Archive for August 2014
“If a man whistles at you, don’t turn around. You are a lady not a dog.”
August 28, 2014Even though it is still summer I can feel the season packing its suitcase to get out-of-town. The changes are subtle. Shadows are different, the nights are comfortable despite how warm the day gets, the morning breeze is sometimes from the north and there is little humidity. The cars seem fewer. Even the rental next door was empty all week. This weekend, though, will be busy being the last hurrah and all.
Today is lovely. Only bird songs break the quiet. It is nap time for all my animals. Gracie is snoring from her crate, Fern has settled on a couch pillow and Maddie, for once, has the spot in the sun Fern usually grabs. They must be exhausted after sleeping all night.
On the front page of the Globe, one of the stories was about the debate between democratic candidates running for attorney general. Ordinarily I couldn’t care less. I can’t even name the current attorney general. This debate, though, has created, according to the Globe, a firestorm. The male candidate called the female candidate’s aggressive line of questioning “unbecoming” which, according to women’s political groups, is one of those inflammatory sexist words. The male candidate, Tolman, apologized the next day and explained that he meant “as candidates for attorney general we should be held to a higher standard.” Romney, in a 2002 race for governor, described his female opponent in the same way. I don’t know if Tolman was being sexist but his word choice is incendiary. I was reminded of when I was a kid and told to stop whatever I was doing and “act like a lady.” I hated being told that and it made me sad and a little afraid for the future. I couldn’t imagine growing up and living by a behavioral code which limited how I dressed and what I said and did. Who decided how a lady acts? I figured I was going to be in trouble most of my life. I was never a kid for convention.
My favorite quotes in the article came from previous campaigns in other states. In 2012 in Missouri the male candidate described his female opponent as not particularly “ladylike” during a debate. In Minnesota the same year, Senator Amy Klobuchar was referred to as a “Daddy’s little girl” and a “prom queen” by her opponent.
How to act like a lady has gotten blurry, but it has yet to disappear. I’m thinking I still might need a handbook.
Rivers of Babylon: Boney M
August 26, 2014Birgit, there is neither rhyme nor reason to my choices today, but they do have something in common.
Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs: Brian and Michael
August 26, 2014
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
August 26, 2014Today and the rest of the week will be summer warm. It is like a curse of sorts. Every day is cool until school starts then the heat comes. The temperature will hit the 80’s off-Cape.
Growing up I never noticed we didn’t have much money. To me we had what everyone else in the neighborhood seemed to have. I wore a uniform to school so I didn’t need a lot of dress clothes. I had one or two church dresses. That was more than enough. I had school shoes and play shoes. I always put my play clothes on as soon as I got home from school. I never needed prodding to get out of my uniform. We had one car, but that’s all we needed. My mother didn’t drive. We either walked everywhere or took the bus. I remember the trek to visit my aunt and uncle in East Boston. We walked up town, took the bus to Sullivan Square where we took the first of two subway trains. We had to switch lines at a station I don’t remember, but the second train brought us to Maverick Station in East Boston, and we walked just a bit to my aunt and uncle’s. My mother always told us to go to the next station if we got separated. She was hauling the four of us with her and had to watch my younger sisters so my brother and I had to keep our eyes on her. I remember kneeling, looking out the train window and watching everything whiz by us. I liked being underground and seeing all the pipes and hearing the squealing of the wheels at each turn. As the train lurched so did the people.
We lived in the project. It was all duplexes with front lawns, trees and backyards. Our house, as that’s how we thought of it, had three bedrooms, a living room and a smallish kitchen. We never felt in any way stigmatized by living in a project. Most of the adults were around my parents’ ages and there were tons of kids. We were never wanting for a playmate or someone to walk to school with or go see a movie. We lived there until the move to the cape. When I visit my sister who still lives in that town, I sometimes drive by our house. The trees and bushes are huge now, but it looks the same from the outside. Once when I drove by the house was empty but I didn’t get out to look. I should have. I’d have seen the living room through the picture window in front and the kitchen from the back steps. The cellar door was below a flight of stairs and I would have seen the sink for the washing machine from the door window.
We didn’t go away much or out to eat, but we never cared. We had woods and the swamp, the zoo, train tracks to walk, the dairy and a whole town to explore on our bikes. Life for us was rich.
Sonny’s Dream: Jean Redpath
August 25, 2014Jean Redpath, an esteemed Scottish folk singer whose arresting repertoire of ancient ballads, Robert Burns poems and contemporary tunes helped energize a genre she described as a “brew of pure flavor and pure emotion,” died on Thursday at a hospice in Arizona. She was 77. You’ll find the rest of her most interesting life described here:
Dowie Dens O’ Yarrow: Jean Redpath
August 25, 2014
“My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.”
August 25, 2014This morning I was awake far earlier than usual, at 6:30. I went on the deck and filled the bird feeders then stayed there to read my papers and drink my coffee. I find early mornings have the most glorious smells and sounds. The air is crisp and clean and scented with flowers and newly mowed grass. Birds sing and I can hear the flapping of their wings as they fly in and out of the feeders. The coffee this morning was hot and strong. I had a second cup then I left to meet my friend for our Monday morning breakfast.
I don’t remember watching my mother clean the house. During the school year she did it while we were gone. During the summers we were never around the house to watch her. Only my two little sisters were and they were mostly in the backyard, not yet being old enough to wander. I’d leave for school, and when I got home, my bed was made. I’d put my clothes in the hamper and they’d reappear cleaned and folded. It was a bit like the elves and the shoemaker. The dish strainer usually had clean dishes sitting in it to dry. We were to rinse any glasses or dishes we used and leave them in the sink. My father went crazy if we didn’t rinse out our glasses. He’d yell if he found a dirty glass on the counter. He called it the height of laziness. I thought he was underestimating how lazy we could get, but I knew better than to mention it. No one ever owned up to the dirty glass. That would have been foolish.
Except for my brother we never had any chores growing up. His was to empty the kitchen basket into the outside barrel. Trash was traditionally a male chore. Once in a while my mother would ask me to empty the garbage. She had a triangular plastic garbage holder in the corner of her sink. I’d take it outside touching as little of it as possible, use my foot to open the metal cover of the in-ground garbage bin then I’d dump the garbage and bang the container on the corner of the bin to make sure it was empty. The garbage always had maggots. I’d watch them for a while. Garbage grossed me out but maggots never did. I never thought that strange. Maggots were interesting while garbage just plain smelled bad.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 