I almost feel that I should be writing this in the largest size I can get. Why? Because I now spend a couple of hours a day on a program called "Free Rice" instead of playing games when I get tired of writing. Oh, it has a 'game'... but the game is feeding people all over the world and I am glad I found it. I've always been a word game fan... Jessie, my mother, made up word games for us to play from the time we were old enough to talk to the end of her days, so this is my kind of website. The best thing about it is that you get a grain of rice to 'give' to those who need it with every word you identify correctly. I had so much training in words by Jess that I rarely miss a definition -- if I don't know the word, I can usually guess it by the root of the word, or the fact that it isn't the other three or four definitions. I have been managing to get 3,000 to 3,500 grains a day... and I shall continue to do that and more from now on.
I also learned a sad fact from this same place... that we are far, far behind some other countries in our aid to poverty stricken countries and peoples. Take a look at this:
International Aid -- A Solution
http://www.poverty.com/internationalaid.html
It will show you that the Scandanavian countries, plus Luxembourg and Netherlands are way ahead in their aid to the poor, while we are at the BOTTOM in giving, down below Japan, Italy, Greece and Portugal. We assume... I hear people 'assuming' daily ...that we are so big in our 'gifting' to others -- well, folks, we are not. We are at the bottom, according to the UN statistics.
Of course, that is rather a regular thing with our wealthy... they give mainly to those who can 'entertain' them, as to the theatre, symphonies, galleries, museums, etc. They tend to overlook the ill, the halt, the blind, and particularly those annoying, grimy, lazy (so says Barb Bush), poor people, not only here in the U.S., but also abroad. Even Oprah and particularly the WalMart heirs fall into this bunch. The middle class in the U.S., plus the lower classes, and even the poor... largely support those annoying poverty stricken, homeless, lost people of this world. How do I know... well, I am now, through unfortunate circumstances I won't go into... one of "the poor," living on my Social Security -- but I work hard to save up enough to give to two of my favorite groups: "Feeding America" and "Doctors Without Borders." The first tries to feed the people who need their help in the United States, while the second has been feeding children and saving lives all across the globe. They both need our help to continue the great job they've been doing.
If anyone reads this, I hope they write to our President and urge him to give the miserable 0.7% (that is LESS than 1%) of our national income that is the same as the other countries are giving, that the UN says is necessary to stop poverty in the world. Let's get our money in there with the Swedish, the Danes and the Dutch and get rid of world-wide hunger.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Why, why, why do I always seem to get involved with men who seem to find it amusing to torment me... who pull me into thinking they are interesting and fun and smart, then start riding me or teasing me or somehow make me feel that I wrong or a fool or often just make me feel rotten and terrible, just when I seem to have pulled myself out of a hole, often that some other man has pushed me into. I shall be alone once again this Christmas (mainly because I cannot stand the extreme cold weather where my children will be) and had managed to somehow have cheered myself up a bit (primarily from reading the absolute crazy headlines and writing funny limericks about some of the worst), when my latest man "friend" cut me to pieces, I guess because someone had done something to him and he needed someone to take it out on, on the most foolish and silly accusation that I took seriously... until I finally realized he was just riding me to amuse himself. I'm sure he would be absolutely charmed to discover that I now have the worst headache I have had in years... I have taken 3 aspirin... if they help I'll be able to lie down and sleep, but can't lie down yet as it makes it worse, so here I sit... writing until then......
Well, I guess I should just forget about making any more men friends. Most of my female friends are dead and gone, and new ones with brains are hard to find, but I must start searching. I do hope I can find some younger women who will put up with old me, as I cannot bear any more of my friends dying off. The year that four of my best friends died almost killed me also... and drove me into a terrible depression that I am just beginning to rise from... then this guy shows up who is out to make my life miserable. Lovely. And I was doing so well......... Well..... life is hell.....
Well, I guess I should just forget about making any more men friends. Most of my female friends are dead and gone, and new ones with brains are hard to find, but I must start searching. I do hope I can find some younger women who will put up with old me, as I cannot bear any more of my friends dying off. The year that four of my best friends died almost killed me also... and drove me into a terrible depression that I am just beginning to rise from... then this guy shows up who is out to make my life miserable. Lovely. And I was doing so well......... Well..... life is hell.....
Monday, November 23, 2009
Who is she.....
Good heavens, does anyone know who, why and what Twitter is? I seem to have acquired a lot of very strange people "following" me. Most of them only because they want to sell me something. It seems that every day or two, if I happen to go to one mailbox that I used to use only to write to Kirk, but somehow got Twitter on that one, I have one or two weirdos telling me that they are 'following' me... or wish to follow me, or whatever it is. I still haven't figured out why they want to follow me, or have me follow them (following seems so strange in this quite strange thing). So, once in awhile, I say they can follow me, but I have no idea what it is for, as I never hear from them again. Well no... they do appear every now and then to sell something new. Like I care. I don't think I have ever even looked at what they are selling, let alone bought anything from a Twitter Type. The latest woman seems to simply hand out entertainment gossip... yeah, lady, I am just dying to hear from Michael Jackson from the grave, or see the latest little screaming kid dancing in her underwear (or less). Oh well, back to the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo novel...I'm getting very close to the number, but not the end... I'm afraid I'm going well over that number! My heroine is still on husband number 1 and she has three more to go to get her diamond ring.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
ARE YOU THERE???
One has to wonder. Does anyone ever see what one writes? Is anyone there? I dearly love to read other's blogs, and do so often. And often I try to write... or comment... on their writing. This is, after all, the way to tell them that I have read what they have to say, and if I like it tell them... or even if I do not like it... tell them. I am an outspoken person, as anyone who has read what I have to say must obviously know, but I guess I am simply writing to myself. Ah, perhaps I should comment on my writing. But why?
Sunday is almost always depressing. I don’t know why; well, I suppose I do know why today... I am sitting here weeping over spilt boyfriends, having found not only the poem I wrote for Barry, but some of the loveliest of Kirk’s love letters, as I am trying desperately to clean out this room. (Gawd... no matter how many magazines I give away, they seem to keep multiplying.)
I’m also wondering what kind of stomach problem now... having eaten, or should I say ‘et’ as Collie does, two apparently uncooked crumpets -- well, Mike gave them to me, saying, “I don’t have a toaster...” so I naturally figured they had simply to be tossed into the toaster, buttered and eaten, or et. I don’t think so... they did seem a bit mushy and doughy in the middle, but I thought that was perhaps as I had over-buttered them. Well, the butter just kept melting into them... whatever, my stomach is talking to me furiously, so who knows what is next.
To get back to the letters... Kirkie was absolutely the best at love letters. So sweet, so delicious to read of his longings that so much matched mine... me too, me too, we’d say so often. He and Barry were so close in my mind so often... the only two men with whom I’d fallen in love at first sight, although I often told Kirkie that it was actually love at first write. His very first letter was so charming and so sweet that I simply destroyed all the rotten, dirty old men letters and kept only his, although, some time later I did start a correspondence with Don, the ‘religious conservative’. Imagine... those two terrible words, and I actually carried on a very interesting correspondence with him. I think that the only reason Don wrote to me was because he so desperately wanted to be a writer, and perhaps felt writing to me would help... then continued thinking that perhaps he could convert me to both god and conservatism... silly MAN. I often wonder where he actually went after his forced stay in the hot, miserable Southern state he was stuck in while he wrote to me. He mentioned perhaps going to Las Vegas, although I would consider that horrible city even worse than the hot forests of the South Don used to run in to keep in shape. I also wonder what he looked like... I pictured him as a short, dark haired, though pale, guy... slim because of his running, lots of dark chest hair and very strong (rather like Paul at BB/L, whose arms were like wood)... but when dressed looking like so many of the lawyers I knew in Chicago -- very stylish, light English or Italian suits, with those soft, expensive, Italian shoes, always looking quite new, as a lawyer never walks anywhere... he simply calls a cab. But Don’s running shoes always muddy and worn from the constant running through the pine woods of Georgia or Alabama... or some steamy Southern state. Why can’t everyone have distinctive names like Dick Zaunere. I put Don’s name in Google and several came up in Las Vegas. Now there was a man who loved his profession, although I don’t think religious conservatives should be allowed in it. He was a typical GOP member, and I do not trust any of them to be impartial. Ah, well, I guess lawyers are never impartial, they can’t be, they have to work for their clients. I suppose Madoff’s lawyer must try to get him off, knowing all the while the man was a rotter and stealing from everyone. What a profession to get into... I would not last two weeks. Although, I was in advertising for years and years, selling stuff I didn’t care about, until I could lie no more. Rather like a politician -- good god, there are too many jobs that ask that one go against all that one believes in. One wonders if the radio talk show hosts actually believe the downright lies they present. I guess they would have to, but what sad little lives they must live. How unfortunate that so great a country that my ancestors dreamed of, has descended into the filth and slime and become a land of lawyers, liars and theives.
Can any of us walk with our heads high again? At the very least, I have become a lot more tolerant of almost everyone. I do not hate anyone, but, sadly, I do not love anyone, either. Well, outside of the ones one is expected to love... one’s own. I do adore my children and grandchildren, even while being quite detached from all of them. The other sad thing about this once great country: there is a separation. One is not supposed to ‘get old.’ What a sad state, where so many old women have either bright yellow or pure black hair, attempting to regain their youth, and so many men do not know how amusing a wig or ‘comb-over’ looks. Take Donald Trump for example, he of the orange forward comb-over. Can they not see that ‘bald is beautiful?’ Well, not on me... and I do love my purple hair, although a foolish little girl at the hospital the other day said, “Do you always match your hair to your outfit?” I was in all purple that day. I guess I shall have to buy a set of those day-glo wigs they sell for Halloween. Now If I could only figure out how to make my eyelashes and mouth show up in photographs. I have disappearing features in most photos. Of course there is always retouching.....
Sunday... bloody sunday. I start with depression, and end with the same. But I have traveled from lovely letters to a land of slime, liars and thieves. I have a solution -- no one can go to law school for the next five years, then they must level out the number of lawyers left, and admit only so many to law school, keeping the number of working lawers at a very low number each year. Nonsense? Ah, well......................
I’m also wondering what kind of stomach problem now... having eaten, or should I say ‘et’ as Collie does, two apparently uncooked crumpets -- well, Mike gave them to me, saying, “I don’t have a toaster...” so I naturally figured they had simply to be tossed into the toaster, buttered and eaten, or et. I don’t think so... they did seem a bit mushy and doughy in the middle, but I thought that was perhaps as I had over-buttered them. Well, the butter just kept melting into them... whatever, my stomach is talking to me furiously, so who knows what is next.
To get back to the letters... Kirkie was absolutely the best at love letters. So sweet, so delicious to read of his longings that so much matched mine... me too, me too, we’d say so often. He and Barry were so close in my mind so often... the only two men with whom I’d fallen in love at first sight, although I often told Kirkie that it was actually love at first write. His very first letter was so charming and so sweet that I simply destroyed all the rotten, dirty old men letters and kept only his, although, some time later I did start a correspondence with Don, the ‘religious conservative’. Imagine... those two terrible words, and I actually carried on a very interesting correspondence with him. I think that the only reason Don wrote to me was because he so desperately wanted to be a writer, and perhaps felt writing to me would help... then continued thinking that perhaps he could convert me to both god and conservatism... silly MAN. I often wonder where he actually went after his forced stay in the hot, miserable Southern state he was stuck in while he wrote to me. He mentioned perhaps going to Las Vegas, although I would consider that horrible city even worse than the hot forests of the South Don used to run in to keep in shape. I also wonder what he looked like... I pictured him as a short, dark haired, though pale, guy... slim because of his running, lots of dark chest hair and very strong (rather like Paul at BB/L, whose arms were like wood)... but when dressed looking like so many of the lawyers I knew in Chicago -- very stylish, light English or Italian suits, with those soft, expensive, Italian shoes, always looking quite new, as a lawyer never walks anywhere... he simply calls a cab. But Don’s running shoes always muddy and worn from the constant running through the pine woods of Georgia or Alabama... or some steamy Southern state. Why can’t everyone have distinctive names like Dick Zaunere. I put Don’s name in Google and several came up in Las Vegas. Now there was a man who loved his profession, although I don’t think religious conservatives should be allowed in it. He was a typical GOP member, and I do not trust any of them to be impartial. Ah, well, I guess lawyers are never impartial, they can’t be, they have to work for their clients. I suppose Madoff’s lawyer must try to get him off, knowing all the while the man was a rotter and stealing from everyone. What a profession to get into... I would not last two weeks. Although, I was in advertising for years and years, selling stuff I didn’t care about, until I could lie no more. Rather like a politician -- good god, there are too many jobs that ask that one go against all that one believes in. One wonders if the radio talk show hosts actually believe the downright lies they present. I guess they would have to, but what sad little lives they must live. How unfortunate that so great a country that my ancestors dreamed of, has descended into the filth and slime and become a land of lawyers, liars and theives.
Can any of us walk with our heads high again? At the very least, I have become a lot more tolerant of almost everyone. I do not hate anyone, but, sadly, I do not love anyone, either. Well, outside of the ones one is expected to love... one’s own. I do adore my children and grandchildren, even while being quite detached from all of them. The other sad thing about this once great country: there is a separation. One is not supposed to ‘get old.’ What a sad state, where so many old women have either bright yellow or pure black hair, attempting to regain their youth, and so many men do not know how amusing a wig or ‘comb-over’ looks. Take Donald Trump for example, he of the orange forward comb-over. Can they not see that ‘bald is beautiful?’ Well, not on me... and I do love my purple hair, although a foolish little girl at the hospital the other day said, “Do you always match your hair to your outfit?” I was in all purple that day. I guess I shall have to buy a set of those day-glo wigs they sell for Halloween. Now If I could only figure out how to make my eyelashes and mouth show up in photographs. I have disappearing features in most photos. Of course there is always retouching.....
Sunday... bloody sunday. I start with depression, and end with the same. But I have traveled from lovely letters to a land of slime, liars and thieves. I have a solution -- no one can go to law school for the next five years, then they must level out the number of lawyers left, and admit only so many to law school, keeping the number of working lawers at a very low number each year. Nonsense? Ah, well......................
Friday, November 6, 2009
Why Do Men Never Understand?
Why? Because they are men, and men will never understand women, any more than women will ever understand men. God knows I have tried. Why do I bother? Why do any of us bother? There is no understanding, nor will there ever be. (Men love war, women do not!)
Only twice in my life have I loved someone who loved me, and I don't suppose one could call either of them 'men'... for they were boys. At age 10 my best friend was named Cecil, which I pronounced Seecul, except when I was at his house, where I pronounced it Sescil, as his English mother did, I was one of the very few people he allowed to meet her, as he wanted desperately to be an Amurican and be called Seecul. We were best friends and probably loved each other as much as any two 10 or 11 year old children can love. He was the first boy to kiss me... and then push me away, of course. We were the two smartest kids in the sixth grade and proud of it, as Miss Holland, our teacher, let us know that that was a good thing. I wrote a play that year, mainly so that Cecil could star in it, and I could be the Orson Welles (writer, director, designer, etc.) I'll always be happy that I saw him in the "Memphis Belle" documentary years later, so that I at least knew he came out of WWII alive and well, even though we moved and I never saw him in person again. Him I understood, and he understood me and we loved each other dearly. The only other 'boy' I ever knew that this same was true of was Barry Bushnell... we fell in love with each other at first sight, understood each other completely and parted most unhappily at at a bit later tender age.
I made the horrible mistake of falling completely in love at first sight (write) with one other person at a very advanced age, and we knew each other completely, or so I thought. Alas, it doesn't always work out that way. He may have understood me, but I did not, nor will I ever, understand him. So now, I guess I will just have to come to the conclusion that I will never, never understand men... nor will I ever again find one who can understand me (or particularly, my sense of humour, which I think is very straightforward and so easy... not so Paiguy, not so).
Only twice in my life have I loved someone who loved me, and I don't suppose one could call either of them 'men'... for they were boys. At age 10 my best friend was named Cecil, which I pronounced Seecul, except when I was at his house, where I pronounced it Sescil, as his English mother did, I was one of the very few people he allowed to meet her, as he wanted desperately to be an Amurican and be called Seecul. We were best friends and probably loved each other as much as any two 10 or 11 year old children can love. He was the first boy to kiss me... and then push me away, of course. We were the two smartest kids in the sixth grade and proud of it, as Miss Holland, our teacher, let us know that that was a good thing. I wrote a play that year, mainly so that Cecil could star in it, and I could be the Orson Welles (writer, director, designer, etc.) I'll always be happy that I saw him in the "Memphis Belle" documentary years later, so that I at least knew he came out of WWII alive and well, even though we moved and I never saw him in person again. Him I understood, and he understood me and we loved each other dearly. The only other 'boy' I ever knew that this same was true of was Barry Bushnell... we fell in love with each other at first sight, understood each other completely and parted most unhappily at at a bit later tender age.
I made the horrible mistake of falling completely in love at first sight (write) with one other person at a very advanced age, and we knew each other completely, or so I thought. Alas, it doesn't always work out that way. He may have understood me, but I did not, nor will I ever, understand him. So now, I guess I will just have to come to the conclusion that I will never, never understand men... nor will I ever again find one who can understand me (or particularly, my sense of humour, which I think is very straightforward and so easy... not so Paiguy, not so).
Sunday, October 18, 2009
A Little More Introspection
Not a love poem this time, just one that is how I feel... not that anyone cares, but after all, this is the place where I toss little pieces of me to the winds, perhaps hoping that they will coalesce into some sort of covering to warm my heart and protect me from harm and/or any more hurt or unhappiness. Why do I do it? The answer is one that almost every writer gives: Because I have to.
Learning...
I have learned from my own and other's failures
In many things, perhaps even motherhood,
How to roll with the punches, take the blows
And often rise above the whole damned thing.
To forget and forgive: family, friends, enemies,
For there is more to life, and fighting is useless.
Further, I have learned that war is useless,
Feckless, futile, ineffectual, hopeless and a waste.
How have I learned this? By living through
So many, of my own making, and my country's,
So many that I do not want ever to hear
The ludicrous ranting of some useless leader
Who cares so little about peace and prosperity,
About the life and death of his country's people,
That he will simply avoid diplomacy and declare war.
Learning...
I have learned from my own and other's failures
In many things, perhaps even motherhood,
How to roll with the punches, take the blows
And often rise above the whole damned thing.
To forget and forgive: family, friends, enemies,
For there is more to life, and fighting is useless.
Further, I have learned that war is useless,
Feckless, futile, ineffectual, hopeless and a waste.
How have I learned this? By living through
So many, of my own making, and my country's,
So many that I do not want ever to hear
The ludicrous ranting of some useless leader
Who cares so little about peace and prosperity,
About the life and death of his country's people,
That he will simply avoid diplomacy and declare war.
"At Break of dawn...
there is no sunrise... when your lover has gone..." and the damned weather has gone along with me for this miserable week, too. We're going into what they laughingly call 'winter' here in S.F. It just means that we get snivily, drisily dark days when you can stay inside and cry and nobody notices... and you can turn over at sunrise and finally go to sleep and nobody misses you 'cause who goes out in this weather anyway. Well, at least I guess that it means that I have finally come to and realized that after nine years of what I thought of as a 'forever friendship/love' has ended by my being dumped in an email. I still find it hard to figure out how he could spend at least eight years telling me and writing me about how much he loved me and then could suddenly write an email saying he didn't. He couldn't even call me... after I had sent him a phone card when he was in a mess and had no phone he could call me on. So much for love and romance... this is the last time I want to have anything to do with it. I love guys, but I want no more love affairs. What am I saying... at my age I doubt that I will ever have a chance at one again. Love doesn't run out, but I guess that time does. And to think that nine years ago I wasn't looking for love or romance... I was just looking for a writing partner. Well, we did write some interesting poetry together, but that was the extent of it, and now, in my depression, I am having trouble writing my name, let alone any stories. What am I saying again: I wrote a 3-day novel in which he figured prominently, got beaten up and wound up being brushed off, while I turned my sights to another nutty guy. Oh no... it was only fiction, but it felt good to have him beaten up.
One of my problems is that music is a big thing in my life... and certain songs bring K back and are hard to listen to. I love Lee Wiley and some of her songs were so much a part of "us"... like "Any Time, Any Day, Anywhere" which brings him back to me so quickly. And I find myself mooning around the house singing all the terrible old 'when your lover has gone' songs. I had forgotten how many of them there are, and a sweet program on KALW took the time to remind me of ALL of them. At least they serve to remind you that you are not the only person to suffer... there must be thousands... millions... billions... beating their heads against the wall and saying, "Why me? Why me?" And yet... they eventually stop crying and get back to work or play, or something like a normal life... so I guess I will also. But right now, just let me cry and get it out of my system. You don't even have to sympathize -- just tell me to shut up and go away... it might even help me to learn to say goodbye gracefully.
One of my problems is that music is a big thing in my life... and certain songs bring K back and are hard to listen to. I love Lee Wiley and some of her songs were so much a part of "us"... like "Any Time, Any Day, Anywhere" which brings him back to me so quickly. And I find myself mooning around the house singing all the terrible old 'when your lover has gone' songs. I had forgotten how many of them there are, and a sweet program on KALW took the time to remind me of ALL of them. At least they serve to remind you that you are not the only person to suffer... there must be thousands... millions... billions... beating their heads against the wall and saying, "Why me? Why me?" And yet... they eventually stop crying and get back to work or play, or something like a normal life... so I guess I will also. But right now, just let me cry and get it out of my system. You don't even have to sympathize -- just tell me to shut up and go away... it might even help me to learn to say goodbye gracefully.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
I Need to see a Face
I think I have just been told goodbye by K. I shall miss him...nine years of almost constant communication is hard to forget about, particularly with someone whose mind seemed to run on the same track as one's own. I'll probably never again know anyone to whom I say, "me too, me too" constantly, and get it back again constantly. Sad times, goodbye times. But I really have to see a face to believe what is said. A look... body language, all that, all necessary really to believe it's true. That, unfortunately will not happen, for it cannot. Sad.
But I guess best thing to do is accept it, so I have written a poem, as usual. Friend Erna from my poetry group also felt a great loss, and feels it is one of my best... I don't know, I can't judge anything this new. Maybe years from now I can look back and judge... if I last that long.
You
You are not my happiness
You are not the center of my life
For I have found contentment
Of a sort.
You may still live within me
In that confined, crowded space
With others I have loved
In my heart.
You cannot push them out
Anymore than I can toss you out
So learn to live with them
As I have.
For life goes on for me now
And even without you I can live
As if you had never been
My only love.
Isn’t it amazing that you fade
Into the clouds of my past
And might even disappear
From my life.
Confined with all the others
In that tiny, over-crowded place
Full of forgotten memories
That is my heart.
But I guess best thing to do is accept it, so I have written a poem, as usual. Friend Erna from my poetry group also felt a great loss, and feels it is one of my best... I don't know, I can't judge anything this new. Maybe years from now I can look back and judge... if I last that long.
You
You are not my happiness
You are not the center of my life
For I have found contentment
Of a sort.
You may still live within me
In that confined, crowded space
With others I have loved
In my heart.
You cannot push them out
Anymore than I can toss you out
So learn to live with them
As I have.
For life goes on for me now
And even without you I can live
As if you had never been
My only love.
Isn’t it amazing that you fade
Into the clouds of my past
And might even disappear
From my life.
Confined with all the others
In that tiny, over-crowded place
Full of forgotten memories
That is my heart.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
I did it, I did it! Finished the story for the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest on Labour(sic) Day Weekend. I'll never be the same (good lord, everything I say turns out to be the title of some old song from childhood...never be the same in this world...) If there is more I've forgotten it.
I was ruthless...used everyone I know, and some rather badly, in the story. Poor K got beaten up and J wound up in a bar, being stalked by a killer. I had a nice call from Gail to wish me happy birthday, so I threw her in as a therapist. Well, I told her I would and she said it was OK. I was up until dawn on Sunday night...when stationary things began to move around, I figured I'd better get some sleep and set my alarm and conked out. I lived on the fried chicken and potato salad Ana went and got for me, plus the lovely cherry pie...I am having another piece right now. She also got me some white zinfandel to have to salute the end, which I am doing, having sent Anastasia off to the Post Office today with the printed copy of "Obsessions, Passions, Fixations, Oh My..." and I was certainly happy to see it go in its little blue and white jacket from the P.O. It's gotten quite expensive to send anything to Canada...that little package cost me $10.95. I guess it's gone up in the US also though...I didn't bother to find out. It's only going up over the border to BC, so that seems like a lot.
Elvira will be back tomorrow and Sylvia and I will be happy to see her. We had a strange substitute Tuesday. She reminded me of nothing so much as a tiny Uncle Miltie. She came in, did the phone bit, went out to the kitchen and put on her plastic gloves, which were too large for her, and raced around, throwing stuff into the waste basket and folding and rearranging everything in the bedroom. She cleaned out all the big cardboard things I had stuffed under the cabinet in the bathroom and the place looks magnificent. Luckily she was too busy in the other rooms to come in and toss all my stuff in here, or I would never again see my 'important' papers. God knows what's gone, but right now I don't know so I don't care. Every time she came and did something for me I expected some of the Uncle Miltie schtik and sometimes got it. She even had dyed black hair...fabulous. Good thing she left at five...having to push the phone buttons a million times with those funny long plastic gloves...wonderful.
My crazy French phone in the bedroom fell and did something terrible to itself...half the time people can't get me, as it slides off. I may have to abandon it, but I hate to. And crazy Ms.Katt has taken to resting on top of my Dover bag, which is on top of my briefcase and my new gorgeous Levenger messenger bag (half-price sale!!) I'm afraid I have a thing for Levenger products. I cannot resist red leather accessories! Or the 'bomber jacket' leather series. Now I need somewhere to go to carry the lovely things. I got some new cards...purple, of course, and I had to have a new case for them. It is red and holds a little pad for writing also. One of these days I'll try to get more of my lovely fold-over cards that I used to write information on. Have to map them all out again and that is a chore. My new cards list me as Poet, writer, eccentric. That's me!
I was ruthless...used everyone I know, and some rather badly, in the story. Poor K got beaten up and J wound up in a bar, being stalked by a killer. I had a nice call from Gail to wish me happy birthday, so I threw her in as a therapist. Well, I told her I would and she said it was OK. I was up until dawn on Sunday night...when stationary things began to move around, I figured I'd better get some sleep and set my alarm and conked out. I lived on the fried chicken and potato salad Ana went and got for me, plus the lovely cherry pie...I am having another piece right now. She also got me some white zinfandel to have to salute the end, which I am doing, having sent Anastasia off to the Post Office today with the printed copy of "Obsessions, Passions, Fixations, Oh My..." and I was certainly happy to see it go in its little blue and white jacket from the P.O. It's gotten quite expensive to send anything to Canada...that little package cost me $10.95. I guess it's gone up in the US also though...I didn't bother to find out. It's only going up over the border to BC, so that seems like a lot.
Elvira will be back tomorrow and Sylvia and I will be happy to see her. We had a strange substitute Tuesday. She reminded me of nothing so much as a tiny Uncle Miltie. She came in, did the phone bit, went out to the kitchen and put on her plastic gloves, which were too large for her, and raced around, throwing stuff into the waste basket and folding and rearranging everything in the bedroom. She cleaned out all the big cardboard things I had stuffed under the cabinet in the bathroom and the place looks magnificent. Luckily she was too busy in the other rooms to come in and toss all my stuff in here, or I would never again see my 'important' papers. God knows what's gone, but right now I don't know so I don't care. Every time she came and did something for me I expected some of the Uncle Miltie schtik and sometimes got it. She even had dyed black hair...fabulous. Good thing she left at five...having to push the phone buttons a million times with those funny long plastic gloves...wonderful.
My crazy French phone in the bedroom fell and did something terrible to itself...half the time people can't get me, as it slides off. I may have to abandon it, but I hate to. And crazy Ms.Katt has taken to resting on top of my Dover bag, which is on top of my briefcase and my new gorgeous Levenger messenger bag (half-price sale!!) I'm afraid I have a thing for Levenger products. I cannot resist red leather accessories! Or the 'bomber jacket' leather series. Now I need somewhere to go to carry the lovely things. I got some new cards...purple, of course, and I had to have a new case for them. It is red and holds a little pad for writing also. One of these days I'll try to get more of my lovely fold-over cards that I used to write information on. Have to map them all out again and that is a chore. My new cards list me as Poet, writer, eccentric. That's me!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Saying Goodbye Is Hard
It's hard to say goodbye to the last of a group of brothers who figured so much in our country's history during my lifetime. The final Kennedy brother, the baby brother, has gone from this life and history. The way I shall remember him is as a man who made mistakes in his early years and spent the rest of his life working to make up for those mistakes. Everything he has done from his seat in the Senate was to help his fellow man woman and child, and to make this country a better place in which to live for all of us. His personal life was not a happy one, but he did not whine about it, and probably worked longer and harder than anyone else in Congress for this country and its people, sitting in the back of the room where he started, never pushing to the front as the other Congresspeople did. He always tried to get people to work together for the betterment of man, eschewing the usual pettiness of minor legislators. Teddy tried for consensus, but only if it meant that the country was being served well by that consensus. He worked for the best for all of us.
I shall miss that booming voice, the brilliant smile, and the good will of a great man who tried so hard to help those who often had no other voice to help them. Goodbye Teddy, in your own way you were the great one in your family and I fear you will never be replaced. A hard thing to say in this cold, sad world that now needs you more than ever.
I shall miss that booming voice, the brilliant smile, and the good will of a great man who tried so hard to help those who often had no other voice to help them. Goodbye Teddy, in your own way you were the great one in your family and I fear you will never be replaced. A hard thing to say in this cold, sad world that now needs you more than ever.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Late Night Musings...
What I learned today: I am now told that the correct way to say aluminum is to use the English enunciation -- al-u-min-i-um, so I guess one must add the extra 'i' also. Strange. And what dictionary told us this... I have no idea. I guess I wasn't listening that intently.
I still cannot put any weight on my right foot without great pain ensuing. Have just about decided that it is a recurrence of the gout I had so many years ago, so I shall avoid all innards and all the other things one must eschew (have to look on the Internet and get a list) and hope it will stop stabbing me constantly and waking me up in the middle of the night. Most annoying. This would happen just when I was getting out and getting some exercise... now I shall have to begin again, if the stabbing stops. I found the elastic stockings from the knee ops, so I shall use them when I go out. I do want to go to some of the things in the S.F. Fringe Festival. Have been trying to find Joe Bullock as he usually knows all these people, but he has disappeared like all my friends seem to just when I need them.
At least I have written the bit I do with Mel for the Poetry Reading on Aug.25 in Yerba Buena Gardens... and the new 'Health Care' nursery rhyme for same. Hard to write when in pain. I do hope it is gone before Labour Day weekend and the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, as I am determined to enter that this year. Which reminds me... I had better fill out the entry form, write them a check and get it in. Then I will surely write. So, off to bed now so I can get up early and get all the other stuff done -- letters to kidlets and clear out all the pileups of unopened and unread mail, both snail and emails -- too damned many of both for one person to handle. I need a secretary again... or a 'wife' or a bonfire... or perhaps all three.
Today I received something in the mail I have been wanting for a long time... of course, the mail people ran over it with a truck and broke the case, but the CD is OK, I'm pretty sure. It's a copy of Lee Wiley's "West of the Moon" album. Oh, if only I had that voice. She could slide from note to note like no one ever has... her phrasing is astounding, and that soft, almost Memphis accent, backed by some of my old Dixieland buddies from NYC... perfect. I'll listen to the whole thing tomorrow and feel like I'm back in New York. This is the album that all the musicians love... me too, me too. The title song just knocks me out.
Having spent the day not only getting my poetry writing done, but also working on getting the word out on health care reform, I am very tired... and so to bed... but before I leave, a quote of Mel Books' from an old favorite film, "The Twelve Chairs": "Hope for the best, expect the woist!"
I still cannot put any weight on my right foot without great pain ensuing. Have just about decided that it is a recurrence of the gout I had so many years ago, so I shall avoid all innards and all the other things one must eschew (have to look on the Internet and get a list) and hope it will stop stabbing me constantly and waking me up in the middle of the night. Most annoying. This would happen just when I was getting out and getting some exercise... now I shall have to begin again, if the stabbing stops. I found the elastic stockings from the knee ops, so I shall use them when I go out. I do want to go to some of the things in the S.F. Fringe Festival. Have been trying to find Joe Bullock as he usually knows all these people, but he has disappeared like all my friends seem to just when I need them.
At least I have written the bit I do with Mel for the Poetry Reading on Aug.25 in Yerba Buena Gardens... and the new 'Health Care' nursery rhyme for same. Hard to write when in pain. I do hope it is gone before Labour Day weekend and the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, as I am determined to enter that this year. Which reminds me... I had better fill out the entry form, write them a check and get it in. Then I will surely write. So, off to bed now so I can get up early and get all the other stuff done -- letters to kidlets and clear out all the pileups of unopened and unread mail, both snail and emails -- too damned many of both for one person to handle. I need a secretary again... or a 'wife' or a bonfire... or perhaps all three.
Today I received something in the mail I have been wanting for a long time... of course, the mail people ran over it with a truck and broke the case, but the CD is OK, I'm pretty sure. It's a copy of Lee Wiley's "West of the Moon" album. Oh, if only I had that voice. She could slide from note to note like no one ever has... her phrasing is astounding, and that soft, almost Memphis accent, backed by some of my old Dixieland buddies from NYC... perfect. I'll listen to the whole thing tomorrow and feel like I'm back in New York. This is the album that all the musicians love... me too, me too. The title song just knocks me out.
Having spent the day not only getting my poetry writing done, but also working on getting the word out on health care reform, I am very tired... and so to bed... but before I leave, a quote of Mel Books' from an old favorite film, "The Twelve Chairs": "Hope for the best, expect the woist!"
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Yeah, I'm STRONGER...
I keep telling my kids and all my young friends... don't get old. Well, I'm telling y'all IN SPADES tonight. I was doing as I was told, lying down with the foot up on a pillow, so what happened? The damned foot started stabbing me with pain, which it continues to do now, although it has let up a bit... I got up, as, why should I lie there and suffer, why not get up and suffer a little more... hell, I can take it... Oprah just started to tell me "YOU'RE STRONGER THAN YOU KNOW...How to tap into your true power and really make it work for you." Well, at least that's her word for the day in her HUGE and getting huger magazine "O." Jeeze, "Newsweek" is hurting for money, the ad revenue goes down and down for all the decent little mags like 'Atlantic' and 'Harpers'... and "O" is heavier every month (as is "Vogue," "Vanity Fair," etc.) and has more ads than any of them. Is this what this country has come to... a bunch of dippy women buying makeup and $500 a pair shoes, and what Oprah considers a nice little bargain of a dress for only $895. Here's an example of one of the 'advisors' pages on what YOU can buy that will make all the other ladies sit up and take notice: Versace glasses, $264, NARS lipstick $24, a cute little Smartcar for $11,990, Ralph Lauren Home 'throw' Blanket, $1,795, Marni skirt, $720, Orla Kiely case for your ipod, $298, Orla Kiely coat $699...my god, what bargains!!! Oprah, maybe you had better quit, I think I just spent my entire income for the year, and I didn't even get the iPod to put in that cheap little case!! Well, thank goodness, the Salvation Army is having its 50% off everything in the store this weekend. Not that my foot will allow me to go to the sale, but I can DREAM can't I?
Yep, getting old and being broke gets to be less and less fun when you can't put any weight on your foot. Well, you can still laugh once in awhile... I was on the phone with my friend Pat yesterday, and when she asked what I was doing, I said, "I'm just lying here with my feet in the air..." and then started laughing, as did she, at what I was saying. "Only problem is," I said, "I'm not having any fun..." and I imagine the picture going on in her head was probably the same as in mine. (OK, Whitney, if you don't like the tack this is taking, go read someone else's blog...) To continue: it gets harder and harder to be 'alone' as one gets older. Thank god I have Elvira and Anastasia and Ana, at least for a few hours, or perhaps until the governator decides to take them away from me so that he doesn't have to tax any of his wealthy friends.
Caretakers are already disappearing, and I fear that if I can simply move mine might be snatched away, too. I sure hope not, as I get the feeling that the reason the foot is biting me now is because I kept having to get up and either find things for the Elvira substitute I had today, or show her for the third or fourth time, how to work the 1-cup button on the microwave. Yes Oprap, I am stronger than I know...just hand me the cup and I'll do it myself! I made a typo on Oprah, but I kinda like it, so it will stay. Now here I sit alone, praying that Elvira comes back tomorrow...she knows where everything is, what I like to eat, how to...face it, do everything....she and Ana both.
Barry, wherever you are... dead and buried up there in Sonoma... I find myself missing you terribly. If you were here, you might be lying with your head in my lap, laughing at me and my complaining. That's how I remember you the best... fighting sleep and asking me a million questions... right now you would simply sit up, fold me in your arms and kiss me gently and so sweetly to shut me up... kind of a 'kiss and make it better' one. You were the best kisser, Barry... no, I take it back, Kirk was the best kisser, and yet he, like you, deserted me when he was having problems. The two loves of my life... my two love-at-first-sights... one at the beginning of my life, the other at the end... and how I miss them both. Of course, the first died young, but the second will probably outlive us all, up in the wilds of Or-re-gun. Funny, I had the same experience with both of them... an evening of questions back and forth... both of us talking fast to get it all in... followed by a long, long, wonderful kiss, whispers of how we loved each other, then out the door with calls of 'next time...next time..." and when 'next time' came, after what seemed forever... the flying together like magnets for a repeat of that kiss. Ah, an hello kiss can be even better than a goodbye one... and they were. So the aloneness swirls around my head as the foot quiets down and stops biting so severly. I guess I did just get it off my mind... practice breathing Peggy like Les told you to when Whitney wouldn't make her appearance in this world almost a month late... or as Nancy tells us to the breathe in the poetry before our group meeting... or as I have been told to do for meditation... can't fool me, it's all to get your mind off your pain or your problems, or your aloneness... I can do that deep breathing until the cows come home... DAMN, the pain just stopped. Wow. Maybe it does work! So I guess I had better hie me off to bed before it starts up again. Sylvia will give me her version of the 'kiss and make it better'... she'll lie on top of me and keep me warm. Hey, I'm not alone... I have a spoiled rotten Ms.Katt, Ms. Sylvia Katt stretched across my body and purring in my ear. What the hell more do I need!
Yep, getting old and being broke gets to be less and less fun when you can't put any weight on your foot. Well, you can still laugh once in awhile... I was on the phone with my friend Pat yesterday, and when she asked what I was doing, I said, "I'm just lying here with my feet in the air..." and then started laughing, as did she, at what I was saying. "Only problem is," I said, "I'm not having any fun..." and I imagine the picture going on in her head was probably the same as in mine. (OK, Whitney, if you don't like the tack this is taking, go read someone else's blog...) To continue: it gets harder and harder to be 'alone' as one gets older. Thank god I have Elvira and Anastasia and Ana, at least for a few hours, or perhaps until the governator decides to take them away from me so that he doesn't have to tax any of his wealthy friends.
Caretakers are already disappearing, and I fear that if I can simply move mine might be snatched away, too. I sure hope not, as I get the feeling that the reason the foot is biting me now is because I kept having to get up and either find things for the Elvira substitute I had today, or show her for the third or fourth time, how to work the 1-cup button on the microwave. Yes Oprap, I am stronger than I know...just hand me the cup and I'll do it myself! I made a typo on Oprah, but I kinda like it, so it will stay. Now here I sit alone, praying that Elvira comes back tomorrow...she knows where everything is, what I like to eat, how to...face it, do everything....she and Ana both.
Barry, wherever you are... dead and buried up there in Sonoma... I find myself missing you terribly. If you were here, you might be lying with your head in my lap, laughing at me and my complaining. That's how I remember you the best... fighting sleep and asking me a million questions... right now you would simply sit up, fold me in your arms and kiss me gently and so sweetly to shut me up... kind of a 'kiss and make it better' one. You were the best kisser, Barry... no, I take it back, Kirk was the best kisser, and yet he, like you, deserted me when he was having problems. The two loves of my life... my two love-at-first-sights... one at the beginning of my life, the other at the end... and how I miss them both. Of course, the first died young, but the second will probably outlive us all, up in the wilds of Or-re-gun. Funny, I had the same experience with both of them... an evening of questions back and forth... both of us talking fast to get it all in... followed by a long, long, wonderful kiss, whispers of how we loved each other, then out the door with calls of 'next time...next time..." and when 'next time' came, after what seemed forever... the flying together like magnets for a repeat of that kiss. Ah, an hello kiss can be even better than a goodbye one... and they were. So the aloneness swirls around my head as the foot quiets down and stops biting so severly. I guess I did just get it off my mind... practice breathing Peggy like Les told you to when Whitney wouldn't make her appearance in this world almost a month late... or as Nancy tells us to the breathe in the poetry before our group meeting... or as I have been told to do for meditation... can't fool me, it's all to get your mind off your pain or your problems, or your aloneness... I can do that deep breathing until the cows come home... DAMN, the pain just stopped. Wow. Maybe it does work! So I guess I had better hie me off to bed before it starts up again. Sylvia will give me her version of the 'kiss and make it better'... she'll lie on top of me and keep me warm. Hey, I'm not alone... I have a spoiled rotten Ms.Katt, Ms. Sylvia Katt stretched across my body and purring in my ear. What the hell more do I need!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Help, HELP!!
Ah, help me oh great Buddha... or someone, anyone... for I seem to have succumbed (perhaps it was the drugs - no, not that kind -- pain pills for my foot... puleese!) to the cyber-devils.
Connie, it's all your fault. I started with something as simple as getting myself on Facebook... so great to find all the relatives there, along with Connie and other old friends. Now I discover that I am on almost anything you can get on... here, well, I've had this blog for a few months... and on Hub and Vox, whatever they are... and constant nice little places that are dying to take my money for stuff I WANT... not need... and places to sign up to win cruises... or new kitchens... or big money... or... And I'm on several writing sites that I haven't time to look at... can you say 'The Red Room...?' or 'Pandalous' or is that it?... etc. Whatever... they do come up all the time, asking where I am... I don't KNOW where I am... but I manage to spend so much time sitting in front of this cursed computer that I don't get a lot of exercise, and rarely get anything important done. Now Connie, you want me on SKYPE? OK...I'm on, only one little problem -- I cannot seem to figure out how to get my voice on there...oh, that's me, but no sound.
At the moment, in case anyone besides me ever reads this bunch of ........ I am on my way to bed, having taken my pain pill so I can sleep, with my injured (?) foot, ankle, leg, whatever on a pillow -- and on the way to the doctor tomorrow so that she can take a look at 'it' to see if she can figure why I cannot put any weight on the foot without feeling like I am walking on hot bricks, and why now, all of a sudden, the ankle has a swelling at the front of my leg.
Oh, great Buddha, since you are the only one whom I think makes any sense in the 'religious community' -- do me a favor and quit picking on me. I haven't done anything terribly bad of late, and I don't think I deserve all this pain and swelling. Make nice and make it all go away and give me back my good health....but wait until after Liz, my doctor sees that it really has happened, as uaually, once I get a chance to go and see her, the symptoms are gone and I'm sure she thinks I made it all up. (Then it comes back double the next day -- how unfair can you get!) Puleese, make it all better! Thank you dear Buddha... I shall spread the word of your kindness, if you just, for once, HELP!!!
Connie, it's all your fault. I started with something as simple as getting myself on Facebook... so great to find all the relatives there, along with Connie and other old friends. Now I discover that I am on almost anything you can get on... here, well, I've had this blog for a few months... and on Hub and Vox, whatever they are... and constant nice little places that are dying to take my money for stuff I WANT... not need... and places to sign up to win cruises... or new kitchens... or big money... or... And I'm on several writing sites that I haven't time to look at... can you say 'The Red Room...?' or 'Pandalous' or is that it?... etc. Whatever... they do come up all the time, asking where I am... I don't KNOW where I am... but I manage to spend so much time sitting in front of this cursed computer that I don't get a lot of exercise, and rarely get anything important done. Now Connie, you want me on SKYPE? OK...I'm on, only one little problem -- I cannot seem to figure out how to get my voice on there...oh, that's me, but no sound.
At the moment, in case anyone besides me ever reads this bunch of ........ I am on my way to bed, having taken my pain pill so I can sleep, with my injured (?) foot, ankle, leg, whatever on a pillow -- and on the way to the doctor tomorrow so that she can take a look at 'it' to see if she can figure why I cannot put any weight on the foot without feeling like I am walking on hot bricks, and why now, all of a sudden, the ankle has a swelling at the front of my leg.
Oh, great Buddha, since you are the only one whom I think makes any sense in the 'religious community' -- do me a favor and quit picking on me. I haven't done anything terribly bad of late, and I don't think I deserve all this pain and swelling. Make nice and make it all go away and give me back my good health....but wait until after Liz, my doctor sees that it really has happened, as uaually, once I get a chance to go and see her, the symptoms are gone and I'm sure she thinks I made it all up. (Then it comes back double the next day -- how unfair can you get!) Puleese, make it all better! Thank you dear Buddha... I shall spread the word of your kindness, if you just, for once, HELP!!!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
"But I NEED it!"
The quote above is from Mark, aged from around four up... Elvira and I have a great little comedy act going using those words. I told her about Mark, usually the perfect child, when he really wanted something, his cry was 'But I NEED it!" The answer, of course, is "NO, you WANT it!" or the actual truth. So my cry these days goes out to unhearing and uncaring ears... "Damn, I NEED it." Silly me, I am suffering from a lack of give-and-take that I have had for nine long years with that miserable deserter, Kirk. I got used to getting a daily letter full of love and understanding and bright, intelligent conversation about likes and dislikes, interesting tidbits about everything...always something one could get one's teeth into and answer in much the same way it was given, and give back something with which to do the same. God...does that make any sense at all, even to me? What was the charm...perhaps just two crazy minds full of trivia...but always written with love and good humour. And then, as my life continued on in much the same easy, even manner, his completely fell apart and I guess he simply fell back on the whole pack of people he had supported all the years in the past, who never gave a damn about him, but still needed him for support. I didn't need him for support physically, but, oh, my mind, heart and head sure did and I guess always will. He was one of a kind -- sweet, gentle, so bright, and a someone who could have finished my sentences for me. I loved his long, strong arms around me, yes, but I loved the words that flowed from that capacious brain down through those long fingers into the computer even more. He was my brick, my Lancelot, my lover, my friend, and the reality that he is gone is almost beyond comprehension. So, is it any wonder that I say, I NEED it and mean I WANT it back...or even a pale copy might be nice......sure.
Cri-men-ettly (what is that from?...where did I learn it?) Barry and Kirk can't be the only people on this earth with whom I can have a mind-meld, can they? When we were together, we never shut up...the conversation was fast and furious....well so was the sex....but it was the constant "me too, me too, me too," that was the most fascinating. To be able to finish the last half of a favorite quotation, to the recognition of a poetry style...to...to I suppose just knowing that the 'other' KNEW what you were talking about. Granted, I shall never see another Barry race across the room, thrown himself at my feet, kiss my hand and say, "Hi, I'm Barry, who are you?" At my age, the poor guy coouldn't get up off the floor again... but there MUST be more than two others in this huge population who know what I am talking about. Maybe not, maybe I have worn out my welcome. However, once I get past the novel writing contest, perhaps I shall try another 'personals ad.' God I hate even the sound of that! But this time, maybe to someone FAR, FAR away...just to write to...never to get in the least involved with...never to 'get hurt' you mean, don't you? Yeah!
So, back to the drawing board. But this time, I am really getting busy and practicing my craft, so to speak, for the big 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. I have three 'ideas' this year, which is more than ever before, as in previous years I simply started writing, not even knowing where I might be going. Had to scrap a whole half day of stuff one year...dumb idea. I've been gearing up by writing little stories for my book about Jessie (mother), who was a great source of stories and I am finally getting them down on paper (well, 'on computer'), a good way to get the old mind going. Wrote three last night late, and will write more tonight. I find that I write best after around 3 pm. However, I shall get plenty of sleep and manage to eat real meals during the 3-Day, I always do, and can still get well over 100 pages of writing done. I do wish I could remember some dreams right now, as they can be my best source for fiction. I tend to dream movies in full color, and often with known 'stars.' I used one of my dreams for a 3-Day novel, and I thought it was pretty good...but lacked the swearing they seem to love. Those Canadians... you never know. And I always found them a bit stiff. Not in their writing, I guess.
Time for dinner. I had best get with it. I shall make myself a nice little potato salad with LOTS of celery (still loaded with that) and some purple onion. Someone put a bowl of cut onion in my fridge, without a cover! Yuk! I do hope everything doesn't smell of onion now. Retraining will be in order this next week! My foot is still killing me to walk on, but I must get used to it, if not over it, as I cannot just sit here with it 'up.' Onward and upward.....ah, well......
Cri-men-ettly (what is that from?...where did I learn it?) Barry and Kirk can't be the only people on this earth with whom I can have a mind-meld, can they? When we were together, we never shut up...the conversation was fast and furious....well so was the sex....but it was the constant "me too, me too, me too," that was the most fascinating. To be able to finish the last half of a favorite quotation, to the recognition of a poetry style...to...to I suppose just knowing that the 'other' KNEW what you were talking about. Granted, I shall never see another Barry race across the room, thrown himself at my feet, kiss my hand and say, "Hi, I'm Barry, who are you?" At my age, the poor guy coouldn't get up off the floor again... but there MUST be more than two others in this huge population who know what I am talking about. Maybe not, maybe I have worn out my welcome. However, once I get past the novel writing contest, perhaps I shall try another 'personals ad.' God I hate even the sound of that! But this time, maybe to someone FAR, FAR away...just to write to...never to get in the least involved with...never to 'get hurt' you mean, don't you? Yeah!
So, back to the drawing board. But this time, I am really getting busy and practicing my craft, so to speak, for the big 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. I have three 'ideas' this year, which is more than ever before, as in previous years I simply started writing, not even knowing where I might be going. Had to scrap a whole half day of stuff one year...dumb idea. I've been gearing up by writing little stories for my book about Jessie (mother), who was a great source of stories and I am finally getting them down on paper (well, 'on computer'), a good way to get the old mind going. Wrote three last night late, and will write more tonight. I find that I write best after around 3 pm. However, I shall get plenty of sleep and manage to eat real meals during the 3-Day, I always do, and can still get well over 100 pages of writing done. I do wish I could remember some dreams right now, as they can be my best source for fiction. I tend to dream movies in full color, and often with known 'stars.' I used one of my dreams for a 3-Day novel, and I thought it was pretty good...but lacked the swearing they seem to love. Those Canadians... you never know. And I always found them a bit stiff. Not in their writing, I guess.
Time for dinner. I had best get with it. I shall make myself a nice little potato salad with LOTS of celery (still loaded with that) and some purple onion. Someone put a bowl of cut onion in my fridge, without a cover! Yuk! I do hope everything doesn't smell of onion now. Retraining will be in order this next week! My foot is still killing me to walk on, but I must get used to it, if not over it, as I cannot just sit here with it 'up.' Onward and upward.....ah, well......
Friday, August 7, 2009
Forget goodnight.....
I got carried, yes, carried away.... Love that song, and now I am awake with my right foot throbbing away, so I read something I had dumped on my desktop to use in writing, and it made me angry enough -- again -- to stay up awhile and write about it.
But first -- I do not understand the people in this country who think we should keep on breeding and having More and MORE children. I have long been in favor of the Zero Population Growth people who say, "Have ONE child for each, then knock it off." I don't care how many times people tell me that we have a huge country and room enough for millions more....IT IS NOT TRUE. We are already short of water for everyone and there are children STARVING in YOUR country...that's MY country, too, and I don't like to see children starve!!! Nor adults doing the same. I get really sick of people saying, "Well, it's OK for people like the Kennedys to have lots of children, they can afford them." NO, No, No, they simply are taking the food out of the mouths of the children who do not have their money to get it. I used up all of my money getting my first knee replaced even waiting in pain until my Medicare kicked in -- (well, not all of my money...my ex managed to trot most of that off to Aruba and gamble it away) AND, has anyone really looked at how easy it would be to pay for decent health care, IF we didn't have to PAY BIG BUCKS FOR SALARIES AND NONSENSE to the INSURANCE COMPANY EXECUTIVES, and pay for all those big buildings they love to put their names on??? Look at this -- I didn't MAKE these figures up (as people like Baucus does -- after all, he has to get a few bucks from the Insurance Companies doesn't he) (he should have been recused from serving on that committee, as he HAS interests in health care firms)...they have to 'support' all those adorable Senators and Congressmen/women, so they will listen to THEIR SIDE (BIG BUCKS side). These figures came from the U.S. Census Bureau...look them up yourselves.
Population, U.S. 304,059.784 -- July, 2008 (oh, god, how many since??)
Population over 18, including over 65 = 217,800,000
Now look at it this way. If everyone in the U.S. over 18 paid $25.00 a month for health care (and that is surely a helluva lot LESS than any of us, including seniors, pay) the government would have $5,445,000.000.00 each MONTH, or $65,340,000,000.00 by the end of each year. THAT'S SIXTY-FIVE and a HALF TRILLION DOLLARS, people. I think that might be a good start toward a better health care system, don't you? Even those greedy, rotten doctors who are only in it for the money might want to get into that system, instead of being a high priced 'special entity' -- right?
Now let me tell you, the Canadians send their government $47.00 a month for their ‘free health care,’ which I might add, I have found is a lot better than what most people get in this country and pay a LOT more for.
(My prime example of the horrors of the ins. co. systems in this country is my daughter, who paid in to ‘the best health insurance in the country’ until she had breast cancer. Then had to go back to work a couple of weeks after the operations (two, as the stupid doctor left a bit in) because she couldn’t take the time off with NO pay, and she had to pay $30,000. as ‘her share’ of the cost of operations and the chemo and radiation they insisted she have. She WORKED to pay for this WHILE SHE WAS STILL having chemo and radiation. What a GREAT HEALTH CARE SYSTEM(S) we have in this country!!!)
And don't tell me to go back where I came from, some of you charming repubs...my family came to this country (and BUILT IT FOR YOU) in 1635.
But first -- I do not understand the people in this country who think we should keep on breeding and having More and MORE children. I have long been in favor of the Zero Population Growth people who say, "Have ONE child for each, then knock it off." I don't care how many times people tell me that we have a huge country and room enough for millions more....IT IS NOT TRUE. We are already short of water for everyone and there are children STARVING in YOUR country...that's MY country, too, and I don't like to see children starve!!! Nor adults doing the same. I get really sick of people saying, "Well, it's OK for people like the Kennedys to have lots of children, they can afford them." NO, No, No, they simply are taking the food out of the mouths of the children who do not have their money to get it. I used up all of my money getting my first knee replaced even waiting in pain until my Medicare kicked in -- (well, not all of my money...my ex managed to trot most of that off to Aruba and gamble it away) AND, has anyone really looked at how easy it would be to pay for decent health care, IF we didn't have to PAY BIG BUCKS FOR SALARIES AND NONSENSE to the INSURANCE COMPANY EXECUTIVES, and pay for all those big buildings they love to put their names on??? Look at this -- I didn't MAKE these figures up (as people like Baucus does -- after all, he has to get a few bucks from the Insurance Companies doesn't he) (he should have been recused from serving on that committee, as he HAS interests in health care firms)...they have to 'support' all those adorable Senators and Congressmen/women, so they will listen to THEIR SIDE (BIG BUCKS side). These figures came from the U.S. Census Bureau...look them up yourselves.
Population, U.S. 304,059.784 -- July, 2008 (oh, god, how many since??)
Population over 18, including over 65 = 217,800,000
Now look at it this way. If everyone in the U.S. over 18 paid $25.00 a month for health care (and that is surely a helluva lot LESS than any of us, including seniors, pay) the government would have $5,445,000.000.00 each MONTH, or $65,340,000,000.00 by the end of each year. THAT'S SIXTY-FIVE and a HALF TRILLION DOLLARS, people. I think that might be a good start toward a better health care system, don't you? Even those greedy, rotten doctors who are only in it for the money might want to get into that system, instead of being a high priced 'special entity' -- right?
Now let me tell you, the Canadians send their government $47.00 a month for their ‘free health care,’ which I might add, I have found is a lot better than what most people get in this country and pay a LOT more for.
(My prime example of the horrors of the ins. co. systems in this country is my daughter, who paid in to ‘the best health insurance in the country’ until she had breast cancer. Then had to go back to work a couple of weeks after the operations (two, as the stupid doctor left a bit in) because she couldn’t take the time off with NO pay, and she had to pay $30,000. as ‘her share’ of the cost of operations and the chemo and radiation they insisted she have. She WORKED to pay for this WHILE SHE WAS STILL having chemo and radiation. What a GREAT HEALTH CARE SYSTEM(S) we have in this country!!!)
And don't tell me to go back where I came from, some of you charming repubs...my family came to this country (and BUILT IT FOR YOU) in 1635.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
NO MORE Oxycodone or Perco anything for me!!!
Jeeze....will I ever WAKE UP! Being a good little patient, I took the pills I was sent home with and slept like a log last night. Elvira came at 1:00 pm and I was still sleeping. Got up, limped and hopped in here, had coffee, strawberries and cottage cheese and pill, tried to think enough to write a bit and finally limped/hopped back to bed, falling asleep to the sound of E.vacuuming. Woke up around 6:00, managed to cook potatoes and carrots E had cut up for me, ate them with a bit of chicken, and again almost fell on the keyboard fast asleep. I think I did nod off a couple of times (well, I was listening to first BBC, then Fox online), and I haven't taken anymore pain pills, nor will I until I find out what the hell is wrong with me.
I need to wake up at least the brain, so that I can get started with an outline for my fourth try at the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, which is coming soon, and I'd like to stay awake for that at least. Also have to write some new stuff for our poetry reading in Yerba Buena Gardens on August 15 at noon. Nancy likes to repeat stuff, I don't. I want ALL new. I'm also planning on writing a play for next year's Fringe Festival, if not before. Where is Joe Bullock when I need him? Have my cast (not one for my foot) lined up... friend Pat, little El-veer-a (unless she panics and runs) and Collie, if he will do it... if his poor foot recovers. He's limping worse than I am. Well, we'll get him a cast!
Ah, yes, I KNOW... I shall just get off here and go to bed and dream a 3-Day, as I have done in the past. Have to remember to throw in a few 'dirty' words. The ones that win are very earthy, so I have to 'clean down' my style I guess. Now, before I manage to fall on my face on the way to bed, I shall bid you goodnight -- is anyone really there? Goodnight air......ah, well.......
I need to wake up at least the brain, so that I can get started with an outline for my fourth try at the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, which is coming soon, and I'd like to stay awake for that at least. Also have to write some new stuff for our poetry reading in Yerba Buena Gardens on August 15 at noon. Nancy likes to repeat stuff, I don't. I want ALL new. I'm also planning on writing a play for next year's Fringe Festival, if not before. Where is Joe Bullock when I need him? Have my cast (not one for my foot) lined up... friend Pat, little El-veer-a (unless she panics and runs) and Collie, if he will do it... if his poor foot recovers. He's limping worse than I am. Well, we'll get him a cast!
Ah, yes, I KNOW... I shall just get off here and go to bed and dream a 3-Day, as I have done in the past. Have to remember to throw in a few 'dirty' words. The ones that win are very earthy, so I have to 'clean down' my style I guess. Now, before I manage to fall on my face on the way to bed, I shall bid you goodnight -- is anyone really there? Goodnight air......ah, well.......
To Add Humor to Injury....
Have to add this little bit: The last time I went to the E.R. at Davies (I broke my nose on my 'office' chair with steel feet and cracked two ribs), the dear little doctor who took care of me, sewed up the nose gash and told me they can't do anything for a cracked rib but tell you not to laugh or cough, was named David Crockett. Hurt my ribs to laugh, he was right. Since I had forgotten to bring a friends phone number to get picked up, he gave me a sleeping pill and put me in an empty room.
This time, I just sprained the right foot (they think... as usual), but I got my Percoset to keep down the pain... and took a cab home alone. As I looked at the prescription today when I was sending Anstasia over to Walgreen's, I finally found the name of the doctor who took care of me and wrote the prescription -- He is named Leif Eriksen. OK... so he is probably Danish (ends in 'sen'), but that's a pretty good pair of ER doctors to have... right? Next, Christopher Columbus?
Coincidence is ME, or perhaps US -- my sister Betty Rae's birthday is D-Day, my son Mark's is the day that JFK was shot, and mine... lovely day: 9/11.
This time, I just sprained the right foot (they think... as usual), but I got my Percoset to keep down the pain... and took a cab home alone. As I looked at the prescription today when I was sending Anstasia over to Walgreen's, I finally found the name of the doctor who took care of me and wrote the prescription -- He is named Leif Eriksen. OK... so he is probably Danish (ends in 'sen'), but that's a pretty good pair of ER doctors to have... right? Next, Christopher Columbus?
Coincidence is ME, or perhaps US -- my sister Betty Rae's birthday is D-Day, my son Mark's is the day that JFK was shot, and mine... lovely day: 9/11.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Go See This, plus yet another injury...
Here is one more great article to go and read:
http://www.alternet.org/media/141685/how_lou_dobbs_scared_rush_limbaugh_off_the_birther_story/
I loved it, and you also get a great clip from Jon Stewart. How scrumptious to have a sagacious man to cut down that bunch of ninnies over at the Faux Network, if it can be called a network... more like the low-class comedy bunch with no brains, a more turgid gang would be hard to find. I am glad that Jon and his whole group, particularly Colbert are there to watch them, so I don't have to.
Now about the INJURY! I did it again -- this time I jumped out of the shower (I MUST learn NOT to JUMP) and landed on my right (or 'good' foot), hearing a sound like one makes stepping on one of those clear plastic glasses. Wasn't a glass, though... it was my foot, obviously screaming at me. Since it didn't get red and swell to twice its size, as the left one had done when I tore the top tendon on the foot in half, I foolishly thought it might stop hurting shortly. It didn't... it also didn't swell a lot, although the arch got a bit puffy, and I couldn't stand on it, as it hurt like hell to bear any weight on it. So I sat, tried to get my doctor and waited for her to return my call. She was just a little sarcastic when I finally talked to her... "Call 911 and get over to Davies' Emergency Room... I can't do an x-ray over the phone, you know." Well, I didn't call 911, as I wasn't about to spend two or three hundred dollars, or whatever the going rate for ambulances is these days (DAMMIT.....get those STUPID 'conservative democrats' to get single payer, universal, DECENT health care -- oh, I forgot, they get decent health care, and they also get PAID BIG BUCKS by the lobbyists to keep the damned insurance companies collecting terrible amounts of money from all of us -- rant, rant, rant!!!).
So, deep breath, Peggy... I called a cab and went over to CPMC's Davies Campus, just up the hill from me (and a hospital I love as they have cared for me in the past), and the driver, a lovely man from Nigeria who thinks S.F. is TOO COLD most of the time -- boy it sure must be HOT in Nigeria, went in and told them to get a wheelchair for me. A nice little tiny Chinese woman finally managed to get me in... She said she loved the way my hair matched my outfit (I was wearing a lavender t-shirt and purple plaid pants) and then asked if I always matched my hair to my outfits. "No, dear, I'm not ready to dye daily" I said, "but most of my clothes are purple."
One thing I love about Davies... I simply gave them my name, signed the usual form and they pulled up my records, put me on a gurney and left me to read one of the Atlantic's I had thoughtfully thrown into a bag. Here's another good read: "Race Over?" by Marc Ambinder from the Jan/Feb 2009 THEATLANTIC.COM. I feel so justified... when I told someone I couldn't stand Tavis Smiley, he accused me of being a racist. NO, I am not, it has nothing to do with the color of his skin, it's his style, personality, etc. that I cannot stand. This article backed me up on that and a couple of other things, like how happy I am to KNOW that Barack Obama refused to pay a number of black 'preachers' to back him, and they turned to Hillary, who DID. Enough said!
After reading the article, I saw the E.R. doctor, then went to be x-rayed by a darling, TALL, slim young man who was extrodinarily gentle with my aching foot. I asked him if he was Swedish or Norwegian, as I thought the nurse had called him Olaf. He laughed and said, "No, my name is David Leibonowsky (or something similar), and I'm Polish/Russian/Lithowanian," and told me everyone in his family got biblical names... boring... and he wouldn't mind being an Olaf. As it turned out, he told me I hadn't broken anything in the foot... the other doctor concurred... they gave me a softer medical sandal to wear home, plus some Percoset to take tonight before going to bed (I got a couple earlier, so I have to wait a bit), and a prescription for more to get my gal to go after tomorrow.
So, I am to stay off my feet for a few days... they will call me if another doctor reads the x-rays and sees something significant (say that several times). My feeling is: why me, why me????? What did I do? Well, I guess I will now read all the rest of the Atlantics and Harpers I have piled up waiting for me to stop getting out and doing something like sitting in the sun. Well, I am teaching Ana to cook. I was given a big bunch of Swiss chard yesterday, so I sat here and typed a recipe for an omelet using it, an onion, a tomato, garlic and basil (all of which I had), then called out instructions as she chopped and cooked, and I had it for dinner before I left for the ER. It was DELICIOUS! And large enough to have the other half for lunch or dinner tomorrow, with a salad I will again call out instructions for to Anastasia, who comes to take care of me tomorrow. Gee, don't you all wish you lived in S.F., so you could have these lovely ladies take care of you when injured?
Just about time to take the next Percoset and get to bed. Sylvia Katt has already told me she is ready to lie on top of me and I should 'meow' come 'meow' on 'meow'...'GO MEOW TO MEOW BED.'
Ah, well...........
http://www.alternet.org/media/141685/how_lou_dobbs_scared_rush_limbaugh_off_the_birther_story/
I loved it, and you also get a great clip from Jon Stewart. How scrumptious to have a sagacious man to cut down that bunch of ninnies over at the Faux Network, if it can be called a network... more like the low-class comedy bunch with no brains, a more turgid gang would be hard to find. I am glad that Jon and his whole group, particularly Colbert are there to watch them, so I don't have to.
Now about the INJURY! I did it again -- this time I jumped out of the shower (I MUST learn NOT to JUMP) and landed on my right (or 'good' foot), hearing a sound like one makes stepping on one of those clear plastic glasses. Wasn't a glass, though... it was my foot, obviously screaming at me. Since it didn't get red and swell to twice its size, as the left one had done when I tore the top tendon on the foot in half, I foolishly thought it might stop hurting shortly. It didn't... it also didn't swell a lot, although the arch got a bit puffy, and I couldn't stand on it, as it hurt like hell to bear any weight on it. So I sat, tried to get my doctor and waited for her to return my call. She was just a little sarcastic when I finally talked to her... "Call 911 and get over to Davies' Emergency Room... I can't do an x-ray over the phone, you know." Well, I didn't call 911, as I wasn't about to spend two or three hundred dollars, or whatever the going rate for ambulances is these days (DAMMIT.....get those STUPID 'conservative democrats' to get single payer, universal, DECENT health care -- oh, I forgot, they get decent health care, and they also get PAID BIG BUCKS by the lobbyists to keep the damned insurance companies collecting terrible amounts of money from all of us -- rant, rant, rant!!!).
So, deep breath, Peggy... I called a cab and went over to CPMC's Davies Campus, just up the hill from me (and a hospital I love as they have cared for me in the past), and the driver, a lovely man from Nigeria who thinks S.F. is TOO COLD most of the time -- boy it sure must be HOT in Nigeria, went in and told them to get a wheelchair for me. A nice little tiny Chinese woman finally managed to get me in... She said she loved the way my hair matched my outfit (I was wearing a lavender t-shirt and purple plaid pants) and then asked if I always matched my hair to my outfits. "No, dear, I'm not ready to dye daily" I said, "but most of my clothes are purple."
One thing I love about Davies... I simply gave them my name, signed the usual form and they pulled up my records, put me on a gurney and left me to read one of the Atlantic's I had thoughtfully thrown into a bag. Here's another good read: "Race Over?" by Marc Ambinder from the Jan/Feb 2009 THEATLANTIC.COM. I feel so justified... when I told someone I couldn't stand Tavis Smiley, he accused me of being a racist. NO, I am not, it has nothing to do with the color of his skin, it's his style, personality, etc. that I cannot stand. This article backed me up on that and a couple of other things, like how happy I am to KNOW that Barack Obama refused to pay a number of black 'preachers' to back him, and they turned to Hillary, who DID. Enough said!
After reading the article, I saw the E.R. doctor, then went to be x-rayed by a darling, TALL, slim young man who was extrodinarily gentle with my aching foot. I asked him if he was Swedish or Norwegian, as I thought the nurse had called him Olaf. He laughed and said, "No, my name is David Leibonowsky (or something similar), and I'm Polish/Russian/Lithowanian," and told me everyone in his family got biblical names... boring... and he wouldn't mind being an Olaf. As it turned out, he told me I hadn't broken anything in the foot... the other doctor concurred... they gave me a softer medical sandal to wear home, plus some Percoset to take tonight before going to bed (I got a couple earlier, so I have to wait a bit), and a prescription for more to get my gal to go after tomorrow.
So, I am to stay off my feet for a few days... they will call me if another doctor reads the x-rays and sees something significant (say that several times). My feeling is: why me, why me????? What did I do? Well, I guess I will now read all the rest of the Atlantics and Harpers I have piled up waiting for me to stop getting out and doing something like sitting in the sun. Well, I am teaching Ana to cook. I was given a big bunch of Swiss chard yesterday, so I sat here and typed a recipe for an omelet using it, an onion, a tomato, garlic and basil (all of which I had), then called out instructions as she chopped and cooked, and I had it for dinner before I left for the ER. It was DELICIOUS! And large enough to have the other half for lunch or dinner tomorrow, with a salad I will again call out instructions for to Anastasia, who comes to take care of me tomorrow. Gee, don't you all wish you lived in S.F., so you could have these lovely ladies take care of you when injured?
Just about time to take the next Percoset and get to bed. Sylvia Katt has already told me she is ready to lie on top of me and I should 'meow' come 'meow' on 'meow'...'GO MEOW TO MEOW BED.'
Ah, well...........
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Food, Glorious Food......red for tomatoes
For those who do not know me, "Jessie" is my mother, who liked to be called Jessie!
Aha, I have found a wonderful kindred spirit once more in the NYTimes (a paper which cannot deliver a REAL copy of their paper to me, no matter how many times I have written to them, or spoken to them on the phone, about HOW TO GET INTO MY BUILDING...AND NOT LEAVE IT ‘AT THE DOOR.’ Jeeze, we have around five or six ‘doors’...which one guys? where? when? why? what? who? Well, be that as it may (and I have finally just said CANCEL! and I shall read it on my computer... which is not nearly as much fun as ‘in hand.’) back to the reason for this silly blogging for today.
I found a wonderful article in the ‘op-ed’ columnist’s listing by Michael Pollan (July 29, 2009), entitled “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.” (I adore all the op-ed people, next to the magazine, the best of NYTimes.) If you love food, admire Julia Child, or just want a really good read take a look at this long article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?em
So many things he said struck me. I guess I am old enough to be in the ‘first wave’ of feminists, and I guess I missed where one was going to get out of the kitchen, as I have always loved to cook, and wasn’t going to let any feminist movement stop me. Or maybe it is just that my first ‘nurse,’ Jessie’s oft quoted, super-maid/housekeeper/nurse, Mary Phykos (I do not know the ‘real’ spelling, as I have just heard it pronounced that way. She was Checkoslovakian {damn, I cannot even spell that} so I probably have it completely wrong....the only Chezk?? in our building is really Polish, so she’s no help). Ye gods, what happened to that sentence?? Shall I now return to ‘be that as it may.....?’
Mary Phykos adored me. She met my parents at the car door as they came home from hospital with me, snatched me up, crying, “Little Poppa, little Poppa (I looked exactly like my father) and was loathe to give me up except during the times Jessie nursed me. Besides being smitten with her adorable charge, she was also a wonderful cook. Poor Daddy gained weight he never again managed to drop... going from being a very skinny young man to a plump one during Mary’s time with us. He spoke often in later years of her cooking, as did Jessie, always in glowing terms. She knew what a great chef she was, as one of her favourite expressions was (and I heard this from both my parents forever): “Mine Gott, how I can cooook!” I cannot tell you if she was as good as they say, but I’m convinced she imparted to me her love of food and cooking.
Well, they all did. Jessie never hired anyone who couldn’t take over the cooking chores from her Not that Jess couldn’t cook... hell no, she was a wonderful cook, inventive and knowledgeable about all aspects of that chore. She just didn’t want to do it. Jessie had better things to do with her life than being a slave to “a man, a house, a stove.” She was the ultimate feminist before anyone ever heard of Betty Friedan. Granted, she didn’t like to see ‘things’ around, but she always said, “I don’t mind a bit of dust, but will you PLEASE pick up your things and PUT THEM AWAY!” (She had a basket on the stairs always, called “the as-you basket,” meaning “As you go upstairs, take this with you and put the things AWAY.”)
So, to get back to what I was attempting to write about... we always had good cooks working for us. From the time I was a little kid, I stood on a chair beside the stove and I learned. I learned that a good cook NEVER measures, he/she simply picks up the pinch or the handful of what the particular dish needs, stirs several times, tastes, then either goes on with the rest of the dish, or throws in the amount needed and repeats. I learned ALL the different herbs and spices one could use and what dishes they went best with. I should say, I tasted and learned, for I got to taste, also, to see that the right amount was put in. I further learned to taste everything, (Jess insisted on this) whether I thought I’d like it or not. I’m still not fond of a lot of Southern food -- ‘sweetea,’ yuk; slimy anything, yuk; undercooked fried chicken, yuk; filet gumbo, yuk -- and a newer thing, seemingly worshiped by new Hispanic and Chinese chefs, cilantro, I cannot abide, it tastes like my grandmother’s attic smelled, and turns me off.
One of my favorite ‘teachers,’ however, did not work for us. A friend in Chicago named Mary Ann Boscarino had a mother who was raised in Italy, obviously somewhere below Rome, as her ‘gravy’ (as all the Italians I know call what we call ‘spaghetti sauce’) took hours to make. My friend Gus, who hailed from Tuscany insisted that this was terrible, as it should only take around an hour to make good gravy. I adore Italian food and wanted to learn, so Mrs.Boscarino said she would teach me. When I asked her for her recipe, her answer was, “What recipe? You just make it.” So I spent a week or two with my notebook at ready while she ‘just made it.’ I am now one of the best South of Rome Italian cooks I know. Actually, I watched and listened to Gus and I am also one of the best Tuscan cooks I know. I am particularly good at pasta primavera, although I do it my way, with a lot less calories. I go to the Farmer’s Market in the Civic Center, buy every kind of ‘peak of ripeness’ veggies I can find... tomatoes, soft and RED, little zucchini, both green and yellow, perfect green onions, the larger the better, etc., etc., everything at the look, feel and smell of perfection, and usually cheap, as who wants to take all that RIPE food back to the farm -- take them home, chop them up, mix a ‘gravy’ of my own concoction... couple of cups of yogurt, little honey to sweeten it up a bit, olive oil and some balsamic vinegar, put the veggies on top of well drained spaghetti or other pasta, pour on that gravy and feed it to guests... as I have, as usual, made too much for me and Sylvia, the cat to eat, and it does NOT last until tomorrow... it is for NOW.
Better than anything, from a dear little gal we had working for us in Pittsburgh, Lessie, I learned to make something out of almost nothing. My absent minded mother would sometimes forget to shop (she usually remembered, and even made out menus -- most of the time) and Lessie would turn out a magnificent dinner with leftovers and anything she could find in the cupboard. One of my father’s (and mine) favorites was a dish she made from leftover salad, something Jessie always told her to throw out as, “who would want all that wilted, dressing soaked stuff.” (Lessie NEVER threw out anything. She had grown up in a large, very poor family, where you used every scrap, particularly of food.) So, Lessie cooked up a bunch of potatoes from the larder, then added left-over salad from the night before that she had hidden in the back of the fridge from Jess. My father was so fond of Lessie’s invention that he told her always to make extra salad so that he could have it the next night. This, and the potatoes and carrots mashed together and liberally buttered, that Mary in Memphis used to make for me when I was a little kid, are my two “comfort foods” that I cook for myself when I am feeling blue and downhearted. I can eat them and hear both of those wonderful ladies saying, “Now eat your food, Paaaaiguy, or “Miss Peggy” in the case of Lessie, and cheer up... for as my sister Betty Rae once told me she became aware of when you became a “Miss” in the South, when she heard the term being used toward her oldest girl, Rebecca when she was thirteen, and I was past thirteen when Lessie came to work for us.
Goodness, this has been a long and roundabout way of mentioning that I really enjoyed reading that article about Julia Child, but while I was doing it, I also went out to the ktichen and whipped up a nice little snacky of my own devising. Lessie taught me NEVER to waste food, so I had to figure out a way to use up a LOT of celery I had been given (now WHO needs five bunchs of celery?) I have five bunchs of celery, so I cut up a LOT of little celery sticks... and I mean a lot... and stuck them in a tall jar full of water and ice cubes and put them into the fridge. I put several heaping tablespoons of peanut butter into a Chinese rice bowl (the kind real Chinese people get in front of them at a banquet, not a BIG bowl), added some Kosher terriyaki sauce (it’s what I had in the fridge) and some Dijon mustard (kept adding until taste was right -- it needed a ‘bite’ to it, and I am allergic to any kind of pepper, so mustard is my ‘bite’), threw in some mayo so I could stir it well (peanut butter is IMPOSSIBLE... watch a cat or dog with it!) and have been dipping and chewing all through this tale, going out to get more COLD celery sticks every now and then.) Well, I had to have something to eat or I’d have died of hunger with all the food- reading/writing.
Only problem: man, I miss Jessie... and Mary (my darling ‘Mammy’ from Memphis), and Ruby, and Lessie, and Essie and all my surrogate mothers from all those what are beginning to seem like hundreds of years these days. Thank heavens I live in San Francisco with a bad foot, bad leg and useless arm that cannot hold up anything over five pounds (Good God...do I HAVE to have ONE MORE replacement? My doctor, Liz Kantor refers to me as ‘the poster girl for the replacement crowd’) as they take care of their elders (and betters?) and I have Elvira (El-veer-a, please) and Ana to help me out, particularly with the ‘as-you’s) and Anastasia, the one who thinks she is a ‘companion,’ but does LOVE to do the shopping). YIKES... I have become Jessie -- except, I STILL am the best chef in the building. The others do their own cleaning, but either get food delivered (yuk!) or let ‘them’ do it. Not me, I shall cook until I cannot stand at the stove any longer, then rush to sit and rest my aching back and eat my own delicious cooking (diet, what diet? Well, Liz, I DO try. Good thing I am a good cook, and have the good sense NOT to buy whipping cream, cookies, etc., etc.)
Ah, well............. read the article!
Aha, I have found a wonderful kindred spirit once more in the NYTimes (a paper which cannot deliver a REAL copy of their paper to me, no matter how many times I have written to them, or spoken to them on the phone, about HOW TO GET INTO MY BUILDING...AND NOT LEAVE IT ‘AT THE DOOR.’ Jeeze, we have around five or six ‘doors’...which one guys? where? when? why? what? who? Well, be that as it may (and I have finally just said CANCEL! and I shall read it on my computer... which is not nearly as much fun as ‘in hand.’) back to the reason for this silly blogging for today.
I found a wonderful article in the ‘op-ed’ columnist’s listing by Michael Pollan (July 29, 2009), entitled “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.” (I adore all the op-ed people, next to the magazine, the best of NYTimes.) If you love food, admire Julia Child, or just want a really good read take a look at this long article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?em
So many things he said struck me. I guess I am old enough to be in the ‘first wave’ of feminists, and I guess I missed where one was going to get out of the kitchen, as I have always loved to cook, and wasn’t going to let any feminist movement stop me. Or maybe it is just that my first ‘nurse,’ Jessie’s oft quoted, super-maid/housekeeper/nurse, Mary Phykos (I do not know the ‘real’ spelling, as I have just heard it pronounced that way. She was Checkoslovakian {damn, I cannot even spell that} so I probably have it completely wrong....the only Chezk?? in our building is really Polish, so she’s no help). Ye gods, what happened to that sentence?? Shall I now return to ‘be that as it may.....?’
Mary Phykos adored me. She met my parents at the car door as they came home from hospital with me, snatched me up, crying, “Little Poppa, little Poppa (I looked exactly like my father) and was loathe to give me up except during the times Jessie nursed me. Besides being smitten with her adorable charge, she was also a wonderful cook. Poor Daddy gained weight he never again managed to drop... going from being a very skinny young man to a plump one during Mary’s time with us. He spoke often in later years of her cooking, as did Jessie, always in glowing terms. She knew what a great chef she was, as one of her favourite expressions was (and I heard this from both my parents forever): “Mine Gott, how I can cooook!” I cannot tell you if she was as good as they say, but I’m convinced she imparted to me her love of food and cooking.
Well, they all did. Jessie never hired anyone who couldn’t take over the cooking chores from her Not that Jess couldn’t cook... hell no, she was a wonderful cook, inventive and knowledgeable about all aspects of that chore. She just didn’t want to do it. Jessie had better things to do with her life than being a slave to “a man, a house, a stove.” She was the ultimate feminist before anyone ever heard of Betty Friedan. Granted, she didn’t like to see ‘things’ around, but she always said, “I don’t mind a bit of dust, but will you PLEASE pick up your things and PUT THEM AWAY!” (She had a basket on the stairs always, called “the as-you basket,” meaning “As you go upstairs, take this with you and put the things AWAY.”)
So, to get back to what I was attempting to write about... we always had good cooks working for us. From the time I was a little kid, I stood on a chair beside the stove and I learned. I learned that a good cook NEVER measures, he/she simply picks up the pinch or the handful of what the particular dish needs, stirs several times, tastes, then either goes on with the rest of the dish, or throws in the amount needed and repeats. I learned ALL the different herbs and spices one could use and what dishes they went best with. I should say, I tasted and learned, for I got to taste, also, to see that the right amount was put in. I further learned to taste everything, (Jess insisted on this) whether I thought I’d like it or not. I’m still not fond of a lot of Southern food -- ‘sweetea,’ yuk; slimy anything, yuk; undercooked fried chicken, yuk; filet gumbo, yuk -- and a newer thing, seemingly worshiped by new Hispanic and Chinese chefs, cilantro, I cannot abide, it tastes like my grandmother’s attic smelled, and turns me off.
One of my favorite ‘teachers,’ however, did not work for us. A friend in Chicago named Mary Ann Boscarino had a mother who was raised in Italy, obviously somewhere below Rome, as her ‘gravy’ (as all the Italians I know call what we call ‘spaghetti sauce’) took hours to make. My friend Gus, who hailed from Tuscany insisted that this was terrible, as it should only take around an hour to make good gravy. I adore Italian food and wanted to learn, so Mrs.Boscarino said she would teach me. When I asked her for her recipe, her answer was, “What recipe? You just make it.” So I spent a week or two with my notebook at ready while she ‘just made it.’ I am now one of the best South of Rome Italian cooks I know. Actually, I watched and listened to Gus and I am also one of the best Tuscan cooks I know. I am particularly good at pasta primavera, although I do it my way, with a lot less calories. I go to the Farmer’s Market in the Civic Center, buy every kind of ‘peak of ripeness’ veggies I can find... tomatoes, soft and RED, little zucchini, both green and yellow, perfect green onions, the larger the better, etc., etc., everything at the look, feel and smell of perfection, and usually cheap, as who wants to take all that RIPE food back to the farm -- take them home, chop them up, mix a ‘gravy’ of my own concoction... couple of cups of yogurt, little honey to sweeten it up a bit, olive oil and some balsamic vinegar, put the veggies on top of well drained spaghetti or other pasta, pour on that gravy and feed it to guests... as I have, as usual, made too much for me and Sylvia, the cat to eat, and it does NOT last until tomorrow... it is for NOW.
Better than anything, from a dear little gal we had working for us in Pittsburgh, Lessie, I learned to make something out of almost nothing. My absent minded mother would sometimes forget to shop (she usually remembered, and even made out menus -- most of the time) and Lessie would turn out a magnificent dinner with leftovers and anything she could find in the cupboard. One of my father’s (and mine) favorites was a dish she made from leftover salad, something Jessie always told her to throw out as, “who would want all that wilted, dressing soaked stuff.” (Lessie NEVER threw out anything. She had grown up in a large, very poor family, where you used every scrap, particularly of food.) So, Lessie cooked up a bunch of potatoes from the larder, then added left-over salad from the night before that she had hidden in the back of the fridge from Jess. My father was so fond of Lessie’s invention that he told her always to make extra salad so that he could have it the next night. This, and the potatoes and carrots mashed together and liberally buttered, that Mary in Memphis used to make for me when I was a little kid, are my two “comfort foods” that I cook for myself when I am feeling blue and downhearted. I can eat them and hear both of those wonderful ladies saying, “Now eat your food, Paaaaiguy, or “Miss Peggy” in the case of Lessie, and cheer up... for as my sister Betty Rae once told me she became aware of when you became a “Miss” in the South, when she heard the term being used toward her oldest girl, Rebecca when she was thirteen, and I was past thirteen when Lessie came to work for us.
Goodness, this has been a long and roundabout way of mentioning that I really enjoyed reading that article about Julia Child, but while I was doing it, I also went out to the ktichen and whipped up a nice little snacky of my own devising. Lessie taught me NEVER to waste food, so I had to figure out a way to use up a LOT of celery I had been given (now WHO needs five bunchs of celery?) I have five bunchs of celery, so I cut up a LOT of little celery sticks... and I mean a lot... and stuck them in a tall jar full of water and ice cubes and put them into the fridge. I put several heaping tablespoons of peanut butter into a Chinese rice bowl (the kind real Chinese people get in front of them at a banquet, not a BIG bowl), added some Kosher terriyaki sauce (it’s what I had in the fridge) and some Dijon mustard (kept adding until taste was right -- it needed a ‘bite’ to it, and I am allergic to any kind of pepper, so mustard is my ‘bite’), threw in some mayo so I could stir it well (peanut butter is IMPOSSIBLE... watch a cat or dog with it!) and have been dipping and chewing all through this tale, going out to get more COLD celery sticks every now and then.) Well, I had to have something to eat or I’d have died of hunger with all the food- reading/writing.
Only problem: man, I miss Jessie... and Mary (my darling ‘Mammy’ from Memphis), and Ruby, and Lessie, and Essie and all my surrogate mothers from all those what are beginning to seem like hundreds of years these days. Thank heavens I live in San Francisco with a bad foot, bad leg and useless arm that cannot hold up anything over five pounds (Good God...do I HAVE to have ONE MORE replacement? My doctor, Liz Kantor refers to me as ‘the poster girl for the replacement crowd’) as they take care of their elders (and betters?) and I have Elvira (El-veer-a, please) and Ana to help me out, particularly with the ‘as-you’s) and Anastasia, the one who thinks she is a ‘companion,’ but does LOVE to do the shopping). YIKES... I have become Jessie -- except, I STILL am the best chef in the building. The others do their own cleaning, but either get food delivered (yuk!) or let ‘them’ do it. Not me, I shall cook until I cannot stand at the stove any longer, then rush to sit and rest my aching back and eat my own delicious cooking (diet, what diet? Well, Liz, I DO try. Good thing I am a good cook, and have the good sense NOT to buy whipping cream, cookies, etc., etc.)
Ah, well............. read the article!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Title, We Don't Need No Steenkin' Titles......
Well, at least tonight we don't, as I cannot think of one. Funny, I notice that as always I did too long a 'title' for my blog, so that it shows up on my dashboard page as "Through a Tall Wind" -- not a bad title for SF at least. The wind is often so bad in our wind-tunnel of a driveway that small people have a problem getting into the yard. At any rate, neither the rather long title I did for my blog, nor the above 'lack of' is as long as one I did for a poem recently, it was around 8-10 lines long...about a silly woman who said she was switching her vote to McCain (from Hillary) because he was a 'feminist' -- she could tell because after all, he had chosen a 'woman' as his VP! (or perhaps because he dropped a wife who was no longer beautiful and married a pretty young one with money?) That's even worse than the Russian woman who told me she was voting for McCain because "THEY (ye gods, I thought that kind of talk had gone out of our country looong ago) are all stoopid." So, I said in return, "Gee, did you graduate Harvard with a magna cum laude? If not, don't bother talking to me again." Be that as it may (a favorite expression of Jessie's):
For me it is still Tuesday ("Tuuesday, dear, NOT Toosday"), so, let me see, day before yesterday (Sunday, as I could simply have said) I had a great day. Went with Pat Jones (no relation to Uncle Collie, kids, but she's from England, and with a name like Jones, obviously another Welsh type) to the Yerba Buena Gardens Theatre/Music Festival, which was a day of fun out in the sun, dominated by big time acts like Beach Blanket Babylon, but also had room for some very interesting little theatre groups and solo acts, some of whom will be seen at the Fringe Festival, which I do plan to try to attend.
Actually, I may even work up an act myself for next year's Fringe. That should shut some of the people who keep asking when I am going to 'be in something' up for a bit at least. If I do, I will have Pat and Elvira appearing with me...they have said they would love to, and I must ask Collie if he would like to dance in as the waiter in what I plan to call, "My Dinner With Peggy" (or should I call it "My Dinner With Pat?") We, Elvira and I, got hysterical talking about it...well, we also had a few laughs about her calling the jello she had made and then hidden behind a bunch of stuff, so that I had neglected to eat it, 'yello' and then saying gelatin quite properly. Interesting, I wonder if all Hispanic people say 'y' for 'j'.....but can say the 'j' sound when it is spelled with "g' as in 'gelatin?' Pat was after me on what accents I can do as we walked the MILES it takes to get through the Metreon to the outside doors. "Can you do Cockney?" (I can even do the rhyming Cockney, 'so oi tikes the apples 'n pears to 'er sea shore...') "Can you do French? ('Ah, mais oui, ah am gooing to 'eight street to z' baak-ary...'), etc. See, I can even write in accents. I have lots of people to study...my darling little El-vee-ra (NOT El-vi-ra, please!) for S.&Central America (they do NOT have 'Spanish' accents, as they do NOT lispe), my Parisian friend Michele (NEVER Michelle for a woman, she says), and of course, I can do Russians beautifully.....my building is full of them. I do the little martinet who lives on the second floor best....the one who prances into our manager's office and says, "Yuuh, I need mon come my a-pat-munt, NOW!" Isabelle: "I am busy talking to someone else at the moment...and I don't have 'mon' here today. What do you need?" Martinet: "I need shen-da-leerr poot up NOW, bot rrooms!" Isabelle: Well, sorry, but as I said, I am busy talking to someone else, and my MAN won't be back until tomorrow. I'll write up a request and he'll get up to see you when he has finished all the other jobs written up for him. Martinet stomps out and she turns to me and says, "He may get the damned chandeliers put up some time after next Christmas if he's lucky!!" I love having him come down to see her, as I am often there to hear all the dialogue, which I will use in an act someday. Friends who have heard my stories about him and another Russian I see often have begged me to go to a comedy club and do them....I'm considering it. As I have said often, everything is grist for my mill, particularly lovely accents. I even have a native SF one that always ends with, "Thank you for sharing that with me....." The 'native' S.F. person doesn't really have an accent, but most are so sweet and kind...I love them.
Now I got off track again, where was I? Ah, yes, the perfect Sunday....Pat and I walked through ALL of the Metreon building and out onto Mission, where she went over to Market St and I went across Fourth to the Mission bus stop and sat down next to a charming Russian lady who told me we had JUST missed the bus, so we sat and chatted a bit, and a very attractive lady sat down on my left. She was just coming from the Theatre Festival also, and was from Bombay...she had wanted to stay to see the rest of the performances her daughter, who lives here, didn't want to see, so she sent them off and said she'd take the bus home. Now the three of us chatted about SF, about the Festival, about ourselves and had a jolly time waiting for the Mission bus. We all were going to almost the same spot, so I pulled out my card (and lost my change purse...damn!) and gave it to her, so she would have my email address. She went me one better, and seeing how close to her daughter I lived, said she would call me when her husband goes back to India and come and see me. She is staying on for a month after he leaves.....he has to get back to work. So now I have a lovely friend from Bombay, and will undoubtedly meet her daughter and family, who live a couple of blocks from me.
I LOVE San Francisco -- where else does everyone talk to everyone else.....at theatres during the intermission, at the symphony before a performance, on the bus....and the cab drivers are the most fascinating characters anywhere. They are from all over the world and darling. I've gotten recipes from Brazilian drivers, been sung to by an Italian one, and the Venezuealan (sp?) driver who drove me to the Sunday Festival loved one of my poems I read to him, and when I told him I have three or four novels in my desk drawer, wanted to be my agent....I had a hard time getting out of the cab, he wanted to finish our conversation. I told him I'd see him at the cab barn, as I have an idea for a book about cab drivers in SF, and he insisted that the next time I called for a cab to ask for him. What a day.....and what a great city I have come 'home' to, for this has been my Spiritual Home ever since Ned started telling me about it when I was around sixteen years old. I never could understand why my kids don't feel exactly as I do about it, particularly when Whitney spent her fifth birthday here, and even got to 'help the drivers turn a cable car around.' She walked between two of them, pushing the car at the turn-around, yelling, "Look at me, mommy -- I'm helping," while they chuckled at her pleasure. Such a funny, darling child! And Mark spent part of his fifth year here, running into the water with Joe Bullock at Ocean Beach, and riding on his shoulders in the park during the 'summer of love.' Mark didn't want to leave -- he had Jenny and Joe to entertain him -- and neither did I. I should have stayed, sent for my money and bought a house, as I wanted to. Shoulda, coulda, woulda means nothing..... perhaps that is the weird break in the life-line of my LEFT hand. The lifeline on my right hand goes on forever up around my thumb--God! I am another 'Mama' without the miserable temper. She'd have lived forever had it not been for that blod clot they didn't catch in time which killed her at 100. I have a better doctor (the best dr. in SF, Liz is!) so who knows!!! However, I find I am suddenly getting the stigmata on right hand that I used to get when I was a kid and the left hand itches miserably in the same spot...terrible! If anyone thinks this will get me back to church....think again!! Oh, well, maybe a short visit to Father Mickey in the old Mission across the street will help. Naw, he'd just laugh at me and tell me about how the graveyard our building was built on was for the pagan Indians and the Episcopalians. (I love that man, he reminds me of the dear priest we had at school, Father Pauley who was a nut like Mickey.)
So, fun and weirdness aside.....life is pretty great! And it is definitely TIME for BED! 'Nite all, it is way, way past tomorrow.....Ah, well................
For me it is still Tuesday ("Tuuesday, dear, NOT Toosday"), so, let me see, day before yesterday (Sunday, as I could simply have said) I had a great day. Went with Pat Jones (no relation to Uncle Collie, kids, but she's from England, and with a name like Jones, obviously another Welsh type) to the Yerba Buena Gardens Theatre/Music Festival, which was a day of fun out in the sun, dominated by big time acts like Beach Blanket Babylon, but also had room for some very interesting little theatre groups and solo acts, some of whom will be seen at the Fringe Festival, which I do plan to try to attend.
Actually, I may even work up an act myself for next year's Fringe. That should shut some of the people who keep asking when I am going to 'be in something' up for a bit at least. If I do, I will have Pat and Elvira appearing with me...they have said they would love to, and I must ask Collie if he would like to dance in as the waiter in what I plan to call, "My Dinner With Peggy" (or should I call it "My Dinner With Pat?") We, Elvira and I, got hysterical talking about it...well, we also had a few laughs about her calling the jello she had made and then hidden behind a bunch of stuff, so that I had neglected to eat it, 'yello' and then saying gelatin quite properly. Interesting, I wonder if all Hispanic people say 'y' for 'j'.....but can say the 'j' sound when it is spelled with "g' as in 'gelatin?' Pat was after me on what accents I can do as we walked the MILES it takes to get through the Metreon to the outside doors. "Can you do Cockney?" (I can even do the rhyming Cockney, 'so oi tikes the apples 'n pears to 'er sea shore...') "Can you do French? ('Ah, mais oui, ah am gooing to 'eight street to z' baak-ary...'), etc. See, I can even write in accents. I have lots of people to study...my darling little El-vee-ra (NOT El-vi-ra, please!) for S.&Central America (they do NOT have 'Spanish' accents, as they do NOT lispe), my Parisian friend Michele (NEVER Michelle for a woman, she says), and of course, I can do Russians beautifully.....my building is full of them. I do the little martinet who lives on the second floor best....the one who prances into our manager's office and says, "Yuuh, I need mon come my a-pat-munt, NOW!" Isabelle: "I am busy talking to someone else at the moment...and I don't have 'mon' here today. What do you need?" Martinet: "I need shen-da-leerr poot up NOW, bot rrooms!" Isabelle: Well, sorry, but as I said, I am busy talking to someone else, and my MAN won't be back until tomorrow. I'll write up a request and he'll get up to see you when he has finished all the other jobs written up for him. Martinet stomps out and she turns to me and says, "He may get the damned chandeliers put up some time after next Christmas if he's lucky!!" I love having him come down to see her, as I am often there to hear all the dialogue, which I will use in an act someday. Friends who have heard my stories about him and another Russian I see often have begged me to go to a comedy club and do them....I'm considering it. As I have said often, everything is grist for my mill, particularly lovely accents. I even have a native SF one that always ends with, "Thank you for sharing that with me....." The 'native' S.F. person doesn't really have an accent, but most are so sweet and kind...I love them.
Now I got off track again, where was I? Ah, yes, the perfect Sunday....Pat and I walked through ALL of the Metreon building and out onto Mission, where she went over to Market St and I went across Fourth to the Mission bus stop and sat down next to a charming Russian lady who told me we had JUST missed the bus, so we sat and chatted a bit, and a very attractive lady sat down on my left. She was just coming from the Theatre Festival also, and was from Bombay...she had wanted to stay to see the rest of the performances her daughter, who lives here, didn't want to see, so she sent them off and said she'd take the bus home. Now the three of us chatted about SF, about the Festival, about ourselves and had a jolly time waiting for the Mission bus. We all were going to almost the same spot, so I pulled out my card (and lost my change purse...damn!) and gave it to her, so she would have my email address. She went me one better, and seeing how close to her daughter I lived, said she would call me when her husband goes back to India and come and see me. She is staying on for a month after he leaves.....he has to get back to work. So now I have a lovely friend from Bombay, and will undoubtedly meet her daughter and family, who live a couple of blocks from me.
I LOVE San Francisco -- where else does everyone talk to everyone else.....at theatres during the intermission, at the symphony before a performance, on the bus....and the cab drivers are the most fascinating characters anywhere. They are from all over the world and darling. I've gotten recipes from Brazilian drivers, been sung to by an Italian one, and the Venezuealan (sp?) driver who drove me to the Sunday Festival loved one of my poems I read to him, and when I told him I have three or four novels in my desk drawer, wanted to be my agent....I had a hard time getting out of the cab, he wanted to finish our conversation. I told him I'd see him at the cab barn, as I have an idea for a book about cab drivers in SF, and he insisted that the next time I called for a cab to ask for him. What a day.....and what a great city I have come 'home' to, for this has been my Spiritual Home ever since Ned started telling me about it when I was around sixteen years old. I never could understand why my kids don't feel exactly as I do about it, particularly when Whitney spent her fifth birthday here, and even got to 'help the drivers turn a cable car around.' She walked between two of them, pushing the car at the turn-around, yelling, "Look at me, mommy -- I'm helping," while they chuckled at her pleasure. Such a funny, darling child! And Mark spent part of his fifth year here, running into the water with Joe Bullock at Ocean Beach, and riding on his shoulders in the park during the 'summer of love.' Mark didn't want to leave -- he had Jenny and Joe to entertain him -- and neither did I. I should have stayed, sent for my money and bought a house, as I wanted to. Shoulda, coulda, woulda means nothing..... perhaps that is the weird break in the life-line of my LEFT hand. The lifeline on my right hand goes on forever up around my thumb--God! I am another 'Mama' without the miserable temper. She'd have lived forever had it not been for that blod clot they didn't catch in time which killed her at 100. I have a better doctor (the best dr. in SF, Liz is!) so who knows!!! However, I find I am suddenly getting the stigmata on right hand that I used to get when I was a kid and the left hand itches miserably in the same spot...terrible! If anyone thinks this will get me back to church....think again!! Oh, well, maybe a short visit to Father Mickey in the old Mission across the street will help. Naw, he'd just laugh at me and tell me about how the graveyard our building was built on was for the pagan Indians and the Episcopalians. (I love that man, he reminds me of the dear priest we had at school, Father Pauley who was a nut like Mickey.)
So, fun and weirdness aside.....life is pretty great! And it is definitely TIME for BED! 'Nite all, it is way, way past tomorrow.....Ah, well................
Friday, July 24, 2009
Saving our History
I found a very interesting article in the New York Times (I'm late reading everything) about plans of the last admin that have been scotched by the present one, THANK GOODNESS, as we thank so many of the changes that have been made lately. This one about the Grand Canyon & surroundings:
Ban Set on Mining Claims Adjacent to Grand Canyon
By FELICITY BARRINGER Published: BY NYTIMES, July 20, 2009
In a modest victory for environmentalists, the Obama administration said Monday that it was designating nearly one million acres of Arizona land near the Grand Canyon off limits to new uranium mining claims for two years.
In a statement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was acting “to ensure we are developing our nation’s resources in a way that protects local communities, treasured landscapes and our watersheds.”
Environmental groups like the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz., have argued that extensive mining operations could contaminate the watershed around the canyon, particularly streams that flow directly into the canyon or into the Colorado River.
Last year the House Natural Resources Committee voted to put the acreage off limits to new mining claims. But the Bush administration disputed the committee’s authority and said it would continue to leave the lands open to new claims.
Mr. Salazar’s decision will not block development of mines whose claims have already been validated.
Some of the 10,600 existing claims within the acreage could thus end up as mining operations if the ore can be profitably extracted. Many of the current claims were filed when the price of uranium soared in 2006 and 2007.
In 2007 the price reached $130 a pound; today uranium is selling for about $50 a pound. From 2005 through 2008, about 3,000 new mining claims were filed in areas near the Grand Canyon.
New mining claims will be barred in three sections of land: one to the north of the canyon, stretching near the Utah border; another bordering a Navajo reservation and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument; and a third south of the canyon in the Kaibab National Forest.
Roger Clark, a land-use expert with the Grand Canyon Trust, called Monday’s decision “a good first step” and said he hoped the moratorium would become permanent. That is the goal of legislation pending in Congress called the Grand Canyon Protection Act.
A House subcommittee hearing on the bill is scheduled on Tuesday.
Mr. Clark also called on the government to take a second look at the environmental reviews that justify existing claims, some of which he said were years out of date.
Ron F. Hochstein, the president of the Denison Mines Corporation, a Canadian company that is about to start three mining operations in the excluded areas, said the decision would have no immediate practical effect on its operations. “We are planning to move forward,” Mr. Hochstein said.
He said the impact of the decision on the mining industry was “more psychological,” reinforcing what he called “an absolutely incorrect impression” of the environmental impact of uranium mining.
Board Approves Drilling Leases
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals board has cleared the way for oil and gas drilling around prehistoric ruins in southern Utah.
Rejecting an appeal filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled that the federal Bureau of Land Management had taken appropriate safeguards in granting leases in 2006 for drilling in the Monticello area.
The area is near crumbling cliff houses, eroded pit houses and cave sites with prehistoric storage boxes made of stone slabs.
WE MUST ALL GO TO TEMPLE TOMORROW AND CHURCH ON SUNDAY TO BLESS THE ADMINISTRATION THAT HAS ENOUGH SENSE TO SAVE OUR TREASURES, AND NOT GIVE THEM AWAY TO THE AVARICIOUS, ROTTEN, ALREADY TOO WEALTHY OF OUR COUNTRY. (Also to pray AGAINST the drillers.) WHAT IF MCCAIN HAD WON????? THERE GO THE NATIVE-AMERICAN RUINS...WHO NEEDS THEM? CERTAINLY NOT CINDY.....McC or their whole crew.
And, speaking of avariciousness, has everyone heard the latest on the 'Octomom?' She's (of course) going to be on a reality show on TV, with separate salaries for each of the fourteen kids she has birthed. Lordy -- I almost died having two! No one could have paid me enough to have three or four, let alone FOURTEEN! MADNESS!
Ban Set on Mining Claims Adjacent to Grand Canyon
By FELICITY BARRINGER Published: BY NYTIMES, July 20, 2009
In a modest victory for environmentalists, the Obama administration said Monday that it was designating nearly one million acres of Arizona land near the Grand Canyon off limits to new uranium mining claims for two years.
In a statement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was acting “to ensure we are developing our nation’s resources in a way that protects local communities, treasured landscapes and our watersheds.”
Environmental groups like the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz., have argued that extensive mining operations could contaminate the watershed around the canyon, particularly streams that flow directly into the canyon or into the Colorado River.
Last year the House Natural Resources Committee voted to put the acreage off limits to new mining claims. But the Bush administration disputed the committee’s authority and said it would continue to leave the lands open to new claims.
Mr. Salazar’s decision will not block development of mines whose claims have already been validated.
Some of the 10,600 existing claims within the acreage could thus end up as mining operations if the ore can be profitably extracted. Many of the current claims were filed when the price of uranium soared in 2006 and 2007.
In 2007 the price reached $130 a pound; today uranium is selling for about $50 a pound. From 2005 through 2008, about 3,000 new mining claims were filed in areas near the Grand Canyon.
New mining claims will be barred in three sections of land: one to the north of the canyon, stretching near the Utah border; another bordering a Navajo reservation and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument; and a third south of the canyon in the Kaibab National Forest.
Roger Clark, a land-use expert with the Grand Canyon Trust, called Monday’s decision “a good first step” and said he hoped the moratorium would become permanent. That is the goal of legislation pending in Congress called the Grand Canyon Protection Act.
A House subcommittee hearing on the bill is scheduled on Tuesday.
Mr. Clark also called on the government to take a second look at the environmental reviews that justify existing claims, some of which he said were years out of date.
Ron F. Hochstein, the president of the Denison Mines Corporation, a Canadian company that is about to start three mining operations in the excluded areas, said the decision would have no immediate practical effect on its operations. “We are planning to move forward,” Mr. Hochstein said.
He said the impact of the decision on the mining industry was “more psychological,” reinforcing what he called “an absolutely incorrect impression” of the environmental impact of uranium mining.
Board Approves Drilling Leases
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals board has cleared the way for oil and gas drilling around prehistoric ruins in southern Utah.
Rejecting an appeal filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled that the federal Bureau of Land Management had taken appropriate safeguards in granting leases in 2006 for drilling in the Monticello area.
The area is near crumbling cliff houses, eroded pit houses and cave sites with prehistoric storage boxes made of stone slabs.
WE MUST ALL GO TO TEMPLE TOMORROW AND CHURCH ON SUNDAY TO BLESS THE ADMINISTRATION THAT HAS ENOUGH SENSE TO SAVE OUR TREASURES, AND NOT GIVE THEM AWAY TO THE AVARICIOUS, ROTTEN, ALREADY TOO WEALTHY OF OUR COUNTRY. (Also to pray AGAINST the drillers.) WHAT IF MCCAIN HAD WON????? THERE GO THE NATIVE-AMERICAN RUINS...WHO NEEDS THEM? CERTAINLY NOT CINDY.....McC or their whole crew.
And, speaking of avariciousness, has everyone heard the latest on the 'Octomom?' She's (of course) going to be on a reality show on TV, with separate salaries for each of the fourteen kids she has birthed. Lordy -- I almost died having two! No one could have paid me enough to have three or four, let alone FOURTEEN! MADNESS!
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Exhaustion creepeth in w/the cold......
Yikes, yikes and double yikes......first I couldn't find this 'page'....I seem to spend half my life getting into the wrong place online...and getting myself on strange 'pages' that don't have much to do with me, and failing to use the 'right password'.....and getting lost reading all the fascinating stuff online..... why this evening alone I learned that Gidget, the Taco Bell Chiuahuahua or however it is spelled... died today of a massive stroke at the tender age of 15. How can I get through the evening!!
My friend Connie Fillippelli (remember: all double consonants) (my spelling gets worse!) insisted that I go on Facebook and I have spent the better part of two days either trying to figure out what I am doing, or finding and writing to people I haven't seen or heard from in ages. I guess all the notes got through....although I am still looking desperately for Mildred Schmertz or any of the Schmertzes and cannot seem to find Ginger Wiles anywhere! Are you out there in the atmosphere? I have one friend who is everywhere, is adorable one minute and despises me the next...STOP that! I don't think he reads this tripe though, although he blogs, boy, does he blog.
I am exhausted....partly because of all the people crushing in on me so suddenly...and all the info doing much the same.......and also because we of my poetry group had our big reading in Yerba Buena Gardens...with quite a large crowd in the audience in spite of the fact that it was COLD, WINDY and rather miserable.....first time that has happened in a long, loooong time. We are usually too warm. I had three in the audience cheering me on....dare I say, well, at least three, as the applause was quite good as I finished reading my silly 'nursery rhymes.' Someday perhaps I shall be allowed to read something serious.....maybe in August when we read again in the Yerba Gardens Festival. Wow, Facebook is as exhausting as reading one's poetry.
We went to a Mexican restaurant after the reading, in spite of one large vote against, and all had not only good lunches, but also a good time. Gina, the gal who made the documentary movie i was in, managed to come and came over to lunch with us also. She and Nancy are old, old friends....both look like teenagers....so unfair! I talked about the 'sex film' back in a June post... well we got the DVDs of the film, and I was surprised.....I didn't look that Terrible! I should figure some way to put it online......no, I don't think so.....children can read this! But it was fun, and not too bad. Pat Jones of my poetry group, and I went to see the 'screening' of all the films, and this was one of the better ones. The others were all G rated, of course....things like boats in the SF harbour, and cable car bell ringers, with no mention of s*x. There were only two 'stars' in our film.....an Ooooooold man and me. And the way he talked, he isn't really getting much. Oh, I am so mean! I have been having so much fun lately....and most of it from listening to friends who have a LOT to say....and laughing and joking with my friends.....particularly my "San Francisco Family'....the TODCO Poets, whom I love dearly, one and all. Thank you NANCY!
Somehow, bedtime is getting earlier and earlier. I used to sit up until 2...or 3.....or even more (what is that song?), yet here I am yawning and wiping my eyes....the droopy "Cartwright" left eyelid is making it hard for me to see.....golly, K had the same problem....I miss him too. So, Daddy with the droopy left eyelid....and Jessie, whom I am suddenly beginning to resemble, and K, wherever you are......goodnight, I shall dream of you....and perhaps have a nice conversation that I can relay here next time...........ah, well......... (one never knows, do one....Fats Waller)
My friend Connie Fillippelli (remember: all double consonants) (my spelling gets worse!) insisted that I go on Facebook and I have spent the better part of two days either trying to figure out what I am doing, or finding and writing to people I haven't seen or heard from in ages. I guess all the notes got through....although I am still looking desperately for Mildred Schmertz or any of the Schmertzes and cannot seem to find Ginger Wiles anywhere! Are you out there in the atmosphere? I have one friend who is everywhere, is adorable one minute and despises me the next...STOP that! I don't think he reads this tripe though, although he blogs, boy, does he blog.
I am exhausted....partly because of all the people crushing in on me so suddenly...and all the info doing much the same.......and also because we of my poetry group had our big reading in Yerba Buena Gardens...with quite a large crowd in the audience in spite of the fact that it was COLD, WINDY and rather miserable.....first time that has happened in a long, loooong time. We are usually too warm. I had three in the audience cheering me on....dare I say, well, at least three, as the applause was quite good as I finished reading my silly 'nursery rhymes.' Someday perhaps I shall be allowed to read something serious.....maybe in August when we read again in the Yerba Gardens Festival. Wow, Facebook is as exhausting as reading one's poetry.
We went to a Mexican restaurant after the reading, in spite of one large vote against, and all had not only good lunches, but also a good time. Gina, the gal who made the documentary movie i was in, managed to come and came over to lunch with us also. She and Nancy are old, old friends....both look like teenagers....so unfair! I talked about the 'sex film' back in a June post... well we got the DVDs of the film, and I was surprised.....I didn't look that Terrible! I should figure some way to put it online......no, I don't think so.....children can read this! But it was fun, and not too bad. Pat Jones of my poetry group, and I went to see the 'screening' of all the films, and this was one of the better ones. The others were all G rated, of course....things like boats in the SF harbour, and cable car bell ringers, with no mention of s*x. There were only two 'stars' in our film.....an Ooooooold man and me. And the way he talked, he isn't really getting much. Oh, I am so mean! I have been having so much fun lately....and most of it from listening to friends who have a LOT to say....and laughing and joking with my friends.....particularly my "San Francisco Family'....the TODCO Poets, whom I love dearly, one and all. Thank you NANCY!
Somehow, bedtime is getting earlier and earlier. I used to sit up until 2...or 3.....or even more (what is that song?), yet here I am yawning and wiping my eyes....the droopy "Cartwright" left eyelid is making it hard for me to see.....golly, K had the same problem....I miss him too. So, Daddy with the droopy left eyelid....and Jessie, whom I am suddenly beginning to resemble, and K, wherever you are......goodnight, I shall dream of you....and perhaps have a nice conversation that I can relay here next time...........ah, well......... (one never knows, do one....Fats Waller)
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Utter Confusion.....
I think I am losing it. First, I did something that screwed up my gmail page...well, gmail no longer shows up on my Firefox start page....and Firefox unfortunately gave me THE LATEST...which just screws me up further. Now I have to sign out to get back to where I was every time I do some foolish thing like enlarging a photo.....there is no longer a 'back' button up in the left hand corner of my 'page'...only an arrow in a circle, an X, and a house.....none of which will let me go BACK. Oh, good lord....am I going to have to shut myself away for a week and read all the stuff about Firefox and Mozilla and even Google and gmail? It was all so easy before they started upgrading me all the time....I don't want to be upgraded......I just want to do all the nice simple things like hitting an arrow facing left and going BACK. I finally caught on to the menu bar where they show me where I am and discovered how to hit that to get rid of a page....but it doesn't show anything for when I do something like enlarge a photo.....or a couple of other things....so I have to go out of the damned program and start all over again. It was very annoying when I was online writing to friends and had to do all that....disappearing for quite a time with everyone wondering what happened to me. Well, I didn't tell them....let them thing what they will. Now I MUST go to bed.....I'm a Mac person, we don't like to read manuals....Ah, well......
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Nic Kristof's wisdom...
Well, folksies, one of my favorite NYTimes op-ed guys wrote something recently that explains a lot of things, so I felt I would add it here. See if it applies to you, y'all......now before you all start yelling, "Not to me, it doesn't..." think about it. When it comes to snakes, I know it applies to me.
New York Times - Op-Ed Columnist
When Our Brains Short-Circuit By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 1, 2009
Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.
If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.
“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on how our minds assess risks.
Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:
1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.
2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.
“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.
Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.
Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.
“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”
Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later.
For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.
Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.
In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.
At the University of Virginia, Professor Jonathan Haidt shows his Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some things: He asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10 feet of a friend carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up, although almost none of the students have been bitten by a snake.
“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”
This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.
Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet. Thank you, Nic!!.....P.C.
New York Times - Op-Ed Columnist
When Our Brains Short-Circuit By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 1, 2009
Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.
If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.
“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on how our minds assess risks.
Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:
1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.
2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.
“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.
Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.
Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.
“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”
Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later.
For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.
Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.
In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.
At the University of Virginia, Professor Jonathan Haidt shows his Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some things: He asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10 feet of a friend carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up, although almost none of the students have been bitten by a snake.
“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”
This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.
Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet. Thank you, Nic!!.....P.C.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
So Much More to Learn...
Well, I did learn ONE more thing about following a blog, and managed to do it. But the blogger found me somehow on Twitter (there's another thing to learn about!). I must and will learn how to do all these things, otherwise how can I criticize the old Russians in my building who will not learn how to speak English. Genya says it's because they are too old -- and they are all younger than I. Just because they look older is no excuse. I know people have read this, my blog...but I have NO followers, in spite of the fact that I have urged them to 'follow.' Even Whitney, my own child does not 'follow' me....but then, when did she ever? (I didn't mean it Whit |-}. That's me making a mean smile with eyes scrunched up.) I think I shall go back to (grin), I'm not real good at cute. Pardon me while I take a very large foot pill.
To get back to the person who made the Twitter contact...he is a local jazz musician and I loved his blog on Suzuki and the teaching of music to children. I do wish my kidlets (grandchildren) were taking some kind of music lessons. There are no 'natural' musicians in my family, or in my daughter-in-laws, but I get the feeling that Bella (the right brained one) might just like having some kind of music lessons. I wanted so to learn to play the piano, but Jessie wouldn't let me, as I couldn't raise my ring fingers alone (Jessie, the classical pianist...I take it back, she WAS a musician, although she could NOT sing...we all sing off-key.) Jess stuck me with trying desperately to learn to play the violin...I was TERRIBLE. I have two lovely poems, one about the violin disaster and one about that darling Arlo Guthrie. I will try to find them and put them on here. They explain a lot. God this is rambling....I seem to have wandered off point again...I am becoming my mother.
So....after I checked into Twitter, gladly 'followed' the sax player, I went on to read his blog about the musical children, then on to a jazz musician in London and a photo of a man with a bass sax, which reminded me of Ernie Caseres (Caceres?) OK...remember I am old and I haven't seen or written his name in years! He played clarinet and any sax that no one else was playing...a very versatile musician, but it must have been difficult to carry all those cases to every gig. he was also such a cute little guy you wanted to hug him on sight. Sometimes I miss NYC and the whole Condon crowd...Muggsy, Pee Wee, Ed Hall, Hackett, crazy George Brunies, Big Sid Catlett, the best drummer of all times...all gone and some of the names are dropping out of my mind, sad to say, but I can hunt for the Condon CDs or dig out the LPs and listen. I still don't have anything with my favorite person on it...I miss old Red MacKenzie...after all, Ned Travis sent me to him to hear the others, and he was the one who introduced me to them. Then Smitty, Scrib and I hung out at Nicks and Julius' and breathed in the music, so it is still in there in my soul. Sometimes late at night I can still see and hear old Brunies up on the bar, waving his trombone around in the air....."You so ugly, you so ugly, you some ugly chile....now the clothes that you wear are not in style/ you look like an ape every time that you smile....yo' hair is nappy, who's yo' pappy...... you some ugly chile. None of them ever grew up...sometimes I wish I hadn't...maybe I didn't.
Am I blue....am I blue....ain't these tears in these eyes tellin' you?
To get back to the person who made the Twitter contact...he is a local jazz musician and I loved his blog on Suzuki and the teaching of music to children. I do wish my kidlets (grandchildren) were taking some kind of music lessons. There are no 'natural' musicians in my family, or in my daughter-in-laws, but I get the feeling that Bella (the right brained one) might just like having some kind of music lessons. I wanted so to learn to play the piano, but Jessie wouldn't let me, as I couldn't raise my ring fingers alone (Jessie, the classical pianist...I take it back, she WAS a musician, although she could NOT sing...we all sing off-key.) Jess stuck me with trying desperately to learn to play the violin...I was TERRIBLE. I have two lovely poems, one about the violin disaster and one about that darling Arlo Guthrie. I will try to find them and put them on here. They explain a lot. God this is rambling....I seem to have wandered off point again...I am becoming my mother.
So....after I checked into Twitter, gladly 'followed' the sax player, I went on to read his blog about the musical children, then on to a jazz musician in London and a photo of a man with a bass sax, which reminded me of Ernie Caseres (Caceres?) OK...remember I am old and I haven't seen or written his name in years! He played clarinet and any sax that no one else was playing...a very versatile musician, but it must have been difficult to carry all those cases to every gig. he was also such a cute little guy you wanted to hug him on sight. Sometimes I miss NYC and the whole Condon crowd...Muggsy, Pee Wee, Ed Hall, Hackett, crazy George Brunies, Big Sid Catlett, the best drummer of all times...all gone and some of the names are dropping out of my mind, sad to say, but I can hunt for the Condon CDs or dig out the LPs and listen. I still don't have anything with my favorite person on it...I miss old Red MacKenzie...after all, Ned Travis sent me to him to hear the others, and he was the one who introduced me to them. Then Smitty, Scrib and I hung out at Nicks and Julius' and breathed in the music, so it is still in there in my soul. Sometimes late at night I can still see and hear old Brunies up on the bar, waving his trombone around in the air....."You so ugly, you so ugly, you some ugly chile....now the clothes that you wear are not in style/ you look like an ape every time that you smile....yo' hair is nappy, who's yo' pappy...... you some ugly chile. None of them ever grew up...sometimes I wish I hadn't...maybe I didn't.
Am I blue....am I blue....ain't these tears in these eyes tellin' you?
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