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Metaphorical Memoir

May 17, 2012 by mountainmornings

A six worded memoir of Spring so far:

1) Magical

2) Cultural

3) Artisanal

4) Minimal

5) Verdantly

6) Comical

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Judge Not

May 15, 2012 by mountainmornings

We all have our defining moments. I’m sure Jung, Freud and Dr Phil have a word for them, those watershed episodes in our histories that help to forge our collective character. And for many of us, high school was the battlefield for our very souls. I came straight out of Sacred Heart elementary school into a public high school and found my safe center, my clique with the drama club. You can’t tell me that you don’t remember the “pranks” you pulled, I won’t believe you. I distinctly remember a rumor was started about me, although I don’t really remember what it was about. I just knew it wasn’t true, and found out who started it.

One day during a play rehearsal in the auditorium, I saw the girl who started the rumor in the darkened audience. I walked down the stage stairs and over to her, and as I’m typing this I can feel my heart start racing a little. I stood so close to her I could smell her breath, it smelled like tuna fish. I told her in a very strong, loud voice, “If you have something to say to me, then SAY IT TO MY FACE!” She looked sick, and started backing away from me as if I’d struck her but I hadn’t touched her at all. This may sound lame today, but believe me back in the early 60s girls never raised their voices. It wasn’t ladylike. I felt good, in fact I felt better than good. The Flapper had taught me well. It was an early defining moment for me.

So I have to think that Mitt is lying, just out and out shook up his Etch-a-Sketch and wants to start over. How does one forget holding another boy down on the ground with a group and cutting off his hair? Granted Mitt may not have known he was a gay kid, because back then we didn’t even know about gay kids, or adults for that matter, but he saw him as “different,” as a victim and pounced. And we might forgive him for his teenage testosterone temper; but for acting like he can’t remember the incident, for lying? I think not. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-kennedy/mitt-romney-bullying-human-rights_b_1514273.html?ref=new-york

Today’s news from Richmond is that in the dead of night (actually 1 am this morning) the GOP leadership overwhelmingly voted to reject nominating its special Prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland for a judgeship.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2012/may/15/12/house-of-delegates-rejects-thorne-begland-for-judg-ar-1914948/

Why? Because he’s gay, and would have been the first openly gay judge elected in Virginia.

Now we all know these things are usually pre-approved and are only given up to the House of Delegates for a symbolic vote, so something went wrong in our state last night.
“The rejection of Mr. Thorne-Begland shows that discrimination based on sexual orientation is alive and well in Virginia,” Del. Mark D. Sickles, D-Fairfax, said in a statement after the vote in the House of Delegates. “And, it shows that legislators are more concerned about the Family Foundation scorecard than Richmond’s District Court.”

What really bothers me – “Ten Republican delegates abstained and 26 delegates, including a handful of Democrats, did not vote.” So we have a bunch of scared people over in Richmond, like those who would stand by and watch someone being humiliated for fear of retaliation. And this leaves me with a sick taste in my mouth. Cowardly is not an adjective I associate with leadership. We need to make our voices heard this November Virginia, it’s going to be another defining moment. We may need to shout!

In this picture in my old kitchen, I’ve just received a graduate degree in education. I was serving as a member of the Rumson High School Board of Education, dealing with pranks among many other things. The Bride was in college and the Rocker was a high school Freshman. He is already taller than us…it seems like ages ago, and yesterday.

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Mother Meanderings

May 13, 2012 by mountainmornings


Thanks to a blogger from New Hampshire, who happened to be “Freshly Pressed” by WordPress, http://susannye.wordpress.com/ I started thinking about Moms in general. What was life like around the dinner table, did your mom even cook and insist that you sit down to eat a few times a week? The relationship we form between love and food actually does start at the breast, which then made me think about that controversial Time cover picture of a nearly 4 year old boy in camouflage pants standing up, latched onto his mom’s milk truck.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/slideshow/time-breastfeeding-cover-controversial-magazine-covers-16328228

The Greatest generation didn’t nurse their kids. They embraced white Wonder Bread since whole wheat, brown bread was thought to be only for those who “…just got off the boat.” Those newly arrived immigrants would also nurse their babies; our modern post WWII moms were taught to sterilize bottles. A whole new industry was born, baby formula! No wonder they called pregnancy and early motherhood a time of “confinement,” in fact Bob’s elderly Aunt Bertha asked me once – “When will you be going into confinement dear?”

Now some moms have come full circle, they are baby-centric, wearing their babies all wrapped up in true third world fashion. They nurse on demand and co-sleep in a family bed, it’s something called “Attachment Parenting.” I dislike this term since it suggests that all previous moms in history were practicing “Detachment Parenting.” The feminist in me scoffs, really, do we have to play the mommy wars again? Aren’t we pitting ourselves against the “free range” parents vs the “bubble wrapped” practitioners? Being a good mom means nurturing and loving your child, setting rules and civilizing them too. There is a middle road.

My sister once told me that she never wanted to wake up angry, because she remembers the Flapper being angry whenever my sister would wake her. Of course our Mother had lost her husband to cancer and was working in a shirt factory to make ends meet. She was most likely exhausted all the time. I never wanted my dinner table to be a war zone, because I remember my foster mother Nell always telling me I had to finish everything on my plate. Growing up during the Depression made Nell quite frugal, a ‘waste not/want not’ type of home maker. So we learn how not to be a mother too, from our past.

I wanted a natural childbirth, but my daughter was breech and so they had to do surgery. We plan, God laughs. I nursed her for ten months and wore her on my back in a Bjorn. I washed her real diapers and hung them on the line in the sun. I made her real baby food from whatever I was cooking. But we believed in a good night’s sleep and so she was taught to sleep in her crib. I remember the Flapper calling me one day and asking what was I doing. I told her I was playing on the floor with my infant daughter. She laughed. So I asked her what was so funny?

She said the only time she would play with her babies was when she was feeding or bathing them. Time is the greatest gift moms have to give to their children. Quiet reading, playing, and yes sitting down around the dinner table time. Listening to their day, their concerns, listening between the lines of what they say. Being present. Driving her to cheerleading practice, being his soccer coach. It doesn’t matter if you opened a can, defrosted a TV dinner, or cooked something healthy from an all organic, local farm. Thank you to the Bride and the Rocker, for teaching me how to be their mom. And a very Happy Mother’s Day to y’all.

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Number 9, Number 9

May 10, 2012 by mountainmornings

It’s all over the news. President Obama comes out in support of gay marriage. Were we really surprised? What is surprising to me are all the unintended consequences to come – like wanting to move the Democratic National Convention out of Charlotte, NC. Oh, and that Etch-a-Sketch moment of Mitt trying to take credit for saving Detroit, that’s old news now. Which is why I love checking in on the rest of the world.

Click on over to the BBC and you’ll find that the headliner is “Syria suicide bomb kills dozens.” This leaves me feeling helpless, what is the world going to do about this? So I scroll down to number three on the list: “Roy Lichtenstein sale sets new record,” apparently in the pop art world Lichtenstein’s blondes have more fun and fetch more money. “Sleeping Girl, from 1964, went for $44.9m (£27.8m) at Sotheby’s New York sale of post-war and contemporary art. The same sale saw Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis, a life-sized silver silkscreen image of Elvis Presley depicted as a cowboy, fetch (only) $37m (£23m).” Want to watch the auction? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18016495

Number nine down the BBC’s front web page is the “Obama supports same-sex marriage” headline, right below “Brazil approves World Cup beer sales!” As most newsy people know, the placement of a story – in a real paper or on the web – is its destiny. We are a lazy bunch of readers, clicking onto the next link is hard…and those who still hold papers in hands like to turn to the obits, or the sports section, or in my case, the op-ed page. And that was that, time’s a wastin.’ I remember the first time one of my stories ended up on the front page, I was ecstatic. Maybe someone would cut it out, and send it somewhere, tack it up on their refrigerator?

I stopped at a McDonalds in TN on my way home this week. There was a life-size poster of Elvis framed on the wall in his white buck shoes. A Memphis boy, the South still loves him. My older brothers listened to him, in fact my brother Mike knew him when he was living in Memphis. Elvis was reduced to beach movies for me, already a Beatles maniac. Somehow it’s nice to know that Great Britain thinks a silkscreen of Elvis is more newsworthy than our President’s remarks on gay marriage…after all, they allowed gays to serve openly in the military a dozen years before we did. Evolution is a tricky, cultural thing.

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It is What it Was

May 8, 2012 by mountainmornings

The nine hour drive home from Nashville can be eye-crossingly boring. I reluctantly passed by Dollywood in favor of listening to the continuing saga of a Janet Evanovich audiobook. One McDonalds with Elvis all over the walls blends with another rocking chair on a Cracker Barrel porch until the Blue Ridge Mountains appear just in the nick of time. Only a sporadic NPR signal saved me from driving off a cliff.

Our dearly beloved Vice President got me wondering, what does the President think of gay marriage? One answer might be, “Who cares?” After all, we know he is a constitutional law scholar and downright brilliant. We also know he ate dog meat as a child in Indonesia because if we were a kid, in that part of the world, we’d eat what our parents gave us too. One culture’s delicious blue cheese is another’s smelly mold. But watching the polls on gay marriage ‘evolve’ in this country is inspiring: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/same-sex-marriage-support_n_1499247.html

Listening to the White House Press Secretary dance around good ole Biden’s plainspeakin’ ways and say that the President’s opinion on gay marriage “…is what it was” made me smile. And now the Republicans would just love to force his hand on this, but don’t let them set the agenda for us Mr President. If Mitt could carry his dog on top of his car at one time in his life, we know he wouldn’t do that again today. If Mitt can embrace health insurance reform in MA, we know he can and did ‘evolve’ and would like to destroy it for the rest of us. Surely Mr President, you can continue to help breathe life into our Constitution. Remember that gay rights are human rights, and that words have meaning.

Here are some shots of Ann Patchett’s independent bookstore in Nashville where anyone can stroll in and play the piano. Browsing among books is a guilty pleasure for this word nerd. We Americans are an independent lot. We respect truth in politics, and in fact we long for it. We give you permission Mr President to keep evolving, along with the rest of us.

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an Early Mother’s Day

May 6, 2012 by mountainmornings

If you’ve been following along my journey – from North to South, from Mom to Mother-in Law – then you know the Flapper’s story. Gertrude (aka Gi) was indomitable. Unsinkable is another word that comes to mind; widowed three times and crippled after a car accident in our Year of Living Dangerously, Grandma Gi managed to raise five children in PA. Her sixth child, the baby, was raised in NJ with another mother.

My second mother Nell was a first generation American housewife. Her parents emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the same PA coal town that my birth family called home. She moved with her husband Jim to NJ during the Great Depression to find work at Picatinny Arsenal. Little did she know that after raising one daughter and sending her off to nursing school, she’d find herself raising another when she was fifty years old for her friend the Flapper. Nell was the kindest, funniest, most loving mother imaginable. She was in fact “Mommy.” When I was 18 months old, and we would visit the Flapper in the hospital in PA, Nell would let me push Gi’s wheelchair down the hospital hallways. Gi was my other “Mother.”

I felt lucky. Two mothers might seem like one too many, but in fact they gave me a special gift. One taught me to be strong and independent, while the other taught me to love unconditionally. One worked outside the home her whole life, while the other never learned to drive and welcomed me home from school each day with a hug. I had two birthday parties and two Christmas trees; twice the fun. Neither one was a gardener, but one was a tremendous cook. My green thumb did not come naturally, but my daughter seems to have inherited it.

Mother’s Day is always the day we plant, so today we planted tomatoes and herbs and peppers in pots. Matt was in charge of protecting the tender plants from rabbits. The soon-to-be parents will be moving into a new house in June, so we now have a movable garden. Their new baby girl is due in August. Between her Great Grandmother Ada, Shavaun (Matt’s Mom) and Nana me, she’ll have three times the Grandma love!

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What’s in a Name

May 3, 2012 by mountainmornings

I’ve been on the road these past two days. Listening to a book on tape (a disc), country music and NPR and finally pulling into Nashville as Adele starts singing about the rain. Now it’s raining, but as the Irish like to say, “It’s a soft day.”

I am overcome with love for my daughter and the baby girl I felt kick me for the first time today. I wonder if she will be a soccer player, or maybe a ballerina. I know she will have long Lynn legs. We talk about names and how important they are and we laugh about some of the birthing escapades of friends. This child of mine is about to become a mother. She seems so serene, so mature and still I can see her sitting on my kitchen floor, feeding raisins to her raggedy ann doll.

Ann Patchett wrote an article about Nashville as part of the Love Letters project on the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/love-letters/ann-patchetts-nashville_b_1470141.html. How the people here are very independent, free spirited. It is the perfect city for your birth in the year of the dragon.

20120503-175717.jpg

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The Tony and Tennis

May 1, 2012 by mountainmornings


Happy first day of May. We were lucky enough to watch the final game of a USTA tournament at UVA’s Boar’s Head Sports Club. Its official name is the Boyd Tinsley Women’s Clay Court Classic and after many days and hours battling to the top, in rain and sun, an underdog won. Melanie Oudin http://melanieoudin.com/ had been destined for greatness on the tennis tour in 2009, but started sliding down in rank until now. She collected her trophy and the $50,000 grand prize from the gracious Dave Matthews Band fiddler himself, Boyd Tinsley. “It wasn’t Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, but the win in Charlottesville did cause Oudin’s ranking to jump 92 spots to No. 278 and that is welcome news to the Georgia native.” The crowd was defintely star-struck on Sunday, clapping and chanting Melanie’s name…discretely…between sets.

Stars are coming out on Broadway today too with the announcement of the 66th Tony Award’s 2012 nominations. A low tech, sentimental musical “Once,” about a Czech flower seller in Dublin, is going up against the mega tech musical “Spiderman.” Considering the rocky (no pun intended Bono) start on Spiderman, I was only slightly surprised it garnered any kudos at all. This is when I miss living an hour outside of Manhattan. Over the years I sat in awe as Barbara Striesand triumphed in “Funny Girl,” and Angela Lansbury was “Hello Dolly.” The Rocker was a mere tot when he saw “Into the Woods” with Bernadette Peters playing the Witch. Actually we sat right up front, and he was watching the orchestra and jamming with the conductor. In 1997, we (Mom and 13 year old Rocker/Son) even won a pre-show dance contest on a Broadway stage, before watching Xena Princess Warrior Lucy Lawless star as Rizzo in “Grease.” This old song and dance girl was ecstatic; and surprisingly, the Rocker wasn’t embarrassed.

Broadway, it’s not just for Gays and Jews anymore 🙂 Delighted to report that Neil Patrick Harris will be hosting, and that I’m seriously considering either tap or tennis lessons, or both?!

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The Deciders

April 29, 2012 by mountainmornings

Yesterday’s Richmond Rally was rainy and inspiring. Twenty years ago I marched in DC with my daughter and my niece; now I march with a new friend who was a lifelong Republican. I am encouraged by these women, and by the power of social media. Women’s rights are human rights! Legislators, we are the deciders. A vote for the Personhood Bill (and many other demeaning and demoralizing bills) tells us you care less about our fertility and access to contraception, and more about your religious dogma.

Our next Senator, Tim Kaine was there. He is listening.

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The Girls on the Bus

April 26, 2012 by mountainmornings

If you’re old enough to remember Nixon’s bid for re-election against George McGovern in 1972, then you may have read the best selling book about that campaign as seen through the eyes of the mostly male political press corps, “The Boys on the Bus” by Timothy Crouse. Ah those were the days: reporters only had one deadline a day; many had intimate access to the candidates; boozing and cavorting were de rigueur, and applauded! http://www.npr.org/2012/04/19/150577036/boys-on-the-bus-40-years-later-many-are-girls These were Mad Men indeed, writing copy that could possibly sway a nation. I was 23 years old, had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and it was my first presidential vote. Only one state went blue, and later Nixon brought us Watergate. To this day, I am proud that along with the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I voted for McGovern.

This Saturday women, and some of the men who love them, will be boarding buses all over these United States in order to unite our sisters as one voice. Our bodies, Our Choices, Our vote. Back in the day, when I had one deadline a week in MA, women were still being categorized as “soft” copy. Articles by and for women, as often as not, appeared buried in the “Style” section. Today, with a 24/7 news cycle and social media, gender-specific issues can hit the front page anywhere, and a bill about “Personhood” in MS might just roll across your Facebook news feed in VA. My friend in NY, will read about our Governor rethinking the “Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Bill” because he had ‘no idea’ it was that intrusive.

And so it adds up – like death by a thousand cuts – we see a slow but steady legislative assault on our very autonomy, on our civil rights. “Nine hundred forty four bills (to limit women’s reproductive health and rights) in the first three months of this year alone. Nine hundred sixteen such bills introduced and considered in 2011, and hundreds in 2010. Never before on any matter has there been such a legislative offensive, such a coordinated drive to overrule the law of the land and force everyone to adhere to one set of religious beliefs.”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-helfert/from-the-frontlines-of-the-war-on-women_b_1450296.html
For one woman it was seeing Sandra Fluke denied her right to speak, and then being degraded by a right-wing nut case. For another it was a presidential candidate threatening to ban contraception! Margaret Sanger, we need you again. So two ordinary women, united by their belief in a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about her body, got together on Facebook and started a revolution…they said we have to take to the streets, again. And we bi-partisan women, blue, red and all other shades, we were listening.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-hannah-grufferman/unite-women-march_b_1447021.html

If you are fed up with the “Boys on the Bus” mentality, with the kind of thinking that brought us this religious vs state testimony excluding women from the conversation and you want to join us, feel free. Our bus leaves for Richmond at 11:30 and arrives at Nina F. Abady Festival Park, 449 N. 7th Street, Richmond, VA for a 2pm rally. 50 state capitals will be filled with women on Saturday. I wonder who will be listening. To find your state’s event: http://unitewomen.org/unite/

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