dogs like berries

This vacation has been filled with all the most delectable summer things:

- leisurely reading from borrowed/recommended books including Gilead and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (I'm stealing someone smart's observation that these are both about earthly truths, but at the opposite ends of that spectrum)
- sunscreen and sunning on a dock
- swimming in the Great Lakes
- an inordinate amount of mosquito bites, mostly on my feet
- berries...

...to which I will devote this post. For the past few years my parents have had an attractive gravel pile at the side of their house. In the best argument for the payoff that comes after waiting through ugly that I can imagine, the gravel pit has blossomed into a bunch of black raspberry bushes (I just learned they are black raspberries, also known as blackcaps, different from blackberries). Which happened to come to fruit during my visit home. Today we spent some minutes picking three containers of them, except the ones the dog got. Turns out dogs, at least my parents' healthy dog Roscoe who thinks that freshly picked peas are delicious, like berries.

midwest vacation, week 1

serendipitous delay in philly, catch up on ZZZZs
family reunion celebration, big house with Grandma Ada spirit:
We Get Too Soon Old and Too Late Schmart (or is it Shmart?) plus dinging clock
appleton over a lake from oshkosh; yes that one: overall
perfect-weather BBQ with cousins tall and small
lots of dancing and loving family like in dream weddings

up wisconsin; this state has lakes too
east to da U.P., Upper Peninsula of Michigan for all you non-ganders
stop in Wakefield, commune with the spirit of our Great Matriarch
north to get Ontonoganized
Jampot stop: monks appear loaded from bountiful jam sales
Eagle River, Lake Superior = wow is the only word that suffices (and cold)

...in marquette, i bought a guitar...

no chupacabras, just Pictured Rocks beauty to make you mute
what's a cell phone?
3 miles to the lake, 4 miles along, don't fall
3 miles back makes us tired
yes indeed we brought our dog
(take that, ranger lady)

south to st. ignace, look at all that beach
one margarita makes art buyer of me
evening by a fire - free for all who stay
i might be a folk singer but
play, play, wish i could play
someday

and then

the bridge.

farewell, remote Michigan. until the next time, and i hope people continue to forget about you, because you are an awesome vacation spot. (despite places named mosquito inn and misery bay: they will keep real tourism away).

if you only read one thing today

People write for lots of reasons, and those of us who write anything at all may confirm that indeed, it is because we feel compelled to do so, whether or not we are any good at it. Occasionally the gift, the muse, the energy of the universe and its ultimate intention for all of our small lives coincides in a time and place and person that allow the message to flow free in a beautiful way that others can read, understand, and be uplifted by it. From what I know of him, David Foster Wallace strikes me as a such a confluence of genius and muse, and no I haven't read any of his books (yet!). His story is a beautiful and sad one, and I won't repeat it here. I will only implore you, whomever you are, to read this speech, and see whether even just a bit of it touches you in a place that wants to awaken and experience life in a whole new way.

more about learning

Even though lots of experiments and observations of people learning tell us that reward-based systems are no good, we still do it. From stickers and candies for appropriate behavior in classrooms...to letter grades for everything from singing to language learning to mathematics...right up to tenure or not, Pulitzer and Nobel and such prizes - we like to arrange people along a line. It is tidier than reality, than acknowledging the true strengths, weaknesses, and chasms in people's skills and character, than saying: "Well, this person is the best scientist I know, but she can't cook with a darn." Or, "That dude can perform brain surgery with the best of them, but he's also having affairs with all the nurses."



I like this instead, from here:

"The proper stimulants to study," Haven added, "are not medals, or position in class, or prizes, but the gratification produced by an enlarged acquaintance with truth, and by the greater influence for good thereby produced."

Today I went to hear Lee Shulman, Professor Emeritus Somewhere, and former Something Else Important at Stanford, speak about teaching and learning in universities. He made lots of really good points, about collecting evidence of our efforts to teach students in academia, and turning an eye of inquiry on EVERYTHING, including how universities function.



That is excellent but if we're going to take this truly to heart, it might be time to question the tenure process. Bureaucratic machines comprised of lots of individual people tend to take over and become self-perpetuating.

My biggest concern about academia is that the pursuit of science and scholarship becomes - not for everyone of course but an influential group - an ego chase. People enter fields not to Do Good (whatever that is) but to make themselves Feel Good. The scary part (or the other scary part) is that this motivation is invisible to most - it lurks in a subconscious somewhere, not to be unearthed until some major psychic event or trauma. And we can't go around randomly assigning people to experience trauma.

So what do we do? I vote to try to remain cautious, skeptical, open-minded, conscious...sounds like true science, eh?

...that's what they call learning

This week I've attended two flash seminars, on the purpose of the university. The Big Questions come up repeatedly: what am I here on this planet to do? How can I learn what I need in order to do it? Who can help me? What is knowledge; what is information? What are schools good at and what could they be better at? What happens in reality - when real people run large social organizations, like schools, institutions, and governments - and what happens when those people are disconnected from themselves and impose restrictions on others?

I'm exploring all this in a new book idea...so stay tuned. And in the meantime, this is the best 15min I've spent recently.

Way to go 10-milers!!

This morning I got up at 6:30am - yes, on a Saturday! - to cheer on the Charlottesville 10-milers. The race is special this year because it has three generations of runners:

3 generations of family take on Ten Miler | Daily Progress

Conveniently, the race began and ended within walking distance from my place...wasn't that considerate of the planners? Actually I think it might have something to do with my living near UVA grounds. Just a thought. Here is near the beginning:




I considered running the 10-miler this year, for about a week. Then the cold weather settled deep into my bones and my running shoes began to give me some impressive blisters after 3 miles. Excuses, to be sure - and I'd love to run next year, if I'm still in the area. I'm new to the running/racing world but if anything could motivate me it's the energy. The runners, the cheerers, the early morning shivers. The anticipation at the beginning of the race, everyone's high hopes for how it will go. The setting in of reality, the cramp that takes you by surprise, the way you started out too fast but it was just so tough to hold back with all the throngs of people around you, moving through the air, defying gravity.

And let's not forget the person in the large red hat and purple fishnets.



Last night I began reading a book by a local C'ville-ian (I don't think we're called C-villains). It's called Live Like You Mean It and begins by painting a lovely image of how we came to be here, now, on this planet, and the rare orchestrations of the universe that had to align in a seemingly infinite number of unfathomable ways to produce something uncanny, mysterious, beautiful.

You.

Me.

So far, the book has told me to drop as many of the preconceptions about how to live as I can. Not the ones that make practical, and legal sense, such as following the rules of traffic and not stealing. But the more insidious and pervasive. The internal rules, the tiny voice that says "you should..."; "why did you..."; and my personal favorite, "You're not good enough."

I used to not want to run races. I didn't understand the point of getting all tired, possibly hurting myself, looking funny.

And now?

I would call that life.

life=growth

I'll admit it! I'm writing other things, beyond this blog. So I'll be lazy and recommend the following two articles:

On the Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map

The Happy Marriage is the Me Marriage

For the latter, I would also venture to submit that it might be true of friendships, as well...

serendipity

I had a recent discussion with a friend about words that are difficult to translate into other languages. She pointed out that it tells a lot about the society and people, these culturally-bound concepts. Her example was Gemütlichkeit - .

Mine is serendipity, which apparently is one of the ten most difficult English words to translate. I have always said that I have a "good star" - it's most notable for helping me find parking spots (parallel parking skills don't hurt). But it's something more. It's something that deposits just the right kind of friend when you need one, something that delivers you into a new work situation when the old one grates, something that finds you that perfect item to compliment your new outfit buried in the clearance rack.

We have many jobs on this planet - but one of them might be opening ourselves up to both coziness and insight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/science/07brain.html?ref=science

50K and counting

Where do bloggers go when they disappear? This one finished her first novel during NaNoWriMo. I almost want to say "novel" because it's difficult to know what will become of this one. I don't think it will end up winning any book awards, like Haruki Murakami, but I learned something I didn't know before and that seems darned good enough: apparently, I can write 50,000 words in 30 days, or if we want to be precise about it, 29 days, or even more precise, 23-ish days (too much precision is bad for you) - because I took some days off, yes I did, and if you think I wrote in my novel on Turkey Day, you have another think coming.

And just how did I accomplish this, you may ask? (Or, you may not, but because I'm in charge here - ha ha that's secret awesome thing number twelve about being a writer - let's pretend that you asked). Well, the answer is visualization. I pictured myself in a future where I'm still around, telling some interested person who also asks questions, "How did you come to write your first novel?" and I would say, "Well I found myself with an awful lot of time on my hands one November and my mother was seredipitously visiting and looking for something for us to do and found this writer's workshop and it was mid-October and they talked about this crazy thing called NaNoWriMo and I went for it."

No, no, no, you've got it all wrong, story-teller. Visualization didn't get anyone anywhere unless you count the time that some unnamed person that I know (not me) took LSD and climbed up in a tree and was happy to be sober later and not have fallen out. What got me to 50K plus words was something more like this new favorite quote about writing, by our dear terse friend Mr. Hemingway:

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

I suppose I already gave it away, that I don't work every day, but only work-a-holics feel the need to do that, and that is not me, no sir Mr. Bob. I do better when I rest and eat and exercise and I ran three miles today before coming home and making a white sauce with onion juice to pour on my baked potatoes and leftover turkey and sesame oil-drizzled green beans. And then, I sat myself down, and pounded out my final 600 or so words, and went to the handy dandy word verifier at the NaNoWriMo site and got my webpage with certificates and shamelessly ordered myself a t-shirt that says "winner." Because the best contests are with yourself. I learned that this month, too (or in the past several months of Crash Course in Life and Living in the Moment). In the end (and in the beginning and middle, also), our greatest pain and freedom originate from our own mind and the silly things we do with it.

Two new favorite books that would make the world a better place if everyone read them:

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle



Isn't he just the most charming and wise man in a gold vest that you've ever seen?

weekend highlights

Thursday, smooth arrival. Stop at massive Whole Foods lunch bar for cornucopia of healthy yet highly salted dishes. Inquiry after slipcovers at Macy's (they do not carry, and good thing because no longer needed). Crate and Barrel reminiscing; mostly sour. Shoe search, several loops at indoor/outdoor mall. Met a friendly, slightly distracted salesman named Don. Got double discounts for brand-new senior status and birthday month. The pair is cute with chic bows and tiny studs. Songs by women with big hearts who trickled into the pink room, growing from seven to eleven. "A Dream is a Wish the Heart Makes," though some dreams require modification along with hearts (aka breaking). Happy Birthday, two times through, some tears. End with Halloween round with witch's hatted Joan. Meaningful, coherent dream.

Friday, found coffee and The Hook. Gym visit; monkey machine after weights. No sightings. Home and rest. Running out of shoes to find ones that fit - back and forth, walking and jogging, dodging parents and undergrads. Free parking; a nice surprise. Onward to Micheal's, begin with a return. Three projects, at the end complete with Band-Aid detour. Natural foods: walnuts and cocoa energy chunks. Kroger milk and chicken dinner. Home again, nacho night and comforting. More pie.

Saturday, writer's workshop: new place, new people, NaNoWriMo (can you believe it). Soft lighting, a few pistachios. Dreams' beginning. Lunch in the space beyond "Adults Only Area": Mexican burrito - can I eat sour cream now? Circa circuit, nada. No Possessions Unrecycled. Recycling center, now closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. No goods at Goodwill. Home again: rest, chores, rest, walk. Up the hill - does it look different? Coming down, gaggles of booted adult-children. Home again; chicken potatoes kale salad. Pie-enhanced applesauce. Meaningful, coherent dream.

Sunday, sleep-in. Two loops - Old Farm Rd. Family on long walk. Home again - rearranging, like it better. Cozier, more coherent. Getting there. Leftovers lunch. Airport run, big hug. Phoned a friend; good advice. Smooth sailing a little at a time.

Jennifer Lee grows up

Jennifer Lee has always wanted to be famous. As a little girl, she craved the attention of her family, especially her daddy, and put on all sorts of shows – dancing, singing, and brief comedy acts – when she was small enough to be cute no matter what she did. As she grew older, she kept a dream in her heart that someday – any day now, really– she would be spotted by a scout and whisked off to Hollywood. She knew that once this happened, they (whoever “they” were, the people responsible for making other people famous) would straighten her slightly crooked teeth, and turn her hair from its mousy, stringy present state into a lush wavy gift to the world. She believed that famous people were just ordinary people that were discovered and then created, and she could think of no reason that this shouldn’t happen to her. (Wasn’t Tom Cruise awfully short with a big nose, anyway?).


For back-up, Jennifer Lee attended college and became a dental hygienist (no one, not even she, would ever connect her desire to help people have beautiful teeth with her own longing for a mouthful of straight and shiny). But, she didn’t worry about actually enjoying her chosen profession because she knew that one day, she’d be a movie actress. There were a few times in her early twenties when she felt the universe conspiring to help her dream come true. On these occasions, she tried as hard as she could to listen to the energy and be in the right place at the right time, so she could be “found”, like that Latina trophy wife from the TV show Modern Family. She worried about missing her chance at the fair that one day, wondering if the scout had passed on the other side of the Ferris Wheel from where she waited with her hair just styled and her make-up fancy. As she inched toward 30, a seed of doubt began to grow inside her, which she tried to ignore. However, it was hard not to notice that her Lucky and People and US Weekly magazines continued to be populated mainly with images of women 25 and under. Jennifer began to look at times supremely confident, and at other times simply uncertain.


For this young person, the Sweet Adelines competition has come at the time when she is beginning to consciously awaken to the reality of her life as an ordinary woman. This will turn out to be a wonderful thing, because she will eventually understand that there is no Prince Charming/Movie Star waiting for her in Hollywood, and she will let herself begin a relationship with a normal, kind, and utterly ordinary man who will love her, crooked teeth and all. But right now is not yet that time, and she is not quite ready to say goodbye to her dream. When she sings “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” Jennifer Lee feels muddled. She is close to (but not quite) understanding that she is saying goodbye to one dream while opening herself up to another, more fulfilling and genuine possibility. While singing this song, she feels confused, earnest, wistful, and sad. She has nurtured the dream of being famous for so long, that she feels guilty for betraying it when she thinks of Jerry, the man who fixes her sink, and settling down with him in a nice ranch house. When she sings “Powder Your Face,” this feels like a last ditch attempt at her dream – during this song, she convinces herself that she will be famous after all. She is nothing if not stubborn, and until she has irrefutable evidence to the contrary, or an awfully good alternative (again, Jerry comes to mind), she can persist in thinking of herself as the next Big Thing, the next face to grace People magazine. As the song ends though, Jennifer remembers that she is turning 30 soon, and might want to start a family. Movie stars always end up divorced, dead, or in rehab, anyway. Which is to say, Jennifer Lee is finally growing up.

The above is a character description of the young woman I will "play" at the Sweet Adelines competition in Winston-Salem for my chorus. This young woman is not me, but she is my age, and so - along the lines of "there but for the grace of God go I" - she seems like she could be. Alter-egos are interesting; they are both more and less than the real person. Spiderman and Batman and even Superman were "all that" but they also couldn't do certain things, like have normal families or sleep schedules, for example. They were vulnerable, too - which many of today's superheroes are not, according to this recent study. It suggests that boys today are limited to one of two choices: hypermasculine and aggressive, or a slacker. Not too encouraging given that today's world, and today's woman, calls for so much.

My cousin's alterego is called Jeffy Pumpkeen, invented mainly for Facebooking his brothers, I believe. I like the idea of developing a persona who can do things that we are unable to do, things that would make us too vulnerable if we did them ourselves. This persona can think the scary and real thoughts that we need to process but can't, quite. This persona can have dreams that sound silly if spoken aloud to real people. And this persona can converse over the internet so the real Us can keep a safe distance from the social hubbub that is Facebook.

This all sounds lovely, as long as some day we are able to confront our demons and assimilate our alter-ego into our own identities. Otherwise - unless you happen to be called Bruce Wayne - I think there is another name for it: multiple personality disorder. Or just plain lonely.

little miss froggie

Today for a quarter I bought a Long Frog (?) pin to go on my new GW jean jacket. You know how everyone looks like a certain type of animal? I kind of think I've always looked like a frog. I have no idea why and I realize that this makes no sense and that some of you (who have nothing better to do) will Google pictures of me and try to figure out the frog parts of Chiara. I couldn't really explain it, until I searched frog animal symbolism.



Now I get it: I'm all about evolution. In undergrad, I applied for a fellowship (which I didn't win) and we were asked to write 17,000 essays (ok, maybe 7, but it felt like a lot). One was about a book we read (I chose Anna Karenina), one was about our career goals, one was about - who knows - a challenge or "learning moment" which is my quartet calls it when someone goofs up. The essay I have in mind was a free skate, 10 single spaced pages (maybe 4) on whatever we liked. I wrote - get this - about personal growth. Ha! Double ha! Because at the ripe old age of 17 and a half, what on EARTH did I know about personal growth? (And really, I'm less than twice that now, so maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead and go watch more TV).

Regardless, I feel my whole life I've been motoring toward my destiny of evolution, which is to become an amphibian, apparently. Darwin would take issue with that but at least it works metaphorically. These lines from the site above are too good not to just pop in here, but do go visit the site because there is a funny lady who greets you at the top before you get to this part:

The frog undergoes incredible transformations to reach the destination of full adulthood, and so do we as humans...The frog understands what it is like to undergo some serious growing pains.


[Just an aside: I'm pretty sure there is no animal that symbolizes stagnation and stubborn unchangingness. It's kind of like when you read your horoscope and it makes you sound like you're a rock star and then you read all the other months and realize that everyone is a frickin' rock star. If the horoscope people didn't make everyone sound amazing most of the time who would buy all those silly magazines?]

But seriously, evolving. As a species we evolved to walk upright, have few offspring that we invest enormous amounts into, and eat a lot of corn (a good little evolver in its own right).



Ok, species are easy to figure out. What exactly are we here to do as individuals? A lot of people (including me) would say that we're here to learn how to love each other. One of my favorite professors would happily share his religion with anyone who agreed to listen for 2 minutes (and that's all it took): "I believe God is love and God manifests wherever humans are loving each other well." Simple huh? Not really, because I think to really love another being, we have to love ourselves. Not "if I were a little skinnier" or "if I earned more money" or "if I were a tiny little baby and hadn't made any mistakes, big or small, yet." The list of reasons NOT to love ourselves is very long, especially when we are squishy tadpoles. Unless we just burn the list up. Light that sucker on fire, dance and holler around the flames, and blow away the ashes when it's all that remains.

two movies

Forgot to also mention that I bought 2 classic movies today: Fargo and Uncle Buck. Both involve the woods...quirky people...that might be where the similarities end. Add those to my tiny little DVD collection comprised of Little Miss Sunshine (did everyone else know that's an old nickname for Shirley Temple?) and Edward Scissorshands. Now I just need The Princess Bride and I'll be all set with the plot of my life: dark stupid criminals plus heroic crazy-yet-practical woman, oblivious crass and invasive relatives (no not really family, that part's a joke), a collection of bumbling, lovable-by-the-end searchers, and an outcast misunderstood warmhearted and terrifying artist.

good night, moon, and Dear God, thank you for sending the rain.

two items

The loveseat was formerly owned by a couple, Ed and Florence. When Ed passed, Florence required a place for her daughter to sleep when visiting from the big city. But, in the tiny apartment that Florence chose when she downsized most of her life, there wasn't a reasonable place for a spare bed, or even a full-size pullout sofa sleeper. Florence recalled that Temple Furniture out of North Carolina used to make a twin-bed loveseat sleeper bed. Proud that she had recalled such an obscure fact, never before necessary in her life of extra bedrooms and otherwise spacious living, she called up Temple Furniture to inquire. Turns out they still made the twin-bed sleeper, selling "a lot to ladies like you," said Bob the salesman to a Florence, who wondered just how old she sounded. She chose a large, mostly neutral floral print, and had it placed in her living room kitty-corner from her red sofa. When Florence's daughter Sandra arrived, she remarked that it was cute and that it would do.

The blue cabinet was made by a whimsical gentleman who stained so many items accidentally with rings of black coffee that he began planning for it. The cabinet was for his granddaughter - his only grandchild and secretly his favorite living person in the world (he felt guilty choosing her over his son, a nice enough lad but not nearly as adorable as a baby as little Sally). She being 10 years old at the time, he designed it as small without being tiny - approachable, he thought. He chose a muted slate-ish blue and made it with simple lines, so that when Sally grew up and developed taste, she might still keep it around. He hoped for this in his subconscious, knowing that he himself might be not around when she made her adult decision about his cabinet. When he was in the garage one day, Sally came out and asked if he was going to stain it with his "coffee stuff like Grandma's ashes table." He shook his head, embarrassed that his wife's urn was on a hand-crafted old TV stand covering up a brown circle, but Sally went on to say "that would be real special, if you made it for me like you made Grandma's fine arresting place." Instead of a coffee ring he chose a dark walnut stain for the front board on the top, and it came out real nice, he thought. Sally said "hmmm, I guess this will do" and turned the two shelves behind the doors into a penthouse for her dolls.

two black bears

Today I went with my good friend E up Skyline Drive hike the Appalachian Trail, which has the coolest graphic:



Literally immediately after we got on the trail, we saw two black bears. The first was to our left, up a little incline, about 20 feet away. She looked right at us, and E said "I'm not scared, we're fine" and I decided to believe her. The bear looked at us for maybe 20 more seconds, and then ran off and made a snuffling noise that E (who became an expert on black bears this past summer, very convenient for today!) says is designed to sound intimidating. But luckily, there hasn't ever been a black bear attack in Virginia and since 75% of their nutrients come from plants (like our friend below; no I didn't take that picture), I wasn't scared that maybe I looked like brunch. We set off, only to go 10 steps and see another bear, this time down the trail from us maybe 50 feet away. This one took less time to decide to make herself scarce, and we both exclaimed about how amazing it was. E's dream each summer is see a black bear and she got two of them! And I was impressed at her black bear knowledge and glad we didn't get eaten, even though I didn't really think we would...



Later I learned what bears symbolize. For various reasons I'm looking forward to fall, but something tells me that this winter will be a good one for hibernating and preparing for big changes come spring. I don't know what they are, but I and my hungry self will be ready.

mad world

everyone wants to be seen

Things I Learned on Sullivan's Island

At some point the flag people were going to add a stripe for each state, but when Kentucky and Tennessee joined (I think those states are correct), it got to 15 and started to look awful crowded. Then a resolution was passed to bring the stripes back to 13 for the original colonies and a star for each new state. Phew! We wouldn't want a cluttered flag...

Real forts are conceptually similar to the ones we all built as children in backyards and under coffee tables. They are burrowed-in places that are difficult to access and easy to defend from the inside. But I never had a control room or a maze for ammunition under my coffee table - I was happy with a blanket.

The Women's Army Corps was created in WWII (I think) so more men could go fight.

The slave trade ended officially in 1808 but continued in secret (or whatever it means when it continues but it's not suppposed to) after that.

Between 10 and 12 million Africans were forced to emigrate in the slave trade. About half of them passed through Charleston (of course I hope y'all will fact check me, if you are genuinely interested in knowing the actual for-real truth).

The Gullah people have retained aspects of their African culture unlike any other people. Words like "gumbo" have origins in the languages of West Africa.

Sullivan's Island has the coolest lighthouse I've ever seen.



On the shore when the wave goes out there are lots of little what look like blowholes in the sand that bubble bubble while the wave recedes. I tried with my toe but couldn't figure out what caused the effect.

Postcard stamps now cost 28 cents.

Ants like to eat shrimp.

Chiara visits Charleston, SC

The forecast for Charleston, SC, is scattered thunderstorms into the indefinite future. They greeted me on arrival yesterday and appeared during today's lunch at a delightful bistro with the best fish and chips I've ever eaten. If one were to assume that the storms blow away the 100% humidity, one would be quite, quite wrong. It's oppressive and makes breathing difficult; AC is not a choice here the way it sometimes seems so at home. Apparently it can be gotten used to, but that probably takes more than 24 hours.

I'm staying with 6 friends - 2 adults, their son and daughter, and 2 cats out of a novel. Oscar is neurotic and takes adult Prozac, designated by CVS as "canine" (yes I know cats are felines). As my friend tells it, Oscar's life took a turn for the worse when their first child was born, and when they had a second and moved from Cville to Charleston, he completely lost it. Each time he enters the house, he takes an interminable amount of time and engages in nighttime rituals, alternating meowing to go out with meowing to come in. He and Sebastian, who lost one-third of his tail in a past life, follow like dogs when the family takes walks.

Other than being humid, Charleston is beautiful. Like Rome, Charleston has strict laws about the appearance of buildings, requiring city approval to change the color of one's home, if one happens to be rich enough to live downtown. Walking by Rainbow Row, near the Battery, I learned about the classic Charleston sideways porch.


In the days before AC (and Charles Towne was founded in the 1600s), apparently such a design, paired with a slightly off-kilter orientation toward the harbor, enabled a sea breeze to blow through and, if not actually cool things off, exchange stale inside air for oppressive outside air. And, with the likes of Blackbeard hanging around, probably the air inside was pretty stinky.



My favorite Charleston sight today was at the elementary school we visited for work, where one of the books in the office was titled "Pirates Don't Change Diapers." That's funny, I thought that's what swashbuckling meant - as in, "little Johnny, does that lovely aroma arising from your backside mean that you need your swash buckled?"

Yesterday's favorite sight happened at the dock of family friends, who live on the intracoastal waterway. We walked through their spongy yard, past an awfully realistic fake dead plastic bird (the coastal version of an owl) to the wooden walkway that wound through some reeds. I spied little black crabs that looked like spiders. I have a friend who is scared of spiders and I wonder: if something looks like a spider but isn't a spider, is it still scary? Other local animal life apparently includes dolphins and alligators which made an appearance in my friends' neighborhood recently. You know what they say: if anything will make a cat neurotic, it's an alligator. So far my scariest creature feature has been with these beautiful dark blue bugs the size of a hummingbird. They live in the trees - Charleston is famous for live oaks and the Spanish moss with which they live in harmony.



Last Charleston lesson for the day: don't touch the Spanish moss because it contains chiggers which will cause you to itch for a week and a half. And that will make Oscar pitch a fit.

family=forever

This weekend my cousin D2 was kind enough to get married so we could have a family reunion in Lexington, KY. Raised as an only child, I got my sibling fix (complete with altercations and time outs from grandma) from my group of tumbling cousins, who now have little tumblers of their own. There's something really special about getting together with a bunch of people you've known since you were small, and their parents who (by virtue of being her siblings) have known your mom since she was small, or just enough bigger to boss them around.

There are so few people in the world who have known us since we were born. To have a whole clan of them seems an amazing gift, that as an adult I have truly learned to appreciate. Initially it's tough to relate to people who saw all the awkward stages, from diapers to glasses to funny poofy hair to bad boy(or girl)friends and all the other stages that one can spend an entire life trying to forget or trying to insist "That wasn't me! That was another person! I'm different now!" But after being past the worst of the awkwardness, it's comforting to have all these people who don't actually care, because they've loved you, or at least teased you, since you were very tiny. To them, probably like with your parents, the "you" that is really true is that cute little person who they once held in their arms or tickled or took to a baseball game, or in one case, the emergency room. (More about that later, but wild mushrooms were involved).

Maybe this time it sunk in because I'm in the middle and can participate on both sides: without children myself, I first drove to Aunt & Uncle M&M's and was tucked in cozily for one night before being driven to Lexington with love. After arriving, I got to play cousin-auntie to the smaller cuties, my cousins' children. Friday night we played chase in the courtyard at the rehearsal dinner, pretended to hide from Mom and Dad (who I graduated high school with), and had a potty party outside the single restroom up a rickety stair at this charming historic home. Saturday little Ada's namesake was learning to swim between her mom - whose own life has enough parallels with my own to be eerie- and me. The reception was the absolute best with dancing and then sleepy bodies who trusted me not to drop them while slowdancing, apparently because I'm related to them. And my personal favorite conversation, with my now-grown cousin whose diapers I changed I was babysitting age, about his friends who are NICKnamed Bill, Willy, and Harold.

So here's the point: family is forever and I'm glad I have enough years in me yet to say THANK YOU to every last one of you. You know who you are.

layers of The Other Guys

Last night we saw The Other Guys, which is actually getting strong reviews. I feel like this film was written by the Coen brothers, had they grown up as cool jock types with lower IQs. Hmm that is confusing. What I mean is, there is more than meets the eye with The Other Guys, but probably not as much as in the best Coen bros films. Fargo, O Brother, and The Big L come immediately to mind of course!

Let me explain. For me it has to do with the movie having multiple layers and the sense that these guys, Will Ferrell (the feeler) and Mark Wahlberg (the angry dude) are dealing with literally everything in their lives all at once. Gone are the days of action movies with a single plot and reliably evil bad guys. No, instead these guys are having identity crises (as in, do I want to be a respected, macho detective or a traffic cop? A pimp or a steady sweet husband?), relationship crises, emotional crises, and figuring out how to behave in public, all while they're trying to catch (kind of) bad guys and stop a retirement fund from being robbed.

Boys, welcome to the club. For several decades now, women have been struggling with these very issues! As in: how do we manage to be Donna Reed perfect uncomplaining mom and wife, sex kitten, accomplished careerists, all while maintaining some sense of ourselves and our interests in things that don't fit into those categories, like, oh, sleeping? It's enough to make a gal stay home, pun intended.

I'm actually really impressed with the guys in the movie, and for the people who made it. They are grappling with some serious shite and not embarrassed to fall down and make mistakes (the dudes who jump 20 stories to their death on accident, now, they were just idiots). It's really, really frickin' hard to balance all that life stuff all at once, and I have not the slightest clue how to do it. But certainly, I can recommend trying, and being open to guidance, and being open to learning stuff about yourself that you didn't realize before being kidnapped and shipped to the west in your red Prius (it's not a spoiler if I don't tell you how or when it happens in the movie).

Last night at quarteting, which was held in a peaceful gathering place, I saw a whiteboard that I liked. Something along the lines of:

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
1. Notice not accepting.
2. Practice acceptance deliberately.
3. Do it over and over.

The actual version was definitely better though not any clearer about what, exactly, one should be accepting. Reality? The chance to make a better reality? I dunno, but I hope I get to have as much fun giving it a shot as The Other Guys.