Dody Jane

2009-11-22T18:08:00.001-08:00

Please Visit...

2009-04-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

Please visit me where I REALLY blog. I changed to Wordpress and kind of like it. Comments welcome.

The Spectral Dickinson

2009-01-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

I have been reading two biographies about Emily Dickinson. The first, White Heat, is beautifully written. This book, which is a biography about the friendship between Emily and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, has many lovely passages, such as this one which describes the Homestead, Emily's home, now a museum, "The Homestead... is spare of furniture; the rooms are cold, and though the docents are helpful, the poet has fled." I agree with Ms. Wineapple. The Homestead is indeed not haunted. But the same can not be said about The Evergreens, the house next door. The Evergreens was built by Emily Dickinson's father for her brother Austin and his bride, Susan Gilbert as a sort of bribe. The elder Mr. Dickinson (Edward) was trying to convince Austin to remain in Amherst rather than go west to Chicago.

While The Homestead is decidedly ghost free, The Evergreens is not. The Evergreens ironically became a hub of Amherst society while Emily was steadily withdrawing from that same society. Next door to Amherst's famous recluse, Emerson and Henry Ward Beecher were received and feted. Today, the house is in a serious state of dilapidation, yet it retains most of the original contents. While dusty and seriously frayed, the chair Emerson is said to have occupied in the parlor looks as if he could emerge from another room and sit down once again, to engage in conversation about the lecture he completed at Amherst College a mere 142 years ago. Yet, the house is eerie. When entering the dining room where Susan Dickinson entertained her guests, there is a noticeable drop in temperature (even in the summer). A chill hangs in the air over the table which looks as though it is set for a spectral dinner party.

But the downstairs isn't the creepiest part of the house, that honor belongs to the upstairs of The Evergreens. Ascending the creaky back servants stairs, the visitor is most acutely struck by the lingering souls of long dead Dickinson's. The nursery of Gib, Emily's little nephew who died tragically of typhus at the age of seven, remains exactly as the Dickinson's left it after his death. Apparently, in her grief, Sue just closed the door and NO ONE every went back in. The feeling of voyeurism is palpable.

However, The Evergreens present a remarkable opportunity to look in on the past exactly as it was, not as a restoration or a recreation of a historical landmark, but as it actually looked (albeit with some deterioration) the last time the occupants left the rooms. It sends chills up the spine. It is just plain spooky. The day I took the tour for the second time, by the time we reached the nursery, early winter darkness had decended and we gazed in upon the doomed little boys nursery by electric lamplight, the lamp swinging in the docent's hand, sending shafts of weak light into the poignantly charming, yet deathly stillroom. Emily's words echoed in my head, "I am out with lanterns looking for myself..." The Evergreens is the saddest museum in America. If there are such things as ghosts, they surely walk at The Evergreens.

My Really Exceptional Stuffing (I made this up myself)

2008-11-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

2 Boxes of Gourmet Seasoned Croutons - Crumble a bit with your BARE HANDS so they aren't so lumpy

3 Celery Stalks - chopped

1 Big Onion - finely chopped

1 Granny Smith Apple - chopped

1 Bulging handful of Golden raisins - (make sure they are dropping on the floor from your hand when you transfer them to the big bowl across the kitchen- that's how you know you have enough)

2 sticks of BUTTER (the better to kill you with!!!)

1/4 Cup Ice Water

3 Eggs - Beaten within an inch of their life

Melt Butter in an attractive, copper bottomed pan reminiscent of Julia Child. Throw the celery, onions, apple and raisins in the melted butter. Bubble around until the onions and celery are translucent. Taste them a lot. Beat the eggs during this interlude. Pour the celery, onions, apples and raisins over the crumbled croutons and stir and stir until mixed. Taste a lot before you add the eggs. Add the eggs. If you are feeling Russian Roulette-ish, taste again once the eggs are added. With a zig zag motion, pour the cold water over all and stir, stir, stir. STUFF THE TURKEY. Place left overs in a pretty casserole dish, choose the little one you received when you got married from a distant non relative friend of your mother who you called Aunt Patty, this type of casserole works best. If you do not have a non-relative named Aunt Patty who gave you a simple, yet pricey casserole dish, Pyrex works just as well.

I LOVE MY STUFFING~~~~

It's Fun Being in the Peanut Gallery

2008-11-24T03:23:00.000-08:00

I frequent a few blogs regularly. I think I have it whittled down to about five. Ann Althouse is one of my favorites. This is a public service announcement encouraging anyone reading here to look at her blog.

Some facts about Althouse: She is a law professor at U of Wis Madison. She is unbelievably open minded and fair. She took a vow of cruel neutrality during the election. She voted for Obama. She is very cool.

I make comments and occasionally - they show up in her blog posts - which is really fun.

Creating ourselves - or do we?

2008-11-23T16:48:00.000-08:00

In March of this year, researchers completed a study which concluded a certain degree of our ability to experience varying levels of happiness is indeed genetic. Likewise, there are studies which reveal the genetic markers controlling the degree to which humans will experience shyness as well as other behaviors such as hostility. The secular, scientific age we live in gives us partial answers to age old questions. Yet, in spite of these conclusions, science is not able to categorically conclude all behavior or personality is something we are born with or derived solely from biology. It appears that at least fifty percent is left to chance and it is within that fifty percent we are either shaped by our own ability to decide or we are shaped by circumstance and other variables such as the influences of family, peers or society.

Self knowledge can be identified early in life. Certain symbols can become life long certainties. Like a ballerina spotting an object while she twirls, there can be focal points which remain with us always. These are decisions we formed on our own and are hard to dislodge. For a long time, I have privately referred to it as the Rosebud Theory and I base it on my own love of pink rosebuds. I can personally remember as far back as two years of age, wanting and needing to see, wear, have pink rosebuds. It was visceral. I wanted my dresses to be adorned with them, I was drawn to baby dolls with “rosebud” mouths. Illustrations in picture books decorated with rosebud borders became my favorites. No matter what I have done or experienced in life, the one constant has been rosebuds. Metaphorical rosebuds for sure, represented by the kind of books I like to read, the movies I like to watch, the hobbies I have. All are akin to the romantic beauty of a rosebud. This is the self I create and hold sacred; and while it may not necessarily be a ’rosebud’ for other people, I believe there is something similarly representative in everyone’s deeply embedded core. Something, which, like a rosebud, remains constant to define them, on their terms and will unfurl to become a complex person based on the bud that defines our innate preferences.

When a boat is tethered by a single line to a dock, it may drift in a myriad of directions. Depending on the conditions of the wind it may drift close to the edge of the dock, safely bumping against the moorings, sheltered somewhat from the wider lake. Or, the wind may kick up and pull the boat out far from the dock, the line taut and strained to a breaking point, far from the original source of safety. Humans are like this. We can be influenced by forces, be they powerful personalities or intervening circumstances, to drift a long way from our original mooring. It may be hard to remain tethered to ideas we form on our own. We may indeed find the influence of ideas we encounter or people we meet overpowering and may even abandon convictions, change our behavior based on the tug of society’s powerful currents. These changes may occur through personal choice or in subtle forms of coercion

It is human nature to believe you are in charge of your opinions or actions. And while, as I briefly alluded to, science can explain some of our behavior as being genetic it also makes sense this genetic basis is malleable. In the happiness study I referred to, the researchers were able to conclude a person’s ability to increase their degree of happiness was dependent on circumstance. So while our “happiness set point” might be one we are born with, the effects of circumstance can increase or decrease our propensity to experience true happiness. Likewise, it is logical to assume other kinds of circumstance can alter who we are or think we are.

During the run up to the recent election, I found it intriguing to read the brief, yet explosive posts written on the social networking sight ‘Twitter’. One in particular caught my eye. The person posting posited the question “Is it possible to be married to someone who votes opposite you?” The responses that poured in were overwhelmingly “NO!” This reaction made me wonder how many of those relationships were genuinely comprised of two individuals who came to a relationship with completely sympathetic views. I pondered the possibility of one personality overcoming another to accomplish such a completely synchronized view. In this way, it is easy to see the extent to which others can create us. If the tables were turned, perhaps if the individual was married to another kind of voter, their preference would or could be altered. Like the boat tethered to the dock, the wind whips you in one direction or another and the circumstances of the situation, the inter-personal relationships, alters what may lie at your core.

However, you may never relinquish your most deeply held love of rosebuds...

The Dating Game - 21st Century

2008-11-18T17:33:00.000-08:00

Lately, I find I find myself thinking the cosmic plates of history and the world are shifting. I wonder if we are in the middle of a tsunami of cultural change. If we are, I am going to be like that girl in some asteroid movie I saw once and just stand on the proverbial beach and let the wave wash over me. It is all in motion and all inevitable, so why even think about it? I am completely sure I was not what Darwin had in mind when he was having his "I could have had a V-8" moment about survival of the fittest.

I loved dating. I had the best boyfriend in high school. On alternate Fridays, he took me to Ponderosa Steakhouse and then a movie. He gave me pretty gifts like music boxes and lockets. I bought him shirts he hated and record albums and Brute colonge. We wrote 'like' letters that became love letters. No, I did not marry him, but I cherish him just the same. It was a ritual, it was a necessary step toward what would come later. I loved being in love. I loved the possibility of marriage. I blatently and with premeditation, dreamt about wedding dresses. I tore pages out of Brides Magazine and kept them in my underwear drawer. Yes, I know. That is wrong. It is silly and probably the result of societal brainwashing. I was probably suffering from a national, gigantic version of Stockholm Syndrome.

So, when I came across this article about the state of dating, I experienced my usual five stages of culture shock: hot flash, denial, melancholy, relief I am past this crap, and finally, the shrug, which for me, passes as acceptance... See? I am definitely not a survivor, I will always, in the end, just shrug my shoulders and watch old movies with a vengeance. It is my recurring theme, my inner Betty Crocker...

Dody Gump

2008-11-07T03:23:00.000-08:00

I am compiling a list of the great historical moments I will tell my grandkids about:

1. Assasination of JFK

2. Assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. Assasination of RKF

(brief interuption - all this happened by the time I was 10. I actually thought famous men getting shot was a something that happened like clock work)

4. Woodstock

5. Moon Landing

6. Vietnam War

7. Resignation of Richard Nixon

8. Oklahoma City Bombing

9. 9/11

10. Election of Barack Obama

If anyone would like to help me with this list, please feel free to comment.

Lock Your Desk, Not Your Heart

2008-11-02T14:01:00.001-08:00

I can't wait for the election to be over. I recently lost a friendship as a result. I was probably overly sensitive in an email exchange, but I tried to apologize, to no avail. Like I have said on Facebook and to other friends I love and cherish, no matter how it turns out I will support whoever wins, wholeheartedly. Anyway, I link to the article because it struck a cord. Happy voting.

Carolina Blue

2008-11-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

I live in North Carolina because of autumn. It is the most gorgeous time of the year. The sky is Carolina Blue, there is a crispness to the air; all the humidity of the summer becomes a distant memory and life feels sublime.

Even now, when the economy is on the ropes. Here are some pictures of that sky...

Halloween!!!!

2008-10-31T05:04:00.000-07:00

An old, old witch, believe me if you can,
Tapped on my window pane and RAN, RAN, RAN!
She ran helter skelter with her toes in the air
Cornstalks flying from her old witch's hair.

Swish went her broom
"Meow" went her cat
Plop, went her hop toad sitting on her hat
WEEEEEE! shouted I,
What fun, what fun!
HALLOWEEN NIGHT WHEN THE WITCHES RUN!!!

Sheeples

2008-10-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

We are now closer as a people to adding $700 Billion to our debt, but by god, we won't let sheep researchers go under...

www.whitehouse.gov/ history/grounds/images/she.

Ethics or the Lack Thereof...

2008-09-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

This article by a revered, yet batty, ethicist with the goofy la-dee-da name of Baroness Warnock, suggests old people suffering from dementia should be put down. Wow. That’s kind of icky. I would like to suggest old people suffering from dementia can be looked at in a different light.
I remember when my daughter was five or six, she loved Madonna. I was a nervous wreck about this because Madonna was really NOT the kind of person I wanted her to emulate. In fact, I was concerned that by letting her listen to her little Madonna tape (a birthday gift from her friend who also loved Madonna) I could possibly be accused of neglecting my parental duties. Yikes.
One day, as we were driving along and listening to FM 99.5, Pop Rock, Material Girl started to play. I observed my sweet little cherub mouthing the words “Living in a material world...” and started to panic. I asked her, “Hey, why do you like Madonna?”
“Oh, cuz, she’s just like you, Mommy.”
“Like ME? How is she like me? What do you think this song MEANS?” Full blown panic. I was examining my unexamined life right there, on the way to the grocery store. I was doing a warp speed brain scan. I didn’t own any jewelry to speak of. Our T.V. was smallish and really irritating by modern standards. We only had two bedrooms and one bath. My car was ten years old. No. I didn’t scream materialism.
“How is she like me, honey?” I asked this in a high, squeaky voice.
“She’s a material girl, just like you and me. She buys material and makes clothes. Like you.”
Kids do say the darnedest things. As a matter of fact, so do dear little, slightly confused (medical term dementia) old people.
During our trip to drop our daughter off at college (who, by the way, is now completely over Madonna), my sweet little mother who is 80 and sometimes very confused, was asked how old she was. I think she had dropped some unusual verbal clues in a conversation she was having with the father of another student. For some reason, he felt compelled to ask how old she was.
“Oh, I’m 69.” I was busy dragging things out of the back of the van, half listening, This statement caused me to stop what I was doing and I found the father looked at me oddly.
“No, mom, you are 80.”
“80? No, I’m 59.”
“No, really, mom - you are 80.”
“I’m 89?”
“No, 80.”
“Are you sure? I feel 69.”
This exchange is every bit as priceless as the one I had with my five year old. It was worth having. She was so engaged and darling. I could tell the father of the other student thought she was charming. He patted her hand and agreed feeling your age is every bit as important as being your age. My mother smiled and waved her hand cavalierly over her shoulder. But if the Baroness has her way, my mother should be put down. For the good of society. To relieve the stress on the healthcare system. There really should be a line drawn. A line that means, “past this point, there are things we just won’t say.” Baroness Warnock crossed the line. There are some stresses medicine will just have to deal with.

My Summer Vacation

2008-07-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

My summer vacation. Fifty summers. Fifty summer vacations. Like a homing pigeon headed north, I fly. North. To the Northwoods. To the land of lakes and birch trees and hemlocks. We drive two days through the mountains and the cornfields and finally the forests, my mother and sister and niece and I.
As we wind through the Appalachians, I remember the first time I saw a mountain. I was 17 and I was enchanted. I remember a feeling bubbling up inside of me. Like a hidden spring, the possibilities of topography dawning on me, all those embossed globes of my childhood, I could feel, like a blind person the memory of my finger tips running down the spine of a mountain range and now, here it was like a wall before me.

I wondered if I had somehow missed out on something deep and mysterious and ultimately more tremendous than the dark black Illinois loam of my mother's peony bed by having spent my first 17 years on the prairie. I would have had a similar reaction to the ocean except for the fact that Lake Michigan had prepared me better than my paper mache globe.

But now, in my fiftieth summer, as we round each curve in the Daniel Boone National Forest, my body pressed from centrifugal force against the car window, I find my heart beats harder the closer we come to Indiana and the vast expanse of corn fields all wearing their long lace collars of Queen Anne's lace. I am going North.

When I finally see the first corn fields ahead through the asphalt mirage of the highway and glimpse the dark heart of Indiana's hardwood forests beyond in the distance, I start to feel as if I am going home. I sigh, a long sigh, as if I have been holding my breath for yet another year when we finally stop for the evening, our first day of travel complete. I feel as if my own fetch greets me. The ghost of the girl I once was. It is the air swirling around me. It takes me back to my Midwestern girlhood. It reminds through flashes carried into my senses on the breeze. Like the ripple of playing cards in a dealer's hand I can see of all my summers. I shiver and It reminds me why I never wore sundresses without a sweater.

In my youth I resented having to cover my pretty shoulders and now as I stand outside the Comfort Inn in Crawfordsville, Indiana which stands in the middle of a cornfield, I ache to go back in time and cover my shoulders all over again. Now. Even now when I know about the mountains and the oceans and the sultry beauty of Savannah and Charleston, I want to go back to the time when all I knew was perfectly straight strips of highway hidden in the precise grid of gently swaying cornfields and the fact that summer was only, truly, three weeks long.

In years past, our daughters stood, teeth clattering at the edge of the Indiana motel swimming pool, lamenting the chilly early July evening air and yearning for their Southern summer swimming pools. Our Southern born daughters who understood nothing about their riches of sweater-less sundresses, our daughters whose lungs ached for the languid blanket of humidity which made it possible to always wear the thinnest cotton over a bikini in the pitch black midnight of Georgia. There is a beguiling sense of recklessness inherent in a Southern summer evening. Yet only a Northerner can truly spot it. Southerners, like our daughters, raised as they are in so gentle a climate are blissfully unaware of the joys of owning multiple sundresses and walking sweater-less on a summer evening. Yes, Sundresses sum it up nicely.

The next day we drive up through the straight center of Illinois, Land of Lincoln and Chicago and me. Dan Fogleberg once sang Illinois, Illinois, Illinois, I'm your boy. If Dan Fogelberg was Illinois' boy than I am Illinois' girl; I can barely stand to see the road signs which point to Decatur. I drive and glance continually to my left after we leave Bloomington and Decatur fades in my rear view mirror. For reasons I can't explain, the green interstate sign declaring this way to Decatur reminds me of my college love making conducted in a dorm room somewhere in Decatur and the sweet boy I left behind. I remember first kisses and secret good byes and because I know I can never take that exit again, my lips quiver a bit.

Soon we are flying by Rockford and then we are finally in Wisconsin and the flat land gives way to rolling hills and perfect farms with barns and silos and dairy cows that frame either side of highway. We accelerate a bit, in hurry now to exit from the lunacy that is interstate 90/94. We exit and find Highway 51, our impatience growing now to be on our island and rowing on our lake.

As the Northwoods loom ahead of us, my melancholy fades. I manage to shake off all the places I have left behind forever and turn my attention to the constancy of my ancient cottage, tucked away on a tiny round island. I am returning to the place I can always return to: the place where time stops. Here, bull frogs serenade little green ladies throughout the night and loons wail distantly in the hidden bays of the lake. Dragon flies who ironically wear Carolina Blue land on my knees and I remember I live in North Carolina now. The herons abide in marshy alcoves and otters play on their backs at the edges of our shore. A mother deer and her babe sneak across our filled in road to drink at the water's edge and we watch humming birds drink at the feeder we have placed on an old wrought iron lamp stand outside the window.

For fifty summers I have traveled north. North. Toward the stars. On my way to heaven. My summer vacation.

The Pursuit of Loveliness

2008-06-28T04:49:00.000-07:00

Loveliness. There needs to be more of it. This past week we embarked on a movie watching spree of some of the supposedly best movies from 2007. All I can say is, oh my. I am going to sum these movies up in a blink. Here goes:

No Country for Old Men – Shoot, kill, monster guy, shoot kill some more, dreadful, horrible, greed, blood, shoot, shoot, hopeless awfulness, good guy loses, bad guy ends up with a broken arm, older generation is irrelevant and talks gibberish. The End. Okay, the writing was quite good. A watch -able (like a train wreck) film with a sick premise. Big Sigh.

There Will be Blood – They should have used this title for No Country for Old Men, because there wasn’t much blood, just a lot of dirty fingernails, grimy, sweaty, dirty, mean, horrid, awful, people and grunge. There was blood at the end when the despicable, selfish, most likely stinky due to lack of baths old guy whacks the stereotypical Jimmy Swaggert-like sniveling, ridiculously big crucifix wearing bible banger guy with a bowling pin. Oops. I should have said spoiler alert. Sorry. Plot ends midway through movie and it meanders to a short story ending of drunken, sweaty nothingness.

An aside about the short story ending…I have to say a few words on this topic. If you read a lot of short stories, you will find many just … end… boom. No rhyme. No reason. I myself use this technique occasionally because for some reason, it is seems to be the preferred way to wind up a short story, or not wind it up as the case may be. I personally think it is laziness. Some trendy, popular author (in the case of There Will be Blood, Upton Sinclair) ran out of things to say and said to himself “I think I will submit this to see what happens and like The Emperor’s New Clothes, the hapless, sycophant publisher thinking he must be missing something, but doesn’t want to give away his lack of sophistication publishes it and Voila! A literary technique is born. Oh well.

Back to movies…

Bella – Cliché, stupid, did I say cliché? Oh, and it is also cliché. Plot moves forward cliche-ly as follows- another aborted abortion, angst, angst. Cliché angst. Stupid use of scarf. No one wears scarves like this anymore. Movie is a combo plot: Like Water for Chocolate meets Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with a twist of Juno. And this won awards at Sundance? My regard for Sundance plummets. (What is it with Hollywood, and abortion? They are doing mea culpa’s for Roe vs. Wade at an alarming, head spinning rate. Their message is so confusing, no wonder so many young girls are getting pregnant and having the baby and romanticizing the whole thing, I think it is irresponsible.)

Into the Wild – This is actually a good movie. Read the book by Jon Krakauer first, it is really good. He is a wonderful writer then, watch the movie. However, I don’t think Chris McCandless is a hero. I think he must have been troubled and he was foolish. Google Into the Wild and read the many articles, like this one and this one. But so far – it was the best movie.

Live Free Die Hard – Why did I watch this? To make my husband happy. He fell asleep, Emma and I watched it to the bitter end. Why? Why? Oh Why?

And so I write again, loveliness. I am dedicating my blog to the pursuit of loveliness, hence, the picture. Isn't it lovely?

Bon Ton

2008-06-27T04:32:00.001-07:00

I should have been a costumer. I think that is why I make dolls. So I have a body to make a pretty dress for.

June Bride

2008-06-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

This is Beatrice. She is getting ready for her wedding day. Here she sits in her satin corset, waiting to put on her wedding dress, reflecting before her big day...

Gallery II

2008-06-01T11:27:00.001-07:00

The Visual Bronte - Yes, I love them too

2008-06-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

It may seem odd, but I had never actually read any of the Bronte’s novels before I was thirty one years old. For a Bronte devotee, this is rather late. Up to this point in my life, I felt as if all the movie and small screen adaptations had ruined the books for me. This is not to say I wasn’t in love with the storylines. Quite the contrary, I adored the early Hollywood attempts at Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I watched both of these movies over and over on a program broadcast Sunday afternoons in Chicago, Illinois called “Family Classics.” As a small girl, I fantasized about running through heather and all things English; I was born an American Anglophile.

When I was an adolescent, sometime in the early 70’s, I saw another version of Wuthering Heights. It was more troubling, wilder and titillating than the 1939 version. If anything, it made my desire to actually read the book even more remote, because by this time I had seen Wuthering Heights at least once a year since I was five years old.

When I saw the 1983 BBC Jane Eyre production, I was enthralled but it seemed so thorough, I was convinced reading the book was completely unnecessary.

I came to my love for the actual novels of the Bronte’s rather late. I discovered them through the back door, so to speak. Being a great reader of biographies, I stumbled upon Rebecca Fraser’s book The Brontes, Charlotte Bronte and Her Family in 1990 and fell into the world of this remarkable family with a layman’s interest that has never abated. It was Rebecca Fraser’s biography which made me want to, no; need to read the books for myself.

Reading Jane Eyre at the ripe old age of 31 was amazing. In many ways, I was grateful none of my English teachers required the Bronte’s for any high school reading assignments. Reading Jane Eyre in the wake of the Fraser biography felt like one must feel when making an archeological discovery. For me, reading Jane Eyre for the first time felt like opening the tomb of King Tut. It seemed remarkable to read this novel and discover writing so present, so alive in spite of it having been published in 1847. I was amazed to hear Charlotte Bronte’s voice in my own head.

I went on a Charlotte Bronte spree, Shirley, Villette and when the Juliet Barker biography The Bronte’s was published, I devoured it even while I continued my self education by reading the novels of Emily and Anne.

When the 1996 film, Jane Eyre, was released, I was first in line at the movie theatre. I loved this version, and forgave its shortcomings. The look of Charlotte Gainsborough enchanted me and having a degree in costume design, I adored the costumes throughout.

This movie kindled a memory I had from Fraser’s biography. It was a picture of Charlotte Bronte’s wedding bonnet. For me, the visual aspect of the Bronte Myth had always played a powerful part in my measured self education of all things Bronte.

Perhaps this is what prompted me to make my very own adaptation of Jane Eyre. After finding some very old lace in an antique store, I felt compelled to create my own idea of Jane based on the bonnet pictured in Fraser’s book. I recreated Jane in doll form and in an attempt to interpret her inner purity, dressed her in white. Whatever the reasons; my Jane doll is an outgrowth of my early visual response to the Bronte mystique. My life long Bronte journey began by watching Hollywood’s visual re-creations of the novels. My Jane Eyre doll brings me full circle.

On a Lighter Note...

2008-05-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of some illustrations I found in early 20th century editions of Emma and Mansfield Park. This lovely picture is by C.E. and H.M. Brock from Emma. The caption reads:

"Most Beloved Emma - tell me at once, say 'No' if it is to be said."

Don't you adore Knightley?

Knocked Out And Down For The Count

2008-05-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

“Sometimes, I think, our impulses come not from the past, but from the future.”

Mary Stewart, The Ivy Tree

This is the way I am feeling today. A bit wistful about the future. Last night I watched the movie “Knocked Up.” I watched it because I had read many very glowing reviews and as a result was inclined to be entertained by the movie. Instead, I found I was dismayed. First of all, I would like to officially declare that our culture is leaving me behind in the dust. I am certainly no activist so no one needs to worry that I will agitate about the decline of decorum. But I have this blog so, I will write about my disgust.

It wasn’t the getting pregnant after a night of drunken carousing that has left me feeling so dismayed. Although, as a plot line it is getting tiresome. Certainly, this is nothing new, and I was young once and I am not going to cast any aspersions on momentary passion. The pregnancy part of the movie was fine, except I do think Hollywood for once should be true to their political positions and make a movie about a young girl who decides to have an abortion, go to Yale, become a doctor, meet a nice young man, get pregnant responsibly and raise a lovely child. Hollywood is all about Rowe v Wade, but they are also COWARDS. There is a flip side to abortion. It is the part no one ever talks about. I agree about safe and rare etc. I also think trying to undo abortion is stupid.. But all this wink and nod film pontificating gets us no where. How many sixteen year olds will think Juno is the way to go? It’s a lovely movie but…I think the character of Juno appeared to be exceptionally bright and capable. Light years ahead of many young girls who will find themselves in her position. Maybe we need to refrain from glorifying the youth culture and their casual approach to “hooking up” and over use of the F word ... Oooo! which brings me back to Knocked Up… Sorry – I got off track.

I think it was the raw display of flat out bad behavior in this movie that blew me away. Lazy, foul mouthed slackers are not only glorified but portrayed as normal and somehow preferable to ANYONE RESPONSIBLE. (big sigh) The message of the movie seemed to be: it is a desirable outcome to become like the five adult males who were the roommates, or the miserable husband who does ANYTHING to stay away from his family. The five LOSERS smoke dope all day, watch porn and screw randomly all while spewing a constant stream of sentences containing the F word, one even went to Yale! That makes everything okay! Even well educated young men can become bums! Now that's progress. So much for an Ivy League education. Also, I love the way women are portrayed. What great writing! Who was the brilliant Hollywood mind that came up with the oriental girlfriend? First of all she didn’t seem to be in complete possession of her marbles. Oh! And I loved the dark, cave like atmosphere of the room, it was heart warming (as in heart burn) the mentally challenged oriental 'girlfriend' pathetically watching lesbian porn next to the disgusting boyfriend... what an embrace of multi culturalism, how cutting edge! Does anyone else see the dehumanizing despair in this scene?

Not only that – it was implied by “Knocked Up’ that exposing a little eight or nine year old girl to adults repeatedly calling a friend of her aunt a “prick” is hunky dory. Upon answering the door the day of her birthday party,and finding said “prick” on the doorstep, her query to the “prick” is “what does prick mean?” The movie seems to promote the okie dokie notion that our hero will now"instruct" our little birthday girl. She is happily and calmly informed in dulcet, smooth, normal tones “prick” means penis! Yea! An anatomy lesson out of a slur! This is certainly a useful example of responsible parenting! I think the whole scene is sickening and somewhat akin to advocating a form of child abuse. It's every bit as damaging as the FLDS bunch down in Texas. The mother of the little girl who played that part should be ashamed. I can’t help thinking that little girl is headed for a spread in Vanity Fair soon. Heck, her agent is probably trying to figure a way to work that out.

I did not laugh much during this movie. It made me sad and Okay, embarrased. It made me feel old and crochety. And I don't want to feel old and crotchety. But YUCK...the mainstreaming of strip joints (the Las vegas scene, a married man with his face buried in the buttocks of a pole dancer, giggle, tee hee, haa haa!) drug use (if it comes out of the ground it's OKAY! says the wise old, hippie turned capitalist father who only smoked dope once a day during the week and then all day Saturday and Sunday! Hey Everyone, shrooms all around!) and incredibly rude behavior throughout (screaming and repeating F---this, F--- you, F--- us, in all sorts of public places, with no reagrd for the people around you who MAY be offended by such language) makes me have to say my impulse is to despair: because the future is upon us, we are here, we have arrived and we are not going to be allowed to be a gentle or kind society. Not if Hollywood has their say. This is my rant for the day. I will follow this post with something soothing. I just had to get this off my chest.

The Secret Fairy Society Newsletter - Special End of School Edition!

2008-05-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

SHHHHHHH! The Fairies are sending this today - Summer is on the way! (click the newsletter to make it big enough to read!)

Take the Jane Austen Survey!!!

2008-05-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

If you are a lover of Jane Austen - I am attaching a link to the new Jane Austen Survey being conducted by JASNA. I hope to attend the annual meeting someday and possibly contribute to the newsletter as well. I am also going to begin counting the days to June 2009 at which time I plan to finally visit Chawton and drink in all that is Jane. Cheers!

Dorothy Trades Places with the Tin Man

2008-05-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

I just won a writing contest at Memoirs Ink. It is the first contest I have ever won. Being a grown up, it felt like all the Christmas mornings of my childhood.

I began this writing journey four years ago when I enrolled in the MALS program (Master of Arts in Liberal Studies) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Feeling restless and bored, sensing I needed something more, I responded to a curriculum catalog I picked up on a newsstand for the University which listed a class called “Writing for Readers.” I thought to myself, “I read, I used to write, why not?”

I remember feeling humble and scared at the first class. The teacher (amazing woman) had us go around the room and introduce ourselves and then she made us write. Everyone in the room was hesitant. We had to respond to a writing prompt with a mere paragraph. It was agony. For ten minutes we struggled and erased and crossed out and there seemed to be a collective groan pulsing like high frequency sound waves in the air. To top it off, she requested we read our responses out loud. She didn’t force us, but we could sense her eagerness and we already recognized her amazing-ness, so we acquiesced.

I will never forget driving home from that class. It was about a twenty minute trip and I wrote a poem in my head all the way and ran into my house to write it down. I still have it. I think it may be a very bad poem, but I love it. Since my name is Dorothy, I wrote a sort of metaphor about The Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy had kind of morphed into the Tin Man and how I, Dorothy, was now the Tin Man, released from my frozen, rusted state. I wrote that “words” had the same effect as oil and suddenly I was alive again, my pen limber and flowing. The poem may be dreck, but the sentiment is real. I began writing again that night and have never stopped.

I say I began again, because I have always loved to write. As a girl I wrote stories. I remember starting a novel in the fourth grade. “The Mystery at Blackberry Hill.” Obviously an homage to Nancy Drew. I wrote myths and fables. In six grade, I wrote a story called, “A Girl from California.” It was about a girl from California (duh) who moved to a suburb of Chicago and had trouble making friends and then she finds a really great boyfriend so everything is peachy again. It was written in the style of the short stories that appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle Magazines. Reading the short stories was the first thing I did when I received the magazines. I loved them.

“A Girl from California” was all me. Constance (the girl) looked like me and wore the same shade of lipstick as me (secretly, on the way to and from school.) The plot was me, the boyfriend was the boy I had a crush on and the mean friends were my mean friends. My teacher wrote on the story, “Very good story, did you really write it?” It didn’t occur to her that all the reading I did may have shown me a few tricks and informed my writing.I was devastated. Of course I had really written it. But her reaction, even though she apologized to me when I went to her in tears to proclaim the story was all me, spoiled writing for me a bit. I still wrote stories in high school, but dread always followed when I handed them in. I think I became gun shy.

When I saw the class “Writing for Readers,” I remembered sixth grade and thought, “see, reading DOES teach you a thing or two.” And it did and does. All of the stories written in my class, by supposed novices, were incredible. I even belong to a writing group now, "Scribblers," with two of my former classmates. When the class ended the amazing teacher reminded us to keep reading, “read when you get stuck,” she said, “it will help your writing.” It’s true. It’s like saying “open sesame.” It works. I wish I could tell my sixth grade teacher THAT.

I want to thank Felice Austin of Memoirs Ink for choosing my memoir. I also want to congratulate the other winners whose stories I just finished. WOW. They are amazing as well. I love your stories, Deborah Thompson, Lisa Piorczynski and Merry Gordon.

Words are wonderful. Life is good.

Collage Gallery

2008-03-10T05:32:00.001-07:00

Millistump Hollowversity

2008-03-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

The Student Fairies of Millistump University want to share their Newsletter with you. Be sure to click the newsletter to make it bigger! (Millistump Hollowversity is a subsidiary of The Secret Fairy Society)

Shhhhhh!!!! The Secret Fairy Society - Valentine's Edition

2008-02-14T03:17:00.000-08:00

(Click on Newsletter to enlarge for reading! Quick! This is news you can use!)

I Wasn't Persuaded...

2008-01-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

Being a Janeite – I am making sure I watch all of the upcoming Masterpiece Theatre adaptations that will be shown on Sunday nights between now and April something or other. The first one up to the plate was a new version of Persuasion. Before I say what I thought, I have to qualify it. Any time there is something to watch with British accents and costumes, I give it an immediate three stars. It is worth watching for that alone. Unfortunately, this version of Persuasion does not climb above the three obligatory stars I had assigned it simply for being made. They should have saved the money and aired the 1995 Persuasion that starred Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. It was MUCH better.

The problem with this Persuasion was that it simply fell flat. The actress who played Anne Elliott seemed boringly mopey, too self pitying and her sister Mary was cartoon-ish and wasn’t three dimensional at all. Captain Wentworth, played by Rupert Penry-Jones appeared younger than Anne and too damn nice too soon. He wasn’t grimly stiff and looked soft. Captain Wentworth is supposed to be SEASONED, a self made man of means, a NEW kind of gentleman who was REFUSED by Anne. There should be a sense of bruised pride that emanates from Wentworth. The blonde Penry-Jones was lovely to look at, but it seemed as if he couldn’t possibly be captain, or old enough to have amassed his own fortune. He looked more like a mid-shipman if you ask me.

In the 1995 version Sophie Thompson played Mary Musgrove, Anne Elliot’s hypochondriac, self absorbed but younger MARRIED sister. She was completely insufferable. And wonderful because of it. Amanda Root as Anne in the earlier versions perfectly fit the fading but kind and competent heroine. She was never mopey, just quietly resigned to her fate. The newer Masterpiece Anne (Sally Hawkins) was too ‘blooming.’ She was almost exotic in her looks, with full lips and lovely, peachy cheeks. Although they tried to make her appear dowdy by dressing her in dreadful, bland costumes, (dreadful hats, absolutely DREADFUL) she was still entirely too lovely. In the book, Anne is clearly on the waning edge of her youth and the beauty that comes with youth. Remember, back in 1819 or so, a 27 year old unmarried woman was getting up there. Jane Austen wrote this book when she was past HER own bloom and was a confirmed old maid. Like a deeply exhaled sigh, Persuasion is a wistful imagining of an unlikely reality. Anne Elliot is clearly NOT a young beauty, “A few years before Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as, even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem.” Jane’s words, not mine. Masterpiece didn’t read closely enough! They used too much blush.

The scene where Louisa Musgrove (Mary’s sister in law, the lady Wentworth is now courting) stupidly throws herself from the sea wall was underplayed. There should have been a tension created. In the book, Jane Austen makes much of this pivotal scene, showing us Louisa’s youthful idiocy compared to Anne’s calm level headedness. This is the turning point when Wentworth realizes he needs to try again and put aside his pride. In the Masterpiece theatre film, it was thrown away and acts as a perfect example of the rushed and compressed script. Okay – I will say it. It just wasn’t good enough. So there.

That is my first review. Northanger Abbey is next. They will reprise the Colin Firth P&P and the A&E Emma. I will enjoy watching both again. I am really looking forward to Mansfield Park (my current Austen favorite) since I hated the politically correct screed of a version that was made a few years ago. I may even enter the JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) essay contest contrasting the book with the movie. All in all, it is going to be a lovely four month wallow in all things Jane

The Secret Fairy Society

2007-12-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Secret Fairy Society Newsletter

(click image to enlarge for reading!)

If a Tree Falls.....

2007-11-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

If a blog is posted on the web and nobody reads it, does it matter? I have been mulling this question for awhile. Writing a blog is a bit of a paradox. It satisfies the writing urge, but you never really know…

Blogs provide a temporary therapeutic outlet for writers. If you have the urge to write and a correspondent need to GET IT OUT THERE, hitting the PUBLISH button is immensely, albeit only momentarily, satisfying. There! You think to yourself, I have PUBLISHED my blog post! The operative word in that statement is PUBLISH.

Moby Dick serves as the ultimate writer’s metaphor. Once you make the decision to put stuff down on paper (or into Microsoft Word) you can’t deny you have the urge to publish something, ANYTHING! But, like Ahab in Moby Dick, you ride alone on the vast ocean of the written word, hoping to spear a periodical that will accept the submission you sent six months ago. It isn’t easy, however. They dare you to write enough stories to BE ABLE to publish something. You have to have a stable of stories because, for the most part you can’t send your story to any other periodical because they don’t accept simultaneous submissions.

Let's say you have written five really good, polished, finished stories. This means you can only send it to five publications. Each publication takes a minimum of three months, usually six to reject you. Can you see where I am going here? You will be 86 before you can make the rounds of a modest list of publications. Your heirs will receive your final rejection notice or if you are really lucky, they will receive 10 complementary copies of the publication and the honor of telling everyone their dead mother’s short story will be published in the next issue.

You begin to develop a criminal mind. Yes, criminal. You say to yourself, “How will they know this is a simultaneous submission? What are the chances of all ten literary magazines accepting this story?” And so, you defy the carefully bolded submission guideline, that looks and sounds sinister “No Simultaneous Submissions….” You begin to dissemble…deceitfulness enters your writing habit.

Blogging is like being a shopaholic. You receive a momentary rush when you boldly PUBLISH what you have written. It feels like buying a new chatzka for the house. It comes perfectly packaged; the bag the shop owner places it in is crisp and new. Once you return home with your darling purchase you take the item out of the bag, which you carefully save as a reminder of the chatzka shop. You flit about the house, placing the chatzka here and there, you step back, you admire it, you feel a rush of contentment and tell yourself it is enough. Like Yahweh on the seventh day, you can rest. You have enough and you don’t need to ever buy another thing.

And then a week goes by and then a month. The rush is gone. Something is missing inside, you need something fun to happen , you are low, maybe you burned your oatmeal that morning or had to pump gas and the nozzle dribbled on your best pair of shoes so you smell like gas all day. What can you do? SHOP!!! Yes! You tell yourself “I’ll just look around, that’s all!” And the whole cycle starts over again.

Blogging is like that. Only instead of shopping, you write something. You bold the parts you want to emphasize, you lean back and make sure it looks fine on the screen, you move bits around with the mouse, you cut and paste. Finally, like Goldilocks, it looks JUUUUUSTTTT RIGGGHHHHTTT and you PUBLISH it. I just love that part, the PUBLISH part….can you tell?

But then, time goes by. You have a bad day. What to do? Write! Yes! Write something, work on that short story that has been rejected, add a creep or a big hearted prostitute! That will get their attention! That will make them want to accept your simultaneous submission, besides, since you added the creep and the prostitute, it isn’t simultaneous anymore! What if you change the first sentence! Make it “pop” as they say.

But you end up doodling around because you just don’t like to write creeps and prostitutes and you decide instead to comment on the immediate present, Maybe you have read something somewhere that makes you feel crazy like some wacky judge who just released a serial sex offender. You type a few hundred lovely words! You turn it into a blog post, you hit the publish button… You feel as if you have accomplished something…

But, if you publish a blog on the web and nobody reads it, does it exist?

Google philosophy! Google has all the answers. It is the giant chatzka emporium to the world. It has an immediate answer for every burning question. You click the best looking link and it makes you feel better because you find a long list of “ISM's.” You are browsing in the ultimate chatzka store and you end up buying into the ism that puts everything in perspective:

MODEL REALISM -a philosophy propounded by David Lewis, that possible worlds are as real as the actual world.

So the answer is, if you publish a blog on the web and no one reads it, it doesn’t matter because it’s your own little possible world!

More Joni

2007-11-19T02:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2007/11/019055.php

Although this isn't the same song, Joni is certainly timely at this time of year because

"It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees.
They're putting up reindeer,
Singing songs of joy and peace..."

Ah! Joni!

2007-11-09T03:35:00.000-08:00

Did I ever tell you about the times I saw Joni live?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2007/11/018965.php

Story From The Writing Life

2007-11-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the most delicious experience. I listened as someone read to me out loud. Well, to me and a room of 75 other people, but it felt extremely intimate and I was completely bowled over.

I had the privilege of being invited to a book launch. (It is so cool to be able to write that.)

“What did you do last night, Dody?”
“Oh, I just attended Quinn Dalton’s book launch, that’s all…”

But – That’s NOT all. It was more than just a venue for a special author to share her newest collection of stories. It was like discovering the joy of reading all over again. It was like homemade vanilla custard being poured over dessert. It was like chocolate melting in your mouth. It was like inhaling a bunch of freshly cut lilacs. It was smooth and sultry and inviting.

Can you tell I haven’t had any new experiences lately? In this harsh, old, jaded world we live in it is hard to actually experience something new; something from the virginal perspective. But last night felt just like that.

Quinn Dalton is a terrific writer. I have had the pleasure and the honor of taking a writing class with her in the role of instructor, mentor, and guide. She happens to be a terrific teacher. But writing is her passion and her new collection of stories, Stories From the After Life,” is pure Quinn; full of unvarnished characters with big hearts and quirky thoughts and imperceptible Mona Lisa smiles. Quinn’s stories have a rhythm like smooth jazz and last night she lived up to that description.

Reading her story titled “Jimmy the Brain and the Beautiful Aideen,” while the group Dawn Chorus coolly jammed in the background, Quinn showed the room full of admirers just how you fold one art form into another. The four musicians seemed to sense exactly what was necessary to provide a seamless musical backdrop for Quinn’s story about the beautiful yet wise older woman, infatuated young man and the awkward social misfit.

I can’t help thinking how unfortunate it is that more people don’t choose to experience the joys of the short story. There was a time when you could find them in every magazine. Yet, as the numbers of readers in America dwindle; so too are the opportunities for talented short story writers becoming harder to find. Trust me. H-A-R-D.

But last night was a latte kind of night. It left me with just enough froth on my mind to savor the experience hours after I returned home. It invigorated the writer inside of me and gave me hope. It also gave me something new to dream, that maybe someday I can read one of my stories out loud to the strains of perfectly pitched music. Like seeing live theatre, last night showed me just how provocative the art of short stories can be. Thanks Quinn, for an exhilarating experience. http://www.quinndalton.com/

Gather Ye Assets While Ye May

2007-10-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

I have worked where I work for 25 years now. This milestone has caused me to look over my shoulder, so to speak, and wonder where the heck the time has gone. I know that it has been 25 years because I have a plaque which attests to this fact. I am an official member of the Quarter Century Club. They gave me a burrito breakfast to seal the deal and I chose a single diamond necklace as my “gift” for all my years of dedicated service. I could have chosen a camera, video recorder, luggage… the list goes on and on. But I chose the diamond because when I am dead, I want my ancestors to know that the fable about the tortoise and the hare is brilliant and I am a living example. And so I say: to all you future descendants, here’s the diamond to prove it…”

I suppose we all either boil down to being hares or tortoises. As it turns out, I am a tortoise. This comes as a bit of shock to me, (and it may to you, too) as I have always considered myself to be a bunny-like kind of gal. I loved the scene in Legally Blonde where she shows up at the party in her pink satin bunny suit. I also love this same scene in Bridgett Jones. This would be me. Curling my hair, donning fishnets to display my inner bunny (she is in there somewhere competing with my inner 50’s housewife.) I am prone to hop to attention and I think of myself more as a cute female Disney rabbit, kind of like Thumper’s girl friend bunny, than as a Disney turtle. Plus, I have always been drawn to angora. In fact, I still own a pale lavender angora sweater I bought in 1981 from a darling boutique in Portland, Oregon.

So, discovering that I am actually a tortoise was somewhat unnerving. But the truth of the matter is, like that great Aesop story, I have been plodding along, one foot in front of the other for 25 years now and it is only recently that I have discovered how eminently sensible this has turned out to be.

While other women that I have encountered along the way have sprinted ahead of me to become “VP’s” or Private Bankers or Executive Directors for trendy non-profits, leaving for greener pastures, or just grazing from job to job, I have poked along in my position, hesitant to give up my sure thing, my good deal, occasionally taking tests for a little extra money here or a bigger bonus there. I have heaved big sighs and quietly hung on to my health insurance. (I know that this is a main theme for this blog, but I promise to explain this obsession someday. It’s all wound up in my Jane Austen fixation and commitment to personal responsibility.) I have also saved incrementally in boring monthly payroll deductions for retirement. I continue to drearily engage in dollar cost averaging and dutifully increase my 401-K contribution by at least 1 percent after I receive my raise each year.

Nope. No fancy titles for me. I just know every in and out of the wacky brokerage world. Big Yawn. I can, however, effectively wiggle my way through the eye of the needle know as “LEGAL”. Or, at least anticipate what they will say before they say it and save at least two weeks of wrangling and agony. It doesn’t make great cocktail party blather, I mean, no one would probably care to hear about how FAST I managed to divide Dr. Whozit”s mother’s estate before the end of the year, (like, really fast, like, December 29th, when the cutoff was December 10th or something) or the clever way I found the lost money of someone’s addlepated Aunt Esther hidden in a bizarre account at a Bank America in California. Nor do they give a hoot about just how high I was able to finagle the bid of XYZ shares for Mr. Soandso’s Employee Stock Option. It was like a high wire act. It was impressive. I felt like I was playing intergalactic mind games with the unseen trader standing somewhere on the trading floor of the NYSE. All I could see on the screen was the ask blinking up and becoming my bid each time… BWA HA HA!

At one point, it felt like all my careful saving and dutiful attention to security was a bunch of nothing, but I recently came across my 401-k statement from 1991 and OH-MY-GOD, what they say about slow and steady is the dog-gone truth! This is the day that it dawned on me, I AM A TORTOISE.

When I started, the Dow Jones stood at about 860. From there it has only gone up. But things can be pretty if-ey in the world of brokerage firms. It’s a tough business no matter how you slice it. Brokers come and brokers go. Mostly, they go. Twenty five years ago, when I was hired as an assistant to stock brokers, I was only on the job for one week before I realized stock brokers made great money. At the time it seemed like a winning strategy. You earned commission if your client bought a stock and also if your client sold a stock. Even if they lost money!! WOW! Who thought of that? It’s brilliant! But the more I watched, the more I realized how hard it was. First you had to find the people WITH the stocks. To gather assets, that is. That is what they call it, asset gathering.

For years, I pictured all the lovely, white males I work with dressed in blue gingham dresses, and red hooded capes, wearing a wig of blonde ringlets. I imagined them skipping through a dark, green forest of stocks, bonds and cash equivalents, a wicker basket slung over their arm, gathering assets. Mostly, they would run into lions and tigers and bears, but all it took was the occasional bull guarding a pot of gold to set them up for life. The caveat: finding the gold is tough. Really, really tough. I knew right away, 25 years ago, I wasn’t up to it.

I once worked for a woman. She was bold as brass. I heard her telling all her little old lady clients in no uncertain terms, “NO! ALMA! You absolutely can NOT buy a beach house!!! I am going to buy that hospital bond instead. If you want your grandchildren to swim, put a pool in your backyard!”

I would have said to Alma, “OH, GOODY! Can I help you decorate the beach house?” No, I was never meant to be an asset gatherer.

So, I stayed put. Just being a top notch assistant. Knowing the business as well as they did, able to be the best damn Girl Friday anyone could ever ask for; but nothing to brag about. No names to drop. No fifteen minutes of anything but, “Oh, look! The market is up 100!”

Recently, one of those rabbit women who passed me by 15 years ago title-wise commented that she wished she had been more like me; just a good, capable assistant with a wad in her 401-K and solid steady job. Sure, she’s been an Asst VP and a VP and Executive Director… but she is also currently on straight commission in that dark forest of stocks, bonds and cash equivalents, with no pots of gold in sight.

Slow and steady might not be flashy or impressive. But it pays the bills and wins the race. Plus, I think even Walt Disney girl turtles have lovely, long, curly eyelashes and are pretty darn cute.

To Utopia and Back Again…

2007-10-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

The problem with Utopia is the impossibility of it ever becoming a permanent state. Luckily, I am privileged enough to be a sometimes traveler to the mystical world, the delicious idea known as Utopia.

We (hubby and I) just returned from a four day stay at my family cottage in Northern Wisconsin. The North Woods. Up North. Way Up. We went to learn the ropes, so to speak, on how to close up for the winter the fragile little house known to all in my family as The Cottage.

With the help of my family, including an Uncle, Aunt, Cousins (1st, 2nd and 4th,) husbands of cousins and children of husbands of cousins, we managed to suck every last dead bug out of the place. This was the King Tut Tomb of dead bugs. Our “to do” list was longer than the amount of time we had to accomplish everything, but as Gen. Douglas MacArthur said on March 11, 1942: “I shall return!”

How, you may ask, does this “working vacation” translate into Utopia? For starters, the information vacuum. In other words, there is no information, except that which can be gleaned from conversation sitting around a dinner table. Ah! The lost art of long, family dinners or the quiet discussion between two people who have been married 25+ years as they sit in two ancient rockers facing the fire, as opposed to listening to the talking heads facing a T.V. It is easy to list the characteristics of this particular Utopia; the woods, the clear cold mornings and evenings, the mist on the lake in the morning. No roaring boats; sublime, simply sublime.

Except for the late night crackle of distant radio stations, you can’t find much information. In fact, we kind of felt like we were in the Twilight Zone, since the clearest station we could locate on the dial only seemed to be playing old Phillip Marlow Mystery Radio Programs from the 40’s. This seemed to be a distant Canadian radio station and for the hour or two we were able to rock in front of the fire and listen, I felt like a time traveler. I could easily imagine that the same show could have been heard over the airwaves by a relative or unknown tourist staying at the cottage when it served as a resort all those many years ago. It was comforting, like receiving a postcard from the cosmos.

The good, hard physical work served as anthropological research of sorts into the past. It is no wonder (according to my Uncle) my great, greats (grandfathers, uncles, ancestors, ancients, etc.) were able to pour pure bacon fat over their pancakes each morning. Chopping wood, scrubbing floors, and sweeping the roof will burn up inordinate amounts of such ingested fuel. No, we didn’t pour bacon fat on OUR pancakes, nor do I suggest that this is a taste temptation I would recommend to anyone except the dog. I guess we have evolved somewhat, but still… you can understand why they were able to consume such… such… or, maybe not. Okay, let’s move on from bacon fat.

It is hard to leave Utopia. For a millisecond, your brain starts to churn with fantastic plans on how you can stay forever. You think how being a waitress in a homey café and writing in between shifts sounds kind of fun. Or, how about applying to become the church secretary at the darling Episcopal Church? Think about the fun you would have designing the bulletin each week! It would be far less stressful than sweating bullets as you rapidly enter short puts on the SPX. And then reality kicks in, the gas starts to sputter in the cottage’s wall heater and the truths of modern day survival start to intrude. Things like: the job you have worked at for a quarter of a century to provide health insurance for your family, the college loans lurking like a lump of dough stuck in your throat, the house, the bills, the animals…

Suddenly, your mind whirling like the baton of a 50’s beauty queen, it hits you. You don’t need to figure out a way to stay in Utopia, because you are already there! Like Dorothy in Kansas, you have had the key to Utopia the entire time! This mini Utopia, this cottage in the woods, you realize, is merely a small sliver of the giant pie that is your Utopian American Life. Utopia is all around you! It is the job God threw in your path, complete with health insurance as well as proof that trickle down economics works, at least for you. Or, the healthy child you have raised, complete with good grades and the smarts to tough it out at a college reputed to have a tougher homework load than Harvard. College loans? Pffhtgt… nothing! A mere trifle! A substitute for a shiny car, a good choice and again possible only because of the job you have held on to for 25 years. Then there’s the husband you can't so without, who keeps all the edges neat and tidy, glue man, sticky boy, call him what you want, he is integral to holding the whole ball of wax together.

Of course, there is also your mom, the little bird, who has loved every word that ever came out of your mouth or off your pen forever. And finally, your beautiful girls, older sis, Uncle and Aunt, Cousins (1st, 2nd, 4th) and the husbands of your cousins and the children of the husbands of your cousins but most especially your little sister who ranks up there with the saints… In other words, UTOPIA.

What Would I Pay For All I want?

2007-10-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

I just spent the day driving my mom half way to Augusta, Ga. I always meet my bestest sister in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina. Once there, (the middle of NOWERE) we make the hand off: that is she gets mom and I drive back home again, alone. Mom hasn’t been back to Augusta in a while and the visit will be good for her spirits.

It’s funny, but every time I do this, I always feel a little blue. Sort of like I have just seen my kid off to summer camp or the first day of kindergarten. It’s so true, we trade places with our parents......

I switched on NPR for company and listened to American Weekend. I love NPR except for the bias. They do the best job of human interest stories and if they could just leave out the political jabs, it truly would be a National Public Radio. Today, however, I just let it all roll over me. For some reason, I was feeling big spirited and overwhelmingly American. I listened to a marvelous story about the original indigenous meanings behind place names. Words like Connecticut and Illinois and Chicago and I felt fortunate to be a part of this vast expanse we call America. (Strange and slightly prophetic, Chicago essentially means big stinky place, was it karma that pre-ordained the stock yards?)

Anyway, during the next story they were discussing Radio Head’s decision to allow the download of their newest CD. Apparently, this past week, Radio Head made the decision to leave it up to their fans to pay whatever they think their music is worth. This gives new meaning to having a free market society.

But this eventually segued into the following question: What would a favorite song be worth to you in treasure, in dollars and cents? What, the hosts pondered, would you be willing to pay for your favorite song? What if it meant the difference between hearing the song or never hearing it again?

The host named Desiree made the startlingly beautiful statement that essentially, songs are only as good as the memories they are wrapped in. How true that is! The segment focused on the really moving stories of various listeners, each telling a story about the value they attach to their favorite song. American Weekend posited: how much you would pay for your favorite song, what is that memory worth to you? Would you be willing to purchase it, like a rare painting?

For me, it has to be All I Want by Joni Mitchell on her Blue Album. I inherited my Blue Album from my brother. He was killed when he was eighteen and I ended up with his albums. I remember his girlfriend telling me he would have wanted it that way. At the time, it felt solemn and deliberate; like the reading of a will in a Dickens novel. He had been listening to Joni Mitchell for about a year before he died and somehow the bequest felt spiritual to me in a way I have never felt since. Inheriting a person’s record album is sort of like retaining the key to their soul.

I submerged myself in this album for months after he died. I can still sing every song in order, side one and then side two. I am almost fifty years old and the songs still manage to shape my emotional landscape. When I am down, I still wish I had a river I could skate away on and if I love you, you are in my blood like holy wine, tastes so bitter and so sweet…In fact, I could drink a case of you…

Blue and All I want connect me to my brother like a strand of spider silk across eternity.

My first download from itunes was All I Want. It seemed inconceivable to me to start with anything else. It only cost 99 cents. But I am sure I would pay more if it came down to it. I suppose you could say I have already spent at least $18 on this song. When I couldn’t play the album anymore, I bought the CD. I made certian my daughter knew about Joni Mitchell and Blue. It is a touchstone; a shard of light breaking from underneath the door of my psyche.

How much is your favorite song worth? What memory does it enshrine? Think about it and be transported back to that moment…

My Grandma Was A CEO

2007-10-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

This post might get me in trouble. But the way I see it, 3000 years from now, when they are resurrecting hard drives and dissecting our culture, blog posts like this one will throw them off a bit. This blog post will be like the Stele of Mer neptah, the Egyptian tablet that happens to contain the only mention of Israel in the entire history of Egypt. It’s not enough to prove anything that was supposed to have happened in the Old Testament, but it’s a bone that keeps the home fires burning. So here goes…

One of my favorite things to do when we drop our sweet daughter, little buzz, off at school in Massachusetts is to people watch. This tourist part of our trip has a Safari like feel to it. It is such a gorgeous location and I watch with fascination the aging hippies ambling down the streets of Amherst with the same enjoyment I suppose one must feel when watching a gazelle heading down to a pond for a drink on the Serengeti Plane.

Another favorite activity of mine is to collect all the local magazines and entertainment guides. I can’t wait to read the articles about what a nasty, horrid little woman Laura Bush is or the ones about how they will have to shut down the local swimming pool for lack of funds unless they gee, raise taxes instead. Most especially, I love the ads.

The very best ads are in the publication called Women’s Times. Yep. It’s just for women. You know, it features articles titled “The Power of Us” which is about “fifteen women coming together, sharing their diverse experiences and goals.” Or “Speaking like a CEO” where we learn, “A leader is the one who can communicate, motivate and inspire others to do the work of an organization.”

Okay. I get it. They are learning how to be my grandmother. Oh? What’s that you say? This is something that only the recently empowered feminists of the past 40 years or so have learned? I don’t think so…

I have figured out the secret of this publication, Women’s Times. It is a bi polar periodical. Yes, I said bi polar. Why? Well after all the empowering stuff like Fashioning Your Image, Resilient Women, Bless Your Stress, we get down to the nitty gritty. We learn that all is not right in the world of Women’s Times.

The Professional Development Directory reveals that in order to Bless Your Stress, you have to employ a Life Coach. At first, I was confused. A Life Coach? Doesn’t a coach design the plays? Yell from the sidelines? Okay, let’s take Fashioning Your Image as an example of how this must work:

“Not the GREEN, Choose the blue, Go with red, POWER to YOU!!!”

Apparently, in 12 sessions your coach will identify your “most pressing goals, (cleaner closets, time for yoga) Create sound strategies (California closets, Yoga while they are being installed by a male former CEO) but most importantly, “construct an active plan to stretch you from your current reality to your desired outcome.” WHAT?!? Okay, what happened to speaking like a CEO? Sounds to me like the Life Coach is communicating what needs to be done here. I thought the goal was to communicate like a leader, not to be lead. I mean, what good is life if you aren’t motivating the rest of the world 24 / 7?

The ads reveal all the answers to life's little bugaboos. If the Life Coach doesn’t work, there are dozens of psychotherapists you can call to discuss career and job decisions, aging, parenting, and naturally, divorce.

Or, you can NETWORK with a group of gals who seek “economic equity, healthcare and equal rights for all women through political advocacy and education.” WHERE THE HECK IS THE CEO LADY? Can’t they get her to talk to these people who are denying this stuff to these ladies up in Massachusetts? I thought Massachusetts was progressive? We have all that stuff down here in North Carolina. What is going on up there?

Say you don’t want a coach (maybe you aren’t economically empowered enough to pay for the 12 sessions,) but you still want to accomplish all this stuff on your own. Well, you can look in the calendar section and find plenty of activities that will achieve the desired results. You can attend a lecture on Family Guilt OR you can go to the Feminist Philosophy Conference.

There is also the ubiquitous Feng Sui designer, acupuncture lady, yoga, yoga, yoga and yoga. When in doubt, do yoga. I personally was drawn to “Writing Through the Chakras” and thank god, once you are finished with that divorce there is a lecture on “Coming Out After Marriage… Oh! and childbirth doulas, postpartum doulas, massage doulas, and naturally, midwives.

How have women made it this far? Without coaches, I mean? I, personally, do not have a coach. I have some family guilt, but I am working through it by knitting extra long sweaters. My feminist philosophy is “Be kind and smell good.”

God forbid if I ever talk like a CEO, they speak jabberwocky. I know, I work for a large Corporation and have to watch all the training videos. I also have economic equality, (I swung a great deal with the team I am on, after taking all the prerequisite tests and whatnot) I have always had great healthcare (I know I know, don’t get on me about healthcare, but part of the reason I work is to have healthcare, if I can do it, so can a lot of other people, do you think I WANT to do option transactions all day?) And guess what, I have achieved political advocacy through education, it is called R-E-A-D-I-N-G; lots and lots of reading.

I am a one woman show. TOOT! That’s me, blowing my horn!!!

So now, when they dust off my hard drive and find my blog in 5007, I will confound all the research that said women in 2007 were wimps who couldn’t do anything on their own except whine!!!

Phenomenal !!!

2007-09-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a busy day. I wanted to write about my visceral response to Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University and the U.N. I wanted to comment on how it feels to be experiencing the supposed end of the Post WWII Era. Reading through various blogs and newspaper websites, I worked hard at rounding up plenty of weighty material to use in support of my own general theme which is ‘Blech!’ (said with a shoulder shiver and a long drawn out emphasis on the ch at the end of blech, you know, lots of phlem rattling…) I was in a serious frame of mind and wanted to add my voice to the blogosphere’s din of condemnation and overall horror and disgust.

But, as that famous optimist, Scarlett O’Hara was wont to say, “Tomorrow is another day!” So, when I woke up this morning I decided that instead of retyping portions of the factual evidence proving Ahmadinejad is danger to society of worrisome proportions and off his nut in general, I want to focus instead on what Iran is missing out on, specifically, GAYS.

No gay people, you say, little Mamoud? Too bad. I have been thinking all night about a world without gay people and I realize that here is just one more reason I wouldn’t want to live in Iran; a country, where, this phenomenon has not yet occurred. It made me reflect on all my own experiences with gay people, and I was struck by the sheer amount of pleasure my life would be lacking if they had never existed.

I met my husband while on a mock date with my dance partner from my summer stock days in Estes Park, Colorado, immediately following my graduation from college. My dance partner’s name was Scott. He was definitely gay. He was also the best dancer on the planet. You could say he was phenomenal dancer. I, however, was not such a good dancer. Luckily, you would have never known it if you had seem me dance with Scott. Oh my, the way he twirled me around to the strains of “Macarthur Park” (this was, after all, 1979 the disco era!) and Donna Summers’, “Last Dance!” I had never danced like that before or since!

Often, we went on ‘mock dates’ following our show each night. There was a nice little pub down the road from the lodge where we were performing six days a week and we spent nearly every late night there.

Once seated, we would have a few drinks, and discuss various good looking males sitting at the bar. To our delight, we found, we were attracted to the same type! Once we had reached the desired state of happiness, we would take to the dance floor. Each evening, when the dance contest was held, we would do all of our dance routines from the show; blow everyone away and win. We had an unfair advantage, but hey, we were young and carefree!

One night, my future husband happened into the pub and caught that evening’s dance contest. There we were, whirling and twirling. My husband asked me to dance and the rest is history; the ultimate result being the existence of our beautiful and smart daughter. Without Scott’s smooth ability to lead me around the dance floor, Dan and I would have never met. No, I hate to think of a world where the phenomenon of Scott never existed.

Years later, when I was taking voice lessons for fun, the director of the music academy I was attending for my lessons, popped his head in to the studio I was singing in and asked me if I would join his church choir. Feeling flattered I joined, naturally. I became a part of the brief Camelot that was Ivan’s (that was his name, Ivan) excellent church choir.

Ivan was so talented. He had a DM in organ performance, everyone raved about the phenomenal way he play Widor’s Toccata in D. Butt he also played the violin like an angel and was the best choral conductor I have ever had the privilege of performing under. Choir rehearsals were the highlight of my week. I couldn’t wait for Wednesday night. Not only did we work on challenging music (this is where I first sang Vivaldi’s Gloria, Faure’s Requiem and learned about John Rutter) but we had FUN. Ivan was witty and handsome and charming and … gay. We laughed our way through choir rehearsal, and I can guarantee most of us hated to see it end each Wednesday night.

When he announced to us that he was dying from AIDS, we wept and couldn’t rehearse, until he told us we were partially the reason he had survived as long as he had. The choir ultimately became part of the large group of care givers who tenderly ministered to him as he left this world. I was privileged to hold his hand and wipe his brow. I like to think he now plays 1st chair with the angels. A light went out in the world when Ivan died. There is a blank place to this day. Thank goodness God saw fit to lend us Ivan for awhile.

These are only two examples of what gay people mean in the world. I feel sorry for the country of Ahmadinejad. What a barren, joyless place it must be - lacking people like Scott and Ivan. Mr. Ahmadinejad is wicked for supposing these people can’t contribute to society. He is wicked to deny their existence. He is wicked to reduce them to the definition of mere phenomena.

Which brings me to this: Mr. Ahmadinejad is a dangerous, tiresome, pompous little stick figure of a man. Part of the reason I have always voted Republican is to keep meanies like Ahmadinejad far away, stuck in their rigid, barren, gayless, wacky world of flying 12th Imams. There is also the phenomenon of the single issue voter. I might be one of those single issue people... So be it.

Voting With My Inner Betty Crocker

2007-09-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

I have not been able to get very excited about the race for president. Those of you who know me well can appreciate how odd this is. The problem is, no one “jars my pickles” as my 10th grade French teacher, Mr. DeFore, would say.

But yesterday, as I was skipping merrily through my favorite blogs, I saw off to the right side of the screen this wonderful retro circa 1950 coffee cup ad that said, “Wake UP America! VOTE FOR FRED, and smell the coffee!” It was so, well, the only way to put it is, it was so ME!!! It might as well have said, “Wake up DODY!”

I have been convinced for most of my forty…, most of my years on earth, that I am a re-incarnated housewife from the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. I watch old black and white films and feel as if, like the sirens of old, they are calling to me. There is a niggling feeling in the furthest reaches of my brain that tells me I watched these films in the Roxy Theatre back in the good old days of the Depression and World War II.

I still cook from the 1950’s version of the Betty Crocker cookbook. I own an original. I love the quirky pictures of Baked Alaska and Pineapple Upside Down Cake. I serve my family Lemon Sponge Pudding with Soft Custard at Christmas. No one makes soft custard anymore, with the possible exception of Martha Stewart, and if she is making soft custard, it has probably been updated with cilantro.

But I digress. Seeing Fred’s clever ad (which certainly plays off of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America theme) I felt a faint stirring of interest. I wouldn’t call it commitment but I started to imagine an excel spreadsheet in my head to help me organize the candidates. In my mind, I put a gold star by Fred’s name simply for his logo. Logo’s are important. We are a logo society. We love to label ourselves with quick, clever clues telling who we are. Just check out Facebook if you want an example.

So- Fred’s ad tells me that he understands my inner 50’s housewife. You see, I have to confess, it is my inner 50’s housewife that can’t get excited about some of the other guys and here’s why:

Rudy – It’s not Rudy I have trouble with, IT’S Judith! This is probably very catty (remember, this is my inner 50’s housewife) I have a problem with all people over the age of 40 who remarry in the same wedding attire firsties are hitching up in. I think this should be a rule. Only newbies get a train. But what really sends me clues about Judy is the fact that she wore a crown when she and Rudy were wed. This tells me two things: A. She is tacky. B. She wants to be the queen. And how does one become the queen here in the USA? She marries the president. I think this is pushy. I don’t want Judy to be queen. Plus, I read recently that her purse gets to sit in a seat by itself on airplanes. This is pretentious and weird.

Mitt – I am not sure about Mitt. He looks exactly like a Ken doll. Not the original Ken dolls who quickly became bald because their peach fuzz hair wore off from the sweaty palms of enthusiastic six year olds, but the molded plastic haired Ken dolls of the seventies. He has shifted some of his core believes a little too quickly for my way of thinking. I know that you can change your mind about abortion and such, but a gradual 25 year shift is more believable than a lightening bolt hitting you just as you are filing your papers to run for president while you simultaneously close the door of the governors office in what might arguably be the most liberal state in the union!

John McCain – I think he is getting too old. My inner 50’s housewife thinks he should be fly fishing in Montana. I know that sounds like discrimination, but I need to know with absolute certainty his brain cells aren’t going POOF! at an abnormally high rate. I have always secretly liked him. He is a tough guy who will probably irritatingly straddle the fence on most social issues but he will make sure the meanies don’t get us. I am all for meanie deterrence. The meanies really cause me to worry; and not so much for me, for my descendants. I am sure in 1922 most 65 year old Jewish couples had never dreamt what the meanies would end up doing to them in 1937. This is my primary talking point when I blather on about security. It is the long range stuff that worries me. I want my daughter to have grandchildren.

I'm feeling ya, Moses

2007-09-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have been writing a paper this week for my class “Who Wrote the Bible?” Our first paper is supposed to be a summary of the first few books of the Old Testament, ending with 2 Kings. Our paper is not supposed to focus on interpretation. This is, after all, a graduate class at a large public university, not a “Bible” class.

We have been asked to identify any themes, especially an obvious overriding theme. We are also supposed to pay close attention to the geographic references.

I have never read the Bible on my own before. I started the New Testament last year and found it very, well, very interesting in a tricky sort of way. The Old Testament isn’t nearly as tricky.

Basically, the theme is obedience. They throw a lot of meaningful numbers around, 7’s and 12’s and 40’s, but the message is, be good, stick to these principles and everything will be hunky dory.

This has made me consider the Republicans. It could be just the effects of finishing up 2 Kings and all those BAD, BAD kings but I can’t get the parallels out of my mind. I keep experiencing Elijah like visions of the deportation of vast swaths of Republicans from Congress back to the lands from whence they came. Sure, there have been some good guys who have tried to pull the fiscally misbehaving bad boys back to reality, but mostly, everyone has just gone along with the big spenders. Frankly, it’s just more fun!

As I read about one bad king after another, the exact phraseology is “and he did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD his God,” it really gets annoying. One after the other after another insists on doing that which is not right. I felt like I was reading about Mark Foley, David Vitter and Larry Craig! Geez!

I couldn’t help myself, but it just feels like the walls of the temple are beginning to shake and all because (the way I see it) Ted Stevens wanted his bridge to nowhere (I guess so he could drive off on his way back to Alaska when they FIRE him) Tom Delay just had to have his K Street project and fat old Denny Hastert had to back it all up, oink oink. If there is one thing I am, it is honest. I call a spade a spade and there have been some duzzies!

Unfortunately, just like Moses being denied entry into the promised land, the rest of us rational conservative types are going to have to be punished for the behavior of a few out of control power charged wackos and that really irks me as I prepare to slink off into what I am sure is the coming exile.

I just hope it doesn’t last for 40 years and that God decides to go with no more than the number 7 when deciding our punishment…Unless I live to be old in Abraham years, (135 or so) a forty year wilderness will leave it up to my descendants to save the USA from politically correct suicide. By then, it might be too late…

Travelogue

2007-09-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

My husband and I recently drove our daughter to college for the third time. She is beginning her junior year at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. This ritual has become a favorite one for us. We purposely drive the scenic route even though, according to Mapquest, it is about 2 hours longer. I am not sure this is actually so. I prefer to think that it all comes out in the wash, since traveling up 95 would expose us to traffic jams and other delays.

We travel instead on Interstate 81. Yes, yes, I know, there are a lot of trucks on 81. Truck Alley I suppose you could call it. But it really isn’t too bad and for interstate driving this is a beautiful trip. Once we hit Binghamton, NY we switch to Interstate 88 – this is a breath taking ride! I think it is the most enchanting bit of interstate I have ever driven. Pastoral and quintessentially American, it rivals the Switchbacks in Montana and Wyoming. Where the Switchbacks are bold and daring, I- 88 between Binghamton and Albany is the epitome of Norman Rockwell.

The first time I drove up to Massachusetts, we were conducting our tour of colleges during our daughter’s senior year in high school. We did this in the fall, smack dab in the middle of “peak” season for fall colors. I am originally from Illinois, and while fall is my favorite season in North Carolina, I was transported by the dejavu I felt upon seeing the vibrancy of the leaves as they turned on the trees in Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

The area of South Hadley, which includes the charming townships of Amherst and Northampton, looks just like a movie set. I refer you to Hocus Pocus and the Witches of Eastwick for visual clues.

We always stay at the Quality Inn in Hadley, MA, because it is pet friendly. Happily, we never leave home without our conversational Bassett hound, Taffy Apple Sweetness, and as it turns out, choosing this hotel was a crucial part of the karma we experienced when Sweet Child of Mine (SCOM) made her decision to attend Mount Holyoke.

This serendipity was made manifest most particularly because of the route we stumbled upon when trying to locate the college. We ended up using state road 47 between Hadley and South Hadley. The first time we were in Hadley, we had no idea where we were going, so we just followed the arrows: South Hadley - 4

This is about an eight mile stretch of the most glorious, winding, picturesque road in the country! You travel through a valley dotted with houses dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, not to mention charming farms that put me in mind of the illustrations from my childhood Golden Books. Think: Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm. I couldn’t stop sighing rapturously. Had we chosen to turn right, instead of left, we would have driven through the classic drek of American stripmalls and Target shopping centers.

Rounding the final curve on 47, you come upon Mount Holyoke and all its loveliness. Okay, I know MHC is probably a bastion of liberalism, but my daughter tells me that she does hear both sides of an issue in most if not all of her classes and so far, no one with three heads and green toes spewing garbage has tried to indoctrinate her. She is, from all appearances (and from reading many of her papers) receiving an incredible education.

That is not to say the area isn’t decidedly left of center or progressive in sentiment. One of our favorite places to eat is in Amherst. It is a Deli called the Black Lamb or Sheep or something like. They sell “Republican Party” Cookies. The ingredients for these cookies are listed as being “full of fruits and nuts.” Naturally, being us, we bought several (fruits and nuts are healthy, nez pa?)and enjoyed them thoroughly, proving that ingesting anything made from Republicans is wholesome and very good for you!

I suppose this is long enough. I guess the message is, VISIT NEW ENGLAND. It’s a lovely area – a national treasure.