Mature Landscaping

Into The Fog

2010-03-07T20:06:00.000-08:00

It's been a befogging, sorrowing, sickening week in San Diego and I feel very old. This post will stumble around in the mist.

The kidnapping, rape, and murder of 17 year old Chelsea King and the arrest of her suspected killer, a registered sex offender, has broken the heart of this city. John Gardner III, the accused, faces additional charges for another assault with intent to rape that took place on December 27th, 2009... at the same Rancho Bernardo park where Chelsea King was abducted. Gardner is also being investigated in the case of Amber Dubois, who has been missing for 13 months. Today, it was reported that Amber's skeletal remains have finally been found in North San Diego County near Escondido. It's possible, but not confirmed, that Amber was found based on tips police received following the discovery of Chelsea King's body. John Gardner lived about two miles from the high school that 14 year old Amber attended. There's a spreading heart-sickness here.

The University of California at San Diego badly bungled its handling of the blatantly racist "Compton Cookout," an off-campus party linked to the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. After first distancing the school from the Presidents' Day party, administrators eventually offered a lame Teach-In to "educate students" in racial sensitivity...which makes me wonder what UCSD's students had been learning about race relations prior to this incident. Tensions escalated when students discovered a noose hanging in the library. And then a Klan-style hood was found on a statue of Dr. Seuss at the UCSD campus. There's some apparent mind-sickness here.

The weather has fit the city's mood: low, dark, heavy cloud; cold temperatures; and another week of intermittent rain. Fog shrouds the mountains around the city. San Diego needs this rain after more than a year of drought that turned the entire city a dull dun. Those foggy mountains sport the carcasses of burned-out trees from the previous year's forest fires...some of them nearly overgrown with new green as long-dormant plants flourish. Maybe the area will be safer from fire this summer, but you can tell San Diego's people have to work hard to remind themselves to be glad of the heavy weather. There's widespread mildew of the spirit here.

I've been trying for days to come up with a fitting post. Ideas have sparked through my mind, but the souring national news and the sorrowing local news have drowned each one. I've become heart-sick and mind-sick and dull-spirited for the time being. And maybe a little dim-witted, too. I know these conditions will lift, but, for the moment, I'm just putting one foot in front of the other, one word behind the next.

I didn't realize how much I was affected until this morning. We were on our way in the rain to the 11:30 service of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church of San Diego, the first church I've attended since my kids were small and I was attempting to introduce them to the religion of their forebears. I love this UU church (I never thought I would utter that sentiment again in my life). They describe themselves as "a vibrant, Welcoming Congregation, open to all regardless of age, race, gender, religion, or affectional orientation." I would add, "Or lack, thereof." We found them three years ago, when my beautiful, big-hearted daughter asked if we'd be interested in checking out the UU's with her. Since then, when we're here, we're there. If I could sell my house back home, and if I could afford to live here, the incredibly smart, wise, diverse people of this church would be reason enough to move. No one who seeks inclusive community and growth would feel out of place here. This is the first group of any kind that I've found to embrace with my whole heart and mind. But I've digressed...into the one clear spot in the fog that I've found all week.

To refocus... I realized on my way to the UU Church this morning that I could not remember why we are in Afghanistan. I hope I'm not stupid, but I may have grown extremely dull lately. I just couldn't recall a reason for our war there that made sense to me. I thought of our War on Terror, but I could think of no front. I thought of Bin Laden, but we believe that Al Qaeda does not rely on centralized leadership so much now. All the obvious and touted reasons arose and none of them would take root this morning. I had to ask my husband, who answered, "9/11, Bin Laden, War on Terror." The fog wouldn't lift for me.

Yesterday morning, I read a post by jack-of-all-thumbs, on Self-Sufficient Steward, called "Looking For Laurels, In All The Wrong Places" about the kids at risk in Afghanistan, and I started crying (jack's posts often spark me). Maybe it was the cold, the gray, the rain, the fog. Maybe it was reading about the stalker my friend Beth has picked up on Nutwood Junction; maybe it was the powerfully courageous post my friend Sheria published on depression at The Examined Life; maybe I'm just getting old, foggy, and thin-skinned.

The UU Church is sponsoring a film viewing and discussion with Afghanistan vets on March 18th, entitled "Rethink Afghanistan." Ours is a military family; this is a military town where we feel at home; my husband retired from the Air Force and we have military active duty family members; we are not Peaceniks by Default...we like to think we're not anything by default, but, when my husband and I want to learn what is meant by a "just war," we watch WWII documentaries. The two of us are thinking we'll be there at the UU meeting to do a little rethinking.

Meanwhile, if any of you can think of a convincing argument in favor of continuing the war in Afghanistan...something other than the reason most of the kids who are there give, which is "to look out for my buddies here"...by all means, fill me in. If you can't, let me hear you. I want to be sharp, clear-headed, un-befogged, when I go to hear what the veterans have to say. What say you?

[images: SEAN M. HAFFEY / UNION-TRIBUNE;.net/images/otaymountainfog.jpg; notinhd.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/san-diego]

The Anti-Dysrationalia Movement

2010-03-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

Dysrationalia is defined as the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. The concept of dysrationalia was first proposed by psychologist Keith Stanovich in the early 1990s. Stanovich classifies dysrationalia as a learning disability and characterizes it as a difficulty in belief formation, in assessing belief consistency, or in the determination of action to achieve one's goals. [wikipedia].

This is a quick bonus post for the Go-Here-Get-This category. On his psychology blog, We're Only Human, Wray Herbert publishes some timely and pertinent research on how angry voters choose their candidates vs. how worried voters make their choices. I want to just copy the whole post, but I'll settle for a quick quote or two:

We like to think that our democracy is rational, that as voters we educate ourselves on the issues and choose the candidate who best represents our views. Emotions, while natural, would seem to undermine this civic ideal, leading to cynicism and confused thinking and wrongheaded choices. But is it so simple? New research suggests that emotions can indeed skew voting behavior—but in surprising and nuanced ways.

Before the voters started researching the issues and candidates, some were primed for fear and others for anger—much like the scenarios above. The idea was to see if these two basic human emotions shaped civic behavior in different ways. That is, did angry citizens size up candidates one way, and anxious voters a different way? And did these thinking styles translate into different behavior at the polls?

Go take a peek and get back to me. Then, please take a look at The Coffee Party's Mission Statement:

The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

and their fingerprint:

We are diverse — ethnically, geographically, politically, in age and in experience.

We are 100% grassroots. No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement. We are a spontaneous and collective expression of our desire to forge a culture of civic engagement that is solution-oriented, not blame-oriented.
We demand a government that responds to the needs of the majority of its citizens as expressed by our votes and by our voices; NOT corporate interests as expressed by misleading advertisements and campaign contributions.
We want a society in which democracy is treated as sacrosanct and ordinary citizens participate out of a sense of civic duty, civic pride, and a desire to contribute to society. The Coffee Party is a call to action. Our Founding Fathers and Mothers gave us an enduring gift — Democracy — and we must use it to meet the challenges that we face as a nation.

I have some of the smartest, most rational Followers on the blogosphere--folks of various political persuasions--which means you actually read the paragraphs and won't just react to the logo. I'd like to hear from you on this.

Aging: The Conspiracy Theory

2010-03-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

I've been observing some disturbing developments in myself at 62. ( I'm really sixty-one, but I've made it a practice since 33 to always give my age as one year older so I can get used to it. By this system, I'm about to turn 63.) I'm growing increasingly alarmed to find strange new limitations of my brain. I have no memory of agreeing to any of this. It's as if there are entire missing decades between 33-year-old-me and me at however-old-I-am these days...could it be drug induced amnesia? Maybe it's just that I've been studying the Tea Party mindset too long (I'm working on publishing my conclusions in an article entitled, The Role of Senile and Paranoid Thought Processes In The Tea Party Movement); I begin to suspect there's something sinister at work.

Given that my brain and body do whatever they want to these days regardless of my intentions, I hope I can keep this post in the road. It feels like I'm no longer in charge, like I've been body-snatched by evil-doing poltergeists. As evidence:

1) I'm slow at everything I do.
2) I'm impatient with time spent on things I don't want to do (which includes all maintenance of belongings and self. I don't know if you've noticed, but those things take up most of our time at any age).
3) I can't abide interruption and I'm distractible as hell.
4) I can't find words...that tip-of-tongue problem based on word ~~looking~~ retrieval processes.
5) I can't recall the proper sequence of steps in a task I've performed a million times before (ex: make a spaghetti dinner or get dressed). I'll be on the last step and suddenly find I'd forgotten Step 3...which can be critical if it involves either olive oil or underwear.
6) I get tired long before I'd expected to, which means I have trouble with biting off more than I can chew and with task completion.
7) I can't seem to make decisions.

That's not an exhaustive list, but it'll do for now. Something funny is going on here; I don't recognize any of those listed behaviors as me. According to an article on aging and centenarians in Time Magazine, based on animal studies,"only about 30% of aging is genetically based;" which, considering that my overall competence seems to have dropped by at least 80%, leaves me with ~~40%~~, ~~60%~~ some considerable percentage unaccounted for. They've ripped off my small supply of math skills, too. Time to do a little detective work.

First, on that infuriating word-retrieval glitch, apparently the density of the gray matter in the left insula of my brain has declined. It may have been redeposited on the inside of my thighs just above the knee; I KNOW I was really dense at one time and these knee-bulge thingies were NOT there yesterday. I think my best defense against left insula theft is to learn a new word each day and to use that word frequently. On Wordsmith.org, today's word is cabal, from the Hebrew kabalah, meaning a small, secret group of intriguers or plotters. In proper usage, My word retrieval issues can be blamed on an Idaho-based cabal of right-wing extremists who are bent on destroying the density of the left insulas of Liberal Elitist bloggers. Good word to know. Some of you could be next.

There's a surprising number of studies out there lately that try to put a positive spin on the brain changes I describe. I'm increasingly suspicious of this sort of thing; what motive could the cabal possibly have for making dodderism look good? There are studies at Stanford that show that, among the aged, our brain efficiency is improved by filtering out our "irrelevant" long-term memories so that we can put more mental energy toward the more immediately relevant short-term memories, or working memories, such as where we put the olive oil. We don't even get to decide for ourselves what's relevant and what isn't, which is mind control. Maybe they do it through reality shows on the television.

Researchers have gone so far as to rob mice of full neuron development in their hippocampi, where long-term memory is stored, in an effort to improve their performance on maze-running tasks (similar to my spaghetti-dinner-making task). Guard your hippocampi, my fellow elders, and avoid cooking for crowds. In fact, I'd recommend that, as soon as you get the kids out of the house, you stop cooking altogether.

Even AARP gets in on the conspiracy cover-up by pretending there's nothing going on. In their article "Boost Your Brain Health," P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D., claims that,

Despite what our youth-oriented culture tells us, mental decline after 50 is not a given. In fact, in some ways the healthy brain gets stronger with age. Studies confirm that accumulated knowledge and expert skills (a.k.a. wisdom) increase as you get older...Other brain functions may not improve with age, but they don't automatically wane either. One example is higher-order decision making such as choosing the best investments. Older people do as well as younger ones on tests that measure this function—as long as they aren't rushed.

Oh, yeah. A bunch of us must have been a little rushed between the tech bubble of the nineties and the beginning of the Great Recession when we were trying to decide where to safely invest our retirement savings...real estate, mutual funds, hmmm. After basically saying that most healthy brains experience few problems with aging other than some short-term memory loss, Dr. Duraiswamy goes on to devote an entire article to recommendations for improving brain functioning in the elderly. Well, which is it? Are we all losing it or just those of us who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time when the spaceship landed looking for experimental subjects?

Where was I? On that distractibility issue, I am self-diagnosed with A-RADD (Age-Related Attention Deficit Disorder), but, according to my sure-fire spaghetti-sauce diagnostic tool, this problem came on very suddenly ~~at age~~ 61, 60 recently, while aging is supposed to take place over time, right? I promise you that no time at all has passed since the last time I had a clue what the hell I was doing. Adam Gazzelley of UCSF has studied this problem and finds that "not all older adults are impaired relative to younger adults." (I bet Adam is about 28; Adam was a very popular name for baby boys in 1982). Adam's ~~team~~ cabal studied two groups, one aged 19-33 and the other, aged 60-72.

The researchers used electroencephalography to record electrical signals from the participants’ brains in milliseconds during the task. In contrast to the younger adults, the older group could not suppress distracting stimuli during the first 200 milliseconds after exposure. “At later time points, the ability to ignore does show up,” Gazzaley says. “It’s not abolished, just delayed.” By then, however, the irrelevant information had interfered with the memory task, making the older group less accurate overall than the younger group.

I think they're saying that my A-RADD developed suddenly at age 60, which is about when I woke up to find myself instantaneously old and prone to parenthetical digression (that was when all my slacks stopped fitting me, too), and that I should ignore the first 200 milliseconds of any task I take on. I'm going to ignore Adam's research; I don't know how it got in here.

It's not funny. There's even research to show that our sense of humor is being effed with! From the Journal of The International Neuropsychological Society, I learn this:

In research designed to probe humour comprehension and appreciation, Shammi and Stuss found that while older people were just as capable as younger people of "getting" wordplay jokes, they were not as good at recognising funny cartoons, or identifying funny punch lines to jokes.

The punch line to that joke is that these guys were named Shammi and Stuss. Obviously, I've not lost a tittle of my humor comprehension. As for funny cartoons...

I was beginning to tire of all this research after about fifteen minutes, so I decided to drop the item-by-item schema and look for some large, over-arching theory to explain my whole list of complaints. That's when I learned of the Dark Energy in my brain, as covered by the March 2010 issue of Scientific American. Basically, they've discovered through modern imaging studies that our brains actually use more energy in the background of our minds when our attention is turned off, when we're daydreaming or sleeping, than it does when we're paying attention. When we're focused on something, the brain actually slows down. They call this background hum the brain's Default Mode, and, when the connections in the Dark Matter become faulty with disease processes or aging, there's less efficiency altogether. That all sounds sort of Black Ops-y to me, like somebody's hacked into my meat computer and fiddled with my Default Mode.

I can't find that issue of Scientific American. It's here somewhere, I know. I even highlighted the kerfluey out of it to share with you. I have absolutely no idea where it went, unless a shadowy cabal is involved. Is it age? Is it me? Is it a vast Right Wing Conspiracy headed by Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney designed to turn aging voters into mindless lemmings? They made off with my highlighter, too.

[images: www.textually.org/.../images/set3/spy-vs-spy.jpg, jaggedsmile.files.wordpress.com/.../mindtrip.jpg, scienceblogs.com/twominds/sign_brain.jpg,www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/ ]

Allow Me To Introduce...

2010-02-26T18:43:00.000-08:00

One of the things that gladdens me about growing old is the pleasure I take in meeting young adults and discovering impressive, reassuring qualities in them that let me know the world will be in good hands, hereafter. In our forties and fifties, as parents rearing the next generation through their adolescence, we have a tendency to fear that we haven’t done an adequate job. I’m happy to say that this conclusion changes when we reach our sixties and our children reach their late twenties and early thirties: suddenly, that same generation is demonstrating all the character, caring, and competence that we parents could have wished for them. They grow up. And, serendipitously, some “generative gene” kicks in for us elders.

Our children face challenges these days, as they launch their careers and families, that my fortunate generation was largely spared as we started out. The deserving, hard-working adults of GenX impress me with their resilience, their talent, and their entrepreneurial initiative. To satisfy some of that elder-urge toward generativity, I will be offering you introductions to some of these impressive young adults from time to time, as I am privileged to meet them.

Today, allow me to introduce Jeffrey Johnson of Red Herring Illustrations. Jeffrey is married and has an adorable two-year-old daughter, Abby. He and his wife are expecting their second daughter soon. Jeffrey suddenly showed up among Mature Landscaping’s Followers as “kingcoyote,” and began leaving considerate, thoughtful comments, adding his young perspective to my elder musings. Turns out, Jeffrey is a friend of a young woman, Amanda, that our family has known and loved since 1991; he followed the trail of breadcrumbs from her blog to mine. This blog world is wonderful that way!

Exploring Jeffrey’s art blog, I find charming drawings of his life at home, enchanting sketches of his daughter discovering her world; fantastic characters designed for the world of online gaming; and the evocative Haiti poster featured above, which he designed for a local church’s relief program. I was also fortunate to have Jeffrey create a blog header for me! Please visit Jeffrey’s blog, explore his art, and join me in mentoring a fine young artist and a fine young father. The world will do well in his hands.

Jeffrey, when and how did you first realize your gift?

I can't really remember a time when I didn't enjoy drawing, though there have been plenty of times when I wasn't sure I was much good at it. The pivotal point though, was at the start of my sophomore year of high school when I had to choose between continuing to play French horn in the band, and drawing. I continued to play the french horn in Youth Orchestra outside of school for the next four years, but that was the end of my band career.

What's your dream goal for your art?

My dream is to be able to pick my projects based on what is a good fit for me, rather than what I need to feed my family. I'm not really interested in getting "rich" (good thing too, since the odds are astronomically improbable), but I do want to be able take care of my family; I am going to have TWO weddings to pay for, so I guess I should add that it would be nice to be able to afford to give the girls at least some of the things they want. Other than that, it's awesome when I see stuff that I did out and about, and I'm looking forward to the possibility that some of the logos that I have done may be used on video game packaging. I think that's a definite win.

Who/what inspires your best work?

I just had a couple of people check out my marketing brochure so I could get some feedback on what might make it a stronger piece. One of the comments that I got back is that I should move my "services offered" section to the front, in front of more personal information about the how and why I'm in this field. From a strictly "menu of jobs I can do for you" point of view, that makes sense. But I'm not sure I agree with it, because if you are looking for just someone to do this or that work, anybody will do. I really feel like the how and why are more important than the what in this situation. Especially the why... "why" is selling a relationship, and I think that I (and really most people) do their best work for people they know. I feel like a lot of my best/most enjoyable work is about stories and relationships, whether I’m making a drawing about time spent with my daughter, or an illustration of a fight between Martians and Venutians, ideas percolate from my daily life (t.v., books, blogs, dinnertime) into a sort of running narrative or inner dialog.

There are always rough or arid spots on an artistic journey; who/what has helped you keep the faith?

I always say that criticism is what helps us get better, and that encouragement is what helps us keep trying. I have made some very good friends that offer up both in equal measure. My wife does a wonderful job of both supporting and grounding me. Pride and self-doubt are the chimeras that I have to deal with most. The things that really help me keep moving forward are 1) I really don't want to do anything else; and 2) I tell myself that no matter how bad my day seems, when it's all said and done I get paid to draw pictures all day...not too shabby.

What's particular piece of work are you most pleased with right now?

Right now, I'm really happy with the website redesign that I'm working on (it's almost ready to go live. I'm just struggling with how to incorporate a section of consolidated work from my blog projects so that they're all gathered in one easy to navigate place). It really tends to be the more recent things that I've worked on... the longer I look at something, the more flaws I see in it.

How can we contact you?

My website is http://www.redherringillustration.com -remember that I'm updating it with a newly designed layout and graphic interface too. All the most current work and ramblings including “Daily Life”, “What You Talkin' About?” and “One MO Picture” can be found on my blog at http://redherringillustration.blogspot.com. And, if you just want to drop me a line or get some work out of me, you can e-mail me at jnjohnson@redherringillustration.com. Thanks for taking such interest in my little corner of the inter-web.

Thanks, Jeffrey! I look forward to seeing more of your work and best wishes to your sweet, young family!

Politics Can Be So Cheesy

2010-02-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

Ya'll know how I am about cheese. In fact, I'm in danger of being overtaken by some cheesy blog theme of dubious dignity, but the subject just keeps turning up to claim me. I know I'll be forgiven for bringing it up again; I just had to offer you this Garrison Keillor piece today, printed in its entirety as published in The Honolulu Advisor and as flagged by Private Buffoon.

Adios, compadres, the cheese is calling

You have fought the good fight, but your tide has turned

By Garrison Keillor

If you wake up in the morning with the blues because people treat you mean, you could sing a song about it, or you could shop around for an enormous conspiracy that has denied you your constitutional right to liberty and happiness. And how about Central Standard Time? What gives the feds the right to set your clock for you? It's tyranny.

So you join the Free Time movement. You go to meetings. You tune in "The Bob Glenn Show" every day on Fox for your marching orders and set your clock as you darn well please and feel liberated from lockstep uniformity.

Before, you were worried about your novelty taxidermy business and the declining sales of mummified mice on tiny surfboards, but now that it's gone under, thanks to Obama's bank bailout, and you lost your mansion on Wyandotte Lane and Joan took the kids to Toledo and you moved into a studio rental, you have time to write scorching letters to authorities and attend Free Time rallies and go to the shooting range preparing for the Revolution.

You used to be a Republican, a Kiwanian, a Presbyterian, a go-along-get-along kind of guy, but now, at age 62, you've awakened from decades of indifference — which, you now know, was caused by chemicals the Department of Agriculture puts into snack foods to induce torpor, and so you only eat dried organic veggies ordered from a Patriot company in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho — and you are filled with enormous energy. You join the good fight on all fronts. You are anti-union, opposed to the eight-hour workday, the 24-hour clock, the Gregorian calendar and the New York Times.

You don't necessarily agree with all the other Free Timers, e.g., the religious wing that says Only God Can Know The Time and is opposed to the use of the future tense, or the wing that believes Obama is using metal detectors at airport security checkpoints to program the minds of all who pass through, but these minor differences disappear in the joyful enthusiasm of the rallies and marches, which focus on Washington's attempts to rule our daily lives and its indifference to you and to others in the novelty taxidermy business.
Meanwhile, your health insurance runs out and your gut hurts and it takes you 20 minutes to empty your bladder. You go to the ER, but they want to check your prostate and you happen to know, thanks to Bob, that the digital prostate exam is how the CIA inserts GPS chips into Patriots to monitor their movements, and so you go home and suffer.

And then the New York Times publishes a big story about the Free Time movement. All your fellow Patriots are thrilled. Sarah Palin is quoted as saying that the movement has raised important questions and that we must look to God for answers and put our clocks in His hands. David Broder says Free Time is an authentic voice of grass-roots anger. The chairman of the Republican National Committee meets with Free Time leaders and is "deeply impressed." Democrats, meanwhile, are silent, confused, disheartened by the fact that Free Time has a 23 percent approval rate in some polls.

But in your own heart, you know that the crest has passed. Once the Times has recognized you, you're on the way down. It's the kiss of irrelevance. Meanwhile, your old friends avoid you, your own mother doesn't call. You've burned through your savings and Joan is talking divorce.

And then a job offer. Teaching science to middle-schoolers, $900 a week through June 10. Your brother the school board liberal twisted an arm and you have two hours in which to decide. Congress doesn't care what you do, neither does the president. Will you continue donating your life to Bob, or will you be a dad to your kids? They miss you. You may be a wingnut, but your kids don't care about that. They love you deep down in their hearts, Daddy, and they always will.

And that's what you're going to do, pal. I've been there. I know.

I was with Che Guevara in Bolivia, selling T-shirts and fomenting revolution, and I got the offer to write a weekly column and had to decide: Do I want to die in the jungle and become an icon, or would I rather live in Minnesota and enjoy macaroni and cheese and quarter-pounders with cheese and deep-fried cheese curds. Call me a coward but I chose cheese.

[images: imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/GDFCARD...,tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/grilled-cheese...]

We Are So Moved

2010-02-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have watched as President Obama, in the State of The Union Address, came battling back from a bout on the ropes; as the jobless numbers and the economic indicators wavered uncertainly; as the Democratic majority in Congress recognized its vulnerability; as Sarah Palin and the Tea Party grabbed headlines with their anger and ignorance. In sober moods, we've had to assess once again the impact of the Recession on our long-term plans for a comfortable retirement, to see how immediately and tangibly we are effected now. We have had to accept that we cannot help our children as we would like. And we find ourselves worried about how we will manage in our old, old age. We've been facing the reality that we have scant chance of recouping our losses within our lifetimes. And we've caught glimpses of the imperiled position our generation may face unless that hopey-changey thing gains new wind and develops some endurance.

In this mood, we found ourselves moved to watch PBS's American Experience: FDR over the last two evenings. We just felt that we needed to revisit that time when our country was desperately threatened and mired down in the outcome of greed and poor leadership. We needed to see the faces of The Great Depression, to look into the faces of our grandparents and parents who suffered and the face of the unexpectedly compassionate president they came to rely upon. I can tell you it was worth doing. We are not history slouches, and we've read endless articles and opinions comparing our Recession with the Depression, but we're feeling our age, our hearts are heavy, and we're discouraged; we needed personal perspective. We found some and we are so moved.

Here's what we saw. First, despite similar beginnings, the two experiences are not the same. We are in better shape as a nation than our grandparents were, chiefly because of the kinds of programs FDR initiated in response to the economic crisis he faced down in his first and second terms. We have safety nets in our minimum wage laws, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Social Security and the unemployment benefit program. Without them, the pictures in our newspapers today would differ little, excepting color and resolution, from the images shown in 1932.

In the documentary, we were reminded that FDR came into office in 1933, at the nadir of the economic crisis. The precedent he set, applying his first bold, practical moves for recovery to shoring up the banking industry, was a crucial lesson followed by Bush and Obama. I find it nearly impossible to believe that the Reactionary Right (and even many on the Left) don't grasp that, with the rescue of the mega-banks, our basic economic structure was pulled back from collapse. That act was not one of preferential treatment for the richest of us; it was an absolutely necessary act of survival made for the salvation of the poorest of us...and for all of us in the middle.

We were also reminded that FDR's first hundred days were only the beginning--that the Depression's effects lingered going into Roosevelt's third term and that there was a disheartening second slump in the economy that threatened the hope our country clung to. It was in the second term that some of the most radical changes were made to turn the economy around: Social Security, the Works Progress Administration, and the National Labor Relations Act.

We were reminded that Roosevelt made dangerous enemies who worked to block his every move. He was not afraid to name them. My computer screen is tabbed from left to right as I try to get my timeline straight this morning, but, as usual, Wikipedia is the most quotable source for concision:

"While the First New Deal of 1933 had broad support from most sectors, the Second New Deal challenged the business community. Conservative Democrats, led by Al Smith, fought back with the American Liberty League, savagely attacking Roosevelt and equating him with Marx and Lenin. But Smith overplayed his hand, and his boisterous rhetoric let Roosevelt isolate his opponents and identify them with the wealthy vested interests that opposed the New Deal, setting Roosevelt up for the 1936 landslide."

There's a road map, if I ever saw one. There's the hope.

Finally, we were reminded that Roosevelt was not born to liberal values; he was born to the economic elite, to American aristocracy. There was nothing in his beginnings, other than the early death of his father, to indicate that a hero of the common man was in the making. It was suffering that formed the heart of the Roosevelt presidency. The documentary we watched brought that suffering out clearly. Heroes are made, not born. FDR worked tirelessly to make sure the public did not think of him as disabled, but it was his disability that forged his compassion.

Our President must find such a wellspring of compassion now, if he is to find the heart to fight on in our behalf. FDR had avid, vocal support of the ordinary men and women who recognized that he worked for them. Obama must believe he has such support, if he is to find the will to fight on in our behalf. We are so moved.

On Facebook yesterday, I saw the recognition dawning that there must be an organized and vocal effort among liberals to balance the Tea Party Movement. Later today, I'll go looking online for more such indications. Sign me up. But, please, let it not be snide or cynical...no smartass, cruel invective, no callous throw-away lines like, "How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya?" Remember who we are and remember who we speak for: Americans who are suffering. It is wrong to pander to ignorance and acrimony. It is wrong for the haves to stir the pain and bitterness of the have-nots and use it to crow-bar their way back into power.

I would have our voices represent not the reactionary rogue faction's opposite extreme, but rather who we are: the governable who pay our taxes, vote, read, think, look into the faces of this recession, and fight to remain rational and sane in order to solve problems.

"Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live." (FDR)

What NOT To Eat

2010-02-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

On his Full Frontal Psychology blog on True/Slant, Wray Herbert, a regular contributor to my beloved Scientific American Mind, posted on the Obama administration's call for a ban on soda and candy in our public schools (A Salvo In The Calorie War). I'd love to write something serious on this subject, since I began Mature Landscaping partly as an effort to answer the question of what we SHOULD eat, but I'm due for a frivolous post about now. I'll take my chances on insulting some ethnic food preferences, instead, by sharing a couple of weird foods that have made recent news.

Take Red Spaghetti Sauce Doughnuts. Or, would you rather, the Ox Tongue Doughnuts you see here? Salmon? Move over, Krispy Kreme! These delights are the creation of Patrick Lin, who is determined to make a go of doughnuts in China. Never doubt the influence of culture on the tastebuds: the American concoctions of sugar, fat, and air have just never caught on in Taiwan...too sweet, says Lin of Tenmu Donuts...but rice flour rings with red bean paste filling or seaweed flakes ought to appeal to the Chinese palate. Dunkin Donuts, which has already failed once in China and is giving it a second shot, might do well to take the Chinese taste for dog into account and consider adding Cockapoo Crullers to the menu.

I don't know where the whole global fusion food craze is going. They have an annual Guinea Pig Festival in Huacho, Peru, and they aren't exactly showcasing their Cutest Cuy Competition there. Peruvian Fusion restaurants were big in New York City and L.A. for a while, but I think they were more focused on those little purple fingerling potatoes and pescado than on whole roast guinea pig. At some point, the PETA people are going to get involved and there goes the whole Saltado Menu.

In Rome, cooking show host Beppe Bigazzi has had his popular morning television show suspended from state TV. The 77 year old chef' features tips and recipes from the nation whose food has been globally adopted and adored, but his assertion that cat stew is a Tuscan delicacy he's enjoyed many times shocked even his co-host.

Bet you didn't think of Dick Cheney and the Conservative Political Action Conference one time while reading this post. Bet you wish you had.

[image: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Guinea-Pig-Festival-In-Huacho-Peru-Rodents-Dressed-Up-For-Fashion-Show/Article/200807315047608, AP photo]

Fear, Itself

2010-02-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

Taking a cue from my friend jack-of-all-thumbs of Self-Sufficient Steward, I'm going to act as internet docent today and point you toward an article in this morning's NYTimes entitled "Tea Party Lights Fuse For Rebellion On The Right." (Remember to use Google Chrome to view this without having to register.)

I've been waiting for someone to explain the origins and the nature of the Tea Party movement, but hadn't found anything comprehensive until now. What I read there has been haunting me all day. According to the article, the movement was birthed in the Recession and the election of a non-white president. It's taproot is part racism, part conspiracy theory, and all fear. I won't analyze further, but I will excerpt briefly.

"Local Tea Party groups are often loosely affiliated with one of several competing national Tea Party organizations. In the background, offering advice and organizational muscle, are an array of conservative lobbying groups, most notably FreedomWorks. Further complicating matters, Tea Party events have become a magnet for other groups and causes — including gun rights activists, anti-tax crusaders, libertarians, militia organizers, the “birthers” who doubtPresident Obama’s citizenship, Lyndon LaRouche supporters and proponents of the sovereign states movement.

It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny. This narrative permeates Tea Party Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube videos. It is a prominent theme of their favored media outlets and commentators, and it connects the disparate issues that preoccupy many Tea Party supporters — from the concern that the community organization Acorn is stealing elections to the belief that Mr. Obama is trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership."

And:

"WorldNetDaily.com trumpets “exclusives” reporting that the Army is seeking “Internment/Resettlement” specialists. On ResistNet.com, bloggers warn that Mr. Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his personal police force. They call on “fellow Patriots” to “grab their guns.”
Mr. Beck frequently echoes Patriot rhetoric, discussing the possible arrival of a “New World Order” and arguing that Mr. Obama is using a strategy of manufactured crisis to destroy the economy and pave the way for dictatorship."

And:

"At a Tea Party protest in Las Vegas, Joe Heck, a Republican running for Congress, blamed both the Democratic and Republican Parties for moving the country toward “socialistic tyranny.” In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican seeking re-election, threw his support behind the state sovereignty movement. And in Indiana, Richard Behney, a Republican Senate candidate, told Tea Party supporters what he would do if the 2010 elections did not produce results to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.”

And, finally, in regards to Pam Stout, leader of the Sandpoint Tea Party Patriots of Idaho:

"There were rallies against illegal immigration to attend. There was a coming lecture about the hoax of global warming. There were shooting classes to schedule, and tips to share about the right survival food...Not long ago, Mrs. Stout sent an e-mail message to her members under the subject line: “Revolution.” It linked to an article by Greg Evensen, a leader in the militia movement, titled “The Anatomy of an American Revolution,” that listed “grievances” he said “would justify a declaration of war against any criminal enterprise including that which is killing our nation from Washington, D.C.” Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent. “I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.'"

It's a long article, but worth it; the reporting did not have a sensationalist quality at all, but I was strongly affected. Frankly,while the concerns that prompted the movement are understandable, the rhetoric doesn't sound sane to me; it stinks of fear. Is this what is meant by "populism"? I deeply hope not. I hope the "big tent" policy the article describes will not prove big enough to shelter so many disparate opinions and that the fractiousness the Tea Party participants suffer will prove too big an obstacle to be internally mastered. Perhaps there is room for another party in the US, but I doubt this is the way to form one.

I'd like to know your impressions.

[4.bp.blogspot.com/_lrc-86fPCwA/SeeBxYtFOyI/AA]

Run, Jenny, Run

2010-02-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

I hate it that I was not in SC this week. I've missed the chance to queue up outside a Barnes and Noble in Mt. Pleasant, where future SC Governor/Senator/Representative Jenny Sanford was signing copies of her memoir, Staying True. She's supposedly the new face of Character in an increasingly uncertain moral climate.

I might have passed on a chance for a signed copy even if I had been back home, because I'm really ambivalent about reading Jenny's story. Reading a politician's wife's tell-all is a little too much like reading People Magazine for this wannabe intellectual elitist; I used to stoop to thumbing through them when I was at the beauty parlor, channeling my inner Average Teabagger, but, since I stopped dyeing my hair and started fiddling with veganism, I have pretensions to elitist snob status. On the other hand, I'm dying to try learn more about Jenny Sanford, because she's running for something...make no mistake... and she's going to aim high.

It says so, right on her "privately financed, personal website," (as her privately financed, personal website calls itself) where she identifies herself as "Jenny S. Sanford, First Lady of South Carolina" (and you can fan her on Facebook, too!). It's a gorgeous website...tasteful and restrained-looking, but that title is due for some editing shortly. Jenny worries me; she's unabashedly self-promoting these days and the website is one of those first-person, blog style sites where the author lauds herself in the third person...as if she was speaking of royalty or as if someone else had dedicated the site to her. She coyly publishes an article there from The New York Times that states,

In South Carolina, some politicians and experts believe she may run for office. They are quick to note that she has served as campaign manager during her husband’s races, shares his conservative fiscal values and acted as de facto chief of staff briefly in his first term.

“Yes, if I had to bet, I think she will run,” said Robert Oldendick, director of the Institute for Public Service and Policy Research at the University of South Carolina. “Just look at what she’s doing externally.”

Ms. Sanford declined to be interviewed for this article, and her friends played down the idea of a run for office.

Oh, brother. I guess her political designs are solid; it's only a question of when, where, and for what office Jenny will run. Whatever it turns out to be, she's obviously already running.

The SC Governor's office is about to be vacated and she already knows her way around the Governor's Mansion, but that might be a little too pushy and forward, even for Jenny, so she's endorsed Republican Nikki Haley to replace Mark. She has the conservative bona fides for any office she chooses in that ultra-conservative state; all she has to do is choose her timing. Of course, she might want to wait until the rumor mill grinds down a bit, but I'm thinking she'd hate to lose the momentum she's got in the press. I understand she's made the rounds from Barbara Walters to Larry King to Vogue. I probably missed her People cover, didn't I? Missed those interviews, too, since I've almost entirely discontinued network TV in an effort to control my sleaze intake.

She could borrow a leaf from Hillary Clinton's political playbook and establish residence elsewhere...maybe back home in Illinois, where her father founded the Skil power tool company, source of the money that launched her soon-to-be-ex husband's political career. Her first book-signing dates were in Columbia, SC, the state capitol, and in the Low Country near the Sullivan's Island home she moved to with her boys after leaving Mark. But her third signing date is in her home town of Winnetka, IL. Illinois may be the only state I can think of that rivals South Carolina for Screaming Need For Some Political Class Acts. I'm just not convinced that Ms. Sanford qualifies to fill that need.

Jenny Sanford's background in investment banking will serve her well in a campaign. She has a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and experience at Lazard Freres and Company of New York, where she began in the cutthroat world of Mergers and Acquisitions, then moved into the quieter world of Bonds. Of course, her initial investment in her husband didn't turn out well, but she undoubtedly learned something from backing the wrong horse. The Mergers and Acquisitions clearly failed, so she's going with the preferred new strategy to gain office for women today: the My Husband Made A Public Ass of Himself, But I Left The Idiot road to a distinguished career in public service.

And, in a decision that I think speaks volumes about her basic judgment skills, she is said to have totally ignored a big red flag when she went along with her husband's insistence on leaving the fidelity promise out of their marriage vows. She told Barbara Walters she was bothered but "got past it" and took a "leap of faith." What do you call that? Credulousness? Ambition? Pigheaded perversity? An arrogance equal to her husband's? Sounds like they made a business deal rather than a marriage vow, and he broke the contract by creating a public scandal; his real sin was getting caught by the press. Maybe Jenny's perfect for South Carolina Republican politics, after all.

I'm probably going to read the book, because I'm afraid we're going to be hearing a lot more from the author. She gave us all fair warning when, in her last public appearance as SC's First Lady, she spoke to a GOP luncheon (as reported by POLITICO, and as featured, too, on her privately financed, personal website in that eerie third-person mode),

Women understand the conservative issues as well as any man. We run our households and our families, and we don’t live beyond our means,” Sanford said to a room full of the state’s most powerful Republican women, according to the first lady’s notes of the speech, which were obtained by POLITICO. We balance our checkbooks as we seek balance in our lives....We care about our security, health and well-being, quality education for our children and hope for their future,” she added. “We need more women and more true conservatives involved in all levels of government to bring common sense and efficiency to our big, bureaucratic government....We have the power to change the course our state and nation are on by being involved, and making sure other common sense, conservative women are involved as well,” she said. “Thank you for the privilege of serving.”

Fair warning. She might actually be an improvement if she winds up bumping Sarah Palin out of the headlines; at least she went to a good school.

Farewell To Mr. Toad

2010-02-12T12:52:00.000-08:00

I miss funerals. That sounds funny coming from a member of the generation that has replaced casket burial with cremation as the official way to go, but I'm not talking about the box or lack of it. I'm talking about the ceremonies we employ to help the living mark loss and build themselves a bridge to life after loss. I miss the concept of "doing it right."

What got me started thinking about this was a call I received on my cell phone at 5:15 a.m., California time, from South Carolina, telling me that my neighbor of the past twenty years, Mr. Toad, had died during the night. The call came from his housekeeper who has done some work for us recently. We talked about his years of COPD, his life since his wife died a few years ago, how he'd gotten impossibly bigger around the middle since then. And I asked her about plans for the funeral. I thought I could at least send flowers for the service and a card to the family, but my caller said Mr. Toad had chosen cremation and no service was planned.

Did you feel the empty at the end of that paragraph? That's what I mean.

This strange, new absence of meaningful ritual is no good for us. Humans need rite and ceremony, but we're in flux between the twentieth century way (when there was plenty of wood for caskets and plenty of land to place them in) and the new "right way" for this century. A right way will develop and it will be embraced because it feels right and honors the values of this new era, for that's the way culture operates: old status--change--new status, and on, and on in an undulating wave pattern that has marked all known time. But these cultural transition periods, maybe especially this one, are as awkward and ugly as...as the word flux.

Our weddings, births rites, and funerals are all up for grabs in the name of individualism in the past two decades. Even as we insist on our right to redesign these rituals, people have trouble at an unconscious level with the most important element of any ceremony: the feeling that we've somehow honored certain milestones the "right way." When they receive an invitation, wedding guests don't know whether to sign on to the website and pony up for the destination wedding, to just monetize the honeymoon, or to call the mother of the bride and request silver pattern registration information. The neighbors of the deceased don't know whether to dry clean the dark suit and change their plans for Thursday afternoon or...do nothing and try to act...how?

When each of my parents died, I knew to start phoning all their friends, contact one of the two funeral homes they were familiar with, put an announcement in their local paper, order the flowers, etc. As an only child, I was responsible for all the decisions, but I had inherited the template and only had to fill in the colors. They were beautiful funerals with both chapel and graveside services, music, a soloist, flowers-- every tradition they had grown up with themselves. They were exhausting efforts, but they gave me a place to put the buzzing current of energy inside me that alternated back and forth between denial and realization. They were done the right way and I have had the comfort of knowing that.

I was told that Mr. Toad's daughter, several states away in the North, was trapped in her house under three feet of snow that had fallen in the latest wave of storms. All her planning was honed down to getting her city's snow plow to come dig her out so she could get to her Dad. That just hurts my heart to hear about.

I wrote eulogies for each of my parents and had them read by the attending minister to my the friends and family who came to the funerals. Of all the plans and decisions I made for my mother and father after they died, those eulogies were the most satisfying thing for me. Anyone who wanted to speak in honor of my parents was invited to do so, too, and I know that the speakers were helped by it. Mr. Toad's daughter will have to find what helps her; I deeply hope she finds the right way.

Had there been a funeral, here's what I might have stood to say:

Mr. Toad was a fine neighbor. His loud bass croak was instantly recognizable when he called or hailed us across the yard. He loaned his tools and gave back the ones he borrowed. He kept an eye on our house and and we trusted him with a key. He tolerated our son's garage band and even pretended to like the music, although even our son believes it was impossible to like. He waved whenever he saw us and usually stopped to talk for a few minutes about hunting, or how the kids were doing, or the state of the lake we shared. He asked for some ivy transplants for his yard and my husband was glad to put them in for him because he never asked us for much.

Mr Toad would call us, very pleased with himself, when he found someone cheap to dig up a stump or put on a new roof; he loved to find bargain rate workers who actually showed up. And he always followed the worker every step of the job, "supervising" with froggy-voiced instructions and criticisms, so he always had to find someone new to do the same type of job the next time.

A few months ago, he phoned us while we were away to say that a muskrat had come to join us in residence at the lake and was tunneling under his yard. He had discovered the tunnels when he stepped through the sod, up to his knee in the hole, and had a real struggle to get out. I felt bad that we weren't at home at the time, because I know he would have croaked for us and we could have helped him...which calls up visions both comical and frightening. Before we left to come west, I asked my husband if he had spoken to Mr. Toad in the last few days and he said he thought he remembered seeing the truck pull out of the driveway the day before. We always wanted to let Mr. Toad know when we would be traveling, but we got rushed this time and didn't call. I wish there was someplace to send flowers. When we head east again, it's going to feel very strange to realize he's not in his rightful place in his home just beside ours.

Farewell, Mr. Toad.

I used to think it was demanding for parents to lay out detailed instructions for how they wanted things to be handled after their death, but I'm re-thinking that. It might be a real blessing to leave my kids with some direction in this odd cultural flux. It almost doesn't matter what the directions are; I could say I wanted a service at the last skating rink in Myrtle Beach, with only chartreuse calla lilies and old Herbie Mann tracks played low while friends and family shared macaroni and cheese. They could cuss me for an eccentric during the whole thing and it wouldn't really matter. What would eventually matter is that I made it easy for them to feel they'd done it right.

The Matter In Question: Have you attended a service or planned a service that was non-traditional and, also, that "felt right"? Have you given thought to your own service? Should you plan or leave the plan up to others? Has someone you've loved and lost left you at a loss for planning a service? Do you hope your parents state their wishes or would you prefer that they leave it all up to you? Where is the whole matter of funeral headed?

[scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/news_images]

Bi-coastal Issues; A Meditation on Underwear and Cheese

2010-02-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

Today, a transition post, and it'll be short, because I have a ton of things I'm supposed to be doing, if only I knew what they should be. It's the kind of crazed day I experience once every couple of months or so, when we move from one coast to the other. Everybody always says how cool and glamorous it sounds to live on both coasts...the Jet Set, and all..., but it's not. Primarily, it boils down to a collection of little annoyances, like Parmesan and underpants.

What bi-coastalism really involves is a lot of time cleaning out the refrigerator; a lot of trips to the grocery store on the other end to fill a refrigerator that I cleaned out two months ago; and an enormous amount of not having what you need where you need it. I can never remember anymore what I left where. Like underpants, for example...a category of clothing that I tend to play favorites on. And this really does relate to getting older, so bear with me. Cheese may or may not make it into the final draft, but, as of the end of this paragraph, I was still intending to include it in this post. I've left myself a handy image reminder above.

On underwear, then. I lack consistency where underpants are involved. I may have twenty pairs of things that more or less qualify as underpants in a given locale, but fifteen of those are just Not Right, which, some mornings, makes for difficult decisions that only the elderly and new inductees into potty training face. There's so many considerations: hip hugging or waist-high; granola cotton, familiar nylon, or sleek microweave; boy-cut (at my age!) or that Bridget Jones style? Honestly, I never expected I'd still be trying to deal with underwear decisions again after that landmark day I decided that thongs were a tactical error. Yet, indecision can still follow me from one side of the continent to the other.

Naturally, there's the fortune-telling aspect of underwear selection. Is this likely to be a Best Underpants kind of day or a day where I might decide to cancel everything I was supposed to do outside the house, and just veg out as only retirees can, in which case Mediocre-Or-Worse underwear will do fine? Although it has no right to, this sort of decision can eat up several minutes even on a day that doesn't involve packing. When you see an elderly woman standing frozen in front of her chest of drawers, drool hanging from her bottom lip, there's likely a big underwear issue up for internal debate.

And, when I do buy some new underwear that appears to have all the ideally desired characteristics, they often don't measure up once I get them home. (They don't let you try these things on, do they? There's a disconcerting lack of standardization in brand sizing: a pair of 6's made in China differs considerably from a pair made in, say, Czechoslovakia. Got that visual?) There's some danger that the new purchases will be so perfect that I decide to pitch all the Lesser Candidates. Or take the Lesser Candidates to the opposite coast in a fit of frugality and underpants-procrastination. And leave them there, of course, but not be able to recall that I did, in which case, I must run out and buy some new ones, because nobody should pack to go away for 6-8 weeks without packing underpants. My mother would spin in her grave.

When I get to the opposite coast, will I have a confusingly varied number of underwear decisions to make on a given day, or will I find that I have to wash and dry the pair I wore on the plane in order to go out and buy some new ones? Right here, you can see that the first day back on the Other Coast is already shaping up for a Retiree Veg-out. I may blame jet-lag, but you'll know better.

Parmesan presents a challenge equal to the underwear dilemma, and not entirely antithetical, but with nuances of its own. Veteran Mature Landscapers will recall that, whatever my dietary whims of the moment, Parmesan cheese is always included. Even when I'm trying to go vegan. Unlike my Underpants Policy, which is likely to change about every two months, my Parmesan Policy is a firm and consistent thing: I try never to be without some.

I like to invest in Parmesan by buying those huge Costco cheeses that would take a real Italian family of eight an entire year to use...none of those pre-shredded types in the plastic shaker bottles for a foodie like me. I like the real deal, the kind you can hurt yourself trying to grate. The ones we buy are so hefty, so costly, and so un-food-like, they remind me of the weighted hockey-puckish things they move down the ice in the curling competition at the winter Olympics. I've usually got one on each coast...occasionally even leaving the East Coast Parmesan in the otherwise empty refrigerator, actually expecting it to be its usual, un-blemished, creamy self when I get back all those weeks later. Ew. Or vice versa. Other times, however, I recall that even cheeses the size of a dorm-room refrigerator can mold, and I gift them to an acquaintance on refrigerator-cleaning day...tax deductible.

There are so many bi-coastal land mines, I've been forced to project them all onto cheese and underwear in the interest of time. But this stuff is anxiety-producing; I start worrying about the Parmesan in one house while cleaning the refrigerator out in the other one. I wish I didn't fret so. And please, don't suggest I write it down. I've already thought of that, but I'm afraid my kids will find a note in my cardigan pocket when they're cleaning out the house after the funeral: "Left half a Parmesan in California, but all the underpants are on the East Coast."

I'd ask my husband again what he recalls on the cheese front from our last migration, but he's never yet guessed right on cheese; he seems to have aged out of a good, intuitive grasp of Parmesan. It would wind up being like the five jars of olives in the refrigerator...he buys a new one every week because ,whenever he's at the store, "olives" keeps turning up as a trace memory. And I would hate to have to call my Other Coast friends and poll them: Did I, by any chance, give you a cheese before I left last time? I didn't? Fabulous! Thank you so much! I didn't happen to mention a sudden, radical rethinking of underwear at the time, did I?

[image credit: cache.daylife.com/.../09Cm1tOdyS4OF/610x.jpg, farm1.static.flickr.com/184/442466500_6e20887]

And The Award For Perfect Timing Goes To...

2010-02-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

“Any man can go up—oh, almost indefinitely—but to go down, and down sure-footed, that is another thing entirely.” (Patrick O’Brian, HMS Surprise)

Is Newsweek saying antidepressants don’t work? Yes, they are, and isn’t that a cute cover. Any doubt which way is up?

And are they right? This one has sent me into a flurry of research over the past two days. My tentative answer is, They may be on to something, but watch for scholarly refutations over the next few weeks.

And, in this national climate of distress, isn’t their timing the coldest, most callous, most credulous act imaginable? Hmmm, you think? We’re vulnerable; we’re already worried about EVERYTHING, and we tend to believe what we read on the cover of a major news magazine, especially when big numbers are thrown at us between the covers. Thanks, Newsweek; can’t wait for your next issue!

I'm no expert, but here’s how the cover story looks to this reader:

Irving Kirsch, PhD, of Hull University, England, is saying that his method of statistical analysis shows that antidepressants do not beat placebos by enough of a margin to justify their use in most cases. Sharon Begley of Newsweek has given him a nation-wide plug for his new book, along with a cynical and somewhat overwrought treatment of a critically important subject. Caveat emptor, indeed, but is it antidepressants, Irving Kirsch, or Newsweek we should distrust more?

In an article written for the issue dated February 8, 2010, entitled “The Depressing News About Antidepressants,” Sharon Begley references research done in 1998, by Kirsch and Sapirstein at UConn., and expanded by Kirsch in 2008. Begley’s article might give the impression that Kirsch and team tested the 3000 patients themselves, which is not the case; they applied meta analysis, a statistical method, to studies published by the drug manufacturers for four antidepressants. Later, they included research that was done, but not published (leaving the impression that this research was withheld or kept secret); those studies were, in fact, sent to the FDA as part of the usual approval process for any particular drug.

Kirsch and team concluded that, of those respondents who reported improvement in placebo-controlled clinical trials of experimental antidepressant medications, the patients who got the medication improved only 25% more than those who claimed improvement on the placebo, and, when unpublished studies were included, the margin of difference between placebo effect and medication effect was reduced to 18%. Hardly worth it, Kirsch concludes. And it does sound like big news, but, before you throw out your antidepressant and confront your doctor, there are a few more things to consider.

The implications of Begley's article are that the facts are being withheld from patients and the public, presumably by a coalition of folks in the know and on the take; to operate as a conspiracy, this coalition would have to include big pharmaceutical companies, the Food and Drug Administration, The National Institutes of Health, The American Medical Association, the medical insurance industry that (from time to time) helps pay for the medications, and individual doctors just like yours or your mother’s or your best friend’s…for a short list. In other words, everybody but the patient. For those who study conspiracy theory, the rule of thumb is that the more entities said to be involved in the conspiracy, the less likelihood there is that secrecy and joint action can be maintained over time…or, too many cooks spoil the broth.

The study acknowledges that antidepressants show greater efficacy rates, as compared to placebo rates, for the most severely depressed, but discounts those results by concluding that the most severely depressed patients were under-responsive to placebo. There are lower drug benefits, as compared to placebo effect, demonstrated for milder depression

The article reminds patients who take antidepressants (and they don't differentiate between mild and severe in this warning) not to stop suddenly because, “That can cause serious withdrawal symptoms.” There is the assumption here that patients will read the article and immediately discontinue their antidepressant because it’s been revealed that the positive effects they’ve experienced are really all in their heads. There's a greater danger that some patients will read the cover headline, alone, and, regardless of the level of severity of their depression, the benefit they may have personally derived, or the history of their own treatment response to other modalities, they'll do what depressed people are prone to do: they'll give up.

Most patients, however, will think for themselves. They know what they tried before they turned to medication and they know what they’ve experienced since. In this country, with our self-reliant tendencies, we tend to go about as far as we can before we ask a doctor for help; hence the stats that everybody can agree on: fewer than half of the 13-14 million adults who experience clinical depression in this country in a given year will receive treatment of any kind and at least 32 million of us will have the disease (or disorder...and that's another blog post altogether, too).

The National Institutes of Mental Health do not recommend medication, alone, for depression. The recommendation in clinical depression is for medication with psychotherapy and lifestyle changes that include exercise and socialization, along with conscious efforts to solve contextual problems that have led to or exacerbated the illness. Good doctors, particularly specialists, know that they give their patients the best shot available at lasting benefit by urging their patients to follow those recommendations. Begley sloughs this off by saying, “…there’s the little matter of reality. In the U.S., most patients with depression are treated by primary care doctors, not psychiatrists.”

So, if we throw out our medications because prescribers aren’t following the national guidelines—put the baby out with the bathwater—then what? If, thanks to Begley, patients assume that their medication was no better than “expensive TicTacs,” as she calls them, will they turn to psychotherapy and alternative treatments, instead? Where I live, there is a large population of depressed patients who distrust psychotherapy far more than they do medication; without the benefit their antidepressants do afford them, they'd go on with lives that are burdensome to them, to their families, and to their employers...unrelieved. In their cases, I'm pulling for all the good of the placebo effect plus whatever boost the medication itself can provide them.

For prescribers, the patient's willingness to engage in the slower process of psychotherapy, the availability of sound and qualified therapists, and the patient's insurance coverage for non-medical treatments all have to factor into treatment planning. Where psychotherapy is chosen, the doctor and therapist have to work in close consultation...a practice that typically does not occur where the referring doctor is a primary care physician.

While Kirsch would obviously be persona non grata in the American medical community, he hasn't fared much better among academics, who have more stake in associating themselves with quality research . When the journal Prevention and Treatment published Kirsch's paper "Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo," they issued a warning in print with the article stating that the authors had used their statistical analysis "controversially." Begley's article does state:

A nascent collaboration with a scientist at a medical school ended in 2002 when the scientist was warned not to submit another grant proposal with Kirsch if he ever wanted to be funded again. Four years later, another scientist wrote a paper questioning the effectiveness of antidepressants, citing Kirsch's work. It was published in a prestigious journal. That ordinarily brings accolades. Instead, his department chair dressed him down and warned him not to become too involved with Kirsch.

When you read Newsweek's cover story, keep in mind:

1. Most of the research cited here has been available for analysis since 1998; if Kirsch's method of analysis is standard and is logically applied to the data in question, are we left with no choice other than to believe the information has been deliberately withheld from us? Both too pat and too paranoid for me.

2. Kirsch holds a PhD in psychology. Research claiming the lack of efficacy of medications and the greater efficacy of psychotherapy and non-medical modalities has historically come from psychologists, a field which previously failed in its bid to be approved in most states to prescribe the medications it now denounces. (Exceptions: in LA and NM, psychologists who additionally complete a two year masters degree in psychopharmacology can prescribe). Most of the studies that have historically shown greater efficacy of meds over psychotherapy have been funded by medical entities. Go figure.

3. On his departmental website, Kirsch states,

“My main research interest is in response expectancy, suggestion, and suggestibility. Among the domains in which I investigate these phenomena are: placebo effects, antidepressants, hypnosis, pain perception, behavioural automaticity, memory distortions, complementary and alternative medicine, cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, repetitive strain injury, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety disorders, and depression."

If the placebo effect can color patient response to antidepressants, can researcher bias color the interpretation of statistics?

4. The Hawthorne effect posits that subjects can improve simply by virtue of being studied, which complicates the placebo effect numbers in studies where patients are followed over time by researchers wielding depression scales. So the placebo numbers cited by Kirsch are not so clear-cut, either.

5. Most importantly, Kirsch’s book, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding The Antidepressant Myth, was published in 2009 in the UK, but at the end of January, 2010, in the US. Time Magazine covered this study in May, 2009, and far less provocatively. The Newsweek article is timed as a book review cum medical alarm, not as timely research news.

6. About the only business in this country that rivals traditional medical treatment for its claim on the patient dollar is the big business of Alternative Medicine, a largely unregulated field where patient exploitation is rampant. In an atmosphere of national distrust of the traditional medical world (not misplaced, entirely), patients are flocking, not to the trained and regulated psychologists and social workers, but to the practitioners of alternative therapies, who base their conclusions on individual patient stories…the very type of anecdotal evidence that the researchers would deny to patients trying to make actual decisions about their care today.

7. When Newsweek casts doubt on the efficacy of antidepressants for mild to moderate depression, they also sow those seeds of doubt, by implication, on other uses of those medications, such as in the treatment of depression associated with trauma for victims of disaster and veterans returning from war, or for obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety disorders. They sow distrust between patients and their doctors. And they sow doubt in the minds of patients who are being successfully treated. Begley admits, "To be sure, the drugs have helped tens of millions of people."

8. The article makes the issue of treatment an either/or proposition: either meds or therapy. Remember that the NIMH recommends both in combination; our attention is better placed on obtaining insurance coverage for both medication and psychotherapy for everyone in this country. The decision on whether to use meds, talk therapy, or a combination could be put back in the hands of the patient and the doctor.

At the very end of the article, Begley says, in reference to exposing the pill pushers, “Maybe it is time to pull back the curtain and see the wizard for what he is.” Yep. I agree that blind trust is a bad idea. And that patients must learn to act as self-advocates, which means more education about their own care. And that statistics aren’t always what they seem, no matter who publishes them. If we’re just looking at which player in this story is most against the ropes and most likely to stretch a point for effect, I’d say the print media is the most endangered of the three…that would be Newsweek.

And somebody licked the red off Sharon Begley's sugar pill, honey, 'cause this girl is PISSED; she's got an agenda with this article. Let's see, I think the telltale phrase was, "drug so strong it's making me vomit or hate sex." No, maybe the giveaway was her two references to Dumbo the Disney elephant to describe people who believe in their medication. And this is the cover story of a major news periodical? Now, I'm really worried about America.

Do you know someone who has been helped by medications for depression? How do you think they would react to this article? Do you distrust anything the FDA approves, period? Does Newsweek have a bias other than a desperate need to sell magazines? Could they possibly have picked a crappier time to go to press with this on their cover?

[image: http://psy.hull.ac.uk/Staff/i.kirsch/#L2]

She's Got Leg

2010-01-31T16:35:00.000-08:00

One of the advertised goals of Mature Landscaping is to describe aging from a personal perspective, so that 1) those of you who are doing it in tandem with me can feel genuinely okay about yourselves, safe in the knowledge that, if it’s happening to somebody who publishes a blog on the internet, it’s got to be normal, and 2) those of you who have yet to participate in aging can look forward to it, confident that you’ve been warned.

Continuing the tradition of journalistic excellence in pursuit of that goal, we have embedded ourselves, at considerable risk, in an iconic twenty-year-old, 2200 sq. footer with a rusting For Sale sign out front, located in a typical middle class retirement destination in a third-world Red State, slap in the middle of Fixed Income Hell…the front lines. It’s happening here first, folks, and, when it does, we’re bringing it to you.

Today, we’ll chronicle an under-reported phenomenon that’s widespread in my age group: the aging body has the ability to hurt itself doing absofrickin’lutely nothing whatsoever. And doctors will make it worse.

[We at Mature Landscaping have issued a policy statement to the effect that we are unanimously in favor of healthcare reform, but we firmly believe that there ought to be some healthcare, first. We know our job is just to report the news as accurately as possible; we leave the conclusions up to you (and we’re the only news source that does. You’ll have an opportunity to make valued input at the end of this report)].

We…well, since I was by myself at the time, sadly…I was taking a shower the other day, doing nothing inappropriate or useful (staring blankly into space, momentarily unable to recall what I was supposed to be doing, and letting the hot water run low). I was standing perfectly still and my right Achilles tendon injured itself. Suddenly, for no reason, and with pain involved. I couldn’t even put my weight on that foot without hot, stabbing pain shooting up my calf, so I did the usual Puritan thing and tried to ignore it for a few days…an approach that I remember working really well until I turned fifty-five, and one which I’ve applied with some degree of success to almost every physical condition except labor.

After about three weeks, when I’d gotten tired of limping pitifully and of receiving the kindly attention of my friends (and they’d begun to tire of giving it), I saw an ortho/sports medicine specialist who X-rayed the bone and used Doppler to rule out a blood clot. Then he sent me home with this honkin’ huge, heavy, awkward, black, rigid, ugly-ass, knee-high boot cast and told me to wear it 24 hours a day except in the shower for six weeks. Weeks. Six.

With help, I strapped in and took The Boot for a couple turns around the office, quickly ascertaining that the booted right leg was about three inches longer than the left one. And, that I couldn’t lift the booted leg high enough with each step to be sure I cleared the floor…at least not in anything approximating a gait that I’d want anyone to witness or that might propel me in an actual direction. No matter what I tried, I drug the sole of the boot a little with each step. I hung. I tried swinging the booted leg out wide to the side, sort of like Chester in “Gunsmoke,” but that quickly caused a searing pain in my right hip. Doc said I could look for “a sneaker with a really thick sole” to even out the legs “so I could walk normally.” Who makes a sneaker with a three-inch sole?! For that matter, who the hell still calls them sneakers…a sports medicine doctor?! I knew right then that about the only time I was likely to be willing to wear The Boot was while I was IN the shower standing still and that compliance with this quack’s instructions guaranteed that I would fall and break a hip before I got to my car in the parking lot.

After the doctor had left the consulting room—apparently satisfied with having produced another grateful patient on her way to a sure cure—I was left with the nurse who had brought me the paperwork and the invoice for The Boot. I tried a few more steps, hung the boot up on the leg of doc’s swivel stool, and saved myself from a fatal fall by grabbing hold of the nurse. She was a tiny little blonde thing who popped gum and reminded me of…what’s that tiny little blonde’s name who played June Carter Cash in that movie called what’s-its-name? Once we unraveled ourselves, I tentatively suggested that I might not be able to cope with my new boot and asked if Nurse June had any suggestions.

June left the room and I heard her tell Doc (cue the sarcasm), “Hey, she don’t wanna wear the boot! (Inaudible grumble from invisible doctor.) Hey, I dunno, she just don’t like it, I reckon. Pop.” Doc wheels in, all 6’4” of him, looking severe in his lavender shirt, matching tie, and black crew cut (who’s his style consultant, honey?) and says, “What’s this I hear about you refusing to wear the boot?!? “

I took the boot. Yeah, I know, you wouldn’t have, but I am a passive-aggressive Southern female; we like to bide our time and lull our victims into a false sense of security before taking our revenge.

I practiced some additional hobbling techniques as I stumped snaggle-legged down the hall with my hands full of coat, scarf, purse, paperwork, and a shoe. At the checkout, a woman with below-average intelligence (remember, average is 100 in America and something less than that in South Carolina) pushed paperwork at me across one of those little two-inch wide shelves that have sliding glass and no space to write…without pushing a pen with it. She was multitasking on the phone, and I got no response to my request for a pen. So I had to drop all my stuff on the floor and do a high G maneuver to locate a pen in the bottom of my purse. Which was on the floor. You’d be surprised how used we all are to bending our right knee whenever we want to.

I asked a another nurse who was passing by to assist me (nice gait; I'd already learned to admire that in people), but, instead of giving me any direct help, she asked my name and perfunctorily mumbled for my husband in the waiting room. He doesn’t like to admit that he’s got a teensy hearing loss issue. Nurse Two, she of the very visible Harley tattoo, gave the effort a full 2.5 seconds before marching past, saying she did not have time to spend searching for people's lost husbands. I can only conclude that everybody who comes to this particular medical office is of sound body and that there’s a real shortage of qualified nurses in our town.

My darling husband, who usually does display above-average intelligence, suggested on the way home from the doctor’s office that he could maybe help me look for a pair of those black, 3 inch platform flip-flops he’s seen women wear. The high today is about thirty-five degrees here. It makes him nervous when the world plays All-Encompassing Ass Clown with me, and I think it interferes with his mental processing.

Yet, all’s well that ends well. I’m happy to report that, after putting the boot in the garage 24 hours a day (except when I was in the shower), after a few days my leg felt better.

So, help me with this. Which would you do?

(a) Return the boot right away, unused, just a few days after being given it, and ask the doctor’s helpful staff to arrange a reimbursement from the manufacturer…maybe limp into the office in hopes that the genius who signed me out would take pity on me…in full and deluded expectation that this doctor, or any other in this town, would ever be willing to treat me again.

(b) Do something more creative with it. Go ahead and suggest something. I dare you.

[image: nordstrom.com]

Two Voices: Honoring The Sit-In of The Greensboro Four

2010-01-29T05:15:00.000-08:00

I share this post today with Sheria Reid of The Examined Life. We both grew up in the Jim Crow South, black and white. We bring our distinct voices and different perspectives together today to provide a tribute to four heroes, all who supported them, and the historic days in 1960 when we all began to change. We continue that effort, still, right here.

Nance: February 1^st marks the 50th anniversary of the Sit-in of The Greensboro Four, an historic event which, due to the media attention it received and the momentum it launched for desegregation, has been called the Dawn of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. My hometown marked the anniversary by opening the International Civil Rights Center and Museum at the old Woolworth & Co. building on Market Street on January 20th. The museum includes both a full-sized restoration and a child-sized replica of the lunch counter…and that seems fitting, for I have a child-sized, vivid memory of the time and the place.

Before the sit-ins, that particular Woolworth’s was familiar to me for Saturday morning visits to kid-level displays of the kind of five-and-dime, “Made In Japan” trinkets no six year old could resist; it’s lunch counter gained my devotion for vanilla-spiked fountain Coca Colas and buttery grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread…manna meant for all children. Black children could shop at Woolworth’s, but they could only eat standing with their parents at a designated “Non-Whites” area at the end of the big counter…and few parents would choose such a meal for their child.

By the time of the sit-ins, I was twelve and had outgrown Saturday visits to the dime-store after dance class; in seventh grade, I was being taught to read the newspaper seriously and to study current events as part of the flow of history. I was old enough to understand that something monumental, and monumentally sensible, was happening in our hometown. It seemed to pre-teen me that the grown-up rules for segregation, the visible manifestations of Jim Crow laws that were sometimes marked with signs and sometimes merely “understood,” were just stupid. I was sorry for the tension stirred by the protests, for there was real fear that harm would come to the college kids thought to be primarily involved, but I was pulling for them.

Sheria: I remember when I was Colored. I was born March 26, 1955 in Wilson County. The year before I was born, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its first decision in Brown v. the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education, striking down legal segregation.

Nance: To a child’s mind, separate doors, separate toilets and water fountains, the designated back seats of the bus, and the forbidden seats at the counter were all in the same class as the arbitrary rules of children’s games like Keep-Away, Red-Rover, and Hop-Scotch: somebody just made up such silliness and it only worked if everybody agreed to play the game. The Sit-in marked the day some smart folks refused to play. My 12-year-old opinion was: “Well, it’s high time and I’m glad somebody was brave.” I didn’t realize that the brave folks were not all that much older than me, but that would have made sense to me, too. I know now that the sit-in did not occur in a vacuum, that there had been a long history of resistance to Jim Crow and substantial challenges to segregation elsewhere in the country that had grown over the previous twenty years. Now, it’s clear that the actions of the Four could not have been attempted in the South at an earlier time.

On February 1, 1960, four young AT&T College students, Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain (seventeen years old) did a little late afternoon school supply and sundry shopping (toothpaste!) at Woolworth. When they had made their purchases, they sat down at the Whites-Only lunch counter and ordered coffee and doughnuts. This was so unprecedented, so unlikely a thing, that they were ignored and remained un-served until Woolworth’s closed at 5:00 p.m. Franklin McCain recalls:

"I think the waitress and the counter people were so perplexed and so surprised they tried to ignore us: 'They're not, they can't be sitting there! They're not sitting there! I can't believe what I'm seeing!'"

Sheria: I wasn’t quite five years old when four young AT&T College students, Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC and ordered coffee and donuts. It was 1960 and I don’t remember the sit-ins but I know all about them. The adults in my life talked about them for years.

Nance: It was some time before anyone thought to call the store’s owner. According to the timeline provided by The Greensboro News and Record , on February 2nd, the Greensboro Four were joined by twenty-five men, along with five young women from Greensboro’s Bennett College for “colored” women. By February 3rd, sixty-three of the sixty-five available seats at the lunch counter were occupied by protesters, and, on February 4th, five young white women from Greensboro Woman's College (UNC-G, today) joined them. There were many unsung heroes in those first days.

Ann Dearsley, Jeannie Seaman and Marilyn Lott were among the Greensboro Women’s College students. For an excellent interview with The News and Record for January 17, 2010, Ann Dearsley-Vernon recalls:

"We just read it in the newspaper one morning, and by mid-afternoon or early afternoon, we arrived” …The girls ordered nothing. The waitress backed away. An arts major, Dearsley-Vernon began sketching faces in the crowd on her lined notebook paper — even as, at one point, someone pressed a knife against the back of her Woman’s College jacket. The young women stayed until closing time but did not come back again... As the women stood up for their principles, there was still the matter of getting back to campus once the store closed.

Realizing their predicament, a group of young black men — who Dearsley-Vernon would come to learn were members of the N.C. A&T football team — joined hands around them and escorted the three past the angry crowd.

Back at school, the women were chastised by school officials and told they would have to leave. That changed after parents intervened, but Dearsley-Vernon didn’t get to walk across the stage to receive her diploma. Still, she doesn’t regret being guided by her convictions that day.

“Of many actions in my life,” she said, “this is one I would do again.”

The protest group eventually grew to over 300 (on a day known as Black Saturday) and was largely peaceful, although there was a regular police presence and unnecessary arrests were made. Logistics during the protest were a problem; the protesters could not risk being stopped along the route to Woolworth’s. The people who provided assistance to the original Four and who joined them to keep the counter manned throughout store hours are often referred to collectively as “The Fifth Man.”

Edward Lee McAdoo remembers being spit upon and threatened as he provided transportation from the colleges to the sit-in.

McAdoo’s job was to drive reinforcements to the lunch counter demonstration in his ’57 Galaxie convertible when the protesters thinned.

“David said, 'Cause, we’ve got to keep those chairs filled,’” McAdoo said, referring to his cousin, David Richmond. When McAdoo wasn’t giving rides, he sat alongside the others at the counter. Beginning the second day of the protest, he kept coming back.

“He dropped everything and became our main supporter,’’ Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair, Jr.) said of the former Marine. “He was very upset that he came home from service and was treated like a second-class citizen.”

McAdoo had to be extra careful as he rumbled back and forth downtown.

“I knew I couldn’t get arrested because I had a job to do,” McAdoo, now 74, recalled. “I had to get the people there. When the police tried to make an arrest, I’d move back in the crowd.”

Of course, the real heroes were the four young men who dared to do the unthinkable first, and who kept coming back again and again…the backbone of the beginning of the end of segregated dining in America. There is some disagreement about whether the protests were planned solely by these young men or whether the female students at Bennett College, along with a professor, were the original planners, but the Greensboro Four had the weight of the entire history of the country riding on their shoulders that first day.

Sheria: What I remember is the segregation that continued to prevail long after those first sit-ins. My mother would take me, and my younger sister and brother with her when she went shopping. The grocery store was fine. It was a black grocery store. Not black owned, the owner was white, but it was on the black side of town and only black people shopped at the store. Of course, we weren’t black then; we were colored.

Nance: The news coverage that the Greensboro protests received sparked lunch-counter sit-ins throughout America, an unstoppable movement that changed everything for the country. Back home in Greensboro, the protest ran on, only briefly interrupted by store closure until July 26th, the day Woolworth’s on Market Street was formally desegregated.

Sheria: However, there wasn’t much shopping on the black side of town, and we had to venture downtown for clothing and toiletries. Some of the stores had signs that proclaimed, “No Colored Allowed;” however, most of them wanted money, regardless of the color of the hand that proffered it. Many of them had separate entrances, a white only entrance and a colored only entrance. Some allowed us to enter through the same door but had restrictions on how we could shop. There was a ladies clothing store called Barshays. I remember my mother shopping for a hat there and the sales clerk made her put a white cloth over her hair before she could try on any hats. Only black women had to do that. Still, it was better than the stores where you couldn’t try on any items of clothing and all sales were final.

I learned practical things like which stores had two water fountains and two bathrooms. If there was only one fountain and one bathroom it was marked white only. If there was a second fountain or bathroom, it would be for colored only. Downtown Wilson merchants ignored the Brown decisions of 1954 and 1955 that declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal, and that segregation was outlawed.

However, my biggest disappointment was that I couldn’t sit at the lunch counter at the dime store and have a soda with crushed ice. Wilson had a Roses Five and Dime Store and it sold everything. I was always thrilled to follow my mother around, staring at all the wondrous items that lined the store’s shelves. At the front, near the checkout line, was the lunch counter where people sat on stools and ate hot dogs, and ice cream, and drank sodas with a straw. Except black people weren’t allowed to sit at the counter and had to go down to the far end where there was a sign, Coloreds. We could purchase food and drink but we had to go outside to eat it.

In spite of Brown, in spite of those four young men sitting at that lunch counter in Greensboro, the restrictions, the blatant practices of racism continued until I was a teenager. My memories of this are clear and are my own, not stories told to me by the adults. Wilson’s famous barbecue restaurant for many years was a place named Parker’s Barbecue. It had a huge dining room but I didn’t see it until I was in my teens. Colored people had to purchase their food at the back door; we weren’t allowed to come inside and sit down. Even after the law changed, customs didn’t change.

The Wilson that I grew up in had a white waiting room and a colored waiting room at the health clinic, the train station, the doctor’s office, even the stone benches in front of the court house where designated by skin color. The facilities were never equal in quality. Sometimes, white people my age who grew up in Wilson tell me that they don’t remember this. I used to think that they were either intentionally lying or just damn stupid. However, I’ve come to another conclusion. I think that when you are not the object of the discrimination, that the existence of it often makes no impression on you; perhaps oppression only leaves lasting scars on its victims.

Sometimes, people who are much younger than I am, ask why we tolerated it, why we didn’t just push for equality, after all the law was on our side. I tell them the other story that the grownups talked about when I was growing up. In August 1956, when I was 17 months old, Emmett Till, age 14, was murdered in Mississippi.

Two white men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, beat him, gouged out one of his eyes, and shot him in the head. Then they attached a 70 pound cotton gin fan to his body and threw him in the Tallahatchie River. His crime was being too familiar with the wife of one of the perpetrators [the details vary, some say he whistled at her and other stories say that he said “bye baby” as he was leaving the store where she worked]. The all male and all white jury deliberated 67 minutes before acquitting the two men. Following the trial, Look magazine paid Milam and Bryant $4,000 to tell their story. Double jeopardy had attached and so the two admitted to killing Emmett Till, explaining that they initially planned to just teach him a lesson but that Till was defiant and refused to show any fear, and they killed him to make an example of him. Milam died in 1980 and Bryant in 1994, both of cancer. Neither ever expressed any remorse for what they had done.

I find what those four young men began at the Woolworth’s lunch counter nothing short of miraculous. I don’t know that I would have had that much bravery. They were college students; one of them was only 17. I think that they surely must have had some fear; I have no doubt that they knew the story of Emmett Till.

Nance: Within that first week of lunch-counter desegregation, around 300 blacks sat for a meal at Woolworth’s five-and-dime. I like to think that some of them were eventually able to relax enough to enjoy some pretty good grilled cheese sandwiches.

Sheria: On this 50^th anniversary of that glorious act of civil disobedience, I salute Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain and all of those brave men and women that joined them day after day at that lunch counter and at lunch counters across America. The world in which I live now is so different that there are times when I almost forget what it was like to live in a world that pretended that separate was equal; almost…

TMI? Back To School!

2010-01-26T17:25:00.000-08:00

I'm swamped, stumped, and confounded by all the news and analysis I've subjected myself to lately. We Americans have become obsessed with the hourly signs and symptoms of our national health as they are broadcasted,Tweeted, and digitally provided to us in exhausting minutiae. And, of course, we can't turn away from poor Haiti. I confess that I can't process fast enough to take it all in and make something of it. I can't see the Big Picture anymore!

And the Little Picture, especially when it comes to politics, sucks so much canal water, my anxiety hyper-hydrates. Like you, I'm desperate for some good news...about our economy, about our national identity, about healthcare, about jobs, about anything! I'm like the hot, sweaty, hungry kid who's been in the backseat so long I have bucket-seat sores: my bladder is full, my stomach is empty, my skin itches with misery, and all I want to know is ARE WE THERE YET?!

In an effort to writhe away from it all, I've attempted in two previous posts to a) return to nature (that USED to work before News Abuse singed my synapses), and b) a little slapstick (futile...could you tell?), but my worry-wart tendencies have overcome my avoidance tactics. I find myself sneaking a twist of the car radio dial to catch "All Things Considered" on NPR or fingering the mouse for a quick peek at True/Slant. And, every time I try a personal news blackout, something dreadful happens out there and my media abstinence smacks of irresponsibility or indifference. I've been left feeling feeble when it comes to coping with what the hell's gonna happen next?! current events. Then, I had some luck today; a trip to the gym straightened things out a bit and I think I've found an elder's answer to information overload. It involves a little regression, but those of us who scamper in the shallows of senility (at any age) are used to a little regression.

When the DH has his regular racquetball date with our buddy, Stan, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go along to ride the recumbent bike in the cardio room. I like the bike that's right in front of the Food Channel TV monitor, because I can spy on the Fox News foolishness on the adjoining monitor without being mistaken for a Conservative. And I love a chance to talk to Stan; he teaches high school social studies and is always a sure source of informed opinion. As the guys were waiting for their raquetball court, we three talked about the outbreak of News Flu we'd been suffering: irritability, tendency toward panic attack, sudden outbursts aimed at anyone suspected of belonging to The Other Side, politically. Stan mentioned that he knocks himself out to keep up with developments, but today he got the best analysis of the Stimulus Plan that he's heard yet...on CNN Student News, right in his own classroom! I checked it out online as soon as I got home and he's right.

I've found my news source, and, as long as my ego doesn't get in the way, why would I go anywhere else? The producers and reporters shoot for that network anachronism, impartiality, when reporting the to teens, I suspect; their product resembles something closer to what I grew up expecting from the news. Logically, there's less blood-pressure-spiking alarmism apparent in student broadcasting; the last thing you need in a high school these days is to rile the little darlings up. And, since the news team plans for one news broadcast a day, the information is put succinctly and clearly. More facts; less spin. That's exactly what I need. To ice the cake, there's video, podcast, and a transcripted version.

Today, on CNN Student News, I was reminded that the Stimulus was designed to be delivered over time, that it isn't all out there yet, which means that it's pointless to take the Plan's temperature every half hour. We can stop snatching at the remote, hoping to spot the exact moment the whole country turns around from despair to hope. Oh, right. I forgot that. I never expected the Stimulus to work magic nor for the recovery to suddenly manifest out of thin air, but I kept watching for magic, anyway. Come on, admit it: you weren't just reading news blogs for half your day because you're seriously devoted to staying well-informed. This phenomenon has become more psychological than logical.

Certainly, poor Haiti won't recover faster if I traumatize myself with too many images. In fact, I wish I had the guts to just forgo the State of The Union address and the endless post-mortems and catch a summary on CNN Student News, instead. It's bound to play better coming from a source that understands that their target audience needs a calm, rational, no-drama approach, something closer to Uncle Walter Cronkite, with an analysis that's limited. I want my news to show respect for the larger context...that of a future that stretches on for many decades (past the listener's sophomore year of high school) and one that can conceive of centuries. Gosh, I'd forgotten about a future that big; I've developed 24-hour News Cycle Attention Span and Instant Analysis Stress Disorder. I don't know if I can break my addiction to news-dope, but Student News is a more benign alternative...like a patch for smokers; same drug, lower dose, timed delivery.

That futurity thing is a perspective I've missed a lot lately, as I grovel for news that my retirement plan may still recover while I'm alive to use it. And the efficiency of a student-sized broadcast will free up a lot of time in my day for things that I might actually enjoy....like mastering my skateboard skills.

Okay, okay, we'll start watching Student News AFTER the State of The Union Address. How do you cope with TMI? Do you turn off, drop out, succumb helplessly? Give us an up-to-the-minute report.

[Credits: scrapetv.com/.../images-2/high-school-class.JPG, diebilderwumme.blogspot.com/2007/10/skateboar...]

Having A Little Work Done

2010-01-24T17:39:00.000-08:00

ML and I have been out of commission for a couple of days, having, as Joan Rivers would put it, a little work done. Just botoxin' the blog. Actually, it's been the full lift: I've been the surgeon, ML has been the patient, and Blogger has provided the tools, such as they are: all five templates, four fonts, a kindergarten color palette, and the software equivalent of rusted pinking shears. My eyes burn. My brain is fried. I launched this makeover as a break from the week's horrid news; in terms of frustration level, I can't say there's been a net improvement. In fact, it's worse than the healthcare bill: I've stared at the thing for so long, I've lost my perspective... like most other Moderate Democrats. Touch-ups will be required.

Maybe what we Democrats could use now is a cheer-leading squad. Where is Obama Girl when you need her? Hey, George W. was a cheer-leader. Maybe he's not too busy to help out.

I've not heard a thing about how his speaking gigs are going, but, in the interest of bi-partisanship, shouldn't we consider putting him to work if he's available? A careful Google search on "George Bush speaking tour" shows the most recent entry as February 25th, 2009: "George Bush embarks on lucrative speaking tour..." and one on February 24th, 2009, "President Bush plans to earn a fortune on 10 year speaking tour..." It's the anniversary of George's speaking tour! Wonder how that's working out for him.

I'm thinking we liberals could probably hire him for a song these days; we're desperate for an unambiguous whipping boy...just pay George to make a few (entirely unsolicited) campaign endorsements for his party members, make a couple of disparaging remarks about how the current administration is handling things. We wouldn't even need to tweak his speeches; just let him go unscripted. We'd have another easy target to throw into the mix with Palin, and we need that right now...t'would cheer us right up, clarify things wonderfully. And we'd have somebody to be down on other than ourselves, each other, and our president.

Who ya gonna call?

[credits: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/02/24/2009-02-24_president_bush_embarks_on_first_speaking.html, scallywagandvagabond.com/wp-content/uploads/2... www.accesshollywood.com/content/images/86/ori..]

Stunned Mute

2010-01-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning, settled into the chaise with coffee and my laptop, glanced out the windows at the lake, and began to try to take in the headlines on my monitor: a huge aftershock in Haiti as strong as another full quake; a stupefying blow to the Democrats, with deadly impact on the healthcare reform game plan. Stunned.

Glimpsed motion from the windows and briefly noted the familiar sight of swans lifting off from the water toward our house, angling across the bank of windows from low left to high right…five Mute Swans out for their morning workout. And then the house jolted from a thud overhead that sounded like…well, like a fast-moving swan had just collided with the roof.

Improbable, all of it. And, hell, it all fit.

Outside, moments later, three swans were circling back on a curtailed flight plan. And two more stood like statues on the lawn, one guarding the other, but neither appearing wounded. Feathers on the roof proved my first hunch correct: the adolescent of the grounded pair had not pulled up fast enough, had been knocked silly, and probably had a really bad headache at the moment. Shortsighted, as adolescents tend to be…as we’ve all become with instant news and analysis around the clock...this bird had lost situational awareness.

I stood watching in the yard until both swans kicked into gear, ambled back toward the lake, and quickly gathered speed back down their watery runway, an easier take-off in the opposite direction. I saw them flying again and that was all I could do for them. I’m not as quick a study as I used to be, but there I was, only fifteen minutes into my day, and I’d had enough. I was not going to listen to or read any more news this day. I was going to spare myself, if I could, and that meant high-tailing it to Brookgreen Gardens…the beautiful grounds of a former rice plantation down the road and a haven of mid-week peace on this mid-winter morning.

I took the camera. The day was all I could have hoped for: a balmy sixty-six degrees; a gentle breeze stirring the Spanish Moss and making the dried wild rice stalks whisper reassurances; the gardens almost empty…only a few old couples like us who knew to move slowly and worship silently; the estuarine river at high tide. We ate lunch on the porch of the Old Kitchen.

When we got home, I found that my friend Sheria Reid of The Examined Life, who had just emailed me that morning that she likes to take her time with her well-crafted op-ed pieces, had felt the pressure and published fast…sad, angry and articulate. On the news front, I offer only: What she said. Go read it because it’s good and it’s true--"Conservatives Win; Progressives Whine; How progressives handed conservatives a win in Massachusetts." Sheria is a woman you want on your side.

The rest of this post consists of the pictures I made in the gardens today and a couple of swan shots. May they rest your soul.

Peace.

[Images: farm1.static.flickr.com/212/447648694_b6a695b...,biocrawler.com/w/images/9/91/Mute.swans.f.., s-tiger.photovillage.org/gallery/2363/Animals]

Where Credit Is Due

2010-01-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. (Voltaire)

When I was very young, my mother, Rachel, declared me to be an impatient person…which was ridiculous. All small children are impatient; they have no idea how long the world will last.

She pointedly praised the patience of the many old people we knew (the demographic in my little world seemed skewed toward old people over young at a rate of about 10 to 1), so I believed there was some hope for me eventually. And I’ve waited patiently for patience, only to realize…since my sudden arrival into Old… that somewhere back there I must have missed a cue and shot right past the Patience Window. It was probably when I was digging in the back of the dryer for a brown sock, or waiting for a small child to tie a shoe.

At the bookstore today, where I finally scored Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, I found myself in line at the information desk behind a woman who appeared to believe, improbably, that she was the only customer at Barnes and Noble on a Saturday afternoon who needed help to accomplish what she’d come for. I will call her Black Coat, and I’ve rarely seen a person less task-oriented or more goal-challenged. She was attempting to obtain credit for a delayed book order or buy a controlling interest in the corporation…it was hard to tell, but it was clearly very complicated and involved lots of storytelling. Lady couldn’t get no credit!

Patience is a most necessary quality for business: many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. (Chesterfield)

I stood still for a solid fifteen minutes, I vow…or, at least, eleven…while Black Coat attracted a gaggle of managers, all of whom had been anesthetized. They acted like they had all the time in the world. The scene reminded me of one of those road maintenance cartoons where seven guys stand around and supervise the one with the jackhammer. Clerk would ask Black Coat a question about her address and several cycles of inhalation and exhalation would pass before she began a long answer involving her husband and the neighbor’s parrot, accompanied by low, concerned murmuring among the managers...The Uh-Oh Squad. And then all parties involved would stare into space for a while and I would varicose another vein.

There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently (Shakespeare)

It was all taking so long and I was holding so still, I slipped into another dimension, out of first-person selfhood and into objective self-observation. As the yogis love to put it, it was very spacious inside my head. I was holding a quiet and mature conversation with Rachel in there, informing her that her daughter had arrived at last into real patience. I thought about the people in Haiti who wait for rescue, or water, or medical assistance. I was thinking I could stand there meditating like that all day, noticing my supreme patience, congratulating myself, when my boasted patience just abruptly vanished!

At times throughout my adulthood, I swear I have glimpsed myself actually striving to fulfill my mother’s characterization of me…”Oh, this is one of those moments where someone impatient would do thus and such”...and damned if I wouldn’t then do just that, which is what I think happened at the bookstore. One minute I was noticing my own patience and the next minute I was silently fuming, gesturing (discreetly), and alerting a semi-comatose manager that they were about to have An Incident if somebody didn’t do something immediately. And my observing self/internalized Rachel was saying, “See? I told you. You’re an impatient person.”

I was helped to find my book and no customers were harmed in the process, but I left so disappointed in myself…until now, as I think about it. I was chastising myself for allowing my patience to fail and failing to give myself credit for the patience I had already shown. I was being, as daughters of mothers tend to be, my own worst critic, and that is a problem more to be conquered in my maturity than is my lack of patience. It’s not too late. There may be time.

Patience is not meant to be a virtue unto itself; it is a means to an end. We use patience while we wait for some goal which we can reasonably hope to attain, because patience is less stressful than flailing impatience... for us and for everybody concerned. I had shown a full, grown-up portion of the desired virtue, despite an apparent lack of reasonable effort...even by B&N standards. The tough part was not the waiting, or even the experience of impatience; the tough part was the self-chastisement.

So, here’s my Old Age Resolution: I will silence the excessive mental harangue and give some credit where it’s due. Rachel was often patient with my impatience, so I’ll give her credit. And I’ll be patient with myself as I work to cut me some slack. Inhale. Exhale. I’ve got all the time in the world.

Can you relate? How's your patience quotient? Queue up.

[Images: www.lunatheater.org/line_image.gif, farm4.static.flickr.com/3511/3802516085_e7292.., http://www.kirstenmiller.co.za/images/Standing%20in%20Line%20%20(small).jpg]

Granny Plays Grand Theft Auto

2010-01-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

For a change from the usual assisted living bingo, Ethel and Mildred decide to take a Sunday afternoon drive. Ethel drives and Mildred rides shotgun. When Ethel runs her second red light in a row, Mildred decides she has to speak up. “Ethel, did you know you’ve just driven through two red lights in a row?” And Ethel says, “Sh*t, am I driving?!” In 2040, they’ll still be telling this joke, but the drivers will be named Tiffany and Heather.

My husband and I have been keeping an eye on our driving skills...well, I keep an eye on his and he tries to keep it on the road while I share my carefully phrased observations with him. My kids will hurt themselves laughing if they read this, but I think that I’m a good driver.

Of course, we all make that claim and some of us obviously have got to be wrong. Judging by conventional wisdom and the American stock of well-known driving jokes, a large majority of the World’s Worst Drivers are little old ladies. The rest, by default, are little old men who tell little-old-lady-driver jokes. Regardless of your age, you’re going to be sharing the road with me and my ilk for a while, so you might want to take a look at this.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in 2006 that were 30 million licensed drivers over the age of 65 on the roads at the time. Next year, the first wave of our Boom generation will swell those ranks, and even though I’m due to be part of the problem by 2013, the prospect of being on the roads with the rest of my generation scares me silly.

NHTSA published data in 1996 showing that male drivers are involved in 65% of police-reported crashes and 75% of crash fatalities. They also showed that only 6000 drivers 65+ were involved in fatal crashes as opposed to 44,000 drivers between 21 and 64 years old. In other words, statistically, I am in the lowest risk group for drivers of any age. Tell it to the Highway Patrol. This left lane has fewer cars in it and I’m going to need to turn left in a few miles, so I might as well be efficient and stay put. With my blinker on. At a nice, safe 45 mph.

Really, I’m a careful Defensive Driver (when was the last time you heard anyone use that phrase?) and I boast a spotless driving record. On two on-line tests of my UFOV (Useful Field of View) and my Divided Attention abilities, which are the first to decline with age, I’m average to above-average (read down to click and test yourself). And, if I want to spend between $60 and $400, I can buy video games specifically designed to help me drive better by training my aging brain. Or, according to Kaspar Mossman in the Jan/Feb issue of “Scientific American Mind,” I can accomplish the same thing by playing Grand Theft Auto.

Both AAA and Allstate Insurance have signed on to endorse the use of games that improve cognitive awareness and driving response time for seniors. Allstate Insurance is said to be so enamored of pricey games designed by Posit Science that they’re offering them to their insured senior drivers at a discount. The game set includes two programs, Jewel Driver and Road Tour; you can demo Jewel Driver and get a measure of your Divided Attention functions. I scored a 2.73 on it and I invite you to beat my score by clicking on that link. Let me know how you do. Oddly, it involves little hairy puffer fish and weird, glowing red jewels, rather than cars and roads, and I found it just annoying enough to rule out purchasing it…unless somebody threatens to take my wheels away from me; then, you can sign me right up. Even so, I’d have trouble wanting to play it the twenty minutes a day that are recommended.

AAA’s website offers a short tutorial and test of UFOV that’s challenging, fun, and logical, since it involves cars and peripheral vision. My score was “Average,” with no explanation of what that means, but I felt reassured nonetheless.

Cognifit’s Senior Driver , another brain trainer, offers 24 sessions for $99.00. They’ve won Britain's Prince Michael Award For Safe Driving; I'd had the impression that the only thing the manly young royals were famous for was making it onto the cover of Star Magazine in nail polish, but this merely illustrates my failure to grasp the intricacies of the Monarchy. Call me distractible; I had to wander off the road here to learn that Prince Michael is HRH Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin and has little to do, apparently, but bestow awards. I checked out his pictures…no nail polish, which boosts Cognifit’s product in my esteem. The Prince is a severe elder-hottie.

Cognifit claims to “exercise ten driving-related cognitive abilities” with a variety of tasks and games. There was no specific demo for Senior Driver, but there was a demo of their Personal Coach software, and the tasks I tried were fun, especially the butterfly/flower one. They assess your results, and I did well, so maybe I don’t need Cognifit yet. There’s no video to purchase; instead, you purchase packages on-line…a downside, since you can’t repeat the games without purchasing more. They offer a money-back guarantee, but I’m stumped as to how they assess actual improvement in an individual user’s driving skills.

Enough of the puffer fish and butterflies; I’m ready for some grownup stuff...I think. Mossman claims in his article that the same cognitive functions tasked by these highly researched programs for older drivers can be improved by playing Grand Theft Auto. I don’t have an X-box or an available adolescent to borrow from, so I looked for trailers available at YouTube and the demos available at gaming websites. Have you ever seen this stuff!? I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong with America.

I understand from Paul Tassi at True/Slant that Germany is looking to outlaw violent video games entirely. There’s a growing body of good research showing negative socialization scores for frequent users of violent games. Mossman couldn’t convince his 66 year old mother to give GTA a try, so he tried it himself. He concludes:

I can report that Grand Theft Auto has a considerable effect on a driver’s brain. It weakens inhibitions. As I piloted the family Subaru on a shopping trip, I was more aware of pedestrians on the sidewalk, but a little voice in my head was telling me to run them over and score their cash and drugs.

From my own research on GTA IV, I feel much more cognitively aware already; I’m aware that I’m reluctant to get out there on the roads at all! I finally understand more about what might have influenced the kid I saw yesterday driving an obscenely tricked-out yellow Hummer. In what amounts to rush hour (high school’s let out) on our 55 mph by-pass, he pulled directly out into tightly packed, accelerating traffic, executing a 90 degree turn from a dead stop, no acceleration lane. The Red Sedan that Hummer pulled in front of never even touched his brakes; Red Sedan just continued doing the high speed weaving from lane to lane that he’d been doing all along.

I’m sticking with puffer fish and butterflies. Older drivers, are your skills as good as ever? Do my younger readers have some thoughts about grannies behind the wheel? Go ahead; pull on out.

[Images: http://www.princemichael.org.uk/gallery/index.html, https://store.positscience.com/aaa, http://www.cognifit.com/products/cognifit/cognifit-personal-coach/demo, http://trueslant.com/tassi/2009/06/08/germany-on-the-brink-of-banning-all-violent-video-games/, www.chrisredford.com/.../2009/05/old-driver.bm]

Kairos, Chronos, Crones, and Confusion

2010-01-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

Kairos: an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment, usually determined by examining the portents. A conjunction of events which has been determined by the fates and foretold by soothsayers, oracles, and crones.

I’ll be sixty-two in March of 2010. As fate would have it, the two best pieces of news in my small world this week are, 1) that I am now eligible for Social Security and, 2) according to an article I read in a highly respected newspaper, that I am not old anymore; I’m only middle aged.

Sounds like free money and the fountain of youth arrived at the same time, but I can’t seem to fully appreciate either one of these boons due to my awareness of the other one. In fact, I’ve been so busy pondering these two apparently mutually exclusive concepts, my DH thinks I’m going senile. He keeps mentioning things he says we discussed just days ago and I have no idea what he’s talking about....for example, DH says, “You know the other day when I left the credit card in the ATM and it was gone when I went back?,“ and I draw a blank. You’d recall if your husband said something like that, right? Honestly, I don’t ever remember being this forgetful. Bear with me while I sort this thing out.

This is not really a blog post on Social Security, but it merits a mention. Briefly, the dilemma for all us old farts is, of course, when to take benefits. Once decided, it’s easy to apply online. Whether we should take them at 62 or hold out until our seventies seems to boil down to three variables: 1) our current personal financial environment; 2) whether we think the 8% “return on investment” we reap by waiting until 66 is too good to pass up; and 3) whether we believe there will be anything still recognizable as Social Security three or four years from now. That’s two more variables than I can manage with this inflexible, aged brain of mine.

The decision to take or delay benefits is entirely individual for each eligible person. Just because the clock says I'm eligible, doesn't mean the time is right for me. And, if it's possible to take the benefits too early for my own good, what about taking them too late? If I’m really growing more distractible by the day, as my DH fears, might I not risk failing to apply for benefits at 70 because I keep trying to log on to my laptop using my universal remote control? Maybe I should throw in another variable: not just how old I am, but how old I feel.

Here’s where the fountain of youth comes in. To distract myself from a day of obsessing on the complexities of government-run pension funds, I searched online for the latest on age and brain resilience…and added age-identity confusion to my dilemma. Barbara Strauch, who looks attractively middle aged in her bio pic, writes in her article “How To Train The Aging Brain,” from The NYTimes online,

Brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s, also get more easily distracted. Start boiling water for pasta, go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — all thoughts of boiling water disappear. Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, fall into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begins daydreaming.

This is a most disconcerting. If I’m still well within middle-age at almost-sixty-two, does that make my claim to cronedom in my blog banner a sham? See that bright blue and yellow rectangular badge in the right sidebar proclaiming that “Elderbloggers Rule”? That’s a link to my favorite group blog, Time Goes By , which just accepted yours truly onto their blog roll….ta da! Do I have to recuse myself? And what does that mean for my Social Security decision; if I take the full benefit now, in Middle Age, am I demonstrating a lack of integrity?

For that matter, I finally got my brown hair dye three-quarters grown out and am well on my way to being grizzled in a courageous effort to embrace my maturity and thus enhance my claim to wisdom; have I been walking around looking like a brindle cat with mange for nothing? If this is a mid-life crisis I’m having and not legitimate old age brain-fog--whoosh-- shouldn’t I go buy some pants that don’t have elastic waistbands and some shoes with a little heel? Social Security can wait, honey, while I get to the bottom of how old I really am.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Middle Age as the range between 45 and 60. I’m going to assume that Old Age starts where the middle leaves off. The Collins Dictionary agrees with most sources in defining Middle Age as the period between 40 and 60. Wikipedia states that the US census confusingly defines Middle Age by including two age ranges: between 35 and 44 and between 45 and 54; that would disorient the old gang on Friends and it puts me about seven years further toward senility than I’m willing to concede. I don’t trust AARP to define this for me, since they are selling ads for their magazine based on readership; I don’t know anyone who likes getting their first issue in the mail. When I finally looked at it last year instead of throwing it directly away, I found it’s got some good articles. This paragraph is starting to sound like Andy Rooney on “Sixty Minutes,” which ought to go a ways toward establishing my old gal chops.

I hardly ever take anyone’s word for anything, so I started looking at the Actuarial Tables, used by insurance companies to determine average life expectancy, to see if I could come up with my own numbers. According to the official table , at my age I’ve got 21.5 years left, which puts average life span in the US for my age group at 82.5. That would mean, if we divide age segments up into four parts (Youth, Adulthood, Middle Age, and Old Age), then I’m moving from Middle to Old this year, which jives pretty well with the way the government has it worked out for Social Security.

Richard Darlington at Cornell explains the formula by which life expectancy is figured:

When you read a headline saying for instance that American life expectancy has increased but is below Japan's, it is always using what might be called "life expectancy at birth", or more precisely the expected age at death for a newborn infant. Let's call this definition of life expectancy LE1, and call the alternate definition LE2. LE2 is the average expected age at death for people now living. To see the difference between LE1 and LE2, consider that a table of 1989 life expectancies shows the life expectancy for a newborn American white female to be 79.2. But a white female who is already age 80 has an expected future life expectancy of 8.9 years, and thus an expected age at death of 88.9 years. One's future life expectancy of course falls as one ages, but one's expected age at death only rises--slowly at first and then more rapidly. For American white females of ages 0, 20, 40, 60, and 80, expected age at death is respectively 79.2, 80.2, 80.9, 82.9, and 88.9. Therefore LE2, defined as the mean expected age at death for people now living, always exceeds LE1.

Basically, this means that the longer we live, the longer we get to live. Consider me a fan of LE2. That takes care of whether to renew my membership at Curves for another year. Looked at all together, the various ways of figuring out my age category have left me in some kind of limbo between Middle and Old, which is highly disorienting. Maybe some of us are old at 62 and some of us are still middle aged, similar to the way some seventh graders look 10 and some need to shave...only backwards. We can certainly all agree that middle school sucks.

Finally, I found a list of some physical signs that help define Old Age:

§ wrinkles and liver spots on the skin

§ change of hair color to gray or white

§ hair loss

§ lessened hearing

§ diminished eyesight

§ slower reaction times and agility

§ reduced ability to think clearly

§ difficulty recalling memories

§ lessening or cessation of sex, sometimes because of physical symptoms such as erectile dysfunction in men, but often simply a decline in libido

§ greater susceptibility to bone diseases such as osteoarthritis.

I’m nine for ten on this list and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, I think I’ve decided to take a Social Security Spousal Benefit, which amounts right now to about a third of my spouse’s benefit. After we pay taxes on it, that’ll just about pay for Continuing Long Term Care Insurance for me with enough left over for a pedicure each month. Or a session with a colorist every other month. Suggestions?

(farm3.static.flickr.com/2307/1846243519_f3430.., domestikgoddess.com/.../salvador-shelf-clock.jpg, gizmodo.com/.../resources/2006/07/daliclock.jpg)

The Devil Wears Loafers; Or, Sticking It To The Joy Mongers, Part 2

2010-01-04T14:18:00.000-08:00

It’s the first workday of a brand new year and I lied. That upbeat post I promised will have to wait, because I just got skyjacked by a movie and that book (Ehrenreich’s Brightsided), and wound up mad all over again. The news right now is jobs…maybe yours. The latest well-tweaked unemployment numbers look good, but I’m not rejoicing yet and I’ll bet you aren’t either. Bear with me. I’ve got some threads to try to weave together coherently here.

Last night I saw “Up In The Air,” with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga, and I had trouble sleeping afterwards. The movie was great, maybe Oscar-worthy, and Clooney never looked better: believable, sincere, warm, lovable, and shallow way down deep. The man plays personality disorder better than anyone I’ve ever seen. His Ryan Bingham is a guy who’s lost his soul helping America’s corporations downsize without lawsuit. I won’t give it away by describing how he almost wins over the audience, but, if you leave the theater feeling anything less than furious, you might need to “see somebody.” Just make sure you don’t see a Life Coach.

So, here’s how the book comes into it. I sat up reading at bedtime and happened to be on the chapter entitled “Motivating Business and The Business of Motivation.” In this chapter Ehrenreich nails the link between our stupefying jobless rate, the Ryan Binghams of this world, and those well-compensated purveyors of positivity, the motivational coaches. Here’s Ehrenreich on the most recent evolution of Positive Thinking:

A whole industry has grown up to promote positive thinking, and the product of this industry is “motivation.” Millions of individuals buy these [motivational] products. People facing major illnesses are particularly susceptible, as are the unemployed and people in risky lines of work…But the motivation industry would not have become the multibillion-dollar business that it is if it depended entirely on the individual consumers. It carved out a much larger and more free-spending market, and that new market was business in general, including America’s largest companies.

Ehrenreich explains that corporations not only employ contractors like Clooney’s character in “Up In The Air” to fire their employees, they also hire them to counsel those same employees in an effort to avoid lawsuit. The counseling mostly deals with avoiding negativity, staying motivated, and never saying die. Corporations additionally hire these same contractors or others like them to prod the “survivors,” those who keep their jobs, to higher levels of production and to make them feel responsible for managing their own emotional reactions to the tsunami of waste, loss, and upheaval in their ranks. In the movie, Ryan Bingham moonlights as a motivational speaker for corporate groups, paid by the corporations. I see a new media trend starting to emerge, bringing public awareness to the unrelenting back beat of all this upbeat-ness. Ehrenreich, again:

In the hands of employers, positive thinking has been transformed into something its nineteenth century proponents [like Emerson] probably never imagined—not an exhortation to get up and get going but a means of social control in the workplace, a goad to perform at ever-higher levels…With “motivation” as the whip, positive thinking became the hallmark of the compliant employee, and as the conditions of corporate employment worsened in the age of downsizing that began in the 1980’s, the hand on the whip grew heavier.

If you find the lonely Ryan Bingham character a little exaggerated, as Bingham would say, “make no mistake;” truth is often uglier than fiction. The consultants who are hired to force employees to quit so that the corporation can avoid expensive severance packages are even darker players in this game; they know without doubt that they are despicable and deserving of social outcast, but the job pays so well and it's just a little addictive.

Long ago and far away, I worked with a man who did that hateful job for many years. He wanted to relocate his soul. He’d finally turned his back on the business of bedevilment, but too late to save his marriage, which didn’t surprise him; he could barely tolerate living with himself, much less expect a wife to do so. It was one of the most painful divorce stories I’ve ever heard. Because his wife knew that he was skilled in forcing another person to abandon their own best interests, she refused to leave their home no matter how unpleasant he made it for her. He, of course, could not leave…he had no training at retiring from the field. They made the house their killing ground and neither would budge for over a year, a year of hell for them and for their children. He lost everything, including his children’s regard…a taste of the life he’d inflicted on others when he shamed them out of employment they may have loved and certainly needed.

Here’s Neutron Jack Welch, famous for chopping 299,000 employees from GE’s payrolls worldwide, in an interview with a UK reporter:

"I upgrade the organisation. I'm constantly evaluating. People always know where they stand. They'll be coached and they'll be expected to bring themselves along, and if they don't make it, they may be happier somewhere else. If you don't make it at the Independent, maybe there's a small-town paper you will be happier working at ...

"Letting people get out early who are not going to make it in the long haul is true kindness. The false kindness is letting people go when they are in their fifties. For 20 years they've been toiling along being told 'you're wonderful, you're wonderful'. And then being called in and told they don't have a job. That's cruelty."

Here’s cruelty: I also knew a man in his late fifties who was drummed out of his job with a huge company, usually known for its humane HR practices, by a hired hatchet man. As it turned out, due to widespread hiring discrimination against his age group, he was also done out of his career. He was finished, whether he liked it or not. He had daughters in private colleges. In the mid-nineties, men his age couldn’t get hired by anyone other than Lowes. His wife left him because he couldn’t seem to shake his funk. His daughters rejected him because they had to leave their schools for bigger, less prestigious state campuses and because they thought he’d been too preoccupied to “be there” for their mother. About a year after the bottom fell out, he was desperately trying to recover from all this with the help of some corporate-recommended motivational CD’s and a new Life Coach, but he dropped dead at 57 from a massive coronary. You might say that would have happened anyway, but I know that he died because somebody moved his cheese.

The same motivational speakers and “coaches” that began to thrive alongside the massive layoffs of the nineties were (and still are) also hired to provide resume writing expertise and job-search cheerleading to downsized employees as part of their severance package, often in “networking seminars”. This practice and the field of motivational training start to look really diabolical at this point. Ehrenreich states that she “attended about a dozen of these networking events and ‘boot camps’ for white-collar job seekers in 2005 and found that the core message was positive thinking; whatever happens to you is a result of your attitude. In other words, if you got fired, it’s because you didn’t think positively enough; if you just avoid negative thinking, you can’t help but find a new job. If you don’t, well that’s your fault, too.

I’m sorry…excuse me. I’ll be right back…I need to be airsick for a minute.

Okay, I’m back. I feel much better. I paid a little visit to an upbeat website you might find interesting: Larry Crane’s and Lester Levenson’s “Release Technique” (releasing your negative thinking), promising health, wealth, and happiness in seminar-sized chunks. You can sign up for the Millionaire Abundance Retreat or the 7-Day Life Mastery Retreat, which is endorsed in a testimonial by Joe Vitale of “The Secret” fame. Oh, brother. I imagine they’ve dropped the sweat lodge segment. Their customers are chiefly the recently and not-so-recently unemployed, and motivational speakers, and members of the Life Coach brigade. Doesn't that seem sort of incestuous in a networkish kind of way?

In the No One Is Immune category, I’ve found out that the first round of employees in India who were the recipients of our lost jobs are worried about being downsized and replaced with cheaper hires. They began making too much money and were starting to want benefits.

We all know stories. We all know somebody who’s been affected. Tweaked unemployment figures aren’t good enough. What can we do? First, don’t think it’s over, because it isn’t. We can’t expect to reverse globalization or bring all the jobs home, but we don’t have to believe we’ve done it to ourselves, as the joy mongers imply. We don’t have to drink the Kool Aid. Exposure is the only thing that will stop this trend—exposure of the facts and a firm refusal to blame ourselves, no matter what the motivational coaches preach.

Have you read the book? Have you seen the movie? Do you know someone who got done in or did the doing? Run your mouth.

[image: altfg.com, www.socialsignal.com/.../2008-03-22-freedom.gif, http://despair.com/demotivation.html (The Demotivation poster is from Despair, Inc, a company that specializes in anti-joymongering for employees. A little sanity)]

The Screened Door

2010-01-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

We have a saying we use in the South when we want to direct someone off the premises: Don’t let the screened door hit you in the ass on your way out. It’s funny that the part of the country known for its good manners is the same region that’s infamous for its raw aphorisms. When it comes to saying farewell to the decade that opened with hanging chads and closed with explosive underwear, I’m not sure I trust the screened door to deliver enough kick. You won’t need me to count the ways the Naughty Naughties failed us as a nation. I don’t need that, either; I’m already working on an optimistic post about the decade ahead.

For this one day, in the spirit of telling this aging stuff like it is, I’m going to indulge myself by looking back personally at the past ten years. There have been classic sixth decade passages, with some significant losses that are to be expected for this time of life. All of them fit into my understanding of the most important developmental task of aging, which is to learn to accept with some grace the gradual peeling away of the powers and acquisitions of the first two thirds of life. It’s not usually a pretty process and you don’t have to like it; you just have to do it without being ugly about it. I’m shooting for that, and to see the gains that showed up along the same route.

I lost both of my parents…my mother, in July 2001, to a cancer that moved so fast and so stealthily, we did not know of it until it was too late; my father, in September 2005, by a much slower process that was pain-free and gave us lots of time together. My beautiful daughter told me that we do not go through grief; grief goes through us. I liken it to standing waist deep in the ocean, facing the shore: you know waves will come, but you never know exactly when the next one will arrive, how high it will be, or whether you will be able to stay on your feet for it. I also lost two first cousins, both younger than I; these losses were cruel in their untimeliness and, particularly, because I had not been close enough to either cousin in the preceding years. I thought I had time. And I lost an uncle who had figured prominently in my childhood.

As an only child, it fell to me to manage both of my parents’ wills and estates. I cleared out the home they had designed and built forty years earlier. We were fortunate to have young relatives, with a small son, who wanted the house and could take good care of it, but I had moments of feeling like a homeless orphan. My parents were the heart of prudence and had been lucky in their investments, so they left me able to retire at sixty from private practice. The recession took a chunk out of those plans, making the retirement a mistake that couldn’t be readily undone.

Both of my children finished their educations and moved away into their own careers and relationships. They both live too far away to reach easily except by air. My neighborhood has declined. Arthritis has cut a swath through my long, long walks.

I gained a paid-off mortgage. And strong, good relationships with my adult children. And two kind and funny young in-laws, two step-grandchildren, and one beloved birth grandson. And retirement with my husband. And the experience of being bi-coastal for a couple of years so that I could be with my daughter and her family for more than short vacations. I’ve had the career I had always wanted, so there were no regrets or resentments in ending it. We are not financially afraid for now and are able to help our kids out a little as they face this rude recession.

In all, I can't say that anything unfair or unimagined has occurred this decade...in my small sphere, I mean. I’ve been helped knowing that women throughout history have buried their parents and gone on to be glad for their own lives. And, lots of people have either survived retirement or faced believing they can never retire. And, although painful, osteoarthritis is a fairly pedestrian ailment (pun intended). I can't complain...well, I could, but it wouldn't make a difference.

It’s been both a terrible decade and a fortunate one. Which way I feel about it depends on the barometric pressure that day. The joy mongers can pipe down now. I’m shooting to live up to my parents’ examples for how to do this segment of life. They were the best role models for aging I could ever imagine...for authentic aging, that is; not for the ageist, age-avoidance model that's so often hyped as the way to go these days....you know, aging that's age-adjusted for how well you're fooling folks about how old you really are and the whole sixty-is-the-new-forty con. That stuff needs to go the way of cardboard and cellophane 3D glasses; nobody ever really believed it, anyway. Go ahead, get me started.

A couple of follow ups: The Vegan Challenge lasted, almost unbesmirched, from August through November of this year. At first, I thought I’d starve, but I didn’t…I didn’t even lose weight. I’ve tried returning to normal carnivorousness, but I just can’t love it anymore. Vegan eating is a pain in the butt, because you spend a lot more time thinking about what to eat, finding the ingredients, and preparing the meals; most of my friends and family found it burdensome in some fashion; it failed to meet the hype for better health; but, somehow, I find I prefer it. My daughter-in-law said, “Aw, just be a vegetarian and get over yourself,” and I think she’s right.

Oh, and the people who looked at our house Christmas week did like it, but the back yard wasn’t big enough for them...too big for us, too small for them. The realtor who showed the house said it was beautiful and she'd show it again (scrambled ambivalence!). I bet the Happy Holiday Home fragrance spray did the trick for her. Yeah, I sprayed it. You knew I would.

I’m working on that next post, the one where I share what’s got me excited and hopeful for our country in the next decade. What’s creating hope for you? And I’m longing to know, Dear Reader, whether you make resolutions and what they are. I’ve been making the same one since 1973: Get goofier. I’ve been successful every year

As for you, Two-Thousand-And-Nine, don’t let the screened door hit you in the ass on your way out.

[images-3.redbubble.net/img/art/border:blackwi.., www.reesepillow.com/.../artwork/screen.jpg]

Sticking It To The Joy Mongers

2009-12-28T13:26:00.000-08:00

The truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts. Positive thinking may be a quintessentially American activity, associated in our minds with both individual and national success, but it is driven by a terrible insecurity. Barbara Ehrenreich

You read it here first: psychology is dead. It’s been the love of my life since my teens, but I’ve fallen out of love with it, so I’m killing it off. Its claim to be one of the sciences has never held up well, but in the last decade the field of psychology has been making a fool of itself again… and, judging by the stuff I’ve been reading lately, I don’t think the victim should be revived. Or maybe I’m just pissed ‘cause I flunked the Joy Movement.

By psychology, I don’t mean neuroscience, the legitimate study of the brain that, despite having been named at conception, was only birthed in the nineties thanks to advances in imaging techniques like fMRI. And I don’t mean sociology which lends itself to collection of data and something like scientific observation of the behaviors of the human species. No, the entity I’m killing off is the bastard child of philosophy and mind-reading, whose only product has been theories and movements…some of which have demonstrated real value by virtue of being sensible, but many of which lacked “legs,” historically speaking, and heads, too, methinks.

To offer an example or two of the foolishness that is so often at the core of psychological “schools” and movements, consider Freud’s psychosexual theories that we are all trying to climb back into the womb and are essentially made in the mold of Oedipus or Electra. When we in the West got wind of that one, we were psychoanalyzing each other to a fare-thee-well. Today, while we still build on his theory of conscious and unconscious drives, we’ve largely relegated Freud to the ranks of those honorary first-pitchers who open the real ball games.

Or take dream interpretation and symbology, which claimed to be able to reveal to you the real meaning of the props in your sleeping soap operas, from daffodil to dagger. Yes, I know a discussion of dreams has often given an artful therapist the opening needed to help the patient verbalize the unspeakable, but dream symbology has produced more parlor games than cured psyches.

And there was the whole Sensitivity Group movement of the seventies that convened small groups of strangers and encouraged them to examine and share with the group every emotion and thought engendered by the fact that they’d been convened to examine and share with the group every emotion and thought engendered….(help me find my way out of this sentence, please). It’s taken a long time, but I believe, with this year’s tragic sweat lodge deaths, we are finally done with T-groups, awareness trainings, Esalen re-enactors, and their often secretly sadistic “facilitators.”

But the movement I most look forward to seeing debunked is the Authentic Happiness movement offered by Martin Seligman, PhD. This school also goes by the name of Positive Psychology. The marketing savvy at work in these names is remarkable; who would argue with a PhD who sells the real, authentic happiness, as opposed to that ersatz brand you’d been shooting for? And, since Seligman has a handle on positive psychology, his nay-sayers, those wet blankets who notice his hard sell and his soft statistics, can only belong to the School of Negative Psychology. Having staked his claim to ownership of the Real Deal, Dr. Seligman trains and certifies his own clinicians, who will have to return to the university where he holds tenure in order to keep their certification current. He’s created his own, self-sufficient empire…genius! But the emperor is about to be called out.

I do not want you to be unhappy; that’s not it, at all. The problem is that by practicing the techniques Seligman offers on his website, we can all lift ourselves out of a bad day or a bad week, but none of us can program our share of sorrow out of life. Positive Psychology is a handy tool but it isn’t new…remember Norman Vincent Peale? And it isn’t Life Changing. It’s just well-marketed by a man with credentials to bank on and a university handy. And the movement is doomed, because it was a school for its time…the financially secure nineties and the born-again oughties (zeroes? naughts? the oh’s?)…you know, that crucial couple of decades when we should have gotten serious about climate change, health care, the nearly-criminal hike in housing prices, and the financial exploitation of your 401K, among other things.

Besides, I couldn’t get serious about all that happiness. I really tried. When I first heard of Seligman and some of his highly respected colleagues, I was thrilled: finally, somebody had figured out how to make us happy without a pill! I studied it carefully, mouthed as much of it as I could stomach, started about a dozen gratitude journals, and reframed everything I could get my hands on. But I got bored, to be perfectly honest. It was too trippy, too…unrealistic! I thought, maybe it’s me, but I can’t endorse this, because something doesn’t ring true. I still believe in reframing, the cognitive technique where you choose other possible words to describe your situation and watch your feelings about it change correspondingly, but I think its primary purpose is to prevent the extremes of dramatic negativity (like some chick who claims psychology is dead just because she doesn’t think highly of a particular school of thought).

Sad happens. Someone you love dies and authentic mourning replaces Authentic Happiness. Your retirement plan tanks, your health takes a turn, your son is diagnosed, your husband is called up. Life does its own thing and the unpleasant emotions we’re supposed to feel show up just like they are supposed to. And we can still feel grateful for everything else, but we’re actually Positive Psychology school dropouts because we didn’t succeed in preventing sadness. These brains are not meant to ignore the fact that living operates along a continuum from joy to pain, and always has.

I had to really stop and think about it, because the positive psychology movement is ubiquitous…you cannot get away from it, not at church, not on Oprah, certainly not on Facebook or Twitter, not even at the vet’s office or the Weather Channel. It’s an idea borrowed from the pulpit and unprofessionally disguised as theory. It went straight from re-invention to pop psychology without ever passing through the floppy rigors of a pseudo-science. And both its unoriginal authors and its legions of gung-ho proponents seem to have some sort of moral advantage over the rest of us, as if they are not only entitled to happiness, but that, by claiming it, they are superior to the doubters. I personally prefer to feel more at home in my brain than to argue with it every time it notices that something is wrong. I couldn’t help but notice. And it’s wrong to market Snake Oil with a doctorate degree. Folks just wind up feeling like they failed Joy 101.

All psychology schools and movements arise out of their own time and move along when that era passes. We’ve elected a president who based his campaign on a balance between entitlement and responsibility. We’re trying to live with some really, really hard truths about our national identity. We are staggering under financial fears. It’s time to get real…Authentically Real. Gratitude has a place; optimism will be invaluable to us; the positive virtues of kindness and generosity and warmth are still abundantly necessary. Personally, I am very optimistic about the next decade. And the next person who waves a Happy Face in my face finally has something to worry about. If the field of psychology can’t come up with something that suits the times, its time has come and gone.

I haven’t read it yet, but Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Brightsided; How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, makes perfect sense to me before I’ve turned the first page. I’ll race you to the bookstore.

[isvr.net/.../images/Happy_face_new.JPG,[IMG]http://i330.photobucket.com/albums/l436/brendajones4life/Sad_Happy_Face.jpg[/IMG]

Blogaffinity

2009-12-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

“I have neither remarked this myself nor found it in any author, but a small temptation, almost an un-temptation, can be more dominant than a great one.” (Patrick O’Brian)

Merry Christmas, Dear Reader! So what are you doing here? And, for that matter, what am I doing here? Aren't we supposed to be doing something besides blogs at the moment...something social, involving face-to-face interaction?

I could call it meeting my self-imposed posting deadline, but you know better. And I figured you’d show up, too. Let’s face it, the holidays are singularly short on novel stimuli…no, not the Solar Coasters in your stocking; those are novelties, which only serve to stimulate the economy of China and are usually worth the fifty-seven seconds it took you to tear the paper off and entirely forget their existence. I’m talking about the hooky, addictive kind of stimulus-and-response hit we bloggers supposedly seek by staring at our monitors. Sort of like Pavlov’s blogs.

I’ve been thinking this week about how strongly I am pulled to blogging. Actually, a couple of interactions with my DH brought to my attention that I may be a little too fond of my new hobby. For some reason, after I’ve been hard at it for a couple of hours, he keeps interrupting me with, “Honey, do you need anything?” and “Dear, are you alright?” You don’t know him like I do, so I’ll translate: “You’ve been on that damn laptop forever! Pay some attention to me! There’s something really wrong with you!” Pretty rude, huh? I understandably felt defensive, so I did what I usually do when I’m being viciously criticized…I tried to read up on it.

According to the latest research on social networking, you and I, by being here instead of in the bosom of Mrs. Claus, would be classified as either lonely people with obsessive-compulsive traits or as examples of the new breed of internet narcissist. Do we have a choice? I might admit to knowing some people who are one of those types or the other…and you know who you are…, but I plan to argue my way out of both options by the end of this post.

In the most recent issue of Scientific American Mind, David DiSalvo (who blogs at neuronarrative.com), reviews the research and literature on social networking “(and associated blogging)” and concludes confusingly that:

1. Not all social networkers are lonely people.

2. The lonely networkers wind up lonelier.

3. Membership in a social networking site enhances social development in adolescents.

4. Social networking sites are havens for narcissists and feed the culture of entitlement.

5. Social networkers are skilled at exposing and isolating narcissists.

6. Social networking is a black hole for the obsessive-compulsive personality.

7. The socially anxious personality may use social networking to regulate mood.

I’m not finding myself in this list. Or, if I was, I wouldn’t tell you about it. What is it about neuroscience writers who think they have to find the worst in the rest of us? I think the mistake DiSalvo makes in this article is to lump bloggers in with the research on Facebook and Twitter narcissists. We deserve our own research. We’re that special. Besides, in addition to blogging, DiSalvo Tweets and he’s on LinkedIn, so, obviously, it takes one to know one.

John Cacciopo (who blogs at scienceofloneliness.com) is a social neuroscientist (oxymoron?) who has studied the effects of internet use on loneliness. He states, “Nearly all the initial studies about people who used the Internet for social interaction suggested that they were getting lonelier.” Ouch.

Cacciopo recommends that we keep up plenty of face-to-face interaction as the cure. This doesn’t sound like real news, but psychosocial research rarely does. Again, I think he was referring to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, rather than blogging. In fact, listen to him from his own blog as he describes the type of interaction that is most beneficial:

Deciding how to search for birds of your own feather requires selection as well. For those who tend to be more quiet than talkative, finding someone who is also comfortable with silent companionship may be a good idea. Enthusiastic readers, especially shy readers, are more likely to find people to connect with at an author’s appearance at a bookstore, or by working in a literacy program, than by going to a dance club. How you should go about trying to meet people depends on what kind of people you want to meet.

He’s talking about us, folks. We are the kind of people we want to meet.

There’s a tongue-in-cheek, twelve step Blogger’s Anonymous blog you might enjoy. I like the 10th Step the best: “Continued to take content inventory and when we were tempted to blog, promptly admitted it.” I hereby claim to have worked that step. They offer the “Mock” Ten Signs of Blog Addiction. I am spot on for three of them.

9. Your significant other suspects you are having an affair with your blog.Even when you’re alone with your special person, you do find yourself thinking what your blog might be doing right then…

8. You “mental blog” while driving or on the train, and sometimes even when you are alone in the shower.

7. You filter everything through your post-writing. You can’t watch a movie, see a play, read an article, or share a sweet moment with your child without thinking of whether it’s blog-worthy.

As usual, I did some really stellar research while writing this post. I found several things I knew you’d like, and a couple, like the Solar Coasters and the social anxiety label, that I knew you wouldn’t. I checked out a number of authorities on blogging, people with impeccable credentials and blogs with about 500 comments per post, who were mostly down on blogging...I need that explained to me. And then I found this joyous thing from Shirah Vollmer, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at UCLA:

Blogging is my sandbox. I am playing with the written word to express ideas. I am using the flexibility of the internet to edit and re-edit my material. In so doing, I feel the inner expansion of my mental processes. When I sit down to blog, I feel like I am starting to play. If I can engage someone in what I am thinking, I feel as though I have found a playmate.

My blogging allows me to enter into an area filled with words and then take those words to create ideas. I can then explain my ideas to my readers. When I am done, I feel refreshed. I have played.

My kind of authority. Her blog, I’ll read. In fact, I’m putting her on my blogroll.

Don’t you feel better about being here? I love this stuff. In fact, blogging creates flow for me, that special state where you’re so deeply absorbed, where you find the perfect balance of frustration and gratification, where you are so delightfully challenged, that you lose all track of time and of ego. The opposite of narcissism. I don’t think blogging is an addiction. I think it’s an affinity.

Oh, and while I was researching, I finally found the perfect present to give you.

Now, go act like normal people on Christmas Day and play with your Tivo.

The Pod People vs. The Yard Gnome Ghetto

2009-12-20T18:01:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, I believed, with good reason, that I’d been ordered from the Sears Catalog. My parents were both charter employees at one of the South’s largest Sears Mail Order plants: my father was a buyer for the catalog, specializing in whatever age group I happened to belong to at the time, and my mother was responsible for building and managing the telephone shopping service for that regional hub. When the Wish Book showed up at my house, it came hand-delivered by Santa’s helpers. Ever since, I’ve seen myself as the poster child for America’s first real middle class. This belief, and the fact that I am among the oldest of the Baby Boom cohort, is at the center of my sense that I represent my generation. I’ve got the average height, weight, and shoe size to prove that, if it’s happening to me, Forrestine Gump, it’s happening to a lot of you, too…or soon will be. I typify; therefore, I blog.

I began Mature Landscaping when our twenty-year-old house went on the market (hence, one excuse for the blog title) in August. We believed the time had come to downsize, that the upkeep and yard work were about to kill us, but we were so ambivalent about giving up our home that we’d have driven a less obtuse realtor than ours quite insane. Our timing has not been the best, we realize, but that’s our way; we retired into The Recession, too. Anyway, all our sanities have been saved by the fact that there’s been only one “looker” in these five months. One. In a row.

I’d begun to think we could wait out our six month listing contract and wave the For Sale sign goodbye, never having to admit that we’d begun wavering the moment it showed up in our yard. I don’t know when we became so indecisive. It’s not how we’ve ever conceived of ourselves…tentative and irresolute, quite like old people…but we can’t seem to help it, so we’ve tried our best to conceal it. We felt our secret was safe, since it’s almost Christmas and we’ve only one more month on the contract; we’d ride this out and Mr. Remax would never know. Who looks at houses at Christmas? You’ve seen this coming by now: we got the call and there’s a showing scheduled today. The market, we’re informed, is picking up.

Who are these savage, callous house hunters?! Who would turn a sweet little elderly couple out of their own home on a cold day just before Christmas…at naptime!? I should be cleaning, spritzing the Happy Holiday Home air freshener, turning on all the lights…but, screw ‘em. I’ve lived in this house longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere. My children’s DNA lingers in the flooring. They could dangle a cash deal for the asking price, and I still wouldn’t sell to somebody who’d be thoughtless enough to make me an offer this week. I don’t expect my realtor, that home monger, to understand this, but I know that you will, Dear Reader. You know me too well to insist on rationality.

Of course, we’ve slightly considered the possibility that, with the The Dear Old Homeplace on the market, we might actually be called upon to move out at some point. We’ve been looking at those clever new quadraplex condos with two-sided fireplaces, walk-in showers, double ovens, granite countertops, two-car garages, and…the piece de resistance…pull-down stairs to the attic. Whoever thought these places up has their finger directly on the pulse of the pig in the python. Each unit has its own vinyl walled courtyard, and who could pass that up? Nobody’s windows open onto anybody else’s garage door. The exterior is a cross between stone façade tudor and Sears Craftsman Cottage. We could just about cover a lateral move, financially, and still pay the movers. But it’s a pod. We’d be one of The Pod People. My kids would be ready to take over ownership of the kayaks. We’d be formally marginalized.

Or, we could stay put. The neighborhood, which we thought promising, though short on trees, when we moved in, has gone down. The trees are so big they threaten the houses now, and some are being chopped back to ugly stumps to prevent storm damage. The mailboxes stand drunkenly along the street with their doors at half mast. The HOA gums its porridge. Our landscapes are mature-to-overripe, the hedges a thin layer of leaves over leggy, bare-branched skeletons. We’ve become a community of yard-owners who are either too old to cope or too young and busy to care. All the houses are two or three generations away from the original residents, so the pride of ownership has tarnished. And, by far the worst thing, the Yard Gnome People have taken over.

We know we’re not alone in this mess. We carry the banner for Boomers everywhere. An entire generation awaits our fate and watches to see how we handle this problem…to stay put or move on, to hunker down awaiting the inevitable squalor when we can no longer push a vacuum or wield a leaf blower, or to be stuck away into faux stone filing cabinets. And don’t try to cheer me up; I’m in no mood for it.

I have nightmares about waiting too long to leave this house, of postponing the clearing out and the clutter removal that a move would require. I see the house outliving me, see the EMS folks picking their way through the sections of fallen-in roof, across the warped and tilted floors to retrieve my carcass before the rats get at it. Visions of Marcia Davenport’s My Brother’s Keeper haunt me. In the worst of the dreams, someone props up a gnome or two in the yard out of misplaced pity.

I’ve been known to resort to hyperbole, but not this time. This time, clearly, my only choices are The Pod People vs. The Yard Gnome Ghetto. Send this post to everyone you know; maybe either our realtor or the rude jerks who’re out shopping for houses the very WEEK OF CHRISTMAS will take the hint.

Bah. Humbug.

P.S. Jo, honey, I’m fine. Really.

[image: riverstonesubdivision.com/images/house_for_sa.., www.blavish.com/.../09/mooning-gnome-fun.jpg]