OneSaneVoice

While we were gone

Posted on January 3, 2008 by onesanevoice

Due to poor wireless service on vacation this entry was written at sea and later published on land.

We’re on a cruise ship to the Western Caribbean as I write this and two of the means for distant communication provided onboard are satellite television and wireless Internet. Neither one of these has exceeded our expectations like the food has with the wireless hookup being mainly fictitious. But the TV connection has been regular enough to deliver the news both horrible and hopeful.

The horrible news is that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. This story appeared on CNN the moment we turned on our stateroom TV after strolling the streets of Cozumel. Husband and I were sun-kissed and relaxed and the broadcast yanked us back to reality with blunt force. I had just recently read about former Prime Minister Bhutto and her vision for Pakistan’s future. Hearing this report, the same sadness washed over me as it has each time a leader of great promise is murdered, with the names now almost too numerous to mention.

The very next story was that Martin Tankleff was released on a million dollars bail after serving seventeen years for the murder of his parents. This crime occurred in a wealthy community on Long Island in 1988 and I could tell as it was unfolding that it would live to spawn a dozen HBO movies. Marty Tankleff was 17 the morning he awoke on the first day of his no doubt privileged senior year in high school to find his parents brutally murdered.

He called the police. They took him into custody and proceeded to question him at the station house for many hours without counsel or another adult present. One of the interrogating detectives maneuvered him into a confession which he immediately recanted. He never signed a written statement. He was arrested and charged with the murders.

It quickly came to light that the last person to see his father alive was an embittered business partner who owed him $500,000 and who faked his own death after the killings, resurfacing in California a week after Marty was arrested. Time passed and with Marty’s conviction and 50-year sentence, his parents’ $3 million estate passed to his half-sister who conspicuously stopped defending her brother’s innocence.

Over the years, dozens of appeals were filed on Marty’s behalf with the case never being reopened. Recently, a private investigator uncovered evidence that a convict confided to fellow inmates that he had driven two men to the Tankleff home the night of the murders and watched them leave in bloody clothes. The named killers were discovered to have ties to the business partner. Ties between the partner and the police officer who coerced Marty’s confession also came to light.

Twenty years later, the spoiled teenager who never changed his story is now pushing forty and looking not so good for this crime. At the time Martin Tankleff was convicted of killing his parents, my kids were both under the age of ten. They have since graduated college, embarked on careers, developed personal relationships and generally lived the lives I always envisioned for them. And while they did that, Arlene and Seymour Tankleff’s son was doing none of it. If he gets a second chance, I hope he makes them proud.

With her Featured Fotos today Daughter says Run, Don’t Walk

while we were 4 skulls,_bones,_spiders,_oh_my!

skulls, spiders and bones . . . oh my!

Posted in Travelblog | Tagged Benazir Bhutto, famous Long Island criminal cases, Martin Tankleff, Pakistan assassination | Comments Off

Feet First

Posted on December 30, 2007 by onesanevoice

Due to poor wireless service on vacation the following was written at sea but published on land.

Before I met Husband, my world concept of mankind was divided into roughly two sections: ancient and modern. All the citizens of cultures past fit neatly under the umbrella of ‘ancient peoples’. I recall my junior high school project on Sumer and Mesopotamia, my mega-presentation with the giant three-dimensional map with little clay figures huddled along the river, and the memory is one of ancient civilizations filled with ancient peoples.

Then I married Husband and suddenly they all had distinct identities. Thanks to his passion for ruins and history, I came face to face with the preserved evidence of lost cultures. On our honeymoon, I stood awestruck in the middle of the Coliseum and later explored the streets of lava-coated Pompeii. Vacations to the Southwest had me inspecting petroglyphs on the walls of caves inhabited in another century by the Anasazi Indians.

In an attempt to appear worldly, I turned to Husband at one of our early ruin visits in Arizona and asked, “Who lived here before the Anasazi, the Incas?” He gave me a look of surprise and said, “The Incas were in Peru.” Oops. I recovered quickly. “Right, Peru. I meant the Mayans.” Now he looked at me like I was just having fun with him. “The Mayans were in Mexico,” he said, smiling to indicate he got my little joke. Oh, I’m a kidder all right.

Now we’re on a cruise to Mexico and Belize and the ancient peoples are back. We toured the remains of the walled city of Tulum in Playa Del Carmen, a ceremonial center of the ancient Mayan culture (note to self: M&M; Mayans=Mexico) and the same realization struck me on the rocky slopes of Tulum as it had in Mesa Verdi, Monument Valley, and the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey: ancient people may be dead but modern people are idiots. No matter where I look I see tourists in flip-flops.

Ancient people called this type of footwear ‘thongs’ but modern people reassigned that word to indicate friction to a different body part. Nevertheless, there is barely a ruin anywhere that is not on unforgiving terrain – rocky and hilly with shards of stone and gnarled whatever sticking up out of the ground – and everyone is prancing around in flip-flops. Asian couples are leaning against each other on steep slopes because they’re in flip-flops. Shirtless dudes from Laguna Beach are walking around going, “Wow, man, this place is frigging rocky” and picking stones from between their toes because they’re in flip-flops.

So I’m thinking, do people not realize they’re going to visit one of the wonders of the world? Do they look in a guidebook where it says Monument Valley and think maybe it’s a water park? Does a dad wake up one morning and say to his family, “Hey, let’s take a trip to the Grand Canyon! Does everyone have their flip-flops? Judy, help Kip find his flip-flops.” It’s like people are under the impression someone swept up after the Roman Empire. So they lurch around on rocks in beach shoes wondering how this ancient civilization met its demise. If they don’t knock all their brains out maybe they’ll ponder how we’ll meet ours.

Daughter’s Fotos spotlight Body Parts In Color from Hunter College Open Studios and HOWL! Art Festival in Tompkins Square Park

Posted in Travelblog | Tagged Anasazi, ancient civilizations, HOWL! Art Festival, Hunter College Open Studios, Incas, Mayans, Ponpeii | Comments Off

On a Wing and a Song

Posted on December 26, 2007 by onesanevoice

Husband and I are on a great vacation at the moment and I will share some adventures in another post. At this moment I am reflecting on our different styles when it comes to flying which we just did once again. I’ve blogged a great deal about my experiences above and below the clouds but for this entry the focus is more about our individual airport behavior.

Neither of us are flight lovers and this has nothing to do with the Mile-High Club or any similar adult antics I’ve heard about and can’t even fathom (don’t other passengers get suspicious when they hear your Barry White CD?) Specifically, my own white-knuckle fever begins with boarding and eases with landing. The whole concept of being airborne with nothing but nothing between me and the earth’s surface is nauseating. I’ve never in my life actually puked onboard a plane but that’s only because I know what I look like puking.

Husband’s anxiety revolves around fear of missing the plane: car service not arriving in time causing us to miss the plane; being scrutinizd by security for so long we miss the plane; me lingering in the ladies room so long that we miss the plane (I should be so lucky). As a result of his nervousness he gets very chatty. I do not withstand chattiness well when I’m trying very hard not to puke.

This is the kind of thing that happens: An airport attendant will loudly announce to the line waiting to go through security that everyone should have their boarding pass ready and Husband will wave his boarding pass in the air calling out, “I’ve got it! It’s right in my hand here!” and I keep telling him this just attracts attention. The same goes for his assuring the lady waving the security wand over his belt that he has nothing to hide, he’ll take anything off she tells him to. She looks at him like, “Hmmm,” and motions another guard over to help inspect him. He might as well just yell out, “Al Qaeda in the house!” and be done with it.

Because of my preoccupation in the airport before flights, I’ve come close to missing important occurrences which thankfully were pointed out by Husband. On a trip to London last year, we entered JFK and walked through an outlying seating area and I spotted an elderly man, seemingly homeless, sitting all alone in the corner with his back to us strumming a guitar and humming softly. He was in worn jeans, an equally worn denim jacket and what looked like a railroad engineer’s cap. I expressed sympathy to Husband and said maybe we should go drop a buck in his guitar case. He looked at me like I was deranged. “You go ahead, I’ll wait here and watch,” he said. “That’s Pete Seeger.”

Mr. Seeger was indeed on our British Airways flight and we approached him as we arrived at Heathrow and thanked him for the unforgettable musical legacy he has provided for over half a century. He was humble and gentle and as soft-spoken as you would expect. In the most elemental way, it felt noble to be in the presence of the man who gave us such era-defining songs as Turn Turn, Turn and If I Had A Hammer, along with the classic Where Have All the Flowers Gone? written after he was indicted in 1956 by the House Unamerican Activities Committee. A survivor of one of the darkest periods in our country’s social history, Pete Seeger wrote some of the richest lyrics in our collective memory. Amusingly, I came close to increasing his personal fortune by a whole dollar.

Ideas for Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All are reflected below in Daughter’s Featured Fotos

grad school final project

hot chocolate from the bald man

on a wing 3 those_cans_arent_picking_themselves_up_sock_puppet_village

home for the holidays in sock puppet village. pick this mess up.

watch your face fathead. and have a happy new year

Posted in Travelblog | Tagged folk songs, HUAC, If I Had a Hammer, Pete Seeger, Turn Turn Turn, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? | Comments Off

Meet Me in the Clubhouse

Posted on December 22, 2007 by onesanevoice

This week was finals again and I woke up with a killer cold on Monday. I haven’t had a cold in years but don’t go thinking how lucky I am because I’m a huge allergy sufferer so it basically always feels like I have a cold. Now that I have one for real I see how different they are. With allergies you feel like you’re right on the cusp of getting something worse, kind of subliminally shitty. With a flat-out cold you’re just a walking wet cow pie.

Normally I don’t go to the doctor until I’m a candidate for intravenous antibiotics but this time what with finals and us going on vacation soon I went right away and he advised me on which over-the-counter products to take as well as giving me an Rx for antibiotics should things get worse while we’re gone.

I was disappointed not to see Nyquil on my doctor’s list of suggested remedies because me and Nyquil are likethis. Denis Leary used to do a thing on Nyquil in his No Cure for Cancer routine and he called it the Green Death. He scoffed at the cherry-flavored one and the orange-colored one and the store brand one and advised going right to the Original Green Death and I totally agree. Anything that tastes like it could dissolve lead paint must have healing power.

Yesterday at one of my finals everyone seemed to be acting loopy until I figured out I was just over-medicated. The proctor kept repeating instructions and the same police siren kept passing under our window and I felt locked in a spiral of waning Nyquil and current Dayquil with the Hall’s lozenge clicking against my teeth so loud I thought I would scream. Then just before the test began a classmate came in late, very upset that a piece of personal electronic equipment of hers had been stolen from the computer lab when she stepped away from her computer for a few minutes.

This was unsettling because it obviously meant a fellow student had taken it which was worse than the theft I experienced in the parking lot in What’s Mine is Yours because my crime was likely committed by a non-student. Then she said she filed a police report and requested the entire school be fingerprinted since the thief had taken her valuable out of its case and left the case behind, no doubt with incriminating evidence all over it. She said this very matter of fact, like it would be a logical thing to expect. Thanks to all the current crime investigation shows there’s barely a person alive who doesn’t know GSR stands for gunshot residue. So now I’m picturing Gil Grissom and the CSI lab descending on my final exam with Sara Sidle patting me down and it just wasn’t a day I was up for it.

A million hours later it finally got to be bedtime and I put on my soft, snuggly black fleece pajamas with the red piping around the cuffs. I wish I could remember where I got these because I would go back and buy a case of them. And then because the cold weather makes my fingertips crack, I tried this remedy I read about in a magazine. I coated my hands with a thick moisturizer and then covered them with little white cotton gloves they sell in the drugstore for just this purpose. When I was all done I left the bathroom and headed for bed.

Halfway into the bedroom, Husband looked up and grinned at me. Not knowing what this was about I stopped and shrugged my shoulders in my black pajamas with the red trim and held my white-gloved hands in the air like, “What?”

He grinned even wider and said, “Wait right there, Minnie. Mickey went to get the car.”

And now boys and girls, it’s time to say goodbye to all our company. See you real soon.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos say Childhood: It Ain’t Just For Breakfast

inspiration

generosity

babar, the rebel years

small things in neon lights

Posted in Skool Daze | Tagged campus thefts, CSI, Denis Leary, Green Death, Nyquil | Comments Off

Of Books and Faces

Posted on December 18, 2007 by onesanevoice

On Friday I traveled to Manhattan’s east side where Daughter teaches early childhood special education. My assignment was to pick a book to read to the students ranging in age from six to eight with varied attention spans and limitations. I chose Big Dog, Little Dog and The Teacher from the Black Lagoon, both from my personal extensive library of children’s stories left behind by the childhood of my children.

The kids were adorable, respectful and participatory. After the first book, I asked for a show of hands as to who had heard it before. A few students raised their hands. One of them said he wanted to ask me a question and I said to fire away – I was an expert on Big Dog, Little Dog. He said, “What’s that brown circle on your face?” I told him it was a birthmark and that lots of people have them, mine just happens to be on my cheek so it’s hard to miss. Another boy with very thick glasses popped up next to my face for a closer look. “Oh, yeah, now I see it. That was a good book.”

I fell in love with all of them.

After the school day ended, Daughter whisked me from the Upper East Side down to Soho where she has artwork on display in a gallery. Then we prowled the Union Square Holiday Market, a yearly tradition wherein Daughter notes something I loved but didn’t buy and then goes back another day to get it for me. We had souvlaki pitas at one place and gourmet tea and bread pudding at another. We walked a distance in the cold winter air that for me was approximately a thousand blocks but for Daughter was probably a few short of her average. At nightfall, we landed in her apartment where she showed me how to use my digital camera. It was a perfect day.

Now it’s the weekend and I should be studying for my finals next week but instead I got sucked into The Outsiders again, one of the few movies that in my opinion actually does justice to the book it was based on. The other one that gets my vote is To Kill a Mockingbird. Interestingly, both books were presumed to have been written by men when they were first published; Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Hinton’s publisher suggested using initials instead of Susan Eloise because it was feared no one would believe a woman could write such a convincing saga of male adolescence and alienation. Harper Lee’s publisher also did not promote the fact that the author of such searing social commentary was female. Which is all reminiscent of that early women’s lib poster that said, “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in high heels.”

The Outsiders was written in 1967 making this year its 40th birthday. The book’s theme of social outcasts and class warfare among teens in rural Oklahoma set the groundwork for a genre to follow, everything from American Graffiti and Grease right up to A Bronx Tale and Friday Night Lights. Not that adolescence owns the market on social insecurity and rights of birth. Fitting in everywhere may be a common desire but rarely is it a realistic one. What we need mostly are not people just like us but people who understand and accept us as we are. Like the brave and special children in Daughter’s class, and all the big dogs and little dogs everywhere.

Daughter’s Fotos taken at Fresh Dance 2007 SUNY New Paltz ask us all Who Are We?

acrobats

dancers

musicians

who knows?

Posted in Random Thoughts and Adventures | Tagged class warfare, Fresh Dance SUNY New Paltz, Harper Lee, S.E. Hinton, social outcasts, special education, The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird | Comments Off

Pride and Remembrance

Posted on December 14, 2007 by onesanevoice

In one of my other lifetimes, in the marriage before this, I had an extended family as colorful as an off-Broadway cast on opening night. Some are still here, many are gone, and still others reflect those that came before like a mirror image in a glassy pond. Of those no longer with us, the one I think about most often is Fran.

Fran was my ex-husband’s sister, eleven months older than him, with the two of them more than a decade younger than their other siblings. My ex-in-laws had two sets of children over a dozen years apart. I never really found out what the story was with that. Mid-life babies are certainly not uncommon, but having two of them less than a year apart in the late 1940’s seems either significantly bohemian or seriously insane.

Young Fran distinguished herself early on as a free thinker and energetic doer. Her accomplishments were so numerous and diverse that a family legend sprung up around their frequent occurrence. As a child, my ex was often questioned by his parents about the happenings in grade school and he regularly reported that Fran received yet another award at a school assembly. My ex-mother-in-law demanded of him, “And when are you going to make me proud?” To which he replied, “I just did. I told you about it.”

Fran married a man with two young daughters that she showered with as much love as the daughter she gave birth to at the age of 40. In a bizarre pairing of miscommunication and malpractice, Fran barely survived childbirth. We all rushed to the hospital when her husband called that she was in danger. Emerging from an unconscious state, she told us she dreamed about hearing two voices as she walked down a brightly lit path. The male voice kept repeating, “We’re losing her, we’re losing her,” as it became more and more distant. But the female voice said, “No, she’s coming back,” and Fran felt drawn forward. We told her it was probably the nurse she had heard through the fog of anesthesia. She said no, it was her daughter’s voice. No one had told her yet she’d had a girl.

Her little girl grew up happily with two big sisters and Daughter as a close cousin. The four girls were together every chance they had at Fran’s big Victorian house in Brooklyn. They knew all the hiding places under the stairs and behind the porch and in the trees. They put on musical shows and costume plays under the guidance of Fran, a high school English teacher and Theatre Arts director. They were never berated about spills on the rug or broken vases because these were only objects. A heart was the one thing you were never allowed to break at Fran’s.

My ex and I had recently divorced when he called to say Fran died suddenly at 52. Acute onset leukemia took her within weeks. The standing room only funeral chapel was overwhelmed with mourners wanting to speak and share their remembrances, and every story was warm and funny and special just like Fran. Her 12-year-old daughter added these stories to her own memories and grew up beautiful and talented just as her mother always knew she would.

Husband and I were away this past weekend or we would have accompanied Daughter and Fran’s stepdaughter to the college where Fran’s youngest studies and performs. We are very sorry to have missed it, but thrilled we were able to attend last year. It’s my pleasure to share with you some of the images Daughter captured that Fran would have loved.

Fresh Dance 2007 at SUNY New Paltz

Posted in Brooklyn is calling | Tagged Fresh Dance SUNY New Paltz, near death experience, surviving childbirth | Comments Off

Fly THIS, JetBlue

Posted on December 10, 2007 by onesanevoice

It’s Thursday afternoon and we are sitting here on the runway at JFK for, let’s see, close to two hours now. Husband and I had this madcap idea of dashing off to St. Augustine, Florida for the weekend for reasons I will get to in another entry but this post is strictly plane-bound.

I used to be a big fan of JetBlue back when they first came on the scene and I think we even have some shares of their stock. They didn’t make me hate flying any less; they just enabled me to watch Law & Order while I was hating it.

Our pilot came on the speaker shortly after boarding was complete and said our plane had recently returned from Mexico where it got a new paint job and to please be patient while maintenance came onboard to take care of a few things. This caught my interest because I didn’t know planes go to Mexico to be painted (Hacienda del Earl Scheib?) and I was busy contemplating that when the girl behind me made a loud cell phone call.

“How you doin’, nigga?! Shit, I am one sorry nigga sitting here on this runway!! Fuck this shit!” I can’t even describe how loud this was on our silent, motionless plane but I guarantee every person within 10 rows either direction heard it all and no one reacted the tiniest bit. Not even the parents with little kids. We live in curious times now where courtesy is optional and privacy is obsolete but commenting on what is thrown before us in public is avoided. Why? Because it would be rude? Because we’re afraid of what might happen? The general public has become the hostage of people with no manners.

Out of sheer boredom I considered whipping out my cell phone and calling my friend Caryn and yelling, “Hey, what’s up? Happy fucking Hanukkah, bitch!! Man, they are gonna keep my hymie ass on this ground for-eh-vah!” I didn’t of course because one, I’m not the maniac I profess to be; two, I might be garrotted with a headset wire by the chick behind me; and especially three, Husband would change his seat.

So I’ve watched the yellow-jacketed maintenance crew come and go for the past two hours, horrified that one went into the cockpit carrying duct tape which you can’t tell me is an acceptable repair for anything more advanced than a screen door. The pilot just came on again and assured us the repair crew is working “frantically” to get us airborne and he should really know that people in a giant metal cylinder that has the ability to fly but isn’t doing so don’t ever want to hear their pilot say the word frantic.

Fortunately, Husband booked us seats in the emergency exit row so we have extra legroom. You probably already know this but you should NEVER book the seats in front of the emergency row because the backs don’t recline. This may not be a tragedy on a trip to Florida, but if you’re flying from New York to Seattle you’ll be sitting bolt upright so long your crap will be shaped like rigatoni for a week.

The flight attendant is now giving her talk that starts out telling us where the exit doors are and ends with terra blue chips. I’m aware that there’s more in the middle but if it’s stuff I really need to know I’m sure the doll behind me will fill me in at the top of her lungs while I’m kissing my ass goodbye.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos tell stories of Side by Side

daily chat

standing guard

double vision at the street art show

plums

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged emergency row seats, fear of flying, flight delay, JetBlue, JFK, rude passengers | Comments Off

Junior High Revisited

Posted on December 6, 2007 by onesanevoice

Over the weekend I went shopping and lunching with a dear friend we’ll call Friend. She is a highly regarded professional in her field doing advanced graduate work. We took turns kvetching about our current education frustrations, mine being documented most recently in Get Out of the Room, and she brought me up to speed on hers saying I could call 9-wah-wah if the whining got too loud.

It seems that the students in her program were paired off to do a big paper/presentation and Friend got teamed with a guy named Darren. He didn’t seem profoundly motivated but she had confidence it would work out. They were all professionals, right? Famous last words along the lines of “Don’t worry, I packed the parachute myself.”

Friend completed her half and emailed him for his contribution so she could put it all together. No response. More emails were followed by persistent stalling. He was very busy. This was not his priority. Stop pressuring him. No, she didn’t understand, he was REALLY busy.

The due date was looming and Friend needed to vent so she forwarded his latest annoying email to a few classmate friends asking what they would do in her place. Figuring everyone had gone through the group-project nightmare by the time they were in eighth grade, Friend hoped someone would have a suggestion. One classmate responded, “What a loser” and instead of clicking Reply she hit Reply All so the original writer of what was forwarded also received her comment. The classmate’s inbox soon contained an email saying, “I’ll be seeing you after class” signed “Darren the loser.”

So it wasn’t eighth grade at all. It was seventh.

Friend took a bite of her pizza and continued. The paper got handed in at deadline after more tense and evasive correspondence. Shortly thereafter, Friend and Darren were summoned to the instructor’s office. Part of the paper, they were informed, was plagiarized. The instructor acknowledged Friend’s work ethic and diligence and said it was too bad she had not brought the team’s problems to the instructor’s attention beforehand. Now Friend’s name was right there on the page. In academia, as in the rest of the world, if you sign it, you’re in it.

Friend was aghast. She is maniacally honest. She is like me only better. When we see a woman on the street wearing terrific shoes, Friend will say, “I wonder if I could find those online” while I’’m thinking, “I wonder if I could knock her down and grab them without onlookers identifying me.”

As a mother, Friend had spent her life raising children with strong values, reinforcing time and again the importance of honesty and character: don’t do drugs; always use a condom; lying is bad; cheating is worse. Lessons we know well and live always no matter what our names are on.

Friend: Can you believe this crap?

OSV: It’s a good story.

We looked at each other over our pizza.

OSV: I’’ll change the names.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos taken at the Museum of Natural History are One Word Wonders

unicorn

dude!

lunch

noel

Posted in Skool Daze | Tagged advanced graduate work, email threats, plagiarism, reply vs reply all, team presentation | Comments Off

Hypertension not only kills, it annoys

Posted on December 2, 2007 by onesanevoice

On my way home from school the other day I was reminded why I’ve always loved this neighborhood. Our community is situated next to a pond which is home to a large flock of waterfowl. Sometimes they look like geese to me and sometimes ducks and in fact the pond may have both. By now you’ve figured out I’m not what you would call NatureGirl but I really like these birds no matter what they are.

It is a fairly common sight to see the ducks (let’s go with ducks) crossing the main road of the neighborhood. Once one starts across they all follow and there are many of them. For the twenty years I have lived here, it is the unspoken rule to wait for the ducks to cross if you encounter them while driving. It’s actually an adorable sight, the parents hurrying the little ones along with their attentive waddle, and from beginning to end it probably takes a minute and a half to two minutes for the procession to pass.

Over the years I have seen school buses stop and wait, parents screaming at their kids in SUVs stop and wait, mail trucks stop and wait, everyone always watches and waits. Today the car ahead of me paused at the sight of the ducks in the middle of the road and then BLASTED ITS HORN. I couldn’t believe it. It was the neighborhood equivalent of kicking the cane out of an old lady’s hand. The ducks all started flapping and panicking, even the ones who were already safely across, with those stranded in the roadway waddling around in agitated circles not knowing what to do.

As soon as there was enough of an opening, the motorist flew through. When the ducks got their wits about them they realized I was letting them proceed so they all settled down and started the parade again. I was probably watching and waiting about 20 seconds when the car that had pulled up behind me gave his horn an impatient tap. I ignored him. I figured as soon as he paid attention and looked around he would know why we weren’t moving. Wrong. He tapped his horn again a little harder. The scene I was fantasizing about was me walking over to his car, leaning into the window and saying, “Hi! How’re you doing? Hey, can you show me some proof you’re not a dickhead?”

But before I could go with the impulse he threw his car into reverse, peeled around me, and plowed right into the ducks. It was horrible. They flipped out even worse than they had with the first moron because this time they were literally scrambling for their lives. They collided with each other, some fell onto their necks in their rush to save themselves and their babies, and the air was scattered with feathers like so many snowflakes. The cretin driver never looked back.

Another driver in the line behind me got out of his car when I did and we both made sure the flock crossed safely. He was as disturbed as I was. But not as disturbed as the dickhead driver’s going to be because I remember his car exactly and this is a small neighborhood. The ducks may soon forget but the dick will be reminded.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos offer various illustrations of That Neighborhood Feeling

ben yehuda market, jerusalem

tel aviv through the trees

hypertension 3 trippy_suburbia_houses___newscasters_DFN_Gallery

trippy suburbia Robert Selwyn’s Houses & Newscasters DFN Gallery, NYC

hypertension 4 yankee_bike_fan_chauffeur_anyone

yankee-fan-bike-chauffeur anyone?

Posted in Rage Against the Machine | Tagged duck crossing, picturesque community, rude drivers | Comments Off

Like the Pilgrims Before Us

Posted on November 28, 2007 by onesanevoice

This year for Thanksgiving Husband suggested making reservations instead of a turkey since it would just be the two of us with Son and Daughter who are in their twenties and no longer live at home. I’m not a gifted cook, albeit an enthusiastic eater, and all four of us have different favorite holiday foods with Son avoiding turkey altogether. Since I love lamb I’m always looking for historical facts connecting our forefathers with sheep, but in the end they’re probably not stories that bear repeating so it’s better just to order quietly.

In the middle of our meal Daughter brought up a topic she was eager to introduce.

DTR: What does everyone think about taking a family vacation? We’ve never done that in the whole seven years you guys have been married and it would be so much fun.

HUSBAND: Where were you thinking?

DTR: Alaska. (turning to her brother) You’d like to spend a week in Alaska as a family, wouldn’t you?

SON: No. No, I wouldn’t.

DTR: Well, which idea don’t you like, going as a family or going to Alaska?

SON: (favoring us all with a warm smile) I couldn’t get a week off.

OSV: How about Costa Rica?

HUSBAND: Oh, I would love that.

DTR: Perfect!

SON: Maybe I could take four days. Five nights. Four nights, five days. And I’d have to go plus one.

Husband and I looked at each other like what’s plus one? Some new travel club? Daughter noticed our puzzlement.

DTR: Plus one means him and somebody else. He wants to bring someone. (turning back to Son) You don’t think you could have a good time with just the family? With me?

SON: You could go plus one, too. They pay their own way.

DTR: Who would you bring?

SON: A friend.

DTR: Which one?

SON: Any one.

DTR: What if no one’s available?

SON: I’ll go on Craigslist.

DTR: You’re not taking this seriously! We won’t always have this opportunity as a family. We’re running out of time!

SON: You’re like the Hitler of vacation planning. I can do four nights in Costa Rica and I’ll go plus one.

DTR: Fine.

They turned to face us.

HUSBAND: Dessert?

Unexpected Combinations is the theme for Daughter’s Featured Fotos taken at Hunter College Open Studios

computer graveyard

fusion of concepts

bunny-men

beauty pageant gone bad

Posted in The Kids Are Alright | Tagged family vacation, Hunter College Open Studios, Thanksgiving dinner | Comments Off

OneSaneVoice

While we were gone

Feet First

On a Wing and a Song

Meet Me in the Clubhouse

Pride and Remembrance

Fly THIS, JetBlue

Junior High Revisited

Hypertension not only kills, it annoys

Like the Pilgrims Before Us

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Recent Comments

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Meta