tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55263333933322719192024-02-06T19:50:19.691-08:00LittleOldLadyBlogAnnis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-78411455612654614782014-05-19T07:18:00.000-07:002014-05-19T07:18:33.849-07:00Fuddy Duddys Unite: It's Good for You.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7MSs9D2dwxkXUfFBmudJCiaYKbhNrABKC6OommDWaNLcI_QC3NqMIR7hAkU3JXcFr97-pkicS5a8prLBfiqiX-z2iCgEhLn2d2ObPq9VVgzFhPJbnfrmKibJVWhF0PZpSGE03m15ELKAd/s1600/fuddy+duddy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7MSs9D2dwxkXUfFBmudJCiaYKbhNrABKC6OommDWaNLcI_QC3NqMIR7hAkU3JXcFr97-pkicS5a8prLBfiqiX-z2iCgEhLn2d2ObPq9VVgzFhPJbnfrmKibJVWhF0PZpSGE03m15ELKAd/s1600/fuddy+duddy.jpg" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0">
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</v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas></v:stroke></span></v:shapetype></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Are you “set in your ways?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Do you have rituals you just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> to perform at certain times of the
day?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> A novelist wrote of a character that “she sought the
consolation of underwear.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for me, I
find my consolation in pink flannel pajamas with hearts printed all over them..
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> I cherish the cozy feel of the soft fabric, but getting into
them is just one of several steps in a bedtime ritual I choreograph as
carefully as I used to for my children.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">1.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">MY PJs. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">2.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My back exercises. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">3.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Two minutes of tooth brushing.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">4.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Popping into bed (that delicious moment). Pillow
under knees, just so.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">5.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Radio tuned to my cheerful local station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">6.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My crossword (with a certain pencil).</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">7.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> No wonder going to bed leaves me totally exhausted!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What are the things that you just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i>
to do in a certain way?</span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> When you are not only quirky but quirky alone, you can act
as oddly as you want (at least within the walls of your own house).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love to talk to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> I used to goof up around the house (trip over a rug
because I’m reading a book, pour the orange juice in the coffee mug) and would
chide myself – “You idiot! What a klutz!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nowadays, I have knocked that yammering self-critic off my shoulder and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reassure myself: “That’s what I love about you
— you are so funny!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When life deals another
random blow I say <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“There, there,
sweetheart, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">course</i> you are upset;
let’s sit down and talk it over.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sometimes I conduct whole conversations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I’m so embarrassed.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“If I were you, I’d be embarrassed too”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“But you<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> are </i>me.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I stick to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rules</i>
for these things. When a snatch of song comes to my head, I have to sing it out
loud, as much<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as I can remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This works well with short ditties, like</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Delicious<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Nutritious<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Makes
you feel ambitious!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>A
giant of a cereal <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Is Quaker Oats.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span>It gets
stickier when it’s a ballad with lots of verses, like “The Fox Went Out on a
Chilly Night,” leaving me frustrated when I can’t remember it all the way to “and
the little ones chewed on the bones, O!”</span><br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span>Poet Marie Howe says that the rituals of
ordinary time, like the water glass you’ve just rinsed and held up to the
light, are to be cherished. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Life is so
daily,” Virginia Woolf once exclaimed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
find myself clinging more and more to the particulars of daily life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My pink pajamas, my bedtime quirks, my need to
stand under the flowering crabapple tree to gaze and gaze, are ways of slowing
things down as life streams by, faster and faster. Our fuddy duddy habits seem
so solid when, after all, we are passengers on the Titantic in dire need of something
to cling to as the deck tilts under our feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Fuddy-duddies,
unite!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Tell</span> me about your lifelines.</span>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-62189233615683140742014-05-10T13:56:00.002-07:002014-05-19T06:19:24.835-07:00Lobby Day!<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><img height="140" src="data:image/png;base64,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" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="164" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The first of the two alarm clocks I had set for 5 and 5:15
AM shrilled as I woke to pitch black skies and a forecast of heavy rain and
thunder storms to last all morning long. </span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But we had to drive to Lansing, the Michigan state capital, which is two hours from my house!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“This is the worst moment,” I reminded myself, as I always
do when leaving for a trip before dawn. “Things will get better.”</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As I gazed out the kitchen window, eating cereal rendered
tasteless by my nervousness, I heard a distant rumble.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><img height="141" src="data:image/png;base64,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" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2" width="211" /></span></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As I drove through the downpour, a bolt of lightning
flashed like a white arrow aimed directly at the carpool spot my friends and I
had chosen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody was there. For quite
a while. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I am little old lady, getting older and littler by the
day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, with a nervous stomach and
fatigued to the gills from a medical procedure the day before, was I doing this
to myself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My beloved earth and
everything I love upon it is already past the tipping point of climate change, so
why bother? Why not just live out my days not worrying about how things will be
after I curl up my toes? </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">That’s just not me. When I see an injustice, I always
figure that if I don’t act against it I am complicit in it. My soul cried out
to do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something</i>, no matter how hopeless,
against our lovely planet becoming uninhabitable for my grandchildren or, if things
continue the way they are going, for any human beings and many other species as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So I spent the winter studying two issues that seemed especially
important for Michigan – the way fracking contaminates our waters and the air
we breathe, and how to switch from carbon polluting fuels to clean energy. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If I go at all this alone, there is reason for hopelessness.
In reading about these issues on the web, however, I discovered that others had
been there before me and done a lot of useful groundwork.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Sierra Club is especially fact-based and
well-organized, providing research and frequent calls for specific actions on
the very same issues I am interested in.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And then came the call — Come to Lobby Day!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rounded up two friends for the adventure.
Here came one of them through the heavy downpour, to relay us north to pick up
the second.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were off!</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There was a bad moment when we thought we had lost our way
in rain-drenched Pontiac, but she is good with maps and we reassured each other
that we were on the right track. We arrived at our other friend’s home, took a
pit stop, hopped into her car, and were off.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There was a bad moment when she thought her muffler was
falling off just as we were turning north to Lansing, but nothing happened and
we found a parking lot only a block from the Lobby Day site.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What a miracle of organization!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every kind of “talking point” had been sent
to us by email, there were two conference calls with preparation and advice for
meeting with legislators, and the (very) young man who stood up to welcome us
explained a complex-to-set-up but efficient process for visiting State
Representatives and Senators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each group
would have a Lobby Leader experienced in the Capitol who knew how each one had
been voting, how many Sierra Club members were in his or her district, and other
useful tidbits. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My team consisted of just me and Mitch, a large and
imposing forty-something with a harried look.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We were both taken aback at the sight of each other, I at the higher
expectations on me for remembering facts without a larger team to share the
burden; he, I suspect, at the frail little old being he was saddled with. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him I was better at making earnest,
heartfelt points than remembering numbers, so we divided what we would say
accordingly. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As we went from office to office we turned out to be a very
good team, he with the numbers and contents of specific bills and striking
anecdotes like the fact that frackers were spraying unpaved roads with their
toxic wastewater; I with my conviction that my rights as an individual citizen
would be abrogated by refusals on the part of fracking companies to disclose
what was in their toxic fluid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I came up
with a good point about the lakes in the Oakland County watersheds being so threatened
with contamination that property values might plunge; Mitch got their attention
with the fact that not a “lump of coal” is mined in the whole State of Michigan
so that we have to pay more for it than we would using our own resources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We both waxed eloquent on the cheapness of,
technical advances in, and job creating possibilities of Clean Energy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">They were all Republicans, sworn to follow the party line
on global warming, but they or the staff speaking for them listened politely to
our points and even seemed to learn something. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My own </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Rep. Mike McCready, Mitch and Me (My goodness! I really <em>am </em>a Little Old Lady!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">state representative, Mike McCready, was apologetic for focusing on other committees so that he was not fully up on our issues, but promised to look into them and seemed interested in what we had to say. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Who knows whether any of the folk we talked to on Lobby Day will
actually change anything in their policies? I am more convinced than
ever that the point is to do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something</i>.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you just sit there passively and watch the world
fall apart underneath you, there is nothing but guilt and despair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the only thing for despair about climate
change's impact on our beloved earth, writes Joanna Macy, is “Active Hope.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When we perceive our deeper identity as an
ecological self that includes not just us but also all life on Earth, then
acting for the sake of our world doesn’t seem like a sacrifice. It seems a
natural thing to do.”*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There are follow-up letters to write, getting busy drawing
others into action, and a feeling, when the wren sang his heart out in my sun
drenched garden this morning, that I was doing everything in my power (and
going <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">way</i> beyond my comfort zone while
doing so) to ensure there would be many more glistening May mornings for the
wren and both of our descendants long after I have gone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">*Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, <u>Active Hope: How to
Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy,</u> p. 76.</span></div>
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Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-67653341564637467292013-09-11T11:24:00.000-07:002014-05-08T13:47:38.721-07:00Tongue-Tied in the Suburbs<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">When we decided to move to the Detroit Metropolitan Area, one of the most segregated communities in America, we chose a suburb with an excellent high school for our fourteen year old daughter, where her grandparents lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But our friends were astonished. How could we, who had always fought for civil rights, move to suburb so racist that every house deed still forbade Blacks and Jews to live there?<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“Maybe we can do some good,” I answered. “People might listen to us since we’re white like them.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t long before I was put to the test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day after our tennis game we were talking over coffee in the Racquet Club lounge.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“I have to move out of Lathrup Village,” announced Betty angrily. “It’s changing —you know what I mean. And the housing values are going down.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">What I wanted to do was tell her she was ought to know better than to engage in white flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Betty had a temper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t think of any other way to put it, so I kept quiet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">That silence haunted me for weeks. If I didn’t say anything, I was condoning Betty’s racism. But what could I have said? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">I called a friend in Lathrup Village.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“Tell her,” said my friend, “that I have lived here for fifteen years and think that the diversity enhances the neighborhood. Also, the housing values have gone up 15% in the last two years.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">I didn’t want to get into a tiff with Betty. I have noticed that when people are angry, they stop thinking; the surge of emotion seems to blow a fuse in their brains.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">I called another friend who gives workshops on racial healing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“Yes, you should interrupt oppressive speech,” said Mary. “That’s what we call being a white ally. Here’s what you need to do. Know your facts. Be sure that you stick to ‘I’ statements. Don’t point your finger at Betty or get into blame by using ‘you’ phrases like ‘you shouldn’t say that.’”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">That was a poser. I practiced a bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I,” “I,” Let’s see: "I would enjoy living in a more diverse community myself. And I have a friend in Lathrup Village whose property values have gone up recently.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">Eager to do the right thing, I went back to the tennis court, but Betty didn’t bring up moving. Instead, one day, someone mentioned affirmative action.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“My grandparents came from Poland,” said Betty in a petulant voice. “They worked hard and they made it. I don’t see why Black people can’t do what we did.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“Facts,”I muttered frantically to myself; “’I’ statements, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>no ‘you’ statements, and no blaming.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“I think many of those European immigrants planned their journeys in advance,” I said. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“They saved up money for their passage, and had relatives in America to help them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must have been much harder for African Americans who were kidnapped and enslaved, had no money or friends, and were deliberately separated from their language and tribal groups when they were sold.”</span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">Betty seemed startled, but she didn’t argue. My other friends looked interested, not at all antagonistic. As for me, I felt elated. I had found a way to stand up for my moral values when racist or anti-Semitic or sexist remarks went flying around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just needed to read up on some more facts, work on my temper, and practice making“I” remarks in front of my mirror until I could get a genuinely non-blaming expression onto my face.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">Want to give it a go?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are some scenarios. Can you think of what to say?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";">You have just been to lunch in a hotel dining room with a white business acquaintance. As you walk back to your car, she realizes she has left her pocketbook at the table, by her chair. You go back to look, but it isn’t there. She declares:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It would be right where I left it if they hadn’t hired so many black waitresses.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif"; font-size: large;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 1in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";">Your daughter likes to sit with African American students in her school cafeteria. Her friends say “We don’t see why you bother to hang out with Black students. They don’t want to be friends with us; why else would they always choose separate tables?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif"; font-size: large;">You are at a cocktail party, standing in a group of five people. One of them is a very tall African American.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A white man asks him what his sport was in college, and adds “I bet you played basketball.”</span></li>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></ul>
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif"; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif"; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Send me some of your ideas and we can figure out what will work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "ClassGarmnd BT","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-60441695354087603692013-03-07T08:05:00.002-08:002013-03-13T06:43:15.544-07:00Road Trip!<span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";"><span style="font-size: small; mso-spacerun: yes;">I am not one of those senior citizens who dislikes winter and always wants to travel south to get away from it. My brain, which slows to molasses in heat and humidity, works much better in the cold. But this winter was different. It snowed and snowed and when it wasn't snowing the sky loured drearily, so steadily overcast that all through February I only caught a glimpse of the blue sky once or twice. I felt walled in. I itched with cabin fever. When a friend asked two of us to fly down to Florida, spend four days at her condo, and then help her drive back to Michigan, I lept at the offer.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span>Along the way, I came up with
some travel tips you might find helpful.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<u><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Flying South<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Those
of you who are frequent and sophisticated flyers probably know this already,
but I was astonished that my travel companion was able to book both our flight and
our luggage<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>via Travelocity and to get
our boarding passes and baggage checks printed out twenty four hours ahead of
time. </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Does
your airport have a terminal that is smaller than the main one? This shortens
the security lines, since there are fewer people checking in, and there was no line at all where we checked our bags in outside. In Detroit, the
North Terminal has much shorter lines than the main one. Too, it has a terrific
bookstore and nice coffee shops near the boarding gates.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If you
are seventy-five and older, you don’t have to take your shoes off!</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Take a
sandwich, since few airlines serve meals anymore (peanut butter and jelly doesn’t spoil in your handbag). Beverages
will be served and that will give you something to have in your stomach during
flight.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li> <span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Do chat with strangers — other people are full of
interesting quirks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s a lady I
talked to who was accompanied by a wide-eyed little dog whose round head
protruded out of her personal wheeled suitcase like a ball of dandelion fluff.
“Jasmine always travels with me,” said her owner, “ though it is terribly
expensive to bring her along.”<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Jasmine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Road Trip</span></u><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After
four lovely days of basking on the beach in the sun and walking along it when it got cooler, touring Naples, visiting friends and relatives and happily lolling
around, we three set off for home. I'm an old dog, but I can learn new tricks. Here are some that I picked up along our way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ul>
<li> <span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Take
turns driving, as long as you hold up; if you don’t hold up, don’t drive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did fine the first two days but, as it got
colder and the heat in the car had to be turned up higher and higher it made me
dizzy so asked my two friends to do the driving.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Don’t
drive at night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It isn’t just our vision
that is compromised as we grow older; it’s our judgment. We still make
perfectly good decisions; we just make them slower. Combined with not being
able to see very well, that can be a lethal combination. One night we drove
into the turn lane on the wrong side of the pitch dark roadway.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Pack
old underwear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my travel
companions disclosed that, on trips that last a week or so, she packs her weary
old underwear and discards it day by day, leaving room in her suitcase for
souvenirs. Some friends who went to China carried this even further, leaving everything behind they weren't wearing on their backs!<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Snoring.
This was an acute problem from our first night together in the condo, where my
roommate and I took turns sleeping on the sofa in the living room. I really don't like to travel alone these days but snoring (mine
and theirs) has made me hesitant to travel with friends as often as I would like. It is so humiliating to wake up
in the morning to find that you’ve done something you don’t remember doing –
all three of us did it though I suspect I was the worst offender. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, we went out
and purchased nose strips and all three wore them. These helped a bit, but we
still kept each other awake. One night on the road, we got a suite<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with a pull out bed in a room where you could
close the door. That solved the issue for one of us. Alas, the best solution for snoring is
separate rooms, worth the expense because you are not exhausted when you have
to get up and drive the next day.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If the
repair engine light goes on, find a dealership.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It might just have been one of us putting the gas cap back on the wrong
way, but the dealership in Ocala, Florida found a serious problem with the fuel
line, so we stopped over to get it fixed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took three hours, but imagine what it would
have been like if we had ground to a halt as we drove through the Tennessee
Mountains.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNr6jOijIX-PfPqDQWoQaChcprHgZkSw7EPyL4cJTGp0LaDB6Lx2QHUXHgue7k-9d2bUwVgjZglBWfp_ibdUWBpAYFj0ZoD9tc3jlV7o1s5CJdp_5UBGBlpUx5dBSILys1RuY0HrfdLkUl/s1600/004_21A.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNr6jOijIX-PfPqDQWoQaChcprHgZkSw7EPyL4cJTGp0LaDB6Lx2QHUXHgue7k-9d2bUwVgjZglBWfp_ibdUWBpAYFj0ZoD9tc3jlV7o1s5CJdp_5UBGBlpUx5dBSILys1RuY0HrfdLkUl/s320/004_21A.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Snow In The
Mountains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Choose
your motel during the day so you have your reservation assured for when you are all tired
out from driving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of us had this
handy-dandy guide to the interstate highway we were on all the way – Dave
Hunter’s <u>Along Interstate 7</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I
think there’s one for route 95 as well — go to </span><a href="http://www.mike_oak@compuserve.com/"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: blue;">www.mike_oak@compuserve.com</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">). It
has useful information like what radio stations can be found along
the road, what county you are in should a tornado alert be broadcast, and the
history of various locations alone the route. It shows the road going North and
South on separate pages,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>each with
motels, gas stations and restaurants listed along the way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After lunch we did looked up motels we thought
we would get to by sunset,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and make our
reservation via cell phone.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Take
an audible book along — preferably, a good long one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We listened to a thoroughly engrossing novel which
lasted all of the way home. Even then, three discs were left so<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>after we were all rested up we foregathered
to tote up our bills and to hear how the story ended.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Go
along with other people’s ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
wouldn’t have thought to tour the local library but one book-loving friend
always does this so we did too. One morning, when I was anxious to get off, my friends wanted to stop at an Artisan Workshop where we had an delightful browse. And who
would have thought of choosing Ikea as a perfect place to have lunch? <o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.75in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<u><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Home at Last<o:p></o:p></span></u><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do you
know — the Florida sunshine, heart-warming companionship and the excitements of
the road trip got my mind off of myself so thoroughly <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that when, at last, I stumbled through the
snow to my door, my cabin fever had been knocked right out of me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlV7LPVi_H16DeA33xmTTH1-Ns1WyK-oi6w4PCK3627ZzoWF18AvPHBspuQnZePmh3rL7xrBLF6ZvJvRewww5dGUuoxx3XhWzOvDLDWv8jDTTlnnt4H_jSlkeTfw0JamdZAqKBDjwfc13g/s1600/BATHINGBIDDIES.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlV7LPVi_H16DeA33xmTTH1-Ns1WyK-oi6w4PCK3627ZzoWF18AvPHBspuQnZePmh3rL7xrBLF6ZvJvRewww5dGUuoxx3XhWzOvDLDWv8jDTTlnnt4H_jSlkeTfw0JamdZAqKBDjwfc13g/s1600/BATHINGBIDDIES.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 94.8pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 142.2pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-79187663746479744842012-11-17T07:00:00.000-08:002012-11-18T17:23:23.929-08:00Turkey Panic!<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Here comes Thanksgiving, with my annual
Turkey Panic. Is there anyone else who has reached a ripe old age and, having
prepared Thanksgiving dinner for what seems like eons, still gets her knickers in
a twist over baking that great huge bird?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQxOSpw1UkzB389NP6q5Acrt58vz_CePVctKcDRT7wSPd_nCfGgQCBtvViZCq6v743y-JVr1yZ6T6x3n1KCS5ioJzfCWhHUxgrIcCCP9_RgERd2G0u0x-2dCXrkTkU_1_ALAS44L0ekFX1/s1600/turkey+panic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQxOSpw1UkzB389NP6q5Acrt58vz_CePVctKcDRT7wSPd_nCfGgQCBtvViZCq6v743y-JVr1yZ6T6x3n1KCS5ioJzfCWhHUxgrIcCCP9_RgERd2G0u0x-2dCXrkTkU_1_ALAS44L0ekFX1/s320/turkey+panic.jpg" width="276" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter">
<v:formulas>
</v:formulas></v:stroke></v:shapetype></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"><v:stroke joinstyle="miter"><v:formulas></v:formulas></v:stroke></v:shapetype></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Illustration published
in <u>The Birmingham Eccentric</u>, Nov 23 1992, by T. Graves<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> I have kept this
picture for years, covered with scribbles and post-it notes. You would think
memos like “14 lb took whole 5 hours,” “Use foil at browning time, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> throughout,” “In at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>9 done by 12.30 but too dry – baste more,” or
“O.K., no problem – cooked in 4 hours,” would reassure me that I have lived
through this before and will again, but I always confront some new worry. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There was the time my ten year old
daughter opened the oven so many times to baste the turkey that it took eight
hours to cook. There was the time when I roasted it at home and brought it to
my younger daughter’s apartment an hour’s drive away, only to find it stone
cold and dried out on arrival. There was the year that my older daughter became
a vegetarian because she didn’t want to eat anything that “had eyes and could
look at me.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was delighted with her
Tofurkey, but the rest of us felt weirdly guilty feasting on our succulent
bird. Then there was the time when my younger daughter ordered a complete
dinner from Whole Foods because she would be coming home from the hospital with
her new baby on Thanksgiving Day. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Put your forks down,” declared my
son-in-law, brandishing a ladybug he had found in the stuffing. “We can’t eat <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thawing a frozen turkey was always
problematic, so I decided to order a fresh one, only to find it icily solid,
fore and aft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I telephoned the butcher
in a panic. He told me to immerse it in lukewarm water for an hour and a half
on each side; it felt like giving a bath to a wrinkled baby.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When the family is all at the table
and we are saying grace at last, it is always, always worth it. In 2001, in
spite of the enormous tragedy of 9/11 and my husband’s death the year before, our
hearts were full of thanksgiving for two new arrivals in the family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My granddaughter had been born on September
18 and then, in October, my younger daughter and her husband underwent an
arduous trip to Ukraine to bring my seven year old grandson safely home. The
first time he saw a potato he wanted to peel it and cook it. He only spoke
Russian, but<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it was clear to us that he
had spent a lot of time in the orphanage kitchen. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigJkEzXpfd20rfaif3T9j_f7x8t6KWJYwlNpuXLCciv3FJo4DRKpkj1a6htCPK7VBl27fYX5TTgRMH7ILETAjh-z6QtULUZ0tKSAK-dA-xzl1MizHR-vR0fLIUczOvdRG8VgZnePck1iCD/s1600/roman+turkey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigJkEzXpfd20rfaif3T9j_f7x8t6KWJYwlNpuXLCciv3FJo4DRKpkj1a6htCPK7VBl27fYX5TTgRMH7ILETAjh-z6QtULUZ0tKSAK-dA-xzl1MizHR-vR0fLIUczOvdRG8VgZnePck1iCD/s320/roman+turkey.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">He was puzzled by the turkey on his
first American Thanksgiving, but wolfed down a big serving of the mashed
potatoes he had prepared himself. Then, with an enormous grin, he realized that
he could ask for more.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Written for <a href="http://geezerguysandgals.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: blue;">http://geezerguysandgals.blogspot.com</span></a>
for November 21, 2012) <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></div>
Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-35640608876708387812012-10-24T06:22:00.002-07:002012-11-09T13:17:27.684-08:00TECHY ME<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I still have friends who
refuse to have anything to do with them, I fell in love with computers early
and hard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the beginning I was as resistant as anyone
when my boss insisted that everyone in our office had to learn to use a
computer, and that we must attend a course to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“He
is trying to make us into our own secretaries,” I moaned, glaring at the heavy
hard drive that had been inserted under my desk and at the weird Zenith monitor
cutting my work space in half.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Mother,”
said my daughter, a computer science major, “here’s the thing. I’ve had to
watch you correct page after page of the books you are writing; I can’t bear to
see how frustrated and upset you get. With the computer you won’t have to white
out all your mistakes or go back and rewrite from scratch. You can cut and
paste — move sentences and paragraphs around without having to type every page
all over again. How many drafts do you think you throw away?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh,
eleven or twelve for every page,” I replied sadly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
problem is, I’ve had a mild case of dyslexia all of my life, which means that I
just plain miss a lot of typos and grammatical errors, necessitating rewrite
after rewrite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Just
take the course. When I get home for Christmas I’ll sit down with you. It’s
really easy – you’ll see.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So
I trotted off to that word processing course where we were handed <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>light blue notebooks which I remember very
fondly for the world they opened up to me. Although the learning curve in those
days was very steep indeed, from the first time I moved a paragraph from one
page to another and saw a clean copy of a page scroll out of my printer, I was
hooked. No more was I wading through a quagmire of typos and erasures; every
time that azure screen came up, it beckoned me to new worlds of thought and
imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then, there came email.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
cumbersome and full of coding marks in its early versions, but I wonder if I
would have such a lovely correspondence with my daughters during their college
and young adult years if it hadn’t existed?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is always special when a hand written letter comes through my mail
slot, but in the days of snail mail I never heard from my childhood friends
more than once or twice a year. Now, we email back and forth several times a
month about the books we are reading, what we think about politics, and how to
heal family vicissitudes. I have always been a volunteer and grassroots activist;
now email makes it exponentially smoother. Instead of moiling and toiling with
telephone trees and leaving messages, I can send reminders to volunteers with a
click of the mouse and get stirred to action by emails from causes I support.
I’ve been through two presidential elections using a handy dandy “Dashboard” for
making campaign calls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I set up my trusty
laptop on my kitchen counter, and a screen pops up with a script for what to
say that day to a chosen nearby group (seniors, women, for example). There is a
name and address and a telephone number, with boxes where I can check off their
presidential choice and whether they want to volunteer themselves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was
glad when cell phones came along for the safety they provided on car trips, and
I used mine for travel until, one day, I went for an upgrade and purchased an I
Phone. On this marvelous invention I can get my email, check the status of my
stocks, take and send photos, find out what the weather is like, play a game of
solitaire, access the Internet, check the status of my flight or the progress
of my train, get the latest from all of my favorite news stations and watch episodes
of shows that I have missed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have
gotten my hands on some truly miraculous “apps” (applications). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nxtnutrio </span></i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">takes a
picture of the bar code on food I am thinking of purchasing and tells me
whether it is genetically modified or contains something I am allergic to. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drawfree </i>is a word-guessing game I can
play any time with my granddaughter far away in Colorado, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leafsnap </i>I can take a picture of some
leaves to identify trees. My absolute favorite is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">TuneinRadio </i>which brings me any station on earth — broadcasts from
New York City or Madison or Boston or California. I am so entranced with this
service that I have bought a gizmo which looks like a miniature boom box into which
I slot my I Phone to amplify my radio shows. I keep it next to my bed so that
if I have insomnia I can tune into BBC London’s breakfast program where the
host puts me to sleep again by reading the newspaper out loud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then
there’s my GPS which, like my cell phone, I bought for safety purposes. I have
a mild case of night blindness — not enough to stop driving but enough to make it
hard for me to make out house numbers when I am going out to dinner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You
have reached your destination,” announces Charles in his British accent, “On
the left hand side of the rrroad” (he has trouble with his Rs).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
original computer voice had a much nastier tone —controlling, and mean
spirited. A friend and I were on a road trip to Toronto. I told her how
intensely I disliked the GPS <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cyber
bitch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You
don’t have to put up with her,” said my friend, “Go to settings; what does it
say?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Australian
– we can have Australian,” I replied; “Or American—north or south. And, oh
look, we can have British: male or female, and cockney or standard. Let’s try
standard.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
we arrived in Toronto we discovered that we were staying in a neighborhood
called The Annex, a maze of one way streets and confusing street signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Charles was right at home, and guided us
plummily through the weekend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For older people scornful of technology, I
can’t emphasize the element of safety enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you have a flat tire or your car breaks down, with a cell phone you
are one click away from rescue; think of the difference between waiting in the
heat of summer of the cold of winter for someone to come along and help. In
case of an accident or sudden illness at home I have a Mobil Help system, which
responds to a button I wear around my neck. Its speaker box asks me if I need
help and, if I don’t respond, calls my daughters, a close friend, and the
nearest emergency medical technicians. It came with a little all in one button
and response device I can take along in my car and use at my summer cottage,
making me feel much better about being all alone out there in the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Enthusiast
though I am, I’ve experienced the inevitable technological goof ups. Just after
I purchased the Mobil Help service and had taken its<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>GPS device to my cottage, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I inadvertently sat on it. The next thing I
knew I had frantic telephone calls from both daughters and my friend, while an
ambulance siren wailed in the driveway. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Never
mind,” said a policeman who also turned up, “It’s obvious that we need to know
where you are, and now we do.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nor is Charles
infallible. From his satellite up in the sky he can’t tell the difference
between dirt roads and paved ones and has left me bouncing along over boulder
strewn rural byways. I was going out for dinner one night to a house on a
street that curved around so that it had two entrances onto the main road. He
took me up the wrong one and announced that I had reached my destination when I
hadn’t, refused to stop saying so and redirect me. Fortunately, I had my I
phone with me and could call my hostess for directions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am always trying to start my
television set with my I phone; the other day I tried to dial a telephone
number on my remote control. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People complain that technology is
eroding our humanity, making us forget how to talk to each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agree that nothing is better a face to face
natter with a good friend, but how about being able to use my I Phone to
message back and forth with a daughter who is nervously awaiting a major
operation? It is always reassuring when my younger daughter messages to let me
know her plane has safely landed. My teenage grandsons have reached a
non-communicating phase; without Facebook, I’d never know what they were up to
from one end of the year to the next. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having always felt that it is our
sense of humor that makes us human, the Internet’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>treasure trove of jokes has provided frequent
balm for my soul. When a second grade granddaughter is coming for a visit I go
to Prairie Home Companion’s handy dandy repository of second grade jokes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I am down and despairing, which happens
more and more often as age nibbles away at my sensibilities, something
hilarious from a friend arriving in my email can completely change my day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-2320632477975273452012-04-04T08:15:00.002-07:002012-06-20T07:30:27.854-07:00Going Political Widdershins<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">All winter long, I kept an astonished eye on the
gaggle of Republicans<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>contending against
each other in their primary, wondering where on earth they were coming from. Rick
Santorum declared the abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests the result of
“academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America.” Rick Paul called for
the abolition of one government department<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>after another, including the Federal Reserve; Mick Romney,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his campaign coffers full of money from
corporations, insisted that corporations were people; and Newt Gingrich announced
his plan to found a colony on the moon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I knew where Newt was coming from, having
encountered him as a graduate student who considered himself endowed with such
a magnificent destiny that the normal rules of academic procedure didn’t apply
to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Not</span> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> the candidates were suffering from megalomaniacal
grandiosity; the rest seemed to be arguing from principles with which
a significant number of Americans agreed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Since the “anyone but Romney” candidates
insisted that they were more conservative than he, while he insisted he was
every bit as conservative as they, I decided that I needed a refresher course
in conservatism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My friends were
appalled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why waste time examining irrational
delusions entertained by proto-fascists? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The academics were especially dismissive. When
I asked them where they thought Santorum, or Paul, or Romney was coming from they
didn’t think at all—they just threw their heads back and shouted “Rick Paul!”
or “Santorum!” or “Romney!” with expletive force <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>accompanied by spatters of contemptuous spit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This did not seem a particularly rational
response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can we argue from our own
principles without a firm grasp of the opposition’s?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True, when I was young and callow I didn’t study
the first principles of Barry Goldwater and John Birch. When the sneering mien
of William F. Buckley Jr., that pioneer of nasty-mouthed right-wingery, appeared
on my television set I changed channels with self-righteous contempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now that I am (so very much) older and
wiser, isn’t it useful to go widdershins for a spell, starting with my old
sworn enemy? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A new biography by <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Carl T. Bogus, <u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of
American Conservatism</u>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>seemed a useful place to start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although he was a libertarian every bit as
vituperative as our present day Tea Party, Buckley opened the pages of his <u>National
Review</u> to a variety of conservatives, including Russell Kirk and Gary
Wills, who were much more traditional than he. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Conservatism, I learned, derives from the
philosophy of the 18<sup>th</sup> century thinker Edmund Burke, who fostered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 76.9pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">honor for traditions of
culture and nation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 76.9pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">accumulated wisdom and
experience of our ancestors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 76.9pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">reform of old
institutions while relying on the wisdom embedded in institutions and law,
understood as valued history and tradition to be passed on in an
intergenerational covenant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This feeling for community values is different
from libertarianism, which, taking individual freedom as the primary good,
opposes any tradition or institution that interferes with individual liberty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Albert Jay Nock, an early libertarian
influence on Buckley when he was still in school,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>argued in <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Memoirs of a Superfluous Man</u>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“against statism and collectivism in all
forms” insisting that “governmental power will inevitably be turned against the
individual” (68). Buckley was also taken with F.A. Hayek’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>The Road to Serfdom (1944)</u>, which opposes
all forms of economic planning which “would require an economic dictator to
make fundamental choices for the society.” 135<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Do you recognize Ron Paul here?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are the basic tenets he enunciated with
admirable consistency to large audience of cheering twenty-somethings during
the primary,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hailing Hayek as one of his
most important sources. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Traditional conservatism is not so dismissive of
the community and economic regulation. Even Adam Smith wrote that the free
market was not free to damage civil society, and should be regulated
accordingly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early years of
editing the <u>National Review</u> Buckley encouraged a broad spectrum of
conservatives like Russell Kirk and Gary Wills, both of whom were eventually
alienated by his libertarianism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Kirk called himself a “New conservative,” fostering
authority and order, including that of states and governments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The conservative, “ he insisted in In <u>The
Conservative Mind</u> , always stood for true community, the union of men,
through love and common interest, for the common welfare…Individualism is
social atomism, conservatism is community of spirit” (111). In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Confessions of a Conservative </u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gary Wills wrote that “no society can ever be
formed on the basis of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>individualism …conservatives
value continuity and tradition.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wills was
troubled by the way Buckley <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“placed the
free market at the center of its philosophy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since “capitalism was all about risk taking
and seeking new markets… it is ”therefore not a force for continuity and
stability.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was dismayed that business
had become the principal source of power in modern America. “We rather
simple-mindedly kept the nexus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">power=conservative,</i>
even when the power involved was a revolutionary and unstable one”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(332).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Wills distrusted market fundamentalism, which
Buckley took as a given. Carl Bogus, by no means a conservative himself,
provides an interesting analysis of where Buckley’s emotion-laden belief system
came from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“William F. Buckley Jr.’s ideology
was not the product of study and reflection,” he asserts, but mirrored the
libertarianism, neo-conservatism, and religiosity of his domineering,
homeschooling father, who instilled his moods as well as his values in his <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ten children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>William F. Buckley Sr.’s tenets derived from keeping his oil business
profitable during the Mexican revolution, which left him a life-long proponent
of stability, government by an educated class, and protection of private
property, including that belonging to the church and to foreign nationals like
himself.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The intensity he brought to
his conservatism, and his diatribes against liberalism, came from closer to home
in Connecticut , where the family was never accepted by the liberal protestant
elite. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In his writings and television punditry Buckley
Jr. took his father’s beliefs and distastes as givens. Profoundly racist, Buckley
Sr. felt that American Negroes were intrinsically inferior. In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<u> National Review, </u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buckley Jr. responded to the Civil Rights
Movement by insisting that the white community in the south is “the advanced
race” with a claim to civilization, even to the extent that “the
great majority of the Negores in the south who do not vote do not care to vote,
and would not know for what to vote if they could”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(157-158).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Anyone who ever watched Buckley’s television program witnessed his self-righteous
fury against his enemies, chief among whom were the “liberal elite.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This enmity, channeled from his father,
became gallingly personal during his senior year at Yale. He had been invited
to give a graduation speech to the alumni but, having read it, the university
retracted the invitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enraged, he
published the speech as <u>God and Man at Yale</u>, where he argued that the
university had failed in its duty to “Christianize Yale” because of its
erroneous belief in “academic freedom” which he sees as a “myth.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yale should have indoctrinated students in
religion, free enterprise, and limited government. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Does anyone recognize Rick Santorum here, drifting
into use of the “N” word, warning against government moving into every corner
of American lives, exhibiting <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>contempt for “the east coast liberal elite” and
its mouthpiece, “the liberal media, and vomiting about the separation of church and state?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“This is not your father’s Republican Party,”
remarked Joe Biden the other day, and it is far from the moderately
conservative Republicanism of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Governor
Bill Millken of Michigan, Senator Nelson Rockefeller, George Bush Sr. or even <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Governor Mitt Romney <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of Massachusetts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we witnessed in the primaries was closer
to the Republicanism of Ronald Reagan, who was converted to William Buckley’s neo-conservatism
when he read the <u>National Review</u> during his travels as a salesman for
General Electric or to George Bush Jr. channeling
the neo-conservatism of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cheney and
Rumsfeld.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As spring arrived and the Republican field narrowed,
I realized that I was as appalled by the emotionalism of neo-conservatism as by
its principles. Giving one’s intellect over to anger, always disturbing in an individual,
becomes terrifying when taken up by the mob. Several years ago, a friend and I
waded into a crowd of 70,000 Tea Party marchers on the Washington Mall because
we wanted to reason with them about <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
Affordable Health Care act. Their pickets with “Don’t Kill my Grandmother” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and “Bury ObamaCare with Edward Kennedy ”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> that they were waving </span>were less frightening than
the expressions on their faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“But we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i>
grandmothers,” we reasoned, “and we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">love </i>what
the Act is going to do for us.” Their eyes glazed over; they didn’t hear a word
we said, the reasoning function of their
brains having been entirely overwhelmed by their emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It seems to me that the response to rampant
conservative emotionalism on the part of liberal intellectuals shouldn’t be rampant
liberal emotionalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wouldn’t it be
wonderful to sit down with a conservative and have a good long conversation about
traditions and values, starting with what we have in common, then reasoning
together about the practical application of our different positions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the Republican Party had continued in the
conservative tradition of Kirk and Wills, we might be able to look at President Obama's list of values:</span></div>
<ul>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Hard work</span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Lookin out for one another</span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the idea that we're all in this together, and that I am my brother's and my sister's keeper</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">and
see where we might find a common ground to bring our common values into
realization.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So let’s keep our minds open, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">use</i> them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s see, what shall I read next?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How about the two volumes that a brilliant intellectual who was a
member of the Bush Jr. Administration, has written </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> ~ Condoleeza Rice!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://shop.tcm.com/img/property/resized/148/00556400-474148_catl_500.jpg?k=f444c936&pid=324899&s=catl&sn=tcm" title=""" "><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><v:shape alt="Biography: Condoleezza Rice DVD" href="http://shop.tcm.com/img/property/resized/148/00556400-474148_catl_500.jpg?k=f444c936&pid=324899&s=catl&sn=tcm" id="detailLargeImage" o:button="t" o:spid="_x0000_i1026" style="height: 212.4pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 148.8pt;" title="""" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:fill></v:shape></span></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-63279609352341354982012-01-11T06:42:00.000-08:002012-06-25T06:00:56.569-07:00Catching the Acela<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> As I get older, I sometimes treat myself to an upgrade when I
travel— a slightly better (though far from luxurious) hotel than the motel I
usually go to; or business rather than coach class on the train to
Chicago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a bit more of a leap
than that when, for the Washington-New York leg of a trip east to see what was
in the museums and warm my roots a bit, I bought myself an (expensive) ticket
on the Acela.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I had first seen this marvel of a
train one summer when I was boarding the Lakeshore Limited in Boston’s South
Station, on my way home to Detroit. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
first leg of that trip involves a slow haul over the Berkshires at maybe
twenty miles an hour, huffing and puffing all the way up like the Little Engine
that Could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there, right on the
other side of our boarding platform, sat an engine crafted out of gleaming
steel, its long streamlined nose regarding us lesser passengers haughtily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was reputed, I remembered, to accomplish
what in France they term <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>TGV—“très grande
vitesse”—a speed of 120 miles an hour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
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</o:lock></v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA2bUJQz_LMeLIG1tdp-Te6FcYGQPa76nwii3OZXJAwiba-lTasmLidOlT5Js-_t5mzD1BNHZOKDEyekNDnZKLOT8WScnhyphenhyphenwiTgUkuYH0JUG-kRStT-31UmjLVzGYwhGdv4AvzpIQ4r60r/s1600/acela+in+Boston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA2bUJQz_LMeLIG1tdp-Te6FcYGQPa76nwii3OZXJAwiba-lTasmLidOlT5Js-_t5mzD1BNHZOKDEyekNDnZKLOT8WScnhyphenhyphenwiTgUkuYH0JUG-kRStT-31UmjLVzGYwhGdv4AvzpIQ4r60r/s320/acela+in+Boston.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, I’m going to take <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> someday,” I promised myself; and so
I did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is nothing so heart-warming as talking for hours with a friend who
(swears she) met you when you were still in your baby carriage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has settled at last in a home of her own,
a pleasant house in Richmond cozily furnished with pieces I recognize from our
Connecticut childhood summers. Her living room is done in beige tones,
the dining room painted dark red, with family portraits impressively arrayed on
the walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We sit in her breakfast nook to talk…and talk…and talk, about our
youthful shenanigans and our grown up daughters, about what is going on in
Washington politics these days and what is going on with our grandchildren, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all interlarded with “organ recitals,” recounting
our illnesses and recoveries and exclaiming how lucky we are to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still be here</i>—laughing and gossiping and
philosophizing while I revel in expressions I had thought disappeared
forever:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“What a lark,” she exclaims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hell's bells,” I find myself saying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Long
story short,” we demur frequently as on and on we go, weaving our web of memories
with a warmth that only a long, long friendship can engender.<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">A</span>s my visit drew to an end I began
to worry about the next leg of my journey, which involved getting back to
Washington to catch the Acela for New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All tired out from so much fun, I hauled my bag onto a regional train that
runs between Newport News and DC. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed pleasant enough, and I found<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an empty seat and settled down next to the
window, gazing at reeds blowing in the wind and the vista of a broad, misty marshland. As
the conductor approached I got out my ticket, and noticed that the train continued
on to New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever nervous about my travel arrangements, I said<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I see that we go all the way to
New York City. Can I stay on if I miss my<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>connection to the Acela?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No problem, if we have a seat for
you. Worst case scenario, we put you off in DC and you catch the Acela when it
comes through.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I sat there doing mental
arithmetic, which I was never good at. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1. They put me off in DC. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2. The Acela, much faster than
this regional, comes whistling ‘through.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3. If both get to New York City at 5:45, won’t
the Acela accelerate itself past where I am put off before we get there?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>4. This depends on how late the
regional is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Recalling
puzzlers like “Train A goes at 60 miles per hour and train B goes at 120
miles per hour. If a little old lady is put off of one to catch the other, how
many minutes can train A be late to allow her to catch train B,” but<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>answer comes there none.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At Fredericksburg, I acquire a
seat mate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At Quantico, there is an
announcement that the train is now full.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I resume my calculations on time/motion train A vs train B problem, but still
to no avail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At Woodbridge, I climb over the
knees of my seatmate, only to discover that the toilet is out of paper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We are sorry,” comes the
announcement,” but all of the toilets on this train are out of paper.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My favorite meal on Amtrak is a
Hebrew National Hot Dog so full of sodium that I wonder what would happen to me
if it raised my blood pressure and triggered a stroke?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, I would really enjoy one just
about now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Announcement resounds though the
car that the café is out of 1. Sprite and 2. hot dogs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I would like to take out my
knitting, but the seats are so close together that I might find myself elbowing
the nice but rather capacious lady sitting next to me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a lot more talking now, some of it
quite loud, and children are skittering up and down the aisle. The car is
beginning to feel close packed and stuffy; and what is that smell?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At Alexandria, I look at my watch
and discover that it is an hour before my confirmed ticket on the Acela, so <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decide it will be well worth the effort to
make the switch and enjoy my treat after all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I haul my suitcase into Union
Station with plenty of time to lug it to the bookstore where I buy a <u>Wilson
Quarterly,</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a journal so full of
wonky articles and well reasoned book reviews that it is always good for a
train journey.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOCjaC6BxwoxRkmUv65y-CsWp819Ka5G8GUT-U__En43cM3czOU5edVvxCKJMrCVNJc9JLUXWMkbBHNNhl-OisB7staFh3pqB-ACkjB9My3x9n1wqZDRSzwAfw2wJGDG8ZC_ESjPShMVb/s1600/Acela+Gate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOCjaC6BxwoxRkmUv65y-CsWp819Ka5G8GUT-U__En43cM3czOU5edVvxCKJMrCVNJc9JLUXWMkbBHNNhl-OisB7staFh3pqB-ACkjB9My3x9n1wqZDRSzwAfw2wJGDG8ZC_ESjPShMVb/s320/Acela+Gate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I am sitting in the waiting
area absently scanning the announcement board when time/motion problem is
solved by my discovery that there is an Acela every hour. It must have been the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">next </i>one I was supposed to “hop on” to,
though how to achieve that without a reservation is not entirely clear.
Perhaps these luxury trains never fill up entirely?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love walking down
the platform alongside a train, refreshed by air so much cooler than inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time, there is the gratification of
glancing up at the gleaming, streamlined engine I had so envied in Boston. </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we get underway through the rail yards and
begin to pick up speed in Maryland, we<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>move along the tracks, in contrast to the regional’s bumps and grinds,
like a knife through butter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon
everything is going by so fast that I don’t have my usual chance to identify
the duck on a particular pond or what crops are at what stage—the landscape
seen from an Acela is more prototypical than particular, affording the general
idea of meadow or forest, like a kind of Platonic ideal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The seats are capacious and
comfortable, with a surfeit of leg room and plenty of space between, though I
am without a seat mate at the moment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perfect, I realize, for knitting! I
am working on a little yellow baby sweater for a friend’s first grandchild and
need to get on with it as I am hosting her granny shower right after I get home,
so I take to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>knitting and purling in blissful
comfort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, until I notice rows of finely
tailored trousers relaxed between seats and foot rests in all the seats around
me. Good heavens! My car is occupied by men in elegant, well fitting (bespoke?)
suits, who must be <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very Important
People.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recall that the Acela is much
frequented by Senators and Congressmen—Joe Biden and all that—and isn’t that
Brent Scowcroft sitting across the aisle, glancing at me with mild surprise before politely averting his eyes? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must
be unusual among this dapper crowd to spy a lady in red blazer, pink blouse,
and pearls carrying on with her knitting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t feel “unimportant” to myself—Full
Professor, Feminist Founder, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Academic
Author and all that—but I must look unimportant to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them. </i>I wonder if there is a car full of well-dressed, powerful
women somewhere on this train, or can they afford it? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Never mind—there are those lovely pastures streaming by and the
intimate windows of cities to glance (fleetingly) into, so I turn my sweater to
a purl row, though I am beginning to get awfully hungry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Walking through the cars to find
something to eat, I pass an enclosure with armchairs and little tables and a
sign affixed to the glass that identifies it as a “Quiet Room—no Cellphones or
Children.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are elegantly suited
women working busily at their laptops, and a dapper executive’s legs stretching
out from his Wall Street Journal. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
surprised to find that the dining arrangements are the same as on the regional,
just a café with no Hebrew National Hot Dogs on offer but adequate if plain sandwiches
and good strong coffee. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Returning to my seat, I notice right at the beginning of my car
that a tiny lady, probably in her sixties, is perched on a
stool provided for a laptop table, busily tapping away while urgently telling someone
at the other end of her cell phone how to prepare the room for <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a speech she is going to make at the Hilton. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I settle down with my <u>Wilson Quarterly</u>
noticing that, as always on a moving train, I am suddenly capable of grasping
concepts that otherwise elude me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon,
however, I need to visit the bathroom<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Toilet Paper! Clean Sink! Scented Hand Soap!) and on the way back walk
slowly enough to read over the urgently busy lady’s shoulder. </span><span style="font-family: "MattAntique BT","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The masthead of her stationary reads<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: ChesterfieldAntD; font-size: 12pt;">REPAIRING THE WORLD!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Good for her, I say to myself, thinking of </span><span style="font-family: ChesterfieldAntD; font-size: 12pt;">Tikum Olam</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, that marvelous creation story where
God sent his light into the world with such power and glory that it broke all
the jars he had set out to contain it, their shards scattering all over the
universe so that we human beings are left to repair the world by collecting the
thousand thousand things and refashioning their containers. Good for
the tiny <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lady repairing the world on
her laptop and cell phone and good for the women working away in the quiet room
and for all of these busy, dapper men, too, if they are of honest intent, and
good for me and my friends renewing the light of our friendship, I revel, as we
streak through the wetlands of New Jersey at more miles per hour than I have
ever experienced on a train before, until the towers of the city where I was
born <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rise in all their splendor out of
the marshes. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioAf_hgrKR1Jd8Nk7Cwd8fTww0tfLid52pRYspsXFlpN7s1vt6AjxvcVcS65nrqTWAFynazT7yE6Fz6XzEBmHOeShrtzVWDbjqHBaJJwsqIPgpvvzTkit_2K_dkd-i4SbeTTLnckvL_xat/s1600/New+York+City.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioAf_hgrKR1Jd8Nk7Cwd8fTww0tfLid52pRYspsXFlpN7s1vt6AjxvcVcS65nrqTWAFynazT7yE6Fz6XzEBmHOeShrtzVWDbjqHBaJJwsqIPgpvvzTkit_2K_dkd-i4SbeTTLnckvL_xat/s320/New+York+City.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_i1026" style="height: 167.4pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 251.4pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_4" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 117pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 78pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-19356194561645546532011-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:002012-06-25T06:01:37.716-07:00LAUNDRY!<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was a little girl growing up in New York City, I was fascinated by flip flapping of sheets, blouses, shirts, towels, overalls and underwear taking sail on the wind between buildings. Sometimes I happened on the scene at the very moment that a satisfied-looking woman leaned out of her kitchen window, reeling out her line on a winch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There would be another winch attached to the building across the way, and a peculiarly melodic sound would resonate as the ropes passed through them, like a jazzy riff on a creaky clarinet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I always considered those long lines of sheets and shirts a miracle of hominess expressing something going on in those apartments that I had always yearned for. My own mother, poor soul, hadn’t a clue about how to do laundry. She had been raised with maids and cooks and, undoubtedly, laundresses, but found herself downwardly mobile, raising two children in a tiny apartment on one of those narrow New York Streets, wondering where all the maids had disappeared to. She did the best she could with a bar of fels naptha in the bathroom sink, but I sensed in those triumphantly flapping lines of radiantly clean laundry something permanently beyond my reach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A couple of years ago my brother and I compared notes about this, remembering how stiff our underwear had always been and how we had itched all over because the soap was never rinsed out entirely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, our little underpants were dried on top of the radiators and always turned out stiff as boards. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He had been married to a wonderful young woman for a while when I first went to visit them in their new home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were drinking coffee in their kitchen as my sister-in-law took the laundry out of a washing machine that stood within easy reach of the sink and stove.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Can I help you,” I asked, awed by the orderliness of her arrangements. As we stood side by side, folding each piece just so, I couldn’t believe how soft their towels and sheets felt in my hands. Was this some kind of miracle!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How did they get this way?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My brother laughed sympathetically.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Isn’t it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wonderful</i>! She uses something called softener!”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">They have been a devoted couple, head over heels in love with each other for more than fifty years now. At that time in my (itchy) life, nonetheless, I would have married her myself for the way she did the laundry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">My father’s horror when he offered me a baby gift and I asked for a washing machine suggests that our childhood laundry sufferings derived as much from class haughtiness as mother’s ineptitude. Reluctantly, he paid for a gleaming white object from Sears and had it delivered to our first home, a little stone cottage on a college campus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It had a fenced in laundry yard where I set up an umbrella-style contraption with four layers of lines to pull my laundry towards me and push it away again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They hadn’t invented disposables yet, but I bought a bottle of softener and had lovely times hanging row after row of fragrant cloth diapers, receiving blankets, little shirts and sweaters out to dry in the New England sunshine. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You don’t see washing flapping between buildings in New York any more, and I am aware that my childhood fascination with it was naïve given the endless drudgery of tenement life in those days. In my wanderings around museums and galleries, however, I have discovered that there are any number of artists inspired by laundry.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Martin Lewis’s print of an emaciated housewife weakly clasping her clothes line, having reeled it right<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into a glowering dusk, expresses the toil and exhaustion from all that heavy washing. Every time I happen upon his depictions of New York in the twenties and thirties I gasp with recognition. In my memory, my childhood seems to have taken place in black and white rather than in color, and his New York <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">noir</i> is dappled with light and shadow just like mine. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">But then there is Egon Schiele’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cityscape of a European city from much earlier in the century, “Houses With Colorful Laundry” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Though the houses are bleak and the sky looming over them ominous, someone has <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>strung up their washing with orderly devotion, like Tibetan prayer flags.</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When we moved into our present home in a Detroit suburb, I noticed that there was a hook for a laundry line on the maple tree and that I could run a laundry line <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to a pole discreetly concealed behind some lilacs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a writer who sets her own schedule, I have always found it helpful to allot chores to their traditional days of the week — yard chores and household repairs on Saturdays, for example, and laundry on Mondays (I observe the Sabbath by turning off my computer).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hoped that my neighbors, who were evidently upwardly mobile, would not feel demeaned if I hung out my washing; keeping it to Mondays seemed to insure their toleration. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I would arrive home with my brain frie</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">d and my nerves frazzled after a semester of teaching, I loved those first warm days of June when I could hang out my wash in my yard. I would lovingly fasten each corner to my line with wooden clothes pins, bury my nose in the fragrance of sun warmed sheets and pillowcases, and discreetly arrange my softened and now capacious underpants among the lilacs, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>blissfully reciting Richard Wilbur’s “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” to myself:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>“<em>Oh let there be nothing on earth but laundry,</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><em><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><em><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”</em></span></div>
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<br /></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-65080352105726192442011-10-18T12:29:00.000-07:002011-10-18T12:29:12.454-07:00OBITUARY HEADLINES<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">(</span><span style="font-family: OldEnglishD; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Warning! There will be homework</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">!)<b><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I never looked at obituaries until my husband lay dying, when, railing that older people had lived longer than he would while feeling immense gratitude for our forty years together— so much longer than the younger of the newly dead had with their loved ones—I began scanning obituary headlines, wondering what to put for his. When the sad day came I didn’t get to make the decision after all, and the reporter got it backwards—“Author was also Professor”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Professors become Authors to get their salaries raised).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the months after he died I felt as if my nose was pressed to an invisible window that he had fallen out of but which unaccountably held me back from the same abyss. Shaken by <i>timor mortis—</i> abject terror at the realization of mortality—I kept reading obituary headlines, which deftly compress a life in three to six words. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I have always liked set forms— the seventeen syllable Haiku and the fourteen line sonnet —and those obituary headlines, rounding out a whole life in a tidy phrase, displayed a terse and even elegant economy.<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(names changed)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">James Woods, 40; Studied Structure of the Universe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span><i>Now <b>that</b> would be a hard act to follow.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Louise Brooks, Birdsong Dialects Expert.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><i><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span>Specialized</i>, <i>but <b>so</b> compact</i>!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jeffrey Moore: Rode with Camel Troops<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Annie Kung, Lived in Leper Colony; Was 94</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span><i>Fascinating: but rather exotic?</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Andrew Eastwood, Credited for Heart Clinic's Strength</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Lloyd Sarkoski, 64, dies; Crafted Cozy Restaurants</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>N<i>ice, solid accomplishments!</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Alfred Bearens, Detroit Accountant Put Family First</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ellis Marks, Obstetrician Loved Time with Family.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><i>Did they? Is someone protesting too much here?</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bud French, 76, Mail Carrier Loved His Family, Cards and Music.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><i>Now<b> this </b>shows more balance</i>!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Micah Washnoski: Music he made, Friends he Kept.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My favorite.</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 1.5in; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in; text-indent: -1.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 1.5in; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in; text-indent: -1.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And, finally:<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Norbert Tilsley, War Taught Him Its Inhumanity</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>This has to be true -no fluff in it - and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>suggests an ethical legacy.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You know where I am going, gentle reader, so throw this down if you don’t want to go there with me—Can you sum up your whole life in three to five words?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’ll go first, just to show I’m not (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">help</i>!) chicken:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Annis Pratt: Commuting Professor Comes to Earth. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Or, how about</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Annis Pratt: Quit Teaching, Went Kayaking?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sad, isn’t it? Or is it? There is an exercise like this they do at self-search workshops— write your own obituary; it will help you find out what you want to live for.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So get out your pencil and paper: just your name, then three to five words:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">...........<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>...........<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>.................. ................... .............. ............... .................</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Try a Professional One:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>........... .............<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.................<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>................<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.....................</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Or a Funny One:<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>.......... .................<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.................... ..............<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>..................</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Show what life has taught you:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.............<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.............<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.................<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>..............<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>………..</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, once we figure out what our legacies will have been, we might relish our existence with even more exuberance, since we are still alive and kicking!</span></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-51206422723502686662011-09-27T12:44:00.000-07:002011-09-29T13:23:22.667-07:00INSATIABLE CURIOSITY<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There was a video shown on television the other day of a family in a boat who were cutting the net in which a very large whale was entangled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It drifted out of their reach again and again and, each time, they eased their boat skillfully up to it and went carefully to work with their cutters on the tough plastic tangle. When it was finally free, it swam about a quarter of a mile off, and then threw itself into a tremendous display of breeching, tail flipping, rolling, and monumental merriment.<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9mJW2W21rYjdqBsdo1nUHT-1aKufw1APpiKuAMDC0n-5VjwSQX5Ki93gpuaHdKixinQS5w5HM6nP4KCUbpyQUr5OEn_5IdX8oAlsmZG9jJoSsFtkB3zZQIpCBivCRcKPqtghcPlEeEBx/s1600/WHALE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134px" kca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9mJW2W21rYjdqBsdo1nUHT-1aKufw1APpiKuAMDC0n-5VjwSQX5Ki93gpuaHdKixinQS5w5HM6nP4KCUbpyQUr5OEn_5IdX8oAlsmZG9jJoSsFtkB3zZQIpCBivCRcKPqtghcPlEeEBx/s200/WHALE.jpg" width="200px" /></a> </span><shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"> </shapetype></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"></shapetype></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> “Look at that! Look at that,” the television newsman exclaimed, “it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thanking</i> them!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That last bit is what we call anthropomorphism, which is when we attribute human characteristics to beings that are not human.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the whale <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> have been trying to communicate gratitude, but all that we really know is that it was expressing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some kind of </i>emotion, its cavorting most likely a self-referential exuberance at being free at last.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is one emotion, however, that we do share with animals – curiosity. In his <u>Just So Stories,</u> written for children curious about “How the Leopard Got Its Spots” and other animal mysteries, Rudyard Kipling chose “the Elephant’s Child” as an exemplar of “insatiable curiosity.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In “How the Elephant Got His Trunk” a young elephant, spanked all the time by his relatives for asking too many questions, is determined to travel down to the “great, greasy banks of the Limpopo River, all hung about with fever trees” because he just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has</i> to know what the crocodile eats for dinner.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I should point out that, at this point in elephant evolution (according to Kipling) elephants have only short stubs for noses, which is what the crocodile grabs after answering the little elephant’s question with “Today, I think I will begin with Elephant’s Child.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"> </div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIAJfhFZfX2MnqBiUy4RpAw_IeLhc5HdRYO5WPxnWIkGAVfMiIOZS4CI3xcUM_va7s_hWI5H4RrUTzbFgpc7Tr4NMuNNFFJJC3xaYJZpDgaG72m62OZKUT7PtY8ZKmIfuYpFWdi_rUAU9A/s1600/elefant2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256px" kca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIAJfhFZfX2MnqBiUy4RpAw_IeLhc5HdRYO5WPxnWIkGAVfMiIOZS4CI3xcUM_va7s_hWI5H4RrUTzbFgpc7Tr4NMuNNFFJJC3xaYJZpDgaG72m62OZKUT7PtY8ZKmIfuYpFWdi_rUAU9A/s320/elefant2.gif" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"> <em><span style="font-size: x-small;">“<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is the Elephant's Child having his nose pulled by the Crocodile. He is much surprised and astonished and hurt, and he is talking through his nose and saying. 'Led go! You are hurtig be!' He is pulling very hard, and so is the Crocodile” (Kipling’s caption)</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 115%;"></span></em></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That roil in the foreground is the bicoloured python rock snake, which comes to the Elephant's Child's aid by grabbing his tail and pulling. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a child filled to the tips of my ears with insatiable curiosity (and perpetually in trouble for it) I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">adored </i>it when the Elephant’s Child went home and used his new trunk to punish his all his scornful relatives. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Animals, especially brainy mammals like whales and elephants (not to mention dogs and cats) are exquisitely curious; which is how, as Kipling seems to be suggesting, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they evolved so highly in the first place.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Late one August when I was ten years old<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was sitting on a beach in Maine wrapped in a towel to warm up from my swim in the icy Atlantic Ocean, when I noticed a whiskery old codger bobbing around in the surf right next to my brother.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Who was that?” I asked, when he came ashore.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t know—a little old man with a beard?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He kept <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">looking</i> at me!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then my father came down with my brother’s towel, and remarked:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Did you see that seal? It’s an old one—it’s almost September. At this time of year, they swim onto the beach to die.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even with his last gasp upon him, the elderly seal was indulging his curiosity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sixty years later, I had an experience on Cape Cod that confirmed for me, once and for all, how curious animals are:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">SEAL WATCHING</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>We went out to watch the seals</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>outboard motor roaring, bow up,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 4.5in; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in; text-indent: -4.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>waves cleft by our wash,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>then down,<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>as we slowed abreast of the pod.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Black heads shaped like hammers</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>swiveled to watch us, nostrils flared</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as a constant snaffle gasping</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>filled the air. There were grey ones</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with oval heads:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>females</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and young. There were couples</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and half grown friends, and a gang</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of bachelors rolling their necks</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>around each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rubbing noses,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>playing tag, playing “let’s splash,”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>their liquid eyes swung around to us, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>time and again.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day, I walked by the ocean,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my bare feet cooled by the sand</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>where tumbling pebbles turned and gleamed </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in right 6.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and sand pipers skittered and mewed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two boys were leaping about.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They played tag and splashed</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>each trying to jump higher than the other in the air</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while two young seals swam along</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>beside them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sleek<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>heads </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>raised above the waves at every shout,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>eyes gleamed to follow the play,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They gazed and gazed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Dalai Lama says we should regard</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all sentient beings as equals. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We go out seal watching, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seals swim as close as they dare</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bestowing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>curious stares—</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to go both ways.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-87358011119328575672011-09-19T07:08:00.000-07:002012-06-25T06:03:22.146-07:00MICE!<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">"<em><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">He looked at it for several minutes, admiring the delicate ears and the curve of its tail, happy with it....it was a wooden mouse with a tarred string tail, a common enough toy but fashioned with such love of mouse that it was almost more mouselike than a real one. It revealed, so to speak, the essence of mouse, swift and slinking, endearing and alarming all at once. "Elizabeth Goudge, <u>The Dean' s Watch</u></span></em> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">S. Stark</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“On the night that you were born,” my mother always used to tell me on my birthday eve, with a kind of lilt and wonder in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>her voice, “there was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mouse </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the wastepaper basket.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve often wondered about that little creature, sticking his pinkly translucent ears over the rim to see what was going on in the bed. Was he my herald angel? I always <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">liked</i> mice, and I even had white ones with twitchy pink noses for pets. As the smallest child in my class my nickname was “petit souris” until, after some daring exploits in the second grade, I was promoted to “mighty mouse.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>None of this cheers me particularly when I arrive at my northwestern Michigan cottage every spring to roust dozens of deer mice from their complacency. I draw the line at droppings on my kitchen counters, knawed-over soap, toilet paper shredded for nests, neat stashes of shiny black seeds nestled among my socks in the bureau drawers, and pathetic little dead bodies curled up at the bottom of my coffee cups.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One glorious May day, delighted to be back Up North, I popped a nice piece of raisin bread into my toaster, only to be assailed by the musty odor of toasting mouse. That’s why I thought it was roasting mouse I smelled when I cooked my first meal in the oven. I didn’t come up with a single baked mouse when I searched inside, but every time I turned the oven on the smell filled the kitchen, so I called the appliance man. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Mouse all right. Not mouse mouse, I mean—mouse urine.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What!”</i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">He had settled down for the long palaver beloved of northern Michigan workmen, so I gave him a cup of coffee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Thing is, it’s the insulation along both sides—they like to pee in it. Get in there, pee over and over down the sides with your insulation, all winter long. What you need, see, is a spray bottle. You could try bleach, or maybe white vinegar? White vinegar, I think—one part in four. That should do it.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That did it, and very nicely indeed. When I turned up the oven for my meat loaf the odor had vanished, so, after disinfecting every counter top and drawer with Lysol and plugging mouse zappers into every room, I settled down for a mouse-free summer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A mouse zapper is an electronic device (therefore of no use in the winter when the electricity is turned off) that emits exquisitely high pitched sound waves inaudible to human ears, but excruciating to mice’s. Since they refuse to enter a room with a zapper in it, these are nicely humane devices to make sure they stay outside of my cottage, all summer long.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "MS Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Gothic";">♬ ♬ </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">♪</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJ1p9L3g5qan6snApBFQirOh_ShsIkyfW21vbTJgLerukCKRZJlUxZ7o47UrDmM2WHqD0iK8jsEtWHz8RTGsTtJQwwG1O4pXRLvkcPxZNPWbhm8aHQWtW_zqQwbvP59SUS-xOpL0Cyahw/s1600/IMAGE1%255B5%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJ1p9L3g5qan6snApBFQirOh_ShsIkyfW21vbTJgLerukCKRZJlUxZ7o47UrDmM2WHqD0iK8jsEtWHz8RTGsTtJQwwG1O4pXRLvkcPxZNPWbhm8aHQWtW_zqQwbvP59SUS-xOpL0Cyahw/s200/IMAGE1%255B5%255D.jpg" width="188" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then I discovered that the acoustical sensitivities of these very same deer mice (the leaping ones with tawny fur and darling white tummies) extend to musical accomplishment. Very late on a moonlit spring night, a researcher who was recording bat sonar picked up a lovely trilling melody. Almost supersonic, it was the mating aria of a male deer mouse, singing his little heart out at the edge of the forest. After an interval (was she assessing the musical quality of the love song and comparing it to others she had heard?) a female took up her part in the exquisite little duet.*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was struck with worry about what my zappers might be doing to the fine-tuned ears of these lovely little creatures, not to mention the havoc I might be causing to their romantic arrangements. Nevertheless, I left the zappers plugged in, since the only alternative was my far less merciful method for cutting down on mouse mayhem—a trip made from a large plastic bucket with three right angled entry tubes set in the lid. I fill it three quarters full of sunflower seeds and put it on my kitchen floor. The poor little things crawl in and eat themselves silly, perishing by dehydration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In some cultures there’s a belief that, when you die, your soul escapes through your mouth in the form of a mouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The terrible spring when my husband lay dying, I got a brief weekend away from the hospital to open the cottage. (There was no hope and all, and before the week was up I had to remove his life support). So there I was, emptying my mouse bucket over the wood pile on a bleak Easter morning just as the sun was coming up, offering words of regret and apology over the pathetic little corpses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine my joy when a tiny grey soul aroused itself to scurry away into the safety of the forest with the Easter dawn shining through the golden veins of its translucent ears.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">*</span><a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Mystery-of-the-Singing-Mice.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Mystery of the Singing Mice | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
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</div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-43505372865485382932011-08-03T06:28:00.000-07:002011-08-03T06:32:47.332-07:00SONNET IN AUGUST<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>When August leaves me breathless, so close and hot</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>That my mind becomes sluggish and my spirits melt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I come where the river runs too cool for thought,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So clear that the willow shadows bend and sway</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>On its tawny bed where smolt and minnows play.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>I strip off my clothes, dive in and flail away</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Among all that dazzle and cold, let myself get caught</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>With the current against me, all for naught.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Most people swim upstream, like my guests </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Who love to thrash like mad around the bend,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In displays of aquatic prowess.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not me: I flip on my back, surrender </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>My self <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>entirely, let the river render</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Me willy nilly~ aimless, cool and blessed.</span></div><br />
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by Annis PrattAnnis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-43311368511743653442011-07-27T12:06:00.000-07:002012-06-25T06:06:28.386-07:00Time's Winged Chariot<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And at my back I always hear</i></span><br />
<em> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Time’s winged chariot hurrying near:</span></em><br />
<em> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And yonder all before us lie</span></em><br />
<em> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Deserts of vast eternity.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></em></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Andrew Marvell</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When they feel mortality catching up with them, some baby boomers decide to cross-train for immortality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a trail near Aspen, David Brooks describes an old geezer coming up behind him with a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whoosh…like an incoming F-18. You’d turn around and see this little nugget of Spandex. It was one of those superfit old guys who’d decided to go on a fitness jihad in retirement. He’d be coming at you at ferocious speed, wearing weights on his wrists and ankles and a look of fierce determination on this small wrinkled face. You’d be huffing and puffing on the mountainside, and this superbuff Spandex senior would whiz by like a little iron Raisinette.”*</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> Although most of us don’t indulge in that level of geriatric athleticism, we have a tendency to declare our retirements “rewirements” and devise copious lists of what we want to do and where we want to travel “now that we have the time.” In no time at all, we replicate the 24/7 scheduling of our previous careers, indulging every minute of every day in fervent jihads of post-retirement activity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">All through our working lives, we understood “keeping busy” as the supreme</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> virtue, from which it followed that not being busy was a vice—and something to be ashamed of. I’m not immune from this <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>misconception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of years ago I was so troubled by my frantic pace that I devised this crazy chart:</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"> Was all this busyness my way of avoiding the “vice” of just sitting still, doing nothing, and contemplating the meaning of life? When I curled up my toes at last, would I find that I had squandered all my precious time on less important pursuits than attending to my soul?<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">There comes the day when your busy little self discovers that it can’t do anything at all. You have cancer, a stroke or a heart attack or are waiting for a liver transplant and you haven’t the strength to lift a finger. You just sit there, stunned to your core. When this happened to theologian James L. Kugel he felt extremely small, contracted to the narrow space of his failing body, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while the “background music” of his ordinary, day-to-day life fell silent. #</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When you feel really sick, your fondest hope is to be able to transcend the pain and tiredness to accomplish a single thing in the day—write a brief note, get yourself onto the porch for some fresh air, take a shower, wash one or two dishes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There go your to-do lists; all you have left is this contracted, “be-ing” surrounded by that vast, unnerving silence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sitting in my chair during my bout with breast cancer, impressed that I’d gotten there from the bed at all, I was ruminating about World War Two. In the dark of those New York City evenings I used to sit on the floor next to the short wave radio, leaning against its vibrating warmth so that I could actual feel the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>thud of bombs raining down on London. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that </i>was 1942.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This </i>was 2002! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The decades reached back and back until I felt like a rubber band, stretched way too far. How could I have lived so long and, if I had, why? How much longer could I <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>keep it all up without snapping altogether?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If we are lucky to survive deadly illnesses, we just love having another chance to fill our crowded engagement books and I phones and blackberries with with lots and lots of things-to-do today and things-I-ought-to-have-gotten-to-yesterday. But is this mindless busyness going to give us the “meaning of life,” that being so very sick made us crave so fiercely? </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recovered, and dived right into “making up for lost time.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I had spent so much time, for the first time in years,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> not</i> being busy in that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>place where the music of daily life falls silent, that it seemed important to find some “time out.” So I cancelled my weekend newspaper delivery and turned off my computer and television on Sunday mornings to sit in my chair and read contemplatively. What I mean by that is taking in a paragraph or two of what Rabbi </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Abraham Joshua Heschel or Paul Tillich or Rebecca Naomi Remen or Karen Armstrong think about human life and the inevitability of death and what other human beings through the ages have said about these issues. Is there a God? Does life have meaning? Do we have souls? If so, what do they consist in? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I put the book down and think about what I have read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> Amazingly, I <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>can get my elderly mind around complexities which I never grasped before. All this is so exciting that I have joined discussion groups where such questions are also batted about: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What is existence?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What is the good? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Do we have free will?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What is integrity?” “What is a virtue, and what is a vice?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> T</span>his, too, will grind to a halt someday—later, I hope, rather than sooner—and if I don’t drop dead on the spot I may find myself a little old lady sitting in a little old rocking chair at the window of a nursing home somewhere, the skin on my shoulders prickling as my<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>feathers break through and I stretch my wings for that last, great wind. </span><span style="color: #005000; font-family: "Bell MT","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Bell MT";"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">*David Brooks, <u>The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. </u>New York: Random House, 2011. 361</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"># See James L. Kugel, <u>In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief (and their connection to a certain, fleeting state of mind).</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York: Free Press, 2011.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-17951132487756621892011-07-12T13:15:00.000-07:002011-07-13T08:22:05.657-07:00Catching The Midnight Sleeper<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">“You went to Washington <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how? </i>By <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">train? </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t know people still <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> that,” my friends often ask, to which I answer, “Yes, but I always take the sleeper.”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoO7PzycVuFRRrqKIE6gDsnFQ7lWjdvxUD77iI7QlITsKEOGR_X4t40FgTUhmwrrm7sLGvmMhLfoqFTuIvabBmS5gwOG96xImNLUo4lqW9kCbp9eS7zxL7JL45Te5SwhoCRpSexdJ3Kj1H/s1600/sleeper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoO7PzycVuFRRrqKIE6gDsnFQ7lWjdvxUD77iI7QlITsKEOGR_X4t40FgTUhmwrrm7sLGvmMhLfoqFTuIvabBmS5gwOG96xImNLUo4lqW9kCbp9eS7zxL7JL45Te5SwhoCRpSexdJ3Kj1H/s320/sleeper.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">What you do, if you live near Detroit, is get yourself to the Amtrak station in Dearborn, where a bus picks you up and zips down route 75 to Toledo and the Capitol Limited.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The hardest part of the trip is the pitch dark drive down the Southfield Expressway, which turns itself into a concrete tunnel for much of the way. My night vision is not very good, and I am perpetually nervous that a flat tire will force me onto the practically non-existent shoulder, up against that high granite wall. So I zip along in my little blue car, coiled tight as a spring, chanting the mantra my husband would always used when I would bleat</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>“Couldn’t you slow down, just a little bit?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> And he would reply,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>“ In a situation like this, you have to keep up with the traffic.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From a situation like that I am always glad to arrive in one piece at the pokey little Amtrak station, its waiting room bright in the darkness and likely to be full of large, cheerful people in matched pastel pants and sweatshirts with cute sayings all over them, lugging <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fluffy pillows, carry-ons, shopping bags, toddlers, and babies. These Happy Campers all chat away excitedly, in stark contrast to the mood of the attendant, a curmudgeonly fellow who crouches balefully behind his glass partition and answers all our questions sarcastically.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> I settle down on the tippy plastic chair and begin to feel, right down to my very pores, the beginning of a metamorphosis from a terrified night driver to wide-eyed, eager traveler. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If laughter is jogging for the soul, then my soul begins to stretch on the bus to Toledo, where the drivers are invariably loopy. When we have picked up our Detroit passengers and tooled off down the dark highway, this one turns on his speaker to declare:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay, all you guys now, listen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">up</i>—this is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">important.</i> I know it goes against how you think of yourselves as manly men, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do not</i> stand over the toilet. Take a hint from the ladies here and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sit down </i>for number one like you would for number two. This is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bus.</i> The toilet is in the back where it bumps all over the place. You can get tossed around. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>you to know, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here and now,</i> that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">refuse</i> to stop the bus and come back there to retrieve your cell phone or your credit card case or your wallet that has fallen in because you think you’re too much of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man </i>to sit down to pee!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My day (that is, my night) is made.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">It may be half past eleven on a dark and rainy evening, but the Amtrak station in Toledo is always bustling with people catching the Lakeshore Limited for New York or the Capitol Limited for Washington. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Happy Campers sprawl over every seat not already occupied by their total opposites, the traveling Amish, who are not half as startled by the Happy Campers as the Happy Campers are by their large families of bearded, suspendered men folk, girls and women in homemade cotton dresses, and children so much better behaved than their toddlers, who are careening all over the station, that they seem to belong to an entirely different species. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">The seating consists of extremely uncomfortable curved settees with rigid, upright backs. Over the years, I’ve mastered the art of stretching out along the slippery vinyl with my head on my overnight bag and my novel to pass the time when the train is late. Recently, however, it’s been right on time, and that’s when the real excitement begins.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At two minutes to midnight a rumbling wells up under our feet and shakes the whole building, accompanied by the heady announcement</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Attention! Attention! Amtrak announces the arrival of The Capitol Limited for Washington, DC, with intermediate stops at Cleveland, Elyria, Sandusky, Pittsburgh….all passengers must step through the door and across the tracks. Please have your tickets ready. Coach passengers to your right, sleeping car passengers to your left.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>However tired I am, I become instantly elated (here we go!) and also sharply alert, remembering the time I headed left but the sleeping car was locked, its attendant fast asleep within. I ran back down the tracks to the mail car to find help, realizing that if the train started moving I was going to have to jump for it and perhaps have a heart attack in the process. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These days, I never leave the side of the coach conductor until she can point to a cohort further down.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then I’m off with my rolling suitcase, amid hissing brakes and rumbling engines. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">“Berth for Pratt! Berth for Pratt,” a shout from the anonymous dark that never fails to lift my tired heart. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotUvaN5mhTK6WYXmUceGCslqMZGeo5CQQ29XmF4ePdi_AXNIXLlCF_Aebcn1lFe8bDHMxJtomuUdPHnJMrjPDX2hIIx18X9HS1lu0kA5X6nAnZZgbD-jWyOYnepSUUBKaw3BwxQp5J7BZ/s1600/BERTHFORPRATT.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotUvaN5mhTK6WYXmUceGCslqMZGeo5CQQ29XmF4ePdi_AXNIXLlCF_Aebcn1lFe8bDHMxJtomuUdPHnJMrjPDX2hIIx18X9HS1lu0kA5X6nAnZZgbD-jWyOYnepSUUBKaw3BwxQp5J7BZ/s320/BERTHFORPRATT.JPG" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">The attendant heaves my bags up the stairs saying “number five, to the right,” or “E, upstairs and to the left.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find my room, draw the curtain, and sit my suitcase on the (in room) toilet, contorting myself into my pajamas and wrestling the sink down to brush my teeth before jamming my suitcase in the narrow space between bunk and door, to a muted chorus of groans and laughs through the wall as the Happy Campers attempt these maneuvers for the first time in their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">These are snug little rooms which, in daytime, contain two easy chairs and a little table, with a bottle of water provided, and free coffee, and orange juice out in the corridor.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmOVIg0G7uYZnZi59zxEBaWI4pnNTlhV1uBtPzagkCVD3O_IAbF_4483D7EBCyGwCXkw2xozwr6QELduY5S8NqSVx-LAZG9WPC4WT-grQagCi0ymCrxgayREmIC7qPfhtidPjesNptNeGI/s1600/roomette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmOVIg0G7uYZnZi59zxEBaWI4pnNTlhV1uBtPzagkCVD3O_IAbF_4483D7EBCyGwCXkw2xozwr6QELduY5S8NqSVx-LAZG9WPC4WT-grQagCi0ymCrxgayREmIC7qPfhtidPjesNptNeGI/s320/roomette.jpg" width="218px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">At midnight, I usually find the lower bunk opened out with one thin blanket (I always travel with a second), two pillows, and, if it’s my lucky day, a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>square of chocolate-covered mint.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are last shouts of “all aboard,” then the tumble and lurch of departure, and we chundle chuck, chundle chuck out of Toledo, our whistle bleating with an odd mixture of confident assertion and diffident wailing as the engine cleaves the darkness. I climb happily into my bunk, tension draining from my every muscle as, rocking along, I experience a wonderful state of mind induced by going somewhere purposefully without exerting the least personal effort. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“There are some people</i>,” writes my all-time favorite novelist Margaret Drabble, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown; as though the notion of movement were inseparably connected with the notion of discovery, as though each displacement of the body were a displacement of the soul”* </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is exactly how I feel every time. I have been coiled up like a spring and feel my soul unclinching, eager for new experiences and discoveries. It’s no mere notion, either, since it happens that way every time I get on a train. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have woken at night to watch thousands of stars over Sandusky; homebound, I have greeted the dawn over that bay’s gleaming pewter, where great blue herons glide close to the water on their enormous wings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early hours I have marveled at a little Pennsylvania town washed with light and shadow, exactly like Edward Hopper has painted “Dawn in Pennsylvania.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 9pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">It isn’t just the scenery that stretches my soul. The meals, free with your sleeper ticket, take place in a dining car where the waiter always seats you with perfect strangers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One of the signs of passing youth</i>,” writes Virginia Woolf, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them</i>,” a tendency that seems to pitch older train travelers (younger ones, I have noticed, are more likely to be silent and sullen) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into interesting conversations. Over those (real) linen tablecloths, (fake, plastic) flowers, and copious breakfasts, I have participated in some stunning colloquies.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkh3EU3rBTsD060_rXQHU_1g8QGx109Tj_B7tEUCrTSZlNlA_qIWDFsLimfIN58SLsXtFVXXx1qn7sxolnhex-B_bKwaZC4wAmtP1WClKugg4PmYOv3GzRBLB897dPbgo-AKuCY6uOCpRA/s1600/AMTRAK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkh3EU3rBTsD060_rXQHU_1g8QGx109Tj_B7tEUCrTSZlNlA_qIWDFsLimfIN58SLsXtFVXXx1qn7sxolnhex-B_bKwaZC4wAmtP1WClKugg4PmYOv3GzRBLB897dPbgo-AKuCY6uOCpRA/s320/AMTRAK.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> We are negotiating the Cumberland Gap and I am deep into my French toast, orange juice, and coffee when the man sitting beside me says</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">“Look over there! We’re in Hastings—that’s where I grew up!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He turns out to be a Presbyterian minister, and, at my query about whether Calvin is still an influence we eagerly plunge into theological conundrums. He doesn’t buy the traditional concepts of original sin and any more than I do, but we agree that there is plenty of evil about and you have to be alert to it. Our dining mates across the table chime in at this point. They are Christian Scientists who believe that goodness is all around us, that we are surrounded by Spirit to the extent that we don’t have to worry about getting to heaven because we are there already. They are interested to learn about my Universalist conviction that we are born good and goodness will ultimately triumph.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I return to my berth, which the attendant has made back into a sitting room, to brood over a <u>New Yorker</u> article I couldn’t make head or tail of when I started it at home but which seems perfectly clear on the train, which not only calms my body and soothes my soul, but even perks up my brain. As we rattle along, I often arrive at sudden understanding of difficult concepts, and knotty family problems untangle themselves astonishingly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZkAWK7QtHab8ipWFVahMhJjGMOOyeZpqBFB6UbgxxDbTKn3BcOL6pEVCToBGc3sdyebd1sWMdHW0kG4jMtb_nHyzAup4O0PfCtRPlzFAmJ-3ojA-rAzYp2u5fquWUi099Z_N2IoB_KUm/s1600/AMTRAK2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJZkAWK7QtHab8ipWFVahMhJjGMOOyeZpqBFB6UbgxxDbTKn3BcOL6pEVCToBGc3sdyebd1sWMdHW0kG4jMtb_nHyzAup4O0PfCtRPlzFAmJ-3ojA-rAzYp2u5fquWUi099Z_N2IoB_KUm/s320/AMTRAK2.JPG" width="199px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">The morning sun strikes a little white church on a country road and, an instant later, illuminates a farm, making black and white cows stand out like porcelain figures. I am enjoying my second cup of coffee when I realize we have reached the old riverside towns strung along the upper Potomac and will be in Washington on time. I love the mixture of thoughtful solitude and human companionship my trip has combined. I ponder the dining car conversation from this morning and look forward to the long, long talks I always have with the dear old friend who has known me since I was in my baby carriage and who will be meeting me today for lunch, not after a tedious wait for my baggage at Dulles or Reagan followed by a long, dreary drive from the airport but right where we pull in at Union Station, smack dab in the middle of Washington within walking distance of the Supreme Court and the Capitol Building.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 10pt;">*Margaret Drabble, “A Voyage to Cythera,” <u>A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman.</u> Houghton Mifflin (New York, 2011), pp. 23-24</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; text-transform: uppercase;"></span></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-19958405910025892592011-06-29T07:53:00.000-07:002011-06-29T07:53:47.247-07:00Widow 101<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Sadly, our time of life can be punctuated by the death of spouses and partners. If there is a long illness, we find ourselves facing the abyss with them, pitched head first on the down side of a roller coaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amid the roil of emotions accompanying the realization that life is not an amusement fair any more, we need to have care and compassion for our own precious selves, along with practical forethought about our futures.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Even today I know women who hold only joint accounts—both checking and credit card—with their husbands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The storm is coming, friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now is the time to batten down the hatches, which means sealing every chink in our personal finances where the water might come pouring in. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">If you don’t have a lawyer, get one. Check</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> that everything in your joint bank account will be available to you immediately after your partner’s death. Although we had a trust, our lawyer asked me not to use any joint funds for four months. With probate, it might be even longer. It's a good idea to put enough money in your personal checking account to get through at least half a year, which will involve working out what your monthly expenses will be. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You need at least one credit card account entirely in your name so that your credit is established. How about your partner’s pension? Are you signed in as the beneficiary? Will it keep coming in without interruption? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">If your partner doesn’t die suddenly, you think you’ve had time to adjust, but death always comes as a total shock to your system. After that, grief begins. It was at this point that I, who had never taken an interest in these matters, suddenly started reading the small print on everything that crossed my desk. It’s a good thing that I did. One week before stocks started to tank I discovered that my spouse’s pension was almost entirely invested in high flyers. I had time to put everything into a conservative portfolio before many of my friends lost their shirts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">And then, there are the chores that you’ve never had to confront before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ours was the most feminist of marriages, with housekeeping divided right down the middle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did everything below the waist—sweeping, mopping, vacuuming—while I attended to cooking, dishwashing, and laundry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">A friend dropped in when he was in the hospital to find me weeping, mop in hand and bucket slopping onto the kitchen floor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“Oh you poor thing! How awful you must be feeling,” she commiserated, putting her arm around me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“I don’t know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i> to do,” I sobbed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I haven’t mopped a floor in thirty-eight years!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">There is nothing that stiffens your spine like the major household crises and attendant workmen he always used to deal with, who sometimes succumb to the temptation to take advantage of you as a newly vulnerable widow.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is a reputable roofer we’d used for years, but when I needed work done he had just retired, and it was his son who turned up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The father had been a short, wiry, scientific and rational man who used to run a little instrument along our ceilings and figure out where the leak was with unerring accuracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The son was a huge, football player sized lout who leaned over me, barking out facts. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Pretty soon, amid much cursing from him and grumbles from his workmen, my shingles were off and replaced by a flapping blue tarp. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Weeks passed. I called, asked him to call, told him to call, all to no avail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, I left a message saying that if I didn’t hear from him that week, I was contacting the Better Business Bureau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That led to the screeching of tires of his humongous truck in my driveway, banging on the door, leaning in my face, and shouts about what he thought about “The BBB,” with declarations that he didn’t give a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bleep</i> about them, accompanied by flecks of spit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I had done my homework, having called a local television channel that promised to bring “Ruth to the Rescue,” with attendant cameras and documentary reproval, so I stood right up to him and told him so.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">That did it, and the roof was repaired.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Fortunately, this was the only game of “intimidate the widow” I ran into, but these types are out there, looking to take advantage of you when you are at your weakest. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In the chore department, there were other surprises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am perfectly comfortable around furnaces, though my spouse had always changed the filters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No problem, I told myself, removing one from its box and unscrewing the steel panel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should have remembered that I had never seen my father’s eyebrows when he worked for the gas company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had opened the wrong panel, and flames darted out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hastily replacing it, I called the furnace people.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The trouble was, I had earned the supercilious look that the owner gave me when he opened an entirely different panel at the back of the furnace and brandished the filter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“This isn’t even dirty,” he insisted, “Why did you call me?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“If it isn’t dirty,” I was quite pleased to reply, “why is there a mouse’s tail hanging out of the side?”</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In the midst of all this, I had some pleasant discoveries about my own competence. I made the rather creative decision to hire a local fireman to clean my gutters, on the theory that he would be comfortable walking around up there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hired a loud-mouthed painter who gave himself a concussion standing up under a kitchen cabinet, but after I patched him up we were the best of chums. The electrician we had always used continued to treat me respectfully, and the man I hired to mow the lawn and plough the snow turned up when asked and behaved himself fairly well, except that he was given to frequent and fatuous endearments.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My spouse, born in Detroit with a stick shift in his mouth, had been the expert on cars in our marriage, good at bargaining with dealers and doing all of the driving <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">on long road trips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>having grown up in Manhattan during the war when private cars were not permitted, had always found driving or even being driven extremely nerve wracking, an unnatural function (where were the subways?) and likely to lead to a crash at any moment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">So here I am, getting myself wherever I need to go these days, having mastered the “Michigan Left” and no longer the least bit intimidated by Woodward Avenue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only that, having competently bargained for and purchased a vehicle on my own, entirely out of ecological conviction, you can see me these days tooling everywhere around town in my little blue car, and also—would you believe it?— roaring Up North and back Down State in Michigan all of the time, doing 70 miles an hour and getting fifty-one miles to the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>gallon.</span></div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-87874310584881845772011-06-20T07:42:00.000-07:002011-06-20T07:56:37.024-07:00Post-Menopausal Zest<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> I have reached a certain age. In fact, if by that expression the French mean menopausal, I have reached past all that into PMZ— post-menopausal zest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a season like blue jays in June, when they have stuffed the maws of their young so thoroughly and for so long that the young are bigger and fatter than their parents, who, worn down to scrawniness by reproductive success, have enough sense to turn their backs on the importunate presumptions of their overgrown progeny and fly off to find some berries for themselves. It is an age when, having committed our energies for years and years to partners and family and career and everyone in the world besides ourselves, we become the chief focus of our own affections. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We are sick and tired of being nice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No more will we pick other people’s socks off the floor, no more will we spend days organizing dinner parties to ingratiate people we don’t really like; no more will we stifle ourselves when someone shows us disrespect, but get right up on our hind legs and talk back. We career women get bored with competition for rewards we see no earthly use for, and, in our workplaces, we no longer suffer fools gladly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hankering for quirkier alternatives, we indulge in long, raucous evenings together, sharing food that we like and our heart’s deep stories, whooping it all up with laughter.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz3mE4B3J_bYRA3jj5ppUC9hwf0YU_TDShkqusdngQ2GFDzbS6eGbkUqSISjuCwSqZ4fc_p8SW7rj8x11TR0qjGKxIJPpPbSCR8btQ8qAN1Y23koLl8-PE2dhXvg5JwzBqTBNExnE9ARHl/s1600/IMAGE1%255B5%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz3mE4B3J_bYRA3jj5ppUC9hwf0YU_TDShkqusdngQ2GFDzbS6eGbkUqSISjuCwSqZ4fc_p8SW7rj8x11TR0qjGKxIJPpPbSCR8btQ8qAN1Y23koLl8-PE2dhXvg5JwzBqTBNExnE9ARHl/s320/IMAGE1%255B5%255D.jpg" width="307px" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far away in India, when women reach this “certain age” they are suddenly considered genderless, a view that would send western women scurrying to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>plastic surgeons, but which suits our superannuated Indian sisters just fine. Free at last from onerous family servitude, they band together in happy flocks chattering under the village Banyan tree, letting it all hang out and telling bawdy jokes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then they go off on pilgrimages, wandering the countryside in dusty saris, carrying only little bundles for luggage.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We western widows, who have been down in the valley of the shadow, find our way back into the sunlight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>much the same way as our Indian sisters do, by travel and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>laughter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A year after my husband died, I set out on a trip to Cape Cod to visit women friends who had offered me ten days in a cottage they rent on their place. I had flown every week for my career and was stick to death of airplanes, so I took a bus from Dearborn to catch the midnight sleeper from Toledo, sporting a small green knapsack and a shoulder bag with computer. Walking out to the bus gate at in Boston’s South Station, I was hailed by a woman my age.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You are one of us!” she announced “I’m Betty.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“How do you know?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You have one of the signs—travelling alone, with only your knapsack.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’d love to be one of you,” I said, as another woman joined us on the bench, “but I’m not a part of your group.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh I didn’t mean <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">that</span></i>,” she replied. “It’s just that I’ve discovered <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>women everywhere, these days, who recognize each other by certain signs, and travelling with nothing but a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>knapsack is one of them.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That’s right,” said the newcomer, “I’m Linda. I’ve been on the road for three weeks with just what I’ve got in here. Are you widows too?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Then, while we waited for our bus, Betty and Linda and I sat and talked about our husbands’ deaths: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Henry was in denial,” I explain, “maddeningly cheerful for months in intensive care—I didn’t know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what </i>to do about grieving.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh, Peter and I were both that way about his heart condition: he was a cardiologist and neither of us believed that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he</i> could die.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“George died of a massive stroke,” says Linda, “one moment he’s weeding the garden and then, at lunch time, when I took him his tuna fish sandwich, he was out flat by the fence, already gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cried for a year, but then I took to travel”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Me, too,” says Betty, “I’ve just been to my 50<sup>th</sup> college reunion and then an elderhostel in Philadelphia. Now I’m off to Nantucket; in the fall, it’ll be Ethiopia, then Fiji!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m on the road every month!” said Linda, “but you’ve got to learn to get it all into one knapsack—just a change of clothes, and washable underwear.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So you get bored with how you look,” said Betty, who was wearing a pair of light weight trousers that zip at the knee to make shorts, “but, honestly, who cares anymore?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Have you heard the one,” asked Linda, “about the little old lady and her granddaughter with the see-through blouse? The girl is going out on a date, and comes downstairs in a gauzy blouse you can see right through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When her grandmother objects, the girl says</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Oh Granny, get with it! When you are my age you get to show your rosebuds!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">So, the next evening when her granddaughter’s date rings the doorbell again, the old lady is sitting right there, stark naked from the waist up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The girl is horrified.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What’s the matter, dear,” asks Granny. “If you get to show your rosebuds, why can’t I display my hanging baskets?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we were off on our pilgrimages, boarding the bus to Barnstable, telling joke after joke all the way out to the Cape, healing our lives with cleansing peals of laughter.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526333393332271919.post-28458529275015255902011-06-20T06:56:00.000-07:002011-06-20T06:56:03.907-07:00Am I A Little Old Lady?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;">Did you hear the latest?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women are living so long that we’ve got a whole new stage of life— “active old age”— which we get to enjoy when are between<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fifty and seventy-five years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well whoopdee- do, I’m seventy-four.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was sitting in my little old rocking chair on the porch of my riverside cabin a couple of weeks ago when I heard the thump of a boat against my dock. I went down to investigate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yellow kayak sat a bright-eyed and bushy tailed little old lady (even littler and older than I am) grinning up at me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Can I help you?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh, no, dear, is it all right if I wait here for the others?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Are you with a group from the canoe livery?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Heavens no!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m the baby of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> group, but I’ve gotten a bit ahead of them. We go kayaking every Thursday.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“How far do you go?”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“About two to three hours paddling. Trouble is, I’m only seventy-eight. They tend to be so much slower. But we have a lot of fun—in the winter we go downhill skiing every Tuesday.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I returned to my cabin, not to the porch but to the garage, where I hauled out my blue kayak and dusted it off.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGX1Vf7pYi8cKnAkrwun4bmjWw0Y5lJ4W98MxINNe-Bo-_DUW63K8hz10Eq6XJNiXRNUK9hXWfypTCjyXKAmulwmhuraKVXRRJg4-Uh0XXf6A29GQbDI0EOPuViiqos2f7q86PSwR5iuJ1/s1600/IMAGE1%255B5%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="123px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGX1Vf7pYi8cKnAkrwun4bmjWw0Y5lJ4W98MxINNe-Bo-_DUW63K8hz10Eq6XJNiXRNUK9hXWfypTCjyXKAmulwmhuraKVXRRJg4-Uh0XXf6A29GQbDI0EOPuViiqos2f7q86PSwR5iuJ1/s320/IMAGE1%255B5%255D.jpg" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I love baseball. My favorite moment in a game is the second out in the ninth inning, when the Tigers are a couple of hits behind but we have a man or two on base. We’ve struck out more than we should have and made plenty of errors, but the game isn’t over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s one last chance for a base hit to keep it alive, or the gloriously last-ditch possibility of a home run, and extra innings. </span><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last year, when I published my first novel at age seventy-three, I surfed the web to see if there was anyone out there veering off on a brand new path at such an advanced age. I pulled up a video of a little old lady tap dancing. Mary McHugh (<a href="http://www.marymchugh.com/">http://www.marymchugh.com/</a>) in her eighties, hands at her waist, legs in the air, was vigorously illustrating her philosophy that “Life is Like Tap Dancing.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Think about it, You shuffle along for a while, then take a few bold steps forward, a few backward and a lot in a circle, and then, just when you think you know what you’re doing, everything changes.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Is it a coincidence that LOL also stands for “laughing out loud”?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;">We emailed back and forth, and she sent me her book about how not to act like a little old lady.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s not alone in assuming that this is a bad thing to be—sedentary, perhaps, or creaky, and pathetic. Sometimes I see people looking at me as if I were sedentary, creaky, and pathetic, but I don’t look at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">myself </i>that way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s be realistic. I am little (5 foot two, and 125 pounds soaking wet), decidedly old and, I suppose, a lady, in the generically female sense. On my bad days, when my arthritis is acute, my family has worn me down, and the thought of dying is scaring me to death, I know all about creaky and pathetic; <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but most of the time I’m a bright eyed and bushy tailed old soul, full of piss and vinegar. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;">On the bus the other day a young woman remarked to the teenager beside her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Smooch over a bit. Let’s see if we can make room for this little old lady.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had competently caught the bus to downtown Detroit, spoken up to the board of a governmental committee I’d gotten myself onto in order to forward my political agenda,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and treated myself to a hike along a new Detroit River walkway. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a little old lady all right, but I don’t take it as an insult. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 12pt;">When I get to be seventy-five next spring it will be the second out in my ninth inning, and I hope that the bases will be loaded! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
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</div>Annis Pratthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02863697894269724026noreply@blogger.com1