A Whole New World

A Whole New World

For a brief moment, I felt an energy go through me like a child who stands at the gates to Disney World for the first time.  I felt joy.  My heart swirled.  I smiled without effort for the first time in a long time.  My mind felt fresh like the way you feel when someone opens a window to let in fresh ocean breezes to a stuffy cottage.  If I had to replicate the scene in a movie, I would have me looking up and around and spinning in a circle.  Wow.  Over 250 cookie jars perfectly aligned on shelves – no dust – arranged in groupings:  polar bears with soda bottles, cottages comprising a village, kittens, designer bears, cartoon characters … the list goes on.  Not only that, the room was knotty pine – and that in itself is glorious to me.

The lady showed me this room of treasures and smiled cheerily, knowing she had found a friend in me.  I understand what it is that makes someone a collector.  For the record:  Collectors are different than hoarders.  Collectors have a purpose – be it having a complete set of something vintage, or gathering to re-sell at a later date, or some such thing – and collectors put order to their treasure trove.  They care for it, keep it orderly and in tip-top shape.  And then eventually they realize when it is time to shift gears and move forward.  It is unfortunate that in our television culture we are so quick to presume that just because a person has more than one of something that he or she is a hoarder.  It just ain’t true.

My friend is a crafter and she has painted and done ceramics, and I’m sure a whole host of other occupations that I am unaware of.  She came to have this collection over time, and then when it was the season for change in her life, she knew that the cookie jars and all the craft supplies would move forward – I assured her that I would buy a few of them as Christmas gifts for children in my life that would enjoy them and take good care of her prizes.  The sentiment seemed to please her.

So I went into the Estate Sale and picked out nine good designs, and one vintage.  (Vintage means it is kind of homely and worth more money than you’d think it would be.)  I thought I was done, because the sellers were in a hurry to close shop at 3pm and they gave me the bum’s rush out the door.  I got home and washed up the jars, setting them to dry on the kitchen table prior to storing them for gift wrapping later.  I made a list of who was going to get which jar, and realized I could do better.  I reached out to the selling company and made an appointment for a second visit.  It was different than the first.

They weren’t watching over my shoulder like the first time because they knew I was a buyer and not a scoper or a thief.  They let me browse.  I had time to think, to inspect, to imagine:  I picked out seven more.  That’s the thing about my personal browsing/buying habits – a smart salesperson will just hand me a box and leave me to my own devices.  The minute someone starts hovering in my zone I get edgy and can’t think straight.  I need my mental space.  I credit this quirk to an artsy, and inexplicable streak of independence in me.  I don’t like working in groups when I do art or planning décor for my home.  I don’t even want a radio on.  My brain gears shift more smoothly when I am surrounded in a blanket of monastic silence… well, with the exception of the slight “huffs” that dogs sleeping at my feet make. 

So now I have these fun cookie jars and will be packing them into boxes for Christmas presents.  I will be sorry to see them go – like when you meet new friends at a conference on a weekend and you know that most likely you will never see them again:  they are in my life for a brief moment, and then onward they go.  I look forward to seeing the expressions on the faces of the people who will give them their new homes.  In the meantime I have been bitten by a bug that has changed my chemistry:  I believe I am going to get more into estate sales and re-homing items.  I really like it.  I like knowing that someone’s treasures will brighten the day of yet another person.

We may not lay up our treasures on earth where thieves and rust destroys, as the Scripture says, but we can certainly borrow them for a time.  In another passage it says:  “all good gifts around us are sent from heaven above.”  Well, maybe Heaven has a 24/7/365 yard sale going on – won’t that be fun?!

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 The Miss Muffett jar & Sleeping bear jar are both for sale.

Contact me if you are interested.  They are vintage jars.

Hand Me Another Grapefruit

Hand Me Another Grapefruit

To My Friends & Relatives:

When I am old in a nursing home, be sure to bring me fruit.  Bring me a fruit arrangement so that I can snack on it.  I will eat the strawberries, and probably every other pineapple piece and throw the darned cantaloupe pieces on the floor.  Cantaloupe is just filler because the real fruit is too expensive, and someone, somewhere is worried about their Profit Margin.  Then bring a bowl of fruit so I can throw grapefruits at the television… because when you are old, you can do these sorts of things and people will pat your arm and go, “there, there, now why are you doing that?  That’s not nice, to throw grapefruits at the television.”  And I will laugh and say:  “I’ve spent most of my life trying to be nice (with varying results) and now I’m just being honest.  Hand me another *bleeping* grapefruit.  This show is written by idiots who think we are idiots.”

Also, buy me a shirt that says, “Rage against the machine.”  I will wear it when I watch television and the aides are too busy with someone down the hallway to change my channel to something intelligent.  I’ve spent my whole life reading intelligent or entertaining and sweet things… because the rule for your mind is the same as for your body:   “you are what you eat.”  And I want to be intelligent, entertaining and sweet (again, with varying results expected relative to circumstances.) 

The worst imprisonment I can imagine is not wearing Depends and eating soft foods.  It is having nothing else to do but watch the Idiot Box for my final days, ad nauseum.  Then, when I show up at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter will be paging through saying, “What the heck happened to you?!  You used to be very engaging.  Most recent entries on your behavior seem to indicate you were a bit testy at the Daisy Hill Home for the Aging and Infirmed.  Did you snap?” 

My reply will be a bit direct, I imagine:  “Just let me in, Pete, you have no IDEA what I’ve been subjected to for the past few years.  If the bane of trash television wasn’t enough, they only brought the Therapy Dogs in to see me once in a blue moon, and I’m utterly deprived of my dog-fix.”  He will look at me sympathetically and say, “Poor dear, come right in.  But wait for two seconds I’ve got to send a bunch of Hollywood writers through Purgatory first, we’ve got to give them time for feeling truly sorry for what they’ve done to the minds of the world.  And I’ve got to send a few Hollywood producers a little further down South to the no-return zone.  They’re inexcusable.  If they produced one more profanity, the Boss would have smote them personally.  Honestly.  And they were so gifted, initially.  Such a pity.”  Then he will add, “Oh, and while you wait, can you feed some of these dogs hanging around the gate, they’ll be coming in right along with you.”

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If you are reading my column and are unfamiliar with dry wit & sarcastic humor …. Build a bridge and get over it.  I don’t need counseling for anger issues.  Yet.  I’ve only had television service for a week after a 30 year hiatus.

The Very Last Priority: TV

Welcome me into the Third Millenium.  After 30 years, I finally got television- cable service hooked up at my house.  It took them thirty years to come down to a reasonable price.  I will miss the fun I used to have with the Dish TV and Satellite guys at their table displays in the Big Box stores.  When they’d ask me how my cable provider is working for me.  I used to say:  “They’re not because I don’t have cable.  Do the math:  multiply what I’m saving per month, times 12 months, times 30 years.”  Well, it’s not that I saved money; really my budget just re-directed it elsewhere.

I also remember the era of shopping for landline phone service.  Back in the day, we’d switch from AT&T, then to Sprint, then finally to USA Datanet.  And the latter drove my long distance bills right down to a do-able cost.  Ultimately, everyone realized they could do better and now everything is rolled-in or bundled or whatever we are calling that kind of extortion now.  It seemed like only yesterday that my grandmother would say to me, “Call me from College and just reverse the charges.”  This generation would not even know what that language means.

So here I am, probably the last of the dinosaurs to jump on board with television.  Yet after 30 years of not having one I find it very funny that I can’t fit watching programs into my schedule.  I have gotten so used to yard work, reading books, washing dogs, etc. that I might just have to plan when to watch “the tube.” 

My mother asked me the other night how I was enjoying television.  It’s only been activated for one week.  I had managed to see one program.  I winced for most of it.  It was on the network – which shall remain nameless – that is known for programming that casts men in the worst possible light.  I was only watching it because the story line was intriguing to me.  The main character was a woman who found herself in Belgrade as an expert in using computer hacking to the service of Good, when her daughter and friend were kidnapped in a nightclub.  Of course, the intent was that they would be forced into an Off-shore prostitution ring that specialized in providing American girls.  The police chief that offered help was actually covering up for the bad guys, of course.  The renegade private investigator that came to her help enlightened her:  there are two ways to survive in the Force - #1) you turn a blind eye; or #2) you become part of the corruption.  I have to say that although the story line was intriguing, when it was all over I didn’t feel good about men, cops, or Belgrade.  Frankly, in my Real Life, where I lived a week ago before the box got juiced by cables, I liked all three.  I’ve been to Belgrade in 1988 and found the city exciting and welcoming.  I generally think men are decent, with the exception of one or two.  And, I am a shameless supporter of the good men in blue as well.  So, um, yeah, my first foray into the world of the tube wasn’t what it could have been.  It was only loosely connected to my reality.

Saturday night I tried again.  After delivering groceries to two customers in the late morning, and then working in my yard doing what I consider hard labor for about three hours, I thought I could unwind before I crashed.  Nope.  I crashed in the middle of Tom Selleck’s current show.  And if you can fall asleep watching Tom Selleck, you should not be watching television at all, you should be lights-out in your bed with the dogs. 

Last night I thought it would be fun to watch a realtor help a few people who wanted to buy a house at the beach.  At least THAT was something I could relate to quite readily.   When he asked the couple what their budget was, they fidgeted a bit –  the guy squeezed the girl’s hand for assurance – “Oh, say, five hundred twenty five thousand…”  I believe I surprised my dogs with the profanity that came out of my mouth.  It roughly translated to:  “Are you kidding me?”  The only thing Real about that episode was the way the realtor responded:  he went ahead and booked them to look at a house that was TEN GRAND MORE THAN THEIR BUDGET.  That, my friends, is Real Life. 

They walked through the house on the beach and said, “wow, what a view!” followed by, “it’s kind of small, though.”  With 1400 square feet of space that apparently was tall, but not wide, there were no visible closets.  I don’t know what their issue was.  I always look for closets.  I look for a sump pump.  I look for evidence of termites.  I check the color of the water that comes out of the faucets.  And I can absolutely assure you that if I look up and see bamboo paddle fans, I am NOT going to be as excited about it as that guy got.  How weird?! 

Then the realtor took them to look at the house that was a cumbersome fifteen minute drive from the beach.  Really.  And it was in their price range, heaven bless them.  And it was only 4000 square feet.  They had the chance to ask the owner why he was selling and he said he wanted to just take a parcel of the back property and build there for himself.  Right then and there I would have said, NO WAY.  Who would want the pressure of the former owner looking to see if you kept up the shrubs to his specs or stopping by to borrow a cup of sugar so he could see if your furniture came from a designer like his or not?  Look, I forward mail to the people I bought from six years ago and all I can think of when I write their address is, “How the heck did she keep this kitchen floor clean?!  Everything tracks into here” and “They should have put on the disclosure sheet that dusting weekly was necessary, especially after the farms down the street shredded the debris from corn.” 

If anything the couples looking at homes on that program were so far from My Reality, they may as well have been from Mars.  It left me kind of sad.  I don’t want what they have.  I just loved looking at the homes on the beach and am sorry that real estate markets have made it so difficult to own a piece of heaven.  Eh, what can you do? 

Do you wonder what I am watching tonight?  I’ll probably be starring in my own reality show:  Bathing Spaniels and Cutting Hedges.  I cannot tell you which will be more exciting or fulfilling to me.  But I can say that I won’t be falling asleep in the middle of either of those activities.  I wonder when the non-contract runs out in eleven months if I will still keep the cable service, or will I jettison them and go back to crocheting and watching the snow fall?  As they say, “Stay tuned.”

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Preach it, Brother!

At first I thought that a radio preacher had taken over the talk radio station I listen to in the morning.  Then I recognized the President’s voice.  I had never heard President Trump like this before and I’ve listened to him a few times in these initial months of his presidency.  But now he was doing something historical – and he was doing it with passion and persuasion with the facts of history in his arsenal of speech-making tools. 

It isn’t the first time I’ve heard a president “go preacher.”  Barack Obama did it in the company of some African American preachers and it was frightening.  It was frightening because he was a man of poise and cultural presence, and tried to put himself in the shoes of preachers who shake, quake, bellow, enunciate, point fingers and sweat profusely.  I watch preachers practically for a living.  And he was as fake as a three dollar bill.  He wasn’t proving he was part of their “culture” because he wasn’t.  They may share a common ethnic heritage, but he didn’t have believability as a preacher.  I couldn’t remember what he said because of the way he was trying to say it.  And as I’ve said to friends on the other side of the political tracks from me, “Don’t tell me he is a great orator, or I will ask you what the content was.”   I found myself asking:  ‘Where’s the beef?’ every time he spoke.

But on this particular morning (6 July 2017), President Trump was giving a presentation in Poland and he was kicking arse.  He had used history and theology to galvanize the opinion of the Poles.  He was reminding them of a history that admittedly they could never forget, and instructing his listeners that were unfamiliar with that significant struggle for freedom.  He was telling the story of how a people hard-working, family-oriented, and faith-filled stood up against an oppressive political system.  I almost drove off the road when he summarized the source of their strength:  their faith.  Since when has a politician ever acknowledged the power of the human spirit as a credible source of motivation? … um, never in the last 54 years that I am aware of. 

He reminded them of that incredible celebration of the Catholic Mass held in Victory Square with Pope John Paul II – “their Polish pope.”  (If you want to melt the hearts of the Poles, just reference their Pope.)  He reminded them of the one cry of the people:  “We want God!”  They did not demand power or prestige from the political system.  They wanted the freedom to be human beings that had a say in their own personal destiny, because it is a God-given right. 

He reminded them of the bloodshed in Warsaw in the 1944 Uprising as Poles sought to hold back the encroaching Nazi-German army.  The people put themselves out there by trying to sandbag against the invaders.  Every time they tried to build up the blockade, snipers would shoot them down.  It was a powerful display of the resilience of the human spirit against the very real physical advancing of hateful ideologies.

He reminded them of the importance of hardworking immigrants coming to a country and the necessity to exclude radicalized terrorism from the gates of any city.  As if he slipped it in, he warned the current country-of-concern (Russia) of parameters.  However, it could be no accident that in a speech to Poland, a nation that had risen from the ashes of persecution and oppression like a glorious Phoenix, he sent a subtle but clear warning to a potentially world-threatening Super Power (Russia). 

He had finally found the balance in presenting a case.  Perhaps President Trump repeated certain words of effect too often for speech critics, and critics will come as sure as the sunset.  Yet he had finally brought forth a connection of the heart by appealing to the human spirit.  He looked at the history of a people and found significant lessons to bring forth.  He tied the issues of the past to the present and he was well received.

Now, to move forward from speech to lived-reality …

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Parenting in Public

She actually shoved him.  My mouth dropped open.  I scanned the other faces seated on the bus waiting-benches nearby and took in the reactions for a second.  While I continued moving away from that scene and towards my vehicle, I was gathering data in my head…. along with questions.  It began with:

Why did a mother shove her approximately seven year old son?  He was being seven, a rascally seven at that.  He had pushed a small shopping cart off the sidewalk onto the road where the bus would soon arrive.  I think boys sometimes do things to see them crash.  They are very much in the moment.  I know that many parents would swat a kid’s behind for doing something like that.  And others would do nothing but be mortified by the “scene” their kid was creating.  Still others would shrug their shoulders and let the kid win the day with his nonsense.  None of this takes into account the kids who would never pull a stunt like that because even though it was mostly harmless and brainless, their parents would go ape on them at home.  (I didn’t just say that, did I?).  And, yes, admittedly pushing the cart out is potentially dangerous.

But what is going on with that mother?  More specifically, you’d have to see the shove itself.  She shoved him in such a way that he sprawled onto the concrete. It wasn’t far for him to fall down because he was a small kid, but it sent a powerful series of messages.  She had a few words for him as well.  But I have to say I wouldn’t have given her an award for insightful parenting at that point.  She was out of control in that moment and childrearing “experts” (if Dr. Spok and Ted Tripp are still appreciated) would insist:  you never hit a child when you are angry.  Technically, she didn’t even hit the kid – she pushed him.  You may ask, “Was it harder than she intended?”  My worry is that it was SOFTER than she would have done if they were home alone.  She peeled back a layer of her life before us, a bunch of strangers passing through, and showed us she is out of control.  And even I, a non-parent, know that you never hit a kid in anger.  Some parents may swat a kid’s bum to teach cause & effect; but, with spanking itself, if you’ve got emotion, you can have a breaking point and do some harm.

How are we supposed to react to this?  The “Way of the City” is to just look the other way and pretend you don’t see it.  Don’t get involved – perhaps because that could mean lawyers or Child Protective Services get involved later.  No one on the bench moved.  No one around even said anything.  It was a brief vignette, as you would see in a role play of some sort, and the audience remained muted.  Is this style of parenting a culturally-accepted behavior in a community that I don’t live in? I hope not.  To be clear, the kid wasn’t broken or bleeding or wailing in any way, shape or form.  Most likely the worst thing that got hurt was his pride.  But my heart felt his pain as I passed through their zone.  I felt uncomfortable, yes, but I also didn’t want her shoving ME.  So I walked on through – while I was moving on the outside, I was paralyzed on the inside.

Is it time for more parenting seminars to be publicized and made available?  The cynical side of me says that people would not go to the seminars.  Single, frazzled mothers don’t have the time or patience to listen to someone telling them about other approaches to discipline.  Married couples probably would find it humiliating to admit that one or the other parent doesn’t have a clue on how to deal with kids except for the way their parents dealt with them.  “It was good enough for me in my day, and I turned out okay.”  Admitting weakness might create a sense of being a failure as a parent.  There are so many issues and hurdles.

Clearly, discipline is important.  Even the Bible says that the person who HATES his child is the one who refuses to discipline him.  Refusing to discipline or put behavioral parameters around a kid doesn’t prepare him for Real Life.  Real Life has rules.  When rules are broken there are consequences that are societal, as well as consequences that are natural.  For instance:  Society may say that you cannot walk on the ledge of a high up building – no matter how thrilling that idea is for you.  The societal consequences might include:  a visit with the police, an unintended stay at a mental health facility, or a financial fine.  The natural consequences are:  if you are a klutz and you fall, or you didn’t account for the changing wind, you won’t be around to do anymore dare-devil feats.  

Discipline is also a training ground for success in life.  When you heed the parameters around you, or learn to work WITH the powers that establish those parameters, you develop a good set of life skills.  For instance, Nick Wallenda the aerial acrobat and Evil Knievel the motorcycle dare-devil are two guys who learned how to work within the system and actually create careers out of their adventurous spirits.  In the latter cases, there is a win-win.  The person gets to live in the zone that they find exciting and they also have created an entertainment venue that teaches the values of persistence and concentration and bravery.

In a more every day setting, the person who can discipline herself to study, learn and pursue education while other friends are goofing around, can earn a degree or certification that opens up a new set of life opportunities for her.  The man who can take a cookbook and patiently follow directions creates the opportunity to impress his new girlfriend with a beautiful and delicious meal … or he can have his own television show!  The kid who has the patience to learn to hammer nails in perfectly straight on a piece of board can grow up to be a famous woodworker or home builder.  The possibilities are endless for those who can move within structure of culture, and self-discipline certainly plays a key role in that.  But kids don’t come emotionally hard-wired with self-discipline:  it has to be ingrained in them by loving, astute parents, teachers and community authorities.

So I guess my closing conclusion would be this:  I think the parent in this case failed to discipline wisely:  She just knee-jerked her reaction.  It is true, I doubt the kid will do this thing again – that is the “win.”  But the loss may be bigger than the win:  his respect for his mother will be squelched by the fear of her.  I watched two parents raise three children together.  The third child was only spanked once – by a relative, not by either of them.  And yet she grew up close to them as a loving, witty, engaging young person.  She was given gentle direction with words and example.  I don’t think she ever even sat in “time out.”  She is now a positive contributor to society and has never been in trouble with the Law.  Her relationship with her parents is one of respect and love.  She is perhaps one of the finest people I know.  The son at the curb will most likely not have a relationship with his mother like this young woman has with her parents.  I am a betting woman, and I still believe you get what you pay for.  Good luck, lady.  Maybe next time you will know a different way.

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