52 Photos Project: A Day In My Life

I am almost at the end of my year of following along with 52 Photos Project, only two more to go after this one.  I think.  This week it is a day in my life which is not particularly anything really, except I wanted to take all the pictures in an actual day & I am not in the habit of bringing my camera with me. 

Struggle number one:  remember to bring my camera when I walk out the door.  The assignment went up sometime Sunday, it was Thursday before I got my act together.  Maybe this is because Thursdays are more predictable than most as it is my usual on campus day.  But plenty of things happen before that.

The short version is I forgot my camera.  This seemed like an excellent opportunity to learn to use the camera on my phone.  I did take a few pictures of my workspace (nothing thrilling-almost the same as the pictures I took a few weeks ago, except would you believe another floor-to-ceiling cabinet has been added to that center row?), so there is no point in posting my less than spectacular new photos.

But I did manage to take a couple pictures of the work I am doing now (specifically matching old index cards wit wood specimens in drawers that are mostly in order...or were when they were last accessed which was mostly in the mid-80s. 

When I left the herbarium I felt like crap.  This is typical of herbarium days.  Between the chemicals to deter the bugs & the frigid temperature to preserve the specimens, I know I look ridiculous walking to the car.  It takes about that long to warm up & breathe clearly even in the tropics. 

But it turns out there was another reason I felt like crap.  By the time I got home, I could not stop shaking.  At 7:30, I had to go back to campus to pick up A.  I brought Sadie with me & we sat on the hill & watched to door to the loading dock until he came out & said her name.  She went nuts. 

I have been in bed (except when I have been "unwell") since Thursday night & got out jus in time to watch a college basketball game.  Which was an accident, really, that just happens to be when I got up.

So this is all I have to document my day.  It was, aside from being sick, a normal Thursday.

52 Photos Project: A present someone gave you, meaning me

In one of those "small world" things, 52 Photos Project this week is A Present Someone Gave Me & this month is our house birthday.  As in all the humans in the house have a birthday in March.  So we have been talking presents, new & old.  for the most part, we are ungiftable; we have what we want.  A few years ago A was anxious to upgrade my camera; he had given me one a year or three before & wanted to get he latest version.  It was lighter, more bells & whistles, etc.  But I liked this one & wouldn't give it up.   OKay, the real story is I started to cry when he tried to take it & I made the poor man eel terrible about trying to do something nice.  Also, there is no pleasing me. 

 

So this is the present someone gave me, that I am still using.  Weekly if not daily.  & I still don't want to upgrade.

That scandalous affair

Every year when it comes to book club book selection time, I usually toss a few mysteries on the pile.  Dime detective novels are a particular favorite with me & my absolute favorite is Nero Wolfe.  Actually, I prefer Archie Goodwin.  Alright already, I really have a thing for Saul Panzer but they are referred to as the Nero Wolfe books. 

I have probably said it here before: I am fascinated by pulp-style fiction (be it mysteries or romances or westerns or what have you) written more or less contemporarily to their setting in time, particularly when it is not my place in time.  Or to put it another way, don't you think Lt. Uhura's uniform tells us more about the present day when Star Trek was made than it does about what people thought the future would be?  Or if they did think the future was all mini skirts & long sleeves for women, who do you think was planning that future?  Yes, I can get lost in this silliness. 

I am also a fan of Agatha Christie, although I came to it later in life.  But the first sleuth (after Nancy, of course; Nancy is always first-first).  But before Agatha, for me anyhow, there was Dorothy.  Agatha Christie had the reputation for writing as a lark, at least once she became successful she didn't need to keep it up &maybe that showed.  Dorothy Sayers, however, needed the money.  & just as Agatha's detective were more or less living on their income, or at least some kind of budget, Dorothy's detective lived, well...LARGE.  Just about as large as any book-detective I have ever heard of, barring the Scarlet Pimpernel, if you were going to call him a detective, which I really think you should.

I refer, of course, to Lord Peter Wimsey: he had money, he had brains, he had style.  The only thing he did not have was looks.  His creator was ruthless; just about the nicest thing she ever said about his appearance was he looked rather silly.  He also went for long long long time without the affection of the woman he adored.  But that all came to an end today...in 1937.  On this day Peter Wimsey married Harriet Vane.  I think what I like best about these books is that the marriage is more or less mid-point in their careers. While he has most of his mysteries before, there are a handful after.  Marriage can do that.  Before they get together, but after he falls in love, Harriet has a book more or less without him. 

Another thing I came to love was something I didn't really catch on to when I was 16 or so & reading them for the first time.  Before the books ever begin, Peter is a returning soldier, profoundly ill with some wounds, but mostly shellshock & even with every advantage of wealth & connection, he just barely pulls himself together.  He has flashbacks & setbacks that fade but never really go away. 

& unlike Nancy & Miss Marple & so forth (not Nero et al, they do this too), Peter & Harriet move forward through time, at the same speed as the rest of us.  So happy anniversary Lord & Lady Peter. 

Happy Loving Day, because late is better than never

I completely missed Loving Day this year (it is June 12th, FYI).  Marriage rights aside (& that is hard to do what with the right to get married -or not- all over the news), the Loving case & decision  has always kind of interested me.  First of all, there is their great name:  Loving.

But more than that is Mr. & Mrs. Loving's overwhelming, indisputable ordinariness.  Aside from overturning an outdated, racist law & making big time history, these people are downright boring.  Mr. Loving was a garden variety small town boy grown to man, he liked tinkering with cars.  Mrs. Loving took care of the house & children.  In one of my favorite Hollywood commentaries when Mrs. Loving saw the movie made about her life she said most of it was wrong, the only part they got right was she had three children.  Anyone reading this blog or anything else ever written about the Lovings would realize the other fact the movie got right was there was a landmark civil rights case surrounding their marriage.  That Mrs. Loving clearly does not view this as the centerpiece of her own life makes me like her more.

There is not much else to say really.  You can watch the documentary which is more about the case than the people.  & I kind of get the impression Mr. & Mrs. Loving would have preferred it that way (the documentary was made after they had both died, the fictionalized film is the one Mildred Loving found inaccurate).  Loving v The State of Virginia comes up a lot in the gay marriage debate, on both sides believe it or not.  But that is a conversation for another post; today I just want to notice the Lovings, that they walked out of small town USA, made their argument & then went back home, happy to leave the spotlight.  Whenever people start grandstanding about "real americans", it is the Lovings I think of. 

"I better not see this on your blog"

Earlier this week (or late last week - on what day does your week start?), I managed to align my blog with the once a month topic with the once a week Weekend Update on Block Lotto.  This never happens.  I am group topic challenged; I have been all my life.  When all the girls my age were hanging on Rick Springfield, I was horrifying myself with what Henry VIII did to those six wives he had wedded-"One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded" (because being the only white double dutch jumper on the playground did not make me freak enough, this is what I chanted).   Years later, those same girls are hooked on "The Tudors" & I am singing "Jessie's Girl" in the shower.  So, everything lined up.  The topic was Tips, Trick & Lessons Learned & I have already said something on same.  Yahoo.  & then that same day we had a household event that qualifies....kinda.

We have the teeny-tiniest bathroom off our bedroom.  Many people don't know it's there, including people who have stood in the master bedroom.  This is because it is just as deep & just as wide as the closet next to it, which while it meets the definition of walk-in (you can walk in & close the door behind you) as walk-in closets go it is pretty small (after you are in it, you can then only stand there because there is no more room to take any more steps). We call it a stand-in closet because a: that is all you can do in it & b: it is standing in for the walk-in closet of our dreams. 

OKay, now that you can imagine that size space, put a toilet, sink w/small vanity & step-in shower in same.  It's a teeny-tiny bathroom.  In fact, if someone is sitting on the toilet when you are getting into the shower, you will be strangers no more.  Even when someone is NOT sitting there it, is a long stride to get past the toilet & into the shower.

So, this teeny-tiny bathroom has had a bit of a...shall we say AROMA the past couple weeks.  We have been dealing with it as a drain clog in the shower because when you get in the shower is when the smell is strongest, but it is not a shower clogged drain kind of smell.  Unless we were to use our shower as a toilet, which I promise you we do not.  Before calling in plumbers, etc., A thought it best to deal with those things he could deal with himself.  & as he had replaced the wax ring on the other bathroom's toilet a few years ago, he was confident he could do it again super-quick.  & it is was a one person job, which is the kind of job we both like best.

After lunch, he went to the local home caretaker DIY warehouse, got what he needed, came home & took that toilet up (after draining, etc. which is not a no-time-at-all process) & put it in the big tray for same in our bedroom (because even if the tray would fit through the door, there would be no room for it in the teeny-tiny bathroom; I don't mean no room for the tray & a person to work, I actually mean not enough floor space for the tray).

• TIP #1- start home repair jobs in the morning.

In the tradition of I-have-done-this-before-&-know-what-to-expect type jobs, this one naturally offered up a new twist.  Once that toilet was off, it was clear there was a significant problem with the top of the pipe that connected with the toilet & directed...uhm...flow...to the septic tank.  Specifically, there was not so much pipe as a round tube with jagged edges, not all of which cleared the edge of the floor, never mind the bottom of the seal.  In other words, there were gaps all around the circumference of the pipe permitting whatever to leak out & just sort of be, underneath the toilet itself.  It looks like the person who put in this bathroom had X inches of broken pipe leftover when what he needed was more like X+2".  But he used it anyhow.  In retrospect it was probably more than adequate when he used it, but broke off when the toilet itself was installed & he figured "what the hell, I'm not going to live here".

I said "well that sucks" & then admired what would have been a pun if drainage pipes were supposed to draw down, which they are not.   A's exact word was "Shit" & then I admired that kinda pun as well.   We took pictures on his cell-phone so he could show the DIY warehouse store guys what he was up against, get some sympathy that did not involve juvenile word play & maybe even a suggestion that would not require a plumber.  He left & I cleaned up the mess on the floor & the crud in the grooves of the split pipe & then I went back to the book I had been reading outside the bathroom door to be on hand to get him whatever supplies he needed.  No, I am not a crazy handmaiden type wife, there was just no way he could easily leave that bathroom once that toilet was in the tray, in the doorway.  Until we realized he was going to have to leave & then we had to do some re-arranging in the bedroom so he could push the toilet-in-tray out of the doorway & get out.  & by "we" I mean me.

• TIP #2- always have reading material on hand, ideally something you can pick up & put down without losing the narrative. 

A returned to find me propped against the toilet, reading & eating buttered toast.  He had received adequate commiseration, & even better an actual solution: this kind of putty that was activated by working it with your fingers (for a minute, literally) & then could be pressed into the gaps, smoothed by hand, etc.  It would harden in 20 minutes or so & become sandable or drillable in an hour & a half.  Naturally we were not going to drill new holes in the pipe, but we did want to know when that time was up so we could test it & be sure no water or anything else was likely to get thru.

So, I got the yoga pose timer, set one alarm for 20 minutes, set the other one for an hour & a half & used the count-up timer to keep track of one minute. 

•  TIP #3- a good multi-task alarm clock/countdown timer is a very useful thing & not just for yoga, although it is very useful for yoga, too.

Then we went in the tv-room & had snacks, lounged around & generally did nothing.  He watched a DVRed Bill Maher while I finished my book while we waited for the putty to set (apparently during the setting process it becomes quite warm to the touch; A asked if I wanted to experience that sensation.  As it would require lying more or less with my face on the toilet-floor & sticking my hand down a septic drain, I decided to take his word for it). 

• TIP #4- aggravated, frustrated people never say no to finger foods.

After the time was up, the putty was deemed most excellent, the wax seal was replaced (you know, the original couple hours+ task we started with) & the toilet returned to its appropriate place.   By then we were a little bit fried, so instead of going out for the birthday dinner we were too tired to go out for last Saturday (the actual birthday) & had postponed to this Saturday, we ate pasta out of the box & sauce out of a jar & went to bed at 9:30.  The book I read was James Lasdun's Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked which I thought was pretty good so it must have been fantastic considering what it was up against.  No pun intended.

What part of this was I not supposed to blog about you ask?  Well on-going throughout the day, we talked about a new toilet seat, specifically one of those cushy ones & one of us mentioned that he wished they had memory foam & the other pointed out we have a dead memory foam pillow (one of the little dogs started to tunnel throw the center, right where a head would go or maybe the opening of a donut-type pillow) & wouldn't that make a nifty little craft project for a blog.  & then the other one said "I better not see this on your blog".

As for the stinky smell?  So far so good.

The other reading list

I have written, more than once, about what is on my reading list, what isn't etc.  What I don't think I have ever blogged on are all those books on my not-for-me list, which is not quite as large as the mine-for-me list but much harder to feed.

Let us travel back in time to the early days of our marriage.  That's right - about 1/2-way into the first decade.  I don't remember what the book was, something science-y probably that I happened to see on the new releases shelf & thought "Well, maybe A might be interested in this"  & I brought it home.

To say it did not go over well is an understatement.  The highlights included an accusation that I was trying to control what he was reading.  Uhmmm, what?  In retrospect, I can see the nerve I accidentally slammed.  I have spoken briefly about my in-laws; let me add this to the mix.  To describe my mother-in-law as controlling is like calling the US Civil War a dust up.   Sure it lasted less than five years, but we are still dealing with it today.  I am not just talking about those persons of reduced brain power with the confederate flag bumper stickers/t-shirts who yap about real americans, (although I do mean them, too), I am talking about the 2013 US Supreme Court docket which includes a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Shelby County, Alabama versus Holder if you are curious) put in place because 100 years later, that war was malingering.  Like I said: controlling.

I have a feeling my complete stupefaction is what calmed him down.  That & the reality that while he did have a knee jerk reaction he is not usually a jerk.  Within a very short time he was asking me to see if I could find particular books.  & I confess, I was a bit controlling.  In the interest of giving him options (honest!), I try always to have at least one work of fiction, one work of non-fiction & one wildcard sitting on his bedside table.  This month:

Mad River by John Sandford
God, No!  Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Gillette
The Where, the Why and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science by Volvoski, Rothman & Lamothe

Happy Valentine's Day

Agatha Christie & another lost week-end

Earlier this year, I was talking with my mom & told her I had begun working my way through the Miss Marple catalog & she said she always thought of them (the books) as kind of henny & her (Miss Marple & Agatha Christie) also kind of henny & without disagreeing (I think they are actually meant to be henny) I said "did you know Agatha Christie went AWOL in December 1926 only to be found in a hotel under her husband's mistress's name after he had come this close to being arrested in connection with the disappearance?" 

Doesn't it make you like her better?

This is not the first lost weekend I had ever heard of.  I knew a lady accountant whose husband was let's say reluctant to believe that staying home with their new baby was nearly so taxing as his day at the office.  He gave long speeches about how she had to pull herself together when he came home & the house was a mess, the baby was crying & she was both a mess & crying.  Among other problems she was having was a complete inability to breast feed, she & the baby just never got the hang of it.  As a result, they were on a merry-go-round of formulas as some did not agree with him some of the time, etc.

Yes, it sounds bad, but it did make it that much easier when on the Thursday before Memorial Day Weekend 1995 she met her husband at the door of a clean house, with a clean baby in her arms, handed over the baby & said I'll be back in time for you to go to work on Tuesday & took off.  C******** & D** were a particularly private couple but alas I was the office manager for the company C******** worked for when not on maternity leave & so I was in the unique position of receiving D**'s phone calls.  Did she go to a client?  Is she staying with someone from work?  Has she called in?  Has she called in? Has she called in?

All I know for sure is she did not stay with me; as to the rest I have my suspicions, mostly formed after the fact.  There was not much he could do; she timed it perfectly.  Memorial Day in east Texas is a big deal & that Friday morning I was the only person in the office & on-call through the weekend.  Both his mother & mother-in-law were also out of town, as was pretty much everyone else he knew who might know what to do with a permanently colicky baby for 100+ hours.  All I could tell him was she never phoned in for messages, no client ever said they were expecting her & it wasn't until a week later that it occurred to me that someone else who was unlikely to have any messages at all kept checking in regularly. 

I have no idea what happened when she got home; I don't know if the house or the baby were still clean.  I do know they hired a nanny & she cut short her maternity leave & came back to work early (the first & only time I have ever seen that happen, by the way).  They are still married & they never had any more children.

Agatha's lost weekend did not end so nicely,  Unless you are Archie Christie, I suppose.  He had said he requested a divorce (that's what prompted the fight that ended in her flight) & a divorce he got.  He married the mistress at the heart of it all & that's all I know.  Happily ever after?  Maybe.

Why you don't want me anywhere near your wedding

A friend of mine was recently in a wedding.  She was The Maid of Honor & it was marginally less fun than anyone would have predicted.  Let me give you the highlights:

The Bride wanted to have a destination shower.  I had never heard of this, but I gather from the trailer of Bridesmaids that it is a thing.  Her location of choice was rather pricey being some distance away & in a generally more expensive part of the country.  What it wasn't was someplace any rational person would want to go.  Her reasons for choosing it had to do with the entertainer who would be there the week-end that had been set aside for the shower.  This same entertainer is actually from the state where the wedding was later held, the home state of The Bride, The Maid of Honor & many others of the bridal party.  He does shows less than 100 miles from the blessed event frequently, just not on demand. 

Ultimately it was a destination (to a different, more convenient, but no less inexplicable locale) shower & it unfortunately coincided with the very day The Maid of Honor lost her job.  This was, of course, not The Bride's fault; it wasn't even The Maid of Honor's fault, as her employer had been circling the bowl for a while.  The Bride gave The Maid of Honor a stirring & uplifting speech about how she better not be a bummer on this oh-so-important of weekends, second only to the importance of the blessed event itself, just because she didn't have a job.  Also, she had better not try to play it cheap.

& finally: at the time of the initial wedding planning The Maid of Honor was dating a guy, lets call him The Snake.  Introductions of The Snake to the happy couple were made, as it was expected The Snake would be the The Maid of Honor's date to the wedding.  After The Maid of Honor & The Snake broke up & he started openly dating the reason for the break-up, The Bride invited him &  his "new" girlfriend to the wedding as guests despite no other previous contact except through The Maid of Honor.  Then the Bride began nagging The Maid of Honor to get another date.

Which brings us to today's story.  The Maid of Honor had a few drinks at my dining room table & we started brainstorming about who she could bring to this wedding.  Previous suggestions included a friend who offered to appear costumed as a butch lesbian, but I knew we could do better.  By the end of the evening on the date-table were:

• A stripper...to give the groom a lapdance right after the ceremony.  She should also be encouraged to make as much extra cash as possible performing private dances for guests & wedding party alike throughout the reception. 
• A drag queen-they are surprisingly pricey
• A mime-they are surprisingly cheap, OKay maybe not "surprisingly" but still a most excellent bargain

By the end of the week we had expanded to include:

• An Elvis impersonator-not as easy to find as you might think, outside of their native Vegas anyhow
• An accordion player-hey, I like accordion music better than the next person.  I even still have Gérard Blanchard on vinyl (dude!), but lets face it not everyone wants to hear accordion music with their dried-out chicken entree.
• A clown-which I ended up expanding to include a bride clown & groom clown & their entire wedding party all crammed into a clown car.  This made no difference, as the only clowns we could find were strictly of the birthday party/balloon animal variety & if we were going to spend that kind of cash we would definitely go with a stripper.

A few weeks later, it was suggested she order a pizza during the ceremony & ask the delivery guy to stay for the reception.  When it was pointed out that the delivery guy probably could not stay, we thought maybe we could get someone to pose as a pizza delivery guy. In the end, there was a kinda-sorta actual offer to pose as a pizza delivery driver but it would have required interstate travel at rather too short notice to board his dog.

The day before the wedding, I texted the suggestion that she dial 911 during the ceremony & ask the firemen to stay.  Somehow, I doubt she did.


//nothing to do with this wedding exactly, but I have spent way too much time with brides & I think I might have an idea how bridezillas happen:  in order to get a bride to pay exorbitant amounts of money for food she will not eat, a dress she will not wear again, etc. wedding vendors spend a lot of time blowing smoke up the bride's ass.  As a general rule, it is never a good idea to take fashion advice from the person who makes a commission off of what you spend on your wardrobe; as a bridal rule it is probably just about as stoopid to take lifestyle advice from people who make money the more extravagant your lifestyle is.  I'm just saying.

& about accordion players.  I actually briefly dated one in high school, although in those days he was a mere clarinet player.  He is a very nice guy & if he lived locally he would absolutely not have attended this wedding with his accordion because he is so nice he would never force accordion music on anyone no matter how egregious their sins.  You can see why we didn't last long as a couple.

Lastly, I might be wrong about why The Maid of Honor & The Snake broke up.  It is possible this is the reason, it is even possible she told me the reason & this was or was not it & I just don't remember.  For the purposes of this blog post, however, The Snake was a semi-discreet man-whore who got caught.

What would Hawley do?

There has been so much chatter, I am guessing nationwide but certainly here in her home state of Fladidah, about how Casey Anthony got away with it.  & maybe she did. Or maybe she was just a really lousy parent.  I have an opinion myself & that opinion is...if I am ever accused of murder, I want the jury sequestered.

But enough about Casey Anthony (please, ENOUGH), lets look back on another murderer everyone knew was guilty & did not get away with it.  Today in 1910, Hawley Harvey Crippen was arrested for the murder of his wife, Cora.  He was apprehended while crossing the Atlantic Ocean with his mistress who was disguised as a boy.  He denied murdering his wife right up until he was hanged.  When asked why he ran, why the disguise, etc. he said he didn't think anyone would believe he didn't kill his wife.  The book Thunderstruck, which is about a lot of other things as well as the Crippen case, describes the media frenzy that surrounded the murder & manhunt.  For decades, the whole business was lauded as a triumph of police technique...until....

Until almost right away,  frankly. There were a number of problems with the investigation, including the idea of Mrs. Crippen as a hapless victim, & the problems have only multiplied over the years.  In 2007 a research group tested one sample of DNA from the remains found in the Crippen home (where Mr. Crippen disposed of his wife's torso, after moving her head, hands, & pretty much the rest of her elsewhere, never to be found) with DNA from contemporary descendants of Mrs. Crippen's half-sister & found no match.  They also found the remains from the Crippen's home were from a man.  & it gets better...or worse if you are Crippen.  Letters that alleged to be from Mrs. Crippen, alive & well & living in the US written to himself in prison, although neither he nor his lawyers were ever told such a letter existed.

So maybe Casey Anthony was really just the worst mother imaginable, but not actually a murderer.  Kind of like Gary Condit was not the world's best husband & was maybe sleeping with a federal intern but did not actually kill her.  Or William Michael Dillon, another party-loving young Floridian who served more than 25 years of a life sentence before DNA evidence exonerated him. 

But back to Crippen.  What would Crippen do when his wife's friends started asking questions about where she had gone?  Well, he lied.  He made false statements to them & to the police.  He changed his story over & over again because he was pretty sure they were not going to believe that an unhappily married man who had made is mistress pregnant was not involved in same wife's disappearance.  & he was right.

What would Anita do?

As we s*l*o*w*l*y come up on the end of Florida's gay adoption ban (& yes, I do consider this one of the silver linings of our tanked economy; it is hard to justify spending $100,000s defending a policy that is just not going to to stand up at the next judicial tier no matter how moral you might think it is), I thought it would be a good time to take a little look at today's birthday girl:  Anita Bryant.

Anita's parents divorced when she was quite small, & Anita was sent to live with her maternal grandparents.  I don't know if it was a happy childhood, but it looks like a successful one:  she began her musical career with their encouragement, she graduated high school, was crowned Miss Oklahoma 1958 & made it to the final four in the Miss America Pageant.   Shortly after this she made the Billboard charts with one of my favorite songs (although I do prefer the Beatles version & even better Miss Peggy Lee; what can I say, I just love The Music Man).  She also got a college scholarship but I cannot see that she attended or graduated (it can be hard to find this information about those pre-Google days in the time I am prepared to look for it, which is almost none).  In 1960 she married a Miami disc jockey & they had four children...& twenty years together.

All that time Anita was singing, wedding, birthing, she was also preaching, kinda.  I confess "preacher" is a lot like "imam" to me.  Anyone with the inclination seems able to break into the biz; I am very unclear as to the qualifications (although I am fairly certain the position does NOT come with health insurance).  Anyway, Ms. Bryant declared a fatwa on anything she saw as a threat to her vision of family.

One of her early targets was......divorce.  & then she got one.  Let me go on record as saying I am a HUGE fan of divorce.  As A says, divorce means all those people who cannot stand the sight of each other can get away without killing each other.  Neither of us has ever been divorced...so far (I also say the same thing about rape; I haven't been...so far). 

Which means I really am happy for Anita's divorce.  If she would go through with it despite the disapproval of some of her followers, she must have really needed it.  What is damn shame is she never stopped to think if she was wrong about this, what else might she have been wrong about?  Because it was her group that reversed local laws protecting homosexuals in Miami & went on to inspire (& bankroll) similar movements across the country.  & while her movement had a far reaching impact, it also reached around & impacted her.  The divorce, yes, but her wholesome spokesperson career was over.  It turns out homosexuals drink as much orange juice as anyone & homo-phobes won't buy orange juice just because Anita Bryant is on the poster, especially a divorced Anita Bryant.  & a handful (her description) of protesters getting coverage outside of her other venues helped the invitations to those venues dry up. 

So she picked herself up, dusted herself off (after a flirtation with prescription drug abuse) & looked for a niche within her niche (divorced, jonesing homo-phobes!) & opened a theater where those who wanted to could hear her sing & minister.  Alas, her flock was only getting smaller, as evidenced by the extremely low attendance at her performances, until finally even the most devoted were completely cashed out & broke & then Anita left town...to rise again-again.

More recently Anita Bryant was singing the national anthem at the 2011 Oklahoma Gubernatorial Inaugural Ball.  Which brings us to what would Anita do?  From here, it looks like she would count on almost everything old being new again & what isn't old/new being overlooked.  What it seems she won't be doing is considering there might be more to the human condition than forgiveness for only the transgression she has made.  Happy Birthday Anita.  You remain for me a shining example of how a bright & pretty cover can disguise a shallow, spiteful story....but only for so long.

Credit: Free images from acobox.com

Achey breaky

Yup it is Valentine's Day & I am guessing A will come home with flowers & maybe even chocolates (to be fair, he comes home with chocolates often, mostly so he can eat them but hey, it's the thought that counts).  He might even arrive with lemon cake -my most absolute favorite- which he also been known to just do.  Either way or empty handed, it's all fine; I am not one for setting much store by these once-a-year days as a measure of true feeling.  After all, this is the man who, when told by the judge we were husband & wife "before the eyes of G*d & the state of Texas" looked into my eyes & said "There's two institutions I believe in".

What really matters is the other 360-odd days that he comes home (again, often with chocolate) & the house looks just the same (i.e. untidy, or worse) as it did when he left that morning, because I have been quilting.  How was that for a segway?

& so I have managed to get thru this months Block Lotto& Friday Block Party blocks before the middle of the month or the middle of the week.

Monk monkey in the middle or Tit for tat

It was 200 years too early for "Neither a borrower no a lender be" but somehow Chaucer managed a new slant with the Shipman's Tale.  The only guy who is happy is the guy who is both a borrower & a lender, the individual borrower & the individual lender mostly just get screwed.

Let me give you the highlights:

• There is a guy.  He wants to sleep with his friend-cousin's wife.  The friend-cousin is clueless, the wife slightly less so. 
  
  
• There is the wife.  Her husband makes plenty of money, in her view, for her to have nice things:  richer clothes, etc., but he is not so generous as she would like or even so generous as she has spent in a Chaucerian credit card debt kind of way.
  
  
• There is the husband.  He thinks the first guy is his friend.  He thinks he is happily married.

The story goes like this.  For a long time the first guy has been visiting his friend-cousin, eating his food, sleeping under his roof & lusting after his wife.  First friend-cousin aka Husband-friend-cousin sees nothing amiss in the longing looks his buddy casts his wife's way.  In fact, I never got that he even noticed.  I did not really even get that she much noticed.  Either my middle english is not great (which is true) or these two are quite the pair of rubes (also true).

One day, Husband-friend-cousin confides in Lecherous-friend-cousin that he 1) needs to go away on business 2) would like to park some cash somewhere short-term & 3) thinks his wife could stand to be watched.  Lecherous-friend-cousin says no problem & by the way he is temporarily light & maybe he could get a small loan...?  No problem right back at him, money moves from Husband-friend-cousin to Lecherous-friend-cousin & all is well when Husband-friend-cousin hits the road.

Lecherous-friend-cousin is happy to gift/loan same $$ to the wife & they have a wonderful athletic time together.  Husband-friend-cousin returns, Lecherous-friend-cousin leaves but not before a brief "where's my money?", "Why I gave it to your wife of course".  When the husband asks the wife what she did with it she says "Uhmmmmm I thought it was reimbursement for being such a lengthy house guest, but I will pay you back Husband by charging you for sex".  

Oh yea, Lecherous-friend-cousin, the guy who is both a borrower & a lender, the only wholly happy person in this tale:  he's a monk.

Über-mother

Before there was Woody Allen, before there was Philip Roth, there was...the Man of Law. That's right, everything begins & ends with the Canterbury Tales.

Let me get right to the middle: my freshman year in college I started watching soap operas for the first (& maybe last) time in my life. If you had lived on a woman's floor in the mid-80's you would know: one end of the floor was for General Hospital & the other Guiding Light. I lived almost exactly in the middle, but that whole Luke & Laura rape thing really put me off. Also the Guiding Light room was way cooler, so Guiding Light it was. I moved dorms for my sophomore year (to the all-women dormitory described here) & what with the rugby players & AG majors, soaps did not get much of a look in. Except in J***'s room. She had been watching Guiding Light faithfully with her mom most of her life & that was not going to stop anytime soon.

For those two years & not so much as one episode since, I was a faithful viewer. & a lot of what I viewed was one character -let's call her Reva- getting hit by a car. Again. Whenever beset by worries of any kind, this woman ran into the street. Which really just compounded her worries (could someone refresh my memory: did she lose the baby because she got hit by a car or did she get hit by a car because she was losing the baby?), making me wonder why she did not move somewhere with less traffic. I always wanted an Amish episode were she seduces Yoder & then his wife drives over her with a buggy.

I told you that story to tell you this one: in the Man of Law's Tale the victim keeps getting on boats & getting set adrift. Or is kidnapped & put on boats. Or flees on boats. I am quite sure she always end up drifting. It is all very murky & scholars have spent centuries talking about the boat: is it christianity or faith generally? Is it a re-birth thing? A better question would be: after the second time you have been set adrift, would you continue to live on the coast? Where someone might trick you onto another boat? Well, she never did move inland. I guess some women just cannot get out of traffic.

I think (& so would Woody Allen & Philip Roth if they were me) that the more important question is WHO keeps putting her on that damn boat? The first time, it is her father but she does not actually drift that time, just makes a lousy arranged marriage. After that though, it is always the mother-in-law. More than one mother-in-law. Each man she ahems has the mother from hell.

That is all I have really, except this final philosophy on mothers-in-law (which I should say I arrived at before I ever met my husband): mothers-in-law are like giant, hairy, poisonous spiders. No matter what it looks like, she is way more afraid of you than you are of her.

//it turns out my memory was better than I thought. Apparently Reva was Amish, briefly. I am sure I must have heard it somewhere; how could I just think that up?

Three tips for the bride who wants her OWN wedding

I am the last person who should be giving advice on any aspect of wedding planning. This is probably how I happened to work, ever so briefly, as the facilities coordinator (i.e. the booker of weddings) at one of the nicest places around. & in the end I left for reasons that had nothing to do with bridezillas. They really were not that bad. Even more astonishing, if you google my real name, I still come up in connection with this job & it is all good.

While I was in the middle of wedding-central, I could not help but notice that almost everyone had the same wedding over&over&over again. & the dream of every bride was to have her OWN wedding. For those of you who go around calling this 'our' big day, let me burst that bubble. I never laid eyes on the groom of at least half the weddings we booked. Grooms want you to: not spend so much, not drag him into arguments with his mother, not drag him into arguments with your mother, not spend so much & calm down. Also, they would really like it if you could not spend quite so much.

Let me suggest a few small changes that will make your wedding yours without increasing your bottomline:

Ditch the Wagner
For my own wedding, this was never on the table because of that whole anti-semite thing, but frankly everyone of us has also been Handeled up to our eyeballs. I suggested Baby Elephant Walk to a relative & she did not speak to me for a month; I really did not mean anything by it. Also, it was Mom's idea originally, so there! Forget the jumbo implications & just listen to it, it is charming.

A has said he wishes I had told him what I really would have wanted because he would have wanted it, too: the Theme from Peter Gunne. OKay, your heart is set on classical, even though you never listen to it any other time in your life. Fine. Let me suggest the next runner up by Bach. Frankly I have been to plenty of weddings where the best choice would have been Night on Bald Mountain, but brides get very tense when you tell them that. If you want original & traditional (I could not believe how often THAT request would come up) what about Come Haste to the Wedding? Anyway...tip number one: make a musical decision that is your own, not Bride Magazine's, yours.

Lose the dress
That's right you heard me: get off that wedding dress wagon. Instead find a dress you like. That does not highlight your ass (back interest, puh-leeze). A normal dress. Less than 100 years ago it was perfectly acceptable for a bride to wear her dress out for evenings, etc. If you do not believe me take a break from your wedding planning schedule & read some Edith Wharton: she will give you a whole new perspective on married life, regardless which book you choose.

I am not suggesting that you need to go 'theme'; I do not mean get married in jeans or scuba gear or both, unless you want to of course. I just mean $ for a dress you wear once? & then fantasize about passing down to your daughter? Who (maybe) does not exist yet? & may not be speaking to you on her wedding day? Perhaps, because you made such a big stink about her wearing your dress? Here is it...tip number two: a wedding dress is not an investment.

Postpone the honeymoon
It never made any sense to me: get together all the people that are important to you (& a few that almost certainly are not), make a major change in your life that means you will see all of them less & then leave. Why not take this opportunity to spend some time with them? If you think you will get to do this at the reception you are delusional. Besides, after your wedding you will want several days comatose, you can do this at home. A went to work the day after we got married (I was unemployed or I would have, too). We took a vacation later when we knew we would get more out of it. I am not saying never have a honeymoon just that you will enjoy it more if you are still speaking to each other. Or not still mad about the cheese plate (suddenly we are kosher, what got into her?). & so tip number three: take a break before you take a honeymoon.

In the fairness of full disclosure I should tell you I never walked down an aisle. There was no music. A saw my dress before the wedding; he bought it for me as a birthday gift, in a shop in NYC & it was not bride-specific. There were no fancy decorations. We were married by a judge we did not meet with before & have not seen since. There were no friends & family there. Our reception was about two weeks & almost 2K miles later. It still took.

Happy 15th to me & mine.

Innie outie, innie innie, outie outie

My bookclub has just wrapped up Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian. It seems that gay was in the air for me generally, as I also just finished Haven Kimmel's The Used World (which I picked because M****** has often recommended the author & it looked like a painted lady on the cover). I found the latter slow but the former grueling in its detail. I do not mean the details of transsexual male-to-female surgery which at least had the grace of being new-to-me details. I mean 2+ pages on which student may or may not have slipped something into a pile of in-class workpapers on the teacher's desk. It was almost more than I could cope with.

But they were both interesting.

Just this past election (& by that I mean March 2009), one town over voted on a re-write that would have disenfranchised a large group of people including gays, transgenders, et al by removing protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The focus of the campaign literature (but by no means the campaign agenda) was drag queens in public restrooms. I do not have to make this sh*t up, people.

& because the re-write progenitors were fond of using children to illustrate their ends, I started breaking it down into sound bytes a child could understand. My take on the re-write adverts was if you CAN pee standing up you MUST pee standing up.

Naturally, all sexuality roads lead to gay marriage. I freely admit to being confused, flummoxed & generally broadsided by the idea that two men or two women being married to each other has anything at all to do with me. Unless they make it mandatory, because to paraphrase Jon Stewart, my husband would not like that. I think I am always so surprised (& I really always am; I am blonde that way) because while sex is important, it is hardly all that makes a marriage. I can only speak for my marriage, but it is about food & television & laundry & bad running inside jokes & so many other things not germane to the in & out bits.

& I am often sucker-punched by the idea that while kids can be trotted out to hold signs & sit at the petition-signature gathering tables, the real reason mommy & daddy are doing this is because they want to keep their children safe from the awareness of gay marriage. After all, what would happen if we had to explain what gay marriage is? It would burst their little brains. Well, I think I might be able to help with that:

While I am part of an innie outie marriage myself, I know people in innie innies & outie outies, too. These three camps are a lot like Trekkies, Lord of the Rings enthusiasts & Star Wars aficionados. Everyone is aware of the other camps & sometimes some of us even visit them, but as we grow up we all realize which sci-fi/fantasy genre is best for us. Oh sure, there are the occasional deviants; those Hitchhikers Guide people are a bit off, but we try to love them anyway. Those outright pervs, the Gormenghastians need to be avoided, though. & Dune! Do not get me started on Dune.

I agree, it needs some work. Also, I have completely left off Red Dwarf & the hero of the transgender: Kryten. & it was from him that I ripped off the whole in&out bits bit. Isn't that just the way these things go?

Guntramnus

I admit, I have been trolling for a saint for a while. I just had not found anyone who really captured my interest & I tend to go underground around Saint Patrick's Day anyhow. But the other morning I tripped across Saint Guntramnus. Here is a guy I can sink my teeth into. Most of what I found was not in English, making for tough research. I can read French passably & other languages with a dictionary close by, but that was too much like work so I thought I would just wing it.

First of all, Guntramnus was more or less a typical medieval monarch & not so much a catholic. Or maybe he was a Catholic for his time (I maintain that Louis was canonized for his extensive killing of Jews). The strange stories abound but my favorite is he divorced his wife (no real reason given), she later fell ill &, when the doctor did not cure her, Guntramnus killed him. With his bare hands. Well, a knife to the throat. You can see how he came to be the patron saint of murderers.

Guntramnus was apparently very very sorry afterward, so at least one site assures me he is the patron of REPENTANT murderers. By the way, his wife's name was Mercatrude. I almost want to get a new cat or goat just to name her Mercatrude.

There are other amusing anecdotes about Guntramnus. & then there is the stuff between the lines. He was a king & both his brothers were kings. I am sure they were just charm-all-around & no one touched a hair on any prior king's head. He is credited for keeping his nephews (one from each of his brothers) safe from multiple dowager queen's wrath. If I am reading correctly, the dowager queens in question were the boys own mothers. What happened to their fathers is not so well documented.

For anyone wondering how the boys were in Guntramnus' care in the first place, the terms guest/ward/hostage were more or less interchangeable in those days. If you are still confused (& maybe unclear how three brothers could all think they were king), let me recommend The Lion in Winter. Incidentally, Guntramnus is also the patron saint of guardians.

The last Guntramnus factoid I wanted to share was that in addition to repentant murderers & guardians, he is also patron saint of divorced people. He shares this with Helena (mother of Constantine) & Fabiola. Considering the church only very reluctantly even recognizes divorce & often only by granting annulments, I was pleased there were still patrons to choose from, even among the *divorced*: the guy who is also patron saint for murderers OR the mother an emperor & herself an empress & patroness of same OR the patroness of almost every marital victimization you can name. Like I said, choices.

My world IS flat

I do not remember when I started flattening things. But I do remember when I started doing things with the results. We were living in Joisey, more or less at the Route 46/I-75 junction. In this complete absence of anything not man-made I was fascinated by the variety of foliage in the drainage ditches. Within a couple months I would pullover & randomly press plants I found ANYWHERE. Lucky for me, A has absolutely no problem flying across lanes of traffic so I can hop out & get a snip of leaf or bloom or bark.

Earlier this year I made my return to the Herbarium on campus to begin the cross-reference of the Wood Collection. An herbarium for those who do not know is a library of plant specimens. It was here I learned there is a right way to press plants (& I was mostly doing it) & a wrong way to record information (& I was doing that, too).

I was fortunate to have access to the images I did when Kathy & I made this quilt "Floristic Inventory of Kanapaha Botanical Gardens" (originally exhibited at the Florida Museum of Natural History in 2006) & compulsive enough to record the information from the source labels on the back (with legend).

It has been a few years (wow! years) since I saw this quilt, it has been traveling off&on & I do not own it, so I do not see it between trips, either. As I look at these old pictures I wonder that A never once suggested that perhaps I needed a psych referral. Instead he listened patiently while I explained the intricacies of digitally recreating the shadows behind the native grape for reproduction on fabric. Lucky for him he can sleep with his eyes open.

Seriously, what was I thinking?

This is the time of year I doubt I am female

I genuinely, truthfully do not 'get' Valentine's Day. This is lucky because A actively resists VDay. He actively resists any directive from any authority. I try to be happy with the conventions he does accept & leave it at that.

He will often come home with flowers on the day, but he does not lose any points if he does not (I do not understand paying inflated prices because of what day it is either, also I have a whole FARM from which I could cut my own flowers, I pressed flowers&plants for years, I work in an herbarium, more doomed&dieing&dead blooms are not really a requirement for me). I will say though that one year V****** was having dinner here on VDay, I cannot recall why, not because of the holiday, I promise. Anyway, he did come home with flowers for her, which was nice.

& then the chocolate thing. I like chocolate. Chocolate is lovely & given the choice I would rather have french fries. Sweet potato fries. Curly fries. When I need a quick-pick-me-up: Checkers fries.

When we lived up north, going out for VDay always seemed to involve negotiating icy weather & bad restaurant service.I preferred to get the points for working late when everyone else wanted to leave early. Here the town has outgrown itself. Even a lousy place on a random Tuesday will have a 45 minute wait. Except in that cherished week between Christmas & New Years. Then you can go anywhere & when you get there, there will be parking. Classes started January 6th this year, giving us a bit longer than usual & it was marvelous.

& so this VDay will be spent much as previous VDays have been, as most of my days are. Uneventful, unmemorable, except in that I am happy in my marriage & have plenty of what I like to eat & things to do with my time.

Technically it is Saint Valentine's Day. Who was he? Who knows; feel free to Google yourself to death.

Shortest days

I know you do not need me to tell you that all the religions in world history have some kind of rebirth/light thing this time of year. There, I told you anyway.

When I was a child, the shortest days meant waiting for the school bus in the dark & getting home from school barely before dusk. & that was only if you did not have detention. Or whatever might put you on the 'late bus'.

Now shortest days means more time outside, in the sun. Most of the year, the sun is too much for me & my lily white skin. I have been an avid consumer of SPF45 ever since I moved to New Jersey (it was not that the ozone layer is thinner there, but that I was more up-close-&-personal with suntan victims circa 1990; I still have nightmares), but I manage to get at least one sunburn every year. This time of year, though, it is never as bad.

Perhaps there is something to that whole earth moving around the sun in an elliptical orbit, etc. Anyhow, the sun is not as strong & does not last as long & mostly that is OKay with me.

There are only a few downsides (for me, remember this is about me). The horses get very confused about when they should be fed. I try to keep it to every 12 hours, but that means that one of these will be in the dark. They stand at the back gate waiting for me to get out there every night for at least an hour. There is no convincing them that sundown is not dinnertime.

Also, the chickens stop laying, or at least slow down. Sometimes they will start up again by New Years, but somehow I do not think this will be one of those years. I will be lucky to see eggs by March.

I consider these more-than-fair trades for the real upside to these shortest days down south: A is happier. He is the last person to admit those long dark days bummed him out, but they did. Here it is rare for him to leave before dawn (although not uncommon for him to return after sunset). He has breakfast every morning in a room with wall-to-wall windows on three sides & there is no doubt it is a better start to his day.

Hapless husbands hurry home

A has a favorite joke: a doctor, a lawyer & a physicist are having an argument which is better a wife or a mistress. The Doctor says: a wife, she can keep your life organized & remember all your patients when you see them & generally be a helpmate. The lawyer says: no a mistress is better. She is around only for what you want, you don't have to spend every free minute with her & when you separate, you don't have to worry she will take half of everything. The physicist says: you really need both. Then you can tell your mistress you are with your wife, your wife you are with your mistress & go to the lab & get some work done.

That was the whole post, but I thought I should make a bit of an effort. So I will add this: my bookclub has observed that I lean towards entrees that can be made in one pot. The other quality they share is being able to sit, in a warm oven for 'a bit' if someone is running late. Or has no idea what time it is. After all, are you really running late if you don't know you are late?

I think that really is it for this post.