Slow Down Week or Slow Down Life

Check out the video at Adbusters. Here's what they have to say:
"Using a hybrid car for your two-hour commute to work, or eating organic food during your 20-minute lunch break isn't enough. In order to negotiate the ecological problems facing our planet, we need to slow down our way of life. The frenetic pace of the modern world is a hindrance to the kind of deep cultural change we need to ensure a healthy future. Slow Down Week is a great opportunity to take it easy and adopt a new perspective."

Young at Heart or Why can't we call it Old at Heart?

Young at Heart is an amazing chorus. Check out the video below and watch the trailer to the documentary here.



Here's what occurs to me. Why is it that we feel compelled to use the word "young" to represent the notion of lively, bold, talented, exciting, energetic, among other qualities of this group? Youth shouldn't own it.

BTW, I found the links to this info at Wintersong, a nice blog to visit.

Thinking Big at Big Think

If you've got time in your life and space in your brain for more thinking I recommend Big Think. I think you'll like it.

A Saturday Hike, Two old ladies style

So Chris (Who surely has a more detailed account of this.) and I go out hiking yesterday and oops, get on the Appalachian Trail (How exactly did we end up on the AT and how long did it take us to realize that those highly visible, bright white blazes were not the blue ones we should have been following?) and it gets very dark and increasingly colder and although we have two flashlights, an apple, two scones and a bottle of water, we're thinking the sign pointing 17 rocky miles one way, 8 the other doesn't bode well, so we follow the supposed .2 mile (This is only .2 miles?) billy-goat climb down to a hostel where Fairfax Station Boy Scout Troop #994 just happens to be having dinner (Okay, I'll have a just a little.) of tasty chili and fresh fruit salad and chips and olives and . . .Then two kindly scoutmasters, one with a GPS and the other an SUV (These culturally recognized abbreviations are not technically acronyms according to Julia since they do not form an identifiable word.) drive us back over and around the ridge to the Friends Wilderness Center where we'd parked our car and incidentally meant to be hiking, just when Sheila Bach, the Resident Manager of the Center who we've yet to meet but turns out to be an accountant (Who doesn't need an accountant?) and a lighthouse aficionado who has herself yet to meet Old Barney, my childhood lighthouse, and whose son went to the same Quaker boarding school that my brothers and I attended, is on the phone with the Sheriff to figure out how to begin to find the two old ladies that meandered into the woods several hours ago and never came back.

So that's what Friends are for.

Is it possible for one to drown in depth of feeling?

Sometimes The Writer's Almanac has a way of making me feel as if I live under a cultural rock. How is it that I've gone this long in life without Maxime Kumin? How will I find the time to read her work while keeping up with the rest of the stuff I'm reading and want to read, and get to work, feed the cats, drive Jerzy to Japanese class, take a shower, go to the bank . . . not to mention the added thoughts, feelings, ideas that will build up and need somewhere to go.

I'm treading water.

Which One by Maxime Kumin

I eye the driver of the Chevrolet
pulsing beside me at a traffic light

the chrome-haired woman in the checkout line
chatting up the acned clerk

the clot of kids smoking on the sly
in the Mile-Hi Pizza parking lot

the meter reader, the roofer at work
next door, a senior citizen

stabbing the sidewalk with his three-pronged cane.
Which one of you discarded in a bag

—sealed with duct tape—in the middle of the road
three puppies four or five weeks old

who flung two kittens from a moving car
at midnight into a snowbank where

the person trailing you observed the leg
and tail of the calico one that lived

and if not you, someone flossing her teeth
or watering his lawn across the street.

I look for you wherever I go.

I like Ron Padgett almost as much as I like mocha lattes or Confessions of a Coffee Consumer.

I love to read the poetry of Ron Padgett. Coffee Corner got me thinking.

I fought with my caffeine habit for years. When I was pregnant with Julia I switched to a mixture of caf and decaf. With Jerzy I went all the way to decaf and beyond and by the time she was born I was caffeine free. Ten years. Then Starbucks came to the hood. Julia gave me sips of her yummy drinks, one sip led to another, I got buzzed and giddy. Then Kristara got a job there and, well, I'm hooked. I no longer fight it. I rather enjoy it, actually, now that I'm beyond the caffeine-induced,breaking-out-in-a-sweat-heart-palpitating-anxiety-attack stage.

Here's the part that weirds me out - not only are we a culture that eats at our desks, driving in the car, standing up, we no longer sit down for a cup of coffee. Coffee feels normal to me in a cardboard cup slurped through a tiny whole in a plastic top. I brew my morning tea in a real mug (albeit strangely with water heated in a microwave) but, not so my $4 afternoon mocha. I check the oblong-shaped opening with my tongue to make sure it's positioned just right before each pull, gulp it down with gusto and a few minutes later toss the cup into the garbage can overflowing with its friends.

A ritual is born. And it ain't your grandma's ritual.

Coffee Corner by Ron Padgett

The large bowls of coffee at breakfast in France,
the heavy porcelain cups in old American diners,
the disposable brown plastic cups in motel lobbies,

the feeling that you ought to drink the entire cup,
the slight resentment you feel at feeling this way,
the wondering why you do it then,

the gratitude for someone’s making the coffee,
the decision not to have a third free refill,
the surprise of a really bad cup of coffee,

the way it used to cost a nickel, then seven cents, then ten,
and now anywhere from sixty cents to three seventy-five,
sometimes a little more for decaffeinated,

the brown print of it drying on the cup’s lip,
the small amount left in the bottom,
the rest of it sloshing inside you,

sending its stimulation through tubes
in your body, hello, let’s go, we’re late, do
you have the keys, oh god I can’t find my wallet

Waking Ned Devine goes to New York

The most popular New York Times article e-mailed today is Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests. I stay in Hell's Kitchen when I go to New York. It's become my favorite neighborhood. My hotel is on 10th Avenue, an old hooker place that I remember driving by as a kid and ogling with fear and disgust. It's been transformed into a tourist hotel where, if you're lucky, you might stumble upon Russian musicians in town to perform at Lincoln Center, smoking in the stairwells. Be Julia and you and your dog Duck will be invited to their room for vodka, cake and a serenade.

Hell's Kitchen ain't your grandma's Hell.

yagrowsoryadies. a blog to savor.

Start with Touching. Wisdom, warmth and a whole lot more.

A Beatnik goes to Woodstock or this is not about the election

I went to Woodstock. I ran into my brother there. I didn’t know he was going, not that with a half million people it would have made much difference if I had. He was lying down, leaning against a tree. Hi Josh, I said. Hi Jude, he said.

Last year a couple of neighborhood kids dressed up as hippies for Halloween. At first I thought it was pretty weird. Hippies? I was dressed as a bunch of grapes. I guess dressing as hippies isn’t much different than the time when I was little that I went trick-or-treating as a Beatnik. I wore a black turtleneck and carried a cigarette in a long holder. There weren’t many people on the island in the winter (All seasons were winter to us except summer.) so we’d walk for blocks and blocks looking for a house with lights on. I can’t imagine how we got so much candy or how we were able to get our cleaned-out, half-pint milk cartons with the orange Unicef wrappers taped on them filled up with coins. Maybe it’s because the candy bars were bigger in those days and the coins were all pennies.

About the election. Aware of my track record, McGovern, Carter and a list of others who lost their bid for President, I'm going to remain mute on the subject. Well, almost mute. I'm fairly pleased with the way the election is going and since I'm not unduly superstitious, I plan on voting.

TheWriter's AlmanacDoes it Again

"Sonnet for Mary" by Ralph Edwards

The old lady who's walking along Concourse A
Rather slowly in front of you, is making her way
To get on a plane to fly to Denver
Though she is in pain, she won't complain ever.
She walks all bent over. She's 91.
But her sister died and there's work to be done.
She must bury her sister and clean out the condo
And see to her niece who's retarded, sweet Rhonda.
There's a funeral to arrange, words to be said,
And her brother is useless, he's gone in the head.
Stuff to be cleaned out, a condo to sell,
And a 50-year-old child who can't care for herself.
She's an old lady who's needed out there.
She's heading for Denver on a wing and a prayer

Gloria Steinem says Women are Never Front Runners. I say it's because their uniforms are Inferior.

Gloria Steinem's January 8 New York Times Op Ed piece, Women are Never Front Runners, is, well, let's see, where shall I start - totally on target, correct, depressing, obvious, startling, shocking, predictable . . . shall I continue? It reminds me of an old riddle. I can't remember exactly how it went but the essence is something like this: A son and his surgeon father are in a dreadful car accident. The father is killed. The son's parent operates on him to save his life. How can it be? Ummmm. It can't be or the father wasn't really killed or . . . The surprise answer is the surgeon is his Mother! I'm not much of a joke/riddle teller and I'm sure it must have been more clever than this, but you get the point.

Gloria Steinem makes astute, well-conceived, irrefutable points but what can we possibly do with the information? I say we change uniforms.

Uniforms - How incredibly powerful they can be. I remember fondly becoming a soccer referee. I was 41 years old. I took the course, passed the certification tests with flying colors. I was to be in charge of a field filled with 22 people running about, each with their own agenda, opponents with competing objectives and an assortment of potentially rabble rousing bystanders. I was nervous before my first game but everyone said that the uniform would give me confidence. Donning black referee’s shirt and shorts, whistle hanging around my neck was half of the job. Put it on, step to the middle of the field and my credibility as the authority and arbiter of all subsequent acts on the field was established. Anyone deeming to challenge me would have to take the leap of disobeying authority. I was a paid dictator.

Operating room scrubs; doctor’s white coat; Starbuck's apron; Kinko's shirt; bellman’s suit and cap; dark light-wool pin-striped suit, starched white shirt and silk tie, polished leather dress shoes of the corporate executive; and for women in the same business environment, dresses or skirts and high-heeled shoes - showing a more shapely calf while simultaneously rendering women more vulnerable, feet not only figuratively, but literally, less firmly placed on the ground. Go to K Street and watch the businesspeople walking down the sidewalk, groups of two and three on their way to lunch - men in leather-soled, flat shoes, women walking double-time at their side, teetering on little perches. Is it any wonder that women are never front runners? How can they run? Their uniforms are inferior.

How about we try this. Let's switch uniforms. Men can wear plunging necklines, control-top pantyhose, form-fitting dresses and high heels. And their legs ought to be shaved or, better yet, waxed. I wanna be able to get a good look at that well-turned ankle and shapely calf.

Michael Pollan has a new book! or George McGovern did his best.

I was talking with Chris earlier in the week and she snuck in, ever-so-subtlety among other topics, that Michael Pollan has a new book, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD An Eater’s Manifesto. Aware of my reverence for Michael Pollan and sensitive to my Amazon-1-Click disorder (I think I should start a support group, AA, Amazon Anonymous), my book shelves overflowing with books as yet unread, she was reticent to mention it.

Michael Pollan is brilliant. I gave his last book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, to anyone that would stand still long enough to accept it. I was like the neighbor with the cat that keeps having kittens. Wouldn't you like to have this cute furry book?

His previous book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World is simply lovely. BookBrowse has reviews and of course, Wiki is always good - "This work explores the nature of domesticated plants from the dual perspective of humans and the plants themselves. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The apple reflects the desire of sweetness, the tulip beauty, marijuana intoxication, and the potato control."

Michael Pollan's new book is, naturally, about food. Or, more aptly put, about our unnatural approach to food. While you're waiting for your copy to arrive, you can listen to Michael Pollan on NPR; sample/savor the first chapter in The New York Times or read the January 3 review. The following excerpt from the review, by the way, reminds me once again why I voted for George McGovern:

"Among the historical details that underscore a sense of food’s downhill slide: the way a Senate Select Committee led by George McGovern was pressured in 1977 to reword a dietary recommendation. Its warning to “reduce consumption of meat” turned into “choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake.”

When Mr. McGovern lost his seat three years later, Mr. Pollan says, the beef lobby “succeeded in rusticating the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable warning to anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of animal protein squatting in the middle of its plate.”"

I resisted 1-Click, resorting instead to Multi-Click - Realizing Julia was at work, her job, conveniently, at Border's, I texted her - Michael Pollan has a new book, I said. I know :) she replied. I'll get it.

The Best Presidential Election Commercials or I Voted for Jimmy Carter

This election, treat yourself to commercials from elections past at The Living Room Candidate, Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952 - 2004. This fascinating, eye-opening, nostalgic gem is an online exhibition of The Museum of the Moving Image.

Watch the country turn from blue to red to blue. See Tricky Dick in black and white; Lyndon Johnson with Lady Bird by his side (After the death of John F. Kennedy, Johnson promises to do his best, acknowledging that it's all he's got to offer.); Images of children juxtaposed against atom bombs exploding (Subtle message, Careful who you vote for.); I Like Ike; Young Jimmy Carter in his plaid flannel shirt. . .

It's a fabulous collection and in the context of an election year . . .

"The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."
-Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, 1956

Little did he know what ultimate indignities the holders of high office could bring.

And the title of the article is "Tigers don't belong in zoos."

Imagine that.

MotherPie mentioned Dave Pollard. Good Stuff.

In response to my entry, Consumption or What's your home page? MotherPie said...
"I find Dave Pollard to be a good source for sustainable living ideas.

Our footprint should be smaller. Much smaller. Our quality of life would improve."

Thanks MotherPie. Good stuff.

Who Did You Vote For? or For Whom Did You Vote?

Remember the 1972 presidential election - Nixon vs McGovern? It was the first election in which I could vote since the voting age was still 21. I was so excited that I bought a television in order to watch the returns.

I voted for George McGovern.

Julia taught me a new phrase today or How come Sharon Olds says things so much more better than I?

57/19
by Judith Shapiro

Julia leaves for California on her first cross-country road trip next week. She'll be driving her 2007 Honda Hybrid that we'll have serviced on Monday before she goes.

I'm reminded of the trip I took with my boyfriend when I was 19. We bought an old van from a construction guy (He'd be called a construction Dude these days.) for $400 (a lot of money, really). My brother, Jeff, and his best friend Bobby, built a platform for our king-size mattress. I pretended to know how to sew and fashioned some Indian-print material into quasi-curtains. The retread tires spent much of the trip just itching to explode (and succeeding from time to time, not always in the most hospitable of places) and eventually the only way to start the engine was to open the cover and manually connect some wire to the solenoid. It was a great trip.

So Julia and Kristara and I are sitting in Subway today (They're part of the Subway generation thanks to Jared and some highly successful marketing programs.) eating veggie patties on toasted whole wheat with all the fixin's talking about Kristara's headache from drinking strawberry vodka (strawberry vodka?) last night. She's decided she must be allergic to vodka - a low blow for someone who only recently turned 21. Julia suggests that she take what's left of the bottle on her upcoming trip to California. Being only 19, how else would she be able to acquire alcohol along the way? she asks. "Can you see me shoulder tapping in some strange town in Texas, yo?"

Shoulder tapping? Too good.

Or

35/10
by Sharon Olds

Brushing out our daughter’s brown
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a moist
precise flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It’s an old
story—the oldest we have on our planet—
the story of replacement.

Sharon Olds, “35/10” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002. Copyright © 2004 by Sharon Olds.

Sharon Olds

A Week Later

A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. And in my dream
someone was playing jacks, and in the air there was a
huge, thrown, tilted jack
on fire. And when I woke up, I found myself
counting the days since I had last seen
my husband-only two years, and some weeks,
and hours. We had signed the papers and come down to the
ground floor of the Chrysler Building,
the intact beauty of its lobby around us
like a king's tomb, on the ceiling the little
painted plane, in the mural, flying. And it
entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard, untouched-but known, seen,
heard, touched. And it came to me,
for moments at a time, moment after moment,
to be glad for him that he is with the one
he feels was meant for him. And I thought of my
mother, minutes from her death, eighty-five
years from her birth, the almost warbler
bones of her shoulder under my hand, the
eggshell skull, as she lay in some peace
in the clean sheets, and I could tell her the best
of my poor, partial love, I could sing her
out with it, I saw the luck
and luxury of that hour.

Sharon Olds

Consumption or What's your home page?

The New York Times is my home page. When logging on to do any work on my computer it's the first thing I encounter - kind of like coming upstairs for tea in the morning and finding someone has left a warm plate of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Who's gonna pass that up? I don't intend to get caught up reading all these interesting articles when I've got a mountain of other stuff on my plate, but since I do and I did, I recommend this op-ed piece by Jared Diamond, "What's Your Consumption Factor?"
Got too much on your plate to read it? Okay, I've whittled it down to one quote to ponder.

". . . living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures."

Duh.

Queer video to share or This is so gay

As a member of the Human Rights Campaign I received an e-mail with this video today. Resolve.
My tongue-in-cheek, politically incorrect kids (lesbians included) would say it's sooooo gay.
I say it's sooooo good.