Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for August, 2023

Early Bird Voting

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Naturally, the Nashville mayor’s race had to have a runoff. So instead of jumping into the pool for morning aquatics, followed by sitting down at my desk to write, Bob and I jumped into the car and drove to a swanky neighborhood for early voting. There were also many councillors on the ticket and we could choose four, except my little red, plastic coffee stir-stick would not work on one of them. I must have ‘tapped’ the name Burkley Allen ten times before it registered.

I alerted one of the election people afterwards because of course my mind thought ‘conspiracy.’ Every other councilor’s name popped right up as soon as my stick hit their box. Bob said he’s always used his finger on the monitor, it’s much easier and better for the environment. The red stick was simply a Covid precaution…VOTE FREDDIE for MAYOR!

I hate that my mind thinks of subterfuge first – that my trust in so many things has been slowly eroding. We trust our children to make the right choice, it’s the only way we can let them go into adulthood. We trust our mail to end up in our mailbox, how else would we know what’s on sale at Costco? But post-Mr T and January 6, I’ve felt a shift in my trusting neurons. Why is T’s name front page news still? Why did TN legislators pass a bill on decorum first, and remove grieving Covenant moms with signs from the gallery? After this special session on public safety, and the latest school shooting in NC, I’ve lost whatever faith I had left after Sandy Hook.

TN was the last state to cast the vote for women’s suffrage. It will most likely be the last to vote for any kind of law restricting guns.

In the good news column, our little Love Bug celebrated her birthday this past weekend. She and her friends went to the Barbie movie, they painted their nails like tweens do. And we had a discussion about cellphones at the family dinner table. Many of her friends have phones, tablets and/or iPhone watches… she doesn’t. It’s her parents’ decision of course. But she told me she’s glad not be on “text chains”that run into the night, instead she gets to sleep through the night. Her friends are always tired – FOMO does not seem to affect her, thank goodness.

When I was young, we only had gossip to contend with; like so and so said that so and so did this! And I was the kind of kid that went right to the horse’s mouth and called them out. Spreading rumors wasn’t called bullying back then, it was called gossiping. We didn’t need to fear that our words, or even our pictures, could be seen by millions of strangers and could linger for years in the virtual cess-pool of a world wide web. Here is an example of how we are all on our own when it comes to cyber-bullying. Two sisters had to track down their stalker themselves.

Technology has raced ahead in the 10 years since Madison’s photos first appeared online, and artificial intelligence combined with social media has made it even easier for abusers to distribute intimate images on the internet without consent. But legislation to protect victims still falls short. Most of the 48 states and the District of Columbia that have laws prohibiting the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, many passed in the past decade, require that victims prove that the distributors of their photos intended to harm them.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/26/revenge-porn-leaked-nudes-police/

HELLO?! I can only hope our laws will evolve to meet our basic humanity. My only wish is that people who are sworn to obey the constitution, will see through the fog of decorum in every state house, and a person’s intent to do no harm.

Read Full Post »

Staining Fences

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It was the best of weeks. Mornings were cool, low 60s, and no humidity. There was a strange hint of Fall, in mid-August, in the south. So my handy husband Bob decided it was time to paint our six month old fence. A cedar fence can be allowed to grey gracefully over the years; OR you could preserve its beauty by painting it a color (like the black fences that dot Virginia) OR if one prefers, staining it with a natural wood pigment. And so the hunt began.

After much searching and trips to Home Depot, Lowes, and our local Sherwin Williams (SW) store, we picked a stain in its natural cedar color – an oil-based, transparent brownish/red. Bob power washed the fence in preparation and made a deal with a college neighbor to help. We bought 10 gallons of stain, pads, rollers, and all the accoutrements. On Thursday morning we drove to SW to pick up the stain, only to learn from a helpful young salesman named Hunter that a 40% off sale was starting the very next day! Believe me when I say I pleaded with him to sell it to us then and there at the reduced price, but Hunter said, “No can do.”

Meanwhile, in Maui, the death toll was rising from a horrific wildfire. I watched online interviews with people who escaped the inferno by jumping into the ocean and dodging embers for hours. I couldn’t turn away from the drone video of a charred, barren landscape; the historic town of Lahaina looked like the end of the world. In my lifetime, I’ve experienced a flood in NJ, an earthquake in VA, and right before the Covid lockdown, a tornado in TN.

But I’ve never experienced a fire, wild or otherwise. I thought of Hawaii as a uniquely American paradise. I loved climbing over black lava and watching the volcano on the Big island. I loved its people, its food, its culture. I felt a kind of existential, primitive grief for our Mother Earth that triggered my limbic system. Is climate change accelerating – was safety just an illusion – what state/country would be next?

And sure enough, in the middle of staining our fence, a once in a century hurricane was headed for Southern California.

The Grands came over to help Pop Bob for a bit, I frog-taped the iron hardware and ran back to SW since we needed double the amount of stain for our 2,700 sq ft backyard. Ingeniously I picked up a dozen donuts on the way back. Waiting, wondering if the torrential rain heading toward LA – toward my son and his wife, their dog and two cats, living in a beautifully renovated home, on the precipice of a hill overlooking a canyon in LA – might precipitate a mudslide.

Bob and I met our rollers dripping with stain in the middle of the fence on the east side of the yard Sunday morning. A job that was supposed to take a day, took three. But the fence is finished, the fence that can only protect us from prying eyes and not natural disasters. Our Mark Twain weekend ended with an undertone of terror. Did you know there is a name for the kind of wind that can boost heatwaves and spark wildfires? The wind is called FOHN.

It’s a word that, in German, also means “hairdryer”. And that’s just what it’s like. A hot, dry wind that sweeps down a mountainside, baking everything in its path. It is powerful enough to raise air temperatures by many degrees. This is the strange, and sometimes dangerous, weather event known as Föhn. This year, it has cropped up many times, including during heatwaves where it has pushed temperatures up to unbearable levels in local, literal, hotspots.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230817-the-weird-wind-that-can-supercharge-heatwaves-and-wildfire

This week we will see record high temperatures in Nashville, and the humidity is returning. No rain, all sun for our fence to dry. I will return to my meditative daily pool workouts, and I will listen to our Governor try and change a gun culture by focusing on everything but guns. Can we save our schoolchildren with bullet-poof backpacks? Will this be the best of weeks?

Read Full Post »

Dusting Off a Classic

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on August 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

My foster mom Nell had a number of quaint sayings, but one that stuck with me was a dismissal of someone’s style.

She was the child of immigrants from Czechoslovakia – a country that was split in two and no longer exists. Nell was a Slav, and how that differs from a Czech I have no idea but she was proud of her heritage. I remember her crying when Russian tanks rolled into Prague in 1968. She was always truthful and meant no disrespect, but she would say hippies looked just like they’d “gotten off a boat.” That meant they looked bedraggled and sloppy and maybe she didn’t want me wearing bell bottoms? She would also steer clear of schmatas.

Nell was certainly NOT a fashionista or a critic. I’m pretty sure she suffered from agoraphobia since she never learned how to drive and rarely left her tiny home in Victory Gardens. Whenever she did leave the house, say to vote, Nell would carefully apply lipstick and powder, and that was that! She was a ‘curvy’ lady who wore a uniform of ‘house dresses.’ Never heard of a house dress? It’s simply an ill-fitting shift with short sleeves that snaps or buttons down the entire front and was made in cotton or a blend of fabrics with a pattern of colorful floral posies.

“The house dress style came from the modest, yet liberating “Mother Hubbard dress” as first envisioned after artist, Kate Greenaway, illustrated her nursery rhyme books showing women and girls in smock dresses in the 1880s. These dresses let women be fully covered, yet had no structure and did not require a corset, bustle, or complicated underskirts like other fashions of the 19th century. It was the Victorian fight between fashion and purpose embodied in garment form.“

https://dustyoldthing.com/house-dress-history/

I was thinking about Nell the other day shopping with my sister. I’d pulled something off the rack and a young salesgirl said, “You could wear it as a duster!”

Brilliant! But who wears dusters anyway? I suppose artsy types might throw one on like an apron; wildly colorful patterns easily camouflage paint and/or cooking experiments. A duster is just a new name for a house dress, only you wear it completely open with an outfit underneath. In the 50s and 60s women wore house dresses all the time, like girdles. You know girdles were simply reframed as Spanx, just another tortuous contraption to mold a woman’s body in the male perspective. The whole point of a house dress was to liberate us from whale bone corsets and other nonsense in the same way yoga pants have freed us from zippers.

Living in Nashville I’ll often see a tall, young woman on the street in cowgirl boots, short shorts and a diaphanous duster covering her ensemble. It’s quite the Lewk for those who can pull it off. But trust me, like ripped jeans, a woman of a certain age should avoid such trends, unless you’re Cher.

I’ve come to take a more Buddhist look at style. The Flapper used to tell me that everyone has a story, and she had quite the saga. But she never complained or whined, even though she was widowed and disabled. She dyed her hair blonde and did her nails and went to work. She had to wear two inch heels all the time because one leg was shorter after her accident, and she didn’t want to limp. She told me you have to suffer to be beautiful – but maybe she meant if you’re too beautiful you will always suffer.

I grew up with two very different mothers, in a generation of extreme social change. One would cling to the past while the other embraced the future. I like to think I was lucky in that sense, I never had to follow a certain set of female standards. I was a tomboy who loved riding my bike more than anything. After wearing Catholic school and camp uniforms for years, I developed my own style eventually – a mix of Coastal Grandma today with a dash of French reprobate.

Below there is but one duster in the mix!

Read Full Post »

Onward XYZ Soldiers

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on August 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »

If this headline doesn’t scare you, well, please read the article.

One of our democracy’s founding principles is the separation of church and state. History has taught us that once a religion dominates public policy, the outcome is terror. Look at Henry VIII, or Sharia Law, or for that matter Ireland back in the day. Thomas Jefferson even wrote his own version of the Bible – seems he took out all the miracles and outrageous stuff:

“…In 1786, he wrote a Virginia law forbidding the state from compelling anyone to attend a certain church or persecuting them for their religious beliefs. The law unseated the Anglican Church as the official church of Virginia. Jefferson was so proud of his accomplishment that he told his heirs he wanted it inscribed on his tombstone, along with his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and his founding of the University of Virginia.”

https://www.history.com/news/thomas-jefferson-bible-religious-beliefs

But all the talk about freedom of religion and the arc of our democracy shifted in 1947. That was the year the SCOTUS voted to allow public school busses to ferry Catholic school students “Everson vs Board of Education.” Everson lived in NJ and figured taxpayers should not have to pay for the transportation of parochial schools. He lost and the country been losing that battle ever since with a thousand small cuts, like praying on a football field.

I always liked being the one Mom to introduce Judaism to my kids’ friends in public school. After all, I brought the M&Ms along with a dreidel for a little lesson in gambling! And what child doesn’t love the idea of one present a day for EIGHT crazy nights! And when students get a small taste of different cultures and yes religions, it only helps to expand their horizon. We Americans can teach and celebrate any religion we choose, so long as we don’t just push ONE religion. At least that’s my understanding of the First Amendment.

But the state of Oklahoma is choosing a dangerous path. To fund a “charter” school, a Christian school, with taxpayer money will set a precedent for any other religion to decide they too need to get into the education business and indoctrinate young minds with public money. At Sacred Heart School I spent every morning memorizing catechism. Every Morning. What if I’d actually been introduced to science at such an impressionable age? How about art?

While three quarters of the US population is Christian, the second largest religious group varies according to state. Believe it or not, Buddhism comes in second for most of the west, while the northeast is mostly Jewish. Surprisingly, Islam covers most of the south! Should a Mosque open a secondary charter school and accept tax dollars in Texas? How about a Yeshiva public school in Maine?

Or maybe we just approve more Christian charter schools? After all, this is the dominant religion in the world as well. Here is the rabbit hole that would lead us down:

“Catholicism dominates the Northeast and the Southwest, and Southern Baptists have a strong foothold in the South. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominates Utah and surrounding counties in Idaho, Wyoming and parts of Nevada. Lutheranism has a strong following in Minnesota and the Dakotas, while Methodists make their presence felt in parts of West Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.”

https://geolabinstitute.org/en/reppublic/16/

Oh wait a minute, that already happened! “The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa were given permission to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in August 2024.” We cannot continue to eviscerate public schools in our country – holding lotteries in inner cities for charter schools is a crime. A child’s future should not depend on a roll of the dice or their zip code. Thomas Jefferson called for a well educated public to ensure democracy’s survival; “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

Here we are with my beautiful niece, in front of the house we were building in Albemarle County, VA. My aviary sits on top, a tribute to Monticello!

Read Full Post »

The First Time

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on August 1, 2023| Leave a Comment »

You remember your first time right? No no no, not that first time, the first time you tried something new. Like your first time on a surfboard, or your first time trying to can peaches. Or maybe you remember your very first Barbie doll (co-marketing much)? The one that came in her own big box with a complete change of clothes so you didn’t have to buy a whole new doll every time Mattel invented one. Instead, your aunt Evelyn would just make Barbie a whole new wardrobe.

My big sister Kay always said I was her very own real, baby doll. My crib was in her room because the Flapper was tending to our dying Father. I was her last child of six, with curly red hair and no idea what the future would hold. No clue that 14 year old Kay would have to travel with me to my foster parents’ house that summer of Living Dangerously and stay with me until it was time for her to return to school. By the time I returned to my biological family, a decade later, Kay was an airline stewardess with a daughter of her own.

My sister is doing the southern tour. After two weeks visiting us, yesterday she flew to North Carolina to stay with a dear, old friend. Our roles have been reversed, instead of Kay teaching me table manners, I’ve been introducing her to a few new experiences. After living the Manhattan city mouse life for a half century, here is a list of the things Kay experienced for the very first time in Nashville – and no peddle taverns were involved:

  • Chipmunks
  • Keurig coffeemakers
  • Pool noodles
  • Barbeque
  • Costco
  • Motorized shopping carts
  • Panerra Bread
  • Kindle
  • Fried green tomatoes
  • Push button toilets

Kay never played with Barbies, and neither did I because the blonde stereotypical Barbie was invented on March 9, 1959 by Ruth Handler, who cofounded Mattel with her husband, Elliot. I was eleven years old and thought moving in with my “real” Mother was of utmost importance. I do remember early on having a gigantic doll that peed; then I quickly moved on to sports. Handler had the right idea though for a beat generation giving way to the 60s. She wanted to give girls an alternative to motherhood. But why the bawdy, impossibly sexy body?

“Barbie’s physical appearance was modeled on the German Bild Lilli doll, a risqué gag gift for men based upon a cartoon character featured in the West German newspaper Bild Zeitung.”

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Barbie

Thanks a lot Ruth. The Bride, because of her allergies could not have anything stuffed in her bedroom; no teddy bears or rugs or even curtains. So plastic Barbie was ubiquitous in her young world. We took the Love Bug to see the Barbie movie. We laughed and applauded at America Ferrera’s soliloquy about modern day women. I’m not sure the Bug was as amused as we were, after all she didn’t grow up with Barbie. The Bride felt conflicted about the doll who could look like Stormy Daniels and still be a veterinarian. Or maybe even a FIFA Women’s World Cup Champion!

Read Full Post »