Monday, May 24, 2010

Dubuquer's Pub

OK, my inner enemy asks myself, what DO you care about? What would the old Dubuquer's ideal magazine print?

1) The Recluse Files. The satisfaction of not going anywhere, hoping the phone is not for you, telling the repairman, "I'll be around all day."

2) The Joy of Sleep. All different articles about "the sex of old age" (as my husband called it). Different naps described, especially the after-breakfast nap.

3) Let's Hear it for Yahweh! Would have to be written by me as few others get it right for some reason. Observations from medieval rabbis, 12-step anonymous writers, with cartoons about Kierkegaard. It's a matter of life or death.

4) My Grandchildren. Not yours, Mine. Their sayings and exploits in detail; armaments categorized.

5) The Helpless Diaries. E.g., gardening as a spectator sport, watching the mending pile grow.

6) Fiction, TV, movies, are the best-written an most interesting parts of the New Yorker today, so they can come in. "Still" care about these.

7) And of course, My Dog.

Perhaps in future these really would be interesting to unpack into the great unsatisfied maw of the blog.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

This Old Lady from Dubuque

Flipping through the latest issue of the "New Yorker" reminds me of how many things I don't care about in my old age:

--Marilynne Robinson p. 5: the author of wonderful "Gilead" now explores the tension between science and religion--and the "concept of mind" It will be b.s.

--Hugh Hefner, p. 27. I mean seriously, dead or alive??

--Dodge City (although by Calvin Trillin, might be interesting anyway), p. 30

--Woody Allen, p. 37. See Hugh Hefner, above. The only difference is I USED to care about Woody Allen.

--Pop Music (probably "should") p. 39 ("'You have to wear your bass guitar a lot higher than you normally would,' he said....")

--Adopting a child in Haiti (know I "should"--do in abstract), p. 44 "the rescue narratives give way to kidnap narratives..." blah blah blah

--Cartoon music, p. 55 (although the subject wants to protect Israel, one thing I do care about)

--Poetry that's worse than I could write p. 74 ("Toadstools")

--"Silence" (been there done that) p.76

--The fashionable American woman p. 79 "A decade passes and the scene shifts back indoors..."

--"The American dream goes south in three plays" p. 84 "Out of the emotive bric-a-brac, the audience constructs a backstory..." Yada yada.

The old lady from Dubuque just doesn't care about such things.
I know, I know, what do I care about? That's a short subject for another day.