If it wasn't all about dope, it was all about alcohol. Or a combination, natch.
Nederland was a crap town. Ugly and useless and mean. Where you went if you wanted to get your jaw busted or your front teeth knocked out before Last Call. Didn't even have a classy jukebox: couldn't differentiate good country from shlockola. Danced to it, the way drunken fake cowboys dance: lurch from side to side til you bump into someone and can start a fight. Boy, howdy! Big fun.
Nederland is where my kids went to school. Miles down the Peak to Peak to this crummy little school, where they took one look at my shy daughter, in her scuffed boots and overalls, and decided she was a retard. Didn't have no time or room for retards in intellectually advanced Nederland, CO, no sirree, so my girl baby got the slap end of the teacher's tongue. And by the way, if I ever track that person down, she better have a tale of woe that will at least arrest my impulse to accelerate her passage through this world of pain. But I digress.
Ward had its own problems, not the least of which was providing shelter for major drug dealers, which created odd scrutiny: cars with several antennas, cruising through, drivers indiscernible behind tinted glass, that kind of thing. We had this funny little person living there, however, who was a sheriff's deputy in Boulder County. He worked a regular shift, kept his ear to the ground and always managed to get a call in to one of the few phones in Ward, just ahead of a visit from some official unpleasantness.
When we had been there about a year, a group of men, women, kids and a few horses suddenly showed up in town and colonized some vacant buildings. The men were slick talkers and the women were pregnant or busy with children and not inclined to sociability. Word drifted around that they were all on the lam from Florida drug charges: a bunch of Vietnam Vets, putting their military education to good use. Their presence among us upped the visits of dark-windowed cars enormously, especially after they had a little exchange of gunfire with some rude tourist. Not Ward's finest hour.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Settling In
On Day 2, I wanted to go home. Home to Point Richmond, to our little house on the hill overlooking the Standard Oil storage tanks, which frequently caught fire. Home to the bed built into the dining nook and the blackberry vines obscuring the entrance. Home to my consciousness raising group and our endless, bottomless bottles of Almaden rose.
I was bewildered by the mountain folk. They didn't talk much (unless they were women, which most of them were not) They didn't smile or joke. They had luxuriant facial hair and they all smelled like wood smoke. Before too long, I found out they had all known each other as undergraduates at UCBoulder, which is why they had come to Ward when they dropped out of college, but I did not know that on those first miserable days. I felt inadequate and dismissed and when that happens to me, I fold.
On Day 1 we had discovered that Ward was a dry town. Not that you couldn't drink alcohol there, but you had to find it first. Hazel was a Christian Scientist and she had decided, back in the days when there were only six people living within the town limits and five of them were women and she was mayor, that alcohol lead to bad behavior and was therefore not to be offered for sale in Ward. Hazel was no longer the mayor but that law was still on the Ward books. Nederland, 10 miles away, was where the bar was. Boulder was where supplies, including alcohol, were.
Boulder was about 25 miles away, downhill. When we needed to save gas, we coasted with the motor off until the last quarter mile before the first gas station. That was tricky on icy roads. The BF enjoyed it.
He enjoyed a lot of things about Ward. The first winter he changed his long underwear twice. He did participate with our once a week shower, but then he put the same longjohns back on. Mostly, he liked driving up into the forest to use the chain saw on standing deadwood and popping cool ones with the lads, after work on that building of Hazel's in the middle of town that became our community center, just in time for Thanksgiving.
I didn't go home, after all. I wrote passionately unhappy letters to my California support group for a month or so. They wrote back and sent little gifts, but they had drifted apart. All of a sudden, the Ward postmaster (she was really a post mistress but we didn't have that term in the USPS) was leaving her job and it was up for grabs and I, with my one month of Xmas service to the PO in 1967, was a shoo-in, so I became the primary earner.
I was bewildered by the mountain folk. They didn't talk much (unless they were women, which most of them were not) They didn't smile or joke. They had luxuriant facial hair and they all smelled like wood smoke. Before too long, I found out they had all known each other as undergraduates at UCBoulder, which is why they had come to Ward when they dropped out of college, but I did not know that on those first miserable days. I felt inadequate and dismissed and when that happens to me, I fold.
On Day 1 we had discovered that Ward was a dry town. Not that you couldn't drink alcohol there, but you had to find it first. Hazel was a Christian Scientist and she had decided, back in the days when there were only six people living within the town limits and five of them were women and she was mayor, that alcohol lead to bad behavior and was therefore not to be offered for sale in Ward. Hazel was no longer the mayor but that law was still on the Ward books. Nederland, 10 miles away, was where the bar was. Boulder was where supplies, including alcohol, were.
Boulder was about 25 miles away, downhill. When we needed to save gas, we coasted with the motor off until the last quarter mile before the first gas station. That was tricky on icy roads. The BF enjoyed it.
He enjoyed a lot of things about Ward. The first winter he changed his long underwear twice. He did participate with our once a week shower, but then he put the same longjohns back on. Mostly, he liked driving up into the forest to use the chain saw on standing deadwood and popping cool ones with the lads, after work on that building of Hazel's in the middle of town that became our community center, just in time for Thanksgiving.
I didn't go home, after all. I wrote passionately unhappy letters to my California support group for a month or so. They wrote back and sent little gifts, but they had drifted apart. All of a sudden, the Ward postmaster (she was really a post mistress but we didn't have that term in the USPS) was leaving her job and it was up for grabs and I, with my one month of Xmas service to the PO in 1967, was a shoo-in, so I became the primary earner.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Learning By Error
Becoming mountain folk is a lot easier if you start in the summer. We thought it was summer, that June of 1970. It was hot in California, hot in Nevada, super hot in Utah and then we started to climb. That first afternoon we drove into Ward it snowed.
We landed at the first house off the Peak to Peak highway, where Norman, Jim and Cheryl lived. Jim and Cheryl were married. Norman was probably 25, at most, but, with his enormous, scarred hands, burly build, stringy blond hair and enormous clothes, he looked like a Yeti in disguise. Jim was doing his best to emulate Norman, but he was - at best - Norman lite. Jim was lazy and soft: a manana kind of guy. Cheryl, of course, was totally present and totally competent. She wore the uniform shapeless pants and flannel shirt, tied her long hair back with string and made the whole pump/woodstove/outhouse thing look effortless. This household gave us space to park the camper over-night and told us many stories about Ward. The case of beer we had brought as a peace offering was entirely consumed before we all staggered off to oblivion.
The next morning, we introduced ourselves to Hazel, who presented us to our dim and dusty new home and took the BF on a reconnaissance of his area of endeavor, which looked a whole lot like our house except with less structural integrity and less roof. The kids and I lugged our valuables inside and began gathering up twigs and branches for stove fuel. I almost flunked my Girl Scout camping badge, due to my inability to start a one match fire, so I was not surprised when the wood we had gathered and shoved into the stove began to smoke. And smoke. And smoke. No flames, no heat, just smoke, which oozed out of the stovetop and the stovepipe and soon filled the house with such acrid pungency that we opened all the windows that would open (two) and sat outside until the fire went out. At least the snow had melted. That was Day One.
We landed at the first house off the Peak to Peak highway, where Norman, Jim and Cheryl lived. Jim and Cheryl were married. Norman was probably 25, at most, but, with his enormous, scarred hands, burly build, stringy blond hair and enormous clothes, he looked like a Yeti in disguise. Jim was doing his best to emulate Norman, but he was - at best - Norman lite. Jim was lazy and soft: a manana kind of guy. Cheryl, of course, was totally present and totally competent. She wore the uniform shapeless pants and flannel shirt, tied her long hair back with string and made the whole pump/woodstove/outhouse thing look effortless. This household gave us space to park the camper over-night and told us many stories about Ward. The case of beer we had brought as a peace offering was entirely consumed before we all staggered off to oblivion.
The next morning, we introduced ourselves to Hazel, who presented us to our dim and dusty new home and took the BF on a reconnaissance of his area of endeavor, which looked a whole lot like our house except with less structural integrity and less roof. The kids and I lugged our valuables inside and began gathering up twigs and branches for stove fuel. I almost flunked my Girl Scout camping badge, due to my inability to start a one match fire, so I was not surprised when the wood we had gathered and shoved into the stove began to smoke. And smoke. And smoke. No flames, no heat, just smoke, which oozed out of the stovetop and the stovepipe and soon filled the house with such acrid pungency that we opened all the windows that would open (two) and sat outside until the fire went out. At least the snow had melted. That was Day One.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Where Does the Time Go?
Ward, Colorado, does not have a proud history. It sits 9400 feet in the air, not far from the Great Divide, and the wind truly does come whistling down the borderline. All the time. It takes a low country horse months to adjust to the altitude. It took me longer than that.
Hazel was not only the BF's employer, she was our landlord. She owned the shack with the newspaper insulation, the ill-fitting windows and the minimally functional woodstove, with a firebox about big enough to heat and cook with toothpicks. If we'd taken time to think about it, we might have noticed that she owned our lives for as long as we stayed in her house, in her town. Instead, we were busy sorting out how to be mountain folk.
It wasn't that Hazel demanded much of us. She led a very solitary life. She kept her lights on all night long and seemed to subsist on peppermint ribbon candy, except for when she sedately drove her red Jeep Wagoneer down the canyon, into Boulder. Then she would eat at McDonald's. Her trips into town rarely involved buying groceries.The BF took to riding along with her on the Boulder trips, to meet the guys at the lumberyard or pick up a clutch of tools. Or maybe just for company and the McDonald's lunch: something he would have disdained in California.
Hazel liked to hike up in the Brainard Lake State Forest meadows, when she had time. She was a botanist extraordinaire, never missing a tiny alpine flower, hiding its light under a rock, and knowing exactly where and when to find the elusive columbine. She hiked with a magnifiying lens and she liked people along on the hikes. That's where we got to observe her sleeping habits. After walking a quarter mile, she'd sit down beside a warm rock and nod off for ten or fifteen minutes. She'd wake, refreshed and take another catnap half an hour later. We surmised that she did not sleep at night.
The thing I remember most vividly about Hazel is her relationship with time. She frequently remarked that she didn't have time to do something. As her life wasn't complicated with family or work or social commitments, it was hard to determine what was clogging her schedule. But now I am beginning to understand.
It's not about how much time there is in a day. It's not about keeping a calendar. It is about psychic time: what you need for yourself, what you have available to spend on others. Just like Hazel, I have fewer things than ever claiming my attention and less time to spare on things that must be scheduled. The more time I spend alone, the less I am inclined to sacrifice my solitude. I wonder if this would be true if I'd never known Hazel.
Hazel was not only the BF's employer, she was our landlord. She owned the shack with the newspaper insulation, the ill-fitting windows and the minimally functional woodstove, with a firebox about big enough to heat and cook with toothpicks. If we'd taken time to think about it, we might have noticed that she owned our lives for as long as we stayed in her house, in her town. Instead, we were busy sorting out how to be mountain folk.
It wasn't that Hazel demanded much of us. She led a very solitary life. She kept her lights on all night long and seemed to subsist on peppermint ribbon candy, except for when she sedately drove her red Jeep Wagoneer down the canyon, into Boulder. Then she would eat at McDonald's. Her trips into town rarely involved buying groceries.The BF took to riding along with her on the Boulder trips, to meet the guys at the lumberyard or pick up a clutch of tools. Or maybe just for company and the McDonald's lunch: something he would have disdained in California.
Hazel liked to hike up in the Brainard Lake State Forest meadows, when she had time. She was a botanist extraordinaire, never missing a tiny alpine flower, hiding its light under a rock, and knowing exactly where and when to find the elusive columbine. She hiked with a magnifiying lens and she liked people along on the hikes. That's where we got to observe her sleeping habits. After walking a quarter mile, she'd sit down beside a warm rock and nod off for ten or fifteen minutes. She'd wake, refreshed and take another catnap half an hour later. We surmised that she did not sleep at night.
The thing I remember most vividly about Hazel is her relationship with time. She frequently remarked that she didn't have time to do something. As her life wasn't complicated with family or work or social commitments, it was hard to determine what was clogging her schedule. But now I am beginning to understand.
It's not about how much time there is in a day. It's not about keeping a calendar. It is about psychic time: what you need for yourself, what you have available to spend on others. Just like Hazel, I have fewer things than ever claiming my attention and less time to spare on things that must be scheduled. The more time I spend alone, the less I am inclined to sacrifice my solitude. I wonder if this would be true if I'd never known Hazel.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Looking Back
In 1970, my BF, the kids, the dogs and I pulled up stakes in California and relocated to Ward, Colorado. At the time, Ward was almost a ghost town. There was still a post office, a general store and cafe and a fire department, with an old Forest Service tank truck and a six person governing group: six people who, against enormous odds, had made it through many winters in the high, windy place and could still be relied on to show up and vote.
We were there because there was a carpentry job that the BF, a neophyte hammer swinger, thought he could handle and I didn't have anything better to do and the kids and dogs didn't get a vote. On our trip from California, in the BF's funky camper, the dogs had discovered the joy of porcupines. We had to spend most of a day at a vet's in Elko. We quickly learned to do the quill extraction ourselves.
Hazel, the woman who would be writing the BF's checks at his job in Ward, was 72 years old when we arrived. She had been the state botanist of Colorado for many years. She owned most of the gold mining town of Ward. She had grown up there. Her father ran the livery stable. During the boom days, he handled travelers' horses and had his fingers in many travel-related pies. Hazel, his only child, delivered milk to the miners and their families. In 1906, fire raged through the closely-built community of miners' shacks and destroyed them. Most people left, and Hazel's father bought out their claims, their homesites, whatever they couldn't carry away, for negligible sums.
In 1970, the town was not beautiful. Ward sits in a little teacup, right below the Peak to Peak highway, with National Park all around. In order to extract whatever gold ran through those mountain rocks, they had to be dug up and crushed. The mine dumps circle the town and nothing will ever grow on those dead spills of scree.
Our house was a three room shack with a wood cookstove, a coal burning heat stove, a collapsing hillside pressing on the back of the house, a decrepit and listing outhouse and no running water or power. We bought a turquoise and white battery operated record player so we could listen to Carole King and James Taylor. We had several coolers to keep our perishables in. We read by kerosene lamp and candles. We hauled water in 5 gallon cans from the hose at the cafe, up at the top of the town.
BF began his job, which involved shoring up a sagging, roofless building in the center of town. Hazel wanted it preserved because it stood on a mine claim. She owned the building but not the land. BF, in full ex-Mime Troupe, all for one, one for all mode, decided that the building could, in fact, be a Community Center and could be restored much quicker if he could hire more people. Some of those counter-culture types, maybe, who were trickling into town. And so the greening of Ward began.
We were there because there was a carpentry job that the BF, a neophyte hammer swinger, thought he could handle and I didn't have anything better to do and the kids and dogs didn't get a vote. On our trip from California, in the BF's funky camper, the dogs had discovered the joy of porcupines. We had to spend most of a day at a vet's in Elko. We quickly learned to do the quill extraction ourselves.
Hazel, the woman who would be writing the BF's checks at his job in Ward, was 72 years old when we arrived. She had been the state botanist of Colorado for many years. She owned most of the gold mining town of Ward. She had grown up there. Her father ran the livery stable. During the boom days, he handled travelers' horses and had his fingers in many travel-related pies. Hazel, his only child, delivered milk to the miners and their families. In 1906, fire raged through the closely-built community of miners' shacks and destroyed them. Most people left, and Hazel's father bought out their claims, their homesites, whatever they couldn't carry away, for negligible sums.
In 1970, the town was not beautiful. Ward sits in a little teacup, right below the Peak to Peak highway, with National Park all around. In order to extract whatever gold ran through those mountain rocks, they had to be dug up and crushed. The mine dumps circle the town and nothing will ever grow on those dead spills of scree.
Our house was a three room shack with a wood cookstove, a coal burning heat stove, a collapsing hillside pressing on the back of the house, a decrepit and listing outhouse and no running water or power. We bought a turquoise and white battery operated record player so we could listen to Carole King and James Taylor. We had several coolers to keep our perishables in. We read by kerosene lamp and candles. We hauled water in 5 gallon cans from the hose at the cafe, up at the top of the town.
BF began his job, which involved shoring up a sagging, roofless building in the center of town. Hazel wanted it preserved because it stood on a mine claim. She owned the building but not the land. BF, in full ex-Mime Troupe, all for one, one for all mode, decided that the building could, in fact, be a Community Center and could be restored much quicker if he could hire more people. Some of those counter-culture types, maybe, who were trickling into town. And so the greening of Ward began.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Mourning Thoughts
This weekend would have been my friend Sooz's 66th birthday. She missed it by four months. She lived long enough to be eligible for Medicare, but that may be part of the problem. In the months between her 65th birthday and her death, the care she received became less comprehensible than ever before, and she had been through some incredibly bad crap already.
At the outset, she was a Kaiser patient. Her female doctor could barely stand to be in the same room with her, because Sooz smoked. Because Sooz smoked, that particular doctor gave up on her before they really began. She did not send her for tests or schedule a colonoscopy when Sooz complained of intestinal pain. A year went by before, as insured under another agency, Sooz went for a colonoscopy, which could not be completed because of tumors. For want of a test, a life was lost. . .
The cancer was misdiagnosed and, consequently, mistreated. After the tumors shrank enough to determine where they were located, it was too late to eradicate them in situ. And so they spread. And spread. And she did radiation and chemo and more and the radiation burned her chest.
When she died, she was eating through a tube and breathing with the help of a machine. Her cat was terrified by the sound of the machine and wouldn't come near her. She couldn't converse or verbally make her wishes known because the operation to insert the breathing tube had gone awry, canceling her ability to speak. And she couldn't think, really, in the roar and drama of life-sustaining machines and the stately dance of revolving caregivers, so she waited until the wee predawn hours and pulled out the breathing tube and left us.
There is nothing to do with this information except try like crazy to avoid placing one's faith in Western medicine and hospital care. Sooz was my heart sister and I thought we would get old and even more sarcastic together. I want to do something for her, about her, this weekend but it's not clear what that should be. Yet.
At the outset, she was a Kaiser patient. Her female doctor could barely stand to be in the same room with her, because Sooz smoked. Because Sooz smoked, that particular doctor gave up on her before they really began. She did not send her for tests or schedule a colonoscopy when Sooz complained of intestinal pain. A year went by before, as insured under another agency, Sooz went for a colonoscopy, which could not be completed because of tumors. For want of a test, a life was lost. . .
The cancer was misdiagnosed and, consequently, mistreated. After the tumors shrank enough to determine where they were located, it was too late to eradicate them in situ. And so they spread. And spread. And she did radiation and chemo and more and the radiation burned her chest.
When she died, she was eating through a tube and breathing with the help of a machine. Her cat was terrified by the sound of the machine and wouldn't come near her. She couldn't converse or verbally make her wishes known because the operation to insert the breathing tube had gone awry, canceling her ability to speak. And she couldn't think, really, in the roar and drama of life-sustaining machines and the stately dance of revolving caregivers, so she waited until the wee predawn hours and pulled out the breathing tube and left us.
There is nothing to do with this information except try like crazy to avoid placing one's faith in Western medicine and hospital care. Sooz was my heart sister and I thought we would get old and even more sarcastic together. I want to do something for her, about her, this weekend but it's not clear what that should be. Yet.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Hey Hey Mr. Postman
My sister and I are corresponding this year. We manage to send off one letter every four or five weeks. When I imagined this project, I think I was remembering that surge of connection, that urge to communicate that I used to experience when a personal letter arrived. I would tear it open, devour the news, react audibly to each surprising factoid and run to the computer to reply. Or so I imagined.
Since my sis and I have each acquired a little computer savviness, we can e-mail and chat, in addition to the letter-through-the-mail thing, so that still happens. We're also both on Facebook. All hurry-up info gets transmitted one or several of those ways. Letters, therefore, are for reflection and contemplation.
Our mother taught us about letter writing. She conducted lively correspondences with various old friends and family members, back in the leisurely days of cheap postage. When we went away to school, she wrote faithfully, several times each week. She wrote about the dogs, the cat, the parakeet (until it slammed into the refrigerator and broke its little yellow neck), the neighbors' burgeoning yard art collection, my dad's progress in barbecuing chicken so it was at least warm inside. Homey stuff. A little formulaic, not very interesting, maybe, but it kept alive the illusion of family. That's what Sis and I are doing, all these years later.
Our recurring topic is our kids. Our Adult kids, I should say: the youngest is her daughter, who will turn 30 in January 2012. We circle and gnaw away at the fact that, in surprising and complicated ways, we envy our children.
For awhile, it looked like my kids, who grew up gypsying around the country, going along for the ride, eating at the low end of the food chain (was it abusive to put wheat germ in their chocolate chip cookies?) were triumphing over all that adversity and happily ensconced in the upper middle class, complete with fine cars, big houses, handsome dogs and beautiful kids. Then they started divorcing: both of them in the same year. And it developed that their marriages had been smoke and mirrors for years before whatever occasioned the final rupture. And my heart breaks and breaks for them and for how very little I can do to help.
My sister's daughter is a bright, beautiful, architecture student, who has thought, for a number of years, that she was her parents' keeper. Most recently, this has lead her to renounce them for their temerity in rebuilding a flooded river bed on their property (the flood having come perilously close to the house and brought the river almost into their kitchen)without her involvement. Never mind that they live in Vermont and she is married, living in Oregon in a house that she and her husband own. Niece believes that she has been disrespected by not being consulted and is now excluding her parents from participation with her life.
Sometimes, it is impossible to write about information like this. Sometimes, it's the only way to give yourself a look at what you're really thinking. Correspondence continues.
Since my sis and I have each acquired a little computer savviness, we can e-mail and chat, in addition to the letter-through-the-mail thing, so that still happens. We're also both on Facebook. All hurry-up info gets transmitted one or several of those ways. Letters, therefore, are for reflection and contemplation.
Our mother taught us about letter writing. She conducted lively correspondences with various old friends and family members, back in the leisurely days of cheap postage. When we went away to school, she wrote faithfully, several times each week. She wrote about the dogs, the cat, the parakeet (until it slammed into the refrigerator and broke its little yellow neck), the neighbors' burgeoning yard art collection, my dad's progress in barbecuing chicken so it was at least warm inside. Homey stuff. A little formulaic, not very interesting, maybe, but it kept alive the illusion of family. That's what Sis and I are doing, all these years later.
Our recurring topic is our kids. Our Adult kids, I should say: the youngest is her daughter, who will turn 30 in January 2012. We circle and gnaw away at the fact that, in surprising and complicated ways, we envy our children.
For awhile, it looked like my kids, who grew up gypsying around the country, going along for the ride, eating at the low end of the food chain (was it abusive to put wheat germ in their chocolate chip cookies?) were triumphing over all that adversity and happily ensconced in the upper middle class, complete with fine cars, big houses, handsome dogs and beautiful kids. Then they started divorcing: both of them in the same year. And it developed that their marriages had been smoke and mirrors for years before whatever occasioned the final rupture. And my heart breaks and breaks for them and for how very little I can do to help.
My sister's daughter is a bright, beautiful, architecture student, who has thought, for a number of years, that she was her parents' keeper. Most recently, this has lead her to renounce them for their temerity in rebuilding a flooded river bed on their property (the flood having come perilously close to the house and brought the river almost into their kitchen)without her involvement. Never mind that they live in Vermont and she is married, living in Oregon in a house that she and her husband own. Niece believes that she has been disrespected by not being consulted and is now excluding her parents from participation with her life.
Sometimes, it is impossible to write about information like this. Sometimes, it's the only way to give yourself a look at what you're really thinking. Correspondence continues.
Monday, August 15, 2011
A Little (Very) Light Reading
I grazed at the Book Depository last week and came up with a newish Brit Chick Lit book, called "The Brightest Star In The Sky" by Marian Keyes. It'll go back on the shelves on Wednesday and, yes, I did stick it out, though the first couple of chapters were somewhat baffling.
There is, you see, a mystery narrator (MN). Although you guess the identity before long, you're meant to be a little confused until the last chapter, when you find out what MN's mission is. Then you wonder why you needed MN to hover around, commenting on stuff, rather obscurely.
The action mostly takes place in a building of flats in Dublin, where live a variety of quirky beings, mostly at odds with their life situations. Lydia drives a cab and tries to keep her mother from sinking into dementia, in between bouts of having wild sex with various good looking guys. Katie is forty and believes her life is on the fast track downhill, even though she is beautiful and sexy and liked by everyone who knows her except her mother. Jemima is 88 and dying of cancer. Her foster son, Fionn, is a babe magnet and as shallow as a mud puddle. Matt and Maeve, a married couple, once had a fine romance and now are getting fat and wearing sweat clothes to bed. All of these problems are explored and then solved by virtue of a car accident, a suicide attempt and an Act of God (in the Epilogue).
Ms Keyes has written a lot of novels and is probably a more-than-adequate, Irish replacement for Maeve Binchy. She certainly gets Chick Lit! I'm not fond of deus ex machinas to solve plot problems but, hey, it's escapist reading and I say go for it!
By the way, there is only one stargazing episode (because Dublin is a city and city air is polluted, making it hard to see the stars) and he's not really stargazing, he's standing on the sidewalk, peering into his downstairs neighbor's window. So we never find out why she chose this title.
There is, you see, a mystery narrator (MN). Although you guess the identity before long, you're meant to be a little confused until the last chapter, when you find out what MN's mission is. Then you wonder why you needed MN to hover around, commenting on stuff, rather obscurely.
The action mostly takes place in a building of flats in Dublin, where live a variety of quirky beings, mostly at odds with their life situations. Lydia drives a cab and tries to keep her mother from sinking into dementia, in between bouts of having wild sex with various good looking guys. Katie is forty and believes her life is on the fast track downhill, even though she is beautiful and sexy and liked by everyone who knows her except her mother. Jemima is 88 and dying of cancer. Her foster son, Fionn, is a babe magnet and as shallow as a mud puddle. Matt and Maeve, a married couple, once had a fine romance and now are getting fat and wearing sweat clothes to bed. All of these problems are explored and then solved by virtue of a car accident, a suicide attempt and an Act of God (in the Epilogue).
Ms Keyes has written a lot of novels and is probably a more-than-adequate, Irish replacement for Maeve Binchy. She certainly gets Chick Lit! I'm not fond of deus ex machinas to solve plot problems but, hey, it's escapist reading and I say go for it!
By the way, there is only one stargazing episode (because Dublin is a city and city air is polluted, making it hard to see the stars) and he's not really stargazing, he's standing on the sidewalk, peering into his downstairs neighbor's window. So we never find out why she chose this title.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Perchance to Dream
In the last few years of her life, my mother did a lot of sleeping. Not at night: night hours were for worrying and sometimes for the kind of reminiscing that recasts a life experience into something cringingly stupid you once did. Mom slept during the day, sometimes dropping off in the middle of a conversation. She slept deeply, if briefly, mouth open, head falling forward, gentle snores. Kind of like listening to a canoe bump against a dock as the wake of a speed boat spreads toward shore.
She and I had our best times during our daily 4 p.m. phone calls. 4 p.m. my time was 7 p.m. her time. She was back from what passed for supper in the no-frills retirement home, probably having skipped the hot dogs and beans and gone straight for the strawberry shortcake. She had brushed her teeth, put on her PJs, turned down her bed and eaten a couple pieces of chocolate before she dialed. She told me gentle lies about how she was feeling. She'd report on the confusion levels of her dining table mates: whether anyone remembered to pass the serving dishes and if she'd gotten a spoonful or two of mandarin orange slices before that ill-mannered wretch at the end of the table upended the bowl onto her own plate. If Mom had been to a play or concert, she'd expound on the audibility of the event. On a slow news day, she would ponder her maiden cousins, Selma Opal and Esta, aka the Roberts girls.
I met the Roberts girls once or twice. They lived in a little, tidy, airless house in Hamilton, Ohio. They had a parakeet. They kept their Venetian blinds closed at all times. They kept nothing of interest to children in their home. A visit with them did not include snacks or a meal. They seemed pleased to see my mother and pleased when she left. When the last of them died, she left my mother more than $100,000. The same amount was bequeathed to each of my mother's two brothers. Mom found this bewildering.
She formed the opinion that I should write about the Roberts girls. They grew up on a farm. They inherited the farm and sold it soon thereafter. They never married. They lived together all their lives. One of them worked.
That's it?
Tell me about them, I would urge.
They watched my brother and me while Father helped with the haying. They went to college but Esta didn't finish.
This was not a lot to go on but it's all she had to give me, beside the recurring pressure to write about them. One fine day, I realized I could do that, unhampered by stubborn facts.
I gave each sister a voice, to entwine and harmonize with the other two. Definite opinions. Dreams. Taste in food. Personal clothing style. I made all sorts of stuff up. Sex found its way gingerly into the narrative.
I got a fair amount written in the Spring of 2004, just before my mother died. I gave it to her to read, the last time I saw her. She was very loosely anchored, by then, but her past, with the golden sheen of a long Ohio summer day, still interested her. So did my story. She didn't say a thing about the truth of the matter.
Makes you wonder about history books, doesn't it?
She and I had our best times during our daily 4 p.m. phone calls. 4 p.m. my time was 7 p.m. her time. She was back from what passed for supper in the no-frills retirement home, probably having skipped the hot dogs and beans and gone straight for the strawberry shortcake. She had brushed her teeth, put on her PJs, turned down her bed and eaten a couple pieces of chocolate before she dialed. She told me gentle lies about how she was feeling. She'd report on the confusion levels of her dining table mates: whether anyone remembered to pass the serving dishes and if she'd gotten a spoonful or two of mandarin orange slices before that ill-mannered wretch at the end of the table upended the bowl onto her own plate. If Mom had been to a play or concert, she'd expound on the audibility of the event. On a slow news day, she would ponder her maiden cousins, Selma Opal and Esta, aka the Roberts girls.
I met the Roberts girls once or twice. They lived in a little, tidy, airless house in Hamilton, Ohio. They had a parakeet. They kept their Venetian blinds closed at all times. They kept nothing of interest to children in their home. A visit with them did not include snacks or a meal. They seemed pleased to see my mother and pleased when she left. When the last of them died, she left my mother more than $100,000. The same amount was bequeathed to each of my mother's two brothers. Mom found this bewildering.
She formed the opinion that I should write about the Roberts girls. They grew up on a farm. They inherited the farm and sold it soon thereafter. They never married. They lived together all their lives. One of them worked.
That's it?
Tell me about them, I would urge.
They watched my brother and me while Father helped with the haying. They went to college but Esta didn't finish.
This was not a lot to go on but it's all she had to give me, beside the recurring pressure to write about them. One fine day, I realized I could do that, unhampered by stubborn facts.
I gave each sister a voice, to entwine and harmonize with the other two. Definite opinions. Dreams. Taste in food. Personal clothing style. I made all sorts of stuff up. Sex found its way gingerly into the narrative.
I got a fair amount written in the Spring of 2004, just before my mother died. I gave it to her to read, the last time I saw her. She was very loosely anchored, by then, but her past, with the golden sheen of a long Ohio summer day, still interested her. So did my story. She didn't say a thing about the truth of the matter.
Makes you wonder about history books, doesn't it?
Monday, August 8, 2011
Book To Read on a Train, Maybe
The name of the book is "A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies". The author is Ellen Cooney, which might be her real name. What's your best guess?
I googled her. She grew up in Massachusetts, outside of Boston (but not that far - not that anything is really far from anything else in MA) so her intimacy with the landscapes and stratified small towns a person rolls through on the way from one side of the state to the other are part of her basic body of information.
What do you think the book is about?
Short version: Red-haired, impulsive (was that redundant?)Charlotte, who married up then spent a lot of time miscarrying and compromising her immune system finally recovers from something like polio, only to discover her husband lustfully smooching some full-bodied lass in the midst of a snowbank on a public street. All this happening in the 19th century, in a small industrial MA town. Wife runs away to Boston to shelter with someone who used to cook for husband's family and now cooks at a hotel on Beacon Hill. Not just an ordinary hotel, pay your money and get a room. Of course not. A very special place for very particular ladies.
Who turns up as a resident but her husband's aunt, who is also the doctor who told Charlotte what she had was "brain fever". What is she doing there, given that she and her husband own a house less than a mile away and she works at the local hospital? Shortly, Charlotte realizes that all these beautiful young men she keeps running into in the hall are "available". Soon, she avails herself of the availability, experiences passion and decides to go back to her rule-ridden husband.
Issues of class and education are raised, dangled and dropped. Charlotte's awakening is so partial that she doesn't get time enough to become an accomplished courtesan. All the interesting stuff about who she really came from and where she might go with that is blanketed under a need to have rewritten this puppy four or five more times, putting the back story to use soon enough so the reader gives a rat's patootie what happens to this naif.
Occasional good descriptive writing. Someday this Ellen Cooney will put her historical material to better use.
I googled her. She grew up in Massachusetts, outside of Boston (but not that far - not that anything is really far from anything else in MA) so her intimacy with the landscapes and stratified small towns a person rolls through on the way from one side of the state to the other are part of her basic body of information.
What do you think the book is about?
Short version: Red-haired, impulsive (was that redundant?)Charlotte, who married up then spent a lot of time miscarrying and compromising her immune system finally recovers from something like polio, only to discover her husband lustfully smooching some full-bodied lass in the midst of a snowbank on a public street. All this happening in the 19th century, in a small industrial MA town. Wife runs away to Boston to shelter with someone who used to cook for husband's family and now cooks at a hotel on Beacon Hill. Not just an ordinary hotel, pay your money and get a room. Of course not. A very special place for very particular ladies.
Who turns up as a resident but her husband's aunt, who is also the doctor who told Charlotte what she had was "brain fever". What is she doing there, given that she and her husband own a house less than a mile away and she works at the local hospital? Shortly, Charlotte realizes that all these beautiful young men she keeps running into in the hall are "available". Soon, she avails herself of the availability, experiences passion and decides to go back to her rule-ridden husband.
Issues of class and education are raised, dangled and dropped. Charlotte's awakening is so partial that she doesn't get time enough to become an accomplished courtesan. All the interesting stuff about who she really came from and where she might go with that is blanketed under a need to have rewritten this puppy four or five more times, putting the back story to use soon enough so the reader gives a rat's patootie what happens to this naif.
Occasional good descriptive writing. Someday this Ellen Cooney will put her historical material to better use.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Night Time Is The Wrong Time
I think about that Sebastopol house in the middle of the night. Where does the sun first glance off which window on a winter morning? Is that dining room floor decor painted on and restorable? When does the sun come into the kitchen? Could I dance all over the second floor landing, maybe put up a trapeze? Because I've always wanted to have a trapeze, ever since my mother dragged us off to Tallahassee in 1948 and we got to see the Ringling Brothers aerialists practice. That was before I sat down on the red ant hill to tighten my roller skates. What happened next was neither pretty nor fun.
Lying in my Select Comfort bed in the 3 a.m. gloom, wrestling with blankets, I think I can never move anywhere. I don't like going places. I sometimes like being places other than home, it's just getting there. And, if we're talking about New York, I only semi like being there and not at all if I have to take the subway. Unless Pippa is with me, and then I feel brave enough. She shouldn't have a coward for a Nana.
There's a lot to be done at the Sebastopol house. The floors are the beginning. The walls have a dusty patina of neglect. Interior painting will brighten up the atmosphere. I might have thought about feng shui, five or more years ago, but I think I'm over that. Or I won't do it unless the house begs for it. I know a few feng shui house plant and crystal tricks, if I have to appease some awkward corner or misplaced closet door.
But do I want this house? If I get it, will I want it then? Since life in SF is comfortable and livable, do I need to stand everything on its head and sail into uncharted waters? TBC
Lying in my Select Comfort bed in the 3 a.m. gloom, wrestling with blankets, I think I can never move anywhere. I don't like going places. I sometimes like being places other than home, it's just getting there. And, if we're talking about New York, I only semi like being there and not at all if I have to take the subway. Unless Pippa is with me, and then I feel brave enough. She shouldn't have a coward for a Nana.
There's a lot to be done at the Sebastopol house. The floors are the beginning. The walls have a dusty patina of neglect. Interior painting will brighten up the atmosphere. I might have thought about feng shui, five or more years ago, but I think I'm over that. Or I won't do it unless the house begs for it. I know a few feng shui house plant and crystal tricks, if I have to appease some awkward corner or misplaced closet door.
But do I want this house? If I get it, will I want it then? Since life in SF is comfortable and livable, do I need to stand everything on its head and sail into uncharted waters? TBC
Friday, August 5, 2011
Am I Hoarding Yet?
Pippa says "I like dogs." She steers me over to the park bulletin board, where someone has posted an announcement about five available pug puppies. "Nope," I say, not even bothering with "You should talk to your mother." Or "You like cows, too, but you might not be so happy sharing your bedroom in Brooklyn with one." Her round about approach to the issue of pet ownership interests me, though. No childish "Buy me one, buy me one!" for her. Simply, grandly, make the announcement and see what happens next.
At home, at her Mother's place, they have two cats: Smart and Silly. Silly has a little gender confusion: she is slow and credulous, like many a male cat of my acquaintance. Or maybe she and Smart just divided up the cat jobs and she got the short straw. For a time, while Pippa's parents still lived under one roof, her dad had taught Smart and Silly to use the toilet for a toilet. He read about it somewhere and liked the idea of eliminating a litter box. And it worked. It wasn't all that fun to find the little cat scut floating in the only toilet, but it was flushable - not by the cats, unfortunately. This toileting practice has faded away, now that the former man of the family resides elsewhere. Silly did learn to do it, though she was often lax in her positioning, so maybe she's smarter than she'd like us to think.
At her Dad's home, Pippa has a bunny. I don't know whether the bunny uses the toilet but I rather doubt it. Bunnies don't have the agility to scramble up on the toilet seat or the claws to hold them in place. I kind of hope the bunny gets to just deposit his waste wherever he finds himself.
Currently, at my house, there are two dogs and three cats. We have Gracie, a terrier mix, with reproachful brown eyes and a penchant for rolling on rugs. Her companion is Omar, a Tibetan Terrier. He looks like a shrunken llama and is generally of good cheer. Gracie is 13, Omar is 1. Every morning he herds us up to the park, where Grace sits daintily on the path in the shade with her little short legs to the side, as she watches her puppy gambol and cavort with pugs and Boston bulls, chihuahuas and the occasional Australian heeler. Gracie interferes only if she believes one of the big dogs is hurting Omar.
The cats are Jazz, Tiny and Mama Katz. Jazz used to live in Seattle with my daughter, in his salad days. He was a roamer, with two or three ports of call, all of which fed him. He came to me when Pippa's family moved to New York. Jazz is not a fan of change. For the first year of his residence here, he lived in the basement, cuddling up to the golf clubs and boxes Pippa's parents had stored there. He barely acknowledged me, when I appeared with food for him and would not eat in my presence. On a number of occasions, delivering kibble, I stepped on the skeleton of some small rodent, so I know Jazz was not starving himself to make a point. These days, he climbs on my lap as soon as I sit down somewhere and twines his claws into my garments, purring vigorously and gazing into my eyes. This doesn't make me entirely happy but it's nice not to have to hang out in the basement with a sad, sulky pet.
The other two cats are mother and son, acquired from a rescue in Alturas. Tiny is part Maine Coon (the body type and weight) and part Scottish Fold. Mama is one-third his size: a scrawny tuxedo Fold. They both have the characteristic tiny, folded ears. Tiny has the huge eyes and fat face. They are fond of each other, except at meal times. Their relationship features a lot of sleeping, which they are proficient at. They were feral, when rescued and are particularly good at finding hiding places.
They all like Pippa. She calls them on their birthdays.
At home, at her Mother's place, they have two cats: Smart and Silly. Silly has a little gender confusion: she is slow and credulous, like many a male cat of my acquaintance. Or maybe she and Smart just divided up the cat jobs and she got the short straw. For a time, while Pippa's parents still lived under one roof, her dad had taught Smart and Silly to use the toilet for a toilet. He read about it somewhere and liked the idea of eliminating a litter box. And it worked. It wasn't all that fun to find the little cat scut floating in the only toilet, but it was flushable - not by the cats, unfortunately. This toileting practice has faded away, now that the former man of the family resides elsewhere. Silly did learn to do it, though she was often lax in her positioning, so maybe she's smarter than she'd like us to think.
At her Dad's home, Pippa has a bunny. I don't know whether the bunny uses the toilet but I rather doubt it. Bunnies don't have the agility to scramble up on the toilet seat or the claws to hold them in place. I kind of hope the bunny gets to just deposit his waste wherever he finds himself.
Currently, at my house, there are two dogs and three cats. We have Gracie, a terrier mix, with reproachful brown eyes and a penchant for rolling on rugs. Her companion is Omar, a Tibetan Terrier. He looks like a shrunken llama and is generally of good cheer. Gracie is 13, Omar is 1. Every morning he herds us up to the park, where Grace sits daintily on the path in the shade with her little short legs to the side, as she watches her puppy gambol and cavort with pugs and Boston bulls, chihuahuas and the occasional Australian heeler. Gracie interferes only if she believes one of the big dogs is hurting Omar.
The cats are Jazz, Tiny and Mama Katz. Jazz used to live in Seattle with my daughter, in his salad days. He was a roamer, with two or three ports of call, all of which fed him. He came to me when Pippa's family moved to New York. Jazz is not a fan of change. For the first year of his residence here, he lived in the basement, cuddling up to the golf clubs and boxes Pippa's parents had stored there. He barely acknowledged me, when I appeared with food for him and would not eat in my presence. On a number of occasions, delivering kibble, I stepped on the skeleton of some small rodent, so I know Jazz was not starving himself to make a point. These days, he climbs on my lap as soon as I sit down somewhere and twines his claws into my garments, purring vigorously and gazing into my eyes. This doesn't make me entirely happy but it's nice not to have to hang out in the basement with a sad, sulky pet.
The other two cats are mother and son, acquired from a rescue in Alturas. Tiny is part Maine Coon (the body type and weight) and part Scottish Fold. Mama is one-third his size: a scrawny tuxedo Fold. They both have the characteristic tiny, folded ears. Tiny has the huge eyes and fat face. They are fond of each other, except at meal times. Their relationship features a lot of sleeping, which they are proficient at. They were feral, when rescued and are particularly good at finding hiding places.
They all like Pippa. She calls them on their birthdays.
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