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Cohabitation

January 18, 2014 by mountainmornings

Birds do it, bees do it. But apparently if you happen to be the next single woman to serve as a university president in some parts of these Southern United States, you won’t be allowed to do it – that is, live with a partner in the usually big, beautiful, university-provided campus president’s house.

Dr. Gwendolyn Boyd, is leaving Johns Hopkins, and is slated to become the first Black female president of her alma mater, Alabama State University in Montgomery, next month.

“Her contract requires the 58-year-old engineer to move into the president’s home…(one) clause states ‘for so long as Dr. Boyd is President and a single person, she shall not be allowed to cohabitate in the President’s residence with any person with whom she has a romantic relation.'” http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/01/17/263484808/no-cohabitation-for-alabama-states-first-female-president

She seems to have no problem with this clause, after all she signed the contract. Still, it makes me smile to think about the “scandal” happening in France right now. President Hollande jets around at night on his scooter, disguised in his helmet to visit his lover, a film actress. He is only discovered by the fashionable French press because of his shoes! It’s all over the papers, but knowing some French people as I do, and listening to the interviews on the streets of Paris, his citizens could care less! Alors, Les Liasons Romantique!

Fidelity is over rated in France. “When it comes to extra-marital affairs, the French are the most forgiving nation in the world, according to a recent study. The U.S., however, is still as unforgiving as ever, ranking 27th on the list, right between Brazil and Ghana.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/infidelity-study_n_4611674.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

What I didn’t know until I read the above article, is that President Hollande is simply cohabiting with his First Lady, Valerie Trierweiler, who was his previous mistress. Yes sirree folks, they are NOT married, but have been together since 2007. I am trying to imagine this arrangement in the USA. My brain just cannot do it, sorry. But let’s try…it would be like Bill living cohabiting on Pennsylvania Avenue with Gennifer Flowers, and then seeing an intern on the side. You can see how the first part just wouldn’t work!

If there’s one thing I learned from moving South, it’s that things move a lot slower down here. We talk to strangers, we help each other in airports, we drive slowly in the left lane. In fact, I’m pretty sure our Governor would never close any lanes in a grudge match, after all we can snarl traffic just fine by stopping to talk to a neighbor on the road. And no Virginian would think of honking their horn!

So maybe this cohabitation clause wouldn’t work at NYU, and it certainly wouldn’t be considered at any French university. I doubt that the clause would have appeared on a male president’s contract. But I’ve got a feeling that Dr Boyd has bigger fish to fry. Might I suggest she give our single female UVA President Teresa Sullivan a call? After all, somebody always gets hurt when all those glass ceilings shatter. http://www.virginia.edu/presidentsreport/

Here is the Bride with Great Grandmother Mamie and some of her great grandchildren after a lunch at the MSU President’s gorgeous historic home that honored my brother and sister-in-law last year. And The Love Bug with her cousin, Frankie.IMG_1554IMG_1558

 

 

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For Art’s Sake

January 16, 2014 by mountainmornings

There’s good news and there’s bad news this week. On the good side – Our do-nothing-Congress has passed a 1+ Trillion dollar budget deal that should keep our government humming along for the next nine months. On the bad side – Congress has defunded ALL portrait painting, which is pretty stupid since I understand that every single Treasury Secretary or Secretary of Defense doesn’t need an official oil-based portrait painted costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each.

But no more Presidential portraits? Are you kidding me? Even I have had my portrait painted, by my sister mind you! This may have started my fondness for hats.

The Author, age 15 in Oklahoma

The Author, age 15 in “Oklahoma”

You know that gallery at the Smithsonian with all of our Presidents hanging regally along its walls in a continuing line of American history? Well, it’s about to stop short. Someone on the blogosphere somewhere said it’s because we can’t have a “president of color” up there with Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy and really? I suppose this means no more First Ladies either.

The horse-trading was done by only about four dozen of Congress’ 533 members, working in private. What’s supposed to be 12 separate spending bills was combined into one mammoth stack that finances the government through Sept. 30.http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/16/5-things-to-know-about-deal-to-avert-shutdown-of-u-s-government/

It’s the “working in private” part that bothers me, behind closed doors in a secret session, along with the sheer lunacy of stopping a tradition that deserves to be maintained. I tend to think very forest for the trees about art. Artists are really doing our society a favor. They reflect back to us what’s going on in everyday life, with a different spin, giving us a new perspective. Enlightening, illuminating and just plain enriching our thirsty souls. Sometimes art can even change history. Think of the photograph of a child about to be shot in Vietnam. Think about the mini-series Roots. Think about a little Goldfinch.

Today the Oscar nominees were announced. Nothing new or unusual except Ms Oprah was denied again for her role in The Butler. A movie about a man who served how many presidents through sweeping social changes in our country. A true story, but one obviously overlooked in Hollywood. Instead a movie about a real political shakedown in NJ in the late 70s, the Abscam scandal, was the basis for the big winner, American Hustle.

“…today offering bribes in exchange for legislation seems almost quaint. The lobbyists do the same things we did, only to a much greater degree,” said John Good, a former FBI supervisor who oughtta know.http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-the-players-in-abscam-the-real-life-american-hustle-the-bribes-now-seem-quaint/2013/12/26/d67648c2-6c15-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

I wonder who’s writing the Chris Christie biopic now? Maybe we need to get some art lobbyists up on the Hill. You know, bring in the big guns – the owners of auctions houses and film industry moguls, maybe a few museum directors? At least we need to appoint a Secretary of Culture, every other country in the free world has one! We don’t need to paint their portrait either. But we DO need President Obama’s portrait painted.

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization,” President Kennedy once remarked, “than full recognition of the place of the artist.” http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/should-the-us-have-a-secretary-of-culture/277409/

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To Kill a Goldfinch

January 14, 2014 by mountainmornings

My Ivy Farm Book Club is reading it. My MIL Ada just finished it. And the Bride wants me to send it to her, the book that’s all abuzz right now, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I finished the last six pages of the book yesterday, in the middle of the day because I couldn’t wait until bedtime when I barely have enough energy to keep my eyes open…and I was afraid of that white space; the blank white space at the end of a book. I knew that I’d have a lot of feelings to process in that white space, and my mind wouldn’t be up to that at midnight.

The Goldfinch is a coming of age story, in the tradition of Catcher in the Rye. We are drawn into the life of Theo Decker, a typical New York teenager who grew up around Sutton Place and went to a private school. He’s being raised by a beautiful and kind single mom, one we imagine is like Holly Golightly, except instead of being a call girl she married the wrong guy, a drinker who disappeared one day. They are a happy couple, son and mother, until one day a terrorist happens to set off a bomb at The Met, just as Theo follows a pretty red headed girl into a hallway.

Tartt sets off the bomb and the motion of her book early on, and so we are hooked, wandering around with Theo who is trying to recover his connection to the world. The cast of characters is familiar. The trust fund kids, the socialite/philanthropist types, the doormen. But it’s the stolen painting, Fabritius’ 1654 Goldfinch,  that glues this epic journey together, through a few lost years in Vegas with the wandering father and Boris the Ukranian best friend, and finally back to the Big Apple. I haven’t been so drawn to a book in ages. In some ways, it’s the small Dutch masterpiece that propels our protagonist forward – his mother’s love for it, a dying man’s plea for its survival.

In the last six pages I wanted more, and I suspect that Tartt was hoping we would. Ms Bean startled me by barking at the window. A lonely hawk was spreading its wing on a tree too close to the house. photo I remembered one of my earliest teenage rules for living, like never stay where you are not wanted, or never cry in public. Never, ever keep a bird in a cage. It was a sort of pre-feminist, Ibsen-like decision. Live free, or die! And I wondered what would happen to Theo Decker. Will he be pulled into a life of crime and drug abuse, or more crime and more drug abuse, by Boris and end up in prison? Did he settle in at Hobart and Blackwell and become a respectable antique dealer like this guy? http://www.themillions.com/2014/01/my-not-so-secret-history.html                           Will he marry damaged-goods Kitsy or Pippa of the morphine lollipop?

As you know, my sister Kay lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She raised her only daughter alone, sending her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart with ambassador’s children. I used to visit them all the time as a teenager, and we’d often walk to the Met for a special exhibit or just for lunch. Later, I would always meet Kay for our mutual September birthday celebration in the City. After 9/11, we roamed around the streets in the Village, trying to find a place that was open for our birthday lunch. Determined not to let the terrorists “win.” 

Fifth Avenue is magical in every season. I told Kay that we  need to see the Goldfinch at the Frick Museum. I want to see this little bird who is chained to her food box. The bird that really did survive an explosion in Delft that killed its painter. Is it serendipity that art is reflecting the current literary scene, in the same city this MS author has captured so well? http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/mauritshuis/605   

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Plausible Deniability

January 11, 2014 by mountainmornings

Anybody who ever watched West Wing, or for that matter served in government in any capacity, knows the term “plausible deniability.” It’s when that trusted inner circle keeps something treacherous, some phone call or email, from ever reaching the ears of the guy (or gal) at the top. That way, when questioned under oath, or maybe attached to a lie detector, the person in charge can always save face and tell the truth. “Who me, I didn’t know a thing!”

While listening to Gov Chris Christie’s almost two hour mea culpa tinged with his apparent ignorance of the facts, that term kept coming to mind. Really Gov, back in September when this bottleneck happened at the GWBridge, it never occurred to you? You don’t know what a “traffic study” looks like, I get that, kinda. I also get the wink and a nod politics of plausible deniability. This is now a “he said, she said” affair, and I can’t wait to see who gets the first interview with Bridget Ann Kelly, his Chief Deputy. Anderson, are you listening?

And I guess just because I happen to be a Jersey girl living in VA, I’m not the only one who compared Christie with Gov Bob McDonnell. Terry McAuliffe, Democrat, will be sworn in today in the pouring rain, while Republican McDonnell leaves him with a house divided, still believing he did nothing wrong in accepting extraordinary gifts from a donor:

“I am not perfect, but I have always worked tirelessly to do my very best for Virginia,” McDonnell told the state legislature Wednesday in a farewell address. “As a flawed human being, I’ve sometimes fallen short of my own expectations.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/new-jersey-chris-christie-virginia-bob-mcdonnell-republican-governors-scandal-102054.html#ixzz2q6QYWKur

Christie may have said he felt sad and betrayed, he may have invoked the stages of grief to elicit our pity, but it’s the people of NJ and VA who should be feeling pretty betrayed about now. Betrayal of the public’s trust is grounds for impeachment, and pleading your supposed ignorance will not help your cause. Any good lawyer who ever watched West Wing knows that! And for your viewing pleasure, next week’s New Yorker cover.

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Political Panoply

January 9, 2014 by mountainmornings

The one Republican politician I actually had some respect for, the guy who fought for Sandy relief and stood arm in arm (almost) with our President, the candid, in-your-face Governor Chris Christie may have fallen from grace. What he first dismissed last year by saying he wasn’t on the phone or setting up cones in traffic lanes, suggesting he knew nothing about the traffic nightmare on the George Washington Bridge, has come back to bite him in the butt. Another little lesson about emails – they can become news headlines very easily.

‘Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Ann Kelly, an aide to the Gov wrote to David Wildstein.

Wildstein, a Port Authority executive replied, “got it. ”

Ten little words that could cut short the political ambitions of Christie. I envision a bunch of Greek gods pulling strings to snarl our piddling, sadly human lives. All because a Democratic mayor in Fort Lee didn’t endorse Christie? Closing highway lanes as political retribution might have been brushed off as just another traffic jam, until we hear about life threatening delays in EMT response times.

But this is more about a culture of bullying in the Garden State. Christie sometimes has to be restrained from taking on his critics, physically restrained! His YouTube videos document it. “Walk on” he shouts at someone on the Boardwalk…and if he doesn’t walk, well we all know what that means. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/08/chris-christies-problem-is-that-hes-really-truly-a-bully/

Quid pro quo is something we assume in politics. Oh yes, even in America folks. In my adopted genteel state of VA, our retiring Republican Governor accepted gifts galore from one of his donors, as did his wife and children. Did his office favor certain legislation pertaining to said donor’s business? On the docket right now is ethics reform, along with mental health issues. Are you biting at the bit waiting for House of Cards to return to Netflix?

In an Atlantic article last year, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/jersey-boys/309019/ the author explores Christie’s adoration of his idol Bruce Springsteen. His memory of seeing the Boss early in his career, a union-supporting-Democrat who still does not even speak to him, serves to explain his ability to compartmentalize his politics with his passion.

“There was this moment early on when I realized that Corzine just didn’t understand New Jersey,” Christie explains. “It was a benefit show at the Count Basie Theatre, in Red Bank—it was the first time that Bruce did whole albums through. It was the best show I’ve ever seen. It’s a small venue, maybe 600 or 700 people. I’m U.S. attorney then, I’m thinking about running for governor, and I’m in the front row of the balcony. Corzine is governor and he’s in the front row. And he left during the encores. He just left. You could see him look at his watch. He left during ‘Raise Your Hand’—Bruce is on top of the piano screaming—and it just struck me that unless there’s an emergency, which I found out later there wasn’t, you don’t leave. You just don’t leave.”

Ballerina Bride

Ballerina Bride

Being a Jersey Girl, having watched the Bride’s ballet recitals at the Basie in Red Bank and worked out next to the Boss in Shrewsbury, I have one piece of advice for the great Governor. Don’t cancel anymore public appearances, and get some anger management people into Trenton. Bullying doesn’t become you.

 

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Three Dog Night

January 7, 2014 by mountainmornings

It was a chilly 3 degrees this morning in our neck of the woods. The wind has died down and there’s a peacefulness about this arctic/polar/vortex. Ms Bean sits at the kitchen door and looks outside resignedly. No hawks circling, no sounds of woodpeckers, just the gentle whoosh of gas fireplaces upstairs and down.

Speaking of a house divided by a staircase, let’s talk about the latest Downton Abbey episode. It was near midnight by the time I got home from our expedition to the Paramount Theatre on Sunday. On my way to Kay’s house (she was driving into town with 2 other friends), the woman directly in front of me hit a deer. The poor thing was just sitting wide-eyed in the middle of the road, while we waited for the police to put an end to its misery.

The incessant rain/fog coupled with such a morbid beginning made me wonder if venturing out so late at night would be worth it – but the season premiere of Downton, surrounded by so many other like-minded-Edwardian-loving women, proved otherwise. We feasted on a substantial array of English appetizers, swigged champagne, and thrilled to a lecture by Richard Will, Chair of the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia,.

‘The Music of Downton Abbey” and film scoring was on the docket before that hound’s white rump started wagging along to those famous opening notes. Will and two UVA students performed music of the 20s and 30s, explaining how American ragtime permeated Europe after the war. There was a tension between old and new, the Edwardian and the Modern age. Young women could be seen in a public restaurant unescorted, and all classes were mixing it up on the dance floor. The Jazz Age ushered in a staccato subtext to the romantic, sentimental music that dominated the turn of the century.

I’ll not ruin the plot for those of you without cable, but the new season is shaping up well. There is frisson between fathers and daughters, maids and lady’s maids, and one or two surprising losses. I for one, am still getting over the loss of Matthew, and have to remind myself that the actor is in fact alive and well and appearing on Broadway at the moment. Having just finished reading “Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey,” fact and fiction collide on a regular basis in my brain.

The only cure is take one of those Viking cruises and tour Highclere Castle for myself! Anyone else interested, maybe this Spring? http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/index.html

Today I’ll cozy up with Ms Bean and search for a Corgi rescue and a good Highclere tour. Stay warm everybody! In the words of Al Jolson:

“Come on along, Come on along, Let me take you by the hand.”

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Double Standards

January 5, 2014 by mountainmornings

Fair warning. I’m going to talk about marijuana, simply because it’s in the news this week. Recreational sales of weed will be increasing the tax revenue of the state of Colorado by many millions of dollars. The prohibition is over; the plant grown as hemp by Jefferson and enjoyed in colonial days has finally come out of the college closet with a grow light. And it’s high time too!

Here we are, in 2014, beginning to realize that non-violent, drug offenders are clogging up our prisons and it’s time we treated addiction like the public health issue that it is. Let’s regulate and tax our fellow citizens, like we’ve done with alcohol and tobacco. And finally, everyone is confessing to a dalliance with pot in their past. After all, even our President wrote a book about his youthful indiscretions.

But most notably, the semi-conservative NYTimes columnist, David Brooks, copped to his high school experience with weed, where he felt like a loser in English class in his article, “Been There, Done That.”

He was forthrightly mocked: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/03/david-brooks-pot-column_n_4537463.html

Well I don’t know about you dear reader, but virtually everyone I know has tried pot. Yes, they inhaled it and proceeded to empty out their parent’s pantry. But then again I’m one of those Baby Boomers, our mantra was “Why not?” May I remind you that the Big Chill went to Woodstock… 6020_1115890693726_5811966_nThen again, we were older. In high school we were clueless.

My friends in the next generation, a decade younger, were introduced to weed earlier, and I have to admit, I think it’s tantamount to child abuse. The still developing adolescent brain can be damaged by all that dopamine, and IQ just may be affected. Who wants their kids living in their basement forever? Pot is not supposed to be physically addictive, but it can be psychologically addicting. It can develop into an expensive habit. Albeit, one that leaves you feeling very zen most of the time.

What if someone started smoking daily in high school and didn’t stop until they had a baby? That’s more than 20 years! I asked my Pulmonology Fellow SIL about the risks of cancer and heart disease for long-term pot smokers. He said since weed has been illegal, there haven’t been many studies addressing these problems, but I found one out of California, naturally. http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/01/11282/marijuana-shown-be-less-damaging-lungs-tobacco

So my advice – brownies! Now that all those Rocky Mountain High dwellers can just go down to their local dispensary and order up some King Tut Kush for $45, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-colorado-marijuana-20140102,0,4217222.story why not make some ghee butter and bake some brownies? Thereby avoiding any possibility of future respiratory disease.

You’ve all seen the ACLU graph about African American kids being three times as likely (I repeat 3x) to be arrested for possession of marijuana with or without the intent to distribute than White kids…which amounts to a type of apartheid in this country. ACLU_5_0Even Chris Hayes fesses up to carrying some weed into a Republican convention in his eyeglass case, and realizing he was not arrested because of the cop’s perception of his privilege.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-hayes-i-was-nearly-arrested-for-weed-106355779668

I believe that about 10% of the population may develop a problem with weed. Because that’s about the same number of recreational drinkers that may become alcoholic. In other words, they go from having a couple at parties, to binge drinking in college with an occasional blackout, to hiding a bottle in the garage and drinking every day. They lose their jobs and their families, and end up in court over a DUI. Their life goes downhill slowly, over many years. They change jobs, they move, they repent; but they never blame the bottle, they keep drinking.

What will a marijuana addict look like? That 1 person out of 10 people lighting up legally for recreational use. Well, he’ll probably not drive fast, in fact he may be picked up for driving too slow. He or she will most likely be similar to the alcoholic. They will suffer years of recrimination, rejection, and reprimands for a life that somehow was derailed. But he or she won’t be thrown into jail and become a caricature on Orange is the New Black, they will avoid that path. The double standard inherent in our justice system will cease to exist in Colorado.

Now let’s share our recipes for double fudge brownies with our Denver friends. Rocky Mountains, the Blue Ridge salutes you!

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Rotten Games

January 2, 2014 by mountainmornings

Normally, I’m not a scaredy cat. However, once my vision was affected by West Nile, I pretty much stopped driving at night. Which is why I’ll be car-pooling with some friends to see the first episode of Downton Abbey at the Paramount Theatre on the Historic Downtown Mall this weekend.

Added to my natural inclination to visit with friends and actually enjoy my Anglophile evening, is my revulsion at a local news story. A little past midnight on December 20th, a young couple leaving Millers was beaten severely right outside the Wells Fargo bank, a few steps away from the Paramount. This incident received national coverage when the victims discovered, nine days later, that the ball had been dropped by the City of Charlottesville PD. The woman took cell phone pictures of the beating and posted them to her Facebook page, initiating an investigation that has so far come up short on suspects.

The rotten part of the story is that the three attackers seemed to take great pleasure in kicking and beating the young man unconscious, and punching the woman in the head. They laughed, they joked and hugged each other. They didn’t take her purse or their money, even when it was thrown at them. The three attackers were Black and the two victims were White; which led some to call this another example of the “knockout game.”

“They didn’t want to rob us. They wanted to beat us. It was like it was enjoyable to them to beat us,” she said. “There was camaraderie to it.” http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/charlottesville-police-chief-orders-internal-review-in-mall-attack-case/article_87e5fdfa-71cf-11e3-a232-0019bb30f31a.html

This knockout game is just another example of a hate crime imho. Maybe it started when Brad Pitt made that fight club movie, or maybe it started as a gang initiation; pick an innocent victim and sucker punch them into oblivion. It’s caught on like wildfire around the country and states are trying to catch up – http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2013/12/30/state-introduce-knockout-game-bills/4249987/

It would be a shame if this news coverage served to deter people from enjoying a night out on the Mall. But calls are coming in for more widespread surveillance and a beefier police presence on the Mall. Our former Mayor Dave Norris had this to say:

…One other predictable outcome: expect another big push for a public camera surveillance system downtown. The damage done by those three jerks to our sense of community, to our sense of safety and to our civil liberties is likely to far exceed the physical damage done to their two victims. I hope none of this comes to pass and that we in Charlottesville avoid the temptation to escalate and overreact. Given human nature, I am not optimistic. I sincerely hope we find these criminals and put them away. I hope their victims’ wounds heal quickly. I hope ours do as well.

I’m not against more cameras, let’s just put them everywhere like London has done. And btw, let’s also ban guns like the Brits, and legalize marijuana like Colorado. But while we’re busy day dreaming, I wonder how our latest single parents will be coping this season?downton-abbey-season-52

 

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What’s in a Meme

December 31, 2013 by mountainmornings

Happy New Year everyone! Tonight I will dress to the nines and attend yet another hospital gala, and believe you me I’ve seen many a silent night auction come and go. Someone will get falling down drunk, someone will bid on a puppy they’ll have to return in the new year, and someone will start singing Meatloaf’s Dashboard Light song with alacrity. Electric slide here we go again.

But this morning I’ll kick back and cogitate on a word – meme. What is a meme anyway? We’ve all heard it and let it roll right off the back of our heads like we know what it means. Well, according to dictionary.com it comes from the Greek meaning “mimic” as in imitating a certain behavior; more recently, it is a bow to biology and gene theory. Think of gene cells, how they mimic one another.

meme

a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.

or

a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc.,that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.
Medicine meet technology! There was a picture of Beyonce that became a meme; meaning it floated around the internet in different adaptations: Beyonce at a football game; at a WWF match etc. Just Google “meme” and her picture will appear.
But I love it when literary and pop culture collide to invent a meme. I happen to love Lena Dunham. The “Girls” creator is never afraid to show her body or try to explain the existential trip of 20 something women living in NYC. She is the present-day equivalent of Carrie Bradshaw’s “Sex and the City.” This year, the character who plays Dunham’s mother attended an academic conference and told her daughter, “I never thought I’d meet so many other women who feel the same way I do about Ann Patchett.”
And there it is – feminist fireworks! Ms Patchett, the owner of my favorite Nashville bookstore Parnassus and writer extraordinaire, is now a meme. A meme who spans the generations. In the past I thought of Ann Tyler as my meme (or maybe my muse?). Her writing spoke to me. Sometimes I’d have to pinch myself just to make sure I wasn’t caught up in one of her novels come to life.
So tonight let’s not list all the great and minor things of 2013. And let’s not try to predict the trends and memes of 2014. After all, it’s just one night in five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.  Let’s all take a deep breath, and stay in that electric slide moment. “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”  Unknown

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It’s the Thought

December 29, 2013 by mountainmornings

I’ve been thinking about giving. While driving through the Great Smokies, past cows and barns and more cows and barns on my way back to VA, I listened to This American Life podcast #514 “It’s the Thought That Counts.” http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/514/thought-that-counts But don’t we learn how to give by what we’ve received over the years?

When I was young, Christmas meant a special doll, one that talked or maybe wet itself. And as I grew older, a slip (remember those?) would invariably arrive in the mail from an elderly aunt in Washington. My foster Daddy Jim would always say he didn’t want anything for Christmas, that he had everything he needed in our little house in Victory Gardens. But Nell would make sure I gave him a pair of slippers and a can of Prince Albert pipe tobacco.

Every day when he came home from work, Jim would have a present for me. Sometimes it was a tiny flower in his pocket, or maybe a piece of candy, but can you imagine, every. single. day! That was a hard act to follow for future suitors.

Some people can think only of themselves. We know these gifts, we open them trepidatiously. “What a beautiful book about art that you are interested in Uncle Sam.” Some people are pragmatic, like my aunt and her slip. “I really needed more socks and pajamas Aunt Helen.” Some people like to boast with their gifts, like the time my step father gave the Flapper a mink coat, “I’m speechless, how thoughtful.” But some people have a knack for gift-giving, like my niece Lisa.

She remembered something I had said in passing that must have resonated with her. Over the years I’ve made only a few close friends with each move. I’m not saying this is a good thing, in fact next year I should work on my friendship skills definitely. My motto has been it’s important to have a friend who knows where the spoons are in your kitchen.

And so Lisa sent me a gigantic spoon to hang in my kitchen! I smile each time I look at it.

In the past, I had searched endlessly for gifts that were actually made here in the US to send to Irish relatives, an almost impossible task. Something might be designed here, but chances are it was manufactured in Bangladesh. So like many, this season of endless giving has turned for me into some distorted, commercialized cartoon holiday. I avoid malls like the plague.

We Americans have so much in the grand scheme of things. I love it when the whole Secret Santa bit is employed to contain costs. Bob’s friend in Richmond passed out some papers to his relatives – only gifts for kids this year, which was always our style – the paper was to make a donation in the family’s name to the local food bank. Great idea Al!

So if you are planning on re-gifting or returning that salad bowl that doesn’t go with anything, take a minute to think about the thought that went into your gift as you trudge back to Target hoping that your credit and pin information is still safely tucked into their hardware. Are they telling you to eat healthy, or sending you a message to stop bringing them pie?

As the Stones famously said, you can’t always get what you want. As for me, I can’t wait till the Love Bug is old enough for a trip to NYC and the great American Girl Doll pilgrimage.  IMG_2349

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