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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I dress myself

I_dress_myself


I DRESS MYSELF is the slogan on the front of a t-shirt my friend Apollonia recently gave me. It features a picture of little Ralphie Wiggum from “The Simpsons,” wearing his bright-red pajamas upside down. “It made me think of you, babe,” she grinned evilly as she gave it to me.

 

 

Most of my friends think that, um, I don't dress well. Last week, I was wearing a lilac shirt with a nice purple sweater, and I thought I looked lovely. Apollonia called me “Purple Boy,” and later, “Eggplant.”

 

 

And stylewise: for me, it's like Edina said to Saffy on “Absolutely Fabulous”: “Darling, that blouse would look wonderful on anyone else in the world! Why does it look so terrible on you?”

 

 

My mother never trusted me to dress myself; she dressed me, and chose my clothes for me, for an embarrassingly long time. I never really learned colors, or style. And now I am the zhlub you see before you.

 

 

Partner knew this when he married me. When he gives me clothes as gifts, he doesn't just give me one thing, but two, like a matched shirt and sweater. The message is: wear these together. “But maroon and green don't go together!” I squeaked last birthday.

 

 

“Just do it,” he said. “It'll look nice.”

 

 

He was right, of course. He has a much more precise sense of style than I do, and a better sense of color.

 

 

(But I forget sometimes.)

 

 

Here's what I know of fashion:

 

 

  • I like cashmere. It's soft and nice. But it's bloody expensive.


  • Black makes me look like a seventeenth-century Lutheran clergyman. And sometimes I like to look like a seventeenth-century Lutheran clergyman.

 

  • A Facebook friend of mine told me that my profile pic made me look like the president of an obscure Eastern European country. I was so absurdly pleased by this.


  • I favor shirts in Easter-egg colors, but (strangely) most of the people around me think they look odd.


  • I also favor bright solid colors. Why not?

     

 

I had lunch with my friend Patricia last Christmastime. I walked into the restaurant wearing an orange shirt with a brown sweater, and as soon as she saw me, she hollered, “Happy Halloween!”

 

 

I give up.

 

 

From now on, I buy only clothes in blue, gray, and black.

 

 

And maybe lavender. And teal. And magenta.

 


 

Monday, May 30, 2011

Memorial Day blog: Great-Uncle Dewey

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On the north bank of the Columbia River, not far from Goldendale, there is a strange monument: a replica of Stonehenge, built to represent what the English version might looked like when it was new, with all the stones upright and intact.

 

It was created by eccentric railroad tycoon Sam Hill (about whom I will tell you some other time), to commemorate the war dead of Klickitat County.

 

 

Among whom was my great-uncle Dewey Valley Bromley.

 

 

Dewey died in April 1918, only a few months before the end of the war. My grandmother, his sister, wrote that he never set foot in Europe; he died on the troop ship while crossing the Atlantic, presumably of pneumonia, and was buried in France. He was not yet twenty years old.

 

 

Imagine: a farm boy born in rural Washington, coughing himself to death on a crowded ship, and buried thousands of miles away from the country he knew. He never even got to fight in the war he'd enlisted for.

 

 

And now his name is written on a plaque and affixed to a concrete slab overlooking the grandiose cliffs of the Columbia Gorge.

 

 

The whole story makes me ponder furiously on the future of the human race, and what the hell we're doing here.

 

 

Which is probably exactly what we should be thinking about on Memorial Day.

 


 

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sunday blog: "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," by Vampire Weekend

Kwassa


Partner and I are off to Cape Cod in a few days, so here's a song in our honor.

 

 

I take great pleasure in these guys.  Their videos are quirky, but if the video doesn't appeal to you, just close your eyes and listen to the song, it's delightful.  

 

 

How can you not love a lyric like: "Did you stay up / To see the dawn / In the colors / of Benetton"?

 

 

 

 


 

 

Saturday, May 28, 2011

You're gonna end up doing something else

674dog-i-dunno-lol


I rode the university shuttle the other day with a graduating senior, who'd overheard me telling someone one of my interminable Peace Corps stories. She asked me questions about my Peace Corps experience as we rode, and demonstrated considerable interest. “It's a shame,” she said. “I was actually thinking that the Peace Corps might be something I could do after graduation. But there was a guy at our career fair talking about the Peace Corps, and he was terrible! He was big and fat, and he went on and on about what a terrible time it was, and how you had to be firm, and just tell people what to do - “ She made a face. “He made it sound really unpleasant.”

 

 

I silently cursed the fat stupid man at the career fair. “No,” I said. “It's different for everyone. When I first interviewed, in Boston in 1983, the interviewer told me: 'Whatever it is you think you're going to be doing, you'll end up doing something else.' And he was right. I went over to do business consulting for fisheries cooperatives in Morocco; I ended up working in a computer center in Tunisia, translating documents and figuring out how to use pirated software. I had a wonderful time. Most of the time.” Thoughtfully I left out the occasional moments of political unrest and upheaval.

 

 

I kept thinking about this after I got off the shuttle. “Whatever it is you think you're going to be doing, you'll end up doing something else.” Isn't that the truest thing you've ever heard? That's human life, in a nutshell.

 

 

I suppose there are a few people who decide at an early age that they want to be lawyers or mimes or radiologists, and they set their sights on their goals, and they attain them. They create their own destinies, or their destinies create them, I don't know which. And good for them.

 

 

I know only that I, like most of us, have been tossed to and fro in the great river of life, and it has not been terrible. It has been, for the most part, a good time. If I hadn't gone to grad school at Brown in 1978, I wouldn't have ended up in Providence, and I wouldn't have met Partner in 1995, and that would never do.

 

 

I respect the people who swim purposefully down the river of life, headed in their own karmic directions. But I'm happy floating on my beach raft, with my umbrella and book and coconut-shell cocktail, letting the current take me where it will.

 

 

Probably down the waterfall, eventually.

 

 

But hey! As Peter Pan said: “Probably Death will be an awfully big adventure.”

 


 

 

Friday, May 27, 2011

Sleep medication

Butterfly


Apollonia was all haggard and red-eyed the other day. “Up late casting evil spells?” I said.

 

 

She swatted at me, then slumped into herself and sighed. “I was reading in bed,” she said. “I finished one book. Then I couldn't sleep.”

 

 

“You overexcited yourself,” I said. “Last night I was reading 'A History of the Monks of Syria.' I conked out almost immediately. Did you know Saint Euphronius lived in a treetrunk?”

 

 

“Anyway,” Apollonia said, disregarding me, “I had another – um – story I wanted to read on my iPad, so I read that. [Editor's note: no doubt some piece of trashy “Twilight” fan fiction. And, by “read,” she probably meant “write.”] Then I was really awake. Then I started thinking about work. Then I looked at the clock, and it was 2:00 am. So -”

 

 

“Three words, babe,” I said. “Am. Bi. En. I take it. Everyone takes it. Take a ride on the big green butterfly, babe.”

 

 

Pills,” she said with alarm.

 

 

Pills,” I said mockingly. “Better living through chemistry. Enter the new millennium, grandma.”

 

 

For decades, like poor Apollonia, I used to lie awake and stare at the ceiling. Every noise kept me awake. Reading in bed helped a little, but not much. If the room was too warm, or too cold, or too stuffy, or too drafty, I couldn't sleep. For a while in the 1990s I had an apartment with old-fashioned steam radiators that went KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK all night, and believe me, that will keep you awake.

 

 

Then I discovered the Big Green Butterfly. (Oh, wait, I just remembered.  That's Lunesta, not Ambien. But let's go with the image anyway. It's so pretty.)

 

 

God bless my general practitioner, skinny little Doctor M., who first prescribed Ambien for me.

 

 

Some people report “sleep-eating” when they take Ambien: they go into a somnambulistic trance, go to the kitchen, eat everything in sight, go back to bed, and wake up to a sink full of dirty dishes. I have never had this happen. (So far as I know.)

 

 

It does blank out your memory, though. Partner tells me that, when I take it, I have entire conversations with him which I forget by morning. (Partner also takes rides on the Green Butterfly, however, so he has been known to say odd things before bedtime himself.)

 

 

Bedtime's drawing near as I write this.

 

 

Hear that fluttering? The pretty butterfly is entering our airspace.

 

 

Nighty-night.

 


 

 

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Arnold and Maria Schwarzenegger-Shriver

Ahnoldbaby


By now, everyone living in this part of the Milky Way Galaxy has heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger's child-out-of-wedlock.

 

 

Me, I'm big on Schadenfreude. When I see a Republican – the enemy! - make a big goof, I'm all over it, tongue lolling out of my mouth, gibbering with glee. I love seeing Republicans make fools of themselves.

 

 

And why? you ask. Well, they're the Party Of Values, aren't they? They oppose the evil anarchy that is gay marriage. And legalized abortion. And all kinds of other unthinkables.

 

 

And then, we find, they have affairs, and get (many) divorces, and have babies they aren't really comfortable with acknowledging. (Remember Strom Thurmond and his black daughter?)

 

 

(I can't get over the Christmas tree in the above picture. The invocation of the Virgin Birth, and the sweet innocence of that little blond boy with a Hispanic mother, and apparently no one noticed the resemblance . . . )

 

 

Ah well.

 

 

Here's the thing: I don't really feel glad about this.

 

 

I am sorry for the little boy, who will be saddled with this story for life, and I hope he doesn't let it drag him down.

 

 

I am sorry for the poor mother, who had sex with an attractive man (well, he was sort of attractive at the time), and probably liked him, and had a little boy whom (I'm sure) she loves very much, and who is now the target of much unwanted attention.

 

 

I am sorry for Maria Shriver, who should have known better. Maria! I could have given you my copies of “Stay Hungry” and “Pumping Iron,” for God's sake!  But no. She has kids by the big Austrian goof. And she probably even really cared for him. So: fine. Let it go.  Lesson learned.

 

 

I am even sorry for Arnold. Do you remember, a few years ago, media discussions about amending the Constitution so that naturalized citizens could become President? That was all about Arnold. He was big and handsome and Republican, and he governed California during – um. Perhaps not its most glorious epoch.

 

 

Now he has become what his detractors called him: a glory hound, a bodybuilder/action star who got into politics on the basis of name recognition. (Better they should have elected Gary Coleman, don't you think?)

 

 

He didn't turn out to be a total dullard, like – ahem – Jesse Ventura. (Jesse: in future, look before you leap. On the other hand, if I'd been a Minnesota voter, I probably would have voted for you. I'm a pushover for pro wrestlers.)

 

 

Anyway: no Schadenfreude today.  Let Arnold and Maria and their whole extended mishpocheh go.

 

 

Vanity of vanities, saith the prophet, vanity of vanities; all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

 

 

Momma's tired.  Let's do Schadenfreude some other day.

 


 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Alfie Thomas and Rick Welts and Jared Max: coming out

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Gareth Thomas, whose friends call him Alfie, is a gigantic toothless Welsh rugby player who has had the guts to come out of the closet. He has become an icon in the gay/athletic community. He's done talk shows and interviews, and he's established a foundation for young people, encouraging diversity.

 

 

He is, by the way, the only professional male team athlete in the world! who has come out as gay.

 

 

Last week, Rick Welts (whom I'd never heard of but who is president of the Phoenix Suns basketball team), also came out of the closet, with some very well-chosen words about being tired of leading what he called “a shadow life.”

 

 

I was watching the sports channels while I was on the treadmill the other night, and they were all chattering about this. Is it, they wondered, because male team sports create an environment hostile to free expression of anything other than heterosexuality?

 

 

Gawrsh. I wonder.

 

 

I'm not enough of a sports buff to know the names and faces, but I clock them in when they're brave enough to out themselves:

 

 

  • Johnny Weir and Rudy Galindo, both of whom are as gay as Christmas at Bloomingdale's, but who are both brave enough to address it – and be proud of it – in a sport which is just sloppin' over with closeted gay men. (If you ever get a chance to see a replay of the “Smuckers Stars on Ice” edition of “Family Feud,” I highly recommend it. The interplay between Kurt Browning and Scott Hamilton made me giggle. And, yes, I know they're both married to women and everything. But, um – guys? Anything you'd like to tell us?)

  • John Amaechi, the very thoughtful former Utah Jazz player, who retired from pro basketball, came out of the closet, and is now a counselor.

  • Martina Navratilova, God bless her.

  • Poor sad beautiful Greg Louganis.

  • David Kopay, from back in the 1970s, who actually came out, wrote a book about it, and was written off as an aberration.


 

It will keep happening. As Rick Welts said the other night, society is changing. Slowly – perhaps more slowly in some places than others – but gradually, and always in the same direction.

 

 

And after a while it will seem beside the point. Because we are – and have always been – everywhere.

 

 

It's not like we’re popping out of the woodwork by spontaneous generation, after all. We were here all the time. We've always been here.

 

 

It took me a long time to have the guts to come out, even a little bit, to a few people. I didn't come out to members of my family until I was in my forties (coward that I am). And I still know people who haven't really come out at all.

 

 

Bless Alfie, and Rick Welts, and all the rest of them, for helping the young and timid and frightened to find their way.

 

 

(Postscript: I see that ESPN anchor Jared Max has also come out. That's three sports-related people in one week.)

 

 

(Keep comin' out, kids. I love it.)

 

 

(And we need it.)

 


 

 

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Mighty Thor

Chris-hemsworth-thor-add-20-pounds-limbs

Partner and I recently saw “Thor.” Frankly, after having seen the preview, you could not have kept me away from this movie with a pack of dogs and a taser. I mean, have you seen this Chris Hemsworth?


Actually, he's not that handsome. He's blandly handsome. He has one of those little-boy faces that looks out of place on top of a big muscular body. (Taylor Lautner has the same, um, problem.)


But, surprise surprise, Chris Hemsworth can act. He is expressive, and funny. And – well, you must know that the movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who knows from Shakespeare. The movie is staged in a split-level way: the gods up in Asgard with their riotous banquets and dramatic feuds, and the poor human beings down here in Midgard (Earth to you). Shakespeare often alternates scenes of the royals with scenes of common soldiers / mechanicals / townspeople drinking and arguing. And once in a while they come together, with great dramatic/comic effect. Just as they do here.


Hemsworth plays Thor as a natural nobleman. Thor is funny and kind and honest, because he doesn't know any other way to be. He's in a diner, eating a gigantic breakfast, and Kat Dennings (Natalie Portman's comic-relief friend) asks him to smile for a photo, and without pausing he looks into the camera and gives her the biggest cheesiest smile you've ever seen.


He is the ultimate Happy Warrior. He's not mean or bullyish; he goes into a fight with a cheerful heart, because he always knows he's fighting for the right thing. Even when he goes out to die for his friends' sake, he's smiling. (Yes, he dies for his friends. And then he comes back to life. Hmm. This story reminds me of something, but I can't think what.)


There is a brief scene in which Thor helps Natalie Portman serve breakfast to her friends. Sacrilege! all the fanboys screamed. The Mighty Thor would never serve anybody pancakes! But you know what? Of course he would. He is that perfect kind of nobleman who never reminds you that he's superior to you.


And this is my very favorite scene:


Thor's finally returned to his full Asgardian stature as God of Thunder. He towers over Natalie Portman gigantically, gripping his hammer. And she murmurs: “So this is how you normally look?” And he pauses slightly, and grins, and says, “More or less.”


And she pauses too, and grins, and says, “I like it.”


I like it too.



Monday, May 23, 2011

Little gorgeous things

Pink_jewel_flowers

In an episode of “Absolutely Fabulous,” Edina and Patsy go to New York. “Shopping, Eddie!” Patsy growls. “I'm going to do some real shopping!”


“Shopping for what?” Edina asks.


“Just – things!” Patsy replies. “Little gorgeous things!”


I recently bought an e-reader. You cannot read an e-reader in the dark, so you need a booklight. I bought a purple one, with a big garish psychedelic peace sign on it.


It is a little gorgeous thing.


Last summer, my friend Sylvia presented me with a birthday gift, which she'd bought at a RISD yard sale: a little flipbook of Chuck Close's face. “I knew when I saw this,” she said, “that you'd get a kick out of it.”


She knows I like little gorgeous things.


Apollonia, my office nemesis, has the Gorgeous Things virus too. She is the only person I know who owns a miniature vase pinned to her lapel, in which she keeps fresh flowers! I ask you! (This is not, by the way, a tussy-mussy. A tussy-mussy is something quite different.  Please do not confuse this with a tussy-mussy.)


Partner gave me, several years ago, two matching rings: one with a ruby (my birthstone) set in white diamonds and yellow gold; the other with a beautiful black diamond identically set with white diamonds and white gold. The carbonado diamond was getting dangerously loose, so I took it to my favorite jeweler in Providence last, a tall handsome jovial man in a tiny downtown shop. He prodded the diamond with interest. “What stone is this?”


“Diamond,” I said. “Black diamond.”


I saw a little quiver go through him. And I knew what it meant: he wanted my black diamond.


I left it with him for repair.


I'd better get it back.



Sunday, May 22, 2011

Sunday blog: Spring in Xinjiang

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From time to time we need a change of pace.

 

 

 

Here's an Uighur ensemble playing “Spring in Xinjiang.”

 

 

 

I like the tune, and the instruments that look like intergalactic bottle openers, and (most especially) those cunning little hats they’re all wearing.

 

 

 

 


 

 

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Rapturous

Rapture_copy


In case you haven't heard, today is the end of the world. Or at least the beginning of the end of the world.

 

 

You see, people love playing with Biblical prophecy and calendars and such, to predict the End of Days.  (Back when I was in high school, a Jehovah's Witness friend very solemnly informed me that “something big” would happen in 1978. I guess, in hindsight, he must have meant my college graduation.)

 

 

So this guy, Harold Egbert Camping, has determined that today - Saturday, May 21, 2011 - is The Day. The faithful – the truly faithful, not me and not you, obviously – will be caught up into heaven today.

 

 

I've scheduled this blog to post at 6:00 am Eastern Daylight Time, so it may already have happened.

 

 

I know three things that are probably true:


 

  • If it does happen, it probably won't happen to me. I don't think Jesus likes me very much.

  • It probably won't happen, because people can't predict it, according to the Bible!: “No man knows that hour, not even the angels in heaven – not even the Son! - but only the Father.” (And a big nyeah-nyeah! to H. E. Camping on this one.)

  • It probably won't happen at all, because it's highly unlikely to begin with.

 

 

And if you're reading this, one of two things is true:

 

 

  • It happened, and you weren't taken up into heaven;

  • It didn't happen.

 

 

Last week, walking back to the office from lunch, I saw some big trucks parked in front of a big Providence nightclub, all covered with illustrations of the Earth exploding, etc., and legends like: THE RAPTURE IS COMING! MAY 21 2011! ARE YOU READY?

 

 

Hm.

 

 

Hm, hm, hm.

 

 

See you tomorrow.

 

 

(Although: wouldn't it be a hoot if this were all true? . . . )

 

 

(Nah.)

 


 

 

Friday, May 20, 2011

Remembering the dead

Siblings


I had lunch with my friend Moira the other day. Her mother, who suffered from severe Alzheimer's over the past couple of years, passed away about a month ago. Over a turkey wrap, Moira told me the story of her mother's last few months: they'd finally found an assisted-living place for her, and then she fell, and broke both her hip and shoulder. The choices at that point were all bad. Operation: dangerous. Put her in traction for six weeks: she'd never walk again. Do nothing but medicate her: she'd die of infection.


 

They operated, and Mother made it through. But then she went to rehab, and she grew tired, and she stopped eating. And a few weeks later, she passed away.


 

Ah.

 

 

Moira and her mother had always been close. But the Alzheimer's had made Mother petty and mean and insulting and confused.  A few years ago, over yogurt at Ben & Jerry's, Moira told me somberly: “She's dead. I lost her. She's another person now.”


 

We talked about the conflicting emotions that come after a parent's death. Grief, naturally. Then guilt: you could have been a better son/daughter! You should have visited more! You shouldn't have put them in assisted living! Then relief: someone you love isn't suffering anymore, and you aren't suffering anymore. Then (worst and most penetrating of all): guilt about feeling relieved!


 

“I'm not guilty at all,” Moira said as we left the restaurant. “I know what I did, and why. I think my brother feels guilty. I don't.”


 

“I still feel guilty about my mother, even after sixteen years,” I said. “I know it's silly, but I still do.”


 

Moira looked at me. “I'm gonna tell you what I told my brother," she said. “Snap out of it.  You know better than that.”

 

 

And that made me feel better.


 

My sister Darlene passed away a few years ago, of the ferocious ovarian cancer that runs in my family. Darlene and I didn't get along. She thought I was a spoiled smartass; I thought she was a stupid stick-in-the-mud.


 

When the news came that she'd passed away, I sighed and put it aside. I didn't go to the funeral. We weren't friends, I told myself, just siblings.


 

But the morning after I received the news, I had a sudden recollection: I was – what? Maybe five years old. And I was running out of the house, and my two sisters were walking home from the bus after school. And I was so glad to see them.


 

I was so glad my unconscious had unearthed that memory: one simple quiet happy image, for me to file away.


 

Now everybody can (maybe) rest in peace.

 


 

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The collected works of practically everybody

Beethoven


I've been cleaning out my CD collection lately.


 

And my question is: Why oh why do I have all these CDs?


 

I went through a buying spree in the early 2000s. I am especially susceptible to complete sets of – well, anything. And everything. The complete Scarlatti keyboard sonatas. The complete Brahms chamber music. (I don't even like Brahms!)

 

 

And then this company – which calls itself Brilliant! - starts coming out with complete sets of everything a composer has written.


 

Evil geniuses!


 

Their business scheme is clever. Somebody in Slovakia records all of Beethoven's bagatelles, somebody in a church in Wales records all of his Welsh folksongs (did you know Beethoven wrote Welsh folksongs?). All you have to do is locate them, and get the rights to them, for a buck and a half. And you remarket them, and all the other stuff, as the COMPLETE BEETHOVEN.


 

How can a human bean resist?


 

I own the COMPLETE BEETHOVEN. And the COMPLETE MOZART, which is vast. And the COMPLETE J. S. BACH, which is entirely daunting.


 

They have smaller sort of semi-complete sets, like the COMPLETE HAYDN SYMPHONIES, which I also own. It is a box of rainbows. I am also partial to some of their oddball sets, like a five-CD compilation of the piano sonatas of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Scriabin; this is more like a box of fireworks drenched in Chanel No. 5, with a few angry cobras mixed in.


 

I'm currently spelunking the COMPLETE BEETHOVEN. I'm working my way through the piano sonatas right now. Then, I think, the quartets. Then the other chamber music, most of which I barely know.


 

I should make it to the Welsh folk songs by Christmastime.


 

Now: back to cleaning.


 

Would anyone like a whole bunch of French operettas sung in German?


 

Ladies and gentlemen.  Please.  I implore you.  Stop me before I go on another buying spree.

 


 

 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Greg Mortenson

Kashmirirefugees


I have never read any of Greg Mortenson's books. I know his backstory, generally: lay person in Central Asia, gets to know people – and hey! they're normal people, just like you and me! - and he comes home and spreads the word, and magically everyone starts helping everyone else, and now there are schools, and everyone is singing and dancing and drinking Coca-Cola.

 

 

I am generally mistrustful of stories like this. There are really very few selfless people in the world. I learned in the Peace Corps that the business of international aid is just that – a business – and there are surprising numbers of people who are in it for selfish reasons: self-aggrandizement, opportunism, laziness, and even personal gain, if you can believe it. There's also the Great White Savior thing: the American who goes to a foreign country and makes everything better.


 

Now it turns out that Greg Mortenson was maybe too good to be true.


 

All of the facts are not in yet. It does appear beyond question, however, that a large percentage of his foundation's money – money that was ostensibly being raised to build schools in Central Asia – was used for his own travel expenses, and publicity for his own books Investigators have found that some at least of the schools he “built” are not actually schools.


 

Mortenson is holding fast. He is blinkingly cheerful about the whole thing, and is assuring everyone that everything will be fine, and that he will be proven to be a Great Guy.


 

The thing that saddens me, though (even beyond the abuse of trust Mortenson and his foundation demonstrated – using money contributed by schoolchildren to pay his own expenses!), is how people react after they realize they've been taken in.


 

In a recent bulletin from my alma mater Gonzaga, for example, there's a ravingly idolatrous write-up of an appearance that Mortenson made there in March – what a wonderful guy, how charismatic, blah blah blah. With an afterword from Gonzaga's president: “We have seen the allegations made by '60 Minutes' and other sources. We still believe that Mr. Mortenson is an inspirational figure.” Or words to that effect.


 

And Nick Kristof of the New York Times wrote something almost exactly like it. He notes with foolish fondness Mortenson's chronic lateness, his carelessness, but makes it all sound like Mortenson was a big ungainly dog, full of love. And, after all, isn't it worth it if Mortenson did some good? Not all the money was wasted. Some of it was sent to Central Asia. Some schools were built. A few people were inspired.


 

No, my dears, no. He fooled you. This is nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing for the skeptics like me to gloat over. Con men are good at their game. Do you remember, right after 9/11, how every corner store had a FOR THE VICTIMS jar on the counter? People poured money in by the handful. Did you ever wonder what happened to that money? I sometimes wonder how much of it actually made its way to the victims, or to any reputable aid agency.


 

Kids, keep believing in your causes.


 

Just don't send your money by way of Greg Mortenson, or (for that matter) anyone you don't know really well.


 

Okay?

 


 

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Life lessons from “RuPaul's Drag Race,” season three

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I managed to survive the third season of “RuPaul's Drag Race” without a (serious) cardiac event.  


 

If you've never seen it: it's a musical-comedy version of Dante's Inferno, with a guaranteed happy ending.


 

And it's extremely educational.

 

 

Here are some of the lessons I gleaned from Season Three:

 

 

It's not enough to look fabulous; you have to be fabulous. Case in point: Carmen Carrera. She was easily the most beautiful drag queen on the runway. Sadly, she had the personality of uncooked brisket. Ten points for looks; minus nine points for lack of charisma.


 

Reading is fundamental. “Reading,” for all you drag neophytes, is scathing/funny criticism of your friends and enemies. “Don't make me read you, girl!” It's phrased amusingly and pointedly; it teaches you to accept criticism, and not to have a thin skin, and to laugh at yourself. Sadly, some of this year's contestants did not seem to understand this. Raja, the winner of the competition, got read by the others constantly: she was mean to the other girls, she was older than they were, blah blah blah. She soldiered on, and she won, girlfriend, she won. Hallaloo!


 

There's a fine line between eccentric and unflattering. Alexis Mateo, one of this year's finalists, had a very unique style: tight Barbie-doll outfits, extreme makeup. It was well-done, and Alexis had a big personality and a lot of determination. But some of her outfits were downright ugly and ill-considered. She looked like a sequined blimp a lot of the time. And that will never do.

 

 

If you're a judge, be a mean judge. Santino Rice: I love you.


 

If you're a judge, be a funny judge. Johnny Weir: I love you too.


 

If you're a judge, be a stern judge. Michelle VisageI love you most of all.


 

It never hurts to be talented. Shangela, though I disliked her intensely, was a hysterically funny comedienne. Raja, the winner, was a very experienced model. Manila Luzon, the first runner-up, could do both funny and glam, and even both at the same time, and could easily have won.


 

And finally:

 

 

Don't talk too much about “keeping it real” when you're a drag queen. I think this is obvious.


 

(Unless this is a koan of some kind, in which case I might actually achieve enlightenment.)


 

(And if I do, it will be thanks to RuPaul.)


 

(And, if so, once again: hallaloo!)

 


 

 

Monday, May 16, 2011

Yakima apples

Yakima_apples


Early last week, the incomparable Apollonia gave me a little mesh bag of Pink Lady apples. “You want these?” she said. “Take them.”

 

 

“What's the matter with them?” I asked warily. “Are they poisoned?”

 

 

“There's nothing wrong with them,” she said. “Eh. They're not aesthetically pleasing to me. You know how I am.”


 

“Oh yes I do, God help me” I said, accepting the bag. “Can I huck them at people I hate?”

 

 

“Go wild,” she said.

 

 

I took them to Ethan, a student who works for me. “You like apples?” I said, proffering them to him.

 

 

Yeah,” he said incredulously, taking them from me. (University students seldom turn down food.) Then he became wary, just as I'd done. “What's the matter with them?”

 

 

“Nothing, so far as I know,” I said. “Except that Apollonia didn't want them. She has very high standards for produce.  Plus, she's a lunatic.”


 

Then, as I handed him the bag, I noticed on the label that the apples were grown in Yakima, Washington.


 

I'm a Washingtonian by birth; my father was born not far from Yakima, as were two of my siblings. There’s a pretty large Native American reservation there, and back in my parents' time, the Yakima used to lease out reservation land to local non-Native American farmers. My mother had a pair of beaded buckskin gloves that she'd gotten in those days; she kept them in a drawer in her vanity desk, wrapped in paper, and would get them out once in a while and show them to me. (I have no idea where those gloves are now. It's only my brother and me now, as both our sisters have passed away; I hope he has them. He was born in Yakima, after all.)

 

 

Ethan saw me looking strangely misty, as all these memories crowded through my head. “What's the matter?” he asked.


 

“Nothing,” I said. “My parents lived not far from where those apples were grown, when they were first married. On the Yakima reservation.”

 

 

“I didn't know you were an Indian,” Ethan said with interest.

 

 

“I'm not.” I sighed. “It's a long story.”

 

 

But that didn't stop me from telling it, to him and to you, did it?

 


 

 

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Sunday blog: "1967," by Thomas Hardy

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This is Thomas Hardy, in 1867, expressing a truth of which Partner and I remind each other daily.

 

 

And I hope that the last stanza is true for Partner and me.

 

 

*

 

Thomas Hardy: “1967”


In five-score summers! All new eyes,
New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise;
New woes to weep, new joys to prize;

 


With nothing left of me and you
In that live century’s vivid view
Beyond a pinch of dust or two;



A century which, if not sublime,
Will show, I doubt not, at its prime,
A scope above this blinkered time.



Yet what to me how far above?
For I would only ask thereof
That thy worm should be my worm, Love!



16 Westbourne Park Villas, 1867

 


 

 

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Tophet

800px-karthago_tophet_2


When I moved to Tunisia, I stayed for a few weeks with an American couple who lived out on the Bay of Tunis, in Carthage.

 

 

You know I'm a history/folklore nerd. So of course my eyes were spinning in my head. I had an old National Geographic image in my head of a Roman soldier and a Carthaginian soldier fighting sword to sword, with the city burning in the background, and Cato screaming Carthago delenda est!

 

 

Nowadays Carthage is a gentle archipelago of suburbs curving north and west of Tunis. A commuter train, the TGM, runs up and down among the communities on the way. I remember riding the train and seeing the Bay of Tunis littered with dirty-pink flamingoes, beautiful from a distance but filthy-looking close up.

 

 

I ended up living in the Tunis medina, which is a story in itself. But I had a copy of the Guide Bleu, the French travel guide, which listed every ruin in Carthage. And I had time on my hands.

 

 

So, over a period of months, I visited every single ruin in Carthage.

 

 

There are the remains of third-century Christian churches. There is the Altar of Saint Monica – just some stones in a cow-pasture, it took me forever to find them – where Monica prayed for her son Augustine before his departure for Rome. There are the spectacular (and largely restored) Baths of Antoninus. There is the Byrsa, where Queen Dido/Elissa measured out her kingdom with an oxhide. There is the nineteenth-century Cathedral of Saint Louis, on a hilltop, with a lovely view, perfect for a picnic.

 

 

And there is the Tophet.

 

 

I first encountered the word in a Kipling poem, and didn't know what it meant, although the context was grim. The Tophet in Carthage is a small field behind a gas-station, or it was in the mid-1980s. It is full of small stones, and a flat dark foundation.

 

 

This (according to history and legend) was where the Carthaginian god Moloch demanded that children be thrown into the sacrificial fire.

 

 

We are on debatable territory here. According to the Romans, the Carthaginians flung their infant children into the flames here, to satisfy Moloch. To make it worse (how can this be worse?), rich families bought children from poor families and sacrificed them, to avoid sacrificing their own.

 

 

Well, the winners always portray the losers as nastily as they can.

 

 

But the caretaker at the Tophet (after we gave him a small tip) showed us his collection of dozens of small clay jars, with the skeleton of an infant in each one.

 

 

Horrible, horrible.

 

 

Please tell me we've changed, and that human beings would never ever do such a vile thing again.

 

 

Although, frankly, I don't believe it. We're just as vile and stupid as they were. We'd do it again, if the situation arose, and we believed it fervently enough.

 

 

As Seinfeld said: “I hate people. They're the worst.”

 


 

 

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Democracy: An American Novel

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I finished “Democracy: An American Novel” last week.

 

 

And now I am very thoughtful.

 

 

It was published (anonymously) in 1880 by Henry Adams, great-grandson of John and grandson of John Quincy. In one sense, it's just a whom-shall-I-marry? story, like so many other nineteenth-century novels: two sisters, one widowed and reflective, the other spirited and unintellectual (are you thinking of the Dashwoods?), who move from genteel New York City to savage uncultured Washington. Madeleine, the elder sister, particularly wants to understand politics. She wants, per the narrator, to understand POWER.

 

 

It comes down to dueling courtships. Madeleine's two suitors are Senator Silas Ratcliffe (nice name, eh?) of Illinois, and a handsome young lawyer named John Carrington. Ratcliffe becomes Secretary of the Treasury through expert manipulation of a new and doltish president. Carrington, who has no real power or influence in the government, but who adores Madeleine, suffers in silence (are you thinking of the Bill Holden character in “Born Yesterday?).

 

 

Carrington is from a Virginia family and fought for the South in the Civil War. He is still called upon to answer for this from time to time. He tells Sybil, Madeleine's lively younger sister, that he “never intentionally shot at anyone.” (My college advisor, a German who'd fought in his country's army during World War II, told me once with a twinkle that he'd been in an antiaircraft unit, but that he “always shot between the planes.”)

 

 

Ratcliffe has skeletons in his closet too, but he fought on the winning side, so he’s actually proud of his misdeeds. At one point he admits to a group that, as Governor of Illinois during the Civil War, he actually threw a state election to ensure a Union-friendly victory, and that he'd do it again in a moment, to save his government. Carrington, his romantic rival, smells victory for a moment, thinking that Madeleine will see Ratcliffe as a villain; he then realizes that “the man who has committed a murder for his country is a patriot and not an assassin, even when he receives a seat in the Senate as his share in the plunder.”

 

 

As a story it's mild; it doesn't even approach Jane Austen, or even Trollope. But the subtlety and complexity of its depiction of American politics – and the kind of thinking (and non-thinking) that goes into political negotiation and manipulation – is amazing.

 

 

For example:

 

 

Ratcliffe, to endear himself to Madeleine, several times describes a political situation, and asks her, “What do you think I should do?”

 

 

To shut him up, she finally replies, a little coldly, “You should do whatever is in the best interest of the people.”

 

 

And he comes back with: “And what would that be?”

 

 

And Madeleine finds that she has no answer to the question.

 

 

And neither do I.

 

 

Uh-oh!

 


 

 

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Happy (belated) Mother's Day!

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Mother's Day is sort of melancholy after your mother has passed away. I did dream about my mother last Saturday night; I think she and I were sharing a run-down shack, and I was trying to sort some music CDs, and she was looking on. (It's nice that we usually get along in my dreams.  It's a refreshing contrast to my relationship with her during her lifetime.)


 

So I was downtown on Sunday afternoon, taking my usual promenade – bookstores, cafes – and I took my cafe latte from the nice fresh-faced Borders clerk who usually dispenses it. “Thank you,” I said politely.

 

 

“Thank you,” the little scamp said, with a perfectly straight face. “Happy Mother's Day.”


 

Bemused, I went to a table, drank my coffee, did my crossword puzzle, read a few dozen pages of “A Voyage to Arcturus,” and decided to go home. When I got to Kennedy Plaza, where the buses all congregate, I was hailed by a tall handsome bearded black man wearing sunglasses and a windbreaker. “Has the Number 78 left yet?” he asked.


 

“Not yet,” I said.


 

We waited together in companionable silence; once in a while he'd address a general comment to me about the weather. The Number 78 finally arrived, and we got on together, and rode up the hill to Providence's East Side. I rang the bell at Wayland Square, and as I got up to leave, my new friend nodded in a friendly way to me. “Happy Mother's Day,” he said.


 

Twice in one day?

 

 

(Oh, wait, I forgot. Partner's sister called the day before. After the phone conversation, he said, “Oh, and she said to wish you a happy Mother's Day.” So I guess it's three times.)

 

 

In “Modern Family” this week, the gay couple, Mitchell and Cam, were spatting over “mother” and “father” identities in their family unit. Cam, who is physically much bigger than Mitchell (“I could snap you like a twig!” he hisses at one point), is everyone's choice for Designated Mom, and it irks him. Somehow, however, it also makes perfect sense. (It's even better if you know that Eric Stonestreet, the very funny actor playing Cam, is straight in real life.)


 

So what is it about people like Cam and me? I have a beard, for God's sake. I was not wearing anything outrageous on Sunday. (Okay, a Hawaiian shirt, but not a very flashy one.) Is it our facial expressions? Our body language?


 

I guess we both look tender and understanding and willing to listen.

 

 

(Please don't volunteer your theories about this, especially if they contradict mine. I don't want to hear them.)

 

 

And a happy belated Mother's Day to all of you!