From Gateway to Golden Gate

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

Who's one?
Cake?
I like cake.

Happy Birthday Evan!

Versatile Bloggers Award

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

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

The weather outside is white. On tv they say the temperature 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

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

Pop-up Garage Stows Your Car Safely Underground

Amazing idea.

The Thing I Miss Most

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--[photo by M G Howell]

Fruitcake as Lump of Coal:

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...?

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

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

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.