What the Doctor Ordered

These days, I get up in the morning, make a big cup of black tea, and start reading Google News on my phone to find out what fresh hell Trump has stirred up.

Then I switch to the Washington Post, The New York Times, and sometimes The Guardian.  By breakfast, I am wired and outraged.    

I know I should stop.  But as my friend Debbie says, "I keep thinking I will take a day off, but then I don't because I'm scared to not know."

Me, too.  I'm scared not to know.   Take your eye off Trump for half a day and God knows what he'll do next.

Well! This morning I had an appointment with one of my doctors, a woman in her sixties who lives in Berkeley, so you can imagine the conversation.   She's incensed by Trump and just about ordered me (is it in my chart?) to join  Indivisible , an organization founded by Congressional ex-staffers who suggest ways to make your voice heard most effectively.  Apparently, you're assigned a pro-democracy, anti-Trump task  to do every single day. 

Among other things, the doctor wrote to Dianne Feinstein and told DiFi that she'd never vote for her again if  she didn't oppose the Cabinet nominees.  And what happened?  DiFi started opposing the nominees!  The doctor's very bucked up.

Then she wrote to Uber and told them she was quitting because their top executive met with Trump.  Haven't heard back on that one.

And the demise of the Affordable Care Act?  She waved that off.  Patients are being overcharged and insurance companies and hospitals are making millions.  She assured me that doctors were not.  We need single payer health insurance, and that's it.  She was very firm about that.

I came straight home and wrote to Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. 

It's a start.

 Does he know this is for real?

* * * * *

I'm in one of those phases where I feel like I've physically aged several years overnight.  I squint at myself in the mirror and wonder what the hell's happened.  Crepey skin, more chin hairs, and a shocking web of wrinkles under my eyes.

 My ineffectual arsenal

More cream, more plucking, more exfoliating more, more, and more, and not much difference.    Maybe I should start an organization called "Invisible," because that's what women in their sixties are,  unless they yell loudly,  which is not a bad idea (see above).

My mental state has also taken a hit, and not just by Trump.  Last week I learned that a friend has a serious illness, another friend has died, and someone else has had a skirmish with a cancer caught at an early stage.  You reach an age where death no longer surprises, but it's still shocking.  

The other night, Jerry and I watched an eccentric movie called "Still Life," about a nerdy, fortyish Englishman who's in charge of tracking down relatives of people who are found dead.  He's not very successful, and sometimes he's the only person at the funeral, for which he writes a eulogy that a minister reads.  In the end, you realize that the message is kindness, and we are in so much need of it.  It's classified as "drama/comedy," but I'd call it black humor (Amazon Prime).

* * * * *

We're taking on another bathroom remodel, due to leaks, mold, inconvenience, and, yes, a "dated" look.

For this, we're going to have to move out of our bedroom and into my studio,  which means I'll have to find another place to quilt.  Afterward, I'll have a sleek new bathroom in a former closet (converted by the last owners).

 Where will it all go?  Haven't dealt with that yet.

* * * * *

This rose bush will not give out!  I keep thinking I've cut the last bloom, and it produces another.  A rose in the winter of our discontent, etc.

Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! The Oakland Women's March

I almost didn't go because I had a cold, but on Saturday morning I felt I couldn't miss it.  I had to show up.

Drums, banners, bells, signs, chants--it's been so long since I went to a march (2002),  I'd forgotten what it's like.  We'd shuffle a couple of steps forward and stop and wait.  We'd take a few more steps.  Camaraderie, yes.  Forward motion, not so much.  Funneling 84,000 people through the streets of downtown Oakland takes time.

 The vibe was good.  Everybody you can think of was represented:  every ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age.  There were old people with walkers, small children in strollers,  and the full spectrum of genders and hair color.   Even a pair of topless young women (shiver). 

The youngest marcher I saw was eight months old:

Me to the mother:  A girl?

Mother:  Well, that's how she identifies now, but who knows?

A sampling of signs and people:

 

I went with my friend Claudia, and we ran into a Berkeley dorm pal, c. 1970-71. 

 Thea and Claudia, who hadn't met up since c. 1972

Getting down to Oakland was no picnic.  Jerry dropped us off at the El Cerrito BART Station, which was mobbed.

Everyone managed to push on to the next train, which was crowded to start with. It zoomed to the North Berkeley station, where there was also a mobbed platform, but few could get on. After that, virtually no one could board the train, even though the platform in every station was swarming with waiting marchers, all through Berkeley and into Oakland.

We finally got off at the Oakland 12th Street Station and hoofed it to the starting point of the march at 9th and Madison.  That was the last time we walked more than three steps in a row until we peeled off an hour and a half later near the Oakland Museum.  We didn't finish the march because despite all the enthusiasm and outrage, we simply pooped out.   Four blocks in an hour-and-a-half!   But our hearts were in it and we showed up.  News helicopters circled the march intermittently and everyone would would wave and shout.

 My own pussyhat, knit by my friend Debbie, another 1970-71 Berkeley dormie.  She knit eight pussyhats, which were worn in marches around the country.

Judging from social media, many of my friends went to marches: LA, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland,  Sacramento, Fort Bragg, Pt. Reyes Station, and Albuquerque. 

Hey,  hey, we're here! 

Floating Along in the Kitchen Cabinet of Jeff Sessions, Plus a Good Read

In 2013, we took a cruise up the Inside Passage of Alaska, seven languid days of being waited on and seeing some truly beautiful scenery.

 In our usual mode of Antisocials at Sea, we talked to almost no other passengers, but kept to ourselves, which was just fine.  Shipboard socializing isn't our thing (although we make exceptions for Aussies and Brits, especially the ones we meet in bars).

 The Anti-Socials at Sea

But one morning as the ship cruised the Tracy Arm Fjord, which is startlingly beautiful, dotted with floating blue chunks of ice, we chatted with a pleasant American couple with accents that betrayed them as Southerners.  They seemed smart and funny, with a winning irreverence, and eventually they invited us to join them at lunch on a terrace where we could watch the action.

 The pale blue ice of the Tracy Arm Fjord

Everything went along fine  until the end of the meal, when the husband mentioned that he was in the kitchen cabinet of Senator Jeff Sessions.

"He goes to our church," added the wife, by way of explanation.  That would be a church in Mobile, Alabama, where they live.

I thought, Wait, that's one of those awful southern senators I shout at every time he appears on TV.  Wow.  

They went on to say that Sessions was "such a nice guy," and so principled that he wouldn't let the husband, a chemical industry consultant,  pay for a cab the two of them shared,  because it might look like a conflict of interest.

At this point, I assumed another layer of social insulation.   We wound up saying good-by very cordially, but we never chatted with them again.  Later, Jerry asked me why I thought they'd brought up an association with a Republican senator.  They knew we lived in Berkeley.  Hadn't they ever heard about Berkeley as a bastion of liberalism? 

 The Ashland Place Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, attended by Jeff Sessions and our cruise-mates

Now that Sessions has been nominated to be Attorney General and he's all over the news, I'm learning that he's even worse than I thought, the epitome of a rigid, old-time southern stalwart, with a history of opposing civil rights (and gay marriage and abortion rights).

"You won't find a nicer guy," protested a friend of his who was interviewed on NPR this morning.  "He's courteous and respectful."

"Of whom?" I shouted at the radio.

* * * * *

I just galloped through a novel I read about in The New Yorker, and I recommend it highly:  The Spare Room by the Australian writer Helen Garner.   A woman in her sixties invites a terminally ill friend to stay with her for three weeks.  The narrator's empathy, anger, and exhaustion are beautifully articulated, I thought.

* * * * *

For anyone thinking buying the  hand cream I recommended recently:  It's much cheaper on Amazon.   My nails are still doing well.

* * * * * *

Thanks to everyone who sent e-mails or called about my post on atrial fibrillation.  It was heartening to hear how many people live for many years with this affliction.

So much of life is figuring out how to manage it (meaning: life). This diagnosis threw me for a couple of weeks, but I think I'm making peace with it now.

   

Retreating to the Gentle Pursuits of Elitism

"We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear...Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers..."--Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post, November 9, 2016 

Since the election I've been feeling pretty guilty about being an elitist, which seems to include people who live on one of the coasts and have a college degree, although I know people in New Mexico and Montana who qualify, so the coast thing is not rigid. I also know very thoughtful, intelligent people who do not have a college degree and voted for Hillary.  Let's not lose our minds with generalities, pundits.

The narrative has been that we coastal-living, college-educated people who've been quietly going about our own lives, giving money to environmental causes, visiting museums, and reading books have been negligent for not picking up on the dilemmas of working-class Americans, who got even on Tuesday by electing That Near-Madman with Orange Skin and Surreal Hair.  It's all our fault.

I bought this for two days, beating myself up, wondering how I could have overlooked and underestimated this demographic; in fact, more than overlooked them,  actually felt disdain for them.   The tape in my head went like this:  Why don't they think more critically?  Can't they see the appalling contradictions and cruelty of what Trump says? Is their empathy on permanent vacation? Don't they have any respect for facts? 

Now I say to hell with guilt.  This morning  I read this piece by Garrison Keillor, published in yesterday's Washington Post, and I thought, fine.  I will retreat to quilting and gardening and listening to Mozart and reading Barbara Pym, all of which nourish my soul.  I'm not abandoning the working class, but I am saving my sanity and living my life according to my values. 

To that end, I'm not going to fly to the Rust Belt and listen to these people's stories, although I will read about them if they don't whine.  If they show up at the Berkeley Food Pantry, I'll listen and try to be kind and hand them off to a volunteer like my dear friend Anne, who went to Stanford and loves opera and manages a food donation program at her (very liberal) church that supplies a hell of a lot of poor people with cereal and canned tuna, which she lugs to the Pantry weekly.  She is not unaware, nor unkind, and she hails from the Midwest.

We'll go on doing our bit, and if in the meantime we're saving our sanity by collecting commemorative tea towels, making collages, watching PBS,  or even quilting, that's okay.

Still working on the election therapy quilt

I'm sorry working class people have felt left out, but as Keillor says, "resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity."

There I go again, being an elitist.  But I dunno, maybe I'm right?

Good luck to all of them.  I mean that sincerely, even if I don't understand them.

And thanks, Garrison, for the validating "us" and to my stepdaughter, Julia, for bringing this article to my attention.

"...by 'us,' I mean librarians, children's authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch."---Garrison Keillor

Stay Calm and Expect the Best

Fragment of  anti-Trump therapy quilt 

Tomorrow's The Day, and everyone I know is stressed and disbelieving and even tearful about the outcome of the election.

What if Trump wins? 

Jerry and I talked about it.  Canada's out for him (too cold) and Mexico is out for me (ongoing fear of Montezuma's Revenge).  Real political stalwarts here.

I started a quilt last night as therapy, and I'm trying not to listen to NPR while I work.  This morning I fished out a short article I clipped from the newspaper years ago, and this, plus deep breathing, has calmed me a bit.  Thank you, Mayo Clinic.


1.  Turn it off:  Stop listening, watching, or reading.  "Stop the ever-present stream of information flowing into our lives."  Is this possible for any length of time?

2.  Turn it around:  Do something positive to make the world better such as volunteering. (I'm going to the Berkeley Food Pantry this afternoon; I don't know if this makes the world better, but it certainly re-focuses my attention.)

3.  Go outside:  Experience nature.

4.  Exercise:  It helps relieve stress.

5. Be positive:  Remember that good news does happen.

I tell myself, "Expect the best," the take-away line from an anti-anxiety program I listened to on audiotape decades ago.  It's kept many planes in the air for me.  


I'm thinking that if Hillary wins the election I'll give away the quilt to someone else who supported her (do the colors work for you?).  If  she loses, I'm going to wrap myself in it and suck my thumb.

Whatever Happened in Iowa, Let's Stay Friends

"My idealistic side loves Bernie. My pragmatic side thinks Hillary is better prepared overall. I think they both have done a great job at bringing hidden issues out in the open. I refuse to put either of them down. There's too much at stake."--my friend Celia on Facebook this morning.

Thanks, Celia.  I needed to be reminded.

 Let's stop putting down either of them, because there IS too much at stake.

On the New York Times website,  articles about Clinton and Sanders are followed by a huge number of comments, and putting down the other candidate is the name of the game. Each morning I scan the comments, bracing myself for criticism of Hillary.  Then I get mad.  Then I scroll down and start distributing "likes" to anyone who criticizes Sanders.  No doubt there are Sanders supporters who are doing the same.

Stupid!  Pointless!

Who's the real enemy?  Small-minded people like Toxic Ted and the rest of that loony brigade.

How about this, instead?

Isn't great that we have two intelligent, committed, sane Democratic candidates to choose from?  People who will appoint a similarly sane, liberal person to the Supreme Court, if necessary. People who will protect the freedom to choose an abortion and the right of gay people to marry.  People who don't deny climate change.  People who don't think people are poor because they're lazy.

 Both candidates have a lot to offer

Either Sanders or Clinton will do a hell of a lot better job than any Republican running for President.  Let's be thankful for that.  Let's be deliberative and weigh the issues.  We can choose whichever candidate we prefer in the primary and then jump the (relatively) low fence to vote for the other in the general election, if necessary.

I'm lecturing myself here.  No more demonizing.  No more payback "likes."  What's at stake isn't my ego or passion or identity--a sister Baby Boomer!-- but the welfare of the country.  Deep breath. 

   

A Wall of Denial

 Jerry and I still talk about an encounter I had in New York City in 2006.  He wasn't with me--I had taken a train from Washington, DC, where we were staying, to Manhattan to go to art museums.  First, to the Museum of Modern Art, then to the Whitney, and then, tired but game, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  All in one day.

Didn't quite trust the map

The Metropolitan Museum is only a short walk from the Whitney, but I hadn't been to New York for years, and I was a bit confused about where I was going (cross Fifth Avenue, turn right).  Walking up Fifth Avenue, I saw a couple who were easily identifiable as tourists:  Overweight and dressed in shorts on an October afternoon.

"Is this the way to the museum?" I asked.

"Yep, we think so," the woman said.

We walked along.  They were jovial and talkative.   They told me that they were from Florida.

I'd just seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," and I remembered that Florida was particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.  I asked them if they were worried about that.

"No," said the woman.  "We're red-staters."

That was probably the first time that I realized science could be seen solely through a scrim of politics.

I offered that my husband was a scientist and that every scientist he knew believed that global warming was a fact.

"We live 30 miles inland," the man laughed.  "If it happens, we'll have an ocean view."  

There was really nothing more to say.  We climbed the steps of the museum and went our separate ways.

When I got back to Washington, I told Jerry about it, and he was both disbelieving and amused.  It was one of the best stories he'd heard yet on the subject, he said.   Over the years, we've joked about that couple getting their ocean view.

 Now it doesn't seem so funny.

This came to mind when I read Paul Krugman's column  today's New York Times.  The deniers are still out there, even with shrinking polar ice packs, extreme weather, and rising oceans.  Sometimes I wish I could ask the Florida couple what they think now--is it still a political ploy?

Something tells me they'd still say yes.

* * * * *

I can't even address the matter of gun control.  Guns kill, but that's something to be denied, too. 

A telling fact: I've had a frivolous post ready to publish for over a week, and each day I plan to click on "Publish," there's another mass killing, and it seems insensitive and utterly beside the point to go through with it. 

I'm taking BART to San Francisco today,  and, honestly, I'm a little worried about being on public transportation.  Is this what it's like to live in a war zone?

Travel of any kind feels more perilous these days

Not Greeted with Flowers and Smiles

Katharine Hepburn with signs she posted outside her country house in Connecticut.  Ambivalent?  Not in her case; she definitely wanted no intruders.

This image has been going through my mind a lot lately.  I'm thinking that all of Europe, except maybe Germany, would like to post these signs right now,  unaccompanied by a smiling face and a bouquet of flowers.

I've spent a week reading every news article I could find about the current migrant/refugee situation in Europe.  I had a high-horse phase of thinking European countries are inhumane, self-protective, and grossly negligent.  I've been appalled by comments left on the New York Times website by people who reduce the migrants to troublesome hordes of--what?  They are human beings, after all.

This morning, I threw up my hands.   Maybe the migrants/refugees (important distinction) are being short-sighted, too.  They get to Europe and don't want to stay in a poor country, but they want one that will provide the best benefits and opportunities.  Out of danger, they are no longer refugees but  economic migrants?  Too choosy?  Per the New York Times,  many people  in the current influx are wealthier than those who migrated earlier; some are even supporters of Assad's regime.  They quite naturally want to regain their socioeconomic standing as soon as possible. 

Then there's the President of Hungary--what about THAT dude?  A "Christian Europe" to be protected from the Muslim hordes?  And what about all this talk of trains and camps?  Scary, scary, scary.

Jerry and I were supposed to be in Europe in August, returning home yesterday.  We would have flown from Stockholm to Paris on the day a terrorist tried to attack a Paris-bound train. We would have taken a Eurostar train from Paris to London a few days before three Eurostar trains were halted for four hours in the Chunnel, with no air-conditioning or lights, because of migrants on the tracks and on the roof of the trains.  This could get personal very quickly if you're in Europe.  Who am I to judge?

A complicated, tragic situation is all I can come up with. 

* * * * *

And so to quilting (if only I could turn off NPR!).

Here's my current project, which I'm rushing to finish so that I can sew the blocks together while we're in Inverness for two weeks.  Not finished yet, but here's a preview.

 Naturally, there have  been changes since I took this photo

Here's the picture I worked from, which I thought looked like a quick, easy, throw-it-together-from-scraps project (from Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!!):

Not exactly what I ended up with

I can't seem to let go of the idea of sewing together random strips--la, la, la!--whacking them into squares, and coming up with a scrappy genius of a quilt (right!).

I did try, sewing the strips, cutting them into blocks:   A mess.  Then I unpicked many of the blocks; rearranged many, many 2" x 5" strips; and re-did the design.  A pain in the neck and very time-consuming.  I never learn.

Onward. 

Hey, Donald: You Have Really Bad Hair

So, The Donald.

Until the recent Republican debate,  he was pretty much off my radar.  A bombastic buffoon with truly terrible hair (my hairdresser is sure he cuts it himself), someone who would go away, thank God.  Implode, and the sooner the better.

But when I read that Megyn Kelly asked him about calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,"  it really touched a nerve.  Apparently, he's also called women "ugly, grotesque, and "the unsexiest woman alive."  The last referred to Sarah Jessica Parker.



Now I really, truly despise him.


I remember the first time a boy said a really mean thing about me.  It was during a school dance class in the 7th grade.  He muttered to a friend, loud enough for me to hear, that I had big feet and hairy legs.

Thanks, Steve van Sickle.  Did I mention at the time that you had bad hair and nerd glasses?  No.  Would I have thought to within your earshot?  No.  I wanted you to like me.  Also, I was not mean.



When I was young and single, I heard similar remarks from some men.  Why was my hair so short?  Was I a lesbian?  My feet were big (again).  I had a moustache.  I looked like I'd gained weight.

A lot of these unkind comments were meant to get me to prove I was a woman by having sex with these these people.  I never did, but I was hurt and full of self-doubt. (Do guys use the lesbian line anymore?  Or is it so politically incorrect that they've given up?  I fervently hope so.)

Trump is one in a long line of males who try to intimidate women by making cruel remarks about their appearance.  At 65, I'm invisible to men like him, and I move in "liberal, coastal, sophisticated" circles, as a New York Times writer characterized us in last week's Sunday magazine.  I can't imagine a man I know making such comments.

But I'll bet that this kind of intimidation is going on at Berkeley High School, just across town.  I'll bet there are boys sniping away at girls about their appearance, trying to bully them into submission. There are still men who model this kind of behavior, and Trump is one of them.

So it's not so much Trump's implying that Megyn Kelly was having her period and therefore "mean" to him that I find most offensive. That's so absurd and irrelevant that it isn't worth addressing.  It's the point she brought up in the first place: that he makes derogatory remarks about women and whenever the hell he wants.

I began to wonder: We may make fun of Trump's hair, but has anyone ever said it to his face?  Has anyone ever told him that he looks bad, has a tight mouth, a sour expression, and--I don't know--big feet?  Or that he has an extra roll around his middle (I'm guessing here)?

I doubt it.  The press makes fun of him, and so do we Coastal Liberals, privately.  But he's rich, aggressive, and scary. Who wants to step up to The Donald and tell him what we're all thinking?  Is anyone that brave? (or mean?)
 
He's a bombastic buffoon, yes.  But he's also unkind, controlling, and a bully.  He verbally beats up men and women. Sorry if I offend anyone with this, but,  really, he's just an asshole.  When I get to be President, I'm going to build a tall fence to keep people like him out of  the country.

Entertained and Educated by Anna Deavere Smith

Several years ago I noticed a police car parked outside Berkeley High School.  I thought, "What the hell?  Is there a riot or something?"

Daily at Berkeley High

Soon afterward, I saw one parked at Albany High School and another at El Cerrito High, and it slowly dawned on me that it's now routine in many American high schools to have a cop on campus during school hours.  But why?

Anna Deavere Smith, that remarkable actress/social commentator, whom I LOVE (have seen"Twilight Los Angeles, 1992," and "Let Me Down Easy" several times), has a work in progress at Berkeley Repertory Theater called, "Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education,"  in which she explores what's going on with cops in schools.

Not good.  

It goes like this:  a kid acts up in high school (or middle school or even elementary school).   This could involve truancy, swearing at a teacher, scuffling with another student, excessive noise, loitering, or the catch-all  "disruptive behavior and willful defiance."  The kid is no longer sent to see the equivalent of Mr. Cunningham or Miss Williams, the Dean of Boys and Dean of Girls, respectively, when I was in high school, for a stern talking-to and perhaps a phone call to the parents.

Mr. Cunningham and Miss Williams, Del Mar High School, 1966
No encounter with them was good news, starting with skirt- and hair-lengths

In many schools, Mr. Cunningham/Miss Williams have been  replaced by police or armed "school resource officers"  who enforce zero-tolerance policies meant to keep schools free of violent crime (think Columbine).  Given that climate, the kid might be suspended, expelled, endure an involuntary transfer to another school, or be ticketed for a misdemeanor.  Some kids are arrested at school.  Many end up in court.


Of all the times I've seen Anna Deavere Smith perform, this is the work that brought me to tears.
African American children are now three times more likely to be suspended or expelled. Students with disabilities and LGBTQ kids are also suspended at higher rates.  Ditto Latino children and other children of color.

Acting out has become criminalized.  What are school administrators thinking?

Well.  There's no evidence that school safety has improved, even though many of these kids are shunted off to disciplinary alternative schools, to court,  to juvenile hall,  down the pipeline to jail for so many of them.

In  Act 1, Ms. Smith explores the school-to-prison pipeline that ends hope and opportunity for so many of these kids.  She interviewed educators, students, ex-students, prisoners, and politicians in Northern California, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and she's woven those interviews into a heart-wrenching, damning exploration of how society has so often failed poor children of color.

Act 2 consists of audience groups meeting to discuss these issues.  My friend Suzanne and I were tempted to weenie-out and leave early (public speaking!), but we stuck with it.  My group was facilitated by an ultra-sensitive,  heavily tattooed young woman named "SK." 

We were given pads of paper, pens, Whole Foods animal cookies, and asked to express ourselves on two topics:  What we'd like the situation in schools to look like in ten years, and what we could do personally to help.  I said nothing, but I scribbled like mad.

Question 1:   First of all, no police on campus as a matter of course.  Schools  would become full-service facilities focussed on helping children and their families in a multitude of way, including mental health services, medical screening, food, and even clothing.  Society would recognize the limits of what teachers can do (oh, please!) and provide counselors and social workers and school nurses who would be assigned to children and their families.  Schools would become an all-purpose resource for the school community.

Question 2: Then SK asked what we could do personally to help, and all I could think of was getting out of my comfort zone and exposing myself to communities and cultures other than my own.   

Did I know about the school-to-prison pipeline before this performance?  No.  My volunteer work at the food pantry has helped me to see some of the  issues that face poor people who are not Caucasian or middle class.  It's been enlightening, chastening, and sad, but I could do more, and I hope I do.

Coming up:  There's hope!  Some school districts have come up with innovative solutions to combat this tendency to criminalize adolescent behavior, Oakland Unified  School District among them.

  

"Amazing Grace" and the Curmudgeonette

Last night I went to Berkeley Repertory Theater to see "One Man, Two Guvners," which was funny, clever, imaginative, and entertaining--all the things you want on a Friday night when your spouse is off counting butterflies in the Sierra and teaching people how to differentiate moth genitalia.

Except!  The quite tall woman sitting next to me--since when did theater designers take a page from the airlines and make seats way too narrow for comfort?--irritated me every few minutes by spinning the screw top off a Mason jar full of water, taking a swallow,  and then screwing the top back on and leaning forward to put the jar (clink!)  back on the floor.  Plus!  She was wearing a leather jacket which squeaked every time she moved.  Close to two dozen times she did this.

What was she thinking?

Is it my English side (mother and three grandparents) that makes me an elbows-in kind of gal in places like theaters and waiting rooms?  Am I uptight or was this woman oblivious?  Please vote.

* * * * *

I went to Berk Rep with three friends from West Marin, one of whom told me that she was tired of "looking at lemons," the photo with my last post, and when was I going to write another post?

I know what she means because I follow blogs, too, and it annoys me no end when the blogger doesn't have anything new for me to read.  This includes one beleaguered woman who just had her fifth baby and had to move to Florida two weeks later because of her husband's job.  I mean, so what?  Where's the new post?

More important, where are the baby pictures? 

Which brings me to my next point:

1.  I have no grandchildren, therefore no pictures/stories of adorable babies to showcase.
2.  I'm not traveling (most of the time) and coming up with new adventures every day.
3.  I'm a generalist in this life--not a specialist in much of anything but being a curmudgeonette. Is that a draw?

 Found this in a bookcase recently; someone gave it to me for my 40th birthday. 

It's a bit of a dilemma.  

* * * * * 

And now for some good news, as opposed to angst:

1.  Thank God for Justice Kennedy!  What an eloquent opinion he wrote on gay marriage.  On the other hand, as one of my friends put it, "Scalia's head has exploded."  Does he have any more mean-spirited snideness left in him?


2.  SCOTUS and the Affordable Care Act!  Hurray!
 
3.  What a President!  He SINGS!  How eloquent he is, how in-your-face he's becoming.  Go for it, Barack!  Nothing to lose.  We are the beneficiaries of grace that he is our President.

 Have a good weekend, if you read this before Monday.  And thanks for the push, Gayanne.

Whoever Invented Stretch Jeans Should Get a Nobel Prize

Senator Chew Toy

So the Republicans triumphed; Mitch McConnell, who my friend Val thinks looks like a chew toy, trumpeted; and the horrible conservative columnist for the SF Chronicle, Debra Saunders, said, "it was a beauteous night."

Wretched

Oh, to hell with her.  It's just one more election.  There will be another one in two years, and Hillary might even win.

I don't think I'm in denial about the election--I just went micro.  There are definitely some things to be glad about around here, such as the new cabinet that just got installed in my studio closet:

 Even without drawers, it's thrilling.

And a rose bloomed on a plant I thought had had it:

 Of course, we still have a toilet in the hall.

* * * * *

This morning in the dressing room at the pool, I overheard a couple of women talking. The first said that her mother died two weeks ago.  Then she said some things I couldn't hear, and the other woman responded, "Oh, you mean she chose to leave."

She chose to leave.  Which is how I've been thinking about Brittany Maynard, who ended her life last weekend at the age of 29,  because she had terminal brain cancer.

I went over and asked the woman who'd said that, a regal African American lady (I wondered if it was a  very wise cultural saying) if I'd heard her correctly.

"Yes," she said.  "My mother chose to leave a few years ago."

"Did she use drugs to do it?"  I asked.

"No," said the woman.  "She just gave up.  Too much cancer pain.  She didn't want to live anymore."

"I like that saying," I said.

"People can choose to leave, however they do it," she said.  "It's fine."  She said this in such a deeply grounded, gentle way that I felt she was giving all of us permission to choose to leave, if we find ourselves in the state her mother or Brittany Maynard were in.

(Of course, Debra Saunders railed against Brittany Maynard.)

* * * * *



 Yeah, right

 Claudia M. and I went to buy some clothes in Walnut Creek.  She's employed, so she needed some outfits that look pulled together, and she found a couple of shirts, blouses, and sweaters.  I bought two pairs of jeans and a t-shirt.

What on earth did we do before stretch jeans?  That's about as foreign to me now as wearing a garter belt every day of high school (or rolling my hair each night, for that matter.  Every. Single. Night.  From 1964 to 1968.).  So uncomfortable.

Clothes sizes now are so insane that I'm wearing a size or two smaller than I did in high school, and I weigh 15 pounds more (or 20,  let's be honest). When I pointed this out, the saleswoman nodded and said "It's American sizing."   I said, "What do you mean, obese?"  She said, "You're funny."  Politely.


She kept urging us into smaller sizes, because--guess what?--stretch fabric stretches out.  I thought, So what? They'll be comfortable.

Afterward, we went to Starbuck's for a drink and a couple of chocolate-coated graham crackers, since we were we were smaller than we thought.  Why not?

Banished Toilet, Sneaky Conservatives, Hotdog with Champagne

And now what I know you've all been waiting for:  An update on the bathroom project.

The drywall is in and now the "tape-ers" have taken over.

The before picture:

 And now:

The toilet is mostly out of sight!

I know, in the Age of Ebola, ISIS, and Marjorie Dannenfelser (see below), this is not a very big deal, but I'm very happy about this transformation, 30 years overdue.  And there are SEVEN NEW DRAWERS for fabric stacked in the basement.

* * * * *

Yesterday, when I flipped open the latest issue of The New Yorker yesterday and found this photograph,  I thought, Whoa!

Does anyone else think this woman looks scary?  Her name is Marjorie Dannenfelser, and  she's the president of the Susan B. Anthony List.   Sounds feminist, right?

"Oh, good, she's on our side!" I thought.

But, no.  The sole aim of the Susan B. Anthony List is to abolish abortions; the group funnels money to anti-abortion candidates.   If you're a person who believes in reproductive choice for women, she's as scary as they come--clever, glib, and passionate about her cause,  a one-issue gal.

"We can't have a Democratic majority in the House or the Senate right now," she said.  "If we're close, I can't in good conscience, for the cause of life, support even a great pro-life Democrat."

The article's called, "The Intensity Gap," and, boy, can you see it in her face.

And why "Susan B. Anthony?"   Because in 1869, Anthony decried, "the horrible crime of child-murder...Guilty?  Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed."

You can read the article here and see how the quote was taken way out of context by the S.B. Anthony List.  Hey, I was taken in.  How many others?

* * * * *

On Sunday, I was feeling so housebound from being sick for two weeks that I has to get out of the house, away from remodeling detritus/chaos, all of it.

So, we drove over to San Francisco to see a new show at the Legion of Honor, "Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House."  

Go, if you're an Anglophile like me.  Don't go, if you are driven mad by the gap between the rich and the poor and can't be seduced for an hour by paintings, china, furniture, tapestries, and other what-nots collected by the family of the Marquess of Cholmondeley.

 Houghton Hall, Norfolk.  Built in the 1720's for Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister.

 The Cabinet Room  (the remarkably small bed is in the show)

.

 

 The Marble Parlour  (some of the furniture is in the show)

 The Saloon in Houghton Hall

Portrait of Sybil, Countess Rocksavage (Later Marchioness of Cholmondeley), John Singer Sargent, 1913.  She used funds from her family, the Sassoons, to restore the house.

 They're even selling English tea towels in the gift shop! Bought one, of course.  But the high point of the day was lunch: a hotdog and champagne.

Had to come home and take a nap

The Houghton Hall show is up through January 18, 2005.  Hard-core Anglophiles can even have an English tea in the cafe.