HOW I SPENT MY 2014 SUMMER VACATION

I went back to England via Miss Marple, Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War and a couple other Detective Chief Inspectors' adventures. My computer never cooled off from the instant streaming of the delightfully benign mayhem that underscores these British whodunnits.

One episode even took me to a llama farm in Wales. That brought back memories of my visit to Ruth Ruck in Carneddi some time around 1989.

Ruth was one of the first Anglo Saxons to own a camelid and her book, Along Came a Llama, set off a llama rage in the United Kingdom. The visit to Ruth, and other owners, was in aid of a feature story I was writing about the comparatively new phenomenon of camelid ownership for fun and profit.

Foyle, on the other hand, took me through the entirety of WWII and, oddly, the last episodes left me sharing almost the same sensations of being at the same sixes and sevens as the participants felt - the bombed, the bombers, the soldiers and the civilians. It was reminiscent of the wrap parties we used to have when our theater group ended a run. 

Time, tide and distance, I think, permit this ridiculous parallel. 

At any rate....I am all set for things to go back to normal. All my favorite news people (essentially Stewart and Colbert) should be back at the old stand tomorrow. And, soon, the weather will change and so will the color of the landscape.

Autumn arrives......and I persist. Pretty jolly, what?

           -30-

A Hair-raising Tale

Originally published March 7, 1985
The Village Times
Serving Three Villages, East Setauket, NY


One of the gratifying things about having nearly grown children is that their daily showers are on their agendas, not mine.

Lassoing one or the other for a bath and a shampoo and pleading for clean jeans and a sweater not stiff with vintage jelly are now just memories.

But, I keep forgetting nature abhors a vacuum. Now that I have real clean kids, there are new things to plague me.

I never really resent children borrowing things and not returning them. I know life is full of more important things to do. What I do resent is borrowing unborrowable things. Things that get used up and are gone forever.

Like shampoo.

Last night, I washed my hair in Woolite. It made me very cross....and frizzy.

I started to have a temper tantrum and then I reminded myself of my teen years....and my mother's tribulations.

At that age I only washed my hair when it was congealed. In pre-hair spray and mousse days everyone knew you couldn't do anything with clean hair. We probably never ran out of shampoo.

What did obsess me, however, were combs. I was forever combing my hair....probably because it was so dirty it kept parting on my ear, and I certainly wouldn't allow anyone to see my ear. It stuck out. The other one did, too.

It upset my mother that there was never a comb in the house. When I lost mine, naturally, I "borrowed" hers. Once she bought me a package containing a dozen combs. It may have lasted a week.

One night I came home from cheering practice and found my mother sitting in the kitchen with a rather tight-lipped expression. "Where is my comb?" she wanted to know. "Why do you ask? I hedged.

"Because I had an appointment in Manhattan today and, since I had to take the train, I thought it would be nice to comb my hair."

Well, it turned out she couldn't...... because I had taken the last comb. 

Unable to find so much as a hairbrush in the house, my mother finally combed her hair with a fork and boarded the train.

I guess I don't have it so tough. If I run out of Woolite, there's always lemon-fresh Joy.

-30-

Water With Personality

Jo Ann Law McGrath

From the Stone Soup Collection

The Long Island Advance, 1979

WATER WITH PERSONALITY

We have well water.

If you don't, you may miss the colorful implications of that statement.

It means we have orange sinks, tubs and toilets. It means that my dishes, tableware and cooking utensils have fascinating watermarks that vaguely resemble the patterns left on a sandy beach by a receding high tide.

It means that after boiling spaghetti for nine minutes it comes out of the pot a strange shade of mauve that clashes with my marinara sauce.

Our water has lots of body. It also has an unmistakeable odor that I once considered fragrant. As a city-bound youngster, trips to the country were pleasurable and the smell and taste of rural water always had happy associations for me.

The smell of OUR water is so strong that it should have the capacity to make me delirious with joy. But it's such a STEADY heady thing that it has lost some of its charm.

A couple of years ago, we decided anything as benign as water perhaps shouldn't smell so evil, so we had it tested. It was deemed perfectly potable but, just as we had suspected, it contained enough minerals for us to start a mining operation. Unfortunately, the only thing we mine is rust.

As a result, we have an unwilling one-millionth interest in a company that makes a dandy little product called Zud.

Zud is designed to removed rust. It also removes my nail polish and, if applied with enthusiasm, my nails, as well.

It's a minor complaint....no pun intended....so unless and until we discover that our minerals come to us through the courtesy of man-made objects left at the landfill and pluming their way toward our well, we'll live with our water.

The option is to have water than smells like chlorine. "They" tell us that chlorine is perfectly safe, and it probably is. But "they" also say that Tang is a good thing to drink and, according to the astronauts, it probably is.

But Tang is what we run through the dishwasher to remove the rust we can't reach. Somehow, it never occurs to me to drink it.

-30-

Trompe L'oeil or Mud in Your Eye

I was a child of radio. I listened to the  Lone Ranger, Captain Midnight, The Inner Sanctum (with its squeaky door), Gangbusters and, when I was very little, Let's Pretend.

Interspersed with, and punctuating all my childish entertainment, were the voices of men like Gabriel Heatter, Hans Von Kaltenborn and Edward R. Murrow.

It was an eclectic lineup for a kid and the selection was not always my choice.  However, by osmosis, the tenor and timbre - and unquestioned honesty - of radio voices became a yardstick by which I came to measure and treasure verbal intercourse.

I knew that if I heard it on the radio, it was right....at least the pronunciation and enunciation were right. In all likelihood, so was the information. (Barring, of course, commercial claims. And, even those bore a stamp of veracity greater than those of today.)

The same can be said of newspapers. At home, The New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times were daily bread. Starting in my early teens, I knew that whatever word or phrase was used by these paragons, it was correct....or it was corrected in a small box the next day, or the next edition. 

Just so were the words issuing from the mouths of the men (mostly) whose voices set the standard for correct grammar and diction to die for.

And here we are today. Instead of  riding an upward moving trajectory of excellence, the educational and informational  standards for radio and television and, alas, the written word, have collapsed like a tower of Babel beneath the weight of ignorance and declining standards.

But now, even more distressing, we are surfeited on a daily diet of lies from semi-respected news sources (sources Murrow would have squashed with his cigarette butt), parodies of news that seem real and are often quoted, and, heaven forfend, something  called photo shopping.

This last may be the ultimate sacking of truth and trust. While you can establish the truth of a piece of news, if you care about probity, by mounting your own research, when your eye has been fooled, leaving no clues, you have been taken in a way that smacks of lots and lots of trouble.

It's fun to see improbable things. And I like to believe in improbable things. But reality is a healthier, if not happier, place to reside.

Beware the Jabberwocky, my friends. Entropy lurks. The Shadow knows!

-30-   

 

The Blanky Needs a Bath

This morning my daughter asked me what the Third Amendment to the Constitution promised citizens of the United States of America.

I didn't know. Does anyone know?

There appear to be only two Amendments that have any claim to our collective memory.

_______________________

1.  Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Petition

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;  or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, etc.

2. Right to keep and bear arms.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

__________________

The first Amendment is generally misinterpreted by the Religious Right. They gloss over the part about Congress not making a law respecting the establishment of religion and have instead made it mandatory by word and deed, not by law, that everyone elected to office must believe in Jesus Christ, the bible, heaven and hell and Satan, or they are not qualified to hold any governmental office.

Further, the second part of the first Amendment is equally misinterpreted by these folks, as well as by other creepy tentacles of the Conservative Party. The part about freedom of the press is a part they prefer to ignore unless it's Fox, Clear Channel or divers other outrageously biased sources on whom they rely to bolster their positions, which seldom bear a relationship to truth and/or accuracy.

However, it is the third Amendment that should hold our attention here because it is as obsolete, as many of us believe the second Amendment is. And it alone should make the case for argument that it, and the second Amendment, are anachronisms. It should also suggest that the Constitution - held as a living, breathing and sacred document that can never be tampered with - could use a little modernization to accommodate a reality that the Founding Fathers could never have imagined.

________________ 

3. Conditions for quarters of soldiers

No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

_________________

Now tell me that the founders ever imagined what this country would look like and how it would be populated in the 21st Century. Can anyone conceive of a need to quarter soldiers in any house in this country when we have millions and millions of acres of public buildings and millions of acres of military bases and VA Hospitals?

Taking over someone's bungalow, or third floor walk-up, in order to bed down and feed a couple  of enlisted men, or even a gaggle of generals, does not sound like anything anyone would ever contemplate in 2013.  

Yet there it is. Enshrined in our Constitution. along with the Second Amendment. 

It's obvious to me - and must be to anyone who has a closet full of hoop skirts or wimples or wooden shoes - we could use a little refreshing.

-30-

 

Coming Undone In the Digital Age

One of the very best things about using a computer is its offer to undo anything you've done. At least on the keyboard.

Yes, there are instances when you don't catch an error or an unpolitic remark in time, and then, poof! - it's published or it has vanished, against your will or better judgment.

But, if you are paying attention, this is a cool tool that - were it available in "real" life - could eliminate so much pain and misunderstanding and some of those terrible entanglements that proceed from a hasty or too-loose tongue.

While life in the digital array does give you a chance to reconsider, this can be a dangerous crutch to rely on. We have to live in the real world and we still are held accountable for our errors in the foot-in-mouth disease department.

As much as social networking has convinced us that we are talking to real people whom we really know, we don't really know them and we have no physical clues as to what makes them tick or how they will react to a variety of things. That makes "undo" even more important. But we have to remember that key does not exist in the world where we breathe air.

On Face Book, where we interact as a community, this key probably isn't used as much as it could be.....but I have to admit that I find that refreshing. I like the spontaneity of the interchange and I am often amused to find things revealed that you would never have believed of a person....good and bad.

And there, for the "bad" department, our thoughtful digital vehicle has provided an application. It's called the "unfriend" button.

I have to say I like making friends more than I do un-friending them, but still....when life can be so full of irritants that can't be neutralized, a flick of a switch is a very satisfying solution.Too bad we can't do that with whole years that are full of devastation and frustration, pain and heartache. 

Since we can't, our only option appears to be to try hard to make as few errors as possible.

Let's hope 2013 is one of the years we can look back on and say: "That's a keeper."

-30- 

 

Basking Shark

Considering the amount and richness of the vittles I have been  hoovering up since last I blogged, and knowing that a basking shark is the second largest fish in the world, I thought  the title here would fairly describe my present state.  

While I know I am still possessed of a big mouth and sharp teeth,  I figured my tone would be tempered by the ennui resulting from the rank depression that follows reacquired fat!

But, lo and behold, while I still have my shark teeth credentials, I appear to have not gained an ounce. How can that be? I must be in a state of grace. By whose authorization, I cannot guess, but I'm not going to look a gift "thin" in the mouth.

Therefore, here is my contribution to the babel of the day:

We enlightened liberals always criticize the troglodytes for living  in an echo chamber and not attempting to broaden their horizons to include other - (read: correct) - points of view.

However, when I open my Face Book page early in the morning, I am so comforted to find my friends - all, or most, of whom react and comment in compatibly similar exclamations of disdain or joy at the reports of events since the night before. A cheery way to start the day.

Being of sound mind and, apparently, even sounder body, my initial reaction to this was a fleeting thought: "Maybe I should doubt my knee-jerk reactions to the loads of fecal substance that daily issue from the other side."

But then I recall that those who inhabit the other side are: Sean Hannity, who appears to have lost half his audience; Rush Limbaugh, who was said to have lost half his sponsors; Michelle Malkin who has, I know, only half a mind; and, of course, Ann Coulter who is, I am convinced, only half  a female.

There! I have recovered my "mean" and also re-established my belief that I should do nothing by half measures. 

It's all or nothing at all....and what I want above all is to change the world. Come with me for another year. 

-30-  

Voiceless in Virginia

I feel as though I've been playing hookey from school. 

For anyone checking to see who or what I have deplored this month, I apologize.

It is the season for  bonhomie and I have to admit that I am feeling some of it and can't seem to summon up much fury and bombast. 

I will leave it to the paid pundits to fulminate for me.

If love and joy are not in your basket of goodies, I hope peace of mind is.

Since we seem to have safely passed the dawning of the dreaded December 21, 2012, I will look forward to seeing you next year.

-30-

 

   

Roll Me Over in the Clover

I found myself in an inexplicable funk this morning and it wasn't until those who know me better than I know myself explained my mood. No more politically inspired adrenaline to fill my veins and set my heart and head on fire.

Would that it were as easy to rid the country of the scourge of religion as it appears to have been to shed ourselves of Romney & Co.

Yes, there were days when it looked like the "supreme" combination of money, media and mendacity was conspiring to frustrate us by working their black magic, but now that the thing is done, it's apparent there was little real doubt about the outcome. Even if Nate Silver and we, his adherents, were the only ones who knew it. 

Sigh. It's true that many of us liberals who normally like to read and dream have finally heeded the warning that a deadly, creeping  oligarchy cum theocracy could take over our lives and our planet. The effect of this realization was to turn us into militants. We took up the banner and entered the fray.

Now, flushed with success, where do we take the sound and fury we became accustomed to brandishing?

Perhaps we should address what  is probably the source of the fuel of the Tea Party and its cousins. Not oolong, lapsang or even Earl Grey, but the self-righteous, authoritarian, theocratic drek the evangelicals and other religion-driven in our society have tried to foist onto the rest of us.

You think they will accept defeat by ballot? Not on your life. And they are like bedbugs. They are everywhere, hard to kill and determined to survive.

I suppose this could be my next fixation. Working toward ripping the masks off the various phony faces of what passes for pious in an effort to enlighten the ignorant among us. 

The inkling for this came this morning when I heard that the underdone adolescent who is the "half" in the comedy  "Two and a Half Men"  is badmouthing the show (which has made him millions even before he becomes a man) because it offends his "Christian values." 

Now there is an oxymoron difficult to fight because it is   amorphous and proven by the religious right that it is totally without meaning.

A friend posted a short video showing another "values" actor,  Kirk Cameron, from "Growing Pains" who is presently bathing in "good news" and the joys of Jesus. 

To illustrate how god is the giver of all good things on earth, he rhapsodizes, on tape, about the heavenly qualities of a banana. "Look how perfectly it fits in the hand," says he. And he tells you how smooth and good it is to hold. It's so easy to peel and it's encased in a biodegradable wrapping that parts with a slight tug.

Only the sheer munificence and intelligence of god  could  have conceived and produced such perfection for all god's children.

OK, Kirk-o. I'll buy that....if you wax similarly enthusiastically about  a pomegranate, a prickly pear and a pineapple.

-30-

A Nosetwist in the Offing?

I just read that Grover Norquist may be getting the wim-wams for fear his bought-and-paid-for lawmakers may welch on their pledge  not to raise taxes, NO MATTER WHAT.

His reported access to all that heavy duty dirty lucre that he has promised to use to obliterate the candidacies of any apostates could be losing its terror effect.

Actually, the pledge couldn't amount to a hill of hiccups if his pipeline to all those cash backed threats is seen to be less than formidable. And there is a stench around even heavily financed failing schemes that cannot be denied. My guess is that Grover's day in the sun is coming to a cloudy close.

Look at the money that poured into the Romney rumble, and it failed to finance any kind of sizzle for that plucky little fellow.

Indeed, it would seem Romney's pluck has run out and his fun is done, too.

Poor Ann. For one wild moment she must have thought she was going to have a new house to redecorate.

Maybe it is time for the inmates to take back the asylum and throw all the bums out. At least that seems to be the view of some of the wiser wardens.....like little Billy Kristol.

Whatever will Grover do without his Wednesday Meetings?

My guess is that anyone who finds the term "poopy head" appropriate for use on national television  is likely to go suck his thumb. 

-30- 

 

   

Cat Gut and Dandruff

We all remember Judy Garland skipping down the Yellow Brick Road where she met the Cowardly Lion, searching for courage, the Tin Man looking for a heart, and the Scarecrow, who wanted a brain. 

These poor needy creatures bear a remarkable resemblance to the last 20 years' worth of GOP candidates for public office.

If one didn't have a firm grip on reality, one could feel that the U.S.A. was taking on some intoxicatingly familiar aspects of the make-believe kingdom of  Oz during this last election cycle. 

There are long lists of understudies for those three starring parts, but the part of the Wizard may have attracted the most aspirants and, possibly, the raunchiest.

To whom do we assign that part?  Rove? Limbaugh? Hannity? Beck? Cheney? Trump?  

And who gets the job of prompter? Ailes? Coulter? Drudge? Murdoch, himself? 

Press agent? Newtie swung into action in fine fettle, a little late but in predictably full throat. Sununu would be a good bet, too. He seems born to sleazy promotion.

The money guys are easy. Adelson and the Kochs led the big parade. Hard to call them "angels" considering the source of their wealth, but cash, no matter the source, does grease all the squeaky wheels.

Probably the easiest parts to cast were those of the Munchkins. The Tea Party gave it their all and were able to supply hundreds of the little - the VERY little - people.

And the whole production was in service of ?

A candidate who not only did not appear to have a heart, a brain or very much courage, but instead seemed to be comprised mostly of a very big sense of entitlement that was and is held together by nothing more than cat gut and dandruff.

Let's hope the not-so-grand old party spends the next few years looking for a new vehicle in which to launch a come-back.

-30-

 

No Thanks Necessary

Thanksgiving is almost upon us and every November my mind seems to zero in like a laser on two silly memories that seem to be engraved on my brain. 

The first is of my husband, whose turkey ritual always consisted of getting out my old Fanny Farmer cookbook and reading the directions that told him How to Carve a Turkey as he honed his carving knife.

It always amused me....at least it started to sometime around our 20th Thanksgiving together. 

The second unbidden wisp I clasp of the past is, oddly, about the British Royals.

I was stuffing a turkey Thanksgiving morning in 1984 and listening to a chatty radio broadcast announcing the two-month-old prince had little tufts of red hair.

This benign observation was fast followed by a list of justifications for this apparently innocent phenomenon. The assurances that red hair has, over the years, surfaced on the royal pates of family members on both sides had a salacious undertone in view of the unneedfulness of an explanation. Who needed to be assured that it was all right?

Not I. I didn't care. I still don't.

Ever since marriage was invented there have been those who have an eye for discerning any lack of paternal influence on the looks of the newborn. Mama's baby; daddy's maybe?
 
In these sophisticated times, combing and brushing one's pedigree can be a chancy, if not an iffy, thing in all quarters since DNA has reared its spoilsport head.

And, speaking of sophisticated times,  here we are, Thanksgiving 2012, and while the royals haven't had a scandal in months,  sex on this side of the ocean is still driving the bus.....and for two important generals, it may be going over the cliff.

Poor guys. They apparently have not learned the truth that great philosopher, Jon Bon Jovi has given us:  

"Women rule the world. It's not really worth fighting because they know what they're doing. Ask Napoleon. Ask Adam. Ask Richard Burton or Richie Sambora. Many a man has crumbled."

Even Fanny Farmer must have known this. 

-30-

Tacky, Tacky, Tacky

I suppose an old lady mourning the loss of gentility and good manners sounds like a chorus from the Flower Drum Song, but reading the stories written since the election, it's difficult to believe they describe people and events born of a supposed polite society.

Perhaps the coarsening of the vernacular of today has added to the reek of the miasma that stands over the political scene in this country. WTF and it's lengthier versions are almost protocol for expression of nearly any sentiment....their use starting in kindergarten and spreading throughout every aspect of our society.

I am not a prude. And I don't like euphemisms when straight talk is the clearest path to understanding. However, the lack of respect for one another, and the lack of even a modicum of delicacy in our daily discourse is debasing. 

The Conservative view in this country considers it unpatriotic to care what the rest of the world thinks of us. But we do care and we should care. And the fact that the opprobrium heaped on our country and its leaders is well-deserved, is for those of us who are of even minimal intelligence and sensitivity, an embarrassment hard to bear.

And it isn't just the offensively colorful language that has become the currency of our communication that diminishes us; it is the offensively parochial religious dogma  that a terrifyingly large segment  of our population seems to feel  is right and proper to jam down the throats of every living being in the country. 

Unquestionably the GOP has produced - not just this year but since the Clinton years - political hacks of the worst caliber. Twenty years ago they were just mean, conniving and insulting; now they are practically brain dead.

How could a man like Dick Lugar have lost his party's support to a candidate like Mourdock? How could a candidate like Todd Akin ever have been elected to the House, much less given a go-ahead to the Senate?

How could a baby-faced governor like McDonnell think he has the right to order a vaginal probe on any woman, including his wife?

How can we give credence to the hysteria of the Bachmanns and the Palins and the Coulters and the Becks, and the Limbaughs and all the rest of the crazies that take up space in our media?" 

Finally, it is for that Southern Gentleman from Mississippi who can't seem to get his own tongue around his Mother Tongue, to verbalize his assessment of the loss the GOP suffered, using the same fulsome rhetoric that characterizes this era:

"We had shitty candidates," he said.

He's right, and it's good old Anglo-Saxon terminology. But maybe it would be a good idea if we start to muzzle some of it and let the South try to rise again. At least the elegant parts of it. 

-30-  

Geopolitics on a Small Scale

Running errands on Friday I had occasion to drive through several parts of my Virginia county - Albemarle.

When I landed on the shores of Virginia in 1986, Albemarle was described to me as a county of primarily middle to upper class residents, with an interesting share of the fabulously wealthy and famous.

I wasn't surprised to discover that many of these were active in Republican politics. 

Since the county's largest town, Charlottesville, is home to the University of Virginia, and supposedly crammed with intellectuals, it is assumed to be more liberal....and it is.


And there are a number of artistic types - both successful and aspiring - who make the county their home and who generally are  considered to be liberal. Some, such as John Grisham and Dave Matthews, have given voice to their support of Democratic candidates. 

Despite this, much of the county has eluded the fulsome labels of wealthy, educated and artistic as testified to by the a number of Republican yard signs.

This does not necessarily signify that if you are a Conservative you are poor, ignorant or both, but it does seem to work out that way.

The odd thing is that while many of the large estates will display their preference for the GOP candidates - in line with their economic interests - the vast number of those proclaiming allegiance to Romney/Ryan/Allen/Hurt live in modest homes....some of them even little better than shacks.

Parked in front of these are trucks with pro-gun decals and the yard is littered with plastic toys and dead cars.

Or, sometimes, it's a modest but buttoned-up residence that will fly an American flag and possibly display a Christian symbol of Christ's love on the family car, right next to an anti-gay statement of some kind. 

There is some satisfying variety in this still essentially bucolic environment. But, even though I am aware of this, I am still bemused by the  devotion of the massive numbers of the least successful among us to a concept that is utterly antithetical to their own best interests.

Remarkable.

-30-

  

Music for a Milksop

Mitt sounds like a mechanical parrot with a supply of recordings taped for special occasions.

Last night was "Highlights of Obama's Greatest Hits"  and "Music to Pander by".

Has this man no shame? He is now on at least the tenth iteration of his theme, "I Can Be President Because I Have a Square Jaw".

It is painful to watch him because he seems to have no moral compass at all. Usually, a politician, without deep convictions can fake it. But poor Mitt has a face and constitution that cannot hide his fear that people will find out what a quivering mass of equivocation he is.

That story of his dressing up to impersonate a Highway Patrolman to accost drivers in order put them down and  to assert a phony dominance, is so revealing of this man's abiding fear that he is, at heart, a nonentity.

His role as a bishop in his church also allows him to wear a mask and attempt to effect a future-altering change in someone's life; someone who doesn't recognize that the bishop is nothing but a cardboard cutout of someone to be revered...even feared. A role he can't pull off in his own skin. 

And Ann, his wife, knows it; and he knows she knows it. That wooden embrace after the second debate was so illustrative of what their relationship probably is. I had a vision of him in a diaper and Ann spanking him. Mommy was not happy with him.

And yet, the pundits are saying he has a real shot at inheriting Dubya's role as another blot on America's copybook. 

"Skim milk masquerading as cream."

His is a life Gilbert and Sullivan could have set to music, and probably did.

-30-