Soon enough

 I'm not looking forward to this.  My mini-me is going to be the same pain in the butt to me that I was to my mother. But my mother steered me right in the end, and now that it will be my turn, I have to do the same for my daughter.  As my mother often said, heaving a sigh and looking up at the sky (or ceiling), "Lord, give me strength!"

 
Shopping Urban

by Jane Shore

Flip-flopped, noosed in puka beads, my daughter
breezes through the store from headband to toe ring,
shooing me away from the bongs,
lace thongs, and studded dog collars.
And I don't want to see her in that black muscle tee
with SLUT stamped in gold glitter
shrink-wrapped over her breasts,
or those brown and chartreuse retro-plaid
hip-huggers ripped at the crotch.

There's not a shopper here a day over twenty
except me and another mother
parked in chairs at the dressing room entrance
beyond which we are forbidden to go.
We're human clothes racks.
Our daughters have trained us
to tamp down the least flicker of enthusiasm
for the nice dress with room to grow into,
an item they regard with sullen, nauseated,
eyeball-rolling disdain.

Waiting in the line for a dressing room,
my daughter checks her cleavage.
Her bellybutton's a Cyclops eye
peeking at other girls' armloads of clothes.
What if she's missed something—
that faux leopard hoodie? those coffee-wash flares?
Sinking under her stash of blouses,
she's a Shiva of tangled sleeves.

And where did she dig up that new tie-dyed
tank top I threw away in '69
and the purple wash 'n' wear psychedelic dress
I washed and wore
and lost on my Grand Tour of Europe
and my retired hippie Peace necklace
now recycled, revived, re-hip?

I thought they were gone—
like the tutus and tiaras and wands
when she morphed from ballerina
to fairy princess to mermaid to tomboy,
refusing to wear dresses ever again.
Gone, those pastel party dresses,
the sleeves, puffed water wings buoying her up
as she swam into waters over her head. 

 

 

 

 

Little Sisters

by Sonia Gernes

This birthday I have reached the age
where my mother bore
the last of her dead daughters—
one that was whisked away
before its first clean cry
could scour the naked room, the later two
a blue that refused to brighten.

"Baby Girl, Infant Daughter of ..."
the little markers said
and I listened from behind the stove
in her last pregnancy,
watched her body swell and sag,
knew from the shape
of those whispered words
that something was amiss—
she was weighted already
with two small stones.

Summer mornings I called them forth—
the little sisters I had never seen—
made them faces
from the old ache
in the air above the garden,
hair like mine
from the grassy space
where root crops should have been.

I learned of blood tests, transfusions,
the factor called Rh,
my little sisters
dreaming their aquatic days
on lethal ropes, my mother
almost dead.

Now at the kitchen table
lighting candles on a cake,
I am empty-handed,
empty-wombed,
no daughters to give her
as she counts again
my miraculous birth,
fourth and forceps-born,
her last survivor in that war
of blood with family blood.

I reach for her hand and hold it,
but there are spaces here,
tender lacunae we cannot fold away.
Still somewhere the hand-stitched garments,
the gingham quilts, the counting game.
Still the soot-smudged corner
where I crouched beneath the stovepipe
and fingered like a rosary
the small pebbles of their names. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things I don't need to know about anymore

 I've had three careers in my life and learned a lot of things that I don't even remotely need to know about anymore.  I sweated blood, stayed up late night after late night, studying and memorizing and practicing to not only learn, become proficient in, but to excel in them.  And now, and now ... none of them matter at all. I might as well never have bothered.  I probably would have been happier, have had a better life, if I had never gotten involved with any of them.

Wait, I don't know about that, especially my first career. That one, my academic career, was the one I wanted and dreamed about achieving since I was, I guess, in the sixth grade.  And that's the one that came crashing down first and hardest -- dreams do die hard.

The Navy paid for my schooling, in exchange for which I owed Uncle Sam a fairly large number of years of my life.  But I was fine with that because after graduation I expected that I would be continuing the research that I was interested in, knew a great deal about and was very good at doing.  But, alas, that research program was defunded. 

Poof! Gone. But since I was an indentured servant, so to speak, I couldn't just go looking for a similar research job at another institution.  

So, owing years of my life to the big blue machine, and considering that my mother had been an army nurse and my grandmother a navy nurse, I opted to go in that direction and black shoe it.  Big mistake.  What I was trained and assigned to do was just too much for me.  I've written about that episode in my life, as much as I ever care to, and now only strive to forget it.

So I took my father's advice and applied for and was accepted at OCS then SNA and joined the brown shoe navy, which suited me much better, clean and simple in its way, emotionally neutral. I would still be doing that job today except that I had some health problems that led to my separation.  Like they say, you may love the navy, but the navy doesn't love you back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So anyway,  all those years of my life, all that effort, all that striving, all that money spent and the end result: nothing.

What brought these musings about?  Oh, I came across some old training materials for stuff that I put all my effort into mastering, and it was not easy, but I did it, and today ... totally irrelevant to my life now and forevermore.  Then I thought about how things went before that and before that .... 

Oh, well.

 

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Letter

This happened before I met your mother:

I took Jennie Johanson to a summer dance,
and she sent me a letter, a love letter,
I guess, even if the word love wasn’t in it.
She wrote that she had a good time
and didn’t want the night to end.
At home, she lay down on her bed
but stayed awake, listening to the songs
of morning birds outside her window.
I read that letter a hundred times
and kept it in a cigar box
with useless things I had saved:
a pocket knife with an imitation pearl handle
and a broken blade,
a harmonica I never learned to play,
one cuff link, an empty rifle shell.
When your mother and I got married,
I threw the letter away—
if I had kept it, she might wonder.
But I wanted to keep it
and even thought about hiding places,
maybe in the barn or the tool shed;
but what if it were ever found?
I knew of no way to explain why
I would keep such letter, much less
why I would take the trouble to hide it.
Jennie had gone to California
not long after that dance.
I pretty much got over
wanting to see her just once more,
but I wish I could have kept the letter,
even though I know it by heart.
 by Leo Dangel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changes

 

Things have settled down over the past few days and I've had time to enjoy the season changing.  Fall is definitely in the air. It's in the morning light, the midday breeze, the afternoon shadows.  It's even beginning to smell like autumn.  Not quite, but soon. Every morning while the coffee is brewing, I sweep fallen leaves off the front and back porches, steps and walkways.  The air has a fresh tang to it, the air cool, the low morning sun rays through the trees delightfully warm.

El jefe and I managed to get away by ourselves and take a horseback ride to one of our favorite spots and have a roll in the hay, a good, solid double shagging of me by he, under a juniper while a squirrel watched and commented.  Afterward, we picked ticks off ourselves like a couple of chimpanzees, but we didn't eat them.  At least, I didn't.

 I watched a helicopter crew doing some power line work the other day.  The helo flew right alongside the power line while a guy on the skid hung way out and wrapped what looked like tape around the line every few yards.  Then the helo would hop over the transmission tower, dropping down on the other side and the guy on the skid repeated the process and so on down the line.

The helo landed on our airstrip and I went over to see what was up.  They asked if we had any Jet A fuel they could buy off of us. I said we didn't, although once we were operating our King Air we would have, not that that did them any good at the moment. They were about to leave when I said why don't you come over to the cook house and chow down -- on the house -- and tell me what you guys were doing.  It looked strange and very dangerous to me.

So, while they were vacuuming up ham bone soup, corn bread, twice-baked sweet potatoes, buttered rice and a leafy salad, all washed down with black coffee, they told me what they were doing.  

 Technically, they were operating as an FAA Title 14, Part 133, external load flight, the "external load" being the guy hanging off the skid. They were  measuring and marking sections along a fiber optic wire, which was above the actual power transmission wires. What they called anti-galloping devices, dampers to stop the wire from, well, galloping, in the wind or because of an earthquake or whatever, would be installed on the conducting wire below where the markings were on the fiber optic cable by another crew later. To accomplish their job, the line technician -- the guy on the skid plate -- wrapped colored tape around the optic wire at measured intervals, he measuring the intervals as the helo pilot inched the bird forward right next to all those transmission lines, stopping at the tech's signal, hovering while the tape was attached, then inching forward again, over and over.

A bad day at the office. FAA photo.

Imagine the skill of the helicopter pilot being able to do that.  Imagine the guts of the technician, balanced on the skid more than a hundred feet above the ground, leaning out, measuring -- precisely -- then taping the wire, all under the thumping helo blades just above his head, in the roaring downdraft of wind from the blades.  Imagine if the helo pilot made just the slightest error in maintaining the bird so close to the wires and ran into them or forced the guy on the skid into them.  What a dangerous job, you can bet.  The slightest mistake would mean, at best, the crew installing the dampers would place them incorrectly, resulting in the fiber optic wire failing in a windstorm, cutting off phone, cable, internet, or, at worst, the helicopter crashing and both men being killed.

Does that happen?  Oh, yes. 

Anyway, after the guys has finished eating and belched a couple of times, we got to talking about current events.  They were both red hatters, MAGA men who were big fans of Trump.  They considered him one of their own.  Their parents and grandparents had been blue-dog Democrats or New Deal  Democrats and they didn't consider themselves Republicans.  They were MAGA, a new and different party that, nominally, was Republican but that was really something else entirely. 

I said that I'd read that MAGA people were dumber, more low brow, than Democrats, who were college-educated urban elites. They said those guys might consider themselves elite, but they were the ones who had ruined the country, so to hell with them.  The helo pilot had been taught his trade by the army and served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, two wars, he said, that were both pointless and stupid, that those self-described elites had gotten us into while being sure to keep their own candy asses safe at home.

The line technician had gone to community college to pick up some skills but not stuck around to get a degree.  His father had been badly injured in Iraq, gotten addicted to pain pills and died of an overdose when he, the technician, was five.  His mother remarried, a bum who wasted the family's savings then disappeared, after which she stayed single, working whatever jobs she could find to keep body and soul together, jobs that were ever harder to find thanks to the flood of illegal aliens willing to work for peanuts. His male role model growing up was Mick Foley, the wrestler.

When I chimed in with my gripes about these self-assured, self-proclaimed elites, it didn't go so well.  I sprang into the saddle of one of my favorite hobby horses, railing against the educated fools who cackle on about left brain-right brain garbage (and it is, dammit!), mentioning a guy with a Standford graduate degree and a Rhodes scholar, among others, then mentioned a Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar believing in chem trails and.... I could see I'd lost them. When I said "Rhodes," they probably heard "roads."  The brain stuff flew past them. They'd clearly never heard of Stanford, but the mention of Harvard brought knowing nods. Dweeb Central. 

So there I was, a sorority girl with a doctorate from a public ivy, feeling at home with them and their conversation, but they, gradually sensing our differences, growing cool to me.  I should have kept my stupid mouth shut.  One day maybe I'll learn. 

I would have liked to listen to more of what they had to say, but they said they had to get going and find someplace to refuel. They wanted to pay for their meal but I said it was free; look around, there's no cashier.  So they wanted to tip the servers and did so, chatting with them while I looked up the closest place they could get jet fuel and off they went. (They had planned to refuel at our now-closed local airport; their information about it was out of date.)  

I told them to drop by anytime for a free feed and a chat.  They promised they'd be back.  I hope they will be, but if they do come back, they'll probably want to talk to the cookhouse workers rather than me.

  

Hier stehe ich

 My husband, seeing how things are going in these United States, has, for some time been suggesting we emigrate, just as our own Protestant forebears did when they, having been pronounced anathema by the Catholic Church, which proceeded to burn their confrères alive, bolted out of Europe running fast, breathing hard and sweating copious.

I was half inclined to agree with him, maybe more than half, and thinking we'd better get going soon, while the kids are young enough to adapt to a new country.  But then...then...I started looking through some photos I took back east a few years ago when I attended a family reunion, visiting Pennsylvania and nearby states, where I became acquainted with distant relatives who had lived in the same area for literally hundreds of years, some on land granted to them for service in the Revolution, others living on farmland their ancestors had purchased from the Lenni Lenape Indians in the 17th century.

I thought about Salathiel Goff, through whom I am a Daughter of the American Revolution, what he went through to create this country in his short life, crossing the river when he was 43.  And how did he die? Indians.  A Shawnee raiding party attacked his homestead and he died defending it and his family.  

So am I, part of his family's centuries-long generational diaspora across America, to turn yellow and abandon the country he fought to create because things are not looking so good right now?

I don't think so. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you a Christian child?

 

In light of recent events, I am most ardently looking for the man on the white horse.

 

Revelations 19:11:1-16

 

 

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written that no man knew but he himself.

And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS."

 

It's strong in this one

 I've had that urge for some time and have pretty much accomplished it except for some things I choose to keep on line. For now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miller v. Hendrix

A 1945 ad: Big Band and jazz music was the teen-age music of its day. 

 What happened to America between 1939 and 1968?  That's, say, one generation.  A child born in 1939 could have had children in kindergarten or first grade in 1968.  That would have been pretty normal for that age cohort.  

But what a different world 1968 was from 1939!  It's almost as if a different...I don't know...species...had replaced the people of 1939.  America was a different civilization, a different people entirely in 1968 than it was in 1939.

Why do I pick those two dates?  Well, 1939 was the year Glenn Miller had a big hit with "In the Mood" and 1968 was the year Jimi Hendrix had a big hit with "All Along the Watchtower."  Could there be any two pieces of music more different, not only in the sound and lyrics, but in the dress and manner of the musicians?  And while it's very likely that most Americans today may never have heard "In the Mood"; indeed may never have heard of Glenn Miller, you can bet they've heard Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "All Along the Watchtower" -- and probably liked it, even though now it's about two generations old.

Even when Hendrix first played "Watchtower," Miller's "Mood" was considered fuddy-duddy music, utterly passé.  That's even though when it first came out it was music for teenagers, bobby-soxers, the latest thing.  Why was that so? How could musical tastes have changed so much so quickly -- and wasn't the fact that they did a sign that American culture had changed as much, too? 

What happened that so radically changed us?  You could say it was baby boomers, but the whole shift in society happened before they could have had much, if any, influence. The oldest baby boomer in 1968 would have been 22 years old.  Rock and roll, or just rock, to distinguish it from Buddy Holly, the Diamonds, Elvis, and their sort of music, was well established by then. Hendrix himself was born in 1942, so not a boomer.

I suppose I should say now that I have a theory as to why American culture changed so quickly in just one generation, and has not really changed that much since -- people still listen to the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Doors and other popular music groups of the sixties. You might walk in to a supermarket and hear one of their tunes playing.  But it's a sure bet you won't hear a Glenn Miller, Woody Herman or Tommy Dorsey song.  

Well, like I say, I should have a theory for why that is so.  But I don't.  Just as I don't have a theory for why "guitar music" as it was dismissed as in the 1930s and '40s is still so popular that it essentially the only popular music there is.  Guitars and drums and a keyboard. That's all you need to have a hit these days.

 There was a big band revival of sorts in the late '90s, typified by the Brian Setzer Orchestra, which incorporated jump blues and swing as well as rockabilly into its big band format, Setzer leading the band with a guitar, but it faded out pretty quickly. 

Anyway, I find the phenomenon interesting -- very interesting -- and think that the change in musical preference so quickly says something profound about what was happening to Americans in those days, something so deep and lasting that we are still living with it today; that there was a civilizational break that left what had been American culture behind.  

If we need a break year, maybe we could say 1963 with the assassination of President Kennedy, or the 1964 Free Speech movement in Berkeley, or the Marines landing in DaNang, Viet Nam, in 1965.... Again, I don't know.  But the change did happen.  What do you think the cause was? And would you cite a specific year?

 This clip is from the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade.  The woman, by the way, is Sonja Henie, who had won more Olympic and World titles than any other women's figure skater. At the time this movie was made, she was among the highest-paid movie stars in Hollywood.  The band is Glenn Miller's and the song is "In the Mood." Note how well-dressed the musicians are, their showmanship formal and pre-planned.  They read sheet music.  They are a dance band, the music meant to be danced to as well as listened to.  There are no lyrics.  The audience is also well-dressed and well-behaved.  It's all so sophisticated...and...public.  Everyone is there to be seen as well as to enjoy the music. 

Miller would die three years later under unclear circumstances while flying from England to France to entertain our troops during World War II. He was 40.

 This music video is of the Jimi Hendrix Experience playing "All Along the Watchtower" in 1968.  Could there be more of a contrast with the Glenn Miller performance, not only in the musical style but in the way the video is filmed, what is filmed, the musicians themselves, their hair, their clothes, their actions, including biting their guitars.  And the music.  It can raise the hairs on the back of your neck.  And the lyrics seem to hint at something profound, telling you something important, but just exactly what is left to your imagination. The whole performance seems somehow more...personal, both for the musicians and for you...and certainly more emotionally intense than that of Miller's orchestra. It is exciting. 

Hendrix would die two years after this video was filmed from a drug overdose. He was 28.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Just for fun, here's the Brian Setzer Orchestra's version of "In the Mood" from 2000.  I wonder what Glenn Miller would have thought of it.

A mirror

Elspeth Eric

 Have you ever met a narcissist?  How about a sociopath?  Is there a difference? Can a person be both? Is it natural, in fact, for a person to be both a narcissist and a sociopath?  But not necessarily in a gross and obvious manner, merely as a part of their personality in a way that you may not realize through years of acquaintance, and maybe even then, not until someone else points these traits out to you, whereupon they become obvious and make you wonder how you had missed so many obvious signs.

Has a narcissist/sociopath ever done you harm?  A person you considered a friend exploited, taken advantage of, betrayed you?  If not, consider yourself lucky. 

What we have tried to tell you is the story of a narcissist -- someone in love with himself.  All of us are susceptible to this affliction. We all continue to dote on ourselves long past the age when we should be turning our interest elsewhere. But we never do completely, and the result is that the world is largely populated by very large babies, by children grown old.

 "Mirror, Mirror," first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on January 28, 1976.

 

 The author of this radio play is Elspeth Eric, a veteran radio and television actress, most notably known in her day for portraying gun molls. 

She was a graduate of Wellesley College, an English lit major who wanted to be an actress, but took years to accomplish that goal, in the meantime supporting herself as a cocktail waitress, photographer's model, cook, maid, sales person, stenographer, personal secretary, etc., while working in summer stock to hone her acting skills.  

Eventually, she broke into radio and performed in dozens of series, including The FBI in Peace and War, Precinct 21, Gangbusters and Front Page Farrell.

On Broadway, she acted in such plays as Margin for Error, Too Many Heroes and Dead End. When television came along, she acted in the dramas The Web, Studio One and Robert Montgomery Presents among others.