Morgana's Spot

California Drivers Suck (and They're Mental, Too)

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:06:00 +0000

I am feeling moved to indulge in a whine fest aimed at levering the complete and total suckage of California drivers off my chest, at least until the next time I get into my car.

Said suckage is something I’ve wanted to comment on for a while now. I delayed while debating whether to expand the topic to California suckage in general, but I think I’ll bring that see-saw down on the side of confining this to drivers and how they illustrate my point that the Golden State is full of crazies, just as you have always suspected (present company excluded, of course).   Apparently, there are folks out there in the ether who share my frustration; in their honor I humbly submit this list as an addition to the growing oeuvre of California driver bashing.

1.        No one uses their blinkin’ signals.

If turn signals are used at all, they’re generally turned on at the last possible second when they have absolutely no chance of doing what they’re intended to do: signaling to other drivers an intent to turn.

In truth, this is but a symptom of a larger California problem, namely that the entire state is passive aggressive.

2.       The decoder ring for what to do at a four-way stop has been lost in a cave somewhere near the Dead Sea.

Remember that scene from the movie L.A. Story where four drivers pull up to a four-way at the same time and graciously attempt to yield the right of way to each other, then all drive into the intersection at the same time and crash? It’s like that. Seriously. What the hell are they teaching in California drivers’ ed courses if not something as basic as this? How to text while driving?

The lost art of the four-way stop is, too, merely a symptom of a larger California problem, namely the entire state operates under a delusional veneer of politesse that only barely covers a manic dedication to looking out for number one.

3.       Red lights give people the shakes.

I thought Boston was bad in the red light department. Basically, in Boston, they were optional.

But at least in Boston, no one bugged you if you decided to exercise your inalienable option to stop. In California, if you’re at a red light and there is even the slightest hint that it isn’t working properly, i.e., it lasts for more than 10 seconds, or other traffic directions seem to be getting two turns to your one, Californians will start to blow their horns at you until you are shamed into giving up your option to stop.

Note that this is the only time when it is, apparently, permissible to blow your horn at someone in California without getting a look so filthy-dirty it would require lemon-freshened borax and a sandblaster to remove, even if you’re headed for a head-on collision.

This total inability to sit still for more than a second is emblematic of a massive California problem, namely that the entire state has ADHD. It figures, when you consider that California has long been at the forefront of the movie, television and computing industries, which together have caused the brain cells responsible for attention span in the collective consciousness to atrophy to the point of becoming vestigial.

4.       The car wouldn’t have reverse unless you can use it anywhere, any time.

I have seen California drivers backing into intersections, including some of the aforementioned four-way stops. I have seen them back through parking lots against one-way arrows, to snatch those last parking spots away from the person going the correct direction and having the legitimate claim on them: me.

I have seen backing at a stop light into an adjoining lane. Backing up abreast to another car so as to be able to have a little chat through opened windows, while a line of cars grows behind waiting to get by. But God forbid someone should blow his or her horn -- there is no red light involved.

And I have seen, on more than one occasion, some idiot backing off of a freeway exit-ramp ONTO THE FREEWAY.

I am at a loss as to what this says about the entire state’s psychological condition, except perhaps a tendency toward the psychotic. But the implications for the IQ of the average Californian are staggering.

5.       Tailgating for fun and profit

Apparently, the California version of the driver’s ed class also completely omits the lesson on the appropriate number of car lengths between cars at a given speed. I have heard an otherwise intelligent person attempt to explain to me that as long as you match the speed of the car in front of you, space between cars just doesn’t matter. Yeah, until the driver in front of you slams on his brakes. Which happens all the damned time on the freeways of California, sometimes because the mow and blow guy’s pickup truck has had a tarp or some other item blow onto the road, sometimes because some idiot is backing off the freeway, and sometimes for no identifiable reason at all.

Plus, having a car, or worse, an SUV so close it is basically driving up my tailpipe gives me a really icky feeling. Sort of like how I felt as a young commuter in New York City when some guy on the subway would take the opportunity presented by a rush-hour crammed car to rub himself up against my butt and hope I won’t notice.

The tailgating addiction is to be expected, I suppose, when the entire state suffers from borderline personality disorder.

6.       Lane changes in zombie land

This is the worst by far, and the reason I first contemplated venting my spleen on the subject of California drivers. It makes me homesick for New York, where lane changes were not simply announced well ahead of time through blinkers, they often became mini social events. Drivers and passengers alike would roll down their windows and wave their arms, heads, and sometimes half their bodies to let you know they or their driver was planning a move, and by George, we were all pleased to accommodate them because it meant someone would do the same for us. It was almost homey, like we were all in it together and would be meeting up for a brewsky or two later.

Give me Vito or Mohan with his body half out the car letting me know he means business any day over the abomination that is California driver behavior when it comes to lane changes. In California, if you signal a lane change on the freeway, the car behind you in the lane you want to move to will SPEED UP, preventing you from changing into the lane in front of him or her. (This may explain why Californians, if they use turn signals, only do so at the last possible second. Explain, perhaps; not excuse.)

Not only that, the next car behind them will do the same. And the next. While this solid line of cars speeds up to prevent you from getting where you need to go, the drivers will avoid eye contact with you at all costs. They just pretend they don’t see you and enter some parallel universe in which magical thinking comes true. You’re just not there to them at all, and since you’re not there, they don’t have to even consider extending a common courtesy to another human being.

Where is it written that the world will come to a furious and fiery end if you let a car ahead of you change into your lane? New Yorkers, for all their faults and subway groping, don’t buy into this crap. Bostonians, color blind though they may be don’t either.

Californians, though, the very same people who will swear to you that if you match speed to the car in front you can tailgate with impunity just don’t get that allowing another car into your lane at constant speed doesn’t make you go any slower.   (Actually, I suspect they do get it, but they just don’t care, which is even worse.)   Even assuming that you’ll get where you’re going a fraction of a second later while you make up that lost car length, is this really going to have a material impact on your life?

Yes, if you’re a freakin’ narcissist, like the entire state of California.

**Morgana**

Reading With Trousers Rolled

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:47:00 +0000

When I was growing up, my parents were poster-worthy reading role models. My father bought practically every Time-Life, American Heritage, and National Geographic book series that offered itself through a mailing. My mother and I made regular trips to the library. Every room in the house had at least one book in it, and even those rooms less conducive to book storage, such as the kitchen and bathrooms, often had at least a small shelf's worth.

At some point during my childhood, I realized that whatever he may have read in the past, my father only seemed to read non-fiction -- primarily military history. Though my mother still had her facsimile edition of the Shakespeare First Folio and some random other classics on the shelves, she seemed to read only mysteries and thrillers, and perhaps the occasional best-seller (which, when I got to junior high school, I would flip through looking for the pornographic parts). My own preferred reading material, however, remained literary fiction, with a bit of non-fiction thrown in once in a very great while to mix it up.

It’s by now cliché to wonder when you’ve become your parent, usually when you hear yourself irrationally informing your children that the reason is “because I said so and I’m the Mommy” or when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think, "That's Mom." (I am convinced it’s true that I look more and more like my mother. But I am also convinced that is because I didn’t really know my mother until she was in her forties. Now that I’m the age she was when I could formulate a lasting mental image of her, the resemblance to that mental image is undeniable.) I, too, have done the irrational preaching and the mirror glimpse, but mainly I see myself becoming my parents in my choice of reading material.

For a while now, I have wondered whether this movement away from literary fiction is just my experience, or whether it is a measurable trend in the general population. A number of months ago, I made a crack on Facebook to the effect that old people only read genre fiction and non-fiction and some of my friends begged to differ. Even so, though I don't have any scientific basis for my supposition, anecdotally I don’t think it is just my experience. Although he claims to have read mostly literary fiction when he was younger, my boyfriend has, for the past ten years at least, only read mysteries and thrillers. I’ve noticed this trend in other friends as well.

And yes, I can no longer deny that the course of  my reading swerved away from literary fiction some time back. I just thought it was a temporary shift and that long term, my established tastes would win out. But now I am forced to admit that the last literary fiction I attempted was War and Peace, over a year ago. I made it 350 pages in. Perhaps there is still hope, though. Toward the end of his life, my father began reading literary fiction: notably, War and Peace. If I really am turning into my parents, maybe I’ll get back to it in 30 years.

The more I thought about this topic, the more I felt moved to break my more-than-a-year-long blogging hiatus to remark upon it. (I would say that I'll explain the hiatus later, but if I don't write again for another year I'll feel too guilty about the cliffhanger.) I've been pulling my thoughts together on and off for a couple of months, in between genre and non-fiction reads, thinking "Someone should do a study on this. Seriously."

And guess what?  The next thing I knew, not only did I discover yet again that there is no such thing as an original thought (at least not in my brain), this time I was partially scooped: Salon’s Laura Miller just did a piece on older people turning away from fiction altogether, though genre fiction wasn't specifically discussed.

In any case, if it is in fact a tendency in the general population for older people to turn to non-fiction and genre fiction over literary fiction, I have a few unscientific thoughts about why that might be -- some of which are similar to those Ms. Miller mentioned, others of which will, I hope, add to the discussion. To be fair, some of the fiction/non-fiction gap is also apparently a gender gap. But age seems to play a part as well.

1. We realize there’s a lot we want to know about, and we no longer have forever to learn about it.

The non-fiction books I’ve read or bought lately are an eclectic group. I tend to read clusters of books on topics, not just one. My current clusters range from the American manned space program, to child rearing and psychology, to brain elasticity, to the economic crisis of 2008, to mathematics, to chess.

Some of these are topics I feel I need to learn about for practical reasons. For example, I know there will come a day, sooner rather than later, when my children will out-math me. I don’t have occasion to use much math in my day to day life, so I have lost a lot of what I used to know. I’m attempting to refresh my knowledge of algebra, geometry and trigonometry and teach myself the rudiments of calculus so that by the time my kids ask for help I’ll have a clue as to what they’re talking about.

But a lot of these choices have no practical rationale. I’m reading space books because I saw Apollo 13 on television again recently and it piqued my interest in learning more. The same thing happened after I saw Too Big to Fail on HBO; hence the economic crisis books. Cable television sucks me in to all kinds of reading I would probably not do otherwise. See, e.g., Twilight and The Song of Ice and Fire. Oh wait, I forgot. I read genre fiction now. Heh.

Becoming well-versed in a topic provides a feeling of mastery that older people enjoy just as much as younger people do.  Reading permits us to cultivate this feeling to no small extent, and from the comfort of our own beds for an hour or so nightly before we crash. When we wake up, we know it will be to another long day at work instead of going away to space camp for a few weeks, which is what we might have done had we wanted to learn about the space program years ago. As far as non-fiction goes, while autodidacticism admittedly has its limitations, it is better than not learning at all.

2. We know too many characters too well already.

By the time we reach middle age, we have a pretty good idea of the gamut of human experience: its triumphs and tragedies, its good guys and bad guys, its sicknesses, its perversions, its jealousies and greeds, and its moments of almost inexplicably touching kindness and beauty, real and imagined. Yes, everyone is an individual, and the never-ending variety of humanity continues to be astonishing, fascinating, and even enjoyable when we get older. But the deep, scary, interior of the human psyche and the rawness of experience that are the stuff of literary fiction are -- well, not to put too fine a point on it, enough already. Particularly when you have a family, a career, a home and the late onset ADD that tends to come with being chronically overscheduled trying to do an adequate job at each of these things.

It’s not so much that we lack the patience to get to know the terribly flawed human beings that great literature serves up to us. We don’t become shallower versions of our former selves simply by getting older. Miller's piece referred to a blogger who explained this as "having experienced enough real life narrative and drama such that made-up stories no longer appeal." I wouldn't go that far, but I think that statement has a grain of truth in it. I expect I'll continue to read literary fiction because made-up stories do appeal to me, but I have a feeling it will make up a smaller fraction of my reading going forward.

If it's not the lack of appeal, then what is it? The reasons are somewhat elusive to me, but I think part of it has do with becoming parents. We’re already spending so much of our own psychic energy raising our own flawed human characters, trying to comfort them and teach them to persevere despite the conflicts in their own stories, that we don't have room for the fictional ones.

Part of it may be that we see our younger, more angst-ridden but also more hopeful selves, both in the characters that populate literary fiction and in ourselves as the reader. Confronting that loss of youth, that loss of the feeling that one’s whole life is ahead and ripe with infinite possibilities, can be wickedly painful stuff. These days my feelings of infinite possibility are pretty finite. As my parents’ generation gets older and passes away one by one, I am increasingly aware of the psychological buffer they provided between my generation and the gaping jaws of death. To paraphrase Sirius Black, I guess we're the old ones now.

To digress for a moment, I think the same phenonmenon is often reflected in changes in musical tastes. Rock and roll used to be my life, but these days I can barely stand to listen to most of it. For the most part, it isn’t speaking to me in the same way anymore. This fact is actually far more disconcerting than the substantive disconnect between me and the lyrics and beat to which I used to relate so strongly. It's like what Miller said about novels: "Once, the struggles of 25-year-olds to satisfactorily arrange [sic] their romantic lives was a fascinating topic to me. Now, not so much." Much of rock music is about the same topic, and directed to the same age group. But what bothers me more is that I no longer find these topics fascinating. It makes me wonder whether there is a statement in there about my idealism, my passion, and my joie de vivre in general. Am I over the hill? Or am I just grown up, finally?

For a number of years now, I've found myself listening to classical music instead of rock. It is timeless, it is soothing, and it is what my mother listened to back when I didn’t look quite so much like her. It doesn’t have words that express youthful yearning, suffering, and passion, which are, these days, largely outside my frame of reference except vicariously.

My boyfriend deals with the same thing in a different way. He's a musical Peter Pan; forever stuck in his youthful tastes, he refuses to listen to anything other than 70s rock, unless it is folk or country. I think the polar reactions he and I typify are fairly common, though I have no data to base my opinion on other than my own observations.

3. We read for escape, entertainment, and information rather than for enlightenment.

To push the previous point a bit further, maybe our reasons for reading change as we grow older. Instead of gathering insights along the path of becoming an adult to aid us in the maturing process, we are now more often reading to place ourselves out of time altogether: to go on mini-vacations from the routine of work and child-rearing, and in some respects to distract us from fact that we don't have the same level of intimacy we used to have with people outside our family unit.

Although there are exceptions, plot driven fiction or information driven non-fiction is fairly circumscribed. It typically doesn’t tackle the big, deep, and nuanced questions of the human condition (unless it is philosophy). It speaks in broad brush strokes: good against evil, or the meaning of X event in the context of the broader panorama of Y history. But the existential questions of meaning, purpose, belonging, and how to be usually aren’t addressed, and if they are, their treatment is superficial compared to the work of good literary fiction.

By the time we hit fifty, we’ve at least started to come to terms with our grand existential questions. Either we have a pretty good understanding of our meaning and purpose, or we’ve concluded there isn't a meaning or a purpose to be understood, or we've accepted that we'll just never comprehend them fully and that’s ok. If we don’t already know how to be, we probably aren’t going to learn in the absence of some religious or other life-changing experience.

Personally, I think the question of belonging is the most difficult as we grow older. Maybe some people have a community they’ve been part of for years that gives them that sense, but I’m convinced as many of us don’t. We don’t have the ready-made pool of friends we had in school, or in our first jobs out of school where everyone was young and single. If we happen to leave the base of friends where we had all those things to move somewhere else, it becomes harder to meet people and spend the sort of time with them that cultivates friendships on anything more than a very superficial level. Most of the people I know now are the parents of my kids’ friends, and though they’re generally pretty nice people, we talk mostly about our kids, the school, activities, and such. Contrast that with college, where we talked about ideas, books, and feelings. The problem is particularly acute in Northern California, where it seems that everyone is doing their best to build consensus with everyone else and would never risk saying something that might be viewed as divisive. This is one reason I miss New York so much.

And contrast the mini-vacation experience with what readers expect from literary fiction. Here's an interesting article that identifies some of the expectations as therapy, life lessons, challenge, and a chance to better ourselves intellectually. At various times I've looked for one or more of those in a literary reading experience. But I also read literary fiction for the aestheticism of it -- the sheer beauty that comes from the meter and sound of words coalescing with a thread of universal meaning to make something lasting and memorable. I don't think we appreciate beauty less as we grow older. I think, though, that maybe we just make less time to do it in our reading because we get a decent dose of it daily as we experience the beauty of our children blossoming into terrific people.

I have a feeling I'll be thinking about this subject more, and may have more to say after I do. In the meantime, please be so kind as to participate in my very unscientific poll on this topic, just for laughs. It's in the top right corner under the title banner of the blog.

**Morgana**

Lessons from an Invisible Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:26:00 +0000

During one of the many Stanford Continuing Studies fiction writing workshops in which I participated in the early 2000s, the instructor told a story that has stuck with me.

I don’t recall her exact words. Peri-menopause, you know; I barely remember my own name sometimes. My memory may have mangled the story. The gist, as I remember it, is that at various points in her writing career, the instructor had to be talked into taking the next step. Changing majors from pre-med as an undergrad. Applying to an MFA program. Sending a first story to some literary journals. Then another story, and then another. She questioned her readiness to take each step. She questioned whether her stories were ready, or whether they could still be improved.

This story made a lasting impression on me, though at the time we heard it, my classmates and I gave each other incredulous looks. Once we got over the initial soul-killing dread of having strangers read and tear our work apart, none of us had any compunction about sending out stories. We all wanted to be published before we got a single day older. For many of us, this seemed imperative unless we wanted to die unpublished. Many of us were older by a decade or more than the young MFA program students we’d be competing with for spots in the vehicle that typically kicks off fiction-writing careers: the literary magazine. We had to make up for lost time. Preferably, without having to do the hard work of major revisions (which none of us really knew how to do despite talking about it in class endlessly). Revision mystified us. How could we re-imagine something that seemed just fine to us the way it was? Something part of our fiber, like a gestating fetus? Something we were so emotionally invested in?

Besides, publication was everything. It was the first domino in a long line of ego-gratifying events that would all tumble if only the right magazine would bite.

Being published would make us writers. Being writers would make us someone. Everyone would love and admire us (or love and admire us again) including, without limitation: parents, estranged parents, spouses, estranged spouses, lovers, former lovers, total strangers, and of course the famous writers we ourselves loved and admired. Love and admiration, respect, recognition -- whatever personal emotional void needed filling – that’s what we’d fill. (Maybe we’d get a movie contract too, and then we’d make money doing something we loved instead of the unglamorous day-to-day of whatever we currently did. We’d see our names rolling by in credits, maybe get to go to the Academy Awards and sit next to Steven Spielberg… )

It was not lost on me at the time that the person who told this story undeniably was a writer, and just as undeniably, an extremely talented one. When I look back, it’s with the ironic realization that those of us most eager to publish were those whose work, or temperaments, or both, were least ready for it. I count myself among those not ready, though I’m willing to be kind enough to myself to believe that with work, dedication, a room of my own, and enough personal growth to enable me to observe humanity with more compassion and less judgment, I might someday have been. Part of me holds out hope, even now, that I someday will be.

But I wasn’t then. Instead of perfecting my craft, I rushed to publication in obscure magazines, many of which no longer exist. No one who didn’t love me before started loving me. Strangers didn’t stop me in the street. Hollywood didn’t call. Very likely, the number of people who read my published stories is less, in aggregate, than the number of visitors to this blog.

The writer and workshop instructor who told the story about having to be pushed along the path to a writing career is Julie Orringer, who at the time was also running the Stanford Continuing Studies Writers’ Workshop program. I just finished reading her debut novel, The Invisible Bridge. I’m naturally biased as one of her former students, and it is not my intent to review the book here. But if you read one thing this summer, you should read this. The first 400 pages are fine and necessary and have a stately, grand, sweeping, romantic Russian feel to them. The last 200 pages are stunning and have the pace and force of an avalanche. Apparently, Oprah agrees.

(Nice picture, eh? I took it while in Budapest a number of years ago. Same with the one below. Part of The Invisible Bridge takes place in Budapest, which provided a great excuse to trot out some of my travel photos.)

Instead of reviewing the novel, what I want to do is to use what I learned from its author and the novel itself as a jumping off point to talk about artistry, craft and the creative process. I’d been tossing bits and pieces of these thoughts around in my mind for some time, but reading The Invisible Bridge helped to crystallize them.

First Thought: Writers Should Be Perfectionists

We’ve all heard about famous literary figures X or Y who wrote novels that became classics long hand on legal pads without ever scratching out a word, but I’m convinced the vast majority of great writers don’t work this way. They write the work, and then they let it steep. They rework it. They let it steep again, then they rework it again. They expand it, they contract it, they expand it again. They reorder it. They change points of view, they change tenses, they change words. They change characters – lose some, add some, substitute some, make some that were minor major and vice versa.

They roll up their sleeves, bury their egos, and do the hard work of writing in service to the story, not to what they hope the story can do for them. It isn’t about them, it’s about the work. They don’t settle. They don’t rest until the last overused idea, the last misplaced image, the last clunky sentence, the last inappropriate word, the last baroque darling has been banished. Only then do they let the work see the light of day.

And in the process, they have to commit to the work more than student writers ever do when they generate the first drafts they can see no problems with. Great writers have to live with it. Their attention spans have to be long enough to keep working it until it either truly works, or clearly will never work and has to be abandoned. They have to be willing to abandon their brainchildren who don’t turn out, however cruel it may seem. And they have to be able to tell when to keep working and when to cast a project aside.

I read that The Invisible Bridge took five years to write. I remember hearing, when Julie was still in the Bay Area, that it was expected to take two. I lost touch with her after I dropped out of one of her workshops; I was toward the end of a difficult pregnancy and could not focus on the work of the workshop along with the pregnancy and my day job. Though I’d intended to go back into workshops after the birth, as a mother with a full time job outside the home I soon discovered I had neither the solitude nor the emotional energy required to attempt writing fiction. I can barely find the time to post to this blog, even sporadically. About all I have time for is five minutes here or there to pound out a tasting note on Steepster -- that’s my creative outlet. My fiction writing “career” is on an as yet uninterrupted hiatus.

But though I lost touch with the author, occasionally I’d check the web to see if I could find any news of the book. And finally, fairly recently, I checked on Amazon and found a release date. My copy shipped immediately on release.

One of the things that sets this book apart from some other first novels I’ve read is its degree of doneness. This one can’t be accused of coming out of the oven too soon, of being too doughy, too wet, or with ingredients that have been thrown together and denied the chance to intermingle and develop fully. I’ve read other first novels where the hard questions may have been asked, but they either haven’t been answered or were answered imperfectly. Characters are selfish or otherwise unsympathetic, lack dimension, don’t speak like real people, don’t act like real people. Language is overwrought, anachronisms haven’t been excised. I sometimes wonder whether, later in their careers, their authors will regret having published them in that state.

But from what I know of Julie, I expected nothing less than perfection, or at least as close as she felt she could come to it. As I was reading, I imagined her at work on the novel. I imagined days, and years, coming and going while the manuscript steeped, was reworked, expanded, contracted, was honestly and mercilessly (but with compassion) reevaluated. I imagine her asking the questions she taught us to ask ourselves in workshops. Are all the important questions answered, are all the motivations true? Are all the characters as real, surprising, and complex as actual human beings with free will while being true to themselves and their character? (Free will, in a very Jewish sense, is one of the themes of the book, so all the more important.)

Is justice, to the extent that it can be in a novel of this kind, done? (Fate’s random cruelties and kindnesses are another theme of the book, so all the more tricky.) Is there enough conflict and has it been pushed far enough? Somewhere I have a list of such questions on a hand out from one of my workshops, and though I can’t recall whether these specific ones are on it, you get the idea. I imagine Julie assessing the novel’s readiness over and over again and not being satisfied. And finally, I imagine her being talked into taking the next step and letting go.

It’s not that The Invisible Bridge is flawless. I had a few questions at the end about some of the authorial or editorial choices, and if I set my mind to it I could probably come up with more. What impresses me most about the book isn’t that it is flawless, but that I can tell it is trying to be – that the author has (probably impossibly) high standards for her work, and strives to meet them. It’s so easy to be so blinded by one’s own brilliance as to compromise what should be one’s own high standards, and thereby miss the opportunity to approach perfection.

Second Thought: Writers Should Not Be Egomaniacs

During a particularly dark time in my life, I had a conversation with a friend about happiness. This friend is a self-described Pollyanna type, always smiling, rarely anything less than upbeat. Her sadnesses come, I’m sure. But they don’t last, they don’t drag on. They’re addressed for what they are and she moves on, always optimistically. Until relatively recently, this did not at all describe me.

I asked my friend about happiness. About how to get there. I seriously wanted to know, as I felt it had eluded me for most of my life. Her answer: happiness isn’t an end state. It’s a process. It’s something you work at every day.

“Happiness is a process” has become something of a mantra to me in the years since that conversation. It has become a core belief of mine and has had a tremendous impact on my life in many ways.

One of the great things about this simple statement is that you can exchange a thousand words or phrases for “happiness” and have the statement still be true. And once you do, it’s hard to be a pessimist. Here are a few substitute words and phrases that I think work: Maintaining friendships. Nurturing intimate relationships. Being a good parent. Losing and maintaining weight. Learning a musical instrument (or learning anything, for that matter). Training for an athletic event. Pretty much everything that isn’t instantaneous and temporary. Pretty much everything that is worth doing.

Being a writer is not an end state you get to just because your words show up in print. It’s a process. It requires discipline, dedication, and honesty. Ego gets in the way.

I’m reminded of a story that may be apocryphal and that I heard during one of the Stanford workshops, though I can’t remember who told it. I believe it was about Tillie Olsen, and her application for a Stanford Creative Writing fellowship. Rather than endlessly blow her own horn (what we today quaintly call marketing ourselves), she supposedly wrote something like: I want to learn to write good stories.

It’s so simple and unaffected, and so directed to the goal: writing good stories. Trusting the process, not expecting to reach an end state. And certainly not sitting next to Steven Spielberg at the Academy Awards.

Back when I was in writers’ groups, I was told on more than one occasion that I should try writing a novel. My short stories were usually on the long side, generally too big for the form. I always made some excuse about liking to write stories because it was a less forgiving form, so more challenging.

But the truth was I was terrified of writing a novel. I couldn’t imagine finding any characters interesting enough to want to spend the sort of time with them that writing a novel would require. I was afraid my attention would flag. I’d become bored and restless. In the time it would take to write a novel, I could write ten or more stories, and so have that many more chances of having someone publish something of mine. Being a writer was an end state, and I wanted to arrive.

Now I imagine Julie living with these characters for five years. I imagine her sitting down with them on a daily or almost daily basis. The amount of trust and dedication it must have taken to do that, when I surely would have fallen in and out of love with characters of my own a thousand times. Grown weary of them, and of having to rein them back in when they strayed too far from their roles.

In the end, there has to be a reason for writing, or for doing anything worth doing, that is not about arriving and is not about self-aggrandizement. Khalil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, “Work is love made visible.” The work of writing, like any work, ought to be done with love for the work itself, not just for the promise of success waiting at the end of the rainbow. It ought to be done for love; because it is part of who the writer is, part of the fabric of the writer’s being.

Third Thought: Writers Can’t Help But Write

Which brings me to the third thought, namely that a writer is one who writes, not one who sits around thinking about writing, dreaming about writing, or dreaming about having something he or she wrote on library and bookstore shelves, and waiting for greatness to be thrust upon him or her.

In The Invisible Bridge, the main character, Andras, is an architecture student who is prevented from continuing his studies. But the fact that he isn’t able to finish his training during the course of the story doesn’t keep him from being an architect. It’s how he sees the world, it’s part of who he is. At various times during the story, he finds himself drawing or analyzing a building, seemingly without conscious intent. When he is in love and enjoying a seaside holiday with his beloved, he finds himself drawing the plans for a house in which the two of them could live. When he learns his first son has been born, but is ill, Andras goes to seek permission from an officer at his labor camp to return home to see his child, and though he doesn’t know where this man’s office is “… he felt his way into the heart of the building, following the architectural lines of force. There, where he would have placed the major’s office if he had designed this building, was the major’s office.” Architecture is how Andras expresses himself, and how he finds his way. It’s part of who he is, whether he’s doing it for a living or not.

It’s the same with writing.

At various times in my life I have written journals, poetry, plays, fiction, non-fiction, academic papers, legal papers, gaming walkthroughs, letters, emails, writing exercises, blog posts, tasting notes, and things I’m sure I can’t even recall writing now. But I have always written.

I was going through a box of old papers recently as part of a long overdue project to organize my home, and I found a note I’d received in law school from a (famous) poet with whom I’d done a poetry writing workshop in college. I must have written to him to ask him what to do when I felt I’d reached a plateau in writing.

Here is what he wrote: “… duh, uh, jeez. I keep writing. Always. Even if it seems repetitive or derivative. Other folks take a break: read more, translate, keep a journal, edit. I have faith in you.”

At the time I received this note, I’m sure I focused on that last little bit of encouragement. But the more important part to me now is the advice, which I find I’ve followed even without remembering this note.

When I was taking classes with this poet, and later with Julie, I wanted to be a writer. It wasn’t until very recently that I realized -- I am a writer. I’ve always been a writer. I’m a writer, because I write. Because I feel compelled to write. Because my life isn’t complete unless I write, and because it is part of who I am and how I see the world, and something that I always come back to. I keep writing. Always. Because I have to.

Now, if only I could start being a perfectionist and stop being an egomaniac. Then I might really be on to something.

**Morgana**

The Miracle of Every Day

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 07:43:00 +0000

I'm going to break with tradition in this blog and go personal for an entry. I had a timely experience that queued up in my mind something I felt ought to be communicated, and it just happened to be personal. So there.

This morning I walked my kindergartener to school. We had a conversation that went like this:

Son: Mommy, I really wish I could have known my great, great, great, great grandfather.

Me: I understand, but I didn't even know him. He died before I was even born. But I knew one of your great-grandfathers. The one who was my father's father. My mother's father had died before I was born.

Son: Tell me about him.

Me: Well, he lived in Russia and he came to America. He married your great grandmother and they had four kids. One was your grandfather. He had the same name as you.

Son: I wish I had known your mommy and daddy. What were they like?

Me: I wish you had known them, too. My mommy was such a wonderful person. Everyone loved her. I sometimes joked that my friends loved my mother more than they loved me. She would have loved you so very much. She was very loving. She was kind to everyone she met, and she was kind to all living things. She was also very smart. You could ask her anything and she would know the answer, or know where to find it. And she was very funny. She made people laugh and enjoyed making them laugh.

Son: What about your daddy?

Me: He was very smart and loved his work. He was very good at what he did; he was a scientist, a professor, a writer. He taught me a lot. He took me to his lab and I learned a lot just by watching him, so I was very good in science later on. And he played ball, and card games and chess with me.  I don't think he remembered a lot about how to play with kids by the time I was old enough to want to play, but he tried. And he came to my plays when I was acting in high school, and all my graduations. And he wrote me letters when I was in college and law school. He wasn't easy to be close to, but I know he loved me and he would have loved you.

Son: I wish I could know them.

Me: I wish you could, too.  You can't know them as living people, but I have videos of them and tapes of their voices, and pictures you can see. And I can tell you about them.

This is the hardest part of being an older parent. Lack of grandparents.  This is the hardest part of being an outlier from the rest of the extended family.

What's the answer? I don't think there is one. And I'm sad about it, but I refuse to view myself as lacking as a parent somehow because of it. I never knew one of my grandparents, and one died when I was one. Even though the other two shared a good bit of my life span, they lived far away and I didn't see them much. So if my kids only have a single living grandparent, and see her sporadically, it is what it is. It is not optimal, but it is what it is.

But the miracle of every day life is that despite the lack of a continually or even frequently present extended family, my kindergartener is developing a sense of personal history. He is becoming a person with a history, and that is, to me, miraculous. May he have a grand and worthy history, that, as he comes to know it and to build it for himself, will serve him well.  I hope that thanks to his brother, he will always have stability and continuity in that history.  Having lost both parents prior to having my own kids, and having no siblings, it was very important to me that mine have at least one other person bound to them through immediate family ties that they could turn to, always.  And the bonus is, I'll have that, too.

**Morgana**

Tea Update: It's Not a Problem So Much as an Issue...

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:09:00 +0000

Since when did we decide, collectively, that we were all so perfect we couldn't have problems anymore? Instead, we have "issues." Daddy issues, work issues -- nothing is ever a problem. Problems are things that used to mark us with character flaws, or render us incompetent. Issues are things that might or might not be problems depending on how we address them (or successfully distance ourselves from them). Issues are things that our very California-inspired, passive-aggressive collective consciousness can deal with, no matter what.

Perhaps the idea is that language is power and if we call something a problem that will most assuredly make it definitely a problem; whereas if something is a more gentle sounding "issue" it might or might not be a real problem. We're not sure. If it is, though, it isn't because of our character flaws or incompetence. Most likely it's because of somebody else's "issue." So his or her head should roll, not ours. I agree that language is power, but the problem/issue thing seems to me, as you've likely gathered, to go way too far. And, it seems, I'm not the first to have had this thought. For musings after my own mind, take a read here.

Lest it begin to sound as though I'm in William Safire mode (who also apparently wrote on the problem/issue point though I couldn't dig it up quickly online) today, let me step down from my soap box and talk some more about tea. Specifically, my rapid evolution as a tea drinker over the last week plus.

I have learned so much in the past twelve days I'm more than a little embarrassed at the naivete I displayed in my February 5 post. In particular, I have learned how to correct myriad tea problems, or at least reduce them to being mere "issues."

For one thing, though I went out and bought a ridiculous number of different types of tea bags only a week or so ago to begin my tea tasting adventure, I have now become convinced that I must move on to loose tea sooner rather than later. To that end, after researching the various methods of keeping the loose tea from becoming dental floss when one sips, I have settled upon the Finum Teeli filters as my initial method of choice. Tea balls, I've read, compact the tea too much. One must give the leaves plenty of room to unfurl. I have also ordered a set of tasting samples to try out my new filters. I may have reached a bit high for my first try as I went with Oolongs from Upton Tea, but we'll see.

I've stopped using water from the tap, and have been experimenting with either using the bottled water I have delivered every two weeks or tap water passed through a Brita filter. Both seem to work better than pure tap water. And the piece de resistance is my brand spanking new Zorijushi water heater/boiler. I made (bagged) green tea with it today at both 140 degrees and 175 degrees, and for the first time, I understood the appeal of green tea. I can only imagine the heavenly result when I graduate to fine, loose tea.

Additionally, I've read a couple of books about tea, which I've added to my Read on the Spot list in the sidebar, and I've bookmarked a number of online tea sites as well as becoming a member of Steepster just for giggles (I've already been so bold as to offer some opinions on teas there as well, where I am __Morgana__ as they don't permit user names with asterisks). Here are just a few of the sites I've been enjoying browsing: Upton Tea, American Tea Room, Todd and Holland, The Necessiteas, Harney & Sons, The Tao of Tea, Adagio Teas, and Rishi Tea.

The search for the perfect cup of tea is fast becoming something of an obsession to me, but at least it's a relatively healthy one that adds to rather than taking away from other enjoyments and commitments. It isn't my intention to inject my novice palate into the already rather crowded world of tea blogging to the extent that Morgana's Spot ends up being completely hijacked, but at the same time I'm enjoying my tea adventures so much that I have a feeling this won't be my last word on the subject.

**Morgana**

On the Problem of Tea

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:55:00 +0000

Let's begin with a confession. I am a coffee drinker, and have been virtually since birth. I was born in Chicago, without the hot chocolate-loving gene. So from the time I was a wee tot, my mother heated me up on winter outings with my preferred beverage -- coffee. Cream, no sugar, just the way she liked it and so I came to like it, too. I acquired a taste for hot chocolate later in life (for all its relevance to this discussion, which is to say, not at all).

From time to time, I've tried to become a tea drinker. Not to supplant my coffee addiction, but to supplement it. Typically, the desire is whetted when I have a really wonderful cup of tea and wonder why it isn't a greater part of my life. Then I remember. Most of the time, the tea I make has at best no taste I can discern, and at worst, tastes simply like hot water, or the vehicles by which it entered the hot water: paper or metal.

This begs the question of whether it is simply that my tea-making skills suck. This could well be. In my recent foray into tea drinking, I actually read the packaging and discovered there is a preferred hotness of the water (sometimes boiling, sometimes not) for pouring over the bag or leaves, depending on the brew. And a preferred steeping time, also depending on the brew. I paid attention this time and I have improved my results. More on that later.

I should also say that I don't use condiments in tea. My father drank it with lemon, but most tea with lemon tastes like weak, hot lemonade to me. Pretty gross. So unless the tea is a lemon tea to start with, I've passed on the lemon. In college, I had a roomie who drank tea with honey. So I tried that as well. Every tea I tried that way tasted like honey diluted with hot water. Where was the tea? And then, being an Anglophile of sorts, I tried drinking tea with milk and sugar for some time. When I did, I tasted hot water, sugar and weak milk, but no tea. I stilll drank it that way until my recent foray, though, just to look worldly.

If it hadn't been for the really stupendous cups of tea I happened on from time to time, I might well have concluded that tea was a sort of placebo: that it deludes people into believing they are drinking something more flavorful than hot water, through various ruses like color and aroma, and a statistically significant group of them claim actually to like it. One of my major complaints about teas is that many smell wonderful, but the smell doesn't translate into taste -- I know the two senses are biologically related, but I feel it a sorry second if the primary enjoyment I get from a beverage is smelling it rather than tasting it, and often aromatic teas again simply taste like hot water to me no matter how wonderful they smell.

If you are a tea aficionado, you might, at this point, question my tasting mechanism. Is it possible that seven or so years of smoking, which ended about 14 years ago, dulled my taste buds? Or that the stronger, richer, fuller taste of coffee has undone my ability to taste subtlety? (Is tea supposed to have more subtle flavoring than coffee? I don't know. It does to me.) It may be, but I don't think so. I can taste subtle flavors in foods and in wines. So why not teas?

Maybe I haven't tried hard enough. My usual tea phase starts with a decision that I should get to know tea, a purchase of several types, along with some supplies, such as tea balls or strainers. I taste hot water and clog my drain with tea leaves, so I let it sit in my pantry until the next time I get moved to convert. If I go back to it, it's probably stale by that time and so not fair to judge.

My latest tea attempt was fueled by my weight loss efforts. To put it mildly, I'd been drinking a shitload of Diet Coke and chomping a shitload of sugar free gum. When my consumption went up to about eight 20-ounce bottles of Diet Coke and a pack or so of gum a day, I thought perhaps I was entering lab rat territory on the Aspartame front so decided there had to be some other low cal beverage I could put into the mix that would calm my orally fixated self. Tea seemed the perfect fit. I just needed the right tea to start with. In the past I'd done Twinings and Bigelow, so I got some of that -- mostly the old favorites like Constant Comment, Earl Grey and some herbal ones.  But I was pretty curious about Tazo. I'd seen it in Starbucks forever, but never tried it. (And I'm not being paid by any of these companies. Oh would that it were. I can use any additional money I can get these days....)

I took myself over to one of my four local Starbucks -- don't get me started -- and found the Tazo section.  I discovered that Starbucks had recently commissioned Tazo to do a full leaf version of its teas in what they call "sachets" (which makes me think of the little do-dads my mother always stuck in my underwear drawer); tea bags that are made of fabric rather than paper. This was apparently big news when it happened, though I learned of it months later from the 20-something Barrista I'd asked whether the cool-looking tins contained loose tea that would require the purchase of tea-making accoutrements.  I bought a few kinds and went home to try one.

I got really lucky on the first one. Wow. With Vanilla Rooibos I was finally able to replicate the experience of an awesome flavored tea at home. This gave me courage. I tried Calm, Passion, Awake, Chai and Orange Blossom, and all of them worked to some extent. In any case, better than I'd recalled with other brands in other times. The better ones were actually the herbals. The teas themselves had less impact, but it was still a much better experience than it ever has been in the past. Though the Bigelow I Love Lemon and Peppermint came out nicely as well. I still can't really get Green Tea to work, though I've not tried a Tazo version as yet. The Twinings was disappointingly weak and flavorless.

Why might my tea experience be improving? First, let me say I am being very anal about tea preparation. I follow the directions, as mentioned before -- I set a timer for steeping and don't let it go one more, or less, second than it is supposed to. But it may also have something to do with the state of my body in general.

I've written about my weight loss efforts before, and I can say now that I have made an honest drivers license of my driver's license. It says 140, and so I am; give or take.  I was down to 139 the other morning and up at 143 the next, and I just got back from a week long convention-type business trip that is bound to have wreaked havoc with my body. They even joked during the last session about the week of caffeine, sugar and alcohol, and yes, I was one of those who succumbed. But I'm still in much better shape than I've ever been and I've resolved to get back on track tomorrow.

Getting here has been, as Shay of biggest loser fame would say, "a journey." I'm on month 7+ of weight loss, probably the longest time I've gone where I've really eaten almost no junk and have exercised like a machine. I'm also older than in previous tea-loving attempts, and probably entering "the change" slowly but surely.   It seems plausible to me that a palate unhindered by too many bad fats and simple sugars, and in hormonal flux, could be a tea-loving palate. I think about the tea lovers I know, and they are generally pretty healthy folks, and older folks. Anecdotal, I know, but it's what I've observed. And tea itself is touted as a healthful beverage. Coincidence? Which is the chicken and which is the egg?

In any case, as you have gleaned, I'm giving tea another try. I once said to someone I'm willing to try anything once. Fortunately for me, he did not hold me to that. Tea has gotten a lot of passes from me on the try anything once front, and somehow I think it will eventually be worth the repeated attempts. I'm already tasting the difference.

**Morgana**

Can't Stop Saab-in'

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:38:00 +0000

I never thought I'd be sad to hear of the demise of a car brand, particularly one of a car I've never owned. But the death of Saab is making me surprisingly melancholy.

I've only driven one Saab, once. It was about fifteen years old and had had several previous owners, but it was still a powerful, liberating experience. The feeling was hard to describe. The closest I can come is to say it is the same feeling I have when I step off a plane in a country I haven't visited before: one of adventure, of appreciation for something foreign yet familiar, of the potential for something interesting, cool, and memorable to happen at any second.

My dream sports car for years has been a Jaguar XKR, but once I had kids I realized that was likely to stay a dream for a long time given its price tag -- absent a best-selling novel, a winning lottery ticket, or a wealthy, distant relative randomly deciding to leave me everything and then kicking the bucket, all of which are about equally probable (which is to say, not at all). Next in line was a Saab 9-3 convertible. Though I bought an SUV when kid number two arrived, I kept my ten year old old Acura Integra since it had (1) been a gift from my mother and (2) no trade in value anyway, with the depression-era thought that in another 14 years or so I could hand over the keys to kid number one, thus saving the used car shopping angst. Still, I nurtured a secret fantasy that if the Acura ever died, I'd replace it with a brand spanking new Saab 9-3. Thanks, GM, for dashing another of my increasingly few secret fantasies into teeny, tiny fragments.

Apart from its style and the fact that its cars weren't a dime a dozen even on the luxury car clogged freeways of California, one of the coolest things about Saab, to me, anyway, was its origins as an aircraft builder. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the feeling I had while driving one was one of descending an airplane into new territory. And that's probably what the fantasy is all about at its root anyway: freedom, adventure, and possibility.

**Morgana**

Fear Itself?

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:06:00 +0000

What the hell is wrong with the Democrats?

Why must they waste the amazing opportunity they have been given -- majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency – by not passing health care legislation that is truly universal? It sure seems like this is what is happening, though I still hold out hope for a miracle.

Are they so beholden to the insurance lobby that they are simply paralyzed, and can only mumble something about how much it’s going to cost (while voting for innumerable other costly projects that are not nearly as important to peoples' lives) because they’re afraid to say their real concerns: they need that insurance lobby money to get reelected? My boyfriend, a far more paranoid individual than myself, thinks this is about more than money and reelection. He thinks it's about insurance industry corporate henchmen, mysterious disappearances, apparent suicides that aren't really suicides, the stuff of movie thrillers. He may have a point, but I think it's more likely insurance companies would retaliate by simply waiting until their enemies have life-threatening illnesses and then denying their claims for care on the basis these people had acne as teenagers and didn't disclose it when asked about preexisting conditions.

But whatever the origin of the fear, can this really be just about fear? Until now I’d refused to believe the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats are fundamentally incompetent or unprincipled to a person, but if this isn’t about fear, perhaps I should rethink that. Otherwise there is simply no excuse for not adopting health care legislation that includes a public option.

What the hell is wrong with the Democrats?

Mostly I blame President Obama for not stepping in quickly enough to take charge of the debate instead of letting it flail and languish while doubt was cast over every portion of the bill that made any sense if what you care about at the end of the day is making sure there is universal health care. Then muddying the waters with the diversion of the Afghanistan strategy before the health care vote was even had.

I voted for Obama in part because I thought he had chutzpah, and I thought he had principles. I thought he cared more about those principles than reelection. What I wanted to see him do with health care is go knock heads together and get a public option passed; and, by the way, why should he even have to knock heads together since there’s a Democratic majority in Congress?

What the hell is wrong with the Democrats?

I wanted to see President Obama stare into the face of the fear that demanding his party pass legislation including a public option would mean he wouldn’t be reelected – and do it anyway. I wanted to see him bet his Presidency on this, because he believed in it. Somehow, I think if he had done so, his approval ratings would have zoomed through the roof for one simple reason. It would show he was not afraid. Not being afraid would make him different from every other politician currently in office in this country. What is the point of being elected if you’re too afraid to get the job done once you’ve gotten elected?

The tragedy is there is an opportunity here to make a statement that every person is entitled to health care as a fundamental human right. Once you accept that health care is a fundamental human right, you can’t let concerns about money get in the way. You have to find a way to make it work for every American. This is the lesson from the Medicare experience – get the bill passed and then find a way to pay for it. And watch it become one of the most popular US government actions of all time.

We all know people who say it’s not a good time to have kids, buy a house, you name whatever the dream may be, because they’re afraid of the financial commitment. The fallacy is, if you have those fears, there will never be a “good” time. There is no good time, there’s just the time you decide to take a bold step into fear because it is worth it to do so. And a good many people who do, when they look back on that step, can't imagine not having taken it because their lives are so much better for it. What makes it even sweeter is the knowledge that they conquered their fear in taking the step toward what they now feel is the best thing they ever did.

It’s astonishing and more than a little nauseating to think that though the United States is the only superpower, we’re unable to provide affordable health care to all our people. So many other countries that are nowhere near superpower status have made this commitment. Why? Because it is the right thing to do. And the stakes are incredibly high here if we don't do the right thing. They are, literally, a life and death matter.

(By the way, the number 2 son decided to be a skeleton for Halloween this year after striking out on finding a snake costume. Scary, isn't he?)

What the hell is wrong with the Democrats?

My father was a medical academic. He devoted his life to research to enable others to heal, and teaching others to heal, because although like everyone else he needed to make a living he couldn’t stomach accepting money from sick people to make them well. Instead of making the sort of money doctors in private practice made, he made a lot less, but he adored his work and he viewed provision of health care as a noble calling. And he viewed health care as a right every human has, just because they are human.

I am certain that he would have expressed the same sentiment I’m going to about my own political party, though he’d probably have used the phrase “they stank it up.” In my view there’s only one phrase to describe the Democrats when it comes to health care: They’re all a bunch of pussies.

And shame on Joe Lieberman, too. So much for tikkun olam.

**Morgana**

Three Things Restaurant Staffers Should Always Do

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000

During my workout a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to NPR when I heard a piece on a post in the You're the Boss blog by a fellow named Bruce Buschel called 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1). I wondered whether he'd cover any of my particular pet peeves in Part 2, but I just took a gander at 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 2) and it seems not. So I hereby append the following to Mr. Buschel's list.

Here are three things restaurant staffers, in particular wait-folk, should always do when the party has one or more small children in it. There's a theme here: the sooner you start bringing things to the table, the more money you are likely to make, and the sooner you'll get rid of the noisy, melt-down-having children (who will be noisier and more likely to melt down if you don't start bringing things to the table as soon as humanly possible).

One: Don't Wait to Bring the Kids' Food Until the Adults' Food is Ready

Experienced waiters or those who are parents frequently do this without prompting, but it should be written in the rule book. If there are kids under, oh say, seven or eight at the table, you should offer to take their orders first and get their food started, then come back for the adults' orders if they're undecided. You should then offer to bring the kids' orders to the table as soon as they are ready, and you should be sure that they are ready a reasonable time after the order is placed. There's no excuse for chicken nuggets not being ready before pretty much anything an adult could order except maybe the soup du jour.

Here's the rationale. Generally, parents have to do some helping with kids this age, which can range from cutting pieces of meat for older kids to spoonfeeding toddlers. If all the food comes at the same time, the adults don't get to eat theirs before it gets cold. It also gets in the way while the adult is playing the helping role, and it can't be enjoyed until the kids are set up and chowing down in any case. Also, in my experience, kids who are young enough to have a hard time sitting still anywhere aren't going to be better at it at restaurants no matter how many crayons or toys they have with them. Once the sights and smells of food are passing by them to other tables, they're ready to eat and feeding them is the best hope there is of keeping them occupied for any length of time.

Two: Be Attentive To The Status of the Mom's Wine Glass

When I waited tables in college, the conventional wisdom was that alcoholic beverages were the key to bigger tips. Get people ordering refills of these high margin products and the bill went up quickly and by multipliers that just couldn't be replicated through food orders. Bigger bills meant bigger tips. Bigger tips were good.

And yet, somehow that wisdom has been lost or deemed inapplicable to mothers of preschoolers. I can't tell you how many times I've only had one drink with dinner though I was entirely willing to have two, or, once in a great while, maybe even three. Typically it goes like this: it takes forever to bring the first glass of wine, then after the wine has been consumed the glass sits empty with no waiter in sight until it is too late to drink another one because the kids are melting down and we have to leave. That waiter just lost somewhere between $8 and $33 added to the bill which could have meant up to $7 or so in additional tip (or more if others at the table are in the same boat), and I just lost one of the temporarily mellowing benefits of the increasingly seldom times we eat out. We've actually requested that we not be seated in certain waiters' sections at our local haunts for this very reason.

Three: Be Quick and Efficient, or Be Poor

This is the logical extension of two and three above. Kids under eight can't be expected to sit still for two or more hours at a time in a restaurant. They have about 40 minutes of good behavior in them and another half hour of acceptable behavior. If it takes 20 minutes to take the table's order, or 30 minutes to bring the kids' food, it's unlikely there will be time for dessert. Not just for the kids, but for the adults too. Or for dessert wine. So there's another $30 or more that isn't going to get spent, and upwards of another $6 in tip that won't be left because the behavior will have deteriorated to the point where the only choice is to leave.

It's astonishing to me how many times waiters have left money on the table because our party, quite literally, hasn't left on the table all we'd have been willing to leave. Instead, we had to high-tail it out of there without ordering additional drinks or dessert. More food also typically means more mess, and I know a lot of parents who will bump up tips if a kid's place at the table (or the floor underneath) is a mess at the end of a meal even though it probably doesn't take that much additional time to clean up if you're wiping down a table or changing a table cloth anyway.

So let this be a lesson in enlightened self-interest. We parents like it when you engage with our kids, or at least don't spurn them when they ask you a question -- but we're unlikely to give a bigger tip for that alone. We'd much rather you be as attentive to our table as you are to the one with the quiet, young, low maintenance couple that is occasionally throwing us amused looks from across the aisle.

**Morgana**

Music to Learn By

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:04:00 +0000

It's been 35 years since my eighth grade English class, but I still remember the following little ditty we were required to memorize:

Am, is, are, was, were
Be, being, been
Have, has, had
Do, does, did
Shall, will
Should, would
May, might, must
Can, could.

Our teacher, the much loved, much feared, master of the eighth grade advanced English classroom, would bang out the beat with the flat of his hand on a metal filing cabinet while we all recited these "helping" or "auxiliary" verbs. We memorized poetry in his class as well, but I only remember the first few stanzas of "The Highwayman" (which we recited with hand motions to signify where the French cocked-hat and bunch of lace were located) and "Paul Revere's Ride," while I've retained this list of words and likely will remember it until I die.

My mother became a substitute teacher at my junior high school when I went to college, and once when I was home visiting she decided it would be funny if I came over to the school and recited "Am Is Are Was Were" for my former teacher. I humored her, and I was glad I did. He truly seemed touched that one of his students had retained this tidbit of knowledge for what was then only about ten years after leaving his class.

If only he were still alive today to witness the conversation on Facebook among many of my former classmates, all of whom,
amazingly, still remember this verse 35 years later.

Although this little poem wasn't set to music, the almost magical way in which we all managed to remember it got me to thinking about the value of lyrical repetition in the experience of learning. It can't be accidental that one of the first songs we learn as English speakers in America is the ABC song. My three year old can sing it, even though he can't identify all the letters in the alphabet yet. When we read an ABC book together, I try to show him how he can propel himself from a letter he recognizes to the next one he doesn't by singing the song. (An aside: I'm still amused by the musical identity of ABC, Twinkle, Twinkle, and Baa Baa Black Sheep, which a childless, gay male friend of mine pointed out to me about ten years ago. If I'd been a mom by then I would doubtless not have missed the connection, since Sesame Street has put all three of them together in the "Alpha Baa Baa Twinkle Song," a preschool favorite.) As an adult, I took a beginning Hebrew class and my instructor taught us a Hebrew equivalent of the ABC song. It appears that other alphabets have been set to music as well. Here's a Russian alphabet song, a Chinese one, an Arabic one, a Thai one, a Japanese one, a Hindi one, a Greek one and even a Yiddish one (sung by a guy in a Spiderman costume and a ushanka -- take that, Debbie Friedman!).

Though I can't say they're part of my repertoire, I found a number of songs on the Internet designed to help remember long lists, such as all the states in the United States, the US Presidents, and the books of the Christian Bible.   And though I'm thinking Tom Lehrer had humor rather than pedagogy in mind when he wrote The Elements, it's out there now on school sites and chemistry blogs for the hard core.

The success of such songs has not been lost on the business of education. I found a site for a business devoted to peddling geography lists set to music. Their slogan: "You never forget what you sing." I have to agree -- though the tunes have to be catchy, the lyrics clever, and the main ideas distillable into memorable bites. I'm not so sure the geography list songs do any of this, though to be fair I haven't listened to anything more than the short samples at the site. I also wonder how successful some of these other "long list" songs really are at aiding memorization. Though I only remember "The Highwayman" through "plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair" I remember the whole of "Jabborwocky," another poem we learned in eighth grade English which was (1) much shorter than the others we had to memorize, and (2) the subject of a song in the Disney film, Alice in Wonderland, by means of which I'd already learned the first and last stanzas (which are identical) when I was about seven through repetitive listening to the soundtrack album.  It had a catchy, clever tune in addition to being short.

Catchy and clever songs with focused sound bites definitely stick with.  Potentially forever. To this day, if I'm called upon to write the word "encyclopedia" I hear Jiminy Cricket singing "Ennn - Cyclopedia, E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A" in my head; it's how I learned to spell the word in the first place. I'll never forget the Twelve Tribes of Israel, thanks to the "Jacob and Sons " song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or the Girl Scout Laws in effect when I was scouting, thanks to a song that I can only find a Girl Guides version of on the web (it was sung to the tune of something that is some college somewhere's school song; my mother knew which one, but I wasn't able to find out which as I'm sadly remiss when it comes to searching for tunes by googling).

Then there are the songs that are more conceptual, like the old School House Rock titles.  "Conjunction Junction," in case you don't remember or hadn't guessed, teaches the grammatical function of conjunctions, and "I'm Just a Bill" teaches how a bill becomes a federal law in the United States. It's a testament to these songs that at least the choruses stuck with me, and so did the general idea of the chatty parts, even though I didn't have a recording of them and so couldn't listen to them repeatedly.

But the songs I'll remember forever and that I really learned from -- I mean, sitting-in-a-test-singing-to-myself-to-remember-how-to-answer learned from -- are in a class by themselves. These are from the late 1950s/early 1960s recordings known as the Singing Science Records, which I just can't say enough good things about.

I inherited these records from the three girls who lived across the street (I had all the titles except Experiment Songs, the weakest of the bunch; though at one point one of the girls asked for Space Songs back so now, forty years later, I only have four on vinyl). I was delighted to find that someone has preserved these long-out-of-print gems on the web. It saved me the trouble of having to digitize these treasures among children's educational records myself, so my kids could listen to them in the car. These records were in no small part responsible for one of my earliest ambitions (as an eight-to-12 year old) to be a meteorologist, and the knowledge I gained from repeatedly playing them until I feared I'd wear the grooves out served me well in every introductory science class I ever took.

I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it's true. I'll never know which was more instrumental in getting me As: the basic knowledge from the songs, or the fact that having the basic knowledge from the songs already, I could focus my efforts on learning more advanced concepts. These songs cover pretty sophisticated topics for their target elementary school audience. Weather Songs, for example, is worth the price of admission just for the three songs, "The Water Cycle Song," "How Clouds are Formed" and "Stratus and Cumulus," which build upon each other nicely and together explain and help kids identify the basic cloud formations through catchy, very sticky, tunes, and lyrics that hone in on fundamental concepts and use rudimentary scientific terminology to convey them.

I could easily identify by name stratus, cumulus, cirrus, and nimbus clouds and their variants (e.g. strato-cumulus, cumulo-nimus, cirro-stratus) by the time I was around nine, largely because of these songs. Years later, in college, I took an introductory physical geography course taught by a climatologist. You guessed it: we had to know the nomenclature of cloud formations, and I'd already known it and committed it to long term memory through the medium of music years before.

Though as Jef's site indicates, these records are very "atomic age" in their orientation, the basic science hasn't changed a whole hell of a lot. Sure, there have been advances in physics and other sciences since these songs were written. But though I'm no expert, I'd guess the basic physics concepts in "Kinetic and Potential Energy" (which I sang to myself during a test in junior high science to help answer some of the questions), "Jets" and "What is Chemical Energy" are just as valid today as they were then. Perhaps, were the Singing Science Records to be recorded today, we'd have songs about string theory, too.

Indeed, some of the material is surprisingly timely. If you want to teach a kid about why global warming is happening, there's a song called "What Does the Glass of a Greenhouse Do" that will accomplish just that (though you'll need to fill in a few blanks after "warm up the earth on cold, cold days"). The messages of the Nature Songs and More Nature Songs albums are decidedly ecological. I teared up the other day while listening to "The Conservation Song," and it's exhortation to "study conservation, and practice conservation, there's no doubt that it will keep our nation strong" -- it made me realize that this message has been around for my entire lifetime (and before) and we're still, as a nation, struggling with this fundamental truth.

Another song that never fails to make me tear up is "The Balance of Nature," and its message that the natural world hangs in a delicate balance that can all too easily be upset ("the balance of nature should be understood; if the balance of nature is ever unbalanced, whatever will happen will not be good"). This is an excellent jumping off point for discussion of rainforests, which were, interestingly, part of my older son's pre-K curriculum. It also aids discussion of the ecological impact of natural disasters, and as well helping to discuss some of the things that puzzle and terrify young kids. Like, "why are there bugs?" And, "why do the bugs have to get eaten by birds?" Or, "Why do lions eat zebras?" For the next part, "I don't want the zebras to die," you'll need to improvise a bit.

Nature Songs' "What is an Insect?" teaches that insects all have six legs, antennae, and three parts to their bodies. "What is a Mammal?" does the same for the mammalian world with a drumbeat that gets the warm-blooded among us ready to pound along : "Why anyone can tell you what a mammal is, anyone who understands: they're warm blooded, have hair on their bodies, and suckle their young from mammary glands." Good for the multiple choice quizzes to come down the road, and entertaining to have your grade schooler sing to uptight dinner guests to see who snickers at the mammary glands line. Though now that I'm a parent rather than an adult with a memory of being called upon to perform this song to an assembled dinner table crowd as a child, the snickering could simply be because of the undeniable cuteness factor that comes with small children using big words -- particularly those that they obviously understand.

Though my kids are a lot younger than I was when I first started listening to these records, I've already found opportunities to introduce them and make them relevant. "What is an Animal" and "What are the Parts of a Tree" have already come in useful, as the newly-minted kindergartener is currently studying trees and plants in school.

When I think about the use of meter and rhyme with or without melody for educational purposes, the Singing Science Records will always be the gold standard. You can still find copies occasionally, at alibris.com or on ebay, so keep looking. I commend them to you, with love, and with more than a little awe for the lasting role they played in my educational life.

**Morgana**

Morgie's Ten Weight Loss Truths

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:04:00 +0000

I have been a normal weight for most of my life thus far. At various times, I might have been ten to fifteen pounds above or below my set point, but I was never in the overweight category or even near it. If I wanted to slim down a bit, it was easy to do. I just went to Weight Watchers for a couple of months and once I was paying attention and working out, the weight dropped.

When I hit my late thirties/early forties, things changed. Without getting into the personal details, I lost three people who were very significant in my life in the space of about four years, became depressed, recovered, had two kids. By the beginning of the 21st century, I found myself up about 50 pounds and unable to lose the weight. Until now.

I felt I’d tried everything, but in truth, I hadn’t. It took some experimentation to find a formula that worked for me, but it appears that at last I have. By combining elements of three different programs and 50-90 minutes of exercise a day, I appear to have hit a sweet spot. Since July I have been losing weight at the rate of about one to two pounds per week.

Though I've still got work to do, I feel confident for the first time that I can get there. Confident enough to offer ten basic truths about my experience. If they sound harsh, it’s because they are. I believe it's because I have accepted them as truths and am working with them instead of fighting against them that I have the right mind set to succeed.

Before I start, let me say my only association with the programs and products mentioned is that I tried them at one time or another. Indeed, I have no credentials as an expert in this field, and no connection to the weight loss, nutrition or fitness industry, other than as a participant. So why should you listen to me? No reason at all, other than that I've been there. And perhaps that those who are credentialed have a vested interest in making everything seem easy, quick and painless. I am here to tell you that weight loss is none of those things. The one thing it is, though, is worth the difficulty, time and pain.

Here are my ten truths.

It is hard.

Just look at the numbers on the obese nation the United States has become. If it was easy, everyone would be thin and healthy. Realize that anything that suggests otherwise is either snake oil or ignorance. Don’t spend money on anything that promises easy weight loss. It’s throwing your cash away. (If you are just dying to throw your cash away, I have a PayPal account that will gladly accept it.)

It takes a long time.

There is no quick fix. It is much harder to lose than to gain. I can gain ten pounds in a day or two, but it takes me a good six weeks of hard work and sacrifice to lose that much. At the risk of stating the obvious, how long it takes depends on how much you have to lose. In my case, I found that after I lost the first 20 pounds, the weight loss sped up a bit. I have no idea why. Perhaps I just became better at the process, perhaps my metabolism got revved up a bit, perhaps a combination, perhaps none of the above. But it is still a long process, unless you can leave your job, your family, and your life to go focus on only weight loss for months and months. Even then, it will take months and months. Maybe even years and years. That money you were going to spend on something that promises quick weight loss? PayPal.

It hurts.

You will be hungry, even to the point of nausea. You will have headaches. You will have sore muscles and painful joints. You will feel psychologically beaten up, deprived, and angry. In my experience, any diet or “lifestyle change” that assures you none of these things will happen isn’t going to work. What does work is acknowledging the pain and pushing through it.

One day, I decided not to eat when I was hungry to the point of nausea, just to see what would happen. It wasn’t time for me to eat, and if I did I’d be in trouble with my Weight Watchers points for the rest of the day. Guess what? It got worse and I felt crappy. But I didn’t throw up, and after about half an hour the feeling passed and I just felt "normal" hunger again. (It took me two years to get the guts even to try this because I have a phobia about vomiting.) After about two weeks of pushing through the nausea-inducing hunger, I stopped getting extremely hungry except when I’m really late for a meal or snack. Or premenstrual. And then, it is "normal" hunger.

Another example. About a month ago, I went out to eat with my family and another family. The mom, who is one of my closest friends in California, is tall and thin, and though I don't know for sure, I gather she has never been overweight. She ordered deep fried onion rings among other things I would have loved to eat. She does this a lot. Chocolate Belgian waffle at brunch, mud pie type dessert at dinner. (Of course, I only noticed this when I stopped doing it myself.) I ordered a salad with chicken breast (and immediately cut the block of feta that came with it in half and discarded half to avoid overeating). She then proceeded to say she thought that a lot of people on The Biggest Loser intentionally gained weight to go on the show, and how she thought she could gain and lose 100 pounds pretty easily, though gaining would be hard.

Despite the fact that she’s one of my closest friends and I know she didn’t mean to push my buttons, I got pissed and snapped something ridiculous like "do you have proof of that?" at her, though it didn't seem ridiculous at the time. There she was eating her deep fried food and talking about how hard it would be to gain weight and how easy to lose it, while I was being virtuous and suffering. Plus, if she’d ever been obese, she would know that the last thing someone who is obese wants to do is gain. If you can't take off the weight you already have, it's not going to seem a good idea to try to take off even more. Particularly with $250K at stake. I mean, maybe it does happen. I have no idea. But my guess is not so much, unless the entire show is reality in name only and hires actor-poseurs to play the contestants.

In any case, my point is that even silly discussions with your closest friends can hit a sore spot when you're vulnerable from the weeks of hard work, soreness, and deprivation. I had to acknowledge that it was sheer envy over those damn onion rings and that she doesn't have a weight problem that got a hold of me there for a minute in my weakened state. I pushed through it, and come out the other side with the realization that it was my problem, not hers -- and feeling pretty ashamed about the whole thing.

It is not a panacea.

The man who doesn’t love you won’t start loving you just because you lost weight (and if he does, he’s a dick). If your nose was too big to start with, losing weight won’t make it small. It might even look bigger now that your face is thinner. You will still have stresses and obstacles in your life, and you’ll still have to deal with them. And if you don’t have some basic self esteem already, losing weight won’t give it to you.

Don’t get me wrong. Losing weight improves health and well-being, enables you to wear nicer clothes and look better in them, and avoids institutional discrimination and interpersonal nastiness based on weight. It removes one reason to be unhappy, and the better health, well-being and appearance that result can all help build self-confidence. There are a lot of great reasons to do it. But it won’t solve all your problems, and, by itself, losing weight will not make you happy. So don’t think it will.

It requires more exercise than you’ve been led to believe.

Seems like every time I turn around there’s a new headline about how little exercise you can get away with and still get health benefits. I believed the ones that said you only needed about 30 minutes a day to lose weight. But my body doesn’t see results on that amount of exercise. My body needs to exercise for at least 50 minutes a day to see results. If I don’t see results, I am not motivated to continue. In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes. I now feel vindicated, because apparently that moderate exercise recommendation has been re-thunk. It turns out you need to exercise more than you've been led to believe.

Also, you will need to sweat. Your exercise will have to be intense, not comfortable. Comfortable doesn’t make visible changes in your body, and after a point, it doesn’t increase your fitness level either. You must pant, you must push, you must groan. No pain, no gain. Truly.

Finally, if like me you’re not an exercise addict, you will need to find a motivator. I like weight loss television and Internet sites for this lately, but magazines and books can be great as well. And you will need to get to know yourself pretty well. I know that if I don’t exercise for more than one day, it is exponentially harder for me to get out there on day three. So I have been trying to avoid more than a day without getting to the gym or out for a run. On those days, I try to walk 10,000 steps, even if it takes doing donuts around the house to top off the pedometer at the end of the day. Then I can tell myself I exercised, and I keep my motivation up.

It requires more willpower than you've been led to believe.

I’ve tried a lot of different diets, and what drives me nuts about a lot of them, even the sensible ones like Weight Watchers, is the propaganda that goes something like this: you can eat your favorite foods! You can eat our delicious low calorie [fill in the brand name here] ice cream treats! You can eat as much as you want of X, Y or Z! You’ll feel full and satisfied and willpower will be taken out of the equation!

Bollocks. No, I can’t eat my favorite foods. If I do indulge in the miniscule portion that is permitted, even if I eat it so slowly that it ends up being over a period of three hours, I will not be satisfied. It will merely whet my appetite and I’ll want to eat until it's gone, and then eat some more. And why in the world would I want to waste my calories on diet sweets that don’t taste nearly as good as they look? What’s the point? Eating as much as you want of anything is just a bad idea. It perpetuates the main problem most of us have, which is an inability to control portion sizes.

If you’re going to indulge, you will need to be able to stop and it will take a strong will to do so. There is no magic formula of other things you’re supposed to eat, drinking water, exercising first, that will make this easy. If you have that sort of willpower, more (will)power to you. If you are like me, it takes about all the willpower you can muster just not to start down that path in the first place.

I anticipate that when I reach my goal, I will splurge from time to time. But for me, it is a derailment waiting to happen if I try to do this while I’m losing.

Yes, I’m going to be hungry, not full and satisfied a fair amount of the time. See truth three above. I have to believe, though, that it is worth it.

It takes experimenting and willingness to try something different if what you’re doing is not working.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of plans, supplements, drugs and other things I’ve tried: Body for Life, The South Beach Diet, Weight Watchers, The Road Back, Hoodia, Phentermine, Buns of Steel, Leptin Diet, Serotonin Power Diet. I even went to a couple of hospital-run programs designed to help with weight loss. I learned some things in the process.

For me, low carb, high protein diets only work to a point. I can drop about fifteen pounds, but then I stall, mainly because I can't continue to lose eating the portions I'm eating, but I can't eat less because eating is the only thing that gives me energy. I feel fatigued, and it makes working out unappealing.

Hoodia did nothing for me. Phentermine enabled me to lose about twelve pounds without much effort, but it made me feel agitated, made my heart race, gave me insomnia, and sapped my energy. While I was taking it, there were times when I honestly thought I was going to die. After a while, my body became immune to it and the weight loss stopped. When I went off of it after about six months, I felt I’d been given a new lease on life.

What works for me has three parts to it. First, I must eat a low fat diet with “good” carbs from grains, and a moderate amount of protein from sources other than dairy sources. Second, I must control my portions. Third, large quantities of fish oil tablets on a daily basis, CLA and vitamins seem to help, along with the aforementioned 50-90 minutes of exercise most days. I eat small amounts of fruit (one serving a day) and milk (about the same, unless you count what I put in my coffee or a tablespoon of parmesan cheese at dinner) and large amounts of vegetables. I do use real butter, but I only use a tablespoon a day at the most.

I track my food consumption religiously with the following exceptions: I don’t count the nonfat milk I put in my coffee, or the occasional bite of dessert or interesting looking snack one of the kids is having (more than a single bite and I’m past my willpower limit). I do still drink alcohol, but only wine (which is mostly what I drank before anyway) and no more than two glasses on the days I do drink, which is at most a couple of times a week these days if we go out to eat, and once in a blue moon if we don’t. I count the calories in the alcohol toward my daily total. I do still drink Diet Coke; my consumption has even gone up. I'd probably be better off without it, but for now it doesn't seem to be impeding progress.

What works for me may not work for you. Again, it’s about finding that sweet spot. Just because the solution your best friend swears by makes you feel like crap does not mean you can’t find something that works. I'd stay away from things that promise results that seem too good to be true (if they do, they are), or involve primarily eating strange supplements, eating only a single type of food, eating in strange combinations or at strange times, drinking instead of eating, or avoiding a list of foods. All of these might as well be voodoo because they’re about as effective.

It must be a priority.

Weight loss this time around has been like a third job for me. I have the job that pays the bills, the job that raises children, and the job that loses weight.

It’s not just the time it takes to exercise. It’s the time it takes to go grocery shopping, which I hate. It’s the time it takes to cook, which I like sometimes, particularly if it is a social event. But not if I feel it is required of me as a daily chore. It’s the time it takes to keep a food and exercise journal, and to pack up your gym bag to take to the office. It’s the time it takes to go to physical therapy when your knee starts to bother you from increasing your training. That doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies, so I hope you aren't addicted to needlepoint.

It is scary.

I never had the classic weight loss worry, that I'd receive unwanted sexual attention. It was never a problem when I was young and thin, unfortunately. Now that I'm in my forties... well, let's just say "unwanted" doesn't really work in that sentence. I can't imagine anything more uplifting than feeling admired for the way I look.

My fears tend more toward the hypochondria spectrum. They go like this: "I’m losing weight. Me? But I couldn’t before. Something must be wrong. That colleague of mine who died from pancreatic cancer lost weight. A lot of weight. Maybe I have cancer?" Um, you’re dieting and exercising like a maniac, fool. Get over yourself. Whatever your personal proclivities, it can be scary to lose weight.

There will be obstacles, frustrations and setbacks. But in the end, it will be worth it.

My official weigh-in day for the week is Monday, and lately I've been noticing that I drop a pound or more about two days after I weigh in. I briefly considered changing my weigh-in day, but then I had a vision of the drop showing up two days later anyway and myself endlessly chasing a better weigh-in around the calendar. My point is that you may not lose every week, or as much as you want to every week. I've had a couple of weeks where I stayed the same. Fortunately this time I haven't had any gains so far, but I know it can happen.

Something as normal as getting invited to a friend's for dinner, or having an all day meeting at work where they bring in food can seem like an obstacle to success. Holidays, busy days, days where you just didn't plan it right and didn't get your workout in until it was late and you were too tired to do it -- these happen.

My plan is to do the best I can without giving in entirely. At a restaurant, I order the healthiest thing I can find, then cut the whole thing in half anyway. I have the server pack up half for me to take home before I even start eating so I don't see it on or near my plate. If I'm tired and the choice is between cooking in and eating out and I have food in the fridge, I pick cooking in then go to bed a little earlier than I would otherwise. If I don't have time to do weights and aerobics back-to-back on my strength training days, I do the weights and come back to the aerobics later when I have more time. If I'm at a function and I'm served something inconsistent with my diet, I try to eat just the parts that are consistent. And if I eat at the high end of my calorie range one day, I try to eat at the low end the next.

The biggest obstacle I will have to face is maintenance. By then the novelty of the diet and exercise will have worn off and I know I'll be wanting a cheeseburger and chocolate lava cake. The positive reinforcement of the continued losses will be gone, and I'll have to figure out how to get jazzed by something as undramatic as not gaining.

Then again, I'll have my old self back, and seeing her in the mirror again ought to be reinforcement enough.

**Morgana**

"When I Was a Kid, We Didn't Have [Insert Noun of Choice] Like That..."

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:52:00 +0000

Since the day after last Halloween, my children have been expressing their costume preferences for this year which seem to change on a weekly basis. My stock response has been straight from my mother's own annals: "If you still want to be a [insert noun of the week] when Halloween comes, we'll see if we can find a [insert noun of the week again] costume for you. Halloween is a long way away yet and you may change your mind." A few weeks ago, when the Halloween specialty stores started popping up and you could no longer walk into a drug or grocery store without bumping into entire aisles colored orange and black, my kids were no longer buying it. The five-year-old in particular gave me a look that said, "Just because you're in denial about the speed with which the second half of your life is rushing by and scared of confronting your own mortality doesn't mean Halloween isn't here, dammit." Ok, maybe I'm projecting just a little. (But only just a little; if you'd seen the look, you'd know.)

So soon we'll be looking for a lion costume and an as yet undecided second costume (the three-year-old is still waffling). Last year we had a Dark Knight Batman and a Darth Vader. Here's Darth:

What amazes me about kids' costumes these days is how much nicer they are than when I was growing up. Look at the detail on that helmet. It's a sturdy, hard plastic, a far cry from the mystery material that seemed to be part cardboard/part nylon they made Halloween masks out of in my youth. And though you can't see it in the photo above, you can see from the catalogue photo that the costume is a soft, comfortable jump suit that at least makes an attempt at verisimilitude with a graphic of colored buttons to resemble Darth's blinking-lighted bodice, a belt and a cape. Light saber not included, but available separately.

When I was a kid, unless your mother could sew (mine couldn't) or you were old enough to create your own costume out of your various family members' closets and your mother's make-up case, costumes came in cheesy, flimsy cardboard boxes with clear cellophane windows on the front. They consisted of the aforementioned mask and some odd smock thing made out of what I remember as scratchy nylon burlap. They were also just plain bizarre. More often than not, they had a picture of the thing you were supposed to be on the front of the costume. So if you were a witch, you'd have a picture of a witch on your chest. Take a look at this retro costumes site to see what I mean. I remember as a child questioning this odd, post-modern-without-knowing-it design choice. Even a seven year old knows Mickey Mouse doesn't wear a picture of himself. Costumes have definitely come a long way.

Once I started thinking about the differences in costumes, I naturally (for me anyway) meandered to thinking about other things that kids now take for granted that I would have loved to have growing up. Videos and DVDs! Imagine getting to see The Wizard of Oz any time you want, not just when it rolls around once a year on network television! Computers! The other day, the five-year-old saw me surfing away and asked whether I liked to play with computers when I was his age. Now I know how my mother felt when she had to explain they didn't have television when she was growing up. (Way to help me avoid confronting that mortality issue, thanks.) He also saw me taking an LP out of a sleeve and asked "What kind of CD is that?" which was doubly amusing to me as a friend had told me long ago her son referred to record albums as "big CDs."

I do think that my life would have been much different if computers had been around during my childhood. As an only child, I spent a lot of time lonely and bored. There were only so many hours a day you could read books, watch reruns, swim, or hit tennis balls against the side of the house during summers when school was out and when your best friends were all on the road with their families. Something as interactive and absorbing as, oh say, a graphic adventure or computer RPG would have made a lot of difference. I suspect some of my tendency to become absorbed in computer games even now is just back-filling against those years.

There are also things they just don't make any more for which I am nostalgic and would love to share with my kids. Whenever we visited my grandparents in Brooklyn, my dad would take me down to the corner store and buy me a Pensy Pinky or two. We'd take them over to the park down the street and play handball. Actually, he'd play handball and I'd try to keep up. Another example: Astonishingly, my mother bought a Sixfinger when I was about four. I would find pieces of it in odd places for years afterwards. She was pretty much opposed to toy guns (though in later years I had a cowboy set, a popgun and various water pistols), but I am sure she got the Sixfinger because she thought it was funny. Her sense of humor ranged from extremely sophisticated to utterly silly.

Some of the things we 60s and 70s kids played with are still around, though the packaging has changed. For a bit of fun, take a look at the Barbie case and the Playdoh. I had a similar Barbie case; I still have it in the garage somewhere. It seems so innocent and simple compared to the ones available today when having 15 dolls to store is apparently common enough to warrant such a device, and when Barbie has her own web site. A modelling clay purist, I only just tolerated Playdoh as a child and still find the smell revolting.

I have a feeling there is more to be said on this topic another time, but for now I'll leave you with the observation that the one thing that hasn't seemed to change that much is toy advertising. The toys always look so much more fun than they turn out to be. I also chuckled at the boxtop reference in that video -- I made one to a twenty-something WoW guildmate and was met with the online equivalent of a blank stare...

**Morgana**

Hiatus Interruptus

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:31:00 +0000

My abrupt disappearance from the blogosphere for almost a year can't fairly be blamed entirely on the repair of my home network last winter, which gave me access to World of Warcraft on my sadly outdated gaming rig. Although I descended into Northrend for a good six months, long enough to get Unchychunch, my shaman, capable of dps high enough not to drag others down in Naxx and to off a few bosses in each of its wings, long about May I bit the bullet and joined Facebook, yet another online time sink (at least until the novelty wears off).

Around the same time, work went through an out of control period of intensity until around mid-July. By the time that was over, I looked back, as I often have, at my most recent gaming spate with a feeling somewhere between fascination and disgust at how completely my non-work life had come to revolve around WoW. There was no withdrawal to speak of, so it has been easy not to go back. I don't even really miss it, mostly because I'd started to become disenchanted around the time the fates conspired to take me offline again. I found myself upset more often than not because I couldn't get anything other than a fill-in raiding spot. The majority of my then-guild appeared to live in the Central or Eastern time zones but to have chosen a Pacific time zone server for reasons known only to themselves. As a result, they started raiding at 4 or 5 p.m. on weekdays my time, which just didn't work for me. Escapism that is frustrating is no escapism at all, so I escaped from my escapist frustration.

So now, I'm doing things with my "free" time that are no doubt much better for my body and soul. I've combined the nutritional elements of three different weight loss programs into one, tweaked them some, and this, along with approximately an hour of exercise most days, is enabling me to make good on my long overdue resolution to get back to my mid-twenties weight. I'm about halfway to goal, and another fifteen pounds to stretch goal. Along the way, I looked online for inspiration and discovered the screamingly funny writings of Shauna Reid. I also developed a fascination with The Biggest Loser, which my kids call the "watching fat people get skinny show." Though I'm more than 75 pounds too light to qualify, and though I'd rather die than cry about my personal shortcomings and spew my stomach contents from overtraining (or indeed for any reason) in front of millions of people I don't know, I do fantasize about having Jillian Michaels as my personal trainer, psychotherapist and weight loss dominatrix. I'm even toying with the idea of trying to run another marathon on the 21st anniversary of my first and only, but I don't think I can swing the training schedule. If I start now, I might make the 25th anniversary, though. Here's a memento from my only marathon to date:

On another note, we have a kindergartener in the house and I'm just tickled about it. He came home the other day and explained to me what an ellipsis is. There's something charming about a five-year-old who hasn't yet fully broken the reading code opining on "the three dots that means something is missing." August and September have been full of school-related tasks and commitments; I'm hoping things have settled down for good.

I may be one of the only people in the world who remembers the names of their first school readers, and I'm probably one of even fewer people in the world who have good enough memories of them to track them down on Alibris. Opening Books (cool picture of the inside at this link), A Magic Box, and Things You See (another cool picture) are winging their respective ways to my doorstep and I'm looking forward to cracking them open with my little emergent reader.

That's the nutshell version of how I spent my winter, spring and summer hiatus. There's a ton more to it of course, but even this much is too much for Morgie's Spot. I vowed when I started this thing I'd write about ideas, books, movies, writing, politics, memories, people other than myself, and other topics I find interesting rather than making this a (yawn) personal diary. Just thought I owed an explanation for the rather crevasse-like gap between posts.

**Morgana**

Morgie's Lost Writings

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:28:00 +0000

Come on, admit it. You do it too, don't you? I'm convinced that everyone googles themselves at one time or another. I probably do it at least a couple of times a year. I search on Morgana, the handle under which I used to freelance for Computer Games Strategy Plus as well as under which I wrote reviews and walkthrus to upload to the Gamers' Forum on CompuServe. It was also my handle for sysoping in some of the TEG forums on CIS. I also search on Morgie, a short form of that handle someone gave me as a nickname (amusing to have a nickname of a nickname), and of course, I search on my real name in its various permutations.

When I search on Morgana, I'm feeling nostalgic about my hard core gaming days and I can take a bit of a stumble down memory lane as my alter ego lives on in acknowledgements on user created DOOM and Heretic levels here, here, and here, a Gamers' Forum transcript of a conference with Origin around the time Ultima 8: Pagan was about to be released, and the once famous-in-Gamers' Lehua's Myst EndGamers Wall of Honor. Some of my gaming-related writings are still available on the web as well. My walkthru of a 1990s era graphic adventure games, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within from Sierra is available on a couple of web sites, although this appears to be the non-revised version and the original archive had several illustrations that apparently have not been preserved. My solution to the turtle bones puzzle in The Dig, a graphic adventure from LucasArts, is available too. Until recently I was also able to find my walkthru for The Dig on the web. My hint file for getting past the search light puzzle in Noctropolis from Electronic Arts also survived. I had uploaded these only to the CIS Gamers' Forum and I note that none of the sites to which I've linked here ever asked my permission to put these files up, nor did any of the folks who decided to upload them. I would have appreciated the courtesy of a request for permission which is why I put a copyright notice on the files. But I forgive everyone -- for the simple reason that these are now the only copies I can find of these pieces.

It's surprising to me that these are available after all this time and I was lucky to be able to capture copies. When I think back to all the work I put into these, it's nice to know they had some staying power. I did most of my gaming-related writing in or around 1995, and the games I wrote about are the sort that you have to use a program like DOSBOX to run now. The hint files have likely outlasted the useful life of the games, for the most part.

I'd dutifully copied all of my collected gaming works from computer to computer every time I upgraded for years, but I must have made the determination at some point to let my gaming material go. Maybe when I was making a rather half-hearted attempt to become a writer of literary fiction. Maybe when I was pregnant. I can't now recall, but I regret having lost them.

I know it is a long shot, but if anyone out there from the old CIS days or otherwise still has any of my stuff, please drop a line and let me know as I'd love to get copies. I found a hard copy of my review of Merchant Prince, but I am missing: walkthrus of Ripper (this was a huge document as I recall and was uploaded to CompuServe in two archives, I believe it also had accompanying graphics files) and Johnny Mnemonic, and reviews of Dreamweb, Noctropolis, Sim Health (as I recall this one, I did it in play form with the characters being Hillary and Bill Clinton), Millenium Auction, Bad Mojo and Syndicate. If there were others, I'm now not recalling what they were. But I'd love to be reunited with any or all of them, so if you can help please let me know and I'll be your best friend.

Pinky swear.

**Morgana**

Is it Smart to Vote Dumb?

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Since when is being smart a bad thing?

To hear the Republicans talk, the last thing we want is someone who is "professorial" or "academic" running the country. Instead, we should have someone who is as average as Joe the Plumber, someone "real" Americans (i.e., not those who do notoriously well in school like the Jews and the Asians) can relate to because he isn't smarter than we are. In fact, he's not too smart at all. And his VP pick is dumber than a post but supposedly someone you'd want to have a beer with. Personally, I'd rather have a beer with someone really bright who would have farther to fall if he or she ended up drunk. Then at least the conversation would still be average, rather than stupid.

As best I can tell, this anti-intellectualism spate seems to dovetail with the general GOP fear-mongering. It can't be that they really think McCain, with his houses and cars and spousal millions isn't "elite." The argument seems to be: at least McCain isn't threatening. We don't have to worry that he'll do something that's too hard for us to understand. That he'll pull a fast one on us because we can't keep up. That he'll trick us, and take advantage of us -- that we have to listen carefully to his words because he's so smart we can be assured he'll choose his carefully and we might be being lied to without even realizing it.

Tell you what. I'm with Jon Stewart on this one. I won't vote for someone for President unless I think he or she is as smart as I am or smarter, or if that's not possible, at least pretty close. Why would doing otherwise be a good idea? Although Forrest Gump and Chauncey Gardner may be able to muddle through and come out on top, why would it make sense in anything other than fiction and satire to take such a risk? We had a President for the last eight years to whom Paul Begala referred as a "high functioning moron" on national television. And look where it got us.

It's unfortunate that people of "average" intelligence aren't as wowed by intellectual brilliance as people of average looks are of exceptional physical beauty. It just isn't valued in the same way, even though it is arguably more important to the survival of the species. By a lot. It's sad and more than a little disturbing to think that being an intellectual, i.e., someone who has a high degree of intelligence and uses it, is something so many people in this country consider a negative.

I admit I may have been in denial about how strong the tradition of anti-intellectualism is in this country, and not only on a political level. I have put Richard Hoftstadter's book on this subject on my reading list; just reading the reviews is enlightening. I've come across in my own career a belief that where you go to school isn't important, that how smart you are isn't important, it's how practical you are and how well you solve problems and interact with people that is important. This seems to me a false dichotomy: either someone is smart and well-educated or a practical thinking problem solver and has people skills, but not both. In reality, it simply serves the purpose of organizations not to have critical thinkers doing that critical thinking thing they do that sets the boat a'rocking, so intellectualism becomes devalued.

I accept that there are many kinds of intelligence and that all have value. A President of the United States requires multiple types of intelligence to be effective. It's rare, though, in my experience, to find an exceptionally smart and well educated-person who, on balance, doesn't have better ability to think practically and to solve problems than someone who isn't smart and well-educated. I also think a curious, open mind is more likely to be an understanding and empathetic mind. Since the President's job is to represent all of the people, not just those who voted for him or her, understanding and empathy should not be underestimated.

It's no wonder that public education in this country is in a shambles when our leaders don't value intellectualism. If Obama wins, at least there's a hope that being smart will be cool.

And I'll go out and buy some new shades.

**Morgana**

Was Dorothy a Slytherin?

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:39:00 +0000

From about midway through my first pregnancy until a few months ago, a period of nearly five years, I read almost nothing unrelated to work unless it involved pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or child care. This was extremely unusual for me. My first choice for pleasure reading is generally literary fiction or nonfiction involving theoretical or abstract concepts. But I found myself unable to concentrate enough to lose myself appropriately in a novel, and unable to wrap my brain around anything requiring thinking in abstractions. At first I attributed this to preoccupation with the pregnancy, then to hormones, and finally, after the first birth and even more after the second, to sheer exhaustion. When it continued to my youngest's second birthday, I wondered whether having babies had permanently damaged my brain. Then one day a few months ago, to my amazement and delight, I discovered that the reading (and thinking) ability I thought had been lost had all come back and actually seemed even sharper than before. Perhaps it's true that "mommy brain" is actually a good thing.

During those lean reading years, the one exception was the Harry Potter series. I hadn't read these books, though of course, since I don't live under a rock, I'd heard about them. I have adult reader friends who loved them, and whose opinions I generally respect though they have different tastes. Most are genre fiction readers, mysteries or science fiction. With a few exceptions in the fantasy realm, that isn't really my thing. But I thought the books would be easy reads and I couldn't read anything else, so I picked the first one up in 2005 around the time Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. I read the entire series through Half-Blood Prince, becoming something of a fan in the process. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, I read it pretty much in a couple of sittings, then I started the series over and read the whole thing again. And then I read it a third time. I probably would have read it a fourth time had I not discovered His Dark Materials when I was looking for a movie to watch on pay per view and ended up with The Golden Compass. (I found the movie unintelligible having no knowledge of the books, but was intrigued, read the books, and found them so interesting I ended up, after discovering my reading ability had returned, wanting to learn about the science underlying the fiction. Hence my recent readings in cosmology, astronomy and physics.)

Let me be clear. I'm not saying Harry Potter is great literature. But I still enjoyed it, and it hit the spot when I couldn't concentrate on anything that left too much unsaid. I could even find things to enjoy in the writing. I remember saying "Wow" aloud when I finished reading the confrontation scene between Harry and Voldemort in The Goblet of Fire. And the light-speed pacing of the Battle of Hogwarts scene seemed exactly right. (I also remember cringing every time a character was embarrassed. It seems Rowling could only show this through the character turning red, pink, blushing, or some other version of color flooding to their cheeks, and it often seemed this was happening every other page or so.)

Harry Potter has been criticized for, among other things, being derivative, and it's fairly hard to miss the debt the series owes to other epic fantasy tales of good versus evil. They're apparent at the highest level, as well as in the detail. At a 3000 foot level, the plot of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars movies and Harry Potter can all be summarized as: an orphaned (seemingly or truly) anti-hero (Frodo, Luke, Harry) is thrust into a situation in which he becomes the world’s redeemer from ultimate evil (Sauron, the Emperor, Voldemort), coached by an aged and powerful sage (Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Yoda, Dumbledore). At ground level, just as one example, the One Ring of Tolkien's trilogy and Slytherin’s locket-as-horcrux both cause negative personality changes in the wearer, are physical burdens far greater than their size, and display human-like willfulness.

But then, I challenge anyone to find a wholly original story anywhere. Being derivative, in and of itself, isn't something that should necessarily equate with bad. To my mind, a lot depends on how well the derivation is done; whether it offers anything new or just rehashes that which it is derived from, and whether it has any hint of self-awareness when it ventures into derived territory. Clueless is Emma, West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet, and Ulysses is The Odyssey but not because their authors obliviously thought they were the first to tell these stories.

The next time I read Harry Potter, likely when my oldest is old enough to enjoy having them read aloud, I'll try to remind myself to look for nods to its progenitors in the writing. I can say now, though, that I think Harry Potter does offer some new things, one of which was completely unexpected -- a new way of looking at The Wizard of Oz.

As I was reading through Harry Potter the third time, I also happened to be reading The Wizard of Oz to my oldest son. Although I've seen the movie countless times, it must have been thirty years since I'd last read the book. I don't often hear adults talking about rereading Oz the way they'll talk about rereading LOTR, the Narnia series (which I never read as a child and couldn't get into as an adult), or even Le Petit Prince. Either it doesn't compel rereading, or it's not cool to admit to.

Reading Oz again after all that time close on the heels of three jaunts through the Potter books, I identified a few obvious parallels. First, the witches in both stories can travel by disappearing ("disapparating") and reappearing ("reapparating"), and in both stories doing so requires a specific physical action of turning the body in a circle on the spot. Second, both protagonists, Dorothy and Harry, are protected through a "mark" on their foreheads originating in love. Dorothy bears the good witch of the North's kiss; Harry, the scar Voldemort razed into his forehead when Lily took the curse meant for Harry, sacrificing herself out of love for him. Third, the Winkies in Oz are a subjugated people who must do as they are told; Winky in Harry Potter is the name of a house elf, a member of an enslaved race that must obey their masters.

The most interesting of these parallels, however, is the one that casts a rather strange light on Dorothy.

The Mirror of Erised (Erised being "desire" mirrored, or spelled in reverse), central to the plot of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and discussed in later books as well, shows the viewer the deepest desire of his or her heart. The viewer need not be, and generally isn't, aware that this is what the mirror is showing. I thought about the Mirror as I read my son the part where the four companions each have their private audience with Oz the Terrible.

In The Wizard of Oz, Oz appears to each of Dorothy and her companions in a different form that reflects an innermost desire, but with a twist. Each different appearance shows what the next companion to have an audience with Oz most wants to see.

To Dorothy, the wizard appears as a giant head, the Scarecrow’s desire for a head full of brains. To the Scarecrow, who sees Oz next, Oz is a beautiful maiden, obviously the Tin Woodman’s desire for a heart so he can fall back in love with the Munchkin girl he was to marry. To the Tin Woodman, next in line, Oz is a horrible monster, a frightening appearance that evokes the Lions sought-after attribute of courage. And to the Lion, Oz appears as a self-sustaining ball of fire, which evokes Dorothy’s deepest desire, to depart life in Oz and phoenix-like, return from the flames into a new life back in Kansas. Each companion, after getting a debriefing from the one to see Oz immediately before him, expects to see Oz in one of the forms already experienced and is to some extent banking on it. Here's L. Frank Baum's description of what the Tin Woodman is expecting before he goes in to face the monster:

He did not know whether he would find Oz a lovely Lady or a Head, but he hoped it would be the lovely Lady. "For," he said to himself, "if it is the head, I am sure I shall not be given a heart, since a head has no heart of its own and therefore cannot feel for me. But if it is the lovely Lady I shall beg hard for a heart, for all ladies are themselves said to be kindly hearted.

Where it got really interesting was when I realized that each of Dorothy's companions, had they been spirited out of Oz and into Harry's world, fairly could be assumed to have been sorted into a different Hogwarts House based upon their primary character attributes. Each character's associated attribute is the one he mistakenly believes is lacking in himself and coincides with his heart's deepest desire, which he will ask Oz to provide: Scarecrow/Ravenclaw ("Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure"); Tin Woodman/Hufflepuff ("just and loyal"); Lion/Gryffindor (bravery; and by the way, the house emblem is a lion). The only House not represented is Slytherin, known for its cunning and ambition. And for turning out the most dark wizards of any House.

What of Dorothy? Would she have been a Slytherin? I think the answer might be yes.

If Dorothy hadn't been misaligned through a weird literary equivalent of a substitution cipher, she'd have seen Oz as fire; idiomatically, a fire in her belly -- a passion -- an ambition -- in this case to return home to Kansas. It is this ambition that drives her from the moment she lands in Oz, and she shows no end of resourcefulness in its service along the way. She bargains with her companions for their company and the skills they bring to the party by offering to do what she can to get Oz to help them get what they most desire (the lion is welcome to join, for example, because his presence will scare away other wild beasts). Here's what she thinks to herself after listening to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman debate whether brains or heart are better:

Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted. What worried her most was that the bread was nearly gone, and another meal for herself and Toto would empty the basket. To be sure neither the Woodman nor the Scarecrow ever ate anything, but she was not made of tin nor straw, and could not live unless she was fed.

Not that it's always inexcusable or even selfish to look out for number one. If you're a mom, or even if you've only had one, you can't really blame Narcissa Malfoy for her single-minded focus on saving Draco even if it meant betraying the Dark Lord. Her loyalties are with whoever can help her most, as are those of most Slytherins. Look at all the Death Eaters who gave up on Voldemort and built new alliances after his seemingly inexplicable defeat at the hands (head?) of a one-year-old. Dorothy has the same tendencies. Here's what our heroine thinks after Oz is exposed as a fraud:

Even Dorothy had hope that "The Great and Terrible Humbug," as she called him, would find a way to send her back to Kansas, and if he did she was willing to forgive him everything.

There are many more such examples, but I'm not going to make more of an undergraduate thesis out of this than I already have. Suffice it to say, the case can be made.

This doesn't mean I think Dorothy is evil. She remains one of my favorites from childhood, particularly when she's Judy Garland. But not all Slytherins are evil. Some are just banal. And some, like Severus Snape, are heroes in disguise.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole thought experiment for me was wondering whether Jo Rowling had any inkling that she'd thrown this aspect of a classic heroine into relief when she penned her own books. Those of us who've studied literature, and who've sat in creative writing workshops helpless as the living crap is kicked out of our brainchildren, have experienced the weirdness of a reader pointing out something that, uncannily but definitely, is present in the writing -- though not at all part of the conscious creative process. My guess on this one is a big fat goose egg. But isn't it pretty to think so?

**Morgana**

I Am Woman; I Am Not a Potato

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:32:00 +0000

The 2008 United States Presidential election is now assured to be historic regardless of who wins. Either an African American will be President or a white woman will be Vice President. That's an amazing thing, and a surprising thing -- given the continuing conservative bent of the not-so-silent majority in this country.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who make less than $200K a year continually vote against their own economic self-interest by voting for Republicans. A friend of mine (despite her politics) actually related to me the other day, quite seriously, that the Republican party really cared about the little guy. Hello? Clue phone: it's for you. The sad part is, she's not an NRA member, a pro-lifer, or a Christian Fundamentalist -- at least I can understand their attraction to the GOP even if they're not rich. What I don't get is how a woman who is none of those things can possibly think it's a good thing to vote Republican. Another thing I don't get: members of my tribe voting for Republicans, because they think that is the best way to assure a pro-Israel administration. Yet the Republican party and their judicial appointees are the very people who take every opportunity they can to blur the already somewhat muddy line between church and state further in favor of church. But I digress.

The question I really came here to pose is, what are the Republicans (or perhaps Senator McCain without the aid of Republican strategists) thinking with with his selection of Governor Sarah Palin as running mate? This is supposed to win over Senator Hillary Clinton's supporters? Do they honestly think that women such as myself will vote for their ticket simply because a woman is on it? We're supposed to abandon all principle and vote based on chromosomes? Do they think we're potatoes?

James Carville on CNN tonight said it pretty well; there's not much overlap between Clinton and Pat Buchanan, whom Palin supported for President. If the bet is that Clinton women will support Palin because she's a woman, that's a very bad bet based on the faulty anology that any woman is to women what Obama is to African Americans. From what I've observed, Obama has the support he does among African Americans not simply because of race, but because of the simple reason that his politics and those of his supporters are aligned.

I have been a Clinton supporter from the beginning of her campaign, but because I thought she was the smartest, most tenacious candidate, and didn't have a naive bone in her body about what it would take to get things done in the humongoid, pluralist bureaucracy that is the United States government. I never doubted her heart was in the right place. I don't just believe. I know that she would have tried to do what she said she'd do if elected President. The fact that she is a woman was a bonus, and a big one. A really big one. I would have loved to see this country mature enough to vote a woman into the most powerful office in the land and indeed, the world. Other democracies have done so, why not this one.

Clinton was the only candidate with the depth of knowledge on the universal health care issue necessary to solve that issue successfully. And she was pilloried by pretty much everyone for her prior efforts in that regard, back when everyone ran in a dither shouting socialized medicine, next stop the US Soviet -- and by the way, a First Lady has no place doing anything other than hosting luncheons, baking cookies and reading to first graders for a photo op.

She (understandably because such a breach of trust isn't supposed to happen in this country) trusted the Bush White House when they said a vote for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq was a vote to do so only if diplomacy failed. It's one thing to stand up on the floor of the Illinois State Senate and say the war is a bad idea. It's quite another to be a United States Senator from the state of New York who asked a specific question and was lied to, outright, by her President. And again, she was vilified for it within her own party as well as without.

Bah. Let's not kid ourselves. Partly this was because she is a Clinton, and they have no shortage of detractors, and even enemies. But mostly it was because she is a woman. The sorts of things said about Clinton even by mainstream media during her campaign were appalling and simply would not have been tolerated had they been said about African Americans or any other racial group.

I had decided to sit out this election. I would never have voted for McCain. The Supreme Court is far too important to leave the selection of Justices to him. But I couldn't bring myself into the Obama camp. The things that most bother me about Obama are a couple of incidents similar in nature, one involving NAFTA, where one of his aides was quoted as basically saying not to worry, Obama was only saying the correct thing to get elected and had no intention of rocking the boat once the tiller was in his hand. While I never doubted Senator Clinton's good intentions, I have had reason to doubt Senator Obama's.

But this latest move by McCain has pushed me into action. It feels personally insulting that he and/or the Republicans appear to think putting up a woman with mediocre academic and political credentials and a straight down the line conservative stance on the issues is somehow a substitute for Senator Clinton. I'm insulted that they appear to think the women of this country are, to a one, potatoes: brainless, without principle, and all grown in a patch together. And yet, they have the audacity to put a woman up for the second highest office in the country. (I guess that's not too surprising given Senator McCain's own view of the office of Vice President.) I'm insulted that they think we would want this woman to be the one who pushes through those 18 million cracks our candidate made in the glass ceiling of Presidential politics. What they don't seem to get is that it matters just as much who does it as that it happens. Because whoever does will set the expectations and the stage for those who come behind her. The wrong person will be as much of a setback as the right one will be a catapult forward.

The way I'm feeling now, I'll vote for Obama. He's smart (not as smart as Clinton, but smart nevertheless), he's got a knack for finding common ground, and he's got Joe Biden, who, like Clinton, I have no doubt has his heart in the right place. Choosing Biden, once it was obvious Clinton would not be the choice, was something of a litmus test: it showed how Obama approaches shoring up the areas in which he is less expert than others. Like President Kennedy did before him, he's shown that his approach when he takes office will be to surround himself with the smartest, most talented and experienced people in every field to advise him rather than ideologues and sports fans. He'll do that and he'll be ok in his areas of lesser strength -- he'll learn what he needs to learn, and he'll apply his intelligence and education to make the right decisions. And in any case, the Democratic ticket is the last, best hope to keep the Supreme Court from a clear conservative majority with the power to affect all our lives in a profound and horrifying way.

This Presidential election will make history either way. But history is not the same as progress, in all the areas in which we need it so badly in this country. The economy. Civil rights. Health care. International relations. Education. Science. Stopping the war, and stopping the terrorists. Optimism for the future. Only the Democratic ticket's win in November can bring the hope for these things, as well as making history.

**Morgana**

In Lieu of Chocolate Lava Cake

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:00:00 +0000

Whatever else personal blogging may be, it can't help but be self-indulgent at least to some degree. I celebrated a birthday recently and in its honor have decided to engage in a bit of unabashed self-indulgence and trot out my Top Ten Favorite Male Actors List. It was either that or chocolate lava cake, and I think on balance, I'll regret this bit of self-indulgence less.

All of these men are not only brilliant artists and versatile craftsmen, they're picky about their roles. And they seem like interesting people. They're the top ten stranded-on-a-desert-island-with, but also the top ten have-dinner-with.

For years I've had eight or so favorites, and in the interest of the list decided to expand to an even 10. This turned out to be a challenge because once I'd pushed the envelope I ended up with more like 20 and had to axe about half. Without futher ado, here are those that made the cut in alphabetical order (because I just couldn't choose who would go first otherwise), and why:

1. Daniel Day-Lewis: He was in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time -- one of my alltime favorites, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which he played a devilish, womanizing, yet politically principled Czech doctor who loses his practice rather than recant a negative opinion he expressed about the Soviets after the 1968 invasion of Prague. One of the few times when a movie was actually better than a book, and I love Milan Kundera.

Who could forget Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning performance in My Left Foot? Or what I would be willing to bet would win the most female votes for sexiest scene ever filmed, in The Last of the Mohicans, where he reclines on the forest floor and does essentially nothing but look at Madeleine Stowe -- yet the heat and tension in that look are not only palpable, they're practically overwhelming. And I haven't even seen There Will be Blood yet.

2. Benicio del Toro: He almost lost out to Clive Owen, but in the end I had to go with del Toro on the strength of his bedroom eyes. Those delicious, pronounced lower lids. He was stunning in Traffic and 21 Grams. I'll be interested to see how he does with Che Guevara in Guerrilla.

And he was in a movie with Johnny Depp, and one with Amy Irving.

3. Johnny Depp: Aside from his physical beauty, how many young American actors can step into a period piece, or a character piece, as easily? How many are the reason a Disneyland icon gets reworked? How many would be willing to take on Gene Wilder as the just as iconic Willy Wonka? How many can hold their own amid the likes of Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway?

The French connection is a plus, as is the humor in a quote attributed to him, which whether he really said it or not, is spot on: "When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit."

And he was in movie (Chocolat) with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time.

"Anysing furzer, Mr. Corso?"

4. Leonardo DiCaprio: Did someone say bedroom eyes? His have that wonderful lower-lidded roundness, too. Those eyes were the first things I noticed about him, back in the Marvin's Room era, followed quickly by the shocked realization that I was looking upon the most perfect example of male beauty I had ever seen. Later, I saw Total Eclipse and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (with Johnny Depp) both on cable, and then Romeo and Juliet -- all interesting and challenging choices for someone who easily could have allowed himself to be typecast into nothing but modern romantic leads. In this he is similar to Johnny Depp, and that's one reason I like both of them.

I also like getting little emails under his name about environmental topics. I have no idea how I got on this mailing list, but it's so momentarily charming to see that email in my inbox and pretend it's him just checking in to say hi.

For personal reasons having to do with who accompanied me to see the film in the theatre, I have difficulty watching Titanic again when it comes around on one of the movie channels. Other than that, I never pass up a chance to see a DiCaprio film.

And he was in a movie with John Malkovich.

5. Ralph Fiennes: He was in another of my favorite movies of all time, Schindler's List, albeit as a murdering Nazi. Indeed, he has had an incredible run in the villain department, including without limitation the ultimate bad guys of the Book of Exodus (the voice of Ramses in Prince of Egypt) and of Harry Potter's wizarding world, Lord Voldemort. I didn't know before I saw him in The Goblet of Fire that he had been cast as Voldemort. It took a few minutes of hearing his voice to recognize it, followed almost immediately by the realization of whose face was under the snaky, masky make-up, and then, a millisecond later, a feeling of almost providential inevitability. Of course. Who else? By that time, the precision and authority of the Fiennesian heightened-to-stage-proportions physical movement left no room for doubt.

The energy, intensity and passion that makes him an excellent villain also makes him a wonderful Heathcliff, to my mind every bit equal to, though different from, Olivier's definitive interpretation. I would have loved to have seen him as Hamlet on stage. He can play sweet, vunerable, hapless characters (Oscar and Lucinda, The Constant Gardner) equally well. The bath scene in The English Patient could force a run off vote in the sexiest scene on film category, though Mohicans still wins.

And he was in no fewer than two movies with Juliette Binoche, though unfortunately, not with Lena Olin. Thanks to Harry Potter, he will likely have been in a whole slew of them with Alan Rickman by the time the series is over.

6. William Hurt: I'm only partly joking when I say he was the reason I moved to New York. I never ran into him the entire ten years or so I lived on the Upper West Side where he was also living at the time. During the same period, without even trying, I ran into Gene Shalit several times near Rockefeller Center and once in Columbus Circle. So it goes. I did have the privilege of seeing Hurt perform live in the Circle Rep production of Beside Herself -- worth the price of admission for that privilege alone.

I saw Vantage Point the other night and was reminded of all the reasons I love his work. He does things I don't think anyone does better, as in the scene where his body double has been shot. He stands watching the aftermath on television while his Presidential aides scurry around and the camera cuts away and then back to him several times. Though he barely moves a muscle, even the frenetic activity surrounding him cannot compete with the look on his face -- an empathetic sorrow that combines shocked disbelief with horrified, utter belief. This ability to simply be, in silence, yet to convey so much, makes him fascinating to watch. Kiss of the Spider Woman, before Molina walks into danger for love. The Big Chill, when Chloe takes Nick's hand for the first time. Children of a Lesser God, when he sits alone, missing Sarah.

I have always loved the idiosyncratic rhythms with which he delivers his lines. Pausing between words or phrases where no one else would. Running together words or phrases no one else would think to run together. Letting a sentence trail into an afterthought, where anyone else would emphasize the words he threw away. Subtley inflecting or refusing to inflect a word against the grain of common reading, and through that smallest of choices, imparting a greater meaning. All of these rhythms come naturally to him, and they all, always, work.

Then there's the scene in Body Heat where, through sexual tension hanging in the air thick as key lime pie, he hurls a chair through the window to get to Kathleen Turner. Still not a clear winner over Mohicans, but close enough to tie.

He speaks French. And he was Viggo Mortensen's big broheem in A History of Violence, and in (different) movies with Amy Irving and Holly Hunter. Holly Hunter, by the way, really ought to be in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.

7. John Malkovich: I know a man who calls Malkovich "the thinking woman's crumpet," which is a great description.

Malkovich has one of the most distinctive voices in theatre and film, and his often underplayed delivery uses it to great effect, turning even a mundane activity like the towel-ordering in Being John Malkovich into a delight. He brings layers upon psychological layers to his characters, whether they were originally created by great literary talents or not. I've adored his work since I saw him for the first time in Places in the Heart, in which he inhabited his character's blindness so convincingly. I'm also always impressed when an actor who is no intellectual slouch takes on character with mental limitations and renders him with the respect, humanity, and emotional complexity owed him, as Malkovich did with Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men.

It's really hard to say what he does best. He does so much so well. His roguishly manipulative characters, like those in Dangerous Liaisons and The Portrait of a Lady, are masterful, but I also enjoyed seeing him tote guns with a cadre of other bad guys in the action flick Con Air. I had the honor of seeing him on stage in Burn This years ago. I sat third row center, and I must say he is most definitely a crumpet in the flesh. His crumpetness is evident throughout The Sheltering Sky, another of my all time favorite films. And he speaks French.

In his long, stellar career, he has been in movies with any number of amazing actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Viggo Mortensen and Liev Schreiber. And though he hasn't been in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time, he's been in one with Debra Winger which is awesome in its own right.

8. Viggo Mortensen: He almost lost out to Gary Oldman (who is so phenomenal that he manages not only to look differently but to act so completely differently in each role as to be barely recognizeable as himself) and then had to put up his dukes against Jeremy Irons. But I had to give it to Mortensen because he was Aragorn, for God's sake -- arguably the hottest male character in all of fantasy literature, and well before Sirius Black was a twinkle in Jo Rowling's eye. Besides, he writes poetry. He paints. He writes music. He speaks French and several other languages. If you have a thing for renaissance men as I do, he's your guy.

Before he was Aragorn, he was Walker Jerome, "The Blouse Man," in A Walk on the Moon with Liev Schreiber. In addition to the seductive shmatte salesman, he played the sexily sweaty weapons guy in Crimson Tide who faced a dilemma on which the fate of the world turned, and the head of the Navy SEAL training program in GI Jane, a character with much more depth than initially meets the eye. Afterwards, he played a small town hero who was good at killing people for a reason in A History of Violence with William Hurt. He performed admirably in all of these and others, including a movie with John Malkovich.

But by far his meatiest role, over the expanse of three movies each in itself an epic, was that of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. When I first heard Mortensen had the part, I thought it was miscast. "No," I thought. "You meant Daniel Day-Lewis." We'd already seen him as a ranger-type in Mohicans, amazingly light-footed in his runs through the forest; the Strider of the trilogy is weathered and craggy, rather like Day-Lewis' John Proctor in The Crucible; and he wears long hair so well. It is a tribute to Mortensen's abilities that the mere word Aragorn now automatically and indelibly conjures his image in the minds of hundreds of thousands of LOTR fans. I don't think the same can be said for some of the others in the cast.

9. Alan Rickman: Thinking woman's crumpet, part deux. Could there possibly be a better Severus Snape? He steals every scene he's in. Drawled vowels, staccato consonants, perfect comic timing. He has a great occlumens' face; never cracks more than a smirk (and then only at Harry's expense), but when he wants to communicate, expresses more with the arch of an eyebrow than could be said in a five minute monologue. Which probably also explains, in part, his casting in Galaxy Quest. The last Harry Potter episodes are where Snape's story steps into the spotlight and so too should Rickman. Early in the story, Snape is intimidating and nasty, but we don't really know why. As the story progresses, he develops into a tragic, romantic hero. Or perhaps more accurately, anti-hero. Like Heathcliff, his cruelty, while it cannot be excused, can perhaps be explained through his hellish childhood and the soul-warping power of an obsessive love denied its object. In the hands of a lesser actor, I might have some concerns about how Snape will continue to develop; I have no doubt that in Rickman's, he'll be nothing less than spectacular when all his layers are finally laid bare.

I also enjoyed the evil Hans of the original Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (the long-haired, bearded look was quite fetching), and the tempted married man in Love, Actually. One of my favorite of his performances was as the pioneering white heart surgeon working in partnership with a black technician in the segregated South in the HBO movie Something the Lord Made. This film was fascinating for many reasons, including its look into the world of medical research in the first half of the last century, where talented persons without medical degrees or even college degrees in some instances worked in an apprentice-like system where opportunities arose out of professional associations and relationships rather than degrees and resumes. He was great as the arrogant, driven medical academic, oblivious to anything outside his own ivory tower (including the very real discrimination, financial hardship and exclusion from recognition his apprentice experienced). Rickman conveyed as well that the obliviousness was in part because his characters saw no barriers between himself and his apprentice, color or otherwise -- he saw only the astonishing work they were able to do together.

And he was in movies with Ralph Fiennes and Johnny Depp. And Kate Winslet, and several with Emma Thompson.

10. Liev Schreiber. My boyfriend looks a bit like him, so I'm biased.

That said, Schreiber is one of those presences that's so commanding he's hard not to notice. As much as I like Viggo Mortensen and as much as he was a great goyische adonis, I found Schreiber's character in A Walk on the Moon so sympathetic, well-meaning and charming that I wanted to slap Diane Lane a la Cher in Moonstruck and tell her to snap out of it. He made a character that easily could have been typed a soulless nebbish into just a good guy trying to do his best; his tragic flaw was spending too much time as a responsible breadwinner and not enough being an exciting and romantic lover. He can also play the opposite; as in the slick, married playboy of The Painted Veil.

As Orson Welles, he had a difficult task. It's one thing to play someone larger than life who is fictional and entirely another if that person was real. And yet, he not only pulled it off, he did so in spades. I also appreciated his peformances in The Manchurian Candidate and The Sum of All Fears. I'd love to see him on stage.

Alas, there can be only ten. If I didn't stop here, I'd be having my chocolate lava cake and eating it, too.

**Morgana**

What Puts the Space in Cyberspace?

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Before CompuServe Information Service became a web-based shadow of its former self following the AOL takeover (which the New York Times described in 1998 as "traumatic" for the "computer intellegentsia" who made up the core of loyal CIS subscribers, and among whom -- despite my inability to cure the home networking problem described in my debut post -- I then counted myself), it was a truly remarkable place for many, many reasons. I was thinking today about one of those reasons.

For those who spent a lot of time there, CIS felt as though it had a physical geography. I had a conversation about this once with Nightshift, chief sysop of a number of gaming forums her company, The Electronic Gamer, had contracted to provide on CompuServe. For a number of years, I was an associate sysop in Gamers' and later, Action Games, two of the TEG forums. In any case, I still remember talking with her about how we and many users referred to the forums as though they were in physical space: "I just saw so and so over in GAMBPUB" or "I'll be up in FSFORUM" or "I'm popping out to ACTION." This was quite something, particularly when you consider what most of CIS (apart from its online games and perhaps WorldsAway) was not.

When you're in a graphical multiplayer game universe like WoW, it doesn't take much imagination to feel as though you're in a physical environment. Towns are located at certain points on a map, terrain and weather patterns change with geography, ships and zeppelins have regular embarkation/debarkation points and routes. Even outside of such obvious examples, mere interface features can suggest a feeling of movement through space. Using a web browser that moves you one page to the "east" each time you follow a link can make you feel as though you are literally moving "west" when you page back.

When I logged on to CIS for the first time in 1992, I used what would now be viewed as a very primitive-looking graphical interface called Compuserve Information Manager, or CIM. CIM was relatively new then; previously, CIS was accessed through the even more primitive command line interface in terminal emulation. Using either CIM or terminal emulation, the primary means of transport from place to place were "go" words. "GO GAMERS," for example, took you to the Gamers' Forum. This wasn't exactly suggestive of compass directions, and yet, many of us came to view our experience that way.

To be more precise, in my case, I perceived the architecture of my experience from a hub and spokes perspective. I almost always logged on to Gamers first, and from there would "move" to other forums. Gamers was the hub, the other forums I frequented were the spokes. Although I felt I was moving almost from room to room in space, I did not perceive multiple storeys in my hub and spokes building (except that my email box was in the basement). Role Playing Games was to my left, the Game Publishers forums were in a line to my right, starting with GameAPub, with Game Developers forum beyond that. Flight Sims was in front of me, in a northwesterly direction. Sports Sims directly in front. Action Games was behind me. I forget the locations of the others. When I went, occasionally, to non-TEG forums or venues on CompuServe it was rather like getting on a plane in my hometown and arriving at a point hundreds of miles away. Why?

I'm partial to the explanation that people, accustomed to orienting themselves in their surroundings by means of mental maps, also form mental maps of frequently travelled routes in online "spaces." This was my working hypothesis as I went out the front door of Morgana's Spot to see whether others had explored this question. Indeed, some have. The idea appears, for good or ill, in a number of essays I found during a quick stroll through web space, for example: "Lost in Cyberspace," "Passage of the Flaneur,""What Kind of Space is Cyberspace?." And to bring us full circle, the New York Times, the year after the article about the AOL acquisition of CIS, reported on the effort to "map" cyberspace.

I have to say that I have never had that same hearth and home feeling about the greater web. Apart from my home page and webmail page (to immediate right from my home page, or so it feels), every journey is like an exploration into uncharted territory where one can get lost, or even fall into a technological trap and end up with a virus or worse. Of course, I haven't been active in the social networking phenomenon. Perhaps MySpace and similar sites put some of the space back into cyberspace. I guess I'll find out -- if they're still around and popular when my kids are old enough to become addicted to them.

**Morgana**

The Image Vault

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:45:00 +0000

I have a vivid memory of a short film about a mouth and a goldfish.

I'm sure I saw this film twice, in two different art museums, years apart. Although I can't remember specifics of the first viewing, other than the twinge of recognition I had during the second, I'm fairly certain the second museum was New York MOMA. This means I likely saw the movie for the second time before 1995. I remember the MOMA showing. It was in a dark room with open doorways at the end of a row of galleries; a room designed for walking into, taking a thoughtful, unhurried look at the work displayed, then meandering to other exhibits while the movie runs on in a continuous loop.

This particular film has no dialogue. In fact, I don't recall any sound at all. The action is simple: a person's open mouth fills to overflowing with water, which starts to trickle from the corners and down the chin. Then a single, live goldfish appears in the water, as though it was there all the time and has just swum out from a shadow. The goldfish flicks its tail and fins, giving the impression of swimming in this limited space, this shallow mouth-pond.

Why I remember this movie, simple plot and all, is a mystery. In retrospect, the images that play in my memory seem funny, even absurd. But I think the recollection's longevity has roots in a different, more immediate effect tied up in the viewing. Somehow, when I saw this -- perhaps only the first time reinforced by the second or perhaps both times -- I believe I found it vaguely disturbing. Although I don't know whether this is true, I find myself believing in hindsight that I was disturbed because I expected (and perhaps feared) something other than a goldfish as I watched that mouth. I must have been a teenager at the first viewing; as daunted as I was preoccupied by all things sensual.

Since I recall seeing this snippet twice in art museums (at least one of which is decidedly world class) I thought it reasonable I'd find at least a reference to it on the internet. It's truly amazing what you can find when you try to search for something like this. The depth of feeling for pet goldfish is staggering. Literally hundreds of questions have been posted, pleading for help with sick fish presenting mouth symptoms. Not to mention the magic tricks, party videos, etc. Go ahead, try it. Plug in +goldfish +mouth and maybe +film or +art and see what you get. But not what I was looking for.

I'd love to know the name of this film, the artist, the year it was made. Maybe in a few years it will turn up, as the reference to "Oh, To Be a Gypsy" finally did.

**Morgana**

Words, Music and Memory

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:20:00 +0000

My boyfriend is the first to admit his singing voice is not his best quality. While trying to sing melody he might, through luck or accident, hit a harmony line temporarily. In a few notes, he'll be back in musical nowheresville.

The other day, he walked in from a jaunt to the local library, toting Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan Was Her Name and singing nonsensical words to a tune of his own invention. My two little boys (ages 2 and 4) for whom any singing is still good singing were eating it up, vying for the chance to hold and shake the book. (The big, plastic googly eyes on the cover are irresistible to the preschool set.)

Despite the unfamiliar tune, which wasn't so much carried as dragged over gravel and through potholes, I recognized the song. I'd learned it in Girl Scouts with different words, though with the same tune notated at the back of the book. Our version, "Madelina Cadelina Hoopasteina Walkaneina Hocus Pocus Locust," bore no other resemblance to the version in the book, except for the verse about her teeth ("She had two teeth in her mouth, one pointed north and the other pointed south"). My favorite verse ("Her neck was as long as a telephone pole, and right in the middle was a big fat mole") was missing entirely. When I joined in the singing, I found I had to sing my version. Anything else felt wrong.

Of course, this proprietary feeling had almost nothing to do with the song itself, and much to do with the tangle of personal history. Retrieving the song from deep memory felt a lot like pulling a heap of untended fishing line from belowdecks, or a lump of unkempt thread from a sewing basket's dregs. Up came a mass of threads leading every imaginable direction, looping back over and under themselves, all apparently emanating from large knot invisible under a mat of looser stuff. Tugging any of these lines to see where it went could cause another elsewhere to clench making the knot harder to loosen later, but I had faith I'd be able to deal with anything my own extended metaphor could dish out. I started pulling a thread called "cool songs from Girl Scouts that the older girls taught the younger ones like me."

The internet is remarkable when it comes to stuff like this. If something exists, if you didn't simply imagine or dream it, traces or even the whole thing will show up on the web eventually. I had tugged this "cool camp song" thread many years before with little success, but this time I struck the motherload. As it turns out, the three songs I was looking for are all folk songs commercially recorded in the early '60s, ten or so years before I learned them.

First, I looked for a song we'd referred to simply as "Redeemed." I hadn't found it at all in prior internet searches, but this time I found numerous references. It's actually named "To Be Redeemed." The Kingston Trio recorded it on an album called New Frontier. A version (not The Kingston Trio's) can be heard here. We sang it to a slightly different tune, and with slightly different words. When I hear the song in my head, I still hear it the way we sang it. Next, I found "Crow on the Cradle." The names Pete Seeger and Judy Collins both come up in connection with this song. The Judy Collins version is on the album "Maids and Golden Apples." Jackson Browne has also performed it. A version (by none of these people, but which showcases the words) can be heard here. The tune we sang was somewhat different, but the words are essentially the same. The last is Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Codine," found on her album It's My Way! Here's a cover of it that I thought was interesting. Again, slight differences in the tune and the lyrics had been imported into the version we sang.

Finding these was comforting in a sappy way, like coming across a much-loved but forgotten childhood tchotchke. I went looking for more scouting songs and found: "Linstead Market" (we sang "Carbonaki go instant market," pretty far from "Mi carry mi ackee go a Linstead Market," but with the identical tune in the interesting mandolin rendition found here; "Spider's Web" (we sang it "made of silver light and shadows, that I weave in my room each night, it's a web made to catch a dream, hold it there until I waken, then to tell me my dream was all right") sung here as "Dream Catcher Lullaby" with a slightly different tune than we used; and then a sort of holy grail, a database of folk song information called The Mudcat Cafe, where I found discussions of variations on lyrics of "Barges," "Rose, Rose," "Dem Bones (Gonna Rise Again)," "White Coral Bells," "Rise and Shine" (we called it Noah's Ark) and many others.

The most suprising find wasn't a camp song at all, but a song my mother taught me. I've never met someone outside her family who knows this song, and I had looked for it on the web unsucessfully before. This time I found a single reference to "Oh, To Be a Gypsy." I just spent more time I can rationally justify trying to find a free online piano program that would allow me to record and provide the melody, to which we sang only the first and last of these four verses believing that to be the complete song. My mom died more than 10 years ago. This song was special to us, partly because it seemed so private. Finding it turned out to be the thread that made another tighten, in a bittersweet but strangely validating way.

We still have a "private" song, or at least one I haven't yet found it on the web. The words are:

Goldenrod, where do you find your gold?
Butterfly, how do your wings unfold?
This is a story that's never told--
Butterfly, how do your wings unfold?

And I'm sure I didn't dream it.

**Morgana**

Greetings...

noreply@blogger.com (**Morgana**) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:30:00 +0000

Well, this is new. For someone who has been online in one form or another for almost 20 years, it's a little embarrassing to admit this is my first foray into the blogosphere. Please bear with me as I start to explore this medium.

I considered focusing on a niche that might be useful to someone somewhere, but alas, I no longer have a niche. Once upon a time I used to be fairly well-versed in and reasonably good at computer games, particularly turn-based computer role-playing games and graphic adventures. I sysoped in several gaming forums on CompuServe back in the day (1993ish to 1998ish), beta tested commercial game software and wrote reviews, walkthrus and hint files in my spare time which I had a lot more of than I do now. Oh to be young, able to stay up all night playing, then haul oneself to work in the morning, get home after a 10+ hour work day (at something about as far removed from computer games as you could imagine) and do it all over again.

I pretty much stopped playing with any degree of intensity in the mid-1990s, although I went through a World of Warcraft phase for about a year until my home network died suddenly one day last October and my desktop started to sound like a lawnmower. My main character, a Tauren shaman named Unchychunch, was about level 65 at the time and just starting to get really interesting. It's emblematic of what my time is like now that I haven't solved the network or the computer problem yet. The hours on support calls that appear necessary just aren't going to happen any time soon.

Popping in here from time to time may happen once in a while. I don't know what I'll write about yet. Not having a niche is kind of nice, though.

**Morgana**