Small town life . . . enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder
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Death
Jane Brody wrote an article about how we die. Read the article and begin to understand how the body starts preparing for death. My addition would be that if someone is near to or beginning the dying process (yep, that's what they call it) at a hospital and you want to get them home, contact Hospice. They will make things happen so you can get the person home, unlike the hospital personnel.
I've fallen and I can't get up!
And if you're like those Baha'i packrats, this might happen to you.
Dishonest Luddism
From The Age, commentary on the campaign to discredit Bjørn Lomborg (author of The Skeptical Environmentalist).
There are two key parts of his message that opponents would want to censor. His book is optimistic about a role for wealth and technological innovation in a solution to environmental problems -- the polar opposite of green Luddite pessimism. It also provides comprehensive documentation of the environmentalist exaggeration. Lomborg's arguments are so damaging to the political credibility of environmentalists that many activists have countered by personal attack rather than reasoned argument.
Shiny pots and crackpots
I bought some Bar Keeper's Friend to clean and polish the Revere Ware I got. It looks great. This stuff is wonderful, it even gets out rust.
I learned about it from the Crazy Bahai's I worked for doing home care for a while. They had all these environmental allergies and this was one of the products I had to use to clean their stacks and stacks of dirty dishes and pots and pans.
I call them crazy because they always invited me to come to their non-denominational potlucks. When I told them I wasn't interested, I was an atheist, they'd say, "That's OK, it's non-denominational." I also call them crazy because they saved boxes and boxes of old jars and empty cans. As in "don't throw that soup can away because someone in Africa or India could really use it." Unfortunately (or fortunately) they never sent the stuff to the people who could use it, they just had stacks and stacks of boxes all over their house. They also had a whole dresser full of twistie ties, rubber bands, plastic bags, etc. There was a specific method I was supposed to use to squeeze the air out of a plastic bag, then fold and roll it until it was about the size of a cigarette. I had to take their clothes out of the dryer, flatten them out and put them in a stack. Then, after a couple of days, I would have to fold them up in just a certain way and put them away.
I also call them crazy because they really liked the way I washed their dishes, so they would save them up for a week or more for me to wash. By hand. In their teeny tiny kitchen. The smell was so bad I would gag. When I told them I wouldn't do it anymore because it was unhealthy, they were stunned--I did such a great job! They were interesting in some ways, but just too strange to hang around with for too long.
Strange names
A friend of my husband from Denmark came to visit us over the holidays. Her name is Vibsen. My daughter called her Vixen.
She gave me a package of origami-like Danish paper stars to make for the Christmas tree. "Don't worry," she said, "there are instructions inside." In Danish of course.
Is google good for anything?
I'm trying to find out where "cruelest dream, reality" comes from. Besides The Offspring. I'm having no luck.
Tip of the day
I got this as a tip from a customer today:
Cats are strange
One of my cats chewed through the wire on the headphones of my discman. How strange.
Holy moly
I heard about this on the car radio and just had to look it up because of the costume description:
It can take Schlipp an hour to struggle into his 32-pound plastic and spandex costume, which includes a belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation and sword of the spirit.
Shoes of peace? I thought he'd at least have a jockstrap of righteousness, like most folks in a "touring ministry."
Small town life
I was just at my mother-in-law's house, cleaning out more stuff. I'm taking some stuff from here kitchen to use at my house. I brought home a nice quiche pan, some wooden spoons, glasses (that match), a couple of casseroles, and some ancient but still solid Revere Ware pots. I also brought her set of Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery. My mom had these books and I loved reading them and looking at the pictures. It will be lots of fun having them.
My mother-in-law spent most of her time in the garden. The other thing that I chose from her house a while ago was her garden clippers. She always kept them right by her back door. I put them right by my back door too.
Lame excuse of the day
"I was late to work because the jewel in my nose ring fell out and I couldn't find it." Yes, I love waiting for people who are late.
Old news
Achievement gaps in California schools between white students and Latino and African American students. And other states with lots of poor kids don't have scores as low as those in Cali.
In eighth-grade math, the percentage of California poor children scoring "below basic" was 62; only Alabama and Mississippi had more low-scoring students.
It's a sad day when Californians can look at test scores and say, "thank God for Alabama and Mississippi."
I'm reading
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
"I dislike the idea of a murderer employing children," said Holmes darkly.
"It is, I agree, bad for their morals, and interferes with their sleep."
"And their schooling," added Holmes sententiously.
Late bit of holiday fun
Revenge of the Christmas lights
Three people in southern California have died while screwing around with Christmas lights. Two of them were 70 or older.
On Dec. 7, Frank Yrisarri, 70, of Anaheim fell off a 6-foot ladder when he reached for his wife, who was below him on the same ladder, lost her footing and fell, police said.
What I want to know is what the hell were these geezers doing climbing around on their roofs? And why were 2 of said geezers on the same ladder? You would think that since they had about 140 years of combined life experience they wouldn't do things that 14-year-olds would do. But no, they have to both get on the same ladder.
More Hospital of the Transfiguration
Stanislaw Lem's book is set in an insane asylum. There's not a lot of difference between the staff and the patients.
He felt that this strange scene was a microcosm of the people locked up in the wards. Peculiarity flourished in human beings who were removed from the usual city soil, like mutated flowers grown in special greenhouses. Then he changed his mind. Perhaps Kauters had shunned the city and created this dusky, violet interior because he was different to begin with.
Stocking stuffers
There's still time to print out these religious trading cards!
Happy holidays
Rather good strikes again. And disco nativity for the rest of us.
Doing time for grammar felonies
in the Gallery of Misused Quotation Marks.
The most subversive of children's literature
Philip Pullman is in the news again. There is (gasp!) controversy over the opening of His Dark Materials at the National Theatre over the Christmas season.
"This the National Theatre, not the National Christian Theatre. Our country contains not only Christians, but Muslims, Jews and a very large number of free-thinking humanists and agnostics. We all have the right to get our story told at the National. If they want the theatre to put on a Christian story, they should write a good one."
Pullman and the play's director, Nicholas Hytner, talk about the adaptation as well.
After praising Wright's adaptation, Pullman says: "Reading is about the mind of the reader meeting the book and making something of it. But it's also about handing over, or saying, 'Well, I've told a story, now you see what you can do with it.'" For these reasons, he's comfortable with the idea that the trilogy's most obsessive devotees, its teenage readers, might be disappointed that the theatre version differs from the book.
Christmas light hell
Yes, my next-door-neighbors would fit right in here.
Dirty places
Really dirty places people never seem to clean in their houses: the light switches on walls. Also doorknobs and the surrounding areas. They must be covered with dirt and germs. Especially because a lot of people rarely wash their hands.
Record-breaking day
I cleaned 4 houses yesterday. One was easy, one was small, the other two were big places. Very tired by the evening.
I have six cats
And a small dog. Maybe I should worry.
A group of hungry cats began to eat their 86-year-old owner after she suffered an apparent stroke and couldn't get up for nearly a week, officials said Thursday.
The cats, apparently without food for that time, also tried to eat Lowrie's small dog, said Jackie David, a spokeswoman for the city Animal Services Department. The terrier showed signs of hypothermic shock, severe dehydration, respiratory illness and was later euthanized, she said.
Holy spookiness
A friend told me today that her grandson (15 years old) has decided to stop going to church. "It gives me the creeps even thinking about going," he said.
Not quite a bake sale
Somehow, I missed this story the first time around. Parents in Eugene, Oregon donated plasma to raise money to help pay for a teacher's salary and administrative costs at the Family School.
Family School supporters are not shy about asking strangers to give plasma to help their campaign. "The financial and other support just isn't coming from the district or the state or the national level in a meaningful way," says Catherine Burns. "It's a bizarre and poignant place we've come to, when we're reduced to donating our bodily fluids to support our schools. It's definitely our last stand."
Morrissey and Books
"I read persistently. I swam in books as a child and at some point it becomes quite ruinous. It gets to the point where you can't answer the door without being heavily analytical about it. But ultimately I think they've proved to be positive weapons for me." (the NME, Feb '84)
Typo of the day
". . . they make the national news and become public laughing stalks."
Now that made me smile.
Holiday couture
Jesus dress-up has outfits for Christmas and New Year's.
Out of the mouths of kids
Nothing cures the blues like a dog lick on the teeth.
I finished Disobedience by Jane Hamilton a little bit ago. A teenaged kid reads his mother's e-mail, discovers she's having an affair, and keeps tabs on her by continuing to read her e-mails. He narrates the story year's later, describing his continued obsession with it . Everyone in this novel is a little odd. The musician mother, the Civil War reenacting father and daughter, the uptight, rich grandmother, the kid's Gertrude Stein-ish best friend, and his crunchy nutty girlfriend. The odd thing about being a homeschooler is that these eccentrics seem like people we meet all the time.
It's a good read, although like in real life, the ending is sort of anticlimactic.
Perhaps as important to survival as shelter and food and clothing is the one person, the right person in your midst, who will listen to your stories and laught in the appropriate places.
Map of the World is a good book, too. I think I liked that a little better.
Oh my!
I've always kind of liked being a puny runt. (Hey, I'm 5 feet tall, almost). This, about surgery to lengthen your legs, really creeps me out.
These giant steel pins are connected by eight screws punched horizontally through her ankle and calf to a steel cage surrounding each leg. Once the bone starts to heal, these cages will act like a medieval torture device - each day over the next few months Kong will turn the screws a fraction and stretch her limbs more and more until she has grown by 8cm.
Poets die sooner than playwrights. Playwrights die sooner than novelists. And novelists die sooner than nonfiction writers, according to a study by James C. Kaufman, PhD, of California State University. The study appears in the November issue of Death Studies.
Ah, those ancient and creaking nonfiction writers. Via Cup of Chicha.
Small town life
I just went over the bridge. The Eel is bank to bank. It has filled up amazingly quickly. On my way back, I looked at the height meter on the Creamery. The river is at 14.85'. Flood monitor stage is 14'. Someone who came and bought coffee this morning said it was only at 14.5' then. I hope we don't get too much rain and it goes down quickly. We had so much rain last night it wouldn't drain out of the street. It came up over the sidewalk.
Thoughts on Death
from Growing up in the mortuary by Richard Packham
As my friends and acquaintances die, I usually weep bitterly for an hour or so, and spend a few days of depression and mourning. But it passes. It's not grief over the death as such, but the realization that part of my own life is gone, never to return, the same sense of loss as when you think of long-gone, happy days, that can never be relived. The difference is that with those memories you often can't quite pin-point the precise moment of loss, whereas with death, you can.
When someone dies I am amazed that, yes, I am really here; the point in my life where people leave, never to return. How could I be here already?
Mormons assimilating the dead
Once again, Mormons are buying dead people's names and re-baptising said dead folks. They are now pissing off the Russian Orthodox Church.
Graves
I just found this weird and interesting site. You can search for graves and cemeteries. I found a "famous" person buried in St. Mary's Cemetery. Joseph Carl Oescher, who was a baseball player from long ago. St. Mary's is a very steep, terraced cemetery. I was there a month or so ago with a friend helping her to put flowers on her husband's grave. Or I should say, in the holder in the cement cover over the grave. She told me there are more Italians buried there than at the Ferndale Cemetery, but I don't know if that's really true. It is definitely steeper than the Ferndale Cemetery, though. Beautiful views of the valley from the top.
Insult to Intelligence
by Frank Smith
The time bomb in every classroom is that students learn exactly what they are taught. They may not learn what their teachers think they are teaching them, but their teachers are probably not teaching what they think they teach. To see what students learn in school, look at how they leave school. If they leave thinking that reading and writing are difficult and pointless, that mathematics is confusing, that history is irrelevant, and that art is a bore, then that is what they have been taught. People learn what is demonstrated to them, and this reality will not change to suit the convenience of politicians and educational administrators.
An alternative to chick lit
A chicken lit slideshow.
Dogs and books, books and dogs
Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend. Inside of a
dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
I came across this quote again here.
Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Via Bookslut. The Black Table recommends magazines you might want for next year (including Found Magazine). And trashes a few.
Formula Companies Play Foul
Mothering magazine has put out an action alert regarding formula companies' pressuring the government and the Ad Council to change its National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign. The American Academy of Pediatrics (which accepts donations from formula manufacturers), asked that the ad campaign be changed after being lobbied by formula companies.
Check out Hathor the Cowgoddess' cartoon.
Breastfeeding is best for your baaa-by. But may not be best for the e-con-ooomy. So! Be a good mommy! Don't be a commie! Always remember to supplement with formula! Supplement with formula!
Holiday gifts
These 2-sided mugs from Disgruntled Housewife would make wonderful gifts. Here's one:
front: I love my job.
back: Kill me.
Isn't this guy dead yet?
I was at someone's house the other and saw she had a whole slew of Rod McKuen books on the shelf. I had totally forgot about him and all those books with those "dramatic" photos of him on the cover. And he's still alive.
For a while
the only earth that Sloopy knew
was in her sandbox.
Two rooms on Fifty-fifth Street
were her domain.
Every night she'd sit in the window
among the avocado plants
waiting for me to come home
(my arms full of canned liver and love).
A once-famous poem about his cat.
Small town life
I had two cleaning jobs today. One was pretty easy, and the woman gave me 3 spaghetti squash and 2 acorn squash too.
The second job was for this old couple I've worked for for about 3 years. He has a habit of peeing in the shower. Not when he's taking a shower like some people do, but just whenever. I guess it's easier to aim at the shower than the toilet. Unfortunately, they have a sliding glass shower door and all this pee dries in the track.
So, if that's not gross enough, when I get to the toilet and I see he's got these previously-used-but not-completely-finished enema bottles lined up there. Now that's a new one. I stopped cleaning their second bathroom a while ago because this guy has a whole homemade enema set-up in the shower there and it's just too gross for me. I remember when he went to the hardware store to get some new plastic tubing to make this invention. I've always wondered if he explained what he was going to use the tubing for when he was buying it.
Book bindings
I hate it when books will not lie flat. I'm reading a book right now whose bindings are so tight (I don't know how else to describe it) that the covers seem to want to slam shut. Annoying.
Read this book
"But allow me to ask," Stefan replied, slightly impatient, "What did you do when you were sick?"
"I called the doctor," Sekulowski smiled. His smile was as bright as a child's. But when I was eighteen years old, I realized how many morons became doctors. Since then I have had a panicky fear of illness, because how can you entrust your body to someone more stupid than yourself?"
from Hospital of the Transfiguration by Stanislaw Lem
Not in our library
via Naked Librarians and, ultimately, librarian.net. Can't make out the author's name, though.
Nickel and Dimed
News flash from The Onion. Poor people pretty much fucked.
Yummy
Drink cocoa. It's good for you. Especially with nice pillowy foam on it.
Oh crap
My pictures keep moving around. I hope they stay where they're supposed to. Since I don't know what I'm doing.
Library kick
I'm thinking about getting more involved with my local library. Not volunteering in the library itself, but in the planning/fundraising/policy area. I thought about doing this a couple of years ago, when my local library was set to become connected by computer to the county library. Some folks in town didn't want to have a computer there because it would de-quaintify the library. Right. I check out a lot of books. I used to check out even more when we were in the picture book stage. I loved printing my name on 50 or so checkout cards at a time. I couldn't sign my name, too hard to read. So it sort of pissed me off that people wanted to stop the library getting the scanner.
I'm thinking about this again because of the feeling of imminent doom that comes from living with California's fiscal problems and wanting to do something to help the library keep on keeping on, especially for kids. I know there are other people for whom libraries were important when they were children. This is a place I remember with fondness.
Any wonder that I really loved our little library when we moved here?
And libraries are changing. From a newspaper article about how people are really using libraries now.
For a variety of reasons - the economy, access to technology and a change in marketing philosophy - libraries are happening places again.
Librarians are quick to point out that in economic downturns, public library patronage always tends to spike because people look for cheap diversions and entertainment.
"When money is tight, people recognize the value of the library," said Roberta Thomas, administrative librarian for the Grayslake Public Library.
But the economy isn't the only reason libraries are experiencing a renaissance. Libraries have embraced new technologies such as the Internet, giving access to the Web to people who might not otherwise have it. And libraries have figured out new ways to market themselves to patrons, said Sarah Long, director of North Suburban Library System.
Green Burial
The LA Times ran this story on green burials. To see it you'll have to register if you haven't already.
Such cemeteries could give the dead a way of making a statement from the grave. Cassity sees them as prototypes for larger natural cemeteries in Southern California, where land preserved for the dead could be protected from suburban sprawl.
"This would give people a tangible way to put a permanent stop to that with their own bodies," he said. "You would know that your death is a way of preserving a piece of this world forever in its natural state."
This has been going on in the UK for a while and there are places there like this
Pop up fun
Robert Sabuda has a gorgeous website all about his pop-ups. You can make your own reindeer pop-up card. The instructions are clear.
Using the library
Reading is absolutely necessary for life.
To not read is to not live.
from the Homeless Guy.
Bedtime Story
I don't know how many times I've read Grandfather Twilight aloud to my kids. I think I bought it from Chinaberry, a great bookseller, but I can't find it there any longer. But anyway, now he's showing up here.
Going out with a bang
Philip Pullman talks about scattering his stepfather's ashes with 40 rockets. Also about His Dark Materials, his wonderfully entertaining trilogy.
Creatures of the deep
We had crab for dinner tonight. Except for my son, who refuses to eat "giant insects."
Bah humbug redux
The Guardian has a fabulous article for the true tighwads during the holidays.
Alternatively, why not discover religion? "Tell friends and family you're having a traditional Jesus-based Christmas, with presents of oranges and incense and other such crap," suggests one advertising executive, who clearly knows how to spin a bad message.
or
Save money on your Secret Santa present by giving whichever poor workmate's name you pick that dreadful free calendar from the local Chinese takeaway. And if you want to avoid splashing out on the biggest present source, one romantic darling from the banking world suggests breaking up with your partner just before the season gets underway.
Tintinnabulary
Today I bought an elf hat with a bell on it to wear at work. Mr. T will be really happy with the jingling sounds it makes while we are dipping tray after tray after tray of candy. I think it will sound good mingled with the noise when customers slam on the bell we have on the counter. Jerks. Yes, I live to serve all those miserly cheeseparing bastards.
Christmas light update
On Friday my neighbors put up icicle lights. I'm beginning to know how Dave Barry feels.
What's my name again
People who can't remember their own names seem to have belts with their names on them. The problem is, the name is stamped on the back of the belt. I guess they have to take off their pants to read the belt. The ones I've seen usually wear Wranglers too. I wonder if this is a coincidence.
There's a guy who comes to get coffee who brings his own mug. It's a stainless steel one and he has a label on it with his last name written on it. We figure he must be really hopeless.
Bigger town life
I went to the mall this evening in Eureka. I saw two people with Saint Bernards. The dogs had those little brandy casks around their necks and I assume they were there as part of some promotion, kind of a canine Clydesdales deal. The funny thing was that the people who had the dogs were really huge. There was a woman who must have been over 6 feet, and a really huge guy, maybe 6'8" or something. Everyone over about 5'10" looks the same to me, so I can't tell for sure. But these people and their dogs towered over all the people near them.
Not too long to wait now
for Splinter.
Finally,
Your final resting day
Is without me
Size matters?
I guess it does to when choosing names for a fossil crustacean. And it matters over at Heartless Bitches. And even Moz realized some girls are bigger than others.
Small town winter weather
If I ever want to move someplace nice and warm in the winter, maybe it will be Mankato.
the winter temperature in many Mankato neighborhoods has never dropped below a balmy 70 degrees!!!!
