Topic 155: Leaders and Led

Carol:

The Royal Ties That Bind   

I decided to get up early and whip out this essay so that I’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the Wedding. I recorded the whole thing (on two channels because I want the commentary of the BBC but the clearer images of CNN) and have planned a little morning family get-together to watch it. But, I cheated. I watched the first half hour of it live at 3 a.m. I didn’t intend to, but I couldn’t help it. I blame my sister-in-law, who led me into it. She called yesterday to find out if I planned to watch it live like she was.
 

Jean and I have a bit of a tradition behind us, you see.  Thirty years ago, she was living with us in San Diego County during the week while she worked for Marc as a summer “intern” while she was in law school. It was a great time because I was pregnant, and in between working on cases with Marc she helped me wallpaper the nursery and get the baby furniture together. And, I’m sure it must have been her idea that we watch the royal wedding together…live. The Wedding of the Century with Prince Charles and Lady Diana.  It was late July, and we had carried the TV out to the back porch to catch some breeze and relief from the stifling heat.
 

The man on the far right is Princess Anne.

I admit to having been a Royal watcher long before Jean and I “attended” the wedding of Prince Charles. Living in Canada for 7 years and being just a few months older than Prince Charles, I remember visits of the Royal family to Canada and much discussion among my friends about what it would be like to marry Prince Charles, who would (we assumed) eventually become the king of the United Kingdom but the head of the British Commonwealth, which of course included Canada. Steeped in the royal mystique, raised on Austin, the Brontes and the Lake District poets, I thought more about boating on the Thames with Charles than about cutting ribbons at boat launchings or shaking hands at hospital openings. I know Charles is more stiff than romantic, but I have always had a very active imagination.
 

So, the Wedding of this Century is over, and the happy couple is waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace just as Granny Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip did in 1947. Prince Charles will never be King (thank God I didn’t marry him, it would have been such a disappointment), so sometime in the next 10 years Prince William and his wife The Duchess of Cambridge (Kate the Commoner) will stand on the same balcony and wave to the crowds just as Granny Elizabeth II and Prince Philip did in 1953.
 

All this hoopla and preoccupation with the Royals—is it fading in the harsh light of modern economic woes and international unrest? Well, apparently 750 million people joined Jean and I to watch the wedding of Princes Charles and Lady Diana. Today when the baby I was pregnant with back then and I turn on the television to watch the wedding of Prince William and Lady Kate, we will join a party of 2 billion Royal watchers.
 

Abso-bloomin-lutely loverly.

(Edited from Megan: Prince Charles WILL be King. As unpopular as he is, the only way he can be passed over is if he abdicates or converts to Catholicism).

Sources:
Image of the Royal  Family. Image taken by Man vyi, uploaded from http://flickr.com/photo/35765599@N00/573748521 using User:Flickr upload bot)

Megan:

Leader of the Pack

I was thinking I’d say something about The Royal Wedding ™ but I haven’t seen it yet. My friend Kelly stayed up all night and live-facebooked it. If I was still in England, I would have put on a fancy dress and watched it at a friend’s house, drinking champagne and making fun of the hats. You’d think with my history with that country, I’d have put more effort into watching it live on this side of the pond but honestly I was way too tired. The puppy has suffered a setback in her sleep routine.

Also: she is disgusting. The other day she brought me a mouse. I posted this information on Facebook, and received a number of comments telling me that I should be proud of her hunting skills, and that bringing me the mouse is a sign of love and admiration etc. But I neglected to mention in the status update that she had not killed the mouse. As with the lizard from the day before, it had likely been dead for longer than she’s been alive. In the desert heat, dead animals dry out and mummify – maintaining their shape, but becoming feather-light as the internal organs shrivel into nothing. 

With this mouse, there was a very real risk it had been poisoned and I did not want her to swallow it, so I repeated the convulsive upside-down, Heimlich maneuver I invented when trying to get her to drop the lizard. The very last thing I wanted to do was reach into her mouth and touch the dead thing because I was afraid pieces of it would come apart in my hand. With the lizard, both the head and the tail detached, the head rolling under the couch. I had to sweep it out with a pencil.

After I got her to drop the mouse, I tossed Bella into the house and got a dust pan to scoop it up.  I hurled it over the fence, but because of the aforementioned feather-lightness, the dead mouse was picked up by the breeze. It flew into a bush growing next to the fence and caught on a branch by its tail. It is out of Bella’s reach, so I let it be, but it continues to hang in the bush at (human) eye-level, swaying lightly in the breeze like some psychotic dream catcher.

This puppy is going to be the death of me. I have read Cesar Millan’s perfect dog book, and watched countless hours of the The Dog Whisperer. Cesar says if the puppy can see and smell the pack, she will be comforted by their presence. So I lined her crate with my favorite red fleece blanket and invited Milo back into my bedroom room. I know what to do. But at 2:00 in the morning when she is howling, I’m too tired to do the right thing. Incoherently, I encourage Milo to see to his sister/niece. “Can’t you go down there?” I ask him. “It’s your turn.”  But he just rolls over on his back and lets out a snore. I wake up hours later on the floor, with my fingers poking through the wire of her crate, and I wonder who exactly is in charge here.

 

Topic 154: Personality in Apparel

Carol:

 Hats Off to the Ladies

Darn it if I didn’t miss another big event. April 25 was the official Red Hat Society day. In case you haven’t seen or read about the Red Hat ladies, they are a social organization for women over 50. The first lines of Jenny Joseph’s 1961 poem “Warning” was the inspiration for the Red Hat Society

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.”

The RHS official website makes it clear right at the beginning; these ladies all about fun, frivolity and friendship
 
The word that comes to mind when I see the Red Hat ladies is “crone.” No, not the hunched over, wart-faced witchy types depicted in films, but the archetype of the wise old woman who gathers the young children around her knee for winter stories and passes on life knowledge to her daughters.  The modern crone is a woman who wears her aging as a badge of survival and celebration, comfortable with a new phase of life that is more about gain than loss.
 
I only know one “Red Hatter,” for sure. She has always been fun and frivolous, and she always wears purple to offset her bright red hair. Maybe she read Jenny Joseph’s poem a long time ago and turned to purple when she was young. The poem is not about being old really; it is about being young. Its title is “Warning,” and only the first half of the poem describes the freedom of old age when women can not only wear what they want but act how they want, “and make up for the sobriety of [their] youth.”  The rest of the poem is about the responsibilities young people have, the social and parental duties, the pressure to conform . Joseph throws in a little teaser in the last stanza, a thought that maybe, just maybe, there is room to “practice” the audacity of personal freedom right now, before women get old.  Like I say, my Red Hatter friend doesn’t need the empowerment of a Red Hat Society to make her feel comfortable in her red and purple-ness. She already had it.
 
I have another crone friend who makes me laugh whenever I think about her. She is more of a “Mad Hatter” than a “Red Hatter,” and she has a an outrageous costume for every occasion. Go to her house for the Academy Awards, and she will be dressed in a tiara and long white gloves. She has a hat with sparklers that light up for 4th of July, and rabbit ears for Easter. She honed her talent for frivolity from 20-something years of teaching first and second graders. Her frivolity and lightheaded joy for life is not shallow; it was hard won from a tough childhood.  Her hugs and hats are celebrations of survival.
 
I have another crone friend who makes me applaud whenever I think about her. She was all about hats for a while, for a year that was the antithesis of frivolity and fun. It was the year of wearing hats to cover the bald head from chemo and radiation. It was about a Knit Hat Society of friends who banded together to help her fight the cancer, shopped and cooked and called and cried…and laughed.. ,with her.  I know that behind the “in your face” bravado and the hats there had to have been times of emotional meltdown, but boy did she show me what strength and friendship are all about.
 
I love seeing the Red Hat ladies congregating at the Courthouse Square or meeting for tea in the Wild Iris. But, I already belong to a Society of Fearless and Frivolous Friends, and I take off my hat to them all. 

Sources:

Joseph, Jenny. "Warning." poemhunter,cm. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/warning/

Red Hat Society Official homepage. http://www.redhatsociety.com/index.aspx



  

Megan:

Impersonality in Apparel

Didn’t we already have this topic? For someone who cares as little about clothing as I do, it’s hard to come up new material for another essay.

Instead, I’m going to rant a little bit about what I think is a size-ist policy in mainstream department stores (Size-ist, by the way, is discrimination against people of size.)

Before

After

A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of What Not to Wear, and Mindy Cohn (Natalie from The Facts of Life) was their victim guest. I really liked her original style, which featured tunic shirts and leggings and comfortable shoes. She looked like she was always on the way to a yoga class, but the woman mostly does voice work now, and it’s nice to be comfortable. After the makeover, she looked pretty nice too – but anyway, she made a point during the episode that resonated with me: Most stores do not stock cute clothes for bigger women.

I shop at Kohls a lot. I’m aware that their clothing is not quality, but they fit my other requirement – cheap and comfortable. What annoys me about that place, is that the first thing you see when you walk in are all the super cute summer dresses on display. I love dresses. One of my favorite things about being back in a consistently warm climate is that I can wear sundresses every day if I want for about 6 months of the year. So, I see the dresses and get excited and then head over to the area with clothes in my size, and there’s nothing. Lots of pants, lots of big shirts, and maybe only two styles of upper-arm-concealing, hide-your-problem-areas-with-excess-fabric dresses. It is extremely frustrating.

This is an old argument. I know that the excuses. It is easier to design a dress in a smaller size because the measurements tend to be more consistent. When you get to the bigger sizes you get people with small hips and a giant bust (or the reverse),  all sorts of fruit shapes (apples and pears and bananas, oh my) and maybe it’s not economically viable to design affordable clothes which account for those variables.
 
Except that I know it is done. We have Maurices, a mid-priced store, in our mall that stocks sizes 0 - 24 – cute and casual as well as professional clothes for plus sized women – and nearly the same dresses for the entire range of sizes. Lane Bryant and Torrid also cater to the bigger sizes, but I would have to drive to Phoenix to shop at those stores, and also they are not very affordable if you are unemployed.

I’ve read that it is harder for overweight people to achieve promotion to higher paying jobs because they are often perceived to be lazy. This perception can only be reinforced by the ill-fitting and unattractive clothing lines available to the lower incomes. I’m not saying the general lack of fitted, cute and sexy options is part of a conspiracy to make plus-sized women feel bad about themselves – there are plenty of other outlets to feed our insecurity. I’m saying there is a market. No matter what their size, most people feel more confident when they look good. Increase our options and maybe we’ll shop more.  And that’s good for the economy, right?

/rant

Topic 153: Adventures While Pursuing an Idea

Carol:

Clochard

 The opportunity of going to school in France for a year was exciting and scary at the same time. My roommate Laurie was going, so it wasn’t that hard to convince my parents of our plan. I expected to become fluent in French, enjoy the Provencal countryside, and spend my holidays poking around Europe. I did not expect to meet Raoul.
 

Aix-en-Provence is a beautiful  city with a grand, tree-shaded boulevard called the Cours Mirabeau. Cafes with outdoor tables line  the street, perfect to linger over a café au lait and croissant before going to class. Laurie and I shared a room in an old farmhouse on the road to Marseilles, about 15 minutes by bus from the center of Aix. In the evenings we would usually  buy a roasted chicken and head back to our room for supper. But, sometimes we would stay in town for dinner and wine with friends, and that’s how I met Raoul.
 

It was common for musicians to show up in restaurants, play a few songs for tips, then head out to the next “venue.” Raoul played the guitar and sang a range of folk music  with a raspy, Tom Waits voice. He was very tall, over six feet six, curly headed with a bit of a beard, and one eye roamed. Not your typical Frenchman. And, not your typical boyfriend.
 

I can’t say that we really dated because Raoul never had any money. Each night, he played in the bars and restaurants around Aix, and the next day he would spend all the coins for food. One morning I saw him give away every franc he had to a vagrant huddled in a blanket on the sidewalk, an old clochard. Raoul was a young clochard. Not someone to write home to Mom about.
 

Cafe des Deux Garcons, Aix

Mostly, Raoul and I would meet at a café and talk for hours before he set out on his evening musical circuit. Sometimes we would join up with his older brother Bernard, who could usually be found in a café reading Herbert Marcuse. Bernard was not a clochard. He lived in an old apartment with little kids and a wife who was a professional ballerina. I think Raoul must have come to Aix because of Bernard. 
 

For several months, I did a lot of hanging out with Raoul and not much studying.  We would weave stories together about buying a boat and sailing around the Mediterranean.  Raoul was at heart an innocent dreamer, and I loved the idea that he made me a part of those dreams. One day he decided to return to Strasbourg, and we said good-bye. He invited me for a visit, and I stayed at the home of his very traditional mother. She gave me steak tartare for dinner, and I was sick all night on the train back to Marseilles.
 

At the end of the school year, my friend Bonnie arrived from Canada for our long-anticipated summer trek around Europe. In July we headed back to Aix for the music festival, and there was Raoul sitting in a café.  Same routine, same dreams, same slight temptation on my part to shuck off conventionality and responsibilities for a vagabond life with Raoul. Slight temptation.
 

Thirty years later, I returned to Aix with my husband and two children. It was July, and the Cours Mirabeau was crowded with tourists for the music festival. I couldn’t help but think about Raoul and wonder what had happened to him--excited at the possibility that I might hear his raspy voice, scared that I might see him wrapped in a blanket on the sidewalk. A clochard, no longer young.

Sources:
Image of Cours Mirabeau Cafe

Megan:

Ideas while pursuing adventure

I like this topic. I think it’s open to interpretation and there’s probably  an abundence of anecdotes that could relate back to it, but I can’t think of one.  I’m gonna be honest and admit that I cheated and read my mother’s essay. Well, the first paragraph anyway. As soon as I realized she wrote about studying abroad, I thought of something to say. And here it is.

When I was in college, I knew that I would study abroad, but I didn’t know where. Spain had originally been the plan, but although I had 4 years of Spanish in high school and a couple months of immersive study in Mexico, I never bothered to take a Spanish class in college. When I also changed my mind about my major and switched from art to creative writing, England was introduced as an option for my junior year. I remember this so clearly. I was sitting on the steps outside of the Tea Shop at Mills and I was talking to a friend who worked on the newspaper with me and my friend Kelly. I was frustrated because Kelly was going to Italy to study opera and I still had no idea what to do and deadlines were approaching and this girl I barely knew said, “You should go to Sussex. That’s where I went.” And that’s what I did.

That random choice influenced everything that happened for the next 8 years. Every decision I made from then on about my education, my career and my relationships was focused on being able to live in England. Now that I don’t live there anymore, my decisions are still mainly shaped around where I do want to live, which for now is here in Prescott.  As I mentioned yesterday, an opportunity has come up and if it pans out, I might get to stay here, but I would not be a librarian anymore.

Even though I’ve been unemployed for close to a year, I have never stopped thinking of myself as a librarian. Doctors go to med school, lawyers to law school and even if they aren’t practicing, they are still doctors and lawyers. I went to library school, so I am a librarian. The thing is, my degree is not in Library Science – it’s in Information Studies. It’s abstract on purpose, so that the graduates aren’t “restricted” by the qualification. I can take the same skills and be a database manager, a web designer, a research assistant or consult on project management and community outreach. There’s no such thing as being “just a librarian” but the career experience can be applied to more than just libraries.   I’m not sure I want to give up on being a librarian, but pursuing alternative ideas could open the door to another kind of adventure.

Topic 152: On Losing One's Grip

Carol:

Get A Grip on It!

 I fit a lot of different statistical niches. I am a baby boomer, which is anyone born between 1946-1962 --28% of the American population. In the 1980’s I became part of a growing group who were labeled “the sandwich generation,” i.e. middle-aged women caring simultaneously for dependent children and aging parents.  Not that the notion was new, just the label.  I had shared a bedroom with my grandmother for several years when I was in grade school, and both grandmothers lived with us for a time. They had done the same for their own mothers.

My mother moved to Prescott twice. The first time was with my father.  The 5000 foot altitude seemed to sap my Dad’s strength. The change in Dad’s health was symptomatic of lung cancer, the diagnosis sending them back to the lower altitude. My mother returned to Prescott in 1990, an 80-year-old widow living by herself for the first time. Over the next nine years until her death, she aged from an independent, happy Grandma who hopped on my husband’s motorcycle for a ride around the neighborhood to a frail, house-bound invalid who needed full-time assistance. Every Sunday I relieved her care-giver, cooked a meal at her house and helped with her most intimate personal care. Just as she had done for her mother.

I earned a new label in 2002, “empty nester.” There is even a term called “empty nest syndrome” to describe a general feeling of malaise or loneliness when children leave home. Oh great, I had felt guilty in the 80’s when I dropped my kids off at day-care, guilty in the 90’s when I was cranky with my aging mother, and now I could feel guilty about not experiencing “empty nest syndrome.” I kind of liked spreading out into the abandoned bedrooms, setting up my own office and having an allocated “guest bedroom.” Still, what do baby boomers do when they reach a significant life passage? They buy a book, or…. they write a book. That’s how I ended up with Lauren Schaffer’s book 133 Ways to Avoid Going Cuckoo When the Kids Fly the Nest: A Parent’s Guide for Surviving Empty Nest Syndrome, a light and humorous approach as opposed to a deep and psychological analysis.

Last May, I reached two statistical milestones at about the same time. I became a baby boomer retiree in a town with 53% of the population over the age of 45. Prescott has been continually ranked by Money magazine as a top-20 retirement destination, and I feel like I am finally reaping all of the benefits a retirement-oriented community provides: free entertainment on the square, senior discounts, great classes for seniors at the college. The other milestone was actually attained by my daughter when she became part of a growing number of 20-somethings called the “boomerang generation” when she returned to her childhood home and childhood bedroom to begin the job search.

I’m trying to finish this essay while my daughter is staring at the back of my head. I know she is wondering why it always takes me so long to get my essays done. But, she isn’t nagging me because Bella is asleep in her lap and Megan doesn’t want to disturb the baby. Our house is looking like it did back in the 80’s when I was part of that sandwich generation, strewn with toys and blocked with baby gates. I think I have gotten a pretty good grip on my new situation, but in the meantime I’m thinking about writing a book called Raising the Perfect Grandpuppy: A Guidebook for Baby Boomer Retirees Who Lost Their Empty Nests.

Megan:

Something about that poster has always irritated me. "Hang In There" seems like such a trite statement for what is clearly a life-threatening situation.

I tried making a list of things of which one might lose one’s grip . Reality, Sanity, Time, The Dog’s Leash etc. Then the expression sort of lost meaning for me, so I looked it up. According to an idiom dictionary I found, it means to lose control of a situation. It occurs to me that, with the exception of the leash, the term is often applied incorrectly. After all, one can neither have nor lose control of things like reality or time. One can only lose the ability to act like one is in control.

When one is unemployed, one might feel like one has no grip at all. (One also might think the use of the pronoun “one” is pretentious, awkward and easily abused.) When I didn’t get that job a couple of weeks ago, I was mostly disappointed because it meant I probably wouldn’t be able to stay here in Prescott.  It’s funny how things change, because staying in Prescott used to be my biggest fear… but I’ve gotten involved in the community. I joined a softball team, I got a puppy, and I have a lot of friends here. I would like to stay.

But then I think of the adventure of moving to a new place and starting over again. I can talk myself in circles and not get anywhere. Literally, I’m just sitting in a chair, arguing with myself in an essay, and NOT applying for jobs.

I actually did apply for a different kind of job the other day. A community outreach position for a local non-profit organization. As a librarian, there are certain skills very specialized to the profession (like cataloguing and classifying), but the public service and information management skills are very transferable to other careers. I have resisted the idea of looking outside of libraries because I thought it would be a waste of the time, energy and money spent on gaining my Masters Degree, but that seems now to be a very close-minded approach.

Or maybe I’m just at the point in the cycle where I’m frustrated with the process. That seems to happen every few months. I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on – good fun things, which might not be as productive as finding a job, but that add meaning and purpose to my life. I’ve been spending time with my family, going to my cousin’s 5 year old’s T-Ball game and her 3 year old’s dance class (both of which were hilariously chaotic). Today I’m going to hang out with my aunt and see my grandmother. And I’ve got a puppy to train. 

Photo courtesy of my neighbor Jim.

Service Interruption #3

We hope everyone had a nice Easter. 

Instead of writing an essay, I (Megan) am busy supervising this:

What you can't see is Bella cowering between my legs, afraid of the horses. Also what you can't see is although the child is fearless when it comes to farm animals, she screams if Bella even looks at her. 

Carol didn't write an essay because she is tired and recuperating from the effort of making a fabulous Easter dinner yesterday (or as I like to say: Lazy). 

We'll be back tomorrow.

Topic 151: Why the Dessert Course Last

Carol:

Getting Your Just Desserts

Because eating sweets first  will spoil your dinner.
Because your parents (or their parents) always did it that way.
Because it’s the way people in your community, state, or country do it.
Because it’s good to exercise delayed gratification (unless you don’t like sweets)

My quick research confirms that the idea of dessert as a course in a meal is relatively new but not the idea of sweet foods, which until the 19th century were mostly sweetened with honey or  fruits. All kinds of seasonal pies were in the repertoire of  Colonial American  housewives.  The 19th century publication The National Cook book: by a Lady of Philadelphia (Peterson) lists over 3 pages of desserts, ranging from quince, apple, and potato puddings to plum and peach pies to blackberry mush and Parsnip cake.  Not a processed dessert to be had, all baked from seasonal fruits and grains.  Sugar was just too expensive for ordinary homes. As sugar became affordable in the 19th century, the number of sugar products multiplied: peanut brittle, candy floss, chocolate bars, marshmallows, toffee, etc, (source: Lambert)
 

The answer to why desserts are eaten at the end of a meal  may come from the origin of the word itself  The name is derived from from the French  verb “desservir,” meaning to clear the table. So, the dessert was a way to clear the mouth of the tastes of a multi-course meal with something  sweet (source: Hassan). That’s why at fancy restaurants you may get a little scoop of sherbet in between several heavy courses as a way to “cleanse” the palate when moving from one rich or spicy item to the next. 
 

Most cultures have traditional desserts that are served at holidays, Easter season being one of those ritual occasions.  In Greece, the traditional Easter meal may finish with Tsoureki, a yeast bread flavored with orange and a special spice ground from wild cherry pits, or a sweet, hand-shaped pastry called Koulourakia.  In England, the Easter  meal may end with a Simnel cake, a fruit cake  topped with  11 Marzipan balls that represent  all of the apostles except for Judas.  The traditional plate of a Jewish seder meal of Pesach (Passover) includes a sweet concoction called charoset made with honey, cinnamon, nuts, apples and other ingredients particular to different culture that symbolizes the bricks made by the Hebrews during their Egyptian enslavement.  After the Passover meal, the dessert table may include a variety of kosher desserts , including macaroons.
 

In our home, Easter traditions often reversed the notion of “saving the dessert for last.” When our children were young, I loved to get an Easter basket together for each one, filled with a variety of decorated hard-boiled eggs, jelly beans, chocolates, etc. The rules were bent as we popped a Cadbury Crème in our mouth or bit off the ears of a Chocolate bunny.  Brunch usually came after church, so the eggs and ham were eaten after the sweets.  This year we will have to be careful as chocolate is poisonous to dogs (see yesterday’s theme on “table manners). 
 

Why the dessert course last? Because.

 

Sources:
Peterson, Hannah Mary Bouvier. The national cook book.: By a lady of Philadelphia. A practical housewife ; and author of the "Family save-all." The Making of America website
Hassan, Taugeer Ui. “A Short History of Desserts.” Ezinearticles.
Lambert, Tim> A Brief History of Sweets
         

Megan:

Googling this topic turns up a number of answers to the question it poses. Some are joking    (“To keep the kids at the table”); some  are scientific (“to slow the absorption of the sugar and avoid sudden changes in blood glucose levels”); and some that don’t make much sense (“it helps you digest the food you already ate”).

My theory is that the food that is worst for you is served last so that you will eat less of it. Most of the time, especially when I eat in restaurants, I don’t have room left in my stomach to have dessert. To avoid this problem, I occasionally go to a place and only order dessert.

This may be the dumbest topic yet.  I don’t have anything else to add. Except maybe this:

Topic 150: Table Manners

Carol:

Table Manners for Dogs            

Today’s topic seems familiar. I know I wrote about etiquette at the table for Topic 57 “Etiquette for Ancestors.” And, I’m sure along the way I have mentioned some of my mother’s methods for instilling proper social behavior:  But, I guess there are always new ways of looking at banal, familiar topics such as Table Manners.” Let’s talk pets.
 

As I mentioned in T145 “Humorous Dyspepsia,” we have had a series of dogs from various shelters. I was also raised with dogs. After my father kept a puppy from the litter of his beautiful Brittany Spaniel Diana, I was recruited to attend dog obedience school with the pup while Dad  took Diana. Momma dog passed with flying colors. Baby dog Solo was sweet but a bit of a clown, and when I took him to class he would act like he didn’t have a solid bone in his body and would become totally limp. I guess in doggie psychology the term would be passive-aggressive. Solo was not badly-behaved, just a little odd. One time I looked out my parents’ window up to the top of the steep hill behind their house where the dogs  liked to sit. Solo was at the top all right, but he was sitting in our neighbors’ backyard, not ours.
 

Our first dog after marriage came from the pound when he was very tiny. I can’t actually go to a shelter myself (it makes me upset), so Marc was sent to pick out a healthy- looking female “toddler” rather than a puppy. He came home with Freebie, an 8-week old male, chosen because the puppy looked sickly and my hubby felt sorry for the little guy. Most of the training was left to me, so I enrolled Freebie in dog obedience school at a local park. He was sort of doing okay until the third class when he peed all over the trainer. I was too humiliated to ever go back. Freebie turned out great although he did have a peculiar relationship with a white fluffy rug.

When Freebie died on the 4th of July (okay, he got run over—our fault, deep shame), Annie arrived as a quick replacement because I had a broken ankle, full leg cast and crutches for 3 months. She was another black and white dog, a cocker mix. She was almost a year old, so we didn’t have to go through any of the puppy phase stuff that requires intensive dog and people training.  She spent a lot of time on my lap, or cuddled up next to me for the next few years until child #1 came along. Then, Annie spent a lot of time hiding under tables. Well….not always. 

By the time Milo came along about 5 years ago, I felt like I knew enough not to need obedience school even though he was at the perfect age for training. Luckily, a neighbor loaned us Cesar Millan’s book How to Raise the Perfect Dog, which led to rules about who was boss. I understand there is some controversy about his approach to training animals, but Milo learned good manners from the approach, including not going into the kitchen and sitting with really terrific posture. The kitchen thing—Milo has added his own caveat to that rule. No going into the kitchen unless people leave the room for 30 seconds while there is a raw pizza sitting on the counter.
 

His table manners? A picture is worth a thousand words.

Megan:

Table Manners for Dogs  2.0

(I already know that my mother stole my idea for this topic.  I didn’t tell her about it ahead of time, but still she managed to pluck it from my brain. )

We’ve never been particularly concerned with table manners in our family. You will find elbows on the table. Depending on who sets the table, the cutlery is not always in the correct order and wine is drunk from a tumbler because most of the glasses have broken. Butter is applied to the entire roll, not to individual bite-sized pieces. Napkins are bunched up beside the plate, or tucked into the collar. Sometimes there is burping and Milo often spends the meal with his head in someone’s lap (where the napkins should be).

Milo is a good boy around food as long as someone is there to watch him. Turn your back and he can eat 4 fillets of Tilapia or half a pizza in less time than it takes to wash your hands. But he never snatches from you, or steals food from a plate, even if it is within reach. Bella, on the other hand, has no self-control. 

The other night I had some friends over to watch the Tron movies, which none of us had ever seen. We had been planning the Tron-O-Thon for weeks, including a gourmet meal during the intermission. During the first movie/appetizers course, Bella was everywhere. She jumped on the coffee table, only to be knocked off. She spilled drinks. She climbed on the couch and tried to intercept the food as it made its way from the table to the mouths. And when she was thwarted, she became frustrated and cried and then howled.  I spent the first 20 minutes of the film trying to get her settled and only after we gave up and put the food away did she settle down. I had no idea what was going on for the rest of the movie.

For the actual meal, we put the dogs outside, but the smell of The Most Amazing Potato Soup Ever, served in fresh sourdough bread bowls, was too much for her.  She gnawed through the screen door, but was defeated by the sliding glass door. Then she tried every window – leaping and hanging from the screens. My friends offered advice, having successfully trained their American Bulldog to “get his ass on his bed.” I can’t stomach some of their suggestions (because I am weak and passive), but I am sure I will be able to train her to be at least as good as Milo.

After all, our standards are not that high. We just want to be able to sit in peace, our elbows on the table, eating soup with a teaspoon, belching contentedly, with a dog under the chair of the messiest eater (Mom). 

Topic 149: Mental Precipitates

Carol:

Plumbing the Family Gene Pool   

John Marshall

 I turned  on my computer this morning at 5:30 a.m  and  opened up the genealogy site to fill in some missing dates of the southern ancestors in Virginia. When I got to the Randolph family, I recognized a name worth investigating. Could it be, I thought, that we are related to someone that my lawyer husband will appreciate, John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States?

My sister-in-law has been working on our family genealogy for over 20 years, and she is very serious about it. She has taken classes, traveled around the country visiting family gravesites and hometowns  and belongs to a genealogy group. She sticks to direct family lines and relies on direct evidence from official records, census reports, veterans’ documents, etc, which is why her files on the Scott, Malone, Caldwell, DeWitt, Grassmyer, Fike, Edwards and Olssen families are more reliable than mine.

Other than a total lack of training or discipline, my problem with doing genealogical work is that I get excited when I see a tangential but famous connection. These serendipitous finds  precipitate hours of wild, connect-the-dot research to show how I am tied to this famous academic or that slaveholder or—omigod, to a guy who died at the Alamo. I’m not really a historical snob as I get kind of excited when I find anything unusual about our ancestors, like the poor woman whose census reports show she spent 20 years in a mental hospital or the farmer who put rocks in his pocket and drowned himself after his health failed.

I get most excited when I get even a hint of DNA connection to a literary figure. This week’s “find” was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  If I follow one family line, Longfellow is my 5th cousin 5 x removed, and if I follow a different family line, he is my 3rd cousin 5x removed. Samuel Clemens is my 5th cousin 4x  removed, and Louisa May Alcott is my 6th cousin 4x removed. Like I said, such little forays into genealogical dreamland not only generate hours of frivolous computer time, but precipitate frustration from family members and neglect of more important activities such as completing my book project or playing with Bella the beautiful and Milo the magnificent.

One benefit of all this genealogical dabbling is that it has rekindled my  interest in American history. I used to say that I didn’t like history classes because they seemed to focus on famous generals and famous battles, and war, war, war. But, when I’m looking at the enlistment and pension records of ordinary people, or when I read their written accounts of the day-to-day life of a lonely soldier, I begin to see the Revolutionary War or the Civil War with greater interest. As tedious as my “Guess who we’re related to” stories get, Marc is now reading books about Gettysburg and watching Ken Burns’ Civil War series with me.

I really admire my sister-in-law’s fastidious approach to uncovering our family roots. And I really admire her self-discipline in being able to spend so many years on a project without letting it become an obsession. Sometimes when I trip across a really surprising genealogical link, I call her to share the news. She never gets as excited as I do because, frankly, she doesn’t really care as much as I do about the 2nd cousins   6 x removed or their in-laws.. But, maybe it will be different when I tell her about John Marshall because she is a retired attorney. She can go to her genealogy class and proudly announce that Chief Justice John Marshall is the grand- nephew of the wife of her husband’s first cousin 9x removed.

Law and literature. They’re in the genes.

Megan:

Mental Precipitates

I initially interpreted this topic as meaning a sort of a ‘mental storm’ (after all, precipitation means rain), but according to Merriam-Webster, precipitate can also mean “to bring about abruptly” or “to move or act with violent or unwise speed.” In other words, impulsively - sort of like how I acquired my puppy.

I have had Bella for a week now and some things are better, some are worse. She sits on command, her accidents are less frequent and usually by the door. She spends most of the night in her crate, and is very sweet and cuddly when she is tired. I’m getting used to my new sleeping arrangement and schedule. I woke up in the middle of the night at the foot of my bed, with my fingers twisted through the bars of her crate; I must have passed out in the middle of trying to soothe her. Milo loves her and she adores him, and mom is already talking about how sad they will be when they are separated.

Worse is her destructiveness. She feels comfortable enough in our home that she’s now ready to tear it apart. Our screen door has a Bella-sized hole in the bottom. Her hound blood, which, with the exception of her long legs, does not really show in her appearance, is obvious in her howling and her sense of smell. I left some treats in a pair of pants and she chewed through the pocket to get to them. She likes to bite and then hang on to anything that dangles, be it hair, earrings or poor Milo’s penis.

I’ve never been completely responsible for an animal before, and I forgot how much work a puppy can be. Sometimes I look at her and feel only a panic that I am no longer free – I imagine this feeling is a cross between buyer’s remorse and post-partum depression (and now my friends with children want to punch me in the face.) I think about the commitment, about how if she lives as long as our other pound-puppies, she may see me into my mid-40’s. She will be a part of everything I want and need to accomplish over the next decade, including finding a way to have a family of my own.

It’s hard to think about anything else right now, which has kept me from dwelling on the disappointment of not getting that job, of not feeling completely settled. But when I look at her and see everything I still need to do, for a moment it feels like a fist is squeezing my heart. 

But then she’ll grunt in her sleep and push her nose into my neck and be the most adorable thing ever. And that pulls me back from the panic and the what-ifs into the present moment (in that Eckhart Tolle sort of way).  Maybe I acted too quickly by introducing this dog into this untethered and transitional period in my life, but now that I have her to account for, in the future I will avoid acting abruptly or with violent and unwise speed.

Topic 148: Temporal Halos

   
Carol:

            Word Play

Today's topic is second choice. The one we threw back was not appealing to either of us, and we only allow ourselves one "throw back." So, we're stuck with "temporal halos." I vowed with T148 not to do any research, resort to Google for ideas, and not to spend many hours on it because there is just too much fun stuff going on around the house right now. There are puppies to play with, after all. Instead, I'm going to play one of my favorite games. Fictionary.
 
We used to play Fictionary on Saturday nights with our college friends while  were waiting for Saturday Night Live to come on. The game is cheap and simple,  requiring  only a dictionary, paper and pencils. The idea is to find a really obscure word in the dictionary and then make up several definitions for it, the more elaborate the better, then read them out loud along  with the real definition. Winners are the ones who guess the correct meaning of the word. Winners are also the ones whose phony definitions get chosen instead.  I love this game because it takes full advantage of my experience with word play. During detention time at my Canadian junior high school, I was required to either memorize stanzas of poems or copy out the dictionary pages. Very civilized, eh?  I write good dictionary.

I’ll use today’s topic “temporal halos” to illustrate. Here are 3 possible definitions, with a whimsical nod to some of my favorite TV shows.

(1)    The Bio-medical Definition:  According to the medical sleuths on House, temporal halos are bio-electrical phenomena that show up as round shadows on brain scans. Generally, temporal halos are symptomatic of increased neural activity in the temporal lobe, neuropathic manifestations if you will, that most frequently signal the presence of brain lesions.  What causes these brain lesions will only be revealed at the 55-minute mark of a 60-minute, high-stakes,  medical guessing  game. Diagnosis: epileptic seizures brought on by pulsating waves of, not STD’s as you might suspect, but HDTV’s that are left on all night  when people fall asleep on the couch instead of going to bed at a normal hour.

 
(2)    The Paranormal Psychology Definition: The science team on Fringe identifies temporal halos as emanations from doppelgangers who travel between parallel universes. “Temporal” here refers to time and space aberrations as opposed to brain abnormalities. While the Housian bio-electric halo is distinguished by its silver metallic flicker, the Fringian halo appears as a translucent rainbow much like the delicate  multi-colored shimmer of a soap bubble or oil puddle.  This halo only manifests for that split second when the doppleganger slides through one world into the other, pushing through a kind of osmotic, membranous force field that keeps parallel worlds from bleeding into each other.

(3)    The Prismatic-Pyramidic-Spiritualistic Definition: Reruns of  Michael Landon’s Highway to Heaven provide convincing proof for a third definition, much favored by crystal collecting Sedona psychics. Angels walk among us, heavenly guardians, ephemerals  whose presence in the temporal world is kept secret lest humankind become distracted from performing everyday functions or acts or bravery. These Earth Angels use eye-deceiving clothing to hide their wings, but their temporal halos can be seen with the peripheral vision, what we might call the Divine Parallax View.  These halos present as auras rather than the gold disks represented in traditional sacred iconic art. Unlike the Housian and Fringian temporal halos which retain a fixed ring shape, the Landonian halo appears to vibrate and even elongate during high-intensity intervention, we might say a heavenly adrenaline rush.

 
There you have it, three plausible and distinct definitions for an archaic expression.  If you want to play the game, post your own definition. But….no googling,  no Merriam-Webstering, please.
 


Megan:

 

Mom is right. There IS a lot going on around here right now and my essay did not get written.

Topic 147: The Joys of the Country Cottager

Carol:

The Pause that Refreshes

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. (Thoreau, “Walking”)

I am married to a Massachusetts native who remembers visiting Walden Pond when he was a teen-ager, riding his bicycle from Lexington to Concord. When I asked about his recollections, Marc’s response was “It’s tiny.” I guess reading about it from Henry David Thoreau might make one curious to see what it is like—the pond, not Thoreau’s wilderness lifestyle.  

In Thoreau’s time, Walden Pond wasn’t exactly an isolated wilderness. Apparently it served as a “nature retreat” for the town of Concord. A number of people lived in the woods around the pond, including Irish railroad workers and an assortment of interesting outsiders described in his journals. “An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gather simples and listening to her fables” (Walden 152); Thoreau was as isolated as he chose to be because he was also in easy walking distance of Concord and could find company if he desired it.   

Walden Pond

Thoreau’s experiment  at Walden Pond was not just about solitude and nature; it was also about simple living, stripping away the conveniences and  encumbrances of a modern, materialistic life. The first chapter of Walden, called “Economy,” serves as an introduction to the book. Thoreau addresses the readers directly from the perspective of someone who has returned  from having “earned my living by the labor of my hands only” (Walden 1). Most of the chapter is really an examination of what people need to keep themselves alive, what is necessary versus what is luxury.  Thoreau looks to the ancient philosophers as having eschewed a rich outer life for the rewards of a fuller inner life. “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of man” (Walden 15).

Most of us have neither the time nor the inclination to step out of the world for two years into the solitude of a Walden Pond.  The term “social networking” has become such a part of our thinking that it may be hard to imagine disconnecting from our adult toys, computers, media and frenetic lifestyles. A couple of years ago when I took a nine-month class at my church, the participants were asked to “turn everything off” for just one day as part of experiencing “voluntary simplicity.” No phones, computers, I-pods, answering machines, electrical appliances. Just one day to slough off that accumulation of the “comforts of life” that Thoreau refers to. I closed the door to my office, seated myself with a view of Granite Mountain, poured a glass of water and started reading. I felt an incredible freedom when I heard the phone ring and didn’t answer it, when I became master of my day.

Thoreau didn’t have a wife and children to feed. And I no longer have kids that need to get to soccer practice or piano lessons. The solitude and inward journey described by Thoreau is itself a luxury. But, I imagine everybody appreciates the value of a little peace and quiet, a temporary time out from life. The pause that refreshes.

Sources:
Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Image of Cover: Schward103. (Public domain file from en.wikipedia: Category:Books made in the 19th century)
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. The Walden Woods Project:

Megan:

You'll never think of cottages or dogs the same way

I’m sure this topic is meant to be about the pleasures of country life. It certainly evokes the image of the thatched-roof tiny white house out of one of a Thomas Kinkade painting, with a bubbling brook and scattered wild-life. I have always been attracted to the ethereal fairy-tale images, and when I picked out the flat I rented in England, it resembled that dream.

The thing is, in England the term  “Cottager” is also a euphemism. In its verb form, “cottaging” is the act of having anonymous homosexual intercourse in a public toilet (ala George Michael).  According to Wikipedia (it’s times like this I LOVE the internet), cottage became a term for a public toilet in Victorian times but cottaging wasn’t picked up as term within the British gay community until the 1960’s. 

Public Toilet, Pond Square, London

I first became familiar with the expression when I was studying abroad at the University of Sussex. My friends and I frequently watched an adult cartoon series called Monkey Dust. On the show, there was a recurring character by the name of Geoff who was a self-proclaimed “First-time cottager.” Geoff was very unlucky. Although he was determined to participate in this ritual, he was regularly thwarted by obstacles and misunderstanding and never managed to achieve his goal. Youtube has many clips, but none of them are appropriate for me to post here because I don’t want to have to register this website as having "adult content."

When we pulled this topic, I got the giggles and had to explain it to my mom. However, I mis-remembered the details and told her it was anonymous public sex on the side of the road, occasionally with an audience. That is actually called “dogging” – which was gleefully described to me by a housemate’s boyfriend, again while I was living in Brighton.  Last October, the New York Times featured an article about a lay-by (or, as we would call it: a rest-stop)  in Puttenham, Surrey in England.

“So popular is the woodsy field below the ridge as a spot for gay sex (mostly during the day) and heterosexual sex (mostly at night) that the police have designated it a “public sex environment.””

After learning about this phenomeon, which is in no way restricted to Surrey, it became impossible for me not to notice all the cars parked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. According to the NYT article, this practice is so popular, there are websites and guides devoted to popular areas in the UK. When I was working in the prison, I once heard one officer joke about another that she knew the location of every lay-by in the county, and I only now understood what was being implied.

I bet this isn’t what you were expecting when you came here today. I can’t wait to see how the search statistics will change to reflect some of the keywords I’ve used today. 

Sources:

Wikipedia: "Cottaging" Image taken from this entry.  New York Times: "Here’s the Pub, Church and Field for Public Sex" October 7, 2010

Topic 146: On Being One's Own Financier

Carol:

Plastic or Paper?

Shortly after our move to Prescott in 1983, I applied for a credit card at the local store of a large retail chain. I was a sure bet—or so I thought—because I had worked continuously for ten years before moving and had a good credit history. I was denied the card because I was unemployed at the time even though my husband was employed and we had a joint checking account. I was so mad I boycotted that store for 5 years.
 

So, imagine my surprise in 2000 to find my college-freshman daughter inundated with unsolicited credit cards. She didn’t have a job, and she had no credit history. We talked about it at the time, and she decided to accept a single card, charge something small every month to establish a credit history, and pay it off. As far as I know she did that, and she has been practical about her finances ever since (although I may get a surprise to the contrary when I read her essay on today’s topic). I know she felt that she had really become her own “financier” when, in England, she sold a car, bought a new one, negotiated a loan, and later sold that car all without guidance from her father.
 

Unfortunately, many young people have gotten credit cards and voila instant money. Then, they have fallen into a spiral of debt by carrying over payments with outrageous interest rates or juggling payments between several different credit cards.   Currently, the average college undergraduate carries $2,200 in credit card debit, the figure rising to $5800 for graduate students.  Between 1992 and 2001, the average credit card debt among young adults who owed on their card increased by 55%. And,  a USA TODAY poll revealed that almost half of young adults who owed money had stopped paying off a debt, thus initiating such consequences as intervention of a collection agency, repossession of a car, or even bankruptcy (source: Williams).
 

Credit card debt is only one indicator of financial trouble in the making, and of course young people aren’t the only ones in trouble. Ben Stein, of TV and movie humor fame, is also a respected economist and these days he is paid to look closely at the financial habits of retirement-aged Americans. Says Stein, Americans are in trouble because they don’t save their money or plan for retirement: "This is the greatest crisis facing the country that people can do something about” (qtd. In Ackman). He notes that personal savings are all the more important because of the increasing gap between Social Security, Pension plans and retirement costs. Yet, 37% of US households do not have a retirement savings account of any kind (source: Ackman).   
 

A few years ago one of the families in our church took the trip of their dreams, a vacation with their four children to Scandinavia to meet distant relatives and explore their family roots. Dad worked for a public agency and Mom stayed home with the kids, so the trip was a luxury.  All six of them planned ways to earn the money for the trip. The parents even took on an early-morning  paper route to earn extra money they would need for the trip. No grumbling from the kids, no concern about paying off the credit cards because they would pay with paper, not plastic.  This family set a goal, worked together to achieve it, and had a memorable experience together—not just on the trip but in pulling together along the way. Those kids are grown now and have started their own families. I bet they have passed on their saving and spending common sense to their own children.
 

Paper, please.
 

Sources:
Ackman, Dan. “Retirement Doomsday.” Forbes.com   

Williams, Erica. “Students Need Help Combating Credit Card Debt.” Center for American Progress.

Megan:

The Greatest Ideas Somebody Already Thought Of

Well, Mom already told you how great I am with money, so I'm just going to update you on a previous post. Remember how I had three really great idea that I didn’t want to tell anyone about because I was afraid they might get stolen? Well, it turns out that someone (many someones) already invented them. The first was a personal library cataloguer using the barcode scanner in a smart phone. And they managed to put a spin on it that makes it appealing to more than just Book Geeks – it can also catalogue your music and DVD collections. The broader appeal is that if you need to make a claim, after a fire or a robbery, you can export the file to the insurance company.  Best of all – it’s available for free, which it was not going to be when I was the inventor.

Another idea I had at the same time was to develop facial recognition software that could be applied to one’s unsorted digital photos. Many people have already had that idea – Google’s Picassa is among them. Oh well.

My third idea was to develop a series of short animated films educating children and young people about how to be safe online. This was actually the most do-able of my ideas. I have a friend who is an animator ; he told me to come up with a script and we could put together a story board. I haven’t done it though. Other things kept coming up – interviews, a book deal that fell through, movies, and now, a puppy. There are probably dozens of versions of this idea out there, developed in schools and libraries across the country but maybe it’s still worth trying.

I’m sure it’s the dream of many unemployed people to come up with inventions and schemes that would pave the way towards financial independence. It’s the dream of many employed people as well. My Irish friend Sean was always coming up with ideas. My favorite was a crowd control barrier that doubled as anti-riot gear. Like most people, his ideas were mainly hypothetical, but one time he actually recruited investors and patented an idea he had for making trailers more stable in high winds. In the pub he would lament the failure of the big caravan companies to pick up his idea. “Just a little scrap of metal,” he would say, holding his hands about a foot a part. “A wee bit of metal and I could have been rich.”