Won't You Be My Neighbor?

In the general category of Pay It Forward, I'd like this blog to be for someone what Mr. Rogers was for me.  Of course, I am not Mr. Rogers.  I'm not even very much like Mr. Rogers. He's a guy.  A nice guy.  And a dead guy besides.  But once upon a time he was my encourager.  My consolation.  My friend.

I was not a Mr. Rogers kid, but I had one of those.  Not that he would cop to that now.  But when he was little and I was young -- wowzer, was I ridiculously young -- there was a time of day, every weekday,  we would spend with Mr. R.

That was a happy interlude of my life, leavened with a modest amount of angst.  I was mostly a stay-at-home mom, doing a little freelance writing on the side -- just to remind myself I could still dress up and drive downtown.  I had doubts about what kind of a parent I was being.  And concerns that my focus was getting very narrow.  And some loneliness and some yearning -- unexpressed and expressed -- to write books.  I wanted to make something of myself.  I wanted to be content in the lucky life I was leading so that God would not strike me down for ingratitude.  In short, I was almost exactly the way I am now.

Having made all manner of fun of Mr. Rogers for his childlike, moderately effeminate, goody-two-shoes persona and of those nutso sidekicks and puppets on his show,  I was chastened, as is so often the case, by how much comfort I derived from my half-hour with Fred.

I loved the way he liked to take his time.  The patience with which he approached the lacing up of his sneakers.  His special sweaters that zipped up and were knitted for him by his mom.  How glad he was to see me.  How generous he was about my shortcomings. How much he liked me just the clearly defective way I was.  

I remember once he took us on a tour of a real airplane and explained everything we could feel good about while flying.  That was prior to my magical discovery of the air-travel-soothing properties of Xanax.  I was glad to have Mr. Rogers show me the little bathroom and how to fasten my seatbelt and where the pilot sits.  I actually did feel a little better.  (Although of course I wasn't exactly inside a plane at that time.)  I was sure Mr. Rogers didn't murmur to himself, "This is barbaric" every time he walked down a narrow aisle in a very narrow room that would sooner or later go 30,000 feet into the thin air.  He was completely fine with that.  (I supposed that was because he totally believed in a nice life after death, but I could be glad for him on that score, as well.)

My friend Judy actually met Mr. Rogers and she got his autograph for John.  The scrap of paper. which I still have around here somewhere,  says, "For John and his mama, best wishes, from their television neighbor, Mr. Rogers."  See?  I loved that. 

It had to come to an end of, course.  John grew up.  I grew up.  Mr. Roger grew old and went on up to Heaven, and one of his sweaters went to the Smithsonian Institution. The Neighborhood of Make Believe is closed to me forever now.  I'm sure I couldn't return to that little island of peace and reassurance, even if I wanted.  Even in reruns.  We've all moved on.   

But, the Pay It Forward part, for me,  is this:   

If you can do something to create a space of acceptance and kindness for the tired, scared and cranky people in your life -- and the ones you meet along your way -- even if it's a little goofy and not up to your usual standard of sophistication, go for it.  Make it so.  Just do it.

And if someone finds a small amount of diversion and reassurance here?

I would like that very much.

As Mr. Gandhi once almost said:   Let us be the Mr. Rogers we want to see in the world.

Body in Motion

Remember the part in Star Wars where Darth Vader says of Luke Skywalker, "The Force is strong with this one"?

Well. The Darthster could have just as easily said that about me.

However,  I wasn't there right then, which is a good thing since I would have been no match for Darth and his light saber attachment. I would have cried like a little girl (of which I used to be one) and probably been dropped out an airlock or down into the trash compactor to be eaten by that giant, many-armed ... thingie.

(I plan to do a post shortly, entitled, simply, "Thingie."  Because it's a handy ... um wordthingie to have in ones vocabulary for the times when the descriptive section of the brain is lazy.  In my particular brain the "find the perfect word" function is very often skulking in a subterranean chamber, located down a long flight of stairs from my Reptilian Lazy Brain -- for reference see post http://lakeewriter.blogspot.com/2010/08/workout-report.html.  That evil Reptile of Laziness is no doubt the pure essence of my being.)

You may think I was rambling right there, but not really.  This paragraph totally pertains.  You'll see.

Here's where the whole constructions dovetails:  The Force that resides so strongly in me is NOT The Force that binds the universe together.  No.  Not at all.

(And anyhow, that Force is, to my way of thinking, way too dependent on both confidence and trust, and I am in notoriously short supply of both of those.  If I and my light saber had been blindfolded until I could feel The Force, I would have cauterized both my feet right off.  I know this.

All righty.  That was a ramble.  Sorry.  I had this flash of how crappy I would be at the "Trust the Force, Luke" scenario.  Here's how:  Very, very crappy.)

My Force of choice is Inertia.  It's the celebrated Inertia so eloquently described by Sir Isaac Newton in his famous, eponymous, Newton's First Law of Motion:  "Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force."*

There we are.  When my body is at rest, it wants to remain in a state of rest.  So badly. It wants to arrange itself on a comfy couch or a comfy bed with 3-4 comfy, comfy pillows to prop up its neck and at least one cozy comforter and/or throw to keep it more comfy.  It would like a book or a magazine to lightly entertain in its Brain Theater of "Entertain Me!" -- which seats 500 and serves popcorn for free.  Spacious, that chamber of my head.  Vast.  It wants to be read to until it drifts off to sleep. 

This has always been my way.  My first answer to "How about we [fill in the do something/anything blank]?" is now and always has been, "Sounds fantastic. Maybe later."

Now, I don't always say that out loud.  The accomplishments of my life, many of which I'm proud to have accomplished, were wrested from the iron grip of my inclination to remain a body at rest. 

But it's tough going.  The inertia here is ... massive.  And it's gotten massive-er because now, with the knee thingie, it actually hurts quite a lot to get off the couch.  I'm not complaining.  (I'm willing to complain, of course, but that's not what I'm doing now.) 

Which brings me to the present challenge.

I have promised to get up tomorrow at 6:50 a.m. and haul my lazy... self to the water aerobics class.  Me and Newton both say, "No."  Therefore, it will be momentarily difficult for us to get going.  (He'll have a slightly harder time since he's dead.)

I will mutter to myself and embrace my pillow in a heart wrenching scene of parting. It makes me sad to picture it.  But I have given my word and I must go.

So, The Force.  I call upon The Force!  I offer up my trust and my confidence.  I tell Obi Wan, I'm gonna do it

And once I get going, the other half of Isaac's First Law will kick in and boot my fanny on down the road.  I will remain in motion.  I will keep on keeping on.  Five days of exercise.  Five, count 'em, five.

This is so not me. 

Do you hear all that slow, heavy, kind of maniacal breathing?

I think Darth Vader may have been my real dad...


*Where would I be without Wikipedia, people? Where?

Blowing the Whistle on Agatha Christie

Couple of things to start:

1) I have discovered lately that in spite of Oprah and her minion with the cute glasses trying to get me to declutter my library, I should never, never give away books.  This is because there's about a 15-year statute of brain limitation on anything I read before that.  An old, forgotten (no kidding) book is a brand new book to me.

2) I discovered this because -- as part of my eternal quest to be a better writer in the genres of mystery and detective fiction -- I've started rereading my favorite series. Serieses? This summer, I read all the Sue Grafton, Kinsey Millhones, from A is for Alibi  right up to but not entirely including R is for Ricochet and enjoyed them a bunch.  Had no clue (as they say), no recollection at all, about who done what to whom or why.  Nice surprises all around.  And now I have gone back to the very foundations of the detective story (No. Not all the way to Poe, but close.) and started reading or maybe rereading Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Series.

Here, my darlings, is what I deduced:

Agatha Christie doesn't give a crap about her characters. 

And neither, so much, do I.

The Miss Marples are as follows, in order:

• The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
• The Body in the Library (1942)
• The Moving Finger (1943)
• A Murder is Announced (1950)
• They Do It with Mirrors, or Murder with Mirrors (1952)
• I AM HERE
• A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
• 4.50 from Paddington, or What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (1957)
• The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, or The Mirror Crack'd (1962)
• A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
• At Bertram's Hotel (1965)
• Nemesis (1971)
• Sleeping Murder (written around 1940, published 1976)

(Thank you, Oh, Wikipedia, God of All The Information You Shouldn't Float Your Doctoral Dissertation On.  You are the most magnificent source of casual FYIs.)

As evidenced by Point #1, above, I don't actually know whether I ever read these novels but I did have a mental picture of how they would have been if I had.  Each little jewel would have been a delectable sojourn in the quaint, atmospherically English village of Saint Mary Mead.  (A misty, marvelous getaway such as I had discovered more than fifteen years ago (Woo Hah!) in the gardens of Brother Cadfael.) There would be the feisty, adorable Miss Marple solving crimes that would have me on the edge of my fluffy couch.  Wringing my hands.  Hoping for the best.

Not in the least.

The Miss Marple series IMHO is about as gutwrenching as a game of Sudoku. Oh, it's entertaining.  But it's not romantic or even engrossing.  Each of these short novels is a puzzle.  And that's pretty much it.  I want to know who done it.  I want to know bad, because certainly the stories are engaging, like any puzzle or game.  There are so many suspects.  And murder is always stalking somebody.  Miss Marple is always looking elderly, fragile and confused and being very tough, sharp and cynical.  And I don't care very much.  If Miss Marple got run over by a lorry, I wouldn't put flowers on her grave, if you know what I mean.

The Sue Graftons turned out to be just the opposite.  I don't really care very much about the crime.  I didn't remember the slightest detail until the fog began to clear slightly in R is for R and I quit rereading.   It's Kinsey I love.  Kinsey I remember everything about, even now, even when her antics are obscured by the mists of Ann Brain Time.   Kinsey and her sweet, cute 84-year-old landlord, her efficient shiplike apartment, fitted out in teak -- with a porthole.  OMG.  I want that.  I love her peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.  I envy her every Big Mac. I'm impressed by the insouciance with which she makes some very poor romantic choices.  When she goes off to do something incredibly stupid, I worry, I fret, I pace (Mental pacing; very good exercise.)  If she died, I'd be personally sad.

So?  So what?  So I've stopped beating myself up so much about my own novels not being incredibly plot driven.  Stopped worrying about not having enough "red herring" characters in the storyline.  I love feisty, scared-but-still-daring, Allie. And Tom, her blind bombshell.  I just do.  I think if I can ever find a &**(^^%$% agent and a %^&;$%^^^ publisher, readers will, too.  And if not?

I'm happy as I am.

The World of Work

Driving to my early morning water aerobics class has been a revelation.  You might recall that I looked forward to the peaceful, meandering ride down Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., savoring the delicious calm of morning.  Ahhhhhhhh.

Wrong.  So wrong.  You might also recall that I mentioned this "rush hour" thingie that they hold down on MLK every weekday.  This morning I was ten minutes late for class.  Again, this had its advantages because I would probably have died of natural causes or drowned myself had the class been longer, but I don't like to be late.

Rush Hour:  So many cars.  So little time.

But what I was musing about today as I inched my way down MLK (that's like a poem, but entirely unintended) doing what amounts to an early-morning, stop-and-go commute, is how it transported me back, as it were, to The World of Work.  To the days when I had a "real job."

Here's what I'd say about that.  Regardless of how you left your job -- if you had a job to leave and you left it without having made arrangements for a fabulous new one -- whether you pushed the eject button on purpose, or someone pushed it for you, or you ran, dancing and leaping through fields of flowers to embrace retirement -- regardless of how deeply and profoundly your life has improved in the days, months or years that have intervened -- leaving a job that you had in The World of Work is a very big deal.

Even the "take this job and shove it" Grim Satisfaction Scenario must still leave a gaping hole.  Because your job takes up a big chunk of your day, your mind, your heart, your life.  And when it's over, it's shockingly ... done.

And something in your soul still leans in, still yearns just a little or maybe a whole lot, to the empty space in your life where your job used to live.

When you had that job, you had a schedule, a time to be somewhere, a route or routes you drove to get there, a stop for coffee or your portable coffee cup you brought from home.  You had music you listened to, a familiar station, or some talk that lifted your spirits or hacked you off and got your blood circulating. You had landmarks you passed and thought about as you passed them. You marked changes, revolving seasons, street repairs, orange cones, construction projects that started as cleared lots and soared many stories high.

You had a parking spot, or a parking lot or garage in which you needed to find a spot.  Maybe finding the spot consumed your strategic attention all the way to work. Or you rode the bus and looked out the window.  Or commuted with friends and listened to their familiar complaints.

You had people who greeted you.  A receptionist, maybe.  The guy in the cube or the office next to yours.  You had acquaintances.  You had friends.  You had people you spent more time with, day-to-day, than you did with your spouse, your lover, your kids, your dog.

You had assignments or had an assignment to give people assignments.  You had a project.  A timeline.  A hole to dig.  A hole to dig yourself out of.  A problem.  A crisis.  A workload.  You had worries.  A mentor.  A nemesis.  An idiot.  A pain in the butt.  Dreams.  Goals.  Income.

You had a chair, a desk, a truck, a photograph of loved ones that you displayed or didn't, depending on the culture of the place you worked.  You had a computer, a notepad, a pencil, a shovel -- if you were really cool, in my opinion, you had an earthmover thingie with a giant claw that looks like a dinosaur and eats rocks.  You had a window.  Or you didn't.  And you had a plan to get a chair, a cube, an office with a window, a better title. Or you'd settled in and given up on that one.  

All in all, you had deep grooves in your brain that had been carved there by the routine of your work.  And when it all stopped and your life changed direction, the grooves stayed.  They seem to persist for a very long time.  Maybe forever.

It helps to put a new job in the old place or fill it with new challenges and dreams.  But those grooves are yours.  You earned them. 

So this morning as I halted my way down MLK (Not a poem.  Seriously.) it all came back.  The people.  The challenge of the assignments.  The satisfaction.  The disappointments. The commitment.  The plans.  The goals.  The love.  The loss.  The rush hour.

Like the dude said, "Love is never gone."  The life you spent on your work has its own integrity, its own power, its own value.  It may have vanished like everything In Time does,  but it was never "for nothing."  It meant something important, if only to you.  So, take my advice and don't regret "what you did for love."  For sure, I don't.

The World of Work.

Gone.  But not forgotten.

The World of Work

Driving to my early morning water aerobics class has been a revelation.  You might recall that I looked forward to the peaceful, meandering ride down Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., savoring the delicious calm of morning.  Ahhhhhhhh.

Wrong.  So wrong.  You might also recall that I mentioned this "rush hour" thingie that they hold down on MLK every weekday.  This morning I was ten minutes late for class.  Again, this had its advantages because I would probably have died of natural causes or drowned myself had the class been longer, but I don't like to be late.

Rush Hour:  So many cars.  So little time.

But what I was musing about today as I inched my way down MLK (that's like a poem, but entirely unintended) doing what amounts to an early-morning, stop-and-go commute, is how it transported me back, as it were, to The World of Work.  To the days when I had a "real job."

Here's what I'd say about that.  Regardless of how you left your job -- if you had a job to leave and you left it without having made arrangements for a fabulous new one -- whether you pushed the eject button on purpose, or someone pushed it for you, or you ran, dancing and leaping through fields of flowers to embrace retirement -- regardless of how deeply and profoundly your life has improved in the days, months or years that have intervened -- leaving a job that you had in The World of Work is a very big deal.

Even the "take this job and shove it" Grim Satisfaction Scenario must still leave a gaping hole.  Because your job takes up a big chunk of your day, your mind, your heart, your life.  And when it's over, it's shockingly ... done.

And something in your soul still leans in, still yearns just a little or maybe a whole lot, to the empty space in your life where your job used to live.

When you had that job, you had a schedule, a time to be somewhere, a route or routes you drove to get there, a stop for coffee or your portable coffee cup you brought from home.  You had music you listened to, a familiar station, or some talk that lifted your spirits or hacked you off and got your blood circulating. You had landmarks you passed and thought about as you passed them. You marked changes, revolving seasons, street repairs, orange cones, construction projects that started as cleared lots and soared many stories high.

You had a parking spot, or a parking lot or garage in which you needed to find a spot.  Maybe finding the spot consumed your strategic attention all the way to work. Or you rode the bus and looked out the window.  Or commuted with friends and listened to their familiar complaints.

You had people who greeted you.  A receptionist, maybe.  The guy in the cube or the office next to yours.  You had acquaintances.  You had friends.  You had people you spent more time with, day-to-day, than you did with your spouse, your lover, your kids, your dog.

You had assignments or had an assignment to give people assignments.  You had a project.  A timeline.  A hole to dig.  A hole to dig yourself out of.  A problem.  A crisis.  A workload.  You had worries.  A mentor.  A nemesis.  An idiot.  A pain in the butt.  Dreams.  Goals.  Income.

You had a chair, a desk, a truck, a photograph of loved ones that you displayed or didn't, depending on the culture of the place you worked.  You had a computer, a notepad, a pencil, a shovel -- if you were really cool, in my opinion, you had an earthmover thingie with a giant claw that looks like a dinosaur and eats rocks.  You had a window.  Or you didn't.  And you had a plan to get a chair, a cube, an office with a window, a better title. Or you'd settled in and given up on that one.  

All in all, you had deep grooves in your brain that had been carved there by the routine of your work.  And when it all stopped and your life changed direction, the grooves stayed.  They seem to persist for a very long time.  Maybe forever.

It helps to put a new job in the old place or fill it with new challenges and dreams.  But those grooves are yours.  You earned them. 

So this morning as I halted my way down MLK (Not a poem.  Seriously.) it all came back.  The people.  The challenge of the assignments.  The satisfaction.  The disappointments. The commitment.  The plans.  The goals.  The love.  The loss.  The rush hour.

Like the dude said, "Love is never gone."  The life you spent on your work has its own integrity, its own power, its own value.  It may have vanished like everything In Time does,  but it was never "for nothing."  It meant something important, if only to you.  So, take my advice and don't regret "what you did for love."  For sure, I don't.

The World of Work.

Gone.  But not forgotten.

Happy Dappy Day

I promised.

I got all pensive and ponderous on those last two posts and and now I'm going to make up for it with the previously pledged clown car and a list of happy things.

Things that make me happy:

1. This clown car.  Except for Sinister Clown in the driver's seat.  I think he has parked on the foot of Hitchhiker Clown.  Look at their eyes.  Their eyes!  

2. Watching Cujo spin his dish for food:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTcUbKWzweE

3. Making Tuna Spaghetti:

I know.  It doesn't sound very attractive, but it is and it's easy.  A spouse can do it.  (Just kidding.  Really.  Well-meant joshing, is all.)  And you can probably find the ingredients in your pantry and in a big old herb pot out on the deck. 

The original recipe called for 1/2 cup olive oil but I wouldn't use that much olive oil even if I were serving ... olive oil. 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (Still quite a bit, but it is part of the sauce.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 TBS fresh parsley, chopped
1 sprig oregano (strip leaves from stem and chop fine.  In my world a little oregano goes a long way.)
3 1/2 cups peeled, chopped tomatoes. (Cut to the chase.  I used two 28 oz cans of good plum tomatoes (San Marzano), liquid sadly discarded; tomatoes chopped.  We have never in my recollection used fresh tomatoes.  Peeled?  Really?  No.  And yes, I know the boiling water trick.)
2  7oz cans water-packed tuna, drained and squished in the can by can opener-ing all the way around and then holding the can under cold running water and pressing the loose lid down into the can and squishing it back and forth until the tuna is rinsed, dried and subdued.  Everybody knows this trick.  But if you didn't it would make you happy to know.  I am happy to know it.  Then flake the tuna.  Flake it up.

1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper.  (It adds a surprising amount of spice.  So follow your instincts.  I like spicy.  I used a little more...)

1 pound of spaghetti, linguine, etc. prepared according to package directions.  We were fortunate to have Ohio Pasta's fabuloso fettuccine which cooked in about 4 minutes even from frozen. 

Parmesan cheese, the best you can find and afford, to sprinkle on when done.

Preparation:

Warm up the oil over medium heat.  Throw the garlic in and watch it like a hawk until you can smell it and it starts to color. Do not let it brown.  And especially do not let it burn. This will take 1 minute at the outside.  Jump the gun.  You'll thank me.

Assuming you have your mis in its place, and I suggest you do, throw in all the ingredients right up to but not including the pasta.  Stir around.  Bring to boil.  Reduce to simmer.  Simmer for 15 or so minutes until slightly thickened.  (Figure that this recipe starts out pretty much ready to eat, don't be paranoid about timing.  You'll know when it's ready because it looks and smells delicious.) 

Put the pasta in individual bowls.  Plop on the sauce.   Grate on some cheese.

A salad and some nice bread would be nice but not compulsory,  Serves four. 

4.  Eating Tuna Spaghetti

5.  Having it be summer, such that the above-mentioned herb pot outside the kitchen door is full of fresh herbs.

6.  Reading Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novels at the rate of about one every 2-3 minutes.  I must have read some or all at some point but I don't remember any except  Death on the Nile because of the movie.   (SPOILER ALERT:  everybody did it.)  I always thought Miss Marple is this sweet little old lady.  That's what the people in the books often think.  I and they?  Wrong.  And wrong.

7. Thinking about putting my third, and most comatose, novel up for sale on Kindle.  Thus being my own *&^%^& agent and publisher.  I figure this is a fool's errand because any sentence that ends, "what have I got to lose?" usually signals: "about as much as the nothing you have to gain, you duffus.  This is one of those something-for-nothing traps."  But really, with poor, handsome, daring John Pritchard just languishing in an electronic drawer, and me having moved in what I consider a more marketable and more fun for me direction, what have I got to lose?  Plus, it's something new to blog about and you can learn from my experience.

8.  The new desktop video program that Billy found for me.  Right now there's a ferris wheel going around behind this post.  I hear calliope music and children laughting.  How delightfully dumb is that?  Soon there will be a beach.  And sandpipers pecking along at the bottom of my screen.  It's magic. 

9.  Meeting a bunch of ladies from my book group to see Eat Pray Love at the movies.  This afternoon.  A matinee.  The possibility of eating popcorn.  Praying for popcorn.  Loving popcorn.  And enjoying those ladies a lot.  The movie?  We'll have to see....

10.  Icy Hot.  When I rub it on my neck, my neck feels happy.  And I can keep sitting here at the laptop even though I suspect the laptop (or possibly the ferris wheel) as having caused the pain in my neck to begin with.  Ah.  Look.  A coral reef.  Much more neck restful.

11.  That in spite of it being overcast and my neck hurting, and no agent yet, and a number of other things less than perfect on this day, I could easily come up with 10 happy things.

Your turn.  

Manna

This is a "Guest Post" from ... er ... well, okay.  It's from me.  I wrote it last year for a blog I had back then called "Like Water for Water."  That blog, which had a very short shelf life and is now in a cul de sac of a cul de sac of the Internet, was soley about living next to Lake E. 

I'm posting this today because it makes a good companion to yesterday's post.  Do not think all the posts here are going to be heavy and heartfelt.  The next one will have a clown car.  I promise.  And soon we'll have some real guests.  But for today I'm loafing, working out and enjoying life.  May your day be as fine as humanly possible.  Here's the post:

"And the house of Israel called its name Manna. And it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey ... So they gathered it every morning, every man according to his need. And when the sun became hot, it melted."
Exodus, 16

So, Bill's new obsession is daylilies. You should come see. This is the second summer for a lot of them and they're filling out and getting wonderful. I don't have him here for quick reference, but I think there are around 80 in the garden now and several queued up in the garage for planting this week. Some 40 of them are currently in bloom.  [Update:  Third summer. About 100.]

Many of them are the most elaborate flowers I've ever seen. Showier than orchids. Ruffled, variegated, single, double. Their colors range from the palest pink to the blackest maroon. Some have different colored "eyes." Some are a single glorious shade. Some are fragrant like nectar. Some smell like something deliciously alive and clean but nothing more. All have names. Like "Shores of Time" or "Ed Brown." Bill's recitation of their names is a daily liturgy.

Each one is a miracle you can hold in your hand. Every bloom thrives for a day and is gone the next morning. It's kind of painful. We've tried gathering them up and bringing them in. They're lovely at night fall and by morning have turned into something totally goopy and disgusting.

They are manna. Sufficient to nourish a soul one day at a time, then gone.

Therefore, in the evening, Bill goes around and picks off the spent blossoms, that are really at their peak. He tosses them into a bucket and that's it on them. Before he does that, though, we pass them back and forth and inhale their beauty. Trying to glean maximum enjoyment before they're gone. Then the slate is clean. Ready for a new morning of fresh bloom.

I am not a Biblical scholar by any means, but the metaphor of manna has always interested me. Touched me, I guess. To me it's the very paradigm of trust, which is a commodity I'm very low on a lot of the time. 

The Israelites were under a lot of stress in the wilderness, and they freaked out about a lot of stuff, annoying Moses and undoubtedly trying the patience of God. They tried to hoard up the manna for the desert version of a rainy day, and the leftover portion turned nasty very fast. They had to learn to take what they needed and trust in providence to provide for later. (Hey! Providence. Provide. I never noticed that before. What was I thinking?)

The Buddhists have that whole attachment concept, which is the same idea with a slightly different spin. It is our clinging that causes suffering. Our desire for every beautiful thing to last, when no beautiful thing ever can. For although the day lilies are extreme in their fleeting span, their wisdom applies to everything that blooms in the garden. Here today. Gone before we're ready.

This is the pitfall of living a human lifetime in such a magnificent world. We can't fully appreciate the beauty without seeing the fading, can't love summer without noticing how fast it goes.

We are commanded by the nature of the universe to live fully in each moment. To hold the lily and breathe in its loveliness so deeply and completely that we can toss it away without regret.

Tall order. Big challenge. Always worth a try.

And no kidding. Stop by and visit Billy's lilies. They're only here for a little while.

July 13, 2009/August 19, 2010

And why is the font different?  Not a clue.  Working on that. 

The Boob Slam

This post feels risky to me.  The title alone ....  The dangers of offending, of overstepping, of appearing insensitive to the incredible pain and suffering of a lot of women in this world -- all that weighs heavily. 

None of that is my intention.   At all.

It just that one purpose of this blog for me is journal, and yesterday was my annual mammogram. Now, awaiting results, I find myself in limbo with every member of the category "female humanity" who's ever found herself in here.

I'm not interested in talking about the discomfort and general humiliation of the exam.  Or even how kind the technicians almost always are.  Suffice it to say that "boob slam" is how my friend Laura refers to the ordeal.  This always cracks me up because it's such a profoundly accurate description of the experience.  And so Laura.  I like to write it in my appointment calendar because it makes me smile and does some of my whistling in the dark for me.

What I want to write about, though, is the opportunity this momentary sojourn in limbo provides. The chance for empathy, for solidarity, maybe even for transformation.  This "waiting room" is a powerful location from which to look at life.  From which to consider what it means to be healthy.  And what it might mean to discover that there's a problem in your cozy little world you didn't know you had, back when you were organizing your worries and aggravations in order of their apparent importance.  Only yesterday.

Because here in The Waiting Room, a lot of those preoccupations lose their attraction.  Along with our current obsession with how bad we need a haircut, what a mess the fridge is, what, in the messy fridge, might still pass for dinner.  Or "Are the little lines around my eyes making inroads onto my complete, entire face?" 

All that dims.  And we get a chance to look around and see that this room is crowded with everyone who has ever walked on the planet (guys, too) and realize that even for the healthy, even for the whole, even for the young and beautiful, time runs out.  Whatever the news at the end of the waiting -- good, not so good, bad -- life is short.  And apparently, at least in its obvious corporeal manifestation, finite.

We know this.  We even believe this.  But for the most part, except in moments such as these and, of course, in Fitzgerald's famous dark night of the soul "where it's always three o'clock in the morning," the knowledge is purely theoretical. 

So, I'm writing this not to bum us out -- I hate being bummed out; ask anyone who knows me -- but to wake us up.  I need waking up.  Ask anyone who ... yeah.

Life is so magnificent.  The world is so rich with reality.  With immediacy.  With truth.  And light.  With that basic, fundamental human design each of us shares with all the others.  Every one of us born fresh and innocent.  All traveling, in spite of impossible differences, side by side, to a conclusion we see, at best, through a glass darkly. 

Here, where our lives, our plans, our opinions are most vulnerable, we have the chance to shed a scrap or two of "I."

And draw comfort and courage from a moment of "we."

Oh, and while we're stuck in here? 

Whaddya say we just pull that cord and see what happens? 

Workout Update: Hallelujah!

Go ahead! Push play:

http://www.hallelujah-chorus.com/audio/10277-m-001.mp3

Guess what!  The pool is going to be CLOSED for three whole days.  Act of God.  Look how happy those angels are.  I think the little one on the right is clapping her hands for joy. She's all angel-cool-and-collected but I can tell that, behind her refined angelic facade, she's like totally WooHah! on my behalf.  Angels are like that.  From what I hear.  They rejoice about all kinds of things.

So I can't work out at the pool on those days. Awwwwww.  But that's okay.

(Hah, FABULOUS is what it is.  Rejoicing is what's called for.)

Oh, shut up, Reptilian Lazy Brain.  I've got a plan for this.  I'm going to work out at home those three days.  On my fabulous exercise bike which I loathe and despise. And today Scott taught me some great things you can do with an exercise ball.  And guess what:  I have one of those, too.  (By the way, the "great" in the next to previous sentence was just thick with sarcasm. Too bad there isn't an MP3 online somewhere for that.)

That's all for now.  Just hallelujah is all.

I bet people would use that word more if it were easier to spell.  I had to look it up.  Twice.

The Workout Report

I did it.  I went to Water Aerobics at 8 a.m. yesterday morning.  I did almost all the stuff.  Not gracefully but with enthusiasm and dedication.

The class people were nice to me.  A woman named Jackie said, "You're new.  I'm Jackie."

People, take it from me:  Always say stuff like that.  It makes a huge difference.  I would have followed Jackie around the pool and clutched onto her hand if I coulda caught up with her.

The class did NOT look like the photo.  It looked like that moment in Jaws when all the idiot swimmers suddenly realize, "Wow. There's a big shark in the water!  Just like the sheriff said."  Zillions of small, disorganized, splashy wavelets. And ladies just bobbing up and down like crazy.  In the midst of all this, someone hollered, "Hey!  Where's Bobbie?"  I almost drowned myself chuckling.  And bobbing. 

But I made it. I went.  I discovered that unlike my dreamy memory of going to work down MLK Jr. Boulevard in placid, Nature-y, early-morning bliss, there's something that's referred to in our culture as a "rush hour"?  The going was kind of slow.  There were lots of cars.  Sort of stopped.  I was five minutes late to class. 

My water shoes worked excellently.  I still love them.

I did enjoy getting out and being with people.  Especially my new best friend Jackie.

And today?  Today I feel like I've been crushed in a trash compactor.  Really.  It makes living ones life as a disembodied brain in a jar seem moderately attractive.  [No. Wait.  Universe: I did not mean that literally.  Turn your Oprah Law of Attraction thingie off.  Right now.  That was a metaphor.  Not a request.  I want an agent for my books and a zillion dollar advance, that's all.  Not the Jar.  Truly.  Not. Thanks so much.  Bye.]

Anyway, today it hurts to be me.  It especially hurts to be my knees.

But I say unto them, "Buck up, knees.  You can be replaced."

Today, I'm dragging my train-wrecked bod to arthritis water workout (which should be cake after yesterday) and a session in the Dungeon of Torture-y Torment ... ah... the Work Out Room.  I'm going to see if I can get someone to give me about two exercises to strengthen my knee support structure.  Just a couple.  Let's not break anything here.

Awhile back, I was wandering aimlessly around on the World Wide Web as I do all the time, and I ran onto an article about quitting drinking.  The article was unsurprising in its enthusiasm for doing that, but it had this concept I found very appropriate to apply to other things.  Booze Brain.

Booze Brain is that clever, creative little voice in the head of an addict that says, "Hey, you legitimately need this drink.  It'll [insert clever, creative reason here.]  Make you more fun.  Get you to tomorrow without crying.  Help you lose weight.  Provide your body with its minimum daily requirement of Vitamin Drunk.  Whatever."  The bottom line was "Don't listen to BB.  It's smart.  It lies.  It'll  promise you anything to get what it wants."

I immediately extrapolated that my own brain is excellent for all sorts of action such as that.  For exercise I have Reptilian Lazy Brain.  It lies at the very base of my skull, murmuring stuff like.  "You need to pace yourself.  It will do you no good if you hurt yourself.  Wow.  We're so sore today.  Let's go lie down and read something comforting." It can even simulate my mother's heartfelt encouragement:  "Don't overdo it."

This is the voice that says, "Go ahead. Eat that apple, girl.   We're starving.  We need to keep the doctor away.  God will completely understand."

So, here I go:  Day 2.  Just like I said I would.

Shut up, LRB. I'm outta here.

Love vs. Hate

I read an interesting post this week on the Zen Habits blog.

http://zenhabits.net/enjoy-the-habit/

I like this blog and often find it inspiring.  The guy, Leo Babauta, is one of the most successful bloggers on the Net.

I say I "often" find it inspiring because sometimes he just makes me feel unworthy, weak, and bad.

Leo is ruthless about simplifying his life, running, eating all vegan, and stuff.

I tend to be relentless about attaching things unto myself and displaying them as attractively as possible, eating all junk-an, and, especially, not running.  (You can see my knee x-rays -- well, at least, x-rays that approximate the general state of my knees -- right here on this very blog.)

Leo's latest post inspired me because he very generously paused his athleticism and stooped down to speak to me at my lazy level. (To be fair, he does this a lot.  And he's not a rub-your-nose-in-it kind of guy.  As far as I can tell from reading his blog.)

The post in question was about how you cannot be successful at creating a new habit by beating at yourself with the discipline stick.  (He didn't put it like that, but that was my takeaway.)  He suggests you NOT try to grit your teeth and keep going at something you hate.

This was timely advice for me because I'm about to make a serious run at exercise as part of preparing to get my knees replaced, and, folks, let me be crystal clear:  exercise is so not my thing.  Over time I have tried plain vanilla Chicken Fat calisthenics, running, swimming, Jazzercise, Tai Chi, Yoga, Curves and Working Out with Wendy, a wonderful personal trainer.  My current exercise is an arthritis water class I've been going to a couple of times a week for a couple of years.

First of all, I'm lazy, by design.  At a deep, fundamental level I'm a Stop, when the world says Go.  I'm a down not an up.  I'm a slow.  I'm a later.  I'm a Zzzzzzzzzzzz.  I'm a "leave me alone. I'm resting here."  On the Eneagram, if you're into that sort of thing, I'm a nine. Big time.

Plus, as noted in another post, I have a deeply embedded fear of "doing it wrong."  This fear is matched only by my terror of doing it wrong and looking stupid.

In the seventh grade I grew about 100 inches, which hideously exacerbated my innate stumbling awkwardness.  Not only was I constantly dropping things and walking into door frames, I was up so high everyone could see.  Therefore, in Jazzercise and Tai Chi, for example, though I was in love with the music and rhythm of the one and the transcendent energetic trance of the other, I was obsessed a lot of the time with going left when the rest of the class and the leader were going right.

(Actually, the leader did appear to me to be going left -- since she/he was leading and therefore facing the group. Being a follower of the most profound sincerity -- and also a little dyslexic about perceiving the location of myself in space -- I found it hard not to emulate this optical/spatial illusion.)

Also, in addition to my lifelong embarrassment, inertia and general laziness, now it hurts quite a bit when I move. Even more incentive to remain stationery.

Back to Leo.

The gist of his essay was that you can only drive yourself into the abyss of despair for so long before you decide to go lie down and eat some chips. The use of discipline to overcome deep aversion is not a viable long term solution.

So, what is?  What is a long term solution that can help me

• make a habit of serious and abiding integrity 
• around something I very much need to do for my health and wellbeing
• but which a long history of personal failure suggests I pretty much ain't gonna do?

There's the challenge.  Leo suggests that

a) you plain old don't try to do that or

b) if you really must do that, find something you love that goes along with it, is part of it, or can be made part of it, and is an overwhelming, irresistible reward for doing it.

So here's my example:  I have signed up for a water aerobics class M W F, at 8 a.m.  Starting Monday.  I also plan to work out for a half hour before my T Th water class. 

Here's what I hate about doing that:   doing that.

Here's what I plan to love:

1. The shoes pictured above.  They're my water shoes.  They're only comfortable in water.  I love them already. 
2. Wearing ratty workout clothes.  I'm giving myself permission to wear the disgusting oversize Adidas t-shirt which is my favorite garment. Every day if I like. And not care how I look.  I'm wearing it right now.  I'm so happy.
3. Driving the Flying Tomato (which is a "salsa red" VW bug) down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at 7:30 in the morning M W F with the top down.  Breathing in the juicy green of summer as it morphs into the dusty gold of fall.  Admiring everything.  Even rain that makes me stop and put the top back up. 
4. Going somewhere and seeing people.  I like people.  Liking the people in my water class is all that stands between me and the couch a lot of times. 
5. Giving myself permission to not hurt myself, even if everybody else is just doing it  better, faster, longer than me.
6. Rewarding myself with rest that I've actually earned.  Spending time in the hammock before it gets icicles on it and has to be stored away again.  Reading.  Reading a whole stack of books I'll acquire from the library and elsewhere to encourage myself to earn some Rest & Reading.  Or napping, even.
7. Feeling better.
8. Feeling better about myself
9. Feeling proud of me. 
10. More things will go here as I find them.  This list should get me through the M of MWF.  At least.

An earlier piece of advice from Leo (and several other folks, actually) that really works for me is that when you want to make a change, put it out where your friends and family and possibly your enemies can see it.  Garner their support and their general butt-kicking scorn for the times when you can't think of a darn thing to love about what you promised to do.

Write about it in your blog.  And see what happens on Monday morning.

Talkin' About The Weather

[Today's category is, again: "Things I think about while driving around in the car."  In case you couldn't tell.]

The saying that "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody can do anything about it" is still patently true.

However, the level and the ubiquity of weather talk has been magnificently cranked up by advances in technology, the invention of new devices of communication, and The Weather Channel.

What used to be a one-minute segment at the end of radio news, or five minutes of affable guy at 11:20 p.m. on the TV, has multiplied and expanded exponentially.

Like a ... um ... well, viruses come to mind.

Information our parents got from the newspaper and our grandparents divined by consulting their rheumatism and the scent of rain on the morning air, is now 24/7 with an exceeding long view into the foggy future.

Now we have access to "Hourly" weather, offered in 15-minute increments, on the 8s, or moment-to-moment, in bulletins and alerts.  We can track weather online and on mobile devices, in multiple locations, all day/all night.  And watch the radar move.  What's more we can get important data for today, tomorrow, the weekend, the Ten-Day -- even fifteen days out.

Seriously?

This gives the illusion that we actually know something about what's going on. 

I suppose all this is has a positive aspect.  For example if there were a tornado bearing down, a heads-up would provide a few precious seconds to ... er ... "Honey, where's the video camera?"

Frequently, though, this embarrassment of information is merely an invitation to bitter disappointment.

Because weather is big.  It's phenomenally unbridled. When we reduce weather to "highs" and "lows" and "fronts" and "rotations," when we depict it, as in the graphic above, as icon sunniness or cloudiness, slanty raindrops or jagged lightning bolts, we fail to do justice to the raw immediacy of our experience of weather. The irrefutable reality of 90 degrees (with a Real Feel of 104) when it's beating down on your head.  Or the Real Feel of a hurricane deciding where to make landfall on your little piece of coastline.  

Weather, to paraphrase, is what happens to you when the Weather Channel is making other plans.

That little graphic up there in the corner is not a promise or a guarantee. (I know. I never fail to be surprised either.  If I see those lines and lines of storm clouds, I think they actually mean something.)  It's not a picture of today's weather. (No. Really. It's not. It's pixels.  Look. You can see 'em.)  But the problem is, to me, when I see those pixelated clouds spread out along the timeline of today, it feels very, very real.

And I end up just as baffled as the next person, shaking my head and whining, "But I thought it was supposed to [insert expectation] rain, storm, be sunny, be nice, be cooler, be warmer, be better today." 

Because, although we're often sadly disappointed by the fallibility of that massive, relentless engine of prognostication, we don't seem to ever get entirely disillusioned.  Every day is a new day for us.  A new chance to hope.  A new opportunity to find out, in advance, what "It's going to do today." Or fifteen days down the pike.

Oh, we of way too much faith.

"It" is going to do pretty much what the planet tells it to without regard for anybody's picnic plans.  And today's forecast is "A 60% Chance of Wrong."

I'm writing about this because it's easy to be obsessed with weather when it unfolds for you on big screen of Lake E.  The sky turns sullen over the horizon.  The wind rises. The need to know what "It" is going to do becomes urgent.  And there's this idea rampant in our culture that somebody out there actually knows.

Excuse me, I just need to take a peek at the radar....

Not kidding.  It's very sad.

Darkling, I Watch.

This is a photo of me watching for meteors.  It is not a photo of the night sky. The night sky would have stars.  Or clouds.  Or at least something to show for itself.  Hint:  this is a photo that represents the inside of my eyelids. I made it by laying the iPhone on its face and turning off the flash.  Very clever, Grasshopper.

Last night was the very epicenter of Perseid Meteor Shower Watching on Planet Earth.  NASA was on board with live chat and "sounds of meteors."  (My son John says if you hear a meteor, it's probably a bad thing.)

I learned that it was Meteoric Prime Time a couple of minutes after I put on my pajamas and headed for bed.  But I was raised by a lot of folks in West Virginia to "have experiences you'll always remember."  And "not miss this."  And "once in a lifetime."  So, I rallied the troops.

Last year we watched meteor showers while lying on the driveway and almost got run over.  But it was fun, if not cushy.  Last night it seemed prudent to just use the deck off the kitchen, even though its view of night sky is somewhat blocked by a big old Norway Maple.

NOTE:  I once read a quote from a botanist who said, "Life is too short to waste on Norway Maples."  But what the heck.  It volunteered.  I admire its spunk.  And it could be holding the house up for all we know.

So right away, I decided we were in "the wrong place."  We should be in the driveway.  We should be down on the rocks.  We should be in A Better Place.  Not Heaven.  Just a better place for looking at it.

This is so me.  It's Annie's Law #2: If I'm here, this must be The Wrong Place.  It lives right next to Annie's Law #3: If I'm here now, this must be The Wrong Time.  We won't even discuss Annie's Law #1. 

After I chewed on that for awhile and suggested to the guys that we go down to the rocks and got that suggestion firmly rejected and wasn't brave enough to risk raccoons, minks, mosquitoes, and possibly even a skunk, all by myself, I settled down and accepted my substandard place.

So then I decided I wasn't "looking right."  (There's an Annie's Law about that, too.  It may be associated with Law #1.)   I was maybe in the right place, but looking in the wrong place.  Or was I was looking in the right place but being too distractible and not looking in the right place long enough?  Maybe my eyes were fogging up from too much looking.

Maybe....  This concern was exacerbated by a blur of something and the guys saying, "There's one."  "Wow," I said halfheartedly.  "Okay."

After the guys saw something else and liked that, they were satisfied.  And since I didn't want to risk mosquitoes or falling asleep alone on the deck in the nighttime. Or being terminally bored or disappointed.  Or, possibly, A Loser.  I went to bed, too.

You can see the sky great from the bed.  I could see it fine.  I watched for awhile, admiring the stars and trying to determine where I should focus my attention. It seemed too easy, not enough of an adventure or a challenge to lie there all comfy.  It made my eyelids heavy, too.

So, then of course I decided I was in the "wrong place."  If I plastered myself against the window and looked straight up, I'd be able be see the apex of the sky where meteors would be queuing up to entertain me.

To do this, naturally, I had to lie on the floor.  That was not comfortable.  I put one foot up on the bed to kind of mediate the back pain.  It worked but it looked like I'd killed myself in a goofy fall. I'd give it two more minutes tops and then I was DONE.

And then:

I saw one.

It was an absolutely fabulous one.  From the very apex of the sky, going over, coming down. Big and blue-white.  Silent as the end of time.  Streaming its five seconds of fame behind it.   Sure of itself and its inevitable passage to destruction.  In its exactly right place.  At its only possible time.  Perfect in every way.

It stopped my heart and made it totally worth my while to be lying on the floor by the door with one foot up in the air. 

Of course, now that I'd established "the best place to watch" I couldn't stay there all night.  Or even five more minutes.  That floor was HARD.  So I moved back up on the bed and watched the sky from there and saw a big raccoon come across the roof to the door and invite the cat out to play.  The cat declined.

And then, shortly after that, I found myself watching the scene depicted in the photo above.  

Zzzzzzz.

But happy.

The Rain We've Been Waiting For.

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop for the garden.   Or the soul. The lawn has turned a dejected shade of yellow. The hydrangeas have been -- I think I'd have to call it sulking. (If they had lower lips, their lower lips would be stuck out a mile. "Oh, buck up," I'd admonish them.  "I'm hot and thirsty, too.")  Even the weeds have faltered a bit.  All within sight and sound of 127,729,589,400,000 gallons of Erie.

It's downright cruel.

Yesterday the Weather Channel radar teased us with the formidable, hovering lines of a 95% chance of orange and yellow.  Yes!  But they parted to the north and south of us, like the Red Sea and moved on off to Pittsburgh -- once again verifying my highly unscientific assumption that the big thermal presence of all that water drives storms away.

(Except, of course, when it doesn't.  Eek! for that.  A lake storm is a storm with all the stops pulled out. You really want to duck.  Even ducks duck.)

But at midnight, the rains came at last.  And because the lake was quiet, I could hear the rush and splatter of water on the roof.  The sluice of it. The roar.  It came and went through the dark hours.  Off and on until dawn. 

When I went to bed I could see from my pillow a peculiar mass of clouds over the lake. All by itself and very low above the water and quite close to shore, it was -- more than anything else I could come up with metaphorically at that hour -- like a long, gray fluffy choo choo train. (I know. That's why poetry is not my metier.)

At first, the cloud was fat and puffy, with darkness along its underside. Then it thinned down to a slim line of pale, ragged feathers.  And at last, gone.  A few flickers of lightning.  An echo of thunder that lagged behind the flash by many, many chimpanzees.

The cloud dispersed into the lowering sky. I dissolved into sleep.

This morning the world is a bog.  Every living thing deliciously moist and scrambling to recover its lushness.  Not cool though.  Just... boggy.  The windows are fogged. The sky is misty.  The air is thick.  I'm hoping for one of those English complexions to develop for me by end of day.

I went down to the deck that's closest the shore and watched the water for awhile. Apart from a single speedboat on the far horizon, there was nobody but me between here and Canada.  A kingfisher parked on the rocks for awhile, instead of zooming by at the speed of kingfisher, which is much too fast for anyone to be able to appreciate what a big and unusual fellow he is.  So I enjoyed a leisurely look before he dived off his rock and zipped away.  The trees dripped on me and plopped big drops into my coffee cup.

I had a professor once who said "nice" is the most mediocre word you could apply to any person, place or thing.  But here's how the morning was, post-rain, down by Lake E:

Nice.

On My Knees

NOT a post about prayer.

My mother always warned me I'd be sorry for:

Running.
Going barefoot all the time.
Getting chilled.
Getting wet.  And then chilled.
Not wearing a hat.  Ever.  And getting my head chilled.
Eating nuts ... which, of course, leads to weight gain.  And endless, endless regret.

All of these things (in my mother's worldview) cause arthritis.  Betcha didn't know that.

Well, now you do.

She didn't, however, warn me about the bad genes she married.  My father died before I was two and therefore didn't live long enough to enjoy The Family Knees, and my mother was not close with My Father's People. But my childhood was haunted (well, a little bit, especially looking back) by the specter of little old ladies in wheelchairs. Wheeling by in my memory, in black & white, like a scene from a Fellini film.  My Aunt Miriam with whom we were close had a hip replacement (back when they were beta-testing replacements as a category) that gave her feet wheels, not wings.  Thus, more specters. 

So, imagine my surprise and vague, uneasy sense of déjà vu when, at a very young age (my opinion) I started having knee pain.  (Oh, look.  Here's another one of these.  I can't resist.   
( listen) DAY-zhah VOO)

First it was nagging.  Then it was disconcerting.  After that, it got limiting. Now it's just ... kind of bad.  So on Monday, I called "My Orthopedic Surgeon" who's been shooting my knees up with cortisone (and, I presume, making me ineligible for participation in The Olympic Games or the Tour de France) and, as they say, "turned myself in."

I'm scheduled for replacement of my left knee at the estimable Cleveland Clinic on Monday, November 1.    


One of the things I'm planning to write about on this blog is that.  So far all I have to report is a calendar entry.  Not a news flash but one must start somewhere. 


Stay tuned. 

This time, let's just have fun.

Blogging can get to be kind of HEAVY.

Will anyone ever read this?  Am I doomed to be the Emily Dickinson of the blogosphere?  Are there two gg's in blogosphere?  Are there two mm's in Emily?  (Just kidding.) Is it an overweening insult to Ms. E.D. to even suggest I could ever play in her lonely iconic game?

Blog angst.  I've had other blogs.  I'm actually planning to populate this one, here and there, with some of the best of those.  But I am writing this mostly for MOI!  As a journal.  As a place to think semi-out loud.  So I'm puttin' in stuff I like.  The things I muse about when I'm driving around in the Flying Tomato. (Tomato photo to follow.)

So here's one right now:

In the category of What WERE they thinking:

"Who named the planet Uranus?"

Who on Earth unleashed all those ludicrous contortions of pronunciation?  I actually found this online: Say "YOOR a nus" , not "your anus" or "urine us"  Dear goodness. With all the names from classical mythology to choose from, why oh why?  And who? Oh, who?


Answer:  A dude named Johann Elert Bode, 1747-1826.  But it didn't come into common use until 1850 when I figure the population of eleven year olds discovered it.  Prior to that, for awhile it was named Georgium Sidus after George III of England (not a big hit this side of the pond.)  And then Herschel.  Which is kind of sweet.  But alas no.  You'd think Johann would have been more shall we say elert about the pitfalls, given that the... ah ... "other word" originated (presumably among eleven year olds) c. 1650.  But no.

Don't assume that this post opens the door to all sorts of explorations of quasi-dirty words.  That's NOT what this blog is about.  But one thing I'd like to do is ask the questions that I ask myself and would like to answer once and for all, for all of us.

This is merely the first.  Because, I'm just sorry.  When I read "Uranus is larger in diameter but smaller in mass than Neptune" I think, "Who in their right mind named that planet???"

So now we know.