Topic 216: Winged Circle

Carol:

Over My Head,  At My Back

“This project is mostly an intellectual exercise for a newly-retired writing teacher and her anxiously-unemployed librarian daughter, both of whom are in need of something to keep them occupied during a transitional time.” (About This Project)

Topic 216 is a “throw back,” returned to the basket when I pulled it months ago, thinking it required more research than I wanted to do. It still does, but I can’t throw it back again because I now can see the bottom of a basket that once was completely filled with strips of paper. Two-hundred and sixteen essays behind us, and most of the remaining topics are “throw-backs.”

Megan and I now have worked on this project for over twelve months, a little experiment to fill our time, present a mental challenge, and provide some structure to our day.  For me, much of the fun was in figuring out how to approach the “throw back” kinds of subject matter, the head-scratchers, and the yawners. I always told my students that their job was to find a way to take an assignment and “make it their own,” so I have had lots of opportunities to practice that principle. 

I usually have a direction in mind by the time I head out on the morning walk.  Not today.I sat down for coffee with wings and circles pushed to the back of my mind. Our neighbor’s patio is inviting, and the temperature perfect for slow sipping and chitchat. Suddenly, Marc pointed up at the sky to a bird in flight. He is always doing that, pointing out birds on bushes, in the trees or flying overhead. But, this time when I looked up, I didn’t need the birders in the group to identify the long legs and wings of a Great Blue Heron.

As I looked back down at the patio table, my eye caught our host’s coffee cup. On the side of the cup was an emblem, a winged circle. The logo was from the Arkansas Department of Aeronautics, whose emblem is the “Great Seal of the State of Arkansas: with white bird wings added.  Interesting coincidence.

Wings and circles eventually led   to literature. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is pretty well standard for any high school English textbook, and it introduces the notion of carpe diem—in tandem with sexual seduction—right at the point where adolescent hormones are kicking into action. Seize the day, a perfect bridge between the elegant language of the 17^th century and the imagined seductions of teen-age boys: “Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball, and tear our pleasures with rough strife…” ( Marvell).

The other half of “carpe diem” fails to penetrate most young minds. Why are we urged to 

“seize the day”?  Because aging and death are inevitable, because the world changes and

 missed opportunities cannot be retrieved.  

“But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.”

I really feel those wings of change at my back this morning.  After 12 months and 216 essays, Megan and I have come to another “transitional time.” I am no longer newly-retired, and she is no longer unemployed.  I have plenty of fun research and writing projects to keep me occupied. And, Megan has her own exciting work and writing projects. I am about to lose my favorite cartoonist and writing partner, co-conspirator in movie getaways and book-buying frenzies.

Thirty-six topics left in the basket. 

Sources:

Image of Great Blue Heron in flight. PeterWallack. Wikimedia.   

Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” Poets.org.

Megan:

 The Ciiiiirrrrcle of Life

I really wish we hadn’t kept throwing back the hard topics. After two weeks of vacation and illness, I could really do with one like “On the Dog.” Except I don’t think “On the Dog” was a real topic from the book– I think we just chose it as our first essay because it would be an easy way to start the project. 

As my mother mentioned earlier this week, it’s been just over a year since we began writing on The Daily Theme.  When we started,I had a concern, which I revisited several times over the year – that when we finished the project, an entire year would have passed and I would have nothing to show for it but this website. And in my mind, my father is telling me that’s not very “In the Moment” thinking and my cynical side is chiming in to suggest that Nowhere is exactly where a year of living “In the Moment” gets you.   

Of course, a lot has changed – or rather, a lot has happened. I’ve reconnected with my childhood friends. I’ve spent more time with family than I have in the past 10 years combined. I experienced professional disappointment for the first time ever – getting turned down for job after job.  I’ve changed my diet (although, just as I wrote that, I took a bite of a very non vegan chocolate chip muffin), and taken classes.

I got a puppy, and regretted it, and then stopped regretting it. And if I were writing “On the Dog” today, it would have been a very different essay. Mom just shouted down to me that Bella dragged her purse into the loft, opened it up and ate her toothbrush all in the time it took to write the essay. But if that’s all the damage she caused, then we are having a good morning.

When we decided to try writing every day on the same topic, I estimated it would take just about a year to get through the 250 topics. I hadn’t factored in vacations and illness and days when we just weren’t in the mood. And job interviews.

 I couldn’t have known that one year to the day of starting this project, I would be offered a job (I thought it would happen sooner).  And now, I’m not sure what that’s going to mean for this website. I know I’m not going to be able to write every day. I want to be able to finish the 250 topics, but it feels more “Circle of Life” to just end it now.  Except that a circle never ends.

 

Topic 213: Voices

Carol:

Voices from the Blogosphere

Our New York Times subscription is a small but pricey indulgence. I love sitting at the dining-room table Sunday mornings and reading:  “Travel,” that showcases exotic getaways we can’t afford; “Arts and Entertainment,” that reviews plays and films we will never get to see;  “Book Reviews,” that lists the authors and books we don’t have time to read. However, my favorite section is the “Sunday Magazine,” which I read just about cover to cover—backwards.
 

I start with the last page column called “Lives.” Writers --profession and non—reveal the little, jewel-like moments we call “slice of life.” When I was teaching, I would   use “Lives” essays to show how good writing often comes in small packages wrapped in natural voices. One such essay was Avi Steinberg’s “A Prison-Library Reunion,” which caught my eye last October because, well, by now everyone knows an ex- prison librarian lives in my home right now.
 

 I enjoyed the essay until I saw the end note. Mr. Steinberg’s piece was adapted from his forthcoming memoir, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian. How dare he write the book that was going to make my daughter famous! I broke the news to Megan that her idea had been stolen, but she bought Steinberg’s book and highly recommends it.

This week, I didn’t have time to read the Sunday NY Times on Sunday, so I read it at Quixote’s Garage where I volunteer.  I grabbed the “Sunday Magazine” first, as usual. After reading “Lives,” washing a few dishes, getting someone’s mail, and greeting a few folks,  I working my way from page 50 back to page 44 and a column called “Riff” by Maud Newton.  I, like, totally identified with Newton’s comments about the evolving use of voice by essayists—professional and non—and how mixed, shaken and poured the language of the blogosphere has become. She blames it on David Foster Wallace, then she sort of blames Dave Eggers for passing on even further what she calls “the stylized mess that is Gen X and-Y Internet syntax” (Newton 46). Newton really seems to hate the way bloggers have gotten into using the word “folks.” 

When I finished Newton’s essay, I jotted down a little note before getting back to washing dishes and playing solitaire. “Note to myself: Megan should read this essay even if Newton maligns Eggers.” Note to readers: Megan loves Dave Eggers, reads all his books, subscribes to his quirky journal McSweeney’s and has attended numerous Eggers readings, even in England.
 

 Avi Steinberg abandoned the temporary job of prison librarian and is now a published author.  Maud Newton abandoned the practice of law and is now a published author. Avi and Maud also have blogs.
 

I couldn’t find a blog for Dave. Maybe… he’s just too busy. Like, folks, um, Dave Eggers spends a lot of his time and money helping kids learn to love writing through his 826 National non-profit organization. Friday is National Youth Literacy Day and “826 on 8/26.” In gratitude, I’ll give Dave the last words:

“Some of these kids just don't plain know how good they are: how smart and how much they have to say. You can tell them. You can shine that light on them, one human interaction at a time.”

Sources:
Avi Steinberg blog.
Maud Newton blog.
Newton, Maud. ‘Really Pretty much the Only One That, Um, You know, Got It.” New
                  York Times Magazine. 21 Aug 2011 p 44.
Steinberg, Avi. “A Prison-Library Reunion.” New York Times 1 Oct 2010.                  
Dave Eggers and 826 National.

Megan:

 I’m in a hurry today because we are leaving for California early tomorrow morning, and there is a lot to do to prepare for a week away. The packing is mostly complete, but I have several assignments due over the next week and I’d rather not have to worry about them while I’m away. The great thing about online classes is apparently that you can work on them from anywhere, but I’m more productive and efficient if I am working in my office than if I am working from a motel room or a friend’s house.

And the voices in my head are rebelling against this project, telling me I should just leave it until we get back because there’s too much else that needs to be done.  But this was supposed to be yesterday’s topic though, and Mom has written hers. I didn’t write yesterday because I had a job interview (it went well, I think). 

So, I apologize, but this is all you get. 

Topic 212: Bristles

Carol:

     Men of a Certain Age

 In my genealogical climb through the branches and tangled vines of my family tree, I have discovered photographs of a lot of hairy men—beards down to the belt buckle, mutton chop sideburns, pomaded pompadours. But, the moustaches tend to show up in photos of family men around the 1920’s No matter what state they lived in, or even what country, moustaches dominated early 20th century male fashion.
 

The   photograph of Walter Lugrin Sr  (1878-1940) shows a man who is meticulous in details of dress. He wears a stick pin in his carefully knotted tie, a white handkerchief in the pocket of his expensive-looking suit. The moustache is bushy but neat, somewhat between a chevron and a paintbrush (American Moustache Institute). I wouldn’t expect less than thoughtful, measured care in the looks of a watchmaker and businessman who worked for  the  A. Wittnauer Co in Manhattan.  Married to my great-aunt Hattie Edwards, Walter was a family favorite who had gotten jobs in the jewelry store for Hattie and three of her sisters.
 

Edward John Scott (1857-1925) also sported a moustache although we have no photos of him as a young man. He too was a “company man” who worked for the same employer for over 20 years, as a printer in New Mexico for the Las Vegas Optic newspaper.  This photo (around 1918) shows a more casual  approach to dress. appropriate for the West. Hand cocked on hip, jacket thrown open, topped with a straw hat to keep off the New Mexico sun, E. J. Scott wears a bushy moustache too, not quite as contained as Walter’s but nevertheless in the “chevron” mode.  His expression is less business-like, less imposing than that of Uncle Walter back in New Jersey E. J. is often shown with that same affable smile in photos with his grandchildren, including my father, another Edward Scott.
 

Frederick William Stanley York (1876-1968) was from the Canadian branch of the family.  His mother Catherine was a first cousin of E. J. Scott’s wife Selina Jane, whose parents had immigrated to the American Midwest in the 1860’s from Ontario.  Stanley and several siblings moved west from Ontario to Manitoba and Alberta in the late 1880’s.  Stanley’s photo shows a young man of ramrod posture, eyes staring directly into the camera, high collar and white tie.  Although not as bushy as E.J.’s moustache,   Stanley York’s bristles add a good two inches to each side, a much truer chevron. This photograph  was probably taken around 1898, about the time he traveled with a group from the Churches of Christ congregation of Carman, Manitoba, all the way to Nashville for training at the Bible School.  From  photos of his horses and chickens, I know he farmed in Alberta with his wife Ella. They lived long enough to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in 1953. The moustache was long gone.
 
Go back one generation from Walter, E.J. and Stanley and you’ll find that men of a certain age—staid, married men—wore beards. But, the beard only really came into fashion in the United States in the 1850’s after several decades of a vogue of clean-shaven faces.
By 1920, the beard went out of style again, replaced by either a moustache or goatee, no doubt influenced by Gillette’s invention of the safety razor which became standard-issue gear for U.S soldiers in World War I (source: “Safety Razors”). As fashionista Heidi Klum might say, “Bristles. One week they’re in, one week they’re out.”

Sources:
 “The Lemania Legacy.”
“Moustache Styles.” American Moustache Institute.
Safety Razors.” Wikipedia. 



 *Please note that Carol was very late in finishing her essay today, and Megan's essay reflects that fact. 


Megan:

The many uses of Bristles

Yesterday, on the way to the movies,  Mom and I had a conversation about this topic. Conversation is probably not the right word. I tried to guess what she was going to write about and she wouldn’t tell me.

“Are you going to write about hair brushes?” I asked thinking it sounded like something she would write about.
“No,” she replied. “I thought that might be what you were going to write about.”
“I could write about how it annoys me that you think your scalp is too sensitive for my brush, and I can’t even get your brush through my hair.”
“You mean like how you bristle about the bristles on brushes?”
“Oh my god.”

“Bella has bristles on her chin” she suggested.
“Those are whiskers. Are you going to write about facial hair?"
“I’m not sure how much I have to say about that,” she said, stroking the whiskers on her own chin.
“This morning,” I offered,  “I found this long curly black hair growing right out of the side of my face.”

She finished choking just as we arrived at the movie theater and saw the worst movie of the year – One Day. It was so bad. Also, it had the same premise as a story I’ve been working on which follows a character (me) on the same day each year. I was going to use my journals. I’ve put a lot of hours into this project, not to mention the ten years that had to pass in order for me to accumulate the entries. I’m not sure it’s going to work – it’s more of an exercise, but I can assure you that the unedited and angsty journaling from my late teens is still much more interesting than that movie we saw yesterday.

I guess the fact that the movie was bad is a good thing. It’s worse when you come up with an idea and then someone else has beat you to it and theirs is better. At least I have a chance to improve it.

Anyway, I’m not doing too well with this topic today. I keep wanting to add that my mother did not finish her essay because she had obligations this morning, obligations she has known about for a while – so she could totally have written the essay before. But I skipped out all last week, and I knew about Kelly’s visit for months. So, I don’t have any right to be annoyed. Except, have you ever noticed that getting annoyed at something is not a logical reaction anyway, it happens whether you have been rightly wronged or not? Still, when I write and she doesn’t, I bristle with annoyance.    

Topic 211: Conceited People

Carol:

Dear Mr. Wordsworth

Right now I can only think of one conceited person in my circle of “friends. I don’t actually  know him personally, but I’ve had a close relationship with his sisters since I was a young girl. The brother of my very dear friends Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, was indeed a conceited man. Patrick Branwell Bronte, known to everyone as Branwell, was also a drug addict and an alcoholic whose final year of life was plagued by deep melancholia. What’s a little vanity compared to that.
 

Unfortunately, this vain self-image contributed to his lack of success as a writer almost as much as his lack of talent. Friend and biographer Francis H Grundy noted in his book Pictures of the Past that Branwell “took an unusual fancy to himself,” which is a pretty good way of describing conceited people. Perhaps Branwell got that fancy because he was somewhat of a big fish in the little pub pond of Haworth, invited often to the Black Bull Inn where his reading and writing penchants “sufficed to make him a wonder among the rustics and manufacturers of the West Riding” (source: Bayne 248). 

 
Undoubtedly, the pub crowd adulation  only added to an already inflated sense of his own artistic talents fed by an indulgent father, doting Aunt Branwell, and loving sisters. So in 1837, 19-year-old Branwell, out of “the conceit and vanity which at this age are of fatal augary” (Bayne 248) wrote to William Wordsworth seeking his advice and support,   including in the letter a comment  that there was not a writing poet then alive worth sixpence. Wordsworth never wrote back to Branwell, so we don’t really know how he might have reacted or even if he did more than quickly skim the poems included in the letter.  Branwell was probably taken aback that he did not even receive an acknowledgement from Wordsworth, and likely would have complained about it over a pint back at the Black Bull Inn. Not that he hadn’t already tried before and failed to get the public notice he so craved.
 

Two years earlier, Branwell had written several letters to the editors of Blackwood’s Magazine, a popular journal subscribed to by the family and always read with great enthusiasm by all of the Brontes. On December 7th 1835 he wrote to the Editors, admonishing them for failing to respond to several earlier letters. In offering himself as a writer for Blackwood’s he wrote:
 

All, sir, that I desire of you is—that you would in answer to this letter request a specimen or specimens of my writing, and I even wish that you would name the subject on which you would wish me to write. In letters previous to this I have perhaps spoken too openly respecting the extent of my powers ... I know that I am not one of the wretched writers of the day” (Orel 34).

Branwell Bronte was a better artist than a writer, but his efforts to make a living as a portrait painter also led to failure. Whatever combination of temperament, addiction and misplaced adulation contributed to his vain sense of self-importance, he died in pain, despair and dejection at the age of 31 within months of his sisters Anne and Emily. Sister Charlotte, as unassuming and humble as her brother was vain, lived long enough to see her own writing accepted by both the public and  literary critics.

Sources:
Bayne, Peter “Studies of English Authors.” Literary World, Vol, 21. 1880.    
Orel, Harold, ed. The Brontes: Interviews and Recollections. 1997. 33-34.
Reminisnces of Charlotte Bronte  Scriberner’s Monthly May 1871 qtd in Orel

Megan:

Just call me Branwell

I often joke that the only time I ever felt smart in college was when I tested out of the English 1 and placed into upper division writing classes my first semester. This turned out to work against me because despite what I managed to pull off in the placement test, I never really got the hang of close readings and literary analysis – the basics of which were taught in that English 1 class I got to skip.

But aside from that, once I realized I wasn’t a naturally gifted academic, I really only ever felt confident in my creative writing classes, which allowed a bit more freedom in style.  I was suddenly complimented on themes, rhythm, and voice. I’d never been able to detect those things in my literature classes, and was unaware I’d included them in my own writing. 

Then, the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I was invited to join a small writing group composed entirely of MFA students. This was a seriously flattering invitation, and for the first time I was in over my head. I got comments like “The words are pretty but the character is stuck – where is the development?” I remember that comment because it provoked an existential crisis –all my writing was thinly disguised memoir, and being the main character in all my stories, this meant that I too was stuck. That fall, I went to England to study abroad and that set me on a new path – and unstuck me. I returned for my senior year refreshed, confident, with new ideas for my writing.

My senior thesis, which was a portion of a novel, was returned to me with a single comment written on a post-it “Fix the grammatical errors and this is publishable.” In retrospect, I think my advisor may not have read it, but at the time I was elated. That might have been the time to go for an MFA, when my confidence was so high, but I went to library school instead – sure that librarianship would only be a day job while I pursued my actual dream of being an extremely famous and successful writer.

Yeah…

I mention all of this because the Fall semester starts today, and I am taking two creative writing classes (and Zumba!). And I’m finding myself as nervous today as I was when I first started college 11 years ago. Added to the usual fears of “what if nobody likes me?”, I now have “what if I’m the oldest person in the class?” Since I’m attending the community college, I probably won’t be the oldest, but so what if I am. I just want to get back into the swing of things, workshop my stories, develop some writing samples and put together a decent application for grad school.

Watch, now I’m going to be offered a job.

Topic 194: On Apologizing for Oneself

Carol:

Going, Going….

Apologizing is an art requiring honesty and good timing. Eloquence is an enhancement but not a replacement for sincerity. Apologizing for oneself is more like an “I’m sorry but…”  I apologize for my poor cooking skills: fishing for a compliment or a sign of poor self-esteem?  Apologizing for oneself can also be a way to justify behavior one doesn’t intend to or can’t change.
 
This morning Marc is returning from a week-long motorcycle trip along the California coast, and  I am in a wee bit of stress. He will be hot and tired, and  I like to have him come home to a clean, clutter-free house. If I don’t at least pick up the bedroom and kitchen, he will wonder what his retired wife has been doing all week. Then, I will have to apologize for myself. I think I’ll line up my excuses in advance, a kind of practice round with my loyal daily theme readers before Marc pulls into the driveway.
 

Excuse #1: I’m trying hard to finish my family history book before the end of the summer. I have learned so much this week about scanning, cropping, and enlarging old photographs. The only place where I could really find the space to spread out the scrapbooks, old letters and photos was our bedroom, where I could set up a card table and use the queen-size bed.

Sacred memories

Excuse #2:  It has been really, really hot.  The air-conditioner doesn’t cool down the upstairs. I can’t get a cross-breeze going; we had to take the screen door from the upstairs bedroom balcony and move it downstairs because somebody’s dog (not mine) shredded the downstairs screen. Besides, if I get too much of a breeze in our bedroom,  those photos and letters will blow all over the room and destroy my organized stacks.  All this heat has drained my energy anyway for vacuuming or lugging laundry up and down three flights of stairs.

Sacred mounds

Excuse #3:  My fingers are a mess. I slashed my left thumb while cutting watermelon.  I dropped a heavy lid on my right thumb and now the black and blue covers half the nail. And, I have puncture wounds on the front and back of my right second finger from trying to take a bone away from Milo. He didn’t deliberately bite me, mind you (after all, he’s perfect). He just mistook my finger for the bone I had removed from his jaws. With all the band-aids I’ve gone through and the throbbing which alternates between left and right hands,  I don’t really feel like washing dishes. Megan has done a lot of the cooking and clean-up, but she is busy too (not that I would ever apologize or make excuses for her).
 

Excuse #4: today is the last day of my OLLI class on Myth in Human History, and I need to prepare for it. I haven’t really procrastinated. I got my PowerPoint presentation done a few days ago, and I wrote a poem about my geologist father because the topic is “Sacred Mountains.”  The Great Courses DVD we are showing even uses the San Francisco Peaks as an example. I still have to watch the 45-minute lecture before I leave at 11:45.

Sacred mountains

Dear readers, dear Marc. I really don’t like to make excuses for myself. I hate apologizing over and over again for untidiness, clutziness or procrastination. I would try to make my apology more sincere, more eloquent, but I just don’t have the time.
 

I’m going, going…….GONE.

Megan:

I’m not a big fan of apologies. Sometimes when I am hungry or hot, I will snap at my parents. If I’ve been extremely unreasonable, I will apologize, but usually I just make a joke after and then everything is ok. I prefer self-deprecating humor – which is different than fishing for compliments or putting oneself down. Making jokes about one’s failings is a way to find humor in an otherwise uncomfortable situation, and it puts others at ease.  I guess I just don’t think apologies mean much because the words are so often used with no hint of regret or attempt to change behavior.

Like when people say, “I’m sorry, but…” Anytime I hear that I know  it’s not a sincere apology, and what follows the “but” is usually an indictment. “I’m sorry but your feet really stink.”  Or “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.” Or, and this one I hate the most, “I’m sorry, but that’s the way I am.” Whenever I hear this, I feel like the person is actually saying “I don’t care that I hurt you. I will not even try to be considerate of your feelings.” Of course, after I snap at my parents (if I apologize), I’ll say, “I’m sorry but I’m really hot and hungry.” And what I’m really saying (although not consciously) is that “I’m not able to set aside my personal discomfort in order to be polite to you.” These words are not sincere requests for forgiveness.

Another way people use apologetic words is when conveying pity. When a fried has suffered some sort of personal tragedy, I will say “I’m sorry.” And invariably my friend says, “It’s not your fault” – which is a response appropriate for an apology. What I really meant was “I feel sorry for you”  but people don’t like to hear it phrased that way because that’s also something we say when we’re trying to sound like the bigger person when actually we’re just being mean: “I feel sorry for that person who is going to die unloved and then burn in hell forever.” But whether we mean to be nice or not, they are not apologies.

We also use apologies to negotiate through heavy foot traffic. The British are constantly saying sorry. They use it the way we say “Excuse me” (also an apology) and in every context. If a person finds his way blocked by another, he will say “Sorry” to get the other person to move.  Although it sounds like he is apologizing for making the other person move, he’s merely making his presence known. If two people are talking and one person either cannot hear (or is outraged by) what the other person has said, he will say “I’m sorry?” (or “I’M SORRY??!!) In both cultures, Sorry’s and Excuse me’s are often replaced by Pardons – yet another apologetic word.

So, after apologizing all day long, what are we supposed to say when we are truly repentant?  “I was wrong” can work, but I’m wrong a lot without causing any harm, so that’s not a real apology either. “I can’t believe I did that” sounds like an accident. So does, “Whoops.”  “Please forgive me” is supposed to come after the apology, not in its stead. “I will make it up to you” is closer, because it promises action. Maybe that’s all we can do, accept that words are not enough and try to do better next time.

Topic 177: Making up one's mind

Carol:

Eenie Meeny Miny Mo

Megan and Marc and have taken the dogs on an extra early morning walk. They are both trying to increase their exercise and decrease their protein intake while taking a nutrition class at the college. Meanwhile, I am feeling a little bit of pressure to get this essay underway before Megan gets back and starts asking me how far along I am. It isn’t that I don’t have any ideas or that I am particularly slow as a writer. It’s just that I often have a problem making up my mind about what to write about.
 

For instance, the first thing that came to my mind for today’s essay was coin flipping. What was the history of using “heads or tails” to determine an outcome? Or, even “rock, paper, scissors,” which I usually played with someone to decide who had to take out the trash, or the dog, or do the dishes.  Drawing the short straw is another “device” for helping people make decisions.
 

Another idea that came to my mind was hung juries. Megan had to report for federal jury duty yesterday, which she used as an excuse for not writing her essay even though she got herself eliminated by 10:30 a.m.  A few years back I made it all the way to the final jury selection and opening arguments because the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney—all of whom I knew—thought I could be fair and impartial.  When they were conducting the “voir dire” on the panel of prospective jurors, they didn’t ask what I think is one of the most important questions, “Do you have trouble making up your mind?”  I thought about that at the time as I had a certain fear that we would end up in a Twelve Angry Men-like protracted deliberation while 11 men and women stared at me as I tried to decide “guilty” or “not guilty” Luckily, the case settled in one day and we were excused from jury duty.
 

Just as a point of interest, my intensive research on Wikipedia uncovered an unusual trial that used “rock, paper, scissors” to determine an outcome. In 2006 a federal judge in Florida who apparently got tired of the protracted and petty bickering between the opposing sides over where a deposition should be held.  Judge Gregory Presnell subsequently crafted an elaborate ruling that the two sides should meet in a kind of “hand duel” using rock, paper, scissors to determine the location of the deposition. According to Wikipedia, the ruling was intended to “shame” the litigants by showing just how extreme their dispute had become (source: “Rock-Paper-Scissors”).
 

Currently, being retired, I don’t have a lot of pressure on me to make up my mind on anything other than a choice of restaurants and menu items.  I get around that by letting the other people in the car hash out where we will eat, and then by always ordering last so that I have just that little cushion of a few extra minutes to “eenie, meenie, mo” the menu options—burrito or taco, burrito or taco.
 

The dog walkers are back, and I can hear the sound of spoons hitting bowls as Marc and Megan consume their healthy morning helpings of oatmeal. I like oatmeal, but for me it’s a winter breakfast and I can already tell this is going to be a hot day. When they asked if I wanted some, I didn’t really have a problem making up my mind.  “No thanks,” I yelled down, “I’m too busy right now to eat. I can’t make my mind up what to write my essay about.”

Source:
Rock-Paper-Scisorrs. Wikipedia.

Megan:

I Changed My Mind

I thought we’d written on this topic already. I searched the archives and although this is a new topic, I’ve already written on it a number of times. When we started this website, I didn’t want to call it a blog because I associated it with online journaling and this wasn’t supposed to be a journal. Except that writing familiar, personal essays by its very nature involves writing about the familiar and the personal, so it’s sort of turned out like a journal anyway (well, my essays have).

So, I’ve already written about how I made up my mind to quit the job in the prison, how I decided to move back to the USA (one year ago today), how I made up my mind to write The Book, to apply for an MFA, to get a puppy, to become a vegan and get in shape.  I make up my mind a lot. I also change it a lot. Sometimes after it’s too late.

I’ve been having more days where I changed my mind about quitting that job and moving back to the States. I found out that there was a surprise inspection of the prison back in January, and that the report had just been published this week. I downloaded it and skipped right to the part about the library. There were no recommendations for improvement. I’m not going to say that I’d hoped the library had failed in my absence, but since I’m having such a difficult time finding a new job, I sort of wished there was evidence that my old one missed me.

I’ve changed my mind about writing because I’m not in the mood, changed my mind about the MFA because I’m afraid of not getting in. I’ve changed my mind about going vegan because even though I watched a very compelling video last night in class about how dairy proteins cause cancer, I came home and ate cheese and crackers at 11 at night because the garbanzo bean salad I had for dinner was not adequately filling.

I changed my mind about the puppy because she’s causing problems in the family. I want to blame the set back in her housetraining because we were gone for four days and although my father walked, fed and watered her, he’s just not a dog person and she probably didn’t get the level of attention she needs. But the fact is, she wasn’t completely trained before we left on our trip. Also, she’s weird. I can walk her for an hour in the morning and she won’t squat once, but in the hour before bedtime she has to go every five minutes.

Anyway, I’ve been changing my mind a lot. And I’ll change it back again. I’m still going to do all those things (and keep the puppy).  And maybe some day I’ll look back on this frustrating and transitional point in my life and think of it as the point where I finally got it together.

Topic 137: Intellectual Pioneers

Carol:

Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat           

I love the inventiveness of the designers who can stylize the word “Google” to pay tribute to a special event or person. Thursday’s tribute showed  a science lab table set up with glass vials, a flame, even a coffee pot, and a maze of tubes configured to spell out G-O-O-G-L-E. Aha, it was Robert Bunsen’s 200th birthday.
 

Name  recognition.  We throw around  lots of names without having any idea what they signify. I haven’t been in a science lab for many years, but I recognize a Bunsen burner or a Petri dish. Just as I know what Apgar score, Morse Code, Richter Scale and Braille system refer to. Significant inventions, but what do we know about the inventors and scientists whose names have been branded into our memory banks?
 

I’m probably typical of many Americans who accumulate trivial “factoids” about popular culture and celebrities but can’t name a pioneer in mathematics, astrophysics, biochemistry, or macroeconomics. Well, maybe I can name somebody, a man whose creative and intellectual interests span so many fields that, according to Wikipedia, his books are found in 8 of the 10 major Dewey Decimal System categories, the man who made robotics famous, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992).
 

Rowena Morril's painting of Asimov.

I never really thought much about the science—or the scientist—behind my favorite science fiction: the Foundation Series, Nightfall, and the Robot Series.  Out of respect for the subject, I will head to the Isaac Asimov Homepage, a site that is short on glitz and long on substance. It  lists all of the books and essays this prolific author has written, including 1600 essays from science fiction magazines and other sources such as Science World, Chemical and Engineering News, The Humanist, and Space World. The topics touch on just about every “logy”: psycho, geo, zoo, bio.  According to homepage authors Seiler and Hatcher, Asimov’s genius  was not just in the breadth of his intellectual curiosity and his depth of knowledge but in his ability to explain complex information in a simple way.
 

In 1982, the 2nd  Revised Edition was published of Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. The book contains 1510 names, some of which would surprise no one (Newton, Kepler, Faraday) and a few who might seem out of place (Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth). In a 2009 review of the book, Robert Wilfred Franson comments: “Asimov's scope is the vast range of human science and technology. He seems equally at home in discussing theory and experiment and invention, medicine and chemistry and rocketry.” Just as Seiler and Hatcher noted, Franson emphasizes Asimov’s ability to make complex material accessible to a general audience.
 

Dr. Asimov collected numerous awards  over the years, including 14 honorary doctorates.  He has been recognized by such diverse groups as the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, the American Heart Association, and of course the science fiction community.   An asteroid is named after him, and in 2009 a crater on Mars. Behind all the scientific accolades and writing accomplishments was a man with a personality, humanity and sense of humor: “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
 

It looks like I missed the Isaac Asimov Memorial Panel Debate at New York’s Hayden Planetarium again this year. The topic was “The Theory of Everything… Still Searching.” Quite an impressive group of credentials although, of course, I didn’t recognize any  of their names. They are mostly Physics professors working on string theory, superstring theory, loop quantum gravity, and the detection of dark matter. Asimov would have loved it.

Sources:
Franson, Robert Wilfred.  Review.
Johns Hopkins University. Bio of Edward Seiler.  
Isaac Asimov Home Page.
Isaac Asimov Biography. Wikipedia.
Rowena Morrill  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaac_Asimov_on_Throne.png

Megan:

So, this is one of those topics that gets Mom all excited because it means research. When I moaned about it, she suggested I write about the president of the college I went to because she was the first female president of a college west of the Mississippi. I find that difficult to believe because the school, first a seminary then a college,  is 158 years old, and has always been west of the Mississippi. Also, it has always been a woman’s college except for two weeks in 1990, which resulted in the college needing a new president.  Anyway, I know there was a female president before this one. But I’m not going to prove it because I’m not in the mood for research right now.

I was talking to my Dad on the way home tonight about how I completely forgot to mention this website in the interview I had last week – didn’t conceal it on purpose, but actually forgot to mention how I’m spending half my days. And he said that if they find it (and they will) they’ll probably want to hire my mom instead because her essays are researched and mine are silly. And I was like, thanks a lot jerk. But I didn’t actually say that, because I don’t speak that way to my father.

Look. I like this project. I didn’t think we’d make it this long, but I’m glad we’re still doing it. But this is not a job for me. I write this stuff mostly to be funny, or at least entertaining. Occasionally a topic really interests me and then I do the research, but not everything excites my curiosity. If this were my job, it would be different. I’d be answering questions, or hopefully, helping people learn how to answer their own questions. But I’m only willing to put a certain amount of time into these essays – like a maximum of an hour – because I have a lot of research and reading to do that is unrelated.

Getting my master’s degree and starting out my career in England has handicapped me. I am not saying I am unqualified to work in this country because that is absolutely not true. But librarianship is practical career and it involves a lot of different skills, most of which are honed on the job. So, while I don’t have a job, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out the American way – the American vocabulary, the American resources. I’ve taken classes since I got back, and spent a lot of time reading professional literature.  I’m not trying to hint that I am an intellectual pioneer, self-training for the job I eventually hope to land. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere at all without the wealth of information and advice available to unemployed librarians concerned with keeping their skills up-to-date. There are a lot of us, working while unemployed. This website is the thing I do when I’m either reflecting on it, or I want a break from it.

Especially when I realize that the thing that would help me the most, I haven’t done. I should be volunteering in a library. But I really thought that at any moment I might find a job and I didn’t want to let anyone down by suddenly quitting. Which was not a concern I had when starting this project – although it is now.

Anyway, another reason writing this essay isn’t like a job: I’m actually writing this in the middle of the night, in the middle of my bed, wearing the nightgown I tried to dress Milo in earlier today. I wish I had been able to video him running up the stairs while the little dress slid further down with each step. By the time he reached the top, it was just hanging off his tail. You probably had to be there.  

Milo wishes he wasn't there.

PS: Mills College is named after its founders, Cyrus and Susan Mills. Susan became as president of the college in 1890 and served for 19 years.  I knew this already. I’m guessing what my mom actually meant to say was that Mills was the first women’s college established west of the Rockies, and is the second oldest women’s college still in existence.

PPS: Mom has clarified to say that she meant Aureilia Henry Reinhardt (Mills President 1916 – 1943) was the first female president.  But as we’ve already established, that is wrong too.

www.mills.edu

Topic 136: People Who Make-Believe

Carol:

History Repeats Itself, Costumes and All

Last weekend I spent time with my three-year old great-niece.  Friday, she dressed as   a princess. The next day she arrived at a family party in a clown costume with a fabric birthday cake perched atop her tow head. How happily she grabs a costume each day and enters the world of imagination. Costumes and make-believe aren’t just for children, and they aren’t just for Halloween. Serious make-believe makes for serious history. 
 

Visit Colonial Williamsburg, and you are transported into one of the most exciting periods in American history. This 301-acre historic area recreates in authentic detail both the life and the spirit of 18th America: “The Colonial Williamsburg story of a revolutionary city tells how diverse peoples, having different and sometimes conflicting ambitions, evolved into a society that valued liberty and equality” (Source: Colonial Williamsburg official website).

Williamsburg Cobbler Shop

I didn’t fall in love with Williamsburg for its historical significance. I was 10 years old the first time I walked up The Duke of Gloucester Street and saw costumed people promenading, working in shops, tipping hats as they passed by. After we watched the cobbler pound  heels on a worn leather boot, I begged my parents to go into the Post Office, which also housed the Printing Office and Book Bindery.  I had a little money, so I bought hand-made stationery, a stamp and sealing wax.  At Bruton Parish Church, I sat in a pew close to where Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry would worship while they were planning for Revolution.  I knew I wanted to come back to Williamsburg, but not as a visitor. I wanted to BE one of those people who got to make-believe every day at Williamsburg.
 

I did go back to historic Virginia, this time on our cross-country motorhome trip. The experience  lived up to my childhood memories, and I still imagined  coming back someday as a volunteer, living a make-believe character I had created and researched myself. Of course, Megan and her brother don’t remember that trip, but I like to think a little bit of the fun of make-believe mixed with history rubbed off.
 

Agoura Renaissance Festival

Several years later, I took them to the Renaissance Festival in Apache Junction. I had spent several weeks combing the local thrift stores and sewing costumes for the four of us. It was no fun going without costumes, and it was more fun if we could dress as nobility. Years earlier, I had taken my students from a Shakespeare class to the Festival in Agoura, California and we learned the etiquette of social class. Dressed as a  cook  with wooden utensils hanging from my belt, I had been obliged to do a lot of bowing and kow-towing.  In Apache Junction, let the peasants do that to us. Did we have fun? Absolutely.  But, I was the only one in the family who was ready to trade in my day job for a career in costume.
 

Marshall and Megan, dressed for the Faire

Planning a trip, with or without kids? Thinking about hitting some of the big name, big bucks theme parks (D-Land, 6-Flags, etc.)? Try something a little different. Visit a living history museum instead. Walk the dirt compound of Old Jamestown.  Stick your head into Iron-maker’s foundry at the Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum.  Buy a newspaper at the Williamsburg  Printer’s Shop on Duke of Gloucester Street. Just look for me. I’ll be the older gray-haired lady with the ink-stained fingers and the food stains on the bib of my blue gown.
 

Sources:
Colonial Williamsburg Official History Site.  

Image: A recreation workshop on Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg. Wikipedia. 

Image:  Main Stage at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, Agoura, CA 1986. Wikipedia.
     
 

Megan:

People Who Can't Control the Make-Believe

As we’ve established before,  I have a very active imagination.  When mixed with a certain amount of insecurity (the normal amount, I think), there sometimes results  a weird sort of paranoia.  For example, last night I noticed that my friend Kelly had mis-dated our year of graduation from college. I commented on it, implying she’d made a mistake, but for the 15 minutes it took for her to respond, I questioned our friendship.

Had she, I wondered, quietly failed a class without telling anyone? Had the college agreed to let her walk at graduation on the condition that she complete the missing credits over the summer? Had it taken longer than she planned and when they finally printed out her diploma it had 2005 instead of 2004? All of this did happened to our roommate who had some health problems, but we’d all known about it. Was that the reason Kelly didn’t have her college diploma hanging on the wall at her office? Was this a Kelly-conspiracy going back years and years? And if so, did it mean our friendship wasn’t as strong as I’d believed?

So, when she said it was a typo and quickly corrected it, I was relieved, but my rapid descent into over-imaginative paranoia still leaves me a bit suspicious. It was just so real.

But it doesn’t just work with insecurity. If you mix an active imagination with delusions of grandeur, suddenly a celebrity death becomes your big break. Last week, Elizabeth Taylor died and we experienced an unprecedented spike in visitors at The Daily Theme.

Before I say what happened, let me explain a little about our regular readers according to what the in-built (and inconsistent) Blogger statistics tell us. We have a core group of regular and devoted readers who most likely know either my mother or me in person.  I know this because most visitors follow the links I post on Facebook  (which makes them my real-life friends), or they search for us by name. 

We have another group of visitors who probably only come once, but they all come for the same reason – they are looking to steal an essay. We get a lot of searches for “essay on making excuses” or “essay on childhood” or “Chinese bound feet.” My guess is these are high school kids, who quickly realize that the only essays worth stealing were written by my mother and she’s way above the high school level. Plus all she ever talks about is history, retirement and genealogy (I love you, mom).

But then Elizabeth Taylor died. Our numbers spike actually started the day before she died, so maybe there were some news articles about her children rushing to her side, because “Elizabeth Taylor’s children” became the only search term showing up in our stats. I was curious, so I searched our site for pictures or reference and found way back in our essays about chickens, mom had used those 3 words together when talking about one of her movies. The children referred to where the ones in the movie, not her real life kids. But no one knows that until after they click through the link, and suddenly The Curiosity of Chickens is our most popular post.

Instead of having some perspective that these new visitors were all gawkers, wanting to see pictures of Ms. Taylor’s grieving children, and who probably left our site frustrated by the chicken talk -- I thought this was our big break. These visitors would become regular readers, and then! agents and publishers would be calling! with book deals! and we would be famous! And out of gratitude, we would dedicate the book to all our loyal readers (like you!) and also to Elizabeth Taylor whose final act would have been to shed some light on our little corner of the Internet.

Cuz things like that happen all the time.

Anyway, the stats have settled back down now. But I still have the graph that proves it.

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.