I think I killed the queen
She was sitting on my bobbin box, which is on my sewing table, which is right under a trap door in the ceiling that's not totally sealed. The biggest bee I've ever seen. Just sitting there, moving as though she were grooming herself. I needed someting firmer than a fly swatter to smash this one. In my mind's eye, she seemed as big as a hummingbird. But this was not a hummingbird. This was a giant black and yellow bee. And not a bumble bee, which is kind of furry and plump. This was something I'd never seen before.
I've since come to figure out that it was probablya Carpenter Bee, of which there are lots around this cedar-sided structure, but none as big as the one I smashed with my quickly removed sneaker.
I gingerly picked up her stiff body with several wads of toilet paper and flushed. Eeuuuww! She had weight and substance, and I swear I felt her exoskeleton crumble. Not like wiping up a smashed spider.
I sure hope she was the queen. That might minimize some the war we have to wage against those persistent Carpenter Bees.
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the telling three saves
My 45th college reunion is this weekend, and I finally unearthed the box of college memorabilia I stashed in my brother's basement. My graduation yearbook is there, of course. Both degree certificates. And these three documents.
1957 - 1958: my golden year. I spent my freshman year socializing. Obviously I made grades good enough to get me into and through my sophomore and subsequent years -- although I don't think I cut back too much on the socializing. I just didn't save anything to remember it by.
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better than a spa
It is two days ago. I'm lying on a straw mat on the grass under a mosquito-netted child-sized cabana. My feet are sticking out from under the net, but the rest of me is in the shade. I'm watching the grass grow between my fingers. My grandson sits in the corner, his big-flapped sunhat askew, explaining the workings of the model construction trucks lined up between us. In the background the voices of my daughter and son-in-law merge with all of the muted sounds around me. They are putting in a fire pit, hauling huge rocks from the woods behind their house and working up the sweat that I'm avoiding.
This morning, even before I was out of my pajamas, Lex (that's my grandson) had me decked out in a fireman's hat and water goggles, marching around the house playing a toy clarinet. I wanted the flute, which I sort of can play, but he said the sounds I make hurt his ears. Later on, he wants to check out my car engine. I open the hood. "Where's the dip stick?" he asks. "I don't know," I reply, because I dont; I always have my oil changed every three thousand miles, so I never bother to check my oil. "There is it," he says, pointing to the dip stick. He'll be four years old in July.
We play catch and chase each other, and I take lots and lots of video clips and photos. I sleep soundly and wake up early.
On the way back to the mountain, I listen to the three disks of 1950-60s music that one of my college class members sent me from which to choose a batch to play at our reunion next weekend. I didn't really know many of the people who will be there; we ran in different circles at the time. But I'm getting to know them now, via email and the private weblog I set up for us to plan and share and get to know each other for the first time.
I loved my college years. I'm looking forward to reliving them, for one night, anyway. Endings are just new beginnings.
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spending a few days with my favorite guy
That's my favorite little guy. My favorite little guy who will be four years old in July. The one person who can make me belly laugh.
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oh beautiful Beatitudes...
An excerpt in The Guardian from Kurt Vonnegut's new book, A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America, ends with:
Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?
Somewhere in the middle is this gem:
How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
And mostly I like his riff on this:
George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.
Ah yes. PPs.
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welcome to my little corner of the world
This is the good part: a corner of my garden, with the veggies growing in the background and the bird feeders on the window.
And this is one of the best parts, our own resident woodpecker looking at me looking at him.
And now on to the other corners of my world -- full of shadows and other disturbing things.
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the case for lunacy
No, I'm not referring to my previous post. I only said that I agreed with Bush that immigrants to this county who want to stay here should have to learn English and attain citizenship.
The lunacy to which I'm referring is the case Molly Ivins makes at Common Dreams for our current administration's total cluelessness. (Hmm. "Common Dreams." Isn't that what Americans used to share?)
Ivins ends her piece at Common Dreams with this:
Both President Bush and Veep Cheney are still going around claiming if you cut taxes, your tax revenues increase. No, they don’t. Now we’re just in whackoville. It’s not true. Their own economists tell them it’s not true, but they go about claiming it is with the same desperate tenacity with which they clung to false tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. How pathetic.
Speaking of lunacy, the saddest report from Iraq is that American soldiers showing signs of psychological distress and depression are being kept on active duty, increasing the risk of suicide. The Hartford Courant reports that even soldiers who have already been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome are kept on duty. This has led to an increase in the suicide rate—22 soldiers in 2005. And as I have reported before, the military is unprepared to deal with the flood of head cases coming back from Iraq. How many ways can we mistreat our own soldiers, while the right makes an elaborate show of devotion to “the troops”?
The consistent pattern that runs through all these problems is the failure to distinguish fantasy from reality. Mexican immigrants keep crossing the border because they can get jobs here—and most of those jobs are provided by companies whose CEOs support George W. Bush. That’s where he can have an impact on the problem, should he choose to do so.
The $70-billion tax cut is part of a continuing right-wing fantasy going back to the Laffer curve. Of course, clinging to demonstrably false economic precepts is understandable when you benefit from them, but at some point reality does intervene.
As for the Iraq fantasy and those who pushed it on a reluctant country through lies, disinformation and bending intelligence—isn’t there a law against that?
Instead of sharing a common dream, we Americans are caught up in a partisan nightmare!
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Am I growing "red" or what??
I got the same email from several people I know -- not bloggers; just regular folk. The title of the email is "critical immigration overview." As I always do, I slid over to www.snopes.com to find out if the info in the email, which quotes Dick Lamm, former Governor of Colorado, explaining the various ways America can be destroyed (by multiculturalism) is true. Lamm leads off his list by saying " No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.''"
Actually snopes.com not only verifies that Lamm made those anti-multiculturalism statements, but also offers a revised version, provided by Lamm, himself.
Now, I did watch Dumbya's address to the nation last night as he set out his proposals for trying to get the various problems caused by illegal immigration under control. I pretty much never listen to anything he has to say, but this is an issue that has so many implications for how we define this country that I forced myself to lend my ear.
I mean, we ARE a nation of immigrants. All four of my grandparents were born in Poland and came through Ellis Island. (I also have a relative or two [now deceased] who sneaked in through Canada -- one, so I'm told, hanging on to the back of a boat.) They all became citizens, all paid their taxes, all learned to speak, read, and write in English. They assimilated and considered themselves true Americans, even while continuing to share their native language and religious and cultural traditions within the family -- both blood and extended.
So, as I listened to Bush refer to immigrants being expected to learn the English language, I agreed with him. (Maybe for the first time agreeing with him on anything!)
And when I read Lamm's list of ways to destroy America -- all of which relate to "diversity," I found myself re-thinking my usual radical/liberal view.
We might be a nation of immigrants, but until recent times, those immigrants uprooted themselves from their homelands and planted new roots in America. They did not keep themselves in separate cultural pots, refusing to become part of the root system implanted in America's constitutional soil.
The concepts of a "tree of peace" and a "tree of life" are not new ones. It seems to me that that America needs to adopt (and adapt to) the metaphor of a tree, wherein to be an American, one must be rooted in American language and law, for that is the very earthy basis of this country. What flowers from those solid roots, and what feeds them as well, are the diversities of customs and cultures that all immigrants bring to the tree that is America.
I believe we need to expect immigrants to re-root themselves officially and legally in this country. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think that Bush's initial take on that aspect of dealing with the overwhelming influx of immigrants is right on. But that's only the beginning. Without giving prospective citizens free and easy avenues for learning how to read and write in basic Amrerican English, assimilation into the root system won't work.
There is something to be said for "America for Americans" -- and that includes wannabe Americans. But they hafta wannabe.
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." And I would add to that "...and eager to transplant their own roots into the system in which the American Constitutional Democracy continues to struggle to survive."
Then, of course, once they get to be legal Americans, they'll be free to bitch and complain and try to improve that system, just like the rest of us.
Oh, and if you haven't yet clicked on the link that will take you to all that Lamm had to say, please do.
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a feast of mother's day limericks
Over at Limerick Savant is the first "Limerick of All Mothers Marathon.", featuring a diversity of writing as well as relationship styles. Take a break and go over there and read some original rhymes.
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a mother's day tribute to my kids
Some women take to mothering naturally. I had to work at it. And so I wasn't the best mother in the world. I would have worked outside the home whether I had been a single mom or not. But because I was, mine were latchkey kids, with my daughter, beginning at age 12, taking care of her younger brother, age 5, after school. I left them some evenings to go out on dates. Oh, I did cook them healthy meals, and even cookies sometimes. I made their Halloween costumes and went to all parent events at their schools. My daughter took ballet lessons, belonged to 4H (but I got kicked out as Assistant Leader because I wouldn't salute the flag during the Vietnam War) . I made my son a Dr. Who scarf and took him to Dr. Who fan events. I bought him lots of comic books and taught him how to throw a ball. But most of all, I think/hope I did for them what my mother was never able to do for me, -- give them the freedom to become who they wanted to be -- to explore, make mistakes, and search for their bliss. I think/hope that I always let them know that, as far as I was concerned, they were OK just the way they were/are. (Me and that dear now dead Mr. Rogers.) Not having had that affirmation from my mother still affects my relationship with her. I hope that my doing that right for them neutralizes all the wrong things I did as they were growing up.
So, you two (now adult) kids, here's to you both. You keep me young, you keep me informed, you keep me honest, and, in many ways, you keep me vital. I'm so glad that I'm your mother.
So, in memory of those not-always-good ol' days that you two managed to survive with flying colors, here you are, playing "air guitar and drums" -- enjoyng each other's company sometime in the 70s and bringing so much joy into my life.
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a day with sunshine
I always suprises me when I stop and realize what kinds of things make me happy.
I really do like living at the foot of a cliff in the middle of the woods. I love having bird feeders and a hummingbird feeder right outside the window where we eat. I love the four chipmunks who play tag with each other across the patch on which we're trying to grow grass. I think they live under the wooden steps. They use the drainpipe to hide from each other.
I love watching the universe of birds and critters share the wealth that we spread out there for them. That's the answer isn't it? If there were enough to go around for everyone, we wouldn't have to fight for it. Enough food, enough places to make our nests. Water. Space. Peace..
The plump mourning doves and the skittery chimpmunks share the wealth of seeds that fall from the feeder, where the red-headed woodpecker and several as yet unidentified warblers assign themselves perches. When they leave, the nuthatch acrobatically addresses his food alongside what I think are little wrens. The timid cardinal awaits his turn on a perch, casually checking out what he might prefer that's already on the ground. And through it all the two irridescent hummingbirds take turns dipping at the yellow plastic flowers on the red feeder. I know there are two because one has a skinnier backside.
I can sit all day and watch my flowers grow -- the Kenilworth Ivy draping slowly over the rim of a tall clay pot -- small pinkish flowers peeking out from the glorious pale green screen. The rows of lettuce -- in leaves of reds and greens, lined up behind a stand of multi-yellow marigolds. Begonias and petunias and geraniums and flowering things I bought and lost the names of. But it doesn't matter if I can name them, just like it doesn't matter if I can name the birds.
They are all growing in the sun and in my line of sight. Sometimes I think I could be happy as a hermit -- become some legendary lone woman who grows odd herbs and knows old secrets.
I have sent away for a compost bin. I just hope the bear who has been known to visit this place does not think it's for him. Or her.
Oh well. I have to live a little dangerously. I can't always count on the sun.
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still depressing, but also funny
Ha! Glad I stopped in at Doug's tonight!
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Lililth in the Darkness East of Eden
If you're familiar with Kalilily Time, then you know who Lilith is. The image above is from here, a treasure trove of Lilith images. Lililth was said to be banished by god into the darkness east of Eden.
If you read the previous post, it should be obvious why that image resonates with me tonight.
I think of the days when this one would have been the Lilith image that spoke to me. And I think of the time when, again, the crone in me will fire up and fly away.
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a mother's day reality bite
The Limerick Savant has put out a call for Mother's Day limericks. I dare the jester to print this one, an original by this burned out, currently bitter caregiver:
Of mothers there are varied kinds.
Some are honored; some are maligned.
There’s no perfect mater
and sooner or later
you learn to accept what you find
To “mother” with grace is not easy.
You’re expected to always be breezy.
And when you mother your mother
‘cause a choice there’s no other
you likely go out of your mind.
Anyone with a Mother's Day limerick to share, email your creative endeavor to limericksavant@gmail.com.
Obviously, I had a meltdown today. Told my sib I just don't care anymore. Either he agrees to let me hire someone to come over here and give her some companionship, or I give him whatever money she gave me and I'm out of here. (The reasons why I only have those two choices are too dysfunctionally private to share here.) I left home when I was 17 because I couldn't get along with her (I've blogged about that before). When I thought she couldn't live on her own anymore and she was always calling me long distance about various ailments, I decided to take her on, hoping that we both had changed enough to find a way to coexist -- if not actually enjoy each other's company. What an idiot I was.
I find that I don't mind at all doing all of the chores, both for her personally and just general cooking and cleaning. I just can't stand her company. I am a terrible daughter. And I don't feel bad about that at all.
According this site, she's nearing the end of stage 5 dementia, moving rapidly into stage 6. There's one more stage after that, and she could live another decade. F**K!.
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slumping
I should be psyched. It's a beautiful day. My vegetable garden is in and I have riotously colored flowers set in planters where I can see them from the window. I even got the old tire spray-painted and filled it with a mound of various green ivy.
But not.
Each evening, after I sit and watch television with her for several hours, my mother asks "Where are you going tonight?" I'm not going anywhere. I have no where to go. "Are your friends coming over?" she asks/adds, ignoring the point of what I had replied. I have no friends around here, mom.
I don't have the energy to go out there and make them. I feel the anger churning in my stomach. I want to go and gorge myself on Breyer's mint cholocate chip ice cream. Or, even better, black rasberry chocolate chip.
I know where it all starts, this slumping. It all starts because whenever I take the time to really get into something, she interrupts me with her needs. I can never get up in a morning and look forward to a day of doing meandering "me" things. It's always about her -- at some point, usually when I get into some kind of zone -- it comes back to her.
Yes, I know that's the fate of a caregiver, and that's the road I chose when I moved down to this mountain. Sometimes I actually can rev myself up and go out and garden (as I have done over the past several days). But when I get back inside the house, dirty and sweaty and tired, all I have to look forward to is making supper, doing the dishes, and keeping her (boring and addled) company.
I think to myself at that point in the evening -- why don't I try to play Bingo with her ("try" is the operative word here), or make an effort to interact with her somehow. But at that point I'm hating what I have to look forward to; I'm hating having to amuse her when I'd rather go to my own space and sew or read -- anything but be with her.
It's not that I don't have options. There was a big ballroom dance weekend recently at one of the big hotels in the Catskills, which is not too far from here. But it would take an enormous amount of energy to get myself there. I would have to go alone; I would have to find something smashing to wear, and these days I don't look smashing in anything; I would be there competing for dance partners with younger more smashing females. Scratch that option.
I just don't have the energy. I don't have the energy to go out and make the new friends that I yearn for.
I think it's time to plan a few days' visit with the almost-four year old grandson. Or maybe a day trip up to Albany to lunch with someone from the old girl-group. It would be worth the exhorbitant cost of the gas.
The one thing I'm looking forward to is my college class' 45th reunion early next month. We were not a gung-ho class to begin with, so I'm not counting on lots of my close friends being there. But I've been in touch with some classmates who had not been my best friends back then but who have become better (virtual) friends since. I've even started a weblog for my Class of '61 in hopes of stirring up......something.
Stirring is better than slumping. Stirring means there might be something to look forward to.
I need something to look forward to. But it's hard to break out of this slump.
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rocks and roots
I used to think that the problem around here was the rocks. Stones, rocks, boulders embedded in clay almost as hard as cement. I pry them loose. Use a pick-axe If I have to. I can't plant carrots on rock.
I turn the rocks into borders, cairns, artfully placed natural scuptures. They have their places. Just not where I need things to grow.
I used to think the biggest problem was the rocks. But it's not. It's the roots.
Sneaking and snaking undergroud from various stands of trees, just deep enough to thwart any deep digging, they insist on their claim to the earth. Roots as thick as wrists, as strong as bone. Under the land cleared for living, they still hold their own.
It is easy to let them discourage my dream of a nourishing garden for the senses. Lettuce, lilies, lemon balm, lavender. Carrots and cone flowers. Tomatoes. Peppers. Strawberries. Foxglove.
The tree leaves surrounding me are uniformly colored in all seasons. I have a red maple to plant. Two lilac bushes. A red bark willow. The old roots are tenacious, adamant in their ownership.
But so am I.
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hosting the Rose of Sharon
Because it means so much more than what it is; because hummingbirds love it; because I never had a place to plant one before -- I now own something that looks like a dried up bunch of twigs with something that looks dried up straw hanging from their ends. That's because I sent away for a Rose of Sharon plant rather than tracking down a nursery that already had one a few years old. That's because I don't always think things through and I never seem to have time to ride around and shop. That's because I didn't want to remember that gardens take years to become what you want them to be. Unless you have loads of cash to pay expensive landscapers and gardeners. Which I don't.
Oh, I did put in some annuals -- again, buying the cheapest flats I could find, which means the flowers are barely budding. Except for the marigolds. I'm going to have lots of marigolds, since the ones I started indoors in peat pots are perkily popping. I like marigolds -- pungent in all the senses.
I never really decided where to put the Rose of Sharon either. It needs sun. And there's no point in putting it in a sunny spot that you can't see from the garden -- which is now really a square smothered in grass seed surrounded by small shale-y rock gardens, a strip of struggling flowering plants, the sides of the house, and a fence that needs to be replaced in front of which I have temporarily planted a planter with ivy and geraniums. I have a feeling that this is going to wind up a "planter" garden.
Except for the Rose of Sharon -- which, although now planted in a big pot in a sunny spot, can't stay there forever.
My task now is to chill out and watch what happens to those twigs. Will they or won't they?
And, if I can manage to chill, I can allow myself to enjoy the family of chipmunks feasting on the grass seed; the little bird with a striped head that makes him look like mutant chipmunk, and the dozens of other winged creatures who mill around our quickly emptying birdfeeder.
Although it's hard to chill out with my mother always looking for me to complain about what she can't find this time. Which is what she's doing right now.
I can't wait for that first bloom on my Rose of Sharon.
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thinking about being gay
No, I'm not thinking about myself becoming gay.
I'm thinking about what it is like to be gay after seeing Brokeback Mountain, after emailing back and forth with a relative who is.
I never met anyone who (as far as I knew) was gay until I went to college. I didn't have much to do with gay girls at that point because I could never tell whether they were hitting on me or just wanted to be friends. I liked straight boys too much to understand where those odd girls were coming from. But the gay guys (well, back then the guys didn't openly admit it)! But we all sort of knew. They were usually the best dancers and the most fun on dates. As far as I'm concerned, the same is pretty much true to this day.
In my professional life, I worked alongside of all kinds of gay people: male, female, somewhere in between, closeted, out, flaming, and subdued. As with all of the people I met, some I liked, some I didn't, and some became friends of mine. One of my first cousins died of AIDS. Another cousin is still alive and kickin' in his 80s.
And so I'm posting here a eloquent letter sent to Jay Leno by Jeff Whitty, a playwright who wrote the hit Broadway musical "Avenue Q." The letter was featured on CNN, but in case you missed it, here it is:
April 20th, 2006
Dear Mr. Leno,
My name is Jeff Whitty. I live in New York City. I'm a playwright and the author of "Avenue Q", which is a musical currently running on Broadway.
I've been watching your show a bit, and I'd like to make an observation:
When you think of gay people, it's funny. They're funny folks. They wear leather. They like Judy Garland. They like disco music. They're sort of like Stepin Fetchit as channeled by Richard Simmons.
Gay people, to you, are great material.
Mr. Leno, let me share with you my view of gay people:
When I think of gay people, I think of the gay news anchor who took a tire iron to the head several times when he was vacationing in St. Maarten's. I think of my friend who was visiting Hamburger Mary's, a gay restaurant in Las Vegas , when a bigot threw a smoke bomb filled with toxic chemicals into the restaurant, leaving the staff and gay clientele coughing, puking, and running in terror. I think of visiting my gay friends at their house in the country, sitting outside for dinner, and hearing, within hundreds of feet of where we sat, taunting voices yelling "Faggots." I think of hugging my boyfriend goodbye for the day on 8th Avenue in Manhattan , and being mocked and taunted by passing high school students.
When I think of gay people, I think of suicide. I think of a countless list of people who took their own lives because the world was so toxically hostile to them. Because of the deathly climate of the closet, we will never be able to count them. You think gay people are great material. I think of a silent holocaust that continues to this day. I think of a silent holocaust that is perpetuated by people like you, who seek to minimize us and make fun of us and who I suspect really, fundamentally wish we would just go away.
When I think of gay people, I think of a brave group that has made tremendous contributions to society, in arts, letters, science, philosophy, and politics. I think of some of the most hilarious people I know I think of a group that has served as a cultural guardian for an ungrateful and ignorant America.
I think of a group of people who have undergone a brave act of inventing themselves. Every single out-of-the-closet gay person has had to say, "I am not part of mainstream society." Mr. Leno, that takes bigger balls than stepping out in front of TV-watching America every night. I daresay I suspect it takes bigger balls to come out of the closet than any thing you have ever done in your life.
I know you know gay people, Mr. Leno. Are they just jokes to you, to be snickered at behind their backs? Despite the angry tenor of my letter, I suspect you're a better man than that. I don't bother writing letters to the "God Hates Fags" people, or Donald Wildmon, or the Pope. But I think you can do better. I know it's "The Tonight Show," not a White House press conference, but you reach a lot of people.
I caught your show when you had a tired mockery of " Brokeback Mountain," involving something about a horse done up in what you consider a "gay" way. Man, that's dated. I turned the television off and felt pretty fucking depressed. And now I understand your gay-baiting jokes have continued.
Mr. Leno, I have a sense of humor. It's my livelihood. And being gay has many hilarious aspects to it -- none of which, I suspect, you understand. I'm tired of people like you. When I think of gay people, I think of centuries of suffering. I think of really, really good people who've been gravely mistreated for a long time now.
You've got to cut it out, Jay.
Sincerely,
Jeff Whitty
New York, NY
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