I am a believer in Dr. Darold Treffert’s theory of genetic memory because somewhere way back in the Neandrathal branch of the Roznik family a gene mutated…for good.
This dent in the DNA chain could be among several, knowing my family, but for conversation’s sake let’s isolate and identify it as the one that allows for the “fortitude and patience it takes to see a project through.”
Growing up, I don’t recall people investing much time in do-it-yourself projects, so there wasn’t a lot of role-modeling going on.
Things were built to last forever. The turquoise tile in the bathroom was there to stay. Same with the thick, checkered linoleum kitchen floor, the plaster walls, and the heavy oak doors. All indestructible.
Neighbors living on Bobolink Drive resided in houses where nothing much changed in 30 years. Maybe a sandbox was added, a little aluminum shed, a horseshoe pit.
Gravel driveways sufficed, porches were concrete, and a room was considered “remodeled” if it got a fresh coat of lead paint.
Back in the early 70s a crazy twist of luck landed me a 1969 Camero SS convertible with a 350 engine. I am not a car person, but it was pretty, white with orange stripes, checkered upholstery, and a spoiler.
Car stereos were the latest rage, replacing the a.m. car radios that came standard in the muscle cars. My greaser friends, the gear heads, were pulling out the 8-tracks and installing cassette players with speakers set into the ledge between the back seat and the rear window (is there a name for that?).
Sheesh. If guys can do it, piece of cake. I purchased a Pioneer a.m./f.m./cassette car stereo system, put the hood down on a gorgeous summer day, and tried to find one of my dad’s screwdrivers. His work bench was like a foreign land.
I probably had on the paisley halter top made out of a kerchief, some Sun-in sprayed in my hair, sandals made by the hippie guy who ran the Leather Shop down on Brady Street.
Piece.
Of.
Cake.
What a relief when, endless hours and lots of tears (crybaby) later my dad came to the rescue, and I admitted to myself that the male species had talents that I couldn’t touch.
I still see it clearly, I come walking out of the house and see my dad with a crowbar and sledgehammer, pounding, pounding, two huge, jagged holes into that back window ledge.
“No one will notice. We’ll just put duct tape around the speakers to hold them in,” he said.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
I throw up a little in my mouth when people tell me they don’t own a television.
Or only watch public television stations, maybe the MacNeil/Lehrer hour if they are feeling particularly slovenly.
I am of the first generation of humans plopped down in front of a television set to be entertained.
Whenever our mothers weren’t looking, we sat too close, heedless of the radiation that was slowly melting our brains and making us go blind at the same time.
We believed with all our hearts that Miss Diane from Romper Room could see us through the television set, our first fix of what we thought was reality TV.
Etched somewhere in my unconscious brain, where the brain cells have been destroyed so there is lots of room, are TV test patterns, the NBC Peacock, the “Star Spangled Banner” that signed off the last station at night, and all the characters with X’d-out eyes — the endless stream of violent cartoon victims.
Weaned on black and white shows my mom watched during the day — “Art Linkletter’s House Party,” “Queen for a Day,” “General Hospital” — and later, graduating to evenings with the family in pajama sets watching “Bonanza” (my brother wearing his cowboy hat and holster), there wasn’t such a thing as “bad television.”
Or if there was, you just sat there and watched it anyway, in ignorant bliss.
It is in this state of mindlessness that I escape from my Type-A job through reality television shows.
In 2000, “Survivor” had me hooked when the evil Richard Hatch played everyone to take home $1 million.
This wasn’t a villainous actor, it was a real-life lech.
How utterly decadent!
I don’t know if it is evolution, or maybe de-evolution of television through reality shows, but this is my partial list of sins:
“I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.”
“Greatest American Dog.”
“Here Come the Newlyweds.”
“High School Reunion.”
“The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.”
“Beauty and Geek.”
“Pussycat Dolls: Search for Girlicious” (I know…).
“Farmer Takes a Wife.”
"America’s Next Top Model.”
“So You Think You Can Dance.”
“The Surreal Life.”
“Big Brother.”
Sadly, it goes on.
This is what happens when you only get basic cable.
Or only watch public television stations, maybe the MacNeil/Lehrer hour if they are feeling particularly slovenly.
I am of the first generation of humans plopped down in front of a television set to be entertained.
Whenever our mothers weren’t looking, we sat too close, heedless of the radiation that was slowly melting our brains and making us go blind at the same time.
We believed with all our hearts that Miss Diane from Romper Room could see us through the television set, our first fix of what we thought was reality TV.
Etched somewhere in my unconscious brain, where the brain cells have been destroyed so there is lots of room, are TV test patterns, the NBC Peacock, the “Star Spangled Banner” that signed off the last station at night, and all the characters with X’d-out eyes — the endless stream of violent cartoon victims.
Weaned on black and white shows my mom watched during the day — “Art Linkletter’s House Party,” “Queen for a Day,” “General Hospital” — and later, graduating to evenings with the family in pajama sets watching “Bonanza” (my brother wearing his cowboy hat and holster), there wasn’t such a thing as “bad television.”
Or if there was, you just sat there and watched it anyway, in ignorant bliss.
It is in this state of mindlessness that I escape from my Type-A job through reality television shows.
In 2000, “Survivor” had me hooked when the evil Richard Hatch played everyone to take home $1 million.
This wasn’t a villainous actor, it was a real-life lech.
How utterly decadent!
I don’t know if it is evolution, or maybe de-evolution of television through reality shows, but this is my partial list of sins:
“I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.”
“Greatest American Dog.”
“Here Come the Newlyweds.”
“High School Reunion.”
“The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.”
“Beauty and Geek.”
“Pussycat Dolls: Search for Girlicious” (I know…).
“Farmer Takes a Wife.”
"America’s Next Top Model.”
“So You Think You Can Dance.”
“The Surreal Life.”
“Big Brother.”
Sadly, it goes on.
This is what happens when you only get basic cable.
In 1975, Wisconsin’s only tattoo parlor was in Lake Geneva, and that’s where I was headed on my 18th birthday.
I can’t recall where the force behind this wild desire came from, but I remember its strength.
Decades later it took someone shaking me awake to finally understand why my adolescent son would always answer “I don’t know!” to my endless “What were you thinking?”
“They don’t know why they do things, they just do them,” some expert told me, explaining the latest disorder, it must have been reactive-compulsive neurosis.
As if some blow to my brain had blocked out what it’s like to be young and utterly unconcerned, oblivious to consequence.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were like that too. I always thought there was something wrong with me,” my son said to me the other day.
I just knew I had to get a tattoo.
The trip took a friend and I down country roads to what seemed like a sleepy town, except for maybe the Playboy Club. We were liberated women then, so even the famous den of feminine playthings for male egos was of no consequence to us. We had boyfriends, what did we care what horny old people did?
I remember a guy with a pony tail, walls full of designs, and pain that felt like someone was dragging a lit cigarette across my skin.
I picked out a butterfly, to be placed at the nape of my neck. I’ve always worn my hair long, so for most of its 34-year existence this tiny tattoo has been hidden from view.
My mom wasn’t happy when she found out, especially when she discovered on my wedding day, that my younger sister also had one - a small bird with a vine in its mouth, and a heart at the end. That freaked me out because she is what I call a “Jockaholic.”
According to Diane my mother said: “If God intended you to have a tattoo you would have been born with one.”
Neither of us regret it, and to the tattoo naysayers who believe someday there will be an epidemic of nursing home residents, with sagging, distorted tattoos, I have to say if we are sagging that badly all over, would it really even matter?
I can’t recall where the force behind this wild desire came from, but I remember its strength.
Decades later it took someone shaking me awake to finally understand why my adolescent son would always answer “I don’t know!” to my endless “What were you thinking?”
“They don’t know why they do things, they just do them,” some expert told me, explaining the latest disorder, it must have been reactive-compulsive neurosis.
As if some blow to my brain had blocked out what it’s like to be young and utterly unconcerned, oblivious to consequence.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were like that too. I always thought there was something wrong with me,” my son said to me the other day.
I just knew I had to get a tattoo.
The trip took a friend and I down country roads to what seemed like a sleepy town, except for maybe the Playboy Club. We were liberated women then, so even the famous den of feminine playthings for male egos was of no consequence to us. We had boyfriends, what did we care what horny old people did?
I remember a guy with a pony tail, walls full of designs, and pain that felt like someone was dragging a lit cigarette across my skin.
I picked out a butterfly, to be placed at the nape of my neck. I’ve always worn my hair long, so for most of its 34-year existence this tiny tattoo has been hidden from view.
My mom wasn’t happy when she found out, especially when she discovered on my wedding day, that my younger sister also had one - a small bird with a vine in its mouth, and a heart at the end. That freaked me out because she is what I call a “Jockaholic.”
According to Diane my mother said: “If God intended you to have a tattoo you would have been born with one.”
Neither of us regret it, and to the tattoo naysayers who believe someday there will be an epidemic of nursing home residents, with sagging, distorted tattoos, I have to say if we are sagging that badly all over, would it really even matter?
I wasn’t born yesterday.
I hear the collective sigh whenever I mention the perpetual plastic tub full of cemetery flowers that I haul around in my car, the motif changing with the seasons.
“She’s not going to mention all her dead relatives AGAIN, is she?” the plaintive glances indicate, my boss’s eyes wild and lolling backward in his head.
I didn’t raise my hand and volunteer for the job, but it’s been passed down to me through three generations of female grave-tenders, and I’m the last one left.
A connoisseur or plastic flowers and Styrofoam crosses, I can admit without hesitation that the cemetery culture and its freshly-lawned landscape have a way of sucking you into the vortex of past guilt. You know what I mean, like the time you snapped back at your sick mother and then before you could make amends she was dead, found at the kitchen table with a half-finished cup of morning coffee.
It was that kind of penitent flame, burning brightly atop some tiny altar near my psyche, that lead me to John, his widow’s directions to the gravestone written on the back of my hand.
I’d been taken aback during a Christmas past, when after John died she sent me a bundle of letters he and I had written each other back in the days when he called me “Babs” and I called him “Babs” for no apparent reason. At the time it seemed the more nonsensical we made life, the better.
Among the “Meet me at the Hayloft Bar on Greenfield” notes that were rescued from car windshields was a long diatribe I’d typed on single-spaced pages that ended with the line: “Do me one last favor – when you see me pretend you don’t know me.” Maybe it was that letter that lead John’s wife to think he and I had been romantically involved.
“Are you kidding me?” I blurted out, and refrained from telling her about the time we decided to kiss once, a long passionate kiss that ended with us swiping our mouths with the back of our hands while agreeing that we could only be together, if in the end, no one else wanted us.
John was a former boyfriend’s older brother and my best friend during a period in my life when all my friends were married and he lived, post-divorce, with his elderly parents. Perhaps our common bond was both of us wondering what I ever saw in his brother, who drove a broken down Chevy Nova, lived on Campbell’s cream of shrimp soup, and lacked social skills.
I can still see John clearly in his threadbare 34-inch inseam bellbottoms and Eric Clapton shag, tiny wire-rims perched on his nose. “Listen to this,” he’d say as his lead-in to the latest import album played at ear-shattering decibels. I can still hear how his voice sounded during all those late-night phone calls during which we watched television, he in his room, me in mine, laughing together at “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”
On my desk at home is a black and white Poloroid of John doing dishes at a party in 1973, him looking over his shoulder at me into the camera. This was an hour or two before he called the fire department because he though the stove wouldn’t turn off. Somehow he failed to tell the other partygoers, who fled out windows and over the rooftop as flashing red lights pulled into the driveway.
I walked out of John’s life one night when I saw him shooting up heroin, and never spoke to him again until years later, on his wedding day, when he married a woman he’d met in recovery.
“I know you’re sad I’m not available anymore, just in case,” he whispered to me, holding me tight in his arms.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry that I wasn’t available to him all those years he struggled with addiction. As with all guilt, one can only wonder at the omnipotent “what if” and try not to let it be too “all powerful.”
I placed some plastic poinsettias on his grave this week, along with the "Guru Guru" album he bought for me one Christmas when our youth seemed immortal. His favorite song by the German rock band was "Immer Lustig," which means "Always Happy."
“Be ‘immer lustig’ Babs, and wherever you are, save a space for me."
I hear the collective sigh whenever I mention the perpetual plastic tub full of cemetery flowers that I haul around in my car, the motif changing with the seasons.
“She’s not going to mention all her dead relatives AGAIN, is she?” the plaintive glances indicate, my boss’s eyes wild and lolling backward in his head.
I didn’t raise my hand and volunteer for the job, but it’s been passed down to me through three generations of female grave-tenders, and I’m the last one left.
A connoisseur or plastic flowers and Styrofoam crosses, I can admit without hesitation that the cemetery culture and its freshly-lawned landscape have a way of sucking you into the vortex of past guilt. You know what I mean, like the time you snapped back at your sick mother and then before you could make amends she was dead, found at the kitchen table with a half-finished cup of morning coffee.
It was that kind of penitent flame, burning brightly atop some tiny altar near my psyche, that lead me to John, his widow’s directions to the gravestone written on the back of my hand.
I’d been taken aback during a Christmas past, when after John died she sent me a bundle of letters he and I had written each other back in the days when he called me “Babs” and I called him “Babs” for no apparent reason. At the time it seemed the more nonsensical we made life, the better.
Among the “Meet me at the Hayloft Bar on Greenfield” notes that were rescued from car windshields was a long diatribe I’d typed on single-spaced pages that ended with the line: “Do me one last favor – when you see me pretend you don’t know me.” Maybe it was that letter that lead John’s wife to think he and I had been romantically involved.
“Are you kidding me?” I blurted out, and refrained from telling her about the time we decided to kiss once, a long passionate kiss that ended with us swiping our mouths with the back of our hands while agreeing that we could only be together, if in the end, no one else wanted us.
John was a former boyfriend’s older brother and my best friend during a period in my life when all my friends were married and he lived, post-divorce, with his elderly parents. Perhaps our common bond was both of us wondering what I ever saw in his brother, who drove a broken down Chevy Nova, lived on Campbell’s cream of shrimp soup, and lacked social skills.
I can still see John clearly in his threadbare 34-inch inseam bellbottoms and Eric Clapton shag, tiny wire-rims perched on his nose. “Listen to this,” he’d say as his lead-in to the latest import album played at ear-shattering decibels. I can still hear how his voice sounded during all those late-night phone calls during which we watched television, he in his room, me in mine, laughing together at “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”
On my desk at home is a black and white Poloroid of John doing dishes at a party in 1973, him looking over his shoulder at me into the camera. This was an hour or two before he called the fire department because he though the stove wouldn’t turn off. Somehow he failed to tell the other partygoers, who fled out windows and over the rooftop as flashing red lights pulled into the driveway.
I walked out of John’s life one night when I saw him shooting up heroin, and never spoke to him again until years later, on his wedding day, when he married a woman he’d met in recovery.
“I know you’re sad I’m not available anymore, just in case,” he whispered to me, holding me tight in his arms.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry that I wasn’t available to him all those years he struggled with addiction. As with all guilt, one can only wonder at the omnipotent “what if” and try not to let it be too “all powerful.”
I placed some plastic poinsettias on his grave this week, along with the "Guru Guru" album he bought for me one Christmas when our youth seemed immortal. His favorite song by the German rock band was "Immer Lustig," which means "Always Happy."
“Be ‘immer lustig’ Babs, and wherever you are, save a space for me."
It was a “click” heard around the world.
Actually the real distance was a suburban block in the mid-’60s, when neighborhood kids bolted pell-mell out the back door at the exact same time every morning, after a bowl of Malt-o-Meal, and mothers closed the doors in unison.
Some locked them, like my mother, during certain days of the week when she claimed to be “washing the floor,” but I think she was watching “All My Children” or maybe lying down in a dark room to get a couple hours of peace, not bothering to remove her apron or girdle or nylon stockings.
“Get outside and stay outside!” was the mother’s rule, and that meant not coming back before dinner, unless you were bleeding profusely or there was a major accident, like the time my friend Jane fell head first off the monkey bars on the school playground, cracked her head open, and kept seeing “wiener dogs” everywhere.
Growing up in the sprawl of new suburbs that continued to multiply after World War II, the neighborhood kids were a melting pot of ethnic and economic diversity. We formed a random pecking order based on meaningless details like who had a dog, who did or didn’t brush their hair in the morning, who knew all the Beatles, their girlfriend’s names and the B side of their latest single, who had a basket on their bicycle and fringes on the handlebars, and whose mother actually brought out Kool-Aid and Popsicles when it was 105 degrees in the shade.
We were essentially good kids because we lived such sheltered lives in these suburbs away from the city, and because the hoods and the greasers were all living on the other side of the highway we weren’t allowed to cross, near the railroad tracks where they say a young girl was murdered by a crazed hobo. Our mothers told us the drifter was most likely looking to kill children who disobeyed and crossed the street.
Because the boys on our block were all older and had their own agendas — baseball and bike riding — we girls were free to stretch out in our own feminine imaginations. We pretended to be horses and drank pond water, shaking our hair like manes. We made stews out of leaves and dirt and made our younger sisters eat them. We sometimes lived all day in tree tops, hidden by great waterfalls of weeping willow, our limbs strewn over branches, languid from heat.
We hardened our feet by going barefoot all summer, the mark of a real pioneer woman, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, or of wild independence, like the moppet Pippi Longstocking, who lived alone with a monkey and a horse.
Most often my sister and I hung out with the Laabs kids who lived across the street. They all had flaming red hair, freckles and names that started with an L.
Mrs. Laabs was an enigma in the neighborhood, someone who drank diet Pepsi, chain-smoked, gardened in a bikini, and was most remembered among homemakers for wearing a mini skirt and matching white go-go boots to the grade school’s spring concert. (I’m sure the husbands remembered, too.)
It was the one house we could sneak back into during the day because Mrs. Laabs liked to watch television in her bedroom, with the door closed. We’d tiptoe up the stairs and stare in wonder at the oldest girl’s bedroom with its walls painted black and the hanging “love beads,” fake fur rugs, fishnet stockings and tubes of eyeliner and mascara. It was rumored she was a hippie, who was once sent home from high school for sitting crossed-legged on the library floor in protest against the dress code, which forbid women from wearing pants.
On the last Sunday night before the start of school after a lazy, but too-short summer vacation, my parents would invite all the neighborhood kids over — wearing their pajamas — and haul the old console television out onto the front porch.
Our now browned bodies laid out on blankets dotting the front lawn, we watched “Bonanza” and “The Wonderful World of Disney” underneath the stars, like we were at a drive-in movie show. My dad passed around pink Tupperware bowls filled with popcorn, then just stood among us like a sentinel, smoking his pipe and breathing in the night air.
We were on top of the world, and thought nothing in life could ever get better than this.
Actually the real distance was a suburban block in the mid-’60s, when neighborhood kids bolted pell-mell out the back door at the exact same time every morning, after a bowl of Malt-o-Meal, and mothers closed the doors in unison.
Some locked them, like my mother, during certain days of the week when she claimed to be “washing the floor,” but I think she was watching “All My Children” or maybe lying down in a dark room to get a couple hours of peace, not bothering to remove her apron or girdle or nylon stockings.
“Get outside and stay outside!” was the mother’s rule, and that meant not coming back before dinner, unless you were bleeding profusely or there was a major accident, like the time my friend Jane fell head first off the monkey bars on the school playground, cracked her head open, and kept seeing “wiener dogs” everywhere.
Growing up in the sprawl of new suburbs that continued to multiply after World War II, the neighborhood kids were a melting pot of ethnic and economic diversity. We formed a random pecking order based on meaningless details like who had a dog, who did or didn’t brush their hair in the morning, who knew all the Beatles, their girlfriend’s names and the B side of their latest single, who had a basket on their bicycle and fringes on the handlebars, and whose mother actually brought out Kool-Aid and Popsicles when it was 105 degrees in the shade.
We were essentially good kids because we lived such sheltered lives in these suburbs away from the city, and because the hoods and the greasers were all living on the other side of the highway we weren’t allowed to cross, near the railroad tracks where they say a young girl was murdered by a crazed hobo. Our mothers told us the drifter was most likely looking to kill children who disobeyed and crossed the street.
Because the boys on our block were all older and had their own agendas — baseball and bike riding — we girls were free to stretch out in our own feminine imaginations. We pretended to be horses and drank pond water, shaking our hair like manes. We made stews out of leaves and dirt and made our younger sisters eat them. We sometimes lived all day in tree tops, hidden by great waterfalls of weeping willow, our limbs strewn over branches, languid from heat.
We hardened our feet by going barefoot all summer, the mark of a real pioneer woman, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, or of wild independence, like the moppet Pippi Longstocking, who lived alone with a monkey and a horse.
Most often my sister and I hung out with the Laabs kids who lived across the street. They all had flaming red hair, freckles and names that started with an L.
Mrs. Laabs was an enigma in the neighborhood, someone who drank diet Pepsi, chain-smoked, gardened in a bikini, and was most remembered among homemakers for wearing a mini skirt and matching white go-go boots to the grade school’s spring concert. (I’m sure the husbands remembered, too.)
It was the one house we could sneak back into during the day because Mrs. Laabs liked to watch television in her bedroom, with the door closed. We’d tiptoe up the stairs and stare in wonder at the oldest girl’s bedroom with its walls painted black and the hanging “love beads,” fake fur rugs, fishnet stockings and tubes of eyeliner and mascara. It was rumored she was a hippie, who was once sent home from high school for sitting crossed-legged on the library floor in protest against the dress code, which forbid women from wearing pants.
On the last Sunday night before the start of school after a lazy, but too-short summer vacation, my parents would invite all the neighborhood kids over — wearing their pajamas — and haul the old console television out onto the front porch.
Our now browned bodies laid out on blankets dotting the front lawn, we watched “Bonanza” and “The Wonderful World of Disney” underneath the stars, like we were at a drive-in movie show. My dad passed around pink Tupperware bowls filled with popcorn, then just stood among us like a sentinel, smoking his pipe and breathing in the night air.
We were on top of the world, and thought nothing in life could ever get better than this.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Everyone - I will not be blogging through The Reporter Web site anymore, at least for now.
They decided to change the blogs, and honestly, I can't figure out how to even work it, so consider this my personal blog where you and I can continue to converse.
So if you want to keep reading Rustnevrsleeps you cannot link through The Reporter Website anymore.
Just tune in at http://rustnevrsleeps.blogspot.com/
Bookmark that people.
They decided to change the blogs, and honestly, I can't figure out how to even work it, so consider this my personal blog where you and I can continue to converse.
So if you want to keep reading Rustnevrsleeps you cannot link through The Reporter Website anymore.
Just tune in at http://rustnevrsleeps.blogspot.com/
Bookmark that people.
Monday, May 07, 2007
The Hmong funeral I attended Saturday for 16-year-old Fue Vang, one of three teenage friends killed in a car crash last week, put Christian death rites to shame in terms of openness, a sense of family and community and seeing death as a journey in which everyone becomes an active participant.
Believe me, I've been to enough family funerals to be a viable source.
And the way the Hmong community treated the press, as honored guests even in their time of sorrow, left me humbled, my head bowed, considering the circumstances.
Covering funerals is not high on my list of journalistic events I look forward to. Try explaining to someone we are going to show the world their deepest grief, suffering and sorrow.It's hard for them to see, and understandably, we are also sharing the celebration of a life.
Steeped in tradition, Fue's journey to the afterlife was attended by 300-some family and friends to make sure their loved one was never left alone for 3 days straight. Rituals included the playing of music, almost continually, on a bamboo instrument called a qeej, drumming, and tradition based on a belief in reincarnation.
A butchered chicken was placed near Fue's head. When his spirit visits his birthplace the chicken will help him dig up the placenta, which provides a connection between the spirit and physical worlds and allows him to be reborn.
Shiny decorations, burned intermittently, represented the money he will need in the next world. A crossbow will protect him from his enemies. A knife will be used to draw a line between this world and the next, so he can't come back. Food and drink are offered to the body to keep up his strength during the journey.
And that just touches briefly on the detail of spiritual preparation which requires, I was told by many of his family, "sleeping very little" during those three days,
"You are so welcome to be here and we thank you. We want everyone to know how much we are doing to help my son on his journey to the other world. Everyone is invited to come," said Fue's father.
To think I was hesitant, scared even, to attend the visitation after the treatment members of this press received from the non-Hmong community involved in Fue's life. Believe me, I never want to make anyone feel bad.
At a memorial service for the trio of young Hmong men sponsored by the Fond du Lac Ministerial Association Thursday held at First Presbyterian Church (which was a beautiful gesture on their part, don't get me wrong), it took some finagling for us to even be there. Our photographer was told, in very abrupt terms, he could stay briefly, not take photos of any faces, and then leave. I could write about the service but not approach anyone or interview them.
It was as if I had to avert my eyes to the grief and pain that stood this night alongside the joy friendship. As if somehow by writing about it and sharing it with our readers it would somehow violate very personal and private emotions.
The thing was it was a public, community event.
I had asked the school district if I could come into Fond du Lac High School and talk to kids about the loss of their friends, invite them to share stories and memories of Fue and his cousin, Jerry Vang, and Peng Thao, the 18-year-old driver.
In light of the tragic circumstances surrounding the deaths, a high-speed car crash, I wanted to give their friends a palette in which they could paint a picture of why these three young men were so loved.
The school district said no.
At the death of these students Monday the district went so far as to "have no comment." It wasn't until I contacted the school superintendent the next day and suggested he make a comment that he agreed to do so.
Compared to the Hmong culture's perspective on death the whole experience for me reflects America's view of death, the shame and privacy of grief, the abhorrence to showing emotion, crying, expressing how we feel, unless it is in a controlled setting, behind closed doors.
My best friend agreed it should be private, citing the pain of Jackie Kennedy's face at the funeral of her husband and our beloved president.
But to me, grief shared through the community's newspaper, only enhances the life of the loved one and spreads collective emotion to every parent, brother, sister, and friend.
Who doesn't nod their head, feel a catch in their throat and think to themselves "I feel your loss. I've experienced it too."
Isn't that what community is all about?
I come away from the experience at Fue's funeral, and I hope our readers do too, with a profound sense of the deep love they share, their incredibly painful loss, and an understanding that the need to be comforted transcends all language barriers.
Believe me, I've been to enough family funerals to be a viable source.
And the way the Hmong community treated the press, as honored guests even in their time of sorrow, left me humbled, my head bowed, considering the circumstances.
Covering funerals is not high on my list of journalistic events I look forward to. Try explaining to someone we are going to show the world their deepest grief, suffering and sorrow.It's hard for them to see, and understandably, we are also sharing the celebration of a life.
Steeped in tradition, Fue's journey to the afterlife was attended by 300-some family and friends to make sure their loved one was never left alone for 3 days straight. Rituals included the playing of music, almost continually, on a bamboo instrument called a qeej, drumming, and tradition based on a belief in reincarnation.
A butchered chicken was placed near Fue's head. When his spirit visits his birthplace the chicken will help him dig up the placenta, which provides a connection between the spirit and physical worlds and allows him to be reborn.
Shiny decorations, burned intermittently, represented the money he will need in the next world. A crossbow will protect him from his enemies. A knife will be used to draw a line between this world and the next, so he can't come back. Food and drink are offered to the body to keep up his strength during the journey.
And that just touches briefly on the detail of spiritual preparation which requires, I was told by many of his family, "sleeping very little" during those three days,
"You are so welcome to be here and we thank you. We want everyone to know how much we are doing to help my son on his journey to the other world. Everyone is invited to come," said Fue's father.
To think I was hesitant, scared even, to attend the visitation after the treatment members of this press received from the non-Hmong community involved in Fue's life. Believe me, I never want to make anyone feel bad.
At a memorial service for the trio of young Hmong men sponsored by the Fond du Lac Ministerial Association Thursday held at First Presbyterian Church (which was a beautiful gesture on their part, don't get me wrong), it took some finagling for us to even be there. Our photographer was told, in very abrupt terms, he could stay briefly, not take photos of any faces, and then leave. I could write about the service but not approach anyone or interview them.
It was as if I had to avert my eyes to the grief and pain that stood this night alongside the joy friendship. As if somehow by writing about it and sharing it with our readers it would somehow violate very personal and private emotions.
The thing was it was a public, community event.
I had asked the school district if I could come into Fond du Lac High School and talk to kids about the loss of their friends, invite them to share stories and memories of Fue and his cousin, Jerry Vang, and Peng Thao, the 18-year-old driver.
In light of the tragic circumstances surrounding the deaths, a high-speed car crash, I wanted to give their friends a palette in which they could paint a picture of why these three young men were so loved.
The school district said no.
At the death of these students Monday the district went so far as to "have no comment." It wasn't until I contacted the school superintendent the next day and suggested he make a comment that he agreed to do so.
Compared to the Hmong culture's perspective on death the whole experience for me reflects America's view of death, the shame and privacy of grief, the abhorrence to showing emotion, crying, expressing how we feel, unless it is in a controlled setting, behind closed doors.
My best friend agreed it should be private, citing the pain of Jackie Kennedy's face at the funeral of her husband and our beloved president.
But to me, grief shared through the community's newspaper, only enhances the life of the loved one and spreads collective emotion to every parent, brother, sister, and friend.
Who doesn't nod their head, feel a catch in their throat and think to themselves "I feel your loss. I've experienced it too."
Isn't that what community is all about?
I come away from the experience at Fue's funeral, and I hope our readers do too, with a profound sense of the deep love they share, their incredibly painful loss, and an understanding that the need to be comforted transcends all language barriers.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
"The buildings reach up to the sky,
the traffic thunders down the busy street,
the pavement slips beneath my feet,
I walk alone and wonder...
Who
Am
I??????????"
I can still hear my first crush, John Davidson, posing that age-old question on one of his many records. I was 12 and laid in bed staring at his boy-next-door face on the album cover, his blue eyes....please don't get me started on John, a guilty pleasure whom I readily admit is out of character for me to love taking into consideration my hippie persona.
Sometimes you just can't choose who you fall in love with, now can you? ;-D
This long lead-in is to tell you that at age 50, I know who I am, at least one-quarter of what makes up SHARON ROZNIK.
My daughter participated in the National Geographic Genographic Project in which for $99 you send in a hair sample and they trace your mother's maternal DNA line from the journey out of Africa to, in our case, western Europe.
It is beyond cool. The results will blow your mind, and allow you to be a trail blazer in a five-year project that is a grand effort to understand genetics and the human journey.
Here's the premise, according to their Web site:
The fossil record fixes human origins in Africa, but little is known about the great journey that took Homo sapiens to the far reaches of the Earth. How did we, each of us, end up where we are? Why do we appear in such a wide array of different colors and features?
Such questions are even more amazing in light of genetic evidence that we are all related—descended from a common African ancestor who lived only 60,000 years ago.
Though eons have passed, the full story remains clearly written in our genes—if only we can read it. With your help, we can.
When DNA is passed from one generation to the next, most of it is recombined by the processes that give each of us our individuality.
But some parts of the DNA chain remain largely intact through the generations, altered only occasionally by mutations which become "genetic markers." These markers allow geneticists like Spencer Wells to trace our common evolutionary timeline back through the ages.
Different populations carry distinct markers. Following them through the generations reveals a genetic tree on which today's many diverse branches may be followed ever backward to their common African root.
Our genes allow us to chart the ancient human migrations from Africa across the continents. Through one path, we can see living evidence of an ancient African trek, through India, to populate even isolated Australia.
But to fully complete the picture we must greatly expand the pool of genetic samples available from around the world. Time is short.
In a shrinking world, mixing populations are scrambling genetic signals. The key to this puzzle is acquiring genetic samples from the world's remaining indigenous and traditional peoples whose ethnic and genetic identities are isolated.
But such distinct peoples, languages, and cultures are quickly vanishing into a 21st century global melting pot.
That's why the Genographic Project has established ten research laboratories around the globe. Scientists are visiting Earth's remote regions in a comprehensive effort to complete the planet's genetic atlas.
But we don't just need genetic information from Inuit and San Bushmen—we need yours as well. If you choose to participate and add your data to the global research database, you'll help to delineate our common genetic tree, giving detailed shape to its many twigs and branches.
Together we can tell the ancient story of our shared human journey.
My mother's maternal line, which comes from Czechoslovakia, is part of a group called haplogroup H.
Apparently, these people took a very direct route from Ethiopia, through the Middle East to western Europe.
That's about it. It's not very detailed at this point, but the more people particiapte, the more missing pieces of the genetic puzzle will start to get filled in, for example, we'll learn about which groups of people actually traveled this route.
I tried to find out how many people participated so far in the project, I know over 200,000, but when I tried to open the document on this stinking computer, that alien language came up, you know the one: gibberish out the assish.
Anyway, I'm picturing this ancient hippie woman ancestor heading down the road playing a flute made from a bird's leg, somewhere near Moravia, long funky, ethnic robes, OK, maybe some teeth missing and because they didn't wear bras, ever, time has taken it's toll, but when she looks at you with her grey-blue eyes, you feel it deep down in your soul, and it makes you throw back your head and laugh out loud.
the traffic thunders down the busy street,
the pavement slips beneath my feet,
I walk alone and wonder...
Who
Am
I??????????"
I can still hear my first crush, John Davidson, posing that age-old question on one of his many records. I was 12 and laid in bed staring at his boy-next-door face on the album cover, his blue eyes....please don't get me started on John, a guilty pleasure whom I readily admit is out of character for me to love taking into consideration my hippie persona.
Sometimes you just can't choose who you fall in love with, now can you? ;-D
This long lead-in is to tell you that at age 50, I know who I am, at least one-quarter of what makes up SHARON ROZNIK.
My daughter participated in the National Geographic Genographic Project in which for $99 you send in a hair sample and they trace your mother's maternal DNA line from the journey out of Africa to, in our case, western Europe.
It is beyond cool. The results will blow your mind, and allow you to be a trail blazer in a five-year project that is a grand effort to understand genetics and the human journey.
Here's the premise, according to their Web site:
The fossil record fixes human origins in Africa, but little is known about the great journey that took Homo sapiens to the far reaches of the Earth. How did we, each of us, end up where we are? Why do we appear in such a wide array of different colors and features?
Such questions are even more amazing in light of genetic evidence that we are all related—descended from a common African ancestor who lived only 60,000 years ago.
Though eons have passed, the full story remains clearly written in our genes—if only we can read it. With your help, we can.
When DNA is passed from one generation to the next, most of it is recombined by the processes that give each of us our individuality.
But some parts of the DNA chain remain largely intact through the generations, altered only occasionally by mutations which become "genetic markers." These markers allow geneticists like Spencer Wells to trace our common evolutionary timeline back through the ages.
Different populations carry distinct markers. Following them through the generations reveals a genetic tree on which today's many diverse branches may be followed ever backward to their common African root.
Our genes allow us to chart the ancient human migrations from Africa across the continents. Through one path, we can see living evidence of an ancient African trek, through India, to populate even isolated Australia.
But to fully complete the picture we must greatly expand the pool of genetic samples available from around the world. Time is short.
In a shrinking world, mixing populations are scrambling genetic signals. The key to this puzzle is acquiring genetic samples from the world's remaining indigenous and traditional peoples whose ethnic and genetic identities are isolated.
But such distinct peoples, languages, and cultures are quickly vanishing into a 21st century global melting pot.
That's why the Genographic Project has established ten research laboratories around the globe. Scientists are visiting Earth's remote regions in a comprehensive effort to complete the planet's genetic atlas.
But we don't just need genetic information from Inuit and San Bushmen—we need yours as well. If you choose to participate and add your data to the global research database, you'll help to delineate our common genetic tree, giving detailed shape to its many twigs and branches.
Together we can tell the ancient story of our shared human journey.
My mother's maternal line, which comes from Czechoslovakia, is part of a group called haplogroup H.
Apparently, these people took a very direct route from Ethiopia, through the Middle East to western Europe.
That's about it. It's not very detailed at this point, but the more people particiapte, the more missing pieces of the genetic puzzle will start to get filled in, for example, we'll learn about which groups of people actually traveled this route.
I tried to find out how many people participated so far in the project, I know over 200,000, but when I tried to open the document on this stinking computer, that alien language came up, you know the one: gibberish out the assish.
Anyway, I'm picturing this ancient hippie woman ancestor heading down the road playing a flute made from a bird's leg, somewhere near Moravia, long funky, ethnic robes, OK, maybe some teeth missing and because they didn't wear bras, ever, time has taken it's toll, but when she looks at you with her grey-blue eyes, you feel it deep down in your soul, and it makes you throw back your head and laugh out loud.
Monday, April 30, 2007
A pinch of fair
A pinch of foul
And bad and good make best of all.
Beware the moderated soul
That climbs no fractional inch to fall.
Nonsense Rhymes
Elinor Wylie
To me that means perhaps there are others in this world who have runny egg yoke melded between the keys on their keyboard......
ghygghghgdfesddddddasdasssssasawewrtgiu2344523456789-weryuioqaweroytytr245678njh
And that's what you get when you try to get it out using wet Q-tips.
Once it reaches 70 degrees outside I tremble a bit when the sun starts beating through the windows.
Yes, I'm afraid it's another childhood trauma I need to let out of the closet.
It starts with my mother, who could only tolerate a temperature of 70 degrees, with no more than two degrees latitude in either direction.
And this before the days of air conditioners or even fans, which were considered a frivolous luxury.
My siblings and I spent summers in darkness unless we were outside, prisoners of "Shade Duty," which entailed pulling window shades up and down according to the movement of the sun.
"THE WEST SHADES! PULL THE WEST SHADES!" She'd cry out, as the light crept along the side of the fieldstone house, sinister, in search of vampires like us.
"Why are you always squinting," my friends would say when I came out to play.
Later in life, much later, my parents were the proud owners of a central air-conditioner and we lived all summer in flannel shirts, shivering under wool balnkets, but that's a whole 'nother story, which now that I think of it, coincides with my mother reaching age 50. Need I say more?
You don't think I could get away with telling you this story without confessing...
Especially with my sister watching.
Fine, I do it too, just not to that degree.
Blame it on ancestral memory.
Once the summer solstice hits I don't think my daughter pulls the shades up at all. :-D
A pinch of foul
And bad and good make best of all.
Beware the moderated soul
That climbs no fractional inch to fall.
Nonsense Rhymes
Elinor Wylie
To me that means perhaps there are others in this world who have runny egg yoke melded between the keys on their keyboard......
ghygghghgdfesddddddasdasssssasawewrtgiu2344523456789-weryuioqaweroytytr245678njh
And that's what you get when you try to get it out using wet Q-tips.
Once it reaches 70 degrees outside I tremble a bit when the sun starts beating through the windows.
Yes, I'm afraid it's another childhood trauma I need to let out of the closet.
It starts with my mother, who could only tolerate a temperature of 70 degrees, with no more than two degrees latitude in either direction.
And this before the days of air conditioners or even fans, which were considered a frivolous luxury.
My siblings and I spent summers in darkness unless we were outside, prisoners of "Shade Duty," which entailed pulling window shades up and down according to the movement of the sun.
"THE WEST SHADES! PULL THE WEST SHADES!" She'd cry out, as the light crept along the side of the fieldstone house, sinister, in search of vampires like us.
"Why are you always squinting," my friends would say when I came out to play.
Later in life, much later, my parents were the proud owners of a central air-conditioner and we lived all summer in flannel shirts, shivering under wool balnkets, but that's a whole 'nother story, which now that I think of it, coincides with my mother reaching age 50. Need I say more?
You don't think I could get away with telling you this story without confessing...
Especially with my sister watching.
Fine, I do it too, just not to that degree.
Blame it on ancestral memory.
Once the summer solstice hits I don't think my daughter pulls the shades up at all. :-D
Sunday, April 29, 2007
I feel terrible you haven't heard from me in what?????
Something like 17 days.
Actually, it was an experiment to see if anyone really cared.
Thanks to the one person who asked...:-)
Sometimes nothing comes out.
Sometimes the spewing forth dries up.
Sometimes you just get so tired of writing you can't.
Sometimes you can't even read words and books just lay there, spread-eagled on your lap in bed and you find yourself staring for hours into some fantasy void, making up your own make believe worlds to live in instead of reading someone else's tedious ideas.
Instead I've been:
Walking...walking...walking....
You're thinking "Dead Man Walking."
This is "Sharon of the Hill People" walking.
That expression was coined by our photographer Justin. One day out of nowhere he starts chanting, in sing-song, drawn out tones that flow out from the photo room:
"Shhhhaaaaarrroooonnnnn........
of the Hill Peoppplllle......."
My heart melted like a child with a puppy plopped in her arms.
So what if Justin meant gape-toothed with long yellow finger nails, scabby knees and untanned clothing stained with juices from raw meat?
I pictured a wild-eyed woman, tan and tall, flowing hair down to her knees, wearing skins from a white deer that are so soft because they were made the ancient way, when the hides were soaked in urine, and wild animals are following her because they beckon to her call.....
Which actually does bring me to my point of how I walked all winter, if it was at least above 8 degrees and for the most part I was alone because what idiots would be out there, but now that the weather is nice the city has suddenly been repopulated with outdoor enthusiasts and I'm chagrin to face the fact I have to look presentable.
I haven't lived in a city for 23 years, so I thought nothing of getting out of bed, throwing several layers of clothes on and heading out the door.
Now there are humans everywhere needing to say hello and wanting you to pet their hairy pampered, panting dogs (unlike the wolves of the Hill People) and I've come to realize I've been scaring them, really.
What? I thought until I looked in the mirror.
If you've ever seen my hair imagine it post REM stage: Picture an Afro, but standing straight out.
Black rings of mascara circle my eyes.
And for some reason my eye brows look like they need brushing.
And my fingernails were all stained yellow from the cheese popcorn I had eaten before falling asleep.
There was a Sunday I talked with two nice white-haired ladies for at least five minutes and it wasn't until I got home I saw there was a red line drawn down the entire side of my face from when I had fallen asleep on a ink pen that leaked.
Now I grudgingly wash my face and at least try to get a brush through the surface layer of hair, but damn it, Justin, I really like being:
"Shhhaarrrrrooonnnnn
of the Hill Peoooooopppppplllllle."
Something like 17 days.
Actually, it was an experiment to see if anyone really cared.
Thanks to the one person who asked...:-)
Sometimes nothing comes out.
Sometimes the spewing forth dries up.
Sometimes you just get so tired of writing you can't.
Sometimes you can't even read words and books just lay there, spread-eagled on your lap in bed and you find yourself staring for hours into some fantasy void, making up your own make believe worlds to live in instead of reading someone else's tedious ideas.
Instead I've been:
Walking...walking...walking....
You're thinking "Dead Man Walking."
This is "Sharon of the Hill People" walking.
That expression was coined by our photographer Justin. One day out of nowhere he starts chanting, in sing-song, drawn out tones that flow out from the photo room:
"Shhhhaaaaarrroooonnnnn........
of the Hill Peoppplllle......."
My heart melted like a child with a puppy plopped in her arms.
So what if Justin meant gape-toothed with long yellow finger nails, scabby knees and untanned clothing stained with juices from raw meat?
I pictured a wild-eyed woman, tan and tall, flowing hair down to her knees, wearing skins from a white deer that are so soft because they were made the ancient way, when the hides were soaked in urine, and wild animals are following her because they beckon to her call.....
Which actually does bring me to my point of how I walked all winter, if it was at least above 8 degrees and for the most part I was alone because what idiots would be out there, but now that the weather is nice the city has suddenly been repopulated with outdoor enthusiasts and I'm chagrin to face the fact I have to look presentable.
I haven't lived in a city for 23 years, so I thought nothing of getting out of bed, throwing several layers of clothes on and heading out the door.
Now there are humans everywhere needing to say hello and wanting you to pet their hairy pampered, panting dogs (unlike the wolves of the Hill People) and I've come to realize I've been scaring them, really.
What? I thought until I looked in the mirror.
If you've ever seen my hair imagine it post REM stage: Picture an Afro, but standing straight out.
Black rings of mascara circle my eyes.
And for some reason my eye brows look like they need brushing.
And my fingernails were all stained yellow from the cheese popcorn I had eaten before falling asleep.
There was a Sunday I talked with two nice white-haired ladies for at least five minutes and it wasn't until I got home I saw there was a red line drawn down the entire side of my face from when I had fallen asleep on a ink pen that leaked.
Now I grudgingly wash my face and at least try to get a brush through the surface layer of hair, but damn it, Justin, I really like being:
"Shhhaarrrrrooonnnnn
of the Hill Peoooooopppppplllllle."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
To Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:
It was 6 a.m. and I was lounging in bed with a fresh-brewed cup of coffee listening to NPR this morning and watching a hawk sit on her nest in a big tree anchored in the center of the field behind my condo.
As the news came over the radio: "Kurt Vonnegut has died," the hawk spread her wings and took to the air.
My hands covered my eyes.
Oh geez, Mr. Vonnegut, how you got me through my high school years. Your sad, mixed up characters were me: Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim, Elliot Rosewater, Montana Wildhack.
When Billy Pilgrim got “Unstuck” in time, so did I. Your stories fit like a missing puzzle piece in the space right between adolescent angst and young adulthood.
Your semi-autobiographical account of life as a prisoner of war during World War II in "Slaughterhouse Five” and the scene that unfolds before the eyes of your character Billy as he is released after the bombing of Dresden is as clear today in my mind as when I first read it.
I heard you in an interview, describing this surreal world where nothing made sense, the bombed city, the animals running free from the Dresden zoo, a young prisoner of war staring at a world gone mad.
The last line of the novel is a bird's nonsensical singing, singing that is posed as a question that to me translates to “What the hell?”
“Poo-te-weet?” it calls.
How fitting for a life-changing story that teaches us how impossible it is to make sense of the insanity of war and massacre. The book came out in 1969, in the midst of the turmoil of the Vietnam War.
Vonnegut’s chirping bird lets us know that sometimes in life it is impossible to even ask questions that make sense.
“What the hell?” is about all you can say.
I loved you so.
God bless you, Kurt Vonnegut. I wonder if today you are wandering in a world that finally makes sense.
Monday, April 09, 2007
My 87-year-old aunt, who has always been like a mother to me, recently poured out her heart to me about what it is like to be a covert atheist in her retirement community.
"If anyone knew I'd be shunned," she said in a whisper.
I say this because Easter and Passover is being celebrated this month and it made me think about her, along with my grandmother, who was an agnostic, and my father, who said he wished he could believe in something, but just couldn't because it didn't make any sense.
The irony is they were, are, the most spiritual people I ever had the privilege of sharing my life with. Kind, compassionate, giving, non-judgemental, they opened their homes to everyone with a kind of immeasurable, unconditional love that astounds me when I think about it.
I never felt worthy in the face of such pureness of heart but that never seemed to matter.
New-agers call it the "Christ-consciousness" that transcends denominations and religious affiliations.
"You aren't an atheist," I tried to tell my aunt. "You believe that when you die you become one with the universe, remember? That our energy force joins forces with the cosmos. That's believing in something."
"No, no, don't mix me up with your grandmother. She thought there might be an afterlife. I know there isn't," she maintained.
My grandmother was a devout Catholic back in the old country and one of the best singers in the church choir until she witnessed at age 16 the priest brutally beating some of the girls who sang off key. The last straw, the stinging blow that severed her ties with organized religion came in America when the priest wouldn't baptize her son because she had no money to pay the church fee.
It seems like our country has been struggling with a variety of religious identities lately as people arm themselves with dogmas and take sides over right and wrong.
As painful as it is to watch I couldn't be more thrilled. It's like watching birth pains of a new nation. We've seen the outcome of a conservative faction armed with a so-called religious right and now people have to decide whether or not it's what they want to see continue.
There's a smell of change in the wind,a pull in the opposite direction as people feel out a different approach.
I like to pretend I'm an observer from an alien planet, watching it all unfold.
Many are saving the year 2012 is the beginning of "Heaven on earth."
NASA predicts that the Sun will reverse its own magnetic poles during 2012 as aresult of reaching the end of current 11-year sunspot cycle. Some believe this will amplify the effects of retarding magnetic field on earth, as harmful charged particles blasted away from the sun would more easily penetrate the earth's atmosphere.
Check out The Year 2012 and you'll see the predictions, originating from many ancient sources (that's eerie in itself!) including the Mayan calendar, which stops on Dec. 21, 2012.
* The book "The Nostradamus Code" speaks of a series of natural disasters caused by a comet which will allow the third anti-Christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a possible nuclear war, although in the strictest sense it is unspecific as to nuclear war or some other natural or man caused destruction.
* "The Orion Prophecy" claims that the Earth's magnetic field will reverse that year.
*"The Return of Quetzalcoatl" by Daniel Pinchbeck discusses theories of a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012.
*Terence McKenna's mathematical novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which a great number of things could happen, including "hyperspatial breakthrough", planetesimal impact, alien contact, historical metamorphosis, metamorphosis of natural law, solar explosion and "quasar ignition at the galactic core," whatever that means.
*The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation of which Jesus spoke, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgment.
*Many new age spiritualists and philosophers believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012.
I'll be 55, and I don't know about you, but good or bad, I can't wait.
"If anyone knew I'd be shunned," she said in a whisper.
I say this because Easter and Passover is being celebrated this month and it made me think about her, along with my grandmother, who was an agnostic, and my father, who said he wished he could believe in something, but just couldn't because it didn't make any sense.
The irony is they were, are, the most spiritual people I ever had the privilege of sharing my life with. Kind, compassionate, giving, non-judgemental, they opened their homes to everyone with a kind of immeasurable, unconditional love that astounds me when I think about it.
I never felt worthy in the face of such pureness of heart but that never seemed to matter.
New-agers call it the "Christ-consciousness" that transcends denominations and religious affiliations.
"You aren't an atheist," I tried to tell my aunt. "You believe that when you die you become one with the universe, remember? That our energy force joins forces with the cosmos. That's believing in something."
"No, no, don't mix me up with your grandmother. She thought there might be an afterlife. I know there isn't," she maintained.
My grandmother was a devout Catholic back in the old country and one of the best singers in the church choir until she witnessed at age 16 the priest brutally beating some of the girls who sang off key. The last straw, the stinging blow that severed her ties with organized religion came in America when the priest wouldn't baptize her son because she had no money to pay the church fee.
It seems like our country has been struggling with a variety of religious identities lately as people arm themselves with dogmas and take sides over right and wrong.
As painful as it is to watch I couldn't be more thrilled. It's like watching birth pains of a new nation. We've seen the outcome of a conservative faction armed with a so-called religious right and now people have to decide whether or not it's what they want to see continue.
There's a smell of change in the wind,a pull in the opposite direction as people feel out a different approach.
I like to pretend I'm an observer from an alien planet, watching it all unfold.
Many are saving the year 2012 is the beginning of "Heaven on earth."
NASA predicts that the Sun will reverse its own magnetic poles during 2012 as aresult of reaching the end of current 11-year sunspot cycle. Some believe this will amplify the effects of retarding magnetic field on earth, as harmful charged particles blasted away from the sun would more easily penetrate the earth's atmosphere.
Check out The Year 2012 and you'll see the predictions, originating from many ancient sources (that's eerie in itself!) including the Mayan calendar, which stops on Dec. 21, 2012.
* The book "The Nostradamus Code" speaks of a series of natural disasters caused by a comet which will allow the third anti-Christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a possible nuclear war, although in the strictest sense it is unspecific as to nuclear war or some other natural or man caused destruction.
* "The Orion Prophecy" claims that the Earth's magnetic field will reverse that year.
*"The Return of Quetzalcoatl" by Daniel Pinchbeck discusses theories of a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012.
*Terence McKenna's mathematical novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which a great number of things could happen, including "hyperspatial breakthrough", planetesimal impact, alien contact, historical metamorphosis, metamorphosis of natural law, solar explosion and "quasar ignition at the galactic core," whatever that means.
*The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation of which Jesus spoke, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgment.
*Many new age spiritualists and philosophers believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012.
I'll be 55, and I don't know about you, but good or bad, I can't wait.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Is there anything more daunting than the sight of a state patrol car zooming in on you from behind?
I was stopped and ticketed last week for various very bad things I had done which were against the law.
There was a Marlon Brando/James Dean moment of exhilaration, a fleeting milli-second where I wondered what it would be like to press the pedal to the metal and just take off.
Oh yes indeed.
Anyone who's ever seen Viggo Mortensen's MAGNIFICENT performance in "Vanishing Point" can relate, as he leads law enforcement on a astounding car chase that as I recall lasts weeks, across country with the entire nation watching and falling in love with this bad guy/hero who is really innocent.
EDGE OF YOUR SEAT ending.....it took me days to recover.
Anyway, since I'm scared to go fast I pulled over, rolled down my window and looked up.
What a sight it was to behold.
Ten gallon hat; black, streamlined sunglasses reflecting the sun just right; a chiseled, young Burt Lancaster face, not a bead of sweat on it and it was an 80-degree day; impeccable NAVY (true Navy, not dark blue) uniform without a thread or wrinkle on it; badge blinding me with it's gleam.
I once saw a public television show in which they showed a Marine getting his dress uniform ready for his duty guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier. The finishing touch was another, well-practiced Marine taking a lighter and going over the entire uniform to burn away any minuscule hairs or invisible threads.
You get the picture.
I sat slack-jawed, temporarily mute. Would I have to be frisked? I wondered.
No one ever told me before that my little Vibe needed a front license plate. It came without one.
And I thought I changed my address with the DMV but I am often delusional and maybe I just dreamed it.
When he asked if there was a reason I wasn't wearing a seat belt, I hung my head in shame and whispered:
"no...........sir......"
Guess what the last words were I uttered as he handed me a pile of tickets and walked away.
"Thank you....really."
I was stopped and ticketed last week for various very bad things I had done which were against the law.
There was a Marlon Brando/James Dean moment of exhilaration, a fleeting milli-second where I wondered what it would be like to press the pedal to the metal and just take off.
Oh yes indeed.
Anyone who's ever seen Viggo Mortensen's MAGNIFICENT performance in "Vanishing Point" can relate, as he leads law enforcement on a astounding car chase that as I recall lasts weeks, across country with the entire nation watching and falling in love with this bad guy/hero who is really innocent.
EDGE OF YOUR SEAT ending.....it took me days to recover.
Anyway, since I'm scared to go fast I pulled over, rolled down my window and looked up.
What a sight it was to behold.
Ten gallon hat; black, streamlined sunglasses reflecting the sun just right; a chiseled, young Burt Lancaster face, not a bead of sweat on it and it was an 80-degree day; impeccable NAVY (true Navy, not dark blue) uniform without a thread or wrinkle on it; badge blinding me with it's gleam.
I once saw a public television show in which they showed a Marine getting his dress uniform ready for his duty guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier. The finishing touch was another, well-practiced Marine taking a lighter and going over the entire uniform to burn away any minuscule hairs or invisible threads.
You get the picture.
I sat slack-jawed, temporarily mute. Would I have to be frisked? I wondered.
No one ever told me before that my little Vibe needed a front license plate. It came without one.
And I thought I changed my address with the DMV but I am often delusional and maybe I just dreamed it.
When he asked if there was a reason I wasn't wearing a seat belt, I hung my head in shame and whispered:
"no...........sir......"
Guess what the last words were I uttered as he handed me a pile of tickets and walked away.
"Thank you....really."
Monday, April 02, 2007
There are all kinds of forms of humiliation in life.
You would think that at this age it would no longer matter what other people think, but still, there's that throwback Victorian upbringing in most of us, you know the voice, the tone, the internal rising of a blush coming on, the need to look away.
I heard on public radio the other night that humans are the only creatures capable of blushing, of even knowing shame.
No one else cares, monkeys for example, if anyone sees them at their worst. I never liked them much because of that or maybe it was because my mother never let us linger long watching monkey island at the Milwaukee Zoo, as something was bound to happen that we, as children, shouldn't see. To this day I feel guilt even watching a National Geographic special on monkeys. I hear my mother's voice:
"They should be wearing clothes," she'd chide.
I'm babbling.
I could not look the young male college kid in the eye who was checking me out at the Fond du Lac Public Library Saturday as I handed him "Hot Flashes, Hormones & Your Heath," with a bright yellow blurb on the cover that shouted "Find out if HORMONE THERAPY is right for you."
Somehow I wasn't thinking when I took that baby off the shelf, it never entered my mind who I would encounter at the check-out counter.
If that wasn't bad enough, I found a parking ticket on my car, but I'm going to fight it. I wonder if I can get a jury trial.
No one should have to pay to park at a public building, like the library.
I'm with you on this one Sister Stella! I'm free Monday night if you want to get together and make some picket signs.
You would think that at this age it would no longer matter what other people think, but still, there's that throwback Victorian upbringing in most of us, you know the voice, the tone, the internal rising of a blush coming on, the need to look away.
I heard on public radio the other night that humans are the only creatures capable of blushing, of even knowing shame.
No one else cares, monkeys for example, if anyone sees them at their worst. I never liked them much because of that or maybe it was because my mother never let us linger long watching monkey island at the Milwaukee Zoo, as something was bound to happen that we, as children, shouldn't see. To this day I feel guilt even watching a National Geographic special on monkeys. I hear my mother's voice:
"They should be wearing clothes," she'd chide.
I'm babbling.
I could not look the young male college kid in the eye who was checking me out at the Fond du Lac Public Library Saturday as I handed him "Hot Flashes, Hormones & Your Heath," with a bright yellow blurb on the cover that shouted "Find out if HORMONE THERAPY is right for you."
Somehow I wasn't thinking when I took that baby off the shelf, it never entered my mind who I would encounter at the check-out counter.
If that wasn't bad enough, I found a parking ticket on my car, but I'm going to fight it. I wonder if I can get a jury trial.
No one should have to pay to park at a public building, like the library.
I'm with you on this one Sister Stella! I'm free Monday night if you want to get together and make some picket signs.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Today I'm 50.
It feels pretty great despite the fact I decided to vacuum (this is sad but I had to look this word up just now in the large print dictionary I took from my dead mothers' house) my keyboard and I sucked up two of the keys and now I have to gut a vacuum bag full of five-month old carpet debris.
Why, why, why, why??? Oh yeah, I forgot. I wasn't going to whine anymore.
But I digress, in fact, I could go on and on lamenting about the cards I didn't get from my friends and relatives and how every birthday, no matter how I hard I try, I end up crying and having a pity-party over the littlest things, for Goddess knows what reason. This started at age 1 and there's some old 16 mm footage to prove it.
Instead, if I practice the latest best-selling mantras touted in "The Secret" craze I would get more cards if I was a nicer person, abundently nicer.
I'm just not sure I'm capable of nice.
The best gift so far was a phone call last night from my hippie, free-spirit son in Oregon. He and his girlfriend are leaving Oregon because it didn't turn out to be the Utopia he thought. Instead, he told me in a disgusted voice, it's filled with Yuppie posers pretending to be hippies.
The gall.
He's heading to Missouri with the goal of planting and harvesting the biggest vegetable garden he's ever attempted, with a little fence all around it and an archway at the entrance.
I told him that was about the noblest thing a person could do in life. That you could learn a lifetime's worth of lessons just watching things grow.
"Just make sure it's vegetables," I told him, not something else green and leafy. I don't think Missouri is Oregon, if you get my drift. I don't think the law in some of those Missouri counties is anything like Andy of Mayberry.
Anyway, there's still things I want to do in life, at age 50, so that's hopeful.
Live on an Indian reservation.
Write for Rolling Stone. Crazy, insane stuff while they spout "We love it! This is genius!"
Fit into my lime green size 12 jeans.
Wake up in Tuscany nestled between 600-thread-count sheets and wonder how I got there.
Speak fluent Porteguese and read erotic poetry aloud
And, as usual:
Scream on the top of my lungs during an inappropriate moment.
I'll refrain as well from echoing platitudes and wise sayings and crap like that.
The best advice I got was from my 87-year-old aunt, who said beginning this day I should get up off the floor, once in the morning and once at night, without holding on to anything.
"You've heard of people who fall and can't get up," she said. "Well, that's why, because they never do!"
I think that says it all.
Rust
never
sleeeps.
It feels pretty great despite the fact I decided to vacuum (this is sad but I had to look this word up just now in the large print dictionary I took from my dead mothers' house) my keyboard and I sucked up two of the keys and now I have to gut a vacuum bag full of five-month old carpet debris.
Why, why, why, why??? Oh yeah, I forgot. I wasn't going to whine anymore.
But I digress, in fact, I could go on and on lamenting about the cards I didn't get from my friends and relatives and how every birthday, no matter how I hard I try, I end up crying and having a pity-party over the littlest things, for Goddess knows what reason. This started at age 1 and there's some old 16 mm footage to prove it.
Instead, if I practice the latest best-selling mantras touted in "The Secret" craze I would get more cards if I was a nicer person, abundently nicer.
I'm just not sure I'm capable of nice.
The best gift so far was a phone call last night from my hippie, free-spirit son in Oregon. He and his girlfriend are leaving Oregon because it didn't turn out to be the Utopia he thought. Instead, he told me in a disgusted voice, it's filled with Yuppie posers pretending to be hippies.
The gall.
He's heading to Missouri with the goal of planting and harvesting the biggest vegetable garden he's ever attempted, with a little fence all around it and an archway at the entrance.
I told him that was about the noblest thing a person could do in life. That you could learn a lifetime's worth of lessons just watching things grow.
"Just make sure it's vegetables," I told him, not something else green and leafy. I don't think Missouri is Oregon, if you get my drift. I don't think the law in some of those Missouri counties is anything like Andy of Mayberry.
Anyway, there's still things I want to do in life, at age 50, so that's hopeful.
Live on an Indian reservation.
Write for Rolling Stone. Crazy, insane stuff while they spout "We love it! This is genius!"
Fit into my lime green size 12 jeans.
Wake up in Tuscany nestled between 600-thread-count sheets and wonder how I got there.
Speak fluent Porteguese and read erotic poetry aloud
And, as usual:
Scream on the top of my lungs during an inappropriate moment.
I'll refrain as well from echoing platitudes and wise sayings and crap like that.
The best advice I got was from my 87-year-old aunt, who said beginning this day I should get up off the floor, once in the morning and once at night, without holding on to anything.
"You've heard of people who fall and can't get up," she said. "Well, that's why, because they never do!"
I think that says it all.
Rust
never
sleeeps.
Just when you think Neil Young can't get any better than he already is, he does.
Those of you who are sick of hearing about my idol and rock legend, too bad. I'm very prone to self-indulgence today.
His latest release, a vintage concert CD "Live at Massey Hall 1971," has hit number #6 on The Billboard charts. Not bad for a 61-year-old rocker.
What a brilliant financial and nostalgic baby-boomer move on Neil's part. How many people want to listen to new music? Most fans at concerts are screaming for their favorite oldies.
Die-hard fans, particularly the members of HyperRust Never Sleeps have been waiting for the release of Neil's archives since rumors surfaced in the early 90s.
"Massey Hall" and last fall's "Live at the Fillmore East" will be included as bonus discs in "Archives Vol. 1," a mammoth boxed set that has been in the works for 10 years and is something of a Holy Grail for Young fans, according to Jonathan Cohen, who writes for Reuters news Service.
The package, which covers Young's career from 1963-1972, is set for a fall release. It will also feature eight audio CDs, two DVDs and a 200-page book of photos and memorabilia.
No tours are planned. How could there be? The archival releases feature a 26-year-old Neil, his voice as real and shaky as the day is long.
Although I no longer write poetic notes to toss on stage and weep at a glimpse of him, I still get goose bumps, especially when I hear the haunting original lyrics of "A Man Needs a Maid."
It must mean I'm not dead yet.
Other Neil Resources on the Web:
Bad News Beat
Human Highway
Sugar Mountain setlist pages
_______________________________________________
Those of you who are sick of hearing about my idol and rock legend, too bad. I'm very prone to self-indulgence today.
His latest release, a vintage concert CD "Live at Massey Hall 1971," has hit number #6 on The Billboard charts. Not bad for a 61-year-old rocker.
What a brilliant financial and nostalgic baby-boomer move on Neil's part. How many people want to listen to new music? Most fans at concerts are screaming for their favorite oldies.
Die-hard fans, particularly the members of HyperRust Never Sleeps have been waiting for the release of Neil's archives since rumors surfaced in the early 90s.
"Massey Hall" and last fall's "Live at the Fillmore East" will be included as bonus discs in "Archives Vol. 1," a mammoth boxed set that has been in the works for 10 years and is something of a Holy Grail for Young fans, according to Jonathan Cohen, who writes for Reuters news Service.
The package, which covers Young's career from 1963-1972, is set for a fall release. It will also feature eight audio CDs, two DVDs and a 200-page book of photos and memorabilia.
No tours are planned. How could there be? The archival releases feature a 26-year-old Neil, his voice as real and shaky as the day is long.
Although I no longer write poetic notes to toss on stage and weep at a glimpse of him, I still get goose bumps, especially when I hear the haunting original lyrics of "A Man Needs a Maid."
It must mean I'm not dead yet.
Other Neil Resources on the Web:
Bad News Beat
Human Highway
Sugar Mountain setlist pages
_______________________________________________
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
It was like an everyday occurance.
I walk in the door and there's my daughter, sitting on the couch, the world's happiest African Giant Millipede nestled in the palm of her hand, nibbling away on a slice of cucumber.
OK, bulging out over the palm of her hand, all black and wet-looking like your worst primordial worm nightmare gone bad.
A wild grin slapped on Rainey's 23-year-old face.
"Isn't it beautiful???" she exclaims.
If this girl had her way there would be crocodiles in the bathtub, a colony of ants in the kitchen, wooly bears crawling the walls, salamanders watching television on the arms of the recliner, and snakes sunning themselves on the windowsill.
I'm not big on slimy. Maybe it's because mothers are always cleaning up slime of one form or another.
I had to look away.
"No, I really, really do not want to pet it," I answered in a panicked, shaky voice.
Giant African millipedes can grow to be 12 inches long and live for seven years. Great.
Maybe I could borrow it and wear it to parties, like the exotic fashion, high couture even, of leashed cockroaches worn on sweaters. (Please don't tell Rainey).
For every body segment, the millipede has two pairs of legs, so they give the appearance of having hundreds of legs. When born, they only have three pairs of legs, and as they grow, they increase in size and add segments with each molt.
Sick.
Some millipedes do not have eyes, but all have antennae and jaws to chew on plants. When threatened, they can excrete a foul-tasting and smelling fluid from specialized stink glands.
It just keeps getting better, doesn't it?
I don't even like to touch fish, or engage in the act of fishing. One look at that little mouth gasping for air, a hook sunk through its lip, and my knees get weak.
I lean toward the warm-blooded species of the world. Escorting a little mouse out of the house and into the woods, no problem.
My daughter told me that one day she hopes to be a part of genetically manufacturing a dinosaur using cells from possibly preserved bone marrow.
I can already visualize a T-Rex in the backyard.
Keep shooting for the moon, kid, but leave me out of it.
Monday, March 05, 2007
It isn't so much I chose bemoaning life, but it's become evident lately that someone in the astral plane is messing with me.
There are those, of course, who have a right to bemoan. Job, for instance, and those who bemoan because it's funny, like Jerry Seinfeld.
There are also the annoying bemoaners, who I probably should not be naming here but you know who they are.
"Why God, why me?" they cry, and this for something as simple as getting white instead of wheat toast when they go out for breakfast or having to change the batteries in the TV remote.
I'm not quite sure which group I fall into, but I so looked forward to wearing my new bubble-gum pink loafers I got on sale for $5 at T.J. Max. The leather is so soft I'm sure they cut it right off something just born, like a baby lamb or a sweet little goat or maybe a spotted calf that only lived long enough to gaze at the world in wonder, lick it's nose and moo once, plaintively.
I slipped them on this morning and immediately sensed something was worng.
They are two left feet.
Last week my front tooth fell out, which doesn't surprise me given my dental history. This tooth , which is really a crown that used to be mounted on a tooth that broke, is screwed in.
I was just about to walk out the door and meet some friends for lunch.
Thank God for super glue, is all I have to say. So far so good, except for some vivid hallucinations of cows, Holsteins to be exact, drinking along the riverbank in Fond du Lac.
It's OK, I wasn't driving.
Can an element be against you?
In the past two months a river broke through a window and flooded my basement, a washing machine hose came flying lose twice and soaked me and a toilet leaked gallons of water through the bathroom floor and now it's running somewhere underneath the house, downhill, and making a beeline for the furnace.
Symbolic you say?
Ah, I'm a fire sign.
So whoever is trying to put me out, knock it off.
There are those, of course, who have a right to bemoan. Job, for instance, and those who bemoan because it's funny, like Jerry Seinfeld.
There are also the annoying bemoaners, who I probably should not be naming here but you know who they are.
"Why God, why me?" they cry, and this for something as simple as getting white instead of wheat toast when they go out for breakfast or having to change the batteries in the TV remote.
I'm not quite sure which group I fall into, but I so looked forward to wearing my new bubble-gum pink loafers I got on sale for $5 at T.J. Max. The leather is so soft I'm sure they cut it right off something just born, like a baby lamb or a sweet little goat or maybe a spotted calf that only lived long enough to gaze at the world in wonder, lick it's nose and moo once, plaintively.
I slipped them on this morning and immediately sensed something was worng.
They are two left feet.
Last week my front tooth fell out, which doesn't surprise me given my dental history. This tooth , which is really a crown that used to be mounted on a tooth that broke, is screwed in.
I was just about to walk out the door and meet some friends for lunch.
Thank God for super glue, is all I have to say. So far so good, except for some vivid hallucinations of cows, Holsteins to be exact, drinking along the riverbank in Fond du Lac.
It's OK, I wasn't driving.
Can an element be against you?
In the past two months a river broke through a window and flooded my basement, a washing machine hose came flying lose twice and soaked me and a toilet leaked gallons of water through the bathroom floor and now it's running somewhere underneath the house, downhill, and making a beeline for the furnace.
Symbolic you say?
Ah, I'm a fire sign.
So whoever is trying to put me out, knock it off.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Don't mind me if I discharge a few rants today, I've gained some strength from the total lunar eclipse last night after an arctic visitor overstayed any welcome.
I was doing the police beat Saturday and I came across another ticket for public consumption. I have never been able to figure this crime out. Is it against the law to be drunk? If we happen to get drunk should we hide ourselves away? What if we don't want to drive drunk so we are walking home one night, a little tipsy, maybe weaving our way down the sidewalk, stopping to chat with light poles?
Will a nice officer drive us home?
There should be safe zones for the inebriated in the city.
Maybe they consider drunkenness disorderly conduct, like squealing your tires , which is another one I could never figure out with the bass volume in some cars these days rattling my bones and the contents of the inside of my skull.
I find the woman in Wal-Mart screaming like a banchee at her children much more disorderly, or the driver on my ass in a snowstorm (I am going 10 m.p.h. for a reason, really! )
Tony, are you out there? Why can't we burn rubber?
I was horrified to discover some gray eyebrow hairs yesterday and immediately flashed to Andy Rooney's hideous brows. If I start removing them (the hairs), I will have to then draw an eyebrow on my face which would be even worse, giving me flashbacks to the time my younger sister shaved her eyebrows off thinking it was what young girl did. What were you thinking Diane?
I need some advice here.
Enough is enough with the Internet please! I'm not sure I can take much more.
The latest headache is receiving my health insurance policy through an e-mail, some gargantuan document I can't even read because my old computer at home refuses (and I don't blame it) to load one more thing, like the acrobat reader program I supposedly need to load this document.
I don't have time to read this thing at work.
You would think, with the cost of health insurance, a Chippendale dancer would be delivering a copy of it to my door, on a silver platter.
Does anyone else out there hate reading things on the Internet?
What happened to sitting at the kitchen table, morning sun beating through the window, a cup of coffee in hand, papers spread out in front of you....
Curled up in your favorite armchair.....the cat taking up one of the arms.
In bed, pillows plumped up, the lamp on the nightstand only 60 watts so there's a warm yellow glow....
Who wants to sit at a computer and read?
What have they done to us?
One thousand years from now our rears will have evolved into immense pancakes, changing the face of furniture forever............
I was doing the police beat Saturday and I came across another ticket for public consumption. I have never been able to figure this crime out. Is it against the law to be drunk? If we happen to get drunk should we hide ourselves away? What if we don't want to drive drunk so we are walking home one night, a little tipsy, maybe weaving our way down the sidewalk, stopping to chat with light poles?
Will a nice officer drive us home?
There should be safe zones for the inebriated in the city.
Maybe they consider drunkenness disorderly conduct, like squealing your tires , which is another one I could never figure out with the bass volume in some cars these days rattling my bones and the contents of the inside of my skull.
I find the woman in Wal-Mart screaming like a banchee at her children much more disorderly, or the driver on my ass in a snowstorm (I am going 10 m.p.h. for a reason, really! )
Tony, are you out there? Why can't we burn rubber?
I was horrified to discover some gray eyebrow hairs yesterday and immediately flashed to Andy Rooney's hideous brows. If I start removing them (the hairs), I will have to then draw an eyebrow on my face which would be even worse, giving me flashbacks to the time my younger sister shaved her eyebrows off thinking it was what young girl did. What were you thinking Diane?
I need some advice here.
Enough is enough with the Internet please! I'm not sure I can take much more.
The latest headache is receiving my health insurance policy through an e-mail, some gargantuan document I can't even read because my old computer at home refuses (and I don't blame it) to load one more thing, like the acrobat reader program I supposedly need to load this document.
I don't have time to read this thing at work.
You would think, with the cost of health insurance, a Chippendale dancer would be delivering a copy of it to my door, on a silver platter.
Does anyone else out there hate reading things on the Internet?
What happened to sitting at the kitchen table, morning sun beating through the window, a cup of coffee in hand, papers spread out in front of you....
Curled up in your favorite armchair.....the cat taking up one of the arms.
In bed, pillows plumped up, the lamp on the nightstand only 60 watts so there's a warm yellow glow....
Who wants to sit at a computer and read?
What have they done to us?
One thousand years from now our rears will have evolved into immense pancakes, changing the face of furniture forever............
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