Random Musings

"I'm Nobody, Who Are You?"

2012-02-15T09:27:00.002-05:00

I'm in the process of cleaning out my bookshelves. In the trash go books entitled, "How to write a Proposal That Will Sell" and "Writer's Market" and "Writer's Block." Just now I finished taking the tabs out of a notebook that had all that stuff in it: proposals written queries sent, lists of agents, and so forth. This is how I quit writing and tried to get a life!

Pat Schneider in her book "Writing Alone and With Others" says, "If you can quit, by all means do!" meaning there is a certain compulsiveness about the writing life. I've tried to quit before, but I always felt worse not writing than writing. This time, though, I think it's working out.

First of all, the problem: Writing is one thing but then you finish something and you want somebody to read it! You start sending it around. You attend a conference and the speakers say you have to sell yourself. You start selling yourself and nobody's buying. (It might work out differently if somebody was!) Then you realize you should be going to poetry readings et cetera. You should be getting a web site, you should be constructing something called a platform. You should be preparing a "list of names." This is how it is today if you want readers.

You tell yourself, Well every job has some irksome chores you must do in order to attain your goal. Then you realize it is not some chores you dislike; you dislike the whole thing--not the goal perhaps, which you would like to attain at least once. But the lists and the submissions and the putting oneself out there? It turns out I'm no good at it!!

And then once you have something out there, you have to make appearances et cetera and develop a little show about yourself. Otherwise nobody will buy your published writings and therefore nobody would read them.

I always thought I was going to do these things when I had time. But I never realized how obnoxious it would be--because it was just failure after failure. There is "try try again" and then there is the definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

I don't have that much in common with Emily Dickinson: her genius, her lack of kids and grandkids. But the decision to be nobody! Yep.

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

"How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"

New Hampshire Verdict

2012-01-10T22:38:00.002-05:00

The results from New Hampshire:

Mitt Romney -- 40% irritating in his manifest falseness
Ron Paul -- 28% grating cackling anarchistic
Jon Huntsman -- 17% BORING raining negative nonsense
Rick Santorum -- 10% repellent seemingly cruel
Newt Gingrich -- 10% entertaining but who really cares about the old days
Rick Who? -- 1% swamp thing who may rise again

I CAN'T STOP WATCHING!!

The Valley of Stillnesss

2012-01-04T21:46:00.001-05:00

The valley of "stillness" is my private name for the stage of life I'm at--everything I do is something I can "still" do. Still is the existential caesura the certainty of ending the nowness of everything. What the heck, stillness is enlightenment!

And I don't mean it in the sense of be still and know that I am God. With all due respect, I mean me and my friends can still get out of bed in the a.m., still do housework (sometimes), still discuss books and take walks, still go food shopping and cook. Some still sew, a few even still ski! Best of all we still drive.

We are happy for the faculties we still have. Two of my friends are legally blind. We look at people older and see what's coming.
I am at the point where I'm glad for every moment I'm out of pain and where every minor illness makes me wonder if this is it.

The main thing about the still ness as I thought walking the dog--there's a fantasy book dog-walking musings--is how much I enjoy just the normal workings of my body. My tibia and femur swinging into action from the hip. My shoulder not dislocating when Cassie yelps and jumps after a squirrel. The smells, the sights, of home outdoors and in still so pleasurable.

Everything I do is a still. That is true for all unfortunately. Reminds me of that little spam thing on "success."

At age 4 success is . . . not wetting your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 17 success is . . having a driver's licence.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers licence.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not wetting your pants.

There May Still Be Time for OWS to Make Gains

2011-11-27T17:08:00.000-05:00

I am glad OWS got out there and organized all these Occupy events; but I am not so glad about the direction that has been taken. To me, a little more imagination and the whole thing could be less needlessly provocative and alarming to the civic authorities. (Of course, we want to alarm the 1%!) A little thoughtfulness could grow this movement into one that can effect real change through the political process.

It was a great idea to focus on Wall Street and the wealth of a few controlling the country for the many--and for their own greed and power-hunger. The voice belongs to all the rest of us that expresses the anger at income inequality and political corruption that big money has bought for itself. The problem as I see it is letting it turn into an anti-police, anti-government movement. It doesn't need to end this way.

By "this way," I mean the announcements I have read in the news that Occupy protesters intend to stay until they are dragged away by police. This idea reeks too much of old hippiedom and the 1968 Democratic convention (which helped elect "law-and-order" candidate Richard Nixon). Confronting the police will prove counterproductive as it contributes to abuses from both "sides." In fact the police and the civil authorities are not Wall Street. They could be labeled as tools of W.S., but consider how another approach could have worked--and maybe still could.

The OWS need/needed to choose an occasion to disband, with appropriate ceremonial celebration and cleaning up. Then, continue to network and get the word out on the Internet and other media. They have already sent representatives onto news shows: a News Hour segment hosted two young OWS people who spoke articulately and effectively. After ceremonially disbanding, OWS should re-assemble at regular intervals around parts of their message. In my opinion, OWS should show solidarity with police who are also in the 99%. OWS groups would then conserve their energy to show up at political events and exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of assembly often and visibly.

OWS should not organize a third party but should exercise their weight within the Democratic party! There are so many possibilities in this widespread revulsion against the decades of rich getting richer. Educate us, OWS. Film 1% homes and yachts juxtaposed with lines at food pantries. Make people do the hard work of voting for imperfect candidates. OWS has created a wonderful opportunity for wide wide influence if they can maintain their identity through networking, assembling, and informing us.

Not so dramatic as getting pepper-sprayed and dragged to jail by the hair, but I suggest this way to go forward that promotes the long-term interests of the 99%.

A Public Space

2011-11-14T23:52:00.001-05:00

A few times a day I check the NY Times on-line, and tonight I got a surprise. The Times posted that I read 54 articles, 18 percent opinion, a certain percent national, fewer international,1 percent on books, and I forget the rest. Ye gods they don't even bother to hide that they're keeping track of my reading habits? Well you know how paranoid I am, immediately started thinking!

1) Hey, how do I know that is accurate? Maybe I should be keeping my OWN records, so if necessary I can dispute!!!

2) NY Times, I also read the paper OFF-line, how do you know I don't read very much worthier articles on Sunday??

3) I immediately went to the home page and clicked on an article about the Supreme Court! If they're keeping track---better look extremely civic. Can they tell if I only skimmed it? Note: click on Science articles but stay away from those trashy wellness blogs!

It being late, I closed the link and snuck away, vowing not to read any more articles about John Edwards ever. Taking off the paranoia, folding it away, I decide to consider this little non-event a friendly reminder that in my easy chair at my fireside if I'm tapping on the Internet, it is a very public activity.

Waited a Long Time for This

2011-11-09T15:30:00.004-05:00

"Dear Grandma. It is so exciteing that you are finally 70 years old! I wish you a happy birthday, Sincerely..." wrote my seven-year-old grandson.

Yes! Finally! I waited a long time for this, and I'm finally 70 years old.
My daughter baked me a lemon cake, and she and husband sang "Happy Birthday" as a duet, because the boys had been naughty and sent to their rooms. They gave me a beautiful cross with a ruby they found in the rough in a bucket of rocks. They were tired; the boys were hyper; and it was the best birthday ever!

Back home I found messages on the answering machine and on Facebook. Gift certificates arrived on e-mail.

Showers of blessings--a birthday worth waiting for!

"Look at the Poor" -- 1973

2011-11-05T17:28:00.000-04:00

I felt sorry for myself when we went broke and I had to get a job I didn't especially enjoy et cetera. On Nov. 7, 1973, Richard Nixon was about to announce austerity measures, and I wrote:

"I'll bet that all over this country there are mothers washing their family's dinner dishes with tight mouths, furious with impotence over the state the men have gotten this country into.

"Before he even opens his mouth tonight, we know that Mr. Nixon is going to impose rationing that will slightly inconvenience rich people while at the same time hurting poor people very badly.

"Look at the poor. We have no lawn sprinklers, automatic garage doors. We have no fancy offices with someone answering our phone. We don't have three refrigerator-freezers, two color TVs. We don't even have carpeting on our floors.

"Yet I hear on the radio that MY children might have to go to an unheated school and MY children might not be able to have lights on the Christmas tree!

"We live in a tiny house, with our four children. We do have an upstairs, which is unheated. Our refrigerator was manufactured before World War II.

"And the president flies his fancy plane to Camp David and uses plenty of energy taping everybody's conversations. Did the White House go without meat when prices went up? Is Pat Nixon putting patches on last year's jeans? Oh sure, they were poor once!" [Her children, believe me, went to a well-heated private school; Denny's Cousin Florence was their teacher at Chapin. The worst rich people are the ones who were once poor!]

"So, plenty of women are furious with our hands in soapy water tonight. Many of us have just put in a full day's work [and lucky to get it] before coming home to clean the house and cook dinner and wash up pots and dishes, then read to the children and after putting them to bed do laundry. Many of us moms are alone, either because we have no man to help us or because our man must work nights to make ends meet. And the thing that makes us so mad is that we KNOW what this country needs. What this country needs is a good mother!

"Would a mother eat and let her kids go hungry? Would a mother let the big kids muscle in and take the most of everything while the little ones cried from cold and hunger? She makes sure everyone gets a fair share, including the weak and the sick."

But you can't say that about the country needing to make sure people play fair because the oligarchs will come back with "socialism nanny state class warfare," whatever BULLYING phrases they're being fed from somewhere by people who are the opposite of poor.

In 1973 you had a chance, and real estate was still reasonable compared to what you could earn. Today's (2011) poor are worse off. Many have no job, no house (although I read in the paper many have a TV in their kid's bedroom). I completely don't know how people get by. I have lost touch with all that -- thank God -- but still relate to furious frustration that today's rich rail and scream against inconvenience while "devouring widow's houses," as George Bernard Shaw wrote, quoting I think the prophet Amos.

Vote vote vote vote vote in your gerrymandered-by -Republicans districts! And keep on organizing you young protesters!

Privilege

2011-09-30T11:05:00.000-04:00

Neat pink brick townhouses, excellent cool breezes fresh as a fountain really, rain-swept sidewalk underfoot, and happy little strawberry-blond cairn terrier trotting on the end of a shabby leash.
Don't think about shabby!
For this suburban neighborhood one must look affluent and neat. We have rules. Puffing up the hill, I'm seeing green lush gardens both one side and the other. Velvety smooth grass surrounds mulched beds of tidy plantings. Smells wonderfully fresh. New Yorker article said grass is a bad idea. Thorsten Veblen; conspicuous consumption. We're doomed et cetera.
Yes, think about doom why not.
Because I have to rein in this dog. A narrow-faced sleeveless-jerseyed young woman has appeared round the corner behind her sleek brown-and-white Springer spaniel. Cassie lunges and barks--ever the terrier--and I get glared at through tiny glinting rectangular spectacles.
Getting scowled at first thing in the morning; someone should do a study on that, get a grant, go on NPR, start what's-wrong-with-your-face trend.
Wait, I think it's been done.
Walk past church, one small red car parked in the driveway. A hundred years from now, throngs will huddle on the church steps. Don't know why; just see them there.
Trotting on past the harvest-ready big-leaved community garden--it is utopian here in many respects--down sidewalk towards home, around the last corner: I see a rabbit!! Tiny but tall-eared; that's no chipmunk. Baby rabbit runs, then freezes, indecisive. ("Run little rabbit! I would too!" cries the Pickett's charger). From behind, rabbit's tiny muscled running haunches move massively, like a miniature kangaroo's. It's about four houses away, and Cassie doesn't react.
I can see farther than my dog!!
Should I pull up that little green grass from the mulch at the front? Out of place, it's a weed. Oomph.
Careful on the steps, fumbling. I remembered my key!
Outside felt wonderfully cool; now indoors pleasantly warm. I'm home from my morning dog walk in a life of rare privilege in the doomed century in the bosom of a great empire.

Sauvex qui pouvais!

2011-08-05T11:01:00.004-04:00

Last night my 10-year old grandson, McGregor, dropped in to play cards and noticed TV showing the DOW 500-point plunge and newscasting voices of alarm.

"What's the DOW?" he asked.

"A stock index," I told him. "Stocks went down today, but ( beaming) I'm in bonds!"

"What are bonds?" he asked, placing his new deck of cards on the coffee table and pulling up a chair. "Could you deal, please?"

"Municipalities borrow money and pay interest."

"Well I'm putting my money in a savings account," said McGregor.

"Bonds pay better," I said, dealing out the hands for Crazy-8s.

Discussing investments w/ Grandma.

Of course, McGregor might be wiser; bonds can go bad, too (which is why some of mine are insured). The economy might be tanking, and at some point it's out of your hands. These troubles are global.

Plus, in the midst of this global crisis, US Republicans work against recovery because above all they want to bring down Obama. About 25% of them are probably stupidly sincere; another 25% fear primary challenges from even righter-wing opponents; and 50% are bought and paid for by the undertaxed superrich.

Plus again, the climate grows more extreme--just look out the window--to cause more expensive crises and raise insurance rates. Least noticed of all: our population is growing too fast!

Our grandchildren really are going to have it tougher than us, but then we have it so very very good right now. You do what you can to save whom you can.

Stealth and destruction have come to Troy's walls
Unto the Aeneas Hector's ghost doth call
Save whom you can and make way to the sea
Trust in the fates you are Rome's destiny

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmania.com/the_fall_of_iliam_lyrics_manilla_road.html
All about Manilla Road: http://www.musictory.com/music/Manilla+Road

Takes Some Getting Used To

2011-07-05T11:42:00.005-04:00

I have just finished reading "The View in Winter," by Ronald Blythe, an esteemed old English man of letters. He was not old when he published his 1979 collection of interviews w/ old people (ranging from 70s to 100+); but he managed to beautifully reveal how it feels to get old! It feels surprising, but if you go on long enough, you will adapt.

The author notes, "It always comes as a shock.....After you have become old, you get older!" I.e., It doesn't take long to get old, but you can BE old for a very long time.

One reason we're surprised it is that when young we never think about being old. How can they; having not been there yet? Furthermore, the old seldom think about being middle-aged. They think about childhood, when they were more nearly who they are now. In fact, in the middle of reading these essays, I remembered myself as a young reader studying my parents' "The Child From Five to Ten" by those Yale psychologists (Gesell and Ilg). Here I am old and still trying to understand my own development.

Seems I am aging normally: e.g., there was an increasing amount of idling found among the elderly. The old spoke of struggling to stay active, and many give in to torpidity too soon. It becomes harder to do anything any more and takes longer. E.g., I have spent most of the morning writing this. Many spoke of the daily pain and debilitation; one reaches a point where one never really feels well any more. One woman who had been disabled since youth remarked it made growing old easier because she was used to it.

Yes, we "grow" old, continuing to develop. (My conclusion, not Blythe's). A nursing home matron comments, "Very old real Christians get beyond ministry. Whatever it is they've got to have at the end, it is waiting to be found inside them." After a while, the matron continues, they "have got used to being old. It is ordinary to them and they hardly ever discuss it... You accept being near death and having no strength, and your face all funny." So these old folks went from resenting their aging to finding it a shock, to clinging to independence to getting "beyond all that."

Conclusion to be drawn: you will get used to seeing but never being seen. To reading but never being read.

We Weren't Always Fat Old Grandmas

2011-06-24T14:34:00.010-04:00

In my mother's nursing home many rooms had pictures of the residents as brides. Someone wanted the staff to know that the wreck in the bed once bloomed in radiant nubility. She had been willowy, fetching, and maybe outside of the bride picture, wild!

Or, consider this. My mother's friend, in middle age, surveying her peers at the swimming pool and concluding, "I'm still pretty cute!" In our forties we definitely were, and in our fifties maybe even. I know a friend or two in their seventies who wear sleeveless dresses and shorts and work out 2 hours a day. And my aunt, a former beauty queen? We were visiting them, and she flirted with my husband, and I felt annoyed, and she was 80 years old, and lovely.

A classmate of mine just published a book (I Remember Nothing, by Nora Ephron) saying "The most important thing about me is that I'm old." On the back cover she is glossy, svelte, and gorgeous. Oh, I may look young, she writes, but I have aches and pains. Please, Nora, you can't have it both ways. You can't complain about getting old until you lose your looks!

Because most of us don't look young in a way that denies one ever really was young (a phrase I read in a a novel once). Most of us in our sixties and seventies look old. No one ever says any more, "Oh you're not fat," or "You're not old." I never considered myself especially good looking, but now I realize I was! The women who are sylphs at 42 or 45 unconsciously tell themselves they'll never look like me. I never thought I'd look like me either!

As an old lady friend remarked, "Pat when I look in the mirror I scare myself!"

Yet, we have to bear in mind, getting older is a privilege not a right.

The Family Genes

2011-06-13T22:40:00.000-04:00

I joined ancestry.com and started filling in little boxes of my lineage. You type in names, and then "hints" pop up with other people's family trees and public records such as census reports. I got absorbed, because there's always more to do, observe, and think about.

The census reports are exciting because they're fairly accurate (and there are ways to correct obvious errors). I found that both my grandmother Tillie and my grandfather Frank lived in Milwaukee with their parents in 1900. How did they meet? What were their mattresses like? I found Frank's WWI draft registration. His own handwriting reports that he is "short" and "stout" and is missing part of a digit. It was 1918, and he already had a wife and child (my mother). Did Frank go to war? I don't know! I will ask Frank's son, my mom's brother, when I see him in August.

My dad's side of the family goes back to the 1700s; they were early settlers in North Carolina and moved on to Tennessee. One ancestor got land grants as a reward for bringing in 8 new families to Tennessee. The settling men incorporated a town "because there wasn't any form of government there." They formed a 13-man commission to be the judges. Then one went out hunting and was "killed by an Indian while hunting with Boone."

I have found one Will by a grandfather named John Allred. In 1792 he left land to his sons and "negroes" and cows to some of his daughters. He left my great-something-grandmother Elizabeth Horner ten shillings. Who knew the young country was on the British currency by that time? And what was the value of 10 shillings? Probably she didn't get much because her husband William Horner was prosperous. Deed records show him buying hundreds of acres for miles around. Elizabeth and William's son "Capt. Jack" Horner looked westward farther, and started plans for a new town in Missouri, where his son and grandsons settled the town of Hornersville with land from the Louisiana Purchase.

Men were looking out and seeing land, land, bountiful land to be had for the settling. Exploring, pioneering, starting towns, was the happening thing.

And what were the women doing? They were having many many many babies, and contrary to popular belief many of those many babies lived to enormous ages. In checking some of my dates I could find great-grandmothers who started having babies at 17 and didn't stop until their late 40s. From time to time not surprisingly the wife would die and then another wife would be married and have lots more children.

If the earliest generations were settlers, by the time things got down to grandfathers, starting companies was the thing. One of Alan's great-grandfathers started a department store, and his dad's father started a bus company. My mother's father Frank (of the draft card) began his own shoe company, and my grandfather Robert had his own magazine, Mississippi Valley Contractor, that he edited and ran for 50 years. They started having smaller families.

That was easier on their wives, who were still putting laundry through a wringer and tending the chickens and cows that everybody had. They sewed their own clothes and put up jam. They took care of sick people at home. One of them, Fannie Dixon Waggener Schaefer, was also a professional musician. Sometimes I wander around here thinking these women would have no use for me!

Because what do I do today? I stand on their shoulders. I imagine our country's history through their experience. I write about them, and future generations will know them!

Patty and the Marshmallow

2011-06-06T11:46:00.000-04:00

A news story is making the rounds about old-time psychology experimenters putting a little kid in a room, sitting her down at a child-sized table, and leaving her there with one marshmallow on a plate. She is told she may eat the marshmallow immediately or wait. If she waits, she will receive another marshmallow later and end up with two. The children who deferred gratification at age 5 ended up as wealthier adults with better jobs than the immediately gratifying tots.

What would little Patty do??

The least likely scenario is she would sit quietly in the chair until the time was up and then receive the reward marshmallow, which she would eat now ("Thank you very kindly") and save the first for later. That alternative must at least be considered because occasionally Patty pretended to be good.

A different outcome seems more likely from the questions I consider while waiting: "What the f___ am I doing here? Who is making me do this? Did I sign on for it or something? Did anyone ask me if I even like marshmallows?

"Isn't there any other reward for this beyond another not very tasty bunch of spun sugar? Who is letting this be done? If I eat it now, do I get out of here sooner??"

Possible findings of experimenter upon return: marshmallow half-eaten. Marshmallow nibbled around edges. Marshmallow shinily sticky from being licked all over. Marshmallow placed under table so as to not be seen by subject. Marshmallow kneaded into the shape of a rabbit.

Actions debated: Eat it and have a tantrum. Have a tantrum but don't eat it. Stick marshmallow somewhere on or around body. Collect a second marshmallow and then refuse both when presented with "reward" marshmallow. Trample both! "THAT's what I think of your second marshmallow!"

Fears entertained: Someone might come grab this thing before I eat it! A bird in hand, didn't I hear that somewhere? Returning lady might find marshmallow pristine on plate but declare some other condition unmet, i.e., you had to keep hands in lap or something like that. I will learn I failed to measure up to some standard I was not aware of and I might lose both. Or worse, I might get spanked.

It's a very unreliable experimenting room for this precocious little girl.

Naturally, as she should have known, the whole thing was being filmed.

Citizen Pat

2011-05-20T10:53:00.000-04:00

My grandson brought home a mobile with the three branches of government, and he gave it to me to keep. Last night I spent an hour re-modeling this clothes hanger with pieces of written-on index cards suspended with yarn. I enjoying making it a whole lot. And this is a typical thought process: oh, I would want a big white bulletin board with the names of all the Justices, Senators, et cetera written in.. I make a big thought balloon of learning about No. Carolina geography and taking a trip to Raleigh to see the Capitol and visiting my state representative. In fantasy I teach a civics class, and my little group files a bill. Lovely musings.

End result is that I add a Senate card under grandson's "Congress" where he has only the House of Representatives hanging from the russet-colored yarn. The project required a lot of re-arranging the yarn. I tied a little piece from the VP card horizontal to the Senate and noted VP is also President of the Senate and in line to become President if necessary. To the House section I added a Speaker card and wrote the Speaker is next to succeed after the VP. I hoped the line of succession will attract the interest of grandsons.

Thought a lot about orderly transition as one of America's world-surprising strengths. In the end I had a little mobile that enlightened citizen Pat hung from a lamp in my living room and admired all night.

Baby steps.

Pursuing Citizenship

2011-04-30T13:31:00.002-04:00

I found out the name of that government report on the deficit and social security: "The Moment of Truth." It may be melodramatic; but I'm sure this committee appointed by the President wants to stress the importance of its bureaucratic message. The 65-page report is heavy going, jargon-y and complicated; I almost gave up on the idea of reading it. However, I decided to just LOOK at it. Nobody needs to be satisfied except me, so why not try.

Starting towards the end helped, with the section about Social Security. If there's anything I'm motivated to understand it's Social Security. Raising the retirement age comes recommended. But collecting half at age 62 is also suggested, as is putting state and federal employees into it (including Congress? doesn't say). There is also a minimum hardship benefit of 125% of poverty. The committee also says the ability to collect lower benefits at 62 and then turn them back in to get full benefits at full retirement age should no longer be tax-free; as it now constitutes a tax-free loan available to the wealthy. Who knew about that last part?

In thinking about the man who cleaned my fireplace yesterday--55 y/o who was fired after 29 years on the job with no health insurance and unemployment benefits running out, and who has diabetes--the change might conceivably be a help to him and allow him to subsist on his part-time business. So I would be OK with these changes to Social Security.

Regarding unemployment benefits and other topics still to be read about, the main thing the authors seem to want is better measuring tools, "integrity adjusted" this and that. There is a section about raising the ceiling on the payroll tax, which I do want done. For any more scrutiny, I'm saving my pennies to afford a 65-page printout.

The whole subject is be-fogged with boredom and inscrutability; yet citizenship requires checking the primary source whenever possible.

Update: net result of studying and stewing and reading the "Moment of Truth" document: a letter to my Congressman. In the process, I realized that when I began numbly "whimpering out" or whatever I posted--others too began to roll over and mew.

The body politic stirs.

Time to Become a Citizen Again

2011-04-06T12:30:00.000-04:00

Google "tax reform" today and you'll come up with links to flat tax, alternative minimum tax, and multiple articles referring to a certain Rep. Ryan, the head of House Budget or Finance coming up with a splashy budget reform that has zero tax increases and starts taking apart Medicare and Medicaid. I saw this Rep. Ryan on TV last night; he is articulate, convincing, an scary. The right wing rich people are jubilant and vocal.

Liberals, Progressives, Christians, whatever you call yourselves, why aren't you DOING anything???

As for me, I favor restoring the Bill Clinton era tax structure. Mortgage deductions on second homes should not be allowed. The ceiling on FICA tax should be raised.

I started to write my Congressman. Then I realized: I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING about taxes and revenues--aside from the fact they're unfair and riddled with lies. E.g., that the mega rich must keep tax breaks because they so-called create jobs. (A few recent articles say no; but again I know little.) Time to become a citizen again.

The beginning is to read the things I have read about: the report that came out, you know the report. Note to self: find out name of report. Secondly, donate to Sojourners campaign of "What Would Jesus Cut?" We must do something!

Stay tuned to find out if I actually DO anything or whether I'm among the numbed who occasionally stir and whimper out.

Shredding, unblocking, some last remains

2011-03-26T16:22:00.000-04:00

In my office there are signs of a struggle. A shredder lies pulled apart, and paper bits litter half the carpet. area. Plus, a vacuum cleaner lies wounded in pieces, with 2 Phillips screwdrivers, 2 knitting needles, a wooden dowel and a bent wire hanger on the desk. The seat of the chair has a big rip in it, and documents lie in piles in front of the computer screen and scanner. This is the last bit of my Amherst house.

At least I hope it is, wrapping it up for the tax man.

I had to scan in many documents and dig down into e-mails from the accountant. Is this as strenuous as grouting the bathroom floor in the apt.? Almost--not quite so hard on the knees though. The old brain--or the brain on Lyrica--has difficulty keeping the complexities in order. Finally after hours of sorting piles and scanning, I hear my lone cry of the widow: "I did it!"

This is only the last (I hope) of several weeks of doing the papers. In fact, I'm good at paperwork. The taxes are understood and known down to their last irregularities. But now for mechanical work: have to unplug the little shredder and go at it with a letter opener to unjam it. Then big curls of paper fall out. I lug the vacuum from downstairs and start vacuuming up these shreds. The dog is pacing in and out; she feels trapped between the machine and the piles. She leaps, farts, and shrieks when a high-pitched scream starts from the vacuum hose. Something's stuck in there.

This was the major event of the morning, the solitary adventure I suppose we all have--unjamming the wedged in something or other with the knitting needles, screwdriver and so forth. I shine desk light down hose and barely see something wooden stuck in there. I am praising the rescuers who got Jessica McClure out of the well 23 years ago. Jam, push, go in with hanger. Go in really HARD. Meanwhile the paper bits float around, sticking to my good pants etc. Finally with one last little nudge in the other direction, the blocking thing falls down the hose. It turns out to be one of those wooden pulls on the end of the venetian blind cord. In triumph, not having to call a man, not having the replace the hose, I vacuum the shreds away. To me, they represent tail ends of a greenhouse full of 50 gallons of toxic waste that I took to 2 different special dump days, then had the greenhouse and shed pulled down, a new deck and a pond filled in. They are all that is left leases with tenants and special escrow accounts. I'm done with huge blocks of furniture, piles of rubbish and old tires,with headachey-inducing e-mails from incompetent lawyers. Can I finally start my life now?

This is a typical day when the "on" switch is flipped in my body. Which still happens occasionally--about once every 2 weeks.

Victory of the People

2011-02-11T13:38:00.004-05:00

Cairo's Tahrir Square 2/11/11 via CNN

It's New Year's Eve, the Fourth of July, Armistice Day, and Woodstock all rolled into one in the streets of Cairo. "The criminal has left the palace."

We thought it would happen last night, but Mubarak just couldn't bring himself to "surrender to a bunch of riffraff," as he was quoted. We watched Mubarak's lame speech last night; we sympathized with the protesters' outrage. We were concerned what might happen today. Would a guillotine be set up in Tahrir Square? Would the tanks roll?

So, what a nice surprise to hear my car radio announce that the dictator retired to his resort in Sharm el-Sheikh today! I passed the news to a friend in the Post Office parking lot: "I heard it on NPR!" Tahrir Square, instead of running with blood, erupted with joy.

We'd grown increasingly impressed by the Egyptian people, whose revolution began on Facebook. It started Jan. 25th as a riot, with tear gas. Then came the chaos and the looting; the museum's priceless treasures being ripped off. "Pro-Mubarak forces" charged into the crowds on horseback and camelback. We dreaded a bloody suppression.

But then things changed. The Army refused to fire on the Egyptian people. (I heard at one point they were ordered to but refused.) At the same time bands of citizens got together to defend their homes and neighborhoods. The museum also got guards of citizens, and some treasures were returned. Interviews came in from people on the street: "We want to choose our own government." "We're not leaving until Mubarek's gone." Respect for Egyptians spread around the world as we saw and heard people who were both yearning and determined.

But then international journalists began being taken into custody! And the unintended consequence of that, from the dictator's point of view, was the ability to report first-hand the brown leather walls, the screams of tortured Egyptians piercing through them. If a reporter had requested to visit on a press pass, they would have been excluded!

Arresting the journalists was another of Mubarek's countermoves that backfired, and his concessions came too late. He's toast; the Swiss are freezing his family's bank accounts.

Tomorrow we will worry about what comes next. But today watching people who wanted to be free shouting, "Egypt is free! Egypt is free!" I think we can enjoy and enjoy an interlude of amazed jubilation.

Thinking about History

2011-02-07T22:32:00.000-05:00

With all our blogs and e-mails, texts, and postings, historians will wear themselves out covering their source material. If you go back a century or even less time than that, you reviewed letters, diaries, newspapers, and public records. A contemporary person will drive their biographer nuts with all the content that's on our drives and floating in cyberspace.

Well historians will just have to adjust, as journalists have done (the reporting kind, not the kind who keep diaries). At least no one writes letters any more.

Back Attack

2011-02-05T23:19:00.000-05:00

While Egypt is transitioning I'm down with one of my bad back attacks. It's the pain thing again, just glad to get it out of the way before we take off for Paris!

After a week of illness I'm at the point of telling God that as long as I have water, a warm room, and am out of pain, I'll never complain about anything ever again!

Of course who's out of pain?

Tonight I felt OK enough to move around the kitchen with accompanying moans--"What's up?" calls down son Greg. "I'm sumo housekeeping!" I'm moving into that phase of first recovery that Kafka called rebirth. There's euphoria when you first feel better.

In the meantime I've seen a lot of Egypt on TV and feel more encouraged than when first wrote. It's been a week of NEWS--somebody's sure to get a Pulitzer Prize from this, I think Nicholas Kristof. After street battles, police attacks, and journalists being detained and beaten, things are enough better that CNN feels comfortable doing a "review" piece on the crisis. But in other news: how about Gabrielle Giffords' husband saying he's "sure she would want him" to command the space mission? "would want"? I think she's less progressed in rehab than we've been led to believe.

Meanwhile I'm reading "Russia Against Napoleon" and a Robert Parker mystery whose name I forgot and a French textbook. Tonight I made flash cards for words I'm unsure of in the "t"s while watching the Military Channel about German spies in the US during WWII. Bunglers. Six went to electric chair. Les traitres qui trahant! (?) If not for the agony--les transes--not a bad life.

There's Rioting in Africa

2011-01-29T13:43:00.000-05:00

Old Kingston Trio Song:

"There's rioting in Africa, there's strife in Iran

"What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man."

In Iran, demonstrations were put down by the Revolutionary Guard a year and a half ago. Today, protests and strife ripples across Egypt--a terribly unstable situation that will have changed and progressed by the time I conclude the post. You can tune in to live shots of masses in streets and on a bridge; you can hear the bangs of rubber bullets and tear gas canisters exploding.

In 1972, Denny and I were just trying to go home to our apt. on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge when we got caught up in the middle of a crowded demonstration. Such were the times that you could just run into a protest on your way home. Lots of people were yelling and moving around fast, and we had to fight our way through the mob to get to our apt. We felt a huge police presence, with scary gleaming shields and masks. With the first whiffs of tear gas, we knew we wanted to be OUT of the mob, and rushed our way to our little second-floor apartment, where we could watch the incident from safety. It took a few days for the tear gas smell to leave our home.

Being caught in the middle of that relatively unhistorical experience gave me more compassion for police who might overstep during civil unrest. Now CNN is reporting that the Cairo police are scared of the people. Everyone is armed now with a samurai sword or with the hose to their vacuum cleaner. Ordinary Egyptians are now concerned, apart from the politics, to defend their homes.

Since beginning this post, watching Egyptian chaos from the safety of TV, I've seen coverage move from freedom of expression to chaotic destruction and looting. Plus, it's part of a ripple effect: in addition to Yemen and Tunisia, Jordan is now starting to de-stabilize. Iran is reportedly "watching quietly." We don't know what will happen next, but I'm pretty it won't be to the advantage of the United States.

It Happens

2011-01-11T10:47:00.000-05:00

Every now and then there's a shooting. This time, in Tuscon, AZ, last Saturday, a nine-year-old girl died of a chest wound because she came out to meet her congresswoman at an event in a Safeway parking lot. Reporters say the third-grader wanted to learn how government works: quite a learning. From Lincoln to McKinley to Martin Luther King to the Kennedys to Kent State, to Reagan and James Brady, guns have gone off in politics. And not just for political reasons: at the post office, at school, buying a hamburger, filling the gas tank, any one of us could be wounded or killed by gunfire. It happens in America from time to time, and we're always so surprised.

Well, the shooter's former professors weren't surprised. And by the way, where are his parents? Who is responsible for this particular incompetent young man, probably paranoid schizophrenic, who kept a safe(!) in his apt. with a letter from his Congresswoman from 2007? You could start with Ronald Reagan, I suppose, who de-institutionalized mentally ill. I'm sure the NRA and the Supreme Court have a share of blame. An adult American has the legal right to be insane and the legal right to buy a Glock 9 mm. Although there's a nagging feeling this shooting could have been prevented, we can't quite think how.

Maybe we'll think shootings are predictable. I predict we'll see no sweeping gun control, but we'll see more armed security at political events. Perhaps the incident will deflate some wind out of Sarah Palin's sails. And then we'll go on to other news until the next time it happens.

New Year's Eve Day 2010

2010-12-31T11:07:00.000-05:00

What? Over so soon?
How arbitrary; who decided this?
Denny used to say at the start of each month: "Click!" and at New Year's he'd say, "BONG!"
Our whole large family jumped off the couch at midnight as his parents had before us.

The Roman god Janus
looked forward
and back.

Our first sober New Year's Eve, '85-'86,
Denny and I got stopped by police driving home from a
macrobiotic cookout. We had a missing headlight, twenty-five years ago,
but the officer let us go due to clean air in car; a miracle!

(I also remember youth '60-'61: a flurry of evening gowns and

Arpege, festivities in mansions and clubs. Back in my

parents' living room our happy tipsy few lit candles in the

wall sconce which were just for show but my mother

didn't even get mad. Another miracle, 50 years old.)

Denny's last New Year's, I rolled off the couch the best I could, then ran upstairs to say,

"Den! Den! You lived until 2005!" A miracle of medicine, six years ago.

OK, that's looking back; now what's ahead? This year I plan to party with

seven-year-old grandson. Hooray, put together the model train set, and I will feed him his favorite frozen mac and cheese. I'm sure that together we will watch endless Scooby-Doos. We'll try to stay up late and make some noise. If I'm awake at midnight I will sit on the couch and touch the floor.

If not, this blog will have to do. That's what the future holds.

THE HOLIDAY IS HERE

2010-12-24T17:31:00.000-05:00

That ever was thrall, now is he free;

That ever was small, great is she;

Now shall God deem both thee and me

Unto his bliss if we do well.

Noel!

--Anonymous, Out of Your Sleep Arise and Wake

Christmas Eve Day, or Wrapping It Up

Today, I cleaned out the last presents from under my desk and wrapped them.
The rush and crush of Advent is giving way
to celebration of the Christ Child; I sense his nearness. Peace starts to descend as my son begins the enormous job of preparing tomorrow's feast.

This afternoon, McGregor and I joined the informal parade of dressed-up neighbors walking to our parish church to welcome the Nativity. We sang the great carols in concert with all the generations: In the row before us, an ancient woman is supported by two (perhaps) granddaughters, and a family at the other end holds a tiny infant daughter in a pink

frilly dress. Lots of green sequins and red velvet are all around, with bows. The restlessness of a hundred small children passes back and forth over the congregation like a great wind.

Now, we turn to family traditions. At six o'clock we walk across the street for my son-in-law's homemade dim sum. We'll enjoy what we’ve prepared, the fellowship of holiday that we have woven for and with them. I will ask for one present to be opened on Christmas Eve; everyone will say no. My son and I will come home and run to separate corners to fill stockings and then what---whatever we want!

"The Littlest Angel"
We're so much better off than we were a year ago, in health, employment, and finances. I am in a position for a while to take advantage of these good times to lay foundation of security and hope for the families I watch over, my own. Thank you, Jesus.

This is trying to resemble a half Christmas tree like the one we bought that year

2010-12-22T19:42:00.002-05:00

OK,
that's it,
it's done, no more.
I'm done with wrapping
and tree-trimming with drama
driving it home in the trunk and
frantically searching for a tiny baby
of the white china creche lost in the
bottom of an ornament box. Why is
this endless mailing packages and cards?
(You better be organized about the addresses
not to mention you had to buy the cards and write
the annual letter and stand in line to buy more holiday
stamps and later find the ones you already had.) No, it's
over with the buying the wrong thing and ordering 2-day
shipping to get it right and why is there always something
more to be done? Tomorrow: Shop for the feast and then
have it and go to church and O Lord, I can't
Wait until You come and I can
finally
be
Done.

I Fixed the Budget

2010-11-30T11:15:00.001-05:00

I like the puzzles in the New York Times, including a new one offered two weeks ago: "Get a Pencil. You're Tackling the Deficit." (NY Times Week in Review, Nov. 14, 2010, p. 4). Unlike some of the
crosswords and acrostics, this puzzle was easy, since the columnists David Leonhardt and Bill Marsh provided multiple choices.

Here's what I did to reach $1.345 trillion, the amount called for in the puzzle by 2030:

Eliminated earmarks ($15b) and cut pay of federal workers 5% (15b). subtotal $ 30b
Left intact farm subsidies, foreign aid, federal work force, government contractors,
national parks budgets, and aid to states.

Left intact current level of military spending.

Enacted medical malpractice reform ($15b, although don't understand why medical malpractice is a federal budget item).
Capped Medicare growth at G.D.P. growth plus 1 percentage point starting in 2013 ($560b).
health care subtotal $575b

Left Social Security intact. Did not tighten eligibility, did not reduce benefits even for top 40 percent of lifetime earners, did not slow cost-of-living increases, did not raise retirement age. (Would favor lowering it, in fact.)

On estate and investment taxes, returned to Clinton era:
Exempted first $1 million of estate ($105b)
Raised capital-gains taxes on all households and taxed dividends as ordinary income ($45b)
Allowed expiration of all Bush tax cuts, above $250,000 ($115b)

and below $250,000 ($250b).

Clinton era subtotal $515b

I mandated the Social Security payroll tax apply to some income above the current
ceiling of $106,800 (a ceiling about which my blood has been
boiling since Reagan days). ($100b)

I reduced mortgage deduction and other tax breaks for high-income households ($55b)
and placed a gradually rising tax on carbon emissions ($70b).

Tax reform subtotal $225b

I did not reduce tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance; nor did I place a
5.4 surtax on income above $1 million.

Banks did not receive a new tax from me, and I strongly vetoed a 5 percent national sales tax.

   Total $1.345 trillion

I even think these reforms would be passable. Republicans and Democrats both are always crying for an end to earmarks, so do it.

With the military budgets intact, who can object to a 5% pay decrease in civilian federal workers (except maybe their unions)? If they do object, just cut 250,000 government contractors instead for the same $15b. They aren't our valiant troops in uniform.

Republicans should love both the cap in Medicare growth and the malpractice reform.
As for Social Security, that "third rail of American politics," even the richest will keep their Social Security benefits and be able to retire at current ages.

And who can seriously object to returning to the Clinton era tax rates? We had a better job rate back then, didn't we?

Mortgage deductions aren't clear in the puzzle; but I would negotiate their removal from second and third homes.

The ceiling on the payroll tax has never ever been fair, and the tax on carbon emissions, which starts at $23 per ton of carbon dioxide, is but the merest baby step compared to the effort we will need to exert. With banks left alone and employers keeping their health care deductions, businesses should find themselves agreeable to clean-energy policies.

Congress: pass this good balance of health care, military spending, social security, with a return to healthier tax policies of the Clinton era, adding progressive incentivizing taxes. Then we can face the future with confidence.

   .

Bits of Good News

2010-11-03T10:06:00.001-04:00

The headlines read, Republican earthquake reconfigures electoral map and some such. And it's true, the Reds took the House of Representatives and also both houses in No. Carolina (for first time since 1898, when they were progressive!). Everyone was expecting this what I call bad.

However, our own Democratic Congressman Mel Watt won in a landslide. And, fortunately, Democrats will retain control of the Senate; Harry Reid will remain majority leader. In Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski leads in her write-in campaign. If Murkowski does hold her seat on a write-in vote, this feat will mean a big loss for former Gov. and current (non)-reality TV star S. Palin in her home state. Could this be the high water mark for the "red tide"?

Hope is still alive, if on life support.

It Must Be a Joke

2010-10-18T23:12:00.001-04:00

Yes of course whatever you say about getting old it definitely has to be a joke. My friend Doc Bubbles says it's a continuous loop of, "News flash, you're old...News flash, you're old!" It comes as a surprise for some reason, who knows why. By this time who knows much of anything right?

Today came the latest surprise: My portrait for the church directory arrived, and guess what, if you looked at this picture and you didn't know the person you would say it's somebody's grandmother or great-grandmother! So much so that looking at it I even conceived an ambition to become a great-grandmother. I started calculating the grandkids' ages and how young they could marry without it being a disaster, and when they could produce an heir or heiress who would say, "That is my great-grandmother."

I gotta get ahold of myself here...

Successful "Olding"

2010-10-08T11:57:00.001-04:00

1) Teeter and totter when you walk. People will rush to your aid, if they're not brigands rushing to rob you.
2) Therefore, use a cane. You can push elevator buttons with it; and if you do encounter brigands you'll be armed.
3) At the checkout, count out your exact change with shaky fingers and make a long conversation with your checker. They are very nice and lovely and have interesting lives.
4) Yes, be nice! Since you are no longer pretty and no longer smart, try to be nice.
5) Talk a lot about World War Two even if you were only an infant during it.
6) Dispense wisdom and advice liberally.
8) Watch TV and eat ice cream while you "still" can.
9) I.e., Enjoy yourself!
10) That is, you can stop saving for retirement now!
11) Talk a lot about Jesus. Oh right; I even did that before I got old.
12) Yes, play hymns and sing them in a quavery voice.
13) Wear velcro sneakers with white socks if you damn well feel like it!

Suggestions welcomed; yes I have seen that "Success at Any Age" e-mail; but you can send it to me if you feel like it.

Civic Pain

2010-10-05T10:33:00.000-04:00

The world continues its merry ride to hell in last Sunday's Week in Review! Frank Rich, whom I always read first, writes about a vote--getting whack job named Christine O'Donnell. She actually out-outrageoused Karl Rove, who used to be the disgustingest. O'Donnell "just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires' coup as a populist surge." Doom.

Feature story" "The Secret Sponsors," investigates the propaganda organization Coalition to Protect Seniors, a right-wing anti-"Obamacare" cabal that spent $400,000 last month. Journalist Mike McIntire wrote this informative piece describing his process of trying to get to the bottom of who's really behind this cloaked conspiracy. Searching through a web site to a post office box to a telephone in an insurance office, McIntire never found out who is responsible. Gloom.

Thomas Friedman hopes a real third party will arise to tell us that both parties are captive to special interests. Dreamer!

If we're still reading, we can continue to John Schwarz's "Bullying, Suicide, Punishment," based on a young man's suicide after cyberhumiliation. Under the rubric of exposing how inadequate the laws are, Schwartz gets to remind us of other horribly sad examples of children hanging themselves and jumping off bridges after being bullied. Moan!

And just to put the cherry on top, Nicholas Kristof brings news we're "At Risk From The Womb," so anti-poverty programs must begin before birth! (But I am sure--my comment--that the billionaire-populists will quash this idea while simultaneously making poor women unable to prevent birth.) Groan!

I must take this newspaper into the woods and fall down on it and pray over it! Or stop reading it, which I don't think I'm allowed to do. Feeling the civic pain is part of one's civic duty.

The Problem of Pain

2010-10-01T11:08:00.000-04:00

I have bad pain on a daily basis, and it makes me unhappy and weak. It makes me "can't" do things and it hurts to even look at a rake, a vacuum, or even my knitting. Pain is a bore! Pain hurts and that is a problem.

If you google the problem of pain things get very abstract very quickly because unfortunately suffering is a big part of existence. C.S. Lewis wrote a book "The Problem of Pain" and tried to fit pain into God's scheme: consequence of sin, which is consequence of free will blah blah. More recently, Bart Ehrmann has written that the problem of pain led him to atheism. (Unlike the most contemporary author atheists, Ehrmann actually knows something about Scripture and faith; he did theological reflection on the way to atheism.)

The theologian Dorothy Soelle settles the question for me. She says we just cannot reconcile the existence of so much suffering with the idea of a loving God. If we try, we get a "theology of sadism" or a "theology of masochism." We don't understand "why," and the comforters talk crap, and all our piety--I don't know. I have theories, but I don't know!

One thing I know about God: if you have pain and see all the suffering, He wants you to tell Him all about it. The Psalms never accept pain as something you must put up with. Your sin can cause pain and confessing sin brings relief, but it doesn't follow that pain was a punishment or even a good thing! Sin causes suffering and death (you can look around and see sin bringing death into the world); but not all suffering is the result of sin (except for mysterious original sin, I guess, that is part of mortal humanity). Healing does exist. If you learn something from it? As St. Paul says, God can bring good out of evil, but he doesn't say pain is good. At best, Paul's "thorn in the flesh" kept him humble.

Most definitively, you never see Jesus telling someone to accept their blind, crippled, deaf, hungry, or discriminated-against lot. He heals the sick and feeds the hungry. In fact, pain relief is a sign of the messianic age!

In the world we shall have tribulation. God damn it and hopefully soon!

I'm Disappointed Too

2010-09-10T09:05:00.000-04:00

Obama has been weak and timid. His efforts at bi-partisanship have weakened him further. It's as if his finding out that being President is harder than it looks knocked the stuffing out of him.

He should point out Reagan tax cuts are what he wants to bring BACK--as the Bush rates for wealthy were much lower than Reagan's were. He should ask where are all the jobs that Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were supposed to allegedly create?

He should give a "for which of my good deeds do you stone me?" speech.

He should give a "what we hoped for" message and describe the obstructionism of the opposition.

He should give a "political climate change" speech about the dangers of escalating and rabble rousing and give some horrible examples.

He should say a lie travels around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes and specify some of the lies going around.

Simplify his message. Stop governing in prose.

No more working at home in pajamas, then...

2010-09-06T14:27:00.000-04:00

Guess from now on we'll have to get dressed up to work at our own computers!

Maybe it wasn't writer's block--

2010-08-31T10:57:00.000-04:00

Maybe it was my old computer.
Since I got the new one I've been playing on it all day.
Maybe one day I'll even start working on it!

The Dying Planet

2010-08-03T10:43:00.002-04:00

It's not just the climate. The oceans are fished out, and the songbirds are disappearing. Everything blears with man's smear and smells with man's smell (Hopkins).

I know, everybody else knows about this. It's hard to believe they know it and behave the way that they do.

But how should we behave? What should we do?

Global You're Not Going to Like It Change

2010-07-27T12:20:00.002-04:00

The onset of global warming is occurring sooner than we expected. Even if this really isn't "it," whenever "it" would be would look and feel pretty much like today. From the look and feel of current weather events, the phrase "global warming" obviously needs revision.

This summer has been horribly hot. A weather map I saw showed the entire United States in glaring red-orange. This is how the putatitve scenario begins. In Massachusetts it's been in the 100s; the temperature in the Pacific Northwest topped 100; the only hotter summer than this was some time back in the 1930s dust bowl.

Last winter was horribly cold! In Massachusetts the ice and record snowfall got dismissed as another hard winter. In North Carolina the ice and the record snowfall got dismissed as record-setting. Popular saying, "Where is global warming when you need it?"

The phrase Global Warming is just too tame! It sounds like an electric blanket, not like this personal experience of beastly heat and beastly cold, constant tornado warnings and increase in disastrous flooding. We're experiencing an onset of global "you're not going to like it" change. Or maybe it's the "global" that falls short; makes us think it's happening far away and mainly to polar bears. We should realize, "all climate change is local," to borrow from Tip O'Neill. Right in your own country and town you're personally suffering more and more every uncomfortable day the onset of catastrophe.

In the David Keys book, Catastrophe: Climate shapes history. Drought is followed by plague and plague is accompanied by violent power shifts. It actually got a bit boring after a while: drought-plague-war-drought-plague-war.
Our prevailing subconscious Western attitude, the leftover Protestant Ethic, that we are ever-improving and perfectable, shall succumb to awareness that we have no immunity from catastropic forces. And the onset will look and feel like today.

Staying Awake in the Snow

2010-06-19T11:02:00.006-04:00

Last night I dreamed a long now-forgotten dream about "a contest between gentleness and fighting." Samantha was in the dream, my high-achieving daughter. I wanted to sleep, to rest, and she kept saying, "Mom, fight! Mom, fight!"

On waking I remembered a long-ago warning that if you're caught in a blizzard you will be tempted to fall asleep but that this is fatal. And I finally realized the meaning of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night."

My enemy tells me it's too late. The seat of the chair is too hard. The enemy grabs onto anything. If discontent, flog her with it. If content, smother her in it and she'll never get up.

Creation demands pools of time, days of staring into space and brooding over chaos. You have to have confidence that your talent will rise up and bring you back into the fray. The fray, get it? Because I fray, I gray.

One's consciousness changes and before long you don't care any more. Last night I was remembering how Thomas Aquinas said everything he'd written was of no account. Wonder how old he was.

--Thomas underwent an intense personal experience on December 6, 1273, which caused him to cease writing forever... When his several admirers asked him why, he replied, "I cannot, for all that I have written seems like straw to me." Friar Thomas died March 7, 1274, aged 49.

(From "Two Cheers for Thomas Aquinas" by David Tracy, edited by Ted and Winnie Brock at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1608)

-- Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though the wise at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The good, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild ones who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

You grave, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (edited for misogyny)

Synchronizing

2010-06-18T12:05:00.002-04:00

The book group met Wednesday to discuss "Pompeii," and I learned Yellowstone has the world's largest volcano that is due to erupt anytime! By a phenomenon Dr. Jung used to call "synchronicity," I found a book on my shelf "Catastrophe" by David Keys, which details climate changes that what Keys calls "re-synchronizing" history. Yesterday I learned of climate changes (and plagues) in the 5th-6th centuries A.D. that left power vaccums for first Persians over Romans, then Avars and Slavs, then Turks and then Muslims.

It's appalling. First that everyone has to have an empire you know?

Secondly, that there's all this history I didn't know about. In school teacher said, "That was the dark ages when nothing happened. The church alone kept knowledge alive, the Irish saved civilization, etc." My history courses and reading never covered Yabghu, Ashina, Uighers, Ghaznavids, sacred caves, or coronations by tossing in a rug and near-strangulations.
Reading "Catastrophe," I even thought maybe this is all fiction; I've never learned it, it can't be real.

Thirdly, that apocalypse is actually possible. Any time history can re-synchronize. Of course, we take this on faith anyway, but as Jesus said, "Pray that it doesn't happen in winter."

Fourthly, re-synchronization is already going on in so many places.

Has the President read this book??

Why I Will Never Succeed

2010-06-08T10:04:00.002-04:00

In order to avoid my daily disciplines, I clicked onto my blog. Blogging is a good thing, right. So good-bye disciplines: prayers, writing, exercise, reading War and Peace. Sometimes I like to switch off and make the blog a discipline and War and Peace the way to avoid it.

That's one reason I will never be a success. Here's the other: When I clicked onto my blog somehow what got in front of me was a way to make money by linking to Amazon and recommending their products! Then I'm going, oh, I know I should call that woman who knows the young man who makes you a web page. While thinking this, superannuated self is reading the inducement to "monetize" my blog.

Of course all this thinking and blogging interferes w/ one's ability to concentrate, so that could be a third reason, but the conclusion is: I can't do it. Some enormous mountain of "can't" stands in the way of monetizing the blog. It translates into "don't want to."

Need to think: 1) what is self willing to do to succeed? and 2) how do you spell success? It is spelled n - o --m - o - r - e -- e-x-c-u-s-e-s.

Now ladies and gentlemen, fire up your chair and make your desk go vroom vroom.

Dubuquer's Pub

2010-05-24T22:44:00.000-04:00

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.

This Old Lady from Dubuque

2010-05-11T10:17:00.004-04:00

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.

The Sadness to Come

2010-04-22T14:34:00.002-04:00

Last night I watched "The News Hour," as I regularly tune in to liberal media establishment so I will know what to think. After learning about derivative swaps (we need transparency!) I watched the segment on a fighter plane that's causing Congress to get mad (we need accountability!)

Not to go into too much detail but Lockheed Martin has been working to develop one design fighter that can be modified three different ways--and as usual with multipurpose weapons, three different functions means it doesn't do any of them all that great. To Congress' surprise there have been delays and cost overruns.

But that's not the sad part. A Lockheed Martin spokesman stated in his interview that the investment in this fighter is worth it because in the long run we'll save. "Our children will be flying these into battle. Our grandchildren will be flying these into battle."

There will be battles; there will be wars; and children yet unborn will fly into them.

"When Writers Speak"

2010-04-15T10:50:00.002-04:00

This week I received a clipping from my sister here known as Lucy: "When Writers Speak" by Arthur Krystal, an essay in the NY times Book Review from last September 27th. "Why are wonderful writers sometimes such dull conversationalists? Blame it on the brain." Krystal claims that he himself just isn't as smart when he talks as he is when he writes. Apparently science proves different neurons in the brain get activated when we write.

"So the next time you hear a writer on the radio or catch him on the tube or watch him on the monitor or find yourself sitting next to him at dinner, remember he isn't the author of the books you admire; he's just someone visiting the world outside his study or office or wherever the hell he writes...."

So, one could conclude, as fictional characters don't exist outside the page, even the author herself does not. We may thrill to encounter another mind within the pages; but the authorial neurons activated for the project only. The question is, why does this idea disturb me so much?

It's kind of a multiple personality thing that makes me feel stupid when I think about it.

Margaret Atwood Disappoints

2010-02-26T13:40:00.006-05:00

Like many in town, I was excited to go hear Margaret Atwood. What a writer: I admired her most of all writers whose memoirs I have read. Her latest novel, Year of the Flood, I'd thought worthy of study--for the development of its future language (or lack thereof); for the theology of the God's Gardeners who are the meek of the future earth. And so I bought it in the bookstore right before the lecture, the better to get it signed afterwards: thrilled to part with my $29.17.

After hearing the author speak--a very short speech, it had the virtue of brevity I'll give it that--I felt disillusioned. Atwood tap-danced from her cute frizzy gray hair to her homely clay feet, giving little ego bits about her old school teachers and her own current fame and importance. She studied at McGill and then won a Woodrow Wilson scholarship to Harvard. Then later there was a Guggenheim, but all spoken in an offhand way as if it happened by accident. She made sure we knew about her greatness and then made sure we realized she wore it all lightly. I know, a genius doesn't want to show off; but the way she almost ridiculed her own talent made me feel I'd been a fool to value it to begin with!

The rest was standup routine: "Oh, we set off the sprinklers in the entire hotel," she laughed, when her agent lit a little (sneer) 'candle of gratitude.' "The English publishers at the party then hung out the window and cried to the firefighters, 'I love a man in uniform!'" (Tee-hee). She was recently inducted into the Harvard Lampoon; however her coterie of documentary-makers following her around (because she's just SOOO famous) had to wait outside (ha-ha!) . My impatience peaked when--in response to a serious question about whether technology has changed her relationship with her readers, Atwood retorted dismissively, "Oh, you never know who your readers are," and then segued into an obviously well-worn riff about her cell phone with whom she has "a relationship of mutual hostility. It deletes gmails maliciously" (Audience roars as she makes little thumbing motions).

Don't ask me why I feel this so keenly, but I do, both as a reader and also as a writer. I no longer wanted to own The Year of the Flood; I returned it to the bookstore and got my $29.17 back (Hah.) From a writer's perspective, I felt repulsed. Even in exchange for having Atwood's originality, industry, skill, and good luck, I would never ever ever ever want to be like that.

Older and Older

2010-02-04T10:45:00.005-05:00

It's all happening so fast. All the plans and intentions are getting jumbled up against this razing bulldozer of aging that will shovel them off a cliff. Just as I think I've adjusted to a new level, whump!

This week it is an attack of shingles, on my bottom. All Monday night I didn't sleep, feeling like somebody was applying a hot waffle iron to my butt. The phrase "indignities of age" flowered with revelation. The pain burned, stung, stabbed, and ached. Is this what it feels like to be branded? If I thought I could make this stop, would I rat somebody out? No, but if the torment got worse, I would give a false name.

But back to aging process. My friend Septuagenarian wants to co-author a book about it. Now I feel like that would be an exercise in futility. As the Teacher wrote in what's the name of that Scripture, oh yes, Ecclesiastes, "of the making of books there is no end." In today's newspaper, a conference speaker asked how many in the audience were writing books, and everyone raised their hand! All that energy went into getting on airplanes and getting the name tags and putting up the hands!

In olderness,I feel noticeably less likely to expend energy. But someday, Septuagenarian and I will collect our random musings. Even if futile, at least it's exercise.

Haiku

2010-01-26T12:13:00.000-05:00

Scrubbing venison
Juice from
Oven window:
Great circle of life.

No Musings

2010-01-18T13:03:00.002-05:00

Yes, I have no musings. Only sense impressions come in right now: Air smelling of new dirt, a dog crunching icy spickles of grass. She crouches and I think: a sculpture called "walking dog" would catch this stillness in granite: tented old woman tethered to bending terrier. Yes, there's still ice and there is much to worry about. Still, the grass under the ice spikes is green.

What if

2009-12-29T11:47:00.003-05:00

What if
All resolutions were off
Due to maximized
Potential?

What if
You're improved as much
As possible; likewise
Organized and filed and
Ditto weight, exercise, and
Fiscal condition?

What if
You're OK
Just as you are
Fifteen minutes a day?

Attention, Please

2009-12-23T14:00:00.004-05:00

I passed a man on the street,
One icy morning;
To be accurate he passed me,
Perfectly dressed
In glossy black shoes without a
Speck of dust.
Even his briefcase gleamed new
And also his vinyl laptop case
Strapped on him like a yuppie's

But man was old, with light gray curls; how odd
On this cold Day: no hat
To top crisp raincoat gloves and scarf.
He turned the corner and I saw it
On a closet shelf, thrown back
Because it had a spot on it.

Vacation

2009-12-04T20:08:00.002-05:00

When you check my blog next time(s) and you see no changes, it's because of vacation.
I will be beyond TV and Internet, sleeping in a bag in my own house in Happy Valley surrounded by the big family.
You can always go back and read some of the earlier blogs; consider them winter reruns!

The next new blog upon return in 8 days will be a sentimental old-faded-blue-jeans-on-the-hook and-the-snow-smelled-so-fresh and then-we-made a fire-and-roasted marshmallows rumination on the joys of not-doing. Why, I will ask, do we always need to do so much, why, I shall muse, can't we always live simply?

These questions will be asked from a well-heated space under a stout roof equipped w/ electricity and running water. Like Thoreau, one must still have clean laundry!

Love,
Pru

P.S. I plan to do a whole bunch of Christmas shopping while I'm there!

P.P.S. If this blog sounds familiar, check out June 23rd 2009.

The Book Signing

2009-11-30T11:37:00.002-05:00

Carrying the all-but-two unsold books out to my car from the bookstore, the manager helping me says all authors feel this way: "All you want to do is write a book and then you have to go out and be an author."

It wasn't so bad, not really; I don't know why I was so nervous the night before. All went smoothly as far as was within my control and that of the store. My dress and scarf looked spiffy, a lime-green jacket with red Christmas scarf. The store had everything ready: a table with a red cloth and stacks of my books with a big illustrasted sign. An announcements came on, "Come meet Pat Caplan Andrews and her Santa Book!" Several came to meet me, but only two people bought my book. Both of them were agreeable, slightly weird middle-aged ladies who probably took pity--because I was flogging pretty hard!

And even while questioning the waste of time, in a way I have to admit it was fun: getting my press release in the newspaper and having friends congratulate me. Even while feeling the futility of sitting there watching the too-few customers trailing through the bookstore--and even fewer likely readers for the book--even then, I compulsively made notes under the table for things to do next year.

Is this some kind of compulsion I should stop so I could spend more time actually being a social human being--or doing nothing for that matter? Is it a hobby that suits me well because it gives me a chance to agonize? Is it my wretched muse flogging me along?

I've always disliked writers who write about the pains of being an author--and now I are one!

Thanks-Giving

2009-11-25T10:21:00.006-05:00

Much as commentators deplore the commericalism of Christmas, to a person they love Thanksgiving. They/we welcome it as a secular sacred observance that we share with all Americans everywhere. Plus, I might add, the work for it generally falls on one woman per extended kinship group, and the rest get to bring a pie, or the hors d'oeuvres, or maybe some flowers. Compared to Christmas it's an easy holiday dedicated to something healthy: gratitude.

On Facebook several of us decided to post something to be thankful for every day. One friend said it got harder as she went along, but for me it got easier. My "cup overfloweth" with blessings to begin with; and I also discovered that each day produces new occasions for thanks-giving.

Yesterday, it was the "Trip to Bountiful," extreme rejoicing in the plenty of the supermarket. What pleasure to stroll through the variety of cheeses, potatoes, the chubby shoppers with overflowing shopping carts: all the feasting all around us. I came home laden with celebratory fruit, nuts, marshmallows, and canned pumpkin. My kitchen cupboards were already full; I could hardly cram in another package of flour, cereal, coffee, or dog biscuits. I'm almost embarrassed to say how lucky I am, and that was just yesterday.

Today I give thanks that having been that designated woman of paragraph one for many years, this Thanksgiving I just have to make a pie.

It's Here!

2009-11-20T19:04:00.003-05:00

If you haven't already done so, it's time to order "The Santa Book" at buybooksontheweb.com. Christmas is here and it doesn't go away. If you want those beautiful smiling faces around the delicious-smelling tree, if you want the precious memories and delightful family photographs, get cracking. If you buy my book, you will never have another worry about Christmas.

Not only will you be in perfect command and experience total serenity, all will praise you; without any effort on your part, you will also reach your ideal weight! That's "The Santa Book" at buybooksontheweb.com!

Sibling

2009-10-27T14:03:00.002-04:00

Across the waiting room next to a big black
coffin-shaped Coke machine
in a little alcove sits a family
whose severely palsied child has
flu. Behind them, a tract rack says
“Levine Children’s Hosptal”

The woman wearing a painter’s cap with a green bill
and a long drab pony tail
is called over to intake desk re: insurance.
She wheels the little guy maybe 8 years old
who, non-verbal, understands things
and is crosseyed and communicates through
grunts and moans.

Then returning to the alcove where the other
son or who knows daughter waits, maybe 10,
with blond straight hair to the ears, Mom
explains this insurance thing quietly
to the other child,
who nods.

Down for the Count

2009-10-20T11:16:00.003-04:00

I started to get a little success in the writing life and as a result got overwhelmed and quit.

What happened was that in the process of taking the next steps forward and making decisions I grew intolerably anxious. It was like that time on Jenny Craig when I reached my goal and felt so uncomfortable in my new successful body that I had to start gaining the lost pounds back. This fear, terror, whatever it is, usually just lurks beneath the surface but when I start to leave its clutches it rears up and roars. Clinically, Matina Horner named the anxiety "fear of success."

So I said, OK anxiety fear horror IquitIquitIquitIquit!! OK??

The monster stopped roaring but is still pacing around. Times like this I really miss Denny. You could say anything to him.

The Pinch is On

2009-09-26T10:28:00.003-04:00

For a while in this downturn I tried to publish a piece I wrote in 1980-something called "Getting Through the Winter." It was a witty, comic-panicky mock diary of plunging through unemployment. Our TV broke and our neighbor gave us their old one, we asked the kids to stop charging things at the drugstore, and so forth.

But now I can take notes from me and my friends at the dog park. A paralegal woman can't find a job for six months. The writer who owns a big lab named Norman (and wants to write the "Book of Norman") was waited on by the manager at Steak & Shake. She only went because she had a coupon by the way. It's happening all over again.

Let's see, how does it work. There comes a day when you just stop spending money. No new shoes, no clothes, no movies, no restaurants, and finally no cable TV. The man who came to remove the cable boxes was a management type; they must have downsized the young cable installers. I freak out when the toaster breaks, and as for getting a new printer--Goodwill here I come. I can't believe I once had the windows washed and the carpets cleaned and installed security lights in the backyard and had the walls painted. That was then. Now I spread out my gold class rings and charm bracelets and think, hmmmmn.

There's a select audience for words like these because people who don't know hear you as self-pitying. Well, I'm not, just factual. I know people have houses in foreclosure et cetera and that I'm fortunate to still have a gold bracelet. Blah blah blah. It's just that the pinch is on!

Plus, even in good times I'm always planning for the time world currency collapses and the day I trade my wedding ring for six eggs and the rejoicing this will cause back at the house.

Writing about Writing and Writing about Selling Writing

2009-09-22T10:42:00.002-04:00

Uh oh time to write can't put it off any longer guess what you've been on facebook checked mail read the Times looked at your money done the wash and nothing else remains.

We are so lucky so lucky to have something to write with. People used to dread the blank page the white screen but other people wish for this time and this blankness. You know Dame Julian who had the showings as she called them, Jesus telling her of his love and how all will be well. She wrote a short version and then much later in life had herself walled up in a cell (with meals served to her it is true). She took extreme measures to get to that blank page.

Because It's a bit hard when "angel in the house" c'est moi! Who is the one who gives rides and nurtures? Who takes the dog to the vet and knows we don't have cumin? A variation on an old theme of mine.

Meanwhile friend and reader, it is time when you don't want to write, to start promoting your other writing.

It's time to start thinking about Christmas. Buy my "Santa Book" at buybooksontheweb.com. Also available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I believe.

If there's anything I dread more than writing it's selling writing.

The Authentic Weirdness of those times.

2009-09-14T21:42:00.005-04:00

Do you ever watch the show "Mad Men"? It's about men in advertising in the late 60s I think, and the women who have to put up with them. Last night I saw an episode where a woman asked for equal pay and got brushed off. "My secretary can't respect me if I make only $71.00 a week more than she." "Get a cheaper secretary then." A woman has a baby boy while the husband drinks in the waiting room. At work the next day he gets chided for absence, "Your wife had the baby, not you!" No concept that his life is altered in any way.

How would Mad Men be viewed in 1969, if it could be made at all? What we did view that year was "How to Make a Woman," an experimental play in Cambridge. The wife has a baby and says to the husband, "It's a girl!" He cries, "Shit!" Soon afterwards I joined the local NOW chapter and the rest is, well, still has the power to shock.

But after the shocks and transitions, time goes on and you go on and the whole thing kind or blurs and you tell the story of the sex-segregated want-ads and the restaurants where women couldn't go (Locke-Ober's anyone?); but it gets a patina of nostalgia. Then watching "Mad Men" you see how strange that culture was, how artificial. How deadening how infuriating and how in retrospect so downright weird.

Health Care Reform: Trying to Think

2009-09-08T11:42:00.005-04:00

Remember those essays on the SAT exam that you had to read and then answer questions about? Well this is why:

http://www.brookings.edu/

I got the link from a very good David Brooks column on health care reform (that also talks about the Goldhill article I mentioned), and I read "Bending the Curve." It's easy to understand why many people would prefer to deal in slogans rather than information because the bureacratese combines with one's own imagination to make one feel strange-lovey.

The general ideas set out in "Bending the Curve" are
a) restructure reimbursements--especially in the public sector;
b) link outcomes to provider reimbursement;
c) some form of tort reform; and
d) somehow reward improvements in health by individual and *community* incentives.

On a) and b), couldn't some reforms be done through policy changes in Medicare and Medicaid? Do improvements in IT and reimbursement policies really require an act of Congress?

On b) and c), the proposals involve adding more committees and bureaucracy, boards and oversight. I have no idea how an Accountable Care Organization would work in the real Medicare system. And couldn't quite figure out what a "CMS" really is, never mind how to streamline and expand it at the same time.

On d) it seems I might get a refund if I lose weight. But what if I gain! Will national annual weigh-ins be mandated? Who will turn me in if I take up smoking? On the *community* incentives, will cameras in school record corn syrup intake?

Reader, you know I'm a liberal but I can see how the right wing gets set off by stuff like this.

Too Sane??

2009-09-02T10:59:00.003-04:00

What do the big columnists do when they can't think of anything to write about? They write about something they read the other day that is excellent:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care/

That is, "How American Health Care Killed My Father," by David Goldhill. Even if the above doesn't result in a usable link, take a minute to copy it into your browser because it's the sanest thing you'll read about health care.

Goldhill is a businessman, and his convincing analysis is a mind-opener. The fault, Horatio, is in the comprehensive health care model itself. If consumers paid for non-catastrophic medical care themselves, Goldhill convincingly demonstrates, American health care could come into balance. For example, Wal-Mart is already offering a month's prescription for generic drugs for $4.00 (which I'm glad to know!!). You can also find free or nearly free flu shots at a local pharmacy.

Goldhill proposes more creative approaches that would end up covering everyone for less money than today. A combination of specialized clinics, Health Savings, government subsidies, and capitalism could provide something both workable and American. Or, his analysis just might fall into the category of too sane to be taken seriously.

This Crazy World

2009-08-24T11:09:00.005-04:00

I spent a bit of time on YouTube this a.m. and came away alarmed. These violent people carrying guns and calling Obama a Nazi--what is it like to be them? What goes on inside their consciousness? Where did they go to school?

Old New Yorker cartoon: A man cutting his grass pauses in fear realizing "The world is insane!"
Two commenters on my last blog said this has always been so. There is strange comfort in that thought! When I was a young mom the whole thing was anti-fluoridation. It is the madness of crowds.

What is behind this madness? A strange spiritualist named Joel Goldsmith (a variant of Christian Science) wrote he attributes it to forces of mass hysteria that float around the stratosphere. St. Paul (an apostle of Jesus Christ) would attribute this evil craziness to "principalities and powers."

Of course once you start speaking like that, you are considered "out there" yourself.

Another thing the Apostle said is, "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8).

I'll try to hold onto that thought and stay away from YouTube which I found truly scary.

To Our Health

2009-08-19T10:22:00.002-04:00

I was working up to a blog on the loss of hope the death of dreams (with research) but can't hold back frustration at the opponents of health care reform. Can't say I follow the debate closely but why can't these nay sayers respond to a few questions.

Q: Do you like status quo.

A: (I presume) Yes.

Q: Do you like exploding costs.

A: (I presume) cut "waste"--such as the last Republican administration did???

Q: Are you OK with so many uninsured?

A: (I presume) Yes. Barbara Bush: "They're underprivileged anyway."

Q: Are you glad people lose coverage when they get sick or have been sick?

A: (I presume) Oh that's just socialist propaganda.

Q: What about businesses who can't compete internationally due to escalating h.c. costs?

A: (I can't even think of a presumed answer to that one.)

Q: So the best thing to do is nothing?

A: Glenn Beck (presumably with 47 mil uninsured and insurance getting away w/o paying for whatever they can get away with and health care costs way outrunning inflation and people losing h.c. when losing jobs and businesses needing to put more and more premiums on employees) "We have the best health care system in the world."

And in today's paper I read an attack on Obama because he hasn't become the post-partisan president he promised to be. Speaking of loss of hope and death of dreams!!!!

Has the world always been this crazy or is it getting worse or is it my imagination? To be continued....

The Medical Death Registry

2009-08-15T10:37:00.008-04:00

It was crowded in our old dusty car, the whole family and Grandma.
There it is there it is you passed it!
See, next to that vacuum cleaner store!!
Huge parking lot. Here, you can ride in this wheelbarrow G'ma!

Inside, we had to wait! For evah! A tacky trailer park behind the fairgrounds, who knew? Greenish-gray glare filters through dirty windows over long lines of standing people.

Who's standing behind those grills?
Bureaucrats of course. Democrat Nazis!!

Arrow to the right... plug pulling deferments..
plug pulling permission...

To the left... ration booklets for
antibiotics
x-ray
ER visits, maximum 2 per family

palsies
transplants
human condition

Do you have your triplicate? Dogs go in that line over there. Oh look at that cute little schnauzer!

Our Pets, Ourselves

2009-08-07T12:10:00.006-04:00

Today, I took Cassie up to the dog park where the owners relax on benches watching our pets run and play.

"I see Lila coming up the hill," said a white-haired woman who lives at the Conifers (retirement community).

"I thought she was taking India to Waggin' Wheels today!" stated the old man with glasses, who had just shared he had a colonoscopy yesterday.

"You know the dogs' schedules?" I asked.

An old man sprawled on the bench opposite drawled, "This is a TIGHT group!" Yep, he sprawled and drawled.

"India IS at Waggin' Wheels," Lila explained as she sat down w/ her coffee "but Mickey's going to my mom's." Mickey, her giant poodle, was seeking scratches from his owner before joining group dog play. He had a large patch on his side, obviously a growing-back after major surgery. Lila said she was sad because her cat had an ultrasound and has Feline Immune Disorder.

She also explained that Mickey and India were both welcome to stay at the mom's while Lila and husband went away. But India just loves Waggin' Wheels so much because they have a bone-shaped swimming pool! Lila had on a very short skirt and tight top and was young; but enthusiastically joined the colonoscopy talk--about pills, juice, and a ginger-ale flavored drink she hadn't liked.

After remarking she hadn't had a mammogram in five years, the white-haired woman told me about Tinker Bell, her mixed breed chihahua's, weight problem. The maid at the Conifers brings dog treats and Tink already had 3 treats today! Also the white-haired woman's husband keeps giving TB leftover ice cream. What was my secret for keeping Cassie so trim?

Uh well, she's only two, I said, and she gets dry Iam's and very limited treats. (And of course I don't have a maid or a husband.) I told her my last mammogram was 2 years ago but didn't share my colonoscopy history.

Several big dogs arrived then at once, and the play group became a thundering herd.

"Well, we're going now," I said, calling Cassie.

"Cassie can take care of herself!" the drawling man said.

"Yeah I know, but it isn't so much fun any more." I waved friendly good-bye to my fellow dogparents who all give our pets choice of our bed or theirs, delightful resort vacations, health and dental comparable to our own.

As Cassie and I trotted down the hill to the car, I thought of my young years on the farm with steers, pigs, chickens, dogs, and cats. I remembered the grownups at a barbecue tossing chicken bones to our black Great Dane Cindy, who happily crunched them up. The large pack of hunting dogs lived in a pen in the pasture, and the cats stayed in the barn subsisting on mice. Cats and dogs were animals back then.

Definition of Heaven

2009-08-02T09:39:00.004-04:00

The Kingdom of Heaven is like an elderly widow returning from a long journey and lying down on her very own bed.
As St. Paul remarked, When the perfect comes the imperfect shall pass away.

I slept well enough on a futon for the month in Happy Valley. After a few nights I no longer noticed the slats under the mattress. The weather was cool for July and the window could be opened onto the grassy nights, with the coyotes squealing in the distance. Grandson McGregor's breathing from his sleeping bag on the floor felt like a lullaby, and the house felt like home.

By day, the cousins squealed outside in a kiddie pool, or batted a wiffle ball around. There was a swing set, and there was yet another "last summer" celebrated at the homestead Den and I created for them. The vision of grandchildren playing in the big grassy yard with swings and croquet and a hammock--with the parents watching all from a lovely deck, yes that was heaven too, especially when you remembered the bug spray and sun block. In memory, it will shine.

But in the eternal now, the house was on the market. Showings, meetings, and tense conversations created a constant kerfluffle. There is a special level in hell, I'm sure, where your empty house sits unsold for all eternity, where prospective tenants and buyers try to chisel yet another last dime from you, and where a mean real estate broker looses tirades upon your head. Reader, the buyer's market is vicious, vicious, and that's all I'm going to say on the subject (for today).

Today, having traveled the gauntlet of puff machines, bomb warnings, prices of bag checking and taxi cabs doubling within a month's time (a lamb among wolves, that's me), today I have returned to my NC space to find it overstuffed with furniture and eerily quiet. It is also cool here, and there was a pizza in the freezer and TV and Internet, and whether or not it feels like home, it does contain my own bed.

That's got to be heaven enough for now.

Vacation

2009-06-29T07:43:00.002-04:00

Hello, Readers,

When you check my blog next time(s) and you see no changes, it's because of vacation.
I will be beyond TV and Internet, sleeping in a bag in my own house in Happy Valley surrounded by the big family.
You can always go back and read some of the earlier blogs; consider them summer reruns.

The next new blog upon return in August will be a sentimental old-faded-blue-jeans-on-the-hook and-the-pines-smelled-so-fresh and then-we-picked-blueberries-and-ate-them rumination on the joys of not-doing. Why, I will ask, do we always need to do so much, why, I shall muse, can't we always live simply?

These questions will be asked from an air-conditioned space under a stout roof equipped w/ electricity and running water. Like Thoreau, one must still have clean laundry!

Love,
Pru

Obviously

2009-06-23T09:34:00.004-04:00

Obviously when your mind shows up empty
Headachy
Yawning
Unwise; just stretching gawping and scratching

Obviously when you are here in flesh only
The inner screen burbles
With static it is time to
Write a poem.
Start at this desk
Where a black lamp bends, curious.
If today means sowing not reaping
But you must hand in,

Obviousy, go back:
Get chased again by a turkey gobbler at
Age two run for your life and
Into the laughter of grownups:
First of many learnings about the
Hypocrites who loved you;
Or ride away from dark Cambridge
stunned, in taxicab your boyfriend called,
To take you away because he was bored:
First of several learnings about
Men who didn't love you.

Obviously, you find those
Barbed and hurty things
More writable than a child's
Hand holding yours,
Or peace after receiving communion or
A little dog smiling over red rubber ball.
More present to pen than the ones
Who really do love you.

Why can't you write about bunny rabbits?
I asked that boyfriend once as
Violence spewed from his
Smith-Corona; and blood spurted from
Loud fiery crashes on his paper-strewn
Desk.
Obviously, he said,
Bunny rabbits aren't very dynamic.

Random Ramble Re Real Work

2009-06-19T21:48:00.006-04:00

I was reading a piece about this new "movement" of trying to get in touch with real work again and thought my friend Alice could write an excellent article about it, taking it either way. She and her husband George bought some land in Arkansas and now are living on it, with no hot water and plenty of cats and chickens and other birds. They are constantly in motion mowing, or harvesting their own food, or collecting eggs and selling them. I could see Alice writing a straight up essay about starting out in your 60s and 70s to farm--or more likely a fairly hilarious sendup, popping the neo-meaningful work balloon.

The piece about the real work movement is in the latest New Yorker, bouncing off an article in the Times Magazine by a Matthew Crawford, who repairs motorcycles and thinks everyone would be better off doing some such "real work" too. Used to be, a mechanic like Crawford might say writing is his real work; but nowadays he can get more published by saying he's really a mechanic!

I certainly agree that more people need to go into the trades; but I personally would prefer to work in a cubicle, because I can't lift anything heavier than the phone and a piece of paper. I did plenty of unreal temp work back when we needed money: One time in a police academy, several stints as a legal assistant, lots of typing and filing. At worst it was at least air conditioned and at lunch I could trot over to a little fridge in a lunch room to get my yogurt. Lunch was my favorite part.

And also getting to go home after eight hours. If real work were all that was available to make money I would not survive. I don't even have the physical capacity to cut my own grass or do more than pull up a weed or two in the front. But then I wonder if doing what you have to to take care of house and family is real. Because Mr. Crawford sounded like a real chauvinist in his motorcycle shop.

Endless Summer with McGregor

2009-06-15T12:57:00.012-04:00

Yesterday, I picked McGregor up at camp and when we got to my house we played Jeopardy for a while.

My questions for him, which he knew:

--This buzzer serves a queen (What is a bee?)
--She's big and she hibernates (What is a bear?)
--This ruler liked to build ships himself (Who is Peter the Great?)

His to me, which I didn't:

--This belt of asteroids is behind Pluto (What is the Kuiper Belt?)
--This is the temperature of our Sun (What is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit?)
--From this planet's atmosphere you can make batteries (What is a model consistent with data involving SO2 being oxidized to H2SO4 by NOx in the presence of H2O? ... Venus.) :-)

After Jeopardy, we played an endless game of war, then a long game of Go Fish, and then I taught him to play gin rummy. Important life skill, after astronomy. Right before McGregor's mom came to get him, we enjoyed a couple of TV innings between light-blue UNC and some orange-clad unknown college. The whole afternoon reminded me of being a kid again, on Countryside Lane in the suburbs: fooling around with friends playing Tripoli or Canasta; fixing lemonade and spilling it into the tape recorder; and just generally whiling away leisure time. It's a great way to be.

Lies Have the Advantage, It's True

2009-06-12T11:00:00.004-04:00

When did the Republicans grow so hateful? Did it begin with Joe McCarthy back in the 50s? Before him came Richard Nixon and his smear campaign in California against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950, calling her "The Pink Lady" and "pink right down to her underwear."

When Nixon got nominated for president in 1968 he chose Agnew of all people for VP, to go with the Republican "Southern
Strategy" (i.e., racism), and appeal to the "silent majority." As President, Nixon dressed the White House guards in splashy banana-republic looking uniforms, and he compiled "enemies' lists" of people to attack with government power. His fall from power was just.

Ronald Reagan introduced the age of illusion and deficit spending, separating us from reality while engaging in Iran-Contra trading arms for hostages with a big sunny smile. Then H.W. Bush, who, everyone seems to think, was the perfect gentleman, ran the dirtiest campaign I can remember against Michael Dukakis and I think that's when the right wing really got its grip. H.W. allowed Lee Atwater to run those Willie Horton revolving-door and Kitty Dukakis flag-burning ads. Lo, the smears worked!! Democrat Bill Clinton devised Rapid Response teams, and he won in '92 due to Ross Perot and a weak economy; but then the Republicans came sailing back with Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America. (Even so, Clinton reversed the Reagan deficits and delivered a surplus.)

The vitriol and lies against the Clintons turned out to be so much fun that the hate-filled self-righteous right wing got addicted to it. They also discovered the power of the party line, literally. You can tune in to news interviews and talk shows and hear the same Orwellian stuff from all Republican speakers: "death tax" e.g. "Fuzzy math."

You know the old saying, "A lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." The lie is highly organized, unprincipled, unhobbled by facts or even decency.

Now, I'm not saying the left didn't go to town on W. Bush; but not by lying. After all he DID steal the election and preside over 9/11 (which now somehow Cheney is using in the right's favor. "No attacks since 9/11"? Hello? Whose watch did that happen on??) W. DID use false intelligence to start a stupid stupid war which probably had Oedipal underpinnings. In my opinion, some kind of contact with reality keeps us Democrats grounded--many would say in weakness!

Which leaves a disadvantage against Republican Party constantly playing offense, and loose with the truth. In 2008 sanity did achieve victory over a scary sold-out old man and his terrifying demagogic VP choice. But now, after a week or so of introspection ("Should we change? Nah!"), Republicans delight to stir up racist anti-Muslim lies against the President. Nor have they abandoned their low-taxes free-market ideology despite evidence supplied by real-world consequences. True, the opposition got out a little ahead of the ball when they announced they were terribly against WHOMEVER Obama would pick for the Supreme Court; then proceeded to prove it with zeal against Judge Sotomayor. Perhaps we can get hopeful that Gingrich et al. had to back down a bit. Geez, he's starting to look like the reasonable one, which is frightening in itself.

And all along the right-wingers skillfully co-opt the media. Run a Willie Horton ad and get free coverage by news shows running it over and over again. Ditto swift boats. Then: they bought their own channel, Fox News! But even the supposedly non-partisan journalists give credence to the lies. The Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out years ago that if the Republicans came out and said the earth was flat, the headline would be "Shape of Earth: Views Differ!"

May we see the fast traveling lies bounding over the edge of it, then.

Nostalgia

2009-06-09T10:14:00.004-04:00

One had only to turn a tap,
they say,
And clean water came pouring out
You could choose hot or cold,
No need to haul.
As for personal waste,
No need to bury or walk away from it.
One just flushed with yet more gushing water;
And huge snorting monsters
Toured the village to
Benignly accept one's trash on certain mornings.
I heard their maws disgorged out to sea, and
Fueled barges toured the oceans
Loaded with used napkins and
Old food (there was too much to eat!) and
Plastic I think they called it,

That refuse had come out from
Their large dwellings clustered along paved
Stretches; and nestled close to these
Buildings sat heavy metal carriage fleets
To carry one anywhere day or night.

Those nights bright with miraculous lamps
(no mystery or silence;
They say you couldn't even see the stars).

Think About Writing

2009-06-05T10:20:00.010-04:00

I think about writing more than I write. Today walking Sassy in the pouring rain, like a bucket on your head, I mused, Why not get some special writer clothes? Those cute little sweat suits that they sell at Coldwater Creek? I picture myself in one of the soft light brown outfits, hunching over keyboard, lucid limpid insightful prose pouring forth. One of my memoir teachers--the kind that goes to bread loaf or sugar loaf or wherever they go--had a son who wears special writing socks. Yow. I have a vision of bright striped ones; let's get some of those!

In fact, my writing clothes tend to be whatever I can fit into--e.g., pajama bottoms and a tattered sweater.

Then I think, I really should organize my space. Pat Schneider (see list below) has special objects she spreads around her desk: lovely rocks and candles and things. I look around my own office and see piles of what Denny used to complain of, my "papers": plus, instruction books, jelly jar labels, messy messy manuscript, and a number of Bibles, Hebrew dictionaries, bulging files with names like "Queries and Bios," "Writer Guidelines," "Futility of Existence"; you get the idea.

I love to read about writing, too:
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
On Writer's Block by Victoria Nelson
Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider
The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick
and many more... works by Tillie Olsen, Brenda Uehlen, Rita Mae Brown, Sara Paretsky, Margaret Atwood, Joanna Trollope...
They're all good!

And the How-To's:
Freelance Writing: Breaking In Without Selling Out by Marcia Yudkin
Write the Perfect Book Proposal, Jeff Herman and Deborah Levine Herman
Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write by Elizabeth Lyon
Writer's Market, Writer's Handbook, Writer's Magazine

The how-to list reminds me of Denny's narrator Lionel Goldfish, purveyor of success books:

"Be a Selling Sensation"
"How to Make a Million by 40"
"How to Move Ahead Fast in Your Office"
"How to Make a Million by 50"

This fictional codger confesses in the intro to "How To Beat the System" (by Denison Andrews, Permanent Press, LI, NY, 1987)
"After the gold has been removed, I sold the public a tour of the empty mine for $8.95." Writers, beware!

My daughter Winifred quoted me a line from T.S. Eliot when someone remarked "Most editors are failed writers." Eliot responded, "Well, so are most writers!"

I don't think changing my clothes or fixing up "a room of my own" will help progress--they will become more procrastination tools. There are other far scarier things I need to change. Stay tuned.

KBO

2009-06-02T09:46:00.002-04:00

Sunday night I watched "Into the Storm," an HBO program about Winston Churchill and his wife. It's a WWII story, framed by a postwar vacation in France where they wait for election results (he lost). It was enormously fun to watch if a bit selective.

The idea was a more personal look at Winston and his wife, Clemmie, and it was gorgeous in the way of Merchant Ivory productions. Buckingham Palace! Inside the White House! Clemmie, played by the divine Janet McTeer, is written as the woman behind the savior of England. "Winston, stop behaving badly," she would say. "Respect the servants, you depend on them!" "You can't give up, you were born for this," she exhorted her moody, visionary, very aware of his great-man status, husband.

And I loved hearing the famous speeches roll forth, the beauty of his rhetoric shown rehearsed and re-written as Churchill walked around his grounds or worked at his desk. In the car coming home from an airfield, he's muttering, "Never so many... to so few..." And the accomplishment of Dunkirk I had not fully appreciated before, where every fishing vessel and pleasure yacht in England was pressed into service to evacuate the entire British army, "the wounded last," as Churchill chillingly ordered. The show made me want to revisit Churchill's memoirs.

But "Into the Storm" counts chiefly as an entertainment for those who already know the history of WWII. It's fun, for example, to see the prime minister running around in the coveralls he liked to wear. But you could be misled if you watch it to learn history: Not a mention of Lend Lease, or of FDR's problems with isolationism in the US; or of the Nazi concentration camps; or of the Battle of Midway that saved the war in the Pacific. No mention of Northern Africa! The conference at Tehran is given a long look; however I thought time wasted on long family dinner scenes could have been used to provide better perspective.

I would recommend the movie, though. My favorite scene was Winston offering his resignation to the king after the fall of Singapore. "No, Winston, keep bumbling on," the king responds. Raising their glasses, they both say, "KBO!" I think that's going to become a saying of my own.

The Whisper

2009-05-29T11:14:00.003-04:00

(With thanks to Mary Oliver)

It's today and finally
I begin
though inside and
out I hear
the usual voices shout
"I Need!" "You Must!"
and my legs are shaking,
lassoed by threads
of very good duties.

As the poet says:

"It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones."

These other calls
come from ahead
reach back to lift me if I like
as I trip and stumble over
rubble and tear away
at tiny twines
fall down make a mess
and hear finally

The whisper of my own shaky voice:

"I need!"
"I must!"

Chess Projections

2009-05-25T16:47:00.004-04:00

McGregor loves chess. At the prospect of playing, he jumps around and pumps the air like a boxer getting ready for a match.
Of course I usually lose to him, 9 times out of 10. It's a mystery to me how McGregor sets things up: no matter what I go to do, all his pieces are so backed up. He's been thinking according to a plan, whereas all I can ever think to do is attack.

About 4 p.m. McGregor said, "Let's order a pizza," so we did. When you're old and your IRA might die, why not live for the moment.

Later I played chess against myself; there's a program on my computer that lets one do that. I'll make a move as white, and then the board turns around, and I need to move as black. How instructive. Whether I'm white or black, the opposing side seems in so much better shape. Whether I'm black or white, the other player is so much better than me!! Of course I always fought to a stalemate. Just goes to show after all: you can't win.

There must be some wisdom lurking in that experience, but perhaps not.

Random Musings

2009-05-21T10:16:00.004-04:00

The writing biz is just awful.

My friend drove us to a gigantic bookstore full of volumes such as "the history of poop" and "365 nights of sex," and we were going to hear how our worthy projects could join these on the shelves. And once again received unwelcome news that it's all hustle hustle hustle.

But first: four poets read their award-winning compositions. The poems were mediocre, which I suppose was the only bright spot in the evening. They won awards for writing worse than me.

That's the whole point, though, innit? Effort trumps ability. These poets hustled and found some contest and wrote into it. So on to the panel of poetry journal editor, author, and editorial consultant. It reminded me of Donald Barthelme's remark that St. Anthony went into the desert to find the answer. "Alas! It was the same old answer!"

I.e., writing now is really selling, and you have to have the "platform." You need the web site, the list of 5,000 to 10,000, you need a bunch of subscribers to your blog. Subscribers???

But you can't publish something you've already put out there on your blog. OK. And your blog, explained the author promoting his book about sports something told me my blog can't just be "random musings."

"You've been reading it!" I told him. I didn't like the uncomfortable chair, the megastore atmosphere, and the bad news I heard for not the first time. But I accepted it, because this is what you have to do if you want to somewhere somehow locate an audience.

P.S. If two or four of you read random musings, could you please send a link to all your friends. Thanks

Retired Again

2009-05-18T15:23:00.003-04:00

It's happened before in other places: my job as Children's Ministries Coordinator got de-funded; so today marks the first day of my third time retiring.

Since my job doesn't exist, I will no longer be doing it. As I was making my good-byes, many people at church wrote kind notes, said gracious things. The teachers even threw me a little surprise party on my last day.

But only one person, one of the dads, a newcomer who was wearing jeans and a work shirt to church--well, he was the only individual among hundreds who murmured to me, "Are you going to be all right, financially?"

I felt touched and said, "Well, I don't know. I'm calling it 'retirement' and will see how it goes."

The third retirement is starting out a bit differently. In earlier ones, there was a feeling that whatever I had done in the world of work and ministry went poof. This time it doesn't matter so much. When I used to feel, along with my dear departed Den retirement as "the interval between work and death." it doesn't seem that so much this time. By the third time retirement is not such a novelty. This time, I have plans.

This interval means more time to write and pursue writing. So far, I've been very successful. If you want me to blog about what I accomplish, though, you must post a comment and ask. I don't want to bore my two or four readers!!!

How to be Happy

2009-05-14T14:16:00.002-04:00

The Grant Study, a longitudinal survey following Harvard men from college to death, began in the mid-thirties. I just finished reading an article about it in the Atlantic. The study is acquiring data on what makes people healthy, happy, and live long, which seems to be a working definition of happiness.

George Vaillant, the study's author, or producer, names several elements to produce happiness: exercise, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, education, stable marriage, and normal weight. Well, we do what we can. Another factor is the use of "mature defenses," altruism and sublimation, comparmentalizing (displacement), intellecutalization; rather than projection et cetera with which neurotics are so familiar.

Dr. Vaillant believes in data collection but also the power of narrative and his students are told to be ready for "obscure literary references" such as Anna Karenina, the Doll's House, and Death of a Salesman. Oh dear (that these are obscure, I mean). He says the material of these men's lives is worthy of a Russian novelist.

I would love to hear Tolstoy on the subject of altruism as a defense, but never mind. I am familiar w/ Dr. Vaillant's work after working in addictions therapy for many years. He is a seminal thinker, and I appreciate his work so much. (I also knew his first wife Nancy, in whose living room the Boston chapter of NOW was begun--collateral benefit from their divorce?) But the main thing I'm mulling is something else. Perhaps it's not fair to ask, having not read the giant study, but why is happiness and health held out as the summum bonum. Is there something more meaningful than one's own personal happiness? Is there a higher desideratum to pursue than even health? (To me, of course, that would be Jesus, saving one's soul, serving the world et cetera)

Well I'm sure the scientists would say yes, that religious faith is very good for health and happiness! (Oh good grief!) And I'm forgetting that the study is entitled to have a topic of what factors contribute to health and longevity; it doesn't claim to offer the answer to the riddle of existence. But there's just something so AMERICAN about the approach.

There, having sublimated for a while, think I'll go overeat for a bit. Have a good day.

Underground Man

2009-05-09T22:38:00.005-04:00

Just finished Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, and I was blown away. If you haven't read it I think you might love it.
The protagonist, a spiteful antihero, hates himself and everyone else and spends much time explaining that is human nature, contrary to what so-called rational men believe. Being rational somehow takes away his individuality; the only freedom is to misbehave, in his mind. And what a mind it is; it is reminding me of Shouts and Murmurs much of the time. The agitated self-centered one is ludicrous.

U.M. is so paranoid that he makes a weeks-long project of passing a certain person in the street who doesn't notice him. The antihero spruces up his wardrobe, even sells his racoon coat collar and has a beaver collar sewn on because he can't push past the certain person wearing a raccoon collar. I won't reveal the outcome of that little business. Underground man tries to challenge people to a duel because he takes such affront; but no one takes him seriously enough to duel with him. He is even an antihero to his valet; everyone has more dignity than he, even a prostitute, and this is his shame-y hell. At the end what will happen with the prostitute, whom he halfway wanted to save? Will she come to the house? He dreads it, he wants it, he agonizes. When she comes: more suspense, as you don't know if he will kill her or marry her. You have to read it that's all: U.M.'s wit and spite are irresisitible. Plus, it is brilliant philosophical denunciation of Reason as a hope for a sane society.

This is who we are without God: trapped in total banal depravity. Yet this person should he turn to God and devote himself to prayer, will be among the "last" who will come "first." He is the sinner Jesus came to save.

The man of Reason, the well-ordered, fitting-in man, the cheerful virtuous successful man, has no need of God. His prosperity, his intelligence, his goodness stand as barriers to his recognition of the U.M. in his own soul.

It's What I Do

2009-04-12T11:16:00.003-04:00

This welcome happy morning finds me on the East lawn of the church tossing plastic eggs stuffed with a candy and a Bible verse. The risen sun glints and gleams from their shiny shapes.
"Are you the Easter Bunny?" a passerby cries out.
In my secret identity, I assure her.
Then I rest a bit on the garden wall, thinking of the angel at the empty tomb,
enjoying the breeze and sunshine of the first day of the week.
This is what I do.
Unseen presence
Sows faith in the Vineyard.
From the work of the people,
A joyous trumpet flows.

Oh that Y Chromosome

2009-03-19T12:21:00.002-04:00

Last week I was tasked with driving MacGregor to a birthday party. His mom, my daughter, e-mailed that the party place was somewhere near Blockbuster and I could get directions by going to the "Monkey Joe" website.
Well I didn't bother with the website; I thought MacGregor would have been to Monkey Joe's before but he hadn't.
No worries, I said, "We'll just go to Blockbuster and ask."
"NO!" cried MacGregor, masculine in the car.

Coming Into Style

2009-02-26T08:45:00.002-05:00

Recession recession recession. Now it's on the style pages in "Does This Recession Make Me Look Dumpy?"
I hope the link below works but it probably won't.

http://people.boston.com/articles/?p=articlecomments&activityId=8887924132321443756&ord=desc

To summarize then: women are stopping expensive hair treatments and buying clothes at sales. Clerks in the mall shops think the passersby look a fright.

My comment: As the identified dowdy person in my family, who has been scrimping for 30+ years, I am used to coming in and out of style. I.e., my clothes are always the same and sometimes come into fashion such as wearing hats to cover the undyed hair. I smile (wistfully to be sure) to think my eight-dollar haircuts will soon be the mode.

My brain is full

2009-02-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

of
Places that no longer
Exist, and advice that
Goes in and out of fashion, e.g.,
The house I grew up in and keeping your feet
Warm so as not to catch cold.
I can’t help it,
I look in my brain and that’s what’s
Going on.

Talking About It

2009-02-19T12:14:00.001-05:00

Everywhere I am I hear people talking about the bad economy.
A volunteer at the office computer checks the stock market, yelps, "I just lost three hundred thousand dollars!"
Another visitor describes his financial history, beginning when he took his pension in one big payout, got very rich, enjoyed travel and giving big gifts, and now has lost more than half, and he's old.
My (pregnant) hairdresser's husband lost his job, and she has no health insurance.
I don't have to watch the news anymore; it's happening before my eyes.

Occasionally for no reason I get the benefit of a disquisition, as when a colleague informed me at length that it all started with Barney Frank doing something with Fannie and Freddie. To me, it was the greedy Republican deregulators.
The man I hired to paint my house went on even longer, while I sat on the staircase listening. The painter blamed on Bill Clinton wanting to make "a nation of homeowners."
"But that was George Bush!" I said. No matter, the actually genial gentleman explained to me the subprime market, the housing bust after banks took on too much risk, the cascading effect around the globe.
"But we're going to be fine," he assured me, "because we're the greatest country in the world."
I refrained from pointing out that Ancient Rome had been the greatest country in its day.

These conversations go far beyond a relative confiding they're "upside down on their house," back when talking about money outside the family was considered gauche; back when falling house values happened only in Texas.
Now, we live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse goes (wishing that you will).
And everyone wants to talk. I'm wondering if we're engaged in some mass psychotherapy with each other.

I mostly listen because I'm doing OK today. Maybe the people doing OK just aren't talking.

Oh Dear

2009-02-09T12:22:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately Obama isn't doing very well.

Of course there's no way he could have measured up to expectations he walk on water; but he could have fed the five thousand if he'd maybe just stuck with the Democrats.

Now he is taken and held hostage by what Paul Krugman calls "the destructive centrists." AAAGGH! Paul Krugman, you may have noticed, is always right.

I have read that one of the reasons Obama left the Senate was how slow and frustrating it was. I think perhaps he overestimated the power of a president.

No I don't really think that. I think he overestimated his vaunted appeal to both parties. Now he is stuck with 3 Republicans in his very cabinet and a really really lame stimulus proposal. And I don't even think or maybe should say don't have confidence his economists are barking up the right tree. Ever since I saw Lawrence Summers on a Sunday a.m. show saying SAME SAME MORE OF THE SAME. Not that I know what to do either!

Plus the press has stopped flattering Obama. Today's AP photo of him and Michelle getting back from Camp David makes them both look so clayfooted.

The predictors say deflationary spiral... which is what has already happened in real estate which crisis supposedly set off the current recession. People will be afraid to spend money for fear prices will drop more.

I think about the economy a lot, for all the good it does. And pray for the president, who's already getting blamed for everything.

A Miracle Happened Here

2009-01-19T21:39:00.003-05:00

Yesterday in my church in North Carolina, the communion hymn was "We Shall Overcome,"
and atmosphere of gladness suffused the mostly white congregation.
Will it be like this at the end of time, when hell vanishes,
when all look upon him whom they pierced?
Will even God's detractors rejoice?
Whatever happens next, we are witness to a miracle in this moment, in Washington D.C.
on Martin Luther King Day
an outbreak of glory.

Getting Through

2009-01-17T10:55:00.003-05:00

If you ran a poll--or made one up--what percentage of time do people spend just getting through stuff.
Someone totalled the hours for waiting in line, commuting to work, searching for lost spectacles;
How many of you/us feel like Sisyphus, pushing tasks uphill
License the dog hang the curtain rods wash the kitchen floor
Write your Christmas cards in January and
Straighten out that insurance thing;
Not to mention your real job with deadlines and dread, this
Job that you love and are lucky to have.
Yes, we're so lucky lucky lucky.
Camus imagines Sisyphus happy
Happy to have just the one rock I suppose.
To have consciousness and muscle. Does he get to
Go home and have a beer, turn on the telly at the end of the day,
Say his prayers and love his friends,
These things get us through.

Reconciliation

2008-12-31T09:38:00.007-05:00

In two ought ought nine should I
Join the Y
Organize my office
Get manicures
Be kind and good
Learn computer skills
Attend concerts
Tithe more often
Keep up the files and
Drop all bad habits
Complete a writing project
Buy new clothes and
Grow vegetables
Sweep the garage
Mend and iron
Finally hang those curtains and
Buy a decent wardrobe;
Or, should I
Watch more TV
Enjoy more sweets
Doze more often
In my chair
Read best sellers
Pet the dog
Watch Looney Toons
Dispute overcharges
Indulge in sarcasm, self-pity,
and
Worry about the wretched of the earth
Write little fragments to mulch
Into old diaries and newsclips
archives and recent pics
all swirling to
Joyce-ian mix
Then fall out of touch
With so much
Pray always and
Laugh at the future?
Well I say, Why
Not do it all, I say, Let
The wild rumpus commence.

The Thing with Feathers

2008-12-11T10:41:00.004-05:00

After all the primaries, after all the general campaigning, after the thrill of Obam-election, I have finally begun to read "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama's book about policy and politicians. Oh my, is it ever good.

Of course it was published an aeon ago--2006--but foresees our recessional woes. Obama had timely economic concerns, even then, and everything he writes is like a dream come true. It's like oneself thinking on a stimulant, i.e., clear, perfectly logical, wonderfully expressed. How we like to think we think.

Obama's dialectical approach ("keeping in mind that..." "on the other hand....") and self-deprecatory anecdotes make him a great conversationalist in print. Case in point: when taking advantage of the congressional prerogative of flying on a private jet, "He [the flight attendant] asked if I was comfortable. I was." Then later he decides he really should fly commercial. "A kid spilled orange juice on my shoes." But on the commercial flight he talks w/ a constituent about his health care problems, which remind him of his purpose and calling.

Oh, I just hope Obama can manage to lead us aright.

My fear is that ingrained greed culture, the media, and Republicans will start taking hope apart, plucking feather after feather until the whole thing can't even fly any more. The other day CNN showed the CEO of Merrill Lynch trying to give himself a ten million dollar bonus. Then we heard about the Governor of Illinois trying to sell Obama's seat. This a.m., right-winger Bill Bennett showed he turned in his pickaxe for a filleting device, "Oh, I hope this won't hurt his presidency; oh he's my president too..."

Whatever happens, in reading "The Audacity..." I realize that at this time in this day Obama is our best hope.

*************************

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
-- Emily Dickinson

P.S.

2008-11-06T10:01:00.001-05:00

Well I guess I didn't figure out how to make a link, but type in Michael's blog address anyway.
Your neighborhood technophobe,
Pru

Joy in our Cause

2008-11-06T09:57:00.002-05:00

Hi,
I think I figured out how to post a link into my blog. Here is an entry from my friend Michael (and his blog is well worth following):

http://jmichaelpovey-retiredpoveinsarasota.blogspot.com/

As I commented to him:

Dancing in our Streets
Pride in our electorate
Tears of relief
Along with a "spent" feeling that the work
ahead is hard and relentless.
I pray for Obama every day: Lord, keep him safe!

Hope hope hope hope!

Dethpicable!!!!

2008-10-25T12:34:00.002-04:00

The presidential campaign is soOOOO ugly, the latest nastiness being: suggestions that those who support Obama aren't "real Americans." It's happening on TV--and right in my front yard.

I live in a battleground state, North Carolina, and politics is local here in a rash of Obama yard sign thefts. I walked out this morning and where my sign stood, a skeleton of a metal frame. All up and down the street: McCain signs intact, Obama signs vandalized or disappeared.
The policeman I called said this has been going on up and down nearby neighborhoods; one witness near me saw a "group of early-20s youths in a white SUV." They screamed obscenities at her 9-year-old son. The white SUV was also spotted out on Concord Rd., which leads from here into town.
Where will this lead at Halloween? Four years ago, Kerry supporters were cursed on that holiday.

Real Americans know about the first amendment (and as my son-in-law, whose sign also got lifted, commented "and the SECOND"!) He just became a citizen October 3rd, was sworn in in Greensboro and registered to vote. A couple weeks later he got a letter saying he's not eligible because of a problem with his documents. I don't know what he's done about his voter registration, but Lester showed me his new homemade yard sign: "You can steal as my signs, but you're done stealing elections!" I only hope he's right.

This would all seem like high-jinks if it weren't for the context of jingoism, voter fraud, and stirring the potential for violence.

Haven't Posted Much

2008-10-07T23:34:00.002-04:00

I haven't posted much lately--for one thing, I've been posting over on Obama's blog a bit. For another, is obsessing about the economy and about politics that bloggable any more?
I watch all the political debates, including tonight. Beyond what was so carefully said, only two observations:
1) viscerally, it was much the old 20th-century bear who still has a half a dance left in him versus the new young champion.
2) I caught Bill Bennett (you know, former Education Secretary neo-con Gingrichian infuriating right-winger) on CNN, saying, McCain "did fine but he didn't do fine enough."

For another thing, sometimes it's a long time between clever wise drollness.

Love to all.

Bizarre Glimpse of McCain

2008-09-23T13:18:00.003-04:00

John McCain was speaking to supporters--I glimpsed before changing the channel--and a woman in his audience cried out,
"Why aren't the media in Chicago going after Ayers [a former terrorist, friend of Obama's]? Why do they have to go after LITTLE CHILDREN AND THEIR PREGNANCIES????"

As everyone clapped and applauded, I caught a look in the eyes of John McCain, such as: What have I wrought? I think he was realizing he should have charged more for his soul.

Stormy Times

2008-09-17T08:15:00.005-04:00

I'm so preoccupied with the election and the economy that I barely noticed when the doctor who invented statins and another-- who had an amazing ability to imagine himself as a microbe-- received big awards. I hardly care that someone replicated the big bang and others worried about creating black holes. I'm paying attention to the financial meltdowns, as big brokerage houses and insurance companies topple into bankruptcy, threatening a rippling financial collapse.

There may be no solutions. Cascading bank failures may be an economic hurricane Ike, where you can see it coming but can't deflect it and can only pick up the pieces. But unlike with a hurricane, you can't chart that the problem will dissipate. The scariest thing is that money can just go poof.

But now everyone thinks this hurricane could have been prevented with better regulation. Even the deregulators are denouncing deregulation. McCain spent most of the 90s working for deregulation to produce more growth and infinite prosperity. Now he who doesn't understand economics (get real, who does?) is going to reform it all or as his running mate says, give it a complete overhaul--through 9/11 hearings!

Obama says "We know what went wrong" and need to get busy fixing it. That will be great if he can stabilize the housing market, which all experts say needs to happen before markets can stabilize. I'll tell you a secret about the housing market: It's largely a demographic phenomenon.

I'm sure measures can and will be taken. Perhaps greed will briefly go out of style. But what puzzles me is the basic question, Why why why are people--especially politicians--surprised when the economy contracts? One economic fact we know is that capitalism is subject to business cycles and things can't just go up up up all the time. This has been known since Joseph told Pharoah to put something away for the seven lean years.

Why do Republican administrations run up debt and deficits in times of prosperity so we're even worse off in stormy times? Oh well, just batten down your personal hatches, my friends.

Mom Saves the World

2008-09-04T10:47:00.002-04:00

We've woken up in the middle of a movie, with an attractive star resembling Mariska Hagerty except cuter!

First act: In the middle of cooking mooseburger breakfast and general family swirlaround (including chaste loving kiss from Rock Hunter husband), phone rings. It's Candidate Oldenpoohead, looking for a running mate. Mom will be V.P.! Yay! No school today!

Second act: Mom overcomes wicked reporters including old enemy who has been stalking her since PTA days. He is thwarted on CNN when Mom makes glorious oration at convention. Colorful campaign montages show campaign stumping where all American women adopting neo-Schlafly hairdos. And then--at Inauguration Ball-- Oldenpoohead has chest pains and dies! Mom takes oath of office with demurely downcast expression while Rock Hunter holds giant Bible. All Americans go down on their knees for different reasons.

Third act: Crises erupt. Mom sends each child to lead military operations to subdue Russia and China, et cetera. Mom will fly Air Force One herself to thwart Osama. Wicked reporter accompanies her on plane, is now on the team! That afternoon, Mom flies home and saves the economy by issuing every family a gun and teaching them to field dress moose. Self-reliance! Home schooling! Mom reverses Roe v. Wade by executive order, and all teenagers instantly agree to abstinence!!

Final Scene: Family is cooking mooseburgers in White House residence many babies toddlng around and being born. Mom hands spatula to Bristol because chaste loving first dude swoops Mom up and carries her off to bedroom. Final scene shows formerly wicked reporters reporting that Mom is happily carrying a spina bifada baby; they agree on Press the Face that the world is better off for unplanned pregnancies. And oh thank God all former terrorists have now become Christian Republicans.

THE END
(no kidding)

My Density

2008-09-02T21:51:00.003-04:00

Reader, you may remember I thought about getting a little job. As often happens in the course of thinking about such a thing, I ended up finding one: Coordinator of Children's Ministry at St Swithin's, around the corner.

Remember all that fuss last year about retirement? So, unbelievably, I'm doing it all again: the lists, the rosters, the
calendars, the teacher training, the safe church workshops, hiring child-care for the church nursery. Plus there is a pre-school and a Hebrew school to be liaised with. Denny used to have a joke with me based on the caretaker in "The Shining." He'd say, "You're the Director, Pru, you've always been the Director...."

I'm actually enjoying it. I had forgotten how interesting it is to organize things and do God's work on staff. I had forgotten that certain pride one feels in work. But it's like riding a bicycle (you don't forget how); and I hit the ground pedaling!

The other news is that my sister and her husband also found jobs, together, at the FDIC, which means they'll be traveling to different cities with bank failures. They want me to take care of their dog, a little cairn terrier, who supposedly will arrive this weekend.

So here I am with my Sunday School job and my soon-to-be dog, Plus ca change....

Old Aunts 'R' Us

2008-08-21T14:42:00.003-04:00

Coming up on the Barack Obama's VP announcements the blogs are writhing again in their contempt for Hillary's 18 million, who are "old aunts with seven cats."

If only I could afford one cat, much less seven! If we had Hillary-Care perhaps my health premiums wouldn't cost $4,000 per year (never mind the rx's and the co-pays).

But meanwhile, here is an identified constituency, which for some reason gets to be personally attacked--because to call someone an old aunt we don't perceive as a compliment. Just as the worst thing you can do to insult a man is to call him a woman the worst thing you can call a woman is old and presumably barren.

Maybe not. I remember on my first picket line, walking around for equality in employment (when the Sec'y of Labor had just announced he was not planning to enforce that particular part of an equal opportunity law), cab drivers rolling by yelling, "If you weren't so ugly you could get a job!!" This was 1970. In 2008 I just read a blogger who said he would never vote for Hillary because she wears pantsuits and he doesn't like her voice.

Great way to choose a President, oh ignorant one. One thing about old people: we vote. If Obama knows what he's doing he'll pick Hillary.

Dream House

2008-08-04T15:44:00.001-04:00

Unpacking in the new place, I have survived the packing, the movers' mixups, and the drive from Massachusetts to North Carolina--with the help of children. So much moving going on that I've even been moving in my dreams.

This early morning I dreamed that Denny was here, helping me. He was hammering together storage shelves and replacing the light in the refrigerator. And then he has gone, leaving carpets half-laid, and I wake up wanting coffee. I wander through shadowy new house surrounded by my history: family furniture, Denny's dominator, our chosen art, rise into place. Outside, an insomniac owl hoot hoot hoots.

Moving Again

2008-07-07T19:59:00.003-04:00

Stages of Moving

1) For some reason it seems like a good idea. A project certainly, but a worthy undertaking.

2) This won't be so bad. I'll organize it! We'll keep all the boxes in one room.

3) Better buy some boxes. Ooh, I remember these cardboard cuts.

5) Damn! It's going to be expensive too.

6) Phone calls to old book buyers and used furniture dealers.

7) Boxes everywhere. That newspaper article I wanted? Packed away. "Terrible," says Ishmael, "full stop."

8) Face it, it's all gotta come down.

9) I drive down my street past houses and gardens and envy everyone in their house who is not moving.

10) Tired. Throw everything away. Trips to dump. Never doing this again. Whose idea was this anyway?