December 29
I love this time of year, when all the news outlets remind us of the events that set the year apart from all others -- the little pop culture stories about who broke up with whom, who had a baby or a big wedding in a castle in Italy, or a big pirate movie, or a big meltdown in front of everybody, revealing his long-suppressed prejudices. We're also reminded of the long-beloved icons who passed away to the firmament of our memory.
We're also sent a barrage of email with humorous trivia, such as this one. The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
This list of the winners from 2005 must have been moldering in somebody's email inbox for a good year now, but it is still funny and worth sharing:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in
the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
And I'll include one more for a certain banana who lives in California and seems to enjoy this type of thing particularly:
11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
God Bless Us Every One!
December 27
Images of a warm Christmas in upstate New York flood my mind as I reflect on the past two weeks. I am ensconced back at home in Fairhope, with temps in the 50's already and predicted to go to the 60's by the end of the day, remaining pleasant for at least a week. When anybody in New York, alarmed at the prospect of global warming, complained about the high temperatures and lack of snow, I just said, "I brought this weather with me!" And it looks as if it was probably a very mild Christmas here too.
I'll remember the excitement of the visit in the city, the fun of walking to a play one night (the soon-to-close delight named How To Save the World and Find True Love in 90 Minutes), the new-to-me neighborhood called "The Ironbound" in Newark, and the hectic days of baking cookies with Alison and frantically buying gifts for the boys. Most of all I'll remember the grandsons at this age -- Elias turning 12 on December 23, and feasting at the Chinese restaurant with his friend Jonah; and Andy, growing tall and beautiful, now age 9, working on learning to play "Heart and Soul" with me on the piano.
I'll remember all their faces in the candlelight, and all the loving gestures and spontaneous hugs from those complex and lovable boys, and thinking, so many times, in the words of Charles Dickens at Christmastime, "God bless us every one!"
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Low-Key Christmas
December 23
It’s quiet and rainy here in the Northeast. I am in a small city, near Woodstock, Albany, and other distant outposts of New York City. There is a cluster of villages with quaint names like Stone Ridge, High Falls, Rhinebeck, and Ashoken very near. It is where my daughter and her two sons live, and where I usually spend Christmas.
I expected a blanket of snow on the ground, as in other years, but it will not be so this year. That’s okay; I grew up in Fairhope, without a glimmer of hope for a white Christmas, and I’ve seen more of them white than not by now, I would reckon. It is abnormally warm for this time of year up here, but that makes it very like a Christmas in Lower Alabama.
Christmas itself will be low key. The youngest child is now cognizant of the reality of Santa Claus and seems to be okay with it. My co-mother-in-law, a victim of Altzheimer’s, has left us just a month ago. Previous Christmases she had two live-in caretakers who had become part of the extended family and added great cheer to all seasons. This year they have moved to be nearer their own families.
There are lights everywhere, and Christmas trees in both the houses we live in. The son-in-law, an exemplary ex-husband, is taking the responsibility of Christmas dinner on himself, with help from me, Alison, and varied friends they will be inviting. We have all done a lot of shopping in the last couple of days, and wrapped some presents.
This is the time of year for raucous merriment, entertaining, and well-wishing, but it doesn’t always work that way. The year is ending, and new things are on the horizon. We can but anticipate the state of the world by this time next year, and what 2007 will bring. We have only a fair hope that it will be a good, happy year, but we know that this one drawing to a close has meant sad transitions for all of us in this family.
That brings soul-weariness and bodily exhaustion to the holiday season, but Christmas is nothing if not about joy, love, and hope – all of which we are holding close this particular rainy Christmas season.
Today is my oldest grandson's 12th birthday, and we are all going to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.
All things are not merry, but by definition Christmas must be. Here’s to you and your wonderful families – and wishes for a good time on Christmas day and lots of excellent adventures in the coming year.
It’s quiet and rainy here in the Northeast. I am in a small city, near Woodstock, Albany, and other distant outposts of New York City. There is a cluster of villages with quaint names like Stone Ridge, High Falls, Rhinebeck, and Ashoken very near. It is where my daughter and her two sons live, and where I usually spend Christmas.
I expected a blanket of snow on the ground, as in other years, but it will not be so this year. That’s okay; I grew up in Fairhope, without a glimmer of hope for a white Christmas, and I’ve seen more of them white than not by now, I would reckon. It is abnormally warm for this time of year up here, but that makes it very like a Christmas in Lower Alabama.
Christmas itself will be low key. The youngest child is now cognizant of the reality of Santa Claus and seems to be okay with it. My co-mother-in-law, a victim of Altzheimer’s, has left us just a month ago. Previous Christmases she had two live-in caretakers who had become part of the extended family and added great cheer to all seasons. This year they have moved to be nearer their own families.
There are lights everywhere, and Christmas trees in both the houses we live in. The son-in-law, an exemplary ex-husband, is taking the responsibility of Christmas dinner on himself, with help from me, Alison, and varied friends they will be inviting. We have all done a lot of shopping in the last couple of days, and wrapped some presents.
This is the time of year for raucous merriment, entertaining, and well-wishing, but it doesn’t always work that way. The year is ending, and new things are on the horizon. We can but anticipate the state of the world by this time next year, and what 2007 will bring. We have only a fair hope that it will be a good, happy year, but we know that this one drawing to a close has meant sad transitions for all of us in this family.
That brings soul-weariness and bodily exhaustion to the holiday season, but Christmas is nothing if not about joy, love, and hope – all of which we are holding close this particular rainy Christmas season.
Today is my oldest grandson's 12th birthday, and we are all going to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.
All things are not merry, but by definition Christmas must be. Here’s to you and your wonderful families – and wishes for a good time on Christmas day and lots of excellent adventures in the coming year.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Fair Hope on Wheels
December 20
Here I am on my second week of vacation, thinking about what makes Fairhope Fairhope and not wishing for an instant I were there. I'm in upstate New York, anticipating a cold front, hoping for a little snow and thinking about Christmas.
A recent blogpost suggested that I am more at home in the Northeast that in Fairhope, and elicited the eternal question, "What exactly are you looking for?"
The eternal answer to that is that at this point in my life it's not that I'm looking for anything except maybe a little positive energy, which I certainly don't find in Fairhope. Fairhope is in flux -- and while I think of myself as capable of flexing with the flux, it becomes clearer and clearer that that particular flow is not going the way I want it to. I spent 18 years in fair hope of trying to stall the inevitable, but I cannot see that my efforts are being effective.
I never thought of retiring to a low-stress area, but in Fairhope my baggage is too heavy. My expectations are, perhaps, a tad too specific; my memories too sacred and my heart on my sleeve. It's not gonna happen. The improvements "they" plan all seem to be innovative ways of tearing out the past...which is the only thing I cherish about the place.
Then I look around in New York City, and, sure enough, it has changed too -- it has beautified and upgraded its marginal neighborhoods, and kept the good parts too. It parades its history while embracing its future. And there is so much stuff going on, always, that the city continues to grow and to glitter with promise. Many of the friends I made when I worked here in the 1960's and '70s are still here, and people in the streets are friendly.
The difference is that in the days I remember New York, you didn't have to be rich to live there. The friends who have stayed lucked into cheap real estate when it was still available, and now they are flush enough, having stuck to jobs until they became careers, and having socked away enough to manage to live comfortably in this extremely luxe atmosphere. Others have found friendly environments within easy commuting distance and split the difference.
Well, in a few years maybe I'll be rich. At least enough to plan the move nearer to the place that I really call home.
Here I am on my second week of vacation, thinking about what makes Fairhope Fairhope and not wishing for an instant I were there. I'm in upstate New York, anticipating a cold front, hoping for a little snow and thinking about Christmas.
A recent blogpost suggested that I am more at home in the Northeast that in Fairhope, and elicited the eternal question, "What exactly are you looking for?"
The eternal answer to that is that at this point in my life it's not that I'm looking for anything except maybe a little positive energy, which I certainly don't find in Fairhope. Fairhope is in flux -- and while I think of myself as capable of flexing with the flux, it becomes clearer and clearer that that particular flow is not going the way I want it to. I spent 18 years in fair hope of trying to stall the inevitable, but I cannot see that my efforts are being effective.
I never thought of retiring to a low-stress area, but in Fairhope my baggage is too heavy. My expectations are, perhaps, a tad too specific; my memories too sacred and my heart on my sleeve. It's not gonna happen. The improvements "they" plan all seem to be innovative ways of tearing out the past...which is the only thing I cherish about the place.
Then I look around in New York City, and, sure enough, it has changed too -- it has beautified and upgraded its marginal neighborhoods, and kept the good parts too. It parades its history while embracing its future. And there is so much stuff going on, always, that the city continues to grow and to glitter with promise. Many of the friends I made when I worked here in the 1960's and '70s are still here, and people in the streets are friendly.
The difference is that in the days I remember New York, you didn't have to be rich to live there. The friends who have stayed lucked into cheap real estate when it was still available, and now they are flush enough, having stuck to jobs until they became careers, and having socked away enough to manage to live comfortably in this extremely luxe atmosphere. Others have found friendly environments within easy commuting distance and split the difference.
Well, in a few years maybe I'll be rich. At least enough to plan the move nearer to the place that I really call home.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Reviewing New Jersey
December 18
After a frenzied and happy three days and two nights in Manhattan, I took off for two days and a night in New Jersey, staying with friends in the Ironbound, a Portuguese neighborhood in Newark.
I was in for treats, literally, with intellectual foodie friends who took me to some delightful eateries and regaled me with stories of their adventures since I had seen them last in 2001. They were the couple with whom I was visiting in Los Angeles in September of that year; it was at their house where I heard the news of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I had left them at that time in a flash, with that awful homeward impulse of having to get there before something even more unthinkable might happen.
We had a lot to catch up on. They wanted to know about my trip home and I gave them the story in detail, much as I did on this blog. We talked of many things and walked the street of Newark and Jersey City and went in whenever we saw a sign that said "Open House." I even found a darling little apartment for sale, which, if it had been in another location I would have been sorely tempted to buy.
My mind snapped somewhere on the Manhattan leg of the journey. I began thinking, "Fairhope is not going to get any better -- when I move, why don't I move back here?" I couldn't get this notion off my mind, and as a matter of fact it's still there. I had been thinking I could take ten more years in Fairhope, but after the mind-shift I realized I probably won't have to wait that long.
Money is always an object, and New Jersey is nowhere near as expensive as Manhattan. The Ironbound is only $1.75 (Senior price) and at 17-minute train ride from Penn Station. Is it for me? I don't know. But my friend owns a little apartment that she rents out and she has suggested that she'd rent it to me while I decide.
Travel broadens one. Sometimes it stretches the mind. Sometimes we end up moving where we just went as a visitor. That's what brought so many new people to Fairhope. It may well be what takes one of them out.
After a frenzied and happy three days and two nights in Manhattan, I took off for two days and a night in New Jersey, staying with friends in the Ironbound, a Portuguese neighborhood in Newark.
I was in for treats, literally, with intellectual foodie friends who took me to some delightful eateries and regaled me with stories of their adventures since I had seen them last in 2001. They were the couple with whom I was visiting in Los Angeles in September of that year; it was at their house where I heard the news of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I had left them at that time in a flash, with that awful homeward impulse of having to get there before something even more unthinkable might happen.
We had a lot to catch up on. They wanted to know about my trip home and I gave them the story in detail, much as I did on this blog. We talked of many things and walked the street of Newark and Jersey City and went in whenever we saw a sign that said "Open House." I even found a darling little apartment for sale, which, if it had been in another location I would have been sorely tempted to buy.
My mind snapped somewhere on the Manhattan leg of the journey. I began thinking, "Fairhope is not going to get any better -- when I move, why don't I move back here?" I couldn't get this notion off my mind, and as a matter of fact it's still there. I had been thinking I could take ten more years in Fairhope, but after the mind-shift I realized I probably won't have to wait that long.
Money is always an object, and New Jersey is nowhere near as expensive as Manhattan. The Ironbound is only $1.75 (Senior price) and at 17-minute train ride from Penn Station. Is it for me? I don't know. But my friend owns a little apartment that she rents out and she has suggested that she'd rent it to me while I decide.
Travel broadens one. Sometimes it stretches the mind. Sometimes we end up moving where we just went as a visitor. That's what brought so many new people to Fairhope. It may well be what takes one of them out.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Travel Blog, Day 3
December 16
Yesterday was busy and exhilarating…punctuated by jackhammers, honks from taxi horns, and the music of secular Xmas piped into every restaurant and building lobby. (I called it “Xmas” rather than “Christmas” to sound secular, even though “X” is an ancient symbol for Christ, like the fish. Just wanted you to know I know that.)
Weather unseasonably seasonable for New York at this time of the year. Makes it easier getting around, but boy did I pack the wrong clothes! All it means is a suitcase of heavy sweaters, scarfs, etc., but they’ll all be used before the trip is over. Cold is on the way -- and I'm on my way upstate tomorrow.
I got quite familiar with the inside of Starbuck’s. Went at least four times and was worried about all that coffee so the last time I ordered green tea, which was cheap and is supposed to be good for you. The visits were precipitated by need to use the facilities (not the bathroom but the Wireless Internet Connection. My laptop informed me that I could get ONE DAY FREE for only $9.95 if I signed up for the special. How $9.95 is free when the one at the airport is only $6.65 (and doesn't claim to be free) I don’t know but there you have it.
Got to know this neighborhood pretty well. It is not what it was when I lived up on the West Side in the 1970’s or down in the Village in the mid-80’s. New York has cleaned up. New buildings. Scaffolding on all the old ones. Money seems to be pouring in. There are expensive designer shops a few blocks away no matter where you are in the city.
Visited an old friend who looks as young as ever and lives in a classy apartment down in the Wall Street area. She tells me the financial district is the next new thing, the only even vaguely affordable neighborhood in town. Well, in New York everything is the next new thing, life revolves around always being in the know and ahead of the trend. We walked around the stock exchange neighborhood, including the Fulton Fish Market, which is being upgraded and will be the next new thing. She got me a discount ticket for an adorable off-Broadway musical that is slated to close soon. It was breathtaking -- the energy and talent on that stage, the wonderful timely script, and the whole new theatre complex called the New Stage Theater or something like that. All underground, like a little Cineplex only not so cheesy, little 100-seat houses, all with interesting odd little plays and musicals.
My friend says the city is enjoying kind of a boom. She says that after 9/11 the city poured tons of money into upgrading certain depressed areas and seeing that attractions abounded all over town. It looks it. And wonder of wonders, it worked. New York is in an up cycle -- come soon and see for yourself. In ten years it might be quite different.
Here I am hogging a seat at Starbuck's (which I'm growing to despise, actually) as a huge crowd has moved in and is waiting in line. I thought Saturday there would not be a rush hour.
One more day in this town and then I'm off to beautiful downtown Newark!
Yesterday was busy and exhilarating…punctuated by jackhammers, honks from taxi horns, and the music of secular Xmas piped into every restaurant and building lobby. (I called it “Xmas” rather than “Christmas” to sound secular, even though “X” is an ancient symbol for Christ, like the fish. Just wanted you to know I know that.)
Weather unseasonably seasonable for New York at this time of the year. Makes it easier getting around, but boy did I pack the wrong clothes! All it means is a suitcase of heavy sweaters, scarfs, etc., but they’ll all be used before the trip is over. Cold is on the way -- and I'm on my way upstate tomorrow.
I got quite familiar with the inside of Starbuck’s. Went at least four times and was worried about all that coffee so the last time I ordered green tea, which was cheap and is supposed to be good for you. The visits were precipitated by need to use the facilities (not the bathroom but the Wireless Internet Connection. My laptop informed me that I could get ONE DAY FREE for only $9.95 if I signed up for the special. How $9.95 is free when the one at the airport is only $6.65 (and doesn't claim to be free) I don’t know but there you have it.
Got to know this neighborhood pretty well. It is not what it was when I lived up on the West Side in the 1970’s or down in the Village in the mid-80’s. New York has cleaned up. New buildings. Scaffolding on all the old ones. Money seems to be pouring in. There are expensive designer shops a few blocks away no matter where you are in the city.
Visited an old friend who looks as young as ever and lives in a classy apartment down in the Wall Street area. She tells me the financial district is the next new thing, the only even vaguely affordable neighborhood in town. Well, in New York everything is the next new thing, life revolves around always being in the know and ahead of the trend. We walked around the stock exchange neighborhood, including the Fulton Fish Market, which is being upgraded and will be the next new thing. She got me a discount ticket for an adorable off-Broadway musical that is slated to close soon. It was breathtaking -- the energy and talent on that stage, the wonderful timely script, and the whole new theatre complex called the New Stage Theater or something like that. All underground, like a little Cineplex only not so cheesy, little 100-seat houses, all with interesting odd little plays and musicals.
My friend says the city is enjoying kind of a boom. She says that after 9/11 the city poured tons of money into upgrading certain depressed areas and seeing that attractions abounded all over town. It looks it. And wonder of wonders, it worked. New York is in an up cycle -- come soon and see for yourself. In ten years it might be quite different.
Here I am hogging a seat at Starbuck's (which I'm growing to despise, actually) as a huge crowd has moved in and is waiting in line. I thought Saturday there would not be a rush hour.
One more day in this town and then I'm off to beautiful downtown Newark!
Friday, December 15, 2006
Travel Blog, Day Two
December 15
Driving to the airport yesterday I was euphoric. The weather was mild in Lower Alabama, already in the 60's, and promised to be pleasant in New York when I got there. Traffic was light on the expressway, and I thought, "If the rest of the trip goes this well, I'm a lucky person."
Then I remembered that things are seldom what you expect. Then I thought, things never work out exactly how you expect, but if you hang on, they usually turn out even better than you expected.
When I got to the airport I found out my flight had been delayed for 40 minutes. It might not make the connection to the next leg of the flight. So the booking agent put me on "backup standby" for the next flight that would have an opening, which would be at 7 P.M. That's fine, I thought, but I have a date for dinner in New York, and if I don't leave Charlotte until 7 P.M. I won't get to La Guardia until 8:30 and won't get into the city until 9:30 at least! As I sat in the Mobile airport and saw the first flight delayed another hour, my hopes for the dinner date were dashed. Tempers were short at the gate. Everybody was on a cell phone making irate phone calls. I didn't have the phone number of my old friend who was expecting me, but I knew the airport was wireless and decided to whip out my laptop and email him, and to email the hotel to tell them I'd be a late arrival.
This was the first time I'd ever traveled with a laptop. Okay, call me a dinosaur; I don't use the new technology to its best advantage. I do own a cell phone, and in fact, for a change, had it in my purse. But I didn't have phone numbers of everyone because I hadn't anticipated this change in flight plans. Get this: I have flown on about two million flights and never had this happen. Now that I have, maybe I'll be prepared. But it probably won't happen again.
When we landed in Charlotte I knew I had missed the first flight. But I ran to the gate, which was probably about a mile away in that airport, and read that there was indeed a flight to NYC boarding at that very minute. It was at yet another gate, however, about another mile away, and don't forget I'm carrying a leather coat on my arm, two books, a purse and a carry bag packed as tightly as it could be. But I got to the gate before the plane took off and the boarding agent looked at my ticket and said, "Just go in there and grab the empty seat!" There were two couples in line, but they wouldn't separate, so I went ahead.
My seat was between a sleeping man and a pretty girl on the aisle, who had had as harrowing as day as mine, apparently, because she and her friend across the aisle, another beauty, were squealing in drunken revelry at everything that happened, and talking about their ordeals in traveling that day. It was a more comfortable flight than the first, and I just felt lucky to have a seat. I hoped that my checked bag had miraculously found the same airplane.
After about fifteen minutes in the air, the sleeping man woke up and we had a very intense and stimulating conversation about a lot of things. He would be traveling on to Vermont, but we had a wonderful talk. He even likes Adam Sander. I didn't ask him about Anderson Cooper.
We said a hasty goodbye when we disembarked, and I got my bag (Yes!) from the carousel and got into a big comfy cab and picked up my cell phone and actually got Howard's phone number from information and called him. Unfortunately he was sick in bed, and couldn't make dinner, but I was excited to be in New York again, and knew we'd probably be able to connect today.
The hotel is a real find, well located and tiny, but like a big city hotel anywhere, clean and neat and look at me, posting on the blog from the room because it's wireless. Had a lovely meal at a little French place last night and now it's time to go around the corner and have a deli breakfast of eggs and hashbrowns and then spend the day doing New York and maybe catch a show tonite.
Things seldom if ever work out exactly as you expect, no matter how tightly you plan. But isn't it nice when they work out even better?
Driving to the airport yesterday I was euphoric. The weather was mild in Lower Alabama, already in the 60's, and promised to be pleasant in New York when I got there. Traffic was light on the expressway, and I thought, "If the rest of the trip goes this well, I'm a lucky person."
Then I remembered that things are seldom what you expect. Then I thought, things never work out exactly how you expect, but if you hang on, they usually turn out even better than you expected.
When I got to the airport I found out my flight had been delayed for 40 minutes. It might not make the connection to the next leg of the flight. So the booking agent put me on "backup standby" for the next flight that would have an opening, which would be at 7 P.M. That's fine, I thought, but I have a date for dinner in New York, and if I don't leave Charlotte until 7 P.M. I won't get to La Guardia until 8:30 and won't get into the city until 9:30 at least! As I sat in the Mobile airport and saw the first flight delayed another hour, my hopes for the dinner date were dashed. Tempers were short at the gate. Everybody was on a cell phone making irate phone calls. I didn't have the phone number of my old friend who was expecting me, but I knew the airport was wireless and decided to whip out my laptop and email him, and to email the hotel to tell them I'd be a late arrival.
This was the first time I'd ever traveled with a laptop. Okay, call me a dinosaur; I don't use the new technology to its best advantage. I do own a cell phone, and in fact, for a change, had it in my purse. But I didn't have phone numbers of everyone because I hadn't anticipated this change in flight plans. Get this: I have flown on about two million flights and never had this happen. Now that I have, maybe I'll be prepared. But it probably won't happen again.
When we landed in Charlotte I knew I had missed the first flight. But I ran to the gate, which was probably about a mile away in that airport, and read that there was indeed a flight to NYC boarding at that very minute. It was at yet another gate, however, about another mile away, and don't forget I'm carrying a leather coat on my arm, two books, a purse and a carry bag packed as tightly as it could be. But I got to the gate before the plane took off and the boarding agent looked at my ticket and said, "Just go in there and grab the empty seat!" There were two couples in line, but they wouldn't separate, so I went ahead.
My seat was between a sleeping man and a pretty girl on the aisle, who had had as harrowing as day as mine, apparently, because she and her friend across the aisle, another beauty, were squealing in drunken revelry at everything that happened, and talking about their ordeals in traveling that day. It was a more comfortable flight than the first, and I just felt lucky to have a seat. I hoped that my checked bag had miraculously found the same airplane.
After about fifteen minutes in the air, the sleeping man woke up and we had a very intense and stimulating conversation about a lot of things. He would be traveling on to Vermont, but we had a wonderful talk. He even likes Adam Sander. I didn't ask him about Anderson Cooper.
We said a hasty goodbye when we disembarked, and I got my bag (Yes!) from the carousel and got into a big comfy cab and picked up my cell phone and actually got Howard's phone number from information and called him. Unfortunately he was sick in bed, and couldn't make dinner, but I was excited to be in New York again, and knew we'd probably be able to connect today.
The hotel is a real find, well located and tiny, but like a big city hotel anywhere, clean and neat and look at me, posting on the blog from the room because it's wireless. Had a lovely meal at a little French place last night and now it's time to go around the corner and have a deli breakfast of eggs and hashbrowns and then spend the day doing New York and maybe catch a show tonite.
Things seldom if ever work out exactly as you expect, no matter how tightly you plan. But isn't it nice when they work out even better?
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Travel Blog
December 14
All packed and ready for my trip to New York. Traveling is different from year to year; this year I'll take my laptop along (last Christmas I didn't even have a laptop) and post on the blog. In 20 minutes I've got to jump in the car and drive to the airport to get there at least an hour early and have my bags double checked, shoes examined, and the little bag of 3 oz. liquids approved for takeoff.
Inevitably I'll find I forget one or two crucial things. I tend to underpack, but I still bring along clothes that I don't wear.
About Noon the Same Day
I've been sitting at the Mobile Airport for two hours and ten minutes; the flight has been delayed and will not leave for another 45 minutes. It's because of fog. Nobody to get mad at, except everybody. My plan was to meet an old friend for dinner tonight and now it looks like I won't get in until close to midnight. Well, you can always get food in New York City...but you sometimes have to eat alone. Just getting there is the problem now. I'll have about five hours in the airport in Charlotte after we get off the ground here.
In the meantime I figured I'd use my handy dandy little laptop to send emails to the hotel and the friend, so I signed up for a single-use Internet access at $6.95. It seems to work for everything but mail. I wish my friend read my blog, because I can write a blog but I can't let him know.
I didn't think of getting his office phone number to telephone and let him know of the problem. I've got a notebook full of NYC phone numbers, but not that one.
It's going to be a good trip, but it's not getting off to a good start. Now I wish I had a few more days in New York.
All packed and ready for my trip to New York. Traveling is different from year to year; this year I'll take my laptop along (last Christmas I didn't even have a laptop) and post on the blog. In 20 minutes I've got to jump in the car and drive to the airport to get there at least an hour early and have my bags double checked, shoes examined, and the little bag of 3 oz. liquids approved for takeoff.
Inevitably I'll find I forget one or two crucial things. I tend to underpack, but I still bring along clothes that I don't wear.
About Noon the Same Day
I've been sitting at the Mobile Airport for two hours and ten minutes; the flight has been delayed and will not leave for another 45 minutes. It's because of fog. Nobody to get mad at, except everybody. My plan was to meet an old friend for dinner tonight and now it looks like I won't get in until close to midnight. Well, you can always get food in New York City...but you sometimes have to eat alone. Just getting there is the problem now. I'll have about five hours in the airport in Charlotte after we get off the ground here.
In the meantime I figured I'd use my handy dandy little laptop to send emails to the hotel and the friend, so I signed up for a single-use Internet access at $6.95. It seems to work for everything but mail. I wish my friend read my blog, because I can write a blog but I can't let him know.
I didn't think of getting his office phone number to telephone and let him know of the problem. I've got a notebook full of NYC phone numbers, but not that one.
It's going to be a good trip, but it's not getting off to a good start. Now I wish I had a few more days in New York.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Good Bad Movies
December 12
I don't know what makes bad movies good, but I'm pretty sure what makes good movies bad -- trying too hard. You get a profound idea (or steal it from a book) and decide you can make a profound movie out of it. You heap layer upon layer of profundity on it and the whole thing collapses of its own weight. But you are convinced that you have made a good movie, and you find a few people who agree with you and pretty soon it's Oscar time and winning one -- far from convincing you that the awards system is wrong -- convinces you that you are profound.
But if you set out to produce a little romantic love story with some quirky, human characters, and if you're an actor who was kind of third-line Saturday Night Live a few years back, you're not only not going to get respect, but you're up for ridicule for trying and you're out of the profundity sweepstakes. Never mind, you might make a lot of movies and a lot of money and have adoring fans ranging from eight year olds to their 66-year-old grandmother.
I had seen Adam Sandler on Saturday Night Live and found him mildly amusing. I was aware he had gone into movies and was beginning to build a following, mostly of little boys, who enjoyed the gross-out factor as much as he did. Then I heard a review on Siskel and Ebert (I think it was still Siskel then) of a movie he made called Punch Drunk, recommending it and recommending that Adam Sandler follow his inclination to do more serious movies.
Now I wouldn't have bothered with The Wedding Singer or Mr. Deeds, but I became an Adam Sandler fan based on that film. From there I went to Spanglish and Big Daddy, both of which won my heart, largely because they were such a good fit for this appealing actor.
The other night The Wedding Singer was on television, and I decided to watch it. I don't have to tell you it is a bad movie, mauldlin and stereotypical. I am indifferent to Drew Barrymore, but she turns out to be a good foil for my boy, and I am probably wrong about her. Here's the thing of it: I liked this bad movie, for all the reasons a lamebrain or adolescent (or both) is supposed to. It is sentimental and romantic, and there is Adam Sandler, looking weird but somehow being a nice boy, giving singing lessons to old ladies and helping a little boy who made the mistake of drinking at a wedding with the all-important lesson of how to heave and not to drink again.
Once many years ago someone accused me of being romantic. I said then what I say now, I am not one bit romantic. Here's exactly what I am: Cynical and sentimental. That said, I take heart from the likes of Adam Sandler.
That's all for today...from your sentimental cynic movie critic.
I don't know what makes bad movies good, but I'm pretty sure what makes good movies bad -- trying too hard. You get a profound idea (or steal it from a book) and decide you can make a profound movie out of it. You heap layer upon layer of profundity on it and the whole thing collapses of its own weight. But you are convinced that you have made a good movie, and you find a few people who agree with you and pretty soon it's Oscar time and winning one -- far from convincing you that the awards system is wrong -- convinces you that you are profound.
But if you set out to produce a little romantic love story with some quirky, human characters, and if you're an actor who was kind of third-line Saturday Night Live a few years back, you're not only not going to get respect, but you're up for ridicule for trying and you're out of the profundity sweepstakes. Never mind, you might make a lot of movies and a lot of money and have adoring fans ranging from eight year olds to their 66-year-old grandmother.
I had seen Adam Sandler on Saturday Night Live and found him mildly amusing. I was aware he had gone into movies and was beginning to build a following, mostly of little boys, who enjoyed the gross-out factor as much as he did. Then I heard a review on Siskel and Ebert (I think it was still Siskel then) of a movie he made called Punch Drunk, recommending it and recommending that Adam Sandler follow his inclination to do more serious movies.
Now I wouldn't have bothered with The Wedding Singer or Mr. Deeds, but I became an Adam Sandler fan based on that film. From there I went to Spanglish and Big Daddy, both of which won my heart, largely because they were such a good fit for this appealing actor.
The other night The Wedding Singer was on television, and I decided to watch it. I don't have to tell you it is a bad movie, mauldlin and stereotypical. I am indifferent to Drew Barrymore, but she turns out to be a good foil for my boy, and I am probably wrong about her. Here's the thing of it: I liked this bad movie, for all the reasons a lamebrain or adolescent (or both) is supposed to. It is sentimental and romantic, and there is Adam Sandler, looking weird but somehow being a nice boy, giving singing lessons to old ladies and helping a little boy who made the mistake of drinking at a wedding with the all-important lesson of how to heave and not to drink again.
Once many years ago someone accused me of being romantic. I said then what I say now, I am not one bit romantic. Here's exactly what I am: Cynical and sentimental. That said, I take heart from the likes of Adam Sandler.
That's all for today...from your sentimental cynic movie critic.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Dire and Deteriorating
December 7
After 9/11/01 I stopped being a self-styled expert on politics. Before that date I wrote letters to the editor about all things political, criticizing the government about every little thing that irritated me, and feeling that doing so was my patriotic duty. When those towers went down I was immediately made aware that no matter how smart I thought I was, there was stuff going on at the political level that I knew nothing about and wouldn't have been able to fix even if I tried.
I live in a very "red" state. I am surrounded by people who not only vote exclusively Republican, but also don't want to hear any ideas that do not support the official stance of the party. The Lexuses in this neighborhood (Fairhope and environs) almost all bear simple black square stickers that state only "W." I didn't hear much objection to our entry into Iraq, or the substitution of Saddam Hussein for Usama bin Laden, or the re-election of the same pitiful, misguided, ill-prepared man to carry our country deeper into the mire he'd created, at his side the most hypocritical, formidable, angry, incompetent right hand man ever to occupy the office of vice president, apparently putting all the worst advice he could think of into the ear of a man who so desperately needed good advice.
I'm old enough to remember Vietnam pretty vividly. We wanted to support our country but the idea used to be -- thanks to World War II -- that that was because our country was the good guys. After Vietnam some of us felt that being good wasn't good enough to make us the policemen of the world.
The outpouring of support for the Iraq war was a carryover for our guilt about Vietnam; another exercise to prove yet again that since we're so nice, the world will thank us for our intervention. What the Middle East needed was to be more like us. That, of course, was the last thing the Middle East wanted.
The Vietnam war was so despised by Americans that by the time it came to an end, returning troops were spat on in our streets. The Iraq war, in order to erase the memory of that, produced for every critical remark about the war itself an accompanying word of pride in our men and women carrying it out. Catch-22 for yet another military conflict.
Today the blogs are spinning with opinion about the Iraq Commission report on the dire and deteriorating conditions in that country. Such a firm, informed statement will have to be dealt with by this President and Vice President. Whether either of them is up to the job remains to be seen; they have shown little aptitude for clear thinking or creative solutions to anything so far in this abysmal Presidency.
I fell for John Kerry when he first appeared on the Dick Cavett Show after returning from Vietnam and reported the disgraces he had witnessed. I was euphoric after his first debate with George W. Bush; he was so clearly the man who could get us out of this debacle, perhaps even before it was too late, perhaps at the expense of his own popularity. But he was a victim of a viscious campaign (one thing the Bush people are extremely good at) and is now disliked in his own party, because parties exist by winning and the Democrats see him only as a loser. I hope his voice will be heard again and that he will avoid trying to tell jokes -- ever -- and may be useful in the amelioration of a situation that can only be seen as a blot on the history of our country.
After 9/11/01 I stopped being a self-styled expert on politics. Before that date I wrote letters to the editor about all things political, criticizing the government about every little thing that irritated me, and feeling that doing so was my patriotic duty. When those towers went down I was immediately made aware that no matter how smart I thought I was, there was stuff going on at the political level that I knew nothing about and wouldn't have been able to fix even if I tried.
I live in a very "red" state. I am surrounded by people who not only vote exclusively Republican, but also don't want to hear any ideas that do not support the official stance of the party. The Lexuses in this neighborhood (Fairhope and environs) almost all bear simple black square stickers that state only "W." I didn't hear much objection to our entry into Iraq, or the substitution of Saddam Hussein for Usama bin Laden, or the re-election of the same pitiful, misguided, ill-prepared man to carry our country deeper into the mire he'd created, at his side the most hypocritical, formidable, angry, incompetent right hand man ever to occupy the office of vice president, apparently putting all the worst advice he could think of into the ear of a man who so desperately needed good advice.
I'm old enough to remember Vietnam pretty vividly. We wanted to support our country but the idea used to be -- thanks to World War II -- that that was because our country was the good guys. After Vietnam some of us felt that being good wasn't good enough to make us the policemen of the world.
The outpouring of support for the Iraq war was a carryover for our guilt about Vietnam; another exercise to prove yet again that since we're so nice, the world will thank us for our intervention. What the Middle East needed was to be more like us. That, of course, was the last thing the Middle East wanted.
The Vietnam war was so despised by Americans that by the time it came to an end, returning troops were spat on in our streets. The Iraq war, in order to erase the memory of that, produced for every critical remark about the war itself an accompanying word of pride in our men and women carrying it out. Catch-22 for yet another military conflict.
Today the blogs are spinning with opinion about the Iraq Commission report on the dire and deteriorating conditions in that country. Such a firm, informed statement will have to be dealt with by this President and Vice President. Whether either of them is up to the job remains to be seen; they have shown little aptitude for clear thinking or creative solutions to anything so far in this abysmal Presidency.
I fell for John Kerry when he first appeared on the Dick Cavett Show after returning from Vietnam and reported the disgraces he had witnessed. I was euphoric after his first debate with George W. Bush; he was so clearly the man who could get us out of this debacle, perhaps even before it was too late, perhaps at the expense of his own popularity. But he was a victim of a viscious campaign (one thing the Bush people are extremely good at) and is now disliked in his own party, because parties exist by winning and the Democrats see him only as a loser. I hope his voice will be heard again and that he will avoid trying to tell jokes -- ever -- and may be useful in the amelioration of a situation that can only be seen as a blot on the history of our country.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Coal Bear County, Alabama
December 3
Never mind that comedian Stephen Colbert pronounces his name cole-behr, as in French, and the county in which Helen Keller was born and raised is pronounced colburt -- the name's the same and in it he or his people saw an opportunity for a joke.
They approached officials of Colbert County, Alabama, with this idea -- the Colbert Report (pronounced "rappoar" to similate the faux French of "cole-behr") would feature the opening of The Stephen Colbert Museum in downtown Tuscumbia and close it the next day. The premise was that Stephen Cole-behr assumes the county is named for him. All in good fun. Some of the sensitive people of the area were a little skeptical that their town was going to be the butt of a big-city joke. They needn't have been.
The character Stephen Colbert portrays is pompous, conceited, Conservative politically and not a little stupid -- in short, the kind of person I tend to avoid in life. But his lampoon is so perfectly tuned that he can be fun to watch, and the "museum" segments fell into this category.
The people of Tuscumbia, Alabama, went along with the joke and acquitted themselves well, providing an interview with their affable mayor, a parade by the high school band, a visit with an earnest Helen Keller Museum employe, and a scene from the local amateur theatre's production of The Miracle Worker. Paul Dinello, the actor portraying a Colbert Report assistant named Tad, made an ass of himself trying to tell Helen Keller jokes at the museum and succeeding in stealing the pump Annie Sullivan used to teach young Helen to speak, displaying it at the Colbert Museum.
The Colbert Report managed to milk the joke for three days, and it was remarkably funny to the end. Stephen himself never went to Alabama (he was too busy), but appeared in a pre-recorded message. The shows will probably appear for years on re-runs, so I won't give away the reason that the Museum closed as suddenly as it opened, but I'll say this: the last laugh goes the young actress portraying Helen Keller beating on the door of the Museum to get in and being turned down. "Tad" tells her, "Sorry. We're closed." She says, "I know! I just want my pump back." and storms away in a charming, little-girl huff.
Never mind that comedian Stephen Colbert pronounces his name cole-behr, as in French, and the county in which Helen Keller was born and raised is pronounced colburt -- the name's the same and in it he or his people saw an opportunity for a joke.
They approached officials of Colbert County, Alabama, with this idea -- the Colbert Report (pronounced "rappoar" to similate the faux French of "cole-behr") would feature the opening of The Stephen Colbert Museum in downtown Tuscumbia and close it the next day. The premise was that Stephen Cole-behr assumes the county is named for him. All in good fun. Some of the sensitive people of the area were a little skeptical that their town was going to be the butt of a big-city joke. They needn't have been.
The character Stephen Colbert portrays is pompous, conceited, Conservative politically and not a little stupid -- in short, the kind of person I tend to avoid in life. But his lampoon is so perfectly tuned that he can be fun to watch, and the "museum" segments fell into this category.
The people of Tuscumbia, Alabama, went along with the joke and acquitted themselves well, providing an interview with their affable mayor, a parade by the high school band, a visit with an earnest Helen Keller Museum employe, and a scene from the local amateur theatre's production of The Miracle Worker. Paul Dinello, the actor portraying a Colbert Report assistant named Tad, made an ass of himself trying to tell Helen Keller jokes at the museum and succeeding in stealing the pump Annie Sullivan used to teach young Helen to speak, displaying it at the Colbert Museum.
The Colbert Report managed to milk the joke for three days, and it was remarkably funny to the end. Stephen himself never went to Alabama (he was too busy), but appeared in a pre-recorded message. The shows will probably appear for years on re-runs, so I won't give away the reason that the Museum closed as suddenly as it opened, but I'll say this: the last laugh goes the young actress portraying Helen Keller beating on the door of the Museum to get in and being turned down. "Tad" tells her, "Sorry. We're closed." She says, "I know! I just want my pump back." and storms away in a charming, little-girl huff.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
A New Leaf
December 2
I’ve gotten a lot from blogging. There was a point at which I was sailing along, posting on the blog every day – inspired to voice opinions on everything from my favorite movie star to the existence of a man who could have been responsible for the works of Shakespeare,to the meaning of god, to the significance of Andy Warhol and to the family of Anderson Cooper.
Then one day I realized I was burned out. It just didn’t make sense to me any more, creating little essays, pleading for comments and then just not being interested in the responses that came. It was getting me crazy.
I posted that I was ending the blog, but I didn’t end it. That was kind of crazy too, but this way I had control. I could write if I felt like it, but I was relieved of the compulsion to put something out there every morning as early as I could. (At its peak, the act of posting early in the morning was cathartic and helped clear my brain for the day. By the time it had become a drag I didn’t know what I would write about or why, or whether it was worth the effort.)
Which brings me to now. Last week, being roughly a month off the blog, I began writing a book. It was an idea that had been circling my brain – a book not about Fairhope or anything connected to it, a smart, funny, commercial book about one thing I was beginning to understand, aging. I would use some material from some of my blog posts and articles I had written in the past, put it together as a chronicle of someone living as full a life as possible in her sixties. I mentioned this to a friend whose brain I respect, and even told her the idea for the title. She said she thought it sounded great and that the thing to do is write a few chapters and an outline, including the target reader, the potential demographic numbers based on research, and present it to an agent who would see if she (or he) could sell it. Here’s the kicker – I had forgotten that this friend had had a book published several years ago which did rather well in its field. She said if I would do the preliminary work, she would see that her agent read it!
You don’t have to be a famous writer to know that getting a reputable agent to read your book is half the battle.
With all this behind me, plus the aerobic mental exercise of having written a daily blog for about ten months, I started writing last weekend and words were coming fast. I was liking what I was doing. I had to make myself stop Sunday night, promising to get back to it today, read it cold, and try to shape up what I have to get it ready to be read by a professional. If she thinks it unworthy then I am spared the difficulty of finishing a book that nobody wants to publish and few would read, as in the late lamented When We Had the Sky.
And if the agent likes it, friends, if she likes it, she submits it to publishers and if one of them likes it, they say yes, get this woman to finish this, and they even give me a little money to assure that I will allow them to publish it.
Just like a real writer. So today I shall look it over and start rewriting the chapters. It has to be the absolute best I can do.
I’m glad I learned – in part from blogging – how to buckle down and shape this thing up. Wish me luck.
I’ve gotten a lot from blogging. There was a point at which I was sailing along, posting on the blog every day – inspired to voice opinions on everything from my favorite movie star to the existence of a man who could have been responsible for the works of Shakespeare,to the meaning of god, to the significance of Andy Warhol and to the family of Anderson Cooper.
Then one day I realized I was burned out. It just didn’t make sense to me any more, creating little essays, pleading for comments and then just not being interested in the responses that came. It was getting me crazy.
I posted that I was ending the blog, but I didn’t end it. That was kind of crazy too, but this way I had control. I could write if I felt like it, but I was relieved of the compulsion to put something out there every morning as early as I could. (At its peak, the act of posting early in the morning was cathartic and helped clear my brain for the day. By the time it had become a drag I didn’t know what I would write about or why, or whether it was worth the effort.)
Which brings me to now. Last week, being roughly a month off the blog, I began writing a book. It was an idea that had been circling my brain – a book not about Fairhope or anything connected to it, a smart, funny, commercial book about one thing I was beginning to understand, aging. I would use some material from some of my blog posts and articles I had written in the past, put it together as a chronicle of someone living as full a life as possible in her sixties. I mentioned this to a friend whose brain I respect, and even told her the idea for the title. She said she thought it sounded great and that the thing to do is write a few chapters and an outline, including the target reader, the potential demographic numbers based on research, and present it to an agent who would see if she (or he) could sell it. Here’s the kicker – I had forgotten that this friend had had a book published several years ago which did rather well in its field. She said if I would do the preliminary work, she would see that her agent read it!
You don’t have to be a famous writer to know that getting a reputable agent to read your book is half the battle.
With all this behind me, plus the aerobic mental exercise of having written a daily blog for about ten months, I started writing last weekend and words were coming fast. I was liking what I was doing. I had to make myself stop Sunday night, promising to get back to it today, read it cold, and try to shape up what I have to get it ready to be read by a professional. If she thinks it unworthy then I am spared the difficulty of finishing a book that nobody wants to publish and few would read, as in the late lamented When We Had the Sky.
And if the agent likes it, friends, if she likes it, she submits it to publishers and if one of them likes it, they say yes, get this woman to finish this, and they even give me a little money to assure that I will allow them to publish it.
Just like a real writer. So today I shall look it over and start rewriting the chapters. It has to be the absolute best I can do.
I’m glad I learned – in part from blogging – how to buckle down and shape this thing up. Wish me luck.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Cooling System
November 27
In 1916 when Captain Ed Roberts, a navigator of the Bay Queen transporting passengers and goods between Mobile and Fairhope, built this house, he wanted all the latest in modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing, a wall telephone in the center hall, and an attic fan to bring in cool breezes all summer long.
He had to have the biggest, most efficient fan in all mankind, and he put it right on the landing between the ground floor and the "cockpit," the upper floor of the spacious airplane bungalow he built.
Until I moved in in 2004 the attic fan was the only cooling system for the house. To operate it, I have to open as many windows as possible -- and these sweet old casement windows that surround the house are outfitted with iron handles that hook into holes to prop them open. There is a nice new switch at the base of the fan, which is now encased in a knotty pine cabinet that leads to a hole in the wall of the house. The fan, I am fond of saying (because it's true) is as big as a Volkswagen and probably as powerful.
In May of the year I moved in I had air conditioning installed. This marked the end of an era for the captain's house, and the beginning of keeping windows closed as tightly as possible against heat, cold, and humidity. I still run the fan sometimes, in the spring and in the fall, when it's cool enough outside and a little window breeze is appreciated. It is a noisy old thing. When it runs it sounds as though someone is using a dishwasher in a room somewhere in the house. It is a novelty now, a throwback to the days before we found dry, conditioned and cooled air an absolute necessity. I'm glad it's here, but I fear that it may not be appreciated as long as the house itself.
I often say that no matter how much energy, creativity and money I put into this house, it will be sold eventually as a tear-down. If I sell it before that time, the first thing new owners would probably do is remove the attic fan altogether. But I remember what it stands for and love it for still being able to function.
In 1916 when Captain Ed Roberts, a navigator of the Bay Queen transporting passengers and goods between Mobile and Fairhope, built this house, he wanted all the latest in modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing, a wall telephone in the center hall, and an attic fan to bring in cool breezes all summer long.
He had to have the biggest, most efficient fan in all mankind, and he put it right on the landing between the ground floor and the "cockpit," the upper floor of the spacious airplane bungalow he built.Until I moved in in 2004 the attic fan was the only cooling system for the house. To operate it, I have to open as many windows as possible -- and these sweet old casement windows that surround the house are outfitted with iron handles that hook into holes to prop them open. There is a nice new switch at the base of the fan, which is now encased in a knotty pine cabinet that leads to a hole in the wall of the house. The fan, I am fond of saying (because it's true) is as big as a Volkswagen and probably as powerful.
In May of the year I moved in I had air conditioning installed. This marked the end of an era for the captain's house, and the beginning of keeping windows closed as tightly as possible against heat, cold, and humidity. I still run the fan sometimes, in the spring and in the fall, when it's cool enough outside and a little window breeze is appreciated. It is a noisy old thing. When it runs it sounds as though someone is using a dishwasher in a room somewhere in the house. It is a novelty now, a throwback to the days before we found dry, conditioned and cooled air an absolute necessity. I'm glad it's here, but I fear that it may not be appreciated as long as the house itself.
I often say that no matter how much energy, creativity and money I put into this house, it will be sold eventually as a tear-down. If I sell it before that time, the first thing new owners would probably do is remove the attic fan altogether. But I remember what it stands for and love it for still being able to function.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Revisiting a Good Review
November 24
When I first sat at the table signing copies of the original edition of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, I was under the impression that I had written a book about Fairhope, sure, but one with broader appeal than that.
There were tourist books about Fairhope already in 2001; books on where to eat and why to move to the toney bayside village. I thought I had written kind of a shorter Lake Wobegone Days with a Single Tax slant, a picture of a unique place with a personality that would appeal to people who really had no sense of different ways of looking at things.
In Fairhope, by far the most compelling chapters seemed to be those written by Bob Bell, my collaborator who had enjoyed a lifelong love affair with his own memories of the town in the 1940's and 50's. When people urged me to write a second book, I felt it should be gutsier, grittier; in short, it should tell of some of the iconoclasts who had changed their lives by moving to early Fairhope or changed early Fairhope by moving to it with their maverick ways intact.
Publishers, when I worked to get a reprint done after the initial 1,000 copies of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree sold out, told me they felt it was a book that would have only local appeal, and they said the same thing about When We Had the Sky, the second book. It has a certain amount of charm, they said, but the world really doesn't need to know about Fairhope.
Recently I sold a copy to Dan Spiro, author of an excellent new novel called The Creed Room, and writer of a blog called The Empathic Rationalist, which is linked to this one. He has never laid eyes on Fairhope, and I'll venture to say had never heard of it before I wrote him about my book. He liked MMATBT and offered to write a review of it for Amazon.com, as two of my friends, including one who identifies himself as John Sweden when he comments on this blog, had done before him.
Imagine the little thrill I felt when greeted with a copy of his review this morning in the email box:
Butterfly trees, the authors tell us, refer to a species of plant that "attract butterflies, which alight upon them, sometimes all at once, creating a visual spectacle that is very pleasing to the human spirit." Notice the word choice: not that these trees are pleasing to the eyes, but that they are pleasing to the spirit. That is precisely how I would describe this book. For those, like me, who share its authors' values, we can't help but find this book and the town that it describes to be spiritually uplifting.
Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree is a beautiful portrait of a place. In this portrait we find a group of people, all of whom beat to their own eccentric drummers, who somehow come together like butterflies on a tree and light up their environment with love, encouragement, and mutual respect. I was particularly taken by the description of the School of Organic Education, which is the antithesis of the modern status-conscious, teach-to-the-test, mind-numbing school that has come to dominate our society in the era of No Child Left Behind. It is clear that the Organic school depicted in this book didn't need slogans to demonstrate its commitment to universal education. But nor did it need to stress test scores. Its faculty were the types who care about creativity, and who value learning for its own sake and wish to inspire students to do the same. The result, no doubt, is a community of lifelong learners -- not mere grade-grubbing pre-professionals.
I could criticize this book by saying that its initial chapters didn't fully grab my interest. But I've never been to Fairhope, nor any town remotely like it, and hail from one of the most self-obsessed, workaholic cultures in the world (the legal world of Washington, D.C.). So perhaps it simply took my mind's eye a bit of time to adjust to the portrait of a utopian town. Once the story turned to the Organic school and some of the more colorful characters who populated the town, I was entranced for the remainder of the book. At that point, you see, I realized what the authors were trying to communicate: if we want our lives to be clothed in beauty -- both as individuals and as a community -- we can find incredible guidance from the people of Fairhope and the philosophy embraced through its institutions.
Non-conformity, collegiality, creativity, playfulness, intellectuality, spirituality -- these are the values of Fairhope. Can they become the values of a community, not of hundreds or thousands, but of millions? Of billions? These are the questions I found myself asking. That's what a true utopian asks.
Take that, you provincial citizens of the rest of Alabama, you who think Fairhope is just a little upscale shopping center with pretentions to Art. Fairhope as it once was was a lesson for you all.
When I first sat at the table signing copies of the original edition of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, I was under the impression that I had written a book about Fairhope, sure, but one with broader appeal than that.
There were tourist books about Fairhope already in 2001; books on where to eat and why to move to the toney bayside village. I thought I had written kind of a shorter Lake Wobegone Days with a Single Tax slant, a picture of a unique place with a personality that would appeal to people who really had no sense of different ways of looking at things.In Fairhope, by far the most compelling chapters seemed to be those written by Bob Bell, my collaborator who had enjoyed a lifelong love affair with his own memories of the town in the 1940's and 50's. When people urged me to write a second book, I felt it should be gutsier, grittier; in short, it should tell of some of the iconoclasts who had changed their lives by moving to early Fairhope or changed early Fairhope by moving to it with their maverick ways intact.
Publishers, when I worked to get a reprint done after the initial 1,000 copies of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree sold out, told me they felt it was a book that would have only local appeal, and they said the same thing about When We Had the Sky, the second book. It has a certain amount of charm, they said, but the world really doesn't need to know about Fairhope.
Recently I sold a copy to Dan Spiro, author of an excellent new novel called The Creed Room, and writer of a blog called The Empathic Rationalist, which is linked to this one. He has never laid eyes on Fairhope, and I'll venture to say had never heard of it before I wrote him about my book. He liked MMATBT and offered to write a review of it for Amazon.com, as two of my friends, including one who identifies himself as John Sweden when he comments on this blog, had done before him.
Imagine the little thrill I felt when greeted with a copy of his review this morning in the email box:
Butterfly trees, the authors tell us, refer to a species of plant that "attract butterflies, which alight upon them, sometimes all at once, creating a visual spectacle that is very pleasing to the human spirit." Notice the word choice: not that these trees are pleasing to the eyes, but that they are pleasing to the spirit. That is precisely how I would describe this book. For those, like me, who share its authors' values, we can't help but find this book and the town that it describes to be spiritually uplifting.
Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree is a beautiful portrait of a place. In this portrait we find a group of people, all of whom beat to their own eccentric drummers, who somehow come together like butterflies on a tree and light up their environment with love, encouragement, and mutual respect. I was particularly taken by the description of the School of Organic Education, which is the antithesis of the modern status-conscious, teach-to-the-test, mind-numbing school that has come to dominate our society in the era of No Child Left Behind. It is clear that the Organic school depicted in this book didn't need slogans to demonstrate its commitment to universal education. But nor did it need to stress test scores. Its faculty were the types who care about creativity, and who value learning for its own sake and wish to inspire students to do the same. The result, no doubt, is a community of lifelong learners -- not mere grade-grubbing pre-professionals.
I could criticize this book by saying that its initial chapters didn't fully grab my interest. But I've never been to Fairhope, nor any town remotely like it, and hail from one of the most self-obsessed, workaholic cultures in the world (the legal world of Washington, D.C.). So perhaps it simply took my mind's eye a bit of time to adjust to the portrait of a utopian town. Once the story turned to the Organic school and some of the more colorful characters who populated the town, I was entranced for the remainder of the book. At that point, you see, I realized what the authors were trying to communicate: if we want our lives to be clothed in beauty -- both as individuals and as a community -- we can find incredible guidance from the people of Fairhope and the philosophy embraced through its institutions.
Non-conformity, collegiality, creativity, playfulness, intellectuality, spirituality -- these are the values of Fairhope. Can they become the values of a community, not of hundreds or thousands, but of millions? Of billions? These are the questions I found myself asking. That's what a true utopian asks.
Take that, you provincial citizens of the rest of Alabama, you who think Fairhope is just a little upscale shopping center with pretentions to Art. Fairhope as it once was was a lesson for you all.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Spruce Up for the Captain's House
November 22
The house is getting a little facelift, with the before picture below and the in-process on the right. People are stopping to notice the old place! Wait until spring when the blooms and leaves appear. In the meantime, the paint job came first, followed by the removal of all the old vegetation, the placement of irrigation, and this week the plants and grass were planted! There is still work being done...men in my yard...but it's about time for them to wrap up for the day. They'll be off for two days for Thanksgiving, but if any last touches are needed they will be here Monday.
And that's my new Saturn in the driveway. It's not really new; it's a 2003 Ion, but bigger than my old one and with a little less mileage.
What a lot to think about this Thanksgiving!
The house is getting a little facelift, with the before picture below and the in-process on the right. People are stopping to notice the old place! Wait until spring when the blooms and leaves appear. In the meantime, the paint job came first, followed by the removal of all the old vegetation, the placement of irrigation, and this week the plants and grass were planted! There is still work being done...men in my yard...but it's about time for them to wrap up for the day. They'll be off for two days for Thanksgiving, but if any last touches are needed they will be here Monday.
And that's my new Saturn in the driveway. It's not really new; it's a 2003 Ion, but bigger than my old one and with a little less mileage.
What a lot to think about this Thanksgiving!
Monday, November 20, 2006
A Room of One's Own: New York City
November 20
For Christmas I am planning a trip to upstate New York which will take me through Manhattan for two days and two nights. My daughter and I will hook up at the Newark Airport where she will be arriving from Mexico and will have left her car in the parking lot – and then we drive to Kingston, two or three hours away, where she and her family live, and where I’ll spend the holidays, returning December 26.
I’ll get to the city on the 14th, and have prevailed upon friends to provide lodgings for three days and two nights. That is, I thought I had prevailed. My friend who lives in a downtown loft agreed to let me sleep on her sofa for two nights. I was fine with that but she kept emailing me how uncomfortable I was going to be and suggesting hotels – so I got the message. I am on a budget, but not so much that I can afford to impose.
This took me to many websites for “Cheap hotels NYC.” She recommended the QT, which is a chic little place with elegant amenities, and rooms that go for about $400 per night. Not exactly on my budget. I was saved when they had nothing available on my nights. I searched and found a couple of places with prices hovering around $100 per night. Damn, I remember when The Plaza was $100 per night! Anyway, I was looking a fleabag hostelries and having the devil of a time finding anything. I found something in the Times Square area for $99 per night, which was described as having “décor reminiscent of Las Vegas…and minimal infestation.” I asked my friend and she went to its website (which didn't have the "infestation" line) and said it sounded fine. But as I drifted off to sleep I realized it was probably a brothel, or one step above. Couldn’t do it.
But every other hotel, in or out of my price range, said on their websites that they had nothing available for my dates. There was a little place in the Gramercy Park area, called The Gershwin, which sounded quaint and Parisian, but had nothing available. I liked the sound of a place over on the West Side, off Columbus Circle. These hotels have user reviews, and this one had a reviewer complain that it was noisy and didn’t have cable TV. What jerk goes to New York to watch cable TV? And what spot in the city isn’t pretty noisy? I find the noise of the city comforting; I can sleep to it.
The Columbus Circle place had nothing available, but when I woke up I decided to telephone and see if I could wheedle something. All I need is one little bed and a little bathroom. When I called, the clerk was pleasant enough, and sure enough there was a place! My NYC friend says I’ll love what’s happening over there in the Columbus Circle area. And I know my way around the city well enough to get anywhere I want to go from there.
So a little adventure on the Internet panned out. And it will lead to a real-life adventure of two days and two nights in Manhattan, catching up with a few friends from the distant past, and the city itself, the love of my life. What could be bad about that?
For Christmas I am planning a trip to upstate New York which will take me through Manhattan for two days and two nights. My daughter and I will hook up at the Newark Airport where she will be arriving from Mexico and will have left her car in the parking lot – and then we drive to Kingston, two or three hours away, where she and her family live, and where I’ll spend the holidays, returning December 26.
I’ll get to the city on the 14th, and have prevailed upon friends to provide lodgings for three days and two nights. That is, I thought I had prevailed. My friend who lives in a downtown loft agreed to let me sleep on her sofa for two nights. I was fine with that but she kept emailing me how uncomfortable I was going to be and suggesting hotels – so I got the message. I am on a budget, but not so much that I can afford to impose.
This took me to many websites for “Cheap hotels NYC.” She recommended the QT, which is a chic little place with elegant amenities, and rooms that go for about $400 per night. Not exactly on my budget. I was saved when they had nothing available on my nights. I searched and found a couple of places with prices hovering around $100 per night. Damn, I remember when The Plaza was $100 per night! Anyway, I was looking a fleabag hostelries and having the devil of a time finding anything. I found something in the Times Square area for $99 per night, which was described as having “décor reminiscent of Las Vegas…and minimal infestation.” I asked my friend and she went to its website (which didn't have the "infestation" line) and said it sounded fine. But as I drifted off to sleep I realized it was probably a brothel, or one step above. Couldn’t do it.
But every other hotel, in or out of my price range, said on their websites that they had nothing available for my dates. There was a little place in the Gramercy Park area, called The Gershwin, which sounded quaint and Parisian, but had nothing available. I liked the sound of a place over on the West Side, off Columbus Circle. These hotels have user reviews, and this one had a reviewer complain that it was noisy and didn’t have cable TV. What jerk goes to New York to watch cable TV? And what spot in the city isn’t pretty noisy? I find the noise of the city comforting; I can sleep to it.
The Columbus Circle place had nothing available, but when I woke up I decided to telephone and see if I could wheedle something. All I need is one little bed and a little bathroom. When I called, the clerk was pleasant enough, and sure enough there was a place! My NYC friend says I’ll love what’s happening over there in the Columbus Circle area. And I know my way around the city well enough to get anywhere I want to go from there.
So a little adventure on the Internet panned out. And it will lead to a real-life adventure of two days and two nights in Manhattan, catching up with a few friends from the distant past, and the city itself, the love of my life. What could be bad about that?
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Two Guys Named Black
November 18
Just now a face flashed on the tv screen that made me laugh out loud. Couldn't help it. Jack Black just makes me laugh. I said out loud "I love Jack Black."
Immediately I felt like a two-timer. Because my real love is that other man named Black who appears occasionally on The Daily Show. Lewis Black.
The two share so much anger and such a raw approach to comedy that they could be related. Wonder if either one of them is really named Black. Wonder if both of them are and they are brothers...nah -- no family, no matter how dysfunctional, could produce two of them.
Jack Black first came to my attention is a good little movie called High Fidelity, featuring the perpetually perplexed John Cusack. Another great role for him was in Orange County.But my favorite so far was The School of Rock. This guy works all the time, so we can expect him to be in more and more movies -- you might say until he wears out his welcome. Which may be for the rest of our lives and his. This guy has an unforgettable face, but when I tried to upload his image here, it didn't work. Google him if you don't know who I'm talking about and when you see his picture, you'll say, "Oh, that guy!" Then you'll know whether you love him or hate him. I doubt that you'll be indifferent.
The man who might be Jack's older brother does stand-up with such venom and noise that just his rapid-fire, growling, screaming delivery makes you laugh even if you didn't respond to the content of his rants.
This guy hates everything and everyone. There is sincerity in his rants. He really means it. He's a little scary, if only you could stop laughing. The Lewis Black web info reveals that he's been in a few movies, some about to be released. We are going to hear more from him and that other guy named Black for some time.
Just now a face flashed on the tv screen that made me laugh out loud. Couldn't help it. Jack Black just makes me laugh. I said out loud "I love Jack Black."
Immediately I felt like a two-timer. Because my real love is that other man named Black who appears occasionally on The Daily Show. Lewis Black.
The two share so much anger and such a raw approach to comedy that they could be related. Wonder if either one of them is really named Black. Wonder if both of them are and they are brothers...nah -- no family, no matter how dysfunctional, could produce two of them.
Jack Black first came to my attention is a good little movie called High Fidelity, featuring the perpetually perplexed John Cusack. Another great role for him was in Orange County.But my favorite so far was The School of Rock. This guy works all the time, so we can expect him to be in more and more movies -- you might say until he wears out his welcome. Which may be for the rest of our lives and his. This guy has an unforgettable face, but when I tried to upload his image here, it didn't work. Google him if you don't know who I'm talking about and when you see his picture, you'll say, "Oh, that guy!" Then you'll know whether you love him or hate him. I doubt that you'll be indifferent.
The man who might be Jack's older brother does stand-up with such venom and noise that just his rapid-fire, growling, screaming delivery makes you laugh even if you didn't respond to the content of his rants.
This guy hates everything and everyone. There is sincerity in his rants. He really means it. He's a little scary, if only you could stop laughing. The Lewis Black web info reveals that he's been in a few movies, some about to be released. We are going to hear more from him and that other guy named Black for some time.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Dethroning the Drama Queen in Me
November 17
I have a friend who is such a hysteric that I hardly know how she can live in her own skin. Even mundane occurences in her life are sources for extreme emotion. Her reactions are extreme to the smallest provocation. I can't help but wonder how she would have handled the highs and lows I went through in the past three days.
Three days ago I learned that my mother had had a small stroke as she tried to throw off a big cold. We have known that having a stroke in the first place made her a candidate for more. We also know that her body clock is slow and steady. Where someone else might have three strokes in a day, hers might be years apart. This little episode, called a t.i.a., came about two years after the first one.
At her age a cold is debilitating, and she is already debilitated by the stroke that has left one side paralyzed. When we visited in the nursing home she looked, as they say, like death warmed over . But we in the family have seen her rebound before -- and somewhere in the back of our minds was the reality that she might well come back from this, if she could throw off the cold and its accompanying infections.
My reaction when I learned yesterday that she wasn't eating because she couldn't swallow was rather like my drama queen friend's would have been. She is all but gone. It will soon be over. I even posted a blog that was rather like an obituary, and was mentally preparing myself for writing a real one.
When I visited her last night she was sitting up in her wheelchair, awaiting a dinner tray. Her speech is very poor, and she struggled to be understood. One thing that was clear was that she was saying, "Take me home!" -- a request I had not heard her make before. I stayed for an hour, trying to explain to her why we couldn't do so, and why we couldn't understand everything that she was saying. She drank some Coca-Cola (the Southern cure for everything), and when the meal came, she ate some soup and canned peaches. When I steadfastly refused to consider the notion of taking her home she said one thing quite clearly. "You mind me!" and when I got it and laughed a little she said, "Mind your Mama!"
I want to be sympathetic, but it is very difficult to sit in that room with her. She says my brother's name, and asks for him, and she is able to say that my sister will take her home with her, and she clearly does not take my attitude as sympathetic. When she says she wants to go home, she is talking about the home she lived in over 80 years ago. Before this stroke she would often talk of that, and ask where her mother was, and tell us about the old neighborhood. She can be distracted by more present things -- I told her about the phone call from our friend in Birmingham, and she said in her slurred way, "I would love to see her."
I overreacted when I thought the end was near. I had her buried, and was ready to get on with my life, having that two hours I spend with her every evening to do things of my choosing. But not that reality has finally gotten through to me, there is nothing to be gained by being a drama queen. Much time in life is spent in waiting, and attending those who are.
I have a friend who is such a hysteric that I hardly know how she can live in her own skin. Even mundane occurences in her life are sources for extreme emotion. Her reactions are extreme to the smallest provocation. I can't help but wonder how she would have handled the highs and lows I went through in the past three days.
Three days ago I learned that my mother had had a small stroke as she tried to throw off a big cold. We have known that having a stroke in the first place made her a candidate for more. We also know that her body clock is slow and steady. Where someone else might have three strokes in a day, hers might be years apart. This little episode, called a t.i.a., came about two years after the first one.
At her age a cold is debilitating, and she is already debilitated by the stroke that has left one side paralyzed. When we visited in the nursing home she looked, as they say, like death warmed over . But we in the family have seen her rebound before -- and somewhere in the back of our minds was the reality that she might well come back from this, if she could throw off the cold and its accompanying infections.
My reaction when I learned yesterday that she wasn't eating because she couldn't swallow was rather like my drama queen friend's would have been. She is all but gone. It will soon be over. I even posted a blog that was rather like an obituary, and was mentally preparing myself for writing a real one.
When I visited her last night she was sitting up in her wheelchair, awaiting a dinner tray. Her speech is very poor, and she struggled to be understood. One thing that was clear was that she was saying, "Take me home!" -- a request I had not heard her make before. I stayed for an hour, trying to explain to her why we couldn't do so, and why we couldn't understand everything that she was saying. She drank some Coca-Cola (the Southern cure for everything), and when the meal came, she ate some soup and canned peaches. When I steadfastly refused to consider the notion of taking her home she said one thing quite clearly. "You mind me!" and when I got it and laughed a little she said, "Mind your Mama!"
I want to be sympathetic, but it is very difficult to sit in that room with her. She says my brother's name, and asks for him, and she is able to say that my sister will take her home with her, and she clearly does not take my attitude as sympathetic. When she says she wants to go home, she is talking about the home she lived in over 80 years ago. Before this stroke she would often talk of that, and ask where her mother was, and tell us about the old neighborhood. She can be distracted by more present things -- I told her about the phone call from our friend in Birmingham, and she said in her slurred way, "I would love to see her."
I overreacted when I thought the end was near. I had her buried, and was ready to get on with my life, having that two hours I spend with her every evening to do things of my choosing. But not that reality has finally gotten through to me, there is nothing to be gained by being a drama queen. Much time in life is spent in waiting, and attending those who are.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Blogging, Seriously
November 16
I thought I should post something today, maybe about who won on Dancing With the Stars last night or maybe whether Nancy Pelosi should endanger her position by choosing Jack Murtha as Majority Leader, or maybe about my plans for Thanksgiving or the weather in Fairhope or any of the little daily situations that stimulate activity on all blogs.
But the overriding factor in all my thoughts today is that my 92-year-old mother is fighting her last battle in the nursing home a few blocks from here. When I went for my daily visit yesterday she was sleeping and the head nurse said that she couldn't eat because her last stroke had made swallowing all but impossible. I could only hope that her sleep would be peaceful. Strong as she is, it is clear she is not likely to see another Christmas.
When I got home there was a call from a childhood friend, a woman my parents had wanted to adopt when her mother died at a young age from disease. She lives in Birmingham now, and is in her own battle for victory over ovarian cancer, but somehow she had heard of the second stroke Mama suffered on Monday, and she wanted to talk about her memories of the many good times we all had together. In times like this, anyone who can bring up happy memories is welcome to call to share them.
Maudetta Graham was the baby of the family born to Maude Melia Matthews Graham and John Richard Graham, born in 1914. The family lived in the town of Crichton, hard by (and now a part of) Mobile, and she grew up in poverty with a brilliant underachiever
of a father and a doting mother. She learned to love from her mother Maude and her devoted aunt Etta, both of whom she was named for. She was to contract the double name into a shortened version which had an old-fashioned, genuine ring to it, much like herself. She worshipped her older brother, Theodore, known as "Doe," an entertainer and professional golfer. Her brother Claiborne, a year older than she and thought of as the smart one of the three children, died of spinal meningitis at the age of 15, a trauma she never really overcame.
She loved little children and dolls. For her 16th birthday, she received her last doll. Two years later she was married.
There was something innocent and childlike about Maudetta Timbes all her life. She was an expert at denial: Every child she loved was "the smartest" and everybody she knew was nice. A gifted and natural writer, she dabbled in poetry and short fiction. When we moved near the bay she began combing the beaches and collecting driftwood which she fashioned into furniture and lamps. She loved her gardens, always claiming that she didn't like the work but she loved the result. To this day she has a wonderful sense of humor and an almost accidental wit. Her three children have a way of gathering and trading wisecracks and jokes in order to keep her laughing. Even at the nursing home, debilitated by a stroke and enormous discomfort, she is able to laugh if we are able to come up with the right thing to say.
She has never handled harsh reality well. When bad things happened she was overwhelmed. After my father died she threw herself into creating a long and complex family history. Aided by a local family history club, she learned to research and spent several years compiling what will always be a family treasure, a 200-page volume of stories, charts and anecdotes of as many family members as she could find, on both sides of our family, going back as far as some brothers who provided a boat for the escape of Robert the Bruce in Scotland (and achieved the honor of a coat of arms with the phrase, "I Saved the King" at its base). She visited major libraries and browsed ancient cemeteries and church records for her information.
She may rally and get better, even now. She has done so several times before. But the end is near and there is only so much her strong old heart will be able to take. All of a sudden, this imminent departure eclipses everything else in my mind. It will come to an end soon.
I thought I should post something today, maybe about who won on Dancing With the Stars last night or maybe whether Nancy Pelosi should endanger her position by choosing Jack Murtha as Majority Leader, or maybe about my plans for Thanksgiving or the weather in Fairhope or any of the little daily situations that stimulate activity on all blogs.
But the overriding factor in all my thoughts today is that my 92-year-old mother is fighting her last battle in the nursing home a few blocks from here. When I went for my daily visit yesterday she was sleeping and the head nurse said that she couldn't eat because her last stroke had made swallowing all but impossible. I could only hope that her sleep would be peaceful. Strong as she is, it is clear she is not likely to see another Christmas.
When I got home there was a call from a childhood friend, a woman my parents had wanted to adopt when her mother died at a young age from disease. She lives in Birmingham now, and is in her own battle for victory over ovarian cancer, but somehow she had heard of the second stroke Mama suffered on Monday, and she wanted to talk about her memories of the many good times we all had together. In times like this, anyone who can bring up happy memories is welcome to call to share them.
Maudetta Graham was the baby of the family born to Maude Melia Matthews Graham and John Richard Graham, born in 1914. The family lived in the town of Crichton, hard by (and now a part of) Mobile, and she grew up in poverty with a brilliant underachiever
of a father and a doting mother. She learned to love from her mother Maude and her devoted aunt Etta, both of whom she was named for. She was to contract the double name into a shortened version which had an old-fashioned, genuine ring to it, much like herself. She worshipped her older brother, Theodore, known as "Doe," an entertainer and professional golfer. Her brother Claiborne, a year older than she and thought of as the smart one of the three children, died of spinal meningitis at the age of 15, a trauma she never really overcame.She loved little children and dolls. For her 16th birthday, she received her last doll. Two years later she was married.
There was something innocent and childlike about Maudetta Timbes all her life. She was an expert at denial: Every child she loved was "the smartest" and everybody she knew was nice. A gifted and natural writer, she dabbled in poetry and short fiction. When we moved near the bay she began combing the beaches and collecting driftwood which she fashioned into furniture and lamps. She loved her gardens, always claiming that she didn't like the work but she loved the result. To this day she has a wonderful sense of humor and an almost accidental wit. Her three children have a way of gathering and trading wisecracks and jokes in order to keep her laughing. Even at the nursing home, debilitated by a stroke and enormous discomfort, she is able to laugh if we are able to come up with the right thing to say.
She has never handled harsh reality well. When bad things happened she was overwhelmed. After my father died she threw herself into creating a long and complex family history. Aided by a local family history club, she learned to research and spent several years compiling what will always be a family treasure, a 200-page volume of stories, charts and anecdotes of as many family members as she could find, on both sides of our family, going back as far as some brothers who provided a boat for the escape of Robert the Bruce in Scotland (and achieved the honor of a coat of arms with the phrase, "I Saved the King" at its base). She visited major libraries and browsed ancient cemeteries and church records for her information.
She may rally and get better, even now. She has done so several times before. But the end is near and there is only so much her strong old heart will be able to take. All of a sudden, this imminent departure eclipses everything else in my mind. It will come to an end soon.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Thanksgiving: A Week Too Soon
November 13
They sure are extending Thanksgiving these days. It used to last one day – and that one was spent waiting for lunch, which didn’t come until about 4 in the afternoon. I have been at stressful Thanksgivings, drunken Thanksgivings, pleasant Thanksgivings, but never one that lasted for two weeks.
It’s a nice meal because, for one thing, it’s a feast, and secondly because it’s so easy. Nobody wants you to veer too much from the traditional, especially from their favorites. It’s a menu that is prescribed by law, with the few variations being allowed for occasional modifications of the side dishes or the rather recent admission of wine to the table. As to the difficulty, and the extended preparation time we see taking place this year, let’s face it, somebody is making much ado where it’s not necessary. All that’s important is the smell of roasting poultry coming from the kitchen. Even as a young bride who had hardly seen the inside of a kitchen I was able to cook a turkey without a whole lot of agony. I was married on October 29 (1960) and prepared oyster dressing for the turkey. That’s the only thing I remember making, but it was a hit, and there was no flop.
I decided turkey was so easy I should cook it often, and I did, that year. But I don’t any more. I hardly make it for Thanksgiving if I can avoid it; I think duck is better and I don’t get any objections from my guests. I vary the side dishes from year to year, but love the homemade cranberry-orange relish that is made in the food processor (and not cooked). I discovered rutabagas about 10 years ago and love the look of them on the Thanksgiving plate. Pecan pie I mastered at a very young age (I was lying about not having seen the inside of a kitchen). I’ll never forget how, a few years ago, I tried to spring an exciting dessert on the assembled crowd – my own creation based on Maida Heatter’s Polka Dot Cheesecake. Ms. Heatter’s features huge, gorgeous chocolate polka dots within the cake; I made a pumpkin cheesecake mixture and piped it in in similar fashion, and my eaters looked as if I had brought a dead rat to the table. “Where’s the pecan pie?” was all that they said.
Once I was in on the planning of a Thanksgiving pot-luck party, and one of participants said cheerily, “I volunteer for the cole slaw!”
We all looked at her with a collective question in our eyes. (The question was, "Huh?")
“There’s always cole slaw on my Thanksgiving table,” she said defensively. Okay with us, but not one of the 30 or so ladies planning the meal had ever heard of that. It is an excellent accompaniment to turkey, I discovered, and I recommend it.
The kids at the Marietta Johnson School will celebrate Thanksgiving this Thursday on the theme, “What if the pilgrims landed on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay instead of in Plymouth Rock?” They’ve written a play to illustrate the premise. The menu will be beans, fried fish, corn bread – and I volunteered a version of ambrosia featuring native satsumas and pecans.
We all know that Thanksgiving is still a week away. But by then we’ll all be bored with it, having stretched it out for weeks. One recommendation to get in the mood for Thanksgiving and the following holidays is to rent Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter, which is hilarious and romantic and leaves you looking forward to Christmas.
I may as well face it, the holidays are already here.
They sure are extending Thanksgiving these days. It used to last one day – and that one was spent waiting for lunch, which didn’t come until about 4 in the afternoon. I have been at stressful Thanksgivings, drunken Thanksgivings, pleasant Thanksgivings, but never one that lasted for two weeks.
It’s a nice meal because, for one thing, it’s a feast, and secondly because it’s so easy. Nobody wants you to veer too much from the traditional, especially from their favorites. It’s a menu that is prescribed by law, with the few variations being allowed for occasional modifications of the side dishes or the rather recent admission of wine to the table. As to the difficulty, and the extended preparation time we see taking place this year, let’s face it, somebody is making much ado where it’s not necessary. All that’s important is the smell of roasting poultry coming from the kitchen. Even as a young bride who had hardly seen the inside of a kitchen I was able to cook a turkey without a whole lot of agony. I was married on October 29 (1960) and prepared oyster dressing for the turkey. That’s the only thing I remember making, but it was a hit, and there was no flop.
I decided turkey was so easy I should cook it often, and I did, that year. But I don’t any more. I hardly make it for Thanksgiving if I can avoid it; I think duck is better and I don’t get any objections from my guests. I vary the side dishes from year to year, but love the homemade cranberry-orange relish that is made in the food processor (and not cooked). I discovered rutabagas about 10 years ago and love the look of them on the Thanksgiving plate. Pecan pie I mastered at a very young age (I was lying about not having seen the inside of a kitchen). I’ll never forget how, a few years ago, I tried to spring an exciting dessert on the assembled crowd – my own creation based on Maida Heatter’s Polka Dot Cheesecake. Ms. Heatter’s features huge, gorgeous chocolate polka dots within the cake; I made a pumpkin cheesecake mixture and piped it in in similar fashion, and my eaters looked as if I had brought a dead rat to the table. “Where’s the pecan pie?” was all that they said.
Once I was in on the planning of a Thanksgiving pot-luck party, and one of participants said cheerily, “I volunteer for the cole slaw!”
We all looked at her with a collective question in our eyes. (The question was, "Huh?")
“There’s always cole slaw on my Thanksgiving table,” she said defensively. Okay with us, but not one of the 30 or so ladies planning the meal had ever heard of that. It is an excellent accompaniment to turkey, I discovered, and I recommend it.
The kids at the Marietta Johnson School will celebrate Thanksgiving this Thursday on the theme, “What if the pilgrims landed on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay instead of in Plymouth Rock?” They’ve written a play to illustrate the premise. The menu will be beans, fried fish, corn bread – and I volunteered a version of ambrosia featuring native satsumas and pecans.
We all know that Thanksgiving is still a week away. But by then we’ll all be bored with it, having stretched it out for weeks. One recommendation to get in the mood for Thanksgiving and the following holidays is to rent Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter, which is hilarious and romantic and leaves you looking forward to Christmas.
I may as well face it, the holidays are already here.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
The Earth Moves
November 9
The more Fairhope changes, the more I wonder how much more it can change. But somehow, after Tuesday's election, there is a perceptible change in the air everywhere. Even my front yard is changing, and I'm having that done myself.
These days you have to have a professional landscape job done, unless you like to potter around in the dirt, which I don't. And the elderly azalea bushes in front of the house were leggy and unkempt. They had probably been planted some 50 years ago, in a kind of semicircle leading to the house from the street. There is a large front yard and the house is rather small by today's standards. Even I, who live in the past, could see the need for updating. But I've been waiting for the coffers to fill up from somewhere after the remodel of the bathroom. I was flabbergasted at how much a professional landscaper charges, but have found the money, with a little help from my stockbroker and the bank. As Ernest Hemingway once said -- in a very different context -- the earth is being moved.
In the past, all we of Fairhope and fair hope did was complain about the new library, but now the unwieldy structure is being extolled by Mobile Press-Register book editor John Sledge as "magnificent." I guess I'll have to reserve my criticism at least until I've seen its magnificent interior. The project is just, as Mama used to say, too much sugar for a dime. Those of you not from the South may have to chew on that for a while, but I think you'll know what I mean.
I mentioned weeks ago about an upcoming visit to Fairhope of the late author and avant garde writer Gertrude Stein. Now I think I'll explain. Gertrude Stein, played by me, will be here in a little production of a delightful play called Gertrude Stein and a Companion, with my friend Edith as Alice B. Toklas. Date and location to be announced, but we have done a couple of readings of the play and those who heard us were very encouraging. The show will not be produced until after the first of the year, and it may be so good that we'll just take it on the road. So I'm changing too -- not in sexual orientation, but from writer to actress! It's only a play! Make no mistake about it, Gertrude Stein is a delightful character in many ways. I'll have to get a lot uglier, but at my age that isn't difficult. And she had a very handsome ugliness at that.
The election itself was a welcome wind of fresh air. The breeze has yet to blow, but its time had come, and, even though my state has kept most of the stale air in place, the overall mood of change is perceptible all around us. I have experienced such shifts before, and know that real change comes slowly, but it does come, and I have a fair hope that this one will be for the good.
I heard on the news that Nancy Pelosi is having lunch today with George W. Bush. That little picture gives me a jolt of old-fashioned joy. Wonder what's on the menu.
The more Fairhope changes, the more I wonder how much more it can change. But somehow, after Tuesday's election, there is a perceptible change in the air everywhere. Even my front yard is changing, and I'm having that done myself.
These days you have to have a professional landscape job done, unless you like to potter around in the dirt, which I don't. And the elderly azalea bushes in front of the house were leggy and unkempt. They had probably been planted some 50 years ago, in a kind of semicircle leading to the house from the street. There is a large front yard and the house is rather small by today's standards. Even I, who live in the past, could see the need for updating. But I've been waiting for the coffers to fill up from somewhere after the remodel of the bathroom. I was flabbergasted at how much a professional landscaper charges, but have found the money, with a little help from my stockbroker and the bank. As Ernest Hemingway once said -- in a very different context -- the earth is being moved.
In the past, all we of Fairhope and fair hope did was complain about the new library, but now the unwieldy structure is being extolled by Mobile Press-Register book editor John Sledge as "magnificent." I guess I'll have to reserve my criticism at least until I've seen its magnificent interior. The project is just, as Mama used to say, too much sugar for a dime. Those of you not from the South may have to chew on that for a while, but I think you'll know what I mean.
I mentioned weeks ago about an upcoming visit to Fairhope of the late author and avant garde writer Gertrude Stein. Now I think I'll explain. Gertrude Stein, played by me, will be here in a little production of a delightful play called Gertrude Stein and a Companion, with my friend Edith as Alice B. Toklas. Date and location to be announced, but we have done a couple of readings of the play and those who heard us were very encouraging. The show will not be produced until after the first of the year, and it may be so good that we'll just take it on the road. So I'm changing too -- not in sexual orientation, but from writer to actress! It's only a play! Make no mistake about it, Gertrude Stein is a delightful character in many ways. I'll have to get a lot uglier, but at my age that isn't difficult. And she had a very handsome ugliness at that.
The election itself was a welcome wind of fresh air. The breeze has yet to blow, but its time had come, and, even though my state has kept most of the stale air in place, the overall mood of change is perceptible all around us. I have experienced such shifts before, and know that real change comes slowly, but it does come, and I have a fair hope that this one will be for the good.
I heard on the news that Nancy Pelosi is having lunch today with George W. Bush. That little picture gives me a jolt of old-fashioned joy. Wonder what's on the menu.
Friday, November 03, 2006
For You Blogstalkers
November 3
Just in case you thought I was in such a rut that I couldn't stop myself from posting a blog every morning by 7 A.M., I actually skipped a day, and here I am posting at 6:16 P.M. on a Friday.
It won't be the traditional fare on this blog, either. No dipping into profundity, no ruminations about the changes in Fairhope, the loss of Utopia, the meaning of existence, and not even a plug for my book. This is a glancing overview of the whole ten months of blogging. If you want to know about my book, scroll down to the bottom of the blog and read a heartening review in the post called "Maybe It Isn't Just About Fairhope."
For blogstalkers (thank you for the word, "Grammie"), this is an index of sorts of what may be found on previous posts you may have missed. There is more, and I hope that clicking on one or more of these topics will tempt you to browse the blog in depth.
Henry George and Why There Is a Fairhope
Campbell Scott’s sex appeal
Garcia Lorca and the concept of duende
Andy Warhol and Fame as Art (and art as fame)
Irony and Americans
Bobby Darin
Anderson Cooper, Wyatt Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt
Questions about God and the Soul
Marietta Johnson and God For this one, you can also scroll down to the bottom of the blog and check out "What Is It All About?" which gives one bright child's good guess, and has a comment about yet another astonishment from another such natural wonder.
All this is to say, there's a great deal to explore on the blog already. Take your time; look around.
Just in case you thought I was in such a rut that I couldn't stop myself from posting a blog every morning by 7 A.M., I actually skipped a day, and here I am posting at 6:16 P.M. on a Friday.
It won't be the traditional fare on this blog, either. No dipping into profundity, no ruminations about the changes in Fairhope, the loss of Utopia, the meaning of existence, and not even a plug for my book. This is a glancing overview of the whole ten months of blogging. If you want to know about my book, scroll down to the bottom of the blog and read a heartening review in the post called "Maybe It Isn't Just About Fairhope."
For blogstalkers (thank you for the word, "Grammie"), this is an index of sorts of what may be found on previous posts you may have missed. There is more, and I hope that clicking on one or more of these topics will tempt you to browse the blog in depth.
Henry George and Why There Is a Fairhope
Campbell Scott’s sex appeal
Garcia Lorca and the concept of duende
Andy Warhol and Fame as Art (and art as fame)
Irony and Americans
Bobby Darin
Anderson Cooper, Wyatt Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt
Questions about God and the Soul
Marietta Johnson and God For this one, you can also scroll down to the bottom of the blog and check out "What Is It All About?" which gives one bright child's good guess, and has a comment about yet another astonishment from another such natural wonder.
All this is to say, there's a great deal to explore on the blog already. Take your time; look around.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Here's a Place To Go
November 1
Now that I'm no longer posting, I have time to spend on other blogs. This one has been linked here for a little while, but I recommend today's post to all who might by sympathetic to a Liberal political point of view. Dan Spiro has a way of bringing up topics I want to know about and writing about them in a way that I like to hear. Occasionally (like today) I am inspired to post comments over there.
Okay, all you techies out there, this is what I dislike intensely about the Internet. I do not post on this blog any more and decided to make an exception this morning to direct those readers who might be interested to a really interesting blogpost. I spent three and a half minutes composing my words and over half an hour trying to get the link to work! Please try to click on the name underlined above. As of this writing it still wouldn't take the reader to the link. You thought this was easy? The maddening this is sometimes it works fine, and maybe by the time you try it it will, but if not, just go to the link on the link list, Empathic Rationalist, and click. If that doesn't take you there, you're on your own.
I'm so glad I'm not blogging any more.
Now that I'm no longer posting, I have time to spend on other blogs. This one has been linked here for a little while, but I recommend today's post to all who might by sympathetic to a Liberal political point of view. Dan Spiro has a way of bringing up topics I want to know about and writing about them in a way that I like to hear. Occasionally (like today) I am inspired to post comments over there.
Okay, all you techies out there, this is what I dislike intensely about the Internet. I do not post on this blog any more and decided to make an exception this morning to direct those readers who might be interested to a really interesting blogpost. I spent three and a half minutes composing my words and over half an hour trying to get the link to work! Please try to click on the name underlined above. As of this writing it still wouldn't take the reader to the link. You thought this was easy? The maddening this is sometimes it works fine, and maybe by the time you try it it will, but if not, just go to the link on the link list, Empathic Rationalist, and click. If that doesn't take you there, you're on your own.
I'm so glad I'm not blogging any more.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
The Universe Said, "Don't Blog"
October 31
I woke up recently -- yesterday, to be exact -- not wanting to blog any more. I decided not to post about it. That always seems a bit like pandering to me, to post that you are abandoning your blog-calling in favor of life itself. A ploy to get readers to beg and tell you how much your daily mind trips mean to them. In other words, a cheap trick to squeeze a commitment out of those who frequent the blog. A threat.
But I emailed a few key players and told them of my decision. The consensus was, "Good for you. You don't wanna blog, then don't."
So after this I'm not going to offer new posts. (Hedging: At least not very often. You might check every week or so.) But if you're new, or if you'd like to take some time pondering some of the great themes we have discussed here, there are ways you can do it. The blog will stay up, and it will still have all the old information it once had. All you have to do to browse is type a keyword into the little blank rectangular box in the upper left hand corner of the blog where it says "Search This Blog" and then click SEARCH.
You may find profound posts on such topics as the Marietta Johnson School, Henry George, Bobby Darin, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Scott, Garcia Lorca, Gone With the Wind, Robert E. Bell, duende, aesthetic weight, Tennessee Williams, the new library in Fairhope, and lots of other stuff.
I'll keep my Site Meter running to see if there is any attendance on the blog for a little while. I'll post, maybe, when inspired. But for now I'm officially retired.
I woke up recently -- yesterday, to be exact -- not wanting to blog any more. I decided not to post about it. That always seems a bit like pandering to me, to post that you are abandoning your blog-calling in favor of life itself. A ploy to get readers to beg and tell you how much your daily mind trips mean to them. In other words, a cheap trick to squeeze a commitment out of those who frequent the blog. A threat.
But I emailed a few key players and told them of my decision. The consensus was, "Good for you. You don't wanna blog, then don't."
So after this I'm not going to offer new posts. (Hedging: At least not very often. You might check every week or so.) But if you're new, or if you'd like to take some time pondering some of the great themes we have discussed here, there are ways you can do it. The blog will stay up, and it will still have all the old information it once had. All you have to do to browse is type a keyword into the little blank rectangular box in the upper left hand corner of the blog where it says "Search This Blog" and then click SEARCH.
You may find profound posts on such topics as the Marietta Johnson School, Henry George, Bobby Darin, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Scott, Garcia Lorca, Gone With the Wind, Robert E. Bell, duende, aesthetic weight, Tennessee Williams, the new library in Fairhope, and lots of other stuff.
I'll keep my Site Meter running to see if there is any attendance on the blog for a little while. I'll post, maybe, when inspired. But for now I'm officially retired.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Hallowe'en in Old Fairhope
October 29
From When We Had the Sky (later retitled The Fair Hope of Heaven):
"Halloween used to be a major holiday in Fairhope. Costumes filled the streets in the days when youngsters were allowed to roam freely without adult companions. Behind a mask you could find a world of free expression, as the Greeks learned in ancient rituals that became the origin of theatre – as I learned in Fairhope at Halloween. The shy, repressed child that I once was was allowed for a night to be anybody she wanted, and she wanted to be the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
"The big party at the Organic School was held of the Friday night before Halloween. The school students produced it, lock, stock, and broomstick; It always featured a costume parade for adults and children, a cakewalk or two or three, a Wheel of Fortune rigged up with a bicycle wheel, a Fun House organized by the Junior High. Sometimes an adult took as visible role, as when Virginia Austin appeared as a gypsy fortuneteller; the high school kids screened off a portion of the building (Comings Hall, long since demolished) with sheets, so that they might produce a silly rhyming playlet, “Little Nell” bobbing up and down to emphasize the iambic pentameter, while on the other side of the hall apples similarly bobbed up and down in washtubs of water for the little ones to retrieve.
"Before the Halloween party could be held, the students spent several days decorating the barny old building, partitioning the outer rim with sheets and setting up a big central area to mill around in.
"People took their costumes seriously in those days. One year Helene Hunter, mother of my classmate Suzie and her two younger siblings, came as a floor lamp complete with cord and shade. My little brother at the age of eight or nine rigged up an upside-down costume to come as a man walking on his hands. Prizes were awarded, and the costumes were a part of the scene.
"In the early 1950’s a group of mischievous boys from (all but one from Fairhope High) plotted to steal the bell from the tower of the Bell Building on the Organic Campus on Halloween night. Billy Scott, one of the infamous Fairhope Five, tells the story with great gusto today. He says they didn’t anticipate the great weight of the big cast-iron bell, but by the time they discovereed that they were well into their cupidity, having managed to get the bell out of its tower, down a ladder, and halfway to the getaway car, Tubby Dunn’s 1941 Buick convertible.
"With their victory of getting the bell to the car came apprehension that they might get caught – and that they didn’t have a plan. They didn’t know where to hide the bell!
"Driving around Fairhope and trying to keep quiet so as to go undetected, they decided to take the bell down to the beach. They would hide it in the bushes between the Beach Theater and the bluff."
There's a lot more to the way Halloween was celebrated in those days, in Fairhope and elsewhere, and there's more to the saga of the purloined school bell and its ultimate return to the Bell Building, but for today, since we manage to stretch this particular holiday out for weeks before its actual day, I'll just say that Halloweens past were for older kids and adolescents, and today the event has been co-opted by the parents of toddlers who produce Martha Stewart-like parties, costumes, decorations and activities. I'll tell a few more ghost stories here since we've got a few more days before Halloween comes.
From When We Had the Sky (later retitled The Fair Hope of Heaven):
"Halloween used to be a major holiday in Fairhope. Costumes filled the streets in the days when youngsters were allowed to roam freely without adult companions. Behind a mask you could find a world of free expression, as the Greeks learned in ancient rituals that became the origin of theatre – as I learned in Fairhope at Halloween. The shy, repressed child that I once was was allowed for a night to be anybody she wanted, and she wanted to be the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
"The big party at the Organic School was held of the Friday night before Halloween. The school students produced it, lock, stock, and broomstick; It always featured a costume parade for adults and children, a cakewalk or two or three, a Wheel of Fortune rigged up with a bicycle wheel, a Fun House organized by the Junior High. Sometimes an adult took as visible role, as when Virginia Austin appeared as a gypsy fortuneteller; the high school kids screened off a portion of the building (Comings Hall, long since demolished) with sheets, so that they might produce a silly rhyming playlet, “Little Nell” bobbing up and down to emphasize the iambic pentameter, while on the other side of the hall apples similarly bobbed up and down in washtubs of water for the little ones to retrieve.
"Before the Halloween party could be held, the students spent several days decorating the barny old building, partitioning the outer rim with sheets and setting up a big central area to mill around in.
"People took their costumes seriously in those days. One year Helene Hunter, mother of my classmate Suzie and her two younger siblings, came as a floor lamp complete with cord and shade. My little brother at the age of eight or nine rigged up an upside-down costume to come as a man walking on his hands. Prizes were awarded, and the costumes were a part of the scene.
"In the early 1950’s a group of mischievous boys from (all but one from Fairhope High) plotted to steal the bell from the tower of the Bell Building on the Organic Campus on Halloween night. Billy Scott, one of the infamous Fairhope Five, tells the story with great gusto today. He says they didn’t anticipate the great weight of the big cast-iron bell, but by the time they discovereed that they were well into their cupidity, having managed to get the bell out of its tower, down a ladder, and halfway to the getaway car, Tubby Dunn’s 1941 Buick convertible.
"With their victory of getting the bell to the car came apprehension that they might get caught – and that they didn’t have a plan. They didn’t know where to hide the bell!
"Driving around Fairhope and trying to keep quiet so as to go undetected, they decided to take the bell down to the beach. They would hide it in the bushes between the Beach Theater and the bluff."
There's a lot more to the way Halloween was celebrated in those days, in Fairhope and elsewhere, and there's more to the saga of the purloined school bell and its ultimate return to the Bell Building, but for today, since we manage to stretch this particular holiday out for weeks before its actual day, I'll just say that Halloweens past were for older kids and adolescents, and today the event has been co-opted by the parents of toddlers who produce Martha Stewart-like parties, costumes, decorations and activities. I'll tell a few more ghost stories here since we've got a few more days before Halloween comes.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
What Is It All About?
October 28
When my grandson Andy was just a toddler, one of his neighborhood friends was from a Fundamentalist Christian family and constantly passed along to him Bible stories and their interpretations from his Sunday School. When I was visiting at Christmas when Andy was about four or five, I heard Andy chanting to himself. He was, like a nervous regurgitation, speaking of God.
"God is everywhere...God is everything...God is everyone...Grandmama, did you know that you are God and God is you?"
I was transfixed. I was grappling with such notions myself.
"Yes," I said. "I do know that. How did you know it?"
He looked as if he'd been caught jumping in the pool at the deep end. He shrugged almost guiltily.
"I guessed," he said.
I stared at him and he widened his eyes, shrugging more broadly.
"I just guessed."
When my grandson Andy was just a toddler, one of his neighborhood friends was from a Fundamentalist Christian family and constantly passed along to him Bible stories and their interpretations from his Sunday School. When I was visiting at Christmas when Andy was about four or five, I heard Andy chanting to himself. He was, like a nervous regurgitation, speaking of God.
"God is everywhere...God is everything...God is everyone...Grandmama, did you know that you are God and God is you?"
I was transfixed. I was grappling with such notions myself.
"Yes," I said. "I do know that. How did you know it?"
He looked as if he'd been caught jumping in the pool at the deep end. He shrugged almost guiltily.
"I guessed," he said.
I stared at him and he widened his eyes, shrugging more broadly.
"I just guessed."
Friday, October 27, 2006
War, God, and Fair Hope
October 27
The topic of war in a recent post here ignited all kinds of sparks, spewing over into at least one other blog (Mendacious Mouse) and creating lots of comments on both sides. It led to nine comments on a blog labeled "Mouse World One" and then a follow-up "Mouse World Two" post. The posts both dealt with the question of why God allows bad things to happen, which is to say, if wars are bad, why does God let us fight wars?
This is, like all "Why?" questions to me, acceptable coming from a three-year-old, but puzzling when grappled with by grown men. Yes, we must be patient with the three-year-old and give him a reasonable answer, perhaps so that he will not still be asking "Why?" about everything when he is in his 60s and 70s.
The reader who characterizes himself as "Officious Oaf" has, in spite of his vow to go on the wagon from an incipient blog addiction, weighed in on the subject. Therefore I'll fold one from his list of questions to me from a few months ago as he sought to help me build readership by being more hard-nosed.
Why is killing justified and murder isn’t?
This is one of those “When-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife” questions. In answering it I am forced to defend killing. But I can’t, so I’ll try to answer the question in the spirit in which it was intended, which I hope was sincere. The questioner must believe that killing is justified, but seems not to know what he means by that. I will take the position that "killing" means "as in war" and "murder" means "premeditated with malice aforethought."
Killing in war is good because it is deemed necessary by society. If our soldiers went into battle with instructions not to kill, we wouldn't have much of an army. What's more, we wouldn't have much of a battle. Therefore, we wouldn't have much of a war at all. And since war is good and necessary, killing is good too.
You may gather from my tone that I am not of this conviction. But I said that at the outset. I cannot seriously defend killing under any circumstances -- here it comes -- not even capital punishment. Now I've moved into tricky territory for myself because I do not oppose capital punishment, as long as it is the right people who are getting it. Pacifist that I am, I would still like to see certain people dead. This does not make me warlike, or a murderer. I am not seeking a hit man. Actually I'd like to see hit men and their ilk eliminated, which means capital punishment to them. This is getting so convoluted even I'm not sure where I stand.
I have malice toward those to whom putting a bullet in a human being's brain is a good gig. For whatever reason -- a lousy childhood, a stray gene, something -- professional (and amateur) killers are not needed in society. Why did God make them? Not for any reason I can understand. But I suspect that it is the machinery of man that created evil, and not God.
The topic is interesting. It is not my area of expertise, yet I keep coming back to it. You should read some of the comments that came out of me on the Mendacious Mouse blog. I have attracted a coterie which is enamored of the subject, and I am compelled to respond. I think open discussions, which may not reach any conclusion, but by virtue of the possibility that a mind might actually change, are our only hope of getting out of the quagmire of stagnant positions.
I said "only hope," but even that is barely a fair hope. Let's just be even-handed here.
The topic of war in a recent post here ignited all kinds of sparks, spewing over into at least one other blog (Mendacious Mouse) and creating lots of comments on both sides. It led to nine comments on a blog labeled "Mouse World One" and then a follow-up "Mouse World Two" post. The posts both dealt with the question of why God allows bad things to happen, which is to say, if wars are bad, why does God let us fight wars?
This is, like all "Why?" questions to me, acceptable coming from a three-year-old, but puzzling when grappled with by grown men. Yes, we must be patient with the three-year-old and give him a reasonable answer, perhaps so that he will not still be asking "Why?" about everything when he is in his 60s and 70s.
The reader who characterizes himself as "Officious Oaf" has, in spite of his vow to go on the wagon from an incipient blog addiction, weighed in on the subject. Therefore I'll fold one from his list of questions to me from a few months ago as he sought to help me build readership by being more hard-nosed.
Why is killing justified and murder isn’t?
This is one of those “When-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife” questions. In answering it I am forced to defend killing. But I can’t, so I’ll try to answer the question in the spirit in which it was intended, which I hope was sincere. The questioner must believe that killing is justified, but seems not to know what he means by that. I will take the position that "killing" means "as in war" and "murder" means "premeditated with malice aforethought."
Killing in war is good because it is deemed necessary by society. If our soldiers went into battle with instructions not to kill, we wouldn't have much of an army. What's more, we wouldn't have much of a battle. Therefore, we wouldn't have much of a war at all. And since war is good and necessary, killing is good too.
You may gather from my tone that I am not of this conviction. But I said that at the outset. I cannot seriously defend killing under any circumstances -- here it comes -- not even capital punishment. Now I've moved into tricky territory for myself because I do not oppose capital punishment, as long as it is the right people who are getting it. Pacifist that I am, I would still like to see certain people dead. This does not make me warlike, or a murderer. I am not seeking a hit man. Actually I'd like to see hit men and their ilk eliminated, which means capital punishment to them. This is getting so convoluted even I'm not sure where I stand.
I have malice toward those to whom putting a bullet in a human being's brain is a good gig. For whatever reason -- a lousy childhood, a stray gene, something -- professional (and amateur) killers are not needed in society. Why did God make them? Not for any reason I can understand. But I suspect that it is the machinery of man that created evil, and not God.
The topic is interesting. It is not my area of expertise, yet I keep coming back to it. You should read some of the comments that came out of me on the Mendacious Mouse blog. I have attracted a coterie which is enamored of the subject, and I am compelled to respond. I think open discussions, which may not reach any conclusion, but by virtue of the possibility that a mind might actually change, are our only hope of getting out of the quagmire of stagnant positions.
I said "only hope," but even that is barely a fair hope. Let's just be even-handed here.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Maybe It Isn't Just About Fairhope
October 26
When I first sat at the table signing copies of the original edition of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, I was under the impression that I had written a book about Fairhope, sure, but one with broader appeal than that.There were tourist books about Fairhope already in 2001; books on where to eat and why to move to the toney bayside village. I thought I had written kind of a shorter Lake Wobegone Days with a Single Tax slant, a picture of a unique place with a personality that would appeal to people who really had no sense of different ways of looking at things.
In Fairhope, by far the most compelling chapters seemed to be those written by Bob Bell, my collaborator who had enjoyed a lifelong love affair with his own memories of the town in the 1940's and 50's. When people urged me to write a second book, I felt it should be gutsier, grittier; in short, it should tell of some of the iconoclasts who had changed their lives by moving to early Fairhope or changed early Fairhope by moving to it with their maverick ways intact.
Publishers, when I worked to get a reprint done after the initial 1,000 copies of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree sold out, told me they felt it was a book that would have only local appeal, and they said the same thing about When We Had the Sky, the second book. It has a certain amount of charm, they said, but the world really doesn't need to know about Fairhope.
Recently I sold a copy to Dan Spiro, author of an excellent new novel called The Creed Room, and writer of a blog called The Empathic Rationalist, which is linked to this one. He has never laid eyes on Fairhope, and I'll venture to say had never heard of it before I wrote him about my book. He liked MMATBT and offered to write a review of it for Amazon.com, as two of my friends, including one who identifies himself as John Sweden when he comments on this blog, had done before him.
Imagine the little thrill I felt when greeted with a copy of his review this morning in the email box:
Butterfly trees, the authors tell us, refer to a species of plant that "attract butterflies, which alight upon them, sometimes all at once, creating a visual spectacle that is very pleasing to the human spirit." Notice the word choice: not that these trees are pleasing to the eyes, but that they are pleasing to the spirit. That is precisely how I would describe this book. For those, like me, who share its authors' values, we can't help but find this book and the town that it describes to be spiritually uplifting.
Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree is a beautiful portrait of a place. In this portrait we find a group of people, all of whom beat to their own eccentric drummers, who somehow come together like butterflies on a tree and light up their environment with love, encouragement, and mutual respect. I was particularly taken by the description of the School of Organic Education, which is the antithesis of the modern status-conscious, teach-to-the-test, mind-numbing school that has come to dominate our society in the era of No Child Left Behind. It is clear that the Organic school depicted in this book didn't need slogans to demonstrate its commitment to universal education. But nor did it need to stress test scores. Its faculty were the types who care about creativity, and who value learning for its own sake and wish to inspire students to do the same. The result, no doubt, is a community of lifelong learners -- not mere grade-grubbing pre-professionals.
I could criticize this book by saying that its initial chapters didn't fully grab my interest. But I've never been to Fairhope, nor any town remotely like it, and hail from one of the most self-obsessed, workaholic cultures in the world (the legal world of Washington, D.C.). So perhaps it simply took my mind's eye a bit of time to adjust to the portrait of a utopian town. Once the story turned to the Organic school and some of the more colorful characters who populated the town, I was entranced for the remainder of the book. At that point, you see, I realized what the authors were trying to communicate: if we want our lives to be clothed in beauty -- both as individuals and as a community -- we can find incredible guidance from the people of Fairhope and the philosophy embraced through its institutions.
Non-conformity, collegiality, creativity, playfulness, intellectuality, spirituality -- these are the values of Fairhope. Can they become the values of a community, not of hundreds or thousands, but of millions? Of billions? These are the questions I found myself asking. That's what a true utopian asks.
Take that, you provincial citizens of the rest of Alabama, you who think Fairhope is just a little upscale shopping center with pretentions to Art. Fairhope as it once was was a lesson for you all.
When I first sat at the table signing copies of the original edition of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, I was under the impression that I had written a book about Fairhope, sure, but one with broader appeal than that.
There were tourist books about Fairhope already in 2001; books on where to eat and why to move to the toney bayside village. I thought I had written kind of a shorter Lake Wobegone Days with a Single Tax slant, a picture of a unique place with a personality that would appeal to people who really had no sense of different ways of looking at things.In Fairhope, by far the most compelling chapters seemed to be those written by Bob Bell, my collaborator who had enjoyed a lifelong love affair with his own memories of the town in the 1940's and 50's. When people urged me to write a second book, I felt it should be gutsier, grittier; in short, it should tell of some of the iconoclasts who had changed their lives by moving to early Fairhope or changed early Fairhope by moving to it with their maverick ways intact.
Publishers, when I worked to get a reprint done after the initial 1,000 copies of Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree sold out, told me they felt it was a book that would have only local appeal, and they said the same thing about When We Had the Sky, the second book. It has a certain amount of charm, they said, but the world really doesn't need to know about Fairhope.
Recently I sold a copy to Dan Spiro, author of an excellent new novel called The Creed Room, and writer of a blog called The Empathic Rationalist, which is linked to this one. He has never laid eyes on Fairhope, and I'll venture to say had never heard of it before I wrote him about my book. He liked MMATBT and offered to write a review of it for Amazon.com, as two of my friends, including one who identifies himself as John Sweden when he comments on this blog, had done before him.
Imagine the little thrill I felt when greeted with a copy of his review this morning in the email box:
Butterfly trees, the authors tell us, refer to a species of plant that "attract butterflies, which alight upon them, sometimes all at once, creating a visual spectacle that is very pleasing to the human spirit." Notice the word choice: not that these trees are pleasing to the eyes, but that they are pleasing to the spirit. That is precisely how I would describe this book. For those, like me, who share its authors' values, we can't help but find this book and the town that it describes to be spiritually uplifting.
Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree is a beautiful portrait of a place. In this portrait we find a group of people, all of whom beat to their own eccentric drummers, who somehow come together like butterflies on a tree and light up their environment with love, encouragement, and mutual respect. I was particularly taken by the description of the School of Organic Education, which is the antithesis of the modern status-conscious, teach-to-the-test, mind-numbing school that has come to dominate our society in the era of No Child Left Behind. It is clear that the Organic school depicted in this book didn't need slogans to demonstrate its commitment to universal education. But nor did it need to stress test scores. Its faculty were the types who care about creativity, and who value learning for its own sake and wish to inspire students to do the same. The result, no doubt, is a community of lifelong learners -- not mere grade-grubbing pre-professionals.
I could criticize this book by saying that its initial chapters didn't fully grab my interest. But I've never been to Fairhope, nor any town remotely like it, and hail from one of the most self-obsessed, workaholic cultures in the world (the legal world of Washington, D.C.). So perhaps it simply took my mind's eye a bit of time to adjust to the portrait of a utopian town. Once the story turned to the Organic school and some of the more colorful characters who populated the town, I was entranced for the remainder of the book. At that point, you see, I realized what the authors were trying to communicate: if we want our lives to be clothed in beauty -- both as individuals and as a community -- we can find incredible guidance from the people of Fairhope and the philosophy embraced through its institutions.
Non-conformity, collegiality, creativity, playfulness, intellectuality, spirituality -- these are the values of Fairhope. Can they become the values of a community, not of hundreds or thousands, but of millions? Of billions? These are the questions I found myself asking. That's what a true utopian asks.
Take that, you provincial citizens of the rest of Alabama, you who think Fairhope is just a little upscale shopping center with pretentions to Art. Fairhope as it once was was a lesson for you all.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Walking Through This War
October 24
Since every blog on the Internet has a position on the current war and the possibility of that next one out there (North Korea), you may wonder where I stand. In a nutshell, I hate this war. I can't think of a war I have ever not hated, and that goes back to the Punic Wars between ancient Greece and Rome.
I am opposed to war. If I had lived in prehistoric times I would have been one of those cave babes who said, "Put down that stupid club, you might hurt somebody!" I just never got it, the need to protect or expand our borders, to quell or vanquish the invaders, to make the world safe for our way of life. Just let's mind our own business and keep life serene. Maybe that other guy is thinking of ways to maraud, rape and pillage. Then again, maybe he's not. Let's not send our boy over there to lose his life or his innocence in such a cause. Look out the window: that's the kingdom of God. It looks pretty good to me.
When I thought about posting on my feelings about war, I realized it's too big for one post. My whole life has been involved in one war or another, and just that is a lot of ground to cover. My earliest memories are of blackouts and all the daddies being gone; rationing of food and creative meals; men in uniform; war games, and grim black and white newsreels called The March of Time before the picture show started.
Tom Brokaw called those boys who fought that war "The Greatest Generation" because, being the same vintage as me -- 1940 was a very good year -- he and his friends had never been put to such a test, and he could only observe and write about it. I feel great sorrow rather than pure admiration for that "greatest" generation, having been married to one of them who eventually died of alcoholism and never spoke of the war. There were many such, and they did not get the glory of being interviewed, nor did they want to be. Booze was an easy refuge from all that life had dealt them, and I think having been taught and required to kill at a tender age had something to do with their great need for a hiding place the rest of their lives.
Now we have a war that has been going on for four years with no end in sight. It's easy to get mad at the "liars" who got us there, but look at the events as they developed. After a vulnerability shown when attacked on our own ground on September 11, 2001, we went after the guy who did it. When finding him proved impossible, we decided to demonize a guy we were pretty sure we could find. Our leader went from "I hear you!" to "weapons of mass destruction" and "slam-dunk." Fighting words. "Smart bombs." "Surgical attacks." I bought into it, only marginally, but I remember saying, "I hope this doesn't turn out to be another Vietnam."
It turned out to be much worse. And now I'm old enough to realize I may not see the end of this fighting in my lifetime. After all, there has been fighting in that region for at least as long as I remember, and our invasion has done nothing to lessen it. My daughter, who is neither stupid nor a child, asked me, "Why are we going to war there? What reason are they giving, other than that we can?" and I had no answers. She has two sons, ages 9 and 11 1/2, and she is thinking of moving to Canada. The little boys are the most militant anti-war activists of their age I have ever met. They are getting a very one-sided view of American politics.
Now the guys in charge are saying they are not willing to "cut and run" like the Democrats. They say it's somehow better to "stay the course." Then they decided that it would be smarter not to stay the course after all, so they are trying to come up with a phrase that didn't sound so bull-headed and, let's face it, stupid. They have tried out "anticipating victory," and by the end of the day today you'll here an arsenal of new phrases, all of which were designed with more thought that the necessity for going to war in the first place was. They must be getting tired of being called liars all the time, every day. They must, somewhere in their hearts, yearn for a way to cut and run without calling it that.
I want them to find a way out. I want it over as soon as it can be. Actually I want it never to have happened. I'm not interested in whether the Democrats would have done a better job -- they couldn't have done a worse one -- but I want somebody to appear with a positive message, a modicum of awareness and taste, and the ability to get this killing stopped.
So there you have my war blog. I don't claim to know anything about why wars get started or why we need them so desperately every few years. It baffles me. I guess I'm a pacifist, which is to say naive, uninformed and ostrich-like, who just will never learn the reality of life in this world. I don't even have a fair hope of success in learning, either.
Since every blog on the Internet has a position on the current war and the possibility of that next one out there (North Korea), you may wonder where I stand. In a nutshell, I hate this war. I can't think of a war I have ever not hated, and that goes back to the Punic Wars between ancient Greece and Rome.
I am opposed to war. If I had lived in prehistoric times I would have been one of those cave babes who said, "Put down that stupid club, you might hurt somebody!" I just never got it, the need to protect or expand our borders, to quell or vanquish the invaders, to make the world safe for our way of life. Just let's mind our own business and keep life serene. Maybe that other guy is thinking of ways to maraud, rape and pillage. Then again, maybe he's not. Let's not send our boy over there to lose his life or his innocence in such a cause. Look out the window: that's the kingdom of God. It looks pretty good to me.
When I thought about posting on my feelings about war, I realized it's too big for one post. My whole life has been involved in one war or another, and just that is a lot of ground to cover. My earliest memories are of blackouts and all the daddies being gone; rationing of food and creative meals; men in uniform; war games, and grim black and white newsreels called The March of Time before the picture show started.
Tom Brokaw called those boys who fought that war "The Greatest Generation" because, being the same vintage as me -- 1940 was a very good year -- he and his friends had never been put to such a test, and he could only observe and write about it. I feel great sorrow rather than pure admiration for that "greatest" generation, having been married to one of them who eventually died of alcoholism and never spoke of the war. There were many such, and they did not get the glory of being interviewed, nor did they want to be. Booze was an easy refuge from all that life had dealt them, and I think having been taught and required to kill at a tender age had something to do with their great need for a hiding place the rest of their lives.
Now we have a war that has been going on for four years with no end in sight. It's easy to get mad at the "liars" who got us there, but look at the events as they developed. After a vulnerability shown when attacked on our own ground on September 11, 2001, we went after the guy who did it. When finding him proved impossible, we decided to demonize a guy we were pretty sure we could find. Our leader went from "I hear you!" to "weapons of mass destruction" and "slam-dunk." Fighting words. "Smart bombs." "Surgical attacks." I bought into it, only marginally, but I remember saying, "I hope this doesn't turn out to be another Vietnam."
It turned out to be much worse. And now I'm old enough to realize I may not see the end of this fighting in my lifetime. After all, there has been fighting in that region for at least as long as I remember, and our invasion has done nothing to lessen it. My daughter, who is neither stupid nor a child, asked me, "Why are we going to war there? What reason are they giving, other than that we can?" and I had no answers. She has two sons, ages 9 and 11 1/2, and she is thinking of moving to Canada. The little boys are the most militant anti-war activists of their age I have ever met. They are getting a very one-sided view of American politics.
Now the guys in charge are saying they are not willing to "cut and run" like the Democrats. They say it's somehow better to "stay the course." Then they decided that it would be smarter not to stay the course after all, so they are trying to come up with a phrase that didn't sound so bull-headed and, let's face it, stupid. They have tried out "anticipating victory," and by the end of the day today you'll here an arsenal of new phrases, all of which were designed with more thought that the necessity for going to war in the first place was. They must be getting tired of being called liars all the time, every day. They must, somewhere in their hearts, yearn for a way to cut and run without calling it that.
I want them to find a way out. I want it over as soon as it can be. Actually I want it never to have happened. I'm not interested in whether the Democrats would have done a better job -- they couldn't have done a worse one -- but I want somebody to appear with a positive message, a modicum of awareness and taste, and the ability to get this killing stopped.
So there you have my war blog. I don't claim to know anything about why wars get started or why we need them so desperately every few years. It baffles me. I guess I'm a pacifist, which is to say naive, uninformed and ostrich-like, who just will never learn the reality of life in this world. I don't even have a fair hope of success in learning, either.
Monday, October 23, 2006
The "Wow!" Factor
October 23
I have for years watched the Home and Garden cable TV channel and shows like Flip That House and Sell This House and Restaurant Makeover. I have built a house to sell and sold it, and am in the process of updating and restoring a 1916 house, which in Fairhope is a real oldie.
I was on the Historic Preservation Committee when its mission was to stop the destruction of the quaint bungalows and genuine architectural treasures of Fairhope’s history. The committee lost its case in the public eye about six years ago, and almost all of the older homes and cottages have been replaced by really big generic houses, some of which affect a “cottage” appearance but none of which would look out of place in any location in the United States or Canada.
A huge new library is about to be occupied. A huge new Baptist Church has been built to replace the old one (which was very very large, but not what I would call huge). The old high school building in the center of town, now housing kindergarten and the first grade, will soon be torn down and sold to commercial interests, under great protest by picketing moms who think (as I once did) that they can stop the trend – and that Fairhope respects its heritage and admires the appearance or at least the presence of its older buildings.
Those television shows and all the shelter magazines celebrate what they call “the WOW factor.” Homeowners – and particularly those planning to sell a home or building – buy into this idea, that a buyer must say “Wow!” when walking into the house. He also must say “Wow!” when viewing the kitchen for the first time. He also must say “Wow!” when viewing the outsized master bedroom with its obligatory luxurious adjoining bath.
Everywhere we look we must say “Wow!” There is no room in today’s world for a quiet street peppered with charming cottages with rabbit-warren rooms. Every house must astound from the curb, and in it, every bedroom must have walk-in closets an adjoining bath. And every room must be big enough to elicit at least one “Wow!”
I think that’s why our public buildings in Fairhope got so big. Committees were formed, committees headed by people from Mobile who wanted to be sure their friends would be impressed with the state-of-the-art, “Wow!” buildings in Fairhope.
The Performing Arts Center, originally planned to be built adjacent to the new high school and to have a 2,000 seat main theatre and several smaller houses along with classrooms, had to be downsized to one 1,000-seat mainstage – but, probably to increase its “Wow!” factor the committee decided to plunk it right in the center of Fairhope. (The school board refused to ante up sufficient funding, and I suppose it was assumed that a central location might help the fund-raisers to save face.) The building is now slated to be on the Faulkner campus so as to be near the envisioned hub of activity in the downtown area. Never mind that the space they selected was set aside in perpetuity as a memorial to Charles Rabold, a beloved citizen of Fairhope of the 1920’s, and the man who brought folk dancing to the Marietta Johnson School. Mr. Rabold is all but forgotten except for a few of us old diehards, and what would be the “Wow!” factor in keeping a greenspace as a silent memorial?
Fairhope is full of structures with the wow factor now. The Wow! does not connote admiration, however, so much as astonishment that such a building or house stands where it does.
As in, “Wow! What happened to this town?”
I have for years watched the Home and Garden cable TV channel and shows like Flip That House and Sell This House and Restaurant Makeover. I have built a house to sell and sold it, and am in the process of updating and restoring a 1916 house, which in Fairhope is a real oldie.
I was on the Historic Preservation Committee when its mission was to stop the destruction of the quaint bungalows and genuine architectural treasures of Fairhope’s history. The committee lost its case in the public eye about six years ago, and almost all of the older homes and cottages have been replaced by really big generic houses, some of which affect a “cottage” appearance but none of which would look out of place in any location in the United States or Canada.
A huge new library is about to be occupied. A huge new Baptist Church has been built to replace the old one (which was very very large, but not what I would call huge). The old high school building in the center of town, now housing kindergarten and the first grade, will soon be torn down and sold to commercial interests, under great protest by picketing moms who think (as I once did) that they can stop the trend – and that Fairhope respects its heritage and admires the appearance or at least the presence of its older buildings.
Those television shows and all the shelter magazines celebrate what they call “the WOW factor.” Homeowners – and particularly those planning to sell a home or building – buy into this idea, that a buyer must say “Wow!” when walking into the house. He also must say “Wow!” when viewing the kitchen for the first time. He also must say “Wow!” when viewing the outsized master bedroom with its obligatory luxurious adjoining bath.
Everywhere we look we must say “Wow!” There is no room in today’s world for a quiet street peppered with charming cottages with rabbit-warren rooms. Every house must astound from the curb, and in it, every bedroom must have walk-in closets an adjoining bath. And every room must be big enough to elicit at least one “Wow!”
I think that’s why our public buildings in Fairhope got so big. Committees were formed, committees headed by people from Mobile who wanted to be sure their friends would be impressed with the state-of-the-art, “Wow!” buildings in Fairhope.
The Performing Arts Center, originally planned to be built adjacent to the new high school and to have a 2,000 seat main theatre and several smaller houses along with classrooms, had to be downsized to one 1,000-seat mainstage – but, probably to increase its “Wow!” factor the committee decided to plunk it right in the center of Fairhope. (The school board refused to ante up sufficient funding, and I suppose it was assumed that a central location might help the fund-raisers to save face.) The building is now slated to be on the Faulkner campus so as to be near the envisioned hub of activity in the downtown area. Never mind that the space they selected was set aside in perpetuity as a memorial to Charles Rabold, a beloved citizen of Fairhope of the 1920’s, and the man who brought folk dancing to the Marietta Johnson School. Mr. Rabold is all but forgotten except for a few of us old diehards, and what would be the “Wow!” factor in keeping a greenspace as a silent memorial?
Fairhope is full of structures with the wow factor now. The Wow! does not connote admiration, however, so much as astonishment that such a building or house stands where it does.
As in, “Wow! What happened to this town?”
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Artists and Fair Hope
October 22
Yesterday's post re-ignited a discussion of the meaning of art, and the information coming from a reader in Sweden should at least inform the discussion.
To broaden the discussion to an art I have a little more knowledge about, I am reprinting the following. It is a reprint of a post I wrote in the height of our discussion of the theatre, when a certain commenter had said that all the women in Tennessee Williams' plays were psychopaths, pure and simple. I tried to weave this into a definition of this blog, of Fairhope and fair hope, and the application of an education in Fairhope on an appreciation of all the arts.
Paul Gaston wrote a book years ago, which I'm sure is still available, called Women of Fair Hope. Its title gave me the idea for the name for this blog. In the book he dealt with the lives of a few women from Fairhope's early days who would be standouts in any locale, in any generation: Nancy Lewis, the former slave from whom the land for the Single Tax Colony was purchased, Marie Howland, the unconventional intellectual who became the town's first librarian, and Marietta Johnson, who was to found an extraordinary Progressive school. His book does much to define the women of Fairhope by these role models. Howland in particular had such a colorful story that readers of today have trouble believing it is not fiction -- and that she actually lived in Fairhope.
In The Butterfly Tree, Bob Bell describes a character that always struck me as generic-Southern rather than "Fairhope." There was a remotely tragic look about Miss Billy, as though she had lost something and wouldn't know when she found it, if she found it. Her eyes were that pale lavender color that made you think of crushed sweet peas. Ladies like this abound in Southern literature. We can read about them in early Truman Capote, in Carson McCullers, in Tennessee Williams. But in reality they were a rarity in Fairhope. To give him credit, Bob Bell's portrait of Winifred Duncan as Miss Claverly does deal with another type of woman altogether. My argument with Bob was that he saw Claverly as an aberration and I knew Winifred Duncan (the very real woman upon whom the character Miss Claverly was based) as a force to be reckoned with among the women of Fairhope of the 'fifties.
I am grateful that, although in the South, Fairhope is not really of the South. Because it was founded by those people from Des Moines, and because it was the kind of little intellectual enclave that attracted nonconformists, to live in Fairhope is not like living in any other place on earth. Those dewy, sweetpea-eyed ladies who exist in other southern U.S. locales are not at home in Fairhope. In Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree I add to Bob's portrait of Miss Duncan the likes of Gretchen Riggs, Verda Horne, Anna Braune and Emma Schramm, who built a house supported by tall pine trees in the woods just off the main street. None of these women was a delicate fading flower or what you would think of as a Southern lady. They were women of Fairhope.
Are Tennessee Williams' women Southern ladies or not? His writing covered such an astonishing range of experiences that the question hardly seems pertinent to anything. I once heard Williams, late in life, railing at some critic who said his women were all "drag queens." "I never wrote a play about drag queens in my life," he said, "and if I wrote about drag queens, they would be drag queens. The women I write about are real women."
A comment here said all the women in his plays are psychopaths. This is an unfathomable interpretation to me. Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, whom the commenter particularly hated, is a well-written, full human being, with goals, humor, personality, and a certain tragic outlook. She is not a victim, except of her own mistakes. She works for a living. The audience is meant to see her as a whole, sympathetic figure doing exactly the wrong thing all the time. She wants the best for her children although she has no idea what it is. She has a son who is a poet and a daughter who is an emotional cripple. Williams wrote, "Her life is a paranoia, but she is not paranoid." Williams' mother said, "I can't see anything about me in that character." My own mother said she disliked the play because she couldn't help but identify with the mother.
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Maggie is a Southern belle who happens to be in love with the wrong guy. There are themes in that play that fold back on themselves in unexpected ways. The homosexual conflicts of Brick and the clever manipulation of the frustrated Maggie against the backdrop of the towering character of Big Daddy make a riveting play -- about real people who might be seen as exotic if one were not raised in the American South.
Anyone who thinks Blanche DuBois is a psychopath hasn't seen or studied the play. She is deluded, yes, afraid of losing her youth and beauty, the only currency she has ever had. Raised to be a classic lady, she is in conflict about her sexual nature, and the only way she sees to resolve that conflict is to split herself in two -- the virgin and the whore -- and to live in the state of denial that is very often a Southern way of life. The inevitable confrontation with reality in the guise of Stanley Kowalski is too much for her fragile hold on sanity, which brings the audience to its own realization of the duality of the nature of man. Excuse me, maybe that should be the nature of Woman. Southern woman, at that.
In Fairhope I saw little of this. My parents, however, were more Southern than Fairhope, and the family I was exposed to had traces of the kind of offbeat reality that pervades the region. My first husband was from a very repressed Alabama town and family; he felt much more kin to the characters of Tennessee Williams than I did.
But what a gold mine those plays were for a young actress. And how lucky I was to have had enough Southern orientation, overlaid with the realistic intellectualism of Fairhope, to "get" the meaning, and to have the opportunity to play some of those roles.
Yesterday's post re-ignited a discussion of the meaning of art, and the information coming from a reader in Sweden should at least inform the discussion.
To broaden the discussion to an art I have a little more knowledge about, I am reprinting the following. It is a reprint of a post I wrote in the height of our discussion of the theatre, when a certain commenter had said that all the women in Tennessee Williams' plays were psychopaths, pure and simple. I tried to weave this into a definition of this blog, of Fairhope and fair hope, and the application of an education in Fairhope on an appreciation of all the arts.
Paul Gaston wrote a book years ago, which I'm sure is still available, called Women of Fair Hope. Its title gave me the idea for the name for this blog. In the book he dealt with the lives of a few women from Fairhope's early days who would be standouts in any locale, in any generation: Nancy Lewis, the former slave from whom the land for the Single Tax Colony was purchased, Marie Howland, the unconventional intellectual who became the town's first librarian, and Marietta Johnson, who was to found an extraordinary Progressive school. His book does much to define the women of Fairhope by these role models. Howland in particular had such a colorful story that readers of today have trouble believing it is not fiction -- and that she actually lived in Fairhope.
In The Butterfly Tree, Bob Bell describes a character that always struck me as generic-Southern rather than "Fairhope." There was a remotely tragic look about Miss Billy, as though she had lost something and wouldn't know when she found it, if she found it. Her eyes were that pale lavender color that made you think of crushed sweet peas. Ladies like this abound in Southern literature. We can read about them in early Truman Capote, in Carson McCullers, in Tennessee Williams. But in reality they were a rarity in Fairhope. To give him credit, Bob Bell's portrait of Winifred Duncan as Miss Claverly does deal with another type of woman altogether. My argument with Bob was that he saw Claverly as an aberration and I knew Winifred Duncan (the very real woman upon whom the character Miss Claverly was based) as a force to be reckoned with among the women of Fairhope of the 'fifties.
I am grateful that, although in the South, Fairhope is not really of the South. Because it was founded by those people from Des Moines, and because it was the kind of little intellectual enclave that attracted nonconformists, to live in Fairhope is not like living in any other place on earth. Those dewy, sweetpea-eyed ladies who exist in other southern U.S. locales are not at home in Fairhope. In Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree I add to Bob's portrait of Miss Duncan the likes of Gretchen Riggs, Verda Horne, Anna Braune and Emma Schramm, who built a house supported by tall pine trees in the woods just off the main street. None of these women was a delicate fading flower or what you would think of as a Southern lady. They were women of Fairhope.
Are Tennessee Williams' women Southern ladies or not? His writing covered such an astonishing range of experiences that the question hardly seems pertinent to anything. I once heard Williams, late in life, railing at some critic who said his women were all "drag queens." "I never wrote a play about drag queens in my life," he said, "and if I wrote about drag queens, they would be drag queens. The women I write about are real women."
A comment here said all the women in his plays are psychopaths. This is an unfathomable interpretation to me. Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, whom the commenter particularly hated, is a well-written, full human being, with goals, humor, personality, and a certain tragic outlook. She is not a victim, except of her own mistakes. She works for a living. The audience is meant to see her as a whole, sympathetic figure doing exactly the wrong thing all the time. She wants the best for her children although she has no idea what it is. She has a son who is a poet and a daughter who is an emotional cripple. Williams wrote, "Her life is a paranoia, but she is not paranoid." Williams' mother said, "I can't see anything about me in that character." My own mother said she disliked the play because she couldn't help but identify with the mother.
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Maggie is a Southern belle who happens to be in love with the wrong guy. There are themes in that play that fold back on themselves in unexpected ways. The homosexual conflicts of Brick and the clever manipulation of the frustrated Maggie against the backdrop of the towering character of Big Daddy make a riveting play -- about real people who might be seen as exotic if one were not raised in the American South.
Anyone who thinks Blanche DuBois is a psychopath hasn't seen or studied the play. She is deluded, yes, afraid of losing her youth and beauty, the only currency she has ever had. Raised to be a classic lady, she is in conflict about her sexual nature, and the only way she sees to resolve that conflict is to split herself in two -- the virgin and the whore -- and to live in the state of denial that is very often a Southern way of life. The inevitable confrontation with reality in the guise of Stanley Kowalski is too much for her fragile hold on sanity, which brings the audience to its own realization of the duality of the nature of man. Excuse me, maybe that should be the nature of Woman. Southern woman, at that.
In Fairhope I saw little of this. My parents, however, were more Southern than Fairhope, and the family I was exposed to had traces of the kind of offbeat reality that pervades the region. My first husband was from a very repressed Alabama town and family; he felt much more kin to the characters of Tennessee Williams than I did.
But what a gold mine those plays were for a young actress. And how lucky I was to have had enough Southern orientation, overlaid with the realistic intellectualism of Fairhope, to "get" the meaning, and to have the opportunity to play some of those roles.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Friday Night Movie
October 21
There is a weekly film series in Fairhope, over at the building that used to be the Episcopal Church, just two or three blocks from my house. They show movies that anyone could rent, just not necessarily ones that we do, so some of us are willing to shell out $4 for the priviledge of going out to the movies in our own neighborhood. The nearest bona fide cinemaplex is up at the mall, at least 30 minutes away through bothersome traffic.
Last night’s show was one I had been planning to see: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. A thoughtful parable set in the contemporary West, it involves a sad story of a cruel border guard, his hapless victim, and a good-hearted Texan who wants to see wrongs avenged.
Not my usual chick-flick fare (I had been thinking of renting The Break Up, and would have had the video store not been out of copies), but I absolutely loved the film. It was full of odd stories, lonely and empty characters, and situations I would never have been able to anticipate. Directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, it had the kind of integrity you expect from him – solemn, wise, and somewhat inscrutable. Beautiful, desolate, dusty West Texas settings helped with the evocative and gut-wrenching saga. A pretty actress (who happens to be January Jones, Tommy Lee's daughter) played a vapid young woman, bringing a sincerity and appeal to an extremely thankless role. Dwight Yoakum, with the awkwardness of an amateur who is perfectly cast, was convincing as the lawman who wanted out of the whole thing.
Somehow I loved Julio Cézar Cedillo, the actor playing the title role, from his first entrance and the line, “Vaqueiro. No Mas,” when he was asked his line of work. With flashbacks and forward cuts we are taken through his story and he is like a shining light throughout the film, even as a corpse. Just as Barry Pepper personifies a man beyond rememption, his presence makes life worth living and doing everything possible to redeem the most despicable. Melissa Leo was spot-on as the waitress with a sideline of entertaining all the available men in town.
I could find nothing to fault in the film. I left it with a few questions and would like to find someone else who saw it to discuss it with, so I recommend it to you. Maybe when we get together we'll remember to solve some of the riddles of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
There is a weekly film series in Fairhope, over at the building that used to be the Episcopal Church, just two or three blocks from my house. They show movies that anyone could rent, just not necessarily ones that we do, so some of us are willing to shell out $4 for the priviledge of going out to the movies in our own neighborhood. The nearest bona fide cinemaplex is up at the mall, at least 30 minutes away through bothersome traffic.
Last night’s show was one I had been planning to see: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. A thoughtful parable set in the contemporary West, it involves a sad story of a cruel border guard, his hapless victim, and a good-hearted Texan who wants to see wrongs avenged.
Not my usual chick-flick fare (I had been thinking of renting The Break Up, and would have had the video store not been out of copies), but I absolutely loved the film. It was full of odd stories, lonely and empty characters, and situations I would never have been able to anticipate. Directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, it had the kind of integrity you expect from him – solemn, wise, and somewhat inscrutable. Beautiful, desolate, dusty West Texas settings helped with the evocative and gut-wrenching saga. A pretty actress (who happens to be January Jones, Tommy Lee's daughter) played a vapid young woman, bringing a sincerity and appeal to an extremely thankless role. Dwight Yoakum, with the awkwardness of an amateur who is perfectly cast, was convincing as the lawman who wanted out of the whole thing.
Somehow I loved Julio Cézar Cedillo, the actor playing the title role, from his first entrance and the line, “Vaqueiro. No Mas,” when he was asked his line of work. With flashbacks and forward cuts we are taken through his story and he is like a shining light throughout the film, even as a corpse. Just as Barry Pepper personifies a man beyond rememption, his presence makes life worth living and doing everything possible to redeem the most despicable. Melissa Leo was spot-on as the waitress with a sideline of entertaining all the available men in town.
I could find nothing to fault in the film. I left it with a few questions and would like to find someone else who saw it to discuss it with, so I recommend it to you. Maybe when we get together we'll remember to solve some of the riddles of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Unconscious Yesses and Complex Nuances
October 20
The hardest part of that title was figuring out how to spell the plural of "yes." The phrase was used in a recent comment, and the spelling looked wrong to me. I had to reach a decision before I could post about it. There it is, right or wrong.
It referred to my story about the man who couldn't bring himself to read religious opinions that conflicted with those he had been brought up to accept. He was, the commenter suggested, unconsciously saying yes to his own indoctrination. Probably he would have come to the same conclusion if he had done some study, but his mind had been made up for him, probably in childhood, and to become a questioner of the faith accepted by all the people he respected and who had raised him was not an option. I've seen film clips from a new documentary called Jesus Camp which depicts the life of children being so indoctrinated. It is chilling to see the fervor with which they embrace the most troubling aspect of their brand of Christianity -- the mindless, emotional, judgmental passion that has nothing to do with Christ or living a better life. It is a "yes," all right, but an entirely conscious one. To some degree I am afraid this was the religious training my good friend had been exposed to, had said "yes" to. He became a Bible scholar, read the book constantly and studied it hard. He read other books too -- but not those that offered new insights to the basic text.
There are many things we unconsciously say yes to as we grow up. We accept them by default, by not saying no. Doing this unconsciously is what makes life easy at first, and it is what makes life difficult later. Over and over, obstacles are thrown in the path of that unconscious decision we made without making it. We are required to defend something we absorbed without thinking, and finding defenses for such is all but impossible. If it's actually impossible, we may switch to the opposite choice and surprise ourselves and everybody else. But it's so much easier to remain unconscious.
Art, another commenter states, is a set of complex nuances that has nothing to do with a child, even an "inner" one. It is the purvue of adults only. This does not discount the art of children (I hope), but to call art itself the work of children is to diminish it in the minds of conscious adults. As in the early days of Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism, people look at the work and say, "A kindergartener could do that!" People are quick to say that Andy Warhol was a charlatan and Salvador Dali a Public Relations expert. Jackson Pollack and Ad Reinhardt were, in this assessment, pulling the wool over the art consumer's eyes.
Such an attitude is the opposite of an unconscious yes. It is an unconscious no. In both cases it produces a closed mind and deprives the owner of this mind of a whole lifetime of experiences based on joy and learning about the other occupants of the world. It's a shame that so many of us live there, verbalizing, pontificating, pronouncing, yet not capable of saying an unconscious yes to the next great thing that may come along.
The hardest part of that title was figuring out how to spell the plural of "yes." The phrase was used in a recent comment, and the spelling looked wrong to me. I had to reach a decision before I could post about it. There it is, right or wrong.
It referred to my story about the man who couldn't bring himself to read religious opinions that conflicted with those he had been brought up to accept. He was, the commenter suggested, unconsciously saying yes to his own indoctrination. Probably he would have come to the same conclusion if he had done some study, but his mind had been made up for him, probably in childhood, and to become a questioner of the faith accepted by all the people he respected and who had raised him was not an option. I've seen film clips from a new documentary called Jesus Camp which depicts the life of children being so indoctrinated. It is chilling to see the fervor with which they embrace the most troubling aspect of their brand of Christianity -- the mindless, emotional, judgmental passion that has nothing to do with Christ or living a better life. It is a "yes," all right, but an entirely conscious one. To some degree I am afraid this was the religious training my good friend had been exposed to, had said "yes" to. He became a Bible scholar, read the book constantly and studied it hard. He read other books too -- but not those that offered new insights to the basic text.
There are many things we unconsciously say yes to as we grow up. We accept them by default, by not saying no. Doing this unconsciously is what makes life easy at first, and it is what makes life difficult later. Over and over, obstacles are thrown in the path of that unconscious decision we made without making it. We are required to defend something we absorbed without thinking, and finding defenses for such is all but impossible. If it's actually impossible, we may switch to the opposite choice and surprise ourselves and everybody else. But it's so much easier to remain unconscious.
Art, another commenter states, is a set of complex nuances that has nothing to do with a child, even an "inner" one. It is the purvue of adults only. This does not discount the art of children (I hope), but to call art itself the work of children is to diminish it in the minds of conscious adults. As in the early days of Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism, people look at the work and say, "A kindergartener could do that!" People are quick to say that Andy Warhol was a charlatan and Salvador Dali a Public Relations expert. Jackson Pollack and Ad Reinhardt were, in this assessment, pulling the wool over the art consumer's eyes.
Such an attitude is the opposite of an unconscious yes. It is an unconscious no. In both cases it produces a closed mind and deprives the owner of this mind of a whole lifetime of experiences based on joy and learning about the other occupants of the world. It's a shame that so many of us live there, verbalizing, pontificating, pronouncing, yet not capable of saying an unconscious yes to the next great thing that may come along.
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