Haven't blogged in a while.

ElBaradei

In June of 2008 I sat in the chapel at Amherst College and listened to a talk by Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1997-2009. The US was the only country to oppose him for his second term, one more thing the thugs in the Bush administration should hang their heads in shame about. But he won the day anyhow and went on to serve a second and a third term.

He was at Amherst that graduation week to receive one of several honorary doctorates. His was certainly the most inspirational speech I heard over those two days, and probably the most inspirational I’d heard in years, perhaps even ever. The chapel was packed to the rafters, people knew how important it was to hear him.

He began by talking about his service over the years. He talked of how he considered himself a civil servant in the most honorable understanding of that term. His desire was simply to serve. To serve his country, the UN, the cause of peace, the citizens of the world. From him it did not sound hokey, he spoke with authenticity – from his heart and from his years of dedication. His translation of his job was to stand in service to people who needed dedicated and smart policy makers and administrators. A civil servant was someone who could, very simply, get the job done.

It might have been enough to hear something so humble emerge with such integrity from so essential a man. But the bulk of his talk was given over to what he considered the most important problem facing the globe. Poverty. It was poverty, he said, that fueled terrorism, poverty that fueled unrest, despotic governments, famine, disease, and syphilitic political opportunism. What courage he spoke with. Poverty is not a sexy problem. It doesn’t attract high profile donors, people don’t make careers fighting it, it seems intractable. Politicians and NGOs who want to address it usually select one tiny corner of the problem and make a lovely garden of their attempt to hold back the deluge. But no one raises it as the most important issue we really need to address, though it is, indeed, the most important issue we must address if we are to remain living on this planet. How brave it is to say this is our issue, this is the moment, this is what we must take on – knowing there is no simple way to frame it and no solution at hand.

As if he was staking his reputation on this moment, he eschewed talking about atomic profiles. Most of the questions were about atomic energy – did Iran have a bomb, how soon until they could use it, how could we extinguish the firestorm in the middle east? He answered the questions – people wanted desperately to know – but he returned again and again to his theme. I am a simple civil servant, I’ve done this all my life, and this is the real problem – the heart and soul of all other problems.

He would make a brilliant leader for Egypt. May the tide carry him there.

shingles I

OK. I’ve been avoiding writing the story of the shingles, but it seems like I should probably diarize the recovery as its glacial pace is alarming. At first I thought I had a kidney stone – pain in the back that was clearly not muscular. After a couple of days I went to the doc in the box and they confirmed it. On the basis of pretty much nothing, just my complaint and a blood test that ruled out diverticulitis – her only other idea. She did not look at my back. She said the pain would move to the front and down to my groin. The next day when I began to feel pain in front I assumed she was right. But by that night the pain had started to diminish and I began to feel a rash on my back. What the fuck is this was all I could think. It began to feel like a bombardment of odd disease symptoms. It didn’t feel bad and decided to ignore it.

The next day – Tuesday – I was busy ignoring the rash, which was small on my back and smaller on my front. But at some point during the day I had an instant’s revelation. I had shingles. I showed them to a colleague and she confirmed it. You need to get to a doctor right away she said. I didn’t believe her, but I called my doctor anyway. When she called me back she was alarmed and prescribed an anti-viral immediately (without even wanting to see me). After some negotiating with the drug store (the first prescription had no generic equivalent and was about $220) I started on acyclovir.

At first they just tingled, and my neighbor (a nurse) was surprised that they didn’t hurt. But then the pain began. The first symptom, back when it was a kidney stone, began on December 10, two and a half weeks ago. Since that time it’s been through several phases. All of them, after that initial tingle, unrelentingly painful. And still so. This ends the introduction.

creature feature

As I walked along the back side of Sherwood Gardens in Baltimore I saw a cat sitting at the edge of a tree line. He was intently watching something and it took me a moment to realize there was another cat sitting about four feet away from him staring, leaning, into the bush. The cats did not scatter as I walked over thinking I would save whatever they were stalking. I didn’t want to be in the middle of a catfight, but just the same I didn’t want the cats to kill anything.

Under the bush a hawk the same size as the cat stared back. At first I assumed the hawk was injured. Why else would he be sitting still as two cats stalked him. But they weren’t in their stalking pose – belly close to the ground, legs moving silently forward. They were both sitting up just staring at the enormous bird. I had visions of the cats pouncing and I didn’t know how I could save the lame bird except to scare the cats away. “Hey,” I called out, and the three creatures turned to look at me. And then the bird took off. He landed on a branch about thirty feet up and sat. The cats ran off, probably irritated at me for ruining their morning.

I think the hawk was irritated too. He sat for a while on that branch then moved to another branch. When he changed branches two ravens followed and lit on a branch a few feet away from him. Each time he moved, they moved. He changed trees, they changed trees. They cawed and followed.

Perhaps he was injured and the ravens were stalking him. Had I made his situation worse? It was impossible to tell. I continued on my walk and when I came around to that spot again all the creatures were gone.

died yesterday

I went out for a walk today for the first time in over two weeks. I’ve been sick and when I get sick I get really sick. I do not do sick well. This particular sickness feels like my body is attacking itself from the inside. Needles of pain shoot up through nerves exploding on my body’s surface in sharp pinholes. It feels like someone is dragging a hot rake across my body – following the meridian from spine to belly button. Every morning I wake up hoping the pain will be gone, but no. It’s itching now and feeling like someone has punched me in the gut and in the back from the inside. I can see why people with chronic pain contemplate suicide. It is unrelenting and I am just constantly angry.

During my power-walk I stopped for a contemplative walk in a labyrinth. I wanted to honor Chris, whom I never called and who died yesterday. I stood still at the entry to the labyrinth trying to think of something profound and lovely to say – as people have been posting profound and lovely thoughts all day to the media ecology listserv. But I just said her name out loud: “Christine,” and then “I love you,” and then I stepped onto the first slate. As my foot came down in the labyrinth the bells tolling the quarter hour started to ring. It was startling but comforting as it seemed to say she was here with me and not afraid.

I have heard that she, even in these last days, was still taking care of people – emotionally, spiritually – even as she wished she could be relieved of that. I think this is one reason why I never called her. It seemed clear to me that my calling her was for me, not for her. Even though I hate to admit that. I will miss her greatly. The world is a richer place for her having lived and an enormously poorer place for her passing. Rest in peace, Chris.

Loss

My graduate advisor is the sharpest woman I know. I met her first when as an undergraduate when she and our most famous faculty member came to an English class I was in to tell us about a new undergraduate minor they were introducing called media ecology. At that moment I knew it was my field. It was popular culture with a twist, saving the whales and bringing them cable TV, culture and technology interacting as an ecology, McLuhan as an academic program. Odd that the farther out I get from it the less I feel I understand it as a field…or even what a field is. My colleagues in the academic organization we’ve formed are so certain about who we are. I am still just interested in studying culture and symbols.

I took absolutely every class I could with Chris – undergrad classes, MA classes, and then PhD classes. By the time she was finished with me, she knew me. I could never quite tell if she liked me – although I suspect she did – but I was completely in her thrall. She was the smartest women I knew.

After I completed my final degree I went off to another city and did not keep in touch. I am a bad keeper in touch. Not because I don’t want to – I’m loyal as a cocker spaniel and try to keep all my friends close – but because I’m terrible at taking that initiative. I wasn’t sure she’d want to and I’m bad at it – a faulty combo for keeping in touch. I sent her a card when her sister (to whom she was very close) died. I saw her at the occasional conference. She is a solitary individual, not keeping many friends and I didn’t want to presume upon her big brain.

I was surprised when she retired about eight years ago. ‘Twas after that famous guy died (I sat with her at his funeral) and she seemed done with the place after he was no longer her confidant.

Then about a year ago I heard she had lung cancer. I still resisted calling – I didn’t want to be morbid and I wanted to assume she’d recover. But it became clear she would not and I sent her a card asking if we could get together. Boy, did I want to see her again. She’s the sharpest woman I know.

I met her for lunch twice and heard many bits about her life that said we were friends. I was happy to feel her embrace, and devastated I’d not gotten in touch before this. I was on my way for a third lunch but the day before it was to happen she moved a thousand miles away. She left to live out the rest of her life closer to her relatives (though she’d never actually lived there), in a place where she owned a home (though she’d never lived there), where she had a larger space for someone to come take care of her. She told me she wasn’t afraid to die. But I am afraid for her to die. I will miss not having been closer to her. I will miss getting more stories from her. I will miss having her in the world.

I want to call but I’m afraid. What will I say, how will be conduct a phone conversation across a thousand miles when she may be fading and we have only talked a few times over the last many years? How can I reconnect with someone at their very end – I don’t want to be doing it just for my own satisfaction. Every day I try to screw up my courage to call. Maybe tomorrow.

Loss

I got a phone call from my cousin Betsy who lives in Ohio a few weeks ago. We are not close, although we are far more friendly than I am with her sister who lives about 15 minutes away from me here in Baltimore. Her mother is my mother’s sister. I grew up with our families spending Thanksgiving together. And every other year my mother would make a huge batch of fruitcake and ship off half of it to their family. We knew each other well. We have not kept in touch over the years. Her mother is occasionally in Baltimore and I never make a point of going to see he. When I didn’t see her after her knee surgery my mother had a little fit (“she’s your family!”) and that’s when I realized I had stopped thinking about them as family.

Bob, the middle child of the three, died 25 years ago of leukemia. It was a terrible blow to us all. I had spent quite a lot of that summer training back and forth to Utica where he lived to spend time with him. I can still recall the feeling of raw shock I had for my young cousin dying. He’d been a marine and was driven by that caretaker gene that good marines develop. He was his sisters’ and mother’s protector. Bob was the member of that family I was closest to. When he was originally diagnosed he kept it from his family for as long as he could, telling them he was having some stomach problems. He finally had to come clean when he was on the oncology ward. That was in the spring of 1985. By the early fall he was dead.

When I answered the phone that day and heard Betsy’s voice I was surprised to hear from her, but somehow also soothed that this blast from my past would probably not be presenting a problem for me. I don’t know why I felt like this would be a safe phone call, but somehow I did. The call would not ask me to do anything, feel anything in particular, join with it in some sort of family escapade. Usually when a hardly-spoken-to family member calls it’s with some request, but I felt safe with Betsy – we speak a same language even though we do not stay in touch.

She and her mother had discovered that Bob’s cancer had been caused by exposure to benzene while he was in the marines. They’d just returned from a conference in Pittsburgh detailing large cancer clusters at Camp Lejeune. We talked for over an hour and a half, often just repeating things we’d already said. I felt as though I’d been hit in the chest with a log, that feeling amplified by my incredulousness at feeling like that. After a quarter century how could it suddenly feel so raw again? We both engaged in the dramatic – but somehow it felt not dramatic but real. He should have been here having Thanksgiving with us for the last 25 years, but instead he’s dead. Learning why he died brought his death back into hyperfocus, and it was like it happened yesterday. They were preparing to sue and, although more often than not I feel that that avenue is just a road to more pain, I said I supported them. I wanted not to feel an intense investment in the discovery, I wanted to have the revelation, feel and embrace the sorrow anew and move on. But I was unable to resist the vortex of Bob’s life reopened. My old grief was polished and shining again. His death had been….unnecessary.

The part of the phone call that shook my world the most was when I said, almost off-handedly at first, that Bob had always thought that the marines had killed him. Slowly it became apparent to me that she didn’t know this. And neither did her mother. Bob had said to me several times that he felt that he’d been exposed to something while he was in the marines that had given him this cancer. I asked him what and he had no idea, it was just a suspicion on his part. He couldn’t have known then what we know now. He couldn’t have known the connection between benzene and leukemia. He couldn’t have known that his barracks were a stone’s throw from where old fuel was dumped, containers rusted and leaking. He simply couldn’t have known. But in his gut he knew. He knew the marines had killed him.

where's my dresser?

Here’s what I hate. I hate that women’s clothing maintains an antiquated belief in a dresser. Someone who waits on you hand and foot, who helps you into your bodice, ties you into your girdle as you clutch the bedpost for dear life. Someone who lifts your laden velvet jacket over your arms and onto your shoulders as you stand with your arms outstretched. I mean really – some of our clothing closures weren’t even invented with this sort of thing was going on.

Don’t we all mostly dress ourselves these days? Even the rich? Don’t we even have a saying about it – he puts on his pants one leg at a time. I’m betting that Oprah Winfrey, although there might be a retinue in her bedroom as she prepares for the day, still gets her own blouse on and manages to get it closed up. So why. Oh why are women’s buttons still sewn on the left side of the shirt? They’re there so our dresser can easily, and right handedly, button us up. But where’s my dresser?!

Why, and this is a particular problem for the great majority of us who are right-handed, do women’s zippers still zip from the left side? My left hand is always pulling the zipper in an odd way and never getting it up on the first try. Although it might be so subtle as to go without notice, I always wind up having to raise the little nub more than once.

And every time my zipper sticks a little because of the non-smooth raising my left handed job is doing, I curse those renaissance women who had nothing better to do than stand around while someone got them dressed.

Resistance

Resistance is not futile, it works. It works to keep me from accessing the deep melancholy. And it’s futile because the deep melancholy overtakes me anyway.

A few notes on climbing

The sport of rock climbing requires your attention in a way unequalled in most other sports. It’s not just that if your attention wanders while you are climbing the results will be instantaneous (and they will). It’s the exceedingly intimate nature of the climber’s relationship with her belayer. A climber’s life very literally, and very immediately, depends on the willingness of the belayer to pay the proper heed. In a time of parsed attention and multi-tasking that diverts our gaze, climbing requires that the parties genuinely and with full concentration look at, really see, each other’s gear. In a time of clouded intentions and embarrassment about authenticity, belayers must confess that they care whether their climber lives or dies. In a time when baring our souls, investing our energy in what we really believe, has fallen victim to increasing partisanship and posturing, climbing is our primal relationship made real: our lives depend on one another.

why work

That's pretty much my question. Why do I have to work? I'm feeling a bit overworked (whatever "a bit" means in reference to "overwork"). And I'm thinking I'd like to have my first job back -- a candy stand attendant in a movie theatre. (Although I'd like to make the salary I'm making now.) The theatre I worked in didn't sell popcorn -- the management thought it attracted rats. But even though there was no popcorn to be seen anywhere in the vicinity of the stand, people would still approach me and ask for popcorn. That's how ingrained popcorn at the movies is. Near the end of my time there a man came to the counter and asked for popcorn. In my usual way, I said "I'm sorry, we don't sell popcorn." He looked at me and very quietly he said "bubblehead" and walked away.

back in a saddle

I ran into the former president of my university this morning on my power walk. He’s looking old. He recognized me as someone who used to work for him, I guess I should be a little flattered. I’m sure, however, that he has no idea what my name is or where I work. He did ask how things were and told me to give his regards. He was out walking his westie, carrying his cane and limping like a hip replacement candidate. There’s a guy who overstayed his welcome by a long, loooonnnnnnng, time. But as I walked away from him I longed for his days of benign neglect. Now that we have a meddler, micromanager, a guy who thinks in the equation of his university that faculty are a confounding variable, a nuisance often minor sometimes major, the hired help, it’s not so much fun. And I fear of the doings of our new dean, what agenda has she brought? I am torn between becoming actually involved and learning what I need to learn to participate in the fight, and shutting off my caring bone and just doing as I’m told. Being, in short, hired help. Why should I care? Should I care? I care?

I’ve got a project I want to work on. It is the exemplification of my fear of committing to projects, my fear of failing, of doing poorly, of being a bad researcher, of not understanding the information I do find. But the project’s been in my quiver for 13 years now, ever since I was tenured here at this institution. I’ve worked hard on it and I’ve completely ignored it over the years. I’ve made numerous commitments to do something with it, anything. And skipped out on them. Now I’m done with that. I finished another project that came along afterwards and I am moving on to the next, prior thing. This thing. This project about Belle Mazur, favorite aunt, odd woman, and fascinating person all rolled into one. She was that relative you hear stories about, the one who led such an interesting life you can’t tell fact from fiction. I’m not sure what form it needs or wants to take, but I’m hereby putting myself at the service of this story. I open my hands wide and make ready my heart. What is first, I wonder? I keep trying to find the trajectory of the narrative. Is that the beginning of the project?

US Open

Maybe next year at the open Ralph Lauren can have the ball people wear actual polo pony costumes. That's the only way I can imagine his logo being any larger than what he's designed this year.

Kittens III

Three of the kittens have found homes. Phew. Two got to stay together. I'm relieved. The one remaining is number one (the first kitten snagged). He's black, well he's black with black stripes. I'm still working on getting a good photo that will show his loveliness. I am considering keeping him. He had ringworm, the reason the spca rejected them. "If you leave them here we might have to consider what this contagious disease will do to our other animals." -- meaning if I left them there they'd be euthanized. I finally got them to actually say what they meant. It was almost impossible for the woman on the phone to speak the truth without metaphor or evasion. So I went to pick them up and thus began the nightmare of finding them homes. So now he is the only remaining kitten. I think he's cured of the ringworm, he'll go back to the vet next week for clean slate pronouncement. He's much happier now that he's moved from the oven-hot guest room to the nice cool basement.

kittens II

Well here are two of the four kittens at play. Yesterday the mama cat found her way to my second floor window and was having a conversation with black kitten (not pictured here). It was a tense moment when I walked in -- I love my new(ish) windows but the screens are pretty flimsy. Now she knows I'm a kitten criminal, having discovered one of her own held captive indoors.

Still looking for homes for these guys if there are any takers -- I'm a bit desperate to de-kitten my house. Although they are cute, I don't want any more cats. Every day they remain in the house I get more attached. Uh oh.

kittens

Yes. Kittens. I rescued (although I'm sure mama cat would have a different name for it, perhaps "kitten napping") four kittens from a feral mother living in my back yard. Now why didn't I see this coming when I started feeding the ferals? I've got these four kittens in my house -- one isolated to treat his ringworm. I officially hate the MD SPCA who said they'd take 'em, but called me four hours after drop-off to say come get them or they'll all be euthanized. I've spent hundreds of $$, devoted two closed off rooms in my house, disrupted my entire routine, called many shelters (all full). I'm about to lose my tiny mind. If you want a kitten please help. They need good homes.

age

A few days ago I found myself wandering around a Target muttering to myself. “Why do they always move stuff around? I can’t find a dang thing in here…where are the calcium chews? I wish they’d stop rearranging this place.” And I realized I’m beginning to feel like my grandmother. Not like my mother, because in my mind my mother is still quite young: the age I am now or even younger. But my grandmother – long dead – will always be, in my mind, that old woman I couldn’t quite relate to across the chasm of our ages.

I loved my grandmothers, both of them. But they were always old women. My mother, although obviously older than I, was never an old woman. She was a professional woman with professional friends, living in a world where she had many activities (most activities, in fact) outside of her relationship with me. She had an identity in addition to her age. But my grandmother was simply that old woman who came to take care of me periodically. Or on occasion we’d go to visit her. But, for this youngster, her existence was pretty limited to being my grandmother and being old. Even though she told stories of her past, even though we went to the zoo, playground, and shows, even though I saw scads of pictures of her as a younger woman, her identity for me always remained locked to her age. She was old. She never quite understood the new fangled ways of the twentieth century. She had no interests outside her grandchildren.

Because the plane on which I interacted with her was only “visiting grandma” I never got to see her in the rest of her life the way I saw my mother having the rest of her life. I knew my mother had portions of her life, major parts in fact, that didn’t revolve around me because I saw them daily. But all I saw of my grandmother was her interaction with me. And in that interaction she was two things: concerned only with me, and old.

So when I found myself wandering around the store muttering I felt, in that moment, pretty old. And in my memory old is assigned to my grandmother, not my mother. I had become a woman who couldn’t handle her own life and needed a grandchild, or guide dog, to help her through her daily activities.

cats

I just figured out that there are three cats living in my basement stairway. As I noisily took out this morning’s recycling two of them ran out of the stairwell and took off over the chain link fence. Down two or three yards they ran. As I looked over the stairwell, I didn’t imagine I’d see anything since I’d obviously just frightened the residents, but one cat remained, legs tucked under against the cold. This shouldn’t surprise me since I’ve seen cats in my back yard several times, these same cats I’m pretty sure. And I’ve heard cat fights nearby. But I am saddened to think of these cute cats living outside in this terrible cold. We’ve been having pretty bad weather so far – it’s been cold and we did have that enormous 22-inch snowstorm. That couldn’t have been comfortable for them. I am inclined to put out food for them, but I know what that would mean so I’m hesitating. One is a Siamese, one tabby-stripped, and one mostly black with some white. They clearly live here, I’ve seen them in the back yard. What to do, what to do. I feel the generous spirit of the new year. But I fear I will soon be caring for a gaggle of cats. Hmmmm.

SQ 6

Noel
Born is the king of Israel
Really? The king of Israel? This seems an attempt at deep co-opting of one religion by another. Clearly – clearly – by the time this carol was written it was clear that this guy Jesus was not the king of Israel. Not even close. In fact, he was sort of the opposite of the king of Israel – Israel being the land of the Jews. Israel had long since been separated from the religion that Jesus followers founded. Yes, it’s true that Christians had been wandering all around this portion of the globe for many years, doing all manner of distasteful things. But to make this guy king of a land and religious people that do not share the path his followers have taken seems akin to the Mormons converting the dead. They do, you know.

SQ5

I’ll be home for Christmas

Presents on the tree

On the tree? This line has always confused me. My limited experience with xmas gift giving has been with presents under the tree. I’m not even sure how one would put presents on the tree. Attach them to branches with alligator clips? Hang them with those easily bendable ornament hooks? Toss them lightly over branches as we do with tinsel? (This last one would work only with fabric gifts, unwrapped at that.) I could swear that sometimes I hear people render this line as “presents ‘neath the tree,” or “presents ‘round the tree,” but I’m not sure I’m recalling that properly. It could be simply my yearning for reason. I really have no answer for the question of what this line means. If anyone might be reading this blog and has a thought, please feel free to share it.