Green Acres: Chatham Courier Columns

Where to find Susie's Mash Up...

2013-01-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

Thanks for all the kind words and complaints that I hadn't posted the new column link!

You can read the first few weekly editions of Susie's Mash Up here where it is temporarily living while my new website (www.whatsusiesaid.com) is under construction. I'll turn on the link when we go live!

The End of Green Acres As You Know It

2013-01-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

It’s with a mixture of sadness and anticipation that I type this week’s Green Acres, the last of its kind as you know it. Hard to believe, but this week’s column marks exactly seven years since Green Acres first graced the pages of the Courier. Not 5 or 6, but 7 years, which has rather blown my mind. Over the past few months, new ideas have been percolating until the effort to keep them under control was harder than keeping a lid on a crab pot and my fearless Editor gave me the green light to tackle pastures new.

When I first pitched Green Acres to the Courier we were new CoCo residents; I was wrestling with our life in the countryside and, soon after, life as a mother. Along the way, I've covered – or uncovered – the joys of well water and septic systems, puppy training and mad cats, the arrival of two children, infant travel (the highs and lows), British-American language barriers, royal weddings, trans-Atlantic spats, and a full spectrum of British and American traditions, high days, and holidays. Judging from the correspondence I've received over time, it has been a source of amusement, and only rarely an irritant that would drive a reader to rant. For that, I am slightly awed and ever appreciative.

In the interest of tying up loose ends, a few words to the lady who wrote in to share her concern for my mental health and suggest several supplements. May I thank you in print, and assure you I took none. For the gentleman who took offence at a mere historical quip, may I stress that I am indeed biased and English too, not “just an Anglophile or European sympathizer”, though I did enjoy the slur. Finally, I’m grateful for the warm greetings once the Courier plucked us -- it’s devoted columnists -- from relative anonymity and placed our heads on a platter beside our weekly spots. I have been greeted frequently and only choked once.

This is not farewell but adieu. Some of my favourite columns have been about trips, places, and events in Columbia County, the Berkshires and surrounding area. And, I have felt it my bounden duty to share the good, the bad, and the ugly – (or over-share when one of my children vomited at a funeral, a big box garden center, even Baba Louie’s in Hudson) – when it comes to executing almost anything with the entire household in tow.

Starting next week, you’ll find my new column: "Susie's Mash Up" in this spot, featuring mash up reviews from ski mountains to festivals, children's events to dining out. I will be tackling activities, testing out local programs, trying new classes or restaurants, often with company or my family in tow, as the occasion calls. And as I dish it out, feel free to dole some back. After all, one (wo)man’s trash is another’s treasure. You might find yourself agreeing heartily or taking me to task in dispute. You can send in your comments or throw out suggestions for other spots to explore by emailing me at the column’s new email: susiethebrit@gmail.com.

As I wrap up Green Acres, you might like to know this finale clocks in as the 248th column, which just happens to be my favourite number, as well as my former phone extension from a former life when I worked tirelessly for the benefit of the US government. We can hardly call this a coincidence.

Finally, in the spirit of home-life over-sharing, I was intrigued to find evidence of mice in the stovetop of our gas oven. I came across a trail of empty Hershey Kisses chocolate wrappers under the gas burners. But as I pulled the shreds of foil away, I found their entryway carefully nested with chewed fireproof padding and stockpiled with four more pristine Hershey Kisses. Intriguingly, they cherry-picked only red Kisses from the festive mix of green, red and silver. I’m not sure whether to be more enthralled by the scientific implications or horrified by the discovery. Either way, you may want to think twice before accepting an invitation to dinner.

2012 Inglorious Change

2012-12-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

I was rather sad to miss the Queen’s Speech this year. This traditional round up of the year’s events is a hallmark of any Christmas Day in the UK, with all the feel of an era when families would huddle around a radio listening a special address. My own childhood Christmases, bubbling with barely contained excitement, hinged on that three o’clock hour. While we were allowed to leap from our beds to ravage novelties in our Christmas stocking, sometimes a few larger packages alongside, we couldn’t unwrap the gifts under the tree until after the Queen had spoken to the nation.

As plates were cleared, the clipped broadcaster’s announcement of The Queen signified the end of Christmas lunch, and brought us running from the dining room to the living room just in time to sit. The Queen, already seated comfortably in an armchair or at a writing desk in her own home, gazed calmly at camera, sometimes with a few lazy Corgis flung about her feet. As a child, it mostly bored me but I ran just the same. As much as I hated the wait, I knew the concluding anthem would herald a breathless start to the present frenzy. Actually, quite an orderly procession of individual presentations, gifts carefully unwrapped, names jotted down for the post-Christmas thank yous.

You may recently have heard about the Englishman who had a stroke and awoke speaking fluent Welsh. He had been among many English school children evacuated to a predominantly Welsh-speaking area of Wales during the World War II. And while he never learned the language, his young mind somehow absorbed it. In a similar way, my recollection of the British political landscape through the seventies and eighties is inextricably tied up with commentary from the Queen’s Speech. Dusty recollections of Prime Minister Callaghan, Labour leaders Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, clearer memories of the miners' strikes, the Falklands War, and Margaret Thatcher’s long tenure, runs as a news reel accompanied by expressions on the Queen’s face. It’s why I clearly remember the low popularity of the Royals and her ‘Annus Horribilis’ speech of 1992 after fire damaged Windsor Castle, and 1997, the year of Princess Diana’s death.

It struck me that this year’s speech would be an exciting one recapping the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, the London 2012 Olympics, and news of a forthcoming great-grandchild. The Queen must be feeling good, buoyed by her current popularity, her willing modernization of the Establishment, including an appearance beside James Bond, (the delicious Daniel Craig), for an Olympics’ clip that ended with a Queenly stunt double skydiving from a helicopter into the stadium below. Speaking to all her Commonwealth subjects, she will have mentioned world visits and world events, but likely omitted the nude photo scandals that rocked two younger royals.

Just before New Year comes the announcement of the British Honours list from Clarence House. No surprise to see the bevvy of Team GB heroes from the London Olympics and Paralympics topping the list. Cyclist and side-burns icon, Bradley Wiggins, and Olympic sailing star, Ben Ainslie, were among those knighted; gold medalists Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis recipients of a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), and, beyond the athletics circle, Stella McCartney, designer of the 500 pieces of GB Olympic apparel, awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for her long-time contributions to fashion.

The end of any year prompts the inevitable reflection and review and sets the tone for so many resolutions. In the UK, between the ebullient highs came the lows: continuing debate over the government’s Austerity Plan, efforts to bolster the brutalized economy, tax fraud, high unemployment. In the US, the aggressive Presidential election provided the back drop to all else: Romney, Obama, Occupy Wall Street’s one year anniversary, Gay Marriage, Planned Parenthood, Obama’s second term, and devastation from the madness of school, mall and theatre shootings. In many ways, it has been a painful and polarizing year. Even the election result brought with it ideological division, great anxiety over the imminent Fiscal Cliff, the raging debate over gun control and the need for improved access to mental health services. But, 2012 has pushed us forward and sees a new year with discussions underway – discussions that can no longer be ignored. Deciding to agree or disagree is no longer enough. Gay marriage is here. Planned Parenthood will stand. Gun control is out of the cupboard and on the table. Wherever you stand, 2013 promises to be a year of wrangling and change. The only promise we must make is to be part of the solution.

Festively Yours

2012-12-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

‘Tis the season to be jolly and some people take the business of festive decorating rather seriously. In any American neighbourhood there are always two or three houses vying with one another for the title of Greatest Nightly Drain on the National Grid, their exteriors glittering with a storm of light bulbs to rival the illuminations of the Eiffel Tower and Harrods. Unquestionably, craftsmanship and diligence go into these creations, no doubt with great satisfaction at the end. On any given morning, I am struck by the strange sight of dozens of deflated Santas and snowmen collapsed on lawns. It lends a curious sort of ‘morning after’ feel to the drive as though you are witnessing the aftermath of some debauchery. Even when someone flicks the switch to re-inflate them, it takes a few minutes during which time they prop themselves up rubbing sore limbs and achy heads.

As soon as December hits, my hopes for the festive season kick into overdrive. It’s my chance to indulge some inner magpie with all things shiny and glittery, not to mention Christmas parties where we are finally allowed to dress up. This year back-to-back illnesses, from Strep to the ‘flu, put a significant crimp in my organization. The surprise birthday party I organized in the city went ahead without me; a friend took my daughter to The Nutcracker while I languished in bed; and the well-oiled Christmas card assembly line ground to a halt despite ordering cards weeks in advance.

Despite my disarray, we’ve been trying mightily to get festive. We adorned the Christmas tree with twinkly lights and piped Christmas tunes around the house. I burned up my laptop ordering gifts from Amazon.com and ragged on the post office since we’d barely received a Christmas card by mid-December. The array of visitors coming to see our house and chaos brought it’s own share of headaches. The uninitiated noticed our Elf on the Shelf and wanted to talk about where we had bought it instead of sticking to the ‘emissary of Santa’ plotline.

Once again, Mother Nature has spared us any December snowfall much to my husband’s chagrin. For years, we labored every winter morning to dig out snow-covered cars for the early morning commute. The second he went out and bought a snow blower, the winter weather stalled. In fact, last winter it was used exactly twice. This year, the ground, soggy from rain and the unseasonably balmy, above freezing temps, wasn’t firm enough to hold our windswept trees. One day before our Christmas party, with the house shaking and wind shrieking down the chimney, a tremendous rumbling sent us running to the window in time to see sixty mile an hour gale force winds level four of our skinny hundred-foot tall trees. Three keeled over, root balls in the air, and one split in half with a splintering that ripped the sky.

As it turns out, fallen trees are like honey to the men of the neighbourhood. Two neighbours popped over to see if we needed help slicing and dicing and the weekend air was soon alive with the sound of dueling chainsaws revving and whinnying, and burly men dressed like seasoned lumberjacks. The children stomped around the sodden lawn throwing rocks in the water-logged holes where the trees had stood, until their fingers were numb and they headed in to thaw out. With just a couple of days to spare we baked ‘End of the World’ cupcakes for the neighbours, (presuming the Mayan prophecy to be wrong), threw up sprigs of fresh holly and popped the last of the Christmas cards in the mail. The gifts are stashed but not wrapped, the tree is up, the party debris cleared away, and all but two of the houseguests have left. And the puppy has only chewed one shoe. Less than twenty-four hours to go, and it looks as if we’ll be ready for Christmas, another gastronomic overload and the post-holiday clear up. I can only hope Santa knows what’s really on my list: a pair of earplugs and a good night’s sleep.

Mad Parents' Christmas Party

2012-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

It’s Christmas, packed with festivity and fraught with pressure to pull it off perfectly like a traditional Norman Rockwell scene. We commit to cookie swaps, bake Yule logs, deck the halls with boughs of holly, and trick out Christmas trees with enough gold and glitter to make a drag queen swoon. Our children’s eyes are bright with the magic of Christmas, and their Christmas lists take days to complete.

I looked back at my daughter’s first conscious Christmas list, aged three. In it, she had limited her earthly requests to a red train and a book, and a heartfelt wish to touch the nose of one of Santa’s reindeer. The gravity with which we handled the latter seems laughable now when I consider the slew of faux Santas we encountered in a bid to find and pet a reindeer. In Washington Park, the reindeer failed to show up, twice, other places only had them at the weekend. Not until we’d done a little flying ourselves, home to England for the holidays, did we finally encounter Santa’s reindeer. And by then it was more a matter of principle.

This year’s letter to Santa was capably written by the six-year old requesting presents. We had been forewarned, but I wasn’t ready for list to contain so many expensive words along the lines of laptop, iPod, or computer. Plus this year’s outlier, “something that comes to life” since, she explained, despite tireless efforts to talk to her toys, still none had come to life. For this great disappointment, we can thank an entire body of G-rated movies which steadily peddle the notion that toys have a grand old party while the children are at school, and flop down limp the second they get home. Hardly sporting. She also warned her three-year old brother not to bother asking Santa for something real. This she learned after requesting a baby sister last year and, to the whole family’s surprise, getting a handwritten reply that commended her pick but revealed only God could grant miracles like babies and suggested she could pray.

Unfortunately, Santa’s suggestion prompted a great debate about whether in fact Santa knows God, if they are friends, if elves make toys and God makes babies, and whether both of them fly around in Christmas sleighs with flying reindeer pulling Santa’s and a flock of angels in front of God’s. I now eyeball the postmistress suspiciously when I go.

In a Christmas column last year I described the great pressure once the elf on the shelf had come to stay. Suddenly, you awake with night sweats unable to remember whether you have moved it. Or find sad eyes next to your bed asking why the elf didn’t find time to choose a new hiding spot. This year we wised up with a nightly alarm, but our peers kept upping the ante with Facebook and Pinterest photos of their elves tipping into tissue boxes and nibbling on cookies. The cracks began to appear when Kindergarten school friends professed to be able to touch their elves without them losing their magic; one even brought hers to school because he’d written to them asking to go. Parents above! The whole charade only works if the parents play by the rules on the box and in the movie.

Suddenly the house of cards was feeling precarious. Especially when the six year old, pulled up a chair to get a better look and marveled that the elf actually had a tag stitched to his bottom. So now it’s an artful scramble for quick explanations. The elf that came to school must have been a different kind. The tag must be his home address in case he gets lost. He couldn’t fly home because we went to bed so late. And the noose of lies pulls just a little bit tighter.

Of course, if you choose, one can add to the ever-deepening web of deceit with an emailed, personalized message from Santa to your child but even this is fraught with danger. The online form asks several questions that presuppose you know the child’s date of birth and toy wish list. This year a relative took the time to prepare and email one of these messages for our youngest. Somehow I had the foresight to view it first, and a good thing too. Santa was professing to know our son well, only to get his age wrong, and say he knew he was asking for something that he wasn’t. Imagining floods of tears over Santa’s mistakes I remade it with the right age and wish list. And once I’d made his, I had to make another for our daughter. And so the madness unfolds.

When Christmas Eve rolls around, we’ll repeat the enduring traditions of Christmas leaving out mince pies and sherry, and carrots for the reindeer. And once the children are sleeping, we’ll simply eat, drink and munch, the final fib done.

The Month of Magical Waiting

2012-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Six people have actively sought me out to vent their frustration over the American media’s fascination with all things Royal and Kate, and to impress on me how little they care that she is pregnant. I have tried to understand whether they specifically find it helpful to vent to a Brit or whether they actually view me as responsible. Although Kate would count as a member of the vilified 1%, it is as comrades of the 2%, (those afflicted with hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy), that the poor girl has my deepest sympathy. But it seems a bit rich to hold me responsible for Kate’s condition or American Royal-Watch media reports. For the former, we should blame Will. For the latter, it may be some motherland complex. Beyond that, if you don’t care, you can rest assured I won’t.

About a month ago I tired of the slow drip in our fridge. It would irk me when water pooled on the lids of tubs, cardboard became sodden mush and the baking soda box collapsed in a puddle of sludge. But once the door shut, it was an easy problem to forget. I called the good people at Sears who had miraculously lost all trace of our purchased extended warranty. Luckily, after rummaging in my box of Important Things Still to File, I retrieved the winning ticket – an original receipt featuring the warranty account number – and saved the day. In his excitement my Sears rep, Jason, bless his polyester-blend socks, seemed confused as to who had done the saving, telling me (after entering my number), that he had worked some magic and cleverly found us.

The point of after-sale service is surely peace of mind. How else could you convince budget-minded shoppers to part with a few hundred dollars more after already shelling out on a costly and unsexy appliance? You pony up the money, they promise a quick response and, ostensibly, “free” call outs and repair. I made my appointment and a few days later, Wayne appeared.

Unfortunately, while Wayne was skilled at diagnosing the problem, the solution would require a special part. Five days later the part arrived, and on Day 7 I waited for Wayne to return between the magical hours of one and five. Only he didn’t. When I placed a follow up call, a customer service helpline could only tell me he had been unable to complete his route that day. A phone call would have been nice. We rescheduled and, one week later, I dutifully padded about the house waiting for him. Half way through the day, I called and found he wouldn’t be coming as he was out sick. Three weeks into this service call, and the little problem could no longer wait. I beat my chest, and ranted to intractable service reps that couldn’t give a monkey’s whether I worked myself into a lather over wasted days. They read from scripts, coaxing me with offers of free-in house consultations for windows and flooring. I’d be delighted, I told them. Providing the consultant can repair the fridge too.

Another week and Todd arrived. Young, capable Todd to the rescue. He gave the fridge the once over and told me to empty the shelves with all the demeanor of a doctor telling you to disrobe. Emptying your fridge in front of a stranger leaves you strangely exposed. All those languishing leftovers and sticky patches visible in all their glory. Todd unpacked the replacement part, marveling at the presence of glitter in the box. Glitter is simply what happens when you leave a package in a house with three and six year olds. But when he pulled the part from its plastic wrap, a good deal more than glitter cascaded down: five screws, several wires, torn foam insulation and a grill, to be precise. The unit was destroyed.

I only half-joked that I couldn’t let him leave, only to find Todd really had been held semi-hostage by a furious man who, after a series of failed Sears call-outs, refused to allow him to go home when he was unable to complete a service job. Frankly, the man has all my sympathy. A month in, the new unit is here, and a new heroic tech, Derek, is completing the repair. Such relief here at Powell Heights. Now I can get back to more pressing matters. I just heard Kate has been discharged from King Edward VII hospital.

A Head Start on the Twelve Days of Christmas

2012-12-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

A puppy is not for Christmas but - since I lost the battle over new puppy versus something slightly older and, ideally, housebroken - it is precisely what we have. By all accounts, most new puppy owners ought to walk around looking bereft, grieving the shoes, leather purse, and items of importance that have inevitably been chewed, gouged or shredded that week. It is no coincidence that a book like Marley and Me, a tale of the nation’s worst behaved dog, resonates so broadly. We’ve been there, readers’ chortle under their breath. But, (not unlike that secret pact over the reality of childbirth), no one really prepares you for the experience of puppyhood. And I don’t mean light-hearted chuckles over chewed slippers. No one solemnly holds you by the shoulders and talks seriously about the emotional rollercoaster you’ll be on, or asks whether you, and your household, are tactically prepared.

It’s the same when people finally meet your puppy. Hearts instantly melted by the innocent eyes, the giant flopping ears and velvety furrowed brows raised in quizzical befuddlement. They fawn and fuss, delivering a running commentary of breathless enthusiasm, rhetoric pre-loaded with anticipation. “What a joy he must be! The kids must love him! You must be so happy to have a dog in the house again. He looks like such an angel!” Looks like an angel is about right given the new in the box soft suede booties he had for breakfast. Or the classic illustrated book of The Twelve Days of Christmas he masticated for lunch. No, your friends are not really inviting you to unburden yourself of a litany of puppy-related woes so you nod in agreement, your heart quietly breaking over the sodden blue suede ballet shoe, the crunched Russian nesting dolls, and endless Crayola crayons splintered into the newly cleaned rug.

Since my true love thought to present our puppy, Felix, in November, and, he was instrumental in disposing of the remnants of the Thanksgiving turkey, I consider him my first gift of Christmas, a sort of modern interpretation of a partridge in a pear tree. No sooner had the meat from the turkey hit the dog bowl, December showed up as though the lid had been taken off a barely contained Cinco de Maio party. Santa was ho-ho-ho-ing with extra gusto in the mall, and the Black Friday sales gave way to a frenzy of pre-Christmas sales. My mood darkened when I discovered the party clothes cleverly purchased in November could now be had for 30% less, and it was positively black when the offending stores were loathe to offer any sort of price adjustment.

With puppy/partridge in hand, the first week of December also started with the gift of two attempts on my life. Having cheated death twice by Tuesday, it left me with some trepidation for the remainder of the week. On Sunday, four retired and neatly stacked baby strollers crashed down from a storage shelf in our garage as I attempted to strap our children into the car. They missed life and limb but left a hefty dent in the front left side panel. On Monday, a car shot through his red light just as I turned left into his path on green, narrowly missing a collision by an ungodly matter of inches. If these two were my turtledoves, I’d like a refund.

Meanwhile, in my infinite wisdom I signed up our six year old for some community caroling at a senior care home. Newly enrolled in ‘Daisies’, the youngest rung of Girl Scouts, I figured it would be civic minded to do good and feel festive at the same time. Only I had not factored in the total lack of rehearsal. I emailed three local troop leaders, the regional contact and two local troop leaders, who did little to reassure me with their caroling plan. The whole family was to show up at the appointed home and run through a half dozen carols in front of the residents. Considering my children still refer to the baby in a manger as the Baby Cheezits and wouldn’t know the words to Good King Wenceslas from a Verdi opera, I decided this could be disaster in the making. In the UK, girl-scout leaders are named after Owls but in this case we may have been saved from certain humiliation by three metaphorical French hens.

By now, the Twelve Days book has been patched, and the puppy has had his first lesson, so things are on the up. I’m hoping the four strapping lads who delivered a damaged piece of furniture today won’t count as my four collie birds. But if they did, I’d better keep my fingers crossed for five gold rings.

Tears and Turkey

2012-11-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

There is a particular pain reserved for the at-home parent, the special pain of caring for grumpy, sick progeny while suffering incalculably with the same – or worse – affliction. Any reverie of slumping in a snuffling fog on the sofa is dashed by an alternating sequence of projectile vomiting and tearful cries for mommy. You strip little beds and nestle small trembling bodies on blankets draped strategically on the sofa. And when they throw up on those, you simply roll your eyes hoping in the vain the dryer is nearing the end of its speed cycle.

You know they are on the mend by the bell curve of increased belligerence. Suddenly the howls demanding your immediate attention are accompanied by thumping on the floors and a Spanish Inquisition over what took you so long. Reading “Llama Llama, Red Pajama” in the hope of teaching patience - while imparting some sense of the other fifty-eight tasks you’re simultaneously juggling - yields little sympathy. And, as your head almost explodes under the pressure of choked sinuses and a splitting headache, you tote bowls of soup and sticky cups of cold medicine up and down the stairs, all the while marveling at the unending joy of parenthood. In actuality, you’re staggering around cursing their impenetrable impatience, sociopathic inability to empathize, and utter ingratitude for all you have ever done, until you plop down on the sofa and remind yourself that these are the Standard Operating Procedures of any sick child.

This year, sickness was shoehorned in between Halloween and Thanksgiving, a three week time period that coincided strangely with a child-initiated plan to dispense with overnight diapers, a commendable effort that backfired. The children were so feverish with strep throat and so sedated with Tylenol that the notion of waking up to use the bathroom was as unreasonable to expect as from a jackpot winner on a three-day bender. The attempt only added to the pile of soiled bed linen proving that sleep deprivation from the wet and tearful nightwalkers can truly addle decision-making skills of an adult mind.

Virus-free just a few days before Thanksgiving, the school and social calendar was filled with unforgiving slash marks and erasable Morse code denoting Harvest feasts, birthday parties, and a game plan for Turkey Day. Right on cue, the cleaning crew was short-handed and cancelled, the babysitter went out of town on an extended Thanksgiving break, our guest headcount doubled overnight and urgent obligations pulled my husband (and every other possible helping soul) firmly out of reach. In a spectacular fait accompli, I was at a 4 year old’s birthday party the afternoon before Thanksgiving, grocery shopping that night, peeling parsnips and spuds at six in the morning, and, at 3pm, serving up a maple-glazed turkey to make a pilgrim proud.

Unfortunately, despite arriving with dishes to share, our guests departed empty-handed. Some demurred on the grounds they were having their own Thanksgiving Part II at home on Sunday, another declared it “comfort food” he wouldn’t ordinarily touch, even the in laws couldn’t face a week of recycled turkey sandwiches. This left me in a quandary, feeling morally obligated to consume the piles of sides and turkey with legs the size of my forearms. I pulled together my post-roast staple, a potpie. My husband whipped up his layered ode to the original feast in a lasagna dish. The children tolerated turkey sandwiches with cheddar and Branston pickle for two lunches, but I couldn’t fault their argument that thin-slice is better. I started cubing it to mix with our puppy’s food until he looked at me quizzically when I tried to serve his kibble plain. Sliced, cubed, baked, sautéed, more things have been done to the leftover turkey in under a week than I’ve dreamt up in a year. Tonight it was hidden in a homemade Indian curry, revamped with a quick pan-sear in olive oil and garlic. But the groans when I mentioned ‘turkey’ curry were there.

With less than four weeks to Christmas, I’m already mentally planning the meal. Something tells me turkey may be “86’d” off the menu this year.

Thanksgiving, or should that be Thanksgetting?

2012-11-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

You’ve got to admit it. What used to be cheeky marketing, a stealthy reminder of shopping options to appropriately mark an upcoming holiday, is now so finely tuned you could be fooled into believing the entire year is one seamless spectrum of seasonally-enhanced holiday cheer. The marketing pitch for Christmas - surely the apex of shopaholicism - seems to be moving ever earlier until, at least stateside, it has finally backed up into the lap of Thanksgiving. Before the last tint of Halloween orange is off the shelves you can hear Santa hohoho-ing his way around the mall, sometimes with the last vestige of his fake summer tan still on.

Thanksgiving is my favourite American holiday. Pretty near perfect with its warm and fuzzy focus on family, food and giving thanks. It’s virtually a model holiday with morality restored after a brush with The Ghost of Christmas Past or a run in with Tiny Tim. Of course, that notion requires a slightly revisionist approach to Thanksgiving’s less flavourful origins. When asked, (as I typically am), what our British equivalent is, I’m forced to explain that we don’t really have one since we weren’t busy fleeing religious persecution, setting up North American colonies, getting sick, failing to raise crops, befriending Indians, learning farming techniques, fighting, stealing land and… Oh wait, yes we were. The Mayflower, Pilgrims, and all that. We were coming over in droves, weren’t we? Well, regardless, the point here is that the holiday doesn’t have quite the pong of moral culpability of Columbus Day. This is a day of giving thanks for what we have, the food on the table. Our closest British equivalent would be a plain old autumnal harvest festival that somehow always winds up with wheat stalks in craft projects and copious cardboard boxes of winter vegetables decorating school assembly halls and bank foyers. It just doesn’t have the insatiable aroma of “feast” quite like an American Thanksgiving which, with its roast turkey, mountainous sides, and lavish spreads of puddings and pies, is almost identical to an English Christmas, except without presents. Ergo, quite deserving of a higher ranking on the righteous holiday hit list.

Now, with Christmas having its wicked way, virtuous Thanksgiving is getting tarnished. Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving day of madcap sales, product lust, unbridled shopping, and customer stampedes is the morning-after antidote to a puritanical Thursday of G-rated thanks. But I’m not criticizing. No, Brits have been up to the similar tricks for years with Boxing Day sales merely inflating the bloated spend-frenzy in the run up to Christmas. Still, the knock-on effect means Thanksgiving is getting short shrift. Outrageous holiday sales are starting earlier and earlier. Remember the years when shop doors would open on Black Friday at 6am? Then along came the 4am opening and, last year, midnight sales with enticements to come out in your pyjamas. (I, for one, have absolutely no desire to march around in the middle of the night with my fellow shoppers clad in their jimmy-jammies.) So this year’s announcement that Black Friday’s sales will start at 6pm on Thanksgiving – yes, the national holiday – truly seems perverse, not to mention irresponsible. People will have barely recovered from their tryptophan-induced comas or digested their third helping of pie.

For sales to start at 6pm on Black Friday means some helpless shop assistant must be in on T-Day stocking shelves or counting inventory and setting up for the murderous crowd baying for blood at the door. And I’m hardly exaggerating here given the rugby scrums and trampling deaths that have occurred in recent years. To be fair, Wal-Mart wised up last year and decided to open all its stores for 24 hours starting at six o’clock in the morning on Turkey Day itself. Chances are any employees unfortunate enough to be called in to work the T-Day shift will miss their turkey dinner altogether unless they can get it on the table before noon.

Who needs Black Friday for Christmas shopping when you can just use that convenient day-off archaically known as ‘Thanksgiving’? Why stop to reflect and give thanks for what you have? Instead, be modern! Stop giving and start getting. Spend the day in an amped up buying frenzy yelling, “Buy, buy, buy! More, more, more!” in a sort of mash up of Billy Idol and the Stock Exchange. And while we’re at it, why stop there? Perhaps Santa could arrive on a broomstick to jumpstart Christmas sales during Hallowe’en or surf in with a Christmas-in-July special offer around Independence Day?

Beyond the put upon shop staff (okay, compensated, but who’s going to turn down double pay to work on a holiday?), let’s give an honorable mention to the die-hards willing to sleep on the street -- not to bring attention to the plight of the homeless -- but to secure the year’s must-have toy for themselves or their own demanding Violet Beauregard. If Black Friday is going to parasitically attack its host holiday, there’ll be no getting home for mum’s home cooking. At least not when there’s an iPad, Xbox 360 or Power Wheels Barbie to be had.

Fury and the Fiscal Cliff

2012-11-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

They think it’s all over, and it is now. The elections, that is. As the nation’s votes were counted and electoral seats tallied, the bubble burst on a foaming sea of committed campaigners leaving behind the post-election silence of a post-apocalyptic calm. Suddenly the drone of mean-spirited political ads has quieted and a multi-pronged assault of television spots, automated telephone calls, and campaign mail dried up overnight. But in all good post-apocalyptic movies, shell-shocked calm typically gives way to chaos, anarchy, and zombies, in a Sodom and Gomorrah-stylized depiction of Hades on earth. And now, just as the jingle bells start ringing and glittery catalogues pouring through the letterbox to entice the consumer-spirit of the holiday season, the craziness is upon us.

The neighbourhood veteran I mentioned a few weeks back has taken down most of his lawn signs depicting Obama as an unChristian deadbeat with a joint in his lips and his hand out. On the remainder, he spray painted, “God help us!” and “Pray for America!” clearly in preparation for the Doomsday looting and zombies about to break loose. The scene on his front lawn actually looks so forlorn and dejected that after several months of loathing his hateful freedom of speech, I almost feel sorry for a man so heartbroken by his unwavering faith that America would do the right thing.

There’s a common misnomer among those on the right who truly view the election result as a loss and failure. Surely, in their disappointment, they can find a shred of pride in their constitutional two-party electoral system that allows for open and rigorous debate and fiercely fought presentations of opposing but viable ways of leading the nation, tackling debt, and setting the nation’s domestic and international course? Instead, the party faithful are wearing black and ringing their hands over the election results and the nation’s apparent endorsement of gay marriage, the right to choose, Planned Parenthood’s safe future, and, if Colorado leads the way, a legal path for recreational marijuana use.

Already, only one week after the Presidential election, the news is rocking the boat with whiffs of state secession, the looming fiscal cliff, and sex scandals from the CIA to Sesame Street. And if the clean up from Superstorm Sandy is ongoing, the weather front remains out of sync. No churning pink skies to prove we’re not in Kansas anymore, but a mix-up of torrential rain, fluffy snow, and sixty-degree sunshine all before 11am.

Since half the nation has its nose out of joint over Obama’s re-election, the grumbling is easily understood. Less usual is the decision by 20 states to submit petitions to secede. As a non-American, I can only imagine one might get fired up with patriotic state allegiance and feel as much ill will toward the federal government as the thirteen colonies did toward England. The final 2012 blue and red election map bears an uncanny resemblance to the polarized states during the Civil War. Still, the US seems to have come altogether too far to entertain state secession as a response to an election result. You can’t help but wonder if the 25,000 signatories on each secession petition have really thought through the loss of all Federal funding, grants, road maintenance, National Guard, and emergency response to major crises like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Then again, with only 25,000 signatures required for White House consideration, the other several million state residents might have other ideas if it came down to a referendum.

While some ponder secession, the rest of us can’t escape the deficit reduction abyss and aptly named Fiscal Cliff. Suddenly, like an overnight pop sensation, ‘Fiscal Cliff’ is in every house and on every tongue. The fact that the automatic tax increases and spending cuts of the Fiscal Cliff debt reduction plan were put in place to light a fire under the gridlocked Congress and Special Subcommittee only makes it all the more sad they still could not agree to a deal. The end is surely nigh!

Before we fall off the cliff like lemmings to the sea, we’ll endure a lot more coverage of the rather boring affair between General Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Why highly intelligent, over-achieving men risk it all on a fling is hard to fathom. The same can be said for highly intelligent, over-achieving women who correspondingly risk it all by harassing their love competition. Paula Broadwell, biographer, meet Lisa Nowak, NASA astronaut.

Competing for scandal airtime and Wal-Mart shelf space, Sesame Street’s ‘Elmo’ has been caught up in tawdry allegations against his human voice animator. Even now, with the retraction, it proves the extent of America’s uncharted post-election challenges. Take the tongue-in-cheek campaign by a group of Gay Rights’ Activists urging all to support gay marriage or, the men threaten, they will marry your girlfriends. If the expiration of Bush’s tax cuts, or the threat of gay men organizing to marry America’s sweethearts doesn’t strike fear in your soul, there’s always the chance of secession below the Mason-Dixon line -- and maybe a few zombies.

Election Pains

2012-11-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

By the time this is in press, the Presidential decision will be final and half the nation will be rejoicing, the other half moving to Canada, if all the tweets are to be believed. I join millions of Americans, and millions more around the world, on the edge of my seat on this otherwise ordinary Tuesday evening. Election night, November 6^th, 2012, is the culmination of all the political rhetoric, historic Presidential debates and campaign ads, not to mention the onslaught of social media wrangling, while the nation is on tender hooks awaiting the final vote count. As a friend rather succinctly put it, “Looking at the votes rolling in, either way, by tomorrow, half the country is going to be p***** off.”

The only fly in the ointment is my inability to vote. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be a hamstrung and trussed pig, I’ll wager it’s close to my sentiments tonight. This has been a battle fought as much over philosophical high ground as the economy. It means people have been fired up over religious convictions and moral positions on gay-marriage, and a woman’s right to choose. Then there have been the polarizing words of candidates willing to play semantics over words with definitions that were hitherto cut and dried. Nonetheless, emotions have been running high for weeks and in the final analysis people are clearly standing behind their man, whichever man it may be.

On Facebook, the new Timeline format has meant that seconds after ‘liking’ a post or a political campaign, your act is broadcast in the news feed and suddenly half your friends are mentally high-fiving or subtly recoiling in horror. We may all be suffering election fatigue here but there is no doubt Facebook has added as a source of irritation. When friends posted links to news articles it fuelled the election debate, and soon the landscape become a sea of liked political pages, and real time Tweets critiquing every nuance of the Presidential debates and Lord Mitten’s facial expressions. Next were the weeks where a flippant political comment tipping your hand to your political leaning could spawn a flaming thread of muck-flinging feedback. Several friends ended up deleting posts simply to nip things in the bud. Perhaps the sage advice to refrain from discussing religion or politics in polite company is equally prudent in the age of social media.

This year, Election Day fell one day after Bonfire/Guy Fawkes’ Night, the fireworks-peppered national celebration observed annually in the UK on the Fifth of November – (“Remember, remember the fifth of November; Gunpowder, treason and plot!”). Somehow the timing seemed rather a propos. After all, Guy Fawkes was one of thirteen treasonous gentlemen who, in 1605, took it upon themselves to attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in King James’ name. Clearly sentiments were running high and we’re still celebrating the thwarting of this attempted government overthrow 407 years later. It’s conceivable, if we were to cast Romney in the role of Guy, by the weekend we could be metaphorically burning him at the stake.

I confess, since my political persuasion is hardly a secret, I made a deal with my sister-in-law in the summer. The deal? Should Romney win, we’ll pack our bags and schlep back to the UK; if Obama is re-elected they four of them will come over on vacation. With the US polarized around the two candidates it is no wonder the idea of relocating has become so popular. Makes you wonder whether Canada might be drafting mass immigration laws or stepping up protection at its borders. Perhaps Mexico could work out a simple trading scheme: For every defecting North American it accepts, Arizona might like to revoke an active deportation proceeding.

Given a nation so divided in the polls and on Facebook, it seems Thomas Jefferson, 3^rd US President and author of the Declaration of Independence, might provide a path of reason from beyond the grave: “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause to withdraw from a friend”. Here, here. I’m just going to sit back and hope I haven’t been “de-friended” on Facebook and that I won’t be packing any bags in the near future.

Oh, Sandy.

2012-11-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

A month ago, our friends moved to Maine and a week later they were hit with an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale. Now we’re gearing up for aptly dubbed “Frankenstorm”, a cosmic blend of Hurricane Sandy and a low pressure cold on an unavoidable collision course. Like Hurricane Irene last year, New York City has taken unprecedented steps with a total shutdown of all subway and mass transit and closure of its bridges and tunnels.

Up and down the eastern seaboard, flights are cancelled, schools are closed, and the states from Virginia to Massachusetts have assumed the metaphorical crash position. One Long Island friend posted a video of her flooded road and standing water in her driveway half way up her Wellies at only eight o’clock in the morning. A friend on the New Jersey shore decided to evacuate after seeing the ocean crashing over the sand dunes. He thinks he’ll lose the house.

It’s sod’s law this would be the week I’m arranging a surprise party for twenty in the city. Half the guests are coming in from out of town. Hotels are booked and there are final details to confirm with a Manhattan restaurant that’s now closed. And while the birthday boy is currently safe and warm in Miami his mid-week plane ticket is supposed to bring him into the eye of the storm.

In between television campaign ads, the only truly happy faces are those of the television weathermen. As they graphically report the size of Frankenstorm, they’re almost radioactive with excitement.

Meanwhile, political analysts are already clogging discussion of the presidential debates with storm analogies, and it certainly seems Hurricane Sandy is going to impact the elections with power outages and major flooding more widespread than in the aftermath of Irene. And besides physically affecting transportation, access, or power for voting sites, the way in which both Presidential incumbent and challenger respond to the crisis is sure to be analyzed with a fine toothcomb.

Fortunately, Frankenstorm should provide sufficient distraction to get some Republicans off the daily topic of what is and isn’t rape. After providing some helpful distinctions such as ‘legitimate rape’ (Todd Akin, 2012), ‘forcible rape’ (Paul Ryan, 2011), ‘easy rape’ (Roger Rivard, 2011), ‘honest rape’ (Ron Paul, 2012), ‘emergency rape’ (Linda McMahon, 2012), ‘enjoyable rape’ (Clayton Williams, 1990), and – wait for it – ‘Gift-from-God’ rape (Richard Mourdock, 2012), they can now move on to sharing their illuminating thoughts on Frankenstorm.

I don’t know who names hurricanes and tropical storms but while ‘Irene’ had a stern, no-nonsense air about her, ‘Sandy’ clearly started off in the tropics with a Pernod and Coke. And, like her namesake from Grease, she transformed overnight from squeaky clean in a poodle skirt to asking for trouble in black lycra and heels. By Monday this week, it was clear Sandy was intent on tearing things up. Fortunately, Pennsylvania Christian Minister, John P. McTernan was willing to launch himself cross the political divide, immediately blaming gay people and both candidates -- “pro-homosexual” Mitt Romney and Barack Obama -- for Hurricane Sandy. McTernan asserts, “both candidates are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda,” which, he says, explains why “God is systematically destroying America.” I’m glad he cleared that up.

At home, I happened to play my daughter a lovely little folk song about the demise of the beautiful unicorn, a topic dear to her heart. Apparently, unicorns didn’t use their listening ears when God told Noah to bring the animals in two by two. They were too busy prancing about, being frisky and fashion conscious. The moral of the story is that they were washed away in the floods. My daughter listened carefully to the song and asked for it again. And again. She had a good point: “Why didn’t Noah yell a little louder or count to 3 when they didn’t come in?”

If there isn’t an omniscient master plan to flood the liberal plains of the East Coast, we should agree it’s at least a clear attempt to disrupt the elections. I’m putting my money on an Organized Weathermen Conspiracy Theory. Hang on to your hats, East Coast. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Madness: Our House

2012-10-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

For the past couple of weeks I’ve somehow found time to simultaneously coordinate two birthday parties: one for 25 five year olds and one for 25 forty-somethings. The similarities have been extraordinary. They are both to be off-site events. The former, local, heavy on the crafty activities and light on the post-party clean up. The latter will be held in NYC, the perfect rendez-vous point for a variety of state and globe-trotting guests, and a slew of dietary restrictions.

Commitment is a whole other kettle of fish. Getting five year olds to commit to anything is a tall order when their fickle wishes change like the breeze. Even when the email invitations are arriving in ostensibly responsible parental inboxes, five year olds prove themselves a busy crowd equivocating over social calendars and daily amendments to the classroom pecking order. This simply must be true because what else could explain the great difficulty with which these pint-sized guests actually pull the trigger on an 6^th birthday RSVP?

On the other hand, corresponding with grown adults, half known to me, half from a provided guest list, has its own headaches. In this world of message over-saturation we may have lost our way, grasping under our murky shroud of online anonymity. So what, (I typically think), if I don’t participate in the group recipe exchange? No one is anxiously awaiting my reply. But online invitations are another beast. Sites like evite and pingg let you see when someone has viewed the invitation – how frequently even -- which makes it all the more maddening when they fail to reply. Ask them to send something to you, a note or a photo, and you’ll really hear the dawn crickets.

After resorting to four rounds of invitation reminders, I managed to get the full presentation of Kindergarteners to respond with five days still left on the clock. On the adult side, teeth-pulling remains a chore and manages to take the element of surprise out of a fortieth party when you have to enlist the birthday boy himself to beat the bushes.

Beyond the world of RSVPS, we’re in autumn in full swing. This means our two schools are now vying with one another daily to demonstrate greater goodwill to all men. “Hungry bowls” fundraisers compete with fall feasts, and every day brings a new handout asking for a donation to the food pantry/animal shelter/school fund.

I wasn’t prepared for the galling amount of time it would take to keep abreast of the school projects, not to mention the Kindergarten homework assignments that keep me up at night grouping paper sheep by size, neckties, and colour. Since some of these sheep can clearly fit into more than one category, I actually asked the Kindergarten teacher for help. When she suggested the exercise lay more in the doing and less in worrying about their final compartmentalized destinations, my over-stimulated organizing gene was more than a little horrified.

The requests keep rolling in for parent volunteers to assist in the library, the school book fair, or the fall fashion show. Gently phrased emails patiently suggest parents chaperone school trips, help dress their children for the Halloween parade, or tie shoe laces before skating at 8:30am twice a week. When I tallied up the amount of time I was spending at the school or engaged in extra-curricular activities for the school, it occurred to me I ought to have the entire car logo-ed and get some sort of discount. Perhaps we should find ourselves a nice minivan and call it a day.

Meanwhile, the morning commute into the capital -- a pilgrimage of sorts for state workers, bridge workers, and school-bound parental units -- remains a soul-destroying task, a sort of rare torture in which car-driving zombies pour onto the highways and snarl up all the exits. And every day, after forty-five minutes of pouty, grumpy children blaming me for the extra-early alarm, I deserve a merit badge for wrangling small children into car-seats for a forty-minute commute that should take twenty. If I were of the religious persuasion, I could be convinced I’m being tested daily.

In the middle of the madness, we do the only thing we can to up the stakes: get a puppy. Just as we hit our forties, the Littles are out of diapers, and the last of our Noah’s Ark pet menagerie has bitten the dust, we’re back in puppy training mode, predicting bowel movements and walking a tethered dog like the Monks of New Skete.

The British Lingo is Coming!

2012-10-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

I’m sure there used to be a bit more novelty in being British in upstate New York. I regularly experienced shop assistants and random strangers gushing over a request for driving directions or insisting that I repeat rudimentary sentences along the lines of “Do you sell Weetabix?” There was almost no end to the excitement a British accent could cause. Especially if it innocently asked where to find the rubbers (Brit-speak for erasers) – when purchasing pencils and books in the university bookstore.

These days, upstate, we Brits are a dime a dozen. At my daughter’s gymnastics class, I’m not the only British parent smiling at my child’s wobbly somersaults and handsprings, but one of three. We look like a delegation of international talent scouts huddled together and beaming at our Olympic-clad offspring. Whatever caché my daughter had imagined by toting her London 2012 Olympics water bottle to gym class was instantly trumped when her classmate showed up in a Team GB leotard. And considering there are only fifteen children in the class, the British contingent is well represented at a ratio of 5:1.

At the local indoor soccer club, three of the trainers hail from across the pond. The not so Olde English Pub in downtown Albany, NY, boasts authentic English imports both on tap and serving them behind the bar. And the nanotechnology corporations behind Albany’s Tech Valley has attracted enough British engineers, and their families, that I’ve met more Brits in the two years since my children started school than in the full five years before that. I’ve sat on bleachers with Brits at the YMCA, discovered an English cashier at our local Hannaford supermarket, and a befriended a multitude of transplanted talent from singers to authors, even a cabinet-maker. And this doesn’t include my own friends who’ve recently made a leap onto US soil.

But it doesn’t stop there. The current influx of British television shows means America is being fed a steady diet of British offerings like Downtown Abbey and Call the Midwife. It’s not only PBS bringing us dramatic Masterpiece theatre. BBC America airs Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, Lion’s Den, The Graham Norton Show, and practically the entire range of current UK television series. No wonder Jamie Oliver, Simon Cowell and Nigella Lawson are household names. Meanwhile US children’s channels are showing British imports ‘Peppa Pig’, ‘Charlie and Lola’, and ‘Chloe’s Closet’ so regularly that my daughter’s classmates barely bat an eyelid when she asks to “go to the loo”.

This current familiarity with all things British is a sort of multi-pronged cultural media immersion. Suddenly British royals are as accessible to US youth as any other reality star and celebrity. Teens might not be quoting Monty Python just yet but they’re happy to impersonate David Beckham or try out the extraordinary Eliza Doolittle syntax of Adele. Ever since our postman, a lovely man, met me in person he’s taken to parting ways with a strangely fifties-sounding “Cheerio” that sounds equal parts Dickensian street urchin and Eton-college upper crust. But just as I’ve stopped marveling at the Americanization of British-English (- take “concretize” or my own father embracing, “We’re all set” -) it’s the sudden surge of British lingo stateside that has me gobsmacked. From ‘brilliant’ to ‘cheeky’, American hipsters are stealing the choicest words that made us Brits so irresistibly cute. How are we supposed to compete when, already hindered by our ever-growing numbers, we can’t even rally with some quirky expression to win the hearts and minds of our American friends? Given the popularity of ‘queue’ and ‘brilliant’, Donald Trump might as well change his catch phrase to “You’re Sacked!”

Luckily, there’s always room for confusion. You really can’t merge “Alright, mate” and “Pip pip, cheerio” into one sentence without sounding truly peculiar and linguistically schizophrenic. And signing off with ‘Cheers’ when you’re 100% American has an air of uber-pretension. But this week, history innocently repeated itself when my American-born child raised a hand in her Kindergarten writing class and asked for a rubber. Luckily, her well-informed teacher didn’t skip a beat.

Air Travel: Falling Apart at the Seams

2012-10-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

It’s one thing when a flight attendant stares you square in the eye and asks if you’re capable of handling the responsibilities required of passengers in the exit row. It’s another thing when she follows it up with a fierce anecdote about the people who were supposed to assist her in an emergency landing, the same ones who hadn’t read the emergency landing card and didn’t know how to rip off the door or free the passengers surging from the back of the plane.

“Are you talking about a practice landing?” inquired the lady to my right.

“No. A real emergency. And let me tell you something. My language wasn’t pretty. When your passengers don’t know how to open the emergency doors, you don’t care who hears your language. So, have you read the card because I need to know you can assist.”

“That’s reassuring.”

For a Chicago to Albany, NY route, we were in an uncomfortably small regional aircraft only three seats wide, barely accommodating the height of the average passenger and providing less leg room than the rear seats in a Mini Cooper. By comparison, the three of us in the Exit Row had it made. We affirmed our willingness to assist and the flight attendant began to demonstrate the desired technique. First, she ripped off a small rectangular panel held on with Velcro, (the classic exit tool of male strippers everywhere), to reveal a pull lever. As she explained, we were to pull the lever forward before yanking the door inwards and tossing it back behind the wing of the plane so escaping passengers could jump forwards. High tech, I said. Only my interior monologue came out audibly and garnered a withering glance at the incompetence of exit row passengers.

As we pondered the escape exercise, I decided, with my neighbours, it was mostly not reassuring on the basis that the flight attendant had been in a real emergency situation. None of us had asked the elephant in the room question as to whether the plane had been going down, but clearly she had survived, albeit with some residual aggression from untreated PTSD. The presence of peeling paint, rust puddles and a chipped interior fusillage above the seam of the exit doors did little to alleviate our concern as it either (a.) corroborated a tale of previous use, or (b.) indicated exceptional aging of the aircraft.

There wasn’t time to worry. Taxiing back from the jetway went reasonably smoothly until the plane began to pick up speed for takeoff. A heavy clunking under the belly of the plane grew in force, wildly vibrating the floor under our seats, until the wheels slammed shut with a bang as we took off. Some way into the flight, my neighbour brushed impatiently at a dot on the knee of her jeans. A few minutes later, she did it again, looking up at the roof and back at her trousers as drops of water - beading at the top of the door - dripped down on her leg. The same was happening above the other emergency exit door, not a reassuring sight in a pressurized cabin, although it did explain the rusty marks and peeling plastic.

While United Airlines seems comfortable flying its guests around in antiquated small aircraft, American Airlines has been blaming passengers’ spilled sodas and sugary coffees for eroding the seat clamps and tracks on its Boeing 757s. Such soda sloppiness has caused several seats to become unbolted from the floor mid-flight. Something to remember the next time flight attendants are roaming the aisles reprimanding passengers for unbuckled lap belts. If lap belts seem a woefully inadequate line of crash safety during emergency banking or an in-flight freefall, you can now focus on your concern on whether your seats is actually bolted down. As I imagined the leaking exit door suddenly sucked off it’s hinges, it seemed inevitable our exit row should be the first to suffer as a classic example in the airlines’ soda defense and finger some cowardly passengers’ vicious cola habits.

After only two hours thinking this over in barely sprung, sagging seats, the crew readied for landing. The clunking started and our flight attendant avoided eye contact, her gaze leveled just higher than the heads of the passengers, until the aircraft wheels folded down with a startling bang. We hit the ground, swerving, and taxied to the gate with an accompanying thwack, thwack, thwack, a sound like a plastic mat smacking a wall, suggesting we’d probably burst a tire.

By all accounts, American Airlines was on course to be the next Delta by filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy and fighting with the Pilots’ Union. But if this was a sample of United’s fleet, they may be literally falling apart at the seams.

The Hunt for Calm October

2012-10-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

No matter how organized things are for the start of the school year it’s always this time of year that goes pear-shaped. In part, I blame the procreative habits of my peers since more than half the Kindergarten set we know were born between October and December. (The other half fall between January and March. After that, the summer is strangely bereft of birthday babies). This means weekends now through the holidays will be stuffed with a round robin of parties at museums and paint-your-own pottery places. Just as the celebration circuit begins to gather steam, I’m already running out of mine.

To complicate things, October appears to be the winning month for a NYS Department of Transportation project team hell-bent on bridge and road construction. Every morning a mob of harried parents do battle with school buses and state workers pouring into the capital until the twisted mass grinds to a halt in a failed attempt to cross the Hudson River. There are three routes to my daughter’s school and all require us to cross this body of water. The first bridge has been under construction for so long my three year old actually believes it is some sort of construction theme park. The second bridge is holding up but all routes leading to the interstate that crosses it are under construction. Weeks of sluggish merging have taken their toll and social niceties have gone out the window. Take the lovely lady in a shiny black Cadillac who flipped me off this morning for having the nerve to switch lanes.

The rash of election signs littering lawns isn’t doing much for world peace either. On our school route, we pass the home of an angry Vietnam vet whose lawn is staked with ghoulish, hateful Vote ‘Em out signs. There’s the colour poster of Obama in a wife-beater shirt, smoking weed and saying, “Hey baby” in a speech bubble. And there’s the truly twisted caricature of Obama as a drooling drug-addled zombie. There are the expletives and the rants against liberals, Hilary in particular, and the block letters proclaiming Jesus is hissaviour, so burn in hell, heathens. To be fair, he keeps his free speech under wraps when it rains by carefully covering his messages with black bin bags. And when the sun is out I go to great lengths to distract my five year old in a bid to avoid the awkwardness of the day when she sound-spells an expletive directed at the President.

If September acts as the gym trainer getting you back in shape, October seizes the green flag and sets in motion a marathon of non-stop entertaining. For us, it starts with our daughter’s birthday that only precedes Hallowe’en by a week, and then leaves just enough time to plan menus for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last year we hosted a fairy princess unicorn party complete with fifteen five year olds and an unpolished Cinderella-entertainer whose insipid lisp and grade-school magic tricks were nearly as cloying as the hot pink iced cupcakes. So this year I broke with tradition and booked an offsite party. I must be learning.

In years past, the run up to All Hallows’ Eve has been reasonably painless: decorating was limited to a couple of hay bales, some pumpkins and some strategically placed spiders. This year, our three year old’s fascination with all things scary has upped the ante with requests for web door ornaments, Halloween window clings, pumpkin carving and the daily debate over costumes. Last year’s homemade costumes were a hit as much for the smug factor (“Take that all you crafty, home canning types!”) as for their effect. This year, I’m praying the Littles will just upcycle something from the dress up box.

For Brits the world over, the passing of All Hallows’ Eve brings no respite from arts and crafts obligations. November 5th, or Guy Fawkes Night, is one of those peculiar annual British events that is fun precisely because of its peculiar traditions. A mere five days after Hallowe’en, we’ll be stomping about in the garden again, stuffing old clothes with leaves and newspaper to make a life-size effigy of Guy Fawkes, the poor sod caught under the Houses of Parliament with a few barrels of gunpowder. Sure, others were in on the treasonous plot to blow up the King in 1605 -- 13 to be exact -- but for the past 407 years British children have been making effigies of the man right before tossing him on a burning pyre and celebrating with a skyful of fireworks. Sort of a perverse combination of Murder, She Wrote! and July 4^thcelebrations.

Just three weeks into the school term and we already have one school's Holiday gift-wrap and cookie catalogue ready to guilt family and friends into unwanted purchases. The other school is pressing for parent volunteers to bake and staff booths at the upcoming fall festival and join the ranks of the PTA. And let’s not forget the Grandparents’ Halloween Parade to be held at the former, and the Grandparents’ Fall Feast at the latter. A small “yes” here and there and suddenly the volunteering and attending and making and baking adds up until dinner is a daily crockpot and the laundry is running at midnight. So saddle up, with October here the year's end is in sight.

Alphabet Soup

2012-09-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

There’s plenty, linguistically-speaking, I’ve put aside in the fifteen years I’ve lived stateside. There was my refusal to ask for “the check” at the end of dinner. It just didn’t make sense to apparently ask for payment when obviously requesting the bill. Of course, nowadays, I just want quickly fed children, the check, and a swift exit. No time for pedantry. Despite that concession, I manage to maintain a firm position against the development of nonsensical verbiage, maddening things like “deplane” which frankly could lead into awfully murky waters along the lines of de-sofa, de-car or de-sit when a simple ‘leave’ or ‘exit’ might do. I’ve also been doing my best to single-handedly restore chaise longue to its rightful position within the US English language instead of it’s uninspired relegation to chaise lounge, which makes it sound like a bonded leather bench in a Laz-E-Boy catalogue.

The language concessions have been coming thick and fast since the Small Children spread their wings in pre-school and began reading alphabet letters and books in earnest. First, I lost the battle over Z. It’s a fair assessment to say the ABC song sounds infinitely better in US English where the concluding “…X, Y, Zee” actually rhymes with “…next time won’t you sing with me.” In the UK, I always wondered why our version, also ending in Z but instead pronounced Zed, didn’t end with some witticism about it being time for bed. So my flashcard indoctrination efforts on foreign soil were going quite well until our offspring immersed themselves in American school culture and came home singing about zee-bras and e-ants in their pe-ants. The writing was on the wall.

Over the last few days, I’ve been delighted by the keen interest with which my daughter is embracing the current Kindergarten study of Vincent Van Gogh. The productivity output has been extraordinary. Every day, we receive descriptions of his starry night, sunflowers, and sad life, along with the lifecycle of sunflower seeds, documented scientifically, reinterpreted in colored bead bracelets, painted in art class, and glued to paper in free-play. Today it was a watercolor bust of Vincent’s head, complete with ear, and an invitation to sit down to talk.

“Mummy?”

“Yes.”

“My teacher says you say Van Gogh’s name like Van Goff because you’re from England.”

“Well, that’s probably true. But I think there are a lot of countries where people pronounce his name that way.”

“I think you’d better check. Just in case you’ve been saying it wrong.”

Frankly, I appreciated her concern; I often feel that way. Just this week a friend posted a heinous work exchange on his Facebook page in which a colleague had announced, “First we analyze and then we solutionize.” You can’t make this stuff up, although, clearly there are some who will. Perhaps there will be a point when professional decorum can be put aside so you can simply call someone out for crimes against grammar.

With school back in session, I’ve only been able to grab a few short calls with friends around the globe, and met a common refrain: Tales of embattled parents working diligently through three hours of nightly homework from mathematics to second languages. And a pod of offspring wondering aloud whether to take their labouring parents at face value. I take their pain seriously since I’m already dragging my heels at the thought of algebraic equations, a concern that ranks only marginally higher than the idea of one or both children eventually making a team.

In our house, the reading homework has been going reasonably well until I correct ‘bu’on’ to button or ‘mi’in’ to mitten. When the eldest phonetically spells out ‘better’ as ‘bedder’ I can’t help myself from pointing out if she pronounces her letter T’s she won’t hear them as D’s, until I remember I’m a lone outpost of topsy-turvy anomalies in her alphabet soup.

Or am I? A quick fix of the terribly British-sounding Peppa Pig audio books in the car and she arrives at school asking for help with her coat “buttons”. I positively preen. Then she spies a friend, yells, “Waid-up! I godda run to get to you!” – and she’s off.

Royal Assets

2012-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

As if the post-Olympics naked photos of Prince Harry partying in Vegas weren’t fodder enough, the Duchess of Cambridge’s assets are proving to be the latest spoils of war in the tabloid feeding frenzy. To their credit, the Duke and Duchess have come out with guns blazing launching legal action for breach of privacy against the French publisher – and winning an injunction – while pursuing criminal charges against the paparazzo who shot the photos. Good thing she’s in hiding; I would be too.

The photos, and the royals’ swift legal response, have created quite the stink online and in print. Comparatively, attitudes to pictures of Harry in the nude ranged from a general acceptance of his behaviour as foolish alcohol-fueled antics of a single lad out on the lash to predictable anti-royalist sneers over excessive wealth, pedigree and privilege. But the images of Kate privately sunning herself on a private balcony, during a private holiday, at their cousins’ private residence in France (did I mention private?) have somehow ignited a feverish debate over free speech and the right to know.

It’s this argument that is rather peculiar. How captured images of private moments, legal ones that the subject would simply not wish to share, can be part of the trough of things included in the public’s ‘right to know’. In a world where enough realty-celebrities are chumming the waters with nudity, sex tapes, or maudlin interior decorating efforts, the paparazzi are still in search of the photo that will represent the Motherlode. Maybe a Head of State on the porcelain throne. In this case, a selection of 200 images were printed in ‘Closer’ magazine in France and the Daily Star in Ireland, Britain’s tabloid rag, ‘The Sun’, and Italy’s ‘Chi’ magazine where photos ran under the artfully crafted headline, ‘The Queen is naked”. One editor cobbled together some sycophantic piffle about the [future] Queen appearing au naturel and “without the constraints of royal etiquette.” Perhaps she had spent too much time reading ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’ Still, we should all breathe a sigh of relief it wasn’t actually the Queen.

Sidestepping basic rules of respect and common decency, the more obvious question is consent, or lack thereof. Right, you say, Prince Harry didn’t consent but he didn’t sue. True, but then he was cavorting with a rent-a-crowd party of post-Olympic revelers, every one of them armed with Smartphones in an era of Facebook. And if we bring up the latest naked-breast photos inadvertently tweeted by Allison Pil of ‘The Newsroom’, or Hayley Williams of the band ‘Paramore’ (get it together, girls) we can’t blame any paparazzi but only human error and tech-challenged hands.

Of course, celebrities don’t typically consent to being snapped without their make up during their early morning coffee run but they are, by definition, out in public. And that’s why we can be brought the joys of Brittney Spears entering a gas station public toilet barefoot and a barely-alert Lindsay Lohan exiting a vehicle without any knickers on.

There have been a slew of remarkable justifications for publishing the latest Royal-Gate photos. Mike O’Keene, the editor of the Dublin-based Irish newspaper, The Daily Star, considered them fair game since Kate is “…not our future queen and the only furore seems to be in UK”. Fair game, indeed. O’Keene has since been suspended from work. Online, some reaction has been more prudish, decrying the Duchess’s decision to disrobe at all. One wonders whether she is perhaps expected to wear floor-length cotton nightgowns and change in the dark?

My personal favourite is the calm explanation that Europeans are all the same in routinely sunbathing topless, as though we rip our clothes off at the drop of a hat. Perhaps the stereotype is fair. I was once verbally cautioned by California beach patrol for innocently sunbathing topless while backpacking across the US. I had no idea of my transgression until I was awakened with instructions to quickly cover up. “We’ve had some complaints. It’s a family beach.” I was baffled at the time but it could have been worse. They might have printed it in the local news.

Here we go round the roundabout: Keep New York Moving

2012-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

I know it’s not the first time I’ve carried on about roundabouts. My love of them. My hopes and fears when a new one is under development, at least in New York. The latest, a glorious specimen on Route 4 in the sunny Capital Region has been on my radar for the better part of a year as it underwent its marvelous multi-layered path to completion. It became the highlight of my pre-schoolers’ day to watch the excavators, skid steers, and steam rollers at work, and completion before summer was pure icing on the cake. We would spend the summer zipping around it in all its circular glory.

The trouble is, roundabouts only work when the drivers using them follow the same set of rules. Living close to the NY-MA border proved an illuminating point. In Massachusetts, roundabouts are as much a part of the routine driving experience as in Europe and Asia. I could power through Pittsfield, Mass., painlessly navigating the shiny, fast, European-style traffic-light controlled roundabout. So ingrained is the concept, drivers are taught roundabout manoeuvring in Driver’s Ed and happily follow the rather simple rules of engagement: keep moving and go with the flow. When roundabouts started popping up all over Columbia County, the public’s clear confusion over when to stop and when to give way sent me hurrying to the Department of Transportation website out of concern that perhaps the NY rules were somehow different.

Not so. But the website provided some useful clarification. It turns out New York State dispensed with traffic circles in the 1950s after they bombed abysmally as an apparently ineffective method of traffic alleviation and, in a fascinating aside, due to a “lack of acceptance”. Probably viewed in the fifties as some sort of Commie-loving Euro-socialist import in a way that some, (I won’t say whom), view Commie-loving Euro-socialist healthcare reform in 2012. Frankly I’m not surprised, at least by their ineffectiveness. The critical, and ultimately baffling component of a traffic circle - compared to a roundabout - is the expectation that cars circumnavigating the circle should stop and give way to joining traffic. Wait, what? Did I read that right? Although this makes absolutely no sense other than to explain the statistically high rate of traffic circle accidents in the past, it does explain why I sometimes find myself staring out at a lone vehicle patiently paused on the curve of a roundabout and waving aboard a stream of inbound traffic.

The fact that any stationary driver is utterly oblivious to the snarl up occurring behind them, the inevitable risk to life and limb, crystalline certainty of locking up the entire circle, and sheer lunacy of not driving forward begs an obvious question: Shouldn’t the DOT plan an ongoing, peppy public service announcement as some sort of value-added continuing education Driver’s Ed credit? After all, if you passed your driving test before about 2005, chances are roundabouts weren’t covered and nothing has come in the mail as a refresher. Perhaps a series of billboards with the catchy little slogan like: “Keep New York Moving”. Could be as catchy as I "heart" NY.

It just so happens there are some thoughtful places like the City of Montpelier, VT and the good folk at Maryland Highway Authority with sufficient foresight to disseminate brochures with visual layouts for new roundabouts and the correct positioning for cars, cyclists, motorbikes and large transport vehicles. A fantastically authoritative report produced for the US Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration includes six categories of roundabout for the purpose of distinction and dedicates an entire subsection to consideration of elderly drivers suddenly facing a roundabout. One fascinating excerpt on crash data finds “older drivers are more likely to be involved in crashes where… they were surprised by the curved alignment.” They are also less likely than the average Joe to decelerate on the approach. While the image of maniacal Old Age Pensioners gunning it towards swirling new traffic arrangements is entertaining, I can’t help but think any driver that “may be surprised by the curved alignment” of a roundabout either should not be on the road or is precisely the demographic in need of an illustrative handout. I’m still hoping the NYS DOT will take note.

Back to school: a lesson in pain management

2012-09-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

Judging by the hordes swarming about big box stores and the mall, I have been swimming in the maelstrom that is “back-to-school”. If I foolishly thought I’d experienced this with our first pre-schooler then dear friends with older children were simply too kind to burst my bubble. We enter this school year with a double dose of chaos: our eldest entering Kindergarten at a school with a uniform - something that had set my heart aflutter - while our youngest is proudly entering the more casually attired Pre-K.

I’d been thrilled about school uniform for months, imagining the ways in which this would simplify the morning drill. Unfortunately, I didn’t skip out of pre-school in June with a readiness plan for September. Why not is reasonably hard to explain. Certainly, the nearly three month summer hiatus – let’s call that a quarter of a year - should have been ample time. Perhaps it’s the same sort of gulf that divides those who shop all year for Christmas from those, like myself, who wait until December actually rolls around. I could say it was the sensible choice: these small creatures grow in unpredictable rapid bursts and shopping in June for September could be disastrous, not to mention seasonally out of sync. But, no, the American summer vacation represents such a yawning cavernous length of time that it requires the careful handling skills of a tarantula handler and singlehandedly obliterates thoughts beyond those of taming the present. Without school routines, summer is necessarily ordered around a succession of daytrips and weekend breaks, playdates and houseguests, barbecues, suitcases – packed and unpacked - and the ubiquitous family vacation. Fun, yes. But a “break”? Hardly. At this point, I’m hard pressed to imagine a day where the washing machine isn’t running at full whack, the floors don’t need mopping from sodden children running inside from the paddling pool, and my daily chauffeuring skills are no longer required.

In theory, the re-imposition of a school routine spells order, serenity and delicious rediscovery of le weekend. But, before the scent of autumn can fill in the air, I’m pawing my way through wardrobes and hyper-ventilating at last minute revelations: the children have grown two inches over the summer and their feet, freed from actual footwear for so many weeks, no longer squash into shoes that fitted six months ago.

The school uniform at least promised to be straightforward. And it was -- right up until the local Stride Rite shoe store shuttered its doors and I found myself walking the soul-destroying length of Crossgates Mall at 7pm carrying an alternately wired, then overtired, five year old. The task was to locate all-white sneakers with Velcro closures. You might as well have asked me to locate Atlantis.

The world of sneakers does not call for all white uppers with Velcro closures. At least, not if you are a five year old girl. If you are, then your footwear options come with a healthy dose of sparkle, silver glitter, unicorns, Doras, and embellishments in every shade of pink. If you’re feeling extra special, you might also have light up uppers and soles, except when they are strictly forbidden on the uniform code. In fact, unless you’re an infant or a (very neat and clean) adult male you won’t be getting anything with Velcro in white.

‘Back to school’, at least in lower school educational speak, really signifies parental engagement. In the thick of the uniform shopping, wardrobe repopulation, and slew of pediatric back to school medical check ups, I found myself rustling up potluck dishes for a back to school picnic and a homecoming weekend. Both schools have volunteer lists, and coffee mornings, and parent nights and, in a fit of organization, I managed to merge both academic calendars like a perfectly blended family. In the middle of this, my husband told me about an upcoming business trip and suggested I must be looking forward to the start of school and getting a break. Since we’re already in September, I ran through the litany of birthdays, international houseguests, Hallowe’en festivities, and “voluntary” school obligations from outdoor clean up days to fall festivals, all before ramping up to Thanksgiving and, let’s face it, Christmas. On cue, he tells me only crazy people look at time this way, and I wax lyrical about the need to plan ahead.

For us, school starts Thursday. The uniform is pressed, wardrobes are organized, book-bags are packed, and school photos are next week. Perhaps I should take a leaf out summer and just let the chips – and their hair - fall where they may.

Fifty Shades of Big Bucks

2012-08-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

I tried to avoid it but after seeing the books on sale in a UK supermarket, I bought the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. “They’re not for me,” I tried telling the cashier. He smirked and didn’t look convinced. But they weren’t. They were for my former babysitter, who just happens to be ninety-seven years old.

Aware of her penchant for romance novels, especially those with a little spice, I’ve been sending care packages of Harlequins and Mills and Boon novels. There are other series too, helpfully labeled with sensuality ratings like subtle, warm, hot, and burning which I took as cautionary advice for ‘romantica’. I hadn’t had the nerve to send those at the steamier end but, when I stopped by to visit, she confided in hushed tones that she’d borrowed Fifty Shades of Grey from a friend. I didn’t ask how old her friend was but I could hazard a guess. The series was on their radar, so all that online gossip about grandmothers boosting sales is clearly not so far-fetched.

She was hoping to pick up the sequels, ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ and ‘Fifty Shades Freed’, at the library, but had heard they were perpetually booked out. In Britain, despite prior (more discreet) availability as an ebook, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ sold 100,000 hardcopies in its first week, subsequently outstripping JK Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter’ and Dan Brown’s ‘Dan Vinci Code’ to become the fastest selling book of all time in UK. So what if it’s been dubbed “mummy porn” and almost universally derided by critics for its “appalling writing”? It seems clear readers are splashing their cash in search of something other than a highbrow read.

So what’s the allure? I have successfully avoided the books, much as I did the Twilight series and even The Hunger Games, mostly from the position that the ten books waiting patiently beside my bed are more deserving of attention. Unfortunately, a good friend – an English teacher, which increases her stock – says we may in fact have to read them simply to stay relevant and credible. I’m not sure how relevant I want to be having discovered several instances of a friend reading the series, only to have a parent read it afterwards. My inner Valley Girl recoils with an inaudible “eww”.

The author, mum of two, Erika Mitchell, writing under the penname of E.L. James, has famously said her books offer women “a holiday from their husbands”. And by all accounts her mother and eighty-two year old aunt enjoyed reading them immensely. Meanwhile, in interview, the mere suggestion of her teenage boys reading the material prompted her to recoil too.

In the plot, there’s not much that hasn’t already been written. It’s been billed as a classic love story, one that happens to neatly dovetail with the soft porn market. The tried and tested storyline of a young virgin protagonist meets perfect, rich, older lover, hardly rattles the cage of new material until the sadomasochistic angle gives Madonna’s early nineties’, plastic-wrapped, provocatively-named, ‘SEX’ book a run for its money. But these books are more than ‘on sale’ with the wrapper off. They are being bundled in supermarkets at three for a tenner. Still, risqué isn’t new. DH Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was banned at the turn of the century for its scandalous scene involving the latter braiding daisies into the nether regions of the former. But I’m unaware of the ban prompting quite the slew of after-market product releases that the Fifty Shades series has spawned.

In case you missed it in the news, Barnes and Noble has narrowed its losses thanks to the boost from Fifty Shades sales. Meanwhile, Tina Winters, an enterprising British lass, has started “Fifty Shades of Grey” parties geared towards discerning ladies of a certain age, as a spin-off from typical saucy lingerie parties. The publishing industry isn’t resting on its laurels either, and, also in the UK, with social taboo lifted, giant billboards are advertising other erotic novelists. Horrifyingly, they are also issuing ‘Jane Eyre Laid Bare’, some sort of rewrite of Charlotte Bronte’s novel.

E L James (or the real Ms. Mitchell) should perhaps get an honorable mention in Congress - and the House of Commons - for her economic stimulus package. ‘Shades of Grey’ is already under contract as a major motion picture, but the series has also inspired a music album, a line of lingerie, and Fifty Shades baby onesies with such dubious taglines as “Fifty Shades of Grey baby” and “Fifty Shades Cute”. Given the title’s unavoidable mental S&M reference, buyers should get their heads Fifty Shades Examined if they don’t see the oddity in emblazoning the title across the chest of a newborn.

Still, there’s no stopping the predictions of a Fifty Shades baby boom on both sides of the Atlantic. Spikes nine months after the book’s initial release have already been documented, while Good Morning America recently hosted several couples on the morning show, all with Fifty Shades-conceived babies on the way.

The series may be contributing little to literature, but it certainly seems to be good for the economy.

Hope, Spice and Olympic Glory

2012-08-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

In my second year as an undergraduate, one of my housemates decided to sign up for a stand-up comedy competition. It filled the rest of us in the house with great angst. While she was funny – (often thanks to confused terms of speech such as “murial” for a wall mural, later immortalized in a personal dictionary) – we weren’t convinced she’d be crowd-pleasingly hilarious. And while we were supportively behind her, we awaited her time slot with our first taste of maternal anxiety as we anticipated the bloodshed. And then she came on stage, all long legs and red hair, and blew the roof off the Student Union bar. From risqué jokes to a tongue in cheek dissection of university life, she had the room eating from the palm of her hand, and the concluding whoops proved the point.

I could just as easily be talking about British anxiety over the London 2012 Olympics. There simply seemed so many ways it could all go pear-shaped. Olympic preparations constantly vied for pole position outdoing wet weather as the greatest source of national moaning while building costs tripled. Then, a year ago, world news stations broadcast the hideous images of organized riots, boroughs and historic buildings engulfed in flames. And despite the pledged clean up, many worried that the vision of marauding youths intent on looting and destruction would deter visitors. Meanwhile, others were gloomily predicting the creaking transportation system wouldn’t be able to handle the increased visitor load, and talk of transport strike threats were not so much ‘if’ as ‘when’.

By the time Queen’s Jubilee rolled around early this year, London was ready for a full-scale dress rehearsal, an event involving massive crowd manipulation, surges in bus and tube usage, the execution of a high-security royal event in the center of a bustling metropolis, and a massive, free, multi-artist al fresco concert literally on the doorstep of Buckingham Palace. The world was watching as the nation came together under a feverishly patriotic sea of Union flag bunting, government-encouraged street parties and clinking teacups, a sort of physical manifestation of a Monty Python skit. And somewhere around an hour into the US Jubilee broadcast, I suddenly believed logistics for the London 2012 Olympics were truly possible and it was time to drop my shroud of maternal protectionism.

Within striking distance of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, the gripers were at it. The bus drivers were demanding a pay increase during the two-week Olympic period and airline personnel were threatening an Olympic eve strike. As security plans were reviewed, the security firm conceded it had insufficient staff prompting the government to order in the army. And then it came together, from the smooth travel to the unprecedented British rock and history opening ceremony, and threw open the gates to the most enthusiastic, high energy Olympics in recent memory. With London’s landmarks as the extraordinary backdrop to the games, the transformation of iconic locations like Horse Guards parade into beach courts or the use of Lord’s Cricket Grounds for archery, it was impossible to separate the energy of the city from that of the games. And with record breaking achievements by the likes of Usain Bolt, Mo Farrah, Jessica Ennis, and David Boudia, new legends leapt into the world’s living rooms.

After two straight weeks vying for gold, it’s no surprise the thousands of Olympic athletes poured into a packed stadium ready to party for the closing ceremony. And London delivered with a two and a half hour theatre and rock inspired concert on a stage in the shape of a Union flag. Initially transformed into a scene of London landmarks draped with newsprint, the scene of commuter rush hour ushered in a musical smorgasbord of anthems from the seventies to today, with performances by The Who, Annie Lenox, Oasis, Madness, George Michael (sporting a massive handle-bar moustache), and tributes to the musical legacy of Queen, John Lennon, and David Bowie. The inclusion of The Kaiser Chiefs, Jessie J, and Tinie Temper injected a taste of 2012 and had the stadium, including London Mayor, Boris Johnson, on their feet.

Where else would you have found DJ Fat Boy Slim with his mixing decks atop a translucent inflatable octopus, The Spice Girls strutting about on five light-bulb encrusted London cabs, or Russell Brand singing “I am the walrus” on a psychedelic seventies’ bus? Brits love an irreverent take on the clergy, (just ask a friendly Brit about Vicars and Tarts parties) so no surprise to find an army of roller-skating nuns storming the stage, some flashing Union Jack underwear, while Monty Python’s Eric Idle lead the entire stadium in “Always look on the bright side.” This was a celebration of British cultural exports with a healthy side of kitsch, camp and cheese. And for their trouble, the artists were paid a whopping £1 each. Makes you wonder if the overpaid, contract-haggling professionals of televised sport might learn a thing or two about being in it for the game.

As the London 2012 Olympics came to an end, social media and the international press were abuzz with glowing endorsements. Peter Wilson, contributor for The Australian writes: “…now the Games are over, it is just as clear they have knocked Sydney off its pedestal as the best host of a modern Olympic Games. As awful as it is to admit, London 2012 was bigger, slicker… and more thoughtfully planned than Sydney in terms of the legacy it will leave the host city…It is…bronze for Barcelona, silver for Sydney and gold for London.”

It fell to Olympic Committee Chair, Sebastian Coe, himself a two-time 1500m Olympic medalist, to conclude proceedings with proud thanks to the athletes and the nation. “We lit the flame – and lit up the world… When our time came – Britain, we did it right.” Now, how do you like that, Mitt?

London: Legends and Underdogs

2012-08-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

From police carrying MP5 assault rifles to army-run security screens to rival any airport, you could be forgiven for thinking the London 2012 Olympics might be overburdened by its efforts to ensure safety. Seven years ago, on July 6th 2005, Britain learned it had been successful in its bid for London to host the 2012 Olympics. Twenty-four hours later, terrorists attacked the London transport system killing fifty-two men and women. Hosting an Olympic games, in a major world capital, had never seemed so daunting in terms of infrastructure development, potential disruption and security needs. It makes you wonder what a major US airport would do if it were suddenly expected to screen a bunch of excited revelers on their way to a party on a runway. Something tells me the TSA wouldn’t break a smile.

Perhaps that’s why the national call for volunteers to swell the ranks of the games-related staff has had such a huge impact. From touchdown in Heathrow to every major train station and all Olympic venues, volunteers in pink and purple shirts are there, beaming, singing, welcoming and assisting the masses that have descended. Sporting huge pink sponge hands to deliver high fives and help direct the throngs, they seem to have taken a leaf out of the Southwest Airlines cookbook, singing to the crowds, calling out jokes, welcoming them in, wishing them well on their way out, and thanking them all the way.

Having had our photos taken with the police brandishing the MP5s and fatigues-clad army personnel, it’s clear they’re in the team spirit too. “No problem”, one army lad told me. “You can take as many pictures with us as you like. It’s just the security lanes you can’t snap.”

I admit I was slightly concerned about getting to the venues, the prospective traffic delays, the queues for body and bag scans, the limits set on liquids, and – once in – the lines for loos and refreshments. But how wrong can one person be? So let’s make that one person, Mitt Romney, since The Hair has continued to eat humble pie talking up a blue streak about how impressed he is with all things London 2012.

I don’t know how they do it but the Olympic lines never actually slow down or back up. With thousands of people milling all about you, the lines keep steadily moving in one fluid motion. In the case of Eton-Dorney, a huge car park was full with the massive fleet of pink buses that shuttled the thousands from race site to local train stations. While the visitors were moving through a maze of cattle corrals, one bus after another pulled up, filled up, and slid away, in time for the next. A logistical sight to behold.

At Horse Guards parade, you would hardly believe you were in the courtyard behind uber-secure Number 10 Downing Street where the morning Changing of the Guard typically takes place. The oval stadium seating staffed by innumerable cheery volunteers pulsed with the steady beat of music, the stamping and cheering of the crowds being geared up by the event MC. If the major events of athletics, swimming and gymnastics have enough international pride to guarantee their momentum and screaming crowds, event MCs and DJs whip up the excited mood of willing crowds at the lesser known sports like handball, volleyball and Roman-Greco wrestling no matter whether home team, nemesis or Kazakhstan is playing.

The overwhelming spirit of the games has been incredible sportsmanship with home crowds blending with the international supporters, not only in support of Team GB, but all the nations competing. It’s something that’s been keenly felt by the athletes and widely reported on from the Olympic village. Enthusiastic interviews by the Jamaicans dominating the track and Chinese, Australians, and American athletes describe the tangible energy of the stadium crowds. Of course, there’s always going to the occasional fool, notably the man who drunkenly lobbed a bottle onto the stadium ground before Usain Bolt took yet another gold. Good thing a judo champion was on hand to give him a thump. (No doubt he’s since sobered under the scornful gaze of his own appalled children.)

In this, the XXX Olympiad, the near constant refrain has been the electric energy, the quirky Benny Hill fun factor (think girls with beach balls in 1950s bathing suits dancing between beach volleyball sets) and genuine support for athletes across all 205 nations. Britain is as much known for its love of the underdog as its celebrity adulation of Olympic darlings Jessica Ennis, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. So at Eton-Dorney, where teams battled out in single, two-man and four-man skulls, while the fiercest screams were over closely-pitted battles between Britain, New Zealand, Germany, and France, the loudest roar spurred on Niger athlete, Hamadou Djibo Issaka. Coming absolute last in the F class men’s single skull finals, his exhausted finish earned him a near constant cheer from an international crowd shaking their own flags and pushing him to the finish.

With just under a week to go, London 2012 still has more to prove and an Olympic closing ceremony to unveil. But the picture so far – a games operating with smooth, military-precision, an army of giddy, grinning volunteers, and a high fun factor across every arena – leaves little doubt these Olympics will be remembered as much for London’s incredible energy as the record-breaking golds and the beloved underdogs.

London 2012 Olympics: The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

2012-08-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

Let’s hope Michael Phelps’ new world record for career Olympic medals has put the US in a better state of mind than the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. While the rest of the world practically caught fire with Olympic fever as Danny Boyle’s £27 million opening spectacle unfolded, the temperature in the States, at least via social media, was decidedly cool. Where were the thousands of drummers a la Beijing? And what do sheep have to do with the Olympics, they wanted to know. Whether ceremonial malaise had anything to do with early teasers trickling forth while large networks like NBC held back from live programming to hit prime time and premium advertising rates, one can’t be sure. But the quirky medley of quintessentially British historic and cultural change set against a resounding soundtrack – one running the gamut from The Clash to The Jam – apparently left some confused.

Perhaps the confusion started early on when the Olympic stadium was transformed from a bucolic scene of Britain’s rolling hills, one speckled with live sheep, cattle and geese, into a raging celebration of the Industrial Revolution with workers scaling factory chimneys and Kenneth Branagh stomping about dressed as Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunel reciting Shakespeare. (After all, the ceremony was themed around the notion of “the Isle of Wonders”, a reference to Caliban’s speech in The Tempest.) Unfortunately, since several American commentators were reporting Branagh had come on as Abraham Lincoln, you can see the early cracks of confusion.

When the proceedings moved into a full on celebration of the National Health Service, you can fully sympathize that some lost the plot. Healthcare is divisive at the best of times in the US, so the idea of celebrating – with song and dance! – a national government healthcare institution, one featuring real “staff and patients from Great Ormand Street Hospital” rather than a bunch of SAG-card toting hired guns, well, you see my point. And when the giant puppet of Harry Potter’s ‘Voldemort’ floated upwards, and dozens of Mary Poppins descended from the heavens, the rest of the world may not have caught the inside political joke (the British Minister of Health has been nicknamed Voldemort for his efforts to privatize the NHS), but the montage of world renowned characters from British children’s literature would have been hard to ignore.

From Bond to Mr. Bean, British contributions to film and television folded seamlessly into performances by the London Symphony Orchestra and even HRH Queen Elizabeth playing herself, effortlessly, in the company of Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, at least up until her supposed parachute jump into the stadium. From The Arctic Monkeys playing The Beatles Come Together and a neat segue of Danny Boy into The Clash’s London Calling, Danny Boyle certainly managed to nail a sequence of cultural exports as internationally well-known as red phone booths and black London taxicabs.

While London partied, Mitt Romney was hastily taking his foot out of his mouth after casting aspersions on London’s readiness and publicly wondering, "...just how well it will turn out." London Mayor, Boris Johnson, poked fun at Mitt in Hyde Park asking the assembled hordes if they felt “they were ready”. And with Romney’s comments coming one day before his scheduled meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron, it’s no wonder he spent the visit hastily reversing up a verbal one-way street with a near constant Olympic endorsement.

Some US commentators may still have been trying to wrap their heads around the brainteaser of spliced British social, economic and rock n’ roll history but the montage method has a long precedent. And China’s blistering 2008 Olympic opening ceremony kicked off with 2008 dancers who propelled us through China’s contributions to the world from type setting to the compass, and along silk trade routes before following Chinese philosophers and social change. Those griping that the London 2012 opening ceremony had nothing to do with the Olympics are missing the point. Showcasing themselves, their history, identity, and contributions to the world, is a right the host nation earns along with the accolade of shining the world spotlight on the Games themselves.

The London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony firmly kept the pace moving forward, even engaging dance musicians ‘Underworld’ to create the pulsing soundtrack to which the nations entered the arena. And while Danny Boyle’s British interpretation honored the past, including those lost in the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London, the combined vision was firmly on the future. It wasn’t left to one celebrity or Olympian to take the final Olympic torch but seven promising young British athletes, their torches lit by seven current sporting luminaries as inspiration for future youth – who simultaneously sparked the tubular Olympic cauldron into flame.

Creating a Great British Summer

2012-07-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

There’s a point in every holiday when you realize the reverie you had cultivated in your head is not quite panning out as envisioned. At least, the calm mornings spent doing crafts with sea shells and assorted beach flotsam, and the relaxed evenings sitting on the beach watching the sun slide into the sea have not quite materialized. In fact the books I have been diligently carrying to the beach are barely cracked and the newspaper I bought a week ago is only in pieces thanks to a fort the children made rather than any meaningful attempt to read it.

There’s no doubt the creative impetus for this family summer trip to the South Hams in Devon was the Olympics and a series of rose-tinted memories culled from childhood. With London a veritable zoo for the games we zagged south-west towards the coast. Grandparents had lived in the area and every family summer always started with the mental horror of a three-hour car ride, a distance considered so incredibly far (in a country that could fit three times into Texas) that to go for anything less than two weeks would have been unthinkable. The car would have been loaded to the roof-rack, my brother and I loosely stowed in the backseats alternately lying on the shelf space behind the rear head rests or curled in the foot well behind the front seats until I predictably threw up into some form of Tupperware.

The trouble with reliving your childhood is that you’re now the adult in charge. As a child you simply turn up in places, transported, fed, and ushered around assorted museum tea-shops and castle ruins. In the 2012 remake, I now had stiff five point harness child-seats and GPS assistance, but it still took nerves of steel to hurtle down single-track hedge-lined lanes in a rental car at the British National speed limit of 60mph.

Even before we got here, work had begun. House hunting for vacation properties from a distance is a strange combination of pleasure and pain. The pleasure in hunting comes from the tantalizing prospect of the holiday; the pain only materializes when you realize you picked a lemon. There was a time on the Amalfi Coast when a taxi driver spent half an hour assuring me my rental property did not exist at the expense of my rising blood pressure. And there was a run down property on Martha’s Vineyard whose only resemblance to its advertised charm would have been before and after shots with a divorce, hurricane and twenty year time lapse in between. There’s an art to rental descriptions, a language designed to ever-so-slightly deceive. ‘Sea views’ may really be limited to cloudless sunny days at high tide as viewed on tiptoe from an attic window. And property photos can be as economical with the truth as a personal ad on dating site where a gentleman with balding pate and pot-belly has no qualms about posting a photo of David Beckham.

Our rental house is indeed a beautiful barn conversion, reminiscent of a French farmhouse with thick walls, exposed stone, and a mounted original threshing wheel. That the garden is only being big enough to swing a cat (and then only if you allow his tail to graze the fence) is proof only that the photographer must have actually wedged herself in the corner of the hedge to get any sort of shot that suggests otherwise. And let’s face it, failure to mention that it is situated on a cow farm is surely no accidental omission. I mean, after the arduous exercise of finding the place – (gussied up and renamed, no-one local has a clue where it is) – its address in the phone book is listed as on South Huish Farm, a more helpful snippet I’m hard pressed to imagine.

Waking to the tune of gently lowing cows and bleating sheep is all very endearing in the rural scene of things. Throwing open the double French garden doors to dine on a glorious day, only to hurriedly shut them against the pungent aroma of manure and an army of accompanying flies du merde, less so. But despite the dents to my bucolic vision, the house has been a welcoming base for a family reunion and launch pad for crabbing quayside in Salcombe and Kingsbridge, ferry rides to beaches across the River Dart, tiny bobbing boats steered by children in the estuary. The sun has lent solid support to my illusion of an endless Great British Summer and a slew of French and British holidaymakers seem to be wandering about in shocked, clotted cream ice-cream stupors, wishing they’d packed more summer clothes.

After a week of day trips, late nights, grocery shopping, family meals, and beach laundry in between, I wondered whether this wasn’t merely the relocation of home-life as usual. And then I picked up my battered copy of Gifts from the Sea, in which Anne Morrow Lindburgh, awe-inspiring wife of Charles Lindburgh and an over achiever in both aviation and the domestic sphere, wrote even in the 1930s about the challenge of unwinding at the beach, and finding time to read and reflect after meeting endless family needs. Flicking through the beaming photos of my children playing on the same quays and beaches that pepper my childhood photo albums, it felt right. It isn’t perfect, but the experience is giving back in spades.