Gifts
By Margie Reins Smith (1/24/2011)
I’ve received thousands of gifts in my lifetime. Some were The Perfect Thing. Some were wildly inappropriate. Some are memorable because of the stories behind them.
In 1946, World War II had just ended. Toy production had not been a priority during the war and manufactured doll houses were scarce and expensive. During the war, metal toys of all kinds were hard to come by. I remember owning a scooter with wooden wheels. It didn’t work well. Didn’t scoot.
I wanted a doll house more than anything in the world. I was six years old.
My favorite aunt made a doll house for me. From scratch. Nobody had yet thought of putting together a kit for making dollhouses. She put real shingles on the roof, little wooden shutters on the windows and wallpaper on the walls. She made the furniture too – tiny floral print overstuffed chairs with removable cushions, a camel-back sofa covered with blue velvet, a tiny wooden trestle table, colorful braided rugs and sheer white ruffled tie-back curtains.
It was a Christmas morning surprise I’ll remember always. I played with it for nearly a decade and put it away, reluctantly, only when I considered myself too old for dolls.
A memorable “bad” gift came from the same beloved aunt. Apparently, I was not an easy-going child. After a particularly memorable Christmas Eve tantrum, on Christmas morning I found a lump of coal wrapped in a scrap of newspaper stuffed in the toe of my Christmas stocking. Santa’s so-called “gift” for bad boys and girls was a puzzling surprise. When my aunt saw the look on my face, she burst into tears. I burst into tears.
She apologized for her thoughtless gift for the next 25 years.
Another memorable gift – a beautifully designed Lucite toilet plunger. One year, my friend Pat gave three of her friends toilet plungers for Christmas because we had admired hers. Four of us traditionally exchange gifts mid-December while treating ourselves to an extravagant dinner at a fancy restaurant. We opened our festively wrapped toilet plungers at the Coach restaurant, atop the RenCen, much to the amusement of the other diners.
One year, for Mother’s Day, one of my grown daughters gave me card with a list of 10 things I taught her. Most of the items must have been passed on by osmosis, because I don’t remember preaching them. Some, I don’t remember mentioning. Ever.
“Everybody deserves respect, even if they’re really, really dumb” for example. And “If you’re really sad, you can spend a day or two crying and cursing and carrying on. Then get over it and move on.”
I had no idea I taught her stuff like this. I still have her list and I’m considering putting it in my safe deposit box.
My parents, when they got into their 70s and 80s, claimed they had every material thing they ever wanted. Instead of acquiring more stuff, they started giving things away. This posed a problem when Christmas and birthdays came along.
“Just send me a nice card and some good wishes,” my dad would say.
“We don’t need anything,” my mother said. “If we need something, we’ll get it ourselves.”
For Christmas, I bought a metal trash can and some poster paint. I decorated it with colorful flowers and designs. They said it was The Perfect Gift.
Too good for trash, they claimed. They used it to store garden tools.
By Margie Reins Smith (1/24/2011)
I’ve received thousands of gifts in my lifetime. Some were The Perfect Thing. Some were wildly inappropriate. Some are memorable because of the stories behind them.
In 1946, World War II had just ended. Toy production had not been a priority during the war and manufactured doll houses were scarce and expensive. During the war, metal toys of all kinds were hard to come by. I remember owning a scooter with wooden wheels. It didn’t work well. Didn’t scoot.
I wanted a doll house more than anything in the world. I was six years old.
My favorite aunt made a doll house for me. From scratch. Nobody had yet thought of putting together a kit for making dollhouses. She put real shingles on the roof, little wooden shutters on the windows and wallpaper on the walls. She made the furniture too – tiny floral print overstuffed chairs with removable cushions, a camel-back sofa covered with blue velvet, a tiny wooden trestle table, colorful braided rugs and sheer white ruffled tie-back curtains.
It was a Christmas morning surprise I’ll remember always. I played with it for nearly a decade and put it away, reluctantly, only when I considered myself too old for dolls.
A memorable “bad” gift came from the same beloved aunt. Apparently, I was not an easy-going child. After a particularly memorable Christmas Eve tantrum, on Christmas morning I found a lump of coal wrapped in a scrap of newspaper stuffed in the toe of my Christmas stocking. Santa’s so-called “gift” for bad boys and girls was a puzzling surprise. When my aunt saw the look on my face, she burst into tears. I burst into tears.
She apologized for her thoughtless gift for the next 25 years.
Another memorable gift – a beautifully designed Lucite toilet plunger. One year, my friend Pat gave three of her friends toilet plungers for Christmas because we had admired hers. Four of us traditionally exchange gifts mid-December while treating ourselves to an extravagant dinner at a fancy restaurant. We opened our festively wrapped toilet plungers at the Coach restaurant, atop the RenCen, much to the amusement of the other diners.
One year, for Mother’s Day, one of my grown daughters gave me card with a list of 10 things I taught her. Most of the items must have been passed on by osmosis, because I don’t remember preaching them. Some, I don’t remember mentioning. Ever.
“Everybody deserves respect, even if they’re really, really dumb” for example. And “If you’re really sad, you can spend a day or two crying and cursing and carrying on. Then get over it and move on.”
I had no idea I taught her stuff like this. I still have her list and I’m considering putting it in my safe deposit box.
My parents, when they got into their 70s and 80s, claimed they had every material thing they ever wanted. Instead of acquiring more stuff, they started giving things away. This posed a problem when Christmas and birthdays came along.
“Just send me a nice card and some good wishes,” my dad would say.
“We don’t need anything,” my mother said. “If we need something, we’ll get it ourselves.”
For Christmas, I bought a metal trash can and some poster paint. I decorated it with colorful flowers and designs. They said it was The Perfect Gift.
Too good for trash, they claimed. They used it to store garden tools.
Disappointed
By Margie Reins Smith (12/29/2010)
Nora Ephron is an excellent writer of witty bestselling books and Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Her work is appreciated and remembered particularly by women in my age bracket, which is the wrong side of 60.
What’s an upbeat-but-feminine word for us? Is there a decent term for women who are ageing with – if not enthusiasm -- at least acceptance, humor and zest?
“Matron” sucks. It sounds like a warden in a women’s prison. “Later-life” or “late-in-life” sounds like we have a firm appointment at the funeral home but are backpedaling furiously. I refuse to consider “dowager” because of the sour, disapproving image it raises. Of course “battle-ax,” “war horse,” “crone” and “witch” are completely out of the question.
“Elderly” isn’t so good either.
“Senior citizen” or “Senior” is OK. "Gramma" or "Grandma" is good, but not every one of us is a Gramma. How about an adjective – “seasoned.”
Ephron has written another best-selling book of autobiographical essays about the season she’s in (she’s 69). I loved reading her first collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, also about growing older.
But I felt cheated by I Feel Bad. I wanted more. Too short. Not enough for the money I spent.
I Remember Nothing is another collection of essays. Good ones. Funny, witty, sharp ones. I particularly liked the chapter about becoming addicted to online Scrabble. I’m looking for a 12-step program for that myself. Another right-on chapter about The Six Stages of E-Mail hit home. She also writes about annoying waiters, about the huge disappointment of Teflon, the O word and the D word.
But the whole book can be read in one sitting. It’s only 135 pages, for God’s sake. Some of the chapters are mere lists. Some chapters are one or two pages.
How does she get away with this? I’ll bet it took her four weeks – tops – to write or re-write and edit some of these essays.
The book is already on some best-seller lists. She’s written some great stuff. Some of her best ones: a novel, Heartburn; three screenplays, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia; and the essays in I Feel Bad About My Neck.
Two chapters in this new collection are lists of things she’ll miss when she’s dead: “What I Won’t Miss” and “What I’ll Miss.”
What won’t she miss? Dry skin, bras, funerals, mammograms, etc.
What she’ll miss? Waffles, the park, her kids, dinner with friends, Paris, etc.
I can do lists, but nobody will publish mine because I’m not famous. I haven’t written anything nearly as good as Julie and Julia or Sleepless in Seattle. Damn.
This blog is one long string of autobiographical essays that nobody reads and nobody will publish unless I pay them big bucks, which I am unwilling to do.
Watch me do lists.
What I Won’t Miss:
Rap music
Icy sidewalks
The feeling that I’m coming down with a cold
Reality shows of any ilk
Colonoscopy preps. The colonoscopies themselves are not as bad as one might expect. The preps are.
Cats
Waiting of any kind – for a ride pick me up and drive me somewhere, for a sales clerk to take my money, for a waiter to take my order, for The Cable Guy to show up to fix my connection, for the trailers to end and the movie to start, for the Extra Strength Excedrin to work.
Emptying the dishwasher
Tobacco and cigar smoke
What I’ll miss:
Watching things that I planted actually grow
Granola
Live performances of any kind, including kids’ school plays
Big, juicy novels like The Help and The Grapes of Wrath;
My children and grandchildren, of course
Somebody rubbing my back
Walking around a golf course on a sunny, 70-degree day whether or not my swing is in the groove or my score is respectable
Visiting an unfamiliar country;
Girlfriends
Interesting, even weird architecture
Peppermint stick ice cream
Wondering if there is life anywhere else in the universe; and if the answer is yes, what it’s like and what that means
Quiet winter Sunday afternoons beside a real wood-burning fireplace, reading a book or watching a movie.
So there. Eat your heart out, Nora.
Nora Ephron is an excellent writer of witty bestselling books and Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Her work is appreciated and remembered particularly by women in my age bracket, which is the wrong side of 60.
What’s an upbeat-but-feminine word for us? Is there a decent term for women who are ageing with – if not enthusiasm -- at least acceptance, humor and zest?
“Matron” sucks. It sounds like a warden in a women’s prison. “Later-life” or “late-in-life” sounds like we have a firm appointment at the funeral home but are backpedaling furiously. I refuse to consider “dowager” because of the sour, disapproving image it raises. Of course “battle-ax,” “war horse,” “crone” and “witch” are completely out of the question.
“Elderly” isn’t so good either.
“Senior citizen” or “Senior” is OK. "Gramma" or "Grandma" is good, but not every one of us is a Gramma. How about an adjective – “seasoned.”
Ephron has written another best-selling book of autobiographical essays about the season she’s in (she’s 69). I loved reading her first collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, also about growing older.
But I felt cheated by I Feel Bad. I wanted more. Too short. Not enough for the money I spent.
I Remember Nothing is another collection of essays. Good ones. Funny, witty, sharp ones. I particularly liked the chapter about becoming addicted to online Scrabble. I’m looking for a 12-step program for that myself. Another right-on chapter about The Six Stages of E-Mail hit home. She also writes about annoying waiters, about the huge disappointment of Teflon, the O word and the D word.
But the whole book can be read in one sitting. It’s only 135 pages, for God’s sake. Some of the chapters are mere lists. Some chapters are one or two pages.
How does she get away with this? I’ll bet it took her four weeks – tops – to write or re-write and edit some of these essays.
The book is already on some best-seller lists. She’s written some great stuff. Some of her best ones: a novel, Heartburn; three screenplays, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia; and the essays in I Feel Bad About My Neck.
Two chapters in this new collection are lists of things she’ll miss when she’s dead: “What I Won’t Miss” and “What I’ll Miss.”
What won’t she miss? Dry skin, bras, funerals, mammograms, etc.
What she’ll miss? Waffles, the park, her kids, dinner with friends, Paris, etc.
I can do lists, but nobody will publish mine because I’m not famous. I haven’t written anything nearly as good as Julie and Julia or Sleepless in Seattle. Damn.
This blog is one long string of autobiographical essays that nobody reads and nobody will publish unless I pay them big bucks, which I am unwilling to do.
Watch me do lists.
What I Won’t Miss:
Rap music
Icy sidewalks
The feeling that I’m coming down with a cold
Reality shows of any ilk
Colonoscopy preps. The colonoscopies themselves are not as bad as one might expect. The preps are.
Cats
Waiting of any kind – for a ride pick me up and drive me somewhere, for a sales clerk to take my money, for a waiter to take my order, for The Cable Guy to show up to fix my connection, for the trailers to end and the movie to start, for the Extra Strength Excedrin to work.
Emptying the dishwasher
Tobacco and cigar smoke
What I’ll miss:
Watching things that I planted actually grow
Granola
Live performances of any kind, including kids’ school plays
Big, juicy novels like The Help and The Grapes of Wrath;
My children and grandchildren, of course
Somebody rubbing my back
Walking around a golf course on a sunny, 70-degree day whether or not my swing is in the groove or my score is respectable
Visiting an unfamiliar country;
Girlfriends
Interesting, even weird architecture
Peppermint stick ice cream
Wondering if there is life anywhere else in the universe; and if the answer is yes, what it’s like and what that means
Quiet winter Sunday afternoons beside a real wood-burning fireplace, reading a book or watching a movie.
So there. Eat your heart out, Nora.
The cactus that would not die
By Margie Reins Smith (12/15/2010)
Remember the monster in the closet? When you were a child you couldn’t go to sleep until Mom or Dad shut the closet door. Tightly. Remember the many-tentacled creature under the bed? The one that was green and slimy and had big googlie eyes that glowed in the dark? If you stayed under the covers and remained very very still and didn’t let any body parts – like hands or feet – hang over the sides of the mattress, the monster wouldn’t get you.
Except for the bathtub drain, where the sludge monster resides, and the evil whirling devil that lives in the depths of the toilet, I didn’t think there were any more monsters in the bathroom until my grandson pointed one out.
When he was about three years old, toddling around touching things and asking questions and exploring stuff around my house, I warned him about the five-foot tall, exclamation point-shaped cactus plant that lived in front of the glass block windows in my bathroom.
“It has prickly things all over that could hurt your fingers,” I said. I wrapped a protective arm around his chest and held him back as I pointed to the hundreds of bristly spines that marched up and down the ribs of its trunk.
He processed the information and nodded. I didn’t think about it again, until the day he refused to wash his hands.
I coaxed. I pleaded. I pushed a step-stool closer to the sink and ran the water until it was warm. I offered his favorite soap – shaped like a leaf. I draped a fluffy towel over my arm.
He resisted. I insisted.
Finally, he poked his head through the door and surveyed the room. He considered his options, then flattened his back against the door jamb and slid carefully along the wall. Arms at his sides, he eyed the cactus. He circled the room, still hugging the wall. He approached the sink with his hands clasped tightly behind his back.
Duh. I overdid the cautions and warnings. Again. I had to explain that the plant couldn’t move. It wouldn’t jump out and jab its spines into his tender fingers.
I like cacti. I have about a dozen house plants. Three or four of them are succulents with sharp spines. The reason I have so many cacti is that I can’t tell, for sure, when the darn things die. At least one of my former cactus plants was dead for two years before I caught on. I just kept watering and wondering why it didn’t get any bigger.
My current cactus – a descendent of the one that scared my grandson -- is now about shoulder height. It’s the top portion of the original one that eventually brushed against the ceiling. I lopped off one of the original one's uppermost arms shortly after my grandson made friends with it. I stuck the arm in some dirt and threw the old one away.
The arm started to grow. Three other current cacti in my house are lopped-off branches from the second and third generations of the old monster.
The original cactus traveled to Michigan from Arizona via Northwest Airlines in a thermos bottle in my carryon luggage. I was visiting a friend who had dozens of these things and their odd, spiny cousins growing relatively wild in her yard. They looked good there.
She asked if I wanted a cactus and I said sure. She pulled on some garden gloves and sliced the top off a tall one. For some reason (?) I had a thermos in my carryon bag so I popped the prickly prize inside the thermos and sprinkled it with water.
Pulling such a stunt today would probably trigger an alarm at Phoenix airport security and I would have some serious explaining to do. But this was before 911, before today’s strict rules, beefy security measures and aggressive pat-downs.
The monster in the bathroom was eventually explained, tamed and allowed to languish untouched until it was, for sure, dead.
Remember the monster in the closet? When you were a child you couldn’t go to sleep until Mom or Dad shut the closet door. Tightly. Remember the many-tentacled creature under the bed? The one that was green and slimy and had big googlie eyes that glowed in the dark? If you stayed under the covers and remained very very still and didn’t let any body parts – like hands or feet – hang over the sides of the mattress, the monster wouldn’t get you.
Except for the bathtub drain, where the sludge monster resides, and the evil whirling devil that lives in the depths of the toilet, I didn’t think there were any more monsters in the bathroom until my grandson pointed one out.
When he was about three years old, toddling around touching things and asking questions and exploring stuff around my house, I warned him about the five-foot tall, exclamation point-shaped cactus plant that lived in front of the glass block windows in my bathroom.
“It has prickly things all over that could hurt your fingers,” I said. I wrapped a protective arm around his chest and held him back as I pointed to the hundreds of bristly spines that marched up and down the ribs of its trunk.
He processed the information and nodded. I didn’t think about it again, until the day he refused to wash his hands.
I coaxed. I pleaded. I pushed a step-stool closer to the sink and ran the water until it was warm. I offered his favorite soap – shaped like a leaf. I draped a fluffy towel over my arm.
He resisted. I insisted.
Finally, he poked his head through the door and surveyed the room. He considered his options, then flattened his back against the door jamb and slid carefully along the wall. Arms at his sides, he eyed the cactus. He circled the room, still hugging the wall. He approached the sink with his hands clasped tightly behind his back.
Duh. I overdid the cautions and warnings. Again. I had to explain that the plant couldn’t move. It wouldn’t jump out and jab its spines into his tender fingers.
I like cacti. I have about a dozen house plants. Three or four of them are succulents with sharp spines. The reason I have so many cacti is that I can’t tell, for sure, when the darn things die. At least one of my former cactus plants was dead for two years before I caught on. I just kept watering and wondering why it didn’t get any bigger.
My current cactus – a descendent of the one that scared my grandson -- is now about shoulder height. It’s the top portion of the original one that eventually brushed against the ceiling. I lopped off one of the original one's uppermost arms shortly after my grandson made friends with it. I stuck the arm in some dirt and threw the old one away.
The arm started to grow. Three other current cacti in my house are lopped-off branches from the second and third generations of the old monster.
The original cactus traveled to Michigan from Arizona via Northwest Airlines in a thermos bottle in my carryon luggage. I was visiting a friend who had dozens of these things and their odd, spiny cousins growing relatively wild in her yard. They looked good there.
She asked if I wanted a cactus and I said sure. She pulled on some garden gloves and sliced the top off a tall one. For some reason (?) I had a thermos in my carryon bag so I popped the prickly prize inside the thermos and sprinkled it with water.
Pulling such a stunt today would probably trigger an alarm at Phoenix airport security and I would have some serious explaining to do. But this was before 911, before today’s strict rules, beefy security measures and aggressive pat-downs.
The monster in the bathroom was eventually explained, tamed and allowed to languish untouched until it was, for sure, dead.
So that's why they call it The Nutcracker!
By Margie Reins Smith (11/29/2010)
I took four grandchildren to see the Nutcracker ballet last Friday night. The final count isn’t in yet, but . . . I think they liked it.
I had three little boys in tow, ages 13, 10 and 8; and my granddaughter, who just turned 16. We attended the Grand Rapids Ballet Company’s first-ever performance at the Detroit Opera House, a pretty impressive building on its own.
None had seen the Nutcracker before.
My granddaughter wants to be an attorney and someday hopes to serve as a Congresswoman in Washington. She’s not into dancing or theater or classical music. The boys, of course, are into hockey and baseball and football and soccer and basketball and swimming and LordKnowsWhatElse – anything that involves physical activity and fierce competition.
They all are fans of Wii and video games and rap music and whatever stuff kids do with iPods and video players. They all want cell phones for Christmas but are likely to be disappointed.
None of the boys -- ever -- in his entire short life -- expressed the teeniest vaguest mildest interest in attending a ballet performance. For that matter, none of the four has ever been keen to participate in dancing of any ilk.
That was the downside. The challenge.
On the upside: the four cousins like being together and love doing things as a group. They get along famously and they all have a sense of adventure in a controlled setting.
In this case, I was the control.
I briefed them on what to expect before we left: the performance would have no talking and minimal singing (the children’s chorus, I think, is the only vocal portion of the entire ballet) and would consist of performers dancing to a rather trite, dorky story.
But the music would be beautiful, I said. The full orchestra would be live in an orchestra pit below in front of the stage. The costumes and sets and choreography and lighting would be colorful and clever.
I outlined the story before we left: At her family’s Christmas Eve party, a little girl named Clara gets a nutcracker shaped like a toy soldier from her eccentric uncle. It’s her favorite gift. At the end of the evening, party guests go home and the children go upstairs to bed. Clara creeps down the steps to find her beloved Nutcracker and falls asleep with it under the Christmas tree.
The tree grows, mice creep out of their hiding places, the toys come alive, an army of toy soldiers fights an army of mice. Clara saves the day by throwing her shoe at the mouse king. The Nutcracker turns into a prince, takes Clara to a fantasyland of life-sized dancing dolls, fabulous sweets, dancing snowflakes and flowers, the Sugar Plum Fairy, etc.
They didn’t pay much attention.
We arrived early and had to wait about 15 minutes in our seats until the ballet began. Earlier, I decided not to push the ballet experience as I had with my three daughters. They remember The Nutcracker as something they had to go to every year because I insisted.
(I notice, however, that my daughters now speak favorably about the Nutcracker ballet to their children.) “You’ll love it,” they said.
I decided to keep my mouth shut except to answer questions.
They played “I Spy” with the theater décor while we waited for the show to begin.
“I spy a lion’s head.”
“I see it.”
“I saw it first.”
“I saw it first.”
“No, I did.”
“I spy a candlestick.”
“I see it.”
“I saw it first.”
And so on.
The music began. They were fascinated.
Did they love it? Maybe. Maybe they just enjoyed a new experience. Maybe they’re humoring me.
One grandson sat on the edge of his chair, eyes glued on the dancers for the entire first act.
During what they called “half time,” the boys made cootie-catchers out of the program inserts.
I remained determined not push theatrical performances on this new generation. That’s what is so neat about being a grandmother. Occasionally, you get a chance to correct mistakes you made the first time around.
I offered the evening as an enjoyable foray into something new and different, a type of entertainment they didn’t see every day. This is not Eminem, I said, or Dora the Explorer, or rap, or a Disney movie, or some half-crazed tattooed, pierced, spiky-haired, freaky teenager yelling obscenities that are supposed to pass as music. This was different.
I kept my mouth shut.
But, I think they liked it.
All four grandchildren were to spend the night at my house. When we got home, they held contests to see who could leap the farthest, who could fling one leg the highest without falling on his butt, and who could jump up and touch the toes of both feet at the same time.
They demonstrated the art of gliding offstage, head held high, one arm flung forward while the other trailed gracefully behind.
So, I think they liked it.
The next day, one especially observant grandson told his mother and father about the costumes. He commented on the unusual clinginess of the men’s tights.
“They were really really tight,” he said.
“That must be why they call it The Nutcracker.”
I took four grandchildren to see the Nutcracker ballet last Friday night. The final count isn’t in yet, but . . . I think they liked it.
I had three little boys in tow, ages 13, 10 and 8; and my granddaughter, who just turned 16. We attended the Grand Rapids Ballet Company’s first-ever performance at the Detroit Opera House, a pretty impressive building on its own.
None had seen the Nutcracker before.
My granddaughter wants to be an attorney and someday hopes to serve as a Congresswoman in Washington. She’s not into dancing or theater or classical music. The boys, of course, are into hockey and baseball and football and soccer and basketball and swimming and LordKnowsWhatElse – anything that involves physical activity and fierce competition.
They all are fans of Wii and video games and rap music and whatever stuff kids do with iPods and video players. They all want cell phones for Christmas but are likely to be disappointed.
None of the boys -- ever -- in his entire short life -- expressed the teeniest vaguest mildest interest in attending a ballet performance. For that matter, none of the four has ever been keen to participate in dancing of any ilk.
That was the downside. The challenge.
On the upside: the four cousins like being together and love doing things as a group. They get along famously and they all have a sense of adventure in a controlled setting.
In this case, I was the control.
I briefed them on what to expect before we left: the performance would have no talking and minimal singing (the children’s chorus, I think, is the only vocal portion of the entire ballet) and would consist of performers dancing to a rather trite, dorky story.
But the music would be beautiful, I said. The full orchestra would be live in an orchestra pit below in front of the stage. The costumes and sets and choreography and lighting would be colorful and clever.
I outlined the story before we left: At her family’s Christmas Eve party, a little girl named Clara gets a nutcracker shaped like a toy soldier from her eccentric uncle. It’s her favorite gift. At the end of the evening, party guests go home and the children go upstairs to bed. Clara creeps down the steps to find her beloved Nutcracker and falls asleep with it under the Christmas tree.
The tree grows, mice creep out of their hiding places, the toys come alive, an army of toy soldiers fights an army of mice. Clara saves the day by throwing her shoe at the mouse king. The Nutcracker turns into a prince, takes Clara to a fantasyland of life-sized dancing dolls, fabulous sweets, dancing snowflakes and flowers, the Sugar Plum Fairy, etc.
They didn’t pay much attention.
We arrived early and had to wait about 15 minutes in our seats until the ballet began. Earlier, I decided not to push the ballet experience as I had with my three daughters. They remember The Nutcracker as something they had to go to every year because I insisted.
(I notice, however, that my daughters now speak favorably about the Nutcracker ballet to their children.) “You’ll love it,” they said.
I decided to keep my mouth shut except to answer questions.
They played “I Spy” with the theater décor while we waited for the show to begin.
“I spy a lion’s head.”
“I see it.”
“I saw it first.”
“I saw it first.”
“No, I did.”
“I spy a candlestick.”
“I see it.”
“I saw it first.”
And so on.
The music began. They were fascinated.
Did they love it? Maybe. Maybe they just enjoyed a new experience. Maybe they’re humoring me.
One grandson sat on the edge of his chair, eyes glued on the dancers for the entire first act.
During what they called “half time,” the boys made cootie-catchers out of the program inserts.
I remained determined not push theatrical performances on this new generation. That’s what is so neat about being a grandmother. Occasionally, you get a chance to correct mistakes you made the first time around.
I offered the evening as an enjoyable foray into something new and different, a type of entertainment they didn’t see every day. This is not Eminem, I said, or Dora the Explorer, or rap, or a Disney movie, or some half-crazed tattooed, pierced, spiky-haired, freaky teenager yelling obscenities that are supposed to pass as music. This was different.
I kept my mouth shut.
But, I think they liked it.
All four grandchildren were to spend the night at my house. When we got home, they held contests to see who could leap the farthest, who could fling one leg the highest without falling on his butt, and who could jump up and touch the toes of both feet at the same time.
They demonstrated the art of gliding offstage, head held high, one arm flung forward while the other trailed gracefully behind.
So, I think they liked it.
The next day, one especially observant grandson told his mother and father about the costumes. He commented on the unusual clinginess of the men’s tights.
“They were really really tight,” he said.
“That must be why they call it The Nutcracker.”
Memor-izing
By Margie Reins Smith (11/15/2010)
I caught a whiff of burning leaves last weekend and it triggered some memories that go all the way back to the 1940s and early 1950s. Here are a few:
Fond memories from my childhood:
1. The smell of burning leaves. On fall weekends, our neighborhood was covered with a thick pungent cloud that smelled like fall. People raked leaves to their curbs, then set them on fire. Imagine what that stuff did to our lungs.
2. Collecting bottles and turning them in for the deposit money.
3. Getting to stay up a half hour later than usual.
4. Visiting my grandmother. She had the knack of making every grandchild (she had 10) feel special. Each one thought he or she was her favorite.
5. Watching my mother sit in front of her dressing table mirror to put on her makeup.
6. Watching my father shave.
7. The first big snowfall of the season. Snow was deeper then.
8. Animal crackers in little boxes with strings for handles. My grandsons still get a kick out of these.
9. Beech Nut chewing gum. Also Juicy Fruit and Black Jack. Too sugary for modern times, but back then they were a treat.
10. Checking out a stack of books from the library. We were only allowed to take home four at a time.
11. Catching fireflies in a glass jar and putting them beside my bed, supposedly to use as a flashlight. You had to punch holes in the lid, so they could breathe.
12. Listening to The Lone Ranger in front of the radio with my friends. We stared intently at the speaker as we listened.
13. Being read to. First, by my mother. Then, by my father, who used different voices for different characters. Then by teachers. Up until fifth or sixth grade, our teachers read aloud to the whole class after lunch while we all cradled our heads on our arms on our desks and listened.
14. Sanders’ Cream Puff Hot Fudge. This was a treat for good behavior while my mother shopped at Hudson’s Department Store in downtown Detroit..
15. Going to the dime store with money to spend. Now, I suppose it’s a treat for kids to go to the dollar store with money to spend.
16. The smell of onions browning in butter.
17. Around 5:30 or 6 p.m., the sounds of my mother cooking dinner in the kitchen.
18. A fire in the fireplace.
19. Popping popcorn in one of those basket devices that you had to shake.
20. A warm, rainy spring day, outside, in puddles, wearing boots and twirling an umbrella.
21. The cartoon at the local movie theater. Short, animated films were usually shown between the main features. Cartoons were even better when they graduated from black and white to technicolor. Movie double features were the norm and they changed weekly. You could see a double feature on Friday night and a completely different double feature at the same theater on Saturday night. If you missed a popular movie, however, you were out of luck. There were no DVDs, no tapes, no On Demand, no rentals.
22. A cherry coke with a straw, while seated on a stool at a soda fountain.
23. Learning to use a typewriter.
A few bad memories:
1. Socks that slid down inside my shoes.
2. Measles. Mumps. Chicken pox.
3. Being sent to bed early. Sometimes it was for good reason. Sometimes I think my parents just needed a rest.
4. Scratchy woolen clothes.
5. Broccoli. Beets. Lima beans. Asparagus.
6. Leggings.
7. Getting my hair washed. Conditioner hadn’t been invented yet, so the comb-out was especially painful.
P.S. Penny, my friend from high school days, wants to know if I remember sneaking cigarettes in my parents' upstairs bathroom, blowing the smoke out the open window and flushing the butts down the toilet. Uh. Yes, I remember. That's number one on a list of dumb things I did. The list is quite long.
I caught a whiff of burning leaves last weekend and it triggered some memories that go all the way back to the 1940s and early 1950s. Here are a few:
Fond memories from my childhood:
1. The smell of burning leaves. On fall weekends, our neighborhood was covered with a thick pungent cloud that smelled like fall. People raked leaves to their curbs, then set them on fire. Imagine what that stuff did to our lungs.
2. Collecting bottles and turning them in for the deposit money.
3. Getting to stay up a half hour later than usual.
4. Visiting my grandmother. She had the knack of making every grandchild (she had 10) feel special. Each one thought he or she was her favorite.
5. Watching my mother sit in front of her dressing table mirror to put on her makeup.
6. Watching my father shave.
7. The first big snowfall of the season. Snow was deeper then.
8. Animal crackers in little boxes with strings for handles. My grandsons still get a kick out of these.
9. Beech Nut chewing gum. Also Juicy Fruit and Black Jack. Too sugary for modern times, but back then they were a treat.
10. Checking out a stack of books from the library. We were only allowed to take home four at a time.
11. Catching fireflies in a glass jar and putting them beside my bed, supposedly to use as a flashlight. You had to punch holes in the lid, so they could breathe.
12. Listening to The Lone Ranger in front of the radio with my friends. We stared intently at the speaker as we listened.
13. Being read to. First, by my mother. Then, by my father, who used different voices for different characters. Then by teachers. Up until fifth or sixth grade, our teachers read aloud to the whole class after lunch while we all cradled our heads on our arms on our desks and listened.
14. Sanders’ Cream Puff Hot Fudge. This was a treat for good behavior while my mother shopped at Hudson’s Department Store in downtown Detroit..
15. Going to the dime store with money to spend. Now, I suppose it’s a treat for kids to go to the dollar store with money to spend.
16. The smell of onions browning in butter.
17. Around 5:30 or 6 p.m., the sounds of my mother cooking dinner in the kitchen.
18. A fire in the fireplace.
19. Popping popcorn in one of those basket devices that you had to shake.
20. A warm, rainy spring day, outside, in puddles, wearing boots and twirling an umbrella.
21. The cartoon at the local movie theater. Short, animated films were usually shown between the main features. Cartoons were even better when they graduated from black and white to technicolor. Movie double features were the norm and they changed weekly. You could see a double feature on Friday night and a completely different double feature at the same theater on Saturday night. If you missed a popular movie, however, you were out of luck. There were no DVDs, no tapes, no On Demand, no rentals.
22. A cherry coke with a straw, while seated on a stool at a soda fountain.
23. Learning to use a typewriter.
A few bad memories:
1. Socks that slid down inside my shoes.
2. Measles. Mumps. Chicken pox.
3. Being sent to bed early. Sometimes it was for good reason. Sometimes I think my parents just needed a rest.
4. Scratchy woolen clothes.
5. Broccoli. Beets. Lima beans. Asparagus.
6. Leggings.
7. Getting my hair washed. Conditioner hadn’t been invented yet, so the comb-out was especially painful.
P.S. Penny, my friend from high school days, wants to know if I remember sneaking cigarettes in my parents' upstairs bathroom, blowing the smoke out the open window and flushing the butts down the toilet. Uh. Yes, I remember. That's number one on a list of dumb things I did. The list is quite long.
Life in the fast lane
By Margie Reins Smith (11/1/2010)
I’m older than I ever thought I’d be.
Time has passed as fast as it does when I’m setting my digital clock after a power outage. The clock has two re-set buttons: “fast” and “slow.” The longer I hold the fast button, the more quickly time flies. As I get close to real time, I have to switch to the slow button or I’ll overshoot my goal and be forced to cycle through another 24 hours.
Somebody pushed the fast button on my life.
I recently ran into an old college friend, someone I had not seen for 46 years. When we finally met, face to face, I said, “You haven’t changed.”
He said, “Yes I have. I’m older. We’re both older.”
He’s right, of course. And we’re not only older, we’re old.
After a few hours together, the visible stuff – crinkles around the eyes, gray hair, thicker midsections – faded to the background. I heard the same infectious laugh and met a gaze from the same eyes with their mischievous twinkle. I fielded the same kinds of quirky, open-ended questions and challenges, and we traveled down some of the same conversational highways and side roads of our college days. He hadn’t changed. I probably haven’t either.
We told each other what we’d done with our lives, which we agreed had clipped along at breakneck speed. We described the lives our children have chosen and we bragged about our grandchildren. We talked about the places we’d visited in the world. Because he lives on the West Coast, he had traveled to China, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia and had even lived for a time in Singapore. I had been to Italy and France and England. We inquired about each others’ parents.
We walked around Ann Arbor for several hours, looking for our old haunts. We found parking lots and high rise buildings.
The Michigan Union looked pretty much as it had in the 1960s. A brass plaque marked the spot on the front steps where John F. Kennedy stood as he put forth a germ of an idea that evolved into the Peace Corps. My friend was in the crowd the night of Kennedy’s speech.
I wasn’t. And this could be a metaphor for my life and for his.
I had planned to be there, but Kennedy’s train was late. I waited with some friends, but we wandered off. Women (co-eds, we were called) had hours. I believe we had to be in the dorm by 11 p.m. on week nights. The University extended our hours when Kennedy’s train was delayed, but I had other things to do and was thrilled with the time extension. I forgot about Kennedy.
One of the perks of getting older, my friend said, is . . . fewer surprises. I wish I had asked him if that is a good or a bad thing. Some surprises are good. For me it was motherhood and now, grandmotherhood. I never expected to be so enchanted with either of these roles. I also was surprised to find a satisfying new career, midlife. Journalism.
I think getting older gets us more respect, whether we deserve it or not. Young people, generally speaking, are extremely nice to senior citizens. They give us their seats in crowded auditoriums. They offer to carry our packages and they forbid us to climb ladders or shovel snow. They offer us a hand when we climb steps or navigate slippery paths . Some of these young people even seem to be interested in what we have to say.
A few anti-perks come with being older, of course. My senior moments embarrass me. I forget the first name of an old, familiar friend when I see her at the deli counter in the grocery store. I remember it three hours later while I’m mulching my garden or brushing my teeth.
I’ve found that being older often means I’m nearly invisible. Sometimes I can’t get out of a car as quickly as I’d like to. I also need to concentrate, plan and grit my teeth when I decide to stand up straight after squatting to look at the books on the bottom shelf of the bookstore or the library.
Sometimes stuff hurts, too. So far, thank God, the pharmaceutical industry gets an A-plus for its remedies for this anti-perk.
The trouble with life on the fast button is that important stuff happens before we realize it’s important. By the time it makes sense, it’s gone or it’s too late. I should have been on the steps of the Michigan Union on that chilly October evening, even though the presidential candidate’s train was late.
I should have played more with my children when they were small; I should have learned to cook; should have listened more and talked less; should have kept a journal; should have scuffled through more piles of crispy autumn leaves; planted more trees; asked my parents and grandparents about their childhoods; visited more national parks; married later; volunteered more; paid less attention to my hairstyle(s); learned to play the viola. I should have returned to college and studied to become an architect. I should have attended more live performances.
But we can’t reverse time. Meeting old friends brings that to the foreground. It was what it was. We can make the best of the time ahead. It’s too late to become an architect or play with my daughters and their Barbie dolls. I will travel more, however, including visiting some national parks. I will play with my grandsons and their Fisher Price cars and trucks and gas stations. I will scuffle through leaves and plant flowers and vegetables and I won’t take it as a personal insult if they don’t grow. I’ll visit every single one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s major buildings. I will volunteer more and only brush my hair once a day and attend every live performance I can get to, including all my grandchildren’s recitals and school plays.
I intend to get even older than I thought I’d be.
I’m older than I ever thought I’d be.
Time has passed as fast as it does when I’m setting my digital clock after a power outage. The clock has two re-set buttons: “fast” and “slow.” The longer I hold the fast button, the more quickly time flies. As I get close to real time, I have to switch to the slow button or I’ll overshoot my goal and be forced to cycle through another 24 hours.
Somebody pushed the fast button on my life.
I recently ran into an old college friend, someone I had not seen for 46 years. When we finally met, face to face, I said, “You haven’t changed.”
He said, “Yes I have. I’m older. We’re both older.”
He’s right, of course. And we’re not only older, we’re old.
After a few hours together, the visible stuff – crinkles around the eyes, gray hair, thicker midsections – faded to the background. I heard the same infectious laugh and met a gaze from the same eyes with their mischievous twinkle. I fielded the same kinds of quirky, open-ended questions and challenges, and we traveled down some of the same conversational highways and side roads of our college days. He hadn’t changed. I probably haven’t either.
We told each other what we’d done with our lives, which we agreed had clipped along at breakneck speed. We described the lives our children have chosen and we bragged about our grandchildren. We talked about the places we’d visited in the world. Because he lives on the West Coast, he had traveled to China, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia and had even lived for a time in Singapore. I had been to Italy and France and England. We inquired about each others’ parents.
We walked around Ann Arbor for several hours, looking for our old haunts. We found parking lots and high rise buildings.
The Michigan Union looked pretty much as it had in the 1960s. A brass plaque marked the spot on the front steps where John F. Kennedy stood as he put forth a germ of an idea that evolved into the Peace Corps. My friend was in the crowd the night of Kennedy’s speech.
I wasn’t. And this could be a metaphor for my life and for his.
I had planned to be there, but Kennedy’s train was late. I waited with some friends, but we wandered off. Women (co-eds, we were called) had hours. I believe we had to be in the dorm by 11 p.m. on week nights. The University extended our hours when Kennedy’s train was delayed, but I had other things to do and was thrilled with the time extension. I forgot about Kennedy.
One of the perks of getting older, my friend said, is . . . fewer surprises. I wish I had asked him if that is a good or a bad thing. Some surprises are good. For me it was motherhood and now, grandmotherhood. I never expected to be so enchanted with either of these roles. I also was surprised to find a satisfying new career, midlife. Journalism.
I think getting older gets us more respect, whether we deserve it or not. Young people, generally speaking, are extremely nice to senior citizens. They give us their seats in crowded auditoriums. They offer to carry our packages and they forbid us to climb ladders or shovel snow. They offer us a hand when we climb steps or navigate slippery paths . Some of these young people even seem to be interested in what we have to say.
A few anti-perks come with being older, of course. My senior moments embarrass me. I forget the first name of an old, familiar friend when I see her at the deli counter in the grocery store. I remember it three hours later while I’m mulching my garden or brushing my teeth.
I’ve found that being older often means I’m nearly invisible. Sometimes I can’t get out of a car as quickly as I’d like to. I also need to concentrate, plan and grit my teeth when I decide to stand up straight after squatting to look at the books on the bottom shelf of the bookstore or the library.
Sometimes stuff hurts, too. So far, thank God, the pharmaceutical industry gets an A-plus for its remedies for this anti-perk.
The trouble with life on the fast button is that important stuff happens before we realize it’s important. By the time it makes sense, it’s gone or it’s too late. I should have been on the steps of the Michigan Union on that chilly October evening, even though the presidential candidate’s train was late.
I should have played more with my children when they were small; I should have learned to cook; should have listened more and talked less; should have kept a journal; should have scuffled through more piles of crispy autumn leaves; planted more trees; asked my parents and grandparents about their childhoods; visited more national parks; married later; volunteered more; paid less attention to my hairstyle(s); learned to play the viola. I should have returned to college and studied to become an architect. I should have attended more live performances.
But we can’t reverse time. Meeting old friends brings that to the foreground. It was what it was. We can make the best of the time ahead. It’s too late to become an architect or play with my daughters and their Barbie dolls. I will travel more, however, including visiting some national parks. I will play with my grandsons and their Fisher Price cars and trucks and gas stations. I will scuffle through leaves and plant flowers and vegetables and I won’t take it as a personal insult if they don’t grow. I’ll visit every single one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s major buildings. I will volunteer more and only brush my hair once a day and attend every live performance I can get to, including all my grandchildren’s recitals and school plays.
I intend to get even older than I thought I’d be.
Bad news baggage
By Margie Reins Smith (10/20/2010)
I traveled to Boston three weeks ago with my grandson, who is 8. Just the two of us. I have an American Express card which, unfortunately, has an annual fee. The American Express people keep reminding me via TV ads, email, snail mail, and magazine/newspaper advertising that this card can accumulate oodles of miles whenever I fly on Delta Airlines or if I buy unnecessary overpriced catalog merchandise. These “bonuses” are called frequent flyer miles or skymiles.
I usually fly Delta, so getting this card made sense in spite of the annual fee.
The card also gives me – and everyone I’m traveling with – a bye on the $25 fee for the first piece of checked luggage.
I forked over 60,000 frequent flyer miles to go to Boston.
I didn’t have enough miles to use for my grandson, so his parents paid for his ticket. His bill was more than $350, even though I spent five hours online juggling and jiggling departure days and departing and arriving times, trying to get the price lower. I was able to whittle the charges a tiny bit. His ticket could have been higher.
So, there we were, in line at DTW’s Delta check-in, eager to divest ourselves of luggage, get through the monkey business of security, board our plane, and be on our way. We approached the ticket desk and I handed over my passport and two pre-printed boarding passes. We were greeted nicely. The desk attendant typed furiously for close to 10 minutes, while we waited patiently.
What in the world do these people type into these computers? Sometimes I wonder if they’re accessing my medical records to see if I’ve had my flu shot or searching local police records to see if I’m a convicted felon. Are they checking my family tree? When she completes her frantic fingerdancing, will this woman know that I got a C in embryology at the University of Michigan because I never learned how to use a microscope properly? Will she know how many times I’ve paid a checking account overdraft fee in the last 10 years? Does she know that I have three overdue library books right now and that when I was a child, I used to think if your books were overdue too long, an armed policeman would come to the door and either arrest you or demand that you hand over the books pronto?
She finally stops typing and scrutinizes my passport while looking back and forth between the picture and me. Apparently satisfied I am who I say I am, she returns our tickets and my passport.
Why don’t children need IDs? I could smuggle a very cute, vertically challenged spy anywhere in the world if I wanted to, quite easily.
We load our two suitcases on the platform beside her desk.
“That will be $50,” she says.
“I get free luggage,” I say, with a smug smile. I show her my American Express card. I’ve done this before. It works like a charm.
She types for another five minutes. “That’ll be $25,” she says.
I point out that this American Express card waives my luggage fee and the luggage fees of up to nine members of my traveling party. I only have one more person in my party. I indicate my adorable grandson.
She, in turn, points out that my grandson’s ticket was paid for with hard-earned parental cash, whereas I (cheap penny-pinching geezerette that I am) used 60,000 frequent flyer miles.
“Nevertheless,” I point out with serene confidence, “we are traveling together. From Detroit to Boston. And back again. Together. On the same planes. At the same times.”
He is not part of my traveling party, she says, because his ticket was paid for and mine was flim-flammed with sleazy hoarded frequent flyer miles.
“He’s 8,” I point out. I’m getting shrill now. “Obviously, we are traveling together. Detroit to Boston. Then back again, Boston to Detroit. Same planes. Our seats are next to each other. Both ways.”
I nudge him. “Tell her how we’re related.”
“Sorry,” she interrupts. “Tickets have to be purchased together to qualify for free luggage. Nothing I can do about it.” She turns away.
“May I speak to your supervisor?” I ask, as nicely as I can.
The supervisor, of course, was on break. Or out to lunch. Or joy-riding on the monorail. Whatever. He was not available.
“I’m going to write complaint letters to American Express and to Delta,” I say. “This is not right. If we had known this, we would have packed fewer items and put them all in carry-on bags and we would have toted them on the plane ourselves and hoisted them into the overhead bin. Or we would have combined our stuff into one big bag and checked it through, AT NO CHARGE.”
She gives me that “Sorry, Charlie,” look and waves the next person to the front of the line.
P.S. I emailed this blog entry to the customer relations departments of Delta and American Express. Within 24 hours, American Express refunded my money, even though technically, the desk clerk was right. AE included a nice note about wanting to please all long-time card holders. Thank you AE.
Within 36 hours, Delta sent a note of apology for the discourteous desk clerk and said it would credit my account with 3,700 miles. Thank you Delta.
I traveled to Boston three weeks ago with my grandson, who is 8. Just the two of us. I have an American Express card which, unfortunately, has an annual fee. The American Express people keep reminding me via TV ads, email, snail mail, and magazine/newspaper advertising that this card can accumulate oodles of miles whenever I fly on Delta Airlines or if I buy unnecessary overpriced catalog merchandise. These “bonuses” are called frequent flyer miles or skymiles.
I usually fly Delta, so getting this card made sense in spite of the annual fee.
The card also gives me – and everyone I’m traveling with – a bye on the $25 fee for the first piece of checked luggage.
I forked over 60,000 frequent flyer miles to go to Boston.
I didn’t have enough miles to use for my grandson, so his parents paid for his ticket. His bill was more than $350, even though I spent five hours online juggling and jiggling departure days and departing and arriving times, trying to get the price lower. I was able to whittle the charges a tiny bit. His ticket could have been higher.
So, there we were, in line at DTW’s Delta check-in, eager to divest ourselves of luggage, get through the monkey business of security, board our plane, and be on our way. We approached the ticket desk and I handed over my passport and two pre-printed boarding passes. We were greeted nicely. The desk attendant typed furiously for close to 10 minutes, while we waited patiently.
What in the world do these people type into these computers? Sometimes I wonder if they’re accessing my medical records to see if I’ve had my flu shot or searching local police records to see if I’m a convicted felon. Are they checking my family tree? When she completes her frantic fingerdancing, will this woman know that I got a C in embryology at the University of Michigan because I never learned how to use a microscope properly? Will she know how many times I’ve paid a checking account overdraft fee in the last 10 years? Does she know that I have three overdue library books right now and that when I was a child, I used to think if your books were overdue too long, an armed policeman would come to the door and either arrest you or demand that you hand over the books pronto?
She finally stops typing and scrutinizes my passport while looking back and forth between the picture and me. Apparently satisfied I am who I say I am, she returns our tickets and my passport.
Why don’t children need IDs? I could smuggle a very cute, vertically challenged spy anywhere in the world if I wanted to, quite easily.
We load our two suitcases on the platform beside her desk.
“That will be $50,” she says.
“I get free luggage,” I say, with a smug smile. I show her my American Express card. I’ve done this before. It works like a charm.
She types for another five minutes. “That’ll be $25,” she says.
I point out that this American Express card waives my luggage fee and the luggage fees of up to nine members of my traveling party. I only have one more person in my party. I indicate my adorable grandson.
She, in turn, points out that my grandson’s ticket was paid for with hard-earned parental cash, whereas I (cheap penny-pinching geezerette that I am) used 60,000 frequent flyer miles.
“Nevertheless,” I point out with serene confidence, “we are traveling together. From Detroit to Boston. And back again. Together. On the same planes. At the same times.”
He is not part of my traveling party, she says, because his ticket was paid for and mine was flim-flammed with sleazy hoarded frequent flyer miles.
“He’s 8,” I point out. I’m getting shrill now. “Obviously, we are traveling together. Detroit to Boston. Then back again, Boston to Detroit. Same planes. Our seats are next to each other. Both ways.”
I nudge him. “Tell her how we’re related.”
“Sorry,” she interrupts. “Tickets have to be purchased together to qualify for free luggage. Nothing I can do about it.” She turns away.
“May I speak to your supervisor?” I ask, as nicely as I can.
The supervisor, of course, was on break. Or out to lunch. Or joy-riding on the monorail. Whatever. He was not available.
“I’m going to write complaint letters to American Express and to Delta,” I say. “This is not right. If we had known this, we would have packed fewer items and put them all in carry-on bags and we would have toted them on the plane ourselves and hoisted them into the overhead bin. Or we would have combined our stuff into one big bag and checked it through, AT NO CHARGE.”
She gives me that “Sorry, Charlie,” look and waves the next person to the front of the line.
P.S. I emailed this blog entry to the customer relations departments of Delta and American Express. Within 24 hours, American Express refunded my money, even though technically, the desk clerk was right. AE included a nice note about wanting to please all long-time card holders. Thank you AE.
Within 36 hours, Delta sent a note of apology for the discourteous desk clerk and said it would credit my account with 3,700 miles. Thank you Delta.
When pigs fry
By Margie Reins Smith (10/4/2010)
We all know the story of The Three Little Pigs.
Three pigs prepare to make their way in the world. The first pig builds a house of straw; the second pig builds a house of sticks; the third, a house of bricks.
A wolf wants a pig for dinner. Goes to house of straw, blows it to smithereens. Pig No. 1 escapes; dashes to house of sticks. Wolf goes to house of sticks, blows it down. Pig No.1 and Pig No. 2 hightail it to house of bricks. Wolf goes to house of bricks. Blows. And blows. And blows. No luck.
Wolf climbs onto roof and lowers himself into chimney. Pigs build fire in fireplace. Wolf slides into fire. Pigs celebrate.
Short and sweet.
What if this story were reported on the 6 o’clock news?
At noon, the promos and teasers would begin: “Wolf destroys suburban straw house. Pig-owner escapes. Tune in at 6 for the whole story.”
At 2:30: “Breaking news. Serial house destroyer strikes again. Local wolf is suspect. Hear what pig victims say about wolf. Details at 6.”
At 5:55: “Wolf leaps into firey inferno after week-long rampage of local pig homes. What can you do to keep your home safe? Full story at 6.”
At 6 p.m., we get 30 seconds of flashing red letters that spell “Breaking News,” bouncy canned music (full orchestra) and a slow-scrolling teaser: “Local wolf foiled by small, quick-thinking pig.” The TV screen is awash with sweeping surging red, white and blue swooshes, textures, hyper-jazzy geometric figures, numbers and ever more frantic music. Then, a long shot of a TV newsroom desk. Three people are waiting to tell all.
Zoom. A close-up of Jeremy, handsome helmet-haired white male wearing a strong, square jaw, perfectly spaced white teeth and kindly blue eyes with crinkles at the outer corners.
“We have breaking news on the city’s near east side,” he says. “Three pig brothers are thankful today that their wood-burning fireplace and their sturdy brick house made the difference between life and death. Reporter Bettina Bungle is live at the scene. What’s the story, Bettina?”
Bettina stands on the front lawn of a neat, brick colonial in the suburbs. Camera sweeps up and down a narrow street in the quiet neighborhood. Mature trees arch over the pavement. Lawns are trimmed. A dog barks in the background.
Camera returns to Bettina. She clutches a microphone bearing a large cube -- Channel 9 – in one hand. It’s raining. She steadies a wobbly, oversized black umbrella in the other hand. The wind is whipping her shoulder-length blonde hair across her face. She tosses her head and plucks the flat wet clumps of hair from her eyelashes. One strand sticks to her supermoist red lips. She’s slightly out of breath.
“Three miniature pig brothers are breathing a sigh of relief and praising bricks tonight, Jeremy. They were the unwitting victims of a lone wolf – a three-hundred pound wolf who had been stalking two of the pigs for several weeks – a wolf who tried to blow this brick house down.” She turns to face the house.
“At approximately 5 p.m., when the wolf realized he could not destroy this home by breath alone, he apparently scaled the roof and climbed down the chimney.”
Bettina stares, wide-eyed, into the camera.
“What he found at the bottom of the chimney, Jeremy, was a raging fire.
“The wolf was taken to Hacker Hospital by ambulance. His condition is unknown. No charges have been filed against either the pigs or the wolf, but authorities are investigating the wolf’s police record. Channel 9 has learned that he had been accused of stalking other pigs. A preliminary investigation showed that the brothers of the owner of the brick house had taken out a restraining order on the wolf.” Bettina swipes her hair aside and re-balances her umbrella.
Jeremy makes a sympathetic sound and leads into an earlier, filmed interview. Bettina is squatting on her heels on the porch of the brick house, face to snout with a small pig. She tips the microphone back and forth as she questions him and he answers.
“How do you feel about killing a wolf?"
The pig is clearly rattled. His lips quiver, his voice is muffled and he waves his tiny front feet back and forth as he answers. “This wolf has been stalking me -- and my two brothers -- since July,” he says. “He destroyed their houses and he was trying to break into my house. We had to do something to protect ourselves.”
Bettina stands up and faces the camera. “More after the break,” she says.
“Find out if charges will be filed and by whom, against whom. Back to you Jeremy.”
Cut to the weatherman. “There’s a warm stretch in our future. More after this.”
Cut to disgusting mucus family who seem to be camping out in somebody’s lung. They’re sitting around a campfire, toasting marshmallows. They're eventually chased out of town by medicine.
Cut to an elderly couple in a grocery store. He’s grumpy and irritable. The wife is discussing his chronic constipation, in detail, with the butcher. The butcher recommends an over-the-counter medicine. The husband is cured and returns the next day to talk about it with the butcher.
Cut to a toenail gremlin who – accompanied by chalkboard-scratching sound effects -- pries a dirt-encrusted, cracked, nail off someone’s toe. He’s looking for fungus. Finds it.
Return to Jeremy and Bettina for pictures of the wolf's house and interviews with his neighbors. They say he was a loner.
"How can you keep the wolf from your door?" Jeremy asks his audience. "Tune in at 11 for suggestions from experts."
We all know the story of The Three Little Pigs.
Three pigs prepare to make their way in the world. The first pig builds a house of straw; the second pig builds a house of sticks; the third, a house of bricks.
A wolf wants a pig for dinner. Goes to house of straw, blows it to smithereens. Pig No. 1 escapes; dashes to house of sticks. Wolf goes to house of sticks, blows it down. Pig No.1 and Pig No. 2 hightail it to house of bricks. Wolf goes to house of bricks. Blows. And blows. And blows. No luck.
Wolf climbs onto roof and lowers himself into chimney. Pigs build fire in fireplace. Wolf slides into fire. Pigs celebrate.
Short and sweet.
What if this story were reported on the 6 o’clock news?
At noon, the promos and teasers would begin: “Wolf destroys suburban straw house. Pig-owner escapes. Tune in at 6 for the whole story.”
At 2:30: “Breaking news. Serial house destroyer strikes again. Local wolf is suspect. Hear what pig victims say about wolf. Details at 6.”
At 5:55: “Wolf leaps into firey inferno after week-long rampage of local pig homes. What can you do to keep your home safe? Full story at 6.”
At 6 p.m., we get 30 seconds of flashing red letters that spell “Breaking News,” bouncy canned music (full orchestra) and a slow-scrolling teaser: “Local wolf foiled by small, quick-thinking pig.” The TV screen is awash with sweeping surging red, white and blue swooshes, textures, hyper-jazzy geometric figures, numbers and ever more frantic music. Then, a long shot of a TV newsroom desk. Three people are waiting to tell all.
Zoom. A close-up of Jeremy, handsome helmet-haired white male wearing a strong, square jaw, perfectly spaced white teeth and kindly blue eyes with crinkles at the outer corners.
“We have breaking news on the city’s near east side,” he says. “Three pig brothers are thankful today that their wood-burning fireplace and their sturdy brick house made the difference between life and death. Reporter Bettina Bungle is live at the scene. What’s the story, Bettina?”
Bettina stands on the front lawn of a neat, brick colonial in the suburbs. Camera sweeps up and down a narrow street in the quiet neighborhood. Mature trees arch over the pavement. Lawns are trimmed. A dog barks in the background.
Camera returns to Bettina. She clutches a microphone bearing a large cube -- Channel 9 – in one hand. It’s raining. She steadies a wobbly, oversized black umbrella in the other hand. The wind is whipping her shoulder-length blonde hair across her face. She tosses her head and plucks the flat wet clumps of hair from her eyelashes. One strand sticks to her supermoist red lips. She’s slightly out of breath.
“Three miniature pig brothers are breathing a sigh of relief and praising bricks tonight, Jeremy. They were the unwitting victims of a lone wolf – a three-hundred pound wolf who had been stalking two of the pigs for several weeks – a wolf who tried to blow this brick house down.” She turns to face the house.
“At approximately 5 p.m., when the wolf realized he could not destroy this home by breath alone, he apparently scaled the roof and climbed down the chimney.”
Bettina stares, wide-eyed, into the camera.
“What he found at the bottom of the chimney, Jeremy, was a raging fire.
“The wolf was taken to Hacker Hospital by ambulance. His condition is unknown. No charges have been filed against either the pigs or the wolf, but authorities are investigating the wolf’s police record. Channel 9 has learned that he had been accused of stalking other pigs. A preliminary investigation showed that the brothers of the owner of the brick house had taken out a restraining order on the wolf.” Bettina swipes her hair aside and re-balances her umbrella.
Jeremy makes a sympathetic sound and leads into an earlier, filmed interview. Bettina is squatting on her heels on the porch of the brick house, face to snout with a small pig. She tips the microphone back and forth as she questions him and he answers.
“How do you feel about killing a wolf?"
The pig is clearly rattled. His lips quiver, his voice is muffled and he waves his tiny front feet back and forth as he answers. “This wolf has been stalking me -- and my two brothers -- since July,” he says. “He destroyed their houses and he was trying to break into my house. We had to do something to protect ourselves.”
Bettina stands up and faces the camera. “More after the break,” she says.
“Find out if charges will be filed and by whom, against whom. Back to you Jeremy.”
Cut to the weatherman. “There’s a warm stretch in our future. More after this.”
Cut to disgusting mucus family who seem to be camping out in somebody’s lung. They’re sitting around a campfire, toasting marshmallows. They're eventually chased out of town by medicine.
Cut to an elderly couple in a grocery store. He’s grumpy and irritable. The wife is discussing his chronic constipation, in detail, with the butcher. The butcher recommends an over-the-counter medicine. The husband is cured and returns the next day to talk about it with the butcher.
Cut to a toenail gremlin who – accompanied by chalkboard-scratching sound effects -- pries a dirt-encrusted, cracked, nail off someone’s toe. He’s looking for fungus. Finds it.
Return to Jeremy and Bettina for pictures of the wolf's house and interviews with his neighbors. They say he was a loner.
"How can you keep the wolf from your door?" Jeremy asks his audience. "Tune in at 11 for suggestions from experts."
Heavenly Umbria
By Margie Reins Smith (9/13/2010)
Nancy Yuktonis Solak, a self-described “homebody,” visited Italy for the first time with her husband in the year they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They fell in love with the country, the language, the culture and the Italian people. She tagged the experience “heavenly.”
They visited again and in spite of the homebody label she had attached to herself and in spite of her penchant for the safe, the secure and the familiar, Solak ventured to her husband, Rich: “Wouldn’t it be fun to live here?”
Surprisingly, he nodded. Enthusiastically.
Soon after Rich retired, the Solaks moved to Umbria. They stayed for a year. Nancy kept a journal, which eventually blossomed into a travel memoir.
Be prepared: A Footpath In Umbria, Learning, Loving and Laughing in Italy, is not Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. Nor is it Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence or Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There or Notes from a Small Island.
Solak’s just-published account of their year in Italy shares similarities with these best-selling memoirs. It involves somewhat naïve Americans who pull up their American roots and transplant themselves for extended periods of time into gorgeous European settings.
But the Solaks’ adventure in Umbria is different. They’re on a strict budget, for starters. Public transportation, walking and biking will be their sole modes of transport. Nancy also views the adventure as an opportunity to “shed the negative images of myself that belong to a past that no longer exists.”
She loves to walk, as does Bryson. She loves exploring new places and learning new languages and customs first-hand, by trial and error, as do Bryson, Mayes and Mayle. Sometimes this method is frustrating, sometimes hilarious.
They set off in January.
“We’re going to heaven!” she writes. “In this new place I will dance and sing with abandon (heck, nobody will know me there), run when my body wants to run, sit silent when it wants to digest what art or food or conversation it has taken in. I will no longer cling to sameness which only gives me the illusion of safety. This is the opportunity of my lifetime . . . This is the time when I plan to learn to talk to the universe and, more importantly, take the time to listen to its reply; connect with nature as I did as a child; and recognize and acknowledge the life in everything, even the infinitesimal vibrations of rocks along the road.
“Italy, here I come.”
As the year unfolds, Solak not only examines the footpaths, the language and the customs of “heaven,” but also the language (or lack thereof) and rituals of her marriage.
Solak explores day-to-day existence in her adopted country: the footpaths, the library, the post office, the cell phone store, the grocery store, holiday traditions, even the dentist and eventually and regretfully, the hospital.
Acts of kindness and generosity run rampant in Italy and many of these encounters result in lasting friendships and new opportunities. She relates etiquette blunders first-hand, – the unwritten rules of the two-cheeked kiss, for example; Sunday night suppers; and unfamiliar hand gestures. She figures out how to walk to town avoiding the “evil” highway, and learns to enjoy unplanned and unscheduled side trips. “This is how retirement is,” she muses. “You run into something interesting and suddenly the plans you made that morning vaporize and you don’t care one whit if they change completely.”
Heavenly. Birds chirp more in Italy. Italian dogs are well-behaved and welcomed in stores and restaurants. Fields of sunflowers vibrate in the sunshine. Carousels appear, overnight, in piazzas. No colds. No flu.
Solak discovers what she suspected since the day they decided to spend a year in Umbria: “The people of Italy appear to live totally free from useless hand-wringing guilt, indulging in all manner of pleasures such as languorous meals, uplifting music, leathering their skin in the sunshine, drinking wine like it is water, and enjoying sex.
“How outrageously celestial!”
"A Footpath in Umbria offers not only a delightful description of moving to a foreign country and the difficulties of adapting to a different culture, but also a neat look at a long-term marriage,” said Skip Gibson, a long-time friend of the Solaks.
A Footpath in Umbria, Learning, Loving and Laughing in Italy is available online at Amazon.com either in paperback or as a download to a Kindle. Solak can be contacted at [email protected]
Nancy Yuktonis Solak is an award-winning writer and editor who lives with her husband, Rich, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. They have two grown children and one and three-fourths grandchildren.
Nancy Yuktonis Solak, a self-described “homebody,” visited Italy for the first time with her husband in the year they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They fell in love with the country, the language, the culture and the Italian people. She tagged the experience “heavenly.”
They visited again and in spite of the homebody label she had attached to herself and in spite of her penchant for the safe, the secure and the familiar, Solak ventured to her husband, Rich: “Wouldn’t it be fun to live here?”
Surprisingly, he nodded. Enthusiastically.
Soon after Rich retired, the Solaks moved to Umbria. They stayed for a year. Nancy kept a journal, which eventually blossomed into a travel memoir.
Be prepared: A Footpath In Umbria, Learning, Loving and Laughing in Italy, is not Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. Nor is it Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence or Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There or Notes from a Small Island.
Solak’s just-published account of their year in Italy shares similarities with these best-selling memoirs. It involves somewhat naïve Americans who pull up their American roots and transplant themselves for extended periods of time into gorgeous European settings.
But the Solaks’ adventure in Umbria is different. They’re on a strict budget, for starters. Public transportation, walking and biking will be their sole modes of transport. Nancy also views the adventure as an opportunity to “shed the negative images of myself that belong to a past that no longer exists.”
She loves to walk, as does Bryson. She loves exploring new places and learning new languages and customs first-hand, by trial and error, as do Bryson, Mayes and Mayle. Sometimes this method is frustrating, sometimes hilarious.
They set off in January.
“We’re going to heaven!” she writes. “In this new place I will dance and sing with abandon (heck, nobody will know me there), run when my body wants to run, sit silent when it wants to digest what art or food or conversation it has taken in. I will no longer cling to sameness which only gives me the illusion of safety. This is the opportunity of my lifetime . . . This is the time when I plan to learn to talk to the universe and, more importantly, take the time to listen to its reply; connect with nature as I did as a child; and recognize and acknowledge the life in everything, even the infinitesimal vibrations of rocks along the road.
“Italy, here I come.”
As the year unfolds, Solak not only examines the footpaths, the language and the customs of “heaven,” but also the language (or lack thereof) and rituals of her marriage.
Solak explores day-to-day existence in her adopted country: the footpaths, the library, the post office, the cell phone store, the grocery store, holiday traditions, even the dentist and eventually and regretfully, the hospital.
Acts of kindness and generosity run rampant in Italy and many of these encounters result in lasting friendships and new opportunities. She relates etiquette blunders first-hand, – the unwritten rules of the two-cheeked kiss, for example; Sunday night suppers; and unfamiliar hand gestures. She figures out how to walk to town avoiding the “evil” highway, and learns to enjoy unplanned and unscheduled side trips. “This is how retirement is,” she muses. “You run into something interesting and suddenly the plans you made that morning vaporize and you don’t care one whit if they change completely.”
Heavenly. Birds chirp more in Italy. Italian dogs are well-behaved and welcomed in stores and restaurants. Fields of sunflowers vibrate in the sunshine. Carousels appear, overnight, in piazzas. No colds. No flu.
Solak discovers what she suspected since the day they decided to spend a year in Umbria: “The people of Italy appear to live totally free from useless hand-wringing guilt, indulging in all manner of pleasures such as languorous meals, uplifting music, leathering their skin in the sunshine, drinking wine like it is water, and enjoying sex.
“How outrageously celestial!”
"A Footpath in Umbria offers not only a delightful description of moving to a foreign country and the difficulties of adapting to a different culture, but also a neat look at a long-term marriage,” said Skip Gibson, a long-time friend of the Solaks.
A Footpath in Umbria, Learning, Loving and Laughing in Italy is available online at Amazon.com either in paperback or as a download to a Kindle. Solak can be contacted at [email protected]
Nancy Yuktonis Solak is an award-winning writer and editor who lives with her husband, Rich, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. They have two grown children and one and three-fourths grandchildren.
Musings
By Margie Reins Smith (9/30/2010)
I have trouble relating to movies and novels involving time travel when the characters travel back to a year AFTER I was born. “Back to the Future” which was a very entertaining movie, zaps Mary McFly’s DeLorean DMC-12 back only to the mid 1950s.
I was born in 1940, for Pete’s sake. Nineteen fifty-five is not back in time; it’s forward. I didn’t graduate from high school until 1958.
If you’re going to write a story about traveling back in time, make the trip worthwhile. Go back to the 1800s or to Shakespeare’s time or one of those backwards-counting years “Before the Common Era.” Stop piddling around with the 1950s.
I still wear sweatshirts I bought in the 1950s. I only recently pitched a drawer full of 1970s shoulder pads with Velcro strips sewed on the tops. The label on my “good” winter coat has the name of a local department store that folded in the ’80s. Some of my belongings are ready for the Antiques Road Show.
I’d love to walk the Appalachian Trail. Not the whole thing. Just parts of it. Think of the brisk crisp fresh air, the different kinds of trees, the wild life I might see. The exercise. All good for senior citizens like me.
I don’t like sleeping in the woods, however, or cooking over campfires or squatting behind bushes.
Walking is OK. I want to skip the other stuff.
I’m waiting for a travel organization to offer a Walk for Wimps. We’d awaken each morning (in a three- or four-star hotel) to a pile of steaming pancakes or a couple of delicately poached eggs, perhaps Eggs Benedict and some toasted English Muffins or bagels. We’d top off the meal with an insulated mug of hot coffee to take with us.
We would be transported to the trailhead by bus or car, walk for an hour or two, then stop for a picnic lunch served on a spread of checkered tablecloths surrounded by plump cushions. A Port-a-Potty would be nearby.
We’d each get a menu – club sandwich? The Reuben? Beef barley soup or creamy tomato basil?
We’d walk a bit more.
Around 4 p.m., a van would transport us to a cute B& B, where our luggage would be waiting. We would nap, take long steamy showers and meet up again around 7 p.m. for cocktails and a leisurely five-course meal.
Someone would give a talk about the history and lore of the area and prep us for the next day’s trek.
We would sleep on crisp linen, under down comforters.
Up for breakfast by 9 or 10 a.m. at least. Start the day with a handful of OTC painkillers, eat a hearty breakfast in a restaurant and be transported by van back to the trail for the next day’s walk.
An young energetic guide would tote healthy snacks and ice-cold water for everybody and keep up a nice walk-along commentary about local flora and fauna.
Of course, there would be a van nearby for those who were not up to a whole day of walking or who might decide to pack it in early.
Perhaps the actual walking could be scheduled every other day. On the off days, we could shop or sight-see.
Come on, Elderhostel/Exploritas/Road Scholar (whatever you’re called now): Step up to the plate.
I have trouble relating to movies and novels involving time travel when the characters travel back to a year AFTER I was born. “Back to the Future” which was a very entertaining movie, zaps Mary McFly’s DeLorean DMC-12 back only to the mid 1950s.
I was born in 1940, for Pete’s sake. Nineteen fifty-five is not back in time; it’s forward. I didn’t graduate from high school until 1958.
If you’re going to write a story about traveling back in time, make the trip worthwhile. Go back to the 1800s or to Shakespeare’s time or one of those backwards-counting years “Before the Common Era.” Stop piddling around with the 1950s.
I still wear sweatshirts I bought in the 1950s. I only recently pitched a drawer full of 1970s shoulder pads with Velcro strips sewed on the tops. The label on my “good” winter coat has the name of a local department store that folded in the ’80s. Some of my belongings are ready for the Antiques Road Show.
I’d love to walk the Appalachian Trail. Not the whole thing. Just parts of it. Think of the brisk crisp fresh air, the different kinds of trees, the wild life I might see. The exercise. All good for senior citizens like me.
I don’t like sleeping in the woods, however, or cooking over campfires or squatting behind bushes.
Walking is OK. I want to skip the other stuff.
I’m waiting for a travel organization to offer a Walk for Wimps. We’d awaken each morning (in a three- or four-star hotel) to a pile of steaming pancakes or a couple of delicately poached eggs, perhaps Eggs Benedict and some toasted English Muffins or bagels. We’d top off the meal with an insulated mug of hot coffee to take with us.
We would be transported to the trailhead by bus or car, walk for an hour or two, then stop for a picnic lunch served on a spread of checkered tablecloths surrounded by plump cushions. A Port-a-Potty would be nearby.
We’d each get a menu – club sandwich? The Reuben? Beef barley soup or creamy tomato basil?
We’d walk a bit more.
Around 4 p.m., a van would transport us to a cute B& B, where our luggage would be waiting. We would nap, take long steamy showers and meet up again around 7 p.m. for cocktails and a leisurely five-course meal.
Someone would give a talk about the history and lore of the area and prep us for the next day’s trek.
We would sleep on crisp linen, under down comforters.
Up for breakfast by 9 or 10 a.m. at least. Start the day with a handful of OTC painkillers, eat a hearty breakfast in a restaurant and be transported by van back to the trail for the next day’s walk.
An young energetic guide would tote healthy snacks and ice-cold water for everybody and keep up a nice walk-along commentary about local flora and fauna.
Of course, there would be a van nearby for those who were not up to a whole day of walking or who might decide to pack it in early.
Perhaps the actual walking could be scheduled every other day. On the off days, we could shop or sight-see.
Come on, Elderhostel/Exploritas/Road Scholar (whatever you’re called now): Step up to the plate.
Three hits, two misses
By Margie Reins Smith (8/16/10)
I read a lot. Here are thoughts about three books I read recently and loved. Just to be fair and to prove I don’t love everything, I added two duds at the end.
All this is my opinion, of course. If one of the duds wins the Pulitzer Prize, I’ll apologize profusely.
The three hits:
No! I Don’t Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a 60th Year,by Virginia Ironside. British novelists – the women especially -- have a charming point of view on the art of growing older.
Marie is happy to be 60, glad to be through with all the nonsense of raising children, maintaining a marriage and surviving a divorce. She’s finally happy with her decisions NOT to learn Italian or join a gym or bicycle across Europe. She’s sworn off men and sex, but she has plenty of time to spend with good friends, male and female, gay and straight, young and older.
She’s worried about not being thrilled with her new grandson. He leaves her cold.
At first.
Within weeks, she’s besotted with the little guy and invents flimsy excuses to visit her son and daughter-in-law so she can spend time with him.
The book is chockfull of dead-on observations of a 60-year-old woman as she ponders the pleasures and pains of friendship, death and the ageing process as well as DVD players and a new, mysterious contraption called a child car seat. She and her friends commiserate about the disgusting state of their upper arms. They share information about their experiences with younger sex partners (“What does K-Y actually stand for?” her friend Penny wonders) and they commiserate about some scary things ahead -- death and illness and the unstoppable ageing process. I give it ★★★★ out of four.
Shakespeare, The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson. Surprisingly, this book isn’t about Shakespeare’s plays. It’s about the man. Because little is known about William Shakespeare’s life, the whole book is crammed with conjecture, supposition, fraudulent claims and spoofs about the greatest English-language playwright ever. Bryson points out what is known and what can be inferred and he debunks a lot of the myths about Shakespeare’s life.
He also gives readers a nice feel for what life was like in Elizabethan London: dirty, dangerous, disease-prone and downright scary. It’s a miracle the Bard survived infancy. ★★★ out of four.
The English Major, by Jim Harrison. I loved this raunchy, irreverent rambling, witty novel about Cliff, a former high school English teacher and farmer who is suddenly set adrift when his wife divorces him and his dog dies.
He finds an old United States jigsaw puzzle in his basement and decides to get in his car and visit each of the 48 contiguous states. The puzzle was manufactured in the 1940s when there were only 48 states – which is OK with Cliff because he’s afraid to fly.
As he leaves each state, he throws that piece of the puzzle out the car window or buries it somewhere near the state line.
Travels with Cliff include an ill-fated fling with a former high school student, a visit to the California home of his gay movie-producer son, adventures at a snake farm and a lot of trout fishing, drinking, seducing and being seduced. While he’s drifting, seeking companionship and sorting out feelings for his ex-wife and women in general, Cliff dreams up an “artistic” project and figures out what to do with the rest of his life.
I loved this book. ★★★★ out of four.
Those were the hits. Here are two misses:
The Best of Times by Penny Vincenzi. Not a good read. Oodles of inane dialogue; plot, plot and more plot; and superficial, stereotyped characters.
“Hi there.”
“Hi.”
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”
“Yes it has.”
Where was the editor of this book? On a coffee break?
The central scene of the novel is a terrible auto accident on a highway near London. Nine or 10 cars pile up, three people are killed and many are seriously injured. Fine. Good start. I thought this was going to be a good plot.
Vincenzi introduces each of the characters as they start out on the day of the accident. She tells why each one is on the highway, who each one is with, where they’re going, etc. etc.
The accident occurs.
She follows each of the characters as they are taken to the hospital or wherever, as they heal and as they get on with their lives.
The blurb on the back of the dust jacket said Vincenzi is the master of plot twists. I kept reading, looking for the plot twist. There wasn’t one. This is what I call chick lit and I’m not fond of it. ★ out of four.
Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart. This was a shallow, silly, simple memoir full of gushing and oohing and ahhing and corny comparisons and silly stuff about how great it is to be a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and how awed the author is by Tiffany & Co and how lucky she and her friend are to land a terrific summer job (in 1945) as pages at Tiffany’s and how cool New York City is and on and on.
It wasn’t worth my time, but it was a fast read. ★ out of four, barely.
I hate to leave a book unfinished, so I finished this one. Normally, I figure I’m too old to waste my time reading books I don’t like. If it doesn’t grab my attention by page 50 or 60 – out it goes.
I read a lot. Here are thoughts about three books I read recently and loved. Just to be fair and to prove I don’t love everything, I added two duds at the end.
All this is my opinion, of course. If one of the duds wins the Pulitzer Prize, I’ll apologize profusely.
The three hits:
No! I Don’t Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a 60th Year,by Virginia Ironside. British novelists – the women especially -- have a charming point of view on the art of growing older.
Marie is happy to be 60, glad to be through with all the nonsense of raising children, maintaining a marriage and surviving a divorce. She’s finally happy with her decisions NOT to learn Italian or join a gym or bicycle across Europe. She’s sworn off men and sex, but she has plenty of time to spend with good friends, male and female, gay and straight, young and older.
She’s worried about not being thrilled with her new grandson. He leaves her cold.
At first.
Within weeks, she’s besotted with the little guy and invents flimsy excuses to visit her son and daughter-in-law so she can spend time with him.
The book is chockfull of dead-on observations of a 60-year-old woman as she ponders the pleasures and pains of friendship, death and the ageing process as well as DVD players and a new, mysterious contraption called a child car seat. She and her friends commiserate about the disgusting state of their upper arms. They share information about their experiences with younger sex partners (“What does K-Y actually stand for?” her friend Penny wonders) and they commiserate about some scary things ahead -- death and illness and the unstoppable ageing process. I give it ★★★★ out of four.
Shakespeare, The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson. Surprisingly, this book isn’t about Shakespeare’s plays. It’s about the man. Because little is known about William Shakespeare’s life, the whole book is crammed with conjecture, supposition, fraudulent claims and spoofs about the greatest English-language playwright ever. Bryson points out what is known and what can be inferred and he debunks a lot of the myths about Shakespeare’s life.
He also gives readers a nice feel for what life was like in Elizabethan London: dirty, dangerous, disease-prone and downright scary. It’s a miracle the Bard survived infancy. ★★★ out of four.
The English Major, by Jim Harrison. I loved this raunchy, irreverent rambling, witty novel about Cliff, a former high school English teacher and farmer who is suddenly set adrift when his wife divorces him and his dog dies.
He finds an old United States jigsaw puzzle in his basement and decides to get in his car and visit each of the 48 contiguous states. The puzzle was manufactured in the 1940s when there were only 48 states – which is OK with Cliff because he’s afraid to fly.
As he leaves each state, he throws that piece of the puzzle out the car window or buries it somewhere near the state line.
Travels with Cliff include an ill-fated fling with a former high school student, a visit to the California home of his gay movie-producer son, adventures at a snake farm and a lot of trout fishing, drinking, seducing and being seduced. While he’s drifting, seeking companionship and sorting out feelings for his ex-wife and women in general, Cliff dreams up an “artistic” project and figures out what to do with the rest of his life.
I loved this book. ★★★★ out of four.
Those were the hits. Here are two misses:
The Best of Times by Penny Vincenzi. Not a good read. Oodles of inane dialogue; plot, plot and more plot; and superficial, stereotyped characters.
“Hi there.”
“Hi.”
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”
“Yes it has.”
Where was the editor of this book? On a coffee break?
The central scene of the novel is a terrible auto accident on a highway near London. Nine or 10 cars pile up, three people are killed and many are seriously injured. Fine. Good start. I thought this was going to be a good plot.
Vincenzi introduces each of the characters as they start out on the day of the accident. She tells why each one is on the highway, who each one is with, where they’re going, etc. etc.
The accident occurs.
She follows each of the characters as they are taken to the hospital or wherever, as they heal and as they get on with their lives.
The blurb on the back of the dust jacket said Vincenzi is the master of plot twists. I kept reading, looking for the plot twist. There wasn’t one. This is what I call chick lit and I’m not fond of it. ★ out of four.
Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart. This was a shallow, silly, simple memoir full of gushing and oohing and ahhing and corny comparisons and silly stuff about how great it is to be a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and how awed the author is by Tiffany & Co and how lucky she and her friend are to land a terrific summer job (in 1945) as pages at Tiffany’s and how cool New York City is and on and on.
It wasn’t worth my time, but it was a fast read. ★ out of four, barely.
I hate to leave a book unfinished, so I finished this one. Normally, I figure I’m too old to waste my time reading books I don’t like. If it doesn’t grab my attention by page 50 or 60 – out it goes.
Turkish carpet ride
By Margie Reins Smith (7/26/2010)
A burly man unfurled a room-size Turkish silk carpet with a snap, flipped it in the air above his head and twirled it with one hand like pizza crust. It hung suspended for a nanosecond, floated briefly as if it were a magic carpet, then settled gently, diagonally on top of dozens of colorful Turkish carpets.
Buying a carpet in Turkey is a lesson in super salesmanship.
Capture the customer’s attention. Educate her about the product. Develop the customer’s desire for quality. Complement her on her taste. Launch a gentle sales pitch. Check frequently as to how you are doing. Answer her questions.
Bingo. Close the deal. It’s Dale Carnegie squared.
During a recent visit to Istanbul, our tour guide took us to The Istanbul Handicraft Center, a shop near the Grand Bazaar deemed by the tour company to be owned by honest and reputable people. We were slated for a short lecture about Turkish carpets – how they’re made; how to judge quality; what to look for; how to buy one.
What we all got was a lesson in salesmanship. What I got was a gorgeous Turkish carpet.
The onsite demonstration of sales technique was nearly worth the price of the rug.
We sat on upholstered benches around a large, open area, a gleaming polished wood floor. Huge carpets woven in colorful intricate designs hung on the walls behind us.
Drinks were offered: apple tea, plain tea, bottled water or Turkish coffee. I chose apple tea, which was served in a small curved glass nestled in a small colorfully decorated bowl accompanied by a miniature spoon.
The talk was delivered by a charming Turkish man with a charming Turkish accent. He talked about carpet quality. Four or five big men, carpet rollers, hovered around the doorway to an adjacent room, which was piled waist-high with hundreds of beautiful rugs. Thousands, according to The Istanbul Handicraft Center’s Web site. Some were folded and stacked. Others were rolled and lined up standing on end. The smaller ones were stacked in piles of about 30. Two by two, the rollers selected and unfurled these works of art on the open floor before us while the lecturer talked. The floor was soon covered with runners and rugs of all sizes, colors and patterns.
Carpets piled up, layer upon layer. By the time he finished his talk, the floor was crisscrossed with 40 or 50 carpets. All gorgeous.
He showed us the high quality stuff first, of course, so we developed an eye for the best, a taste for expensive. Good plan.
The talk was short and sweet, with excellent visuals. We got important and useful information about knots and weaves and natural dyes and fringe and materials: wool on wool, wool on cotton, wool on silk, silk on silk. We learned a bit about the weavers and about how to judge the quality of a carpet.
The atmosphere shifted, however, when I rumbled through my purse for a small piece of yellow paper. The dimensions of the floor of my office were scribbled in pencil. I said I was considering the purchase of a rug for this floor.
Full disclosure -- considering is not the right word. I was ready to buy a Turkish carpet. In Turkey. I was really ready.
The lecturer zeroed in. The sale began.
We (my three traveling companions and our tour guide) were directed to another, private room. A new salesman was introduced, Mr. Yakup Ceki Karmona, one of the presidents of the company. Another charming Turkish accent.
We conversed. He asked what colors I was looking for, what kind of design, the size of my room, whether I wanted wool or cotton or silk. He showed me the best first, of course.
He showed me several gorgeous designs before I asked about price.
Way too high.
We conversed. He complimented me on my excellent taste and my desire for authenticity, quality and workmanship. I felt powerful and special and smart, even though I was fully aware I would be the one forking over money.
He brought out some less expensive rugs. The rug rollers were pressed into service again and again. (Nice muscular shoulders, by the way. Rippling, even.)
I find the carpet of my dreams.
“I’m not prepared to purchase a carpet today,” I said. I meant it.
“I never buy on impulse. I’ll be in Istanbul for two more days and I would like to consider this price and this rug and perhaps purchase tomorrow.”
I actually said that.
He smiled. “We like to strike while the iron is hot.”
He actually said that.
I demur.
He has a special offer for me. He names his price.
We talk.
He asks me to name my price. I do.
We split the difference.
Bingo. The papers arrive. Sign here. Sign there. Please fill this out. He takes my credit card. I sign.
Free delivery? Of course.
For more about The Istanbul Handicraft Center, go to www.istanbulhandicraftcenter.com
A burly man unfurled a room-size Turkish silk carpet with a snap, flipped it in the air above his head and twirled it with one hand like pizza crust. It hung suspended for a nanosecond, floated briefly as if it were a magic carpet, then settled gently, diagonally on top of dozens of colorful Turkish carpets.
Buying a carpet in Turkey is a lesson in super salesmanship.
Capture the customer’s attention. Educate her about the product. Develop the customer’s desire for quality. Complement her on her taste. Launch a gentle sales pitch. Check frequently as to how you are doing. Answer her questions.
Bingo. Close the deal. It’s Dale Carnegie squared.
During a recent visit to Istanbul, our tour guide took us to The Istanbul Handicraft Center, a shop near the Grand Bazaar deemed by the tour company to be owned by honest and reputable people. We were slated for a short lecture about Turkish carpets – how they’re made; how to judge quality; what to look for; how to buy one.
What we all got was a lesson in salesmanship. What I got was a gorgeous Turkish carpet.
The onsite demonstration of sales technique was nearly worth the price of the rug.
We sat on upholstered benches around a large, open area, a gleaming polished wood floor. Huge carpets woven in colorful intricate designs hung on the walls behind us.
Drinks were offered: apple tea, plain tea, bottled water or Turkish coffee. I chose apple tea, which was served in a small curved glass nestled in a small colorfully decorated bowl accompanied by a miniature spoon.
The talk was delivered by a charming Turkish man with a charming Turkish accent. He talked about carpet quality. Four or five big men, carpet rollers, hovered around the doorway to an adjacent room, which was piled waist-high with hundreds of beautiful rugs. Thousands, according to The Istanbul Handicraft Center’s Web site. Some were folded and stacked. Others were rolled and lined up standing on end. The smaller ones were stacked in piles of about 30. Two by two, the rollers selected and unfurled these works of art on the open floor before us while the lecturer talked. The floor was soon covered with runners and rugs of all sizes, colors and patterns.
Carpets piled up, layer upon layer. By the time he finished his talk, the floor was crisscrossed with 40 or 50 carpets. All gorgeous.
He showed us the high quality stuff first, of course, so we developed an eye for the best, a taste for expensive. Good plan.
The talk was short and sweet, with excellent visuals. We got important and useful information about knots and weaves and natural dyes and fringe and materials: wool on wool, wool on cotton, wool on silk, silk on silk. We learned a bit about the weavers and about how to judge the quality of a carpet.
The atmosphere shifted, however, when I rumbled through my purse for a small piece of yellow paper. The dimensions of the floor of my office were scribbled in pencil. I said I was considering the purchase of a rug for this floor.
Full disclosure -- considering is not the right word. I was ready to buy a Turkish carpet. In Turkey. I was really ready.
The lecturer zeroed in. The sale began.
We (my three traveling companions and our tour guide) were directed to another, private room. A new salesman was introduced, Mr. Yakup Ceki Karmona, one of the presidents of the company. Another charming Turkish accent.
We conversed. He asked what colors I was looking for, what kind of design, the size of my room, whether I wanted wool or cotton or silk. He showed me the best first, of course.
He showed me several gorgeous designs before I asked about price.
Way too high.
We conversed. He complimented me on my excellent taste and my desire for authenticity, quality and workmanship. I felt powerful and special and smart, even though I was fully aware I would be the one forking over money.
He brought out some less expensive rugs. The rug rollers were pressed into service again and again. (Nice muscular shoulders, by the way. Rippling, even.)
I find the carpet of my dreams.
“I’m not prepared to purchase a carpet today,” I said. I meant it.
“I never buy on impulse. I’ll be in Istanbul for two more days and I would like to consider this price and this rug and perhaps purchase tomorrow.”
I actually said that.
He smiled. “We like to strike while the iron is hot.”
He actually said that.
I demur.
He has a special offer for me. He names his price.
We talk.
He asks me to name my price. I do.
We split the difference.
Bingo. The papers arrive. Sign here. Sign there. Please fill this out. He takes my credit card. I sign.
Free delivery? Of course.
For more about The Istanbul Handicraft Center, go to www.istanbulhandicraftcenter.com
A brief history of my boxing career
By Margie Reins Smith (6/17/2010)
My box collection is getting quite impressive.
When I moved, 14 years ago, it had peaked. I’d lived in the same house for 25 years and the basement space was generous enough to accommodate several hundred boxes. However, I’m not one to pay big bucks for a moving company to tote a truckload of empty boxes from one dank basement to another. Out they went. After the move, I had to start over.
In the last few years, without even trying, I’ve built my collection nearly up to its former glory. I have a vast repertoire of gift boxes and packing boxes and mailing boxes of various sizes and shapes.
I do not have OCD. I am not a neat freak. Overall, I’m not a saver or a collector, like one of my oldest and dearest friends who saves all the family photo-type Christmas cards she has received during her entire lifetime and glues them into scrapbooks. She also has a massive collection of pricey animal figurines and shelves full of African violets that bloom their little butts off. Another friend has every single issue of Gourmet magazine from the last 10 years. She has even tagged the pages where the good recipes are with color-coded sticky notes – blue for entrees, yellow for desserts, pink for salads, etc. Another friend, a wine connoisseur, boasts of two garbage bags filled with corks, stored in his garage. He’s sure somebody will come up with a good plan for using them or recycling them. Someday.
I’ve learned to pitch the corks and the houseplants that refuse to cooperate, but I can’t make myself throw away a good, sturdy box. Now that I do so much shopping on the Internet, this reluctance to part with good cardboard is getting out of hand. I hate to shop. If I need a new pair of shoes from a manufacturer I know and like, I log on to its Website, order the style and size and color I need. Voila. Within a week I’m clumping around in new shoes. The bonus is (usually) free shipping and two (count ’em – TWO) nice boxes: one, a shoebox (my favorite shoe manufacturer’s box even has a cool hinged lid; and two, the nice big sturdy brown cardboard box in which the shoebox-with-a-cool-hinged-lid was packed. Hey, the label even peels off with one clean swoop.
How can any responsible person pitch stuff like this into the trash or the recycle bin?
Every three or four years, when I clean the basement (another chore I dislike) I weed out duplicates and triplicates. I stack one shelf with the small boxes that usually house earrings and bracelets and small doo-dads. Many of these treasures still have their form-fitting squares of cotton-like material nestled in the bottom. Another shelf is for shoe boxes. Another for shirt/shorts/sweaters boxes. Another for odd-sized boxes, like the one my coffee maker came in or the one that LL Bean used to send cushions for my Adirondack chairs. Another area is floor-to-ceiling mailing boxes of the larger kind – the ones that brought computers and microwave ovens and printers, for instance. I also have a stockpile of various sizes of mailing tubes.
I have a few huge boxes. Once I stole a terrific one – the Cadillac of its ilk -- from a neighbor’s front lawn on trash pick-up day. His big-screen TV had been delivered in it. A friend helped me make it into a playhouse for my grandsons. We cut holes for a door and for windows and we painted shutters and flowerboxes and bricks and shingles on it.
At Christmas time friends and family jostle each other for time in my basement to pick out boxes for the gifts they’re giving.
Soon after I moved (14 years ago) a friend who confessed to having a box collection of his own made the ultimate sacrifice. He jump-started my new collection in my new house by giving me five boxes of varying sizes from his own well-preserved stash. He’s my boxing coach. I owe the glorious state of my new box collection to his support and encouragement.
My box collection is getting quite impressive.
When I moved, 14 years ago, it had peaked. I’d lived in the same house for 25 years and the basement space was generous enough to accommodate several hundred boxes. However, I’m not one to pay big bucks for a moving company to tote a truckload of empty boxes from one dank basement to another. Out they went. After the move, I had to start over.
In the last few years, without even trying, I’ve built my collection nearly up to its former glory. I have a vast repertoire of gift boxes and packing boxes and mailing boxes of various sizes and shapes.
I do not have OCD. I am not a neat freak. Overall, I’m not a saver or a collector, like one of my oldest and dearest friends who saves all the family photo-type Christmas cards she has received during her entire lifetime and glues them into scrapbooks. She also has a massive collection of pricey animal figurines and shelves full of African violets that bloom their little butts off. Another friend has every single issue of Gourmet magazine from the last 10 years. She has even tagged the pages where the good recipes are with color-coded sticky notes – blue for entrees, yellow for desserts, pink for salads, etc. Another friend, a wine connoisseur, boasts of two garbage bags filled with corks, stored in his garage. He’s sure somebody will come up with a good plan for using them or recycling them. Someday.
I’ve learned to pitch the corks and the houseplants that refuse to cooperate, but I can’t make myself throw away a good, sturdy box. Now that I do so much shopping on the Internet, this reluctance to part with good cardboard is getting out of hand. I hate to shop. If I need a new pair of shoes from a manufacturer I know and like, I log on to its Website, order the style and size and color I need. Voila. Within a week I’m clumping around in new shoes. The bonus is (usually) free shipping and two (count ’em – TWO) nice boxes: one, a shoebox (my favorite shoe manufacturer’s box even has a cool hinged lid; and two, the nice big sturdy brown cardboard box in which the shoebox-with-a-cool-hinged-lid was packed. Hey, the label even peels off with one clean swoop.
How can any responsible person pitch stuff like this into the trash or the recycle bin?
Every three or four years, when I clean the basement (another chore I dislike) I weed out duplicates and triplicates. I stack one shelf with the small boxes that usually house earrings and bracelets and small doo-dads. Many of these treasures still have their form-fitting squares of cotton-like material nestled in the bottom. Another shelf is for shoe boxes. Another for shirt/shorts/sweaters boxes. Another for odd-sized boxes, like the one my coffee maker came in or the one that LL Bean used to send cushions for my Adirondack chairs. Another area is floor-to-ceiling mailing boxes of the larger kind – the ones that brought computers and microwave ovens and printers, for instance. I also have a stockpile of various sizes of mailing tubes.
I have a few huge boxes. Once I stole a terrific one – the Cadillac of its ilk -- from a neighbor’s front lawn on trash pick-up day. His big-screen TV had been delivered in it. A friend helped me make it into a playhouse for my grandsons. We cut holes for a door and for windows and we painted shutters and flowerboxes and bricks and shingles on it.
At Christmas time friends and family jostle each other for time in my basement to pick out boxes for the gifts they’re giving.
Soon after I moved (14 years ago) a friend who confessed to having a box collection of his own made the ultimate sacrifice. He jump-started my new collection in my new house by giving me five boxes of varying sizes from his own well-preserved stash. He’s my boxing coach. I owe the glorious state of my new box collection to his support and encouragement.
Older women
By Margie Reins Smith (6/1/2010)
My last blog entry was about one of my family’s few heirlooms, THE wedding handkerchief. The scrap of linen and lace has been carried four times, most recently by my youngest daughter, last weekend, at her wedding. Each time it is carried, I carefully wash and iron it and put it back in its envelope. I record the name of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage and I stick it in the back of a dresser drawer.
The handkerchief has never been used. It has never been blown in. It has never dried a happy tear or mopped a single, glistening bead of bridal sweat.
In my last blog entry, I rattled on about hoping this daughter would be the first to use it. Daintily, I hoped. Perhaps she would use a corner of the handkerchief to delicately brush a crumb of wedding cake from her lips. Maybe she’d be called upon to tenderly blot a bead of sweat from the groom’s brow as he graciously acknowledged a heartfelt toast to the newlyweds from the Best Man.
On the evening of May 22, my daughter poked this scrap of vintage lace down the front of her gown, glided down a candlelit aisle and married a wonderful man. Afterward, at the reception, she fished the handkerchief from her cleavage and handed it to me.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose this,” she said. “Keep it for the rest of the evening, OK?”
I tucked it into a corner of my teensy little evening purse.
In this purse, a scrappy little miniature thing that dangles from a slim braided cord, I had already crammed a pair of reading glasses and a pair of bifocals; comb and lipstick; my driver’s license and registration and insurance stuff; a credit card and some singles for valet parking; a pill container; one Kleenex; and one cough drop. These are purse essentials -- absolute minimum purse essentials.
I squeezed the treasured, never-used handkerchief into the tightly-packed interior and snapped the purse shut.
Later that evening, as merriment evolved and the music got louder, I developed a scratchy throat from screeching at friends and family. I soothed my inflamed throat with THE cough drop. My voice got raspier. I reached into my purse for THE Kleenex.
Alas, without realizing, I blew my nose in the wedding handkerchief.
Aaaaak! The mother of the bride, of all people, finally christened the family heirloom. In a most un-delicate manner.
In praise of older women
Because this is a blog about grandmothers, I must pass along a wonderful quotation from a National Post column by Canadian novelist and short story writer Katherine Govier. I love her comments because I am writing a book and it’s pretty scary to be writing a first novel in the age of Kindles and Sony Readers and Nooks and E-books and books-on- tape and the Que (an electronic reader aimed at businessmen and women) and the Skiff and the eDGe (a reader designed for students).
It’s also pretty scary BEING an older woman and to BE WRITING a book about older women.
Here’s what Glovier said:
“You do hear, in publishing circles, the occasional complaint that the audience is 'graying.' Yep, it is. It is also loyal, intelligent, informed, crazy about Canada, opinionated, and not going anywhere. These women have years of reading ahead of them. They will not be switching their allegiance to video games or social media. They will read, and discuss what they read, as long as they have eyes in their heads. Anyway, they’re not all gray. And there are a few men among them, I notice now. Also some younger people. Younger than me, I have to say. The audience is a bigger mix than it first appears to be. But yes, it is mainly older women. These are the buyers, the ones who get the ball rolling. Let’s face it, they are the mainstay and the lifeblood of books in our country. Maybe in most countries.... So let’s hear it for older women who read. Without their wisdom, curiosity and lust for life, their humour, loyalty and pride of place, we would be nowhere."
Govier’s latest novel is The Ghost Brush.
My last blog entry was about one of my family’s few heirlooms, THE wedding handkerchief. The scrap of linen and lace has been carried four times, most recently by my youngest daughter, last weekend, at her wedding. Each time it is carried, I carefully wash and iron it and put it back in its envelope. I record the name of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage and I stick it in the back of a dresser drawer.
The handkerchief has never been used. It has never been blown in. It has never dried a happy tear or mopped a single, glistening bead of bridal sweat.
In my last blog entry, I rattled on about hoping this daughter would be the first to use it. Daintily, I hoped. Perhaps she would use a corner of the handkerchief to delicately brush a crumb of wedding cake from her lips. Maybe she’d be called upon to tenderly blot a bead of sweat from the groom’s brow as he graciously acknowledged a heartfelt toast to the newlyweds from the Best Man.
On the evening of May 22, my daughter poked this scrap of vintage lace down the front of her gown, glided down a candlelit aisle and married a wonderful man. Afterward, at the reception, she fished the handkerchief from her cleavage and handed it to me.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose this,” she said. “Keep it for the rest of the evening, OK?”
I tucked it into a corner of my teensy little evening purse.
In this purse, a scrappy little miniature thing that dangles from a slim braided cord, I had already crammed a pair of reading glasses and a pair of bifocals; comb and lipstick; my driver’s license and registration and insurance stuff; a credit card and some singles for valet parking; a pill container; one Kleenex; and one cough drop. These are purse essentials -- absolute minimum purse essentials.
I squeezed the treasured, never-used handkerchief into the tightly-packed interior and snapped the purse shut.
Later that evening, as merriment evolved and the music got louder, I developed a scratchy throat from screeching at friends and family. I soothed my inflamed throat with THE cough drop. My voice got raspier. I reached into my purse for THE Kleenex.
Alas, without realizing, I blew my nose in the wedding handkerchief.
Aaaaak! The mother of the bride, of all people, finally christened the family heirloom. In a most un-delicate manner.
In praise of older women
Because this is a blog about grandmothers, I must pass along a wonderful quotation from a National Post column by Canadian novelist and short story writer Katherine Govier. I love her comments because I am writing a book and it’s pretty scary to be writing a first novel in the age of Kindles and Sony Readers and Nooks and E-books and books-on- tape and the Que (an electronic reader aimed at businessmen and women) and the Skiff and the eDGe (a reader designed for students).
It’s also pretty scary BEING an older woman and to BE WRITING a book about older women.
Here’s what Glovier said:
“You do hear, in publishing circles, the occasional complaint that the audience is 'graying.' Yep, it is. It is also loyal, intelligent, informed, crazy about Canada, opinionated, and not going anywhere. These women have years of reading ahead of them. They will not be switching their allegiance to video games or social media. They will read, and discuss what they read, as long as they have eyes in their heads. Anyway, they’re not all gray. And there are a few men among them, I notice now. Also some younger people. Younger than me, I have to say. The audience is a bigger mix than it first appears to be. But yes, it is mainly older women. These are the buyers, the ones who get the ball rolling. Let’s face it, they are the mainstay and the lifeblood of books in our country. Maybe in most countries.... So let’s hear it for older women who read. Without their wisdom, curiosity and lust for life, their humour, loyalty and pride of place, we would be nowhere."
Govier’s latest novel is The Ghost Brush.
Hanky Panky
By Margie Reins Smith (5/17/2010)
Next week, my youngest daughter will continue a more than 70-year-old family tradition. She will carry our heirloom wedding handkerchief when she walks down the aisle. It will serve as the “something old” of the four required items to be included in every bride’s wedding finery: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” My mother – the bride’s grandmother -- always added: “and a penny in her shoe.” I think that was an embellishment peculiar to our family, but just in case, the bride will have a penny in her shoe.
It’s all supposed to bring good luck to the bride and groom and assure a long and happy marriage. You can’t beat that.
My daughter’s dress will be the “something new.” A girlfriend’s blue garter will do double duty as the “something borrowed” and the “something blue.”
Who carries handkerchiefs anymore? I don’t own one except for this old-timer, this special edition. Kleenex is more practical. Disposable, too, and much more sanitary.
Does anybody remember the old-fashioned idea that a young woman can purposely drop her handkerchief behind her as she walks past the young man she wants to meet? She hoped he would pick it up and run after her. “You hoo, Miss. You dropped something.”
The whole idea was he would then have an opportunity to strike up a conversation with her and eventually ask for her phone number. Her mission would be accomplished.
I’ll bet 90 percent of women under 50 never heard of this outdated feminine ploy. Can you imagine a 21st Century woman allowing a Kleenex to flutter to the sidewalk behind her? More incredible, can you picture a 21st Century young man picking that Kleenex up, then running after her to return it? I think not. If today’s woman spots a young man she likes, she gets his name, then calls him on his cell and asks him out. If he says “Thanks, but no,” she texts a dozen girlfriends about the experience and moves on.
Lots of other things about weddings have changed. Perhaps evolved is a better word, because some of these newfangled ideas are improvements.
Formal, engraved invitations, for example. Remember those? You were supposed to reply to a formal wedding invite on one side of a single sheet of white or cream-colored paper, using black or dark blue ink. It had to be hand-written with the exact formal wording dictated by Emily Post.
Centered, too. Which meant you first filled a trash basket with crumpled pieces of white or cream-colored paper because it was hard to get all that formality centered on the first try.
Mr. and Mrs. So and So
accept with pleasure the kind invitation
of Mr. and Mrs. So and So
to attend the wedding of their daughter, Miss So and So
at seven thirty o’clock on Saturday, the fifteenth of May, two thousand and ten
at Such and Such Church
and the reception immediately following
The receiving line is no longer de rigueur either. Thank God.
The father of the bride is no longer responsible for underwriting the whole shebang. I suppose he would also say, “Thank God.”
These days guests receive stamped, pre-addressed envelopes and reply cards along with their invites, which can range from traditional black ink on cream-colored paper to art deco designs to weird-shaped cut outs with psychedelic tie-dyed borders to bright yellow three-by-five-inch cards decorated with pink flamingos.
The past 50 years have seen changes beyond wedding etiquette. We no longer have to wear white on tennis courts or wait until Memorial Day to drag out the white pants and patent leather shoes. Ladies no longer have to wear girdles and stockings and slips and hats and white gloves when they go to weddings or to church or to shop, then have lunch at a downtown restaurant.
My daughter will carry the family tradition forward with this particular delicate, lace-edged handkerchief. I think it was originally my mother’s. Maybe it was her mother’s. It’s old, and it has been carried in three weddings, so far. Soon to be four.
And even though it has never been actually used as a handkerchief, it is getting ragged and thin. It has a couple tiny holes in it even though it has only been tucked carefully into bridal cleavage on three occasions. After the weddings, it gets washed, ironed and placed in an envelope along with documentation about its use. My mother carried it in her wedding in 1938. I carried it at mine in 1964. My oldest daughter carried it when she walked down the aisle in 1995. Now it will do its thing again in our family’s 2010 wedding.
This time, I hope the bride actually uses the handkerchief to swipe aside a happy teardrop or to mop a bead of sweat from the groom’s brow. Use it or lose it is my motto.
Good luck and good wishes for a long, happy life together, bride and groom. I love you both.
Next week, my youngest daughter will continue a more than 70-year-old family tradition. She will carry our heirloom wedding handkerchief when she walks down the aisle. It will serve as the “something old” of the four required items to be included in every bride’s wedding finery: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” My mother – the bride’s grandmother -- always added: “and a penny in her shoe.” I think that was an embellishment peculiar to our family, but just in case, the bride will have a penny in her shoe.
It’s all supposed to bring good luck to the bride and groom and assure a long and happy marriage. You can’t beat that.
My daughter’s dress will be the “something new.” A girlfriend’s blue garter will do double duty as the “something borrowed” and the “something blue.”
Who carries handkerchiefs anymore? I don’t own one except for this old-timer, this special edition. Kleenex is more practical. Disposable, too, and much more sanitary.
Does anybody remember the old-fashioned idea that a young woman can purposely drop her handkerchief behind her as she walks past the young man she wants to meet? She hoped he would pick it up and run after her. “You hoo, Miss. You dropped something.”
The whole idea was he would then have an opportunity to strike up a conversation with her and eventually ask for her phone number. Her mission would be accomplished.
I’ll bet 90 percent of women under 50 never heard of this outdated feminine ploy. Can you imagine a 21st Century woman allowing a Kleenex to flutter to the sidewalk behind her? More incredible, can you picture a 21st Century young man picking that Kleenex up, then running after her to return it? I think not. If today’s woman spots a young man she likes, she gets his name, then calls him on his cell and asks him out. If he says “Thanks, but no,” she texts a dozen girlfriends about the experience and moves on.
Lots of other things about weddings have changed. Perhaps evolved is a better word, because some of these newfangled ideas are improvements.
Formal, engraved invitations, for example. Remember those? You were supposed to reply to a formal wedding invite on one side of a single sheet of white or cream-colored paper, using black or dark blue ink. It had to be hand-written with the exact formal wording dictated by Emily Post.
Centered, too. Which meant you first filled a trash basket with crumpled pieces of white or cream-colored paper because it was hard to get all that formality centered on the first try.
Mr. and Mrs. So and So
accept with pleasure the kind invitation
of Mr. and Mrs. So and So
to attend the wedding of their daughter, Miss So and So
at seven thirty o’clock on Saturday, the fifteenth of May, two thousand and ten
at Such and Such Church
and the reception immediately following
The receiving line is no longer de rigueur either. Thank God.
The father of the bride is no longer responsible for underwriting the whole shebang. I suppose he would also say, “Thank God.”
These days guests receive stamped, pre-addressed envelopes and reply cards along with their invites, which can range from traditional black ink on cream-colored paper to art deco designs to weird-shaped cut outs with psychedelic tie-dyed borders to bright yellow three-by-five-inch cards decorated with pink flamingos.
The past 50 years have seen changes beyond wedding etiquette. We no longer have to wear white on tennis courts or wait until Memorial Day to drag out the white pants and patent leather shoes. Ladies no longer have to wear girdles and stockings and slips and hats and white gloves when they go to weddings or to church or to shop, then have lunch at a downtown restaurant.
My daughter will carry the family tradition forward with this particular delicate, lace-edged handkerchief. I think it was originally my mother’s. Maybe it was her mother’s. It’s old, and it has been carried in three weddings, so far. Soon to be four.
And even though it has never been actually used as a handkerchief, it is getting ragged and thin. It has a couple tiny holes in it even though it has only been tucked carefully into bridal cleavage on three occasions. After the weddings, it gets washed, ironed and placed in an envelope along with documentation about its use. My mother carried it in her wedding in 1938. I carried it at mine in 1964. My oldest daughter carried it when she walked down the aisle in 1995. Now it will do its thing again in our family’s 2010 wedding.
This time, I hope the bride actually uses the handkerchief to swipe aside a happy teardrop or to mop a bead of sweat from the groom’s brow. Use it or lose it is my motto.
Good luck and good wishes for a long, happy life together, bride and groom. I love you both.
Mulch Appreciated
By Margie Reins Smith (5/3/10)
My daughter thought I was nuts. This is not new. Adult children, whether they admit it or not, are usually on the lookout for signs that it's time for Mom to consider checking in to The Home.
She watched me, weirdly fascinated, rolling her eyes upward and shaking her head from side to side, as I cut three banana peels into postage stamp-sized pieces with a kitchen shears. Had I overdosed on blood pressure medication? Had I been nipping at the cooking wine?
"What the hell are you doing?” she said, finally.
I never would have predicted – back during my teenage and twentysomething years – that I’d get excited about composting. I never heard the verb to compost or the noun compost until the mid 1990s. Even then, I didn’t pay much attention.
For the last ten years, however, I’ve kept a waist-high black plastic bin behind my garage. It has a lid that seals firmly with the turn of a handle. Two small side doors slide upward, near the bottom.
It creates miraculous stuff.
I toss kitchen scraps, weeds, spent flowers and dead leaves into the top. I stir it up with a pitchfork now and then. (If anybody is watching, I strike a pose reminiscent of American Gothic.) And, lo, within a few months, my discarded dead stuff has been transformed into beautiful black dirt. Compost, if you will. Or mulch. Whatever you want to call it.
Mother Nature is a genius.
I have oodles of this beautiful dirt for my vegetable garden and my herb garden and for the few flowers that compete for the filtered sunshine in my yard.
I love composting because it mystifies my daughters.
I love composting because I don't have to buy bags of topsoil. Buying dirt has always seemed odd and oxymoronic, sort of like defrosting meat quickly in the microwave in the morning so you can cook it in the Slow-Cooker for the rest of the day.
I've dedicated my life to getting rid of dirt. I have plenty of it inside my house and my car and my closets. I work to get rid of it, not to buy it back in 20-pound bags.
Composting also lets me decrease the amount of stuff I poke down my kitchen sink disposer. Coffee grounds, egg shells, fruit and vegetable peelings (except for citrus) – it all gets chopped up and pitched into the big black bin behind the garage.
Best of all: Composting makes me feel good. It keeps me from feeling guilty.
When I visit a fresh produce market or a grocery store featuring aisle after aisle of glossy fruits and vegetables, I am seduced. I buy too much. Everything looks good. The tomatoes are so red, the broccoli is so firm, the asparagus and the apples and the onions – they all look so plump and shiny and good-for-you. They beckon. I fall in love with them.
I load up my cart and carry too much of it home with me. Often, I forget about some of the items until – alas – it’s too late.
Now that I'm a composter, I am absolved from the guilt of overbuying. When I discover a bag of slimy spinach or a fistful of limp asparagus in the back of the vegetable drawer, instead of kicking myself, I compost. I am making dirt for my garden.
I vow to make better decisions the next time I mosey down the produce aisle, but in the meantime, I chop watermelon rinds, cut up banana skins and save potato and carrot peelings.
Voila! Compost. Not guilty.
My daughter thought I was nuts. This is not new. Adult children, whether they admit it or not, are usually on the lookout for signs that it's time for Mom to consider checking in to The Home.
She watched me, weirdly fascinated, rolling her eyes upward and shaking her head from side to side, as I cut three banana peels into postage stamp-sized pieces with a kitchen shears. Had I overdosed on blood pressure medication? Had I been nipping at the cooking wine?
"What the hell are you doing?” she said, finally.
I never would have predicted – back during my teenage and twentysomething years – that I’d get excited about composting. I never heard the verb to compost or the noun compost until the mid 1990s. Even then, I didn’t pay much attention.
For the last ten years, however, I’ve kept a waist-high black plastic bin behind my garage. It has a lid that seals firmly with the turn of a handle. Two small side doors slide upward, near the bottom.
It creates miraculous stuff.
I toss kitchen scraps, weeds, spent flowers and dead leaves into the top. I stir it up with a pitchfork now and then. (If anybody is watching, I strike a pose reminiscent of American Gothic.) And, lo, within a few months, my discarded dead stuff has been transformed into beautiful black dirt. Compost, if you will. Or mulch. Whatever you want to call it.
Mother Nature is a genius.
I have oodles of this beautiful dirt for my vegetable garden and my herb garden and for the few flowers that compete for the filtered sunshine in my yard.
I love composting because it mystifies my daughters.
I love composting because I don't have to buy bags of topsoil. Buying dirt has always seemed odd and oxymoronic, sort of like defrosting meat quickly in the microwave in the morning so you can cook it in the Slow-Cooker for the rest of the day.
I've dedicated my life to getting rid of dirt. I have plenty of it inside my house and my car and my closets. I work to get rid of it, not to buy it back in 20-pound bags.
Composting also lets me decrease the amount of stuff I poke down my kitchen sink disposer. Coffee grounds, egg shells, fruit and vegetable peelings (except for citrus) – it all gets chopped up and pitched into the big black bin behind the garage.
Best of all: Composting makes me feel good. It keeps me from feeling guilty.
When I visit a fresh produce market or a grocery store featuring aisle after aisle of glossy fruits and vegetables, I am seduced. I buy too much. Everything looks good. The tomatoes are so red, the broccoli is so firm, the asparagus and the apples and the onions – they all look so plump and shiny and good-for-you. They beckon. I fall in love with them.
I load up my cart and carry too much of it home with me. Often, I forget about some of the items until – alas – it’s too late.
Now that I'm a composter, I am absolved from the guilt of overbuying. When I discover a bag of slimy spinach or a fistful of limp asparagus in the back of the vegetable drawer, instead of kicking myself, I compost. I am making dirt for my garden.
I vow to make better decisions the next time I mosey down the produce aisle, but in the meantime, I chop watermelon rinds, cut up banana skins and save potato and carrot peelings.
Voila! Compost. Not guilty.
Major Pettigrew, I love you
By Margie Reins Smith (4/19/10)
Two or three times a year I stumble upon a book I love so much, I read it slowly. I shamble through the pages. I read a chapter; put it down; do something else; read another chapter; mosey around; read something else; go back to read another chapter. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is just such a book. It’s Helen Simonson’s first novel. Her second novel can’t come soon enough for me.
Sixty-eight year old widower Major Ernest Pettigrew, Royal Sussex, retired, lives a quiet, dignified life in a quiet English village peopled by proper English ladies and gentlemen ensconced in charmingly thatched, ancestral cottages. He reads. He walks. He observes the absurdities of the 21st century. He follows a strict daily routine, endures lonely Sunday afternoons, carries a cane. He favors tradition, family, honor, humility. He doesn’t own a cell phone. Who cannot love this wry protagonist?
The Major sizes up the waitstaff at his golf club during a post-golf lunch : (These were) “waitresses who, culled from the pool of unmotivated young women being spat out by the local school, specialized in a mood of suppressed rage. Many seemed to suffer from some disease of holes in the face and it had taken the Major some time to work out that club rules required the young women to remove all jewelry and that the holes were piercings bereft of decoration.”
Major Pettigrew befriends the village’s Pakistani shop owner, Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a widow. The friendship starts calmly enough, but gathers speed and whips itself into nearly hurricane-force winds. Along the way, Simonson examines social mores, racism, the corrupting effect of too much money, and the ins and outs of trying to do the right thing in spite of it all.
The Major’s daydreams are flamboyant, romantic, but in the end, he’s a realist.
“He allowed himself to imagine striding into (Mrs. Ali’s) shop at the end of the day, smelling of gunpowder and rain-misted leather, a magnificent rainbow-hued drake spilling from his game bag. It would be a primal offering of food from man to woman and a satisfyingly primitive declaration of intent. However, he mused, one could never be sure these days who would be offended by being handed a dead mallard bleeding from a breast full of tooth-breaking shot and sticky about the neck with dog saliva.”
Widowers are in demand, wherever they reside.
The ladies of Edgecombe St. Mary conspire to set the Major up with Grace, their selected suitable unattached lady, the village spinster. They invite him – and Grace – to tea. He refers to the date as “their project.”
“They had conspired to make a presentation of Grace. She was fully primped, her slightly elongated face made papery with pale powder and a girly pink lipstick, a coquettish scarf tied in a bow under her left ear as if she were off to a party.”
The ladies were determined, however. Later, “They had sent Grace to a luncheon date with him, all made up and forced into a hideous silk dress. She looked as ruched and tied as a holiday pork roast. They must have filled her head with advice on men, too, so that she sat and made frozen conversation all through her green salad (no dressing) and plain fish, while he chewed a steak and kidney pie as if it were shoe leather and watched the hands of the pub clock creep unwillingly around the dial.”
The Major, through a series of miscommunications prompted mainly by an unwillingness to be impolite, gets dragged into his golf club’s annual pull-out-the-stops over-the-top gala, an event he fondly remembers as a black tie evening featuring dinner and dancing. The ladies of the 21st century are into theme parties, however, and have selected “Mughal Madness” for their gala, complete with decorations, dramatic presentations, appropriate food and drink. The plot thickens. Mrs. Ali agrees to be the Major’s guest, but the evening evolves into an ugly train wreck.
Move over, Jane Austen. Move over Henry James. Move over Edith Wharton. I’d give this novel five stars out of five. I think I’ll read it again.
Two or three times a year I stumble upon a book I love so much, I read it slowly. I shamble through the pages. I read a chapter; put it down; do something else; read another chapter; mosey around; read something else; go back to read another chapter. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is just such a book. It’s Helen Simonson’s first novel. Her second novel can’t come soon enough for me.
Sixty-eight year old widower Major Ernest Pettigrew, Royal Sussex, retired, lives a quiet, dignified life in a quiet English village peopled by proper English ladies and gentlemen ensconced in charmingly thatched, ancestral cottages. He reads. He walks. He observes the absurdities of the 21st century. He follows a strict daily routine, endures lonely Sunday afternoons, carries a cane. He favors tradition, family, honor, humility. He doesn’t own a cell phone. Who cannot love this wry protagonist?
The Major sizes up the waitstaff at his golf club during a post-golf lunch : (These were) “waitresses who, culled from the pool of unmotivated young women being spat out by the local school, specialized in a mood of suppressed rage. Many seemed to suffer from some disease of holes in the face and it had taken the Major some time to work out that club rules required the young women to remove all jewelry and that the holes were piercings bereft of decoration.”
Major Pettigrew befriends the village’s Pakistani shop owner, Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a widow. The friendship starts calmly enough, but gathers speed and whips itself into nearly hurricane-force winds. Along the way, Simonson examines social mores, racism, the corrupting effect of too much money, and the ins and outs of trying to do the right thing in spite of it all.
The Major’s daydreams are flamboyant, romantic, but in the end, he’s a realist.
“He allowed himself to imagine striding into (Mrs. Ali’s) shop at the end of the day, smelling of gunpowder and rain-misted leather, a magnificent rainbow-hued drake spilling from his game bag. It would be a primal offering of food from man to woman and a satisfyingly primitive declaration of intent. However, he mused, one could never be sure these days who would be offended by being handed a dead mallard bleeding from a breast full of tooth-breaking shot and sticky about the neck with dog saliva.”
Widowers are in demand, wherever they reside.
The ladies of Edgecombe St. Mary conspire to set the Major up with Grace, their selected suitable unattached lady, the village spinster. They invite him – and Grace – to tea. He refers to the date as “their project.”
“They had conspired to make a presentation of Grace. She was fully primped, her slightly elongated face made papery with pale powder and a girly pink lipstick, a coquettish scarf tied in a bow under her left ear as if she were off to a party.”
The ladies were determined, however. Later, “They had sent Grace to a luncheon date with him, all made up and forced into a hideous silk dress. She looked as ruched and tied as a holiday pork roast. They must have filled her head with advice on men, too, so that she sat and made frozen conversation all through her green salad (no dressing) and plain fish, while he chewed a steak and kidney pie as if it were shoe leather and watched the hands of the pub clock creep unwillingly around the dial.”
The Major, through a series of miscommunications prompted mainly by an unwillingness to be impolite, gets dragged into his golf club’s annual pull-out-the-stops over-the-top gala, an event he fondly remembers as a black tie evening featuring dinner and dancing. The ladies of the 21st century are into theme parties, however, and have selected “Mughal Madness” for their gala, complete with decorations, dramatic presentations, appropriate food and drink. The plot thickens. Mrs. Ali agrees to be the Major’s guest, but the evening evolves into an ugly train wreck.
Move over, Jane Austen. Move over Henry James. Move over Edith Wharton. I’d give this novel five stars out of five. I think I’ll read it again.
Where do babies come from, anyway?
By Margie Reins Smith (4/5/10)
My grandmother – my mother’s mother – was the only one who dared to answer when I asked where babies came from. My mother had been dancing around the question for months and hadn’t come up with anything remotely satisfying. I was five years old.
"God makes them," my mother said, at first. I’d heard that before and it wasn’t good enough.
I persisted.
"They grow inside their mothers’ tummies," she finally confessed. When I pressed her for details about how they got into such an odd place, she said, "God puts them there."
Finally, she called a halt. She waved her hand and walked away with a non-answer: "When you’re older, you’ll find out."
My grandmother stuck with the God-theory, too, but she said God made babies in heaven, in a big oven. "He puts all the ingredients together – eyes and ears and arms and knees and chubby little cheeks and tummies and dimples and eyelashes and fingernails," she said, and he kneads them like dough."
I used to help her bake bread from scratch, so I knew about kneading bread.
"He punches and pokes and shapes them into baby shapes, then puts them in little baby-sized bread pans. Pink bread pans for girls and blue pans for boys.
"He slides them all into his big oven in heaven and sets the timer. When they’re almost done, he opens the oven door and presses his finger on each little tummy to check which babies are done. "That’s what bellybuttons are" she said. "God’s fingerprint – the exact spot where God touched you.
"The first babies he takes out of the oven have pale, pink skin," she said. "But with all those babies cooking at the same time, it takes a few minutes to retrieve every single one. The ones he leaves in a little longer are browner, like bread that toasted a little longer."
In retrospect, I consider the racist overtones to her theory. The darker babies were left in the oven too long? On the other hand, perhaps the pinker babies were taken out of the oven too soon. She never elaborated on that detail.
"When they’re all out of the oven," my grandmother said, "God lines them up on wire racks to cool. Every single day, he has rows and rows of babies, ready to be sent to families who will love them.
" God walks up and down the rows and stops in front of all the the pink bread pans to tuck these babies in. The ones in the blue pans, he skips."
The girls are finished. Tucked in. Completed. The boys aren’t. They’re still hanging out.
In my grandmother’s world, penis envy hadn’t been invented.
My grandmother – my mother’s mother – was the only one who dared to answer when I asked where babies came from. My mother had been dancing around the question for months and hadn’t come up with anything remotely satisfying. I was five years old.
"God makes them," my mother said, at first. I’d heard that before and it wasn’t good enough.
I persisted.
"They grow inside their mothers’ tummies," she finally confessed. When I pressed her for details about how they got into such an odd place, she said, "God puts them there."
Finally, she called a halt. She waved her hand and walked away with a non-answer: "When you’re older, you’ll find out."
My grandmother stuck with the God-theory, too, but she said God made babies in heaven, in a big oven. "He puts all the ingredients together – eyes and ears and arms and knees and chubby little cheeks and tummies and dimples and eyelashes and fingernails," she said, and he kneads them like dough."
I used to help her bake bread from scratch, so I knew about kneading bread.
"He punches and pokes and shapes them into baby shapes, then puts them in little baby-sized bread pans. Pink bread pans for girls and blue pans for boys.
"He slides them all into his big oven in heaven and sets the timer. When they’re almost done, he opens the oven door and presses his finger on each little tummy to check which babies are done. "That’s what bellybuttons are" she said. "God’s fingerprint – the exact spot where God touched you.
"The first babies he takes out of the oven have pale, pink skin," she said. "But with all those babies cooking at the same time, it takes a few minutes to retrieve every single one. The ones he leaves in a little longer are browner, like bread that toasted a little longer."
In retrospect, I consider the racist overtones to her theory. The darker babies were left in the oven too long? On the other hand, perhaps the pinker babies were taken out of the oven too soon. She never elaborated on that detail.
"When they’re all out of the oven," my grandmother said, "God lines them up on wire racks to cool. Every single day, he has rows and rows of babies, ready to be sent to families who will love them.
" God walks up and down the rows and stops in front of all the the pink bread pans to tuck these babies in. The ones in the blue pans, he skips."
The girls are finished. Tucked in. Completed. The boys aren’t. They’re still hanging out.
In my grandmother’s world, penis envy hadn’t been invented.
Snakes, snails and puppy-dog tails
By Margie Reins Smith (3/22/10)
Don’t tell me little girls’ brains and little boys’ brains are the same. They aren’t. I’ve been trying to believe this since the 1970s, when it was first pitched to unsuspecting parents. I had a hard time with it then and I still do. My own daughters and my grandsons constantly strive to disprove the theory. I have three grown daughters in their 30s and 40s and two grandsons, ages 9 and 7.
A friend who collects Native American baskets, beadwork and souvenir miniature birchbark canoes recently gave me a pair of just-for-fun birchbark earrings. One is a tiny dangling birchbark canoe decorated with red beads. The other is a miniature infant strapped to one of those baby-board things Native American mothers used to tote their babies around on their backs.
Little girls would be fascinated with these earrings. Right off, they’re jewelry. Little girls love jewelry. Second, the earrings are tiny. Girls love miniature anything. And they dangle. The canoe wiggles and wobbles in the most engaging manner. Little girls especially love jewelry that dangles.
As an experiment, I put the earrings on before my grandsons were dropped off to spend the afternoon. I didn’t say anything about the earrings. Neither did they. They went outside on this unseasonably warm, sunny spring day to hit plastic golf balls against the side of the house with plastic baseball bats. An hour passed.
Little girls would have checked out and remarked on the earrings immediately and would have spent a half hour fussing over them, taking turns trying them on, examining the details of the canoe and marveling at the baby’s little painted-on face and shock of black hair. They would have been fascinated by the sheer miniature-ness of the items.
Another hour passed. The boys decided to run around the yard shooting each other with pretend laser guns, a la "Star Wars," dodging, ducking, hiding, leaping out from behind bushes and dramatizing agonizing deaths from painful wounds.
Another hour passed. While helping fill my bird feeders, they decided to check out the worms and bugs that, because of the warm weather, had surfaced in my flower beds. They even helped me with some yard clean up, energetically wielding brooms and rakes and hedge clippers and arguing over whose turn it was to wear the "good" gloves with the green thumbs.
Finally, I asked: "Do you notice anything different on Gramma?"
"Huh?"
I stood them before me and forced them to look into my face. "Something I’m wearing."
No answer.
"Anything new or different about Gramma?"
Blank looks.
"Above my neck!"
Nothing.
Finally: "Oh, yeah. You mean the weird earrings?"
Don’t tell me little girls’ brains and little boys’ brains are the same. They aren’t. I’ve been trying to believe this since the 1970s, when it was first pitched to unsuspecting parents. I had a hard time with it then and I still do. My own daughters and my grandsons constantly strive to disprove the theory. I have three grown daughters in their 30s and 40s and two grandsons, ages 9 and 7.
A friend who collects Native American baskets, beadwork and souvenir miniature birchbark canoes recently gave me a pair of just-for-fun birchbark earrings. One is a tiny dangling birchbark canoe decorated with red beads. The other is a miniature infant strapped to one of those baby-board things Native American mothers used to tote their babies around on their backs.
Little girls would be fascinated with these earrings. Right off, they’re jewelry. Little girls love jewelry. Second, the earrings are tiny. Girls love miniature anything. And they dangle. The canoe wiggles and wobbles in the most engaging manner. Little girls especially love jewelry that dangles.
As an experiment, I put the earrings on before my grandsons were dropped off to spend the afternoon. I didn’t say anything about the earrings. Neither did they. They went outside on this unseasonably warm, sunny spring day to hit plastic golf balls against the side of the house with plastic baseball bats. An hour passed.
Little girls would have checked out and remarked on the earrings immediately and would have spent a half hour fussing over them, taking turns trying them on, examining the details of the canoe and marveling at the baby’s little painted-on face and shock of black hair. They would have been fascinated by the sheer miniature-ness of the items.
Another hour passed. The boys decided to run around the yard shooting each other with pretend laser guns, a la "Star Wars," dodging, ducking, hiding, leaping out from behind bushes and dramatizing agonizing deaths from painful wounds.
Another hour passed. While helping fill my bird feeders, they decided to check out the worms and bugs that, because of the warm weather, had surfaced in my flower beds. They even helped me with some yard clean up, energetically wielding brooms and rakes and hedge clippers and arguing over whose turn it was to wear the "good" gloves with the green thumbs.
Finally, I asked: "Do you notice anything different on Gramma?"
"Huh?"
I stood them before me and forced them to look into my face. "Something I’m wearing."
No answer.
"Anything new or different about Gramma?"
Blank looks.
"Above my neck!"
Nothing.
Finally: "Oh, yeah. You mean the weird earrings?"
Family stories
By Margie Reins Smith (2/22/10)
I’m about to have lunch with Terry, a cousin I haven’t seen for 14 years. This has gotten me thinking about family stories that should be preserved and passed down to younger members of the family – Terry’s and my children and grandchildren.
Terry is the oldest son of one of my mother’s three younger brothers. We remember our grandmother, Alice, with great affection. We called her Gram. She was a great role model for grandmothers.
She became a young widow in the early 1920s, when my grandfather was killed in an automobile accident. He died leaving no life insurance; no estate; nothing to support his surviving wife and five children under age 12. Alice had no skills, except as a housewife and mother.
But she had a family to feed. Alice got a job doing what she knew how to do – cleaning. She cleaned office buildings after hours and she cleaned other people’s houses. Her daughters, my mother and her younger sister, were her assistants. Money was always in short supply.
One by one, as the children grew old enough to quit school and get jobs to help support the family, they decided to drop out of high school. Alice put her foot down. Education was priceless, she said, and free education was a gift that should never ever in a million years be passed up. She marched each child, in turn, back to school. They all graduated.
With the help and support of an extended family (she was the youngest of 13 children), Alice raised five successful, hard-working, independent adults, including Terry’s father and my mother. None of the five went to college, but every one of Alice’s children found satisfying ways to make a living. Four of them got married and had children. In time, Alice had 10 grandchildren. She adored every one..
But here’s the tricky part: Every one of the 10 grandchildren (me included) knew for sure we were her favorite. Terry thought he was Gram’s favorite. I thought she preferred me.
I wish I knew how she got that “preferred” message across.
When we were with her, we got unconditional love and undivided attention. We could do no wrong. She stuck up for us when our parents were angry; she provided a lap and a rocking chair when we were unhappy; she showed us new ways of doing ordinary tasks, of seeing the world around us and dealing with problems. I remember helping her bake and tend the flowers in her garden. She let me fingerpaint on her kitchen table. She fixed my favorite meals, danced with me, let me bring a wounded bird in the house. She helped me lobby for a puppy when my parents were dead set against the idea. I got the puppy.
Another family story involves my father’s side of the family. My father loved to tell people how he met my mother.
My mother and his younger sister, Phyllis, were friends. They were young twentysomethings working as secretaries in the office towers of downtown Cincinnati. In those days, young women lived with their parents until they married. My mother and Phyllis belonged to a group of young women who got together at each other’s homes to play cards.
Phyllis invited the group to her house for an evening of cards. My dad, who was hanging around in the kitchen, apparently decided to check out the girls. He saw one he liked -- my mother. He asked Phyllis to give him her phone number. Phyllis did.
He called the number and asked her on a date. She accepted and told him where she lived. When he went to pick her up, another girl answered the door. Not my mother.
Apparently, Phyllis misunderstood which girl he indicated and had given him the wrong girl’s phone number. My dad, nice guy that he was, went through with the evening’s plans.
Then he got the right phone number. He called my mother and asked her out.
The rest is history. Family history.
###############################################
I’m about to have lunch with Terry, a cousin I haven’t seen for 14 years. This has gotten me thinking about family stories that should be preserved and passed down to younger members of the family – Terry’s and my children and grandchildren.
Terry is the oldest son of one of my mother’s three younger brothers. We remember our grandmother, Alice, with great affection. We called her Gram. She was a great role model for grandmothers.
She became a young widow in the early 1920s, when my grandfather was killed in an automobile accident. He died leaving no life insurance; no estate; nothing to support his surviving wife and five children under age 12. Alice had no skills, except as a housewife and mother.
But she had a family to feed. Alice got a job doing what she knew how to do – cleaning. She cleaned office buildings after hours and she cleaned other people’s houses. Her daughters, my mother and her younger sister, were her assistants. Money was always in short supply.
One by one, as the children grew old enough to quit school and get jobs to help support the family, they decided to drop out of high school. Alice put her foot down. Education was priceless, she said, and free education was a gift that should never ever in a million years be passed up. She marched each child, in turn, back to school. They all graduated.
With the help and support of an extended family (she was the youngest of 13 children), Alice raised five successful, hard-working, independent adults, including Terry’s father and my mother. None of the five went to college, but every one of Alice’s children found satisfying ways to make a living. Four of them got married and had children. In time, Alice had 10 grandchildren. She adored every one..
But here’s the tricky part: Every one of the 10 grandchildren (me included) knew for sure we were her favorite. Terry thought he was Gram’s favorite. I thought she preferred me.
I wish I knew how she got that “preferred” message across.
When we were with her, we got unconditional love and undivided attention. We could do no wrong. She stuck up for us when our parents were angry; she provided a lap and a rocking chair when we were unhappy; she showed us new ways of doing ordinary tasks, of seeing the world around us and dealing with problems. I remember helping her bake and tend the flowers in her garden. She let me fingerpaint on her kitchen table. She fixed my favorite meals, danced with me, let me bring a wounded bird in the house. She helped me lobby for a puppy when my parents were dead set against the idea. I got the puppy.
Another family story involves my father’s side of the family. My father loved to tell people how he met my mother.
My mother and his younger sister, Phyllis, were friends. They were young twentysomethings working as secretaries in the office towers of downtown Cincinnati. In those days, young women lived with their parents until they married. My mother and Phyllis belonged to a group of young women who got together at each other’s homes to play cards.
Phyllis invited the group to her house for an evening of cards. My dad, who was hanging around in the kitchen, apparently decided to check out the girls. He saw one he liked -- my mother. He asked Phyllis to give him her phone number. Phyllis did.
He called the number and asked her on a date. She accepted and told him where she lived. When he went to pick her up, another girl answered the door. Not my mother.
Apparently, Phyllis misunderstood which girl he indicated and had given him the wrong girl’s phone number. My dad, nice guy that he was, went through with the evening’s plans.
Then he got the right phone number. He called my mother and asked her out.
The rest is history. Family history.
###############################################
Saving time, trees, money and mail carriers
By Margie Reins Smith (2/8/10)
From mid-October through Christmas Eve, some 400 slick, colorful catalogs slipped through the mail slot in my front door and thumped on the rug below. They dazzled me with their wares: gourmet cooking apps like programmable espresso makers, electric citrus presses, indoor grills, whoopie pie mixes and mahogany drawer organizers; obscure "aids" for senior citizens like hand exercisers and lighted magnifiers and pill organizers; and an unbelievable variety of travel-related gear such as disposable underwear, money belts, crushable Panama hats and power conversion kits.
The covers of these publications were gorgeous – adorable puppies, panoramic views of the pyramids, beautiful children frolicking in the snow, holiday tables set with candles and embroidered linens, china, crystal and silverware.
I leafed through every catalog, page by page. I didn’t want to miss stumbling across the perfect gift for a grandchild. Maybe I would find the tablecloth and napkins that would be just the right touch for Christmas Eve dinner. I paused and perused pants with expandable elastic belts in catalogs that promised I would look 10 pounds thinner and that nobody would be aware of the expandable elastic belt. I pondered the no-iron, reversable, packable, basic black designer dress – perfect for traveling, the cutline promised.
I dog-eared pages with items I liked.. I spent hours flipping through catalogs that, I eventually realized, were mere reshufflings of merchandise offered all year long – and last year – and 10 years ago. The stuff had just been re-positioned and put into a catalog with an alluring new cover.
I stacked all the catalogs neatly in two piles in a 14- by 21-inch crate. By New Year’s Day, they overflowed the crate and spilled out onto the floor.
I filled seven grocery bags and lugged them to the recycling bin.
These companies also have my email address. Just in case I missed the six catalogs they sent last month with last year’s merchandise reorganized, they email me news of specials and sales and close-outs and coupons and good deals. Free shipping, usually.
Enough. Stop the insanity.
On Jan. 20, I started calling the 800 number of every catalog that thunked through my door. Some of these firms are great companies that sell quality merchandise which I occasionally buy. Never mind. I don’t want to waste time reading their catalogs. When I need something, I’ll go to the Web site, check what’s available. Perhaps I’ll buy it.
I started by calling Woolrich, Pendleton, Soft Surroundings, Champion, Sahalie, Norm Thompson, Plow & Hearth and The Territory Ahead.
The phone answerers were polite, courteous, helpful. Understanding, even. One young woman thanked me for saving trees. Another asked if I’d like to stop delivery of catalogs from other companies under their umbrella. They all warned it might take a month or two for the mailings to stop.
For some, I was able to request a halt on catalogs via an automated menu: "Press 1 to be removed from our mailing list; press 2 to be added to our mailing list, press 3 to talk to a real person," and so on. Some asked to be notified by email.
OK with me. Just stop.
Since Jan. 20, I have called 22 companies that regularly send me catalogs. Besides the ones I mentioned, I asked to have my name removed from lists at Ballard Designs, Aerosoles, Home Decorators Collection, Expressions. NorthStyle, Linen Source, Sundance, Title Nine, The Great Courses, Gardener’s Supply Co., Monterey Bay and Magellans.
How did I get on these lists? Maybe I don’t want to know.
I chose to remain on the mail lists of companies I actually buy things from: LL Bean, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, Land’s End, Eddie Bauer, J. Jill and two or three others.
My mail carrier’s going to love me.
From mid-October through Christmas Eve, some 400 slick, colorful catalogs slipped through the mail slot in my front door and thumped on the rug below. They dazzled me with their wares: gourmet cooking apps like programmable espresso makers, electric citrus presses, indoor grills, whoopie pie mixes and mahogany drawer organizers; obscure "aids" for senior citizens like hand exercisers and lighted magnifiers and pill organizers; and an unbelievable variety of travel-related gear such as disposable underwear, money belts, crushable Panama hats and power conversion kits.
The covers of these publications were gorgeous – adorable puppies, panoramic views of the pyramids, beautiful children frolicking in the snow, holiday tables set with candles and embroidered linens, china, crystal and silverware.
I leafed through every catalog, page by page. I didn’t want to miss stumbling across the perfect gift for a grandchild. Maybe I would find the tablecloth and napkins that would be just the right touch for Christmas Eve dinner. I paused and perused pants with expandable elastic belts in catalogs that promised I would look 10 pounds thinner and that nobody would be aware of the expandable elastic belt. I pondered the no-iron, reversable, packable, basic black designer dress – perfect for traveling, the cutline promised.
I dog-eared pages with items I liked.. I spent hours flipping through catalogs that, I eventually realized, were mere reshufflings of merchandise offered all year long – and last year – and 10 years ago. The stuff had just been re-positioned and put into a catalog with an alluring new cover.
I stacked all the catalogs neatly in two piles in a 14- by 21-inch crate. By New Year’s Day, they overflowed the crate and spilled out onto the floor.
I filled seven grocery bags and lugged them to the recycling bin.
These companies also have my email address. Just in case I missed the six catalogs they sent last month with last year’s merchandise reorganized, they email me news of specials and sales and close-outs and coupons and good deals. Free shipping, usually.
Enough. Stop the insanity.
On Jan. 20, I started calling the 800 number of every catalog that thunked through my door. Some of these firms are great companies that sell quality merchandise which I occasionally buy. Never mind. I don’t want to waste time reading their catalogs. When I need something, I’ll go to the Web site, check what’s available. Perhaps I’ll buy it.
I started by calling Woolrich, Pendleton, Soft Surroundings, Champion, Sahalie, Norm Thompson, Plow & Hearth and The Territory Ahead.
The phone answerers were polite, courteous, helpful. Understanding, even. One young woman thanked me for saving trees. Another asked if I’d like to stop delivery of catalogs from other companies under their umbrella. They all warned it might take a month or two for the mailings to stop.
For some, I was able to request a halt on catalogs via an automated menu: "Press 1 to be removed from our mailing list; press 2 to be added to our mailing list, press 3 to talk to a real person," and so on. Some asked to be notified by email.
OK with me. Just stop.
Since Jan. 20, I have called 22 companies that regularly send me catalogs. Besides the ones I mentioned, I asked to have my name removed from lists at Ballard Designs, Aerosoles, Home Decorators Collection, Expressions. NorthStyle, Linen Source, Sundance, Title Nine, The Great Courses, Gardener’s Supply Co., Monterey Bay and Magellans.
How did I get on these lists? Maybe I don’t want to know.
I chose to remain on the mail lists of companies I actually buy things from: LL Bean, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, Land’s End, Eddie Bauer, J. Jill and two or three others.
My mail carrier’s going to love me.
3,639 (so far) Sign Up for DPS Volunteer Reading Corps
By Margie Reins Smith (1/25/10)
Volunteers and teachers and tutors are so — so nice. So supportive. So upbeat and hopeful and determined and positive.
Last Saturday’s gathering of more than 2,500 candidates for the Detroit Public Schools’ newly minted Volunteer Reading Corps drew a half dozen standing ovations during the first hour. The rally was held in the gym of Detroit’s Renaissance High School.
On the podium were Robert Bobb, DPS Emergency Financial Manager; Yvette Bing, first lady of the City of Detroit; Paul Anger, Vice President/Editor of the Detroit Free Press (the Freep initiated the call for volunteers just six weeks ago); and Charles Pugh, President of the Detroit City Council. Also on stage were Gail Russell-Jones, principal of Renaissance High School; Tia’ Von Moore-Patton, Principal of Jerry L. White Center (which adjoins Renaissance High School); Tracy Martin, DPS Deputy Chief of Academic Affairs; and Keith Johnson, President of the Detroit Federation of Teachers.
Bobb was one who got a standing ovation.
The stars of the program – the ones for whom the volunteers lept to their feet, raised their arms and clapped most enthusiastically – were the young people: the DPS "I’m In" Singers, who got the audience swaying and clapping before and after the rally; the Nevels String Ensemble made up of elementary school musicians; Randi Martin and Myrakle Riggins, second graders who offered a duet: "I can do anything – Yes I can!"; and Skylar McClanahan, Nyla Copeland, and Zoey McClanahan, three winsome preschoolers who bravely bellied up to the mikes and actually showed everyone how it’s done. They opened their books and . . . read aloud.
Standing ovation.
The most amazing part of the whole morning? Some 3,639 volunteers, so far, have signed on to help Detroit’s school children climb out of the basement where they recently scored in a national literacy test, and learn to read. Each volunteer has been asked to give an hour a week for a year, a half hour each to two students. The volunteers, Bobb hopes, will bond with their children and continue mentoring until they’re third graders.
The number of people who signed up projects out to 434,187 volunteer hours. The Free Press only asked for 100,000 hours.
I told you they were nice. Supportive. Upbeat. Hopeful. Determined. Positive.
The goal, Bobb said, is for every single child in the Detroit Public Schools to be reading at or above grade level by 2015. "And failure is not an option," he added. More applause.
Other surprises? The rally was beautifully organized. ROTC members, City Year volunteers and Renaissance High School students directed traffic, helped volunteers find where they needed to go, held the doors open and greeted everyone with smiles and "Good mornings." One young man, who was unsuccessful in directing me to the bathrooms, cheerfully waved his hand and said, "Just follow me."
Ten TV monitors placed around the gym let everybody see the faces of the children performing. The sound system was excellent. All in all, I’d give the rally and the morning’s activities four stars out of four.
The only glitch was not enough parking. But who knew? Shuttles brought people from parking slots around the neighborhood. A half hour into the opening program, someone leaned into the microphone and said traffic was still lined up outside the school for a mile.
Break-out sessions were handled efficiently. We all got an idea of what we’re supposed to do during our half-hour tutoring stints, even down to the number of minutes we should spend on each portion of the lesson. The first five lesson plans were outlined in detail.
Now, all we need are fingerprinting and background checks and we’re ready to go. Look out. Never underestimate the power of a group of committed volunteers, teachers, tutors, parents and grandparents. In 2015, when every single child in the Detroit Public Schools is reading at or above grade level, we’ll deserve a standing ovation, too.
Volunteers and teachers and tutors are so — so nice. So supportive. So upbeat and hopeful and determined and positive.
Last Saturday’s gathering of more than 2,500 candidates for the Detroit Public Schools’ newly minted Volunteer Reading Corps drew a half dozen standing ovations during the first hour. The rally was held in the gym of Detroit’s Renaissance High School.
On the podium were Robert Bobb, DPS Emergency Financial Manager; Yvette Bing, first lady of the City of Detroit; Paul Anger, Vice President/Editor of the Detroit Free Press (the Freep initiated the call for volunteers just six weeks ago); and Charles Pugh, President of the Detroit City Council. Also on stage were Gail Russell-Jones, principal of Renaissance High School; Tia’ Von Moore-Patton, Principal of Jerry L. White Center (which adjoins Renaissance High School); Tracy Martin, DPS Deputy Chief of Academic Affairs; and Keith Johnson, President of the Detroit Federation of Teachers.
Bobb was one who got a standing ovation.
The stars of the program – the ones for whom the volunteers lept to their feet, raised their arms and clapped most enthusiastically – were the young people: the DPS "I’m In" Singers, who got the audience swaying and clapping before and after the rally; the Nevels String Ensemble made up of elementary school musicians; Randi Martin and Myrakle Riggins, second graders who offered a duet: "I can do anything – Yes I can!"; and Skylar McClanahan, Nyla Copeland, and Zoey McClanahan, three winsome preschoolers who bravely bellied up to the mikes and actually showed everyone how it’s done. They opened their books and . . . read aloud.
Standing ovation.
The most amazing part of the whole morning? Some 3,639 volunteers, so far, have signed on to help Detroit’s school children climb out of the basement where they recently scored in a national literacy test, and learn to read. Each volunteer has been asked to give an hour a week for a year, a half hour each to two students. The volunteers, Bobb hopes, will bond with their children and continue mentoring until they’re third graders.
The number of people who signed up projects out to 434,187 volunteer hours. The Free Press only asked for 100,000 hours.
I told you they were nice. Supportive. Upbeat. Hopeful. Determined. Positive.
The goal, Bobb said, is for every single child in the Detroit Public Schools to be reading at or above grade level by 2015. "And failure is not an option," he added. More applause.
Other surprises? The rally was beautifully organized. ROTC members, City Year volunteers and Renaissance High School students directed traffic, helped volunteers find where they needed to go, held the doors open and greeted everyone with smiles and "Good mornings." One young man, who was unsuccessful in directing me to the bathrooms, cheerfully waved his hand and said, "Just follow me."
Ten TV monitors placed around the gym let everybody see the faces of the children performing. The sound system was excellent. All in all, I’d give the rally and the morning’s activities four stars out of four.
The only glitch was not enough parking. But who knew? Shuttles brought people from parking slots around the neighborhood. A half hour into the opening program, someone leaned into the microphone and said traffic was still lined up outside the school for a mile.
Break-out sessions were handled efficiently. We all got an idea of what we’re supposed to do during our half-hour tutoring stints, even down to the number of minutes we should spend on each portion of the lesson. The first five lesson plans were outlined in detail.
Now, all we need are fingerprinting and background checks and we’re ready to go. Look out. Never underestimate the power of a group of committed volunteers, teachers, tutors, parents and grandparents. In 2015, when every single child in the Detroit Public Schools is reading at or above grade level, we’ll deserve a standing ovation, too.
Abide with Me -- a novel by my new favorite author
By Margie Reins Smith (1/11/10)
Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout is one of those books I enjoy reading in small snitches – a chapter here, a few pages there, another chapter in bed before I go to sleep. I savor. I make it last as long as I can, like a rich, complicated dessert.
Now that I’ve savored the last bit of Abide with Me, I want to go back to page one and start over, to see what I missed. It’s dense. It’s perplexing. It’s the best example I can think of for that old (still valid) advice for new fiction writers: Show, don’t tell.
Strout describes her characters and shows their body language in minute detail – jittery fingers, averted eyes, awkward hesitations, blustery pronouncements. She often offers conversations her characters wished they had said. Then she shows us what they actually say. And layered over the whole story, in this case, is the stark beauty and spare, oppressive New England winter – ice, crusty snow, brooding skies, chilly air and snow squalls.
I like the crispness, the selection of details Strout chooses. Tyler Caskey, a young minister assigned to his first church, a widower, is summoned to a conference with the teacher of his troubled 5-year-old daughter:
"Mrs. Ingersoll was seated at her desk. ‘Come in,’ she said, standing up. She wore a red knit dress with lint on it.
"Tyler extended his hand. ‘Good afternoon.’ Her hand was so small it surprised him – as though instead of her own, she had slipped him the hand of a schoolchild. . . . They sat in little wooden chairs, and right away there was something in the woman’s manner, a closed-off confidence, that Tyler found unsettling. . . She looked at Tyler with such a steady gaze, he had to look away. . . Mrs. Ingersoll pulled a tiny chain out from beneath the neckline of her red dress, running it back and forth with a finger. . . He saw that the chain held a small silver cross."
Strout moves forward, then doubles back. In the next chapter, we learn: "Mary Ingersoll had worn the red knit dress because of the way it showed off her figure, and, washing it the night before, she’d been annoyed to discover her husband had not removed the Kleenex from his shirt pocket, as she’d told him many times to do, so that in the washing machine all those gunky little pieces of wet tissue were stuck, and then on her red dress, too. Mary had found Tyler Caskey attractive, and while she told people she’d been dreading the conference, she had, in fact, looked forward to it, rehearsing in front of the mirror, trying on expressions of kind-hearted, authoritative patience. She’d remembered to wear the little silver cross around her neck, so the man could see she was religious . . ."
Tyler Caskey is a fascinating, flawed human and the reader is never quite sure what he’s going to do. Or why he does it. But he’s always interesting. What new flaw or strength will Tyler display when his controlling mother butts in again? How will he handle the parishioner who bursts into tears and claims her husband beats her? Is Tyler falling for his housekeeper, an older woman with secrets and a certain "something" he reads in her eyes?
Elizabeth Strout wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, Olive Kitteridge, and another dense, dark novel with an upbeat conclusion, Amy and Isobel.
Strout’s characters are never predictable. Never sugar-coated. Always human. Always humane.
Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout is one of those books I enjoy reading in small snitches – a chapter here, a few pages there, another chapter in bed before I go to sleep. I savor. I make it last as long as I can, like a rich, complicated dessert.
Now that I’ve savored the last bit of Abide with Me, I want to go back to page one and start over, to see what I missed. It’s dense. It’s perplexing. It’s the best example I can think of for that old (still valid) advice for new fiction writers: Show, don’t tell.
Strout describes her characters and shows their body language in minute detail – jittery fingers, averted eyes, awkward hesitations, blustery pronouncements. She often offers conversations her characters wished they had said. Then she shows us what they actually say. And layered over the whole story, in this case, is the stark beauty and spare, oppressive New England winter – ice, crusty snow, brooding skies, chilly air and snow squalls.
I like the crispness, the selection of details Strout chooses. Tyler Caskey, a young minister assigned to his first church, a widower, is summoned to a conference with the teacher of his troubled 5-year-old daughter:
"Mrs. Ingersoll was seated at her desk. ‘Come in,’ she said, standing up. She wore a red knit dress with lint on it.
"Tyler extended his hand. ‘Good afternoon.’ Her hand was so small it surprised him – as though instead of her own, she had slipped him the hand of a schoolchild. . . . They sat in little wooden chairs, and right away there was something in the woman’s manner, a closed-off confidence, that Tyler found unsettling. . . She looked at Tyler with such a steady gaze, he had to look away. . . Mrs. Ingersoll pulled a tiny chain out from beneath the neckline of her red dress, running it back and forth with a finger. . . He saw that the chain held a small silver cross."
Strout moves forward, then doubles back. In the next chapter, we learn: "Mary Ingersoll had worn the red knit dress because of the way it showed off her figure, and, washing it the night before, she’d been annoyed to discover her husband had not removed the Kleenex from his shirt pocket, as she’d told him many times to do, so that in the washing machine all those gunky little pieces of wet tissue were stuck, and then on her red dress, too. Mary had found Tyler Caskey attractive, and while she told people she’d been dreading the conference, she had, in fact, looked forward to it, rehearsing in front of the mirror, trying on expressions of kind-hearted, authoritative patience. She’d remembered to wear the little silver cross around her neck, so the man could see she was religious . . ."
Tyler Caskey is a fascinating, flawed human and the reader is never quite sure what he’s going to do. Or why he does it. But he’s always interesting. What new flaw or strength will Tyler display when his controlling mother butts in again? How will he handle the parishioner who bursts into tears and claims her husband beats her? Is Tyler falling for his housekeeper, an older woman with secrets and a certain "something" he reads in her eyes?
Elizabeth Strout wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, Olive Kitteridge, and another dense, dark novel with an upbeat conclusion, Amy and Isobel.
Strout’s characters are never predictable. Never sugar-coated. Always human. Always humane.
2010, The Year
By Margie Reins Smith (1/4/10)
I hope 2010 will mark the end of these 10 personal annoyances:
1. Mass-printed Christmas letters.
2. Restaurant salads containing pieces of lettuce too big to fit in my mouth.
3. Celebrity news about celebrities I’ve never heard of.
4. Massive New Year’s Eve parties where most of the guests drink too much and eat too much and pretend to be excited as they usher the old year out and the new year in, then spend the next five days talking about how they drank too much and ate too much how exciting it was to usher the old year out and the new year in.
5. TV in general, except for local and national news, "The Antiques Road Show" and Frasier reruns.
6. The recorded phrase, spoken earnestly while I wait and wait and wait: "Your call is important to us. . ."
7. Trouser belts tucked BELOW the beer belly. Trouser belts hoisted ABOVE the beer belly. Beer bellies.
8. Snuggies.
9. Corsages -- even the ones I’m told I can pin to my purse.
10. Mucus family commercials. Also that toe fungus commercial where the big toenail gets lifted like a coffin lid, with accompanying squeaking sounds.
I hope by the end of 2010 I will look back on:
1. New books by Elizabeth Strout, Bill Bryson, Anna Quindlen, Anne Tyler, Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver and Susan Isaacs.
2. New volunteers of all kinds.
3. A revived economy.
4. Movies about older people such as "Julie and Julia," "Calendar Girls," "Something’s Gotta Give," "Waking Ned Devine" and "It’s Complicated."
5. Specifically for Michigan: oodles of new jobs, new cars, home sales, Hollywood and made-for-TV productions, organic farms, green energy and happy tourists.
6. Uplifting movies such as "Blind Side," "Up," "Mr. Holland’s Opus," "Rocky," "Seabiscuit" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."
7. More back rubs.
8. Me, 20 pounds lighter.
9. Travel to places I haven’t seen yet: Greece, Turkey, the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. (I'll settle for one or two of those.)
10. The completion of the first – and second – drafts of my novel-in-progress.
I hope 2010 will mark the end of these 10 personal annoyances:
1. Mass-printed Christmas letters.
2. Restaurant salads containing pieces of lettuce too big to fit in my mouth.
3. Celebrity news about celebrities I’ve never heard of.
4. Massive New Year’s Eve parties where most of the guests drink too much and eat too much and pretend to be excited as they usher the old year out and the new year in, then spend the next five days talking about how they drank too much and ate too much how exciting it was to usher the old year out and the new year in.
5. TV in general, except for local and national news, "The Antiques Road Show" and Frasier reruns.
6. The recorded phrase, spoken earnestly while I wait and wait and wait: "Your call is important to us. . ."
7. Trouser belts tucked BELOW the beer belly. Trouser belts hoisted ABOVE the beer belly. Beer bellies.
8. Snuggies.
9. Corsages -- even the ones I’m told I can pin to my purse.
10. Mucus family commercials. Also that toe fungus commercial where the big toenail gets lifted like a coffin lid, with accompanying squeaking sounds.
I hope by the end of 2010 I will look back on:
1. New books by Elizabeth Strout, Bill Bryson, Anna Quindlen, Anne Tyler, Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver and Susan Isaacs.
2. New volunteers of all kinds.
3. A revived economy.
4. Movies about older people such as "Julie and Julia," "Calendar Girls," "Something’s Gotta Give," "Waking Ned Devine" and "It’s Complicated."
5. Specifically for Michigan: oodles of new jobs, new cars, home sales, Hollywood and made-for-TV productions, organic farms, green energy and happy tourists.
6. Uplifting movies such as "Blind Side," "Up," "Mr. Holland’s Opus," "Rocky," "Seabiscuit" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."
7. More back rubs.
8. Me, 20 pounds lighter.
9. Travel to places I haven’t seen yet: Greece, Turkey, the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. (I'll settle for one or two of those.)
10. The completion of the first – and second – drafts of my novel-in-progress.
But -- Will it Sell?
By Margie Reins Smith (12/14/09)
I’m into a new project. Most of my friends would never guess what I’ve undertaken this time. It involves reading, though.
I’ve committed myself, along with about 100 other people at my church, to reading the Bible in one year. The whole shebang. We started in October and we have a daunting schedule of daily assignments.
No matter. I’m going to do it. I love challenges.
For eight or 10 weeks, we can attend a discussion group between church services called "Overview of the Old Testament," where we learn about the political history, geography and the customs of the people we’re reading about. It’s helping.
For the last 65 years, I’ve heard stories lifted from the Bible. I’ve heard the Bible quoted; misquoted; maligned and praised. I’ve read books with plots based on Bible stories. I’ve met literary characters that are modeled after Biblical characters.
In church, I listen to two readings straight from the Bible – usually one from the Old Testament; another from the New Testament. I’m familiar with a lot of the characters, the scenery, the choreography, the songs and a few of the plots. I’ve heard most of the buzz words – forbidden fruit, do unto others, forgive them for they know not, yada yada yada. But I’ve never read the whole book myself, front to back.
We’re reading the Old and the New Testament simultaneously, a few chapters from each, every day. So far, we’ve completed Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Matthew and most of Acts.
I breezed through Genesis in two days. Loved that book. Good plot. Two protagonists – hero and heroine – flawed, but well-intentioned. They tried to follow instructions, but they turned out to be human, just like the rest of us. They muddled on, determined to make the best of the situation. I can identify with them.
I’ve heard many of the stories in Genesis before, but never read them in person. Exodus, too. I didn’t realize some of these stories were from the Bible until I read them for myself.
Numbers was a chore. But it’s nice to see all those laws, right there in writing and marvel at the details. But Leviticus, now there’s a heavy book. And Deuteronomy doesn’t look like it’s going to be a breeze either. No fluff. No romance.
Actually reading the Bible, I think, must be like standing in the Sistine Chapel and gazing upward instead of looking at pictures of the Sistine Chapel ceiling or hearing somebody talk about how beautiful the Sistine Chapel is. Some day, I hope to stand on that floor and crane my neck upward to see it, too, in person. I like in-person stuff.
I’m trying to imagine a query letter to an agent from someone trying to get a publishing company interested in the Bible. Then I try to imagine the agent’s answer – the gentle let-down offered to writers – and anthologists – who are trying to peddle their work:
"Thank you for giving us the opportunity to review your collection of essays, ‘The Bible.’ with a view toward representation. Unfortunately, in today’s increasingly tough publishing markets, we cannot offer you the support needed for your project. We wish you the best of luck for finding representation for this project."
"Anthologies are not popular in today’s market."
"Too many characters."
"Repetitious."
"Needs a major edit."
"Plot is not believable."
And finally, from a publisher: "After careful consideration, I’m afraid this idea does not fit our current publishing needs. Good luck with your publishing ambitions."
Good luck, indeed.
I’m into a new project. Most of my friends would never guess what I’ve undertaken this time. It involves reading, though.
I’ve committed myself, along with about 100 other people at my church, to reading the Bible in one year. The whole shebang. We started in October and we have a daunting schedule of daily assignments.
No matter. I’m going to do it. I love challenges.
For eight or 10 weeks, we can attend a discussion group between church services called "Overview of the Old Testament," where we learn about the political history, geography and the customs of the people we’re reading about. It’s helping.
For the last 65 years, I’ve heard stories lifted from the Bible. I’ve heard the Bible quoted; misquoted; maligned and praised. I’ve read books with plots based on Bible stories. I’ve met literary characters that are modeled after Biblical characters.
In church, I listen to two readings straight from the Bible – usually one from the Old Testament; another from the New Testament. I’m familiar with a lot of the characters, the scenery, the choreography, the songs and a few of the plots. I’ve heard most of the buzz words – forbidden fruit, do unto others, forgive them for they know not, yada yada yada. But I’ve never read the whole book myself, front to back.
We’re reading the Old and the New Testament simultaneously, a few chapters from each, every day. So far, we’ve completed Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Matthew and most of Acts.
I breezed through Genesis in two days. Loved that book. Good plot. Two protagonists – hero and heroine – flawed, but well-intentioned. They tried to follow instructions, but they turned out to be human, just like the rest of us. They muddled on, determined to make the best of the situation. I can identify with them.
I’ve heard many of the stories in Genesis before, but never read them in person. Exodus, too. I didn’t realize some of these stories were from the Bible until I read them for myself.
Numbers was a chore. But it’s nice to see all those laws, right there in writing and marvel at the details. But Leviticus, now there’s a heavy book. And Deuteronomy doesn’t look like it’s going to be a breeze either. No fluff. No romance.
Actually reading the Bible, I think, must be like standing in the Sistine Chapel and gazing upward instead of looking at pictures of the Sistine Chapel ceiling or hearing somebody talk about how beautiful the Sistine Chapel is. Some day, I hope to stand on that floor and crane my neck upward to see it, too, in person. I like in-person stuff.
I’m trying to imagine a query letter to an agent from someone trying to get a publishing company interested in the Bible. Then I try to imagine the agent’s answer – the gentle let-down offered to writers – and anthologists – who are trying to peddle their work:
"Thank you for giving us the opportunity to review your collection of essays, ‘The Bible.’ with a view toward representation. Unfortunately, in today’s increasingly tough publishing markets, we cannot offer you the support needed for your project. We wish you the best of luck for finding representation for this project."
"Anthologies are not popular in today’s market."
"Too many characters."
"Repetitious."
"Needs a major edit."
"Plot is not believable."
And finally, from a publisher: "After careful consideration, I’m afraid this idea does not fit our current publishing needs. Good luck with your publishing ambitions."
Good luck, indeed.
www.cybermonday
By Margie Reins Smith (11/30/09)
The novel I’m writing has, so far, two scenes that take place in a large department store. My protagonist gets a part-time job for the month of December. I want my scenes to sound authentic, so I went to a local department store to do some research.
I also needed to buy a pair of leather gloves, some black jeans and a bra. Here are some of my notes:
In the lingerie department at 10 a.m. on a weekday -- no visible customers. After 10 minutes or so, an adorable little boy, probably 3 or 4 years old, raced in, followed closely by two young women. He dashed through the maze of circular, rotating racks filled with panties and bras. He screeched and waved his arms and finally stretched flat out on the floor so he could kick the racks of bras. The two women were amused, but kept looking around and shusshing him.
"Stephen. Stephen. Come here right now. Stand up." They exchanged smiles. Stephen continued to lay on the floor and flail with his feet at a rack of 44 double Ds. He watched the bras swing precariously on their flimsy transparent mini-hangers. The women chuckled.
"What are those?" one asked him.
He screamed and giggled.
Lingerie is available in every color and pattern imaginable, including dark brown, maroon, faux zebra skin, another kind of fur (mink, maybe?), tattersall checks, polka dots and some very unusual color pairings. One two-piece set reminded me of a Howard Johnson’s restaurant – turquoise and orange. Most of them were pretty – lace and embroidery and tiny satin bows, appliques, rosettes, ruffles, little peek-a-boo cutouts and so on.
(The thongs? Don’t get me started.)
The biggest sizes, however, were strictly utilitarian No lace. No ruffles. No trim of any kind. Bras were trussed and cris-crossed with strips of elastic, reinforced swaths of muslin-like fabric and Spandex. Color choices? White or beige or black.
Overall lighting in the lingerie department was dim except for the wall racks, which were spotlighted from above. The walls were lined with different kinds of bras, four deep. Some were arranged by brand; other displays were arranged by the percentage of the day’s discount – 25 percent off; buy two get one free; buy one get one 50 percent off; door-buster sale items; and so on.
Another portion of the department was arranged by size – big, bigger, huge and – well, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it must be to walk around with so much jiggling flesh.
News to me: a stretchy armpit-to-hip garment designed to make you look smooth. These items were available in such huge sizes, however, I couldn’t imagine that anyone of such girth would look smooth.
The only busy part of this store on this particular day was the cosmetics department. Saleswomen abounded. Many were dressed in white, doctor-like lab coats. All they needed were stethoscopes looped around their shoulders, like necklaces. The lights were bright, the display cases were artfully arranged and well-lit. Soft music played in the background. Special bonus items were featured prominently. The place was permeated with a pleasant buzz of activity.
The Christmas Mart – where holiday decorations and Christmas tree ornaments were for sale – was deserted. The housewares department – nobody. The shoe department was bustling, as were the purses.
I couldn’t find a saleswoman in the hosiery department. Nor in scarves and gloves. I found a pair of gloves to buy, but wandered in circles looking for somebody to wait on me. Finally, the coat saleswoman across a central aisle took my money. Nobody was in the coat department anyway. She was bored.
A distracted salesperson in another part of the store was about to ring up a pair of store-brand jeans I had tried on without assistance or direction and, nevertheless, decided to buy.
"Lucky you," she said, with glee. "You get 20 percent off for using our charge card today." She took my card, rang up the sale and asked me to sign my name. I pointed out that the 20 percent had not been deducted.
"Oh, well, I guess not today," she chirped. She indicated where I should sign.
I asked her to check on that. Ask her supervisor, maybe? Whatever it took. After all, she brought it up. I had expected to pay full price.
She faked a phone call, standing with her back to me, talking to nobody on a cell phone. She flipped the phone shut and turned back to me, her paying customer. "I was wrong about the 20 percent," she said. "Not on these pants. Just Ralph Lauren."
Today is Cyber Monday and I’ve already made three purchases. Free shipping. Special Cyber Monday discount. And I ordered exactly the items I wanted in the colors and sizes I needed.
The novel I’m writing has, so far, two scenes that take place in a large department store. My protagonist gets a part-time job for the month of December. I want my scenes to sound authentic, so I went to a local department store to do some research.
I also needed to buy a pair of leather gloves, some black jeans and a bra. Here are some of my notes:
In the lingerie department at 10 a.m. on a weekday -- no visible customers. After 10 minutes or so, an adorable little boy, probably 3 or 4 years old, raced in, followed closely by two young women. He dashed through the maze of circular, rotating racks filled with panties and bras. He screeched and waved his arms and finally stretched flat out on the floor so he could kick the racks of bras. The two women were amused, but kept looking around and shusshing him.
"Stephen. Stephen. Come here right now. Stand up." They exchanged smiles. Stephen continued to lay on the floor and flail with his feet at a rack of 44 double Ds. He watched the bras swing precariously on their flimsy transparent mini-hangers. The women chuckled.
"What are those?" one asked him.
He screamed and giggled.
Lingerie is available in every color and pattern imaginable, including dark brown, maroon, faux zebra skin, another kind of fur (mink, maybe?), tattersall checks, polka dots and some very unusual color pairings. One two-piece set reminded me of a Howard Johnson’s restaurant – turquoise and orange. Most of them were pretty – lace and embroidery and tiny satin bows, appliques, rosettes, ruffles, little peek-a-boo cutouts and so on.
(The thongs? Don’t get me started.)
The biggest sizes, however, were strictly utilitarian No lace. No ruffles. No trim of any kind. Bras were trussed and cris-crossed with strips of elastic, reinforced swaths of muslin-like fabric and Spandex. Color choices? White or beige or black.
Overall lighting in the lingerie department was dim except for the wall racks, which were spotlighted from above. The walls were lined with different kinds of bras, four deep. Some were arranged by brand; other displays were arranged by the percentage of the day’s discount – 25 percent off; buy two get one free; buy one get one 50 percent off; door-buster sale items; and so on.
Another portion of the department was arranged by size – big, bigger, huge and – well, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it must be to walk around with so much jiggling flesh.
News to me: a stretchy armpit-to-hip garment designed to make you look smooth. These items were available in such huge sizes, however, I couldn’t imagine that anyone of such girth would look smooth.
The only busy part of this store on this particular day was the cosmetics department. Saleswomen abounded. Many were dressed in white, doctor-like lab coats. All they needed were stethoscopes looped around their shoulders, like necklaces. The lights were bright, the display cases were artfully arranged and well-lit. Soft music played in the background. Special bonus items were featured prominently. The place was permeated with a pleasant buzz of activity.
The Christmas Mart – where holiday decorations and Christmas tree ornaments were for sale – was deserted. The housewares department – nobody. The shoe department was bustling, as were the purses.
I couldn’t find a saleswoman in the hosiery department. Nor in scarves and gloves. I found a pair of gloves to buy, but wandered in circles looking for somebody to wait on me. Finally, the coat saleswoman across a central aisle took my money. Nobody was in the coat department anyway. She was bored.
A distracted salesperson in another part of the store was about to ring up a pair of store-brand jeans I had tried on without assistance or direction and, nevertheless, decided to buy.
"Lucky you," she said, with glee. "You get 20 percent off for using our charge card today." She took my card, rang up the sale and asked me to sign my name. I pointed out that the 20 percent had not been deducted.
"Oh, well, I guess not today," she chirped. She indicated where I should sign.
I asked her to check on that. Ask her supervisor, maybe? Whatever it took. After all, she brought it up. I had expected to pay full price.
She faked a phone call, standing with her back to me, talking to nobody on a cell phone. She flipped the phone shut and turned back to me, her paying customer. "I was wrong about the 20 percent," she said. "Not on these pants. Just Ralph Lauren."
Today is Cyber Monday and I’ve already made three purchases. Free shipping. Special Cyber Monday discount. And I ordered exactly the items I wanted in the colors and sizes I needed.
Men only
By Margie Reins Smith (11/23/09)
I’m working on a list of things that make men tick. Men are different, in spite of what any scientific surveys or psychological tests say.
Boys (who are little bitty men) are different than little girls from the get-go. In addition to the obvious topics (sex, power, food, messy hobbies and things that explode) that apparently stir men’s souls, there are other, subtler, more baffling topics that, given a chance, men get passionate about.
I know a man who slows his car, stops, leans across the passenger seat, points to an empty lot near Oxford, Michigan, and gets nostalgic, even teary-eyed, because we’re driving past the site of a store where he used to buy bait.
Bait. That’s worms; minnows; slimy, wiggly stuff.
The store was demolished decades ago. The site is an empty lot full of weeds and litter. I find this nostalgia rather odd. I tried to explain the curious phenomenon to this man’s grown son.
"Oh, that bait store," his son said. "I remember that. They had night crawlers and red worms and his wife worked there too and . . . what was his name?"
Father and son wandered off and spent the next 15 minutes reminiscing about mutual fishing experiences with something called "spotties."
Men also can get on one of those professional scales where you have to slide a weight up to 100, 150, 200 or whatever, then move another weight in five-, 10- and one-pound increments until the little bubble fits between the two black lines. Men and women both can do this.
But men, incredibly, will step off the scale and walk away, leaving the weights in place. Anybody! Anybody could mosey up to the scale and check the weight of the person who just used it.
Bizarre.
Little boys are also hardwired at birth, probably due to some extraordinary Y-chromosome configuration, so that from the first moment they pick up a toy car – or any toy with wheels – they know how to imitate a motor.
Nobody teaches them these sounds. They just know them.
"Rmmmmmmm-rmmmmm, vroom, vroom," they say.
And, as little boys grow older, they increase their repertoire of motor noises to include the sounds of airplanes, trains, powerboats and helicopters. They also perfect their renditions of special sounds – multi-car crashes, for example, police and ambulance sirens, 18-wheelers going uphill and a variety of different kinds of squealing brakes. They learn to imitate explosions, bombs, the sounds of gunfire and, as a bonus, an incredible variety of gross bodily noises.
Also, by the time they’re 6 or 7, little boys compete to see who can get the most disgustingly dirty in one day and who can develop the most extensive arsenal of sounds depicting speed, power, mayhem, mishap and indigestion.
By the time little boys have become senior citizens, they’re routinely looking back with fond memories to things like their first catchers’ mitts, their favorite sports heroes, their first bikes, first cars, memorable girlfriends – and the store where they used to buy bait.
This essay first appeared in The Grosse Pointe News.
I’m working on a list of things that make men tick. Men are different, in spite of what any scientific surveys or psychological tests say.
Boys (who are little bitty men) are different than little girls from the get-go. In addition to the obvious topics (sex, power, food, messy hobbies and things that explode) that apparently stir men’s souls, there are other, subtler, more baffling topics that, given a chance, men get passionate about.
I know a man who slows his car, stops, leans across the passenger seat, points to an empty lot near Oxford, Michigan, and gets nostalgic, even teary-eyed, because we’re driving past the site of a store where he used to buy bait.
Bait. That’s worms; minnows; slimy, wiggly stuff.
The store was demolished decades ago. The site is an empty lot full of weeds and litter. I find this nostalgia rather odd. I tried to explain the curious phenomenon to this man’s grown son.
"Oh, that bait store," his son said. "I remember that. They had night crawlers and red worms and his wife worked there too and . . . what was his name?"
Father and son wandered off and spent the next 15 minutes reminiscing about mutual fishing experiences with something called "spotties."
Men also can get on one of those professional scales where you have to slide a weight up to 100, 150, 200 or whatever, then move another weight in five-, 10- and one-pound increments until the little bubble fits between the two black lines. Men and women both can do this.
But men, incredibly, will step off the scale and walk away, leaving the weights in place. Anybody! Anybody could mosey up to the scale and check the weight of the person who just used it.
Bizarre.
Little boys are also hardwired at birth, probably due to some extraordinary Y-chromosome configuration, so that from the first moment they pick up a toy car – or any toy with wheels – they know how to imitate a motor.
Nobody teaches them these sounds. They just know them.
"Rmmmmmmm-rmmmmm, vroom, vroom," they say.
And, as little boys grow older, they increase their repertoire of motor noises to include the sounds of airplanes, trains, powerboats and helicopters. They also perfect their renditions of special sounds – multi-car crashes, for example, police and ambulance sirens, 18-wheelers going uphill and a variety of different kinds of squealing brakes. They learn to imitate explosions, bombs, the sounds of gunfire and, as a bonus, an incredible variety of gross bodily noises.
Also, by the time they’re 6 or 7, little boys compete to see who can get the most disgustingly dirty in one day and who can develop the most extensive arsenal of sounds depicting speed, power, mayhem, mishap and indigestion.
By the time little boys have become senior citizens, they’re routinely looking back with fond memories to things like their first catchers’ mitts, their favorite sports heroes, their first bikes, first cars, memorable girlfriends – and the store where they used to buy bait.
This essay first appeared in The Grosse Pointe News.
Sock it to Me
By Margie Reins Smith (11/16/09)
Socks have improved remarkably in the last 60 years. In fact, socks should be near the top of a list of the items of clothing that have improved in my lifetime. Other items on the list: stretchy pantyhose, disposable diapers, relaxed-fit jeans and the demise of what used to be called a "foundation garment." It was a girdle and it was hell.
Socks are 500 percent more comfortable than they were when I was a kid in the 1940s. I have happy childhood memories that would have been much happier if they hadn't been marred by annoying socks. When I was little, girls wore ankle-length cotton socks, ribbed at the top. The ribbed part was folded down. They came in a variety of colors and you were supposed to either wear white socks or socks that matched your dress. Little girls wore dresses to school every single day when I was a kid, which reminds me of another childhood clothing malfunction.
Many of these dresses had sashes that your mother tied into a bow in the back before you went to school in the morning. The bows soon came untied, of course. When you went to the bathroom, if you didn't grab the ends of your sash and hold onto them, the tips would fall in the toilet. Then you had to wring them out and re-tie the sash.The straps on bib overalls often got wet too, and you had to wring them out and re-button the soggy ends.
I digress. Back to socks. Most little girls in my circle had a pair of school shoes, gym shoes, play shoes and dress-up shoes. The dress-up shoes were called Mary Janes. They were made of shiny black patent leather, had a strap that buckled over the top of each foot, and were reputed to reflect up. The reflecting up thing has never been proven to my satisfaction.
Mary Janes were usually worn with white socks. As soon as you put your socks on, whatever their color, whatever the shoe, whoever you were, wherever you went, the socks' self-appointed devious and determined mission was to gradually and unobtrusively slide down your heels and hide inside your shoes. Whatever little girls were doing, they had to periodically bend down and yank their socks up. The socks, in turn, became even more perverted and doubled their efforts to disappear inside shoes.
As the day wore on and your socks crept out of sight, you were left with naked heels, annoying lumps inside your shoes and red, raised blisters on the backs of your feet.
Today's socks are disciplined with elastic. The technology of combining elastic with sock yarn is one of the wonders of the late 20th century. Today's socks stretch. They fit better and are less likely to turn or twist or disappear. Theoretically, if you purchase socks in the proper size, put them on in the morning with the heels in the right place, you'll never have to readjust them.
Better elastic has solved other wardrobe malfunctions. When my mother was a young career woman in the 1930s, she characterized the elastic in women's underwear as: "unreliable."
One day, my mother, a young 20-something career girl working in an insurance office in downtown Cincinnati, was walking back to her office after lunch when she felt the elastic on the waistband of her Skivvies snap. She felt the newly liberated garment sliding gently earthward. Within half a city block, it was in the vicinity of her knees. She tried to walk slowly, keeping her knees clamped together.
Too difficult, she decided. "I just looked the other way," she said. "I stepped out of them, and walked on as if nothing had happened."
This essay first appeared in The Grosse Pointe News
Socks have improved remarkably in the last 60 years. In fact, socks should be near the top of a list of the items of clothing that have improved in my lifetime. Other items on the list: stretchy pantyhose, disposable diapers, relaxed-fit jeans and the demise of what used to be called a "foundation garment." It was a girdle and it was hell.
Socks are 500 percent more comfortable than they were when I was a kid in the 1940s. I have happy childhood memories that would have been much happier if they hadn't been marred by annoying socks. When I was little, girls wore ankle-length cotton socks, ribbed at the top. The ribbed part was folded down. They came in a variety of colors and you were supposed to either wear white socks or socks that matched your dress. Little girls wore dresses to school every single day when I was a kid, which reminds me of another childhood clothing malfunction.
Many of these dresses had sashes that your mother tied into a bow in the back before you went to school in the morning. The bows soon came untied, of course. When you went to the bathroom, if you didn't grab the ends of your sash and hold onto them, the tips would fall in the toilet. Then you had to wring them out and re-tie the sash.The straps on bib overalls often got wet too, and you had to wring them out and re-button the soggy ends.
I digress. Back to socks. Most little girls in my circle had a pair of school shoes, gym shoes, play shoes and dress-up shoes. The dress-up shoes were called Mary Janes. They were made of shiny black patent leather, had a strap that buckled over the top of each foot, and were reputed to reflect up. The reflecting up thing has never been proven to my satisfaction.
Mary Janes were usually worn with white socks. As soon as you put your socks on, whatever their color, whatever the shoe, whoever you were, wherever you went, the socks' self-appointed devious and determined mission was to gradually and unobtrusively slide down your heels and hide inside your shoes. Whatever little girls were doing, they had to periodically bend down and yank their socks up. The socks, in turn, became even more perverted and doubled their efforts to disappear inside shoes.
As the day wore on and your socks crept out of sight, you were left with naked heels, annoying lumps inside your shoes and red, raised blisters on the backs of your feet.
Today's socks are disciplined with elastic. The technology of combining elastic with sock yarn is one of the wonders of the late 20th century. Today's socks stretch. They fit better and are less likely to turn or twist or disappear. Theoretically, if you purchase socks in the proper size, put them on in the morning with the heels in the right place, you'll never have to readjust them.
Better elastic has solved other wardrobe malfunctions. When my mother was a young career woman in the 1930s, she characterized the elastic in women's underwear as: "unreliable."
One day, my mother, a young 20-something career girl working in an insurance office in downtown Cincinnati, was walking back to her office after lunch when she felt the elastic on the waistband of her Skivvies snap. She felt the newly liberated garment sliding gently earthward. Within half a city block, it was in the vicinity of her knees. She tried to walk slowly, keeping her knees clamped together.
Too difficult, she decided. "I just looked the other way," she said. "I stepped out of them, and walked on as if nothing had happened."
This essay first appeared in The Grosse Pointe News
Musings on mournings
By Margie Reins Smith (11/02/09)
I want music. Really gorgeous music. A first-class organist for the church service. If the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is available, great, but a string quartet will do. Screw the expense. On the chance that all decent live performers are busy that day, a recording of Samuel Barber’s "Adagio for Strings" would be nice. Also "Air on a G String," by Bach. Or consider the grand fugue from Beethoven’s Third Symphony – the funeral march movement, I think. Later, something romantic and schmaltzy, like Tchaikovsky might compose.
For the organ selection: Bach’s "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" might reverberate nicely inside church before the service begins. Then some old-fashioned hymns, then Barber; then, more Bach. I love Bach.
It should definitely be in church because I like churches. An old stone building, preferably, with gothic arches and stained glass to die(!) for, lots of carved woodwork and a nice big pipe organ. My church.
A decent program would be nice, too, with readings and hymns and a speaker who won’t put any of the older folks to sleep and who will give all the guests some insight into that perplexing enigma, "the human condition." But he/she should have a wry sense of humor, too. I want people to chuckle. Laugh. Guffaw, if possible.
A beautiful day would be great. If it’s fall, one of those breezy slanted-sunshine days, with a chill in the air and cascading leaves that make swooshing sounds when you walk through them. If it’s spring, a day when tulips are blooming, the grass is so green it hurts your eyes and the magnolia trees are in full flower. If it’s summer, not too hot. If winter, a no-school day of pristine new-fallen 12-inches-plus snow and blinding sunshine that glints off the drifts. Kids should be sledding on the hill at the foot of Moross and grownups should be cross-country skiing on golf courses and on the water side of Lakeshore Drive.
And a party. With good wine and a full bar. Lots of food. Shrimp and crab legs for sure and oysters on the half-shell, even though I don’t like the disgusting, slimy things. It should be arranged on a nice cloth-covered table with the good silver and the good china and linen that has to be washed and ironed afterward.
I’m talking about my funeral, of course.
I know it’s coming eventually. (For the record, I’m feeling fine!) I hope it’s a party I’d want to attend if I could. Invite my beloved family and their friends and my friends and all the people I love, even those to whom I’ve been close for only brief periods. I’d like them to stand around in small clusters and laugh and tell jokes and eat and drink and gesture wildly and act silly. Some of them can even get tipsy, as long as they have designated drivers to see them home.
I hope someone – perhaps an older gentleman with twinkly blue eyes who can imitate an Irish brogue and pretend to speak Yiddish – will break the ice by telling a slightly off-color joke. "A Rabbi, an Irishman and a Presbyterian minister walked into a bar . . ."
When the laughter dies down, another guest will try to top his joke. Then another will have to top both of them and by then the party will be off and running.
I’ll already be cremated by the time the party begins. No open casket, pulllleeeze. I don’t want little kids gripping their parents’ legs and getting squeamish because there’s a dead body in that box. And I don’t want anybody to sigh and say, "She looks good."
I won’t look good, for God’s sake. I’ll look dead. Anyway, I’d never convince my family to lay me out in my favorite outfit – Ralph Lauren jeans, a light blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up twice and my thin gold necklace.
If things go right, most of my body parts will either be used up or donated anyway, so there will be stuff missing – eyeballs and skin and kidneys and maybe a heart or a liver. It’s hard to put a body back together so it looks like it hasn’t been chopped up and passed around.
No bagpipes. No Irish music. No drum solos. No accordians. No rap or hip hop or whatever passes for music these days. No flowers either.
OK. Maybe a couple vases of loosely arranged daisies. I love daisies. Send the flower money to a charitable organization but be sure it’s one that will use it wisely.
As for former boyfriends and lovers. I want them seated in a roped-off section in the front of the church, so they can think about what might have been. I’d like the ones who dumped me to be escorted politely to a front pew. To the ones I dumped – second row. And I’m sorry.
I’ve just been to a funeral for a friend of a friend, a man I knew slightly, but liked. His sons spoke about him with truth and love. The party was at his favorite hangout and it rocked. The whole thing was nice and . . . well . . . it got me thinking.
I want music. Really gorgeous music. A first-class organist for the church service. If the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is available, great, but a string quartet will do. Screw the expense. On the chance that all decent live performers are busy that day, a recording of Samuel Barber’s "Adagio for Strings" would be nice. Also "Air on a G String," by Bach. Or consider the grand fugue from Beethoven’s Third Symphony – the funeral march movement, I think. Later, something romantic and schmaltzy, like Tchaikovsky might compose.
For the organ selection: Bach’s "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" might reverberate nicely inside church before the service begins. Then some old-fashioned hymns, then Barber; then, more Bach. I love Bach.
It should definitely be in church because I like churches. An old stone building, preferably, with gothic arches and stained glass to die(!) for, lots of carved woodwork and a nice big pipe organ. My church.
A decent program would be nice, too, with readings and hymns and a speaker who won’t put any of the older folks to sleep and who will give all the guests some insight into that perplexing enigma, "the human condition." But he/she should have a wry sense of humor, too. I want people to chuckle. Laugh. Guffaw, if possible.
A beautiful day would be great. If it’s fall, one of those breezy slanted-sunshine days, with a chill in the air and cascading leaves that make swooshing sounds when you walk through them. If it’s spring, a day when tulips are blooming, the grass is so green it hurts your eyes and the magnolia trees are in full flower. If it’s summer, not too hot. If winter, a no-school day of pristine new-fallen 12-inches-plus snow and blinding sunshine that glints off the drifts. Kids should be sledding on the hill at the foot of Moross and grownups should be cross-country skiing on golf courses and on the water side of Lakeshore Drive.
And a party. With good wine and a full bar. Lots of food. Shrimp and crab legs for sure and oysters on the half-shell, even though I don’t like the disgusting, slimy things. It should be arranged on a nice cloth-covered table with the good silver and the good china and linen that has to be washed and ironed afterward.
I’m talking about my funeral, of course.
I know it’s coming eventually. (For the record, I’m feeling fine!) I hope it’s a party I’d want to attend if I could. Invite my beloved family and their friends and my friends and all the people I love, even those to whom I’ve been close for only brief periods. I’d like them to stand around in small clusters and laugh and tell jokes and eat and drink and gesture wildly and act silly. Some of them can even get tipsy, as long as they have designated drivers to see them home.
I hope someone – perhaps an older gentleman with twinkly blue eyes who can imitate an Irish brogue and pretend to speak Yiddish – will break the ice by telling a slightly off-color joke. "A Rabbi, an Irishman and a Presbyterian minister walked into a bar . . ."
When the laughter dies down, another guest will try to top his joke. Then another will have to top both of them and by then the party will be off and running.
I’ll already be cremated by the time the party begins. No open casket, pulllleeeze. I don’t want little kids gripping their parents’ legs and getting squeamish because there’s a dead body in that box. And I don’t want anybody to sigh and say, "She looks good."
I won’t look good, for God’s sake. I’ll look dead. Anyway, I’d never convince my family to lay me out in my favorite outfit – Ralph Lauren jeans, a light blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up twice and my thin gold necklace.
If things go right, most of my body parts will either be used up or donated anyway, so there will be stuff missing – eyeballs and skin and kidneys and maybe a heart or a liver. It’s hard to put a body back together so it looks like it hasn’t been chopped up and passed around.
No bagpipes. No Irish music. No drum solos. No accordians. No rap or hip hop or whatever passes for music these days. No flowers either.
OK. Maybe a couple vases of loosely arranged daisies. I love daisies. Send the flower money to a charitable organization but be sure it’s one that will use it wisely.
As for former boyfriends and lovers. I want them seated in a roped-off section in the front of the church, so they can think about what might have been. I’d like the ones who dumped me to be escorted politely to a front pew. To the ones I dumped – second row. And I’m sorry.
I’ve just been to a funeral for a friend of a friend, a man I knew slightly, but liked. His sons spoke about him with truth and love. The party was at his favorite hangout and it rocked. The whole thing was nice and . . . well . . . it got me thinking.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout -- a review
By Margie Reins Smith (10/27/09)
Olive isn’t easy.
She’s a retired high school math teacher – "the scariest teacher I ever had" – claim several former students. She’s overbearing, overweight and over-sensitive. She’s sometimes loud. Sometimes pushy. She’s smart, level-headed, practical. At times she’s compassionate and kind.
When they’re older, many of those same students claim she was the best teacher they ever had.
The most poignant vignette in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge, is when Olive’s husband, the long-suffering, affable Henry, comes back from the grocery store with a bouquet of flowers.
"‘For my wife,’ he said, handing them to her. They were the saddest damn things. Daisies dyed blue among the white and ludicrously pink ones, some of them half-dead.
"‘Put them in that pot,’ Olive said, pointing to an old blue vase. . . . Henry came and put his arms around her; it was early autumn and chilly, and his woolen shirt smelled faintly of wood chips and mustiness. She stood, waiting for the hug to end. Then she went outside and planted her tulip bulbs."
A week after the incident, Henry steps out of his car in the parking lot of the big Shop ’n Save and collapses. The stroke leaves him mute, blind and wheelchair-bound. His mind is mud, but he wears his usual smile.
"The tulips bloomed in ridiculous splendor," Strout tells us.
Olive Kitteridge is not a novel, but a collection of short, razor-sharp stories, reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. We see the inhabitants of a fictional town in Maine from multiple perspectives. Each story also offers a glimpse or sketch or an in-depth look at Olive.
She’s accustomed to thinking one thing : "Oh for God’s Sake!" and saying another. She sits next to her estranged son in the cramped, cluttered apartment he shares with his second wife and the wife’s two unappealing children.
"She wanted to say, ‘It’s awful good to see you, kid.’ But she didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either. For a long while they sat together like that. She would have sat on a patch of cement anywhere to have this – her son; a bright buoy bobbing in the bay of her own quiet terror.
‘So, you’re a landlord,’ she finally said, because the oddity of that struck her now.
‘Yup.’"
The stories are about partnerships. Some partners are married; some are not; some are young; some are in their 70s; some in their prime. Strout shines a particularly sharp laser on long-term partnerships. Jane Houlton, now in her 70s, compares her long-term marriage to Bob: "It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert." Ah hah – read on. Things are not as Jane describes.
Other themes – suicide, gossip, unexpressed anger, anorexia, infidelity, lonliness, doughnuts(!) and the desire of all people to feel needed and valued by others – run through Olive Kitteridge. The book is dense with comedy, tragedy, introspection, pathos and a razor-sharp examination of the human condition.
It’s also laced with humor.
"You could laugh your head off with that one, ha-ha thud," said Olive to no one.
I’d give it four stars out of four. It’s one of the few books I’m anxious to re-read.
Olive isn’t easy.
She’s a retired high school math teacher – "the scariest teacher I ever had" – claim several former students. She’s overbearing, overweight and over-sensitive. She’s sometimes loud. Sometimes pushy. She’s smart, level-headed, practical. At times she’s compassionate and kind.
When they’re older, many of those same students claim she was the best teacher they ever had.
The most poignant vignette in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge, is when Olive’s husband, the long-suffering, affable Henry, comes back from the grocery store with a bouquet of flowers.
"‘For my wife,’ he said, handing them to her. They were the saddest damn things. Daisies dyed blue among the white and ludicrously pink ones, some of them half-dead.
"‘Put them in that pot,’ Olive said, pointing to an old blue vase. . . . Henry came and put his arms around her; it was early autumn and chilly, and his woolen shirt smelled faintly of wood chips and mustiness. She stood, waiting for the hug to end. Then she went outside and planted her tulip bulbs."
A week after the incident, Henry steps out of his car in the parking lot of the big Shop ’n Save and collapses. The stroke leaves him mute, blind and wheelchair-bound. His mind is mud, but he wears his usual smile.
"The tulips bloomed in ridiculous splendor," Strout tells us.
Olive Kitteridge is not a novel, but a collection of short, razor-sharp stories, reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. We see the inhabitants of a fictional town in Maine from multiple perspectives. Each story also offers a glimpse or sketch or an in-depth look at Olive.
She’s accustomed to thinking one thing : "Oh for God’s Sake!" and saying another. She sits next to her estranged son in the cramped, cluttered apartment he shares with his second wife and the wife’s two unappealing children.
"She wanted to say, ‘It’s awful good to see you, kid.’ But she didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either. For a long while they sat together like that. She would have sat on a patch of cement anywhere to have this – her son; a bright buoy bobbing in the bay of her own quiet terror.
‘So, you’re a landlord,’ she finally said, because the oddity of that struck her now.
‘Yup.’"
The stories are about partnerships. Some partners are married; some are not; some are young; some are in their 70s; some in their prime. Strout shines a particularly sharp laser on long-term partnerships. Jane Houlton, now in her 70s, compares her long-term marriage to Bob: "It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert." Ah hah – read on. Things are not as Jane describes.
Other themes – suicide, gossip, unexpressed anger, anorexia, infidelity, lonliness, doughnuts(!) and the desire of all people to feel needed and valued by others – run through Olive Kitteridge. The book is dense with comedy, tragedy, introspection, pathos and a razor-sharp examination of the human condition.
It’s also laced with humor.
"You could laugh your head off with that one, ha-ha thud," said Olive to no one.
I’d give it four stars out of four. It’s one of the few books I’m anxious to re-read.
Consume by 10/26
By Margie Reins Smith (10/19/09)
Some people are paranoid about food expiration dates. In the olden days, when I was growing up, if something didn’t smell good or look fresh or taste quite right, you considered it spoiled and threw it away or spit it into the sink.
If your Rice Krispies were wiggling, you made a face, yelled "Eeeeeeuooo," and dumped them in the trash. If the lettuce on your sandwich was wilted, you picked it off with thumb and forefinger and disposed of it. Then you ate your sandwich.
I attended a summer camp where we were instructed, up front, before the first meal was served: "If you take a sip of milk and you think it’s sour, drink it anyway. Sour milk won’t kill you."
Expiration dates are perplexing. You could come home from the supermarket with $150 worth of fresh food packed in 40 flimsy, two-pint plastic bags, one item per bag. While unloading the goods and stashing stuff in the freezer, refrigerator and cupboards, you might note that some items carry a "sell by" date; others are stamped with a "consume by" date, still others have a "best when used by" date and a few are labeled with flat-out "expiration" dates.
Are these suggestions? Rules? Laws? Are they guidelines? Or are they cryptic clues for different degrees of spoilage?
On the "best when used by" date, the baby spinach leaves are crisp and green; the lemon smells lemony; and the cottage cheese is creamy and white.
On the "sell by" date, the spinach is floppy; the lemon has shrunk somewhat; the cottage cheese is watery.
On the "consume by" date, the spinach has wilted; the lemon has morphed into a lopsided version of its former self and sports an interesting patch of blue fuzz; and the cottage cheese smells odd.
On the "expiration" date, the spinach is downright slimy. The lemon is squishy and furry. The cottage cheese has turned blue on one edge.
If we ignore the cautions, do we face agonizing, painful, lingering illnesses, followed by excruciatingly malodorous, disfiguring, brutish deaths? Or are these dates yet another sign of our times – blatant overreaction to an infinitesimal danger, followed by the passage of complicated laws requiring:
* Federal, state and local funds
* An engineering team
* A go-around with the National Fresh Spinach Advisory Board (or whatever)
* The creation of a mission statement, written goals, a public advisory committee, policing policies and stiff penalties for those who don’t toe the line.
Give me a break. Who would willingly eat blue cottage cheese?
The mother of two of my grandsons was raised with expiration dates. She is the Expiration Date Nazi.
When she discovered I had given the boys some yogurt that was two days past its prime, I had to prove it was OK by grabbing the yogurt out of their little hands and eating it myself.
This is not a good example for children.
This essay first appeared in The Grosse Pointe News
Some people are paranoid about food expiration dates. In the olden days, when I was growing up, if something didn’t smell good or look fresh or taste quite right, you considered it spoiled and threw it away or spit it into the sink.
If your Rice Krispies were wiggling, you made a face, yelled "Eeeeeeuooo," and dumped them in the trash. If the lettuce on your sandwich was wilted, you picked it off with thumb and forefinger and disposed of it. Then you ate your sandwich.
I attended a summer camp where we were instructed, up front, before the first meal was served: "If you take a sip of milk and you think it’s sour, drink it anyway. Sour milk won’t kill you."
Expiration dates are perplexing. You could come home from the supermarket with $150 worth of fresh food packed in 40 flimsy, two-pint plastic bags, one item per bag. While unloading the goods and stashing stuff in the freezer, refrigerator and cupboards, you might note that some items carry a "sell by" date; others are stamped with a "consume by" date, still others have a "best when used by" date and a few are labeled with flat-out "expiration" dates.
Are these suggestions? Rules? Laws? Are they guidelines? Or are they cryptic clues for different degrees of spoilage?
On the "best when used by" date, the baby spinach leaves are crisp and green; the lemon smells lemony; and the cottage cheese is creamy and white.
On the "sell by" date, the spinach is floppy; the lemon has shrunk somewhat; the cottage cheese is watery.
On the "consume by" date, the spinach has wilted; the lemon has morphed into a lopsided version of its former self and sports an interesting patch of blue fuzz; and the cottage cheese smells odd.
On the "expiration" date, the spinach is downright slimy. The lemon is squishy and furry. The cottage cheese has turned blue on one edge.
If we ignore the cautions, do we face agonizing, painful, lingering illnesses, followed by excruciatingly malodorous, disfiguring, brutish deaths? Or are these dates yet another sign of our times – blatant overreaction to an infinitesimal danger, followed by the passage of complicated laws requiring:
* Federal, state and local funds
* An engineering team
* A go-around with the National Fresh Spinach Advisory Board (or whatever)
* The creation of a mission statement, written goals, a public advisory committee, policing policies and stiff penalties for those who don’t toe the line.
Give me a break. Who would willingly eat blue cottage cheese?
The mother of two of my grandsons was raised with expiration dates. She is the Expiration Date Nazi.
When she discovered I had given the boys some yogurt that was two days past its prime, I had to prove it was OK by grabbing the yogurt out of their little hands and eating it myself.
This is not a good example for children.
This essay first appeared in The Grosse Pointe News
Homer and Langley -- candidates for Disposophobiacs Anonymous?
By Margie Reins Smith (10/12/09)
When I was a teenager, my mother periodically took a stand outside my bedroom door, hands on hips, and ranted about the Collyer Brothers.
Homer and Langley Collyer were reclusive bachelors. They were wealthy and well-educated. They both earned degrees from Columbia University. They were members of a well-respected New York family and they lived in their deceased parents’ pricey three-story Fifth Avenue apartment. Langley, who fancied himself an inventor, worked diligently creating what he claimed would be a forever-current "dateless" newspaper, the only newspaper anyone would ever need. Homer, who was blind and a pretty good pianist, described his brother as "eccentric" and "intellectual."
Langley was neither. He was nuts.
So was Homer.
Homer & Langley, E.L. Doctorow’s newest novel, is loosely patterned after the Collyer brothers, who were found dead in their apartment in 1947, amid some 130 tons of trash.
Nuts is politically incorrect. Langley probably had what today would be called Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome, a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
For decades, he prowled the streets of New York City collecting "stuff." He dragged home thousands of magazines and books, broken furniture, empty milk bottles, candles, machinery, surplus military paraphernalia, musical instruments (14 pianos!), guns, rubber tires, umbrellas, scrap metal, and you-name-it. He never threw anything away. The newspapers were bundled, tied with string and stacked from floor to ceiling. The bales were pushed against the walls, eventually forming a warren of tunnels and passages through the rooms of the apartment.
Doctorow takes liberties with the details of the Collyer brothers’ story, extending their lifetimes into the ’70s and fleshing out the reasons they might have gotten themselves into such a mess. He brings a colorful parade of his own made-up characters through the apartment, too.
Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime, a best-seller, was the first of this genre, often referred to as "fictionalized" history. The imagined characters in Ragtime interacted with celebrities of the day: Harry Houdini, Sigmund Freud, Henry Ford and more.
Homer & Langley is a mini historical survey of Manhattan in the first two-thirds of the last century, seen through the eyes of a couple of eccentric recluses. Langley was damaged in the Great War, probably by mustard gas. The Collyers’ parents died in the 1920s. That’s when the brothers begin getting goofy. Doctorow traces their deterioration through the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, right smack into the Age of Aquarius.
It was a interesting read. I like fictionalized history. I enjoyed Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan, a fictionalized biography of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The book was written from the point of view of his second wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the women for whom he left his wife and six children. I also loved T.C. Boyle’s The Women, which viewed Frank Lloyd Wright through the eyes of each of his four wives. (FLW is a fascinating genius/rascal.) I loved American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld, which was loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. (If I were Laura Bush, however I’d be furious – FURIOUS – at the liberties Sittenfeld took with the intimate details of my life. Remember the sex scenes? The bathroom scene?) I also enjoyed The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham, a fabricated biography of Rose Kennedy.
The Collyers just aren’t as interesting as Frank Lloyd Wright or Laura Bush or Rose Kennedy. Homer and Langley were nuts. I give the book, Homer & Langley, one-and-a-half stars out of four.
My mother, who wasn’t nuts, gets five stars for exaggeration.
When I was a teenager, my mother periodically took a stand outside my bedroom door, hands on hips, and ranted about the Collyer Brothers.
Homer and Langley Collyer were reclusive bachelors. They were wealthy and well-educated. They both earned degrees from Columbia University. They were members of a well-respected New York family and they lived in their deceased parents’ pricey three-story Fifth Avenue apartment. Langley, who fancied himself an inventor, worked diligently creating what he claimed would be a forever-current "dateless" newspaper, the only newspaper anyone would ever need. Homer, who was blind and a pretty good pianist, described his brother as "eccentric" and "intellectual."
Langley was neither. He was nuts.
So was Homer.
Homer & Langley, E.L. Doctorow’s newest novel, is loosely patterned after the Collyer brothers, who were found dead in their apartment in 1947, amid some 130 tons of trash.
Nuts is politically incorrect. Langley probably had what today would be called Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome, a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
For decades, he prowled the streets of New York City collecting "stuff." He dragged home thousands of magazines and books, broken furniture, empty milk bottles, candles, machinery, surplus military paraphernalia, musical instruments (14 pianos!), guns, rubber tires, umbrellas, scrap metal, and you-name-it. He never threw anything away. The newspapers were bundled, tied with string and stacked from floor to ceiling. The bales were pushed against the walls, eventually forming a warren of tunnels and passages through the rooms of the apartment.
Doctorow takes liberties with the details of the Collyer brothers’ story, extending their lifetimes into the ’70s and fleshing out the reasons they might have gotten themselves into such a mess. He brings a colorful parade of his own made-up characters through the apartment, too.
Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime, a best-seller, was the first of this genre, often referred to as "fictionalized" history. The imagined characters in Ragtime interacted with celebrities of the day: Harry Houdini, Sigmund Freud, Henry Ford and more.
Homer & Langley is a mini historical survey of Manhattan in the first two-thirds of the last century, seen through the eyes of a couple of eccentric recluses. Langley was damaged in the Great War, probably by mustard gas. The Collyers’ parents died in the 1920s. That’s when the brothers begin getting goofy. Doctorow traces their deterioration through the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, right smack into the Age of Aquarius.
It was a interesting read. I like fictionalized history. I enjoyed Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan, a fictionalized biography of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The book was written from the point of view of his second wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the women for whom he left his wife and six children. I also loved T.C. Boyle’s The Women, which viewed Frank Lloyd Wright through the eyes of each of his four wives. (FLW is a fascinating genius/rascal.) I loved American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld, which was loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. (If I were Laura Bush, however I’d be furious – FURIOUS – at the liberties Sittenfeld took with the intimate details of my life. Remember the sex scenes? The bathroom scene?) I also enjoyed The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham, a fabricated biography of Rose Kennedy.
The Collyers just aren’t as interesting as Frank Lloyd Wright or Laura Bush or Rose Kennedy. Homer and Langley were nuts. I give the book, Homer & Langley, one-and-a-half stars out of four.
My mother, who wasn’t nuts, gets five stars for exaggeration.
A time to write and a time to tweak
By Margie Reins Smith (10/5/09)
The Editor’s Intensive, a two-day event sponsored by Writer’s Digest magazine, is designed for aspiring writers who are working on a project (a novel, for example, or a non-fiction book or a children's book) and are wondering if they’re on the right track. It’s also for those who have completed a book and are trying to figure out how to get the dang thing published.
I attended the Editor’s Intensive workshop last weekend at WD’s Cincinnati headquarters, along with nearly 40 other (mostly) unpublished writers from places as far away as Texas, Alabama, California, Florida, New York and Georgia. We immersed ourselves in writing and publishing and soaked up buckets of information during a full day of talks by WD editors and publishers. We were sponges.
The lecturers talked about how to get published in what they called "transformational times." Publishing is no longer limited to hardbound and softcover books. New writers can consider options unthinkable as few as 20 years ago: Web sites, print-on-demand books, blogs, self publishing, subsidized publishing, e-publishing and more. Some new publishing gimmick is probably being developed as I write.
Jane Friedman, WD’s publisher and editorial director, assured us that some 400,000 new books are published every year, 75,000 of those by five big publishing houses. So we can still aim for that nice new, hardback book with the colorful dust cover, propped seductively on top of a pile of its clones just inside the front door of the local book store.
One of the attendees at the conference had a Kindle, Amazon.com’s electronic book reader. It was the star of the afternoon. We all gathered around to check out this new way to read books. We marveled at its lightness, its huge capacity, its portability and its price (which, surprisingly, is decreasing).
Some nuggets I plucked from WD’s Editor’s Intensive:
* Writers today have to be actively involved in the marketing of their books. This is more important than ever before.
* Writers – particularly those who write non-fiction – must have platforms. These aren’t shoes. Platforms are the myriad ways authors can reach potential buyers of their books. Boiled down, it’s all the ways they can get involved in the marketing process. They can give talks, write blogs, teach classes, send out mailings, make personal appearances and/or promote their books in various creative ways involving print and broadcast media, the Internet and more.
* Writers must be visible online. With blogs, like this one. Facebook. Even Twitter, which I am resisting, since I can’t see any earthly reason why anybody would give a rip about what I’m doing now, unless it was either illegal or immoral.
* My novel (working title "Goodnight, Gracie") needs to be tweaked. Friedman, who provided a one-on-one critique of my first 50 pages, offered solid suggestions for getting conflict into each scene and hooking my potential reader right from the get-go. I’m enthusiastically tackling a rewrite of the first few chapters.
Postscript: How many readers of this blog – both of you – either have or are considering buying a Kindle or another brand of electronic reader? Send me a note about how you use it, how you like it or why you want it. I’m at [email protected]. I’ll gather some facts about e-readers and blog on it.
(Blog on it: That sounds nasty, doesn’t it?)
The Editor’s Intensive, a two-day event sponsored by Writer’s Digest magazine, is designed for aspiring writers who are working on a project (a novel, for example, or a non-fiction book or a children's book) and are wondering if they’re on the right track. It’s also for those who have completed a book and are trying to figure out how to get the dang thing published.
I attended the Editor’s Intensive workshop last weekend at WD’s Cincinnati headquarters, along with nearly 40 other (mostly) unpublished writers from places as far away as Texas, Alabama, California, Florida, New York and Georgia. We immersed ourselves in writing and publishing and soaked up buckets of information during a full day of talks by WD editors and publishers. We were sponges.
The lecturers talked about how to get published in what they called "transformational times." Publishing is no longer limited to hardbound and softcover books. New writers can consider options unthinkable as few as 20 years ago: Web sites, print-on-demand books, blogs, self publishing, subsidized publishing, e-publishing and more. Some new publishing gimmick is probably being developed as I write.
Jane Friedman, WD’s publisher and editorial director, assured us that some 400,000 new books are published every year, 75,000 of those by five big publishing houses. So we can still aim for that nice new, hardback book with the colorful dust cover, propped seductively on top of a pile of its clones just inside the front door of the local book store.
One of the attendees at the conference had a Kindle, Amazon.com’s electronic book reader. It was the star of the afternoon. We all gathered around to check out this new way to read books. We marveled at its lightness, its huge capacity, its portability and its price (which, surprisingly, is decreasing).
Some nuggets I plucked from WD’s Editor’s Intensive:
* Writers today have to be actively involved in the marketing of their books. This is more important than ever before.
* Writers – particularly those who write non-fiction – must have platforms. These aren’t shoes. Platforms are the myriad ways authors can reach potential buyers of their books. Boiled down, it’s all the ways they can get involved in the marketing process. They can give talks, write blogs, teach classes, send out mailings, make personal appearances and/or promote their books in various creative ways involving print and broadcast media, the Internet and more.
* Writers must be visible online. With blogs, like this one. Facebook. Even Twitter, which I am resisting, since I can’t see any earthly reason why anybody would give a rip about what I’m doing now, unless it was either illegal or immoral.
* My novel (working title "Goodnight, Gracie") needs to be tweaked. Friedman, who provided a one-on-one critique of my first 50 pages, offered solid suggestions for getting conflict into each scene and hooking my potential reader right from the get-go. I’m enthusiastically tackling a rewrite of the first few chapters.
Postscript: How many readers of this blog – both of you – either have or are considering buying a Kindle or another brand of electronic reader? Send me a note about how you use it, how you like it or why you want it. I’m at [email protected]. I’ll gather some facts about e-readers and blog on it.
(Blog on it: That sounds nasty, doesn’t it?)
Kathryn Stockett scores a hit with first novel, The Help
By Margie Reins Smith (9/28/09)
A well-known author – I wish I could remember his/her name – advised beginning writers to figuratively march up to a reader, look him in the eye, grab him by the lapels and begin telling the story. A good writer should be able to let go of those metaphoric lapels after a few pages because the reader will drop everything to follow him around, asking: "What happened next?" "And then what?" "And then what happened?"
Kathryn Stockett, a first-time novelist, has gotten the hang of the lapel-grabbing thing.
The Help is the story of three southern women. They all live in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, just as the civil rights movement is stretching and flexing its muscles.
Two of the women, Aibileen and Minny, are maids. Their mothers were maids. Their grandmothers were maids. Their great-grandmothers were slaves.
The third woman, Skeeter, is a newly minted graduate of Ole Miss, a young woman of privilege, class, education and money. Skeeter was raised by a caring, nurturing maid.
Aibileen and Minny, of course, are black. Skeeter is white.
In the 1950s and early ’60s, written and unwritten rules for interaction between an upper-class white woman and her maid were crystal clear. Among those rules:
* The maid follows orders, without question or complaint. "Yes, ma’am," is her standard response.
* The maid never sits down in the presence of her employer.
* The maid never has a meal at the same table with her employer.
* In fact, the maid has separate dishes and eating utensils which are washed and stored separately.
* The maid has her own bathroom.
* . . . Not to mention her own neighborhood, library, church, schools, retail stores and . . . outlook on life.
Nevertheless, these three unlikely co-conspirators get together, in secret, to write a tell-all book about what it’s like to be black, female and unquestionably subservient in the pre-civil rights South.
This is the lapel-grabbing story.
The characters, especially the black women, are wonderfully, carefully, lovingly drawn, with details and dialects and motivations that ring true. The white women are a bit over the top – almost cartoons. Miss Hilly is too cruel and vindictive; Miss Celia is too Dolly Partonish; Skeeter’s mother is too controlling. And Mr. Johnny, given his past history with Miss Hilly, would certainly have figured out why the Junior Leaguers were ignoring his wife.
But the lapel-grabbing story carries them all along, hurtling toward a conclusion that is both satisfying and surprising.
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is a good read. I’d give it three out of four stars.
A well-known author – I wish I could remember his/her name – advised beginning writers to figuratively march up to a reader, look him in the eye, grab him by the lapels and begin telling the story. A good writer should be able to let go of those metaphoric lapels after a few pages because the reader will drop everything to follow him around, asking: "What happened next?" "And then what?" "And then what happened?"
Kathryn Stockett, a first-time novelist, has gotten the hang of the lapel-grabbing thing.
The Help is the story of three southern women. They all live in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, just as the civil rights movement is stretching and flexing its muscles.
Two of the women, Aibileen and Minny, are maids. Their mothers were maids. Their grandmothers were maids. Their great-grandmothers were slaves.
The third woman, Skeeter, is a newly minted graduate of Ole Miss, a young woman of privilege, class, education and money. Skeeter was raised by a caring, nurturing maid.
Aibileen and Minny, of course, are black. Skeeter is white.
In the 1950s and early ’60s, written and unwritten rules for interaction between an upper-class white woman and her maid were crystal clear. Among those rules:
* The maid follows orders, without question or complaint. "Yes, ma’am," is her standard response.
* The maid never sits down in the presence of her employer.
* The maid never has a meal at the same table with her employer.
* In fact, the maid has separate dishes and eating utensils which are washed and stored separately.
* The maid has her own bathroom.
* . . . Not to mention her own neighborhood, library, church, schools, retail stores and . . . outlook on life.
Nevertheless, these three unlikely co-conspirators get together, in secret, to write a tell-all book about what it’s like to be black, female and unquestionably subservient in the pre-civil rights South.
This is the lapel-grabbing story.
The characters, especially the black women, are wonderfully, carefully, lovingly drawn, with details and dialects and motivations that ring true. The white women are a bit over the top – almost cartoons. Miss Hilly is too cruel and vindictive; Miss Celia is too Dolly Partonish; Skeeter’s mother is too controlling. And Mr. Johnny, given his past history with Miss Hilly, would certainly have figured out why the Junior Leaguers were ignoring his wife.
But the lapel-grabbing story carries them all along, hurtling toward a conclusion that is both satisfying and surprising.
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is a good read. I’d give it three out of four stars.
Sorry, Charlotte
By Margie Reins Smith (9/21/09)
A few hours ago, I murdered a bulbous brown spider with hairy brown- and black-striped legs who had the nerve to dangle herself from the top of my screen door exactly at my eye level. The murder weapon was poison: three squirts from a large red and green can of something labeled ROACH, Ant & Spider Killer.
"Kills on contact," it promised. "Guaranteed."
Just in case I didn’t get the point, the manufacturer placed three menacing pictures on the can – one each of an ant, a spider and a ROACH.
I wondered why the word ROACH is in bigger letters than the words ant and spider. ROACHES are more disgusting, I suppose.
When I was growing up, my parents were friends with a couple whose names were Floyd and Maxine Roach. This couple owned a restaurant. They decided not to use their last name for the restaurant. I think it was called Floyd’s Lunch or something.
But I digress.
The arachnid murder reminded me of my youngest daughter, now in her 30s, who still works herself into a virtual seizure when she encounters a spider. For whatever reason, she can deal with yellow jackets, mosquitoes, ants, ROACHES, flies, wasps and whatever six-legged creature sashays across her field of vision. Only spiders send her into overdrive.
When she was a little girl, she used to wake me in the middle of the night to kill a spider she spotted in a remote corner of the bathroom ceiling. Never her father. Me. Kids are like that. No child ever padded into his parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night, leaned on Daddy’s shoulder and said: "I think I’m gonna throw up."
Always mother.
This daughter insists that when a spider is murdered, even though it is squashed beyond recognition, it must not be place in a wastebasket. It must be flushed. She examines the toilet bowl post-flush, to be sure it went down. "If you put them in a wastebasket," she insists, "sometimes they come alive again."
Does she think these spiders will regain consciousness and stalk her?
Once, when she was in her 20s and living in her own condo at least 45 minutes across town from me, she called in the middle of the night because there was a threatening-looking spider in her bedroom.
"Smack it," I mumbled.
"It’s so big I can see its eyes," she said.
"Smack it anyway. Spray it. Step on it. Hit it with your shoe. I’m going back to sleep."
That night, she actually talked a friend into getting out of bed, getting in his car, driving to her condo and killing that spider.
She should be in sales.
Normally, I consider spiders Mother Nature’s good guys. I rely on them to patrol my basement. I know they will slurp up centipedes and millipedes (who, if given enough time and some space, will grow to be as big as mice.)
However. If a spider flaunts its bloated body and its wiggly little legs and its beady little eyes smack in front of my nose in broad daylight in my house, even though it’s a good guy, it’s gotta take the consequences.
A few hours ago, I murdered a bulbous brown spider with hairy brown- and black-striped legs who had the nerve to dangle herself from the top of my screen door exactly at my eye level. The murder weapon was poison: three squirts from a large red and green can of something labeled ROACH, Ant & Spider Killer.
"Kills on contact," it promised. "Guaranteed."
Just in case I didn’t get the point, the manufacturer placed three menacing pictures on the can – one each of an ant, a spider and a ROACH.
I wondered why the word ROACH is in bigger letters than the words ant and spider. ROACHES are more disgusting, I suppose.
When I was growing up, my parents were friends with a couple whose names were Floyd and Maxine Roach. This couple owned a restaurant. They decided not to use their last name for the restaurant. I think it was called Floyd’s Lunch or something.
But I digress.
The arachnid murder reminded me of my youngest daughter, now in her 30s, who still works herself into a virtual seizure when she encounters a spider. For whatever reason, she can deal with yellow jackets, mosquitoes, ants, ROACHES, flies, wasps and whatever six-legged creature sashays across her field of vision. Only spiders send her into overdrive.
When she was a little girl, she used to wake me in the middle of the night to kill a spider she spotted in a remote corner of the bathroom ceiling. Never her father. Me. Kids are like that. No child ever padded into his parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night, leaned on Daddy’s shoulder and said: "I think I’m gonna throw up."
Always mother.
This daughter insists that when a spider is murdered, even though it is squashed beyond recognition, it must not be place in a wastebasket. It must be flushed. She examines the toilet bowl post-flush, to be sure it went down. "If you put them in a wastebasket," she insists, "sometimes they come alive again."
Does she think these spiders will regain consciousness and stalk her?
Once, when she was in her 20s and living in her own condo at least 45 minutes across town from me, she called in the middle of the night because there was a threatening-looking spider in her bedroom.
"Smack it," I mumbled.
"It’s so big I can see its eyes," she said.
"Smack it anyway. Spray it. Step on it. Hit it with your shoe. I’m going back to sleep."
That night, she actually talked a friend into getting out of bed, getting in his car, driving to her condo and killing that spider.
She should be in sales.
Normally, I consider spiders Mother Nature’s good guys. I rely on them to patrol my basement. I know they will slurp up centipedes and millipedes (who, if given enough time and some space, will grow to be as big as mice.)
However. If a spider flaunts its bloated body and its wiggly little legs and its beady little eyes smack in front of my nose in broad daylight in my house, even though it’s a good guy, it’s gotta take the consequences.
Trash or Treasure?
By Margie Reins Smith (9/14/09)
The difference between a garage sale and a trash pickup is how close the items are to the curb. When it comes to garage sales, I've been around the block a few times. As a seller and as a buyer. Ditto for putting the trash out.
By the time women my age (motherly/grandmotherly types) have traded in our training bras and tubes of Clearasil for heavy-duty underwires and Botox, every one of us has collected way too much stuff.
Having too much stuff is like having clogged arteries. It keeps you from running at peak efficiency. It makes you groggy and sluggish. I want to be free of all my 33 1/3 LPs, rusty fireplace tools, circle pins, bell-bottom maternity pants, decoupaged cigar boxes, 8-track tapes and my mother's knee-length skunk fur coat.
The typical garage sale goes something like this: A few women get together and set a date, select a garage and place an ad in the community newspaper. Each one goes home and sorts through her old stuff. The old stuff gets hauled out, dusted off, polished, fluffed up and carried to the designated garage, where items are grouped according to type, placed on wobbly card tables and "priced to sell."
"Priced to sell" means ridiculously cheap. Readers' Digest condensed books and dog-eared paperbacks are 5 cents apiece. Plastic patio chairs go for $2. Ski boots are $5. Woven baskets, figurines, mismatched coffee mugs, Styrofoam
snowmen and framed posters are 10 cents each.
I am always amazed at the different points of view between vendors and vendees at garage sales. It's a game.
Take a chipped, gaudy turquoise-and-brown flower vase that has served as a home to hundreds of generations of spiders in my basement for 50 years. I see a chipped, gaudy turquoise-and-brown vase. Someone else sees a rare piece of Art Deco pottery manufactured in Ohio by Rookwood. She snags it for $5 and brags about it.
Boo. I should have done my research. I lose.
Another vendor offers a crudely crafted wooden goose covered with peeling paint, wearing a droopy, stained, dust-catching brown plaid ribbon around its neck. I see a charming piece of folk art. I whoop and holler that I got it for $2.
Yippee. I win.
Watch out when planning a garage sale with a bunch of neighbors or friends. Be careful. Trust me.
In theory, the idea is brilliant. You all clean out your basements – which is good. You recycle your usable items – also good. You get to sit around on a driveway on a Saturday morning drinking coffee with friends, watching the items fly off the shelves. Good.
Uh oh. Your first clue comes as you're arranging the stuff in the garage on the night before the sale. You see a toaster oven that your neighbor wants to sell.
"Sure, it works," she says. "I bought a new toaster and I just don't use this one anymore."
Then you spot a pair of cross-country skis that, for sure, would fit your daughter and keep her from borrowing your skis. As you paw through a pile of paperbacks, you notice two Peter Mayle books you haven't read yet.
Your friend takes a shine to the framed Golden Gate bridge poster you're selling, even though it's so faded, the only colors remaining are the blues and pinks. Another co-seller finds a roasting pan she needs, a pair of jeans that will probably fit her son and a pair of gold earrings exactly like the ones she sold at a garage sale last year by mistake.
At the end of the day you all will have sold many items, mostly to each other. You will still have a garage full of stuff.
This is the stuff that gets moved to the curb.
This essay first appeared in the Grosse Pointe News
The difference between a garage sale and a trash pickup is how close the items are to the curb. When it comes to garage sales, I've been around the block a few times. As a seller and as a buyer. Ditto for putting the trash out.
By the time women my age (motherly/grandmotherly types) have traded in our training bras and tubes of Clearasil for heavy-duty underwires and Botox, every one of us has collected way too much stuff.
Having too much stuff is like having clogged arteries. It keeps you from running at peak efficiency. It makes you groggy and sluggish. I want to be free of all my 33 1/3 LPs, rusty fireplace tools, circle pins, bell-bottom maternity pants, decoupaged cigar boxes, 8-track tapes and my mother's knee-length skunk fur coat.
The typical garage sale goes something like this: A few women get together and set a date, select a garage and place an ad in the community newspaper. Each one goes home and sorts through her old stuff. The old stuff gets hauled out, dusted off, polished, fluffed up and carried to the designated garage, where items are grouped according to type, placed on wobbly card tables and "priced to sell."
"Priced to sell" means ridiculously cheap. Readers' Digest condensed books and dog-eared paperbacks are 5 cents apiece. Plastic patio chairs go for $2. Ski boots are $5. Woven baskets, figurines, mismatched coffee mugs, Styrofoam
snowmen and framed posters are 10 cents each.
I am always amazed at the different points of view between vendors and vendees at garage sales. It's a game.
Take a chipped, gaudy turquoise-and-brown flower vase that has served as a home to hundreds of generations of spiders in my basement for 50 years. I see a chipped, gaudy turquoise-and-brown vase. Someone else sees a rare piece of Art Deco pottery manufactured in Ohio by Rookwood. She snags it for $5 and brags about it.
Boo. I should have done my research. I lose.
Another vendor offers a crudely crafted wooden goose covered with peeling paint, wearing a droopy, stained, dust-catching brown plaid ribbon around its neck. I see a charming piece of folk art. I whoop and holler that I got it for $2.
Yippee. I win.
Watch out when planning a garage sale with a bunch of neighbors or friends. Be careful. Trust me.
In theory, the idea is brilliant. You all clean out your basements – which is good. You recycle your usable items – also good. You get to sit around on a driveway on a Saturday morning drinking coffee with friends, watching the items fly off the shelves. Good.
Uh oh. Your first clue comes as you're arranging the stuff in the garage on the night before the sale. You see a toaster oven that your neighbor wants to sell.
"Sure, it works," she says. "I bought a new toaster and I just don't use this one anymore."
Then you spot a pair of cross-country skis that, for sure, would fit your daughter and keep her from borrowing your skis. As you paw through a pile of paperbacks, you notice two Peter Mayle books you haven't read yet.
Your friend takes a shine to the framed Golden Gate bridge poster you're selling, even though it's so faded, the only colors remaining are the blues and pinks. Another co-seller finds a roasting pan she needs, a pair of jeans that will probably fit her son and a pair of gold earrings exactly like the ones she sold at a garage sale last year by mistake.
At the end of the day you all will have sold many items, mostly to each other. You will still have a garage full of stuff.
This is the stuff that gets moved to the curb.
This essay first appeared in the Grosse Pointe News