One under par from the roof

Posted on September 21, 2011 by onesanevoice

Yesterday I was out of the house all day on various errands, which included a workout appointment and an extended research session at the local library to gather sources for an upcoming grad school paper.  When I got back it was mid-afternoon and I ran upstairs to get out of my workout clothes.  As I stripped off my top to the spandex exercise tank underneath, I glanced out the window to a swarm of insects.  Oh no, I thought in despair, the hornets-flies-wasps-winged ants, whatever, are back, since we’ve waged battles in the past with all of them.  Getting closer to the window I looked down onto the roof overhang and saw the attraction: a dead bird.  He was on his back with his feet straight up, and if there was still any doubt in my mind that tweetie wasn’t just a sound sleeper, there were insects all over him.  I can’t be certain of course that it was a him, even with his legs up like that, so I’m just using the first gender identifier that comes to mind and no deeper meaning should be ascribed.

Our upstairs is an addition to the house that was added back in the seventies way before we bought it, so if you look out the window of our dressing room, you see the pitched roof of the original ranch.  If you looked yesterday, you’d see a dead bird that would be lying there indefinitely as a food supply for all manner of vermin unless it was removed.  I pulled up the screen to survey how far away the bird was and the insects all made a beeline for the inside of our house, so I flailed them away and shut the screen.  Hmmm, this would require a plan.  A plan and a stick.

I looked around the room and spied a spring-loaded curtain rod behind the door that looked plenty long, so I opened the screen again and leaned out the window with the rod in my hand.  It was too short.  The bugs came at me again and down went the screen.  I went downstairs and toured the house in search of a long instrument to move the bird, and found Husband’s vintage yardstick.  As I prepared to open the screen again, I looked closely at the ruler and realized Husband might not appreciate feathers and bird guts on the end of it, so I put it back in his office and headed for the basement.

There was a Darth Vader Lightsaber on top of some boxes and I waved it around to check its suitability.  It made me feel strong and invincible, especially in my royal blue spandex tank top, but it didn’t seem longer than the yardstick so I put it back where I found it.  I made my way into the furnace room and saw a free-standing box next to the water heater filled with a bunch of Son’s old hockey sticks.  Perfect.  I could totally score with one of these.  I picked out the longest one and wrapped my hands around the black tape that wound down the shaft all the way to the blade.  Satisfied, I jogged back up the two flights.

It was a quarter to three as I lifted the upstairs screen for the last time and leaned halfway out onto the roof with the hockey stick in my hand.  The elementary school had just been dismissed and bunches of kids and their parents were piling into the cars that lined the street in front of our house.  I balanced my weight and took a swing at the bird, missing him entirely, but scraping the hockey blade on the roof shingles loud enough to draw attention from the people below.  The insects were flying into my face and I realized I was committed now to finishing the job, so I leaned further out and swung the stick again sending the bird sailing across the roof and into the storm gutter.  “SHIT!” I yelled, frustrated that after all my effort I would have to call the gutter service to come get tweetie out before the next rain or everything would back up.

Then I noticed my audience.  About twenty parents and children were anchored to the ground by their cars watching a woman in a neon spandex tank top swing a hockey stick out an upstairs window and yell obscenities.  Obviously no one could see the bird.  Not knowing what else to do, I pulled one of my hands off the stick and waved.  “Hi!” I called out.  They scurried into their cars, some of the smaller children with their mouths gaping open in confusion and wonder.  Hey, I may not be She-Ra: Princess of Power, but I do what I can.

Back to Daughter’s Featured Fotos which Never Disappoint

round

round

Keely

Keely

creeping

creeping

one under 4 raisedunderfire

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That’s the way God wants it

Posted on September 14, 2011 by onesanevoice

Having grown up in a TV-loving family, it’s hard for me to work in total silence when I’m at home.  Even while Husband and I were on vacation recently I usually had the television on in the background while I was reading or on the computer in our hotel room.  During this vacation it was invariably The Weather Channel, something I’ve never even watched before, but because we were in the southwest while our house was being assaulted by Tropical Storm Irene back east, I needed to obsessively monitor the atmospheric conditions from a distance.  Husband would walk into the room and moan, “The Weather Channel again?  Why can’t you give it a rest?  It’s eighty-five degrees and sunny here.  Turn off the TV and look out the window already.”  He was absolutely right, of course, but it was like my spirit was possessed by Al Roker.  I couldn’t help myself.  When we left Arizona and checked into our hotel in New Mexico, the first thing I did was grab the TV remote to see if they got The Weather Channel.  Husband just shook his head and threw up his hands.  In my defense, I did do my best to be fun in other ways and you can go ahead and use your imagination about that.

One nice thing about The Weather Channel is that there are limited commercial interruptions.  It’s like they know to cut to the chase, no pun intended here for the storm chasers, those testosterone-addled lunatics too crazy for any wind to blow away.  I have to say I didn’t miss the never-ending parade of insipid televised ads for things like Christian Singles dating.  All the we’ll-find-you-your-soulmate-online commercials are much more annoying than actually being on the sites, which, if I recall, can be quite entertaining unless you believe every guy who tells you he’s been mistaken for George Clooney.  Uh-huh.  Maybe Marvin Clooney, the parolee cousin the family won’t talk about.  He’s on EVERY dating site.

The difference between the Christian Singles commercials and the others, like JDate, Match dot com, and e-Harmony, is that the TV ads for Christian Singles act like they were written by someone very close to God who’s been appointed spokesperson for The Almighty.  Like dating is this religious experience instead of the horror show it is.  The TV spots urge single Christian viewers not to wait for God to lead them to their special someone.  The voice-over reassures with calm authority that sometimes God is telling you it’s time to do it yourself.  And what, I wonder, does this heavenly sign look like?  Your last blind date showing up in socks and sandals?  The tattooed remnants of an ex-lover’s name?  Across the neck?  Is all this saying you could do no worse online?  Can I hear an amen?

I know many couples who have met on dating websites, and a few even got married.  It’s interesting that people are still skittish about saying that’s how they met, as if it makes any difference what road leads you to happiness.  I guess if you’re really concerned that others might judge you for meeting your soulmate online you can always say something more traditional, like you met in a karaoke bar and you got so hammered you puked on his shoes and he had to put you in a cab head first.  I’m sure Mom would much rather hear that.

Today’s Fotos are from our Southwest Vacation where the weather was great, or so I’m told

eager dance

eager dance

Gallup war memorial

Gallup war memorial

hot pursuit

hot pursuit

donkey lost

donkey lost

take it easy

take it easy

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Disaster Prone

Posted on September 4, 2011 by onesanevoice

It all started a couple of weeks ago as I sat in my home office working at my desk.  Something moved.  I thought it was me, then I thought it was just my stomach that went whoops and skidded sideways.  Then I realized it was my rolling desk chair.  Then the phone rang and it was Husband calling from his evacuated building to see if I was okay.  I said, you know, I’m feeling a little dizzy.  I hope I’m not coming down with something.  He said you’re coming down with an earthquake and I said WHAT?  If you’re reading this from California or Japan you’re thinking what a weenie, she doesn’t know what an earthquake is.  And you’d be right.  Here in New York we don’t know from earthquakes and the one we all felt that day was technically an aftershock.  But now we know what it feels like and as The Who famously predicated, we don’t get fooled again.

Husband and I left for a two-week vacation to the Southwest before hints of Hurricane Irene were in the air and flooding the Weather Channel.  Husband would eventually tell fellow travelers in New Mexico that we were from New York and just evacuated further west than advised.  The same day we flew out to Arizona, Son and Girlfriend departed for a destination wedding in the Dominican Republic.  They were due home the Sunday Irene hit NYC.  Daughter was in rural Pennsylvania at Boyfriend’s parents’ farmhouse and due back the same day.  Watching the Weather Channel in our Flagstaff hotel room, I realized both my kids would be stranded wherever they were.  I emailed Son and he said JetBlue had already canceled his return flight.

I called Daughter’s cell and asked if she was back in New York early because of Irene and she said, “Who’s Irene?”  I said don’t kid, this is a serious storm and she asked why I thought that and I said it’s all over the TV and she said the farmhouse doesn’t have TV.  Boyfriend’s parents apparently enjoy a more natural lifestyle than we do and probably even eat fresh food.  I said Bloomberg is shutting down the airports and subways Saturday at noon and Daughter said now you’re just talking crazy.  The subways NEVER shut down.  I said FIND A TELEVISION.

I emailed Son from Gallup, New Mexico and he said JetBlue got them on a plane leaving the Dominican Republic the following Saturday, that’s the best they could do, and it’s a good thing Son speaks Spanish so he could negotiate a good rate at the resort where they were extendedly staying.  Daughter’s boyfriend drove her to NYC the week following Irene and it took them five extra hours because New Jersey was such a hot mess.  I emailed Son from Santa Fe a few days later to tell him to keep an eye on Hurricane Katia which was then making its way toward the DR.  He said he and Girlfriend better be getting on that plane or JetBlue would have to deal with Hurricane Son.

The next morning in Taos I got an email from a friend in our neighborhood saying her basement got flooded from Irene so I started feeling anxious because we’d be gone another week and who knows what we’d find when we got back?  I emailed Son to please go over and do a walk through when he got home since we live in the same town.  The day he called from our living room to give his report, Husband and I were sitting in a rug auction at the Navajo Totah Festival in Farmington, New Mexico.  The rug I was waiting to bid on hadn’t come up yet among the 200 rugs being sold.  The Totah rug auction is a yearly event held in the town’s Civic Center auditorium with the bidders sitting in the mezzanine and the Native American weavers in the balcony.  It’s like nowhere you’ve ever been.  This year there were three older, white-haired women who looked like Iowa church ladies and they were bidding up a storm.  They spent over $20,000 on rugs with one going for $7,500 alone. The weavers in the balcony kept giving them standing ovations.  It was crazy.  My bidding limit for the very small one I was waiting for was $200 and I was hoping none of the three rich old ladies wanted to buy it for a placemat.

Just as my rug hit the podium my cell phone rang.

SON:  The first floor looks perfect and so does the basement.

OSV:  Great.  How about upstairs?  (holding up bidding card)  One fifty!

SON:  One fifty what?

OSV:  Not you, the rug.  I’m bidding on a rug. (waving card again)  One seventy!

SON:  Okay, upstairs looks great.

OSV:  Great!

WOMAN NEXT TO ME:  Yes, it is a great little rug.

OSV:  No, my upstairs.  It’s not wet.

WOMAN:  (nodding with a strange smile)  That’s nice.

I looked behind me to make sure none of the Money Sisters were bidding.  Their cards were down.  My treasure was too minor for them.

AUCTIONEER:  Sold to number 25!

SON:  I’m taking off now, everything’s fine here.  Did you get the rug?

OSV:  Got it.

SON:  Good going, Mom.  Relaxing vacation, huh?

Daughter’s Featured Fotos contemplate Stability

dragonfly

dragonfly

look inside

look inside

flying

flying

check your balance

check your balance

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Every Picture Tells

Posted on August 22, 2011 by onesanevoice

Husband looked around our house the other day and made the same comment he’s been making almost since we got married ten years ago:  there’s too much stuff in here.  Of course, after a decade of living together a nice chunk of the stuff is also his, but never mind that, he happens to be correct.  It also happens that I received a magazine in the mail that day with a whole section on how to decorate your house with taste and minimality, sort of a feng shui guide to shit removal.  I glanced around at our open space living/dining/den/kitchen area and realized with chagrin that our decor broke about five rules on the first page alone.

Interestingly, Husband and I both have passions for collecting; his is Southwestern artifacts and mine is Depression Glass.  Somewhere along the way, his stuff became a collection and mine became tchotchkes.  I agree that collecting glassware that was once given away for free in boxes of laundry detergent might seem offbeat, but in my own defense, we do use many pieces of my collection in our everyday life.  Others should not be touched under penalty of starched boxers.  That said, the real issue is the photographs.  I am a freak for artistically framed pictures of the people I love.  These individuals include the group you might already suspect:  those I gave birth to, those who gave life to me, those who gave life to them, and the lovely man I married who gets to look at all of them in multiple variations.  When you add his loved ones pre-me, you have quite a museum tour.  The magazine article advised to “display family photographs sparingly” in the living room, and reserve them for places like bedrooms, family rooms and hallways.  Well, here I have to admit that EVERY SINGLE room in our house displays family photographs.  Unsparingly.

What to do?  The magazine suggested removing all photos and then display only the favorites in clever odd-numbered groupings in unexpected places.  With a hollow pain in my chest, I swept away all the vintage framed images of my dearly departed elders, the kids’ graduation photos (high school, college, graduate school, 6th grade, you get the picture), and our wedding, cruise and vacation shots and laid them all side-by-side and end-to-end on Son’s old twin bed.  Looking down at the vast array of candids and posed portraits made me feel like I was viewing my whole history in a panoramic slide show.  I must have stood there for a half hour in Son’s silent bedroom conjuring up memories from each frame of frozen life.

Then I chose my favorites:  winsome Daughter in front of our house on her way to junior prom; a birds-eye view of Son in his basketball warm-up suit and game face; Husband kissing me suddenly as the cruise photographer said Smile; Husband with his stepsons when they were (all) young; my parents; his parents; our wedding picture.  An odd assortment in the recommended odd number.  All perfect and now perfectly displayed on the bay window ledge, piano, and middle bookcase shelf.  Seven photographs that hint at the boundless memories our house and our lives hold.  Husband and the magazine were right.  Less can be more just as much as more can never be enough.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos always show what Needs To Be Said

amen

amen

pothole

pothole

sad

sad

LOST!

LOST!

every picture 5 sticker

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The Price of Miracles

Posted on August 17, 2011 by onesanevoice

This morning while I ate my bowl of 80 calorie Fiber One, I watched a story on the Today show about an 11-year-old kid at a charity hockey game out in Minnesota.  Seems his name was drawn in a halftime fundraising raffle and he went out there and hit an 89-foot shot that sent a 3″ puck into a 3-1/2″ hole.  Needless to say, the crowd went wild.  I went wild just watching it.  I imagined Son at age eleven streaming up and down the ice during his hockey games and how it must have felt for this kid to hit a once-in-a-lifetime shot.  Then came the story.  Seems the kid who took the shot was the twin brother of the boy whose name was called.  As the father related it, the son whose name was chosen had stepped outside for a moment, so the dad told his twin brother to take the shot instead, thinking what the hell, what are the chances the puck goes in?  A million to one?  And yet, there he was.  The roar of the crowd.  The huge smile.  $50,000 ready to be awarded.  No one would have ever known otherwise.

Except that the next day the boys’ father called the event organizer and explained what happened, saying, “We thought honesty was the best policy, and we wanted to set a good example for our kids.”  The mom, however, wondered where it was written on the raffle ticket that the person whose name is on it has to be the one who takes the shot.  Clearly there’s some wiggle room here as to what comprises a good example when college funds are at stake.  I asked a sports fan I know what he thought about the situation and he said, “Oh hell, give the kid the money; he made a miracle shot.”  I asked the fan if he’d feel the same way if it was him who organized the event, and he answered quickly “Absolutely not.”  So I guess it depends on which side of the $50,000 you’re standing.  Proving once again that it’s all fun and games until someone gets pucked in the eye.  According to the news report, no final decision has been released yet so we’ll see how it all turns out.  I’m rooting for the twins.  In the end I guess it’s not MY money.

A commercial came on after the story and it got me to wondering, when did death become a side effect?  Those television ads for the new miracle drugs that will save us from high cholesterol clogging our arteries and psoriasis caking our skin all come with a disclaimer that they could cause tremors or diarrhea or death.  Seriously?  Isn’t that kind of an unacceptable leap from diarrhea to death?  I mean one of those things will pass.  The drug companies slip death in like it’s on a par with dizziness.  I don’t think so.  Maybe the word ‘death’ has been so overused that it’s lost its meaning.  Perhaps it would get the public’s attention more if the commercials said, “May cause sleeplessness, irritability, skin rash, and the feeling that comes with hitting a brick wall at eighty miles an hour in a Beetle.”  Now we know what they’re talking about.  I personally would rather the feeling of cholesterol the consistency of motor oil coursing through my veins than that last one.

I gave Son a ride to the airport the other night, and I told him I had dinner recently with a friend whose son was in Alaska in the same area as the teens who were just attacked by bears.  I said my friend was a nervous wreck over it.  Son said he doesn’t blame her; he’s terrified of bears.  I asked him if he’s ever had an encounter with one and he said no; he doesn’t have to to know it would be scary.  I told him we live in a low bear area and if he ever thinks it’s becoming a phobia he can always talk to a professional about it.  He looked over at me and said, “Why would I want to reverse that fear?  It’s a healthy one.  What’s to be gained by thinking a bear could be my friend?  Where would that get me?”  Diarrhea and death crossed my mind, but I kept them to myself.

Cousin is back from China with these amazing Featured Fotos.  Thanx cuz.

Dragon Boat on the Yangtze

Dragon Boat on the Yangtze

Panda Cubs - Chengdu

Panda Cubs – Chengdu

Terracotta Army - Xi'an

Terracotta Army – Xi’an

Fisheye Bund - Shanghai

Fisheye Bund – Shanghai

Transport on the Hong Kong Harbor

Transport on the Hong Kong Harbor

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“You can let go of his neck now. He’s dead, Harry.”

Posted on August 12, 2011 by onesanevoice

When I bought my MINI Cooper this past spring, it came with a free one-year subscription to Sirius/XM radio.  At first I thought big deal, canned music.  Then Husband turned me on to a station that runs classic radio shows from the forties and fifties.  I have to admit that I am a whore for noir and all the tough guy talk and floozy banter.  The lost art of radio melodrama is one that has left a large hole in interactive public entertainment, one that people don’t miss because they have no memory of it.  That includes me, having been born in the fifties at the same time as television for the masses.  Today’s blockbuster mega-movies think they offer something so real the audience feels right in the action, especially with IMAX and 3D, and those venues do entertain.  Where they miss the point is that it doesn’t take any imagination to watch something catch fire, even if you feel like you’re burning too.  Old time radio shows draw you in simply because there are no visuals.  You hear a scratchy sound and then a hot sizzle and know you’re listening to the detective strike a match and light a cigarette.  He inhales deeply, then breathes out his next line coated with gritty smoke that you can hear so plainly it’s right in front of your eyes.  Classic radio shows make you feel like you’re seeing with your ears.  It’s like mental multitasking, and it’s nostalgic and uber cool at the same time.

The half-hour show I heard yesterday while driving around on errands was “Death is a Double-Crosser,” one of the Inner Sanctum shows that aired in 1951.  A diamond cutter’s housekeeper alerts her recently paroled husband, Harry, that her employer is about to cut the King Midas diamond worth over $100,000.  Their plan is to wait until the old man has it scored for the final cut and then murder him, after which Harry will cut the diamond himself since he’s such a talented guy he’s spent half his life behind bars.  But Harry’s so worried he’ll cut the diamond wrong and make it worthless that his hands shake uncontrollably.  Mrs. Harry gets pissed and yells for him to cut the damn thing already; they didn’t plan all this for his nerves to screw it up.  Harry gets even more anxious and then slightly psycho so he turns on the Mrs and slashes her neck with the cutting blade, then walls her body up in the basement.  The police close in on him, but I can’t tell you if Harry gets the chair or not because I arrived at Trader Joe’s and went inside to buy blueberries.  Not to worry though; even if he only got fifty years he’s dead by now, so carry on.

Today’s Rhymes with Orange sounds like gumshoe paw prints in a dark alley

you can 1 DogNoir

You also don’t have to trouble yourself anymore about those three siblings who went on a crime spree last week that spanned half the country.  The Dougherty kids, a sister and two brothers all in their twenties, led police on a high speed chase in Florida and exchanged gunfire, then robbed a bank in Georgia.  I became aware of the story a few days later when I saw their mom on TV, her face obscured, giving them some motherly advice.  “Only mom knows what good people you are inside,” she said.  “Please prove me right and everybody wrong by doing the right thing now and turning yourselves in.”  Husband and I looked at each other like, “Yeah, that ship left the port a long time ago,” and not to cast aspersions on anyone’s parenting skills or make gross generalizations, but a household that turns out three youngsters with lengthy rap sheets and a Dillinger mentality is not a place I’d ever send my kids on a play date.  The Dougherty siblings, whose mug shots look like Facebook photos, were captured yesterday when they crashed into a police roadblock in Pueblo, Colorado.  I know we mothers always think the best of our children, but really, WTF??

Continuing our crime wave broadcast, another missing tourist has been reported in Aruba, the site of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance and presumed murder.  Another extremely attractive blonde woman has gone missing, this time reported by her male travel partner, not to be confused with her boyfriend, who was for some reason not on the trip.  The male friend said his companion went missing as the two were snorkeling.  Aruba’s police force refused to allow the man to leave the island since parts of his story sounded hinky.  This was an excellent decision on the part of law enforcement there since they had released their main suspect in the Holloway case only to enable him to murder a young woman in Peru a year later.  What made the male friend’s account so suspicious was 1) no witnesses saw them go snorkeling, and 2) the woman’s boyfriend said she would never go snorkeling in the first place because she wouldn’t want to ruin her makeup or get her hair wet.  That’s good enough for me.  Guilty all the way.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos have something to say All Around the Town

taboo

taboo

mac people

mac people

water tower blast off

water tower blast off

plastic yarn balls

plastic yarn balls

caged hawk

caged hawk

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The Battles of Marwencol

Posted on July 31, 2011 by onesanevoice

Several years ago, I opened an art magazine and read a feature about an upstate New York man with an astounding story.  His name is Mark Hogancamp, and in April of 2000, he was beaten senseless outside a bar in downtown Kingston.  Thirty-eight years old at the time, he came out of a nine-day coma with a surgically rebuilt face and a head kicked clean of all memory.  After his state-sponsored health care and rehab ran out, he returned home to deal with the cognitive damage and severe post-traumatic stress that resulted from being attacked by five strangers who hated his guts.  Why did they hate his guts, you ask?  Because in the drunken camaraderie he mistakenly thought they were sharing inside the bar, Hogancamp confided that he sometimes likes to dress in women’s clothing.  They waited for him outside and nearly killed him.

The reason he was written up in an art magazine was because the therapy he devised for himself to deal with the trauma he suffered was a town called Marwencol.  Named for Mark and two friends, Wendy and Colleen, Marwencol is a 1/6 scale Belgian World War II town Hogancamp constructed of plywood, sweat, and determination in his backyard, then populated with action figures and Barbie dolls to represent him, his friends, the townspeople, the Nazis, and anyone else his imagination could conjure up.  He devises elaborate serial stories for his alter ego, Hogie, to act out.  First, he has Hogie crash land in Marwencol and rally the townspeople to fight the SS and regain control of their village.  Once the Nazis are driven out, Hogie makes it a place where everyone can coexist peacefully.  No one passes judgment; people don’t gang up on each other.  The town’s only rule is to be friends.  But it’s WWII and the SS come back, so Hogie and company have to beat the bloody crap out of them.  It’s all Mark Hogancamp’s way of dealing with his pain through play.  Instead of acting out his anger and frustration on real people, he lets Hogie do it for him.  After all, it’s wartime.  Aggression is expected.

But war isn’t the only thing on Mark’s mind.  Friendship, love, heroism, betrayal, joy, insecurity — they’re all part of life in Marwencol.  Mark’s uncanny artistic talent survived the attack and aids in rebuilding his fine motor skills.  He repaints the factory faces on his figures so they are instantly recognizable as the people they represent, right down to the scars on Hogie’s face from Mark’s surgeries.  The town is crowded with people, buildings, battles, and celebrations.  In meticulously staged, brilliantly captured photographs, Mark fills Marwencol with the memories he wishes he had.

After the magazine spread in 2005, Mark was approached by an art gallery in Manhattan about having a one-man show.  With great trepidation he agreed, and White Columns had an exhibition of his breathtaking photography in 2006.  Around the same time, Mark was asked by a documentarian to make a movie.  Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencolwas released last year and won several indie film awards.  It is now available on DVD and it’s a knockout.  This is all overwhelming for Hogancamp, who says in the movie, “My mind can’t decide what world to go in.  The realistic world?  There are dangers out there.  I feel safe when I get in my town and it just takes everything away.  I prefer to live in my world.  I want to live here, in Marwencol.”  It may be the real world’s loss, but at least we can visit.

Click the link below to read more, watch a trailer, or buy the DVD.

Scenes from Marwencol, where fantasy meets reality and the good guys always win

alter ego hogie

alter ego hogie

the SS rides into town

the SS rides into town

buddies for life

buddies for life

women to the rescue

women to the rescue

battles 5 WeddingofAnnaHogie

wartime wedding

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After the Wheel

Posted on July 22, 2011 by onesanevoice

Today I went to our local post office to drop some letters off.  I am a big fan of the mailboxes that sit across from the post office entrance, the boxes for people doing the drive-by-drop-off thing without getting out of their car and actually entering the purgatory that is our local post office.  Our branch is a stellar example of the current postal system, meaning that it takes forever to park near, an eternity to conduct any business in, and a time-sucker all around since 3/4 of the staff is on break at any given time.  So I use the drive-by mailboxes and buy stamps at the supermarket.

When I pulled over to the curb and opened my window to let in the 100 degree heat, I realized the SUV ahead of me wasn’t moving.  I could see there was a guy’s head behind the wheel and the motor was running, but no forward motion was happening.  I gave a gentle beep to alert the driver of my presence, and when that had no effect, I beeped again.  Finally, I drove around him and pulled to the corner where I parked my car and walked back.  The SUV’s driver side window was open and inside sat a young guy in his twenties texting on his phone, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was blocking access to every single mailbox.  As I mailed my letters just inches from his face, he didn’t even look up from his phone.

OSV:  Excuse me, but you may not realize that you’re blocking people from reaching these boxes.

JERK:  People can go around me.

His withering tone of entitlement washed over me in the baking sun.

OSV:  People can poke you in the eye, too.  But that doesn’t make either thing right.

JERK:  Stupid bitch.

OSV:  Your apology is accepted.

I walked away feeling oddly satisfied with our verbal exchange.  He called out some more salutations that were hard to discern.  Maybe it was due to the distance; maybe because of the bulging neck veins strangling his voice.  Either way, I like to think he was wishing me a nice day.

Earlier in the week on my way to school, I was stopped at a light on a busy road when I observed a driver on the opposite side suddenly attempt to back into the gas station he had just passed.  People idiotically do this stuff all the time, except here there was a pedestrian walking across the entrance.  The driver just backed right into him and the guy was knocked against a fence.  When he realized he bumped something, the driver looked back and saw the guy against the fence, and STARTED YELLING AT THE PEDESTRIAN.  I was facing the wrong way to get involved, but a car going in that direction pulled over to assist.  Hopefully not in chewing out the guy who got hit.

Speaking of preventable accidents, nothing could be more tragically ironic than an incident that appeared in the newspaper on July 4th.  A motorcyclist at an upstate protest against helmet laws died after he flipped over his bike’s handlebars and struck his head on the pavement.  He was part of an entourage of Harley riders who were protesting New York’s helmet law by not wearing helmets.  The doctor who attended the biker following the incident said his death could have been prevented if he had simply been wearing a helmet.  I don’t know where to take this, except to say we must respect the things man has invented in the name of progress.  Things like the wheel.

Dealing with the wheel actually goes back to ancient times.  Many people are not aware that the enterprising caveguys who started it all traveled a rocky road on their way to making history.

MORG:  It was my idea to make it round.  Your prototype was a hexagon.  Those test rides were kidney busters.

GROK:  Maybe that’s because you drive like a girl.  Why don’t you go play with fire?  Hahahaha!

MORG:  You are such a freak.  Evolve already.

GROK:  You don’t think I’m evolved, you monkey turd?  Evolve this: we’re partners.  And my half will always be bigger than yours.

MORG:  Your HALF is bigger?  Do you have any idea how stupid you sound?  The Babylonians over that ridge have some numeral etchings you should look at, genius.  I’ll see you in court.  I’m gonna wipe your name right off that patent.

GROK:  I don’t think so, partner.  I got Zuckerberg’s lawyer.

Daughter’s Fotos are from Under the Influence at the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival

window display

window display

Inner 907

Inner 907

dark clouds

dark clouds

Tony Bones

Tony Bones

Infinity

Infinity

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Back on Solid Ground

Posted on July 18, 2011 by onesanevoice

There’s a saying that goes “A mother is only as happy as her least happy child.” I don’t know who said it, but it’s a famous quote that happens to be true about any mother who is connected to her children in a meaningful way. This extends beyond empathy and love to a primal desire to protect. Think lioness sprinting across the Serengeti plains to intercept a predator headed toward her cub. Now come indoors following that chase and the lioness might be seen having a cosmic connection with a vodka on the rocks in a dark kitchen after the cubs are asleep. Or making promises to God in the middle of a restless night. Like any female animal, when a woman’s child is in danger, it’s like pulling the pin from a hand grenade. The resulting explosion reverberates through the woman’s mind, body, and family. Perhaps the immediate world. Certainly the surrounding plains.

One of my children had surgery last week. The months leading up to the surgery were filled with tests and scans and more tests and results and discussions of results by various medical people I would never meet. Internet research into symptoms and procedures ruled my days and fueled my anxieties. Here I will revise the famous quotation to read “A mother is only as healthy as her least healthy child.” And when the child is an adult, the mother must relinquish control because adult children call their own shots. This is very hard for mothers who have their control mechanism lodged in their frontal lobe with a big neon sign over it that says DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ADJUST.

I plead heredity here. When I had my first C-section and no one was permitted into the recovery area except medical staff, I opened my anesthesia-hazed eyes and saw my father hovering over my bedside with anAuthorized Medical Personnel badge clipped to the pocket protector on his shirt. I recall my thick voice saying, “DAD?! How did you get in here?” and him assuring me he had been extended a professional courtesy to come see me because he was on staff at a hospital in another state, and I automatically responded “WHAT??” because even though the morphine drip removed any idea about what the hell he was saying, a distant part of me knew he was a salesman and not a doctor. Which in retrospect makes sense because only a salesman could talk his way into a restricted area. What I do recall is him leaning over the metal railing of my bed whispering, “Hello, beautiful.”

Husband and I spent eleven hours at the hospital the day of my adult child’s surgery last week, and they may have been the worst eleven hours of my life. For a while it seemed like they would go on forever, but then the surgeon walked into the waiting area, looked directly at me, and said, “Are you ready for some great news?” It meant I got to lean over the metal railing of a hospital bed and say, “Everything went perfectly. You’re just fine.” It didn’t even matter that what came before was the most dreadful month in memory. In the end, family history will tell that it wasn’t about me at all. It was about the cub. Feel good forever, sweetie. If you will, I will.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos provide a Panorama of the city

harlem stoop

harlem stoop

pigeon sentry

pigeon sentry

wheel-less

wheel-less

nypd at gay pride

nypd at gay pride

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Repressionable

Posted on July 13, 2011 by onesanevoice

I am taking a graduate English course at the moment called Literature & Psychoanalysis. You’re no doubt already aware that there are elements of the author’s psyche present in all works of literature. Like everyone else, writers have pasts and memories and stuff hidden away behind their memories. The difference is that writers are driven to communicate, and in communication comes the visible evidence of what excites and tortures them. All of this, including (and maybe especially) the repressed things in their lives, finds its way into the creative process, which is how we get a Moby Dick or a Catcher in the Rye, or a book I just read for the first time, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

I was amazed at how current The Bell Jar feels, considering Plath wrote it in the early sixties about events that happened a decade earlier. It was first published in the UK in 1963 under a pseudonym only a month before Plath committed suicide at 32. The book was republished under her own name several years later, but wasn’t released in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of her family. The story is a thinly veiled autobiographical tale about the author’s own mental breakdown during college, specifically in the months following a guest editorship at Mademoiselle magazine in New York City. Her devastating description of how it feels to go mad unfolds against a backdrop of 1951 America, complete with white glove luncheons and the Rosenberg executions. Plath’s heroine is one of a dozen college girls from around the country who win an essay contest that lands them a coveted internship with the glamorous Manhattan magazine.

Just like in Catcher, you can open to any random page and find sentences that stop your breath; the writing is that precise and evocative. Like Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Plath’s Esther Greenwood captures the singular feeling in adolescence of being both smarter than everyone else, and a self-conscious misfit at the same time. Sitting inside a darkened movie theater, Esther has this to say about her fellow guest editors:

I looked around me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked like nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moonbrains.

Salinger wrote his classic tale of adolescent male depression in the 1940’s, and the cult following it inspired is similar to the identification young women find in Plath’s female protagonist. Both main characters are painfully observant of their surroundings and emotionally conflicted about where they fit in. They narrate the events of their “madman stuff” in voices we hear as our own. Few writers have pulled this feat off as seamlessly as Salinger and Plath. It’s no surprise that neither author lived what one would call a normal life. Salinger became famously reclusive after the publication of his first novel. Plath never wrote another novel at all, and was concerned that the one she did write was not real literature. She defined herself by her poetry, which would be legacy enough without The Bell Jar. I have read her poems and they are shattering, but for me her book is the goods. It may be that our most affecting and influential authors become synonymous with the most memorable character they create. Perhaps because it is the closest to themselves.

Daughter’s Fotos transport us to the interactive art of FIGMENT on Governors Island

do it!

do it!

Disorient

Disorient

dinner's ready

dinner’s ready

glow snail

glow snail

paper

paper

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