The world according to wells: why we are special

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

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

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

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

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?

“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

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.