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Posts Tagged ‘NPR’

Techno Wizard

Posted in books, Country, Journaling, wedding, tagged , , , , , , on November 18, 2014| 2 Comments »

OK, so I’m not as bad as Great Aunt Bert, who once asked me where my blog “goes?” In fact, for my age, I think I can keep up with most technological advances, with a little help from my kids, my hubby, and a certain friend in MN (Thanks Steff). But I failed miserably on this online test of my favorite and most prolific author, Margaret Atwood. http://www.theguardian.com/books/quiz/2014/nov/18/margaret-atwood-75-quiz?CMP=twt_gu

Happy Birthday Ms Atwood! She is ten years my senior and she IS a techno wizard. For instance, do you know the answer to this question – “Which piece of technology did Atwood invent?” Hint, it’s not the She-Reader!

And just to preface this piece about techno skills, you must know that I’m not nor was I ever an earplug kinda girl. Remember those Apple ads of kids running around with earbuds in their ears all happy and dancing? Well, that’s one thing I missed the memo on; when I walk I like to hear birds, when I bike I read the New Yorker in the gym, I work-out to my own inner music. I look at the scenery, I want to be connected to my environment, not hooked up to a device through my ears.

However, on the mind-numbing drive to and from Nashville, alone, the Bride turned me onto podcasts. Much safer than trying to change books on CDs while passing trucks, my iPhone plugs into the car’s stereo for hours of compelling journalism. Beats right-wing radio jocks every day. And the latest thing she has me hooked on is “Serial.”

Billed as the 1999 murder baffling millions, and created by the “This American Life” team, “Serial” is like having a little Agatha Christie along for the ride. Only it’s non-fiction. And before I even had a chance to explain the story to Bob, this podcast was making national news. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenkilloran/2014/11/13/the-serial-podcast-is-eating-us-for-breakfast/

I inhaled/binged on seven episodes in the car even though they are released every Thursday and now have the UVA Innocence Project team involved. It’s a Romeo and Juliet meets West Side Story whodunit. And if I lost you at “podcast,” have no fear. You don’t need earplugs, or a car with a plug for your smart phone. You can listen on your laptop http://serialpodcast.org

I’m talking to you, big sister Kay. I know you can jockey your MacBook like a pro, and you finally broke down and bought a DVD player, and thanks for allowing me to put you on Facebook (a mixed blessing). I’ll always remember Kay’s story of trying to buy our Nana a refrigerator in Scranton, PA, when she was perfectly happy with her ice box! Will Serial or Netflix be the next frontier? Come to think of it, I think you need an iPad like Great Grandma Ada!

A Tale of Two Sisters (before smart phones)

A Tale of Two Sisters (before smart phones)

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
– Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

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Social Currency?

Posted in an expository essay, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2014| 3 Comments »

Bob alerted me to an article in November’s Atlantic magazine, “Remember the sexting scandal in Louisa this Spring?”

In fact, I didn’t, but I was all over our town’s famous crime novelist, John Grisham’s blow-up on Twitter about his interview with a British magazine. The one where he said our prisons are too full (true!) with normal, old, white guys downloading child porn (what?). Then he steps in it further by differentiating between 16 year old girls and 9 year old boys…

But that’s not the hot button issue Bob was talking about. He had listened to an NPR interview http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/10/15/356393531/why-kids-sext-describes-nude-photos-as-social-currency-among-teens

…on his ride to the hospital yesterday with the author, Hanna Rosin, of the Atlantic piece on teen sexting: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/why-kids-sext/380798/

Now we all know that teenagers do crazy things, and every generation has to prove their worth by totally rebelling against their parents – with their music, with their language, with a scathing look, or the ubiquitous word of dismissal, “Fine!” Sheer insolence has no better bedfellow than a teenage girl. Still, it’s one thing to grow your hair long and straight, shorten your skirts to the mini-mum, and listen to the Rolling Stones. Or as the Flapper did, bind her breasts, cut and bob her hair, and go out the window to dance to the Jimmy Dorsey Band.

“You come from a long line of rebels,” Mother told me more than once. But of course, we didn’t have smart phones.

Louisa is a sleepy country county, between my edge of the Shenandoah and the big city of Richmond, a mere 10 minute drive. Think Friday night lights on football fields, and the occasional DUI. So it was baffling to local law enforcement to find out A) that they were collecting more and more cell phones because each kid knew 5-10 kids with naked pix on their phones, it was non-ending, and B) that the kids didn’t seem to care at. all.

For the most part, the laws do not concern themselves with whether a sext was voluntarily shared between two people who had been dating for a year or was sent under pressure: a sext is a sext. So as it stands now, in most states it is perfectly legal for two 16-year-olds to have sex. But if they take pictures, it’s a matter for the police.

There is no easy takeaway from this article. Girls take great care in posing for their pix, like Kim Kardashian and her selfie book saga. Boys just point and shoot. And there are those who feel pressured by boys to send sexts, and those who are in a relationship and this just seems to be a part of the mating ritual, no.big.deal. For some boys, the number of naked pictures on their phones is akin to “social currency,” like collecting Pokemon cards.

But for some girls, the less confident, more marginalized girls, their pix are shared without their consent and humiliation follows; certainly setting up an Instagram account on the web takes this into felony territory. But even here, law enforcement wanted to know was this just two brothers playing a prank, or did they have a more salacious motive?

When we over-schedule our teens, when their only free time is spent texting their friends in the middle of the night, then we know something is wrong. Romancing in high school, while no longer done at the corner drug store sharing an ice cream soda, should not be done alone, after midnight, with a cell phone. Parents, teach your children well.

Love is Love but sexting is stupid

Love is Love but sexting is stupid

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Feeding the Cat

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on October 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Have you heard of the saying, “Don’t feed the cat?” Literally it refers to the alley cat who comes to your door, meows and looks starved and miserable but cuddly too, and so you give it some food. Just a few bites of your leftover fish maybe. This would be a bad move if you don’t like or want a cat in your life, because soon enough you’ll be hauling said cat to the vet and setting up a nice, cozy bed by the fire for her. She will rule the roost; you will own a cat.

Well, I’ve been thinking about this as it relates to our country’s policy on kidnapping. Like Great Britain, we don’t pay ransoms. We are not feeding these cats so to speak. The sheer outrage over the latest beheadings of American and British citizens has caused us to once again go to war – and not with a country. With a bunch of highly organized jihadists who would like to claim a stake of sand in the desert as their own, to rule with their own biblical/koran-like laws. And the reason we say ISIS and our government says ISIL is telling.

Is it ISIS the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or is it ISIL the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant? But as we learned from reading Gertrude Bell, nomadic cultures do not have borders. They roam freely according to the season and their history – borders were artificially drawn by the British when they left their Empire to the sands of time. And so our President has tagged this terrorist group with an “L” because the Levant is more fluid and denotes their mission if you look at their name in Arabic:

In Arabic, the group is known as Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.The term “al-Sham” refers to a region stretching from southern Turkey through Syria to Egypt (also including Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan). The group’s stated goal is to restore an Islamic state, or caliphate, in this entire area. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/18/isis-or-isil-the-debate-over-what-to-call-iraqs-terror-group/

al-Sham is translated into English to mean the Levant. It’s sounding a little more treacherous now, isn’t it? And I remember listening to an NPR piece about how European countries may say they are not paying for their kidnapped citizens, but their diplomats negotiate deals that fund certain Islamic charities and they launder money back to terrorist groups in this subversive, back-door way. Which is why many German and French hostages have been released over the years, and our people are not.

“Since 2003, at least 68 Westerners have been kidnapped in the vast Sahara.” http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29409361 When I read this BBC article I was shocked, not just by the numbers, but also to think my BFF’s daughter had worked for the Peace Corps in Mali and lived with a Tourig family. Aid workers, tourists and journalists are pawns in this senseless slaughter. And money talks, money funds their ammunition and their “soldiers,” Western money helps them to kidnap more Western citizens.

We may not be feeding the cat, but other countries are. Two Million per person! In Africa hostages are discounted, they were asking 10M for James Foley in the Middle East, although they may have accepted 5M…

“…Ransoms totalling at least $30m (£18.3m) have been paid since 2008 in connection with these kidnappings and that the going rate for a single Western hostage in the region (Africa) is now about $2m (£1.2m). Most of these hostages were citizens of countries that are believed to have paid ransoms….at least five Spanish, four Italian, two Canadian, two Austrian, two Swiss and two German hostages have been taken. Of this group of 17, one died of natural causes in captivity and the rest were released unharmed. Nearly all of them were aid workers or tourists.

It’s not fair, terrorist groups get 30M to fund what they do best, terrorize people, which creates that insane feedback loop of more and more kidnappings. And for those who don’t pay, a beheading on Youtube. I’m not a diplomat, and I have no idea how to stop this problem, except that maybe building schools, educating girls, and providing access to water, sanitation and basic health care needs might go further than drones dropping bombs. Maybe leaving Iraq and leaving Assad to his own devices, helped to create these black/flag/waving/zealots; but certainly, now that they have advanced to the edge of Turkey, we have to do something.

I’m writing this as I gently remove my Grand Cat from my laptop. It’s a good thing I love cats.   IMG_1263

 

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The Allure of Mean

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2014| 2 Comments »

I’m back on the road again. My pilgrimage past Davy Crockett’s birthplace and Dollywood has me listening to another podcast of This American Life, and this time the theme is “Mean Friends.” You’ve got to love being able to laugh out loud while driving through pop-up thunderstorms and trucks-in-left-lanes on windy mountain roads. The girl’s name was “Cohen” and she fluffed off a would-be suitor in middle school by letting him think they could be “Hi, Bye” friends. In other words, she’d acknowledge him in the hallways but that’s all…and he was ecstatic!

Are girls better at being mean? Is this our first feeble attempt at self-protection? I remember in high school a boy from a private school asked me to go to his prom. I accepted, but only if he promised to drop me off at my future-husband-then-almost-boyfriend’s house afterwards. And he did! I didn’t think I was being mean at the time, I actually thought I was being kind?!

I remember so clearly chasing the Bride around a preschool birthday party, telling her it’s not OK to tease and chase another little girl. I could see it already, my tyrant in blonde curls was the queen bee of her little posse, she was the mighty, mini trendsetter. Probably our move back to NJ when she was in 2nd Grade nipped that in the bud. It’s so easy to go all Lord of the Flies when your family stays in one insular community, “,,,after all we aren’t savages really…”

I asked my little Mussolini how she would feel if her feet were in that girl’s shoes. Yes, at times like this I would go all biblical, and believe me parents, you will too. I recently read a letter on Momastery titled “Brave is a Decision” this is excellent reading before the little ones head off to school. If you’d like to instill a little compassion and not so much as a mean bone in your child’s body, this one’s for you.

We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done.
We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.
Kind people are brave people. Because brave is not a feeling that you should wait for. It is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

– See more at: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/08/21/the-one-letter-to-read/#sthash.0aYv3r2N.dpuf

I’m meeting my “bad” in a good way MIL, the queen bee of her generation who broke a few hearts along the way, to pay homage to the next generation of “it” girls, our Love Bug is turning the BIG TWO. She has just started school and I’m hoping she’ll sit next to the kid without a lunch and offer to share her bento box. But she’ll also need to channel some mean into her young life, so she stands up for herself, so she can fight back when needed.

You can’t take Jersey out of the girl.

Carousel of Time

Carousel of Time

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Wild Heart

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Ms Bean is following me everywhere, if she loses me again I might never come back, right? Like the Love Bug following her Mama around when she returned after five days; we had to watch her go out to the alley and bring back the garbage cans. At the zoo, the first few rounds on the carousel were thrilling, but then wait, Mama kept disappearing. It wasn’t until my grandbaby turned around to watch the Bride growing smaller and smaller in the distance that she’d had enough. Time to slow this thing down.

And the seasons they go round and round

I listened to some amazing This American Life podcasts on the nine hour drive home. I even enjoyed the interview on NPR with an author about a new book about the Koch brothers, “Sons of Wichita.” http://www.npr.org/2014/05/21/314574217/how-the-koch-brothers-remade-americas-political-landscape

And the painted ponies go up and down

But hearing about China, and the demise of their socialist system after a famine wiped out food supplies and farmers stopped growing crops for their collective farms and started planting for their families was fascinating. After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese people lived by Chairman Mao’s little red book. It was the fastest and most sweeping political and social upheaval in history. Everyone lived for the common good of the Chinese people, a class system was virtually erased overnight.

We’re captive on the carousel of time

Then just as suddenly, with starvation came rebellion again. And so the savvy Communist leaders co-opted a kind of free market system – the Chinese term for ambition, “Wild Heart,” was no longer considered blasphemy. It was allowed, the Wild Heart was set free in every person to follow their passion, and a kind of well choreographed authoritarian capitalism was born.

We can’t return we can only look

Behind from where we came

I saw this morning that the Wild Heart is catching on in Tehran, where a bunch of teenagers posted a video dancing to Pharrell’s song “Happy.”

And go round and round and round 

In the circle game 

 

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Overwhelmed

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on March 12, 2014| 4 Comments »

This getting back to normal business can be frustrating. Obviously it’s difficult waking up and not having a toddler waltz into your room to escort you to breakfast; or should I say the feast of fresh fruits and juices and any other breakfast food imaginable no longer awaits you on a breezy terrace with the ocean looking on. No, it’s back to making my own coffee and cutting up my own banana in yogurt looking at the mountains, all the while waiting for a single crocus to bloom…really, shouldn’t that have happened already?

So I did what any red-blooded American woman would do after finally getting over my flu-like illness. I went to the gym – I figured if I kept waiting for spring it would never come. Like the proverbial boiling pot. And on my way home just now, I  listened to an author on NPR about feeling time crunched because she was a working mom. Way to put my problems into perspective! My daughter was returning to her everyday life which included the usual; grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning and laundry and also a sick toddler and a job that was anything but 9 to 5. It was more like 11pm to 7am, then she’d get some sleep and wake up to write her charts while the Love Bug napped.

I thought she must be feeling overwhelmed about now. So I made a mental note to tell her about this book since its author was heartbreakingly good on the radio. Brigid Schulte, a Washington Post columnist, wrote Overwhelmed; Work Love and Play When No One Has the Time. She talked about her generation and how they didn’t want to have a traditional marriage, the kind their parents had where the woman was in charge of the home, even if she had a full or part-time job. She wanted a more equitable distribution of work – like one always loads the dishwasher at night and one will always empty in the morning.

Last one out of bed makes the bed, and even if he forgets to put the pillows back on the bed you don’t do it…you leave them on the floor. I don’t think men understand just how hard that is for us, not picking up pillows.

Eventually Schulte and her husband did get to that place of marital housework justice, but it was a shock to see how far they had slipped into a more traditional model. She had to rewrite her to-do list, which is surprisingly the cover art of her book. Because after writing down every single thing she was trying to cram into her days, she realized that if she didn’t plan for her own recreational time, it would not happen.

I was just with my father who’s had a stroke, and sitting in a hospital room really makes you remember: … We don’t have that much time; what do you want to make of your life here on this Earth? And so, my to-do list is really: What are my priorities? What is most important to me? And then everything else, everything my to-do list used to be, I call the other 5 percent — it shouldn’t take more than 5 percent of my time or energy. There’s a lot of stuff that I used to do that I don’t do anymore. http://www.npr.org/2014/03/11/288596888/not-enough-hours-in-the-day-we-all-feel-a-little-overwhelmed

In many ways the Bride is lucky. Her Groom does his fair share around the house and truly shares child care when he is at home. Maybe my SIL could use this book? In Mexico she said she never gets any down time. To which I foolishly replied, but doesn’t your daughter go to school every day? Because she said, “Yes, but I go to work.”

If I were a list maker, this would be my list for today: 1) make bed, 2) pick up tickets for Book Festival, 3) search for a purple crocus. And I only make the bed because Nell said even if that’s all you do in a day, at least you did something!

Breakfast Anyone?

Breakfast Anyone?

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A Patchwork Essay

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 24, 2014| 2 Comments »

Bob was driving yesterday when we happened to catch the last half of Ann Patchett’s interview on NPR with Terri Gross. She was talking about how her life changed when she moved back home to Nashville, because it was her husband’s home too. Most of us do dream of leaving home and making our way in the bigger world, and she certainly did that. I thought about how our lives can pivot at times, we think we’re going one way and suddenly we find ourselves in a different place entirely. And we wake up, look around, and decide to embrace this new place…

You just roll up your sleeves and you do the job that’s in front of you and that’s what people do. And you know what? It’s easy for me to say this now that I’m years on the other side of it, but it’s a privilege to see someone through that time in their life. And the trick of it is to love them for who they are that day…”http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265228054/patchett-in-bad-relationships-there-comes-a-day-when-you-gotta-go

Patchett was talking about taking care of her grandmother as she was dying. It was supposed to be her sister who stayed at home, in Nashville, and would be the family’s caretaker. But instead, tables turned and her sister moved away just as Patchett agreed, after an eleven year courtship, to marry her boyfriend Karl. She was still smarting after a brief early marriage. That essay too is included in her new book, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I’ve yet to read her new book of essays, but after listening to her interview, I’ll have to wait until I return to the Love Bug so I can purchase her book in her bookstore, Parnassus. And no, she wasn’t pushing her bookstore with Terri Gross, but she was extolling about her love of independent bookstores. And I found myself agreeing with her.

I thought about meeting my husband again, after many years apart. I too had been burned by a bad first marriage at nineteen. The kind you know never should have happened, the kind you are second guessing while you’re saying “I Do,” and thinking “What If.” Young feminists at the time called these “starter marriages.” I sometimes think in discovering our own strength, the strength to leave, we started a revolution. I knew it was over when he told my sister Kay he could never be vulnerable. And I think we raised boys who were not afraid of vulnerability. https://medium.com/religion-spirituality-and-philosophy/838b400fe2a5

I had returned home and was keeping watch at my foster father’s dying bedside when my MIL Ada found me and pulled me into Bob’s hospital room. He was recovering from some minor surgery and thought he was hallucinating. His vulnerability matched mine. We met at fourteen, and married at thirty. And so our story resumed, the he.went.to.woodstock  (meets) she.went.to.westchester story.

I’m glad Ada kept most of my newspaper articles, faded yellow paper over the years. There was no Cloud to store and collate all my writing, but my MIL who will be 90 this year, became my biggest fan and super star archivist over the years. I may have to scan all those essays for posterity. They are like all the pictures stored away in boxes, waiting to be digitized on some rainy day. But first I’ll catch up on all things Nashville on Parnassus’ new blog  http://parnassusmusing.net it’s for anyone who loves to read – period!

“Let go of who you think you should be, and become who you are.”

another reason to call Nashville

another reason to call Nashville

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Read for the Record

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2013| 1 Comment »

Yesterday was Kale Day, but today is the official national book reading day for millions of children in libraries, homes and schools all across the country, and the idea is that we’ll all be reading one book. Well, you could read more than one, but doesn’t everybody love a tractor?

The book for Jumpstart’s 2013 Read for the Record campaign is Otis! Published by Penguin and written by New York Times bestselling author Loren Long, Otis is the timeless story of a friendship between a lovable tractor and a calf that live on a farm. On October 3, 2013 children and adults will come together to read Otis as part of Jumpstart and the Pearson Foundation’s Read for the Record campaign.

I packed a box full of toys and books for the Love Bug’s arrival. And her parents brought her favorite books with them as well. I’m even working on a children’s book inspired by the Bug, so here’s a little clue:County Fair 009

We started reading early to the Bride and Rocker, almost as soon as they could sit semi-steadily on our laps. And I’m happy to see the tradition continues. I found a beautifully illustrated book, I’d Know You Anywhere, My Love by Nancy Tillman. It’s about how we parents would always see through any animal disguise in pretend play, and recognize our beloved child.

And while talking all things literary today, let’s jump ahead to the next book on my list. I cannot wait to dig into Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, The Signature of All Things. I follow this author on Twitter so I was aware of its release date, then I caught her on the Today Show and later heard her interview on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/01/225719994/fghfgh

The heroine is a botanist in the early 19th Century, who travels to Tahiti and discovers herself, along with “…varietals of vanilla pods; a sky-high waterspout; abolition…” and so much more, including a bit of Victorian pornography. Gilbert’s book, Committed, helped the Bride and many of her friends in their understanding of modern marriage. So I had to smile when Gilbert said she married a man who believes a wife belongs in the kitchen…”with her feet up and a glass of wine, watching her husband cook dinner.”

We read around here for the love it, to escape and be challenged, to learn and to laugh. For the record, ebooks, podcasts and iPads have their place, but in my life, nothing will replace the feel of a real book in my hands!  photo

 

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Looking Forward

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2013| 2 Comments »

It’s another beautiful morning, a second day of sun and no rain. I’ve finished my conference call with my brother Jim and my sister Kay, and I’m about to head down and water the fig trees we planted. We’re looking forward to 3 weddings in the coming months and I’m determined to start doing water aerobics. Yes, you heard me right, there’s nothing I’d like better than dancing in a pool!

I started this day by listening to a podcast in the early morning light on our screened-in sleeping porch. NPR’s Snap Judgement is new to me, it’s kind of like Ira Glass’ This American Life, only it tells more stories, with extra “hip” music and is trying to reach a younger, more diverse audience than the usual white guys over 50. So it helps that the curator of Snap Judgement, Glynn Washington, is black. And now, I’m under his spell. http://snapjudgment.org

The theme was Isolation, and not to give anything away, we are taken down into a cave for months with a French geologist, and into the basement with a guy who is quarantined because his treatment for thyroid cancer has left him radioactive. But the most poignant story is about a priest who visits prisoners that the world has forgotten. And one thing he said struck a chord;

When hearts have no place to break…they become harder.

Then of course I had to check Twitter before writing and Joyce Carol Oates posted about an essay by Oliver Sacks on the joys of old age (no kidding), without a link, so I just had to Google it…http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-old-age-no-kidding.html?_r=0

“At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”)”

Feeling this holiday weekend, as I watched newly minted citizens take the Oath of Allegiance, barbequed with friends on our deck, and listened to a podcast on my iPhone, very grateful for this life. And still looking forward, as Sacks’ so eloquently said about his 80th, to my 65th birthday in September…even though I’ll be eligible for Medicare.

photo

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What’s in a Purse?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 4, 2013| 4 Comments »

In “Purse Politics; Tote and Vote,” the NYTimes thought it might be fun to do a puff piece on what women Senate and Congress members carry with them all the time. And thanks to Jezebel, I found it! Sen Claire MacCaskill said, “I think most of us, while we may look at the cute little purses, our lives don’t fit in a cute little purse. Our lives fit something that is in between a purse and a briefcase, and that’s what I carry.” http://jezebel.com/new-york-times-profiles-powerful-congresswomen-and-thei-511022241

Right, something in between, like a big purse…a tote maybe. In 2013 we have a record number of women on The Hill, 20 in the Senate and 81 in the House, and all we want to know about are the things they carry? iPads and phones, chap sticks and wallets? This article led to a bit of stream of consciousness for me, so follow along if possible.

A book on my teenage children’s summer reading list was, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It just so happens their English teacher Mr Shea was a friend of the author, and this book has been coined the next best thing to Hemingway in writing fiction about war. It won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. Unlike lady senators, soldiers in the Vietnam War carried mosquito netting, writing paper, letters from home and tarps to keep the jungle at bay; “For the most part they carried themselves with dignity.”

And I started to think about the things I carry around hither and yon. The damnable iPhone leaves me feeling rudderless should I forget it, and because of my shoulder problem, I’ve switched to a smaller summer purse. I sling it cross-body like a bandolier setting forth to do battle every day with life in the country. Keys, check! Water, absolutely! Wallet is a must have, along with all those plastic cards that let retailers know all my personal information. I’m holding out at Panerra Bread, why do you need one of their cards, really?

When I was working for a newspaper, I always had a small notebook and pencil with me, very old school Lois Lane. Now, I just send myself a text on my phone if I need to remember something. And my text said “WWII and sex.” I’d been listening to NPR’s “All Things Considered” about our GIs and prostitutes in Normandy around the end of the war. Mary Louise Roberts wrote her non-fiction book titled, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, to bring some attention to some of the lesser known evils of war; like the rise of VD in our troops and the increase in African American soldiers charged and promptly hanged for rape in Le Havre.  http://www.npr.org/2013/05/31/187350487/sex-overseas-what-soldiers-do-complicates-wwii-history

Soldiers to senators, writers to doctors, we all carry a microcosm of meaning with us every day. Diaper bags are toted everywhere with new moms and dads, and they always have less to carry with the second and third child. Still I’d rather read a book about what lady legislators actually do, and how their approach to politics may differ from their male colleagues. What kinds of policy are they willing to compromise on, when do they stand and fight for a bill. Are they cookie-cutter voters with their party mates? Do they bring in cookies for their aides? Are they furious with the GOP for trying to repeal Obamacare for the 36th time? Is a woman fundamentally different in building consensus?

Because in the end, it’s not about what we carry, it’s about what we do with it once we get there. Let’s see; can you guess who is the DC lawyer, the San Francisco businesswoman, the Chicago child psychologist and the Nashville ER doctor?

J&M 0992

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