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Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

City of Angels

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Have you heard of the band Weezer? Not a particularly great band name, makes me think of somebody struggling to breathe. They were big in the 90s and early 2000s. I was wondering because the bass player, Scott Shriner’s wife Jillian Lauren was involved in a police shooting last week here in LA.

Then Shriner performed at Coachella over the weekend.

It’s been a busy weekend. For one thing, Bernie and AOC held a rally on Erev Passover to fight the oligarchy. It was one of their largest turnouts yet, over 35,000 people attended! The Rocker thought we would go, but I had better things to do – like make chicken soup with matzoh balls and finagle a brisket into a slow cooker. Our small Seder was simple but lovely, the twins’ first holiday.

Bob told the girls about the Exodus and Moses. We didn’t get into all the plagues, or make them answer any questions, like “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I mean, they were already reclining in their twinsie pillow. Leo the Protector dog watched over them on the deck as the sun set over the canyon.

This morning I made matzoh brie (scrambled eggs with milk-soaked broken matzoh) with maple syrup.

And then I saw that the NYTimes had picked up our local Weezer story. It happened like this in the neighborhood of Eagle Rock: Jillian Lauren heard something suspicious in the middle of the night and so she picked up her legal gun and went outside to investigate. I’m assuming she was alone in the house with her four dogs since Shriner was out in the desert with the band.

Whereupon she was shot by the LAPD and then arrested.

Just a few weeks ago I’d met my sister-in-law Jorja and two of my LA nieces with children in Eagle Rock for dinner. Granted you hear lots of sirens and helicopters in the City of Angels, but this shooting just seemed so bizarre and close to home. My initial thought was the city will see quite a law suit in the future; Lauren survived her injuries and posted bond for 1 Million.

This has all the makings of an LA Law and Order style episode. Did she point her gun at the police? Did she fire? Did they identify themselves? And just to make it all more interesting, Lauren is an author! She wrote a book about her time spent in a harem – “Some Girls; My Life in a Harem.”

I didn’t feel the magnitude 5.2 earthquake this morning, which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There were several aftershocks but the only thing that happened was Bob’s phone alert started shrieking, my phone was on silent. “Drop, cover and protect yourself.” Similar to finding your safe place during a tornado watch?

But is any place really safe anymore when you can get shot by the police in your own backyard?

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Sequestered

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, Bob took me out for a ride. We drove through a McDonalds for two fish sandwiches like two old people, then we came home where I could lay in an anti-gravity chair in the warm sun. You see, within 48 hours of arriving home from France and visiting a dentist to have my tooth replaced, I tested positive once again for Covid. Rebound Covid. Nearly 50% of people, taking Paxlovid or not, will experience rebound – in fact, Joe Biden got it again! Only this time, the second time around, one cannot take Paxlovid; you’re required to just suffer in silent isolation.

What to do, what to do? During the first few days I simply existed with a brown paper bag sitting next to me filling up with tissues. I was counting the hours between Tylenol and sleep, sweet, sweat-drenched sleep. On Air France I watched “The Regime” with Kate Winslet, where she plays a wild and disinhibited dictator of some fictional European country, but back in the States my appetite changed. Now I needed pablum – we’ve started watching “The Good Place” on Netflix and it’s exactly right. And once the fever broke, I started reading again.

This month’s Atlantic must have read my feebled mind, the cover story is titled “The Case Against Pessimism; the West has to Believe That Democracy will Prevail,” by Anne Applebaum.

“Since 2018, more than 116,000 Russians have faced criminal or administrative punishment for speaking their mind. Thousands of them have been punished specifically for objecting to the war in Ukraine. Their heroic battle is mostly carried out in silence. Because the regime has imposed total control on information in Russia, their voices cannot be heard.”

Applebaum makes the case for war, and I never thought I’d agree with such a premise, but fascism in the form of Putin today, is on the march. Fascism hides beneath many names: Sovietization, Russification and even a German word: Gleichschaltung. She posits that IF Germany had armed Ukraine in 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea, if the West had not looked away, this current war might not have happened. And now, after the full-scale invasion of 2022 and initial call to help Ukraine, western democracies’ support is starting to wane. She warn us:

“Complacency, like a virus, moves quickly across borders,” she writes. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/russia-ukraine-democracy-applebaum/680318/

My virus flew across the ocean courtesy of Air France. But I refuse to be complacent about our election. Our twice-impeached ex-President, you know the Apprentice candidate who sent Putin Covid tests for his own personal use before we Americans could get our hands on them, wants another crack at autocracy. Remember back when our friend and neighbor who had been in construction gave us K95 masks for our daughter the ER doctor? Mr T admires tyrants, and Arnold Palmer is running around naked in his head. It’s been a week.

This morning I tested negative for Covid!! We voted early! Instead of going to the movies afterwards, Bob wheeled me around Lowes looking for mums. I didn’t wear white like I did when I voted for Hillary, I’m lucky I got dressed at all. I’ve been humbled, and not by children, by the fragility of our democracy. This is not a forkin joke. Please remember to vote like your life depends on it.

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Oh La La La

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2024| 1 Comment »

Bonjour Everyone! How do you say, “We have reluctantly returned home from France?” in French? We landed in Nashville last night after touring most of Kennedy Airport between connections. And I have three takeaways:

I didn’t think about our election much. We had to decide where we would go for dinner. Should we walk with an umbrella around a mountainous ancient city on the Cote d’Azur? How many Salades Nicoise is too many Salades Nicoise for lunch? But we did pass by a golden poster on the Metro advertising a new movie, “The Apprentice,” where Jeremy Strong plays the kingbuilder Roy Cohn. How could I not have even known about this movie? It’s about to be released in Europe but is currently playing here. This is about the ex-president as a young real estate tycoon in New York, about the time we met him at a Vikings game. My plan is to vote early for Harris/Walz, and cap it off with the movie!

You cannot go back! I mean you can go home again, but it’s never the same. In Paris for example, we couldn’t even get close to the Eiffel Tower without standing in a long line because it is now barricaded. On our Bateau Mouche cruise, we didn’t pass by the monuments because the Seine is too high! Mon Dieu. Only the diffuse light and delightful French people were similar to past tours. And having the Bride and her family with us for our last weekend was the icing on the gateau! They were visiting the Groom’s colleague and his family near the Place de la Republique, and so the Grands got a taste for real Parisian life.

But for the first part of our trip, Bob and I were two for the road and started off in Nice. We sat in the blue chairs on the Promenade des Anglais and watched the Mediterranean sea. In fact, we saw a man dressed in a black wetsuit swimming far, far out who came closer to shore with what looked like an orange balloon tied to his waist. When he emerged on the rocky shoreline and took off his cap and gloves, we could see it was a buoy. He just walked down the Prom like Jason Bourne! I was too stunned and jet lagged to film it. Bob and I have never been to the southern coast of France, so everything was new.

We strolled through mansions of the Belle Epoque – one on the sea, Villa Massena, and one on a mountaintop, Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. Everything was over the top! But the story of Beatrice Rothschild captured my interest. In 1883, her marriage was arranged (at the tender age of 19) to an older Parisian/Russian banker, Maurice Ephrussi, who almost immediately infected her with “an illness.” This illness compromised her fertility, and as a result she kept many small animals in the villa who were pampered as only the French can do. After her divorce from Maurice, she spent every winter in her villa, throwing parties, collecting art and gambling in Monte Carlo! The casino, built in 1863, was the only gambling establishment in the world to allow admit women!

“The Baroness Ephrussi de Rothschild made her Villa a true haven for art collectors with porcelain, furniture and paintings by the Great Masters. The Villa was decorated in the Rothschild style, i.e., with the best from each era, resulting in a somewhat eclectic mix!” https://www.villa-ephrussi.com/en

The Pandemic was real, and still has reprecussions.

Traveling over 4,000 miles has some risk. And unfortunately for us, we contracted Covid early on – even though we wore K95 masks in every airport. My companion, the ER doc, brought along Paxlovid just in case, and we had just been vaccinated so I cannot complain. Well, I can complain about losing a tooth after biting into a hard baguette because I had to eat something before taking the pills. Then, after searching for an English language book at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I hastily picked up Stephen King’s “Holly” for the plane. I have never read one of his books, but I had no choice. Billed as a crime novel, I was hoping for minimal horror but the timeline includes early pandemic and Mr T days, and I remembered that the sheer terror of that time was real.

How could we as a nation have forgotten? How can it be that a tyrant with small hands and delusions of grandeur think he could possibly win another term? He bungled our response to a worldwide novel virus, creating a culture of Zoom funerals. His incompetence was likely responsible for several hundred thousand deaths. Marie Antoinette offered her subjects cake, Caesar suggested ‘bread and circuses’ to keep his citizens happy, and what does Mr T offer? A CIRCUS with LIES.

Okay, so I’m back to thinking about our election. Vote early people, and remember “…we are never ever ever ever getting back together… Like, ever.” Taylor Swift

Except well, I did get back together with this guy 45 years ago, and I think I’ll keep him! Here we are with Monet’s Water Lilies.

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When Water Rises

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2024| Leave a Comment »

What’s happened to the Appalachian Mountains post Hurricane Helene is apocalyptic.

And we are no strangers to hurricanes. When you marry an Emergency Physician, you learn to live with contingencies. We would fill up the bathtub so we could flush our toilet in the Berkshires before a Nor’easter. We had a generator in our garage on the Jersey Shore.

But last week in Nashville, Bob was walking around the house muttering about emergency back-up plans, or the lack thereof. He needs to know that everything will fall seamlessly into place when all else fails… I mean he used to write disaster plans! This is why doctors seem so serene in the midst of chaos, they figure they have everything covered. We even have a mophie wireless charging brick just in case we lose power.

But last week we didn’t lose power, we only lost internet service for four days.

This is day FIVE since Helene roared her way up from Florida, leaving over 100 dead and 600 missing. We had dinner with Les and her husband Saturday night and she got us up to speed on Asheville. She and her husband David own a condo in the middle of town and she told me she spoke for less than a minute with one of her neighbors before they lost cell service. She was starting to pack her car when she heard the roads were gone and only emergency services were allowed in.

Roads in and out of Asheville have washed out. Cables are gone and cell towers toppled. They had a boil water alert before they lost water altogether. Power and internet service is down and food is running low. Every creek and river overflowed after being drenched the week before, then Helene dropped the amount of FIVE Septembers of rain. The hospital there, Mission (recently bought by HCA) was running aground before all this happened. Doctors and nurses are living on-site with the help of generators.

People in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have lost everything. It is unimaginable but not totally unexpected. Most people living in the Northeast don’t understand how a mountainous area can flood, but climate change has challenged that belief. The once every hundred year flood is happening every few years. I checked on the Facebook page of a widowed friend living in Haywood County, NC. Her daughter is a physician who works with the Groom, and she worked as a journalist for a newspaper in her younger years. The Bride thought we’d have a lot in common, and we do. I found a picture on her timeline of a coffee cup a friend posted for her with this caption:

“She’s hand grinding her own coffee beans and using a camp stove.”

I was relieved to know she’s alright. Of course she is, she roasts her own coffee beans on her front porch! If you would like to help people recover from this storm, all the usual sites are accepting donations – Red Cross, the Salvation Army and United Way. Also you can register online if you live nearby to help with food: “World Central Kitchen, which set up meal service Monday at Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ, welcomes volunteers who have registered online.” There is also: https://mercychefs.com/helene-response and https://www.heartswithhands.org/

In retrospect, losing Google Fiber for four days was nothing compared to Helene’s wrath. And please remember when you vote next month, one ex-president’s response to a disaster was to throw paper towels out to victims after a hurricane hit Puerto Rico. And vote accordingly. Wonder Woman painting by Ashley Longshore.

Screenshot

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The Land of How Many Lakes?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 17, 2024| 2 Comments »

Along with a travel-size tube of lavender lotion, I crafted an eternity pearl necklace for her. Bob and I ordered tennis balls for her temporary/travel walker. Dr Jim arranged for a Fajitas and Margaritas lunch cruise on Lake Minnetonka and his friends threw her a celebratory brunch complete with her favorite coconut cake for dessert.

My big sister Kay turned 90!

We couldn’t have picked better weather for our visit to Minnesota. Dr Jim is the last connection our family has to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and we all flew in like migratory birds last week from TN and NY. After Kay’s last fall, the one that broke her shoulder outside her Upper East Side apartment, she wanted to see her little brother ‘one last time’ and so we set up a Fall sibling reunion goal. We also thought we’d ‘help’ Dr Jim downsize into a pied-a-terre in the town of Excelsior.

But like most construction plans, his actual move-in date was delayed; birthdays however, arrive despite our best objections. Our Daughter-in-Love, Aunt Kiki, will turn thirty something this week. Ah, to be thirty again… The Bride received a blue Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a pasta attachment for her big day and mine will be the last of the September birthdays, a footnote to a momentous year.

According to my Native American horoscope, our September natal days come under the “Duck Fly Moon.” I’ve always called us Christmas Party babies, but maybe Autumnal Equinox sounds better? The Flapper introduced me to a book, “The Medicine Wheel,” about Native spirituality years ago. She was beginning her search for meaning, studying psychology and Buddhism. She spent her final years surrounded by sculptures of Buddha on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. With her two sons nearby, we would write letters to each other wondering about the state of the world.

This was the last time I routinely actually wrote letters!

First the Love Bug, followed by four more female Fall birthdays – 12 to 90 years old. We saw a family of wild turkeys crossing Dr Jim’s road. I glimpsed a white egret swoop into the trees behind his house. At least I think it was an egret, maybe it was a swan? We all saw loons floating on the lake. I remembered the whooping cranes flying south last month over Nashville after I read Margaret Renkl’s brilliant essay about blue jays and change. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/opinion/hope-social-problems-justice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU4.kgtX.2sZHo4nF3YuS&smid=url-share

My sister Kay is an artist. Her beautiful paintings are hanging all over the country, including right here in my snug. She was a single mom and a lipstick feminist back in the 50s and 60s, a glamorous stewardess for National Airlines. At her interview she was never weighed or measured, simply hired on the spot! National’s base was in Florida, but she flew around the world a few times! I loved visiting her Manhattan apartment as a teenager, right up the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. We’d have lunch at the Madison Deli and she’d correct my country-bumpkin table manners at Lutece for dinner.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s can’t compare to her lifestyle then, and now she still walks with some help to Central Park nearly every day.. Kay taught me so much about life and love. As soon as I landed back home, I cleaned out the bird bath and replaced the small solar fountain. The cardinals and robins are getting used to the moving water, even guarding it at times. Our temperatures will be rising back into the 90s this week and I know our cardinal family will be sticking around, but we’ll be flying off again in a few weeks to France.

Happy Birthday Kay!

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World View

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on September 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Happy September, the month of family birthdays.

Hope your Labor Day weekend was warm and sunny! We had a good downpour in Nashville and I didn’t complain because all the trees were wilting. After days and days of three digit temperatures, I’m looking forward to Fall. My Irish lineage craves soft, overcast rainy days. I’ve started a new knitting project and the Bride is taking a pottery class. The Grands are back in school and thriving… the Pumpkin is playing soccer and the Bug has finally grown an inch taller than me! But of course I’m shrinking, so there’s that…

I came across a little known connection between Ireland and our country while reading the BBC News yesterday. Did you know that back in 1847, while the Native American Choctaw people were being “relocated” to a reservation in Oklahoma, their tribal leaders sent a donation to Ireland to help with the Great Famine? They reached out to help others suffering around the world while experiencing their own Trail of Tears, where 15,000 died from disease, starvation and exhaustion.

What caught my eye, and the reason for the newspaper article, was the glorious “Eternal Heart” sculpture recently unveiled in Oklahoma by the Choctaw to symbolize our kindred spirits. And I say “our” because I have always loved Native culture, and wear a silver feather pendant from a Native artist in Arizona like a talisman around my neck.

The Irish and the Choctaws have continued to honour this gesture through continued acts of generosity. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Irish people demonstrated their support by providing €2 million in aid to Native Americans severely affected by the crisis. Similarly, in 2018, former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar announced a scholarship for Choctaw people to study in Ireland.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3zvq3vz8o

But it’s not just one or two acts of generosity, it’s not just the companion sculpture of feathers in County Cork, Ireland, this connection is an example of the purest form of altruism. It’s the opposite of selfishness. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, altruism is a “willingness to do things that bring advantages to others, even if it results in disadvantage for yourself.”

Could you reach out to another with love and support, while suffering yourself, like the Choktaw? Dr Jim, my psychologist brother, said something to me the other day that stuck – “There are two ways of looking at things depending on your view of the world; they are the abundance vs scarcity model.” I had to sit with his reasoning for awhile. If you can take the balcony view, if you believe in the ‘greater good,’ your world view is that of abundance – you can appreciate the rain instead of fuming about a washed-out barbeque. You pick eggplants in your husband’s vegetable garden and imagine a new recipe for the evening’s meal. You can feel free to be creative, even fanciful.

You can donate money to one of the TN Three even if you know there’s no chance in hell a Democrat will be elected to the US Senate in this state. https://www.votegloriajohnson.com/ But you feel it in your bones that a woman, a smart compassionate woman, will be our next president.

You might even let your granddaughter weave fairy hair into your greying tresses!

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Olympic Dreams

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It was forty years ago in LA, the Olympics that is, when we were living in the Berkshires and I was about to give birth to the Rocker. We lived in a farmhouse on the outskirts of a bird sanctuary. Idyllic and terrifyingly beautiful, surrounded by cardinals, chickadees and grouse, there was a dairy farm up the road. I had picked the date of his birth, a repeat C-section was scheduled; Reagan was president, I remember watching the Olympics live while nursing my newborn baby boy.

“Synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics debuted in Los Angeles as Olympic events, as did wind surfing.”

There is a picture of us at the Bris, tall gladiolus of every color stood guard while friends gathered. Two rabbis came and Grandma Ada was there. She would drive four hours from NJ, always bringing food, “Did you eat?” and a cousin or two. We loved to sit on the swing in the big screened-in porch; the bassinet was on that porch because babies need fresh air. I looked so young, so peaceful. Or maybe I was just exhausted.

“John Williams composed the theme for the Olympiad, “Los Angeles Olympic Theme” later also known as “Olympic Fanfare and Theme“. This piece won a Grammy for Williams and became one of the most well-known musical themes of the Olympic Games…”

I’ve just returned from LA, from visiting the Rocker and Aunt Kiki. My baby grew up to be a talented musician and composer. His company debuted two new trailers while I was there – one for a movie and one for an Apple series. I told them about the Woodstock themed 40th birthday party I’d planned for Bob’s big day, and we talked about my son’s generation – listening to Kurt Cobain, learning to design and create websites. Somewhere between Gen X and the Millennial Generation, the Rocker is a Xennial, a unique subset.

“You have a childhood, youth, and adolescence free of having to worry about social media posts and mobile phones. … We learned to consume media and came of age before there was Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and all these things where you still watch the evening news or read the newspaper.” https://www.bos.com/inspired/xennials-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-micro-generation/

Their California home is like a tree house, perched on a hill with lush tropical plants. We watched the Paris Olympic skateboarding finals on Peacock, a streaming platform. I thought about my son doing tricks on a skateboard, playing rollerblade hockey, moving effortlessly through my dreams. He is tall and lanky like my brothers, Po the Cat drapes herself along his legs while we critique the athletes. And we cooked and played together in the kitchen to fantastical music Kiki curated. My baby is turning 40.

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The Grandmother Hypothesis

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

My daughter called me yesterday to rave about a new book she’s reading, it’s all about menopause! My immediate thought was, why is she reading about menopause, and then I came to my senses. My little girl is rapidly approaching this phase of life, and like everything else she does, the Bride will gather all the evidence-based information she can find before she plots her course through peri to post-menopause with the utmost care. And this book, “The Menopause Manifesto” by Jen Gunter, MD, begins at the beginning.

What do we humans have in common with killer whales? Homo Sapiens (and Japanese aphids btw) are among the very few females in the animal kingdom to live well beyond childbearing age. Why? Well some researchers have studied this phenomena – after all, evolutionarily speaking once you’re finished reproducing, you’re finished. But women can live half their lives in their golden years; and according to Darwin’s theory there’s a good reason.

“The first hard evidence for the grandmother hypothesis was gathered by Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah who was studying the Hadza people, a group of hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. Hawkes was struck by “how productive these old ladies were” at foraging for food, and she later documented how their help allowed mothers to have more children.” https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/07/692088371/living-near-your-grandmother-hasevolutionarybenefits#:~:text=If%20being%20close%20to%20grandma,same%20parish%20as%20their%20mother.

Pretty simple right? The grandmothers know which mushrooms are poisonous; how to treat mastitis in a nursing mother; where to dig for water. They can also simply watch over their grandchildren so that fewer wander off into the rainforest. But what about today? Factoring in birth control and hormone replacement therapy (HRT), is the modern Grandma still as useful as her predecessor?

The Flapper taught me how to wash a newborn’s head, how to gently nudge a baby to sleep during the night and not let them sleep all day, how to stay calm in the midst of it all. She ordered a dryer and had it installed because she didn’t want me hanging diapers out in the sun, like she had to so many years ago. She told me how my brother Michael started coming into this world while she was hanging out the wash. How my sister Kay had to run through backyards to fetch the doctor, running through our neighbor’s laundry.

“You are in your perfect place,” my Mother told me time and time again. A mantra I repeat to myself, and to my children and grandchildren. The Flapper embraced Buddhism in her later years. I often wished she didn’t live in Wayzata, MN, I longed for her every single day… the Mother I lost when I was 10 months old and found again when I was the Love Bug’s age.

But there was Great Grandma Ada to the rescue. Once we moved from the Berkshires back to NJ, Bob’s Mother took on the role of Supreme Grandchild Spoiler and Snuggler. She fed the Bride her first solid food, chopped liver, and she encouraged the Rocker to explore and expand his horizons. I remember when he was five and played the violin on her deck for all her friends! They fed the ducks in the park, went swimming in her pool, and accompanied us to the Big Apple Circus every year.

It’s good to know I have a purpose according to the Grandmother Hypothesis. Of course, I’ve always known that loving and caring for my babies was the one thing that mattered most, my one raison d’etre. Now that we live only two houses away, I try not to be too intrusive, but I love it when the Grands just stroll in without knocking. “Hiya Nana!” they say.

“Are you ready for breakfast number two?” I ask after a big hug.

It’s too late for me to take HRT for my osteoporosis, but if you’re in your forties and wondering about it, here’s a good place to start – https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menopause/in-depth/hormone-therapy/art-20046372

I am the luckiest Grandmother in the world!

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Bird Facts

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“Bird” is simply working class (UK) slang for a woman. It’s not pejorative, but it’s not respectful or flattering either.

The Groom has developed a funny habit. Whenever he gets an advert text message, he texts back a random bird fact! Usually it’s a bot and he immediately stumps it. But sometimes it’s a human, and sometimes there’s a tacit recognition, a glimmer of humanity between the sender and the sendee. I wanted to tell him all about the crows making a racket next to my pool PT this morning, but then I remembered the family drove to Memphis at dawn..

They are being interviewed for Global Entry passports: “Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States. Members enter the United States by accessing the Global Entry processing technology at selected airports.” https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-entry

When we flew British Air to Italy, we breezed right through TSA checkpoints while the kids had to wait in long lines. It’s definitely worth the effort to apply for Global Entry if you fly out of the country. You feel a tiny bit royal coming back to the US. Being an avid Anglophile, I was delighted to be served “Coronation” tea sandwiches on board. I didn’t even mind being called, “Mum” by the flight attendants. When the pictures of Taylor Swift hit social media over the weekend, smiling with the Prince of Wales and his two oldest bairn, I was positively gobsmacked.

Then today I read (cue the lights) that Travis Kelce picked Tay Tay up like a bird on a London stage and carried the Queen to her throne chair.

The Love Bug had a fantastic week at Taylor Swift camp. She made a gorgeous tee shirt, lots of bead bracelets, and dove deep into the Swiftie phenom. I’m sure Yale will be offering the definitive course on Taylor soon enough.

Well, we’re all wilting aren’t we? Bob and I walked to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday for the first fresh garlic and barely made it home. It’s less than a mile, half up a gentle hill, but the heat index got me. Not so much the temperature, which was mid 90s, it’s the “real feel” as Aunt Kay calls it; a combo of humidity in the air and the subjective, apparent temperature we perceive. That was at least three digits! Nashville has been experiencing the same heat dome as everyone else, only I guess it’s pretty normal for us, except…

“It’s not even July yet people!”

The Pumpkin enjoyed robot camp too, and I’m just happy the camps were indoors during this heat spell. Naturally I’ve been keeping the Pumpkin’s bird bath refreshed twice daily. I love watching our robins, yes I believe these two are our babies recently hatched above the patio, indulging in water aerobics and taking a drink every now and then.

Yesterday I stood by the window marveling at our bird’s ingenuity and determination to get a berry. Bob covered the blackberry bush with mesh this year, hoping we’d actually have a harvest, but the birds have outsmarted us. The robin jumped up on a lawn light, squared off, and then hovered for a few seconds whilst plucking a berry through the mesh! This went on for quite awhile. I didn’t know a robin could impersonate a hummingbird. There’s another bird fact for you!

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Disconnected

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on June 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »

As we approached the medieval city of Pietrasanta last week, I was surprised to see a giant sculpture of a teddy bear laying down outside of a church with a knife through his heart. Marco and Claudio had told us this place has long been a haven for artists – from Paul Klee and Joan Miro to Henry Moore and Fernando Botero. But I had no idea the exhibit we were about to see, including large busts of cherubic angels with their mouths taped shut inside the deconsecrated church , was by a sculptor connected to the Jersey Shore, Rachel Lee Hovnanian!

“Hovnanian’s “Poor Teddy in Repose” sculpture shares a powerful message. “Poor Teddy is a reflection on the ways in which childhood playtime has changed in the contemporary era,” Hovnanian shares about her work. “Children are no longer interested in teddy bears and other tangible toys – the smartphone seems to have eclipsed all other toys as the ultimate pass-time for children, a knife to the heart for Teddy.”…Hovnanian goes on to share that her choice of raw material – bronze – was deliberate. “It emphasizes the industrialization and commercialization of childhood,” she explains.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/janehanson/2024/05/28/how-one-artist-is-using-teddy-bears-and-angels-to-redefine-the-way-we-communicate/

It was a July day in 2002 when Hovnanian’s 15 year old son, Alton, drowned in his jet ski-type watercraft in the Navesink River. Word spread quickly in our Rumson-Fair Haven community, Hovnanian Enterprises was the number one building firm in the state. Alton was taken to my husband Bob’s ER in Red Bank, NJ. I had friends who were good friends with the boy’s grandmother. His grandfather, Kevork, was an Armenian immigrant from Iraq when he started his company.

Now the silent angels stared down at me, more menacing. I felt a chill inside the dark vestibule of the Complesso di Sant Agostino, maybe it was my fever? We turned a corner only to find another gigantic, lonely teddy bear surrounded by floating, electric plugs that looked like the tentacles of an octopus. The Love Bug said it made her feel sad, and we talked about the meaning of art. The Rocker told me the artist herself was in the next room.

It was an accident that night when Alton plowed into a moored sailboat. The Rocker was 17 and had just graduated high school, we were packing him up for college; while Rachel was burying her son instead of sending him off to high school. Luckily, I had stopped writing for the local newspaper the year before. And here we were, in Tuscany, in a room with another Poor Teddy having a solo tea party.

When we arrived home, I handed over my iPad to the Bug for her Design Camp. She is an artist like her Aunt Kiki! You see, I thought I would be the Nana with a basket for devices by the door; that Grands would be required to drop their screens and connect IRL. This was my fantasy. But instead, I am the wild Nana who says “Anything Goes” when the kids come to our house. My daughter and her Groom said “NO” to screens until thirteen!

At first, we went along with their Luddite ways. I hated to see a toddler in a stroller clutching an iPad while sucking a pacifier! But lately, social media seems to have creeped into the Grands’ lives nonetheless. After all, mostly all of her friends have either a cell phone, a tablet or a smart watch. While we were walking through the ancient streets of Pietrasanta, I noticed the Love Bug, who will turn 12 this summer, doing a little dance move of her own here and there. I asked her where she learned it.

“Oh, it’s on TikTok,” she said. “All my friends are doing it.”

Poor Teddy

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