Republicans vs. Democrats

 

WHAT a political climate we live in! I’ve never seen it so crazy, characterized as it is by a floundering Democratic party and a hijacked-by-teabaggers Republican party.  Everyone seems polarized, and everyone on both sides accuses the other of heinous positions: Republicans have all become experts at  defining the meanings of “communist” and “socialist,” all magically learned without the benefit of serious scholarship; and Democrats, when not crawling across Antarctica saving every creeping thing,  erroneously think that all Republicans are Sarah Palin supporters (when most thoughtful Republicans wouldn’t waste their time shaking a stick at her).

We’ve come to this “nyah nyah” level of politics after more than 200 years, mainly because not enough people are willing enough to want to form a demilitarized zone of discussion. Senators and Congress members stare stonily across the aisles, refusing to budge .

Perceptions of “the other side” have always existed, though not in such hateful measures. In yesteryears, we were blessed with educated observers spouting pithy, witty comments, and everybody laughed. Nobody demanded apologies; nobody cried and formed a support caucus in order to nurse wounded egos.

In that tradition, here is a list of differences between the two major parties as observed by the great Nancy Stahl back in 1979; the cultural references are hilarious as well. My apologies to no one.

1. When Republicans mention “my club,” they mean their country club. Democrats mean Book-of-the-Month Club.

2. Republicans get tennis elbow and ulcers. Democrats get heartburn and sties.

3. Democrats drive six-year-old green Pontiacs with roof racks. Republicans drive six-month-old Cadillacs with bumper stickers that say “I Like Ike.”

4. Republicans own horses. Democrats bet on them.

5. Republicans drink Drambuie and Cafe Capuchino after dinner. Democrats drink creme de menthe and Sanka.

6. Republicans get face lifts and hair transplants. Democrats get nose jobs and silicone transplants.

7. Republicans have nannies for their children. Democrats have grandmothers.

8. Republicans hire good cooks. Democrats marry them.

9. Republicans read Vogue and the National Review. Democrats read The New Republic and Photoplay.

10. Every three weeks, Democratic women make an appointment to have a manicure and get their hair shampooed, cut, and blown dry. So do Republican men.

11. Republicans play golf. Democrats bowl.

12. Republican men wear monogrammed silk pajamas. Democrats sleep nude.

Slow Down and Taste the Roses

You Are Here

You all are by now very aware of Green, and Sustainability, and Ecology, and Global Warming, and Earth Day, etc. etc. etc. I think it’s great that so many of us are aware of the necessity of preserving the planet, especially in light of an exploding population that’s having to depend on dwindling resources.

I’ve been told “there’s PLENTY of room and PLENTY of food for all of us, and even more. Just look at a map of the world!”  I do, and I see little black dots representing the fact that most of us are crammed into Western Europe, China, India, and the North America Eastern Seaboard. The huge, wide open spaces are the Sahara, the Gobi, Siberia, Antarctica, northern Canada, Greenland… you get what I mean. Not a lot of Starbucks in those places.

Sometimes governments are lax or disinterested in fomenting any sort of awareness for the ills that loom, so I always appreciate it when people on the local level make an effort toward saving us all.

The Winter 2010 issue of  GOOD Magazine features articles on the benefits of slowing down– growth, for example– and basically turning to the Earth and using and then nourishing it for its benefit as well as ours.

Read about a stone cathedral made from found objects at Eco-Cathedral

And here’s a guy who is making a toaster from the ground up– including smelting his own ore in a microwave:  The Toaster Project

And, finally, a link to a movement that originated in Italy (how appropriate): Cittaslow. It features cities around the world that are committed to slowing down the pace of living, turning to the land, and basically striving toward a better quality of life.

GOOD also features a Century camera that you can cut out and assemble; it’s a pinhole camera that they ask us to place in a quiet place for 100 years; in that time it will have recorded– slowly– a snapshot of what it had been focused on all that time.

All these little things show that people are thinking, and trying. It’s one thing to be a slacktivist and sign on to causes that we agree with, but actually getting up off the couch and DOING something is the harder step. I hope I’m up to it.

Warm, Handmade Ravioli On A Cold, Cold Day

Friends At Table

I’ve written about ravioli on this site before, specifically my grandmother’s dedication to the art of making it– and it is an art. I recently found out from my mother that Nonna got her recipe here in the United States, probably in Chicago when they lived there in the early 1920’s. In those days, groups of Italian immigrants from common areas would settle together in neighborhoods in a sort of support system. My grandparents were kin to a group of ceramic artisans who manufactured decorative statues–” figuristi–” in their Italian home villages, and they brought these skills with them to America. The Fontanini family, who to this day makes creche figures, are based in Bagni di Lucca, which is where my Tuscan grandparents grew up close to. In America, after arriving here in 1920, they designed plaster detailing for the old movie palaces in the Midwest, eventually moving to Brooklyn to manage a factory that manufactured mannequins. (But they never talked much about the failed wax fruit business they bought into previously.)     

And everyone had to eat !     

I’d never tried making ravioli myself, but today was cold enough (in the mid 30’s) and I was sick of being sick with the creeping airplane sludge all week; the antibiotics had run their course and I felt good enough to run up the  to Publix for the ingredients I needed.     

The recipe had been dictated to my mother by my grandmother on small sheets of looseleaf, and the cover letter– in Italian– updates me on the family doings sometime in the early 1980’s: news about new babies who are now adults, and people who are no longer with us. That letter and attached recipe (complete with my mother’s added wisecracks) belongs in a safe deposit box, I think.     

What goes into the ravioli stuffing is this: ground pork; ground veal; large onions; carrots; celery; parsley; spinach; mushrooms; grated cheese; rosemary; allspice; bread; and tomato sauce. Ground together after the  meats are browned, you get a bowl of what looks very much like a pesto sauce on steroids. The aroma is indescribable, and my house smelled just like my grandmother’s all day: I could close my eyes and picture her little kitchen in Brooklyn with the flour all over, the filling waiting inside the ocher-colored earthenware bowl she always used.     

The pasta dough is made differently from the standard way I do it; she used a mixture of water into which butter had been melted, and this is poured into the flour, followed by eggs. The measurements depend on… what? The instructions call for about 4 cups of flour to start, ending with “then you add flour until right texture. I guess maybe 4 to 6 cups? You see!” That little directive– “you see!–” is Brooklyn dialect for “you’ll know what to do when you’ve done it.” And it’s true– you add flour until the dough feels right.     

You mix and knead and let it rest in damp towels for a half hour, and then you divide and roll out the dough as flat as you can. I was trying to remember how Lucy made the pizza-dough on her show, or even how people do it in restaurants, but there’s so much else to do that you don’t worry about being a dough impresario: you just roll it out (I use my grandmother’s wooden rolling pin) until it’s thin enough. You roll out two large roundish sheets and spoon your filling onto one sheet every few inches– then you place the other sheet of dough atop the whole shebang, and with a water glass you cut circles down through the two layers of dough that have formed a little round envelope stuffed with filling. Then you get Kirk to “fork shut” the edges all around the 127  ravioli, and you place them on a floured tablecloth to dry. (If you don’t have a table clear and free, use a bed covered with a floured sheet.) “Make sure you fork deep enough,” I ordered. “Make sure the filling doesn’t seep out. Sprinkle more flour! But don’t sprinkle any on the new floor! And line them up neatly so we can COUNT them!” And, while forking, he asked if there weren’t any machines to do these tasks; I almost threw the mortar and pestle at him.     

We made sauce too, though nobody had my grandmother’s recipe for that. I remembered that my sister Lois and her husband Mike often make sauce for the week, so I called and got their recipe. My sister is hysterical, with her mixture of Brooklynese, Italian dialect, and Florida WASP:     

“In a crockpot– do you have a crockpot?!– put some olive oil in the BOTTOM, and add garlic. You can use fresh garlic or that paste kind that comes in a jar, right? Then chop a large onion up and put it in next. Then some Italian seasoning. A bay leaf which you fish out later– it’s just for flavah. Parsley– you can use dry. And Mommy puts in Gravy Master for a little brown color, but you can skip it. [I did.] Then some zazeech– maybe five or six? You know, like what comes in a package. So first you brown the SAH-sidges, then drain them, then add them to the crock. Right? Okay. THEN finally three cans of crushed tomatoes– we use Tuttarosa. Let it cook for like five or six hours.”     

(Did I just hear someone ask why we didn’t put in any sugar?!?! Don’t make me come over there!)     

Lois and Mike: it was PERFECT. Almost looked like Nonna’s sauce, but in a different way. Excellent!     

We heated up two large pots of water until the kitchen looked like Yellowstone National Park, and then cooked the ravioli in batches until it was just past al dente.  This is important: you cook and stir them carefully because you don’t want to knock them around so that they open and disgorge their contents into the hot water. You drain them and place them all in a bowl– we used a brand new Fiesta Tangerine pasta bowl, which comes with its own matching cheese shaker. You can mix the sauce in but we let people apply their own when it was time to sit down and eat.     

Five of us sat down to dinner, and we each had two giant plates full, but there was still plenty left over. What do you expect when you make 127 of these things, each of them at least three inches in diameter? (Guys! You forgot to take some home!) And red wine, chocolate candy, and homemade Italian bread supplied by the guests…     

What a meal, if I do say so. Not bad for a first attempt! I realize now why she only made it three or four times a year, because it takes hours and hours. My back felt it from all the standing, and the place where my right thumb meets my index finger was rubbed red by my left hand during the kneading process. But do I complain? I’m just saying. There’s nothing I like better than feeding people, and I thank them for being my guinea pigs. (We weren’t planning to have anybody over, really, but all that filling and dough cried out for diners.)     

Good times!     

For Mary Ann DeStefano  http://www.madaboutwords.com

My New Future Predictions to Come

Every online columnist– and there are thousands of them, because everyone with access to a typewriter now considers himself a journalist– has been whining about the disappointments of the previous decade (2000-2009, even though decades begin at the 1-mark, but don’t get me started).

I already know what’s going to happen over the next ten years, give or take, so pour yourselves some stale eggnog and read what you have to look forward to.

1. THE TELEPHONE. These will be simple machines molded in an unobtrusive black color, equipped with a hand-held speaking module attached to a base by a three-foot long wire. When someone needs to talk to you, it will ring; you will be charged for talking via increments called “message units.” The wire will prevent you from wandering too far and getting into mischief, like pileups on the freeway, and the expense will preclude any long, boring, meaningless conversations.

2. THE RECORD PLAYER. This ingenious device will allow you to play music that has been pressed into flattened, vinyl discs; large discs with twelve songs on them will be called “albums,” and small discs featuring only two songs will be known as “singles.”  You will be listening to the music in the same room in which the record player is located, and occasionally someone will ask you to “turn down the volume.” The coverings of these albums and singles will feature large photos of the recording artist, along with detailed information about their musical career.

3. THE LIBRARY. Libraries will be large buildings located in the downtown neighborhoods of cities and towns, and they will be represented in outlying areas called “satellites.” Here you will be able to look up any fact or reference in history simply by driving or walking there, parking, and looking up the books you need in conveniently-placed “card catalogues,” which will direct you to the proper section within minutes. Helpful, learned assistants will be nearby in case you don’t know the name of an author or the title of a book, and they will be able to steer you through an ingenious Subject Catalogue. Libraries will be filled with books from wall to wall, and you will be able to spend an infinite amount of time in them… ALL FOR FREE.

4. PRIVATE SCHOOL BUSES. Looking somewhat like trucks, these large vehicles will be used to transport children to and from private schools, exactly like children in public schools are. In fact, they will be exactly the same, and will succeed in replacing single vehicles containing one small child and its Mommy with one vehicle containing fifty children and their driver. Now these Mommies, safely off the highways at nine in the morning, can while away that hour talking to one another and exchanging recipes on their telephones– and REALLY helping to save the environment that they are so earnestly concerned about.

5. TELEGRAMS. Special shops conveniently located almost everywhere will enable a sender to enter and then dictate a message to a clerk who will send it on to a recipient within an hour, either via mail on paper or via signals by telegraph.  Messages will be necessarily short, as they will be charged by the word. Senders will naturally be required to send telegrams only to announce auspicious events– BABY ARRIVED THIS PM 7 LB 6 OZ;  UNCLE HENRY PASSED AT NOON SEND DONATION TO HEART FUND– as it is hoped that the system will not be overloaded by unnecessary verbiage– AM AT STORE NEED ANYTHING;  JUST WOKE UP AND HAVING COFFEE.

Wouldn’t it be great if all these predictions came true? At the rate that technology is moving, don’t be surprised if you find yourself talking on the telephone before the end of the year (and rumor has it that they’ll be available in colors other than black). Meanwhile, have a safe and happy 2010– and welcome to the future!

Christmas In New York– 2009

What can I say about Christmas in New York? It looks like a winter carnival, smells like lasagna, and usually feels pretty cold. If it’s NOT too cold, New Yorkers complain. “It’s too hot! It doesn’t feel like Christmas!” they bleat, yet if it IS too cold and snowy, by February they are dreaming of throwing their Blackberries onto the subway tracks and heading to Hawaii.

I myself rarely travel to New York for the Christmas holidays– specifically, Brooklyn and Staten Island– because anything below sixty degrees is too cold for me, my blood having thinned after thirty-one years in balmy, sun-kissed Florida. This year I decided at the very last minute– sorry, Jeff– to go and surprise them all because my sister Lois and her husband Mike were driving up from Port St. Lucie on Interstate 95– yes, DRIVING through all those states which, let’s face it, form nothing but one big factory outlet from northern Florida to Washington, DC.

I landed in Newark on the 23rd. and met my friend Stephen at Volare, an Italian restaurant on West 4th. Street in Manhattan. What an excellent place! He had discovered it recently and remarked on the excellence of their Manhattans, and so we each had two along with a plate of appetizers. We commented on the fact that we had known one another for forty years, having started high school together in 1969. (That was before disco, Madonna, rap, and Lady Ga Ga.) He looks better than I do, having retained all his hair and much of his sense.  It was nice to sit in that warm and red and gold glowing place and reminisce. Here’s to another forty years, Stephen! (Jeff– next year, I promise! Or you’ll just have to come to Florida. After all, I’ve been here for thirty-one years.)

I surprised Mom at home later that evening– the phone call at the front door, the subsequent ringing of the bell, the look of sheer delight and surprise on her face when she saw that her eldest, her favorite, her prince had come home for Christmas. Lois and Mike and Montana (their Yorkie) were in the upstairs apartment, sound asleep, and soon I plopped onto the living room sleeper sofa. It seemed like I only slept a few minutes before I awoke to my brother-in-law Mike, finger to his lips, whispering that I should walk into the kitchen where Lois and Mom were having coffee. The look on her face was priceless… the words from her mouth not so priceless– “I thought it was Peter Boyle comin’ down the hallway!” Peace and good will to you, too, dear sister.

My brother Tony was suitably surprised when he showed up later that day, presents in hand, looking good and happy and recovering nicely from shoulder surgery– so no tight hugs, please.

That evening we met at our sister Gina’s in Staten Island, to have our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of seven fishes. Or nine. Or eleven. Who could say? Everyone leapt onto various electronic devices to Google the details of that tradition, which basically is just another reason for Italian families to get together and eat. When Gina saw me she gasped, trembled, and burst into tears. Very emotional! It was only later that Mom and I realized that the surprise and shock were probably not a good idea for Gina, having only last year been implanted with a defibrillator.

We sat– well, first we had cocktails– the five of us in from Brooklyn; Gina and husband and two kids; and the husband’s sister Annie and her husband George and their daughter Caitlin. (George is Irish.) There was food enough for a Roman legion, but we managed to eat through most of it, like locusts with lots of vowels in our names. There’s a point when somebody produces a box of Italian pastries, which always elicits detailed discussion:  “Annie, where did you get these?”  “Right?!? I know !! From that place on Hylan near the store that used to be next door to the pizzeria.”  “Romano’s? That’s where we got those candied almond favors for Maria Scaccialotti’s wedding that she had to get married right outta high school.”  “No, not Romano’s, the other place past the dump.”  “OH, Tuttocarbo’s Bakery!”  “Yeah, except they don’t own it no more, the Spinzanas from New Dorp bought it but decided to keep the sign.”  Of course the pastries are always perfect with coffee, and you somehow find room atop the spaghetti with clam sauce, lobster tails, stuffed calamari, fried shrimp, and scungilli salad, all sauced and tossed and amazing and plentiful. And you talk and laugh and yell, even if the person you are talking two is six inches away. It’s all so lively and exhausting and you wish you could remember forever all the funny things everyone says and does…

Christmas Day everyone came to our house, and Mom made a huge lasagna, stuffed escarole, sweet potatoes,  and a ham. It’s like we hadn’t eaten for months… I distinctly recalled saying to Gina the night before that I would never eat again, but I guess I must have slept off all that seafood. It was so good being there with everyone; Mom always puts out the old decorations that we made as kids, and things our father made, so it’s like going back in time for the few days that I visit. The baby Jesus is wrapped in a little piece of paper towel, which is removed on Christmas morning, and I feel like I’m twelve years old again, listening to Mom, doing what I’m told, and making everyone laugh as much as I can.

Saturday Lois and Mike and Mom and I went to a diner out in Bay Ridge, even though the house was still stuffed with food. It was cold and rainy, and everyone wanted to escape from the four walls, so we went to one of Mom’s favorite places. She didn’t exactly know where it was– “we don’t go by streets, we go by landmarks!”– so Mike almost drove the wrong way into a one-way street when Mom told him to make a left. Mom and Lois and I started waving our arms in the air, all trying to alert him to that fact, but only strange, garbled confusion came out of our mouths; it was like he was driving three excitable Kreplachian people to lunch.

Sunday was sunny and beautiful, and I had no trouble flying home to Florida except for an hour delay on my Detroit to Orlando leg. And that wasn’t bad, because I had never been to Michigan so I suppose one of these days I will have to by a Michigan magnet for my refrigerator door. (Does it mean you’ve been in a state when you are just in an airport?)

Kirk elected not to travel north this year, so we had Christmas with our new floor when I got back to Florida. Maybe we’ll go up next year together, for longer, because there are so many people to see and so many meals to indulge in. And I want to shop in the Italian stores on Eighteenth Avenue so I can bring some REAL prosciutto back to Florida. And maybe one of those giant cheeses like what Lucy snuck onto the plane.

Christmas– it’s all about calories!

Nuts for The Nutcracker– My First Ballet

 

Nuts ?

It’s not that I never wanted to attend a ballet; it’s just that I never consciously made the effort to buy tickets to a show and then actually attend– you know, the whole process. I’m a gelatinous blob in many ways, figuring that I have the rest of my life to “catch up.”  E.g., I’ve never seen the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. But I will… one day.

Oh wait… I did see Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, a troupe of male ballerinas who, after you laugh hysterically for the first ten minutes, cause you to sit up and realize that they are actually exceptionally accomplished.

So, at his urging, Kirk and I met a few friends at The Bob Carr last night for a performance of  The Nutcracker,  staged by Robert Hill, the Orlando Ballet’s new Artistic Director. I’d really no idea what to expect– I looked up the story on Wikipedia and got the gist, but was pleasantly surprised at the fact that I knew all the songs already. I turned the experience into a one-man hum-along! Kidding; the only occasional extraneous noise was provided by a small child behind me who insisted on unwrapping and then playing with his souvenir Nutcracker RIGHT THERE, followed by a hissed  “not NOW, Madison!!”

As far as I could tell, the ballet’s storyline is about a family who gives a large Christmas party for the entire population of Mitteleuropa. There’s a lot of gesturing and folk dancing, the requisite funny old couple, and thousands of children with ADHD. I was amazed that they were able to jam that many people onstage, but they did it with grace and precision. (Why wasn’t I encouraged to take ballet lessons when I was a child?? I’m just asking.) Soon a magician uncle arrives to distribute presents, and we are treated to three mechanical dancing dolls who make the Stepford wives look like jellyfish. Incredible! They caused me to want to sit up straight in my seat, erect, but then I had to slouch down again because Madison couldn’t see past my head.

The little girl protagonist is gifted with a nutcracker; being that the original story was written in 1816, this is understandable. These days Madison would most likely prefer a Barbie who shoots miniature WMD’s at Midge. But the little girl loves her nutcracker and proceeds to crack open treats for all the children on stage who gather and cheep and lift up their hands to her like little birds.

Apparently she ate some bad walnuts because that night the little girl dreams that the house has been overrun by rats and mice. Nice, right? Things were not so perfect in Merrie Olde England, I tell you. And you just KNEW the exterminator was not going to be paying any calls during Christmas week.

A troupe of soldiers assails the vermin, and all is well; the little girl’s dream becomes more involved and we are treated to beautifully hallucinogenic visions of snowflakes, sugarplum fairies, Russian dancers, and living candies. Entrancing! I was totally enchanted… even Madison was quiet (or maybe he had been dragged out of the theatre to be locked inside the family’s SUV).

The little girl eventually wakes up, clutching her nutcracker, and the ballet ends. The two hours (with break) flew by like magic! I felt like I was five years old again, and idly wondered about just what type of holiday liqueur would put me into the same happily comatose state as those bad walnuts did the little girl.

And I just checked the TV schedule to see if  It’s A Wonderful Life is playing… and it’s the ONLY thing on TV !

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2009

The tree: silver aluminum from the 1950’s, complete with the attendant wheezing, clanking color wheel.

The ornaments: from family and friends, including a tiny tree that Carol painted in the 1980s, and hand-sewn figures from David Kenny’s mother. Atop the tree– David’s Star!

The menorah: from Menorahs.com; Kirk has some Jewish blood from the 1700’s. Who knew? He was a fur trapper in the Old Northwest. Probably sold a fur stole to Mrs. Rogers– wholesale!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all our friends and family!

PS … for a warm Hanukkah chuckle, click on my friend  Judy Lobo’s link right here:

http://judylobo.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/hanukkah-shmanukkah-5770/

Matinee Movie Mayhem In 1960’s Brooklyn

Joan In Tights

Winter break always reminds me of the Christmas vacations of my youth. In 1960s Catholic Bay Ridge, there was no such thing as “winter break;” you’d hear “break” in commands like “if you don’t come in the house when I call you I’m gonna break both your arms and legs,” to which the only reply was “how can I come in the house if I get broken legs?”

These Christmas vacations were mainly for kids but I think it gave the nuns a vacation as well because in those days they had 50 to 60 pupils per class, and none of us were allowed to have ADHD or peanut allergies; you just sat still and tried not to wheeze. Imagine the tension! And we always wondered where the nuns went for Christmas vacation– did they go visit other nuns? What else would YOU do if you were a nun? Sometimes we imagined them running crazily throughout the convent in bras and slips, smoking cigarettes and screaming, but who could say?

I think we usually got two weeks off. In those days it snowed a LOT, and it was often very cold, but we were bundled up and sent outside anyway. We did the same things we did the rest of the year, only slower. What we liked to do was, during a thaw, dam up the flowing water in front of somebody’s house, which would invariably freeze over in the middle of the following night. Two or three parking spaces– gone ! I think we probably set off this current radical change in weather patterns.

In those days, for 75 cents we could go to the movies, and we often did. For six bits you could sit in the Fortway Theatre for six hours between lunch and dinner, watching bad movies and giving grief to the matrons. Ahh, the matrons! They were basically vacation nuns, serving the same purpose– to keep us out of our mothers’  hair during the day so that they could go to the A&P and the beauty parlor and drink rum and Coke. If a movie was particularly boring, we’d drop nickels and summon the matrons with their flashlights to come help us find them, or we’d spill popcorn or sodas (accidentally) and then put our feet up while we watched her sweep the mess up. God forbid if the film snapped or clogged the projector and started to burn; pandemonium would ensue as the matrons ran around trying to keep order while we stamped our feet, screamed, and threw Dots at the screen.

And who could forget the popcorn lady? While filling your cup, she’d stare off into the distance, knowing instinctively when the cup was full. She had a dyed blonde beehive and blue eye shadow, and was probably in her forties. One time I asked for “a small dry,” meaning “a small tub of popcorn, no butter,” and she snarled “whaddya think this is, a cocktail lounge?” I only saw her smile when the toadish theatre manager was around.

I’m sure we saw many, many different movies, but it seems to me that we were always sitting in front of some Joan Crawford potboiler that involved an axe murder or a stabbing. In Berserk  she played a circus ringleader in tights who was trying to run a show, for crying out loud, as performers experienced gruesome deaths all around her. Of course, that kept the circus patrons coming back for more! (Folks is folks.) In I Saw What You Did,  her lover stabbed her to death as he embraced her, but not before she gave HELL to some young teenagers who were harrassing them. Strait Jacket  featured Joan freshly released from a mental hospital for killing her husband and his lover years before, and of course another series of murders takes place around her as soon as she settles into her daughter’s home. In both Berserk  and Strait Jacket  her daughters were responsible for the murders, which neatly foreshadowed the real-life drama Joan and her real-life daughter Christina would re-live during the Mommie Dearest fiasco.  

Joan, Still Alive

Were we children affected by these movies? Of course not. There was no discussion; we were sent to the movies and left to deal with any issues and to sort it out amongst ourselves. No pampering; no pandering. We knew we were seeing something fake, and the fact that Joan Crawford was up there on the screen experiencing mayhem somehow made it all laughable.

It wasn’t always about horror, though; we all sat through The Bible, and the theatre was actually completely silent for a few seconds when Adam and Eve showed up naked, but then the hooting began. And Disney sent a tour bus to the Fortway one day, with Annette Funicello inside, and sixteen million of us surrounded the theatre, blocking traffic, ready to welcome her. She never got out, though; upon seeing the boiling crowd of us, she opened a window a little bit and waved. What did she think we were going to do, tear her clothes off and grab fistfuls of her bouffant? I was so disappointed, because I loved Annette!

Annette, My Love

My mother tells me that, these days, the streets are empty of kids during Christmas vacation. Apparently they’re all inside on their computers or thumbing electronic devices in front of their television sets. They’ll never know the pleasure and community of crowding into an old movie palace and just being lousy rotten kids for a few hours. Every kid should experience that, especially during winter break…  and the memories would last longer than two weeks.

Random Acts of Blogolence

I have this Ideas notebook that I use for jotting down ideas for stories, blog topics, and letters to people. Sometimes a kernel of an idea leads to an entire novel:

“Carol was depressed. Carol was always depressed. Her depression had lasted longer than the Great one, the only difference being that nobody had ever handed her a New Deal.”

Years ago, I wrote a whole novel built around that one tiny paragraph. In fact, I was so amused by it that I called Carol herself, and we screamed and laughed for days. That’s at least ONE sale!

Ideas notebooks have to be tended to and nourished with care; the germ of an idea, written down in shorthand as is sometimes the case, can disappear after a few days if you don’t swathe it in a little fur coat of description. Something like ”a ang tub g’ma’s” won’t make any sense after a while; you have to flesh it out right away: “Write short story about catching Aunt Angie in the bathtub at Grandma’s house.”

Here are a few bits and pieces (clear or unclear) from my Ideas book, all of them naturally copyrighted herewith, complete with all the necessary ironclad herewiths and whereases:

OK — Norwegian Day Parade, Albanian flag, marching behind horses.

? –Dogs! Nuns! the JCs and BDs of my grammar school years.

? –Ellie: plaid butterscotch

OK –When I was young I wanted to marry a doctor; now I just GO to the doctor.

OK –buys her family tickets to Italy using the loose change she finds in people’s couches.

OK –The Night Paula’s Husband Died and Grandpa Fell In the Tub

? –helicopter buzzes us as we make love.

OK –Tupperware fumes caused global warming

OK –Why are we here? To vacuum.

? –Aunt Ida. L. thion Good guy

OK –Looking for a new maid while attending an Interfaith church service.

? –Waving women / volunteer to be bumped- not!

? –Take two checkbooks and call me in the morning.

Get the picture? The writers and bloggers among you know what it’s like. The BEST idea pops into your head at a stop light– you reach for a pen and a scrap of paper… you start to jot furiously… and, for the first time in the history of transportation, the light at 436 and Aloma changes immediately to green after three seconds instead of making you SIT there for the standard three minutes. Arrrggghhh!

One of these days I think I should just crochet all my unintelligible jottings into one big magnum opus, and I’ll send it to Oprah. She’ll have me on the show; she’ll make profound statements about my book, none of which will make any sense to me, but I’ll pretend, and we’ll both hug and cry. She’ll compare me to current Balkan social commentators because of my wry take on life– Why are we here? To vacuum– and maybe I’ll win the Nobel prize. (Something else to dust.)

What can I say?

Gay Marriage, the Pledge, and All That

This week, a ten-year-old boy was ratted out by a substitute teacher after he refused repeatedly to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He refused because, in the good ol’  USA, the rights of his tax-paying gay and lesbian fellow citizens have been repeatedly assailed and compromised and, to him, that did not add up to “liberty and justice for all.”

Out of the mouths of babes!

How many people have conveniently forgotten that this country was founded by rebels? They came here to basically form a country where everybody could keep out of everyone else’s private business; things were legislated toward those ends and, the Christian, God-fearing Puritans and the witch-hunters notwithstanding (just to name two early instances), the model has worked well. Of course heads had to be broken and bodies mutilated after being wrung dry in the name of “Biblically sanctioned” slavery, but you know what? It only took a couple of hundred years before our black brothers and sisters were afforded full citizenship. And of course every immigrant group that has come here to slave over railroad-building and Empire-growing has had to be put through the mill of hatred, racism, ignorance, and misunderstanding before the powers-that-be decided that they, just like the people who got here first, should be able to pay taxes just like everyone else.

So, on paper, everyone is equal. However, gay people aren’t equal. Every year, laws are put into place preventing us from actually achieving our full due regarding life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We’re legislated against and told that we CAN’T do this and we CAN’T do that. Our rights are boiled down into initiatives that the lovely, educated masses get to march into a voting booth and vote against. Though many municipalities have voted otherwise, and the progress appears excellent on that level, there still remain many flies in the ointment.

This is nice? Hasn’t anyone in this country learned anything? Judging by today’s level of education, I would have to say no. People are encouraged toward hatred, toward divisiveness, and toward indifference. And these emotional issues are played out within the sacred confines of the voting booth.

Who do I blame? I blame politicians who appeal to the ignorant and to the ill-educated– the sort of politicians who lick the thighs of their constituencies, cajoling and playing up fears within the guise of feel-good, anti-intellectual Americanism. You don’t agree with them? Then you’re a communist, or– these days– a socialist. Does anyone even KNOW what socialism is? Apparently not, because millions of our citizens enjoy the benefits of socialism without even realizing it.

And what gets me– and what everlastingly shames me– is that these attitudes are fed to the people by their religious leaders. Something like “equal rights for all our gay citizens” has been forcibly and horribly twisted into “those perverts want SPECIAL rights!”  And “those perverts want to force the churches to marry them at the altars!”  And “those perverts want to assail and cheapen the sanctity of the marriage sacrament!”

They are entitled to their opinions, of course. But you see, it’s not just a matter of having an opinion anymore– these opinions have been allowed to fester into active discrimination and, in many cases, murderous violence. These, therefore, are no longer people with opinions– because their opinions have succeeded in prevenmting me from living my life fully. And I’m angry!

You know what? Most, if not all of the gay people I know scratch their heads at all this. Storm the altars? No way. The opposition has decided that this issue be called “gay marriage” in order to appeal emotionally to its constituency. More thigh licking, in other words. What’s wrong with “equal rights for all?” I pay taxes toward that end, or I am missing something? My taxes go to fund wars and shenanigans much as they go toward helping the disadvantaged, but I don’t get to choose exactly where my dollars go. I end up paying to keep myself rooted in my second-class status because I don’t see the Feds protecting my rights. Hear that, Mr. President? Can you say “executive order?” I know you’ve got more pressing matters on your mind, but you need to make it a point to ensure that ALL your taxpayers are enjoying ALL the liberties that these endless wars are supposedly being fought for overseas. (And how ironic that forcibly closeted brothers and sisters are sent to Iraq to free the population… don’t ask, don’t tell? How about don’t get me started?!)

I’m grateful for the segment of the population that actually sits down to consider these issues, and who decide that it is 100% wrong to deny gay citizens the rights we were born to. This is NOT a religious issue; if the churches want to become actively involved in politics that foster discrimination, then tax the hell out of them.  I include my own Church within that group, most especially. It’s a cross I bear, ha ha… but I send the eMails and write the letters because they have to know how I feel. And I hear back, and, while it’s always good and encouraging, why can’t it be universal?

Ten years old… out of the mouths of babes, indeed…

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it ?