clearly, things are out of hand in frisco, tx

ok, so the mm read with horror this piece in the nytimes about a 5th grade teacher who was suspended because she took her class on a school approved field trip to an art museum in dallas, and her students were exposed to.......naked people in art form......and when a parent later complained, she was suspended pending investigation.....omg.......does this parent not know that she/he is actually naked under her/his clothes at this very minute....as we all are....even jesus was naked on the cross, despite the artfully wrapped cloth in most depictions....we know so because the gospels agree that the soldiers gambled for his clothes.......yet this parent would likely be offended by a naked jesus, even if it was historically correct...go figure....but i digress from an art museum......yep...most art museums contain art that depicts the body as it was made by god, not how we have covered it up......the parent in question must be pretty naive to allow her/his uber-sheltered child to venture into such a place......come to think of it...there would be few places that this parent is safe taking this child.....certainly not a zoo, or a farm.....as ya never know when the inhabitants will be copulating......and certainly not to shopping malls, as some flagrant mamma may be nursing her baby......not to professional sports events like nascar because women tend to want to do the wet-t-shirt thing......and gosh, even disney employs gays.....and ya just never know what might happen there....so my best advice for this mamma/pappa is to home school.......maybe even do college on-line......and after that....well...your child will be at a loss to know how to handle the reall world and will likely live with you forever......maybe that is what would most make this mamma/pappa happy........

back to bed.....

ok, so i got up early to take my daughter to meet the cross country bus...then came on back home for more coffee and internet....and i came up this article about a guy who takes his cue from a newly translated book about a 19th century guy named oblomov, who lays in bed for 10 days and thinks about his life...as only russians who dream of serfs and radishes and rye bread can do......the reviewer is a russian immigrant...and chose to stay abed for 10 days in order to read this 450+ page tome.....and it was about this point that the obvious occured to me...that i was home alone and there was no earthly reason why i didn't go back to bed as well......not to read, but to sleep.......and so i climbed back into the already-made bed, without bothering to take off the dhs sweatshirt i had donned to drive into town.....i hadn't actually bothered to take off my pajamas to drive to town, in that i had no intention of getting out of the car.......but i digress.....i couldn't seem to fall back asleep for all the distractions...like the dog coming upstairs to be near me......or the neighbor's hired tree crew come to trim and grind up what they trimmed, or even the birds who landed on the branch just outside the window to sing......oy!......and just about when i was finally nodding off.....my spouse came back from his 10+mile saturday running group......and wanted to chat as he got ready for work......ah well.......the notion was a sound one.....but how would one manage to do a 10-day stint in bed......i suppose with wifi and a laptop it would be more entertaining.....and maybe a tv/dvd player.......and a bedside fridge for my fruit and cottage cheese.....and a stack of iris murdoch.....or maybe i could use the time for rereads.....like all of jane austen or all of agatha christie.......of course, it must be clarified that i wouldn't actually want to HAVE to be in bed for 10 days....as in recovering from something horrific.......this sort of decadence implies the lack of necessity......that lying about was a deliberate choice......and i want to further clarify that i would have to take showers because i cannot go more that a single day without washing my hair......or using deodorant.....my spouse related the description of the of those on the run this morning...the free-spirited sister of one of the more colorful/annoying centre professors....who has stopped combing her hair, shaving under her arms, or washing in general....to the point that my spouse said he had to stay clear of her for the stench....omg.......there is nothing free-spirited about lack of hygeine.......but i digress from my own back-to-bed story.....i didn't last til 9:30.......just couldn't fall asleep, nor justify delaying all of the errands i have in mind for today....like buying catfood in time for her supper......if she knew that my lying in the bed was between her and her next meal she would be howling in her special caterwawling way.......yeah...that is probably not how one spells caterwawl......but y'all get my point......and so i am up and ready to go......and if there is a god i can sneak in a little nap later on.......

exhausted.....

ok, so.....the mm ate modestly at the red mile buffet.....especially compared to her coworkers....who seemed hell-bent on the money's worth thing......and i stopped betting after the 3rd race, as $6 gone was more than i was willing to risk.....somehow my dollar on powerball on wednesdays and saturdays is spread out enough to seem miniscule.......ah well....i met up with andrew at his place midafternoon...whereupon he measured and we started out on a fruitless hunt for what he has in mind.......grey sheets do not seem to be 'in' this season...may have to do the on-line thing.....but we did have good sushi at the goodfoods coop..and now that i am back home i am going to put my feet up and read my new yorker......

fall outing.....

ok, so today the health department is closed, and we are meeting at 11:15 at the red mile for a buffet lunch and to watch the races......my plan is to stay til a respectable 2:00, when my eldest has agreed to call me up for the most noble and inarguable requests...to help him to spruce up his apartment.....he is quite serious, btw....and i am delighted.....he is taking this so seriously that is has taken snapshots, and measurements, and has an idea about the color scheme he prefers......i may go so far as to pay to recover the rosey-pink recliner he got from my mother......in my wildest imagination i don't see pink being part of something andrew would want to live with for the next 2 years.....and so i am lounging about in my jammies, dining on latke's made partly with sweet potato, and listening to salon.com downloads...a newish tom waits and somebody called the oxygen ponies.....i kind of like this guy (group?) it is always hard to tell in this day of studio miracle music treatments....i do plan to drive up to lex early enough to check out a few goodwills on the way...but my clothing of choice is still in the dryer.....ah...the life of the leisurely...i could get used to this.....we were up several times last night...once when i was too cold to have the window open....and again when the dog fell down the steps......this poor pup has no learning curve.....he has climbed up in the dark only to fall back down several times, and cannot seem to remember from mishap to mishap......if i had not already paid for my part of this buffet thing i would go back to bed and blow off the races art of the day....but i am looking forward to meeting andrew and shopping for fabric and acoutrement.........

my thursday county

ok, so.....the people who work everyday at my thursday place of employment have gone off the deep end....for starts...2 of the 50-something nurses have gotten into internet-dating....and discussed their on-line conversations with these eligible men a little too loudly for my level of interest......these would be the same women who moved my stuff from my original office to another location.....unceremoniously moved my stuff......which meant that i spent over an hour sorting through and rearranging materials on shelves and in drawers......oy!......on the other hand....i did learn a thing or two today......a client with hepatitis c was told by her doctor that she shouldn't breastfeed, and i went right online and showed her that his rec. was unfounded...........sadly, i was asked by another nurse to give a second opinion with a 2 month old baby who weighs only 10 pounds.....this child cannot keep down her 4th formula, and so far her doctor has done nothing more than prescribe different formulas, and hasn't actually asked to see the child in the flesh......whereupon he might have noticed that this child has got a greyish skintone...and her facial bones are pronounced, and she looked 3rd-world......i was also surprised that the mamma, who has older children, hasn't been in her doctor's face wanting to find out what is wrong.......the technical term is failure-to-thrive......the nurse told this mamma that if this formula doesn't work by monday, to change doctors........i was glad that the nurse said this.....because it was in my mind....and then there were moments of joy...when i spoke to a 44-year old woman who just found out she is expecting her first child.....after a disastrous first marriage where she always assumed it was her fault that they couldn't conceive......granted, she is starting out at 275 pounds.....no wonder she is too tired to eat......but she is so thrilled to be having a baby it brought tears to my eyes.......oh yeah, and i ate most of a container of cottage cheese with my fruit and rye krisps.....and i am reduced in bulk by another whopping 1/2 pound.....god bless cottage cheese.....

cottage cheese.....

ok, so i have had an insatiable craving for cottage cheese these past several weeks...to the enxtent that i have taken copious amounts to work, along with fruit and these rye krisp high fiber wafers......and i have not purchased fast food during this maniacal time-frame.....and with the valuable break-minutes i am saving not driving about i have walked the halls of the building.......for at least 30 minutes listening to songs on my pda......and i have lost over 2 pounds..i hope to lose 10 pounds by december.....and i have saved $50 not buying fastfood.......and so today i impetuously mailed off that $50 to a worthy investment......one that is music-oriented...music-driven....and one who might just be amused at the connection.....let us hope.....because these days the MM is getting scattered....I am still looking for a little leather moleskine journal that has all of my most recent paris addresses.....no idea how i lost it.....but i digress from my food fascination with cottage cheese....i find that i can eat it for breakfast, for a morning break, for a pre-supper appetizer.....and as long as this low calorie low fat gold-standard is in play......i say let's just roll with it......

ok, so this picture of the george allen insult generator from slate.com didn't come out very well.......his response to my being old was.....'how's it going, prune pants?'.......blunt guy, that george........ 

early to bed.....

ok, so last evening i am certain that i was asleep by 9:30......i did try to read a bit of my latest iris installment, but i could not concentrate and opted to turn off the light and ease on into slumber.......and a good idea this turned out to be as i feel most rested this morning.....such a feeling cannot be adequately described in mere words.......it is totally experiential......curiously, i dreamed that i had my appendix taken out....and that before the anesthesia i showed the surgeon just where the lumpy organ was bulging out of my lower abdomen.....hmmm......i was able to make it to my daughter's cross country meet in stanford...despite major traffic delays on the bypass in danville......my journey took over an hour...and i arrived in lincoln county fullly expecting to find that her race was already over.....but it seems that buses from participating schools were also caught in construction traffic....and the the entire meet was delayed accordingly......of course, we didn't make it home until after 7:30.......when it was already nearing darkness......and the air was already beginning to chill.......maybe the chill deserves partial credit for a good night's sleep.....we are keeping the windows open, and when one has the proper raio of chill to covers there is nothing quite so sweet...a warm bed against the cool air.......life is good.....

mean mamma

ok,so.......i am extraordinarily mean this evening.......calm......quite calm......in my assertions that one can find the date of colonization for new haven, ct...--online along with the sovereign nation who founded it.....there are those in range who are not calm in ther vocal disagreement,.....but i digress from the purpose of this blog, which is tequilla.....thursday is my lecture on alcohol, and i intend to tell my tequilla story.....from march of 1981.....as i was planning our honeymoon.....my friends beth and jane came over, with a blender and bottles of tequilla and triple sec....and limes.....and salt....along with beth's slides of her year abroad (luxembourg).....andjane made margueritas until we could drink no more.....and the hangover that resulted is legendary....at least in my brain.....i have not knowingly drank tequilla since.....we have the rest of the bottle of triple sec in the cupboard above the fridge...... a fun fact.......i have no hopes that a 25 year hangover story will resonate with my class.....but it has prompted me to email both beth and jane.......and such connections are priceless

second chances

ok, so i had a pang of regret on my way home from work....istening to npr...about a group of 'retired' band folks who have formed a second-chance band somewhere in oregon.......the only requirement is that you played some sort of instrument.......well, heck......they had me until that statement........i love marching bands....but i cannot carry a tne in a bucket...let alone read sheet music and pay an instrument.....if the gene was there is remains dormant.......the piece was quite whimsical in that the folks who choose this as their adult endeavor seem to be enjoying it all more the second time around than they did the first.......even the twirlers and the dancers......who perform regardless of cellulite.......ah well.....i was coming home a bit late, having spoken at the quarterly gathering of the M..W..A (mdrn wdsman of am).....trying to avoid a lifetime google link to this life insurance group...they met....all 80 of them at the pizzahut.....and the place was so loud and crowded htat i ended up speaking briefly to each table rather than to the entire group......hmmmm.....i focused on family food safety...a timely issue...in that people are so apt to avoid spinach and to miss the point that most food poisonings happen in their own homes out of carelessness.......in fact, most folks admitted that thye were eating pizza with their hands without having washed first....i did pass out hand sanitizer.....for this very purpose....our own hands taint our foods to a much greater degree than any retailer or food purveyor.......but enough about my soapbox....the low point was when one of the older ladies asked me if i was stil at the hospital......oy!.......i received a kindly email on sunday, and a followup this morning from a dear brother-in-law who only reads my blog on occassion....and he was quite worried when the google search produced the early september entries( the cached entries....) only....he was concerned that something was very, very wrong for me not to blog......nice to know that my gentle readers notice these things........and keep up with my daily doings.....for the record, I am no longer at the hospital.......

moleskine......

ok, so.......i have torn the house apart looking for my moleskine travel diary from january 2004......the last time i was in paris.....i only started the search when it occured to me that the diary wasn't full, and that i might be able to fit another paris trip in the back......i found the diaries kept on every other european adventure i have taken......paris with andrew's class, paris with stephan's class, london/paris en famille, roots tour to belgium, france, germany and holland, spain.....even paris with deidre.....but not 2004.....if i quit looking it will eventually show up.....but i do not possess the stop-looking gene......and so i continue to poke and lift and sort.......omg.....this will keep me up tonight.........

11 inches.....

ok, so i am but an inch away from cutting off my hair....and i suspect that the conundrum length will take months......had i not been trying to grow out my hair to the locks of love requisite...i would have hair down to my waist....but that is how these things go...when one is waiting impatiently.......

osu vs penn state

ok, so we watched this televised match-up yesterday afternoon.....if for no better reason than it was played in osu's famed horseshoe stadium.....and because the spectacle reminded me so of home,of ohio, of my dad......even the cheesey half-time college promotional ad brought tears to my eyes...as the current student narratpr gushes with pride that osu was the only school he applied to because he could only be a buckeye......cut to the narrator as the tuba player in the band....the guy who gets to dot the 'i' in script ohio.......but i digress from the actual game......whereupon the rain came down in sheets and the wind played havoc on the set plays......and poor joe paterno had a bout of stomach flu and had to trot off the field twice.......nothing worse than a camera trained upon you as you duck into the bathroom......osu did not play brilliantly, i am so sorry to admit.....mostly they won because penn state played poorly.......but somehow the actual field stats never take center stage at an osu game......the pageantry and the tradition cane make up for a lackluster performance.....and i will remember how sweet it was to watch the game and think about my dad rather than the 28 to 6 final score.....

cancelled....

ok, so our daughter and i got up at the crack of dawn so she could run by the farm and get her chores done before we were due to help set up concessions at the annual e.g.plummer run.......yeh it was pouring down rain, but it never occurred to either of us that it could be cancelled.....and so we sat out in front of the stadium...waiting until the notion of calling somebody came into my head.....go figure......coaches phone number does not happen to be in my cell phone memory....luckily we found somebvody who had already gotten the call about cancellation until further notice......ah well......now that i am up, might as well get a leg-up on my chores.......

strings......

ok, so i have finally found a few moments to start listening to my cadre of downloads that are starting to take over my desktop......a current fave is a guy called evan duby that i found on 3hive..lovely, with strings in the backround...i just love strings.......many thanks to reese, who knows all when it comes to music for this download mecca.......i also like the salon.com download careless darling...a duet with lucinda williams and a fellow named ramblin jack elliot.......he is in his 80's and he sounds better than lucinda......wow........

paris 2007

ok, so.....the meanestmamma is planning an alternative trip to paris in march/april of 2007...i say alternative because my daughter is nothing like my sons.....but even they had moments that defied conventional wisdom.....one of my favorite moments of our first trip en famille (the one where we flew to london, then chunneled to paris...) was in the palais royale gardens...watching andrew and stephan feed the remainders of their street vendor sandwiches to pidgeons......but i dgress from the 8th grade mother/daughter adventure.....i am working in a side trip to chantilly, a chateaux of the versailles-genre, on a lesser scale.....that is famous for its stables....it has a racetrack on site, and a training facility and a museum of all things equine.....seems the duc conde imagined himself as a reincarnated horse.......we will land on saturday morning....and i insist on my current favorite first day.......check into a hotel near le tour eiffel......buy museum pass at napoleon's tomb.....dart in and out of the rodin museum....mostly to see the thinker.....then walk on to musee d'orsay for lunch in the grand ballroom...all gilded and wicker and oh-so french......then a quick round of the impressionists before a walk along the seine and an ascent of the eiffel tower before collasping from jet-lag.......sunday to the gare du nord for the train to chantilly......monday and tuesday divided between the louvre highlights, st, chapelle...the tribute to stravinsky fountain, the newly reopened l'orangerie, and the new musee du quai branley.....which has a vertical garden........i would also love to take the train out to giverny, but my daughter is not into gardens......i have read that young ones of her ilk like the wax museum, and/or the sewer tour......but i cannot go that far afield........i figure that frequent stops for food will be welcome....and these will be more order-of-the-day than pleas to see one more museum........ah well....they don't make-um like that anymore..........

hugo chavez

ok, so.....i totally neglected to blog about hugo chavez's u.n. speech...the one where he pretends to smell the sulfuric remnants of the devil bush's presence on the podium.....and then proceeds to berate bush for thinking he owns the world by virtue of his office........hard to argue with that logic.......and i am not surprised that chavez found many nodding heads in the crowd......dubya really needs to get over his napolean complex.....

absentee ballots.....

ok, so the mm encourages all of her gentle readers currently out-of-state to obtain absentee ballots so they can make their vote count in the local november election.....i might have to get one myself....the notion of the entire county voting at the convention center is heinous......

propane.....

ok, so my sweet spouse exchanged the propane tank on the grill sometime this week.....and when i got home from my class...to an empty house....i decided that grilled chicken sounded like a great idea......my class this evening was about tobacco....and i learned new things about the evil weed whilst studying the material...for example.....nicotine is acidic......but when made basic...it becomes more rapidly absorbed....and thus tobacco companies add ammonia to tobacco to make free-base the nicotine......and make it rush to the brain......who knew?........ammonia, by the way, is also a great grease solvent for the cleaing of your floors.......my class was especially talkative this evening....when asked to reveal why they smoke or don't smoke...and why.......i was not surprised that the nurse intending to get a ph.d. in nursing so she can teach at the university level is a smoker.......she is quite gravel-voiced......this person has missed one class and will miss another soon because she volunteers as a rape crisis counselor.....she started out as a planned parenthood volunteer.....i can see myself as a pp volunteer....i do not know exactly why i haven't made a move toward this goal.....other than having a child still in school.....pp needs women to step forward.......maybe my student will prompt a decision.......not that any of this has anything to do with propane....

waiting for iris to kill off a character....

ok, so last night i finished the bell by iris murdoch....and tru to her form....in 3 our of the only 4 books i have read thus far.....a main character was killed off during the climax of the plot......not the one i was expecting to die...iris is much too clever for that......and by yet another 'way to die'...iris has yet to repeat herself.......i received two more volumes in the mail yesterday......a fairly honorable defeat......and an unofficial rose.......will these be death-free.....or denouement by death?........only iris knows at this point.....

not catholic by choice.......

ok, so.....my choice to not become a catholic 25+ years ago has finally paid off, as i foresaw......well, there were many reasons why i decided that i could not become a catholic......like the 2nd class citizen role played by women.....their basic disdain for non-catholic christians (only catholics may partake of communion, even at funerals and weddings)......but mostly because of the top-down theology........i didn't, and still don't need some guy at the top telling me what i should believe......and when pope benedict the what-ever started in quoting some muslim-bashing 13th century turk.......i knew that all-hell would break loose......what was this guy thinking?........certainly not about religious tolerance/accepting the rights that others on this earth have to their own faith......even the scientologists have the right to believe in their splatter-theory......too bad the pope didn't pick on tom cruise rather than the millions of muslims on 5 continents.......and when the pope comes out and says that he is sorry, i have little faith that he is sincere....the guy was a college professor.....he knew exactly what he was saying....and so is is not at all sorry that he said it....he is only sorry that others are angry....at him.......ah well......as for me.....i believe in the small miracles of everyday life......i was walking my path after work...trying to get the dog to follow along for a bit of exercise......and i spied a basil plant......growing not where my seeds failed...but in another spot entirely....and not just one plant but two...with perfectly formed and bug-free leaves.....dinner will be planned totally around a handful of fragrant herbs......isn't life grand?

pricing plane tickets....

ok, so the mm is in potential travel mode......for the record, a nonstop flight from newark t lexington the week before christmas is $397.......not bad for a 2-hour flight that has no connections......and a onestop flight from lexington to paris on spring break is $738.......i figure i can manage 4 days as a touriste with a 14-year-old.......especially with weather that should allow for cafe sitting........

Martha, Rachel and Rosie.....

ok, so it would seem that the daytime television market is heating up......this from jossip.com........There's been plenty of hubbub over Rachel Ray's new show on ABC which premieres today at 10 am. Of course we aren't going to switch from Martha Stewart (NBC) to watch Rachel bounce around the stage shouting "EVOO Extra Virgin Olive Oil," but we also can't ignore the rumors that Martha sent her staffers over to the new show to get a whiff of what Rachel's cookin' up.

Four Stewart staffers using fake names tried to infiltrate Ray's audience at a taping last week, a source told PAGE SIX, but the spies were recognized by a security guard who also works for Stewart. "They were kicked out because they lied about their names," sniffed the spy. "Otherwise they would have been welcome to stop by - we have nothing to hide."

Well, at least RR has her PR campaign in order. Ray isn't the only one making her debut today. Oprah kicks of her first show of the season on ABC and Meghan Mullally starts her daytime talk show on NBC. Somehow Rachel Ray has gotten all the media attention on this one ... but maybe it's only because Mullally didn't send a bunch of undercover interns to go spy on Rosie O'Donnell at The View.

under the net.....

ok, so i have finished my 3rd iris murdoch novel and begun my 4th.......under the net was her first novel....and it read like a daschel hammett thriller, though with comedic touches and without a murder....go figure......the one novel that cried for a killing and no one was (physically) harmed.......i did appreciate that the hero ended up with the british version of rintintin.....the scene where the dog is stolen from the movie producers flat is priceless and was unexpected in murdoch's generally angst-ridden works.......think jimmy stewart trying to spirit lassie out of a secure apartment building.....though jimmy stewart wasn't really irish enough to be perfect for the role.......but i digress....the plot had many hammett-style double and triple crosses...so much so that it did conjer up images of the maltese falcon.....the bell goes down a completely different path......focusing on religion and convictions and relationships (all alternatives it would seem).......so far nobody is dead, but the signs are there.......being as there is a murky lake that must be crossed by a punt.......and so many people that so want others to be out of the way......intrigue abounds......my spouse commented today to one of our children that he doesn't quite understand the need to read all of her works in succession.....makes perfect sense to me......to get a thorough feel for her style, her trends, her ways......and to see if one can get a glimpse of her impending senility......so far there she shows no signs whatsoever of confusion...quite the contrary.....and probably knows how it will all end before she ever starts.......

cockadoodledoo.....

ok, so i was parked in front of a farm gate this morning at the break of dawn.....and chanced to hear...and see an actual rooster crowing his greetings to the new day.......i had not been witness to such an event since i was a child visiting my crown grandparents....and i had forgotten just how evoking it could be....like proust's madelines.......but on this morning i just sat in the car, sipping my coffee and wishing i was still in bed....the farm-chore gig is actually our daughter's project......she was asked by our neighbor's to feed and water and watch over their livestock on place they own on buster pike....while they went on a weeklong caribbean cruise....the farm is located less than 2 miles from here....a distance that seems much farther away before sunrise.......i dread tomorrow, when this feat must be accomplished along with getting ready for school/work.......i believe that our child had imagined herself riding her bike over and back in the mornings and in the evenings....by herself as an independent contracter....but this woild never be a safe bet for a 13 year old.....and so one of her parents must manage the transport....as well as the cajoling of the 13 yearold to get herself out of bed earlier than usual as she so faithfully promised she would do......luckily, the evening shift is not my problem on this day.......and for that i give thanks.......

from today's email...

ok, so this was in my in-box....

After Michigan coach Bo Schembechler passes away and enters the Pearly Gates,
God takes him on a tour. He shows Bo a little two bedroom house with a faded UM
banner hanging from the front porch. This is your home now coach. Most people
don't get their own house up here God exclaims.

Bo looked at the house, then turns around and looks at the one sitting on top of the
hill. It's a huge two-story mansion with white marble columns and little patios under
all the windows.

Ohio state flags line both sides of the sidewalk with a huge scarlet and grey
OSU banner hanging between the marble columns.

Thanks for the home God, but let me ask you a question.

I get this little two bedroom house with a faded UM
Michigan banner, and Woody Hayes gets a mansion with new OSU
banners and flags flying all over the place.

Why is that God?

God looks at him seriously for a moment then replies

"That's not Woody's house, That's mine"!!!!!!!

GO BUCK'S

ok, so the fda has endorsed the mass discarding of bag spinach due to an outbreak of a potentially lethal e coli strain......i saw this online this morning, heard it on the news, and had it announced at a diabetes meeting i attended this morning......only to have my daughter's birth mother call my spouse frantically this morning to assure her that we had thrown out all of our spinach........as if we would have missed tuning into some sort of news outlet on this day only......but i digress from the point i set out to make......that the fda made this broad pronouncement-discard all bagged spinach- over a single death....if the fda was really concerned about preventing death, it would have stores discard cigarettes, in that 1 american dies every 82 seconds from tobacco related diseases......big difference........ 

cutting edge concerts?

ok, so this from pitchfork......In order to inform fans of his upcoming album-- the song-and-video extravaganza known as The Information, due out October 3-- Beck will make a few extravagant concert appearances around the U.S. this fall. And he'll be bringing puppets!

The mini-tour includes stops at the dorkily named Download Festival in Mountain View, California and the Detour Music Fest in L.A. For many of the dates, Beck will be bringing along some special puppet friends (created by L.A.-based Puppet Productions) which already accompanied him at Bonnaroo and on previous tours of the West Coast, UK, and Europe.

huh?

precious literature......

ok, so i had a marvelous lunch at dudley's today with andrew......mostly filled him in on my reading list of late, and naturally focusing on the two novels i have read thus far by iris murdoch........i mentioned my too-soon-to-tell theory that iris has a denouement by death thing going....in that someone critical to the plot dies just before the end....leaving many unresolved issues for the characters she allowed to live......and i did share my furious reaction to the killing off of the meanmamma in the sacred and profane love machine.......which turned out to be a natural segue into a conversation that he had with a fellow student in his earlier german class......the student, who is a retired u.k. professor who has appeared on ket's bookclub on occasion was filling andrew in on the difference between what is said about kentucky authors onscreen versus after the filming is over......that so many of the critics find the tales of appalachia, and other mountain or horse oriented themes to be too precious to have faults worth bringing up......the notion of precious literature is intriguing, and certainly timely, given our bookclub's next installment, clay's quilt by silas house.......it seems to already have the precious aura about it....as if no one will be able to bring themselves to say they do not like the book, let alone find the prose lacking.......

the cat.......

ok so this morning i am going to a meeting in lexington, and do not have to leave the house til 8:30.....and so i am being leisure girl....drinking coffee and catching up on the e-news.....with the cat.......she started out in full-scale covet mode of my breakfast....and having missed out on her preferred option she has moved on to her secondary list......at this moment she is nestled on a pillow at my feet.....purring loudly......as if she would prefer to spend her day indoors rather than outside......the good news is that she cannot snatch birds from the feeder area if she is inside......

ok, so.....this morning in my thursday county i had a belated revelation....as the clinic space next door to mine emptied out of several women...and the nurse......and it occured to me that one of the ladies had an appointment for a pap smear...and the rest of the females were just along......gracious sakes.......this sort of thing is beyond me...but not beyond the nurse......who commented that i must not be familiar with appalachia......where everybody related goes everywhere with everyone else....because these folks trust only family, even if family is nothing but scoundrels......and so the woman with the appointment brought along her kin just in case.....in case of what i have no idea....but i was assured that pap smears had been done with more in the room that that.......i pondered this reality as i started silas houses fine novel clays quilt.....set in mythical crow county, ky.......maybe the perfect foil for evil iris and her mean endings.....though silas may turn out to have a similarly tragic bent.......who knows.......by the way....my keyboard will not do apostrophes...when the key for this symbol is struck, a new window opens as if to search whatever is typed next.....no idea why this has happened.......please, lord, make it stop .....

new yorker and new locks

ok, so.......today is the new yorker day.....and as i walked down the sidewalk from the mailbox in casual perusement mode, i noticed that the lock on the front door was much bigger than usual....meaning bruce, our contractor extraordinaire had come and gone.....but then the reality set in......how will i get in the house of the locks are changed?.......fortunately bruce pre-read my mind, and left the door ajar so slightly that i didn't notice it at first......whew!.......now we must make copies for our significants......and take the old keys off the rings so as to reduce confusion......ah well.....home early to take back some time from monday evening....i do believe that i will take my new new yorker out to the deck to enjoy the glorious day........

iris, iris, iris.....

ok, so.....i finished the sacred and profane love machine...only to be disapointed in iris's choice of endings.......she had several options available, and she chose the meanest......at least from a mother's perspective.....oh iris, did your own meanmamma reject you at a critical age?......did her milk dry up and leave you with a watery and unsavory alternative?........did she love your brothers more than you?......i'll have to keep pondering these and many other burning questions for eternity, as you left no codex to your mysteries........darn shame, that.........

too much information.....

ok, so this morning, on my usual mid-morning walk down to the tech school and back...my walk-mate intimated that she took her elderly mother to the doctor yesterday, only to find that her mother had a major uti...and that the doctor gave strict instructions for my workmate to throw away her mother's nylon panties, buy cotton briefs, and to quit feeding the infection........the doctor had not given much explanation of how one feeds an infections....but at a fast food supper following the appointment, the mamma had spilled part of her meal in her lap...at which point my workmate had quipped....'mamma- will you please quit feeding that infection!'...and while this was funny, it occured to me that there are few people that i would feel comfortable bringing up a storyline that involved my mother's choice of underwear and/or the notion that spilt food might feed a uti......there were other stories today that involved too much information.....the workmate whose children (freshman and 6th grader) have been kicked off their bus for the rest of the year for fighting....with each other.....and the workmate whose 16-year-old stepdaughter is pregnant and threatening to quit school........quite curious in that my own children imagine that i go to work each and every day with stories that involve their deepest secrets....gentle readers....i cannot hope to compete with the stories of those i work with.....and so i do not attempt to do so........mostly, i listen and nod.......and offer words of comfort.....and trust that someday my doubting kin will come to understand that the issues issues that we as a family fuss about...in public and in private, are so mainstream as to be boring.......and that is the way i intend to keep things........having no interest in duplicating the drama that surrounds those that i have come to love and respect

all iris, all the time

ok, so.......i am half-way through the sacred and profane love machine, which is at once about mothers-and-sons, sons-of-mothers, husbands-need-to-be-mothered, and women who cannot help but to mother.....got that?......a fine quote.....with precocious prescience as quite a small boy he had decided not to let his mother kill him, as it seemed she might easily do, by the sheer intensity of her love, like a huge sow rolling over on its young.......wow.....prose doesn't get more profound than that about the potential for a mother to focus a bit too strongly on her own chip-off-the-old-block.......i should get to bed, but the gravitational pull of the last 200 pages is drawing me toward my new favorite reading chair rather than to slumber......i did order more murdoch today.....4 rather than 3.....i added another book called the bell.......so few were available on half.dom...or on amazon.....this may be a raison d'etre.......a reason to swing through every and all used book and goodwill store from here to eternity.....looking to complete my murdoch collection........life really is good, isn't it?

ok, so a picture is worth 1000 words.......especially when one steps right into it....... 

ok, so.....my friend lana from work gave me seeds for this lovely flower.....the seeds came from plants that her son dug up growing wild up above the kentucky river......the details about this plant are as follows....Belamcanda chinensis or Blackberry Lily derives its name from the clusters of shiny black seeds exposed when seed capsules split open. Even though it is called a lily it is actually in the Iris family. Fan-shaped leaves will reach 2 to 3 feet. They are hardy from zones 5 -10 in the U.S. Blackberry Lilies are native to China and Japan.

Blooming Time: Late summer. Flowers are orange with a red dot and are 2 inches across.  

back to work......

ok, so weekends are far too short....we all know this travesty to be true, but somehow i could not fight the urge to see the words in print. for the weekend feeling short, sunday afternoon seemed to draf on forever while we tag-teamed support for a child writing a report......to be accurate, writing a report without referring to the directions or the grading breakdown for each of the required sections. at one point my overly emotional child tried to convince me and herself that the three descriptive words listed in a section all by themselves was worth 30 points out of 100...and that there was no need for her to go back online to gather additional information that would fuel an expansion effort.......oy!.......thankfully, i was able to get back to my book, a novel that is fully expanded in terms of character description, setting of the story in place and time, and its forward-driven plot......thanks be to iris for avoiding one of those annoying flashback laden works.......and bless her heart for having the internal work ethic that drove her to write her own fiction without the need for parents to stand behind her every keyboard-click of the way.......

more on iris murdoch......

ok, so.......i have moved on to the second murdoch goodwill volume...the sacred and profane love machine.....which sports a picture of a mother and son on the cover in italianate glory......not a madonna scene, and certainly not a madonna nursing a sickly grey baby jesus from a breast planted in the middle of her chest as is found in so many northern european galleries..this painting is by Titian and is housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome....a mother sitting quietly and unobserving as her child plays in the water trough..........so far the themes appear to be mothers and sons......and so far i am amazed that murdoch herself had no sons...for she captures the pain and anguish adeptly.........i have ventured online for the purchase of my next murdoch volume....and i suppose that choice will be made randomly....much like i selected a song or two from the house computer's hard drive to transfer to my pda...and came up with pale green things, cut off their thumbs, when you wake up feeling old, the end has no end, .......possibly not the best of the genre but the best of what i selected at random.......i am looking to order a fairly honourable defeat, an unoffical rose, and under the net.....for no better reasons than i like the names....and i am just about ready to forgive iris for her legendary meanness.....ah well......must get back to my book......

ok, so target is selling this franklin roosevelt american history action figure on its web site.......though this guy looks more like benjamin franklin, ......and what about fdr's wheelchair? 

ok, so......this headline was one you had to hunt for this morning...Martina Navratilova ended her career in style with an amazing 59th Grand Slam title as she and Bob Bryan won the mixed doubles title at the US Open.......it is sad that agassi's retirement garnered much more attention that martina's...though it is quite possible that martina has retired several times before, and may have had her share of adoration in the past........martina is a credit to the game....and the fact that she was playing til nearly 50 years of age is a testament to the notion of taking good care of oneself......she will be missed....... 

ok, so i just love this photo of sweater-vested osu fans at last evenings showdown with texas.......buckeye coach jim tressel is a big fan of the look, which reminds my spouse of my dad.....i do believe that my dad had an osu sweater vest......the buckeye necklaces also add a nice touch....... 

a nervous wreck......

ok, so this evening i will admit to being a nervous wreck.......until the clock ran out and ohio state beat texas...go bucks......texas rained on osu
s parade about this time last year....but key players moved on, and osu was left with the better quarterback, receivers, and defense......for the record, gentle readers, i am not a football fan.....i am an ohio state fan.....there is a huge difference between the two camps.... ..the nervous wreck part ran the entire day, i will admit.....from the moment i dropped my second-born off at bluegrass field for a flight to newark through atlanta.....granted, i was confident that the pilot could see the runway clearly...but there is always that cloud of doubt that seeps into the soul and takes hold until the all-clear call comes from the final destination......and so this night i should sleep well, knowing that my baby boy is safe and my alma maters march toward a stellar season is unblemished.......

bon voyage....

ok, so we had a nice dinner of stuffed salmon and toasted with champagne last evening, and then sat down to enjoy napoleon dynamite as a family.......a sweet last evening before the house settles down to a tidy threesome for another school year.....we are off to the same song, different stanza.....with the news that our tagalong child is flunking spanish......well, news to us since she has flunked tests that she never mentioned she was having....ooops.....difficult to memorize when one doesn't open the book......but i digress from the departure of the child who remembers everything he hears/reads/suspects.......it has been special to have had him home for 4 solid weeks.......given that he won't be home for thanksgiving and christmas break is rather short......we (as a family) hope to hear from him more often than we did freshman year, if only because we have gotten used to having him around and will go through withdrawal.......ah well.......almost time to rouse the traveler and make him a bon voyage omelet......

the sea, the sea......

ok, so.......I am enjoying the latest of my goodwill bookclub series ...the sea, the sea by iris murdoch......the plot thickened in the pages i read last evening.....somewhere around 60-75.......as previously noted, murdoch writes this novel as a sort of blog, with shortish installments than build upon the last entry, rather than in numbered or named chapters.....and the pace that this style creates suits me perfectly.....and i am in awe of how skillfully she set the stage for the mayhem she sprung upon our self-satisfied and newly retired playwright/actor/director.......i am not quite sure that she didn't mean for these pages to be seen as comdey....i should say dramedy.........because i was seriously diverted, as jane austen would say......i am home for the rest of the day.....and i might just allow myself a bit of time on the back deck with this luscious book before i get down to any meaningful housework......though even our hero charlie has done some rudimentary cleaning.......maybe he will be inspiring of more of the same in pages 75-100.......

jilted bride.....

ok, so this story from the nytimes impressed me...about a woman who had turned what would have been her wedding weekend into a charity fundraiser so as to make lemonaid when given lemons.......good for her......

The New York Times

September 8, 2006
Wedding Off, Jilted Bride Turns Party Into a Benefit
By STEPHANIE STROM

Six weeks before Kyle Paxman’s scheduled wedding, a stranger walked into her office with e-mail messages and other evidence that Ms. Paxman’s fiancé was cheating on her — with the stranger’s girlfriend.

“The dress had arrived, the flowers were done, the menus were chosen,” said Ms. Paxman, manager of two food and beverage outlets at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif. “One hundred and eighty guests had tickets from all over the country and the Virgin Islands to come and make a weekend of my wedding.”

But rather than cancel the reception, planned for this Saturday in Vermont, Ms. Paxman, 29, has turned it into a charity benefit, at which strong women will be celebrated. “How do you turn something so awful around?” she said. “We needed to turn this into something positive and start the healing process.”

Right after getting the bad news on July 28, her mother, Patricia Carbee, began canceling reservations and events like a golf outing, but she learned that the family was still on the hook for the reception costs, a block of rooms at the Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain, in Vergennes, Vt., and other expenses.

“We had already spent the money, and I started trying to think of other ways we might be able to put the things we’d bought to use,” Mrs. Carbee said.

Ms. Paxman and her parents have invited 125 women, only some of whom were among the original invitees, to enjoy the cocktails and four-course dinner and, in return, she hopes they will write checks to two charities she has chosen, the Vermont Children’s Aid Society and CARE USA, the American affiliate of the international relief group.

“If you think about it, she’s not only empowering herself, she’s reaching out and helping to empower other women,” said Bibiana Betancourt, a fund-raising executive at CARE. She said Ms. Paxman’s plans were the most unusual she had encountered in her seven years raising money for CARE.

Ms. Paxman and her parents came up with the plan over dinner one night, she said, and quickly hit upon the Vermont Children’s Aid Society as one beneficiary. “We had supported things like the March of Dimes in the past, but this had to be something Kyle could embrace and support,” Mrs. Carbee said.

The next morning, as she and Ms. Paxman were mulling other possibilities over coffee, they were distracted by an advertisement for CARE on television. It shows hundreds of women from various countries striding across a desert, then zeroes in on four who stare straight into the camera and declare, “I am powerful.”

It ends as a narrator says: “She has the power to change her world. You have the power to help her,” and it spoke to Ms. Paxman. “It was the most powerful commercial I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I knew then that I had found my other cause.”

She said she did not know whether her former fiancé, whom she declined to name, knew what she was doing, but said his parents were aware of the benefit. They have not been invited. “It would just be too hard to have them there on the day I was supposed to be marrying their son,” she said.

After the event, she and her mother will head for Tahiti and the honeymoon trip she planned.

“It’s going to be hard, of course,” she said of appearing before her guests. “But the end of my story now isn’t so awful.”

iris murdoch.....

ok, so the goodwill bookclub book of the week is the sea, the sea a novel by iris murdoch that won the booker prize in 1978....a detail that i failed to notice when i snatched it out of the goodwill bin.......and prize-winning is the prose....splendid and lush......though written through a man's eyes rather than through a woman's.......the setting is an aging seaside home, now the abode of a recently retired director/playwright/actor......who is just beginning to sense that living alone is not to his liking.....and he is revisiting memories of women he wouldn't have, or who wouldn't have him.....and he is fast running out of wine.......the novel is written blog-style, with a cadence quite familiar to me.....day be day....with no chapter deliniations......and i am totally entranced......a reading this marvelous piece of fiction rather than my lecture notes......ah well.........isn't that what life is all about?.......and now that i have gotten over being mad at jonathan franzen i can really get down to business.......but i digress from iris herself, who was described in wikipedia as self-absorbed and cruel.....but eventually withered on the vine from Alzheimer's...as portrayed in the movie iris that won jim broadbent an academy award for playing her long-suffering spouse.......iris was played by dame judy densch.......sadly, when i slip into senility dame judy will turn down my film role, given that she will be far too old....so sorry dame judy............

jonathan franzen

ok, so terry gross interviewed mr franzen on fresh air last evening....and i must say that there is a lot not to like about this fellow........a reality that must be true about many writers......that one can adore the prose despite the curmudgeon from which those words hath sprung......mr franzen has published a new book, one that brings together embarassments from his youth, his failed marriage and his love of birdwatching........this is not new ground for franzen.......he published a piece in the new yorker a while back that must have been his test balloon for this project........and having read that piece, and heard his interview....and i am not surprised that his marriage failed.......there was a point in the interview when terry gross (and who couldn't love terry gross) commented on a letter that his mother wrote to him in college, in response to a series of correspondence between franzen and both his parents about his decision to pursue a writing career.......he freely admitted that he hadn't read the letter at the time, simply kept it in keeping with his archival instincts...but i digress from terry, who cooed about how sweet the letter had been.....to which franzen spouted all manner of disagreement as to her motives and cowardice and general lack of suitability to be his mother.....or so it seemed to me, as the only mother in the room.......and as i thought of the author's words later on in the evening, as i couldn't sleep.......i recalled blanket words of advice to women that one reads occassionally in magazines appealing to woman of marriagable age........a man that is not nice to his own mother is a bad bet for a husband......plain and simple.......and a reality that cannot be changed by even the wiliest woman.......i must dig up the article that franzen wrote not long after the corrections came out.....again a piece published in the new yorker...about his father's demise from Alzheimers disease....this piece brought me to tears....and i recall being unable to finish it it a single sitting.....thinking back, franzen did not portray his mother kindly in that article, either...no sympathy for the woman who cared for his father during difficult times.........giving us some insight into the notion of the dysfunction that made his first novel so famous.......can we really blame our parents for the total of our own personal misadjustments?......or is dysfunction such a complicated combination of genetics, environment, birth order, and cantankerousness on the part of everybody involved that there can be no blame leveled in any direction?........i really feel a kinship to this woman, franzen's mean mamma........what a thankless job it must have been to have raised such a vitriolic child......i say this in anger, i suppose.......maybe after a good night's sleep tonight mr franzen and his contempt for his mamma will not grate so much on my brain.....surely this fine writer must harbor some tender feelings toward his mother.......and i suspect that if looked closely and carefully at himself in the mirror, he would see that much of what he is, for better or for worse, is thanks to his mother, not in spite of her

seeing eye cat......

ok, so the blind dog and the licky-licky cat have forged an unusual relationship......or at least one that lasts as long as it takes them both to follow me up to retrieve the newspaper in the morning before preparing their breakfast feast.....the dog cannot keep up, being blind.....and so the cat appears to allow the dog to nuzzle her back along the way.....which allows him to follow her as she follows me.....and they are as one poised to burst through as i open the front door.......there was a time when that cat would not have given that dog the time of day.....but the cat has stepped up to the challenge of being a member of the family rather than a mere ....a mere what?.......taker-up-of-space........a thankless creature who eats our food and stalks our birds and scratche up the edges of our carpets?.......on this cool fogged-in morning, it warmed my soul to see the cat in a selfless act of kindness.......

religious freedom.....

ok, so this from crooks and liars......about a blog from a right-wing christian....he'd been in Hawai'i, where he'd been shocked to discover that pre-game prayers were given by Buddhist monks, and he found himself an uncomfortable minority in a sea of people following some strange religion (hmmm…does anybody else know what that's like?)

It's actually funny to read. He's plainly horrified that he'd have to be in the presence of someone reciting a pagan prayer! He doesn't quite get the response right, though.

We were frozen in shock and incredulity! What to do? To continue to stand and observe this prayer would represent a betrayal of our own faith and imply the honoring of a pagan deity that was anathema to our beliefs. To sit would be an act of extreme rudeness and disrespect in the eyes of our Japanese hosts and neighbors, who value above all other things deference and respect in their social interactions. I am sorry to say that in the confusion of the moment we chose the easier path and elected to continue to stand in silence so as not to create a scene or ill will among those who were seated nearby.
As I thought through the incident over the next few days I supposed that the duty of offering the pre-game prayer rotated through the local clergy and we just happened to arrive on the night that the responsibility fell to the Buddhist priest. However, after inquiring I learned that due to the predominance of Buddhist and Shinto adherents in this town, it was the normal practice to have a member of one these faiths offer the pre-game prayer, and Christian clergy were never included. Needless to say that was our first and last football game. Although many of the students we worked with continued to invite us to the games, we were forced to decline. We knew that if we were to attend again we would be forced to abstain from the pre-game activity. And not wanting to offend our Asiatic neighbors and colleagues, we simply refrained from attending. I would say in love to my Christian brothers and sisters, before you yearn for the imposition of prayer and similar rituals in your public schools, you might consider attending a football game at Wahiawa High School. Because unless you're ready to endure the unwilling exposure of yourself and your children to those beliefs and practices that your own faith forswears, you have no right to insist that others sit in silence and complicity while you do the same to them. I, for one, slept better at night knowing that because Judeo-Christian prayers were not being offered at my children's schools, I didn't have to worry about them being confronted with Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Satanic or any other prayer ritual I might find offensive.


the crooks and liars blogger ended with this....Well…so his solution was to simply and completely withdraw from the social activity? I wonder how he'd react if the entire culture was saturated with overt displays of such religiosity—where courtrooms would claim their justice was founded on their religion, where the government, top to bottom, was loaded with official who would regularly trumpet their religious affiliation, where store owners would declare themselves adherents of particular faiths, and promise that a percentage of their profits would go to promote their beliefs, where much of the business of the town was mediated via contacts at places of worship? Would he divorce himself from the culture entirely, throw out his radio and TV, bunker down in his house and pray?

ok, so this from cnn.com....BRATTLEBORO, Vermont (AP) -- Public nudity isn't new to this bastion of bohemia, but it usually bares itself in more subtle places than the downtown parking lot.

This summer, a group of teenagers has disrobed near restaurants, bookstores and the town's many galleries, igniting a debate about whether Brattleboro should ban a practice long tolerated until now.

"Brattleboro tends to be a laid-back town and pretty accepting of the unusual, but this is really pushing limits," said Police Chief John Martin. "It's clearly to outrage people, it's clearly rebelliousness."

By most accounts, the stripping started on a whim in early summer when a young woman sat naked on a park bench, Martin said. Then another woman started taking her shirt off downtown.

A music festival promoting nudity and rebelliousness set up in May in a downtown parking lot attracted nude hula hoopers.

Last month, a half dozen young people bared their bodies in a parking lot, encircled by the backs of bookstores, coffee shops and restaurants.

"It's just an act of freedom," said 19-year-old Adhi Palar. "We're just doing so because we can."

Palar said he and the others "do not consider nakedness to be innately sexual or rude and it shouldn't be confined to that."

All the bare skin has raised eyebrows, even in this town of 12,000 residents that has seen clothing-optional swimming holes, streakers and an event known as "Breast Fest," which featured women parading topless.

"To most people, it's not a big deal," said Catherine Kauffman, 57, who calls Brattleboro "a don't-take-away-too-many-of-my-rights kind of town."

At Everyone's Books, co-owner Rich Geidel, 50, said the parking lot may not be the most appropriate place for nudity, but "as long as people are polite, don't block the entrance, we don't ask them to leave." 

the crocodile hunter....

ok, so when i mentioned to my daughter thsi morning that steve the crocodile hunter had been killed this mroning, she was in disbelief.......how did i know for sure?.......it wasn't in the paper.....oy!....and when i added the detail that it had been a stingray that did him him, rather than a croc....she was livid.....how could this be true....? it had to be a crocodile!....and then she proceeded to call up her friends to spread the news.......my middle child didn't miss a beat, quipping....'i'll always remember where i was when steve erwin died.....'....reading all about this fellow online i learned all sorts of things that i missed out on-not being an animal planet junkie.......like the contraversy over him holding his month-old son in one arm whilst he fed a croc with his other......child-rights activists had a heyday with that.........i do feel sorry for the wife and children he left behind.......though his line of work is not something that a family member can realistically 'carry on' in dad's name.......maybe the craziness that is crocodile hunting for cash will be a dying art........

mystery

ok, so last night several of us sat up and watched mystery on pbs....a remake of a classic tale about a country doctor who murders his once-aristocratic spouse so he can carry on with other women....curiously, this version really goes to great lengths to give this guy a balanced treatment....we are at once horrified at his actions but feel sympathy over his plight, as the wife is controlling and mean and non-supportive of the fellow's interest in sketching.......when watching such period pieces one is also amused to see familiar faces....several were in gosford park......ah well.......it is 9:00 am....and i am still in my p.j.'s.....and i may just remain at this level of leisure on my day off......others are going hiking at a nature preserve 3 hours away.......ha! i may not go further than my favorite chair.....

tributes......

ok, so the media is clogged these days with looking-back stories.....about the victims of the comair crash, katrina, 9-11.......but i choose to look back farther still......to the recent 10th anniversary of the passing of lady di....aka princess di......a singular death in our minds despite the reality that she was in a car crash that also took out others along with her.......an article from britain that i read just this morning spoke to diana's lack of a legacy......no books written by her.....only about her........the money collected for her foundation hasn't appeared to have been managed well....nor spent on visible and/or meaningful projects........the monarchy survives without her.....and the question was asked....why do we still care?......possibly because she will always be young and beautiful in our memories, walking with mother theresa or through landmine fields or holding aids babies.......she will never grow old nor plump nor cantankerous......and therefore all current and future diana wannabes will pale before her gilded memory of everything one could aspire to be if only had those looks, financial resources, and royal connections.....and it is the if-only part that makes no sense in this fairy tale......none of us will ever have that.....it is only in our musings that any of us could live out the diana dream......but yet there is that tiny glimmer of hope that somehow fate will bless us with the opportunity to live the fantasy......and it is on these anniveraries that we are reminded of the hopes that we must not let die along with diana......

the goodwill bookclub....

ok, so.... i spent much of the day with my sons and potential d-i-l......at area goodwills.....under the pretense of delivering a load of discarded clothing.....but this illusion is always a thinly veiled desire to take a look at what has arrived since our last visit......and today books were the find.....2 novels by iris murdoch, 2 obscure volumes by john le carre (both smiley sags-if you are a le carre fan you know the smiley i am referring to.....)....a collection of essays by adam gopnik about his 5 year residence in paris with his wife and young son.....and 2 volumes that are part of murder mystery series that i may have read before...but for 75 cents i'll take that chance.......i started in on the paris essays......which seemed infinitely more engrossing than my eku chapters on self-care in the age of health care systems......and preventing unintended injuries.......we didn't drop off as many items as we bought...so we ended the day in the hole.......ideally the day would have been a wash........i was amused by the reaction of andrew's significant other at my offer for her to go through the bag of cayle's clothing ebfore we actually walked it up to the drop-off......several items that my child had rejected were snapped up with the disbelief that nobody in our family wanted them.....go figure.....bless michelle's heart..........but i digress from books......i should be reading in cold blood.....but i will be working the night that book club moved to after we set the schedule.......and therefore i haven't opened the book i took the time to order online.....i know it to be classic.....but i have yet to read even the dedications........preferring mr gopkin's description of finding a rental apartment in the city of lights.....about the same time a high-ranking cabinet minister had been exposed at renting a city-owned property for well-below market rate........the notion that $3000/month was below market was also amusing.......one wonders just how fancy the place actually was to consider $3000 too little.........it was on rue jacob...in the 6th...behind the eglise st germaine.....but still $3000/month is a heck of a lot of money.....especially considering that this book is dated......and the scandal in question happened in 1995.......i could probably manage to read a bit nmore before turning in for the night......of paris rather than health care........the only rational choice..........

scrabble......

ok, so last evening was especially steller, with a lovely meal, followed by team scrabble.......almost...my sons wouldn't dream of teaming up with each other for something so competitive as scrabble.....the highlight of the evening was when michelle taught them both how to make music on the lip of the wine glasses.......they even allowed a photograph of this event...each wearing similar harris tweed sports jackets, by the way.......this is the stuss that memories are made of................

ok, so this link will take you to liquids allowed on planes......the up to 4 ounces of personal lubricants is interesting...given that lipgloss is disallowed...... 

sell-by.......

ok, so things in the grocery-shopping venue have gotten out of hand when reasonable people obsess about sell-by dates for pasta.......i was in the aldi on my way home from work when i chanced upon a lady from my church....60=ish.....who was ddep in thought over a box of macaroni......and she asked for my advice.....about whether it was safe to buy pasta that didn't have a sell-by date......wtf?...this is dried pasta.....which, if kept dry.....will last for a very, very long time.......and will show it's unsuitability but he presence of...say....mold or discoloration at some point in the distant future......i was dumbstruck that this woman had agonized over a box of something not in the perishable department......milk-yep- we worry about milk......and cheese......but pasta......i don't think that companies that actually include a sell-by date can say for certain that the product won't be still good 2 weeks beyond........