tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79037903265244649262024-03-13T21:05:58.473-07:00Tone Deaf in ThailandJanet Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15213363229927571063noreply@blogger.comBlogger544125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-32060872112521914632024-01-06T09:14:00.000-08:002024-01-06T09:14:04.613-08:00Weaving My Life<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The day is emerging in the same damp gloom that characterized yesterday but with rain in the mix. The gulls are happy. Mulrooney is not. Me? I’m working hard at acceptance, a word I’m just beginning to understand.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-97f1c3ca-7fff-10ba-150b-8f1e285298c8"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">“Some people think acceptance means giving up,” a friend said yesterday. I used to lean toward that definition with the phrase “Just accept it,” one that I usually accompanied with a shrug. This fell into the category of “Offer it up,” an admonition that told little Catholic children to emulate Job. Bear your misfortunes with equanimity and thank God you’re alive. Since this is a difficult achievement for a seven-year-old, which is when one becomes responsible for one’s sins and faults, it was easier to sink into an imposed form of resignation that reeked of defeat. As a rebellious child, I developed an aptitude for change, rather than acceptance, and this skill was well sharpened by the time I became an adult.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Change is a word I’ve always welcomed, with its connotations of self-determination and fresh beginnings. And I’m not alone. It’s the American Way. We’re a country built by people who were unhappy and sought to change that fact by crossing an ocean, pushing into a new continent, and then forcing our way across it. Although history praises the settlers, if it weren’t for the ones who looked for change, we’d all still be living in the original thirteen colonies. It was those who refused to “settle,” to “accept,” who made Manifest Destiny a truth, not a concept. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Now that there’s little new territory to light out to, we’re still divided into the ones who settle and the ones who are driven by the thought of change. In fact even the settlers embrace that thought which is one that drives our economy. Change propels demand. Don’t like your house, buy a new one. Tired of your automobile, visit a used car lot. Hate your hair color, buy a new shade. It’s a fact that if acceptance was enshrined as a virtue in the same way that change is, our stock market would plummet in a millisecond and the whole world would lose the lifestyle that it yearns for.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Then Covid-19 came to town, an unchangeable truth that forced acceptance as the only form of protection. All over the world, people chose isolation over death. Staying home, avoiding others, wearing masks that concealed smiles and muffled speech, forestalling travel, even on a city bus--these habits became so pervasive that they threatened to turn into behavior and when they were no longer necessary, they still had made acceptance an ingrained part of human life. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I’m one of the millions of aging people that populate the world and for our demographic, Covid was a thief. Although it took years of possibility from everybody, it brought me and others of my generation closer to a sense of mortality. Death is no longer abstract. It’s a certainty.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This is a lot like being crammed into a time machine and spat out into the future. While my mind still was adjusting to the fact that I’d turned seventy, my body was well on its way to the next decade. Minor illnesses hit me with greater force, an accident on a city street made me think of buying a cane, flagging eyesight forced me to wear eyeglasses, my sags and wrinkles were impossible to ignore, and my body had gleefully accepted the law of inertia. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">These are changes that I don’t welcome and am unwilling to accept. Although the past years pushed me into unknown territory, I’m trying to find what is a realistic way for me to live and what is simply absurd. I swallow pills that might forestall cardiac problems, limited eyesight, and fragile bones. I’ve bought an airline ticket that will take me across the Pacific and back again, with the promise of more travel to come after. I make plans with friends that will propel back into motion and the world at large. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">But I’m halfway toward eighty. My Covid habits have become comfortable and my physical alteration inexorable. There’s a degree of acceptance that lurks under my need for change and I’m struggling to understand what that means. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Since I’m a person who turns to reading when I’m puzzled, I’ve begun my search for meaning there. “Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,” May Sarton advised in a sonnet on what she called “this strangest autumn.” The resignation in this wasn’t a welcome signpost and I moved on, floundering until I came upon Abigail Thomas’s Still Life at Eighty.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">These short crisp essays were written during the imposed isolation of the Covid years, a period when Abigail worked to put her truncated isolated state into words that made some kind of sense. Her enforced confinement led her to the word “acceptance,” which seems to have been as alien to her as it is to me. Even though her life has been one of sensuality and connection with the external world, she was raised in a household of scientific inquiry and rigorous thought and her mind has been shaped into a habit of research. She turned to the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots and delved into the words that gave birth to what we call “acceptance.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">“A thread used in weaving,” was the meaning of one of the words it’s derived from, she discovered, and when I read that, acceptance made sense to me in a way it never had before. With this as part of its root system, acceptance, instead of hope, becomes the opposite of despair. While hope is a flame that needs to be tended to stay alive, while acceptance is an active task that weaves a thread into the fabric, over and over again.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Handwoven textiles are one of my passions and it made me happy to see my life as a piece of Thai cotton stretched out on a loom as a work in progress, rough and sturdy, with a bright and colorful pattern. I was the one who placed each thread and if I wove one into the fabric sloppily without caring, the piece was marred in that spot. If I stopped altogether, feeling this was pointless, the cloth would never grow beyond that point, staying frozen in that one place. Picking up a thread and weaving it into the whole, with care and thought, even at times when I disliked the color---that was essential. Taking what I have and making a full life from it when I have no choice but to use that particular thread is at the heart of acceptance. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Recently I put on a pair of prescription eyeglasses that showed me vividly what I’d been missing in clinging to my impressionist point of view. It was like walking through Disney’s Fantasia with colors that popped, even on a grey Seattle afternoon and shapes so sharp that they made me wonder if my glasses were 3-D. Expressions on the faces of people who walked past me were as fascinating as an entire novel and architectural details on buildings I’d dismissed as bland became artful surprises. Then I came home and looked at myself in the mirror. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Without the instant facelift that I’d been given by my bad eyesight, every wrinkle was as obvious as the Grand Canyon. Crow’s feet and crevices--there they were, all mine, along with my blurred waistline and my thighs dimpled with cellulite. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">It was too late for Botox, even if I could afford that option. These things were inexorably part of my appearance, and as much as I’ve denied it, they clearly showed who I am, an old woman. As I saw this truth carved into my face, I made my choice. I accepted. I smiled. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">And now with that thread in place, I’ll go on weaving, carefully, in my own pattern, with all the colors that come to hand.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-62148062456567570132023-12-06T17:21:00.000-08:002023-12-06T17:25:25.382-08:00Three-Quarters of a Century? What the hell?<p> After weathering the vast shock of turning forty-five, a process made easy by moving to Bangkok where I instantly reverted to the status of a clueless four-year-old, I've been skipping heedlessly through the following years without paying attention to the increasing numbers. Not even hearing a tactless little brat who passed me on a stairway in Hong Kong and announced in horrified tones, "Mommy! She's so <i>old</i>!" made me stop and ponder where my latest birthday had taken me. Wrinkles? So what. A vanishing waistline? That was part of the American Way of Eating, regardless of age. Lost hair color? Grey was fine with me. </p><p>Not even the inertia of the Covid years made me pay attention to entering a new decade. Seventy felt no different from sixty--until I reached the halfway point of my septuagenarian years. </p><p>This birthday was different. Two months earlier my youngest sister died, swiftly and unexpectedly. Soon after this, I tripped over an errant rolling duffle bag, broke a little bone in one hand, and had cuts and bruises on my face for three weeks afterward. Two days after I turned seventy-five, I went in to have a cataract removed and observed all the strictures involved with that procedure for much too long. Suddenly aging and mortality weren't just staring me in the face, they <i>were </i>in my face, or to be more precise,<i> on</i> it. A healthy crop of freshly developed lines had come to stay and with my newly improved eyesight, I couldn't ignore them. Perhaps they'd been there all along, I realized with a surge of horror, and I simply had been too vision-impaired to notice them.</p><p>Today, after brushing my teeth, as I assessed my face's creases and crevices under the unforgiving light of my bathroom, another thought burst into life. The toddlers I once babysat when I was thirteen are now preparing to enjoy the blessings of Social Security and Medicare. We're almost contemporaries at this point, all of us receiving sales pitches from AARP. There's nothing comforting about this at all. Nor am I soothed in any way by the knowledge that my oldest son will be getting those same missives in two more years and in that same time period his younger brother will hit the half-century mark. If they are approaching the dubious privilege of senior citizen discounts, then I must be perilously close to being ancient.</p><p>In years past, any time I felt as though age was catching up with me, I packed a suitcase and grabbed my passport. In the beginning of this coming year, I'm going to do this again. I'm hoping that a transpacific flight will work its usual alchemy and I'll return with a mindset that has no time to dwell on birthdays and their advances. God, I hope so. I really don't want to let the truth that next year I'll be closer to eighty than seventy get in my way of having a good time with the rest of my life.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-53741631743822704162023-07-24T08:12:00.004-07:002023-07-24T09:31:52.530-07:00Feeling Old in a City of Swifties<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taylor Swift came to town and for two days the streets were full of young women and little girls. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">They flashed through downtown like butterflies, some still young enough to need a middle-aged mother in attendance, others striding in pairs like half of the leading characters in Sex and the City. Seattle's notorious dowdiness was suddenly perked up with bras and Stetsons and skirts that resembled band-aids,s</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">atin and tulle, sequins and cowboy boots. Among this, I felt as though I was wandering through a series of TikTok reels.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-f543c70a-7fff-0b81-b758-1bb5554d4196"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suddenly I was in a city inhabited by avatars, shining and confident and somewhat terrifying, all young enough that they’ve never inhabited their lives without ever-present screens and cameras. They’ve been stars of their own private video worlds ever since they were old enough to hold a phone and they have an eerie physical presence in which every motion contains a pose.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Almost all of them were white. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many were blonde with bodies that looked as if they’d been manufactured by Mattel. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every last one of them had access to the financial comfort that could purchase a Taylor Swift ticket and the chutzpah to put together the sort of outfit that defied any concept of 20th Century style. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are not the girls and women I usually see on the streets of downtown and that truth comforts me. There are young female people in the world today who are imperfectly human and unaware of their beauty and power, “same as it ever was.” But in their innermost selves, do they yearn to be one of the Swifties? Or have they turned their backs on that form of gender?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taylor Swift is popular enough that she drew her audience from all over the Pacific Northwest. From Vancouver B.C. to Idaho, her followers descended upon Seattle in outfits they had probably agonized over for months. I need to remind myself that they aren’t a new species, just a transformed version of cheerleader and sorority girl. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve seen their kind before but they were in Bangkok, impossibly glamorous in full drag or dancing on the stage of a transgender cabaret. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Was this weekend a watered-down version of a celebrity red carpet or a Pride Parade for straight girls? I’m too old to know the answer to that but I’m quite happy that my grandchild was at the Seattle Center, wearing everyday clothing in full sunlight, dancing and probably sweating to the music of Sir Mix-a-lot, for free.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-20994195771951636602023-07-04T07:30:00.003-07:002023-07-04T07:30:41.130-07:00Death by Tomato Plant<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the past three weeks my hands have felt as though they’ve been bitten by mosquitos, although I haven’t seen any. The bites are swollen and itch like crazy, emerging every time I come back inside from my porch. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-35af8b2c-7fff-5bcd-0c83-2f5e4e85e6fd"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I began to remember the invisible and voracious gnats that adored me the last time I was in Tucson, but I’d never encountered them in Seattle before. Besides, those little Southwest devils were averse to wind while my recent bites have shown up even when my porch is ruffled by a stiff breeze.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bites seemed to become more annoying as the summer took on some heat but I could never find an area on my hands that looked like an insect had feasted there. The swelling and itching came within a few minutes after I came indoors and disappeared after an hour of annoyance with no visible scars. This wasn’t like insects I’d known in the past--and believe me, there have been many. Wherever I go in the world, the word is out. “Hey. Janet’s in town. Let’s eat.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The source of the bites became my little mystery. Were they coming from the drain that lay just outside of my fence? Did my next-door neighbor have an open container of water within his lush garden where gnats had formed a summer home? Why did these creatures never attack me in the morning when the air is cool and my windows are wide open? And why did the bites show up every time I watered the massive tomato plant that my neighbor had given me a few weeks ago? Was there such a thing as tomato mites?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night after dowsing what’s become a tomato tree complete with yellow blossoms and miniscule green globes of fruit, I settled in with a magazine and a particularly virulent itching on my right hand, the one in which I hold my watering can. As the swelling fattened, my concentration went straight to hell and I grabbed my ipad.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Itching” “Swelling” “Tomato plants”-- within a second google obligingly provided the answer. Tomato plants, with their abundance of pollen, are the bane of allergy sufferers. Itching and swelling are the least of their hazards to those with “sensitivity.” Some people go into anaphylactic shock after being in contact with tomato plants.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This apparently is a fact well known to gardeners and is the reason why tomatoes were considered poisonous for centuries. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good old Deadly Nightshade came by its name honestly. Some people can’t even eat a fresh tomato without lapsing into an allergic reaction and many gardeners only approach their tomato plants while wearing dishwashing gloves.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today is the Fourth of July when most stores are closed. In preparation for the holiday, I stocked up on coffee and cat food. Who knew that my most essential need would be latex hand protection? It seems that my best avenue of defense is to wash my hands the second I come back inside and if that doesn’t work, resort to antihistamines. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been so proud of the way my tomato plant has flourished--watering it twice a day, propping up its drooping branches with little sticks, pruning unnecessary branches, and taking deep breaths of its distinctive scent. And this is how it repays me?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next year I’m going to sprinkle my porch with an assortment of artificial plants that provide greenery without danger. Or perhaps a cactus garden--all thorns, no pollen, no gloves necessary. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nature, I’m breaking up with you. It’s all over between us.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-18078601826143977312023-06-30T08:37:00.000-07:002023-06-30T08:37:03.643-07:00Getting the Bends<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since I don’t know how to swim, Caisson’s Disease, or decompression sickness, has never been a problem that preyed on my mind--until yesterday when I got the bends. This usually only happens to scuba divers when they rise too quickly from the aquatic depths to the water’s surface. The rapid change of pressure produces nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream and in addition to physical pain, causes dizziness and confusion. Who would think this could ever strike on dry land?</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-34bf95ad-7fff-baae-9e78-a41542540a57"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like most of us, I sank into the darkness of isolation and fear in 2020 and have slowly risen above it in the years that followed. My social life remained cautious and my interactions scanty until this week when that all burst into blossom. For the first time in ages, I had four different occasions marked on my calendar, where usually there’s only one a week. First I was dazzled and then I became dazed. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the middle of time spent with one of my dearest friends and her husband, I began to pay for a bottle of wine and suddenly realized my debit card wasn’t there. Neither were an assortment of other crucial items, ranging from a credit card to my passport. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Luckily I was close to home so I could race back to search for these things. Unluckily I live in a heavily touristed neighborhood with narrow streets filled with crowds of pedestrians. When the little clutch purse where my essential items live didn’t appear in my apartment, I became certain that they had either fallen from an unzipped compartment in my handbag or they were stolen by a pickpocket. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I immediately canceled my bank cards. Two hours later as I struggled to make an online report of a lost passport, I got up to find something in a pile of papers that I’d moved from the table minutes before my friend arrived. Within them was a weight that was definitely not paper--and there were my missing essential items.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I mentally retraced my steps that led to this act of stupidity, I remembered that in the middle of preparation for a visit that I’d longed for, I bought fruit at a stand in the crowded public market--mangosteen that both my friend and I had loved when we lived in Southeast Asia. I came home and removed the receipt for this purchase and then left the little purse on top of some papers. Then I received a text message about a job I was involved in, answered it, and began to make changes in the task when another text came saying my friend had arrived. I put what I was working on at the top of the pile of papers and moved it all to another spot. As soon as I saw my friend for the first time in over a year, everything else left my mind, consumed by joy. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some may unkindly chalk this up to impending senility. I prefer to think of it as a surfeit of happiness crammed into one week after years of not having this happen at all. Bubbles of effervescence in my veins stalled my brain and the result wasn’t pretty. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lesson learned? Slow the hell down as I make my way out of the depths.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-34594698351072314202023-06-18T07:50:00.004-07:002023-06-18T07:50:55.416-07:00Death and Life Downtown<p> </p><span id="docs-internal-guid-6fd47d4b-7fff-3caf-6e99-102c34395f4d"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beginning a rainy morning with a funeral march isn’t going to brighten the rest of the day. Perhaps the best part of yesterday was meeting a Rottweiler puppy. The worst part was marching in the company of signs made by a man who comes to every protest, Seattle’s Republican co-opter: Support Small Businesses. Although the march was prompted by the murder of a small business owner, this seemed remarkably dissonant. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The drumming that led us back to my neighborhood was appropriately somber and set a tone of grief for the dead woman, her unborn baby, and the husband and child who live without her. A senseless crime committed by a madman who heard directions coming from an invisible car was punctuated by a statement from a policeman. We knew who he was. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s now a taskforce of fifty police spread over most of this sprawling city: Aurora, the CD, South Seattle, Downtown. That’s twelve police for each area. More lip service from a city that specializes in this.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the way to the march, I passed a building where a window washer was poised halfway up a glass wall. Below him was a makeshift shelter constructed of motley objects with its inhabitant under an improvised tent made from a blue tarp and blankets. What insanity is brewing within it? Who would be able to stay sane under those conditions?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later I went to PCC to get a magazine and ice cream that might pierce through the inner and outer darkness. What gave me a little jolt of joy was seeing a long line outside Ludi’s which is open at last. Nobody waiting outside looked like a tech worker and everybody was happy. When I walked back home a few minutes later, a sign on the door announced that they were closed for the day--sold out. By this time today, they will have been open for five minutes and I would bet there’s already a throng behind the waiting line rope.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the third business to open downtown in the past six months--Uniqlo, Ben Bridges, and Ludi’s. Because of its history, Ludi’s arrival makes me happiest. Across from the Market for decades as the Turf, a working-class diner and bar, it became Ludi’s when the owner bequeathed it to a Filipino employee. It was displaced for a parking garage and finally found its new home a block away from me, just down the street from the Thompson Hotel, the Moore Coffee Shop, and a building that has become low-income housing. This is what downtown should look like.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So as a vicious tragedy strikes one business, another one opens. This couldn’t have happened at a better time for the residents of downtown who fear that their neighborhood will die from gentrification as much as from crime..</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can’t wait to have a BLT and a beer at Ludi’s.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-72701857327002313072023-04-06T08:31:00.001-07:002023-04-06T08:34:09.822-07:00Starving the Algorithm <p> I've <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">deactivated my Facebook account, which I should have done long ago. Every day I woke up to memes and jokes from people I’d never met and probably never would. My recent “restriction--only you can see your page”--with no recourse provided when I clicked the buttons that supposedly would give me a chance to get out of what we’ve come to call Facebook Jail, made me realize how absurd and conditional this medium is. That it grudgingly gave me snippets of my past every day in the form of “memories” no longer seemed acceptable and I felt disgusted that I’d given it intimate access to my life from 2008 until now.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-bb05ec4d-7fff-e945-54bf-e930a0e1fea5"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I moved all of my photos from Facebook to Google Docs--and please, don’t point out the shaky logic behind that. There’s no escaping The Cloud, now that cameras have all become digital. Facebook invited me to move all of my posts and notes too, but I don’t have that kind of time. It took almost five hours for the photo extraction to finish its odyssey and during that time I had to be close by to hit refresh when my wifi timed out. Moving my words would have taken days-and none of them are deathless enough to warrant that.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next I went through my list of friends and trimmed it ruthlessly. What remained when I finished the triage were family and close friends who don’t have another presence on Instagram that posts everything they put on Facebook. This was a surprisingly meager list. Now that Instagram has become Facebook’s less obnoxious twin, there’s a large degree of duplication. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I decided I’d deactivate for the first week before I pulled the plug for good on my old account so I could still use the Messenger accessory that’s attached to it. Once I delete that account, I can no longer use that particular part of Messenger. So until I had notified people that I had moved, I wanted to keep that option. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then came the shocker. I can’t issue friend requests to people who apparently no longer have Facebook in their countries, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand. Luckily some of them are on Instagram and all of them use gmail. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel lighter this morning. Pressing the delete button and removing fifteen years of my life from Facebook, plus pictures and memories from times before that, will happen today after I’ve sent my last message informing people of this change. Once I’ve done that, I will have come a long way toward reclaiming the word “friend.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps this is my first step to truly leaving Facebook. My new account is infinitely different from the one I had for a decade and a half. The algorithm is in free fall with no data yet to feed on and it’s not a pretty sight. I’m getting a flood of posts that tell me how to roast cauliflower to where I can find a good auto mechanic in Arkansas. My option for removing them is “snooze for thirty days.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The “story” invitation is prominently displayed and it’s repulsively easy to wander into the realm of video clips by mistake. When I investigated my settings, there were huge numbers that I turned off. “Push?” What the hell is that? I hope I never find out. What I do know is that before I denied Facebook that power, my gmail account and my SMS were flooded with notifications. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The beast is changing and feeding it may well be something I decide I’m not going to do anymore. Right now I’m enjoying the sight of it floundering, unsure of what to do with “Mulrooney Brown.” Bite me, Facebook.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-80492205038042352622023-04-05T07:11:00.004-07:002023-04-05T07:13:56.854-07:00Move On. Nothing to See Here<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lunch with my son yesterday was shattered when he said,”In Mexico they have newspapers that show all the blood. What would happen if we did that here? Look, this is what an AK-47 does to a six-year-old?” </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-aca1e6e4-7fff-6288-71d3-8bd7a1a72cd7"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kids at his school were out at recess when they saw “a suspicious-looking man.” They reported him to a teacher and he turned out to be a parent who had come to pick up his kindergartner. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those kids were at recess. They should have been playing. Instead they’re monitoring their school grounds for potential danger. And we think it’s covid that’s affecting their mental health. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If people formed human shields around schools every day at every school, would that only accentuate the children’s fear? "Why are those people here every day? Is someone coming to hurt us?" </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the Parkland students didn’t sway politicians from the gun lobby, what will? Maybe the pictures of bodies torn to bits? What paper or television station would have the courage to show that? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that’s what stopped the war in Vietnam--dead bodies shown on prime-time TV every night. Coverage of the civil rights struggle brought hate and courage into living rooms everywhere. Now we get our news from social media and watered down newspaper coverage. We don’t even have to change the channel. Click the image of a weeping face and move on.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are a country who has decided murdered children are an acceptable fact of our national landscape. Some of us believe that Sandy Hook was a hoax and some of us have learned not to think about it at all. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is what democracy looks like.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-23247407512871674402023-04-03T08:10:00.004-07:002023-04-03T09:19:11.659-07:00Let Them Eat Cake<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back in the ‘70s, one of the Andrews who wrote for New York magazine (Tobias? Solomon?) wrote a piece advising people of a certain income level that it would be better for them to shove a case of canned tuna under their bed than to put money in a savings account. Now the cost of that case of tuna is beyond the means of quite a few and a savings account is as useful as a piggy bank.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-821cd5cd-7fff-13d6-bddd-ebcc5a982d1c"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When our current century was still young and not yet covered in battle scars, I bought a case of Mama noodles to put under my bed. I think I could still afford that investment but I know my blood pressure would rebel. The flood of palm oil and all the delicious additives that make Mama the world’s easiest comfort food also make it one of the least healthy staples. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a person who is indifferent to grocery shopping, I still spend far too much of my monthly Social Security check on food, a fact that’s belied by the contents of my refrigerator. I blame this on my homestead upbringing and the food that nourished me when I was a child. All of the economical measures that determined what went on my plate every day--50 pounds of potatoes in a burlap bag, cases of canned green beans, corn, and peas, Crisco in cans so large that they often served as seating for guests at the supper table, enough sugar and flour to last through the winter--kill my appetite with the mere memory of them. They turned me into a person who only stocks up on condiments and a bag of rice to accompany whatever I decide to eat that day. Even if I could afford the financial outlay required by a case of tuna fish, the obligatory nature of it lurking under my bed would deter me from eating it--which I suppose is the point. Survival rations rarely inspire a bout of binge eating.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there’s the matter of canned tuna fish itself in this era. Cleverly, manufacturers have abolished the need for a can opener, giving most canned tuna a top that resembles what's found on canned cat food. The resemblance doesn’t end there. Is it a health measure or an economic one that has packed that tuna in water instead of olive oil? No matter which, the result is the same--a dismal lack of flavor that makes a can of Fancy Feast seem almost succulent. That case of tuna has become the nightmare that used to prey upon single women, the one in which they were old, alone, and living on cat food.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Occasionally I’m given a magazine from the days of my childhood and as I study the advertisements, my personal nightmare reawakens. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember casseroles? Remember when a can of Campbell’s soup was the only flavoring agent and garlic powder was an exotic ingredient? If your memory flags, go to an old school NYC outer borough diner where salt, pepper, and a dash or two of Tabasco sauce are the only condiments in the kitchen or on the table. No wonder cocktail hour was a staple in many middle class homes in mid-Century America. To face the dinner table, fortification was essential.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The pendulum made its customary swing and suddenly Julia Child replaced Peg Bracken. The housewives who, in Ms. Bracken’s words, “would rather wrap their hands around a dry martini than a wet flounder” began to labor over recipes that had them tottering by the end of the day, perhaps because of frequent sips of the wine that went into those complicated and exhausting meals. No wonder American women were always on a diet. They were simply too tired to pick up a fork.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God knows what's going on in this country’s kitchens now. What I find telling is that Gourmet and Bon Appetit have disappeared from magazine displays--and so have Woman’s Day and Family Circle. When I make my annual purchase of Real Simple, I’m always dazzled by the preponderance of recipes for pasta and the lack of ones for desserts. There’s a clue, I suppose. Unfortunately the food photography is always more tempting than the recipes; although I may tear out a page for future inspiration, it always ends up in the recycling bag.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead I spend a generous portion of my food budget on condiments. A case of fish sauce under the bed? Now we’re talking…</span></p><div><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-7783142561588610242023-04-02T09:02:00.006-07:002023-04-02T17:17:59.019-07:00Goodbye, Momo<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the last trace of Momo disappears, my thoughts have the same tinge of sadness as the weather. I’ve finally reached the point where I can walk past the corner it filled for ten years and am able to look at the shop that replaced it without feeling mournful. Today on the second day of its final sale, I think of going down to say goodbye but I’m not sure I have the strength to do that. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-595de53b-7fff-ad49-cb57-fb4bd585c391"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Momo first opened, its windows bright and colorful with the sort of clothes that had never before been sold in the CID, I felt a bit outraged. When I first walked in and found it carried $200 jeans, I was horrified. Where did this shop think it was, anyway? But as I continued my exploration, I understood; Momo was like a neighborhood candy store that offered Faberge eggs filled with the best Swiss chocolates--and lollipops too. All the things it held were carefully and democratically chosen to make every shopper at every economic level leave with a purchase that made them happy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was a revolutionary approach to retail, made even more iconoclastic by the welcome it extended to anyone who walked in. Lei Ann Shiramizu and the people who worked for her quickly made Momo an unofficial neighborhood community center. Whether someone popped in to buy a greeting card or just to say hi, there was always a spot of chat. Tourists were lured in by the enticing windows and left with recommendations for neighborhood restaurants. Momo's customers were often introduced to people they’d passed on the street for ages without ever saying hello, let alone knowing their names. Lei Ann was not only a “connector,” she was the world’s best hostess who made every day at Momo feel like a cocktail party, no alcohol necessary. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I lived around on the same block as Momo for years and when I needed a small present, the perfect snarky card, a bar of bourbon-vanilla soap, or a bit of cheerful conversation, that was where I went. “Retail therapy” has become as big a lie as “customer service” but at Momo I always found both--and so much more. I found a friend. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well actually I found two. Years after it opened I walked in and behind the counter was a woman as prickly as she was beautiful. We clashed until we discovered we read the same kind of books. Now in spite of the cavernous age gap that yawns between us, I love Angela with all my wizened heart. She is a gift from Momo, in the same way that Lei Ann is its greatest treasure.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a grey and gloomy day and all I want to do is go to Momo. I want to be in the place where everything it contains goes beyond “sparking joy,” it lights a goddamned bonfire of delight. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not only did I always find the perfect present when occasions warranted it, Lei Ann publicized my book readings on the blackboard that was at eye level just behind the counter. She sold my last book and gave it precious window space. She--and Angela too--trimmed ragged portions of my self-inflicted haircuts when I rushed in for approval. She was there when my mother died, when a sister and I were bitterly estranged, when the man I loved lost his battle against cancer on another continent, and when my apartment was sold, forcing my departure from the neighborhood.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Momo was Lei Ann’s art installation and she made it a destination point for people all over this city. When I think of everyone it embraced and welcomed, and of everyone who now passes its corner without ever knowing it had once been there, I feel tears at the back of my nose and the beginning of a lump at the back of my throat. At the same time, I feel deep gratitude for all those years when Momo was in place. Thank you, Lei Ann. Goodbye, Momo.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-70754204217513226112023-04-01T09:24:00.002-07:002023-04-01T09:26:04.537-07:00 The Slow Traveler--That's Me. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD2uW0g0gq6QNcXbuEXF-pjXdJS9BBfyoiYOpjVq1-FewWd1ZnvfNZBWBPgtNqMW56zfwsnSP8Wt9uzDNisoPLoo7awieZBFKPoAG9fSXsupRFCUPSTY-sNCC3EX8F7vkGEKrEmXGm2-0fqbd0bWnLeu2QF8mHSExxqoET145QLudTEROlEUMlViBJVQ/s228/IMG-7137.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="228" data-original-width="228" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD2uW0g0gq6QNcXbuEXF-pjXdJS9BBfyoiYOpjVq1-FewWd1ZnvfNZBWBPgtNqMW56zfwsnSP8Wt9uzDNisoPLoo7awieZBFKPoAG9fSXsupRFCUPSTY-sNCC3EX8F7vkGEKrEmXGm2-0fqbd0bWnLeu2QF8mHSExxqoET145QLudTEROlEUMlViBJVQ/s1600/IMG-7137.JPG" width="228" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-1370790708410578992023-04-01T08:11:00.003-07:002023-04-01T08:34:02.305-07:00Veggies? No, Thank You.<p> <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought about Kitchen & Market briefly as I wondered if a prospective visitor puts milk in his coffee. Suddenly I realized that place is a bougie corner store and then I recoiled. I loathe the word “bougie” as much as I do “veggie,” which is one I’ve never uttered. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-209a9031-7fff-687e-dae6-d781b46f6055"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think it’s the “ie” ending that makes my brain flinch. It makes those words feel like adult baby talk, like cray-cray and jelly. Jelly doesn’t even make sense since it has the same number of syllables as jealous. That has to be a text abbreviation like Imma and gonna. A Hong Kong friend has even shortened don’t to dun.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can understand the text-spawned words. Phone keyboards are a pain in the neck to use and the fewer characters involved, the better. Blessedly that new language doesn’t seep into spoken words. But veggie has been around for half a century, spoken by people who certainly have the capacity to utter that extra syllable in vegetable. And bougie is just plain idiotic--bring back the old mispronunciation, bushwa, if the original French is too affected to survive in this century. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hoi polloi is another annoying term because nobody knows what it means. It’s the rabble, for god’s sake, not the moneyed class. Namesake annoys me too, since it originally referred to a person named after another, not a person whose name was given to someone younger.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We live in the era of Humpty Dumpty. “When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Slang used to revitalize the language, not infantilize it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dr. Oz was pilloried for referring to a selection of raw, bite-sized vegetables as </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">crudités, instead of a veggie plate. It may be the only thing about that fraud that I can understand--if I had to choose between the two names, I’d call it crudités too. But I wouldn’t choose. I’d learned to call it vegetables many years ago.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The one time I ordered crudités</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from a menu, it was in Fairbanks,Alaska, back in the day when quiche hadn’t yet become a cliché. The waitress, a sweet woman from the Kenai Peninsula, repeated my order as crudite with a long i in its last syllable. After that I just ordered a plate of raw vegetables and we remained friends. But there was no way in hell that I’d order veggies. I’d rather have crudite, even though the mispronunciation makes it sound like something that could kill Superman.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What all this means is I’m growing old. Nobody says “it used to be” or “back in the day” unless they’re doddering. No matter that I hated “veggie” when I was a mere slip of a girl at thirty. Some people are born old while others are Noam Chomsky. Prescriptive? Descriptive? I’ll take a helping of both, but for god’s sake, don’t offer me baby talk.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-5556543980028535082023-03-20T07:30:00.003-07:002023-03-25T17:16:02.520-07:00Wishing for a DMZ<p> <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I spent six months in Tucson, I became friends with a couple of dogs who obviously weren’t meant to be friendly. They were a pair of boxers with menacing barks but after a couple of weeks they stopped barking at me. They lived within a fenced yard with a sign that told passersby to beware of them and their personal style indicated that this was a fine idea. However they seemed to like being talked to and after a brief initiation period, they began to come as close to me as they could get, leaning against the substantial chain links of the fence. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-26b31e9c-7fff-da24-1163-c4cfd0294bf8"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never touched them because of a chat I had one day with their owner. “I don’t want them to be friendly,” he told me, but he told me their names, Chacha and Chipilone. With this crucial piece of information, my brief encounters with the dogs became more intimate and they seemed to like the increased recognition.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also picked up a bit of Spanish vocabulary that has no single word equivalent in English. The youngest dog was named Chipilone because he was like a child who demanded every scrap of his mother’s attention for himself--and sure enough, the youngest of the boxers jammed between the older dog and me as thoroughly as the fence would allow. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I now live in a household with two chipilones.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I brought Mr. Fritz home to be a companion for Mulrooney. I’d been told that this tiny little cat was deferential to other felines and at first that seemed to be true. But as soon as he gained enough confidence to venture out from under the bed, he gradually began to take over, inserting himself between Mulrooney and me, Mulrooney and the food bowls, Mulrooney and the cat treats. He observed where Mulrooney liked to sleep at night and did his best to take that over too.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In spite of there being two of almost every cat essential in this very small apartment, Mr, Fritz wants it all. Annoyingly, Mulrooney has spent the last three weeks in a state of abdication, with all of his hostilities directed toward me. Any attention paid to Mr. Fritz, even the uttering of his name, depletes the supply of affection that Mulrooney knows is his. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mr. Fritz seems more than willing to confirm this theory. He took over the fleece jacket that’s been Mulrooney’s security blanket for the past couple of years. He’s done his level best to monopolize the bed once I’m in it. He likes nothing better than to gobble his portion of Fancy Feast and then turn toward Mulrooney’s. The one thing he hasn’t assumed possession of is Mulrooney’s little cat cave and that’s been the saving grace of this situation, if there can be any at all.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night Mulrooney asserted his right to the bed and Mr. Fritz disputed this for a couple of fun-filled hours. It’s like living with the Jets and the Sharks in feline form and it’s eroding my nervous fiber.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been told to separate them. Put Mr. Fritz in the bathroom and close the door. This would work wonderfully well if I had more than one bathroom or if Mr. Fritz hadn’t rejected that plan from his first minutes in this apartment. Instead he and Mulrooney have chosen their own spaces, one under the bed, one in his cat cave. There are hours in the day when anybody walking into this place would swear that no cats lived here. There are hours when I wish that were true.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The part that bothers me most about this is the look in Mulrooney’s eyes. He’s a very expressive cat with an eloquent scowl when life doesn’t go in the way he wants it to. He’s not scowling now. He has the feline version of the thousand-mile stare, something I’ve never seen before, and I have an impressive number of scratches on both forearms.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since the afternoon of February 28th, I’ve been hyperventilating, my life consumed by nonstop turf wars. For the first time ever I’ve considered asking my doctor for Xanax and when a friend bought me a couple of cocktails the other day, a life of heavy drinking began to seem like a fine idea indeed.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The truth is there’s a battle for dominance going on here and it’s not pretty. I have the flesh wounds to prove it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They’ll work it out, I’ve been told--but will I survive the process?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slowly I’m beginning to believe this place just isn’t big enough for all of us. </span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-13146028729464662312023-02-18T09:02:00.004-08:002023-02-19T18:05:40.666-08:00Getting Over It<p> <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother once told me her 70s were her favorite decade as she grew older and I never expected mine to be anything other than an extension of what I felt was late middle age. Then covid came along and slapped me upside the head, giving me a foretaste of how it would be to grow very, very old. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-0f0f26cd-7fff-2790-a557-5f5d36a2bb57"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was luckier than many. I didn’t lose any of my senses except for my sense of adventure. For thirteen days all I wanted to do was sleep or sit. A trip down the hall to the garbage chute felt like climbing Mount Everest, an exercise in brute physical endurance. Worst of all, for almost two weeks I “lost my invaluable curiosity.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This phrase comes from a sentence in Tove Jansson’s Fair Play. A man who is 92 tells a woman who has just turned seventy, “Do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent--lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I first read this around the same time of year that I’m remembering it now,</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 13.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">back in 2013, and I recognized its truth immediately</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Curiosity and interest have been the underpinning of my life from the time I was very small right up until I took to my bed and my armchair last year. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had never before been so thoroughly immobile for such a long time. Even when the fateful T-line refused to show up on my test strip, it took much longer for my physical energy to come back. When it did, it returned in inches. My body had learned the principle of inertia and it was reluctant to launch itself into motion again.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There seems to be a link between physical and mental energy because when my body wanted to remain still, my mind followed that example. “Why bother?” was its response to any idea that occurred to me. All through a glorious summer, “between the motion and the act fell the shadow,” and the shadow was cast by fear.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Except for a fear of swimming and another of wild monkeys, there are few things that have frightened me enough to keep me from doing them. For most of my life if I ever felt apprehensive, that feeling vanished when I confronted it. However the post-covid me became almost paralyzed when compared to my pre-covid self. Inactivity, I thought, might keep me from ever getting the virus again. Instead it steeped me in I hated most about covid: indifference, lack of interest, and torpor.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m three months away from my covid anniversary. I still have to force myself to take a walk and when I do, it’s half the length of the ones I took before the end of May in 2022. My mind reflects that abbreviated activity, with writing that barely extends to the length of a decent blog post. I still wear a mask in an unmasked world and even if I could afford a flight to places I yearn to see, I’d have to do a spot of self-hypnosis to make myself sit on a plane for fifteen hours. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Only recently, as I reread random pieces of writing that I’d done since the beginning of 2020, have I realized that I, as well as the world around me, am recovering from years of trauma that extend beyond the advent of covid. My life has been dominated by uneasiness since the election of Trump. In the beginning of 2017, I was in Shenzhen reading about the ban against Muslim travelers entering the U.S. I read reports of our President’s words in the South China Morning Post and cringed in a mixture of embarrassment and revulsion that would last for four years.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The George Floyd Uprising </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 13.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">deepened the dystopian world around all of us,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with the police and National Guard attacking protesters with tear gas, flash-bangs, and the LRAD “sound cannons” that induce pain and nausea. By then I was so accustomed to the lock-down form of house arrest that I didn't join the marchers and will always regret that. The storming of the Capitol Building was a horror beyond all imagining. Then came the vaccines that were almost impossible to get--I only received mine because a grandchild drove me to a small town that was hours away. The surreal quality of life has left its scars and because I’ve always been an emotional lightning rod, mine go deep and refuse to go away.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is prudent? What is madness? How to embrace being alive in the way I always have? Maybe by jettisoning my mask and making myself walk with a sense of adventure again. Maybe by trusting the doses of vaccine that have been pumped into me and kept me from hospitalization a year ago. Maybe by choosing life and once again reclaiming my “invaluable curiosity.” </span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-27249798470896439162023-02-12T08:26:00.005-08:002023-02-12T19:00:48.737-08:00Me Too<p> <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dance and music are waiting on a day that begins with fog but became light before 7:30--only several weeks ago it was still dark when my alarm went off. It's a milky light that woke me this morning and almost makes me grateful for the illuminated crane. So much for red skies at night, although perhaps pink doesn’t count. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-2600376e-7fff-3a82-c60d-4d46353aa36b"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last evening brought a pink so vibrant it should qualify, with a pale pink that colored the underbellies of clouds. I snapped and snapped but none of the colors came true to what I saw. Still I had to keep trying to catch them so I could show the radiance and beauty of what I saw, online.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Devices prove that photography is an art that requires precise instruments and painstaking technique. Having an eye for it is only the beginning. The rest is work. But we live in an age when we all are artists, if we choose. And choose we do, over and over again, swamping the internet with our exercises in creativity--paintings, photographs, pieces of writing. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This should be a fine thing, and just might be in theory. The screen and keyboard have been transformed into tiny computers that accompany us wherever we go with larger ones dominating our time when we’re at home. We all have the same instruments that lets us make what we think of as art and we all exhibit it on our own private galleries through social media. The process is effortless and there’s the problem. The old cliche, “This could have been done by my four-year-old” is true now. Most of the pieces seen online are instinctive and reflexive--think it, see it, brush it and there it is--instant art.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because this is what we see every time we go online, we become used to a standard of work that relies solely on a quick inspiration. Swamped with unedited writing, hastily snapped shots, smeared daubs of color, we’ve created a kind of artistic democracy where everything is “liked.” It’s the equivalent of a doting parent saying “Good job.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately we’re losing the ability to recognize art that’s been accomplished with craftsmanship and care. Any old sentence will do, just slap it out and carry on. Any image captured by a convenient camera is good enough--it’s pretty, isn’t it? And if Rothko could become renowned for painting squares of color, why can't we?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Art was never fostered by democratic principles. It’s grounded upon education of both the artist and the audience--not with MFAs but through the knowledge that comes from being surrounded by work that's burnished and thoughtful. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been reading Geoff Dyer’s latest book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, a collection of his pandemic writing. Like many books that have been published lately, this is a kind of journal, and like many books written by Geoff Dyer, it seems to meander while always making provocative observations and solid points. What separates this from other pandemic-spawned volumes is the depth of Dyer’s well-furnished mind and the disciplined theme that runs through his essays. These pieces aren’t blog posts, a matter of whatever was on his mind that he tossed out while having his morning coffee. Although he encompasses subjects as disparate as Nietzche and Burning Man, he focuses his thoughts on a single topic, one he examines with the brilliance and rapid turns of thought that come from a kaleidoscopic intellect. His writing is based on a lifetime of reading and learning, not from an hour of putting unconsidered sentences on a page. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The extension of “Anyone’s an artist” leads to “No one is an artist.” Doing things for pleasure without effort isn’t art. It’s therapy.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-45911980963084877592023-02-10T08:51:00.010-08:002023-02-10T09:12:18.034-08:00Free? Gee, No Thanks--I'll Pass.<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 6pt 0pt 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 6pt 0pt 0pt;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was given an electric grill on a Buy Nothing site and had a few misgivings even while I was carrying it home. It was too big to fit in my canvas bag and it was rather heavy. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-0a53477d-7fff-00c6-ea9a-a7372b0b6bab"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It had seemed as though it was a good idea when I’d seen its photograph online. Even in my old apartment, using the stove in summer had guaranteed a poor night’s sleep. In this one with its windows trapping the rays of the sun right up until it disappears, roasting and broiling would probably cause heat prostration. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I felt a bit of excitement when I thought of making grilled chicken, Thai style, and when I went to buy groceries the idea of a hamburger refused to go away. I found brioche rolls, some Tillamook cheddar, and then I approached the meat counter.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since I buy my food at Trader Joe’s, I haven’t glanced at a butcher’s department in over a year. I had no idea that this was where dreams go to die. This particular one was within PCC, a grocery store not noted for its low prices, but as I looked, my sticker shock was almost comic. Why this spot wasn’t under armed guard was beyond my comprehension--even the small packs of ground beef hovered around ten dollars while the steaks and roasts might as well have been covered in platinum.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I quickly assessed the cost of my prospective hamburger as coming in at $25.99, which made the $17.00 hamburgers in my neighborhood seem downright cheap, especially since they were a matter of immediate gratification with no clean-up afterward. Staggering a bit under this moment of reality therapy, I put the brioche rolls back on the shelf and came home with bread and cheese instead. A grilled cheese sandwich would soothe my rumpled ambitions and I made one in my cast iron skillet, for comparison purposes. Later I planned to do the same thing on the electric grill.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This project was a challenge from the minute I walked into my kitchen with an appliance that, unopened, was almost as big as the top of my apartment-sized range. The only visible small feature was the length of its electrical cord which extended as far as my electric kettle--about 12 inches. Since I have only one outlet in my miniscule kitchen and that is positioned squarely above the sink, even my morning coffee required a spot of logistical planning before I could heat the water. Coincidentally both the kettle and the grill are made by Hamilton Beach, a manufacturer venerable enough to be aware of this design flaw. However judging by the hundreds of reviews that complain about it, they simply don’t give a jolly damn.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The only way I could plug my new acquisition into a power source was by putting it on a large cutting board and positioning it over the sink. This was a solution that gave me a few qualms but it seemed stable and secure, so I plugged in the grill. A light went on in a cheery manner but I was surprised that there was no power switch. I put my hand above the grill and sure enough, it was getting warm.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a nice little knob to control the temperature that had the same range as my oven, and a light that was still dark said it was “preheat.” I pushed at it optimistically but it wasn’t a button. Not until after I made my way through a thicket of product reviews did I discover that “preheat” only went on after the grill reached its desired temperature. Clearly whoever designed this had a shaky command of the English language.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I turned the grill up to 450 and plopped in my sandwich, feeling puzzled that the lid refused to shut completely. When I checked it five minutes later, one side was nicely toasted while the other was lukewarm. I flipped it over with a tinge of annoyance and left it to its own devices. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suddenly a cloud began to hover in the kitchen and I rushed over to investigate. Nothing was in flame. What had drawn my attention seemed to be steam, issuing from the incompletely closed lid. I opened it and saw a little river of melted cheese coming from a sandwich that resembled a pancake. One side was a trifle singed while the other was still slightly pallid. The cheese on the grill rapidly congealed and was easy to remove but other than that I could see no advantage to using this behemoth to make one of my primary comfort foods. My cast iron skillet definitely did this better.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I unplugged the grill and left it to cool, a matter that took more time than I thought was necessary. But then the only lightweight part of this thing was the little drip tray that rested under the cooking element, a miniscule pan made from a flimsy plastic.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was all however clean in a matter of seconds, which may be its only advantage that I could see. If I lowered the lid, anything I grilled would be flattened. If I left it open, the grill would take longer to heat and to cook, while releasing heat that would probably be almost as warm as my oven. Plus there was the sad truth that if the lid was open, this appliance would be much larger than the cutting board I had placed it upon.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ate my squished sandwich that would have tasted a whole lot better if it had been acquainted with olive oil and read reviews to get some information about the giant in my kitchen. Apparently I’d been wise not to use oil; there were reports of kitchen fires that had been ignited while grilling chicken. The weight of the lid not only flattened--it extracted all the juices from any piece of meat that rested beneath it--and the tiny drip pan cracked under pressure. People who used their grill to fry bacon often found grease all over their kitchen counter. Suddenly I understood why the woman who gave this to me said she had rarely used it.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought of leaving this in the free basket where people in my apartment pick up unwanted items but the fire hazard component worried me. This clearly wasn’t an item that could be plugged in and ignored, what with the flaming chicken and potential for grease fires. What posed as a household convenience was actually a weapon of mass destruction that probably shouldn’t be in the hands of old and forgetful people. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I decided I’ll keep the damned thing but I’ll save it for the height of summer’s heat. By that time I’ll have at least one table on my terrace where I’ll be able to put this, tethered with a long extension cord. In the open air, any odors that escape from the insufficiently closed lid will dissipate quickly and the heat will just float off into the blazing sunlight. As for potential fires, I’ll just have to keep a box of baking soda close at hand and be certain that I stay nearby myself. And if what issues from it is as unpalatable as my grilled cheese sandwich, this monster will go down the garbage chute, in a bag that will keep any curious sightseer from picking it up and starting a conflagration in our building.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Free is always good,” a Malaysian woman told me once and even at the time I silently disagreed. Now after three unsuccessful Buy Nothing attempts, I’m ready to give up. Free is turning out to be a massive pain in the neck.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-51206434047059954922023-02-04T09:04:00.004-08:002023-02-04T09:04:48.777-08:00Not Much. How About You?<p> <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Few questions annoy me more than “What have you been up to lately?” and “Have any plans for the day?” Because I’m a woman who embraces spontaneity, any plans I make are whatever appeals most at the moment and can change in the middle of a single step. As for what I’ve been up to, I’d love for my answer to be “No good,” but the truth is much less interesting and I hate to be a bore.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-cc275b08-7fff-17f6-9ed3-a28254642e07"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I read, I write, I walk in a dying portion of the city. Without travel, most of my life is interior and I wonder if that’s the way it will be forever. I’ve become that person I loathe, a woman without stories, which is probably why queries about what I’ve been doing or what I will do flick me on the raw. And yet everyone seems to feel this is an appropriate conversation opener, from bank tellers to baristas to members of my own family.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was a bookseller, the question I was asked most frequently was “What have you been reading lately?” It was one that turned me mute, as my brain shuffled through all the books I’d made my way through in the past week or so. They blurred into the books I’d handled, the ones I’d recommended to customers, the ones I’d chosen for the store’s newsletter and made me want to reply, “The National Inquirer.” Eventually I’d choose one title from the literary mush that clogged my mind and stammer out a brief sentence or two about it. But that was a problem of abundance. Now whatever I have to serve up is embarrassingly meager and often repetitive. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a pre-covid custom that deserves to die and hangs on only because “How are you?” or “How have you been?” dabble in matters that nobody wants to discuss. Health may become the latest conversational taboo, replacing sex, religion, and politics. It might lead to a mention of death and there’s a topic nobody wants to touch upon. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve never been adept at small talk, which might be the reason why for years I cut my own hair. The stream of pleasant, inconsequential conversation that’s essential at parties and dinner tables is a skill I’ve never acquired. Since there have been few meals and other gatherings with strangers in the past three years, I’ve lost any pretense I might have had of “working a room.” But the mental paralysis I faced in those past situations has infiltrated daily life in this persistent and annoying form of interrogation. I’d gladly return to “Read any good books lately?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Better yet, why not ask “What’s been on your mind lately?” Perhaps not posed by those amiable bank tellers but it wouldn’t go amiss when used in conversation with family and friends. Replies could range from “Why is it so difficult to find a good lipstick without paying a fortune?” to “What in the hell can be done about the opioid use on our streets?” Who knows? When we talk about what we think, this may just lead to what we’ve done. Want to try it?</span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-66026117723277470402023-02-03T08:58:00.014-08:002023-02-03T09:14:01.036-08:00Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Seattle?<p><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Unearthing a time capsule isn’t always delightful. When I was given two fashion </i></span><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">tabloids that had been supplements to the Seattle Weekly, one from fall of 1998 and </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">one from spring of 1999, I was eager to pore over them. Two women whom I knew, one of </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">whom has become a close friend, had feature pieces in both and I’m always curious </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">about other people’s writing. This curiosity held more than my average avidity. I </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">didn’t meet the writer who’s now my friend until much later, after she had become one </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">of Seattle’s fashion doyennes, and I was eager to discover another one of her facets. </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I quickly found that her writing sparkled with the same panache that she brings to </i><i style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">everything she does, while the other writer labored under heavy metaphors, linking </i><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nordstrom’s newly-opened flagship store to Moby-Dick.</span><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-small;"> </span></i></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-16d655be-7fff-9c1a-41f3-c4efbba6b86a"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">After reading these pieces, I leafed through the remaining pages and began to feel the same heaviness that hits me when I listen to a eulogy. These supplements were printed during the time that I bounced between Seattle and Bangkok. When I had returned in 1998 for a year, one of my sons told me that if he dropped me blindfolded into many parts of downtow</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: courier; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">n, when I was finally allowed to see, I wouldn’t know where I was. That was true. In the time I’d been gone, downtown Seattle had woken up.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">Although in 1998, Bellevue Square and University Village shopping malls still dominated fashion advertising, the editorial pages showed Prada and Versace from Barney’s New York, a store called Fast Forward, Nordstrom, and Mario’s. Only the last two are still alive. But what struck me hardest were the ads for small shops that could be found on downtown streets: Betty David who sold “hand-painted lamb shearling coats” on South Main Street, Moda Xpress and Dansko in Belltown, FABU in Sodo, Design Products Clothing, “Established in 1973 by Vicki Tsuchida, a woman who wanted you to look good,” in Pioneer Square, Carroll’s Fine Jewelry, “Seattle’s Oldest Jeweler,” was on 1427 Fourth Avenue, where it would die ten years later and L/T /Denny, ‘Diamond Importers and Fine Jewelers” were open “by appointment only” in the Florentine Building on Occidental Avenue. Nordstrom’s takeover of Frederick & Nelson’s former dominance of Fifth Avenue rated a feature article but of the downtown heavy-hitters, only Westlake Center placed an ad. They didn’t have to. Although both I. Magnin’s and Frederick & Nelson had disappeared, Nordstrom and the Bon Marche were legendary magnets that regularly drew shoppers downtown, and Pacific Place, called Catalog Corners by two contemptuous Pine Street store owners, was ready to open, bringing Barney’s and Tiffany’s close to Nordstrom. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">By 1998, Ardour and Ped competed on First Avenue, selling shoes and accessories in what the Weekly called SOMA (“the retail flurry south of the Pike Place Market.” David Lawrence sold designer clothes on Fourth Avenue, closing in 2010 for a move to Bellevue. San Marco sold Shoes, Clothing & Accessories” on 6th Avenue, “across from Pacific Place,” while StellaBeam offered style on Stewart Street near the market. Pacific Place was doing its best to lure mall shoppers from Bellevue with Barney’s, Max Mara, Bebe, and Helly Hanson, with Sephora down the street. But although its success drew other national retailers--and a sprinkling of international ones too--small shops began to lose their customers.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">Who cared? Downtown glittered with names like Gucci at Fifth and Union and more accessible ones like Ann Taylor and The Gap. Local designer Luly Yang and classic boutique Nina McLemore nestled in the shadow of the Olympic Hotel and there were rumors that a Ritz-Carlton was eyeing a location next to the subterranean shopping of Rainier Square. A children’s shop from the Netherlands called Oililly might soon appear in Pacific Place, going up against Flora and Henri on First Avenue where a local designer made French-inspired clothing for the very young. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">Although it was always under attack from the malls that drew shoppers far from the downtown core, the heart of Seattle was a place of possibility at the end of the 20th Century and into the 21st. Even with the strong hit it took during the financial debacle of 2008, it still had the feel of a real city right up until the dawn of 2020. Office workers, tourists, and local shoppers made the streets vibrant and bustling before Covid shut the city down in March of that year. Now three years later, that scene is almost unimaginable. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">Will Seattle’s downtown ever come back to what it was? Considering that far-flung Seattle clings stubbornly to its neighborhoods, I don’t think it will. It was never really a place that the city’s residents thought was essential. They didn’t want New York. They wanted coziness and they found it in shops and restaurants near their homes, turning neighborhoods into little villages. It was the tech business that grew and nourished Seattle’s core and when the city decided to tax it heavily, those businesses created their own company town in South Lake Union. Even before Covid, online shopping and restaurants that catered to people whose salaries soared far above Seattle’s average were draining the life from what used to be the central business district. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">These two fashion supplements provide testimony to that prediction. Almost every downtown store mentioned in their pages have gone, some of them having sunk without even an online trace. Fast Forward? StellaBeam? Gone, baby, gone while the stores that once filled Westlake Center and Pacific Place are distant memories in what amounts to a retail ghost town. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">I wish I’d never stepped back into what used to be. The memories of what was in place thirty years ago are still too close for me to examine them with the perspective of a social historian. What threatens to replace that lush brightness and promise of the past is a tourist mecca, linking the Pike Place Market, the waterfront, and the cruise ship terminal, with everything else existing as a sideshow. When I look at the sadness I feel about this new city, I realize I’m getting old.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: courier;">“It is Margaret you mourn for.” Damn straight, Gerard Manley Hopkins.</span></span></p><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-60064119342363656382023-01-29T12:34:00.003-08:002023-01-29T12:34:52.515-08:00Little Boys in the Rain<p> <img height="499" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Hk2Besjh0RgsuDzHO9fw6uvBKjAkQi8PDLWFSUAGCb_IB9pdUtvAl_7ZoONSQ3WgfaPzlob_3eVAmeBzGsnYsyfotvjZhb52HIfEvNE0kISIhBAi83JPmFxrX6H0XsVtDVcWuyaJ_U4grE_FxoWmRZTKHIHVnpg-oOPV7tA1Pn__RgnQnmEp4OHU3ty88Q" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;" width="324" /></p><div>I often wish I could edit my first book, streamlining run-on sentences and reworking some of the stories. But I never wish for a different cover. Nana Chen's photograph makes my heart sing even now, fourteen years after I first held this book in my hands. Perfection.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-78531027957559063422019-06-16T07:35:00.002-07:002019-06-16T07:37:51.803-07:00How My Light Is Spent<br />
I grew up with a father whose vision became severely limited several years after he'd come to Alaska and I myself turned out to be nearsighted to the point of embarrassment at an early age. I wore glasses from the time I was six, just so I could see the blackboard in our one-room schoolhouse. Eyesight was always a topic of prime concern in my family and when I first found Milton's sonnet that began, "When I consider how my light was spent," I immediately thought of my father.<br />
<br />
I've only known the sharp clarity with which other people see the world when I've put on a pair of glasses but I've learned that I prefer seeing the world through a myopic veil that conceals imperfections. It was only because of my remaining cataract that I recently had vision tests and it was a good thing that I did. Although I don't have a hole in my retina, I do have macular degeneration in both of my eyes.<br />
<br />
I'm not alone. One estimate claims that 11 million people in the U.S. have some form of this condition, which can only be restrained, not cured. I take a special vitamin twice a day and wear sunglasses on bright days in an effort to keep this at bay. I was originally told that a diet of fish and leafy green vegetables was mandatory but, like almost everything I was told by that doctor, this is faulty information, disproven by recent studies. Even so, I've limited meat so severely that I'm almost a vegetarian, but not fanatically so. When I found that a nearby Thai restaurant served khao kha moo, fatty slices of braised pork leg with rice, I was devouring a plate of it on the following afternoon. "May" and "might" aren't words that are going to curtail my enjoyment; they never have.<br />
<br />
Few people go blind from macular degeneration, although some are reduced to peripheral vision over time. My definition of it is simple and probably flawed: my eyes are wearing out.<br />
<br />
This isn't surprising. I've been a gluttonous reader for the past sixty-six years, racing through a book a day ever since I learned to read at four. And because of severe motion sickness that's plagued me from childhood, I stare out the window of any vehicle I'm in instead of reading or even turning my head to talk to the person sitting beside me. This trained me to observe everything I pass through and makes me damned poor company on any road trip. It also gave me a prevailing hunger for fresh vistas and turned me into a traveler who lives through my eyes.<br />
<br />
But nothing lasts. Although I refuse to acknowledge it in any significant way, I'm growing old. In fact, some people might describe me as an old woman. If that's true, I'm a fortunate old woman whose major failing is a disregard for calendars and a predilection for arriving at an appointment a day ahead of time. (Thank goodness for virtual calendars on phones and tablets, with their annoying reminders.)<br />
<br />
My hips, knees, and feet still work. My brain and heart still function creditably well. My memory occasionally falters when I try to remember an author, a book title, or the name of a movie, but that's what Google's for. We've all outsourced our memories, haven't we?<br />
<br />
My pace is slower than it was twenty years ago and I have wrinkles. Tant pis, as I learned to say in my introductory French class at a Catholic girls' school. I suppose that fading vision is a reasonable deficiency that comes with age.<br />
<br />
But in the time I have left, be it years or decades, I plan to spend my light in the same greedy, pleasurable way that I always have, devouring books and absorbing the world through my retinas, taking pleasure in light, shadow, and color, snapping images that delight me with my phone, loving every second of vision that I'm fortunate enough to have been given.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-69962762140815046302019-06-15T10:26:00.002-07:002019-06-15T10:28:49.512-07:00Misled<br />
We all have our definitions of who we are and mine has always been that I'm healthy. That was a good thing, because for many years I had no health insurance. During that time, I developed high blood pressure, which tarnished my self-image a trifle, but when I reached the age of Medicare, I began to control it with a daily pill.<br />
<br />
But swallowing a drug every morning wasn't what I wanted to do, so when I turned 70, I began to walk more and eat differently. Within a month of that new regimen, I no longer had high blood pressure and my self-image began to restore itself. My waistline was returning and I walked up to eight miles a day. As a septuagenarian, I I felt better than I had in a very long time, with just a couple of simple changes in the way I lived. Getting older was easier than it was cracked up to be, I told myself.<br />
<br />
Then I went to an ophthalmologist to have my second cataract operation. In the barrage of tests, she told me I had a hole in the macular region of my retina, showing me a spot on a photograph that she said was the hole. Telling me she wouldn't remove my cataract until a retina specialist had determined the size of the hole, she left me with her diagnosis and a lot of uncertainty.<br />
<br />
Being a woman of my time, I went home and consulted the internet, going to sites like the Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical, and the American Academy of Opthalmology. As my doctor had told me, if the hole was small it might close on its own. However if it were not, it would need a procedure that would result in me keeping my head face down for anywhere from three days to two weeks. This was a horrifying thought and one that preyed on my mind quite a bit for the two weeks between the diagnosis of the hole and the assessment of its size.<br />
<br />
There was no macular hole. However after the misdiagnosis, my blood pressure had risen by thirteen points. I was certain that the relief of learning that the only surgery I faced was cataract removal would bring it back down to normal levels.<br />
<br />
Two weeks later I went back to my opthalmologist, my faith in her wavering a bit after having her statement of certainty proved wrong. However cataract removal was something Doctors Without Borders do in undeveloped countries under field conditions. Certainly she would be able to handle this without any difficulty; her academic and medical pedigree was high enough that I had no reason to worry and I was in good spirits when I showed up for a few tests.<br />
<br />
The technician returned after taking the test results to my doctor, saying "She wants one more." This involved putting numbing drops in both eyes while I was lying down but after the right eye was done, he said he needed to do it again with an assistant. "I need two hands," he said.<br />
<br />
While he was getting someone to help him, the right side of my lower face began to go numb and I touched it with my fingertips, assessing how much skin had been affected. A few minutes later, the fingers of my right hand began to tingle and I was getting concerned. "Some of the drops may have run down your face but I'll get the doctor," the technician said.<br />
<br />
It took at least ten minutes for him to reappear with the doctor and I got off the table to get my phone, just in case I needed to call 911. Puzzled and beginning to feel alarmed, I was relieved when the doctor<br />
entered the room. When I told her what had happened, she told me my symptoms were that of a stroke, that the drops had nothing to do with what I was feeling, and that this was a neurological issue. She said nothing more as I stared at her, trying to process this information.<br />
<br />
After what seemed like a long period of silence, I said "I'm going home." "Let us know if there's anything we can do to help you," she said and I replied "There's nothing you could do for me."<br />
<br />
I was shaking by the time I reached the elevator and called my primary care physician. She was busy but I was seen by a nurse practitioner who ran me through the physical tests for a stroke, took my blood pressure, and gave me an EEG. My heart was normal, my body showed no stroke symptoms, but my blood pressure was at 110.<br />
<br />
Two weeks later, my blood pressure is at normal levels but during that time, I felt shaken. I still am. I continue to have faith that I'm a healthy woman but I brushed far too close to a belief that I am not, through misinformation given me by a doctor who pronounced these things with certitude.<br />
<br />
That woman is no longer my doctor. My customary skepticism about medical professionals has increased. Always a "difficult patient," I'm now a 21st century female Diogenes, carrying a lamp to raise in search of honesty in a profession that seems to have forgotten the oath of "Do no harm."<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-16192374645622297302019-02-21T09:45:00.002-08:002019-02-21T13:00:45.213-08:00Roots<br />
I never thought I had any. Wherever I lived was always temporary, and I liked it that way. When my husband bought our first house, the sentence that reconciled me to the purchase was made by our realtor, "The average American buys a new house every five years." Ha. Those were the days, back in the mid-70s.<br />
<br />
Within eight years, we moved to the next place and after that my life was a long succession of apartments, with dreams of going farther afield. Eventually I would live in eight different dwelling places in Bangkok and Penang before returning to four different ones in Seattle. In those years I learned how to KonMari my possessions to fit into two suitcases.<br />
<br />
That part is easy. What isn't is leaving the people I care about.<br />
<br />
Now that I'm looking for another place to live, a friend recently asked me "Why not Bangkok?" It's a logical question, since that's been my alternate universe for over twenty years. But she is the reason why, along with some other close friends and my family. I can do it. I know how to do it, but the older I get, the higher the price becomes.<br />
<br />
Time is infinite right up until we reach our sixties. Then we begin to assess and budget how we spend it. When I was a mere slip of a girl at 45, leaving was as easy as getting a passport. Now I know that no matter how much I love my life overseas and how many friends I may make in another part of the world, the ache of not being able to share it with the people I care about most grows stronger every year. When one of my sons came to visit me twice in Thailand, after each visit was over I cried for two days, and when my longest standing Bangkok friend returned to the States after years of being my mainstay in that city, I was unable to go downstairs to wave goodbye as he walked out the front door of our house. Expat living, when you do it on your own, is damned hard, even though it's materially more comfortable than existing in the Old Country.<br />
<br />
Today when I went to Craigslist and examined my three different staple sites, I found several possibilities in this area. Only one was for Seattle and I'm pretty sure it was either a scam or someone else has already grabbed it. But it made me wonder. Are rents coming down in the Puget Sound market? And would I pay the top end of what I can in order to stay here, even though Tucson offers more comfort and Queens is the pinnacle of my desires? When I think of the pleasure of conversations with my friends and the joy of spontaneous visits with my sons, I say yes. I claim roots.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-67726596119500644322019-02-18T08:50:00.002-08:002019-02-18T10:21:06.712-08:00Where Would You Go?<br />
A year ago I saw realtors clustering in the hallways of the building I'd lived in for years and I knew I was in trouble. When my landlord confirmed that yes indeed, the place was up for sale, I began to think of what to pack and what to jettison.<br />
<br />
This wasn't an unfamiliar mental exercise. I'd left that building and returned to it twice over the past ten years but it had always been there for me. If I had a Seattle home, it was the International Apartments, and foolishly I'd thought it would always be there, as it had been for many others over the past hundred and four years. But boom town Seattle, flush with tech money, had other plans.<br />
<br />
The workers in previous high times of this city had been gold prospectors, fishermen, loggers, shipbuilders, and factory workers. This current crop worked with intangibles, the Internet, the Cloud, fostering dreams and satisfying desires on the world's computer screens. They were paid beyond any laborer's wildest dreams and they were filling up the city, paying astronomical rents and keeping the restaurants alive. They were crowding the rest of us out.<br />
<br />
For the past year, I've shared a house with two friends and looked religiously on Craigslist for apartments. Craigslist is a lot like the mail order catalogs of my childhood. With a flick of my fingers, I can look at apartments all over the world, and I have. Mexico, Bangkok, Dublin, Marseilles, and almost every city in this country with a major league baseball team--I've peered at photos and assessed rents in them all.<br />
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A friend says I'm fantasizing but I'm really not. I've moved often enough in the past seventy years to become an expert on relocation, and some of those moves have involved a passport. So far only one was a disaster, a short-lived tenancy in Malaysia that was a financial disaster, a foretaste of hell, and a wake-up call. But Penang taught me to do my research and spend a lot of time in thought before leaping into a new life in another place.<br />
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When this all began, I said I'd give it a year, living in someone else's house, hoping that an opening in a low-income building would come my way, and continuing to scour online ads for possible dwelling places. That year will be up in three more months and I'm facing the reality that I may not have the luxury of living near my family and my friends much longer. My new deadline is this coming autumn.<br />
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Like Amazon, I've found two possibilities: Tucson and Queens.<br />
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Tucson has heat (oh god does it ever) and beautiful light, along with seasonal thunderstorms. Its sky is right up there with Cambodia's and Northeastern Thailand's. There are apartments that are only slightly higher than what I pay for living in this house, and according to food reviews, it has Chinese restaurants that use Sichuan pepper and chili oil. The library system is good, and there are bookstores.<br />
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It also looks quellingly suburban. But there are Ubers.<br />
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Queens. What can I say? It has everything I want and a winter that I don't. For the same price as a very nice apartment in Tucson or a 420-friendly travel trailer in this past of the world, I could share an apartment in South Richmond Hill, a couple of blocks away from sari shops, East Indian groceries, and a diner that knows how to make egg creams and ice cream sodas. It's close to two subway lines and the Atlantic Ocean is an hour away.<br />
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But living with someone else is a crap shoot that's easier played when you're in your twenties. At seventy, not so much. But it's New York.<br />
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So--I have all summer to ponder this and perhaps a reconnaissance trip or two for reality therapy. Meanwhile, I'm haunted by Tucson or Queens, the Lady or the Tiger.<br />
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Where would <i>you </i>go? Which would you choose? (This question is not rhetorical.)<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-79492273822638810962019-02-17T10:04:00.000-08:002019-02-18T10:17:35.345-08:00Jenny Made Her Mind Up...<br />
I have a confession to make. That snowstorm and its aftershocks--my fault, all mine. Back in the earliest days of February, I decided to increase my walking from 2-3 miles to 5. And then it snowed.<br />
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Snow on its own is a lovely thing to walk through, both when it falls and when it's fresh on the ground. Happy to have a chance to wear my fur jacket which I paired in true Pacific Northwest fashion with red rubber boots, I trudged through the transformed streets, taking pictures and smiling at the happy dogs whose morning walks had become a trip to canine Disneyland.<br />
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Even when I stayed inside, my world was different. The white landscape changed the quality of the light. Even with a heavy cloud cover, the days were bright and once when I woke up at 3 am, I was certain it was time to get up. "White-out" they call it in Alaska and in this part of the country it was almost hallucinogenic and definitely surreal.<br />
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The beauty of it almost made up for the truth that it closed Seattle down. Buses were scanty, children stayed home from school, flights were cancelled, library doors were locked. That began to feel oddly familiar. It was like living in Bangkok when political strife took to the streets, or like Fairbanks, Alaska during a siege of heavy ice fog.<br />
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And then the ice took over. The University of Washington swears that a student who died after slipping on campus ice and hitting her head perished from natural causes. I began to salt my porch steps, knowing it was an environmental sin but finding that I couldn't break through the packed and icy snow with a shovel. Walking to buy groceries took forever because the idea of a broken hip made me cautious. The world shrunk and it stayed that way for days.<br />
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There are still patches of dirty snow in my front yard while the back has lost its beauty and is fifty shades of grey-green. The cold prevails but the sidewalks are mostly clear and dry. My cat continues to stare balefully out the window and becomes worried when he sees me put on my boots. He's eight years old and has never seen anything like this before. For the first few days of winter he burrowed under my comforter, only emerging when it was absolutely necessary. There were a few late afternoons when I followed his example, with a book and a cup of tea.<br />
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When I was small, my mother would tease me at times with a song about Jenny, who persistently made her mind up, with disastrous results. I thought of those lyrics often in the past three weeks, when my walks were perfunctory, careful, and much shorter than five miles..<br />
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Sorry, Seattle.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7903790326524464926.post-13188674915964092102018-02-17T12:43:00.000-08:002018-02-17T12:46:25.846-08:00The Price We Can Pay, and the One We Can't<br />
The minute I read about a book that interests me, usually in reviews that focus on works soon to be published, I order it. Right now I have eight forthcoming titles on order, and I've recently read four novels that just arrived on the shelves. No, I'm not wealthy, nor am I starving myself in order to buy books. I have a library card.<br />
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Unfortunately I live in a city of avid readers who know the same secret. When I reserve a book not yet published, I'm often #300 in line. Fortunately our library system has adopted the wonderful idea of first-come, first-serve with Peak Picks, a section of books that can't be reserved or renewed. Recently I looked at the Peak Pick shelf in my branch library; there was a book I had reserved months ago and wouldn't receive until after 338 other people had finished with it. Gleefully I snatched up Tayari Jones' <i>An American Marriage</i> and raced my way through it in a single evening. Today I'll take it back and hope for another surprise.<br />
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This is what the current President wants to weaken, by reducing federal funding for public libraries. He must know that <i>Fire and Fury</i> is currently on the Peak Pick shelves, and has 1400 people on the reserved list, waiting for one of the 452 copies that can be renewed. Or perhaps he's chafed by the number of readers who have checked out the 191 copies of Hillary's <i>What Happened</i>, which appeared on the Peak Pick shelves the same day that it showed up in bookstores. Of course this is a man who regularly rails against the free press and invented the epithet "fake news" for anything that puts him in an unfavorable light. Why would he be in favor of free libraries, those places where people go to read, among other things, newspapers?<br />
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We all provide financial support for our libraries, through taxes which are then reflected in the price of our rent, the cost of our groceries. It's a price that the city I live in has agreed is worth paying and because of that our libraries are open every single day, offering books that many of us otherwise could never afford to read. I am confident that even without federal support, my city would still have libraries. But the question is unavoidable: Can we afford a president who doesn't see the value of an electorate who reads, regardless of its income level?<br />
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I don't think we can.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0