I am Woman

My morning read—I stumbled upon it, didn’t mean to go there, but here it is:

“The reality is that girls make up almost a quarter of the world’s population yet still face the greatest discrimination of any group in the world.” (Movie I am A Girl.)

Anyone in their right mind ought to be outraged.

Why or why would anyone treat their mother less-than, their sister, their aunt, their girlfriend? Someday these individuals might get their sorry asses saved by a woman doctor, or kept out of prison by a woman lawyer, or their despicable childhood healed by a lady psychologist—you got it. Although it took millennium for women to be allowed into those professions.

When I attended the University of Oklahoma that also sported a Veterinary program, I considered applying for their Vet school, but I was only a sophomore, and we moved away that year, but I remember the Vet professor saying that women were seldom admitted. They didn’t want to waste their time on someone who would get married, have babies and not practice.

Now, ha ha professor, the majority of Veterinarian graduates are women.  I was married then, and I did have children later, still I could have practiced for 50 years—that would match any man. No regrets, just the facts.

Remember the Trojan Women denied sex to their men until they stopped warring. That worked. Yet when a girl loses her virginity at twelve years of age that sets her up for a lifetime of submissiveness—not power.

Monty Roberts, a horse trainer, and you have heard me say many times “It’s all about horse training,” spent a summer observing wild mustangs. One day Roberts watched the schooling of a terrorist foal by a nun mare. While Roberts watched a colt—he figured it was between one and two years old—the colt took a run at a filly and give her a good kick. The filly hobbled off.

Then the colt committed another attack. A little foal approached him moving his mouth in a sucking motion, which in young horses indicates that they are no threat. “I’m a baby. I eat grass, not animals.” 

The colt lunged at the baby and took a bite out of his backside. Immediately after the attack the colt pretended that nothing had happened.

The dun mare was watching this activity. She was the wise one, the matriarch of the herd, and the alpha mare in charge of the day to day living. Each time the colt behaved badly she inched closer to him, showing no sign of interest, until she made her move. She pinned her ear back, ran at him, and knocked him off his feet into the dirt. As he struggled to his feet, she knocked him down again.  Then she drove the colt some three hundred yards from the herd and left him there, alone, and took vigil to keep him there. Clearly she was freezing him out.

It terrified the colt to be left alone. For a flight animal this was equivalent to a death sentence. The colt attempted to sneak back into the herd, but again the mare drove him out. He started the licking and chewing motion of a contrite young foal.

By morning Roberts saw a surprising event. The dun mare was grooming the colt. She was giving him little scrapes on his neck and hindquarters. She had let him back in and now she was giving him lots of attention. She massaged the root of his tail, his hips. Hell was behind, this was heaven.

As time went on Roberts observed that, like a child, the colt would test the disciplinary system, and each time the mare disciplined him. By the third time he sinned, he practically exiled himself, grumbling but accepting his fate.

Finally the colt’s teenage rebellion stopped, and be became so sweet he was a positive nuisance. He would wander around when the horses wanted to graze asking, “Do you need any grooming.”

Amen

P.S. From a reader. This is fascinating. Today is Pi Day  (π)
The date is 3.34.(Pi)
Later today the entire Pi number (well a large amount of it--it goes on forever) will come up with the date and time. This will not come again until 2115.

www.vox.com/215/3/13/8205807/piday


See below: "Coming In For a Landing"--my new landing page title.

This will be a place to park my books when they appear, and they (you know the publishing gurus) say that I need a "Landing Page" in case anyone googles my name, or books or whatever. 

http://www.joyceslandingpg.blogspot.com

Today Its Gold Bug Eyes

It wasn’t an epiphany. It wasn’t even the first time I had heard of it, or the first time I thought of it, but it was nice to see it in action.

I was in a coin shop where I casually told the clerk my husband had been in a few days earlier to purchase a tiny square of gold to electroplate a bug. She laughed, “Why?”

“To take its picture with an electron microscope.”  She loved microscopy she said. She used the imagery in her potting, and she showed me a coffee mug of her own design. Pure pleasure showed on her face, excitement in her voice. People love talking about what they love.

Next at the bank the teller sported a beautiful vintage engagement ring. Her face lighted when I asked her when she was getting married. “Soon,” she said. Her fiance’ was raised in Hawaii, he was flying his family to Eugene. He was Samoan, and he was taking her to Samoa so she could see his culture, and how he was raised. She was in for an adventure, and excitement reigned supreme.

Remember the movie You Can’t Take it With You (1938 Oscar winner for Best picture) where the patriarch, the Grandfather played by Lionel Barrymore collected an odd assortment of dreamers, misfits, eccentrics, and they lived together in his house where they did pretty much whatever they wanted. Someone had left behind a typewriter, and Barrymore’s  daughter, and mother of the Jean Arthur character engaged to Jimmy Stewart, picked it up and began writing a screenplay. She had written herself into a monastery and couldn’t find a way out. All through the movie she asked whoever showed up to help her get out of the monetary.  That’s a stock phrase at our house. “How can I get out of the monastery?”

Once the Barrymore character was doing business with a lack-luster accountant. He asked the man what he really wanted to do. From beneath his desk the man pulled out a bunny, a mechanical toy he had made. His face lighted. This is what he wanted to do, make mechanical toys.

Of course Grandfather convinced the accountant to come live at their house where other husbands and grandfathers made fireworks in the basement.

I look around and see few people loving what they are doing. So much of life is doing the 9 to 5.

So, what’s the secret?

How do we break out, and live the life we dreamed of when we were kids, when we thought the world had our best interests at heart and believed the world was our oyster? (Whatever that means.)

You know the story of the oyster who like a cookie under his sheet, finds a grain of sand in his shell. Without hands to pull it out, he begins to coat it with a smooth shiny substance, coating it and coating it so it no longer pokes him when he tries to sleep.  Thus the pearl is born.

I think there are two lessons here. Take your pick.

Blame it on the Reptile*

*Not the one from the Garden of Eden. I mean the old brain stem, the Reptilian Brain.

A home buyer noticed construction close by the home he was considering purchasing, and asked his agent what it was.

“I don’t know,’ the agent answered, “a shopping center I think.” (He had heard that one was going in somewhere in the vicinity.)

Later, after buying the house, the client found that it was not a shopping center, but a bottling plant, and he turned the agent over to the Grievance committee, where they faulted the agent.

Here you can worry about casual remarks, plain old conversation, and corporate stupidity.

An elderly man and his wife were about to board a cruise ship. Before boarding they were asked to fill out a form . One of the questions was : ”Have you been sick within the last week?”

The man checked the yes box, then quickly realized his mistake. He had not been sick, so he scratched out the YES box and checked the NO.

Do you think he got to board?

No.

First they had medical personnel come from the ship and take the man’s temperature, then, although his temperature was normal, he was denied boarding.

Whoa,  and we don’t know the planning that went into that vacation, where he traveled from, how much his plane fare cost, or long he had looked forward to it.

Stupidity abounds. Or is it fear?

Are we so afraid of getting something wrong that we have become stupid?

Blame it on the reptile.

You know that old reptilian brain, the primitive brain stem that lies under our higher “Thinking brain?” This reptilian brain controls our vital organs, our heart, our lungs, that is the autonomic system, so we don’t have to think about such things as digesting our food.

It also looks out for our physical well-being. Using this brain we can jump out of the way of a careening bus without thinking about it. We might fight off an attacker, or lift a car off a loved one if need be. The Reptilian brain has our best interests at heart…

HOWEVER, it is always looking for trouble.

It knows nothing of SPIRIT. It knows nothing of the higher working of the brain. It doesn’t know that guidance, intuition or well being exists.

So, if someone wants to get the human animal, or any animal for that matter, into a state of discontent, of confusion or turmoil, go after the reptilian brain. Let it believe it is in danger.

When some animals are faced with danger they run, that’s a prey animal.  If they fail, they get eaten—end of animal. If the human animal, the predator, fails or gets it wrong, they fear being humiliated, or ostracized, or unloved. Being ostracized is so serious that ancient cultures used it as punishment, and often, without their tribe, that ostracized person died. It was essentially a death sentence.

But, if you are a good horse trainer (and it’s all about horse training) you will want the animal to want to be with you. In that case you will provide comfort, safety, food, and fun.

Horse meditation

What if we used that training on the old reptilian brain? Calmed the savage beast so to speak.

There is an old Native American tale: Two dogs were fighting. One Native asked the dog’s owner which dog would win. Replied the owner, “The one I feed.”

Stop Me Before I Buy a Horse Again

Or encourage me depending on where you stand.

Daughter, grandson and I are leaving tonight to attend the Hermiston Horse Auction—the trip is my Christmas present from my Darling Daughter.  We haven’t attended the auction for over 6 years, but now we are back in Oregon, and the Hermiston Horse Extravaganza that happens three times a year, is an event to be taken in.  This time Little Boy Darling will have his first exposure to an auctioneer who sounds like a horse's hooves at dead run.  LBD can take in the chaos of the ring, and see horses of all shapes, sizes and conditions.

We are going just to look.

What if, though, I wonder, I see a horse I can’t resist. We have no place for a horse. I don’t need a horse. Horses are expensive…

But what if I love him?

What if he needs me?

My husband would kill me.

One year at the auction a girl was wearing a tee-shirt with the inscription, “My husband didn’t ask if I bought a horse, he asked, “How many?”

About twelve years ago I bought my horse Velvet at the Hermiston Horse Auction as a six month-old filly-the prettiest little foal on the premises. As she was being led down one of the corridors, she turned her head to look at me—that will get me every time. I said “She looks like Velvet,” and thus I called her, and thus I decided she was my horse.  Having never bid on anything before I was filled with adrenalin, so I would nod to daughter who would then hold up the bidding sign. Someone was bidding against me, but that was MY HORSE. We weren’t very subtle with our bidding…I went over my limit, twice over my limit. The bidding was heavy, and when I won, the arena burst into applause. A cowboy came up to us later and said, “Watching you two buy a horse was more fun than buying one myself.”

Velvet

Another time two Norwegian Fjord horses were placed for sale—a very distinctive horse, cream in color, round in body, and distinguished by a white mane with a black stripe down its center. There were two horses in the sales ring and three cowboys fighting for them like playing musical chairs. One cowboy would pull another off his horse and climb aboard (they are rather short horses) then race around the arena trying not to be caught. One man’s jacket was ripped to shreds. The audience loved it, and I am sure the horses sold for more than they would have without the show. Daughter would have bought one except she felt the price went too high.

I have to stop reminiscing, but I did sell a horse there a couple of times, once for myself—a horse that bucked with Darling Daughter (DD), and another for DD. DD decided perhaps she could make money on horse trading, so she bought a horse in Eugene, a sweet horse named Sweetie whose owner didn’t take care of her feet and she will probably suffer for it the rest of her life. I had my Ferrier tend to her feet, I rode her a couple of times just around the yard and found she was very gentle, then  DD and I hauled her to the auction where she sold to a very nice lady.

 A few months later Sweetie’s owner called DD. “Who was your horse bred to?” she asked. “We just had a baby.”

P.S. That Kickstarter project I placed at the bottom of the page began yesterday and they met their quota in one day. Congratulations Dale.

We have met the enemy...

Cartoonist Walt Kelly's most famous quote.

Have you ever had a thought rattling around in the back of your mind, an idea that is hard to articulate, but it seems to be something you ought to grab a hold of?

That’s happening to me right now. I’ve been reading a book titled Choosing Easy World by Julia Rogers Hamrick. At first the book seemed so simplistic, I pushed it aside. Then it called me back. When Hamrick began talking about “Difficult World,” I perked up.

There appears to be a Difficult Dictator that yammers in our heads, that feeds on difficulty, that tells us we aren’t good enough, we will never make it, others do, of course, but not us, that we are too old, too stupid, too disconnected to be successful in our endeavors.  Why old Difficult Dictator does that I don’t know, he appears to feed on worry, stress, and making things hard. Most of us have had times when can we decide to choose the easy way and this old dictator grabs us by the throat. Some call him the Ego. Why though does the ego want difficulty for us?

It could be conditioning. It could be that working, striving, pushing against have been drummed into us for so long it has penetrated our beings.

Now, this is not to say that a challenge is not rewarding. Think of music, the arts, athletics, solving a mathematical proof, a law proof, when we arise triumphant it is a giant hit. What I am saying is that there is a pervasive difficulty regarding life that is not necessary, is not healthy, and does not support the magnificent beings that we are.

And this is where that rattling thought in the back of my mind comes in. We hear about how the media is conditioning us, about the “Shadow” government, the government behind the government that pulls the strings.  We hear that the “Grays” control us, the “aliens,” are out to get us, and the Illuminati have been lurking in the shadows controlling world affairs for millennia.  And I wondered, could be as Pogo said long ago. We have met the enemy, and it is us?’

Perhaps, it is not “out there.  It is in here.”

I am touching my chest.

A heartfelt thanks to you wonderful people who have followed me. Words cannot express my gratitude...a picture maybe?

Mount of Refuge

Our (used to be) "Green Trail of Bliss" that was our driveway. And there is good ole Bear lying in the middle of it.

On January 1, 2015 Railroad Road, also known as Puua Kapoho Road, where our house sat at the end of the road, was made into a through-a-fare. Well maybe I exaggerate about the through-a-fare, but giant bulldozers have opened that road as an escape route for the people of Pahoa, Hawaii. So our house (now someone else’s) is no longer at the end of the road.

Barry, the caretaker who lived on our property before us, called our place, "The most beautiful spot on earth," and the name given to it by its owner was Pu'u Honoa, meaning  "Mount of Refuge."

Perhaps it will be that for the people who travel Railroad Road.

And now I wonder if while widening Railroad Road the caterpillar crew found our cement cow.

Oh, you don’t know about the cement cow? Guess you will have to read the book. The Island.


P.S.  Hawaii Lava update.

For the past few months lava oozed its way through the jungle, burning a swath aiming for the town of Pahoa. The prediction was that it would go straight through the market place, thus the grocery store, Malala Market, closed, and other stores in that complex closed as well, the tire shop, the hardware store, the propane supply store, Island Crazy, the Urgent Care facility and FED X where we Faxed so many documents we became friends with the beautiful clerk. The Subway Sandwich shop is there, and the bakery where they made the best butter mocha’s in the world.

Scientists predict that if the lava will eventually cross the highway and cut off the route to the rest of the island, Hilo. Kona, Volcano, Black Sand’s Beach, all that and more. The front stalled 550 yards before reaching the market place and has widened out and changed directions threatening they say the Police and Fire Station. 

Hey, what about those other buildings sitting in the path?

The Great Chicken Mystery

This post also appears on my book site http://www.joycedavisbooks.blogspot.com

No sense going there, it is just a landing site for anyone who searches for my name and my book. Do you think I landed in the wrong place?

And now onto the mystery...It began on the Day after Thanksgiving. 

Both my wonderful pet hens mysteriously died. Same day. They were alive in the morning, dead in the evening. What are the chances of that unless it was something they ate? My tame hens, one would sit on my lap, the other was more stand-off-ish. Both laid the most delicious, beautiful eggs, egg yolks orange as a six-year-old's sun drawing. Gone. Rats.

I had given the chickens vegetable scraps the day before. Being Thanksgiving I thought I was giving them a treat. After finding them dead, I researched and found that potato skins can be toxic to chickens. Only the green-skinned potatoes they said.  My potato skins weren’t green, but the chickens were dead, and I suspected the potatoes were the culprits. How many people had fed potato peelings to chickens? Tons I bet. Still mine were dead.

Three months later:

This pertains really: On Jan 26 I decided to query an agent. I found Elizabeth Krach of Kimberly Cameron and Associates who said “I wish I had my own Jon Krakauer.”

Who in the heck is Jon Krakauer?

Oh, he was the author of Into the Wild, the story about Chris McCandless, who gave away his money, burned his wallet and went to the wilds of Alaska where he lived off the land and journaled his findings, including the food he ate. On July 30, 1992 he wrote, “Extremely weak. Fault of potato seed. Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great jeopardy.”

Before this entry, there's nothing to suggest he was in trouble. After that, there were other signs in his journal that he was in big trouble. And then a little over three weeks later, on August 18, he crawled in the back of the bus and died."

Krahauer, wanted to know if the ending of his book was accurate. Was it in fact the wild potato seeds that did in McCandless? He took wild potato seeds to a chemist.

"These are not poisonous," said the chemist.

Hum. What now? 

Enter a reader:

After reading Into the Wild, Rod Hamilton had an Ah Ha moment. He knew that Jews in concentration camps were fed the seed of the chick pea, eaten for centuries, but known to contain a substance called ODAP which under certain conditions, is toxic. 

Wild potato seeds also contain ODAP.  In a mal-nourished body the seeds containing ODAP cause paralysis and death. My chickens were molting and thin, obviously struggling to keep fit as winter was coming on.

The fault, I believe, lies in the potato skins...and skinny chickens. (I kept their feeder full.) No chicken of mine will ever be fed potato skins, and now I wonder about anyone eating them.

Rail, Sea, or Land

You guys have to watch this—no you don’t have to--it just knocked my socks off.

I know this isn’t giving you information.

It isn’t giving advice.

It isn’t about a contribution to society—but then maybe it is…

This story hit me between the eyes, or rather in the heart.

It is about love and caring, concern and even skill, and it comes from a monkey. It’s on YouTube. I stumbled upon it. I know, you can do your own stumbling, but I couldn’t resist.

A monkey was electrocuted at a subway station and was lying completely unconscious in the center corridor between two train tracks.

You can watch it here:  

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/dec/22/monkey-saves-dying-friend-train-station-india-video

Don't read the next paragraph is you want to watch the You tube. It's the Reader's digest Version.

Another monkey came up to the unconscious monkey, grabbed it, shook it, turned it over, worked on resuscitating it, dumped it in water that was puddling over the edge of a rail. The electrocuted monkey was like a rag doll, showing no sign of life. The rescuing monkey kept working on him. FOR TWENTY MINUTES. Finally the electrocuted monkey did rally, and at first was like a drunken sailor, then recovered somewhat. The video ended with the rescuing monkey patting the electrocuted one on the back. Probably humans probably would have pronounced him dead long before twenty minutes.

Success!

MOB (Man Over Board);

Have you heard this one? A passenger tumbled off a balcony of a Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship. No bells or whistles went off, no one saw him. He floated in the ocean for about five hours…and a Disney Cruise Ship came along that same corridor, a passenger spotted a man in the water, (imagine) and the Disney crew saved him.

Long live Disney!

P.S. Disney Cruise lines have a detection device that is an automatic man overboard detection technology. It uses radar and sensors to establish a perimeter around a ship. The Royal Caribbean Cruise line does not.

Success!

On Land:

My chiropractor told me I wouldn’t have any back problems if I lived on the moon. Well, I have recently become a Real Estate Agent, but I don’t believe I will investigate any property on the moon. Good ole planet earth. I’ll take my chances here.

Remember us if you ever decide to sell your house or want to buy one. No hard sale tactics, just good old win/win. You want to buy, someone wants to sell, Bingo. You want to sell, someone wants to buy. Ditto.

We are The Pink Flamingo Real Estate Team, at your service. 1 814-9613 ext 124

Coming soon to a yard near you: 

 http://pink-flamingo.wix.com/real-estate

How about joining me for the 90 Day Millionaire Challenge? http://www.the90daymillionairechallenge.blogspot.com 

I began it once, going at it again, just posted  "If we keep on believing that money doesn’t matter…" sign up to be a part of the process 

jewellshappytrails@gmail.com 
Say $, or millionaire, or something that will identify you.

Don't Grow Up

Remember when you were a kid and you believed that anything was possible?

One week you were going to grow up and ride a rocket ship to the moon. Another and this was my dream, that I would own a horse ranch and hire handsome men to run it.

One of my daughters couldn’t wait to grow up. The trouble was, she found when grown up that it wasn’t much fun.

How do we get the fun back? How do we pull back those dreams that sustained us on long winter nights?

I learned this from a horse trainer—let’s call him a horse gentler, for that is what he preferred. He said after he got a macho-etocomy, he realized that a dance partner doesn’t want to be pulled to their feet and forced around the dance floor--or slapped, or pulled by ropes. A horse, he said, will respond to pressure no stronger than you can put on your eyeball.  (Did you know that a horse’s hide is seven times more sensitive than a human’s?) The point of this that whatever the rank and file are doing, chances are you ought to do the opposite. (Stroke a horse, don’t slap it.)

I’m trying. (Yoda said, “Don’t try, do.) Yet we know when we are standing on the brink of an abyss we quiver a bit, we become immobilized, our brain becomes oatmeal.

You great readers who have been with me for a while know that I studied to become a Real Estate Agent.  I passed those horrible exams, I had my background checked, and all my little fingers finger-printed. I paid my dues. I backed off, I tested the water. Well now I have signed with a Brokerage, I’m on the brink, I don’t know what to do next.  I know that some of the old ways of operating do not work as efficiently as they once did. I don’t want to become establishment.

What is the opposite?

P.S.

Daughter and I are The Pink Flamingo Real Estate Team. Now doesn’t having a For Sale sign in your yard with a pink flamingo on it sound outrageous enough to garner attention?

 “Next time I’m really going to put my foot down.”

Thank you for following me all you wonderful people.

Post Script

I had never heard of Pahoa Hawaii before we moved there five years ago. We bought ten gorgeous acres with an acre of pineapples, some citrus, a macadamia nut orchard, room for horses, a main house and the cutest little Tiki Room we could imagine.  We were at the end of the road—or so we thought.

Later we learned that at one time Railroad Road went all the way to Hilo, but right beyond our gate debris blocked any vehicle from going farther.

Railroad Road also known as Puua Kapoho Road has been made into a through-a-fare; well maybe I exaggerate, but it has been made passable as an escape route for the people of Pahoa. We remember it as two miles of lumpy, lava encrusted, pot-holed infested road that beat the heck out of our Prius. It consisted of a single lane where we would pull over to let another car pass and therefore wave at our neighbors. About fifteen mongooses would do the squirrel scurry across the road before we got to the highway, and at night stealth wild pigs would run their little wiggly tails down the road before disappearing into the brush. Now Railroad is a two lane road, and our house which was once at the end of the road, no longer is.

Fiery hot lava is threatening to cut the town of Pahoa in half and close off the highway, the road out of there, thus they have widened Railroad Road as an escape route.

We sold our house and property on the island thinking it was not safe, and moved back to the states. Now the marketplace in Pahoa where we shopped, where we went into peals of ecstasy over the Bakery’s Butter Mochi, where we shopped at Malala’s  grocery store, where Island Crazy sold Barry’s paintings, and Island nick-knacks, and who took one of my books on consignment (sold it), is at risk. In that shopping center we frequented the propane store, the hardware store that once sold a bouquet of orchids for $2.99, the tire shop, The FEX X, where we FAXed more documents trying to get a loan on that property than I care to count, the Urgent Care Facility where they took good care of my husband, the Fish and Chips café, the Subway Sandwich shop, and the Sushi Restaurant—are all at risk of Pele’s hot lava.

The turn-off into the shopping center is highway 130, the highway to Hilo, and numerous other places on the island that I mention in my book, like the drive to Kea’au, and Black Sands Beach, and Kona— which was “Going to Hawaii,” for us, could be completely bisected by the lava. Long’s Drug Store, fancy and new, was being built as we were leaving, closed recently.

Barry, the caretaker who lived on our property before us, called it “The most beautiful spot on earth,” and the name given to it by its owner was Pu’u Honoa, meaning “Mount of Refuge.”

Maybe it will be just that for the people who travel the road in front of our house, (that is someone else’s house now), and thus escape Pele’s fiery ability to make more land by pulling it from inside the earth and depositing it on the surface.  

I wish all those stalwart souls well, and please watch out for the critters.

" A Christmas Memory"

“A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen, but due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable—while not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind, but it is delicate too, finely boned and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. “Oh my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the window pane, “it’s fruitcake weather.”

The person she is speaking is Truman Capote as a seven-year-old child. 

Truman Capote writes, “A Christmas Memory” 1956.

The woman he is speaking of is sixty-something, they are cousins, and have lived together since before he can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over the two and frequently make them cry, they are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. The boy and the old lady are each other’s best friend…

Every year I read Truman Capote’s, “A Christmas Memory,”—makes me cry though. The old lady calls Capote “Buddy” after a best friend who died as a child. The old lady is still a child.

With his exquisite manipulation of words Capote tells of taking an old dilapidated baby buggy into the woods to collect windfall pecans for the fruitcakes, and gathering together their year-long savings of $12. 73 to buy “Ha Ha’s moonshine for the cakes…whiskey, that’s the best, and the most expensive.

 “Buddy,” she calls from the next room, and the next instant she is in his room holding a candle. “Well, I can’t sleep a hoot,” she declares. “My mind is jumping like a jack rabbit. Buddy, do you think Mrs. Roosevelt will serve our cake at dinner…”

Well, you just have to read the story…

Truman Capote has a natural gift that makes him a great guest at a dinner party—writes Irving Pen in Truman Capote 1965, “he is always interested in whomever he's talking to. For one thing, he really looks at the person he is with. Most of us see outlines of one another, but Truman is noting skin texture, voice tone, details of clothing.

[...]

One of the reasons that Truman is always interested in people is that he won't allow himself to be bored. He told me that when he meets a truly crashing bore he asks himself, "Why am I so bored? What is it about this person that is making me yawn?" He ponders, "What should this person do that he hasn't done? What does he lack that might intrigue me?"

He catalogues thoughtfully the bore's face, his hair style, his mannerisms, his speech patterns. He tries to imagine how the bore feels about himself, what kind of a wife he might have, what he likes and dislikes. To get the answers, he starts to ask some of these questions aloud. In short, Truman gets so absorbed in finding out why he is bored that he is no longer bored at all.

Can't help laughing...and this blog is about age

Picture, Unknown Victorians laughing

And this blog is about age.

When someone would ask Neil’s mother how old she was she would answer, “I’ll forgive you for asking that personal question.”

I even resent a doctor asking my age. That means he has immediately categorized me.

We do want to be perceived as young—that baby-butt smooth skin, how gorgeous is that? No wonder we want it, but who wants to be judged as slow, awkward, ugly, conservative, stupid, or forgetful—or worse yet, “What age did your parents die?” Horrors.   Even being victims of our DNA  can be changed, so I’ve heard, as genes are constantly turning on or off. Bottom line, we fight to look young, while we ought to be fighting to think young—meaning, of course, forward thinking, innovative, inventive, open to new ideas, and new people. Be a person worth keeping around.

“Look for your mold.”

Scientist Dr. Jonathan Sackner- Bernstein persuades us to “Look for our mold.” He tells the story of one scientist, who daily sorted through his petri- dishes checking specimens—you know where this is going, but the story bears repeating. Dr. Alexander Fleming was 47 when he discovered penicillin. Every day he would check his numerous petri-dishes. If he found that one had turned moldy he chucked it into the trash.  One day, a moldy dish looked a little different from the many others he had thrown away, so he put it aside. Later he noticed that the bacteria around the mold had died--thus Fleming discovered one of the first antibiotics. He called it mold juice—I guess Penicillin sounds more scientific.

Bernstein’s  point was that this scientist, Dr. Alexander Fleming, at age 47, had the years of experience to discern,  the wisdom to trust his intuition, and the training to identify. Unfortunately he was not good at communicating and thus the community didn’t listen to him, even in WWI when he said, accurately, that the antiseptics they were using did more harm than good. He brought in a couple more scientists and eventually the word on penicillin got out.

Too often people use the excuse that they won’t make a difference because they lost their chance, they are too old.

Remember what Richard Back (book Illusions) said, “If you wonder whether your mission on earth is over, if you’re alive, it isn’t.”

Berstein pointed out that even such things as learning to play a musical instrument involves different components than years and years of practice. It involves how you are supported, your attitude, and your innate talent.

 “Go boldly in the direction of your dreams.”

If you’re alive having your dreams come true is still an option.

I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.”

—Alexander Fleming

Angels Beware, a New Kid on the Block

It was over four-score years ago that she sat across the aisle from me in Spanish class. She smiled, I smiled. She invited me for lunch at the Barn at UC Riverside, and thus began a friendship that endured for those forty- some years.

We were both married students, older than some, both of us had a gap in our schooling. We graduated, lived in the same town, then apart, together, apart.

I remember a Christmas Eve in Oregon, when Sylvia and her husband Greg flew in from California, and found themselves unable to maneuver their car on our snow laden hill. I saw them from my kitchen window, trudging up the road dragging their suitcases, laughing and slipping. They joined us for Christmas, and we ate turkey and drank Champagne—one of Sylvia’s favorite things—Champagne and Christmas.

Over the years we have sometimes lived close by, oftentimes far apart, but visited often. The Fourth of July at Coronado Island and eating sea food from Point Loma Seafood, and watching fireworks will always be our favorite fourth of July—she mentioned it every year and wished we were there. 

We endured separations, togetherness, confidences, marital disputes, pregnancies, childbirth, child rearing. She had a little girl when I met her, and 13 years later she gave birth to a little boy. My kids and her little boy took baths together, ran around the Zoo, Disneyland, and Bazaar Del Mundo in San Diego where Sylvia and I drank margaritas, and the kids perused the court yard, and visited the toy store, and were safe and confined while we wiled away the hours.

We wondered about the afterlife together, and when hippies came along we contemplated what that meant, and about the gay movement, and women’s rights.

She liked shocking pink fingernails and toe nails, and flip flops with huge flowers on her toes, and all things bling, but her favorite were jewels of the real variety. Going to an auction stirred her creative juices, as did Interior Decorating.

I still remember those pink fingernails clutching basalt bluffs as Sylvia and I slogged in sandals through the water of Oneonta Canyon in the Columbia River Gorge, then we sat all wet and prickly, but laughing about it, until we changed at Nordstroms before the drive home.

Within this past year she said, “When I lose weight and get in shape I’m getting a pair of skinny jeans with rhinestones on the pockets.”

When you see a short lady with long blond hair, with rhinestones on her butt wandering around heaven—that will be Sylvia

She died December 7, the day after her 83^rd birthday.

Obey Your Whims

“Bon appetite.” Have any of us said that phrase in a normal voice since 1964?

Do you know of anyone who has hosted a TV show and never tried to change themselves?

Apparently Julia Child did not.  

(Above photo Photo of Julia and Paul Child)

With Julia, what you saw was what you got.

I am reading Julia Child Rules, Lessons on Savoring Life, by Karen Karbo, and I was struck by the notion that we have been trained that something is wrong with us, that we need changed, or that at least we ought to be working on ourselves.

More “How–to Books abound that any other. On top of that we need “Life coaches,” because we can’t figure it out for ourselves.  I am guilty of all that myself, having taken more seminars than you can shake a stick at (I never understood why anyone would shake a stick at anything, but it was one of those sayings mother’s perpetrate on their children.)

Most of us want to savor life, but don’t know how.

Apparently savoring life was built in to Julia. There she was a 6 foot 3 inch tall young woman in the 1930’s, too tall to play the damsel in distress in school plays, so instead opted to play the Emperor. Even after shaving three inches off her height she was too tall to be accepted into the WACS or WAVES during wartime, (talk about discrimination), so she because an OSS researcher instead. That was dreary work, typing files, so on a whim she moved to India where she was knee-deep in classified information, and where her organizational skills were appreciated. Julia was not a typical desired young woman to be courted; she was a spinster until age 32, but there in India she met and later married the love of her life Paul Child.

She and Paul were rare birds—mix-matched, he shorter than her by 6 inches, a sophisticated French man of the world, interested in intellectual pursuits and love-affairs—she a giddy free-spirit, and yet they married and lived a forty-eight year love-affair.

Paul introduced Julia to French food. She introduced herself to the Le Cordon Bleu Cooking school, and the rest is history. “How magnificent to find one’s calling at last,” she said. She was thirty-eight years old.

You know after seeing the movie Julie Julia, that publishing her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking was no small feat. After many failures, she decided that writing an 800 page cookbook that didn’t sell, was better than working on an 800 page novel that didn’t sell, for they still needed to eat, she still had the recipes, and she still loved to cook.

When her mayonnaise recipe, one she had successfully made thousands of times, and even made to bolster herself up after a cooking failure, did itself fail, she turned her attention to the scientific interaction of ingredients, or was it the temperature of the bowl or of the eggs?  Julia made so many mayonnaise recipes that Paul finally called a halt to it, and she threw gallons of mayonnaise down the commode. See people do research because they want to know. (I don’t know, though, why her mayonnaise failed, Karbo didn’t say, and I’m not making sixteen gallons of mayonnaise to find out.

When Julia tuned 80, a birthday she would have preferred to ignore, her vast following were in the mood to celebrate her.  And Julia who, according to Karbo, had the stamina of a shed dog at full peak training, attended all 300 birthday bashes. (Some commanding $350 a plate.)

Julia was robust and healthy, except in later life her knees failed her, and she would sometimes cry in pain at the end of the day.

Julia followed her own rules, “Obey Your Whims,” “Live With Abandon, “Be Yourself,” and she became an original. She will long be remembered as The French Chef. (Who was neither a Chef nor French. Don’t you just love it?)

Well, I have a Revere Ware pan in my kitchen, not French standard issue, a travesty by French standards, but it is over 50 years old, I have burned more food in it than I care to count, and I have expended more elbow grease in cleaning it than I care to mention. On top of that I do not have a decent kitchen knife in the house. I'm no French Chef, nor one of any other nationality, but I love watching cooking shows.

Here's butter to you Julia.

Excuse me, I’m going out to eat…