Author Archives: Elaine

My Fan Crush and Why

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I have a fan crush on young Vincent D’Onofrio.  As I lay in bed tonight, I finally realized why.  He reminds me of an old flame.  Something about the tall body type, the surrounding air of intense creative energy. 

Ed was an artist.  Well, he still is, since he is still alive.  Lives in Bangor Maine and still teaches art. D’Onofrio no longer looks anything like the young man he once was, although I still watch the old “Criminal Intent” reruns from decades ago, in which he plays Detective Robert Goren.

One summer weekend, Ed and I drove out to Boston. We stayed at Copley Square and roamed the surrounding streets of Boston, meandering galleries and shop windows, never at a loss for conversation and delight.

That night, as we prepared for sleep, he asked me to get up and pose, with my arms out, in the light from the window. He pondered the pose for a minute, and that was it.

So, when I saw this painting on his website, I wondered if that image of me stuck somewhere in his subconscious and wound up in this painting.

Probably not, but I can fantasize, can’t I?

If you’ve the mind to, check out the paintings on his website.  His spirituality (he’s an ex-priest) comes out in his paintings, capturing the very essences of his subjects.  His paintings are full of the kind of beauty and energy with which he lives.

Here are two poems that resulted from that weekend in Boston.

Stone Cold Demon

I hear the silent scream
of the demon in the shop
on Newbury Street,
teeth bared, hunkering in
some primal isolation.
I want to hold him to my heart,
warm the stone that molds him
in his place, sing him
soft with lullabies
and promises I will keep.

I taste his fear in the tears
that mark my cheek.
“Love me, love me!” he cries.
“Love!”
“Me!

 

Pan Makes a Personal Appearance

To think it was you I summoned!
All those incantations,
those spells dispatched
to shift the stars, returned
as this immortal face,
this ancient tale.

To think the gods still answer prayers!
Make bright, deft-handed landings
right before my eyes,
fall haloed and goat-footed
deep into my mark,
breathing mischief and mayhem,
and bold bewildering dreams.

Angel, satyr, shepherd,
your music stirs the skin.
Play your syrinx now
for me, my kin.
We will dance, dance
to your tune.

September Sunflowers

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Valley Time

Easterly,
the winds tease the sun
toward morning
brushing aside the easy showers
of early summer clouds.
Time follows the way of the wind
through this dawn-misted valley,
filters through the blue unfoldings
of fragile morning chicory,
flows through the slow, green seekings
of those low growing vines,
breathes honeysuckle and wildrose rain
into the season’s drifting light.
Westward,
the sun leaves the high horizon,
draping a dry autumn night
over the tired faces
of September sunflowers.

© Elaine Frankonis

So, I Want to Start a Movement

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I have a logo and a name, created with the help of  my talented daughter:

© Elaine Frankonis

But I’m one little old lady sitting at her computer.  I did write to Jane Fonda about the idea, but haven’t heard back.  How does one organize support for elder housing when most elders are not going to band together and go out and protest.  And, anyway, the most important support would be from Boomers who are facing the issue in their futures.

There is one site I found that tells how to start a movement.  I have contacted them. My earlier blog post is the beginning of a “case statement”.  The next piece would have to be the goals of the movement, and I’m open to suggestions.  I would think the ultimate goal would be to have one of the President’s Cabinet members take on the challenge.  Housing and Urban Development?  Health and Human Services?  A combination of the two?

How would we begin to work toward the general goal of improved senior housing?  Petitions at senior centers that would get sent to the relevant new presidential cabinet members?  A website that someone has to design for the movement? (I would host and pay for it.) How does it get publicized?

Or maybe it’s just a pipe dream.  Thoughts?

Boobs Alive at the Emmys

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I’ve never seen so many boobs almost flowing out of the low bodices in the audience at the Emmys.  When the women clapped, their boobs shook like Jello, threatening to overflow their moorings.  I don’t know why they think it’s attractive.  Oh, I know.  It’s the men.

Actually, the most attractive gowns ignored the boobs and covered them with exquisitely designed gowns that flattered the figures of the wearers. Here are three of them.

Enough about boobs.

I don’t usually watch the Emmys, but I was looking for good stuff to watch on tv. I never thought to watch Baby Reindeer (Netflix), but it got several awards, so that’s now on my list.

While I’m not one for big productions, I might go ahead and watch Shogun, since it got the most awards last night.

Hacks (Max) is another one I never watched that got several awards, including one for Jean Smart, whom I like, anyway.  I’m always looking for older female leads.  Hacks is in its third season, so I have some catching up to do.

Which brings me to a new series starting soon featuring Kathy Bates as Matlock. It  airs next week on CBS and Paramount.  That’s a go to for me.  Bates has lost weight and looks as though she has had some work done of her face.  But that’s the price some older women will pay to be chosen to work at their craft.

Another quirky series that I loved last season that is coming back, also on CBS and Paramount, is Elsbeth.  I’m not sure when season 2 airs, but if you missed the first season, now’s the time to do it.

Yes, I watch a lot of tv at night.  The only daytime show I watch is Ari Melber on MSNBC, although I also try to catch Rachel when she’s on.

 

 

 

 

 

The Face of Pain

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My mother had passed away at age 94, after a decade of increasing dementia.

         While  Words Fail  
She was gone before she went,
slipping into that final forgetting
with each hollow breath.

I was her angel, she said
as she sat at the sunny table
picking at pancakes and coffee
while she still could smile
and think meaning.

Music kept her eyes alive
awhile, her feet remembering
thoughtless, but certain of rhythms
too deliberate to disappear.
She followed my familiar lead,
reaching for memories lost
with the fading of voice.

She didn’t believe in demons,
but I saw them slip inside her skin,
forcing pain from her pores,
folding her face in caverns
of anguish and alarm,
as, steadily, words fled, leaving
a frightened keening in their wake.

She was gone before she went,
and when she went, the world
filled again with words.

(elf 2020)

My Meandering Mind on a Sleepy September Saturday

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250 SHADES OF BLUE, and I have most of them hanging on my closet!  I have three pair of “navy” jeans and a pair of “navy” pants; each one is a different color blue.  And forget about having any of them match up with any of my “navy” tops.  (Note:  First World Problem)

I DON’T HAVE A BUCKET LIST; there is only one thing I want to do (again) before I die.  I want to go to a ballroom dance with a partner and dance the afternoon away.  Why “afternoon”? you ask?  Because the dance is at a senior center at 2 p.m.

So, here’s my plan, since I don’t have a partner (and assuming that the shot I will get in my back on Tuesday at the Pain Management Center will solve that limitation):

Sometime in the beginning of October, I will contact Sara at EdanSe Company and Ballroom and ask if she might know of an intermediate male dancer who is free on the afternoon of October 21 and would like to earn $50 for two hours of dancing with me. At first, that seems like a lot of money, but it’s worth it to me.

I quit ballroom dancing several years ago because my knee was giving out.  And I stopped driving at night.  Since then, I got my knee replaced, and if my back gets treated, I’ll be good to go (in the daytime).  Sara should remember me because I wrote and shared a poem about her young twin instructors.

LUNCH WITH BETTY, whom I haven’t seen in more than a year, was yesterday, at her Senior Center.  It was my first ever Center lunch, and I have little desire to return.

Betty was part of my pre-Covid writing group, and she was one of the best writers in it. Today, she is a tiny, frail looking woman with silver hair and carefully applied makeup.  At age 95, she is now part of another weekly writing group, and she recently just stopped taking weekly ballroom dances.  (For which she paid her teacher, privately, more than I could ever afford.)

Betty holds court at a lunch table comprised of three men and one other woman.  They are like her entourage, and she she regales them with her writings, delivered in a volume that her (hearing impaired) fans can accept.  She, herself, she tells me later, has one cochlear implant and one hearing aid.  She also has congestive heart failure and upper back pain for which she carries around a microwavable heating pad.

After lunch, she invites me to her home, and I follow her stick-shift Mini Cooper to an older, lovely, well-kept upper middle class home in a lovely upper middle class neighborhood. She lives alone. I aske her what she usually does all day after early lunch at the Senior Center.  Usually, she says, she sits with her heated pad behind her back and watches Asian movies on Netflix (because they are all romantic and they end happily).  I finally leave because Betty has an appointment at CVS for her flu and COVID shots.  She goes to bed around 9 p.m.

Betty has the advantage of being financially comfortable.  But she also daily faces the pains and discomforts and challenges of being 95 years old. I think that she personifies what Betty Boop would be like at 95.

 

THE DANCE OF SEPTEMBER SUNFLOWERS

Geographically, Size Matters

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I think folks forget (or never realized) that just about all of Europe will fit within the boundaries of mainland U.S.  While there is population diversity in European countries,  it is nowhere near the complexities with which we struggle in America because of our size and because we are mostly a nation of immigrants.

For example, Poland is about the size of New Mexico. France is somewhat smaller than Texas. Germany is a little smaller than Montana.  Both Portugal and Austria are about the size of Maine.

I wonder how many folks realize that, while Russia is larger than the US in land mass, its population is about half of what we have here in America.  Smaller, less diverse, and/or less-populated countries (theoretically) are easier to govern. In terms of politics,  geographical size matters.  We used to call America a “melting pot”, but it is more like a “vegetable soup”. PBS needs to bring back it’s children’s program Vegetable Soup.

The purpose of the program was to be a television series for children to help counter the negative, destructive effects of racial prejudice and racial isolation and to reinforce and dramatize the positive, life-enhancing value of human diversity in entertaining and affective presentations that children could understand and relate to. Vegetable Soup used an interdisciplinary approach to entertain and educate elementary age children in the value of human diversity.

The show combined music, animation, puppetry and live action film, on the subject of economic, racial and ethnic diversity

Back to  size, there is even less awareness, I’ll bet, of the size of Israel.  It is about the size of Vermont.  And Gaza is about the size of Philadelphia.

I recently posted my own solution to the Israeli war, and oddly enough, Kamala Harris’ comes close.  I urge her to take it further.

Leaping into Elderhood

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The only podcast to which I listen is “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on NPR.  It makes me laugh, and I always learn some little known, but intriguing facts.

For example, I just learned that a recent study shows that we do not age slowly; rather we age in leaps.  The first leap is at age 44; the second at 60.  They need to add one more leap and that’s at 80.

When I reached 80, my knees went and I had to have one replaced.  The other is still iffy.  Then my hips and back started aching and now I have an appointment at the pain management office because my lumbar spine is in constant pain. Of course, the “where the hell did I put my phone” syndrome is right on target as well.

Theoretically, the next leap would be at 100.  If I last that long, it will be very short leap to “can someone please adjust my pillows?” and “Please up the morphine.”

 

 

 

 

How my garden doesn’t grow.

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When I moved here, one of the first things I started to do was to plant tomatoes and flowers.  That got me through COVID.  Then my knees started going and I wound up getting my right knee replaced last year.  Now it’s my back that is bothering me, and this past summer was too humid to be outside gardening anyway.  So, this is what I’m left with — a shelf by a  window.

I have always had house plants, and I just repotted the ones that were getting out of control.  The vines on the left are the offspring of a plant I got some 40 years ago from very good friends with whom I am still in touch.  The orchid was a spontaneous gift from my daughter a few weeks ago.

While not really an altar as such, I did add my two favorite icons/archetypes:  St. Anthony and Hecate.  St.  Anthony belonged to my mother, and it is one of the few things of hers I rescued.  Hecate is made of wool fibers by an artist I found on Etsy.  She is wearing a Hecate necklace that I made but have no where to wear.

I guess I look at these archetypes as representing my animas and anima, although this male represents sweetness and caring and light, while the female is powerful in her darkness.

My space is too small for any more plants, but I’m happy with the ones I have, and they seem happy with me.