I could never live in a place where there is no autumn or winter. It makes springtime all the more miraculous. Do I have such a bad memory that new leaves are a delight for me year after year? Or is it truly amazing how, over the course of three days, a bright green parasol unfolds from nowhere over a drab streetscape? Even this place is beautiful.
Archive Page 29
17
May
07
Greening
11
May
07
Happy Birthday, Minnesota!
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| I think I can see my house from here. (Map of Minnesota, c. 1910) [U.S. Digital Map Library] |
From today’s Writer’s Almanac:
On this day, in 1858 the state of Minnesota was admitted into the Union. It was from Minnesota that we got the stapler, water skis and roller blades, Scotch tape, Bisquick, Bob Dylan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Spam.
Mmm… Spam. I do so like Spam.
Minnesota also gave us Garrison Keillor, the creator of The Writer’s Almanac and much more. Can’t forget Loni Anderson, also a Minnesotan. Or Jesse “The Mind” (née Jesse “The Body”) Ventura. Judy Garland. Winona Ryder. Prince.
Apart from Scotch tape, Scotchguard, Post-it Notes and various and sundry other 3M products are all from Minnesota. Kitty litter was invented in Minnesota in 1947 by a guy named Edward Lowe. And where else but in the Land of 10,000 Lakes could teenager Ralph Samuelson have invented water skiing in 1922.
10
May
07
In Like a Lion, Out Like A Lamb
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| XOXO |
On June 27, 2007, I will die inside just a little. On that black day, Tony Blair will step down as Prime Minister of the UK.
I’ve had a crush on Tony Blair from the beginning. He’s smart and I’ll even say cute. Then he got even hotter when I began associating him with Bill Clinton, who I would vote for in an instant if he could run for president again. But that’s not what I mean by “crush.”
People alternately make fun of me or express horror that I have an autographed photo of him on a bookshelf at home. Yeah, he’s not the man who was elected in 1997. He was Bushwhacked and hijacked and dragged into compliance with America, into a war his people will not forgive him for, and I hate that. He stands by his decisions, says he still thinks he did the “right thing,” but he acknowledges he may have fallen short of expectations and trusts his people to judge his performance.
The “right thing” may well have been to side with the States. Maybe he’d be equally reviled if he had not stood with our vindictive president, weakening the UK in the process. It was an untenable position for any British PM, and I think he heard the air leaking out of his own credibility the moment Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on that aircraft carrier off the coast of Florida.
However, I still have a lot of respect for him as a politician who isn’t afraid to also be an intellectual. I can’t imagine most American congressmen going up against a British MP in a debate. American politicians don’t even debate anymore. They cram as many talking points into 30 seconds as they can, whether or not it actually addresses or counters their opponents’ points. And, shame on us, we don’t call them out on it. We accept it. But these are the people we have to choose from, so one of them wins and is rewarded for bad behavior and intellectual laziness.
One of the questions at the first Republican “debate” last week was, “What is the one thing you hate the most about America?” I think it was Mitt Romney who paused for a long while and said something like, “I’m at a loss. I love America,” and then went on and on about rolling hills and streams and the hard-working and innovative American people, bla bla bla…
Too bad so many of those hard-working American people can’t afford to keep themselves healthy — to enjoy the mountains and the streams, and to continue being hard-working and innovative. Our ridiculously lopsided and unfair health care system is one of the things I like least about America, but not one of the candidates would dare say something so substantive or meaningful.
But I don’t have a bratty constituency to placate, and I don’t have special interest groups and lobbyists to appeal to, so I can say those things. I don’t have to promise to fix America’s problems even as I paradoxically pretend that America is so great that it has no problems.
Tony Blair has also been accused of being a master of spin. He has been accused of governing like a center-of-attention, American-style president instead of a British prime minister. But I’d trust him before I’d trust many American politicians to carry out good policy. He can function simultaneously and seamlessly as a leader globally, nationally and locally; he can work with or against another president, he can defend Labour policies in his own Parliament, and he can speak to any issue in his home constituency of Sedgefield.
I think he lost more sleep than I did the night of November 7, 2000. And imagine his dismay on the night of November 2, 2004, at the prospect of getting back into the sandbox with us! (Myself, I had a “Tony Blair for President” bumper sticker on my car that year.)
Like most politicians, American or British, I am sure, he started out as an idealist and was driven to realism, even perhaps cynicism, by the forces of the world. I still believe that he has something salvageable of that old pre-Iraq Tony. He can return to idealism after leaving 10 Downing Street. He can run off with Bill Clinton and marry him. (A guy can dream.)
There will be talk ad nauseam of his legacy now. Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, of course. (Great Britain doesn’t exactly have a great record when it comes to Iraq, by the way.) He weakened the House of Commons. He was a hero in Northern Ireland. He has admirably managed the transition of devolution in Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. He did nothing to reform the House of Lords. He had over-reaching domestic policies and didn’t keep his promises. His foreign policy is a disaster. Economic gains made in the last decade are down to Gordon Brown, not Tony Blair. I know little about politics in general and even less about British politics specifically, but whatever your opinion of Tony Blair’s performance, I think it really comes down to this: Is the UK better off now than it was 10 years ago? The general consensus from anyone except a British Conservative seems to be: “Yeah, sure. I guess so.”
He may soon no longer be prime minister of the UK, but he will always be the prime minister of my heart.
09
May
07
Crazy Guy on Henry Street
There’s a crazy guy I used to see every evening when I walked down Henry Street on the way to the East Broadway F train stop after work.
He’s always stationed outside a particular tenement building — if it’s not too cold, if it’s not raining — fussing around in a storage shed right out front. It took me some time to figure out that he lives there. The building, that is, not the shed — though at one point, I did think maybe he lived in the shed. At first I thought he was a homeless guy who just sort of camped out there. I think he’s the building’s super.
I wonder what he does with himself all day. He seems to be outside from morning to night, just sort of waiting, sitting in a folding chair on the sidewalk, maybe talking to someone, maybe just standing there silent and still. Sometimes he lightly sweeps the sidewalk. Sometimes he’s not there at all.
He’s one of those people you see every day. They are part of your routine. They’re like landmarks. You can measure your commute by them. (OK, I’m at the crazy guy in the shed, so I’ve got about four minutes before I hit the front door at work. Enough time to get a bacon, egg and cheese from the deli?) Some of these people you greet. Some of them you don’t greet. Either way, you recognize each other. You have to. It’s every day.
This guy, I decided, I would not greet.
I’d see him from about a block and a half away. Eventually, because I’d be looking looking forward, I’d see him look up at me. I’d look down immediately. I’d usually have my iPod on, so there was no reason to speak; I couldn’t hear him anyway. Just maintain the pace, don’t run away, but don’t look up — and don’t speak.
I’d pass him, and that would be it.
It felt ridiculous to make eye contact with a person but remain silent and expressionless. I should just say hi to him one of these times, I thought. Just some non-committal gesture, like any neighbor. But what then? New York is rife with people for whom a simple nod of the head is an invitation to a conversation, a rant or an opportunity to ask for money.
I could feel him looking at me as I passed. He wasn’t longing for me to look at him, but rather, it seemed he was incredulous that I so studiously avoided looking at him. I could see him out of the corner of my eye aggressively watching me, his head turning slowly to follow me as I passed him. It was creepy and scary and totally justified.
Then I started avoiding eye contact altogether, hoping to discourage him. I’d time my pace with other people on the sidewalk so there would be someone between him and me just as I passed him. Usually he’d be distracted, talking in an excited, raspy voice to someone, always male: a teenager, someone his 20s, someone in his 50s. What could these people have to talk to him about? I assumed they were residents, too. Were these actual conversations, or was he just the annoying weird guy taking advantage of their lag time or their smoke break? He must be lonely.
One day, with no pedestrians between me and him, and no iPod to shield me, I decided I would say hi. No big deal, right? Smile and nod and continue. So, I tried it. We made eye contact from a ways back, and I looked away. As I approached him, I looked up again and met his stare. Maintaining my gait, keeping my hands in my pockets, I nodded and grunted, “Eh,” with a submissive little smile. He cocked his head to one side and, as I passed, he broke into an impassioned, incoherent rant. I seriously do not know what he said, but it was loud and it was angry and it lasted for at least a block.
A-ha! See? This is what I was trying to avoid. That’ll learn ya, I thought.
I convinced myself that he was yelling at me for being rude or stuck up or something, but for all I know he was just telling me about something he’d seen earlier that day.
So, I changed my route. I’d walk around the other side of the block to avoid him. (The unobstructed sun on Henry Street hurts my eyes, anyway, this time of year. And it’s a more direct route to the subway.) But sometimes I’d forget, and I’d find myself on course with the old man.
I tried it again. And this time, instead of lambasting me, he simply nodded back. But with a different expression that, to my mind, said Yes. Thank you. Thanks for looking at me. See? It’s not so hard now, is it?
I walked back around the the other side of the block the next day.
08
May
07
Guerilla Catholicism
Sometimes religion comes at you from the unlikeliest of places. We are accustomed to the subway preachers and the greeting card sermons of certain American heads of state and stumping political candidates. I see South Americans in my neighborhood cross themselves whenever we pass St. Joan of Arc on the bus. However, there are some places you just don’t expect to find it.
For example, the other day, my husband was paying for an Ambien prescription and was leaving the counter when the pharmacist asked him, “Are you Catholic?” Apparently she was tipped off by his last name.
Yes, he said, he was raised Catholic.
“Oh,” she said, “Well if you pray, you might try praying to the patron saint of sleepers.”
It was a sweet gesture, to be sure, meant in all earnestness and out of a sense of neighborliness, but I thought it a bit odd and maybe even ironic. I don’t consider it a resounding endorsement of the drugs she is dispensing when a pharmacist suggests dosages of prayer as treatment. I can imagine, in a generic way, that prayer and meditation might help bring the body to a calmed, centered state, better able to sleep than the stressed-out, jittery creatures we have become. But from the medical profession it sounds kinda like: Give it up, buddy. Better start saying your prayers.
It was a saint he had not heard of. (There are so many of them.) After a little bit of research, all I could find was the legend of St. Dymphna. Her name is occasionally invoked, apparently, in matters of sleep disorder.
Hers is another one of those heartwarming tales of human misery so popular among we Catholics. Family values stuff. Her mother dies, and her father is unable to remarry to his satisfaction. He takes a fancy to her, she being the next best thing genetically, and tries to rape her. When she refuses him and fights back, he kills her in a rage.
I guess what we learn from these stories is that it could always be worse. That must be where we derive the comfort of prayer. I can’t sleep, but it’s not like my dad is trying to do me. So … who am I to complain? Let’s just see what’s on TV.
01
May
07
What? No, really… what?
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| Mad, crazy turkey, or the link between dinosaurs and birds? |
Last night I had a dream that I was stalking an archaeopteryx. This would be the long-extinct link between reptiles and birds. The “first bird,” if you will.
I was crawling on my belly on a forest floor. After waiting for who knows how long, I looked up and saw it through a gap in the leafy canopy. Its flight followed a graceful arc, its wings beating effortlessly. I don’t think an archaeopteryx actually flew this way. It was not a bird as we know it. It was a reptile, much heavier than a bird. Its bones were not hollow. It glided, and it flew short distances like a bird, but it was not like an albatross or an eagle or a sparrow.
The creature in my dream was beautiful, with a spectrum of feathers splayed out along its wings like a multicolored poker hand. It had fins of feathers on its head, too, like a gryphon. They looked like horns or ears. The head in real life would actually probably have been covered with something more like scales than feathers. And it would not have had horns. I remembered this after I woke, but during the dream I saw the creature as a normal specimen.
It soon spotted me and began to approach. I remembered it was a carnivore and that I probably looked pretty tasty, but I didn’t know where I could run to avoid it. And anyway, this being a dream, I couldn’t move. The closer it got, the uglier it looked and the slower it moved. Soon it was just floating down, like the petal of a blossom or a piece of fluff from the laundry.
When it reached the ground with a soft bounce, the creature looked nothing like it did when it was in the sky. It was brown, gray, withered, shabby. It looked like pieces were missing — its eyes, for one thing. It had no feathers. It was dried up. It was dead. But it was still moving.
It was trying to communicate with me, but it made no sound. It just hopped and flapped impotently, thrashing around through the dead leaves. I had the impression that these movements were meant in a menacing way. It wanted to hurt me, but it was harmless.
Then I became aware that there was someone else on the ground next to me. He or she was a companion. I knew that much, but I didn’t know who it was. This person was similarly dead and dried up in a gray, intact, zombie sort of way, able to move arms and legs but not apparently able to stand or walk or talk. Then I realized the archaeopteryx was communicating with — threatening, in fact — this dead friend. The corpse was scared of this creature, I could tell. And I realized that I was not. Rather than being startled by a partially mobile dead person, I was mainly annoyed that I couldn’t tell who it was.
I stood up and ran away. I tore through the brush, forgetting where I had just come from.
01
May
07
The Quick and the Deed
Walking to work one day not long ago, I had the opportunity to play the Good Samaritan. A man walking toward me on the sidewalk in the opposite direction was holding a plastic grocery bag full of papers and miscellany. I guess it contained one too many things, because the bag split and papers went pouring out onto the sidewalk. The morning spring breeze picked up and sent it all eddying and dancing down the sidewalk — torn-open envelopes and bills and other bits with handwriting on them.
The poor guy barked a PG-13 curse and immediately fell to his knees and threw his hands and feet in every direction, like a Twister champion, trying to stop the papers from getting away and missing several. They didn’t seem to be driven by the wind so much as by a desperate desire to get as far from him, in any direction, and as quickly as possible. One glided under a parked car.
As the bag spilled, three people breezed right past him, offering no help. I was approaching him anyway, so it was no big deal for me to stop and see what I could do.
At first I stopped simply because it would have been ridiculous and conspicuously uncharitable not to. I helped him not necessarily because I wanted to but to avoid shame, setting myself up in my head in opposition to the people who didn’t stop.
I was glad I did. He was embarrassed, the poor guy. He would not look up at my face. As if the papers scattering around us were bits of underwear or nude photographs. But he was also grateful. “Thank you. Thanks, sir. Thanks,” he said.
Our reactions to the situation were so different. He’d been taken by surprise, something of his life exposed briefly and rudely, his independence momentarily stripped away by forces outside of his control, whereas my simple interaction with him, which neither of us was looking for in particular, took me outside of my own head and put me in a position of power. I know it sounds idiotic, but I think I actually felt some dominance over him in that moment. It was brief and a little embarrassing, but it was power. I was doing the one thing he needed most right at that moment.
So I gathered up what I could. I knew we didn’t have all of it. Some papers I had just seen moments prior were gone when I turned around. Oh well. He looked up at me finally and smiled and said one last thank-you.
“No problem,” I said. He seemed to have everything under control, so I carried on along my way. I wondered what he would do about the missing pieces, but I felt wonderful for at least doing my best to help. Should I have told him he didn’t have all of it? Did he already know? Would I know if it were me?
In that moment, the paper that had gone under the parked car skidded out into view and made its way down the street away from the man. I ignored it and kept walking.
When you commit to a kind gesture, how far must you go? Did I negate my good deed because I didn’t chase that page down the street? My obligation was complete. What was my obligation? Hadn’t I done my best? No, I knew I hadn’t. It wasn’t quite the same thing as walking an old lady halfway across the street and then dashing off when the light changes, leaving her to contend with honking horns and whizzing bicyclists. But it occurred to me that I hadn’t really helped him at all. Those people who had walked past him were rude, but at least they were honest. And, in opposition to them, I was certainly no better.
26
Apr
07
Madonna Gets It Right
Madonna is not much use to us as an actress in feature-length films, with some exceptions, but in short films, like this H&M commercial, she really shines as a comic performer. I don’t watch enough TV to see commercials, so I completely missed this one.
25
Apr
07
Good Night. Sleep Tight.
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A friend of mine wrote an article about a bedbug infestation she — just barely — lived through.
And I quote:
Their tiny brown legs never tickled as they scurried across my face while I slept. Their sharp mouths weren’t enough to make me flinch. I could imagine it, though, and that was enough.
Each night, in bed, I waited wide-eyed for hours knowing they were homing in on the heat of my body and the escape of my breath. I protected most of my body with a long-sleeved shirt tucked into pajama bottoms tucked into socks. The slightest tingle upon my skin made me flick on the light, snap back the covers and begin the heart-pounding examination. Had they arrived?
Eventually, pure exhaustion forced my eyes closed. And that was when I unwillingly became breakfast, lunch and dinner for the little body snackers. My face and neck got the worst of it.
Are you scratching your neck yet?
... but enough about me 