Dirty Laundry

Chasing rabbits? Headfirst down the rabbit hole...

2009-03-02T09:35:00.008-06:00

I finished a delicious book last night.

It was Rebel Giants: the revolutionary lives of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin by David R. Contosta. A lot of fun. I have read perhaps 5 or 6 Darwin biographies but scratching my head, no reading of a Lincoln bio that I can remember. Just absorbed the Lincoln mythos via osmosis. Must find one -- he was awesome! I am smitten, what a truly amazing man.

Especially taken by his darkness, a lifelong depression that he actually fully acknowledged, perhaps even at times reveled in -- at any rate, President Lincoln had no shame in claiming his melancholia.

Have been feeling kind of low, myself, lately.

This is not new.

In fact it is old and wearisome.

Things had gone on long enough that very many months ago I sought help and got a dandy prescription for an antidepressant.

This is not unusual, lots of people are doing well and getting better with chemical assistance.

But the antidepressant exacerbated insomnia and somehow the insomnia increased the asthma and the asthma medicine created more insomnia and then both treatments made me more anxious and before I knew it, I had drugs to compensate for the side effects, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication and new, better asthma medicines and pretty soon things began to go...

out of control.

Too many drugs and not a clue how I was really doing. Not to mention a few evenings of being totally out of my head. Add a couple glasses of wine to the mix every few days (and once, a recent totally lost evening that involved half a bottle of champagne) and well... disaster.

Quit everything.

Haven't crashed yet.

Image above is from an illustrated book called Living with a Black Dog by Matthew Johnstone. Honestly, for the most part, Churchill's black dog has been beaten to death by every gloomy blogger out there. But I found this book (well, at least the bit of it posted on The Guardian's website) enchanting.

Sorry, rather another non-post.

Next up: a juicy expose of my EXTREME crush on Stevie Smith. Fasten your seat belts. Apologies for this one.

Your contrite, morose, sorry old laundress.

Wandering (back on track?)

2009-02-02T19:54:00.003-06:00

Managed to finally resume walking-commuting. Waffled awhile before deciding the Yaktrax were jinxed, so I left them in their package. Sidewalks were icy, but I neither witnessed nor participated in any falls. Decided it is foolish to believe in bad luck and jinxed footwear... expecting even better hikes tomorrow.

New plan, to snap out of the winter blues/dreadful funk that has seized me, will just try posting a bit of something here. Precious little bit, but enough for tonight!

Famous foot -- where???

2009-01-28T23:01:00.016-06:00

Apologies all around for my non-blogging lately.

I have been caught up in New Year's resolutions gone terribly wrong!

The first weekend of 2009, prior to returning to work, I went shopping for YakTrax (little slip-on devices to improve traction when hoofing it on ice). The basic intention was to return to my walking-commute immediately in 2009 and also to start Dr. Walford's caloric-restriction (CR) diet.

Alas, things went horribly askew.

I was shopping with Best Friend and teen daughter. She found a cute hoodie, I scored my YakTrax (highly recommended by former co-worker, J.J.). We were happy. BF pooh-poohed both hoodies and winter footwear -- he was recovering from his latest surgical excavation of skin cancer and spent his time at the outdoorsy store (where all winter garments were on deep discount) looking at sunhats. What a contrarian. The irony of his misguided attentions became immediately apparent as we exited the store (me, triumphantly waving about my sackful of YakTrax and hoodie)...

... and poor BF stepped onto an invisible sheet of glaze ice and did a spectacular loop-de-loop, avoiding landing on his face because he very wisely rolled his shoulder into the fall. He landed with an impressive, loud thud -- right in the middle of the road.

Stood up, shook off. Daughter and I gasped in horror (he is so skinny, to make such a resounding THUD). We asked, was he okay? And he assured us he was fine...

and asked that we should proceed to the local emergency room immediately. Hah. BF is no whiner. He shattered his shoulder, and is now is facing physical therapy (after surgery to plate-and-pin things together). It could have happened to anyone. Alas it was him (poor sweetheart). Him and 181 other hapless victims.
Our hours and hours of waiting in the hospital emergency room witnessed an endless parade of ice-stricken victims. Things were gummed up forever! It was a weekend of especially dangerous ice and many ice-related casualties. The back injuries were the worst to view, they came in writhing and we didn't see any of them leave. Leg, arm and shoulder folks just cooled their heels for hours, the ER was swamped.

Sweet daughter should have been studying for her first high school finals, instead she took long hikes around the hospital and ate many, many candy bars from vending machines.

I consumed 9,000 calories in Cheetos. Drowning anxiety and boredom in Cheetos? How pathetic.

I have no excuse, other than this is my usual hospital waiting room behavior. Hospitals and Cheetos made me what I am today.

Well, dang but the winter weather (and caretaking of BF) have led to a serious crimp in my New Year's resolution to return to walking-commuting. Also, there is a certain nervousness about how quickly this happened and how long the recovery time will be -- I have been feeling rather safe in my giant Swedish fortress of a car.

But... walking and blogging are both in my plans, starting next week. I am still out to lunch on Dr. Wolford's diet. Most especially because, today I ate lunch at the local Cheeseburger in Paradise (Jimmy Buffett-owned chain restaurant, with vaguely tropical decor). Discovered something interesting -- the restaurant is on the outskirts of our city, which has a restrictive smoking ban. No such ban apparently exists over the border! It is also mainly a bar, perhaps that explains the peculiarly high rate of adult smokers inside (ME! the lone non-smoker! how funny is that?) and 75 other adults puffing away.

At any rate -- far from a tropical escape, it was like spending my lunch hour in a high school girls bathroom, circa 1977. All smokers on this side of town have gravitated to this restaurant. I guess it is just to flippin' cold to smoke outside.

Taking me back...

Ringing in the New Year (better late than never)

2009-01-05T23:30:00.026-06:00

Happy New Year!

Glad to still be around. Delighted that you are here too.

Did you have a good New Year's celebration? Did you do something glitzy? Did you have fun? I hope so. Tell me about it!

Mine was mild. So mild that no effort was made to pop the cork on our $3 bottle of sparkling pear cider. Ah, but I was longing for a bit of glamour and some bubbly.

Instead, 2009 came in like a lamb.

Watched dvds of The Tick (animated, seasons one and two) snuggled up on the good, old couch with my son and our Big Orange Kitty -- in the newly-reclaimed family room, on a television freshly-whisked out of the main living area and bumpily* settled into this previously uninhabitable space. Husband declined the invitation to join us and retreated to party into the new year by reading in bed with his favorite small cat and James Church and Inspector O.

(*er, that means it was dropped and not quite the same since.)

The bulldogs and guinea pigs and birds disregard holidays and other festivities. For them, it is lights out and sound asleep by 9:00 pm, no matter what.

Once again, I was struck by the brilliance of Ben Edlund and wondering if I should be emulating American Maid. Now, she is glamour. Perhaps I should swap the Yaktrax and balaclava (which doesn't really make me look like a ninja) for stilettos and a tiara? Seems like a no-brainer, what a gorgeous character.

Anyhow, just an abbreviated bit of my family (myself, sleeping son, purring Big Orange Kitty) rang in 2009 together.

My daughter had gone off to a party, and I was staying up to chauffeur her home.

Here comes the scary part...

My daughter attended a New Year's Eve party that lasted past midnight. Yep, she is that big now.

The party was hosted by the eldest daughter in a family of five kids. The parents were entertaining 15 additional high school freshmen (I often find just one is too many to amuse) plus allowed each of the younger siblings to invite one friend as a sleep-over buddy (to keep the younger siblings out of the big kids' hair?)

24 children, ages 15 and younger. Not a wealthy family with a slew of hired help and paid entertainment and thousands of square feet to disperse them in. The kids went out and played in the snow, came inside and played that marvelous game Apples to Apples plus drank a barrel of sparkling grape juice and devoured a truckload of baked goods. I know, that sounds pretty precious. But it wasn't, it really happened and it seems to have worked quite well.

Arrrghh.

And here I die a thousand, hopelessly inadequate parenting deaths.

Your laundress can barely cope with one cousin sleeping over for three nights. That happened between Christmas and New Year's, one sweet extra kid but I was going nuts with the bickering, the teasing, the jolly loudness when all was going well, the damn responsibility of one more person under the roof. And I LOVE the kid. My kids love this cousin. My husband hits it off fabulously with him. He is a great person and good at handling our unruly pets. It was just -- almost -- too much for me.

These people? They had courage. They had pizazz. They had an awesome Christmas tree still up with an amazing model railroad running around it. Mom was smiling when yours truly and other parents showed up at her door, 30 minutes into the new year. Happy, noisy teens were milling around plus a few sleepy little kids were straggling here and there, in pajamas. I am pretty damn positive their teeth were brushed.

30 minutes into the new year and already I am feeling woefully inadequate and hopelessly jealous? Dang but things must improve. Inside my head.

Dark, mean little laundress.

Buttoned down (pig, in a blanket!)

2008-12-28T01:42:00.004-06:00

I have a warm (though aged) down coat. It has served me well, surviving last year's walking commute without any troubles.

For Christmas, this year, my husband gifted me with a Polar Parka -- a goose down good 'til minus 100 kind of winter coat. He bought this garment in size SMALL. Uh huh. For your truly, the corpulent and exploding out of compression garments laundress.

shameful

I told him it was lovely. I told him I loved it. I told him I love him.

I hate.

Hate the damn big coat that is way too small for me. Hate me for being too big for the huge little garment. Hate the whole holiday and the idea of giving people you love something they might love so they may love you more.

FUG.

Cat feeders and shrewd larders

2008-11-24T10:49:00.054-06:00

Do you feed wild birds?

When we first moved into our current house, I did.

I maintained three birdseed feeders and a woodpecker station plus a suet board and two platform feeders (primarily for squirrels and chipmunks--stocked with cracked corn and stale bread).

All of the feeders were a source of endless entertainment and fascination for me and the kids. An amazing array of songbirds, woodpeckers, birds-of-prey, rodents, deer, raccoons, and opossum, and assorted other wildlife(!) visited the feeders.

But our most memorable visitor was a feral cat.

A Siamese cat of formidable power and build. Apparently an important local feline, he often sunned himself on our front porch. He was a handsome cat but definitely not people-friendly.

Admiring glances were welcome but, please, no petting.

Mr. Big-stuff Siamese would just slink away if you got too close.

One morning, little daughter C. and I were looking at goldfinches on the niger thistle tube and suddenly a velvety brown paw slashed forward and decapitated a finch... head flung one way, body the other, blood spurting everywhere.

C. was screaming. I was annoyed. The aloof Siamese? Turns out he was a homeless guy masquerading as a bank president.

A bit of investigation led to the discovery that this mighty hunter had a bad rep all over the neighborhood -- for leaving mostly-uneaten though mortally maimed songbirds next to everyone's feeders.

Many neighbors were sheltering and feeding the stray Siamese beast: besides the hearts and livers of goldfinches, he was consuming tuna fish, fancy canned cat feasts, leftover chicken wings, and other delights -- while lounging in garages or porches, often on special cat beds purchased for his comfort. Nobody could pet him, let alone get too close. This cat walked alone. But he liked an audience.

His highness, the death machine.

I decided to trap this cat.

My husband was annoyed with ME about my decision, this was one of the blow-out fights of our marriage. He said I would be catching one of our neighbor's pets (the cat obviously wore a collar and tags) and they would justifiably hate me for it and only an idiot would do such a socially-irresponsible thing. I countered that our neighbor should be keeping their cat indoors, where it would not be destroying songbirds and wreaking environmental havoc.

Anyhow, after capturing an interesting array of other wildlife, I successfully trapped the yowling feral Siamese. Because he was still wearing a collar with an expired rabies tag from a vet clinic in a faraway city, the local cops were able to reunite him with his "owner", a woman who had been missing her kitty for over a year. She had resorted to hiring a psychic, after lost-pet posters and all else had failed. The psychic told her the cat was "living near water and happy". The psychic was right. The Siamese had gained weight in his year plus of living wild, and he could enjoy a view of the lake while lounging on the roof of our garage.

Lord knows he spent enough time up on top of the garage, sunning his rotund belly full of goldfinches and fledgling cardinals and baby chipmunks. The killer-Siamese's human mom figured out where I lived from vague police reports with a vicinity and house description... and she showed up to shower me with thanks! When she knocked on the door and sternly asked if this was the house that had trapped a cat, thinking of my husband's admonishments, I wanted to run and hide. Couldn't because she was hugging me too much.

A happy ending!

Especially for local birdlife.

When H. was sick, none of this bird feeding mattered anymore and I let it all go. The feeders were empty for several years, listing over and lurching sideways. Mostly empty: house sparrows filled one up with grass and twigs and raised families. That was interesting, they reared their babies in a glass-walled house, just a few feet and a energy efficient double-walled pane of glass away from me, as I stood at my ironing board.

Last weekend, I straightened the tilted feeders and refilled them, and added a new platform feeder just outside the family room windows.

Cat TV! Our cats have been glued to the recently exposed row of three windows in the newly-christened family room. The family room, formerly known only as an inhospitable repository for stacked up dozens of boxes, filled with weird Victorian glassware, heaps of assorted trash and Lederhosen and bazillions of bridge tallies, etc.

Having set up an environmentally-friendly covered platform feeder (made of recycled plastics), what kind of visitors should be expected? Turns out they are of all kinds-- and most interesting ones!

The image above is famous. It is from a Flickr account labelled Cool Cat in Bird Feeder, which was invited to participate in LOL Cats. I am still a dismal failure at getting any of our THREE digital cameras (let alone two cats) to cooperate with my blogging photography endeavors. If I could only get a digital camera to function, LOL Cats would be begging me for permission to post images of my cats observing the new platform feeder.

Meanwhile, believe me, the cats are gorgeous and spend most of their days happily glued to their observation posts on the windowsill. Watching chickadees and nuthatches and squirrels and, most recently, a mysterious animal that was moving at lightning speed.

My husband mentioned on Sunday afternoon that "the cats seem more interested in the fast mouse than anything else at the feeder."

I went to check out the "fast mouse" and it was like no mouse I had ever before seen...

a swirling tumult.

A pane of glass and about two inches of distance away from the kitties and my eyes. Diving over and under fallen leaves and bark mulch. Squirming above and then below my line of vision, under the feeder, next to the feeder, in the feeder. No visible ears, with minute, probably useless eyes. Tiny, stub-tail. Covered in a thick and lustrous pelt of dark black-gray fur.

This was NOT a mouse.

Not a mole.

Wracking my brain, suddenly figured it out: A SHREW!

More specifically, upon checking my field guides: the Northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda). A really common animal that I had never observed before.

How cool is this -- Northern short-tailed shrews are poisonous mammals! B. Brevicauda is thought to have emerged in the middle to late Pleistocene, but their ancestors were around much earlier than that. Here is a press release from the University of Alberta, Researchers find first evidence of venom system in extinct mammal :

Currently, there are three types of living mammals with salivary venom-injecting capabilities: the Caribbean Solenodon (found primarily in Cuba), the North American short-tailed shrew, and the Eurasian water shrew. The Australian duck-billed platypus also has venom-injecting capability through a spur on its heel.

Okay, I did know about poisonous spurs on platypuses. Who doesn't? If you grew up reading The Guinness Book of World Records, you know about the platypus. And solendons are just plain weird. I had heard of them but remembered nothing other than their name and strange appearance. But poisons in shrews? Especially local ones? WTF?

Here is reliable info from a print resource:

MacDonald, David (ed.)
The Encyclopedia of Mammals
Facts on File, c1994

P. 762+
…shrews can detect a very wide size range of prey, from 10 cm earthworms to 1-2mm nematodes. Even small mites and the animal’s own external parasites are not exempt…

The bite of some shrews is venomous. The salivary glands of the American short-tailed shrew, for instance, produce enough venom to kill by intravenous injection about 200 mice. The poison acts to kill or paralyze before ingestion, and may be particularly important in helping to subdue large prey like fish and newts which water shrews are known to take.

200 mice? They devour their own parasites? Famously voracious, shrews must consume an average of 43% of their weight daily. Shrews also cache food, especially in fall and winter. Their poison, which includes both a neurotoxin and hemotoxin, is much like snake venom. Specifically, shrew poison is like cobra venom.

Short-tailed shrews can not, like a snake, directly inject poison -- instead they chew it into their prey. Shrews use their toxin to immobilize snails and other foodstuffs, which can then be cached in their larder, insuring a continuous supply of fresh foods. This is important if you need to eat 43+% of your body weight every day.

Owls are the most common predators of Northern short-tailed shrews. B. brevicauda have pungent musk glands on their bellies and flanks, which make them unpalatable to most predators. Cats and dogs will pursue them but rarely eat them, the same is true for most other carnivores. They are just too stinky. Only my beloved great horned owls are regular predators of the short-tailed shrew.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has an excellent brief article on B. brevicauda, which includes animations, pictures and diagrams and a link to a pdf of a much more detailed description from the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM). Here is how the ASM describes the coat color of Northern short-tailed shrews (okay, I found this poetic, hope you do too!):

"sooty-plumbeous above, ashy plumbeous below, varying with the light"

From notes on Blarina brevicauda from the NatureServe Explorer:

Food Comments: Eats earthworms, slugs, snails, insect larvae, millipedes, other invertebrates, and small vertebrates (especially mice in winter). May hoard food (especially snails).

I wanted more information about these spectacular shrews. Especially, how their poisons are delivered and how they work.

Bone Clones offers elephant shrews and tree shrews, but alas, no Northern short-tailed. They do have a seven-foot tall reproduction of the skull and neck vertebrae of a giraffe. Just shy of two grand, mounted on a stand. Not too much cheaper, you can get the giraffe head and neck dis-articulated and without stand. Nevermind the whole giraffe, seven feet of profile is plenty, eh?

The Bone Clones site also offers forensic and comparative anatomy models. These do not come cheap either. For example, you could snap up a Fetal oranguatan for $395. Who on earth is seeking facsimiles of fetal orangutans, enough so that they are commercially available? Well, they are and I must be damn stupid. But dang, Bone Clones have no B. brevicauda whatsoever.

Okay, getting over this, but Northern short-tailed shrews, aka mole shrews, have some kind of funky poison spit going on...and everything about them is pretty fascinating. They do not hibernate. They communicate and observe through echolocation. Cool and then cooler!

Mammals of Wisconsin ( I am reading the print version, but it is also available online) includes quoted material from former-President Theodore Roosevelt on the habits and behavior of the "mole shrew". What? Love that former-President TR is off conducting weird experiments on natural history, especially those involving shrews. Bill Clinton is no way near as inspirational, love that Teddy R. was observing and recording data on B. brevicauda. Don't you, too?

The Shrew (ist) Site is a fantastic web presence, a "shrew shrine" of interesting links and discussion of all things shrewish. Obviously, there are others out there who know and appreciate the shrew in ways far deeper than your laundress and her cats!

Anyhow, the fact that shrews get to eat 43% of their weight, just to maintain themselves, has left me dumbfounded. For I am on forever on a diet and, more recently, badly wearing compression garments yet again. Besides that, guess I am truly sucky at blogging. But hey, like the pugnacious Siamese, I am out here, doing my thing. Say howdy, tell me your feral cat and/or shrew tales.

Best to all!
tl

The Emancipation of American Women: a video vacation

2008-11-19T23:58:00.007-06:00

I really needed to pull up my flaps, been draggin'. But then I discovered a fabulous video: Mother Takes A Holiday. 1952. Sponsored by the Whirlpool Corporation. It just blew me away. Hope you like it as much as I do!

Found the film clip via a web vacation to London's Science Museum, which hosts an impressive web exhibition called Making the Modern World: Stories About the Lives We've Made.

cooking with gas (a blast from the passed)

2008-11-10T21:24:00.023-06:00

Even though refrigerators cost almost twice as much as an automobile, manufacturers were not shy about touting their many benefits. In fact, several went so far as to imply that a woman wasn't a good mother unless she had a refrigerator:

You, as a conscientious mother, buy the best food for your children, prepare it with scrupulous care and cook it correctly. Yet, in spite of all, you may be giving your children food which is unwholesome – even dangerous! For even the best food becomes unsafe to eat unless it is kept at the proper degree of cold, which medical authorities agree should be 50 degrees or less – always. ... There is only one way to be sure that your children’s food is fresh and healthful – correct refrigeration.
"From Housekeeping to Homemaking", Trail End State Historic Site -- Sheridan, Wyoming.

Aw, when you were a kid, did you ever give your mom shit about the milk going sour? Act like she was personally, irresponsibly poisoning your breakfast cereal? Ouch. I did. So did my siblings and I am guessing other folks might also be guilty of blaming mother for failed refrigeration.

Our former home (the two-unit) had aged appliances, mostly in early '70s harvest gold. They worked just fine until the day that they died (only occasionally going out in flames). I was ridiculously pleased to replace all major appliances for both apartments in the late 1980s. It didn't cost buckets of money and it seemed reassuring that the new appliances would be around for many years to come.

But they weren't. The second time around, replacing all appliances for both units a scant decade later, it became apparent that they sure don't build 'em like they used to...

Your laundress currently lives with a refrigerator that costs as much as a damn good used car, but is about as reliable as a really bad one. A rustbucket Yugo with a brand-new Ferrari price tag. It has had several factory recalls, involving replacing the door hinges, then the door, then the hosing for the icemaker, then the whole damn thing. In-between times, it has leaked, drooled, flaked off enamel and generally misbehaved. A stainless steel behemoth of ridiculous proportions. It is lousy. I have lost sleep and wasted time, mopping up after this leaky convenience.

Recently, I repurposed an old ice chest, made of oak and lined with zinc, to function as an end table. It is large and solid and you can tuck all kinds of reading material inside. A proud, shiny brass placque on the front labels it "Hall's Reliable". Maybe this product should be used as originally intended? It was supposed to leak. It has a large drain hole and a nice-sized drip pan to accomodate leakage.

Is there a life lesson here, a take-away message on household appliances? They don't make them like they used to? You don't get what you paid for?

Hmmmmm.

Maybe?

Just finished:

digging out basements -- the final episode.

The process has pretty near been the death of me, most of this year's vacation days were spent unpacking and dispersing the contents of moving boxes. Moving boxes often stuffed with souvenirs of other people's fun vacations.

Souvenirs from generations of people much fancier and more sophisticated than me, who took swank trips to enviably exotic and faraway places. Now they are all dead people, their final journey being one in which I am in no hurry to follow. But I do suffer major vacation envy.

Often, the basement souvenirs are survivors of holiday destinations that no longer exist -- or anyhow places where names and borders and politics and boundaries and such have changed.

My mother-in-law bet on horse races in Cuba in the 1920s. She lost on the ponies but kept her ticket stubs and a racing bulletin. I have also discovered playing cards from Venice, matchbooks from Thailand, a hat-check ticket from Monaco, stir-sticks from every island in the Caribbean, plus the ridiculous number of Lederhosen from Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Prague and Budapest are well-represented, by several generations of travelers. Memorabilia from trips to London and Paris are positively tiresome. Handsome flyers and brochures from extinct resorts all over the U.S. had perhaps their final refuge, right here in the middle of (well, you know). Someone in my husband's extended family was creating wooden bicycle racing rinks in Bolivia in the late 1880s and sent home photos. And on and on and on...and it all came home.

In a box.

Everything was boxed. Mixed in with kitchen utensils, half-used cans of motor oil, broken wine glasses, high school yearbooks, and a jaw-dropping array of bridge tallies. Visit the local St. Vincent de Paul shop, and many of these wonders could become yours! Except for the motor oil (sent to the appropriate recycling facility) and the broken glassware and the moldiest of the Lederhosen.

The scrap of paper pictured above caught my fancy and perhaps will charm you too. Good lord, what kind of dedicated housewife goes on vacation and attends a cooking school? That would be like yours truly traveling to Miami to attend workshops on shirt starching and household organization. Blecch.

I was delighted to find evidence of someone in the past taking a lousy trip. Maybe that special attraction, the lecture on "Electric Refrigerator" was too much of a novelty to pass up?

What is the date of this mysterious cooking school?

It was sponsored by Majestic Refrigerators. Here is the cover art from a Majestic cookbook, dated 1931. This one was not in my basement, found it posted for sale ($12) over the delicious Heavens to Betsy Vintage (1930s-1980s sewing patterns and cookbooks) website, which encouragingly notes "Leans towards the elegant. You'll find some nice molded and jellied recipes in this one!"

Walt Disney World did not officially come to Orlando until 1971. Walt Dated World is a sweet website shrine to Disney Worlds of the past, Extinct Orlando is another long-gone Disney shrine.

I have never visited a Disney theme park. Neither have my children nor my spouse. We have no intention to do so... many perfectly fine people do adore all things Disney. We aren't them. This is okay. However, if I could time travel, I would kinda like to be sitting in on the cooking school with the Indiana hausfrau who saved her pink program guide. Thinking this might have been my mother-in-law, but maybe some other relative? Anyhow...

Prior to riding roller coasters and romping with Mickey, visiting Orlando meant you could attend edifying workshops, such as the Yowell-Drew seminar -- and learn to create some tasty recipes and curious cooking techniques (such as steaming fish for three hours).

The Yowell-Drew Cooking School had formidable recipes, no doubt targeting a refined audience. Check out the delish crabmeat and whipped cream icebox treat, "Frozen Crab Salad". Reproducing the recipe below, in case you have trouble reading the 2 point type from the image:

Frozen Crab Salad

2 cups flaked crab meat

1 tablespoon chili sauce
3 tablespoons salad dressing
Salt and paprika
2 hard cooked eggs
1 cup cream
Slices of lemon
Strips of pimento

(added in pencil: 1 cup celery)
Blend the crab meat with egg, chili sauce, parsley, salad dressing, pickles and seasoning. Whip cream, fold in, freeze in tray 3 to 4 hours.

There you go. Summer bridge club delight.

Does pimento = pickles? Where does the parsley come in and how much... a sprig? a bunch? Several pounds?

Never mind possibly wild variations in "chili sauce" and "salad dressing" (in the midwest, that can only mean Miracle Whip, right? Neatorama explains the difference between Miracle Whip and mayonnaise here, worth checking out plus noting Miracle Whip did not appear until 1933 -- does that help date this document? or did I just make up this whole digression on creamy white dressings?)

Also included in the Yowell-Drew brochure, a recipe for deviled crab, made with with canned crab meat and canned mushrooms -- so easy to recreate back home in the midwest. The cooking school's stuffed eggplant: fill it up with minced ham and lumps of butter. YUM. These are practical recipes to take back and serve to the bridge club.

Okay, this post was going to meander into some curious recipes for meatballs and a rant on the latest tooth-whitening versions of Nicorette plus some speculation on why various John Prine lyrics have deeper current social relevance than anything Bob Dylan ever thought of...

But I am tired and anxious to try um, actually POSTING something on this blog. So here you go, sweethearts.

Hugs and please say hi!

Luv,
your cranky old
tl

Me 'n Barack: gone to the dogs? For better or worse or whatever

2008-11-08T21:16:00.022-06:00

"Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House." Calvin Coolidge

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Harry S. Truman

"...Sasha and Malia, I love you both more than you can imagine, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. " President-elect Barack Obama, Victory Speech

Barack Obama has been elected and it seems like most of the country is feeling like he promised us all a new puppy. The better economy, end-of-war, health care reform, improving environment: these issues will take some time. But, damn, the new puppy? We want it now!

There is a Presidential Pets Museum, recently relocated to Williamsburg, Virginia, which has a fun web site. Calvin Coolidge had a particularly diverse menagerie, though apparently the irresponsible Coolidges ditched many of their pets when they left the White House. At least, that is what this newspaper article implies: What is to Become of White House Pets When Coolidges Depart?

The Theodore Roosevelt family had the best presidential pet names -- a snake named Emily Spinach (named by his daughter, Alice: "Emily in honor of a very thin aunt, and Spinach because it was green"), plus guinea pigs with intriguing names such as Bishop Doane and Father O'Grady. You can read about the Roosevelt guinea pigs at Project Bartleby, where Roosevelt's Letters to Children are published. Check out Fine Names for Guinea Pigs.

Did you grow up with family dogs?

If yes, were they mutts or purebreds?

What about now --breed loyalist or pound rescue?

For a long time now, the Obama PR machine has been publicizing Barack and Michelle's promise that the kids would get a puppy when the campaign was over, regardless of the outcome. Little Malia, who has asthma, has done her home work and is reportedly lobbying for a goldendoodle. Doodles are also known as "designer dogs" and "purebred mutts".

Yay! The real Obama girls will finally be getting their family dog. Best of all, after all kinds of politicking on the part of the American Kennel Club (lobbying for a purebred with their "Presidential Pup" survey and coming up with a poodle) and of the general public (with Obama Family Dog pounding hard for a rescue or shelter pup)... Michelle closed the deal and said they would go with a rescue dog. There is a rescue group for doodles, the International Doodle-Owners Group, which is eager to help the Obamas find the right First Pup. That ought to keep both factions happy.

My neighbors have a doodle and it is HUGE, way bigger than the average golden retriever or standard poodle. Sometimes, mutts turn out larger than the sum of the parents. Pictured above left, a contender for the title biggest dog in the world: a Great Dane/Newfoundland cross named Samson.

Samson got a short coat and overall Dane appearance --and is drooly and black like a Newfie. Honestly, he looks like one big and shiny black lab. However, this lil' pup is a 275 pound, 4"2" head-to-paw (or 6'5" standing up on his hind legs) tall dog. A moose-dog. A dog with oodles of public appeal and a hard luck case -- his human mom is in a wheelchair, his family has limited income -- and the big guy needed an operation plus physical therapy. Save Samson came through.

Samson was an RSPCA rescue puppy, saved at 6 months of age. The adoptive family were warned he might get bigger. Oops and he sure did... There is a frequently reported shelter problem called Black Dog Syndrome, aka Big Black Dog Syndrome: large black dogs are less frequently adopted than other size and color combinations.

I checked out the Washington DC Humane Society -- good lord, all they have is pit bulls, pit bulls, pit bulls. A good pit bull is the finest kind of canine and a bad one is the worst. Maybe the Obamas should get one of the sweetiepie-variety pitbulls? They could name it Hockey Mom. Of course, the Obamas may adopt a Chicago area doggie... pretty sure, whatever dog they get, it will behave far better than W.'s little Barney!

I like dogs and can't imagine living without them. Best dog I ever lived with was a pound rescue. Purebred or mutt or designer dog -- doesn't matter at all. I had a friend with a fantastic German Shepherd Dog (GSD) -- my favorite breed. Her neighbors loved to play Frisbee with her dog. They worried she was too big and too vigorous for their own household, so they visited the Humane Society and came back with a tiny GSD/hound pup. They were thinking, Frisbee dog and smart like GSD, but little and perky like a beagle. Hah! It turned out that the "hound" part was a bloodhound. They ended up with a 120 pound mass of wrinkles that couldn't have cared less about Frisbees, unless you could eat them. Undistinguished little puppy turned into one peculiar (but charming) dog.

Husband and I adopted a lovely bulldog as our first attempt at parenting. He was wonderful. Since his demise, we have adopted two more bulldogs -- and they are night and day in character and personalities. The sum of the two new bullies is far less than the wonderful first, even though they have finer "bloodlines". One of the new bullies approximates a neurotic GSD, the other generally impersonates a rock. We still love them to pieces. Honestly, this purebred vs. shelter dog debate seems to boil down to the same as adopted vs. birth children -- to my mind anyhow, it just does NOT matter. You just love what you have. There are no bad dogs (or kids). How the caretakers handle them, that is what matters.

Well, this post is going no where and I am going off to bed. But really looking forward to hearing about Malia and Sasha's new doggie. With every rescue group and humane society in America combing their holdings for good presidential dog candidates, they ought to end up with a real winner!

Escaping twelve o'clock tales

2008-11-06T21:56:00.008-06:00

Apologies for the lack of posts lately.

I've been on the go, on vacation.

Nah, haven't been visiting faraway places or anything exotic like that -- just taking time off paid employment to clean out some basements. Generations of free-wheeling pack rats have left their loot for me to redistribute, their weeks in Paris doing nothing to ease the bite of it. Jealous longing for lounging has left me too weary and brain-dead to post.

Wickedly hard labor but the results are sweet. Things are tidied up and organized. Shocking amounts of trash have been unpacked and sent to the landfill. Stunning quantities of perfectly useful items have been unboxed and delivered to St. Vincent de Paul and Goodwill. Generations of debris and garbage have been sifted through -- and luminous pearls discovered within the rough coverings of slimy oysters.

For example:

Look over to the right! Whoa! One dusty discovery of a more recent vintage. Evidence that my dear son, H. used to be a laundry helper. Yep. Among many things much, much older (and often moldier and rather odiferous), I uncovered this sweet photo of little H. Back when I couldn't get away from him, he traveled up and down the stairs with me and the laundry baskets, helped sort and fold. Scared the pants off me when he would try to help with ironing. Everything I did was fascinating and he wanted to share. This used to frustrate me at times...

Plus, he really was cute as a button.

Got a tiger by the tail (or something like that)?

2008-10-21T21:00:00.035-05:00

Every now and then, my middle-aged, middle-class suburban existence does chafe and burn in strange ways.

Last week, prior to attending a "staff meeting", I ate lunch at a funky little cafe (decorated in cute neo-Roccoco). Munching bad falafel, in this mostly-deserted place, I was seated next to two pretty women who were about my age. Both were much thinner than me, even though they were eating formidably more substantial luncheons. I notice these things.

One of the women was decorated with casts and bandages, but both had apparently been through the mill. They were discussing battered women and why the visibly damaged one needed to finally, permanently break away from her very abusive partner. Her sidekick was physically healed but clearly still wounded -- she was voicing "been there, done that, it is not going to get better."

Meanwhile, I was trying to mind my own business and read an entertaining and informative book on vampire bats and other bloodfeeding creatures. Before anywhere near finishing my sandwich, and barely dipping into my otherwise thoroughly engrossing book, I was gone from there. Had to pay up and split.

The ladies were so lovely and this sordid topic did not belong in their mouths or most especially in their broken bones...

why are women so often damaged by the people they love best of all?

rrrrrowwwrrr

I've got a tiger by the tail it's plain to see
I won't be much when you get through with me
Well I'm a losing weight and I'm turning mighty pale
Looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
"(I've got a) Tiger by the Tail", c1964
Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. aka Buck Owens

Haven't lost any weight yet (though I have high hopes). However, I may be the palest white woman in America.

For example:

Damn but I have a powerful weakness for Buck Owens.

You too?

Maybe not? I am thinking he may be an acquired taste.

Spent a lot of childhood weekends viewing Hee Haw on a big console television with my grampa (plus siblings and parents and aunts and uncles and many cousins) as grampa blew amazing smoke rings out of his ears, while my granny was slowly dying in a hospital bed in the dining room, right next to the buffet.

We didn't have a television at home, but the grandparents had a huge one. My early television memories involve no fondly-recalled cartoons, no (ultimate hip and cool) Dark Shadows. Nope, nothing slick in my TV history. What we watched was Hee Haw and The Lawrence Welk Show.

Cigarettes, country music, cancer. An inseparable trinity.

I used to know a girl who could do one scary, deep-throated tiger snarl. She could make people jump with it, but her purr was sexy and engaging too.

rrrrrowwwrrr

Still struggling with whether to abandon or re-direct or just carry on with this blog. Taking another stab at it tonight, forgive me but I am rusty and crusted over with barnacles from weeks of blog-immobility aka unposting. Even worse than not posting at all, I have been creating and then deleting posts like a fiend.

Maybe Buck Owens was behind my aborted attempt to flee The Husband by taking a job in Bakersfield? Never got away, though I did subscribe to the Bakersfield Californian via third class mail for several months. Talk about escapist reading.

What have I been up to lately, besides not blog-posting? Well, I have been reading a lot. Reading after dinner, companionably sitting with my television-viewing spouse. My husband is sorely addicted to television news pundit programs.

I glance up from my book, usually during the commercial breaks for Cialis. These generally catch the eyes and ears of our teenage daughter and her fifth grade brother too. We all sit in silence and wait for it while the narrator intones "... in the rare event of an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury." So far neither son nor daughter have remarked on this but they have certainly heard it enough.

They never ran commercials like this during Hee Haw.

Missive to all Bibliophibians: posted from the litter box

2008-09-20T21:05:00.037-05:00

Looking for a GREAT gift idea?

Pictured at right:

hand-cast resin slugs (big ones!)

So handsome, so absolutely grand.

Are you trying to decide on wedding or anniversary or birthday gift for loved ones?

If so, look no further.

Almost certainly, massive resin slugs are missing from their lives...

and the recipients will always remember YOU presented them with this:

each slug is approximately 5"x3"x2.5" and weighs about a 1/3 of a pound.

One of many fine products available from Chris Yates Studios Toy Store.

Nope, no typo in the title up above.

Did not mean letter box.

No postcards to far away places sent from here (in the middle of, well, you know).

A friend recently returned from the west coast. She said the air in San Diego was quite remarkable -- that when she walked along the oceanfront and breathed in deeply, she felt extremely healthy and wonderfully clear-headed. I have been envious and longing to visit the beaches of San Diego ever since hearing her glowing praise.

Here is a picture of Coronado Municipal Beach at sundown... just one of San Diego's many acclaimed beaches. Never been to any of them, myself. Hell, I don't even particularly want to see them, just desperately long to breathe their air. Good air is one thing you can not share via the internet.

Some kind of wickedly-resistant asthma is upon me, no doubt payback for all of the whining I have done about my summer staycation spent cleaning out basements. Now huffing newly-prescribed corticosteroids and hoping for some better breathing soon.

It still astounds me that my smallish, midwestern city has poor air quality alerts. Thank goodness I don't live in Knoxville (the worst air quality city in the US) and I am truly sorry for those who do! How is the Air Quality Index where you are?

Two days after I got additional asthma meds, a boy at my daughter's school collapsed in the cafeteria, whisked off to the hospital in critical condition due to an asthma attack. Scary.

My daughter hisses at me whenever we go anywhere: do I have my inhaler? Her gym teachers won't let any of the asthmatic kids participate unless they are wearing gym shorts with a pocket containing their inhaler.

This is weird, to me anyhow. So is the "peanut free" cafeteria tables that now exist at every school, since food allergies have also become ubiquitous. These mysterious ailments did NOT exist when I was a kid -- or at least they were far less frequently diagnosed and never discussed. I've always assumed that asthma is some sort of psychosomatic illness (well, at least in MY case) and not to be taken too seriously. Penance for the sins of being an ex-smoker. Um, except when you can't breathe, it is damn hard to do anything else except seriously ponder the fact that you can not breathe.

Anyhow, my best technique for dealing with oxygen deprivation is web-surfing.

I have a mighty fine web comics addiction going on which has provided hours and hours and hours (primarily wee hours) of entertainment. I have posted before -- and probably more eloquently -- on the joys of web comics.

My numero uno is Achewood ("A momentary diversion on the road to the grave").

Read by your laundress and also most of the rest of the web comix-seeking world. Hey, even The New Yorker is wise to the Achewood wit. Of course, The New Yorker sussed it out after learning that...

Achewood was voted the "#1 graphic novel" (never you mind that it is neither one nor the other, let alone both or all three -- maybe it won top spot simply because it is none of the above?) by Time Magazine -- er, well anyhow at least by Time's designated pitcher for gns, the very cute (but obviously not fact-checked) Lev Goldstein -- back in 2007.

The Achewood comic. Do you know of it? Do you read it?

If you haven't, go on and check it out. Even though if you wander off to visit, you won't be coming back here anytime soon... (heh heh, fooled ya, Nebraskan and Albanian and Guatemalan pornseekers! If you try to pester Chris Onstad, he will baffle and befuddle you far more than my posts on hot sox and soapy housewives. Pretty sure you won't be leaving him perplexed by your disappointed, hostile comments.)

If you are coming into Achewood cold, things might take some time to warm up -- but stay with it and keep reading. After a while, you won't be able to stop. I know this.

My favorite characters are Ray and Philippe. Who are yours?

The fact that the Achewood character blogs are so casually witty and distinctly voiced is yet another reason to envy the creator, Chris Onstad. Good lord, man: how many talents can a single person possess? Mr. Onstad has clearly gathered up and is utilizing more than his fair share! That, or he truly and deeply is suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Anyhow, Achewood and Onstad have recently launched into mainstream print. Yep. They have a book -- one I hope readers and librarians everywhere will be buying. It is a bit of an odd duck -- no collection of "best hits" from the web comic, instead it is a full-length graphic novel, an actual, illustrated storybook. The Great Outdoor Fight. Strangely and engagingly charming... a muscular and energetic narrative, but I think it catches an audience only if they kinda know the characters. Such a manly volume, not written for the Jodi Picoult readership and with no chance of becoming an Oprah selection. A bloody fisticuffs kind of reading endeavor. I loved it but sheepishly and worrisomely. Perhaps an acquired taste?

Anyhow, not sure you will love it (whoever readers of this blog may be, besides good ol' Awesome Mom! and PK from Pearls and Dreams -- and ladies, I am kinda thinking this book is not your cuppa...), but heartily endorsed nevertheless.

At first, I was frankly appalled by the lack of a holds list for Mr. Onstad's title at my local public library. Then, I thought some more... readers of web comics are not your standard bookish readers and perhaps they don't normally read print materials from the library?

I (personally, for home use) purchased the entire print Achewood library a year or two back. A show of support for this fine young creator. Nicely and sturdily square-bound, self-published paperbacks which I have loaned to various friends and family and gotten back with mumbly thanks. Nobody swiped a single one, much to my chagrin.

The Achewood Cookbook is the single funniest title in existence. Do you need to live with my husband to understand the humor of this book? G'wan and give it a whirl, a small investment for (actually tasty) recipes and wicked, wicked good commentary.

Another print volume from a web comic strip that is wonderfully remarkable is Beards of Our Forefathers, the print excursion by David Malki!, creator of Wondermark! an illustrated jocularity.

"Beards of our Forefathers" is perhaps a more accessible book for the mainstream, non-web comics reader. It will definitely lead you off in search of the Wondermark site.

My favorite strip is Wondermark #119, which I tried and failed to share here (other than the link). It has to do with a kitty-blogger and her litter box. Go read it yourself.

And then read this one, all of you librarians and bibliophiles and bibliophibians (that would be the odd offspring of librarians and bibliophiles?)

Thanks for visiting!

we're always off to war, my friends

2008-09-16T23:33:00.031-05:00

Been away from blogging for awhile... and every day away just raises the bar.

Nobody is visiting here lately, not even Armenian pornseekers.

S'okay, I haven't been around much either, and visiting other bloggers hardly at all.

So, how to spectacularly return? This has become an obstacle that seemed increasingly insurmountable.

I haven't ever had anything to say although I sure have had some terrific commentators.

But pffft, no previous blogging glories. Going to slog back into it. So, holding my nose and hey, you hold yours too -- shall we dive into the murky bloggy backwater?

Where have you been lately? What is new with you?

Me?

I have been digging out basements and sorting out a 150+ years of history that was crammed into moving boxes and then packed away and forgotten about for many previous decades. The process of unpacking and sorting and discarding or (much more rarely) keeping has taken untold hours and burned up most of my vacation days for the year. Not done yet (sob). But damn close (victorious grin). And damn it, I have some grand old things newly discovered that I would like to share.

Just got a new scanner-printer which should work handily with the cursed-but-nearly-conquered digital camera , in order to capture images of all of the pre-Victorian through 1920s paper ephemera and strange artifacts that were squirreled away in my HOUSES*. Some remarkably amusing and curious stuff that I have discovered has made sorting out the debris nearly tolerable. Fascinating stuff that is worth sharing.

Heh heh. *Houses. Yep, doesn't that make me sound like a John McCain-ish bazillionaire? Got such an excess of housing that I just can't remember how many habitats and lord only knows what lurks in the closets and basements? Not exactly true.

We sold the old house, the one that I loved and had fully intended to move back into soonish, and that did break my heart a bit but now I am firmly, permanently residing here, in the middle of, well, you know. And that is that and no more looking back.

Except, the process of selling one house and moving squarely and entirely into the other one has meant dealing with a HUGE number of moving boxes. Some of these boxes have contents nobody has examined since the mid-1800s.

Repeating myself, but these moving boxes are/were really immobility boxes. Things not dealt with but merely tucked away. Decisions on contents were left "pending". Pending the onslaught of The (raging, resentful) Laundress. The boxes that did have a label or marking generally said "Miscellaneous" or "Assorted" or (scariest of all) "Fragile".

Boxes marked "fragile" or "delicate, handle with care" were typically on the very bottom of a heap, tucked in a corner, with the sides stove-in. Delicious contents in ruins, so many sad, shattered items discovered and disposed of and the sorry wastefulness just gnaws at me.

Other people might have been spending their vacations painting their living room a thrilling new color or visiting the Bahamas or prowling the halls of the Smithsonian museums. But me? Just shredding old medical records concerning long-dead ladies urinary tract infections and disposing of mildewed bed linens and cutting fingers on wastefully broken, formerly handsome glassware. Dismal stuff like that...

Nope. No secrets here. I have been visiting neglected basements and forgotten closets and shady corners and abandoned dustbins-- and fully intend to share the fruits of my labors. One of the painful and peculiar lessons is that almost ANYTHING is interesting, if old enough.

For example, in a box trapped behind the boiler in the old house, I unearthed a ratty, mildewed notebook, covers stripped off. Almost tossed in the trashbin, thank heavens I peeked inside and noticed it was a treasure, therefore sent a unique handwritten document off to another state's local historical society instead. It was the pre-Civil War minutes of a men's social club. The club was devoted to training the members in "gymnastics and military manuevers".

Getting ready for war, the membership were training themselves for participation in the Union Army. Beautifully written in copperplate script, in several different hands. My favorite part was a passionate (and correspondingly sloppily rendered) by-law, fervently denouncing members who guffaw or gesticulate when another club member holds the floor. Offending members to be fined 10 cents for the first infraction, 50 cents for the second. A third offense would result in expulsion from the club. At the back of the notebook, the membership roster had several members with enormous, exuberant, flowery "EXPELLED" written next to their names (those would be the fellow who couldn't restrain their guffaws and gesticulations) but most members had dates of enlistment and regimental troop info. The last entry in the notebook was 1863.

Another painful lesson: other than this blog, the only remnant of The Laundress that might be left behind is my formidable heaps of un-ironed washing and unsorted socks. No witty letters, no clever poems, no gorgeous photographs, no undiscovered oil paintings. No copperplate script anywhere.

Nope.

I haven't created anything of merit and have very little that will be left behind when I am gone. A few funny photos, posed with my husband and a couple dozen Pomeranian dogs in Montreal in the late eighties, with a mixed flock of endangered parrot species in Florida in the early 1990s? Maybe not even those photos are of future interest, since thousands of other tourists probably have the same basic images. Reading the contents of many cigar boxes crammed with witty, ancient correspondence and original poetry and news clippings and journals has humbled me greatly. Good lord, and I was already so very low!

Alas, I have sucked up wickedly large amounts of fiberglass insulation and coal dust and ordinary dust and assorted airborne particulates. My lungs are FRIED and the asthma (my anathema: hotly denied rotten lung issue) has spectacularly returned.

Nope, still not smoking -- haven't been for years now. Still thoroughly addicted to nicotine replacement products, which now have a frequent buyer incentive program (check out Nicorette's Quit Rewards) and gather oddly non-judgmental side columns (for example, in today's Science Times, check out The Nicotine Blast). Every night, I am resenting the fact that you can not pick up at least a tiny cannister of oxygen at the local drugstore. Can you buy this stuff on the internet? Why is basically purified air under the purveyance of the medical bureaucracy? Can you cash in your Nicorette Rewards for at a smallish amount of oxygen?? (Questions that need to be asked!)

The coolest uncool and the techno-shame ironies of wet suits

2008-08-22T23:33:00.023-05:00

My son loves to tell dumb jokes.

Some times they are funny, sometimes we (we = husband + daughter + myself) listen and then moan, and sometimes we just ignore him.

The last response (ignoring) is a particularly well developed specialty of H.'s big sister.

Drives the boy wild. He always asks her "Do you get it?" and she sighs and responds "Yes, but you are NOT funny." His disappointment is so clear. Sometimes his jokes, or at least their reception, make me sad.

Maybe jokes are never funny if you have to ask the recipient if they get it?

Aw HELL.

Is The Laundress all wet?

Needing a cold shower of reality?

Is she a fool of a person

...or simply a foolish tool?

-- unable to realize how painfully she represents the worst bits of the most ordinary underbelly of middle class, middle aged, middle America?

Damn.

I am acquainted with a person who is almost universally well-regarded as wholesome and friendly.

A chipper, look-on-the-sunny-side kind of person.

My life-experience has taught me that these are the most lethal and vicious snakes in the garden. I trust this wholesome person not one inch.

But whatever. Miss Little Merry Sunshine and I were having a chat. And she giggled at me... "ooh, you use a LYCOS email account? ha ha, I haven't seen one of those since the dark ages, they are even older than AOL email addies!"

Ooops, that gave me all kinds of pause.

Like, Ms. LMS was calling me out on my un-coolness.

This was most painful: because the Lycos email for my blogging laundry lady persona was calculatedly, deliberately meant to be an ironic statement. In that teenage sophisticate way that my daughter sometimes wears the color pink? My understated joke was missed by Ms. Sunshine and perhaps also the rest of the world? (other than those fashion-forward Balkan pornographers, of course!)

So, by being called out... do I lose all of the joke by going nudge, nudge, wink, wink? Should I just clam up?

Decided Ms. Sunshine could continue thinking me UNcool. So I just blushed. Or maybe glowered. In her pretty world, these pinkish/reddish colors are one and the same.

NYT Op-Ed columnist David Brooks (the cleverest and most likable neo-con writer that I am familiar with) had a painfully funny piece earlier this month, King of the Memes. Here is a teasing bit to jog your memory if you read it a few weeks back -- or to get you to read more (in case you missed it):

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)

Wickedly, Brooks at once nailed and just sailed right by whatever yours truly is up to with blogging. Read it, what do you think? Brooks made me wince and giggle and wonder some more about what I am up to blathering away at having this blog.

Guess I will just stick with what I know best: laundry.

Here is something wonderful, just discovered by me (although millions of other bloggers claim first dibs, hey-- I am not trying for a home run or a scoop here!)

Check out an amazing merino wool suit you can rinse in the shower, drip dry overnight and wear again the next morning. Perfect for anyone caught in a smoky bar after work. Um, if smoking is allowed in your local taverns.

And you happen to wear suits.

your (naked) unfunny Laundress

put on some speed

2008-08-20T21:29:00.012-05:00

Looking for direction here because I have lost whatever blogging compass I once had...

is this going to be a book-blog?

A blog with a helpful consumer products focus?

Perhaps I should just continue to provoke and titillate amorous Eastern Europeans (and people from Kansas) with suggestive posts about fat pussies and panties (good lord, that was a post about Spider-man doing laundry and, yes, I know already, it was not sexy. In fact, it was outrageously disappointing).

Having trouble even crawling out of bed lately. Can't take enough sleeping pills to knock myself out at night. Reading like a fiend but unable to articulate a single cohesive thought on anything I've read. Can't find enough enthusiasm to tunnel through a post. Apologies all around.

Lost in the wood...

found foundering

2008-08-05T16:18:00.029-05:00

Chatting with Citizen Reader often leads to awesome reading suggestions.

She has an uncommon ability to recall intriguing and relevant book titles, no matter how offbeat the conversational subject. Talk about anything* and she will very likely suggest a great, related book.

Voila! Like magic. Bookish dexterity. CR just tugs terrific reads out of the top of her head with no scrambling to remember the title, no groping for the author's name. Then she verbally blurbs it, succinctly but ever so temptingly. I envy these talents, what formidable skills -- to read, to intelligently review and then to remember vast numbers of books.

Recently, I mentioned my some of my basement archeology discoveries (curiosities all originally from La Porte, Indiana, such as the badge of honor and a peculiar pre-Civil War notebook) to CR and damn but she did it again.

Recalled a book that is perfectly -- no, shockingly -- right.

The book, entitled La Porte, Indiana is an assemblage of 1950s - 60s photographic portraits of the residents of that city, all taken by Mr. Frank Pease and (much later) discovered and compiled by Jason Bitner, the founder of Found Magazine. Published by Princeton Architectural Press, great reproduction on fine-quality paper, it is a handsome, dense little brick of a book. Nicely sized, weighty in your hands yet small enough for curling up and perusing in bed. Here is the blurb (lifted from the publisher because I suck at describing books and can't remember even CR's enticing description):

FOUND magazine editor Jason Bitner has made it a habit of picking up after us, walking down the back alleys of our lives, and accumulating all that we've thrown away or mislaid. One afternoon not long ago, after lunch at a small Midwestern diner, he stumbled onto a forgotten archive. In the back of the restaurant were box upon box of studio portraits of the townspeople of LaPorte, Indiana–over 18,000 in total.

Bitner selected a satisfying grouping of complimentary images from the 18,000 portraits. He arranged them and pitched it and found a publisher. It is a delicious browse, kind of a look-and-wonder book. In the introduction, Bitner teases that he deliberately tried to exclude the oddities and weirder images from the photographs that he chose (so one is left the marvelous task of imagining what those stranger rejects might have looked like!). He also playfully mentions that the portraits are grouped into themes, although the reader might have to work a bit to figure them out.

Themes such as horn-rimmed glasses, couples that resemble one another, people wearing bow-ties, varieties of pearl necklaces? That didn't require too much mental exertion. Are there subtler messages that I have missed here? These photos are freakishly exactly like the small selection of family portraits my own household kept in a cupboard while I was growing up... but there were 18,000 images that Bitner sifted through (and counted). Achingly familiar yet entirely unknown people.

The one shown below right is one of my favorites from Bitner's album. It was especially striking as part of a grouping of paired images, showing the same subjects looking pensive and then smiling. So sorry, I have no scanner and could not find an online version of the mate to this image -- the girls were transformed by their smiles!

Mr. Bitner was wise to have recognized the value of the pictures and to have assembled such a wonderful, understated selection of them. It makes a fascinating book. However, he loses a whole lot of scavenger cred due to the cushy environment of these treasures.

The portraits were in tidy boxes, all one size, arranged in an unused room in a diner in La Porte. So his archival toiling involved sipping coffee and eating warm cinnamon rolls while flipping through the pictures in relative comfort. No grappling with mold, mildew, mouse mummies and raccoon mommies for him.

Sorting out the garbage from the salvage from the keepsakes has just about exhausted me.

Ah, but Mr. Bitner, please come see my finds! There have been a few bright, sparkling gems in among the debris and those have given me enough strength to persevere. Pretty sure that you could write a book about them and that Citizen Reader could persuade others to peruse it.

* pleasant recollection of an early conversation (about flint-knapping --many people have idle chit-chat on this topic -- Mary, are you out there?) and sure enough, CR just popped out a "hey, you might want to read..." suggestion and it was a fabulous novel: A Gift of Stones, an early work by Jim Crace. Never would have picked this up without her endorsement, but it is a terrific book. Don't miss it!

Gas lamps, ball gowns, Saturday night

2008-08-02T19:31:00.014-05:00

Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody...

but sometimes you can earn a Badge of Honor for just showing up (see previous post!)

My husband has drifted off to bed, casually swooping up MY designated evening reading:
Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke (thanks for that reading tip, Citizen Reader. Now, any tips on wrestling desired book from clinging male companion?)

Left to my own devices, as I sweep and tidy up the house. Sleeping children and pets. Reading husband.

Pondering what kinds of delights await me tomorrow, since we are still moving out of the basement of our old home.

One of the most interesting curiosities discovered last week, while excavating the downtown basement (repository of pre-1850 through early 1980s familial garbage) -- a sad cardboard carton, squashed and accordion-pleated under the weight of many other boxes.

The bottom box had a most intriguing label, in huge black letters: VERY NICE LAMP.

Uh-huh.

I am a jaded cynic of box labels, having found 1960s Ritz Cracker packages stuffed with the dessicated, mummified corpses of mice that died in the early 1970s -- in a box lettered "Christmas Decorations".

My probably-dust addled theory is that the mice died due to the staleness of those promising crackers. The mousies should never have fallen for the box art, exclaiming about the deliciousness of Ritz Crackers. Whenever I see those words, I think "dead mice". Ritz Crackers are a major appetite suppressant for yours truly. Perhaps I should be gluing "Ritz Cracker" labels on all of the cans of nuts in my house?

well, I digress...

Arrgh. I do NOT trust any labels on boxes found in my former home's basement.

The label was intriguing, I give it that... the contents were... horrifyingly sad.

A full-length ball gown or evening gown, for a woman taller and slimmer than me-- red satin, sleeveless, gathered and fitted bodice, full and sweeping skirt. Wound about the "very nice lamp" which turned out to be a hideous Victorian monstrosity.

A vast lace-work of shiny metal (weird coppery color, no oxidation, not golden, was this bronze? brass? some strange alloy?) -- pretty, multi-faceted lead crystal pendants and lozenges bedecked it. Many of the crystals and some of the lozenges fell away as I unwound the ball gown, which was furry with white mold and smelly with blue and black mildews. One side of the metalwork stove in.. it is a defaced and damaged gas lamp. With a weird bit of electrification (from the 1940s or '50s or '60s? a rickety and fragile electrical element has been flimsily mounted onto the big scary gas lamp).

What to do with this valued item?

Into the landfill? Off to Goodwill? Drag to an antiques shop?

NO, good Lord, I am not a profiteer. Not trying to raise gorgeous, filthy eBay lucre from any of this shameful bounty... but I am feeling shamefully wasteful. And maybe this is salvageable? Or if not, perhaps those crystals could be re-energized into some sort of positive being?

What would you do with this strange treasure?

(thanks to Madison Guy, I shall try once again to master basic proficiency of digital camera, some photo-documentation would aid this post immensely -- plus the previous post's medal of honor could be gorgeously displayed).

Cursed Lederhosen and the mildewed red silk "Badge of Honor"

2008-07-28T21:42:00.020-05:00

The Laundress ain't getting the clothes washed lately.

Dirty laundry is piling up in heaps, as she rummages around, stuffing trash bags with moldy garments that once were lovely.

This hurts. It is so wasteful to be tossing out well-tailored garments made of interesting fabrics. If only these things had been properly cared for, perhaps my family would be adorned in a spectacularly eccentric wardrobe -- or have enough curious apparel to stock a wonderful vintage shop -- for YEARS.

Been preoccupied with the archelogical dig known as "cleaning out the basement" -- in an old house, stuffed with moving boxes transferred from an even older house. Among today's interesting discoveries: my husband (and/or other members of his family?) have owned at least four pair of Lederhosen.

Yes. It is weird.

Every time I find a pair, I throw them in the trash -- and yet they keep materializing. I did send one pair, with especially fancy embroidery, to Goodwill, thinking someone else might appreciate them in spite of a light case of mildew. Yet, even after spending so many of my vacation days tidying up, cursed Lederhosen keep popping out of the woodwork. I thought our household was finally rid of this plague of leathery shorts. Nope. Not yet. Maybe this was the last pair?

Admittedly, the kid with the shining, smiling face in the image up above looks adorable in his snappy short pants. If you too have a hankering for Lederhosen, you can purchase them online from Bavaria Lederhosen (the site where I found the cute kid picture). But please take care of them, they cost many euros and are meant to last.

Also discovered today: many wonderful books*, which I have dragged home in spite of their smelly, fragile condition. One, simply labeled "Album" in gold leaf on a black leather cover, was my husband's mother's grandmother's autograph book. The handwritten dedication is dated July 1853. Most of the writings inside are dated from 1853 - 1859.

It was a commercially-produced book, with lots of blank pages, interspersed with assorted romantic and fanciful illustrations. In between the pictures, the "blank" pages have been filled with handwritten silly poems from her friends. Some poems are copied and some are (sweetly, obviously) original compositions. Most inscriptions are in ink, with blotches, some are in very scratchy pencil. The album also includes really scary remains of pressed flowers (magnolia blossoms and lily-of-the-valley, I think). My favorite part, discovered at the end of the book, is a gorgeously-lettered, tattered scrap of red satin ribbon. Spotty with mildew but still legible. Here is what it says:

Laporte Public Schools
---
BADGE OF
HONOR,
PRESENTED FOR
PUNCTUALITY,
The Recipient not having been
Tardy nor Absent during an Entire
Year.
June 25, 1869

What is up with the sixteen-year spread between obtaining the book and gathering the "autographs"/poems and notes and then this most honorable badge? Maybe the badge-winner and the book-owner were not the same people? Just a little puzzle.

Also found a wealth of other curiosities, including several odd 1800s letters from Midwesterners abroad in S. America and Europe, some pre-Civil War militia journals and workbooks and correspondence from a well-known Beat poet. Not to mention three functional typewriters, perhaps the world's first vacuum cleaner (yeah, I know, I thought that was discovered in this same basement 2 years ago. But I was wrong, today's find was much, much older). Surprisingly spectacular: some remarkably strange electronic products (slightly functional but oozing assorted fluids and shedding mysterious chemical powders).

Sadly, in between discoveries, sucked in a few too many lungfuls of mold, coal dust, fiberglass and lord knows what else, so wheezing off to sleep for now -- but more later...

g'night.
*other, decidedly unwonderful books have been sent off to the curb with the Lederhosen.

p.s. MacBlogger issues are back -- will post images and modify this post once I have access to an not-Apple machine.

Their little, nimble, probing hands (another NOT sexy post)

2008-07-26T23:50:00.033-05:00

I hate moving.

Moving boxes this weekend (at least that is the plan.)

Rockin' my whole little world-- and it was already shaky.

We are selling the lovely city house to the long-term tenant, within the month. From now on my family shall be solely, squarely, stolidly living only here, in the Middle of Hell.

No more fantasy escape house.

This is cool. I am okay with it.

Really.

Except for the moving boxes.

There are so many boxes that need moving. Boxes that have not been touched for many years. Boxes filled with unresolved issues that are moving me to tears. Most are not even my boxes. Other people abandoned boxes stuffed with wanton wastefulness, with benign neglect.

Immobility boxes.

Boxes that were packed by my in-laws in the 1960s, when they reluctantly yet permanently relocated to their "summer" house. Boxes that were packed by my husband in the 1970s, when his first marriage disintegrated. Boxes that were packed by yours truly, in the 1980s, when I was trying to scrape away a bit of "shared" space in my now-husband's even-then crowded living quarters. Boxes from the early '90s, when my mother-in-law moved from two, conjoined apartments into one assisted-care room and then, soon after, from that into a full-fledged nursing home room.

Somehow all of these boxes, stuffed with unresolved conflicts, issues, and indecisions, are coming home to roost.

Here. In the middle of, well, you know.

Amazing, that they didn't poof go away or abracadabra magically resolve. Nope. Just clung persistently, patiently gathering dust.

These are not tidy boxes, their labels are misleading or dead-wrong. There are also metal storage closets and long, fiberboard wardrobes and loose items of furniture and strayed bits of clothing and paperwork.

Shameful, how messy it all is... many years of storage have not improved things. Leaks, vermin, time: all have added patina to the boxes. The dust is thick and cobwebby and asbestos-riddled and choking.

Just hoping to hide from that which is unavoidably mine to deal with... mouldering mouton lamb coats, stiff as boards and greened with mildew. The creepy, ruined monkey-fur hat and matching jacket (have marveled and shuddered at those special items before! I do believe they were created out of Colobus monkeys, well before anyone had a clue about "endangered species"). Assorted scrambled cartons, mixing up coats, shoes, dishes, books, bills, letters, photographs.

Sometimes discovering lovely, Victorian photographs of mysterious people, perhaps distant and oh-so-long-ago relations to my beloved husband and children? For example: found in a c1932 "Meats of Indiana Cookbook" :
(huh? as if Indiana once had some sort of unique meats not found in the rest of the USA?)
a crumbling, red leather wallet stuffed with photos of big-eyed 1880s and '90s poppets. Twirly curls, fancy dress, cute baby faces. Thick, lovely paper -- these are sturdy photographs, meant to be saved and cherished. Tiny, indecipherable scrawls on the back, telling who they were... a massive investigation might yield some clues.

What would YOU do?

What to do with such a treasure?

a) to the trash, don't look back

b) hide in the enormous accomodating cabinet, with millions of other baby photos (circa 1994 and 1998 of my own darlings) -- gawdawful mess, that!

c) whisk off for framing in some sort of arty Martha-Stewartish shadowbox and then hang in the mudroom as a "conversation piece"?

The kids are pretty, the photos are in great shape. I just have no clue who they are... or why to save them. Except, like my own mess of baby photos, these babies were somebody's beloveds. Jeepers, my ghost would be kinda sad, I think, if someone else perused and then callously tossed out photos of pretty baby C. in her floppy, floral sun hat, of handsome little H. riding on his German wooden train engine with big rubber wheels.

Maybe I am just all fucked up?

Everybody has beautiful babies.

Really.

Babies are the most gorgeous creatures in the world.

Baby snakes, baby warthogs, baby rats, baby spiders, baby rhinoceros. Name your ugliest adult creature -- betcha I can find you an image of their babies that will make you go "Awwww."

Cute Overload is misguided in their odd-ball attention to preternaturally cute hamsters and Pomeranians...

On the other hand, raccoons have unusually appealing offspring. Go on and try to find an image of an ugly baby raccoon. There are NONE. Check out the picture, above and left. Shiny black eyes, shiny black noses, shiny black masks. Gorgeous!

Amazingly cute baby raccoons have become a stumbling block.

For me. In moving boxes. There are too many boxes full of raccoons blocking the doorway.

You see, the long-term tenant has a pet cat. A feral, damaged cat she found and nursed back to health. A tiny, 5 pound cat who thinks it is a ferocious wild tiger and must go hunting outside every night.

So the tenant has been persistent in her desire for a cat-flap, to allow the semi-feral cat to come and go as it pleases... We always said NO. No, no, no. Cat-flaps allow other cats and other vermin in to wreak havoc. No cat-flap. But when it was only one, very nice and likable tenant, renting both apartments in what had always been a 2-unit... and her fierce little tiger-cat was kinda cute too... we weakened. She put in the cat door.

Guess who came knocking and then just bowled their way in???

Raccoons! Yeah, the scariest and most aggressive of all urban wildlife. Animals that make themselves at home but are really hard to live with.

So, the renter hired a trapper, who came with traps and bait. Marshmallows and maple syrup are good bait for catching raccoons and NOT catching cats.

Anyhow, last night's haul: four tiny raccoons. Two babies in one trap, then one baby each in two other traps. Leaving one raccoon mama rattling about the backyard in a state of maternal panic.

The trapped babies are just outside the back door, which leads to the cellar where all of the immobile moving boxes are stuck. I do not wish to further scare the babies or add to the mother's distress. I also just really want to get this weekend of hellish moving over with... what a dilemma.

Oh crud. This post was supposed to keep going a while then wrap up with some sort of conclusion. Not going to happen. But I have posted raccoon themed blog-rants in the past, one of which featured this still funny and still excellent cartoon, from the scarily-reliably amusing Dinosaur Comics, which totally explains this post's title.

p.s. oh boy. Nice thread of cartoons involving raccoons and giant marine cephalopods over at Dinosaur comics. Eerie how much this strip mirrors my interests.

Smells like... dirty laundry?

2008-07-24T17:19:00.008-05:00

Last night, my family attended a pleasantly informal neighborhood party. Yours truly was dog-tired after working and walking, but had a nice time in spite of myself.

Idle, cocktail party chit-chat swirled about... including speculation about the upcoming election and possible VP candidates. One neighbor, respectably plugged into media and politics at a national level, snorted and waved off someone else enthusiastically suggesting John Edwards as Obama's VP -- relaying that the night before, Mr. Edwards had been captured by The National Enquirer slinking about a hotel with his mistress and their baby. His comment left at least some of the rest of us a bit incredulous. Mostly, I was puzzled that the respected and connected neighbor would be dismissively accepting of a National Enquirer report.

No news or reading snob here (after all, I am a major champion of comix and an unabashed drooling fan of fashion magazines). However, I resolved to look into the matter further, certain it would be posted in the next day's newspapers.

In case the National Enquirer is not on your daily prowl either, here is the source material:
John Edwards Love Child. Nope, no Google News headlines today, no local paper coverage, no NYT, no Washington Post.

However, many bloggers and many "alternative" news sites seem to be picking up and running with riffs on the tale. Mostly, outrage at the way mainstream media (aka MSM) is squashing the story, though some do also poke at the Enquirer's lack of photographic or other "hard" evidence.

The coverage on Gawker nicely summed up the dearth of reportage, check out What John Edwards Scandal

Slate had an interesting take on things too:
Why the Press is Ignoring John Edwards "Love Child" Story

The only newspaper (not blog) that I found with coverage was the St. Petersburg Times: Edwards Scandal: Silence Please

Hmmm, The Huffington Post was in on it too, with juicy background tidbits, such as this video clip:Couric's Candidate Questions: Infidelity.

So is the Edwards baby another scary example of mainstream news cover up, or is it a ridiculous and undocumented bit of slander?

Hmmm. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I wouldn't have given it a moment's thought, except sucked in by a high opinion of the neighbor's political savvy. Well, what do you think?

Time will tell?

News more relevant to my everyday life (and perhaps yours?) turned up on Science Daily:
Toxic Chemicals Found In Common Scented Laundry Products, Air Fresheners. Aha, I knew it! Reported here many times, for sure those dryer sheets are deadly!

Science Daily lifted their reportage entirely from the press release by University of Washington News. Didn't find any other articles with more info but I will be following this story closely.
(apologies, once again having connectivity and mouse troubles)

health and willness: the growling ghrelin gremlins?

2008-07-22T20:16:00.010-05:00

"I haven't smoked a cigarette in 12 years," he says, "but about 40 times a day, I feel like having a cigarette." -- Vaclav Havel, quoted in the Financial Times, July 4, 2008.

“I feel a deep affinity with smokers and I enjoy breathing second-hand smoke in their presence.” -- Vaclav Havel, (London) Times Online, June 1, 2008.

By golly. My goodness. And here I am, just trying to breathe some new life into yesterday's news.

In an amazing effort to live more gently on the planet and conserve paper (and perhaps most strongly, to preserve his precious finances), my husband has let his subscription to the Financial Times (the beloved peachy-pink paper, the color of St. Joseph's baby aspirins) lapse.

I miss it.

Still, he indulgently bought a copy at a newsstand (for vacation reading) a couple weeks back, and I immediately seized upon the "Coffee With the Financial Times" fluffy bit -- an interview with Vaclav Havel. One of the rare lung cancer survivors who is still walking and talking and contributing to society, years after his diagnosis. If I had any blogger cred, would have posted on this ages ago. But no, awkwardly shoehorning it into this post.

At last, just today I received a library copy of To the castle and back. Haven't cracked it yet. The reviews intrigue me no end. Delighted to note that some one so learned and artistic, with political chops to boot, is also concerned with bats* in his broom closet. Household minutiae IS worthy of acknowledgment.

Nope, the title of this post contains no spelling typo. Punctuation? That I do truly suck at, and no doubt have misused the colon. But anyhow, what is up with people equating healthiness with willpower? How much of our health, our lifestyle, our weight, is actually under our individual control?

Is achieving health and fitness mostly a matter of willpower? Is Mr. Havel a weak being such as myself?

Wellness is eluding me, wickedly, though avidly pursued. I see it flicking a devilish tail as it saucily runs ahead and I limp and lurch, far behind. With a big emphasis on behind. A big behind, powered by flaccid, gasping lungs.

Still walking my commute.

And, kinda sorta still blogging.

Suffering insufferable connectivity issues and some one-button mouse troubles. This post is raw but shall be thrown out there anyhow. Hopefully, to be improved upon soon...

*scooped Cute Overload. Somebody, no doubt an Eastern European, swooped up my dandy baby bat image and sent it off to C.O. But you saw it here first!

Unfit (crawling out of the would-work?)

2008-07-16T21:46:00.035-05:00

Curious about other people's paid and/or unpaid employment.

Why do you do what you do? Do you think about changing careers?

Do you feel that your occupation suits you? What would your dream job be -- or do you already have it?

In my fantasies, The Laundress labors and launders no longer -- instead, she is successfully self-employed in a creative arts field.

But my imagining rapidly gets derailed in trying to choose just how to accomplish this worklife satisfaction. So many rewarding careers are not mine. With such an array to choose from... which dream job should I settle upon?

Painting? Writing poetry? Performing live theater? Creating pithy-yet-accessible novels? Jetting about as an international journalist?

Why, sure!

Any of those occupations allow one freedom of expression, eh? But they don't come with health insurance, that is a big deal in my household.

The image above is from NYC artist Lorraine Shemesh, who specializes in paintings featuring swimming pools. Discovered her last year, via Neatorama and she did capture my fantasy. What amazing creations. Would love to see her work IRL.

Nah, my stellar performance as a cold-shower blogger (squelching the passions of Slovakian, Polish, Albanian, and Nebraskan web surfers longing to find dirty housewives) is just not rewarding enough.

Somehow my wonderful, imagined career and my real life as a worker and a parent seem to collide in unfortunate, splintery ways. Fractured, with the result being at once a lousy worker and a crap parent, with heaps of unfinished laundry. Been there too many times. Once again, this is painfully apparent to me and I am, yet again, at a loss on how to reconcile things. C'mon, please somebody throw me a lifeline and send me on a new, improved course.

Suggestions for adopting a better attitude, a new persona, most welcome here!

I am one of the lucky ones: I have secure, union-protected paid employment that provides full health care benefits to my family. This is valued and treasured and yet sometimes really pisses me off.

No, not aggrieved by the benefits nor the work life. In fact, I very much like my job. Love it, actually (other than sucking abysmally at "office politics" and air-kissing. Thank heavens, those are minor parts of my employment).

It is just the need to show up every scheduled day, including evenings and weekends, that pains me. For example, this upcoming weekend. I worked the dreaded noon-'til-nine Friday and then all day Saturday. Which would not be too remarkable except that the timing exactly conflicted with the performances of my daughter's summer theater troupe. Ah, the uneasy balance of working motherhood is once again shoved down my throat but stuck in my craw...

I shall get over it. Her daddy and brother attended one performance, her grandparents another. A few friends and old neighbors were there too.

Still walking my commute.

Every working morning, my path takes me past the local community pool. Unlike fall and winter walks (when the emptied pool is a forlorn concrete urban sculpture), summer mornings find the pool buzzing. On Thursday, I stood waiting by the entry drive, as in rapid succession a Yukon, an Escalade, and a Navigator pulled in -- anxious to disgorge their young swimmers. Massive vehicles, burping out tiny children dressed in flimsy bathing suits. Autos too eager to wait for any pedestrians on the sidewalk, with drivers too elevated to see a short little turtleish laundress. I wasn't waiting out of some weird tolerance, simply held back by self-preservation.

Now, surely these kids could have ridden their bikes to the pool? Are they going to the pool for fitness, a healthy, outdoor summertime experience? Why aren't they walking or biking to the pool? This is not a large community, there is one busy thoroughfare and a few main roads -- but by and large, all routes to the pool are pretty bike- and pedestrian-friendly.

Clumsy gas-guzzlers with silly parents inside, I think. Somehow being (reproachfully) more responsible for their childrens' activities than yours truly is for her own neglected offspring. I just walk away, leaving my husband to sort out slumbering kids and pets. Nevermind, I threw a load of their wash in the machine, sent another to the dryer, fed the pets and swept the floors before leaving. Hah, that was not enough. The guilt? Not left behind. It is walking along, inside me.

My home is also located near a large fitness club with a vast parking lot. Many people who live in this neighborhood drive less than a mile to the fitness club, so they can run a several miles on a treadmill, or don their running gear and go jogging in the nature preserve sandwiched between Hell and Fitness. The absurdity of this causes me an unreasonable and unhealthy bit of annoyance. Such a cranky laundress! Obviously, a huge part of the local fitness club is just plain old socializing, a chance to connect and chat with other people in the neighborhood. Like the schmoozing at the uncriticized and beloved diner, located just across the street.

Where did all of this ranting come from? Place the blame squarely on the upcoming Olympics.

There is some funny intersection between middle age and swimming and motherhood, pointed out by the poster child of all of the above: Dara Torres. Ms. Torres has become an impossibly unrealistic role model for middle aged women everywhere, and I am exasperated with her media buzz.

Have you missed hearing about her? Check out this Washington Post article: At 40, Torres Is Back In the Fast Lane: Iron Will and Phalanx of Experts Aid 'Mind-Boggling' Comeback. Or USA Today's Can middle-aged mortals achieve Olympic fitness?, which concludes with the following words of wisdom from Timothy Church, director of preventive medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge and co-author of the exercise book Move Yourself: The Cooper Clinic Medical Director's Guide to All the Healing Benefits of Exercise (Even Just a Little!):

"If you don't have the time or inclination to achieve a high fitness level, remember there are great health benefits with moderate amounts of activity, he says. "Thirty minutes a day of walking promotes healthier, happier aging."

Damn. I am really screwing things up.

I am comfortable with focusing on fitness, not thinness -- but it seems wrong, after walking so much for the past nine months, not to have lost even a pound! Plus, having given up smokes so long ago, why the sudden lung fatigue and wheezing? Ah, just an aging body? Personal lack of Torres-esque self-discipline? Uncontrollable weakness for cashews?

Kinda thinking there might be a lot of answers lurking in the bottom of those salty, empty husks that remain after polishing off far too many cans of nuts.

Good night.

Your crazy unfit geezer-blogger,

tl

Okay, gonna let this post stay. No further deletions. Blog 365, so sorry! Will compensate by posting six times per day 'til the end of the year and all kinds of self-flagellation? Hmm. No, just wanted to throw flagellation in there for the thrill-seekers.

sorry, y'all. Another non-post.

A roaring fire of burning books (and naked ladies)

2008-07-07T15:10:00.013-05:00

Book burning has been popping up in my reading a lot, lately.

An eye-poke topic, one just can't ignore it.

Though I have been trying (rather hard) to do exactly that... actually, I have been hiding from blogging.

Good lord, other people write and publish books that befuddle or bedazzle or annoy me. Other bloggers create posts that excite, delight, or irritate. I think about these writings, I comment, I mumble to myself.

Um.

And then there is THIS: The Dirty Laundry Blog.

Primarily accessed by people living in Baltic countries who are searching for porn involving housewives and "naughty" playmates. They find no satisfaction here and lately have been leaving cranky comments which I have been apathetically deleting. Maybe I should just leave them up, since they are more passionate and spirited than my recent posts?

I am sorry.

There is nothing too stimulating on this blog. I have created and then deleted at least three entries for every one that I post. Lately, that ratio is more likely 10:1. Regrettably, at least for you salacious Ukrainians, there are precious few posts on this blog that are even remotely sexually titallating. Sexy, dirty laundry? Actually, that is about one in 474 (so, go on, find my one sexy post!)

Amazing Albanian women

2008-06-25T16:14:00.007-05:00

Elvira Dones, a Swiss-Albanian author and filmmaker, has created a documentary that sounds fascinating: Sworn Virgins.

The film is about a dying cultural tradition from rural northern Albania, where a woman could formally swear an oath of virginity and then live her life as a man -- treated with the full respect and privileges accorded to male society. Ms. Dones also wrote a novel featuring this "third sex" tradition, prior to making the film.

The film debuted on Swiss television and will be making its American debut at the 2008 Baltimore Women's Film Festival.

I learned about this interesting topic through an article in today's New York Times, Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man, which oddly, makes no mention of Ms. Dones or her book or film. The Times article does include a fine photo gallery, including the image shown here. It also had this quote, which set my head spinning:“I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is a woman’s work.”

However, the BBC posted an article, The Albanian Women Who Become Men, about Dones' film, almost a year ago. The BBC link includes a terrific audioclip of an interview with Elvira Dones, who speaks eloquently and passionately about her film's subject. The Washington Post also covered the film last year (The Sacrifices of Albania's 'Sworn Virgins') and they include a video clip. Alas, I couldn't get the video to play, got a "not available" message. Grrrr. Off to fall into the quicksand of YouTube...

Me 'n the boys

2008-06-24T22:10:00.056-05:00

Back home - sit down and patch my bones

Ahhhh.

For the next two weeks, I am "on vacation".

Most refreshingly: not doing anything spectacular. Not flying to France nor Argentina, visiting neither casinos nor museums.

Staying close to home.

No fancy things. Just hanging out with the family and reading and walking (hopefully, quite a bit of the latter two and, no doubt, plenty of the first). Won't be walking my usual way though.

My walking commute takes me past familiar, sprawling, big suburban homes with three car garages and expansive driveways and ample lawns. The same ones I have been walking by almost daily since October.

As the weather has gotten warmer, I am suddenly noticing that so many of the houses have lawn services, spraying and spreading chemicals about plus mowing the turf.

I am at once envious and repulsed.

My asthma has returned in recent weeks (after staying dormant for several years) and it is assuredly responding to the smelly, yellowish pellets that the lawn guys provide. What is that stuff? Lungs seize up and wheezing intensifies as I approach certain yards, the ones with chemical pellets clearly evident on the sidewalks. Try to hold my breath but damn, I am not an endurance-type athlete. So many lawns, so many lawn services. I find myself fretting about the health of the guys being paid to apply these unnecessary products.

All of this effort and expense to maintain grass seems excessive and wasteful. Why not grow fruits and vegetables or more shrubs and flowers?

Another long, strange trip being reconsidered here. How did I end up with this family, this life?

When I first moved in to my husband's two-unit apartment, in the downtown of our small city, the single family houses on either side of us were owned by lone men, both slightly older than my beloved.

All three men had owned their homes for a long time yet none of them had EVER mowed the lawns. Three yards of shaggy, knee-high grass. The men all had beautiful old houses but their grounds looked like shit.

I grew up surrounded by Sicilians living (with big families) in unremarkable 800 square foot,"ranch-style" homes with lovely yards and gardens. Sicilians, the best cooks in the world, maintained gorgeously manicured front lawns plus backyards frugally covered with vast vegetable gardens and side-yards filled with fava beans, six varieties of grapes, nine kinds of peppers and 14 kinds of tomatoes. All kinds of food, feeding large households on tiny lots.

Master gardeners one and all -- not to mention their topiary skills, maintaining heart-shaped shrubbery and front lawns mowed in plaid patterns to impress visitors. No, this was not hired out. You did it yourself -- a signature. Proof of one's work ethic?

The urban-sophisticate, professorial male with untamed turf grass was an unfamiliar and baffling species to me.

I found a gasoline engine lawn mower in our backyard shed and I proceeded to mow all of the boys lawns. They were at once delighted and equally as perplexed by me as I was by them.

One came over and told me about the spots I'd missed, the other shook my hand over and over again and said "Welcome to the neighborhood!" about nine times.

My future-husband shook his head and said "You are just like my father, he always mows and trims when he visits me." That should have been ample forewarning, because my husband's father was a retired surgeon in his eighties. Why would a man of such age and distinction be tackling such a mundane and thankless task? Why would I?

The guys grew complacent. I mowed and trimmed and re-seeded and sprinkled. Trying to achieve Sicilian levels of lawn hygiene. Pretty quickly, their yards looked excellent. Or at least, one hell of a lot better than they used to...

One day, the mower failed.

I couldn't start it.

My fellow plus the boys next door all came out to our backyard, to assist me. The first one yelped "When did you change the oil? What about the spark plug?", another barked "Did you check the throttle?", the third said "If we need to send it away, you could always use mine!" Good lord, I was bewildered. I was incredulous. These guys actually knew more than me about how the mower worked, yet never used it?

That last comment, from my wonderful neighbor, D. (a lapsed Sicilian) excited me, I asked him "Hey, wait a minute! You actually OWN a lawn mower? Did you ever use it?" Hah! He never did, just bought one when he bought his house and then tucked it away.

Yep.

He giggled.

My guys.

Tonight is my first night, recently, without a hot bedtime book companion.

Saturday and Sunday nights, I was cozied up with Tony Horwitz's latest title, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. A title sniffed upon by my favorite professor emeritus, the one soon to be departing on a fancy vacation to Sicily. Or was that Sardinia? My husband once spent a month in Sardinia and I have yet to hear the end of that vacation...
Horwitz excels at retracing historic travels, weaving together his modern day encounters with descriptions and historical anecdotes -- I am a big fan of his earlier works.

I liked A Voyage Long and Strange, but with reservations. It is a sublime travelogue. His escapades, especially in the Dominican Republic, are delicious. Mostly, it is a series of road trips through assorted kinds of hell, engagingly recounted.

The conquistadors and their desperate, violent treks across the east and the west of what is now this country are excruciatingly described, and there is much waving about of Native American exploitation. Maddeningly, tantalizingly incomplete. Read it for the amusing modern day travel and it is fine.

As far as historical information? I don't doubt that Horwitz did his readings but they were far too vast in coverage, both in time and scope, to summarize a mere 464 pages. I felt most painfully ignorant after finishing his book! His premise for writing it was that he had realized his own lack of knowledge of the explorers and discoverers of our country -- and set off to learn about them by retracing their journeys. By the end of it, I felt entertained but annoyingly anxious about having been made aware, yet again, of my own ignorance. I tried supplementing my reading with Daily Life in Pre-Columbian Native America but that only made me feel more stupid and ill-informed.

There is a lot in the book on how tobacco shaped the development of this country, and good Lord but tobacco has shaped the development (or lack there of) by The Laundress.

Not sure what to make of this Op-Ed piece written by Horwitz, Obama Should Start Smoking Again (excerpt below but please, read the whole thing and weigh in!):

Tobacco goes deeper in our history than any other crop. Native Americans harvested it for centuries before Europeans arrived, and cultivation of tobacco ensured the survival and prosperity of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on this continent. Without the weed, Jamestown might well have failed, leaving this land to be settled by wicked Spanish or perfidious French.

Last night -- a one night quickie -- enthusiastically read the newest Dave Sedaris, a book with an excruciatingly perfect title:
When You Are Engulfed in Flames. His fond recounting of an awful Sicilian neighbor was my favorite part of the book.

But I was dismayed by the vagaries and dodging of the much-touted David-quits-smoking part of the book -- what, he was a functional but surely addicted alcoholic who just *poof* gave up the booze? His quitting smoking is similarly, gently waved away. He just kind of quit. He worried about it a little bit, then, well, he got over it... blowing smoke?

I prefer the Augusten Burroughs approach, as far as my taste in gay male memoirists and their addictions. Love Burroughs for his unabashed abuse of nicotine replacement products. Disappointingly, Sedaris hides out from dishing on what I know are the the pitiful pains of giving up smokes. C'mon, can't be shyness, so what gives? I am jealously wondering if David Sedaris (and Barack Obama) are still indulging in the evilest of weeds.

Just discovered and wish for fellow bloggers to take note: there is a blog called Caustic Cover Critic ("one man's endless ranting about book design".) which reviews book jackets! Hooray, a blog addressing an under-appreciated yet critically important part of the book-world. No denying the impact of cover art on the reader's perception of a book.

Please note that Sedaris had his latest book jacket designed by the acclaimed Chip Kidd. Also worth noting: The Dirty Laundry Blog featured this very same image many months before Kidd selected it for use with Sedaris' book, in my now famous rant on the glories of Nat Sherman's (would my editors please now advance and advise on my use of the apostrophe?)

Yikes.

That cover looked achingly familiar. Nah, I couldn't remember where I had seen it... it is a famous image: Vincent Van Gogh's 1886 Skull With a Burning Cigarette. However, I think Mr. Kidd would have done better by When You Are Engulfed in Flames if he had instead featured the MC Escher illustration featured at the top of this post. A top hat suits David Sedaris mighty well.

(apologies for this post -- attempts to revise have made a bad one worse -- wonky mouse and connectivity issues again!)

(cat) body for life?

2008-06-21T20:31:00.020-05:00

I love my cats.

I am blessed with living with excellent cats.

Kids and husband are unreliable: sometimes delicious, sometimes crushingly disappointing, but mostly unremarkably somewhere in the wide expanse in between those extremes (for sure, they can -- and do -- quite honestly say worse about me).

Our dogs are fools. The guinea pigs are sweet but totally driven by their always-hungry tummies. Companion birds are elderly and cranky.

But the cats?

Damn near perfect. Grand companions, sociable, diplomatic in their handling of diverse situations, negotiating life in a multi-species household with aplomb (though I am suspicious of their feigned indifference to the plump guinea pigs.)

The family favorite is our Big Blue Kitty (BBK). He is not chummy with strangers, saves his favors for the immediate family -- and, even then, passes them out rather infrequently. Actually, BBK is damn stingy with his affections and it is kind of telling, that our whole family jumps through hoops to try to get him to acknowledge us. Ahh, but when he snuggles up at 4:00 am or winks and purrs at 11:30 pm? All of our silly escapades trying to gain his attention are redeemed. You are special if BBK recognizes you. But outsiders, non-family? Well, my daughter gigglingly refers to his reponses as "talk to the tail". Uh huh.

The kitty pictured above is Big Orange Kitty (=BOK), aka Center of the Universe. When the doorbell rings, he is there. The Pizza Guy is his personal emissary, bringing both food and pats. If you come to visit, he is sniffing your shoes, headbumping your knee, sitting on your lap and purring way too loud for any other conversation. BOK is a gregarious kitty. Kind of a wiener, his personal hygiene is not up to snuff. Lacking the sanitary skills that obsess BBK. However, BOK has his own charms...

He is a big cat. Was a fat cat, up to 22 pounds. The vet said that was way too fat, put him on a slimming regime and he is down to 19.5. They want him at 18.5 but dang, whatever, he is one big boy. Always hungry. Tragically, ferociously hungry. I can relate...

BOK has erupted in... spots? Nope, not like a leopard.

Weird, hard lumps all over his pretty face. I found the first one, petting him. It was like a gravel lump, under his soft furry face. Petted it, puzzled at it... and it erupted in dust, all over my hands, leaving a bloody hole under his big, orange eye. Weird. Next day, even more gravely bumps, all of which left gaping, bloody holes on the cat's face. By evening, he had a horrible visage: raw, red, bleeding. No pain? Dabbing away at his raw face with antiseptic towlets and encountering no wiggling, no complaints. BOK was pretty oblivious.

Off to the vet. Much testing. They knocked him out, shaved his face, did scrapings and microscopy and assorted chest radiographs. Hmm. Results are inconclusive. According to the veterinary report, he may have feline eosinophilic granulomas (scary-sounding), or mosquito bite hypersensitivity (that sounds downright silly) or atypical facial dermatitis (that just means weird rash) or rather generically, allergies. Perhaps a food allergy: maybe he should give up pizza?

Or maybe his face is just rotting off? It is creepy and scary and I worry too much about a cat. He is just a cat. Nothing more. Kind of a cranky cat, taking antibiotic tablets twice per day. One thing that did not show up on the veterinary report... perhaps he is allergic to humans? You know, you meet so many people who say they are allergic to cats. Well, why couldn't a cat be allergic to people? Maybe he has Morgellons disease?

Nah, this is another non-post. Off to medicate my cat. The veterinarians shaved his face, below the eyes. It is lumpy and red and bloody. He looks kind of scary.

He is very sweet.

said it better

2008-06-18T20:12:00.021-05:00

Nuts.

Finding no wonder in the world tonight.

Just weary.

Maybe it is just

...the weather?

...the state of the world?

...politics?

...my waistline?

Husband's television news is blaring. I don't want to hear it: Michelle Obama does NOT need a make-over or tone-down or tune-up or whatever the media is trying to do to her. Offshore oil drilling is a million ways bad idea and no amount of discussion improves things.

Nothing has been crossed off on my index card "to do" list today. Have traveled 19.5 miles in my walking commute so far this week and still managed to gain a pound. Was it the whole can of cashew halves?

Just can't get anything right lately.

Usually, Tuesday's Science Times is full of delicious information... but tonight's reading of yesterday's paper provided still more disappointment. The major feature? The Web That Time Forgot, an article on the Mundaneum, which was exciting news last year on the reliably fascinating Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society blog. Hell, even your laundress posted about that tired old Mundaneum on this blog over a year ago...and I think my post was more readable.

Since tonight's post is a non-post, tonight's image is in honor of the blogger-formerly-known-as-Nonanon. No, that blogger does not need to fret over dress sizes (she is lovely) but she tipped me off to the damn funny, brilliantly creative blogger known to many but newish to me:
Indexed ("published weekday mornings as the coffee brews")
The 3x5 card here was one of her early ones. Hats off to Jessica Hagy (wearing a fine hat in her profile picture too), one impressively creative person.

With index cards.

On the web.

Gotta go. Time to fist-bump my husband good night.

equally shared housework: not a fantasy?

2008-06-15T13:53:00.019-05:00

A man who irons.

A smiling iron(ing) man.
Who is the fellow in the image at left?

a superhero?

maybe

The most beautiful man in the world?

perhaps

A well-paid model, impersonating a jolly ironer -- the grinning and ironing are just part of doing his "real" job?

That is most likely the correct answer.

Compare his picture to this post which sadly, accurately still reflects the current state of The Laundress.

The cover article in today's New York Times Magazine made me stop breathing.

Really.

Either it was my powerful, emotional response to the article or lung-constricting fumes from the Windex I had been slathering about the house, but something triggered an asthma attack... I am leaning towards the assumption that it was my bewildered, excited reading of the article, featuring couples who have worked out more-or-less equal sharing of child rearing and household duties. Sharing of housework is a topic covered in such a prominent mainstream media article?

Wow!

I worked at my paid employment on Saturday. Having a one-day weekend sucks. The primary reason I hate working Saturdays is that it compresses the majority of the week's housework and yard work into one intense Sunday of labor for me. A day that always ends with a dismal feeling of having nothing to talk about yet much still needing to be done. A day that ends with my husband having cheerfully ploughed through the majority of the thick newspapers and having accomplished some sort of recreational activity with the kids. He has things to talk about and things to say, I have been huffing cleaning products. Life-work balance be damned.

The article champions The ThirdPath Institute, an organization that I had never before heard of but find intriguing. Check out their site! The founder, Jessica DeGroot, discusses her organization on an interview with the Forbes video network. Never mind the goofy commercials, I believe Ms. DeGroot is on to a good thing here. Watch the video, what do you think?

Will reflect on the article and explore the many swell links to related sites included on the NYT website and The ThirdPath Institute tonight and tomorrow -- maybe there is some hope for changing things in my household? What about yours? Is this news to you too? I would love to do more of the stuff with the kids and far, far less of the housework.

Who are these couples, with partners who clean? They aren't people I know...most are a decade or more younger than me and several decades younger than my husband. White, well-educated, well off. The lawyer married to the business executive mentions "we outsource a lot" as far as household chores. Hmm, that certainly solves a whole lot of the who does-the-housework issues, doesn't it? But the lawyer poster-boy doesn't really reflect reality for those of us who mow our own lawns and clean our own toilets. There are a couple interviews with nods to same sex couples. Overall, lesbian couples are role models for heterosexuals, but no coverage of gay co-parents. That is unfortunate -- doesn't seem like it would have been too much of a stretch to find a couple of gay dads willing to talk about division of labor...

Overall? Delicious to discover that this is considered newsworthy. It is not just me struggling (poorly) with this topic. Much of my blogging seems to be trying to figure out whether, in my marriage, it is our differences in gender or age or our own personal glitches that ended up with me being, well... The Laundress.

Meanwhile, if housework issues come up in your relationship (with or without kids), don't miss:

When Mom and Dad Share It All

Savoring turtle-saviors

2008-06-13T22:09:00.014-05:00

Image posted here is a golden, floating angel of a turtle.

A common snapping turtle.

What a beauty. What a dinosaur.

I took an afternoon of vacation today. Actually, I had intended to take a full day off but the person who writes our schedules decided to go out of town herself this weekend -- hence, I was required work this morning. Grrr. I asked for the full day off in December and it was "approved". Oh WELL.

But today was a special day, for lots of reasons.
First and foremost:

it is my husband's birthday. A day worth celebrating. I married a good man. For example, he always brakes for turtles, whether on the side or the middle of the road. If we are driving and see a loose dog, he pulls over to the curb immediately. I am the legs, but he is the mastermind of our critter-saving operations.

Anyhow, driving home alone from work this beautiful, sunny afternoon -- in the exact same location that Sunday's softshell maneuvering occurred -- I see a man in a dress shirt, marching across the road, arms extended, gripping what looked like a black dinner plate. His hands were at six- and eight o'clock. He was moving fast.

Pulled in behind his car (late-model, luxury small SUV). He was releasing his turtle on to the stream bank. When he came back, I asked him if it was a softshell. Nope. A snapper! Damn. Who is this turtle-hero, picking up a snapping turtle barehanded?

Told him I had retrieved a big softshell from almost the same location a few days earlier. He said he was glad I had... I told him she was beautiful. He thought his snapper was too... I drove away, saw him in the rearview mirror, going back across the road to double-check on "his" turtle.

Ah, but the world is good and people are kind. Turtlekind is remarkable, for their beauty and their stubborn dinosaur-like refusal to see neither man nor auto as king. Plus, I apologize to the heavens above and the turtles for assuming all other residents of the Middle of Hell, especially those with SUVs are turtle-hating creeps.

Turtles rule!

The Tortoise Trust has a detailed, informative article on common snapping turtles (tips on helping snappers at the bottom of the article).

Here is an excerpt of useful turtle roadside assistance information from the Minnesota Heretological Society, There's a Turtle Crossing the Road. What do I do?:
(linked/posted on this blog earlier, but refresher was useful to me, maybe this will come in handy for you too!)

Turtles are frequently hit by cars while crossing roads. If you see a turtle crossing the road please help it across. First, make sure that it's safe to help (do not endanger yourself or others by walking into heavy traffic). Move the turtle in the direction that it is traveling (this is not necessarily toward the water). Turtles know where they are going and will turn around and march right back into traffic if you return them to the side of the road they came from.
Small turtles can be easily carried across the road. Large snapping turtles should be carefully carried by the rear of their shell, or both rear legs, with the head facing away from your body. Do not pick up a turtle by the tail, this may damage the vertebrae.

herding turtles

2008-06-09T01:16:00.017-05:00

It has been raining rather a lot lately, locally.

Flooding, actually. Roofs leaking, basements filling up, roads closed, travel advisories. That kind of weather.

Deluge after deluge, prompting far too many Noah's Ark jokes. Dark skies split by bolts of lightning and thunderous pounding downpours -- dramatic weather. Not conducive to exploring the great outdoors.

Except... everything is wet and green and glowing. My gardens look spectacular -- other than the large flowered early-bloomers. Peonies are burying their heads in the mud and the front yard's normally spectacular banks of tall white iris are sprawled across the lawn like so much soggy bathroom tissue.

Encountered this weekend, due to the crazy weather: one exceptionally amazing creature.

A most wondrous animal that I never knew existed. Right here -- in the Middle of Hell.

Yep. And she has made everything in my world better and brighter and now I am going to share that with YOU.

Sunday morning, we woke up early. Husband scooted out on a hopeless athletic endeavor. Kids and I puttered about with the pets, heavy rainfall was not promising for getting the rest of us out and about... Husband returned from his aborted sport and suggested we head out for brunch. Okay, why not? Nothing better to do and it was pouring.

Just a couple blocks from home, driving past the middle school (adjacent to a creek and nature conservancy), we spot something in the middle of the road. Something large and moving and weird-looking. A turtle.

Husband turned on the blinkers and stopped the car. I grabbed our silly, tiny umbrella and trotted out to escort the turtle out of the road. We are experienced self-appointed turtle saviors, having rescued a couple snappers and several sliders from local roads over the years. Figured by the size, it must be a snapper. Except, maybe it had been hit by a car already? It was so FLAT.

Damn.

Weirdest, most gorgeous turtle I have come face-to-face with... a strange, tubular pair of nostrils, smooth flat shell, massive and flattened flippery legs. Dull olive drab coloration, with flashy pale yellow racing stripes on the head and elegant, long neck and thick tail.

I approach the impressive turtle, who is sitting in the middle of a two-lane road. She looks at me, boldly. Small, intelligent eyes. Confident. Not afraid, but not friendly either. Not moving.

I poke at her shell gently, with the edge of my shoe. Amazingly, her shell bends, it is squishy-soft and flexible, like a rubber bathmat. A softshell turtle for sure!

She rears up on her flat, powerful flipper-legs and races off with shocking speed to the curb. Bumps up on the curb but is WAY too flat and short to get over it. She tries to climb the curb and falls and tries again and falls again and then goes rapidly swim-running along in the rushing water of the gutter. Heading away from the relative sanctuary of the nature reserve and its stream. Oops.

I was delighted with this turtle but worried too. I was intent on herding her back to the conservancy. She was formidable and fast but not cooperative. Her idea was to either hang out in the middle of the road or maybe head towards suburban lawns. Bad plans.

Meanwhile, my family was staying dry inside the car. Husband was getting peeved with all of the cars that kept flying past us. My son was in a panic that I would get hit or the turtle would or perhaps both of us. Every few minutes, he would step outside the car and scream "Stop scaring the turtle! Stop getting wet! Don't be an idiot!" (Thanks, kid.)

My daughter was reading a book. I don't think she noticed that our car stopped, let alone the drama unfolding right outside.

A guy walked by with his two little kids, all of them bundled up in slickers. I thought they would want to observe the turtle, so I helpfully pointed her out (she was HUGE) and said "Look over here! Isn't this amazing!" The dad said, "Oh, um, yeah, that is one big turtle." His kids didn't even come over to see her! Maybe they were distracted by the storm? Maybe they were preoccupied with whatever mission had them out in the pounding rain. Perhaps they were scared of the dripping-wet and hyperventilating Laundress? But I am truly perplexed why none of those buzzing-by cars stopped for a closer look. This was one FINE turtle.

I was soaked. The umbrella blew inside out (it was gusty, in addition to being rainy) and I think this was the very happiest I have been in... (scary, this) a year or more? The miracle of the turtle. The most beautiful turtle in the world. She was almost four of my hands long, across the shell. While measuring, I kept my hands several inches above her back, cautiously.

Debated trying to pick her up by the back of her shell, on either side of the tail. But her neck was so long and her shell edges so bendy (petted the top of her shell, it was kind of hard). Not safe to pick up. I know, turtles don't have teeth, but this lady was formidable and I am certain she was annoyed enough with me that her bite would have been awfully painful.

I wished for a tape measure, for a camera, to get rid of my family and the cars and the road. Wanted some time alone to concentrate on the turtle. Damn. Really a marvelous creature. Tried to memorize her features. Got her to charge over to a driveway and down a sidewalk and across a walkway and then down the pea-gravel path to the rushing stream bank.

Left her there.

On the way home from brunch, we checked. No turtly road-kill. No turtle roadblock or speed-bump. She was gone. We were so lucky to have had this chance encounter. Er, I was... my family was pretty annoyed with me. Anyhow. I still had NO idea who she was, other than being a generic "softshell turtle". Was she an invasive? A native? No idea. Off to research...

Here is what I have learned:

She was a spiny softshell turtle. Apalone spinifera, formerly known as Trionyx spiniferus. They are fascinating turtles that make really crappy pets (check out C. Dee Dillon's article for the Tortuga Gazette). This turtle was on the western border for A. spinifera spinifera and the eastern border for A. spinifera hartwegi. In my region, the two sub-species may interbreed... perhaps a hybrid?

Pictured above left: a Texas spiny softshell, which looks much like the Eastern spiny softshell turtle I encountered, as far as shell color and general appearance (though the pictured turtle is lacking those flashy yellow stripes). Male spiny softshells are much smaller, so my assumption (why?) that the turtle I encountered was a female was probably correct. Supposed to grow to about 18 inches for a large female. "My" turtle was at least 22 inches, maybe more. A big girl! My hands are almost exactly 6" -- she was very close to four hand-lengths of them. No idea what she might have weighed.

The first image, at the top of this post, is from the excellent World Chelonian Trust site. The site includes a rather graphic but funny and informative (therefore, PERFECT) article, The Story of the "45 Pound Endangered Turtle", in which veterinarian (and photographer) Chris Tabaka demonstrates how to remove a fish hook from the throat of what turned out to be a 6.2 pound, non-endangered spiny softshell.

Yeah, that article gave me pause: am I just another hyperbolic wannabe turtle rescuer, like the lady in Dr. Tabaka's article? Is my turtle growing in size, like the fishwives stories about the one that got away? Nope, most certainly the turtle I escorted did not weigh anywhere near 45 pounds and I did not for a moment think she may be endangered (species-wise)...

but I was wondering if she was an invasive. Hadn't ever seen or heard about midwestern softshells. Turns out these turtles are invasives in other parts of the US, helped along no doubt by a misinformed pet trade customers who end up releasing them from unnatural into non-native habitats (they are at once fragile and aggressive, therefore lousy candidates for aquarium hobbyists and other would-be turtle owners).

From the Animal Diversity Web (green italics added by yours truly):

Predation:

Spiny softshell turtle nests are often destroyed by raccoons, skunks, and foxes. Young softshell turtles are eaten by raccoons, herons, and fish. Adults are killed and eaten only by humans, they have few natural predators. When bothered, spiny softshell turtles will extend their long necks and snap viciously at their attacker, inflicting a painful bite. They are wary and can hide themselves quickly.
Harding, J. 1997. Amphibians and Reptiles of the Great Lakes Region. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Conservation Status:

Because A. spinifera respire aquatically with pharyngeal gill slits and cloaca, they are vulnerable to Rotenone, a chemical that is used to kill unwanted fish. Rotenone hinders oxygen absorption and many soft shell turtles are now gone from Rotenone contaminated waters in the Great Lakes. Habitat fragmentation and shoreline development continues to threaten nesting sites. Along with other turtles, A. spinifera is hunted or shot for "fun" and human consumption. Eggs, hatchlings, and juveniles are threatened by various human activities and vulnerable to predators such as raccoons, foxes, and skunks, all of which thrive in areas of human development. They are not listed as endangered, vulnerable, or threatened by the IUCN, CITES, or the U.S. Endangered Species Act. (Harding, 1997)

Good lord, who finds such a marvel and eats it? What kind of fun would come from killing one? Barbarians.

An alternative title considered for this post was "No scutes? 'S cute!". No scutes on softshell turtles. They can breathe with their butts. That is cool. Everything about them is cool. Except killing them, whether or not you intend to eat them. No, no, no. Just say no to Apalone turtle soup!

The all-around fantastic Discovering Lewis and Clark web site has a special mention of spiny softshells, the last third of the article entitled 'Twixt Plated Decks.

The USGS included this single sentence in their assessment of (invasive) Apalone: "In North America, Apalone species are commonly exploited and exported for the commercial trade in the Asian market (Zug et al., 2001)."

Nuts. I have blogged away on this before... American turtles keep ending up in Asian stock pots.
Bad for turtles. Bad for the planet. Bad all around.

A shiny sunbeam of hope? Discovered a couple excellent blogs while poking away about turtles yet again. New discoveries, visit them and you will be happy and enlightened. First: Rigor Vitae: a view through the eyes of a nature artist is a Salt Lake City area blogger, artist and naturalist, "Straddling the uneasy isthmus between art and biology, without quite touching either." Hell, I am partial to anyone straddling an isthmus, but most especially this fellow, talented as both an artist and a blogger. Be sure to check out his March 7, 2007 post that rolls into spiny softshells, with fine illustration (and also touches on the beloved Lake Hoan Kiem cryptozoology wonder).

Another notable blogger is Alabama's Rurality. Her encounter with a softshell was gorgeously photodocumented and engagingly described. Splendid images. Don't miss it!

So now I know. I would far rather blog on turtles than laundry. Actually, I would greatly prefer to encounter many more turtles in my everyday life and far less laundry.

Love,
your bedraggled Laundress

collared: colored and Chinese?

2008-06-05T15:11:00.027-05:00

Reported by the New York Times, January 22, 1906:

Celluloid Collar -- Dog Gone
From Le Matin of Paris

The latest craze in New York is celluloid collars for dogs. Mlle. Zelie, of La Folies Bergere has a friend in America who sent her one of these collars. Mlle. Zelie also had a little dog. On this dog Mlle. Zelie placed the collar. Now Mlle. Zelie has neither dog nor collar. Mademoiselle smokes cigarettes. She was smoking one when she put on the collar. The cigarette touched the collar, and pouf! it was all over.

Segregation is a big part of doing the wash. The fundamental rule: separate the colors from the whites. Sharing wash water leads to color bleeds and all becomes sullied. Nah, more specifically -- colored garments are never adversely affected by sharing the load with white ones... but the whites pick up tones and nuances they didn't have before. They become less white and more "colored".

The latest presidential election campaigns have thrown things into high relief: does it ultimately all boil down to black and white?

Never mind that female thing... that is all moot (mute) once again. Damn but I don't find myself wishing that pouf! it would all be over. Such a long, long time from here to November...

Barack Obama is a biracial man. Somehow, his mother keeps getting erased. I have been wondering how Asian Americans and Mexican Americans and Native Americans and other women and people of color are viewing this election. Not much room for shades of gray (or other colors), the way mass media is spinning it.

Your Laundress really needs to get outta town. Time for some museum tours. Virtual museums, a brief VR vacation from the real world of bleaching and fabric softeners.

Curious image posted at left, discovered thanks to an excellent site: The Costumer's Manifesto. The caption reads:

circa 1880s celluloid collar ad, showing white man taunting an alarmed group of Chinese laundry workers his new celluloid collar that requires no starching.

Yep, those Chinese laundrymen are clearly alarmed, as shown by their excited pigtails. The white guy is a weird caricature too. A buffoon, foolishly showing off his silly box of celluloid collars.

Turns out these new-fangled collars were immensely flammable (not to mention tacky looking) and were soon banned from many social circles. Apparently, more often viewed as inappropriate apparel for aesthetic rather than safety reasons.

Another fascinating related image is available from the Library of Congress American Memory Project, showing Chinese laundrymen, put out of work by "celuloid cuffs, collars, and bosoms" sailing back to China in laundry tubs as gleeful, white men (liberated by their inflammatory collars) wave them off...

What is the connection between Chinese immigrants in the US and laundries? This is a topic that your laundress has been naively unaware of for far too long. Thanks to The Preemie Experiment for bringing this perplexing topic up! Time to wring it out a bit...

The best web-based examples that I found were not US but Canadian. Strangely, once again, a topic that seems so "American" is more clearly examined by Canadians. Anyhow, it appears that a lot that was true about the establishment and treatment of Chinese immigrants (and their laundries) in the United States also applied to Canada. Thanks again to our northern neighbors, for providing an unflinching perspective.

The best of my web touring? The Canadian Museum of Civilization's virtual exhibition of a (permanent?) museum exhibit: Enduring Hardship: Chinese Hand Laundry (I could not get the panoramic movie of the exhibition to display well -- close ups very fuzzy -- in spite of having newest version of QuickTime -- but go on and give it a visit! Fabulous concept, to have a video access to museum displays that one might otherwise be unable to view at all!)

In addition to the museum's exhibit, there is an 86 page book (exhibition catalog?) published by the museum, which I am ordering... here is a summary sentence from a review of the printed work by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association: "For a long time, the populations of Chinese communities in North America have been viewed by outsiders as docile, apolitical, and uncommunicative. Their isolation is assumed to self‑imposed, stemming from a desire to maintain their cultural tradition."

From the museum website text:

Two factors contributed to the establishment of the Chinese laundries. First, all that was required was a bit of capital and long hours of work, with the owners speaking little English or French. Secondly, the Chinese were discouraged from entering other occupations and were subjected to legal restrictions and socio-economic discrimination. They could only engage in labour-intensive work.

Laundrymen experienced social and family isolation. In most cases, their family members were left behind in China. In an era of racial intolerance and fearful of competition from cheap Oriental labour for jobs, some politicians and trade union groups pressured the Dominion Government to severely restrict the numbers of incoming Chinese, Japanese and East Indians. Head taxes and legislative exclusions discouraged the immigration of family members, and ultimately, the Chinese Immigration Act (1923-1947) barred the admission of all Chinese. The hand laundry thus became essentially a man's occupation. Ho King, for example, the proprietor of Winnipeg's Central Laundry, left China in 1918 and was joined by his wife in 1959 - a forty-one year separation.
The life of a laundryman was very difficult and monotonous. Most of his time was spent washing, ironing, pressing, packaging and delivering clothes and chopping wood. The work was hard, and the income was very low. Apart from their long hours of work, laundrymen made an occasional trip to Chinatown to buy groceries and have a cup of tea or a game of mahjong with their fellow clansmen and friends.
With few resources and the denial of opportunity, the Chinese community in Canada was relegated to the low end of the socio-economic ladder for more than half a century. With gradual mechanization from the late 1940s to the 1960s, and with the ageing of the earlier Chinese immigrants, the occupation of laundryman inevitably petered out, but it remains an unforgettable part of Chinese-Canadian history.

Nifty rolling in of comics culture and Canadianism and Chinese laundry stereotypes can be found in a four-year-old post from The Opinionated Lesbian (sadly, a now defunct blog): No tickee, no shirtee.

The University of Texas San Antonio hosts a terrific website on Texan Cultures (there is also a bricks museum devoted to this topic, Texas has a whole lotta multiculturalism going on, W. not withstanding). From their article on Chinese Texans:

Washing other people’s dirty laundry was not considered by very many as a desirable occupation…or was suitable only for women. Therefore, the Chinese man was allowed to do this work because washing laundry posed little economic threat—at least at first.

San Diego Chinese Historical Museum had a 2005 exhibition on History of Chinese Hand Laundries in San Diego:

Chinese laundries emerged wherever Chinese immigrants settled; from small mining towns to towns where railroads were being built. By the 1870s, there were Chinese laundries in the large towns all across the country. By the 1880s, there were at least 1,000 Chinese laundries in the city of San Francisco alone. By 1900 most large American cities had Chinese laundries, which employed 75% of all Chinese men.

Another interesting source of information has been a PBS series, Freedom: A History of US. Segment Six of Webisode Eight is The Strange Case of the Chinese Laundry. Wonderfully, the site is aimed at kids (hence your damn simple Laundress greatly appreciating the site?) It has a refreshingly direct approach to the topic. Here is part of the site's plain and painful text:

During the Gold Rush, the men who flocked to California needed to get their clothes washed. Traditionally, in Europe and America, women were expected to wash clothes. So most of the miners wouldn't wash their own clothes. But Chinese men would. Racists are haters, and the racists hated the Chinese. They got mean-spirited laws passed to try to put the Chinese launderers out of business. Sheriff Hopkins arrested almost all the Chinese owners of laundries in wooden buildings. He arrested only one of the white laundry owners—and she was a woman!

One result of Sheriff Hopkins' arrests was Yick Wo v. Hopkins, a Supreme Court case that yours truly is trying to make sense out of, both from its legal description and historical context. Not sure from the descriptions what it really was all about, as far as the law. I will just end this with a big shout out to Yick Wo and all that he fought against -- he was courageous to refuse to pay the "fine" and to pursue legal action. Seeking his rights when blatantly, wrongly being denied them.

still exploring the history Chinese laundries in the US and damn, it is a big topic with much shoved under the rug...

share links and info here please!

Thank you!

tl

The low-down on the up-and-up.

2008-06-04T09:29:00.009-05:00

Been kind of low lately. Lying low, feeling low.

Planning on picking myself up, dusting off and back with a flair.

Soon.

Sorry for no worthy posts.

your sniffly correspondent,

tl

cat toes and cameltoes and Karen Allen and me

2008-05-26T23:14:00.016-05:00

Damn.

Worried about the cat, he has a puffy pad on his hind trotter. It stinks and his normally pink paddy-paw has turned shades of black, white, and deep, angry red.

A pus-sy pussy paw. Infection? Off to the vet, tomorrow. I should be thinking about bigger and better things, surely the cat will be fine. Yet, preoccupied about a cat's-paw.

Here is a picture of Karen Allen (aka Marion Ravenwood),
star of the 1981 Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark and the 2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull .

Buzz-worthy Karen Allen, now 56 and gorgeous. Keeping those geek juices flowing for quite a while now.

Saw the newest flick this weekend, with my husband and kids, ages 14 and nine. We all liked it just fine. Best part, in my opinion, was that both Indy and Marion were shown as grown-ups with wrinkles and pudge. Most notably to me, Marion had a visible gray-line of growing out dyed hair. This could not have been an accident, in a Spielberg/Lucas film. They are getting older too, kudos to both for casting a not-twenty-something.

Someone who has been away from the movie screens for quite a while. Here is what Karen Allen has to say about aging, graying actresses:

"These days all somebody has to do is Google you and they know how old you are. I would show up for roles that were written for somebody in their early 50s, and people would say, 'You can't do that, you look too young,' but if I showed up for a role for somebody in their early 40s then the people would say, 'Well, but she's 50.'

"I'm from a generation of fantastic actresses. It's a big pool of really wonderful actresses, and so many of them we never even get to see on the screen anymore."

She ticked off several -- Jessica Lange, Debra Winger, Julie Hagerty.

"I was thinking about Julie Hagerty the other day," she said. "Remember her in 'Lost in America'? . . . It's been so fantastic to see Julie Christie come back and be in films again, because I always loved her, and she disappeared for a long time. Glenda Jackson just completely walked away and became an MP," she said, referring to the actress-turned- British Parliamentarian.

So what has Karen Allen been doing in the 27 years between Indy One and Indy Four?

Knitting.

Ah, yet once more, I am gnashing my veneered teeth. Talent and beauty are so unevenly distributed amongst us. She is beautiful, a film star... and a really skilled knitter?

Good lord, but I have issues with women who knit. I have no natural propensity toward knitting though struggled for years to attain competency. Once took a knitting course but failed to ever even cast away... I think my left-handedness perplexed the instructor (a wondrously talented woman who proudly shared pictures of her self-knitted wedding dress and other needle- marvels). It certainly perplexed me. My cats have a greater affinity for creative use of yarn -- so does my daughter, a self-taught knitter. I have surrendered my stash of pretty wools to their amusement.

Today's New York Times Magazine featured on the cover celebrity celebrity-blogger Emily Gould.

Damn. Bet she knits too.

Somehow, amazingly specialized blogs such as Rate Cameltoes get a bazillion visitors per day, and Emily Magazine sees many thousands...

yet the Dirty Laundry blog languishes with barely one or two accidental tourists?

Buzzfeed is showing 13,729 visitors for their glimpse of Sharon Stone's crotch, yet only 3,446 for Karen Allen and none at all for Dirty Laundry.

Hmmm.

Must be doing something wrong. Okay, not too good at blogging and worthless at knitting. Considering a film career.

On second thought, will try to re-energize my blogging.

smokin', haughty? or, Why the kicks just keep gettin' harder to find

2008-05-12T23:09:00.033-05:00

Whenever I visit a city, my most vivid sensory perceptions are of two worthy scents:

diesel fumes plus cigarette smoke.

Ahhh, ticket to heaven! Priceless -- pure joy.

Like peanut butter and chocolate, Abbott and Costello, Cagney and Lacey, buttered toast and breakfast: just the right combination.

Neither scent is part of my daily walking commute. Neither is part of my daily life. One or the other may be an infrequent visitor. Most notably, oil-burning VWs. NObody in the Middle of Hell (or its environs) smokes.

There is some evil conspiracy against smokers in America.

The circle of acceptable venues and possible locations in which an American adult might enjoy a cigarette IN PUBLIC has shrunk to... nowhere? Well, that it true at least in the Middle of Hell (located on the outskirts of a health-conscious city).

Sure, I am guessing in certain rebellious tweenie/teenie circles smoking is still considered "hot". My brother's third-shift working machinists might beg to differ...but in my suburban dream world and most of the rest of North America?

Uh-uh.

A no-go.

Not allowed, not accepted, not permitted by civic ordinance.

I like Barack Obama for his weird smoking denial/Nicorette addiction.

I especially liked him today, writhing in the throes of this shameful habit. Nope, not smoking. Just hooked on gum.

Monday morning, I woke up late. Was up into the wee hours reading a very good book. I could have walked to work. But I would have been at least five minutes late. Stressy. And it was looking like rain...

so, I drove. Left early, there was ample time to swing by Target and purchase all sorts of suburban household necessities.

Charged right over to aisle 1-A.

Oops.

There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. The Nicorette Fruit Chill 4.00 mg display was EMPTY. I am wise, so I double-checked the end-of-aisle special sale rack displays. Sure enough, Nicorette WAS featured, but Fruit Chill was all gone. Damn.

Nicorette has started a Rewards program -- you get discount coupons based on how much of the product you buy. Hmm, something makes me think I am not the only one misusing the gum. Now they offer a gum abuser's incentive program.

Bought a lousy substitute: Fresh Mint.

There is a problem: they forgot to include the nicotine or... perhaps... my abuse of this product has resulted in unfortunate (and costly) tolerance. Chewing three pieces of 4 mg gum at a time--

and still no kick. Got to chomp four pieces for the right feeling.

Time to give up the gum?

Maybe not.

Tuesday's Science Times had an article by Jane Brody,Trying to Break Nicotine’s Grip, here is a bit of it (with significant part highlighted by yours truly) --

Many products on the market can reduce or eliminate the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, which so often lead to failed attempts to quit. Nicotine replacement therapy is regarded as safe, even in high doses and even for heart patients, and it carries none of the risks of smoking, which exposes people to higher levels of nicotine and 4,000 toxins. Products are available as skin patches, gums, lozenges, inhalers and nasal spray.

Individuals can choose whichever method is most comfortable and convenient, as well as using a combination of a short-acting product like nicotine gum or nasal spray with a longer-acting one like the nicotine patch. According to Dr. Michael B. Steinberg of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in New Brunswick, nicotine replacement can be safely used for as long as a former smoker finds it necessary.

Repeatedly flummoxed when trying to add video to these posts -- here, hopefully is a fine bit of nostalgia, musical accompaniment provided by Paul Revere and the Raiders (anyone else fondly remembering that local bar that had a jukebox stuffed full with PRatR and bathrooms full of prostitutes and good lord, I did spend nights there, nursing three dollars worth of diet Coke and four dollars worth of smokes and it was mighty fine times! Man, and the lyrics are oh so apropros! Whaddya think (sorry for earworm!)

Hell, boy? Iron? Man!

2008-05-12T22:39:00.013-05:00

Aw heck. What have we here?

Image at right is the Big Boy ironing board cover, available for sale at needapresent.com -- and here is their copy on this product:

If she's always too busy to do the ironing, then you need to give her more of an incentive.

This Big Boy ironing board cover features one big sweaty hunk who's wearing a cleverly positioned towelette... and it gets steamier once you switch the iron on.

The heat from the iron whips off his loin cloth, leaving you with more than an eyeful of what's dangling underneath.

The cover is elasticated so fits in seconds, has super thick felt backing, reflects heat to iron both sides of your garment at once and is machine washable.

The cheekiest ironing board cover money can buy!

Cheeky? Hmm, that ain't the half of it. As if viewing exposed male genitalia is what gets women steamy? That part amused me the most. Er, that plus I am already far too busy doing the ironing, so what is my incentive to do (something) else? What kind of assumptions are being made here?

I have a little crush* on Robert Downey, Jr. for being such a seething hunk of tender beefcake in Iron Man (one excellent flick if ya don't try to analyze it too much). Never did care a whit for Mr. Downey, prior to seeing this film... only knew of him from a few bleary-eyed magazine photos and thought, "oh well, another wasted Hollywood b-lister." Nope, this fellow is lovely.

But I have an even bigger crush on a guy named Huck Gutman. A guy who irons.

Damn. One tuff name if you say it right. A poet and a Vermonter.

Author of a curiously provocative essay, published in 2005: Through the Prism of Human Collectivity. Meditations after 15 minutes spent watching a brown man masterfully ironing shirts in upper Manhattan.

Here is an excerpt from Professor Gutman:

For several months the dire situation in America — a senseless war, an assault on civil liberties, a fraying economy, a drive towards oligarchy — has been so depressing that I have not known how to address it in print. Nor do I want to do so, now. For the moment, even in the midst of bad times, I want to acknowledge simply that human labor continues, and that labor has its dignity.

The man ironing with such self-contained pride in his work makes a gesture that is appropriate for all of us. It is of course not enough, just by itself: we all have political roles to play, for society is ours and not the sole possession of a ruling class or small group of political professionals. But doing our work with attentiveness, doing it well, taking pride in whatever work we do in the human community, is the bedrock on which all human society and culture rests. Wallace Stevens wrote poems; my Central American acquaintance irons. Work, prideful work, in the world.

Beautiful sentiments, tenderly observed and thoughtfully examined. But I am struggling to find the poetry in ironing.

Man, where does he leave me? No pride in my work: too many duties heaped on a too-full plate. Not fully inhabiting any kind of life because there is too much to do and too much involves other people's laundry. Not showing up at cocktail parties in an artfully crisp linen blouse. More like nobody wants to talk to somebody who's latest thoughts involved removing grease stains from blue flannel...

It is bondage and shameful and really pisses me off. But somebody needs to do it. Ain't no superhero, just me: The Undignified Laundress.

* t'ain't nothing compared to my crush on Hellboy
(Ron Perlman rocks!)

** Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics are even better than the (excellent) film, give them a read!

If I were you, and you... wormy?

2008-05-07T08:25:00.020-05:00

Do you think about worms?

I do, rather a lot.

Observed lots of worms on the patio when I peered out the back door this morning.

Noted while looking out, checking in on the weather before leaving for work.

Rainy morning.

Lacking good rain gear, I drove.

15 below (Fahrenheit), I can handle. 35 mph winds are OK by me. Heavy snows are no problem...but done in by gentle spring showers.

Wimpy?

So, anyhow, I drove to work (all 3.24 ridiculously short miles) and found myself pondering yet another benefit of walking-commuting: less roadkill. Lower chance of inadvertently killing another living being when walking, other than trampling ants... and earthworms, after a rainstorm.

I try not to step on earthworms (or ants) but it is tricky.

Bicycle-commuting must fall someplace in between walking and autos, as far as roadkill damage. No doubt much closer to walking, though I once saw a biker hit a slow-waddling duck and it was not pretty.

Pictured above is one deliberately calculated worm-lethal bike. Wilf Lunn's Worm Catcher: "Plays on the worm's fear of drowning by creating the sound of a rainstorm. The cloud visually reassures the worm that it has done the right thing prior to being bludgeoned." Well, I found this funny, apologies if you don't.

A specialty bicycle, part of a series of intriguing and funny bicycles created by one multi-talented inventor/cartoonist/celebrity. Never before heard of Mr. Lunn but found his site extremely entertaining (check out his worm-collecting remembrance here! Warning for the squeamish or prudish -- contains a bit of wormy perversion.) Don't miss his cartoons, they are excellent, and ewwww, just pretend "Chewing Gum Menace" is really all about stepping on earthworms.

Thrilling bit of yesterday's (actually last week's) news to share: the giant Palouse earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) has made two new appearances. Two, or perhaps three...

Partial appearances, but apparently still around and with a larger range than previously thought. One specimen was found near Moscow, Idaho in early March 2008 (in two pieces, totalling about two inches long). Another was discovered near Leavenworth, Washington last November. Damage to both has prevented conclusive identification but DNA tests are underway.

Worm fragments of a very rare worm, reported to be prevalent in the 1800s but which has rarely turned up in the past century. What do you think about native giant pinkish-white worms that spit lily-scented mucous, perhaps as a chemical defense mechanism?

Sweet.

(We all know -- I have blogged on this -- that the earthworms in our gardens and environs are mostly invasives, which MAY be friendly garden helpers or more likely quite harmful?)

The big worm's shaky ground was the cause for a petition/lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in August 2006, with the Palouse Prairie Foundation, the Palouse Audubon Society, Friends of the Clearwater, and (most intriguingly) three private citizens petitioning for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The FWS responded, tardily, on October 9, 2007, basically stating that because virtually nothing is known about the habits, habitat or behavior of this worm, they can not protect it. Here is an excerpt, but please read the full text of the FWS news release (perfectly reasonable and understandable but still maddening!):

"...After careful consideration of the petition and the information it provided, the Service found that while the Palouse prairie has experienced a dramatic conversion of native habitat to agricultural practices, information linking the effect agricultural practices that utilize chemicals and result in soil compaction and composition has had on the earthworm is currently nonexistent. In addition, the Service found no information on predation or transmission of pathogens by exotic earthworms to the giant Palouse earthworm. Though there are no existing regulatory mechanisms for the giant Palouse earthworm or for other native earthworms, so little information exists about the population size, trends, habitat needs and limiting factors of the giant Palouse earthworm, the Service could not determine if a lack of regulations may pose a threat to the species."

How'd ya like them apples? The worm is so rare and so little is known about it that nothing can be done (at the governmental level) to try to save it? Wait a minute, maybe more than three individuals can get behind this? Are you in??

The FWS is NOT the villain here. But the current administration surely is -- for example, check out this post from e-wire:

"Failure to respond to the petition is all too typical of the Bush administration, which has protected the fewest number of species under the Endangered Species Act of any administration since the law was passed," said Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "To date, the Bush administration has only protected 58 species, compared to 522 under Clinton and 231 under the first Bush president."

The Dubya Bush administration has found conditions to be improving for native species, hence dramatically fewer needing protection? or, perhaps, just too distracted with other endeavors to worry about the lowly worms here at home?

In the name of balance, here is an anti-worm petition post, from March 7, 2008. Posted by Nancy Reyes, a "retired physician who lives in the rural Phillipines" and blogs away at Finestkind Clinic and fishmarket ("Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit.") She has a fun blog, doesn't fit in any kind of box or compartment. But I think she was dead wrong on this post and shooting (shouting?) from the hip.

I love the description offered by Steve Paulson of Friends of the Clearwater -- "This worm is the stuff that legends and fairytales are made of. What kid wouldn't want to play with a three-foot-long, lily-smelling, soft pink worm that spits?" YEAH. How cool is that?

Feeling a bit guilty after the previous post's big rant on wolves, a glamorous and beloved species. Not a hardcore anti-gun nor anti-hunting champion, though I find the plight of wolves disturbing.

But truly, I find these worms even more engaging than wolves. Hope that you do too. They need support and are less likely to find it than the furry canids (who admittedly are on shaky ground themselves.)

Did you know that 97% of all animals are invertebrates?

What kind of conservation efforts exist for invertebrates, anyhow?

Well, there is Buglife ("conserving the little things that run the world"). This a UK site, concerned primarily with British bugdom. Beautiful website and a fun browse. Sadly, no mention of the newsworthy giant Palouse earthworm.

However, the Xerxes Society, an international non-profit invertebrate conservation group, is concerned about the giant Palouse. This group also has an essay on their website, Why Protect Endangered Invertebrates (excerpt posted below, emphasis added):

Though they are indisputably the most important creatures on earth, invertebrates are an overlooked segment of our ecosystems. Many people can identify an endangered Bengal tiger, but few can identify an endangered Salt Creek tiger beetle. The Endangered Species Act has always treated vertebrates more generously than it does invertebrates. Whereas the ESA authorizes the protection of "distinct population segments" of vertebrates, only species and subspecies of invertebrates may be protected. This provision was a compromise between the House and the Senate in 1978 after the House voted to eliminate protection for invertebrates altogether. Moreover, unlike the success stories of the American alligator and the brown pelican, no insect has been taken off the ESA list.

And if no insect has been shepherded to safety, well, you can guess how the worms are doing...

roadkill, in the fast-moving, political traffic that is aka conservation.

sorry, another non-post from your poll-watching, anxious laundress.

Dinner, guessed? or, Wolves and fishes

2008-05-06T21:09:00.016-05:00

"Few animals have ever haunted our dreams or fired our imaginations more than the wolf. Unfortunately, by the early part of this century, man had almost exterminated the wolf from the lower 48 states. The recovery of the wolf is becoming an impressive conservation success story and a gift to future generations" (Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior).

...and we humans are most ungrateful recipients of the gifts of this planet.

Timber wolves (Canis lupus, aka gray wolves), listed as an endangered species since the 1970s, have been making a comeback in my state and several others.

After wolves were delisted from the Endangered Species Protection Act in 2007, individual states and Native American tribes assumed responsibility for the conservation and "management" of them. Predictably, this has led to an increasingly heated debate on wolf hunting.

What kind of sportsmanship is involved in wolf hunting anyhow?

In a "fox guarding the hen house" scenario, the state's Department of Natural Resources held a vote. The attendees of the state's Conservation Congress cast 4,848 votes in favor of hunts to 772 opposed. I am baffled by whatever logic led to this lopsided vote.

It seems very odd to me, when an entire population of a species often numbers less than the population of a small town, that the topic of hunting is even open for debate. Good lord, wolves were hunted nearly to extinction to preserve white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations for sport hunters.

That is right, wolves were killed off to preserve the white-tails that are such an important part of our state's deer hunting culture. Deer: key players in lucrative business involving the regional insurance companies and auto body industries. The pretty creatures were involved in over 125,000 traffic accidents in this state in 2006*. The species also plagued by Chronic Wasting Disease, that nasty prion introduced by human involvement (in "game management") from diseased western elk and mule deer.

*check out the Deer Vehicle Information Clearinghouse for interesting information and statistics.

This state's deer population was estimated to be 1,217,000 in 2007. The wolf population? Somewhere between 540 - 577. The would-be wolf hunters cite the increasing occurences of wolf depredation on livestock (estimated to be approximately 17 animals per year), from a population of 1, 251,000 dairy cows (not to mention sizable populations of beef cattle, sheep, horses, chickens and other livestock). Notice that there are even more cows than white-tails? Maybe the real problem is too many people.

Hmmm, I do suck at math but something just is not adding up here.

Ah, but this post was only intended to briefly note an article that appeared in the NYT a week ago. Actually, the full article was the provocative An Unlikely Way to Save a Species: Serve It for Dinner, but the part that piqued my interest the most was a sidebar: Celebrating Shad by Sparing It.Read the articles if you missed them, they are interesting. Here a bit of a quote, with the part that bedevils me emphasized by yours truly:

At one long-running Hudson River shad festival this spring, the part of the shad will be played by farmed Atlantic salmon.

For the past few years, Riverkeeper, the Hudson River conservation group, has been easing the fish off the menu of the festival it stages in Garrison, N.Y. This year’s event, on May 18, will be completely shad-free.

The issue is simple conservation. Shad swim from the ocean to the upper reaches of rivers each spring to spawn. In the Hudson River, the number of shad has been dwindling because of overfishing and decades of environmental sins.

That is right: farmed Atlantic salmon. I thought I had mis-read that...out of the frying pan and into the fire? What a weird "environmental" choice. They might as well be eating wolves.

So here I go again, suggesting roadkill deer or opossum for the menu? We do know to stay away from armadillo barbeque...

The wolf is at the door.

Vacuous (vacuuming) vacations

2008-04-30T10:47:00.009-05:00

On vacation today.

Another isolated weekday of paid vacation away from paid employment.

Not yet noon, but toilets are scrubbed, floors vacuumed, assorted bedding is in various stages of the laundering cycle. Much accomplished so far!

Today's excursions will involve a visit to Sear's for a tune-up kit (fresh oil, filter, blade) plus a stop at the gas station for to fill up the gas can, followed by yours truly pushing the mower about (for the first, this season, of what shall be many lengthy mower-journeys through the yard).

Accompanied by a side-trip involving a whole lotta laundry.

Tropical islands and sandy beaches exist only in my mind.

Heavily. Not exactly bikini-ready.

There is a blueberry pie on the kitchen counter, with only two slices missing. My husband and daughter enjoyed some for dessert last night, heated in the microwave and enhanced with vanilla ice cream. Son passed on pie but did devour ice cream.

Me? I wistfully, remorsefully served but refrained from participating. Too fat for pie. Especially with ice cream.

But now, the pie is sitting there. Alone. Unattended. Who would know, if I ate a bit? Or half? Or all the rest?

Or just threw it away (their memories are short!) That shall be the fate of the leftover blueberry pie. So tempting... so forbidden.

Off on another sidetrip, to the trashbin.

Losing the race -- by a hare's breath?

2008-04-21T13:15:00.026-05:00

It is finally spring, in spite of the late April snow flurries.

As I walked out the door, heading to work this morning, I saw two big, fat rabbits mating in the backyard.

Damn.

There goes the garden. Tiny baby bunnies will soon be scampering about, all over the middle of Hell. Nibbling up the bedding plants, gnashing away at the shrubbery. Rabbits are highly successful at reproduction, we all know that...

Aesop was wrong. Slow and steady does NOT win the race. Consider the fate of the world's turtles.

Turtling
-- a sailing term, when a small boat goes pointy-side down. Not good. Hard to recover, at least for successful completion of a race.

Ah, and the poor race of turtles? They are in dire straits.

Turtles.

One of evolution's greatest success stories, surviving on earth for over 225 million years. They wandered the earth when the dinosaurs roamed and yet still live here today.

For how much longer? That is a painfully uncertain question. Almost two thirds of the world's turtle species have threatened or endangered status.

Several different scientific names are used for turtles including Chelonia, Chelonii, Testudines, and Testudinata. The earliest fossils are from the beginning of the age of dinosaurs, in the late Triassic. The Testudines reached its greatest diversity by the end of the Cretaceous. Today only 260 species representing 13 families survive. Although turtles are abundant in the tropics, they also are quite diverse in temperate regions and have been recorded in Arctic waters.

Records from Olduvai Gorge indicate that men have eaten turtles for at least 2 million years. We have had a severe impact on turtles, causing the extinction of many forms, especially land tortoises. Today the problem is quite serious with many land tortoises, sea turtles and aquatic forms facing extinction. Loss and degradation of habitat and continued killing of reproductive females on the nesting beach and removal of their eggs are the biggest problems. The future of many of these survivors from the age of dinosaurs will depend on a conscious effort on our part.

Turtles have successfully existed almost everywhere on Earth, including many places where humans have been barely present, such as deserts and bogs and deep oceans. Natalie Angier wrote poignantly on their behalf, in an article that appeared in the NYT in 2006: Though Sturdy Survivors, Turtles Prove to Be Ill Equipped for Human Threat.

Impressively long-lived individuals with an even more impressive longevity of species. Gorgeous creatures, always. Some are amazingly large, others endearingly small. Many are just someplace in between, but all are handsome.

One turtle species that didn't survive, and now only exists in museums and under fields in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas is pictured at right: an extinct sea turtle from the time of the dinosaurs -- the famous Archelon ischyros specimen of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. A show-stopper, a jaw-dropper. One gorgeously big and impressive turtle. Never mind that missing back paw, this is one remarkable fossil skeleton. Have you seen it? Wow, would I love to...

Archelon swam in an inland sea that once covered much of the middle of the US. Their amazing fossilized skeletons are breathtaking, even in images, don't you think?

The largest and finest Archelon ever discovered was found in South Dakota in the 1970s. It is on display in Vienna, Austria, at the National Natural History Museum. Facsimiles are available from the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Inc.

Yep, for $65,000 you can purchase a replica of the Vienna Archelon. As far as I know, no local museums have ponied up. I am sorely hoping one of my deep-pocketed neighbors might buy one, just to fill up their cavernous cathedral-ceilinged living room. Guess that would be the neighbor who actually wants me in their bunco league?

Anyhow, I am eager to see one, an Archelon -- whether an actual or facsimile skeleton. This is one of those instances where the web vacation disappoints. It is hard to visualize the scale of this extinct reptile: 15 feet long, 16.5 wide. Whoa. One huge turtle!

Did you catch the recent press release from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo? The discovery of a lone wild specimen of Rafetus swinhoei (featured in earlier posts on this blog, the famous Rafetus swinhoei, magnificent creature and legendary portent)? The largest and rarest freshwater turtle in existence. Er, that would be barely in existence.

This is big news. Picked up by news media around the world, although rarely making headlines. More of a curiosity, a filler. Once again, your laundress is a bit out-of-touch, because I just found out today. Here is the official press release, in case you missed it:

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo today announced the discovery of a critically endangered turtle in northern Vietnam that previously was thought to be extinct in the wild. Experts from the Zoo's Asian Turtle Program confirmed that they have identified the only known living specimen of a Swinhoe's soft-shell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) in nature.

Last December, the NYT covered the fate of Rafetus swinhoei, in an article by Jim Yardley, China’s Turtles, Emblems of a Crisis. The article focuses on captive specimens in Chinese zoos. There is an interesting video on the NYT website, which includes action footage of the 80 year-old female turtle in the Changsha zoo, as she moves about her blue-and-white tiled enclosure and is showered by an attendant, plus sad film of the pollution and other environmental pressures on the turtle's native habitat.

The zoo's deputy director talks about plans to have the turtle artificially inseminated or perhaps moved to the Suzhou Zoo, which houses the only known male. He is 100. The estimated lifespan for these huge turtles is 100 years. There is an "action plan" in place, sort of... this maybe too-late attempted mating of an octagenarian with a centenarian. We are moving at a snail's pace as our world spins way too fast for huge, dinosaur-age turtles...

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Zoo press release is followed by a cynical update. Vietnamese biologist and turtle expert, Professor Ha Dinh Duc, is skeptical of the reports of the wild Rafetus swinhoei (and rightly so!) since fuzzy photographic images are not exactly hard evidence. Loch Ness Monster, anyone?

My apologies, have been trying to scrape a coherent post out of this topic for a week and a half but it stirs me up and sends me surfing. No good coming of any of it...

except: if you too are impressed by the magnificent enormous LIVE turtle and aghast at how once again we humans have managed to mess up this miracle of a planet...

Okay, we ALL screwed up and did not save the gorgeous little baiji. But the turtles possibly could have a hundred or more offspring from a single successful mating. There is hope.

We can do something. Contribute to the Turtle Survival Alliance.

Hoping that the turtles win this race against time and humans.

Sweet John Clare (with snails and slugs and tortoises and Gilbert White)

2008-04-18T10:28:00.022-05:00

Spring has sprung,

noisily.

Tonight the house windows are open and the frog chorus is impressively but distractingly loud.

Must shut the windows in order to sleep.

For (perhaps?) the first time, it occurred to me that all of those amorous frogs must keep other creatures that would be sleeping wide awake too. Poor squirrels, poor muskrats, poor hawks -- with no windows to close out the sound. What a din!

Hush, shhh.

Let's just start things off with a poem, since it is April and National Poetry Month and all...

Heard in a Violent Ward
by
Theodore Roethke

In heaven, too,
You'd be institutionalized.
But that's all right,--
If they let you eat and swear
With the likes of Blake,
and Christopher Smart,
And that sweet man, John Clare.

Who was John Clare and why does he keep popping into my life and perhaps yours too?

John Clare is sprinkled about in my favorite poetry anthologies and mentioned frequently in writings by poetry critics and essayists. I purchased a (cheap) book last fall, John Clare: Selected Poems. $15.00 paperback Penguin Classic. Since then, I have read from it here and there but only last week read it cover-to-cover and abruptly found out: I love him -- John Clare.

Powerful, sorrowful, beautiful poems.

I bought this (cheap yet priceless) book of John Clare's rich poetry and and since finally reading it find he has set my mind astir. Here is one of his poems, in case you are having trouble thinking of one -- though I bet you have met him before too:

To John Clare

Well, honest John, how fare you now at home?

The spring is come, and birds are building nests;

The old cock-robin to the sty is come,

With olive feathers and its ruddy breast;

And the old cock, with wattles and red comb,

Struts with the hens, and seems to like some best,

Then crows, and looks about for little crumbs,

Swept out by little folks an hour ago;

The pigs sleep in the sty; the bookman comes--

The little boy lets home-close nesting go,

And pockets tops and taws, where daisies blow,

To look at the new number just laid down,

With lots of pictures, and good stories too,

And Jack the Giant-killer's high renown.

Currently reading Jonathan Bate's John Clare: A Biography. It turns out that Bate's publisher, MacMillan has four books about John Clare currently in print. Pretty good for an early- to mid-19th century mad poet. One largely unknown to me, a poorly-educated but passionate poetry reader. There is a John Clare Society, which hosts a John Clare blog where you can read more of his poetry online.

He was born in 1793 and died in 1864. In between, he wrote poetry. He was an amazing fellow, especially since in his country and in his age, he was a loser. He would have been in our time as well, perhaps even more so...

An improbable success story. A poorly-educated and poor man. A day laborer, a farm worker. He fathered nine children, with a woman he loved second-best. He wrote passionate love poems to his first love through out his adult life, his marriage, his "madness". He struggled with mental illness (usually described by biographers as manic-depressive illness or perhaps schizophrenia). John Clare spent much of his life in British insane asylums.

I fell for John Clare and have been scrambling to figure out the meaning of the many unfamiliar words he uses. I puzzled about a rather naughty-sounding term "pooty", referring to some appealing small snails. Some how, reading up on John Clare's "pootys" led me to Gilbert White, who had this delicious bit of information to share about snails and slugs:

birds eat ivy-berries, which now begin to ripen: they are of great service to the winged race at this season, since most other berries ripen in the autumn. The shell-less snails, called slugs, are in motion all the winter in mild weather, & commit great depredations on garden-plants, & much injure the green wheat, the loss of which is imputed to earth-worms; while the shelled snail, does not come forth at all ’til about April the tenth; and not only lays itself up pretty early in the autumn, in places secure from frost; but also throws-out round the mouth of it’s shell a thick operculum formed from it’s own saliva; so that it is perfectly secured, & corked-up as it were, from all inclemencies. Why the naked slug should be so much more able to endure cold than it’s housed congener, I cannot pretend to say.

Oh my! That last sentence just clinched it for me, suddenly need to read more by and about Gilbert White. Another newly-discovered (by me) yet long-famous and long-dead writer. A whole generation earlier than Clare. Gilbert White was the father of natural history writing and is sometimes referred to as the first ecologist. I didn't know! A fine virtual vacation location: Gilbert White's House and The Oates Museum.

Now, still reading the thick John Clare biography, but I am also reading Verlyn Klinkenborg's Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile plus Walter S. Scott's White of Selborne. You can read Gilbert White's famous book, The Natural History of Selborne, on the Project Gutenberg web site. It has been published in more than a hundred different editions and remains a relevant and interesting book today. "The Natural History of Selborne was published in 1789. It was not, however, until the next century, with the issue of cheap pocket editions, that it sold in large numbers, becoming a classic of both science and English writing." Sadly, my public library system does not own a copy... though surely they have in the past? Will pick up a copy to read and then donate.

Springtime and the voices of frogs and dead writers are calling...

Juiced? (standing on an orange juice can)

2008-04-16T22:06:00.011-05:00

I have been walking a lot more than I used to (mostly commute walking but also accelerated dog walking).

One positive result: developed a rather casual attitude towards parking lots. Leaving the car in the way back of the stalls is ridiculously simpler than crankily circling about and hoping for a nearby space.

Logging 6.48 miles per day, minimum, at least 4 days per week, since October. I have not lost any weight, I have not gained inner tranquility. I am not saving the planet. Ain't no good coming from this...

except...

I LIKE walking. I like being outside, like knowing the weather, like having two hours per work day that are mine. In the fall, I had a few dog walkers and joggers that I would regularly encounter, which was nice. Especially the dogs. Most of the winter? The sidewalks were my own and in this long winter of unusually heavy snows, the sidewalks were also more often uncleared and the going slow. Most days, both coming and going I was the ONLY person on the sidewalk. Really. Solitary journeys.

Suddenly *poof* like magic, spring is upon us... sidewalks are cluttered up with fitness walkers and dog walkers and joggers and strollers and toddlers on tricycles. A girl being towed on roller blades by two bouncy pups. Basketball players in driveways, up and down many blocks. Plus straining-thighs and popping eyes of multiple bike riders going up the one significant hill on my route (the one that always leaves me gasping, even downhill).

Tonight, "my" sidewalks included a grandmother escorting a homemade birthday cake, a few blocks north and a couple blocks east, for a toddler party (oh and homemade is so much more enticing and handsome than store-bought! The lettering was wobbly but passionate. She was -- justifiably -- proud!).

Okay. I like walking for the solitude, that I learned this winter. And also for the flashes of companionship. That I learned tonight. This is just good enough: I am walking because I LIKE walking.

Perhaps things weren't quite good enough. I have been having wicked foot pain, in my monkey-toed, flat feet, seemed that could be improved upon. I made an appointment to see a podiatrist. I was self-diagnosing "heel spurs". I have heard of heel spurs, I like the sound of heel spurs -- envisioning morphing into a cowboy, a fighting cock, something fierce and manly?

Nah.

The podiatrist told me that even though my heels hurt, the source of my pain is straining a tendon that runs across the bottom of the foot. An easy cure is to just stand on a can of frozen juice (or a water bottle or whatever) and slowly roll it back and forth after walking. Ices down the tendon, relieves swelling, all calms. That and a few stretching exercises and I should be fine.

Nuts. No drugs? No surgeries? No additional billing for testing or treatments? What planet does the foot doctor live on?

Just standing on a can of orange juice?

What a silly medical prescription. So far (four days into "orange juice can standing" treatment, it helps. I think.)

I like it.

Fanning the fires? Tending health and home

2008-04-08T11:59:00.020-05:00

My husband, a world-class champion newspaper reader, was very eager for me to read an article that appeared in this past Tuesday's New York Times. That evening, when I returned from work, he met me at the door waving the paper. It was unusual.

Usually, my newspaper reading occurs while I am cleaning bird and guinea pig cages. The papers I read are from the previous day. But this article? The Tuesday Science Times is the one section of newspaper that I consistently seek out. I wouldn't have missed it anyhow, but appreciated the significance that my husband wanted to share and therefore I started reading it while removing my coat.

The article that had him so excited was My Daughters Are Fine, but I’ll Never Be the Same by Harriet Brown. It discusses the largely unrecognized aftermath of a child's serious illness on the parents in the months and years that follow. Brown addresses parents who have lost the illusion of safety, of being able to protect their children.

The author's take is particularly interesting to me, because Brown has personal knowledge of her topic. Nope, not writing as a doctor or as a journalist with an intriguing lead. She writes from the heart, from the perspective of a parent with two daughters who are surviving life-threatening illnesses. Her youngest was critically ill with Kawasaki Disease, then her older daughter developed anorexia. Brown has written on their illnesses in the NYT before, in articles such as Just a Rash, And Then It Took Aim at Her Heart; A Diagnosis for One, but an Impact Shared; Counting Calories, but Not to Shed Pounds.

I have worried no end on how H.'s period of acute illness has impacted on his big sister. At the time, we felt we were doing the best we could -- she spent a LOT of time with her grandparents and they are sane and stable influences. But every now and then, C. will comment about how we forgot to feed her dinner, neglected to sign field trip permissions so she was the only kid left behind on a big class trip. And I wonder, will this period of parental neglect will be coming back to haunt us and if it is haunting her.

Ms. Brown's insightful writing identified a topic that has been chewing away at me and my husband since our beloved H. was most mysteriously ill, back at the beginning of this blog. She writes:

We parents throw everything between our kids and danger: bike helmets, seat belts, vaccinations, tooth sealants, self-defense classes. We are creating the illusion of safety as much as anything else, weaving a kind of magic circle of protection. Like all illusions, once broken it can never be made whole again.

That three sentence statement nailed something important, affixing my two years of blog entry jell-o to the wall. Harriet Brown is on to something significant and, I think, previously unrecognized. Besides parents of formerly critically-ill children, caretakers of other dependents (of fragile parents and/or terminally ill spouses) can connect with this topic. Harriet Brown has a blog called Feed Me! ("One woman's opinions on food, eating, body image and weight"). She has been getting comments from all kinds of people who were touched by her article.

The Feed Me! blog comments reflect how universal and how frustrating this unspoken, unacknowledged pain is... Surely not unique, most of us will be in the position at sometime in our lives, if we haven't already (of being the "responsible adult" caring for a delicate and beloved child/parent/partner)?

But the weirdness of being still (disheveled? broken? damaged?) a year or two or more later -- after some sort of resolution? -- as if the caretaker somehow not being properly appreciative and HAPPY when all is well again (or at least all is resolved for now)?

One of my most vivid memories from the time when H. was very ill and everything was so very scary was a phone call from a former neighbor. A woman who cared for a husband who was critically ill with cancer for a decade before it killed him.

She said that one of the things people who haven't been there don't understand is how very tiring it is to be continuously making decisions, large and small, until you just can't THINK. Decisions, such as "should we go with this drug therapy or that one?", "Should he eat this or that?", "Does he need looser-fitting pajamas?" and on and on, all day long, on and on... no end of things to consider and decide for the beloved one. So you just stop being able to discriminate between what is "big" or "small". The chemotherapy choice and the pajamas decision assume equal and perhaps equally undecipherable, undecidable importance.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the article has been the impact it apparently has on my husband. He has brought Harriet Brown's article up in conversation three times over the past week (and this man does NOT talk about anything that doesn't interest him). My husband and I don't talk about the period of time when H. was ill, except in January when we mutually but individually freak out over the annual MRI. I was thinking my husband viewed me as weak for still hurting over this undiagnosed and mysterious "thing" that happened and also I was viewing him as an invulnerable and insensitive guy (in spite of his exemplary parenting when my own was far lacking, during the crisis.) Why do I feel better to know he still hurts too? Harriet Brown brought us closer, in ways we can't talk about directly.

Posted above, the cover of a surprisingly, evenly good (though diverse) collection of essays on caregiving. The book, An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family, is edited by Nell Casey, a woman with insightful personal perspectives on this topic as well. Ms. Casey previously edited Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, a title that I intend to check out very soon. Meanwhile, if Harriet Brown's article touched something in you, you may wish to also read Nell Casey's anthology:

An Uncertain Inheritance examines the caregiving relationship from every angle—children caring for parents; parents caring for children; sib-lings, spouses, and close friends, all looking after one another—to reveal the pain, intimacy, and grace that take place in this meaningful connection.

Bats: they are just like us (only cooler!)

2008-04-08T09:40:00.011-05:00

Did you know that bats are perhaps more closely related to primates or whales than to rodents?

Yeah, they are certainly more like us than they are like mice.

A press release from the University of Michigan this week reported on a study stressing the importance of bats in pest control for Mexican organic coffee plantations. Like the native deer mice that tackle invasive gypsy moths, sometimes our best defenses are the small creatures humans have long-regarded as enemies.

Now bats are hitting us in our Starbucks-fueled hearts. C'mon, you non-bat-loving friends, give the little one a chance! Here is a spendid poem to set things off in the right direction:

The Bat
Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

Theodore Roethke, “The Bat” from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.

(I am quite taken with Roethke. His poem, The Meadow Mouse just clobbered me. Found that shortly before my mousie post. Go on and give it a read if you don't already know it.)

Gosh, what pink-faced darlings are pictured up above? They are white-winged vampire bat babies (Diaemus youngi)! Nope, not living in your attic, no matter how old your house is...they are native to much of tropical South America although not much else is known about them."This species is not protected under CITES or IUCN. The status of populations is poorly known."

A couple weeks ago, the NYT Science Times had an alarming article, Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why. Hey, I am a bat-aficionado. Love the winged folks. But I hadn't heard of this epidemic before. Huge die-offs of native east coast bats (95%?!!) The epidemic is new and not widely reported. Why not? Surely this is a MAJOR newsworthy topic. We don't understand the ramifications? This is way bigger than Mr. Spitzer in impact on all of us.

Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine has a report too-- Vet College scientists aid investigation of why bats in Northeast are mysteriously dying.

Here are swaddled Australian fruit bats, (more human baby-faces). Victims of a tick borne plague that ravaged north Queensland in 2007-2008. The bats, Spectacled flying foxes (Pteropus conspicillatus) were patients at the Tolga Bat Hospital -- a terrific volunteer-staffed sanctuary and rehabilitation center, well worth a virtual visit.

Bat World is a bat advocacy and activism group, which sponsors regional rescue centers. They also have "Adopt A Bat" fund raising going on...there is a baby fruit bat named Bootsana who has her own video. She definitely belongs on CuteOverload (tip: turn off the sound, they really did Bootsana a disservice with the musical accompaniment):

where is my heart? where is yours?

2008-04-07T21:26:00.033-05:00

Do you like where you live? Why or why not? Would a different home change your life a lot

...or just a little?

Is home where the heart is?

We are (perhaps) selling mine.

When my husband and I first were married and even while our daughter was a baby and then a toddler, we lived in a Queen Anne Victorian, in the downtown of our little city.

This was originally my husband's home. It was big for one person. Fine for two, plus my birds. Then we got a dog...

soon after, we had a kid.

Suddenly, five birds, three people and a dog were sharing the space that was ample for one and acceptable for two (plus those birds). When our daughter was born, we stuffed her crib in the living room. Things were getting cozy. But then we were thinking about another kid. Keeping two kids in the living room seemed a little weird.

It is a nice house. The picture above left is a similar version of our pretty house. It is comfortable and friendly and the neighbors are mighty fine. I made a flower garden in the front yard, which was fun and delighted me no end. But the house was too small -- we lived in the top and rented out the bottom.

When our daughter was getting bigger and our son wasn't yet here... we went off looking for a larger home. We looked a couple blocks east and a couple blocks west. My husband grew cranky fast. He hates moving and he hated looking at houses. We gave up.

Then he heard about this New Urban thingy. He was switched on... we could build our perfect house, with every single feature we wanted just as we wished. It would be a mixed-income, mixed use neighborhood, with senior citizens and low income and rental and homeowners and parks and public spaces and oh, oh, oh, so lovely.

Oh, if we had only known...

intentions are not necessarily outcomes.

He grew up in the heart of a small, gritty industrial city. His family home was an original homestead, their roots went deep. This meant he grew up in a downtown area, next to banks and bars and auto dealers and billiards halls -- but no other residences and absolutely no kids. His friends all lived far away, too far for a little kid to bike. He was determined that our kids would have a different life. A suburban life.

I grew up in the "bad" part of our small city and in a very different age than my husband. Sure, a kid on a bike could get just about anywhere... and there was trouble everywhere and kids just learned to either seek it or avoid it (as they saw fit). Unless it dragged you down a dark alley and then you just kept your damn mouth shut. Nope, not exactly ideal but it was real. The grass was never greener on the other sides of town.

When you build a house, you have to select everything. Door knobs and door hinges and toilets and faucets and laundry sinks. Drains. Everything. It is draining. A million decisions, to make everything just exactly and ideally YOURS. You make it. Then you live with your conscience and the consequences.

We built a house. We built a pretend life. The house and the lifestyle just don't fit. Like I have mentioned earlier, my experimentation with buying shoes way too big in the hopes they would be extra-comfy-- and instead, I broke my toes? The too-big house and the too-big lawn have taken their tolls, outta my hide mostly. No longer able to spend basically 18 hours per day either at work or trying to do housework and lawn care (planting and maintaining all of those damned, cursed, hated flower beds!) and everything else. Barely sleeping and hardly alive.

I want to watch some television. I want to read silly novels and serious poetry and gleeful non-fictions and whatever else. I want to loaf a bit.

The current tenant is renting the whole house, even though it is officially a two-unit. A completely novel idea to me, living in the whole thing. She wants to buy it. We should sell it? I want to move back there and live in the whole house with the wee tiny yard. It WAS too small, living in half of it. The whole house is half as big as our way-too big place. Gee... where is the MIDDLE ground?

Here is a fine poem by Grace Paley, about an old house and the work of houses and of being:

House: Some Instructions
by Grace Paley

If you have a house
you must think about it all the time
as you reside in the house so
it must be a home in your mind

you must ask yourself (wherever you are)
have I closed the front door

and the back door is often forgotten
not against thieves necessarily

but the wind oh if it blows
either door open then the heat

the heat you’ve carefully nurtured
with layers of dry hardwood

and a couple of opposing green
brought in to slow the fire

as well as the little pilot light
in the convenient gas backup

all of that care will be mocked because
you have not kept the house on your mind

but these may actually be among
the smallest concerns for instance

the house could be settling you may
notice the thin slanting line of light

above the doors you have to think about that
luckily you have been paying attention

the house’s dryness can be humidified
with vaporizers in each room and pots

of water on the woodstove should you leave
for the movies after dinner ask yourself

have I turned down the thermometer
and moved all wood paper away from the stove

the fiery result of excited distraction
could be too horrible to describe

now we should talk especially to Northerners
of the freezing of the pipe this can often

be prevented by pumping water continuously
through the baseboard heating system

allowing the faucet to drip drip continuously
day and night you must think about the drains

separately in fact you should have established
their essential contribution to the ordinary

kitchen and toilet life of the house
digging these drains deep into warm earth

if it hasn’t snowed by mid-December you
must cover them with hay sometimes rugs

and blankets have been used do not be
troubled by their monetary value

as this is a regionally appreciated emergency
you may tell your friends to consider

your house as their own that is
if they do not wear outdoor shoes

when thumping across the gleam of their poly-
urethaned floors they must bring socks or slippers

to your house as well you must think
of your house when you’re in it and

when you’re visiting the superior cabinets
and closets of others when you approach

your house in the late afternoon
in any weather green or white you will catch

sight first of its new aluminum snow-resistant
roof and the reflections in the cracked windows

its need in the last twenty-five years for paint
which has created a lovely design

in russet pink and brown the colors of un-
intentioned neglect you must admire the way it does not

(because of someone’s excellent decision
sixty years ago) stand on the high ridge deforming

the green profile of the hill but rests in the modesty
of late middle age under the brow of the hill with

its back to the dark hemlock forest looking steadily
out for miles toward the cloud refiguring meadows and

mountains of the next state coming up the road
by foot or auto the house can be addressed personally

House! in the excitement of work and travel to
other people’s houses with their interesting improvements

we thought of you often and spoke of your coziness
in winter your courage in wind and fire your small

airy rooms in humid summer how you nestle in spring
into the leaves and flowers of the hawthorn and the sage green

leaves of the Russian olive tree House! you were not forgotten

Grace Paley, “House: Some Instructions” from Begin Again: The Collected Poems of Grace Paley.

prostitutes and dead chickens

2008-04-05T23:16:00.026-05:00

Pat Barker's novel Blow Your House Down is terrific.

A "good read", to use understated librarianish vocabulary. Meaning, by all means find a copy and settle down someplace comfy because you won't be getting up until you finish it.

I don't read much fiction. Rarely read "the news" except while papering the bottom of bird- and guinea pig cages with my husband's day-old leftovers. Yesterday's news -- that is what you get from a laundress.

Usually, I read non-fiction and I read poetry but also snack on assorted news websites and back issues of magazines... plus labels and boxes and blurbs and reviews and scraps of paper found on the floor. Mostly I read comic books. I like to read. Novels, however, are rare birds in my world . I did read the books of Barker's Regeneration Trilogy as they were published and liked them very much.

But this book, which I only just discovered though it was published in 1984? It is about as close to "contemporary fiction" as I ever get. It kinda sorta helped me make sense of the whole news-weary, war-filled, Hillary-bashing, Elliot Spitzer-rich media blitz of the past month. The whole "prostitution is a victimless crime" (or isn't it?), where do women fit in the world of power and politics (especially the women who are raising their children, making the beds, doing the laundry)?

It is a novel where prostitution is about as glamorous as dismembering chicken carcasses. Basically, they both suck. (sorry, couldn't help that). The characters in the book, women in a grimy Northeast England industrial town, are working as prostitutes or in a chicken factory (there is not much difference). The women do their housework, care for their children, care for one another. Prostitutes are being stalked by a serial killer. Police have no suspect, the customers are generally relishing the additional power fear gives them over the women, the women themselves have no alternative but to keep working.

Kind of an clearly unresolved, non-aha murder mystery. With dazzly bits of prose such as:

... The early evening when I went to call for her, and the starlings were coming in. The sky was black with them, and I used to walk through the streets and listen to the cries, all the whistles and clatters and clicks, and it was like walking through a shower of electric sparks.

That is a beautiful bit of writing, eh? Lovely, as lovely as poetry. Hell, it is poetry.

There was an interview with Pat Barker in the New Yorker a few weeks back, which discusses "Blow Your House Down" along with Barker's other books. The article led me to this title. Kennedy Fraser's article, "Ghost Writer," The New Yorker, March 17, 2008, p. 41. (Sorry, the link only supplies an abstract, not the full text.) The article includes this interesting quote from Ms. Barker:

"In the end, I think about war from a very feminine perspective. In all my books, there's a great emphasis on the long-term damage to the individual and to the family. There are male carers, for veterans, but the overwhelming burden of caring for someone who will never be the same again falls on women. I've always been aware of the psychological damage inflicted on families, sometimes not clearing for several generations."

Whew.

Sorry, I am not a reviewer, the author and her book deserve better. Here is a link to Katha Pollitt's 1984 NYT review of "Blow Your House Down".

Pollitt wrote a response to Charlotte Allen's Washington Post article, We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?, an article which has spawned no end of fury in the blogosphere since it was published on March 2, 2008. An article I printed and have been toting about in my purse and reading over and over again for weeks, because it makes me think. A lot. I also tote about Pollitt's response to Charlotte Allen's article, for more or less the same reasons.

walking around (with moths and mousies)

2008-04-01T10:46:00.025-05:00

It is April.

Finally.

At last.

This winter's record snowfall is now reduced to dirty, shrinking mountains in parking lots plus a few lumpy remains of snowmen in the north sides of yards. Not much snow left and what remains shall soon be gone. Good riddance!

I walked my commute all winter and lost nary a pound. Maybe found a bit of sanity? That part is arguable. Something good must come from all of this walking about (I just know it) though I am not sure what... My final lame reason? I was saving a lot of money by not buying gasoline (only two tankfuls in 5 months).

Alas, last week, I found out that a deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) had moved into my mostly-unused car. Strange noises upon starting and general car misbehavior led to a trip to the auto shop. The mousie had been busy, she removed the air filter and insulation from the engine and rearranged things (neatly), creating a snug, fluffy mouse house in the spare tire. So much for saving money, the mouse-remodeling was expensive to repair. Apologies to those seeking soley laundering advice, somehow mice have become a fairly prominent topic on this blog.

But now it is April. The deer mice can move out of the garage and my car and back into the woods and fields. They are beneficial creatures (when not tackling automotive work). Yep, these little cuties are important predators. Love the image at right, a wee deer mouse looking more like a winsome Christmas ornament than a formidable predator, eh?

My household just received an official letter from the city, they will be spraying soon in our area for the dread gypsy moths (Lymantria dispar). Spraying a benign bacterium, Btk -- not the DDT or other pesticides used in gypsy moth wars of the past. Surprisingly, it turns out the handsome deer mice are a native, natural predator of the invasive gypsy moth:

The most important native natural enemy of gypsy moth is the white-footed mouse or deer mouse. This cute rodent relishes gypsy moth pupae and will also attack the large caterpillars, skinning and gutting them before feasting. Deer mice can have a dramatic effect on the growth of gypsy moth populations. Evidence of their effectiveness can be seen by comparing defoliation of oak trees growing in lawns to those growing in a woodland setting with shrubbery, logs and other cover for mice. Mice avoid crossing exposed areas such as lawns, so caterpillars on those trees are protected and their population soars.

Gypsy moths can do terrible, horrible damage to forests. Their favorite meal is oak trees. I love oak trees. I am worried about gypsy moths. Are you worried about gypsy moths? You should be!

I have seen their devastation, first hand. Decades ago, they defoliated the forests where my grandparents lived, in New York, around a beautiful lake and up and down old mountains. It was awful. Grandma used to wander around her heavily wooded lot, as it sadly, rapidly became a cemetery of tree trunks-- plucking the caterpillars that dangled by silken threads from the bare branches. She would offer them up to us (the kids) as fishing bait -- but the furry, squishy caterpillars were useless. Not enticing, no fish would take them. We had better luck with wild blueberries, Wonder Bread pellets, or hot dogs. Perhaps if we had been trolling for deer mice...

At left, a picture of the enemy.

One of the 100 World's Worst Invasive Species, according to the Global Invasive Species database. Trouble.

Brought to this country by an entrepreneurial French immigrant, seeking to make his fortune by hybridizing silkworms. Alas, Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (such a pretty name and an interesting person-- he was an artist and amateur scientist) has gone down in history as the man who unleashed gypsy moths on North America.

Well, maybe furry caterpillars that turn into pretty moths are not his entire legacy. The New York Public Library has a handsome web exhibition, Trouvelot: From Moths to Mars, which features gorgeous chromolithographs of celestial objects and phenomena captured by this mothman.

Here is an image of the Dexter Elm of Medford, Massachusetts, perhaps the largest known elm tree on the east coast at the turn of the century. The picture shows an optimistic but doomed attempt to save the massive elm from gypsy moths (nope, not Dutch elm disease).

This picture, from 1896, shows so poignantly how much people love our big trees. The tiny men are trying to handpick away the the moth egg cases. The operation was doomed to fail. Other pictures show the demise and subsequent dismemberment of the lovely Dexter elm. It is sad, like viewing old photos of whaling. If you must, you can view the whole sorrowful scene on the US Forest Service website.

Chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease (each featured in earlier posts on this blog and much more informatively elsewhere) appeared much later -- approximately 1900 and 1928 respectively -- than the gypsy moth invasion, which started in the 1860s.

The national Slow the Spread of the Gypsy Moth (STS) campaign has a wealth of additional material if you want to know more. If you live in the midwest (or further west), you may want to know what these (pretty!) moths are capable of and be able to identify them.

You also may wish to cast a kindly eye on our little native deer mice, even if their homemaking efforts can be costly.

On a brighter note, April is also National Poetry Month.

The American Academy of Poets has posted 30 Ways to Celebrate-- a whole month full of good ideas that I am happily pursuing. The poster for this year's celebration includes a quote from a wonder of a poem, The Healing Improvisation of Hair by Jay Wright (a poet new to me, you too? deliciously, he is a former professional baseball player who studied comparative literature).

My favorite poem, today, is by former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser (he of the hotly passionate ironing board ode). I like this for lots of reasons, it is a simple and accessible poem with some trails to follow.

Walking to Work

Today, it's the obsidian
ice on the sidewalk
with its milk white bubbles
popping under my shoes
that pleases me, and upon it
a lump of old snow
with a trail like a comet,
that somebody,
probably falling in love,
has kicked
all the way to the corner.

From 'Sure Signs,' University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980.

Inspirational squid

2008-03-29T12:00:00.004-05:00

Some web comics just dumbfound me.

I just discovered one which is a sweetly inspirational spin on Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey, which was my favorite book for a couple years when I was a kid. Burnford also wrote another of my childhood favorites, the lesser-known but even more thrilling Bel Ria: Dog of War

Lots of people love The Incredible Journey, there are two filmed versions of it as well, both of which remain popular. Burnford said the characters in the book were inspired by her own animal companions, commenting

"Communication between animals has always fascinated me, not just the instinctive means, but the day-to-day, individual and original communication that exists between animals of diversified species when they live harmoniously with common domestic background. There were endless examples of this with our animal trio, all members of it as different in their personalities as it is possible for animals to be, yet apparently able to receive the intent or communication of the others and act upon it."

Here is Fillipino comics creator Andrew Drilon's version*, which niftily incorporates a giant marine cephalopod, animal companions and vacations (three topics that have bedeviled me lately). Check out:

The Dog, The Cat, and The Giant Squid

*Drilon is a member of an online comics collective called The Chemistry Set, a lot of intriguing work posted there!

Ironies of ironing -- funk to funky?

2008-03-21T21:04:00.019-05:00

Hitting an all-time low?

Nope, not just because of my recent discovery that all kinds of original video footage of vintage '70s music is available on YouTube. For someone from the pre-MTV generation who was passionate about music, it has been a mesmerizing revelation. Things I have never before seen, never dreamed of seeing: concert footage, television performances, pre-MTV music videos (where did they air?) Hooray for hi-speed! So distracting though, I have become a slack-jawed, YouTube-viewing fool.

Posts on this blog have always been sporadic and (in all honesty) have been pretty shitty lately. Never have been one of those blockbuster, 5 - 5,000 readers per day blogs that all of my blog friends seem to have, but anyway -- things have fallen off precipitously lately. Too cranky?

Grabbing my nose and diving deep. Here goes...

Iron My Shirt Bitch

is an iconic photo that has crept about throughout the internet. It shows up in all kinds of places: wrestling forums, women's health chat rooms, sites aimed at fans of chamber music and of backyard chicken cultivation and of NASCAR and of whatever lies in between.

Seems to strike a universal chord. Besides American, Canadian and UK sites, I found Mexican, Brazilian, Dutch, Japanese, Russian and German web sites that posted this picture.

In case you missed it:

Where did this photo originate?

Perhaps in New Orleans in 2006? Hmmm.

Reported in the Best of New Orleans, in May 2006:

Three middle-aged, well-fed-looking good ol' boy types spent most of Bob Dylan's set talking about a women's rally a friend of theirs had attended. "Yeah, you know, it was like a women's ... women's liberation kinda thing," says one. "Hoo! And then there's Mike standing out there, with this big sign that says, 'Iron my shirt, bitch!" says another. All three enjoy a good laugh and turn to their festival schedules. "Y'all know this Ani DiFranco?" None do. "Let's go check that out." And off they go -- to see the bisexual feminist folksinger.

But no, that can't be right.

The photo was being commented on at a variety of sites in 2005. Admittedly, the quote above does not specifically address the year that "Mike" held up his poster. How to sleuth out the date and location of the photo above? Seems to (obviously) have a golfing theme. Some sort of protest regarding women's access to a country club? Oh gawd.

Do you know the history of the picture? Tell me. I will bake you a cake. Iron your shirts. Whatever you wish, because you will have my undying gratitude and respect. Tried for a solid month (well, sporadically) to 'suss this out and with no success. Was there an earlier "Iron My Shirt" anti-feminist backlash? If yes, when did this first crop up? So mysterious, yet so ubiquitous.

If you know or can figure out the origin of this photo, please share!

There is a 2005 book, How to Iron Your Own Damn Shirt: The Perfect Husband Handbook Featuring Over 50 Foolproof Ways to Win, Woo & Wow Your Wife, written by a precious, rare fellow named Craig Boreth.

Mr. Boreth writes a young blog, The Sensible Parent: Finding Your Own Right Way Through the Myths, Marketing & Misinformation. I like this guy! He has a second kid due this month, he is funny and promotes the screaming monkey slingshot on his blog. All cool by me.

Plus, he irons?

You can buy t-shirts and coffee mugs with the inspirational slogan on them. The understated mug at right is available from Amazon for $9.99.

Now, are you thinking that The Laundress is all pissed off and offended by this catchphrase, this cultural slogan?

Ha ha.

Nope.

Not a bit. My pulse is steady, heart rate stable. Not frothy about this. I say this phrase to my husband, in response to foolish questions, such as when he asks me if I know the whereabouts of the missing TV remote (which I never touch) or his favorite socks (which are either in his sock drawer or in the laundry). I say it gently, with love in my voice. He gets it. Here is what I say:

Iron My Shirt, Bitch!

funny, ain't it?

So WHY was there a general media dismissal/suspicion of "planted" hecklers, during the January 11th, 2008 "Iron My Shirt" disruption of a Hillary Clinton speech? Did you miss this? It has sent me reeling forever. I have spent a lot of time since then trying to figure out how I feel about it. What do YOU think?

Most sources attribute the young male hecklers as employees of a radio station. They are boys in their early twenties, interviews with them supplying no deeply insightful comments about what they are up to in the above video. Hmm, they were plants? Who planted them?

This 1911 photograph from The Library of Congress American Memory, for example:

Is this a staged photo? Who are the men? Would this image be anywhere near as effective without that woman, standing back and observing the men who are inspecting the storefront display? What is on display in that window?

This photograph raises a lot of questions, which still have no answers.

As previously mentioned, I voted for Barack Obama in my state's primary. I still have very mixed feelings about why I did this and about our electoral process. But the rampant Hillary-bashing is wearing me down.

I smell a rat. One that just does not approve of a woman running for president. Do you disagree? There is a deliberately provocative, well-written essay by Robin Morgan -- Good-bye to All That 2.0 -- if you missed it, please give it a read... and then tell me what you think!

posthaste: bibliotherapy or biblio-insanity?

2008-03-15T00:19:00.018-05:00

It has been a long winter,

the length and relentless wintriness of it has been bringing me down.

What about you?

What is up? Creating 5 drafts per post for the past several months. I suck. Been in a funk (more than usual!) Alas, life outside of blogging is proceeding in much the same pattern...

All kinds of pre-post goodies (badly-formed and half-baked) are waiting in the wings. Usually, somebody over at Dark Roasted Blend or Boing Boing is reading my mind and puts together a fascinating and visually stimulating post on an interesting topic I have been rendering dull, dull, dull.

I keep getting scooped. Examples include:
Guam; the Ice Festival in Harbin, China; rain-on-snow; doppelgangers; illuminated manuscripts; suffragettes; Victorian political caricatures.

All fascinating topics. Not new, but all fabulously and recently addressed elsewhere. Covered badly as drafts here, eluding the rigorously high standards of Dirty Laundry, eloquently showing up on other (well-written) blogs. Thanks... and curses.

Hmm. So tonight? A quick and dirty series of book reviews. No, not really reviews, more like snap judgements. Things I read that affected me, ineffectively. Books that may prove useful and helpful to other readers (perhaps you?) but left me at a loss. These were all library books, my only investment was the time I spent (sometimes, squandered) reading them.

First, a best seller. Charla Krupp's beauty and fashion advice book, How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Thinner and 10 Times Better. 19 chapters on how to look younger, broken down into high, medium and low maintenance efforts. How to be "Y&H" (young and hip) vs. OL (old lady)

Like the tagline?

Forget getting older gracefully.

Nope. I already have the bleachy bleachy blonde hair thing going on and the shiny pink lipstick. Whitened teeth. Wearin' my own nails. Not to mention various and assorted experiments involving compression garments. Dignity and self-acceptance already out the window. No grace whatsoever. But somehow, this book really pissed me off.

Ms. Krupp takes pride in her personal connection with the Spanx line of shapewear. That is fine with me, but even outstanding body shapers can only take you so far.

A much better commentator on women's fashion than Ms. Krupp or your dowdy laundress -- my favorite syndicated columnist Patricia McLaughlin -- had these insights about the book (excerpted from her January 26 column)
We want to age — as opposed to the alternative — but we don't want to look old:

...Conflating looking old with looking bad may sell books, but it's a lie. As you know if you happened to see Julie Christie in "Away From Her." Christie looks old in the movie; she has plenty of wrinkles, and her sturdy, freckled arms reminded me of my grandmother's. She's also radiantly beautiful. She didn't look better in the '60s, only younger.

Old isn't necessarily ugly — and being young, in case you haven't noticed, is no guarantee of being beautiful.

To assume, even before we get there, that old age is ugly is foolish and damaging.

Let's stipulate up front that a lot of getting dressed is and always has been about disguise and pretense. We typically do ourselves up to look — insofar as we can — thinner, richer, cooler, smarter, better connected, etc. than we are, and we don't worry that much about any potential corrosive effects of the transaction.

But when you pretend to be something you aren't, you implicitly admit that there's something inadequate, something shameful, about what you are.

It can't be healthy to believe that public acceptance — by neighbors, colleagues, boss, grocer, discount drugstore checkout person — depends on your ability to pass for younger than your actual age. You can't believe that without also believing there's something intrinsically wrong/inferior/undesirable/unworthy about being whatever age you are.

Imagine if somebody published a style manual for persons of color called "How to Pass for White." It's unthinkable for a couple of reasons. For one, it'd be a public relations disaster on the Imus scale, because it's insulting to imply there's something intrinsically wrong/undesirable/inferior/shameful about not being and looking white.

And, anyway, the book wouldn't sell. As Sen. Obama's recent success in Iowa illustrates, Americans don't stigmatize race the way we used to. How many persons of color would be willing to deny a significant aspect of their identity — and then go to a terrific amount of trouble: new wardrobe, new makeup, demanding maintenance routine, uncomfortable underwear, etc. — just to look white? Big whoop.

So why is it plausible to assume that getting old — something every single one of us is doing at every single moment of our lives — is so appallingly shameful that every woman over 40 should be willing to jump through hoops to pass for 10 years younger than however old she is?

Amen and huge whoops of joy here for Ms. McLaughlin, the most intelligent and subversive "fashion" columnist out there. If you miss her writings because you write off the "ladies" page of your newspaper, you are missing a LOT. She is one of the best social critics writing today: eloquent, insightful AND funny.

Ms. Krupp's book is all about spending bundles of money and time and energy (even to achieve her "low maintenance" look). Nope. Not going to go there. Can't afford to... mostly about time, but also energy... and I do have higher priorities on how to spend my money too. For example, buying books. Comic books, not ones like this. But I also have a sudden and powerful urge to rent the dvd "Away from Her".

Next up? Be Happy Without Being Perfect: How to Break Free From the Perfection Deception by Alice Domar and (ghost writer) Alice Lesch Kelly.

Good lord, I am not trying nor anywhere near succeeding at "perfection". Trying to hit the mark of loosely socially acceptable and failing miserably. Still, this book did have some helpful tidbits for me.

It is a book that asks:

Do you have trouble going to bed at night when there is a mess in the kitchen? Do you think that you would be happier if only you could lose weight, be a better parent, work smarter, reduce stress, exercise more, and make better decisions?
You're not perfect. But guess what? You don't have to be!

No, WAIT! I have trouble going to bed at night leaving flagrant messes about, because I know they will only increase exponentially the next day, during the time that I am at work. Shit. This is NOT perfectionism. Merely survivalism. Something base and instinctual and perhaps, inherently female?

If the world were only men, would it be a world of unwashed garments, rumpled shirts and dirty dishes left not only in the sink but also on the nightstand, the sofa, the mantle, the toilet tank?

Alice Domar is a psychologist, a successful author, and the founder of the DomarCenter for Mind/Body Health. I LIKE Alice Domar. She is forthright, she confesses her own weaknesses and tells funny and familiar anecdotes about her family. She also offers up scads of suggestions on how to decrease stress and increase self-acceptance. I would wish to be her friend, if we lived in the same neighborhood. She might feel otherwise.

She confesses to having made a horrible mistake. If I were her neighbor (and then, of course, her wannabe friend) I would have warned her off this misguided foray into social acceptance. She joined a neighborhood bunco league! Her suburb spells it bunKo, but whatever. Here it goes:

A number of years ago, I learned an important lesson about keeping my perfectionist priorities straight.

I joined a bunko group so that I could get to know more women in my town. (Bunko is a group dice game that's something like Yahtzee.) It's the rage in a lot of suburban towns -- women like it because it's fun and is really just an excuse to hang out and chat and drink wine with a bunch of other women, which I'm all in favor of. There were twelve women in this group -- eleven stay-at-home moms and me. We took turns meeting in one another's homes.

Oh Alice! It did not go well, try as she might, the other mothers made fun of her interior decorating skills and she found they did not share the same priorities. Hmmm. Alice Domar, psychologist? You need to hang out with me, The lunatic laundress!

Domar's book has many suggestions that I found intriguing and a few that I am already doing...or trying to: taking mental (not chemical!) vacations; surrendering the housekeeping standards of fulltime at-home moms if you are working outside the home; separating media fantasies from everyday realities.

One part that I especially liked was on mindfulness, which always seemed a squishy and evasive New Age term. She writes about the importance of not thinking about the past or the future, but focusing on what is going on at the moment. Then, very usefully, points out that one of the best ways to experience mindfulness is to walk your dog :

Dogs are always in the moment. They can take the same walk every day for ten years and still experience grass in an entirely new way each day. They're not worried about the past ("Why didn't my people give me some of that chicken they had for dinner?") or the future ("I wonder if my people will give me chicken when we get home?"). All they think about is what is right in front of them: the smell of the grass, the basset hound in the yard next door, and the squirrel in the tree across the street.

Aha, so that is mindfulness. Anyhow, BHWBP is not a panacea but it is a book with useful concepts and some doable applications for achieving a more peaceful life.

Last up? The book pictured at the very top of this post --
What the Land Already Knows: Winter's Sacred Days (Stories from the Farm in Lucy) by Phyllis Tickle. Tickle is the acclaimed author of three famous books of fixed hour prayers, The Divine Hours.

Phyllis Tickle: a religion editor for Publisher's Weekly, mother of seven, farming wife of a physician-farmer, and a terrific writer? Gracious, my continual lament about how unfairly capabilities and talents are distributed among us is once again supported!

What the Land Already Knows is her musings on the first third of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany. Yet, somehow so much more. Why was I reading this book in March, well after the appropriate seasons? Why did it call to me, why did I take it home and snug up in bed and read it twice in one night and then once more, the next?

It soothed, it calmed, it made me feel right with the world. No, I am not born again. I am not even a believer. She just writes really well and about, well, the right stuff. Pecan dust in a messy kitchen but keeping your traditions. Beloved cows and disliked ones and beef steers that hold a strong place in her family's memories long after becoming part of their dinners. She draws strength and purpose from her religious faith -- something I found both enviable and inaccessible.

This is a wee 5' x 7", 128 page book. A tiny gem. Tickle is an Episcopalian, but Catholics and those of other (or no faith) will relate. She writes with beauty and calm and passion. A great, quiet, contemplative read.

For a sampling of her writing, Phyllis Tickle was a contributor to I Like Being Married: Treasured Traditions, Rituals and Stories. Check out her essay, Squinching.

Drawing life from life, drawings

2008-03-12T17:08:00.012-05:00

Still walking and still happy about it.

A whole winter of walking-commuting. It has been mostly good. I have traveled hundreds of miles! If only I had jumped off my narrow path, perhaps I too could have migrated to the deep South? Nope, I have traipsed through deep snow, slipped over ice, trudged through slush.

Once again, flocks of geese are passing overhead as I walk-- but now they are flying north. Recently, commutes are accompanied by a morning chorus of cardinals, robins, and many other birds I can't identify (some have been driving me wild with their mysterious songs and invisibility! perhaps black-throated green warblers?) Yesterday, two sandhill cranes flapped by me, whooping and clattering in their weird way. Spring is near.

But I haven't heard the booming great horned owl or his mellower mate in a good long time. A couple weeks, at least.

I am hoping they (and their offspring?) have survived the winter. But I worry. Why the silence? Maybe the mates are worn out from tending eggs, then hatchlings, in what has been a most relentlessly cold and snowy winter?

Daylight savings time has left me walking in sunshine, not darkness or twilight, maybe that is part of it too.

Pictured at right, an endearing owl that I discovered through a digitized text: Ornithologie by Francois Nicolas Martinet. Captioned "Le Duc = Grand Duc". I think this is a Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo). An even larger relative of my beloved Bubo virginianus.

Martinet, a reknowned 18th century engraver of ornithological illustrations, is an artist new to me-- and spectacular!

Are you familiar with Martinet's work? The Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) website has a well-written, brief biography plus a careful description of the digitized book available in the introduction. Then, gloriously, you can browse or read the entire book in a variety of ways.

I love digitized books, especially the way SIL provide them!

Martinet's Ornithologie is part of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Galaxy of Knowledge, in the Art and Design category. The Galaxy of Knowledge is awesome, a site where you can fall in and not resurface for hours, worthy of many repeat visits. As described in the January 2006 D-Lib Magazine, the "Galaxy" is

...a virtual bookshelf of digital editions – cover-to-cover, high-resolution digital replications of selected Smithsonian Libraries' holdings, and brings together additional online projects such as online exhibitions, and research materials such as bibliographies and research guides. The wide variety of materials encourages the visitor to use the "Galaxy" for a variety of purposes, from education to entertainment.

SIL are providing digitized content of their rare books without falling prey to Google/Microsoft's control. From a New York Times article that ran in October, Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web (italics in headline added by yours truly):

...many in the academic and nonprofit world are intent on pursuing a vision of the Web as a global repository of knowledge that is free of business interests or restrictions.

I doubt that I would have encountered (let alone been so delighted) Martinet's engravings, if not for the "Galaxy". A rare book in a special library, many, many miles from my home? Full access to this wonderful book, and I can flip the pages over and over again, without fear of harming them? Nope, no scholarly knowledge obtained here, just pure pleasure. Browse in the Galaxy of Knowledge, see what kind of delights you can discover.

Perhaps I would have encountered Martinet outside of digitization? I do love publisher's catalogs. Rizzoli offers All the World's Birds: Buffon's Illustrated Natural History General and Particular of Birds, Written by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Illustrated by Francois-Nicolas Martinet, Foreword by David Sibley, Introduction by Stephane Schmitt and Cedric Cremiere -- for $350.00. Sounds lovely! Too pricy for my local public libraries or my own pocketbook. Hmm, hope it is digitized some day too.

The Kama Sutra of Housework (and Laundry Porn!)

2008-03-10T20:24:00.022-05:00

On Doing Laundry
The man is often too hurried and wishes to place the clothes immediately in the washing machine. He must learn patience and be guided by the woman, who will teach him the art of sorting and, in time, even to pre-soak. The slow, deliberate dividing of clothing into piles of whites, lights and colors will lighten the loads and heighten the pleasure.

Caption for the image posted below:
"This is the way you like the shirts folded, right?"

Oh, yes, baby, YES!

Pictured below, an image from a book entitled Porn for Women. I haven't seen a copy yet but plan to check it out.

well, good old Norma threw me for a loop.

For a moment or two... see previous post's comments.

Hell no, Norma. Women in your and my worlds are THE LUCKY ONES. We are not being denied education because of our gender, not being obviously and overtly prevented from running for public office, nor acquiring car loans or access to our children. But that is NOT the case in much of the world, you do realize that, don't you?

Er, and have you ever bumped into the parts that are not supposed to happen, the ones when the facade of "gender equality" slips or slides or just goes gully-washing by you? By golly, have I ever... and if you are a woman I am certain you know what I mean! Even if you are trying really hard to stick your fingers in your ears and sing la la la la la la -- there is no denying it. It is here and present and it sucks. It is not supposed to exist. We are not supposed to acknowledge it. Damn but I do suck at sticking to socially-proscribed norms.

Do you want to help things along? Don't just wave me off as a cranky and sour laundress. I have been a good egg for many years but damn, the current state of affairs is rotten. It should be better. We can make it better...

A small focus tonight. That is about all your laundress can handle, having tackled all of the bedding today, on her surprise vacation day.

Here is one piece. A Smithsonian Magazine article. Domestic Bliss: The Kama Sutra of Housework, by David Martin. The fragment on doing laundry leads off this post. The rest is, well, more of the same. Kinda cute. Hell, it was in Smithsonian Magazine (uh, that means it is gentle and harmless).

Another, from the Boston Globe. The Job Without Benefits:

Women are the maids-in-chief in the average American home (18 hours a week of housework on average, about 40 percent more than men, according to a 2001 study by University of Maryland sociologists). This made sense, sort of, back when women's occupations were limited to variations on caring for other people, usually the ones living at home with them. But it makes no sense today. Women, who compose 49 percent of the American workforce, are now outearning their husbands in 32.6 percent of American married couples, up from 23.7 percent in 1987. Wives brought home 34.8 percent of the average family's annual bacon in 2004, up from 26.7 percent in 1980. In another generation, if this pace of change continues, wives will contribute half. Although there are no local statistics, it would seem likely that Boston has an even larger percentage of these women who earn more than their husbands, thanks to a saturation of industries, like financial services and healthcare, in which women are statistically more likely to be top company earners.

Five years ago, Dave Barry wrote a column entitled Women Know How to Achieve Laundry Parity. Here is an excerpt:

As you men know, laundry is a key area in which we have long enjoyed a tactical advantage over women, thanks to the fact that, through a combination of genetics, evolution, instinct and plain old good fortune, we are pigs.

A man can live happily in a confined space with a mass of unwashed garments so funky that his shirts wrap their sleeves around his ankles as he walks past, hoping he will drag them to a Laundromat; and his undershorts, which have developed primitive bacterial feet, crawl around and arrange themselves on the floor to form the words "FOR GOD’S SAKE WASH US." Every year, thousands of pedestrians collapse while walking past male-occupied college dormitories, overcome by sock fumes.

So in most relationships, women wind up doing the laundry. To compensate, we men assume full responsibility for more masculine, but equally necessary, household tasks, such as making sure that the TV channel is changed regularly.

Okay. I live in one of those households, where the TV channel is changed every 20 seconds but the sheets get changed once weekly, by me. No, it is not fair nor right. And somehow, I think it is a bigger issue than my own little whine. Sorry fellas, but please step up to the plate.

potato people and wimmen

2008-03-06T15:27:00.019-06:00

Today is International Women's Day. March 8, 2008.

A day to celebrate and recognize women.

Does this day receive any acknowledgment from you, your family, your employer, your community?

No noticeable efforts in my part of the world! Not much a suburban laundress can do to help things along.

But it is a day of significance, and worthy of more recognition. Doing my little bit -- taking a break from a weekend packed solid with housework, here is a laundress' view of International Women's Day.

It frustrates me no end. Sure, I am a "well-educated" and prosperous woman living in a wealthy suburban enclave. Yep, one of the privileged few. Most women in the world have it far worse than I do. Does this mean I should be thanking my lucky stars?

Ahem. Fuck this privilege.

I work full time and I put in a full hour of housework before and after my paid employment on weekdays. Weekends and those days that I work the dreaded noon 'til nine shift? All of my free hours are full of laundry and bill-paying and vacuuming and such. These are lonely hours... there is no companionship. No fellow-sufferers to joke with, to mourn with, to relieve the tedium. For sure, other women are nearby and dealing with the same stuff. But we are all in it alone.

It is just plain drudgery.

The United Nations theme for International Women's Day 2008 is Investing in Girls and Women, with "an intense focus on financing for gender equality at the country level." Huh? What does this mean?

It must be noted that the UN has also declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. Women get a day* but potatoes get a whole year (and a gorgeous web site!) Hmmm....
*Ahhh but the lovely potato site has made it clear that potatoes are very important. And besides, there was a UN International Year of the Woman back in 1975.
Here is Mrs. Potato Head -- a mascot for the day?

Red lipstick, eye makeup, earrings and a pocketbook: she has all of the accouterments that signify femininity in western culture. Mrs. Potato Head is neither tall nor slim: a silly-looking figure, clearly not a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.

WomenWatch, the UN's inter-agency website on women's issues has detailed information on themes for previous years, this year's pages are apparently yet-to-be written. There is a vast amount of information on their site though, for example the Critical Areas of Concern section links to studies and reports on the status of women around the world.

Grim.

The UN also has a educational page on International Women's Day for students and teachers, part of The Cyberschoolbus (a great site). The Cyberschoolbus is not sugarcoating anything, the language is clear and direct:

...nowhere in the world can women claim to have all the same rights and opportunities as men.

The majority of the world's 1.3 billion absolute poor are women.

On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work.*

And everywhere, women continue to be victims of violence, with rape and domestic violence listed as significant causes of disability and death among women of reproductive age worldwide.

*And the unpaid work of women? Immeasurable... but from everything I have observed it does add up to vast quantities more than unpaid work by men. There seems to be a huge difference between men and women in our away-from-paid-employment "leisure hours". Men go walleye fishing in Canada, they watch pro-football, they build furniture. Women? We are doing the laundry, sorting the socks, scheduling the orthodontist, medicating the dog. Think about it. If you see things differently, please share!

The World Health Organization addresses the theme of "Investing in Girls and Women" under their topic of Gender, Women and Health. An interesting read!

I just discovered a great blog called The Tween Scene, which examines popular culture and tween girls. It has a lot to say about dolls and toys being marketed to young girls, worth checking out.

Apologies if this post is even more disjointed than the rest of this blog. A four-times bigger post, slashed to make a self-imposed deadline.

Happy International Women's Day to YOU!

vaginas and apologies: books for children (and you)

2008-03-04T21:58:00.022-06:00

I handed my daughter a library book last night.

A gift.

An award.

A super present for a teen... we will be buying our own copy of this book.

I read it first (cover-to-cover) and found it delightful. It is a book that includes many photographs of assorted women. Their outsides, their backsides, their... labial folds?

Yep.

It is a good book and one I sorely wish had been written and available when I was going-on fourteen. The book is Nancy Redd's Body Drama: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers. If you are a female, age 9 on up? Read it! You are bound to find out useful information that nobody ever before shared with you. I did.

Thank you, Nancy Redd, for writing a terrific book.

Ms. Redd, (the gorgeous woman pictured above) is a Harvard graduate and a former Miss Virginia. Her book addresses body image, funky smells, airbrushing in print advertisements (Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, anyone?) plus a whole lot more. She does a great job! Ms. Redd's book is one that every woman will find reasurring, helpful and encouraging. Love that she was competing in beauty contests as a 5'4" and 150+ lb woman. Sorry to hear of her painful social self-consciousness and encouraged by her climb out of and then away from it. Her book is getting a huge amount of buzz, deservedly.

Another noteworthy "kid's" book: a poetry anthology.

Yes, you read that right.

A most amazing, stop-your-heart kind of poetry book. This one has made the rounds in the blogosphere. No new news here.

It won a Cybil.

Nope, no review. But a heartfelt recommendation: this is the most enchanting book of poetry that I have read in a long time-- check out:

This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman.

Amazing. Perfect in concept, superb execution. Gorgeous and heart-wrenchingly and funny apology poems-- to a teacher, friends, pets, even a statue. The responses are equally good.

More later, I have been living on fumes for way too long. Apologies to my few longtime readers.

Meanwhile, check these out!

The title (and the concept) for the poetry book were inspired by a William Carlos Williams poem, published in my birth year. It is one of the few poems I have committed to memory, at least one of the few that actually stays there. You are probably familiar with this poem, but here it is for those of you with even shorter memories than mine:

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

chicken (necks and clothing) revisited

2008-02-27T17:14:00.013-06:00

My family used to spend many weekends "up north" with my maternal grandparents. Sunday dinner was always chicken. Frequently, there were a lot of people at the table and not enough fowl. Grandma always ate the neck, insisting it was her favorite part. We all knew this wasn't true but there was no changing it.

My husband nearly succeeded in getting me to eat raw chicken this week.

Due more to his unwavering self-confidence, and my complete lack there of, than anything else. I have posted before on my husband and his proclivity for serving me raw meats.

But this was a particularly dramatic case.

He was cooking a stuffed chicken breast for our dinner, while our daughter was baking yet another vegan cake. Alas, she automatically turned off the oven when she pulled her cake tins. Not one to eat flesh, she just kind of forgot about the other occupants of the oven.

My husband has immense power over me. He can tell me day is night and vice versa -- and I am completely lost, even when my own eyes and mind and wristwatch tell me otherwise.

So when he presented me with a plate of crisply golden chicken, and said "Enjoy!", I did fully intend to... he is a good cook. But the chicken was cold, in spite of the lovely color. Slicing into it, it was pinkish and slimy and repulsive. I told him I didn't think it was cooked.

He pooh-poohed me, unthinkable. Then he tried his own plate.

Ah. The look on his face. Priceless.

Eww.

Yep, I almost ate a mostly-raw chicken breast and so did he... until we figured out what had happened. The cake, the oven temperature, etc. (this was going to be a longer post but I am dog-tired).

When I was a child, I attended Saturday catechism classes and Sunday masses at St.X's Catholic Church.

Both were HELL.

Sundays, there were those elderly ladies who wore the mink collars plopped over their humble woolen overcoats. Minks biting themselves on the tails. Fascinating! Endlessly fascinating when Father G. was droning on and on and on...

Oops, what have we up above?

A proper lady, clearly. Um, but what is going on with her collar?

She is part of an amazing artistic endeavor. By a young Turkish woman art photographer, Pinar Yolacan. An amazing artist, with a background in fashion design. She stitches together costumes for her models and takes large format portraits. Costumes made of raw meat, of viscera and bits and pieces of animal flesh. Draped over female models, these costumes have an odd elegance, and give pause to perceptions of female dress, of human "dignity", and more.

Ms. Yolacan's exhibition Perishables was most recently on display at the Finnish Museum of Photography, in Helsinki (where she is serving as an artist-in-residence).

Yolacan has another exhibition, Maria, recently featured at the Rivington Arms gallery in New York City.

Stunning, impressive portraits... Ms. Yolacan says she is interested in the "impermanence of things".

Your laundress can say no more, humbled and awed by this amazing talent.

Oh, I'm being eaten...(hush now and oh, fiddle, this is NOT another sexy laundress post)

2008-02-25T21:38:00.023-06:00

In the words of the remarkable, inimitable (though, oh so many try) Shel Silverstein, perhaps this shall become the theme song for the lower third of the United States?

Oh, I'm being eaten
By a boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor,
And I don't like it--one bit.
Well, what do you know?
It's nibblin' my toe.
Oh, gee,
It's up to my knee.
Oh my,
It's up to my thigh.
Oh, fiddle,
It's up to my middle.
Oh, heck,
It's up to my neck.
Oh, dread,
It's upmmmmmmmmmmffffffffff...

Pictured above: the handsome and mysterious Mr. Silverstein.

Do you own this disc? You should! Listen to clips from Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words His Songs His Friends -- guess which one is my favorite? Which is yours?

A scary report from the US Geological Survey, seen on today's Science Daily:

Python Snakes, An Invasive Species In Florida, Could Spread To One Third Of US

Yep. The USGS article claims that
USGS Maps Show Potential Non-Native Python Habitat Along Three U.S. Coasts.

The map shows that climate change is creating possible friendly habitats for Burmese pythons (also known as Python molurus bivittatus), as far as north as Delaware and southern Illinois. Yep, about a third of the country is potential python territory. A wake up call for pet owners and everyone else.

Burmese pythons are appealing and interesting snakes. They are very popular in the pet trade, in part because of their beauty and their friendly, docile personalities.

But they get BIG. Very, very big. Check it out, there is one over in the image posted at left. No, they do not have legs nor polo shirts. The python is the handsome, splotchy fellow to the left in the photo.

Current feral, invasive population of Burmese pythons are concentrated in the beleaguered Florida everglades -- and entirely thought to be composed of fertile populations of released pets. This sucks in so many directions!

Pet owners! If your exotic pet is too much for you to handle, size-wise or expenses or custodial skills? Seek HELP! Local zoos and humane societies will do whatever it takes.

Nobody wants your pet running wild. A Laundress soap box issue: no pet should be running free. Even "wild" animals, once held in captivity need help adjusting and most certainly need assistance if they are to return to their native environment -- not just one they can survive in. Many exotic pets do belong in better or more natural habitats. If you have a pet that is more than you can handle -- seek help. Find a solution. Don't just toss it away... it might come back to bite you, most likely figuratively but perhaps literally...

You can listen to a radio broadcast of USGS zoologist Gordon Rodda explaining things here. The potential for a new and massive predator, on both wild animal and bird populations but also domestic animals (both pet and farm animals) are immense. As are the snakes!

Previously posted as a link on the Dirty Laundry blog -- and I shall include the link again but refrain from adding a picture -- one of the most eeewwww photos your rather unsqueamish laundress has ever seen. An 13 foot python burst after trying to consume a six-foot alligator. The strange forensic puzzle was figured out after park surveillance came across the very odd death scene.

Update and details here, on Professor Stephen Secor's National Geographic blog. Perhaps a second alligator was the actual culprit and the snake had succeeded in consuming his prey -- only to be ambushed by another 'gator? Hmmm. The mystery continues...

Whatever the case in the exploding python mystery, if a 13 foot python will ambitiously try to consume a six-foot alligator -- what size human is safe from a 20 foot python? Nope, not just your puggles and toddlers are needing protection. What we really need is ways to halt global warming and stop international exotic pet trade. Puggles are exotic enough.

Wait, I think the fact that puggles exist is a hard and fast reason for why we have global warming. Good lord, if the puggles get released into the everglades? But that is for another post. G'night.