Unnatural Blonde

2008-08-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

I can't hear you cuz I'm stupid

This is going to be a rant. If you're not interested in reading a rant, come back later when I'm closer to a glass half full of the milk of human kindness.

I'd like to have a little talk about cell phones. I don't mean how people so often answer them when they're with other people- friends or strangers- and then have the conversation right there in front of us all as if we'd just before asked what they were up to these days. "Oh my, that's such a long story. I know! Listen in on this call and it'll give you a snapshot."

I also don't mean the people who use their cell phones at unsafe times. Say when they're crossing the street. Or when they're turning left on a green light and they're supposed to yield but instead, when the phone rings and it's their dad they feel they have to take it so they do and, they drive right into the front of my car and total it.

Being nearly a half century old provides one with more than just a sense of perspective, it also means one can remember things. (Okay not everything. And, no, not always where the car is parked at the store as well as what one is to buy at the store. But I know the words and tune to two different versions of "Hound Dog", all three versions of the Free Credit Report dot Com ads plus the Hillshire Farms commercials, and I know that Pure Prairie League performed "Amie". So it's not like my brain is devoid of all usefull information.)

One thing I remember very clearly is how people used phones before there were cellphones. "Yeah, yeah. Most people remember phones before cellphones. We remember early cellphones. Why on the first few season's of 'The X Files' Mulder's cellphone was so big it looked like he was talking into Maxwell Smart's shoe."

I remember when all I really wanted for Christmas was a Princess phone. I remember when my grandmother refused to use her phone during certain hours because she had a party line- which isn't as much fun as it sounds and doesn't cost $5.99 per minute- and she didn't want to interfere with her neighbor's rights and opportunities to use the phone. And I remember how people reacted when they got a long distance call.

I didn't know anyone who got a call from overseas; in all the cases I witnessed the participants were four hours or fewer apart from each other. For each instance the behavior was the same: Someone would answer the phone, they'd determine the identity of the caller and who they wished to speak to, then they would turn to that person and hiss, "It's your mother"- if it was their mother- then in a much louder hiss they'd add "Long distance".

You're probably wondering why someone would say "long distance" at that point. If you live in Wisconsin and your mother lives in California and she's calling you from there then naturally she's calling you long distance. No one should have to explain the conditions to you in other words. But the phrase "long distance" was not uttered sotto voce for the benefit of the intended recipient of the call. It was a cue to the other people in hearing distance as to how they should behave. Televisions and radios were shut off. Depending on the time of day, children were taken outside or to other rooms where they were shushed. It didn't really matter that these precautions were taken to render the vicinity as quiet as possible. It didn't matter because the first thing the person who was handed the receiver did was...shout into it. "HELLO, MOTHER. IT'S GOOD TO HEAR YOUR VOICE."

Why did they do this? Some of them did it because America was more rural then and they had grown up running and yelling and working and playing outside. They were used to arguing baseball rules across a field and calling people to dinner who were in the back forty.

The other reason many people shouted was because this was a long distance call. These were not stupid people. They were leading productive lives. They had most likely not seen the highly informative video "How Your Phone Works" but if they'd thought about it they probably grasped the idea that there were wires running into their house and into Mrs. Avery's house and into Mom's house that carried the conversations. Well if everything is being transported by wires then it doesn't really matter how far away the other person is, does it? There are wires here and wires there and it all works the same whether it's Mrs. Avery down the block or Mom in California. Right? Technically, yes. (Of course it also costs a hell of a lot more to talk to Mom in California and to this day I've yet to have anyone explain that to me in a satisfactory manner.) But in practice, no. The further away the other person was the louder you had to shout.

I'm reminded of those earlier headier days of phone usage whenever I'm out in public but especially when I cross the river and visit the more sophisticated city of Portland. Portland, after all, is bleeding edge. Nike is there. IT firms are there. They had a plan to free wi-fi for the whole city. Portlanders know their technology.

You can figure I was surprised then when I realized how many Portlanders were shouting into their cellphones. Whether they're leading productive lives or not these people are stupid. This is 2008 not 1968 and I have different expectations for people's behavior and their understanding of how things work. We have all seen enough news stories about overheard/intercepted cell phone calls to get that conversations are transmitted over radio waves and you don't need to shout just because there isn't a wire running out the end of your phone. (If you want to learn about the beginnings of wireless communication- Hey! You might find it interesting- you can read about the Alohanet here.)

I don't think lack of knowledge about how cellphones work is what is causing most people to shout into them. I think it's caused by stupidity. I really believe people are shouting into their phones because they're too ignorant to realize they're trying to use the phone in the wrong place. Not wrong because it's offensive although sometimes that's also true. Wrong because there are environmental factors preventing the phone from fulfilling its purpose of enabling communication.

You've probably seen these people. (If you were one of these people I doubt you would have read this far.) In an elevator, descending in a parking garage built by someone whose sideline was fashioning fall-out shelters:(spoken loudly) "Yes, I'm on my way to the car now."

Another floor down and the thick walls and wiring interfere: (as if speaking to someone who's old or a non-native speaker of English) "I said I'm in an elevator and I'm on the way to the car. Can you hear me? I. AM. IN. AN. ELEVATOR!"

One floor below the sign reading "Abandon all hope..." but the phone user hasn't: (in a voice used for calling "Chow's on" to the back forty) "Can you hear me? Hello? Hello! I was in an elevator?" Shakes phone. (This works for remotes and flashlights but I've never seen it work with a phone.) "Screw it! I'll have to drive over and do this in person".

But these were not the stupidest people I saw. That dubious honor goes to the folks who were walking beside the Max train talking on their cellphones. They had the phone up to one ear and they would put their fingers in or hand over their other ear- the one closest to the train tracks- in an attempt to block out the noise and continue the conversation. Unless you're negotiating a hostage situation, an organ transplant, or a way to make people stop knitting or crocheting those Martha Stewart "Freedom" ponchos then there is no reason not to stop and continue your conversation somewhere and somewhen else. After all, at this point it seems to be consisting of "Talk louder! I can't hear you! I'm walking beside an effing train trying to shout over it! What? Because I'm completely stupid!"

Okay. Maybe that last was really just editorializing on my part. I can't be sure though. It's hard to hear well when you're standing beside an effing train.

2008-08-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Quotidian Economics

I have recently become friends with one of the young men in one of my computer classes. I'm not sure how young as he says his birthdate is the equivalent of a state secret and he has had to kill people to protect it. On the other hand, he is young enough not to recognize that "Say 'Good night' Dick" is a reference to Dick Martin of "Laugh-In" as opposed to Dick Cavett the talk show host. (Does anyone besides me remember the series of comedy shows Dick Cavett put together for radio? I heard them on the Armed Forces Radio Network but they had to have started out somewhere else first.)

He wears a lot of message T-shirts with sayings on them like "I won't lower my standards to raise yours". He's one of those intense people who feels that everyone should be learning philosophy and that philosophy should be the basis for a civilization.

"If only people thought more about what they're doing and why, the world would be a much better place," he told me today. "If people treated one another fairly and ethically, there would be peace and everyone would get along."

"Do you know why more people don't study philosophy?" I said.

"No."

"I took a class years ago that explained that people didn't even consider things like 'What am I doing' and 'Why am I doing it' until society was sufficiently industrialized that it could afford a leisure class. Most people then and I happen to think most people now as well were too busy trying to get by, trying to eke out a living. But then again it depends on what you mean by philosophy, doesn't it?"

"Are you saying people are too busy studying economics to study philosophy?"

"I'm saying that if you're living hand to mouth and you can barely feed your family or if that's your perception then you're probably not thinking about why you're doing something. One reason you're not thinking about it is that the answer is obvious: you're doing what you can and what you need to do to acquire food and shelter and clothing for the people who are your responsibility. You're not worried about the people outside your circle because it's someone else's job to look after them. During the Irish Potato Famine there were probably very few people sitting around saying, "Does everything work towards the common good in this world?"

"That's just it though," he said. "There was no potato famine".

It is at this point that- in the words of Lynne Truss- "I start making pointed harrumphing noises". I am pretty familiar with historical revisionists. I once visited the concentration camp at Dachau and the Lyndon Laroushe people had set up a table outside the gates. Clearly they had not been inside the gates because even if you wrote the facility off as an elaborate hoax you would at least have to wonder why anyone would put so much time and effort into staging it. I believe that wondering is only a short nudge from believing and what I saw at Dachau was beyond even the talents of Disney or George Lucas to contrive.

"How can you say there was no potato famine? Why would all the historians say there was one and why would all those Irish people have emigrated to American and wherever else?"

"There wasn't really a famine. Yes, the potato crop was smaller than usual but there would have been enough for the Irish if they were only supporting themselves. The problem is that the Irish were supposed to be supplying potatoes for all of England too. When the English arrived to pick up the potatoes, the Irish people told them there weren't enough and they couldn't supply the English and feed themselves. The English then took all of the potatoes and the other crops too and the chickens and goats and children to use as slaves and their daughters and packed everything/everyone off to England."

"Okay..."

"So that's it. If the English had treated the Irish with respect and left them enough food to eat then there wouldn't have been a famine at all."

"Right..."

"I don't get it. Everybody studies math and science and nobody studies philosophy. Why is that?"

"Because you don't make any money with philosophy. We still live in a bottom-line type society. You make money by using math and science to invent or develop something. You don't make money being nice to people and explaining to other people why they should be nice to each other."

"I guess that's true. Do you think that's why there's such an emphasis on math and science?"

"I'm probably not a good person to ask. When I was in elementary school, we were all pushed as fast and as hard as we could be to learn math and science so we could defeat the Russians. Math, science, and chess."

"Oh, the old Space Race thing."

"Yes, and we weren't going to beat the Russians by sitting around coming up with ways to be nice. And Bill Gates didn't get to be a billionaire by thirty-one by being nice either. He made a billion dollars and then he started giving it away. Ethics and respect for other people are fine in personal relationships but I've never heard of anyone using them to get ahead. You can be as kind and respectful as you want in your cardboard box under the bridge."

The conversation moved on then to why people don't follow Bill and Ted's advice to "Be excellent to each other" and why nearly forty years after the attempted introduction of the metric system it still isn't dominant in American society. "Umm... because we're Americans and we're still a super-power so we'll use any damned measurement system we like and to hell with what the rest of the world is doing" was my take on the reason.

In some ways I hate having those kinds of conversations with younger people. I always feel like I'm letting them down and letting myself down as well. I understand that I'm just presenting to them the facts as I've experienced them. (Do I wish things were different? You bet your sweet bippy! I'd love to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.) More and more frequently unless someone asks me specifically I just let them proceed in ignorance. Yes, someone at some point is going to shake them by the scruff of the neck and tell them it's a dirty old world and most people would sell their mother or one of their children to make a buck or to get a carton of cigarettes. But I no longer think it is my job to do the shaking and I would rather do them the kindness of maintaining their innocence as long as possible.

2008-07-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

Relapse

Sometimes when you're suffering from an addiction it seems as if you're the only one and it's kind of nice to find out you're not.

Maybe calling it an addiction is too strong. Maybe "obsession" would be better. "Affection" isn't big enough for the things I'm going to be discussing. It's a good word for a phase you'll grow out of like thinking life will end if you don't end up married to Kevin Spacey, Kevin Kline or Les McKeown.(Alan Rickman isn't on that list because no matter how increasingly shabby he looks as Severus Snape he will always be entrancing in "An Awfully Big Adventure".)

People also don't seem to grow out of their desire to own a lot of Sharpie pens. Once you have the regular thickness in all the different colors you can start on the ones with "fine" on one end and "ultra fine" on the other. Sometimes they make good souvenirs; I once bought four of them at a stationery store at the beach and gave them to appropriate people along with their back-story. (Could we have bought the same ones at the Office Max here in town? No. They would have been the same color but they wouldn't have traveled three hours in a bag with a Cannon Beach sweatshirt and some salt water taffy and that makes all the difference.) It's hard to set someone on the path to Sharpie love though. You can give someone a Sharpie and they will either squee and their eyes will light up or they will say,"Oh. A marker"and it's hard to tell which ahead of time.

Another perennial favorite for unpredictable responses- I thought I had grown out of this one but apparently not- is fonts. Not fountains. Not those things they baptize babies and sometimes larger humans in. The typographic kind you find in books, magazines, and web designers' caches. I have not designed in years therefore I had not come into contact with font collections online therefore I thought the danger was past. Then I read "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" and there was a chapter on typography and even worse there were links. Now I have three different fonts of various sorts of hearts and a font that looks like stamps and a handwritten font called "Rhiannon" has found its way back onto my computer.

Sock yarn, coffee, baseball, books, Sharpie pens, Alan Rickman, jewelry-making supplies, cheese, and now fonts.

At least I'm over the guy down the hall. Right?

2008-07-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

A bit old (and out of shape) to be a home-wrecker

Robert Cray did an outstanding song about a couple in the apartment next-door who get into an argument about her being unfaithful. Their disagreement is especially poignant for the narrator because the woman has been unfaithful and it was with him.

My situation is a lot less extreme but I want to apologize now to the gentleman who sat beside me yesterday for the long disagreeable night I'm anticipating he had. Especially because the whole incident was completely unintentional.

I am not a young person. I have a lot of fun. I usually have a lot of energy. I am wearing an oversized Ichiro T-shirt, rubber flip-flops, jeans that drag the ground, and two rubber bracelets (that support prostate cancer research) but I don't really look young. I have crow's feet and parentheses and frown lines on my face. More weight than I'd like has moved from my bust to my waist. You get the idea: not young.

But even when I was a younger person I never had the problem of girls being upset if I talked to their boyfriends. We were usually talking about cars or sports or Dungeons and Dragons and the girls would give me the once-over and mentally- at least- say "Yeah, right". I haven't expected this to change any time soon. Girls tend to see me as one of the guys and guys tend to see me as one of the guys and that's okay.

Whether it makes me one of the guys or not, I love baseball. I don't know when I started to love baseball. I was listening to an audiobook about Spenser and he was reciting the names of the Impossible Dream 1967 Red Sox and they floated to the top layer of my brain like long-forgotten friends. I don't know why my father would have been a Red Sox fan and I would only have been six-years-old when these guys played which makes it very odd I would have the players' names filed away. Clearly baseball has been with me for a long time. (I don't play baseball or softball. My hand-eye coordination sucks and I have either asthma or COPD so at this time I am purely a spectator and commentator.)

And if people appear to be spectating with me I will talk to them about baseball. Anyone. And they only have to look like they're the tiniest amount interested in the game. I offer as evidence the fact I once spent twenty minutes explaining to my mother about a ground-rule double. My
mother is a) a 70 year old woman, b) only remotely interested in sports and that goes double for baseball, and c) usually doing something else and listening to me purely because I am her offspring.

Yesterday evening I attended the Vintage Baseball game held at the Fort on the field not too far from the gazebo. They play in the uniforms of and use the rules of the early 1860's. This means no bunting, no sliding, no stealing, no called strikes, no called balls so no walks, and no gloves. Also the ball must be thrown underhand.

I arrived at the field with my blanket and my sweatshirt rolled into a ball and was able to find a good seat even though there were a lot of people and the game had already started. I plopped down next to an old man- not being ageist. He was at least seventy-five. Not as elderly-looking as the seeming centenarian who later got hit by a foul ball but still old- who was sitting in one of those very short lawn chairs. I pulled out my BlackBerry, started getting some pictures and trying to understand the rules.

I'm not sure if he talked to me first or if I talked to him first. I have feeling it was me and I asked him something like "Do you think those bats are made of hickory?" My daughter had sent me a link to an article on why baseball bats break and it mentioned that in the early days the bats were made of hickory and since this was supposedly the early days I thought it was a reasonable question. (No, I don't know why I thought he might have an opinion. Maybe because he was an old man and they seem to have an opinion on everything except what they want for their next meal.)He said he thought they might be and we started talking about why bats break and how players like Ichiro who keep their bats in humidity controlled conditions don't break their bats. And then we talked about baseball in general and how the Mariners are doing and whether they will turn out to be the reincarnation of the 1914 Braves and how the Portland Beavers are doing and in between all this talking- which was spread over six innings- we sat in companionable silence that was only broken by exclamations of "Nice hit" or "He batted from the other side of the plate last time. He might want to consider going back to it".

The reader can easily gather from this bare-bones recounting of our interaction that nothing untoward was said by either the old man or me. There was nothing, in fact, that could not have been broadcast as "color" during this particular game had there been color announcers at that time or announcers of any kind.

I had noticed that every so often the old man would exchange a remark or two with the old woman in the chair ahead of him. A lot of people were exchanging remarks with other people though and the two of them weren't in matching chairs or anything so what happened around the middle of the sixth inning came as a big surprise. (My mother claims it shouldn't have but she wasn't there so it's all supposition on her part.)

What happened was that the people directly ahead of me had brought their two children and the kids got increasingly restless and the parents had already bribed them with soda and hot dogs and Cracker Jack and decided finishing the game wasn't worth any further monetary investment. So they left. This was an awesome development for me because I now had an unobstructed view of the field even when I was sitting rather than kneeling.

The parents and children leaving wasn't a wholly unexpected event. The unexpected thing was when the old lady called over her shoulder, in the manner of one of the wives on "Last of the Summer Wine", "Well, now that there's room...I suppose you could come up here and sit beside me."

No response from the old man. Presumably he was focusing on the game.

"Did you hear me?"

The old man's head slowly swiveled from the runner on second trying to decide whether he could make it to third once the ball was struck before the ball bounced. "What did you say?"

A bit louder this time- "Now that there's room I suppose you could come up here and sit beside me."

"I suppose I could."

"Yes... I suppose you could."

The old man moved up and as soon as he was settled in she left to get a hot dog.

By now it was the seventh-inning stretch- no singing, of course, as that portion of the stretch hadn't been inaugurated yet- and I went up to have a better look at some of the bats.

Because the old man and I had been discussing them earlier, I said to him as I walked by in search of my own hot dog, "He said his bats are made of white Ash wood and there was no weight limit but there was a circumference limit and the length limit was 42". Can you imagine how tall you'd have to be?"

"You'd have to be a basketball player! No limit for weight though?"

"No limit on what?" asked the old woman returned from her successful mission.

"No limit on weight," he said.

"Hmm..." she said.

It was very apparent now that I was the third wheel on a tandem although she was displaying as much interest in the whole topic as my mother had in the ground-rule double and I departed on a hot-dog recon of my own.

When I came back to the game I sat facing the other side of the field. I hadn't seen the action from over there and I thought it was the better part of valor even though it had never been my intention to cause trouble.

But why was there going to be trouble? I had no interest in hooking up with the old man. He was a nice enough old man with some good baseball stories to tell but even if I were looking for a sugar daddy he didn't look like he had the makings of one. And if I were an old woman I can't imagine why I would be jealous of my old man talking to someone like me. No one would consider me trophy wife or girlfriend material.

I hope the old man didn't get in trouble. I hope he had a good time watching the game. And I hope this experience doesn't put him off talking to other people. They could learn a lot from him. Even if all they talk about is baseball.

2008-07-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Now I've got the pill

My doctor looked at me from under her straight-across black bangs, her eyes serious behind her silver wire-framed glasses.

"The fact is your cholesterol is sky-high, my friend."

"Yeah, well I'm cutting back on the cheese like the nurse said." The doctor's hair swayed as she gave her head a quick shake.

"Your cholesterol is so high I can tell there's no way you're going to be able to bring it down with a low-fat diet. I'm going to put you on Zocor."

Ah, the old good news-bad news situation.

The good news is since we're not going to try to reduce the cholesterol by cutting the fat I can still enjoy cheese (occasionally).

The bad news is- with the exception of the mental anguish caused by contemplating a life without cheese- I was a lot more comfortable with the idea of lowering my LDL by diet and force of will than taking another pill.

I am thankful that someone invented this pill and it's going to help prevent atherosclerosis and a possible heart attack. Don't get me wrong about that. But I've been adding more and more pills to my life in the last few years and Zocor like Prozac is going to be something I'm on for the foreseeable future. (In the interest of full-disclosure, when I received my first prescription for Prozac two years ago I was extremely happy. It's goofy, I know, but I am very proud of my identity as a trailing Baby Boomer and in my mind having to take Prozac solidified my membership in that group. A doctor later diagnosed me as having an "attachment disorder" which essentially means I have a hard time accepting that we're all getting older, my child is going to go to college then off to start her own life, my parents are eventually going to die, and even more eventually so will I and the world will just continue on as if none of
these events amounted to a hill of beans. Aside from personally finding this line of thought depressing as hell, I think most Baby Boomers have suffered or are now suffering from some form of attachment disorder. Come on... The only way you can unironically say, "Never trust anyone over thirty" is to ignore the fact that someday you'll be there yourself.)

Besides- and this is probably the crux of the issue- Zocor is something my pop takes. And he's diabetic. And seriously overweight. And seventy-one.

What the hell am I doing having to take the same medication as him?

The short answer is it's his fault. Actually it's his parents' fault. Okay, it's probably their parents' fault too. In other words, I'm one of those cholesterol from "apple pie and Grandpa Si" people just like in the
commercial.

Come to think of it, most of the people on his side of the family suffered from some form of anxiety or depression too.

As I look at the state he's in and consider whether his fate might be my own in twenty-five years, it appears having an attachment disorder and- as my mother puts it- railing against the advance of the years might not be a bad idea.

The title of this entry is taken from a song by Loretta Lynn. She was filled with unalloyed joy at getting the pill because it was, in fact, The Pill.

2008-07-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

i'm not lovin' it

We've had a bit of a heat wave this week and with that and the price of gas being so high we've all been driving as little as possible. That's why even though my mother wanted fruit and yogurt parfaits from McDonalds she hesitated to text me to ask if I'd stop and get some. I arrived at her house around ten after ten and she made the request in person. I said, "Sure" cuz I don't mind driving when it's hot; I put the windows down and turn the radio up and everything's fine. Our local oldies station is playing their way through their library from A to Z and it's been fun discovering and rediscovering songs. So I absolutely did not mind making a Mickey Ds run. Until I got there.

You probably noted the time I arrived at Mom's- even if only subconsciously- and you probably know that McDonalds stops serving breakfast at 10:30. (I don't know why 10:30 is the magic time but it appears to be universal except for Jack In The Box.) So I pulled quickly into the drive-through lane and looked at the clock and it was 10:20 and yes that's damn fast driving but please don't snitch me off.

I ordered the six fruit and yogurt parfaits and the Sausage McMuffin with no meat and the iced coffee and since it was now 10:22 I put in my order for the three Filet O' Fish sandwiches.

"We don't start serving lunch until 10:30."

"Okay."

"It's not 10:30 yet so you can't order the sandwiches."

"I don't think I'm understanding this right. Are you telling me I can order all the other stuff now but I have to come back through to order the fish sandwiches even though 10:30 is only eight minutes away?"

"No lunch until after 10:30."

I pulled up to the first window and gave someone the money then I drove to the second window and received six fruit and yogurt parfaits and a Sausage McMuffin with no meat. Then- because I have clearly been beaten down by years of bureaucrats. I parked and sat and enjoyed the moderately pleasant breeze and listened to the radio until...10:35. At which time I got back into the drive-through lane, ordered iced coffee and three Filet O' Fish sandwiches, pulled up to the first window, gave someone my money, pulled up to the second window and waited.

I waited sixteen minutes for them to finish cooking some "fresh" fish for me. Are you seeing the irony in this timing?

Later my mother said, "You can't blame them; it's how they're trained."

I do understand that. I'm not talking about blaming anyone. I also comprehend that there are occupations which call for precision. If someone was say wiring my house I'd want them to pay exacting attention to the codes. Same goes for someone performing surgery on me or someone I love. And, yes, if you start making exceptions for one person then theoretically everyone else will want to order their Filets O' Fish early.

That's "theoretically" because I've never seen the world start down the slippery slope to Hades when I've made exceptions and other people do it so seldomly I can't claim to have enough experience to draw a conclusion.

It's just like that poem by Charles Bukowski.

2008-07-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

I enjoy being the girl

Many many years ago when computers took up a whole room and John Denver was popular (and alive) and Mt. Saint Helens had yet to erupt, I took computer classes. I studied Basic and Fortran and played Dungeons and Dragons and spent hours working my way through the caves of the Adventure game.

In January of this year, I started taking computer classes again. I had already spent over a hundred hours beta-testing interactive fiction a few summers ago. I had spent many happy afternoons singing folk songs. (And even writing some songs of my own). I had not resumed my playing of D&D but otherwise I guess you could say my re-enrolling in computer classes was just the next step in my progression.

Most of my classes have a mix of males and females in them. That's different. Ten years ago I took a class in Microsoft Office applications and there was only one male; the rest were women in their fifties and sixties who were only there because their boss made them be and were terribly afraid to shut down the computer for fear the data would disappear as soon as it left their sight.

I am the only girl in my Data Networking class. It's the first of the four you have to complete to pass the test as a Cisco Certified Network Administrator. I guess there still aren't many women in this part of the computer field. I'm enjoying the class though. Even if I am the only girl. Let's be honest and say it's because I'm the only girl. I specifically asked before I signed up for this academic track whether the majority of the students were male. If the advisor had answered in the negative I would have had to do some serious thinking.

It's not that I dislike being around women. Men just seem to be a lot more fearless when it comes to machines or well most things really. "If I crash this machine do we have the data to rebuild it?" they ask. If the answer is "yes" then nearly anything is fair game to try.

That's kind of how I usually feel too. If everyone makes it through alive, there is no permanent damage to people or equipment, and things can be restored to their original or near-original state then let's see what happens if we try this...

Am I more than a little old to approaching life like that? Yeah, probably. But let's see what happens if I do.

2004-07-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

White Privilege

"White Privilege", according to the website of the same name, "is a special advantage or benefit of white persons; with reference to divine dispensations, natural advantages, gifts of fortune, genetic endowments, social relations, etc."

The first time I was aware of this concept was spring of 1979 when I was taking a high school class called Pre-Law. We were discussing the Alan Bakke reverse discrimination case that had been decided the June before and one of the students said, "I think they should set aside some spots for someone who isn't White. Look at all the slots there are for people who are White."

This statement confused me because while I knew those seventeen spaces were specifically set aside for what we now call people of color I hadn't read anything that said there were rules that prohibited these people from being admitted as a student into one of the non-designated spots. Weren't people being judged on their SAT scores and their grades? Shouldn't the excellence of a student's qualifications be the basis for awarding all the spots? With these first ponderings I was thrust into the world of affirmative action, quotas and wildly uneven attempts at balance.

I have to say that before this, and again for several years after this, I didn't really think about being White and whether it worked for me or against me. Obviously I knew that I was White and that other people were not White. I knew that this caused problems for other people in other places. But in my seemingly little town we did not have the racial conflicts that were seen over the bridge in Portland. There were not a lot of Hispanic or African American students and those there were seemed to be accepted into high school society as fully and in most cases more fully than I was. I never witnessed anyone called names because of their race or ethnicity. Even the newly arriving Vietnamese students were taken at face value, so to speak, and I didn't hear the word "gook" until after I'd graduated. It's true that when some of the Black girls taught me to dance outside the school library to The Commodore's hit "Brick House" they told me I did "real good for a White girl with no booty" but it seemed no more complimentary- or offensive for that matter- than someone commenting on my shortness or lack of punctuality.

In 1982, I was in Boise, Idaho. I filled out job applications in as many different locations as I could reach by bus in a day. (It wasn't just Reaganomics causing the problem. Lack of snow at Bogus Basin had sent all the ski resort staff to the lowlands looking for jobs.) One of the places I visited was a Japanese restaurant. I carefully put down my references and my address and phone number and the woman behind the counter read just as carefully over it and then she asked me to wait and talk to the owner. I was feeling pretty positive as he sat down across from me and started asking questions. Looking back I realize that if I had been more self and situation aware I could have saved myself a big let down. I didn't take much notice of the people already working in the restaurant so what the owner said came as a surprise to me-"I'm sorry. You have good experience and it looks like you're a good worker and people like you but you can't work here."

"But if you like my experience and you like me then why won't you hire me?"

"The people who work in this restaurant have to look a certain way."

"You mean there's a uniform or I need to cut my hair or put it up or something?"

"No. There is nothing you can do. See that waitress over there? All the other ladies look just like her."

"Oh, I see. They're all tall." By now the owner must have thought he was talking to the dumbest girl in the world but I just was not getting it.

"No. They're not all tall. They are all Japanese. People don't like to see a non-Japanese person bringing them their food if they've ordered Japanese food. People are happiest when all the workers look the same, when they all look Japanese."

"But you're not Japanese."

"No, I'm not. But I'm the owner. And I stay in the kitchen."

I was so heart-broken to be rejected like this that I didn't have nerve enough left to ask why they had allowed me to fill out the application and talk to him or why they hadn't made up some good excuse to not hire me and had instead announced flat out that I was inadequate because I was White or at least not Japanese. Everytime I told the story to someone they advised me to suck it up and move on. I eventually got a job at a Skippers where they didn't care what I looked like as long as I was nineteen and therefore old enough to serve beer and wine.

I didn't again consider the effect of my race on my work until over five years later when I took a job at a fast food restaurant on an Army post in what was then West Germany. The manager of the place and the assistant managers were White- two of them were so White they were German- and as permanent employees of the company were pretty much as settled as they chose to be. Under them worked a rotating mixed crew of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian women who arrived and left as their husbands' tours of duty began and ended. We all worked the same lousy shifts, we all did the same greasy jobs, we all confronted or didn't the same sexist comments, we all shared bull sessions in the kitchen during slow times, and when one of the other cashiers- who happened to be Black- got up in my face it was our large cook from Chicago- who also happened to be Black- who backed me up.

Then overnight everything changed. Someone decided we should have an award for Employee of the Month. None of us was outstanding enough to deserve such an award but what the heck. The first month they gave it to a Puerto Rican girl named Mariah. She was fairly efficient and very sweet and when the soldiers saw her new badge they took advantage of that sweetness by taunting her mercilessly to see if she really was the Employee of the Month.

The next month the award went to my friend, the cook from Chicago. This was kind of a surprise because she was known to get rather surly with the customers as well as the cashiers. (Before I started working there and earned her respect, through an incident too lengthy to relate here, she had terrified me when her calling a cashier to the back to discuss an order was followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh and a body falling to the floor. A substitute cashier was required.) Still, she did do a good job of keeping the grill and fryer staff jumping but under control.

The third month was the turning point. This time no one could find any way to rationalize the manager's choice. The recipient of the award was a woman from Korea who was so unpopular with soldiers and staff that we had seen men walk in, spy who was at the counter and walk right back out. She had left to work in a specialty Korean food stand elsewhere on post but quickly returned. The gossip went that she was so irritating and persnickety that not even the other Koreans wanted to work with her. And yet, her first month back, she was being proclaimed Employee of the Month. I had heard complaints from the soldiers about how this man or that man had been promoted as soon as he had sufficient points because he was Black and there weren't enough Black sergeants and someone else had been passed over because he was White or Hispanic but I hadn't believed it. It seemed to me that the military of all places should have a level playing field. It would follow that those things attached to the military would be similarly equitable, right?

When the third month's Employee of the Month was announced there was a tremendous amount of unrest in the kitchen area. Despite being one of the few White people not in management and still being "a skinny White girl with no booty"- as my helpful African American friends had pointed out when I volunteered at the day care center- and not being the quickest of workers I was very popular. There was a lot of discussion regarding why I had not been named Employee of the Month. I told them it's probably because I talked too much or had shortchanged my husband or something and we should suck it up and see what happened the next month.

The fourth month was the last one for which an employee was selected and she didn't even serve the whole month because the program was scrapped shortly after she was named. She was from Detroit, she was Black, and she snuck out for an hour during the middle of every shift to see her married boyfriend. She was the cashier I'd fought with and it had been about my not wanting to cover for that very thing. When the other women heard she was the one chosen they went right to the manager's office to complain.

"We want to know how come Ramona wasn't picked?"

"Ramona's work habits are not exemplary and that's what we want to reward here."

"Bullshit! She comes in early. She comes in on her day off. She does stuff we ask her to do that she isn't even scheduled to do."

"Customers have come in and she wasn't at her register."

"She was back in the kitchen with us or she was in the store-room getting stuff. She always asks one of us to keep a lookout and she comes right up front when we tell her someone's there."

"She talks to the customers a lot."

"Yeah, well you guys ran the tape and she was up selling like crazy. Maybe they're really hungry by the time they get to the front of her line but whatever the hell it is, she's a good cashier. She even calls around and sells the old pizzas to the guys on CQ so they have something to eat all night and we don't have to throw them away."

"Look, we are not going to argue about this. The decision has been made."

"It's cuz she's White, isn't it? You can't pick a White girl for this award. How come?"

"We are not discussing this any longer. Maybe it's a mistake to continue this program."

"You're damned right it is if you won't give it to someone who deserves it. We don't want some stupid certificate just cuz we're Colored. Then you went and gave it to that Korean chick and really shot the thing to hell."

"Get out of the office now. I've heard enough. We're just not going to do this any more." (So I never got the award and neither did anyone else. When I was getting ready to leave the country to come back Stateside, the other girls pitched in and bought me a sexy red nightie to kind of make up for it.)

And that, essentially, is the story of how perceived White Privilege and the accompanying reverse discrimination have negatively impacted my life. If not for those factors, maybe I too would be an esteemed veterinary thoracic surgeon. Or maybe the top worker in a sushi house. I continue to be White so I guess we'll never really know. But at least I've finally got some booty.

Check out bread coffee chocolate yoga. As Dick and Oscar wrote, "These are a few of my favorite things". It would be worth visiting just for the graphics.

2004-07-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

My Cultural Identity

I would describe my forty-three years of life as being lacking in color. Maybe it would be more accurate to identify them as being deficient in people of color. Or, alternatively, filled with people of non-color- as some of my group call ourselves- thereby following the tradition of defining something by what it is not. I guess we could say "Euro-Americans" although some were certainly from the furthermost edges of that region. They would probably be considered members of the dominant culture even though my Irish ancestors would have bristled at the term and most likely did not feel very dominant when they were being turned away from jobs, restaurants, and lodgings. My German relatives, who should have had even less to celebrate on their arrival here, would have been far more amenable to the title "dominant" -"All Hitler wanted was a warm water port," Great Grandpa used to say. "Is there anything so wrong about a man wanting to go to the beach and dip his toes in the waves and not freeze them instantly?"- but could they be considered so when their names were without their consent changed at Ellis Island and their children refused to let them visit if they insisted on speaking German?

For the sake of simplicity and with the full understanding that we are not being sociologically exact, let us use the term "white" to denote these folks. We will be using this word a lot because that's who populated my little part of the world: White people. My parents are White. My schoolteachers were White. My classmates, with the exception of two in junior high and three in high school, were White. My pastor and Sabbath school teachers were White. That made a lot of sense because, after all, Jesus was White and who would you expect to be carrying his message to the White church members. My college classmates were White unless they were of Middle Eastern or East Indian descent. Actually, Dinesh D'Souza, in his book Illiberal Education, considers himself to be White- which I must admit to being surprised about- so I guess these students count as being White also. The first guy who made it to "third base" was White as was the guy who eventually made it to home. Both my ex-husbands were White; Maybe that was part of the problem. (Three of my counsins are adopted. One is part Native American. One was born in and brought up from Mexico. Of the seven of us from the same generation, everyone who married- whether once or more than once- married a White non-Hispanic, non-Asian person.) Not all of my supervisors have been White but all of my employers, no matter what side of the globe I was on, have been. I have had friends including close girl friends and boyfriends who were Black or Asian or Native American but for the most part mine is a White White White White world.

This is kind of to be expected as I did grow up in Vancouver, Washington in the sixties and seventies and was raised by middle-class parents with three kids and a three-bedroom, one bath house in a quiet neighborhood with good schools. Did I mention they both voted for Nixon in '68 and '72?

Some of the most important values in my environment have been:
1) Go to work no matter what.
This is a huge one. I personally have gone to work with cramps so bad I sat on a crate so people would think I was relaxing a bit rather than doubled over in pain. I've shown up with a migraine so intense I used my break time to be violently ill. My grandmother went to work even though my drunken grandfather had beat the holy snot out of her the night before and was most likely molesting her children and the neighbors' children while she was gone to one of her two or three jobs. She walked four miles each way through the Michigan winters for the privilege too. My uncle, another sometime drunk and sometime child molester, put in his eight to twelve hours a day moving heavy appliances. We can only assume the painkiller addiction his job had pushed him to made the job more difficult but it may have been the only thing that enabled him to do it at all. My dad, who neither drinks nor fondles, continued to read slides looking for cancer even though his nitwit boss called him to come in to staff meetings held at two in the afternoon- Dad was on graveyard shift- and this sleep deprivation coupled with his then undiagnosed apnea caused him to fall asleep halfway through his time at the microscope. They hadn't determined he was diabetic or clinically depressed yet either. He didn't want to consider himself a slacker so he would set a timer to help him keep track of how long it took to read a tray of slides. If the alarm went off and woke him up and he couldn't remember where he'd been in the tray then he started over. He kept doing this until the tray was finished even if that was ten or more hours after he'd arrived at work. When he finally took medical retirement -forced- they cashed out his vacation and sick time for nearly another six months worth of pay. As one insightful boss of mine said, "I don't care if your marriage is ending and neither do the customers. Slap on a smile and get out there. No one wants pathos with their pasta."

2)Blood is thicker than water unless the neighbors are involved or someone might get their feelings hurt.
My mother's sister's husband was a child molester. (He eventually died of liver failure which I thought was excellent. I thought this because there was no way in hell he could have coaxed a child near him with his yellow skin and fingers that looked like they belonged on a banana boat.) I know this for a fact. My sister knows this for a fact. My mother knows this because, apparently, we told her. I did not know anyone knew until I was almost eighteen. The reason for that is no one ever mentioned it to me when I was old enough to understand and remember and- here's the kicker- we continued to go to their house for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Why didn't my aunt divorce him when she found out? It wasn't because she was against divorce because she did kick his butt to the curb many years later when he started going to the store for bread and coming back a day later smelling of Certs with no baked goods evident. The reason is that no one ever told her. That's right. Even though she did in-home daycare and probably five hundred kids were through her house over the years. Why did no one tell her so she could be extra vigilant around the kids? Because they were afraid she might confront him and he would leave and no longer support his family or he might commit suicide or he might harm my aunt or cousins in some way. Was it a good gamble to put the safety and security of the day care kids at risk to keep my aunt and cousins and their livelihood safe? No children or parents ever complained or sued so it all worked out for the best, right?

On the other side of the coin, there is my dad's brother. (He too has passed on but he died of pneumonia due to immobility caused by a fall and weighing close to three hundred pounds. Not a nice way to die and he was a very nice man even if he did used to buy me those horrible orange marshmallow "circus peanuts".) He came to live in my parents' house after his own parents had both died. He and I worked odd jobs over the course of a summer like delivering phone books. He and my dad spent hours playing Battleship, a process infinitely complicated by his desire not to sink any of my dad's ships. My dad did not want to lose the game but did not want to win because someone else also did not want him to lose. You could hear them in the back bedroom snarling and apologizing to each other as they regressed into their older brother and younger brother roles.

My uncle loved Kentucky Fried Chicken more than anything except blondes- whom he had never and would never ask out- and Jesus- whose coming he had postponed marriage and kids for until it was now essentially too late but whom he still looked forward to seeing. I'm not sure what was going on in his brain that caused him to start consuming the chicken he bought in the front seat of his car instead of bringing it into the house. Or why he began keeping a stash of canned goods in his trunk to nosh on when an urge hit. He never got along all that well with my mom and maybe he was anticipating their final falling out as he had anticipated the rapture and stockpiling accordingly.

In any case, the day came when some of the neighbors noticed him chowing down in the driveway. They came over to ask if everything was okay or if he was maybe locked out of the house. He replied that everything was hunky-dory. Then why was he enjoying his picnic al auto? I am guessing he didn't realize they would tell my folks or maybe he didn't think it would get back to them so fast. Maybe he felt trapped and embarassed and wasn't thinking at all. He could have said a lot of things in that moment. None would have gone over well. What he chose to run with was that he was eating in the car because my parents felt he ate too much. That part was true but not flattering to either party. Had he stopped there the damage was probably reparable. But he went on to say that he was eating in the car because my mother would not allow him to eat in the house. Their relationship had been on shaky ground already- he squeaked the sides of his cowboy boots together while watching TV and at night peed into a gallon milk jug that he emptied the next morning rather than walking upstairs to the bathroom- and this was the final straw. Mom delivered the ultimatum, Dad followed through, and my uncle departed. As my dad drove him to Idaho to stay with their sister, they stopped at a KFC and shared a bucket of barbecue-style. My uncle is reported to have said, "This will be the last time we ever have a meal together like this in this life" and he was right. They seldom even spoke after that incident and my dad did not want to go three miles to see him when we went back for my aunt's memorial service. He said there was no point in stirring him up but I'm not entirely sure he meant my uncle.

3) Nothing of great emotional importance should be discussed with members of the family if it's at all possible to avoid it. If such discussion is necessary, it should take place after the topic has been talked through with strangers.
My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. Even as she went to the doctor to receive the news she knew she had a solid foundation of love and support...from the twenty-five ladies she discussed her lump with in an Internet forum...for three days...before she told my mom or dad or her housemate of five years. Six weeks ago my father underwent a five-way bypass. At dinner the Friday before I asked him if he was nervous or scared or wanted to talk about anything. "No," he said, "I'm fine. I called and talked to Bob this morning and I got pretty choked up but I'm okay now. I'm at peace." Who's Bob? He's the man my dad has bought his last four cars from. Dad just called him up at work and bared his soul. I asked my mom whether she didn't think it was weird that Dad had discussed this with his car salesman rather than his family and she said, "Sort of. I knew I shouldn't have left him home with the phone alone." I said, "No. Don't you think he should have talked about this with us instead of a stranger?" Mom's reply? "He couldn't talk to us. We're his family. It would be too emotional. He'd be too upset." Alrighty then. It's fine to cry together when we have a dysfunctional family movie for an excuse like "Field of Dreams" or "On Golden Pond" or something touching like a United Airlines commercial but heaven forbid we should stand shoulder to shoulder with Kleenexes in hand to face a real-life issue together. Better we should wait until it turns up as a special on the Discovery Health Channel so we can eat popcorn and regard it from a distance through the eyes of some stranger. They'll at least have discussed it with their family before they signed the release.

A few weeks ago I was shopping with my mom and I apologized beside the organic tea shelves. It was entirely out of context and I could understand her being startled so I said, "Well, you've been telling me things I said when I was much younger and I'm sorry about them. I didn't realize at the time what a little bitch I was being and now that I do I want to let you know." She said, "What is this? Are you on your deathbed? Have you heard something from a doctor? We don't need to go into this now unless you did." I just looked at her and thought, "My god. The things we teach our children, the ways of behaving. We have no idea at all, do we?"

2004-03-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Preaching to the Choir

That may be what I'm about to do but I am very riled up about this whole "Passion of the Christ" nonsense. A little background is in order. In my current ASL class is a young man, compared to me, named Scott. About a year ago, God and Scott rediscovered each other. I guess that's not entirely true. Presumably God was always aware of Scott's existence and Scott was sort of aware of God's but they weren't really what you might call "friendly". Then last summer over the course of about a week Scott became very convinced that God not only was alive but that He had sent His son to die for Scott's sins. He reached a point where he was even surer of that than of the presence of other students in the classroom with him. Now I'm not one to pooh-pooh a person's move from wandering in the darkness to the light of their life's purpose and peace of mind. We can all use some of that and I'm in favor of conversions whether it's dollars to shoes or Nova to lox or life experience to college credits.

A little over a week ago, Scott came into class nearly glowing from having seen a pre-release showing of "The Passion of the Christ". He was talking about how you can imagine something but it doesn't mean much and you can't grasp it until you see it with your own eyes. (Yes, I do understand that he was speaking about this as if he had been an actual physical witness in 30 C.E. I'm cutting him some slack.) I agreed, kind of, and said that's how it was for me when I visited Dachau. One of the most bizarre parts of that experience for me was the table outside, staffed by the person from Lyndon LaRouche's organization, complete with the flyers that said the Holocaust was all a hoax. (Pay close attention because irony is about to rear it's ugly but entertaining head.) The other students said they couldn't imagine someone thinking that and the trip must have been very intense and someone said they thought Lyndon LaRouche was dead.

After class that night, Scott was still going on about the film and how amazing it was to have "experienced" the death of Christ and then we discussed whether or not Mel Gibson's film was anti-semitic. Scott said it wasn't and the way you could tell is that in the film it's Mel's own hands that drive in the spikes for the Crucifixion. This didn't really convince me and I decided to do some research on my own. I also decided that since everyone was having such a wonderful time talking about it and it meant so much to them I would leave it alone.

Well I did some research and guess what? (Here's some of that irony I told you about.) Mel Gibson's film may not be anti-semitic but Mel sure as hell is. How do we know? Because Mel's father is in the same camp as Lyndon LaRouche. (Perhaps "camp" isn't the most sensitive word to use there. Sorry.) Now Mel hasn't said that he believes the story was fabricated from whole cloth but he did say that his father had never lied to him- presumably he told him right off the bat there was no Santy Claus and no Easter Bunny- and we know that Mel's dad believes that the Jews died "in World War II" and is on record as saying that there was no Holocaust. (His line is that the story is mainly "fiction".)

I don't expect a lot in the way of good sense from Lyndon LaRouche. He's married to a Geman political figure and that's a recipe for heartache if one doesn't toe the party line pretty precisely. His specialty as we see from this bio is footwear rather than politics. He's generally acknowledged to be a whacko who is a leader of loons, he has very little influence over anyone and will likely come to a bad end like Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Mel Gibson, on the other hand, has a lot of influence if only by virtue of the fact that busloads of impressionable young people are being taken to see this film and are reading the propaganda that is his commentary on it.

So here's the part I really don't understand: These people like Mel Gibson and his father, who we are led to believe are mentally sound, do not believe there was a Holocaust but they do believe the little baby Jesus came and died for their sins. They believe this despite the fact that there is one and only one book making claims on His behalf. (We're going to leave aside the Book of Mormon for the moment because there are a heck of a lot more Christians than there are Mormons and even some Mormons aren't too big on the golden tablets found under a tree line.) They refuse to believe there was a Holocaust in spite of the many books documenting it, in spite of the Nazis who went to prison or were executed for what they did and what they accused each other of doing, in spite of the many Americans who came back from the war and talked about what they saw, in spite of the records the Germans kept documenting all the things they took from the Jews and what methods were used for killing them. In spite of their own Vatican apologizing for not helping the Jews at the time. (Gibson is a devout Catholic but rejects Vatican II because he feels it was too liberal. Likewise his feelings about the current pope.) If one steps back and looks at the supposed Holocaust hoax purely from a ratio of investment of effort to return point of view it makes no sense.

I suppose the most reasonable thing to do would be to say, "Yeah, but you have to separate the artist from his art." That's what they teach about half the time in Lit classes. "Don't assume that just because the author wrote this intensely intimate and graphic love scene between the two male protagonists that he's gay or even that he's been in love with anyone at all." "But he is gay. We know that he's gay. And he dedicated this book to his lover." "But you can't just decide that this is how he would like his own love scenes to be in real life. You can't draw inferences from the work. And don't try to read things into the writing based on what you know about the author." I took several of those classes so I do know what the "reasonable" and "civilized" thing to do would be. I'm not going to do it though. I'm going to boycott the artist and his art. I'm going to draw my inferences from his words and actions in "real life" and vote against them with mine. I'm probably pissing into the wind here but I urge others to do the same. Do not see this movie. Do not support hate-cinema.

P.S. Scott, if you read this, I want you to know that I envy you your certainty and dedication. On the whole I think you're a big-hearted person who cares about other people and making the world more marvelous. I just wish you had different taste in movies.

2003-11-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's presumptuous to butt in like this, or if you even remember that I'm on the user-list for your blog, but I was doing some Blogger-oriented spring-cleaning (it being 9.30am and me having been up all night, seemed like the obvious thing to do), and came across Unnatural Blonde in my list... So whatever. Hello, gentle readers, hello Roma, hello again world.

I've been writing all night. Well perhaps that's an overstatement. But I have been at least pretending to write my essay, with short breaks for food and cigarettes, since 5.30 yesterday night. In for the long haul, you could say. The essay is due in today, and whilst what I've written so far is good, it's only half an essay. The question isn't so easy, y'see. Here:

“And so, walking or quickening his pace, he goes his way, forever in search. In search of what? .... He is looking for that indefinable something we may be allowed to call ‘modernity’, for want of a better term to express the idea in question.” (Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, Part 4: Modernity.) Explore the content and genesis of this idea of ‘modernity’.

Well, I've got 6 books on various aspects of the idea of modernity, one called The Birth Of Modernity which is interesting but dense and full of references to people I haven't read, one on Ezra Pound, the fascist nutjob, and slightly more sane partner in crime Wyndham Lewis (who did some pretty good paintings, dontcha know). I've got The Waste Land of course, T.S. Eliot's masterwork, and my favorite-of-all-time poem. Permit me to quote:

Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

As a critique of modern (post-war) society, it's top-notch, but it's really difficult to write about. It's such a dense poem, and so layered, that it's difficult to know where to start.

Anyway, maybe that's my cue to stop. Nice to see you're still around (I assumed you were, but I had forgotten about this particular corner of the web). Maybe we can start up some interesting debate about coffee.

2003-08-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

They're At It Again

Once again the "taste equals money" thinking rears its ugly head in Seattle. That's right, the espresso tax is back.

Despite the aspersions being cast on the mental abilities of those who enjoy this drink it is clear to me that it is the creators of this plan whose brains may not be firing on all cylinders. Their plan relies on the espresso drinkers being addicted and on their having to satisfy that addiction in public. They cannot have been tracking the downtrend in cigarette sales in places where cancer sticks were taxed to pay for public programs. We on the Left Coast love our caffiene but, as there still is no patch to calm us down, I'm going to continue to consider nicotine the more motivating addiction. If they can't wring blood from those stones...

While many, including Philip Morris, are crying because addicts are avoiding the cigarette taxes by crossing state lines, buying through the Internet or supporting the Black Market thereby funding terrorists, the solutions for espresso drinkers are much simpler. Not to mention cheaper. In their less than infinite wisdom, the creators of the plan have chosen not to tax all coffee and coffee-based drinks sold only those involving espresso. So, switch to the coffee of the day, save money, avoid the unfair tax. When only espresso will do, roll your own so to speak. Buy the beans and take them home -or have them delivered- then enjoy your morning jolt without leaving your jammies. If you look, you can find an excellent organic or Fair Trade bean and feel you're still doing a good thing for the planet. The difference is choice- something which you'd expect the Liberal founders to understand and be in favor of.

2003-08-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

Watching The Game With A Bud

I got carded last night. Is that totally amazing? I am two weeks away from the big 4-2 and they wanted to see some I.D. for the Bud I bought my escort during the seventh inning stretch. (If "42" is the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything, in addition to being Mulder's apartment number, does that mean next year that answer will be revealed to me?) Lest you think that I'm supporting drinking and driving, let me say that I asked my friend how he was getting home before buying the brew.

I recovered from my shock, backed carefully away from the snack counter, and started bashing my way upstream against the current of folks carrying overfull beers that surged in the other direction. There were a lot more people moving about than are usual, even during a seventh inning stretch, because it was Thirsty Thursday and beer was exceptionally cheap. Many folks missed great plays because their view was blocked by those in the row ahead of them rising to allow exits to the restrooms.

It wasn't only the beer that kept the traffic flowing. The six Beavers runs in the first inning set the tone for the remainder of the game and many so-called fans bailed as soon as victory appeared assured.

My delight in the ineptitude of the Trappers pitcher and our engaging in more aerobics than at a Catholic mass, deterred me from pondering the big questions baseball games stir. Who started the seventh inning stretch? Why do we sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"? Why are there so few peanuts in Cracker Jack -is that why we say "peanuts and Cracker Jack"- and what happened to the good prizes? Is it wrong to exult in a manager's tantrums or is it an appropriate vicarious release?

There are those who will say it's wrong for me to be focusing on such minutiae when there are bigger issues like peace on the West Bank and whether we'll ever locate Osama bin Laden.

2003-07-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Ripping the Band-Aid® Off All At Once

Dear Slide,

Tonight is the 27th, one of the nights you said you would be free and in Portland, and we're not together. In fact, I haven't heard from you since the 11th over two weeks ago. I'm not really surprised by either of these things although I believe you were sincere when you told me what nights would be available. I ICQ'd you on the 15th asking what dates we could get together because it seemed like it would be better and more civilized to talk about this in person rather than the way it looks like it's going to be.

The simple truth is that you don't seem to have room or time for me in your life even as a friend. When I went to court on the 18th, the only man behind me or beside me was my attorney. Rick didn't go because of the divorce -which became final on the 22nd, by the way- and I didn't anticipate much in the way of positive thoughts from him. You have such a crazy life that you didn't remember when my birthday was so I certainly didn't expect you to be keeping track of when my court date was. But I want someone to know these things, especially the birthday one, and to be able to ask me how the hell things went.

You can't do that now and, to be totally honest, I can't foresee a time when you can. I wasn't really looking for an incredibly intense romantic involvement and would have been happy with someone to share joys and sorrows with long distance on a semi-regular basis and physical intimacy on an even more infrequent basis but it's just not going to happen at this point in your life. You have school and work and friends to fill up your time. You have someone to pour your nurturing energy into that needs it far more than I ever would. You have a very full life and you're being true to yourself and your loyalties and your priorities and that's good. I am being totally non-sarcastic when I say that I admire your single-mindedness and your devotion and integrity. I think all the things I've mentioned are wonderful. They're also what prevents there from being a Roma-sized space in your world.

You said a number of times in your e-mails that I was the person you'd been waiting your whole life for. I don't think I was the perfect person, or else the heavens -or something- would have aligned more favorably to make this work, but I do think we were very good together. It's easy to say that if we'd met at a different time it would have been smooth as glass, but I don't put much faith in pronouncements like that. If you meet a person who's perfect but the timing is off then they weren't really perfect, were they?

It's also easy to say that we would have been better off to have remained friends and never fallen in love but I take issue with that too. You have so much encouraged positive changes in my life -and not just my CD collection- that I would have a hard time adequately thanking you. Would I have made them without being in love with you? Maybe but the motivation wouldn't have been as strong. And I will treasure forever the time we spent together in person whether it was inside or outside the Barnes and Noble or at your place. The first time I saw you, the first time we kissed, the night we had phone sex, the night the U.S. conquered Baghdad...

I'm sending you the Hot Chocolate album on vinyl that I bought for you. I'm also returning to you the CD that you had made for L. J. and so graciously shared with me. I still appreciate the feelings that inspired that sharing, and I burned a copy of it, but seeing as how it's the only one with all the graphics and everything I feel it's too special for me to keep at this point in the relationship and it should be with you.

I hope Angelena's surgery and recovery goes well. I hope you'll pop in to say "Hi" if we're both online. I'll think of you when I'm in the college bookstore, when I'm in the Barnes and Noble at Jantzen Beach, when I see someone driving moronically, sometimes when I slip onto the floor at night, and -yes- during the Private Time I'm still occasionally able to scavenge.

I guess I should head off to bed now. I have one midterm Monday and one Tuesday. After an emotionally devastating 38.5 out of 40 on my first homework for Deaf Studies class, I received 40 out of 40 on the next one and 100% on the midterm pretest for my other class so I appear to be back on track. (Anna has been kidding me about being like Hermione and having my worst fear be "getting nine out of ten". I refused to claim that as being my worst but did acknowledge that it's pretty far up there.)

The coffee at OHSU and Shriners is usually Kobos and always excellent so enjoy some if you get the chance as it is likely to be one of the higher points of your day. Save time, as I said, by going in pre-prepared to kick ass and take names. I understand that sometimes "ducks need to be flexible" but that's not something I'm interested in teaching mine to be especially when it comes to bullshit and hospitals.

Sending medicinal thoughts your way.
Sleepily, remorselessly,

Roma

And P.S. Yes, if you didn't gather it, this note does mean it's not necessary for you to schedule time with me and away from Angelena in August or September so we can work on our friendship.

2003-07-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

It's Official...

I talked to Rick this afternoon and he said that today's mail brought him the copy of our final divorce papers. So now I really am "free, White, and over 21". The papers were dated the 18th rendering us divorced the same day I went to court and sat there like a big girl with just my lawyer for company. If I sound like I'm riding the bitter bus it's cuz I kind of am.

He also said was that Anna is having a hard time seeing how this is going to be a better thing because she has nothing to judge it by. He said she has no idea what a "healthy relationship" is supposed to look like. I said, "No shit. I don't either. Is it like the friends we had who went camping and birding together and seemed to share most of each other's interests including an affection for 'Buckaroo Bonzai'? They looked happy right up to the point they disappeared off the face of the Earth, got a divorce and he went back to school to become a teacher and got custody of the cat. You kept talking about how we should be more like them, remember? Or is it like my parents who haven't slept in the same room in over twenty years and everyone is wondering how they'll cope when my mom retires in eight days and they're thrown together 24/7? Is it like Bill and Hillary or Ron and Nancy? Is it Judith and Milton Viorst? If someone came to me tomorrow and wanted to get involved in an LTR, I'd run like hell since I have no idea how it's supposed to be done right." I'm truly beginning to wonder if I'm even the relationship type. Not because I'm old but because I'm just tired of the whole process.

I'm especially sick of guys who refuse to communicate or to make an attempt to communicate. I know two different women who have been diagnosed with Menier's Syndrome which eventually causes deafness. When I told my Deaf Studies teacher, he said, "How unfortunate. You know, they'll be divorced in a few years." I said, "What?" He said, "In a majority of the cases that a woman becomes deaf, her husband leaves her within a very short time. The children will learn sign language. Her family and friends will learn sign language. But it is too much for the man's ego. He becomes incredibly frustrated with the barriers to communication so he talks with the woman less and less until finally he moves on to be with someone who is 'easier'." I told him that my mother had said that it is very hard for deaf women or men to get jobs at schools for deaf children when the superintendent is a man and it's because of the man's complaints that if he can't communicate with -and therefore control- his employees then how will the 90% hearing parents communicate with them. He agreed and said, "Yes, again that is the man's ego causing problems." (For the record, he and I conducted both sides of our conversation totally in sign language. In this area, at least, it looks as if my communication skills are improving.)

Well I'm tired of men and their egos and I'm tired of their misplaced -to me anyway- loyalties and priorities. For now the only men I'm interested in are Ben, Jerry and Ichiro Suzuki. Maybe Harry Goldenblatt but that's an awfully big maybe. And then there's Vash the Stampede...

Off to make myself a mocha, find a spoon, turn on ESPN and enjoy an unholy menage a quatre.

2003-06-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

"If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Friday night

9:30 p.m.

Outside the Starbucks at the Jantzen Beach Barnes and Noble

The Portland Police car circled the lot then parked on the right-hand side of the building. The event which would take place in just a few hours had rendered parking scarce and the two officers had a pretty fair walk to reach the sidewalk.

The woman in the rust-brown jacket and jeans was sitting at the table closest to the edge of that sidewalk. I'd heard her earlier exchanging snivels with a friend about how crowded the store was and how many people had shown up. I have to say right up front that I hate the kind of person who goes to a place they know will be packed then complains about the lack of space inside. "Go home already! I'm sure someone else can use the elbow room you're taking up." Actually I rarely say things like that loud enough to be heard. Why? I like to believe it's because I'm trying to set a good example for Anna by not getting into a fight rather than because I'm a small person who would probably get her ass kicked. Sometimes I wish I was less concerned about this and the reason will be evident in a few moments.

So we have Ms Whiner occupying the table at the edge of the sidewalk which the two policemen are approaching at a relaxed pace. Just as they're passing her table, she calls out, "Hey" then pauses. I find I'm waiting to see what she'll follow that with. Pigs? Heat? Fuzz? I'm betting on "pigs" but she surprises me with silence then "Why don't you guys go in and arrest all those little kids in there? I'm sure they're breaking some kind of laws."

The two policemen look at each other, shrug and continue walking towards the door. The woman smiles to herself, yells to a friend "See you inside", throws out her cup and goes into the store. From all appearances, the only person this encounter had much effect on was me. And I'm steaming mad.

I'm mad at this woman who took the opportunity, upon meeting two policemen who were at the moment pursuing their caffeine fix and enjoying the warm night air like everyone else, to make an unnecessary and obnoxious comment. I'm mad at her parents who indoctrinated her in the biases they learned either justly or unjustly in the 1960's. Mostly I'm mad at myself because I didn't pipe up and let her know exactly what I thought of her lack of manners and her parents' lack of judgement. I think I could probably even have taken her.

What I did instead was wait until the two officers came out to sit at the now unoccupied table. Then I said, "I'd like to apologize for that woman's rude behavior. I'm sorry she decided to act that way."

"What do you mean?" One of the men said.

"When she suggested you go in and arrest the kids."

"That's okay," he said. "I'd trade a hundred comments like that for what I usually hear."

"I'm sure you would," I said, "but it's really not okay. You shouldn't have to put up with a lot of bullshit just because of who you are or what your job is. If you were Black, would she demand that you break dance? I don't think so."

Both men laughed and the other officer said, "Thanks for your support but usually it's a lot worse than that."

"I'm familiar with some of what you guys go through," I said, "but it's still bullshit to treat someone like that."

"Well, we should have known better," the first officer replied. "We were just asking for it coming here on 'Harry Potter' day."

"Really?" I said. "Like women ask for it by going out at night?" As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized what I was doing so I took the arrival of two other officers bearing cups of coffee as a good time to say, "Good night" and to shut up.

Because what I was trying to do was agitate. I was trying to point up the injustice in how these two men were being treated and to get them to stand up for themselves. This was plainly stupid for a number of reasons.

First of all, these men know they're being treated unfairly. They have to know. Anyone growing up in America today has been taught that throwing things at people, calling them names, and otherwise giving them a hard time because they're different from you is a bad thing to do. Doesn't matter if a woman really is a trailer-park dwelling Welfare collector with eight children by six different fathers who's so incredibly fertile because her tubes were blown clean by Crack, if you say something derogatory anywhere outside your head you're wrong. She or someone who represents her and her interests will step right up and tell you you're wrong. Since I'm not telling these men anything new, I'm wasting my time and theirs.

Second although they know they're being abused there's nothing they're going to be able to do about it and I'm just reminding them how powerless to respond they are. Miss Model Citizen is in a position to do so because she is a victim of society. If you are a man especially if you are a White man and especially if you work for The Man then you are not in a position to do that. You are absolutely, by virtue of your race and gender, the Oppressor rather than the Oppressed and since you're the one who created this situation we would all very much appreciate it if you would shut up about it and sit down. We wouldn't be treating you like this if you hadn't taught us how so suck it up.

And they will definitely keep sucking it up if they want to keep their job because even if these men felt comfortable enough within themselves to take a step forward and defend themselves, they would certainly not be supported in doing so by their agency. You have to understand that when it comes to law enforcement in Portland it's not a question of the inmates running the asylum. It's more like toddlers running a candy counter. In Portland they give New Year's Eve parties the way mothers hand out candy bars- as pre-emptive measures hoping to prevent the youngsters from throwing tantrums because they're not sufficiently amused- then if that fails the mayor comes to them and apologizes because the Police had to send them to time out. A Serpico situation will never occur in Portland. Not only because the personnel lack the cohesiveness necessary to create and sustain a graft ring, but because they have been crunched underfoot so long by the city and their own leadership that sufficient backbone could probably not be assembled to erect a Frank Serpico.

It has always seemed unreasonable to me to inform someone they were floundering in a mudhole without providing them with A) firmer ground and B) a way of reaching it. Some may call it enlightenment and pointing someone towards the first step onto a new and better path but I call it aggravation and agitation without purpose. Unfortunately my enjoyment of a good argument, and my frustration with my inability to stand toe to toe and defend my opinions, frequently win out over my attempts at reasonableness as it threatened to do last night.

Jackie Mason once said, "Being antisemitic deprives you of the opportunity to hate each Jew on his individual merits" and I think that philosophy should apply to all people no matter their race or religion. Besides, on a night like this past one we were all brothers. Anyone you'd cut would have bled the rich aromatic brown of Starbucks coffee.

2003-05-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Widower Shopping

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." -Pride and Prejudice

"Oh my gosh. He'd be perfect for you."

I knew my mother had said something about me and someone male, but my thoughts were so completely occupied with memories of the sour cream-raisin pie I'd just eaten that I didn't catch what she'd said or at all follow its meaning.

"What? Who are you talking about?"

"That man over there. That's just the kind of man you should marry next time," Mom said. "He'd be perfect."

"Okay, I'm not getting married again to anyone. Let's be clear on that. But just for the sake of conversation, which man are you talking about?"

"The one in the dark green Lincoln," she said, pointing.

"Oh. My. God. He's a million years old if he's a day and I wouldn't be caught dead driving a Lincoln like that. If I was going to pick out a car from this lot, it'd be that creme brulee Mercedes convertible over there."

"Well, of course," Mom said. "He'd drive the Lincoln and the Mercedes would be your car. Simple as that."

"But there's the little problem of him being old enough to be my grandpa and then there's the problem of us not having anything in common," I said, ignoring for the moment the fact that I had somehow been sucked into a discussion I'd never intended to have.

"Of course he's old. He's rich too. That's the point," Mom said almost reasonably. "And it really doesn't matter if you have anything in common or not. He's not going to be around long enough for you to disagree all that much."

"But if we have nothing in common then how would I ever fall in love with him?"

"Who said anything about love?"

"But if I didn't love him then why the hell would I marry him?"

"Security," she said at once.

"Security?"

"Of course. If you married a man like that and then he died and left everything to you, assuming of course he doesn't have children keeping vigil by his bedside even now, you'd be taken care of for the rest of your life. You'd never have to work again." (Perhaps here would be a good place to say that my mother worked most of her early married life and does not appear to have chosen my father based on his future financial prospects. Also he is only a year older than she is and they are experiencing physical deterioration at roughly similar speeds so I'm not really sure when she hatched this Anna Nicole Smith retirement plan.)

"But if I did marry someone like that and then he died, I'd be really upset. I mean I'd probably love him after all and I'd get attached to him and then he'd be gone and-"

"Of course you'd be upset," Mom broke in. "We'd all be upset. We'd cry a lot and have a funeral and then a wake and we'd all have to go with you when you bought your new red convertible and booked a round the world cruise to cheer yourself up."

"Well what if, instead of that, I didn't marry a younger guy who became rich some day? Or better yet, what if I didn't marry anyone and I became rich myself and bought myself a convertible and booked a round the world cruise because I didn't need cheering up?" Mom shook her head.

"Nope. No good. What you need is security. What you need is protection," she said, jabbing a finger at me in emphasis.

This wasn't the first time I'd heard about marriage and security and the theme of protection had reared its head so many times I'd felt I'd stumbled into a film about the Cosa Nostra. From the moment my mother found out I'd be getting a divorce, she'd been singing the security and protection song. I heard it from other women too. It was usually followed up by encouragement to get my "share" of the property in common despite my protests of not having put in fifty percent of the money.

"You earned it," they said. "He owes you for almost twenty years of companionship and over ten years of child care."

"What do you mean 'companionship'?" I sometimes asked.

"You know," they said, grinning sheepishly, "s-e-x."

"But it's against the law to be compensated for sex," I said. They just laughed.

"Besides, wouldn't that make me a whore and wouldn't I then owe him money for room and board?" More laughter.

"Honey," one woman finally said -and that is how I know I am approaching middle age at a trot: I have started calling other people, including complete strangers, "honey"- taking me gently by the elbow, "you don't understand. This isn't just about getting paid back. This is about your future and making sure you're taken care of."

"I don't want someone else to take care of me," I kept saying. "I don't wanna be protected." They nodded agreeably but I noticed they also exchanged some very knowing looks.

Whereas the division of goods discussions commenced almost immediately, the promotion of possible suitors didn't begin for almost a month. I was standing in the kitchen on the farm, complaining to Susie that the skills I seemed to have acquired -goat-milking, woodstove fire-building, baking powder biscuit making- weren't going to add to my resume or my chances of impressing someone in "civilization" and getting me a good job.

"Wait and see," she said, "you never know what might happen. Maybe you'll meet and fall in love with a goat farmer."

I started to say, "Never never never" especially as I was already in love but thought better of it and replied instead "Well, life is long and I guess we don't know what may happen. I wouldn't have believed I'd be here right now." Both parts of which were entirely true.

Several days later, after we puzzled over Jim Carrey's inability to remain married and she suggested that he and I might be soulmates, my mother and I had our first talk on the topic of future matrimony during which I stated that I was never getting married again.

"I'm not saying I'll never have another relationship with someone," I said, "and I have someone very much in mind besides Jim Carrey, but I am positively not getting married again. It's way too easy to get into and way too tough to get out of. Twice is enough."

"Wait and see," she said, "I can see you a couple of years down the line married to some nice, retired doctor with houses in two different states, taking trips to Europe and going scuba diving."

"No," I said. "No doctors and no marrying. Definitely no marrying of Jim Carrey although he is cute and funny. I wouldn't turn down dinner, mind you, but dinner is not a relationship."

"That's how it starts," she said. "Better to stick with doctors who you might actually want to marry." (Funnily enough, my mother isn't a yenta and, in fact, no one in my family has ever admitted that any of our relatives were Jews. Nevertheless, by the age of ten I had a better grasp of Yiddishisms than anyone raised without knowledge of Hadassah or the Catskills ought. Go figure.)

And the specter of the "nice, retired doctor" had cast his shadow over my pie.

"If you're going to live to be ninety," my mother said, "then you need to be sure you'll be taken care of. That's why you should find yourself a nice, retired doctor."

"If he's retired, wouldn't he be pretty old?" I said.

"Not necessarily. A lot of doctors retire in their fifties."

"Why?"

"So they can enjoy life, enjoy their money."

"Lots of doctors also commit suicide," I said, "And present company excepted, retired usually means old. Fifty? My gosh!"

"You're not so young yourself, missy," my mother said, raising one eyebrow at me. "You wait... You'll meet one of those doctors and phwoof!"

It occurred to me that, in many ways, that would have been an excellent moment to set my mother's brain at rest by telling her I had met someone months before and that "phwoof", whatever that was exactly, had already happened to me. I considered it again tonight when I explained that I had told Anna I was no longer willing to settle in a relationship and wanted someone who would wake up every morning and declare that they were the "luckiest man on the face of the earth" because they were involved with me and my mother said, "Absolutely. That's the minimum you deserve."

The problem is one of timing. Not the timing of the telling but the timing of the "phwoof". You see, as much as my mother and her generation value security that's how much they fear what they consider to be infidelity. However much my mother would love for me to have a man in my life who is attractive and intelligent and educated and who treats me like a princess is how much she would hate the fact that he came into my life while I was married to someone who wasn't and didn't. After a month of living openly and honestly on the farm, I'm back to being closeted. I tell myself that no one could possibly be dense enough to not notice the hours I spend communicating with someone by ICQ and letter or the references to past and future trips to Klamath Falls. I tell myself that it's no one's business but mine and his anyway and since they don't seem to care about Anna being the only grandchild, and the reasons behind my siblings not reproducing, then my relationships and sexuality are no concern of theirs either. I tell myself that revealing the truth, not just about me and Slide but also about Rick and whomever, would bring nothing good and lots of bad. I tell myself that my silence, and therefore the preservation of their peace of mind, is the price I pay for their assistance in recovering from the stumble the disequilibrium in my living situation caused. And yet... I cannot help feeling that having to hide the physical, emotional and intellectual intimacy I'm sharing with the most decent, most respectable and respectful, most marvelous man it's been my privilege and pleasure to meet, while my mother openly plots the demise and plunder of a man who's done nothing whatsoever to harm us, is wrong on far too many levels for me to elucidate at this moment.

Am I overstressing on this? Is total honesty essential when dealing with one's parents? Is outing one's self a necessary component for living by one's own lights? Am I trading my hard-won self-respect for a modicum of security and a place to stay? Have I already sold out?

And what would it take for me to sink below the surface of the peaceful slumber in which the old man in the green Lincoln and others like him are, unmolested by me at least, presently swimming until morning?

2003-04-02T03:42:00.000-08:00

Shipping Blame

"Orren Boyle will deliver that rail just as soon as it's humanly possible. So long as he can't deliver it, nobody can blame us."- Atlas Shrugged

Although it was two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, the parking lot at Harbor Freight Tools was nearly full and I had time to sort out and scan the sale flyers as I worked my way through the crowd. First on the list were some steel-bristled brushes which I easily found and dropped into my handbasket. Had I known that this would be the only simple process the rest of the day, I would have savored it more.

The place on the shelves where the medium-sized latex gloves were supposed to be was easily located but there were no gloves in it. The bigger boxes which held the many smaller boxes of gloves were stacked on the floor at one side of the aisle. It would have been the work of a moment to open one of the boxes and take the three smaller ones that I needed out of it, but I thought I'd better ask first. I spotted a mostly intelligent-looking man who wore the blue Harbor Freight polo shirt with pride, if not presence, and said, "Excuse me. I need three boxes of these latex disposable gloves in medium. Do you want me to just pop open a box and get three out?"

"I can come over and pop a box open for you," he said. And, following me back to the glove aisle, he did. So what? I asked and he assisted. That's harder than finding it and reaching it for myself though still not too bad so hold on.

There were no sized medium "magenetic extra hand" packages on the shelf and the store employee I asked said I would need to take my sale flyer to the front counter and they would ask one of the employees to find a package for me. The same went for the 3" by 7/8" swivel castors.

"Would it be possible for you to look for these things in the back to be sure you have them before I get to the front of the line and find out and inconvenience everyone?" I asked.

"Nope. We're not allowed to go looking for things unless someone up front tells us." Well that was kind of what I thought I might hear and, while it wasn't what I wanted to hear, policy is policy and this guy wasn't going to move up by sticking his neck out for me. I carried my basket with my boxes of gloves and my brushes and my sale flyers to the end of the winding line and started waiting. As I stood there I thought about how few people seem to have jobs which allow them to or force them to use their best judgement. There are buzzers and policies and pictographic instructions everywhere designed to keep employees from screwing up and to render their jobs as idiotproof as possible. I wondered if these safety nets were made necessary by the volume of employees who were uneducated and ill-equipped to think clearly or whether it was the work environment that had created these surly, undermotivated folks.

The cashier began ringing up my purchases and I asked him about the products I hadn't been able to find. He called for a customer service person to bring up the service cart and the bender then started writing out a rain check for the 3" castors.

"Excuse me," I said, "You don't have any of those at all?"

"Nope," he replied still writing.

"They're in the sale flyer."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And there are none at all even in the back? Could someone look, please?"

"No point in looking, ma'am. There ain't none in the store." This was the second "ma'am" in two sentences. Using it that often usually means either the person was in the military and it never wore off or they'd really like to say "bitch" but don't dare. My money was on the latter.

"Okay then is there a phone I can use? I need to see if I should substitute 2" or 4"." He pointed to a phone on the counter, dialed the number, and drummed his fingers irritatingly on the counter lending even more credence to his substitution of "ma'am" for "bitch". "Alrighty then," I said replacing the receiver ever so gently in its cradle, "he said to get the 4" swivel castors so do you have those?"

"I have no idea, ma'am. All the castors are on that wall back there."

"I know. That's where I looked for the 3" ones. I just thought that since you knew you didn't have any 3" then you might also know if you have any of the 4"." He shook his head then leaned into the walkie-talkie clipped to the strap of his safety support belt and said, "I need a manager up to register two for some line voids so we can get people moving again."

It was still pretty early in my errand running process so I thought rather than said, "Fuck you. If you didn't have such a poorly run and organized store most of us would be out of here by now and people would already be moving." I made my way back to the castor shelf, discovered that the 4" by 7/8" swivel castors were the same price as the regularly priced 3" castors and that there were none in that place on the shelf either. Now I was getting pissed. I flagged down one of the customer service employees and said, "Are you helping someone right now besides me?"

"Um, nope. Whadya need?"

"Here's what I need... I need four of these 4" by 7/8" castors and I want them for the sale price. The regular price is the same so it shouldn't be a big deal. If it's going to be a big deal then I need to talk with someone who has to decide these things."

"I know we're out of the 3" ones but they can give you a raincheck and we should have them in a week or so."

"No. You don't understand. I have a sheetmetal bender in the back of my van that I need to put castors under. I cannot put a raincheck under it and have it work. Please find out if you can give me the 4" for the 3" price."

The young man disappeared behind the swinging doors and I stood in front of the baskets of different sizes of castors. I could hear some of the other workers talking in the back.

"I was watching this movie last night with the Swayz in it and it was great."

"Which one was it?"

"One of his first ones where he's a greaser who dances."

"He was in 'Grease'?"

"No, moron. He wasn't in 'Grease', he played a greaser. Jesus."

"He was in 'Medal of Valor' and he was pretty good in that."

"What's the one where he dances and he's trying to teach that girl...?"

"'Dirty Dancing'?"

"Yeah, that's it. He was excellent in that."

"So, how come you always call him that?"

"Call him what?"

"Suede."

"Not 'suede', assface. It's 'swayz' and I call him that because it happens to be his name."

"His name isn't 'swayz'."

"Yes it is. That's how you say it."

"No it isn't. It's pronounced 'swayz-ee'. So there you go, assface. Now you can leave him alone."

"They said I can give you the 4" castors for the cheaper price," my helper had returned to announce.

"Supercool. I'd like four of them."

"Umm, there might be a problem."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure we have those in stock. What you need to do is take the flyer up to the front counter and he can check and if we don't then we'll give you a raincheck."

"No."

"What?"

"No. I am not going up to the front counter to wait in line again to get to the front and have him call you and ask you if there are any 4" castors or not. I've been here almost half an hour and I need to be running other errands too. Please go back there and see if you have the 4" castors."

He stepped through the doors like a gunslinger moving towards his fate. The look on his face abruptly silenced a debate on the merits of CGI characters.

"What's up, man?"

"I gotta know if we've got 4" by 7/8" castors."

"We're talking, man."

"No. Talk later. Right now we gotta look for 4" castors." I heard them moving around in the back of the store, now and then calling to each other, "What was that sku number again?" and answering as if from a great distance as if they were castor Search and Rescue workers. All to no avail.

"We don't have any of the 4" castors either."

"Will some be coming in soon?" I asked. He shrugged.

"We never know. They weren't on the truck this week so who knows?" He shrugged again.

"Is there anyone who would know?"

"Maybe the guys up front but maybe nobody."

"Shit." I really did say that out loud and it was only the first of many times during the rest of the day. I walked back to the front counter to pay for the stuff we had found then asked to use the phone to double-check the castor situation. "That's one, five oh three," I began. The overly-foreheaded and under-chinned young man behind the counter turned an odd shade of pink then tapped the woman beside him on the forearm.

"Do I need to dial a one first?" He asked.

"No," she said, "In Oregon, everything is 503 so you don't need the one."

"Excuse me," I said. "First of all you do need the one since it's a long distance number and second of all, and this is beside the point I know, not all of Oregon is 503 because my boyfriend lives in Oregon and his starts with a 541. The number you're about to dial is out towards the Coast so you need the one."

"Long distance?" He gasped. "Are we supposed to dial long distance?"

The woman opened and closed her mouth several times giving me a chance to jump in and say, "Look, they just dialed this number for me about ten minutes ago. I am about to spend $150 dollars here and I'd have spent even more if you had had the products you advertised so please dial the number with the one in front and I'll get out of here." He did and I did.

My next stop and, despite my running additional errands, the last on this tour of insanity and nonaccountability was the Swan Island UPS center. It wasn't so much what happened to me, although having to re-open three tightly sealed boxes which were nestled inside each other like so many Russian dolls was a pain in the ass, it was the poor suckers around me who provided a sick sort of entertainment for me while I waited for my package to be inspected and paperwork to be processed.

"Hi," a woman said, "I'd like to buy a very large box to ship some clothes across the country." (An auspicious beginning, eh?)

"I'm sorry," said the UPS agent. "We don't have any large boxes." (And then reality set in.)

"No large boxes at all?"

"Afraid not."

"Okay, how big do you have?"

"18" by 18" by 24"."

"Wow. That really isn't very big, is it?"

"No, ma'am, it isn't."

"When will you be getting more in?"

"We don't know."

"You don't know? You have no idea?"

"Nope. We changed the manufacturer who does our boxes and he was supposed to send us some more but they never did yet and we don't know when they will."

"So you might never have larger boxes again," the woman said sadly.

"We probably will," said the agent, "But who knows? We keep thinking the guys at the main office will know and tell us but maybe nobody knows."

My attention was drawn from this astonishing statement to follow the saga of a young man who was told by the supervisor that a package was there waiting for him but when he arrived the package was nowhere to be found. He asked to be called when his package was found but a day had passed during which there were no calls and no news. So he was back. He had tried to reason with the workers. He explained that he had a tracking number which showed the package was there. He explained that he had a confirmation number which showed the package was there. He explained that he had received a phone call saying the package was there. He explained that he very much needed the package because he was leaving the country the next day and it was from his family. He did all of this talking in an even, pleasant tone. Then he got pissed.

"What is the point of a tracking number if it can't tell us where the package is?" He asked everyone and no one in particular. "What does a confirmation number confirm?"

"Now, sir," which as we can surmise means 'asshole' in this context, "We think the package may have gone back to the shipper but in order to find out I'll need your tracking number," the agent said.

"My tracking number? But my tracking number says my package is here. How could it also say that my package was on its way back to New York?"

"I don't know, sir."

"I don't think the tracking number tracks anything. Does it? Are these numbers just a joke? Is someone out there in UPSland making these up in order to have fun at the customers's expense? Where is my package?"

"I don't know, sir. Right now nobody knows." Needless to say this man was not comforted by her assessment of the situation. When I left, he and his girlfriend were still sitting there trying to figure out where the package might be and who might know its whereabouts. Another group of three or four people had come in and were being told about the phantom box manufacturer and what they would need to do to accommodate.

As I was driving up I-5, I considered the nonlocatable castors and the nonlocatable boxes and wondered where they were and how long it would be before an employee came along who cared enough to try to find out. (Maybe the castors and the package and the boxes were all on a truck somewhere in America traveling around like the Merry Pranksters or the bean can and the purple sock and the conch shell in a Tom Robbins novel. Maybe the blame for these things is on the truck too to make the moving around of it that much easier.) I thought about how no one is responsible for the lack of boxes or the shortage of castors but the ethereal "they". Shouldn't some flesh and blood person step forward and take responsibility for tracking these things down? Isn't that what supervisors are for? And is this the same "they" which is responsible for making the auto parts store switch to a less expensive brand of tools which it is almost impossible to get enough of to restock? Who knows? Maybe nobody.

2003-03-23T22:25:00.000-08:00

My Life As A Pepsi Commercial

Or

It Really Is About Soul

I've been reading a book by Martha Beck, who writes a column for O magazine, called "Finding Your Own North Star" in which she discusses finding your essential self as opposed to your social self so you can pursue the life you were always meant to have and be successful and happy in all areas of your life. She also talks about creating a sense of abundance in your life so you won't be so stingy with yourself, making it sound appealing in a way Sarah ban Breathnach never did, and I'll get to that in a bit.

First though I want to talk about my essential self and Billy Joel. I have been a very big Billy Joel fan over the years. (I'm not just saying that in case he reads this. I count his Portland concert to support Nylon Curtain as one of the few and definitely one of the best concerts I've attended. Yeah, I went to see Jimmy Buffett. But I ended up in the family section miles away from Jimmy, the tequila drinkers or anyone remotely comfortable tossing a beach ball around in the Rose Garden. They should label seats at concerts demographically, don't you think? Jee-zus. I sat with livelier people at the Harry Belafonte concert.) Not just musically although with the exception of the doo-wop he wrote when he was first in love with Christie, who I don't happen to believe deserved anyone as seemingly wonderful as him writing songs about her, there hasn't been a clinker in the bunch. (Doo-wop... I think we're back to Martha's topic of the essential versus the social self or maybe falling in love throws everyone back to their teenage years. We know it causes you to do goofy things you might not otherwise.) He's also a very classy guy i.e. turning down groupies at a time when the President of the United States, whom we assumed wrongly would be a good role model for our citizens, is getting hummers in the Oval Office. And it can't have been easy watching Christie marry blond blue-eyed schmuck after blond blue-eyed schmuck each time crowing from the cover of the women's magazines, "I've finally found true love" or "Now I've got the life I've always dreamed of" and not penning some biting punk anthem or firing off a letter to his press release writer to spill the juicy details about a quirk of Christie's we can only have dreamed she had.

Due to Martha's inspiration, and the fact that I am currently unemployed and otherwise at loose ends and therefore desperately seeking direction, I have been trying to rediscover my essential self and the things that would have me springing from the bed each morning raring to go. One of the things I've always loved doing is -duh!-writing. I also enjoy asking questions about things and would think I'd gone to one of the higher planes of Heaven if I were to get a job which paid me to go around and ask questions and write about what I experienced. Another of these essential ingredients in my make-up is singing. Now there is even less chance that I will be able to make a living wage as a singer than there is that I will do so as a writer, but apparently my subconscious mind doesn't agree. Which led to last night's dream.

I had gone to the aforementioned Rose Garden because I knew that the aforementioned Piano Man was going to be there. He was in town for one night only, which I personally thought was a shame, and somehow I knew he was already in the building even though it was only early afternoon and had decided to see him. First though I had to fight my way through all the Justin Timberlake fans who were lined up outside clamoring for their idol. (I was a Bay City Rollers fan but I still don't "get" Justin Timberlake. The Rollers claimed they were inspired by Pink Floyd -and wasn't that apparent in their music?- so there was an illusion of something edgier beneath the plaid suspenders but what does Justin have?) In any case, once the girls outside and the staff people inside found out I was looking for Billy Joel, they were immensely relieved and sent me right on back to his suite.

So I wander on back, down the endless hallways that always seem to appear in dreams like this, and finally bam! I burst the door open and there I am, obviously interrupting whatever had been going on before I arrived, and there he is surrounded by this enormous but unexpected entourage all sitting around in chairs and on couches and watching the war on TV. The Man Himself is sitting at a table in the center of the room in deep conversation with this stunning young Black woman who looks to be in her mid-twenties. When I say "stunning" I mean like Beyonce Knowles only moreso. I walk in and close the door behind me, a bit more firmly than necessary, and everyone looks over at me. Everyone except Mr. Joel and the Ms. Knowles look-alike. Well he didn't look at me anyway. He looked over at one of the men on one of the sofas who walked over and bent down to hear what he had to say which was probably "See what she wants and get rid of her" because the man walks over to me and says, "Billy wants to know what you want here?"

I'm not shy even when I'm dreaming so I stand up to my entire 5'3" and I say, "My name is Roma Weiss and I sing."

At this announcement Billy Joel finally turns his head to look at me. Then he laughs. Not just a little bit either. And not just a chuckle. I mean full-on, throw your head back and horse-laugh type laughing. Then he nods to the man who came over to me before and he reaches onto a shelf and hands me a brochure which I realize is a list of singing teachers and a discount coupon for lessons. Then he turns back to the faux Beyonce and shaking his head says, "She sings. Everybody freakin' sings. What people want is someone who looks like you and sounds like you instead of someone who looks like me and sounds like me." The
Destiny's Child wannabe giggles and I know I've been dismissed.

I am so confused because I'm suddenly wondering why the hell I came to see Billy Joel. And I am so pissed because he's blowing me off without even hearing me sing. And I am so sad because for some reason it feels like this was my last chance at my dream of being a singer and now it's gone just like that and I'm gonna lose out to this gorgeous young girl who's half my age and for all I know wonderously talented, although my dream self doubts this, that I start crying. Just like that, when I feel the first tears on my cheeks, it's like someone drew first blood in a fight and I decide I'm not giving up like that. If I'm going out then I'm going out singing. So I turn back around to face the room, plant my feet squarely, take a deep breath and start off with "Ain't got the change of a nickel. Ain't got no bounce, no bounce in my shoes" and go right on singing until I wind up with "I ain't got nothin', ain't got nothin', ain't got a damn thing but the blues" all in my best Sarah Vaughn fashion. This time when Mr. Big Shot nods to the guy by the door, he hands me a brightly colored sheet of paper that turns out to be the announcement of upcoming auditions for a production of "The Lion King".

I decide the music world's loss is the writing world's gain and launching into "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues", I turn to go.

But just then this old Black man, who could have been Ray Charles but wasn't, stepped out of the background and said, "What the hell's wrong with you, man? You been singing 'Uptown' this and 'River of' that so long you forgot what real singing's s'posed to sound like?" (It's been my experience in life that Black women tell it truer than anyone else and often one appears as the Wise One in my dreams. This is my first time having a Black man come forward as a witness.)

Billy Joel said, "What're you talking about? I wrote 'Baby Grand'. I wrote 'It's All About Soul'."

"So?"

"So what do you want from me? The girl comes in, says she can sing, I turn her on to some training and an opportunity."

"Man, you are deaf, aren't you? That voice didn't come from no training. It came from life. She sings the blues because she's lived the blues. She's sat up crying over babies who won't sleep and broken hearts that won't never heal. Her voice is warm and soft like the shoulder of a lover or a friend when you need one. And you want to send her off to sing some commercial Disney shit. Man, you've lost your touch and you've lost your way. Come on, girl, we're outta here."

"Where're you going?"

"Jee-zus, man. We're going to New York. We're going to Memphis. We're going to places where people can hear this girl and know what she's got and what to make of it and her. Point is: we're going." And he spun on his heel and walked toward the door and I took one more look at Mr. Billy Joel, who was looking an awful lot like someone stole the last bites of New York Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream from under his nose while he wasn't looking, then I followed that old Black man out into the hall and onto the road where my future lay.

What's it all mean? I don't know. I couldn't begin to tell you. This isn't the kind of dream where things are laid out all neat and simple and all the meanings are clear like the time I dreamed I heard a terrible mournful noise and I went to the back door and there was Maggie the Bassett Hound. She had somehow managed to climb on top of a garbage can to get away from some wolves and was now howling and wailing to express her fright about them and her discomfort at being up so high. That was easy to interpret because I was out of work at the time and the bills were piling up and I was figuratively trying to "keep the wolves from the door". But this? Should I go back through the Martha Beck book and do the quizzes and exercises again and actually fill them out this time and try to locate the life I was always meant to be living? Should I get several songs polished up then go to the music store to see what bands might be looking for a singer? Inquiring minds want to know.

2003-03-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

"I'm Sensing A Lack of Confidence..."

"So, how're you doing?" The career counselor asked.

"I guess I'm doing okay considering how it feels like everything is happening at once," I replied.

"Which was what again?"

"Well, let's see. We bought a dog who seems to have some emotional problems in that she craps in the house if we all leave and she's alone and abandoned or if she thinks she's alone and abandoned like this morning when I went downstairs to take my bath and didn't take her with me. We had been putting her in the van while we were gone because she very rarely poo-ed in the van but now it looks as if my husband may be living in the van soon so that seems like less of a good idea," I said, rubbing my hands like Uriah Heep, and sinking onto the chair she offered.

"And he'd be living in the van because..."

"Because there's a very good chance he's going to lose his job after June. I don't actually think he will but he does so that's the track we're running on. Which means," I hurried on, "that I will be responsible for supporting this family until the divorce goes through. And, frankly, I'm not too confident because he doesn't have a lot of different job skills to choose from and apparently neither do I since my last job was a qualified disaster."

"In what way?" I popped open my can of Cherry Coke and said, "I did make money while I was doing it so that could probably be considered the successful part. On the other hand, I never got a chance to do anything of the things they said in the interview would be my job and at the end they allegedly fired me for doing the very things they'd said at the beginning were okay. When I say 'allegedly', I mean that I was given alleged reasons for why I was fired rather than questioning whether or not I really was fired. Basically they kept reducing me down to the point where I sat in a corner and did data entry the whole time I was there and just prayed like hell that no one would screw with me while I was there. I tried to 'make no noise, pretending I didn't exist' to quote Harry Potter and it sucked. I've had bosses beat me down and beat me down and suck most of the creativity out of me while at the same time saying, 'Now I'm not trying to break your spirit. I'm just trying to temper you with some judgement.' and those people did less harm than happened at this job. Usually I just laugh when bosses say that. Not out loud and in front of them, of course. But this time they very nearly did it."

"Why do you think it was different this time?" She asked, leaning slightly across the table towards me.

"Because I wanted so much this time to succeed. Because I thought I finally knew what I wanted and where I wanted to be and they had promised they were going to help me make those things come true."

"So even when you saw that it wasn't going to you still believed?"

"Yes. At least I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe because I wanted it to be true. I wanted to feel like all the time and all the years and all the winnowing of options had led to my finally finding the place I belonged. Instead of it being another spot where I was screwing up and badly. But that's all it was really. I should have had another job lined up from the time they cut me back to half-time. I knew it wasn't working and I told myself it wasn't and other people told me it wasn't and I should have made other plans. I would have done that if I'd been thinking rationally."

"People don't always think rationally."

"They need to if they don't want to get hurt," I said, plunking my soda can down firmly.

"So what brings you to my office?"

"I need help. I need direction. I need shoring up."

"But why here?"

"I got your flyer about women in transition at the Career Fair last week and I had already been going to come and see you since last autumn. Since before I got and lost this most recent job. Since before I was about to become divorced and homeless. Or more likely homeless and then divorced because I believe the divorce process takes longer than the repossession process does. You wanna hear something funny?" She nodded expectantly. "My husband is seeing a counselor every week and the counselor keeps telling him that I'm going to change my mind and want to take half. 'Half of what?' my husband says, 'Half of the van I'm sleeping in? Half of the house that the bank takes back? Half of the boat that's standing in the California desert like a freakin' mirage because it's not done yet and the weather there is dry enough so it might not leak and rot before it's finished?' Isn't that amazing? I don't want half. I didn't ask for half last time and I'm not asking for half this time. Hell, last time I didn't even get a decent pair of sheets out of the divorce never mind the crockpot."

"You were saying you almost came to see me last fall?" She reminded.

"Yeah, I was thinking about getting into the outboard mechanic class but I changed my mind. What I definitely don't want at this point in my life is a job where someone can just come in off the street with no certification or formal training and take my job away or beat me out of one in the first place. I don't want to get cut out by an Americorps worker getting a pitiful stipend or a guy who gets a job at the garage because Joe knows he can do the job because they've both worked in the backyard on Joe's car together."

"And..." she prompted.

"And I don't want another office job. No, period. Maybe this is my mid-life crisis and maybe this is menopause and maybe it's because I decided quite awhile back that I wasn't going to have any more children."

"That's relevant how?"

"I keep reading and hearing about how men feel this great need to create something that will last because they can't give birth to children." She nodded and made an affirming noise. "I don't know which of those it is, if any of them, but I want to have something to show for the time I put in at work. I'm not saying that typing reports into a database isn't something to show but it isn't enough for me anymore. I want to be able to say 'I was here and because of that this framework for a building is standing or this tradebooth exists or this engine was messed up but now it purrs like a kitten. I thought I was going to write great works of fiction and nonfiction. I thought that was maybe going to be my legacy. I was reading the other day about a woman named Candy Jernigan and the people who knew her said that she was so amazing because she could show you something that either you'd never seen before or something that you had thought was revolting and she helped you see the beauty in it. She was a marvelous person it looks like and she died all alone and broke in her apartment and nobody knew for several days and the crowning irony was all the journals she'd kept with evidence of her being here. I just found out a few days ago that an anthology, in which it had looked like a piece of my writing was going to appear, is now out in the bookstores without that piece of writing in it. I found this out because I saw the book on the shelf at Waldenbooks. 'Oh look,' I said, 'here's the anthology I'm not in and which no one bothered to tell me I wouldn't be in. I guess I won't be buying copies of this for my relatives for Mother's Day after all. That will save me some money.' So it doesn't look like the writing is going to be enough. At least for right now."

"What do you want to do?"

"Well I guess hope springs eternal because I was at the Career Fair and they had a flyer for the Women in Trades Fair in Seattle next month and I'm going to go to that and I was doing some research online about the different trades and I think what I'd really like to do is become a carpentry apprentice and learn how to set up trade shows. I've been spending a lot of time out in the boat shop and it is so amazing to take something like pieces of wood and some wire and some fibreglass cloth and epoxy and you put it all together and it's a boat. I want to put a bunch of pieces together and have it be a booth or a door frame or a cabinet. So I want to learn to be a carpenter in general and I want to learn to do tradeshows in particular because you do those on the road. You can go from coast to coast doing the same show or different shows and just go wherever the work is. From the time I was a kid I've loved going somewhere, putting things up and together and then going back, taking them down and moving on to something else. I've helped with booths at the county fair and youth group events, evangelists's meetings at the fairgrounds and at church, getting things ready for communion, working a booth at the wooden boat festival in Port Townsend. Sometimes I think that in a previous life I was a gypsy or in the circus or something."

"You know there's a group of women in Portland," she began."

"The Oregon Tradeswomen? I'm going to an informational meeting on Wednesday," I finished.

"And there are apprenticeships."

"I was up at 5:45 this morning and on my way to Portland to apply for one with the local carpenter's training center and I'm going to be applying for some other positions as well even though that's what I would prefer."

"I'd be happy to make you a copy of the names and addresses of the unions up here in this area," she said after we'd talked about how it is illegal to discriminate against women but is it legal to discriminate for them, "but I'm still not really sure why you're here. Usually I put people through a battery of career assessment tests like 'What do you want to be when you grow up' but you already know that and you already know why you want to be that thing. You're already making contact with the people who can help you achieve your goals." It was my turn to nod and make an affirming noise. "It seems like you know where you want to go and you have a plan to get there but I'm sensing a lack of confidence. You're not behind yourself in this. Why?"

"Because I've been sure of so many other things in my life that have crapped out on me. Because I've let myself and other people down so many times and I have no guarantee that I won't do it this time. Because it feels strange to be sitting and saying, 'This is where I'm going to be staying when they come for the house so I need to take the following steps to make that happen' and 'Do I want to live in Oregon or Washington and what are the advantages of either as far as work and financial aid'. Because I feel very calm and collected most of the time and it bothers me a bit and seems to bother the people around me a good bit more. A wise friend once said, 'If one person tells you that you're a horse you can blow them off. If two people tell you you're a horse then you might consider it. But if three or more people tell you you're a horse then start shopping for bits and saddles because, honey, you're a horse.' I've heard so many people suggest that I should be hysterical right now because my whole life is falling down around my ears that, honey, I'm just about looking for the saddle and the blanket."

"Tell those people for me," she said, "that you're going to be okay. Tell them that you have a plan and that it's going to work for you and for your daughter and all the other areas of your life. People who don't get visibly upset make other people nervous. Let people in if you feel you need to whether it's for your sake or theirs." I nodded.

"If one of the local unions is taking applications for apprentices," I said, "can I ask them to call you? Will you tell them that you talked with me and I seemed more than usually level-headed and motivated and they should give me a chance?"

"Of course," she said. "I'm not sure how much influence I'll have."

"I'm sure you'd have a lot," I said. "Besides, it never hurts to have one more person in your corner."

"That's very true," she said, standing to shake my hand in parting. "And will you do me a favor?"

"What would you like? I'm not in much of a position."

"If you do decide to enter our Construction Technology program or the Automotive Repair or you get on as an apprentice will you let me know? I like to follow the progress of people I've spoken with and you're going to be very interesting and exciting to watch." I scooped up the Cherry Coke can and carried it out with me even though it had very few drops in it and I could just as easily have thrown it away, walked out to the van, kicked the dog out of the driver's seat and climbed in myself. Interesting? Oh yeah. Exciting? We will see.

2003-02-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

The Subject Was Roses...

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose.
A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

My apologies to Stein and Shakespeare but this is sooo much bullshit. Gertrude Stein should know this too seeing how frequently her first name is listed among those practically guaranteed to cause unpopularity.

A recent column at MSN.com got me to thinking about this all over again. The author of the column, whose name is Martha Elizabeth, decided to look up her name to see what it meant. It turns out that Martha means "lady" and Elizabeth means "dedicated to God" thereby committing her to a life in the convent. Following her example, and the link she so kindly provided, I looked up my name. Let's see... Ramona means "wise and strong" and Marie, which is extracted from Mary, means "bitter". That pretty much sums me up right there, doesn't it?

To be completely honest, I have had issues with my name for nearly as long as I can remember. My sister's name is Pamela Diane and she was named after two of my mother's best friends. I, on the other hand, was named after a Slim Whitman song. For many years I blamed this act on my father because he was the Slim Whitman fan but I later discovered that my mother had done this on his behalf.

Even though the name Ramona is not on the list I mentioned earlier, it did almost automatically guarantee my unpopularity. (There were other factors like wearing high-water plaid pants because it's what we could get as hand me downs. And the glasses I wore from first grade until fifth. And maybe my extreme dislike of horses as a result of reading Black Beauty. But we're going to lay most of the guilt on my name.) It is possible that if I had grown up anywhere other than the Pacific Northwest and more specifically Portland I might still have had a basically pleasant school experience even accounting for the other factors mentioned above were it not for a lady named Beverly Cleary. This very talented author created a girl, even before I was born, who unfortunately for me shared my name and much of my personality. Due to her lack of appropriate social skills, especially when interacting with her sister, this child became known as "Ramona the Pest". Every year I would pray as hard as I could that this would be the year no one remembered the books or had read them but it never worked out that way. Sometimes it took until the third or fourth day of school before someone mentioned it but like the freezing rains that mark the end of Indian Summer it was inevitable. Once spoken the epithet was not to be forgotten and I was pegged as Ramona the Pest for the remainder of the schoolyear.

This is one of the reasons why, in the fifth grade, I decided to change my name to Jennifer. BabyNames.com says that the meaning of Jennifer is "white wave" but I didn't know that when I chose it. I knew that the Jennifers I had met were tall and cool and sophisticated including the one in the book "Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth" while Ramonas were best described as "The kind of girl who will wear overalls without a shirt." (This information was passed along to me, completely unrequested, by a secretary at Portland Community College. I wish I could remember her name so I could tell you it was something like Bertha and she was envious because I had received a better name than she did but I don't recall it now and it was probably something glamorous like Barbara so my argument wouldn't work anyway).

I did not take steps to legally change my name from Ramona and as I grew up and the people I associated with grew up I stopped hearing about Ramona the Pest except from children I encountered who thought it was an excellent name and wanted to know if the books were called that after me. Of course I said yes figuring if I had had to bear the hardship of the name when I was younger then I should reap the benefits of it when older. I discovered that there was a town in California named Ramona which staged a pageant each year in honor of the Helen Hunt Jackson book about forbidden love. There was at least one street in Portland named Ramona. Because there are so few women named Ramona when I encountered one we greeted each other warmly as if we were somehow joined in a secret sorority by virtue of sharing the same name. All these things added to the coolness factor of the name and yet I was still not entirely happy bearing it.

A few years ago I decided it was time to stop writing solely for my own entertainment and the moment had arrived to start sending my creations out into the big bad world of magazine publishers to see if there might be a home for them somewhere other than my desk drawer. Since some of the publications in which they eventually landed weren't exactly mainstream it seemed best that my articles appear under a pseudonym. I chose the German variant of my last name, thereby also connecting me however distantly with the heroine of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and for my first name selected the word used by Gypsies to describe themselves. Hence Roma Weiss was born.

Last November I entered into a new relationship -this would be the boyfriend mentioned in the earlier entry about Stan Grist. He (my boyfriend not Stan) is wildly attractive, both mentally and physically, as well as being an extremely talented DJ and barista although I have only experienced the former and have yet to be graced by the latter. He is also the one responsible for the I-Mood indicator reading "lovestruck" these many days.- and it made sense to begin it with a name that had none of the baggage and negativity which my birth name carried. (I have yet to resolve this problem at work where a previous employee named Ramona wreaked all kinds of mischief so that my colleagues feel it necessary to say "Not you. The other Ramona" many many times a day). He doesn't go by his birth name either so this seemed like an excellent solution. He knows who he is and who I am and vice versa, no one is confused, nuff said.

But I had reckoned without consideration for the rest of the world and how easily they can become addled by the slightest deviation from how their systems function. About two weeks ago I decided to send my beloved some roses. No they weren't red and they weren't for Valentine's Day. They were sort of a lavender color, according to the florist, and they weren't for any occasion other than waking up another glorious morning amazed to find this man in my life. In any case, things were going fine until the florist asked the name of the person to whom I wanted them delivered. I told her. (I'm not revealing it here because I don't have permission to out him in this blog and I intend to respect his privacy.)

"Is there a last name?" she inquired.

"No, that's it," I said.

"Okay," she said in an extremely patient and cooperative voice. "What do you want the card to say?" I gave her the message then added "And would you please sign it 'Roma'?"

"Yes," she said. "Is there a last name for that?"

"No just 'Roma' is fine," I said. We proceeded with the payment procedure including giving her my credit card info which, of course, was under my real name and I thought she really had a hold on things until she said, "Thank you very much for your order umm..."

"Ramona," I said. "You can call me 'Ramona'."

I want to take a moment to send a special wish out to my best girl, Anna. You've made every day of the last ten years seem like Valentine's Day and it's hard sometimes to remember what my life was like before your birth brought the true joy of living into it. I love you, baby.

2003-01-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

Who Is Stan Grist?

In one of my all-time favorite movies, The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey playing Verbal Kint got a lot of mileage plus an Academy Award out of asking "Who is Keyser Soze?" in piteous tones. I'm not going to argue here about how a criminal had somehow missed ever hearing the name of the biggest bad-ass in his world but when asked about him later by agent Kujan was able to say "My favorite story was..." as if he and his compadres had whiled away their hours exchanging Keyser Soze stories as they planned their next heist. It is possible though to be unaware of someone who could have been and may still be a major influence in your life. Look at me and Stan Grist.

When I was a kid we usually went to church on Saturday mornings cuz we were Seventh-Day Adventists. (To avoid any possibility of legal action, let me say that I haven't been to an Adventist church in over twenty years and I don't hold them in any way responsible for how I turned out and neither should you.) One of the tenets of this religion is that the Sabbath should be a day of rest. Their rules about what constitutes "rest" aren't as restrictive as those in the Jewish tradition but still there isn't a lot to do until the sun goes down and Sabbath is over. Parents frequently sneak off to the bedroom for a -ahem!- nap after lunch leaving children to their own devices. These children are encouraged to read some Christian literature or engage in crafts projects but my brother and I rarely did. Instead we chose to fill our Sabbath afternoons with the Saturday Matinee on Channel Twelve. More often than not the movie starred Jerry Lewis. We watched "The Bellboy", "The Errand Boy", "The Delicate Delinquent", "The Big Mouth", "Cinderfella", pretty much the whole Lewis ouvre. There is something about Lewis's work that is especially appealing to children and the French and we gobbled these movies down with a soup ladle. It isn't just the humor in the movies that makes them enjoyable, it's also the heart-tugging that's mixed into the brew. I will never forget the earnestness of the conversation between Lewis and a clown puppet in "The Errand Boy" and how disappointed he was when he visited the store room later in the movie and his clown friend wasn't there. Of course he knew -well, he was playing a grown-up so I'm assuming that he knew- that it was just a puppet but he wanted to believe, he needed to believe, and the viewer believes with him. The viewer has to go along or else you're watching a very sad man pouring out his heart to someone else's hand. I am someone who has always wanted to believe, at least in puppets and magic, though I have spent enough time around both to know how they really work. (I even spent a bit of time putting on puppet shows myself and it was always a treat to go out after the show and have my puppet shake hands with the kids. Some people in my position might have been offended because the children showed no interest in meeting me and focused entirely on my "friend" but I put it down as a compliment on the convincing nature of my performance. The puppet was so real to them that it didn't matter who was behind and under her and, in some cases, they seemed almost surprised that I was there at all.) I was horrified, despite my being a teenager at the time, when Mr. Rogers took us behind the scenes in the Neighborhood of Make Believe and showed us how he did all the different voices for X the Owl, Henrietta the Pussycat, Lady Elaine Fairchild and the rest. I didn't want to know how the Trolley worked. I didn't want to know what Speedy Delivery, the postman, did when he wasn't delivering letters to Mr. Rogers's house. I understand that, especially at my advanced age, I was attempting to delude myself. I was hoping that if I didn't know the facts then they didn't exist and a cat and an owl really could live together in harmony in a hollow tree. This is the same kind of self-delusion I practice when the magician offers to show the audience, after his performance, how some of the tricks work and I make for the nearest exit. I am only recently coming to believe again in romantic love and I'm not sure whether or not I believe in God but I very much want to believe in the unexplainability of magic.

Verbal: Keaton once said, "I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him." Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.

Keyser Soze? Oh yeah... So of the movies that weren't Jerry Lewis films, the majority were in the White Hunter Goes to Darkest Africa and Finds Trouble mold. We watched men go off in search of the elephant's graveyard and almost die. We watched men go off in search of the lost city of El Dorado and almost die. We watched men go off in search of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, kill each other and then almost die. I'm not sure what, if any, influence these films had on my brother but they left two lasting impressions on me. One was never go out into the wilds of anywhere without emergency flares and a flare gun or nowadays a cell phone. And two they created an as yet unfulfilled desire to go out and find one of these wonders. I spent hours poring over maps to see if I could figure out where Atlantis was located and how to get there and back without the other members of my party sacrificing me. I learned to write and pronounce what I felt where necessary and useful phrases in Chinese. But the closest I ever got to uncovering treasure was the year my parents bought me a metal detector for Christmas. We wound up selling it to my cousin, Pat, (who actually used it for a while but mostly found bottlecaps) possibly saving me from a misguided life in politics. I say this because of the many stories describing President Nixon's later years as being spent schlumping along the beach at San Clemente with Bermuda shorts and his own metal detector. Of course there is no law that says that if you become a politician you have to run for president, abuse your office and resign in disgrace but let's not take any chances.

By now you may be wondering what all this has to do with Stan Grist. Or maybe you visited his site from one of the earlier links and have moved onto pondering whether or not it was mere coincidence that the CBS executive who resigned from Augusta National in protest died within a month of doing so or whether someone with the courage of their convictions whacked him. (And while we're on the subject... Why is Jesse Jackson a part of this protest? You may call me "clueless", and I've already called myself "delusional" right here in this entry, but I am failing to see how this is a Rainbow Coalition issue. First of all, I didn't know that the Rainbow Coalition even concerned themselves with rights that were being denied solely to women. Secondly, is this the biggest need of women and other minorities right now? This is more pressing than affordable child care that's not being provided by undereducated Welfare mothers working for cash under the table or by unregistered sex offenders? We have reached a point in our country where not only those at or below the poverty line but also those earning $75,000 a year do not have health insurance at the same time the managed care organizations are posting record profits due in part to the increase in rates. Could Jesse et al find time in their schedules to address this problem rather than supporting women who have an extra $50 k but aren't being allowed to give it to a country club? Would it increase the chances of the uninsured and underinsured gaining his attention if he knew that African Americans and Hispanics suffer the most under the current managed care system? I know that some people are even now getting ready to call me a racist because of my remarks about the Reverend Jesse. Well you go ahead if it makes you feel any better but I suggest that just to be sure you ask to see a photo of my boyfriend. No, I am not a racist. I am sure as hell not a feminist if Martha Burk is one. What I am is a humanist in the purest sense of the word.) If you are still here and are still thinking about the Stan Grist connection it is this: I'm certain I would have been far more successful in my quest for treasure if I had had access to the information on Mr. Grist's website when I was a young girl. Look! Right there in shades of brown are the secrets of El Dorado including the reasons the secret has been so well-kept for so many years. And rather than struggle to learn, at almost certain risk of life and limb if Hollywood is to be believed, how best to equip myself for the arduous journey to riches and whom to take with me, for the minimal sum of $29.95 I could have benefited from the in-depth training course Mr. Grist has created to spare us just such unfortunate experiences. Hell, I could have been a female Indiana Jones. (Wouldn't "Indiana" make a better girl's name anyway now that you think about it?"

Lest you think that the above paragraph was in any way written with my tongue in my cheek or that I am less than sincere in my admiration for Stan Grist, his adventures and his foresight, let me reassure you. After I acquire sufficient job experience and life experience to make me attractive to more non-profit organizations, I hope to be spending some or most of my golden years in a place like this and I am definitely going to be ordering a copy of Stan Grist's course to read before I go. Who knows... Maybe I can flesh out my salary with a little side business in Pre-Columbian artifacts. Thanks, Mr. Grist for showing me it really may never be too late to have a happy childhood.

By the way, besides gaining an admiration for Jerry Lewis as an actor and comedian through his movies I also grew to think highly of his role as a humanitarian in the work he did with the Muscular Dystrophy Association. So much so, in fact, that I spent most of my sixteenth summer as a volunteer in the Portland office of that organization and helped out with the telethon. No, I didn't get to meet the Great Man. I did meet Miss Oregon for that year and Blazer Wally Walker and inadvertently broke up any action he was hoping to get from her. At least temporarily. I also spent two weeks at MDA camp where I developed a life-long affection for Bruce Lee and Kung Fu movies but this fascination is best left for another day.

2002-12-31T23:57:00.000-08:00

Fishwife

"You would like coffee."

It was more a pronouncement than a question and the unfamiliar tone drew my thoughts and my eyes from the surf sparkling at my feet to the old man who had spoken. I watched his weathered hands as he scooped Nescafe from the jar, adding sugar then hot water nearly to the top of the mugs. He handed one to me and I stirred it in silence. I watched a sailboat disappearing beyond the horizon and, much closer, fishermen setting their nets and lines.

"We will drink coffee," the old man said. "While we drink, I'll tell you a story. When I'm done, you'll have the answers you seek." He lifted his mug to me and, smiling slightly, took a big gulp of his coffee. Following his example, I raised my own mug then took a drink. The coffee went into my mouth then out again in almost the same instant as I scalded my tongue. I thought I heard the old man snort. To cover my embarrassment, I pretended to study the mug. The old man had told me they were handmade in the next town and the solid, simple design and bright paint reminded me, as the coffee's taste had, how far I had travelled to reach this shore.

A week ago I had closed and locked my apartment for the last time before slipping the keys through my landlord's mail slot. I had given my mother a Power of Attorney, given a last farewell to friends and colleagues, and exchanged my life savings for traveller's checks, travelling clothes, and a pair of sensible shoes. I had left behind all the familiar, but unhappy, trappings of my life to journey by plane, boat, and donkey -my butt still hurt- to Coriano where I hoped to teach, to write, and to learn. Most of all I had come to find the sense of community and belonging I'd never known at home. Where I came from,the weather and the people were cold. They bundled their hearts as tightly as they bundled their necks in scarves. Maybe coming to Coriano was wrong. Maybe the people would reject me and close me out because I was a stranger, but I couldn't help feeling that it would be better to knock and be turned away, empty-handed, from the door of a stranger than that of a friend.

"You must understand," the old man said, refilling both our mugs, "We are very simple people. We believe in the old ways. The power of the Evil Eye or a burning candle. The omen in the yolk of an egg. You have your magic, too, where you come from even if no one acknowledges it." I looked at him and he said, "The things you don't ask for in case someone should discern your heart's desire and tell you 'no'." I nodded silently. "Your answers." I turned my face to the sea again and sipped cautiously from my mug.

"Many years ago, there was a fisherman who was not much concerned with the business of catching and selling fish. He didn't want to go hungry and he didn't want his wife to go hungry but he cared much less about the fish than about the fishing. The sun kissed the tips of his ears and the back of his neck. The breeze caressed the planes of his face. The waves rocked him gently, gently until the motion of the boat matched the rhythm of his heart. He learned to tell when the fish would come and when he would have to wait. He learned the moods of the sky and the wind and, especially, the sea and he came to love them. But he was a fisherman not a sailor and it was hard on his wife and hard on him on the many nights when he reached shore without a fish to show for his day." The old man reached into a basket on a table behind him. He pulled out two oranges and began peeling and segmenting them. A bit of pulp squirted into the air where it mingled with the salty tang rising from the sand under our toes.

"On one evening, after a great many such days, the fisherman came home to find his wife and her sister waiting for him with great anger in their eyes and their voices. The sister said that the wife should have married someone with more ambition. She said that perhaps the fisherman didn't love her after all and was trying to starve them both. The wife said that perhaps the fisherman didn't love her as much as he loved the sea and that maybe he would have more ambition if he went to work in the next town making mugs and plates. The fisherman was ashamed and afraid. He told his wife that he would go back to his boat and only return when he had a fish, no matter how long it took." The old man placed an orange on the table in front of me. The juice filled my mouth as I bit through the membrane. I closed my eyes, focusing on the sweetness running down my throat as I chewed. I could sense the old man smiling at me and I could hear it in his voice as he continued the story.

"The fisherman did go back to his boat. He stayed out all night even through a violent storm. Some of the other fisherman came out to the beach and called to him that he was risking his life, but he trusted the sea. Just before dawn, his faith was rewarded. He pulled in his line and there on the end was the largest and most beautiful fish he'd ever seen. As he pulled it into the boat and prepared to whack it, it spoke to him." A bit of my orange tried to go down the wrong pipe and I sputtered and grabbed my coffee.

"It spoke to him," the old man said again, not seeming to notice my distress. "'If you will spare me my life,' it said, 'I will give you whatever your heart most desires.'

The fisherman thought for a moment then said, 'I will spare you but it breaks my heart for my wife will surely leave me if I come back in the morning with no fish to give her.'

'Throw me back over one side of your boat and your net over the other, ' the fish replied, 'and you will have more fish than you can carry home.' The fisherman did as he was told. He rowed back to shore with his boat so loaded down with fish that he feared for his life as he hadn't done the night before during the storm." I held my mug out to the old man to be refilled.

"So his wife was happy then?" I asked. "Because they had so many fish?" The old man turned away to get more hot water and I read my answer in the slump of his shoulders.

"She was happy for a time," he said, measuring out more Nescafe, "but her mind was working even when her mouth wasn't. She began to wonder how the fisherman had come by all those fish and whether he couldn't get more the same way. A plan was forming in her mind and one day she brought it to the fisherman. 'If you could get so many fish in one night,' she said, 'think how many you could catch if you spent more nights out on the boat. We could sell those fish as well and move out of this shack. Maybe we could move to the city.' The fisherman looked around at the little house he and his wife had shared all the time they'd been married. He looked at their bed with the sag at one edge. He looked at the table, at which they ate their meals, with its fourth leg shimmed by a brick from the road. He looked out the window to the hill where he had sat as a boy and waited for the fog to lift so he could catch a glimpse of the sea. He looked at his wife for a long time. Then he nodded and went out to the boat for the night." A woman, much younger than the old man, whom I hadn't noticed before approached the table to set a plate on it. She bowed deeply to the old man, and less so to me, before moving away with the grace of a Balinese dancer. The old man uncovered the plate and placed a still-warm ball of dough in my hand. Nearly crisp on the outside, it was filled with bitter chocolate and a creamy cheese that dribbled down my chin before I could catch it.

"Just before dawn, the fisherman once again pulled the large, beautiful fish into the boat. He told the fish of his wife's plan and the part she intended him to play in it. 'Is this your heart's desire?' asked the fish.

'It's not what I would have chosen,' said the fisherman, 'but it will break my heart if my wife must live in a little house by the sea when she would be happier in the city. She is, after all, my wife.' So the fisherman and his wife moved to the city. Many times he returned to the sea to fish and each time he caught enough to maintain the house and the clothes and the parties that his wife now loved."

"Then she was happy?" I asked, taking another bite and rolling it around on my tongue to savor the blending and contrasting of the flavors.

"She was happy for a time," the old man said. "But then she began thinking of all the time the fisherman wasted by living in the city with her. She started to think that if he had a second boat and even a third he could stay at sea most of the time and send the fish ashore in one of the other boats. One day she brought her plan to the fisherman. 'If you were at sea, I would handle the selling of the fish,' she said. 'We rarely see each other now and you're not fond of the city so why not spend your time on the water. We will both be happy that way and there will be even more money.' The fisherman looked around at the luxurious house he and his wife now shared. He looked at the plush bed with its satiny sheets and velvet coverings. He looked at the marble and ebony table weighed down with the finest fruits and meats. He looked at the textured, insulated drapes which protected the inhabitants of the house from the sights and sounds of the city. He looked at his wife for a long time. Then he nodded and went back to the little town where his boat was waiting." A tear was about to sneak from my eye and I tried to hide behind my hand as I raised my mug. I felt embarrassed because the old man had made me cry and embarrassed because I couldn't let him see that he had. I wondered if there would ever come a time, here in Coriano or somewhere else, when I would feel free to show my tears to the person who had caused them without fear of appearing weak and at a disadvantage. The old man pulled a soft, faded cloth from his pocket and laid it over my hand. He hadn't been fooled but he knew that I was so recently come from the city myself that I would be uncomfortable with his doing anything more.

"Did she miss him?" I asked hopelessly. "Please tell me she wasn't happy."

"She wasn't happy for a time," the old man said, as I blew my nose and snuffled into the handkerchief he'd given me. "The fisherman sent fish to the city and his wife sold it. The more he sent, the more she sold and the more she demanded that he send. The fisherman loved the sea and, because that love was returned, his fish was the best in the market and sold for the highest prices. The fisherman's wife knew a lot about the business of selling fish and soon she had created an enormous, fish empire. A factory was built, trucks were purchased, roads were improved. Then a truck arrived at the factory and it was only three-quarters full. The next one was only half full and in a few more days the fish stopped coming entirely."

"He wasn't dead?" The old man reached across the table to place his warm, broad hand over my cold one. To my surprise, but not his, I didn't pull away.

"It wasn't the sea that took him," the old man said. "Not in the way you're thinking anyway."

"But what then?"

"It was love."

"Love?"

"One night the fisherman was in his boat waiting for the fish to come. The moonlight kissed the tips of his ears and the back of his neck. The breeze caressed the planes of his face. The waves rocked him gently, gently until the motion of the boat matched the rhythm of his heart. All at once, the large, beautiful fish jumped into his boat. 'What is your heart's desire?' it said.

'My wife,' began the fisherman.

'Your wife has all she needs for her happiness,' said the fish.

'What is your heart's desire?'

'I would like to live in a little house with a view of the hill,' the fisherman said. 'I would like a small bed with a sag at one edge and a table shimmed with a brick from the road.'

'And love?' Asked the fish.

'I guess I don't know about love,' said the fisherman, 'but maybe there could be someone to pick oranges for me and to rub my shoulders when I'm tired and to
hear me talk about the sea.'

'That is love,' said the fish. And a great storm blew in and the sea turned black and the fisherman's boat was dashed against the rocks until there was nothing left but splinters that the townspeople carried to the city to show the fisherman's wife."

"So she had nothing then? No husband? No empire? All because she was greedy?"

"No," said the old man. "The fisherman's wife was greedy and smart. She, too, knew a bit about the ways of the sea and she had insurance in place just in case something like this should happen. In time she found a new source of fish with new men to catch them and her life went on as it always had."

"But the fisherman?" The tears came again and this time I made no effort to hide them. The old man patted my hand and gave me another cream-filled bun.

"The same wind that had smashed his boat on the rocks carried the fisherman over them. He awoke under the bed in the little house he had shared for so long with his wife. He was wondering if he had fallen and it was all a dream when he heard a knock at the door. He opened it to find a young girl with an armful of oranges. 'I picked these along the road,' she said, 'I hope you don't mind. I just arrived a few days ago. I've lived all my life in the city and I'm looking for someone to teach me how to love the sea.'" The woman who had brought us the buns had returned. Standing behind the old man, she squeezed and pressed the muscles in his shoulders with obviously experienced and practised hands. Leaning forward she winked at me as she dropped a kiss onto the tip of one leathery ear. Looking at them, I realized I didn't even wonder if the fairy story the old man had told was true.

"You will have the answers you seek," the old man had said. I would find many answers during my time living in Coriano, but most of all I would discover which questions were worth asking. Sometimes the old and simple ways are the best and believing is all that's necessary.

2002-11-20T18:57:00.000-08:00

A Supermarket in California

by

Allen Ginsberg

(For Juliet and all the other midnight seekers of wisdom and produce)

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into
the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!- and you. Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the
grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork
chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary
fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an
hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees
add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue
automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

2002-11-10T21:43:00.000-08:00

First Response

His Poly-Matchmaker name was Happy Guy. He was the first one to send an e-mail about my profile on that site and the first man I had considered any kind of relationship with since my husband had given me his blessing and encouragement.

His response was tentative, vague, nonconfrontational and nonpromissary as befitted a man attempting to date after the failure of the Sexual Revolution during which women gained the inalienable right to say “no” but lost much of the happy privilege of saying “yes” and men’s position became so unsteady as to deprive them of the knowledge of when, or even whether, they should ask.

His profile said that he was thirty-seven, a cross-country skier, excellent cook and the possessor of an MA or MBA so immediately my low self-esteem reared its head and my suspicious nature kicked in. If he was so great, why wasn’t he pursuing women in their twenties? What was it about my profile that had caused me to seem attractive? My liking the color pink, my enjoyment of Martial Arts movies, my attempting to treat all people -including myself- with compassion?

The first question he asked me was what I liked to read and my first reaction was to lie. You see, when he wrote to me I was reading Isabel Allende’s “House of the Spirits”, had just finished David Denby’s overview of the Humanities courses at Columbia University entitled “Great Books” and was looking for a good translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” and I didn’t want him to think I was putting on airs or trying to make myself look more his educational equal than my Associate’s Degree would qualify me to do. I actually do read the kind of books they require in college courses. In part I do it because I am trying to overcome my working-class, public school background. I am trying to shake the small-town, future inheritor of fifteen bowling balls dust from my feet and make my way in the big city. But I also read them because I like them. They help me learn how people tick, give me a peek into a world different, bigger and, sometimes, older than my own and it’s inspiring to read a story in which the author is skilled enough to present the motivations of the hero and villain bit by bit over the course of the book rather than in five expository pages at the end. I didn’t know, however, if Happy Guy would buy all of this or any of it. It sounded pretty lame even to my own ears and I have known me all my life. I decided to tell the truth and let him begin to deal with the many complexities of my personality and preferences right from the start.

It entertained me, in a self-deprecating way, that I who had had so little trouble disclosing my presence in a shaky triadic relationship, a situation on which most of society would have frowned, would mentally labor so over revealing my elitist taste in reading material. Had Happy Guy asked me how it felt at forty-one to have come to terms, prepared to sell out to the Man and received no buyers, I could have answered without hesitation. (For the record, it sucks.) Instead he asked a small, seemingly innocuous question, that whirled my head about for most of a day. To truly mangle the old quote about comedy, “Confession is easy. Small talk is hard.” Let us pray he never asks about the designated hitter rule.

2002-10-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

Contemplating "Amazing Grace"

As the last clear notes of the bagpipe rang through the high school commons, I looked at the woman standing beside me. I noticed that her eyes had filled with tears, as mine had, and I wondered why. A man behind us let out a soft whistle and said, "Wow. That was beautiful, wasn't it?" I shook my head and turned away, knowing even as I did that I'd probably have to explain my actions and that it would have been much simpler to have nodded or said, "Yeah."

Sure enough came the question a moment later: "What? Didn't you think he did a good job of playing it?"

"I thought he did an excellent job of playing it," I replied. "I've just been a cop's wife too long to enjoy hearing it."

I came of age during the 1970's when acoustic guitars were everywhere and nearly every gathering of religious young people included at least one verse and chorus of "Amazing Grace". Its appearance on Judy Collins's "Whales and Nightingales" album had given the old song new life. She had introduced it to people who loved folk music and appreciated how the song sounded a cappella with a slight echo. They hadn't grown up with the song as I had, hadn't heard their grandfather singing it while he washed and dried the dishes. They didn't know the story of the angry young man who sailed away like a modern day Jonah and, like that prophet to Nineveh, called out to God in desperation in the middle of a storm that threatened his life and the lives of the others aboard. He sang and prayed and confessed his wretchedness and God stilled the storm and allowed him to go forth and tell his story. I loved the song because I had sung it with Grandpa but I loved it all the more when I heard the tale behind it and realized that it was a song of hope.

Grandpa passed over and I quit going to church but I never stopped loving or singing "Amazing Grace". Its melody connected me to all the people who had sung it before including my friends on the college maintenance crew who had sung it with me while we cleaned the stairwells because we like the way it sounded when sung a cappella with a slight echo.

Then one day I was driving on a two-lane country road. A truck was coming up fast behind me and I didn't know if the driver saw me or not. From his speed I guessed not, so I pulled into a side road. I bounced along until I came to a small waterfall. It was so beautiful that I decided the grocery shopping could wait a few minutes more and parked beside it. As I sat there looking at that crystalline work of Man and Nature, I started to cry. I was driving into town by myself because my husband was working overtime. One of his fellow officers had been shot and killed and the Bureau was shifting people around so that those who had worked most closely with her could take the time to mourn and grieve properly. During my trip I'd been listening to this woman's funeral on the radio and just as I reached the waterfall the piper had played "Amazing Grace". I sat and I cried and I thought about the female officer and the people who had loved her and all she might still have done with her life and I thought about my husband and how far away he seemed even though, in reality, he was only a ninety-minute drive. And I knew right then in my heart that I would never again be able hear "Amazing Grace" without thinking of all the officers who had died and the people who were without them and would spend the rest of their lives clinging to the hope in that song.

"My husband was in World War II," the woman said, bringing me forward in time to the Children's Fair. "Every few years we go to the reunion for what's remaining of his unit. They set up a table with one plate and a set of silverware and a glass and it's all upside down because the man it's designated for is never going to use those things again. Then they hold the ceremony for those who are missing Roll Call and every time we attend there are more of them. Finally the piper plays 'Amazing Grace'. It's a beautiful song because it's about hope but you don't want to have to hold onto hope when you'd rather have your husband." I nodded silently and patted her shoulder. The piper was playing a new song now: a lilting song made for dancing. The woman smiled wetly at me and I understood. The bitterness makes the joy that much sweeter but you shouldn't waste today's happiness grieving for tomorrow. Not when there are kisses to steal and friends to embrace and that needed glimmer of hope is still far-off.

2002-10-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

Dissin' and Aggravation

Arrrggghhh!! He did it again!

Rick left this morning on a five-day motorcycle trip with a friend from work. They are going to Eastern Oregon and then down into Nevada and through Northern California and then coming home. Tonight they're in John Day, Oregon.

I cried off and on for a week because he was going to be gone soooo long and I was going to miss him soooo much. I cried last night because I did something stupid and I was afraid he was going to go off on the trip and the last thing he'd be thinking about was how I screwed up again. (We ended up packing his stuff for the trip together and watching a movie and actually having a pretty good time so he may remember something different after all.) I cried this morning because I wouldn't be seeing him or snuggling up to his back tonight.

I went right out and got started on the list of stuff he asked me to do while he was gone and then I made a list on my own of some different projects I could do to pleasantly surprise him and make him glad to be home again. And even though I had a tough job-related clerical test tonight, I spent most of the day looking forward to hearing from him around 10:30 and wondering where on the road he was and what he was seeing and doing.

When he finally did call around 10:45, I asked right away what kind of day he'd had and what he'd seen because I was so eager to get the call started on the right foot. He told me they'd gone through Antelope but hadn't seen any Rahjneeshees. Then I asked if he'd seen any deer. This was a mistake because it caused him to get into a discussion with his traveling companion about whether or not they had seen any deer and which ones they had both seen and where. Then they discussed Annie Lennox, who was apparently on "Saturday Night Live" which they were watching, and took off on another tangent about how many channels there were in the hotel. At the end of that exchange, when I jumped in with a comment about how our daughter laughed at me for being so unusually organized for my assessment tomorrow, he decided that maybe he should hang up so he could conserve his cell phone battery since he didn't bring the charger with him.

Now does something occur to you about the paragraph above? How about the fact that he didn't ask what kind of day I had or how the test went -pretty good, I think. I did quite well on the clerical part but even though I knew how to do all the things on the math test I didn't have much time to actually do them since we only had 10 minutes to do seventy-five problems- or if I was nervous about my TSA assessment tomorrow -yes, but mostly because I don't seem to have a belt that goes with my shoes or will even fit through the belt loops and I really should wear one with the pants I selected rather than switching to wear the black pants and my red and black striped suspenders.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't expect that he had spent the day pining away for me. He's on a motorcycle he's only had for a few months and has only ridden to and from work, he's out seeing the countryside with a good friend with whom he rarely gets a chance to visit any more, he had a stressful week just before this; All of those are good reasons to be less than downhearted about being away. I'm happy that he's having fun as he very much deserves it. And I'm glad he called to let me know he was alive and to tell me he actually wrote some in the journal he said he'd keep so I could read about the trip when he gets back.

My question is: Why call me and then talk to someone else who's in the room and will be there all night while I won't? Are they really so bored that they need someone else to prod the conversation along? Or is this his -hopefully- unconscious way of showing me that he's having such a good time and this other person is so interesting that even when he has called with the expressed purpose of talking to me, it's still more fun to talk to them? He was paying so little attention, either because he/they were enthralled with Annie Lennox and her tuxedo shirt or were arguing over who should have the remote control, that when I said, "I missed you a lot today" he said, "I love you, too." He has done this same thing at times when he's called from work and this particular friend is around. Sometimes it's slightly better in that the friend joins in on the conversation we're having so I'm actually included in the phone call. Of course sometimes that can really suck, too. Like the time I called from the gynecologist.

Maybe I should just say, "Good hearing from you. We're all alive too. TTFN" and that's it and then hang up and not even plan on getting a chance to put my two cents in. Maybe I'm expecting too much. Maybe it's overly presumptuous to think he would actually care about, or listen to me talk about, the events in my life when he has anything better to do.

But if he didn't actually want to talk to and with me then why waste his batteries or either of our time?

2002-09-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

“Looking for Mary”

After I finished reading this book by Beverly Donofrio, I sat patting it for several minutes and saying to myself, "That was a really good book. That really was a good book." I had known it would be a good book, had known I would enjoy reading it. Nevertheless it took me over a year to actually buy and read it. Why?

Maybe it's because I instinctively distrust anyone whose books become box office successes. (I like to think that this is the result of having been badly burned by John Grisham's The Firm rather than pettiness and envy.)

Or maybe it's because I was afraid of the similarities between Donofrio's Mary story and mine. Not that mine had progressed to representations of Mary in every room of the house. But I had mindlessly snatched up the black plastic Rosary my mother and I found while cleaning her room. It looked so appropriate and comfortable on my dresser next to the framed painting of the Virgin de Guadalupe I'd purchased at the local mall at Christmastime when I found it hidden among the photos of 1960's sports cars and puppies nestled in slippers. I started reading all I could about Mariana, collections and her role in the Church- how it started small but then was increasingly emphasized in order to encourage more women to participate. Women like me and like Ms Donofrio. The kind of ladies who in a few years will be shining the pews and bringing flowers and inviting the preacher over for dinner after the services and frowning at young people who dare to chew gum or give each other scavenger hunts in the hymnal or missal. I asked Rick how his family would feel if I converted and became Catholic. He said, "No one goes to church anymore so if you're doing it to win them over don't bother. Also, you're too old to walk down the aisle with the little girls for First Communion and even if you did anyone looking at you can tell you've done enough bad stuff that there's no way you should be wearing that white dress. And that's just the stuff you've done on Christmas and Easter."

I eventually replaced the picture and the Rosary with a small fountain filled with stones, a rose quartz Buddha I had purchased on a whim at a garage sale and the weeping Buddha that Rick and Anna bought me for Christmas. I surrounded the fountain with a ring of six candles because my book on altars said this number represented both creativity and social good and service. I also put the pictures of my deceased and non-deceased relatives and pets in my bottom drawer to remain there until the Day of the Dead.

It is probably obvious to even the most infrequent reader of this blog that I am going through the yearning for more spirituality that's experienced by most baby boomers at this age. (Usually they are frustrated with the lack of happiness that their material achievements have brought them and that bring about this craving for something more. I lack this motivation so maybe this is an ongoing appetite which waxes and wanes. Judging by the books on my shelf -The Book of Mormon, several different versions of the Bible, To Be A Jew, Great Thinkers of the Eastern World, How Do You Spell God?, Breakfast With the Pope- there can be little doubt.)

So why, you may be asking yourself, if I want this so much don't I just give in? Surrender to the feeling and embrace it like an insomniac finally approaching sleep? Order a custom rosary, if that's the way I choose to go, and stop yammering and stressing about it?

One of the big problems is commitment phobia and fear of divisiveness. That looks like two problems but it's really one problem with two faces. You see, if you pick a religion and join a church then they get pretty cranky about your being a member of any other church and you usually have to agree to believe that your church and what it practices are right and all the other churches didn't get the memo and are wrong wrong wrong. (I once asked my mother why the Jews were still waiting for the Messiah to arrive the first time when everyone else was waiting for the Second Coming and shouldn't someone let them know. For the record, her reply was "How the heck should I know why? Look out the window at the nice cows.") Funnily enough -or maybe not- this fear doesn't keep me from being a card-carrying Republican even though I do spend most of my nonworking hours promoting education and supporting the local food bank.

There is also the fact that when I have attended church with any regularity I always feel far more kindly toward my fellow man and woman. All sort of turn-the-other-cheekish. I have yet to reconcile this with the need to hold others accountable for their actions. Some would say I have yet to learn the proper time and place to do this with or without church guidance and maybe they're right.

The quizzes I took this morning said I would be most comfortable as a Neo-Pagan followed by a Unitarian Universalist and a Liberal Quaker. The first one said that. The second one said I was a straddling seeker. I definitely agree with the seeking part. My question is whether I will recognize that what I find is what I sought and know enough to stop looking.

2002-09-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to Me!

Every year on my birthday I try to do something special for someone else because I want to pay back for all the joy I've received the previous year. This year the gift is extraordinary because I'm going to benefit too. We have a garden plot we haven't used in two years so it is mostly grass and weeds now. Our local food bank/clothes giveaway place lost their garden spot earlier in the summer when the church who had donated it decided they needed it for a parking lot. So today this agency and I made an arrangement whereby they will come out and till the plot and will work with me to raise food next year and we will split the harvest. I am going to take my part and sell it at the Farmer's Market and use some of the proceeds to help get an art program going here in town. (I'm going to a grant-writing seminar on the 26th and that should help too.) Ideally I would like to see a one to two week day camp type thing. Kind of like Vacation Bible School only art and music and writing and so on and without any kind of religious orientation. (Not because I'm anti-religion but because not everyone feels comfortable and because I think there is room here for both.)

Isn't that so cool though that I will have help in the garden? And that we can use some space that was just sitting there to help feed people? I am so happy! I hope this works out and we can do it every year.

One of the reasons I'm so very excited about this is that I had envisioned myself at age forty-one making a difference in the world. I share a birthday with Jane Adams Hull who started Hull House to serve the immigrant community in Chicago and I guess I thought that provided me with a ready-made destiny. What it didn't provide me with was a plan for fulfilling that destiny. That's why twenty-four years after I graduated from high school with these grandiose dreams I am working part time as an in-store marketing rep where I mostly push marginally healthy food products to people who already have obesity and hypertension issues. The attempts I've made at improving my community have met with temporary support and little involvement outside of those I dragged kicking and screaming along with me. I haven't totally given up yet. Maybe this will be new start on the path I really wanted to follow. Maybe Serendipity will kick in. Maybe someone will read this and decide I'm just what their organization needs. Maybe I should go get another cup of coffee.

While we wait to see if Fate will lend me a hand or if I will have to give my own self the necessary kick in the keister, I've included some birthday related links for your enjoyment and edification. And a very happy birthday to Roger Waters, too.

Birthday Horoscopes

What else happened the day you were born?

Who else was born on your birthday?

2002-08-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

The Great American Coffee Party?

Is coffee a luxury item? Should the well-off contribute additionally, above and beyond their property taxes, in order to provide child care and education for those in the lower brackets? They will if an initiative currently being considered in Seattle successfully finds it way onto the ballot then passes. Read the article below then consider whether you will support this "bad tax" when one of its variants reaches your area or the ban on nonpolitically correct coffee heading for the ballot in Berkeley or if you will become a part of the next American Revolution and assert your right to imbibe freely.

Proposal brewing for Seattle "espresso tax"

By Reed Stevenson

SEATTLE, Aug 8 (Reuters) - A campaign is underway to slap a tax on espresso in the city that launched America's love affair with dark, strong coffee.

But so far few caffeine addicts living in the hometown of the Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) and Tully's Coffee Corp. are complaining.

That's because polls say that more than two-thirds of them favor a tax that would add 10 cents to the price of each cup of espresso or espresso-based coffee to help provide better child day care for low-income families.

"This is a way to generate a pretty substantial source of funding for a worthy cause," said Jill Sells, a local pediatrician and sponsor for Seattle Initiative 77, as it is called. Regular drip coffee would not be taxed under the proposal.

The Early Learning and Child Care campaign said it added 8,000 more names to the initiative, bringing the total number to 28,000 signatures and well above the 17,228 needed for it to be sent to the City Council. Various local polls have shown that 65 to 75 percent of Seattle residents supported the initiative.

The City Council can pass Initiative 77 into law, leave it to a November ballot, or put it on the ballot with an amended version. If it becomes law, the espresso tax would take effect from next April and bring in $7 million to $10 million dollars per year, Sells said.

Starbucks and Tully's issued statements saying that they were major supporters of children's organizations, but the two coffee giants have not expressed any direct criticism of the espresso tax, which could hurt coffee consumption.

"It's just bad tax policy," said Stephanie Bowman, who represents the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and a coalition called J.O.L.T., for "Joined to Oppose the Latte Tax."

J.O.L.T., which Bowman says includes Starbucks and Tully's, is steaming mad at the espresso tax because it "picks out a single product that some have identified as a luxury."

"In Seattle, everyone from secretaries to construction workers drink lattes," she said.

Robert Nelson, President of the National Coffee Association, the industry's key trade group, also called the proposal a "bad tax" that would hurt local businesses.

Sells said she expected the City Council to pass the initiative on to voters to decide.

Thanks to Badgett's Coffee e-Journal for the link to this article.

2002-08-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Not So Quick and the Dead

How could I ever have bought so many seeds for pink-blooming plants with no plan for where to place them? (This discovery was particularly distressing following so closely on the heels of a discussion about my mother swooping around Trader Joe's scooping up merchandise and flinging cash like a sailor on a twenty-four hour pass. She rarely eats most of this food, despite her good intentions, and ends up passing it along to me to bring home. I usually let it sit on the shelf for several weeks to months, occasionally opening the cupboard to admire it and to wonder if I will ever have a good grown-up job which allows me to buy such things.) As best as I can recall, my thinking was to reserve the orange flowers for the side nearest the driveway because they would coordinate with the purple and yellow Pansies already there. The Asters, the Coneflowers, and the pink and white Cosmos were meant to mix and match with the newly painted pink and blue side porch.

I made these plans before I had weeded either of the front flowerbeds and assessed the damage wrought by the Thistles and Dandelions. Of the ten multicolored Pansies, I had planted on the left side, only three appeared to still retain a fighting chance. (The others may resurface in the spring, as I didn't dig them up, but I don't hold out much hope.) The best way to fill the yawning empty space while I waited for the Cosmos and Tithonia -Mexican Sunflowers- to sprout and bloom appeared to be transplanting some of the Nasturtiums from Calvin's beds across the street. Those pale yellow, bright orange and nearly red flowers would quite easily and happily take over the left flowerbed.

Bringing us right back to the color coordination problem with which I began. I could plant some seeds at the side of the back door where Maggie's house was or behind the garage facing the poolhouse where the Irises were. But just as all projects seem to begin "whenever" but must all be completed in the same two weeks at the end, all of these plants seem to need either full or partial sun. As this is a -fairly- ordinary house there are some limits to such optimum conditions. Something is going to have to compromise.

(If it seems that this entry is rather disjointed and choppy at times, it is because I have to keep looking over to see what Anna is doing and whether or not she is still writing. She is supposed to be pouring everything she knows into a one page essay on "Milk". This is part of my attempt to begin homeschooling her. Her assignment is to write one page, on a topic of her choice, per day but she has had a nearly impossible time deciding what to write about. I am determined to make this work despite both of our shortcomings so here we sit. We are supposed to be following the Robinson Curriculum and this is part of it.)

You might be wondering why I, who have rarely displayed such an inclination, am spending so much time among the flora and fauna now. There are several reasons.

One is my increasing unhappiness with the length of what feels to me to be increasingly oppressive winters here in the Northwest. I know that it really is darker here in the country where the night is lit by stars rather than streetlights but it also appears to stay darker. Not until the sun comes out in the morning, but until the sun comes out, more or less to reappear every day, in June or July.

This probably sounds like Seasonal Affective Disorder and perhaps it is. It is also a symptom of being a woman at midlife, as Stephanie Marston puts it, since many of my similarly aged friends have expressed the same distress.

In a valiant, at least in my eyes, attempt to break the family pattern of taking a dozen or so pills every day by the time one reaches the age of fifty-five I am trying to head of this year's weather-induced depression by surrounding myself with bright colors and blooming reminders that summer and the sun will return. (As a side note, most of my relatives -whether thin or fat- have wound up on anti-cholestrol medication and thirty minutes a day is supposed to decrease the chance of needing these pills.)

Another reason for taking up yardwork is the solitude it provides. You must understand that I live in a house in which people will follow you into the bathroom and continue to engage you in conversation even as you are trying to focus on moving your bowels. They are unlikely, however, to follow you outside into the yard filled as it is with fresh clean air. And it is an extremely safe bet that even if they did follow you they'd never say, "Are you weeding? Gosh, that looks like great fun. May I weed too?"

When we first moved out here, we often joked about living on a street -well, kind of- called "Life Lane" that had a cemetary at one end of it. (There's little activity either. Apparently no one here celebrates Dia De Los Muertas or Day of the Dead. This is in no way to be confused with the movie Day of the Dead although if you saw Crow: City of Angels then you've had a glimpse of how the holiday is celebrated in some places.) The graveyard and church are devoid of living people except for Sunday mornings, Tuesday nights and a very occasional Saturday afternoon. So I am alone in my tidying and my decisionmaking as I commune with Nature, the Dead and the dead.

2002-07-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

Sally?

It may be hard to believe considering the entry I posted below, but the Peanuts character quiz pegged me as Charlie Brown's happy, optimistic and romantic sister. What about you?

Thanks to Lynn of Lucid Dreaming for the link.

2002-07-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

Little Messes

I've just come in from cleaning the mailbox. No, I'm not going through a manic period and the Post Office didn't complain. I just got tired of it looking the way it did. It's white, you see, and there were green streaks where the rain and bits of the tree above the box had dribbled down onto it. I wiped it down with 409 and some paper towels and I got most of it off. To those of you who are asking why I feel it's okay to get "most" of the dirt off, I invite you to come here and go over the grooves with a toothbrush since that's what it would take. To those of you who are asking why in the world I, who am so notoriously half-assed about cleaning, would buy a white mailbox in the first place, I will say that it wasn't me who wanted a white mailbox and it wasn't me who swore they would be out there and clean it every day or, at least, every other day. That would be Anna and her dad.

We went on vacation last year and didn't tell the mail carrier to stop carrying the mail to our house. Consequently, the mail continued to arrive and she continued to cram it into the box for nearly a month. Now stop for a moment and consider how much mail you get in a month... (Because we live in a very small town we were under the impression that going into the Post Office and announcing we would be gone would be like flinging open the doors of the house and hollering "Y'all come on in." I'm not sure what we thought the conclusion would be if we failed to take the mail out of the box after three or four days. We really weren't thinking that clearly then since visions of Southern California beaches were dancing in our heads even during our waking hours.) Amazingly, the mailbox, which stood on a very old and kind of rickety post anyway, continued to stand on that post bravely bearing the mail until after we arrived home. As soon as I opened its front door and relieved it of its burden, however, it creaked and the whole assembly -post and all- wavered and fell to one side with a crash like one of the Imperial Walkers from "The Empire Strikes Back".

For several days after that, the mail carrier continued to carry the mail to our house. She would swing around on our little lane, pull up next to where the box had stood, gun her engine and lean on the horn. One of us, usually me, would drop whatever they were doing and run to the curb as quickly as possible before the mail carrier's patience was exhausted and she peeled away from the site of our former mailbox leaving a cloud of dust and junk mail in her wake. On about the fourth day, however, although the mail carrier honked and I obediently presented myself at the curb she refused to give me any mail. On the fifth day, she neither stopped nor honked. On the sixth day, I threw myself on my knees in front of her Jeep to beg for my notice from the Publisher's Clearing-House.

"I'm not delivering any more mail unless and until you buy a new mailbox and put it up properly," she said with that half-snarling, half-pitying look so many older women have mastered. Then, spraying gravel, she left me choking and empty-handed

I will spare you the number of trips over a number of days which we made to Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer and Hi-School Pharmacy and the seemingly endless debates over whether this mailbox or that encompassed everything we could hope for in such a receptacle. All of this was done, of course, with the knowledge that we would not be receiving any mail until we had made a purchase and it was put up "properly". You will notice that I said "any mail" and you might be wondering why I didn't just go and pick it up from the Post Office. Simple. It wasn't there. Our mail carrier did not intend to deliver the mail until we had a new mailbox, that's true. It is also true that she had no way of knowing on what day that purchase and installation would occur. So every day she would pack up our mail, along with the mail that would actually be delivered that day, and drive it around in her truck. If I went to the Post Office during the hours when she was out delivering the mail there was nothing for me to pick up and I would have to wait until she returned. Since there were different amounts of mail being delivered every day, I would have to sit in the Post Office and wait, all the time being regarded with that semi-pity by the ladies who worked there, until my mail came back. Needless to say, I urged Rick and Anna to select the next mailbox without undue delay and to be sure that it was US Post Office approved, not all mailboxes sold in stores are, so our mail carrier couldn't refuse to deliver our letters based on the use of an unauthorized mailbox.

When Anna saw the white mailbox on the top shelf at Fred Meyer, she let out a gasp usually reserved for newly decorated Christmas trees and plunges into pleasantly cool swimming pools.

"Please please please," she begged. "It's sooo beautiful."

"No," I said immediately. "It's white and white gets dirty really fast. No one will want to clean it, including me, and that means it will look horrible in a matter of days and probably have moss growing on it in a matter of months and I'm sure the mail carrier doesn't want to put her hand into some disgusting moss-covered mailbox with spiders and God know what else in it." This was a variation, of course, on the line that all mothers have used since the beginning of time to fight against children having their own wheel, the bringing of flea-infested mange riddled puppies into the house, and so on. I put my most maternal energy into it but, alas, it didn't work any better for me than when I had tried a similar tack regarding buying this four bedroom two bathroom house situated on two lovely and perfectly landscaped acres. We bought and installed the mailbox, after Anna cuddled it next to her in the backseat all the way home and whispered to it about the superb home awaiting it, and now I am caring for it.

As I walked back into the house this morning, weeds reached out to tickle my ankles. These should be dying soon since I sprayed them yesterday with Round-up. I have to say I'll be glad to see them go since they are ruining the butter-yellow expanse of lawn by breaking it up with their splotches of green. I notice this a lot more when I'm mowing than when I'm out pruning the roses or rhododendrons. (No one ever prunes the hedge anymore because none of us are tall enough to reach the parts we should be cutting.) I'm not sure if there will be tulips this coming spring because I forgot to feed them after they bloomed last spring.

If you sensed a certain desperation in the paragraph above then you're very perceptive. I'm mostly on my own when it comes to the yard and house care just like I'm mostly on my own when it comes to the child care. If you ask Rick, he'll tell you that he doesn't take care of the house because he was tired of being the only one who cared. He'll tell you he doesn't take care of the child because he's never really been allowed to.

Many years ago, and I do mean many, I had the opportunity to get a "real job" and I turned it down. Rick and I were going to be working staggered 4-10 shifts and would only need to have someone else watch Anna one day a week. I was afraid -yes, that's the word- that Rick would be unable to turn down overtime if they offered it and that we wouldn't see each other very often and that our child would suffer from having two overworked and under-rested parents. Rick has never forgiven me for that. He feels that he should have been given a chance rather than being judged on his past decisions. He feels that by my not taking the job I jeopardized his chances to have a normal relationship with his child. He believes he could be turning down overtime now and would be here building boats if I had taken that job. Maybe he's right.

Soon after I turned down the "good" job, we moved out to the country. Rick was now 1 1/2 hours from work. I asked him as we sat in the title company office who would be responsible for keeping up the beautifully landscaped yard when he would be working or commuting and I had no interest in being outside with dirt under my nails.

"We'll do it together," he said. And I cried so hard and so long that the title company ladies suggested we go to lunch and come back.

We probably still could have made the payments on this house on his checks alone but we didn't stop there. We bought a duplex, in a sagging neighborhood, which from day one was a hole in the ground into which we threw money Someone else is paying for that one now and we sold the duplex in Portland and there is just the mortgage on the house we live in to be met each month. It would appear that Rick could be home building boats. Why isn't he? You'd have to ask him to be sure, but my reckoning is that people in this house don't seem inclined to do things unless and until no one else is available or willing. His body and heart won't be around much until I'm around a whole lot less. And standing out front cleaning the mailbox probably doesn't count.

2002-07-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

Role Model

The water in the pool was cold, let's make no mistake about that. It wasn't "pleasantly cool" or "slightly chilly" or any of the other euphemisms for cold that you might have heard someone use. And I was naked, let's be clear about that, too. In a very impressive effort to impress my child with my immense bravery I was climbing into an underheated pool and swimming. Why me? Because I am the mother of our nine year old and, according to her father, that makes me the ultimate role model and displayer of behavior which we would like her to emulate.

2002-07-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Ambition

I've visualized myself in a lot of different occupations on my way to the age of forty-one -who are we kidding? I've had a lot of jobs on the way to the age of forty-one. I may have had forty-one jobs come to think of it- but there are three that stand above the others.

The first, and closest to my heart always, is being a writer. Unfortunately I have had less success as a writer than I should have at this point because I am less interested in the business of writing than the craft and joy of writing. It isn't like a job yet by which I mean that I don't get up every morning and jot down or type in 1200 to 1500 words before I do anything else and continue doing that every day until I have a story or novel or screenplay which I send out and keep sending out every time it comes back until it returns with a check. (Kind of like Noah did with the Raven and the Dove if you think about it. There's an essay that someone would appreciate right there. Noah kept sending out the Raven but didn't get the results he wanted so he sent out a different bird and Bingo!) For some reason I fail to do this even when I've received encouragement from a publication, and they've told me exactly what they're looking for, as is the case with Grit magazine. I had sent them the story called "Out of a Molehill", which everyone agreed was a wonderful story, but it didn't fit their size restrictions and they sent it back with a rejection letter telling me to feel free to send them other submissions and a copy of their writer's guidelines. What they are looking for are serials. History, mystery, romance or Western serials of around 15000 words broken up into 1200 word chunks so that they can run part of it each month. This might not seem like a very exciting proposition to the casual reader of this blog, but if you are a writer yourself you know that one of the hardest things to do is to receive exposure consistent enough for someone to notice you. Your story might run in the June issue of Diet Soda Monthly and by August no one knows who you are and you have to kind of start over again because unless someone looks you up in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature you've vanished from the map. But a serialzed novel that runs for nearly a year would be different. See the beauty of this? Every month for a year someone could pick up this particular magazine and find a 1200 word story that you wrote. It's even better, I think, than writing a column because someone who reads a column that you wrote on a particular subject might or might not look forward to reading the next one, and they might or might not look for previous columns, but who could resist the need to know what happens next in a story? Scheherazade recognized that and it saved her life.

Because you enjoy reading my writing and because you love a good drawn-out story yourself, you're probably wondering which if these genres I'm exploring in this serial I've talked so much about. Well, I'm wondering that too. You see, I haven't actually started the writing part of it. I need to mow the lawn and I need to spray some Round-up on the weeds and I needed to buy some bookshelves and put them together so I wouldn't have my books and magazines all over in everyone's way. I need to take Anna to the doctor and I'm trying to help Rick figure out what the person he's corresponding with got their Master's in without actually asking her and I never did get my timesheets and receipts put together for this week so I could mail them. Besides, I'm still researching the genre. Fifteen thousand words is a big commitment and I wouldn't want to waste all that time on something that wouldn't work when I was done.

My friend, Glenda, said I should write a funny mystery since I do humor pretty well. I told her that I would help her find the "Universal Theme" in her writing if she would help me with my serial. She sent me a story and I sent her back some notes on it and that was ten days ago and I've never heard from her again. (Of course I am in the middle of a different writing project with a different friend which we may never finish because neither of us has the attention span and then there is the guy who needed press releases written and distributed then vanished off the face of the Earth after we agreed to a price and I hooked up with a subcontractor and who knows what ever happened to the "I Love Baseball" tour so Glenda isn't the only culprit.)

I was pretty excited the other night because I dreamed I was in a store that sold used books and there was one there called "The Suicide Knit". I immediately wondered, of course, if that should be the title of my book. (By the way, I checked Amazon.com and there is currently no book by that name according to them. I am also going to check Powell's City of Books to see if there is a used book by that name but it is looking pretty positive.) The main reason I was so tickled to find a title like that is many years ago I read a series of books by Robert Kimmel Smith -I believe he also wrote the "Rabbi" books about the Rabbi who went hungry on Saturday and so on- about an elderly lady named Sadie Shapiro who wrote knitting books and worked as an amateur detective. These books were very funny and you would swear you knew Sadie and all her friends even though you might not know any Jewish grandmothers or live in Florida. Sadly, the books have been out of print for a very long time so I can't send you to a place to read them. Even more sadly, for me anyway, I cannot knit or anything like that -and I'm not including crocheting because it took me almost twenty years to finish that afghan- so the book would lack authenticity.

But you see what happens as quick as I get an idea that might work? At once I am all over it like a fireman with a flameproof blanket. It really shouldn't make a difference whether I can knit or not. I could make it a man and make him Morris the detective who makes woodcarvings. My father has been carving for over fifty years so presumably he could supply some details. I build stitch and glue wooden boats so presumably I know my way around a shop and wood stores. Or I could find a Seasoned Citizen who does knit and she could teach me a little bit and tell me the rest. I am going to be teaching a journalwriting class this autumn and there will be some ladies like that in there who would no doubt be thrilled to teach me something in return.

All of that is beside the point, of course, because the real problem is not committing to the process. If I sat down and wrote 1200 words a day, and this blog entry is probably longer than that, about anyone doing anything whether it was solving crimes or eating breakfast then after ten days I would have 12000 words and I could see if it worked or not. But that would mean dedicating myself to working at something rather than just talking about it. "Getting something done" rather than just "doing something" as the writer of a letter to the Editor in last weekend's USAToday was kind enough to distinguish for us in regard to airport security and government efforts to improve it.

Maybe I don't really want to be a successful writer or even a writer at all. Maybe I just haven't succeeded at anything else and I am calling myself a writer by default. It isn't a question of talent. I know I have talent. But am I ever going to use it? There are plenty of people who have a talent for counting cards and guess what? They're not in casinoes. Some people are sure to read this and say, "But if you have a gift and you don't use it then it's a waste." That's true. But there are hamburgers thrown out every day at McDonalds -at least I hope there are- because they were past their time for sitting. Someone could have eaten them so that's a waste too. Something to think about.

Tomorrow: Lunch and the Married Lobbyist

P.S I found out that you can buy the "Sadie Shapiro" books at Half.com and they're very reasonable. Just go to Half.com and type in "Sadie Shapiro" without the quote marks and you're there. Who knew?!

P.P.S. The "Rabbi" books weren't written by Robert Kimmel Smith at all. They were written by Harry Kemelman. They're still very good though.

2002-07-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Fan Mail

Dear Ramona:

I started to speed-scan your story but by the time I hit the second page, I stopped and said to myself, "Hey, this is pretty good." I then went back to the beginning and started reading, becoming increasingly impressed with your writing as I went along. Halfway through, I started envying you for having the talent to write such a piece. A little further along, I became irritated that I hadn't written this thing myself. By the end I'd built up a considerable dislike for you, as I think Mark Twain himself would have done, because this story is about five times better and funnier than his "The Jumping Frog of Calaverous County," and that's the story that made him famous!

My tip regarding how to find an agent is true. My agent, however, is getting old and irascible, not necessarily because of me in either case, and is no longer accepting new clients, at least none that I recommend. So I can't help you there.

You are a talented and funny writer. If I were you, I'd forget about finding an agent for now and concentrate on getting a syndicated column. As I recall, Erma Bombeck started by doing a column for a small weekly and rather quickly moved up to big-time syndication. You can find a list of syndicates in Writer's Market, as you probably know. One of my writing students once did a series of articles on how she traveled through Europe on $5 a day (a bunch of lies) and sold the 5-part series to a syndicate, United Press as I recall.

You really don't need an agent unless you have a book ready to go. If you specialize in humor you probably can't get the book published unless you already have an audience, and you can't get an audience unless your work gets published somewhere. Nothing in this writing business is easy. But it seems to me that right now there is a big gaping hole in newspapers for a syndicated woman humorist. Something to think about.

Good luck,

Pat McManus

2002-05-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

Christina Ricci?

Ummm... I think I should be upset, but maybe I'm supposed to be flattered. I am a quiz addict, having grown up with Cosmopolitan, and although I do spend more time than I should at E-mode I'm trying to cut back. Today I followed a referrer link to the Beware of Redhead site and discovered that my blogging compadre had taken a quiz at Planetag.de and discovered that the Hollywood princess she most resembled was Angelina Jolie. There is little chance that I am ever going to be mistaken for Miss Jolie, but I thought I would amble on over and take the quiz myself just in case. (DH wants her to play me in the movie version of our California journey but I don't think that's a very likely possibility despite her string of flops.)

I consider myself to be a basically happy and upbeat person. If you judge my personality by the way I answered the questions that led to my being told that "Walking On Sunshine" was my song then this is a certainty. Imagine my surprise then, even setting any Angelina hopes aside, to discover that I most resemble Christina Ricci. Wednesday from The Addams Family? Katrina van Tassel from Sleepy Hollow is slightly closer to the way I picture myself but still. This is the biggest surprise result I've had since the quiz that declared Heath Ledger was my soulmate.

Ms Ricci is on the cover of this month's Jane magazine and is talked about as being sooo cool and hip that I am even more certain this was a mistake, but less sure that I should feel insulted.

Judge for yourself. You go take the quiz and then come back and tell me who you are. I'm off to write to Jim Carrey, my matching soulmate from another quiz, to tell him how much I loved his work in The Majestic. Then I'm going to dress up in my best black clothes and bleach my hair. Hey! At my age if you get a second -okay, maybe first- chance at coolness, you gotta work it.

2002-05-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

Appearances

I finally went into Portland on Tuesday and used the gift certificate, for the facial and haircut, that my mother gave me at Christmas. The facial was pretty cool and I made the lady who did it write down everything she did and check things off in her brochure so I could post it later and tell everyone. "I'm journaling my facial," I said. Long about two-thirds of the way through I finally had to shut up and relax a little. Something about having a person drape a very warm towel around and over your face, leaving room only for part of your nose so you can still breathe, and then placing another towel across that one so you can continue to breathe but everything is now dark and warm and moist because your hands and feet have been previously slathered with lotion and put in plastic sleeves and then slid into "booties" that are like little electric mittens, renders you unable to do much but shut up and relax. You sure as hell won't be doing any talking like that. Especially when the lady doing your facial closes the door and leaves. Yep, you either relax or have an anxiety attack because you're so immobilized and cut off from most of your senses. Later when I told my mom about it she said, "Did you surrender to all the wonderful things that were going on?" I guess kind of. I might have done that more if I wasn't a little nervous because my mother raved about the place and the process and she gives in too easily. She once sat quietly while a Korean beautician, and her daughter, waxed her eyebrows down to pencil lines. This was just after they had highlighted her hair in back with a big swathe of darker blond so she looked like a very pale reversed skunk. She not only paid them, she tipped them. She also paid and tipped the woman who butchered Anna's hair and was going to let them leave the salon with the hair dripping wet rather than blow-dry it or put her under the dryer. When they walked out, after the woman was "done", you could still wring a bit of water out of Anna's hair. Sigh. (Mom also asked me if I "felt like like a whole new woman?" I said, "Hell no. It was just a facial and a haircut, Mom. It's not like I had liposuction." DH says I'm lucky anyone asks me anything, but I figure that after knowing me for almost forty-one years she ought to be used to me. Besides she had more than a little hand in making me who I am. Not that she'll probably admit it now though.)

The woman who did my hair on Tuesday was very nice with none of that nonsense. She left most of the length, did some good things with the layering and the framing in the front, and except for the part where she told me I could "just pop in some rollers in the morning to give it texture" she seemed to understand who I was and what I was trying to do. DH said, "I was all prepared to say 'Wow!' but you don't look very different. You look good but not really changed." I said, "It's not supposed to look 'done' or very 'different'. It's just supposed to look kind of better." All in all it was a good, positive experience but next time it will be on my dime and the $38 haircut, $9.25 parking garage, and $15 total in tips is a pretty big chunk of change. Someday maybe I will get all this business stuff going along steadily and I can actually go in and get a fancy haircut every two months and join the gym so I have someone on my back to go and exercise.

Yesterday we took the train with the homeschoolers to the Seattle Aquarium. (DH did not go because he discovered the night before that he couldn't get there by 9 am. He might have been able to make it by 10 but we didn't yet know that was an option.) I wore my kind of short black wrap skirt with the twisted yarn fringe at the bottom, black pantyhose, my new bright pink long sleeved T-shirt I bought Tuesday at Goodwill -because I used to love pink when I was a little girl but I hardly ever wear it now- and a black beaded bracelet. I was going to wear my flat suede shoes -faux Birkenstocks- but my feet kept sliding out because of the pantyhose so I had to wear my semi-high-heeled closed-toed pumps that had straps. Over it all I wore my "truck driver" jacket which is denim with sheepskin on the collar and on the inside. I also brushed my hair and put on make-up. (I am being very precise in describing my appearance because it's relevant to the story rather than because I'm bragging.) I did not look -to me anyway- like some half-dressed hoochie. I looked, once we got to Seattle, like a nicely dressed and groomed lady enjoying a day out. (DH told me when I got home that I looked very "fancy". Okay, fine.)

Anna and I thought we were barely going to make the train or else would miss it entirely since she was particularly oppositional while getting ready and then we had to drive ten minutes back to the house to get my wallet. We went to the station anyway and discovered that the train was running 25 minutes late and we had plenty of time. (That's when I went into the bathroom to put on my make-up.) Once we were on the train Anna refused to go and play with any of the other children or to talk with them much once we reached the aquarium. This was pretty aggravating because part of the reason we took the trip was so she could spend the time with some well-behaved homeschooled kids instead of the other third graders who want to get their belly button pierced like Britney Spears.

I had thought my shoes would be fine. Not the most comfortable but I didn't have time to change my whole outfit so I could wear the flat shoes and why should I have to wear my jeans everywhere? I had planned to get on the train, get on the trolley, go to the aquarium, get back on the trolley and then get back on the train so there wasn't going to be much walking anyway. The best laid plans, etc. What happened, of course, was that Anna and I fell in with the group who was making the brisk twenty minute walk to the aquarium. This was a mistake even if I'd been barefoot because I am not a fast walker. I "mosey" at the best of times. The rest of the group stopped once to wait for us, which was nice but not necessary for us, plus I noticed some of the group was panting. Otherwise we were fine. On the way back we intended again to take the trolley but ended up going for food with the same group and then onto McDonald's for ice cream and socializing and walked the rest of the way back to the train station.

We arrived at the station in plenty of time, stood around and visited, found our seats on the train and had a good ride back with no problems or undue slowness. (Why is it that going somewhere takes two hours and coming home takes twenty minutes? There's some screwy physics for you!) While we were waiting at the station to get on the train to come home, I noticed several of the mothers looking at me and heard one of them say, "I can't believe she wore that on this trip." The other mother said something like "Tsk tsk. Those shoes and that skirt" and rolled her eyes. That's when I remembered why I have stopped dressing up most of the time. Many of the ladies out here have had a goodly number of children and by that I mean over three. They don't eat right or exercise and they didn't get my grandma's good genes so it makes a bigger difference in their case. They wear baggy sweatshirts and baggy sweatpants and shirts with spit-up on the shoulder and breast milk down the front and they don't put on make-up. I happen to think, secretly of course, that they're depressed. But, whatever the reason, that's how they dress and because I wanted to fit in I dress the same way. (Only no spit-up or breast milk and I refuse to gain thirty-five pounds.)

Oh there are women here who dress better and have their hair done, but many of these mothers think they're snobs. I'm not in any way saying that ladies who have more than one child are slobs. Lord knows I'm in no position to say that. And I wouldn't even if I thought it was true and I might be in that position.

When I was younger, and more slender, I often had women come up to me at work to ask, "Are you anorexic? I read about it in a magazine but I've never really met someone who was." Actually, that's what the nicer ladies would say. The not so nice ones would ask "How come you're so skinny? Do you make yourself puke?" It would never have occurred to me to ask someone why they were so fat. "Excuse me, I couldn't help noticing that great portions of your butt cheeks are hanging off either side of the chair. Why is that exactly? Don't you have any self-discipline or is it a gland problem?" Maybe that's because my parents and my brother and sister are overweight so I'm more sensitive. Or maybe I was raised to be respectful of the feelings of others and not to treat people like walking articles from the AMA journal. Maybe I've decided that someone's appearance is their own business and if I'm not their doctor or their lover and if there isn't something they can fix where we happen to be -like the poor ladies who are practically walking out of their slips before someone mentions it- then who am I to be their fashion critic or nutritionist. Why is it necessary for women, and it's most commonly women, to make disparaging remarks to each other and others about one another's appearance whether it's nice or not? How many times have you seen a woman dressed up and thought "Show-off"?

Naomi Wolfe, whom I don't always agree with, said "If I can't wear high heels, I don't want to dance at your revolution." I'd like to add "lip gloss" to that list. Will I wear the shoes I wore yesterday on my next "hike"? Probably not. Neither will I probably have time to wear mascara and I might not even brush my hair. But I retain the right to do all of the above.

2002-04-23T17:16:00.000-07:00

Journal Of A Crazed Domestic Engineer

I don’t think it matters whether you call it a “journal” or a “diary” since neither word probably conjures the most pleasant impressions. You might picture Lewis and Clark or Anne Frank. Or maybe that pink and white striped Barbie diary that locked with a tiny key, which got lost almost immediately, and which never had more than a week or two of entries. What, you may be wondering, does this have to do with you now that you’re A) grown-up and B) not planning an extended cross-country road trip anytime soon and how will it benefit you in the whirlwind that is your day? The answer is: a lot more than you might think.

Although I had kept my share of pink or blue striped diaries, I didn’t really get serious about keeping a journal until my last day of therapy. Twice a week for the past six weeks I had sat across from this red-haired, bearded psychologist pouring out my dreams and dilemmas while he yawned and murmured, “Mmhmmm” and “I see”. He gave me no reading to do, no exercises to try, no feedback of any kind other than the yawning and murmuring I’ve mentioned. (Several times I considered creating a wilder life for myself so I could at least keep him alert but, since I was there to enhance the life I had rather than provide entertainment in his, that seemed rather counterproductive.) One morning I finally had enough. “This is ridiculous,” I said to myself, maybe the only person listening in the first place, “My insurance company is paying $120 an hour for me to do this. For $5 I could buy a notebook at the drugstore and a darned good pen and get exactly the same benefit.” I drove to the nearest drugstore and that’s just what I did. The surprise came later. Not only did my notebook-journal serve, as had the therapy sessions, as a dumping ground for all the flotsam muddying up my brain, putting things down on paper instead of spewing them into the air meant that I had a permanent record of the activities, events and feelings in my life. This enabled me to, sometimes happily and sometimes painfully, take a look back. “Wow,” I said, “look how many times I wished I had the nerve to do X or Y. I wonder how many more times I’ll say that before I actually do develop the nerve?” Or “I can’t believe DH and I had the same fight last night that we’ve had nearly every month for the past nearly twenty years. I wonder what would happen if I either refused to take part in the argument or said something different?” Reading through my journal entries was like seeing fields of flowers or a corn maze from the seat of an airplane rather than trying to find a path while slogging along on the ground. Patterns emerged, some good and some not so. Did I become instantly well-adjusted and assertive? No. Did I stop arguing with my husband about the same senseless topics over and over again? Sometimes. Keeping a journal didn’t cure the illness but it did make me more aware of the symptoms and forewarned is forearmed or so I’ve heard.

While my illness is primarily figurative, or at least emotional, the journals kept by others have charted actual physical conditions. These records were a help to the writers and their physicians in the present because they were accurate records of how the patient was feeling, in terms of energy level and pain, as well as dates. (How many times has the gyn asked for the first day of your last period and how many times have you known off the top of your head? There’s a reason we put immunization records in baby books.) They also served to help doctors farther down the timeline because they were first hand accounts of the sickness’s progression available at a time when the writer might no longer be. Jane Austen’s diary is one example of this.

But not everything written in a diary or journal serves to remind us of bad times. Mixed in with the moanings and groanings in my entries are tales of exuberantly celebrated birthdays, food food food and trips to the County Fair to see the world’s smallest horse, the world’s largest pig and the cutest cowboy butt to grace a pair of Wrangler’s denims. (Actually that last category was an unofficial and personally established one and no trophies were given.) Many mothers have used their notebook to create a “gratitude journal” in which they record the times their children are kind or generous or otherwise exceptionally good so they can read through and remember those instances on the days when the children seem exceptionally bad. Pasting souvenirs of a trip taken together or pressing a dandelion from a handpicked bouquet -along with a yellow handprint from the junior florist- can serve as additional jogs to the memory and tugs to the heart.

Whatever the purpose of your journal is or becomes, there’s no need to wait until you can make a trip to the craft store to create an elaborate home for it. Grab an 8 ½ by 11 notebook, some loose paper, some stationery or even a 3 by 5 index card, a writing instrument of some sort, tug on your coonskin cap and begin. Times a wastin’.

Ramona White is an instructor at http://www.eclecticacademy.com where her course is called “Journal: A Book With A View”. She is available for on or offline workshops. To contact her about this or promotional writing, e-mail her at rubylou@hotmail.com.

2002-04-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

Caution Is The Opposite of Fun

I wanted to go to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival last weekend. I was scheduled to work on Friday only so it seemed like the perfect time to go. But I didn't.

I didn't go because I wanted to be prudent. My car is going in to be tuned up this afternoon and it seemed like a good idea to wait until after that happened before embarking on a four hours each way road trip. (I took my car in last summer because the oil pressure gauge seemed to be malfunctioning and ever since they allegedly fixed that the car has been doing that lurching and coughing if you give it much gas and it has been sitting for more than twenty minutes but less than an hour thing it was doing before. Rick has already readjusted the carburator once to get it to quit. This was especially irritating because the people at the dealership told us the carb wasn't adjustable. Yeah, right. I don't understand why it is necessary to adjust the idle on the engine so high that the drive train tries to throw itself out the back of the car when you put it into reverse. Mechanics do this pretty consistently and it pisses me off. One of them is probably also responsible for the fact that my car stereo doesn't work right anymore as soon as the car gets adequately warmed up, but I can't prove anything.) And since I had seen on the website that the festival was extended for a week there was no good reason not to wait. After all Anna and I would be able to reserve a room in the hotel which was booked up for this weekend. The flowers would still be there. Why not, just for once, allow caution to handle the reins rather than flinging it, and them, to the winds?

Today, now that it is too late, I am finding out why I seldom follow the more conservative path when it isn't related to politics. It would have been an easy matter, if I had gone to the Festival this weekend, to walk down to Pier 69 -no rude remarks please- from my hotel and board the Victoria Clipper which would have taken me to a bus which would have taken me around to the tulip fields and lunch and then more fields before bringing me back to Seattle. This would still be an easy matter were it not for the fact that the Victoria Clipper people did not choose to extend their Festival services just because the Festival was extended. It remains to be seen whether the Bellair Airporter shuttle will be providing tours to the Festival. (They said I can call back on Wednesday to find out. I realize that's only two days from now but it seems like an eternity when I look at my other options.) There is a bus that goes from Seattle to the Skagit Valley Casino, and it runs at some very convenient times, but the casino is ten miles out of town and the Festival operators have discontinued their park and ride service.

The tulip fields themselves are still there and the tulips are declared to be more beautiful than ever, but the tours given by the Master Gardener program are finished for the year.

Plane flights over the fields so the rainbow of colors can be fully admired? Over. Boat rides? Over. Street festival and Farmer's Market? Gone.

Remember when George Bush the First was president of the U.S.? Remember how we laughed and laughed at his inordinate hesitancy? My God! The man was worse than Hamlet when it came to making a decision. "Can't do it. Wouldn't be prudent." Ha ha ha. What a buffoon he was. But now here I am erring on the side of caution. I can still drive up, stay in the hotel, drive over to the fields, have lunch, and then drive home but now that Rick is going and a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo has been added and a trip out in a kayak for him and Anna and there is the dilemma of taking more than one car so no one is stranded, it is a far different and more complicated road trip than it would have been if I had just climbed in the car, tucked Anna in the back seat, clenched my AAA card in my teeth, loaded up on munchies at Safeway and gone for it.

I'm considering a trek to South Dakota in August. I think I 'll stow my common sense at home and leave the driving to my id.

2002-04-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

It's A Dog's Life For Feral Cats

"Cats don't get much respect," said Karen Kraus. "If someone sees a dog wandering alone then they are likely to assume that it is lost or has strayed from home and they might try to put a leash on it and look at its collar. They will make an attempt to reunite it with its owner. That doesn't happen with cats. When someone sees a stray cat they tend to turn their head and just walk on. One of the goals of our program is to raise the esteem people have for cats and to increase their respect. We'd like to seem them treated as favorably as dogs are." Kraus is the Director of Development for the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon, an organization that was founded in 1995 by five veterinarians, which has performed 13,000 spaying and neutering surgeries free of charge provided by volunteer veterinarians and veterinary technicians. She joined the organization in November of that same year, after seeing a story about the FCCO and its work on television and being impressed with their spaying and neutering program, bringing with her a degree in marketing and four years of fund-raising experience with other nonprofits.

"One of the cornerstones of our agency, and it's right in our mission statement, is education," Kraus said. "We have speakers who visit schools to emphasize to the next generation of pet owners how important it is to neuter their animals. Many parents feel that a cat will be a better pet after it has a litter or that it is a good thing for their child to watch the birth process but the average cat has four kittens per litter and they can start breeding as early as five months of age and then have three litters per year. That can add up to a lot of kittens pretty quickly. An unaltered female cat and her offspring can produce 250,000 kittens in seven years and while there are usually homes for one or two kittens nobody knows enough people to find homes for all of them. Also, any new kittens that are born are taking homes away from cats or kittens who might already have been born and are now waiting in a shelter for someone to adopt them. When people run out friends and relatives who will take the kittens they sometimes abandon them, although it is a felony in Oregon to abuse or abandon an animal, and there is a 60% chance that those kittens will become feral within three years. It might seem that since there are so many mice around the cat would do fine on its own, but that's not true. Years of domestication prevent the cat from thriving outside. It may survive but it will be a terrible life. Starvation, disease, coyotes and other predators, are all risks these cats have to face and they're not prepared. Often Animal Control is called to come and get the cats and it costs approximately $100 per animal to catch, house, feed and eventually euthanize them."

"One alternative," Kraus continued, "is for there to be someone in that neighborhood who will look after the cat or cats who've been left behind. Sometimes a person will like cats and be willing to feed any stray or feral cats in the area. We try to work with those care givers to be sure that the cats are healthy and to get the cats spayed or neutered. There are programs that offer low cost neutering services but they may still charge thirty to fifty dollars per animal and the person caring for the cats can't afford to pay that much. Our agency is supported entirely through donations so there is no charge for altering the cats. Also many veterinarians refuse to work with feral animals because they frequently have diseases and fleas and, because they are unsocialized, they are more agitated than a domesticated cat might be and therefore more dangerous. By offering no-cost services, and by stressing to the care giver the importance of this procedure, there is a much greater chance the animals will be altered."

I told Kraus that there was a question that a number of people had asked me to ask her when I did the interview. "Why is this a program where the cats are trapped, neutered and returned to their neighborhood? Why not take the cats to an animal shelter once they're caught so they can find a new place to live?"

"Many people wouldn't call us if thought the animals were going to a shelter because they would be afraid the cats would wind up being euthanized," Kraus replied.

"But what about no-kill shelters?"

"A lot of no-kill shelters refuse to accept animals they consider to be unadoptable and the shelters are already filled with domesticated cats looking for homes. Feral cats have very little chance of finding a home because they lack social skills. Even feral kittens have been taught by their parents to mistrust and to be afraid of people. That's why if there is someone who agrees to care for the cats where they are then that's the best solution. We work with the care givers and we ask a lot of questions. We want to be sure that the cat has been and will continue to be fed and cared for, that the cat is welcome in the area it's living in and that this is not someone's housecat."

"Supposing my neighbor has a cat and wants it to spend time outside. She loves cats and so when she's putting food out for her cat she starts putting food out for all the strays in the neighborhood too and they're spilling over into my yard because there are so many and I'm tired of it. What should I do about it?" I said.

"The first thing to do is talk with your neighbor. See if she knows about our program and if she is open to helping with spaying or neutering the cats. We don't trap the cats and bring them in. It's the responsibility of the care giver to do that. Explain about the Feral Cat Coalition and Spay U.S. A. and the no-cost services. Also ask if she will schedule feedings for the cats rather than doing what we call ‘free feeding'. Not only will this ensure that the food the cats are receiving is fresher but it will cut down on the number of cats who show up and prevent rodents from eating the cat's food. It also makes it easier to attract the cats when you are trying to trap them and bring them in to be altered," Kraus said.

"And if none of that helps?"

"If it is a big problem for you then you will need to call your county and see what the rules are regarding cats trespassing on your property. We try to encourage tolerance and compassion for street cats. A lot of times we'll receive a call from a restaurant or something that there are cats near the garbage and we ask the caller to go and look at the cat's ears. Cats who have been spayed or neutered by our agency have the tip of their right ear docked to show this. When the caller looks at the cat many times it turns out that they have been altered. This doesn't prevent there from being cats in the area now but it will cut down on the future population of cats because they won't be reproducing and replacing themselves."

"You mentioned that the agency and the services are funded through donations so, obviously, if someone reads this and their heart is touched sending a donation would be a good idea but are there other ways to get involved?"

"We received a grant in 1997 which enabled us to put our mobile clinic into operation and this has meant we could extend our service range from the Portland Metro area to Coquille and Sweet Home and St Helens. It also means we have more opportunities for volunteers. We especially encourage young people to get involved. You need to be at least sixteen years old because of the wildness of the cats, but being a part of this process really adds to their education."

Considering how many films have featured cats associating with the villain or assuming that part themselves it looks like the FCCO has a long way still to go if they are going to rescue cats from their Rodney Dangerfield role in the animal kindom, but they've got an excellent start and some very good people, including Karen Kraus, working on their side.

2002-03-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

Dogwatch

The man in the blue suit stopped just outside the glass doors and scrubbed his sweaty hands on his pant legs. “You’re acting like a schoolboy on his first date,” he said. “Just go in there, tell them who you are and take her home.” Flinging the door open, he walked to the desk just inside and announced, “I’m Howard Wallace and I’ve come for Mariah.”

The woman behind the desk gathered her curly gray hair into a fist at the nape of her neck then pulled it so it was all back over her shoulders. Faint smile lines traced the sides of her mouth and her eyes twinkled even as she frowned at Howard from beneath her brows. “Howard Wallace,” she repeated. “Could I see some identification?”

“Is Mariah here?” Howard asked. “Can I see her?”

“First things first,” the woman said. “Some identification, please.”

Howard’s hands were damp again and he fumbled with his wallet. He opened it and handed it to the woman across from him. She glanced at it then nodded for him to put it away. He’d stirred up a small breeze and the woman’s soft perfume came to him along with enough disinfectant to make a lesser man swoon. “Mariah is here,” the woman said. “She was picked up this afternoon.” Seeing Howard sag in relief, she added, “But I’m not sure she’ll be leaving with you.”

“But why? I’m her owner.”

“Mr. Wallace, Mariah is very young and she needs someone looking after her at all times.”

“But my neighbor was supposed to be watching her.”

“Mariah was found wandering in traffic four blocks from your home, Mr. Wallace. That’s a lot of traveling for a small dog.”

“I know, I know. The girl let her out to take care of her business and then she forgot about her. I’m not sure if the phone rang or her boyfriend arrived or-“

“It doesn’t matter what happened or how it happened,” the woman said waving a hand at Howard. “The fact is that Mariah, who’s a beautiful little dog by the way, was alone and lost and could very easily have been hurt or killed or have caused some person to be hurt or killed. That’s very irresponsible pet ownership, Mr. Wallace, and I don’t feel comfortable releasing her to you.”

Howard took a deep breath and slowly let it out again. He listened to the lost and homeless dogs barking in the next room and tried to hear which one was Mariah. He let his eyes roam the pastel walls, and light for a second or two on each of the bright posters, before he brought them back to the slight woman behind the desk. “The thing is,” Howard began, “I’ve got to have Mariah back. She was a pre-retirement gift from my daughter and she’d kill me if anything happened to her.”

“Good thing we reached you first then.”

“Yes,” Howard said. He looked at the poster behind the woman’s head then back down to her face. “And there’s another reason, too.”

“Which is?”

“Well... I love her,” Howard said all in a rush. “I know it’s hard for you to believe. It’s a little hard for me to believe, I mean, I’ve only known her for two weeks. But that little thing has wormed her way into my heart. She’s the first thing I think about in the morning and my last thought before I close my eyes at night. At first I wasn’t even sure I wanted her but now I’m counting the days until I’m retired and we can spend all our time together.”

“She’s a dog, Mr. Wallace. Just a dog.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Howard said. “She’s a dog to you. You see lots of dogs every day so maybe they don’t mean anything to you any more. But Mariah is more than a dog to me. She’s my friend now and in two more weeks she’ll be my traveling companion.”

“Where are you going?”

“Well, I’ve always dreamed of sailing around the world. I know Mariah’s just a small dog, but I’m going to teach her to swim and buy her a little jacket so she’ll be safe. I’ve got a tether for her and a hammock for her to sleep in. We’ll take some short trips at first to see how we like it and then we’ll be man and dog against the elements on the high seas.”

“That’s pretty ambitious for one man and a small dog,” the woman said.

“I spent a lot of years looking for a woman who’d like to share the trip with me,” Howard said, “and I never could find one. Maybe it’s me and maybe it’s the idea of being away from civilization so long, but now it doesn’t matter anyway. I found a girl to keep me company. She just happens to have four legs and fur.” Howard laughed then looked the woman straight in the eyes and said, “So you see, I’ve got to have Mariah back. She’s part of my dream and I’m only two weeks from it.”

“A little dog can get into a whole lot of trouble in two weeks, Mr. Wallace.”

“I’ll find a good kennel,” Howard promised. “I’ll hire a professional reputable dog-sitter.”

“Or Mariah could stay with me.”

“What?”

“You’re right, Mr. Wallace, I do see a lot of dogs every day, but if they didn’t mean something to me I wouldn’t be doing this job. We could keep Mariah here and try to find a better home for her, but I don’t suppose we’d find someone as crazy about her as you are,” she smiled at Howard for a moment. “At the same time, she’s a very special little dog and I wouldn’t want to take another chance of something happening to her especially when you’re only two weeks away from your dream. So, what if she stayed out here in the reception area with me while you’re working?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Howard said. “That’d be a lot of trouble for you.”

“Nope,” said the woman. I’m here from eight to five Monday through Friday. Just don’t be late or she goes home with me.” The creases at the corners of the woman’s mouth deepened and an Orion’s Belt of stars danced in her eyes as she waited for Howard to say “Yes”.

“Where do you live?” Howard asked “In case I’m unavoidably delayed.”

“Don’t be,” the woman said, “but I live at North Cove Marina almost all the way to the end of F dock.” She motioned for Howard to follow her as she walked back to the dog room and unlocked the door.

“Do you believe in love, Miss ummm?”

“Ms ummm Grace Marshall,” the woman said. “And yes, I do believe in love. But first I believe in walking dogs and drinking coffee.”

“Forty-five minutes?”

“I’ll just be closing up,” Grace said. She placed Mariah gently into Howard’s arms then escorted the two of them to the front door. “Don’t be late,” she called as man and dog climbed into Howard’s car.

“You know,” said Howard pulling out of the lot, “We’re a pair of very lucky dogs.” Mariah yipped and licked his ear and Howard threw back his head and laughed, shedding the years like so much extra fur until he felt as giddy and light as a boy with new sneakers.

The End

2002-03-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

Silver Bullet

When Rick agreed to work the overtime shift, he wasn’t imagining the silky thighs of Miss Britney Spears. He wasn’t picturing her gently muscled stomach undulating as it peeked from beneath her white schoolgirl blouse. If he thought of any woman, in fact, it was probably the cow he called his wife and how many more shifts it would take to get out of the hole that he had begun digging when he received his first credit cards and which she had deepened by refusing to get off her ass, after only twenty years of his increasingly agitated requests, to get a real job rather than playing Lady Bountiful to a plethora of social causes. “Where’s my hand out?” He said. “Better yet, where’s my hand job?” He had chuckled to himself when he first thought of that line but she hadn’t found it amusing. Well, he no longer found her behavior amusing either and he was counting the days until he’d be free to pursue the life he’d always been meant to. Nothing but sun and white sand and well-oiled girls with Brazilian bikini waxes (his wife now considered snipping the ends off three pubic hairs to be a trim) and he’d snap open a Diet Pepsi, grab one of those girls by the naked butt cheek and...

“Hey, man, you awake?” There was a tap on the window of his police car.

“Yeah. Yeah. Just daydreaming.”

“Well pay attention, man. She comes, she’s probably gonna be coming back through here.”

“Who?”

“Britney Spears.”

“She’s not on the bill tonight.”

“No. She’s with that dude. You know the one.”

“The one from rehab?”

“No, the other guy. Not one of the ones what was in that movie either.”

“And she’s gonna be here?”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

“Britney Spears is gonna come back here through the loading dock of this arena?”

“I didn’t say ‘For sure’. I’m just telling you what I heard so stay sharp.”

“We gonna get groupies trying to get in backstage?”

“You maybe. You look good. I’m not a fag, but you look good.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Fucking serious.”

“Okay. Okay. I believe you. So Miss Britney’s gonna be here?”

“That’s what I heard. I heard she might ‘cuz she’s with that guy and she heard there was gonna be groupies.”

“Ahhh. I hear ya. Okay. I’ll be sharp. Gonna open up a Diet Pepsi right now and I am sharp.”

“Stay cool, man.”

“Yeah. You too.” Rick opened up his Diet Pepsi as the security guard’s car pulled away. Mm mm mm, he thought. Britney Spears coming back through here to this loading dock. Well, we’d just see about that. He wasn’t supposed to be letting anyone in unless they had a delivery. Come to think of it, Britney Spears would look good well oiled with a Brazilian wax.

The next hour of Rick’s shift flew by, filled as it was with his fantasies of groupies trying to work their way backstage and Britney Spears on a sweltering Kingston beach with a cooler of DP, until there was another rap on the window. His solitude forcibly ended, he lurched back into conversational mode.

“Britney’s gonna be here.”

“No fucking way.”

“I’m serious. She’s gonna be here.”

“No.”

“I just heard it. She’s worried about groupies and she’s coming out here to protect him.”

“Protect him? What is she like his fucking bodyguard?”

“Kinda.”

“You see that movie?”

“No. Any good?”

“Whitney Houston before the drugs? That girl was fine.”

“Kevin Costner?”

“Yep. A little of that jungle love.”

“Jesus. They end up together?”

“Yes and no.”

“Meaning?”

“They finished the movie together. She gets on the plane and he’s standing there and she says to stop the plane and she jumps out and they run and jump on each other but that’s it. It’s not gonna work.”

“Why? ‘Cuz she’s Black and he’s White?”

“No. ‘Cuz she’s famous and he’s a nobody and he already broke the rules by fucking her and falling in love with her and he already took a bullet for her ass.”

“What?”

“This psycho tried to kill her at an awards show and he jumped up on the stage and threw himself in front of the bullet and it hit him instead.”

“You’d have to be really fucking fast to do that.”

“No shit.”

“So what’d she say?”

“When?”

“When he took the bullet for her?”

“Oh. She said, ‘This man needs a doctor. Somebody get a doctor.’”

“That’s it?”

“And she cried.”

“And that’s it?”

“What’d you want her to say?”

“Thank you?”

“I’m sure she said ‘Thank you’ later on.”

“But you said they don’t end up together.”

“Before she got on the plane then. What the fuck do you care if she said ‘Thank you’ or not?”

“I just think that if somebody takes a bullet for you from some psycho then you should say ‘Thank you.’”

“I’ll remember that. You gonna take a bullet for Britney?”

“Fuck that.”

“Let me get this. If Britney Spears was out here and you saw she was gonna get shot you would just let her ass get shot?”

“Yep. I’m going home.”

“Yeah. Me too. She does have a nice ass though.”

“She does. It’d be a shame.”

“It would.”

“Probably won’t even see her. I’m getting a Coke. You want something?”

“I got plenty.”

“Catch ya later then.”

“Yep.”

This bucolic interchange was, as far as anyone can now tell, the last full conversation Rick had that night. He nodded or waved to several of the other police officers who drove past and some kids, who were skateboarding by, yelled out “Fucking pig” but these can hardly be classified as satisfying social intercourse.

Perhaps it was too much work or too little sleep that caused Rick to forget his earlier pronouncement to his colleague when Britney Spears did arrive. Perhaps it was his perpetual lack of meaningful female contact. Maybe his inner Samurai took over. Whatever it was, it induced him to leave his car and gallantly offer to escort the young diva through the burgeoning crowd that threatened to prevent her safe entry through the door beside the loading dock. Knowing that his fear of a scandal costing him his job would bodyslam his baser instincts, she accepted. They had nearly reached the door when tragedy struck. Rick was behind her, resisting the urge to grab one of her nearly naked butt cheeks, and saw a metallic flash zipping toward them. He threw himself between the missile and Miss Spears and fell to the ground immediately after it hit his head. As he lay there bleeding, he thought he saw her mouthing the words “Thank you” before she was whisked into the building by the security team.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was leaving a hotel, where he had just made a speech, when John Hinckley, Jr. tried to gun him down. He did not hit the president but he did wound a Secret Service man and one of the president’s aides named James Brady. Due to the severity of Brady’s injuries, he had difficulty speaking and was also confined to a wheelchair. Because Hinckley had used a gun, as opposed to a Bowie knife, Brady became the poster adult for gun control and, in fact, the bill which eventually became a law was known as the Brady bill.

In 2001, Rick White was severely injured by someone who was intending to do harm to Britney Spears. Because he had been injured trying to save a minimally talented pop tart rather than the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, he received a commendation for bravery and his rescue was forgotten as soon as her most recent album left the charts. No legislation took place because he was hit in the head with a can of Coors Light, rather than a bullet, and such containers were already prohibited on arena propety. Due to the severity of his injuries, he was reduced to an even more vegitative state than usual, was given permanent disability, and moved to a warm country with white sand beaches and no extradition where he spent much time in intensive physical therapy. He would never again work in his previous field but after only three years, he was able to raise his hand high enough to grab the naked butt cheeks of the girls going by. Another six months of therapy restored enough memory for him to know why he was attempting to grab them. He now gets all the handjobs he wants.

His cow of a wife wrote a book about his adventure and even sold the movie rights. She should have been very rich but, as bookkeeping was one of the job and life skills she had failed to master, her advance payment, royalties and taxes became hopelessly muddled and she is now being forcibly taught tennis by her new girlfriend. Isn’t that what they mean by “love”?

The End

2002-03-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

From the Horse's Mouth

Hugo was not at all sure he believed in God. He had never really given much thought to religion. If there was a God though it must be one who practiced Karmic retribution for surely Hugo had done something atrocious in his previous life in order to deserve the one he was living now.

He looked over at Malcolm, his partner in this latest business venture, who whistled tunelessly through the gap between his front teeth. The drone of the flies in the back of the truck had at times rivaled the thrumming engine for noise, but now they had quieted down and Hugo could hear the blood pounding behind his eyes and the buzz of the thoughts in his head.

"Tell me again why we're not doing this with a refrigerated truck," he said to Malcolm. Malcolm sighed and turned to Hugo.

"We're not using a refrigerated truck because it costs a lot of money," he said slowly. "When you're starting out you have to cut a few corners to get going and then you can move up."

"But the UPS guys have refrigerated trucks."

"That's right," Malcolm said. "They can afford refrigerated trucks because they have a big company behind them. They have a name that people recognize. They have stock and investors so they can buy the latest equipment. We were very lucky to get a good deal on this truck."

"I suppose you're right," Hugo said.

"Of course I am."

"But I can't help thinking that they'd be fresher if we had another way of keeping them cold. Isn't the dry ice expensive? Couldn't we have bought a chest freezer and plugged it into the cigarette lighter?" Malcolm sighed again.

"You can't freeze them. If you freeze them, you have to wait for them to thaw which we don't have time to do. And if you freeze them they might get freezer burn and they won't be as attractive."

"But they're not attractive now," Hugo whined.

"If you freeze them there's a good chance they won't bleed properly," Malcolm said. "There are two things that really make this work. One is the surprise of seeing the thing and the other is the terrible mess, which it is practically impossible to clean up, the incredible grossness of all the blood and knowing it's on you and you've been in it. Ya see?"

"It just seems like there are a lot of flies back there. Are there supposed to be so many flies?" Hugo asked. He lowered his head and pulled as hard as he could on his hair.

"What are you doing?" Malcolm had turned his head again and was watching Hugo yank on his hair.

"I'm getting a headache from the buzzing and this helps."

"Howzit do that?"

"It stimulates the nerve endings in my head and confuses them," Hugo said. "The nerve endings in your head confuse very easily. That's why if you eat ice cream really fast your forehead hurts. There really should be pain in the roof of your mouth because the ice cream was too cold but your head gets confused so your forehead hurts."

"So how does this work? Does it make your head think the roof of your mouth hurts?"

"Naw, don't be stupid. It spreads the pain all over your head instead of it just being in one place. Then instead of having a huge lot of pain behind your eyes there's a little bit of pain in a lot of places."

"And that's better?"

"Argghh! Those damnable flies!" Hugo said. Malcolm took his right hand off the steering wheel and belted Hugo in the shoulder. "What are you doing?" Hugo snarled, clutching his arm.

"I'm helping you," Malcolm said. "I confused your nerves even more. Now your head won't hurt at all since there should be a pain in your arm. Or maybe the nerves won't know where to send the pain."

"Maybe I could give you a pain and then I wouldn't have any at all," Hugo said reasonably.

"No time for that, " Malcolm said leaning away from him, "We're almost there. Start looking at the map." Hugo unfolded the map and flapped it around trying to find their location on it.

"I do like this job better than my last one though," Malcolm said.

"Repossessions, wasn't it?" Hugo said.

"Yeah," said Malcom. "Organ repossessions."

"Like instruments?"

"Naw, like spleens and livers and so on."

"You took them out of people?"

"My partner did that. That was a rough job though. People would get really angry with us for trying to collect, but you know an agreement is an agreement. If you stop paying on something then the person who sold it to you has a right to take it back. Same as with a TV. Right?" Malcolm looked at Hugo for affirmation but Hugo appeared to be engrossed in his mapreading.

"Did you find us?" Malcolm asked.

"No, there's no mark on the map where we are but I did find the place we're supposed to be going," Hugo said, laughing. "You know, Malcolm, I've been thinking. I've been pretty rough on you about the truck and all and the thing is... The thing is I think you're doing an um good job and err," he trailed off and Malcolm reached over and patted his shoulder.

"It was a job," he said. "Just a job. I'm not violent and I'm not crazy and I don't attack my friends. The truck's not so good. I know that. As soon as we get paid for a couple of these jobs, we'll get something better. Okay?" Malcolm smiled at Hugo then nodded to the map. "We'd better find the address and make the delivery before those flies give me a headache too."

Eight miles later they turned off the main highway onto a private road that led to a circular driveway. Malcolm pulled up to the front steps while Hugo climbed into the back of the truck to get the package ready. Hugo jumped out with the bundle in his arms. He was met at the next to the top step by an imperious Black maid who would have been at home in a 1940's movie.

"All deliveries around the back," she said holding her arms out to bar his way.

"But this isn't an ordinary delivery," Hugo said.

"I don't care if it's salvation on a platter sent by the Almighty Himself," she said. "All deliveries go around the back." Hugo looked pleadingly at Malcolm.

"Look, " Malcolm said stepping forward to take Hugo's place on the stairs, "I know you're just doing your job. Well, we're just trying to do ours. This package needs to go in the house. It's supposed to go to Mr. Cannoli and I'm supposed to take it in to him." The maid shook her head.

"All deliveries go around the back," she said. "Furthermore, I don't know you and Mr. Cannoli don't take things from just anybody. Now if you would like to leave that with me I will check with Mr. Cannoli and see if he is interested in receiving it."

"No!" Hugo blurted. Malcolm recalled later that he could pinpoint the moment that Hugo had snapped. Hugo had been balancing the bundle in one arm and snatching at tufts of his hair with the other, but all at once he lowered the package to chest level and barreled into the maid, knocking her to one side. It took her a few seconds to recover and in that time, Hugo had reached the top step then the porch and wrenched the front door open. Hugo blinked several times. The foyer and living room were like Carlsbad Caverns after the bright motion light outside and he hoped his eyes would adjust before he tripped.

Flickering light led him to a bedroom at the top of a winding staircase. Hugo found a very wrinkled old man propped up in the bed watching the Public Broadcasting Station. The old man felt among the three pillows beside him then fumbled a pair of glasses onto his face. He peered at Hugo through their filmy lenses.

Hugo could hear the heavy breathing of the maid as she reached the top of the stairs and stomped into the room behind him. Hugo held up a hand to halt her just inside the doorway then walked toward the bed.

"I tried to stop him," the maid said, "but he just wouldn't listen."

"It's okay," the old man said. "Please clean my glasses and then make me some toast." The maid shook her head at Hugo then swished past him.

"Mr. Cannoli?" Hugo asked. The old man nodded. "I've got a package for you. I was supposed to put it in your bed so you'd find it when you woke up but you're not sleeping so I'm not sure what to do."

"I assume it is a horse's head."

"Yes, sir." Malcolm had come into the room just after the maid had departed and he stood leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Hugo stepped towards the bed and held the bundle out. The old man peeled back the wrapping and sniffed.

"Am I the first person to receive this head?"

"Well, yeah, I mean. Something wrong with it?" Hugo asked.

"Usually they are fresher than this," the old man grunted. "This looks like it has been to several other houses before mine. And there is no blood. There is supposed to be lots of blood. This is disgusting." He tried to return the package to Hugo but he backed away.

"I know, sir," Hugo said squinting and tugging at his hair with both hands now.. "I'm awful sorry but we're just starting out and a refrigerated truck is real expensive. I mean, you're a businessman so you know how it goes." The old man nodded.

"Yes," he said gruffly. "I am a businessman. My father was a businessman also and his father before him. All of our lives we have minded the business. There are rules and when a rule is broken then we send someone the head of a horse to remind him. To remind him that a man is potent like a stallion and just like a stallion his life can be cut short. To remind him that even now when so many people are turning away from tradition and technology is more important than human beings, there are some of us who remember the old ways. Now it seems that even the delivering of the horse's head is done poorly, by amateurs with no respect for tradition and no understanding of the ways things should be done."

"I'm sorry," Hugo said.

"Everyone is sorry," the old man said. "Things change. In the old days you would have found me asleep and you could have slipped that sorry excuse for a horse's head into my bed and I would have been none the wiser until I woke up in blood. Instead I am awake in the middle of the night and watching a program on how to use the Internet. Maybe I'll send an e-head the next time I need one."

"You gonna sign for this head or what?" Malcolm asked.

"Of course," the old man said. "And let me give you some advice."

"Here it comes," said Malcolm half under his breath. "Get out of this business before it's too late."

"That's right," the man in the bed said sharply. "Get out of this business. You are young. You have ambition. You could go far. This delivery business, anyone can do it."

"What'dya have in mind then?" Malcolm said.

"Car bombing. If I was a young man I would go into car bombing. It takes timing. It takes intelligence. It takes skill. It would be much harder to replace you with cheap foreign labor and, best of all, it cannot be done by computer. But delivery... Pah! Two guys and a U-Haul truck could do it."

"Thanks for the tip," Hugo said. He was grinning at the old man and at Malcolm who wanted to smack the smile off his face.

"You're welcome. And speaking of tips," said the old man, "Here." He reached into the drawer beside his bed and pulled out some money which he handed to Hugo. "Take this and buy a good truck. Learn your business. You're part of a noble tradition. Honor it." He pinched Hugo's cheek then patted it. He called to the maid who took the horse's head and tossed it into the garbage at the back door before she hustled Hugo and Malcolm back to their truck.

"He was a nice old guy, wasn't he?" Hugo asked when they were back on the main highway.

"Oh yeah. A real peach," Malcolm growled.

"And guess what? My headache's gone. This is gonna be a terrific day." Malcolm balled up the map and tossed it at Hugo.

"Just read the map," he said. ‘We've got a lot of deliveries to make and it's not getting any darker out here." He started to whistle through his teeth again and this time Hugo joined in.

2002-03-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

Hail to the Chief

Our conversation ended abruptly and dramatically when Chief Gary Kuehl leaped from his chair, ran out of the building and sped away, with lights flashing and siren howling, to the site of a major accident on Highway 30. Luckily, I had already asked nearly all my questions by then.

I had begun at the very beginning by asking Chief Kuehl how he became a policeman.

“Back in high school,” he said, “I played basketball. Phil Derby played for Mayger and since I played for Qunicy he and I became avid competitors and then good friends. After graduation, he got on as a deputy with Columbia County and, since we were friends, he used to come by and take me along to ride with him. I believe that at one point my wife thought he and I’d be getting married since he’d pick me up after dinner and not bring me home until three the next morning. Through him I became acquainted with Gary Gear, who was the police chief here in Clatskanie, and in August of 1973 Chief Gear called me up and asked if I’d like a job here.”

Obviously being a familiar face gave Chief Kuehl a head start in finding a job in the field he has been happy in for the last twenty-nine years, but I wondered about the downside. Many police officers choose not to live in the same community in which they work. Was it difficult to be recognized as an authority figure by those who had “known him when”?

“It was very hard at first,” Chief Kuehl admitted. “Many of the people I met and had dealings with had been my friends before I joined the police force and some of them felt they should be treated differently because we were, and had been, friends. There was a tendency to push the lines and say, ‘Well I know you’re not really going to arrest me.’ I did have to take in several very good friends in order to prove that I was going to handle everyone fairly and equally. There are still challenges sometimes, but a lot fewer.”

“I love working in Clatskanie,” he continued. “I’ve heard stories from my colleagues who work in bigger places and there are people there who hate cops and have no hesitation about calling someone a pig. We don’t have that kind of thing here. I can go from work to a basketball game and I don’t feel the need to bring extra clothes with me to change into before I go. It helps that I know a lot of the kids because I coach softball with Chip Waisanen, but even adults treat us differently here in Clatskanie. And most people understand that you’re just doing your job and trying to help them and working to deal with a situation. I’ve had more than a few folks come up to me later and say, ‘If it wasn’t for you I would have kept going down this other path. Thanks for waking me up.’ That’s one of the best parts of this job: the fact that you can make a permanent, positive difference in someone’s life.”

Twenty-nine years of work makes for a lot of memories and I asked Chief Kuehl to pick out two that really stood out. He leaned back in his chair and said, “In 1996 there was this real piece of work. He was a rapist and, in fact, we wound up with eleven counts of sex abuse against him by the time we had finished with the grand jury. He was preying on the kids who were involved with drugs, the nonatheletes, the party kids, who weren’t as interested in school. We ended up taking him down at gunpoint and he went away for forty years. I got notification not long ago that he might be up for parole.” He shook his head.

“The other case that will always stick in my mind happened up the hill here when I was just starting out. There was a burglary. It was an elderly lady and a bunch of her stuff was stolen. The whole bunch of it probably wasn’t worth one hundred dollars and somebody else might have thought it was junk. There was a bunch of those bottles in different shapes from...” he snapped his fingers, “Avon, that’s it. And there was a .38 that wouldn’t even have fired any more that belonged to her deceased husband. That kind of thing. It took me three days to clear this case and we found the teenager who did it and we took her things back to her. She was so tickled. She kept saying, ‘You brought my life back. You brought my life back.’ Like I said, to you or me or someone else this stuff was worth nothing but to her it was everything. She came down to the office the next day and she was carrying an eight-ball decanter and she said, ‘I want you to have this.’ She carried it in so carefully and she handed it to me. I put it on a corner of my desk. One of the things I try to do here is to help people get their life back.”

“I’ve talked to many people who, when I asked them if they’d suggest getting a job in their field, told me to run as far and as fast as I could,” I said. “What would you tell younger people who might be considering a career in policework?”

“I would tell them to go to school and go for it,” Chief Kuehl said. “There is no other job in the world like this and I mean that in the very best way. I’ve got nothing against people who work a regular job, like at the mill for example, but I’d hate it. You go to work and punch the time clock and eat lunch at a certain time and take a break at two and it’s the same every day. With this job you never know what’s going to happen. Every day is completely different. And if I’m hungry and I want to eat lunch, or I’d like to have a cup of coffee with someone and talk, I can do it without someone looking over my shoulder.

Many law enforcement agencies are investing in new technology and I asked Chief Kuehl what Clatskanie’s plans were. “There are things we would like to have. I assume you’re talking about the ability to use non-lethal force and so on. That is one of the few downsides to working in a small place. We don’t have the opportunity to get some of these things. Where would the money come from? I would like to see more of those things here, but right now we’re still getting used to the computers,” he laughed then said, “What we do, what you have to do when you don’t have a lot of these other things and you don’t have the new equipment or the money to train your people on it, is to focus on the people and the training you do have. We also work cooperatively with the other agencies around us. If you don’t have twenty officers then you borrow some from Rainier or wherever when you need them and they do the same. We’ve had two or three high speed chases and that’s about the same every year.”

Just then the radio squawked and the phone rang and Chief Kuehl said, “I’m sorry. I’ve really gotta go. This sounds major.”

I asked him how he was going to be spending his retirement and he said, “Golf.” Then he was gone in a blaze of light and noise. I heard that Rainier PD was on the way and I was curious and eager to see some of that cooperation in action, but I figured I’d be in the way and it was better to come home and do my job -writing this article- and let them do theirs without anyone looking over their shoulder.

2002-03-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

Out of a Molehill

Bob Cox stood by his kitchen window watching the birds flitting around on his lawn. He had just eaten his breakfast and was feeling his oats. What he needed, he thought, was a project. But even better than starting his own project would be to help someone else with theirs. Looking across the street to where his new neighbor stood, he realized he’d just found the opportunity he was seeking.

I was kneeling beside a small mound of dirt when I felt someone standing behind me. I turned to find the old man from across the street regarding me intently.

“Whatcha doin’?” He asked.

“I’m putting gum down here to get rid of the moles,” I said.

“Naw. Don’t waste no more gum on ‘em,” he said. “Why don’t you put down some candy bars or nylons? Something they could use.” He chuckled then leaned closer to me and said, “Say, I was gonna ask you... Was that your husband out here the other day sneaking around in his underwear with a pistol?”

“No,” I said, “that wasn’t.”

“That wasn’t your husband out here? He walked around for a while then he’d drop down to a hunker next to one of them molehills and just sit there watching it for a while.”

“That was my husband,” I said. “That wasn’t his underwear. It was a swimsuit.” The old man whistled.

“Hoowee! Swimsuit? Why, my kids had diapers bigger than that.”

“Besides,” I said. “He wasn’t out here all the time with that pistol. Sometimes he had a shotgun.” The old man had followed me to the next molehill and stood behind me, blocking the sun, as I scooped the dirt up with a spoon and put it into my bucket. Then I opened a packet of gum, slipped the piece in my mouth and started chewing. The old man shook his head at me.

“You can’t kill moles with gum,” he said. “Not broken glass neither and you can’t shoot ‘em out. There ain’t no person as fast as a mole.”

“Then how do you get rid of them?”

“To catch and kill moles,” he said leaning close again, “you need a special mole-catching dog.”

“I didn’t know you could train a dog to catch and kill moles,” I said.

“Of course you can. We had us a real good one. Say,” he said then paused, “Why don’t you come on over and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“What about your wife?”

“Former wife,” he said. “‘Sides she don’t have to like everything I do. We’ll sit right out on the front porch where everybody can see us and know there’s nothing wrong about it.”

“I guess that’d be okay,” I said. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bag of coffee and a carton of milk then crossed the street to the old man’s house. Once the coffee was brewing, we settled into sunny chairs on the porch and he began.

“About ten maybe fifteen years ago, but not more than that, I had me a real bad mole problem. I mean you couldn’t walk from here to the mailbox without tripping over half a dozen hills.” I looked out over the now parklike lawn then nodded for him to continue. “I heard tell from a man down to the store that his brother had a dog that was specially trained to catch and kill moles. I asked him could I borrow the dog and he said his brother wouldn’t part with it but they were gonna breed her and I could have one of the pups. Now that was a generous offer but I told him that I was desperate. He finally agreed to ask his brother to call me, which he did, and we were able to come to a financial understanding and this brother agreed to loan me his dog.” The old man went into the house and brought back two cups of coffee. I fished a dog hair from mine while he scrunched himself around in his chair till it was comfy again.

“So what happened then?” I asked. “Did the dog come here and get rid of the moles?” The old man waved a pacifying hand at me.

“Now hold on,” he said. He took a big sloppy sip of coffee then sighed with happiness. “The dog did indeed come. She arrived in the back of a pick-up like most dogs except...” He stopped for another sip of coffee. “Except that instead of running around loose in the back she traveled in one of those crates like they have for dogs on airplanes. I’d never seen a dog going around like that so I asked the man ‘why?’ and he told me that if she wasn’t kept penned up then she’d jump out the back of the truck and start trying to chase moles even before he got stopped. He said that one time she done it riding down the highway and that’s how come she limped like that. Now I didn’t entirely believe him but she did favor one of her front legs a bit so I decided I’d wait and see.”

“And?” I prompted.

“They was all tuckered out from the long drive and it was getting on towards suppertime so we figured it’d be best to start out fresh in the morning. So everybody sat down all around the table and in the living room and we ate everything there was and then called it a night.”

“Did your wife do the cooking? Were you still together then?” The old man looked over my shoulder to where his former wife, who lived next door to him, was weeding her garden.

“Yes and no,” he said almost in a whisper. “Yes we was together and no she didn’t do the cooking. She never was much of a cook. Didn’t like to use spices in things. Nope, I did the cooking this night and that’s why everybody licked their plates.”

“And in the morning?”

“In the morning we all got up and had a real tasty breakfast and some good hot coffee.” He took a big gulp out of his own cup. I thought I saw him stick his tongue out but he must have had a hair in his coffee, too. “Now maybe that dog was feeling unsettled because she was about to come into season and there were so many other dogs around. Because, you see, word had got out that I was having a mole-catching dog visit my house to rid me of those critters so all morning, and partway through the night before, men had been driving up here in their trucks hoping they’d get to see a demonstration and there ain’t no pick-up around here that doesn’t have a dog in the back. By the time we filed out of the house after tucking into those blueberry pancakes and venison sausage, there must have been fifty trucks parked out in front.”

“That’s a lot of people,” I said. “How did everyone find out?”

“I’d assume some of ‘em heard about it down to the store same as I did and probably some of ‘em heard it on the scanner.”

“The scanner? I thought that was just for emergencies?”

“Or other important information,” the old man said. “And believe me, a mole-catching dog being in the area is very important information. As I said, maybe she was unsettled on account of all the other dogs or maybe her owner got a bad piece of meat the night before, though I don’t know how that could have happened with me cooking it, and it’d been nagging at him all night. In any case, what eventually happened never should have and it was a shame that it did.”

“But, what?” I goggled. The old man paused to raise his hand in a jaunty wave and I wondered at all the traffic we were having on our little country lane. There’d been three cars just since we sat down.

“Maybe you've heard that moles have a very sophisticated way of communicating. But do you know how they do it?”

“No,” I said.

“Well the thing is moles live underground but they’re a lot like bees.”

“Bees? But bees live in a hive.”

“So do moles. The only difference is that the hive is underground. Since it’s dark down there the moles can’t see each other so they talk by bumping up against each other. Every day scout moles go out and gather information and bugs and bring everything back to the main part of the hive where they pass it along to the other moles. ‘There’s lots of good bugs over on the North side of the greenhouse,’ they say and then the moles will dig tunnels over in that direction or ‘The people at such and such a house are putting out peanut butter. Let’s all go there.’”

“But I thought moles were poisoned by peanut butter,” I said. The old man shook his head.

“No. That’s what the moles want us to think. See they got ways of getting messages to us too. In actuality, peanut butter is considered a true delicacy to moles.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” I said. The old man nodded.

“You do that. If you listen to me you’ll learn everything you need to know about living out here in the country. Some of it’s stuff you can’t learn anywhere else,” he said smiling. For a second I’d have sworn that he’d winked at me but it was probably a trick of the light. “Now then. After that fine breakfast we walked out onto the porch and there were all those trucks parked out here and all those men a-sitting in ‘em waiting for us to come out so they could see the mole-catching dog. Her owner put her on long leash, must have been forty feet or so, and he walked her down onto the grass so she could take care of her business and then get started. And she did. No sooner had she ceased to squat than this dog took off for the nearest molehill and started digging like Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel. The dirt was flying over her shoulders and she started baying and then all at once she disappeared into the hole and came back out with a mole in her mouth.” I clapped my hands.

“It was true then. She really was a mole-catching dog.”

“Yep, she truly was,” the old man said bowing his head.

“But what happened? What was the shameful part?” I said. “Did she catch any more moles?”

“She did indeed,” the old man said. “She caught moles all through the morning and pretty near all through the afternoon, too. The first few were easy because they were near the surface and she’d just dig until she found one and then bring it on over and drop it at her owner’s feet. As the day wore on though she had to go deeper and they worked out a different method. She’d dig until she found a mole, just like before, and she’d be baying, just like before, but now she was going underground and we couldn’t see her. Sometimes if she wasn’t too far under then we could see the dirt moving but if she was down real far then we’d wait for her to stop shouting and we’d know she had a mole in her mouth and we’d pull on the leash until she was back up to the top.”

“Why didn’t she just turn around and come back up with the mole in her mouth on her own?”

“Mole tunnels are very narrow,” the old man said. “There isn’t room to turn around in there even for moles never mind a dog. Moles just run right over the top of each other if they need to get past. So we had to pull this dog backwards out of the tunnel, after she got a mole, so she could get out.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.” Then the lightbulb went on over my head because I remembered something I’d heard about bees and I had a funny feeling how the story might end but I still wanted to know for sure. “So she was going further and further down,” I said.

“Yes, she was. More and more of that leash was disappearing down the hole and I was wondering if we was going to have to add some when the dog’s owner said this was going to be the last trip she’d make down the hole. By this time she was going so far down that he asked his brother if he’d get down on the ground above where we thought the tunnel was and kind of keep track of where she was since it was getting hard to hear her.” A cloud rolled in front of the sun and the sudden chill made me shiver.

“So this man’s brother was lying by the hole listening, like you do on the train-tracks, and giving us a report on the dog’s whereabouts. ‘She’s about three feet down and headed downhill,’ he’d say and then every little bit he’d tell us the new spot she was at so we’d know when to pull on the leash. He was flat on the ground listening to the dog and we was standing on the porch listening to him and all the men was sitting in their pick-ups listening to both. (Some of ‘em had tried earlier to listen to the ballgame but we told ‘em to turn the radio off since there’s a ballgame pretty near every week but you’re never going to see a mole-catching dog twice in a lifetime.) Everything was real quiet and our ears were sticking out from our heads with the listening. I wished I could’ve rotated mine around like my dogs do but there wasn’t any good to it. All at once that man on the ground jumped up and hollered, ‘She’s coming back. She’s coming back.’ We was all surprised, of course, and we figured he’d gone around the bend. Then we all heard it. The most horrible terrified howling you’ve never heard in your life. And, I’ll be darned, but that man was right as rain. Just under the sound of the howling and yelping we heard scuffling and shoving noises and it sounded for all the world like a dog running backwards up a narrow tunnel.”

“Why was she running and howling?” I said.

“In another minute we found out. It seemed like we’d been hearing these strange noises for over five minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than four, when all of a sudden that dog came flying backwards out of the hole like the Devil himself was after her. But it wasn’t him at all. In the fading afternoon light we could see that that poor old dog had been chased out by the biggest, meanest looking mole I’d ever seen outside of the County Fair. It was the old Queen Mole herself come to wreak vengeance on the creature who was destroying her hive and her home.”

“Oh my goodness,” I said.

“Your average mole runs to about four or six inches,” he said. “If you get a big male he might be eight. But this Queen Mole was nearly two feet high. She’d been down in those tunnels so long her fur was white and she had three inch long teeth growing out of her face and these huge paddle-shaped feet with razor-sharp claws. When she’d driven that poor dog out of the tunnel, she stopped and reared up to her full height. Then she raised her head and looked all around, sniffing at us. Her eyes were hidden in her fur so it looked as if she had no head at all.” He looked sadly at his empty mug. “Then she turned around and went back down the hole before any of us could get a shot off.”

“What happened to the dog?”

“Well, needless to say, the whole experience put her off of chasing moles. I don’t know as she ever did go back to it. Last I heard she was chasing cats like a dog is supposed to. Course I had to pay the man extra for ruining his dog when it was his fault for letting her go down that far by herself. Luckily though she’d put a scare into that queen too and no more moles came back to my lawn.”

Feeling more than a little shaken myself, I thanked the old man for the information and the coffee and climbed slowly and carefully down the front steps. I had only walked partway back to my house when his former wife stopped me.

“He been filling your head full of nonsense?”

“No. Actually he shared a very sad story about a dog and why he doesn’t have any moles in his lawn.”

“He’s an old fool,” she said, “and you’re a young one for listening to him.” I took a step back. “There never was any mole-catching dog.”

“But his lawn...?”

“He runs a hose from the exhaust pipe of his car into the hole and gasses ‘em,” she said. “Same as everyone else around here does and same as you’ll do if you got any sense.”

Bob Cox watched his former wife and his neighbor talking for a few moments then he walked through the kitchen and turned down the hall. After all the helping he’d done this morning he deserved a good nap. Maybe after he’d caught forty winks he’d have his energy back and be more helpful in the afternoon.

The End

Actual photos of terrifying moles

2002-03-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

The Mole-catching Dog

Bob Cox stood by his kitchen window watching the birds flitting around on his lawn. He had just eaten his breakfast and was feeling his oats. What he needed, he thought, was a project. But even better than starting his own project would be to help someone else with theirs. Looking across the street to where his new neighbor stood, he realized he’d just found the opportunity he was seeking.

I was kneeling beside a small mound of dirt when I felt someone standing behind me. I turned to find the old man from across the street regarding me intently.

“Groundhog’s Day is passed, you know?”

“What?” I said.

“Groundhog’s Day is passed,” he repeated. “‘Sides that ain’t no groundhog’s burrow anyway. That’s a molehill.” I stood up and brushed the dirt off the front of my jeans.

“I know that,” I said. “I was just looking at the hole and trying to figure out how I’m going to get rid of them. My husband’s just about lost his mind over these things.”

“What’d you try so far?” He asked.

“Well,” I thought for a moment, “we tried bubblegum and peanut butter. We even tried broken glass but I felt pretty bad about that. I didn’t want to think the poor little guys were down there bleeding to death so we could have a nice lawn.”

“None of that stuff works,” the old man said shaking his head.

“I noticed that,” I said. “It seems like the more we try to get rid of the moles the more moles there are. I think they’re telling their friends to come look at us and laugh.” I sort of chuckled but the old man looked very serious.

“That’s entirely likely,” he said in a quiet voice.

“It is?”

“Sure. Moles can communicate. They have a very sophisticated communication system.”

“Gosh,” I said. “I sure didn’t know that.”

“Have you tried anything else to get rid of them?”

“As I said, I felt pretty bad about leaving them down there to bleed to death but my husband said it would serve them right for tearing up his grass. He said he’d feel a little bit bad if they died like that since he’d rather kill them himself up where he could see it. He’s starting to make me nervous, too.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, he was off on vacation last week and we didn’t go anywhere or do anything fun. He spent the whole time staking out molehills. Sometimes he had a handgun and sometimes he had a shotgun and he went on patrols all over the yard. Then when he’d find a new hill he’d sit there for hours watching it and waiting for the dirt to move.”

“You can’t kill moles like that,” the old man said.

“That’s what I told him and he wouldn’t listen.” I could hear the edge of hysteria creeping in and I was trying not to wring my hands. The old man reached over and patted me on the shoulder.

“Nope,” he said. “A human being’s not fast enough. To catch and kill moles you need a special mole-catching dog.”

“I didn’t know you could train a dog to catch and kill moles,” I said.

“Of course you can. I had me a real good one. Say,” he said then paused, “I might be persuaded to tell you about him if you brought over some coffee. I seem to be a little low.”

“Anything if it’ll keep my husband unarmed and inside.” I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bag of coffee and a carton of milk then crossed the street to the old man’s house. Once the coffee was brewing, we settled into sunny chairs on the porch and he began.

“About ten maybe fifteen years ago, but not more than that, I had me a real bad mole problem. I mean you couldn’t walk from here to the mailbox without tripping over half a dozen hills.” I looked out over the now parklike lawn then nodded for him to continue. “I heard tell from a man down to the store that his brother had a dog that was specially trained to catch and kill moles. I asked him could I borrow the dog and he said his brother wouldn’t part with it but they were gonna breed her and I could have one of the pups. Now that was a generous offer but I told him that I didn’t have that kind of time- waiting for the pup to be born and then waiting for it to get weaned and so on. He finally agreed to ask his brother to call me, which he did, and we were able to come to a financial understanding and this brother agreed to let me borrow his dog.” The old man went into the house and brought back two cups of coffee. He handed one to me then scrunched himself around in his chair till it was comfy again.

“So what happened then?” I asked. “Did the dog come here and get rid of the moles?” The old man waved a pacifying hand at me.

“Now hold on,” he said. He took a big sloppy sip of coffee then sighed with happiness. “The dog did indeed come. She arrived in the back of a pick-up like most dogs except...” He stopped for another sip of coffee. “Except that instead of running around loose in the back she traveled in one of those crates like they have for dogs on airplanes. I’d never seen a dog going around like that so I asked the man ‘why?’ and he told me that if she wasn’t kept penned up then she’d jump out the back of the truck and start trying to chase moles even before he got stopped. He said that one time she done it riding down the highway and that’s how come she limped like that. Now I didn’t entirely believe him but she did favor one of her front legs a bit so I decided I’d wait and see.”

“And?” I prompted.

“They was all tuckered out from the long drive and it was getting on towards suppertime so we figured it’d be best to start out fresh in the morning. So everybody sat down all around the table and in the living room and we ate everything there was and then called it a night.”

“Did your wife do the cooking? Were you still together then?” The old man looked over my shoulder to where his former wife, who lived next door to him, was weeding her garden.

“Yes and no,” he said almost in a whisper. “Yes we was together and no she didn’t do the cooking. She never was much of a cook. Didn’t like to use spices in things. Nope, I did the cooking this night and that’s why everybody licked their plates.”

“And in the morning?”

“In the morning we all got up and had a real tasty breakfast and some good hot coffee.” He waggled the cup at me and when I had filled it, I came back to perch on the edge of my seat. I thought I saw him sticking his tongue out just as I walked through the kitchen door, but he must have got some dust or pollen on it and was spitting it out. “Now maybe that dog was feeling unsettled because she was about to come into season and there were so many other dogs around. Because, you see, word had got out that I was having a mole-catching dog visit my house to rid me of those critters so all morning, and partway through the night before, men had been driving up here in their trucks hoping they’d get to see a demonstration and there ain’t no pick-up around here that doesn’t have a dog in the back. By the time we filed out of the house after tucking into those blueberry pancakes and venison sausage, there must have been fifty trucks parked out in front.”

“That’s a lot of people,” I said. “How did everyone find out?”

“I’d assume some of ‘em heard about it down to the store same as I did and probably some of ‘em heard it on the scanner.”

“The scanner? I thought that was just for emergencies?”

“Or other important information,” the old man said. “And believe me, a mole-catching dog being in the area is very important information. As I said, maybe she was unsettled on account of all the other dogs or maybe she’d been crazy all the time and I just never knew about it. Maybe her owner got a bad piece of meat the night before, though I don’t know how that could have happened with me cooking it, and it’d been nagging at him all night. In any case, what eventually happened never should have and it was a shame that it did.”

“But, what?” I goggled. The old man looked longingly toward the kitchen. The coffeepot’s peaceful, brooklike gurgling was in direct contrast to the lack of tranquility I was feeling as I rushed back to my seat nearly sloshing coffee as I went.

“I told you earlier that moles had a very sophisticated way of communicating. But do you know how they do it?”

“No,” I said.

“Well the thing is moles live underground but they’re a lot like bees?”

“Bees? But bees live in a hive.”

“So do moles. The only difference is that the hive is underground. Since it’s dark down there the moles can’t see each other so they talk by bumping up against each other whereas bees talk by wiggling around and kind of dancing. Every day scout moles go out and gather information and bugs and bring everything back to the main part of the hive where they pass it along to the other moles. ‘There’s lots of good bugs over on the North side of the greenhouse,’ they say and then the moles will dig tunnels over in that direction or ‘The people at such and such a house are putting out peanut butter. Let’s all go there.’”

“But I thought moles were poisoned by peanut butter,” I said. The old man shook his head.

“No. That’s what the moles want us to think. See they got ways of getting messages to us too. In actuality, peanut butter is considered a true delicacy to moles.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” I said. The old man nodded.

“You do that. If you listen to me you’ll learn everything you need to know about living out here in the country. Some of it’s stuff you can’t learn anywhere else,” he said smiling. For a second I’d have sworn that he’d winked at me but it was probably a trick of the light. “Now then. After that fine breakfast we walked out onto the porch and there were all those trucks parked out here and all those men a-sitting in ‘em waiting for us to come out so they could see the mole-catching dog. Her owner put her on long leash, must have been forty feet or so, and he walked her down onto the grass so she could take care of her business and then get started. And she did. No sooner had she ceased to squat than this dog took off for the nearest molehill and started digging like Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel. The dirt was flying over her shoulders and she started baying and then all at once she disappeared into the hole and came back out with a mole in her mouth.” I clapped my hands.

“It was true then. She really was a mole-catching dog.”

“Yep, she truly was,” the old man said. He lowered his head and looked at his empty cup. I jumped up to fill it before he looked any more forlorn.

“But what happened? What was the shameful part?” I said. “Did she catch any more moles?”

“She did indeed,” the old man said. “She caught moles all through the morning and pretty near all through the afternoon, too. The first few were easy because they were near the surface and she’d just dig until she found one and then bring it on over and drop it at her owner’s feet. As the day wore on though she had to go deeper and they worked out a different method. She’d dig until she found a mole, just like before, and she’d be baying, just like before, but now she was going underground and we couldn’t see her. Sometimes if she wasn’t too far under then we could see the dirt moving but if she was down real far then we’d wait for her to stop shouting and we’d know she had a mole in her mouth and we’d pull on the leash until she was back up to the top.”

“Why didn’t she just come back up with the mole in her mouth on her own?”

“Mole tunnels are very narrow,” the old man said. “There isn’t room to turn around in there even for moles never mind a dog. Moles just run right over the top of each other if they need to get past. So we had to pull this dog backwards out of the tunnel, after she got a mole, so she could get out.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.” Then the lightbulb went on over my head because I remembered something I’d heard about bees and I had a funny feeling how the story might end but I still wanted to know for sure. “So she was going further and further down,” I said.

“Yes, she was. More and more of that leash was disappearing down the hole and I was wondering if we was going to have to add some when the dog’s owner said this was going to be the last trip she’d make down the hole. By this time she was going so far down that he asked his brother if he’d get down on the ground above where we thought the tunnel was and kind of keep track of where she was since it was getting hard to hear her. We was all pretty excited since this was the last trip and,” he paused and looked at me, “you’re looking pretty excited yourself. Would you like some more coffee?” I shook my head. “Would you mind getting me some more?” I rushed into the kitchen. My heart was beating in my hands making it tough to handle the pot. This time I did slop some coffee over the side of the cup and I curled up in the chair sucking my injured fingertips as the old man continued the story. A cloud had rolled in front of the sun and the porch had turned chilly.

“So this man’s brother was lying by the hole listening, like you do on the train-tracks, and giving us a report on the dog’s whereabouts. ‘She’s about three feet down and headed downhill,’ he’d say and then every little bit he’d tell us the new spot she was at so we’d know when to pull on the leash. He was flat on the ground listening to the dog and we was standing on the porch listening to him and all the men was sitting in their pick-ups listening to both. (Some of ‘em had tried earlier to listen to the ballgame but we told ‘em to turn the radio off since there’s a ballgame pretty near every week but you’re never going to see a mole-catching dog twice in a lifetime.) Everything was real quiet and our ears were sticking out from our heads with the listening. I wished I could’ve rotated mine around like my dogs do but there’s wasn’t any good to it. All at once that man on the ground jumped up and hollered, ‘She’s coming back. She’s coming back.’ We was all surprised, of course, and we figured he’d gone around the bend. Then we all heard it. The most horrible terrified howling you’ve never heard in your life. And, I’ll be darned, but that man was right as rain. Just under the sound of the howling and yelping we heard scuffling and shoving noises and it sounded for all the world like a dog running backwards up a narrow tunnel.” I had given up sucking on my fingers and was worrying a hangnail by this time.

“Why was she running backwards? Why was she howling?”

“In another minute we found out. It seemed like we’d been hearing these strange noises for over five minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than four, when all of a sudden that dog came flying backwards out of the hole like the Devil himself was after her. But it wasn’t him at all. In the fading afternoon light we could see that that poor old dog had been chased by the biggest, meanest looking mole I’d ever seen outside of the County Fair. It was the old queen mole herself come to wreak vengeance on the creature who was destroying her hive and her home.”

“What happened to the dog?”

Well, needless to say, the whole experience put her off of chasing moles. I don’t know as she ever did go back to it. Last I heard she was chasing cats like a dog is supposed to. Course I had to pay the man extra for ruining his dog when it was his fault for letting her go down that far by herself. Luckily though she’d put a scare into that queen too and no more moles came back to my lawn.”

Feeling more than a little shaken myself, I thanked the old man for the information and the coffee and climbed slowly and carefully down the front steps. I had only walked partway back to my house when his former wife stopped me.

“He been filling your head full of nonsense?”

“No. Actually he shared a very sad story about a dog and why he doesn’t have any moles in his lawn.”

“He’s an old fool,” she said, “and you’re a young one for listening to him.” I took a step back. “There never was any mole-catching dog.”

“But his lawn...?”

“He runs a hose from the exhaust pipe of his car into the hole and gasses ‘em,” she said. “Same as everyone else around here does and same as you’ll do if you got any sense.”

Bob Cox watched his former wife and his neighbor talking then he walked through the kitchen and turned down the hall. After all the helping he’d done this morning he deserved a good nap. Maybe after he’d caught forty winks he’d have his energy back and be more helpful in the afternoon.

2002-03-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

Toast of the Town

Bob Cox rolled slowly over to the edge of his bed then sat up. Sliding his feet into his slippers, he shuffled stiffly down the hall to the kitchen and switched on the light. It looked like he’d be making a trip to the store in a few hours since there was little in the cupboard or refrigerator but some wilted lettuce, some questionable margarine and some bread which had seen better days. He scanned the bread for obvious mold then popped two slices in the toaster. He was in the middle of making a pot of very weak coffee when the phone rang.

I was standing in my driveway wondering if the tulips were ever going to peek out of the soil, never mind blooming, when Delores pulled up. Of all the parents of all the children my daughter played with Delores was the most irritating. Maybe the reason was a small one like the fact that her daughter knew none of her colors or numbers at the age of four but could sing the Barney Song, complete with gestures, for hours on end. Or maybe it was something bigger like her superior attitude because she had left the city three months before I had and was now an authority on country living.

“Whatcha doing?” She asked brightly.

“Looking for tulips,” I said. “I must have done something wrong. I don’t think they’re ever going to come up. The stores are full of tulips and look at this.” I pointed to the bare brown beds.

“The ones in the store are from California,” Delores said. “Ours won’t be up for another three or four weeks.”

“Oh.”

“How was Jenny?”

“Aggravating, um, I mean, enchanting,” I fumbled.

“How’s your neighbor?”

“Fine. I mean as far as I know he’s fine. He’s on vacation for a month in Klamath Falls.” Delores nodded then cocked her head like the RCA Victor dog.

“What’s that beeping noise?”

“I dunno. Probably somebody’s car alarm going off.”

“People out here don’t have car alarms,” Delores said. “Hardly anyone locks their cars even.”

“Oh.”

“I should get Jenny and get moving but you might want to check out that noise. We all look after each other out here on the frontier and it sounds like it’s coming from across the street.” She called her daughter and they fell into a hugging and kissing fit as if she’d been away two decades rather than two hours. Eventually they were able to stumble to the car and, wrenching themselves apart, climbed in and drove away. The street was quiet except for the strange beeping sound Delores had noticed. It did seem to be coming from my neighbor’s house across the street. Suddenly the lightbulb went on over my head and I ran into my own house shouting to my husband.

“Bob’s house is on fire. His smoke alarm has been going off for quite a while now so it must be a big one. I’m going to call 911.” My husband lurched groggily down the stairs as he was only halfway through his day of sleep.

“Did you check his house?” he asked reasonably.

“There’s no time,” I said as I was dialing. I couldn’t remember Bob’s house number so I told the dispatcher it was down the street from the church on Prairie Lane. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my husband toss on his coat and head out the back door. A moment later, but after I had hung up the phone, he rushed in.

“Call them back and tell them not to come,” he said.

“What?”

“Bob’s house isn’t on fire.”

“How do you know?”

“I was just there. The back door opens into the kitchen. It was unlocked so I pushed it open and there he was talking on the phone.”

“But what about the smoke alarm?”

“Well, there was some bread charring pretty good in the toaster and he’s been gone almost a month so the batteries in the other alarms are probably getting low and going off, too.”

“What did you say to him? How did you explain what you were doing in his house?”

“I didn’t say anything. His back was to me and he was talking on the phone and I was so embarrassed that I just backed out the door and closed it.” I snatched up the phone and sheepishly told the dispatcher not to send anyone but she said it was already too late.

Even before I hung up the phone I heard a truck come squealing up the road and crunch to a stop across the street. A tall young man stepped out, pulling off his “Bud” cap and running his hand through his hair.

“I’m Bob’s grandson. Where’s the fire?” He asked.

“Funny thing about that,” I said but I didn’t get to finish the thought. Two more trucks and a car joined the first vehicle. Debarking from the car was one of the best-dressed ladies I’d ever seen.

“My husband is the minster of the church down there at the end of the lane,” she said extending her hand to me. “I didn’t see any fire down there so I drove up here. I don’t see any fire here either.”

“Yeah, well, the thing is...” I began. More trucks arrived including, finally, a small fire truck and an ambulance. They were the only ones supposed to be there and I was confused and curious as to how everyone else had come to be milling around my neighbor’s yard looking for a fire that wasn’t there.

“I got a call from one of the church members,” the preacher’s wife said. “She heard on the scanner that there was a fire in or near the church and she was worried.”

“We heard it on the scanner too,” said one of the grandsons. There was agreement all around.

“Way out here we’re a long way from help,” said a lady I didn’t yet know. “We’ve got to look out for each other.” More nodding.

Even though I had explained to them that there was no fire other than the one in the toaster, the firemen insisted on inspecting the house to be sure. The door to Bob Cox’s house opened just as they reached it to knock. Needless to say, he was mighty surprised to see the assembled throng trampling his grass.

“What’s all this?” He asked. His former wife, who lived next door to him, had gone for a quiet walk up the hill and, while missing the initial excitement, arrived just in time to answer his question.

“I think,” she said, “that they’re here to welcome you back from vacation. I’m not sure about the firemen though.”

“That’s it,” I said. “We all got together to say we missed you.” He took off his glasses and swiped at his eyes. Probably still had some sleep dust in them.

“Well if this doesn’t beat all,” he said. “This is really nice. I didn’t think anyone even noticed I was gone.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’ve all got to look out for each other you know.”

“This surely was nice,” he said. “But maybe next time you could just bake me a cake or something.”

And next time I will. In my oven.

2002-02-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

Guess Who’s Going to Be Dinner?

There is a marvelous moment in the movie "Casablanca", when Rick and Ilsa are together in Paris, and he turns to her and says "I want to know everything about you. Who are you really, and what were you before? What did you do, and what did you think, huh?" Remembering that scene as I scanned the meat department at Safeway, I couldn't help considering the idea that when it comes to our dinner partner, we want to know everything, but when it comes to our dinner itself, we'd be happier knowing as little as possible. Oh sure, you want to know whether it's fresh or not and how it's prepared. How much fat is in it and what kind of meat it is, so you can choose the kind that's healthier for you. Some people who eat chicken go so far as to consider what kind of diet it had and whether it was allowed to roam around, and annoy all the neighbors, or was kept in a cage and only annoyed those close by. But that's as far as most of us go. We don't really want to think about what it did and what it thought. We prefer to believe it grew in that styrofoam and plastic package and that even when it was a living animal it was too dumb to think about much and especially too dumb to recognize what was about to happen when it took that long one-way ride.

There are people who have thought about these things. Some of them became involved in movements to ensure that the animals were treated well and humanely before they were killed and eaten. Some of them became vegetarians. Some of them, like me, decided to stop eating certain foods such as lamb because we couldn't bear to think of those little wooly things being killed and eaten. Some other people, also like me, pause before we eat meat and think about where it came from and thank the animal for processing its feed and water so well and for passing along the nutrients and a bit of its spirit to us. I can write about this while I'm in California and, probably, no one will think I'm all that strange but back home they'd laugh their butts off. There, animals are kept for being productive: dogs herd sheep, chickens lay eggs, cats chase off mice and so on. This isn't true of everyone, and there are animals even on the farms that worm their way into the farmer's heart and are kept around when they are less productive and are allowed to sleep in the house, but you would have to wait a very long time to hear anyone talk about the spirit of animals. (We had chickens for a while, but when I walked out the gather the eggs then hens would run in front of me to distract me, or plant themselves in an effort to save their young. At least that's how I, being a mother, interpreted it. I couldn't bear to do it and we now buy eggs, from chickens we don't know, at the grocery store. Some other farmer goes through the same process, no doubt, but I being a hypocritical coward don't have to see it. Did I mention I have almost completely stopped eating eggs anyway? It's not the cholestrol. I'ts the guilt.) Native Americans and some folks in the Far East believed that you could gain some of the animal's power by eating it. I haven't seen anything I would like to gain from eating chickens and I am already content to sit in a field in the sun and chew my cud, so if this theory works there will be a lot fewer cheeseburgers in my future.

We had spent most of the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We rushed to the window with everyone else while they fed the otters. We handled the starfish and hermit crabs. But mostly we, I guess I should be truthful and say I, stood next to the kelp forest tank and watched the fish swim around. I had no real idea of just how many different fish there are. I knew there were sharks, and I knew there were different kinds of sharks but I had never seen them -and even at the aquarium they don't have one of every variety- so they seemed less real somehow.

Because the fish, in the kelp forest, are fed several times a day, there is hardly any predation. That is to say, that the big fish don't eat the littler fish very often. Having witnessed the first feeding of the morning, when a shark swam right up to the diver, who was lowered into the tank to feed the fish, and snatched food from the feeding pouch before the man was fully ready to begin feeding and the pouch was open just a smidgen, I would say that is a remarkable achievement. (Anna and I did see two fish fighting over a shell in one of the smaller tanks upstairs and it looked as if one of the fish was going to swallow the other one whole, but a larger fish swam by and distracted them and they all lived to tell the tale.)

Anna had fallen in love with the hermit crabs after I picked one up to show her how much fun it was. I had not been sure if I wanted to hold one since I was concerned about getting pinched and dropping it and having Anna decide they were dangerous just when she was starting to become less afraid of things. I have spent, at least, the last five years demonstrating how safe things are, but it is not working as well as I had hoped. She is no longer afraid of snakes, whether they are pythons or garter snakes, and thinks other reptiles and amphibians are cool. She insists on walking up to meet the biggest dogs and, as long as they are not appearing too fierce and she follows the dog-meeting rules she has been taught, I usually put on my game face and go with her. She has no interest in riding a bike or swimming and I have to put this down to delayed development on her mother's -yep, mine- side of the family since her grandmother got the hang of swimming when she was about forty and I learned to ride a bike and drive all in the same year which happened to be my 27th. I am going to push the bike riding this summer since it will decrease the chances of her developing "computer-butt", though other than that I try to leave her alone, choosing to not rush her out of safe situations rather than pushing her into them.

Rick wandered about looking at this and that. He very much wanted to see the film about undersea life, but didn't tell us what time it started or encourage us to eat fast enough that he could arrive on time. He also refused to listen to my advice that he ask the guide to let him, since it was only a few minutes past the starting time and he had driven all the way from Oregon to see it. It was the last showing of the day, too.

Anna and I went to the giftshop to buy some postcards to send to our friends and family. We had decided that we would send a postcard out every day to surprise her class. (Needless to say, we did not send any postcards and, instead, carried them along with us the entire trip, adding them to the pile on the floor at my feet until it became necessary to either clean out the car or ride home in a semi-lotus position or with my heels on the dashboard.) When we returned, we found Rick transfixed beside a wall which appeared to be moving.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Sardines," he said. "Look up." I did as I was told, for once, and discovered that most of the wall and part of the ceiling was filled with shimmering, silver sardines. My only encounters with sardines to this point in my life had been when they were crammed in a can, like sardines, and I was using a fork to pry them out. My dad is a great lover of smelly foods and sardines were his favorite. In a great precursor to my own passive-aggressive behavior -but one which I only recently deciphered- he would serve sardines, often accompanied by Franco-American Spaghetti-Os and asparagus, to us kids while my mother was away at work or at a meeting. Usually he handed us each a fork or a spoon and we passed the cans around thus saving on dishwashing as well. My sister, as she reached an age where either her tastebuds began to function or she was onto dad, refused these delicacies and made herself a peanut butter sandwich. It is hard to imagine how delighted my mother must have been to come home at the completion of her mission and find three children eager to greet her with sloppy kisses, as they, and the whole house, reeked of the very foods she hated most.

It was with mixed feelings that I regarded the wall of sardines and, later on, the column of anchovies. There was no denying that they were beautiful. We had seen no fish that weren't attractive at least, in the case of some of the sharks and eels, in their own way. And there was no arguing with the fact that this "architectural" presentation with its shining sheets of fish more nearly resembled a painting by Dali than food. And yet, even as I stood there watching them swim, I couldn't help remembering how great they had been on pizza and Caesar salad, in the case of the anchovies, or in tomato sauce or mustard, in the case of the sardines.

Many years ago my mother and I went to the Clark County fair together. (My dad went too but he didn't stay with us the whole time and isn't part of the story.) We walked through all the barns petting the animals. We patted cows on the rump and scratched the goats on the head. We even stood on the fence and leaned way over so we could see the newborn piggies. (I don't know how they always have piggies at the fair. I wonder if the farmers know it will bring them more business through having the sow's photo in the paper and they breed them just in time.) We made a whole day of it but eventually it was time to go home and eat dinner. Mom looked through the refrigerator and I stood nearby kibbitzing, but try as we might there was nothing in there we wanted to eat. It was all good food mind you, and another time we would have been all over it like white on rice, but we couldn't bear to eat a relative-no matter how distant- of someone we now felt was a friend. To avoid feeling like cannibals, we had tuna sandwiches. After visiting the aquarium, steak wasn't going to be an option so we settled for pepperoni pizza.

Albert Brooks, in the movie "Defending Your Life", tells Meryl Streep that "You can't eat something you've named". (She replies that if she had known that she would have named ice cream a long time ago.) I tend to agree with him so until I can bring myself to face the reality of eating beans and rice forever and barbecued ribs or Buffalo wings never I guess I will be forced to depend upon the kindness of strangers. Here's looking at you, lunch.

2002-02-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Power to the People

Since it was my bright idea to build a boat in the first place, it seemed self-evident to all concerned that I be the one to actually learn about and physically build the boat. I would be the one elbowing my way to the front row of the stitch and glue construction demo at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. I would be the one reading the book about building building boats the Sam Devlin way. And, since research can only postpone action for so long, I would be the one operating the power tools.

The last thing of any consequence that I made from wood was a box for my dad. I built it in first grade shop class using a hacksaw, an overly large hammer and a lot of crooked nails. (I might also have briefly handled a hand-powered drill, but if I did it was whisked away before any clear memories of it formed.) None of these tools, it was made clear to me, would be of any use in creating the masterpiece in mahogany that we were about to undertake. I would have to use other tools. Tools which could remove fingers or whole hands if one was careless. Tools which harnessed the power of electric current. Manly tools. I was near to beating my chest as I strode out to the shop.

Given enough ointment there's always a fly. As my husband was quick to point out, it's well and fine to feel proud of one's self but far better to do so after you've got a reason. I hadn't, in fact, used the tools in question so my celebration was a bit premature. After measuring and remeasuring the wood then adjusting and readjusting my safety goggles and hearing protection, the moment was upon me.

"It's very simple," Rick said, "just push the red button, squeeze the trigger, and saw this piece of wood in half." I pushed the red button and I could have sworn I squeezed the trigger but nothing happened.

"Back the saw away from the wood. Now, push the red button and squeeze the trigger," Rick repeated patiently. I paused for a moment to gaze lovingly at Anna who was sitting on her tricycle in the corner with her hands covering her ears. Was this the last time she would see her mother with all of her fingers attached? I wiggled my fingers then looked at Rick who nodded encouragement.

I took a really deep breath, pushed the red button and squeezed the trigger. The saw roared to life and the metamorphosis began. I was so busy trying to remember all the things I'd been told -"Don't lift the front of the saw", "Don't push too hard", "Let the saw do the work", "Keep the saw up against the guide"- that about halfway through I forgot to be afraid. I stopped the saw, walked to the side of the wood, realigned the saw with the guide and finished the job.

As the saw spun to a halt and I set it down before unplugging it, as I'd been instructed, Rick walked over to me.

"You looked pretty pleased with yourself," he said. "Not now, but when you were about halfway." I threw my shoulders back and tried not to look smug. Of course I looked pleased. Tonight I had joined the rest of the Homo Sapiens... for tonight I had mastered tools.

2002-02-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

Opportunity Knocks

A once thriving school district facing cuts. A small town whose economy could use a boost. A group of outsiders who arrive with a plan that could benefit themselves, the district and the town. It sounds like the latest John Grisham thriller but, for the people of Clatskanie the truth about the Quincy school and the Zen Community of Oregon’s plan to buy it is a lot less entertaining than fiction.

“It’s really sad,” said Theresa Trotter, a teacher at Clatskanie Elementary School. “That was my very first reaction when I heard the news. It’s so sad that the way the system is set up in the State of Oregon and the government, it makes all the funding decisions right down to the local level. This community would have chosen to pay additional money in their taxes in order to keep Quincy School open and functioning, but we didn’t have that choice.” Shaking her head, she continued, “It’s too bad we even have to think about giving up such a wonderful learning facility.”

Many of the Clatskanie residents seemed to be thinking less about what the community might be losing and more about what it could be gaining. One of those is librarian, Elizabeth Kruse.

“I’m curious about what we can add to our experiences by meeting different people and learning about them. I think exposure like this helps us get a more realistic view of the world. We live here in Clatskanie and we’re just one small part of the great big world. There are a lot of positive things in other cultures that we haven’t been exposed to yet,” she said.

But will the culture of the Zen Community of Oregon overwhelm the culture that Clatskanie already has? I called Hugh O’Haire who lives in Coos Bay and is part of a sitting meditation group which has been meeting for the last three years. “People sometimes forget that Buddhism has been in America for about the last thirty years. Many people have been practicing it that long. The precepts of Buddhism and Christianity are not that far apart if you look at them -don’t lie, don’t kill, don’t misuse your sexuality- and then Buddhism has the additional rule of ‘Don’t talk about others in an attempt to make them look bad and yourself look better’,” he explained. “A big part of Buddhism is meditation. And you certainly don’t need to change your religion in order to meditate since meditation is part of many other religions including Christianity. You’re talking about being calm and quiet and still and looking at yourself and your place in the world. It’s hard to get into trouble when you’re sitting quietly on a cushion,” he laughed. “As for taking over, I saw a sign in one of the first Zen meetings I went to that said ‘Those who come are welcomed. Those who leave are not pursued.’ Buddhism isn’t about proselytizing; it’s about helping to relieve physical, mental and emotional suffering. That’s something of which Christians are also in favor.”

“Most people in Clatskanie are not Christians,” Nicki Davis, one of many home-schooling parents, pronounced, “and, based on what they know of Christianity, most do not care to be. Some people are concerned that the Zen Buddhists will bring more darkness into the community. There is already a lot of darkness here -adultery, drug and alcohol addiction, pornography, disobedience, apathy- but we’re used to that darkness. My questions are ‘How much more is more’ and ‘How dark is dark’? The church spends millions of dollars to send missionaries to preach to the Buddhists and here the Lord has graciously dropped a load of needy Buddhists right into our lap. I think this is an opportunity.”

“This will be a really good thing for your community,” said Donna Donohue, one of my best friends and a practitioner of Buddhism for the last twenty years. “It’s a great opportunity. Buddhists are very active in their communities. If there is a project needing volunteers, they will be among the first to sign up and get involved. It will be good for you economically as well. People are likely to come to the retreats from Portland and Seattle and they will need places to stay and things to eat as well as gas to get home.”

But if it will be good for the people, the economy and the community, why was there so much negative reaction when the news first broke? And why are some people still so concerned?

“I’m kind of resigned to it now,” life-long resident Tim Wolf said, “but I’ve been very unhappy about this whole process. I’d say three-quarters of the people at that first meeting, where about two hundred showed up, were against this idea. I think they got the feeling though that this was pretty much a done deal and that’s why so many less showed up at the school board meetings to make their feelings known. I know a lot of people did write letters and make phone calls and maybe they felt that was enough.” Won’t the Zen Community of Oregon leasing the building be a good thing? What about those tourist dollars?

"I’m disappointed to see someone using this building in this way,” Wolf said. “It’s going to be completely off the tax rolls. There was talk about a company in Port Westward expanding and maybe buying the building and that would have been better. And what happens if in ten years the school district needs to expand into another building itself? After the commission to the realtor, the district will be getting less than a million or just about a million dollars for the building and land. That money won’t go very far if we need to replace this property.

“And as for all the people coming to stay at a bed and breakfast or buying food, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much money from that either. They’ll be having institutional quantities of food delivered and the people will be lodged at the seminary. It’s not like they’re going to be going in and buying fifty loaves of bread at Safeway. We might see an increase in gas sales, but that’s all I’d expect.”

In the end though, “I’m glad I got involved in this,” Wolf said. “You can’t keep hard feelings against someone because they were on a different side of this. We’ll just have to see what happens next.”

Librarian Kruse echoed Wolf’s sentiments. “I kind of think to myself, ‘Who am I to be judging what someone else believes?’ I think people will be judged by their actions and the results of those actions. Change started in this country when people were able to move around more freely by stagecoach and then by train. Clatskanie has been sort of cut off from a lot of change but I think this will be a lot like the worries about Y2K and people will realize that their fear was stemming primarily from a lack of information and education.”

Whether the Zen Community of Oregon buys the Quincy School and becomes a part of the Clatskanie community or not, the school will always hold a special place in the hearts of residents. As teacher Ginnie Donner said, “There’s so much wildlife and so many nooks and crannies. It’s so serene. It’s really a magical place. I think it’s wonderful that someone will be using the school especially as these folks are such avid gardeners. Besides,” she added, “It could have ended up a drug rehab center.”

2002-02-10T00:05:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Has An Adventure

Elizabeth glanced again at the young man sitting across the bus from her. He was definitely leering at her.

"Why me?" she thought. "Can't he see I'm nearly thirty-five? Can't he see that I'm carrying this baby around? Why, he's just a baby himself." Nevertheless, when he leaned forward as if to talk to her, she leaped up, rushed to the front of the bus and took a seat behind the driver. The driver was engaged in conversation with an off-duty driver who sat beside the door.

"I believe it has rained this entire day," Elizabeth said loudly. The two drivers broke off their conversation and looked at her.

"That so?" said the one by the door. The bus stopped to discharge some passengers into the growing darkness then lurched to life again. Elizabeth peered anxiously toward the back of the bus. The boy was still there.

"Yes," said Elizabeth. "I don't believe there has been a moment all day when it wasn't raining." The driver turned and gave Elizabeth a pointed look.

"Is that a fact?" he said. Elizabeth shrank into the seat for an instant then looked at the two men.

"I see how it is," she hissed. "You just want to talk to your friend here. You don't need to hit me over the head. I forgot my place for a minute but you reminded me. I'm just a customer, after all." The driver by the door tore at one of his cuticles.

"Hey, don't take it so hard, lady. We're just talking, okay?" He spat the bit of nail on the floor. "Don't nobody mean nothin' by it. Right?" He looked to the other driver for confirmation.

"Don't be spitting on my floor, man" the driver said.

"I'll clean it up," the man by the door said in a low voice. "Maybe this lady has a problem we need to help her with. That's what we're here for, right?"

"Yeah. Right," the driver muttered.

"Don't worry about me," Elizabeth said, standing and moving to the door. "I'm leaving now so you'll be free to talk all you want. And, don't worry, I'm not going to complain. I think you're excellent drivers. I just wish you weren't such rude, miserable human beings." She whirled grandly on her heel and tripped down the top two steps. The baby mewed to shatter the moment even further. As she touched the ground, the bus doors hissed closed and it rumbled off, belching a cloud of diesel smoke. She thought she saw the boy wave as he passed her.

The baby mewed again. Elizabeth readjusted him on her shoulder and looked around. It was nearly dusk and she was in the older section of town. She began walking quickly toward the bus mall. It was well and fine to put on airs for the bus drivers, but she still had to get home. She started to pass the Metropolitan then changed her mind. Some enterprising former expatriate had bought an old Paris subway car and transported it here to the heart of Rowland. He was now doing a booming business selling nostalgia, for Paris at her peak, to those who had never left the States.

Elizabeth climbed aboard and found a seat halfway up on the right side. The baby had fallen asleep and she wedged him onto a chair with her coat.

"Madame? A Caffee Borgia perhaps?" The waiter had appeared, almost before Elizabeth had been seated, and he now waited shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"Damnit! I'm nursing," Elizabeth said.

"Pardon?" said the waiter.

"I would like some steamed milk with chocolate jimmies on top," Elizabeth said. "Make that lots of chocolate jimmies," she amended with a flourish. The waiter shimmered off. Elizabeth shook out a napkin and pressed it to her flushed, sweating face. Why had she told him she was nursing?

"So I let 'em wait. Those stupid bastards sat there for three stinking hours waiting to see if they was gonna keep their jobs or not." Elizabeth lifted her head and turned to see who the speaker was. A tall, elegantly dressed man had entered and taken a seat at the table near the platform. His dark hair gleamed like a Sunday School girl's Mary Janes and a large pinky ring glittered in the diffuse light of the car. His companion was equally well-dressed. She was probably beautiful once, but now would have to settle for handsome. There was a definite horsey air about her and Elizabeth imagined she heard it when the woman spoke.

"What did you do?" the woman nickered softly.

"Why, I fired the whole bunch of 'em," the man appeared mildly surprised. "I said 'who do you think has been doing your jobs while you been sittin' on your keisters all this time? Nobody. Same as going to be doing them tomorrow and next week.'" His voice had a slightly breathy quality and Elizabeth realized the hairs on her arms were standing up.

"So the whole division is gone then?" the woman asked. Elizabeth held her breath.

"Naw, I'm gonna hire some of 'em back. I gotta do it. Some of these guys been there since Hitler was in kneepants. They're the only guys who can run it. But they don't know that. I told 'em 'You guys are a bunch of pussies. If just one of you had asked to go out and get back to work or demanded to know what the hell we were doing that was more important than doing the work we were hired to do that man would be a Vice President in charge of something.' So they don't know nothin'."

The waiter had arrived and placed Elizabeth's milk in front of her, with a short bow, while she was eavesdropping. She drank it eagerly, holding the cup in both hands and rolling it slightly to warm her hands. She continued to listen to the businessman and his companion. It was like dispatches from a foreign land. His hair glistened as he bent his head to speak with the woman beside him. He had ordered a double cappucino, Elizabeth knew, and the cup appeared to be a thimble in his large, sinewy hands.

Finally she had drunk her last and had no more excuse to linger. She dropped some bills and coins on the table and scooped up the baby who slept on. She had meant to pass the executive's table on her way out just to get one last glimpse. Instead she found herself stopped beside his table staring at him. His companion nudged him and he stood to face Elizabeth.

Elizabeth felt her face grow hot again and her hands cold. She opened her mouth and closed it then said all in one breath, "I just want to tell you that you're the most gorgeous man I've ever seen. And, of course I never would, but if I ever did decide to leave my husband and go out looking for adventure, you're just the kind of man I'd look for because you're so impossibly handsome and powerful."

The man winked at his companion then stepped forward and took Elizabeth in his arms, tipping her slightly. Elizabeth knew that he was going to kiss her and she saw the coffee and tobacco stains on his teeth just before he fitted his mouth over hers. She felt a thrill go through her as the calluses on his hands abraded the soft skin on the back of her neck. She leaned into him tasting coffee and banana and chocolate and something alcoholic. She wished she could fling her arms around his neck and draw him so close he was nearly behind her.

All at once the baby awakened and began to protest being crushed between his mother and this stranger. Elizabeth came to herself at once and jumped back, nearly upsetting the table behind her.

"I'm very, very sorry," she gasped. Her horrified gaze met the amused one of the other woman and she tried to smile. "I'm really very, very sorry."

"Not at all," the woman said, beaming at her. "You're very refreshing." The man stepped around Elizabeth and held open the exit door. Elizabeth smelled Brilliantine and Bay Rum as she brushed past him and fled into the cool night air.

Elizabeth ran until she saw the familiar sandwich board bearing a picture of a friendly sailor. Although he couldn't have been much out of his teens, his uniform and the formal pose endowed him with a maturity he did not yet physically possess. The lights in the office were still on and Elizabeth began hammering on the door.

"Let me in. Please, you must let me in," she shouted. A woman in a dark blue dress emerged from behind the office partitions and hurried over to admit Elizabeth. Gravity and life had worn down all her sharp edges and she appeared to sag anywhere it was possible. She unlocked the door and Elizabeth ran past her to collapse in one of the chairs.

"Whatsamatta?" the woman said. "Somebody chasing you?"

"Oh, yes," gasped Elizabeth. The woman looked out the door curiously. Seeing no one there, she turned to Elizabeth.

"Who is it? Where are they?"

"It's me," Elizabeth said. "I've done a horrible, unforgiveable thing and I need to join the Navy at once."

"What about that young one?" the woman asked, easing herself into the chair behind the desk.

"Oh, I don't know," Elizabeth said. "My mother could raise him or his father's mother. It doesn't matter. Anyone could as long as it isn't me." The woman behind the desk shifted her bulk in the chair. She put her hands on the desk and folded them carefully.

"Why don't you tell me all about this horrible thing you've done? If it's too terrible you may not be able to join the Navy," she said.

"I kissed a man," Elizabeth began. "He wasn't my husband. I don't know him. I just..."

"Oh my," the woman said. "I think you'd better tell me more." Elizabeth sighed.

"I was feeling pretty blue on account of the baby and getting old and everything and my husband said I should get out for the day and then there was this boy on the bus and the driver and his friend and so I went into the Metropolitan and there was this marvelously gorgeous man and he was talking about all these people he fired and who he was going to hire back and it all sounded so exciting. I listened and listened and then, when I was on my way out, I kissed him."

"What does your husband do?" the woman asked.
"Oh, I don't know," Elizabeth said. "He buys something or sells something. I don't know."

"Are you going to leave your husband and run off to be with this man?"

"No. Of course not," Elizabeth said. "He isn't that kind of man. But it's not going to matter. As soon as my husband finds out what I did, he'll make me leave. My only chance is to join the Navy or the circus or something before he finds out."

"How's he gonna find out?" the woman asked. "Who's going to tell him?"

"I will," said Elizabeth. "I always tell him everything."

"Everything?" the woman asked. "Like what you ate for breakfast and who you saw at the market and how many times the baby pooped and all that?" Elizabeth nodded vigorously.

"Yes. We made a promise when we got married that we wouldn't hold anything back." The woman leaned forward.

"And he tells you everything, too?" Elizabeth nodded again. "Then name three people he works with," the woman demanded.

"Why, I don't know," Elizabeth said.

"What's his favorite song?"

"That's easy," Elizabeth said, laughing. "'Another Saturday Night' by Cat Stevens."

"That's an oldie," said the woman as she scooched back in her chair. "Must be a lot of good memories attatched to it, huh?"

"I don't know," Elizabeth said. "I guess I don't know my husband at all." The woman nodded slowly.

"And he knows you all too well. Can I give you some advice?"

"I'm not sure," Elizabeth said. The woman heaved herself from the chair and walked around the desk to stand behind Elizabeth. She reached down and took one of Elizabeth's cold hands between both her warm ones.

"I can't help you join the Navy since I'm just a custodian," she said softly. Elizabeth gasped and the woman shook her head and laughed. "You knew that. There's no way they'd let an old lady like me stay in even if I do know more than all these pups put together." She patted Elizabeth's hand and looked into space for a moment.

"What I can do is give you some advice that will save your marriage and might make you happy enough that you won't want to run off to the circus."

"What is it? I'll do anything," Elizabeth said.

"First of all, don't tell your husband what happened tonight."

"Not tell him? But why?"

"It won't hurt him any not to know and it might hurt him if he did know. I'm not saying you should do this kind of thing all the time, but just this once should be all right. Every woman has her secrets. Even your mother." The woman sat down in the chair beside Elizabeth's. Elizabeth's face turned an angry red.

"My mother hasn't done any such thing. Why she would no more kiss a strange man than..."

"Than you would," the woman finished. "It's okay. The idea takes a little getting used to. But haven't you ever noticed when you're helping her dry the dishes after supper and she gets all dreamy-eyed and doesn't answer when you're talking to her? She's thinking about her adventures then." Elizabeth shook her head.

"But to not tell my husband. To keep secrets from him."

"There's other things you might try not telling him, too." The baby started to fuss and the woman fitted him into her arms as if he had grown there.

"What next?" Elizabeth sighed.

"Stop telling him what you ate for breakfast and who you saw at the market. Do you really think he cares about that stuff?" Elizabeth gaped. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but think about it. Tell your girlfriends or your mother but don't tell your husband."

"But he'll notice," Elizabeth said. "He'll notice I'm not talking as much and then he'll know I've done something awful." The other woman smiled and crooned softly to the baby.

"He won't notice because you'll be talking just as much if not more."

"B-but," sputtered Elizabeth.

"You won't be telling him about you. You'll be asking about him. How was his day? Who did he see? What does he buy and sell? You might find out he's just as exciting as your friend from the Metropolitan." Elizabeth shuddered.

"I'll try," she said in a small voice. The woman winked.

"There's a bonus to this," she said.

"What is it?"

"If you ask the right questions, your husband will never suspect a thing. And when you're mind starts to drift he'll be sure you're thinking about what he's just said."

"How can I ever thank you?" Elizabeth said, jumping up from her chair. The woman held out the baby then reached into the pocket of her voluminous uniform and held out some money.

"Here's cabfare," she said. "Now get that baby home and out of the night air."

"Of course," Elizabeth said. "When I get home I'll just tell my husband..." The woman shook her head.

"Don't tell. Listen," she reminded. She waited with Elizabeth till the cab arrived then locked the door behind her. The smoky warmth of the cab wrapped itself around Elizabeth. She leaned back and dreamed for just a few moments about the man at the Metro before she realized her husband could never be like that. So she thought about what she would fix for dinner and wondered how soon she could sneak back to her dreams.

2002-02-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

The Cream Puff

Johnny had never seen a body in that condition before. Neither had I but I’d learned enough to cover my disgust. I took a hard gulp of air and pulled back the sheet.

“What could’ve happened to make her swell up like that?” Johnny moaned. He and his bacon and eggs were fighting for the same air.

“I don’t know, but my guess is she’s been in that tub a while,” I said.

We’d received a call from the next-door neighbor about the Pekingese scratching to get in. That’s a sound that would go unnoticed in most neighborhoods. But this wasn’t most neighborhoods. The cost of living was a lot higher and everybody paid one way or another.

When we got to the house, the dog was still scraping at the door. She became frantic at the sight of us, growling and launching herself into the air. We opened the door and she flew into the kitchen. Concern for her mistress hadn’t diminished her appetite, but what we found in the bathroom was enough to put us off our food for a long time.

I covered the sodden mass that had once been a very attractive woman. I sent Johnny out front to breathe and sat on the edge of the coffee table to start my report. She’d been a real looker. No doubt about that. About twenty-seven. Brown hair and big green eyes. A slight cleft in her chin. Not a bold Kirk Douglas cleft. More of an afterthought. Five feet six. I’d have guessed her weight at a hundred, maybe a hundred and a quarter, but it was hard to tell. Now she was bloated to one and a half times her usual size. We’d found her floating in the tub and, feeling bad for the woman she’d been, Johnny pulled a sheet off the bed and spread it across the top of the tub.

“Coroner’s on his way,” Johnny said, coming back into the house. “Sorry I made such a fool of myself in the bathroom.”

“I don’t remember anything like that,” I said.

“You just get used to thinking about women a certain way and it catches you off guard to find them floating in a tub all puffed up like that.”

“Forget it. The coroner’ll be here soon and we can get down to business. To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen anyone in the condition who hadn’t been under water quite a while. In this neighborhood they’d have noticed something like that.”

Fred Johnson had been the coroner since I was a kid. It seemed to be his life’s work and he brought a little style to it. No matter what we threw at him, Fred was the old stone face. The bloodier the scene, the more stoic Fred became. At first there was challenge to see if anything would put Fred off his stride, but now we just pointed to the body and got out of the way.

“She’s in the tub, Fred. Under a sheet. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Fred opened the bathroom door and pulled back the sheet. I thought I saw one of his eyelids twitch then the usual Fred was back.

“What d’ya think?” I asked from the hall.

“I’m not sure what to think,” he said.

“Ever seen anything like that before?”

“Not in a bathtub. Only in rivers and lakes and such.”

“That’s what I thought, too. So what’s your first guess on the case?”

“I’ll have to check further into it but right off I’d say she drowned.”

“Drowned? In a bathtub?” Johnny had joined me in the hall.

“It’s possible,” Fred said. “It’s not common or likely, but it’s possible.”

“Do you think someone held her under?” Johnny asked.

“I didn’t see any signs of struggle. Did you?”

“We didn’t find anything out of place at all. It looks like she let the dog out for a run, turned on the radio, laid out fresh clothes, and settled into the tub for a nice soak,” I said.

“Well, I’ll have to take a good look at her but I’d say she drowned. Maybe she fell asleep. That happens sometimes. The sooner I get her out her, the sooner we’ll know something.” The attendants moved in to take her away and Johnny and I went back to our car.

Johnny was real quiet on the way downtown and I could tell he was thinking about the girl.

“She sure was pretty,” he said at last.

“I’m sure she was,” I said.

“Why would somebody kill a girl like that?”

“Maybe she fell asleep. Maybe it was suicide.”

“A beautiful girl like that would have everything to live for. She wouldn’t want to kill herself. Somebody hated her. Probably some other girl. She waited until this girl was alone and naked and vulnerable and then she sneaked in and held her under the water until the bubbles stopped.”

“You know that for sure?”

“What?”

“Do you know for sure that another girl killed her?”

“Well, that’s how it looks.”

“If you know for sure then you should be out there looking for her instead of in this car chewing on my ear. If you’re not sure then maybe we’d better wait for the coroner’s report.”

The next few days were routine dog bites man-man bites dog reports. About ten o’clock on Thursday morning, Jim Marshall stopped by my desk.

“Miller and Ives just had a call you might be interested in.”

“I might be. What is it?”

“A redhead was found floating in a bathtub over on 47th. She was a living doll from the sound of it. That is when she was living.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“The big news is that it wasn’t her bathtub. It belonged to Ed Schumley.”

“The plumbing king?”

“The same.”

“Hey! Ed Schumley’s married,” Johnny said from behind a stack if paperwork.

“Johnny was just about to get me a fresh cup of coffee,” I said. “Can he get one for you while he’s up?” Jim shook his head. Johnny strolled off in the direction of the coffeepot.

“Are you keeping him on a short leash?”

“Johnny’s a good kid. He just need some toughening up. He’s a kid. Now, what about the redhead?”

“Apparently Schumley’s landlady saw her go into his place a couple times before. She knows he’s married and she knows the redhead isn’t his wife. They show up today. About a half hour later she sees Schumley leave and figures now’s her chance to talk to the girl alone. They don’t know if she meant to shake her down of warn her away from him. The girl isn’t in any condition to talk about it now. The landlady knocked on the door and didn’t get any answer so she decided to try the knob. It opened and she waltzed in. She looked around quite a bit. They found her fingerprints all over the living room and kitchen. Then she went into the bathroom. Some colored glass figures were knocked off a shelf and they figure the landlady did that when she found the girl. Her name was Rochelle Sanders and she was twenty-eight years old. Her license says twenty-four but it lies. Old Fred thinks she drowned.” He handed me some papers and I scanned them quickly.

“How bad off is she?”

“Like I said, she was a living doll before. She swelled up like a sponge for some reason. I just don’t get it. I never saw anything like that brought in from a bathtub before. Well, I see you’re coffee’s here so I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks, Jim.” He nodded to Johnny and left. Johnny passed me my cup and sat down opposite me.

“What did he say about Ed Schumley?”

“They found another girl floating in a tub. Ed Schumley’s tub. They think this one drowned too.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“So it seems. Red hair. Twenty-eight years old.”

“You said ‘this one drowned too’, did the other one drown?”

“That’s what the corner said.”

“Did someone hold her under?”

“It doesn’t look like it. It could still be suicide but that seems less likely now that this redhead turned up.”

“So what do we do now?”

“What we always do. Fill out paperwork. Take calls. Drink coffee. And wait. The last two are the hardest.”

The next two days brought two more bodies. Neither of the girls was linked to Ed Schumley.

We were still seeking the owner of the house the first girl had been found in. No one was coming forward. The neighbor who’d called about the Pekingese was the only who would talk and she didn’t know much. She didn’t know the owner’s name and the one on the property tax records led nowhere. She said the dog belonged to the girl in the tub, who turned out to be Lorelei Jenkins -probably not her original name- and who had no outstanding debts with any merchants although she had accounts all over town. The owner of the house was a tall man in his early forties. He had brown hair and two-tone sedan. She thought he was probably married. Not much to go on. I asked her to keep her eyes open and someone was assigned to watch the house.

On Saturday afternoon a week later, Johnny and I sat down to sort out what we knew from what we didn’t. All five women were beautiful. All were in their late twenties. Rochelle’s parents lived out of state and were on vacation. The other girls were between boyfriends although they’d accumulated quite a list. Their histories had the same pattern: several relationships lasting over a year but recently a series of short affairs with nothing over six months.

When Johnny came in Monday morning, he looked as ragged as I felt.

“Here’s your coffee.”

“I’m gonna talk to the lieutenant about moving you to something a little less gruesome,” I said.

“Why d’ya want to do that?”

“I think this investigation is really getting to you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You don’t look like you’ve slept in days.”

“Neither do you.”

“No, but it’s my job to get you off on the right foot and running yourself into the ground isn’t the way to do that.”

“It’s not just the case. I didn’t want to say anything but I broke up with my girlfriend last week. She always wears this cream to keep her from wrinkling up around the eyes. I guess it works, but it smells something awful. I don’t know why she needs it. She’s only twenty-three.”

“You sure about that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Rochelle Sander’s license said she was twenty-four. Her birth certificate said she was twenty-eight. One of them was lying.”

“Let’s go through it again,” he said. “Rochelle Sanders drowned, right?”

“That’s what the coroner says.”

“And the other girls?”

“Drowned.”

“Well, maybe it was suicide.”

“How do you figure?”

“All these girls were almost thirty. They weren’t getting any younger. They didn’t have a man in their life and they decided life wasn’t worth living alone.”

“Rochelle Sanders had Ed Schumley.”

“But not all to herself. They’d never get married or have kids or go out in public.”

“Mayor Guiliani did.”

“Ed Schumley’s not Rudolf Guiliani. Maybe she and the other girls decided it just wasn’t worth going on.”

“You got awful wise over the weekend. So far I’ll bite, but why so many girls all at once? And why would they commit suicide by drowning themselves in the tub? Drowning is a hard way to die. It takes a long time. It wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice.”

“Didn’t the Romans die in the tub?”

“Some of the Senators killed themselves in the tub. But they got slit their wrists and bled to death. There wasn’t a mark on these girls. And, like I said, even if you took the Senators’s way out it wouldn’t be the first choice.”

When the phone rang an hour later, I answered it.

“All right. We’ll be right over.”

“What’s going on?”

“They found another woman in a tub. They want us to come over and take a look.”

She was a blue-eyed blonde. You could still see traces of the bones that had made her a stunner. Johnny shook his head as the attendants moved her out.

“She reminds me a lot of my girlfriend. Same color hair. Same figure as far as you can tell. And there’s something else. I don’t know what it is.”

Our first good break came during lunch. I was eating a liverwurst on rye and drinking mine black. Johnny had a BLT and a Coke.

“What’s that on your sandwich? Liver?” He asked. I nodded. “I knew it. I hate the smell of liver. Ever since I was a kid. My mom would cook it on baseball nights and I’d come home full of hotdogs and mustard and all I could smell would be that liver.” I snapped my fingers at him.

“The smell. That’s it.”

“What is?”

“You said you broke up with your girlfriend because she wore a cream that smelled bad. Every bathroom we’ve been in smelled the same.”

“Maybe they wore the same perfume.”

“Not as likely as the same cleansing cream. Women like their perfu,e to be distinctive like a signature. They try not to wear the same scent as another woman. But a face cream doesn’t matter since you’re going to wash it off.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“We get someone to check it out and see if all the girls did use the same brand. It’s an awfully thin link if it does pan out, but so far it’s all we’ve got.”

About two o’clock Jim Marshall came by. Johnny stood up to get more coffee but I waved him back down.

“There’s a woman here you might like to talk to.”

“I might. Who is she?”

“She came by Rochelle Sanders’s apartment this afternoon to collect money that Rochelle owed her. She left her some make up and such to try and now she’d like to get paid.”

“We’ll see her in the cafeteria. Johnny?”

“Right behind you.”

Olivia Maxwell was a handsome woman. She’d probably never been beautiful. A sickly mixture of gardenia and lemon preceded her as she stood to meet me.

“You’re Ms Maxwell?”

“Mrs.,” she said sharply then smiled. “Yes. As I told the other gentleman I sold some beauty aids to Miss Sanders and have yet to receive any payment.”

“You understand that Miss Sanders is dead?”

“Yes. They told me that and I’m very sorry but I need to get the money from someone.”

“She’s dead and you still want the money?” Johnny said.

“Well you must understand. If it was up to me I’d say ‘forget it’. But it’s not up to me. If I don’t get the money from Miss Sanders or someone else it has to come out of my own pocket. These beauty aids are very expensive and I can’t afford that.”

“You keep saying ‘beauty aids’. Do you mean make up?”

“Make up and products which improve the skin and hair.”

“Do you sell a wrinkle cream that smells really bad?” Johnny said.

“Many of our products have a scent. None of them have an unpleasant scent.”

“My girlfriend uses some kind of wrinkle cream and it smells horrible. I told her it’s a waste of money. She doesn’t need it. She’s only twenty-three.”

“I think you girlfriend is very wise. It’s never too soon to begin taking care of your skin. Moisture is very important. We pride ourselves on our fine line of moisturizers.”

“Exactly how do those work?” I said.

“Different products work different ways. Some trap moisture in the skin. Some draw moisture out of the air into the skin. Our newest product does both. It absorbs moisture and helps your skin retain it. Would you like a demonstration?” She opened her purse and pulled out a raisin and a small jar. Unscrewing the jar, she dropped the raisin into the cream and prodded it with her finger.

“This product can turn a raisin into a grape,” she said. The raisin began to swell and lose its wrinkles. When it was plump and shiny, she pulled it out of the jar and squeezed it. “See? No moisture is released. It would do the same thing even for your skin.”

“Ma’am, have you sold a lot of this cream?” I said ignoring her jab.

“I sold some to Miss Sanders for which I still need to be paid. And I sold some to a few other girls.”

“How old were these girls, Ma’am? Remember anything about them?”

“Oh, they were beautiful girls. In their mid to late twenties. You know. That time of life when the little lines start appearing.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Where would a woman put this cream?”

“Anywhere the little lines are appearing. Especially around the eyes.”

“And this cream pulls moisture out of the air?”

“Certainly.”

“Have you encouraged anyone to add extra moisture?”

“Well, one young lady had particularly stubborn lines so I told her to rub some ice on the affected areas and that would help.”

“And did it help?”

“Umm... She overdid it a little bit.”

“What happened?”

“The area around her eyes was very swollen and she went to the dermatologist to have it massaged. Then she exercised strenuously and quit drinking for a few days and the excess moisture passed from her body.” I stood up and motioned for Johnny to follow.

“Thanks for your help, Ma’am. Let’s go, Johnny.”

“But what about my money?”

“You can sue the estate of Rochelle Sanders. Have a good afternoon.”

Johnny sat at his desk fiddling with a pen. He’d called his girlfriend and told her to stop using the cream because her life depended on it. She called him a control freak and a creep and told him to stop calling. He didn’t know if she’d stop. Part of him no longer seemed to care and he’d started drinking coffee instead of Coke.

“They did drown, didn’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“I still don’t entirely understand how.”

“I guess you could say they got greedy.”

“How’s that?”

“You got part of it right when you said they were going nowhere and not getting any younger. They decided to do something about that. The figured if a little cream and a little water would help them look a little younger then a lot of cream and a lot of water would help them look a lot younger. As far as I can tell, they applied the cream and got in the bathtub. The cream encouraged their skin to absorb water and not release it. They swelled to an unnatural size and became too heavy to lift themselves from the tub. But I guess they got their wishes in one way.”

“How’s that?”

“They won’t be looking any older.”

The End

2002-01-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

Being Sociable

We interrupt your usually scheduled fiction in order to take part in a social experiment. I'm not sure how many other Webloggers will do this, but the ones on either side of me already have and I feel I'm seriously lagging.

Jish asked me to say HI! to my webloggers webring neighbours.

to the left of me:French Vanilla and

to the right of me:Billegible -Caffeine's Bitch.

And, in the spirit of friendliness, let's go one step farther. One more click to the left of me:Somebody or Lovedust's Closet and
one more click to the right of me:PurpleJain.