The wearin'o the green

There will be much green about this week; it is a big-time green wearing anniversary all year long, but especially this month, especially this week, especially TODAY.  That's right, I'm talking about the Girl Scouts.

According to Girl Scout legend, 100 years ago today, on March 12 1912, Juliet Lowe gathered together 18 girls & founded the first Girl Scout Troop bases on the Boy Scouts/Girl Guides model of the Baden-Powells but much more girl-centric.  Here in the US anyhow, Girl Scouts is not a female but an organization in it's own right (I am not trying to put down the Girl Guides, I just see them as a kind of little sister sorority to the more important fraternity of Boy Scouts, ironic really as the Girl Scout Troop of which I was a member had a companion Boy Scout Troop using the same facilities & this is not often the case).

There are celebrations planned all across the country.  In the town my parents live in, the local museum has en exhibit of Girl Scouts past & present (& I truly wish I lived closer as I would love to go), closer to where I live now they must be doing something (I saw them in uniform, mobilizing in front of the grocery store just a couple days ago), but alas in the land of football & hunting, Girl Scouts don't get much press.  Too bad, because there are few enough places where a girl can be a girl without boys taking over (& again I am not knocking boys, but lets face it testosterone being what it is, once a group of boys is anywhere it is hard for anyone else to get anything else done; a group of girls in the same space ignoring them would be untenable).

So I guess I just wanted to say Thank You Girl Scouts.  I spent years happily part of Troop 27 in West Hartford, CT; a troop now long defunct I'm afraid.  I remember the year I sold enough cookies to go to Camp Timber Trails.  As I aged out of the program, I actually had the thought that I would miss it more than I knew & I was right.

The internet giveth & the internet taketh away

I spend a certain amount of time on Facebook.  I check it a couple times a day: fewer when my computer is being stoopid, more when we are getting close to a Quilt Block Swap Group deadline.  I get friend requests, I ignore most of them.

//sidebar- honestly, who sends hello-old-friend-type requests without ANY INDICATION of who they used to be? After I ignored such a friend request, I got a quite snotty message from a former dorm-mate (well over 150 women in the dorm, every one of the six semesters I lived there by the way) who had gone by the nickname Lisa, which way-back-when I thought was her name & her last name I'm not sure I ever did know, but now was using her full first name Melissa & her married name (I know because I forwarded the snotty note to ANOTHER former dorm-mate asking if she had any idea who this was & she said "you remember Lisa, she was a sophomore our senior year".  Right).  Lisa/Melissa was QUITE CLEAR on the point that I was a snob & always had been which begs the question why send the friend request in the first place?  Yes, I kept right on ignoring it.

Where was I ?  Oh, ignoring old friends, that's right.

So I was online when I got a friend request from a boy (now a man, of course) I went to high school with.  I DID remember him, also he looked just like a grown-up version of himself (Lisa/Melissa might look the same, I really just don't remember her).  I looked over his profile as I was in the process of clicking Accept & then I got distracted.  I don't think there was anything on his page, maybe the phone rang, maybe something else, I just didn't do it. 

A few days later I was looking at the high school site & saw he had posted a question about the lacrosse team (that I would never be able to answer, it turns out that while I was there the football team went all state or something & I missed it completely).  Anyhow, he said he was now living in Fladidah  & I went back to his profile & saw he actually lives one town over from where my in-laws used to live & so I happen to know what county that is.

I honestly don't know what made me google him & the county name in the same search, I really truly do not know.  I almost never google people because it just never works out.  I happen to know that I am the only person in the country (& very likely the world) with my first name/last name combo & half of what comes up when you google me is not quite right.  Yes, I do knit & quilt & share a phone extension at the herbarium &....& OKay maybe it's mostly right, but google A & you get A LOT of stuff about folk songs which must be a different person with his name because trust me he knows jack about rural american music.  Also my middle initial is not G.  or B.  I'm just saying.

So I googled his name & the county & learned that this very nice boy I went to high school with (& probably middle school, my memory for other people is SHOCKINGLY bad) steals cars, if not for living certainly for a hobby.  A very, very consuming hobby.   I kind of feel like replying that I am well, thank you & I drive a 7 year old Tundra that doesn't even have power windows or locks.  After all it doesn't, & why would I lie?

The new office

Last week (the week before?) I was listening to either an American Public Media or a National Public Radio phone-in show & the guest that people were phoning in to speak with was a woman who recently wrote a book, an egghead book not a mainstream book, about how many of the jobs that have not returned as the economy turned around are just plain not coming back.  Her theory was that technology had changed so much in the preceding ten years that the way business is conducted had also changed, specifically no one needs the kind of office support staff that was the norm.  While these jobs had been slowly falling away as people changed jobs or retired & the chairs went empty, the massive belt tightening meant a lot of them went all at once.

First let me say "duh".  Earlier this year we had our septic system pumped.  We used the same company we have used since we bought this house & it had been less than 4 years since the last time we did this.  The experience was night&day.  Last time I called on a ?Monday? & got the office manager/administrator/secretary/whoever & an appointment for the following week (it wasn't an emergency & that was fine).  The owner, an older man, arrived, dug out the two tank openings (we have two unconnected tanks, weird & yet very useful), pumped the tanks, hand-wrote a bill which I paid by check.  He was here maybe 3 hours total.  At the beginning of the following month, I got a typed statement in the mail which reflected a balance of $0. 

This time I called, got the office manager/administrator/secretary/whoever & she said they could be there later the same day.  Both she & the owner (a younger man who had worked with the other guy for years; he had been out on previous jobs in previous years) arrived.  They had a laptop with the layout of our property & where the tanks were (I could have told them but they tell me this is not the norm).  While he dug one, she dug the other.  While he pumped, she went back to the truck & made & received phone calls & printed my bill from the printer in the truck.  The bill had ALL my previous calls on it & a notice of when they were likely to be needed back for a routine job (3-5 years).  She offered to make the appointment for five years out with the understanding it might change.  They were here exactly 1 1/2 hours.

I realize it sounds like there are just as many people in both stories working just as many man hours, but there aren't.  In the previous visit, there is another guy in another truck also working alone & checking in with the office.  Now there is one guy doing all the driving himself, but becasue he has a n extra pair of hands when he needs them he is covering just as many places as two used to. 

All of this hinges on the reality that in the second story there is no office.  The office works all gets done on the road except for once a month, once a quarter, once a year stuff which they handle at home.  That is one less full-time job than there was five years ago with no loss in service.  & it doesn't stop there.

This elimination of offices generally has eliminated quite a few jobs:  no office means no once a week cleaning staff to come in & clean that office, driving the office around means no more delivery guy with office supplies coming out to the office every month or so.  That is another three jobs poof & gone.

I have a friend who cleans offices for a living, or rather she used to.  She used to clean seven offices a week & a public area on weekends.  Now she has two cleaning jobs during the week & the public area every other weekend (that one irks her actually because it is the same amount of work & now she gets calls on the off-week that the garbage cans are overflowing & when is she going to deal with them).  The offices she doesn't clean anymore are still there, empty & at least one of the businesses still exists.  Ironically they are the cleaning company she still works for except now the manager handles scheduling etc. in her car between cleaning jobs.

Last Monday I had my sewing machines cleaned & serviced by the same guy who has taken care of them since I bought them (trust me, it has been years).  I used to bring them to his shop & wait a week.  & I can still bring the machine to him & wait a week if I want, but mostly he just comes to the house.  His shop is now a room in his own house & he has maybe 2 or 3 machines there at a time, most afternoons he is on the road & although his travel expenses are higher, they are more than offset by the reduction in overhead.

Last night I accidentally tuned into a presidential candidates speech (I flipped the tv on & then went into the other room where I can still watch it but forgot the remote).  The gist of the speech was how when he is president he will bring these jobs back & the crowd went wild.  I wonder if they will be as pleased when they realize that bringing these jobs back will mean commuting longer to get to work (the average commute is a fraction of what it was ten years ago, by the way & generally it is longer commutes to lower paying jobs) & taking on all that expense (deductible if you are the CEO & the company send a car  but not for the average worker), as well as giving up their cell phones & a slew of other conveniences we really do take for granted.  Maybe it's time to consider we just don't live in that world anymore.  & unemployed or not, most of us don't really want to go back.

Panama, a homecoming

Recently (& not so recently) a handful of rock bands have been on the news quite irked that their music was being used as, dare I say it, an instrument of torture.  Apocalypse Now aside, that musical torture was largely incidental (the soldiers just happened to like it that loud), the first time I ever heard of it was those 15 days Noriega spent holed up in the little piece of the Roman Catholic Church that was the Vatican Embassy while outside US Troops blasted the Rolling Stones (if memory serves-wait let me look it up...yup The Rolling Stones, & Hendrix & Bon Jovi & others) to make life just that much miserable for those holed up inside.

There is a lot of fodder in that whole story:  the church really will shelter anyone at all if they think anyone might find out they didn't & we apparently have no problem considering what we enjoy to be a plague on others.  But I'm not going there today.  Today I am going to France.

In 1990 Daniel Noriega did finally surrender to the rock'n'roll army & was shipped off to a US trial & US prison & that's the end of the story.  Well actually it isn't.  After the US was done with him...did you know the US was done with Noriega?  I missed that story last year, on April 26 2010 precisely.  Turns out between the Gulf Oil Spill & the 20th anniversary of the Hubble it just never came up.  Anyhow, so Noriega went to Paris & to prison & maybe even brought is Legion of Honor medal with him.

Wait, you didn't know that (me neither)?  Noriega was awarded the highest decoration in France in 1987 although his name was not on the list of recipients when I checked just now so apparently they can take that back.



Why am I going on & on about Noriega?  Because a judge in France has ruled in favor of yet another extradition & this morning he should be heading back to Panama.  Panama has been trying to get their hands on him for awhile & I for one am happy to know he is going.  The Panama he left & the country he returns to are like different worlds.  There have been elections, no doubt imperfect ones but still much improved.  Crime is hardly eradicated, but the police force are no longer just a thuggish arm of the current president-for-life.  Best of all, there is no such thing as president-for-life. 

As for the Rolling Stones, they will probably be playing somewhere, but Panama has had quite the cultural revolution since  Noriega left & now he will be treated to the not-so-smooth stylings of Panamas biggest musical export: a kind of sort of reggae hip-hop mosh.  What can I say Mr. President, the times they are a-changing.

Pascua Florida Day

I confess I have lived here for a while, longer than I lived anywhere except the house I grew up in, but this year is the first time I have ever heard of Pascua Florida Day.  This is doubly odd as it IS the state holiday & my husband works for the state.  Pascua Florida Day is actually April 2, but this year Florida is observing it on -you guessed it- April Fool's Day. 

It is just too easy to make fun of Florida (recently a state representative was reprimanded for using the word "uterus" while talking about abortion rights); fool doesn't really seem like enough. So, let's stick to tomorrow's holiday today.

When Ponce de Leon first discovered Florida (& he was here first, no matter what the Timocua thought), he named the place for the flowers that were all around him (Florida = Land of Flowers).  Specifically, he named it for the easter-time feast of flowers or Pascua Florida.  I went looking for information about Pascua Florida but it turns out there are A LOT of spanish flower festivals.

Every school child knows (well, when I was a school child I knew) that Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth.  The gold every other spanish explorer put at the top of his list is just sort of implied.  He didn't find it but every little-bit older school child knows/knew that for much of the 20th century the people moving to Florida were still looking for the Fountain of Youth; at the end of the last century, 20% of the population was over 62 or older, while nationwide less than 15% of the population was over 62.   Plenty of other people come here to recapture youth temporarily, they tend to hang out & about around Disney.  Lost youth is big business here.  Anyone who has taken a look at the state of education knows that current youth doesn't have quite the same importance.

Don't get me wrong, I love it here.  I would have a lot of trouble uprooting & moving someplace else, even some place that used to be on my top ten I wish I lived there list (which Florida never was).  Still when I hear things like "as California goes, so goes the nation" I think about Florida, because here just might be where good old bad ideas come to revisit their lost youth.

In the end, Ponce de Leon was killed by a poison dart from the manchineel tree (the dart was dipped in the poison, I think, not made from the wood although I am told the wood IS poisonous, so maybe) a tree which has both male & female reproductive parts on a single plant.  Also, the flowers are really not all that much to look at, but they do pack quite a wallop.

Free to be not-so-much you

I might be alone, but I was appalled APPALLED when Target rolled out Free To Be You & Me as their back-to-school shopping theme song.  It had nothing to do with Target, I just did not think of that song as being for sale exactly.  I remember listening to an interview with Paul Simon & he was talking about John Lennon.  Specifically he was talking about how John Lennon asked him how he knew not to sign away the rights to his music.  Paul Simon's answer was "well, I'm from New York". I also remember when Them There Eyes was used to sell color film (yes, I am that old).  My mother was very upset over I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke.  We both moved on & have lived happy lives since then.  It rankles, but it is not worth getting bent about.

Around the same time that Target rented Free To Be You & Me to sell their stuff (which I have been known to buy; I will not tell a lie) they also made a donation to a group supporting gubernatorial candidate -not in my state- that is anti-gay rights.  As it happens he is anti a lot of things that I am pro, but again not my state (we have plenty of anti-candidates here, they just aren't getting Target money...that I know).  It made me want to take back the crockpot I bought for C****** & give "Target is a hypocritical bastard" as the reason.  I did not, of course, but I also have not been through the doors since.

I know there has been some backlash to the backlash:  that it isn't fair to the employees who have no control over where company money gets spent, but will be the ones who lose their jobs OR that private companies like private people should be able to spend where/when/how they want without third parties getting involved.  I think you could make a god argument for a past&potential customer being not-so-much a third party myself, but that does not seem to be where this one is headed.  Instead, it seems headed for if you do support candidate X & his message of non-inclusion, you should do MORE shopping at Target. 

None of this solves my problem, of course, because mine is unsolvable.  How can I unring that bell in my head that now marks the moment when another large corporate entity carved off a piece of my history in the hopes of making me associate their products with whatever good feeling I had about a particular piece of music?  I guess I can't.  But I can find Boy meets Girl on YouTube, which makes the whole donation thing just more glaring.

Dear Mr. Iwata

Here's the thing.  You have never heard of me & I had to google to find out who you were.  It is safe to say we don't have much overlap & I think we are both fine with that.  Except recently I bought a Wii.

A few things you should know about me:  I don't have kids.  I don't like kids, much.  Actually kids are OKay I guess, it's their parents that make me want to...well enough about that.  All you need to know is I did not get the Wii for the kids, I got it for me.  Ditto the Wii Fit.  Then my husband got me a "game"  EA Active as an anniversary gift.  It is a bit lunge-heavy for my taste & I did lose my balance once already & have a really vivid bruise to show for it.  I fell down mostly because I cracked my kneecap in a freak dog walking incident several years ago &...well, never mind about that.

Sidebar here-does EA Active seem like a strange gift?  Well, he once got me a Nordic Track for our anniversary & I fell off it & hurt my shoulder then too, so apparently he is working a list of seemingly benign gifts that I can hurt myself with.  As it happens, the dog of the dog walking incident was also an anniversary gift.  I had not put that together until just now.

After EA Active turned out to be not-so-much a game, my husband got me Tetris.  He was disgusted with the really really bad navigation design.  The keys were all scrambled (push the up key to go down, seriously?), but they made me nostalgic.  I remember the very first Tetris with Red Square in the background & those oh-so-poorly translated directions.  The whole thing reminded me of my favorite NewsRadio episode when Mr. James's memoir is not such a big seller in the States but hugely popular in Japan, so he decides to have the Japanese translation translated back to English & re-release it.  After all, it worked for VCR instructions.  That was a great show.

All of this leads me to my first request:  Frogger.  We would like a Frogger for the Wii.  & by "we" I mean everyone I have mentioned this to & double for A*****. 

Next, we would like a celebrity workout game.  & by "we" I mean me.  I know there are dime-a-dozen celebrity workout videos out there, but "we" actually want something a little different.  For example, you know that hula-hoop thing in Wii Fit?  We were hoping Kirstie Alley could do that.  & for the rhythm Kung Fu, maybe James Gandolfini.  They don't all need to be as out of shape as I am, of course.  I mean WE are.  Valerie Bertinelli is looking good these days.  So is Betty White, for that matter.   I admit Hot In Cleveland has been a huge hit in my house.  Did you see last week when Betty White broke off her engagement to Carl Reiner because he wouldn't go downtown?  I'm still laughing.

Other celebrities we would like to see in this workout game: John Stewart, Stephen Colbert & what the hell Rush Limbaugh, since we have Betty White already on the list throw in Mary Tyler Moore & Cloris Leachman, I know for a fact the rehab unit at the place my in-laws live is looking into getting a Wii Fit & Dick van Dyke would make them very happy.

I hope I have given you some food for thought Mr. Iwata.  & I hope you won't look a gift demographic in the mouth.

To kill a blood OR In cold mockingbird

I am one of those that reads To Kill a Mockingbird two or three times a decade.  There are legion of us.

This year is, of course, the 50th anniversary of its publication.  I say "of course" because I really truly do not know what you do with your time if you managed to miss this.  Either that or you live on an atoll (either virtually or actually) with no NPR & no public libraries, in which case I am very sorry for you.   Please accept my humblest apologies & consider getting out more.

Every Mockingbird landmark (anniversaries, movies based on the book, plays about the book, the decision by British librarians to list it as more vital reading than the Bible -go librarians!), someone always wanders back to Monroeville, Alabama to ask that slacker Harper Lee when she is going to get around to writing her second book.  There are only so many ways a southern woman can say "bite me" or "listen asshole, call me once your first book reaches half that acclaim & ask that question & then I will tell you to BITE ME"  so she more or less stopped talking about it in 1964.  Can you blame her, really?

I once heard Harper Lee described as a recluse & a modern Emily Dickinson & asked a friend of mine (who teaches Mockingbird year in, year out & still loves it) about that.  She said if Emily Dickinson managed to stay in college through that first semester, then went on to law school, lived & worked in NYC for a period, actively sought publication, I think you can see where this is going, only then could Harper Lee be said to be anything like Emily Dickinson.  I shared with her one of my favorite quotes (James Thurber, of course) in which Thurber compared himself to Salvador Dali.  He said his artwork had as much in common with Dali as on old ukulele in an attic has with a piano in a tree, & even then the piano would have to have breasts.  We laughed, we are pretentious literary types & that is the kind of thing we laugh at.

Back to the book:  ten or so years ago I thought I should maybe expand a bit & when I felt like reading Mockingbird (& sometimes I just DO) I should try try try to read something else first.  The natural choice was Truman Capote who, of course, appears in Mockingbird kinda-sorta (again, if you did not know this I am begging you please rethink your day, maybe even just run your errands in a different order).  It took a while but I finally worked my way to In Cold Blood.

I know there was recently a movie made about the writing of In Cold Blood (also called In Cold Blood, not to be confused with the 1967 movie called In Cold Blood based on the book In Cold Blood) which I did not see.  I planned to see it, at the theater even but a letter from the Shawn brothers in the New Yorker regarding the characterization of their father, who was Truman Capote's editor at the New Yorker made me decide to read the book first.  & I did.  & maybe you should, too.  Because Harper Lee went from writing To Kill a Mockingbird & expecting it to be quite small, to researching this book with her childhood friend & being quite overwhelmed by the impact of her not-so-small book.

It begins with a small game

Let's play word association.  I will say a word & then you say the next word that pops into your head.  Are you ready?

sex  -

children -


father -


Now.  Could everyone who did NOT picture a catholic priest at any point during this game...  Could you just....uhm.  Seriously?

I do not live in CT anymore but I do follow the broad sweeping topics of the area. Lately the broad sweeping topic has been sex with children.  Specifically, the Archdiocese of Hartford, the Diocese of Bridgeport & the Diocese of Norwich are contacting parishioners any way they can think of (sermons, e-mail) & asking that they contact their representatives & request they vote against House Bill 5473.  The part the bishops take issue with is the part extending the period of time by which victims of sexual abuse can bring law suits against their abusers.  Now, those of you who never saw a catholic priest at any point during the word association game, can you think why this might be?

World religions always have been & always will be riddled with sex cults.  India was very big with dedicating young girls to a local temple & they raised funds for the temple by having sex with the local men.  As far as I can tell, this is just a hop, skip & an ahem from Bristol Palin having sex with whats-his-name, spawning & then trotting out to fund raising events to say how she won't do it again, because as far as I can tell abstinence is a kind of sex cult.

Sexual assault happens (in the US, Ireland, Germany, etc.) but that is not what the Catholic Church is about.  The church is about some basic core belief, right?  Unswerving, fundamental guidelines for all catholics to live by.  Like, oh say, abortion is bad.  Except of course, in China, where Catholic Bishops keep pretty mum on the subject.  As with the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government went ahead & promoted their own Catholic Bishops, reflecting the state view that abortion is a good idea.  This means that if you are in China, looking for an organization prepared to stand up for their beliefs, no matter how conflicting or out of step with dominant local thinking, you should start praying to GOOGLE. 

As for Connecticut House Bill 5473, I have decided to go one better.  I cannot contact my representative in CT because I don't have one.  But I can contact Bishops in Florida & ask them what the fuck?  Well, maybe not "fuck".

Better living through chemistry

The past few hours & much of the last two days have been given over to Becca (horse).  We thought she was having a garden variety belly-ache: she was showing signs of early colic, trying to lie down etc.  But she was pooping & peeing, albeit in small quantities & after walking her about for much of the morning we called our large animal vet.  While I was leaving the voicemail message , Becca started spinning like a drunk who had been spun in circles & then told to walk a straight line.  In the course of that voicemail message I went from "when you get this, call me & I'll come pick-up some banamine" to "Oh my G*d, please call, please please please.  As soon as you can, please".

S**** did call & she came right out & she confirmed with a nod what we both had begun to suspect.  This was not colic, this was neurological.  We spent some time yesterday getting antibiotics into Becca, some banamine & tubing her to deliver DMSO straight to her belly.  We don't know yet how things are going to go for Becca.  Although she is looking better, this treatment is not something she can live on, long-term. In some ways we could not live with it long-term either; the smell of DMSO as it does its things is so overwhelmingly bad that I have to walk away & gag every few minutes I am with her.

This made me think about Janet Finch's acclaimed book White Oleander.  I read this book before my own DMSO experiences (yes, I have had more than one) & so I missed a critical flaw in the crime that starts the whole adventure.  The short version is a man is poisoned with oleander, the absorption of which is enhanced by DMSO.  It is the presence of the DMSO that is the difference in differnt degrees of guilt & premeditation.  When I read the book., this did not raise any flag at all.  Now, of course, I wonder how completely smell & taste impaired a person would have to be to ingest DMSO unknowingly. 

On another the other hand, one of A's collaborators is here now (they are preparing for a meeting later in the week) & he swears he cannot smell a thing.  He's an organic chemist.  I honestly do not remember what the murder victim did for a living.

When bedbugs bite

A month or two before I was due to visit Northern Climes, my hometown-ish newspaper made national headlines.  At least, I thought they had.  The short version is the watchdog reporter for the Hartford Courant was reported negatively (dare I say watchdoggedly) on one of the Courant's few remaining advertisers.  & then he was fired.

I do not remember where I first heard about it, it really was almost certainly the radio, but you can find the story to read here.  I followed the whole thing, to the degree there was something to follow & rather figured that those who still subscribe to the Hartford Courant did, too.

I figured wrong.  Not one person that I talked with on my return to Hartford County had any idea what had happened.  Even stranger, they had all noticed the absence of the watchdog reporter but thought his was one of several job cuts made over the past few month for budget reasons.  I know many newly former readers of the Hartford Courant have been disgusted with the combining of the paper & a local tv station (as I typed that last sentence, I pulled up the link to the station & indeed the headline story & photo were exactly the same).  After all, why buy a newspaper when they will plonk the exact same story on your television, no charge?  On a network you could not pay some people to watch?

So bed bugs bit a consumer.  & then they bit a reported.  & several months later, they are just starting to bite the media operation that fired him.

What I meant to do while in CT

I grew up, went to university & had my first jobs in the greater Hartford area & I assure you, it really is not the most boring place on earth. In fact, I always run out of time to do the things I want to do. What I should have done but did not:

- Seen the Chihuly. We actually tried to on a previous winter holiday visit. After dinner we were four adults just staring at each other & it was a beautiful night so I asked if we could walk around Constitution Plaza & see the lights. No one could come up with a better idea, so we went. I know it does not compare to even lawn displays in some parts of the country but it is still the first big light display I ever saw & I am fond of it. We swung by the Bushnell to see the Chihuly; it is inside but it is massive & well lit BUT they had the shades pulled on the 2+story high windows. If you do not buy a ticket, you cannot see the Chihuly.

- Visited Horace Wells. Back in the days when I worked around Bushnell Park, I used to seek out the space near the Horace Wells Statue. Sure, I was drawn to the flashy carousel horses in warmer weather, but even when he was dusted with snow I enjoyed a brown bag lunch with Horace. How many other capitol parks have statues of famous dentists, hmmmm? It turns out that the answer to this is Paris; in the Place des Etats-Unis there is a statue of........Horace Wells.

- Walked through the Mark Twain House. Even before we moved south, it had been too long since I had done this. If you can, go on a day it is snowing so you can watch the snow flakes in the window over the fireplace. It really is pretty cool. You can also visit his neighbor, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Unbeknownst to many (well, me) she wrote one of her books just a few miles from where I live now.

- Dined at Kashmir. I was once dumped over dinner at Kashmir. Immediately after, anyhow. I had never been to the restaurant before that evening & it was worth it. Good-bye man, hello cuisine!

Then there are all the places outside the city limits that I missed:

- Crazy Bruce's Liquors. This is another place I have never actually been, but on a past xmass eve my husband & my brother rushed in moments before closing & bought all the ingredients for chocolate martinis, including the glasses (most women want jewelery but we are not most women). The clerk was very helpful & figured out what they were making from their purchases. What does not ever seem to have occurred to them is that she thought they were a couple. Crazy Bruce stocked the bar at A's graduation party, our wedding reception & every event we ever had at my parents on these visits home. Yes, even those whatever night of Chanukah/G***'s Birthday/Open Houses we used to have when we came north in Decembers past.

- Talcott Mountain. Roughly between the house I grew up in & the house my parents live in now is Talcott Mountain. It is not a big mountain; it is a perfect mountain. You can get up & down in an afternoon & enjoy an uninterrupted view from the top.

- Rock Cats game. I actually have a hard time leaving Florida in the summer: I like it HOT but we are trying to swing a winter-holidays-in-July so maybe....

- SONE rehearsal. We have been on previous visits to watch my sister sing & they treat you like an honored guest! Really, they make an announcement & thank you for coming. No talking though, you can only smile & wave like the Queen of England. If you go in winter, take a step back & enjoy the Congregational Church architecture conveniently located diagonally across from the Prosser Public Library. If you go in summer, bring your anorak; I do not know what the deal is at Emanuel Synagogue, but it is the best air-conditioned place I have ever been & I live in Florida.

& finally there are those places I will never visit again:

- Mount Southington. I can x-country ski, but I rarely do. I do not downhill ski. I do not even like the ski lift. The sensation of air moving quickly across my face makes me feel ill. I have a lot of great pictures of everyone else coming down the slope though.

- Cinema City. I have been told there is a theater there again but is it really Cinema City? I remember when they put real butter on the popcorn, popcorn popped right in front of you. The movies were good, bad & off-beat. This is where I saw Dogs from Space, Sid & Nancy, Round Midnight, & the list goes on. Maybe I am wrong & it is everything it could be, but I will never know.

- The Elm, another theater, but this one really is gone. The last film I saw there was Walt Disney's Cinderella. N*** & I tried to sneak up to the balcony, but it was already closed & then we sat through the unpublicized opening film which caught us by surprise: Nestor the Long Eared Donkey. I don't even think it was xmass-time, but that is part of what made The Elm The Elm. Actually, N*** & I have a twisted history with strange movie theaters across Hartford County. Remember the one in Avon with all the sinks in the stalls so a person could not just wash the salty-popcorn-y smell off her hands without feeling obligated to try & pee....?

I know this sounds like a tag-you-are-it kind of list, random-beyond-random but these were what made my every day for decades. Or at least they are what was part of what made my every day for decades & then fell away has become. You can follow that, right? Even if they are gone, even if they are back & better than ever, they are not every day anymore. Not for me. I think this might be why people make small shrines in their kitchens & collect scrapbooks & plant trees.

//one place I had thought I would miss was Shady Glen. These are the only cheeseburgers I ever eat. Which means I have a cheeseburger roughly every eight to fifteen years. I have been enjoying the mural on the back wall & the doilies under the little metal bowls of ice cream for as long as I can remember. So has the rest of my family, except maybe my cousin C**** who has been working there since he was sixteen & just might be sick of it all. We managed to squeeze in a visit on Monday along with one wonderful quilt shop & Penzeys. & yes, I had a cheeseburger, so I will eat beef again in ?2015-2025?, give or take.

In which an organization dedicated to the preservation of a childhood icon ponders prostitution

When we visited London in ought-five-or-six (I really do not quite remember) one thing I very much wanted to do & DID do was see the Pooh portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. Christopher Robin was also in the picture, but I do not care about him.

Not so very long before we went, some group in the UK (perhaps the very group...but I digress) had become quite testy with the New York Public Library because they (the library) had the actual original Winnie-the-Pooh in their collection & the complainants felt this artifact belonged on British soil, what with Pooh being a national treasure & all. In the version I heard, the library responded they would be happy to discuss it, just as soon as the British Museum returned the Elgin Marbles...& all those mummies...

I have decided to believe this story for two reasons. First, it sounds like something a New York librarian would say: snarky yet well informed, dare I say snarkily well informed? Also Pot-Kettle-Black is one of my favorite games.

Flash forward to last January when I read this & learned again that indeed nothing is sacred. The very organization charged with preserving the original Pooh concept, those same caretakers that licensed him to Disney & gave us those flat-colored amorphous things & the Tigger song which I agree is worth having & then turned around & re-sold us Classic Pooh, maybe even inspiring that whole Classic Coke debacle....

What I am trying to say is I learned that someone had been commissioned to write more Pooh. Imagine that Christopher Robin never grows up. He never really leaves the hundred acre wood. He never writes his memoir talking about how intellectually distant his father was, that his mother could give a chilblain a run for its money & that he is sick&tired of people asking him about the G*d D*mned Bear. We have to pretend we do not know he married his first cousin against his mother's wishes- not because she was his first cousin but because she did not care for the girl's father, her own brother. It is too much to ask.

This is hardly the first time such a thing has happened. You might not know it but recently the Peter Pan People aka The Great Ormond Street Hospital authorized a sequel to Peter & Wendy. I just do not know what to think. I do, however have the audio-version on hold at the library. Someone somewhere had the good sense to hire Tim Curry to read the thing & that I will not miss.

But back to Pooh. Return to the Hundred Acre Wood will be on shelves in a bookstore near you tomorrow & just in time for holiday sales. I am not sure I will be able to face it but face it we must.

//how do you play Pot-Kettle-Black you ask? Well it is very easy. Whenever you catch people biotching about someone else doing something that they themselves do, you get right in their face & scream "Pot Kettle Black!". It is most effective if you have something in your mouth that sprays while you do this. I try to keep twizzlers & beer in my purse for just such occasions. Tuna sandwiches work too. Originally this game was widely known (in my family anyhow) as Guess My Food, but I classed it up a bit.