baratin-debordant

On Writing

2012-01-14T11:30:00.003-06:00

An author from Kentucky, Mr. James Still, once told me if I wanted to be a writer I would be better off spending time writing than going to writers' groups and classes. Still was about 83 at the time. Maybe he thought time was too precious to waste. A feeling I have stronger now, more and more as I grow older.

A contemporary writer I have been interested in lately, one I'll probably never meet, is Paulo Cuelho, a Brazilian. His stories fascinate me and his writing inspires me. Cuelho has begun a VLOG (video blogg) on writing--or at least his writing process. In addition to being a great writer, Cuelho is great communicator. He's interested in using all forms of technology to provide people the opportunity to read his books and to share his ideas.

I have not followed Mr. Still's advise very well in my life. Sometimes I write. Most of the time I think about writing, letting work and other responsibilities get in the way. The same with drawing and painting. Someone asked me yesterday if I had a passion for the work that I do. Sadly, I had to say no. I have a competency for the work I do, and most of the time I like what I do. Maybe I even have a gift for it, but no passion. If I quit tomorrow, the work would be done by another who may even be more competent than I am at getting the work done. Maybe someone who is passionate about the work. The pay will be the same for both of us.

Cuelho's vlog reminds me of what my passion means. Mr. Still probably would say I 'd be better of writing instead of viewing a vlog on writing. I'm watching them anyway.

Becoming Bohemian

2011-12-08T09:04:00.005-06:00

From an article in Art in America on Joan Mitchell:
"...and Mitchell grew up rich. Yet as a young woman in New York, she donned worn-out clothes. . . and tried with limited success to keep her wealth a secret from her Abstract Expressionist peers. In spirit at least, she held fast to the romantic ideal of the penniless bohemian."

Faux Bohemian. Complexity in the costuming of the authentic self.
Image and book info.

Doodle Me Smarter

2011-11-05T17:53:00.003-05:00

Meetings can make us feel trapped. Especially meetings that last longer than one hour. One way I've found to make meetings, any meeting, more interesting is to look at the various individuals in the room and place the top rim of my glasses (presuming, of course, that you wear glasses--of any kind*) in the middle of the face. The dimensions of the face become distorted. I've lengthened and shortened the faces of the most powerful person in the room in one glance. I've erased his nose, shrunken his ears, and basically made the very best caricatures without using a pencil. Sometimes the effect makes me giggle which can be embarrassing.

Another time-passing tool I like to use in meetings actually involves the pencil or pen, glasses are optional. I like the pencil because it allows more freedom of form in drawing actual caricatures of the people speaking. After the first 15 minutes, I start with the person who has had the most to say. As long as his mouth or hers is moving, I'm looking at them anyway, and my pencil sketches the main features.

Not that the finished product is in any way a keenly drawn portrait. It's not. But I'm usually able to capture the significant features. Nearly anyone looking on to my notebook can discern the figure in the margin to be the person in the room talking, and talking, and talking. Later, when I review my notes, I have found my drawings to be reminders of who said what, and the details they've shared come pouring back in my memory.

I use the same two tools during lectures. Some of the best lectures are made even more interesting, from a personal level, and the really worst of all lectures are definitely made more tolerable. Unfortunately, it also makes them memorable.

Doodling is one of the best ways to help the brain retain incoming information. it's true--as in proven. If you like to doodle, but you don't like the sneers from those who think you are not paying attention, check out Sunni Brown's TED lecture.

And if you find yourself on the TED webpages unable to stop watching and listening to the "ideas worth sharing" pick up a pencil and doodle away.

*Note: if you don't wear glass, by some weak reading glasses and bring them along to your next meeting. You've got some serious head shrinking to do.

Can't Ask Alice

2011-10-29T18:05:00.004-05:00

Alice sits with my mother at every meal. They live in a nursing home and only see one another at meal times in the dining room. My mother is non-ambulatory, using a wheelchair all day every day. Alice can still walk on her own and lives in a "secured" wing for people who have Alzheimer's and tend to wander if not kept under close guard. Each day Alice's daughter, Dorothy (names changed for confidentiality), visits for lunch and sits with the two elderly women, helping them order their meals, use utensils, and keep up a conversation.

My mother's been in the hospital for a week. The change in environment has caused her to be confused, even more so than the rampant infection that sent her to the hospital. Confusion, anger, and depression occur regularly with dementia. Nurses and family members learn to repeat directions and stories over and over and over before the point finally hits the mark. In my mother's case, her difficulties in hearing increase the number of times and volume one has to tell her even the simplest of things.

"I wonder where Alice and Doris are today," she asked me when I visited at lunchtime on her first day back from the hospital.

My first thought was to fudge the truth a little, tell her Alice had the flu or a cold. Like the old joke about telling the family their cat died, I'd start with "Alice is on the roof."

Knowing I'd have to tell her eventually, I said plainly, "Alice died last night."

Now, my mother, whose memory is not very keen on the best of days, hadn't seen Alice or Doris in a week. During that week, she's been in every state of mind except lucid. I wasn't even sure she really remembered Alice.

"She's where?" My mother asked.

"She died," pause, "last night," I said right up next to her ear, so the other residents dining at the table might not overhear. I wasn't sure the staff told residents when another resident passed away. Seems reasonable that they would tell them, but with HIPPA who knows what's private and what's not.

"He died?" was her response.

Momentarily confused myself, I changed the subject and asked her if she was going to drink her juice. Maybe she didn't remember Alice. Still I thought it was an odd response. The woman to her right was having difficulty with her wheelchair, and I offered to help her. Meanwhile, my mother was trying to fish out the details of the death from my husband who had to shout "Alice died. Not Dorothy's dad. It's Alice. She died." At which point my mother turned to me with a look of horror and said, "Alice died!!"

Now everyone knows, I thought. Like a punch line to the jokes we often tell her, I figured they would all forget within minutes and we'd play this scene over at every meal for weeks until their shorter than short term memory let go of Alice.

I suppose there's a certain grace in having dementia as we age. The people we've met along the pathways of our life's journey step off the path when their time comes, and all we see is the vista before our eyes at that moment. We can't mourn or even miss someone we don't remember. At the same time, dementia brings with it delusions and visions of people who passed away long ago making them ever present before us. Conjured up at will to keep us company.

Alice left her friends on the path and began another journey. She stepped off the path the way we would all likely prefer it--fall asleep, "To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life." Alice slipped off without pain, without an ambulance ride, without hospice help for family, without a chance to say goodbye.

My mother will continue to ask about her, probably remembering the answer as soon the question leaves her lips. I'd always thought of Alice as an angel. A gift of a friend to eat meals with, so that my mother always saw a familiar friendly face at the table. And I think it was the same for Alice. I won't see Alice anymore. But in my mother's dementia, I wonder if Alice will visit from time to time. I hope so.

***Photo taken today by an angel that visits my mother! (Matt 25:35-40)

"Let my doin' catch up to my knowin'"

2011-08-15T12:46:00.003-05:00

Streetbooks provides people who "live outside" have a chance to read books. Without an address it is difficult to get a library card.

Watch a short film on Streetbooks here.

From Gateway to Golden Gate

2011-06-18T14:01:00.010-05:00

Ms. Toad's Tours

The scene opens on North Bay Watch, as five friends defy the wind at Crissy Fields to view the Golden Gate Bridge. Our adventure began the night before, near Haight Ashbury at a boutique hotel, the Metro, where our friend, Pat--she who LIVES in San Francisco, met us after we'd flown in from St. Louis (Gateway to the West). Pat, SWLiSF, recounts the three day tour here Late to the Haight.

We could have been cast in a movie, filming that morning in one of SF's many parks. But since we'd promised to meet SWLiSF for our tour of the city sites, we walked on by this active city set.

Perhaps they chose to film the movie in this park because of the lush shoe garden.

After all, it's not often you see a garden full of shoes in bloom.

Our tour, unlike the typical SF tour, promised pizza, Picasso, and plenty of panoramas. Not the usual tourist attractions. But then, we had NO usual tour guide!

Mr. One-derful

2011-06-11T11:34:00.003-05:00

Who's one?
Cake?
I like cake.

Happy Birthday Evan!

Versatile Bloggers Award

2011-04-23T17:04:00.005-05:00

When I awoke today, I thought today would be just another rainy day. Here at the seventeenth hour of a rainy Saturday, following destructive weather in the Midwest that tore up the airport, I sit in my comfy chair composing my acceptance blog. Award winning writer and blogger, Dianna Graveman of Write in the Midwest has bestowed upon me the Versatile Blogger Award. The award comes second to being mentioned on Dianna's blog. Write in the Midwest is just one of Dianna' noteworthy accomplishments and it inspires me each time I visit.

The award comes with modest rules:

Here are the rules:

1. You have to thank the person who awarded you & link them back in your post and let them know you "accept" the award.
2. Tell everyone 7 random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award to other bloggers --some sources say 7 (I'm going with my top three, and being versatile, I can do this).
4. Contact each blogger and let them know you have passed this award onto them.

I Googled the award to find out what the origin might be, but nobody's sayin'. And it really doesn't matter. I've got to get on with the rules.

Thank you, Dianna, for giving me the Versatile Blogger Award. You will always inspire me to write more, think of myself as a writer, and encourage others to do the same.

Random facts gathered from the versatility of my life and my blog must begin with
1. the random award I received from the Riverfront Times, St. Louis, for Blog of the week five summer's ago for the my blog Part I for the posting that remains the last one for that site.

2. I began blogging in May 2003, and no one I knew had a blog then.

3. I met my husband when I was 15 at a high school party that I crashed with a friend.

4. Like Dianna I have a guitar and piano that I never play anymore. (Actually, I have two guitars, two keyboards, and a piano; all collecting dust.)

5. And not to be a copy-cat, but like Dianna, I don't care much for sugar either, preferring all things salty for my food vice.

6. I can't eat eggs unless I want to feel icky for three days; probably because many sweet things contain eggs I don't like sweet things--hense #5.

7. Water is my favorite natural element and I must be immersed in it regularly, thus the present remodeling of the bathroom to add a tub.

As for the passing on of the award, I hereby bestow the Versatile Blogger Award to bloggers I love to visit:

In the Aquarium, which is one of the earliest blogs I read and still read because I can live a Londoner's life.

Late to the Haight, which I've read since the first post and tickled my heart with all things San Francisco.

Mirabilis, and I'm smarter because of each visit.

To close this post, I must say a few words on behalf of versatility, a quality that keeps life from being totally boring. Dare I name it as a virtue? With versatility comes a knack for changing your mind. And changing it again in order to suit the moment. Being versatile lessens the chance of being disappointed. Failure, too, takes a back seat when you can switch lanes to avoid a collision. Finally, versatility is fun. Consistency will have her fans but I'll take a second helping versatility anytime. No eggs, no sugar. Water on the side.

When My Mother Gets Married, I'll Be Rich

2011-02-21T14:13:00.001-06:00

My mother tells us she’s getting married. His name is Will and he has lots of money. Every time we visit her, she tells us more about Will and his family, with interesting details, a host of characters suitable for a romance novel, and an expectation on my mother’s part that we’ll all be at the wedding.

When I entered my mother’s room at the nursing home, I found her in her wheelchair, chin resting near her right shoulder and her eyes closed. Slouched in her wheelchair with a notebook resting on her lap, pen in hand poised to write the next note on paper, she slept so deeply that I had trouble waking her. Minutes later, I had her full attention because she wanted to tell me about the wedding.

“Have you seen Will?” She wanted to know.

“Me? No, I haven’t. Have you?”

“He’s been trying to find me, but they won’t let him. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people. All night long Will and the girls have been outside and it’s cold out there. What door did you come in? Was Will still outside?”

“I didn’t see anyone,” I assured her. One of the things that she worried over continuously was finding Will, or more to the point that Will couldn’t find her. Not at this nursing home, not in rehab three months ago, not at the hospital the month before or in rehab at the first nursing home before that. We were all tired of hearing about Will’s problems in getting in to see her. She suspected security wouldn’t let him in, but she could never work out why.

Exacerbated, she sighed as she said, “Stupid security people. What’s wrong with them.”

Though she articulated, as best she could, certain words came out slurred and run together with the next. “Stupid security people” sounded more like “Stusecurity pupple.” And “Whatshwrong wthm” made her sound drunk. A stroke six years ago had caused some problems with speech, most of which she had overcome, but every now and again I noticed the same “mushy” post-stroke sounds. I wondered if she had not been sleeping well or whether the doctor had increased the dosage of one of the drugs. Maybe the TIAs were causing more stroke-like symptoms. It was increasingly difficult to tell.

I suspected the medication had been increased because the wedding caused her to be more agitated than usual. On Labor Day Will’s factory had burnt down, and naturally the wedding had been called off.

We had talked about the wedding each time I came to visit her. She’d even gotten married before. By my next visit she would have forgotten that she’d told me, and we’d talk about the plans all over again . My husband, her grandchildren, her friends, the nurses, aids, doctors, and more than one roommate had all heard about the coming wedding. At first we tried to reason with her, telling her she’d maybe had a dream or that she was confused with a book she’d been reading. That kind of response only made her angry.

The Alzheimers’ support group I attended advised us to enter her world and enjoy it with her. So, we began to fabricate wedding scenarios at each visit.

I’d even practiced a look of surprise. Happy surprise because she worried that I did not want her to get married. I practiced in front of a mirror saying, “What! What am I going to wear!” And I’d walked into coworkers offices exclaiming, “Oh, no, when? I don’t have anything to wear.” We all agreed I was getting better at feigning happy surprise.

The nurses and aids were usually pretty good at staying in the world of Wonderland with the dementia patients. Except one. She found Muzzy rolling down the hall toward to dining room between meals and stopped her. As my mother tells the story, the aid has a problem.

“She’s a witch, but with a ‘b,’” according to my mother. “You should have heard her. She chased me down the hall yelling ‘Adele, where are you going?’ And I told her, I said, ‘I have to go down here to see if Will’s waiting for me,’ That wasn’t good enough for her, the witch.”

I knew this story was not going to have a happy ending, but I let her go on, “Then the big witch said, ‘Ain’t nobody down here. Who’s Will?’” My mother mimicked the aid’s voice like a snotty seven-year-old tells a story.

“Who’s Will? Can you believe she asked me that? Wait. Wait til you hear what else she said!”

“Oh, no,” I said, with honest dread in my voice.

“Well, I told her Will is my FIANCE,” she said drawing the word out in three slow syllables. “I’m getting married and I need to find Will. He’s waiting for me.” She took a breath and let her eyes get big. “And she had the nerve to ask me, ‘Don’t you think you’re a little old to be getting married?”

To which my mother replied, “Don’t you think you’re a little FAT to be a nurse?”

“That’s what you said?” I couldn’t believe it. My mother is a favorite resident and never gets into trouble. What in the world has gotten into her. She went on to tell me that the witch made her go back to her room. The story goes on with details of how my mother reported the aid to the head of “this place” and he fired her, “the witch!”

“And now they all watch me all the time. I can’t go anywhere without somebody asking, ‘Adele, where are you going?’” She pushed herself up straight in the wheelchair and said, “I am going to get married and that’s that.”

I’d learned that if I asked too many questions about Will and his family, my mother took it as doubt on my part. “Enter her world” I reminded myself. Every visit had its own story.

Before she could launch into Will’s newest wedding plan, I wanted to find a comfortable place to stay and visit with her. “Muzzy, let’s go down to the sunroom and you can tell me there,” I suggested. We all called her muzzy, ever since my daughters had called her that as toddlers.

Muzzy thought the sunroom sounded like a good idea, so I pushed her wheelchair down to the end of the hall and as luck would have it, we had the whole room to ourselves. The windows that surrounded us offered a second story view of the highway where cars and trucks provided a constant change of scenery. I took a seat at one of the tables used for board games, crafts, and jigsaw puzzles. Muzzy’s vision and memory were failing, so her attention stayed inside the room, looking outside only if I pointed out something of interest. Her attention today focused on the wedding.

“I think you will be upset when I tell you what I have to tell you,” she said firmly.

“Upset?” I repeated, “Upset over what?”

“That I got married. Last night. I should have told you, I’m sorry. But I didn’t want to upset you.”

During this particular visit she seemed more agitated than usual and very concerned that I would be angry with her for getting married.

“I’m not upset that you got married.” I assured her. “You told me that Will had a ring for you. A really big diamond ring.” I lifted her left hand and feigned surprise, “Where’s the ring?”

“Will did have a gorgeous ring for me. He gave it to me. We got married!” She looked at her fingers, puzzled. “Someone stole it!”

“Someone stole the ring! That’s terrible. Who would steal the ring?”

Muzzy looked at her naked finger and then at me, exclaiming, “FRANK. Frank stole the ring. He was really mad about the wedding and he came flying down this hallway ran in here, grabbed the ring and jumped right out that window.”

Frank was my father, and her husband, until his death 14 years ago. She’d been looking for him the day before on my last visit, and I had to remind her that Frank had died. Yes, she said, she remembered now, and commented that she didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

“We’re on the second floor. Why would Frank jump out the window?” Momentarily, I left her world and began to think rationally, thinking maybe I could bring her back to our world. I was never comfortable in her world and despite what dementia experts said, I could not resist an attempt every now and then to rationalize with her, to make her see that what she thinks she’s seeing is not real.

In fact, on this occasion, I made an impromptu, but not quite unconscious decision to rally reality all around her. “He’d probably die if he jumped out the window and hit the ground, not to mention the glass he’d break going out,” I exclaimed.

“It was in the paper. I’m surprised you didn’t read all about it. His whole obituary was in yesterday’s paper,” she argued. “You didn’t see it?”

“What?” I snapped. “Why would he steal your ring?”

“Well, how should I know. He ran straight in here,” she gestured with her hand to show me he’d come from the hall way, “And he grabbed my hand, grabbed the ring, and right out through the window he went.”

I followed her motions with my eyes until the part where he jumps out the window, and I turned toward the window to imagine the scene. That’s when it occurred to me without really occurring to me that it was time for a reality check.

Placing my arm gently around her shoulders, I leaned close to her and with all the concern I could muster I said, “Mom, I know you don’t probably want to know this,” I began. My inner child had woken up and before the adult within me could stop her, I said, “But they think you have dementia. I’m so sorry,” and the tears came to my eyes and surprising myself I was really crying. I made a firm decision not to stop. This is the reality she had to hear.

My eyes were closed, my head rested on her shoulder, as she patted my head, and I cried. “I’m sorry,” I told her again.

“I hate to see you this upset. Everything is ok, honey,” she was saying as I opened my eyes to look at her face. It was blank. Empty of emotion. “I was afraid the wedding would upset you. I should have told you before.”

Obviously, she hadn’t heard me, I thought. I could re-enter her world and be no worse off, but I had reality on my side. “No, no not the wedding. There’s no wedding. Your mind is off kilter. They think it’s the dementia. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, honey. But it will be okay. Please don’t be upset. Of course I don’t have dementia. Why would they say that. I haven’t forgotten anything,” she said with every assurance it was true. “Who says I have dementia?”

“The doctors do,” I told her.

“I haven’t forgotten anything. I can’t dementia because that makes you forget.”

“If you forgot something, how would you KNOW you forgot it?” I asked innocently, for one last grasp at reality.

For a fleeting second, I thought I saw the glint of the present moment in my mother’s eyes. “Here we are,” I wanted to shout. “Grab my hand, stay here.” And then the glint passed.

“Did you say you saw Will on your way in?”

All wrapped up and no where to go

2011-01-15T10:46:00.002-06:00

The weather outside is white. On tv they say the temerature is 27 but it feels like 15. I want to wear a jacket and go hatless, but white weather requires a higher level of planning what to wear than I'm capable of. Once I wrap up in all the layers, I'm too warm and can't drive the car because the Michelin Man posture makes it difficult to turn the steering wheel.

From the warmth of my kitchen I look out the window and squint because the white weather hurts my eyes. Little patches of grass peak through the white snow on the ground and fool me into thinking it's a hatless day. Huh! Yesterday i tried to walk from the car to the building without gloves. My fingers turned to icicles. And I was carrying a heavy package, so I couldn't stick them in my pockets.

I'd rather be in Key West or Miami where the climate allows for less planning in getting dressed to go outside in the winter. Less is more .

Inside Mom's Head

2010-08-31T21:03:00.002-05:00

The psychiatric nurse practitioner visited Muzzy today and called me afterward. Nurse mentioned in passing that there isn't much anyone can do for Lewy Bodies Disease. Like Alzheimer's, LBD is a form of dementia caused by protein buildup in the brain. An MRI or CATSCAN will not detect the protein. Only an autopsy can show for sure the diagnosis is correct.

Muzzy already takes an anti-psychotic, Serquel, and they are going to move to twice a day dosage. i guess it is the only option at this time. The hallucinations have now moved to paranoia about the staff. Sometimes meds can help with delusions, but most of the time--I think--even when the elderly take these drugs legitimately to treat symptoms it cause them to become droolers.

My own take on the delusions as symptoms focuses on the hardwiring of the human brain. More on that later.

Space Saver

2010-08-29T22:28:00.001-05:00

Pop-up Garage Stows Your Car Safely Underground

Amazing idea.

The Thing I Miss Most

2010-08-28T20:22:00.005-05:00

On the cover of one of my favorite greeting cards is a cartoon with a woman, obviously the stereotypical frazzled housewife-mother at the end of a very long day/week, collapsed on the couch in a room that is cluttered with everything everyone has drug out and not put away. The caption reads, "The thing I miss most around here"; and inside it says, "is my mind." I think this is my favorite card because I've so often felt that way.

How many times have I opened the mail, answered a distraction (phone, door, child, text) , and turned back to the mail only to find that I can't find the overdue bill I had in my hand? And where's my coffee? Why did I come into this room? Where are my car keys?

When the mind truly is missing it doesn't look like that at all. And it isn't funny. Visit a nursing home--a long-term care facility--where many minds have gone missing. Okay, so in order to endure the visit, I do find some humor amidst the disoriented minds that attempt conversations.

My own mother's mind seems to be fractured. One day more of it is missing than another. Like swiss cheese brain that rotates around, lettting a bit of the memory pass through one minute, but the lucid moment vanishes the next as the cheese moves. Gives "Who moved my cheese?" a whole new meaning for me.

Right now Muzzy (my mother) believes that a man named Will Claire d'Lune wants to marry her. He has been trying to visit her and give her a ring for six months. One or another things keeps him from finding her. His mother's name is Ruth d'Lune. Will is a choir master. A choir of women accompanies him wherever he goes. That's how she knows he wants to visit, as a matter of fact. The choir of women sings about it, filling her in on where he is and when he will be arriving. Except that he never arrives.

Will has a ring for my mother. An engagement ring. Big diamond. I can tell by the lilt in her voice when she describes the ring that she can't wait for Will to bring it to her. She's been talking about this for nearly the whole six months. But Will has not been able to get in to see her.

Yesterday, Muzzy told me that two women in the nursing home believe the ring is theirs. One of them is going to file a law suit.

Sometimes the choir sings songs. I remember a few months ago her excitement in telling me they sang "Old Man River" in four part harmony. A few men joined them for that song. Must have been brilliant. She sounded impressed.

A piece of my mind gets lost each time I visit. Though I'm trying to hang on to my senses, the incredibly imaginative delusions challenge me to remain objective. This is my mother. This is my mother in old age. This is my future.

Like Cornography but with a P

2010-07-26T22:03:00.002-05:00

Evidently the number of corn but with a P websites on the Internet number high in the millions. I don't want to spell cornography with a P because it will result in no end of unwanted everything. So many many others have estimated the number of corn sites with numbers that defy imagination. What can we imagine as corn with a P anyway? And what's wrong with corn with a P, by the way, you might ask. If you have to ask, you haven't been paying attention.

Some may have to ask and want to know first what corn with a P is--how do we know it's corn with P? Do we answer, well, we can't define it, but we know it when we see it?

I believe the definition stands to reason. And reason lurks well beyond the corn with a P fan's ability. The surgeon general has a warning on cigarrettes that tells people smoking causes problems for their health. We know it can cause early death and lots of pain. But people smoke anyway. We don't, these days, allow them to smoke in public places. Why? Because it takes away the rights others have to not have their safety and health endangered by nincompoops. Same with corn spelled with a P. Science tells us that corn with a P is dangerous. Harms people. Demeans people. Uses people. Treats human beings as objects rather than persons.

What can lower the esteem and worth and value of a person more than being used for the sheer pleasure of others? Do we have a right to treat others badly? Even if they allow us to treat them badly? What if we pay them cash money to let us treat them badly, lower their worth as human beings? What role do we play in stopping others from treating people badly?

If studies prove absolutely that having a value only for the pleasure of someone else, harms an individual, stunts the ability to form relationships, permeates the very soul of a person who is treated as an object such that he/she fails to see the "self" as worthy of love, would we be horrified? Especially if the object of pleasure has not had time to develop, say, beyond childhood, would we be horrified? Most of us would be. The 21st century corn sources have gone beyond magazines for men, hidden in the garage or bottom drawer. They exist as sexually explicit images, text, and everything in between or in combination all over the Internet and elsewhere. Who dares complain about it? Lest they be called closed minded. Criticized for being prudish. Labeled as uptight. Accused of restraining the artist with a message. Damned for violating the rights of someone else's freedom of speech.

What happened to the right of each human being to be a person, respected for being an individual with value and worth well beyond the pleasure they offer others?

What it's like being in the world of publishing, or not... according to Garrison Keillor and me.

2010-06-27T11:34:00.005-05:00

A fellow former acquisitions editor for a local publishing house sent me the following link to one of Garrison Kiellor's former posts.

Interesting (fairly brief) column by Garrison Keillor on publishing.

We were acquisitions editors once; now we've moved on to new career paths, some might say more respectable, depending on the publishing house, I suppose. I responded to my colleague and to Garrison with my own take on the fate of traditional publishing and the acquisition of authors for "house stable":

We almost traveled in that world, you and I, when the likes of inspiring religious authors like Paul C. awaited our calls and emails, rolling new ideas around in their minds so to be ready to let them roll and flow off their tongues hoping to grab our interest, land a contract with three figure author advances and escalating royalties on the first 500 copies flying off the shelves to those readers oh so eager to find a path to heightened spiritual awareness and answers to the questions burning in their hearts and souls, but now others sit in our places at the cocktail parties in Barnhart smiling coyly across the table near the door at GiGi's writing down every word uttered by this being of higher thought and pure holiness, like Joe K., Joan C., Sean M., Andrew C. W., and so many others, watching the cars pass along the freeway of Jefferson County under the crystal blue skies just north of Crystal City in America's heartland where people still read books because the internet has not yet come over power lines, cable wires, and cell phone towers, home of the brave and last remaining Christians, not many of whom are Roman in their beliefs, and at the end of the shared meal, bread broken, hearts stirred, the new editors shake hands, maybe hugging with the pastorally correct one arm, those monks, brothers, sisters, and clergy, a few lay Christian writers, promising to call or email and invite them for further conservations which will certainly include the marketing minds ever vigilant to sell the five-hundred and first copy for which the author will earn extra royalties and be able to buy an extra gallon of gasoline, as prices for fuel rise faster than the incense upon the altars of worship of which they write.

TheTitling Tilting Planet

2010-04-28T22:02:00.004-05:00

Today I took a big step. Not just a step, but a leap beyond what I ever thought possible. With all my strength of heart, mind, and body, I took three bins filled with magazine to the recycling center. In particular, this trip to the center takes on grave significance because contained in these bins were National Geographic magazines.

I am not sure what they do with these magazines in the recycling process. The weight of 4 decades of National Geographic issues moved from one place to another could quite possibly shift the tilt of the planet.

If tomorrow, your juice glass slides across the breakfast table you'll know why.

note: thanks Anna, I need an editor!

Puppies in the Sky

2010-02-10T21:55:00.003-06:00

On a briskly cold St. Louis day, one small boy's dream came true. Standing at the top of Art Hill, he looked out upon the world as far as a small boy could see. Snow. One steep hill, one blue plastic toboggan, and nothing but hay stacks below.

One push and he sailed down the perfectly snow packed hill, bouncing gently over the bumps in the earth below the snow. All the way to the bottom, the wind kissed his cheeks making them ruby read to match his nose. Ice cold snow-spray kicked up from the heels that dug into the snow, painted his jacket and hat white with frost. The heels dug deeper and the toboggan carrying one small boy pounded into the hay stacks. He giggled with joy, as he fell over backward onto the soft compacted snow. "Look," he exclaimed as his eyes scanned the brilliant blue sky, "puppy clouds in the sky. This is the best day ever."

Lettin' It Snow

2010-02-09T10:30:00.004-06:00

New house, new job, and new lease on life. Mother Nature provided me with another pajama day, as the snow keeps falling and what melts in the sun on the pavement turns immediately to ice. One totally free week before starting the new job could be spent packing books and drawers for the coming move, but snow days have rules, and one of them is "If it was a day you'd go to work or school and it snows on this day, sitting around reading is expected." Fortunately, I went to the library yesterday and gathered a bog o' books just to follow this rule.

Titles:
Making and Keeping Creative Journals
Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life, Elizabeth George
A Moment on the edge, ed. Elizabeth George
New Media in Late 20th Century Art, Michael Rush
Darwin's Watch: The Science of Discworld, Terry Pratchett

And four periodicals:
Interior Design, Nov. 2009
ART NEWS, Oct. 2009
Psychology Today, August 2009
ditto, Nov./Dec. 2009

Still on the bed-side table: Elain Viets' Clubbed to Death fun and easy read, started reading it after returning from our winter respite in Miami.

No more EPDs, no more PAWs, no more meetings waiting for the other shoe to fall, and no more wondering what's going on behind those closed doors.

Enjoy a house tour with Jon

Tis the season to read

2010-01-03T13:51:00.003-06:00

On the reading list through this past long holiday break with no metro, bolo, dodo have been some lengthy and inspirational books:
In Due Season, by Paul Wilkes
Circling My Mother, by Mary Gordon
Pearl, by Mary Gordon
What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell
How Big Is Your God?, by Paul Coutinho, SJ
The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, by Susanne Alleyn
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver.
Spiritual quests : the art and craft of religious writing, compilation of essays

None of them disappointing.
And several movies well worth watching: The Hours, Star Trek,Sherlock Holmes.

Tomorrow, metro, bolo, dolo, to do what I do: read manuscripts that will be books. The life of an English/Literature major: read, read, read. Read until the right time comes to write.

Best Reads

2009-12-27T10:49:00.004-06:00

I'm currently reading Circling My Mother by Mary Gordon.

Gordon is one of the best writers I've come across in a long time. She has woven her mother's story into her own so that at once the reader discovers a path of life familiar to all human stories. Born of a mother disabled by polio, Gordon gently tells the story from her childhood eyes rocking back and forth between the business woman mother and the mother crippled as much from a disfunctional family as by her polio. The book begins with a trip to a museum to see Bonnard's work, art that becomes for Gordon a therapy and a lens; both of which help Gordon understand her mother (Anna) and the relationship of an only child with a mother widowed by a husband who never told either of them of his previous marriage. Coming full circle, the book ends with Bonnard's work and this time the reader, with Gordon, becomes the voyuer, wondering how appropriate it is to expose our mothers' most intimate parts--body and soul.

Anna has grown old into her nineties and with aging has come dementia. Her daughter, now acclaimed author, must care for her through the hands of a nursing home staff. The tension of loving and resenting a mother who loved large and lived even larger than life, for the author, does not end with death.

Snowman Dalek

2009-12-20T22:11:00.004-06:00

The Dalek have landed. Dr. Who where are you?

--[photo by M G Howell]

Fruitcake as Lump of Coal:

2009-12-20T21:57:00.002-06:00

Borrowing today's post from Michael G. Howell who has given permission for me to copy his work on my blog.

Fruitcake as Lump of Coal: A Derridian Deconstruction of a Loathed Holiday Icon

by Michael G. Howell

Close your eyes for a moment and try to explain what comes to mind when I say Fruitcake. With any number of people with any other word; cat, for example, everyone will have a different mental image of a cat. But with fruitcake the results would appear to be almost universally similar. Similar and negative. It’s hard to imagine a more despised holiday pastry than the fruitcake. The dense, dark cake, heavy like a tumor, impregnated with impossibly bright and sweet chunks of candied fruit appears as appetizing as a loaf of steamed leather. Yet the fruitcake still remains firmly seated in our collective consciousness as a symbol of that most wonderful time of the year. But to be sure, receiving a fruitcake, while once upon a time thought of as a kind gesture, has transformed over several generations to the equivalent of receiving a lump of coal in the stocking. In other words; if you get a fruitcake this year you must have done something very, very wrong.

How could something seemingly so fantastic have drastically turned into the Grinch of pastries? On the one hand you have cake. Who doesn’t enjoy cake? Cake is delicious. Cake brings people together. Cake is used to celebrate just about every major and minor accomplishment a person could conceivably achieve. Cake is a cornerstone of any and all festivities in myriad social gatherings.

And fruit. Since the dawn of time (save for that one minor set back in a garden long ago involving a serpent and an apple) fruit has been one of the most important food items in every culture. And the sheer variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes in the fruit world pretty much guarantees there is at least one fruit somewhere in the world growing on a tree or bush that is just right for you. It tastes great and it’s good for you. What better to offset the empty calories of cake than fruit?

Perhaps the fruitcake represents that old adage “too much of a good thing.” Cake is good, fruit is good so shouldn’t good + good = freaking awesome? But it doesn’t. At least not anymore. At one time, perhaps, fruitcake was beloved by all. Around the 16th century a popular way to transport fruits was by storing them in strong concentrations of sugar. This practice lead to the inevitable sweetening of the fruit and enhancing the color, as well. Eventually fruits not native to an area could be transported from far away lands leading to a virtual cornucopia of colors and flavors hitherto unknown in the civilized world (which at the time was western Europe). By the 19th century the fruitcake became a staple because, well, what else are you going to do with a bunch of candied dry fruit?

The result was a brick-like “food” with bits of fruit embedded inside. From the outside you might mistake it for a shoe box (though some traditional fruitcakes took on a more round, pound cake appearance). Usually the fruitcake in everyone’s mind is this impossibly heavy, possibly armored, dense, soul-sucking block that, in all probability, would withstand a nuclear holocaust. But before you go hoarding fruitcakes to build a bunker I should tell you that a fruitcake fort probably won’t withstand anything stronger than a 5 megaton detonation. And in all likelihood anything we get hit with will probably be at least 10 megatons.

It’s appearance should be your first clue that maybe something isn’t quite right with this so-called cake. I mean, really, cakes aren’t supposed to look like they’ve just been dug out of the ground. That might be why the British (and what greater culinary experts are there) started putting icing on the tops of their fruitcakes. Lipstick on a pig? A coat of paint on ancient ruins ain’t gonna make it the Taj Mahal. Icing on a fruitcake, while a noble endeavor, is merely a cosmetic change and merely attempts to hide the otherwise disturbing product. Upon closer inspection the subterfuge won’t last.

But certainly something that looks just so incredibly inedibley wrong must have some redeeming feature. What about taste? Surely it is a delicious tasty culinary phenom. I’m sorry to say, no. A slice of your average fruitcake will more than likely send you into a diabetic coma. The amount of sugar guarantees that a slice is nothing less than a tooth melting disaster. Some people have a sweet tooth and might be able to handle it. For some reason the Japanese seem to enjoy fruitcake. But if you’re like me you stopped trying to figure out the Japanese a long time ago. If you could somehow just have small bite-sized fruitcake nuggets (patent pending) then fruitcake might just be tolerable. But no. You have an entire loaf of this stuff taking up precious counter space in your kitchen. And you and it both know that it won’t move until the following year when you give it to someone who did you wrong.

Apart from icing there weren’t many more attempts to pretty up a fruitcake. It’s as if a council of cooks got together to head scratch over what to do about this food brick. They squirted some icing on it and called it a day. That was the ultimate fix, the best and only thing they could think of. So taste had to be addressed. Enter the 19th and 20th century southern United States.

The Southern half of the United States has some wonderful culinary traditions. I won’t get into them here since we’re talking about the opposite. But you’d figure that the South would find a way to rise (the fruitcake) again. Their solution to the tragically sweet taste: just add nuts. Ok, so now not only is it so dense that it has its own gravitational pull, elephant man hideous, sweeter somehow than sugar alone, but now, NOW, it has crunchy bits in it as well. Hold a piece of nutty fruitcake in your hand and you might mistake it for a broken piece of concrete. I am reminded of taking a bite of sausage only to find my teeth striking then rolling around one of those mysterious hard chunks. Imagine that . . . got it . . . ok now add two tablespoons of sugar.

At one point someone tried to offset the terribly sweet taste with alcohol. The result did help in cutting down the sweetness and made it a tad more edible. But with so much alcohol in the cake the unintended result (or for some, very intended indeed) was that people were getting loaded off of their fruitcakes. Trust me, you don’t want to have to puke up fruitcake when you’re three sheets to the wind.

So the fruitcake’s not looking so good. Literally and figuratively. It looks terrible and it tastes so sweet it’s hardly edible. But it is still here. It is still around. Year after year fruitcakes are prepared, bought, and given as gifts. How could something so incredibly bad have lasted so long (eh hm, George W. Bush).

Part of the fruitcake’s prominence in pop culture relies on the fact that it IS so bad. The horrifying disgustingness itself is what propels the mystery of this cultural phenomenon. Fruitcake is still around for the same reason we slow down to see car wrecks or watch reality TV shows. It is just so bad you can’t help but be interested in it. Johnny Carson once posited that there is only one fruitcake in existence and that it has been passed around for decades. This of course is not true as there are still many bakeries that not only make fruitcakes, they specialize in them. Others suggest the longevity of the fruitcake in popular culture to be part of a generation gap in which aging grandparents give fruitcakes to their adult grandchildren who then just throw them out or re-gift them in essence seeing the fruitcake as a symbol of a bygone era.

The fruitcake has reached post-modernity. Given as a gift it can be seen as ironic. Popular culture poking fun at itself. Or, for those with less of a sense of humor, giving a fruitcake can be interpreted as something much more sinister. Something a kin to receiving a lump of coal in your stocking if you were a bad little boy or girl that year. Giving coal is no longer environmental friendly and for the average household it isn’t easy to come by. In the early 20th century coal was used as a fuel to heat homes so it was readily available to place under the tree or in a stocking for a bad little boy or girl. That time has passed. Coal is not used in our homes anymore. Tell a child they might receive a lump of coal for being bad and the prospect may intrigue them. Something has to take its place and the next best (worst) thing is the fruitcake. As we have already determined in many ways the fruitcake is very coal-like. At least, perhaps in appearance.

If you give a fruitcake to someone as a gift it could mean any number of things:
1) You phoned it in this Christmas putting zero thought into your choice of gifts

2) You don’t really like the recipient but a gift is obligatory as is the gratitude you’ll receive back

3) You don’t like the recipient and the fruitcake is a symbolic slap in the face

If you receive a fruitcake it means that the giver doesn’t like you, wants you to suffer, or doesn’t have the audacity to slap you in the face. You must have done something to really piss off this person and I suggest that you should probably just end it now before things get out of hand.

So now you have a fruitcake (or if you have given one, be prepared for retaliation next year). What do you do with it? You could eat it but we’ve pretty much covered why that is something you should probably avoid. You could just give it away to the mailman or someone else. The question is, do you want to keep receiving your mail? You must be very careful to whom you give a fruitcake. It’s the atomic bomb of the gift world. Don’t wield it without some responsibility.

You could through it away but that might prove to be an environmental hazard. The half life of one of these things has got to be an easy 50 years. Not to mention all the weighed down garbage trucks and sanitary workers with herniated discs from hauling around all those trashed fruitcakes.

So what to do with them? In Manitou Springs, Colorado they have an annual fruitcake toss where you can even rent one if you don’t have your own. You could build some sort of structure but good luck getting the safety inspector to approve such a monstrosity. You could bury it but even the slightest threat of a fruitcake tree is a chance no one should take.

I have my own modest proposal for what to do with these unwanted pastries. I say we should make them even more than their lump of coal counterparts and use them for fuel. Burn them, in the hearth, a bonfire, in burn barrels. The density will guarantee they’ll burn for hours (the ones with alcohol might go up quicker). You could save hundreds on your heating bill and your home will smell like fruit and cake for days. If the fruitcake is the cloud, free fuel is the silver lining.

Merry Christmas

Money and Meat go together like...?

2009-10-31T10:16:00.003-05:00

Answer: subsidies and government.

"Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?"

Answer: The U.S. Farm Bill mandates government subsidies for key livestock feed and neatly ties to what school lunch programs feed children.

"The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies."

Why is America fat?

Answer: Farm states receiving subsidies have strong representation in congress which writes the bills and provides the subsidies for fattening foods we can afford to eat.

Why is obesity a problem for America?

Answer: Obesity correlates to health costs because obesity is not a healthy way to live. The discussions about health care reform largely depend on a congress ruled by people who get subsidies for feeding children and the rest of us cheaper, chronic disease producing diets.

If salads and fruit were cheaper to grow due to governement subsidies, resulting in less expensive healthy choices in stores and restaurants would people choose less expensive ingredients and meals?

Beware of Earthlink

2009-10-18T18:34:00.003-05:00

We have been trying to cancel an email account with Earthlink for several months. Each time we call they either say we do not have the right telephone number, password, or such information as is necessary to verify the account. The charge of nearly $5 a month for an email account that gmail, yahoo, and others offer for free requires greater imagination than I have to figure why I would want to pay Earthlink $5. It's a leftover account from the dark ages of internet when we chose Earthlink for our internet service. I won't go into why we still have the account, but let's just say someone in the household needed the contacts in the Earthlink email account.

On a live chat with Andrew at Earthlink, we were given a number to call. And when we did, the auto-voice did not offer any choice for canceling email account billings. Here is the live chat with Andrew at Earthlink. I'm recording it here because it is difficult to believe anyone could be less helpful.

Welcome to Earthlink LiveChat. Your chat session will begin shortly. Feel free to begin typing your question.
'Andrew A' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today?

me: I want to terminate my earthlink e-mail account and my automatic charging to a credit card.

Andrew A: Hi, I will certainly help you with your query.
Andrew A: Just to confirm, do you want to cancel your entire account or just the payment mode?
me: i would like to cancel both

Andrew A: In this case you may have to call 1-888-EARTHLINK (1-888-327-8454) 24 hours a day, 7 days per week for cancellation and further help.
Andrew A: Is there anything else I may help you with today?

me: well since i have been trying to do this for months, can you at least stop the charges to my credit card?

Andrew A: We can stop that right away, but we are not the department to take care off, that is reason I provided you the above number.

me: so just to confirm - you can not help me stop payment to my credit card?

Andrew A: I apologize, I do not have the access to the resources in order to accomplish this task.

me: the phone number you have given me is only for technical help

Andrew A: The above number is for our Customer support as well.

me: well i can not get through to the proper assistance,

me: how else can i get my credit card charges cancelled?
Andrew A: Please click the below link.
Andrew A: http://support.earthlink.net/contact/phone/
Andrew A: You will see the same number for billing issues too.

me: that is where I started and the number you had me dial simply tells me to dial another number HELP PLEASE!!!

Andrew A: Like Explained earlier, we are not authorized to do any changes or cancel your account. We do not have the access to cancel it.
Andrew A: I do understand your concern, but we are not the right department.

me: the phone number does not seem to offer a choice for email disconnect.
me: and we have just tried 866.408.8305 and he says that he cannot do email disconnect.
me: when we do find the right number and person, can you tell me what information they will require to stop the account?

Andrew A: They will have to verify your account in order to close the account.

me: Who would we call to change the payment from our credit card to a home bill?
me: What will they need for verification?

Andrew A: The above customers support number is the total solution for your issue.
Andrew A: I kindly request you to contact them as you have reached an in-correct department.,

me: Actually, it is not. There is no selection number offered by the operator voice for cancelling email accounts.
me: The first question is are we existing earthlink customers. We do not have cable, dsl, or internet service with earthlink anylonger. But I have dialed twice. Once I answered yes, and the next time no. Neither time did the operator offer a choice for canceling email.

Andrew A: In this case I kindly request you to call on Monday.

me: Andrew, I know you are trying to help. But do you think there is anyone there with you who knows what number to dial on Monday or anyday who can cancel our email with earthlink?

me: Andrew, I believe you are trying to help-- But do you think there is anyone there with you who knows what number to dial on Monday or any day who can cancel our email with earthlink?

Andrew A: I assure you, Once you call the above number, you will get the desired help. As it is Sunday that could be the issue you are not able to get anyone.

me: By the way, I have copies this chat dialog and will place it on my blog and send it to the Earthlink hmf because no one will believe that I am having this much trouble cancelling an email account. Or wait....maybe they will believe me, but I'm posting it online anyway. And sending it to Earthlink, Andrew. You are not being helpful.

Andrew A: I aplogize, As explained earlier you have reach to a department which do not handle these queries.
Andrew A: Thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please contact us again.

meister@earthlink.net: Thank you.
meister@earthlink.net: Goodbye

AFter an hour or so and several phone calls to various Earthlink service numbers we spoke to Michelle Richardson, quiet voice with an Indian English accent, who attempted to brush off the request because we did not have the right phone number, though we assured it has been the only bloody phone number we've ever had. Eventually, she was able to give us a confirmation number to track the record of actually canceling the Earthlink email account and our credit card should not be billed again.

We'll see!

Meet the Joeys

2009-09-20T09:17:00.001-05:00

Red Wiggler Worms may be the best pets ever!

When my daughter started her "worm composting" several years ago, I have to admit that I grimaced. My familiarity with worms at that point began and ended with the garden variety, sometimes hooked onto the end of a fishing line. One day the worm farming daughter moved away and left behind the large black worm composting bin.

Eventually, overwhelmed with how much kitchen waste we throw away in the garbage each day, I thought, Why not compost this waste? I looked into the traditional compost bins and decided to look for one that rotates or tumbles in one container.

And then I remembered the worm bin sitting empty in the garage.

The biggest hurdle to the worm compost process is finding the Red Wigglers. I searched the internet for sources of Red Wigglers in our city or near by. Nothing in my neck of the woods. I continued to look at the tumblers and talk about composting with friends. Then, quite by accident I saw them. In a booth at craft fair a woman had a display of her "home-made" plywood worm bin with directions and WORMS.

How much for the Red Wigglers? I asked her with more enthusiasm than she'd ever witnessed in her booth. She told me she happened to have a bucket of 1,000 Red Wigglers, and I bought them. We brought them home and tucked them gently into the black worm bin per internet instructions. They eat all our kitchen vegetable waste, coffee grounds, egg shells, and shredded newspapers.

We call them the Joeys. Naming 1,000 worms seemed impossible, so I called them Joey. If anyone asks, and people do, I recite a litany of Joey names: Mary Jo, Billy Jo, Jonny Jo, Kelley Jo, Peppy Jo, Slowy Jo, you get the idea. They appear after three weeks or so to be pretty happy. It's relatively free of odors and the Joeys live in the kitchen or laundry room most days. This week I opened the lid to check on the Joeys and found ten of them headed for the lid. In fact, some of them crawled all the way to the lid. Probably this means they want something more than what they've found in the bin. I added more garbage and spritzed a little water on the newspaper cover. Fewer and fewer of them climb to the top now.

I have no photos of our worm composting bin, but here is a website that gives great directions with photos.

One day my daughter will come to claim the worm bin and the Joeys will go to live with her. I will miss them. I think I'll buy a tumbler next time.

On Being Five

2009-08-30T08:52:00.006-05:00

On August 19, Jon stayed home from pre-school with Mommy.

They ate breakfast and played with trains. Late in the morning Jon asked Mommy, "When am I going to be five?"

"You are five today; it's your birthday," Mommy reminded him.

"Today! Today I am five?"

"Yup."

"But when did I turn five?"

"Today. It's your birthday and you are five now."

"No, but when. Right now?"

"I guess," she paused and wondered where he was going with this line of questioning. "I guess you turned five this morning. So, you are five now."

"Right now I'm five."

"Yes, now you are five-years-old."

He thought about it. And in quiet, pensive voice he wondered aloud, "So, this is how it feels to be five."

The next day, Jon woke up, got out of bed, dressed, and asked Mommy, "Am I six today?"

July in Ireland

2009-08-01T07:54:00.001-05:00

Ten days in Ireland began in New Grange. Amazing pre-pyramid tombs in Ireland. Restoration of the tombs allows visitors to enter the ancient burial mounds and experience the ingenuity of an ancient culture. Giant's Causeway on Ireland's northern coast can hardly be believed. The volcanic formation of geometrically shaped columns of basalt provide a natural staircase for exploring this wonder of Mother Nature. The last photo was taken of the "Gap" on the northern Irish penninsula of Inishowen, north of Buncrana.

Tinker Toy Radio Show

2009-05-04T07:57:00.002-05:00

What do you build with Tinker Toys?

Jon and I arrived at the table filled with TT pieces. He brought his 4-yr-old enthusiasm for random pieces in bright colors. I brought my 50-something enthusiasm for Public Radio. Spotting a wheel, Jon said, "We can make it go!"

I built a tower, inserted a flat plastic disc through a horizontal, red TT stick and said, "On today's show, ladies and gentleman, we'll be talking to Jon Cxxxxx Hxxxxx, whose just returned from an adventure with trains. Good morning JON, what can you tell us?"

"Yeah, I fell off a bench in Kirkwood watching trains."

This interview played out over the course of 45 minutes. The guest on the show waxed eloquently about his many adventures for all things pre-school promises. The story of falling off the bench, complete with the list of injuries led to his sage advise for others who might be game to try standing on a bench and jumping off after the train pulls away. "Don't do it."

My husband arrived late into the broadcast and asked, "Ooooh, what's that?"

"We'ew havin' a wadio sow."

"A radio show! I wonder who thought of that," he said a little too sarcastically, I thought. "I've been building with Tinker Toys for over 50 years and I never once thought of building a radio." And then the engineer sat down and became caller number 7 with a question about trains for the guest on the show.

Bishop Robert Carlson, meet me in St. Louis, Louis!!

2009-04-21T08:18:00.011-05:00

The faithful of Saginaw and Sioux City welcomed Bishop Carlson to his last appointments. As St.Louis prepares to roll out the red carpet for the new Archbishop, some may wonder what the expectations of his former dioceses were and how he lived up to them.

For a look back:
The Saginaw Blessing

Guidance in Voting

and again here

"The decisive leadership of Bishop Robert Carlson is causing a vocation surge in the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan. Bishop Carlson led the vocation-rich Diocese of Sioux Falls from 1995 to 2004 before his transfer to the vocation-poor Diocese of Saginaw, which ranked 150th in the nation early last year. In his February 2005 installation homily, he announced: I am Bishop Robert J. Carlson, and I come to you as an apostolic missionary and a servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I consecrate my ministry among you to the intercession and care of the Blessed Virgin Mary . . . I promise as your bishop to teach only authentic Catholic doctrine . . . And, as of today, I am the vocation director for the Diocese of Saginaw, and I invite the men of this diocese, young and old, who have the necessary gifts and state in life, to seriously ask God if they have a vocation to the diocesan priesthood."

In Sioux Falls, the bishop also developed a reputation for being a good listener. The Detroit Free Press reported that in one year he had hosted 2,000 people for coffee, cake or dinner.

Ordains Grandfather

Lifestyle Choices and More
"it became public over the weekend that the incoming bishop of Saginaw, Bob Carlson -- an appointment I previously referred to as the "American Chur" -- had decided on a
$330,000 home before he even takes possession of the diocese. (For those in need of briefing, Carlson's predecessor, Ken Untener, spent every month or so in a different rectory in the diocese, eliminating the need for a central bishop's residence.)

How Happy is Saginaw - survey

If you have links to add, place them in your comment and I'll load them here.

Intergalactic Deb Day

2009-03-24T18:45:00.003-05:00

Today is the first Intergalactic Deb Day ever.

I had a latte and a warm raspberry with white chocolate scone to celebrate.

One of my coworkers proclaimed today as Intergalactic Deb Day. That's all it takes. Holidays start that way, don't they?

What will tomorrow be?

Diet Experts

2009-03-24T18:35:00.003-05:00

Someone I know explained to me today about the fine art of dieting. "It's all about calories," she said. If you want to know how to lose weight, according to her, ask a fat person. Heaven knows they've tried everything and yo yo up and down.

She explained that "studies" at one time showed that eating fiber was the way to lose weight. Everyone ate fiber. Didn't matter how much fiber. They bloated and corked themselves up with fiber, she said. If they'd asked her, she could have told them what it would happen, but the studies carried a lot of weight. Fat people carry a lot of weight, probably more than studies. We should ask fat people how to lose weight, fat people like her. And she would let us know that it is all about calories.

Doesn't matter if it's a 500 calorie lunch containing only Fritos. Those 500 calories will not make you fat, if that's all you eat. Five-hundred calories is five-hundred calories. She learned this from experience, back in her college days when she ate 500 calories of Fritos and a Three Musketeer bar everyday for lunch. She was thin. Not healthy, but thin.

Now studies tell us that it's all about calories. Next time ask a fat person, and you'll be ahead of the game.

Peeking into the Single Life-style

2009-03-12T19:09:00.002-05:00

I'm married. Happily. But I have friends who are single and lookin'. The hunt for the date life is a distant memory for me, honestly. So, wasn't I intrigued with a recent evening spent with a single, attractive girlfriend who introduced me to match.com.

Most nights, I spend with a book, a magazine, making yogurt, talkin' with the princely spouse, or netflixing. And I spend an inordinate amount of time on my realtor's site hunting for houses. The listings are endless and photos help a great deal in deciding which houses to see in person.

One night this week, keep this under your hat, I looked at petmatch.com or some site with a similar name. You put in the criteria you want, like dog or cat, f or m, big or small, etc., and it gives you photos and personality traits of potential pets that could work for you.

Looking for a date is not much different. I had a blast looking at the photos of these gentlemen who, quite frankly, should not put their photos online if they want to get a date. Granted, some are decent sorts. Though not cover-dudes, some have charming descriptions, and I'd be thinking --if I was lookin'-- that someone who can take the time to write about himself with a touch of humor and dash of humility may be worth meeting at the pub one night.

My girlfriend has done exactly that. And she pointed these fellas out to me. I had to agree, they were good choices. But they didn't last long. Too quiet, too tall, too old, too young, too married...yup, that's problem.

And then there's the moment when you actually recognize one of the eligible chaps. Someone you went to school with, someone you work with, the brother of someone you know--and the someone's a priest. Add wine, olives, and cheese to this evening and it beats looking for a house. Or a puppy.

Doodling all over

2009-03-12T19:02:00.004-05:00

The post on this blog that gets the most hits is the one on doodling.

NPR has a story on doodling with some interesting insight.

I like to doodle. I'm a squiggle line doodler. Nothing frame worthy. I go over the letters in my notes, darkening and outlining them. Sometimes I sketch the person speaking. If the speaker catches me staring and drawing, and staring and drawing, it's a little uncomfortable. Usually the sketch is not flattering.

Now that I know, if NPR is to be believed, that doodling helps the mind concentrate on the speaker, I will doodle more freely.

Text messaging, however, during meetings or conversations leads to precisely zero comprehesion of what is being spoken in the room.

Those Charities Are Calling

2009-01-11T09:14:00.004-06:00

Dinnertime, peaceful evenings, and just when I thought it safe to sit down in front of the television--the phone rings. Caller ID tells me its a charity. Sometimes they hide behind "unknown" caller. I always know who it is.

Fireman's Fund, Policeman's Fund [never mind the lack of PC, you know who I mean], Special Olympics, Democrats, Republicans, Kidney Foundation, Cancer Society, the calls keep coming. How to decide who to give to? Give them each a few dollars and they'll call in a month. One wants to be charitable, but at the same time, one hopes to offer money to the the group that will spend it well.

Frankly, I find the calls annoying. When I say, "Please send me something I can look over. And if I like what you are doing, I'll be happy to make a donation." The reply is always something to the effect that they'd like to send something but budget demands they ONLY send something if the prospective donor has agreed to make a donation. At this point, I could say, fine, $5, send it. And when it arrives, I could trash it or send $5.

One day, I realized that the Rockefeller Fnd., the Rasko Fnd., the Gates Fnd., and the A-Busch Fnd. among others have a process. Why shouldn't I have a process?

Now I tell the charity caller, "My family meets once a year to review all proposals for charitable giving. Please send me your information, I will present it to our Family Invitational Non-necessary Expense board (FINE). We invite you to submit your plan for taking care of your part of the world, and we will consider a donation from our earned income that we have budgeted for non-essentials this year." To which... they argue and complain and whine and say they want to know NOW. I keep calm and speak slowly and repeat the same invitation. Usually, they say thank you and hang up. The Policmen's Fund just hangs up. The caller NEVER says thank you.

These funds have hired folks who are gifted with, let's call it, persuasive gab. Yak yak yak, he says, crime rising, drug dealers on the street, protect your family, he says. he tries to make me very afraid. Persuasion by fear. A common tactic, often heard in church's and political rallies. I wholeheartedly agree with him and invite him to submit the proposal to FINE. He hangs up.

None of them have ever agree to send me anything to submit. They want money. They don't want to prove to me that the money will be spent on those who need help. Who's paying the persuasive gab caller, by the way? Why do people give them money when they call? That's why they keep interrupting our quiet dinners. Just like the SPAMMERS who use the same rational because some people, even just a few, buy Viagra and who knows what else in response to the email spam.

If you want to be as generous as Bill Gates, you need to give to charities who are willing to request money respecfully, as they do when they submit to the Gates Fnd, or any other group. Like my family fund. And we will meet and we will donate. We did this year, and we even had fun reviewing the mailed requests.

Another new year

2009-01-01T16:53:00.002-06:00

Several times today I practiced in my head saying two-thousand and nine. 2009. I imagined two-thousand years ago when they might have practiced saying the year "nine." Then, I remembered they didn't ever practice saying the year NINE. The year hadn't been "invented," yet. Instead of the year 9, they named the whole year after the magistrate with all the power. In these terms, we'd be leaving the year of W and entering the year of Obama. Not until the year 46 CE did anyone pay attention to a numerical designation of the year. And suddenly it was 46, no 45 or 44?

I would be practicing in my head saying The Year of Obama. That would be cumbersome to write on checks as the date. Rather than 09 (oh-nine), I like to write just 9. Why 09 anyway? It won't be 010 or 011. We could shorten it to "O" as in Obama. Jan. 2, Oh--for "O." Or B.O. I think I'll stick to 9.

ZENdom

2008-11-20T07:34:00.001-06:00

While you tidy up the kitchen, storing the Thanksgiving leftovers in the Chinese Tupperware, how about some Buddha music.

Comes in three colors and costs $25.

Tupperware by any other name

2008-11-12T21:54:00.002-06:00

I'm comforted to know that anywhere in the world I can store food in airtight containers.

Tupperware changes ever so slightly as travels around the world.

My Kind of Town

2008-11-10T20:35:00.002-06:00

CHICAGO! CHICAGO!

Wonderful weekend in Lincoln Park for a Saturday wedding. A visit to Navy Pier on Sunday in the downtown surprised us with a visit to the SOFA exhibit.
http://www.sofaexpo.com/

I don't know how may galleries had installations in the hall, but it's more than my feet could stand. In spite of the name, there are no sofas to sit upon and rest the weary tootsies. On Sunday the crowd was manageable. Easy to move about and view all objects d'art. And their prices.

Lost keys?

2008-11-05T22:05:00.001-06:00

Lost your house keys? Car keys? Not to worry.
Take a photo of your keys with your cell phone. The photo can be used to create a copy of your key.

Of Architectural Dreams

2008-10-29T20:43:00.004-05:00

Beauty in the daily environment of homes.
Architecture of St. Louis featured in this blog.

The blog links to many other great architecturally focused sites like this one -Vanishing St. Louis

Found this site on my own. Great place for viewing St. Louis architectural styles.

I am impressed with the number of folks looking after St. Louis' architectural heritage of modern design. Several blogs and sites like this one which is one of the best.

Fight Depression Through Your Anus

2008-10-12T22:21:00.002-05:00

No kidding.
Who knew?
Somethings are just meant to be shared. You can thank me later.

In How-Good-bye-Depression, the author explains tips for clearing up your depressed mental state.

Here's the info from Amazon: Product Description

I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.

In addition, he also can have burned a strong beautiful fire within his abdomen. It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.

If you don't know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell.

What more can I say? Published in 2000 and sells for $15.25--eligible for free shipping.

Mr. Jon Turns Four

2008-08-17T21:04:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday Jon will be four-years-old. Today we had cake, sang, and opened gifts. Before the party started, while the cake was being iced, he proclaimed, "THIS is the birthday ever." All he wanted was a helicopter, which he received; complete with lights, sound, and a rescue hoist hook and basket. He does not know that Pops got a fly around the house remote control helicopter for his grandson's birthday. We thought we'd wait awhile to break it out of the box--some quiet rainy day.

Jon is still a big fan of trains. Two Fridays ago we spent the evening --ALL evening, until 10:30--in Kirkwood waiting for the AmTrack, for no good reason, mind you. Just because we wanted to see the train come in. We, that is, as in JON.

We waited, it was late, we waited, it was later, we waited and we watched the station attendant erase the board to fill in the new arrival a time. Another patient little boy(5), waiting for his grandparents from KC, said to Jon, "Hey, you could take the train home." To which Jon replied, "No, I tan't; it won't fit frough the door." I leaned over to Jon's ear and suggested his friend might mean that he could RIDE the train home. We all chuckled. And Jon could not figure out why.

Friday, Jon has his peanut challenge. They stick him in a room at the hospital and give him teeny bits of peanuts until he has an allergic reaction. Starts at 8:30 AM and could go until 4:30 unless he goes into anaphylactic shock - or not That's what the doc wants to know: just how allergic is he. Sound like one of those days we'll all be happy when it is over.

Mile High

2008-08-02T22:53:00.003-05:00

Record temperatures welcomed me to Denver on Thursday. And after frigid indoor temperatures I welcomed the 101 heat outside. My room at the Hyatt had a thermostat which I prompty set at 72--five degrees warmer than when I checked in.

When I arrived at the Sheraton to check out the L. booth in exposition hall, I walked into a lobby filled with large, burly men of all ages. In the same lobby, I noted all the women of a certain age dressed mainly in blue, black, and white. Not religious order habits, actually, but clearly they represented religious orders. The women and the men made for an unusual picture. I chuckled to myself.

Later, I asked what conventions were being held at the Sheraton. The burly dudes were gathered for the John Deere convention; the nuns were attending the Leadership of Religious Women Conference. The juxtaposition of the two tickled me.

Having nothing to do that evening, because I could not set up the booth until morning, I ventured out to the 16th street mall. Somebody in Denver knows what's what about drawing people into a downtown area. FREE shuttles travel up and down the mile long mall, closed to all other traffic. Cross streets have long lights giving pedestrians ample time to cross. Shops and restaurants line the street on both sides. No shortage of things to see and do.

Not enough time this trip to head off into the mountains. And due to the clouds and haze, I can't really see them clearly. But in the evening when the sun sets--it's a stunning view from the top of the Hyatt.

Salvation Army and bells

2007-12-15T21:40:00.000-06:00

I put money in the big red can while the bell ringer rang his bell outside of Schnucks last night. As I put the dollar bill and some change in the can, I paused and caught the bell ringer's eye.

"I have an idea," I said. "How about when people put money in the bucket, you stop ringing the bell."

"Ok," he said.

"I think if you STOP ringing the bell when people give you money, people would give you more money," I suggested.

"You think so? Maybe. I can try that."

"Good, I'll put my money in the bucket, and you can't ring the bell until I get into my car."

"Ok," he laughed, "it's a deal."

I placed my bill and change in the slit and waved goodbye. He raised the bell like he was going to ring it, but held it up in the air. "Go ahead, then. I'll wait." And he did.

Put money in the bucket and ask the bell ringer to stop ringing the bloody bell. If we all keep putting money in the bucket, the bell will never need to ring in annoying, constant ding dong ding, and they'll have lots of money to feed the poor.

It's a good idea.

Guess who is having a birthday in December?

2007-11-30T11:44:00.000-06:00

Recognize this fellow?
It's Jesus. Yes, of Nazareth. Or Bethlehem, depending on the source.

We have all of Advent to have ready what he wants most for his birthday this year. He's been asking for the same thing for over 2000 years.

Arrr, what's your pirate name? Savy?

2007-11-26T21:50:00.000-06:00

I'm Red Morgan Bonney....and who might you be, matey? ARRRR.

My pirate name is:

Red Morgan Bonney

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Workin' For a Livin'

2007-11-06T13:30:00.000-06:00

In france they have an expression that I like for the quotidian of life.

Expression: Métro, boulot, dodo

Pronunciation: [may tro boo lo do do]

Meaning: same old routine, work work work

Literal translation: subway, work, sleep

Sad that daily life can be capsulized as such.

Jon Goes Fishing

2007-11-06T13:27:00.000-06:00

NOTE: Several of my posts were bombarded with spam comments. So, I reset moderating comments and reposted the old posts.

Luckily, Jon had no hook on his line. Just a bobber. He only LOOKS like a fisherman. Photo album below--click on photo.

Jon and Pops Go Fishing

Meg Popp is trying to win a trip to Australia Zoo. View her video and vote for her to win. You have to register in order to vote but it takes NO time at all. Here's how:
Voting started today on the "win a trip to australia" site. I've been voting all day.

http://freetrip.australiazoo.com.au/?p=watch&v=e8tevkcign

Over-thinking Disney?

2007-11-06T13:25:00.002-06:00

The whole film is longer than this snippet from U Tube, but you'll get the idea.
I'm using this in class with regard to evaluation of an argument.
What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byaMd_PNyIY
U Tube: micky mouse monopoly

BOOK TO READ

2007-11-06T13:25:00.001-06:00

I needed something to read that had nothing to do with anything I am involved in at the present time. My library shelves are double deep, but I know I have not read every book. Shoving some books aside, pulling several out in order to read the back cover, I finally found one. West by Night.

With the first page, my adventure began. This woman is amazing. As the book opens we learn that she is a pilot in the 1930's on the African continent at a time when only very few men were flying over Africa. Hemingway has said of Markham that after reading her book he is embarrassed to call himself a writer. Each chapter begins a new story from her life in Africa--from her childhood through adulthood. What a courageous soul. Nearly impossible to believe.

The book is easy to read, a page turner from beginning to end. I would guess that you could check it out of the library. Take it home and enjoy the adventure.

KIN U spell?

2007-11-06T13:24:00.000-06:00

Now, in the privacy of your own computer screen, you can test yourself in spelling.
SPELLING TEST

Oh, go ahead. It's fifty words. Takes a few minutes.

If you need to improve. Try this technique.
Visualization

Good memory, just short

2007-10-16T10:43:00.000-05:00

Every day I speak to someone who thinks she/he is losing memory power. We forget dates, past events, names of books, movies, where we had dinner last Sunday. When my children were small, I was busy with many things. As soon as I was overly busy, I'd forget things like picking up the carpool (and my own children). Often, I lost my keys or forgot where I'd placed them. I still do all those things; luckily both of my kids grew up and drive their own cars. And I wonder, with the other people who are forgetful, where did my memory go?

The key, so it seems experts tell us today, is to forget unnecessary things in order to have the space to recall the important information. They explain is with this example:

"Using fMRI machines to monitor brain activity, the researchers showed that when volunteers searched for a fact they had committed to memory while being distracted by new but irrelevant information, their prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in decision making, was very busy. Once they recalled the information and were easily able to remember it when faced with continued distractions, prefrontal activity slowed considerably--meaning their brain had edited out the info clutter and was now free to do important things like make decisions."

One thing I have found that helps is to never commit anything to memory that you can look up. Frees up a lot of memory cells. So, when we meet next time and I've forgotten your name, don't be offended. I've simply downloaded that info in order to remember where I left my keys.

What's the buzz?

2007-08-27T19:48:00.000-05:00

The buzz is no doubt a mosquito scouting your fleshy parts for a landing site. Evey time I walk outside at or after dusk, I am bitten ALL over by mosquitoes. I googled "How to not get bitten" and found this horrible bit of information.

Can garlic keep mozzies away? The answer given was ‘No’ but the article contained a vital piece of information – that drinking alcohol attracts mosquitoes!

So, it's the wine with dinner that attracts the little buggers. Argh. Looking further into the problem at hand, I found the following advise

"B1 Vitamins (Thiamine) are another homemade remedy to keep mosquitoes away. Taking B1 supplements helps your body metabolize carbohydrates and fats and turns them into energy. It's also great for the heart. Not only that, but taking 25 to 50 milligrams of Thiamine three times a day makes your body produce an odor. Don't worry, other humans can't smell it, but female mosquitoes hate it.

You need to take Vitamin B1 for two full weeks before they kick into effect as an effective mosquito repellent.

Rubbing apple cider vinegar on your skin or taking vinegar capsules is another homemade remedy you can use. You need to drink two tablespoons of vinegar every day for this to work. If you can't stomach the idea of taking it straight, mix it in a few ounces of cold water and drink it down that way. Besides protecting yourself from those bloodsucking insects, apple cider vinegar has many other other health benefits as well. It can help relieve arthritis, lower cholesterol and more."

I'm ok with the B1 but the vinegar might not be my answer. My mother tells me to rub my arms and legs with a dryer sheet. She read it in a magazine. Mosquitoes do not like Bounce or whatever.

Other search engines generated a diverse pile of hoe to avoid being bitten. Most of them too bizarre to even think about.

No More Curls

2007-08-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

Handsome boy with new haircut.

Sweet Dreams are Made of Lemons

2007-07-13T07:59:00.000-05:00

Carrie Hudson (Kansas City area; extended family in St. Louis) has what I'd call double vision. She sees her own life with the joys and struggles of a cancer survivor, and she sees the greater joys and struggles of exercising her vision to make life better for other people. She's 12 and cancer free after 26 long months of treatment. She's also our great-niece, and great in this case is totally appropriate. Here's the story:

Leawood — Everyone’s heard the old adage: “When life hands you lemons, make some lemonade.”
But seldom has someone as young as Carrie Hudson been called upon to heed its advice — or taken it so literally.
For a couple of days this past June, however, the 12-year-old parishioner of Curé of Ars Parish in Leawood, ran her own Alex’s Lemonade Stand as a way to take the lemons she’d been dealt — cancer — and turn them into “lemonade” for others facing their own cancer journeys. The proceeds from the lemonade stand went directly to pediatric cancer research for treatment and cures.

"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (MT 18:3)." Children see with bigger imaginations than grown-ups; maybe because they are so small their egos don't stand in the way, blocking the vision of what is possible in life.

Fun on the dock

2007-07-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

Whose legs are these?

Grammy teaches Jon how to unhook the fish.

New York in the Summer

2007-07-06T11:21:00.000-05:00

The people in New York stand out in a crowd.

The artist of this bejeweled "girl" stood next to me in the audience at the Today show. The cameras did not scan our section until AFTER she left. But she did get to talk to Natalie in person off camera.

Other photos of the NY trip can be viewed here.
second attempt
http://picasaweb.google.com/meister.home/NewYorkSummer07

Ordination Photos

2007-06-05T13:04:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we celebrated another Sacrament. Bill only has one more and he'll have them all! But we can wait a long long time for that one.

All went well. Celebrations continued all evening and I slept all day Sunday.

To view the day click

Ordination 2007

Memories...

2007-05-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

Some things are best forgotten. Like, say, someone's breath. And, yet, if you just can't live without smelling the faint odor of your loved one's life breath, prepare ahead:
Breath Capture

Why I don't go whale watching

2007-05-10T07:48:00.000-05:00

Last time I had the opportunity to whale watch, off the coast of Vancouver, I opted not to sign up. The sea craft that would take me to the whales was a kayak. I'd seen video of a kayak overturned by a whale with a playful spirit. Though I am a good swimmer, I could not imagine swimming WITH whales, being eaten by a whale or another sea creature, or even just drowning in the cold sea.

Now, I have a new fear: Family scrambled to survive as boat sank off Hawaii
If you haven't heard the news, told today in the St. Louis Post, go read the story. I assume they've been on some number of tv shows; I'm a little behind in the news. This family will remember the day forever. And it won't be a pleasant memory.

The article doesn't say, but I don't think they saw any whales.

Math IS useful!

2007-05-02T12:36:00.000-05:00

As a liberal arts thinker, I have often dismissed math as something we have to put up with, like menstruation (we, being women--and men if you're married to one). I married an engineer so that I wouldn't have to really LEARN math myself. Having graduated from an engineering university, I have many friends who also like to do math; and while I enjoy their company, I've pondered the existential meaning of their mathematical nature.

Until now. Here is math put to [good] use . [from Mirabilis blog] Not necessarily useful, you understand. But if there's beer involved (and most of the math minds I know like beer) it must have been useful for them.

Mathematicians have come up with a formula that predicts how the head on a pint of beer will change after pouring.

Their advance could shed light on why the foam on a pint of lager quickly disappears, but the froth on a pint of Guinness sticks around.

The research could not only provide tips for better brewing, but could also have applications in metallurgy, say the authors.

I wonder if there's a study group formed to compare the speed of women and men's pouring technique. I'd like to volunteer for such a study. Particularly if I get to drink the beer.

I wonder if the equation takes into consideration how much beer someone has consumed before pouring the beer.

I wonder if they have thought to apply Heisenburg Uncertainty principle to the study of the foaming.

I wonder if there are graduate students getting credit [extra] for assisting the genius professor in the lab with the beer.

I wonder...

Sometimes a red hat

2007-04-30T20:04:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a red hat, that doesn't go and doesn't suit me, is just NOT enough!

When I'm 80, I'll wear a gold bow on my head,
that doesn't match and doesn't make any sense.
And I will know I am pretty.

When I'm over 80 I'll wear balloons on my head or any place I want!

[First I tried a copy and paste to get photos in post--doesn't work. Here they are!]

Have You Seen?

2007-03-14T18:25:00.000-05:00

This video came out ahwile back. If you haven't watched it, you don't know.

Did You Know?

Be Happy AND SMART

2007-03-14T10:38:00.000-05:00

I want some:

[from Science Daily] Antidepressants increase the presence of a growth factor in the brain, which then leads to a proliferation of new cells, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
New cells, huh? Does that translate as the more you have the smarter you are? If it helps memory, I'm likely to benefit.

However, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." Or so says Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961).

Thus, we might ponder why "adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don't understand that they need help and other kids don't want to associate with kids the social leaders say are outsiders.

As a result we have many highly intelligent people whose social development progresses much slower than that of most people and they have trouble coping with the stressors of life that present themselves to everyone. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of prison inmates are socially and emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped and a larger than average percentage of them are more intelligent than the norm."

I've never thought that criminals were smarter than the average bear....at least not the ones that get caught. In fact, we probably have all concluded that a life of crime is S-T-U-P-I-D. Maybe they are all depressed and need antidepressants to be smarter and happier and find a way to live within society with, say, more concern for the welfare of others and not so much their narcisstic selves.

Narcissistic individuals, those who live as though the world revolves around them. Infants and young children understand the world in this way, but they are young. As they gain more experience and begin to realize the self as separate from the ego, poof: the world begins to turn in another direction, one that involves others. One that results in relationships, healthy ones.

The neurotic tendencies of those who have not passed successfully through the stages of [Erikson's] human development with a positive slant toward moving into the next stage, drive the rest of us nuts. Neurotic people drive other people crazy. Psychotic people go crazy themselves.

Some people benefit from antidepressants. Having come full circle in this post, what have we learned? Not much. Feeling the need for Paxil, Prozac, or Zoloft? Know someone who could use a few more brain cells? I do. But this is NOT the place to mention any names.

WINTER: Bah Humbug!

2007-02-25T16:06:00.000-06:00

February can be the cruelest month in the midwest. We can see spring o'comin' but it ain't here soon enough. More rain, more ice, more ---don't say it...

Think of more pleasant climates, like Miami in the winter.

Here, take a vacation--

Miami photos

This day was born

2007-02-25T10:28:00.000-06:00

George Harrison

(1943–2001)

Born in Liverpool, England, musician George Harrison played lead guitar and sang with the Beatles, developing an interest in Eastern music and religion. After the Beatles’ break-up, he made solo albums, including All Things Must Pass (1970), and performed with other artists, notably ‘super-group’ The Traveling Wilburys (1988–90). He also produced several films, such as Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979). Harrison died after a long battle against cancer.

Takin' the Day Off

2007-02-19T12:41:00.000-06:00

As if I have nuffin' to do. But it's President's Day, and the world rests in their memory. Quite a creative lot of souls, I'd say, those presidents all; some more memorable than others. They inspire my creativity, and I searched for ways to doodle on the day we have off.

Here are some to view.
Doodle one
Forget therapy--analyze this, Freud.
Other medium for doodlers
Even presidents doodle.
Exposing some interesting insights.

There's a science to everything. I thought doodling was just, you know, doodling. How can there be rules?

Of course you can do art doodles any way you please, but we recommend the following rules:

Working space refers to the entire area of the graphic file - in this case 300 x 300 pixels. Image refers to the actual shapes, pictures or lines on the working space when you first open the file. Picture refers to the completed picture after you have finnished doodling.
You may enlarge the working space to 600 x 600 pixels.
You may not erase any part of the image nor change the colours of the image nor cover more than 5% of the image (this allows for dithering or drawing a few lines over the image in order to complete your picture.

I think the rules are made to broken. Doodling relieves stress.
And some people are better than others. Do scroll down to see the cartoon.

I thought doodles were those shapes and scribbles I make while I am talking on the phone or listening to a speaker and pretending to take copious notes. I usually sketch the speaker. Passive aggressive behavior, I guess.

Aside: If you wear reading glasses--fun thing to do when someone is boring you: Look at the person in the room with you and tilt your head so that your reading lens is right about half way down their face. Shrinks the face. Makes it squatty and distorted. Don't laugh out loud, though. Every face looks different. Try it with various people in the room. Especially fun at bored, oops, board meetings.

Living on Another Planet

2007-02-09T15:24:00.000-06:00

Do you know who Anna Nicole Smith is?
Of course you do.

Thursday, 8 February, I was the chaplain on the sixth floor of the FP Hospital, making my rounds to make initial visits like I always do. After the fifth visit, as I was sitting in the nurses station writing my chart notes, one of the nurses rushed into the station and grabbed a rolling chair and slid over next to me.
"I got somethin' to tell you," he said nudging my arm. I looked up from the chart with interest.
"Anna Nicole Smith just died. In her room. They don't know why she died," he told me.
"Anna Nicole Smith," I repeated, more a question than a statement.
"Yeah, Anna Nicole Smith."
My mind was turning. Had a seen a Smith this morning, I wondered.
He saw my perplexed look and continued, "She died, in her room. No one knows how she died."
"Smith." My mind was spinning. Smith, Smith, Smith. I didn't recall any Smiths. I hadn't heard them call a "code" and I had not gotten a page. I looked at my pager. When someone dies they always call a chaplain. Maybe they called the CCU chaplain. So I opened my folder to check the patient census sheet. No Smiths on the 6th floor. Maybe she was in CCU.
"What floor is she on?" I asked.
"What?" What what, I thought. Something is not right about this conversation.
"Is she a patient?"
"No! Anna Nicole Smith." He looked at the other nurses in station. They looked at him and then at me. "Anna Nicole Smith?" one of the offered, "You, know?"
"Um, I guess not. But I'm guessing she was not a patient," I admitted.

They took turns explaining the story behind Anna Nicole Smith. Intriguing, I thought, and said so. None of it sounded even vaguely familiar.

They all said it's ok not to know who she is or was. But I know they were all wondering what planet I live on when I am not at the hospital. Obviously one that does not care about Anna Nicole Smith.

The World Turns

2007-02-06T07:50:00.001-06:00

Cultural disaster or turning point that will be noted by hisotrians to come? Perhaps print media has entered its end stage. I'll agree that holding paper in the form of a magazine or book adds a tactile sense to the reading experience. But the newspapers are a hassle and I for one will not mind their extinction.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.

The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals.

Can you spell SPA....................

2007-02-03T21:48:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to midwestern winter! Temperatures will not reach above freezing for the next several days. Pinch me, somebody, so I can wake up back in Key Biscayne.

Last week I died and went to the Ritz Hotel on an island off the coast of Florida for four days. In addition to lounging by the waterfall at the pool, I enjoyed the spa amenities. The first thing I noticed is the scent of the entire spa and fitness area. A quick look in the gift shop and the nose found mango candles. Ah ha! The smell of the spa.

Entering through the spa doors, I walked down a long, softly lit, softly carpeted, well appointed hallway, through French doors surrounded by the hint of mango. The door to the women's spa opens into a warmly lit and cozy lounge where each guest is greeted by the hostess who gives you sandals and offers you a key to a locker. I thought the lounge was cool enough just to stay right there! An inviting couch, magazines, botanical prints, live orchids, healthy snacks, water or light cranberry refresher or hot herbal tea whisper, "relax, time has stopped, be here, be you , be now." Filled with an other worldly Zen-like transcendental peace I sipped my lemon water, slipped into the spa slippers, and floated through the next door to the locker area, which is nicer than most people's bedrooms. Much!

I changed into my silky robe with terry lining and ascended into the mango scented spa area. First, the steam room, then more water, then the jacuzzi, then more water and five minutes of sinking my body into the cushions of the wicker chair. Ready set go...into the sauna. Ah, but I brought with me a fluffy washcloth, folded and chilled in cucumber water to place on my eyes.

How can I recreate this in my own bathroom? I wondered. Well, the sauna and steam rooom will take a major rehab. But the mango scent and soft lighting, cucumber towels and robe are an easy addition to any home. Chilled lemon water with a splash of cranberry can be stored in the fridge for spa day.

The locker room [really far to harsh a description for the lovely environment] was complete with hair products, disposable razors for the shower, lotions, conditioners, body gel soap, and personal hygiene products. Silly me; I brought from home in my 1 quart zip locked baggy for the plane all those personl items! Who knew? The spa also offered the hair dryer and the flat iron and the curling iron and the hot rollers. And more fresh soft white towels than Macy's.

I found mango tea candles at the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden.
First step to home spa accomplished!

For years I've kept potpourri in a Lenox bone china bowl that I bought for nothing at a flea market in Paducah or somewhere. It's filled with water, now, waiting for ice, cucumber slices, and water to soak the hand towels in. I noticed the hotel room bathroom had a lovely silver tray that held the shampoo and lotion. Finally, an everyday use for the wedding gifts of silver bowls, trays that have slept for years in the dining room hutch. And orchids! Don't forget the orchids. I've killed two in the last two years. Better to buy artificial ones in pots that last forever and look more real and never drop their leaves. Every bathroom needs an orchid.

The memory of the Ritz spa is etched in my mind. Each pore and cell of my body remembers the creature comforts of the otherwordly environment. May be a slight problem in creating the time I'll need to lock myself in the bathroom at home and light the tea candles.

Next post: I hope I'll have photos downloaded and ready to share.

Puttin' On the Ritz

2007-01-31T08:56:00.000-06:00

Run along the island shore. Soak up the early morning sunshine. Lunch on the beach. Fun in the sun. Relax poolside. Mild Florida winter temps. Fresh seafood, vegetables, prepared by the french chef. Tomorrow replay the whole day.

Relatively speaking---

2007-01-24T06:44:00.000-06:00

I want a president with good judgement. The president doesn't have to have be the smartest person on the planet because the president has a steady stream of advisors with lots of information, numbers, and plans. The president needs to have good judgement in order to sift through all the muck and make the right choice.

Has Hillary Clinton forgotten that we all know she married Bill Clinton? That does not show good judgement. And we remember his presidency and the endless stream of media attention that distracted from governing our nation with reagrd to his sexual exploits. Definitely a lack of good judgement in the whole family.

Is it too much to ask that we have a choice to elect someone who is not related to anyone who has ever been president? I'm tired of Kennedy relations, Bush relations, and Clinton relations. I think I might be tired of Arkansas, Texas, and the North Eastern states, as well. Californian is a weary topic, too. Maybe Indiana or Illinois or Kansas are states that breed people who have good judgement and have no genetic relation to anyone who has ever been president. We can only hope.

Another Shade of Pale: the Other White Meat

2007-01-20T16:16:00.000-06:00

I think I'll pass on those juicy BBQ ribs. After reading the Smithfield article my taste buds are still numb. I didn't need the photo they show, either.

I hear Australian cattle ranchers give red wine to their beefy herd. If red wine tastes good with a steak, they thought WHY not go double or nothing. Like free range chickens, these will be HAPPY cows.

[via: Boing site; Mirabilis, respectively]

Don't Delay Happiness

2007-01-20T14:27:00.000-06:00

Reliving childhood memories is sweet. Here's a clip from a movie I watched over and over and over as a child. Shirley's feet barely move. I thought she was always dancing.

this post has been edited to direct you to a new ST movie

Hello Mudder,

2007-01-13T14:32:00.001-06:00

These are photos taken with the new camera, explained below. But FIRST!!!

Everyone say hello to Muzzy. C'mon. Just click on "comment" below. Muzzy has found this blog and enjoys reading it. She says I should write a book. As long as I don't write it about her--but she didn't say that! To see the comments, Mum, just click on comments and they should pop up. To add your own, follow the directions.

I have a new camera. A Fujifilm V10. There is nearly NO delay time when you snap a photo. Here's a sample of the first pictures. The new foosball table is awesome. The little winter village is quaint, and that is the Great Wall of China behind the houses. Nice effect.

I can't wait to go out and take s'more pictures. The old digital Kodak is finding a new home with a graduate art student in Minneapolis. The fuji V10 has a 3" display screen--that's the same size as the camera itself. It's just the size of a a deck of cards. The Cnet link is a keeper; they review all kinds of stuff. Aaaaanyway, the V10 only has x3 zoom and I wanted x6 or more, but those are pricey and large. So, I went for FAST, excellent photos, and orange. Mine's orange. Nice.

Just When...

2007-01-13T14:28:00.000-06:00

Just when I've figured out most of the idiosyncracies of Blogger and posting, they invite me to RE-up with the NEW and IMPROVED version. One click and they do all the work. I'm looking for differences on this build a post menu....no, don't see any. Looks the same. Well, now, there's a post options icon to click on which allows or disallows backlinks and comments. Ok. And a place to change the date and time. A place for labeling the post--in addition to the title.

I'll check the template.

What's Next? St. Oscar (Wilde)?

2007-01-10T08:51:00.000-06:00

I hear Catholics warning others about one author or another, some condemned by the church or some who have written things opposed to Church teaching. Take for example Fr. Anthony DeMellow S.J., whose books and lectures were banned from local Catholic bookstores a few years ago. Too Eastern in his thought, the Vatican judged.

What about the "poet, playwright, gay icon and deathbed convert to Catholicism," who " has been paid a rare tribute by the Vatican"?

"Wilde [as in Oscar] (1854-1900) had long been regarded with distaste by the Vatican — a dissolute and disgraced homosexual who was sentenced for acts of gross indecency over his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas." And now, one of the pope's closest aids has included quotations from Wilde in a new book. "Father Sapienza said that he had devoted the lion’s share of Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity to Wilde because he was a 'writer who lived perilously and somewhat scandalously but who has left us some razor-sharp maxims with a moral.'"

In contrast, the congragation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned Fr. DeMello, stating, "But already in certain passages in these early works and to a greater degree in his later publications, one notices a progressive distancing from the essential contents of the Christian faith."

The final statement of the documet regarding Fr. De Mello warns: "With the present Notification, in order to protect the good of the Christian faithful, this Congregation declares that the above-mentioned positions are incompatible with the Catholic faith and can cause grave harm." Have they read Fr. Sapienza's new book? Have they read any biography of Oscar Wilde?

Mr. Wilde was, however, not a Jesuit. And we all know how dangerous those Ignation warriors can be. While the Church later lifted the ban on Fr. De Mello's work, they did issue a word of caution to readers who may not understand the full context of his lectures and teachings. And now they have lightened their opinion of dear Oscar, a gay rascal, albeit a deathbed Catholic.

At the Bistro

2006-12-11T08:50:00.000-06:00

On the last day of the semester, I scheduled a hair cut at the salon located in an ever popular shopping mall. The second week of December is not the time to go to the mall, especially on a Friday afternoon. Long ago, I found a double-secret parking area where I've never been left without a spot nearest the door. And this Friday, even in December, was no exception.

Inside the mall, however, was standing room only. The Food Court was a zoo. Hungry and tired from teaching, answering questions like, "Do we have to take the final?" "When is the final?" for hours in a row, I had to eat before sitting in the salon chair, or I knew I'd faint.

Suddenly, I remembered the Bistro at Nordstroms. Someone recently told me I should check it and today was the day.

Standing in line, a long line, I became aware that these patrons were a different lot from the Food Court zoo. Strollers, toddlers, shoppers, and clerks stood in this line with a different attitude. What a great idea, I thought. Here I am far from the madding crowd.

Two blonde 30-something sisters with their daughters about four or five-years-old, one child slighlty taller than the other, holding hands and dressed in pink, come out of the Bistro looking calm and happy. Practically skipping into the Nordstrom's women's department.

Standing next to me in line is a man I identify as distincly non American. He is casually dressed in tan cuffed slacks and a black rather sporty zipped down jacket revealing a dark naby dress shirt. His black leather shoes have a decorative buckle partially hidden under the cuff. His hair is perfectly cut, with the front, now gray, combed straight back where it mingles with the black wavy hair in the back. It's a European style.

A woman walks up, "Hi, sweetie!" I think that if I were meeting this man for lunch, I would not say Sweetie. "Darling" I'd say, or I'd use his name. She's not gorgeous. She's not blonde. She's not trim. She's not well dressed. She's average. Medium height shorter than I'd expect, 5'3"), wearing jeans, a little rump heavy, but average. She has a coat length jacket on and a striped turtle neck (from Macy's when Macy's was Famous; I saw them two years ago; a friend of mine has one). Her hair shows no gray and comes a bit past her shoulders with highlights about a year old. When she speaks I notice braces--the invisible kind you aren't supposed to notice. She's American, mid-western accent. He speaks to her with an accent which sounds Greek to me.

They converse about the day, his day, her day. Soon it sounds medical. A doctor. She holds her own, asking diagnostic questions, and shows an understanding of his dilemna with a patient. Maybe he married a nurse. More likely she married a doctor whom she met when she was a nurse at Barnes-Jewish. I see the ring. It's gargangtuan. They are next to order.

The line moves ahead and I step up to the counter to order my Nicoise Salmon Salad and Michelobe Ultra; I pay, turn around and look for a table. I see a booth seat with no chair across the small table--perfect a single diner. No one is seated at the next table with whom I'll share the long booth seat to my right. But there's a jacket on the back of the chair.

After two or three minutes, the nurse and doctor return to the table. I now recognize the jacket on the chair as his. I continue to write in my notebook, details of the Bistro and them. They are 18 inches away from my elbow. Now this is surreal. She'a on the booth seat, he's facing her and kitty cross from me.

I notice the St. Louis Blues insignia on his navy shirt. I can't hear the details of their lunch conversation over the droaning voices of fellow diners and the clatter of dishes in the Bistro. His pasta arrives and her soup of the day. They share fries. They drink ice-tea.

The Bistro is crowded. All the table are filled now. I see no other patrons dining alone. And no one esle is drinking beer. I'm impressed with myself. Mothers and daughters, girlfriends taking time away from shopping, and gray haired couples relax in the chic Bistro enjoying heaping bowls of Ceaser salad and sandwhiches made with fresh, crisp bread.

My Nicoise salad arrives. Presentation is splendid. I'm ravenous. A large piece of warm salmon rests atop the greens with a hard boiled egg quartered and evenly arranged at the edge of the shallow bowl. Long thin green beans, "French" the menu said, peak out from under the colorful assortment of lettuce, olives, red onion, and potatoes. I dig in, with good grace. Delecious. Better than I could expect salad to be. The beer is refreshing, too, between bites. I'm totally distracted from my neighbors and barely notice that they are finished their lunch.

I look up when they stand to leave. They don't look in my direction and they don't say good-bye.

A Job is a Job is a Job

2006-12-03T21:34:00.000-06:00

By any other name, a job is a job. I was reflecting on my past jobs. Make your own list and be surprised at what you are willing to do for pay.

First job: washing dishes for eighty cents an hours at St. Agnes Nursing home. Prying off the sticky, pastey, no need for chewing, hardened food from 100's of plates and sloshing them around in hot water is a JOB.

Stix Bare and Fuller kitchen help: prime responsibility of placing rolls on plates with butter, and filling water glass, and keeping catsup bottles filled. $1.25. Any idiot can do this job.

Life guard. Definitely a better job. Things are looking up. Wisely I kept the job for two (3?) summers. Pay was poor but the job was great.

Plaque Shack sales clerk. Relatives owned the store and I worked there one summer. No complaints.

Newspaper reporter--features. UMR paper. Very little pay! And a former judge threatened to sue the university over one of my article. Thus ended my life as a journalist.

Volunteered for three months after graduation to feed and read to the dying patients at a hospital in Rolla, MO.

First REAL job: Houston, TX. Records Management at the Offshore Company. Very interesting and good pay.

AEROBIC DANCE instructor-- i know, i know, you can't believe it. But it's true. Got my picture in the Peoria Newspaper--FULL PAGE. Really embarassing to see oneself so large in print. I have a copy. I'll have to make a copy and put it on the blog. Yeah, right!

Univ. of IL--Springfield co-host, director, writer of an NPR show for children. Absolutely a favorite job. Tons of fun. Never like the sound of my voice on the air, though.

Lincoln Land Community College-- English Instructor.

Antelope Valley Community College --English Instructor

[I'm beginning to see a pattern; though it sounds like I work an amusement park.]

Pikeville College --Coordinator of Corporate and Private Grants, Editor of Colleg Paper, Education feature writer for city paper [oops, back into journalism]

Music Teacher --grade school, part-time, including directing Christmas Pagent each year.

Kent State Univ. -- English Instructor. We didn't live there long enough to really even mention this job, but they hired me to teach. It counts.

Univ. of Southern Indiana -- Professor of English

Newburgh Historic Society --grants and publicity, mostly volunteer.

Meramec Community College--Prof. of English

UA campus minister

Teacher for Lay Ministry program

Editor for Catholic book publisher

Writer of x# of publications for various Catholic publishers

Hospital chaplain.

Teaching English at MCC, once again

And the winner is LIFE GUARDING. Great tan, good hours, free swimming, when you save someone from drowning or even if they die, you get the rest of the day off--but they don't pay you after you go home. I'm thinking of getting recertified and applying at the Y.

That's 22 total jobs. And still going.

How Old Is Esther Williams?

2006-11-18T10:12:00.000-06:00

Well, the first question might be who the hell is Esther Williams? She's a movie star that swam in all of her films. Glitzy, splashy Hollywood style movies (couldn't resist the pun).

Muzzy (nearly 80) saw a commercial with a young, really young, mom cooing to her adorable, chubby baby. "That's Esther Williams' baby. Isn't it cute?"

"Nah, nah, that's not Esther Williams. THE Esther Williams, you mean?"

"YE-E-E-S," she said sarcastically, "Esther Williams. You know Esther Williams?"

"The swimmer."

"Yes. She's wonderful in all her movies."

"That's not Esther Williams. She's like 80."

"What? Oh, stop. That was her right there."

"Mom, she's older than you. That woman was in her twenties."

"Esther Williams is maybe 40 at the most."

"FORTY!!!"

Then, she used my full name, middle name and all! "Yes, she's young. That's her baby."

"Her daughter's baby, maybe, or her granddaughter's baby. But Esther is OLD. Too old for babies."

"She is not. Don't be ridiculous." Now she's angry.

"Ok, I'll go google her." And I left the room knowing that no matter what I found out she wouldn't believe me.

When I returned, I said, "She was a member of the 1940's Olympic Team and her first movie was with Mickey Rooney. And I think he's dead. She's old."

"Now I know you are making things up. He is not dead, he's about 50."

I'm thinking I should just give up about now. Obviously, she wants Esther to be young, eternally, as she is in all the films. But something drives me pursue this ludicrous venture. "When did you see her movies?"

"I don't know. They're on from time to time."

"No, I mean first see her in the movies." Then, I jump to the chase. "She was born in 1922. You were born in 1927. It be--like you having a baby."

"Well,............................ she's just 40. You're wrong. Not 1922, that must be someone else."

Here we go, I pushed her wheelchair through the house to the computer and showed her the Wikepedia on Esther Williams which was showing a photo of Esther at about 20.

"Yes, that's her. Look, see, she's still young."

"IN THE PHOTO, mom. Not today. Read this--born in 1922."

"Oh. I can't believe that."

So, we go back to the kitchen and she says, "I bet no one knows that."

"Everyone knows she's 80 something. I'll call someone and ask. I bet your sister knows." She scowlls at me as I pick up the phone and dial. "Hi, hey, do you by chance know how old Esther Williams is?"

"I guess she's about 40. Why?"

I am shocked and appauled. Has the world gone mad? Is this a dream? "When did you first see her movies?"

"I guess when I was young."

"How old?"

"When we were in school we used to go watch her in the movies."

"It's 2006. How old is Esther Williams."

Gasp! "She must be in her 80's."

"I am handing the phone to my mother. Tell her how old Esther Williams is."

My mother's face says it all. Esther, we now all agree, is 85.

Why do I feel NO relief, no sense of having won the battle. I feel guilty. I've taken away their false reality. What difference does it make if Esther Williams is 25, 40, or dead? I really did think she was dead actually. So, I guess I'm happy to find out she isn't. We should all be happy she's alive and well and recuperating from an infection for which she was hospitalized in sunny California.

Moral of the story: We are only as old as we feel until someone comes along and throws cold water with an old swimmer in it right in our lap.

What was Once Lost But Now Is Found?

2006-11-18T10:10:00.000-06:00

You may have answered Grace, and you'd be right, of course. But this week it is BLUE LOVIE. Seems BL was hiding near the front door under a big ball. Tricky bear.

WANTED!!

2006-11-12T17:38:00.000-06:00

Some of us remember losing our favorite stuffed friend, truck, or doll when, against your mother's advise, we took the favored toy out of the house (e.g. say the favorite Lime Sherbert Strawberry Shortcake doll you lost at the ARCH!). The experience may have required you to have counseling later in life. Or maybe you are considering having counseling, unaware that the lost bunny or doll haunts your psyche to this day.

A certain little fella we all know has lost his Lovie. We knew it would happen one day. If you see a blue Lovie somewhere in the vacinity of Cape Girardeau, MO, let us know. Or if you see one for sale in your neighborhood, do give us a call. Here's what they look like. The distraught child would like the blue bear.

http://www.aspecialgift.com/lovies.asp

The Russians Are Coming!

2006-11-06T14:55:00.000-06:00

Actually, the Russians have been here and gone. The business associates that B. works with in Russia came to St. Louis, rather than the Americans going over to Russia, as has been the habit. One Russian engineer and his translator [V. and N. the same folks featured in B's blog] were here for the last week. We visited the Wine Country, Lake St. , Louis complete with kayaking and pontoon party boat, the Arch, the Blues game, Halloween in Wildwood, and various restaurants. They were impressed with our fair city. I gained five pounds!

Problem with losing weight is that I always know where to find it, so it isn't actually lost.

The translation between me saying something to the Russian, the translator phrasing it into Russia, his reply in Russian, translated to English left plenty of time to eat whatever was in front of me. Over and over. And chase it with beer, scotch, wine.... The Halloween jokes brought to the door by the children trick or treating were NOT so funny after being translating into Russian. Consider how much is lost in the following joke:
Why doesn't Piglet have more friends? Answer: Because he plays with Pooh.
Not even after the Russians had LOTS of Anheiser Busch products.

In Russian, the joke makes NO sense. Explaining the humor is a lost cause. There were worse jokes, I won't even go into here. The Wildwood home owners had NEVER heard of asking the trick-or treaters for jokes. Can you imagine? GADZOOKS. Silly people in West County. Well, these people are actually Candians, but really they HAVE lived in the states for 50 years.

St. Louis is the only city we've lived in (and we've lived in seven or so) where trick or treaters tell jokes when they come to the door. But you have to ask them. The home owners were amazed that all the children had jokes ready. Geez.

Speaking of St. Louis traditions--we let the Russians go home without eating toasted ravioli or White Castle. I know I know, we are such poor tour guides and hosts. But the one remaining British chap who is here for the rest of the week has tried the toasted ravioli. He was not quite sure what to make of it.

I lost seven pounds while I was in England for thirty days. They NEED toasted ravioli. British food is only as good as the ethnic restaurant you find to eat in.

When all the visitors have gone back across the pond, I'm going on a diet. This week we've still got The Hill, The Loop, and White Castle to look forward to. And beer. Lots of beer.

Reminds of a Joke

2006-10-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

I visited my nearly 80 - year-old mother this weekend, and she told me that her cell phone continues to ring. She has a cell phone designed for five-year-olds, the Firefly. It's cute as a bug. When we got it for her [she wanted a cell phone wihtout "all those buttons"], we programed in the two main numbers, for emergencies, and a handfull of others in her phonebook--which to this day she cannot use. But we call her every once in awhile on the cell phone, so she feels connected, not only to family but also to the twenty-first century. Everybody MUST have a cell phone. Even when they never leave the house, it seems.

Her Firefly, she explained, rings and rings for over an hour and she can't shut it off. "Did you try to turn it off?" we asked.

"How?"

I took the phone and turned it off, showing her the exact step of pushing the red (hang up) button. It went off. I noted that her description of the Firefly's continued ringing sound was not one the phone is programed to make. The Firefly has about five different "rings" and to me they all sound the same, but it is not a "ring." This was my first clue.

The phone needed charging, and I guessed maybe this was some signal the phone makes to say "plug me in." So, we plugged it in.

Two days later she calls me. "My phone is ringing again and I can't shut it off."

"Huh." I replied. "Have you tried to turn it off?" I asked.

"How?"

"Push the red "hang up" button."

"It doesn't go off and it won't stop ringing."

I can hear the soud its making over the phone. This is not a cell phone noise. But I play along.
I picked up my cell phone and called the Firefly. It rings, she answers. "It works," she shouts.

"Yes, but I still hear that noise. Is it doing that in your ear?"

Long pause. "Ya know," she starts, "it isn't coming from the cell phone."

What a surprise! I think to myself. "Where is it coming from?"

"I think it's that clock on the counter," she says. The clock that DOES NOT WORK, cannot be programmed by a normal human being [and I have a sixth sense for digital watches and clocks] and should not have batteries in it. But she insists it works --it's supposed to actually SPEAK the time when you push the button. Though, what use this feature is I cannot guess. And now the clock that is impossible to set for month and day and time is beeping. Obviously an alarm of some kind.

"Take the batteries out of it," I suggest. She wheels herself over to the counter and I hear a lot fo rattling. Finally, the beeping stops.

'It WAS the clock," she says. "I thought it was the phone."

This ranks right up there with the weekend before when she swears some one came into the house and took a shower early Sunday morning. Why would someone break in and take a shower? Silver or jewels maybe, but a shower? And after they took a shower they set the damn clock's alarm to go off in the middle of day and disguise itself as a cell phone.

House Hunting

2006-09-28T08:17:00.000-05:00

Or is that House Haunting. Tis the season, after all.

We have been looking for a house. Something tres modern, preferably. But this new listing may be one to consider. If the price was just a bit lower; current listing price is $1.75 million.

More information here.

What's the opposite of color blind?

2006-09-15T16:44:00.000-05:00

Answer: Tetrachromat---a woman who can see four distinct ranges of color, instead of the three that most of us live with.

Found this at Mirabilis---

"Dr. Neitz, who conducts his research with his wife Maureen, said only women have the potential for super color vision.

That's because the genes for the pigments in green and red cones lie on the X chromosome, and only women have two X chromosomes, creating the opportunity for one type of red cone to be activated on one X chromosome and the other type of red cone on the other one. In a few cases, women may have two distinct green cones on either X chromosome.

But it's unlikely, Dr. Neitz said, that all of the women with four types of color cones will have the potential for superior color vision, because for many, their two red cones will be so close to each other in the wavelengths they detect that they won't see things much differently than a three-color person does.

He estimated that 2 percent to 3 percent of the world's women may have the kind of fourth cone that lies smack between the standard red and green cones, which could give them a colossal range."

Interesting but it gets me not closer to knowing why my husband can NOT tell when I get my hair cut. It does explain other things...like knowing what ties go with what shirts.

Slow Movin' Money

2006-09-12T09:14:00.000-05:00

My $5 bill came from Montana. It took 187 Days, 16 hrs, 41 mins. to travel a distance of 942 at an average speed of 5 miles per day.

Now I have to say goodbye to Abe and spend him wisely. I shouldn't be thinking about where to spend him, such that he will travel someplace far away and fast. The rules of Where's George strictly prohibit artificial spending to speed George, Abe, and gang around the country.

This particular $5 bill has a stamped message on it which reads:
See Where I've Been
Track Where I Go Next!
www.wheresgeorge.com

And the message is in red on the back near the left side of DI10724322A series 2003. If you happen to see Abe, say hello for me. Don't send him back.

Monday in My Dull Life

2006-09-11T20:19:00.000-05:00

You know life is really dull when the most exciting thing you can do on a Monday is track your money via the internet to see WHERE GEORGE has been.

That's right. Little George on the $5 bill we received in Minnesota can be tracked online.
WHERE's GEORGE at its very own .com
Actually, in the case of my bill, it's Where's Abe?, but no one seems to care.

The site is very slow and almost causes me to lose patience and give up. But I wait.....
The rules for tracking George or Abe are specific. You can't go to the bank get a wad of bills and copy the serial numbers to the WG.com site. Nope. That's cheating. Where's George only wants to know where George goes in an organic, natural course of events. You can't mail George to arelative or friend across the country. That's cheating, too. Unless, I suppose it's the money you are sending to your nephew in Alaska.

Can't wait to see Where George goes from here~!

Visiting Gunther's World

2006-09-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

The Minniapolis Science Center is one of the view venues for BodyWorlds.
An amazing exhibit. I spent the first half-hour trying not faint. Breathe! Breathe! In a crowded exhibitions hall, one room after another, people filed by the mannequin-esque figures. The silence of the crowd was noticeable, leading me to wonder if everyone was thinking what I was thinking: These people were once alive. And now they're....plastic.

The bodies are skin-less, posed, and artificial looking. Except they are not artificial and something about them is too real. One body is only muscles on a skeleton; another is only the nerves. In the middle of the rooms are glass cases showing organs, limbs, bones, tumorous ridden stomachs, black lungs, and babies of varying womb-ages. No one speaks, except quietly. In hushed tones they tell each other that Uncle Clinton has the same arthritic knees and Aunt Sally has a new hip just like that one. Most people just stare.

You can't touch, not that many people would probably. The muscles, arteries, and bones are plasticized anyway. The cadavers frozen and sliced look like giant slides of the body. They would feel like glass plates no doubt, too. One slice is a fat man next to a slice of a thin man. Notice the thick layer of FAT around the first man. Like the fat on pig when you buy pork at the story, only thicker.

I was not hungry when I left. I'd show you photos, so you could start a diet this week, but they don't let you take photos. You can buy a DVD. Or a book. The photos online are scant. You can google Body Worlds Gunther and sites pop up but none are worthy of the exhibit. I will find out if it is coming to town and let you know.

Read the original blog on Body Worlds here.

Down Iowa

2006-09-06T13:45:00.000-05:00

The Walters home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and rests on an overlook with great view of the Quasqueton river.

Check out the space saving bathroom! Obviously NOT a priority for Mr. Wright. The sink slides over on top of the toilet and frees up space in the bathtub/shower. It is not much bigger than a bathroom on a train. And those are the smalles bathrooms EVER.

At the river's edge is a boat house, also Wright designed. The property is vast and surrounded by woods for lots of privacy. Actually, the whole town of Quasqueton is a pretty private place. Took two phone calls from the highway and roads to find this place.

For views from someone else's trip go here:
http://www.peterbeers.net/interests/flw_rt/Iowa/Cedar_Rock/cedar_rock.htm

Up Iowa

2006-09-06T13:36:00.000-05:00

Stopped along the route north in Iowa because we happened to see a sign for the Frank Lloyd Wright house. They have moved the Stockman/Wright house from its original site (white square house). We took the tour, but first we skipped across the street to the little village of Mission Style houses built along a creek. The owners share an idealic park-like setting joining their yards and the view of a waterfall. The homes were designed by like-minded architects in the Mission/Wright style. We found these quite by accident and thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

Minnie-Me in Minneapolis

2006-09-05T10:27:00.000-05:00

In the lobby of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minnie-Me poses with minnie art.

Minnie-Me enjoyed a tour of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with current grad-art student, Kelley. In this photo, Minnie-Me is having a close look at the process for print making in the studio.

Everyone Likes Good Manners

2006-08-28T17:02:00.000-05:00

I have never used a urinal. Most men, in western societies at least, use urinals all the time. I was unaware until today that there is such a thing as "good urinal manners." However, I payed the Urinal Game and got 100% correct.

If I could get one of those attachments for female urination [emiction, miction, micturition, uresis] that allows one to pee standing up, I think I should be able to use the men's room. I do have good urinal manners. No one should mind.

Info on said attachments:
My Sweet Pee
Travel Mate
TM is my personal favorite, though I don't have one and have not tried one. But it comes with accessories--why not accessorize?
Shewee
The Whiz
P-Mate

I have been told that the line-persons for electric companies use a portable device that allows men or women up in the boom carts above the roadways, fixing the wires, to urinate in a comfortable, sanitary, and discreet manner. Why shouldn't we all have such a device available for easing the need to go?

Yisrayl?

2006-08-25T07:04:00.000-05:00

Not that anyone could possibly believe someone who actually spells his name Y-I-S-R-A-Y-L, much less after he opens his mouth and predicts nuclear war. Yet, here he is, Yaweh's prophet for our time, saying just that. View the prophet.

End of Summer Cruise?

2006-08-25T06:53:00.000-05:00

The perfect way to end a lovely summer: a cruise along the coast (or down the mudy Mississippi to New Orleans--before the hurricanes come) in your own 37' diesel cruiser. And not just ANY cruiser but the very boat that took Gilligan and the Skipper, too, on a "three hour tour." "A three hour tour." There are photos at that link of the S.S. Minnow if you are interested, interior and exterior. The cost for the perfect cruiser is $99,000, asking price. She looks seaworthy.

Caution: there are links to other formidable sailboats and the like. If you're prone to impusle buying, don't even go there.

"A House is Just a Place..."

2006-08-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

"A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff." Wise words of a 21st Century philosopher.

The liquid airplane bomb threats reveals that most of us bring our stuff with us. Or at least we try to bring as much stuff with us as possible. The Washington Post examines the modern compulsion to never leave home without "it," concluding that we are a multi-tasking people, unable to be truly free because our attachment to stuff makes us both poor and overburdened.

I notice my own addiction to stuff when I pack the car nearly every time I leave the house: A book bag of books to return to the library, a mini-lunch cooler so my water doesn't boil in the parked car, a bag of medicines to take to my mother to refill her weekly dispenser, another to-do bag with a magazine in case I get stuck someplace, a sketch book and pencils. I like to have a digital camera along, too, but it requires a battery charger, as does my cell phone. If I'm teaching that day, I'll need my Land's End canvas briefcase overflowing with student papers and lecture notes. Invariably I have a meeting that day with a team of people I'm working with on a workshop which necessitates another canvas bag of notebooks and sources. In the back seat is an ever present red Scoth-plaid metal lunch box with wet ones, contact lubricant, nail file, napkins, a straw, a mirror, blush, a headband for "bad hair" afternoons, and anything else I can cram in and still close it.

The Post explains that we are all carrying more stuff, so I guess I'm not alone. The proof is found in the bookbags with wheels now manufactured not just for graduate students with 600 pounds of books, but for the grade school set. Children have actually been injured by their over filled bookbags.

Are we an insecure culture? Do we lack a basic trust in ourselves to make it back home? Home to our stuff?

I've tried this month to cut back on the stuff. I emptied my car, threw all the stuff in a box, and put only the ESSENTIAL stuff in the center console. I'm not even going to say what I think is essential. Trust me, it is. But I still cart those canvas bags for each occassion on the multitasking day ahead.

I have successfully made a habit of tossing out salt and ketchup. Unlike some people (you know who you are) who keep these "food" items lest you starve while your car hangs precipitously over the edge of cliff after you've skidded off the road during an ice storm, not to be found for five days; all because you read a story in the paper about the guy who lived for five days on ketchup and odd fries that were lodged in his seat cushions in an identical situation. I've seen your car parked next to mine, and you, too, could use a little unpacking.

A little advise on what not to carry is here at your finger tips. Good ol' online wiki of information. And other swell links can be found at 43 folders. Let's not stuff ourselves with too many links. Just empty your pockets and your glove compartment. Give it a month. If you need something, take it out of the box and return it to the car or bag. If you don't need it in 30 days, you don't need it. Free at last, free at last.....

Putting it off?

2006-08-21T14:06:00.000-05:00

Let's give this a try. Here's an audio file for listening to 10+2*5 Work the Dasy

powered by ODEO
which gives you some of the details for moving through procrastination or just getting your work up and going.

I think I'll suggest it to students who are working on their English essays this semester.

Procrastination is Your Middle Name?

2006-08-17T16:58:00.000-05:00

My middle name is Procrastination. I'm the Queen of the Land of Procrastination, in fact. I will put off just about anything, even good things, just because .... I can. My friend Pat C. says, "Never postpone pleasure." I've attempted to follow this advise whenever possible. For an award winning procrastinator, even pleasure is difficult to get started.

Merlin Mann has mastered a few anti-procrastination techniques that should help me. Here is part of what he thinks: "My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your overdue project. Neat, huh?"

Mann is the master-mind behind loads of ongoing and completed projects. It is truly difficult to imagine he has ever had trouble with procrastination. But he makes some fine points about moving beyond the obstacle of getting started on dreaded projects, points he can only know via first hand experience. He obviously follows his own advise and has managed to squeeze onto the top one hundred blogs in the world list. No procrastination there.

I have used a similar anti-procrastination process with pretty high success. When I have something on the "to do" list that I want to do but never get 'round to, I make a plan to just do a teeny bit of it., which is often represented by "five." Here's an example: I want to work out and run more everyday. The present level of exercise is ZERO. To go from zip exercise to and hour is not going to happen. But from 0 to 5 mins. is not too difficult. From NO situps to 5 situps is EZ and can be accomplished during one commercial break, if necessary. From 15 pounds to 5 pounds is do-able. To read 5 pages won't take long, or 5 paragraphs. Even planning on starting some project or job in five mins. or five days might work. Pay off could be 5 Hershey's Kisses or five M&M's or five handfulls of popcorn or five hanfulls of M&m's. The take five process usually works for me. After doing five of something I go five more and five more over a period of time.

Like Mann's plan, once the job is started the fear is overcome and continuing on is much less threatening.

Day 3 in Russia

2006-08-17T16:42:00.000-05:00

On Day 3 in Russia, B explores St. Petersburg by hydrafoil and wanders into a trendy Russian hookah bar. His journal has been posted.
http://meistertravel.blogspot.com/

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

2006-08-17T16:22:00.000-05:00

Last night was my first visit to the new Busch Stadium. Very Norman Rockwellish, actually. If he'd painted pictures of families going to the ballpark, it would be walking by the front entrance of the new stadium. Our tickets were fan-double-tastic, thanks to former Mayor S.'s generosity. We sat in section 250, and my seat was directly behind home plate. This section is in the Red Bird Club, so on the way to our seats we walked thru the club with all the good food, including a bakery....ooo la la the chocolate covered strawberries!

I was soaking in the view of the field and the park from my great seat when the folks in the row in front of us arrived. Naturally, an EXTRA extra large fan sat in front of me and felt the need to lean forward most of the game, so that I could only see his XXL back. He was wearing an ESPN polo shirt which had slogans written all over it. Slogans like: "A soft drink and a bag of chips." "Get on with your bad self." There were many more, but I only had seven innings to read them. They left when the Cardinals were down by 6.

Section 250 is a great place to expect foul balls. One man two seats and one row in front of me caught a ball hit by Cinncinati. I ducked every time a ball even looked like it would sail over the net. Not that I had anything to fear. The XXL fan made a perfect body guard. No ball would get by his girth.

I didn't have any of the delish snacks, though B. had a hot dog and two beers and J. got peanuts. I'd eaten four quarts of popcorn at home before I knew we had tickets that afternoon.

Even after Cinncinati's home runs and single hits put them 7 up, we held out hope that the Cardinals would rally. They tried. But like a bad deja vous, they filled all three bases as Pujols stepped up to the bat and ....struck out. We lost 7 to 1.

A lost game cannot dim the lights on my first ever visit, free tickets, free parking, balmy weather, and good company at St. Louis. But I sure won't be able to sit any place else now that I'm totally spoiled by section 250. Unless I get to sit in the green seats where they bring you food. And those party boxes are nice. Oh, and the game isn't bad either.