Topic 210: Mountains and Molehills

Carol:

Little Engines That Can

I saw today’s  topic and immediately thought of the old adage “making mountains out of molehills,” which I  tried not to do before I was retired, when I really felt the pressure of juggling family and work. I made up for procrastination by being an expert time manager, and I focused all my attention at work on making it through my to-do list, no hanging out in the faculty lounge, no cups of coffee and shooting the breeze with my colleagues. I even got really good at helping my students learn how to navigate the molehills and mountains of their educational paths as they juggled school with family and work. But, I never really thought about reversing the adage and considering turning mountains into molehills.
 

There is a difference between NOT blowing something the mental size of a molehill out of proportion and NOT letting something that really is the size of a mountain paralyze you into inaction.
 

Gaining perspective, how to keep molehills from looking and feeling like steep, jagged, lung-sucking obstacles of mountains is about being realistic and patient. It’s about keeping your eyes on the next step or the next task without looking so far ahead as to lose your footing or sense of purpose.
 

Gaining perspective, how to turn steep, jagged, lung-sucking obstacles of mountains into manageable and satisfying little molehill challenges, is about being optimistic and patient.  The big challenges seem insurmountable, chronic, tragic—world hunger, economic downturn, environmental catastrophe, global violence.  But, turning mountains into molehills is all about strengthening the body, brain and spirit to attack tough challenges with skill and efficiency.  We can’t bulldoze the mountain, but we can learn how to conquer it a little bit at a time.
 

My engine search with “mountains and molehills” found several  interesting websites, mostly around the notion that a small group of people can effect change on a small scale and still make a difference. An interesting example is the website  Mountains and Molehills—Colorado’s Heartbeat.  It is basically an advertising site, doesn’t hide the fact, says it right up front that it serves “the needs of small business owners through affordable, effective advertising” (source: Mountains and Moles). But, the mission also includes a commitment to preserving the history and vitality of small town live, and its links celebrate the LOCAL, local business, local artists, local heroes.
 

A completely different website that pops up from the same engine search is called Repair the World, dedicated to inspiring service work among American Jews: “We aim to make service a defining part of American Jewish life” (source: Repair the World). This site does tackle the bigger, global issues of civil rights, disaster relief, child abuse, and social justice. But, it includes a section called D.I.Y with practical suggestions for making those issues local and personal.
 

Like I said, turning mountains into molehills requires a change of perspective to look positively at personal, creative problem-solving. Mountain climbers train rigorously for the work ahead, but they don’t do it just by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. They practice on the little, local molehills too. And, what about the people who don’t have the strength, skill or resources to be mountain climbers. They can make a difference, too, with a little positive thinking…
 

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…. I know I can.

Sources:
Mountains and Molehills website.
Repair the World.

Megan:

Yesterday I took the day off to hang out with my friends Kelly and Chuck. When they left our house on Sunday, I gave them careful directions to help them avoid the various road repairs between here and Sedona – especially the construction on Mingus mountain. Then, the next day I drove to meet up with them and deliberately ignored all of the sensible advice I had given them. Not only was I stuck behind the Smelliest and Slowest Truck in the World, I also spent a full half hour completely stopped. Immediately behind me was an unmarked police car, and for the entire time we were stopped I worried about whether or not my registration was in date, if my tail and brake lights were in working order, what he would think of the dozens of empty beer and wine bottles I had in my trunk (Prescott has stopped recycling glass, so we periodically drive it over the mountain and drop it at the center in the Verde Valley). I was so fixated on the cop car, and the series of texts I was sending to Kelly and Chuck about my late arrival, that I didn’t notice when the traffic started moving again and the cop had to hit his horn.

Usually this would prompt me to speed ahead, especially since I had just lost 30 minutes. Once the pilot car turned around, the cars in front of me were long gone, but I had that unmarked car behind me so I crept along at the posted maximum speed limit (which at some places is only 20 mph) until the cop made a U-Turn and headed back over the mountain. I guess he was detailed to patrol the construction site. What a boring job.

Anyway, I called Kelly to let her know I’d be joining them shortly and we agreed to meet at  Red Rocks Crossing for a short hike and a swim in Oak Creek. She texted me directions, and once I noted that the turn was in Oak Creek, I happily cruised on my way. I know a lot of my readers are probably not familiar with the layout of the greater Sedona area, but I have been going there since I was a very small child and had been in the exact area less than 6 months ago. I don’t know street names, but I felt pretty confident I could find my way around. With that in mind, the fact that I confused the Village of Oak Creek with Oak Creek Canyon was incredibly stupid. 

It wasn’t until I passed Slide Rock that it occurred to me that I might be going the wrong way. And then I drove another 10 miles just to make sure. By the time I pulled over, I had lost another hour as well as my cell phone reception.  Luckily my GPS navigation worked, and I realized I was nearly 40 miles of winding canyon road north of where I was supposed to be. The reception came back about halfway through Sedona when my phone suddenly came alive with previously undelivered texts and voice mails, inquiring about my whereabouts with increasing concern.

I did eventually find my friends, (but not until I got lost twice more), and although they had been swimming and waiting for me for more than 2 hours, they quite happily stayed put and let me swim away my frustration for another hour. I slipped on the rocks, got swept away in about 8 inches of fast-moving water, and managed to dislodge a natural dam so I’m sure it was very amusing for Kelly and Chuck. They kept saying helpful things like, “This is your land. You grew up here. Why is this so difficult for you?”

Topic 204: On Arising to the Occasion

Carol:

Let Them Eat Cake

One of Megan’s grade school science projects was a baking experiment. She made a series of  cakes from scratch, leaving a different ingredient out each time, took photos of the various cakes and, showed show the chemistry behind the cakes. Baking powder, of course, was the key ingredient in the rising process, but we also had to factor in the variable of altitude. At our altitude (5000 feet), changes in both the amount of ingredients and the oven temperature are required.
 

I have sometimes felt a certain obligation to make my own cakes for special occasions. After all, isn’t that what mothers do? And, I would often foist upon myself the added pressure of creating a theme to match the event. My first baking effort was a great success. I made a Valentine’s Day cake following a recipe in my Betty Crocker children’s cookbook. It showed how to bake a square cake and a round cake, then cut the round cake in half and attach with icing to two sides of the square, making a perfect heart. Of course, the cake was a big success because I was 10 and my parents gushed over my creativity and hard work. Fifth grade was a good year for me. I was the best artist in my class, and I baked. Unfortunately, I peaked that year. My drawings never got any better, and my cakes still look like they were made by a ten year-old.
 

There were some exceptions. I made a circus cake one year with a little carousel and decorated animal crackers. The birthday girl and her playmates appreciated it, and it must have tasted pretty good because they dug in with four-year old enthusiasm. My best effort was the spaceship cake for Marshall’s 4th birthday. His friend Francis had a birthday the same week, so we had a little party with just the two families. Francis’ mom and I covered their little bicycle helmets with tin foil, and each wing of the spaceship cake had a boy’s name on it. It was a big success. Now that I think about it, I didn’t bake that cake. Francis’ mother did. Darn.

 

 

Somewhere along the way,I found out about The Cake Lady. She lived up the road and we used to see her almost everyday hiking the hill behind our house.    She had a reputation all over Prescott for her beautiful, delicious recipes, so much better than store-bought, infinitely better than my homemade efforts.  And she had an artist’s talent for decorating. The Cake Lady’s cakes commemorated Megan’s high school graduation, Marc’s sixtieth birthday, and my mother’s 85th birthday, all of them decorating with little personal touches for the occasion. My mother’s cake was the most beautiful I had ever seen,  with little musical notes to mark her many years of singing in the Methodist choir and cascades of delicate flowers and butterflies around the edges. 
 

Eventually, the Cake Lady retired from baking (boo hoo).  A few years ago she slowed down her exercise routine, not because she couldn’t keep up that energetic pace but because her dog couldn’t.  Now, she is part of our early morning “walk and talk” group. Today is her birthday, so she didn’t have much time to stay and chat because all her family is arriving to celebrate #75. Arisin’ to the occasion, her loving husband put her under strict orders. No baking.  Happy birthday, Cake Lady. 

Megan:

During my freshman year in college, I joined the crew team. We practiced five days a week starting at 4 AM.  We had to get up that early because it was a half hour’s drive to the reservoir where we rowed, and then we had to get the boats in the water. The sun would come up over the Oakland hills, and I’m sure from above we looked just like the teams you see in movies about Ivy League schools – our boats gliding over a perfectly smooth surface like a water bug. 

Down in the boat, it was a different story. We were usually cold and wet, our inexpert rowing often splashing each other. Occasionally, someone would “catch a crab” which meant the oar jammed in the water, driving the handle end into a stomach. We were warned that at high speed, catching a crab could launch someone right out of a boat, but at the worst, it just knocked the wind out of us.  Every now and then we would find our rhythm, row in sync and fly across the water, and it was beautiful, just like in the movies.

Not all the practices included rowing on the water. We spent a lot of time in the gym, and outside running. One time we ran a series of staircases by Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. We ran them for an hour straight, and towards the end I paused and told the coach I needed a break. She yelled at me to keep going, and at the top of the stairs on the final lap, I threw up all over a perfectly landscaped flower bed. The coach applauded my dedication, using me as an example for the team, but I planned her murder on the ride back to campus.

Eventually the early hours got to me.  Four AM is not much earlier than I wake up now, but back then, I wasn’t getting up for practice, I was staying up. I worked the last shift in the library, and then when I got back to the dorm, I wanted to hang out with my friends. In college, I found that most of the fun stuff was happening between midnight and 3 AM, and I didn’t want to miss anything. For the most part, my classes were all in the afternoon and evening, so I went to bed after practice and slept most of the day.  

I wasn’t the only one who lived this way and it drove the coach crazy. She hated that the team was full of drinkers, smokers and up-all-night partiers and criticized our lack of commitment to the team. Rightly so. Eventually this led to a mass exodus and more than half the team quit, including me. I used the excuse that it wasn’t fun anymore, which, in my late teens, was my go-to reason for quitting anything. I didn’t understand back then that there’s a real sense of accomplishment in seeing something through, especially when it’s hard.  I wish I hadn’t quit, but for the most part, I’ve seen everything through since then. Except for Pilates.

Topic 202: Smoke Wreaths

Carol:

       Smokin’ Words

I worry a little bit.  What we’re going to do for daily theme topics when the basket is empty now that we have used up 202 out of the 250 provided by Mr. William Tanner in his book Essays and Essay Writing (rev 1927). How are we going to come up with new subjects to write about? Today’s topic was a head-scratcher. What the heck is a smoke-wreath? What gave Mr. Tanner the idea for this topic? Where does any author find inspiration?

 

Rudyard Kipling smokes a cigar

Rudyard Kipling found a subject by reading a court case. Apparently, he wrote “The Betrothed” after reading about a breach of promise case. A young woman had given her fiancé a “me or the cigars” ultimatum. Kipling imagines the young man’s thoughts:
 

“We quarrelled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
 

Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a space;In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.”

Does the narrator form smoke wreaths out of that “soft blue veil of the vapour” while thinking about his betrothed?  A funeral wreath perhaps? By the end of the 50-plus lines of rhyme, we hear the the death knell on Maggie’s bridal hopes, “A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.” Kipling’s poem paints a picture of a rather blasé bachelor whose “breach of promise” probably saved the young Maggie from a very unhappy marriage.
 

Kipling began writing and publishing poems and short stories while working for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, India during the 1880’s. He must have spent countless hours smoking cigars and drinking pints at the bars where the young British soldiers congregated, listening to their tales of homesickness and fatigue, capturing their variegated accents and songs in his verses. 
 

“The Betrothed” found its way into another collection published in 1895 by the Joseph  Knight Company in 1895. The book was Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry.  Kipling’s poem is in the “B” section of the book, which includes “The Ballad of the Pipe” and “The Ballad of Tobacco.”  The selections include writings by well-known writers such as James Russell Lowell, James Whitcomb Riley, and Lord Byron.”  Some are sober, some are whimsical, some are excessive:
 

In the smoke of my dear cigarito

cloud castles rise gorgeous and tall;

And Eros, divine muchachitoWith smiles hovers over it all (p. 92 “To a Pipe of Tobacco”)

One selection in Knight’s collection, “Smoking Song” (p. 78), lists no author or source other than the label “college song.” Its words are unusually poetic and evoke a sense of anticipated loss:

Chorus:Then drown the fears of the coming yearsAnd the dread of change before us;The way is sweet to our willing feet,With the smoke-wreaths twining o’er us.” (p. 78)

Perhaps puffing a Meerschaum pipe was an indulgence of William Tanner,  the editor of the 1927 text that provides our daily theme topics. Maybe he chomped on a cheroot while prepping for his English classes at Boston University and writing his 1922 Composition and Rhetoric. Or maybe, like me, he didn’t smoke at all but was a connoisseur of poetry, whose personal library included Pipe and Pouch. Did that odd little collection of smokin’ words give him the idea for a writing topic on “smoke-wreaths” ?

Sources:

Kipling, Rudyard. “The Betrothed.”
Knight, Joseph, ed. Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry. Gutenberg. 
“Rudyard Kipling.”

Megan:

I have a friend who can blow smoke rings. 

 Back when I was smoking (and had purple hair), she tried to show me how to do it. 

I don't remember exactly what she said, but I do remember that the explanation wasn't very helpful.

Nor was her criticism very constructive when I couldn't figure it out.

The smoke went up my nose and I choked. 

I don't have purple hair anymore, and I also do not smoke. But my friend is still my friend. 

Believe it or not, she used to be a teacher.

Topic 199: Safety Valves in Student Life

Carol:

             Pass the Pitcher

“This place was really cool. At night the bar was actually pretty kickin', and the bartender poured super stiff drinks.  The karaoke was always hilarious.    ..Alas, this place is closed (2009 online review of Frank’s).

A safety valve is a device that allows the automatic release of something (usually steam) from a boiler or pressurized vessel. Without that release, the tank can build up pressure to the point of exploding.  I never really felt enough anger or frustration to reach that point of near-explosion. But, my college friends studied a lot harder than I did, felt more family pressure than I did, and worried more about their grades and scholarships.  So, we had our hang-outs as a way to let go of that built-up steam.
 

In 1970, that hang-out in Riverside was Frank’s on Iowa off of West Blaine. No karaoke back then, no stiff drinks. It was just a “blue collar” bar close to campus with a juke box heavily loaded with country western music and several dark tables where we gathered for hours over cheap pitchers of beer.  We never really mixed with the guys on the barstools who were finishing off the week’s work, probably using Frank’s as their own safety valve. There was always the feeling that we should lower our voices when we got to talking about The War, Reagan, or any of the other touchstone events of that year of protest. Politics was an issue where Town and Gown didn’t always see eye to eye.
 

Maybe Frank’s Bar needed to find more ways to attract the students who didn’t want to hear Willie Nelson or drink cheap pitchers. The bar and grill closed in 2009 although there was talk that it might open under new ownership.
 

Mory's around 1914

The guy I drank with at Frank’s in Riverside headed back East to law school, and I joined him there the year before we got married. The student safety valve of choice at Yale depended a lot on pedigree. The aristos and legacies often congregated at Mory’s, adjacent to campus. It had been founded as a private club in 1849, but the establishment eventually broadened its membership under pressure from a changing Yale community. Still, women weren’t allowed to join until 1972, the year I was working at Yale as a secretary. The guy I shared pitchers with at Frank’s recollects that he went in there to look around once, but not having the money or inclination to pay for a membership, he never ate there. History and pedigree aside, Mory’s closed its doors in 2009 after suffering increasing financial losses. Thanks to aggressive fundraising and a new business model, Mory’s reopened in 2010 and membership fees for students and alums are pretty reasonable.
 

Instead of hanging out at Mory’s, Marc and his friends showed up for  pizza and beer at Hungry Charlie’s on York Street. I don’t recollect anything distinctly unique about the place, another loud and noisy student spot where we were bound to run into someone we knew after a night of study. We said good-bye to New Haven in 1974, the same year   New Haven said good-bye to Hungry Charlie’s. Its new owners turned it into a very successful night club and concert spot called Toad’s Place.
 

Bars close, students graduate, new pressures build up with jobs, family and mortgages. Frank’s and Hungry Charlie’s morphed into the Daley Double in Encinitas where our friends would gather for a pitcher and listen to Willie Nelson. The real safety valve—then and now—was not the beer but the people that came with it.

Sources:
Image of beer.  Silk Tort 14 Feb 2006.
Mory’s. Wikipedia.
Toad’s Place. Wikipedia. 

Megan:

Public Safety at Mills College

Mills Hall

I've mentioned several times that I went to  Mills College, in Oakland CA. I had no intention of attending a women’s school, but I fell in love with the campus. I remember the brochure for prospective students claimed there were 11 trees for every student. The campus, as I have described elsewhere, is 135 acres of rolling hills, oak and eucalyptus trees, with a creek and a small lake.  What makes this setting even more unique is the fact that it sits right in the middle of one of the poorest, rundown areas of Oakland – although since I graduated, that area has undergone a transformation. Mills was founded in 1852, and has sat at its present location for more than 100 years – so the college predates the neighborhood.

As the city grew up around the college, the campus became more isolated. Walls and fences were erected and the multiple entrances were reduced to one. A major freeway cut the campus in half, and would have eliminated it completely had the founders not been buried there. Still, when I visited with my father in the Spring of 1999, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. My father loved it too, but I could tell he had concerns about the neighborhood.  And he was reassured by the single entrance, with a gatehouse manned 24 hours a day by campus security. I don’t want to give the impression that the Mills had a closed campus – the school put a lot of effort into integrating with the community, opening the pool for local children, allowing dog walkers and other pedestrians. But all visitors had to check in with campus security as they came onto the campus.

The undergraduate students had a love/hate relationship with the security team, which is called “Public Safety.” Depending on our moods, we were sometimes reassured and sometimes annoyed at having to present our IDs at the gate. Other times, if we were waved through without having to stop, we would say to each other – “That’s not right! I could be here to kill everyone. “ As if presenting an ID would have identified us as killers. 

Public Safety also annoyed us if we were trying to break rules.  As with all colleges, there was significant part of the student population drinking underage and taking recreational drugs.  For the most part, I believe, Public Safety didn’t consider it their jobs to interfere – as long as we weren’t too obvious about it. Once we had a BBQ on the president’s lawn, hid a keg in her shrubbery, and just got a wave from the security guards as they drove by in a golf cart.

The President's House

There was only one time when I thought we might get in actual trouble. Freshman year, one of my friends had a Jeep Wrangler that she liked to take off-roading around the campus. There were clear signs on the hiking trails forbidding motorized traffic, but this was a new car and she wanted to play with it. On more than one occasion we engaged in a low-speed chase with Public Safety, lights flashing as they pursued us in a little SUV. My friend never stopped, and she always beat them. Eventually, they erected barriers of hay stacks and fallen trees, which the Jeep still could have cleared, but we didn’t want to push our luck.

The Library

For the most part though, Public Safety was our friend. And after dark, we used them as a taxi service. I always worked the late shifts in the library – finishing around midnight. It was quieter then, and I could wear my pajamas. Every night, about 5 minutes before closing, a Public Safety officer would patrol the library, and then give the student workers a ride up the hill to the dorms. In my opinion, this was their greatest service, not because of the “dangerous” neighborhood, but because the campus was riddled with skunks.





*PS: Mom just asked me where the valves part of the essay is as if she's never strayed from a topic before.

Topic 195: The Monotony of Being Good

Carol:

  Shooting the Breeze

Our pack of dogs and their walkers met this morning for our usual Friday coffee chat at Marilyn and Lou’s house up the road.  When it’s warm, we sit outside while the dogs roam around the almost two acres of fenced land.  We spend the hour of sipping and socializing before heading off to work or chores or whatever--relaxed, enjoying both the gentle breeze and the meandering conversation.  Still, all are keeping an eye on the whereabouts of their various animals.
 

Koda, who lives here, rarely leaves the patio.  She appears to be bored with anything that doesn’t lead directly to food. She doesn’t play with the other dogs, she doesn’t poke around. She does sit beside the person most likely to drop a crumb or give in to her sad eyes by pulling out a dog treat, which is usually me. She is so quiet most of the time that we forget she is there. Good doggie.
 

Milo takes off in full throttle and covers  the whole yard, jumping over walls and poking under bushes. Sometimes we see the tip of his tail whiz by or track his direction by the scatter of birds.  Eventually he works his way back to the patio and sits at full attention if there is food on the table, hoping for a reward for his good posture and self-control.  He would never lunge at the plate of cookies, he would never leap up to grab food out of someone’s hand. He does, however, poke his nose into a pocket if he smells crumbs from a doggie treat. His behavior would be monotonous if it weren’t for those infrequent times when quiet presages trouble. Like the day he tipped over Koda’s food container and ate enough kibble for a week. Good doggie (mostly).
 

Bella is also predictable, not by the monotony of her behavior but by her absolute lack of predictability.  So far, she has been tentative about exploring the open spaces of Marilyn’s yard. Sometimes she will watch for evidence of Milo, a quick view of his tail through a bush or a flash of striped coat flying by in the distance. Sometimes, she will stop, frozen into a pose that betrays her German Shorthair DNA.   This morning she completely ignores the large dog bowl of water, instead jumping up to hook her paws over the cement lip of the bird bath to drink from the deeper pool of water.  She eventually settles down under the patio table, still licking the crumbs from the cookie she grabbed off the table.   We are using “off” and “no” a lot these days with Bella. Bad puppy (mostly).
 

Today we are joined by another neighbor and an extra dog is added to the mix,  Spirit, a 10-year old with beautiful long pristine white fur. He is quite patient as Bella takes a playful lunge and even indulges her with a few enthusiastic laps around the patio. He doesn’t beg, doesn’t bark, doesn’t lunge, well, isn’t he just about perfect. The kind of monotonous good behavior that parents of young pets and young people are grateful for.  Good doggie.
 

The hour is up, chairs are pushed back, cups retrieved, leashes snapped on collars. Bella, come. Milo, come. Where’s Spirit? The monotonously good, the beautifully white, long haired majestic animal is in the flower bed behind a bush, behind the flowing water sprinkler, barely visible behind the flying dirt from the hole he is digging with muddy black paws.
 

So much for the monotony of being good.

  

Megan:

The Monotony of (Writing About) Being Good

Yesterday I took my grandmother to Walmart, and while she was shopping, I wandered around the store. I hadn’t eaten lunch and I stood in the snack aisle for  a long time trying to convince myself that Cheeze-its were vegan because the cheese was probably all chemicals anyway. I didn’t actually read the label, I just stared at the front of the box. I put some Wheat Thins in my cart, and took them out again.  Then I picked up a small container of fresh fruit from the produce section and ate that while I waited for Grandma to finish.

Eating healthy is only a problem if I get hungry while running errands. After I dropped my grandma off at her house, I went to my favorite coffee shop because I had time to kill before I picked up my mother (I’m the family chauffer). I was so proud for not eating the crackers that I rewarded myself with an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. It was probably not a vegan cookie, but I didn’t beat myself up over it because one cookie is better than (or at least not as bad as) an entire box of crackers.

I just reread those two paragraphs and nearly died of boredom. At least I’m on topic. I didn’t intend to be one of those bloggers – who writes about weight loss and diets and the silly things dogs do (which reminds me: on this morning’s walk, Bella tried to eat 2 birds, 1 mouse, and 1 rabbit leg – all dead before she got to them). And it’s not that I have a problem with people who write about those topics; most of the blogs I read cover the same issues. I just didn’t want that for myself, because it’s not particularly interesting (except for cataloging Bella’s dead animal collection).

The most exciting anecdotes and stories often involve dangerous excess, errors in judgment and unfamiliar environments. I have plenty of those stories in my past. As I get older though, it’s harder for me to remember why I thought that was fun. Young people take stupid risks with themselves without considering consequences. I never got in any trouble, but that was luck. Not all of my friends escaped their youth unscathed. We had some great times, but right now I think I would rather have a good life than an exciting life. And perhaps that means I will have to seek inspiration for my stories from my imagination rather than my good but boring life.

Topic 188: On Being Small

Carol:

Nano, Nano

Today’s paper had a photograph of a baby born last Friday, a whopper at 16 pounds. Ouch.  Pretty well anything that is bigger, higher, taller, longer gets notice: the world record giant pumpkin at 1810.5 pounds, the tallest cornstalk at over 31 feet (higher than an elephant’s eye), the longest bull horns (4 feet 7”) (Guinness Book of World Records).  We tend to think of the other end of the measurement spectrum as wanting in some way, too small is stunted, too short a range is a dud. But, modern science has created a whole new world of miniaturization and a vocabulary to describe that world.
 

Micro: Greek prefix meaning “small.” In the metric system, used by every industrialized country except for the United States, “micro” means 1 millionth of something. But, in common language it identifies any number of smallish devices (microphone, microbe, microscope, micrometer). The microchip is the miniature “wafer” of semiconducting material that carries the electronic devices or transistors that run cell phones, computers, cameras, I-pods, etc.

When microchips were first invented, only a few transistors could ride on a wafer, but current technology has increased that capacity to millions or even billions of transistors on a single chip (source; “Integrated Circuit”).  Microchips about the size of a large grain of rice are routinely implanted into not only domestic pets for identification but wild animals and livestock for tracking and research.

Cat X-Ray with microchip

Nano: another Greek prefix for a measurement that is a billionth of something, most often used in science and electronics.  So, a nanosecond is one billionth of a second or 1 thousandth of a microsecond.  How people ever created the equipment to be able to measure something in nanoseconds I don’t know.  But, that’s what I get for studying literature and not computer science, and what I get for using Wikipedia rather than a physics or computer science academic journal.
 

Hopper: is not a Greek prefix.  Hopper, as in “Grace Hopper” is a link at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry on “nano.” She was an American scientist who was a pioneer in computer science. Her concepts led to the development of modern programming language such as COBOL, FORTRAN, etc. Hopper spent the last part of her life working as a consultant for Digital Equipment Corporation, travelling a lecture circuit to its different facilities. Hopper received standing ovations for her presentations and was particularly well known for her ability to illustrate the concept of the “nanosecond.”
 
Hopper graduated from Vassar in1928 with degrees in mathematics and physics, earned graduate degrees at Yale. In 1943, she volunteered for the US Navy Reserve, graduated first in her class at Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School, and ended up working on the Mark I computer project. The next 30 years of her life measure the evolution of computer science. Thank her for introducing the term “debugging” into our computer vocabulary.
 

Grace Murray Hopper maintained her loyalty to military service throughout her career. After being recalled to reserve duty several times, she retired for good in 1986,   the oldest commissioned officer in the US Navy and a few months shy of her 80th birthday.  One of the few US military vessels named for a woman, the USS Hopper was launched to honor her in 1996 and nicknamed  Amazing Grace. (source: “Grace Hopper”)
 

Amazing Grace, Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, had to get an exemption to enlist in the Navy back in 1943  because at 105 pounds, she was 15 pounds under the weight limit. Talk about miniaturization. 

 

Sources:
“Grace Hopper.”  Wikipedia.
Image of cat with identifying microchip above the spine. Wikipedia. Attribution: Joelmills 

“Integrated Circuit.” Wikipedia.

Megan:

On Being (Sort of) Small

I don’t think of myself as a small person. At 5 foot 3 inches, I am the shortest full-grown member of an extended family that tends to be taller than average. If I sit back in a chair, my feet barely touch the ground. I have the smallest hands of anyone I’ve met except for my one friend who is also shorter than me. I make fun of her shortness, but she is not small either. Our voices and opinions and laughter make us seem bigger than we are, even if we are whispering. Even though I am used to looking up at the world around me, I rarely ever feel short or small.

There are a few exceptions. I eat soup with a teaspoon, because a soupspoon is too big for my mouth. Trying on pants is a hassle. Regular pants come up my chest, long ones up to my chin. Do you know how hard it is to find a pair of pants that are both petite and plus-sized ? When I joined my softball team, I requested an XL uniform shirt to be sure it would fit. It is comfortably wide enough, but the ¾ length sleeves extend past my fingertips.

My shorter friend has the disadvantage of having tiny feet. Her legs might as well end at the ankles, is what I mean. She has to wear children’s shoes or else order online.  So, she has little patience when I complain about the inconvenience of being short. Reaching high shelves is a problem for both of us. At home, I use a step stool or my father. I was over at my friend’s house the other day and I opened a kitchen cabinet looking for a cup. The first two shelves were perfectly organized, but the highest shelf was a disheveled mess of Tupperware. Unable to reach that shelf, she tosses items up and then shuts the door quickly to stop them from bouncing out. She also has a step stool (and a husband) but this system works for her, I guess. 

Recently, my mother and I visited family in California. My aunt and uncle are less mobile than they used to be, and have difficulty bending over to pick things up off the floor. So, they have this grabber thing that does it for them. Mom thought it was a nifty invention and kept mentioning that she would like one, so I picked on up from the hardware store. It’s useful as long as we can remember where it is, but since I have no problems bending over, it was mainly a novelty toy as far as I was concerned.

The other day, we discovered another use for it. I was getting ready to re-upholster that chair, and needed a sewing kit. I have one my mother gave me when I was little, but it was in the back of my closet and I couldn’t reach it. Mom offered to get it down for me, which I thought was strange because she’s started shrinking the past few years and is now only barely taller than me.  But she walked into my room with the grabber thing, and used it to pull down the sewing box. The grabber thing is not mean to support any real weight though, so the box fell out of its grip and landed on her head. Still, it did the trick.

Topic 175: Late Arrivals

Carol:

Warning: Baby on Board           

Dear Readers: if you are the kind of person who gets bored when women tell birth stories, this essay is not for you. Mothers never forget the events and emotions surrounding childbirth, and I simply could not pass up the opportunity to tell one that so perfectly fits today’s topic. I realize that the “normal” range for the gestation of a human baby is really a couple of weeks on either side of 40 weeks (259-294 days). But, Megan was really late. Three weeks.
 

I’m talking about 3 weeks after my obstetrician told me at my mid-August check-up that there was a 50-50 chance I would go into labor within the next 48 hours. So, what happens when a first-time mother gets news like that? Does she go into a frenzy of last-minute “nesting,” obsessively refolding stacks of tiny baby clothes in the brand new nursery, furiously cooking and cleaning so that the house will be in order when she arrives home with the new baby? I took a more placid approach and packed that little suitcase for the hospital and pretty much sat down to wait.
 

I felt  a tremendous relief that very soon—50-50 chance within 48 hours—I would be freed of sleepless nights in the California heat of August, continuous indigestion and swollen feet.  I contacted  friends and family  in expectation of a new baby within a week.  But, most of all I remember the mounting frustrating as that 48 hours went by, then a week, then two weeks. Meanwhile, the phone was ringing as well-meaning friends and family checked in to see if this baby was ever going to come.
 

The waiting, of course, spilled over into Marc’s routine.  He was a public defender whose office was about a half hour from the house, and this was before the advent of the cell phone or even pagers really. Sooo, I started going to court with Marc everyday, sitting in the back of the room while he handled a variety of cases. I could only fit into one dress at the time, so I’m sure there was a lot of talk at the courthouse about that crazy pregnant women in the flowered muumuu hanging out at court.
 

Right about the time that a woman gets to that outer end of the “normal gestational range,” official things start to happen. For me that meant driving about 15 miles down the coast to Scripps Hospital in La Jolla for stress tests that would check the fetal heart rate for signs of distress.  By the second test, my obstetrician decided it was time for medical intervention, and September 26, 1981 was scheduled for inducing labor.
 

Wednesday, September 24 was pretty peaceful and Marc and I were looking forward to a relaxing evening in front of the TV as we counted down to our final day as a childless couple.   The contractions began mid-afternoon, we drove into the hospital parking lot at 11 p.m, and  Megan was born by C-section at 4 a.m on September 25.
 

That might be the end of the story of how our first child was a late arrival for her own birth-day. But, she had another surprise for us and that three-week delay was just a warm-up. At 7 a.m. on September 25 our red-headed curly-top baby was transported by ambulance to a neonatal intense care unit in San Diego.  Our supposed-to-be August baby slept in her  brand new nursery for the first time in  November. Six weeks after her birth.

 

But, that’s another story. And my late baby girl hates it when I’m late.

Megan:

 Please check the arrivals gate 

for any friends you forgot to collect

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I am a compulsively early/on time person. This quality came in handy once when I was on the way to the airport a few years ago. I was flying from London Luton airport to Prague to spend Christmas with a friend.  Not far from the airport, my car stalled in the middle of a roundabout and wouldn’t start again. A helpful police man pushed the car onto the median and then went on his way. I would have been quite happy to abandon the car  as long as I didn’t miss my flight, but the policeman didn’t offer to give me a ride. My point though, is this: even after the tow truck arrived and took my car to the garage, jumped it and checked it out and then gave me directions to the airport, I was still 3 hours early for my flight.

I’ve missed a number of flights in my life, but it’s never been because I overslept or didn’t get to the airport on time. Usually, I’ve missed connecting flights on international trips after the original flight was delayed. Most recently,  my New Years travel plans to Colorado (to meet the same friend who used to live in Prague) were delayed by unexpected snow fall here in Prescott. That was extremely frustrating, but I still managed to make it to Vail before midnight on New Years Eve.

Although I am meticulous about confirming travel plans and getting to the airport on time, I have friends who are not. Twice I have arranged a visit, once to DC and once to LA, only to have my friend not show up to meet me. In fact, my friends had forgotten I was coming that day at all. Both times were before cell phones became ubiquitous, and tracking them down was difficult. When I finally reached my L.A. friend (Kelly!), not only had she forgotten I was coming (all the way from England), she had taken her own trip to San Diego and wasn’t due to return until the next day. I wound up taking a shuttle to my uncle’s house in Thousand Oaks, where I was welcomed by my surprised relatives who hadn’t even realized I was back in the country.

The DC friend, who is also the Colorado and Prague friend, had to borrow a car to come get me after she’d forgotten, and I sat at the Baltimore airport for 3 hours. In her defense, that was the first time I’d visited her, and on the countless times we’ve since arranged to meet all over the world, she's never forgot me again.  And neither has Kelly. But I always call or text ahead of time, just to make sure.

Topic 160: Social Misfits

Carol:

A Story in Two Parts

 I married someone who sounds like a social misfit when you hear half the story. Marc repeated the 10th grade twice for truancy, usually heading for the library once he had snuck out of class. The second time he had already skipped 45 days before the administrative wheels began turning and he was withdrawn from school. Not that he would have passed his classes anyway. How did he get away with it? Mostly, he forged his mother’s signature on report cards, wrote forged notes to excuse his absences, and had a talent for lying in tough situations. He ran around with a tough crowd, but he admits to having been a bit of a coward when it came to fighting. He just didn’t like the idea of getting beat up.  Finally, on the third try at 10th grade, he talked his mother into completing the paperwork and he joined the Navy at the age of 17.
 

His best friend Larry was also a social misfit, but with a violent streak that set him apart from Marc. Larry was a drinker and a hard-core fighter. You didn’t mess with him, and you didn’t mess with his friends.  He was a bona fide juvenile delinquent whose record of trouble-making caught the attention of some documentary film-makers investigating juvenile delinquency in Massachusetts.  Marc and his navy buddies were watching TV together the night the documentary was shown on national television, Larry the central focus of the program who announced to the interviewers that nothing was “cooler” than fighting. 
 

That’s the first half of the story. Here’s the second half.
 

The truant who ditched school to go to the library went to college on the GI bill after his stint in the Navy, ended up graduating with highest honors from a California university and became a lawyer. Among the ex-military in his law school class, there were lots of former officers but he was the only enlisted man, and surely the only one kicked out of high school twice.  He is not a famous man like some of his classmates at law school, but he is respected in his community, loved by his family, and known for being fair, ethical and kind.  He is a good defense attorney, and I think he has a special compassion for some of his clients who remind him of Larry.
 

The teen-age misfit who lived to fight became an adult delinquent, an alcoholic who never lost his taste for brawling. He was a teen-ager when his daughter was born, but he missed her birth  because  he was watching the  Superbowl. He worked in a lumberyard for years, drinking his lunch at a local bar and marching with the Vets in the 4th of July Parade even though he had never served in the military. He died in his 40’s, his health likely ruined by the hard life of a social misfit.
 

The last time the truant saw the fighter was on our motorhome trip around the country in 1985. We went out for hamburgers, and Larry sat in the back of the car with our children while Marc drove. I looked in the rearview mirror from time to time, just to make sure the kids were okay with him.  Before we said our final good-byes, Larry took Megan on his knee and began to sing. “Skidda-ma-rinky-dinky-dink, skidda-ma-rinky-do. I love you.” He smiled, she laughed.
 

You see, there are always two sides to every story.

Megan:

Social Misfits

My first boyfriend was a homeless runaway from Georgia. He came to Prescott because he met a girl (not me) on the Internet.  This was in 1997, so that’s pretty impressive. I didn’t even get my own email address until 1998, but he was clearly an early adopter. The girl was not happy see him when he turned up unexpectedly, so their romance was short lived.  I was never really sure what his circumstances had been at home. He just said he didn’t get along with his father.

I was introduced to him by my best-friend at the time. My friend had just been expelled from our high school after refusing to attend the in-school suspension he’d been assigned for some trouble that I cannot remember. He then spent most of his time pacing across the street from the high school waiting for his girlfriend and I to have free periods and lunch. He met the homeless guy, who also spent a lot of time across the street, and he introduced us.

The first time I saw the homeless guy he was wearing a bicycle helmet and  a skirt – a long hippie type skirt – over his jeans and . He had green hair and was sunburned. In the two weeks we “went out,” I spent most of my time driving him and my expelled friend around town, buying them food. We went to the movies once and he held my hand. When I introduced him to my parents, he spruced up a bit – shoplifting new clothes from the Kmart just for the occasion. After our dates, I drove him back to his tent in the woods behind Thumb Butte.

My parents were concerned about this relationship, but didn’t forbid me from seeing him. There were a lot of reasons to be concerned about me at that point in my life: I stopped going to church. I tried to drop out of school. I wasn’t a very happy person, but hanging out with these guys was sort of exhilarating. We never drank or did drugs, so I’m not sure what excuse we had for jumping my car Dukes of Hazzard style out in the desert. They were both in the car when I had my accident. The boyfriend (although by that point, the ex) in the backseat hit his face on my headrest and there was blood everywhere.

We broke up after I confessed to having feelings for our friend. They had  both been hired by my parents to paint the house, and I picked that time to end it.   In retrospect was pretty dumb, because then my parents got to witness the aftermath. The homeless boy took off his shoes, and walked barefoot over the hill towards the mountain. He was gone for hours. When he returned, his feet were bleeding and he had a row of safety pins stuck through the skin in his arms. In the prison, I got used to seeing self-mutilators, but this was my first experience and it terrified me.

But we continued to hang out, the three of us, until just after my car accident. I went to France that summer with my parents, and the boys were arrested while I was gone. My best friend moved to Florida to hide from the charges, and the homeless boy was eventually shipped back to Georgia because he was a minor.  I found him on Facebook recently. From the pictures, he looks like the Unabomber, but he has a girlfriend and works for a computer company so maybe he’s ok. I’m not going to friend him. No reason to remind him of a sad, difficult time in his life.

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 129: Penalties of Success

Carol:

Go to the Penalty Box           

One of our friends from college  was always looking for the best deals.  One summer Russ came back from Mexico bragging about all the stuff he had bought. He pulled up his sleeve to show his proudest purchase. “Guys, can you believe I only paid $30 for this Omega watch? Take a look.”  As Russ  pulled the watch off his wrist, the little gold horseshoe on the clock face came loose and dislodged in the hands of the watch.  Imitation may be flattering, but it is also costly. Consumer Reports estimates that legitimate businesses lose nearly 250 billion dollars a year in sales to counterfeit merchandisers.
 

If one penalty of success is unwanted imitation, another is notoriety. Successful people have little privacy. The missteps of famous celebrities like Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson make money for “entertainment” magazines and talk-show hosts, but successful people are rarely portrayed with compassion or insight. Nor are their family members, who then become “collateral damage” through the media attention.  Take, for example, the son of Bernie Madoff—the most successful of Ponzi schemers, at least until he got caught.  Forty-six-year old Mark Madoff committed suicide on the 2nd anniversary of his father’s arrest. According to Madoff’s lawyer, “Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime” (source: Reuters).
 

Successful people may seek fame regardless of the loss of privacy. But, they may not anticipate all the consequences of courting the public eye. The penalty for James Frey put him in a league of his own. Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces, whose critical reviews  sent him on the Oprah Show, was “outed” for fabricating parts of his so-called memoirs. Random House settled a law-suit by disgruntled book buyers at a cost of 2.35 million dollars. The damage to his reputation wasn’t permanent;  he may make a million little dollars on the success of his book turned teen-age science-fiction film I am Number Four. Don’t look for his name on the book, however. He and collaborator Jobie Hughes publish under a pen name, Pittacus Lore (source: Wikipedia).
 

Of course, plenty of people are successful without being famous. Do the successful folk in our own families pay the price for being good at what they do?   My son  son taught me a lesson about success when he was in high school. Because he had shown a strong aptitude for mathematics, we pushed him into accelerating his math studies to include a college calculus class at the same time he was working part-time, playing guitar in a band, and taking a full course-load at the high school.  When I applied a little pressure to work harder in the college class, he remarked “Just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I like it.” Duh—I have thought about that comment often.
 

Closer at hand, my writing co-conspirator  pays the penalty for being the most proficient “techie” in our household.  Yesterday, I decided to reconfigure my workspace and started moving everything around without unplugging the computer, the modem, the printer, or the screen.  The penalty of that hasty, lazy whim was that I pulled some wires loose.  Megan was not pleased to be rooting underneath my desk reconfiguring a tangled mess of wires by flashlight.
 

Everybody knows how Megan’s cartoons really add just the note of humor to The Daily Theme essays. I can only imagine what she would have come up with today. I asked her if she had the time, but she said no. I guess I’m in the penalty box now.

Sources:
James Frey. Wikipedia.
 Mark Madoff death.
“Real or Fake? Counterfeit Merchandise can Threaten Your Safety and Fund Crime.” Consumer Report  Jan 2008. 

Megan:

Penalties of Celebrity

I bet celebrities are counting on there being a special place in hell for the paparazzi . But those photographers wouldn’t be taking the pictures if there wasn’t a market for them. Tabloid magazines and websites wouldn’t buy them if there wasn’t an audience eagerly waiting for the next picture of Suri Cruise, Brangelina, or the Twilight kids. I have always been a part of this audience, but recently I’ve started to feel uncomfortable about the role I play in supporting this part of the industry.

As I’ve mentioned before, I see almost every mainstream movie that comes out (I like Independent films too, but they hardly ever make it to my local cinema). Naturally, I have a curiosity about the actors who star in these movies. One of my favorite TV shows is Inside the Actor’s Studio, and although I was not previously a fan of his work, the interview the Dave Chappelle changed how I thought of Hollywood. In the interview, he was speaking of Martin Lawrence, Mariah Carey and his own public “breakdown” when he left his show at the height of its popularity and went to Africa:
 

What is happening in Hollywood? Nobody knows. The worst thing to call someone is crazy. It’s dismissive. I don’t understand this person. So they’re crazy. That’s bullshit. These people are not crazy. They are strong people. Maybe the environment is a little sick.

Since he gave this interview in 2006, we have watched Britney Spears shave her head, Joaquin Phoenix freak out in a very elaborate hoax, and now we are watching Charlie Sheen implode. If there was ever a reason for not doing drugs – aside from their illegality – look at what they do to the people who otherwise have everything going for them. 

For every Charlie Sheen, you have dozens of actors who aren’t wasted on live television, who aren’t modeling for the paparazzi every night in front of nightclubs, who remember to put on their underwear. Because there are so many examples of celebrities who are able to cope with their fame, it is easier to put the blame on the ones who can’t, the ones on drugs.

But I think it’s more than drugs.  I think the condition of celebrity will eventually be studied in college psychology classes. I don’t think a person can withstand that much scrutiny, such a loss of privacy without it having some sort of negative affect on their mental landscape. Sometime last year, Kristen Stewart compared the effect of the paparazzi with rape – an analogy that drew derision from the public and the Internet. But maybe she was just using the only other word for such persistent violation that she knew. 

Sure, there are financial compensations… these people live in mansions, can travel the world, and have trainers and personal chefs and nannies for their kids.  But they aren’t famous because they are rich – there are CEO’s who make more money, who can walk down the street without getting mobbed by fans and photographers. Celebrities are famous because we recognize them; we can pick them out of a crowd, like we could a family member or a friend. But we treat our family and friends with more respect.


Inside the Actors Studio: Dave Chappelle 2006.