Just between us

Unexpectedly free

2011-12-13T14:16:00.001-05:00

If there ever was any doubt, today helps clinch the fact that I am certainly one weird duck.

So I oversleep this am to 6:30 and rush to make it in to work by 8, arriving only 3 minutes late. I punch in and dig in fast, only to be called over by my manager who asks if I have traded shifts with anyone. You guessed it, I wasn’t scheduled. I thought my day off was tomorrow.

So there I be, dressed, earings bra et al by 8 a.m. with no place to go. After a pit stop at a local Publix, I drop by Bed Bath etc. to purchase a new toaster—one which toasts on both sides simultaneously. I am unsuccessful.

By now it is 9:30. I head over to the local mall, an uncharacteristic move, only to find it doesn’t open until 10—this in the midst of a cutthroat holiday season. I hang out anyway, finally trolling the most upscale of shops, including Saks, trying to get into a festive mood.

Here I am, fresh from a bankruptcy, with what amounts to not much more than a minimum wage job, strolling through yards of merchandise well beyond my means. And here comes the strange part: It makes me feel better. It always has. I find being surrounded by abundance, seeing it, touching it and (in the case of Whole Foods, for example) smelling it calms me. It is somehow uplifting to know it’s out there. I’m not sure why.

I bought nothing but a short eggnog latte and sat reading on my nook for a while, as the din of shoppers around me slowing mounted.

I was there—but apart. And that’s fine.

page one revisited

2011-07-31T20:45:00.000-04:00

During my tenure at a large daily New Jersey newspaper, I was fond of watching the presses roll. The owners had installed the huge machines behind a glass wall which loomed above the common area.

High drama.

It was dejà vu all over again. (OK, I couldn’t resist a Yogi-ism, so sue me.) As I watched the film Page One: inside the New York Times, there was a definite frisson at the establishing shots of those impressive presses.

I stumbled into journalism in my mid-30s, raw and untrained. It was as close to a calling as I’ve ever found. I’m not claiming everyday was a joy, but it was both my longest job and most fulfilling work.

My longing washed over me today in the tiny dark theater. The film focused on how the paper both covered and dealt with the change in the media landscape, as one after another newspaper was devoured by internet pixels.

Frankly, I was less interested with stirring the pain in the collapse of journalism as a profession, as in revisiting it. While I do know several former colleagues who went on to work at the Times, I have never made it through the doors –until this afternoon.

I was mesmerized by the sheer physical space. My newsroom, the size of a football field, was dwarfed by that of the times. The place actually had a polish to it. I swear, I’m not jokin’.

Being the proverbial fly on the wall for news meetings was a joy. The familiarity of a reporter’s frustration when a source refuses to go on the record still cut deep—even after all these years. I couldn’t get enough of the backstory--editors agonizing over what to go with and how, flashbacks to the glory days…I confess to a passing stab of jealousy when reporter/columnist David Carr remarks that he’ll need another week of reporting (for a total of 3 weeks) and then a week to write. Such luxury!

I came to journalism too late, yet I am among the lucky who’ve had the good fortune to experience the rush of nailing a story and the comradeship of the newsroom.

And in related news: The Star-ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper announced large scale buyouts and layoffs.

I learned about it on facebook, naturally.

catch the finger

2010-08-19T18:15:00.006-04:00

My dad's game of "catch the finger" goes international. (NO, not that finger!)

Doing my laps this morning, I paused to exchange greetings with a visiting toddler. The youngster in question--glad in a big hat and dark glasses to protect him from the summer Sarasota sun--was in his mother's arms. They are the daughter and grandson of one of my condo mates, who is French.

I'm not sure how much English either understood, but it's a moot point. Without thinking, I slipped into my usual behavior at these moments. I extended my index finger in front of the child's face. He reached to grab it--almost every child does--I folded my finger, foiling the attempt. He laughed and tried again, and again and again--as I repeated the action. A child a bit older would have started moving his hand closer and closer, until I couldn't pull the finger away.

Anyone with a child who knows me, knows the game. At first, I did it mindlessly. But after my Dad died, I started wondering how it got started. I'm sure it was "invented" in a moment of desperation, to amuse me and my brother. I honestly can't recall a time before I played it myself.

A second game involving only one's hands that he often used--as do I-- is "walking fingers", a self-explanatory game with the fingers walking toward the then onto a child, if he/she is willing.

I still miss my Dad. But at times like these I realize that he does live on in me--and in many children he's never met.

pledge week

2010-08-15T13:36:00.001-04:00

To continue with the subject of pleading for money...

I confess to being one of a handful of folks who look forward to—yes, adore—pbs station pledge weeks.

It’s not that I enjoy the begging for cash part. But the smarty-pants program directors husband the best of the best to coax said cash out of our hands.

Wayne Dyer, Daniel Amen, Christiane Northrup, John Denver, Peter Paul and Mary, South Pacific, along with some new folks. Songs of the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, (The sound track of our collective lives )... “Visions of southern Italy” ...and the list goes on.

I can’t get enough of these shows and I watch them over and over, every chance I get in the allotted time period, using the pledge breaks to toggle between pbs stations to catch what’s on there.

I am greedy, storing up the images until the next time. Sometimes, I even pledge...

Hungry. Homeless. God Bless.

2010-08-06T20:05:00.003-04:00

On my way home from work, stopped at a light. Out of the corner of my eye I spy I youngish woman with mousy blond hair.

She stands perfectly still, staring straight ahead in 95 degree heat. She holds a sign chest high: Homeless. Hungry. God Bless.

Thoughts of my impending Chinese take-out start to make me queasy

It's a long light. She does not move, doesn't even blink. She makes no eye contact. Her quiet dignity touches me. I don't even care if its true.

I pull out the only cash I have--$1--roll down my window & reach out--apologizing it isn't more. She smiles, thanks me, takes a step forward & renews her stance.

And I head for the Chinese restaurant.

coldback

2010-08-05T20:52:00.000-04:00

With the flaps over the Arizona immigration law and the building of a mosque at Ground Zero, I’ve once again been considering “the other.” By that I mean the tendency of us human animals to cull out “those people” from the herd.

Once done, we imbue those “others” with unfavorable qualities, e.g : lazy, greedy, opportunistic, fanatic. “They” are the enemy, dangerous, the source of our problems—whatever they are at that moment in time. They are out to take our jobs, our resources, corrupt our youth or terrorize us.

Illegal aliens. Muslims. Gays. Whoever.

It’s a subject I have long considered. I recall sitting in high school history class marveling at my good fortune—being both female and Jewish--at being born in the mid 20th century America.

Yet, I was still never far from the definition of “outsider.”

I was a hs junior when Kennedy was assassinated. I returned home from school to a call from my mother. I’ll never forget the first thing she said: “Thank God he (Oswald) wasn’t Jewish.”

Regardless, she was not immune from turning on “others.”

Fast forward a decade. She and I are arguing about the then California uproar over illegal immigrant mothers “ abusing” our healthcare system. My mother, first generation born in this country, ranted on about these Mexican women crossing the border to give birth on our soil. So what, I retorted, they are risking their lives so their children can have a chance at the American Dream. (Sound familiar? I read now some law makers want to change this. )

Ok, so here’s the rub. I found out not long ago, that I, too, am descended from an illegal alien. It seems that when my paternal grandfather came over from eastern Europe he couldn’t enter legally. So like many other Jews at that time, he went to Canada and crossed the border in the Chicago area before making his way to New York.

So he wasn’t a wetback—he was a coldback.

We have met the “other” and he/she is US!

writers write

2010-07-29T20:49:00.001-04:00

Decades ago, my young daughter reproached me with those words: writers write. It has haunted me lately because I haven’t been—writing, that is.

I could blame the extremely thick Florida heat.
I could say I am distracted and out of sorts since giving up sugar about 6 weeks ago.
I could curse the atmosphere at my day job.
I could bemoan being homesick for the Jersey Shore—the real one, not the TV variety.
I could complain about my shifting work schedule.
I could whine about being empty, with naught to say.

While all this may be true, it matters not.
My daughter is correct: writers write.
All else is irrelevant.

There are few things more miserable to be near than a “non-writing” writer. So I find myself avoiding people when not at work, trying in vain to pressure myself to produce.

As for what I’m doing here, writing about how I’m not writing, it’s akin to those Seinfeld shows where they jabbered on about “nothing.” Big yuk.

I guess I’m just trying to prime the pump, move my fingers across the keys in the hope that something will catch. It’s a bit like going through the motions of exercise, meditation et al...sort of the ol’ “fake it until you make it.”

Writers write. Writers write. Writers write...

attack of the techno devil

2010-07-05T14:09:00.006-04:00

Looking back, it started about a month ago, with a noisy, but innocuous seeming microwave problem. It made a loud noise which continued even after it shut off. After a few moments of panic, I discovered the motor running the turntable seemed to be running on. I wound a metal flap to access it and now shut it down manually after its use.

Then I awoke from a couch nap just before the holiday weekend to find no picture on my flat screen TV, which couldn't be more than 2 years old. So I shut off the power to reboot and was rewarded with a series of well-spaced colored lines. To this date it remains, with me watching on my old not-so-flat, not-so hi-def bedroom TV.

And today, it's my laptop. (I'm writing this on my Dell net book). I started getting weird virus messages--even tho I have so-called virus protection. And before you know it, I couldn't connect to the net. Since the net book and my nook connected fine, I knew it was the computer. Now, I can connect to certain site, the machine shows I have an "excellent connection" however, most other sites refuse to connect and when I run the diagnostic--get this--it won't work because there is no connection and THEN Verizon directs me to and ON-LINE SITE to correct the problem. Since this is a holiday, I can't get a hold of a human, of course.

Since I have an old TV and this tiny computer I'm gettin' by. And through all this, it's hard to get too upset. In fact, I awoke this morning to a sound that made me more than smile--I let out a breath I wasn't aware I was holding.

Abbie, my calico cat/companion of 17 years, appeared whining at my door. She had been AWOL for 2 nights, the longest ever. I was hoping it was a combo of the driving rain and fireworks that sent her into hiding, but some part of me feared she was hit by a car or fodder for some gater.

Her arrival put things in perspective.

ps: Did I forget to mention my toilet--recently repaired--has started leaking from the bottom again. A story for another day...

AND the tub drain is still running slow even tho I fed it liquid plumber........................................

birthday wisdom

2010-06-10T13:26:00.007-04:00

As of last week, I have officially aged another year. I find myself in one of those reflective moods that affects us as the years pile up. In taking stock, I have given considerable thought to those old saws and whether or not I’ve found any truth there. So, here goes.

• You’re not getting older, you’re getting better. Maybe a bit wiser, but not better. My back hurts, my teeth are wearing thin while the rest of me is thickening. Youth is most certainly wasted on the young.

• The best things in life are free. Nothing in this life is free. And the best are the most dear. Nonmaterial things such as love, trust, family, fitness—you name it—all require a significant investment of self. And that can be not only personally expensive and time consuming, but painful. Oh well, no pain, no gain.

• A stitch in time saves nine. I have repeatedly ignored this one to my detriment. I can’t seem to get it through my thick skull that things break down, wear out and need maintenance. I expect them to go on forever and continue to be surprised when anything fails, be it my car, my toaster oven or my body.

• You are what you eat. If this were true, I’d be a lot sweeter and quite a bit richer.

• If you’re happy, your children will be happy. Many of us, myself included, raising a family in the 1970s swallowed this one, I’m sorry to say. And our children paid the price. The needs of adults and children are often not in harmony. Being the adult means taking care of the kids first. And that can mean postponing careers and making peace with a marriage that has fallen far short of expectations.

• All you need is love. See above.

• Children should be seen and not heard. Actually, it’s the grown-ups who should be seen more and heard less.

• It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man. Sure it is, if your bust size is at least twice your age.

• Better safe than sorry: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Well, that all depends on the type of bird in your hand, the kind of birds in the bush, how far away the bush is and the length of your reach. Sometimes it pays to go out on that limb.

• Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Most of us play it too safe all our lives, for which many of us are sorry later on. I, for one, have come to regret the chances I let pass by rather than the ones I took.

• You can’t judge a book by its cover. True. Remember Ted Bundy?

• If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. Also, true.

• Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses. Don’t make me laugh.

• Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. Yeah, right.

• A fool and her money are soon parted. I’m the poster-girl for this one.

• The meek shall inherit the earth. No way. As a character in the musical “Camelot” sings: “It’s not the earth the meek inherit, it’s the dirt.”

• A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Ignore this at your own peril. I have. There is just no way around this one. And I’ve tried. Nike puts it best: Just do it.

• Ninety percent of life is just showing up. Woody Allen was on to something here. Of course, it’s the remaining 10 percent that separate the haves from the have-nots, the doers from the did-nots, the Woody Allens from the rest of us.

• Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you. This makes more sense and becomes easier the older you get. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with where we begin. As babies, children, adolescents and even young adults, we assume we are the center of the universe. Perhaps as we mature, we move off center a bit. Suddenly, letting someone into your driving lane or cleaning up after yourself is not such a big deal. Besides, it feels good.

The best is yet to come. Maybe, maybe not. But whatever good comes, I’ll appreciate it.

As my mom always said: “Tomorrow is another day.”

Story time + nursing =...

2010-05-30T21:12:00.001-04:00

Another adventure in bookselling.

So it’s Saturday morning, and parents with kids are gathering for story time in the children’s department. I notice an attractive new couple with an infant and a toddler among the small crowd lining the stage. As I put stuff together to get started, I notice she is breastfeeding her daughter.

Now, this is not unusual. As those who know me or are regular readers of this space, are aware, I am a great proponent of the practice. I go out of my way to make sure my kid’s department is hospitable to moms looking for a place to feed their young.

Most go about nursing with a degree of modesty. Not this young mother, however. Her babe chowed down with gusto, her mom’s breast bare. And when the child was done, mom made no attempt to shield her nipple from public view. It wasn’t as if she was flouting it or anything. It was as if she—and her husband--didn’t notice. She suited up for story time, but later I saw her walking around the department, again seemingly without a clue.

I confess to almost laughing out loud. The sight of a totally bared breast in public didn’t so much shock, as surprise me. And the total comfort of this young mom astounded me. This is Florida, you understand, not New Jersey, where breastfeeding is protected by law.

Back in the early 1970s, when those of us in the La Leche league were rare indeed, I was considered a fanatic for not only breastfeeding, but for continuing until my children were each about a year old—almost unheard of in this country back then. Frankly, I was mad with happiness to find a use for the pair I’d been lugging around since the age of 11.

Mother-nature made has come back in vogue in years since, as science has discovered it’s advantages for both mother and child. Regardless, we in the USA have an uneasy relationship with public breastfeeding, with many viewing women’s mammary glands primarily as sex organs.

I refused to rush off and hide to feed my own children when at home, forcing even my own father to deal with his own issues. I also nursed in public, using clothing to maintain decorum.

What really pleased me was that I heard no obvious snickering or signs of discomfort from those at my story time, which included men and women of varying ages. No one complained to me or to the store’s management.

Rock on, mom!

SICK

2010-05-24T13:16:00.002-04:00

That’s SICK. In capital letters.
A true 4-letter word.

I am finally up after 10 days of being so wretchedly ill that for the first time since this blog started, I failed to post in a timely manner. And for that, I apologize.

But this time, there was no choice. For days, I lay on the couch, coughing up stuff that made me gag.

The milk in the fridge soured, the food ran out, the garbage overflowed. I didn’t much care. I lived on green tea with honey and some protein shakes I happened to still have.

Me, who never loses an ounce when sick, dropped 7 pounds in a week. Sure, that would be a little good news, as I certainly could stand to drop even more—but I know it will hop back on these ol’ bones as soon as my appetite returns with a roar.

I was finally forced to venture out the day the cat food ran dry.

The weird part of this was that I lost my voice—and I mean TOTALLY. I couldn’t even call in sick and had to drag myself in one day to let them know I couldn’t work.

Yes, yes, I know it’s kinda funny for someone who talks as much as me to be silenced. But the truth is, it was incredible frightening. It lasted for almost 5 days, before I could croak out sounds. I felt completely isolated without use of the telephone and once found myself wondering if one could text 911—that is, if I could figure out HOW to text.

Yes, I fleetingly thought of reaching out for help via email. But I have no family here and just about everyone else is busy working etc. Also, I didn’t want to expose anyone to whatever was bouncing around my innards.

Each night, I was sure I’d feel better the next day, if I could just hang on. But I didn’t. I finally filled a prescription for antibiotics and now feel almost human. Either the virus had run it’s course or the drugs quashed the evil bacteria. I’ll never know which.

And at this moment, I don’t much care.

lessons of motherhood

2010-05-09T09:57:00.002-04:00

I received my first Mother’s Day card in a good many years this week, thanks to my son’s new wife. My off-spring, you see, do not believe in celebrating a day “invented by greeting card companies.”

I have made an uneasy peace with it. I know how they feel about me. Besides, I’ve never much hankered for that which is not freely given. In that spirit, I hereby take note of a few things my children have taught me.

CREATIVITY: I mean this in the most basic sense, as in: I can really build another human being; I can produce milk that will keep that child alive and well. It’s one thing to be told all your life that women in general can do these things. It’s quite different thing, however, to actually do it.

VULNERABILITY: With the birth of my daughter more than four decades ago, I learned the true meaning of vulnerability – not hers, mine. I specifically remember the moment when I realized that any individual having control of that little bundle had me at his or her complete mercy; that there was NOTHING I would not do to keep her safe.

PARENTAL MATH: Children are originals, not reproductions. Regardless of how much they may resemble their parents, children are more than the sum of their genes.

RESILIENCY: My son is the true teacher here. Since he was a lad, he’s been impossible to permanently flatten. While it’s true that many of his troubles are of his own creation, so are his solutions. If faced with a wall too steep to climb, he will reassess and change direction; whatever it takes to get around it, under it or through it. He seems to know where he wants to go and willingly engages “creative” detours en route. I confess to a silent admiration for his ability to bob and weave through life.

ASSUMPTIONS: Don’t rest on them and life will be a lot more fun. Why can’t you eat ice cream for breakfast? Why not get dressed for school before you go to sleep? Who says underwear must be folded before it’s put away? Where is it written that hair must be the same length on both sides or a pair of earrings identical? Look for reasons to say yes. What can it hurt?

LABELS: They don’t mean squat. This I learned from my daughter, the thrift-store shopper. Forget sizes and categories. One person’s bedroom slippers are another’s party shoes. The odd thing is, once you start thinking this way, it tends to spill over into the rest of your life.

TRUST: And I don’t mean in “experts.” Because it was so important to me, I managed to shake off all those older and wiser souls who advised me that I couldn’t totally nurse for six months, care for two children while working and going to school etc., etc.

I will never forget the dingbat psychologist who insisted my grade school-age son was a potential serial killer because he drew human figures without necks. Since I knew that this was simply his chosen style of cartooning, I was in no danger of confusing and offbeat sense of humor with the profile of a young Ted Bundy. (Can you imagine what some art teacher might have said to Gary Larson’s folks?)

NORMAL IS AS NORMAL DOES: I have little idea what “normal” behavior is and neither does anyone else. I don’t care what degrees the person holds. Go with your gut. If you sense something is wrong with your child, don’t’ let anyone dissuade you. But the reverse also holds true. And if your kid crosses an authority figure, find out what really happened before you do anything rash.

BE A GROWN-UP: This is the biggie. I am all of 21 years older than my daughter and 23 years older than my son. If I had not had them, I fear I would have remained eternally in the “what’s-in-it-for-me” stage of human development, never suspecting that I have a considerable amount to offer. That’s no small insight.

All in all, I would say motherhood has given me more than it took. Thanks to my children, I know myself.

A happy greeting-card-holiday to all...

times square terror

2010-05-05T16:17:00.003-04:00

This is gonna sound weird, even for me.

But as I sit, sipping coffee from my ‘I (heart) NY” mug, watching the scene in Times Square unfold early Sunday, the story is fresh, the smoking car—as it were—recently towed.

The CNN reporter is doing a stand-up in the most famous spot in America’s most famous city.

And all I could do is peer behind the reporter to take in Times Square as folks go about their business, wishing like hell I was there.

Yup, even a car bomb couldn’t scare me off.

New York, New York, a helluva target.

With “apologies” to Sarah Palin, it’s where the heart of “Real America” beats.

It was also such a helluva New Yorkish story. Where else could a STREET VENDOR sporting an “I Love New York” t-shirt, flag down a MOUNTED POLICE OFFICER to report a suspiciously smokin’ SUV? The only thing missing was the cop chowin’ down on a bagel with a smear as he bends down to catch what the vendor was saying.

Where else would it take only 53 hours to pinpoint a suspect and flag down a jet about to take flight to Dubai to take him into custody? So CSI New York.

Call it: The miracle on the tarmac.

I caught Police Commiss Ray Kelly on Charlie Rose right after that and was only mildly surprised to learn that police had foiled seven such car bombs since Sept. 11.

And New Yorkers go about the business of being New Yorkers.

New York, New York.
It’s a helluva town.
Still.

the doomsday network

2010-04-29T18:16:00.003-04:00

Forget Revelations, Stephen King novels and chainsaw massacre flicks. The Weather Channel is where the scary stuff lives and breathes.

From blizzards to floods, tornadoes to hurricanes, not to mention earthquakes present and future, they specialize in “end of the world” scenarios complete with state of the art graphics.

I guess that’s what happens when you have an all-weather-all-the-time channel. I hate to say this, but these unending misfortunes of Mother Nature are Mother’s Milk to these folks. At times, I swear, they hardly seem able to suppress their enjoyment.

They could hardly contain their glee in reporting on the “global gridlock” resulting from the recent volcanic eruptions.

Just the other day, a female anchor interviewing a “storm chaser” of a violent mile-wide tornado, actually opined it must be really hard give up chasing the storm and start helping people caught in its wake. To his credit, he shot her down.

Not content to report and forecast weather—which can be unsettling enough—they keep inventing new forms of speculation and retelling old weather related horror tales.

Oh, I forgot, there is also the effects of global warming in which to wallow.

I have to monitor weather channel viewing. I can’t allow myself to get drawn in to watching more than my local forecast. It’s just too dangerous to my tender psyche.

Moving to Sarasota, the lightening capital of the world, hasn’t helped. I live alone with my cat in a 1970s condo made of wood—like the Little Pig’s house made of sticks. A loud metal roof adds to my feeling of vulnerability. When the tropical rains hit, it drowns out even the loudest setting on the TV or stereo.

Once upon a time, I actually enjoyed electrical storms, finding then incredibly erotic. No more. The start of hurricane season literally makes me sick to my stomach.

Ok. I admit it. I’ve become a weather weenie.

a kid at work

2010-04-25T09:28:00.002-04:00

Would everyone please take a seat and settle down?
Thank you.

The subject for this week’s discussion is kids at work, a situation that many of us have, or will have, to face, prompted by this week’s Take Your Kid to Work Day.

This may seem an odd subject of concern for someone my age, but life can play tricks on you. Some years ago, a date with my favorite 3-year-old collided head-on with a work deadline. Forced into the workplace for a stressful few hours, I had little choice but to take the tyke along.

Having left behind my full-time duties at the newspaper, my “day job” took me to a conservative law firm several days a week. Unlike the open informality of a newsroom, this was a true corporate atmosphere. There was no dress-down day. (However, there were free bagels on Fridays.)

How, I mused, was I going to pull this off?

First the preparation. The night before, I picked up two new animated videos, an “Aladdin” coloring book and a “Lion King” book of stickers. That morning, I packed a bottle of his favorite apple juice, a plastic bag with his choice of dry cereal, a few chosen toys and a complete change of clothes – just in case.

As we got him dressed, I talked up the place, explaining what an adventure it would be (OK, so I stretched things a bit), how we would ride an elevator to the top floor and so on. I went so far
as to promise all kinds of special treats afterward if he was a good boy.

On the way over, he chattered endlessly about the “elebator,” likening it to a Ferris wheel ride. We got off to a fine start; he was impressed the parking garage: “It’s sooo dark.” He pressed the “elebator” button and watched the floor numbers come and
go with open fascination.

I must tell you that in my (very biased) opinion, this is one extremely adorable, outgoing and quick youngster who is used to a warm reception whenever he ventures out into the adult world. My office was no exception. Faces lighted up when we walked by, and necks craned around corners at the sound of his voice. Unfortunately, he was in his unsociable mode and “harrumphed” at those who tried to engage him in conversation. Eventually, he
did willingly march off with a smiling staffer who
offered him Tootsie Pop.

The main problem was keeping him in my small, windowless office. I closed the door, set up the video, etc. After about 15 minutes, he declared: “let’s get outta here.” Not a bad suggestion; unfortunately, not a practical one. When I explained I had more work to do, he demanded more rides on the “elebator.”

Between elevator rides, he sat on my lap munching Fruit Loops as the “Land Before Time IV” played on. All the while, I answered the phone, studied photo contact sheets with a magnifying glass and managed to punch out a Simba sticker or two.

Then came his discovery of my laptop, which I had naively switched on. As computer literate as they come, my little pal focused on the machine. He attempted to negotiate the touchpoint in the middle of the keyboard, which takes much more finesse than the mouse with which he’s adept. But he managed quite well within 10 minutes.

Considering all the extra effort and distraction, I still believe kids can be an addition to almost any workplace. It isn’t the children per se, but the lack of facilities that get in the way. I wish kids could
be more integrated into the workplace without the expense of formal on-site day care, perhaps with a friendly room close by – like on each floor.

Children add humanity and perspective to life, cutting adults and their pretensions down to size. Who else could abruptly put an end to a terse conference by announcing with some urgency: “I hafta go potty!”

a love story

2010-04-18T18:52:00.004-04:00

Turn on the tellie these days and it’s awash in ads for one antidepressant or another. Twenty years ago, depression was still closeted, rarely discussed.

This, my first award-winning piece, came about after a casual comment to a colleague writing a feature on the new “miracle drug” Prozac. I told her I would do a first person side-bar detailing my experiences with the drug.

When the story ran, my world cracked open. I was totally unprepared for its effect, among my colleagues, the public at large and my own parents. It had only taken 20 minutes for the words to pop up on the computer screen. But in truth, it had taken three decades to write.

When I called my parents to suggest they pick up a copy of the paper, I had no idea my shocked mother would read it while waiting to pick up an order of Chinese food.

A door opens to a world of glorious color

This is a love story.

Not between me and a drug, but between me and my life – a late-blooming love story at that. One that began the last day in May, a few days shy of my 43rd birthday.

Let me back up just a bit to a year ago last St. Patrick’s Day. On that day, my younger brother died, having swallowed more than 400 assorted pills. His act ended more than 20 years of depression and substance abuse that only the ultimate act of self-destruction could penetrate.

He was never to reach 40 years, and I had begun to despair of seeing the other side of 50. I was tired – plumb worn out – from the constant fight just to remain vertical through an ordinary day. Sometimes, I didn’t make it out of bed. And often when I did, it didn’t seem worth effort.

Since early adolescence, I have lived in a world whose colors slid from ash gray to soot black – a world of chronic depression.

For those of you who naturally live a more colorful existence, I will try to communicate what it’s like to live a constricted world: Image a dark, dank day – not a refreshing spring rain – but a day in which the rain never quite stops. Now imagine years flowing in decades of such days.

I don’t know what day my depression started, but I can tell you the day it ended – June 19. It was a Tuesday, exactly 20 days after I began swallowing a yellow-and-blue-green Prozac capsule every morning. It literally was like a switch being flipped in my brain. The lights went on, and stayed on.

The decision to give the controversial drug a try was mine, much to the surprise of my psychologist/mentor of 20-plus years. With my brother’s history of drug addiction, the psychologist knew my fear of medications and had long given up suggesting that I might find relief in them.

With his help, I survived a failed marriage, graduated from college with a degree in psychology while raising two children on welfare and part-time work. Even without the constant weight of depression, it would have been tough. But the overload of responsibility also served to keep the darkness at bay.

Work served the same purpose. If there is one thing that can be said about working for a daily newspaper it’s that it absorbs you. It will take every effort and every second you will give – and never be sated.

My world held no joy, no music and precious little passion. All my energy was being used to hold my head above a sea of depression. I was treading, just treading my life away.

My brother’s suicide and my own impending middle age put and end to that. I was running out of time and couldn’t seem to push myself past functional on any sustained basis. I tried everything from exercise, to subliminal and hypnosis tapes. Nothing lasted.

Then I heard about Prozac, a new drug, totally different from any other anti-depressant on the market. I read everything I could and watched all the talk shows, considering the pros and cons.

When I found out that a first cousin was suffering through a debilitating episode of clinical depression. I decided it was a family illness, and thought I’d give Prozac a try.

My internist prescribed the “marvelous drug,” as he called it, on a trial basis to see if I could tolerate the initial side effects, which can be frightening. He cautioned me it might take 21 days to kick in and to be patient.

The first week was not pleasant.

I was restless and suffered digestive upsets. It caused sleep problems and anxiety, especially in the beginning. Since I refuse to take any of the habit-forming tranquilizers, like Valium or Xanax, I talked myself through the anxiety, telling myself over and over it wasn’t me, it was the Prozac.

I soon discovered that any activity, even something simple as getting out of bed – banished the anxiety. Almost from Day One, I felt an infusion of energy, a zest.
By the start of the third week, the undesirable side effects began to fade. I felt different somehow, but not necessarily better – until I woke up that Tuesday in June.

If I were Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, it would have been the moment when the door swings open revealing a world of glorious color and infinite possibilities – a world I never knew existed.

Without the need to bathe my depression in chocolate, I have lost about 20 pounds. Without the extra physical and mental weight, I have physical and emotional energy left over for work and family. Without the need to guard my emotions against depression, I even experience occasional joy.

But even Oz had its wicked witch, and Prozac does not ward off all ills like Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Objectively, my life has not changed. I still deal with all my other psychological issues of self-esteem, success, intimacy and the like. I didn’t get rich or win the Pulitzer Prize. Nor am I a size 8. I still get impatient, angry, stressed-out, lonely and sad.

And while my life has not changed, my perception of my life has. It’s really amazing how manageable problems seem when you stand upright and look them in the eyes.

I am not a new person. In fact, my daughter thinks I’m more like the real me. Now when I’m down, I generally can point to a reason. And it lasts at the most a few days – not a few years. Blue is a color, not a lifestyle.

Prozac didn’t change my life; it introduced me to life. I’ll take it from here.

And so I have...

chasing the moon

2010-04-15T08:23:00.003-04:00

I just finished The Girl Who Chased the Moon, the latest novel by Sarah Addison Allen. It took me all of one day. Darn it. Her books slide down so smooth you hardly notice. I wanted this one to last longer.

I really needed one of her books. I’ve been on a reading jag lately, finishing up a book every few days. And as good as much of the writing has been, they haven’t been very nourishing or uplifting.

I like my literature to be better than real life.

I’ve been in love with Allen’s work since her first, Garden Spells, was chosen by Barnes & Noble. I snapped up her second, The Sugar Queen, as soon as it hit the shelves.

She is my favorite kind of novelist—a total original—who surprises and delights. I can’t get over how her mind works.

The stories are all set in imaginary small town South, peopled with quirky characters. Oh, then there’s the magic. Not your ordinary magic, mind ya. And not too much of it. It dances around the edges. Her characters take to it naturally—natural magic? Does that make any sense? It sort of reminds me of a warmed-up version of the old TV series Northern Exposure, an all time fave.

Two examples from her latest which won’t ruin anything: bedroom wallpaper that changes patterns according to the occupant’s mood; and a sugarholic that can not only “sense” but “see” cakes being baked from afar in the form of sparks in the wind.

It’s not that her works are devoid of tragedy. But they are never allowed to overpower the plot or the book’s inhabitants. What can I say? I like a happy ending.

I repeat: I like my literature better than real life.

Then there’s her impeccable sense of place. She breathes life into those Southern towns, as only a native can. She does for her mythical South what Harlan Coben does for the real New Jersey. And I’ve already read his latest.

Now what the heck am I gonna do?

eye of the beholder

2010-04-11T13:23:00.004-04:00

The United States officially commemorates the Holocaust during the Days of Remembrance, marking the anniversary of the Warsow Ghetto uprising.

Today.

I wrote the following column some years ago, just after the film ''Schindler’s List' first ran on television to criticism from then Republican Congressman, now Senator Tom Coburn, a medical doctor and ordained Southern Baptist deacon from Oklahoma. I feel it remains relevant:

Filth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What a person views as lewd defines that individual’s value system.

That said, Oklahoma Rep. Tom Coburn is one twisted mister.

Imagine watching Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning “Schindler’s List” and seeing only violence, nudity and sex. Then lambasting NBC for airing the film and “polluting the minds of our children.” The story of Oskar Schindler, the Czech-born Nazi war profiteer who saved more than a thousand Polish Jews from the death camps, is such an important work its airing needs no defense.

It has been written that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. One Jew was killed. Then another Jew was killed, the another – 6 million times. That’s what Spielberg illustrates by exposing the terror in such arbitrary and casual murders.

As for the “full frontal nudity,” no man, woman or child was herded into a gas chamber clothed. Prisoners were not paraded before Nazi doctors in their undies. To find something remotely sexual here is perverse. Not to show it would have been the obscenity.

Our children are not hard-wired to TV sets. All it takes to protect the very young is to change the channel or shut off the set. Yes, some older children will be shocked and a bit traumatized. And that’s OK.

In early adolescence, I went with some friends to see “Judgment at Nuremberg,” the first big Hollywood production about the Holocaust and its aftermath. I smugly assumed I understood the reality of the time. After all, I even had a role in my school’s production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” So, I sat in the dark theater surrounded by friends, enjoying the courtroom drama and the first-rate performances of Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland and the like.

Without warning, the film cut to the now familiar newsreel footage: piles of rotting corpses, stacks of clothing and shoes, mounds of hair and teeth, the often nude, emaciated waking corpses of those “liberated” from the camps and the tear-stained faces of their young GI liberators.

I froze, unable to take my eyes off the screen. It was hard to breathe. I wanted to run, to scream. But I couldn’t move, make a sound or even shed a tear. The Holocaust was no longer in the third person, a tragic historical episode to be studied in school. It was no longer about them. It was about us. It was about me.

To this indulged postwar American Jewish teen, as assimilated as they come, Holocaust stories had been just that – appalling tales to which I had only a distant, incidental connection. Eastern Europe was the place from which my grandparents came, nothing more.

It finally reached me, that for an accident of time and place, those would have been my father’s shoes, my mother’s hair, my brother’s teeth. I would likely lie amid that pile of rotting flesh. The Nazis wouldn’t have cared if I observed the Sabbath, ate pork or went to temple. The fact that I was born to Jewish parents was enough.

Decades later, as a reporter on the Lakewood, NJ beat, it was my job to cover annual Holocaust memorial services. Each ceremony heightened the connection. I had my own children by then and realized they, too, would not have been spared because only one of their parents was Jewish.

What I took away from “Schindler’s List” had nothing to do with sex or violence. It was a recognition of the complex nature of goodness. Many of us assume that in order to make a difference we have to be some kind of Mother Teresa. But Oskar Schindler was a selfish, greedy manipulator. It was these very traits that put him in the position and provided the wealth to save 1,100 Jews and, indirectly, their 6,000 descendants.

Salvation can be found in the most unlikely places, even amid nudity, violence and sex.

full disclosure: Springsteen post

2010-04-06T19:15:00.004-04:00

In the previous post I neglected to add that I was once named in a divorce suit. It was some years ago and involved my best friend and her husband.

No, it’s not what you think.

HE named me as some kind of undue influence on her. The abusive worm just couldn’t believe she acted to end their 30 year marriage of her own accord. He never forgave me for convincing her, back in the early days, that pjs and sheets didn’t require ironing, I suppose.

Oh, and did I also forget to mention the threesomes she and I turned aside. In his mind, the only reason to do so was that we were into each other. One night, he showed up at my door, expecting to find us rolling in the sheets. She wasn’t even there.

So naturally, he thought the two of us should do the nasty. And he just didn’t get that I wouldn’t bed my best friend’s husband.

‘nuf said.

Springsteen & Tiger & babes, my my!

2010-04-06T11:52:00.006-04:00

I am a Springsteen fan.

Decades of living at the Jersey Shore, working for the Asbury Park Press and returning each summer to Red Bank will do that to ya. So I am saddened to see him make the tabloids again for being named in the divorce of a West Long Branch couple.

Court documents in the divorce of Ann and Arthur Kelly cite an alleged inappropriate relationship between Springsteen and Ann Kelly as contributing to the break-up, according to the New York Post.

Both Springsteen and the wife have denied having a sexual relationship. And you know what? I don’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other. It’s a private matter that should have stayed within the families.

I can understand how an “aggrieved” husband would be hurt and angered believing his other half stepped out on their vows. But I’ll never understand what would possess anyone to make such charges public pickings for the media circus. If you don’t care about your spouse any longer, what about your kids?

The Post cites court filings by Arthur Kelly alleging the relationship began with a chance meeting at Red Bank's Atlantic Club in 2005. Ok, I used to work out there during that time and I never noticed anything. Then again, I never ran into Bruce while swimming or taking Pilates.

Arthur Kelly filed for divorce last March and the case is likely to be settled this week, according to the Post. As part of that settlement, the Post claims, he dropped the adultery charge and both parties agreed not to chat up the media. Ann Kelly earlier tried and failed to get the proceedings closed to the public. Perhaps Arthur Kelly calmed down—or got the leverage he was after.

As for Tiger and his endless rounds of mea culpa press conferences, can someone tell him to just shut-up already? It’s just more evidence of the inflated ego that got him into this mess for him to think anyone out there cares...Be quiet and stroke the little white ball. That’s what you do best.

passover pain

2010-03-31T12:37:00.009-04:00

I thought my 100th post would be something special. Instead, here it is, a brief riff on an aching heart tilting toward pain.

The weather up north is rotten, I hear. The weather here couldn’t be more perfect. Blue skies, a cool breeze, even a day off. Over at Ed Smith stadium, close enough for me to walk to, folks are gathering to watch the Orioles play the Red Socks. A festival atmosphere abounds as I drive passed to Publix. It could be my very own Yankees and I’d still remain untouched.

I pick up a few things at the store, lingering a bit at the Passover table with its giant boxes of matzos et al. I throw a container of Streits chocolate non pareils into my bag—a favorite of my moms.

Yesterday, I stopped at Whole Foods and spurlged on a serving of prepared brisket for dinner.

The cashier wishes me “happy Easter.” I flinch inside, although I am certainly not an observant Jew.

I am not happy. Tears cascade down my cheeks on the short ride home.

I miss my family. The large extended family that was and the little which remains, scattered much like the Jews of old. The pull of ritual is embedded in my DNA. The sights, the smells, the sounds of Passover Seders past are extremely sharp this year. They do not fade with time.

It’s that simple.

adventures in bookselling—sex

2010-03-30T13:59:00.005-04:00

MADE YOU LOOK!

Seriously, though. Among the store sections that most of us HATE to straighten is the SEXUALITY section. It’s located—either by accident or design—on the far side rear of the store. Walk back there at any time and you’re likely to find bunch of crusty ol’ guys or giggling young would-be studs—depending on the time/day of the week.

For some reason I can’t fathom, the Kama Sutra comes wrapped in glossy, bright red paper, which naturally gets pulled off by those I search of, shall we say, enlightenment of the sexual nature. OK, so maybe pulling off a wrapper is no big thing, But why CONTINUE to take them off? It’s all the same book, folks.

(An aside: as a young child my mother would often return from shopping with a box wrapped in blue and white striped paper. When I inquired as to what it was, she replied “napkins.” For years, I wondered why our paper table napkins came gift wrapped. Only to discover in my early teens that Modess wrapped their sanitary napkins in that paper for discretion, I assume. Like anybody who knew what a sanity napkin was, wouldn’t recognize the paper, eh? Let’s hear it for the 1950s.)

Back to the 21rst century, people.

So the other day I’m heading to the head and glance down at an attractive, obviously enamored young couple, laying all over each other in one of our large armchair. As I’ve said before, many of our “customers” confuse our store with their living rooms.

I can’t help but notice the book splayed in front of the them—which they are studying—displays an intimate coupling I’ve never been limber enough to attempt, even in my youth.

“Hey guys,” I say softly, bending over. They look up, the girl turning scarlet. “No worries about me,” I add. “But the way you are sitting, anyone heading to the restroom will get a full view. You may want to switch to the chair on the other side of the table."

When I come out of the restroom, they smile and wave from the other seat.

Now for something completely different. A small case of sexual confusion.

A colleague adopted a tiny kitten a short time ago, which he named Bea Arthur. He would often regale us with tales of the trials of bringing up a toddler cat.

Last week I saw him sitting in the break room and inquired as to what Bear Arthur was up to. He grimaced a bit before explaining he had noticed during one of his daily bathing (Yes, his pet was bathed daily.) , something odd. Upon further examination, Bea turned out to be Bentley.

Who knew?

grief in the time of facebook

2010-03-23T09:49:00.003-04:00

This is not suppose to happen, at least not to someone I know. It’s something I hear Nancy Grace screeching about.

This is a television episode, one of those ubiquitous crime series, like the now defunct Without a Trace.

But it is real, and it is close. As close as my Facebook page.

Last week, a posting from my dear friend Carol in Point Pleasant, NJ, simply stating that her nephew Martin Molinski, 26, living and working in Bermuda, had apparently gone for a swim in 60-degree surf before work—and disappeared leaving only his clothing on the beach.

Less than 2 hours later, her daughter had the Find Martin Molinski ASAP page up on fb. Not only did family and friends chime in, but the lead detective and island residents did also. The local paper posted the link on its front page.

The search lasted four days.

The body of the young man washed ashore on Sunday, and the fb page morphed into a memorial site, with stories and photos.

Overwhelmed with the need to hear my friend’s voice, I called, noting her phone must be ringing off the hook.

“Not really,” she replied. “Facebook took care of that.”

So it did. Facebook allowed her family, strewn over multiple continents, to come together in a comprehensive way, to grieve together virtually, in a manner they would never have been able to do without the much maligned social networking site.

THIS is what I love about fb. You don’t have to be Michael Jackson. Anyone can create community. Yes, a lot of it is silly and time wasting. I just ignore it.

In this electronic age, age-old rituals need not be forsaken due to time and distance. This is no small thing. Maybe it’s the Jew in me, but ritual exists for a reason. It connects, it amplifies joy, it gets us through the unfathomable—until we find the strength inside to go on.

This young man--a master carpenter taking time from his craft to figure out his future—was waylaid by death. I don’t pretend to know why.

I am grateful, however, my friend has her fb family at this time.

singing american pie

2010-03-17T13:34:00.002-04:00

I break into song at the slightest provocation.
OK, so oftentimes with no provocation.

When I was growing up, we just sang with gusto around house, in the car, wherever. I thought everyone did. Needless to say, I soon learned otherwise.

When my children were young, it humiliated them. As they grew, they responded with snide remarks, sneers and the reaching over to increase the volume of the car radio. Even as adults, that hasn’t changed.

What has changed is me. I no longer care. As I’ve gotten older, the opinion of others, including me darlin’ offspring, matter less...and less. I’ve now reached an age where Simon Cowell could be sitting before me, rolling his eyes and I doubt it would touch me.

I will add here that I have a pleasant enough alto voice. Think Karen Carpenter, with dashes of Ethel Merman and a sprinkle of Judy Garland. People—not related to me—have commented favorably.

This is a good, as I often handle story time duties in my bookstore kids department. And I sing. I find it easier to keep the kids’—and their parents’—attention. And I freely confess I enjoy it. The tunes are simple. The standard children stuff to which I add Puff the Magic Dragon and the Marvelous Toy, all books. I often require participation and receive it. Occasionally, I indulge my yen to play Adeline in Guys & Dolls by including Bushel and a Peck which is also now a children’s book.

Back to Don McLean’s American Pie, a VERY long narrative tune from back in the day, written as an ode –“The day the music died”-- commemorating the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper in that famous Feb. 3, 1959 plane crash.

When it comes on the car radio oldies station, I naturally sing along. If I get to where I’m going, I just keep sitting there, singing, until its done. (The same is true at traffic lights, by the way.) In the spirit of full disclosure, I add that I don’t just sit there, I emote.

Yupper, that’s me.
I’m that crazy lady sitting in her car singing out loud—and strong.

So sue me.

more adventures in bookselling

2010-03-09T15:29:00.002-05:00

In the spirit of my previous post, I continue with the latest list of quirky bookselling experiences.

I recently went to customer service to relieve a young bookseller for her 15-minute break. She was on the phone with a customer and online, frantically scrolling up and down on Ticketmaster.

“I’m sorry, I can’t find a phone number,” she kept repeating to the woman, who apparently refused to accept the fact that she would have to call information herself. At least I was there to witness that the bookseller wasn’t online purchasing concert tickets, should she have been questioned.

None of us is immune from these over reaching customer demands. Our store manager told me of a phone call in which a customer refused to be convinced she could not print out her airline boarding passes in the store after accessing them on our free wifi because THERE IS NO PRINTER.

I was on the phone with an elderly man the other day who wanted to order a book sent to his house, but did not want to give me his credit info on the phone, as required.

“I would go to Amazon,” he said, “but there’s none near me.”

While working café register for breaks, I asked a customer what she would like.

“I’ll have a large tai chi.”

With a smile, I suggested a large chai tea instead. She burst out laughing,

Back in my kids department one hectic Saturday, the Thomas Train Table was crowded with tots of varying ages jostling each other. A burly woman yelled across at me, waving closed Thomas cars packages.

“Do you have a scissors to open these?”

“No, ma’am I’m not allowed a scissors in this department, nor am I permitted to open up items until they are purchased. I’m sure they will be glad to open them at the cash register.”

As half a dozen stunned parents watched, she ripped open the packages so her children could play with them at the train table, since she “forgot to bring in her own.”

When she complained about me to a manager, the other customers leapt to my defense.

Oh, then there was the fellow who called asking if anyone had seen his dentures.

Who says life among the books is dull?
To be continued...

adventures in bookselling, part 2

2010-02-28T13:36:00.008-05:00

This is my continuing commentary on the sometimes quirky experiences that are part and parcel of spending one’s working life as a bookseller for a large chain.

When the weather is cold and rainy in Florida, as it was yesterday, the store tends to be extremely crowded. When it is a Saturday, the kids department—my department—is a zoo.

In addition to the actual shoppers with kids, kids off from school, non-custodial parents in search of a free time waster, there are those who treat the section as in indoor playground. People who haven’t a clue as to appropriate behavior in a bookstore, or the difference between such a store and a library.

So I was coming to the close of a particularly stressful day, counting the minutes until the end of my shift, when a burly, boisterous young boy and his mom came in. The lad, who turned out to be an extremely large 5-year old, demanded in a booming voice that I show him the “romance books.”

“Is there any particular author you have in mind?” I replied, with a glance at his mom, both of us suppressing a smile.

“NO, I just want the falling in love books.”

I look up at his mom, commenting he is certainly an evolved young man. She laughs.

She explains his sister reads to him and he has heard of the Twilight books, knows teenage girls like those books, and he likes teenage girls.

The youngster loudly rejects my suggestions of books like Cinderella, as “baby books.” I usher him over to the classics section, where we have abridged versions for younger children. I try Little Women, (It has four GOOD LOOKING teenage girls, says his mom.) No go. The same with Anne of Green Gables.

Then he spots his choice: Dracula. Very discerning. The original vampire story which some scholars do consider a love story, certainly a precursor to the Twilight saga.

He leaves happy, as do I.

white out

2010-02-23T13:22:00.003-05:00

Into each life some snow must fall — and fall, and fall. As I write this, the Great Blizzard(s) of 2010 are hopefully winding down.

Sitting here in Sarasota, I can afford to be a bit smug. Yet I resist, as I know in too short a time we will be on the flip side and in the midst of Hurricane Season. But I haven’t lived in the Sunshine State long enough for my snowstorm memories to have faded.

I recall the first great snowfall in a year, the joy, the beauty, the incredible crystalline stillness. And I also remember how it grows old, grey and crusty, the treachery overtaking any beauty, especially for commuters and travelers.

I suspect that’s where most of my northern friends now sit, looking our their windows yearning for something green, a sign of spring.

Whenever storms of these magnitude hit, comparison to previous storms is inevitable. For every generation, however, there is a "storm of the century," the one about which they tell their children.

When the Great Blizzard of ’96 hit, my biggest problem was running out of cat food. Unlike my fellow journalists, I didn’t have to find my way in to the newsroom, regardless of weather conditions. Such were the perks of no longer drawing a full-time salary from a daily news organization.

I was also among those fortunate folks who have a solid roof over their heads, a working furnace and adequate food, so I spent the my days reflecting on the weather and keeping in touch by phone with friends and family.

While many of those snowbound with small children were pulling out their hair, yearning for peace and quiet, those alone often found themselves cleaning out closets and polishing silver to stay sane. I thank my lucky stars that I had reinstalled cable. Two solid days of public television would have surely resulted in a raging case of cabin fever.

For my parents, it was the Blizzard of '47.

Now, 1947 was a particularly good year for me. I was born. Being only six months old when Brooklyn was snowed under, I can't claim to remember the event firsthand. But there are reams of black and white snapshots of me, looking like an overstuffed doll, being pulled through the drifts in front of my grandparents' house on an old-fashioned wooden sled. I must say, it looked like I was enjoying myself.

Growing up on the north shore of Long Island, I recall many a snowstorm bringing things to a halt. Like most kids, I looked forward to the days off from school, then got dressed in layers of clothing and plowed through the snow. I can still feel drifts so deep that we sank in up to our waists and had to be rescued by a friend or parent.

For me, however, the storm of the century was the Blizzard of '61.

It was the first time I recall hearing the words "snow emergency." New York City was locked down tight for days, keeping my dad home also. My aunt, uncle and two young cousins were stranded at our Nassau County home. The roads were impassable for so long that my dad and uncle took sleds and hiked several miles to a shopping center, only to find little food left on the shelves.

Us kids had a ball. The Long Island Expressway was still under construction and not yet open to traffic. We put it to fine use, sledding down the embankments onto the snow-covered roadway. What a sight. Nobody has ever had such a good time on that roadway since, I wager.

We went back to school before the city roads were completely opened, so one of my cousins was allowed to accompany my younger brother to school. Somehow, I can't imagine a public school being that accommodating today.

Hey, I don't mean to wax too nostalgic over this. Time and childhood have a way of softening the focus of events. The edges blur into a pleasing shape. As we grow, though, we learn that these spontaneous holidays can be terribly costly. Aside from the loss to business and property, there are always those whose lives are at risk.

For instance, my Aunt Sally will never forget that 1961 blizzard, either. Regardless of snow emergency rules, she drove into New York City with her 5-year-old son, Neal. She had little choice. My young cousin, in the throes of a losing bout with cancer, needed chemotherapy.

Of course, that's one part of the story my memory tends to leave behind.

outsourcing docs—quick take

2010-02-16T12:21:00.003-05:00

These days, it seems the best chance you have of seeing an American medical doctor is on TV—especially in hospitals. From Grey’s Anatomy to reruns of ER and Chicago Hope, the English spoken by the staff is clear. That’s because it’s American TV and the ability to communicate with the viewer is paramount.

I submit the same is true in “real life.” So I was glad to read in the NYT the other day that two dozen medical schools are set to open right here. I write this with the knowledge I may get pegged as some kind of xenophobe.

These new schools are seeking to correct an imbalance in American medicine that has been growing for a quarter century. Many otherwise qualified students give up or attend offshore medical schools after being squeezed out of domestic schools. Meanwhile, American hospitals have turned to foreign-trained and foreign-born physicians to fill medical residencies.

I confess this is a problem for me, especially as I age. I just can’t understand what they are saying half the time. And when it comes to medical issues, catching every other word just doesn’t cut it, regardless of how qualified these folks are. Sorry.

It’s bad enough trying to decipher the foreign techs trying to patch up my aging laptop. But when it comes to my aging body, I just don’t want to have to work so damn hard. In a medical setting, I am either already sick or anxious about some sort of test and I’d appreciate a less stressful environment.

It’s stressful enough knowing the bill will be in the mail soon enough.

"My Way Killings"? NO WAY!

2010-02-09T14:58:00.002-05:00

Say it ain’t so.

Philippine authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed for crooning “My Way” in that country’s karaoke bars over the years. But the news media recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade.

It’s been dubbed the “My Way Killings.” Even those Philippinos who admit to loving the song have stopped singing it, even at private parties. The song has also been removed from many playlists.

That’s what you get in the karaoke-obsessed Philippines for daring to follow Frank Sinatra, I guess.

Some folks blame the “arrogance” of the lyrics. Written for Sinatra by Paul Anka as an unapologetic summing up of Sinatra’s career, the words include those of a tough guy who “when there was doubt,” simply “ate it up and spit it out.” It must be noted here that Elvis included the song in his concerts. Well, it fits, eh?

My good buddy Jim, Sinatra buff extraordinaire, might well agree. It’s the only one of the Chairman’s songs I ever heard him deride.

I, however, disagree. I love the song—and the lyrics. To me, it bespeaks endurance and perseverance, sort of a musical version of the poem Invictus. It tells the story of a person facing the end of full life without regret, despite mistakes. It’s the way I’d like to go out.

Invictus, Latin for "unconquered", gave it’s name to the title of a recent movie about Nelson Mandela, directed by Clint Eastwood. But that’s not why it springs to mind.

It was my father’s favorite poem, which I read during my eulogy at his funeral some 14 years ago. Last week would have been his 89th birthday and this Thursday is the anniversary of his death, so he is on my mind more than usual.

Below is the poem followed by the lyrics—you decide.

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

My Way lyrics
And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend I'll say it clear
I'll state my case of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way

Regrets I've had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way

Yes there were times I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out, I faced it all
And I stood tall and did it my way

I've loved, I've laughed and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now as tears subside
I find it all so amusing

To think I did all that
And may I say not in a shy way
Oh no, oh no, not me
I did it my way

For what is a man what has he got
If not himself then he has not
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way

Yes it was my way

As for me, I find the last line of each is not a bad exit line.

Haiti’s children: quick take

2010-02-04T12:22:00.002-05:00

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — “God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that,” Laura Silsby, one of 10 Americans accused of trafficking Haitian children, said Monday through the bars of a jail cell here. “Our hearts were in the right place.” ...New York Times

Uh, maybe their hearts were in the right place, but their bodies were also rightly behind bars.

I cannot imagine the devastation in that wretchedly poor country.

But heaven protect us from those taking it upon themselves to do “God’s Will.” I posit that those on the “God and Country” side often do as much damage as those purveyors of evil who use any excuse to scoop up vulnerable youngsters.

The Americans, most of whom are affiliated with two Baptist churches in Idaho, said they were trying to rescue orphans and take them to an orphanage they were setting up in the Dominican Republic. Questions were raised about whether all of the children were indeed orphans.

This has a sickly familiar feel.

“Poor” countries—and even “poor” people—often have their children taken from them, for “their own good.” OK, so Madonna does come to mind.

To give a orphan a fighting chance can be a noble and rewarding deed. To steal other peoples’ offspring because YOU think you can give the child what the (otherwise fit) parents cannot is rephrehensible—unless, of couse, you can show me the burning bush.

Haiti’s people have lost their past and much of their present—let’s not let their future be stolen.

Edwards & Young: perfect together

2010-01-31T15:05:00.001-05:00

I have not yet read Andrew Young’s recently released book, The Politician. But I’ve heard and seen enough in the media to have some thoughts.

First, a confession.

I liked John Edwards. I would likely have voted for him for president if given the chance. I also liked John Kennedy. I would have voted for him if I had been old enough. (Let’s not even talk about Bill Clinton.)

My ability to vote should be revoked, as I obviously have NO ability to judge male character.

That said, let’s consider John Edwards’ rotten luck.

He screwed around on his wife. Nothing new there. With such notable exceptions as “catch me if you can” Gary Hart and “cash up front” Elliot Spitzer, numerous politicians have survived this “flaw.” But Edwards’ wife was battling breast cancer. Major bad.

Then he knocks up this other woman, right in the middle of his second presidential bid. Major bad timing.

His luck turns, or seems to, in the person of his “devoted aide” Andrew Young, who throws--not only himself but his whole family--on the sword to protect Edwards and save the campaign. He claims the love child as his own and enters into a bizarre period of hiding out (with preggers+wife & kids) in a series of posh “safe houses.”

As we all know, this has been unraveling without end—until Young’s tell-all memoir. With its publication, we are treated to details, including videos of the Youngs and pregnant mistress in hiding, and Edwards’ interviews in which he shows off an ease of deception equal to that of “I did not have sex with that woman” Bill Clinton.

Edwards deservedly comes across as a major scumbag. Young, on the other hand, paints himself as a victim, an idealistic young man deceived by a man he served.

Well, exuuuuuuuuuse me! How can I put this politely? DONKEY DUST.

While I don’t doubt Andrew Young started out supporting a man he believed would make a good president, when push came to shove, he caved. The best that can be said of him is that he became an enabler. The worst, was that in participating in the cover-up, he was also furthering his own ambition.

I’m sorry. I have no sympathy for either of them. Neither showed regard for their families or for any reasonable standard of behavior. And now Young will be rewarded with a best-selling book. Who knows, maybe he’ll even run for president one day.

Would you trust him?

millennium mo: a flashback

2010-01-23T10:19:00.004-05:00

It was Dec. 31rst 1999, millennium madness, Y2k run amuck. The world was suppose to come to a crashing halt at the stroke of 2000. Remember?

A close friend recently emailed me of catching up on this blog after being sidelined by a computer viral attack. She reminded me of that special New Year’s night we spent together, a long decade past.

My good buddy Barbara and I chose to celebrate in a bowling alley parking lot on Rt. 88 in Point Pleasant, NJ, counting down to the “end of time” with Mo The Millennium Mossbunker, a 10-foot wooden replica of an Atlantic bait fish, covered with 1,500 Mylar scales.

The big ball-drop at Times Square had nothing on us when Mo was lowered down a 40-foot scaffold outside the bowling alley, after being taken a mile out to sea aboard a fishing boat, returned to land and paraded through the streets. Word of the “dropping of the fish” spread ‘cross the pond to my daughter living in London.

"We fully expect this to be the epicenter of the millennium," Mo's creator, Gene Bissey was quoted as saying. OK, so not exactly the epicenter, but Bissey, a local artist and entrepreneur was a character with an imaginative flare for the quirky. Unfortunately, he died several years ago. But that don’t mean he be forgot.

He left the Jersey Shore, and the town of Point Pleasant Beach with the annual “Hey Rube Get a Tube Race,” which is now ends each summer season. Bissey came up with the idea for the tube race 41 years ago, some say, after a night out tilting a few with friends.

It started out as a few rowdy guys peddling backwards across the inlet, I believe, and was later moved to the ocean. It grew in size and lore and in later years was later taken over by the Lions' club as a fundraiser. Beer mugs remain a big seller.

Always the showman, I seem to recall that when women demanded to be included, Bissey suggested they swim topless, like the men.

His mind seemed to overflow with the playful and the absurd, not all of which were a success. If I remember correctly, he once proposed a flour war to be held Gull Island, a small uninhabited hunk off Point Beach. But the war was truncated when one of the teams secreted themselves on the island the night before and ambushed the other. At least that’s what I recollect.

Bissey was a rare and wild duck, the likes of which are missed at the Shore, especially in these oh-so-serious times.

Here in Sarasota they drop a Pineapple to ring in the New Year.

Yaaaaaawn...

dimes

2010-01-17T09:01:00.002-05:00

For the past week or so I’ve been finding dimes—in the most unexpected places. By this, I mean, not on the floor beside a vending machine for example. There I am, cleaning and straightening books in the nature section of my kids department, and there on the shelf will be a shiny 10-cent piece, winking at me.

The other day, working the cashwrap, I pointed out to a customer that he had left a dime behind on the counter. “Oh, that’s not mine,” he says.

And the list goes on...

A while back I wrote a piece on finding pennies—which also continues, by the way—and what it means to me. In light of this latest development and for the benefit of new readers, I repost that piece below.

pennies from heaven

Pennies make me smile.

No, I’m not one of those people with jars and dishes of pennies stashed around the house.

It’s that pennies like me. Really.

I go through periods in my life when they show up, unannounced.

I don’t go looking for my copper friends, you understand. I don’t stare at the ground, shake pants or empty junk drawers.They just appear. In some of the strangest places.

And literally out of thin air.I walk by the kitchen counter, nothing there.I walk back a few minutes later, and there it is, in plain view, winkin’ at me. I move a jar of cream on a bathroom tray and a Canadian penny shows its face.

And I smile. Every time.

Because they are a reminder of abundance.

But also, I know that money is on its way. It happens every time.I don’t know how, when or how much. But ALWAYS some unexpected cash comes my way. Without fail.

And I am grateful for whatever it turns out to be.It may be a long forgotten rebate check, a gift, a miniscule royalty payment. Recently, I learned I was entitled to a small annuity from my time at the Asbury Park Press along with a cash payment.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind a life-changing extraordinary infusion of green, like a big time lottery win.I allow myself one a week ticket in each of the two Florida games.This permits me to indulge in my favorite game: Fantasy Philanthropy.(Full disclosure-a colleague came up with the name.)

When the jackpot is obscenely huge, I imagine myself the holder of the only winning ticket, then estimate the net amount, say $100 million.Then the fun begins.

I imagine all those I’d like to help and look for unusual ways to do so: paying off various debts, mortgages, setting up trusts to pay real estate taxes, health care, college.

My latest twist is a foundation called Second Acts for those starting over in life. I figure my journalism friends could make use of this, for sure.I also like the idea of paying off all debt for someone, like a Clean start foundation. Spending big money is big fun. And surprising, a lot of work.

But when I can’t sleep or am stuck in line or whatever, I occupy my mind with thoughts of creative giving, each tailored to a particular person’s personality.

Hey, it’s much more fun than fretting over my own economic woes.And when the time comes, I’ll be ready.

whose child is it, anyway?

2010-01-10T11:40:00.003-05:00

For thousands of years, we Jews had the answer. Since motherhood could not be disputed, the child always took the religion of the mother.

With advances in fertilization techniques, such distinctions have long since become moot. And I find myself, once again, considering the legal and emotional intricacies of surrogacy. (Regular readers of this space will recall my involvement with the Baby M case as a fledging Asbury Park Press reporter. For background just click on the December blog archive.)

And once again, it’s a New Jersey case that brings it to the forefront. Several weeks ago, a state judge gave a gestational surrogate of twin girls the right to seek primary custody. He ruled her the children’s legal mother, although there is no genetic connection. Experts hold that if this ruling stands it could expand the rights of gestational surrogates by making it indistinguishable from traditional surrogacy.

In 2006, Angelia G. Robinson, had the girls for her brother and his male spouse The embryos were created from anonymous donor eggs and fertilized with sperm from the spouse. The girls and went to live with the male couple in Jersey City. But in March 2007 Ms. Robinson filed a lawsuit seeking custody, alleging that she had been coerced into the arrangement.

Judge Francis B. Schultz relied heavily on the precedent established by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1988 in the case of Baby M. In that case, Mary Beth Whitehead, carried her own genetic child for another couple after artificial insemination with the man’s sperm. After Ms. Whitehead decided she wanted to keep the baby, the court ruled a fit mother’s maternal rights could not be terminated against her will. Judge Schultz ruled the lack of a genetic link irrelevant.

The lawyer for Sean and Donald Hollingsworth, said the case was of importance to gay men and lesbians because of their reliance on reproductive technology to have children. It illustrates the legal complexities of gestational surrogacy, in which a woman carries unrelated embryos created in a Petri dish. Although a gestational surrogate in Michigan recently got custody of twins she carried, courts in other states have upheld the rights of people who contracted with gestational surrogates.

I find myself deeply ambivalent on the subject.

The NJ lawyer in this recent case also represented Whitehead, and is among those who consider surrogacy exploitation of women, where those who can afford it take advantage of their less affluent sisters. I’m not sure I agree. Yes, there are women who have children with ease. And I can see little wrong with them using their abilities. I don’t even think it’s wrong for them to make some money at it. It can be the ultimate win-win.

I can also feel for those who find it impossible to part with children they have sheltered inside their bodies, who have shared their blood and been soothed by their heartbeat—whether or not they share DNA.

The problem lies in not being sure in which camp a potential surrogate falls. Even she may not know. When I was in my 30s, a couple, a friend of a friend I barely knew, asked me to carry their child. It was extremely flattering, although I never gave it serious consideration.

I was one of those women who gave birth with ease, at 21 and 23. I enjoyed my pregnancies and intended to have more children, but my marriage ended soon after and it never happened. But I knew deep inside that I could never voluntarily part with a child of my body.

We all know people who have adopted. These children are loved no less for the lack of a genetic connection. How can those who emerge from our body have less of bond? It matters not if they begin their journey in a Petri dish or a night of passion.

new year, old me

2010-01-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

So here sit I, mere days into this new decade. And with all the hype notwithstanding—it’s NOT: a “new” me. In fact, I’m more like the “old,” OK, let’s make that “original” me.

Last week, I chucked decades of red hair to return to a version of my chestnut brown. I’m still not sure what prompted the action. My daughter was visiting from London, and I was watching the brunette Barefoot Contessa on the food network. And suddenly, I wanted brown hair again. What can I say? I just didn’t feel like a redhead anymore.

I guess it’s possible that even such a superficial change could signal that deep down, I’m coming to terms with who I really am. Hey, you never know. It could be. That’s not to say I don’t desire changes, have ambition, even still some high-flying dreams, ‘cause I do. I’m not even gonna bore you by listing them. Most are the same we all share and have for years.

All I’m saying is that if my 62.5 years on this earth have taught me anything, it’s that we can control only a small fraction of the circumstances of our lives. And wasting our time and energy fighting that only prevents us from enjoying what we do have. Who knows, even brown hair may end up being too high maintenance, with all the “new me” grays underneath.

So I’m making the same determination this year as last: to find a way to be happy wherever I be. I don’t want to put it off until I: loss weight, finish the novel, find a love, have a grandchild etc. etc. This is deceptively simple—not easy in the least, I know.

I think most of us have it backwards, anyway. The inside changes really do have come first. Or perhaps from the top down, eh?

the usual new year's riff

2009-12-30T17:26:00.002-05:00

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

In my experience, the population is divided on the subject of celebrating New Year’s Eve. The most vocal members have had their plans in place for at least a month in anticipation of hearty partying. For the rest of us, it’s something to get through as uneventfully as possible.

I fall into the latter group, which, I suspect, is a silent majority. However, my feelings about New Year’s Eve are strong. I dread it. I think I almost always have.

In childhood, it was the celebration I always missed. No matter how hard I tried, sleep overcame me before that ball dropped. The next morning, the house rarely failed to show evidence of some secret grown-up ritual I was certain was as magical as it was mysterious. Someday, I thought, I will be old enough to join in such fun.

As an adolescent, I spend the long nights in a number of strangers’ homes, tending to their offspring as they frolicked away the last of the year. It was such a bore. Regular television was preempted for the New Year’s specials. It seemed that everyone in the world was partying but me, or so I imagined. At least then I earned a nice bit of change for the empty hours.

As I grew older, New Year’s developed into a time of involuntary reflection. It is when the earth and everyone on it ages, including me. Each January 1, I feel as if I have aged at least a year, although my birthday is five months away.

It’s not that I never had a good New Year’s Eve. While my children were young, I experienced the night through their eyes. We would go out to see a movie together and then either go home or gather at a friend’s house.

As our collective youngsters fought the good fight to stay awake, the adults cooked marvelous treats. We were even known to fire-up the backyard grill and roast s’mores. We sang camp songs and downed hot chocolate. And if anyone remembered, we turned on the tube in time to catch the ball drop, gingerly stepped over the bodies of sleeping offspring to offer the traditional New Year’s kisses.It was heaven.

But all too soon, my kids were making their own plans for the evening. It seems that the celebration had now grown to include teenagers. Now, my job became one of worrying: Were they where they said they would be? Would they come home in one piece? The up side to having children is that concern for their well being often obscures concern about your own life. So, in a perverse sort of way, my New Year’s Eve dance card remained filled.

For some time now I have been left to my own devices. And I have tried just about everything I could think of to get the dark night behind me. Some years I would force myself to make elaborate plans to avoid ending up alone. This tended to drive my friends, usually a generous lot, and nuts. I’d start asking them in August what they were doing for the New Year. They would pat me on the head, laugh and dive back into the swimming pool.

So I tried ignoring it. It was just another night. Yeah, right. Let me tell so something. It doesn’t matter how many videos you rent or how early you hit the sack, the world will insist upon reminding you at midnight – with firecrackers, bells and whistles – that you are entering the New Year.Lately, I’ve been taking a more moderate approach. I try not to obsess until mid-December. Then I make casual overtures to a friend or two. If nothing turns up, I try to make my peace with the evening. I may decide to go to a movie. Perhaps I arm myself with a good book, some incredibly decadent food and new CDs. These days, I bet I can party harty on the internet. Betcha facebook will be rockin". Something tells me, I have a lot of company out there, eh?

This year, I'll be working New Year's Eve until 7 p.m. and the next day, so any kind of partying may be beyond me anyway.

Christmas Day, 2009

2009-12-25T11:45:00.002-05:00

Alone again, naturally.
That’s not as bad as it sounds, not now, even on this traditional family-centered day.
It’s not just that I’m used to it.
It’s that I live in the retail world, where “Christmas” is interminable and often insufferable.

Much of me just wants to veg the day away, especially since I need to be at work by 6 a.m. tomorrow.
My Christmas dinner is a prepared turkey feast from Whole Foods.
My desert of pumpkin cheesecake by way of the B&N café.
I even have one of those cheesy video’s of a Yule log to pop on the TV.
Yeah, I know. It sounds pathetic.
But in truth, what’s a lot worse is one of those pity holiday invites where you sit around amid other folk’s family and watch them open gifts. I’ve been there, trust me.
If I rally later this afternoon, I’ll hit the movies for a traditional Jewish Christmas day.
If not, I’ll curl up beside my “fire” with a book.

My life has always been filled with Christmas confusion.

As a child of the 1950s, growing in a secular Jewish family on Long Island, we got the season all wrong. In an effort to give us everything, my parents ending up leaving us wanting. Like many children, Jewish mainly in the cultural sense, I coveted Christmas, the trappings of which permeate our culture.

We lit the Hanukah candles, did the fried food and such, but “Santa” brought our presents on Christmas morning. The thing is, we weren’t allowed to have a Christmas tree. We didn’t have a fireplace, but I once actually hung one of my little white stretch socks from my bedpost. I don’t even think my parents noticed.

It’s no surprise that as soon as I was married—to an Italian—I got a tree. With no money for ornaments, it was decorated with Christmas cards. But the lights were the old fashioned kind that looked like candles. And the ornaments I later collected mimicked those trees of the olden-day movies of my youth.

When I split from my husband, I also chucked the artificial tree for the real thing.(Although, he took the Lionel trains with him.) Among my warmest memories are going with my son to a small farm in Farmingdale, N.J., to chooce our tree.

I enjoyed many a Christmas Day as my children grew. (Yes, we continued to light the candles & eat the latkes.) When they were tiny, I put the tree in the playpen. I loved wrapping the gifts, which I often did with home decorated newspaper. For me, it was all so fresh.

My friend Jean taught me how to bake cookies, and I had a collection of tins. I’m probably one of the few that included my grandma’s home-made mandelbread, though. I spent alot of time covered in flour.

My parents would arrive early, laden down with shopping bags full of gifts, and we all chilled out for the entire day. Our meal was another turkey feast with all the trimmings. Yes, there was tension and some sour years, but I choose not to go there. Not important.

When the kids grew and no longer came home for the holidays, it died a natural death. There are no grandchildren (as yet?) and each lives 4,000 miles away in opposite directions. So I’m on my own.

Which brings me back to this day, Christmas 2009, now almost half gone. By the time most of you read this, your Christmas will be but a memory. Hope it was warm and wonderful.

And that’s the way the Christmas cookie crumbles.

Tiger’s tail: so many puns, so little time

2009-12-17T11:32:00.006-05:00

OK folks, I know I’m a little late to the party. But my confession has been held up by negotiations. You know the drill by now: my agent is shopping my story around the media to get the best price before I can make a full confession. So I can just lay out the bones for now, so to speak.

Tiger and I crossed paths as I was leaving work. He was dashing out of a neighboring golf store having forgotten to pack his favorite golf socks. He was appearing at the nearby Bobby Jones golf course later that day.

What can I say? (that hasn’t already been said, and said, and said.) Our eyes met and it was instant chemistry. Yes, I know I’m 30 years his senior, but “soul mates” know no age barrier. The details of how we got it on etc. will be left for the aforementioned interview(s), but let me just say, ours was a deep relationship.

Tiger let me know right away how boring all those beautiful blond tight bodies (such as that of his elegant wife) can be, how he longed for the heavy loose flesh of a well-seasoned cougar. But ours was much more than a physical thang. We spent hours in philosophical discussions, interspersed with hours of tantric sex to which I introduced the dear boy.

In the end, though, I sent him on his way, concerned he was becoming too attached to me.

Ridiculous? Of course it is.

As much as I’ve tried to avoid it, though, the marathon of blond bimbos parading before us with hand outstretched, to confess (brag?) of their sexual encounters with Tiger turns my stomach. I am making no moral judgments here, you understand. But if you have an affair (By the way, these women were not “mistresses.”) with a married man, the very least you can do is keep your MOUTH SHUT. Shame on the so-called main stream media for paying these women to talk. YUK.

I am among the minority who believes Tiger Wood owed us his skill on the golf course. Period. Yes, I know he signed on to promote products and these folks certainly are within their rights to turn their collective backs on him. But the only children he is a role-model for are his own. And the only person he betrayed is his wife. If we insist on elevating sports figures to sainthood, because they can swing some variation of a stick, or jump high or throw long etc, then we deserve what we get.

Unlike Clinton and Stanford, Tiger wasn’t on the public payroll when he was getting it on.

So now Tiger will disappear for a while, and we will move on to tearing down the next idol. Then he will appear on Dancing With the Stars, and we will applaud his “smooth moves”...and the beat goes on.

memories of Baby M redux

2009-12-13T08:28:00.003-05:00

A front-page story in today’s New York Times updating the status of surrogate parenting in the U.S. again triggered a flood of images, so I am reposting this piece from last May. This post continues to generate far and away the most hits of any other. Surrogacy remains an unregulated minefield of heartache.

Twenty-two years ago, I was a fledging reporter with the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey when we were ground zero for the story of stories. I've always thought of it as the flip side to abortion. It was my immersion into pack journalism.

Melissa Stern is now 23 years old. Back then she was known only as Baby M, an infant at the center of a landmark custody battle revolving around surrogacy.

First a recap:

Mary Beth Whitehead of Brick Township, answered an ad in the APP to help infertile couples. Whitehead signed a $10,000 surrogacy contract with William and Elizabeth Stern of Tenafly, agreeing to be inseminated with his sperm and then give the baby up to the Sterns.

But Whitehead refused to turn over the child, whom she called Sarah, invoking a media circus worthy of a TV movie. Actually, I think it was made into one. The Brick police raided the home, returning the infant to the Sterns, whom they had named Melissa. Whitehead sued for custody.

Among all the ethical and cutting edge science questions, there was the “class” issue. Did the Sterns affluence, that of a biochemist and a pediatrician, give them undue advantage over Whitehead, a high school dropout married to a sanitation worker?

(an aside: Local newspaper reporters would chaff at calls the Whiteheads were “working class”. Her husband's salary of $35,000 was considerably more than any of us made at the time. So much for a college education.)

On March 31, 1987, Superior Court Judge Harvey Sorkow upheld the contract, terminating Whitehead’s parental rights and taking Elizabeth Stern to his chambers to adopt Melissa.

On that day, I joined the flood of media camped out on Whitehead’s lawn in the now familiar scene, awaiting that decision. I was petrified and overwhelmed, decidedly out of my league and eager to prove myself.

As the hometown paper, I felt special pressure. After all, her front lawn was less than 10 minutes from my own. I was on first name basis with many of those Brick cops she so detested. I knew my paper expected me to find some fresh angle to a story beaten to death, some way in through the barred door to the emotions inside.

I watched hot-shot broadcast media types so desperate they interviewed young children milling about on their bikes who parroting their parents’ words proclaimed: “a contact is a contract.”

Then the familiar “slap” of a newspaper hit the driveway, our newspaper.

The Press smartly paired me with one of out most talented and aggressive photographers who had been shadowing Whitehead for the length of the story. He immediately slapped the paper into my hands and shoved me toward the front door. I took a deep breath, swallowed and knocked. A beat later I was looking into an extraordinary pair of crystal blue eyes. She was indeed striking. Newspaper photos didn’t do her justice.

Mary Beth smiled and reached for the paper. She was gracious but unyielding. I failed in my mission to cross the threshold and the surging crowd behind me fell back, although Tom got off a few shots.

In the end, with a bit of insider info, I was able to slip away from the pack and interview the sister-in-law at her house several blocks away. It was a second hand story, but I was the only one with it, earning me a bylined story running along the bottom of the jump page. At least I didn’t shame myself.

Whitehead appealed by the way, and on Feb. 3, 1988, the New Jersey Supreme Court voided the contract and adoption, restoring Whitehead as Melissa’s mother with visitation rights. They ruled a fit mother cannot be forced to give away her baby. In this case, a contract was not a contract.

With medical advances, gestational carriers, who have no genetic relationship with the children they bear, have since replaced paid surrogates in most cases. But the shadow of Baby M lingers in New Jersey, barring such carriers from receiving more than medical and legal expenses; compelling them to give birth outside the state to collect a fee.

62.5

2009-12-06T21:22:00.001-05:00

Wednesday was my half-birthday. NO, I’m not one of those boomers crazed by advancing age. However, it’s impossible for me not to notice that I am now closer to 63 than 62.

It’s just that Dec. 2 is my brother’s birthday. He was born exactly 2.5 years after me, under unusual circumstances. Neither of us was suppose to be born. Let me give you one piece of advice: If you can arrange it, don’t let your birth make medical history. Please, take my word for it. For now, let’s just leave it at that.

Back to my half-birthday. Actually, now that I think about it, my brother suffered through this concept also. My parents never let either of us have a birthday to ourselves. It definitely was a pebble in my shoe and certainly didn’t help our sibling relationship. Not too long ago, one of my mother’s best friends told me she never understood why my folks insisted on the practice.

So even though those days—and my parents--are long gone, the legacy remains. Without conscious effort, I can’t help knowing the exact day I am closer to my next birthday. When someone asks my age I start saying, “...I’m going on (insert next birthday age here). I’m always making myself older than I really am. I can’t seem to help myself.

My brother would have turned 60 years old on Wednesday--if he had lived. He orchestrated his exit from this plane of existence 21 years ago. But that, too, is a story for another time.

One thing’s for sure, I’ll never forget his birthday, no matter how long I live.

(I apologize for this brief entry, but I’ve been distracted by my daughter’s recent visit and radical changes in my work schedule. I’ll get back my rhythm in a bit. )

the cheese stands alone: year 13 repost

2009-11-26T07:57:00.004-05:00

November 26

Today my mother died. Not TODAY, today, but on this date 13 years ago. My mind refuses to remember the exact date. Maybe that’s because it was “two days before Thanksgiving” and that’s one of those holidays that moves around. Also, I tend to confuse it with President Kennedy's death.

My body, however, always knows it’s coming. There is no way I can forget to remember. For a short time last week I panicked because I couldn’t find my dad’s old black Filofax (remember them?) in which I list such things. I was just about to call my Aunt Sally and shamefully ask, when I found it in one of my many shoeboxes of stuff.

The column I wrote after she passed, became one of my most requested and responded to. Years after I left the paper, I would run into people looking for a copy, or telling me how they had passed it along to their own daughters. In that spirit I offer it once again:

I have come down with a severe case of chronic terminal adulthood.

Two days before Thanksgiving, my mother died. With both my father and younger brother having preceded her, I have become the last standing member of the family in which I came of age. And frankly, this is one of those times when there is cold comfort in the knowledge that many others are being propelled through an identical emotional gauntlet.

So, I have become – in the words of self-help guru John Bradshaw – not only a “terminal adult,” but an “adult orphan.” To those who haven’t yet experienced the last of their parents’ passing, it may seem a bit self-indulgent to consider oneself an orphan when one is just shy of 50, but it really is an accurate description of what it’s like. There is something both scary and liberating about finding myself in this position. As Janis Joplin once sang: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Ain’t it the truth.

My father used to say that when he was a young man attending family functions, he was seated at a table near the door with his cousins. Then, one day he turned around and realized he was in the front of the room, with nowhere left to go and all eyes upon him.

In the month since my mother’s death, I have barely touched on the emotional work. With all the pressing, practical details, it’s almost easy to avoid the crushing realization that the parenthood fantasy is ended. Gone. There no longer exists in this world someone to whom I am all-important, someone to always be there, someone to willingly place his or her body between me and the grave.

Aside from terse financial realities, there is all that stuff. The stuff, not only of their lives, but also of mine. A melange of memories. Sorting through it bounces me back and forth in time – very unsettling.

The passing of seconds, hours and days are indistinguishable. I rise each morning and go about the rituals of life, but I am disconnected. The world spins freely without me. And that’s OK.

Oddly (or maybe not so oddly), the only place I approach wholeness is in the solitude of my mother’s house. It still looks, smells and feels as if she stepped out for a walk. I watch TV from her recliner, wade through a mass of papers on her desk and heat the last of her frozen homemade vegetable soup for dinner. Some nights, I even sleep in my parents’ bed.

For me, she will not really die until I dismantle her home, scattering her worldly goods. I begin, slowly and singularly, shaking off offers of help. I am not in a rush. In a weird way I savor the chores, perhaps as one last parting gift. I want to do it right – as if there is such a thing.

As many others of the Great Depression generation, she saved everything regardless of the logic. I found niches filled with folded paper bags of every description, a can of old twist ties, a collection of more take-out plastic food containers than a caterer would need, receipts more than a decade old, handbags with broken straps, an evening gown I wore at 17 to a cousin’s wedding – and so on.

I ask my children, extended family and her friends what they want. Their choices are surprising: a vase from my own childhood; a pair of wine goblets: a set of fruit knives, a tiny teddy bear. As for me, I can’t decide on what to sell, what to give away and what to keep. I am literally dizzy with indecision. What do I do with all those bowling trophies?

For the first week or so, the answering machine in the den hummed with innocent reminders of missed doctor’s appointments and confirmations of future appointments never to be kept.

The answering machine is quiet now; there is no blinking light announcing new messages. Well, almost no blinking light. I confess to dialing the number once or twice just to hear that familiar voice promising to return my call.

thanksgiving

2009-11-22T08:32:00.002-05:00

It matters not that I have to work Tuesday and Wednesday, my Thanksgiving holiday started 27 minutes ago when I saw on fb that my daughter’s plane was leaving the gate at Heathrow. I shall be at the Tampa airport gate at 10:30 p.m. to greet her.

It’s been 14 months since I been close enough to hug my eldest child and only daughter, and I miss her muchly. She has made her home in London for almost a decade now, and our visits are few and far between.

Her brother just closed on his first home, having moved with his wife to Seattle from New York after being recruited by Microsoft. So I live roughly 4,000 miles from each of my offspring. It is even rarer for all of us to sit around a table. This will not be the year.

Yet, I am grateful. They are healthy, extremely talented people, leading sound productive lives. Not only are they my children, but I like and admire them—and would choose them as friends. Not too shabby.

A recent post referenced the defunct TV show Northern Exposure, and once again it flits across my mind. It was Shannon, my daughter, who turned me on to the quirky show, which became my all-time fave. Set in the fictional town of Cicely, in (pre-Palin) Alaska, it had a Thanksgiving episode in which the native folk celebrated by throwing tomatoes at it’s white residents.

All of that aside, Thanksgiving is just about my favorite holiday. The reason? Simple. It’s ALL about the food. Period. It doesn’t hurt that I love Turkey et al. (My son once made a complete Thanks dinner for my birthday party in June!) And I’m Jewish. Who else has a holiday around fried food (Hanukah)? Except for Yom Kipper, we never miss an excuse to chow down. We even snack at the cemetery.

I also have warm memories of family Thanksgiving as a child, which translated into holidays for my own kids. And this year, I get to spend the day with one of my own children. OK, so she says she may roast a chicken. That’s OK by me.

Happiest Thanksgiving to all...

santa on a cycle

2009-11-15T13:35:00.004-05:00

So I’m out doing errands late this ayem, in the left turn lane of the (first) supermarket of the day. I notice a motorcycle cop in the opposing lane, followed by Santa on a cycle. Then, I see hundreds upon hundreds—I kid you not—of Harleys coming at me. Each rider carrying a teddy bear of some kind, from tiny to life-size. There was honkin’ and waving as the swarm of cycles seemed endless. I honked and waved back, determined not to be put off by the delay.

I know the big bikes come our way each year this time, but for the life of me can’t remember when. Each year I am taken by surprise.

They are by and large a merry middle-aged and up bunch, likely lawyers, accountants and dentists out for a fling. Not a Marlon Brando in the crowd. Women are both passengers and riders these days.

It reminds me of an episode of Northern Exposure, when Ruth Ann (well up in her 70s) steals Chris’ bike and joins up with a few rough looking dudes for a ride through the Alaska countryside. Turns out, the men are as I describe above, on a short foray from their lives, and have to pull out datebooks to find time to get together again. An adult version of a “play date.”

Life. It happens to all. Yet we all need room for play, regardless of how long we’ve been here this go round. Thanks guys, for the reminder.

coeds & sex-toys & Duke—Oh my!

2009-11-09T07:46:00.005-05:00

A campus religious leader is up in arms over a Duke University study involving coeds attending parties where sex toys are offered for sale—at a discount, no less.

Now, these are the stories that have me salivating for me ol’ newspaper column. You just can’t make these things up, folks. That the director of the Duke Catholic Center is upset about such a “study” rates a “DUH.” But if I were a parent of a student—or even a student—I’d be pissed off also. Not to mention ashamed of my alma mater.

This is DUKE UNIVERSITY, people, not Daisy Duke University. And all those associated with one of this country’s top schools deserve better, especially at today’s prices. Talk about a bogus use of university resources.

The study reportedly invites coeds over age 18 to parties with erotic toys, lingerie and games. The women complete surveys about their sexual attitudes before and after the parties and get product discounts. Does it occur to you, Dukesters, that the women are just interested in getting a good deal on the product? How valid would such a “survey” be?

A spokesman for Duke said the sex-toy party project went through the peer review process. Boy, how I’d like to have been a fly on the wall during those meetings. Really guys, what legitimate academic truth will result from a university run cut-rate sex-toy party? Perhaps some young woman will report a more receptive attitude toward Ben Wa balls or fur-lined handcuffs. And this proves what? Where is the legitimate scholarship here?

This is the generation that gave us “friends with benefits” and “rainbow parties” for those not much out of middle school. Unless these women are from some fundamentalist cult/religion, I can’t imagine they would find sex-toys anything but a wholesome diversion. Face it folks, this generation would agree that President Bill didn’t “have sex with that woman” because they don’t consider “oral” to be sex.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m all for open and frank sexuality. I came of age with the Pill and the pre-AIDS free love 1970s. I adore Dr. Ruth. Now there’s a person who added to the national sexual discourse. And she isn’t above marketing her own sex toys. But I digress.

I’m gonna let you in on a little (not so) secret from my past. Back in the day—pre internet et al--my brother ran several “adult bookstores”. And during a lean period of unemployment, I briefly worked for him. The stores were sealed boxed with no windows, not a real pleasant place to eat your lunch, I might add. And let me tell ya, there isn’t much I haven’t seen in the way of sex-toys. So I’m not offended by the subject matter, but by the fact that this project lacks redeeming academic value.

As for this old broad, my favorite sex-toys come permanently attached to a human being. No batteries required.

playing with time

2009-11-01T11:10:00.001-05:00

When I was not much more than a tot, my dad told me that story about one twin going off into space and returning years later, not having aged, facing an old twin—illustrating Einstein’s theory of relativity. Way cool thought I. And every since I’ve been fascinated by time travel.

I can’t resist books, TV shows, movies et al that make use of the device. From a Wrinkle in Time, Star Trek to Quantum Leap, I gladly accept the premise although the classic time paradoxes can give me headache. (Such is the case with the ultra-convoluted Lost, which I no longer watch.)

Now, I know that “time travel” is not possible according to scientists. And as enticing as the concept is, I’m not sure I’d opt to travel either way if given the choice. The past too sad (see Our Town), the future a mondo spoiler alert. OK, so it would be more than a little tempting to get in on the start of Microsoft, Apple, pantyhose (Peggy Sue Got Married) and bottled water. But then we come up against that “changing the past” thang.

However, we all do time travel, don’t we? Take today, the start of EST a 25-hour day in which we “fall back” into reliving an hour. Then there’s all that flying around the world in which we “gain” or “lose” time. But regardless of how much we humans play with time—we could crisscross the international date line every day—it will not halt our own personal march of time, unlike Einstein’s space voyage.

halloween cabin fever

2009-10-31T18:28:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my own personal Halloween horror.
It’s being stuck at home alone for the week culminating in the ghoulish holiday.

I’ve been down with bronchitis. And though I am feeling better, my chest aches from hacking, (I can’t take cough meds.) leaving me too exhausted to do much of anything. And will all the flues and such, I’ve made it a point to keep my compromised immune system out of harm’s way.

I had planned on working today, as usual, in the kid’s department at BN. Even though the company had the official holiday celebration last Saturday, I was gonna dress up for story time. I was actually looking forward to it. However, it was not to be.

But this is not a day to be laying in front of the tellie. OK, so most holiday fare sucks, but for me—decidedly NOT a fan of horror flicks—it sucks dirty canal water. And switching to the shopping channels leads to a real life financial horror for this kid.

I could use some REAL chicken soup. I make a killer version. It’s a combo of my grams (Never use onions, it sours the soup.), an Italian neighbor from decades ago (Use chicken wings), and my fondness for dill. I won’t bore you with the whole recipe, suffice it to say the soup is rich, thick with slivers of meat and somewhat green.

Since I can’t be bothered to shop, let alone cook, I send out for chicken egg drop soup. It’s rich with eggy goodness. It will have to do. As I’m eating, something jiggles in the back of me brain—a memory—the recollection of making egg drop soup for my sick father as a kid. I used Lipton’s chicken soup as the base. I don’t even keep the stuff in my pantry these days. I consider myself lucky. Egg drop soup is one of the few Chinese dishes worth eating down here.

Oh for a good book.

calling toto

2009-10-26T10:38:00.003-04:00

16,900,00 hits.
That’s what I got by googling “Balloon Boy”.
Then there’s the Halloween costume, tee shirt, the you tube spoof etc.
Add to that TV news and law enforcement pronouncements.

That’s a LOT of hot air—enough to carry the lad all the way to Oz and back.

And with all that hot air swirling around young Falcon Henne, (Not a bad choice of first names, eh?) I struggled with whether the world wide web needed my 2-cents. What the heck. Here goes.

The journalist in me squelched a flicker of incredulity when the “story” first broke. You see, it’s the 70th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz. My first thought was of a publicity stunt connected to that. I’m still amazed that no news outlet made that connection, especially when the hoax became obvious. Perhaps because there was no little dog along for the faux ride. Toto, we’re not in Colorado anymore.

Hey, if you recall, the “great and powerful wizard” was also a sham, a snake oil salesman carried to Oz by a runaway balloon, unable to get home. Having impressed the population by his stunning arrival, he sets himself up as a wizard, working puppets and effects from behind a curtain. Humm, now who in this scenario does that bring to mind?

Yet all this begs the question:
What’s worse than throwing up on national TV or having an unrepentant narcissistic creep for a father? (Poetic justice note: his publicity besotted father is being referred to as “Balloon Boy” dad.)

Answer: Having your life defined for you at age six. It’s being known henceforth, through one’s ENTIRE life, as BALLOON BOY. Regardless of how hard you work, how much you accomplish in this life you will never escape that moniker.

He could solve the Mideast mess, cure cancer or global warming singlehandedly and when he steps up to claim his Nobel Prize the headline will be: Balloon Boy Wins Nobel Prize.

Other less fortunate options:
Balloon Boy enters rehab—again.
Balloon Boy, where is he now?
Balloon Boy found dead at age (you fill in the blank).

I’m sure you get the drift.
The great and powerful Wizard has spoken.

moonshadow: novel excerpt

2009-10-19T20:18:00.007-04:00

Now for a change of pace. Following is a brief except from my novel Moonshadow .

Songs From the Wood

February 1975

My feet ached and my arm was beginning to stiffen from the weight of the heavy glass door. Every time I leaned into it, my bra strap slid off my shoulder, cutting into the top of my arm. My blouse tugged at the waistband of my pants. Less than four hours into my shift and already I was downright cranky.

Despite the bitter cold, the line waiting to get into the Back Bay Diner wrapped around the side of the building. With almost everyone having been ejected from a local bar at the 2 a.m. closing time, it wasn’t a particularly merry bunch either. They were cold, hungry and not in the mood to be put on hold. But they had little choice, as the Back Bay was one of the few eateries at the Jersey Shore open all night.

It was a normal Saturday night bar crowd for a mid-winter weekend. If it had been summer, the line would have snaked through the large parking lot swelled by Bennies, the locals’ name for summer-folk. Still, it was 2:45 a.m. and the crowd showed no signs of slacking off. They called me a hostess, although the duties on my 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift had more in common with that of a bouncer at a bar. I was the first woman to hold the job, and hold it I did.

The Back Bay was the nexus of the local Jersey Shore social scene, and with the drinking age at 18, the crowd was young and rowdy. The diner was a kind of a last chance saloon, with table-hopping in hopes of landing a bed partner as the rule. I often thought myself housemother to the world’s longest-running frat party. The place did have a few standards, though. Those who consistently dumped eggs on their waitress’ head, were particularly vulgar or refused to wear shoes would find themselves exiled. Since being banned from the joint put a fatal crimp in their social lives, I wielded more clout than my 5-foot 3-inch frame would suggest. Of course, this didn’t stop the line jumpers who were supposedly meeting people inside. By 3 a.m., playing the heavy got a bit old. I was glad I only had the role on weekends.

At 27, I had lived in Bay Harbor for seven years, having barely survived a brief marriage with one of its favorite sons. With Jeff gone, the kids and I lived in a converted summer bungalow within walking distance of the diner. I worked there on weekends, juggling college, kids and mountains of bills.

And so it was that night, business as usual. Then a young man in an olive green corduroy car coat, thick black hair falling across one brown eye, appeared at the door. As he pulled the glass door open, Susan, the formidable 6-foot tall red-haired cashier, drew her hand across her neck in an off-with-his-head motion, the signal that he was among the banned. I raised my arm to bar his entrance just as Susan realized she had mistaken him for one of his friends. He gazed down at me with disdain muttering “Yeah, right,” as he brushed past, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth like a character in an old World War II movie.

Obnoxious little punk, I thought. But I was shaken. In the few seconds his face paused inches from mine something happened. The oversized jacket and the mop of thick hair gave off a waif-like look that belied his arrogance. I wanted to grab his hair and throttle him. I wanted to grab his hair. It didn’t take me long to look forward to his coming in. He was always with his friends, of course, Frank, Marc or Warren. They would ask for the corner booth by the door, Don told me later, so he could watch me unobserved.

I did feel his eyes on me, however, the night Susan called the cops. It didn’t happen often because the management frowned on the practice and put a great deal of pressure on waitresses not to sign complaints against patrons, regardless of how drunk or obnoxious. But that night I had come to the aid of a green young waitress being hammered by four drunks in the corner booth across from Don and his friends.

“What’s the problem?” I asked the lead drunk.
“The fucking bitch messed up my order twice. I ordered over easy and these are hard as rocks.” He waved the plate under my nose. “She refuses to take them back again.”

I looked over at the waitress, who was shaking with anger and fighting back tears. I knew she hadn’t messed up the order, that he was too far gone to remember what he had said. I also knew she was afraid to take it back into the kitchen for a second time. Our head cook was a burly man with a foul temper who was not above throwing rejected plates of eggs at waitresses on just such occasions.

“Let me see what I can do.” As I reached for the plate, he made the mistake of grabbing my ass. That was enough for Susan.
Now, you don’t work at an all-night diner anywhere without getting to know local constabulary, so the sergeant and patrolman who answered the call were friends, especially Sgt. Robert Ryan who worked steady nights. He strutted over to the table, tapping his nine-man-flashlight—so named because he claimed he could take out nine men with its long, weighted handle—against the open palm of his left hand.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on,” he directed the biggest offender with a stern face. It wasn’t a question. “I understand you went beyond verbal abuse and got downright physical with this young lady.” He pointed the flashlight at me and shot me a dead serious look.

I stood off to the side and listened while the jerk rattled on, lying his guts out. But when he insisted I was flirting with him and welcomed the manhandling, I blew up.

“Donkey dust!” I screamed in his face before stomping off.
After seeing the men to their cars, Ryan came back into the diner and pulled me aside, placing one very large hand on each of my shoulders.

“Donkey dust! Donkey dust,” he exclaimed, waving his finger at me. “Here I am, trying to maintain a professional demeanor and your contribution is donkey dust! It’s a good thing you’re one of my favorite people or . . .” He made a fist and mockingly punched me in the face. We burst out laughing.

“So sorry, Bobby,” I gasped through my giggles. “I’ll do my best from now on to keep my colorful language to myself in these situations.”
As the name “Bobby” left my lips, I sensed Don’s eyes narrow. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him hunched over the table, drawing down hard on a cigarette. Nobody, but nobody, called Ryan “Bobby.”

One weeknight I was filling in for a waitress working the counter, when Don and Marc stumbled in. At 3 a.m., the diner was almost deserted. Surprised to see me, the two settled in at my counter. They were the only customers, so we chatted as they drank cups of coffee and munched on fries with gravy. We started to gossip about one of the older waitresses who always gave me a hard time. As she walked out of the kitchen, I leaned in close. By then I was looking for excuses to breathe his air.

“Now, don’t look, but . . .” I hadn’t so much as muttered the “but” when, in perfect unison, the pair turned smartly to look in the forbidden direction. I was simultaneously mortified and delighted.
Without realizing it, we started looking for ways to touch each other, going so far as to engage in an arm wrestling match at 4:30 a. m. one blustery morning during the lull between drunks and railroad men.
“I bet I could take ya,” I bragged, making a show of sizing him up. As a young girl I had taken down guys twice my size. It was something about the way I was built, leverage seemed to be on my side. And I had learned how to use their own arrogance against them.

“You gotta be joking, woman,” he shot back with a snort.
“Oh, yeah. Wanna feel my muscle?” I said, cocking my arm. He leaned over and gave the obligatory squeeze.
“Not bad . . . for a chick,” he conceded with a shrug. “How much are you willing to put up?” He leaned back in the booth and took a hit off his ever-present Marlboro. “How about . . .” he blew several smoke rings, “you cook me dinner?”
“You’re on. What do I get if I win?”
“I take you out for dinner, at a real restaurant, not here . . . Deal?”
“Deal.”

We squared off in the corner booth. At first I could tell he was toying with me, letting his arm fall off to the side. But when he had some trouble bringing it back upright, he realized I wasn’t a pushover and he might really lose. The smile slid from his eyes and was replaced by concentration. I fought hard, I really did. He beat me, though, fair and square.

“So, when’s dinner?”
“You really serious?”
“Deadly.”
“You really want to come to dinner?”
“You can cook, can’t you?”
“Of course I can cook,” I snapped, hesitating for a beat. “I tell you what. Here’s my number. You call me and we’ll arrange a time.”

Although I thought he was merely showboating for his friends, I took a napkin from the holder, borrowed a pen from Susan and scribbled my number down. I can see his face to this day, as he reached over the table to take the paper from my hand. He was grinning.

ps: If you'd like a look at the rest, I have a few copies available at a greatly reduced price.

supermarketing and other quirks

2009-10-12T16:46:00.001-04:00

Once again, I have put aside a “planned” post on the Duggar family for something more spontaneous.

On this, my day off, I was up and out earlier than usual to get a fasting blood test. I’m not one to put off breakfast any longer than necessary. No surprise there, eh? Afterwards I treated myself to a delicious low carb meal at Word of Mouth Limited, one of my favorite eateries, and headed out to St. Armand’s circle to see me ol’ bud Debby who owns Circle Books. I got there promptly at 9 a.m., only to discover the store doesn’t open until 10.

What to do?

Needing to pick up some groceries for the week, I decided to head out to the Long Boat Key Publix and then back to the store. It’s not my usual Publix, but I enjoy going to various supermarkets and noting how they vary, even in the same chain. At the high tone one on LBK I enjoy watching the women—many quite elderly—as they often dress quite smartly.

I confess. I am a supermarket voyeur. I look for reasons to go into a different market. When I first moved to Sarasota, I went out of my way to visit all the area markets, noting how the one in my lower income area had more Spanish foods, while the one on LBK stocked frozen Empire kosher chickens—for example. One particular Sweetbay market cooks my favorite whole turkey breast, which I buy and slice up for the week.

I like to take my time and walk down all the aisles, rooting out new and interesting items. I am not one to speed down the aisles tossing items into the cart. Recreational food shopping is among my joys. This has nothing to do with searching out the best prices. I am just as likely to stop at high-priced gourmet shop like Morton’s or stroll through Whole Foods. Often I buy little, but something about the abundance comforts me, calms me down.

Is that weird? OK, maybe it is. Get over it. We all have our quirks. Come to think of it, following are a few of the quirks I came across when I moved. I should add here that I took my driver’s test 45 years ago in New York State, when you took the exam on real roads and were given one chance to successfully parallel park in order to pass.

If you come to Florida:

--Forget all that stuff about driving on the right. Stay in the middle lane, otherwise you’ll get stuck in a ubiquitous right-hand only turn lane.

--Get used to “humping” down the road. We have speed humps instead of speed bumps.

--You know how we were taught to move into the intersection and wait for a chance to turn left. Forget about it. Around here, they wait behind the while line and think what we do is dangerous. That may be because the left-turn signal actually stays on for more than a millisecond and you have time to turn. Still, I find myself unable to hang back.

--Those diagonal white lines across roadways are not there as some pop-art to break up the monotony of the black top. They REALLY mean it here when they say you have to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. I know. It’s unbelievable. These people just step into the street without even looking. Who the hell do they think they are?

--And yes, the traffic lights really are long enough for those oldies to hobble all the way from one side of the road to the other. In fact, that’s why there are so many of us down here. We get old waiting for the light to change.

Free-range kids?

2009-10-05T16:58:00.006-04:00

So here’s the question: Shouldn’t we allow children as much freedom as we do chickens?

That’s an affirmative, says Lenore Skenazy.

Back in 2008, she wrote a column in The New York Sun detailing how she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone—that’s sans adult supervision, folks. Almost immediately thereafter she found herself on the morning shows labeled “America’s worst mom.”

The author of "Free-Range Kids" is in great company, it turns out, none other than PBS’s own Sesame Street, likely the premiere children’s TV show of all time. When the first--now 40-year-old--season of that acclaimed ground breaking series show came out on DVD in 2006, it sported this disclaimer: "early 'Sesame Street' episodes are meant for grown-ups and may not meet the needs of today's preschool child."

Huh?

The DVD shows children scampering through large pipes, balancing on planks between picnic tables, romping through New York City streets. Mon dieu!

Skenazy takes on a number of modern myths, including the widely held assumption that our country is more dangerous than it was when today's parents were children.

The crime rate today is actually lower than it was in the '70s and '80s, the author says, noting that even the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children admits that "stranger danger" is overblown. We are all watching too many Law & Order episodes. Instead, children should be taught how to talk to strangers, they say, since they may need help if they're really in danger.

Not only are toys being recalled left and right, but so are some books. That’s right, people—books. I know this, ‘cause I work in the kids department of a bookstore, and last spring spent much of my time rounding up such stuff. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t given a clue.

So instead of teaching our offspring how to deal with the world, we are trying—in vain—to child-proof it. Awful stuff can, and does, happen but we should prepare kids for what is more likely to happen—like being hit by a car.

The truth is we can’t protect our children from everything, all we can do is teach them as best we can, prepare them, allow them to develop confidence in their own judgment—and then get out of their way.

Yeah, I know. It sucks. But what can you do? It’s a parent’s lot. Think back on your own childhood. It’s likely you “went out to play” and arrived home in time to eat—no “play dates” and ultra-scheduled time. My own kids managed to grow up just fine without me hovering about. As a single mom. I couldn’t if I wanted to. I was too busy making sure they had a home to come back to.

My son was no more than 10 when he became fascinated with cycling and practicing to ride in the Tour de France. I found out years later that he would take off and ride until he got tired, then approach someone and inquire: “Excuse me, but what town is this?”

That’s just one of many things I’m glad I never knew at the time.

It’s no accident that in children’s literature--from fairy tales to Harry Potter--the parents are disposed of in some way before the first page. They have to be. Otherwise, they never would allow their children the freedom to have their adventure.

fearless

2009-09-28T08:43:00.002-04:00

Think of this as a continuation of the previous post.

It’s Saturday morning. I climb into the front seat of our blue ’52 Oldsmobile with m daddy for the hour-long drive into Manhattan, my mom and brother left behind at home in Syosset, Long Island.

I wear my silver Capezio tap shoes. When I put them on, tie the ribbons into bows, my movements become audible, there for the world to hear. Tap shoes make you impossible to ignore. And I, too, adore being at the center of my world.

The Charlie Lowe Dance Studio is cold and bare, with wood floors scarred by years of metal-tipped tap shoes. The big windows and floor-to-ceiling mirrors bathe the large room in light, leaving no perches in which to hide, no background into which to fade. Music comes from a battered upright piano off to one side, with a real piano player playing real notes, unamplified, unfiltered and raw, like the dancing.

We take our places in rows facing a mirror. There is little clowning around. This is a hard-core, professional practice hall, serious stuff. I can hear the bark of the male instructor as he calls out the time step: “Hop, two taps change, brush out, stamp stamp,” again and again. I can dance it still; his voice, his cadence, echo in my body more than 50 years later.

I feel his look, that glare, as he turns to evaluate our form, motioning the best examples to the front to lead.

Several times a year, I perform in shows sponsored by Macy’s. I am given brassy tunes, such as “The Glory of Love” and “The Trolley Song,” somehow cute when performed by a second-or third-grader. Nothing fazes me. I relish being on stage, taking command of an audience. It’s easy, natural. I assume it as a birthright. So enamored am I with myself that the first time I hear Judy Garland, I accuse her of stealing my songs.

Performing is my passion. From the time I utter a coherent sentence, I insist I am going to be an actress. In the long, dark, narrow hallway of my Aunt Sally’s Brooklyn apartment, I gaze intently into a full-length mirror. No older than 5, I am singing with all my heart and soul, oblivious to family chuckling, rolling eyes or muttering about Sarah Bernhardt. I need no one to complete my performance. I enchant myself.

Fast-forward a few years. I commandeer the living room for acting out the scores to Broadway musicals, either alone or with my best friend, Carin. We leap and strut across tables and couches, emoting like crazy.

Fast-forward several decades. And I wonder. What happened – not to the cute, sweet, water-colored girl in fading snapshots – but to the tough, fearless creature willing to step into the world with only confidence as her shield? I miss her.

"AWESOME!"

2009-09-27T09:42:00.005-04:00

Just saw my most favorite TV commercial. It's from the large Florida supermarket chain Publix to support youth soccer.

An overwrought father is watching his very young (looks about 3 years old) son at his first match. He suffers as his son falls, reaches to pick up the ball and so on.

Finally he goes over to the boy, obviously intending to console him:
Boy: "Did you watch me?"
Father: "Are you OK?"
Boy: "I WAS AWESOME!!"

Boy runs off.
Close-up of father's face dissolving into a smile.

Ah, to find that child inside us all.

Peter, Paul and Mary no more...

2009-09-17T14:11:00.006-04:00

Note to all you boomers out thar: It's official folks, the 60s be kaput.

The passing of Mary Travers puts the final nail in that otherwise very full coffin. And frankly, I’m getting’ mighty tired of saying farewell to the cherished.

The timing of the news really hit me, as I finish every Wednesday morning story time at BN by singing Puff the Magic Dragon with the bunch of parents and kids. (Many of the parents are so young they need the storybook to follow along with the words.)

By the time I got to see Peter, Paul & Mary perform live, she had fought back her leukemia with a bone marrow transplant and her signature blond tresses were short cropped. The group was at the auditorium in Ocean Grove, NJ, (which is like sitting inside a giant overturned boat.) singing to a sold-out crowd of aging hippies and their grandchildren. They didn’t so much “sing” as lead a sing-a-long. It was a warm and wonderful night. Comfortable.

And with their sweet harmonies, PP&M managed to be easy on the ear and the heart, even as their socially relevant lyrics hit their mark. I don’t know how I would have found Bob Dylan searing question, “How many times...” without them.

I admired their gentle constancy. They kept to their ideals, even when it was “unfashionable” to do so, although I never bought for a second the revisionist history the Puff wasn’t pot driven. It just didn’t matter.

Come to think of it, the impetus behind that question hasn’t changed, either, just the name of the war. The worst part of the 60s manages to live on—and continues bringing our young back in flag-draped boxes.

The answer, my friends, is (still) blowing in the wind.

Guiding Light fades to black

2009-09-14T09:34:00.003-04:00

After 72 years and 15,672 episodes they are turning off the lights in the mythical town of Springfield (actually Pea Pack, NJ). I learned the last episode of the soap opera Guiding Light would air next Friday while watching CBS This Morning yesterday.

Since, like too much of its audience, I had both aged out of the advertiser’s target market and returned to the workplace, this wasn’t exactly a shock. I can’t recall when I’ve seen the an episode of the show, which began in 1937. That’s 10 years before I whaled my welcome to this world. That’s when TV was considered a passing fad. Both had remarkable staying power.

Ok, so this isn’t exactly an earth stopping event. Except it is, in a way. Because the news stopped time for me, throwing me back to my Long Island childhood. Yup, another one of those. It was one of my mom’s soaps (along with As the World Turns). I flashed on laying across my parent’s bed on those days when I was home from school with some ailment, and watching alongside my mom—all comfy. Back then, the shows lasted only 15 minutes.

So I guess it’s only natural that I fell into following the convoluted storylines. As the shows grew in length to 30 and then 60 minutes, they shifted the time so I watched after school—or so I recall.

Soaps became something of a fashion for a while, very hip. When I was in college, there was actually a course called “Psychology of the Soap Opera.” And students would gather to watch together.

Then my own daughter, now 40, took to Guiding Light. And it served as a touchstone for us both. At times, when we found it hard to share our own lives, we had common ground. I was so grateful for that. There was always those folks in Springfield. Any problem you could imagine, they had. And they survived—until now.

So although I no longer watched, I guess it gave me comfort to know the world of Springfield still turned. What to make of a world without the ultimate star-crossed soul mates Reva and Josh, without the unending diabolical plots of Allen Spaulding and the rest of the population. What indeed?

Of course, I will be working when the last show airs, so I’ll have to check it out on the web after the fact. And that, my friends, is how the world now turns.

Separation anxiety

2009-09-06T13:01:00.001-04:00

I want to feel like I’m returning home.
Instead, I feel that I am leaving home.

Even after 8+ years, I can’t wrest my soul from the Jersey Shore. My separation anxiety, it seems, is geographical as well as human.

I am in “soak up” mode, sucking in the brine at the Spring Lake boardwalk, as if I could find a way to make it last all the way back to Sarasota. I linger outside of No Ordinary Joe’s in Red Bank until my coffee is cold, obsessively scanning the streetscape. I gaze out at the Navasink River and imagine myself on one of the sailboats floating by.

I admire those who boldly stride into the future.
My neck cranes toward the past.
I cling.

So I make lists of the good stuff : I have a job, a roof over my head, healthy children, good friends et al. I mutter thanks to the universe for the opportunity to be here again this summer.

And I don’t know what else to do but keep moving, dragging myself into the forward. Well, I do purchase a lottery ticket each week. The belief in magic dies hard.

Something funny happened on the way to the publisher...

2009-09-02T07:56:00.002-04:00

I became a blogger.

So I’m pausing to pat myself on the back—a bit—for crossing the year-one blogging divide. Not a small feat, or so I’m told. According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned.

I started this site last August 19, with a post about my daughter, without whose help I never would have made it off the ground.

I was not what you would call an enthusiastic blogger. Publishers and agents, who said they liked my second book, a few even loved it—yet they would not take it on. Since I no longer had my newspaper column , I was left without a “platform” they moaned, a demonstrable readership. (Even being called “early Nora Ephron didn’t help!)

Enter blogging. By casting my writing out onto the web, they opined, I would attract a following, create such a platform and thereby become publishable. That’s the theory, anyway. Reality, as always, tends to get in the way.

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, has reported that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views...There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

Okay, so my audience exceeds that, but not by nearly as much as I had hoped. Like many folks of my generation, I find myself so overwhelmed by the marketing of this thing that it freezes me into inaction.

So until/unless I figure it out, I have come to terms with what is. I am determined to continue—even if I am an audience of one. It is, at a minimum, a date with myself, a date to show up on the page at least once a week, to continue and not get tossed away. This is no small thing in my life. I meet this commitment—others, not so much.

I’ve had three months of free time to work on my second “novel” and have done next to bupkis, nada. Whatever creative juices have been given over to me dried up. I am the Sahara of the literary world. Continuing here, on this site, is helping me make peace with that and move on.

Next week I will be back in my “real life”, back in Sarasota, back at work in B&N. This blog will continue and at some future time I hope to find my way back to that book or on to new ones.

Hope you stay tuned...and it wouldn't hurt if you would pass the word along to others. Thanks.
span>

Curtains for Camelot

2009-08-28T11:37:00.001-04:00

The curtain has fallen.
Cut the applause and standing ovations,
There are no more encores.
Time to dim the lights and leave the theater.
Camelot is done.

It matters little what the remaining Kennedys of the so-called younger generation do, with the death this week of their “Uncle Teddy” the “dream” has died. (Even if Caroline does resume some political quest.)

And even knowing the Kennedy “Camelot” was as mythical as the literary one, it still saddens me. At first, as I watched Edward Kennedy’s casket escorted from his boyhood home for the final time, I couldn’t put my finger on why that might be.

Then it hit me—my adolescents and young adulthood was bound up with that family, for good or ill.

I will admit that as a teenager I enthusiastically bought into whole bag, delighting in the contrast between JFK and Ike. I felt as if the world was opening up, just as I was approaching adulthood, possibilities unbounded. A series of well-aimed gunshots cut short the lives of JFK and RFK . Others, like the affable JFK Jr., were lost to their own fatal misjudgments. But there always seemed to be another Kennedy to step into the void and feed the myth. Until now.

The “dream” that died with Teddy was not the one of political dynasty, power or privilege. It was the dream of my—and my generation’s—youthful view of this country and what our lives might be. As much as we boomers hate to admit it, the torch REALLY has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born to a very different reality and impatient with the masses of us clogging the road to their new millennium.

the puny penis defense

2009-08-19T11:39:00.001-04:00

Now the world knows mondo rip-off artist Bernie Madoff’s “other secret” thanks to his self-proclaimed former mistress Sheryl Weinstein. Bernie, she says, is puny in the penis department. This I learned last night watching the “news.”

And as we women all know, size CAN matter, both for good or ill. That’s the hard truth of it. So suck it up, guys. If you doubt me, check out HBO’s “Hung, ” a kooky comedy about an over endowed divorced high school basketball coach who needs money after his house burns down an bills himself out as a “happiness consultant.”

So now pundits are pondering if his super fraudulent life was the result of his less than adequate genitalia. Bernie was simply “overcompensating.” Shit, he must have a penis the size of a Ken doll. Come to think of it, Ken was sans genitalia. Oh, well. At least Madoff had balls, eh? He never met a buck he couldn’t steal. He even took his honey for all she was worth, she claims.

So now it’s out. His penis made him do it.
Hey, they once laughed at the Twinkie defense.

missing Woodstock

2009-08-16T11:51:00.003-04:00

So I’m missing Woodstock—again.

Forty years ago, I was the same chronological age as many of those at the hallowed festival. But in reality I was much older. I spent the time almost unaware of the goings on. You see, I was already married with an 7 month-old daughter. My choices had already constricted my life to a tiny yellow five room ranch house in Point Pleasant, NJ.

My Aunt Sally, on the other hand, summering in a nearby bungalow colony, responded to pleas for food. I did have a tenuous connection.

But as years have melted into decades, the distinction has faded. The images of the place, masses of flesh, mud and drugs, mixed with music , joy and freedom have sunk into our very souls. All of us feel we were there. (Gone, by the way, are less savory images of drug overdoses, overflowing toilet facilities and the like.)

That’s how I feel now, watching the celebration’s 40th birthday. It does, however, remind me how much of my own “era” I observed rather than participated in—such as civil rights marches and sit-ins. My only sit-ins were in the pediatrician’s office.

That child, now a 40 year-old resident of London, was certainly worth it. I would make the choice again. I would, really. I've never much cared for crowds after all.

32,850 sunsets

2009-08-15T11:47:00.002-04:00

I don’t usually run other folks columns, especially pieces making the email rounds. You know, the words of wisdom you find forwarded to your email addy from friends. Maybe I’m feeling mellow and introspective on this summer Saturday, but this one hit home, so I’m posting it.

This was written by Regina Brett, now 90 years old, and appeared in the The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, evidently some time ago. I think when someone of intellect looks back to share his/her insights, it behooves us to at least pay attention. Some, like the ones on retirement and credit, I ignored at my own peril. Others, while seemingly simple, are really hard to do. I have my faves. Which are yours?

"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me,” says Brett. “It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:”

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful..
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative--dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

Julie & Julia & Me

2009-08-09T12:01:00.002-04:00

Yeah, so I’m blogging about a film about a blogger. Sorta.

Julie & Julia is one delightful flick. Even being interrupted by a 45-minute evacuation from the theater didn’t hurt. (We were never told why the alarms went off.) The performance of Meryl Streep is everything you see in the trailers. It was just fun, so much fun I was sorry to see it end.

But along with my engagement in the dual storyline, (I’m not going into that here. It’s just a google away.) I found myself reacting strongly to the experience of nascent blogger Julie Powell working her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days—and that of nascent chief Child’s in France.

I could certainly identify with Julie’s concerns that she’s just sending her writing out into a literary version of lost in space. I still feel that way, even after almost a year. Is anybody out there? Does anybody give a damn?

I chuckled at her delight when her blog receives its first comment, only to find it’s from her mother—real close to home. And her excitement at getting 65 comments from “people I don’t know.” Here, I started slipping over into more dangerous territory—envy. Powell developed a real conversation with her “readers” who even sent her gifts through the mail.

My own stats, which are too easily checked, are silly low. Yet I am determined to continue. The climb up is incremental. Unlike Julie, I have no “gimmick.” That’s what the reviewers are calling her Julie/Julia project. However, I beg to differ.
What separates me from both Julie and Julia is passion, a focused passion. In both their cases it is food. Well, not just food. I am passionate about food, eating it that is. Their passion lay in the process, in the preparation of (and then the consuming of) said food.

Julie nurtures a love of cooking as a means of getting her through an otherwise drab existence (not unlike Child, by the way), before she starts her project. It’s not an artificial construct. Without that innate passion, neither of them would have soldered through to the end. Julie, her year of cooking dangerously, and Julia, fearlessly going where no American woman had gone before. Neither had a smooth ride, although both are blessed with amazingly supportive spouses.

The so-called “gimmick” of cooking her way through Child’s tome, is really what we journalists call a “hook.” It’s a means to draw people into the young woman’s life, as she struggles and juggles to navigate the year without losing her job, her husband or her sanity.

For Julia, her passions fall upon her rather late in life. She is still a virgin at 40 when she meets the man she marries—also a most passionate relationship, by the way. Her cooking career begins after as “something to doooooo.” Julia masters the cooking easily enough, but getting that now familiar opus published, while following her adored husband with his diminishing career around Europe almost proves her undoing.

What saves the film from ending up as a fairytale, is the reaction of then 90-year-old Julia Child to Julie’s blog—she is unimpressed, calling the young woman disrespectful and not serious. Thankfully for the upset young woman, this news comes to her after the project is complete and accolades pour in. Her husband rightly reminds her that it’s the “Julia in her head” that matters.

Since Nora Ephron combined a bio partly penned by Child and her grand nephew, along with Julie’s book on her project for the movie, we are left with the real sense, that if Child were still alive, this film would not have seen the light of day. And that would have been a shame.

shaken & stirred

2009-07-31T12:42:00.003-04:00

The thing about Walter Cronkite’s passing is that it stirred memories of a time long gone and shaken loose others. I should have expected it. Yet, as is often the case, these things have a way of ambushing my emotions.

All the Cronkite memorials naturally keyed in on the Kennedy assassination, the days surrounding November 22, 1963. And the power of seeing those black & white images again, snapped me back in time, riveted.

But that passage of time also left layers of poignancy on the images, once so crisp and familiar. The solemn procession under the watchful gaze of the stately young widow, punctuated by a toddler’s salute, weigh on me differently now, now that they are all gone.

And my thoughts turn to Caroline, as they did on July 16, 1999, when that toddler, then 38 years old, old died along with his wife and sister-in-law in that plane crash. Because she is the lone survivor of the immediate family of her birth. And I know what that’s like.

Yes, it’s odd for me to identify with one so accomplished, so wealthy, with so much extended family and resources. And yet I do. Both of us outlived parents and a younger brother. That’s enough for me.

In my case, my brother was the first to leave, a suicide at age 39, ending a life of emotional pain. Neither of my parents really recovered from that.

No one knows why my 75 year-old father died after a routine operation removing age-old adhesions blocking his bowel. He came out of the operation, regained consciousness, even sat up, before his body started shutting down. An autopsy revealed nothing, nothing medical that is. I’ve always believed he, too, chose to go. My mother was battling lymphoma and I don’t think he wanted to wake up one day without her.

My mother, on the other hand, never forgave him for “leaving her,” and fought on for 15 months before joining her husband and son. Her heart just gave out.

I was never much of a “family” person. And in the 13 years since my mom’s death, have been shocked at the grief and deep aloneness—much greater than simple loneliness—that overcomes me at times such as these. I have lost my moorings.

From Walter Cronkite to Caroline Kennedy to me.

Memory isn’t linear and once awakened, we never can know where it will take us.

the Viagra diaries

2009-07-26T11:56:00.003-04:00

Economic hard times are leading to fewer hard-ons for some seniors.

New Jersey says senior citizens will have to pony up for their own Viagra starting next month. Another unforeseen consequence of this down economy.

The NJ Department of Health and Senior Services announced the change in letters sent to 76,000 people enrolled in its two low-cost prescription drug plans for senior citizens.

(In addition to impotency drugs, the state will no longer pay for so-called "cosmetic drugs" that treat obesity or skin conditions. Nor will it cover vitamins or cold medicines. But methinks these changes won’t cause much of a stink)

Geez. I guess this means the loss of a low-cost recreational option for many of these folks, at least—both men and their partners will be at a loss, so to speak.

There are likely health benefits to a continued full sex life, I wager, such as lower blood pressure and less depression. Hey, I wonder if the increase in antidepressives, or other meds, will cut into the dollars the state figures it will be saving.

Years ago, when erectile dysfunction made the TV commercials as “ED” by none other than former presidential contender Bob Dole, I wrote a column detailing how turned off I was by the whole turn of events.

Anyone who’s met me, even casually, can tell I’m about as far from a prude as one can get, yet I still can’t stomach those commercials for “when the time is right.” Especially that one for the herbal remedy featuring gawky “Bob” who prances around with a shit-eating grin, while swooning women wonder at his “new-found confidence.” There’s even one where a guy looks over at him longingly while holding a limp water hose. OY.
I’m also glad I don’t have to answer some youngster’s inquiry about “a four-hour erection” and the dangers of...

Listen, I’m as much of a fan of the end product as the next gal (or guy for that matter). Yet, I dunno. It just has no grace, no charm, no taste to have this pushed at me on the tellie. Yeah, I hear ya, there’s all that feminine hygiene stuff also, but that just doesn’t have the sleaze factor. Although, ads for the new KY-Intense, that promise a gigantic increase in that “special moment” for us woman falls into the same category. It may not require a prescription, but at $28 bucks for a small tube, it is pricey—too pricey for me, girlfriend. I’ll just work harder.

It almost makes me yearn for the good ol’ days, when bras where shown on forms instead of the real life “girls”.

Guess I’m really getting on--instead of getting it on--eh?

asylum

2009-07-20T09:56:00.004-04:00

A front page article in the NYT the other day describing the new Obama administration’s policy of granting political asylum to abused foreign women, brought me back to a column I wrote way back in October of 1994. Unfortunately, it’s still relevant, so I thought I’d post it.

Survival is a victory for this woman

I switched on the TV while getting dressed and heard the familiar voice of Gloria Steinem.

My admiration for this woman has only grown as years go by. Not only does she display an incisive mind, but she continues to appear on the tube – having reached a certain age – without benefit of a smear of lipstick. I’ve always been a sucker for those with the courage of their convictions.

Anyway, she was taking about the new issue of Ms. Magazine and its extraordinary cover. Front and back, it portrays a Vietnam Memorial-type wall. On it are inscribed the names of women killed by domestic violence in the past four years.

As Steinem answered questions on the now ubiquitous subject, she concluded by saying that as grim as the statistics are, at least now the problem has a name. Twenty years ago, she added, it was just life.

Twenty years ago…….

Actually, it was about 27 years ago. I was pregnant with my daughter when we moved into the little five-room yellow ranch house in a small Ocean County town.

I was a few months past my 20th birthday. She was four years older and already had children. We became inseparable fairly quickly, which was rather odd. She was tall and preppie; I, short and ethnic. She was Junior League. I was La Leche League.

But something grew between us that has spanned almost 30 years, five children and two marriages, despite the fact we often went for years without much contact. In those days, we lived in each other’s houses. She taught me to bake cookies. I convinced her that sheets didn’t need ironing.

Neither her mother nor her husband had any use for me or my “bad influence.” Why she even breast-fed her last child. By age 30, she was restless, searching for something not to be found at home. I didn’t understand.

My own marriage was over. Regardless of what her family thought of my “loose” life-style, in reality, I was scared, lonely and bowing under the financial and emotional weight of supporting two children under 5 years old. So, I wasn’t about to encourage anyone to frivolously follow in my shaky footsteps.

Under my insistent questioning, she finally broke down and told me the truth.

The beatings had begun when she was pregnant with her first child. His need to control every aspect of their environment – from the finances to the temperature and lighting -- was obsessive. She never knew what would set him off. And when she tried to leave, he would physically bar the door and take her car keys.

She hid the evidence with grit and cosmetics, riddled with shame and guilt. After all, her handsome, athletic husband was a brilliant professional with an advanced degree. He made a fine living. It must be her fault. After all, that’ what he said. She was unstable and an incurable spendthrift, he insisted.

Our modest homes were no more than 10 feet apart yet, I never had a clue. My shock quickly turned to fury.

At 30, something snapped. She was unwilling to continue in a dark, cold world forever. So, she began carving out a life of her own. It was slow and not without cost.

She stayed for the kids, she said, and for the financial security. But she went back to school, got her own advanced degree and established a career, an independent life.

The physical beatings ended, but the verbal and fiscal abuse continued. The more independent she became, the more affairs he had. After each one ended, he bought her a wedding ring. She has an extensive collection.

The shell of a union officially died earlier this year. He found himself someone younger and more acquiescent. He has already remarried. After 30 years of marriage, she cherishes her solitude and independence. She no longer eats dinner in a dark house with a cold husband or stews about his gun collection. She has a regular companion butt marriage is no lure.

She is among the lucky ones. Her name does not appear on that Ms. Wall. For that, I am eternally grateful.

where the heart is...

2009-07-13T08:35:00.003-04:00

Since my return up north for the summer, I have been considering the subject of “home.” What exactly is it? Where is it? Is it “where the hat is”? And if it is, as some say, it’s where the heart is, can the heart live in more than one place?

I’m not sure I know the answer, but I am sure that many folks surely have the same questions. Well, fairly sure. OK, so maybe I’m among the few who bother to think about these things. So sue me.

Regular readers of this space are aware I feel deep connections to several places separated by both time and space.

When I travel back to Syosset, Long Island, the Nassau County neighborhood where I came of age, there is indeed a sense of homecoming. It is a static homecoming, set in the 1950-60s and viewed through childhood eyes. My brain tends to screen out changes and emotions are stirred—egged on, I’m sure by the loss than comes as we age.

The pieces written on my time here in Rye, NY (see: what I did on my summer vacation, August 21, 2008 and return to Rye, June 11, 2009.) also touch on my youth, on the summers spent in the Catskills. Another visceral connection. A decided chunk of my heart is home amid the cool green mountains of New York.

Then there is the Jersey Shore, where I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life, where I raised my children, did my best work. I can get so gut wrenchingly homesick for the sights and smells of the place, it drives me nuts. But unless my children are with me for a “down the shore” foray, Point Pleasant, the actual town in which we lived holds little sway. I am somehow more connected to the neighboring town of Point Pleasant Beach, perhaps because it has both a real downtown and the boardwalk where much time was passed. And maybe it’s because my house of 40 years was stripped of its uniqueness by its new owners. I avoid going down that street now.

But this year, something weird hit me. I feel the most at home in a place I have never lived. How can that be? That place is Red Bank, where a best friend puts me up every summer. I walk downtown for coffee, which I drink outside at a café table. The view is identical to the photo on my home computer. From there, I easily travel to walk the Spring Lake or Point Beach boards and to visit others. And the hospital, a short walk from my friend’s home, has a dynamite view of the Navasink River from it’s café. Having lived across from the Manasquan River for decades, I love watching the action on a river.

Sadly, the one place I still do not feel at home is where I’ve lived for the past 7 plus years—Sarasota, Fl. I wish I could will myself to feel that sense of belonging that comes with being “at home.” In moving so far from all I know, alone, I acted against type, gambling it would shake up my moribund life for the better. The best I can say right now is that the jury is still out. I am better at hanging on to old connections that making new ones.

It surprises people—even those who know me fairly well—that my apparent extroverted nature is severely tempered by an introverted soul. I dislike parties, crowds and find it difficult to join things. When I first moved, I went to some social mixer-type things, simply looking for friends of either sex. I even went on one date. It was excruciatingly boring and painful.

The first two people I hit it off with, moved away. I do work with good folk and will return in the fall, once again, with determination to reach out some more, somehow. Yes, I’m well aware the fault is in me, not the place. I realized recently that I am much more comfortable as an observer, rather than a participant, so finding my way to journalism makes perfect sense.

I also tend have a tendency to blend into the lives of my friends instead of building my own—sounds a bit like a book concept. You know, a woman who lives her life by shuttling from one friend’s home to another, adopting and adapting to their lifestyles before moving on. Oh my, how hollow is that!

Whoa, this piece has taken an unsettlingly whiney turn. Enough of this.

Billy Joel, the voice of my Long Island youth has his own take on the subject as he sings:

Well I never had a place that I could call my very own.

That's all right, my love, 'cause you're my home...You're my castle, you're my cabin and my instant pleasure dome.I need you in my house 'cause you're my home.

A decidedly romantic, but methinks very dangerous concept of “home”.

Perhaps the simplest answer:
When someone asks “where are you from,” what’s your first response?

Death take a holiday

2009-07-04T10:15:00.002-04:00

Enough already!

The month of June was over rife with celeb deaths, it seems to me. Yeah, I know, it’s probably not statistically aberrant. I mean, folks die all the time and under those well-known skins, celebs are just human. (I know, it comes as a shock.)

But the never ending list of famous endings still seems a bit much—like their expiration dates all came due. They were all ages, also. The exits ranged from the natural and odd, quick and drawn out, painful and seemingly peaceful, expected and shocking.

June. Of all months to have death busting out all over.

This is where the internet comes in handy, for a list of those who have moved on. I confess these are a few names in there I’ve never heard of. And I know I’m getting on in years, cause quite a few of these folks aren’t that old to me.

Deaths in my extended family bunched up in August. We always seems to be marking one anniversary or another. When my uncle died some years ago, my aunt noted it was on one of those anniversaries, to which a cousin quipped: “It’s hard to find an open date in August.” (And yes, we laughed.) We have a rough sense of humor in our family, what can I say?

And July continues the trend. As I write this actor Karl Malden, 97 has just died. And from what I read, Patrick Swayze and Walter Cronkite won’t be far behind.

Perhaps that bit about celebs dying in threes should be amended to dying in droves.

For the morbidly curious, here’s the list in chronological order

June 3
Chicago blues legend Koko Taylor dies at 80
David Carradine, Accidental Death at72
1950s-'60s tenor saxophonist Sam Butera dies 81

June 7
Singer-songwriter Kenny Rankin dies of lung cancer at 67

June 8
Actor Johnny Palermo dies in car accident at 27

June 10
Jack Nimitz, Sax Player, a Big Part of Jazz History, Dies 79
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section Keyboardist Barry Beckett Dies 66
Ink Spots guitarist Huey Long dies at age 105 in Houston

June 14
Bob Bogle, Original Member of The Ventures dies at 75

June 23
Ed McMahon dies at 86

June 25
Farrah Fawcett dies of cancer at 62
Michael Jackson dies at 50
Sky Saxon - Band Member of The Seed dies 63

June 27
Gale Storm, singer, star of '50s hit TV series, dies 87

June 28
Infomercial Pitchman Billy Mays Dies at 50
Fred Travalena, impressionist and singer, dies 66

June 30
Harve Presnell, 'Fargo' Actor, dies at 75 from pancreatic cancer

Jon & Kate plus 8 divorce lawyers ?

2009-06-27T10:18:00.004-04:00

I confess.
I’ve watched Jon & Kate Plus 8, maybe half a dozen times—long before the present troubles. I was sucked in by the shear logistics of it all. And frankly marveled at her ability to keep on top of it.

But I found the so-called “reality show” uncomfortable viewing, even then. She was not a happy camper, or so it seemed. It wasn’t just that she continually told him what to do, but she was decidedly unpleasant about how she did it. She comes across as a bullying harpy. So it’s no surprise that a recent “poll” finds 61% of the country siding with him in the divorce action.

That’s not a bandwagon onto the which I will jump. Yes, she is easy to dislike, often roiling with anger and disapproval. But every coin needs a flip side to exist. And Jon is Kate’s. He is a whimpering mass of passive aggressive manipulation. And I know from first-hand experience, how such a person can subtly provoke one to rage. In my own youthful, brief marriage, I was more a Kate than a Jon.

Ironically, the photo always accompanying the story of the split comes from the episode where the kit’n caboodle flies to Hawaii and the couple renew their vows. Yes, I happened to catch that one. Leaves me wondering if that was the network’s idea or the couple grasping at straws—they didn’t have to pay for.

Although I read there is a prayer website dedicated to the couple, I also find the silence of the Christian community telling. Kate’s book publisher was a major evangelical house and the series drew heavily from that sector for its support. However, I’m not among those that believe that the evangelicals are any less likely than the rest of us to slow down to rubberneck at a roadside disaster.

Their network, TLC is banking on us to tune in for what I am afraid will be a media circus of a divorce—cause a reasoned, measured split won’t make for good ratings. They are so confident reports have them procuring a Trump Tower apartment (or its equivalent) for Jon so the pair can separate and continue filming.

I won’t be among those watching, though. Living through my own crumbling marriage and watching those of people close to me is fall apart is enough, thank you.

Somehow, I doubt the couple will provide a public service by showing us how this should be done. The two appear to agree on only one thing: The show must go on. Why? So the Gosselins can afford to divorce without sacrificing their bloated lifestyle? Give me a break.

sexting?

2009-06-20T15:55:00.008-04:00

For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
The mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
/span>Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)

-From satorist Tom Lehrer’s song, Smut

This has been bugging me for a while, so I figure I’d get it off my chest (so to speak). After all, what’s the fun in bloggin’ if you can’t bitch.

Just the coined word, sexting, is enough to set my teeth on edge. Is it just me, or is there precious little sex in so called sexting. I guess it sounded better than nude-ting or semi-nude-ting.

Casually flip through the news channels on any given day and your sure to come up with yet another tale of an adolescent girl caught using their cell phone camera for more than was intended—wearing a lot less than modesty allows. (I haven’t heard of a boy—gay or straight caught forwarding nudies photos of himself. But I’m guessing it’s out there .)

The stories are infuriating on so many levels.

The exploitation of many of these young girls. The same “if you loved me you’d do it” shit dressed in the latest technology, that young men have been pressuring females with ad infinitum.

And we adults are SHOCKED, SCHOCKED that such behavior continues. Considering the rampant sexual images bombarding our youth, the raging hormones and the lack of frontal lobe development in adolescents, this is disingenuous at best. Give a teenager an appliance or vehicle of any kind and they will find a short-sighted, stupid (although creative) way to use it. It goes with the territory.

The worst of it is the legal morass these young people fall into. The victims of overzealous, hypocritical and puritanical purveyors of the law. The stories sicken me. As one after another teen’s foolish or vengeful choice in pushing the “send” button effectively ruins their lives. I am not talking here about the embarrassment caused my the endless reproduction of these images, growing in concentric electronic circles. That would be bad enough.

I am talking about the application of child porn laws to hound these young people and their families. There are instances of convictions as purveyors of child porn leading to the requirement of registration as sex offenders. There are lost college careers and inability to find jobs. Ok, I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV, but it doesn’t take a law degree to know this is beyond ....

Where do you draw the line? In one instance, a high school girl is being prosecuted for a photo taken at a slumber party when she was 12, showing a training bra. A male prosecutor calling it “provocative” doesn’t come near to elevating such common girlish silliness to something criminal. In this case, child porn is in the mind of the beholder.

And I don’t buy that “We need to protect the children,” “It’s not my fault, that’s the way the law is written” crap. We all know that prosecutors have a great deal of latitude it what they pursue. Maybe, if they weren’t so distracted by this nonsense, the Bernie Madoffs of this world—not to mention REAL child pornographers would get a bit more attention.

Please, people. I am NOT defending this behavior. Yes, it can go beyond foolish to dangerous. But education, not criminalization is the answer.

If we are honest, we may admit to indulging in similar behavior at some time in our lives. But the damage was limited by the technology at hand.

Does anybody out there remember Polaroid’s???

twilight in the garden of predicable & sophomoric

2009-06-16T15:16:00.004-04:00

A few well chosen words about the Twilight Saga, an insanely popular teen series written by Stephanie Meyer and published by Hachette. I feel eminently qualified to do so, as I have spent the past four days buried in the four novels—and a good part of the past year lugging and stacking hundreds of copies, almost daily.

I tend to resist reading such overwhelmingly hyped franchises. I’ve never had the urge to read any Harry Potter, for example. And it took over a year before I would pick up Marley. But I digress

These phenomena are so profitable that publishers and bookstore owners drool. They burst forth from their designated markets to become “crossover books,” in this case from teen girls to women to film. I can’t begin to guess how many I’ve personally placed in the hands of moms, enamored by the “greatest love story ever.”

Now that I am on leave from my bookseller duties, I took the time to see what all the fuss is about. I still don’t know. I knew I was in trouble after 30 pages when I was so bored, I started riffling through chapters in search of some action, with no sense of loss. For those of you without a clue, it’s the story of a teenage girl Bella and a (teenage-looking) vampire Edward who fall for each other in the classic star-crossed love affair.

Listen. I was all prepared to fall under the spell. I’m well-up on my vampire lore, Buffy the Vampire Slayer being among my all time favorite TV shows. Of course, that series was created by Josh Wheden. ‘Nuf said.

Meyers is a competent enough writer, and she does a few interesting takes on vamp and even werewolf, mythology but... I list below a few of my turnoffs.

--The books are way way way too long. Situations are repeated in a seemingly endless loop. Book editors, it seems are a truly endangered species.

--We are asked to believe that a good “family” of vampires, some closing in on three digits age-wise, thinks it would be fun to do small town high school for what must be the umpteenth time. Really. What immortal being wouldn’t jump at the chance to take bio and calculus (not to mention gym) one more time?

--The foreshadowing is so heavy handed the pages are almost striped. Example: Bella moves from sunny Southwest when her airhead mom remarries, to live with her clueless father in the dreary Northwest town named—wait for it—Forks. Can you say “a road less traveled” ?

--These vamps are all things desirable, super strong, good-looking, magical, rich, smart etc. Being human is so, well, inconvenient. You have to eat, sleep, age and go to the bathroom. The messy business of feeding off humans is swept aside by these “vegetarian” vamps who make do by hunting wild animals on frequent “camping trips” .

--One interesting (and recurring theme in all vamp lit) is that sex between us humans and vamps is always dangerous. This enables the Bella-Edward love story to drip in desire but remain chaste, cannily effective in the teen genre.

--After pushing myself through 1,200 plus pages, I finally arrived at the final book, Breaking Dawn, an almost 800-page tome. I came close to skipping it and that would have been a mistake. It’s far and away the best—and in my view—the only one worth reading. Editing it down and adding some back story from the first three bloated books would have made one engrossing read. It actually managed to surprise me a bit. I love that.

--In the end, though, it’s really just another girl-falls-for-guy-and-gives-up-all-in-the-quest-for-happily-ever after—emphasis on ever. Is that really the best message to send to our young women?

I could go on, but why.

A final note: For a REALLY intensely well written series, one hell of a touching first love story with the complex layers of real literature, skip the teen section and head straight to the children’s department. Pick up Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, including the Golden Compass, the Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass. Buy all three at once, cause you won’t be able to put them down.

return to Rye

2009-06-11T17:18:00.002-04:00

They say that the sense of smell is the strongest evoker of memory. It certainly is so in my experience. The brine of the Atlantic mixed with damp wood brings back the NJ boardwalk—perhaps an endangered sense memory, though, as wood slats are replaced with recycled material.

But there is no replacing the smell of upstate New York. It smells like the 1950s summers of my childhood. I know, I’ve written about this before, but every time I return to the countryside north of New York City, it washes over and transports me.

It’s rich, green, damp and laden with as much memory as foliage. Salad days made concrete. Bungalow colonies with names like Blueberry and Kraus’s, and day camp color wars. (No, it wasn’t much like Dirty Dancing. That was much too upscale. Yet the film is oddly evocative. The 1998 flick, A Walk on the Moon, with Diane Lane was closer to our reality.)

So I returned yesterday and had my first morning walk with Angel, my friend Martin’s dog. The morning was dark, raw and wet. Lovely for me, not so much for Angel, who struggled a bit with her arthritis. Instead of lunging ahead, she was content to trot alongside and poke around. That was OK with me and my arthritis. We are both seniors.

I drank it in, so refreshing, mountain cool, like the fall days I so miss since my transplantation to Sarasota. Even the grayness was a pleasant change from the drumbeat of Florida sunshine.

So I settled inside today, to cozy up and read. I promised my friend Paula I would give Twilight a try. Sorry to say, that so far the immensely popular franchise leaves me bored. And considering how many hundreds of those books I’ve stacked, I am surprised and disappointed.

Later...

riding the auto train

2009-06-08T06:10:00.011-04:00

Friday,
June 5

12:50 p.m.
Phase one of my sentimental journey is complete. I sit in the Amtrax station in Stanford, north of Orlando. I am up at 5:30 to pack the car in between sheets of rain, clean out the fridge and drop Abbie off at the vet to board for a week. She is not a happy camper. By 10, I am on my way, stopping to down a bacon, egg & cheese McGriddle. There is something about being on the road that awakens the sleeping fast foodie in me.

I make great time, even though traveling I 4, especially during the week, is a nightmare. It’s one of those congested, shopworn roads constantly under construction--not to mention passing all the theme park exits and golng through downtown Orlando. On a good day, it's a 2.5 hour trip.

It’s one of those hurry up and wait scenarios, since the train doesn’t leave unit 4, but they want you there by 2. If you don’t get there even earlier you get a bad dinner seating and end up sharing your space with anxious parents and screaming infants…so I wait.

The Sanford station is old and shows its age. The small concession stand is shuttered. I’m glad I brought a salad to munch on as I chose the most popular 7 pm dinner. The food has always been quite tasty. And as a lone traveler, I’ve been lucky with dinner partners. On my first foray, I sat with a couple who spends summers in the Catskills with my favorite aunt. Once, I dined with three recent college graduates on their way to starting independent lives. It's among my favorite part of the trip.

I pause here to talk a bit about the storied train which has always intrigued me. It is the only one in the U.S, and at 3/4 of a mile in length, the longest passenger train in the world. There are no stops, just a straight run from Stanford to Lorton. (OK, so there is one stop to take on water, in the middle of the night in Florence, SC, ironically where I stop to spend the night when I drive.)

The trip takes about 17 hours and pulls into Lorton about 9 a.m. Then another round of waiting. This time for your car to be offloaded. My luck has been running out here. For the second year, I wait 1.5 hours to get back behind the wheel of my little red Honda Fit. The train carries 222 of a maximum 300 cars this trip. (Most of them in VERY boring shades.)

3:15
I settle into my seat and luck out. The nervous Nellie in the window seat en route to her home in Boston freaks because a kid is sitting behind her and dashes off to a pair of empty seats. So I'll have two seats to myself.

The sky opens up again and the day turns gray, sleepy grey. I am winding down but trying not to nap, cause I wanna sleep the night. It makes the trip go faster. My eyes are getting heavy, though, having been up since before dawn. I so wish the train would get underway already. Oh god, am I doomed to listen to cell phone conversations for 1,000 miles?

4:32
OK, so I’m beginning to feel like one of those airline passengers stuck on a runway. We are still sitting. This is a first for me. Dunno what the problem but antsy am I. Wanna get a going!

4:50
I am reminded of the worst part--the airline-like bathrooms. Oh, for a posh sleeping car with private bath and turn down service.

I have a soft spot for trains. They are another one of my many time machines, carrying me back to my Long Island childhood and the "change at Jamaica" cry of the conductor as my mom and I head into the city for a Broadway matinee. (Even in
London, I prefer them to the Underground which is way too deep underground for my taste-- unless bombs are falling.)

There is just something earthy and connected about a train, Without the need to drive, I am free to contemplate the passing sights, right now lush green farms with real trees and three horses grazing under shade trees by an inland water of some kind. Not a palm tree in sight. It could pass for the New Jersey or Pennsylvania countryside.Then there is the rhythm, the vibration accompanied by the clickity clack, very retro. Full disclosure: If you are sensitive to motion, be sure to bring meds, as the lateral motion can turn the tummy.

Being an old form of transport, trains pass through the old sections of towns, sometimes quaint, but more often simply shabby. As we slip by farms and homes, I find myself wondering about the lives contained within, something I used to do as a child, passing time in the back seat as my dad drove home from my grandparent's house in Brooklyn.

7 p.m.
A pleasant dinner of flat iron steak, fresh veggies and a raspbery/chocolate desert, with the affluent, as usual, on their way to Cape Cod and the like. I am the only one, however, who leaves a tip. UG!

9 p.m.
Lights are dimmed but I continue reading until 10 under the shallow overhead lamp.

5:30 a.m.
I give up trying to sleep. Although I've brought my own blanket and pillow (and a pair of comfy socks), my body refuses to find comfort. All the maneuvering, reclining, foot rests do no good. I long for a pair of Bose earphones and my sleep number bed.

6 a.m.
I head to the dining car for a early breakfast and meet a nice couple celebrating their 58th anniversary. My spirits lift.

9 a.m.
We pull into the station on time and hear the announcement to "detrain". My mind skips to Geroge Carlin's "deplane" riff and I chuckle.

10:30 a.m.
..and my sentimental journey continues on to Point Plesant to suprise a friend.

Leaving paradise

2009-06-01T07:59:00.004-04:00

I’d be dancing on air, if I had the time that is.
I’m too busy being busy. On Friday I get to leave paradise for a full three months.

Three months away from air so viscous it’s actually visible. Three months away from shelving books and screening out the incessant cries of toddlers forced to share the Thomas train table. Three months.

Late last Friday I received approval for (unpaid, of course) Summer Leave. There are few such glorious phrases in the English language. Each year I manage somehow to make it back “home” for an extended period. A young friend will move into my condo and care for my 14-year-old cat, Abbie.

Call it snowbird light.

By now, I am so homesick for the Jersey Shore its all-Bruce-all-the-time, combined with live streaming images of the surf and boardwalk. I dream of REAL rye bagels from Hand Rolled Bagels on Purdy Ave in Rye, NY,(Yes, I know rye bagels from Rye. What can I say? I don’t make these things up.) raspberry bomb ice cream, from Ryan’s on Shrewsbury Ave, Tinton Falls, NJ, and “Chinese” food that doesn’t make me gag. Dare I forget, NEW YORK CITY, the Yankees, TV channels with the correct numbers, the Spring Lake and Point Pleasant Beach boardwalks...

How, you ask, can I afford on a retail salary to take such time off? My bills don’t go on leave, that's for sure. I can’t, but I do it anyway. I am aided in this endeavor by dear friends who open their homes to me. In return, I make myself as useful as possible—house and dog sitting, as well as general chipping in.

This year the Feds will also chip in. Tomorrow I turn 62 and start my reduced Social Security the second Tuesday in July. The amount is small, but welcome (see previous post: pennies from heaven). I also usually manage to pick up a little cash with odd jobs here and there.

This summer I will once again divide my time between a spacious home on the Long Island Sound in Rye, NY, and a cozy Dutch colonial, a block from the Navesink River, within walking distance of No Ordinary Joe’s Cafe in downtown Red Bank, NJ.

SWEET.

My time will be spent reconnecting with friends and family—and myself. I am looking forward to focusing on my third book , a second novel. Of course, I will continue this blog, which began at the close of last summer’s leave.

Tata for now. Much to do. Gotta run.

Coming up next: Riding the Auto Train. Stay tuned.

pennies from heaven

2009-05-25T08:41:00.004-04:00

Pennies make me smile.
No, I’m not one of those people with jars and dishes of pennies stashed around the house.
It’s that pennies like me. Really.
I go through periods in my life when they show up, unannounced.
I don’t go looking for my copper friends, you understand. I don’t stare at the ground, shake pants or empty junk drawers.
They just appear. In some of the strangest places.
And literally out of thin air.
I walk by the kitchen counter, nothing there.
I walk back a few minutes later, and there it is, in plain view, winkin’ at me. I move a jar of cream on a bathroom tray and a Canadian penny shows its face.
And I smile. Every time.
Because they are a reminder of abundance.
But also, I know that money is on its way.
It happens every time.
I don’t know how, when or how much. But ALWAYS some unexpected cash comes my way. Without fail.
And I am grateful for whatever it turns out to be.
It may be a long forgotten rebate check, a gift, a miniscule royalty payment. Recently, I learned I was entitled to a small annuity from my time at the Asbury Park Press along with a cash payment.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind a life-changing extraordinary infusion of green, like a big time lottery win.
I allow myself one a week ticket in each of the two Florida games.
This permits me to indulge in my favorite game: Fantasy Philanthropy.
(Full disclosure-a colleague came up with the name.)
When the jackpot is obscenely huge, I imagine myself the holder of the only winning ticket, then estimate the net amount, say $100 million.
Then the fun begins.
I imagine all those I’d like to help and look for unusual ways to do so: paying off various debts, mortgages, setting up trusts to pay real estate taxes, health care, college.
My latest twist is a foundation called Second Acts for those starting over in life. I figure my journalism friends could make use of this, for sure.

I also like the idea of paying off all debt for someone, like a Clean start foundation. Spending big money is big fun. And surprising, a lot of work.

But when I can’t sleep or am stuck in line or whatever, I occupy my mind with thoughts of creative giving, each tailored to a particular person’s personality.

Hey, it’s much more fun than fretting over my own economic woes.
And when the time comes, I’ll be ready.

Missing the mother of all reunions

2009-05-18T08:37:00.003-04:00

I missed out on a once in a lifetime reunion this past Saturday. It was a family reunion of sorts. My journalistic family, culled from decades of those who worked at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey.

I’m sure it was one hell of a good time. Journalists—real journalists—are uniquely smart. The job requires the ability to think on a dime, absorb foreign, often complex, information at lightning speed and translate it into prose a 6th grader can understand.

My body may have been 1,200 miles south but my spirit definitely made the trip. So I can’t help reflecting on those 10 years, the most interesting work I’ve even done with some of the best people I’ve ever been privileged to know. It remains the only place I’ve worked where I felt I truly belonged.

I was late to the party at 40 years old, but fortunate enough to catch the wave at its crest and ride it in. It was a perfect journalistic storm. The paper, the people and the times melded together. As is the case, none of us knew how special—and fragile—it was.

(I was reminded of this watching The Soloist. Behind Robert Downey Jr., as he writes at his desk at the Los Angeles Times, there are continuing shots of people walking behind him pushing all their “belongings” in carts—like the homeless he is writing about—nameless journalistic victims of yet another layoff.)

The Asbury Park Press was at its zenith, among the top independent newspapers in the country, racking up awards for content and design, and about to have a Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist. (Steve Breen, who just won his second such award.)

Its Sunday circulation hovered around 200,000, ranking it second in New Jersey behind the Star-Ledger. The synergism in the newsroom was palpable. It gave me the impetus to step forward.

When an opening to write a Sunday column came about, I was a personal finance writer on the Business Desk. With my heart in feature writing, I took every opportunity to produce Sunday cover stories. Instead of submitting one of those to the editor as my audition piece, I wrote a “first column,” introducing myself and laying out the tenor of the columns to follow. It ran exactly as written.

When it ran, my world cracked open. It had only taken 20 minutes for the words to pop up on the computer screen. But in truth, it had taken three decades to write.

I was never one to keep a diary. It just seemed to me too "square" an activity past adolescence. I never did get it. What was the purpose of committing yourself to the page then squirreling it away like an emotional time capsule?

Little did I realize that in fact, I was keeping a public journal. Interspersed with commentary on current events, I shared my some of my deepest secrets. I wrote about my depression and my brother’s suicide. I admitted being raped, that the unexpected death of my father tore me apart, and how bereft my mother’s death left me. I confessed, too, that I resented the unending demands of grown children, as much as I loved them, and so on.

Strung together, they amounted to a mid-life memoir that became my second book and gave this site its name. All this before “blog” was a common four-letter word.

But I digress—as my buro chief used to say.

This is my tribute to my former colleagues, where ever you are. I lift a virtual glass to you—to US.

memories of Baby M

2009-05-10T11:34:00.008-04:00

A story on CBS Sunday Morning updating the status of surrogate parenting in the U.S. brought forth a flood of images.

Twenty-two years ago, I was a fledging reporter with the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey when we were ground zero for the story of stories. I've always thought of it as the flip side to abortion. And it was my immersion into pack journalism.

Melissa Stern is now 23 years old. Back then she was known only as Baby M, an infant at the center of a landmark custody battle revolving around surrogacy.

First a recap:

Mary Beth Whitehead of Brick Township, answered an ad in the APP to help infertile couples. Whitehead signed a $10,000 surrogacy contract with William and Elizabeth Stern of Tenafly, agreeing to be inseminated with his sperm and then give the baby up to the Sterns.

But Whitehead refused to turn over the child, whom she called Sarah, invoking a media circus worthy of a TV movie. Actually, I think it was made into one. The Brick police raided the home, returning the infant to the Sterns, whom they had named Melissa. Whitehead sued for custody.

Among all the ethical and cutting edge science questions, there was the “class” issue. Did the Sterns affluence, that of a biochemist and a pediatrician, give them undue advantage over Whitehead, a high school dropout married to a sanitation worker?

(an aside: Local newspaper reporters would chaff at calls the Whiteheads were “working class”. Her husband's salary of $35,000 was considerably more than any of us made at the time. So much for a college education.)

On March 31, 1987, Superior Court Judge Harvey Sorkow upheld the contract, terminating Whitehead’s parental rights and taking Elizabeth Stern to his chambers to adopt Melissa.

On that day, I joined the flood of media camped out on Whitehead’s lawn in the now familiar scene, awaiting that decision. I was petrified and overwhelmed, decidedly out of my league and eager to prove myself.

As the hometown paper, I felt special pressure. After all, her front lawn was less than 10 minutes from my own. I was on first name basis with many of those Brick cops she so detested. I knew my paper expected me to find some fresh angle to a story beaten to death, some way in through the barred door to the emotions inside.

I watched hot-shot broadcast media types so desperate they interviewed young children milling about on their bikes who parroting their parents’ words proclaimed: “a contact is a contract.”

Then the familiar “slap” of a newspaper hit the driveway, our newspaper.

The Press smartly paired me with one of out most talented and aggressive photographers who had been shadowing Whitehead for the length of the story. He immediately slapped the paper into my hands and shoved me toward the front door. I took a deep breath, swallowed and knocked. A beat later I was looking into an extraordinary pair of crystal blue eyes. She was indeed striking. Newspaper photos didn’t do her justice.

Mary Beth smiled and reached for the paper. She was gracious but unyielding. I failed in my mission to cross the threshold and the surging crowd behind me fell back, although Tom got off a few shots.

In the end, with a bit of insider info, I was able to slip away from the pack and interview the sister-in-law at her house several blocks away. It was a second hand story, but I was the only one with it, earning me a bylined story running along the bottom of the jump page. At least I didn’t shame myself.

Whitehead appealed by the way, and on Feb. 3, 1988, the New Jersey Supreme Court voided the contract and adoption, restoring Whitehead as Melissa’s mother with visitation rights. They ruled a fit mother cannot be forced to give away her baby. In this case, a contract was not a contract.

With medical advances, gestational carriers, who have no genetic relationship with the children they bear, have since replaced paid surrogates in most cases. But the shadow of Baby M lingers in New Jersey, barring such carriers from receiving more than medical and legal expenses; compelling them to give birth outside the state to collect a fee.

A modest proposal

2009-05-03T12:57:00.006-04:00

Bear with me here for a bit and I’ll get to it.

The “high season” is now behind us in Sarasota. The roads are clearing and restaurant tables are once again available. At times over the past month, the children’s department at the bookstore where I work, resembled the Tower of Babel. Not only could I go hours without hearing “American” English--of any dialect, but I often couldn’t make out the language being spoken. I find differentiating between the Nordic languages impossible. The decades I lived and toiled at the Jersey Shore, a Canadian “o” was as exotic as it got.

This gave me pause to consider why I choose to live where others come to play. The oft repeated phrase “another day in paradise” takes on a less than glorious sheen when you’re working--usually at a low paying service job--amid the smell of coconut suntan lotion and the echo of flip-flops. We are intimate with the upscale but the perennial outsiders, not a comfortable place, lacking the honorable service class history of our foreign brethren.

I used to dine out frequently with an affluent friend, one in a second marriage to a millionaire. She is in most respects a caring individual. And yet, I found myself so uncomfortable with her treatment of the wait staff that I finally had to say something.

One of those interminable emails making the rounds a while ago got on my last good nerve. It was one of those whinny pieces about customers doing all the work at check-outs (such as lifting their hand to swipe a credit card through a reader) while those of us behind the counter are goofing off—talking, chewing gum etc. Pleeease!

I am college educated, a former journalist with several awards to my credit. I’ve taught, written two books and once even earned well into the high five figures. The company says it takes two years to master selling books on its floor. Yet recently, a customer--irritated that I referred her to customer service when she interrupted me during story time--called me a “clerk.” The air of entitlement among many customers coupled with a general disrespect for those of us in the service field led me to this modest proposal:

Dear President Obama,

I would like to propose a new mandatory American youth service corp. Upon leaving high school—by graduation or dropping out—each and every one of our young people would spend two years in the service profession of his or her choice. The list of fields will include those of food service, retail, recreation (e.g. boardwalks, NOT Disney), health aide, farm work and the like. Corp members will be expected to live on their salaries, with any family support held in trust until their term is complete. Failure to live out the allotted term of duty will result in a dishonorable service discharge, a permanent part of a person’s record available to colleges, medical schools, employers etc. as is a dishonorable discharge from our military services.

The only exemption from this service would be extreme mental or physical disabilities—and this, too, would become a part of their record. If someone left the country, their service requirement would resume upon their return.

OK, I’m not naive enough to think this is perfect, or that the some of the wealthy and connected won’t find a way around it. They always do. Perhaps making the list of exemptions public would be some help.

But it’s time we recognized those “invisible” folks who tend to our needs. I suggest this in hopes a short walk in such shoes will have some lasting impact.

All honest work deserves our respect. Case closed.

Yours in the audacity of hope,
Roberta

The world according to wells: why we are special

2009-04-26T12:08:00.004-04:00

Not being The Huffington Post, I usually avoid commentary on current events, but the confluence of two seemingly unrelated news items got me thinking of this country, who we are and why we are special. Let me note, upfront, I do not mean this in any jingoistic sense. I’m more than aware of our faults and missteps.

First the feel good item: our NCIS-like rescue of the freighter captain from pirates.
One crack SEAL team, three perfect shots and our guy is saved.
We pay them not one cent: they pay the ultimate price.
Protecting its citizens on the high seas is, after all, among the oldest and most basic of governmental responsibility.
The Buddhist part of me abhors the violence and loss of life.
The Jewish part of me applauds the Mossad-worthy surgical justice.
The message that reverberates startles the pirate world and beyond: this country will go the distance in defending an individual American life.

Now on to the bad news.
We tortured people.
Parse it as you will
Call it “harsh interrogation.“
But, like porn, we all know torture when we see it.
We are not talking about a few renegades from Abu Grav, here folks.
This was a systematic government policy.
Terrorism is no excuse.
That’s the same twisted thinking that led to destroying a village to “save it” in Vietnam.
This is not the American way.
We know it in our collective gut.
Hence the debate.
And herein lies our uniqueness.
Where else, could such a public conversation take place?
What other country would create, not to mention, publish a “torture memo"?
What government would voluntarily release photos documenting such behavior?

Yes, history records evidence of other reprehensible acts on our part. Slavery, Native American extermination, Japanese internment, medical experiments on unknowing “volunteers” spring to mind...

Yet, as an adolescent studying that history, I can still recall how lucky I felt at being born an American—especially being female, and Jewish. Yes, yes, I know, I wasn’t born into one of the above groups. I take that into consideration.

Other countries get parts of it better.
Health care, parental leave, 6-week vacations.
We definitely work much too hard.
I admire the red-line secularism of the French, for instance.

As far as we are from approaching perfection, people still risk--and lose—their lives daily to set foot on our soil, to give birth to their children within our borders. But that doesn’t give us license for arrogance or complacency.

I don’t even mind being held to another standard by the world at large.
I learned that lesson in sixth grade when Mrs. Gold rejected my hastily written thank you note she had assigned the class.
I protested, pointed to those from my classmates she had accepted.
“You,” she replied. “Can do better.”

adventures in bookselling

2009-04-19T12:43:00.004-04:00

Dispatches from the frontline of publishing.
You know, that part of the biz where the book actually makes it into a reader’s hand for the first time. And that reader forks over cash.

Life in these retailing trenches occasionally amuse and startle. When my book is written it will include the following incidents.

I take the middle-aged woman to the section and hand her the requested book, The Yeast Syndrome.
She looks up at me asks, “Can I buy this?”
For a tiny part of a second I am too stunned to speak.
“Of course,” I reply. “That’s the point. You can purchase everything but the fixtures.”
“Well, I’ve never been in here before.”
Huh? Perhaps the name above the door should have been a clue.

OK, so maybe one such oddity is to be expected once in a blue moon. But this is the SECOND such inquiry I’ve had in the past two months. And neither was approaching senility.

In the early days of my employment, I am working the register in the hectic post-Christmas rush. A woman of no more than 50 steps up to my station, complaining her computer is not functioning. Where, she demands, is the line for returns. I lean in close, so as not to embarrass her.

“Ma’am, do you think you are in Best Buy? (on the other side of our mall)
She stops, straightens up and looks around.
“I guess you got your laugh for the day.”
I do.

A colleague reports a phone call from a customer requesting, “A bible for someone new to walking in the word.”

I recently took a call from customer requesting the author of The Anderson Method. Perhaps, I thought, it's the same person buried in Grant's tomb.

As the lead bookseller in the kid’s department, the bane of my existence is adults who think nothing of dropping/sending their young children to my department and trotting off to sports, self-help, investing or whatever. I am not a babysitter, and small folk are not to be left unsupervised in the section. I once caught a toddler hanging from the metal hooks of a display he had climbed.

One day, I notice a child who really does toddle, she’s so young--not much beyond a year--wandering about with no adult in sight. I am just about to call a manager, when her father (I assume) strolls in, unconcerned. Overcome with outrage am I. What can I say? The Jewish mother part of my psyche is easily activated.

“Sir, you cannot leave a child this young alone in this department.”
He looks genuinely surprised.
I wonder how his wife—or the judge supervising his visitation—would react.

The recent installation of a security system creates its own indignity, constituting a downright hostile work environment. While covering breaks in the music department, I am subjected to repeated shots of my butt in the monitor. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment!

Terms of detachment

2009-04-13T10:31:00.007-04:00

It’s one of Mother Nature's little jokes.

Among the rare things shrinking as we age is the vitreous, the gel-like substance surrounding the eye. As it shrinks, it pulls at the retina and can cause a retinal tear or worse. If not attending to quickly, this can lead to blindness. Those of us with extreme myopia are the most at risk, cause our retina’s are stretched thinner around our elongated eyeballs.

So when the cascade of black dots and cobwebbed floaters over a filmy gray field suddenly descended on my right eye last Saturday as I worked, I was more than disquieted. Naturally, when I got home, I did the expected. I logged onto the internet to check it out—using mainly my one “good” eye. The results were confusing.

The lists of symptoms were vague and comments from others describing what seemed to be the same trouble complained of no cause or cure. The problem was the description. How to tell if what I was seeing was what they were describing? The two definitive photos of what a detached retina would look like to the victim brought about a temporary sigh of relief. They appeared different. One photo looked like those black semaphore flags used to send Morse code in those old movies.

That night, I worried and watched my internal black’n white psychedelic light show. No improvement. My mind kept returning to the phrases “sudden change” and “immediate medical attention.” Sleep didn’t help. What to do on a Sunday morn? I called the service of a glaucoma specialist I had seen several years ago and was referred to the doctor covering for him. That doctor, bless his heart, called me immediately. Turns out, he is a retinal surgeon. “I’m heading down to the office for another patient, why don’t you stop in.”

This stroke of “luck” is referred to in my Buddhist practice “a benefit.”

I feel the need to note how petrified I am of anything regarding my eyes. I’ve worn glasses since 5 years of age. And my myopia increased at such a rate, my family would joke that “next I would need a seeing eye dog.” At night, I would shut the lights and feel my way around the bedroom to memorize it, so convinced was I that blindness was near. Children are literal creatures. As a teen, an attempt at contact lenses (hard plastic back then) ended with corneal abrasions, as if a ring of fire had been stamped onto my eyes. The few times I tried not wearing my specs the results were too embarrassing to mention.

I chanted silently to myself through the uncomfortable exam (another one on tap for later today) and the results were encouraging. The retina was intact—for the time being, he emphasized. It was the vitreous that had detached and those dots were from the broken blood vessels. There was nothing to be done but watch and wait to see if the retina would follow. In the past week, I have noticed no improvement. But I think I may be getting used to the flotsam congesting my view. If I make it though the next few weeks, he said, I would only have to worry about the other eye, which usually follows the same pattern.

“If there had been tear, I’d just take you into the other office and spot weld you,” he added, referring to the laser used to seal the breach. I must say, the thought of it makes me lose my lunch. Let’s face it. There is no “closing your eyes and thinking of England” in these procedures. You are awake and too much aware for my taste.

I have a great deal of company here. The doc is making a fine living. There are so many of us bailing water out of this same aging boat, that it gave me an idea for a new reality show: Retinas behaving badly.

Stay tuned.

Lawn yawn

2009-04-05T17:06:00.003-04:00

This is an example of what seems eccentric, at best, may be just enough ahead of the curve to appear around the bend.

Oct 1, 1995
Point Pleasant, NJ

It’s been this summer’s drumbeat: drought, drought, drought. Meteorologists even insist that the recent rain has done little to fill our reservoirs.

In England, the chief executive of a Yorkshire water company recently announced that he hasn’t bathed in three months, limiting himself each day to a washcloth and a half a bowl of water to keep from offending others.

I’m not following his sterling example, but at the incessant urging of public officials, I have made a good faith effort to cut back, to at least not waste this very stuff of life. I try not to linger in the shower, to shut off the tap while brushing and to think before I turn on the dishwasher, although I freely admit it sometimes slips my mind.

Although we have been fortunate in not needing mandatory water restrictions like the North Jersey communities, I remain puzzled and disturbed by our priorities.

Walking around my neighborhood, I can’t help but notice an awful lot of lawn watering. To my mind, that should be way down the list, right after filling a swimming pool. (But it was stifling this summer, and to my mind, people come before lawns.)

OK, OK already, I confess to lacking this national obsession with outdoor, velvet-green carpeting. My long-suffering neighbors would be quick to agree. I make this statement with full realization that most of you call such a position heresy.

This spring, a new friend asked if she could borrow my lawn mower. (She obviously had not been to my house yet.) When I stopped laughing and told her I had no use for a lawn mower, she stared in disbelief.

You see, I don’t have a lawn. My front yard is a motley collection of sand, weeds and trees. Every few months I go out and trim things back a bit, so it doesn’t grow to resemble the rear yard. There is no other way to describe the back yard other than wild. One of my friends dubbed it “the rainforest.” At this time of year, you can’t even walk back there – not without hip boots and a sickle, that is. (At this juncture, I feel the need to pause and point out that I wasn’t raised in some shack with a dilapidated car in the front yard. My family lived in a succession of very middle-class houses with very green lawns.)

When I married and moved into my first home, the yard work fell to my husband. But that was another lifetime. For decades, I have lived in my own home, one with quite a large yard. And I have never been inclined to “put down a lawn,” as they say. I just don’t get it.

Why do we yank out the indigenous plants, the so-called weeds and spend an enormous amount of time and money nurturing grass and polluting our precious water with chemicals? And who are these weed police, anyway? Who decides, for example, that the graceful and abundantly growing mimosa tree is little more than a weed?

Humans seem to have an inborn need to reshape nature instead of joining with it. After careful consideration, I have decided we feel uncomfortable without the illusion we are in control of our surroundings. And that extends to the physical space around our homes.

By now a lot of you might be thinking, so what’s the big deal? Lawns look and feel real nice, and it’s not as if they do any harm. I will concede that a hearty strain of grass makes a nice place for children to play. But front lawns are worse than useless.

They waste time, energy and pollute the environment. And for what? I could understand it if the yard was put to some productive use, such as a vegetable garden. But all this just make our houses look better? Please!

Decades ago, I had a friend with a large family who actually dug up the front lawn of her Monmouth County home and planted vegetables. She also started an alternative school for her six youngsters before moving out West. Once in California, her kids adopted names like Treefrog. I’m sure you get the drift.

Back then, I thought she was slightly off kilter.
Now I’m not so sure.

Babes in the bush: a bit of comic relief

2009-03-30T09:07:00.001-04:00

They dubbed us “the babes in the bush.”
But I was more like a babe in the woods.

Some years ago, Brookdale Community College, N.J., advertised a “Women in the Wilderness” weekend at the “primitive facility” of Wawayanda (aptly pronounced way-way-yonder) State park in northern Passaic County. An editor with a sense of humor thought I was the perfect choice for the assignment.

Up front, you ought to know I was a 46-year-old, out-of-shape woman whose idea of primitive is a place where there is no microwave. I don’t do the outdoors willingly. As a child, I only lasted two days at Girl Scout camp.

So, it was with understandable trepidation that I faced the weekend, a sort of overage slumber party--minus the house, the bed and the toilet. Oh, did I forget to mention that? For the uninitiated, “primitive” is a camping code for no toilet facilities – not even and outhouse. How’s that for fostering an up-close and personal relationship with Mother Nature?

But more about that later.

My anxiety didn’t decrease much as I met my fellow campers, all of whom had at least some experience in the outdoors. I was definitely there to provide the comic relief. And I didn’t let them down.

Bonding began at the base camp, which sported such luxuries as a water pump and three outhouses – one which was closed. (someone with a primitive camping sense of humor had propped a “NO DUMPING” sign at its door, creating a popular photo opportunity.) Our low-key leaders espouse the philosophy of “low-impact camping” -- all you leave is a footprint; all you kill is time. What they neglect to mention is that low-impact camping is high impact on the body. Each of us carried a full 50-pound pack containing the gear, food and two bottles of drinking water – all there would be until we returned to base camp the next day.

The hike to our campsite, Lake Lookout, was an uphill trek for miles on moist leaves interspersed with rocks. (A tip: If you want a walking stick, it’s advisable to find one BEFORE loading on your pack. It’s almost impossible to bend down once you’re strapped in. Trust me.)

The trail, actually an old mining road, was both beautiful and treacherous. The foliage was peaking, but the colorful leaves underfoot were slippery, so most of the time we stared at our feet. We hadn’t gone 50 feet when I began to sweat. A few minutes later, I began a fight for breath that lasted the whole hike. I was clearly in over my head and bringing up the rear, with a new understanding of those unfortunates forced to walk in the Bataan Death March in World War II.

In between the moans and groans, the mood on the trail was incredibly convivial. We hit it off immediately and there was a spirit of oneness that kept us going. If you stumbled, help was there before you could fall. It was impossible to fail.

By the time we reached the campsite, I couldn’t tell what hurt more, my chest, my back or my feet. We dropped our packs and took in the scenery. It was almost worth the pain. The orange, red and green leaves were reflected in the placid lake, mirroring the carpet beneath our feet.

The light was starting to fail. I realized I had better attend to basics before it was completely dark. So, I grabbed the shovel and some paper from the “toilet tree” and went to find a spot far from camp. The land was hilly, and my leg muscles quivered from exhaustion. I found a fairly sheltered area and set about to take care of business.

The real trouble came when I tried to stand up. My trussed-up legs gave way and I fell, tumbling down the hill. Before reaching the lake, I was caught by a rock and a tree--literally wedged between a rock and a hard place. I lay there in pain and humiliation, unable to even pull up my leggings. Finally, I made it upright, put myself back together and stumbled back to camp to the sound of leaves crunching inside my clothing.

Even in the gathering darkness, it didn’t take long for my fellow babes to sense something was wrong. That was the strangest part of the weekend. No one ever needed to ask for help; we had become so in tune with one another. It was spooky how quickly we bonded into a highly functional and loving family.

Regardless, Saturday night was my low point. If I had access to a phone, I would have called for my dad to come get me – just as I did at Girl Scout camp 35 years earlier. Instead, I swallowed some painkillers and slid into my sleeping bag, hoping like hell it wouldn’t rain. And determined not to open my eyes if something licked my face.

Sunday dawned to fog but no rain. Amazingly, my body rallied, and I could actually bend. My spirits lifted momentarily as I downed coffee made from the lake’s brown water. Then I realized there was no way to avoid another solo walk into the woods. This time, I braced myself by holding onto a friendly log. I relaxed. I felt greatly relieved. Until I stood up. My technique had improved but my aim needed work.

There was nothing to do but peel off my soaked leggings, slap a grin on my face and stride back to camp, sporting only my hiking boots and L.L. Bean anorak. It made such a fashion statement that--between shrieks of laughter--the cameras appeared.

It wasn’t a love of nature I carried away, but the kinship of the group, the sound of that laughter. I never had sisters, but I imagine that’s what the connection is like at its best.

Of course, I also leaned to appreciate indoor plumbing, and greeted my toilet warmly on Sunday night.

Has Atlas Shrugged?

2009-03-23T10:57:00.009-04:00

“I swear—by my life and by my love of it— that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
John Galt’s oath

Atlas Shrugged.
The 1957 tome by Ayn Rand is making news once again. Recent reports show a direct correlation between sales of the 52-year old novel and the state of the economy. The lower we sink, the more of us reach for the epic, which runs in excess of 1,000 pages. They say it’s more popular than ever. I need no news article to know this. As a bookseller, I can personally attest to its rising popularity, as I place the book into the hands of one customer after another. And I can’t help grinning.

Atlas Shrugged.
The very name brings a smile to my mind. I own a first edition copy of Rand’s final novel. It’s as dog-eared and annotated as many folks bibles. I’m not going to go into depth relating her philosophy. A few strokes of the keyboard will take those interested to an abundance of links, including a recent Wall Street Journal article. And it’s easy to see how the economic apocalypse foretold in the book can be seen unfolding before our 21rst century eyes. (She even has a chapter called: The Utopia of Greed.) We watch as incompetence is rewarded and listen as the phrase “nationalize the banks” actually leaves the lips of our so-called “representatives.”

Atlas Shrugged
My relationship with the book and its author, however, is more personal, dating back to 1962 when I cracked it open. At age 16, I was already depressed and alienated from the world. Lost. I found a home between its dark green covers; people I longed to meet in her characters. I argued her philosophy with my Jesuit-trained history teacher. He presented Saint Thomas Aquinas; I countered with Aristotle. Yeah, I was one serious-minded kid. Philosophy became my minor in college. But I digress.

Atlas Shrugged.
From the now famous opening line: ”Who is John Galt?” I was entranced. (A note: When I came to investigate moving to Sarasota, I found a shop on St. Armands Circle called Who is John Galt and took it as a sign.) At first, I thought the book was historical and kept asking my mother when in the Depression these things had come to pass. It slowly sunk in as I was drawn into the mystery. The brilliant two-word title tells it all. In Rand’s world, the economic collapse is hastened deliberately by—oh, well the secrets been out for decades—the mind on strike. Those with the creative intellect propelling our world withdraw, allowing the world to become a festering economic black hole, sucking in everything.

But more than that, it’s a mondo love story. Naturally, I saw myself as heroine Dagny Taggart, a 36-year old railroad tycoon with “showgirl legs.” (It must be said here that Angelina Jolie, whose name always surfaces to play the part in the long-awaited movie, was likely not yet born.) She is adored by the each of the three male heroes and won by—you guessed it—the “perfect man,” John Galt himself. (Who, if memory serves, has hair the color of “liquid copper.” Ok, it’s been 25 years since I’ve re-read it so cut me a break here.)

I’ve never had much use for so-called “realism” in novels or film. I want to be transported—dare I admit it—uplifted by art. At the time, I had not heard of Rand and was not familiar with The Fountainhead. So I worked backwards through her works, devouring everything. Then went on to the philosophical tracts and as years passed, biographies. (The definitive being The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Brandon.)

My obsession with all-things-Rand was well known to my friends and family. I once received a 2 a.m. call from a former boyfriend informing me that she was on the Tom Snyder Show. I was just shy of 30 and it was the only time I saw her in the flesh. Like her creation John Galt, though, Rand lives on.

So instead of Who is John Galt? perhaps we should be asking:
Where is John Galt?

the "F" word

2009-03-16T09:51:00.002-04:00

So lately, the F word is inescapable. It’s on everyone’s lips, from the crudest of talk show host to the President himself.

Even for someone like me, who makes it a practice to minimize exposure to such “news”, its just about impossible to avoid being hammered by the statistics, especially here in Florida where they say the rates are now 1 in 70.

The new F word, of course is Foreclosure. There is nothing remotely sexy about this version of the F word. It also bears little relation to its official clinical Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary definition:

Fore*clo"sure, n. The act or process of foreclosing; a proceeding which bars or extinguishes a mortgager's right of redeeming a mortgaged estate

Translated in human terms, the F word means destitution, unspeakable misery. Here in this country, most of us working folk have assumed “a roof over our head” as a base line right. It is more than the loss of a physical place—as awful as that is—but of one’s place in society. More than belongings are lost, cherished memories, irreplaceable memorabilia, along with a sense of self. I can imagine disorientation, along with lifestyle issues too numerous to mention.

How do you maintain your job is you still have one? Get your mail? Keep your kids in school? Go to the bathroom? I imagine that the “luckier” ones bunk with family or friends, but that can get old fast.

And as the ranks of the “new homeless” grow, the rest of us tend to back away in fear. Just beneath our surface, most of us are just a few missing paychecks away from joining them. Don’t kid yourself into thinking only those “irresponsible” borrowers are at risk. A simple chain of events can bring any of us down.

I have a bit more empathy than many having dodged that bullet decades ago. I was single mom in my late 20s, existing on aid to dependent children payments and food stamps. One day, seemingly without warning, my bank account containing $400, my entire month’s welfare check, was frozen. The small local bank responded to my hysterical phone call with sympathy, apologizing, saying there was nothing they could do.

It was a judgment by Sears against a $720 debt. (If there was notice of court proceedings, I don’t recall receiving it. But it’s possible I was so overwhelmed it just didn’t register.) There is a bit of irony here, though.

Several months prior I had been “let go” from my management training position with Sears. They wanted me to be a store manager, I wanted to use my pysch degree and work in human resources. So they showed me the door one day in April. And now they were hammering mine down for the rest of their cash.

I called a lawyer friend and asked if it was legal for them to, in effect, garnish my whole “pay” and as it turns out, they has no right to any of that money and the action was reversed.

But I was already on a dangerous path. I couldn’t pay my real estate taxes. After two years a tax lien was sold. At one point, a sheriff was at my door, threatening to carry my somewhat shabby belongings out onto the front yard to be sold. It was two days before Christmas. Yeah, right outta a bad movie.

I can still taste the fear of all that, roiling in my gut, as those around me see the ground under their feet fall away today. I was fortunate. My parents were able to help me stay afloat for a few years. That isn’t an option available to many, especially now, when even the most affluent have seen their bottom line sink below the financial horizon.

I realize this bleakness is not my usual post, as I truly reject wallowing in the negative. I just feel it necessary to acknowledge the humanity at the base of those “toxic assets.”

And there is nothing toxic about that.

sand in my shoes

2009-03-08T18:52:00.009-04:00

There’s an old saw about how once you get sand in your shoes, you can never totally get it out—or something like that. It’s been that way for me. Since leaving the Jersey Shore for points south, I scamper back each summer for as long as my day job allows and my friends put up with me—or put me up. Whatever.

And I also confess, somewhat sheepishly, to running live webcams of the Point Pleasant Beach surf and the boardwalk on my computer. I don’t do this occasionally, you understand, but ALL the time. (The surf camera does shut down “when the lights go on,” though.)

Several times a week, I check in at my old paper’s website to see what’s doin’ in the state, and wasn’t at all surprised to learn the police were needed to get between the Point Beach mayor and a councilman at a recent Borough Council meeting concerning the mayor’s plan to expand paid parking onto every street to make up a budget shortfall .

Ah, parking—the third rail of Point Beach politics. Comments from residents left on the site touched on the vitriolic. Geez, I miss covering that place. To borrow from Saturday Night Live: It was always something.

The feisty Ocean County resort was my first beat when I started at the local weekly newspaper and again when I graduated to the Asbury Park Press, a large regional daily. I made my home in the less affluent adjacent Point Boro. To my children, “downtown” was Point Beach’s Arnold Avenue, which then included a Woolworth with wood floors.

In those long-ago days, (in addition to the parking) it was the town’s rusty water that filled the Borough Council chamber to overflowing with angry residents – many of whom brought their damaged laundry, including undies, as exhibits.

That’s about as racy as things got until the Spring of 1995, when sex came to The Beach in the form of The Love Shack, a small boutique selling lingerie, novelty sex items and offering body-piercing services.

In a small town where political grudges span generations, almost any happening is grist for the political mill. So, it’s no surprise that the then Borough Council President, a mayoral contender, used the shop to spark a ruckus at the last council meeting before the June primary election.

Newspaper reports had him railing against the shop in a manner befitting Professor Howard Hill in “The Music Man.” (The flimflam artist, you may recall, used the advent of a pool hall in the mythical hamlet of River City as signaling moral doom for its young.)

As evidence, he distributed photos he took at the store, including one of the manager’s young son next to a “fake penis.” One business owner, demanding the town take immediate action, complained the shop’s vibrators and dildos were embarrassing and made her feel “dirty.”

The Shack’s manager called the critics “uptight” and accused them of blowing things out of proportion. (Pun intended?) The Love Shack carries condoms and massage oils, but the only other sexual items in the shop are “gag gifts,” she said, denying there were any vibrators or dildos. That “fake penis” , she added, was not a sex toy, but merely “soap-on-rope.”

Well, that was enough to stir this reporter to action. Not one to take hearsay as fact, I made a quick trip to investigate. (Hey, “Hard Copy” had nothing on me.)

At the risk of disappointing the truly licentious, The Love Shack came across as more PG than X-rated: more “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” than drool; more playful than seamy. So, what was for sale, you ask? A fair question.

The vast majority of the floor space was devoted to clothing, mostly scanty versions of the thong-type bathing suit you can find in malls or clothing catalogs. OK, a few did have metal studs decorating the bodice. There also were “tear-away boxer shorts” And the by-now-rather-old-hat edible panties and “I love you” garters.

For the more adventurous – or mischievous – there were X-rated greeting cards and lipsticks, erotic oils, jellies and creams (including the whipped variety), fur-lined hand cuffs, oral sex manuals and something called a “penis ring.” And lest I forget, a kit to “Grow your own penis and amaze your friends.”

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the much discussed “fake penis” was indeed soap-on-a-rope – generously endowed perhaps, but benign and certainly clean.

I must agree with one lifelong female resident who said the only thing obscene about the place was that I couldn’t get my butt in one of those swimsuits.

One last note, The Point Beach Republicans did turn out in record numbers for that primary. But they proved more unflappable than the folks of River City, returning the veteran mayor to the ticket by a vote of 703 to 386.

no worries...

2009-03-02T10:37:00.003-05:00

List making can become an addiction if one is not careful. But after my last post I’m on a bit of a roll.

My single yearly determination, if you recall, is to be happy—now. In an ongoing effort to fulfill same in “these times,” I’ve scribbled down a few items. Ready? Let’s do the “half-full” thing. The following is a partial list of stuff (in no particular order) about which I don’t have to worry:

Capital gains taxes
The outrageous cost of insuring my jewels
Becoming addicted to exercise
Needing a social secretary
The Globe rummaging through my garbage
Bringing home my report card
Practicing the piano
Repeating French II for the third time
Rushing home to fix dinner
Being too rich or too thin
Disappointing my parents
Sitting through endless school concerts
How to spend my “discretionary income”
Quitting Girl Scouts
Packing up kids for summer camp
Paying for said camp, or any day care for that matter
Losing my virginity
What comes out of George W. Bush's mouth
Whether to wear Calvin Klein or Donna Karan to the premier
Choosing between medical and law school
Lack of privacy
Back –to-School Night
If any hunks will come to my party
Somebody stealing the silver
Whether he will respect me in the morning
Where to park the Lear jet
Finding myself
Which coordinated Martha Stewart sheet sets to buy
Eating too much fiber
Making my bed
The proper way to dish up caviar
Halloween costumes
Getting a tan
How to dress for and audience with the Pope
My household staff writing tell-all books
Walking in spiked heels
Being killed in an avalanche while mountain climbing
Being too young to wear lipstick
Fighting for control of the remote
Where to sit for my interview by Barbara Walters
Antonio Banderas badgering me for a date
The “Guinness Book of World Records” misspelling my name
Tying up the telephone
However to manage on the maid’s night off
Getting carded
Missing the school bus
Finding the perfect prom dress
Eating in bed
Which bikini to buy, neon orange or plaid
Worrying when the kids are out for the night
Being tall enough for the boardwalk rides

That’s more than enough for now. Are there things you’re glad you no longer have to worry about? I’d love to know.

a nod to Nora

2009-02-22T15:37:00.013-05:00

Some time back, Nora Ephron posted a list of 25 things that continue to surprise people. So I thought I'd do the same.

1. Espresso has less caffeine that regular brews.
2. “Irregardless” is not a word.
3. It’s illegal to pump your own gasoline in New Jersey.
4. Old people have sex.
5. OTC drugs kill.
6. It gets cold in Florida.
7. Heart disease, not breast cancer, is the number one killer of women.
8. Hard work often goes unrewarded.
9. High school is no predictor of life success.
10.San Francisco has miserable weather.
11.There is no such thing as a “safe investment.”
12.It snows in April.
13. Hollywood couples divorce.
14. Politicians screw around (also).
15. “Reality shows” are fake.
16. Arranged marriages are as happy as love matches.
17. Our bodies age and betray us.
18. Iran once had a flourishing Jewish community.
19. Not all comics are Jewish.
20. Elite athletes take designer drugs.
21. The word “unique” requires no modifiers.
22. Very rich, really smart folk get taken by very rich, really smart con artists.
23. Our children heard what we were saying.
24. Just about everyone has taken a hit off a bong...so what?
25. Many otherwise sane intelligent people reject evolution.

And it would not surprise me if you could add 25 more...

Getting the photo

2009-02-15T13:02:00.000-05:00

Whenever a tragedy, such as the most recent commuter plane crash, hits the airwaves I am grateful for my spot on the sidelines. The public has been shown in many studies to have little regard for us media types at such times. While it’s true my former profession has its major slezoids, even the most sensitive and ethical journalist has felt the sting of verbal abuse, slammed doors and threats.

The hard truth is that oftentimes journalists are the personification of misfortune. We show up when the last thing people want is to be asked questions or have a camera catch their countenance. I’ve taken my share of lumps at the hands of distraught victims who feel our mere presence as a violation. I don’t blame them. But almost everyone expects to read about such events and see images. How do you suppose they get into a newspaper? For every photo of a child whose life has been tragically lost there is a reporter given the dreaded assignment of getting the picture and talking with a grief-sticken family.

My first experience came on a frigid winter evening following a horrific accident. A school bus had run over and crushed a little boy crossing in front of it. To make matters worse, the child’s pregnant mother was watching, helpless. My experienced bureau chief, no fool he, assigned himself to the police station, sending me to the hospital morgue to “speak” to the parents. What the press is really after, though, is a photo of the victim, something to bring home the story to its readers.

The closer I got to the hospital, the more nauseous I became. How in the world was I going to do this? I thought seriously of turning the car around and turning in my press credentials, although it had taken me seven years to land a job on a daily newspaper.

I arrived at the hospital and stood shaking outside the swinging doors leading to the morgue, waiting. There was a TV on somewhere and I could hear strains of the “Jeopardy” theme. About 15 minutes later, a police officer came out. He noticed both my reporter’s notebook and my ashen face, took my arm and pulled me into a small private room.

“I’m here to see the parents and get the picture,” I stammered, looking him straight in the eyes. “Please, tell me they’re not here.”

Without missing a beat, he replied: “You just missed them.” (That family never did talk to the press, nor could the mother bring herself to testify in court.)

Several months later, it was a house fire started by a youngster who died in the blaze. This time, I managed to speak to the family and was given a framed photo fished from inside the charred remains of their home. Later, as I took the photo out of the frame to give to the photo lab, the smell of smoke was so overpowering I broke down and cried. It was the first of many such forays and tears. Without wanting to I became known as “someone who could get the photo” in instances of fatalities.

Young reporters are often advised to get to the family as fast as possible, that it’s easier for them while they’re still in shock. We also are told that most people really want to talk and that down the road, families often cherish these newspaper stories as a tribute to their loved ones. This may be so, but it never becomes routine for any of us. Many’s the time we frantically searched for a school yearbook or pleaded with a funeral director rather than come face to face with the grieving family,

It’s part of the job I relish leaving behind.

Gratitude

2009-02-11T07:30:00.008-05:00

A fountain pen is a time machine I can hold in my hand. Intimate and forgiving, the nib of a fountain pen is as far from a computer terminal as one can get.

As I wrap my fingers around its chunky body, I am once again 11 years old. a student at South Grove Elementary School in Syosset, Long Island. I live on the same block and walk home for lunch.

I am in the sixth grade. More importantly, I am in Mrs. Gold’s class. Mrs. Gold—a diminutive, exuberant woman of indeterminate age and unapproachable standards.

Those were the final days of penmanship, and Mrs. Gold believed its purpose could only be served by the banishment of the ballpoint pen. Of course, this was before the advent of the felt-tipped, roller ball ersatz fountain pens, all of which she would have abhorred.

In Mrs. Gold’s class, everyone wrote with a fountain pen. She felt it was the natural way to encourage proper writing form. For Mrs. Gold, form preceded function. She believed physical clarity would lead to mental clarity, and although I would have died rather than admit it at the time, she was right.

Today fountain pens have been relegated to a status item, pulled from a pocket or briefcase, its profile as recognizable as that of a Jaguar. What they contain in status, they lose in practicality. They leak into the pockets of custom-made shirts. They don’t work on the carbonless paper that clutters our life and times. They can’t send e-mail.

So what?

Picking up your fountain pen is like sliding into a well-worn pair of shoes. The wearing down of the nib is as individual as fingerprints. It not only fits; it fits only you. That’s not something to shrug off in this mass-produced world. As someone who made her living tied to a computer, I can say with some authority that it’s just not the same as taking pen in hand. Perhaps that’s why I still write my journal the old-fashioned way, by pressing pen to paper.

I can pick up a journal from any year and tell my emotional state just by the handwriting of a particular entry. Was I pressing down in a fury or skipping lightly across the page with joy? Was I rushed or wallowing in the luxury of time? I cannot imagine writing a love letter, a condolence letter or even a “Dear John” letter with anything else. Yet, at the same time, I could not imagine writing my newspaper column on anything but a computer, so I crank it up as I wait.

I find myself unexpectedly spending a Friday evening in February in the surgical waiting room at Princeton Hospital. They say my father’s emergency surgery for a bowel blockage should take about three hours. It takes in excess of four. As my mother leafs through a newspaper and fidgets nervously, I find myself shifting mentally back and forth in time. I’m not sure why I come up for air in Mrs. Gold’s class.

Maybe because it was the last time I felt really carefree, really sure of myself both physically and mentally. I awoke each morning sure of my place in the scheme of things. Mrs. Gold saw to that. And if I came up short, there was always that tall, strong and handsome dad who could make anything right.

Then came junior high and later the complexities and shades of the adult world. One in which fathers get old and frail, and where, if things are to be made right, it’s up to you to do it yourself. In that real world, things sometimes go too wrong for anyone to make right—even dads, even doctors. So, I cling to the illusion of a safe harbor, a quick trip back to Mrs. Gold’s class and the time in which certainty flourished.

The day after surgery my dad sits up in bed and kisses me goodbye as I leave for home. He is about to try and walk a few steps. I smile and wave as I walk out the door. I’m home about an hour when the calls start. One by one, his organs are shutting down, my mom says. Before I can return, I answer the phone to hear the surgeon’s distraught voice: “Roberta, I don’t know what happened. He’s gone.” At that very moment, all I want is to go back in time, to really give my dad a serious hug as he went into surgery, instead of shrugging off his emotional embrace. That was February 11, 1995. And in the past 14 years, these feelings have only grown.

What I need is a time machine, one I can hold in my hand. I need to go back to tell them--Mrs. Gold and my dad—thanks for the priceless gift of childhood security, a shield for all my days on this earth.

25 random things about myself

2009-02-05T19:37:00.003-05:00

As part of a fb informational game of "tag" this is my list of 25...Thought I would post it here also for you who opt out of facebooking.
1. My birth made medical history.
2. My brother & I were born exactly 2.5 years apart to the day.
3. When I was 11 years old, my parents overheard someone ask “Who is the new teacher?” as I narrated the 5th grade Christmas pageant.
4. I once accused Judy Garland of stealing my songs.
5. My first full sentence, spoken at a year old, was “Leave me alone, Bobby!” Bobby is my cousin.
6. I love the taste of burnt sugar, especially on the bottom of chocolate chip cookies, the result of a faulty oven when I learned to bake.
7. I continued to wear a size 36B bra years after I had outgrown it, because it never occurred to me I would wear a size larger than my mother.
8. I never reached my mother’s height, nor did my brother grow as tall as our dad.
9. I know an amusing insider anecdote about shooting the bedroom scene between Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway in the film Don Juan DeMarco.
10. At age 13, attempting to go without my glasses, I said hello to a mailbox on the way to the pool at Kraus’ Bungalow Colony in the Catskills.
11. However, my vanity saved my sight, as later that morning, a stiff wind knocked a poolside umbrella into the corner of my eye, necessitating a bloody ride to the emergency room for 6 stitches into that spot with nothing to kill the pain. Doctors say if I been wearing my specs, I’d likely have lost the use of at least my left (my good—ok, my better) eye.
12. I never attended a high school dance of any kind, including a prom.
13. I hate scary amusement rides and films.
14. I once worked polishing brass at a refinishing shop.
15. The screen saver on my computer is a photo taken by my daughter of a rainbow over the boardwalk in Spring Lake, NJ.
16. My ancient TR3 sports car broke down so much I ended up marrying my mechanic.
17. I put sugar on my French Toast.
18. I can sing the complete score to scores of musicals.
19. I’ve had several benign conversations with Stephen King.
20. I rung up Ben Stein’s purchases which included several doggy magazines, and opened his mints for him. We exchanged pleasantries.
21. By this time of year I am desperate for a REAL rye bagel.
22. I scored in the 30% in clerical ability on my high school aptitude test. (This comes as no surprise to any of my former editors out there, who argued as to whether my typing was worse than my spelling or vice versa.)
23. I never make my bed.
24. I have always been a Yankee fan, even when I lived in Brooklyn with the Dodgers.
25. I taught drama, creative writing and a lit to film course as a part-time teacher at a private school when I first moved to Sarasota.

Your turn...

"Abortion”

2009-02-02T10:47:00.006-05:00

Just the word itself is among the most divisive we have here in the old U.S.A. For some of us it’s among the longest 4-letter words in history.

The release of that word from bondage became the first formal act of our new president, a significant yet mostly symbolic gesture. Yes, abortion counseling is now available to those outside our borders receiving U.S. aid dollars, but none of those greenbacks can be spent actually providing the legal service.

It got me pondering the subject once again.

When I was an 18-year-old freshman at Bard College in the 1960s, abortion was still an illegal, dangerous and often fatal whisper in the midst of the so-called sexual revolution. Even the newly minted birth control pill was no absolute safeguard.

I know this first-hand as I stood by and watched the agony of my roommate, who drove to Canada for the procedure. It so traumatized me that I stopped menstruating and had be given a shot to shock my reluctant hormones back into action.

I take note here of the recent passing of Constance E. Cook, 89, a former New York State assemblywoman who is not exactly a household name, but should be. In 1970, she co-authored the law legalizing abortion in the state three years before Roe v. Wade.

Thirty-six years later and the country has made little peace with it. Because even though an abortion is legal, it is not without consequences—and that isn’t necessarily bad.

One would think, that at my age, abortion would be an abstraction. That would be a mistake. Over the past year, I watched as two families close to me struggled under its weight.

In one case, tests showed an anomaly, the extent of which could not be determined until birth, but could have produced profound disabilities. This young couple, chose to end their first pregnancy with much anguish. And the sadness and grief reverberated up several generations

The other couple had one in-vitro child, and after much effort and failure with high tech reproduction found themselves pregnant with twin girls. Almost from the start, there was concern that one of the babies was Downs. The couple decided there would be no “selective reduction” regardless, so the only tests allowed were not invasive—yet, still cutting edge.

As the pregnancy progressed, each test (including a sonogram) revealed more evidence of the genetic abnormality. Weeks before the delivery, the last hopeful doctor succumbed to the “inevitable.” Peace was made within the family. Then came the birth—of two perfectly normal children who are continuing to develop as they should.

In matters of childbirth, one size does not fit any. The following column, written by a much younger and strident me, received many comments from both sides. I offer it here for your consideration:

My sisters: You have the right to remain celibate. If you give up that right, any and all sexual intercourse – protected or not – may result in pregnancy.

You have the right to an abortion, if you can find a physician still willing to perform this legal procedure.

You have the right to be escorted into an abortion clinic under a hail of insults and accusations. Once inside, you have the right to fear that some self-righteous fanatic with access to fertilizer may blow the place up.

You have a right to be demeaned by so called “abortion counseling” – whether you want it or not. At which time you will be informed of the “alternative” to abortion, which every female over 10 years of age knows is a baby. Perhaps you will even be treated to the sight of fetuses preserved in glass jars.

You have the right to be patronized by being sent home like an errant child for 24 hours to think it over, something which, of course, would not occur to you otherwise.

You also have the right to endanger your life by having medical decisions regarding late-term abortions interfered with by the state.

Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you? Before you say yes, think. Have you really considered the consequences of allowing this erosion of our right to reproductive choice?

If you are smart enough to shudder at the above, you have the right to seethe at the contemptible treatment women are receiving at the hands of our government.

Make no mistake. This isn’t about fetuses or medical procedures. Behind all the hysteria of the anti-abortion movement and the sophistry of our politicians lies a woman’s right to control her own life. It’s that simple.

All the equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, all the Title IX regulations, all the sexual harassment suits in the world mean nothing if we have no control over our own bodies. There is no freedom for women that does not have reproductive choice at its base. None. Nada. It’s kind of hard storming the barricades for equal rights while barefoot and pregnant.

This is an age-old battle. In the early years of this very century, delivering contraceptive information was a crime. Margaret Sanger went to jail for helping women whose destiny it was to conceive child after child until they died young and exhausted. (And I don’t want to hear any that “they didn’t have to have sex” donkey dust. Women were not permitted to deny husbands their “conjugal rights.”)

As far as I’m concerned, Sanger was among the first of the pro-lifers. She supported women already born, women whose very existence was endangered. So do I. I am pro-choice, therefore pro-life. I honor the choices that all my childbearing sisters make.

I respect those who believe abortion is wrong for whatever reason. They deserve the utmost in emotional and financial support--and not just until the child is born. Women who eschew adoption should not need to fear that they and their child will be abandoned. Our investment in a child’s life begins, not ends, at her birth.

Those who choose to end their pregnancies deserve to feel safe and supported, not hounded by those who disagree and hamstrung by government red tape. They should be respected as adults, not treated as children who need to be protected from themselves by bureaucrats.

The issue is not what decision is to be made, but who should make it. Those whose bellies and feet swell, whose backs ache, whose breasts harden with milk and whose wombs contract in labor have earned the right to make that individual choice unfettered. In that way, the hand that rocks the cradle can finally rule her own world.

haunted heart

2009-01-26T09:16:00.002-05:00

Valentine’s heart box displays abound, filled with delights and memories of my father. If that sounds a bit odd, just read on.

When I was a girl of about 9 or 10, my dad used to take me to work with him. The joy of the day for me began with the commute into Brooklyn from Long Island. Imagine, a whole hour alone with my dad, no little brother. And I could sit in the front seat usually reserved for my mom.

My father managed Miro Container Co., a family owned box factory (today, it would be called a “packaging plant”) in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section. Even then, some 50-odd years ago, it was far from the most hospitable of neighborhoods. But my dad was at home there and I felt perfectly safe.

My “job” was to make up the time cards. I remember sitting in the dingy office at what seemed to me a huge old metal desk. I would laboriously copy the intricate ethnic names on to the top of each Manila card in my best block printing.

When I tired of that, I hung around the switchboard operator, fascinated by the old plug-in-style board straight out of a Lily Tomlin sketch. Looking back, I must have really worn on her nerves, pleading until she let me answer or transfer a telephone call.

My absolute favorite part, though, was when my dad would take me onto the freight elevator, with its metal gate. It was a kick to see the floors arrive and then fade away.

Along the way, he would stop to explain to me about paper, glues, hand vs. machine-made boxes, problems with gold stamping, blistering or the ubiquitous “sloppy corners.” No box in our house ever escaped his ripping apart each corner to reveal to us the “sloppy corners” in other manufacturers’ work.

But to me, the factory was a magical place, with intricate machines slurping up fragrant glues and huge roles of paper spitting out an infinite variety of boxes. Naturally, I felt like the crown princess of this magical kingdom, with my dad the all-powerful king. It was heady stuff.

However, there was one major frustration at my father’s place of business (which we always referred to as “the place,” as in: “Where’s dad?” “He’s still at the place”).

You see, my dad didn’t make just any boxes, he made toy boxes for dolls like Shirley Temple; game boxes, including Scrabble; book boxes and candy heart boxes, like the kind given on Valentine’s Day.

I can almost hear you pondering: “Sounds great, what could possibly have been her problem?” Well, since you asked….

His office was filled, from floor to rafters with the most intriguing collection of games, toys, books and candies a child could possibly imagine – at least at first glance. But as I sadly discovered each time I visited – the boxes were empty, the books blank, not a chocolate was to be found.

And I looked. In all the years, I never really accepted the fact that these were nonfunctional samples. Somewhere in my mind, I believed someday I would find a treasure in that big pile of tease.

Of course, I never did. And if there was a life lesson in that experience, it got past me. But the experience of seeing my dad at work and being permitted to take even a tiny part in an adult workplace has stayed with me.

pacman wars

2009-01-19T09:44:00.003-05:00

I should have seen it coming.
Yet the item on CNN the other day still shocked, then disgusted me.

In a Philadelphia mall, the U.S. Army has set up a large recruiting center filled with various “realistic” Xbox type video games, to introduce and entice the young to the glories of war. There are even full sized tanks to sit on while firing.

Life is not like television or Hollywood, people.
And war is NO video game.
Seems so obvious, yet, the place was filled with the young and probably gullible, operating various faux killing apparatus.

For decades, we have been in a continuous state of blurring “lines”
between fiction and non-fiction;
between news and entertainment;
between editorial and advertising.

This, however, crosses the line. And intelligence is no protection. My own son, not lacking in stuff of the intellect, fell for an army recruiter’s line in the waning days of Gulf I. He thankfully avoided combat, but I could have lived a long and fruitful life without knowing my only son could strip an M-16. This young man, brought up without so much as a water pistol.

My own father, having survived WWII, detested guns and taught his children to also. Yes, yes, I’ve heard the drill: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Yet I know that guns make it much too convenient for people to kill people—even by accident.

Back in 1983, long before the realistic avatar-type electronic world our young now populate, the movie WarGames introduced us to the dangers of such a world. In the film, a mischievous teen hacker, played by a young Matthew Broderwick, innocently starts a “game” of Global Thermonuclear War on the side of the Soviet Union, triggering a chain of events that bring the real world to the eve of destruction. (The world is saved, by the way, when the supercomputer in charge is tricked into playing an endless loop of tic-tac-toe against itself. A device Capt. Kirk uses several times in Star Trek. But I digress).

The following year, Hollywood served up "The Last Starfighter," starring Robert Preston as the desperate alien recruiter combing the universe for pilots as an unending conflict has eliminated those of his planet. He targets great, teenage, video game player and tricks them into being a pilot in a real intergalactic war.

Does any of this have a familiar ring, folks?

Since 2001 we have been harangued with the message that we, too, are constantly at war. This message is suppose to help keep us safe. I don’t buy it, my friends. Reaching back 26 years ago to WarGames, the film ends with the supercomputer concluding "the only winning move is not to play.”

Can I hear an “Amen.”

One singular sensation

2009-01-11T11:56:00.006-05:00

That’s what I’m after this year folks – one singular sensation. The sensation of happiness, that deep in the gut feeling of “aw right, now.” And I do mean NOW.

That is my only determination for 2009. We Buddhists call resolutions, “determinations” and although we make them all year, the New Year is also a special time. Many of us take the list of yearly determinations. Seal them up and store them sight unseen until year’s end.

But I’ve tossed my list this year and substituted this: I am determined to be happy. Now. This very second. Without losing an ounce, pleasing my boss, accomplishing one goal (or setting one for that matter) lifting one weight, or rewriting a single page of my dormant book.

I will find a way to be happy, just because... without earning it. Shocking, I know. My happiness will not longer be on lay-away, to be parceled back to me as it is paid for.

We are trained and bombarded,especially this “New Year’s New You” time of year. Be unsatisfied. Push the envelop. Make a plan. Take control . Get moving. etc, etc.

I’ve had enough. I have no more patience. I will wait no longer. The siren sound of happiness calls, like Bali Hai. Whether I ever lose another pound, publish another piece, make a decent living, attract another lover...I’m gonna be happy.

How?
By deciding to.

It’s not that radical an idea, I freely admit. It is even the cornerstone of the Buddhism I practice: Absolute happiness. In other words, an inner happiness not dependent upon conditions, or as you may put it “reality.” Oh, I can just see my son shaking his head at his ditsy out-of- touch mother. Sorry, Jamie.

I am going to search out reasons to be happy every chance I get. Even if it’s only the contrasting taste and texture of bacon and eggs; the warmth of my comforter as I smuggle down to sleep (alone).

I can hear it now: That’s all fine and dandy, if maybe somewhat corny. But all the good thoughts in the world amount to nothing without action. Maybe. But I’ve taken a lot of action in my life and precious little of the important stuff has changed.

I want to emphasize what this is NOT.
It’s not about giving up on my dreams, resigning, compromising, passivity and the like.
Feeling good shall be my activity.
Ready, set go. Sing out loud and strong.
“If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands...”
CLAP CLAP

The street where I live..

2009-01-04T10:54:00.004-05:00

I suppose I could call this piece "in the hood," but that smacks of us old folks trying out now out of style street speak. But I've been pondering this area where I now lay my head, of late, since I've been home with some kinda thing for the past week. Not my favorite way to transition into a new year.

When I moved to Sarasota from the Jersey Shore 7 years ago, I entertained a fantasy--as it turns out--fueled by myths about how inexpensive it would be to live in the Sunshine State. I saw myself living in a small condo downtown, working part-time and devoting myself to my own writing.

I ended up fairly close to town, on the "wrong side" of the tracks, a decidedly long walk downtown in a working class area. As you know by know, I work full time in retail and squeeze the rest of my life around that.

It lacks the shimmer, convenience and pace of downtown, but also the hefty price tag, even with the real estate collapse. However, I have come to appreciate the shabby chic of this old style Florida neighborhood, even with its rough edges. It kind of grows on ya.

Until the crash, in fact, my main worry became "redevelopment". I feared that as pressure grew to expand downtown, we would be ripe for a change in zoning that would lead to more high rise condos. And we would be displaced. In fact, as prices rose, some people put so much cash into fixing up these condos, I worried the complex would become too upscale for my undersized income. That too, has been paused.

The 40 condos in the Jefferson Club, as it is called, are quirky. You quickly learn, as repairs become needed, that there is no standard between the units, as if separate contractors did the work. And often not very well. Some of the electrical switches, for instance, were installed backwards. I heard a great story after I moved in, that it was built in the 1970s by mobsters to house their girlfriends. A colorful tale, for sure, but it would explain the freestyle construction. I confess to enjoying the off kilter charm. It fits.

When I first moved in, I could walk to a real Mexican restaurant, in which no one even spoke English. Unfortunately, it's been replaced by the standard Chinese take-out. A more pedestrian form of redevelopment.

Oh, well.

A New Year’s Riff

2008-12-27T10:30:00.006-05:00

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

In my experience, the population is divided on the subject of celebrating New Year’s Eve. The most vocal members have had their plans in place for at least a month in anticipation of hearty partying. For the rest of us, it’s something to get through as uneventfully as possible.

I fall into the latter group, which, I suspect, is a silent majority. However, my feelings about New Year’s Eve are strong. I dread it. I think I almost always have.

In childhood, it was the celebration I always missed. No matter how hard I tried, sleep overcame me before that ball dropped. The next morning, the house rarely failed to show evidence of some secret grown-up ritual I was certain was as magical as it was mysterious. Someday, I thought, I will be old enough to join in such fun.

As an adolescent, I spend the long nights in a number of strangers’ homes, tending to their offspring as they frolicked away the last of the year. It was such a bore. Regular television was preempted for the New Year’s specials. It seemed that everyone in the world was partying but me, or so I imagined. At least then I earned a nice bit of change for the empty hours.

As I grew older, New Year’s developed into a time of involuntary reflection. It is when the earth and everyone on it ages, including me. Each January 1, I feel as if I have aged at least a year, although my birthday is five months away.

It’s not that I never had a good New Year’s Eve. While my children were young, I experienced the night through their eyes. We would go out to see a movie together and then either go home or gather at a friend’s house.

As our collective youngsters fought the good fight to stay awake, the adults cooked marvelous treats. We were even known to fire-up the backyard grill and roast s’mores. We sang camp songs and downed hot chocolate. And if anyone remembered, we turned on the tube in time to catch the ball drop, gingerly stepped over the bodies of sleeping offspring to offer the traditional New Year’s kisses.

It was heaven.

But all too soon, my kids were making their own plans for the evening. It seems that the celebration had now grown to include teenagers. Now, my job became one of worrying: Were they where they said they would be? Would they come home in one piece? The up side to having children is that concern for their well being often obscures concern about your own life. So, in a perverse sort of way, my New Year’s Eve dance card remained filled.

For some time now I have been left to my own devices. And I have tried just about everything I could think of to get the dark night behind me. Some years I would force myself to make elaborate plans to avoid ending up alone. This tended to drive my friends, usually a generous lot, and nuts. I’d start asking them in August what they were doing for the New Year. They would pat me on the head, laugh and dive back into the swimming pool.

So I tried ignoring it. It was just another night. Yeah, right. Let me tell so something. It doesn’t matter how many videos you rent or how early you hit the sack, the world will insist upon reminding you at midnight – with firecrackers, bells and whistles – that you are entering the New Year.

Lately, I’ve been taking a more moderate approach. I try not to obsess until mid-December. Then I make casual overtures to a friend or two. If nothing turns up, I try to make my peace with the evening. I may decide to go to a movie. Perhaps I arm myself with a good book, some incredibly decadent food and new CDs.

These days, I bet I can party harty on the internet. Betcha facebook will be rockin". Something tells me, I have a lot of company out there, eh?

ernie & bert

2008-12-22T08:21:00.004-05:00

My daughter entered this world the same year as Sesame Street. My son followed 2 years later. We grew up on that fictional inner city block, the characters our neighbors. So a few years ago, when a friend mentioned that Ernie & Bert were devised to desensitize the young to gay couples, I burst out laughing. Ernie & Bert! To me, they were the puppet Odd (not queer) Couple, a cartoon version of Felix & Oscar.

But what do I know. I have no gaydar. Nada. Well, almost nada. I catch on real fast if someone is a flaming, lisping queen. As for the rest, most of it slides right past me. I don't notice. I am gay blind. Some time ago, I asked a co-worker if he had children. He raised his eyebrows and replied: "They don't allow us to have children." (note to those who actually live in "real America": this is Florida.) I am silent. "Roberta, don't you know I'm gay?" No, I say, it never occurred to me. He walks away shaking his head.

Just recently, I pointed out to another co-worker that a young woman was particularly good looking. "Roberta, what do I care, I'm gay." I cover my mild surprise with: "Well, I'm not, and she's still a looker."

I went through this weird time at the newspaper, when women kept coming out (not necessarily "on") to me. I started to wonder if I was giving out some vibes I wasn't aware of and asked a (very hetro) colleague about it. He insisted it was less about sexual orientation than about my non-judgemental nature. OK, I'll buy that.

When I moved here, it took a little while before I realized I now live in what I've tagged "The Castro East," with t-shirts proclaiming: Two of a kind beats a straight." No exactly my kinda poker.

Why all this talk of gaydom? I saw Milk recently. And the film is everything you hear it is. Sean Penn, and perhaps the film, should take the Oscars (no pun intended). I can't quite seem to get the picture off my mind. And it isn't the personally tragic end to Milk's life. It's the time.

The poignancy of the film is almost unbearable, as it is set in the days just before AIDS decimates the Castro, and entire gay community. There is a lightheartedness to the sexuality in the film, that along with the bath houses, are gone forever. It's like watching those people in the 1920s innocently partying their way into the depression. Or even those or so assimilated Jews in Germany in the 1930s.

The present struggle for gay marriage pales in contrast to an era in which homosexuality was illegal, and coming out often meant losing everything. Harvey Milk was audacious enough to offer hope. Sound familiar?

Doggie dominatrix: update

2008-12-15T10:02:00.005-05:00

So Victoria Stilwell has now been unleashed on America for while now. And it pains me to admit I’m sorely disappointed with the US version of It's Me or the Dog. (see original post: Oct.6)

Firstly, the show had been supersized. From a snappy 30 minutes to a meandering 60. It’s bloated and lost its pace.

Victoria herself also appeared to have lost her edge. She was spotted last Saturday in (aghast) jeans. More than driving on the left side of the car, she has gone native.

The first two doggies in need, borrowed from Heather, of kids, book fame, and had two mommies. It seems that single sex households have the same difficulties as duel sex. No surprise there.

The next household was a single mom with two kids, living in a spacious suburban house. This woman was so traumatized by a break-in that she brought a humongous mastiff puppy into the home. The doggie proceeded to terrorized everyone, including the kids. I would have invested in an alarm system. It couldn’t cost more than feeding that animal, not to mention replacing the items he destroyed, including a weight bench.

Even with the “puppy” by her side, the woman was afraid to sleep in her upstairs bedroom,. Opting instead for the sofa, doggie at her feet. Victoria presented her with "Beware the Dog” signs, which supposedly discourage unwanted visitors. Again, I would have opted for the alarm system signs.

Yet, I continue to watch anyway. I still love the way she says “dog”

I have had first hand experience with Brits and their dogs. I walked my daughter’s Siberian husky Misha during a visit to her home in London several years ago. As we strolled the common, we were practically mobbed by admirers, old and young. Almost all remarking on her eyes --one brown, one blue. “Just like David Bowe,” they would exclaim.

“Oh, darling, look,” said one entranced mother to her youngster, “This doggie has one blue eye and one brown eye. Just like David Bowe...She’s a wise and magical dog.”

Lady, I recall thinking, you’ve been reading too much Harry potter. That same "wise and magical dog" managed to catch and down a whole squirrel before my daughter or I could stop her.

Maybe it’s just the sometimes incomprehensible British accents I miss.

Cutting our loses -

2008-12-11T13:50:00.002-05:00

NOT.

Why do we continue reading bad books? Or sit through awful movies?

Sunday night I saw Synecdoche New York. I sensed I was in trouble when it opened with the lead character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, beginning his day by reading the obits.

This sorry excuse for a movie quickly devolved into an unintelligible mess and seemed to go on for 2 days instead of 2 hours. Yet few of us got up to leave. Why?

Some may have been waiting for it to improve, to make some sense. After all, it had a first rate cast and good reviews. It was even billed as a comedy. I will admit to bursting out laughing a time or two at the inanity of it all, but I was the only one. Some comedy. It was so relentingly dreary people just sat, stone faced staring at the screen. Why?

I stayed because my companion will not leave in the middle of a film, regardless, unless we have aisle seats.

Others, doggedly wanted their “money’s worth,” I wager. My own time, though, is worth more to me than that.

My main theory is that most of us are afraid, afraid we are missing something, that we are the only one not smart enough to understand the deep meaning. Afraid to declare the script has no entertainment. As my former father-in-law would say: donkey dust.

If it doesn’t make sense to you, odds are there is something missing in the work, not in you. To those of you muttering that I didn’t “get it’” that it was an existential exercise. I got it. I will concede that it might have been meant as a send-up. If that’s the case, I really am not smart enough to see the difference.

How about you? The truth now. Do you vote with your feet or your seat?

face out

2008-12-08T09:36:00.003-05:00

I confess.
I have strayed, lured away by superficial charm.
By facebook.
Instead of blogging, I have been frolicking on the field of the cheerfully mundane.

Last week or so, I finally took the plunge and joined the site. While I have barely scratched the surface, I now understand the lure. It IS the surface. In real time. It's the 21rst century party line.

My son may be too busy building an empire to respond to an email or phone call, but fb fit into his life. I like knowing when he stops for pizza. It's kind of like the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when he, his sister & I are all on aim at the same time. Silly, eh? Yet it's akin to how I felt when, as teens, they were both in their beds at home. Am I making any sense?

Then there is the fun of seeing the list of friends grow exponentially and reconnecting with the long-forgotten and the unexpected.

Sure, there is the serious, the organizations et al, but I am convinced it's the quick peep into the lives of those "friends" and "friends of friends" and so on, that addict.

Have to run, need to check my page.
Look at ya later.

the cheese stands alone

2008-11-30T08:41:00.005-05:00

November 26

Today my mother died. Not TODAY, today, but on this date 12 years ago. My mind refuses to remember the exact date. Maybe that’s because it was “two days before Thanksgiving” and that’s one of those holidays that moves around. My body, however, always knows it’s coming. There is no way I can forget to remember. For a short time last week I panicked because I couldn’t find my dad’s old black Filofax (remember them?) in which I list such things. I was just about to call my Aunt Sally and shamefully ask, when I found it in one of my many shoeboxes of stuff.

The column I wrote after she passed, became one of my most requested and responded to. Years after I left the paper, I would run into people looking for a copy, or telling me how they had passed it along to their own daughters. In that spirit I offer it once again:

I have come down with a severe case of chronic terminal adulthood.

Two days before Thanksgiving, my mother died. With both my father and younger brother having preceded her, I have become the last standing member of the family in which I came of age. And frankly, this is one of those times when there is cold comfort in the knowledge that many others are being propelled through an identical emotional gauntlet.

So, I have become – in the words of self-help guru John Bradshaw – not only a “terminal adult,” but an “adult orphan.” To those who haven’t yet experienced the last of their parents’ passing, it may seem a bit self-indulgent to consider oneself an orphan when one is just shy of 50, but it really is an accurate description of what it’s like. There is something both scary and liberating about finding myself in this position. As Janis Joplin once sang: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Ain’t it the truth.

My father used to say that when he was a young man attending family functions, he was seated at a table near the door with his cousins. Then, one day he turned around and realized he was in the front of the room, with nowhere left to go and all eyes upon him.

In the month since my mother’s death, I have barely touched on the emotional work. With all the pressing, practical details, it’s almost easy to avoid the crushing realization that the parenthood fantasy is ended. Gone. There no longer exists in this world someone to whom I am all-important, someone to always be there, someone to willingly place his or her body between me and the grave.

Aside from terse financial realities, there is all that stuff. The stuff, not only of their lives, but also of mine. A melange of memories. Sorting through it bounces me back and forth in time – very unsettling.

The passing of seconds, hours and days are indistinguishable. I rise each morning and go about the rituals of life, but I am disconnected. The world spins freely without me. And that’s OK.

Oddly (or maybe not so oddly), the only place I approach wholeness is in the solitude of my mother’s house. It still looks, smells and feels as if she stepped out for a walk. I watch TV from her recliner, wade through a mass of papers on her desk and heat the last of her frozen homemade vegetable soup for dinner. Some nights, I even sleep in my parents’ bed.

For me, she will not really die until I dismantle her home, scattering her worldly goods. I begin, slowly and singularly, shaking off offers of help. I am not in a rush. In a weird way I savor the chores, perhaps as one last parting gift. I want to do it right – as if there is such a thing.

As many others of the Great Depression generation, she saved everything regardless of the logic. I found niches filled with folded paper bags of every description, a can of old twist ties, a collection of more take-out plastic food containers than a caterer would need, receipts more than a decade old, handbags with broken straps, an evening gown I wore at 17 to a cousin’s wedding – and so on.

I ask my children, extended family and her friends what they want. Their choices are surprising: a vase from my own childhood; a pair of wine goblets: a set of fruit knives, a tiny teddy bear. As for me, I can’t decide on what to sell, what to give away and what to keep. I am literally dizzy with indecision. What do I do with all those bowling trophies?

For the first week or so, the answering machine in the den hummed with innocent reminders of missed doctor’s appointments and confirmations of future appointments never to be kept.

The answering machine is quiet now; there is no blinking light announcing new messages. Well, almost no blinking light. I confess to dialing the number once or twice just to hear that familiar voice promising to return my call.