computer is getting old

I can’t wait until I get a new computer. This one is getting very tired. It often won’t go to sleep even when I close it. This causes the motor to work extra hard and get exceedingly hot. I hope it doesn’t burn all the way out before a new one arrives. I do love my Mac. And I don’t want to make the computer mad – I want it to hang out and be happy until its replacement arrives. I want to give it lots of love and caring so it feels all warm and fuzzy and continues to work at its top capacity until it gets to retire. I suppose I should turn it off more often. It probably deserves more rest than I permit it to have. I am a computer slave driver. And it sees everything I do so I want it to know how much I love it.

Well it’s been a long hard day. That’s about all I can get tonight.

traumatic brain injury

Who am I if I lose the ability to do my job? Not if I lose my job, but the ability to do it. Who am I if my mind, not my memory, betrays me? What if I have memories but no access to their how they got there? What makes my personality? I can be traumatically changed by a short circuit in my head. Electrical impulses work sometimes, sometimes not. My memory wanders off sometimes, it’s small and shouldn’t be out on its own. But the basic abilities, the likes and dislikes, the frameworks for reasoning. What when they disappear?

the accident

Oh my god. I just found out my good friend was in a terrible car accident in November. Pedestrian versus car, she was the pedestrian. A pedestrian because she was being a good Samaritan and trying to help a woman in a car who was having a seizure. She saw a car bouncing off the guardrail as they both sped up Route 95. Finally the bouncing car came to stop and she could see the woman in the driver’s seat having a seizure. She stopped her car on the other side of the road and other cars helped her stop traffic and get across. As she and her son approached the car that had come to a halt it started moving again – a Mercedes SUV – barreling toward them. “Run!” And she tried to jump the guardrail, but it was too high. As she tried to lift her leg over it, the car made contact and her son, running ahead of her, turned just in time to see her being cartwheeled over the rail. He was hit next – the car actually ran over him, but the big chassis straddled him (thanks be to Allah) and he wound up with a broken leg. She’s been out of work with TBI since then. Holy shit.

It happened in November, I’m just finding out now. As she spoke I kept saying “my mouth is hanging open.” I feel so unmoored finding this out. Let me speak selfishly for a paragraph or two.

She’s been a friend for 38 years – a long time. Learning of this horrible accident makes me so aware, once again, of our mortality. And it makes me feel so personally lucky that I am alive and well – after all the things I have also survived. And the things my other friends, so many of them, have not survived. Her life is changed forever. And I am still fine. How does this happen? How is it that I keep surviving?

And why, after I found this out, was my first reaction to try and finish up everything I had to do before settling in to process the horror? I was trying to make myself grade a few papers before blogging about it. Finally I put the papers aside, and here I am telling you. But my first instinct was to put everything in order and then set aside some time to feel.

OK. Done being selfish (at least for the moment). Our lives change in a moment, an instant. While we’re walking dully along, or watching our children play, or trying to help. And suddenly and forever everything is different. Could be better. Often it’s worse. And even if the alteration is itself minor, miniscule, too small to be seen with the naked eye, the impact can be unfathomable. We are entirely changed. And then…who are we? We are in unfamiliar skin. The mind has familiar memories, but the window to the present is suddenly fogged. How to carry on? It’s the finale of the Carmina Burana, or a whisper. The question rolls silently through the open door and into the center of the floor. How to carry on?

assessment I

I thought I would have a day to relax today and it was starting to look like that. But then I went down to help a friend and it took the remainder of the day. There was some entertainment, and a meal. But I was hoping to clean up a little bit after my busy week and trip to the dorky assessment conference. Assessment. Donkey, donkey, certs – as a colleague calls it. I can’t think of anything more idiotic. I think we’re even converting one of the assessment gurus here at my place of business. The conference was nothing new, but a bit frightening. I did hear a few people talking about how they’re actually using it to help students – that’s the only way I can justify taking my time for this most useless and time consuming of tasks. It has the potential for too many serious problems. And that potential is all but certain to materialize. How can it not? If you put a gun on the wall in the first act, you must use it by the third. So sayeth Chekov. So the big question is to figure out how to have this monster live among us and not have it consume us. This requires serious thought and cooperation for subverting the master’s plan. More anon.

returning from Raleigh

I’m at the airport in Raliegh/Durham (RDU – although I’ve no idea what the U is for)
I’m watching a mother (or possibly a sister) sitting with two boys, one about 17, the other maybe 14. Her entire energy is devoted to trying to take pictures of the 17-year-old with her cell phone. she sits between them aiming her camera at him by holding it out and pointing it at him. She does not look a the screen. The 14-year-old tries to foil her picture taking by swinging his hand out in front of the phone as she points it. The 17-year-old devotes most of his energy to trying to avoid a good picture. He holds his hand up in front of his face. He turns his head away. He turns to look at her with eyes half closed as if badly hung over.

But although his motions tell the tale of someone who doesn’t want a photo taken, every time she snaps one he leans in to look with her at the tiny screen and see what she has captured.

She seems old enough to be their mother, but might not be. She and the young boy keep engaging in a slapping contest. They all have similar looks, tall and thin (except for the adolescent boy). She is inked with tattoos of a dragon and and eagle crawling up her lower leg.

Behind me in the rows facing one another are about ten grown men exercising their testosterone; carrying on in loud resonant voices filled with privileged laughter and audible winking. The tannest one among them has a sharp haircut and a Bluetooth fastened in his ear. Every single one of them is wearing shorts. Hard to imagine more obnoxiousness than this.

They’ve called my flight and we are lining up by our “position” numbers. Southwest no longer relies on groups A, B, and C, but now assigns actual boarding positions. This, I assume, is to finally stop the entire boarding group from rejecting seats in favor of queuing up on the floor. I’m off to board in the 29th position.

just leaving

I'm off to North Carolina for a conference. After I get done with that hot mess, I'll be back here. See ya.

just home

I've just arrived home from seeing the Nationals pelt the Mets horribly. It took me 45 minutes to get from the park to Union Station. In all, about two hours home from the DC ballpark. A long trip. Too long. And too late.

Hillary I (beause I'm sure there'll be more)

Driving up Charles Street today I saw a car with four homemade bumper stickers taped to its trunk. “Stop her” “Stop her now” “Put her in her place” “Vote for Obama” Such venom. The driver was an old hippie – male. And people continue to argue that misogyny is not a part of Hillary Clinton’s undoing. They don’t even see it – how people say things about her they’d never, ever, ever say about a male candidate. Because it’s acceptable to speak with that kind of derision and contempt about a woman. Even when a woman is doing the speaking.

organization(?)

One thing I really need to do is clear out my email box. It has 4,703 messages in it, and that is just the in box. It doesn’t count all the messages I’ve moved to other specially created mailboxes. I’ve got boxes for different things going on at work, boxes for my death penalty avocation work, boxes for particular people, boxes for projects I’m working on, boxes for organizations I’m a member of, boxes for particular interests, boxes for personal items, boxes for things that amuse me, too many boxes. But is it really too many boxes? It’s fairly well organized. But what happens is (the same thing happens any time I’m trying to organize something) that I start a box called Box 1, thinking “this is what I need.” Then I make a new box, Box 1-a, thinking it’s a class of Box 1. Then I make Box 1-b, then a Box 2, then a Box 3. And then everything winds up in Box 3 because all the other boxes were false classes of what I thought I was collecting. So I’ve got the box I’m using (3) and all those other boxes (1, 1-a, 1-b, 2) just sit around collecting dust because I never tidy up the boxes. It’s all very confusing to describe without using actual box names – but I can’t bring myself to actually do that since it would show the world, in no uncertain terms, my organizational goofyness. I choose to simply write about it nonsensically.

Anyway, I need to clean out my email boxes. But the job, I fear, will take a few days of concentrated effort and I’ve not got the stomach for it. After that I need to clear off my computer desk top because my Firefox decided to start downloading everything to the desktop without telling me and it got out of hand very quickly before I got around to changing the preference setting. Oh the things we need to look after on our computers. More on this tomorrow.

uniform v. costume

I do have a pair of Groucho glasses – eyebrows and mustache – that I sometimes wear at work. Would this be clown-like? I wouldn’t want to frighten my companion from Ft. McHenry. She put re-enactors with clowns because they wore uniforms. What about other uniform types – police, fire fighters, catholic schoolgirls? Are they frightening too? Clowns wear costumes, not quite the same as uniforms. Would she be a-feared of trapeze artists? Opera stars? Actors? Re-enactors? Re-enactors don’t really wear uniforms. Since they’re not actually civil war soldiers, they are wearing costumes.

Ft. McHenry

At Ft. McHenry yesterday re-enactors were roaming the grounds. Sometimes shaping themselves up into formations, sometimes wandering off individually. As we sat eating a cupcake (not a very good one) one came over and told us they were about to fire a cannon and we were just barely in the safe zone. He seemed hot in his woolen uniform but insisted, although he was also wearing a flannel shirt beneath his coat, that he was not. We missed the cannon fire, but my companion did not like the re-enactors one bit. She said they were too much like clowns and she is one of those who does not like clowns. Apparently this is a breed of person – the clown hater. She felt their being in uniform made them resemble clowns. I pointed out that maybe she didn’t dislike clowns, just people in uniform. However, she felt pretty certain it was a dislike of clowns. She might have even been a little afraid as she was very nervous when the one came over to talk with us. And as we were leaving the company was marching in our direction and she adopted a swift pace to make our hasty exit.

cupcakes

The Baltimore Cupcake Company on Fort Avenue makes a pretty good, although not superb, cake upon which they pile several swirls of extra sweet icing. The flavor is mostly in the icing, although we did discover the blueberry pie had a layer of what is essentially blueberry jam at the bottom of the cupcake paper. You cannot extract the cake and jam together – leaving the “pie” aspect unmet. The cake is vanilla and the topping is a sweet swirled purple frosting about two inches high. The cupcakes are OK. Not fabulous or terribly moist or to-die-for delicious. The icing, like the actual cupcakes, is extremely sweet, almost too sweet. I am not a cupcake connoisseur. They were good, but not wonderful. They were rich but a bit too sweet.

The issue with the BCC is its exterior. They need to hire me to come and explain to them what is wrong with their look. In their limited display window they have a cupcake display tray – brightly colored, but with no cupcakes on it. No cupcakes in the window. No product for passers by to see. In fact, the window makes them look as though they might have closed and gone off leaving this cupcake tower behind. In front of the store on the sidewalk – by the street, not directly in front of the store – is a large (about 8 feet high) dead bush. This should be cleared away. They need a tiny makeover.

A few blocks down the road is Fort McHenry, the place that flew the flag that Francis Scott Key saw when he wrote the Star Spangled Banner. More on this tomorrow.

sermon

Note in the margin of a sermon: "Weak point. Pound pulpit." And so it is with all fascism.

Papal visit

I’m sorry but there’s something just a little bit creepy about a Pope – head of the catholic bunch, those wily papists – who speaks with a German accent. Just hearing him sound like all those actor Nazis (because the real Nazis probably rarely spoke English) feels like a confluence too bizarre to stomach. Joey Ratz (his former name) is visiting America. Benedict ex vee eye (his current name) is coming around saying he wants the church to return to its roots – belief in miracles blind faith to church teachings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has a gentle voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah he’s appalled by the abuse scandal. But his voice says crazy things and he’s appalled because the scandal gave the church a black eye, not because it was horrifying. Since when did a religious leader of a relatively small group of people become a world leader? That other guy – Beatles guy – he made the papacy an icon of coolness. And now the former head of the church censorship office – the office that used to be in charge of the inquisition – is speaking in a German accent about what we ought to believe. This guy used to be John Paul’s Dick Cheney.

Paradox

I’m possessed by the notion of paradox and how it plays out in so many arenas. Everything contains its own opposite. Take the seasons. Winter contains spring. I was cured of being depressed in winter by moving from an apartment to a place where I could see the ground. As the deepest winter days drape gloom from high clouds down to the horizon’s edge I can just see the beginnings of tiny bulbs shoving their teeniest shoots up for a tiny peek. Even when snow covers the ground I can still see the azaleas preparing their buds for when their moment arrives. They are not budding, mind you, they are preparing. I can see them breathing deeply in their period of rest, making ready to be ready for what is to come. And the same for other seasons – while we enjoy the glorious days of summer, the light is shrinking away from us. Fall contains winter and spring can barely hold summer back.

Homeopathy is paradox. We ingest a tiny bit of the disease we want to prevent. Immunization works on this same principle, western medicine steals the best from eastern. How in the world did any person ever think that what might kill her would heal her? Who was the first person to eat the poison? We use it cosmetically too – botox, that highly toxic poison, is our current fountain of youth.

Sometimes we call paradox by other names. Irony is paradox that’s kicking you in the ass. Nixon made “launder” a dirty word. Culturally we want people to behave one way – like nursing infants because it is the most healthy way to begin life for both mother and baby – but we do everything within our symbolic power – like asking them to do “that” in the bathroom – to make it impossible. Beethoven went deaf, Julie Andrews’ surgery on her vocal chords took away her voice, Beverly Sills had a deaf daughter. You might call these last few coincidences. But if you do, coincidence is paradox that stumbled and took a header into a rosebush.

Quoting his father, Martin Luther King once said “if a man has not found something worth dying for, he is not fit to live.” Surely this is paradox.

Our most painful paradox is that we need people who’ve been in war occupying high places in government so they can speak up against other wars. People who’ve fought know the horrors of war and why it can never lead you where you think it will. But the only way to get people who’ve been in war into high positions in government is to have wars for them to fight in.

phew

Walked six miles today -- to and from work. Uphill both ways.

Vicki's story

I hate listening to my good friend Vicki Scheiber tell her story. It’s always a struggle not to be infuriated by the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s murder. Four similar rapes had preceded Shannon’s attack. But the police downgraded the first two so the third rape was considered the first attack in the area and, thus, not part of a pattern. When the rapist broke into Shannon’s apartment her scream alerted her neighbor and he called the police. They came quickly and were actually pounding at the door to her apartment probably as she was being killed inside. But because the first two rapes had been downgraded, the two young cops knew nothing about a pattern in the neighborhood. And when they received no reply to their knocking and they heard no noise inside they told the neighbor who’d called they couldn’t break a door down for no reason. And they left.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be trying desperately to find your child, knowing she’s not shown up to take an important MA degree exam, that something went on at her apartment last night, that she’s not answering her phone, that the balcony sliding door has been discovered open, that she’s nowhere to be found. The doting parent must think the worst, yet thinking, perhaps unconsciously, that couldn’t possibly really be what’s happened. Maybe she’s hurt, maybe she was at a friend’s and took ill, maybe an accident. And then the worst is confirmed. She’s dead in her apartment, discovered by her brother who, along with the police-dialing neighbor, finally broke down the door the next afternoon. How can you go on?

And every time I hear her tell the story I get angry all over again at the police behavior. Trying to improve their stats they erased a pattern that might have stopped this rape from becoming a murder. Young cops who didn’t understand the real situation or believe the neighbor that he’d heard a scream took the silence in the apartment to mean all was well. But it feels almost ridiculous to say it makes me “angry.” Angry is not what hearing this does to a person. I’m incredulous and enraged, and every single time I hear the tale I still can’t believe the horrific serendipity of events that led to that moment. Her brother was going to come stay with her that night, but she told him not to because she’d be studying. If he’d been there… If the police department hadn’t tried to pad their numbers… If the police at the door had gone in… If, if, if.

And then your daughter is dead. How to bear that pain?

Food Network

I’ve recently become addicted to the Food Network. I haven’t watched enough shows to be able to know who I really like yet. But so far I’ve discovered that, even though she is somewhat (somewhat?) annoying, Rachel Ray’s 30-minute meals are good ones. I also like Bobby Flay. I discovered the Food Network one day when I came downstairs and turned on the TV set. It was already tuned to this channel and I just sat down on the couch and started watching. I found myself fascinated and began seeking out this channel again and again. I began learning things about food and cooking food that interested me and made me feel like I wanted to cook. I knew I was hooked when one afternoon, while watching Rachel Ray, I found myself thinking “I can do that” and in the middle of a fairly packed workday I made a list, went to the store, purchased ingredients, came home and whipped up three 30-minute dishes for two people who were coming over to watch the finale of Project Runway. I guess it might not be all bad to be addicted to the Food Network.

Poker night

Tonight is poker night. (Although we started out playing Catch Phrase, so I’d say it’s simply game night.) I actually write this missive from the middle of a game. We’ve got brand new slippery cards and so far I’ve won two hands. We have a stack of post-it notes on which we’ve written the names of the games we generally play. When the dealer calls the game we display its name on our little post-it note stand (an old desk calendar stand) so that we can remember the game we’re currently playing. We are women of a certain age and along with all the chatting we can’t always remember what we’re playing from one moment to the next. I wanted to get one of those scrolling LED signs to use for display as that would have been far more ridiculous, but we would not have been able to input all our game names and the game-to-game maintenance would have been far too labor intensive. We go low tech. So far I’m up. Back to the game.

A good fit

It took me ages to figure out how clothes are supposed to fit me. For years I was buying the wrong size, too large because I didn’t understand that clothing was not supposed to hang on your body lifelessly. I didn’t understand that some clinginess was expected, that you were not supposed to look like a house draped with one of those gigantic flags you see at used car lots. (“Bigger than my house” is what I say every time I pass one of those enormous pieces of star spangled drapery.) I can’t even imagine what I used to look like before I understood this. But apparently I am not alone. Tim Gunn has based an entire Bravo TV show on helping people understand that they’re wearing clothes that do not fit. They don’t fit physically, they don’t fit chronologically, they don’t fit style-wise, and they don’t fit emotionally. We do love Tim, he’s gentle and non-threatening, and he seems able to explain what he means – a rare quality. I still sometimes have problems understanding proper fit, but I’ve grown better over the years. Now if I just had some hair to mess about with. Ah me.

Expectations

Expectations. How they mess with us. My saying about it is this: the second I have expectations, I’m fucked. And how true it is. When I go into a situation wanting a particular thing to come of it I am always disappointed. Always. Because what I want will never be the outcome. It’ll be something worse, something better, something entirely unexpected. Whatever it is, it’ll not be what I thought would happen. I might be happily surprised. I might be bitterly disappointed. I might be bitterly surprised. But it most decidedly will not be what I was thinking it would be.

The Tao says that truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing. Desire bends our actions into misshapen brittle twigs. Expectations cloak us in a fog genuine experience cannot penetrate.

plans (I hope)

Wanting to get back to two things soon. 1. Hoping to return to working a little more actively on repealing Maryland’s death penalty. Want to get back to getting my hands in the process. Wanting to put my energies where my beliefs are. and 2. Really wanting to return to working on some writing about Belle Mazur – the Belle of Belle’s mouthpiece. Somehow the day job (which I like) keeps getting in the way of these things. Hopefully as we approach the end of this season I’ll be able to rearrange some working focus. That’s my plan. I’ll keep you posted.

parking

There’s a big bru-ha-ha brewing where I work. Management is planning to raise fees for parking and one enormous segment of the community is hugely, and justifiably, furious about it. A couple of them made a YouTube video and our CEO was reportedly pretty angry about it. Apparently he didn’t see it coming. My question is how could he not see it coming? This is 2008 and this segment of our community uses the Internet and YouTube the way other people use the telephone. It’s a daily and regular part of their lives. The video is fabulous. It tells the problem, says what they want as redress, has moments of humor, even (appropriately for their secondary audience) bleeps out the one curse word they use. It's well made and fun to watch. Our CEO simply isn’t used to having this population around and expected them to lie down and accept the new policies as the rest of us are expected to. Hooray for them!

The tag

Recently manufacturers have stopped putting tags in the necklines of topwear – you know, shirts. How wonderful is that? No more scratchy tags on the back of your neck. No more trying to fold the tag down in the drawer so it will learn that position. And most importantly, no more tag sticking up from your the back of shirt. No more small outcropping climbing up your neck that some person embarrassingly has to tuck gently in. Hooray. When Hanes started billing this on their commercials, it was as if they were touting a revolution. Viva la revolucion!

But we should have known better. Every advancement is a Faustian bargain. You gain something, you give something up. We lost the tags at the neck. But we were presented with the even more annoying tag on the lower left seam. It’s even worse than the neck tag. More annoying, more scratchy, more likely to make the wearer yell. It won’t ever show. That much is true. But it’s far worse than the tag at the neck. Part of the problem is that since the tag is not visible as you fold the shirt, you don’t remember to extract it. The thing elicits a constant absent-minded scratching of the left side until, filled with rage, you finally dash for the scissors – in the middle of a meeting, while you’re on the bus, at the opera – and cut the thing out. If this is the price for no tag at the neck, it’s definitely not worth it.

pitching...

So speaking of baseball, I’ve been noticing that several pitchers are wearing number 44 these days. What’s up with that? This large number used to be used mostly by the big sluggers, Hank Aaron wore number 44, so did Reggie Jackson. But now pitchers for the Astros and the Padres are both wearing number 44. Pitchers used to take the lower numbers: 10, 12, 15. But now they’re up in the stratosphere with their numbers and I wonder if it means that they’re planning to become big hitters.

I’m definitely a fan of the National League rules of having everyone hit. The designated hitter rule of the American League is for sissies. Everyone plays – that what I say. Anyone playing on the field should hit. Managers need to figure out how to negotiate around other good fielders who cannot hit. Pitchers should take batting practice and they should do what everyone else does.

Pretty much the only thing the DH does is allow old baseball players who’ve passed their prime on the field and are losing speed to continue playing. It emphasizes power over strategy and steamrollers over any subtlety that might be summoned by having to negotiate around the problem of a low-hitting pitcher. Bob Costas says that “anyone who has so short an attention span and so little appreciation for baseball that he can't bear to watch a pitcher bat is probably beyond hope, anyway” and I agree with him.

First Mets Game

Watching the NY Mets for the first time this year. Playing the Atlanta Braves. The Mets’ collapse last year – 7 games ahead then losing 12 of the last 17 in the last three weeks of the season – was the second worst in baseball history. I wish I could buy a TV station that would just show one team. I don’t want a hundred and forty for thousand games over the season. I just want this one team. I can either get all games, all teams by paying extra. Or all games of my local team on local station. But I can’t get only the team I want – the Mets. I’m listening to Tim McCarver, I still can’t stand him. Years ago, before his network career when he was just the Mets announcer, I once met a friend at the door to my apartment with a list of things I hated about Tim McCarver. He’s irretrievably annoying. I’m committed to getting back into baseball this season. Hoping it won’t mean all Tim all the time.

today's writing

If you add the day and the month together they equal the year. Fun with numbers. I wrote so many things today I wish I could post them here but, alas, I cannot. One was an exceptionally well composed email to a colleague about personnel issues. I take issue with his plan and made a brilliant case for an alternative plan. Another was an email to a friend from whom I am drifting away, an email trying to get us back on track. I wrote two emails to people I supervise summing up my recent visits to their work stations, and an email to one person explaining why something she’s using at work is an inappropriate example of what she thinks it might be. All writing was, if I do say so, terribly well done and completely unworthy of appearing here. Very sad. But it explains why I’m all written out for the moment and am going to bed. Goodnight.

Washington

The cherry blossoms were beautiful as usual. I have a photo somewhere of me when I was about 8 years old, sitting in one of those paddle boats that people take out on the tidal basin. I remember really enjoying that trip, but my father tells me I did nothing but whine. How idyllic it is that our memories permit us to enjoy what at the time we may have hated. I returned to DC years later with my friend Marion when I was living in NY. We had a Washington DC vacation. It was mostly dead people – monuments, cemeteries, art. No cherry blossoms. But I enjoyed that one too. And now I live down here. I love being close enough to my nation’s capital to go blithely to a protest for an afternoon. I can take up so many additional causes. What fun.

Interesting that a sign along the tidal basin path says it is visitor information, but really it's a series of commands. It's just a big do not.






The FDR Memorial has so many pieces to it, it covers a huge area. In this part we find out that apparently he did not like war. I agree.

home late

I've just returned home from a day in DC seeing the cherry blossoms and an evening of Jigu, Thunder Drums of China. Left at 7:30 this morning and getting home at 11:30, totally wiped out. More anon.

Seeing Satrapi

Saw Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, tonight at Notre Dame College (College of Notre Dame of Maryland). She was insightful and thoughtful and clear. “The intellectual work of art – written, visual, any sort of art – is anti-fascistic.” I went with a Persian friend (a former student) and her cousin and we ran into another former student, also Persian. (I love so many of my students and I’m so happy to see them after graduate and fly the coop.) Marjane's honesty with the crowd and her integrity as an artist sparkled in a room full of people living under a government filled with denial and existing on lies.