In Which I Am Tired Of Being Inundated By Pharmaceuticals Which Want Me To Ask My Doctor About Them

For quite some time now, the Dept. has been without cable television. Aside from the occasional jonesing for MSNBC or CNN every now and then, (and okay, maybe some Top Chef or Project Runway, but only if it's Old School), we honestly Do Not Miss It. We are very content Cord Cutters, the growing breed without cable and satellite television services who watch network TV, stream select shows from our computers using an HDMI hookup, and, in our case, have a Roku box and Jared's Netflix password.

One of the things I'm continually amused by is the carefully selected advertising on some of the over-the-air networks. It's clear that they have studied their audience demographics, and that they are targeting them like the bullseye on a dart board. My favourite example of this is a network called MeTV, one which shows reruns of old popular shows that were huge faves in their day. Here's a typical lineup of their primetime: MASH, The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan's Heroes, Gilligan's Island, Welcome Back Kotter, Perry Mason. (Rick and I watch MASH during dinner every night. It replaces Seinfeld, which was our choice during the Heydays Of Cable.)

During MASH Rick and I are offered a variety of medications, information on life insurance and reverse mortgages, and several medical devices including catheters, back braces, and of course the medical alert system for when we've fallen and can't get up. Oh, and the walk-in bathtub. But the amount of prescription medications we are urged to "talk to (y)our doctor about" is ridiculous. And lately, I've noticed that it's not just on The Old People's Network. It's all over the networks, and it's all over primetime.

Obviously, the pharmaceutical companies wouldn't advertise on television unless such advertising worked. It's like negative political campaign ads: people say they hate them, but their effectiveness is undeniable; they work. And so do prescription drug ads. That's why they are so ubiquitous. The US federal ban on direct to consumer (DTC) advertising for prescription medications was lifted in 1997. But do you remember there being so many ads on television in, say, 2005 as there are now for medicines?

And the names of these meds are fascinating. Januvia, Latuda--I think I may have had them in class. Eliquis--wasn't that the name of a car not too terribly long ago, maybe the Mercury Eliquis? And Linzess--sounds more like a chocolate or maybe a fabric, or even a feminine hygiene product. But I digress.

I'm irritated by so many facets of this: Advertising, in many ways, creates demand. One health writer noted in her article this February that "70 percent of adults and 25 percent of children are on at least one prescription drug" in this country. For adults the most-prescribed medication is an antidepressant. For children, an ADHD med. (It's noteworthy--and a relief--that I've yet to see any adverts for ADHD meds on TV, at least in my area; the vast majority of commercials seem to be for male sexual performance drugs. I'm struggling to think of any ads for children's prescription medications at all.)

A second feature that irritates me is that we, the health consumers, end up paying in time and money for these slick little commercials in which men sidle up to their wives and get feely, or the grey-faced woman looks disinterested and hopeless. It drives up the cost of a pill which the drug companies are already providing samples of--along with free lunches, doodads, and other perks--to our doctors while we sit idly out in the waiting rooms as the reps take up a patient time slot. And I'm sure I'm not alone in having had to wait as long as an hour to see one of my doctors. (Back when I used to go and see them. Don't start.)

Oh, and one more: stop telling me to "ask my doctor about" this pill when I don't have Erectile Dysfunction, Low Testosterone, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Clinical Depression, or Overactive Bladder, or really, any of the conditions treated by the medicines being hawked at me. So much of this advertising has absolutely nothing to do with me, period.  It's interesting that there are few to no commercials for drugs that battle hypertension, diabetes, or heart-related conditions. (I don't have those, either, but I'm willing to bet that more people do.) Probably the majority of those drugs are now available in generic form, and don't generate much profit for drug companies anymore.

Pharmaceutical companies spend good money in Research and Development, and I've benefited immensely in the area of migraine therapies. I don't expect any business to do business for free. I know it costs a staggering amount to get a new drug to market: according to Forbes, it's 5 billion dollars. It's hardly a dilemma--cut the advertising budget and save a bit by not putting the commercials on television, but sacrifice that revenue stream (Every $1.00 spent advertising prescription drugs is estimated to increase their retail sales by $4.20.). It is, however, quite telling that the US and only one other country--New Zealand--allow DTC pharmaceutical advertising.  Are we getting it wrong?

Geeze. I sound old and curmudgeonly talking about this, don't I? Am I going to start bitching about Kids Today or That Rap Music or Being On A Fixed Income? Should I take back the cute new boots I just got?

(I don't think so either. There's a zipper.  In the back.)

Do let's chat all this up in Comments.  Am I just having an Old Lady Moment?

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Somewhere, An Amish Lady Knows Victoria's Secret

Last weekend was the fall garage sale held at my brother's lakehouse. Thankfully, the weather was sunny and delightful as we hawked our strange collection of stuff. I was still basking in the blisses of my previous triumphs: my two bought breadmakers, my purchased punchbowl, that set of bedroom drapes and bedskirt, finally gone after five sales! Bobby and I decided we were in a Giving Mood, a Blowout Mentality. Our patrons didn't know it, but no offer would be rejected. We were getting rid of everything, and everything could be had for a song.

"I've got plenty of bags, too," my brother informed me, showing me an impressive array, including many pink striped Victoria's Secret shopping bags. His daughter is a devoted client, and he is a fanatic Reducer, Reuser, and Recycler. Immediately, a plan--no, A Plan--hatched in my brain. "I love those," I said, "and I say we reserve them for the Amish women only."

"Absolutely we will," he said, serious and resolute. "Without a doubt."

I cannot express to you the Joy that I felt each time I tucked away the Amish women's little purchases into those gaudy bags and watched them walk away with them over their arms. Most of the ladies, I swear, moved with a little jauntier step, making the pink bag swing or bounce against their skirts. The contrasts were overwhelming. Not only were the colours startling--that brilliant hot pink against the black, navy, or strange washed-out purply black, but the very idea of one of The Plain People, in muslin bonnet and heavy black shoes, carrying a sexy lingerie bag...the irony was gorgeous. And that's without considering the contents, which varied from several pairs of dark socks to a softball to a wallet. Oh, and cans of Pepsi.

Bobby sells cold beverages to supplement his garage sale...sales...from a small dorm refrigerator, and he makes a tidy profit.  Sales of bottled water, cans of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and the occasional pouch of Capri Sun fruit punch are usually brisk, especially in the spring.  For some reason, the Amish, usually the women, are big fans of The Pepsi.

One small, hawknosed woman, her back humpish and her overall appearance dumpy, spent quite some time among our tables while her husband sat in the buggy parked out front. It was pulled by a gallant-looking black horse that would have been far more suited to a romance novel cover than standing there shitting all over the road in Ashland County, Ohio, at a garage sale. After holding up several items from the men's table to her husband for his consideration, she finally got a brief nod. She hurried over to us with her purchase.

My brother immediately drew out a pink striped bag while I shook out the teeshirt she had chosen, preparing to fold it. We exchanged glances and fought our involuntary smiles. It was a Blue Moon beer teeshirt. "And one Pepsi. I almost forgot," the woman said, her voice heavily accented in their Pennsylvania Dutch/German dialect. She carefully counted out four quarters for the entire sale, and I handed her the bag. As she walked away, I desperately tried to discreetly take a photograph, but was thwarted yet again. After holding it closely in front of her, she stowed the bag in the back of the buggy, and as her husband flicked the reins, she trudged alongside while he rode on to the next sale. I couldn't even grab a picture of the bag in the back of the buggy; it's inappropriate to take a picture of the Amish without their consent, and they eschew photographs. It is Vanity; it is not Plain.

"Do you see that? He's making her walk alongside!" St. Patsy could not contain her irritation nor her fascination with the scene we were witnessing. Bobby and I were generally philosophical. "Mom," I said, "he's probably not making her. The next sale is right next door. What's the point of getting up in the buggy only to get right down again? Besides, it's the culture. It's only a big deal to you, not to her."

"He's taking her shopping. He's even driving! What more do you want?" my brother joked. Oblivious to his intended humour, my mother shot him a look that conveyed equal parts disappointment and disgust, and packed enough disdain to curl upper lips across the entire Midwest. Thankfully, the couple rounded the bend and we could all, all of us, move on.

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Bus Stop

For the past few weeks, I've been watching the same sad drama unfold outside my living room window every morning at about 8:30 AM. It's not that I sit and wait for it; I'm already in my big armchair, reading the newspaper and having my second cup of coffee. Or, if Piper has decided it's Time, I'm having a Snuggle with a huge orange marmalade cat, rendering any movement at all completely impossible. (More than once, I've mistakenly played an Unintentional Word in Words With Friends; it doesn't always work out advantageously.)

But I digress.

At 8:30 in the morning on Mondays through Fridays, a school bus pulls up to the house two doors down, and the sound of a child crying and wailing begins. Soon, a little boy of about six appears, backpack on his back. Sometimes his mother carries him; other times he slowly walks, rubbing his eyes or his head with one hand while holding his mom's hand with the other. It's crying only--no words, no complaints--just a steady bawling which reaches a higher pitch as soon as the doors whoosh open. Each day, the little boy and his mom have been greeted by a cheery, merry bus aide. She calls out his name--it sounds like it might be Charlie? Marty? Barney?--and asks how he's doing. Is he ready for school today? She carefully takes his hand and helps him to walk up the steps to the bus. She won't carry him; he has to walk himself. The doors close, and the bus lumbers away.

The first time this drama unfolded, I initially focused on the little one, naturally. My heart broke for him. He clutched at his mother; he looked so tiny and his backpack looked so large. He's so afraid! I thought. And he has to go on that big huge bus! That poor baby. What if he cries the whole way there? What if someone is mean to him? Then I looked at his mother, who lingered at the end of the driveway, watching and waving, then standing there, hands clasped at her chest. How awful for her! To know that her baby is so sad and so upset, and to be unable to do anything but watch. I remembered my own guilt: I couldn't take my own kids to school on their first day because it was always the first day of school for me, too. I would always spend odd moments of the day wondering. So much of raising children is Heartbreak!

In the ensuing days, the tears have not subsided when the bus comes. Each day, the mother brings the little boy to the bus, still crying. The bubbly aide tries her hardest to jolly him up, but nothing has worked thus far. "He's a little crabby today," said the mother yesterday through the wailing. I wondered why she bothered to say anything. Maybe, though, he does stop crying on the bus at some point. Certainly he would at school. I'm not entirely certain, however; today as I was gathering my mail, the bus dropped him off. He was crying.

All of this is in stark contrast to the other little boy three doors down from me the other way who used to get picked up by a van for his school. A happy-go-lucky sort of kid, he was very hyperactive and didn't seem to have any sort of concerns about going off to school at all. As a matter of fact, one morning as he was leaving, he yelled loudly, "So long, suckas!"

A performance that was never, at least to my knowledge, repeated.

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Nine Story

Nine is a number I am not fond of, to be honest. 

When I was earning my living as a bank teller, the only good thing about Nine was that if I did not balance at the end of the day, and the amount I was off was divisible by Nine, I could start looking for a transposition. Transposition errors are always divisible by nine. Try it; it works.

When I was Nine, I got really sick. After I didn't get any better, my parents took me to the emergency room where they eventually learned that my appendix was ready to rupture, possibly minutes away from spreading poison throughout my entire body. My father, a normally very swarthy Croatian man with a barrel chest and strong arms, turned white right in front of me as I watched the doctors explain to him and my mother in the busy hallway that I needed surgery immediately.

The surgeon told my parents that my appendix burst as soon as he touched it. Consequently, I have two scars: a long, ugly gash for the appendectomy, and then a small one directly below it for the drains that pulled out the ugly greenish-brown fluid that I watched fill up a receptacle on the side of my bed. I hated those tubes. They kept me in bed and they meant that for the first few days of my seemingly endless stay, I was NPO, or allowed nothing by mouth. I was constantly thirsty and constantly hungry.  To this day I cannot stand the smell of A & D Ointment because that's what they kept putting on my lips to keep them from cracking while I was NPO.

The year was 1969, and it was April. The children's ward was full of Hong Kong flu cases, and there was also a girl with a full-body cast from her neck to her knees. She had been a hit-and-run victim, and she was my first roommate. She went home two days after I got there. Then I got Rosemary Jake.

I really have no idea why Rosemary was in the hospital, and I don't remember anything being wrong with her. That is, I don't recall any IVs or a cast or anything. But Rosemary was my roommate--I think--for pretty much the rest of my stay, and I was in there for about two weeks.

Rosemary was about the same age as me, but she was teeny tiny with thin arms and legs and a head full of braids. Her skin was the color of coffee, and her face was all eyes. Those eyes were so wide and so dark and they looked as if they could not possibly wait to understand every single thing you were saying. She was very devout--a Catholic--and her mother listened to her prayers sometimes when she visited.

Mrs. Jake braided Rosemary's hair almost every day. My mother did the same to me, except that I had only two braids, one on each side. If my mother brought ribbon, she made sure to tie a few bows onto Rosemary's braids. As the days began to wear on, I began to get gifts from people, and I shared them with Rosemary. One gift was a set of rub-on tattoos called "Funny Freckles." She was charmed by the little pink flowers and red strawberries that appeared on her skin with just a few strokes of a tongue depressor over the transfer.

We watched the movie "King of Kings" together, and we hoped we would be home for Easter. Sometimes, late in the evening, she would get a visitor who made her so happy. I can't remember if it was her uncle or her brother, but he was definitely a character. Named Buster, he wore a long, sweeping duster-type coat and a fedora-style hat. He would walk in on pointed-toe shoes and call her "Rosie." She would smile brilliantly, sit up in bed, and talk and talk. She would promise to rest, but keep up with her schoolwork. It was clear to me that they loved each other.

Rosemary and I were still in our room at Easter, and it was a terrible day. We each got a little basket with a token toy, but we weren't home. Worse, I had spiked a fever; my incisions had not been attended to according to doctor's orders and I was again full of infection. My stay had just gotten longer.

I did finally go home, of course, and not too much longer after that it was my birthday. I was to have a party, and I asked if we could invite Rosemary. I have no idea how my parents contacted Mrs. Jake, but they did and if we could provide transportation, Rosemary was allowed to come.

There are only a couple of things I remember about her house. One was that she lived in a very different part of town than we did, and in a brick house that was big but old and tired-looking. The second one is that it had a sagging trellis on one side with a climbing rosebush on it. Much later, I went down that street again, and those roses were a deep, blood red.

I remember presenting Rosemary--who was dressed in a red plaid dress with red bows all over her braids--as if she were a celebrity to the rest of my friends at my party. Because, to me, she was. She had been my comrade-in-arms, my fellow in suffering, my hospital friend and now, here she was! Here! I have no idea--no recollection--how she was received at my party or if she had a good time. It was such a long time ago.

In the intervening years, life was a challenge for Rosemary, who not only had several of her own children to raise, but because of the sudden death of her sister, was raising several nieces and nephews as well. All this, plus working and trying to take college classes, stretched her resources. Our family often put together some boxes of clothes and things to help out.

That birthday party in 1969 was the last time I saw Rosemary until my father's funeral in the summer of 2000. My brother, who had been the liaison with Rosemary's burgeoning family through his job with the city, took me over to her. "Oh, Rosemary," I said as I hugged her once again, "how wonderful that you're here."

Rosemary didn't look teeny tiny and awestruck anymore. Mostly, she looked tired and...experienced. Like she had seen way too much of life and would like to close her eyes for a while. But she also looked compassionate and kind. I would have loved to have spent some time with Rosemary, but not that day. And she had other commitments as well. And again, our lives have diverged into the years ahead. I have not seen her since, and it's been fourteen years.

To be honest, I have not thought of Rosemary very often, and I'm sure she has not thought of me.  Our lives always were very different.  We lived on the other side of town, but it may as well have been the other side of the world.

Sometimes a person can cross the stage, play her scene, and exit again without changing significantly the course of the play, even if her performance is memorable.  In a life this can happen over and over again.  In the playbill of Memory, during a very difficult year, Rosemary's name is gilded.

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Sometimes, Whilst Driving, One Has To Turn Around, Find A Nearby Parking Lot, And Take That Picture To Share With Everyone

Wow.  That Jesus.  Talk about a Personal Saviour.

I'm Back And Listing A Little, Now That I'm Nine

All of you will be glad to know that Maryland--home of Patriotic Gore That Flecked The Streets Of Baltimore--is still alive and well and right where it belongs. I just returned from yet another Extended Jaunt, during which I luxuriated and slothed and spent more time surrounded by Leanne's fabric hoard while I drank wine and Cosmopolitans and conferred Sainthood upon her long-suffering husband, Jim.

Did any of the rest of you know that there are gloves just for quilting? I'd like to know how the Hetsler sisters, my grandmother Ethel and her siblings Bertha and Grace, managed such an impressive output without them. Who knows what they'd have accomplished had they been suitably gauntleted.

But I digress.

Now that I am back, we can celebrate the Ninth Anniversary of the Dept. of Nance. Nine years ago this month, I staked my claim on this little spot of the cyberverse and began my blog. Who knew that I had such stick-to-it-iveness?

Normally, I choose a Numerical Theme and go from there, but Nine is not a favourite number of mine, so let's just, as the rappers do, "freestyle." (I'm so G.) Do your own Hoodrat Stuff in Comments!

9 Random Material Things That Make Me Happy

1. My GPS
2. My Bench Scraper
3. Effen Cucumber Vodka
4. Words With Friends
5. My Window Bird Feeder
6. Butter
7. Daisies
8. The Internet
9. Pasta

Could I get along without any of those? Maybe. But I would rather not. Are there other things that should be on that list? Oh, sure! But things like books, wine, avocados--those are becoming cliche with me. Besides, I'm freestylin', remember? Off we go.

9 Random Other Things That Make Me Happy

1. My grocery store guy who sings with the Muzak
2. Getting pictures of my granddog via text message
3. Forgetting what day it is
4. Laughing with St. Patsy
5. Reading long, long, long emails from friends
6. Wine on the porch or patio with Rick
7. Dinner with the boys
8. A clean house
9. Travel

I love my grocery store, which is full of genuinely nice and helpful staff. One guy who works there sings along with almost all of the songs on the Muzak, whether it is Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" (which it was yesterday) or Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs" (which seems to play every Tuesday that I shop). He sings enthusiastically and accurately as he stocks shelves, replaces signage, and tidies areas. He only stops to inquire of everyone in his sphere whether or not he can help them. He's wonderful.

And who wouldn't love getting pictures like this?

So I'm celebrating Being 9! Nine Years is a long time to be an Internet Sensation Personality ...Presence. Sigh.

But I owe you all a huge Thank You for reading me. So many of you have been my Steadfast Readers, my Dearest Readers and Friends throughout. And some of you have jumped in at different points along the way, getting to know The Me of that moment on. It is the Conversations with all of You that I so enjoy. Thank You.

Now, won't you have some dessert while I rustle up the champagne? And do share a List Of Your Own Nines (or whatever) in Comments.

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The Redbud Tree: Chapter Three of Watching And Thinking Of Blueberries

Rick had stepped across the street to talk to the yard man, now stowing the mower into the back of the small black pickup parked in the Cashes' driveway. It rankled me to see him using Tish and Barrington's driveway even though it made sense. That house had been vacant for years, so why clog up Sue Ellen's driveway unnecessarily? But increasingly, people had begun disrespecting the property; at least I thought so. Because there is no parking on the street, Tish's driveway had become a sort of neighborhood parking lot for anyone who had a bridge club, holiday party, barbecue, or needed a place to stow his or her car for a quick getaway when workmen were going to be at their house all day. Her curb lawn became the repository for a few people to place their tree limbs and brush until the city came around to pick it up. Aghast, I watched as the woman next door took her dog out and led it into Tish's front yard to do its business. I stood on my own front porch, impotently furious. Had she glanced over and seen me, I doubt she'd have cared.

At least Sue Ellen had stopped hooking up her hose to Tish's outdoor faucet to do her watering. That had ended years ago, and it probably was because Tish's water was turned off, I'm guessing. There's nothing at Tish's to even pretend to water. Her chubby pots of yellow marigolds and mums have been gone for so long, I almost forget what they looked like. The only thing blooming there now is the huge clutch of brilliant orange tiger lilies surrounding her black locust tree in the back yard. A family of little brown bunnies lives in it again this year, in defiance of the urban hawks and one stray cat that has managed to survive.

Ever since Tish left, the redbud tree in her curb lawn has been slowly dying. It rallied one year, about two years after she disappeared from across the way, but then its decline was steady and inexorable. This spring, it barely showed any pink blossoms at all, just a few on a couple of branches. One limb is entirely dead, and the rest are sparse with leaves that have already begun to yellow, and brown ones litter the ground below. Last week, a green card from the city appeared on Tish's front door. Her redbud tree is going to be removed soon. It's too far gone.

For the past several months, every now and then, I would see a car or truck at Tish's. Once, several lovely pieces of fine furniture--an armoire or china cabinet, a table, and something else--were piled into the back of a pickup truck and it drove away. Another time, a young couple in a bright red jeep went to the house for a while. Recently, three elderly men were there for a while and came out talking. I was watering my plants on the front porch, and it was impossible not to hear them, talking loudly in that Old Man Way. "...And this way, he doesn't have to sell the house," one of them said. "Right!" the other one agreed heartily. Before they left, one stooped low, painfully, and fixed the blue rug on Tish's front porch. I almost burst into tears. I've fixed that rug dozens of times. At least now I'm not the only one.

"That guy wants twenty bucks a week, just to cut and edge our little old front yard!" Rick said when he came back later. "That's ridiculous. I told him I'd get back to him, but obviously I won't. Oh, and he told me that on Saturday, he's doing all the trimming and mowing at Cashes'. The house is either sold or rented. I asked him when he was finally going to shape up Tish's bushes and cut out that tree from the middle of that one that's been bothering you all summer."

I felt a little breathless for a minute. But Rick continued.

"Nance, Tish has Alzheimer's."

What I said next is unimportant. My impression will forever be The yardman knew. The yardman knew. Which I guess is reasonable. As I've said before in my previous posts about Tish,we were merely cordial neighbors. We waved and said hello. She was kind to us and my children. She led her life and we led ours. Why, oh why, am I so invested in her life now? Why am I heartbroken for her? Why am I raging at the unfairness of it all? She is not me; our lives are not parallel.

I will be happy, truly, to see Tish's house come alive again. When the crew arrives to take away the dying redbud tree, I will probably cry just a little. But when the new neighbors arrive, I'll bake a tray of fresh blueberry muffins and step across the street to welcome them.

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In Which I Discuss Drinks And Invite You To Join Me Whilst CAUWFing

Bless your heart, there you are! Thanks for coming back and giving me another read. It's a bit of a Mixed Bag today, so get yourself something pleasant to sip and/or snack on, settle into a comfy spot, and let's see what we have here, shall we? Off we go!

~*~Language Police. Is there a single person among you who has ever spoken--in conversation, ever--the word "wriggle"? I've discovered that I have a deep-seated antipathy for this word. I find it not only ugly to look at, but equally ugly to say. And again, who says it? I have read it plenty of times, mostly in old British novels, and I was unpleasantly surprised to come across it today in a comic strip. When I was much younger, I used to think that it was just the British spelling of the word "wiggle" since that word fit just fine contextually. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that no, wriggle was a word all its own. I'll continue my One-Woman Campaign to Avoid Using Wriggle Forever (CAUWF, pronounced "cough"), and you're welcome to join me. Or not.

~*~Name Brand. So, even though I've been travelling quite a bit, I still remain oblivious to so many things. I was completely confused by (and therefore immune to the allure of) Coca Cola's latest marketing ploy called "Share A Coke." Jared and I were at a Walgreen's when I saw a cooler full of Cokes, all labelled with first names like Jeremy, Amy, Nick, and Jenn. He took great pains to explain it to me, and to his credit, agreed with me that the whole thing was, in a word, stupid. The chances of most Coke drinkers finding their name is remote. Instead, the person is left feeling like a doofus drinking someone else's coke. Or, vaguely odd drinking a Coke with a name, like "Hi, er...Holly Coke. I'm Benito Fernandez. I'm thirsty, so...thanks in advance." And what happens when you reach into the cooler in the 7Eleven at the same time as another person, go to grab a Coke, and the other guy says, "Hey! That's my coke. My name's Steve! See, it's right there on the bottle!"?  Or, finally, last one--you're drinking a Coke with some name on the bottle, and someone assumes it's your name. "Hi, Kelly!" people keep saying to you. But your name isn't Kelly. It's Sarah. Or Anisha. Or Rainbow. Or Vladimir. Just saying. I'm really glad I don't drink Coke.

~*~Bloody Mary Lunch. I've written before about my Bloody Mary lunches and the astonishing iterations that simple drink can take. Today, after a quick meeting to go over some documents I worked on for a free-lance job, I met a friend for an impromptu lunch at a nearby restaurant. Yes, it was only 11:30, and yes, I ordered my Bloody Mary immediately upon being seated and with great alacrity, but there was absolutely no excuse for the garnish that was lolling all over the top of my glass. Once I heaved it off and onto a plate, I had to take a picture. Here it is, in all its glory. Remember, this was on top of a drink:

No, that is not lunch.  That is, in order from left to right on the skewer, my drink garnish: a strip of bacon, a slice of provolone cheese, a third of a stalk of celery, a lemon wedge, a lime wedge, a bleu cheese stuffed olive. Lying on an appetizer plate.  And I am not kidding.

That Bloody Mary cost me ten bucks.  An appetizer of hummus, tzatziki, and tapenade with warm pita and some cucumber slices cost only nine bucks. And Sue and I split that. I'm not even sure what my point is, other than the fact that A) that is just a completely ridiculous garnish, and B) ten dollars is obscene for a Bloody Mary, and maybe C) I could have paid way less for the drink if they would have cut out all that crap in the garnish.  But D) I enjoyed the Bloody Mary and my visit with Sue.

How is it that August is imminent?  Summer is speeding away.  Let me catch up with you in Comments.  

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Can You Hear Me Now?

My life is ever Seinfeldian.  Let me prove it to you, and for those of you who have never watched an episode of Seinfeld, ever, I think you may still enjoy the following:

ACT I.  The Speed-Dial. Scene opens with Nance answering her cell phone.  On the other end is her mother, St. Patsy, who is visiting her sister Shirley in Gettysburg.

Nance:  Hi, Mom.  I hear you're ready to come home already.
St.  Patsy:  Hi, Nance.  You're number four on my speed-dial.
Nance:  What?  Okay, but what, now? Number four?  How am I all the way down at number four?
St. Patsy:  Well, Voicemail is number one.  Then Bobby (my brother, with whom she lives) is number two. Coley (Bobby's daughter; Coley is a nickname--don't ask.) is number three, and you're number four.
Nance:  What the heck!  How is Coley ahead of me?  When the heck do you ever call her?  For anything? How does she rate the number three spot?  I don't get this at all.
St. Patsy:  Well, you're ahead of Patti. She's number five, and Susan at number six.  So, it's Bobby, Coley, Nance, Patti, Susan.  Maybe it's alphabetical order.  I don't know.  But you're number four.
Nance:  Oh, brother.  Well, maybe the next time you need a ride to the doctor or to Gettysburg, you should call Good Old Number Three, then.  See if Coley can haul your ass all over the place.  How about that? Why did you call in the first place?  Just to taunt me with your Speed Dial Hierarchy?
St. Patsy:  No.  I wanted to tell you that Shirley and Dick are bringing me home, so you don't have to drive to Gettysburg after all.  Isn't that nice?
Nance:  Yes.  For Coley.

End

ACT II. The Squirrel. Scene opens with Nance walking outside to take out the trash and recyclables.  She notices a baby squirrel barely moving on her deck.  Upon closer inspection, she sees it is badly wounded, bloody, and intermittently covered in flies.

Nance:  Oh no!  You poor baby!  Damn it.  Those damn hawks.  First my fish and now you.  I don't know what I can do for you.  Damn it. Damn.  Let me go look and see what I can find to help you.

(Leaves to go and look up a wildlife or metroparks rescue number...or something.  Shortly after, Rick comes home.)

Nance:  (greets Rick in garage)  Oh, Rick.  It's terrible.  I need your help with something.
Rick:  What happened?  What's wrong?
Nance:  Rick, it's this poor baby squirrel.  Something got it and it's all chewed up and mangled.  We have to help it. I feel so bad.
Rick:  Nance.  What are you talking about? Like, take it to the vet? I don't want to be on the hook for a huge vet bill and then have to bring home some wild squirrel.  I just got home. Where is it?

(Nance shows him the squirrel, who is now barely breathing.  Its eyes are glazed, and its body is covered in flies.)

Rick:  Nance.  This thing is dead.  Or practically.  There's nothing anyone can do.  Look at it.  I feel bad, too, but it won't even survive a car ride to a vet.  Or anyplace.  You have to let it go.
Nance:  I called the metropark office number and got a machine.  I left a message.  There's no place else to call.  I feel sick.  Rick, you have to do something. We can't let it suffer. (taps out a message to her friend in Maryland, Leanne, who relays it to her husband, Jim; pause)  Jim says to use a flat-edge shovel and break its neck.  Ugh.  That will behead this poor baby!  Rick.  Do something.  I'm not able to.
Rick:  Nance, what would you like me to do?  I don't want to kill it, either!  We just have to let Nature take its course.  It's sad, but there it is.

(An hour later, Nance goes out and finds the squirrel dead.)

Scene 2.  The next morning, Nance's cell phone rings.

Nance:  Hello?
Caller:  (brightly) Hi, Nance? This is Amy from the county metroparks returning your call.  How is the squirrel?
Nance:  Dead.

End

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Summer has been busy.  I promise to get back to posting more often as soon as I can.  And I owe so many people so many emails and blog comments.  Where is my time going?  Fun places mostly.  Be back soon, and I will try to get back on track!

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“Long Is The Night To Him Who Is Awake; Long Is A Mile To Him Who Is Tired; Long Is Life To The Foolish..."--Gautama Buddha

I'm back from an Idyllic jaunt to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, where perfect weather and lovely people and a Secret Winery all converged in a Holiday Vortex that left me repeating, "This is so wonderful" overmuch. Our Vacation Friends from New York were staying at the inn; we had a convivial evening in the garden house with the innkeepers and some very good organic wine; we splurged and sat down to a winery chef's dinner of five courses (with wine pairings) where, astonishingly, I enjoyed a raw oyster sprinkled with flying fish roe. Enjoyed! It was a revelation.

With no television in our balcony room, I was blissfully unaware of the World around me. Vacations there are also a vacation from The News and, especially, The Politics. Tim, our innkeeper, keeps a table of newspapers in the breakfast room, but I assiduously avoid them. And I'm not the only one. Most of the American guests do, I've noticed, and the few Canadian guests do a cursory skim of the front pages of each section, then turn their attentions to the excellent homemade bread, yoghurt, or daily sweet, especially if Sharon has made her tempting cranberry coffeecake or lemon poundcake.

(This changes markedly if a Presidential election is News in the United States. Everyone, no matter his or her passport, wants to talk about that at breakfast. We are spared, at least for a bit.)

Still enrobed in my Zen--somewhat--I caught up on The News a little, and I reviewed some of the articles I have been saving. Quite a bit of The News and The Politics is frosting my cupcakes lately. Perhaps, I thought, if I try to address all of it at once and all of it while I am still a bit Warm And Fuzzy, things won't Get Out Of Hand.

Oh, let's do try. Shall we? On, then.

1. Hillary and President Clinton and Who Is "Dead Broke". My admiration and deep love for President Clinton is a Given. My vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential Primaries was, too. But someone has to wrench these people and all politicians out of their extraterrestrial elitist circles and show them how the Real World lives. And, if necessary, show them Some Math. As in, a family has an income of $46K, and the average price of gasoline is $3.50 a gallon, and a loaf of bread is $2.00, and a pound of ground chuck is $3.59, and the average mortgage payment in, say, the Cleveland, Ohio, metro area is $800 monthly, and yada yada yada, do you get my drift? And that is for the people fortunate enough to be employed fully and gainfully. In the United States of America, %15 of our fellow citizens live below the poverty line. Now who is Dead Broke? Consider telling a family of four making ends meet on less than $24,5K a year that you, a former First Lady who spends more on haircuts and wine in a year than they do on...oh...living, are Dead Broke. These D.C. people need to get out and get The Questions. "Do you know how much a gallon of gasoline is in your district, or anyplace?" "How much is a steak at the grocery store?" "How much is a gallon of milk?" And no, it's not "wrong to focus on these small things in light of larger legislation" (paraphrasing here). Why? Because WE LIVE THE SMALL THINGS. I care a hell of a lot about the bullshit that the Supreme Court just shoved down my throat and up my skirt. But some people need to Get Real, too. Why do you think the Supreme Court handed down such tripe? Because they are Out Of Touch with the day to day realities of real people. Look at the vote. Duh. (And that's Real People. Not corporation people. Or people corporations. Or whatever the hell the 5/9 Supreme Beings want to call them/think they are.)

2. Ugly Americans and The New Gladiator Sport. I live, I guess, technically in a border state, but no Canadians come sneaking in across Lake Erie in milk jug barges or packed under fake-bottomed boats. I understand only from reading and watching news reports the concerns and issues that a burgeoning illegal immigrant population brings with it to a true border state community, its economy, and the government's resources. It has to be incredibly stressful in myriad ways. But what happened in Murrieta, California, made me so profoundly sick and ashamed. Three buses loaded with Central American women and children--all illegal immigrants--were met and turned away by protesters there. Over 100 angry, sign-carrying United States citizens swarmed the buses and shouted, among other things, "USA! USA! USA!" As I watched this on television, right before I left for my trip out of the USA, I had a churning mix of emotions. I knew the children inside those buses were already afraid, tired, and probably hungry and thirsty, too. This was not their fault, and it was not fair, as things often never are for children. I was shocked that such anger and hatred could be focused on women and children, and that it could turn so wildly afield: some posters were about Obama, some protesters interviewed rambled on about other political agendas. Finally, I was angry and ashamed. That chant, that cheer! I remembered it being so deafening during the USA/USSR hockey game at Lake Placid. It is supposed to be a cheer of pride, a cheer of support and national spirit. I felt such outrage that it had been co-opted for something so threatening, so ugly, so primitive. All I could think of was Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery." I honestly felt sick. How dare they? They do have a right to assemble, to speak freely. But they tarnish us all.

3. Guns, Guns, and More Guns. Unlike the paid politicians in Washington, D.C., who I am loathe now to call Our Representatives, my feelings never stop being wounded by news reports of shootings, bursts of gun violence such as Chicago's bloody Independence Day Weekend, and here in the Cleveland area, the sight of mothers so bowed down by profound grief that they literally cannot walk behind their child's casket. After Newtown failed to move these morons, I got very wide-eyed with the knowledge that those in government saw The American People as disposable or trivial, whereas their own Ideologies and Bank Balances were not. It has been difficult to live with the idea that, and this is not to be immodest or overly simplistic, Stupid and Sometimes Evil Idiots are in charge, and I cannot expect anything from them, ever. Something is terribly wrong when a heap of dead (American) elementary children and their teachers are an insufficient catalyst for change. Show me an unarmed nation, a gun-controlled nation with a high rate of gun violence akin to ours. Show me the graves of their dead schoolchildren. Show me their "good guys with guns." They're like Starbucks, the NRA. Everywhere, yet never enough.

Speaking of Starbucks, they've even infiltrated Niagara-on-the-Lake. So irritating. Can't a nice, independent coffee place open up there? No, apparently not. At least this Starbucks is in a completely closed building, though. No windows at all, and the door is always shut, although as we walk nearby, it opens about eleventy thousand times per half hour. Sigh. People. Many, many times, they get what they ask for, I suppose.

Rick just sent me a text message. Tough re-entry day back at work, he said. Isn't it terrible how Real Life ruins any Vacation, whether it's physical, mental, or spiritual? As I try to maintain my Zen--Post-Canadian Holiday Type--I think I'll ignore The Ugly today. And do my level best not to contribute to it.


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Do Me--And Edgar--A Favour With This Poem, Won't You?

June, my Golden Month of Summer, burns out at midnight tonight. When I was teaching, June was my True Summer month, for it seemed that once July blazed in, time began running much faster, the days sizzled so much hotter, and soon, my countdown of the days back to school would start in earnest.

This year, however, June proved to be my July. Over almost before it started, June made me feel as if I never stopped driving, doing, and squeezing things in. And now, Poetry Month is over with this post. Perhaps I shall beg your indulgence and discuss poems every now and then regardless of the month. As St. Patsy, whose birthday is in June (hence her middle name!), would say, "We'll see."

My final poem must be one of my favourites, and it must be by one of my favourite authors. All of my Loyal and Longtime Readers know that I have long felt a strange sense of responsibility toward defending the memory of Edgar Allan Poe. Vilified by a rival who wrote a scathing obituary, Poe's legacy was left to wallow in a mire of jealous inaccuracies and sad half-truths. The blanks were filled in by ignorant analyses of his macabre stories and poems, which, because they have first-person narrators, were mistakenly seen as autobiographical and psychological unburdenings.

As if the facts of his poor life, both childhood and adult, aren't pitiful enough.

This poem is sad, but I want to look at something else about it. First, of course, you need to read it. It is the incredibly beautiful

Annabel Lee.


It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Edgar Allan Poe was a careful, meticulous, downright picky craftsman when it came to his poetry. Nothing--and I truly mean nothing--was by chance in his poems. Every single word, line, stanza, set of parentheses, and exclamation point had been sweated over. He was a bit of the egomaniac; he held most other contemporaries in disdain, so he had to be perfect by comparison.

This poem, like so many of Poe's works, has a first person speaker. He starts out very rhythmically, very calmly as he recalls for his listener the love of his life. But by the time you get to the third stanza, and the speaker is recounting a more emotionally taxing part of his love story, the meter/rhythm begins to unravel. Your reading is a bit choppier; it's as if you are perhaps fighting those sobs, that you are breathing a bit heavily, becoming upset. The fourth stanza is the emotional peak of the poem. You can really see the heavy punctuation, the frequent stops for breath. And the speaker stops using euphemisms for his dear Annabel Lee's fate: in the last line, he says "killing my Annabel Lee." Notice, however, that after this catharsis, the speaker begins to reassure himself, and the poem's sound reflects it. In the fifth stanza, he calms and regains the rhythm of the poem, and the language becomes beautiful again; it is about love and how romantic love is enduring. In the final stanza, the language is at its most beautiful in sound and imagery. The moonbeams bring him dreams of his love, and the stars are Annabel Lee's shining eyes. He will be by her side always as long as he is near the sea. The final stroke of Poe's mastery is that the rhythmic sound of this poem, especially the last stanza, is that of the ocean's waves. He uses repetition and internal rhyme to do it (beams/dreams; rise/eyes and "Of the beautiful Annabel Lee", among other things).

A great many of Poe's poems were meant to be read aloud precisely because of his attention to sound. There would be days when I could not get through this one, and eventually, I stopped teaching it. My threshold for beauty was ever inexplicable to many of my sophomores.

Bring joy to yourself and to Edgar and read this poem aloud if you can.  Do it proudly and with great expression.  I know you will be glad that you did.  And so, somewhere, will he.

Percy Bysshe Shelley Meets Alanis Morissette Meets The Iraq Mess: Plenty To Look Upon And Despair

Every year in Creative Writing II (CW2), which we also called All Poetry All The Time, I assigned the
English Sonnet. To deafening groans and much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was positively Biblical. We even developed together a Sonnet Map, which was a helpful worksheet showing the metric pattern, the rhyme scheme, the quatrain numerals, and blanks for each syllable so that students could write their poem on it with these reminders in place. Eventually, with peer and teacher conferences, my writers created sonnets that were read aloud and critiqued, and they survived it all. Many times, their sonnets were wonderful: some were traditional, some were funny, some were romantic, and others retold stories from literature, film, or even current events.

I love the form of the Sonnet, and the Elizabethan, or Shakespearean Sonnet in particular. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter arranged in three quatrains (four-line sets). Each quatrain has a rhyme scheme. The final two lines, or couplet, rhyme with each other.

Some people don't realize that there is actually a pattern of development for the Sonnet as well. The first quatrain presents the problem; the second quatrain is supposed to develop or complicate the problem; the final quatrain restates or summarizes the initial problem with more intensity; finally, the couplet reaches a conclusion or solution. The Sonnet offers a chance for a poet to work Creatively Within Limits. For me, I find this liberating. For many others, it is a prison sentence.

Of course, a lot of Sonnets aren't perfect, and a lot are not the classic Shakespearean. I like all kinds, generally. One of my favourites is by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was a pretty reprehensible individual in a great many ways. Like several of the Romantic Poets, he was a selfish jerk (I'm looking at you, Byron) whose conduct of his personal life was not as beautiful as his poetry.

This particular poem has been on my mind lately, thanks to the mess in Iraq.

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

If you read this poem with a sing-songy voice, making sure to start on an unstressed syllable, you can sustain it throughout. That's the iambic metric pattern. You'll have to force it on "boundless" and "Nothing," words for which the natural stress pattern is reversed. (Alanis Morissette does this all the time in her hit song "Uninvited"; it's okay.)

But, in spite of having to Follow Some Poetry Rules, Shelley has crafted a wonderful poem of imagery and wordsmithing. I don't like the device of the poem being the recitation of some unnamed tourist, and I often wonder, "Which antique land has native people who speak so gorgeously? I want to go there!" But beyond that, there is an awful lot to like about this poem.

It has that startling irony there in the last three lines, and that's where the tone of the poem changes, too. The traveler's story is a bit bitter, and his cadence is staccato and abrupt as he describes Ozymandias. Of course, when you read the inscription, you have to read it with that pomposity it demands, and it's the best part of the poem, really, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Then it drops dead with quietude, and you can almost hear the sighing of the winds over the desert, "boundless and bare." Ozymandias' kingdom is wrecked and gone, and we know that his hubris was the cause.

I'm not going to go into why "Ozymandias" comes to mind lately due to Current Events, or talk now about how heartbreaking (and frightening) it is to hear words like Mosul and Shiite and Tikrit again with some frequency.  Or even mention whose "shattered visage" it is that I see when I look at the face "half sunk" in the sands.

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Having A Reverend Dimmesdale Moment. Back To Poetry Soon. But, Did You Know Miss Indiana Was The New Normal For America's Women?

It's a terrible thing to get up a Good Head Of Steam--and Self-Righteous Steam at that--and run smack up against a Huge Wall Of Startling Self-Realization. It's a humbling thing, too. But because it helps to illustrate my point all that much more, I'm going to Embrace it and lay it all out there, my own cracked armour on display for all to see.

For some reason, in this Day And Age, we still have women who agree to participate in so-called beauty pageants. I am not going to present nor argue their reasons, nor am I going to entertain the discussions regarding whether or not it is Feminist to be the one deciding to put your own body on display for whatever purpose or reward. None of that is my point, and I can end most of the discussions by asking where the Male Counterpart for these beauty pageants is.

My purpose for raising the topic is due to the uproar on social media following the appearance of Miss Indiana in a bikini during the Miss USA pageant televised 8 June 2014.  Here she is.

To quote one news outlet: "Nia Sanchez, aka Miss Nevada, may have won Miss USA this week, but it was Mekayla Diehl, 25-year-old Miss Indiana, that grabbed Twitter's attention. Why?...Diehl, who is also the first registered Native American to represent Indiana in the pageant, stood out during the bikini portion of the two-hour-long competition for the fact that she had 'womanly curves'."

Here also is Miss Indiana's Facebook page, where it is revealed that she is 5' 8", 137 pounds, and a size 4. She has also inspired a teeshirt that reads I'm The New Normal. People from all over the country have posted positive messages, thanking her for being a role model for normal women everywhere. One woman enthused, "God picked YOU to travel this road and speak for others! You are so poised and a true inspiration."

I have no problem with Miss Indiana, aside from the fact that she makes the egregious lose/loose error in spelling.  She is lovely and seems to be sincere about her Platform for her pageant issue.  (Her shoes in this photo are absolutely unforgivable, but maybe they were not her choice.)

No, Miss Indiana is fine.  But can someone, anyone out there, please tell me how a Size 4 is curvy and The New Normal?  Are American Women so incredibly brainwashed by airbrushed magazine advertisements and anorexic fashion models and wispy, starving film actresses that a Size 4 looks chubbily robust to us?  Was there really someone out there--or several Someones--watching that night saying, "Whoa!  Get a load of Miss Indiana!  Bet her car knows the way to all the buffets in Muncie!"?

That was the gist of my Rant to my husband after I read a few blurbs about the Voluptuously Curvaceous And Womanly Miss Indiana.  I had just gotten into my Zone, using a ton of SAT Words and Emphatic Gestures (for lack of Pretentious Capitalization), when suddenly, I stopped and fell silent.  Shocked, I looked up at Rick.

"Oh my god.  Oh. My. God," I said, as the realization struck.  "I'm no better than any of them. What have I been crabbing about for weeks now?  Why have I been so down lately?  Because I have gained weight. Because I'm not a Size 2 anymore like when I was working.  Because now, thanks to my new migraine meds and menopause and a lack of killer stress, I'm never seeing a Size 2 again. And Size 4 is looking iffy. Because I'm Huge.  Holy Effing Crap.  Do you know how, even when I was twenty, I would have killed to be this size?  What is wrong with me?  I am so much smarter than that, but...apparently not.  Even I have fallen for the years and years of marketing and airbrushing and false representation of the Ideal Woman.  I'm fifty-five years old, educated, well-read, a Feminist, and the most pressing issue on my mind right now is that I hate my body because I can't fit into certain clothes like I used to and that they aren't labeled with a certain number which I find desirable or acceptable."

And at that moment, what made me really, really sick and disgusted was that I knew, deep down inside, if my neurologist told me that I could either be a Size 2 again or have no migraines ever again, at that precise moment, I would have chosen being a Size 2.

Something is terribly wrong.  With me, yes.  I'm admitting that, owning it, and without delving any further into my personal trove of the wherefores behind it, putting it here for the Interwebs to see.  Beyond my faults, however, are those of the Others.

It's Terribly Wrong that, despite the public health campaigns regarding eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, the bulk of advertising continues to promote only one body type, a sylph-like, slender, and angular female with jutting hipbones and no discernible padding underneath her skin unless it is zeppelin-like breasts for a bra manufacturer.

It's Terribly Wrong that, when Mattel redesigned Barbie's body, it was not so that it was a more realistic reflection of what a young woman's body really looked like. It was in order "for her to have more of a teenage physique," says Mattel spokesperson Lisa McKendall. "In order for [the new doll's debut outfit] to look right, Barbie needs to be more like a teen's body. The fashions teens wear now don't fit properly on our current sculpting."  It's also Terribly Wrong that this occurred in 1997, and almost twenty years ago, the writer of the article observed, "Barbie may not be the cause of eating disorders and body hatred, but her universally recognizable profile makes her a flashpoint, an image of female perfection, a symbol of the drawbacks of any such images, and a convenient scapegoat for our cultural troubles with them."

Pageants are part of the problem.  Miss Indiana is being lauded by many for things like "starting the discussion" and "raising awareness" and "being a role model."  I have to disagree.  Until there is an identical pageant for men in which they are walked in front of a judging panel in various outfits, asked questions, required to showcase their talent, and perform some hokey song and dance in a state costume along with a host of other inane activities, I can't see a true and meaningful purpose for any pageant.  For anyone.  Hasn't anyone--any woman--ever asked herself why there hasn't been a male pageant like the Miss USA, Miss Universe, or Miss America pageant?

What sponsors would pay for time on that?  What network would want that ratings dog?  Who would watch it (besides Mumsy and Popsy of each contestant)?  And let me tell you why it is a ratings dog.  This.  The summary is all you need to read.

But there I go, preaching again.  There's nothing worse than the sinful preacher preaching against Sin.  (Ask Hester Prynne.)

I'm currently on a jaunt in Maryland.  While I'm here, I plan on doing a great deal of deep breathing and re-centering.  It's obvious that I need some Redemption.  And a helluva lot of New Normal.

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Poetry: The Cilantro Of The Literary World? I'm Dying To Convert The Haters Out There

Sometimes I think Poetry is like cilantro; you either love it or you hate it. Probably English teachers are largely to blame for this. We can never, ever leave things alone. "Why, what a lovely poem," Innocent Student says brightly after reading. "I liked the idea of that winding vine and the gate. The whole thing sounded nice. And the white rose was pretty, too. Okay, next."

"Oh, really?" English Teacher asks, one eyebrow lifted. "You mean you didn't think the vine was choking the gate, making it struggle to open? You didn't think that was...oh, I don't know...symbolic? Didn't you think that perhaps the gate was a symbol of freedom? And why was the rose white? And what about the word choice? Did it really sound nice?"

Sigh. All that carping can take the fun and enjoyment and appreciation right out of Poetry for some readers. (Even as it puts the fun and deeper appreciation right in for others.) It turns people against Poetry because they become afraid of it. They think that there is some Hidden Meaning that only English teachers and SmartyPants have the key to. They decide that Poetry is For Others. Therein lies the problem.

While traditional "Dead White Guy" poetry usually does employ all kinds of symbols and devices that add meaning and depth, plenty of modern poetry just doesn't go that route. Twenty-first century poets, especially, enjoy experimenting with moments--expanding them, magnifying them, changing them, lending them weight and import. Some poets want to make you feel the way they do about a subject, so they show it to you as only they see it. Still others want to play a bit of The Magician--with a collection of merely a dozen or so lines, they can cleverly beguile you, only to leave you breathless and completely astonished at the end.

photo by Jeannette Palsa

One of my most virulent Poetry Haters became a poet himself. I bullied him into taking my Creative Writing I and II class, and he is now an oft-published author of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction with a few awards here and there to keep his ego warm at night. He's no longer afraid of poetry, and even blank expanses of paper don't scare him. Once, after a long talk with a friend, he decided to write a poem about the One Thing that truly frightens him. Meet my friend Eric Anderson and read his poem about


Zombies

At first, I mistook them for the hedgerow. That's how still
the dead were, as they stood in my front yard.
In their hands, they held the snow
which they brought all the way from Canada. They had icicles
on their cheeks and chins, heads tilted back, snow
covering their faces. I watched
from the warm window, and when they saw my hand
parting the curtains, they thought I was waving.
The dead waved back. I felt obliged
to put on my coat, go outside. I brought
hot chocolate. The dead weren't thirsty. They were
lonely for the living. We made dead snowmen,
dead igloos, packed the snow into a slide for the dead
children to go down. The dead love to leave
their footprints in fresh snow,
even if they drag their feet. I don't know why
I went with them when they started walking back,
past Canada, past Hudson Bay, farther.
We came to the North Pole. We kept going north;
when you're dead, it's important to stay cool.
I carried snow, no warmth in my hands to make it melt.
To get where the dead are going, it takes forever. You think
you'll never arrive. Then you're there.

--Eric Anderson

This poem works on so many levels that Everyone can appreciate it.  The subject matter is delightfully absurd:  the speaker looks out the window and discovers that what he thought was his row of shrubbery is actually a gathering of zombies. Instead of being terrified, he waves at them (since they waved first), takes them hot chocolate, and plays in the snow with them and their children.  Soon, they leave, and inexplicably, he leaves with them, following them all the way to the North Pole and beyond, where the speaker ultimately arrives at his final destination.

For me, as a creative writing teacher, I love the line breaks.  Each line breaks at a place that creates a bit of suspense or ambiguity for a split second before you get to the next line.  Notice how the line break creates a duality of meaning in some cases, such as here:

The dead love to leave
their footprints in fresh snow,
even if they drag their feet. I don't know why
I went with them when they started walking back,

"I don't know why" could be talking about the the previous image of zombies dragging their feet in the snow, but you don't know until you get to the next line.  This sort of enjambment (bigass poetry term!) also creates a halting, deadening movement to the reading of the poem that is appropriate to its subject.

Yet--you don't have to know or care about any of that.  The poem is like microfiction.  It's a funny little story all on its own.  It has enough imagery that you can picture the scene.  There are enough concrete details (hot chocolate, icicles on cheeks and chins, snow covering their faces) that you can fill in the blanks.  You can even get a little shudder at the idea of dead children going down a snowy slide.

But...but...what's the Deeper Meaning?  What is The Theme?  What did we all Learn?  Is the poem really a Metaphor for Living Life To The Fullest and all that crap?  (Whenever asked for the theme of anything, my students always yanked out "Live Life To The Fullest", and I always threatened to stab myself in the eye.)

Here's what I would say:  Hey.  It's a zombie poem.  I'm not about to go looking for a Deeper Meaning in a perfectly wonderful poem about zombies.  But, by all means, if you would like to, then certainly, go right ahead.

And, if you would like to read more of Eric Anderson's poetry, you can read him here, here, here, and here. Oh, and here.

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And Now For Something Completely Different (And Undead)

The Dept. of Nance interrupts Poetry Month to bring you this Moment Of NEO Neighborhood Culture.

I was sitting in my leather easy chair one morning, coffee in hand and catten on lap, about a week ago (30 May, to be exact), when I happened upon this little item in my beloved Cleveland Plain Dealer:

I took the above photo with my iPhone and immediately sent it to Jared and Sam via text message. They live in Lakewood, a Cleveland suburb that is not too terribly far from where I am, but for its culture, it may as well be eleventy thousand miles away. "That is so Lakewood," Jared responded. I think Sam sent me a photo of a sleeping baby giving me The Finger. Sigh.

Maybe I'll post a Zombie Poem next. I know just the right one, too. Until then, be careful out there.

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In Which I Kick Off Dept. Of Nance Poetry Month And Discover Another Good Thing About NEO

June has arrived and with it, Dept. of Nance Poetry Month. It's the First Ever, so who knows how things will transpire? Let's get right to it, Readers Mine, and celebrate!

Our first offering is by a poet who comes from Maple Heights, Ohio, a city not too terribly far from where I
live in NEO. She studied at Ohio State and Vassar, and later lived as a companion to Edna St. Vincent Millay's sister in the famous poet's home for several years. Quietly and persistently, she became well-known, reading her poems in almost every single state and earning honors and awards for her verse. This remarkable voice can count among her accolades a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and several honorary doctorates. I will be forever in fellow blog writer Rose's debt for introducing me to the work of Mary Oliver.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I wonder if there isn't a bit of the Buddhist in Mary Oliver; her nature poems remind me of Walt Whitman's, but are more spiritual and less Nineteenth Century Hippie. She has hundreds more that are better, more breathtaking, and better examples of her astonishing craftsmanship, but this particular poem was like a little bit of therapy for me this morning. Yesterday had been a lousy day for a lot of reasons, and I awoke today with a migraine in a stuffy bedroom. The air was heavy and humid, and my sleep had been hard-fought. My hands were swollen from arthritis; the rest of me was puffy from my new migraine medicine. Not only is my new medicine apparently not working, but it has also made me gain weight--and noticeably, (thanks for mentioning it, Mr. LandscaperFriend, and loudly, too, in the middle of The Garden Center). In short, I was feeling Really Sorry For Myself.

Enter Mary Oliver and Wild Geese. "You do not have to be good," she tells me, and that first sentence is so comforting, such a balm to my wounded psyche, that tears well up in my eyes. I don't have to be a martyr, a penitent, a saint, an ideal. My relief is almost cathartic.

"Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." How much I needed this reminder! My problems are just that--mine. My troubles would be trivial to people who awoke this morning in a foreclosed home, awoke in a hospital, awoke worrying about a parent in a nursing home, awoke to ready a special needs child for camp. There is despair, then there is my version of it, then there is someone else's. That comma, then the word "yours" is huge--parenthetical, really.

"Meanwhile the world goes on." While this might sound like "suck it up", the examples that Mary Oliver provides are rejuvenating and encouraging. Sun and rain move across the land, and the earth continues its cycle of life. Wild geese rise in the sky and return home.

What I love about the last five lines of this poem is that she anticipates the reader's evolution of emotions. He or she enters the poem feeling sad and alone with her despair. She wants to share her burdens, and then realizes that not only does everyone have troubles, but that hers are not as serious as she first believed. The reader understands that the world still moves on, no matter how sad or despondent she may feel. But, rather than feel isolated and alone by that fact, she should instead feel that the natural world is calling to her, reminding her that she is part of it.

Both Mary Oliver and Walt Whitman see Nature as our source and comfort. They seem to think that denying Nature is to deny our nature. This admonition always makes me think of the Puritans; they tried to curb, deny, or downright outlaw every natural human instinct or proclivity or, at the very least, force it into some unnatural constraint. The Puritans had a healthy respect for nature itself, but they didn't revere or celebrate it. That would have been a Sin. They could have used a little bit of Mary Oliver.

Speaking of which, here she is, reading Wild Geese.


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