Oyster Crackers

When I was young, I went on a vacation with C., my best friend.  For some reason, we chose to stay in the room while my parents went out to eat.  We were tired or sunburned or something.  We had been on a semi-disasterous innertube rafting trip on a river in Tennessee, and we were likely exhausted.  I seem to remember a great deal of portage and falling off innertubes.  In any case, it seemed a good idea at the time. 

Only we got hungry.  And it went on so long.

The hotel was near nothing, so walking to a place to eat was impossible.  We looked through the room, but there was nothing and no vending machines.  All we had to eat was a bag of oyster crackers we'd bought to throw at the ducks in the nearby river.  So we'd eat them one at a time, laughing hysterically because there was nothing else to do.  We had no transport, no options.  We just waited, trusting that sooner or later, food would come because we'd been told that it would.

Many hours later, my parents returned, and they'd had quite a lot of trouble finding us (and themselves) food.  In the non-touristy place we were staying, apparently the sidewalks rolled up quite early.  We wound up with a couple of very nasty hamburgers in styrofoam takeaway containers. 

At some point in your life, I am pretty sure most of you, gentle readers, have had this hamburger.  It is the ultimate disappointment.  Dry-hard bun, pitiful cold patty, rubbery technicolor orange cheese, frightning tiny pickles, limp lettuce, and no condiments to speak of.  We ate them because we had no other options.  They weren't what we'd wanted (that restaurant had not been open), but they were what we had, so we made do.

Certain things have happened to me in the last two days that have impressed upon me the notion that I'm still sitting around waiting for things that were promised that just aren't going to come.  I'm still trying to tell myself that I can be content with something that is less than what I really wanted or expected.  I am tired of it.  It's time to do something about it.

I don't know what, and I don't know how yet, but it has been impressed upon me that I must start looking, or all I'm ever going to have are things that do not satisfy me.  Stop-gap has become my whole life.  I'm sure it was a gradual thing, something silent and stealthy slipping up like some form of comfortable quicksand, but this is enough.

I'm putting you on notice, world.  I am done with oyster crackers and piss-poor hamburgers.  I refuse to believe that's all there is.  I refuse to believe that's all I'm worth.  If that's all you can offer me, it's time for you to get to steppin'. 

Graceland

 After years of being curious, I finally got to go to Graceland last Wednesday.  My best friend and I got up, ate a hotel buffet breakfast, and braved cross-town traffic to arrive in an nearly-empty parking lot.

We paid our fee, passed through a queue and an unexpected photo stop, were handed the headphone set/audio guide that has become de rigeur at tourist attractions, and loaded onto a small shuttle bus which rolled across Elvis Presley Boulevard, through open gates, and up a small hill.
And there it was.

I am not sure what I was expecting.  This wasn't it.

Maybe I just expected the sort of excess that one sees in the homes of Hollywood elite today, flash, excess, too much of everything to be a truly livable space.  Instead, what was there was a home.  Large, spacious, elegant, but still a home.

Our little headphoned herd passed through the large front door and on either side of us were the home's public spaces.  There was a formal parlor, furnished in white, gold, and blue, on the right, and to the left, there was a formal dining room, the height of elegance for the time period in which it had been decorated.

We looked into a couple of bedrooms tucked down a small hall, and then we went around a corner to the kitchen.  It was here that the contrast of the two parts of the house really struck me.  The kitchen was described as the heart of Elvis's home, and I could tell the difference automatically.  It looked like a place real people could cook and eat and sneak down to raid the fridge in the middle of the night.   In fact, there was a stairwell that would allow just that. It looked like real people had at one time had real lives there, not just a set for photo ops or a display of conspicuous consumption.  

The downstairs rooms and even the famous Jungle Room felt the same way.  The private spaces of Graceland were comfortable and functional, full of expensive things, perhaps, but not a museum, not a slick spread in a magazine.  People used and enjoyed those rooms.

I liked it quite a lot.

The divisions he'd created, the idea of a public formal space in which he could meet those who perhaps were not close to him, is a very Southern thing.  The formal front parlor has been around for a long time.  I found it interesting that he had continued that tradition in his home.  He had enough money to have created anything he wanted, but what he created was a home.

Of course, the house itself is only a small part of the tour.  The outbuildings that have been converted or added are storehouses of memorabilia, costumes, personal items, and above all, gold and platinum records.  Trophies of all kinds were everywhere.

We finished up in the memory garden where the graves are.  People were snapping image after image of the graves, and to me, it felt a little odd.  To me, the graves were a private place, and the neverending parade of tourists, myself included, seemed a little inappropriate.  I admit that I've toured cathedrals of Europe, and I certainly took pictures of Dante's monument in Santa Croce and Shakespeare's in Holy Trinity, but this hit me differently.  I felt like I'd crawled over a fence and invaded someone's privacy.

We loaded back up, were carted across the road, and got off in the miniature theme park where we'd started.  We dutifully toured the automobile collection, browsed in shops, had our photo made with Elvis through the magic of Photoshop, got pressed pennies, bought the obligatory t-shirts.

We took a break and ate a hamburger and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with some of the best fries I've ever had in one of the two restaurants on the Graceland property, and the 50s diner decor included the obligatory beautiful Wurlitzer filled with Elvis's music.  We listened, ate, and took a minute to refuel. The whole time, though I couldn't stop thinking about what Elvis himself might have thought about this whole thing.  He had tried to make a home, a refuge for himself and those he loved.  He hadn't built a palace to excess, although he certainly had the financial means to do so.  This means that he treasured that space and what it represented.

So would he have been okay with what it has become?  Would he have seen it as just another part of the business, or would it have bothered him that we were traipsing through his kitchen, snapping photos of his formal parlor?

The question continued to resonate with me all the way back out to the now-filled parking lot and all the way down I-55 to my own refuge.  It lingers still.

Retro-Eco

The really fabulous thing about living out here in the country in a house various members of my family have lived in for more than 50 years is that many of the tools of the past are still around ready for use.  Sometimes, they break down due to natural age, and I have to make the decision as to whether or not it is worth it to replace them.

One item I have never had a moment's qualm about keeping in repair is the old-fashioned clothes line my grandmother had situated in the back yard.  She had hers originally strung through huge old fence posts and cedar trunks more than head high.  Even cedar gives up eventually, and the second year I lived here, I had to figure out what to do about it.

The vocational center at school has a welding program, and my dad had them build me a new set of posts, huge steel Ts, to hold updated line.  We set them in quick-setting concrete, strung them with the plastic-sheathed steel cable, and it was ready to go.

Until Katrina dropped a tree on it.

Some time later, we dug up the pole, took it back to school, got the top bar rewelded on, and reset it in the ground.  Since that time, it's been standing sentry like Granny's version did for so many years.

I don't use it all the time, but when I wash all my bedding, quilts, comforter, sheets, all, I use it to sun dry all of that whenever possible.  Today, I got up, stripped down the bed, took the feather mattress out and draped it over a porch stair rail, and began the process of laundering all the fabrics.  Then I carried each load out to the line and hung it up.

Even though it's an old-fashioned thing, I like it for several reasons.  First of all, it keeps me from having to run my dryer and heat up my house unnecessarily.  Even though the laundry area is out of the way, there's no reason to make things harder on my poor old air unit than they have to be.  Second, it's nice to feel like I'm somehow saving electricity.  It never ceases to amuse me that so many of the things that people now embrace as "eco-friendly," my grandmother did on a daily basis because that was all there was.  I suppose there really is nothing new under the sun. Finally, I love how it feels to sink down in the bed at the end of a day of cleaning and smell that freshness that only comes from something dried outdoors.

The only real drawback comes in the form of a never-ending worry that it's going to rain.  It's always a sort of lottery.  Today, for example, I went to Wal-Mart earlier, and I carefully checked the weather forecast before I left.  Nothing but clear skies.  While I was wheeling up and down the aisles, my phone chirped at me, and when I looked, a severe thunderstorm warning had showed up.  At that point, there was nothing to do about it.  I just sighed and moved on to the pet food, hoping I could get my shopping done and get home before the bottom fell out of it.

Well, the skies are still sunny although now and then a threatening cloud passes by.  In a couple of hours, I'll go out and gather everything in, make up the bed, finish up the chore.  When I do, I will feel connected to my Granny.  I remember going out to the clothes line with her to gather in the towels or Grandaddy's overalls.  I remember the little bag she'd made that fit on the clothesline that held wooden clothespins.  It's a small thing, but they are the ones that matter.

Uh-oh.  Even as I typed that, I heard thunder.  Time to get the clothes off the line, I think.....

A Total Futbol Neophyte Looks at Messi

Today, it seems like every friend I have who has kids spends half their year ferrying the kids to soccer and the other half to a sport played with a stick (softball, t-ball, baseball). When I was a child, we didn't have soccer as the ubiquitous kid sport. It didn't start to become popular in our area until I was well into high school.  I think my high school got a team together when I was a sophomore or a junior.

Prior to this World Cup, I have not paid much attention to the sport.  I don't know why, really.  I have worked with international students for years, was in-country in Japan the year before they hosted and observed the building of the stadium in Brasilia two years ago from the heights of the TV Tower.  I have friends who are rabidly interested and have talked about it all the time.  I guess I just don't pay much attention to many sporting events.

This year, though, I had intentions to watch.  Admittedly, one of the main draws for me was seeing Brazil again even from a televised distance, seeing how all the preparations had come together, seeing if the general unrest that those preparations had stirred up had settled any. The World Cup began while I was in Louisville, and I turned on the TV in the Galt House one afternoon as one of the first matches was starting.  I was tired from a long day of hacking my way through the underbrush of essays, and I said, "Okay.  This is the year.  I'm going to do this this time around."  And so I watched.

Coming to a thing about which you know nothing is always both a humbling experience and a great source of the joy of discovery. I spent a lot of time looking stuff up online and trying to learn terms, rules, positions.  Thank God for Google, eHow, the FIFA site, and the millions of other sites made for newbies like me. The longer I watched, the more I began to comprehend basic things that my students probably absorbed with their baby food.  I discovered I liked the sport quite a bit.

The second game I watched in this World Cup had Argentina playing.  I honestly don't remember who their opponent was.  It was the first match in the opening round.  Right before it started, ESPN did one of their dramatic little mini-highlights of Lionel Messi.  I watched it with a little bit of interest and settled in for the match.

And from that point forward, pretty much all I saw was #10.  He's sort of amazing.

(Which I know is not new news.  Bear with me.  And while I know he is considered to be one of the best players in the world right now by people who actually know what they're talking about, I'm still going to tell you why.  This is my space.  I can do what I like.)

Ronaldo was made much of early on.  He had a different haircut for each match, including at one point a zigzag with a gold stripe painted in it. (Where and WHY did he find the time to go get a new 'do?) Apparently, according to the ESPN announcers, he was met at his hotel by a topless model.  While these things in and of themselves are not crimes, in the games I saw with him, he always seemed very conscious of his own glamour.  While I don't doubt he's good, I find that whole over-the-top attitude and lifestyle very boring.

Then there's Messi.  His is another one of the big glittery names at this World Cup.  The announcers chant his name like it's a litany required for salvation. Games he's not even playing in make mention of him. The corporate sponsors splash him on screen for almost every product.  He's drinking Pepsi, gulping Gatorade, operating at "god level" for Adidas.

Normally, these are things that would make me put him in the same big-business-sports-star box with Ronaldo.  I just couldn't do that to Messi, though.  The longer I watched him, the more I realized that his hair is the last of his concerns. I love to watch him play for several reasons.

One, he does things that are very hard but makes them look graceful and easy.  He doesn't showboat as I've seen some of the other young ones try to do.  To watch him move the ball is a kind of magic. (And no, not the "bippity-boppity-boo" kind, but thank you, Gatorade.  I have that flippin' song stuck in my head for DAYS every time I see that commercial...) Every time the ball comes near him, things get interesting.  He can take it away from others.  He can move it himself.  Apparently Maradona has said that it's like "the ball stays glued to his foot," and that seems about right to me.  It's beautiful to watch.

Two, he is not selfish.  While right now, the big media phrase is "Messi Dependence" for Argentina, this isn't because he isn't passing and giving his teammates a chance.  I love him for that.  In the last few matches I've seen with some of the other one-name demi-deities, too many of them wanted to hog the ball at times when a wise pass would have meant a goal.  Although Messi has done the majority of the scoring for his team in this World Cup, it isn't because he believes he's the only man on the field.

Three, I respect him because he always looks just a bit uneasy when the cameras are following him around during the pre-game stuff.  He doesn't simper or smirk or smolder into the lens. I perceive his expression as being one of resignation.  He can't do anything about it, but man, he wishes they would get that thing out of his face so he could concentrate on the important matters ahead.

Four, I love to see the rapport he has with other players.  My favorite example of this came when Argentina played Nigeria, and Messi and Enyeama were clearly giving each other friendly crap after Enyeama saved one of Messi's goal efforts.  The next time, Messi got it past the incredibly-good Nigerian goalkeeper, and still there was no pouting. It was an example of what sport SHOULD be to me.  It wasn't personal. They were sportsmen who could each appreciate the skill the other had. They might have been opponents, but that didn't mean they were enemies. I've seen him do that several times, sometimes with people he plays with in his regular league, sometimes not. For him, there is still joy in the game.  There are some others on the pitch who could take a lesson from that attitude.

Five, I saw pictures of him with his son.  Oh my God.  How totally precious.  Somebody retweeted his birthday post last week, and it was him with his little boy in his arms.  He had an expression of total happiness on his face. He has his son's handprints and name tattooed on his calf.  How can you not love someone who loves his little boy that much?  ESPN showed his wife carrying the little boy into the stadium before one of the matches, and he has a very small Argentina jersey with number 10 and the word "Papi" on the back.  Pardon me for having a girl moment, but, "AWWWWWWWWWWW."

Six, he does good things off the field.  He served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.  He makes sure children who need medicine (as he did when he was a child) have access.  He gave money to restore the oncology wing of a hospital and train their doctors abroad.   His foundation additionally works to promote and ensure educational opportunities are there for those in need.  He gives back.

Seven, finally, (and to your eternal relief, no doubt)  to me, he's just beautiful.  Sure, I suppose he's not classically handsome in the way that Ronaldo considers himself to be.  When he smiles, though, or when he looks up and grins after a score, how could anyone possibly prefer that overly-groomed Portuguese?

I am looking forward to tomorrow's matches. If Argentina get past Sweden and should the USA manage to get by Belgium (about which I refuse to make predictions in either case), it's theoretically possible my national team might be facing my favorite player.  I'm not going to think about it much, though.  Instead, I'm just going to enjoy another day of Messi.

The Allure of Shiny Tech

Every year I do the AP national reading, I set aside part of that check for something special.  This year, the vast majority of it has been earmarked for the various portions of my National Boards, but as always, I have decided to keep just a little back to spend on something nonessential.

I have a FitBit, and I love it.  I wear it almost all the time, and it really has helped me increase my activity.  (Well, except right now in the summer when it's hotter than nine hells outside and World Cup is on all the time...)  The only thing I wish is that the FitBit had a watch on it.  If I'm going to have something on my my wrist, I wish it could at least tell me what time it is.  There are many situations where I simply cannot pull out my phone, and I do not want to wear a regular watch, so having the time on this slender band would be great.

Recently, a whole new batch of smartwatches has been released by several companies.  I looked at the ones from Samsung, and I liked what I was seeing.  They have gone past the Pebble phase of something functional but quite ugly and are actually becoming interesting.

I was most interested in the Samsung Gear Fit, a combination of fitness band and smartwatch.  When compared to the other things that are available, the design is lovely.  It is designed to do all the things I want one to do, measure my steps, run my music player, show me notifications, tell me the time.  However, when I started doing research on it, the reviews were almost universally lukewarm.  Everyone loves the design but hates the functionality.

I could have dismissed some of the reviews.  Those people expected it to summon a space pegacorn to sweep them to a solid gold house, apparently.  Some of them had such piddly little faults or expected such massive things no simple smartwatch is probably going to be capable of for a long while that I took them with the required grain of salt and moved on.  I probably would have already ordered one except for the repeated claim that it does not measure steps accurately.  One reviewer claimed he'd been sitting in his chair, swung his arm to reach for something, and the Gear Fit registered 36 steps.

Yeah.

That's a problem.

Again, one or two such instances would have been possible to discount.  The fact that almost every single reviewer on every site I checked said much the same means I just can't justify spending the money on a device that isn't what is should be.

There's another option coming later this summer, apparently.  Motorola is going to join the fray, and from the
very vague ads they have, I am optimistic that this could be the thing I need.  For one thing, it looks gorgeous.  It's not a conspicuous square with a technofabulous band that screams, "HEY!  LOOK AT ME!  SMARTWAAAATCH!!!"  Instead, its face is round, its band interchangeable, and with the right clock face selected, it wouldn't draw that much more attention than the old-fashioned analog watches I wore for years and years.

What they say it will do, however, would make my life so much easier.  It has deep Google integration, and just the little teaser previews available here and there promise fitness measuring and everything else I want.  Granted, this one probably doesn't have a "summon pegacorn" setting, either, but that is totally fine by me.  My wants and needs are simple.  (heh)

So I'm still waiting.  I'm sure that as we get closer to the season of commercial feeding frenzy (aka Black Friday/Cyber Monday), more of these devices will appear.  I'm not going to jump on the beta device wagon this time.  I want something that I can use for a long time, and I will wait until it appears.

The Things We Leave Behind

Yesterday, I went junkin' to get out of the house.  I usually really enjoy it.  I've been feeling pooish the last three or four days, apparently the run up to a migraine that woke me up early this morning, and so maybe that's the reason I looked at everything differently yesterday.

I browsed as I usually did, but I kept being struck by the little things, the cut glass knickknacks, the chalk wall plaque of the smiling bird, the assorted rolling pins casually lying in a Pyrex bowl, the rhinestone brooches, and the tattered toy biplane hanging from the ceiling.  All those things had belonged to someone else.  At some point, presumably, all those things were valued by someone else.  Now, they were piled haphazardly into the various booths of the flea market, priced with a small sticker or tag, and waiting on usefulness to come again.

Some of the items moved me more than others.  One booth had a kitchen's worth of cast iron.  The skillets were crusted in rust.  The Dutch oven was, as well.  I picked up a couple of pieces with an eye to finding something to refinish and put back into use, but I couldn't stop thinking about how many meals, how many family moments, those abandoned vessels represented.  I wondered if whomever used them worried over them, kept them shiny and well-greased, enjoyed the heft of them as they took them out of the cabinet the way I do with my own pieces.  It made me sad.

A young fluffy couple, both of whom were entirely too overly groomed to be junkin' in an unairconditioned building in 95-degree weather, were sweeping up and down the aisles, noses firmly in the air.  The ridiculously preppy man snidely commented to his ridiculously preppy mate that "this place seems like a horror movie."  And even though I didn't agree with the reasons behind his comment, for the first time ever, there was something horrible about one of my favorite places.  Everything around me was something that had been left behind.

I started thinking about my own house, all the things I treasure, my collection of ceramics from Japan, my bits and bobs of jewelry from various trips, my Fiestaware, all those PEZ I've collected, my own cast iron.  What will happen to it when I'm gone?  I have no one to leave it to, no daughter to teach my grandmother's cornbread recipe and skillet with, no son to whom I can give my grandfather's WWII uniform or the knife my other grandfather made from a bayonet and stacked glass circles from the windshield of a downed Italian plane.  Some day, someone will have to come in, slog through, box up, and all my things will wind up in some rag and bone shop, too.  That old saying from Lamentations came to mind, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity..."

I forced myself to put the thought away.  I found an interesting and amusing pair of old sunglasses, a purple whisky bottle for my bottle trees.  As I walked out to the vehicle with my purchases, though, I looked at the old bathtubs sitting around the edge of the parking area, and it returned with a vengeance.  I had to look away.

Watching Team USA

It's game day with Germany, and like what I hope is most of the US, I am watching my country's representatives fighting Germany.  Nobody expects us to win.  I personally sort of believe in the concept of any given team on any given day, but then again, I have been accused of being a hopeless optimist.

We're into minute 15, and I have a separate timer sitting beside me counting down the time left on a batch of rice pudding that I mixed up during the pregame show.  I also cleaned my whole kitchen at that time.  It seemed the thing to do.

I was in the middle of washing up last night's pots and pans when it came time for the national anthems.  I stopped, cut off the water, and walked into the living room to hear it.  There is something about hearing a stadium full of people singing "The Star Spangled Banner" that gives me both goosebumps and tears.  At the very end, that last phrase, "home of the free, and the land of the brave," seemed to sum up what we are all about here in Brazil.

We are not a soccer superpower.  We aren't jaded when we show up here.  Other countries have accused us of being fake underdogs.   They say we have money, power, economic status.  How can we possibly be an underdog anymore?  Announcer and journalist eyes roll.  Snide memes proliferate.

I think America is always going to be the underdog, though.  Despite our status, whatever it may be in this current world, I'm not sure we are ever going to get over being the new guy at the party, the nouveau riche guy who came from humble origins and sometimes can't quite figure out how he got there in the first place.  He's not quite sure of the etiquette.  Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable in the clothes.  However, he's here now, and he's going to do the best with it he can.

I'm not sure why the rest of the world seems to resent us so much for this.  We have traditionally demonstrated the trait of working hard to achieve a goal, even when it didn't seem possible.  I think America has always been at her best when things come down to the rock-and-hard-place moments.  It brings something out in us that we don't always see at other times.  There is a relief in being able to roll up the sleeves, lay hands on the obstacle, and work to remove it.

And shouldn't everybody feel that way?  What does a team or even a private individual show up for if the plan isn't to give everything, to do the best you can?

Undoubtedly, I'm just a product of my national point-of-view. Maybe it sounds naive or idealistic, and I'm sure it is in some ways.  However, that's very American, too.

I don't know if we will win this, get the draw, or go through.  I hope whatever the outcome may be that we will be able to leave with a feeling of satisfaction at our effort.

A Red Fiesta Pitcher

Today, I got something I've wanted for a long, long time.  Today, I got a scarlet Fiestaware pitcher.

After the UPS man delivered it and entertained my dogs in the process, I unpacked it and simply stood at the sink for a moment.  I felt its heft, inspected the places on the inside where the red glaze hadn't quite changed color totally in the firing process, not a flaw but part of the character of the piece.

I sort of fell a little in love.

It doesn't seem like much to someone else, I'm sure.  It's only so much clay, so much glaze.  It's not a limited run item.  It's not exotic or even very expensive.

There's something about it, though, that enchants me.  Maybe it's the art deco lines I love so much. Maybe it's the vibrant color.  Maybe it's the connection to family that I've written about before.  It's hard to nail it down.

The piece had some warehouse dust on it, so next I washed it. There is something about hand washing something that you love that takes the work out of that action.  It was pleasing to see the glaze shine through the soap suds, to watch the water sheet across the surface and leave it clean.

I finished up by making some pink lemonade.  It wasn't fancy or exotic.  I used no lavender and no mint.  It came from a Country Time mix.  Okay, I did supplement it somewhat by adding juice from half a lemon I had in the fridge, but that's the only extra I did.  I put it in the fridge and walked the dogs.

When I came back, I got a glass, opened the refrigerator door, and took a moment to admire the pitcher.  I swear it made the whole inside of my fridge happy.  When I poured the lemonade and put it back, I shut the door with a smile and wandered back into the living room just a little happier.

I am learning slowly but surely to let the little things brighten up my days.  Life is full of so many of these little things, trivialities, really, that are actually capable of being tiny drops of balm if we would only look around and allow them to do their jobs.  It might not always be a pottery pitcher.  It might be the bloom on my cucumbers, the fuzzy white chin of my cat as she sleeps with her head propped on my shin, the clean wood of the new stair tread my father replaced today on my south porch.  It might be a butterfly landing on a chestnut tree in tassel.  It might be the sound of snoring dogs gathered around my chair.  It might be the absence of the sound of a 5 am alarm.  Whatever it is, I mean to try to appreciate it wherever it can be found.  It's so easy only to see the nasty and the grim.  God knows there's enough of those kinds of things to swamp us, to blind us to anything else.  I think, though, that there are plenty of these good things, too, if we will take the time to look.

There's still more pink lemonade in that pitcher.  Think I'll go get another glass.

That Moment When....

(haven't done a list in awhile....)

• You'd really like to get on a plane, fly a long distance, knock on a door, and punch somebody in the throat. Get over your flippin' self.  Really.
• You come home to find a half a tree hanging from the remains of your security light.
• You discover how really very actually dark it is out in the woods when a tree has killed your security light.
• You've put on the "polite and social" face so long that it actually hurts.
• You're so far behind that you are actually starting to catch up with yourself again.
• You have to reorder multiple items from a place because, for no reason that can be explained, the original package is deemed "undeliverable" by FedEx....even though it apparently never left their sort facility.....

Twitter Is Blocked in Turkey

....and the people have flipped a big old electronic bird to the oppressor by simply sliding around that block.  I want to stand up and cheer.  The images I see of people spray-painting the DNS numbers to skate around the government ban over Erdogan's own political posters fill me with the same satisfaction all those portraits of Ataturk flying on red backgrounds and plastered accusingly on the walls opposite the presidential residence did when we were last year.

Turkey is so dear to me after the Ottomans course and the travel that went with it.  The people who live in that wonderful place deserve better than their leader is giving them.  What a tremendously condescending insult to think that he has the right to shut them off from the electronic world.  What a tremendously arrogant stance to pretend he has that kind of power.  I keep thinking we're about to have a "V" moment there, and the results will be shown to us by the Instagram feeds, YouTube videos, and tweets of the people who will rebuild what he's tried to tear down and repress.

I want to applaud Twitter and Google, too, for standing up to a world leader who is trying to hide his own sins by denying his people freedom and access.  He's literally trying to cover not only his own eyes with dirty hands but also the eyes of the whole world like a petulant child who cannot get his way.  It heartens me to see them standing up, providing backdoors and work-arounds instead of folding their hands and waiting passively for someone else to do something.

I'm not much of a revolutionary.  I hate politics passionately.  It just makes me furious when I see such a vibrant nation under the heel of such a massive hubris-filled jackass.  So by all means, let's #occupytwitter since #twitterisblockedinturkey.

The Android Life

A little over a month ago, I decided it was time to upgrade my iPhone.  I had been debating whether or not I might want to change from iOS to Android for a long time, doing research and asking people who had the other platform for insights.  It was the day before my birthday when I finally found the time to walk into my local phone store, and as the tech-laden greeter came up to put my name on the waiting list for service, I still didn't know which phone I would walk out with.

One of the good things about the phone store always being so busy is that it gave me more than enough time to walk around and look at all the different models.  I started with the iPhones.  They were comfortable and familiar.  It looked great, and I knew immediately that it would be pleasant to use.

Then I strolled over to the Androids.

I've been using one of the Galaxy tablets from school to set up activities and hunt for apps my students might be able to use on the big class set, so for the first time, the Android devices felt familiar.  I started looking at the specs on memory and other aspects, and I realized that I could put in large memory card and have three times more space than the iPhone I'd been looking at, and the phone, the SD card, and the Otterbox all together would still be less expensive.

That sort of decided me.  Yes, my iPhones have always been tremendously good to me.  They've done hardcore duty all over the globe without batting even the tiniest eyelash.  Standing in that store, though, I couldn't justify spending more money for what was going to be less phone that I really needed. 

As I picked up the devices, the Android also felt good in my hand.  True, it was much larger than the iPhone resting in my jacket.  I had worries that it would be cumbersome to keep up with, too big to slip into a pants pocket.  The more I held it, though, the more I liked the way it filled my palm, the way the screen size increased because of it.

When my name was finally called and the sales associate finally came to ask me what I wanted, I knew I wanted one of the Samsung Galaxy models.  After a brief conversation with him, I settled on the GS4.  He took it over to the service desk, did that magic that they do, and thirty minutes later, I was headed out into the darkness of a February night with it clipped to my beltloops in a Defender holster.

It seems like a small thing, the addition of a new device to my life, but it has actually had a number of really rather profound changes on me.  The first came when I noticed the preloaded Samsung S-Health step counter widget.  I dragged it onto one of my screens out of curiosity, and slowly, I became more and more interested in watching the numbers go up.  I found myself taking extra trips down to the office and the mail room just to get a little more exercise.  This led to my buying a Fitbit Flex, and now I'm tracking movement and calories, and I've lost six pounds.  

I've also sort of rediscovered what a smartphone is all about.  I had gotten into a tremendous rut, it seems, with my apps and my habits.  I didn't get all the same apps I used to have when I was reloading this new phone, and some of the ones I kept work for me now in a totally different way.  Since Android is intimately welded to Google and since I am such a tremendous user of Google stuff, things I do all the time have become much easier.  

When I walked out of the store that night before my birthday, I admit I still had doubts.  It's hard to believe that now.  I know some people have horrible experiences with Android devices and flee back to iPhone as soon as they are able, but I have to say, I don't think that will be me.  This change has been totally for the better.

Prufrockianism and Other Poetic Clap-Trap

I haven't written in a long time because I haven't been able to bring myself to it.  I think about this space, and I think about the need to put words down to clear out my head, but for reasons I cannot look at clearly except out of the corners of my eyes, I always find other things to occupy my time.

And mostly, I've been happy.  There have been moments, but mostly, I've been trying to be happy and healthy and content.

It doesn't always work that way, though.

The nightmares are back lately.  Maybe it's the change of seasons or the phase of the moon.  I don't know.  I just wake up feeling old and tired, sick and sad.  It doesn't matter if I've slept for eight hours or three.

Tonight, I acutely feel my losses, all of them.  I feel the absence of people I lost or who threw me away.  I feel all the bumps and stones under my feet on this road less traveled, and I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to have taken the other damn one.  I feel the impact of every sling and arrow.

I create horrible, maudlin pastiches of literature, too, apparently....

Leaving all the greats alone, then, I find myself slipping a finger across the glossy screen of my cellphone, and images of Istanbul and Brazil flicker past.  I stop on a view of the Ayasofia at sunset, and I keep feeling like if I could just get there, just hear the call to prayer floating again, I could be okay somehow.  That distance and that certain slant of light could somehow combine into something strong enough to hold all the pieces together.

Would that really soothe this saudade, this painful/beautiful longing in my heart?  I don't know. Maybe it's just an illusion.  The wise say that travel gets us nothing but what we took there with in the first place anyway, don't they?  And maybe tomorrow will be an optimist's dream, filled with peace, progress, and plenty.  Maybe the sun really will come out.  Maybe all the mermaids really will sing.

I keep having those Prufrockian moments, though, and I have to say that I am pretty sure they won't be singing to me.

And now, having danced clumsily through Shakespeare, Brazilian Portuguese, Eliot, Frost, and popular musical theater, I think it's time to face whatever face whatever comes to see me in my dreams tonight has picked out of its prop closet.

Good night.

Yeah. It's Still Me.

Consider it a part of the general redesign and fluffing of my life right now.  I just wanted something different.  It may look different again tomorrow.  I make you no promises.

Little Broken Hearts

Every once in awhile, I stumble across an album that I can't stop listening to.  I loop it instead of listening and putting it into a rotation.  Generally speaking, I like variety instead of repetition.  Little Broken Hearts by Norah Jones is currently sort of obsessing me.

Oh, it's not new.  It's been out awhile.  I've had it on my list of things to get.  I finally did the other night, and it's one of those things I'm kicking myself for not getting earlier.

This album is rare in that I think I like every single song on it.  Some cut me more personally than others.  Since it's an album of broken relationships as indicated by the title, not all of these places Jones goes are happy ones.  They're rendered lovely, though, by her voice and artistry.  Sometimes there is beauty even in the shadows of the dark places we go, I guess.

As usual, I also find myself drawn to the lovely little tune with the crazy little lyrics.  I was halfway through "Miriam" the first time before I realized what she was saying.  I restarted it, pulled up the lyrics online, and I immediately fell in love with it.  I think I'm going to make a playlist of nothing but all these happy little psycho songs I have accumulated over the years.  I will do this without looking too closely at what that probably says about me....

Most of all, though, I will continue to enjoy the voice of Norah Jones.  She has such an unusual and rich sound.  Come Away with Me has been something I have enjoyed forever.  Little Broken Hearts, however, adds some edge to both her lyrics and her sound.  It's different, but unlike some of the reviewers I read, I don't think that's bad.  Clearly, as time goes on, we aren't the same people anymore.  Our life experiences change us, or they should, anyway, if we're living any sort of life at all.  Why do we always seem to expect every album from a performer to sound the same as if they aren't changing, too?  That's absurd.  We should enjoy the evolution instead of demanding what only really amounts to stagnation.

A Twenties Sort of Day

In the last 24 hours, I've read two and a half books.  The first two were utterly forgettable fluff.  The third, though, has been fabulous.  It's Bill Bryson's One Summer:  America 1927.

I've read a lot of Bryson's books, and he has the ability to make any subject fascinating.  I have no idea how many hours of research it must take him, but he never fails to show all the layers and connections of his chosen subject.

He also never fails to infuse that subject with humor.  Sometimes, it's just subtle irony.  Sometimes, it's absolutely side-splitting stuff.  His A Walk in the Woods has several passages that make me laugh until I cry.

In this book, he's walking the reader through the Roaring Twenties, showing how all things and people are connected by looking at one singular summer.  While it's true that a lot happens in this brief time, he doesn't limit the scope to just those weeks.  He traces histories and causes of the things that arise, and he also in some cases goes on to show the long-lasting repercussions and legacies.  It's fascinating.

So many of the people and things he's covering have become so well-worn in even the most basic overview of the history of the 20s that I don't think we generally appreciate how much work went into them and how special they really were.  He covers baseball, Prohibition, Lindbergh, politics, finance, international relations, and I'm only about halfway through.  It's fabulous.

Lindbergh is one of the key figures.  Everybody knows he was the first non-stop flight over the Atlantic.  Bryson presents the reader with so many things that have gotten lost from the broader, timeline-dot sort of approach to history. I know I personally walked through the Air and Space Museum and saw The Spirit of St. Louis, sort of took a moment to notice it and moved on.  Had I read this first, I think I could have appreciated it vastly more.  To tell the truth, I spent so little time and knew so little that I didn't even notice that it was a canvas plane treated with a metallic varnish.  Bryson's account brought home how terrifying it must have been to try to cross an ocean in what was essentially "a flying tent."  I can start to give the accomplishment the recognition it deserves because now I have a feeling of these people as more than photographs and footnotes.  I appreciate that depth tremendously.

This is what history textbooks should be like.  They should be less concerned with bulleted lists and more concerned with telling the story of the amazingly interconnected web of events that shapes the world.  I know that I began to love history only when I had a professor who made those connections for me.  My History of England professor assigned us readings that were largely bone dry, but in class, he told us stories of the very real people who were involved in, creators of, or trapped by the wheel of time.

If you're interested in American history, the 1920s, aviation, baseball, literature, politics, or just basic human life, I highly recommend this book.  I think it has something for everyone.  For me to say that and not have finished yet is probably the biggest indicator of how good I think it is.

New Year's Eve and Cookies

It's New Year's Eve, and I'm celebrating with my usual flair.  I have lit the candles that will take me into the new year, and everything I could be in charge of as far as cleaning (which isn't much, actually) is done.  The house hasn't been scrubbed and polished to the nth-degree as I usually do on New Year's Eve, but I did sweep today (bad luck to do it tomorrow), and I washed all the pans and bowls I used during today's manic baking spree.  They're quietly drying in the new little stainless steel drainer in my sink.

Usually at this time of the year, I'm full of introspection, full of thoughts of the past and worries about the future, but not this year.  I'm watching Criminal Minds in my comfy pajamas, and there is an absolute minimum of navel gazing.

And that, of course, is because I made oatmeal raisin cookies today.

This seems like a total non-sequitur, I know, but bear with me.  I'm going somewhere with this.  I promise.

I remember when I had my myomectomy while I was still in Indiana. There was a period after that when all things in my life sort of fell into focus.  I stopped caring about a bunch of things (and one notable person) who I'd allowed to cause me absolute woe.  I started doing things I had always wanted to do instead of smiling wistfully and saying, "Someday."  To use a phrase that is endlessly new-agey and trite, I found myself.  Rather, I found a new version of myself.  I really liked that person.  (Of course, one of the things that happened during that time was going to a meeting of the kendo club, and so the evil T came into my life and things sort of took a hard left for the worse....)

I feel that clarity of purpose again now.  I've been sick for...  God. I don't even know.  Between the migraines and the Topamax and this other, I've been sick for years and years.  I'd say that in just the past calendar year, I've had less than two weeks a month where I felt like doing anything other than surviving.  Now, though, even with the limitations currently on me with recovery, I am finding that other person I lost again.

There were so many things I'd lost along with that other me.  Many of them wouldn't mean a thing to anyone but me, but I guess that's what life is made of, the things we endow with importance for ourselves.  From the time I was in high school, I used to make a batch of sourdough bread every week.  I started it with the idea of giving a loaf (or so) to my grandparents.  That ritual got even more important to me when my Granny got sick.  She couldn't eat a lot of things, but she could eat my sourdough.  I had starter that I kept religiously fed for years.  It died when I went to Japan, clearly, but when I came back, I tried repeatedly to get my routine back again.  As my health declined, so did my resolution.  I just mixed up batch two of the bread today.  Every step of the process made me feel good.

It wasn't just the bread.  The cast iron skillets that are the legacy of both my grandmothers came to me shiny and well-conditioned.  Yesterday, I decided to make cornbread from my Granny's recipe for the first time in what I guess is probably three years, and when I took it out, even though I'd taken pains to store it properly, it was in need of care.

That was one of the moments (and I've had several lately) when how much I'd let go and how much of myself I'd lost really hit home.  My life before the surgery had become about the quickest possible solution, the easy path to finish the necessary before I fell down.  Now it doesn't have to be.  Oh, there's nothing particularly complicated about the foods I'm making.  My grandmother's cornbread is fabulous, but cornbread isn't a recipe requiring Cordon Bleu training.  The aforementioned oatmeal cookies I put together today weren't complex, either. The thing is, I CAN make them now. I don't have to run for the couch and collapse.  Pain and weakness aren't pinning me down. I have the energy and the will again to do something that I enjoy because it connects me to my past and allows me to share with my family.  Somehow, oddly, ironically, by losing something, I have managed to become more whole.

It's not just the cooking.  My house has been full of projects that I was "going to get around to" but never have.  I have been systematically fixing, changing, and moving.  I've been making things I pinned on Pinterest for someday happen now.  It's not perfect, but I'm making progress.  I have two great piles left to tackle, but as I look around my living room now, this house reflects me again.  (And maybe those two great piles are representative of me, too, heh....)  It feels like home.

So I'm back to the salad days.  Maybe it's the baking days for me.  Whichever.  I can't say that there aren't moments of difficulty and sadness, and I'm not such a sunshine-dazzled fool that I believe everything is always going to be fabulous, but right now, I have to say, things are pretty good.  That's a nice place to be as I get ready to leave 2013 and head into 2014.

And now, I'm going to have a cookie.  Happy New Year to you wherever you are.

A Hopeful Song

"I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" lyrics
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

----
I've heard this song and played this song a million times.  It is only this year that it finally sank in.  Isn't it funny how you can suddenly encounter something for what feels like the first time even after having it underfoot for a lifetime?

The third and fourth verses are the ones that moved me.  Despair is all around.  Darkness encroaches.  Every day our news is full of violence and hate, greed and self-interest.  The song doesn't end there, though.  Even the bells know the antidote, "God is not dead nor doth he sleep."  No matter how bad things get, there is cause for joy and hope in that. Someday, "the wrong shall fail, the right prevail" and we will have that peace and goodwill we so desperately need.

Merry Christmas to you one and all.

A Christmas Carol

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
― Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

I haven't felt very Christmassy this year.  Music is the best of Christmas for me, but this year, the songs make me cry.  Family gatherings are also usually a great joy.  This year, nothing but anxiety fills me.  It's okay.  I'm moving through something, and it is going to take time.

Even though there's all this stuff going on, though, some parts of Christmas shine through.  I'm watching the Patrick Stewart version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.  I watch one version or another almost every year.  Of all the Christmas movies and feel-good stories out there, this one is the ultimate for me.  This version is one of my favorites because it is so well done.

I always feel so for Scrooge.  He is a person who built walls between himself and others because...because it seemed right at the time.  Because it seemed the way to get what he thought was the most important thing in life.  Because he was hurt and knew no other way to deal with the pain.  Somewhere along the way, those walls started to grow on their own, and by the time we meet Scrooge, he's blocked off from every human feeling.  A gentle nudge won't do.  Walls only come down with the brute force of a sledgehammer.  And when those walls do start to come down, he begins to understand what is and is not worth the price of life.  What does and does not enrich and redeem the time that is given.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is an example of this.  He hides the ragged and pitiful beings he calls the children of men, ignorance and want, beneath his rich gown.  Dickens is not subtle.  He wants us to remember that Christmas has to be about more than the frills and the bows, the gifts and the decorations. Advertising bombards us on every side telling us that if we buy the right piece of jewelry or get the latest gaming system then our lives will be somehow complete, that we just need a special thing to fill the hole in our hearts.  When we live like that, when all we strive for is the top layer of Christmas and shut out the lessons that it teaches, when we forget the love, the almighty love that ought to be the best and most glorious part of Christmas, then we wind up like Scrooge, headed for that horrible end and yawning, unmourned grave.

I love to watch him change.  I love to think that no matter how poor and blind we may be, there is always a chance that our eyes can open and we can be redeemed.   When someone turns away, there is always another option, another path.  There is such tremendous hope in A Christmas Carol.  It's such a tiny work, but it has lasted because of that hope, that ability to bring an ice-axe into our hearts and break up the frozen chunks the world creates. And if my eyes are filled with tears again as I watch it, they're not tears of despair.  They are tears of remembering and gratefulness.  They are my own version of Scrooge's Christmas miracle.

The Tale

I've thought many times about coming back here and saying something, but to be honest, nothing I have been able to come up with has seemed to be sufficient.

I guess I need to go back and tell the tale.

I showed up at the hospital, and things moved very quickly at first.  I was shown to the little pre-surgery room, put on the dreaded paper gown, was moved to the holding area where my IV was put in and all the many people who were going to be involved in my surgery came in and talked with me, checked on me, and asked me my name and date of birth so many times that I really wish I had gone with my first instinct and put it on a dry erase board that I could have just held up.  There was a delay because my doctor was assisting with another surgery, and then it was my turn.  As with everything that relates to me or my family, once the procedure began, the situation got more complicated than my doctor anticipated.  There were more problems than they'd previously been able to detect due to the three other abdominal surgeries I've had in the past.  A general surgeon had to be called in to deal with part of it.  It took three hours to take me apart and then put me back together again.

Blessedly, I remember none of that.  The last thing I recall was the surgery team coming to collect me and asking if I was ready, to which I replied by telling the nurse anesthetist that I didn't want to know anything about any of it past that point, not the roll down the hall, not the color of the operating room (which I know for a fact was blue because they are ALWAYS BLUE and cold), nothing.  He grinned, injected something into my IV, and told me that would no problem at all.  The world spun hard to the right, my gurney moved, and the next thing I recall was a brusque nurse in recovery continually telling me that I had to breathe, BREATHE, to which I finally managed to mumble that it HURT to breathe and I wanted her to leave me alone.  I think she laughed.

I remember nothing of the rest of Monday.

The big events of Tuesday included a clean gown, staggering horrible trips to the bathroom, a couple of family visitors, and a migraine as big as the universe.  Apparently, the morphine in the pain pump triggered some kind of rebound headache.  And, since I had the morphine in my system, I couldn't have any of the medicines I would usually take for a migraine.  I decided to stop using the pain pump so they would unhook it and also so the backlash from it would hopefully stop.  I wanted to scream, but it would have hurt too much.  Early Wednesday morning, they finally came in with a solution, a combination of drugs that wouldn't react with the morphine.

They were from hell.  I'd never had one of the two, and the new one spiked my blood pressure and heart rate so high my room was a festival of flashing lights and shrieking monitors.  My body locked up and shuddered, my teeth chattered, and I couldn't breathe.  For a short time, it was so bad that I honestly thought I was going to die right there with my mother holding my hand.  Again, I was continually told to BREATHE, which seemed to be the motto of my whole experience, and when I didn't do it deeply enough to keep them happy with the O2 level in my blood, they put me back on that horrible little oxygen tube-nose thing.  I was told later that the first attack like that lasted about twenty minutes before that effect passed.  There were two or three episodes like that before everything calmed down and all the beeping and flashing quit. So Tuesday passed into Wednesday.

After that, things got better. I got to take a shower and put on real people clothing that didn't bare my backside.  I put on my bright blue TARDIS robe, leaned on Mom and the rails around the hospital ward walls, and staggered unsteadily up and down, up and down the brightly lit hallways.  I ate some solid food.  I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Egg Bowl from my bed after the doctor making the rounds decided I needed one more day in the hospital.  The following day, I carefully pressed the little red PillowPet dragon my mother had decided to call Surge (short for Surgery, apparently) over my aching belly, and the nurse rolled me downstairs and out into the cold, bright world.

Since then, I've been getting better daily.  I have been able to drive a little, and Sunday I went out to eat with my family.  Tonight, I went to a Christmas party for the choir, and I tottered down the hall to the organ in the sanctuary to play for a little while because I look forward to playing Christmas music all year long.  I am a little sore and a lot tired, but each new thing I manage to do is a victory.  Based on everything I've read, I'm moving through this slow process like I'm supposed to.

Things are different now, though.

There are the physical differences.  I've lost about twenty pounds, and weight continues to slip off me.  I don't hurt inside all the time.  Even though I don't have tons of energy, I still feel better than I did before the surgery.  I have had a couple of headaches, but they've been negligible.

Then there are the other differences.  It seems dramatic to say it, but the version of me who rolled into that operating room died there.  This version of me who rolled out is someone else.  I'd been living in silent and growing fear of this surgery for over ten years.  I hadn't realized how much it had accumulated or how heavy a burden it was until it lifted.  Certain dreams I have had, certain hopes for what my future holds are also gone now.  Other things are going to have to take the place of those dreams, and I'm not exactly sure what those will be.  On the other hand, certain restrictions my condition has caused for me are also gone now, and despite the uncertainty, I can't help but feel oddly liberated because of that.

So now I'm on the other side of this milestone I've been running from for so very, very long.  I'm tottering around and regaining my strength.  I'm re-evaluating, re-organizing, removing, even redecorating.  I'm making plans....slowly.  It's enough.  I have to believe that the worst is past, and now it's time to move on to whatever is next.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day. I've cleaned as much as I would if company were coming. I still have a few things to do. I don't know if it will be enough to let me sleep. 

I'm so nervous. At least it's supposed to be early tomorrow so I don't have that gruesome wait in the hospital. 

I'm just going to watch a little more Doctor Who and try my best to sleep. Hard to believe how much my life is about to change.....