Aiming for Grace

Amkle Diary Day 9

2012-01-25T14:12:00.013-05:00

It hasn't gone as well as I expected. The last two days have been my lost weekend, slept all day couldn't sleep at night. Pain pills around 2 a.m., woke up groggy at 7 a.m., laid here in a daze till noon.

Slugged downstairs for food and bathroom then back up, sleep some more, so out of shape that I often have to rest between on landings between floors, crushed glass in my knees, the jarring of jumping and bumping makes my ankle hurt, think I can feel the metal in it...

...wondering how I'll get the house cleaned before my sister arrives, words with friends, alternating between sweating and freezing, haven't been outside in days, don't hear from neighbors or work, one get well card from my daughter, missing my dog till i cry. Haven't been interested in reading a book or watching or movie or doing desk work. It looks gorgeous out.

I'm supposed to be working on the master plan. Its only for six weeks I'm told and I know I should be making the best of it. I had every intention of making the best of it. Looking forward to making the best of it.

Soon the flowers in the neighbors yard will start changing heights.

Part 2

As the opiates gradually ebb from my body I realize I've been in a glumfest when actually Ive had some great incentives. I'll be getting fresh, local organic produce and eggs from the good folks at Sunnyside Farms in Pa. The NOLA Jazz fest has an incredible lineup. And although I won't be going I can still dream about it, and hope at least some of my good buddies in San Fran will be attending and sending back reports.

I tried to listen to Joan of Arc last night by Donald Spoto but I kept falling asleep.

My attention span still hasn't returned although I tried reading Etta, a historical novelization of the life of Etta Place. Lots of great great DVDs lined up: Treme, Justified, Downton Abby.

Ankle Diaries Day 7 - Part 1

2012-01-23T07:23:00.018-05:00

This morning, I had my first cup of coffee in 7 days. And even though it still sits downstairs waiting to be finished, it was wonderful. Bumping it upstairs is not an option, but when I slither back down for the mid morning bathroom trip I will again sip it savoringly. Thank You daughter.

Feeling less like the Human Torso or Crab Woman, and trying to be upright more. I suck using crutches. No patience, no upper body strength, no balance. How pitiful is it to opt for a wheelchair out of fear of failure and falling?

My daughter has been my lifeline in my time of convalescence. She checks on me, feeds the cats, brings in the mail, fills the ice trays, and brings me warm meals on the days she is here . If nothing else I'm going to be thinner and stronger after this. I was badly out of shape before the surgery from months of no exercise, and grossly overweight from said non activity and a thyroid running rampart.

I miss my little dog. I miss him body bumping me for more petting and fawning. I'm afraid he's wondering why I abandoned him. But I know it would be tough for me to get him out several times a day so I'm grateful he's in a safe place with good dog people.

A couple days I have felt forsaken, alone with no one to take care of me. Would I have to get one of those first alert alarms in case I fall and can't reach a phone. Will I die alone like my mother? But I know I am lucky to have as much help as I do and should be grateful for the care. My aforementioned dog sitters, such a weight off my mind. My ride home. My long distance buddy calling to check on me. Stacks of magazines from a friend to keep me entertained. Words with Friends. My sister giving up a week of her time to help me when she could be visiting her three little grandsons. Interaction with FB friends. The cat who hasn't left my side, rather head.

And of course my daughter who I am so proud of for bearing the weight of an immobile mother while working full time, volunteering at SPCA and running her own life.

Happy 2012 earthlings!

2012-01-01T12:30:00.006-05:00

I think 2012 is going to be alright. I had my doubts for a few days. But I've calmed down from my surgery debacle, hopefully mended some fences on the grandparent front, got an unexpected windfall and am looking forward to an evening of Ravens football with family. I found a bond with my granddaughter, music. Things feel right.

The sun is out, the house is still a mess. Tomorrow breakfast with the dog group ladies. I was asleep last night by 10:30. Never saw the Cyber Dick Clark, or the ball fall or pop the cork on the champagne that is still in my fridge and has been for two years because I slept through New Year's Eve last year too. Somewhere in the U.S. a giant Peep was dropped. You gotta love this country.

When things go askew I scan for the cosmic logic and realize the God is telling me a reason. I now have more time to get organized for my surgery. Having my son and granddaughter here this week told me I really wasn't ready and need to get ready. I'm tired of not knowing where anything is. Tired of huffing and puffing, unable to bend, to zip, to feel like I'm in a full body bustle.

"Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle."
-Tich Nhat Hanh

Back home at square one.

2011-12-30T09:17:00.008-05:00

After mentally preparing for the surgery for almost two months, and physically needing this surgery even longer, the surgery has been indefinitely postponed because my doctor over reacted as usual instead of listening. She puts all her faith in tests and not in her patients observation and input.

Her "patient service coordinator" has the sensitivity of Igor and is probably the main reason I will be leaving this practice I've gone to for over 20 years. She is my nemesis. This is the woman who billed me and the insurance company for a prostate exam yet never went back to the insurance company and fessed her mistake.

This is the woman who said to me in front of other waiting patients, when I hadn't returned her phone calls, "I'd appreciate it from now on if you'd return my calls right away." This is the woman who when I called to make an appointment after I got out of the hospital for chest pains and had written discharge papers to see my doctor immediately after discharge, "Don't you have discharge papers telling you what to do once you're released?"

This is the woman who when I called in November to book this pre op exam and told her when the surgery was said the only date they had available was Dec. 29. Then when I walked in yesterday for the exam, the first words out of her mouth were, "why did you wait so long to book this exam."

When she goes to schedule my stress test and she's on the phone to the orthopedist she says, "oh she hurt it in May. Then she should have no problem running on a treadmill. And she's been taking aspirin." (You're not suppose to take blood thinning agent 7 days before surgery.) Like she's ratting me out. In fact, I didn't take aspirin, i took Advil, two days before making it safely within the 7 day range. If I walk more than 10 minutes my ankle hurts, so no, running on a treadmill for 30 minutes shouldn't be any problem for me.

Beware! Towson under attack. Dogs traumatized. Car alarms akimbo.

2011-12-26T08:33:00.019-05:00

Let it be duly noted that as the world ends I'm watching The Price is Right, waiting for my doctor appt. and trying to comfort my shivering dog. I guess the last Thursday of the month at 10:00 a.m., of course I wouldn't know this I'm usually at work, Towson noisily prepares for an air raid, with booming loudspeakers and window shaking alarms as if every car alarm in the neighborhood has been triggered.

This afternoon I have my pre op exam and I just fielded a slew of questions from the surgeon's office. Maybe they can just skip the anesthesia and load me up with painkillers afterwards. Questions flash -- why are the doctor's "patient services coordinators" the surliest, least accommodating people on planet? Reaching them by phone is like trying to get Mark Zuckerburg to answer your personal email. Not that I'd know anything about that.

I still haven't worked out the particulars of how I'm going to function with a screw newly planted in my ankle. For that matter how I'm even going to get how from the surgery. I guess as my daughter suggested I'll have to do a Liz Lemon and waive my rights to being sensible. I shouldn't worry too much, chances are with their charm they'll point my wheelchair at the door and push.

It's been good to have my family home. Not without it's drama but that's family. Christmas was, as my friend Yap says, another day, part of which i spent curled like a shrimp in my bed weeping about "a little bit of everything." Great new song I discovered. Warren I hope you like it too. Movie of the holiday was Home From The Holidays, Jodie Foster at her youthful best. Movie for the new year may be The Ref, if I can find it.

There's a mattress stuffed in my car I should be retrieving so I can stuff a sofa in there next. I should also be stuffing a chicken. And cleaning a litter box. And paying bills. And wrapping gifts, actually going out and buying more gifts. Watering plants. Bolting the dining room table together. Hauling the day bed upstairs. Putting down the rugs. Returning the returns. Going to the store. Brushing and bathing the dog. It's not like I'm without meaningful work.

Christmas changes, and continue building the prez

2011-12-25T12:48:00.031-05:00

Lots has changed since Christmas of 20 years ago. I stopped sending out cards. It didn't just happen overnight. I got slower and slower at it. They were going out after Christmas. Then after New Years. They'd be written but then never sent. And as I might expect year after year the cards I received dwindled. This year I received two. However, lots of the family who used to send me cards are dead.

I haven't had a tree in quite awhile so the decorations don't come out of the attic. I think how nice it would be to put up lights but that's a luxury I leave to my neighbors. I don't get the yard raked. I bring plants in and forget to water them so they die.

I used to get gifts bought and wrapped by Thanksgiving. Then they would be bought and I'd stay up Christmas Eve wrapping them. I didn't even get all my gifts bought this year. Most of what I did buy is still in its bags scattered around the house. I'm not even sure where tape and scissors are.

When my kids were in school I spent a weekend baking cookies. I took them to their classes gave them to coworkers, the bus driver, neighbors. Likewise with food. I'd make feasts and invite friends and neighbors over. Now I go out to eat on xmas eve. Xmas day I munched goodies that had been given to me, or frozen things I bought.

Is xmas changing or am I? Have I spent too many years in retail and others can't understand why I'm not in the holiday spirit? Or have I battled depression too many years and am getting too old to wage a good fight? Depression isn't like an illness where you are cured or not, it's like asthma. Sometimes it's better than others, and when it's not good you keep on going anyway because you've learned that if you don't your life will fall apart and then you'll never dig out. You are truly screwed. I play possum and stay very still, hoping its dark cloud will soon hover on past.

All the stalwarts are missing-- exercise, companionship, good diet. I've never been so fat in my life and I'm miserable. Clothes don't fit. I can't bend over. If I'm active more than 10 minutes I'm redfaced and out of breath. I use to trot 4 miles. I wake up every morning with chest pains. If I walk more than 10 minutes my ankle hurts. My whole body is out of alignment because of my limping. Both knees ache, my right hip hurts, if I bend more than a few minutes I get a stabbing backache. Advil is tearing up my stomach. I smile less and less and am angry more and more. I try to not talk about it or complain.

My family doesn't realize any of this, of course I don't have much family left and they all have their own trials and tribulations. I've never regained control over my finances or paperwork since I dealt with my son's heroin addiction. I'm always late with my bills even though I have the money to pay them. I've idiotically paid thousands in late fees for no reason. There are receipts and statements in piles all over the house. I go into denial and go out and buy stuff I don't need. Little stuff, but lots of it. My purse is always crammed with receipts. I don't know where a
lot of the stuff is, or I've never used it, or I've forgotten I bought it.

I use to balance my checkbook every month to the penny. I rarely look at a statement. I know I spend more than I make, especially with interest rates in the toilet, but of course I make such a paltry sum it isn't hard to do. The only thing that keeps me afloat is the money my Mom left me that is dwindling away between work on my house, my son's continued financial problems, eating out, and gross mismanagement.

I will often go weeks without doing dishes or cleaning the litterbox or picking up the clothes on my floor. Each morning is a challenge to a find 1. fat jeans 2. clean underwear 3. a bra that fits 4. matching sox. I have a list a page long of things I can't find or haven't seen in a long time. The only incentive I truly have is when I know the contractor will be over to work in an area and I need to clear it. It's been one big Rubik's cube moving all my crap from room to room to room. Keeping a space cleared on the bed to sleep.

I don't even worry about writing any of this because no one reads my blog except some schleps overseas who saw the phrase porn star in one blog. It is a diary in a true sense. The key that locks it is the dull life of just one more sap on the earth.

What do I do with all my time? Nothing. Work, and the 1-2 hour drive each day pretty much zaps any strength and motivation I have. I walk the dog twice a day. I dream about one nice outing a year.

Years ago Lyme came through and robbed me of my concentration. "You may have to try harder to remember" were the pearls of wisdom my GP gave me after I passed a test for alzheimers. I never went back to her after that. I was angry that she minimalized my frustration and how overwhelmed I felt. She couldn't be convinced that I was still being brutalized by Lyme. She was of the mind that once I had taken the prescribed month of antibiotics it was magically, on cue all gone.
(Addendum to my list of shit I don't understand. I don't believe all that is online or would I try to practice medicine based on what I found, but I do get frustrated with doctors who do not keep up with the latest information. More than once I've had to clue a doctor in to a new treatment, new findings or research. Isn't this their job?)

I'm here for the duration. Little things let me float like an angelfish, my sweet dog, the sun shining in my window, my granddaughters smile. Float and it passes by. Float and it's gone.

Good by ol' desert rat
Ya half crazy wild cat
You knew where it was at
What life's all about.

Ya saver of catalogs, king of the prairie dogs
Success is survival and you toughed it out.
We all tough it out.

"Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life"

2011-12-25T12:41:00.014-05:00

Those are the commencement words of Steve Jobs. But hard it is for the average person today not to live someone else's life or at least be in someone's shadow or on someone else's time unless he or she is rich or self employed or lucky enough to find a job of a lifetime.

Then there's the issue of courage. Is playing it safe really the most dangerous thing one can do? Do I have the courage at my advanced years to pack up my life, dispose of my baggage and move to a new city to start completely over? Nothing holds me here in Baltimore, a city I could take or leave. It's never been overtly kind to me in any ways. In fact upon first moving here I found most of the people self involved and unreciprocating. And when I did find people I liked, they were originally from somewhere other than Baltimore.

The air quality is putrid. Crime escalates. The neighborhood declines. Each year the beltway becomes more overburdened. Yet I stay. Because it's safe. It's familiar. It's easy. It's a rocking chair. A western saddle. A down comforter. An opiate and a chocolate bar. But it's not a life.

Said Rilke, the unlived life, of which one can die.

My kids are grown and I have no elderly family. I'm free as the breeze. I could do any of a million things. I could sell all my possesions live on a sailboat. Move to Montana and raise alpaca and Rocky Mountain ponies. Go to NOLA and open a bookstore/cafe in the Quarter which I could close whenever I wanted. Move to San Fran and enjoy legal pot. Live in the desert and paint like Georgia O'Keefe.

Christmas Post #2: Shit I Don't Understand

2011-12-25T10:41:00.013-05:00

I'm not the most well-read, savvy politico. I don't always understand all the complexities of the issues, the history they are rooted in or the impact they could carry. I come to issues from a gut instinct raised by people who depended on pragmatism and reason for their survival instead of tax loopholes of lobbying opportunities. The Golden Rule generation.

Here's a few that continue business as usual when they make no sense to me:

Extending the middle class tax cut if the Pipeline is approved. I know this is the heart and soul of political compromise but does it bother anyone else that two completely unrelated actions hinge on each other. One benefits citizens the other benefits citizens maybe in a round about way but really benefits oil companies, lobbyists, states and cronies. Make it stop.

Why does the state have no problem bankrolling stadiums, auto races, the purchase of slot and gambling machines but cut back on police, fire, education. Again, they cite an around about benefit to citizens in more tourism money but we all know its a lie. It first and foremost benefits people with far more money than you or I.

Celebrities who are continually embraced no matter how dangerous or criminal their actions and
beliefs. Tom Cruise can worship pig nose wonks for all I care, but when he attacks psychiatry across the board and professes that everyone can be just like him with vitamins and talking into antenna rotary he's scary. HE THINKS HE'S FROM ANOTHER PLANET!!! FOR REAL.
Ben Roethilsberger is a rapist, as is Kobe Bryant, Michael Vick tortured and murdered animals, Ray Lewis was an accessory to murder, Michael Jackson a child molester, ditto Roman Polanski. If you have some kind of artistic merit you are forgiven anything? Did this also apply to artists of the past?

Merry Crittermas Spirit of Bo, Heart of Bernie

2011-12-25T09:46:00.012-05:00

Christmas started off sort of rocky. The coffee pot broke down and Southwest (no change fees my ass) wants $600 to change 2 plane reservations made a week ago from 9 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. THE SAME DAY. No change fees but change gouging.

On an up note, the sun is out, Bernie is napping at my feet and my son and granddaughter will be here tomorrow -- at 11:30 p.m. thanks again Southwest. My house no longer looks like a failed bomb shelter. It's time for me to do my part and put it back together.

I've got some time off this week to gather my thoughts and re-cement my center. I have more time off next week for surgery and a long, long list of stay still, long overdue work and fun. I'm going to sort through two years worth of paperwork. I'm going to watch Treme so I can further dream about moving to New Orleans and opening a bookstore/cafe. (Tallulah come with me dear. We can be our own bosses and set our own customer standards.)

I can be still enough to read books again, and maybe write a note or two. Maybe get rides out to movies so when the Oscars roll around I'll have seen more than 1 nominee (especially now that there's ten) Start a quilt. Blog more.

Flash******More people know the words to Gilligan's Island than they do the Star Spangled Banner.

There were a few really highs this year among the daily cobblestones. The trip to NOLA for the Voodoo Festival with some great, great people and music offset the broken ankle in the spring which totally torpedoed my mental and physical health.

The Ryan Adams concert was energizing and restorative. My niece had her third son. I got to see my dear ex brother in law after at least a ten year absence. I found a contractor who was a wizard. I got central air.

We closed a Baltimore store and displaced some good friends. I lost my irreverent assistant manager. Work became more strained. I couldn't stop gaining weight and couldn't exercise to stop it. My wanderlusty cat parlayed his curiosity into a $400 emergency room visit.

My daughter's beloved car got totaled. And probably the worst, my son was locked out of his home after returning from Afghanistan, his marriage broke up and he faces a vicious custody battle of which nothing good will come out of. He didn't see his daughter for two months and had a restraining order filed against him that stated she was terrified of him.

But I went to a holiday party where I saw a friend who lost her son at age 22 and I'm sure she'd give anything to be able to bail him out of financial difficulty and support him through heartbreaking domestic woes. I know she'd trade with me in an instant not to see a grandchild for 8 months rather than never.

So hard it is to remember the miracles we never see. That a cancer didn't take a loved one. That you didn't lose a job, or a house. That the tree across the street didn't crash down upon your house. Planes stayed in the sky, cars didn't cross the line and hit you, you weren't born into a home of abuse or abject poverty. That your eyes still see and your fingers still move.

Grandparents have no rights, just broken hearts

2011-11-25T18:27:00.022-05:00

I haven't seen my granddaughter since April, and since her mother has illegally absconded with her, a kidnapping chargeable action, I probably am not going to get to see her for a long time. Even sadder is my son, who didn't see his daughter for a year while he was in Afghanistan, and now is being kept from seeing her. Even though there are custody filings pending and she wasn't suppose to leave town with her, she did anyway, not returning his calls or telling him where she was.

Because my daughter in law doesn't want him around, she has deemed him unfit and claims he isn't a good father. She's never given him a chance to even be a father. She's transfixed on these single unwed mother reality shows and disconnected from any reality herself. She wanted a baby and someone to support her, and my son, who has had a crush on her since high school, was her dupe. .. I heard her out and out say that to her aunt T.

I remember the uneasiness I felt when they first came home from the hospital and my son slept on the floor while my daughter in law, her Mom and the baby slept in the bed. It was creepy, unnatural. Her Mom even admitted to me she pushed my son into proposing to E. He never would of done it because he thought they were just friends, but her Mom told him to propose.

Hell like saps we paid for her damn wedding. Her family, that now condones and abets her behavior, could have paid for it, but we got suckered. I wasn't allowed to invite my family but she instead invited all of hers, even her aunt from overseas. They are a family of users.

I know she is telling her family a pack of lies that my son is an alcoholic pervert. She learned this well. Her own Dad has been driven as far away as possible. Her brother doesn't speak to him. She admits her own Mom is a sociopath. She admitted her Mom wrung every nickel she could out of her father.

I knew she was a user, but I didn't realize she was cruel. I told her a couple years ago I didn't like the vicious degrading way she talks to my son. She treats her methadone addicted ex boyfriend better than she treated my son. In fact she's called my son by her ex boyfriends name.

I prayed he would snap to his senses and put his foot down. He was in love. When I told her I was tired of her anger at him, she said she was so hateful to him because she has all this anger built up in herself. My worry is, if my son's not around, who will she take this anger out on next?

This is a mess of a story, Dr. Phil, Jerry Springer stuff. I should have known since the two of them were heroin addicts out of high school. (She swore to me for the longest time that she never did heroin until she finally admitted she did. But that's what addicts do, they lie. ) E. slept on my floor for a week once, her grandmother frantically calling me about her whereabouts. (I don't know where her Mom was at this time.)

Then she disappeared from my house. My son and I drove all over Dundalk looking for her, she'd taken up with a gang of tattoo artists somewhere. I go way back with these kids. Her idiot boyfriend and my addict son who broke my heart then, his idiot girlfriend who oddly enough ended up having a baby her E.'s idiot boyfriend.

Believe me. My son put me through the wringer. (Read older posts) But he choose to go into the Army to clean up. He's done a tour in both Iraq and Afghan. He's made sergeant. He completed he Associates degree. So he's not the fuckup E. makes him out to be. And he has a gentle heart. He loves his daughter and will not abandon her.

He loved E. and would have done anything for her. Because of her he stayed in the Army about 3 years longer than he would have. He re upped once so he could transfer from NY to KY to be closer to her since she refused to move to NY. She wanted him to sign up for the Army permanently so he'd always have a job. Thank God he didn't do that for her.

When my son was overseas E. would never ever talk about him on Facebook. She'd gush on and on about being in love with her daughter, or her girlfriends, or poor, poor K., her old boyfriend. There was never an I miss my husband, I love my husband, I worry about my husband. That's because she didn't love him, miss him or worry about him.

The minute he got back she had his possessions put out and her brother illegally change the locks on the townhouse that he paid for. She claimed he looked at porn and drank. This was her tough love approach. He's not her child, he was her husband. Only that wasn't her motive. You have to be particularly heartless to put a soldier out of his house a month after he returns, when that's all he's thought about, going home, no matter how troubled he might be. But she didn't really care if he got counseling or not.

She claims he's bad with money but it was him that paid off her debts to get her driver's license back. When he decided to go back to school she called it a waste of money. The minute they married she quit her job and got pregnant and hasn't worked since.

There's not a damn thing I can do. They will now battle it out in court. She obviously doesn't love her daughter as much as she loves having her own way or she wouldn't keep her from her father. I just hope she doesn't go Casey Anthony.

Born to be an immortal porn star

2011-09-14T22:50:00.012-04:00

My favorite bad boy Indie actor is in two new movies this fall, both of them crap. Bucky Larson: Born to Be A Star (he plays a porn star) and The Immortals. At least he's spreading his genres to comedy and epic action films. Comedy may be his thing.

Stephen Dorff was beginning to settle into the psychotic ruthless killer, a far cry from his child actor work in the Power of One and I Shot Andy Warhol, the same way Dennis Hopper did. Hopper resurfaced to redeem himself in Hoosiers, playing an alcoholic coach, before moving on to TV.

I realize an actor has to make a buck, and I was momentarily relived when he did Somewhere, which died at the box office although I liked it a lot. It's as Dylan Moran says, you want to leave potential alone because you'll mess it up.

I think Mr. Dorff had lots of potential and "somewhere"along the way got he left it alone. Blame Pamela Anderson or John Waters or Wesley Snipes, he managed to go from SFW and Innocent Lies to Cold Creek Manor and Fear.com. Forever there's been a Deacon Frost prequel, sequel, trilogy in the works, however it's almost too late unless vampires aren't really ageless.

Tonight I watched The Conspirator, which also seem to have come and gone quickly at the theaters. It made me realize what a solid actor James McAvoy has become. I wasn't overly impressed when I first saw him in Atonement (I think), but then he was Mr. Tumnus for God's sake. You just have to be good to be Mr. Tumnus. Then The Last Station. He's geeky, no chiseled good lucks. I like that.

The Voodoo that you do

2011-09-12T19:21:00.010-04:00

(this is not New Orleans)

I've decided who I'd like to see at Voodoo, Band of Horses on Friday night and the Raconteurs on Sunday. And of course, Grandpa Elliott on the corner of Royal and Toulouse, for free.

If you are hitting the thrift shops for costumes, start now. Salvation Army was stripped and Good Will had a bit more but good awful stuff was going fast. I got Bernie the best costume even though I vowed I would not dress up my dog up because it is demeaning to his self respect. It's the Headless Horseman's horse, so he'll have this little figure on his back that is preparing to throw a pumpkin. I couldn't resist, it was perfect for him to roam around the store. We can have an Ichabod Crane flashing blue light special, just follow the dog.

I imagine whoever invented plastic flowers thought it was a really good idea at the time. Is anything more pathetic? Plastic flowers with dust on them. Gas stations love to have a wine barrel tub with assorted plastic flowers, nothing that would ever grow in the same season or region together. It's like thinking you never need to go to Europe because you've visited Epcot Center.

Watched another really good teenage based movie last night, "The Kids Are All Right." It is the city mouse to "Winter's Bone," another very well done contemporary study of the bizarre places today's world is taking the rite of passage.

Borders officially closed today. My home away from home for close to ten years, the place I met the craziest sock monkeys in retail, both sides of the counter. Tallulah used to say there were two kinds of Borders employees, the kind that would come back with a gun and pick off customers, and the kind that would come back with a gun and pick off co-workers.

I'd like to thrash all those people at the top who sent down some of the dumbest, counterproductive edicts which over time layered to shut down what was one great party of a job. How impressed I was the first time I entered the three story store in Towson, talk about a wonderland. My first experience, I was looking for a book called Women of the West for my mother. A young man in history knew exactly the book I meant. That person turned out to be Rich C. I knew I had to work there, applied for job and because of my matronly appearance got one in the children' section. The rest is history.

Could Be Worse, Could Be Raining.

2011-09-08T22:21:00.022-04:00

The past few weeks has had sort of an end of days feel, the earthquake, the hurricane, the remodeling, the fleas, the backed up plumbing and tree root clogged pipes, the new gallon paint can bouncing to coat the driveway, the flooding basement, and the Ark rain.

The house, at least phase 2, is half done, and I'm sort of loving the stark bareness of the bedroom. All that is in here is my bed, my dog and my laptop. The floor is gorgeously refinished and the walls are Dune Grass. No curtains, not one other thing. And I like it. I wish I could keep it this way. Of course the other bedroom is so jammed with everything you can't get it in.

So here in the Harvey Dent hideaway, half gorgeous, the other way a mess, I'm trying to keep from getting stalled. There are now two more rooms to finish, which means I have to reshuffle all the furniture again, and move the boxes and boxes of books. I plan on having the biggest book sale ever once life calms down a bit. I probably have a hundred boxes of books, easily. Somewhere there's still a POD in Timonium half full of books and crap that's not worth the cost of storing it. The book collecting is out of control, no doubt about it.

Then, there's phase 3, which I'm starting to doubt will get done this year. That's going to be the most drastic renovation. And thank God, because both the kitchen and back porch leaked this time around. And I'll have a dishwasher. And real cabinets. And a bathroom on the main floor, like a real girl. Or as the plumber said when I told him the only bathroom was in the basement, "get outta here."

Voodoo Fest is just around the seasonal affectiveness corner. My diet to get into to shape is to just stop eating. I just got tired of eating, worrying about eating, what I could eat, what I shouldn't eat. And it didn't help to toss out several hundreds dollars of food. Nothing curbs an appetite like cleaning out a moldy, sticky refrigerator after losing half a dozen bottles of excellent salad dressings and packages of grade A steaks and burgers. But after reading The Family That Couldn't Sleep, I've given up meat. The human form of mad cow disease, JCD (and no that's not Jean Claude Van Damme)

VooDoo Fest should be rolling. Of course we will be in New Orlean the last days of the hurricane season tempting the fates. One costume is a group ensemble of the Mexican Day of the Dead revelers, not to be confused with any George or Cesar Romero production. The last I heard, the crew making part of the costume was popping the heads off Barbie dolls. The rest of the costumes we are on our own. I've got my red cape that Ali made for Kate long ago, and a luche libre mask, and anything else I can smash in a suitcase. New Orleans, Halloween and three days of incredible music, 8 people and a rented house. I can't imagine anything but extreme mischief.

Back at the Five and Dime again

2011-09-07T20:23:00.016-04:00

Since we got East of Eden and Rebel at work I'm back into a James Dean revival, although it's hard with just three films. What absolutely mystifies me is that here is an actor, dead 56 years and who would be 80 if he were alive, as fresh and raw as any one today. Nothing dated, from his style to his ferocity.

He was able to carry off a bisexual lifestyle before Mick or Bowie, and he understood image better than any Hilton or Kardashian. Sure he angered fellow actors by relentlessly, unabashedly stealing scenes from them any way possible -- squirming, bending, fidgeting. He wasn't a team player or a director's actor. As Sammy Davis said about him, he did his act, and he did it better than anyone else. Bright, brilliant and gone. Immortality was his goal, possibly accomplished, and he's more popular than ever thanks to death. He didn't hang around as long as Elvis to tarnish his image, or get fat like Brando or desperate like Marilyn.

The only reason to watch Giant is for his portrayal of the young Jett Rink. It's as if he's in a different movie than Hudson or Taylor (Hudson terribly miscast.) In a roomful of old school, heavy weight actors, he literally walks off with the scene, very little dialog and a piece of rope. Screenwriters must have hated him too, but his instincts were so true. Even George Stevens admitted that years later.

I'm trying to find the James Franco "James Dean" made for TV in 2001, I understand it is very well done and Franco does a remarkable job as Dean. Also trying to locate Dean's performance in Gide's "The Immoralist," and the film "Sept. 30, 1955," also known as "9/30/55" by James Bridges(out of release.)

I'm always pained to think of promising actors who die young, missing the performances they will never give: River Phoenix, Heath Ledger (heartbreaking to watch in Monster's Ball,)Brad Renfro. But then there's something about going out on top with no flops to your credit, two Acad noms for your first three films, no career reinvented over and over. When I first saw Mickey Rourke in Body Heat he shellacked William Hurt right out of the arson scene, I was sure he would be a force. Instead he self destructed. Like Downey. DeNiro now does Fockers.

I went through this Dean worship about 30 years ago, the amazement about how unique he was, then let it become a common thing. He's such an icon it's almost corny. But what really blows me away is I was born the year East of Eden was released. My older sister was only five. I wasn't even close to being his generation, this near sighted, practically orphaned Indiana farm kid. Yet I could imagine him in many of the movies today.

What drives people, what makes them become who they are, and how they choose to transcend their situations fascinates me. Loneliness absorbed, exhausted, and exhaled. Yearning to desperation, desperation to courage. Some emptiness always a part.

155 books written about him, they still continue to come out. 15 - 20 movies/documentaries about him. The youth movement coincided with or because of him. Was he homosexual, bisexual, had a death wish, didn't have a death wish, lucky or calculating? No one will ever know.

The misfit, loner, outsider, anti hero. Not Brando, not Clift, not Newman, not Nicholson, not DeNiro.

Slow

2011-05-30T07:34:00.008-04:00

Bernie and I went put early for our hobble walk, no one out but crows and robins and geese. A dead snake in the road, about two feet long. Looked like a coral, but probably just milksnake. I remember playing in the yard as a little girl and hearing my Mom find a snake in the garden which she would quickly dispatch with one chop of the hoe.

At the high school an odd group of geese circled as if trying to decide which one to follow. The goose asserting leadership landed in the soccer field throwing it's neck back and forth like it was having a seizure. Bernie off leash saw another chance to catch something he would never catch. The rest of the geese pulled up quickly and assumed chevron about a hundred feet in the air right in front of me. It was so close it was more like a movie and a reality.

The lesson I keep forgetting is often we don't readily see why things happen. Call it God works in mysterious ways, or where he closes a door he opens a window. I call it slowing my ass down. This past winter was exhaustingly depressing for me, overwhelming, so many balls in the air threatening to fall. Teach me to care and not to care. Teach me to be still. Which is curiously odd since I'd been complaining about old age; getting old and forgetful and slow. But there's lethargically slow and mindfully slow, and with my foot in a cast I've now converted from one to the other. Our walks are short but long due to out pace. Black dogs heat up fast so BMan slows down too after failing to catch a rabbit, a chipmunk and something I think really did not exist.

It's Memorial Day. Last night I watched a show on the 9 young men who died at Wanat, Afghanistan and how the father of one, Army himself, went after the truth like a pit bull with patience. The death of his son I'm sure was a hard thing for him to comprehend, but the window it opened when his door slammed shut was turning the flood lights on the irresponsibility and arrogance at the top of the chain of command. Maybe, if only for fear of that heavenly light blinding them again, will they be more cautious with these young people's lives, and making those parent's pain a bit more bearable.

Memorial Day. And all that's on is the Casey Anthony trial. Or Arnolds indiscretions. Or Foxy Knoxy's appeal. Or that sex diplomat in Italy, okay I didn't follow that one too closely. Bring home the soldiers from Iraq. Get out of Libya. Understand what's going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan rather than fighting first and figuring out later. The mountains there are simply the jungles of Vietnam.

Although they didn't die in battle, thank you Dad, and Uncles Joe, Carlos, Edward, Paul, brother in law Larry, and my own dear son Zack, for your bravery and sacrifice. As John Hiatt said, it's a slow turning from the inside out, slow turning but you come about.

Little Girl Walking Down the Path Looking Backwards

2011-05-22T20:10:00.007-04:00

At my father's funeral,
My great aunt turned,
on a cold and blustery day
And said Of my young son
"He has lips like a red bow
Lips so pretty like a little girl"

The little face,
that looked like mine
Acted stronger and smarter
The best of me
All I ever wanted to be
only better.

With cherub cheeks,
and leprechaun eyes,
smiling like St Patrick,
mischief and love,
A tiny heart,
who's net flew threw the air
With the guile of a master hand.

Only now to see them,
passing on the same path.

In a crinoline dress
Pigtail curls and badly cut bang
A mother so proud of a chubby child
Wry, crooked smile waiting
For that next little girl
To come walking.

Mr. Cellophane

2011-05-17T06:16:00.007-04:00

Dependency has always been an alien concept for me. I don't like asking for help, I don't like people knowing I need help, and I really hate having to ask over and over for favors.

If something breaks in my house and o can't fix it, it stays broken and I learn to live around it. I'm very resourceful working around broken water pipes, dark hallways , fired electrical sockets, irascible doorknobs, parallelogram doors hung on rectangular door jambs. One door fell off makeshift hinges and pins. A lack of adequate light just underlies my belief that the house wasn't that dirty.
I haven't even begun to talk about the fact their are no closets or counters. That was a challenge that living on a sailboat gave me much insight. Using every possible inch to stow your gear. But yachters didn't have to deal with both children moving in with me when they were suppose to live with their father. He had four bedrooms, I had two. My son slept on the sofa and had a dresser in the dining room.

Did I mention i have one bathroom in the basement but it has no sink? Then when my Mom died brought about a sixth of her house out to join me. Inherited packratism was not a help. For the past two year a great deal of my belongings have lived in a POD somewhere in Cockeysville. Okay, I admit , Los of it are boxes of books.

So whats going on? Sheer stubborn pioneer spirit, serious alienation issues? The walls were part remuddle fake paneling, the others were pea green horsehair plaster falling off in chunks to expose weathered wooden lathe. Peeling paint, antique light sockets, hanging lights having precariously by a Chunk of wood.

Embarrassment kept people out, and the more I shut out the more I shut off. Transparency was always a fearful wolf at the door. So how did I come to buy a 170 year old house? Well other than the fact it was cheap cheap cheap in a real nice neighborhood, it had a yard that was sheer paradise. Heirlo lilacs, azaleas of every color, rhodedendrums, columbine, violets, snowdrops, iris, every plant imaginable.

But now it's time to be transparent. Swing the doors open and let everyone know how disturbed I truly am. Then push on and start turning things around. I've seen better days and I ain't putting up with these. Plus I have that adorable little granddaughter that I hope someday will be able to come here and think my grandmas got grit to turn a low down house into a playlist for everyone.

Start your morning off right

2011-05-14T23:04:00.005-04:00

Supposedly Bin Laden woke up every day thinking about what he could do to destroy the united states. He kept journals, sent off flash drives, OC' d every second before the first pot was brewed. Now I've been known to
Be a bit obsessed at times, but I do get up and walk the dog, read the paper and have a cup of Joe, check the lottery numbers. My anger can set me off Lex Luthoring my revenge but usually I lose interest when the first shiny object passes by.
But he didn't. He stuck with it every day. Imagine what he might of accomplished. And it explains so much:
Sarah plain, Charlie sheen, Justin bieber, Lindsay Logan , the kardashians, pregnant teen reality shows, Donald trump, the no oil spill, Katrina and the levee break, brownie, record tornadoes, the westboro church, Twight saga ( books and movies), Karl rove return, tiger woods failure, gas prices, declining home sales, Michael vick, Mel Gibson, stink bugs, flash floods, obesity, tiger mothers , airport gropings, red light and speed cameras, Oprah quitting, teen bullying, excessive bag and airline fees, the movie NTheRoom, cell phone use while driving, Anne hathaway/James Franco hosting the oscars, slots ( no that was Ehrlich), Spiderman turn off the dark, BeAtrice and eugenies hats, Yo Gabba gabba, Microsoft vista, kindles, and the scheduler of the superbowl half time shows.

It's amazing what you can accomplish in just a few hour every morning. And feel free to add you own. Granted, these arent massive displays of murder mayhem and anarchary. But I'm reminded of Albert Brooks words in broadcast news: while being a very nice guy, he is the devil. What do you think the devil lookslike? Like God? Come on, no one is going to be taken in a guy walking around with a long red pointy tail. What's he going to sound like, arrrrrrrrrrr? He'll be attractive, he'll be helpful, he'll get aloneness he influences alarge god fearing nation. He'll never do an evil thing, he'll never deliberately hurt another living being. He'll just bit by bit lower our standards where they are important. Just a tiny little bit. Just coax along flash over substance, just a tiny little bit. And he'll talk about us all being really good salesmen. And he'll get all the good women. Butgivemethis, he personifies everything you've beenfighting against.

High hopes

2011-05-11T06:16:00.009-04:00

My Mom sang to me all the time. From the minute I can remember she would rock me and sing to me. Not necessarily lullabies, but old classic standards and ballads from her day. Laten one night at a farm team baseball game my dad had to see I was so cold and so bored.and there above us was the if old moon, so she wrapped me in a stadium blanket and proceeded to sing. I'm in love with the man in the moon. I. 'm going to marry him soon. I can never look at that moon without seeing the face of my Mothers celestial suitor.

Some would be show tunes. Some standards fringed massive collection of sheet music. (always play the piano she told me and you'll be the most popular girl at the party . Then there were the dustbowl ballads. The appalachian traditionals passed down from generation to generation. Her older brother had been in a trio called the Black Diamonds and traveled the Midwest singing country songs (but not c&w)

There was a child singer my mom adored, Little Jimmie Sizemore who with his father Asher broadcAst a radio show from louisville kentucky. Little Jimmie was going about five when he started but he brought on such classics as chain gum and when lay me down to sleep that my. Mother felt compelled to send away for his little yellow songbook circa 1928. Somewhere I still have that songbook.

The song that really got me was Babes in the Woods. The song exists mainly in public domain with the lyrics and tune changing by region. My mom did some research on it and found it in a book titled Little Songs of long ago in london. A true handed down folk song. I cried every time heard it, and my mom sang it almost every night till I came to know those children and feel their plight. Like hansel and gretel it must have been written by Germans to keep three children from straying off.

I sang the song to my children but when I sang it to my granddaughter my son cringed, don,t sing her that horrible song.
"how well remember a long time ago, two babes in the woods whose names i don't know. They wandered away one bright summer day and were lost in the woods so I heard people say. And when it was night so sAd was their plight the sun had gone down and the stArs gave no light. They sobbed and they sighed and bitterly cried, poor babes in the woods they layed down and died. And when they were dead the robins so red brought strAwberry leaves and over them spread and sang them a song the whole day long, two babes in the woods are dead and gone."

Once there was a silly old ant, thought he could move a rubber tree plAnt, everyone knows an ant can't move a rubber tree plant
But he had high hopes. Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home In a jar, or better off than you are , or would you rather be a mule? Playmate come out and play with me, bring your dollies three,climb my apple tree. Look down myrain barrel, slide down my cellar door, and well be jolly friends forever more."

My mother actually found my daughter that played the song "Playmates.". Other songs were more contemporary, Seven Lonely Days, Que Cera, My Lonliness, LittleBrown Church in the Vale, You are my Sunshine ( my absolute favorite), How much is that Doggie inthe window, I can't remember them all.

My Mom left me a list of songs her parents sang to her: Barney Google, little brown jug, ducks and chickens, preacher and the bear.
So it was only natural that the first thing I did with my granddaughter was sing. Our repertoire is a little different. Mockingbird, Puff the Magicdragon, cottonfields, summertime, hushaby, stewball, edelweiss, feed the birds, my favorite things, the sweetest gift, and of course babes inthe woods, and my favorite, You are my sunshine.

I hope I get to do that again soon. Feeling her fall asleep in my arms midsong. Like my son did. Like my daughter did. Like I did, and my mother before me.

It ain't that pretty at all

2011-05-02T08:29:00.003-04:00

I'm back on the blog with a vengance, and to quote Warren zevon, how pretty is it, well it ain't that pretty at all. Right now I need All the good vibes I can get from friends, family, co conspirators and fellow desperadoes under the eaves. I know that smart people who
Like you will always have your back. Send your prayers to my son who desperately needs your thought and prayers. After a year in Afghanistan he no longer has a home. Locks changed and his posessions removed without due process. Yet he's told he's part of the family. His email was hacked and when his better half intercepted messages of family telling him
To get legal help she wouldn't let him see his daughter. Send
Me your strength so level heads will prevail

Not waving but drowning

2010-10-15T19:45:00.012-04:00

I have so much juicy juicy. However as British poet Stevie Smith wrote, "I was much too far out all my life, not waving but drowning." The trip to Greece, phenomenal, the trip of a lifetime. I had an absolute ball, pampered and sunbaked; full of wine and good food and amazing people and sights. And though we didn't swim naked (next time), we swam and snorkeled almost daily, even saw a moray eel.

Today I'm distracted. I had Tess put down. She had been my companion for almost 15 years, since I bought the house, and she was the most gorgeous cat I've ever seen. I got her from Animal Rescue and initially walked away from her because she gave me love bites when I held her. But she had the most intelligent, piercing stare, those big green lamp eyes, that I went back the next day and adopted her. When I was sick she never left my side. And when she developed diabetes she was tough as nails and bounced back again and again. She was the kitchen goddess and sat on a chair above the other animals. Regal and in charge.

I got back from Greece and got very sick, then I shot down to Nashville to see my son while he was on leave, then back to Baltimore, only to find dear Tess in bad shape. Soon wonderful tales of Greece.

Political observations

2010-09-10T19:25:00.005-04:00

1. What is wrong with Patricia Jessamy's hair?

2. If you get voted out of an office why are you allowed to run for that office again?

3. If you vote against a pay raise and still accept it, does it really matter if you voted against it?

4. If you've been State's Attorney for 15 years and the show The Wire gets made about your town, can you really claim crime is down?

5. How does waving by the side of the road in any way constitute an ability to govern?

6. Instead of Korans why isn't anyone threatening to burn a stack of campaign signs?

7. Is it wrong of me to not want to vote for you because I don't want to listen to you pronounce police POE-lease for four years?

8. Is that Wargotz guy serious? Does he know that backwards his name is Gots War?

9. When did it become unfashionable to list your political party on your campaign sign? Maybe after Bush?

10. Sick of wives staring adoringly at their candidate spouse.

In every word, every action, you've never left

2010-06-20T09:24:00.052-04:00

My Father rarely went anywhere without a child in tow, and the child was usually me. Family was his world and he wanted them near always. Even if it was just a trip to the store he'd always ask me to ride along. Because of my Dad, I can throw a ball from home to second base (not so much since the shoulder tear), hit a line drive, drive a nail, cast a fly line, pitch a tent, build a fire from scratch, whittle a stick, drive a stick shift, drive a car in any kind of ice and snow, motor a boat quietly into the shallowest cove. In my entire childhood I had a babysitter only twice. If the kids couldn't go my parents didn't go.

After my older sister, I was suppose to be the boy. So I got the training anyway. I spent more time in a fishing boats with him than I can remember, every lake in Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. There wasn't a lot of talk. There was a lot of silence, or him talking aloud to himself, me listening. Nature was his solace, his place to heal. Whatever the problem, nature was the answer. It never was about the sport, heck, pound for pound, my Mother could always out fish him with a bamboo pole, a worm and a bobber. It was about the solitude.

A few times we went quail and pheasant hunting, walking the corn rows on my cousin's farm. But he and my Uncle Joe didn't much care for killing things, they just liked to be outside walking. Other relatives were bow hunters. That didn't interest him either. He'd seen enough slaughter. They were both veterans of WWII and I think they'd had their share. And nothing made them angrier than the reckless use of guns by other hunters. They knew pain that recklessness could cause.

When I was little we lived in Riverton, Ill. My Dad would tell my Mom that he was taking me with him to the hardware store to look around. (He loved to browse at two places, the hardware store and the tackle shop, always on the lookout for that special little tool for a unique woodworking problem, or that special lure he'd never seen before.) I was small. Maybe 4 or 5. He'd put me on his shoulders and off we'd go, a couple blocks away, in the heat of an Illinois summer.

On the way we'd pass this dark magical place with cool air and heavenly music pouring out in the early afternoon. One day, we broached the wooden screen door and entered, squinting to adjust to the dim light, fans spinning overhead. My father placed me on the high bar and bought me the most wonderful grape Nehi in a tall glass bottle while he had a beer and watched the baseball game on the TV in the corner. There were only a few other inhabitants who all greeted him, and me, politely.

Many years after my Dad died I related this to my Mom. She was appalled. She never knew he did this and obviously would not had been pleased if she'd known. This was a secret I never knew that I had.

A carpenter (I mean a poor carpenter) he built our own car top carrier and a small cot that I could stretch out across the back over the luggage. Seat belts? We didn't need no stinking seat belts. I was an eight year old potential projectile, adventure sleeping through this great land. Usually to National Parks if possible because they were the Holiday Inns of the parks. The Parks even provided entertainment each night as the naturalists would speak, or show films or give presentations.

Nature and the three women in his life were his foils. He never intended to make us laugh, but he always did.

The first time we went my Dad and I stayed in a white Army surplus tent with no floor, sides flapping in the wind. We slept on cots while my mother and sister slept in the car. This was not comfortable for anyone. When the tent blew down one night, during a gale across the prairies of Kansas, with us in it, my Mother couldn't help but laugh all day between barrages of I told you so's.

By the time we got to Yellowstone (I now slept in the car with my Mother and sister while my Dad stayed alone in the big tent) my Dad was sitting at the picnic table washing his feet one night while the three of us were in the car preparing for bed. From behind him, a large brown bear approached unbeknown to him. The three of us waved madly from the car trying to get his attention. He looked up, saw us and assumed we were making fun of him washing his feet so chose to ignore us. My mother finally rolled the window down a crack and in a hushed shout yelled, "Donald, a bear."

He turned and was immediately startled but I knew he didn't want us to think he'd been caught off guard or was frightened. He stood, waved one arm, wash pan in the other hand, and said, "get out of here," which miraculously the poor bear did. Dad walk over to the car to set the pan of water on the roof telling my Mom he knew the bear was there the whole time, his hands shaking so bad he spilled the whole pan of water down the slightly opened window into the car. That was a fodder tale was years to come.

He loved music but wasn't musical, even though he had a pretty good bass voice and was an excellent dancer. He was always singing some new song he'd heard, from Daddy Sang Bass, Flowers on the Wall, King of the Road, Big Bad John. But his all time favorite was Nat King Cole singing Red Sails in the Sunset. He loved Nat King Cole.

Why was his family so important to him? It wasn't because his own childhood was remarkably nurturing. His Mother was known to stay in the house with all the shades pulled down all the time. When he was small and the family had their first car, little Donald was so curious about the noise emanating when steam passed through the engine that he stuck a pair of scissors in a radiator hose to discover the source. For this his mother chained him with a cow collar in the front yard.

A sergeant in the 7th Army my Father got a Bronze Star for an unthinkable job, Grave's Registration, scraping up the dead with the intent to identify them in order to notify the families. During this time his younger brother was shot down over Germany and a POW. He never heard anything more about him until he was released. He speaks in one letter of his worry over his brother and how he'd do another stint if his brother would never have signed up.

His brother, my Uncle Carlos (pronounced carless and not the Spanish way)lived in a small trailer in Goofy Ridge, Ill. He was a short, stocky man, sort of looked like Jack Nicholson, as much as a recluse as one could be, confirmed bachelor, motorcycle aficionado, he ran the Farm Service gas station in Easton. As a young man of about 20, he was a turret gunner during WWII and hadn't served in the Air Force long when he was shot down over the Black Forest in Germany and held in a POW camp for 18 months. He died at age 45 of a heart attack, ironically out walking in a pine woods, something he did often.

When I was a kid I could never figure out my uncle. He would do anything for me, my sister and mother, yet had not family of his own. He took me for rides on his motorcycles whenever I asked (when he died he left my Dad the neatest Moto Guzzi with a sidecar along with all his possessions.)

When we stopped at his gas station he let me sit on his stool behind the register like I was in charge, and have any of the candy I wanted from the case below, sodas out of the big red Coca Cola cooler. He had the meanest junk yard dog, Queenie, who no one got passed except him and me. The place was always filled with hangers on, tall tale tellers, local n'er do wells. The wall's covered with girlie calendars. Again I was royalty in the land of taboo. Again my mother hated the place.

The most telling letter my Dad wrote was to his Mother upon arriving in Sicily. When I read this for the first time the light went off over my head. This young tow headed, country boy who grew up in Biggs, Illinois, face to face with reality of cruelty that the world and war had to offer.

"Dear Mother -

Until last night I thought I'd seen everything but last night I went down town to pick up one of the officers and arrived a few minutes early. I noticed something lying on the sidewalk of a side street. My curiosity getting the better of me I investigated and found what was the most pathetic site I've ever seen. About 20 small boys, none over 10 years old, were huddled together sound asleep. Some were sitting on the curb leaning on the next for a pillow, and rest lying on the concrete. One little chap in particular on the end had no shoes or stockings, his trousers were legless, his shirt had no sleeves and was of flimsy material. An M.P. said they slept there every night, they had no parent and were homeless. It really reaches deep to see little children living that way. How those little boys stand it I'll never know for I was wearing heavy underwear, my woolen uniform, field jacket, heavy overcoat and was still none too warm. People back home will never realize how lucky they are."

In 1954, the year I was born, Newsweek did an article on the 10th anniversary of D-Day, and my father was one of the veterans quoted. I think the quote rivals something Yossarian might have said.

Newsweek -"It is ten years since D Day Normandy. The graves there are green but how green is our memory?"

"Sure, there were lots of bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy. Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade, even. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm. The ones that stink the worst are the guys who got internal wounds and are dead about three weeks with the blood staying inside and rotting, and when you move the body the blood comes out of the nose and mouth.
Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don't all get blue, some of them get black. But they all stunk. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn't have any more wars."
—Technical Sergeant Donald Haguall, 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration (quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War - his named spelled wrong as always.)

So said Sergeant Hagvall. No wonder he took me every where he went.

A few weeks after he passed away I had a dream that I woke up in the middle of the night to find him standing at the foot of my bed staring at me. He said, "remember all those mornings I gave you a ride to school at 7 a.m. in the morning? Well, I never really went to work after that, I stayed there all day and watched over you."

No matter how old I get, I still feel that way.

(portions from older blogs)

Swimming Naked in Greece

2010-06-15T20:30:00.030-04:00

(disclaimer - not me)

My whole purpose for being now revolves around sailing 'round the islands in Greece, and diving into into the sapphire blue water from the side of the boat for a warm water skinny dip. It all is perfectly clear now. The running, the health club, the eschewing of junk food and booze. Oh to feel fit and sleek cutting through the water. Days of sunbathing on the bow, reading book after book, punctuated by a quick dip to cool off, then more reading, more wine, more everything, and nothing.

This all started when my boss and his wife returned from the same, albeit shorter, trip where captain Thanos and the wonderful Alicia sailed you from island to island, docking at night to tour whatever city you may have reached. I always wanted to go to Greece I said, and so did tripmate, and less than a week later the reservations were all made.

The other day she admitted, if there's no one else around and the captain doesn't mind I'd like to swim naked. Yes, I said. And who cares if any one's around and I'm sure the captain won't mind because doesn't he do a "naturist" tour. ( not flora and fauna.)

Breakfast and lunch are complimentary, prepared by Alicia from whatever fresh bounty of the day she finds, artichokes, tomatoes, fig jam, fresh bread, homemade goat cheese. For dinner we are on our own to traverse the streets in search of dinner. All the beer, wine and ouzo on the boat are complimentary.

Not big on ouzo every since 35 years ago we mocked my late brother in law, the inimitable Bobby Nixon, for arranging his liquor bottles in alphabetical order. And he had every liquor known to man. What, are you suppose to drink A to Z? Well the gauntlet was thrown down, and by the time we got to O I was sicker than a dead clam in the sun. Haven't been able to drink, or even smell, ouzo since.

Berths and cabins aren't huge. It won't be like staying at the Ramada or sailing on the Carnival line. But neither of those appeal to me much anyway. To me cruise ships are like spending your vacation in a floating hotel with manufactured events and fun. I'd rather be out traipsing, meeting people, exploring, making my own fun.

First we arrive in Athens and must make a 5 hour bus trip to Levka, something which less than excited my tripmate. But I'm excited about the bus. I love staring at the window at the countryside, I enjoyed even from the JHU bus that

went from Charles Village to downtown to Bayview. I love the faces, and looking inside the houses. The gardens and stores and street hangers on. Even across the Midwest I could stare out the window for hours.

Starting to feel the life come back to me. My former mother-in-law, after both she and her husband had suffered several bouts of health problems, from emphysema to throat cancer to strokes, told me one day that if she didn't have anything to look forward to she didn't want to live. They had lived a pretty charmed life, theater and symphony people who drank and smoked when it was fashionable to do so, had parties and hosted conductors from Bernstein to Fiedler. The kids were grown and gone now, and every day was a struggle. She died about a year after that, partly I think her hope was gone.

I'm learning to sail. And soon perhaps I'll be writing and painting again. Once the momentum begins the tumblers begin to fall into place and one thing after another happens. The anticipation has begun to spread over all else.

What books will I read? How can I choose just a few to tuck away in my duffel? The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, All Soul's Rising, Pearl of China, Agent Z, Anthropology of Turquoise, Unlikely Passages. No TV, no laptop, no phone. It will be glorious.

And now, a message from my sponsor...

2010-05-28T16:38:00.051-04:00

So much has been happening, I should be over the moon. But like free-floating anxiety, which hovers out of nowhere to smack your neuroses with a ruler for no apparent reason till they cower in fear, I'm experiencing free-floating happiness. It's there, I recognize but it, but I'm not enjoying the anticipation or excitement.

It's as if I've taken mineral baths of indifference, soaked in lithium till I've flattened out all the edges. The biggest edge, the hardest edge to lose has been will. Motivation. Desire. Concern. Care.

If discipline is remembering what you want, I'm a monument to amnesia. I'm trying to figure out why by taking long naps. Playing with the computer. Watching TV. Sitting. Getting up to doing something. Sitting back down again. Immobile, passive and well, most would call it downright lazy. I have no inertia.

"Keep moving" my Mother told me when I used to suffer debilitating bouts of depression. "That's what I do in winter," she said, " when I don't feel like getting out of bed some days. Do anything, no matter how small." Just keep moving. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, I guess.

Even thinking about doing anything is exhausting and overwhelming. Organization flies around my head like a ticker tape parade. Every now and then I catch a scrap but it only emphasizes the vast number continuing to fly by untouched.

Deadwood/Calamity Jane: Every day takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.

This weekend I'm going sailing for the first time. It's something I've wanted to do forever. Now that I'm going to Greece and staying on a sailboat, I actually get the chance to see how that's going to work out. Suppose I have massive claustrophobia. This very nice guy through the Balt-Annapolis Sailing Club takes rookies out to crew, so I'm going out this weekend for a late afternoon trial run. He's a brave man. It can't be that hard to find crew so he must enjoy sharing his knowledge and passion.

I have no interest in ever owning a boat, I'd own a horse first, but the water, the wind and the sun sound like a seductive trio of sirens. Ah Greece. I'm still pinching myself over the fact that's happening. A ten day sail from the Ionian to Aegean seas, sleeping on board, breakfast & lunch, day sailing then pulling in to port in the afternoon for dinner and sightseeing.

The granddaughter is in town and I've had many soothing nights enjoying her smile and watching her sleep. I know soon she'll be gone and I won't get this chance for months. She will have changed and grown, and I'll have missed those milestones, the same way my son is missing those milestones. Her ten fingers and ten toes all attached to a healthy little chunk of heart melting protoplasm.

I'm back in touch with even more old friends via FB and had some wonderful chats and memories. Vilify or deny, I would never have stayed in touch or found many of the people who's comments and quips I've come to look forward to had it not been for FB. Waste of time?Usually. Addiction? Possibly. Substitution for human contact? Not so much.

And after my groundbreaking trip to San Francisco, my oldest BFF (i hope that means what I think it means) is coming for a visit this summer. We haven't seen each other in over ten years and then this year we'll get together twice. Stars all aligning.

What's the problem here? Looks good. Sounds good. Hell, I even fired someone recently and didn't lose much sleep over it. Is this what aging does? Is my mind/body now ready to retire just when I'm beginning to achieve some goals? Maybe prolonged periods of stress and depression have finally torpedoed my persistence into oblivion. Could it finally be whats the word whats the word whats the word the long term affects of an ever changing cocktail of anti-depressants, anti anxiety drugs and ADD meds have doused every synapse in a chemical coating of who gives a fuck?

I like to keep blaming the Lyme disease because it's existence coincides when all this started. Sort of. That, or the realization I'm probably going to be alone for the rest of my life. Used to be that was a liberating thought, a situation I sought out. Doing what you want, when you want. Until you begin to crave closeness and symmetry.

Everyone asks me why don't I go to a doctor. I have, three times, two different doctors. I knew more about the disease than they did. And all they can really do is give you a drug. And once they give you that drug and the symptoms return, they can only give it again. By then the little bacteria has wound its way through your neurological system and the damage is done. Muscle aches and fatigue are the least of my worries. The compromised engine, the driving wheel, that's where true misery lies.

What if you could never feel the bad, but also could never feel the good? What if anticipation didn't register. Outcomes and, whats the word whats the word consequences had no bite, the very definition of sociopathy. I hate to use that touchy feely word intention, however, that sizes it up. Without the intention, does outcome exist.

To summarize, good things are happening. I'm not.

Nova Trail Dogs 2010

2010-05-17T11:28:00.011-04:00

Sometimes I thought John Denver was a goof, but there are parts of the often maligned West Virginia that are almost heaven. The fact that in the middle of a cow pasture on the mountain there's a tremendous cave that goes on for a mile, or that rolling clear icy streams parallel roads that wrap and wind, snake and corkscrew up and down and back up, make it a beacon for hikers, fisherman and nature lovers.

This is where the Trail Dogs headed for the spring hike, Seneca Falls, Spruce Knob, the Sinks of Gandy, W. Va. Fourteen people, ten off leash dogs and one intrepid toddler primitive camping next to the most gorgeous mini rapids. Primitive means pack it in, pack it out, no fresh water, toilets or showers. No picnic tables, fireplace grates or even trash cans. No phone service.

Bernie, Astro, Monty, Ringo, Ernie, Austin, Brutus, May Bell, Piper and Arielus completely free to cruise and chase each other. Romp in the stream. Sniff and mooch and hump, all the things dogs like to do.

Most impressive feat, Mellie (Piper's Mom) carrying her 26 pound toddler Orren straight up a mountain and back, 4 miles total, and then do another 6 miles up Seneca Falls in the afternoon. Jim (Brutus's Dad), his son and friend did an amazing chicken and vegetables in a dutch oven over the campfire. At night a big fire, beer, Shenandoah Rebel Red, Scotch, marshallows and Alex's (Ernie's Dad) Pop Tart S'mores. Lot of wahooing from local liquored up fishermen going past.

On Sunday morning Alex led us through the mile long cave located on some guy's farm. To go all the way through meant a swim so we only went part way through, waist deep water, hanging bats, and incredible rock formations. Bernie and Astro waited outside.

Top Ten Ways The Granddaugher and I Are Alike

2010-05-02T08:21:00.009-04:00

10. We both have rolls of fat in odd places.

9. We both think it's funny when the dog licks our feet.

8. We both go to bed early and nap alot.

7. We both run hot.

6. We both smile with glee when we see a bottle.

5. We both fart alot.

4. We both are easily distracted by bright, colorful things.

3. We both don't know whether to laugh or cry when we first wake up.

2. We both have lots of clothes but don't really care what we have on.

1. We are both apt to be wearing whatever we are eating.

For the hoards

2010-04-29T10:40:00.025-04:00

My daughter fears I'm becoming one of those hoarder people, lots of stuff coming in, not a lot going out. Not to mention the fact my house has been in a despicable state of disrepair for over 10 years with no attempts in sight to change.

(this is not my house - it is the house of the Collyer Brothers)

When something breaks, I just learn to do without it if I can't fix it myself. I have trust issues with handymen and contractors, the few attempts I did make were either costly i.e. I felt like i got screwed or non responsive, they never showed up, or required more supervision than I could spare. No storage in the house also make it appear bursting at the seams. Not a single closet. And then there was bringing stuff from my Mom's house which she had carefully tended all those years (see Mom below.)

Time and inclination to do the work myself? Not going to happen. Oh, maybe a few years ago before life put me through the wringer, but not now. It's not that I don't wish I had a nice house, I do. Somewhere along the line there was a massive disconnect between me staying organized and managed, to not caring where things landed. When I was home with the kids I was a neat freak, I cleaned and organized all the time. I couldn't stand disarray. Picked up a sock the before it hit the floor. I was a Nazi for paying bills, and answering letters and staying up to date with everything. But now I haven't sent Christmas out for five years, even though I buy them every year. I have a nice collection.

I read Homer and Langley by EL Doctorow, hoping it would shed some light. It didn't. It was a little disappointing compared to much of his work, not as fleshed out and thorough as usual, not rich with detail. In fact the Wikipedia description is almost better reading. The Collyers were the first celebrity hoarders, two affluent brothers who collected junk rather than conduct civil lives.

In the book, Doctorow has Langley attempting to compile the one all encompassing volume of world news, hence the bundles of newspapers. Many items were inventions, tinkerings or fits of fancy. Nothing of true value or purchased new, but items foraged from the trash. These weren't trappings of the wealthy. They didn't buy clothes or food, and in the end did away with electricity and their phone.

Why couldn't they part with things, and how was it they didn't see the heaps around them? Well Homer was blind. And Langley was the converse of Howard Hughes, obsessively a mess. They both died in their house buried under their piles. There were newspaper tunnels and booby traps made of trash to safeguard the other trash from thieves. In fact one such booby trap fell on Homer and killed him as he was trying to help Langley under another pile.

Nothing was ever discarded.

Spring ahead to my Mother, who also never discarded anything. Those ringing words: this might come in handy some day, it'll do till you get a better one, and, do you know what this costs if you have to buy one. The original Rosie the reuser, renewer and recycler. The generation who lived through The Depression and really did know a time when there was no food, no clothes, no money, no toys, no toiletries. When we thought we had our Mother's housed cleaned out, we mustered the courage to look in the attic. It was mind numbing for such a tiny house. Boxes of mason jars, xmas ornaments, stacks of clothes, dozens of purses, frames, old games, crates of dishes.

What is spawning a new generation of hoarders? I can only speak for myself, but I have a few theories which give me sustenance from this practice. Schopenhauer via Zevon, if you buy a book you think you are also buying the time to read it. (The Collyers had over 25,000 books) So no matter what you buy, watercolors, yarn to knit, plants to landscape, pots & pans to cook, you think you are also acquiring the time to actually do all those things one day.

And then there's the hypomaniacal mind which runs a thousand miles ahead into the future dragging my checkbook and credit cards with it. Can you say delusions of grandeur? There's a modicum of control when I go out and gather things which temporarily make me happy, bring them home and wedge them into my tiny hope chest house, waiting for the day I become samurai gardener, chef, musician, artist, writer, builder.

"All told, police and workmen removed 130 tons of garbage from the Collyer brownstone. The salvageable items fetched less than $2,000 at auction; the cumulative estate of the Collyer brothers was valued at $91,000 (about $1.2M in 2008 dollars), of which $20,000 worth was personal property (jewelry, cash, securities, and the like).[6]

Items removed from the house included baby carriages, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child's chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, the chassis of the old Model T with which Langley had been tinkering, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, 14 pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old. Near the spot where Homer died, police also found 34 bank account passbooks, with a total of $3,007.18 (about $40,000 in 2008 dollars)."

I've no newspapers or magazines, they are going the way of the dinosaur anyway. I do have three cats and a dog, a piano, snowshoes, two guitars, a mandolin, a box of 1920's sheet music, grandpa's shotgun, a treadle sewing machine, hurricane lamps, enough rhinestone jewelry to bring back burlesque. I'm on my way.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

San Francisco - The Cavalry Rides Again

2010-04-11T12:08:00.036-04:00

The friend I've known the longest - since third grade - is hardly the one I've seen the most through out my life. But we have a connection which allows us to pick up where we left off with ease and comfort fortified by our years of lengthy letter writing.

To me LJ always appears as the cavalry, dialed up to 11 and ready to make an adventure should one not be obvious. It was like that in grade school too. Always upbeat, always curious, always ready to go. She never fails to cheer me. How else could she and her husband lived in Tokyo, Sofia, Santiago and traveled to more placed than I could ever name.

The last cavalry run was when I was in Springfield, 1998 maybe, staying with my Mom but there to spend New Year's Eve with an old beau. He was a retro bate in a long line of questionable men, and invariably we got in a fight and he stood me up that night. Oh, did I mention we also had about 3 feet of snow, enough to shut down even Springfield and cancel my flight? So I'm moping around with Mom when LJ and T arrive with supplies to take me out on a quest to find an open bar.

Funny that when a town shuts down due to weather, a bar somewhere always remains open. We had a ball driving around in blizzard conditions and finally arriving as practically the only patrons in the establishment. I laughed all night. I'll never forget them for that.

So on the cusp of my 56 birthday, unlucky in love and contemplating my existence with a vengeance, I head to SanFran to finally visit LJ (unfortunately T in Afghanistan near my son as coincidences go.) It's been 10 years I've been threatening to visit, I'm sure she'd given up on me.

I had a ball. More fun than a barrel of bare assed monkeys. Happier than a clam in a jar of gin. She had planned for me a jam packed 4 days, but even activities not on the agenda, like the feral cat snatch and repeated parking searches, were fun.

First up to the Ferry Building where we attended the Saturday morning of West Coast Live with guests Anchee Min, Walter Mosley, and Olympia Dukakis. Traipsing the farmer's market where I so wanted to buy groceries. On to the Mission District, where I bought my daughter a luchadores (Mexican wrestling) mask to get back at her for when I asked if I could bring her something and she said, "like what? a t-shirt that says San Francisco." To Roosevelts for tamales.

Christ, I can't begin to tell you all the places we drove. We went to the Haight and the Castro. The Castro on Easter morning when the residents replete with bonnets and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were all in fine feather. Sutro Tower and Twin Peaks. At our side most of the time was Gus, the dog with the treat on his nose captivating gay men all over SF. It's a pretty doggie town, yes my shirt does say, "Dogs are the new kids."

To Yoshis, a small jazz venue, to see Habib Koite and Bamada and imbibe these wonderful Dear Ruby grapefruit martinis (I had two, I could have had twenty.) Our seats were so near the stage I swore LJ must have given someone a blow job to get them. As I was leaving the ladies restroom I looked up and thought, geez, there's goes Bonnie Raitt into the bathroom. Sure enough she sat behind us and later took the stage. LJ thanked her as she left. And you are right Bonnie, they are the tightest band I've heard in a long time.

We ate out -- the Citrus Club for big bowls of noodles when the weather got drizzly and cold. The Massawa in Haight Asbury for Ethiopian grub. Calzone's for Italian across from the City Lights Bookstore. The Blue Plate for my birthday dinner. The Chenery where it was kid's night in a fine dining restaurant, and the Beach Chalet on the Pacific. All the time this reminding of the letters LJ used to write when she traveled, so detailed and descriptive that I felt like I had been there too.

For the true SF experience, we went with her neighbors to see Beach Blanket Babylon, a 30 years stage fixture which updates with the times featuring burlesque staging, campy songs and the largest headpieces I've ever seen. And yes, everyone there seems to have medical reasons for marijuana. The neighbors reminded me of being back in college, it was that kind of clique, and nicer people they could not have been. I'm not surprised that LJ & T would have good neighbors and a sense of community no matter where they were.

One thing that did surprise me was that LJ is so organized and such a neat freak. The house was gorgeous and immaculate. I left inspired to do better when I got home. I also got to see her brother's house, a real stunner, overlooking the city, and decorated with similar sensibilities that I remember from his room when he was a teen. Then he had a barber's chair, this time, movie seats.

The light there is incredible, with a clarity and brightness unlike the East Coast or Midwest. Maybe because it's closer to the sun, or maybe because of the Ocean. It pulls you out of the house, out of yourself, and laser focuses on the rest of the world.

On the last day I walked down Mission St as far as I could from Excelsior to about 14th St., past the Lucky Pork Market, The Knockout Lounge (good till the last round,) a restaurant for every South American country, and I guess near a porno studio but I didn't know it at the time. I canoodled in independent bookstores, a rather sad state of affairs actually, window shopped a tempting antique emerald necklace and earrings, got cake at the Lelienda's Wedding Cake shop, and admired the fresh seafood at the Market of Manila.

I can't forget to mention the basement suite I had to myself, or rather with Barney the cat, with the comfiest bed I've ever slept in looking out at her Zen Garden. Some days after lunch I dreamed of crawling into that bed at night.

The Goodwill in the Castro was like shopping on Rodeo Drive. Thank God I had limited room in my suitcase or I could have done some real damage there. And the plants, Jesus, the plants... big full blooms, day glo orange poppies, translucent succulents, calla lilies like white chenille bathrobes. Their azaleas already in bloom.

The feral cat snatch, well, that's another story.

1969

2010-03-22T19:54:00.015-04:00

KILL THIS BILL OR WE'LL SHOOT THIS DOG!

I watched a rather mediocre movie the other night, 1969, which I had never seen before. It was written by Ernest Thompson who wrote, On Golden Pond, and it starred Kiefer Sutherland and Robert Downey Jr., two recent high school grads trying to avoid the draft.

The draft. Now there was an issue where the government was truly in your life. I was 15 in 1969 but I do remember many neighborhood boys waiting out the lottery. A couple not coming home. My older sister nervously waiting to see if her boyfriend would get a high or low number since he was about to flunk out of college. Every decision required courage: enlisting, being drafted, going to Canada. After the Democratic Convention and Kent State, protesting required courage.

So as the teabaggers all get there panties in a bunch about A Health Care Policy designed to help people, not kill our young people or people on a foreign soil, I wonder where the fervor is for the two wars in which we are still engaged. There were minor protests the other day on the 7th anniversary of Iraq, but not the same group protesting against health care. Anything to improve the lives of people from the rabbit hole that is health insurance (or lack thereof) should be applauded, or at least encouraged.

I think reinstating the Draft might be the action which would galvanize both right and left against it. Of course the draft will never return, unless there would be a way to guarantee that white, middle and upper middle class kids wouldn't go, regardless of their politics. But no one will ever let this imposer on personal freedoms return, unless it was a really "good war." Why do I think their infringement on personal freedoms as infringement on selfishness. Nixon and Johnson probably illegally wiretapped more people than the FBI, the Patriot Act propagated by W. (and that pinched doughboy of a donkey penis Karl Rove who has weaseled back on the public scene.) Any protest for those?

Somehow I feel that the right isn't really about losing freedoms to government control. When I listen to WBAL's right wing Ron Smith, which I often do to further increase my blood pressure while driving home, I'm struck the that same people who supported W. and his war, patriotism, all that jazz, are now against Obama and the war in Afghanistan. The program whips it's listeners into a reactionary hate orgy. It reminds me of the old SNL skit with Buck Henry trying to get listeners to call in to his radio program. He keeps adding inflammatory issues to a very non issue and eventually has the topic:

How 'bout this? "Killing Puppies -- It Doesn't Bother Me" ... That's me, Frank Noland, and I LIKE dead puppies! Frankly, I'm totally in favor of using federally supported municipal bonds to pay for forced busing of Soviet Communists to come into your homes to kill your puppies! Give me a call, won't you? The lines are open. Tell ME what you think about it. [lights his cigarette, mumbles to himself] Dead, mangled puppies ... I like 'em ...

Health care, coming into your home to kill your puppies.

Handicapping the AA's

2010-03-04T09:01:00.013-05:00

Avatar. That's about it for what I've seen. No Inglorious Basterds, no Up, no Single Man or Serious Man, no Up in the Air, no Crazy Heart. I don't like the expanded field of 10. Why not just put all movies released in 2009 on the ballot. When you narrow a field of nominees there is always the possibility of wrong choices. But doubling the field then allows weaker choices.

Up is in two Best categories. That hardly seems fair.

I like Jeff Bridges a lot, but isn't Crazy Heart just Tender Mercies only not as good? I like Ryan Bingham so he can win for Best Song. I was surprised Tobey Maguire wasn't nominated for Brothers. Didn't see it either but the trailers looked phenomenal.

And The Blindside? Didn't see it, but very leery of Sandra Bullock in a feel good movie. Her Erin Brockovich take me seriously film.

Didn't see Invictus, District 9, Precious, or An Education. What the hell have I been watching? The first three all reminded me of movies I'd seen in the past. That's what happens when you get old. It takes a lot to impress me. I have no idea of what An Education is about.

My personal hope is that Hurt Locker beats the pants off everything. I didn't see it either but would love the student to one up the teacher with far less money, and glad a woman is making movies that aren't immediately recognizable as directed by a woman. There has yet to be a movie about our current war that anyone has bothered to see. Plus Kathryn Bigelow raises horses.

Through the Looking Glass

2010-02-25T18:20:00.032-05:00

Bad enough I've failed at dating these past ten years. It seems I'm really a miserable wretch at online dating too. I never really warmed to the idea, anything with money involved up front seems like prostitution of some type.

Judging people based on writing is always a mixed bag. If it was foolproof, I wouldn't have hired some of the boneheads I hired who looked stellar on paper. It does however separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to spelling and grammar. Perhaps that's petty on my part but I look at that stuff. It's the editor in me. And petty is probably one of the many reasons I suck at online dating.

When you first enter the water like chum, all the sharks look you over. Mainly you hear from the ones you don't want to hear from, the ones who make you shriek when you open their photos. Or being discovered by the guy who used to stalk me when I worked in Towson. He found me on a couple sites, made me a favorite. I guess he thought the statue of limitations had run out on leave me the fuck alone. My skin stills crawls.

The ones I sent icebreakers to I never heard from again. In fact, very few write anything at all, leading me to wonder if this can work when a majority of the opposite sex have communication issues. I heard from a guy in San Jose who wrote a very nice note. I answered and never heard from him again. Then there was a guy from Michigan who moved to Montana. Also never heard from him again because he wanted someone willing to move to Montana (I guess right away.) A couple kind of hermit types with really long beards i.e. ZZ Top. A few who had never married. You know there are Peter Pan issues there.

There seems to be a sense of urgency to some, don't ask me to marry you on the first date but by the third all bets are off. One guy, also out West, stated, too, if you aren't planning on moving out here to be with me don't read any further. Others just look at your profile over and over again, the voyeur or the indecisive. A few maybe want to engage in keyboard sex, like phone sex but your hands aren't free.

Some give info about themselves which they shouldn't: nasty custody stuff, if you have a cat don't go any further, former fussy eater, living with my ex, working at Chucky Cheese, like a home cooked meal, they call me lone wolf, must be thin, must be voluptuous, must be thin and voluptuous.

There was the guy 12 years younger than me who was "into" sensuous older women who wanted to explore boundaries with a talented younger man. He worked at a non described job which took him from DC to London to Hong Kong and had a rather stilted command of the language. When I made a reference to "Last Tango in Paris," he didn't seem to get the connection.

How old are these photos? Should separated people be dating? Are they all really athletic and toned? Do they know what that means? John Adams seems to be the book all men have read. Lots of former Marines. And sailors. Overused phrases: soulmate, people tell me I look better than my photo, younger than my photo, captain seeking firstmate, lovely lady, life is a journey, needle in a haystack, better half, cuddly teddy bear, walks on beaches.

I think there's lots to be said for face to face chemistry, as Ellen Barkin said to Al Pacino in Sea of Love, I believe in "this," with a snap of her fingers.

Probably will take my profiles down soon. The longer you are out there the more loser you look. Or forgetful, which also looks loser.

Thanks God I have Bernie the dog and my 37" Vizio TV, and lots and lots of books.

"I like wherever I am. That's my big secret."

2010-02-21T08:03:00.009-05:00

Sun glorious sun. I knew when I ordered those snowshoes that the bad weather would go running. While sitting in ordering all sorts of crap online-- a new TV, CDs, face preserver-- I decided that if Baltimore is going to become the snow capitol I was going to start stocking up on Canadian staples: snowshoes, toboggan, ice chipper. That begs the question though, do I want to stay or want to go?

One of my doctors recommended I move to a location which didn't have winter since I basically lost 6 months out of the year with mega-SAD. Moving is a big pain in the ass. Not just the physical moving but new doctors, new stores, new job, new friends, being lost for a couple years. But he's right. When the sun is out I'm golden. While in San Diego I walked around like I was high thinking, God I feel good, God I feel good. Does everyone feel like this? Is there something in the water? No matter everyone moves to California. The sun evaporates your brain till everything left is superficial. When I'm in the Caribbean my mind rolls with, how can i stay here how can I stay here. Sort of like, where can I get my next fix.

Travel is my only option for now. Heading to SanFran finally to see my oldest bud in the world. (The oldest meaning the one I've known the longest-- since third grade-- which would make it 40 some years. My oldest friend will be 101 in May.) After that maybe Key West. My daughter is headed to Ecuador.

Till I move, or sail away, I'll have to stick with Warren's advice.

Blizzard is a state of mind

2010-02-10T11:33:00.015-05:00

It's frightening the way the snow is coming down, has been coming down, this week. Reverse Haiti only instead of rumbling from below, death pouring from above. Global warming (yes folks, storms get worse not warmer. weather swings to extremes) or God's revenge on Pat Robertson. But I'm 55 and I've never seen anything like this. It's like Montana or Idaho, yet the poor Olympics in Vancouver can't seem to get a snow break.

My house should be spotless with all the days off but I'm as paralyzed as everything else. Watching and waiting takes all my time. Finally they've banned all but emergency traffic in Baltimore City. It's time they got tough on morons out driving and getting stuck, endangering others.

Probably 5 to 6 feet by the time it's done. My old house has stood for 150+ years, but actually it's the newer added on structures which I fear might collapse. Will there be a rumble before something collapses so I'll have time to rescue the muffins and cats? Or will the roof just fall with no warning? Daughter has left me alone with the cats and dog. So far no power loss. That will probably happen tonight when it's dark and cold.

Drinking wine leftover from last night and heating Chinese leftovers for breakfast. I took the little dog out earlier and now he wants to go again but my poor face is so wind chapped I don't know if I can bear it. He must be part St. Bernard. He comes in with so many ice balls on his under carriage that he looks like he's wearing a clown suit. Would spraying his underside with PAM keep them off?

Red wine gone!!!! Forced to drink the champagne I didn't open for New Year's. Maybe finally watch the last episodes of The Wire. I wish I could walk up the street and shoot pool with someone. Things to buy before next year: toboggan, snow suit, space heater, jumper cables, new snow shovel.

We make plans, God snows

2010-02-06T11:21:00.022-05:00

Last night on the cusp of the Blizzard of 2010 here in Merrytown we walked to The Rec Room Billiards to practice pool and watch the blast unwind. It didn't seem too bad at 6:30 when we started out. Not too many people in Towson. We played on the hourly tables, daughter and I, then moved to the per game table in the front window to quaff a beer and enjoy a burger. Two bold but questionably bright young men befriended us, mostly to hit on daughter, and we had the pleasure of playing doubles. One of the guys was pretty darn good and we got some pointers and coaching. The other was pretty full of himself, I mean they did approach a girl AND HER MOTHER. Does this really work for you, she asked.

They finally headed out to HiTopps and we trudged home, snowing harder, more foot traffic than vehicle traffic. Daughter headed out to sled after that, and I headed to bed. This morning of my God. It may not officially be the storm of the century, 2003 still holds that record of 28", but we are getting close. Little dog ran out the door, jumped off the porch and disappeared. He fears the white death.

Over two feet of snow, finally the experience of living in Montana, and the nostalgia of growing up in the Midwest. A friend is making tunnels for his daughter. I remember the tunnels, the igloos, the snow forts we'd make. I put a snowball in the freezer.

Today it's still snowing, presumably till 10 p.m. I'm enjoying every one's blizzard photos. No one is going anywhere. I hope nothing essential collapses. I fear the power will go off at any time. My business is closed today, and probably tomorrow. Who knows when it will ever be open, and if we'll ever dig out. More snow coming Wed/Thurs. Little dog already has cabin fever.

The temptation is to cook, and eat. Not good after a ten pound holiday. A great time to whip the house into shape. Catch up on all those little things that usually I have the excuse "I don't have time for" just so I don't have to do them. But something meditative drifts over from the snow event and makes me feel like sitting, staring, contemplating.

Lately I've had lots of negative feedback, personal rejection, causes for self doubt and low self worth. The storm has just whirled around my motivation level pulling it down down down. It's snowing harder. Snowing and blowing. Screw all those people who don't find me as fascinating as I find me. It's snowing where they are too.

So much snow it's hard to walk outside. It is reaching dangerous levels, for driving, for the weight of the wet snow, for overburdened tree branches. The poor birds chirping to be fed. Lately between the online dating, or not dating, and the weather, and my ever nagging need for a change, I've been thinking a great deal about what I want, and why. I got a bit of good advice prior to the online dating, be specific. At first I thought, gee, perhaps that rules out some very good things I would have never have considered. But it didn't. It put in my path considerations which should have never been considerations in the first place.

I'll be doing an entire post on online dating. Back to the snow. Bigger flakes. More blowing. And it's cold outside. Time to reclaim my drishti.

Bizarre twisted reach of the Internet

2010-02-04T07:54:00.012-05:00

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about my Father during World War II and his experiences in Graves Registration. I mentioned a Newsweek article in which he was quoted in 1954 with his last name spelled incorrectly. Someone referenced that misspelled name and hit my blog site. Odd I thought. So I googled my Dad's misspelled name, and to my amazement his crude little quote was famous!

Here's the quote in its George Romero entirety with the parts Newsweek politely removed:

Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don't all get blue, some of them get black. But they all stunk. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn't have any more wars."

—Technical Sergeant Donald Haguall, 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration (quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War)

Yes, he's quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War, Phillip Knightley's The First Casualty, Webster's Guide to American History, "44 in Combat from Normandy to Ardennes.

From these, the little-quote-that-could spun out to an unlikely group of websites: archaeology, military strategy, battlefields, legal, grief, LOTS of antiwar sites (domestic and international,) dozens of blogsites, a New York sports fan site????, and a Corvette???? website. I have not found yet, but expect to, a horror movie website or an anatomy site.

My father was a simple man with a great imagination and vivid descriptive abilities. He might possibly have been a writer. When he did communicate it could be powerful or very funny with his own unique twist. I don't know what he would have made out of the use of his quote. There were no high concept intentions. It was his life day to day during the war and it made him cling to his family and friends, seek solace in nature, and live simply.

But most of all, my Father was honest and spoke his mind. Over and over the relatives said, "you always know where you stand with Don. He tells you exactly what he thinks." No military censor or political cover up. Be it war or natural disaster, what he meant was what he said -- scraping up dead bodies is awful business.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Zevon - Jan. 24

2010-01-09T18:53:00.029-05:00

As novelist and screenwriter Tom McGuane recalls, “I kept wanting to say to him, ‘Take your hat off and let your brain cool down. You just need to cool it a little bit’ . . . . But that was his style, everything dialed up to ten.”

Legendary songwriter and musician Warren Zevon unsurprisingly ranks as one of Dylan's favorites. Dylan notes the songs "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and "Boom Boom Mancini" as "down hard stuff," adding, "'Join me in L.A.' sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he's classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they're all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician's musician, a tortured one. 'Desperado Under the Eaves.' It's all in there."

Mr. Springsteen has described Mr. Zevon as writing about ''the good, the bad and the ugly'' and called him ''a moralist in cynic's clothing.''

All this time, marriage kids & all, he has been the voice to which I always turn.

"...And if California slides into the ocean/As the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/Until I pay my bill." Best. Couplet. Ever.

He's been a Confederate soldier, a psychopathic ex-Catholic carpet salesman, and Philip Habib, President Carter's envoy to the Middle East. He's been on the run from werewolves, the Securities Exchange Commission, President Woodrow Wilson, and an assortment of overly amorous women. Warren Zevon is a Crusader, a stage magician, Joseph of Aramathea, and a sexual masochist with low self-esteem.

They were terse, action-packed, gallows-humored tales that could sketch an entire screenplay in four minutes and often had death as a punch line. But vulnerability and longing were also in Mr. Zevon's ballads...

To be blessed with humanity, mucho musical chops, AND a criminally literate mind is truly one of God's great gifts.

Warren Zevon is a poet. He has written more classics than any other musician of our time, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan. ... He is also a crack shot with a .44 magnum and an expert on lacrosse -- which we also watched while we worked. He went wild when Princeton beat Syracuse for the NCAA Championship on Sunday.

He disappeared in the middle of the night, still without sleep -- saying he was headed to Indianapolis to write a song with Colts owner James Irsay, who just returned from buying Kerouac's original manuscript of "On The Road" for $2.43 million at Christie's Auction House in New York. Irsay is another one of Warren's heroes. Warren is a profoundly mysterious man, and I have learned not to argue with him, about hockey or anything else. He is a dangerous drinker, and a whole different person when he's afraid.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

In an era of lava lamp soft rock and SoCal slickness, Zevon paraded his renegade outlaw act loaded with irony, wit and literary heft.

Behind Mr. Zevon's stoic baritone, the music changed with its central instrument. His piano songs suggested marches, hymns and the harmonies of Aaron Copland, while his guitar songs connected rock, Celtic and country music

Zevon seldom lived inside reasonable lines, but he did not blame his difficulties on others. That alone makes him highly unusual among modern men, and a singular case among rock-and-rollers. His response to that life was to write songs mixing humor with disappointment and sarcasm with gratitude, which is surely the most honest reaction to life that any man can have.

"As someone who abused the privilege for a long time, I'd like to say, it's good to be alive."

"I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that didn't pay off."

Letterman comments to Rolling Stone about his meeting with Zevon at his dressing room after the show. "After the show, it was heartbreaking -he was in his dressing room, and we were talking and this and that. Here's a guy who had months to live and we're making small talk," Letterman said. "And as we're talking, he's taking his guitar strap and hooking it, wrapping it around, then he puts the guitar into the case and he flips the snaps on the case and says, "Here, I want you to have this, take good care of it."

"And I just started sobbing. He was giving me the guitar that he always used on the show. I felt like, "I can't be in this movie, I didn't get my lines." That was very tough."

"Went over to Ryan’s. Later in the evening I got stuck in the elevator — Fire Dept. had to come. Not as much fun as it sounds.”

One of the most acute and savagely satiric songwriters of his era...

"Hide the porn, son, hide the porn."

Warren Zevon was a big fan of Doctor Faustus; he thought the Thomas Mann tome was “the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll novel.” But if he himself cooked up any deals with the baddest of Mr. Bad Examples, he got sold short.

"No," he says quickly. "It's not just the karma. The Tao says, 'Old men like being old and young men like being young. And good is good, and bad is good too.' As my father used to say in his late 80s, 'It's all good.' But I don't get depressed. I don't know." He raises his teacup. "I'm insane. I'm fucked up. I have problems. But I don't get depressed and I don't get bored."

Zevon is an acquired taste, like sloe gin ... or capital punishment.

Warren Zevon has known from the start that hell is where they play rock & roll. In this, as well as in his romanticism, he resembles the great eighteenth century poet William Blake: "Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy."

Warren Zevon openly defied the "muy sensitive" stereotype of the L.A. singer/songwriter. Literate, satiric, violence-obsessed, funny as hell, piano-pounding, equally capable of deranged rock-outs and beautifully sustained melodies:

"Regrets are so far from reality. Would

I like to tell someone, 'Look, if you don't

want to die at 55, you might not want to

smoke for 30 years'? Sure. I'm a living

example of that. But this is my life, these

were my choices. I lucked out big time because

I got to be the most (expletive)-up rock

star on the block, at least on my block,

and then I got to be a sober dad for 18

years. I've had two very full lives."

"I'm the rockabilly Ibsen in Norway"

I like wherever I am. That's my big secret."

"I suppose on some deep and profound

level, the evening would seem incomplete to

me without three minutes of howling."

"The moon has a face

And it smiles on the lake

And causes the ripples in Time

I'm lucky to be here, with someone I like

Who maketh my spirit to shine"

Good Bye Tallulah, Don't Leave Me

2010-01-08T19:28:00.000-05:00

The friend I've known the longest in Baltimore is moving away after 15 years. The Bert to my Ernie, the Heckle to my Jeckle, the Natty to my Boh. My dear Tallulah, like a sister, a daughter, and if I was bi, probably another person she would have dated.

We met at work as my marriage was dissolving and I was desperately in need of a fellow marauder with razor wit, acid tongue, tough as nails, fun as monkeys, tolerated no fools unless they were drop dead gorgeous or good in the sack. Despite our age difference we seemed to have similar sensibilities and appetites.

She taught me to always check driver's licenses to make sure they were legal and hadn't lied about their height. She introduced me to the Rendezvous, the original Rendezvous, where we spent many afternoons, evenings and late late nights, dodging and deflecting tawdry advances, discussing books, or shooting the shit with the bartenders. When the trolls wouldn't leave me alone she'd pretend we were a couple. When one poor guy still didn't get it she laser leveled him with a single line. I was too nice, she said.

We cowered in awe of Captain Kangaroo together. I held her hair when she puked on Martini night, helped her move about five times. We watched each other's cats and I marveled in the older days that not one inch of her apt floor was visible. She'd call drunk from Puxatawney, Pa. where she went to celebrate her favorite holiday, Ground hog's Day.

My best New Year's Eve party was her worst New Year's Eve party yet the two strands of that night wrapped together like some comic opera. After that we would spend New Year's Eve together in the seediest, emptiest bar we could find with the nastiest bartender in the world who she still respected because he was the only one that ever cut her off.

She made great beer, was a helluva cook, a partner in crime, crocheted me stuff, watched my kids grow up, left entire soliloquies on my answering machine. Okay so she's just up the the road a couple hours, but damn Sam, it's still hard to say goodbye.

Year of Living Fearlessly

2010-01-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

I feel a change is gonna come. People are leaving me, my son, his wife, my granddaughter, my good friend. My son is a big one because he will be in Afghanistan so I can't hop a plane and see him whenever I choose. My granddaughter will change drastically even though it may be only a few months till I see her again.

But, I found out that a former neighbor of mine, who I thoughtlessly assumed was dead because I had been out of touch with her for so long, is still alive and around 100. I will see her soon.

I talked to another friend I hadn't seen in ages and remembered how dear she was, especially considering the horrible tragedy that befell her several years ago. People come and go out of life. I must be careful not to miss any of them.

Fearless isn't necessarily performing brave and daring feats. It will be staying honest and on track with what I want to do in spite of the daily house cat humdrum. I've become very complacent the past sixth months, which oddly isn't the way my mind runs. My mind is a washing machine of thoughts, a constant churning out of, I should do this, I would like to do that, buy that, make this, write that, clean this. The thoughts never make it down to the extremities lately. Restlessness sets in. Dissatisfaction. Never wanted to be a house cat.

My resolutions I made rather tongue in cheek, even though they are real and have been compounding for a few years. The main thing I realize is how much I miss being able to have friends over without scaring them that I live in a crack house, or without them banging their head on the low hanging ceiling when they use the bathroom in the basement. I have no closets in which to hang their coats.

Long, long ago we use to have a party every couple months. A big one. Every weekend we had friends over. Friends and photos. Being married to a photographer our life was very well documented and displayed. We had themed parties. And unthemed parties. Parties where we knew everyone, and knew no one. And when we didn't have parties, we went to parties.

One friend called me Zelda. I was quite partial to the House Rules the Fitzgeralds posted at their house that I had a copy over my desk. It reads in part:

"Visitors are requested not to break down doors in search of liquor, even when authorized to do so by the host and hostess. Weekend guests are respectfully notified that the invitations to stay over Monday issued by the host and hostess during the small hours of Sunday morning must not be taken seriously."

It was a good New Year's. I saw old friends. I got to see my son's best man and former bunkie at Ft Drum who is a sweetest, nicest guy and why not, he's from Illinois. Friends of my daughters. New in laws. My dog even got to spend time with his brother, close as clams as they romped and growled and chased.

Bring it on 2010, or whatever it is you call yourself. I'm ready.

Baby It's Cold Outside

2009-12-30T11:06:00.000-05:00

Nothing underlines cold like trying to canter in an unheated arena. I could have sworn my back and leg joints were made of ice and likely to shatter at any moment. The horse was fluid, I was granite. Today I am stiff and in need of some hot yoga.

On the subject of cold climates, i heard from a Hagvall in Sweden via FB. It was so very cool (excuse the pun.) Thank God he speaks English at least better than I speak Swedish. Hagvall, he says, is not a common name and the only ones he is aware of are his family, some cousins, and someone in Stockholm. His brother has been researching the family name back to the 17th century so I'm very excited to ask him what he's found.

Off for a couple days to hopefully visit with my family before they head back to Tennessee, and then my son to Afghanistan, and to begin setting my house in order. Dog and cats all concur it's cold outside by curling in tight balls and pretending to hibernate.

While hunkered in from the cold I have a movie to recommend if you've never seen it during one of PBS' frequent fundraisers. It's Alone in the Wilderness, about a man named Richard Proenneke, who decides to live alone in Alaska for a year in a cabin he cuts the trees for and builds himself with simple tools. Based on his journals and footage shot with an 8 mm camera, he lives a dream so many have, not to be at odds with the world but content with only one's own thoughts and company. It's an Into the Wild from the 70's only with a mature, well contemplated result.

So what have I done? Another year over and a new one begun. 2009 was better than 2008 which will go down in the sucking year hall of fame. The only true negative was the Lyme disease. I do believe my brain has been compromised. I'm having problems with short term memory more than just the regular growing old forgetfulness which has alarmed both me and my daughter. Even bigger problems with sore, aching joints in my knees and hips which come and go, but are staying longer each time. Kate graduated, Aubrey arrived, Bernie joined us. All good stuff.

"Determined" will be the watchword for 2010. And no, I'm not worried about what we will call the new year. We had a customer at the store very concerned about this and decided that President Obama should set the standard for how we refer to 2010. Poor man's got a shitload on his plate, now this. What does it matter when I'll continue to write 2009 on checks for at least four months. Checks will probably be obsolete soon anyway.

Now I have two friends who can perform my marriage. This is incentive to try online dating again. Nietzsche says something about overcoming danger by moving forward to it. I'm partial to this guy who retired and moved to Montana to raise gaited horses and cattle, something he'd dreamed of during all his years of teaching in Michigan. However in all honesty, I don't like the cold. The isolation is appealing.

The smell of burning wood...

2009-12-28T17:31:00.001-05:00

Walking through the cold blustery nights, the smell of burning wood from nearby homes smells like life long ago, smells like old comfort, smells like walking on forever.

Neatest Gift Ever

2009-12-27T09:09:00.000-05:00

A wonderful Christmas for me is no errands, no expectations, frequent naps alternated with frequent glasses of red wine, and lots of laughter with family or friends. All families are dysfunctional to some degree, I think that's the definition of family, but nothing is better when all that dysfunction comes together to laugh at and with the farcical situations it often creates.

The fact i spent Christmas eve with my ex husband, his wife's family, our kids and four dogs was a good starter. I arrived to their house late after working that day then rushing home to spend three hours wrapping gifts, only to find my ex had turned on the wrong oven and failed to cook the ham. My son landed, on its maiden flight, his new Brookstone helicopter on the frozen roof at 10 p.m. and tried to climb out a second floor window to retrieve it. Then you begin strolling down memory lane recalling fuck ups and stupidity of years gone by.

I received some great gifts. A really good bottle of wine from a friend (of which I'll have to get more.) Two great framed photos, one of Bernie the dog 11x17 black and white, and one of my son and his family, taken by my ex who still has a good eye. A GC to Record & Tape to replace some of my long lost CDs. Another GC from my employees to my beloved yoga classes. A gorgeous sexy scarf from my boss from some foo foo DC place.

But the WOW, I'm completely knocked over gift was a signed poster of Dylan Moran. Who is Dylan Moran you ask? He's this Irish comedian that embodies all the contempt, rudeness,and irascibility that retail booksellers around the world must feel via his signature character Bernard L. Black, for whom my dog is named. Bernard Black expels customers from his store with a bullhorn and a broom to take his noon wine break. He makes Basil Fawlty almost seem civil.

Moran isn't too far off his character's mark. His live performances are staged with an ever present glass of wine. He's not fond of Americans, modern technology, rap music, or idiots. He tries to steer clear of anything computer related until every device can be combined into one that he can cram up his ass for the total cyber experience. He is not politically correct. He smokes. His hair is never combed.

I understand he doesn't like to sign things. There's a several month wait to get his signature on anything because, he doesn't like to sign things. So imagine my awe when my assistant manager found a shop in England with a 2008 poster that the shopkeeper had Moran sign after a concert. I don't collect signatures, in fact this is my only one. It's a beaut. The anger in every pen stroke as some jerk shopkeeper from London asks for his autograph so he can sell it overseas to some Yank.

Whenever I'm feeling in need of a laugh I pop in a few episodes of Black Books and vicariously abuse customers and obliviously fail basic retail duties. It's not only a comedy but a fantasy. So with one squiggle on a paper I have a tenuous connection to the hero of my working life. The only ultimate homage other than to frame it would be to sit a wine glass on it and let it spill.

As I count my blessings on Christmas Day

2009-12-25T07:46:00.002-05:00

I avoided getting a dog for ten years, but sometimes life puts in your way what you need at the time and it's up to you to let go and make that leap of faith. The dog gets me up and moving in the morning, and that's the first critical step in breaking the cycle of depression. Once my brain is allowed to stay in bed and let those memes circle like buzzards, I'm toast. But when I have to hop up without thinking and get a whining dog with his leg crossed out the door, then I'm on the path to more(meaning less) enlightened thinking.

As I walked on this cold, quiet Christmas morning I counted my blessings, which are many and my troubles, which are really few. They just seem greater than they are because I tend to bemoan them at length. No one bemoans good luck, most of the time you never see good luck.

I have a house that I can afford that's warm and dry and in a quaint neighborhood. Nothing major has failed in it in 10 years despite the fact I've put very little money into it. I bitch and whine that it's ghetto renewal, a 150 year old condemnation waiting to happen, that I never have the time or ability to work on it. At least I have a home. It protects and shelters me. My family is still happy when they are here and come to see me, even though Joyce is afraid of the spiders in the dry, never leaking basement.

Some how I fell ass backward into a wonderful place to work. I never dreamed I would find such a charmed place with like minded people who work hard, play hard, and realize that people should come before profit. My bosses are sagely smart, quirkily driven. My staff is caring and devoted. I could nitpick (and do) a million little irritations but I found my island of the literate among a sea of corporate nincompoops.

For a 55 year old woman, I have my health. Lyme disease aside, which has been a challenge, I can ride horses, do yoga, paddle a kayak. I get up and go to work everyday. I've learned to make the psychiatric illnesses the background noise in my life rather than the rapturous score.

My parents dropped dead. It sounds a bit callous or macabre, but it is truly a blessing. Ask anyone who cares for elderly, ailing parents with Alzheimer's or dementia who may linger on for years navigating Medicare and nursing homes, oops senior facilities. Neither my parents would have wanted those kind of final years. They fulfilled the philosophy of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's protagonist in one of my favorite short stories, Heyday of the Blood, "live while you live then die and be done."

I have great friends. Okay, I mainly see most of them on FB but they are funny, insightful and always entertaining. They make me laugh on a daily basis, and have a multitude of interests which keep me informed and curious. They aren't dumb.

I'm very proud of my son. He was on a destructive path but he chose to turn it around. His choice took courage, he decided against rehab, went cold turkey and joined the Army. It was never easy but he never complains, never. When people express disdain at a military life, which would have never been my choice (I tried to talk him out of it) I say I'd rather have him in the midst of a dangerous country doing what he thinks is right than dead with a needle in his arm in Baltimore. He now has a beautiful wife and darling baby girl, creating the supportive family he needs.

I have a daughter who is my wingman. She finishes my thoughts, keeps me motivated, shares my likes and dislikes, quashes my pessimism and makes me think in new ways. She is everything I wish I could be, only better.

A new little granddaughter with ten fingers, ten toes, pudgy cheeks, a sweet smile, good lungs, and all the promise of the first day of spring.

Pollyannas aren't creatively desirable. It's always more fun to sit next to the curmudgeon. Today my blessings will be my mantra. Tomorrow I will live while I live in preparation to die and be done.

Resolutions for 2010

2009-12-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

1. Get another tattoo.

2. Finish The Wire.

3. Realize my lifelong ambition to help Jacques Costeau (now dead, so his son) restore damaged coral reefs by getting my scuba certification.

4. Move into a real house.

5. Open mail from 2009.

6. Go to Greece with Leslie K.

7. Go to Belize with anyone.

8. Download all the Warren Zevon concerts from Internet Archive (easily over 30.) Be entertained for hours by the incredible between song banter.

9. Have a horse in the country, get to see him every second Sunday.

10. Spend time with the grandlala.

11. Attain organization.

12. Do a headstand, bridge, dancer, Warrior III

13. Pity no longer an option

14. Renounce all guilt.

15. Get the Land Rover running.

16. Live like an adult.

17. Return to painting.

18. Spend more time outdoors.

19. Play the mandolin.

20. Don't fear online dating

Over There

2009-12-14T17:02:00.000-05:00

My son just got his deployment papers for Afghanistan, which scares me more than Iraq. For some reason Iraq seemed contained and manageable compared to the geography, culture and history of Afghanistan.

When my son went to Iraq it was juxtaposed with the airing of Ken Burns The War and I thought often of the differences in communication and dissemination of news, creature comforts, food, supplies between the two wars. A letter taking months to cross the ocean vs Skype, c-rations vs MacDonald's or Pizza Hut on base. I still have the letters my Father wrote my Mother when he was stationed in North Africa, among other places. Everyone now has their own cell phone overseas. I sent box after box, as I'm sure most families did, of "stuff" to my son while he was in Iraq. I'm sure most of it was left behind, mountains of American trash.

My experience with the military extends to the three generation of men in my life, my Dad, my boyfriend through College and my son: different wars, different mentalities, the same finding courage while facing desperation and fear in miserable conditions. And, of course, my boundary of trying to fathom sights, sounds and emotions I would never know.

A sergeant in the 7th Army my Father got a Bronze Star for an unthinkable job, Grave's Registration, scraping up the dead with the intent to identify them in order to notify the families. During this time his younger brother, a turret gunner in the Air Force, was shot down over Germany and a POW. He never heard anything more about him until he was released. He speaks in one letter of his worry over his brother and how he'd do another stint if his brother would never have signed up.

The letters I find fascinating. He can speak nothing of specific locations, activities or names. In a few letters there are words blacked out. Can you imagine, someone actually going through GIs letters censoring them? My son and I would speak on the phone every week from Iraq and we'd talk about everything. My Dad wrote of raiding gardens in [Italy} because everyone had a garden, drinking Nazi cognac, picking olives with the local girls, the beautiful landscape of France, and everywhere the gorgeous women.

My favorite letter was one he wrote his Mother after arriving in Sicily:

"Until last night I thought I'd seen everything but last night I went down town to pick up one of the officers and arrived a few minutes early. I noticed something lying on the sidewalk of a side street. My curiosity getting the better of me I investigated and found what was the most pathetic site I've ever seen. About 20 small boys, none over 10 years old, were huddled together sound asleep. Some were sitting on the curb leaning on the next for a pillow, and rest lying on the concrete. One little chap in particular on the end had no shoes or stockings, his trousers were legless, his shirt had no sleeves and was of flimsy material. An M.P. said they slept there every night, they had no parent and were homeless. It really reaches deep to see little children living that way. How those little boys stand it I'll never know for I was wearing heavy underwear, my woolen uniform, field jacket, heavy overcoat and was still none too warm. People back home will never realize how lucky they are."

When I was little my Dad often talked of his war years. He had a box of photos that he would go through and narrate. One always caught my attention. It was my Dad and another man holding the long hair of a head with no body. "We found this and could never tell if it was male or female. Looks like it was severed with a sword." My Mother would cringe. "Donald, put that away. That's not the kind of thing you should be showing." After my Mom died I found that box of photos. The one of my Dad and the head was gone.

He told the story of Patton chewing out one of his superiors in front of him for putting the cemetery at the entrance to the city so it was the first thing all the new arrivals would see. He talked of having malaria in Sicily and passing out for three days with no recollection of the time. And the wonderful olives they had there that he was never able to find again when he returned to the U.S.

In 1954, the year I was born, Newsweek did an article on the 10th anniversary of D-Day, and my father was one of the veterans quoted. I think the quote rivals something Yossarian might have said, and oddly it anti war.

It is ten years since D Day Normandy. The graves there are green but how green is our memory?

"Sure there were lots o bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell odes to a guy. Or a mine. Or a solid hit with a grenade. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm," said T/Sgt. Donald Haguall of 48th Graves Registration (his named spelled wrong as always.)

"They all stink. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after awhile the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. If you think about it too much, you go nuts.

"You know what I think? I think that maybe if every civilian in the world could smell the stink of death for an hour or even ten minutes, then I think we wouldn't have any more wars. What do you think?

So said Sergeant Hagvall. No wonder he took me every where he went.

In college I met and dated a young man for three years who was fresh off the killing fields of Vietnam. He and his buddies were in school on the GI bill, but mainly they were in college to party and see how numb they could get. They often talked of being owed two years of their lives, as these were the days of the draft. They never talked to anyone about their experiences in country except each other, they would speak pigeon Vietnamese, and they would take drugs and drink as if they had a death wish. They would sleep with fans blowing on them all winter long because they had vowed never to sleep hot again.

I was a sassy mouthy little thing, the wild child, five years younger, good mainly for a roll in the hay. Always my father's daughter, I was ready to match these guy step for step, drug for drug, outrageous behavior for outrageous behavior. This was my posse. I would strut into a bar with 4 or 5 of these death from above, chips on their shoulder Vets behind me and I knew no fear. We could take over bars. After a year or so, most of them had dropped out of school, found blue collar jobs and were on the road to one form of addiction of another.

My son was of a generation that I think of as the lost boys, young men whose magnetic direction finders were so jammed that they longed to return to simpler times of heroes and villains, black and white, living without thinking, not like their fathers, or even grandfathers but like their great grandfathers. College cost a fortune with no promises of success; they had to walk the line of the sensitivity and masculinity. Girls were now doing better in school, earning more and learning more, yet still wanted a man of strength and confidence. In droves their energy was more often than not labeled a disorder. I think they felt society had set an impossible bar and then abandoned them. Many turned to drugs and the military, including my son.

All their young lives my son and his best friend was enamored of the military. They long talked of joining the marines. I shuddered. I was of the hippie generation, and not a proponent of war, guns, or the military. I'd had an Army sergeant Father, so I leaned left. My son's friend who probably navigated best the minefields of which I spoke earlier, did end of joining the Marine reserves, doing two tours in Iraq and going on to college at Bucknell.

When my son graduated Boot Camp we attended the ceremonies at Fort Columbia, I walked among the soldiers, male and female, and what struck me most was the fact that many were there because they had no other options. They weren't overly patriotic zealots, war lovers and gun nuts. They wanted an education they couldn't afford, they wanted to support their young families (most had small kids) but could find no jobs. And the bleeding heart liberal in me thought, what if we put half the money into education for these kids that we put into supporting them as soldiers.

The military isn't necessarily the answer many seek. The suicide and AWOL rate has skyrocketed, an all time high. Self discipline is a lost concept among these kids. My son was fortunate, he was able to adapt and needed the discipline. He finally got that discipline isn't merely a me vs them, battle authority dynamic, it can be the catalyst to set you free, or to save your life.

Of this I can speak with certainty. These were three sensitive, loving young men who fought in three horrible wars and emerged to know that the most valuable things in life were family and friends. They saw things, heard things, smelled things that no human should have to bear, and came to cast a veneer of quiet introspection rather than emanating bitterness or violence. Tis the best that can be expected.

The Day the Music Died

2009-12-03T20:32:00.000-05:00

Two things have always healed my soul, music and nature. No matter how much despair, sadness, anxiety or confusion those were the two constants that could restore my center, or at least pull me back a bit from the abyss. Whatever the question, nature is the answer, paraphrased from the Power of One. And music, you don't ever mess with some one's music. I wasn't quite as bad as Shrevie in Diner, but close. I still have my collection of vinyl and 45s.

One payoff of working retail for many years was acquiring an extensive collection of promo CDs, especially in the areas of blues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, and soul. Hundreds and hundreds, maybe a thousand. CDs long out of issue. The obscure, the unknown, the long forgotten. Downloads aside, there's nothing like being able to hold the cold hard product in my hands, read the liner notes.

Nothing has impacted me more than the period of time when my Mother died and my life sank into dealing with my son's heroin addiction. Addiction takes over families, its tendrils wrap around everything in it's path and chokes it into submission. Other family member become mere fodder. There is a macabre carousel of emotion with only two directions, up and down, anger/despair, anger/despair. Your nerves perch constantly on edge as if clearing a field of IEDs. What will be the next explosion, a car wreck, an arrest, an overdose, a fight? You go numb. You give up hope of normalcy. You become a non person.

Social events are a blur of pawn shops, police stations, emergency rooms, court rooms, methadone clinics, therapists, lawyers, lowlifes. The only thing you have in abundance are the lies. The definition of addiction should be "no truths." Addicts are incapable of telling the truth, it becomes their kryptonite.

There are many schools of thought in dealing with an addict. You try to help them get help, but as everyone knows, no one can help anyone get help unless that person wants to get help. Even then, the first 5, 6, 7 tries at sobriety usually fail. And you set yourself for more heartbreak, and expense. Or you cut them completely out of your life, hit the road and don't come back until you are well. In essence you are sending a person you love more than yourself out of your life forever and most likely to certain harm. The ribbons of love do not keep you true sane. Or, you put up an emotional wall and keep them at the periphery. Finally you can sink into complete denial. That was the path I started on but didn't stay for long.

I went to the group meetings and found them basically worthless. I'm not much of a meeting person anyway, but I found no answers here. The speakers were compelling but scary, the parents in the group who had been dealing for an addicted child for YEARS were even scarier. Commiseration only sated me for a brief time. It seemed like a lot of whining, sincere, heartfelt whining. It seemed passive when I yearned for action.

Methadone is just addiction light, as hard to get off of heroin, as sloppy, as costly, and as life robbing. Addicts build their days around the next hand out rather than the next buy. Suboxone works, but is God awful expensive, especially when most addicts don't have insurance.

I was living Requiem for a Dream without getting caught up in the trap myself. My son was in a horrible car crash (my Jeep) and since his Dad had kicked him out he ended up living on my sofa. For those of you who don't know my house, I've been preparing to remodel for about ten years. Then when my Mom died I had her belongings moved into my already cramped and over packed house. I knew where nothing was. I boxed stuff up. I boxed up all my CDs. I had three people living in a house that barely held two. I had my drug addicted, mangled son with his jaw wired shut living in my living room.

Occasional something would disappear. It usually took me awhile to notice. Then things began to disappear quickly. Appliances, tools, electronics, musical instruments, money, credit cards.

The worst it seemed was the jewelry, family jewelry that had been my Mom's. I had to call the police to my house to have my son removed, he came home so high one day after work. I locked him out and he broke a door window. Six Baltimore County police cars came screaming to my house. Sigh. Overkill. My son still worked. Dave Barry once said if he had to employ heroin addicts or golfers he'd pick heroin addicts because they miss less work.

Then I went to get a specific CD one day, the box seemed light when I touched it. The box was empty. All the boxes were empty. My heart fell out of my chest and flopped around on the floor. For months I couldn't even listen to music anymore. The very thought of retrieving a certain song to play brought back a crush that took my breath away. I couldn't think about it. I couldn't talk about it. For some odd reason I partly blamed myself.

From this dreadful time comes an unlikely hero in the form of friend. A friend for years who would make me CDs completely unsolicited. You've got to listen to this, he'd say. He must have spent hours upon hours compiling the songs. You don't have to do this, I'd say. I have lots of CDs. But he did. Compulsively, passionately. They were still in the boxes, unpawnable.

Eventually I started to listen. Ryan Adams, Eddie Vedder, Counting Crows, Neil Young. It was probably a small gesture of sharing, to me it was an avalanche clearing away pain. I will never forget this kindness. I will try to pass it on.

Daily Affirmations For the Barely Undercontrol

2009-11-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Feb 20 - All over the world there are people much worse off than me who somehow manage to pick themselves up and go on. Their spirit should challenge and inspire me, but I prefer to believe that if they were in my position, they would be just as lazy and pathetic and worthless as I am.

Feb. 21 - No matter how much I brace myself for disappointment I am never sufficiently prepared. By working to eliminate all traces of optimism, I will find that almost nothing is worth trying. This will make be feel much better about spending all day on the couch.

March 13- Perhaps I will achieve a small success today. If so, I must not be taken in. I am not on a roll. I am not in the zone. It was an accident, happenstance. Such things are bound to happen sometimes. The false feeling of confidence will soon pass.

April 7- In the past I have had moments of clarity, where i knew with all my heart that I would never be the same again. Then, in the matter of just a few days, I was once again the person I always was. I should remember this the next time I think I have made a permanent, positive change in my life.

April 12 - I am not well suited to the tasks set before me today. Most of what I do is either insulting to my intelligence or far beyond my capabilities. This explains why I am so frustrated and full of rage most of the time.

April 19 - It is easier to think about next week than today. It is falsely reassuring to remember that the future never really comes, that it is always in the future. This knowledge leads to the false corollary that the time to act is never now. I believe this, even though I know it is untrue, because I am lazy and because lies are better than work and responsibility.

May 7 - Something I do today could turn out to be something I will regret the rest of my life.

June 9 - Perhaps God laughs at me everyday with sadistic glee and complete contempt. And perhaps that's how I should look at myself. If I could just see myself as God sees me, perhaps I could have a good laugh too.

July 8 - There are days that I feel so inert I can't believe that I can move. The weight of the world presses down on me and I am paralyzed and frightened. Today may not be one of those days, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to do anything.

Aug. 2 - It is hard for me to be good to myself when I think about what kind of person I really am. This is another reason that self-reflection is ill advised.

Nov. 3 When I get involved in the world I can be lured into thinking that things actually matter. When I am alone at home, I can see life for what it is: meaningless and empty.

Thank you John S. Hall for making me smile today, despite the fact it's pointless, and every other day of the year.

Scariest

2009-10-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

I've haven't been a fan of horror movies since my early years with Vincent, Chrisopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaney, Peter Lorre. I loved those old cheesy movies, Creature Feature on Friday night and Thriller. But then came the slasher genre, the screamer genre, and all that blood and gore, Texas Chainsaw up to Saw. I did like Night of the Living Dead but not until Shaun of the Dead did I care about zombies. 28 Days mildly entertaining. Vincent D'Onofrio very scary in The Cell. Duel had me on the edge of my seat. I do like funny, tongue in cheek movies, Army of Darkness, Darkman, Dawn till Dusk, Lost Boys.
I know I'll leave some good stuff out. What are my scariest? Lots of the obvious and a few not.

The Haunting - Edges out the Exorcist only because it does it all with mood when Friedkin depended on that scabby face, rotating head and Mercedes McCambridge's voice. Oh the original, not that piece of crap with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta Jones. Once they showed it on Halloween and the power went out at the end when the "essence" was in the car, right when it crashed into the gate.

The Exorcist - I couldn't sleep alone for weeks. I kept hearing that voice and seeing down that hall. Scariest moments were subtler ones, the beginning when they thought they had rats in the attic, when Regan pees on the carpet, the scene where Damien sees his mother going down the subway.

House of Wax - A childhood terror. Terrified I'd be "waxed" while I slept.

Psycho - It was set to air on TV for the first time when Richard Speck killed 7 student nurses in Chicago and it got pulled. When I saw the movie didn't get it till the final scene in prison with the fly, ooooh. My mother and i had an argument over whether he thought he was his mother or his mother possessed him.

Testament - Not a horror movie at all but I had more bad dreams from this film than any other. A nuclear blast hits California right after a family father leaves to commute to work. No one knows what has happened, the father is never heard from again, no outside communication, and one by one the mother buries her children as they, and neighbors, die from radiation poisoning. Horrific. No answers, no reasons, only death.

The Wizard of Oz - Scared the bejesus out of me as a child. I had to leave the room when the witches' green face appeared, and oh those flying monkeys. Scariest scene: When Dorothy is locked in a room and thinks she sees Aunt Em in the crystal ball who suddenly turns into the cackling witch.

XFiles episode, "Home" (aired only once in primetime because of intense subject matter) An inbred rural family snatches innocent bystanders. Rolling stumpy Mom from out under the bed for sex and instructions, creepy.

Poltergeist - Mostly fun but with a few intense scenes. That little woman's voice enough to make skin crawl.

Jacob's Ladder - Also not a horror movie but paranoia to the nth degree. Was that a tail?

Freaks - Can a torso really be a person? All those little people coming at me....

Eraserhead - At the time it was the most twisted, unsettling thing I'd ever seen. And I lived in an apt with radiators.

Most Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes.

Movies I didn't find scary: The Shining, Sixth Sense, The Omen, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, although I liked The Omen.

Hagvalls in Sweden

2009-10-22T20:02:00.000-04:00

There's only one other Hagvall in the U.S., where else, California. The rest are in the motherland. Very different names: Bertil, Pontus, Ulf, Cia, Arvid, Malin, Familjen, Sepideh, Kajsa, Ulrika, Kjell. They are all very good looking people, not a dud in the bunch. So what happened when they got to this country? My Hagvall ancestors, not a pretty sight. Hefty, sturdy farm folk with big noses.

Things Bernie has chewed up: my Moleskine journal, laptop power cord, earpiece to headphone, lots of kleenex, hairbrush #1, hairbrush #2, hairbrush #3, comb #1.

Well it happened. My POD got a ticket.I knew it was only a matter of time. The parking Nazi couldn't nab Kate or I as we kept switching the cars as soon as he chalked our tires, so my POD got a $100 fine. Yes it has been sitting out there well past the five days the county gives you, so the last push is on to get it out of here. Sadly, a third of it is filled with books. I just packed 8 more boxes of books. Learning Swedish, a ridiculous amount of books on Lincoln, lots of poetry, Zen & Buddhism & tai chai, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Whitman, Uncle Waldo, Auden, Dickens, writing reference, the old West, depression era, pioneering and native American culture, gardening, cooking, painting, drawing, Austen, Virginia Wolf, Eudora Welty, George Sand, Andre Gide, Thoreau, Kerouac, home repair, needlepoint, Twain, Milhauser, DeLillo, Fforde, Chandler, Carver, Hunter Thompson, Alice Hoffman, Synder, Zane Grey, and stacks of assorted history and fiction that I've yet to read.

Do I go off on the medical profession or the insurance companies, both are plucking my nerves right now with a resurgence of my Lyme disease. I never dreamed when I read on line about the frustration sufferers felt from being mis- and undiagnosed, not believed, even maligned for the symptoms they claim they had, that I would be subjected to the same skepticism. After spending days reading websites from the CDC, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, JAMA, and dozens of personal anectodes, it was pretty obvious the initial line of antibiotic treatments didn't take and it was back with a vengeance. It seems 30% of people do not respond to early treatments of antibiotics. The aching joints, stiff neck, headache, extreme fatigue, dizziness and vertigo starting to drive me a little nuts, when my doctor, who I usual trust, pulls a diagnosis out of her ass : viral inner ear infection and spastic thyroid. What? What? Are you kidding me?

What does she prescribe? A motion sickness drug for the vertigo which makes me EVEN MORE TIRED. I know I do not have an inner ear infection, and I've been on thyroid medication for 20 years and I know when that's out of whack. What about the aching, swollen joints. Neither diagnosis explains that. That she says, is probably a third thing going on. I guess the obvious answer wasn't obvious to her, there's a name for when the obvious, simplest answer is overlooked even when it's correct. Or maybe like my daughter says, every one want to be Dr. House and come up with a complex, meandering diagnosis. Granted my doctor was having a bad day that day, too many patients all having emergencies and I probably looked to be the youngest, healthiest of all of them even though I sit and stare into space as my head spins.

I'm still waiting for the blood work to come back so i can say I told you so. I insisted on the Lyme test as she wasn't recommending it. Still fighting with the insurance company over the fact they denied my anesthesiologist claim from a colonoscopy. They claim the procedure doesn't require you to do knocked out, only mildly sedated, which doesn't require an anesthesiologist. Because I have an irregular heartbeat and MVP the doctor insisted on it as a precaution. Grrrrr. Twice the insurance medical review board has denied it. Still amassing my anal probe for them.

Thoughts get stranger on another rainy night

2009-10-17T19:26:00.000-04:00

The dog has a cone on his head and won't go out to pee because it's been raining for three days. I'm out of Apple Cider donuts from Weber's. My Lyme disease may or may not be back, it's hard to tell with the lousy weather, although dizziness isn't usually a symptom of excessive rain. I'm reading that a cure for LD is time in a hyperbaric chamber. I freaked out the last time I had an MRI so this doesn't sound promising.

There's 2 inches of water on top of the POD outside my house. I finally hooked up a converter box up to a TV but most of the stations don't send out strong enough signals so I get broken video and sound. Fox 45 has a second channel that shows nothing but cheesy second rate movies. Right now there's a B&W one with William Shatner. He has webbed fingers. Then he set himself on fire. No, it's Outer Limits. Usually lots of American International Films, like Vincent Price and Charles Bronson in Master of the World by Jules Verne.

Daughter took a gallon of cider and a bottle of rum and went to dogsit. Her Dad found a four foot snake in the blower motor of the clothes dryer. A sure sign of Apocalypse. I've got Jonathan Creek on DVD from Netflix, another British detective show we never got here. I love the theme, Danse Macabre. And I love Alan Davies on QI. He's the perfect foil to Stephen Fry. The impish Alan Davies, that what reviewers always say. According to his Twitter, he's on his way to Barcelona right now.

The rain broke, I took the cone off the dog's head and we went out. The sky was pink. My power has been flashing off a lot lately. Then I have the scheduled outages too. I have to reset all the clocks. Each time I reset my bedroom clock I make it even faster. It's now 45 minutes fast. It's amazing how at age 55 this still fools me each morning. I wake up, think it's time to get up then realize I can sleep 45 more minutes. It's a stupid little gift to myself each day.

The hedgehog has her own heat blower on night and day. Since she's African she can't get too cold or she'll curl up into a ball and freeze. First I pay for cancer surgery for her with tiny little tools now she has her own heater. She runs all night on a squeaky little flying saucer disk on her little African legs. Then she crawls in her igloo and puffs.

I was going to go out and see a friend's gig last night but I fell asleep during the first 30 minutes of Law and Order. I've been craving sugar lately, hence the Apple Cider donuts which are still gone.

Cone back on.

Where can a bum find bed and board
When you gonna make it stop rainin' Lord.
-- Warren Zevon

And the winner is ... the Pace Hotel

2009-10-17T17:00:00.000-04:00

The seediest bars I've ever frequented:

Border Lounge - Rock Island, Ill.-- By far, one of the seediest. It sat on the border of Rock Island - Moline on the stretch where all the John Deere and Farmall companies had factories. Paydays were insanity and the police automatically camped out there that night. Always country and western, and it wasn't unusual to see a bartender with fresh stitches. Fights nightly. One night Monica and I had to chase a bat out of the ladies room. The bartender gave us a broom. Classy. Gone.

Loading Dock - Davenport, Iowa -- Just across the Mississippi from the Border Lounge, except it would have some decent rock bands. The doors on the ladies room stalls were shower curtains. The hygiene fixtures in the mens room were usually pulled off the wall and thrown in the urinal. Customers had no qualms about doing drugs in the corners. Vaguely recall a bad night of boilmakers. No longer in existence.

The Library - Cleveland, Ohio -- I'm not sure this even was a bar. It was a gigantic mansion in a sketchy part of Cleveland with no outside signs or lights. I only knew about it word of mouth. No decor except that you could go from one large room to another drinking, and each room had a gigantic fireplace. The bouncer at the door had a shotgun across his lap, no joke. No longer in existence.

Harbor Inn - Cleveland, Ohio -- Actually a very popular dart bar in the Flats on the Cuyahoga River very close to the German restaurant which served as the backdrop for the Warsaw Bar on Drew Carey. Great lunchtime burgers and bloody marys. As ugly and plain as any bar could hope to be, plus it had an upstairs. Always crowded. Not only still in existence but has a MySpace page and listed as the oldest bar in Cleveland at 103 years.

Moccasin Bar - Hayward, Wisconsin -- Home of the world's largest Muskie (now in dispute), and other assorted fish mounted on the walls, a true fisherman's bar. This is what the Roadside America said about it, "...it is in The Moccasin Bar, the kind of place where you'd expect to see a giant, dead fish on a wall. It's dark and smoky inside, with a big jar of pickled eggs next to the beer taps and The Hallmark Channel on the TV. When we stopped by, at ten in the morning, it already had three patrons, one wearing a "Muskie Capital" sweatshirt."

Rendezvous - Baltimore, Md - Joyce introduced me to the original Rendezvous tavern on 25th street. It was one small room with Dave and Marge behind the bar during the day, and Adam at night making the meanest martini known to man. Old style red Naugahyde barstools with the stuffing sticking out of them. Neighborhood drunks, MICA and Hopkins students and assorted hangers on. Bulldozed to make a car dealership.

Rendezvous II - Baltimore, Md - 25th and Howard. It doesn't have the panache of the original, but it does have an upstairs and a green tile pool room which looks like a cross between a steam room and an opium den. My 23 yr old daughter came home one night and said, you'll never believe the bar we found tonight. It's called the Rendezvous. Everything old is new again.

Two Brothers Lounge - Springfield, Ill. -- Every bar in Springfield is a seedy bar, this is one of the oldest with its signature drink, the Deserted Mule. Just a short walk from Abe's house. Of course it's still there, where would it go.

the shack on the beach near the Cayman Kai resort -- God I hope it's still there. It was made of palm branches and had sand on the floor and lots of those little lizards running around. Outside hung numerous hammocks among the palm trees, the place to launch a thousand dreams, or naps; be rocked gently by the soft sea breezes. The bar guy made a mean rum punch and a killer pina colada.

Hotel Pace - Macomb, Ill. Finally, the king of all seedy bars. Not only a seedy bar, but a seedy hotel also that rented rooms by week and month. I spent more time at the Pace my junior and senior year than I did in all my classes together. In fact, I had one independent study teacher who like to hold informal classes on the porch of the Pace. It had a great enclosed porch with those paneled windows with little panes, about a thousand coats of paint on them. The wall tables had the juke box selectors over them. In winter we'd trudged through the snow in minus twenty weather for hot buttered rum. Before football games we'd gather before noon for shots of Peppermint Schnapps followed by beer chasers. By the time I graduated it had become shabby chic with a line outside to get in. Crusty and romantic. Long gone.

Gorilla you're a desperado...

2009-10-06T08:05:00.000-04:00

"Big gorilla at the L.A. zoo

snatched the glasses right off my face

Took the keys to my BMW

left me here to take his place.

I wish the ape a lot of success

sorry my apartment's a mess

Most of all I'm sorry that I made you blue

I'm bettin' the gorilla will too."

-- Warren Zevon

Halloween was always my favorite holiday, not so much anymore. As with most things it was different when I was a child. I don't remember my parents ever taking me out to trick or treat until I was old enough to go with older kids. I don't remember any parents out on Halloween. They were all home handing out candy, and guarding against soaping windows and TPing trees. Despicable acts, both.

I don't know whether it was the bath tub full of candy or the dressing up I looked forward to the most. My family didn't run in social circles where we had occasion to dress up much, either formally or in costume. We rarely even went to church. I had an active imagination, was quite the day dreamer, and I was pretty shy. So pretending to be someone or something else was incredibly appealing. Plus I had an insatiable sweet tooth. Little did I know that I was probably self medicating my ADD all that time in addition to rotting my teeth.

We pushed the envelope on the few rules there were to Halloween. We would go out 1 -2 nights before Oct. 31, for example, if Halloween was on a Monday, we'd go out the Sat and Sun night before. We'd go far out of our neighborhood, on foot, and wouldn't come home for hours (except maybe to drop off one bag of candy and get a replacement.) Even though we knew most of the people in the surrounding blocks we'd venture into neighborhoods where we didn't know people. We'd go to the old crazies houses that we never went near the rest of the year. We knew from experience who gave what year after year-- pennies, raisins, apples, popcorn balls -- those boat rockers who refused to tow the commercial line and give out the good stuff.

My anti social side almost dreads the holiday now, all those adorable little children dressed up so sweetly with their parents in tow. Terrifying. One recent Halloween night I was coming home from work and I knew I didn't have enough candy having eaten the kinds I liked the night before. I was pulling up my street when I saw an entire squad of 5-6 year olds canvassing the street, parents socializing in the background. I turned around, drove to the high school parking lot, and called Joyce begging, "can we please go out for a drink, I can't face Halloween tonight." Yes, I can be that neurotic.

My absolute favorite Halloween night was in my early twenties in Cleveland, Ohio. For the bad raps it gets, I had a ball in Cleveland. It is a party town. The winters just suck. I highly recommend to anyone who has a twisted adventurous side what I am about to tell. My husband and I had long thought it would be a hoot to rent gorilla costumes and drive around town for the night. One Halloween, that's what we did. Although we didn't just drive around, we drove around town and crashed Halloween parties.

It was pretty expensive even back then, plus a deposit. I found a couple of suits at a serious costume shop, but they didn't match. One gorilla suit looked slightly more effeminate, but both were realistic not cartoonish. We started at a friend's party in our apartment building. She was African American as were most of her guests so it was slightly uncomfortable when two idiots walked in dressed like gorillas. But soon everyone got into guessing which of their friends would be crazy enough to rent gorilla suits.

We were supposed to go to another party next with friends of ours dressed as Ronald MacDonald and Oscar the Grouch. They were in a separate car and some how we lost them on the way. How four people dressed as described can lose each other is a mystery. Since the party we were headed to was a party of their friends not ours, we didn't know the address. Oh the days before cell phones. Instead we decided to just start going into any house where there was a party going on. As long as we didn't de-head, or speak too much, we would be fine.

It was fantastic. Everyone thought they knew us. "Don't tell me, it's Ed and Miriam, Paul and Angie, Joe and Mike, don't tell, don't tell, I want to guess." In the meantime, while the guests are guessing, we are drinking their liquor and smirking. Other substances may have been involved, I don't recall. When anyone began to demand the big unveil, it was time to leave.

The second best thing was driving around town at night dressed as gorillas. Being it was Halloween I guess it wasn't that odd, but it did freak out a few people (one old couple in particular) and gave a few others a big grin. I don't think it's illegal to drive while dressed as a gorilla as long as vision isn't impaired. It can't be any worse than texting.

Each year town talking heads mumble about doing away with Halloween. Too dangerous, encourages vandalism (okay Detroit has a point,) obesity. Or they want to make it an organized community event at a single location, I guess so parents can better schedule it in to their busy lives and control it. One school in Ruxton did away with any participation because "not everyone may be able to afford to buy a decent costume." Are you fucking kidding me? Except for the gorilla suits I don't think I ever bought a costume in my life. This is the thinking that helped drive me out of the stereotypical family life, through the loony bin, and into marginalized bohemia. Like when my kids' school, early in the Simpson days, wanted to ban anything with Bart emblazoned on it because he was a negative influence, but I digress.

As with most issues and me, whatever happens, happens. I'm not Crusader Rabbit. But to me Halloween meant imagination, mystery, individualism, independence and walking outdoors, probably the biggest elements being drained out of childhood. And a shitload of candy I never got the rest of the year. So if there's ever been some silly thing you've long said, "Someday I should...," this Halloween, consider it.

"In the meantime keep your profile low, Gorilla you're a desperado."

Waiting For The Coffee To Be Done

2009-10-05T12:32:00.000-04:00

It's morning again,

and it feels like wet grass, cold

and soaking, slow to rise up

into the atmosphere.

I try not to notice the work not done,

waiting for tomorrow's brother

to carry his weight.

Tired of slogging along the path

of one mind, stopping to rest

like stones set upon graves.

I am eager but not hopeful.

I am wary of my own promises.

The first sip

and my day is over.

August and Everything After the Black Dog (not Bernie)

2009-09-28T19:52:00.000-04:00

That chill is in the air. You have an overwhelming urge to buy school supplies then bring them home and lay them out on your desk. You begin looking around at all the outside summer chores you never finished thinking it's too late now, they'll wait till spring. Some waited last summer for spring. The sheets and blankets creep back up to the top of the bed and sleeping at night is the vapor from absinthe over ice. Long Sunday afternoons watching football at 1, 4 and 8 o'clock, napping on the sofa while sports wash over you in waves. Announcers have the soothing voices of angels -- one more quarter, two minute warning. Long jeans are a pleasure to put back on. The carb cravings begin, hearty soups and stews, starchy breads and pastas. You even think about baking.

Fall would be a cornucopia if not for two things, shorter days mean hibernation and SAD, (and working retail.) October is upon us and that is National Depression Screening month. Well, it had to be sometime. The fall is when I've had my nastiest bouts and I am always fearful this might be the year it comes again. I've tried to be as open about it as I can, many people don't want to hear about it, it makes them uncomfortable. Many poo poo it exists, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Jimmy go like a man.

"I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the human family, there would be not one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better it appears to me." -- Abraham Lincoln

Hard to believe he led the country through it's worst crisis all the while his own family was coming apart at the seams and he was miserably depressed. Equally as hard to believe is he uttered the phrase, "most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be." Today, with his psychiatrist background, he wouldn't have a prayer of getting elected. Remember Thomas Eagleton? He was bumped from the ticket just because he saw a therapist.

Two of the most powerful figures in recent history who held their countries together during insurmountable times were also two of the most depressed. Lincoln and Churchill. Churchill called his depression, "the black dog." The book, Lincoln's Melancholy goes as far as to say that Lincoln's bouts with depression shaped his presidency. As crippling and debilitating as depression can be, and it's a bastard, it takes an incredible strength to punch through the middle and come out the other side; the kind of strength required to fight a Hydra no one else can see.

I had family members tell me it was all in my head (ha ha) even when I was hospitalized at Sheppard Pratt for a moribund depression. "You don't belong there with those people," my Mother said. The nurses called it "running out of cope." I even had one friend say to me, "you can't be depressed, you are the rock for everyone." Several friends dropped away after my bouts, sad to say. I too know it's a disease that's slimy to handle and hard to look upon. I remember my sister saying, "I didn't know whether to send flowers or not." By all means, send flowers.

I've tried to make a point when I know a friend or acquaintance is going through a clincial episode to at least make an appearance, a phone call, a gesture, and to say that I've suffered the same and haven't yet been banished from the village. It's not always easy to do; it's humiliating coupled with a well developed sense of failure that you are quite comfortable hiding from the rest of the world. Everything else in life can make me neurotic, death and depression I am able to face full on. Except of course my own.

Perhaps the most eye opening moment for me was when I was at Johns Hopkins many years ago and my roommate was an Amish woman, younger than me, with 7 children. She had stopped talking and just sat in rocking chair all day staring out a window. Her family was so alarmed and at a loss they came down from Pennsylvania and had her hospitalized. She was a sweet, gentle soul, once she started talking again, who had no idea why she didn't care about anything anymore and just wanted to go home to her children. She asked me if I wanted her to rub my back and feet as that's what her kids would often do at night for entertainment, give back and feet rubs and teach the younger ones how to do it. I got one letter from her once she returned home, wanting me to come visit her farm, but I never heard from her again. She had no idea what had happened to her.

My people -- the alcoholic, depressed Swedes -- refer to their long winters as the morktiden, or murky times, when their suicide rate soars. I have to find my reference to that, it's not coming up online. Most of this is behind me. I've learned many coping mechanisms, and of course there are all those drugs. I've had one great doctor, a few good, the rest mediocre to incompetent. Between the right combination/dosage of drugs and the right therapist I very often found the treatment far worse than the illness. The one great doctor was the first I ever had, a kick in the seat kind of guy who would rather play sax in his jazz band Mood Swings than talk to patients who didn't want to hear 90% of what he said. Had I not had him out of the gate I might not have done as well as I have (he called me the most optimist depressed person he'd ever met.) Finding a good psychiatrist must be like online dating, lots of candidates who sound good in the abstract but are more messed up than you.

Maybe we are suppose to sleep all winter and instead we fight against it with artificial light and heat. I know by April I'll be eager to be tackle a billion projects. Circadian rhythms do change, maybe so subtle you don't notice until it's fall and you wonder why you're in over your head.

Ken Burns and me

2009-09-27T18:49:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking about going camping this weekend. It might be a tad chilly but that makes it even better to sit around a roaring fire at night drinking hot whatever, then snuggle down in the sleeping bags enjoying the warmth with only the cold reaching your face, until you are forced to go out and pee from drinking all the hot whatever.

I usually go in August or early September, but this year with the birth of the granddaughter and all, I never made it. Plus I went in May to Chincoteague. Totally different camping adventure. I think my daughter is right, there really should be pine needles and tall trees around when camping is involved.

Many moons ago when my kids were small we always went to Mathews Arm on Skyline Line in the Shenandoahs. One year when we arrived it was closed due to cost constraints (I think that was a Reagan year, maybe Bush senior. I vaguely remember cursing at the administration and it was nothing new.) It was Labor Day and all the other campgrounds on Skyline Drive were full. That's when we discovered, in the dead of night and clearly by accident, Camp Roosevelt in the George Washington National Forest.

Camp Roosevelt is where the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) started during the FDR alphabet years. I don't think it's changed much since then. There are only 10 campsites, no showers, no electrical hookups, yes to a flush toilet and running water. It's primitive but it's gorgeous. At night the stars are so much closer and plentiful since you are up in the Massanutten Mountains. When I first went there it was $2 a night per campsite, it's up to $8 now, and they take checks.

There is one campsite that is our favorite because it offers the most privacy and is the most spacious in case we want to pitch multiple tents. The coolest discovery was the fire access road which links the Camp going across the top of the mountains over to the highway which runs through Luray, Va. Otherwise to reach civilization you must go down the mountain, quite a trek. The fire access road is one lane gravel and also leads to several primitive backwoods campsites for backpackers. It's preferable you have 4 wheel drive to navigate it; the locals drive it like it's the Daytona 500. But there are some gorgeous vistas and beautiful roadside stretches of wildflowers.

I'm especially struck that the last few times we've been to Camp Roosevelt, it has not been full. It's always very clean, you might see a Park Ranger once a day but not necessarily. If you like hiking there are some pretty daunting trails around. With all the rain the Shenandoah River should be running fast so I can use my new kayaks. Last summer I completed the destruction of my shoulder while kayaking four hours so I'm hoping it's healed sufficiently that I won't reinjure it. I think I'm going to get Bernie a doggie life jacket and mount him on the front. The labs were always free to jump ouat will.

One year when my daughter and I went kayaking we had a plinking banjo moment. As we were approaching a launch a couple of locals, hired by kayakers to do a drop off, were coming towards us with a large mason jar which had some pink liquid inside with something white at the bottom. We preceded to pull up our kayaks as the approached asking us if we "wanted a taste." Daughter seemed a bit leery and the people at the top were pretending like they didn't know these guys. What is it, I asked? Strawberry moonshine, the reply. I smelled it and it smelled pretty good. The white things at the bottom were strawberries bleached by the alcohol. I can't, I declined. I'm driving. I am too, said one of the distillers with a toothless grin. When I asked about good camp spots I was told, wherever you don't get arrested. Gotta love the mountains.

Other fun excursions are the Luray Caverns, oh to have visited there during my college years. What a trip that some nutty farmer discovered these caves when he fell into a hole in his fields. He must have felt like Alice in Wonderland. There are immense blueberry fields on Skyline Drive to pick blueberries for morning pancakes, note bears like blueberries too. If you want to ride horses there is Fort Valley Stables, not as much fun once you ride on your own. There are several wineries around Interstate 81, I recommend Shenandoah Vineyards. The little ladies there do a very classy winetasting any time of the day, and some of the vintages are actually decent. Then there's always a foray into Luray, home of my all time favorite camping story, better even than when the bear stood behind my Dad as he washed his feet.

My parents always took us camping on vacation, usually to National Parks if possible because they were the Holiday Inns of the parks. The Parks even provided entertainment each night as the naturalists would speak, or show films or give presentations. I'm sure these events have gone by the wayside (see above comment about past administrations.)

The first time we went my Dad and I stayed in a white Army surplus tent with no floor and we slept on cots while my mother and sister slept in the car. This was not comfortable for anyone. When it blew down, with us in it, during a gale across the prairies of Kansas, it was time to move up to a store bought tent. Anyway, as my parents camping acumen evolved so did their tent. When I got married, my husband and I would get their hand me down.

One was a beast of a Coleman, gigantic, with a separate bags for the ridiculous number of tent poles it needed. While we were getting packed to go on one of our trips I repeatedly asked my husband if he had packed BOTH bags for the tent. Yes, yes yes was the answer. Okay you know where this is going. Three hours later we arrive at Mathews Arm, the little ones dying to play in the tent, only to realize there were no tent poles. I was mad and hysterical with laughter at the same time. My husband, trying to save face by acting like this was no big deal, announced he would simply make tent poles from small tree branches. Did I mention this was a massive tent with more poles than say, Poland! Even my small children soon knew that making poles was folly.

Off we ventured to Luray in search of tent poles. We first stopped at a gas station to inquire which establishment might sell the said tent poles. (This predates Wal Mart in Luray, but they did have KMart) We were directed to a sort of camping store in another old gas station. We were told that they didn't sell any kind of poles for that sort of tent and their best suggestion was to buy a new $99 4-man tent. That option be damned. The KMart, the 5 & 10 -- none had tent poles. Okay then, my husband rallied on, if there was a hardware store he could buy pipes or tubing and make tent poles (back to that again.) The male ego, it knows no bounds.

There was indeed an old style hardware store in town with a wall of little wooden drawers full of screws and nails behind the counter, and a rolling ladder to climb way up near the ceiling. There was an older man behind the counter and another in front. My husband approached and asked about the cost of tubing and pipes. The man behind the counter asked why. My husband said he needed to make some tent poles. The other gentleman says to the one behind the counter, "this must be the guy who forgot his tent poles." I think I peed myself at some point.

We ended up with a brand new $99 4 man tent.

Grace and Grit

2009-09-25T21:17:00.000-04:00

I've been listening to WTMD a lot lately and heard this song, Grace and Grit, a title I totally like better than Aiming for Grace. Plagiarism? I completely blackened my pizza, it's like a big charcoal briquette waiting for me downstairs, do I still try and eat it? I was writing long overdue messages and lost track of time, so I'll get out my chisel and fork and give it a go. Thank God I've got wine.

I've been a very undisciplined blogger lately. For me it means a theme, then organized and supporting details, editing, analyzing, which is like work. Sometimes it all seems like crap. I'm always months behind on my evaluations at work for this very reason. I start writing them, then I change a word, or a slight meaning, then I'm mad at someone, so I rewrite it, then someone does something good, so I rewrite it again. Then I reread and it sounds too harsh, so I rewrite, and it sounds to wimpy, then I give up for awhile. For Christ Sake Denise, it's only selling books they aren't passing the Bar. Say good job or bad job and get over it. No one cares, all they want to know is how much money it means.

Ah, Friday night. Bernie went to work with me all day, the second string of dogs was in, and he did pretty well. He didn't whine as much so I think he feels some stability. Then we went for our evening stroll, I look at the sky and think how different it looks each night, and he smells the ground and probably thinks how different the ground smells each night. Running is definitely the better exercise for me but I don't enjoy it as much as I do walking. I can daydream when I walk, I can observe and take notice of trees, and clouds, and birds. When I run I need to be sure I don't trip and fall or get hit by a car.

Cowboy Junkies sold out at Wolf Trap, waited too long for that too. And Springsteen, well I've seen Springsteen and he does a hell of a show but just didn't have the desire. I like how I go an enamored with a band or artist, leave for awhile, come back. Now it's John Hiatt (thanks Paul for The Tiki Bar is Open) and really like the Skydiggers Retrospective. Next up, Cash Brothers. These Canadians have me hooked.

I admit it, I miss television. I find myself looking at ads for big 42" flat screens. I'm envious when I read about people watching series I know nothing about, True Blood, Mad Men, Dexter. I miss long, languid days watching football game after football game. I miss Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood and then all the talking pundits after him, Meet the Press, Face the Nation. I miss PBS and Inspector Lynley, the Brit Coms and Masterpiece Theater. I miss the total stupidity of 2 1/2 Men and Big Bang. I am a child of the television nation. I spent one summer watching Watergate all day and Carson each night.

When my Mom died and we were cleaning out the house, I found a pamphlet she had from the 50's about the dangers of excessive television on young children. I still have it somewhere, I intentionally kept it because it was all true. So much stuff my little old Mother prophesied back then, simple Kansas farm girl that she was. Organic gardening, recycling, saving instead of spending, no credit cards, CD's and low interest saving accounts instead of investing, frugality over spending, doing over passively watching, repairing over shopping.

Still no mandolin yet. I want a Mid Missouri but they only seem to be available in the west and midwest. I just did something frightening, no not eating the pizza. I'll digest both and report back.

Uncle Carlos and the Legend of Goofy Ridge

2009-09-15T19:53:00.000-04:00

No, not ready to write that one yet. Too much research. Even though Goofy Ridge, Ill. at one time was suppose to have the highest murder rate per capita for small towns in the U.S. Wouldn't you kill someone if you lived in a town called Goofy Ridge? Somewhere I have an article on how it got the name. Let me wager a guess, everyone there was goofy.

My Uncle Carlos lived there (pronounced carless and not the Spanish way) in a small trailer home, my father's younger brother. He was a short, stocky man, sort of looked like Jack Nicholson, as much as a recluse as one could be, confirmed bachelor, motorcycle aficionado, he ran the FS gas station in Easton (that's Farm Service to you slickers) and was born and raised down the tracks in Biggs, Ill. I'm not making these names up. This is central Illinois, God's country.

As a young man of about 20, he was a turret gunner during WWII (images of Catch-22.)

"When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. A ball turret was a plexiglass sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24 bomber and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short, small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine-guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with canon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose."

He hadn't been in the Air Force long when he was shot down over the Black Forest in Germany and held in a POW camp for 18 months (images of Hogan's Heroes.) Somewhere I have tapes of a fellow prisoner who was held with my uncle and gives a recount of what how they were taken, what their daily life was like, who was among them (like I said, more research.)

In letters that my Dad sent to my Mother while he was in Sicily picking olives with the locals waiting for orders, he worried because he hadn't heard from his brother. "I'd extend my service another 5 years if it would get him out. He's just a kid," my Father said. It was a long time before he knew what happened. WWII -- no Skype, Twitter, cell phones, email, internet. I talked to my son almost daily when he was in Iraq. Letters then could take months.

This fellow prisoner had been looking for my uncle to gather more testimony, but alas my uncle was dead. He died at age 45 of a heart attack, ironically out walking in a pine woods. It was something he did often. When I was a kid I could never figure out my uncle. He was always nice to me, my sister and mother. He took me for rides on his motorcycles whenever I asked (when he died he left my Dad the neatest Moto Guzzi with a sidecar) let me sit on his stool behind the counter at the gas station and have any of the candy I wanted, gave my mother a 5 pound box of chocolates for Christmas, and always gave us kids cold hard cash for birthdays and holidays. But he never said much, ever. Never socialized or stayed around the family for long, even for meals. He was a horse trader, my Mom said, swapping a revolver for a engine, a projector for a 5 string banjo that he used to play.

Why would anyone want to live alone in a small cramped trailer in a desolate place called Goofy Ridge? This definitely needs more research.

Other lessons from Hot Vinyasa

2009-09-13T23:00:00.000-04:00

I started taking hot yoga again to help with my balance for horseback riding. I used to have decent balance, could do headstands and back bends and handsprings, twenty years ago. I've practiced yoga on and off since college so I thought, yeah, that's the ticket, a really hot room, stretch those muscles. I'll be my own personal sauna since I can't afford to go to one.

It's done wonders for my flexibility (my balance still sucks) and I'm sure I'm shedding toxins and impurities by the bushels. I credit it to thinning to me down because I must sweat off several gallons each class, like a faucet. Every pore on my body sweats, it's pretty remarkable. But my concentration is what gets challenged the most.

Nothing brings your mind back to center more than being spontaneously combustibly hot, taking a pose to its fullest expression, keeping your balance (slip and slide), breathing, and trying not to chastise yourself for thinking what a great idea this is. I am amazed how often I forget to breathe. I don't forget to breathe during the day when I'm pricing books or driving or walking the dog, doing anything which requires some modicum of concentration ( the dog's a kamikaze, walking is difficult.)

The first few times I went it was like Larry Miller's five levels of drinking where you promise yourself, I will never do this again and this time I mean it. People have fled the room during class. At least I haven't done that yet. Some take many breaks, that I've done. Others surrender to child's pose and stay down for the count. So why did I go back?

An amazing thing happens afterwards, your body feels liquid. The first time I went I came home and collapsed on the floor in total relaxation, like I'd had a 90 minute deep tissue massage. You feel so limber you literally feel lighter. And nothing is more awe inspiring than taking an icy cold shower immediately afterwards, the rapture. Like the Pete Townsend song Red, Blue and Grey, the pleasure balances out the pain.

The other transformation is, for about 6 hours afterwards, I can think in a straight line. My disjointed brain is reset to remember what normal thought processes are like, and for me, that's not thinking at all. Do one thing, move to the next. Do another thing, move to the next. For as simple as it sounds it's a gargantuan accomplishment.

Now that I've written the obvious, yoga is good for you, I might as well slay the other lame dragon and mention my new dog. I find it well, almost pathetic, when people write about their pets, the same people who have their pets "talk" on their answering machines, or get their pets pictures taken with Santa at PetSmart. I talk to my cats in the privacy of my own home, but I don't dress them up for photo shoots or get them their own credit cards. Rita Mae Brown elevated her cat to co author, and this after Rubyfruit Jungle. The horror.

My friend Sara tells me time spent writing is never time wasted, so here goes. The dog, Bernard L. Black (because he's black and because Black Books is my favorite TV show) was rescued from a family in Tennessee that decided they weren't up to keeping a dog, what with the kids and all. His name was Spot but they called him Puppy. Half cocker and half Shih Tzu (which makes him a CockaTzu, not a CockaShitz like I thought) was another of my impulse decisions I put no thought into whatsoever. In fact, I've gone 10 years intentionally not getting a dog because I'm not home during the day, I have no fenced yard, and I have 3 cats. Even my daughter was dumbfounded.

I fell in love with Bernie's brother, Sammie, my son and his wife's dog, so when my daughter in law heard that Bernie was about to be pound bound she sent my son to rescue him. He'd been shaved to the skin, and nicked in process, to remove the mats and fleas, and Edward Scissorhands had trimmed around his eyes and face.

Maybe I was feeling lonely or overly charitable or simpleminded, and frankly the cats have not been overly supportive of me lately in any of my endeavors. But he walks around with these big dark eyes that say I am the luckiest dog in the world. Irresistible. An eleven hour car ride later, Bernie moves in.

Two things he's done for me. He makes me get up in the morning. I have a tendency to sleep through the weekend in the fall and winter. And he forces me to walk whether I want to or not. I stumbled out at 7 a.m. on Sunday with coffee in hand, looking like my unmade bed and headed down to Towson High, where in the large field there was gathered a crowd of about 15 people being swarmed by a pack of about 15 dogs. I figured it must be an obedience class. I went over to inquire and was told it was a "disobedience" class, just a group of dog people who meet every Sat/Sun to let their dogs frolic with each other. They invited me to join them. I had no idea. How many other clandestine groups are out there meeting in the wee hours of the dawn?

Now when my daughter takes Bernie out for a walk and strangers pass by saying, hi Bernie. He's here a week and he has more friends than I do. These dog people are hardcore, my daughter says. Now I'm one of those. Crazy old cat woman wasn't bad enough.

To recap, yoga good. Dogs good. Time spent writing......

Diminishing returns

2009-09-12T18:44:00.000-04:00

There was a time when I had aspirations to be something other than a bookstore manager in Maryland. I never knew what for the longest time, I just knew it would be exciting and unique. In high school I had an English teacher who encouraged my creative writing. I enjoyed writing a great deal so I thought perhaps that would be a possibility. This was during the Woodward-Bernstein Watergate years and investigative reporting became the rage. I could be a newspaper reporter.

I did that, and soon realized I didn't have thick enough skin. Maybe it was when I was the only woman sitting in a room of unionized meat cutters at a labor meeting. Or maybe it was when the woman I replaced returned to work and threatened me. Anyway, the money was lousy and the hours were awful, even though I met the most colorful characters of any job I ever had. One of the sportswriters was the best writer I have ever read. He'd been offered jobs at the Chicago papers but repeatedly turned them down, choosing to stay in Rock Island and drink himself to death.

Next came advertising, that sounded fun, and glamorous. I wrote radio ad copy, then public relations materials for a college, and finally, ad agency copy. Lots of people in the field who took their jobs, and themselves, way too seriously. It wasn't fun, and I didn't take any of it seriously.

For a very brief time I dreamed the dream all writers dream, a novel. I had quite a few story lines mapped out in my head. I made copious notes. But getting them to paper was a different matter. It was evident I lacked the discipline and concentration to ever tackle a novel. Probably lacked the intelligence too.

Screenplays were another pipe dream. I took a screenwriting seminar. Again, lots of treatment ideas, but no tangible output. I channeled my creativity into poetry, at which no one has a prayer of ever earning a dime, then fell into the world of retail books. I may not be writing, but at least I'm surrounded by the works of others who did, and do.

My career path has never been one. It's been a drunkard's meander, trial and error, start, stumble, and (for my tenure at Hopkins) fall. It's a miracle I've been able to support myself however meagerly I do that. I think careers are overrated, not to be confused with work you love. I briefly had a therapist (one of the many dullards I've come across who grace the psychiatric field) tell me that "I needed to get a career because I couldn't work at a bookstore all my life." Little did she know, I showed her alright. (Which reminds me, a future blog -- bad advice from psychiatric professionals.)

What is my aspiration now? I want to be organized. I want to be able to find things without retracing my steps or overtaxing my memory. I want to plan ahead more than 2 days at a time. I want to be a financially responsible adult with a will and a retirement portfolio and a house that could not easily be condemned. I want to take a vacation on purpose. I want to open mail the day it arrives and not stockpile it into not important, less important, don't care piles. I want to write letters again, and remember birthdays and get plants planted at the beginning of the growing season instead of the end.

I really don't care that much about all the job stuff. I can feel joyful over the stupidest, simplest things. And as long as there is something to laugh about, or birds singing outside my window, or my puppy snuggled against me, I can find a reason to get up in the morning.

If only I could get back my ability to live deliberately. It slips away a little more each day.

No, no I don't want it all to end

2009-09-10T09:02:00.000-04:00

The last day of my vacation and I'm reminded of the column Mike Royko wrote when the Chicago Tribune was sold and the award winning collection of writers separated. If you don't know who Mike Royko was, in my opinion he was probably the best newspaper columnist ever. He didn't just write from the head and heart, but from the gut. A door kicker, take no prisoners approach. He said it was like the last evening of summer vacation, when you have the best softball team from among the neighborhood and every play is perfect. You want to keep playing all night, but the sun is setting and you know you have to go home and get ready to go back to school.

That's how I feel. I'm relaxed, I'm realizing there are still about 2 million things I want to do before I die. I'm centered and now ready to start. And I have to go to work tomorrow.

Fall is a tough time anyway. It's when SAD kicks my ass, and no amount of sitting in front of the lightbox overcomes the desire to sleep sleep sleep. October-November is when I've suffered my worst depressions so there's always some trepidation about the approaching winter days. If I run, meditate, eat well and practice my yoga (and take lots of drugs) I do fine. If not, I walk the precipice. It's a wild ride, Mr. Toad.

My former brother in law died last week at age 61. That's hard, when your contemporaries start to go. Despite the fact we didn't see eye to eye on politics, Bobby was more fun than a barrel of monkeys and more curious than a carload of cats. Everything he did was larger than life, and he did it all. Stock car racing, scuba diving, skiing, guitar playing, motorcycling, scotch drinking, woodworking, the board of the symphony. When Bobby took something on he fully immersed himself in it and learned everything he could. He put a basement under a house because it didn't have one. He had a workshop beyond compare, exquisite guitars and an extensive knowledge and love of folk music to go with them, rented an empty firehouse to store his antique Corvettes.

He was meticulous. Once at his apartment we were mocking him because he had all the bottles in his liquor cabinet arranged alphabetically. That prompted a challenge to start at A and see how far we could drink. When we got to O I think I threw up, and I haven't been able to touch Ouzo since then. The party never started until Bob got there. He taught my son how to build his first spud launcher, and gave him his first guitar.

I hadn't seen him in awhile but his memories always elicit smiles and a sense of wonder. I will miss him.

Nashville by day and night

2009-09-06T11:38:00.000-04:00

So what did we do the first night in Nashville? We had a crabfeast. The blues traveled well and were still lively and snapping when we arrived 12 hours later. Zack was up steaming crabs all night, then picking crabs, then making crabcakes till the wee hours. Two days later he was still picking crabs and making cakes, crab cakes for breakfast even.

Despite the gorgeous weather I ran nary a time choosing instead to eat, and drink. Really had an ice cream thing going on. Revisited the salty margarita. And all that BBQ. Handsome men- zero. Decent used mandolin - zero. But a really kick ass aquatics store with the clearest most gorgeous tanks I've ever seen, every Trigger imaginable, and a separate reptile room with several 4-5 ft long Caimans, one with a big bite out of its neck.

Saturday night and we set out to tour Nashville, so much music blaring from so many bars, musicians everywhere, street corners, doorways, sidewalks, bus stops. Tootsies had a line to get in, we stuck our heads in Robert's but jam packed, and made it into Legends but was suffocated by boot leather and drunken hoohaws. A randy mix of tourists and locals neither of who exuded much southern chivalry when they stomped on my toes. Next door at the Titans stadium fireworks.

Lots of holding the baby and being entertained by the dogs marauding like a mini pack of gremlins. Totally relaxing.

Pack first, write later, pack first, write later...

2009-09-02T20:32:00.000-04:00

At 10 p.m. I have to be at the Shell station in Ellicott City to meet my crab connection. That's all my son wants, local crabs. He's going to Louisiana for three weeks to train for his year in Afghanistan beginning in Jan. so scoring real Md crabs is the least I can do. They are specially packed to make the 12 years trip tomorrow. Wish they could drive.

I'm supposed to be packing, but why pack when I can kill time writing. Like the POD that I was supposed to have packed. I'm sure my neighbors are going to be thrilled to realize it's still sitting there even though I've left town for a week. In its usual constipated way, Balt Co. has a law that such things can only sit on the street for a week. Mine has been out there for three. It doesn't have wheels, will it get a parking ticket?

Upon my return I'm suppose to go to a hearing to determine if my house is worthy of Landmark status, however, now I'm not sure I even want it because then you get these squareheads deciding every window, door, hinge and shingle you can hang, and you can never tear your house town (in case I get possessed to do that some night.)

On the way to Nashville I get to go down Distillery Highway. I found it very odd that the Jack Daniels Distillery is in a dry county, it's an odd little state they have. On Sunday I'm told the police force is posted at all the churches since traffic is so massive. An odd turn, the people are incredibly polite, but the drivers are worse than any in Maryland. I'm not sure what I'll do there, I really have no desire to go to Opryland, I already saw the Ryman and went to the Ernest Tubb Record Store. The bars are pretty cool, each one has a decent band, no cover and booze is pretty cheap. The last time I was there the band tried to play Streets of Baltimore when they found out we were from Baltimore, but didn't know all the words so the singer pulled them up on his IPhone. Just not real Country. I guess I could go see where Steve McNair got shot, sorry, that's not very nice.

What passes for poetry

2009-08-30T18:51:00.000-04:00

I'll try to keep the poetry to a minimum as not everyone is a fan. Ira once told me he thought people enjoy writing poetry but no one really liked to read it, and to some extent that might be true. I do enjoy writing it, and I always think it's best to read it aloud, so I may throw one in every so often to the point where I'm forced to write a new one. You're on your own for the reading aloud.

I haven't written much poetry lately, but then again, I haven't written much of anything lately.

I've even let go of my epic letter writing which I used to do religiously. Not that I replaced it with online correspondence, I just stopped writing period. My globe trotting friend in California and I used to do rousing 6, 7, 8 page letters in the tiniest hand print full of detail and description. I received an actual written card from her the other day and while I was answering it during lunch at work someone walked in and said, "I didn't know people still wrote letters." Words on paper have a different energy than on a screen. Michael Chabon in Wonder Boys said writing on a computer was like watching cartoons

Writing suffers when there's a full time job in play. In the movie The Whole Wide World, about pulp writer Robert E. Howard, there's a line when his girlfriend, an aspiring writer, claims at the dinner table that she'll keep teaching, and write too. Howard, who's sacrificed a normal life for his writing, leans toward her and solemnly whispers, "it don't work like that."

I don't care much for Conan the Barbarian, or any of Howard's genre, and luckily the movie isn't about that, it's about a lonely, reclusive man who never went outside his small Texas town,was self taught, never went to college, and was a social outcast but ended up creating an entire genre of phantasmagorical people and creatures before he committed suicide at age 27. I recommend it if only for Vincent D'Onofrio's performance.

I believe some people fear poetry, I know I used to when I hosted the Meter's Running poetry readings at Borders in Towson and had Open Mike Night. Nothing is more frightening. It's like the first couple weeks on American Idol. But I also had some wonderful poets do readings, Bruce Jacobs, Edgar Silex, Clarinda Harriss, Barbara DeCesare to name a very few. I also took numerous poetry workshops at Johns Hopkins (when gainfully employed there and tuition was free) which mixed the accomplished with the novice, providing motivation and inspiration and producing some envious results.

When my Mom died, my sister and I decided we each going to speak at the service. As I sat in that grief stupor on the plane which I had no idea how I caught, images and lines spilled out on scraps of paper. I hadn't been sleeping well anyway so that night I knew I had to muscle those notes into some workable form, I was still editing and rearranging on the way to the funeral home but somehow all fell into place.

My Mother was a simple Kansas farm girl, who when she was young rode horses, played piano, got dressed up (or dolled up as they like to say) to have photos made, worked a Rosie the Riveter job during WWII, and had many suitors. She was frugal as a nun, preached recycling and reusing light years ahead of Al Gore, and always amazed me how many practical hands on things she could do without ever going to college. She was big on doing things right.

My brother-in-law said he was a little nervous when I stood up and said I was going to read a poem. Not being familiar with my work I suppose the only thing he thought might be worse than an Open Mike poetry night is an Open Mike Poetry reading during a funeral. That was the last poem I wrote, and that was six years ago.

“Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.”

Ginsberg may not of meant writing was the work, but that's how I always interpreted the line. The work that eases the pain of living by giving it expression, meaning, solace and honesty.

There is a simple truth

in making things right.

Mending a tattered blanket,

oiling a squeak,

a weary smile rather than

no smile at all.

Sweeping debris

from a cluttered sidewalk,

replacing a fallen egg

to a nest, tying a shoelace

rather than not.

A simple peace in doing

rather than passing by.

A simple beauty carved

from a mighty intent

of making each moment

true.

There is a balance

in these small moments

which fold together to cradle,

an ever rocking world.

Getting ready for a road trip- dharma blogs

2009-08-29T20:50:00.000-04:00

Except for all the asshole drivers, road trips are meditation on wheels, staring out the window for hours at the countryside, goofing on locals, realizing the subtle changes a few miles, then a few more, can bring. I'm about to embark on a drive to visit my son and daughter-in-law, new granddaughter, and bring home the latest member of my fur family, Bernard Ludwig "Bernie Lu" Black.

How I ended up with a dog I haven't a clue. I had a therapist tell me once my best decisions are made impulsively, of course he never saw my house. Ask me 10 days ago if I wanted, needed or planned on getting a dog and the answer would have been, no, no and again no. Dog? I have no business with a dog, no room for a dog, no time for a dog. I have three cats that I'm pretty sure are going to question the sanity of the decision. Yet I said yes to a rescued dog. (Like when my buddy Steve talked me into the rabbit snatching caper where he took on the Towson crackheads while I drove the getaway car, and ended up with a lop ear living on my back porch eating my lawn furniture for a couple months.)

Sometimes the universe talks to me in that heel of the hand to the forehead kind of way, like when I got my first cat, Tess. I walked away initially because when I held her she kept giving me little bites on the hand, love bites the handler said. My brain was tracking, "this could be a problem," but I couldn't stop thinking about her big green eyes or piercing look through the cage as I walked away. I went back the next day and adopted her and she's been Nanny Cat for 12 years. Call it chemistry, cosmic resolution, magnetic direction, following the flow.

Buying my house was that same kind of insightful spontaneity, and despite the fact I am totally in over my head in a 170 year old house with one bathroom in the basement that Joyce won't use because she's afraid of spiders, and electrical outlets burning out like drug addled rock stars, (amazing how few lights you really need) it still was a sound purchase for a valuable piece of land. And one day, as God as my witness, I will have doorknobs.

I'm looking forward to time away, to reclaim my center and hear the sound of my internal ocean rush around my shell. To do nothing but stare and daydream, lay down the multi tasks and mindless pace. When I was a kid I loved to swing, preferably on a big old tree swing like the one my Grandfather in Kansas had. (Grandfather in Kansas - John Prine's ultimate old prairie dog-- another fine blog some day) I would daydream and swing for hours on end, think about birds building nests, why chewed wheat turns to gum, whether stars moved, and where the sky touches down at the end of the horizon. I'm sure it explains why I am a extraordinary underachiever.

My Father's idea of a vacation was vagabonding in our unairconditioned station wagon camping at every National and State Park in as many states as we could cover in two weeks (except California and New York, which for some reason he didn't like). A carpenter (I mean a poor carpenter) he built our own car top carrier and a small cot that I could stretch out across the back over the luggage. Seat belts? We didn't need no stinking seat belts. I was an eight year old potential projectile, adventure sleeping through this great land. Road trips are in my blood.

Soon my daughter and I will be heading to Tennessee and Kentucky, brushing up on our Spanish on CDs, seeking enlightment with Eckhard Tolle but getting bored since as most self help it's Basic Humanity 101 then chucking it for Dylan Moran's Monster, because laughter really is enlightment; wishing every state, city, town didn't have the same stores, gas stations, and restaurants we've seen since home.

I'll be bringing back a new best friend, kisses from my granddaughter and hopefully a used mandolin which some poor broke Nashville musician was forced to pawn. Somebody out there better teach me to play.

Grand Mere, Moggee, Phar Mor and where are my damn shoes...

2009-08-29T20:12:00.001-04:00

Friends are morbidly curious about how it feels to be a grandmother, since most of my friends are younger than I am, at least in years. It feels... I have no clue.

My mother always accused her grandchildren of hiding her shoes when she had accidentally hid them from herself. So senility seems to be a big part of it. Between my autumnal depression, Lyme Disease and menopausal ADD, senility might be a welcome change. A baby won't be as sharp as a 55 year old who's lost a large percent of her marbles. I'll look like a raving genius to an infant. Hence the myth of sage Grand Mere is born (excuse the pun.) God knows I've slowed down so I'll appear intentional, deliberate, thoughtful and composed, when all I really am trying to do is get up out of a chair.

Yes, most of my friends are quite a bit younger than me. People my age tend to bore me, not all, but many. My friend Tim kept the music going for me when I couldn't listen to music for along time (that's another blog.) A young co-worker got me back into writing. Musician friends remind me that passion is LIVE, all are quite a bit younger, except Sam, who like me, who will never grow up or old. I suspect my younger friends will not lose their edge as they age, attitude plays a major role.

I don't really think much about being a grandmother, it's neat and all that, but it's just another piece of the puzzle. I won't ever hang up my rock and roll shoes, still laugh at Animal House, love to color & draw, think monkeys are hysterical, swear like a sailor, find nothing more comfortable than jeans and a t-shirt, like to drive fast, marvel at the trivial, and get rushes off of little things. The entertainment inside my own head never ends.

Twitter, Uh, What is It Good For, well mainly ...

2009-08-29T20:11:00.000-04:00

At first look, Twitter seemed like Internet stupidity come home to roost. Twitter should produce Twits not Tweets, inconsistency bothered me right off the bat. Verbal riffs or very simple recipes, what's the point. Brevity is for advertising and movie taglines.

I've found several good uses for it though. A co-worker in the IT field says her colleagues use it to bounce ideas off each other. Since I've never had any ideas about computers I'm out that gate, but I suppose writers could use it as a forum for really brief workshopping blurbs.

I like to follow bizarre news, comedians, and musicians. Conor Oberst puts up lyrics. Someone does that for Warren Zevon too. Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Wilco, Tim Easton, Rhett Miller, Cowboy Junkies all do concert updates or road news. It's an endless source of oneliners. Find some really perverse comedians, I like Michael Ian Black, Sarah Silverman, John Laroquette, Christopher Moore(author)Penn Jillette, Eddie Izzard, BillBailey, Stephen Fry, to name a very few.

Then there are news sources: Rachel Maddox, NPR, George Stephanoupolis, Drudge Report, Luke Russert, Joe NBC. I'd love to hear of what other people follow. Of course you get the porn sites wanting to be followers, those came when I followed Michael Madsen and Charlie Sheen.

I don't do much writing there, since no one follows me. It's sort of like a police scanner, you want to watch the watchers but not be one. No one cares if I made popcorn or returned a Netflix movie.

My Mother would have been a queen on Twitter. After she died I reread many of her diaries and they were the driest, most pragmatic things I ever read. No emotions, no feelings, no wishes or hopes or dreams or disappointments. All matter of fact.

Rain. Took aspirin at noon. Wrote letter. Made dinner. Mended sox. Watered plants. Went to bed 10 p.m. No wonder she had to take the aspirin so early to face that day. In her defense, she was a lady of simpler times so who am I to judge.

I found the only other Hagvall in the United States on Twitter, a guy named Martin who does some kind of job placement coaching in California who is now following me but not because we have the same last name but because he follows anyone who follows him (like Yoko Ono.) All the other Hagvalls are over in Sweden doing diet research or linguistical studies, it's a strange little country.

Twitter sort of reminds me of the tin can telephones we used to make that never really worked unless you yelled loud in the first place. The conversations were short and you waved a lot. Not only have kids graduated to their own extension phone in their rooms, but now cell phones, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Hula, YouTube. And we felt so smug, connected to our friends next door with 100 feet of string and two soup cans. Progress, it's a beautiful thing.

The Vast Indifference of Heaven

2009-08-29T18:33:00.000-04:00

I was thinking the other night how novel it would be to have say, Warren Zevon, for my guardian angel (hence the title of this post.) How he really couldn't help me with most any of the crises in my life since his own life was fairly remiss -except of course at the end when he took his shot on goal and saw that heavenly light. He went out classy.

But how wry and twisted the conversations would be, certainly better than anything on television or the Internet. I would ask him about relationships and dating, about why men are always looking for the next best thing. And he would say, "You really want to take dating advice from me, as close to a sex addict as you can possibly get?"

In many of his interviews he would answer the question with a question, and a sometimes scathing one at that, as if to say to the interviewer, "did you really think about that question before you asked it because if you did you never would have asked it."

I would get to thinking about my questions before I opened my mouth, and perhaps come to realize that if I only thought first I would find I actually did know the answer, fully aware that he seemed to not tolerate fools well, or mundane lyrics, or passing up hot sex.

I would mostly be curious about his songwriting process. I heard his wife, Crystal, talk about when he wrote Mohammed's Radio on Halloween night in Denver when a poor unfortunate walked into a bar, dressed as a sheik with a boom box on his shoulder. The light flashed across his face she said, and she knew he was writing the song.

While most contemporary songs deal with love, sex, cheating, heartbreak, redemption or hope, his songs dealt with mercenaries, international prostitutes, murdering psychopaths, political intrigue, bondage, Lord Bryon, Einstein, Mata Hari, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, outlaws, renegades, hockey players, boxers, bums, alcoholics, opportunistic sociopaths, a maniacal father with a Craftsman lathe in the basement, gorillas, monkeys, OCD, suicide, bad haircuts, not to mention, lawyers, guns and money. Deny his mainstream popularity, but never deny his intelligence or range.

When I ask about his writing he would eventually tell me that he trashed his relationships, his family ties, his friends, his health, maybe even his success, but he never turned his back on his craft. He always wrote what he wanted to write, and he always wrote, period. He clung to life longer than he was supposed to in order to write.

Like the tale of the boys playing mumblety peg when they are suddenly told by God that the world will end tomorrow. One boy says he'll drink and whore all day, the next says he'll gather as much wealth around him as he can possibly accumulate. God asks the third boy what he will do with his few remaining hours and he says, I will finish the game.

Warren finished the game. With one eyebrow raised, he's telling me it's time I got my game started.