When did we get old?

I had dinner with some other thirty-something friends last night and almost the whole evening's conversation centered around our annoying chronic health problems. I mean, the knees, the guts, the back, the mysterious dizziness, the computer-strained wrists, the trouble sleeping/ trouble waking up... And of course after our nutritious meal we all scattered to our cozy rented corners of the East Bay by 9:30 pm. When did we get old?

And remember that show "Thirty Something"? That was an old people's show!

The one member of our party who was particularly self-conscious about her aches and pains and "oldness" was also, I have to add, the one who earlier in the day went wide-eyed sidling up to a moo-cow and her calf with a handful of dry grass. Cows. It's calming just to watch them. We decided on our hike that day that the horrors we listen to on the news should be interspersed with a minute or two of footage of cows grazing, just to recalibrate back to center between beheadings and rapes and global pandemics.

Is this why people put wooden cut-outs of cows on their lawns? The aesthetics of calm?

From the Office of Federal Obfuscation

I'm sorry I haven't blogged in -what- a month? But life has been pressing what with gall bladder removal, a couple of trips and at least one load of laundry. Just now I ran across an office in the Russian Government which I'd never heard of, but which is apparently powerful, and apparently has something to do with federalism in a big way. Learn more about it at:

The website of the Chair of the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation

The News from Home:
Sky I Grew Up Under Still As Intimidating as Ever

Sent to me by my parents-- a clipping from the Watertown Daily Times-- my parents' favorite-- the crime notes. This young man, my near-age-mate, apparently didn't escape Northern New York to a place with a friendlier sky like I did.

City Man in Public Square Accused of 'Yelling at Sky'

Corey J. Wiley, 28, of 201 Sterling St., Apt. 8, was arrested Wednesday morning on Public Square, where Watertown police said he was "yelling at the sky."

He scuffled with an officer who attempted to quiet him down, police said, and he was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

He was released following arraignment in City Court and awaits prosecution.

One never tires of the fact that in our small community they publish the entire name with middle initial and exact, complete street address of everyone who gets arrested. It's a great way to keep up with the kids from back home... and far more inspiring than my college's class news column, which is full of news of advanced degrees, exotic research trips, new family members-- it usually brings out that old yell-at-sky urge.

4,000-Year-Old Noodle Found "Sitting Proud" on Sediment

The ancestor of Top Ramen has been found in the ancient land of Chin. It was made from "domesticated grasses" and not wheat. The BBC reports:

It was in amongst the human wreckage that scientists found an upturned earthenware bowl filled with brownish-yellow, fine clay.

When they lifted the inverted container, the noodles were found sitting proud on the cone of sediment left behind.

The Earthquake Rests

I couldn't let the death of Paul "Earthquake" Pena go by unnoticed here.

His movie, Genghis Blues, was the last movie I watched with my partner Kris, on our last night together, about 30 hours before she overdosed on heroin to end her life after a long struggle with breast/ bone cancer and lymphoma. His struggle in the movie to maintain, just maintain, despite the strange circumstances, and the sudden loss of his anti-depression meds, and his despair at his disabilities and lack of language, and how it turned into beautiful music really moved us both. But it particularly moved Kris, an artist herself who had struggled to keep perspective about her growing frailty by writing about her journey and drawing cartoons (she was a somewhat famous cartoonist in her day). She was also a musician- a guitarist- who had once been in a folk/ old time band called the Tampon String Band.

She was not a big one for crying at sentimental movies, but she cried when he sang "Center of Asia". Paul sings solo, in English, accompanying himself on a lonely slide guitar.

Here I sit in the middle of Asia, I can't find the way- to tell them what I need, why I just can't stay...

It's a hard life when you're stupid, a hard life when you're blind... I ain't robbed nobody, but it feels like doin' time...

But, you see, he was a wounded warrior figure, but he was also a garden-variety widower. What the obituaries leave out that -- and how I think about Paul-- is that he wanted to end his life after his wife died. But then he got a shortwave radio, and discovered Tuvan throat singing, learned it by ear, and proceeded into history.

Sometime after Kris died I found in one of my journals a note to myself:

Start.
Stop.
Do something else.

Paul decided to die, to stop. And then he did something else. And the world was a better place for it.

I wonder what you can see now, Earthquake. You were born a year before my Kris, died four years after her. Maybe you two are hanging out over there, on that side, passing the time a little playing guitar together. Whatever you're doing, there's no more sickness and dying for you to worry about. Rest easy.

Injuries Incompatible with the Postseason

On "ER" the way they inform the people who are coming in to see their loved one who they didn't even know was injured but who is in fact very dead is by saying "they had injuries which were incompatible with life." Well, thanks to all my hours logged watching "ER" I wasn't scared to go in for some stomach pain I was having last weekend, and found out I need to have my gall bladder removed. And now, the post-season.

There's something that happens the day after the season ends (i.e. ends for the Giants and A's). I have to look at what parts of my life are incompatible with the postseason / offseason (which are the same, this year, turns out, for Giants and A's fans). And I'm not sure I can handle being on a zero fat diet and dealing with surgery and recovery and bills and all that headache while NOT looking forward to tonight's game or at least replays or at least gossip on the radio about my favorite teams. It's a funny thing, when you have to swivel all that fan-focus back on yourself.

The health problems I've had lately are the sorts of things that (my research tells me) happen to people who aren't popular or attractive. OK, that's not exactly what it says in the Kaiser Health Handbook, but, neither does it say "only caused by genetic abnormality." There is no health profile that says that x-illness tends to happens to relaxed, popular, attractive people. All this leads to even more navel gazing and nervousness.

How many days until spring training?

Russia: Hard to Go, Hard to Stay, Harder to Come Home to a Drunken Cat Sitter

Returning home from Russia yesterday I found that a 2nd cousin had died and that my cat sitter had drunk every drop of alcohol in my apartment, used up all the toilet paper, and left broken glass both in the bathroom and in the bedroom. The fact that I left Russia no longer on speaking terms with my work supervisor (who was, it turned out, a terrible person to travel with in Russia) didn't help matters. Also, my apartment being the cramped thing it is in the crummy neighborhood where it is doesn't help. One very GOOD thing is that the stripey girl cat, my own private predator, was happily stoned on cat nip when I came home, making the make-up game all too easy.

Never mind that the conference I was at was a total success, and the two major campaigns I've been working on have had great breakthroughs in the last week, my supervisor was just miserable. I was clearly working on her last nerve, being as happy as I was. Buying a bunch of Russian duck calls at a hunting store (just wait until my family gets these for Christmas-- I hope they know what to do with all the Russian ducks) and then trying them all out in the restaurant where we were having lunch on our last day probably snapped her last thread of control. So, she made sure to put me in my place before we all got in the van to go to the airport.

I can't help it that being in Russia makes me happy. I don't know why she- being dedicated as she is (to the point of being at a dead-run on the way to Burn Out City) to the country- was so miserable there! My two theories are that she was actually happy and she just shows her happiness by being miserable, or that she is actually a much more miserable person and this was her being happy.

So back to my amazing cat sitter, who must have taken all the liquor to the bathroom and drank while sitting on the toilet for ten days (how does one woman use up 4 rolls and a box of tissues in ten days!?). I asked her about one of the (full) bottles she drank and threw away-- a balzam that was a rare gift from a friend-- my last violin teacher, back in Novgorod, Russia-- and she simply said that if I hadn't wanted her to drink it I should have told her not to. I really do wonder if this woman has any idea that she even has a drinking problem, I mean, that she- who only eats organic and works as in the healing profession- drinks like a sailor, a Russian sailor, a Russian sailor with a particularly bad drinking problem. In ten days she drank a nearly full (not small) bottle of gin, whisky, two bottles of absinthe, a full bottle of Russian balzam, an unopened bottle of wine and bottle of champagne-- and some more alcohol she had bought herself when my stash was running low. I almost want to ask her-- what was wrong with the sherry? She only drank it half down. It was perfectly good sherry. And the sweet vermouth she hardly touched at all. If anyone is wondering, her name is Stacy Lininger, CMT, and she is a good cat sitter if you don't mind the massive number of empty liquor bottles and the broken glass in places where you walk barefoot.

Luckily I'm NOT a drinker (most of the bottles Stacy Lininger, CMT, emptied were gifts that I kept for special occasions), and I have a good pair of slippers to protect me from the glass, so this doesn't impair my ability to relax. I'm taking a sick day to regroup and think about my poor cousin Bill. He was a long-time sufferer of MS - but it's funny how the chronically ill surprise you when they die. You just think they can go on forever, since they've already survived so much. He was a few hours older than my father, and so they were childhood playmates and very fond of eachother. Bill made a lot of mistakes in his life, but as my father said, he didn't make these problems anyone else's. Well, unless you count his wife and son, but he really did try to do ok by them, as sick as he became. Rest in peace, Bill. Or, now that you have your legs and arms back, may you party very hearty and then rest in peace. Sleep very well.

Back to my time in Russia. This was an amazing trip where the organization where I work gathered leaders from 30 different important Far East/ Siberian environmental organizations (plus Greenpeace and WWF since they have programs out there) in the very deep woods near the Sea of Japan to discuss the coming year of projects and campaigns. It was the seventh such conference, and it met for about six days, a longer time than the conference had ever extended. Since the women's cabin (the damskaya obitel we called it - the convent) was up a muddy hilly trail we all had to try to stay sober, but the men really whooped it up. Some started the day with beer and ended the day hardly able to sing the sad songs and cry about the things Russians like to drunkenly cry about. But other than the partying, the working groups really gained common ground, and the new people seemed to really connect with the older members of the coalition, and the slimy WWF guy left early. A success all around.

And then there were the tigers. The area where we were-- Lazovsky reserve in the Primorye region- is one of the preserves where about 450 Siberian tigers still roam. The head organizer of the camp where we were staying was a miraculous survivor of a tiger attack - two short years ago- where he nearly lost his leg and then all but died lying in the snow for two days while they tried to organize a rescue using a private helicopter (the emergency ones could only be used at decree of the administration heads who were off drinking with some Japanese businessmen). He had a lovely singing voice. And he seemed to stay sober enough to use it. And to keep an eye out for tigers.

Now, keep in mind the fact that we ladies had to cross a couple of streams (hopping on rocks and thin planks) and climb a steep hill at night to get to our cabin. Through an unlit stretch of woods. Then we had as our protector the young shepherd Jack (Russian: "Djeck") who was on a fairly short and fairly stout chain, i.e. a nice appetizer before hitting the damskaya obitel for lunch.

Also keep in mind that the young men running the place were unable to design the cabin to make sure heat circulated to the upstairs room. The men apparently don't need heat. So the ladies upstairs in the obitel were freezing the first few nights until they got loud enough to get the men to stoke the fire in the bottom floor early enough and hot enough to * heat the bricks that made up one part of one wall in their room *. That was all they had for heat. So, that done, the ladies (including me) on the bottom floor had to leave ALL the doors and ALL the windows as WIDE open as possible ALL night in order to breathe let alone fitfully sleep. So, warm sweaty ladies in a blanket, all ready for the evening tiger buffet. One had to just not think about it. Some of us simply didn't go to the outhouse after dark. I relied on my good luck, and managed to see more stars in one sky than modern humans almost ever see. I liked to imagine the tigers were too distracted by the brightness of the stars, making up tiger constellations, to pay attention to the little fleshy lady-niblets running around.

Then there was the banya. The banya. Ah the banya. It was three days old and the sap was still seeping out of the fresh pine boards. The men built it specifically for us. Such gentlemen. I've never bathed in a three-day-old banya-- the pine scent mixing with the birch switches (used to slough off old skin) will be with me for a while. Then there is the matter of handsome Sergei the tiger-mauling-survivor taking one of our handsomest Slavic beauties into the banya one afternoon for a little R&R. It honestly made the banya seem more magic-- like a healing house and a bathing house and a pleasure house all at once. A place of solace in a terribly broad swath of taiga.

One late afternoon we went to the beach. It was our last evening out in the taiga by the Sea of Japan. We saw the fog rolling in just like it does here in California. Just like a Californian I jumped into the surf. The beach was soft with small pebbles and the undertow was like a big paw pulling me down-- I had to call out to get pulled out by my arms. Not long after I'd recovered, someone cried out and we all grabbed our digital cameras and came running. Tiger tracks. The tracks couldn't have been more than a matter of hours old. A set of just-as-fresh wild goat tracks were next to the tiger's. After that I kept one eye on the ferocious undertow in the deep bay to my one side and the other eye on the steep forested hill on my other side... at that point some ladies just went and waited in the cars. One particularly drunken activist man-- from Chukotka, that Russian side of the Bering land bridge-- went and taunted the surf by trying to stand in the waves. I just found a rocky perch and amused myself wondering how we could get him out if he finally went under. He went down on his knees with almost every wave but he never got tired of the game. So it is with our activists, and why they might just succeed in protecting that good water and those wild tigers...

Flatulence: The Enemy Within


This actually came up on a South African search engine when I was researching export credit agencies.

I think I detect a new international NGO starting up: Flatulence Without Borders.

No matter where you go in this world, you will always find a local word for a flatulence outburst. In Japanese, it's called he. The Russian's perdun, the Chinese's fong, the German's furz, the French's pet, the Hindu's pud and the Afrikaans's poep give clear proof that flatulence knows no borders.

From the Department of Pasta Research

We know you always wondered why dry spaghetti never breaks in half.

No more broken-spaghetti-fests in the kitchen for you.

Ah yes, why I'm still in San Francisco

We may have fog all summer, but we don't have ice storms in August.

The weather report today for my home "town" includes this lovely aside:

Any storms this afternoon may contain downpours, gusty winds, frequent lightning, and hail. Rain fall rates of an inch or so per hour will also be possible in some of the storms.

The weather for Adams Center, New York, at Weather Underground

Still on light duty from tendonitis

Headlines You Will Never See on Your NYT RSS Feed

My RSS newsfeed from the BBC included one that made me long to know this strange world of people who still like Shakespeare in their headlines:


'Authentic' Shakespeare on stage


Which has a link to another headline that I love for its being a distillation of the great extreme of non-news-worthiness (through US journalistic eyes):


Poetry newcomer up for award

"She who must be obeyed" has died

Please to read.

She controlled the rains and rivers and liked to disco.

Gonadactylicious!

My summer intern's other job is trying to train these lovelies to recognize shapes and colors.

Dolphins Use Sponges

And not just as fashion acoutrements.

Though it is pretty limited to females and just a few (I'm guessing gay) male dolphins, apparently.

Neato.

Waiting for Superpowers

Well, my physical therapist hit the wrong button on his machine (the "H-Wave") or it was in fact, as he said, shorted out that day (though not on the day his supervisor was using it, a week later), and I got the full voltage. Into nodes on my back. Very bad. I told him later after I calmed down from screaming that maybe he'd cured my depression. He didn't get the joke.

Anyway, I think I'm entitled to get a superpower from the experience. X-ray vision at least. But it's been almost two weeks and NOTHING. No super nothing. I've been revisiting that question posed on This American Life-- inivisibility or the power to fly?-- and I just keep thinking Wonder Woman had it the best. An invisible plane.

Due to this tendonitis I've been trying to stay off the computer, but I had to blog today because I found a note intended to inform a blog I think I wrote a few years ago, about supervillains. Make of it what you will. The question apparently was: is George W. Bush a supervillain, or just a bad president?


Here are my notes:

Is G.W. a supervillain--

1. mask
no

2. armor
Dick Army

3. cape
no

4. refers to self in 3rd p.
probably

5. has own country
yes

6. style
not really

7. despair
yes, helpless-seeming

8. fallability
yes

9. ignorance
yes

10. degree
yes [he did finish college eventually, yes?]

11. adaptable
no

12.
creative
no

13. delusions
yes

-----

That's a -- let's see-- 8 out of 13! Good for you George, you're almost a supervillain! In particular I think you need to get some style and a cape.

The Conclusion to the Arrested Grandma Story

Well, sad to say, I have tendonitis and can't give the full 411 (or maybe it's 911) on this story about my grandma's famous arrest. In a few short paragraphs then---

She, a single woman with a Swedish name, showed up in the Chicago hoosegow about eight weeks after Pearl Harbor, with no officer present to state her charge, and a general suspicion hanging over all foreign-named people (they hadn't sorted out ally from foe yet-- everyone seemed to be an enemy after the bombing).

The jail matron looked at her name and -- not knowing her crime-- "ya shouldn'ta oughta dunnit!"

She was a seminary student on a date with another seminary student who chose not to stand for a racist war bonds ad playing before Dumbo. They were seminarians going to the movies to see Dumbo! Ya shouldn'ta oughta dunnit.

Well, the Chicago Tribune screwed up the story-- two Chicago University students refuse to stand for national anthem was the quick and dirty version-- and it ended up all over the news wires (back in the day when there were wires), playing over the radio in the barn where my great-grands on my grandpa's side were milking cows, and on the front page of the Boston Herald, which my great-grands on grandma's side read every day. Since Grandma was from Boston she was quite the local feature.

So, that night grandma and grandpa were arrested, the faculty of the seminary was at a party, and someone passed the hat around and put together their bail money. Later they were given a talking to about putting the seminary's relationship with Chicago U. in jeopardy because of the papers calling them Chicago U. students. The photograph of them holding their hands over their hearts and saying the pledge of allegiance (their penance in court) was given big play on the front pages of the big papers the next day.

Grandma wrote editorials correcting the errors in the stories and asked the papers to publish them without edits, but only the Boston Herald printed it in full.

The end of the story is that the bejesus had been scared out of the young couple, especailly grandma, and without even a formal courtship and proposal and engagement they just sped along to the wedding. Grandma's tentative position as a foreigner in a country at war scared them that much. Their Japanese friend studying with them at seminary attended their 1942 wedding.

He's still a minister, living now in Japan.

Later that sprign grandma and grandpa graduated by the skin of their teeth (the management of the hate mail, hate phone calls, press reactions, their families, etc. etc. took a lot of their time and energy for a few months). They finished their dissertations on manual typewriters in the Chicago hotel room they got for their honeymoon.

the end

Whence I Came: My Grandma the Jailbird

Being home in North Nosebleed for a few days always resurrects the ghosts. This time I was collecting my grandmother's ghost stories and recording them for posterity. She is 87 or something godawful close to 90 and her mind is still razor sharp, so there's lots of cool gossip about ghosts to harvest. One of her best is the story of a date gone awry. I'm lining up people to read at a "bad date" themed performance, and I'm realizing my horrible dates have nothing compared to my grandparents' bad date that ended up on the front of the Chicago Tribune and across the country in the radio news headlines, a date that generated hate mail. A quintessential bad date.

My first date was at the age of 12, and I showed up in my finest clothes only to be asked to help with the neighbor's haying. My date and I were out in the afternoon heat hauling in the hay bales. My second boyfriend, me still at the age of 12, didn't really have dating on his mind and so I remember repelling his advances more than any one of our few, bad dates. My third boyfriend was the first in a long series of long distance romances that didn't require as much effort, which worked for me, since I'd figured out before even the first bad date that I was actually a lesbian. Dating women or women-identity-based-creatures didn't start for me until I was 19, far past my prime in the world of North Nosebleed. Now I'm an old maid at 31, enjoying a cup of decaf earl grey, some good wool to knit, and NPR far more than I probably should. Meanwhile, in 1930's Brooklyn, my grandma was being made an old maid at the age of 15.

My great-grandpa Adolph (so named in the same year as the other Adolf-- they were age-mates) had great plans for his two daughters. He wanted to see their names in lights. He was born to poor farmers in Sweden, an illegitimate child to a class-conscious mother, who ran away to the US with the first guy who'd marry her, to try and start the climb to the social top rung. He wanted no man to touch his daughters and put them in the bad position his mother escaped. So he made them pile their hair up in long braids pinned to their heads like some 19th century cameo. The style then was short hair, and cutting her hair was the first thing my grandma did when she escaped Adolph and went to Chicago Theological Seminary (his alma mater, and the furthest away he'd let his daughter go). He also taught them how to box. His youngest, my great-aunt-Mona, beat up-- rather badly-- a teacher for holding her after class... when she was in the fifth grade. My grandma takes a very dim view of boxing, but I like that Adolph taught them to defend themselves-- it feeds my fantasy that I come from some bastard line of Xena Warrior Princesses.

So, when grandpa passed her a note in her Religious Drama class asking her out to coffee, grandma was ready for action. She says she was a Swede who couldn't turn down a free cup of coffee, but I bet she was just aching to make her father jealous. Off they went to two semesters of coffee and strawberry shakes, during which time grandpa made sure his date was aware that he was from a penniless line of Michigan farmers. We had no less than three bankruptcies on that side of the family during the Great Depression. Just the ticket to piss off her papa, she threw herself into the romance and even spent the winter holidays at his family's farmhouse. To give grandpa some credit, he was a handsome devil, the son of another handsome devil. Great-grandpa Frank has a headshot from his youth that looks like a movie star-- dark and brooding and wind-tousled. Grandpa had even more gravity about his dark good looks.

Little did these lovebirds knew what was in store for them the night they went to see Dumbo. It was February 1942. Dumbo had hit the theatres just days before bombs hit Pearl Harbor, three months before. After the news reel, the theatre played a war bonds ad. The ad was a cartoon in which the war bond you could purchase flew into a racist charicature of a Japanese fighter pilot, whose blood then dripped down the screen and became the field of red in the stars and stripes of the US flag. The national anthem rose up in the background of the war bonds spiel, and some people in the theatre stood up and removed their hats. My grandparents, who had a dear friend at seminary who was Japanese, did not stand at this gory display. An off-duty police officer sitting behind them tapped my grandpa on the shoulder, and told them they should stand. They refused and told him why. He arrested them, and sent them to the paddy wagon without escorting them-- leaving them waiting at the jail to be charged while he finished watching Dumbo.

They were later charged with disorderly conduct.

Tomorrow... the story of my grandma's hard time in jail.

World Bank Supports Community Art Project

Albeit indirectly.

Peepers, Stars, and Cow Crap

The land of my birth. I am leaving tomorrow morning to go back to the SF Bay Area to complete whatever next challenges I've chosen for myself. But returning to this place I call North Nosebleed for a few days reminds me that there is achievement in just leaving here. And, if I can find it, still more genius in finding a way to come back, if only in reweaving my life to include this. My father and I went for a walk to remedy the food coma from Mother's Day's all you can eat carbo-riffic buffet, and in the 20 minutes we were out, only one car passed. The stars were so multitudinous we didn't even carry flashlights, and found the neighbor's garage floodlight blinding. The dark swampy fields of May were washed in a thick eau d' cow shit-- the annual beshitting of the fields where the dairy industry would get its hay in July. The new generation of baby frogs we call "peepers" were in full swing. Each song would last about 15 seconds. I have-- for the plane ride home-- numerous MP3's that I recorded from different points around the swamp on our land. Two were leading the peepage, and uncounted quieter thousands of voices kept a gentle pulsing chime going under the solos and duets. When the lead singers paused, it seemed like the stars themselves were providing the undercurrent of shimmering sound.

This makes me happy.

I have a couple of guys working with me on a project whose names are Bob and Doug. It doesn't help that they are both a little slow on the uptake and one is Canadian.

Walking down memory lane via Google, I discovered this factoid about the SCTV puerile purveyors of the federally mandated "Canadian content" that was Bob and Ted's Great White North (from a site devoted to beer):


Canada's fastest supercomputer, used to simulate the collisions of galaxies and the movement of supermassive black holes, is named "McKenzie," after the nefarious brothers. It cost $900,000 to build, which, at the current exchange rate, equals roughly 40,900 Molson beers, sold wholesale.

You can read "important Bob and Doug episodes" here.