Saturday, January 24, 2009
I Didn’t Mean That the Way It Sounded!
It’s going to be two more weeks, probably, before I can post at length, so I must also say I didn’t mean to imply that I felt David and Lisa had visited upon me a, pardon the expression, task. David’s request for a recording of my composition was very flattering; I myself turned it into a task by the simple method of failing to do it right away, ditto the next month, and the next …
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
President Barack H. Obama
All right, I’m sick of looking at that perimenopause thing myself, even, so I’ll just quickly note that I got over my ire about Rick Warren enough to get excited about the inauguration again, and I did stay home and watch the ceremony, and cried through most of it, though it was hard to be sure exactly why: relief that George’s presidency was ending, distress at how he broke our country, joy at seeing an African-American sworn in as president? All of that.
They said on NPR that President Obama plans to be known as “Barack H. Obama,” and I think I did detect a malicious gleam on Justice Robert’s face when he said “Hussein.” I think he also went too quickly when he told Obama what to say on purpose so that Obama would mess it up, which he did. But it's probably not a bad thing for a president to have a humbling moment now and then.
Question: If you don’t say the oath exactly the way it’s written, are you still really the president? My mother said right after Obama’s fine speech that there are probably Republicans getting ready to sue right this minute.
Fortunately, the thing I was really nervous about went fine: that guy playing the clarinet outdoors in the freezing weather.
P. S. My online news purveyor says it was Roberts who messed up the wording. Obama probably had the oath memorized to make sure it would go smoothly, hence the dueling versions.
They said on NPR that President Obama plans to be known as “Barack H. Obama,” and I think I did detect a malicious gleam on Justice Robert’s face when he said “Hussein.” I think he also went too quickly when he told Obama what to say on purpose so that Obama would mess it up, which he did. But it's probably not a bad thing for a president to have a humbling moment now and then.
Question: If you don’t say the oath exactly the way it’s written, are you still really the president? My mother said right after Obama’s fine speech that there are probably Republicans getting ready to sue right this minute.
Fortunately, the thing I was really nervous about went fine: that guy playing the clarinet outdoors in the freezing weather.
P. S. My online news purveyor says it was Roberts who messed up the wording. Obama probably had the oath memorized to make sure it would go smoothly, hence the dueling versions.
Friday, January 02, 2009
The Citizens are Revolted
The perimenopause symptoms I was complaining about not long ago all turned out to be short-lived: there was only one mega-period with gallons of blood, the sleep problems disappeared, and I’m back to my normal level of irascibility, or maybe even less, thanks to meditating in the morning, or maybe more, given what happened New Year’s Eve.
However, one weird thing has cropped up, which is nausea. Normally, while eating I can listen to someone describe his or her bout with explosive diarrhea or just how much pus was in his or her infected wound without any distress whatsoever. You have to have a cast-iron digestive system to eat as much junk food as I do. Before the past month or so, I could have counted on one hand the number of times I'd felt nauseous since quitting drinking 29 years ago.
But now it happens quite frequently, and I feel like I’m going to heave if, for instance, someone says something about green beans while I’m eating. “Green beans!? Blech … ”
Jeff is treating it with acupuncture, I have stopped taking fish oil in hopes that is the culprit, and Jack recommends eating fermented sauerkraut made by a woman in Berkeley.
It’s been raining lately, so my ant friends have returned. Some years I leave them unmolested, and some years I get in the habit of killing them, these small creatures who want to live as much as I do and fear death just as I do.
This year I strongly feel I don’t want to harm them, so I have been using a little piece of scrap paper to scoop each one up and tap it onto the Bianchi’s rack so I can go ahead with washing dishes or cooking. I seem to have far fewer ants this year than in the years when I make every effort to eradicate them. It’s almost as if when I treat them with respect, they treat me with respect.
To keep ants out of Hammett’s food, I put the bowl in a shallow baking dish with water and a couple of drops of dish soap in it. This eliminates the surface tension that would allow ants to make their way over to his food bowl. Ants are good swimmers, or at least good floaters. I often find one or two gamely performing the Limp Ant’s Float while waiting for rescue from Hammett’s water bowl, which of course does not have dish soap in it.
Hammett is doing fine. He’s full of energy, as always. This morning he used my trumpet case to get onto the bookshelves and knocked an item or two to the floor. Then he noticed there was a bird outside and rushed to the window. Then he spied a malicious enemy leering at him from the iMac’s shiny monitor and stood glaring at it for several moments. Then he seemed to relax suddenly: Is that me? I thought I was a beefy bruiser. You mean I’m just a fuzzy little cat?
Then he went to dig in the tub a bit, and then he pulled the springy door stop near the front door and let it go several times in a row, making a loud spronging sound, until its white rubber tip came off—a new toy!—and then he walked under the canopy of the sweatshirt draped over my knees and poked my inner thigh a time or two with his front fingers to see if it was time for him to be picked up and told again what a remarkable cat he is, the best cat there is. It was that time.
Good news at work, regarding the proposal I wrote a year or so ago for the installation of bike racks: A high-level manager has agreed to fund a pilot project at three to five locations. We’re hoping to produce a process guide that can be used by other sites that want bike racks. My company employs 150,000 or so people, and makes changes very slowly, like any large company, so it’s exciting to see this gathering momentum.
Two very pretty songs: “Take the Hand,” by Nazz, Todd Rundgren’s early band, and “Second Nature,” by Utopia, another Todd Rundgren band. A song I would never have thought would be good, but is: “I Kissed a Girl,” by Katy Perry. The lyrics probably don’t bear close scrutiny, but it is catchy. Also very good: “Remedy,” by Seether.
Just after I was raving about my chiming clock here, it quit working, so I have tried to rig up a poor woman’s version of it using multiple timepieces, and it’s sort of doing the trick, but not really. I feel groggy in the mornings again, and today I just turned the final clock off and went back to sleep for two more hours, followed, after meditation and breakfast, by a three-hour nap tucked under the flannel sheets with Hammy, who stayed the whole time.
I’m managing to get up in time to meditate before work, but I fear the day will come when it is impossible, so I can’t wait to get my replacement chiming clock in the mail. What I had was the Digital Zen Alarm Clock, from Now & Zen. It costs a ridiculous amount, and is not all that reliable, based on online reviews, but most people still say they are crazy about their clock, anyway. That is, roughly five percent say, “This clock was a piece of crap—it broke after six months,” and the other 95 percent say they can’t imagine waking up any other way.
There is also a non-digital version, which may be a bit more robust. I’ve seen reviews mentioning that the non-digital version has been going strong for 15 years, and the customer service person at Now & Zen, while assuring me that both clocks have a low failure rate, did say the non-digital one might be a bit less prone to trouble, since it is of simpler design.
So I have sent my digital clock back—it had lasted nine months—and sent ten more dollars to get the non-digital version instead. It’s larger, which is not good, but if it works reliably over the long term, that’s the main thing.
However, one weird thing has cropped up, which is nausea. Normally, while eating I can listen to someone describe his or her bout with explosive diarrhea or just how much pus was in his or her infected wound without any distress whatsoever. You have to have a cast-iron digestive system to eat as much junk food as I do. Before the past month or so, I could have counted on one hand the number of times I'd felt nauseous since quitting drinking 29 years ago.
But now it happens quite frequently, and I feel like I’m going to heave if, for instance, someone says something about green beans while I’m eating. “Green beans!? Blech … ”
Jeff is treating it with acupuncture, I have stopped taking fish oil in hopes that is the culprit, and Jack recommends eating fermented sauerkraut made by a woman in Berkeley.
It’s been raining lately, so my ant friends have returned. Some years I leave them unmolested, and some years I get in the habit of killing them, these small creatures who want to live as much as I do and fear death just as I do.
This year I strongly feel I don’t want to harm them, so I have been using a little piece of scrap paper to scoop each one up and tap it onto the Bianchi’s rack so I can go ahead with washing dishes or cooking. I seem to have far fewer ants this year than in the years when I make every effort to eradicate them. It’s almost as if when I treat them with respect, they treat me with respect.
To keep ants out of Hammett’s food, I put the bowl in a shallow baking dish with water and a couple of drops of dish soap in it. This eliminates the surface tension that would allow ants to make their way over to his food bowl. Ants are good swimmers, or at least good floaters. I often find one or two gamely performing the Limp Ant’s Float while waiting for rescue from Hammett’s water bowl, which of course does not have dish soap in it.
Hammett is doing fine. He’s full of energy, as always. This morning he used my trumpet case to get onto the bookshelves and knocked an item or two to the floor. Then he noticed there was a bird outside and rushed to the window. Then he spied a malicious enemy leering at him from the iMac’s shiny monitor and stood glaring at it for several moments. Then he seemed to relax suddenly: Is that me? I thought I was a beefy bruiser. You mean I’m just a fuzzy little cat?
Then he went to dig in the tub a bit, and then he pulled the springy door stop near the front door and let it go several times in a row, making a loud spronging sound, until its white rubber tip came off—a new toy!—and then he walked under the canopy of the sweatshirt draped over my knees and poked my inner thigh a time or two with his front fingers to see if it was time for him to be picked up and told again what a remarkable cat he is, the best cat there is. It was that time.
Good news at work, regarding the proposal I wrote a year or so ago for the installation of bike racks: A high-level manager has agreed to fund a pilot project at three to five locations. We’re hoping to produce a process guide that can be used by other sites that want bike racks. My company employs 150,000 or so people, and makes changes very slowly, like any large company, so it’s exciting to see this gathering momentum.
Two very pretty songs: “Take the Hand,” by Nazz, Todd Rundgren’s early band, and “Second Nature,” by Utopia, another Todd Rundgren band. A song I would never have thought would be good, but is: “I Kissed a Girl,” by Katy Perry. The lyrics probably don’t bear close scrutiny, but it is catchy. Also very good: “Remedy,” by Seether.
Just after I was raving about my chiming clock here, it quit working, so I have tried to rig up a poor woman’s version of it using multiple timepieces, and it’s sort of doing the trick, but not really. I feel groggy in the mornings again, and today I just turned the final clock off and went back to sleep for two more hours, followed, after meditation and breakfast, by a three-hour nap tucked under the flannel sheets with Hammy, who stayed the whole time.
I’m managing to get up in time to meditate before work, but I fear the day will come when it is impossible, so I can’t wait to get my replacement chiming clock in the mail. What I had was the Digital Zen Alarm Clock, from Now & Zen. It costs a ridiculous amount, and is not all that reliable, based on online reviews, but most people still say they are crazy about their clock, anyway. That is, roughly five percent say, “This clock was a piece of crap—it broke after six months,” and the other 95 percent say they can’t imagine waking up any other way.
There is also a non-digital version, which may be a bit more robust. I’ve seen reviews mentioning that the non-digital version has been going strong for 15 years, and the customer service person at Now & Zen, while assuring me that both clocks have a low failure rate, did say the non-digital one might be a bit less prone to trouble, since it is of simpler design.
So I have sent my digital clock back—it had lasted nine months—and sent ten more dollars to get the non-digital version instead. It’s larger, which is not good, but if it works reliably over the long term, that’s the main thing.
Tasks Are Things I Cannot Do
On New Year’s Eve, I ordered a pizza from Marcello’s on Castro for me and Tom, and then got into the shower. A couple of minutes later, the phone rang. I worried that it was Marcello’s, calling to confirm my order and that they would cancel it when I didn’t answer. A short while later, the phone rang again—two rings, meaning someone was at the front door.
I leaped out of the shower and tried to buzz the person in, presumably the pizza delivery person, but it didn’t seem to work. The phone rang again and again. Finally, I called Tom and asked (well, instructed) him to go downstairs and let the pizza delivery person in.
Then I listened to the earlier message, which was Marcello’s saying they were out of potato skins and giving me the new total for the order, so I got out that amount plus tip, and when I heard rustling at my door, opened the door a crack—I was still dripping wet, wrapped in a towel—and reached for the pizza.
The front end of the box entered my apartment, but when I tried to take it, there was some resistance, so I pulled harder, and then harder still.
I know I have at least one reader who is hoping I’m going to say the whole pizza slid out of its box and landed, cheese down, on the carpet. Well, it didn’t, but I could hear Tom giggling outside the door as, with one last mighty wrench, I wrested the pizza from the delivery person’s grasp and then slammed the door as hard as I could—it was instinctive; what the aitch ee double toothpicks is going on here?—and then, instantly remorseful, yelled, “Sorry!” I hope my tip made up for it.
Tom explained later that the poor fellow was trying to balance the big box and take the money and stash it somewhere, all of which required about three hands.
New year’s resolutions, besides being more patient when receiving a pizza: To take fewer cabs, and not to buy any more CDs. I did buy a couple of CDs in the past year on which every single song was good, such as The Best of Gino Vannelli and Seether’s Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces, but that was more the exception than the rule, so from now on, I’m just going to buy songs from iTunes.
Tonight, for the very first time in my life, I heard the music of Britney Spears! And I even bought one song: “Toxic.”
Yesterday I completed a task that had been on my list of things to do for 16 months, which was to figure out how to get a piece of music (a classical composition I wrote while in music school, for solo piano) from cassette tape into the iMac, so I could make an MP3 and send it to David and Lisa.
(At David and Lisa’s going-away party in late August or early September of 2007, guests were encouraged to bring an artwork to share, a poem or picture or song. I brought a recording of my piano piece, and David asked afterwards if I could make them a copy.)
I figured it would take five minutes and I’d be chagrined at having delayed for so long, but it did actually take a few hours and quite a bit of hair-pulling. In the end, I got it working, and learned how to edit the digital sound file to remove unwanted parts, which is very easy, and how to make it fade in and fade out.
I also tried making a recording from a vinyl LP and that also worked, though it doesn’t sound as good as the file that came from the cassette tape.
This piano piece was performed at a Friday noon recital at San Francisco State University, not by me, since I am a very junior-level pianist, but by a graduate student named Kerri Dillman, if I recall correctly. She did a great job, and afterwards, the piece received about 30 solid seconds of applause, all captured on the tape, so that is basically a tape of the happiest 30 seconds of my life.
Once I was done with this piece, I did the same for another piece of mine, for bassoon and tenor saxophone, and then, for just a moment, I had the crazy idea of sifting through my tapes and extracting everything worthwhile to digital files and junking the actual tapes, but I was able to cleanse my mind of this ludicrous plan right away.
It would just be way too much work. I might even listen to the digital files more than I listen to the tapes, but I’m still not going to do it, and I’m not going to get rid of a single one of my cassette tapes, either. I like to look at them and remember the sound of what’s on them.
As for vinyl LPs, I have been assured that there will always be turntables, because the true audiophile will always prefer to listen to records, so that part should be fine. I have all my LPs, too, from the first one I ever bought, the greatest hits of the Friends of Distinction.
I did learn something from having procrastinated for so long on my little recording project (I also made David a promised CD or three containing some metal and Todd Rundgren favorites), which is never to agree to do anything for anyone, including myself, ever again.
As Gertrude Stein said, or should have said, or could be imagined saying, “Tasks are things I cannot do.” (I think this line may come from a one-person show about G. Stein, so it's not original, but I don't know who the author is.)
I leaped out of the shower and tried to buzz the person in, presumably the pizza delivery person, but it didn’t seem to work. The phone rang again and again. Finally, I called Tom and asked (well, instructed) him to go downstairs and let the pizza delivery person in.
Then I listened to the earlier message, which was Marcello’s saying they were out of potato skins and giving me the new total for the order, so I got out that amount plus tip, and when I heard rustling at my door, opened the door a crack—I was still dripping wet, wrapped in a towel—and reached for the pizza.
The front end of the box entered my apartment, but when I tried to take it, there was some resistance, so I pulled harder, and then harder still.
I know I have at least one reader who is hoping I’m going to say the whole pizza slid out of its box and landed, cheese down, on the carpet. Well, it didn’t, but I could hear Tom giggling outside the door as, with one last mighty wrench, I wrested the pizza from the delivery person’s grasp and then slammed the door as hard as I could—it was instinctive; what the aitch ee double toothpicks is going on here?—and then, instantly remorseful, yelled, “Sorry!” I hope my tip made up for it.
Tom explained later that the poor fellow was trying to balance the big box and take the money and stash it somewhere, all of which required about three hands.
New year’s resolutions, besides being more patient when receiving a pizza: To take fewer cabs, and not to buy any more CDs. I did buy a couple of CDs in the past year on which every single song was good, such as The Best of Gino Vannelli and Seether’s Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces, but that was more the exception than the rule, so from now on, I’m just going to buy songs from iTunes.
Tonight, for the very first time in my life, I heard the music of Britney Spears! And I even bought one song: “Toxic.”
Yesterday I completed a task that had been on my list of things to do for 16 months, which was to figure out how to get a piece of music (a classical composition I wrote while in music school, for solo piano) from cassette tape into the iMac, so I could make an MP3 and send it to David and Lisa.
(At David and Lisa’s going-away party in late August or early September of 2007, guests were encouraged to bring an artwork to share, a poem or picture or song. I brought a recording of my piano piece, and David asked afterwards if I could make them a copy.)
I figured it would take five minutes and I’d be chagrined at having delayed for so long, but it did actually take a few hours and quite a bit of hair-pulling. In the end, I got it working, and learned how to edit the digital sound file to remove unwanted parts, which is very easy, and how to make it fade in and fade out.
I also tried making a recording from a vinyl LP and that also worked, though it doesn’t sound as good as the file that came from the cassette tape.
This piano piece was performed at a Friday noon recital at San Francisco State University, not by me, since I am a very junior-level pianist, but by a graduate student named Kerri Dillman, if I recall correctly. She did a great job, and afterwards, the piece received about 30 solid seconds of applause, all captured on the tape, so that is basically a tape of the happiest 30 seconds of my life.
Once I was done with this piece, I did the same for another piece of mine, for bassoon and tenor saxophone, and then, for just a moment, I had the crazy idea of sifting through my tapes and extracting everything worthwhile to digital files and junking the actual tapes, but I was able to cleanse my mind of this ludicrous plan right away.
It would just be way too much work. I might even listen to the digital files more than I listen to the tapes, but I’m still not going to do it, and I’m not going to get rid of a single one of my cassette tapes, either. I like to look at them and remember the sound of what’s on them.
As for vinyl LPs, I have been assured that there will always be turntables, because the true audiophile will always prefer to listen to records, so that part should be fine. I have all my LPs, too, from the first one I ever bought, the greatest hits of the Friends of Distinction.
I did learn something from having procrastinated for so long on my little recording project (I also made David a promised CD or three containing some metal and Todd Rundgren favorites), which is never to agree to do anything for anyone, including myself, ever again.
As Gertrude Stein said, or should have said, or could be imagined saying, “Tasks are things I cannot do.” (I think this line may come from a one-person show about G. Stein, so it's not original, but I don't know who the author is.)
Marrying a Person of Your Own Gender Is Not Required, but Encouraging Homophobes Is Not Good, Either
After I saw High School Musical, I saw High School Musical 2. Neither is very good, though Zac Efron is cute. He’s cuter in the recent version of Hairspray, however, and the music in Hairspray is lots better, too.
I’m still working on the book about Henry Ford, and now that I’m out of renewals, it’s costing me 10 cents a day. The fine will be capped at $5.00, which is good, though I don’t mind supporting the library.
In the dharma department, I just finished Ajahn Sumedho’s Teachings of a Buddhist Monk. It’s extremely off the cuff. Some dharma books someone actually sits down and writes, and some are collections of transcribed dharma talks. This one sounds like Ajahn Sumedho drank a few beers, which we know he didn’t, and rambled very informally and freely to a longtime friend who is a good listener.
The final chapter, “He Did Not Pass the Cakes,” is full of useful stuff that is highly pertinent to my situation at work, and in general. It’s about the friction and irritation we encounter all the time, and how to work with it.
It is clear that Ajahn Sumedho has put in his time wrestling with this stuff, and he makes it sound like the fruits of learning to direct attention inward will be very much worth having. I’ve read or heard this exact advice approximately 2000 times and still manage to forget about it when it’s most needed, so I appreciate bumping into something that inspires me anew.
I’ve been reading a little bit of this chapter each morning to remind me of my intention. I really don’t want to be run hither and thither all my life by this or that thing that someone else might be doing, and I do want to be a kind and patient person.
Meditating in the morning is making it so much easier to be tolerant at work, and to listen to my “customers” attentively.
I am reading, at night, Awakening the Buddhist Heart, by Lama Surya Das. So far it hasn’t offered any notable revelation, but I like his down to earth, friendly style.
I recently got two Etta James CDs, Heart of a Woman and Blue Gardenia. There are several songs on both that I like. It’s neat, too, to hear the lyrics to several jazz standards I’ve played many times on the trumpet. Listening to Etta makes me think of Amy Winehouse; some of Amy’s phrasings are identical to Etta’s. It’s easy to be critical when a musician displays her influences so obviously, but I think it takes talent to be able to analyze what another musician is doing and reproduce it so faithfully. I guarantee I can’t sing anything that sounds like Etta James.
I have also obtained three Jonatha Brooke CDs, including The Works, the one that uses the Woody Guthrie lyrics. It is charming and lovely, incredibly sweet and passionate. Woody Guthrie evidently often wrote from a woman’s perspective.
I discussed my co-worker’s web surfing habits with Tom, whose advice in any situation of undesired behavior is almost always to ignore it, but in this case, he said that was absolutely not OK and that I should have a word with the person’s team lead. As soon as I had Tom’s permission to make an issue of it, I decided I could live with it: the miracle of reverse psychology.
My parents have lately acquired digital cable in their new house. My mother wrote me this:
“Our cable TV is hooked up. The installer said to us, ‘Are you familiar with digital cable TV?’ I said, ‘No. Will I still be able to use my La-Z-Boy?’ He said, ‘Yes, but there will be an extra charge.’”
I’m sorry to say that, after being excited for months over Obama’s candidacy, I’m angry and disappointed about him inviting Rick Warren to participate in the inaugural ceremony, and I wish I had back the money I sent him.
Gay people worked hard to elect Obama. They (or we; I’m bisexual) sent money and spent time volunteering, and voted for him three to one. Rick Warren has likened gay marriage to pedophilia and worked to pass Proposition 8, denying certain human beings and American citizens the right of marriage enjoyed by nearly every other adult; I guess if you're in San Quentin on death row, you also can't get married.
I was actually going to take a vacation day so I could watch the ceremony on TV, but now I probably won’t watch it at all, let alone use a vacation day for this purpose, and I took the “Yes We Did” button off my backpack, because it made me feel a bit heartsick every time I saw it.
I don’t buy the “reaching across the aisle” thing, because there is absolutely no way Obama would have invited an avowed segregationist or KKK leader to participate, because THAT would have been offensive to people he actually cares about not offending.
In the past day or two, there was a report on sfgate.com about a lesbian who was gang-raped by four men who made clear the attack was based on the victim’s being gay.
As one commenter wrote (I have removed an errant apostrophe and added a comma), “I'm convinced that the passage of Prop. 8 and its attendant marketing contributed to [these] other recent instances of hate crimes against perceived LGBT people. Words are powerful, and hateful rhetoric designed to take away people's civil liberties encourages hateful people who act to fulfill their sentiments.”
Rick Warren’s insulting comments about gay people are on the same continuum as this dreadful crime. Maybe they are near opposite ends of the continuum, but it’s the same continuum. When I think of Rick Warren praying at Obama’s ceremony, all I can see is Matthew Shepard’s battered body hanging from the fence in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. He was still alive then, barely, but died later at the hospital, leaving his family and friends to grieve forever.
It makes me cry, and to think that our new president has so honored an open bigot makes me really, really angry.
I’m still working on the book about Henry Ford, and now that I’m out of renewals, it’s costing me 10 cents a day. The fine will be capped at $5.00, which is good, though I don’t mind supporting the library.
In the dharma department, I just finished Ajahn Sumedho’s Teachings of a Buddhist Monk. It’s extremely off the cuff. Some dharma books someone actually sits down and writes, and some are collections of transcribed dharma talks. This one sounds like Ajahn Sumedho drank a few beers, which we know he didn’t, and rambled very informally and freely to a longtime friend who is a good listener.
The final chapter, “He Did Not Pass the Cakes,” is full of useful stuff that is highly pertinent to my situation at work, and in general. It’s about the friction and irritation we encounter all the time, and how to work with it.
It is clear that Ajahn Sumedho has put in his time wrestling with this stuff, and he makes it sound like the fruits of learning to direct attention inward will be very much worth having. I’ve read or heard this exact advice approximately 2000 times and still manage to forget about it when it’s most needed, so I appreciate bumping into something that inspires me anew.
I’ve been reading a little bit of this chapter each morning to remind me of my intention. I really don’t want to be run hither and thither all my life by this or that thing that someone else might be doing, and I do want to be a kind and patient person.
Meditating in the morning is making it so much easier to be tolerant at work, and to listen to my “customers” attentively.
I am reading, at night, Awakening the Buddhist Heart, by Lama Surya Das. So far it hasn’t offered any notable revelation, but I like his down to earth, friendly style.
I recently got two Etta James CDs, Heart of a Woman and Blue Gardenia. There are several songs on both that I like. It’s neat, too, to hear the lyrics to several jazz standards I’ve played many times on the trumpet. Listening to Etta makes me think of Amy Winehouse; some of Amy’s phrasings are identical to Etta’s. It’s easy to be critical when a musician displays her influences so obviously, but I think it takes talent to be able to analyze what another musician is doing and reproduce it so faithfully. I guarantee I can’t sing anything that sounds like Etta James.
I have also obtained three Jonatha Brooke CDs, including The Works, the one that uses the Woody Guthrie lyrics. It is charming and lovely, incredibly sweet and passionate. Woody Guthrie evidently often wrote from a woman’s perspective.
I discussed my co-worker’s web surfing habits with Tom, whose advice in any situation of undesired behavior is almost always to ignore it, but in this case, he said that was absolutely not OK and that I should have a word with the person’s team lead. As soon as I had Tom’s permission to make an issue of it, I decided I could live with it: the miracle of reverse psychology.
My parents have lately acquired digital cable in their new house. My mother wrote me this:
“Our cable TV is hooked up. The installer said to us, ‘Are you familiar with digital cable TV?’ I said, ‘No. Will I still be able to use my La-Z-Boy?’ He said, ‘Yes, but there will be an extra charge.’”
I’m sorry to say that, after being excited for months over Obama’s candidacy, I’m angry and disappointed about him inviting Rick Warren to participate in the inaugural ceremony, and I wish I had back the money I sent him.
Gay people worked hard to elect Obama. They (or we; I’m bisexual) sent money and spent time volunteering, and voted for him three to one. Rick Warren has likened gay marriage to pedophilia and worked to pass Proposition 8, denying certain human beings and American citizens the right of marriage enjoyed by nearly every other adult; I guess if you're in San Quentin on death row, you also can't get married.
I was actually going to take a vacation day so I could watch the ceremony on TV, but now I probably won’t watch it at all, let alone use a vacation day for this purpose, and I took the “Yes We Did” button off my backpack, because it made me feel a bit heartsick every time I saw it.
I don’t buy the “reaching across the aisle” thing, because there is absolutely no way Obama would have invited an avowed segregationist or KKK leader to participate, because THAT would have been offensive to people he actually cares about not offending.
In the past day or two, there was a report on sfgate.com about a lesbian who was gang-raped by four men who made clear the attack was based on the victim’s being gay.
As one commenter wrote (I have removed an errant apostrophe and added a comma), “I'm convinced that the passage of Prop. 8 and its attendant marketing contributed to [these] other recent instances of hate crimes against perceived LGBT people. Words are powerful, and hateful rhetoric designed to take away people's civil liberties encourages hateful people who act to fulfill their sentiments.”
Rick Warren’s insulting comments about gay people are on the same continuum as this dreadful crime. Maybe they are near opposite ends of the continuum, but it’s the same continuum. When I think of Rick Warren praying at Obama’s ceremony, all I can see is Matthew Shepard’s battered body hanging from the fence in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. He was still alive then, barely, but died later at the hospital, leaving his family and friends to grieve forever.
It makes me cry, and to think that our new president has so honored an open bigot makes me really, really angry.
I’M Looking at YOU: Christmas 2008
I was recently telling a friend about the box of gifts I get every year from Santa, with a charming note explaining why Santa thinks this year’s garlic press is better than the one he sent last year. Over the years, I have probably gotten three garlic presses from Santa, and five implements for sharpening a knife, and a lot of other stuff I’m very fond of: a Wüsthof knife, a red silicone scraper, my current garlic press, my current knife-sharpening implement (the DMT Double Sided Diafold, which is excellent), a pair of gizmos that can be used in tandem to get stubborn jar lids off, a particular silicone spatula I use nearly every day, and much else.
My friend thought that was perfectly delightful, and I have always concurred. Not two days later, I discovered that last year was the final year for this particular tradition, as Santa went green this year, “in more ways than one.”
Santa’s holiday letter, entitled “New Paradigm,” explained Santa had realized maybe it would be better to send the “wee ones on his gift list” ideas instead of “actual hardware.” He went on to describe the kitchen gadgets he currently likes, and I’m guessing that if I were to obtain them all, they could be had for $60.49, the amount of the check that accompanied the letter.
Santa also switched from Christmas cards to an emailed year-end missive, in which he struck the perfect holiday letter tone. I was admiring, but not surprised, since the letters that accompany Santa’s gifts are always just right—witty and informative.
Now I’m feeling a bit guilty about my own Christmas card habit. I suppose it’s time to give it up, and maybe 2008 will prove to have been the final year for Christmas cards. I recently bought a fresh supply of stamps, even as I wondered if I’ll have occasion to use that many stamps in the entire rest of my life, what with nearly all bills being paid electronically. I do still believe in the handwritten thank-you card.
On Christmas Eve afternoon, Tom and I took BART to Richmond and there boarded an Amtrak train to Sacramento. Tom had a special gift for one of his brothers—a used bicycle that he’d been working on and finding parts for for about nine months.
The train was so packed there were people sitting on the floor between the bicycles hanging from hooks. The train was not that crowded last year on Christmas Eve, and there weren’t that many bicycles aboard, either, I’m sure. It’s good that more people are taking the train and bringing their bikes aboard.
We were able to find a four-seat area to share with a young Indian woman and an elderly Dutch lady. She must have been a knockout in her day. She still looked fantastic at 80-something. She told me I looked very much like her beloved aunt, which I thought was very nice. She was eager to talk. Alas, with the train rumbling along and the fans blowing, I could make out very little of what she said, though Tom and I gathered she doesn’t care for Salt Lake City.
Christmas with Tom’s family was as magical and wonderful as ever. Tom’s sister-in-law Julie's mother, Diane, came from Michigan this year to join us. She had made every single person quite a quantity of chocolate goodies. It must have taken her hours and hours, and she must have spent a small fortune on the ingredients. I was so touched by that.
Tom’s niece’s live-in boyfriend was with his own family in Seattle this year. On Christmas Day, Sarah told us that a certain gift from the night before had been from both her and Josh. Tom’s brother Steve said, “Good. I was starting to think he’d stiffed us, that we’d gotten the full doughnut hole.”
Also, after we got the aforementioned chocolate, Steve said, “OK, I’m setting my chocolate RIGHT HERE and I expect it to be here later. I’M looking at YOU,” and here he made a gesture where he pointed two fingers at his own eyeballs when he said “I” and then pointed the same two fingers at my eyeballs when he said “you.” He really makes me laugh.
It was also funny when Chris, who is allergic to nuts, received walnuts in his stocking and said, “Walnuts—you remembered."
We spent Christmas Day afternoon with Ann and Mac—Ann made us soup, and Steve, Julie and Diane came over to help eat it—and then, before we knew it, it was time to get on the train to come home.
A couple of days later, Steve’s wife Julie came to San Francisco, along with her mother, Diane, who made us all the goodies. It was Diane's first visit to San Francisco. Tom and I met them downtown. Our goal was to ride the cable car, but that turned out to be the one thing we didn’t do, because the line was way too long both at the Market St. end and at the wharf end.
We met at 4th and Mission, and walked through the Bloomingdale’s mall to Market St. When we saw the cable car wasn’t going to be feasible, we took the historical streetcar to near the foot of Market St. and admired some giant Christmas ornaments inside and outside of what is possibly 101 California St.
We went to the Ferry Building and poked around—Julie bought us each a cupcake at Miette—and then had lunch at Fuzio in one of the Embarcadero Centers, a pasta restaurant where fresh-squeezed lemonade can be had. We took the bus to Pier 39 and looked at the water and the boats and the sea lions. I discovered, with regret, that San Francisco has a Hooters restaurant; it’s near there somewhere.
We went to Starbucks and had caffeinated libations and ate our cupcakes. Diane told us a funny story about, years ago, moving heaven and earth to get to New York, I believe it was, to join Julie and a friend for the opera. Diane and her sister were so exhausted, they ended up falling asleep at the opera and snoring.
By this time, it was dark. We took a cab to Chinatown, passing Coit Tower, which was glowing with beautiful red lights, and walked around Chinatown, including up an enormous hill. Then we took the 30 Stockton bus back to 4th and Mission, where we began, and walked through Yerba Buena Gardens, by the huge fountain, and admired another burning-red lit-up building, the Museum of Modern Art.
We ended up at the Thirsty Bear, where Sarah was working, and Julie treated us to snacks there. Then Tom and I took a cab home, dropping Julie and Diane near their parking garage on the way.
My friend thought that was perfectly delightful, and I have always concurred. Not two days later, I discovered that last year was the final year for this particular tradition, as Santa went green this year, “in more ways than one.”
Santa’s holiday letter, entitled “New Paradigm,” explained Santa had realized maybe it would be better to send the “wee ones on his gift list” ideas instead of “actual hardware.” He went on to describe the kitchen gadgets he currently likes, and I’m guessing that if I were to obtain them all, they could be had for $60.49, the amount of the check that accompanied the letter.
Santa also switched from Christmas cards to an emailed year-end missive, in which he struck the perfect holiday letter tone. I was admiring, but not surprised, since the letters that accompany Santa’s gifts are always just right—witty and informative.
Now I’m feeling a bit guilty about my own Christmas card habit. I suppose it’s time to give it up, and maybe 2008 will prove to have been the final year for Christmas cards. I recently bought a fresh supply of stamps, even as I wondered if I’ll have occasion to use that many stamps in the entire rest of my life, what with nearly all bills being paid electronically. I do still believe in the handwritten thank-you card.
On Christmas Eve afternoon, Tom and I took BART to Richmond and there boarded an Amtrak train to Sacramento. Tom had a special gift for one of his brothers—a used bicycle that he’d been working on and finding parts for for about nine months.
The train was so packed there were people sitting on the floor between the bicycles hanging from hooks. The train was not that crowded last year on Christmas Eve, and there weren’t that many bicycles aboard, either, I’m sure. It’s good that more people are taking the train and bringing their bikes aboard.
We were able to find a four-seat area to share with a young Indian woman and an elderly Dutch lady. She must have been a knockout in her day. She still looked fantastic at 80-something. She told me I looked very much like her beloved aunt, which I thought was very nice. She was eager to talk. Alas, with the train rumbling along and the fans blowing, I could make out very little of what she said, though Tom and I gathered she doesn’t care for Salt Lake City.
Christmas with Tom’s family was as magical and wonderful as ever. Tom’s sister-in-law Julie's mother, Diane, came from Michigan this year to join us. She had made every single person quite a quantity of chocolate goodies. It must have taken her hours and hours, and she must have spent a small fortune on the ingredients. I was so touched by that.
Tom’s niece’s live-in boyfriend was with his own family in Seattle this year. On Christmas Day, Sarah told us that a certain gift from the night before had been from both her and Josh. Tom’s brother Steve said, “Good. I was starting to think he’d stiffed us, that we’d gotten the full doughnut hole.”
Also, after we got the aforementioned chocolate, Steve said, “OK, I’m setting my chocolate RIGHT HERE and I expect it to be here later. I’M looking at YOU,” and here he made a gesture where he pointed two fingers at his own eyeballs when he said “I” and then pointed the same two fingers at my eyeballs when he said “you.” He really makes me laugh.
It was also funny when Chris, who is allergic to nuts, received walnuts in his stocking and said, “Walnuts—you remembered."
We spent Christmas Day afternoon with Ann and Mac—Ann made us soup, and Steve, Julie and Diane came over to help eat it—and then, before we knew it, it was time to get on the train to come home.
A couple of days later, Steve’s wife Julie came to San Francisco, along with her mother, Diane, who made us all the goodies. It was Diane's first visit to San Francisco. Tom and I met them downtown. Our goal was to ride the cable car, but that turned out to be the one thing we didn’t do, because the line was way too long both at the Market St. end and at the wharf end.
We met at 4th and Mission, and walked through the Bloomingdale’s mall to Market St. When we saw the cable car wasn’t going to be feasible, we took the historical streetcar to near the foot of Market St. and admired some giant Christmas ornaments inside and outside of what is possibly 101 California St.
We went to the Ferry Building and poked around—Julie bought us each a cupcake at Miette—and then had lunch at Fuzio in one of the Embarcadero Centers, a pasta restaurant where fresh-squeezed lemonade can be had. We took the bus to Pier 39 and looked at the water and the boats and the sea lions. I discovered, with regret, that San Francisco has a Hooters restaurant; it’s near there somewhere.
We went to Starbucks and had caffeinated libations and ate our cupcakes. Diane told us a funny story about, years ago, moving heaven and earth to get to New York, I believe it was, to join Julie and a friend for the opera. Diane and her sister were so exhausted, they ended up falling asleep at the opera and snoring.
By this time, it was dark. We took a cab to Chinatown, passing Coit Tower, which was glowing with beautiful red lights, and walked around Chinatown, including up an enormous hill. Then we took the 30 Stockton bus back to 4th and Mission, where we began, and walked through Yerba Buena Gardens, by the huge fountain, and admired another burning-red lit-up building, the Museum of Modern Art.
We ended up at the Thirsty Bear, where Sarah was working, and Julie treated us to snacks there. Then Tom and I took a cab home, dropping Julie and Diane near their parking garage on the way.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
WWAJD?*
*What Would Angelina Jolie Do?
I’ve seen my dentist nine times lately, give or take, in the course of having a tooth crowned. Because the one crown I already had, from many years ago, looks really terrible—fortunately, it’s toward the back—I wanted to make sure the new crown, which is much closer to the front, would be pleasing to the eye.
My dentist (the same one I’ve had the entire time I’ve been in San Francisco; I’m very fond of him) assured me that since the new crown would be quite visible, aesthetics would be paramount, so I was quite chagrined to see that the new crown's color didn't match that of neighboring teeth particularly well and that it featured a faint gray line near my gums, which I knew would only get worse—it’s not like my gums cover more of my teeth with each passing year.
When you get a crown, they start by taking a mold of your teeth, and then reducing the tooth under treatment, in a matter of moments, to a horrid-looking little brown stump. A temporary crown is made on the spot to protect the stump's shrieking nerve endings while the real crown is constructed.
My temporary crown looked fantastic, so I stopped worrying about what the real crown would look like and was all the more surprised when it looked not so good. It turns out that the mold used to construct the temporary crown does not figure in the creation of the permanent item. Instead, they use a generic tooth for whichever position it is—front tooth, canine, molar.
I was hoping that maybe when I put my night guard in and clenched my teeth together as tightly as possible all night, as is my habit, it might push the crown up just enough to cover that line, but it turned out that I couldn’t put my night guard in at all—it didn’t fit over the crown.
I made an appointment to have my night guard adjusted (in the end, we're having to make a whole new night guard), and then I got to wondering why Angelina Jolie doesn’t have gray lines near her gums. When I got to my dentist’s office, I asked, “If I were Angelina Jolie and my teeth absolutely had to look perfect and I had a million dollars to spend, what would they do?”
He said she would probably get an all-porcelain crown, which would look very nice, but not be all that durable. Mentioning Angelina Jolie must have impressed upon him how deadly serious I am about my teeth, and he said he’d send the crown back and try to get the color adjusted and the gray line fixed.
First he had to get it off again. It didn’t budge right away, so he softened up a sticky, squishy piece of sweetened gunk that mimics the kind of thing you’re not supposed to eat if you have crowns and had me bite down on it with the crowned tooth.
He said that when I snapped open my jaw, the crown would come off. I said, “Either that or it will pull the opposite tooth right out of my head.” He said that if the opposite tooth was also crowned, yes, it could be tricky, though if the opposite crown was permanently cemented down, the one with the temporary cement should be the one to come loose.
“Hopefully,” I said.
“Hopefully,” he agreed, with a merry laugh.
The tech redid my crown and it still didn't look great, so we started again from the ground up and now it looks perfect. The color is just right and there is no gray line at the gum line whatsoever. I would defy anyone to identify which tooth has the crown, at least until my gums recede further.
It looks so good, I think I'll probably have the rest of my teeth crowned.
I’ve seen my dentist nine times lately, give or take, in the course of having a tooth crowned. Because the one crown I already had, from many years ago, looks really terrible—fortunately, it’s toward the back—I wanted to make sure the new crown, which is much closer to the front, would be pleasing to the eye.
My dentist (the same one I’ve had the entire time I’ve been in San Francisco; I’m very fond of him) assured me that since the new crown would be quite visible, aesthetics would be paramount, so I was quite chagrined to see that the new crown's color didn't match that of neighboring teeth particularly well and that it featured a faint gray line near my gums, which I knew would only get worse—it’s not like my gums cover more of my teeth with each passing year.
When you get a crown, they start by taking a mold of your teeth, and then reducing the tooth under treatment, in a matter of moments, to a horrid-looking little brown stump. A temporary crown is made on the spot to protect the stump's shrieking nerve endings while the real crown is constructed.
My temporary crown looked fantastic, so I stopped worrying about what the real crown would look like and was all the more surprised when it looked not so good. It turns out that the mold used to construct the temporary crown does not figure in the creation of the permanent item. Instead, they use a generic tooth for whichever position it is—front tooth, canine, molar.
I was hoping that maybe when I put my night guard in and clenched my teeth together as tightly as possible all night, as is my habit, it might push the crown up just enough to cover that line, but it turned out that I couldn’t put my night guard in at all—it didn’t fit over the crown.
I made an appointment to have my night guard adjusted (in the end, we're having to make a whole new night guard), and then I got to wondering why Angelina Jolie doesn’t have gray lines near her gums. When I got to my dentist’s office, I asked, “If I were Angelina Jolie and my teeth absolutely had to look perfect and I had a million dollars to spend, what would they do?”
He said she would probably get an all-porcelain crown, which would look very nice, but not be all that durable. Mentioning Angelina Jolie must have impressed upon him how deadly serious I am about my teeth, and he said he’d send the crown back and try to get the color adjusted and the gray line fixed.
First he had to get it off again. It didn’t budge right away, so he softened up a sticky, squishy piece of sweetened gunk that mimics the kind of thing you’re not supposed to eat if you have crowns and had me bite down on it with the crowned tooth.
He said that when I snapped open my jaw, the crown would come off. I said, “Either that or it will pull the opposite tooth right out of my head.” He said that if the opposite tooth was also crowned, yes, it could be tricky, though if the opposite crown was permanently cemented down, the one with the temporary cement should be the one to come loose.
“Hopefully,” I said.
“Hopefully,” he agreed, with a merry laugh.
The tech redid my crown and it still didn't look great, so we started again from the ground up and now it looks perfect. The color is just right and there is no gray line at the gum line whatsoever. I would defy anyone to identify which tooth has the crown, at least until my gums recede further.
It looks so good, I think I'll probably have the rest of my teeth crowned.
Screw You, Orbitz, I’m Moving to Fallon, Nevada
I went to Michigan for Thanksgiving again this year. The weather was fairly gloomy all week and my back was killing me the first several evenings, thanks to Orbitz (I booked ten weeks in advance and cheerfully paid more than a month's rent to make sure I’d have an aisle seat; in the actual event, I was mashed into a window seat next to a fellow who actually touched my ribcage with his elbow more than once, not meaning any harm), but it was nice to see my parents and sister. We went through my father’s stash of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books from the 1940s and 50s and divided them up.
Last year, by the time my parents got done preparing Thanksgiving dinner, nearly every possible flat surface was covered with dirty pots and utensils, even the washing machine in the back hall. I stayed up until about 3 a.m. washing the dishes so my father would walk into a perfectly clean kitchen the next morning.
I planned to do the same this year, but my father made a point of washing everything as he went along, so the kitchen was nearly sparkling clean when we sat down to our vegetarian Thanksgiving feast, and I know he did that so I wouldn’t wash dishes for hours, so thank you, Dad. He got up at 3 a.m. himself to make this all happen.
I have been lately enjoying going to iTunes and sampling different versions of jazz standards. I got Monica Mancini singing “When October Goes.” I’d never heard of her, but that was the one that gave me goose bumps, and then there’s Etta James singing “Tenderly”—wow! Gorgeous. I’m going to buy a couple of her CDs. She once weighed more than 400 pounds: awesome. She's still alive. I should send her a fan letter. I got the Al Hirt version of “Tenderly,” too. I like his jaunty trumpet playing.
I also got a few Jonatha Brooke songs, including two lovely things from The Works, her CD that uses Woody Guthrie’s lyrics, and I got Queensrÿche's "Revolution Calling."
My magical chiming clock has granted me the ability to start doing something I’ve long wanted to do but which seemed impossible: to get up before the moment of absolute necessity and meditate in the morning. I feel noticeably calmer during the day if I meditate first thing, and it’s great not to have yet another task waiting when my bed is calling to me in the evening; its murmured "Come back!" starts the moment I arise, and reaches a deafening volume by nighttime.
Now it's perfectly easy to get up at 6:30 a.m.—thanks, clock!
Eugene Cash now and then puts out a stack of free books with the other literature at his Sunday night sitting group. I confess I kind of thought they would be worth what I paid for them—nothing—but I’ve been enjoying them. I just finished Meditations, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, which is a collection of dharma talks, and thought it was excellent and inspirational. You can download the whole thing at www.accesstoinsight.org, along with lots of other stuff from this and other authors. I went there and printed out the four talks I liked most from this book so I can reread them without having the whole book lying around.
I have been to Eugene’s only a couple of times in the last several months, for whatever reason. The last time I was there, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s son, Will, was teaching. He started his dharma talk, after we meditated, by asking, “What’s happening now?” Then he was silent for several anxiety-producing moments. “What’s happening now?” he asked again. More silence. More anxiety. “And now?”
After a few minutes of this, the anxiety ebbed and it became very restful: Oh! That’s all there is to do, to notice what’s happening now. The peaceful effect of this lingered for days.
I am lately reading The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century, by Steven Watts. I was complaining to my mother about someone having bent my ear with something boring, and she asked, “Is that anything like your telling me something about Henry Ford every ten minutes?” “No,” I explained, “it’s nothing at all like that, because facts about Henry Ford are inherently interesting.”
For instance, did you know Henry Ford was dyslexic? Or how about this? “Socialists such as Vladimir Lenin admired Ford as one of the major contributors to twentieth-century revolution, and it was not unusual to see portraits of Ford and Lenin hanging side by side in Soviet factories.”
Or then: “He has gained a reputation, of course, as the American pioneer of industrial mass production, but a less appreciated role was, perhaps, even more critical. Coming to prominence amid the collapse of Victorian tradition with its values of self-discipline, thrift, and producerism, Ford popularized a new creed of consumer self-fulfillment. He was perhaps the first American businessman to realize that large-scale production depended on large-scale consumption.”
The Model T went into mass production in the fall of 1908, and in just one hundred years, with its descendents, wrecked what had been peacefully sitting here for 4.5 BILLION YEARS (give or take)! Doesn’t that boggle the mind? Not that I blame Henry Ford himself. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. I’m quite a fan of Bill Ford.
Nonetheless, the car polluted our air, water, soil and food; the oil to fuel it we now kill each other to possess. Automobiles made it so people could live far from their jobs—working in cities they don’t care about because they don’t live there, living in communities they likewise don’t care about because they spend so little time there, speeding daily through bland wastelands their eyes never consciously rest on.
Whereas it once was likely that you’d live with or near your extended family all your life, when it became standard for most folks to have a car, it was easy to say, “Screw you, I’m moving to Salt Lake City,” and never be seen again.
In sum, the car destroyed our natural environment, our landscape, our cities, our suburbs (after making possible their creation), and our family units. Without the car, we wouldn’t have the exact same chain businesses in town after town after charmless town.
Today Tom and Sarah made a run to Costco, dropping me off at Rainbow beforehand and picking me up afterwards. I made two-bean chili and listened to the second Nazz album, Todd Rundgren’s first band. The first Nazz album has a few nice moments; the second has considerably more. You can hear Todd becoming Todd. “Hello It’s Me,” one of his biggest hits, can be heard in its first incarnation on a Nazz album.
Tonight, conscientiously seeking to remain culturally literate, I watched High School Musical.
The elbow that got clobbered in my bike accident at the end of July has lately started to hurt again, so I went to see Jeff, who said adhesions had formed. He treated my elbow with the means at his disposal (acupuncture, moxibustion, a bit of massage), and then I went to see Jack, who agreed about the adhesions and worked on them, which was quite painful, but when I saw Jeff again last night, he said things were improving, and I agree.
Between them, those two can fix just about anything short of being backed over by a UPS truck.
Last year, by the time my parents got done preparing Thanksgiving dinner, nearly every possible flat surface was covered with dirty pots and utensils, even the washing machine in the back hall. I stayed up until about 3 a.m. washing the dishes so my father would walk into a perfectly clean kitchen the next morning.
I planned to do the same this year, but my father made a point of washing everything as he went along, so the kitchen was nearly sparkling clean when we sat down to our vegetarian Thanksgiving feast, and I know he did that so I wouldn’t wash dishes for hours, so thank you, Dad. He got up at 3 a.m. himself to make this all happen.
I have been lately enjoying going to iTunes and sampling different versions of jazz standards. I got Monica Mancini singing “When October Goes.” I’d never heard of her, but that was the one that gave me goose bumps, and then there’s Etta James singing “Tenderly”—wow! Gorgeous. I’m going to buy a couple of her CDs. She once weighed more than 400 pounds: awesome. She's still alive. I should send her a fan letter. I got the Al Hirt version of “Tenderly,” too. I like his jaunty trumpet playing.
I also got a few Jonatha Brooke songs, including two lovely things from The Works, her CD that uses Woody Guthrie’s lyrics, and I got Queensrÿche's "Revolution Calling."
My magical chiming clock has granted me the ability to start doing something I’ve long wanted to do but which seemed impossible: to get up before the moment of absolute necessity and meditate in the morning. I feel noticeably calmer during the day if I meditate first thing, and it’s great not to have yet another task waiting when my bed is calling to me in the evening; its murmured "Come back!" starts the moment I arise, and reaches a deafening volume by nighttime.
Now it's perfectly easy to get up at 6:30 a.m.—thanks, clock!
Eugene Cash now and then puts out a stack of free books with the other literature at his Sunday night sitting group. I confess I kind of thought they would be worth what I paid for them—nothing—but I’ve been enjoying them. I just finished Meditations, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, which is a collection of dharma talks, and thought it was excellent and inspirational. You can download the whole thing at www.accesstoinsight.org, along with lots of other stuff from this and other authors. I went there and printed out the four talks I liked most from this book so I can reread them without having the whole book lying around.
I have been to Eugene’s only a couple of times in the last several months, for whatever reason. The last time I was there, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s son, Will, was teaching. He started his dharma talk, after we meditated, by asking, “What’s happening now?” Then he was silent for several anxiety-producing moments. “What’s happening now?” he asked again. More silence. More anxiety. “And now?”
After a few minutes of this, the anxiety ebbed and it became very restful: Oh! That’s all there is to do, to notice what’s happening now. The peaceful effect of this lingered for days.
I am lately reading The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century, by Steven Watts. I was complaining to my mother about someone having bent my ear with something boring, and she asked, “Is that anything like your telling me something about Henry Ford every ten minutes?” “No,” I explained, “it’s nothing at all like that, because facts about Henry Ford are inherently interesting.”
For instance, did you know Henry Ford was dyslexic? Or how about this? “Socialists such as Vladimir Lenin admired Ford as one of the major contributors to twentieth-century revolution, and it was not unusual to see portraits of Ford and Lenin hanging side by side in Soviet factories.”
Or then: “He has gained a reputation, of course, as the American pioneer of industrial mass production, but a less appreciated role was, perhaps, even more critical. Coming to prominence amid the collapse of Victorian tradition with its values of self-discipline, thrift, and producerism, Ford popularized a new creed of consumer self-fulfillment. He was perhaps the first American businessman to realize that large-scale production depended on large-scale consumption.”
The Model T went into mass production in the fall of 1908, and in just one hundred years, with its descendents, wrecked what had been peacefully sitting here for 4.5 BILLION YEARS (give or take)! Doesn’t that boggle the mind? Not that I blame Henry Ford himself. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. I’m quite a fan of Bill Ford.
Nonetheless, the car polluted our air, water, soil and food; the oil to fuel it we now kill each other to possess. Automobiles made it so people could live far from their jobs—working in cities they don’t care about because they don’t live there, living in communities they likewise don’t care about because they spend so little time there, speeding daily through bland wastelands their eyes never consciously rest on.
Whereas it once was likely that you’d live with or near your extended family all your life, when it became standard for most folks to have a car, it was easy to say, “Screw you, I’m moving to Salt Lake City,” and never be seen again.
In sum, the car destroyed our natural environment, our landscape, our cities, our suburbs (after making possible their creation), and our family units. Without the car, we wouldn’t have the exact same chain businesses in town after town after charmless town.
Today Tom and Sarah made a run to Costco, dropping me off at Rainbow beforehand and picking me up afterwards. I made two-bean chili and listened to the second Nazz album, Todd Rundgren’s first band. The first Nazz album has a few nice moments; the second has considerably more. You can hear Todd becoming Todd. “Hello It’s Me,” one of his biggest hits, can be heard in its first incarnation on a Nazz album.
Tonight, conscientiously seeking to remain culturally literate, I watched High School Musical.
The elbow that got clobbered in my bike accident at the end of July has lately started to hurt again, so I went to see Jeff, who said adhesions had formed. He treated my elbow with the means at his disposal (acupuncture, moxibustion, a bit of massage), and then I went to see Jack, who agreed about the adhesions and worked on them, which was quite painful, but when I saw Jeff again last night, he said things were improving, and I agree.
Between them, those two can fix just about anything short of being backed over by a UPS truck.
You Say “Walkway,” I Say “Gap”
I did survive that bout of what I guess was food poisoning due to eating garlic in oil that had been left (by me) out of the refrigerator for a week. Live and learn.
And I did move back to the crappy cube, slightly improved by the addition of a filing cabinet to block the gap that leads to the next cube. One of the people who sits near me informed me that I needed to move this filing cabinet because it’s blocking a “walkway.”
I told him the Cube Lady had said to put it there, and that was the end of that. Don't even start with me on this.
As for the loud eating guy, he’s working from home two days a week, which does help. I think it's not actually when he eats per se; it's that when he eats hard candy or cough drops, he makes quite a tremendous slurping sound. A few days ago he was doing this, and I saw, with displeasure, that he had a whole bag of cough drops sitting on his desk.
But I had made up my mind—I mean, what a ridiculous little problem—to learn to live with it, so when he started up—and he has been known to do this for hours on end—I told myself, "It's just a sound." And then I told myself again, "It's just a sound."
And then I went over to him and said something like, "That’s the sound I'm talking about," and he said, "I'm having a cough drop," and I said, "Yes, I know you are. I can hear it. We can all hear it." And that was certainly extremely rude on my part. I mean, I wouldn't have said that to my grandmother, for instance, or my father.
(Of course, none of my relatives would ever make a sound like that to begin with.)
Then I got to thinking about the first of the Twelve Steps: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable, or something like that (today is my 29th sobriety birthday; you’d think the Twelve Steps would be etched, word for word, in my brain by now).
People in Alcoholics Anonymous use this to mean exactly what it says, people in Al-Anon use the exact same wording to express the inability to cure or control someone else’s problems with alcohol, and it can also be applied to pretty much anything: I’m powerless over slurping noises and I’m powerless over gril—all kinds of things.
Part of my problem is that the list of things I think I’m truly powerless over is extremely short. As I think I’ve said before, if it’s something I can achieve without the use of a firearm, then I’m not powerless over it, or so I have tended to think.
It seems to me that making a slurping sound is optional, not required or inevitable. Since it's an optional behavior on his part and it annoys me extremely, shouldn't he stop?
What I realized was that I'd better try to ACT AS IF I'm a person who's not bothered by this kind of thing, because I AM (actually) POWERLESS over his behavior, even if it seems like something I shouldn't be powerless over, because it is something he could easily stop doing.
I must admit that nagging him to change the behavior is not working. It's probably making him angry and upset, and it certainly is me.
So I have to pretend that this is something he is powerless to change, even though I really don’t think that. I have to pretend he has some disease that causes a revolting slurping noise.
A couple of days after I was thinking about this, I read something about the Serenity Prayer and how to interpret it. The Serenity Prayer is “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I guess I’m sorely lacking in that last.
The person who was writing came to think of the things she could change as the things God would WANT her to change. I don’t believe in God, but that did strike me as a useful way to think about it. If there were a God, She probably wouldn’t direct me to pester my co-worker until we end up in a fistfight. She would probably say, “Here is a golden opportunity to practice being with things as they are.”
Not long after this, I realized that the other guy who sits across from me, the one who spends the first four hours of each day reading the newspaper from cover to cover, spends the latter four hours of each day looking at scantily clad young ladies online. It’s not pornography per se, but I feel quite sure is equally discouraged by company policy.
I’m not sure what to do about that, if anything. I do believe that is absolutely not appropriate for the workplace. Yet, if I put my mind to it, I should be able to avert my gaze from his monitor the 20 times per day that I pass by. It is a clue that I think it SHOULD NOT be happening. Many of my most grievous self-inflicted problems begin with the thought that this or that SHOULD NOT be happening.
Nonetheless, I may convey to him that he is not in a private location and that it would be nice if he saved the R-rated research for when he's not at work. I've only heard of three people being fired from the company I work for in the ten years I've worked there, one for frequenting sexually oriented websites, and another for making off-color remarks to women in his group (I met that guy; he followed me all the way to and into Walgreens one day, and commented on everything I was buying: "Mineral oil! Huh! What are you going to do with that?").
(I suppose you want to know about the third guy. I can't go into the details of that one, except to say I'm really sorry he's gone, because he was in my group and now I have a lot more work to do!)
And I did move back to the crappy cube, slightly improved by the addition of a filing cabinet to block the gap that leads to the next cube. One of the people who sits near me informed me that I needed to move this filing cabinet because it’s blocking a “walkway.”
I told him the Cube Lady had said to put it there, and that was the end of that. Don't even start with me on this.
As for the loud eating guy, he’s working from home two days a week, which does help. I think it's not actually when he eats per se; it's that when he eats hard candy or cough drops, he makes quite a tremendous slurping sound. A few days ago he was doing this, and I saw, with displeasure, that he had a whole bag of cough drops sitting on his desk.
But I had made up my mind—I mean, what a ridiculous little problem—to learn to live with it, so when he started up—and he has been known to do this for hours on end—I told myself, "It's just a sound." And then I told myself again, "It's just a sound."
And then I went over to him and said something like, "That’s the sound I'm talking about," and he said, "I'm having a cough drop," and I said, "Yes, I know you are. I can hear it. We can all hear it." And that was certainly extremely rude on my part. I mean, I wouldn't have said that to my grandmother, for instance, or my father.
(Of course, none of my relatives would ever make a sound like that to begin with.)
Then I got to thinking about the first of the Twelve Steps: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable, or something like that (today is my 29th sobriety birthday; you’d think the Twelve Steps would be etched, word for word, in my brain by now).
People in Alcoholics Anonymous use this to mean exactly what it says, people in Al-Anon use the exact same wording to express the inability to cure or control someone else’s problems with alcohol, and it can also be applied to pretty much anything: I’m powerless over slurping noises and I’m powerless over gril—all kinds of things.
Part of my problem is that the list of things I think I’m truly powerless over is extremely short. As I think I’ve said before, if it’s something I can achieve without the use of a firearm, then I’m not powerless over it, or so I have tended to think.
It seems to me that making a slurping sound is optional, not required or inevitable. Since it's an optional behavior on his part and it annoys me extremely, shouldn't he stop?
What I realized was that I'd better try to ACT AS IF I'm a person who's not bothered by this kind of thing, because I AM (actually) POWERLESS over his behavior, even if it seems like something I shouldn't be powerless over, because it is something he could easily stop doing.
I must admit that nagging him to change the behavior is not working. It's probably making him angry and upset, and it certainly is me.
So I have to pretend that this is something he is powerless to change, even though I really don’t think that. I have to pretend he has some disease that causes a revolting slurping noise.
A couple of days after I was thinking about this, I read something about the Serenity Prayer and how to interpret it. The Serenity Prayer is “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I guess I’m sorely lacking in that last.
The person who was writing came to think of the things she could change as the things God would WANT her to change. I don’t believe in God, but that did strike me as a useful way to think about it. If there were a God, She probably wouldn’t direct me to pester my co-worker until we end up in a fistfight. She would probably say, “Here is a golden opportunity to practice being with things as they are.”
Not long after this, I realized that the other guy who sits across from me, the one who spends the first four hours of each day reading the newspaper from cover to cover, spends the latter four hours of each day looking at scantily clad young ladies online. It’s not pornography per se, but I feel quite sure is equally discouraged by company policy.
I’m not sure what to do about that, if anything. I do believe that is absolutely not appropriate for the workplace. Yet, if I put my mind to it, I should be able to avert my gaze from his monitor the 20 times per day that I pass by. It is a clue that I think it SHOULD NOT be happening. Many of my most grievous self-inflicted problems begin with the thought that this or that SHOULD NOT be happening.
Nonetheless, I may convey to him that he is not in a private location and that it would be nice if he saved the R-rated research for when he's not at work. I've only heard of three people being fired from the company I work for in the ten years I've worked there, one for frequenting sexually oriented websites, and another for making off-color remarks to women in his group (I met that guy; he followed me all the way to and into Walgreens one day, and commented on everything I was buying: "Mineral oil! Huh! What are you going to do with that?").
(I suppose you want to know about the third guy. I can't go into the details of that one, except to say I'm really sorry he's gone, because he was in my group and now I have a lot more work to do!)
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
In the Interest of Full Disclosure
I need to clarify that one (or more) of my last posts was ridden with exaggerations, speculation and confounding conflations, as follows: The Cube Lady didn’t necessarily tell the other group to move their stuff immediately. I have no idea what she said to them, because I wasn’t there. She sent me an email saying she had asked them to move their stuff, that’s all. It just gave me pleasure to think of her saying, “Move this stuff immediately!” so I reported it accordingly. (Maybe she did say that.)
And I have no idea if she used her foot to draw a line showing them where my territory extends to, but she did do that when she and I were in the cube, so she COULD have done that with the other group. She may actually have, because they moved everything to the other side of that line. But who knows?
And the other group wasn’t necessarily not speaking to me. To be perfectly accurate, if I must, one person who is usually very friendly, but who is also moody, answered a question of mine with one syllable or two right after they had to move their stuff, so I’m pretty sure he was ticked off. And another person in that group who is also moody, as it happens, did a similar thing.
But the person who by rights should have been most annoyed was actually joking around with me today, and I think the two others will probably come around in due time, so it’s not as bad as reported. (My mother is smirking right now. That’s OK. I like for my mother to be able to enjoy a smirk or two at my expense.)
I made a salad dressing Lisa recommended a week or so ago, and left it sitting on the counter until yesterday. It seemed to me it shouldn’t require refrigeration, but maybe it did, since it had a bit of fresh garlic juice in it.
I had some yesterday and it was really wonderful, and I sent Lisa and David an email saying how much I liked it, and then about two minutes later (or 30 or 60 or maybe it was two hours, but I think it was actually pretty soon), I got a hideous pain in my stomach that persisted all night, segueing this morning into intermittent nausea.
I poured the rest of the salad dressing down the drain this morning, and when I opened the lid, there was a distinct uptick in abdominal distress, as if my body was saying, “That’s the stuff! That’s the stuff!” So I think maybe I should have refrigerated it.
I would have stayed in bed, BUT: I HAD to go to the dentist, for about the seventh time in the past two months, and it was really a particularly bad week for missing a day of work. I’m on call, I am extremely busy with other projects, AND I have to move to the other cube this week.
My KQED Perspective was slated to be on this morning, and I realized I would miss it myself, because I would be on the bus, which was kind of disappointing. I told Tom and he kindly lent me his Walkman, which has a radio in it.
What ended up happening was that I took a cab up to my dentist’s office, an extravagance to be sure, but I wanted to stay in bed until the last possible moment. The reception on Tom’s Walkman turned out to be poor, so I asked the cab driver if we could just sit outside the dental office for an extra ten minutes until my thing was on, and if he’d be kind enough to change the radio to 88.5, which he did, so I got to hear it.
(By the way, the cab driver looked like an Italian Mads Mikkelsen, so that was a particularly good cab driver to sit with for ten minutes. He had nice smile lines around his eyes, too.)
When I got to work, there was a nice note from Bert H. about it, and from Tom’s mother, Ann. That was very sweet.
I stayed at work for an hour or so, but then was overwhelmed with nausea again, so I came home and went back to bed and slept for eight hours. I have not had a single bite to eat today and have no appetite at all. This was my last vacation day for the year, so I hope I feel better tomorrow.
I could take an unpaid day off and wouldn’t mind doing that, but the movers are coming tomorrow, so I just have to get there.
And I have no idea if she used her foot to draw a line showing them where my territory extends to, but she did do that when she and I were in the cube, so she COULD have done that with the other group. She may actually have, because they moved everything to the other side of that line. But who knows?
And the other group wasn’t necessarily not speaking to me. To be perfectly accurate, if I must, one person who is usually very friendly, but who is also moody, answered a question of mine with one syllable or two right after they had to move their stuff, so I’m pretty sure he was ticked off. And another person in that group who is also moody, as it happens, did a similar thing.
But the person who by rights should have been most annoyed was actually joking around with me today, and I think the two others will probably come around in due time, so it’s not as bad as reported. (My mother is smirking right now. That’s OK. I like for my mother to be able to enjoy a smirk or two at my expense.)
I made a salad dressing Lisa recommended a week or so ago, and left it sitting on the counter until yesterday. It seemed to me it shouldn’t require refrigeration, but maybe it did, since it had a bit of fresh garlic juice in it.
I had some yesterday and it was really wonderful, and I sent Lisa and David an email saying how much I liked it, and then about two minutes later (or 30 or 60 or maybe it was two hours, but I think it was actually pretty soon), I got a hideous pain in my stomach that persisted all night, segueing this morning into intermittent nausea.
I poured the rest of the salad dressing down the drain this morning, and when I opened the lid, there was a distinct uptick in abdominal distress, as if my body was saying, “That’s the stuff! That’s the stuff!” So I think maybe I should have refrigerated it.
I would have stayed in bed, BUT: I HAD to go to the dentist, for about the seventh time in the past two months, and it was really a particularly bad week for missing a day of work. I’m on call, I am extremely busy with other projects, AND I have to move to the other cube this week.
My KQED Perspective was slated to be on this morning, and I realized I would miss it myself, because I would be on the bus, which was kind of disappointing. I told Tom and he kindly lent me his Walkman, which has a radio in it.
What ended up happening was that I took a cab up to my dentist’s office, an extravagance to be sure, but I wanted to stay in bed until the last possible moment. The reception on Tom’s Walkman turned out to be poor, so I asked the cab driver if we could just sit outside the dental office for an extra ten minutes until my thing was on, and if he’d be kind enough to change the radio to 88.5, which he did, so I got to hear it.
(By the way, the cab driver looked like an Italian Mads Mikkelsen, so that was a particularly good cab driver to sit with for ten minutes. He had nice smile lines around his eyes, too.)
When I got to work, there was a nice note from Bert H. about it, and from Tom’s mother, Ann. That was very sweet.
I stayed at work for an hour or so, but then was overwhelmed with nausea again, so I came home and went back to bed and slept for eight hours. I have not had a single bite to eat today and have no appetite at all. This was my last vacation day for the year, so I hope I feel better tomorrow.
I could take an unpaid day off and wouldn’t mind doing that, but the movers are coming tomorrow, so I just have to get there.
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