Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
- From a headstone in Ireland
My Auntie M--my mom's second eldest sister, passed away today. :-( It just seemed too quick, since her diagnosis in September. I thought she was supposed to have at least six months, according to her doctors.
Auntie M and Uncle B were married for over 50 years. They had no children. I imposed myself on them 21 years ago, one summer, while I was trying to graduate on time by taking a couple of intensive, three-week, quick and dirty get-it-over-with summer courses at San Francisco State U. (Not my regular college). I stayed six weeks. I'm sure it was hard on them, having had no children and not being used to company.
I felt like I was under a microscope the entire time, with Auntie M reporting my every move, word, and habit to my mother! %-0 Despite our difficulties, I came to realize Auntie M was a good-hearted person. She may have been seemingly hypercritical, judgmental, and intolerant of others at times, but she really had a good heart. :-)
Auntie M makes the fourth person in the family we've lost this year. In January, it was a dear family friend. In March, my favorite uncle. In April, a young cousin (who survived a year after being diagnosed with a brain tumor). And now, Auntie M.
Can we have a break from all this sadness, which also includes loved ones on both sides of the family who've been diagnosed with cancer this year??
When I read things like: death is part of life, I do NOT disagree. But that doesn't make it any less painful for the ones who lost someone dear in their lives, by any measure.
I'm not a religious person, so I am not going to talk about God. My feelings are ambivalent about Her (!) at best. I go to God when I'm feeling desperate, like going for junk food when I have no other choice in front of me. No wonder sailors curse God all the time. Or pray fervently to God. They are sailing on rough waters that seem to have no end in sight.
(To those shocked by my reference to HER, I ask: DO YOU IN FACT KNOW that God is a HE, not a SHE?)
When I think of death, I think of an image seen too many times in film: the image of a robed, hooded person whose face you can't see, with a sickle in hand--used for digging your grave.
The last time I encountered the Grim Reaper, it was when I had my one and only car accident en route to work one morning. A slippery bridge...my car went out of control, and I ricocheted across the bridge. Good thing no one was on it except me. It was 5:45 in the morning or so. Yes, I used to work crazy hours like that for too many years!
Hubby asked later why I didn't use the emergency brakes. Well, dear, it's kind of hard to remember that when you think that this is THE END. When you suddenly see your life flash before you. When you try to remember at what point do you open your car door and escape when your car flips over into the water (which I was sure that was going to happen, but never did)?
The first time I thought I had met Mr. GR was a decade ago, after an operation to remove ovarian cysts, and I felt so utterly miserable that I almost didn't care AT ALL if I woke up again or not. I was SO completely overwhelmed with nausea. Yech!
I've escaped him twice now. I know you can't choose your time, and I've had more ailments throughout my lifetime than I can count on my fingers and toes together. My family can attest to that! But each time I get knocked down with something, I allow myself a little pity party, and then force myself to move on. Do whatever I have to do to get over this situation.
I'll be damned if I let the Grim Reaper get anywhere near me: I'll fight HIM tooth and nail as long as I have my faculties intact! (Yes, a him. How could such an unpleasant character be a woman?!)
I did have a couple close calls in the last year with a monster Mack truck and also a pick-up truck (the driver was looking right AT me! Or was it through me?) while crossing the street on foot. The Grim Reaper can show up anywhere!
I am the baby on both sides of the family. I came later in my parents' lives (for the 60's) and all my grandparents were products of the 19th century. I was very young when three of them passed away in succession within a year and a half or so. I had just barely started school--no later than the beginning of 1st grade when the last of the three died.
I didn't know them well, but I have a good photographic memory of them. AND their funerals. I think seeing a lot of death in a short period of time and being very young has had a big impact on me in ways I haven't quite figured out yet.
My mom was also having health problems at the time, but I didn't know it--or maybe I did at the time but didn't ask. And wasn't told. That's just how things were then.
I do know that I don't get freaked like some people do when others die. Maybe they haven't seen death close up before, I don't know. It's never, never easy, no matter how many times I've seen death. I had two friends who sat next to each other at my wedding banquet; both were gone the next month. And of course I fell apart at their funeral and memorial service. :-(
When someone I cared about leaves this world, it certainly makes me reflect on their life. Was it a life well-lived? How did he or she survive war and manage life's dark moments? Then I think about my life. Am I living the best way I can, according to my desires and goals first, rather than according to the expectations/conventions of society? What can I do better to achieve and surpass my own expectations? There is always room for improvement, yes indeed! ;-0
Death may be lurking in the distant future, but I intend to live my life as fully as possible, on my terms, pursuing the activities and ideas I value, standing firm for my convictions, and not being afraid of those who may vehemently disagree with me. We'll just have to agree to disagree. ;-)
Oh, one other thing: I don't like wearing black at all. It reminds me of funerals, death. Black looks great on other people. It looks cool. Sophisticated. I'll wear black trousers if need be, like for work or if it's too cold to wear a dress, but if I don't have to, I won't. Because black represents death and cold, vast emptiness to me.
I'd rather wear my favorite color, RED: a color symbolizing life...vibrancy...warmth!
Rest in peace, Auntie M. I'll never forget what a good heart you possessed and my brief time with you and Uncle B. :-)
Monday, December 17, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The Right to Read
On the occasion of the hyped unveiling of amazon.com's new wireless reading device, Kindle, I present to you the following cautionary tale:
The Right to Read
This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
(from “The Road To Tycho”, a collection of articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096)
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA—the Software Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not taking pains to prevent the crime.
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)
Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory.
There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.
Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.
Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for class exercises.
It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
Dan concluded that he couldn't simply lend Lissa his computer. But he couldn't refuse to help her, because he loved her. Every chance to speak with her filled him with delight. And that she chose him to ask for help, that could mean she loved him too.
Dan resolved the dilemma by doing something even more unthinkable—he lent her the computer, and told her his password. This way, if Lissa read his books, Central Licensing would think he was reading them. It was still a crime, but the SPA would not automatically find out about it. They would only find out if Lissa reported him.
Of course, if the school ever found out that he had given Lissa his own password, it would be curtains for both of them as students, regardless of what she had used it for. School policy was that any interference with their means of monitoring students' computer use was grounds for disciplinary action. It didn't matter whether you did anything harmful—the offense was making it hard for the administrators to check on you. They assumed this meant you were doing something else forbidden, and they did not need to know what it was.
Students were not usually expelled for this—not directly. Instead they were banned from the school computer systems, and would inevitably fail all their classes.
Later, Dan would learn that this kind of university policy started only in the 1980s, when university students in large numbers began using computers. Previously, universities maintained a different approach to student discipline; they punished activities that were harmful, not those that merely raised suspicion.
Lissa did not report Dan to the SPA. His decision to help her led to their marriage, and also led them to question what they had been taught about piracy as children. The couple began reading about the history of copyright, about the Soviet Union and its restrictions on copying, and even the original United States Constitution. They moved to Luna, where they found others who had likewise gravitated away from the long arm of the SPA. When the Tycho Uprising began in 2062, the universal right to read soon became one of its central aims.
Author's Note
This note was updated in 2007.
The right to read is a battle being fought today. Although it may take 50 years for our present way of life to fade into obscurity, most of the specific laws and practices described above have already been proposed; many have been enacted into law in the US and elsewhere. In the US, the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act established the legal basis to restrict the reading and lending of computerized books (and other works as well). The European Union imposed similar restrictions in a 2001 copyright directive. In France, under the DADVSI law adopted in 2006, mere possession of a copy of DeCSS, the free program to decrypt video on a DVD, is a crime.
In 2001, Disney-funded Senator Hollings proposed a bill called the SSSCA that would require every new computer to have mandatory copy-restriction facilities that the user cannot bypass. Following the Clipper chip and similar US government key-escrow proposals, this shows a long-term trend: computer systems are increasingly set up to give absentees with clout control over the people actually using the computer system. The SSSCA was later renamed to the unpronouncable CBDTPA, which was glossed as the “Consume But Don't Try Programming Act”.
The Republicans took control of the US senate shortly thereafter. They are less tied to Hollywood than the Democrats, so they did not press these proposals. Now that the Democrats are back in control, the danger is once again higher.
In 2001 the US began attempting to use the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty to impose the same rules on all the countries in the Western Hemisphere. The FTAA is one of the so-called “free trade” treaties, which are actually designed to give business increased power over democratic governments; imposing laws like the DMCA is typical of this spirit. The FTAA was effectively killed by Lula, President of Brazil, who rejected the DMCA requirement and others.
Since then, the US has imposed similar requirements on countries such as Australia and Mexico through bilateral “free trade” agreements, and on countries such as Costa Rica through CAFTA. Ecuador's President Correa refused to sign the “free trade” agreement, but Ecuador had adopted something like the DMCA in 2003. Ecuador's new constitution may provide an opportunity to get rid of it.
One of the ideas in the story was not proposed in reality until 2002. This is the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords for your personal computers, and not let you have them.
The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as “trusted computing” and “palladium”. We call it “treacherous computing”, because the effect is to make your computer obey companies instead of you. This was implemented in 2007 as part of Windows Vista; we expect Apple to do something similar. In this scheme, it is the manufacturer that keeps the secret code, but the FBI would have little trouble getting it.
What Microsoft keeps is not exactly a password in the traditional sense; no person ever types it on a terminal. Rather, it is a signature and encryption key that corresponds to a second key stored in your computer. This enables Microsoft, and potentially any web sites that cooperate with Microsoft, the ultimate control over what the user can do on his own computer.
Vista also gives Microsoft additional powers; for instance, Microsoft can forcibly install upgrades, and it can order all machines running Vista to refuse to run a certain device driver. The main purpose of Vista's many restrictions is to make DRM that users can't overcome.
The SPA, which actually stands for Software Publisher's Association, has been replaced in this police-like role by the BSA or Business Software Alliance. It is not, today, an official police force; unofficially, it acts like one. Using methods reminiscent of the erstwhile Soviet Union, it invites people to inform on their coworkers and friends. A BSA terror campaign in Argentina in 2001 made slightly-veiled threats that people sharing software would be raped.
When this story was first written, the SPA was threatening small Internet service providers, demanding they permit the SPA to monitor all users. Most ISPs surrendered when threatened, because they cannot afford to fight back in court. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1 Oct 96, D3.) At least one ISP, Community ConneXion in Oakland CA, refused the demand and was actually sued. The SPA later dropped the suit, but obtained the DMCA which gave them the power they sought.
The university security policies described above are not imaginary. For example, a computer at one Chicago-area university prints this message when you log in (quotation marks are in the original):
This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals using this computer system without authority or in the excess of their authority are subject to having all their activities on this system monitored and recorded by system personnel. In the course of monitoring individuals improperly using this system or in the course of system maintenance, the activities of authorized user may also be monitored. Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring and is advised that if such monitoring reveals possible evidence of illegal activity or violation of University regulations system personnel may provide the evidence of such monitoring to University authorities and/or law enforcement officials.
This is an interesting approach to the Fourth Amendment: pressure most everyone to agree, in advance, to waive their rights under it.
References
- The administration's “White Paper”: Information Infrastructure Task Force, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights (1995).
- An explanation of the White Paper: The Copyright Grab, Pamela Samuelson, Wired, Jan. 1996
- Sold Out, James Boyle, New York Times, 31 March 1996
- Public Data or Private Data, Washington Post, 4 Nov 1996. We used to have a link to this, but Washinton Post has decided to start charging users who wishes to read articles on the web site and therefore we have decided to remove the link.
- Union for the Public Domain—an organization which aims to resist and reverse the overextension of copyright and patent powers.
This essay is published in Free Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman.
Other Texts to Read
- Philosophy of the GNU Project
- Copy Protection: Just Say No, Published in Computer World.
The author's note talks about the battle for the right to read and electronic surveillance. The battle is beginning now; here are links to two articles about technologies now being developed to deny you the right to read.
- Electronic Publishing: An article about distribution of books in electronic form, and copyright issues affecting the right to read a copy.
- Books inside Computers: Software to control who can read books and documents on a PC.
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Copyright © 1996 Richard Stallman
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* * * * * *
HEY EVERYBODY, DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY...IT'S FREE, NO BUTTON TO PUSH TO BUY A BOOK! YOU CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO READ. :-)
Friday, November 16, 2007
I Didn't Aspire To Be A Domestic Goddess
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with it's endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
-Simone de Beauvoir
-from The Second Sex
Merci, Simone, for expressing my thoughts exactly on housework and putting them on paper before I even was born! You are my newfound heroine, inspiration, and mentor from beyond! I am in the process of devouring everything you wrote and I will dedicate a post to you on your 100th birthday next January. :-)
For now, I am publicly admitting that I am not a domestic goddess. That's a fancy, modern day term for housewife. I never yearned to be one. Ever. It would drive me insane.
I say kudos to the generations of housewives who have fed, clothed, and kept their families living in relative neatness and cleanliness. We wouldn't be here without them!
However, I don't fit that category. My apartment is evidence of that! %-0 It's not a pigsty but neither is it a Macy's showroom. Daily cleaning is BORING. I'm talking about thorough cleaning beyond just cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen or bathroom, like daily dusting, vacuuming, cleaning floors.
Cooking is also part of housework. Cooking is essential, and I like to cook the things I like to eat, but I am not a chef--though I do like to pat myself on the back when a dish turns out especially good. It's much more enjoyable to feast on other people's fine dining, like my family's or friends' or at a restaurant. ;-)
Referring back to de Beauvoir's words, it is the montony of housekeeping that I relate to. Having read half of her four volume autobiographical series, I can tell she was no housekeeper. She was an intellectual since her youth. She had no intention of ever submitting to the "service" of marriage and motherhood. And she didn't. She was too busy teaching and writing. She was a woman ahead of her times: freethinking and independent in her own right. She challenged women to think for themselves and become their own person. She laid the foundation for modern-day feminists.
Thinking about dust bunnies was not high on her to-do list. Nor mine--until I see them...and I have poor eyesight anyway!
What is the torture of Sisyphus, to which Simone de Beauvoir refers in the quote? Sisyphus, according to Greek mythology, was a king punished in the Tartarus (either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades or the entire underworld with Hades being the hellish component) to roll a huge boulder up a hill for eternity. The catch was that before he reached the top of the hill, the rock would always escape him and would have to begin again! %-0
That sounds EXACTLY like ironing to me! Torture. Repetitive torture at that! I hate ironing. But it's a necessary evil; I iron because I don't like to wear wrinkly clothes. I have wrinkly clothes because I've never liked to use a dryer unless I have to in emergency. I hang them out. Just as my mom has done probably her whole life. Freshly hung clothes smell better and last longer. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and they'd all be smooth, straight out of the washing machine! I can't think of a more mind-numbing activity than ironing. :-(
If I know company is coming, which is very rare for hubby and myself (as in a few times a year or less), I go on a mad cleaning rampage: I put on some kind of racy classical music in the cd player, while I wash and vacuum the floors, and make everything non-cluttered and clean as can be in a few hours' time! Yes, I wait until the last minute. That's how much I think of the the task of housework.
And no, I don't like looking at dust, much less dirt. I'll take care of it in due time thank you very much. Dirt first. We don't wear shoes in the apartment, so that helps a lot. I don't let company wear their shoes in our home, either, if they're going to stay awhile.
Clutter is another matter. I do try to make "neat" piles of stuff. It's hard! Hubby is a pack-rat, as is his dad and my family. I save a lot, too, but I try to organize it, or at worst, hide stuff in drawers until I get to it in another life. ;-) Hubby's worse than me: he'll even save cardboard boxes. He might have to send back an item someday he says. Hah! %-(
When we left our house four years ago, we had an attic PACKED with old boxes! A fire hazard, indeed! NEVER AGAIN, I proclaimed. He even took the words right out of my mouth one day recently: "I didn't sign up to be a WAREHOUSE manager!" Darn right I didn't, mister.
Hubby's favorite line to me whenever I make noise about clutter: "What's it hurting you? Don't you have more important things to think about?"
* BIG sigh*!
Well, of course I do. He's right. I DO have more better things to think about, like keeping abreast of new developments in my field of massage therapy, or devouring the work of Simone de Beauvoir or any other feminist, or reading about things Chinese. That's plenty to keep my mind busy. I made a vow to myself long ago that I wanted my life to have a feverish quality about it: to be as involved as possible through mind, body and soul in pursuing what I enjoy and what I believe in.
I think of myself as a woman finally on the blazing path to realizing her dreams, but still pulled back now and then by the nitty gritty details of life: serious illness and death among friends and family/relatives (six already this year). Somehow, the serious and sad parts are easier for me to accept than the mundane details of housekeeping.
It is my good fortune I hooked up with a progressive-thinking man who is not a neat freak. I just don't want too much clutter and dust! Is it because I'm a woman, conditioned by society that it's the woman's job to upkeep the home?
Even though The Second Sex was written over a half century ago, I think that Simone's views on housework and other topics are still pretty much as true today as when she wrote them. It is what I observe in some, but not all, relatives and friends. Impatient and ignorant reviewers on amazon.com will say she's boring and outdated, but I don't agree.
On housework:
"...woman's work within the home gives her no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it does not open out on the future, it produces nothing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as it is linked with existent beings who reach out beyond themselves, transcend themselves, toward society in production and action. That is, far from freeing the matron, her occupation makes her dependent upon husband and children; she is justified through them; but in their lives, she is only an inessential intermediary."
I like to keep in mind her words: "in order to find a hearth and home within oneself, one must first have found self-realization in works or in deeds". For myself, it is more important to invest my time nourishing my mind and body than to spend time making my home look physically beautiful.
Dust bunnies will never rule my day! %-0
* * * *
At worst, a house unkept, cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
-Rose Macaulay, prolific poet and novelist
-Simone de Beauvoir
-from The Second Sex
Merci, Simone, for expressing my thoughts exactly on housework and putting them on paper before I even was born! You are my newfound heroine, inspiration, and mentor from beyond! I am in the process of devouring everything you wrote and I will dedicate a post to you on your 100th birthday next January. :-)
For now, I am publicly admitting that I am not a domestic goddess. That's a fancy, modern day term for housewife. I never yearned to be one. Ever. It would drive me insane.
I say kudos to the generations of housewives who have fed, clothed, and kept their families living in relative neatness and cleanliness. We wouldn't be here without them!
However, I don't fit that category. My apartment is evidence of that! %-0 It's not a pigsty but neither is it a Macy's showroom. Daily cleaning is BORING. I'm talking about thorough cleaning beyond just cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen or bathroom, like daily dusting, vacuuming, cleaning floors.
Cooking is also part of housework. Cooking is essential, and I like to cook the things I like to eat, but I am not a chef--though I do like to pat myself on the back when a dish turns out especially good. It's much more enjoyable to feast on other people's fine dining, like my family's or friends' or at a restaurant. ;-)
Referring back to de Beauvoir's words, it is the montony of housekeeping that I relate to. Having read half of her four volume autobiographical series, I can tell she was no housekeeper. She was an intellectual since her youth. She had no intention of ever submitting to the "service" of marriage and motherhood. And she didn't. She was too busy teaching and writing. She was a woman ahead of her times: freethinking and independent in her own right. She challenged women to think for themselves and become their own person. She laid the foundation for modern-day feminists.
Thinking about dust bunnies was not high on her to-do list. Nor mine--until I see them...and I have poor eyesight anyway!
What is the torture of Sisyphus, to which Simone de Beauvoir refers in the quote? Sisyphus, according to Greek mythology, was a king punished in the Tartarus (either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades or the entire underworld with Hades being the hellish component) to roll a huge boulder up a hill for eternity. The catch was that before he reached the top of the hill, the rock would always escape him and would have to begin again! %-0
That sounds EXACTLY like ironing to me! Torture. Repetitive torture at that! I hate ironing. But it's a necessary evil; I iron because I don't like to wear wrinkly clothes. I have wrinkly clothes because I've never liked to use a dryer unless I have to in emergency. I hang them out. Just as my mom has done probably her whole life. Freshly hung clothes smell better and last longer. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and they'd all be smooth, straight out of the washing machine! I can't think of a more mind-numbing activity than ironing. :-(
If I know company is coming, which is very rare for hubby and myself (as in a few times a year or less), I go on a mad cleaning rampage: I put on some kind of racy classical music in the cd player, while I wash and vacuum the floors, and make everything non-cluttered and clean as can be in a few hours' time! Yes, I wait until the last minute. That's how much I think of the the task of housework.
And no, I don't like looking at dust, much less dirt. I'll take care of it in due time thank you very much. Dirt first. We don't wear shoes in the apartment, so that helps a lot. I don't let company wear their shoes in our home, either, if they're going to stay awhile.
Clutter is another matter. I do try to make "neat" piles of stuff. It's hard! Hubby is a pack-rat, as is his dad and my family. I save a lot, too, but I try to organize it, or at worst, hide stuff in drawers until I get to it in another life. ;-) Hubby's worse than me: he'll even save cardboard boxes. He might have to send back an item someday he says. Hah! %-(
When we left our house four years ago, we had an attic PACKED with old boxes! A fire hazard, indeed! NEVER AGAIN, I proclaimed. He even took the words right out of my mouth one day recently: "I didn't sign up to be a WAREHOUSE manager!" Darn right I didn't, mister.
Hubby's favorite line to me whenever I make noise about clutter: "What's it hurting you? Don't you have more important things to think about?"
* BIG sigh*!
Well, of course I do. He's right. I DO have more better things to think about, like keeping abreast of new developments in my field of massage therapy, or devouring the work of Simone de Beauvoir or any other feminist, or reading about things Chinese. That's plenty to keep my mind busy. I made a vow to myself long ago that I wanted my life to have a feverish quality about it: to be as involved as possible through mind, body and soul in pursuing what I enjoy and what I believe in.
I think of myself as a woman finally on the blazing path to realizing her dreams, but still pulled back now and then by the nitty gritty details of life: serious illness and death among friends and family/relatives (six already this year). Somehow, the serious and sad parts are easier for me to accept than the mundane details of housekeeping.
It is my good fortune I hooked up with a progressive-thinking man who is not a neat freak. I just don't want too much clutter and dust! Is it because I'm a woman, conditioned by society that it's the woman's job to upkeep the home?
Even though The Second Sex was written over a half century ago, I think that Simone's views on housework and other topics are still pretty much as true today as when she wrote them. It is what I observe in some, but not all, relatives and friends. Impatient and ignorant reviewers on amazon.com will say she's boring and outdated, but I don't agree.
On housework:
"...woman's work within the home gives her no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it does not open out on the future, it produces nothing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as it is linked with existent beings who reach out beyond themselves, transcend themselves, toward society in production and action. That is, far from freeing the matron, her occupation makes her dependent upon husband and children; she is justified through them; but in their lives, she is only an inessential intermediary."
I like to keep in mind her words: "in order to find a hearth and home within oneself, one must first have found self-realization in works or in deeds". For myself, it is more important to invest my time nourishing my mind and body than to spend time making my home look physically beautiful.
Dust bunnies will never rule my day! %-0
* * * *
At worst, a house unkept, cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
-Rose Macaulay, prolific poet and novelist
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
BOO!
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
- William Shakespeare
There is a graveyard by our apartment complex. It's the first thing I noticed when we first moved here four years ago. I told hubby, "We're going to be in trouble if these folks decide to wake up one night!"
If I had never seen "Night of the Living Dead", I might never have thought to say such a silly thing. But as it is, I have a morbid curiosity with horror films, mostly since I've been with my man. I can only watch horror flicks with him or with friends, though...never alone!
I do not like the gruesome, gushy blood fanfare. Especially any head lopping stuff. I can thank my 8th grade history teacher for that. She showed us a film on the French Revolution that had guillotine scenes. That did it. My lunch period was next. I don't recall having had lunch that day; my stomach was in a knot. Yuk. Sorry if you feel sick at this moment, but you can understand my aversion to certain scenes. Nothing will make me puke faster than a head scene.
I'm more into the eerie psych stuff, which I think is scarier than lots of butchering. Films like "Psycho", "Raising Caine", "The Exorcist", and "Rosemary's Baby" still scare me to this day! %-0 Even "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"--which actually did not show a lot of blood but only let the audience imagine it with the screaming and the sounds of the chainsaw, is more a psychologically scary film than the slash and burn types. It certainly leaves more to the imagination than some newer films, which is why I like older films in general, because they're not insulting to my mind.
The other week, I got "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi from the library.. I'd seen it eons ago, but hubby never saw it. It was GREAT! We had seen the Dracula movie by Coppola with Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves. That was also very good, and stylish! But there was something very pure and raw about the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi--he was portrayed as more human...and tortured. The other Dracula movie we saw was an older one with Christopher Lee as Dracula, probably from the 60's or early 70's. That was a funny one: there was a host in the castle named Clove (as in garlic clove!), thick blood that looked like it came out of ketchup bottle, and Dracula sinking into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz"!
Silent horror films can be spooky, too, like German expressionist films "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Nosferatu". They look tame...but don't watch them by yourself!
Also, when we first moved here, we had a horribly noisy fan in the bathroom. It sounded like the motor on the boat in "Jaws". Yes, in my wild imagination (especially if I was home alone), I fully expected a shark to rip through the bathroom wall and violently tear my flesh off! I had that thought for only a moment! But t was enough for us to call maintenance to come and quiet the thing. They did something, I don't know what; afterwards, it was still loud, but not so obnoxious. :-)
Many eons ago, I heard some horrible voice coming from another room and went in to find my honey watching "Hellraiser". I was so scared for him! As if the skinless people in the movie were going to reach out and grab him! Aren't you scared, I asked? Oh no! He was very non-chalant about it, and in fact, was getting quite a bit of thrill and morbid amusement out of it. Being the good wife, I stayed with him cuz I was worried for him. Instead, I ended up hiding behind him everytime I thought something gruesome was going to happen, like a head scene. Yuk!
Would you believe I saw it a second time? Or maybe it was the sequel. I don't remember! All I remember is that I was laughing my head off at Pinhead! The other characters, too, but mostly him. Some of these horror flicks have a lot of black humor in them, if you can get past the red liquid part. Hubby and I tend to be attracted to the bizarre and black humored fare (which, I suppose, could mean both of us may be weird, ourselves). ;-)
This can include non-horror entertainment, such as Dr. Who, The Twilight Zone (the old, black and white episodes) and Monty Python, all of which were prone to showing some horror--usually in a very, dark-humored way.
I don't know why some find horror fascinating and others are revolted by it. I guess it depends on your tolerance level. I just figure: it's only a movie!
Books are another matter. I went through a Stephen King phase in jr. high and high school and got scared reading "The Shining" while babysitting; my neighbor's heater was really loud one night, and their little girl didn't like to be in the dark, yelling for me to come keep her company. And wouldn't you know it--her yelling combined with the choking, gutteral, wailing heater coincided with the "purple lady in the bathtub" scene! %-0
A few years later, at a church youth group xmas party, "The Shining" was on the host's tv! Yes, a church Christmas party! It really was quite funny that it was on during most of the party! Most of us were only looking at it periodically until the really scary parts--then we were all glued to the tube! I'll never forget that party because it's when I ran into my ex-boyfriend and he asked if I was going to the senior ball (he had graduated two years previously), and I said, no...no one asked me. NO ONE? he asked incredulously. Nope. Wanna go with me? So he did...and then stood me up two weeks before the event saying he couldn't get off work; then a friend found me another "date", then the ex called back and said he actually could take me, so I had two on my hands! I ended up going with the ex, since I hardly knew my friend's friend and didn't particularly like him to start, AND my parents knew the ex from before (you know how it is, put the parents at ease so you can get achieve your goals!).
I read a few more of King's novels, the scariest being "The Stand". Then I had enough! They sort of became formulaic, like Danielle Steele novels. Or cheap romantic novels. You read a few of them and they all seem the same. I despise that! Scary to me is Edgar Allen Poe's work...try him if you'd like your imagination to fly.
Or Dante's _Inferno_..."ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE"...oooh! And that was just at the gates of hell, not in the depths! %-( I actually had to put the book down because it got scary and gruesome! On the second reading, it was actually amusing, in a dark way, which is probably why it is part of a larger work called "The Divine Comedy" (which I read in junior high but did not appreciate at the time).
How about music? The scariest contemporary artist we heard was Marilyn Manson. We were on the road one day, and didn't hear the announcer say who was singing until after the "song" was over. It sounded like the devil! Is he related to Charles Manson, I thought?! Geez! He sounded inhuman! I was thinking of "Rosemary's Baby" when I heard it! %-0
You can listen to good, classical music and feel very spooked, such as with Maurice Ravel's "Isle of the Dead" and Modest Mussorgky's "Night on Bald Mountain". Probably many people have heard these tunes in pop culture, but didn't know their origins. I didn't until the last several years. Check them out sometime...just don't listen to them by yourself at night! %-0 Then there's "Pierrot Lunaire", by Arnold Schoenberg. NOT for the faint of heart! Just be prepared--you might just think there is a crazy person in the house...! And everyone's heard Bach's fugues for Halloween. Did that master of music ever turn in his grave to know what was done with his work?
I had good restraint today: I only took two Tootsie Roll candies out of the plastic pumpkin overflowing with sugar at the library! And I haven't eaten them...yet!
Oh, I miss dressing up for Halloween. The last time I did that was in college. I was a gypsy. I hope to go to a grown-up Halloween costume party one day. I think it would be fun! And I wouldn't be a gypsy again. I'm inspired more by Marvin the Martian (of Looney Tune fame) or the creatures in the bar scene from "Star Wars". Or even the "creatures" who carded me at a dark disco somewhere south of Market Street in San Francisco during my wild college nights! :-D
BOO to you!
One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
- Emily Dickinson
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
- William Shakespeare
There is a graveyard by our apartment complex. It's the first thing I noticed when we first moved here four years ago. I told hubby, "We're going to be in trouble if these folks decide to wake up one night!"
If I had never seen "Night of the Living Dead", I might never have thought to say such a silly thing. But as it is, I have a morbid curiosity with horror films, mostly since I've been with my man. I can only watch horror flicks with him or with friends, though...never alone!
I do not like the gruesome, gushy blood fanfare. Especially any head lopping stuff. I can thank my 8th grade history teacher for that. She showed us a film on the French Revolution that had guillotine scenes. That did it. My lunch period was next. I don't recall having had lunch that day; my stomach was in a knot. Yuk. Sorry if you feel sick at this moment, but you can understand my aversion to certain scenes. Nothing will make me puke faster than a head scene.
I'm more into the eerie psych stuff, which I think is scarier than lots of butchering. Films like "Psycho", "Raising Caine", "The Exorcist", and "Rosemary's Baby" still scare me to this day! %-0 Even "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"--which actually did not show a lot of blood but only let the audience imagine it with the screaming and the sounds of the chainsaw, is more a psychologically scary film than the slash and burn types. It certainly leaves more to the imagination than some newer films, which is why I like older films in general, because they're not insulting to my mind.
The other week, I got "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi from the library.. I'd seen it eons ago, but hubby never saw it. It was GREAT! We had seen the Dracula movie by Coppola with Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves. That was also very good, and stylish! But there was something very pure and raw about the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi--he was portrayed as more human...and tortured. The other Dracula movie we saw was an older one with Christopher Lee as Dracula, probably from the 60's or early 70's. That was a funny one: there was a host in the castle named Clove (as in garlic clove!), thick blood that looked like it came out of ketchup bottle, and Dracula sinking into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz"!
Silent horror films can be spooky, too, like German expressionist films "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Nosferatu". They look tame...but don't watch them by yourself!
Also, when we first moved here, we had a horribly noisy fan in the bathroom. It sounded like the motor on the boat in "Jaws". Yes, in my wild imagination (especially if I was home alone), I fully expected a shark to rip through the bathroom wall and violently tear my flesh off! I had that thought for only a moment! But t was enough for us to call maintenance to come and quiet the thing. They did something, I don't know what; afterwards, it was still loud, but not so obnoxious. :-)
Many eons ago, I heard some horrible voice coming from another room and went in to find my honey watching "Hellraiser". I was so scared for him! As if the skinless people in the movie were going to reach out and grab him! Aren't you scared, I asked? Oh no! He was very non-chalant about it, and in fact, was getting quite a bit of thrill and morbid amusement out of it. Being the good wife, I stayed with him cuz I was worried for him. Instead, I ended up hiding behind him everytime I thought something gruesome was going to happen, like a head scene. Yuk!
Would you believe I saw it a second time? Or maybe it was the sequel. I don't remember! All I remember is that I was laughing my head off at Pinhead! The other characters, too, but mostly him. Some of these horror flicks have a lot of black humor in them, if you can get past the red liquid part. Hubby and I tend to be attracted to the bizarre and black humored fare (which, I suppose, could mean both of us may be weird, ourselves). ;-)
This can include non-horror entertainment, such as Dr. Who, The Twilight Zone (the old, black and white episodes) and Monty Python, all of which were prone to showing some horror--usually in a very, dark-humored way.
I don't know why some find horror fascinating and others are revolted by it. I guess it depends on your tolerance level. I just figure: it's only a movie!
Books are another matter. I went through a Stephen King phase in jr. high and high school and got scared reading "The Shining" while babysitting; my neighbor's heater was really loud one night, and their little girl didn't like to be in the dark, yelling for me to come keep her company. And wouldn't you know it--her yelling combined with the choking, gutteral, wailing heater coincided with the "purple lady in the bathtub" scene! %-0
A few years later, at a church youth group xmas party, "The Shining" was on the host's tv! Yes, a church Christmas party! It really was quite funny that it was on during most of the party! Most of us were only looking at it periodically until the really scary parts--then we were all glued to the tube! I'll never forget that party because it's when I ran into my ex-boyfriend and he asked if I was going to the senior ball (he had graduated two years previously), and I said, no...no one asked me. NO ONE? he asked incredulously. Nope. Wanna go with me? So he did...and then stood me up two weeks before the event saying he couldn't get off work; then a friend found me another "date", then the ex called back and said he actually could take me, so I had two on my hands! I ended up going with the ex, since I hardly knew my friend's friend and didn't particularly like him to start, AND my parents knew the ex from before (you know how it is, put the parents at ease so you can get achieve your goals!).
I read a few more of King's novels, the scariest being "The Stand". Then I had enough! They sort of became formulaic, like Danielle Steele novels. Or cheap romantic novels. You read a few of them and they all seem the same. I despise that! Scary to me is Edgar Allen Poe's work...try him if you'd like your imagination to fly.
Or Dante's _Inferno_..."ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE"...oooh! And that was just at the gates of hell, not in the depths! %-( I actually had to put the book down because it got scary and gruesome! On the second reading, it was actually amusing, in a dark way, which is probably why it is part of a larger work called "The Divine Comedy" (which I read in junior high but did not appreciate at the time).
How about music? The scariest contemporary artist we heard was Marilyn Manson. We were on the road one day, and didn't hear the announcer say who was singing until after the "song" was over. It sounded like the devil! Is he related to Charles Manson, I thought?! Geez! He sounded inhuman! I was thinking of "Rosemary's Baby" when I heard it! %-0
You can listen to good, classical music and feel very spooked, such as with Maurice Ravel's "Isle of the Dead" and Modest Mussorgky's "Night on Bald Mountain". Probably many people have heard these tunes in pop culture, but didn't know their origins. I didn't until the last several years. Check them out sometime...just don't listen to them by yourself at night! %-0 Then there's "Pierrot Lunaire", by Arnold Schoenberg. NOT for the faint of heart! Just be prepared--you might just think there is a crazy person in the house...! And everyone's heard Bach's fugues for Halloween. Did that master of music ever turn in his grave to know what was done with his work?
I had good restraint today: I only took two Tootsie Roll candies out of the plastic pumpkin overflowing with sugar at the library! And I haven't eaten them...yet!
Oh, I miss dressing up for Halloween. The last time I did that was in college. I was a gypsy. I hope to go to a grown-up Halloween costume party one day. I think it would be fun! And I wouldn't be a gypsy again. I'm inspired more by Marvin the Martian (of Looney Tune fame) or the creatures in the bar scene from "Star Wars". Or even the "creatures" who carded me at a dark disco somewhere south of Market Street in San Francisco during my wild college nights! :-D
BOO to you!
One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
- Emily Dickinson
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Cancer Click
Hey, everybody! Wouldn't you love to enter a contest for a good cause, like breast cancer awareness? :-)
Imagine winning digital camera--a PINK one no less! If that doesn't catch people's attention, I don't know what would be an easier way to mention cancer awareness to others. Go to the 5 Minutes for Mom website to enter the contest for a chance to win a cute pink digital camera. Spread the word!
Oh, and if you search further down on the page, there is a pink button you can click on: if there are so many clicks, the sponsors of this breast cancer campaign will pay for mammograms for women in need. Your click will help another woman somewhere. Every click counts :-)
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It's good to know that cancers particular to women are getting more attention in recent years. I can only hope more research and better medicines and technological advances will benefit more women in my lifetime, if not the next generation.
It would be very cool if someone could invent something better and more accurate than the painful mammogram, so that one day women can cringe in horror at the very thought of it--imagining it to be some sort of medieval torture device (which I think it is)!
When I think of breast cancer, I think of my mother in-law, who battled and survived it over 14 years ago. She had a mastectomy and danced two weeks later at her middle son's wedding. :-) And she's still going strong. You go, Mom!
She and my fil's older sister are actually the only close, relatives I know who've had breast cancer, though I've known of friends' or neighbor's relatives who've had to battle with breast cancer.
While I think it is fabulous that breast cancer has gotten so much publicity in recent years, I hope that other forms of cancer will not be eclipsed by it, and will in fact, gain as much awareness to garner research funding to benefit future patients. Particularly women's reproductive cancers, which I know little about--and which ob/gyns don't discuss with you beyond asking for a family history, or if you've got something going on. I lost my favorite auntie to ovarian cancer. I didn't know anything about it then...only that it took her from my uncle and my family and so many people who loved her. And truth be told: I'm not even sure if it was ovarian cancer. I only know that it was related to the reproductive system.
It seems that women's reproductive cancers are still somewhat of a mystery. It's up to the public to educate themselves--docs aren't much help unless something goes wrong in your system. Even when I may occasionally discuss women's reproductive issues that includes cancer, with close friends, I realize our knowledge is quite limited.
It's too bad that it takes celebrities' battles with cancer to make people aware of female reproductive cancers, as if non-celebrities don't count. Women like Gilda Radner or Fran Drescher ("The Nanny"). Fran Drescher has become an activist extraordinare for women's cancers and has a wonderful website dedicated to raising awareness through her foundation, Cancer Schmancer.
And what of other cancers? A close friend battled and won over testicular cancer (before Lance Armstrong became famous). My dad and other male relatives suffered from prostrate cancer, two cousins from the same family lost their battle with brain cancer in the last year, and now my aunt recently had major surgery for a brain tumor. Another aunt has a growth on her pancreas, and my sister in-law is battling Hodgkins (re-diagnosed from diagnosis of a rare form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma earlier this summer). How much attention does prostrate, brain, pancreatic and Hodgkins get, I wonder?
The "C" word is scary, especially when you learn that someone close to you has gotton it. I can't imagine what the ones who are afflicted with it must be going through. But I am inspired by my sil, whose sister put up a website for her to keep a journal on her progress, which keeps her family and friends and even total strangers (usually friends of friends or family!) around the country up-to date. Check out her site at caringbridge.org.
There are other inspiring stories on that website worth reading, also. :-)
Please don't forget to click on 5 Minutes for Mom !
Imagine winning digital camera--a PINK one no less! If that doesn't catch people's attention, I don't know what would be an easier way to mention cancer awareness to others. Go to the 5 Minutes for Mom website to enter the contest for a chance to win a cute pink digital camera. Spread the word!
Oh, and if you search further down on the page, there is a pink button you can click on: if there are so many clicks, the sponsors of this breast cancer campaign will pay for mammograms for women in need. Your click will help another woman somewhere. Every click counts :-)
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It's good to know that cancers particular to women are getting more attention in recent years. I can only hope more research and better medicines and technological advances will benefit more women in my lifetime, if not the next generation.
It would be very cool if someone could invent something better and more accurate than the painful mammogram, so that one day women can cringe in horror at the very thought of it--imagining it to be some sort of medieval torture device (which I think it is)!
When I think of breast cancer, I think of my mother in-law, who battled and survived it over 14 years ago. She had a mastectomy and danced two weeks later at her middle son's wedding. :-) And she's still going strong. You go, Mom!
She and my fil's older sister are actually the only close, relatives I know who've had breast cancer, though I've known of friends' or neighbor's relatives who've had to battle with breast cancer.
While I think it is fabulous that breast cancer has gotten so much publicity in recent years, I hope that other forms of cancer will not be eclipsed by it, and will in fact, gain as much awareness to garner research funding to benefit future patients. Particularly women's reproductive cancers, which I know little about--and which ob/gyns don't discuss with you beyond asking for a family history, or if you've got something going on. I lost my favorite auntie to ovarian cancer. I didn't know anything about it then...only that it took her from my uncle and my family and so many people who loved her. And truth be told: I'm not even sure if it was ovarian cancer. I only know that it was related to the reproductive system.
It seems that women's reproductive cancers are still somewhat of a mystery. It's up to the public to educate themselves--docs aren't much help unless something goes wrong in your system. Even when I may occasionally discuss women's reproductive issues that includes cancer, with close friends, I realize our knowledge is quite limited.
It's too bad that it takes celebrities' battles with cancer to make people aware of female reproductive cancers, as if non-celebrities don't count. Women like Gilda Radner or Fran Drescher ("The Nanny"). Fran Drescher has become an activist extraordinare for women's cancers and has a wonderful website dedicated to raising awareness through her foundation, Cancer Schmancer.
And what of other cancers? A close friend battled and won over testicular cancer (before Lance Armstrong became famous). My dad and other male relatives suffered from prostrate cancer, two cousins from the same family lost their battle with brain cancer in the last year, and now my aunt recently had major surgery for a brain tumor. Another aunt has a growth on her pancreas, and my sister in-law is battling Hodgkins (re-diagnosed from diagnosis of a rare form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma earlier this summer). How much attention does prostrate, brain, pancreatic and Hodgkins get, I wonder?
The "C" word is scary, especially when you learn that someone close to you has gotton it. I can't imagine what the ones who are afflicted with it must be going through. But I am inspired by my sil, whose sister put up a website for her to keep a journal on her progress, which keeps her family and friends and even total strangers (usually friends of friends or family!) around the country up-to date. Check out her site at caringbridge.org.
There are other inspiring stories on that website worth reading, also. :-)
Please don't forget to click on 5 Minutes for Mom !
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Of Shallow and Deep Adventures in My Favorite City
I participated in the ultimate shallow activity last Friday: celebrity gawking!
On the eve of my annual weekend trip to New York City--my favorite city to visit (and where my dearest friend lives), another good friend of ours called and asked if I knew anything about movie stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I replied that I know who they are, but only saw one film with Brad Pitt in it (The Twelve Monkeys--quite good!). So what about them?
B said they had come to her ward's school, where their eldest attends...at this outrageously expensive Lycee Francais de New York on the upper east side of Manhattan. Tuition hovers near $20k a year for one kid alone! Apparently, my friend missed being at a school party the day before, where Angelina came and was very amiable with the teachers, parents and nannies (mostly nannies), and took photos with them. Did I want to come along when I arrived in NYC on Friday when school ended to see her?
It didn't matter. Did I really care about Angelina and Brad or any other movie star for that matter? Just to be a pal, I said, sure why not! %-0
Since I don't own a cell phone, we wasted over an hour looking for each other around Macy's. Our friend kept reminding us to be specific where to meet (she was working); what could be more specific than meeting in front of Macy's, I thought? I just read off the bus ticket address of where it drops off passengers! My friend B took it literally, and went to the wrong place. She phoned our friend D, who told her no, you go to this end of the street! I ended up calling her from a pay phone after half an hour. We both arrived early, but managed not to see each other for over an hour, even though we were probably less than a 100 feet from each other the whole time! Macy's takes up A WHOLE BLOCK in NYC.
After a nice big lunch at Todai's, a sushi buffet, we rushed uptown on subway. School was going to be let out soon (my friend had the weekend off; her employers went to Bermuda with their families)...no bus in sight! B got anxious, called her nanny friends about any star sightings at school? Nope.
We stopped by her employers' building to drop off my rolling duffle bag for the day. It was a different place than last time I visited there. Some actor also lives there--one of the Baldwin brothers, in this swanky upper west side apartment. A three-bedroom flat can cost you only 8 million. That's all! But it was nice that I could just leave my bag behind the front desk for the day for the men at the desk (all in suits) to guard. ;-)
We were on the upper west side. My friend asked me again did I still want to go and try to catch Angelina? Sure, of course! You only live once! %-) I know she wanted to go more than me because she missed her the day before. But time was running out. So she hailed a taxi to cut across town through Central Park and around it to the upper east side...and blew more than eight dollars to get us there.
When we arrived at the corner, it was quite a sight, seeing lots of cute blond and brunette school children being gripped tightly by their nannies of different nationalities waiting to cross the street. One of B's nanny friends from Russia or some Slavic-speaking country was really funny when she described her experience meeting Angelina: "I felt bad for her, with everybody asking to take pictures with her and asking her autograph! So, I just put out my hand and said, 'Can I shake your hand?' and she did. I saw her three times already. That's enough for me. It's not exciting anymore."
Soon enough, people were gathering at the front gate of Lycee Francais and the commotion was getting louder, with paparazzi appearing out of nowhere! A black SUV drove up and there she was, with some pock-marked man who obviously wasn't her honey, but looked like a mean bodyguard type straight out of a Bond movie. It all happened so fast--she just walked into the gate and out: someone had her son ready to go (I didn't see him).
I couldn't bring myself to take her picture. I was feeling guilty: I'd be invading her privacy. I already was, just standing there gawking with everyone else! And I must admit, I was also feeling pretty shallow at that moment! ;-( But it was rather exciting I must admit, being part of a scene I only see on tv news! :-0 It was enough for me just to observe her and the crowd.
B couldn't believe I didn't take a photo. I told her the reasons why, as stated in the paragraph above, and she understood. Besides, everybody rushed to the front, including photographers, so I let them push past me. The funny thing was, B didn't really like Angelina much--it was just a celebrity "rush"...the excitement of seeing movie star.
I wonder how many people living in the Big Apple make a point of engaging in star gazing?
Apparently, those few minutes Angelina was there got caught on some website, probably dealing with entertainment gossip. Tonight, my dear friend D emailed me the photo of her appearance that day, from the opposite angle, which showed our pal B smiling and holding up the camera. Where were you, J, she asked--weren't you there also? Yes I was...I let myself get pushed back by the crowd and just enjoyed absorbing the whole scene. :-)
It seems that once someone becomes a public figure--particularly a movie star, everybody takes liberty of calling that person by his or her first name. Guilty me! I write "Angelina and Brad" but only refer to family and friends by their initial for privacy. Perhaps I shouldn't feel so guilty about that, since by virtue of entering certain professions, you run the risk of becoming famous. ;-) I can't imagine what life would be like for the celebrities' children, apart from a life of luxury...to have paparazzi and the public watching your every move would be enough to drive anyone crazy. No one in their right mind wants to be under a constant microscope.
So much for dreams of being famous! ;-D If I were to achieve notoriety in my lifetime, may it be for a worthy cause, such as championing the rights of women to be treated as equally as men as human beings, so that they may enjoy the same fair treatment in courts, in society, and at home.
Later, we spent the next several hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I really wanted to see the special exhibition of one of my favorite artists, Rembrant van Rijn, and other Dutch painters of the period. I was pleasantly surprised B didn't mind going because when she went to a special exhibition on Dada-ism at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) last year with our friend D, she complained she didn't understand any of it; it was too weird! I loved it! I saw it by myself on the Target Free Friday night. ;-)
I got to visit the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with D the next day, for free. There was just a two hour time frame when the public can visit for free on Saturdays. We just had barely half an hour to spare we when arrived; it took over an hour to get from Bronx, where she lives, to Brooklyn. I'd never been to Brooklyn before. (I always try to do something different when I visit!). It was very nice, especially the Japanese Garden. But since it was October, there wasn't a whole lot to see...so good thing we went in free!
Amazingly, there were quite a few rose bushes still alive with blooming (and dying) roses. It boggled my mind that there were SO many different varieties. Come in spring next time, D said. It's beautiful then...so colorful. :-)
We went to a birthday party for a 3 year old--or rather, post-party snacking.;-) Then we headed over to another friend's 77th birthday. This lady is a real character. Everybody in the building calls her Mommy. Even me. She was all gussied up in a green gown (for good luck--and green for money!), even though red is her favorite color, like mine! All her friends wanted to take photos with her, so she posed with them like a Filipina starlet! Mommy's a shrewd business woman who knows how to party and dance and eat! I met all these people on previous visits, so they're almost like an extended family in the northeast for me: always trying to make me eat even when I've already eaten! %-0
D and I escaped the party scene (my belly was SO full after two party eatings) so she could pick up her camera from her niece's coworker in their ice cream shop in uptown Manhattan. Then we went downtown and took the tram across the harbor to Roosevelt Island. It was less than 10 minutes, but it was fun being in the air, like a ski lift (which I've never been on)! Nice and breezy evening after a stifling hot and humid July-like day in October. Not to be missed for a fabulous nightime view of the city!
I didn't even know a tram existed in NYC! Round trip using our metro pass is just two dollars. D told me it was in a movie with Sylvester Stallone where he had to rescue the people on it in a very outrageous plot that can only happen in the movies. Good thing I wasn't there last fall: the tram got stuck at night for SIX HOURS before the occupants got rescued by having to transfer to either a helicopter or to the tram going the opposite direction! %-0
We took a break while waiting for the tram to return us to Manhattan and strolled along the walkway. D said that side of the harbor used to be really polluted. It was also a favorite place for the Mafia to dispose of those who disappointed them in some way! %-0 That part of the harbor is apparently cleaned up now.
Like the night before, I didn't get back until 12:30 or so! We slept in Sunday, which made D and B miss Mass. We went directly to The Cloisters museum.
The Cloisters is part of the Metropolitan Musuem of Art and dedicated to art and art and architecture of the European Middle Ages. It's a castle on a hill! VERY cool! Lots of history behind the art there. And a very nice place to rest and have peace, especially with Gregorian chants in the background. A must see for anyone who appreciates art and history. The gardens are beautiful, too. :-)
We got in for free, thanks to the invitation of the niece of D's employer. Imagine the looks on the staff's faces when she said she knows JL. So the guy calls JL to say there's someone here named M (her formal name), while another staffer sneers under her breath, "Yeah...one of those kinds...!" :-( "What did you say your name was?" the guy asks. "M", says my friend D, "tell her I work for her aunt K" HAH! How many people can claim that?
JL is high-up there on the administrative staff at The Cloisters, in charge of most of the staffers after 11 years, starting out as a cashier! She was a really pleasant young woman, barely in her 30s and very tall! She took us where almost no one is allowed to go: the top of the castle tower where the president's office is. Really nice office! ;-) It had almost panoramic views of Bronx, some of Manhattan and New Jersey from afar. While we were inside chatting, an older gentleman opened the door to peek in and just for a moment, my friends and I felt like guilty schoolgirls and thought, "Oh shit! J is going to lose her job!"
But J was very nonchalant and said, "Hi! Just showing my friends around!" and introduced us. Can't remember his name or title but I know he was up there in The Cloisters powers that be. He was just wondering what was going on since he noticed that the president's office door was open! ;-0
JL was very sweet and accomodating in her busy schedule and invited us to come at any time. Just tell the people at the front desk to ask for me, she said. Do we really want to endure the scutiny of the staff again? ;-) In any case, she added, be sure to see the film XYZ (can't remember the name--has the word "zero" in it!) coming out in November; it stars Elijah Wood. (I don't know who he is!) She's playing a party girl! JL is a part-time actress on her days off managing the staff at The Cloisters.
We ate Thai food at a popular place that night; D treated us. It was so popular (and so tiny a place) that there were long waiting lines outside. We ordered a whole red snapper; being Asian, we all expected the fish to fill the platter! But this sucker must have been a baby fish! %-0 No head (not that I care about the head), but it only occupied half the platter! A rip-off for the price charged!
It was pretty tasty food. I'm not a big fan of Thai food because they usually give too little for too much $$. And I'm not that fond of coconut milk on non-dessert food. Those waitresses couldn't wait to get rid of us; we ourselves had to wait 40 minutes for a table.
B wanted to go to a bar called Tao, next to the Four Seasons Hotel, where one goes to be seen, like celebrities. So we went, at the recommendation of one fast-talking and jovial concierge (or staff) at the apt where her employers live and where she works as nanny to their daughters.
Unfortunately, B chickened out, which irritated D. As soon as D said, "Of the three of us, you are the best suited to go inside and take a look! You look sexy and well-dressed! Look at me and J! We look like tourists!", a very tall, svelte blonde and her equally tall male companion walked out of the Four Seasons Hotel and walked by us. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he looked like he could have been some Bollywood movie star with his shiny, black ,wavy hair, his sharp designer suit and oh yes...the way he held that cigar! So very sophisticated, my dear! %-) He gave us an amused smile, not a smirk or sneer, but a sort of look that said, "Oh really? You three actually think you will walk into Tao?!" He had quite an aura about him! However, I thought his look was bordering on the vacuous Calvin Klein model gaze!
D and I saw his look and burst out laughing! B didn't see it and was puzzled. "Now I am challenged, to go visit Tao!" D announced. "That look he gave us! That amused look! C'mon J! Let's go in! B doesn't have the guts to go in!" At that, we dumped my backpack and D's handbags onto B and marched right into Tao, behind the sleek and suave Beautiful People.
It was warm, dark, and smoky in there, with large golden statues of Buddha at the entrance inside and way inside. Standing behind a line of the Beautiful People, the first question we heard from the host at the podium was, "Do you have a reservation?" That did it! We turned around and took business cards and matchboxes and headed out. Me in my shorts and t-shirt, D in her capris and t-shirt. ;-) It was like sneaking into a forbidden place. And we can thank our supposed Bollywood star for inspiring us! We might as well have been ants to his mind.
Again, we didn't get home until past midnight!
Monday, before I left, I was able to buzz through the Pearl River Mart on Broadway St. A three-story store full of mostly Chinese wares, art, furniture, clothes and food. Got a lot of Xmas shopping done there for the in-laws. Such deals! :-D Not enough time to shop! %-( Actually, I had planned to spend a few hours there, but B had some plans in store for me, like eating lunch first at her friend's store.
I had to think fast: no use getting upset! I didn't want to leave a bad taste in her mouth and be temperamental and appear ungrateful. It's more important to spend time with friend than shop, isn't it? So we compromised. :-) But I didn't get to food shop for Chinese veggies which are much cheaper than where I live, for the most part. I only had a little over an hour, so I just grabbed stuff, although I had my Xmas list. Got everything I wanted for them, which is good because they were cheap (but expensive if I'd looked for them online, if you include shipping). :-)
Too bad I got on the wrong bus going home! %-0 Never been kicked off a bus before. But at least I got off before they took off! I was extremely upset, mostly at myself.
Hubby says I'm a volcano! %-0 I went stomping in the waiting area to ask what was going on?! They started speaking Cantonese to me (this was a Chinatown bus service and had to say, STOP! I don't speak Chinese!
Nobody pointed out which bus to take--I saw only one marked bus, which the agent pointed out when I first arrived. There was a white bus with just designs but no name--it was in traffic, so I thought it was some random bus! Oh well! I had to wait two hours for the next and last bus to Wilmington. I read for a while to calm myself down, then decided I had better eat. I left my heafy duffel bag at the mercy of strangers, at the end of a sofa, and went three doors down to a humble eatery where they filled my styrofoam container full of rice and three vegetarian dishes I chose--all for a whopping $3.24!! ;-) Very homey tasting! Made my belly happy! ;-) I love eating at places like that! This time I took the food back to the bus company's waiting room and ate in front of everyone. Some people were eating. Two women spied on me eating away for some time, walked out, and then came back with food.:-)
I didn't get home until past 11:30 p.m. But that's okay. My annual whirlwind weekend with my dearest friend and company was the best kind of fun! We are free to be ourselves and be as wild and crazy as we want! :-D
I love NYC. Even w/o my friend being there, I still love it, although her and her friends' presence makes it that much more pleasant! I've spent almost whole days exploring the city on my own. SO much going on there! Hence, the city that never sleeps. I don't know that my mind ever sleeps either. Hubby always says I' m a restless spirit on an endless flight. It's the maddening intensity of the place that I am drawn to. Maybe that's why I love visiting the Big Apple. :-)
On the eve of my annual weekend trip to New York City--my favorite city to visit (and where my dearest friend lives), another good friend of ours called and asked if I knew anything about movie stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I replied that I know who they are, but only saw one film with Brad Pitt in it (The Twelve Monkeys--quite good!). So what about them?
B said they had come to her ward's school, where their eldest attends...at this outrageously expensive Lycee Francais de New York on the upper east side of Manhattan. Tuition hovers near $20k a year for one kid alone! Apparently, my friend missed being at a school party the day before, where Angelina came and was very amiable with the teachers, parents and nannies (mostly nannies), and took photos with them. Did I want to come along when I arrived in NYC on Friday when school ended to see her?
It didn't matter. Did I really care about Angelina and Brad or any other movie star for that matter? Just to be a pal, I said, sure why not! %-0
Since I don't own a cell phone, we wasted over an hour looking for each other around Macy's. Our friend kept reminding us to be specific where to meet (she was working); what could be more specific than meeting in front of Macy's, I thought? I just read off the bus ticket address of where it drops off passengers! My friend B took it literally, and went to the wrong place. She phoned our friend D, who told her no, you go to this end of the street! I ended up calling her from a pay phone after half an hour. We both arrived early, but managed not to see each other for over an hour, even though we were probably less than a 100 feet from each other the whole time! Macy's takes up A WHOLE BLOCK in NYC.
After a nice big lunch at Todai's, a sushi buffet, we rushed uptown on subway. School was going to be let out soon (my friend had the weekend off; her employers went to Bermuda with their families)...no bus in sight! B got anxious, called her nanny friends about any star sightings at school? Nope.
We stopped by her employers' building to drop off my rolling duffle bag for the day. It was a different place than last time I visited there. Some actor also lives there--one of the Baldwin brothers, in this swanky upper west side apartment. A three-bedroom flat can cost you only 8 million. That's all! But it was nice that I could just leave my bag behind the front desk for the day for the men at the desk (all in suits) to guard. ;-)
We were on the upper west side. My friend asked me again did I still want to go and try to catch Angelina? Sure, of course! You only live once! %-) I know she wanted to go more than me because she missed her the day before. But time was running out. So she hailed a taxi to cut across town through Central Park and around it to the upper east side...and blew more than eight dollars to get us there.
When we arrived at the corner, it was quite a sight, seeing lots of cute blond and brunette school children being gripped tightly by their nannies of different nationalities waiting to cross the street. One of B's nanny friends from Russia or some Slavic-speaking country was really funny when she described her experience meeting Angelina: "I felt bad for her, with everybody asking to take pictures with her and asking her autograph! So, I just put out my hand and said, 'Can I shake your hand?' and she did. I saw her three times already. That's enough for me. It's not exciting anymore."
Soon enough, people were gathering at the front gate of Lycee Francais and the commotion was getting louder, with paparazzi appearing out of nowhere! A black SUV drove up and there she was, with some pock-marked man who obviously wasn't her honey, but looked like a mean bodyguard type straight out of a Bond movie. It all happened so fast--she just walked into the gate and out: someone had her son ready to go (I didn't see him).
I couldn't bring myself to take her picture. I was feeling guilty: I'd be invading her privacy. I already was, just standing there gawking with everyone else! And I must admit, I was also feeling pretty shallow at that moment! ;-( But it was rather exciting I must admit, being part of a scene I only see on tv news! :-0 It was enough for me just to observe her and the crowd.
B couldn't believe I didn't take a photo. I told her the reasons why, as stated in the paragraph above, and she understood. Besides, everybody rushed to the front, including photographers, so I let them push past me. The funny thing was, B didn't really like Angelina much--it was just a celebrity "rush"...the excitement of seeing movie star.
I wonder how many people living in the Big Apple make a point of engaging in star gazing?
Apparently, those few minutes Angelina was there got caught on some website, probably dealing with entertainment gossip. Tonight, my dear friend D emailed me the photo of her appearance that day, from the opposite angle, which showed our pal B smiling and holding up the camera. Where were you, J, she asked--weren't you there also? Yes I was...I let myself get pushed back by the crowd and just enjoyed absorbing the whole scene. :-)
It seems that once someone becomes a public figure--particularly a movie star, everybody takes liberty of calling that person by his or her first name. Guilty me! I write "Angelina and Brad" but only refer to family and friends by their initial for privacy. Perhaps I shouldn't feel so guilty about that, since by virtue of entering certain professions, you run the risk of becoming famous. ;-) I can't imagine what life would be like for the celebrities' children, apart from a life of luxury...to have paparazzi and the public watching your every move would be enough to drive anyone crazy. No one in their right mind wants to be under a constant microscope.
So much for dreams of being famous! ;-D If I were to achieve notoriety in my lifetime, may it be for a worthy cause, such as championing the rights of women to be treated as equally as men as human beings, so that they may enjoy the same fair treatment in courts, in society, and at home.
Later, we spent the next several hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I really wanted to see the special exhibition of one of my favorite artists, Rembrant van Rijn, and other Dutch painters of the period. I was pleasantly surprised B didn't mind going because when she went to a special exhibition on Dada-ism at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) last year with our friend D, she complained she didn't understand any of it; it was too weird! I loved it! I saw it by myself on the Target Free Friday night. ;-)
I got to visit the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with D the next day, for free. There was just a two hour time frame when the public can visit for free on Saturdays. We just had barely half an hour to spare we when arrived; it took over an hour to get from Bronx, where she lives, to Brooklyn. I'd never been to Brooklyn before. (I always try to do something different when I visit!). It was very nice, especially the Japanese Garden. But since it was October, there wasn't a whole lot to see...so good thing we went in free!
Amazingly, there were quite a few rose bushes still alive with blooming (and dying) roses. It boggled my mind that there were SO many different varieties. Come in spring next time, D said. It's beautiful then...so colorful. :-)
We went to a birthday party for a 3 year old--or rather, post-party snacking.;-) Then we headed over to another friend's 77th birthday. This lady is a real character. Everybody in the building calls her Mommy. Even me. She was all gussied up in a green gown (for good luck--and green for money!), even though red is her favorite color, like mine! All her friends wanted to take photos with her, so she posed with them like a Filipina starlet! Mommy's a shrewd business woman who knows how to party and dance and eat! I met all these people on previous visits, so they're almost like an extended family in the northeast for me: always trying to make me eat even when I've already eaten! %-0
D and I escaped the party scene (my belly was SO full after two party eatings) so she could pick up her camera from her niece's coworker in their ice cream shop in uptown Manhattan. Then we went downtown and took the tram across the harbor to Roosevelt Island. It was less than 10 minutes, but it was fun being in the air, like a ski lift (which I've never been on)! Nice and breezy evening after a stifling hot and humid July-like day in October. Not to be missed for a fabulous nightime view of the city!
I didn't even know a tram existed in NYC! Round trip using our metro pass is just two dollars. D told me it was in a movie with Sylvester Stallone where he had to rescue the people on it in a very outrageous plot that can only happen in the movies. Good thing I wasn't there last fall: the tram got stuck at night for SIX HOURS before the occupants got rescued by having to transfer to either a helicopter or to the tram going the opposite direction! %-0
We took a break while waiting for the tram to return us to Manhattan and strolled along the walkway. D said that side of the harbor used to be really polluted. It was also a favorite place for the Mafia to dispose of those who disappointed them in some way! %-0 That part of the harbor is apparently cleaned up now.
Like the night before, I didn't get back until 12:30 or so! We slept in Sunday, which made D and B miss Mass. We went directly to The Cloisters museum.
The Cloisters is part of the Metropolitan Musuem of Art and dedicated to art and art and architecture of the European Middle Ages. It's a castle on a hill! VERY cool! Lots of history behind the art there. And a very nice place to rest and have peace, especially with Gregorian chants in the background. A must see for anyone who appreciates art and history. The gardens are beautiful, too. :-)
We got in for free, thanks to the invitation of the niece of D's employer. Imagine the looks on the staff's faces when she said she knows JL. So the guy calls JL to say there's someone here named M (her formal name), while another staffer sneers under her breath, "Yeah...one of those kinds...!" :-( "What did you say your name was?" the guy asks. "M", says my friend D, "tell her I work for her aunt K" HAH! How many people can claim that?
JL is high-up there on the administrative staff at The Cloisters, in charge of most of the staffers after 11 years, starting out as a cashier! She was a really pleasant young woman, barely in her 30s and very tall! She took us where almost no one is allowed to go: the top of the castle tower where the president's office is. Really nice office! ;-) It had almost panoramic views of Bronx, some of Manhattan and New Jersey from afar. While we were inside chatting, an older gentleman opened the door to peek in and just for a moment, my friends and I felt like guilty schoolgirls and thought, "Oh shit! J is going to lose her job!"
But J was very nonchalant and said, "Hi! Just showing my friends around!" and introduced us. Can't remember his name or title but I know he was up there in The Cloisters powers that be. He was just wondering what was going on since he noticed that the president's office door was open! ;-0
JL was very sweet and accomodating in her busy schedule and invited us to come at any time. Just tell the people at the front desk to ask for me, she said. Do we really want to endure the scutiny of the staff again? ;-) In any case, she added, be sure to see the film XYZ (can't remember the name--has the word "zero" in it!) coming out in November; it stars Elijah Wood. (I don't know who he is!) She's playing a party girl! JL is a part-time actress on her days off managing the staff at The Cloisters.
We ate Thai food at a popular place that night; D treated us. It was so popular (and so tiny a place) that there were long waiting lines outside. We ordered a whole red snapper; being Asian, we all expected the fish to fill the platter! But this sucker must have been a baby fish! %-0 No head (not that I care about the head), but it only occupied half the platter! A rip-off for the price charged!
It was pretty tasty food. I'm not a big fan of Thai food because they usually give too little for too much $$. And I'm not that fond of coconut milk on non-dessert food. Those waitresses couldn't wait to get rid of us; we ourselves had to wait 40 minutes for a table.
B wanted to go to a bar called Tao, next to the Four Seasons Hotel, where one goes to be seen, like celebrities. So we went, at the recommendation of one fast-talking and jovial concierge (or staff) at the apt where her employers live and where she works as nanny to their daughters.
Unfortunately, B chickened out, which irritated D. As soon as D said, "Of the three of us, you are the best suited to go inside and take a look! You look sexy and well-dressed! Look at me and J! We look like tourists!", a very tall, svelte blonde and her equally tall male companion walked out of the Four Seasons Hotel and walked by us. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he looked like he could have been some Bollywood movie star with his shiny, black ,wavy hair, his sharp designer suit and oh yes...the way he held that cigar! So very sophisticated, my dear! %-) He gave us an amused smile, not a smirk or sneer, but a sort of look that said, "Oh really? You three actually think you will walk into Tao?!" He had quite an aura about him! However, I thought his look was bordering on the vacuous Calvin Klein model gaze!
D and I saw his look and burst out laughing! B didn't see it and was puzzled. "Now I am challenged, to go visit Tao!" D announced. "That look he gave us! That amused look! C'mon J! Let's go in! B doesn't have the guts to go in!" At that, we dumped my backpack and D's handbags onto B and marched right into Tao, behind the sleek and suave Beautiful People.
It was warm, dark, and smoky in there, with large golden statues of Buddha at the entrance inside and way inside. Standing behind a line of the Beautiful People, the first question we heard from the host at the podium was, "Do you have a reservation?" That did it! We turned around and took business cards and matchboxes and headed out. Me in my shorts and t-shirt, D in her capris and t-shirt. ;-) It was like sneaking into a forbidden place. And we can thank our supposed Bollywood star for inspiring us! We might as well have been ants to his mind.
Again, we didn't get home until past midnight!
Monday, before I left, I was able to buzz through the Pearl River Mart on Broadway St. A three-story store full of mostly Chinese wares, art, furniture, clothes and food. Got a lot of Xmas shopping done there for the in-laws. Such deals! :-D Not enough time to shop! %-( Actually, I had planned to spend a few hours there, but B had some plans in store for me, like eating lunch first at her friend's store.
I had to think fast: no use getting upset! I didn't want to leave a bad taste in her mouth and be temperamental and appear ungrateful. It's more important to spend time with friend than shop, isn't it? So we compromised. :-) But I didn't get to food shop for Chinese veggies which are much cheaper than where I live, for the most part. I only had a little over an hour, so I just grabbed stuff, although I had my Xmas list. Got everything I wanted for them, which is good because they were cheap (but expensive if I'd looked for them online, if you include shipping). :-)
Too bad I got on the wrong bus going home! %-0 Never been kicked off a bus before. But at least I got off before they took off! I was extremely upset, mostly at myself.
Hubby says I'm a volcano! %-0 I went stomping in the waiting area to ask what was going on?! They started speaking Cantonese to me (this was a Chinatown bus service and had to say, STOP! I don't speak Chinese!
Nobody pointed out which bus to take--I saw only one marked bus, which the agent pointed out when I first arrived. There was a white bus with just designs but no name--it was in traffic, so I thought it was some random bus! Oh well! I had to wait two hours for the next and last bus to Wilmington. I read for a while to calm myself down, then decided I had better eat. I left my heafy duffel bag at the mercy of strangers, at the end of a sofa, and went three doors down to a humble eatery where they filled my styrofoam container full of rice and three vegetarian dishes I chose--all for a whopping $3.24!! ;-) Very homey tasting! Made my belly happy! ;-) I love eating at places like that! This time I took the food back to the bus company's waiting room and ate in front of everyone. Some people were eating. Two women spied on me eating away for some time, walked out, and then came back with food.:-)
I didn't get home until past 11:30 p.m. But that's okay. My annual whirlwind weekend with my dearest friend and company was the best kind of fun! We are free to be ourselves and be as wild and crazy as we want! :-D
I love NYC. Even w/o my friend being there, I still love it, although her and her friends' presence makes it that much more pleasant! I've spent almost whole days exploring the city on my own. SO much going on there! Hence, the city that never sleeps. I don't know that my mind ever sleeps either. Hubby always says I' m a restless spirit on an endless flight. It's the maddening intensity of the place that I am drawn to. Maybe that's why I love visiting the Big Apple. :-)
Monday, October 1, 2007
Becoming the Bicycle Advocate
Thanks to you, Mr. Feynman, I have been able to walk through stores with my bike helmet on (with blinkie light on the back helmet, but not turned on), x-large reflective vest that makes me look like a highway worker, backpack on my back, and maybe even one day--my safety glasses, if I don't take them off by habit as soon as my bike is locked.
"What do YOU care what other people think?"
Where would I be if I hadn't read the writings of the late physicist, Richard Feynman? He would say that to his first wife often and she would throw that line back to him, when challenging him with what he thought could be socially embarrassing or harebrained ideas. I never tire of those words of his! They're an inspiration to me. :-)
Recently I acquired a hybrid bicycle from my fil's property which had been sitting in a garage for who knows how long, but it was in pretty good shape. I'd been missing riding a bicycle since we moved to Delaware 13 years ago. Fil and mil strongly discouraged us from bicycling in rural Sussex County because people were not used to bicyclists. And really, there was nowhere to ride because the two lane roads were so narrow. Now there are more bicyclists around, especially near the beaches.
Hubby and I haven't owned a mobile prison (car) since 2003 when we moved upstate from rural Sussex County; my honey has been relying on his bike, and me the bus. I'M quite the expert on public transportation! Throw me in any city, anywhere, and I will find my way around town faster than I ever would by car!
However, when I need to get to work, waiting for a late-running bus can severely raise my tension level, and I don't like that. I can say this much though to those who may be alienated from public transportation: a city bus is obligated to show up, no matter what the weather brings. If your car breaks down--or worse, is involved in a car accident, then what are you left with?? High stress calling work, home, insurance company, towing company, etc. With the bus, the attendant headaches are mainly on the bus people. You know a bus will show up sooner or later...or the powers that be will have to answer to a lot of pissed off people.
Plus, you can get lots of good reading done on the bus. ;-) I've read many a great novel over the years on the public transportation system: War and Peace (2x!), The Iliad, Moby Dick, The Sound and the Fury, and more, plus a lot of non-fiction works. You can't do that driving a car.
Or riding a bike.
But, with riding a bike, you have freedom! Freedom to explore! Exhilaration! An adrenalin rush! The thrill of speed! Freedom to move your legs as you wish--with the satisfaction that you're getting exercise while traveling to where you want to go.
Nothing like fueling a bicycle with your own power and knowing a soldier or a citizen didn't have to die to fuel it.
Freedom also brings with it responsibility: knowing and following traffic rules. And also being well-equipped. We've both done a lot of reading online and with books and a video from the library on effective cycling. We want to be safe and traffic-savvy efficient riders. Nothing less. No one can predict anyone's behavior behind the wheel (I already slipped and fell on the bike in front of a pizza joint right on our Main Street the other day for all to see! ), but it's better to be as prepared as possible.
Lately, I find myself observing bicyclists the same way I observe everyone's posture and gait while they walk (from a massage therapist's viewpoint)! The more familiar I become with traffic rules and good bicycling habits, the more shocked I am with other bicyclists' lack of adherence to simple safety principles--down to the simple things of not even wearing a helmet! I wanna have my brain around for as long as possible and protect it as much as possible!
I'm all set to go, now! I just need my night light for the front of the bike. I've got new tires for pavement riding, a bell, hubby's old bike rack (he got a newer, better one for heavy loads), my crate for a basket, a x-large reflective vest (so I can wear it over winter coats), fenders, blinkie lights for the helmet, safety goggles so insects--and rocks and dirt from cars won't fly into my eyeballs, U-lock and cable...and of course, my snazzy RED helmet. :-)
This is just my third week of urban cycling. I can't say I've ever ridden like this before. Growing up, it was riding in the 'burbs. It was the same when we lived in Goleta, CA (near Santa Barbara), just riding in a residential area to reach the university campus or to the grocery store. The latter involved cutting through a wide swath of a bumpy dirt field, which was great fun! :-D
Now, we live near a university and the main street of the city, which involves quite a bit of traffic: cars, people and other bicyclists that I am not accustomed to yet. I'm getting more comfortable with each ride though.:-)
Hubby did hours of research on bike safety and equipment for my sake and also his. I know he's more worried about me, but I do remember him walking into the store I once worked in and he was scraped up: a lady didn't see where she was going and he flipped over the trunk of her car...and all she gave him was a lousy $20! %-( And the one day he didn't bother with his bike helmet last year was the day some dumb bunny ran right into him because she was busy talking on her cell phone. The police officer didn't have much sympathy for him...maybe because he didn't have his helmet and/or other safety gear on him. I think it's because she put on a good drama act. I wasn't present (thankfully...else my mouth might have gone off), but I know that hubby was visibly annoyed with her hysteria and "current lack of funds". It wasn't even her van that she was driving. We didn't hear anything from her, after promises of sending $$ for bike repairs. She oughta thank her lucky stars that we're not the suing type of people.
We are almost fully equipped for night riding, as soon as we get our flashlights for as our front lights. There is a whole bicycle culture out there that I wasn't aware of! It's really neat reading their websites...they did all the hard work for us already!
I especially admire the bicycle advocates and the women bicyclists who have traveled solo by bicycle in faraway lands--beyond the tourist destinations. Places like Turkey (I love that place!), the "stans" in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. It all just sounds like a lot of fun to travel by bicycle! But I wouldn't do it until I was an experienced commuter and knew something about bike mechanics.
And from what I've read so far, I think bicycle advocates are very progressive-minded people. Yes, they may still need their cars for work and travel, but cars are not their focus. Bicycling is.
For some food for thought, check out the article, Make Money By Commuting on Your Bicycle.
By walking into the store and looking like a bicycle geek of sorts, I am making a statement to the world: that I'm proud to be a bicyclist and not afraid to look like one either! Bicycling is cool! It brings my honey and me closer together in spirit, helps keep us fit, and helps us not contribute to air pollution.
It's the civilized thing to do.
Besides, I'd rather be SEEN by cars (especially at a busy intersection) than not. Why should I care how I look in the grocery store or anywhere else as long as I'm well- equipped? I do not care what others may think! Why, this morning I wore my safety glasses over my regular glasses! %-D
I intend to be bicycling well into my 100's...! Freedom is very nice thing indeed.
If you have a bicycle in your possession, is it collecting dust? Or are you giving it fresh air? ;-)
* * * * * * * *
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.
--Antoine De Saint-Exupery
"What do YOU care what other people think?"
Where would I be if I hadn't read the writings of the late physicist, Richard Feynman? He would say that to his first wife often and she would throw that line back to him, when challenging him with what he thought could be socially embarrassing or harebrained ideas. I never tire of those words of his! They're an inspiration to me. :-)
Recently I acquired a hybrid bicycle from my fil's property which had been sitting in a garage for who knows how long, but it was in pretty good shape. I'd been missing riding a bicycle since we moved to Delaware 13 years ago. Fil and mil strongly discouraged us from bicycling in rural Sussex County because people were not used to bicyclists. And really, there was nowhere to ride because the two lane roads were so narrow. Now there are more bicyclists around, especially near the beaches.
Hubby and I haven't owned a mobile prison (car) since 2003 when we moved upstate from rural Sussex County; my honey has been relying on his bike, and me the bus. I'M quite the expert on public transportation! Throw me in any city, anywhere, and I will find my way around town faster than I ever would by car!
However, when I need to get to work, waiting for a late-running bus can severely raise my tension level, and I don't like that. I can say this much though to those who may be alienated from public transportation: a city bus is obligated to show up, no matter what the weather brings. If your car breaks down--or worse, is involved in a car accident, then what are you left with?? High stress calling work, home, insurance company, towing company, etc. With the bus, the attendant headaches are mainly on the bus people. You know a bus will show up sooner or later...or the powers that be will have to answer to a lot of pissed off people.
Plus, you can get lots of good reading done on the bus. ;-) I've read many a great novel over the years on the public transportation system: War and Peace (2x!), The Iliad, Moby Dick, The Sound and the Fury, and more, plus a lot of non-fiction works. You can't do that driving a car.
Or riding a bike.
But, with riding a bike, you have freedom! Freedom to explore! Exhilaration! An adrenalin rush! The thrill of speed! Freedom to move your legs as you wish--with the satisfaction that you're getting exercise while traveling to where you want to go.
Nothing like fueling a bicycle with your own power and knowing a soldier or a citizen didn't have to die to fuel it.
Freedom also brings with it responsibility: knowing and following traffic rules. And also being well-equipped. We've both done a lot of reading online and with books and a video from the library on effective cycling. We want to be safe and traffic-savvy efficient riders. Nothing less. No one can predict anyone's behavior behind the wheel (I already slipped and fell on the bike in front of a pizza joint right on our Main Street the other day for all to see! ), but it's better to be as prepared as possible.
Lately, I find myself observing bicyclists the same way I observe everyone's posture and gait while they walk (from a massage therapist's viewpoint)! The more familiar I become with traffic rules and good bicycling habits, the more shocked I am with other bicyclists' lack of adherence to simple safety principles--down to the simple things of not even wearing a helmet! I wanna have my brain around for as long as possible and protect it as much as possible!
I'm all set to go, now! I just need my night light for the front of the bike. I've got new tires for pavement riding, a bell, hubby's old bike rack (he got a newer, better one for heavy loads), my crate for a basket, a x-large reflective vest (so I can wear it over winter coats), fenders, blinkie lights for the helmet, safety goggles so insects--and rocks and dirt from cars won't fly into my eyeballs, U-lock and cable...and of course, my snazzy RED helmet. :-)
This is just my third week of urban cycling. I can't say I've ever ridden like this before. Growing up, it was riding in the 'burbs. It was the same when we lived in Goleta, CA (near Santa Barbara), just riding in a residential area to reach the university campus or to the grocery store. The latter involved cutting through a wide swath of a bumpy dirt field, which was great fun! :-D
Now, we live near a university and the main street of the city, which involves quite a bit of traffic: cars, people and other bicyclists that I am not accustomed to yet. I'm getting more comfortable with each ride though.:-)
Hubby did hours of research on bike safety and equipment for my sake and also his. I know he's more worried about me, but I do remember him walking into the store I once worked in and he was scraped up: a lady didn't see where she was going and he flipped over the trunk of her car...and all she gave him was a lousy $20! %-( And the one day he didn't bother with his bike helmet last year was the day some dumb bunny ran right into him because she was busy talking on her cell phone. The police officer didn't have much sympathy for him...maybe because he didn't have his helmet and/or other safety gear on him. I think it's because she put on a good drama act. I wasn't present (thankfully...else my mouth might have gone off), but I know that hubby was visibly annoyed with her hysteria and "current lack of funds". It wasn't even her van that she was driving. We didn't hear anything from her, after promises of sending $$ for bike repairs. She oughta thank her lucky stars that we're not the suing type of people.
We are almost fully equipped for night riding, as soon as we get our flashlights for as our front lights. There is a whole bicycle culture out there that I wasn't aware of! It's really neat reading their websites...they did all the hard work for us already!
I especially admire the bicycle advocates and the women bicyclists who have traveled solo by bicycle in faraway lands--beyond the tourist destinations. Places like Turkey (I love that place!), the "stans" in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. It all just sounds like a lot of fun to travel by bicycle! But I wouldn't do it until I was an experienced commuter and knew something about bike mechanics.
And from what I've read so far, I think bicycle advocates are very progressive-minded people. Yes, they may still need their cars for work and travel, but cars are not their focus. Bicycling is.
For some food for thought, check out the article, Make Money By Commuting on Your Bicycle.
By walking into the store and looking like a bicycle geek of sorts, I am making a statement to the world: that I'm proud to be a bicyclist and not afraid to look like one either! Bicycling is cool! It brings my honey and me closer together in spirit, helps keep us fit, and helps us not contribute to air pollution.
It's the civilized thing to do.
Besides, I'd rather be SEEN by cars (especially at a busy intersection) than not. Why should I care how I look in the grocery store or anywhere else as long as I'm well- equipped? I do not care what others may think! Why, this morning I wore my safety glasses over my regular glasses! %-D
I intend to be bicycling well into my 100's...! Freedom is very nice thing indeed.
If you have a bicycle in your possession, is it collecting dust? Or are you giving it fresh air? ;-)
* * * * * * * *
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.
--Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Super Therapist for the Day!
What can I attribute my energy to that I was able to massage a body every ten minutes for several hours straight with no interruption, have a 20 minute meal break, and then work another hour more, during the Newark Community Day fair, today?
The beautiful weather? Eating Chinese rice noodles and shrimp before leaving? Chilling out with Pink Martini before leaving? Doing squats and pushups before leaving?
Does it even matter?!
Today's event turned out much better than Newark Nite in June. More hours and daytime hours, for one. Which means many more peeps. And of course, the word FREE. Charge a dollar a minute and only a few will be willing to cough it up. Offer mini massages for FREE and people are willing to wait until eternity, almost!
I myself can't believe all the people who waited in line for us to give them a much needed massage. (Everybody needs a massage!) Or maybe I should believe it considering we offered free massages. Ten minutes is better than nothing! Five minutes doesn't do much at all. It was like a factory: one body following another body! I barely had time to grab my water bottle!
From 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. or thereabouts, I was on a ROLL! In my element! Every ten minutes a new body was on my table! Sixty minutes=one hour. Sixty divided by ten equals six. SIX bodies an hour! I've never even had six clients in a day...yet!
I have had five relatives in a day, bless their hearts! ;-)
Of course, I prefer the longer massages (60-90 min), but you do what you gotta do to get more business. Two people will win an hour-long massage. We got a lot of new names to market to, too. And I got one person to commit to a massage this week with a substantial discount. :-)
Even with incentives, few people are willing to make an appointment. Or perhaps I should say, part with their money. Save $20 off a regular price massage OR buy a gift certificate: BOOK TODAY! Other massage vendors were charging a dollar a minute...maybe that's why our waiting lines were long and non-stop! FREE is such a nice word, isn't it? ;-) Selling is a hard job...and all the more challenging when you are selling your own services rather than those of a company, which I have done before.
The most important thing for me, was that I made a lot of people happy with loosened muscles today. :-)) That's my focus. My livlihood. My joy!
I finally had to turn away a group of college gals and asked them to return in half an hour because I HAD TO EAT! %-0 Let alone find a Port-a-Potty! I went to the area where most of the food vendors were situated and first walked by the Indonesian stand, but I heard the women behind the table telling someone they had no chicken satay left. It was past 3:30, after all. Then I found the Chinese Student's Union table and they had food and trinkets for sale. I always go to them on Newark Community Day--I like to support students because I remember being a college student.
They had the food that Americans like and most Chinese don't (unless cooked at home or for Chinese people): fried rice, egg rolls, and fried dumplings. Fried everything on their menu. It was waaaay too greasy, but it was good because I was famished. Simply starving beyond imagination! Heart attack food can sure be tasty when you almost don't care WHAT you put in your belly! Even though the food was cold, it filled the bill. I ate part of it walking back to our station, then I ate in front of everybody waiting for a massage! Told one lady I couldn't work on her because I was eating. I HAD TO EAT! No food in my belly makes for an awfully cranky yours truly! :-0
So she walked away disappointed because my colleague was working on someone else. Geez, lady, did you expect me to drop my plate at your beck and call? I would not even stop eating if you paid me! ;-( What good am I to you if I don't take care of myself first? (Well, THAT'S worthy of another blog entry!)
My belly full, I was ready to go back to work for free again.
For another hour and some odd minutes.
That makes some 30 or 31 bodies I think! I really did lose count, but I do know that I was working non-stop for several hours at a time today.
One other detail: we had tables instead of a chair today. Table work IS much more pleasant than chair massage and MUCH easier on therapist's body, especially for prolonged periods of time. I know I'd be more tired than I am now if we had to do chair massage (which I and many of my therapist friends do not like) all day cuz I've done it before and I hated it. I can deliver a much, much more effective massage with the client on the table.
Oh my...I'm probably gonna feel the effects of today, when I wake up in the morning! Then I'll need a massage! %-)
The beautiful weather? Eating Chinese rice noodles and shrimp before leaving? Chilling out with Pink Martini before leaving? Doing squats and pushups before leaving?
Does it even matter?!
Today's event turned out much better than Newark Nite in June. More hours and daytime hours, for one. Which means many more peeps. And of course, the word FREE. Charge a dollar a minute and only a few will be willing to cough it up. Offer mini massages for FREE and people are willing to wait until eternity, almost!
I myself can't believe all the people who waited in line for us to give them a much needed massage. (Everybody needs a massage!) Or maybe I should believe it considering we offered free massages. Ten minutes is better than nothing! Five minutes doesn't do much at all. It was like a factory: one body following another body! I barely had time to grab my water bottle!
From 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. or thereabouts, I was on a ROLL! In my element! Every ten minutes a new body was on my table! Sixty minutes=one hour. Sixty divided by ten equals six. SIX bodies an hour! I've never even had six clients in a day...yet!
I have had five relatives in a day, bless their hearts! ;-)
Of course, I prefer the longer massages (60-90 min), but you do what you gotta do to get more business. Two people will win an hour-long massage. We got a lot of new names to market to, too. And I got one person to commit to a massage this week with a substantial discount. :-)
Even with incentives, few people are willing to make an appointment. Or perhaps I should say, part with their money. Save $20 off a regular price massage OR buy a gift certificate: BOOK TODAY! Other massage vendors were charging a dollar a minute...maybe that's why our waiting lines were long and non-stop! FREE is such a nice word, isn't it? ;-) Selling is a hard job...and all the more challenging when you are selling your own services rather than those of a company, which I have done before.
The most important thing for me, was that I made a lot of people happy with loosened muscles today. :-)) That's my focus. My livlihood. My joy!
I finally had to turn away a group of college gals and asked them to return in half an hour because I HAD TO EAT! %-0 Let alone find a Port-a-Potty! I went to the area where most of the food vendors were situated and first walked by the Indonesian stand, but I heard the women behind the table telling someone they had no chicken satay left. It was past 3:30, after all. Then I found the Chinese Student's Union table and they had food and trinkets for sale. I always go to them on Newark Community Day--I like to support students because I remember being a college student.
They had the food that Americans like and most Chinese don't (unless cooked at home or for Chinese people): fried rice, egg rolls, and fried dumplings. Fried everything on their menu. It was waaaay too greasy, but it was good because I was famished. Simply starving beyond imagination! Heart attack food can sure be tasty when you almost don't care WHAT you put in your belly! Even though the food was cold, it filled the bill. I ate part of it walking back to our station, then I ate in front of everybody waiting for a massage! Told one lady I couldn't work on her because I was eating. I HAD TO EAT! No food in my belly makes for an awfully cranky yours truly! :-0
So she walked away disappointed because my colleague was working on someone else. Geez, lady, did you expect me to drop my plate at your beck and call? I would not even stop eating if you paid me! ;-( What good am I to you if I don't take care of myself first? (Well, THAT'S worthy of another blog entry!)
My belly full, I was ready to go back to work for free again.
For another hour and some odd minutes.
That makes some 30 or 31 bodies I think! I really did lose count, but I do know that I was working non-stop for several hours at a time today.
One other detail: we had tables instead of a chair today. Table work IS much more pleasant than chair massage and MUCH easier on therapist's body, especially for prolonged periods of time. I know I'd be more tired than I am now if we had to do chair massage (which I and many of my therapist friends do not like) all day cuz I've done it before and I hated it. I can deliver a much, much more effective massage with the client on the table.
Oh my...I'm probably gonna feel the effects of today, when I wake up in the morning! Then I'll need a massage! %-)
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Give Women a Higher Status Than Dogs
I cannot get an article I read the other night out of my head:
"Beat a Woman? Play on; Beat a Dog? You're Gone" , by Sandra Kobrin, from Women e-News.
It made my blood BOIL!
Please read it: it's well-written and ought to be on the front pages of every paper on earth.
Animal abuse is certainly inexcusable. What's the point? :-(( It's just wrong, let alone inhumane. But why do people seem to get more huffed up about a football star involved in high stakes dog fighting (and death) than some star athlete who gets arrested for spousal abuse or beating up a girlfriend?
Does this mean women are STILL second class citizens in the 21st century? In America, the most free country in the world?
That appears to be so, judging from indifference of popular media and popular national sports organizations.
I never have paid much attention to sports/sports news, except during the Olympics, which I enjoy watching. :-) But I cannot relate to what seems to be contrived aggression, or just all out uncontrolled tempers on the playing field. I am mainly targeting men here, since they are usually the ones who get in trouble during any sort of sport...that's not to say that women are incapable of being nasty to one another--but you rarely, if ever, hear about female athletes beating up the ones they supposedly love.
I don't know the intricate details of hormones, but I thought sports was a way for guys to release some of that testosterone! (What do I know? I'm a woman!) Yet the ones who are making an unimaginable amount of money can keep playing their game while beating their honey up at home. And even get arrested for it. They don't have to worry about a thing. Are they thinking: so what if I slap my woman around when I come home? I got a big game to play,tomorrow!
This tells me that the head honchos of these huge sports leagues have their values skewed, to put it mildly. Sure the bottom line is important, but is it SO important you have to keep a certain player regardless of the fact he battered his wife or girlfriend--often repeatedly, AND got arrested for it??
WHERE ARE THE REAL MEN, HERE? :-(
I hope more people will make a BIG STINK about this, so that the powers that be in these sports leagues will never, ever tolerate spousal and girlfriend abuse again.
One might say: well, domestic abuse is their damn business; whatever goes on behind closed doors is their private affair.
That is true...to a point. Once the injured woman has to seek medical help, it's everyone's business. Concerned family and friends will seek to help her, which can cause more stress all around. Fees will have to be paid for jail bail. Taxpayers will have to pay for yet another man who didn't know how to keep his balls and brains where they belong. If children are involved, then their emotional turmoil will likely go unnoticed while they try to be brave and cope with daily living.
Spousal abuse affects the community, near and far, directly and indirectly.
It'll be a fine day when society will view this sort of abuse with zero tolerance and impose severe penalties. When people on the street will recoil in horror when they hear about someone committing spousal/domestic abuse...just as if they heard about a bloody murder today.
And why not?
Abuse is like murdering someone's soul: that person trusted you and you have no thought except to satisfy your own selfish needs by physically and/or verbally lashing out at that someone who was supposed to be special to you. And you spill your poison over and over again, refusing to clean up. That's as good as a slow, painful death, to my mind.
Hey! What about the millions raked in by these fantastic athletes who abuse the women in their lives? Too bad our society doesn't value the brains of those brilliant scientists in the research halls of academia who endeavor to make our world a better place to live. I'm sure they would be happy to have some of those millions to fund their research to improve our lives.
The leaders of the sports leagues could actually make our world a better place to live by taking a step forward in a very loud way: they can announce a zero tolerance policy for ANY player arrested for spousal abuse or beating up their girlfriend. ANY player!!
OR, maybe the hundreds of thousands of sports fans will beat the CEOs to the punch and demand a zero tolerance policy towards spouse and girlfriend abuse? Imagine if all the fans began to boycott their favorite team games as a matter of principle: we don't support you because you condone the beating of wives and girlfriends!
Think the head honchos or the fans can take a stand against domestic abuse?
Perhaps it'll depend on whether or not they truly value women, equal to men as human beings, worthy of respect.
"Beat a Woman? Play on; Beat a Dog? You're Gone" , by Sandra Kobrin, from Women e-News.
It made my blood BOIL!
Please read it: it's well-written and ought to be on the front pages of every paper on earth.
Animal abuse is certainly inexcusable. What's the point? :-(( It's just wrong, let alone inhumane. But why do people seem to get more huffed up about a football star involved in high stakes dog fighting (and death) than some star athlete who gets arrested for spousal abuse or beating up a girlfriend?
Does this mean women are STILL second class citizens in the 21st century? In America, the most free country in the world?
That appears to be so, judging from indifference of popular media and popular national sports organizations.
I never have paid much attention to sports/sports news, except during the Olympics, which I enjoy watching. :-) But I cannot relate to what seems to be contrived aggression, or just all out uncontrolled tempers on the playing field. I am mainly targeting men here, since they are usually the ones who get in trouble during any sort of sport...that's not to say that women are incapable of being nasty to one another--but you rarely, if ever, hear about female athletes beating up the ones they supposedly love.
I don't know the intricate details of hormones, but I thought sports was a way for guys to release some of that testosterone! (What do I know? I'm a woman!) Yet the ones who are making an unimaginable amount of money can keep playing their game while beating their honey up at home. And even get arrested for it. They don't have to worry about a thing. Are they thinking: so what if I slap my woman around when I come home? I got a big game to play,tomorrow!
This tells me that the head honchos of these huge sports leagues have their values skewed, to put it mildly. Sure the bottom line is important, but is it SO important you have to keep a certain player regardless of the fact he battered his wife or girlfriend--often repeatedly, AND got arrested for it??
WHERE ARE THE REAL MEN, HERE? :-(
I hope more people will make a BIG STINK about this, so that the powers that be in these sports leagues will never, ever tolerate spousal and girlfriend abuse again.
One might say: well, domestic abuse is their damn business; whatever goes on behind closed doors is their private affair.
That is true...to a point. Once the injured woman has to seek medical help, it's everyone's business. Concerned family and friends will seek to help her, which can cause more stress all around. Fees will have to be paid for jail bail. Taxpayers will have to pay for yet another man who didn't know how to keep his balls and brains where they belong. If children are involved, then their emotional turmoil will likely go unnoticed while they try to be brave and cope with daily living.
Spousal abuse affects the community, near and far, directly and indirectly.
It'll be a fine day when society will view this sort of abuse with zero tolerance and impose severe penalties. When people on the street will recoil in horror when they hear about someone committing spousal/domestic abuse...just as if they heard about a bloody murder today.
And why not?
Abuse is like murdering someone's soul: that person trusted you and you have no thought except to satisfy your own selfish needs by physically and/or verbally lashing out at that someone who was supposed to be special to you. And you spill your poison over and over again, refusing to clean up. That's as good as a slow, painful death, to my mind.
Hey! What about the millions raked in by these fantastic athletes who abuse the women in their lives? Too bad our society doesn't value the brains of those brilliant scientists in the research halls of academia who endeavor to make our world a better place to live. I'm sure they would be happy to have some of those millions to fund their research to improve our lives.
The leaders of the sports leagues could actually make our world a better place to live by taking a step forward in a very loud way: they can announce a zero tolerance policy for ANY player arrested for spousal abuse or beating up their girlfriend. ANY player!!
OR, maybe the hundreds of thousands of sports fans will beat the CEOs to the punch and demand a zero tolerance policy towards spouse and girlfriend abuse? Imagine if all the fans began to boycott their favorite team games as a matter of principle: we don't support you because you condone the beating of wives and girlfriends!
Think the head honchos or the fans can take a stand against domestic abuse?
Perhaps it'll depend on whether or not they truly value women, equal to men as human beings, worthy of respect.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
A Mountain or a Molehill?
My dear sister in-law was recently diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. :-( I am not a religious person, but I do respect and admire her steadfast faith in God and the fact that she has a large support base of equally devout friends and family. And of course, she does have fan club members like hubby, myself, my sis and bil, and other family members on the in-law side who may not be as devout or not at all religious. ;-)
My sil, S, is also a good friend as well. Not only do I admire her steadfast faith, but also her sunny disposition and levelheadedness. I have never known her to be ill-tempered in the least. Her sister recently put up a webpage for her at caringbridge.org. Check it out!
I think cancer has to be one of the scariest things known to man. When a loved one gets it, it tends to remind me of the fact that my problems are small, compared to the one that received that diagonsis. I'm starting to lose count of the people I've known who've suffered the effects of cancer.
Someone's got it worse than you, I tell myself, whenever I feel overwhelmed.
That helps me to shrink my head a bit. ;-)
One of the reasons I made a decision long ago to have at least ONE volunteer activity throughout my life was to ensure in some small way that I was giving back to the community...and to remind myself that no matter HOW sucky things may seem at any given time, there is ALWAYS someone out there who's got it MUCH much worse than I do. Or perhaps, more than I ever did.
My first volunteer activity was as a mentor. I started with mentoring an elementary school girl from a broken family (most mentoring is with children from troubled families). I did that for 2.5 years. Then we moved and I decided to try the middle school age group and I got another girl for another two years. That was great. THEN, I got a girl for one year...and that was enough for awhile. She was totally unmotivated--and despite my efforts, I began to feel I was wasting my time.
I took a year off. Actually, I'm still not mentoring, due to my schedule. But I am tutoring English to an ESL student, off and on. As long as I have at least one thing going on, I'm feeling useful. :-) I hope it's true that you reap what you sow.
All I have to do is listen to the news or open the pages of any National Geographic magazine issue to realize there is someone out there who is living in danger, squalor, without personal freedoms, or unimaginable misery. Or all of the above. It helps me put things in perspective.
In recent years, whenever I'm in a bad situation, I try to ask myself whether I'm going to make a mountain or a molehill out of it. To stress or not? Get heated and age myself...or chill and breathe? I'd like to think I'm improving on the "not stress" and "chill and breathe" aspects of healthy living. ;-)
How did I come by this thinking, you may ask?
When I was a roving reporter on my college weekly, I interviewed a student who was confined to her wheelchair and who needed someone to take notes for her. She was studying for her master's degree in liberal arts and had returned to college after raising a family.
I asked her a question which could have invited scorn on her part since the answer seemed so obvious, but I asked it anyway. I can't tell you what my question was because I'm too embarrassed to remember and I don't have my clips of written work on me at the moment! But basically, I inquired, did she feel challenged by her disability to complete her degree?
She gave me a very sharp reply with a matronly tone of disapproval: "Of course not! This is what I set out to do!" She set out to enrich her mind as did each student on campus. Her disability was not on her radar, it was only a fact of life, not her focus.
This was Mills College, for goodness sakes! Women rule! WE can do ANYTHING we want! :-))
Wow! When I wrote her story in the paper, I realized I had nothing in the world worth complaining about. Not at all. She was my inspiration for the rest of my time in college--especially when I thought I was going to die of stress during finals week/graduation week. ;-) But to this day, I still remember her, even though I can't remember her name. She still inspires me.
As does my sil in her journey to recovery. :-)
I've actually never seen a molehill, by the way. Have you?
My sil, S, is also a good friend as well. Not only do I admire her steadfast faith, but also her sunny disposition and levelheadedness. I have never known her to be ill-tempered in the least. Her sister recently put up a webpage for her at caringbridge.org. Check it out!
I think cancer has to be one of the scariest things known to man. When a loved one gets it, it tends to remind me of the fact that my problems are small, compared to the one that received that diagonsis. I'm starting to lose count of the people I've known who've suffered the effects of cancer.
Someone's got it worse than you, I tell myself, whenever I feel overwhelmed.
That helps me to shrink my head a bit. ;-)
One of the reasons I made a decision long ago to have at least ONE volunteer activity throughout my life was to ensure in some small way that I was giving back to the community...and to remind myself that no matter HOW sucky things may seem at any given time, there is ALWAYS someone out there who's got it MUCH much worse than I do. Or perhaps, more than I ever did.
My first volunteer activity was as a mentor. I started with mentoring an elementary school girl from a broken family (most mentoring is with children from troubled families). I did that for 2.5 years. Then we moved and I decided to try the middle school age group and I got another girl for another two years. That was great. THEN, I got a girl for one year...and that was enough for awhile. She was totally unmotivated--and despite my efforts, I began to feel I was wasting my time.
I took a year off. Actually, I'm still not mentoring, due to my schedule. But I am tutoring English to an ESL student, off and on. As long as I have at least one thing going on, I'm feeling useful. :-) I hope it's true that you reap what you sow.
All I have to do is listen to the news or open the pages of any National Geographic magazine issue to realize there is someone out there who is living in danger, squalor, without personal freedoms, or unimaginable misery. Or all of the above. It helps me put things in perspective.
In recent years, whenever I'm in a bad situation, I try to ask myself whether I'm going to make a mountain or a molehill out of it. To stress or not? Get heated and age myself...or chill and breathe? I'd like to think I'm improving on the "not stress" and "chill and breathe" aspects of healthy living. ;-)
How did I come by this thinking, you may ask?
When I was a roving reporter on my college weekly, I interviewed a student who was confined to her wheelchair and who needed someone to take notes for her. She was studying for her master's degree in liberal arts and had returned to college after raising a family.
I asked her a question which could have invited scorn on her part since the answer seemed so obvious, but I asked it anyway. I can't tell you what my question was because I'm too embarrassed to remember and I don't have my clips of written work on me at the moment! But basically, I inquired, did she feel challenged by her disability to complete her degree?
She gave me a very sharp reply with a matronly tone of disapproval: "Of course not! This is what I set out to do!" She set out to enrich her mind as did each student on campus. Her disability was not on her radar, it was only a fact of life, not her focus.
This was Mills College, for goodness sakes! Women rule! WE can do ANYTHING we want! :-))
Wow! When I wrote her story in the paper, I realized I had nothing in the world worth complaining about. Not at all. She was my inspiration for the rest of my time in college--especially when I thought I was going to die of stress during finals week/graduation week. ;-) But to this day, I still remember her, even though I can't remember her name. She still inspires me.
As does my sil in her journey to recovery. :-)
I've actually never seen a molehill, by the way. Have you?
Saturday, July 14, 2007
How Self-Conscious are You?
Would it bother you if strangers watched you chow down?
This afternoon I sat on concrete steps bordering a parking lot and sidewalk, famished, and thinking about what the late physicist Richard Feynman often said to his first wife: "What do you care what other people think?"
What did I care that I was seated near the bus stop sign, within 10 feet of the closest car sitting in two-lane traffic waiting for the red light to turn green? I wanted to eat! I had to EAT! Now, not a moment later! Let 'em all stare at me, I thought. I'll never see them again...just peeps in passing cars.
I whipped out my little cheese stick and strawberry yogurt granola bar that I'd bought from the 7-Eleven across the street and wolfed them down. And then I finished those off with my nearly-filled 1 liter bottle of water.
Only two sets of waiting cars sat in front of me. It didn't bother me that they were there, I was so hungry! Then my vanity played on me: I needed to re-apply my lipstick after eating. I've seen many a woman apply their make-up in public: bus, airplane, airport waiting area, restaurant, park bench, etc.
How about in front of traffic?
So I did. I whipped out my Ruby Desire lipstick by Maybelline and free Blue Cross/Blue Shield compact mirror and skillfully re-did my lips for all to see! Oh, I don't know if anyone actually looked as they came to the red light. All I know is that I like my lips to have some shiny color to them!
I had a bit of practice doing my own thing at bus stop a couple of weeks ago in Washington, D.C. I had some medical business to take care of, and there was royal screw up on the receptionist's part, which gave me time to run to Chinatown and get something to eat. Since I couldn't eat in the medical center, I ate at the bus stop right outside it.
I had ordered what turned out to be really bad dumplings; Americanized. But since I don't believe in wasting food unless it really tastes toxic or is toxic, I ate it. And I was under a time crunch to get back to my appointment, so I gobbled four of six dumplings right there. They were hot and steamy, with hot sauce. I didn't use much of the hot sauce because my tongue and tummy can't tolerate too-spicy stuff.
While I ate, a bus stopped by, and a young family sat next to me. I could feel a toddler's eyeballs boring into me! I only glanced sideways once to see that she was staring at me eating noisily. Didn't bother me because: I WAS HUNGRY!
I did what I had to do and that's that! Stare all you want, I told them silently. I'll never see you again! I don't care. I have to eat! I have to make my lips look good afterwards, too!
;-)
How self-concious am I anyway?
Hopefully, less and less as time goes by.
Take for example, my fuzzy, florescent leggies. Hubby loves them just they way they are, thankfully. :-) I haven't seen many women at all who've let their legs go natural.
I haven't shaved them since high school and I'm sorry I ever did it because I think it caused my hair on my legs to grow darker. I'm not ever going to shave them again because of that, but mainly because shaving was a pain in the ass. I hated it. I've got better things to do with my time.
Sometimes, though, I get really hard stares. Mostly from women.
How shallow of you! I say to them silently. Why are you looking at another woman's legs? If they look so repulsive to you, don't look at them for goodness sakes! :-(
The looks can sting if I let them bother me. Most of the time, they don't. Every once in while I ask hubby if he still likes my fuzzy leggies, and he says, "Of course. Leave them alone." ;-)
Between him and Richard Feynman, I should just put it out of my mind, shouldn't I?
I'd be lying if I said I haven't been tempted to rid my legs of hair. My sis mentioned waxing to me recently. I thought maybe I could try it once and hopefully the hair will take longer to grow back--and lighter. And yet, I like to be as natural as possible in all ways. We'll see.
How shallow will I be by giving in to society's standards of beauty? I already have given in a bit by buying makeup, though I use a minimal amount.
I don't tan--I get a "tint". As a result, black hair on pale legs are rather striking! I have fuzzy arms, too, but they're not as noticeable.
With age comes wisdom.
I don't know where that adage came from, but I hope it's true. One being the wisdom not to bother about what other people think about you. :-)
Being involved with taekwondo has helped me a lot to build confidence in that regard. Having to perform in front of instructors, judges at tournaments, and your classmates over and over again is a great confidence booster!
Yep, there have been events in the past where I was put uncomfortably in the spotlight:
Among countless other times...!
The important thing to remember is to just be myself, eh? And nothing less! :-D
This afternoon I sat on concrete steps bordering a parking lot and sidewalk, famished, and thinking about what the late physicist Richard Feynman often said to his first wife: "What do you care what other people think?"
What did I care that I was seated near the bus stop sign, within 10 feet of the closest car sitting in two-lane traffic waiting for the red light to turn green? I wanted to eat! I had to EAT! Now, not a moment later! Let 'em all stare at me, I thought. I'll never see them again...just peeps in passing cars.
I whipped out my little cheese stick and strawberry yogurt granola bar that I'd bought from the 7-Eleven across the street and wolfed them down. And then I finished those off with my nearly-filled 1 liter bottle of water.
Only two sets of waiting cars sat in front of me. It didn't bother me that they were there, I was so hungry! Then my vanity played on me: I needed to re-apply my lipstick after eating. I've seen many a woman apply their make-up in public: bus, airplane, airport waiting area, restaurant, park bench, etc.
How about in front of traffic?
So I did. I whipped out my Ruby Desire lipstick by Maybelline and free Blue Cross/Blue Shield compact mirror and skillfully re-did my lips for all to see! Oh, I don't know if anyone actually looked as they came to the red light. All I know is that I like my lips to have some shiny color to them!
I had a bit of practice doing my own thing at bus stop a couple of weeks ago in Washington, D.C. I had some medical business to take care of, and there was royal screw up on the receptionist's part, which gave me time to run to Chinatown and get something to eat. Since I couldn't eat in the medical center, I ate at the bus stop right outside it.
I had ordered what turned out to be really bad dumplings; Americanized. But since I don't believe in wasting food unless it really tastes toxic or is toxic, I ate it. And I was under a time crunch to get back to my appointment, so I gobbled four of six dumplings right there. They were hot and steamy, with hot sauce. I didn't use much of the hot sauce because my tongue and tummy can't tolerate too-spicy stuff.
While I ate, a bus stopped by, and a young family sat next to me. I could feel a toddler's eyeballs boring into me! I only glanced sideways once to see that she was staring at me eating noisily. Didn't bother me because: I WAS HUNGRY!
I did what I had to do and that's that! Stare all you want, I told them silently. I'll never see you again! I don't care. I have to eat! I have to make my lips look good afterwards, too!
;-)
How self-concious am I anyway?
Hopefully, less and less as time goes by.
Take for example, my fuzzy, florescent leggies. Hubby loves them just they way they are, thankfully. :-) I haven't seen many women at all who've let their legs go natural.
I haven't shaved them since high school and I'm sorry I ever did it because I think it caused my hair on my legs to grow darker. I'm not ever going to shave them again because of that, but mainly because shaving was a pain in the ass. I hated it. I've got better things to do with my time.
Sometimes, though, I get really hard stares. Mostly from women.
How shallow of you! I say to them silently. Why are you looking at another woman's legs? If they look so repulsive to you, don't look at them for goodness sakes! :-(
The looks can sting if I let them bother me. Most of the time, they don't. Every once in while I ask hubby if he still likes my fuzzy leggies, and he says, "Of course. Leave them alone." ;-)
Between him and Richard Feynman, I should just put it out of my mind, shouldn't I?
I'd be lying if I said I haven't been tempted to rid my legs of hair. My sis mentioned waxing to me recently. I thought maybe I could try it once and hopefully the hair will take longer to grow back--and lighter. And yet, I like to be as natural as possible in all ways. We'll see.
How shallow will I be by giving in to society's standards of beauty? I already have given in a bit by buying makeup, though I use a minimal amount.
I don't tan--I get a "tint". As a result, black hair on pale legs are rather striking! I have fuzzy arms, too, but they're not as noticeable.
With age comes wisdom.
I don't know where that adage came from, but I hope it's true. One being the wisdom not to bother about what other people think about you. :-)
Being involved with taekwondo has helped me a lot to build confidence in that regard. Having to perform in front of instructors, judges at tournaments, and your classmates over and over again is a great confidence booster!
Yep, there have been events in the past where I was put uncomfortably in the spotlight:
- Starting to play before I was supposed to during a class recital when I was four years old at Yamaha Music School/Class!
- Picked last on the team during p.e. every single week and year during my school years.
- Performing horribly on physical fitness tests in front of my classmates.
- Standing out like a sore thumb on my trips to Turkey (especially the first time).
- Riding bus #38 through San Francisco's Chinatown and having all the passenger's eyeballs stick to you as you come on board.
- Going to a beauty salon recommended by a coworker and then upon arrival, being stared at as if I were from Mars.
Among countless other times...!
The important thing to remember is to just be myself, eh? And nothing less! :-D
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