When I was a kid, I used to love to go to Panama City, Florida with my family. We would stay a place on the beach and each night we ate seafood. Everything was fried in those days and only the most finicky of eaters and, of course, Yankees would think of eating seafood that was broiled. Some nights we would have fried red snapper, other nights, fried shrimp or oysters. For me a real treat was snapper throats – white succulent meat like nothing else! We had our rotation of seafood joints, including my favorite, Jessie Cooks, down on the dock in downtown PC (as Panama City is affectionately called by people from Alabama). Cholesterol and calories – who cared --- fried seafood was involved!
Our next door neighbor in Birmingham loved to fish, but I don’t think they much cared for eating fish. Many a night, my mother and father would come home to find our friendly neighbor had dropped off his catch, and they were swimming in the kitchen sink. No matter how late the hour, my mother would clean them right then and there. She chopped their heads off while they were still squirming and within a matter of minutes they were gutted and ready to fry. Crappie, bream and freshwater trout – a tasty assortment fried to perfection in corn meal.
Today catfish is plentiful and an aquaculture favorite. My family, however, always did like catfish, as long as it was “river cat” not “mudcat.” I am not sure what the difference is, but I know eating “mudcat” was something that “nice people” didn’t do. Being Southern by birth and training, I knew early on that I was expected to be one the “nice people.” That required adhering to a number of standards, including not wearing white after Labor Day and eating “mudcat.”
For all of my comfort with watching Mama clean fish at the kitchen sink, I was totally disturbed when at about age 12, at a fancy restaurant, I was served a brook trout with head still attached. This was in Boston, where people were more sophisticated and used to such strange customs.
That same trip to Boston, we went to Buzzards Bay on Cape Cod and stayed at little motel up on a hill. Across the street there was a restaurant where they had the most amazing bay scallops – fried, of course. For my family, it was love at first bite. Down south, we only had the big scallops that it was rumored were really cut from shark fins using a cookie cutter. On a recent trip to Cape Cod, we spent about an hour riding around looking for that restaurant. As far as I can tell, it is long gone, along with the small motel. But after all, it has been more than 50 years!
Another childhood favorite was salmon croquettes, made with left-over potatoes and canned RED salmon. We may not have been wealthy, but we always were able to afford RED salmon, as opposed to pink salmon. After all “nice people” ate red salmon! I never saw a fresh salmon until I was grown.
I grew up taking fresh seafood pretty much for granted, and even in college at Auburn, it wasn’t too hard to get one’s fill of fried seafood. When I was student teacher in Columbus, GA in 1968, my mentor teacher introduced me to the whole fish camp idea. My fiancé and I were treated to our fill of fried catfish and snapper throats.
A favorite memory from graduate school was when a friend and her husband, whose family lived outside of Auburn, drained their pond and had the most incredible fish fry. The fish was great and so were the hushpuppies.
My roommate and I invited a friend down from Birmingham for the weekend, and we decided to broil a snapper. By then I had become more sophisticated and come to realize that broiled seafood could be very tasty. So we prepared the huge red snapper with stuffing and herbs, and put it in the broiler to cook. But after half an hour, that snapper was still only warm. We consulted our houseguest (whose father worked for GE). She opened the oven and asked where the fish was. I said it was in the broiler. She opened the drawer under the oven and explained patiently that we had been trying to broil the fish in the pots and pans drawer.
When we moved to Illinois, I discovered that fish was not so plentiful. In fact, in her rural Illinois town, nobody really sold fresh fish. One time I bought a fish the bakery (they just happened to have a fish), but I ended up throwing it out because it smelled so bad.
If you wanted seafood, it came in the form of a can of tunafish, or from chain seafood chain. I remember one day we were in Belleville and wanted to get seafood at the Cape Codder and didn’t have much money. We dug through the bench car seats and in short order found about $6, which was enough to buy a seafood dinner. For real seafood, we went to St. Louis!
When we got to California in 1971, fish was not exactly plentiful in the Inland Empire (San Bernardino area). One night we went to fancy restaurant called the Castaways and I ordered trout amandine. I wore an opal ring that night – it had about a dozen very small opals. When I got home, I discovered one opal was missing. We called the restaurant and they checked through the vacuum bag, but no luck. I think I ate it, and thought it was just a crunchy almond.
We found ourselves craving fresh seafood and would often take a long drive to Balboa Island and go to the Crab Cooker. They had wonderful grilled fish – and I understand they are still in business. I want to go back there – well, next time I am in Southern California that can go on the ”to do” list.
Maryland is a great place if you are a seafood lover. After 35 years of living outside of Annapolis, I find myself never tiring of local seafood -- crabs, rockfish and oysters – a all delectable, if not periodically endangered. Because this is a “seafood town” there is no shortage of seafood from all over – grouper, tilapia, catfish, salmon, scallops (both kinds), and supermarket and seafood market staples.
I love our periodic forays into New England and I overdose on lobster. A treasured memory is the lobster roll on the front porch of the National Hotel on Block Island. Nothing else comes close! Though I have to say that for more than 40 years I have fondly remembered that lobster supper at St. Ann’s Church on Prince Edward Island.
We also spend a lot of time in Grand Cayman. One or our favorite things to do there is to go out with Captain Ebanks for the day long snorkel trip with beach picnic. The snorkeling is fun and time at the famous Stingray City is special, but the highlight of the day is the conch salad and barbecued fish, freshly caught that morning and cleaned on the back of the boat while we are snorkeling. I remember when Stingray City was just the “sandbar” and we would stop there to look for sand dollars. The captain would clean the fish and the conch in preparation for our lunch; he would throw the entrails over the side of the boat. One year, we noticed a few stingrays, and were told not to worry – they were friendly. A few years later, we returned and by then, Stingray City had been featured in National Geographic. We asked about going to Stingray City, and quickly learned that was the “sandbar” we had been going to all of these years.
My other favorite thing to do in Grand Cayman is to eat at the Grand Old House. That is, hands down, my favorite restaurant – not just in Grand Cayman but in the world! Dinner there is a trip back in time and the food is incredible – especially the grouper. Following dinner, you can walk down to the end of the pier and watch the tarpon. Oh, the memories.
When David was a baby he used to love the song Molly Malone and Steve used to sing it to him regularly – you know, “cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o.” I always wondered about cockles were, but decades later we went to a gathering of the McNeill clan (my grandmother’s family) on the island of Barra, off the coast of Scotland. We took the ferry, but there is a once a day flight on British Air. There is no paved runway and the plane lands on the beach at low tide. The rest of the day, the area of open for people to harvest (I guess that is what you call it) cockles –small tasty shellfish. If you go to any one of the islands restaurants (there are several) cockles are on the menu, with a notation that they are from the local airport (and they mean flown in) daily.
When I think of Greece, I always think of seafood, so when we found ourselves on a small Greek island looking for dinner, we sought out a waterfront seafood restaurant. I looked at the choices and determined that what I wanted to order was something called “white bait.” My husband assured me that it was a mild white fish. Nobody discussed size, though the name should have cued me in. What I got was a plate piled high with what appeared to be minnows, beautifully fried, complete with heads and tails. I pinched off the heads and the tails and ate the middle part, probably much to the amusement of the wait staff. The bones were too small to see.
For our last day in Athens, we chartered a cab for a full day trip. At lunchtime, we had our choice of restaurants and we opted for a place on the waterfront. Our driver knew the place, otherwise we might not have gone there. Somewhat ominously, we were the only diners. Upon arrival, we were asked what we wanted to eat and we said “fish.” We were taken to a cooler and asked to select a fish. The fish was actually wonderful, thought I think it cost about $50 just for the fish. After that, we focused on other less costly Greek specialties.
I went to the grocery store yesterday and I bought two nice group filets. They weren’t cheap, but I know they will taste terrific. Obviously, I could fix them in some gourmet way and fall short of the Grand Old House for sure. I could broil them, now that do know how to use the broiler. But my Southern roots have won out. I think I will fry them with an egg batter and panko – my new favorite ingredient. Of course, I will use olive oil and blot them carefully on a paper towel. After all, fish IS healthy, right?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Power Failure
The lights used to go out when I was a kid, but it was not a big deal. Late afternoon summer thunderstorms are a part of life in Birmingham and some days the fierce winds would knock down trees and power lines. Sometimes devastating tornados would race through nearby communities. No doubt the victims of these horrific events lost power for many hours, but for us power failures were rare and passed quickly by candlelight.
When I was a teenager, Birmingham experienced some harsh winter ice storms and the power went out for days. It was more of a grand adventure than a disaster. My father worked for the gas company, so we had a gas stove and grill. My mother would host a power failure party and invite all the neighbors.
More than two decades after I moved away, my mother was terminally ill with cancer. It was January and she was hospitalized for the last time. I got the call to come home, and managed to fly in on the last flight before the Birmingham airport was closed due to an ice storm. That same storm took out the power at my parents’ house. My father and I stayed at the hospital at my mother’s bedside until she passed away. That night, we went home to a dark and ice cold house. It was like walking around in death. My mother’s things were there, just as she had left them. The darkness was palpable and the cold, bone chilling.
In Maryland, power failures are common in summer storms, hurricanes and winter ice storms. We have talked about getting a generator, but haven’t yet. Somehow it seems once the storm has passed that it is hard to think about the next one.
The winter power failures are the worst; they go on for days. The cold is intolerable. It chills the soul and it reminds me of the night my mother died. The last time we had an extended winter power failure, we went to a motel.
We just finished with a 6 day power outage due to Hurricane Irene. What is scary is that by the 3rd day I found myself falling into a power-less existence. The restlessness passed and calm set in. I became accustomed to not having TV and finally stopped switching on lights when entering closets. I came to enjoy sleeping with the windows open and reading myself to sleep by electric lantern.
The electricity is back on now. Life is back to normal, but I am not. I keep thinking that I have lost something special that I was just beginning to grasp in the quiet and darkness of the power failure.
When I was a teenager, Birmingham experienced some harsh winter ice storms and the power went out for days. It was more of a grand adventure than a disaster. My father worked for the gas company, so we had a gas stove and grill. My mother would host a power failure party and invite all the neighbors.
More than two decades after I moved away, my mother was terminally ill with cancer. It was January and she was hospitalized for the last time. I got the call to come home, and managed to fly in on the last flight before the Birmingham airport was closed due to an ice storm. That same storm took out the power at my parents’ house. My father and I stayed at the hospital at my mother’s bedside until she passed away. That night, we went home to a dark and ice cold house. It was like walking around in death. My mother’s things were there, just as she had left them. The darkness was palpable and the cold, bone chilling.
In Maryland, power failures are common in summer storms, hurricanes and winter ice storms. We have talked about getting a generator, but haven’t yet. Somehow it seems once the storm has passed that it is hard to think about the next one.
The winter power failures are the worst; they go on for days. The cold is intolerable. It chills the soul and it reminds me of the night my mother died. The last time we had an extended winter power failure, we went to a motel.
We just finished with a 6 day power outage due to Hurricane Irene. What is scary is that by the 3rd day I found myself falling into a power-less existence. The restlessness passed and calm set in. I became accustomed to not having TV and finally stopped switching on lights when entering closets. I came to enjoy sleeping with the windows open and reading myself to sleep by electric lantern.
The electricity is back on now. Life is back to normal, but I am not. I keep thinking that I have lost something special that I was just beginning to grasp in the quiet and darkness of the power failure.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Computer Revolution and Unemployment
Yes, I think they are very much related. Computers are finally coming of age in offices all over the world, and the result is a shift in how companies staff.
When computers came on the scene in the early 80s in regular offices populated by people with no technical expertise, the buzz was that computers would help us do everything easier and quicker! Yeah, right! Not for at least for another 30 years.
Computers are finally living up to the hype. Or perhaps we low-tech humans with 30 years of dealing with them are finally more competent to use them. The truth is now we are getting a lot more done than we did 30 years ago. Personally, I think every day that I am doing the work that six of me could have done in 1981.
Remember what it used to be like? You would go to work in the morning and review the papers in your in-box. You would look for little pink slips of paper for phone messages to return. Then you would start to work. If you wanted to write a letter, you would take a yellow tablet and write it out in long-hand or if you were a big-shot you could have your secretary take dictation (I never experienced that). In any event, you didn’t type it yourself. Chances are that the letter would have to be retyped because of a typo. A letter I could zip off today in a few minutes via email would take two people several hours.
If you wanted to write a research report, you would gather all of the materials you needed around you. The magazine articles you might cite would come from your personal stash. You had a bookshelf in your office because you needed the books to do research. If you really wanted to get serious about research you would have to get in the car and go to an academic library. A thorough report might take days. And then somebody still had to type it.
If you wanted to do a slide presentation, you had to shoot the slides with a camera, get them developed; and spend several hours putting the slides in the right order in the Carousel tray and setting the timing. Obviously, PowerPoint is a great time-saver!
Our Boomer generation knows how to type and that has probably been our salvation. We didn’t learn to type in anticipation of computers, however. That was a fortuitous accident. My mother, like many others of her generation, made me take “personal typing” in high school so I could type term papers in college and letters when I was a functioning adult. I was in the college prep course, so there was no time in my academic day for regular typing. Besides, I was never going to be a secretary. In retrospect, typing was by far the most useful thing I learned in high school!
While doing anything before the office computer came along was harder than it is today, nobody talks about that decade from 1981 to about 1991 when computers seemed to make productivity go DOWN, not up. Nor do they consider the negative impact of SPAM and viruses on productivity that followed for another decade.
Why would all of these wonderful machines make things harder? The answer is that people had trouble using them. In the early 1980s, to type a letter you had to memorize a bunch of control codes. To add a column of numbers you had to create a spreadsheet and use formulas that reminded you of algebra class. I am not a fast typist (especially back then) and I could type faster than my computer display could show the letters. File names had to be short and have no spaces. In most offices there were a few computer-phobics and it was their secretaries who had to adapt. I was what some of my colleagues called a “computer person.” That meant I could turn it on and competently type and print a letter. I could even create a spreadsheet!
When the computer broke, I was still pretty helpless. There was no “tech support,” but I was lucky that my husband and son are both way more computer savvy than I am and could usually solve the problems. But all of that takes time.
For a whole decade we had offices with a handful of people who could deal with computers and a majority who could not. It wasn’t especially cost effective, but it was a way of life.
By the early 1990s many who simply could not handle computers at all had retired or moved to other careers where computers were not essential. The lingering computer phobic executives had competent administrative assistants who could do their computer work for them. At last we were beginning to realize some of the promise of what computers could do for us. They still broke, but they were easier to use. We still, however, had no access to information in real-time.
Enter the Internet and e-mail – BIG TIME! At first the Internet and its sister e-mail were novelties in the office. I remember having ten workstations in the mid-90s and only two of them had an Internet dial-up connection on shared line with fax machine.
Soon it became clear that everyone needed the Internet we got an Internet hub and DSL and thought we were hot-stuff. Now that everybody could get e-mail, we started using it to communicate. Everyone could get online, so we started using the Internet to research things and order stuff. It was pretty cool!
But everyone else also discovered e-mail and our e-mailboxes filled with SPAM. People started sending dumb jokes around via e-mail and employees, who lacked e-mail at home, started having personal e-mail come to the office and using the Internet to shop.
The bad guys also discovered that the Internet was a great way to wreak havoc, so we started getting debilitating computer viruses – not to mention big bad Trojan Horses and evil worms. Countless hours of productivity were lost in most offices.
But things are different now. We have SPAM filters so much of the distraction of SPAM is gone. Employees have computers and Internet access at home, so there is little temptation to waste company time on personal shopping or sharing jokes. The workflow is fast and furious!
We now have good virus protection software and a computer virus is a rarity. We don’t lose time to unraveling computers tied in knots by Trojan horses and the like. The computers mostly just work. And we have learned what to do when they don’t.
In order to work in an office today you have to be competent with basic office software. That means just about anyone can type a letter, create a spreadsheet, create a Powerpoint presentation, send and receive emails, and use the Internet. And, of course, everyone is self-sufficient. There is no longer much need for lower level employees to provide services for the higher ups. There is a culture of “do it yourself” – even if you are the boss!
I submit that there are thousands and thousands of jobs lost to increased computer productivity. In a tough economy, simply getting the work done is a top priority. Reducing payroll costs for a company may be the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. It is unfortunate that many people are not able to find jobs – competent, skilled people who are very adept at using computers. That’s the point – just about everyone is able to use computers well these days.
So what will be the differentiator of the future? I submit that it might just be creativity and problem-solving and the ability to work with little or no supervision. Of course, that assumes there is money to hire anyone new, and that is, of course, the challenge of our times.
When computers came on the scene in the early 80s in regular offices populated by people with no technical expertise, the buzz was that computers would help us do everything easier and quicker! Yeah, right! Not for at least for another 30 years.
Computers are finally living up to the hype. Or perhaps we low-tech humans with 30 years of dealing with them are finally more competent to use them. The truth is now we are getting a lot more done than we did 30 years ago. Personally, I think every day that I am doing the work that six of me could have done in 1981.
Remember what it used to be like? You would go to work in the morning and review the papers in your in-box. You would look for little pink slips of paper for phone messages to return. Then you would start to work. If you wanted to write a letter, you would take a yellow tablet and write it out in long-hand or if you were a big-shot you could have your secretary take dictation (I never experienced that). In any event, you didn’t type it yourself. Chances are that the letter would have to be retyped because of a typo. A letter I could zip off today in a few minutes via email would take two people several hours.
If you wanted to write a research report, you would gather all of the materials you needed around you. The magazine articles you might cite would come from your personal stash. You had a bookshelf in your office because you needed the books to do research. If you really wanted to get serious about research you would have to get in the car and go to an academic library. A thorough report might take days. And then somebody still had to type it.
If you wanted to do a slide presentation, you had to shoot the slides with a camera, get them developed; and spend several hours putting the slides in the right order in the Carousel tray and setting the timing. Obviously, PowerPoint is a great time-saver!
Our Boomer generation knows how to type and that has probably been our salvation. We didn’t learn to type in anticipation of computers, however. That was a fortuitous accident. My mother, like many others of her generation, made me take “personal typing” in high school so I could type term papers in college and letters when I was a functioning adult. I was in the college prep course, so there was no time in my academic day for regular typing. Besides, I was never going to be a secretary. In retrospect, typing was by far the most useful thing I learned in high school!
While doing anything before the office computer came along was harder than it is today, nobody talks about that decade from 1981 to about 1991 when computers seemed to make productivity go DOWN, not up. Nor do they consider the negative impact of SPAM and viruses on productivity that followed for another decade.
Why would all of these wonderful machines make things harder? The answer is that people had trouble using them. In the early 1980s, to type a letter you had to memorize a bunch of control codes. To add a column of numbers you had to create a spreadsheet and use formulas that reminded you of algebra class. I am not a fast typist (especially back then) and I could type faster than my computer display could show the letters. File names had to be short and have no spaces. In most offices there were a few computer-phobics and it was their secretaries who had to adapt. I was what some of my colleagues called a “computer person.” That meant I could turn it on and competently type and print a letter. I could even create a spreadsheet!
When the computer broke, I was still pretty helpless. There was no “tech support,” but I was lucky that my husband and son are both way more computer savvy than I am and could usually solve the problems. But all of that takes time.
For a whole decade we had offices with a handful of people who could deal with computers and a majority who could not. It wasn’t especially cost effective, but it was a way of life.
By the early 1990s many who simply could not handle computers at all had retired or moved to other careers where computers were not essential. The lingering computer phobic executives had competent administrative assistants who could do their computer work for them. At last we were beginning to realize some of the promise of what computers could do for us. They still broke, but they were easier to use. We still, however, had no access to information in real-time.
Enter the Internet and e-mail – BIG TIME! At first the Internet and its sister e-mail were novelties in the office. I remember having ten workstations in the mid-90s and only two of them had an Internet dial-up connection on shared line with fax machine.
Soon it became clear that everyone needed the Internet we got an Internet hub and DSL and thought we were hot-stuff. Now that everybody could get e-mail, we started using it to communicate. Everyone could get online, so we started using the Internet to research things and order stuff. It was pretty cool!
But everyone else also discovered e-mail and our e-mailboxes filled with SPAM. People started sending dumb jokes around via e-mail and employees, who lacked e-mail at home, started having personal e-mail come to the office and using the Internet to shop.
The bad guys also discovered that the Internet was a great way to wreak havoc, so we started getting debilitating computer viruses – not to mention big bad Trojan Horses and evil worms. Countless hours of productivity were lost in most offices.
But things are different now. We have SPAM filters so much of the distraction of SPAM is gone. Employees have computers and Internet access at home, so there is little temptation to waste company time on personal shopping or sharing jokes. The workflow is fast and furious!
We now have good virus protection software and a computer virus is a rarity. We don’t lose time to unraveling computers tied in knots by Trojan horses and the like. The computers mostly just work. And we have learned what to do when they don’t.
In order to work in an office today you have to be competent with basic office software. That means just about anyone can type a letter, create a spreadsheet, create a Powerpoint presentation, send and receive emails, and use the Internet. And, of course, everyone is self-sufficient. There is no longer much need for lower level employees to provide services for the higher ups. There is a culture of “do it yourself” – even if you are the boss!
I submit that there are thousands and thousands of jobs lost to increased computer productivity. In a tough economy, simply getting the work done is a top priority. Reducing payroll costs for a company may be the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. It is unfortunate that many people are not able to find jobs – competent, skilled people who are very adept at using computers. That’s the point – just about everyone is able to use computers well these days.
So what will be the differentiator of the future? I submit that it might just be creativity and problem-solving and the ability to work with little or no supervision. Of course, that assumes there is money to hire anyone new, and that is, of course, the challenge of our times.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Fashion
At 65, I don’t find fashion of much interest, but then I never did. I get a fashion magazine – I never ordered it – it just comes. Clearly, some computer out there has my birthdate off by about 30 years. Nonetheless, I must confess to occasionally thumbing through it before it goes into the recycling pile. The last issue they seem to be wearing a lot of short dark socks – whatever!
In most of us, I guess there is a herd instinct. We don’t want to stand out in a crowd, but rather be one of the herd members. Any analogies to sheep are purely intentional. For me, that is my only goal with fashion – I don’t want people to stare at me on the street and say – ‘get a load of that!”
Thinking back about fashion, I remember my first grade teacher had a long skinny skirt. Before then I have never thought about it one way or the other. When our teachers were wearing straight skirts, we girls were wearing plaid “school dresses” with little puffed sleeves and white socks rolled down.
Before elementary school was over, skirts got full and petticoats started being made of scratchy fabric. Girls wore their cardigan sweaters turned around backwards with little fake collars. Some had furry pom poms hanging down. I never really had a poodle skirt, as I was just a bit too young, but they sure were popular with the older girls.
By junior high, the full skirts and petticoats mercifully were gone, and we were in very tailored pleated plaid skirts with long fuzzy sweaters and oxford cloth blouses with Peter Pan collars. We wore our socks straight up and clip-on bows in our hair.
When I arrived in high school, we went from pleats to heather tone A-lines and from sweaters to blazers with emblems of nothing in particular on the pocket. We wore stiff- starched oxford cloth skirts with button-down collars. By senior year we had ditched our white cotton socks for hose with our loafers. How sophisticated we were!
My mother made my freshman wardrobe. She was a wonderful seamstress and I was very fashionable – but, of course, my mother (nor I) had no real idea what the other girls were wearing. The school had strict rules – no slacks and jeans were a major conduct breach. Mostly we wore the same stuff as in high school, but in spring out came the floral print Villager dresses with Peter Pan collars, pleated fronts, straw belts and beads. Having blazers in navy, red, and beige was a wardrobe essential. A London Fog trenchcoat was obligatory for going to the dining hall in one’s nightgown or out the car for a forgotten item – even in the hottest weather. Technically it met the dress code and we always wore them buttoned up.
By the time I started graduate school in 1968, something had changed and slacks were now OK on campus. Some of the undergrads were not even wearing school, except to class where they were still required. I didn’t get caught up in the whole Hippie dress thing. About the “Hippiest” thing I did wear cut off knee length jeans, though we would buy them pre-cut to avoid that sloppy threads hanging down look. Never to class, of course. This was still the South!
When I started my career in education, the rule was “no slacks.” We tried to wear dresses, rather than blazers and skirts so we wouldn’t be mistaken for the students. No more socks – we were professionals. My mother made me tailored dresses, but I still would wear a blazer and skirt when I felt I could get away with it.
As a young married woman, I tried to look sophisticated, but usually fell short of the mark. Fortunately, my mother kept my wardrobe flowing with new additions, and my beloved blazers and skirts were OK – until we moved to California. But when I lived in Illinois, I learned to wear a wig and wear high heel boots. Lipstick got pale and eye makeup got strange.
Enter polyester – the fabric we loved to hate. In California in the early 70s it was jeans and T-shirts or what we later started to call “fat’ polyester. The earliest polyester had a plastic feel about it – very thick and impossible to wrinkle. It was the fabric of the future. No more ironing (nobody objected to that!). Polyester just went with the whole 70s thing with disco, glimmer balls and the like. I hated that whole period.
About the time we left Southern California in 1976 and came east, Preppy was back. We never called it Preppy, but it was the look I had grown up with. I was thrilled to wear blazers and leather jackets again. Plaid was in again and so was its companion, oxford cloth- though now perma-pressed. Polyester became progressively more refined. It was sometimes indistinguishable except by touch from natural fabrics.
At some point in the 1990s I stopped worrying about things like dress length or even what other people except my immediate colleagues were wearing. I bought what they had in the stores that fit my overweight body. Before Women’s sizes, life after size 16 was definitely limited. My mother was no longer around to sew for me and I had to find clothes I could wear.
In the 2000s my mid-aged and beyond colleagues and I discovered that the secret to getting by in the world was slacks in black, white and beige in a variety of styles. Blouses could be solid colored knit tops and jackets could be bright colors – plaids, florals, anything goes! With black dress and jacket you can go anywhere – mostly especially Washington, DC, the city that appears to be in continual mourning.
What is next – I don’t know and I don’t really care that much. But I know for sure I will not be wearing what those people in the fashion magazine are wearing! Well, maybe the dark socks – but never with a feather skirt and baggy sweater! There are limits ---
In most of us, I guess there is a herd instinct. We don’t want to stand out in a crowd, but rather be one of the herd members. Any analogies to sheep are purely intentional. For me, that is my only goal with fashion – I don’t want people to stare at me on the street and say – ‘get a load of that!”
Thinking back about fashion, I remember my first grade teacher had a long skinny skirt. Before then I have never thought about it one way or the other. When our teachers were wearing straight skirts, we girls were wearing plaid “school dresses” with little puffed sleeves and white socks rolled down.
Before elementary school was over, skirts got full and petticoats started being made of scratchy fabric. Girls wore their cardigan sweaters turned around backwards with little fake collars. Some had furry pom poms hanging down. I never really had a poodle skirt, as I was just a bit too young, but they sure were popular with the older girls.
By junior high, the full skirts and petticoats mercifully were gone, and we were in very tailored pleated plaid skirts with long fuzzy sweaters and oxford cloth blouses with Peter Pan collars. We wore our socks straight up and clip-on bows in our hair.
When I arrived in high school, we went from pleats to heather tone A-lines and from sweaters to blazers with emblems of nothing in particular on the pocket. We wore stiff- starched oxford cloth skirts with button-down collars. By senior year we had ditched our white cotton socks for hose with our loafers. How sophisticated we were!
My mother made my freshman wardrobe. She was a wonderful seamstress and I was very fashionable – but, of course, my mother (nor I) had no real idea what the other girls were wearing. The school had strict rules – no slacks and jeans were a major conduct breach. Mostly we wore the same stuff as in high school, but in spring out came the floral print Villager dresses with Peter Pan collars, pleated fronts, straw belts and beads. Having blazers in navy, red, and beige was a wardrobe essential. A London Fog trenchcoat was obligatory for going to the dining hall in one’s nightgown or out the car for a forgotten item – even in the hottest weather. Technically it met the dress code and we always wore them buttoned up.
By the time I started graduate school in 1968, something had changed and slacks were now OK on campus. Some of the undergrads were not even wearing school, except to class where they were still required. I didn’t get caught up in the whole Hippie dress thing. About the “Hippiest” thing I did wear cut off knee length jeans, though we would buy them pre-cut to avoid that sloppy threads hanging down look. Never to class, of course. This was still the South!
When I started my career in education, the rule was “no slacks.” We tried to wear dresses, rather than blazers and skirts so we wouldn’t be mistaken for the students. No more socks – we were professionals. My mother made me tailored dresses, but I still would wear a blazer and skirt when I felt I could get away with it.
As a young married woman, I tried to look sophisticated, but usually fell short of the mark. Fortunately, my mother kept my wardrobe flowing with new additions, and my beloved blazers and skirts were OK – until we moved to California. But when I lived in Illinois, I learned to wear a wig and wear high heel boots. Lipstick got pale and eye makeup got strange.
Enter polyester – the fabric we loved to hate. In California in the early 70s it was jeans and T-shirts or what we later started to call “fat’ polyester. The earliest polyester had a plastic feel about it – very thick and impossible to wrinkle. It was the fabric of the future. No more ironing (nobody objected to that!). Polyester just went with the whole 70s thing with disco, glimmer balls and the like. I hated that whole period.
About the time we left Southern California in 1976 and came east, Preppy was back. We never called it Preppy, but it was the look I had grown up with. I was thrilled to wear blazers and leather jackets again. Plaid was in again and so was its companion, oxford cloth- though now perma-pressed. Polyester became progressively more refined. It was sometimes indistinguishable except by touch from natural fabrics.
At some point in the 1990s I stopped worrying about things like dress length or even what other people except my immediate colleagues were wearing. I bought what they had in the stores that fit my overweight body. Before Women’s sizes, life after size 16 was definitely limited. My mother was no longer around to sew for me and I had to find clothes I could wear.
In the 2000s my mid-aged and beyond colleagues and I discovered that the secret to getting by in the world was slacks in black, white and beige in a variety of styles. Blouses could be solid colored knit tops and jackets could be bright colors – plaids, florals, anything goes! With black dress and jacket you can go anywhere – mostly especially Washington, DC, the city that appears to be in continual mourning.
What is next – I don’t know and I don’t really care that much. But I know for sure I will not be wearing what those people in the fashion magazine are wearing! Well, maybe the dark socks – but never with a feather skirt and baggy sweater! There are limits ---
Sunday, August 07, 2011
My Shoes from Mary Janes to Clogs
When I was a kid in the 50s, we had three kinds of shoes, leather oxfords for school, tennis shoes for play, and leather sandals for the beach. Life was so simple then!
The first shoes I really remember vividly were Mary Janes, but back then we didn’t call them Mary Janes. I would have remembered because my best friend, from across the street, was named Mary Jane. We just called them Sunday shoes. Usually they were white or black patent leather and we wore them with white cotton socks, rolled down. The rule, as every kid in Brimingham knew, was no white shoes until Easter! Being Protestant, I never associated patent leather with any inappropriate reflections.
For school, we all wore brown oxfords until sometime in the upper elementary grades saddle shoes came along. I think about that same time saddle shoes were all the rage in high schools, and somehow the fad trickled down to us. Keeping them clean was a lot harder than the brown oxfords. The saddle was brown or black and sometimes the sole was a reddish rubber. The main part of the shoe was a hard to clean white!
Tennis shoes, as we called them, came in two brands, Keds and PF Flyers. Keds had the blue rectangle on the back and PF Flyers had the red ball. The Keds were considered cooler in my social set of adolescent girls, though I am not sure why. We had a choice of three colors – blue, red or white. We didn’t buy white because everyone knew white was for P.E. class and for real tennis.
I never much cared for sandals because I didn’t like the way they felt when the sand got in them. But they were, after all, required!
When I got to junior high it was a different world – shoe-wise! Saddle oxfords gave way to rah-rah shoes, which were similar to saddle oxfords but the saddle extended with a long tale to the back of the shoe. They were called rah-rah shoes because cheerleaders wore them with their uniforms. For regular kids, rah-rahs were fun because we could pick choose from saddles in different colors. I vividly remember a red pair I thought was especially “cool.”
No more Mary Janes - -now we had to wear “heels.” My first pair was red patent leather with about three inches high and instruments of the devil. I still remember the pain and the awkwardness of walking in them. After that flamboyant start, I settled on plainer pumps with lower heels.
For gym, starting in junior high and all the way through college, we had to wear white tennis shoes. They had to be inspected every Monday. Nobody liked to wash the shoes because that made they never looked right after they were washed. We resorted to coating them with white shoe polish intended for nurses’ shoes. By the end of the school year, the canvas was very stiff.
By the time I reached high school, there was only one kind of school shoe that was acceptable – Bass Weejuns. Those shoes cost about $30 and had to be special ordered about 6 weeks in advance from the ritziest department store in Birmingham. My mother reluctantly relented after I became despondent about having to wear an obvious “knock-off” brand. The optimal color was brown and the preferred style was the penny loafer (in my world it was not cool to put pennies in penny loafers).
But by the time I was a senior, it was OK to be a bit daring. I remember getting a pair of navy blue Weejuns with a pebble finish and tassels. What a fashion statement!
In high school, there was only one two kinds of acceptable shoes -- pumps and spectators. A basic wardrobe required pumps in black, blue, white and off-white. Brown was OK too if you could afford another pair. We then dressed them up with shoe clips in various styles and colors. For Easter, spectators were a good choice.
Spectators were the dress equivalent of saddle shores because they were white with colored trim. They also had small holes in them similar to a man’s wing tip shoe (BTW, my grandfather, Thomas Green Humphreys, Sr., designed the original mens’ wingtip shoes).
In college, Bass Weejuns still prevailed, as did pumps and spectators. By the time I graduated, however, other shoe style were creeping into our wardrobes. I remember a pair of navy blue shoes with sturdy low heels and big buckles. My mother, who was always every fashionable, dubbed them my “Pilgrim shoes.” I loved those shoes and wore them most days when I was a student teacher in 1968.
In 1969, the hippie movement hit my college, but I was in grad school and saw no particular need to go barefooted. We did, however, hop on the sandal bandwagon with dark brown leather thong sandals – the fancy rendition of the humble rubber flip-flop. We also took our aging Bass Weejuns and made them into strange sandals using razor blades (a summer indulgence for bored camp counselors).
When I got married and entered the professional world, it was pumps and hose in the day time and loafers at home to relax in. We were in Illinois by then and things were pretty conservative on the small, church-controlled campus where I worked. The small town where we lived did not even have a shoe store, so the simplest thing to do was wear my old shoes.
When the military sent us to California in 1971, I was cast into a strange world of synthetic leather and strange styles that my Southern sensibilities found unacceptable. The weather was beastly hot and not a good combination with synthetic leather – talk about foot odor! I finally located a shoe store where they sold shoes to little old ladies and ordered a pair of really ugly brown oxfords. At last, comfortable shoes! My mother thought they were even uglier than my Pilgrim shoes that I had only recently retired due a un-repairable broken buckle.
The entire five years I spent in California I was not happy shoe-wise. On occasional trips to Alabama I would pick up new loafers, pumps or tennis shoes. But I never fit into a world a plastic shoes, platform shoes, and peculiar sandals.
When we moved to Maryland in 1976, I quickly noticed that all of the other kindergarten moms were wearing brown leather shoes with white soles and leather laces. It was love at first sight, and within a week of arrival I had secured a pair of brown Sperry Topsiders. Soon, I bought an off-white pair for a trip to the Caribbean. I have had at least one pair in my wardrobe for the less 35 years – decades before we ever owned a sailboat.
Maryland was certainly more to my liking shoe-wise. My leather pumps, loafers and tennis shoes, along with my boat shoes, served me well for decades, with slight variations in heel design, color, and style.
Then a few years ago, something happened. My feet started to hurt – a lot! Pumps, even with the broader stacked heels that were then my preference, were intolerable. In fact, even my beloved loafers were uncomfortable.
For a trip, I ordered some really unattractive clogs with mesh tops. Within a week, I learned to love them and have ordered more colors, including a fur lined leather pair for winter. I even ordered dress versions that are really pretty strange, but are acceptable for events where I am to be on my feet for extended periods.
I still have some pumps for weddings and funerals, and I still can wear my boat shoes. My tennis shoes have morphed into athletic shoes in black for winter and white for summer.
Because I live in Maryland, I now live by the more restrictive rule on white shoes – forbidden until after Memorial Day and banned after Labor Day – except when at the airport in a flight bound for Florida (of course).
The first shoes I really remember vividly were Mary Janes, but back then we didn’t call them Mary Janes. I would have remembered because my best friend, from across the street, was named Mary Jane. We just called them Sunday shoes. Usually they were white or black patent leather and we wore them with white cotton socks, rolled down. The rule, as every kid in Brimingham knew, was no white shoes until Easter! Being Protestant, I never associated patent leather with any inappropriate reflections.
For school, we all wore brown oxfords until sometime in the upper elementary grades saddle shoes came along. I think about that same time saddle shoes were all the rage in high schools, and somehow the fad trickled down to us. Keeping them clean was a lot harder than the brown oxfords. The saddle was brown or black and sometimes the sole was a reddish rubber. The main part of the shoe was a hard to clean white!
Tennis shoes, as we called them, came in two brands, Keds and PF Flyers. Keds had the blue rectangle on the back and PF Flyers had the red ball. The Keds were considered cooler in my social set of adolescent girls, though I am not sure why. We had a choice of three colors – blue, red or white. We didn’t buy white because everyone knew white was for P.E. class and for real tennis.
I never much cared for sandals because I didn’t like the way they felt when the sand got in them. But they were, after all, required!
When I got to junior high it was a different world – shoe-wise! Saddle oxfords gave way to rah-rah shoes, which were similar to saddle oxfords but the saddle extended with a long tale to the back of the shoe. They were called rah-rah shoes because cheerleaders wore them with their uniforms. For regular kids, rah-rahs were fun because we could pick choose from saddles in different colors. I vividly remember a red pair I thought was especially “cool.”
No more Mary Janes - -now we had to wear “heels.” My first pair was red patent leather with about three inches high and instruments of the devil. I still remember the pain and the awkwardness of walking in them. After that flamboyant start, I settled on plainer pumps with lower heels.
For gym, starting in junior high and all the way through college, we had to wear white tennis shoes. They had to be inspected every Monday. Nobody liked to wash the shoes because that made they never looked right after they were washed. We resorted to coating them with white shoe polish intended for nurses’ shoes. By the end of the school year, the canvas was very stiff.
By the time I reached high school, there was only one kind of school shoe that was acceptable – Bass Weejuns. Those shoes cost about $30 and had to be special ordered about 6 weeks in advance from the ritziest department store in Birmingham. My mother reluctantly relented after I became despondent about having to wear an obvious “knock-off” brand. The optimal color was brown and the preferred style was the penny loafer (in my world it was not cool to put pennies in penny loafers).
But by the time I was a senior, it was OK to be a bit daring. I remember getting a pair of navy blue Weejuns with a pebble finish and tassels. What a fashion statement!
In high school, there was only one two kinds of acceptable shoes -- pumps and spectators. A basic wardrobe required pumps in black, blue, white and off-white. Brown was OK too if you could afford another pair. We then dressed them up with shoe clips in various styles and colors. For Easter, spectators were a good choice.
Spectators were the dress equivalent of saddle shores because they were white with colored trim. They also had small holes in them similar to a man’s wing tip shoe (BTW, my grandfather, Thomas Green Humphreys, Sr., designed the original mens’ wingtip shoes).
In college, Bass Weejuns still prevailed, as did pumps and spectators. By the time I graduated, however, other shoe style were creeping into our wardrobes. I remember a pair of navy blue shoes with sturdy low heels and big buckles. My mother, who was always every fashionable, dubbed them my “Pilgrim shoes.” I loved those shoes and wore them most days when I was a student teacher in 1968.
In 1969, the hippie movement hit my college, but I was in grad school and saw no particular need to go barefooted. We did, however, hop on the sandal bandwagon with dark brown leather thong sandals – the fancy rendition of the humble rubber flip-flop. We also took our aging Bass Weejuns and made them into strange sandals using razor blades (a summer indulgence for bored camp counselors).
When I got married and entered the professional world, it was pumps and hose in the day time and loafers at home to relax in. We were in Illinois by then and things were pretty conservative on the small, church-controlled campus where I worked. The small town where we lived did not even have a shoe store, so the simplest thing to do was wear my old shoes.
When the military sent us to California in 1971, I was cast into a strange world of synthetic leather and strange styles that my Southern sensibilities found unacceptable. The weather was beastly hot and not a good combination with synthetic leather – talk about foot odor! I finally located a shoe store where they sold shoes to little old ladies and ordered a pair of really ugly brown oxfords. At last, comfortable shoes! My mother thought they were even uglier than my Pilgrim shoes that I had only recently retired due a un-repairable broken buckle.
The entire five years I spent in California I was not happy shoe-wise. On occasional trips to Alabama I would pick up new loafers, pumps or tennis shoes. But I never fit into a world a plastic shoes, platform shoes, and peculiar sandals.
When we moved to Maryland in 1976, I quickly noticed that all of the other kindergarten moms were wearing brown leather shoes with white soles and leather laces. It was love at first sight, and within a week of arrival I had secured a pair of brown Sperry Topsiders. Soon, I bought an off-white pair for a trip to the Caribbean. I have had at least one pair in my wardrobe for the less 35 years – decades before we ever owned a sailboat.
Maryland was certainly more to my liking shoe-wise. My leather pumps, loafers and tennis shoes, along with my boat shoes, served me well for decades, with slight variations in heel design, color, and style.
Then a few years ago, something happened. My feet started to hurt – a lot! Pumps, even with the broader stacked heels that were then my preference, were intolerable. In fact, even my beloved loafers were uncomfortable.
For a trip, I ordered some really unattractive clogs with mesh tops. Within a week, I learned to love them and have ordered more colors, including a fur lined leather pair for winter. I even ordered dress versions that are really pretty strange, but are acceptable for events where I am to be on my feet for extended periods.
I still have some pumps for weddings and funerals, and I still can wear my boat shoes. My tennis shoes have morphed into athletic shoes in black for winter and white for summer.
Because I live in Maryland, I now live by the more restrictive rule on white shoes – forbidden until after Memorial Day and banned after Labor Day – except when at the airport in a flight bound for Florida (of course).
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Floors I Have Known
Floors I Have Known
My husband just installed a beautiful new bamboo floor in our basement room. Who knew we would ever have floors made out of bamboo? When I was growing up, bamboo was used for fishing poles. Later I learned it was an invasive species. Now they are making floors out of it. Now if they could just find a similar use for kudzu, the scourge of the South.
We also re-carpeted the basement stairs in a commercial grade, heavy duty carpet that is called “Expresso” and is dark brownish, with lots of colors if you look closely. I am hoping it will outlast me. For sure it won’t show dirt or coffee spills.
All of this got me thinking about the floors I have known in my life. For sure there have been changes.
The floors in the house I grew up in had hardwood floors and every so often my mother and grandmother would paste wax them. What a wonderful smell! They waxed the floor and I played” train” with the dining room chairs all lined up.
The kitchen floor in that house was linoleum. They cleaned it with a mop and disinfectant. Once they put in a new floor and it was great – all fresh and clean!
I still remember the bathroom floor. It was little octagonal white tiles. Between the cleaning lady, my mother, and my grandmother the floor was always sparkling. Of course, we only had the one bathroom, but at the time there was nothing odd about that. People out in the country still had outhouses.
We had rugs in the living and rooms and throw rugs in the bedrooms – all over hardwood floors. My grandmother loved her canister vacuum cleaner. I got the impression that we were pretty lucky to have such a fine vacuum cleaner, but that didn’t stop me from hating the noise it made. (I still HATE the noise a vacuum cleaner makes.)
The front porch was made of wood that was painted bluish gray. Everyone seemed to have front porches that color—though I am not sure why. It was just the way it was.
In 1958 we moved to a new house. My mother insisted on hardwood floors everywhere except the kitchen (nobody ever did that back then), bathrooms (we had TWO), the basement. My mother used rugs in the bedrooms similar to what we had in the other house, and big oval rag rug in the family room. So far, this was all pretty normal and not a surprise to my 13 year old mind.
To my father’s amazement, my mother had the living room and dining room floors covered with smooth beige flat wall-to-wall carpet. Apparently at that time it was very cool to have wall-to-wall carpet. But homemakers of the day were wise enough to realize that at some point wall-to-wall would go out of style, so hardwood underneath was a necessity!
Sure enough, after 10 years later, my mother ripped up the wall to wall carpet in the living and dining rooms, touched up the hardwood floors, and bought Karastan “oriental” rugs! Those rugs were beautiful and still are – in my living room, dining room and hall.
A couple of years after moving in, my father built a “rumpus room” in the basement. Since I was a teenager, it was expected that I would soon want to be hosting my own “rumpuses.” I never figured out what a “rumpus” really was and the closest I came to it was a slumber party where we played Elvis’ GI Blues all night. But, for sure, we had the right floor for any “rumpus” that might occur. We bought square floor tile (oh my, I think they were asbestos) and one afternoon we installed them. They were beige with multi-colored speckles and we put them down onto the concrete with black gooey stuff. My father cut the “hard ones” with a blow torch, while my mother and I did the easy ones. That was one durable floor! It was still there 30 years later when we sold the house. I am sure, however, the new owners covered over it with something else. I can’t imagine anyone ever getting it up!
When I went to college in 1964 we had dark colored tile floors in our dorm rooms. We had to sweep them, but the cleaning crew mopped them – I think between quarters when we weren’t there! The major problem we needed to deal with was “dust bunnies.” Our rooms were inspected weekly and you could get in trouble for having “dust bunnies. “ No doubt the boys (who were even allowed of live off campus) were not subject to such scrutiny.
In graduate school. I had a couple of apartments and they had hardwood floors , except for the kitchens and bathrooms. When my roommate and I moved into one apartment in summer of 1968 we thought we had a gray floor. With the help of boyfriends, we cleaned it and discovered it was really yellow. In those years, I developed a profound dislike for linoleum.
After we got married, in 1969, our first apartment had ubiquitous beige carpet and linoleum in the kitchen. It was totally uninspiring, but so was the rest of the apartment.
A few months later we moved to brand new apartment. Much to our pleasure, it had harvest gold shag carpet (our other option was avocado)and the kitchen linoleum and bathroom had nice white vinyl tile. We were SO stylish and fashionable.
In 1971, we moved to southern California. We bought a house with avocado shag carpet in the living room, commercial grade carpet in the family room, and beige tufted carpet in the bedrooms. The entrance hall had dark brown vinyl and the kitchen had gray with little blue speckles. The carpets were OK, but the kitchen, entrance hall and bathrooms were a major challenge to clean. I had to use floor stripper – awful stuff. I remember buying a floor cleaning machine that scrubbed the floor and sucked up the water.
My next door neighbor introduced me to Solarian and I had to have it. In short order, we did the bathrooms and kitchen in Solarian and this saved me hours every week. All I had to do was clean it with a damp mop.
When we moved to Maryland in 1976 we bought a house that “needed work.” One place where the house definitely needed work was the floors. The hardwood floors had been stained dark brown and they looked terrible and we had the same green shag carpet in the living room as in the house in California. A few years later, we ripped it out and replaced it with a soft green soft carpet – what an improvement! By the mid-80s I could not STAND shag carpet OR avocado.
The whole time we lived in that house, we struggled with the floors. We covered over most the dark stained hardwood with wall-to-wall (the cheapest solution on a budget) carpet and we put down hardwood parquet floors in the entrance hall and a wonderful new addition. We opted for Solarian in the kitchen and were placed the 60s style tile in one of the bathrooms with random sizes of ceramic tile.
When we built our new house in 1992, we knew exactly what we wanted. The living room, dining room and entrance hall got hardwood and my mother’s Karastan rugs. We bought a matching Karastan runner for the stairs. The kitchen is hardwood (the best kitchen floor yet) and I have commercial carpet in my first floor office. The upstairs hallway is hardwood and the bedrooms have wall-to-wall. All four bathrooms have wonderful textured ceramic tile. My husband’s office and laundry room have wear like iron sheet vinyl.
In this house, installed a redwood “lift-up” floor in the basement room with our hot tub. Underneath the redwood, there is a concrete floor with a drain. Fortunately, we have never needed it!
So here we are today, living with floor choices we made ourselves based on decades of living with and scrubbing floors mostly selected by others. Come to think about it, we are pretty lucky! And I have a cleaning lady who LOVES to clean floors. Life really IS good!
My husband just installed a beautiful new bamboo floor in our basement room. Who knew we would ever have floors made out of bamboo? When I was growing up, bamboo was used for fishing poles. Later I learned it was an invasive species. Now they are making floors out of it. Now if they could just find a similar use for kudzu, the scourge of the South.
We also re-carpeted the basement stairs in a commercial grade, heavy duty carpet that is called “Expresso” and is dark brownish, with lots of colors if you look closely. I am hoping it will outlast me. For sure it won’t show dirt or coffee spills.
All of this got me thinking about the floors I have known in my life. For sure there have been changes.
The floors in the house I grew up in had hardwood floors and every so often my mother and grandmother would paste wax them. What a wonderful smell! They waxed the floor and I played” train” with the dining room chairs all lined up.
The kitchen floor in that house was linoleum. They cleaned it with a mop and disinfectant. Once they put in a new floor and it was great – all fresh and clean!
I still remember the bathroom floor. It was little octagonal white tiles. Between the cleaning lady, my mother, and my grandmother the floor was always sparkling. Of course, we only had the one bathroom, but at the time there was nothing odd about that. People out in the country still had outhouses.
We had rugs in the living and rooms and throw rugs in the bedrooms – all over hardwood floors. My grandmother loved her canister vacuum cleaner. I got the impression that we were pretty lucky to have such a fine vacuum cleaner, but that didn’t stop me from hating the noise it made. (I still HATE the noise a vacuum cleaner makes.)
The front porch was made of wood that was painted bluish gray. Everyone seemed to have front porches that color—though I am not sure why. It was just the way it was.
In 1958 we moved to a new house. My mother insisted on hardwood floors everywhere except the kitchen (nobody ever did that back then), bathrooms (we had TWO), the basement. My mother used rugs in the bedrooms similar to what we had in the other house, and big oval rag rug in the family room. So far, this was all pretty normal and not a surprise to my 13 year old mind.
To my father’s amazement, my mother had the living room and dining room floors covered with smooth beige flat wall-to-wall carpet. Apparently at that time it was very cool to have wall-to-wall carpet. But homemakers of the day were wise enough to realize that at some point wall-to-wall would go out of style, so hardwood underneath was a necessity!
Sure enough, after 10 years later, my mother ripped up the wall to wall carpet in the living and dining rooms, touched up the hardwood floors, and bought Karastan “oriental” rugs! Those rugs were beautiful and still are – in my living room, dining room and hall.
A couple of years after moving in, my father built a “rumpus room” in the basement. Since I was a teenager, it was expected that I would soon want to be hosting my own “rumpuses.” I never figured out what a “rumpus” really was and the closest I came to it was a slumber party where we played Elvis’ GI Blues all night. But, for sure, we had the right floor for any “rumpus” that might occur. We bought square floor tile (oh my, I think they were asbestos) and one afternoon we installed them. They were beige with multi-colored speckles and we put them down onto the concrete with black gooey stuff. My father cut the “hard ones” with a blow torch, while my mother and I did the easy ones. That was one durable floor! It was still there 30 years later when we sold the house. I am sure, however, the new owners covered over it with something else. I can’t imagine anyone ever getting it up!
When I went to college in 1964 we had dark colored tile floors in our dorm rooms. We had to sweep them, but the cleaning crew mopped them – I think between quarters when we weren’t there! The major problem we needed to deal with was “dust bunnies.” Our rooms were inspected weekly and you could get in trouble for having “dust bunnies. “ No doubt the boys (who were even allowed of live off campus) were not subject to such scrutiny.
In graduate school. I had a couple of apartments and they had hardwood floors , except for the kitchens and bathrooms. When my roommate and I moved into one apartment in summer of 1968 we thought we had a gray floor. With the help of boyfriends, we cleaned it and discovered it was really yellow. In those years, I developed a profound dislike for linoleum.
After we got married, in 1969, our first apartment had ubiquitous beige carpet and linoleum in the kitchen. It was totally uninspiring, but so was the rest of the apartment.
A few months later we moved to brand new apartment. Much to our pleasure, it had harvest gold shag carpet (our other option was avocado)and the kitchen linoleum and bathroom had nice white vinyl tile. We were SO stylish and fashionable.
In 1971, we moved to southern California. We bought a house with avocado shag carpet in the living room, commercial grade carpet in the family room, and beige tufted carpet in the bedrooms. The entrance hall had dark brown vinyl and the kitchen had gray with little blue speckles. The carpets were OK, but the kitchen, entrance hall and bathrooms were a major challenge to clean. I had to use floor stripper – awful stuff. I remember buying a floor cleaning machine that scrubbed the floor and sucked up the water.
My next door neighbor introduced me to Solarian and I had to have it. In short order, we did the bathrooms and kitchen in Solarian and this saved me hours every week. All I had to do was clean it with a damp mop.
When we moved to Maryland in 1976 we bought a house that “needed work.” One place where the house definitely needed work was the floors. The hardwood floors had been stained dark brown and they looked terrible and we had the same green shag carpet in the living room as in the house in California. A few years later, we ripped it out and replaced it with a soft green soft carpet – what an improvement! By the mid-80s I could not STAND shag carpet OR avocado.
The whole time we lived in that house, we struggled with the floors. We covered over most the dark stained hardwood with wall-to-wall (the cheapest solution on a budget) carpet and we put down hardwood parquet floors in the entrance hall and a wonderful new addition. We opted for Solarian in the kitchen and were placed the 60s style tile in one of the bathrooms with random sizes of ceramic tile.
When we built our new house in 1992, we knew exactly what we wanted. The living room, dining room and entrance hall got hardwood and my mother’s Karastan rugs. We bought a matching Karastan runner for the stairs. The kitchen is hardwood (the best kitchen floor yet) and I have commercial carpet in my first floor office. The upstairs hallway is hardwood and the bedrooms have wall-to-wall. All four bathrooms have wonderful textured ceramic tile. My husband’s office and laundry room have wear like iron sheet vinyl.
In this house, installed a redwood “lift-up” floor in the basement room with our hot tub. Underneath the redwood, there is a concrete floor with a drain. Fortunately, we have never needed it!
So here we are today, living with floor choices we made ourselves based on decades of living with and scrubbing floors mostly selected by others. Come to think about it, we are pretty lucky! And I have a cleaning lady who LOVES to clean floors. Life really IS good!
Monday, May 30, 2011
Plane Travel
My dad used to be a frequent flyer before the term was capitalized and meant points for free flights or walking onto the plane on a red carpet. Back then, he just flew a lot – mostly from Birmingham, AL to Washington, DC. My mother and I would take him to the old Birmingham Municipal Airport and we would sit on the wooden benches and listen to the squeal of the old Capitol Airlines Viscount as the plane took off.
Days later we would return to the airport, often at night, to pick up my weary father. He was a large man and he usually flew First Class, but I recall nights when he would say – “I hitch-hiked home on the milk-run.” That meant, for whatever reason, his scheduled flight was cancelled and he grabbed the first plane South, usually a series of short hops.
I found the airport fascinating, and my favorite activity was picking up travel brochures for glamorous places. I then took them home and played travel agent – my favorite game. I still like planning trips, and my husband thinks I am pretty good at it – he says I should have been a travel agent – now a lost forever opportunity. Oh, well!
In those days, of course, there was no “security.” The airport was an open place where families went right to the gate, even if they were just seeing someone off. The gate, of course, was at the chain link fence between the benches and where the airplanes parked.
One disturbing thing about the old airport was the prominence of the insurance counter, or machine. Even to a kid, it was clear that flying was considered a risky activity. Otherwise, why would they sell this special insurance? My farther took the insurance without fail, much the same way that you might take insurance on a fragile package. A few days later, my mother would get the receipt in the mail. I always wondered if he saw it as a gamble—a way to give us great wealth if the plane should crash. Fortunately, we never got to test the insurance.
They used to say flying was glamorous. Though people joked about airline food, undoubtedly it was better than the peanuts or pretzels choices we have today. I wouldn’t know though, because I didn’t take my first flight until 1968, months before my marriage. There has just been no reason for me to fly prior to that. Even in 1968, there was still no security, plenty to eat, and, of course, the very sophisticated liquor in little miniatures we still have today.
In the intervening years, I have taken hundreds of flights – more than I can count. There have been long flights to Europe and short hops in the Mid-Atlantic. I have experienced First Class many times, Business Class, and the joys of the Coach. From the front of the plane to the last seat in the back, I have done it all. I have been bumped and endured cancelled flights. But somehow there has still been some fun - -some sense of adventure. Today I have access to airline club lounges, so that helps to ease the stress.
I just got back from three weeks of extensive flying, including a long haul to Hawaii in “the main cabin.” The glamor is gone - -that’s for sure and frankly, so is the sense of adventure. Flying is simply not fun anymore.
I think I am getting too old for the security dance! I know the rules. I have to have my ID out to show the person who is taking my luggage and I have to have my boarding pass and ID to show the TSA guard. I have learned put my ID back in my wallet while standing in the security line. At the security check point, I have to stuff my boarding pass in my pocket, but not wrinkle it too much of the bar code won’t work; take off my shoes, jacket and belt; remove my computer (and my printer if I have it with me) and my Kindle; remove my zip-lock bag filled with toiletries, each less than 3 ounces. I have to stuff my purse into my computer bag (so it won’t count as a third item). So I am managing one bin for my shoes, jacket and plastic bag; another bin for my computer, a computer bag and a suitcase. I have to shove all of this stuff onto the conveyor belt with people behind me pulling up trays and pushing mine forward. Then I have to walk through the metal detector with only my boarding pass in my pocket. Recently I have been through the new, x-ray machine because it is round shaped, the door closes and I have to put my hands in the air. Then I have to wait while someone “reads” the results. Sometimes the authorities target my computer bag because I tend to have a jumble of cords. I suppose I am going to have to start using twist ties on my cords – one more thing to worry about.
My poor husband has it much worse – he has metal pins in his foot. Need I say more!
I understand about the peanuts and pretzel choices – I really do! They can shave a few dollars off their fares that way. What I don’t get are the “options” one has for purchase on the plane. These snack boxes are strange combinations of what can best be described as junk food. I was pleased to see that Delta actually offered a chicken salad sandwich for lunch and it wasn’t bad.
As much as I hate all of the challenges of modern flight, I am not going to stop flying anytime soon. It is still the best way to travel long distances quickly – the only way. Would I pay extra to have a decent meal and a comfortable seat? Absolutely! The problem is that the price differential is just too great between Coach and Business/First, so unless it is a Frequent Flyer upgrade, I am doomed to coach.
I wish that we could go back to the days when there were no security lines, and the airlines served real meals, but I have to say I would not want to give up my wheeled luggage.
Days later we would return to the airport, often at night, to pick up my weary father. He was a large man and he usually flew First Class, but I recall nights when he would say – “I hitch-hiked home on the milk-run.” That meant, for whatever reason, his scheduled flight was cancelled and he grabbed the first plane South, usually a series of short hops.
I found the airport fascinating, and my favorite activity was picking up travel brochures for glamorous places. I then took them home and played travel agent – my favorite game. I still like planning trips, and my husband thinks I am pretty good at it – he says I should have been a travel agent – now a lost forever opportunity. Oh, well!
In those days, of course, there was no “security.” The airport was an open place where families went right to the gate, even if they were just seeing someone off. The gate, of course, was at the chain link fence between the benches and where the airplanes parked.
One disturbing thing about the old airport was the prominence of the insurance counter, or machine. Even to a kid, it was clear that flying was considered a risky activity. Otherwise, why would they sell this special insurance? My farther took the insurance without fail, much the same way that you might take insurance on a fragile package. A few days later, my mother would get the receipt in the mail. I always wondered if he saw it as a gamble—a way to give us great wealth if the plane should crash. Fortunately, we never got to test the insurance.
They used to say flying was glamorous. Though people joked about airline food, undoubtedly it was better than the peanuts or pretzels choices we have today. I wouldn’t know though, because I didn’t take my first flight until 1968, months before my marriage. There has just been no reason for me to fly prior to that. Even in 1968, there was still no security, plenty to eat, and, of course, the very sophisticated liquor in little miniatures we still have today.
In the intervening years, I have taken hundreds of flights – more than I can count. There have been long flights to Europe and short hops in the Mid-Atlantic. I have experienced First Class many times, Business Class, and the joys of the Coach. From the front of the plane to the last seat in the back, I have done it all. I have been bumped and endured cancelled flights. But somehow there has still been some fun - -some sense of adventure. Today I have access to airline club lounges, so that helps to ease the stress.
I just got back from three weeks of extensive flying, including a long haul to Hawaii in “the main cabin.” The glamor is gone - -that’s for sure and frankly, so is the sense of adventure. Flying is simply not fun anymore.
I think I am getting too old for the security dance! I know the rules. I have to have my ID out to show the person who is taking my luggage and I have to have my boarding pass and ID to show the TSA guard. I have learned put my ID back in my wallet while standing in the security line. At the security check point, I have to stuff my boarding pass in my pocket, but not wrinkle it too much of the bar code won’t work; take off my shoes, jacket and belt; remove my computer (and my printer if I have it with me) and my Kindle; remove my zip-lock bag filled with toiletries, each less than 3 ounces. I have to stuff my purse into my computer bag (so it won’t count as a third item). So I am managing one bin for my shoes, jacket and plastic bag; another bin for my computer, a computer bag and a suitcase. I have to shove all of this stuff onto the conveyor belt with people behind me pulling up trays and pushing mine forward. Then I have to walk through the metal detector with only my boarding pass in my pocket. Recently I have been through the new, x-ray machine because it is round shaped, the door closes and I have to put my hands in the air. Then I have to wait while someone “reads” the results. Sometimes the authorities target my computer bag because I tend to have a jumble of cords. I suppose I am going to have to start using twist ties on my cords – one more thing to worry about.
My poor husband has it much worse – he has metal pins in his foot. Need I say more!
I understand about the peanuts and pretzel choices – I really do! They can shave a few dollars off their fares that way. What I don’t get are the “options” one has for purchase on the plane. These snack boxes are strange combinations of what can best be described as junk food. I was pleased to see that Delta actually offered a chicken salad sandwich for lunch and it wasn’t bad.
As much as I hate all of the challenges of modern flight, I am not going to stop flying anytime soon. It is still the best way to travel long distances quickly – the only way. Would I pay extra to have a decent meal and a comfortable seat? Absolutely! The problem is that the price differential is just too great between Coach and Business/First, so unless it is a Frequent Flyer upgrade, I am doomed to coach.
I wish that we could go back to the days when there were no security lines, and the airlines served real meals, but I have to say I would not want to give up my wheeled luggage.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Visionary Overtaken By Events
Some people tell me I am a visionary, as if it were a good thing. I guess in some ways it is good to have an idea of what the future might hold. On the other hand, the real world is today, not 30 years from now. And it is the real world that we live in, not the world of the future.
Most of my adult life I have been living about 30 years ahead of reality. I could give you a long list of things I wanted to do 30 years too soon. Here are a few related to my former profession as an educational media specialist. I was teaching information skills when the rest of my educational media colleagues were focusing on library skills and the Dewey Decimal system. Back when portable computers were the size of carry-on bags, I thought each kid should be issued one in 8th grade. Not having the appropriate software, I catalogued a library collection using a mailing list program simply by changing the field names. I can’t help it – I have to do things like that, despite the reaction of others – which is generally “that is not how these things are done.” Now I am hearing, "I remember when you wanted to do this30 years ago."
As I approach age 65, I am not sure what I might gain by living in the reality of 30 years from now. By then I probably will be gone. Besides, I can’t stay 30 years ahead any more. I have some sense of where it is all headed, but frankly the changes are coming so fast it takes my breath away. So I am what you might call a visionary who has been overtaken by events.
When I was in graduate school in the late 60s studying educational media, we knew we were on the brink of the information age. We had a professor on the faculty whose specialty was cybernetics and we worshipped Marshall McLuhan, of “The Medium is the Message” fame. We put slide/tape shows together using Carousel projectors, reel to reel recorders, and using cumbersome and expensive dissolve units. PowerPoint was decades away, but we knew we wanted it! If I had only had PowerPoint in 1969!
In about 1970 I declared that what the world needed was a typewriter where the keys were silent and you viewed your work on a TV screen. You could make corrections on the screen, and when you had it just the way you wanted it, you could press a button and it would come out the bottom of the machine just like a copy machine. Admittedly I got the placement of the printer wrong, but overall not bad!
Back then, we had cumbersome ways of doing most everything, but we did get stuff done and we used various media. But everything was slow and usually painful. I wished for a camera that didn’t use film and was quick – just like the old Polaroids, but with no chemicals. I wanted a phone that I could carry around with me and a device where I could read books a portable screen. I wanted my transistor radio to play tapes. I wanted a copy machine that didn’t cost a fortune and fill a small room. I wanted an adding machine that didn’t make that horrendous number cruncher noise.
Now here we are, living and breathing in the information age. All of my equipment fantasies are being fulfilled. Talk about pent-up demand! I find myself on the cusp of senior citizen status downloading apps for everything imaginable. Of course, the big problem is I keep misplacing my phone. It gets lost in my purse, in my car or on my desk. Fortunately we still cling to our landline phone, which sits on my desk and can always be found. It comes in very handy for finding the cell phone, but mostly it used for receiving annoying robo calls.
Then there is the whole social media thing. Of course, being a visionary and all, I must use social media. So I have my Linked In, Facebook and Twitter accounts – all with waiting blanks for me to fill in with something profound or at least what I had for breakfast. More and more I am getting friend requests from people I never heard of. I have to admit when someone and I have 27 mutual friends, I go ahead and connect, as clearly it is just some twist of fate that we have never met. The result of course, it is that I can read daily what hundreds of people, some of who I don’t even know, ate for breakfast or thought was funny or feel passionately about.
In my age group, it is not too hard to a techie. Basically, we emerging seniors (I just dreamed up that term- - I rather like it) fall into two groups – those who use technology and those who don’t. If you have a laptop computer, an iPhone, a scanner, a flat screen TV, a digital camera and a Kindle you definitely qualify for techie-hood -- provided you know how to use the stuff without assistance from grandchildren!
My big new thing now, as a publisher, is online magazines that resemble print magazines – you can flip the pages so it simulates reading a magazine. What is really cool, however, is that you can add audio and video clips and make it come to life. In the last 40+ years I have had three overlapping areers -- educational media specialist, publisher and association manager. Wow! Now I have a way to integrate them. I can publish magazines for my nonprofit clients and those magazines can have audio and video components -- talk about convergence!
Back in 1989 I wanted to start a small publishing company. I thought about various names that included the word “publishers.” But when all was said and done, I opted for Bay Media. These days many publishers are putting the word “media.” This was actually my second try at a “media” company – the first was Custom Media Services in about 1974. It was catch-all for whatever it was I wanted to do.
I am hereby confessing that I totally missed the boat with Skype. How could I miss using something so totally amazing and inexpensive for so long? I guess I just figured I had a so many phone options that I didn’t need any more. What with the landline, the cell phone, a bunch of VoIP lines for the business, I did not feel any shortage of phone service. In foreign countries we buy a cheap SIM card and are on our way. But I wasn’t thinking video phone - well, the thought actually did enter my mind, but then they would all see my in my bathrob. Duh! Here I am with a virtual office and some of the people have never met. OK, I am now am all set with Skype and ready to roll with video conferencing for up to 10 people. Of course tne downside is I hadve to get dressed before sitting down at the computer for a Skype call.
I am managing to keep up well enough I guess, despite my slowness to embrace Skype. I am cool with cloud computing and I lust for an iPhone 4 and an iPad, despite my unembarrassed fondness for Windows. In our family -- consisting my husband, my son, his wife and our two grandchildren, I am the only PC person. They are all “Mac” people. That's OK -- it makes me have to me more self-sufficient.
I realize that soon the day will come when I fall behind due to the brain fog of old age. I dread that day, because that will be when the game will be starting to come to an end. Meanwhile, I am opting for keeping up with the technology instead of using bridge or crossword puzzles to keep my brain sharp. I never really liked playing cards or crossword puzzles, so why should I change now that I am signed up for Medicare and the big 65th birthday is only weeks away. I may not be so visionary any more, but the world has finally caught up to my vision and I can have the fun of living in it. I just have to find the money to buy all the toys.
Most of my adult life I have been living about 30 years ahead of reality. I could give you a long list of things I wanted to do 30 years too soon. Here are a few related to my former profession as an educational media specialist. I was teaching information skills when the rest of my educational media colleagues were focusing on library skills and the Dewey Decimal system. Back when portable computers were the size of carry-on bags, I thought each kid should be issued one in 8th grade. Not having the appropriate software, I catalogued a library collection using a mailing list program simply by changing the field names. I can’t help it – I have to do things like that, despite the reaction of others – which is generally “that is not how these things are done.” Now I am hearing, "I remember when you wanted to do this30 years ago."
As I approach age 65, I am not sure what I might gain by living in the reality of 30 years from now. By then I probably will be gone. Besides, I can’t stay 30 years ahead any more. I have some sense of where it is all headed, but frankly the changes are coming so fast it takes my breath away. So I am what you might call a visionary who has been overtaken by events.
When I was in graduate school in the late 60s studying educational media, we knew we were on the brink of the information age. We had a professor on the faculty whose specialty was cybernetics and we worshipped Marshall McLuhan, of “The Medium is the Message” fame. We put slide/tape shows together using Carousel projectors, reel to reel recorders, and using cumbersome and expensive dissolve units. PowerPoint was decades away, but we knew we wanted it! If I had only had PowerPoint in 1969!
In about 1970 I declared that what the world needed was a typewriter where the keys were silent and you viewed your work on a TV screen. You could make corrections on the screen, and when you had it just the way you wanted it, you could press a button and it would come out the bottom of the machine just like a copy machine. Admittedly I got the placement of the printer wrong, but overall not bad!
Back then, we had cumbersome ways of doing most everything, but we did get stuff done and we used various media. But everything was slow and usually painful. I wished for a camera that didn’t use film and was quick – just like the old Polaroids, but with no chemicals. I wanted a phone that I could carry around with me and a device where I could read books a portable screen. I wanted my transistor radio to play tapes. I wanted a copy machine that didn’t cost a fortune and fill a small room. I wanted an adding machine that didn’t make that horrendous number cruncher noise.
Now here we are, living and breathing in the information age. All of my equipment fantasies are being fulfilled. Talk about pent-up demand! I find myself on the cusp of senior citizen status downloading apps for everything imaginable. Of course, the big problem is I keep misplacing my phone. It gets lost in my purse, in my car or on my desk. Fortunately we still cling to our landline phone, which sits on my desk and can always be found. It comes in very handy for finding the cell phone, but mostly it used for receiving annoying robo calls.
Then there is the whole social media thing. Of course, being a visionary and all, I must use social media. So I have my Linked In, Facebook and Twitter accounts – all with waiting blanks for me to fill in with something profound or at least what I had for breakfast. More and more I am getting friend requests from people I never heard of. I have to admit when someone and I have 27 mutual friends, I go ahead and connect, as clearly it is just some twist of fate that we have never met. The result of course, it is that I can read daily what hundreds of people, some of who I don’t even know, ate for breakfast or thought was funny or feel passionately about.
In my age group, it is not too hard to a techie. Basically, we emerging seniors (I just dreamed up that term- - I rather like it) fall into two groups – those who use technology and those who don’t. If you have a laptop computer, an iPhone, a scanner, a flat screen TV, a digital camera and a Kindle you definitely qualify for techie-hood -- provided you know how to use the stuff without assistance from grandchildren!
My big new thing now, as a publisher, is online magazines that resemble print magazines – you can flip the pages so it simulates reading a magazine. What is really cool, however, is that you can add audio and video clips and make it come to life. In the last 40+ years I have had three overlapping areers -- educational media specialist, publisher and association manager. Wow! Now I have a way to integrate them. I can publish magazines for my nonprofit clients and those magazines can have audio and video components -- talk about convergence!
Back in 1989 I wanted to start a small publishing company. I thought about various names that included the word “publishers.” But when all was said and done, I opted for Bay Media. These days many publishers are putting the word “media.” This was actually my second try at a “media” company – the first was Custom Media Services in about 1974. It was catch-all for whatever it was I wanted to do.
I am hereby confessing that I totally missed the boat with Skype. How could I miss using something so totally amazing and inexpensive for so long? I guess I just figured I had a so many phone options that I didn’t need any more. What with the landline, the cell phone, a bunch of VoIP lines for the business, I did not feel any shortage of phone service. In foreign countries we buy a cheap SIM card and are on our way. But I wasn’t thinking video phone - well, the thought actually did enter my mind, but then they would all see my in my bathrob. Duh! Here I am with a virtual office and some of the people have never met. OK, I am now am all set with Skype and ready to roll with video conferencing for up to 10 people. Of course tne downside is I hadve to get dressed before sitting down at the computer for a Skype call.
I am managing to keep up well enough I guess, despite my slowness to embrace Skype. I am cool with cloud computing and I lust for an iPhone 4 and an iPad, despite my unembarrassed fondness for Windows. In our family -- consisting my husband, my son, his wife and our two grandchildren, I am the only PC person. They are all “Mac” people. That's OK -- it makes me have to me more self-sufficient.
I realize that soon the day will come when I fall behind due to the brain fog of old age. I dread that day, because that will be when the game will be starting to come to an end. Meanwhile, I am opting for keeping up with the technology instead of using bridge or crossword puzzles to keep my brain sharp. I never really liked playing cards or crossword puzzles, so why should I change now that I am signed up for Medicare and the big 65th birthday is only weeks away. I may not be so visionary any more, but the world has finally caught up to my vision and I can have the fun of living in it. I just have to find the money to buy all the toys.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
In a couple of weeks, I am headed to Savannah to spend the weekend with a group of women friends who get together each year in a different city. I will board a plane in Baltimore, change in Atlanta, and in a few short hours, I will be on the ground in Savannah.
Planning for this trip reminded me of my first trip to Savannah. It must have been in around 1953 and I was 7 years old. My grandmother and I boarded a Trailways bus in Birmingham and headed for Savannah. We were to spend a week with my uncle and his family. He was in the Air Force and stationed at Hunter Field. The trip took many hours, and we stopped at every small town along the way. I just remember the hot summer weather and how good a cold Coca-Cola tasted. I suppose one could call it a journey through the last days of the old South, but for me it was just a grand adventure with my grandmother and my first and last long trip on a regular commercial bus.
When I was kid growing up in Birmingham in the 1950s, going to Panama City, Florida was a summer ritual. We would rent a cottage or apartment on the beach. Each year, we seemed to move further away from Panama City Beach, out past Laguna, as far Mexico Beach. We always shopped at Hill’s Grocery store, not the Hill’s chain, but the beachfront store owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hill. One Halloween afternoon when I was in first grade, my mother picked me up early at school, saying my father had “sand in his shoes.” That was his way of saying we needed to go to the beach. I have a very fond memory of trick-or-treating at the grocery store – and of course they had PLENTY of candy. We always drove to Panama City, often stopping for a picnic lunch along the way. On the way back, it was very “in” to tie wet bathing suits to the antenna on the car and dry them off in the breeze. By the time we got to the Alabama line, our suits were dry.
When my parents made the requisite California trip in 1952, I had to stay home with my grandmother. They had a new black Chevrolet that they equipped with cup holders (my mother had to have a place for her Coca-Cola), and a two-way radio. My father was a HAM (Amateur Radio operator) and we always had a radio of some kind in the car. Each night they would call us using some sort of phone patch, and I was very jealous of their adventures with snow in the summertime in the Sierras.
When my father took on a leadership role in a national association (NCUR – National Committee for Utilities Radio), we started to travel all over the United States, including Boston, Denver, and San Francisco. We always traveled by car, and we saw a lot of the United States. My father liked to “make the miles” and it was not uncommon for us to go more than 600 miles in a day. Still, we managed to take in a few major attractions like the Grand Canyon and Disneyland.
My father traveled by airplane, often gone for a week at a time, and usually to Washington, DC. For his trips to Washington he used Capitol Airlines and the airplane was a turbo-prop model called a Viscount. In those days, you waited for planes to arrive and depart while seated outside on rows of park benches, weather permitting. There were some seats inside near the insurance dispensing machine, but it was more fun to be outside and watch the planes come and go. A major feature of the airport was their wonderful rack of travel brochures. I collected those brochures very earnestly and kept them all in a little blue doll clothes trunk. My favorite game was to play travel agent and to put together trips for people (a role I still confess I enjoy). I had brochures for hotels and cities all over the world, including Cuba. Sadly my mother threw them all away while I was off at college. Of course, if I had them now they would be just more stuff to store and leave for the next generation to puzzle over.
Despite all my time at the airport, my first airplane trip did not happen until I was dating my husband. I flew from Birmingham to New York City to meet his family. I felt so grown-up. It was 1968 and I was 22 years old and traveling alone on an airplane, at NIGHT. Wow! What a scary, but exhilarating experience! I remember asking the stewardess what that light was that kept following us. She said it was on the end of the wing – duh – why didn’t I think of that?
In the late 60s I made a few more plane trips – our honeymoon trip to Puerto Rico in 1969 and weeks later a job interview flight to Illinois. My husband was stationed outside of St. Louis and I managed to secure a job at a nearby college.
Airplane travel was, however, expensive, in the early years of our marriage, we traveled mostly by car. Steve was transferred to Norton AFB in San Bernardino, CA and we made several cross-country trips to New York and Alabama. We managed to hit a lot of states and attractions along the way and by the time we had finished, we had seen most of the country.
When our son, born in 1971, was an infant, my husband went TDY to Thailand, and the baby and I flew to Birmingham. Traveling on an airplane with an infant in your lap is not for the weak of heart, and something I vowed never to repeat.
When we moved to Maryland in 1976, my husband took a job with a company was, at that time, owned by an airline consortium. One amazing benefit that went with the job was the ability to use airplane passes on most of the major airlines. We could fly for the cost of a service fee. Travel was space available and you had to dress up – but it was worth it. With a pass, we could travel on any flight for the airline we purchased a pass on, going to our destination, provided there was space. You could call ahead and “check on availability.” We were called “non-rev” passengers and were easy to spot. The men always wore coats and ties and the women traveled in dresses or coordinated pant suits -- always with hose. The way it worked was that everyone else boarded the flight and we waited until called by name. We were sent on the plane in order of seniority and sometimes just told to take any available seat. When it came time for food, we were usually skipped. When all the other passengers were served, assuming there was anything left, we could have it – by then there was only one menu choice – the one nobody else wanted. But we never complained. In those amazing years up until around 1995, pass travel was a part of our lives. I learned to fly alone or with colleagues who also qualified for passes. I went to conferences and visited friends. Sometimes our family, including our son, went to the Caribbean or Europe. Uncertainty was our travel partner and we learned to accept the delays with good grace and figure out ways to enjoy the gift of time in a strange city. Once, when the air traffic controllers in Nice were on strike, my husband and I rented a car and drove the next leg of our trip to Frankfurt. We could have seen it as a disaster, but we saw it as a chance to tour more of France, drive through the Swiss Alps, and see parts of Germany we had not seen before.
Today, the passes are gone and we have Frequent Flyer miles instead. Sometimes my husband and I travel together, and sometimes separately. I routinely travel on business by myself. There was a time when I found traveling alone intimidating, but I did it anyway. Now I find it refreshing and exhilarating, though sometimes tiresome. My laptop and iphone are my constant companions and make the time go faster. I have access to some airport lounges and enjoy the peace and quiet they offer. I know what to do it they lose my luggage or if I miss my flight, or if my hotel or the rental car company loses my reservation. Those things happen – they are part of the adventure. Years of pass travel help make just having an assigned seat and getting on the plane along with everyone else seem like a blessing.
The last frontier, however, for me, was dining alone and taking tours alone. Both of those things used to make me a bit uncomfortable. I used to order a room service hamburger for dinner when arriving the night before my conference. Now I just seek out the restaurant in the hotel and buy myself a nice dinner, with a glass of wine. If I am going to a city I don’t know well, I will program in some time at the end of the trip for a tour. Why should I deprive myself of seeing a new city just because I am there on business or traveling alone?
I know my trip to Savannah in 2011 will be vastly different from my first trip there 58 years ago. But I know there is a side of me who will be just as excited as when I was a little kid boarding the bus with my grandmother. And the best part is that when I get there I will be spending time with dear friends from all over the country .
Planning for this trip reminded me of my first trip to Savannah. It must have been in around 1953 and I was 7 years old. My grandmother and I boarded a Trailways bus in Birmingham and headed for Savannah. We were to spend a week with my uncle and his family. He was in the Air Force and stationed at Hunter Field. The trip took many hours, and we stopped at every small town along the way. I just remember the hot summer weather and how good a cold Coca-Cola tasted. I suppose one could call it a journey through the last days of the old South, but for me it was just a grand adventure with my grandmother and my first and last long trip on a regular commercial bus.
When I was kid growing up in Birmingham in the 1950s, going to Panama City, Florida was a summer ritual. We would rent a cottage or apartment on the beach. Each year, we seemed to move further away from Panama City Beach, out past Laguna, as far Mexico Beach. We always shopped at Hill’s Grocery store, not the Hill’s chain, but the beachfront store owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hill. One Halloween afternoon when I was in first grade, my mother picked me up early at school, saying my father had “sand in his shoes.” That was his way of saying we needed to go to the beach. I have a very fond memory of trick-or-treating at the grocery store – and of course they had PLENTY of candy. We always drove to Panama City, often stopping for a picnic lunch along the way. On the way back, it was very “in” to tie wet bathing suits to the antenna on the car and dry them off in the breeze. By the time we got to the Alabama line, our suits were dry.
When my parents made the requisite California trip in 1952, I had to stay home with my grandmother. They had a new black Chevrolet that they equipped with cup holders (my mother had to have a place for her Coca-Cola), and a two-way radio. My father was a HAM (Amateur Radio operator) and we always had a radio of some kind in the car. Each night they would call us using some sort of phone patch, and I was very jealous of their adventures with snow in the summertime in the Sierras.
When my father took on a leadership role in a national association (NCUR – National Committee for Utilities Radio), we started to travel all over the United States, including Boston, Denver, and San Francisco. We always traveled by car, and we saw a lot of the United States. My father liked to “make the miles” and it was not uncommon for us to go more than 600 miles in a day. Still, we managed to take in a few major attractions like the Grand Canyon and Disneyland.
My father traveled by airplane, often gone for a week at a time, and usually to Washington, DC. For his trips to Washington he used Capitol Airlines and the airplane was a turbo-prop model called a Viscount. In those days, you waited for planes to arrive and depart while seated outside on rows of park benches, weather permitting. There were some seats inside near the insurance dispensing machine, but it was more fun to be outside and watch the planes come and go. A major feature of the airport was their wonderful rack of travel brochures. I collected those brochures very earnestly and kept them all in a little blue doll clothes trunk. My favorite game was to play travel agent and to put together trips for people (a role I still confess I enjoy). I had brochures for hotels and cities all over the world, including Cuba. Sadly my mother threw them all away while I was off at college. Of course, if I had them now they would be just more stuff to store and leave for the next generation to puzzle over.
Despite all my time at the airport, my first airplane trip did not happen until I was dating my husband. I flew from Birmingham to New York City to meet his family. I felt so grown-up. It was 1968 and I was 22 years old and traveling alone on an airplane, at NIGHT. Wow! What a scary, but exhilarating experience! I remember asking the stewardess what that light was that kept following us. She said it was on the end of the wing – duh – why didn’t I think of that?
In the late 60s I made a few more plane trips – our honeymoon trip to Puerto Rico in 1969 and weeks later a job interview flight to Illinois. My husband was stationed outside of St. Louis and I managed to secure a job at a nearby college.
Airplane travel was, however, expensive, in the early years of our marriage, we traveled mostly by car. Steve was transferred to Norton AFB in San Bernardino, CA and we made several cross-country trips to New York and Alabama. We managed to hit a lot of states and attractions along the way and by the time we had finished, we had seen most of the country.
When our son, born in 1971, was an infant, my husband went TDY to Thailand, and the baby and I flew to Birmingham. Traveling on an airplane with an infant in your lap is not for the weak of heart, and something I vowed never to repeat.
When we moved to Maryland in 1976, my husband took a job with a company was, at that time, owned by an airline consortium. One amazing benefit that went with the job was the ability to use airplane passes on most of the major airlines. We could fly for the cost of a service fee. Travel was space available and you had to dress up – but it was worth it. With a pass, we could travel on any flight for the airline we purchased a pass on, going to our destination, provided there was space. You could call ahead and “check on availability.” We were called “non-rev” passengers and were easy to spot. The men always wore coats and ties and the women traveled in dresses or coordinated pant suits -- always with hose. The way it worked was that everyone else boarded the flight and we waited until called by name. We were sent on the plane in order of seniority and sometimes just told to take any available seat. When it came time for food, we were usually skipped. When all the other passengers were served, assuming there was anything left, we could have it – by then there was only one menu choice – the one nobody else wanted. But we never complained. In those amazing years up until around 1995, pass travel was a part of our lives. I learned to fly alone or with colleagues who also qualified for passes. I went to conferences and visited friends. Sometimes our family, including our son, went to the Caribbean or Europe. Uncertainty was our travel partner and we learned to accept the delays with good grace and figure out ways to enjoy the gift of time in a strange city. Once, when the air traffic controllers in Nice were on strike, my husband and I rented a car and drove the next leg of our trip to Frankfurt. We could have seen it as a disaster, but we saw it as a chance to tour more of France, drive through the Swiss Alps, and see parts of Germany we had not seen before.
Today, the passes are gone and we have Frequent Flyer miles instead. Sometimes my husband and I travel together, and sometimes separately. I routinely travel on business by myself. There was a time when I found traveling alone intimidating, but I did it anyway. Now I find it refreshing and exhilarating, though sometimes tiresome. My laptop and iphone are my constant companions and make the time go faster. I have access to some airport lounges and enjoy the peace and quiet they offer. I know what to do it they lose my luggage or if I miss my flight, or if my hotel or the rental car company loses my reservation. Those things happen – they are part of the adventure. Years of pass travel help make just having an assigned seat and getting on the plane along with everyone else seem like a blessing.
The last frontier, however, for me, was dining alone and taking tours alone. Both of those things used to make me a bit uncomfortable. I used to order a room service hamburger for dinner when arriving the night before my conference. Now I just seek out the restaurant in the hotel and buy myself a nice dinner, with a glass of wine. If I am going to a city I don’t know well, I will program in some time at the end of the trip for a tour. Why should I deprive myself of seeing a new city just because I am there on business or traveling alone?
I know my trip to Savannah in 2011 will be vastly different from my first trip there 58 years ago. But I know there is a side of me who will be just as excited as when I was a little kid boarding the bus with my grandmother. And the best part is that when I get there I will be spending time with dear friends from all over the country .
Monday, October 06, 2008
Squirrel in the Toilet
I was on the my phone with a client the other day, when I heard some animated discussion coming from my downstairs home office. Two accounting contractors were there working on a project. They called to me, and I explained that I could not come right now, as I was on the phone.
Then I heard my husband, recently retired, saying something like -- "I've never seen that happen before....I will take care of it." I figured some piece of equipment had broken and he, the engineer, was coming to the rescue.
When my call ended, I went to investigate. No it wasn't the copier, the computer or the fax machine. It was a squirrel, dead in the toilet. Steve had removed it, but all concerned were a bit stunned. What on earth was a dead squirrel doing in our toilet?
We offered various theories. The cleaning lady had the deck door open when she came on Tuesday. Maybe he got in then. But why was there no damage or even evidence of his presence until now? Or maybe he got in that very Thursday morning when Steve was putting the trash out.
That night, when all got quiet, I went online and typed in squirrel and toilet. Turns out this is not such a rare occurence.
But here's the interesting part. They come in through the roof vents. Apparently toilets have roof vents. I never knew that, but then I am not a plumber. Squirrels like to investigate roof vents. So when a squirrel (usually a young, dumb one) is sticking his/her noses down a vent and a toilet flushes -- they are sucked down the vent and into the toilet somehow. Apparently, some squirrels survive the experience and emerge from the water angry and confused. So, while I pity the poor deal squirrel, I am glad that he did not escape into the house -- can you imagine the mess!
So, now we have someone coming out to "cap" the vents for the toilets. Wire mesh is required to keep the nosy little characters out. While we are at it, we are also capping the chimney and cleaning the gutters.
My husband did not share my trauma. His theory is that since he has lived 65 years and never before had a squirrel in the toilet, he will not likely see another in his lifetime. But we will never find out because soon we will have vent covers.
--Pat
Then I heard my husband, recently retired, saying something like -- "I've never seen that happen before....I will take care of it." I figured some piece of equipment had broken and he, the engineer, was coming to the rescue.
When my call ended, I went to investigate. No it wasn't the copier, the computer or the fax machine. It was a squirrel, dead in the toilet. Steve had removed it, but all concerned were a bit stunned. What on earth was a dead squirrel doing in our toilet?
We offered various theories. The cleaning lady had the deck door open when she came on Tuesday. Maybe he got in then. But why was there no damage or even evidence of his presence until now? Or maybe he got in that very Thursday morning when Steve was putting the trash out.
That night, when all got quiet, I went online and typed in squirrel and toilet. Turns out this is not such a rare occurence.
But here's the interesting part. They come in through the roof vents. Apparently toilets have roof vents. I never knew that, but then I am not a plumber. Squirrels like to investigate roof vents. So when a squirrel (usually a young, dumb one) is sticking his/her noses down a vent and a toilet flushes -- they are sucked down the vent and into the toilet somehow. Apparently, some squirrels survive the experience and emerge from the water angry and confused. So, while I pity the poor deal squirrel, I am glad that he did not escape into the house -- can you imagine the mess!
So, now we have someone coming out to "cap" the vents for the toilets. Wire mesh is required to keep the nosy little characters out. While we are at it, we are also capping the chimney and cleaning the gutters.
My husband did not share my trauma. His theory is that since he has lived 65 years and never before had a squirrel in the toilet, he will not likely see another in his lifetime. But we will never find out because soon we will have vent covers.
--Pat
Monday, January 07, 2008
Prices
My mother used to complain about how expensive everything had gotten – and that was in the 1950s. Today’s prices would shock her beyond belief – perhaps even more than they shock my husband (and his sense of price is stuck at about 1962).
I wish I understood about economics; none of it makes a lot of sense to me. In high school I took a course in summer school (no I didn’t fail anything; I needed some extra credits for my very cool and impressive Advanced Academic Diploma). It was a very confusing course – somehow if the government spent more than it had had, things were supposed to work our well and everyone will live happily ever after. Personally, I have tried that approach and found it not to work so well in real life. But maybe it is different for countries.
Actually, I think that whole mindset (even for countries) might have been blown out of the water back in the Reagan years. But then again, seems like that is what the politicians are still doing. They talk a lot about not doing it, but they still do it.
My father said that the problem was that the country got rid of the gold standard. He may have been right! On the personal level -- if everyone had enough money in the bank to pay their credit cards and we merely used them for convenience, then what would happen to interest rates? My guess is they would go down – but then I am not an economist and, as I say, none of it makes any sense to me. And maybe if interest rates were lower, then everything would cost less?
When I was a little kid you could buy a nice house for less than $10,000. When I was a teenager, good houses cost about $25,000. By the time I was in my 30s, they cost at least $50,000 by the time I was in my 50s that number had tripled. Now even in a deflated housing market, the average house is about $250,000 and those of us who had the vision to buy on the water have values well over $1,000,000 (at least in Maryland).
I remember buying a car for $5,500 in 1971 and thinking we were being pretty extravagant. Now I have to replace my 1998 Olds and everything new costs at least $30,000 (or at least so it seems to me for the features I want). Strangely, the “regular” cars and the “luxury” cars end up costing about the same when you get the same features on them. It is not that I want anything all that special really – just leather seats, a split fold-down rear seat, and a CD player.
I paid $26.95 for a small container of crab meat last night. It was Backfin—had I gotten lump it would have been $32.95. Well, the crab cakes were tasty and I did use a bit more cracker meal than usual so I was able to squeeze 13 nice crab cakes out that small container.
About the only thing that hasn’t gotten more expensive is technology. But then again, we didn’t have computers in the 1950s. Yes, we DID pay more than $400 for simple calculator back in about 1974. The same thing would cost about $4 today. As I say, none of this makes any sense to me.
I wish I understood about economics; none of it makes a lot of sense to me. In high school I took a course in summer school (no I didn’t fail anything; I needed some extra credits for my very cool and impressive Advanced Academic Diploma). It was a very confusing course – somehow if the government spent more than it had had, things were supposed to work our well and everyone will live happily ever after. Personally, I have tried that approach and found it not to work so well in real life. But maybe it is different for countries.
Actually, I think that whole mindset (even for countries) might have been blown out of the water back in the Reagan years. But then again, seems like that is what the politicians are still doing. They talk a lot about not doing it, but they still do it.
My father said that the problem was that the country got rid of the gold standard. He may have been right! On the personal level -- if everyone had enough money in the bank to pay their credit cards and we merely used them for convenience, then what would happen to interest rates? My guess is they would go down – but then I am not an economist and, as I say, none of it makes any sense to me. And maybe if interest rates were lower, then everything would cost less?
When I was a little kid you could buy a nice house for less than $10,000. When I was a teenager, good houses cost about $25,000. By the time I was in my 30s, they cost at least $50,000 by the time I was in my 50s that number had tripled. Now even in a deflated housing market, the average house is about $250,000 and those of us who had the vision to buy on the water have values well over $1,000,000 (at least in Maryland).
I remember buying a car for $5,500 in 1971 and thinking we were being pretty extravagant. Now I have to replace my 1998 Olds and everything new costs at least $30,000 (or at least so it seems to me for the features I want). Strangely, the “regular” cars and the “luxury” cars end up costing about the same when you get the same features on them. It is not that I want anything all that special really – just leather seats, a split fold-down rear seat, and a CD player.
I paid $26.95 for a small container of crab meat last night. It was Backfin—had I gotten lump it would have been $32.95. Well, the crab cakes were tasty and I did use a bit more cracker meal than usual so I was able to squeeze 13 nice crab cakes out that small container.
About the only thing that hasn’t gotten more expensive is technology. But then again, we didn’t have computers in the 1950s. Yes, we DID pay more than $400 for simple calculator back in about 1974. The same thing would cost about $4 today. As I say, none of this makes any sense to me.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Living in the BWA Corridor
Living in the Baltimore, Washington, Annapolis Triangle
We’ve lived in the Severna Park/Arnold area (Anne Arundel County) for 31 years now, and I have to say that we don’t intend to leave. Sure, the prices are high and the traffic is congested, but the Chesapeake Bay is magical. We live in suburbia, but we have three great cities to choose from to enrich our lives.
Annapolis is my favorite of the three – close, historic, warm and friendly. Although not a resident of Annapolis, I know the city as well as my own neighborhood. I read the local paper and I know as many people in Annapolis as I do in Severna Park and Arnold. For practical purposes, those of us who live just outside of Annapolis as tied in with the city as most residents.
I still get a thrill out of being in Annapolis on a mild fall evening, walking along the city dock, going to dinner at a local favorite, then to a play at Colonial Players (our community theatre). There are the tourist and the Mids, but there are friends to be seen everywhere. It is rare that I walk down the street in Annapolis that I don’t see someone I know. A sense of history surrounds you and it feels good.
Driving in downtown Annapolis requires a high comfort level with narrow streets and tight turns. That is just the way it is and I don’t think about it at all anymore. I can whip a Dodge Grand Caravan around State Circle with ease and can even parallel park the beast on the wrong side of the street, on a curve in front of the State House.
Baltimore is an amazing city – a city I feel that I know and understand pretty well. It is sometimes called “Charm City.” And for sure, it has a certain charm and elegance in places like Roland Park and Towson. Thanks to the Inner Harbor, downtown is vibrant and alive and bustles with excitement year-around. At one level, the city is new and fresh and full of hope. The various ethnic neighborhoods give it a richness – a texture that you don’t find in most cities. There are the “hons” – the stereotypical ladies caught in a 50s time-warp – and they are still there in Baltimore. You might not find them in the Inner Harbor, but you will find them in the neighborhoods. Baltimore is bold and brassy at time, but it has the ability to laugh at itself.
I carry a pretty decent road map of Baltimore in my head, and as long as I stay on the main streets I do OK. It is hard to get very lost in Baltimore, as the streets are laid out on a grid. Whenever we go to Baltimore, I drive. That was a deal my husband and I made when we moved here. I would learn Baltimore and he would learn Washington.
Washington, DC, is puzzle in many ways. As our Capital, it is provokes as sense of awe. A drive down Constitution Avenue makes you stop and appreciate our American way of life – the monuments and museums remind us of the grandeur of democracy.
I always feel a bit disoriented in DC. Because the streets are mostly at an angle, it is easy to find oneself totally lost in some parts of town. There are the famous circles, like Dupont Circle and Thomas Circle. Massachusetts Avenue, Connecticut Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue seem to be where most of my travels take me.
Coming from the east, the best way into town is on New York Avenue – once a “war zone” and now slow gentrification. The other day I saw a panhandler along New York Avenue. He was holding a sign that said “Why Lie, I Want a Beer!” People were rolling down the window of their Mercedes to give him cash. I guess he struck a responsive chord
In order to live here, on the banks for of the Chesapeake in our little suburban enclave, and fully grasp the opportunities – both business and personal – you have to learn to embrace all three cities and to love each of them for its uniqueness.
We’ve lived in the Severna Park/Arnold area (Anne Arundel County) for 31 years now, and I have to say that we don’t intend to leave. Sure, the prices are high and the traffic is congested, but the Chesapeake Bay is magical. We live in suburbia, but we have three great cities to choose from to enrich our lives.
Annapolis is my favorite of the three – close, historic, warm and friendly. Although not a resident of Annapolis, I know the city as well as my own neighborhood. I read the local paper and I know as many people in Annapolis as I do in Severna Park and Arnold. For practical purposes, those of us who live just outside of Annapolis as tied in with the city as most residents.
I still get a thrill out of being in Annapolis on a mild fall evening, walking along the city dock, going to dinner at a local favorite, then to a play at Colonial Players (our community theatre). There are the tourist and the Mids, but there are friends to be seen everywhere. It is rare that I walk down the street in Annapolis that I don’t see someone I know. A sense of history surrounds you and it feels good.
Driving in downtown Annapolis requires a high comfort level with narrow streets and tight turns. That is just the way it is and I don’t think about it at all anymore. I can whip a Dodge Grand Caravan around State Circle with ease and can even parallel park the beast on the wrong side of the street, on a curve in front of the State House.
Baltimore is an amazing city – a city I feel that I know and understand pretty well. It is sometimes called “Charm City.” And for sure, it has a certain charm and elegance in places like Roland Park and Towson. Thanks to the Inner Harbor, downtown is vibrant and alive and bustles with excitement year-around. At one level, the city is new and fresh and full of hope. The various ethnic neighborhoods give it a richness – a texture that you don’t find in most cities. There are the “hons” – the stereotypical ladies caught in a 50s time-warp – and they are still there in Baltimore. You might not find them in the Inner Harbor, but you will find them in the neighborhoods. Baltimore is bold and brassy at time, but it has the ability to laugh at itself.
I carry a pretty decent road map of Baltimore in my head, and as long as I stay on the main streets I do OK. It is hard to get very lost in Baltimore, as the streets are laid out on a grid. Whenever we go to Baltimore, I drive. That was a deal my husband and I made when we moved here. I would learn Baltimore and he would learn Washington.
Washington, DC, is puzzle in many ways. As our Capital, it is provokes as sense of awe. A drive down Constitution Avenue makes you stop and appreciate our American way of life – the monuments and museums remind us of the grandeur of democracy.
I always feel a bit disoriented in DC. Because the streets are mostly at an angle, it is easy to find oneself totally lost in some parts of town. There are the famous circles, like Dupont Circle and Thomas Circle. Massachusetts Avenue, Connecticut Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue seem to be where most of my travels take me.
Coming from the east, the best way into town is on New York Avenue – once a “war zone” and now slow gentrification. The other day I saw a panhandler along New York Avenue. He was holding a sign that said “Why Lie, I Want a Beer!” People were rolling down the window of their Mercedes to give him cash. I guess he struck a responsive chord
In order to live here, on the banks for of the Chesapeake in our little suburban enclave, and fully grasp the opportunities – both business and personal – you have to learn to embrace all three cities and to love each of them for its uniqueness.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Solutions to Unnamed Problems
It seems that much of what technology offers us today is solutions to problems we didn’t know we had. But once we know we have a problem, and we see others solving it with some techie tool or another, we are hooked.
In my lifetime I have driven all over the US without a phone in my car. It never occurred to me that I needed one. If the car broke down, I would simply flag down a passing motorist who would NOT necessarily be an ax murderer and that kind motorist would tell the owner of the nearest gas station. In those days, people took care of each other. Now, of course, if I am driving to the grocery store and forget my cell phone, I have to go home to get it.
Of course, the laptop computer is the “must have” tool for daily living. It has been only about ten years since I got my first laptop and I have been hooked ever since. I can work anywhere. If Marshall McLuhan were alive today I am sure he would refer to it as “wheels for the mind,” I must not be alone in this addiction. Just stand in any airport security line for proof.
They call smart phones “crackberries” and I can understand that. I seem to think I can’t live without my Treo. I left at home when I went to Germany and found it peculiarly freeing and continually frustrating not to have it. In a way it was like quitting smoking!
I have not gotten an I-Pod yet. Maybe I will, but I can play music on my Treo if I want to. Problem is I keep forgetting how to transfer the songs in MP-3 format. Maybe one day I’ll get an I-Phone.
I haven’t gotten a GPS either. My husband has one, but I try not to have anything to do with it. It confuses me. But I know someday I will succumb, as no doubt my next car will come with one built into it or maybe it will be built into the I-Phone.
Then there is the whole online directions thing. I love the convenience of being able to type in addresses and get directions. The other day, however, Mapquest led me totally astray and I drove maybe 20 miles out of my way.
Last Saturday, all of my techie addictions came into play and I was driven to taking desperate action. The Internet was down at the house; I had a meeting to go to in Laurel and I couldn’t print out directions. I stopped at the coffee shop nearby and planned to do some work prior to my meeting and to jot down the directions. The Internet was down at the coffee shop also. So, not wanting to appear to be out of sync enough to call for directions, I drove to Laurel. Finally, I realized I had this wonderful tool in the car all along. It was a MAP book. I remembered how to use it and the day was saved!
In my lifetime I have driven all over the US without a phone in my car. It never occurred to me that I needed one. If the car broke down, I would simply flag down a passing motorist who would NOT necessarily be an ax murderer and that kind motorist would tell the owner of the nearest gas station. In those days, people took care of each other. Now, of course, if I am driving to the grocery store and forget my cell phone, I have to go home to get it.
Of course, the laptop computer is the “must have” tool for daily living. It has been only about ten years since I got my first laptop and I have been hooked ever since. I can work anywhere. If Marshall McLuhan were alive today I am sure he would refer to it as “wheels for the mind,” I must not be alone in this addiction. Just stand in any airport security line for proof.
They call smart phones “crackberries” and I can understand that. I seem to think I can’t live without my Treo. I left at home when I went to Germany and found it peculiarly freeing and continually frustrating not to have it. In a way it was like quitting smoking!
I have not gotten an I-Pod yet. Maybe I will, but I can play music on my Treo if I want to. Problem is I keep forgetting how to transfer the songs in MP-3 format. Maybe one day I’ll get an I-Phone.
I haven’t gotten a GPS either. My husband has one, but I try not to have anything to do with it. It confuses me. But I know someday I will succumb, as no doubt my next car will come with one built into it or maybe it will be built into the I-Phone.
Then there is the whole online directions thing. I love the convenience of being able to type in addresses and get directions. The other day, however, Mapquest led me totally astray and I drove maybe 20 miles out of my way.
Last Saturday, all of my techie addictions came into play and I was driven to taking desperate action. The Internet was down at the house; I had a meeting to go to in Laurel and I couldn’t print out directions. I stopped at the coffee shop nearby and planned to do some work prior to my meeting and to jot down the directions. The Internet was down at the coffee shop also. So, not wanting to appear to be out of sync enough to call for directions, I drove to Laurel. Finally, I realized I had this wonderful tool in the car all along. It was a MAP book. I remembered how to use it and the day was saved!
Sunday, September 02, 2007
I found my uncle’s old tennis racket in about 1958. The racket was about a decade older than I was at the time. To me, it seemed like an artifact from another time. But money for tennis rackets didn’t grow on trees, so when I wanted to take up tennis later that year, I started with that old racket. It was a great racket! I hated to part with it, but about 40 years ago I gave it to my cousin. It was his dad’s after-all. Both my uncle and my cousin are gone now. I wonder what happened to that racket.
Anyway, once it became tennis was just a twelve year old’s passing fancy, my parents got me my own racket. It was a brand I had never heard of, which they got from some sort of discounter buying club. I think it was the same place they got my transistor radio and bowling shoes.
The problem with stuff from that discount buying club was that nothing was name brand. And while I was grateful for the tennis racket, the radio and the bowling shoes, I have to admit that I gave myself a complex that I was a generic brand second-class citizen. (That may explain why the other day, when I was coming out of anesthesia from my colonoscopy and my doctor was telling my husband about my new lifetime prescription for acid reflux medicine, I made it clear to my husband that I wanted the brand name – not the generic.)
I still have that old discount buying club racket (also the bowling shoes), plus a few other name brand wooden rackets accumulated over the years. Some have covers; some have wooden racket presses. But, of course, one wouldn’t think of showing up on the tennis court with any of them. Using one of those old rackets would be a dead-give-away to my age and the condition of my game (of course just watching me play for 30 seconds sends the same message.)
I played tennis most afternoons and Saturday mornings all through high school. I loved the game and actually with all that practice I got to be a pretty good player. I had a wicked serve and was pretty good at returning balls. My form was never my best thing, and I envied those folks who just seemed to be able to stand there and hit low, fast balls that skimmed over the top of the net. But I had fun and got exercise.
My tennis partner and I went to different colleges (I wonder where she is now). In college I really was too busy with other things to play tennis and I lacked a partner. Spring semester of my freshman year, I took tennis. I was pretty good; I won the class tournament and even beat the teacher. Since I am not at all into sports, this is my one and only lifetime athletic accomplishment.
During the remaining college years, I played here and there and now and then, with friends, but it was an occasional thing and my game suffered.
When I married in 1969, I tried to get my husband interested in tennis. I bought him a racket and we tried to play once. It didn’t work out; he hated it. But then he is not interested in sports in the slightest, although he loves to scuba dive.
My son got to about ten and I tried to get him interested in tennis. I bought him a racket. He tried it dutifully a few times, but he was more interested in other things. Too bad that didn’t work out, as we had great public courts behind our house.
I wonder if my grandson or granddaughter would like to play. Eventually, maybe a family member will actually like the game.
So that was the end of tennis for me until the early 90s when a friend and I played on Saturday mornings for 5 or 6 weeks, but then the snows came and we never picked up where we left off. But during that particular phase I bought myself a new Prince metal racket. I liked it because it had a much bigger area to hit with and was lighter than my old wooden racket.
Just recently, I got it in my head that I wanted to start playing again. I found a friend who was about as rusty as I was. Through a mutual friend, we were treated to a tennis lesson. We played for about 1 ½ hours. We were not as awful as we could have been. Actually, we managed to hit the ball at least a fair portion of the time. Control and form – well those are other matters.
During that game, the instructor was continually reminding me not to crowd the ball and to hit from the side. Of course, I know that is what you are supposed to do, but it is easier said than done – especially when one doesn’t move too fast. But whenever I hit the ball properly, it felt great! That feeling is really powerful!
Then I got to thinking about how I lead my life and I began to see an analogy between the way I approach life and the way I play tennis. During the game my friend said that some of the balls that came her way she opted not to try to hit because she knew if she did her form would be off and she didn’t want to reinforce bad form. That thought never occurred to me! But maybe she is onto something.
My approach is to try to hit every ball except those that are clearly out of bounds or just ridiculous to get to. Otherwise, I go for it. I hit balls overhead or with the racket in front of me; many of my shots have that “thunk” that you get when you hit outside of the racket’s sweet spot. Sometimes those off shots go over the net; sometimes they don’t. But when they do go over, they are usually high or poorly placed.
In life. I really do try to “hit every ball” the best way I can. Opportunities come my way and I try to take advantage of them unless they are clearly “out of bounds” or really not a good fit. That is just like my tennis game – whether it is today or 45 years ago.
Sometimes in business I get that same feeling I get when I hit the tennis ball in the sweet spot. In business, this feeling might be defined as having all my preparation work prior to a meeting, arriving on time, and walking out the door with a contract in hand. Other times, the job gets done, but I am overcoming obstacles every step of the way. I would say this is the equivalent to a hit outside of the sweet spot. Then there are those misses and bad hits – true in both business and in life.
What if I could, through practice, hit in the sweet spot more and more often. What if I could learn not to run to try to hit every ball that comes over the net, but to evaluate the odds and make a decision? What if all of my hits were low and fast?
Then, I wonder, if I could train myself to approach life and business this way? Would it make sense to start with tennis and wire those circuits in my brain to work that way? Interesting! It might work, and just think of the good exercise and the fun of playing tennis instead of sitting at my computer.
Of course, while I am playing tennis I am not working and if I am not working, I am reducing my odds of hitting the sweet spot in business. Or would my brain, fully rewired and refreshed, be able something make me just that much more efficiently? Hmmh…
Then on TV they say 1one hour of exercise increases your life by two hours. That sounds promising. I wonder if it would be possible to have those extra hours in the form of 26 hour day for next ten years instead of having them added on at the end. That way I would have time to play tennis, train my brain to hit in the sweet spot, and still get all of my work done?
Guess not!
But before I play tennis again I have to deal with the matter of my racket. The grip is disintegrating. My right hand was totally black after the game last week. The racket says it is a graphite volley. I think I have found where they store the graphite. I need a new grip; but it is probably cheaper to buy a new racket. Maybe I can pick one up at Costco – discount buying clubs have come a long way!
Anyway, once it became tennis was just a twelve year old’s passing fancy, my parents got me my own racket. It was a brand I had never heard of, which they got from some sort of discounter buying club. I think it was the same place they got my transistor radio and bowling shoes.
The problem with stuff from that discount buying club was that nothing was name brand. And while I was grateful for the tennis racket, the radio and the bowling shoes, I have to admit that I gave myself a complex that I was a generic brand second-class citizen. (That may explain why the other day, when I was coming out of anesthesia from my colonoscopy and my doctor was telling my husband about my new lifetime prescription for acid reflux medicine, I made it clear to my husband that I wanted the brand name – not the generic.)
I still have that old discount buying club racket (also the bowling shoes), plus a few other name brand wooden rackets accumulated over the years. Some have covers; some have wooden racket presses. But, of course, one wouldn’t think of showing up on the tennis court with any of them. Using one of those old rackets would be a dead-give-away to my age and the condition of my game (of course just watching me play for 30 seconds sends the same message.)
I played tennis most afternoons and Saturday mornings all through high school. I loved the game and actually with all that practice I got to be a pretty good player. I had a wicked serve and was pretty good at returning balls. My form was never my best thing, and I envied those folks who just seemed to be able to stand there and hit low, fast balls that skimmed over the top of the net. But I had fun and got exercise.
My tennis partner and I went to different colleges (I wonder where she is now). In college I really was too busy with other things to play tennis and I lacked a partner. Spring semester of my freshman year, I took tennis. I was pretty good; I won the class tournament and even beat the teacher. Since I am not at all into sports, this is my one and only lifetime athletic accomplishment.
During the remaining college years, I played here and there and now and then, with friends, but it was an occasional thing and my game suffered.
When I married in 1969, I tried to get my husband interested in tennis. I bought him a racket and we tried to play once. It didn’t work out; he hated it. But then he is not interested in sports in the slightest, although he loves to scuba dive.
My son got to about ten and I tried to get him interested in tennis. I bought him a racket. He tried it dutifully a few times, but he was more interested in other things. Too bad that didn’t work out, as we had great public courts behind our house.
I wonder if my grandson or granddaughter would like to play. Eventually, maybe a family member will actually like the game.
So that was the end of tennis for me until the early 90s when a friend and I played on Saturday mornings for 5 or 6 weeks, but then the snows came and we never picked up where we left off. But during that particular phase I bought myself a new Prince metal racket. I liked it because it had a much bigger area to hit with and was lighter than my old wooden racket.
Just recently, I got it in my head that I wanted to start playing again. I found a friend who was about as rusty as I was. Through a mutual friend, we were treated to a tennis lesson. We played for about 1 ½ hours. We were not as awful as we could have been. Actually, we managed to hit the ball at least a fair portion of the time. Control and form – well those are other matters.
During that game, the instructor was continually reminding me not to crowd the ball and to hit from the side. Of course, I know that is what you are supposed to do, but it is easier said than done – especially when one doesn’t move too fast. But whenever I hit the ball properly, it felt great! That feeling is really powerful!
Then I got to thinking about how I lead my life and I began to see an analogy between the way I approach life and the way I play tennis. During the game my friend said that some of the balls that came her way she opted not to try to hit because she knew if she did her form would be off and she didn’t want to reinforce bad form. That thought never occurred to me! But maybe she is onto something.
My approach is to try to hit every ball except those that are clearly out of bounds or just ridiculous to get to. Otherwise, I go for it. I hit balls overhead or with the racket in front of me; many of my shots have that “thunk” that you get when you hit outside of the racket’s sweet spot. Sometimes those off shots go over the net; sometimes they don’t. But when they do go over, they are usually high or poorly placed.
In life. I really do try to “hit every ball” the best way I can. Opportunities come my way and I try to take advantage of them unless they are clearly “out of bounds” or really not a good fit. That is just like my tennis game – whether it is today or 45 years ago.
Sometimes in business I get that same feeling I get when I hit the tennis ball in the sweet spot. In business, this feeling might be defined as having all my preparation work prior to a meeting, arriving on time, and walking out the door with a contract in hand. Other times, the job gets done, but I am overcoming obstacles every step of the way. I would say this is the equivalent to a hit outside of the sweet spot. Then there are those misses and bad hits – true in both business and in life.
What if I could, through practice, hit in the sweet spot more and more often. What if I could learn not to run to try to hit every ball that comes over the net, but to evaluate the odds and make a decision? What if all of my hits were low and fast?
Then, I wonder, if I could train myself to approach life and business this way? Would it make sense to start with tennis and wire those circuits in my brain to work that way? Interesting! It might work, and just think of the good exercise and the fun of playing tennis instead of sitting at my computer.
Of course, while I am playing tennis I am not working and if I am not working, I am reducing my odds of hitting the sweet spot in business. Or would my brain, fully rewired and refreshed, be able something make me just that much more efficiently? Hmmh…
Then on TV they say 1one hour of exercise increases your life by two hours. That sounds promising. I wonder if it would be possible to have those extra hours in the form of 26 hour day for next ten years instead of having them added on at the end. That way I would have time to play tennis, train my brain to hit in the sweet spot, and still get all of my work done?
Guess not!
But before I play tennis again I have to deal with the matter of my racket. The grip is disintegrating. My right hand was totally black after the game last week. The racket says it is a graphite volley. I think I have found where they store the graphite. I need a new grip; but it is probably cheaper to buy a new racket. Maybe I can pick one up at Costco – discount buying clubs have come a long way!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Coming Home to Birmingham
I cried the night before I got married. I cried because I was leaving Birmingham, Alabama – this time for good. Of course I knew that things would not stay the same, and that I could never recapture the feeling of home. Leaving for college is one thing, but leaving with a husband with a military career ahead of him was quite another.
Over the years I came home a few times each year. When my mother was dying, I came more often, and two years later, when my father was dying I stayed for several weeks at a time. Gradually most friends and relatives moved away or passed away.
This past week I came home to Birmingham for a family reunion I had arranged for my father’s family. It was great fun to see everyone, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
We had a little time to drive around town, so I loaded by husband, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren into a rented van and I gave them a guided tour on the old roads.
Driving down the street in Birmingham I see what “is” with my eyes and with my memory I see what “was.” Nothing much has stayed the same and there are memories everywhere I turn.
See that building that says Dialysis Center; we used to go there every Sunday afternoon for ice cream.
See that boarded up apartment building that looks like a castle; my aunt used to live there.
See that flat area over there beside the freeway; my high school was there. They built a new one and I have no idea where.
There’s our old house where my parents lived for 1958 until 1989; it looks great! What is that music? Oh, it is a mariachi band in the carport across the street.
There’s the 16th Street Baptist Church; that Easter Sunday bombing changed everything. That was the deep wound, after which the city knew it had to heal.
That is the house where we lived until 1958. See where that carport is; that was where I had my swing set. My grandmother had a beautiful garden in the backyard. They have torn off the brick railing and replaced it with wrought iron.
That’s my old elementary school. I wonder why they have a giant antenna in the front of it. Strange! See they cut down the one tree on the playground.
See that boarded up department store; that is where we used to shop. Yes, we used to get all dressed up to go downtown to shop. It was an all day thing.
See that shopping center. I remember when it opened with just a few stores in 1958. No, all of the others are new. Yes, the Shell station has always been there on the corner.
The list goes on and on. Memories pile onto memories. I can’t stop the flow!
I love Birmingham, but I know I can never go home again. The people who defined my life are mostly gone; the places have all changed. I will find excuses to come back to visit from time to time. There is a compulsion to watch the changes.
My life is in Maryland now. In the 31 years we have lived there I have seen many changes, but I have had a chance to internalize them. I don’t have to relive the memories every time I drive down the road. I can live in the moment, and that has to have some value!
Over the years I came home a few times each year. When my mother was dying, I came more often, and two years later, when my father was dying I stayed for several weeks at a time. Gradually most friends and relatives moved away or passed away.
This past week I came home to Birmingham for a family reunion I had arranged for my father’s family. It was great fun to see everyone, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
We had a little time to drive around town, so I loaded by husband, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren into a rented van and I gave them a guided tour on the old roads.
Driving down the street in Birmingham I see what “is” with my eyes and with my memory I see what “was.” Nothing much has stayed the same and there are memories everywhere I turn.
See that building that says Dialysis Center; we used to go there every Sunday afternoon for ice cream.
See that boarded up apartment building that looks like a castle; my aunt used to live there.
See that flat area over there beside the freeway; my high school was there. They built a new one and I have no idea where.
There’s our old house where my parents lived for 1958 until 1989; it looks great! What is that music? Oh, it is a mariachi band in the carport across the street.
There’s the 16th Street Baptist Church; that Easter Sunday bombing changed everything. That was the deep wound, after which the city knew it had to heal.
That is the house where we lived until 1958. See where that carport is; that was where I had my swing set. My grandmother had a beautiful garden in the backyard. They have torn off the brick railing and replaced it with wrought iron.
That’s my old elementary school. I wonder why they have a giant antenna in the front of it. Strange! See they cut down the one tree on the playground.
See that boarded up department store; that is where we used to shop. Yes, we used to get all dressed up to go downtown to shop. It was an all day thing.
See that shopping center. I remember when it opened with just a few stores in 1958. No, all of the others are new. Yes, the Shell station has always been there on the corner.
The list goes on and on. Memories pile onto memories. I can’t stop the flow!
I love Birmingham, but I know I can never go home again. The people who defined my life are mostly gone; the places have all changed. I will find excuses to come back to visit from time to time. There is a compulsion to watch the changes.
My life is in Maryland now. In the 31 years we have lived there I have seen many changes, but I have had a chance to internalize them. I don’t have to relive the memories every time I drive down the road. I can live in the moment, and that has to have some value!
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Bluetooth Headset
I finally broke down and got a Bluetooth headset. A few years ago, I tried a borrowed one, and it drove me nuts, so I returned it. But Friday afternoon I decided I had to have one. Why? I don’t know!
There has to be something to it. If there wasn’t why would all sorts of people being wearing the things? I have to admit that driving and holding a cell phone is not a good thing. I also have to admit that rummaging through my purse or grabbing at my waist to answer a call is not much fun either. So maybe with this little device I will have less aggravation in my life and be safer on the road.
Of course, the units, especially the one that I bought, resemble a giant cockroach with a blue light (which is sometimes red or purple) embedded in its head. What’s not to love?
I bought a small, very lightweight and too expensive model. The instructions had to be located online (no small feat) and downloaded and printed out. I followed them to the letter and nothing happened, so I took it back to the store. Actually, I thought it wouldn’t work with my cellular phone, and wanted to return it. But it was non-returnable because it sticks in your ear. The sales manager quickly got it operational and I was good to go. I still wasn't sure why I was doing this, but...
A key thing about Bluetooth is that it has to “pair” with another Bluetooth device. My cell-phone and the headset have to find one another. In this particular electronic device mating ritual, the cell phone first has to have its Bluetooth turned on. And very quickly, it is necessary to get the headset to get in the mood for mating. You know it is ready when it flashes red, then blue. The boom, they are connected! Now for most phones and headsets, that is the end of it. But, of course, I would have some compatibility issues, and my headset has to be rebooted following pairing --every time. I wonder if a Bluetooth counselor could help them work out their differences?
I wore the headset Saturday night while cooking dinner. Not that I was expecting any important calls, but it was my new toy and I wanted to try it out. My husband chuckled as he asked me if I was going to be wearing it all the time. He said that he always had a compulsion to ask headset wearers how are things on the mothership. Clearly he did not share my excitement!
It supposedly can handle voice dialing – that is if I buy a program for my phone and teach the phone how to understand my speech. I am not sure I up to tutoring my cell phone and trying to get it to come to terms with my southern accent. But it certainly would be cool not to have to dial the phone in the car. Pulling over to the side is a drag! We’ll see!
It does work – provided I cater to its rebooting needs. Tomorrow is Monday. I should be getting lots of calls. I will try it out again –this time for real! I could try wearing it into the grocery store. It is, after all, a very cool fashion accessory. I admit it would look better with the long hair, huge hooprs, hip-huggers and a athletic shoes favored by the younger generation. But maybe it will look OK with my short hair, old lady cropped pants, clip on earrings and clogs. And if it doesn’t – who cares!
I finally figured out why i had to have one. And this is a REALLY, REALLY good reason!
This is really all about being able to type on my laptop with two hands while talking on the phone. Life’s too short to do one thing at a time! You know you are truly multi-taking when you are having an email conversation (unrelated to the call) with someone who is on the same group conference call you are on. So bring on those calls and simultaneous emails!
There has to be something to it. If there wasn’t why would all sorts of people being wearing the things? I have to admit that driving and holding a cell phone is not a good thing. I also have to admit that rummaging through my purse or grabbing at my waist to answer a call is not much fun either. So maybe with this little device I will have less aggravation in my life and be safer on the road.
Of course, the units, especially the one that I bought, resemble a giant cockroach with a blue light (which is sometimes red or purple) embedded in its head. What’s not to love?
I bought a small, very lightweight and too expensive model. The instructions had to be located online (no small feat) and downloaded and printed out. I followed them to the letter and nothing happened, so I took it back to the store. Actually, I thought it wouldn’t work with my cellular phone, and wanted to return it. But it was non-returnable because it sticks in your ear. The sales manager quickly got it operational and I was good to go. I still wasn't sure why I was doing this, but...
A key thing about Bluetooth is that it has to “pair” with another Bluetooth device. My cell-phone and the headset have to find one another. In this particular electronic device mating ritual, the cell phone first has to have its Bluetooth turned on. And very quickly, it is necessary to get the headset to get in the mood for mating. You know it is ready when it flashes red, then blue. The boom, they are connected! Now for most phones and headsets, that is the end of it. But, of course, I would have some compatibility issues, and my headset has to be rebooted following pairing --every time. I wonder if a Bluetooth counselor could help them work out their differences?
I wore the headset Saturday night while cooking dinner. Not that I was expecting any important calls, but it was my new toy and I wanted to try it out. My husband chuckled as he asked me if I was going to be wearing it all the time. He said that he always had a compulsion to ask headset wearers how are things on the mothership. Clearly he did not share my excitement!
It supposedly can handle voice dialing – that is if I buy a program for my phone and teach the phone how to understand my speech. I am not sure I up to tutoring my cell phone and trying to get it to come to terms with my southern accent. But it certainly would be cool not to have to dial the phone in the car. Pulling over to the side is a drag! We’ll see!
It does work – provided I cater to its rebooting needs. Tomorrow is Monday. I should be getting lots of calls. I will try it out again –this time for real! I could try wearing it into the grocery store. It is, after all, a very cool fashion accessory. I admit it would look better with the long hair, huge hooprs, hip-huggers and a athletic shoes favored by the younger generation. But maybe it will look OK with my short hair, old lady cropped pants, clip on earrings and clogs. And if it doesn’t – who cares!
I finally figured out why i had to have one. And this is a REALLY, REALLY good reason!
This is really all about being able to type on my laptop with two hands while talking on the phone. Life’s too short to do one thing at a time! You know you are truly multi-taking when you are having an email conversation (unrelated to the call) with someone who is on the same group conference call you are on. So bring on those calls and simultaneous emails!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Berlin
My husband and I went to Berlin for a week at the invitation of our son and his family, who have rented an apartment there for the summer. Although we have been to Germany many times, we had never been to Berlin. While I had suggested it in the past, it was not a practical thing to do before the wall fell.
When the Berlin wall came down, my father commented that he never thought he would live to see it happen. Frankly, neither did I – much less think that I would spend a week of my life living in what had been East Berlin.
I guess I expected to see dramatic differences, even today. I imagined East Berlin in shades of gray – the dismal colors of the communist regime. But this is 2007, and East Berlin is in many ways like every other city, alive with a Technicolor vibrancy.
There one thing in particular that struck me about the city, whether it be East Berlin or West Berlin, and that was its youth and energy. I looked around and saw few people older than myself. Most of the people I saw seemed to be 50 or younger. Everyone was in motion – whether walking, riding bicycles or sitting on the train or bus.
At 61, with little tolerance for walking and hot weather, I found myself constantly seeking out places to rest. There were plenty of street cafes, with a cold beer the price of admission. A few times I succumbed to the pain in my feet and ordered a beer.
I lost ten pounds in one week, and I think it was a combination of walking and heat that did it. Though the first few days were cold and rainy, we were soon in the midst of a heat-wave, with the thermometer topping 90 degrees. Not something that I notice at home in my little sedentary, air-conditioned world, but something that really got my attention in Berlin. Without air-conditioning and relying on my two feet and public transportation, I was quickly the victim of heat exhaustion. But, I felt good – alive in a way I don’t at home.
They left some of the wall standing. It was thinner concrete than I had imagined – not much more in some ways that an extra tall Jersey barrier. The course of the wall is marked in stones on city streets. It amazed me just how easily we could cross from one side or the other. I could only imagine what it was like before.
While we were there the Brandenburg Gate was mostly blocked off with a series of elaborate white tents. Turns out this was fashion week in Berlin, and fashionable people were there from all over the world, presumably to find out what was hot. Contrast this to scenes from the Third Reich.
When we go to Germany, we enjoy eating traditional German food. Our son had warned us, however, that Berlin was very cosmopolitan and real German food was not that common. But we did enjoy several excellent German meals, mostly at beer gardens. We also enjoyed fabulous pizza, as well as delightful French and Russian food.
We toured a museum (in a shopping mall) that focused on the history of Berlin. A commercial venture, it was indeed worthy of the Smithsonian. It was a great way to spend a cold and rainy day.
At the conclusion of the tour, there was an optional tour of a fallout shelter under the mall. I guess of everything I saw, this shelter shocked me the most. Built in 1974, it could accommodate 3,500 people – first come, first served. There are four of these in Berlin. According to our tour guide, two weeks notice would be required to stock the shelter with food, and after the 3,500 people had stayed there for only two weeks, they would have exhausted all the supplies and air, and would have to leave. I remember 1974; we were living in Southern California. By then I already had come to terms with the reality that if the bomb dropped, it was all over for us. We were told that the shelter could still be used. Amazing!
The scars of Nazi Germany were visible, intertwined with modern life. Walking down the street, one can see small brass markers that show where the Jewish families lived. It made the Holocaust seem all too real.
We visited a small museum focusing on the life of Anne Frank. The museum was in the attic of a small building. This venue made it easy to envision how Anne Frank must have suffered in a sweltering attic in hiding with her family in Amsterdam.
Clearly, Berlin is a city that has endured a lot of pain, and it shows. There is as much graffiti per square mile probably as Queens. But what impresses me is the city’s resilience – the way it embraces life. Its focus is clearly on the future, and there is an energy that is electric. Late at night young men and women, some drawn together by the Internet and a shared language, are gathering in cafes and beer gardens and talking of things that matter. Something powerful is bubbling just beneath the surface.
For our son, his wife, and most especially for our grandchildren, living in Berlin for the summer has to be a grand adventure. For us, it was a glimpse into another world.
We are home now; back to our cars and our air-conditioned, comfortable suburban world. There is no walking up the street for a gelato or catching a subway to go to a museum. Everything is easier here, but what is missing is creative tension and energy that happens when you get outside of your comfort zone.
When the Berlin wall came down, my father commented that he never thought he would live to see it happen. Frankly, neither did I – much less think that I would spend a week of my life living in what had been East Berlin.
I guess I expected to see dramatic differences, even today. I imagined East Berlin in shades of gray – the dismal colors of the communist regime. But this is 2007, and East Berlin is in many ways like every other city, alive with a Technicolor vibrancy.
There one thing in particular that struck me about the city, whether it be East Berlin or West Berlin, and that was its youth and energy. I looked around and saw few people older than myself. Most of the people I saw seemed to be 50 or younger. Everyone was in motion – whether walking, riding bicycles or sitting on the train or bus.
At 61, with little tolerance for walking and hot weather, I found myself constantly seeking out places to rest. There were plenty of street cafes, with a cold beer the price of admission. A few times I succumbed to the pain in my feet and ordered a beer.
I lost ten pounds in one week, and I think it was a combination of walking and heat that did it. Though the first few days were cold and rainy, we were soon in the midst of a heat-wave, with the thermometer topping 90 degrees. Not something that I notice at home in my little sedentary, air-conditioned world, but something that really got my attention in Berlin. Without air-conditioning and relying on my two feet and public transportation, I was quickly the victim of heat exhaustion. But, I felt good – alive in a way I don’t at home.
They left some of the wall standing. It was thinner concrete than I had imagined – not much more in some ways that an extra tall Jersey barrier. The course of the wall is marked in stones on city streets. It amazed me just how easily we could cross from one side or the other. I could only imagine what it was like before.
While we were there the Brandenburg Gate was mostly blocked off with a series of elaborate white tents. Turns out this was fashion week in Berlin, and fashionable people were there from all over the world, presumably to find out what was hot. Contrast this to scenes from the Third Reich.
When we go to Germany, we enjoy eating traditional German food. Our son had warned us, however, that Berlin was very cosmopolitan and real German food was not that common. But we did enjoy several excellent German meals, mostly at beer gardens. We also enjoyed fabulous pizza, as well as delightful French and Russian food.
We toured a museum (in a shopping mall) that focused on the history of Berlin. A commercial venture, it was indeed worthy of the Smithsonian. It was a great way to spend a cold and rainy day.
At the conclusion of the tour, there was an optional tour of a fallout shelter under the mall. I guess of everything I saw, this shelter shocked me the most. Built in 1974, it could accommodate 3,500 people – first come, first served. There are four of these in Berlin. According to our tour guide, two weeks notice would be required to stock the shelter with food, and after the 3,500 people had stayed there for only two weeks, they would have exhausted all the supplies and air, and would have to leave. I remember 1974; we were living in Southern California. By then I already had come to terms with the reality that if the bomb dropped, it was all over for us. We were told that the shelter could still be used. Amazing!
The scars of Nazi Germany were visible, intertwined with modern life. Walking down the street, one can see small brass markers that show where the Jewish families lived. It made the Holocaust seem all too real.
We visited a small museum focusing on the life of Anne Frank. The museum was in the attic of a small building. This venue made it easy to envision how Anne Frank must have suffered in a sweltering attic in hiding with her family in Amsterdam.
Clearly, Berlin is a city that has endured a lot of pain, and it shows. There is as much graffiti per square mile probably as Queens. But what impresses me is the city’s resilience – the way it embraces life. Its focus is clearly on the future, and there is an energy that is electric. Late at night young men and women, some drawn together by the Internet and a shared language, are gathering in cafes and beer gardens and talking of things that matter. Something powerful is bubbling just beneath the surface.
For our son, his wife, and most especially for our grandchildren, living in Berlin for the summer has to be a grand adventure. For us, it was a glimpse into another world.
We are home now; back to our cars and our air-conditioned, comfortable suburban world. There is no walking up the street for a gelato or catching a subway to go to a museum. Everything is easier here, but what is missing is creative tension and energy that happens when you get outside of your comfort zone.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Holidays Mark the Speed of Life
You know how with reel-to-reel tape recorders, the closer to the end of the reel, the faster it spins. At 61, my life feels like it is spinning ever so fast, almost out of control. I guess that is normal, but it is disorienting, and it just keeps getting faster and faster. Ironically, this phenomenon coincides with the intellectual knowledge that one’s life is coming to a close, sooner rather than later. My mother died at 69; her mother at 67. I wonder how much time I have left.
I can tell you what songs were popular in the 1960s or even the 1950s or 1940s, and even usually what year and who the artist was. But I am hard-pressed to make a distinction for all the other more recent decades, much less know the artist. It all just sort of runs together in a blur. And the bottom line is – I really don’t care, so I don’t focus on it.
When you are young, everything is an adventure. There are new things to experience; new foods to try; new places to visit. And, of course, when I was younger those new experiences and places to visit were more diverse and intense than they are now. The world is quickly getting to be all the same. One has to look for differences, and they are more subtle than in the past.
At the same time I am discovering that cultural distinctions are harder to find, I am also discovering that I really do enjoy being set in my ways and the comforts of home. I love my home, and travel is harder than it used to be. Suitcases seem to be heavier and my feet have less tolerance. I don’t like to be too cold or too hot, and I like an extra firm mattress and bottled water. If I can’t hook up to the Internet or there is bad cell phone reception, I am totally out of sorts.
The Fourth of July was yesterday. For the 30 years, we have done essentially the same thing. We have participated in the local parade in one form or another, then had lunch with family and dinner at a friend’s potluck. While there was a disquieting sameness to this ritual, there was comfort in it as well. Then this year, everything was different. Our son and his family are away in Germany; we borrowed our son’s convertible to use for the parade, but it wouldn’t start and the top wouldn’t go down; there was no potluck. Steve is having a colonoscopy today, so he was on clear liquids. So no parade, no family, no potluck, not even any food for Steve. It didn’t feel right, but I seized the time and, you guessed it, worked! This is a Fourth I will remember because it was different. But next year, it will come around again. Maybe my family will be in town; maybe the car will be fixed and we can be in the parade; maybe the potluck will be back on, and surely Steve won’t have to have another colonoscopy. Or maybe we will try something totally different and get out of town or start a whole new ritual.
I remember Christmas of 1985. We were making our annual trek to Birmingham to be with my family. I knew it would be a long and exhausting trip, and I somehow envied those who didn’t have to leave their homes over the holidays – the people who had Christmas trees, had parties and cooked Christmas dinner. But it was a passing thought, and one I now wish I had never had. Being with my family at Christmas was always very special. My mother had big holiday parties, and the house sparkled with holiday cheer. We all felt loved and past of something bigger than ourselves. It was worth the grueling 15 hour drive.
That was our last real Christmas together. A few weeks later, my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. By January 13, 1987, she was dead – a year to day after her diagnosis. We were all together for Christmas of 1986. There was no party; everyone was depressed; Christmas dinner was prepared by myself and a family friend, under my mother’s none too patient supervision. We are Chinese take-out Christmas Eve. We exchanged meaningless gifts. I got a camcorder, but my mother wouldn’t let me take her picture. She did not want to be remembered looking the way she did. We left tired, discouraged, and profoundly sad.
It is strange about holidays; they are the same for decades, then suddenly everything changes. Old rituals give rise to new rituals, and we find comfort in the sameness as the years go spinning by, faster and faster. But without holidays, the days and nights would totally spin out of control with no anchors to hold us our past.
I can tell you what songs were popular in the 1960s or even the 1950s or 1940s, and even usually what year and who the artist was. But I am hard-pressed to make a distinction for all the other more recent decades, much less know the artist. It all just sort of runs together in a blur. And the bottom line is – I really don’t care, so I don’t focus on it.
When you are young, everything is an adventure. There are new things to experience; new foods to try; new places to visit. And, of course, when I was younger those new experiences and places to visit were more diverse and intense than they are now. The world is quickly getting to be all the same. One has to look for differences, and they are more subtle than in the past.
At the same time I am discovering that cultural distinctions are harder to find, I am also discovering that I really do enjoy being set in my ways and the comforts of home. I love my home, and travel is harder than it used to be. Suitcases seem to be heavier and my feet have less tolerance. I don’t like to be too cold or too hot, and I like an extra firm mattress and bottled water. If I can’t hook up to the Internet or there is bad cell phone reception, I am totally out of sorts.
The Fourth of July was yesterday. For the 30 years, we have done essentially the same thing. We have participated in the local parade in one form or another, then had lunch with family and dinner at a friend’s potluck. While there was a disquieting sameness to this ritual, there was comfort in it as well. Then this year, everything was different. Our son and his family are away in Germany; we borrowed our son’s convertible to use for the parade, but it wouldn’t start and the top wouldn’t go down; there was no potluck. Steve is having a colonoscopy today, so he was on clear liquids. So no parade, no family, no potluck, not even any food for Steve. It didn’t feel right, but I seized the time and, you guessed it, worked! This is a Fourth I will remember because it was different. But next year, it will come around again. Maybe my family will be in town; maybe the car will be fixed and we can be in the parade; maybe the potluck will be back on, and surely Steve won’t have to have another colonoscopy. Or maybe we will try something totally different and get out of town or start a whole new ritual.
I remember Christmas of 1985. We were making our annual trek to Birmingham to be with my family. I knew it would be a long and exhausting trip, and I somehow envied those who didn’t have to leave their homes over the holidays – the people who had Christmas trees, had parties and cooked Christmas dinner. But it was a passing thought, and one I now wish I had never had. Being with my family at Christmas was always very special. My mother had big holiday parties, and the house sparkled with holiday cheer. We all felt loved and past of something bigger than ourselves. It was worth the grueling 15 hour drive.
That was our last real Christmas together. A few weeks later, my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. By January 13, 1987, she was dead – a year to day after her diagnosis. We were all together for Christmas of 1986. There was no party; everyone was depressed; Christmas dinner was prepared by myself and a family friend, under my mother’s none too patient supervision. We are Chinese take-out Christmas Eve. We exchanged meaningless gifts. I got a camcorder, but my mother wouldn’t let me take her picture. She did not want to be remembered looking the way she did. We left tired, discouraged, and profoundly sad.
It is strange about holidays; they are the same for decades, then suddenly everything changes. Old rituals give rise to new rituals, and we find comfort in the sameness as the years go spinning by, faster and faster. But without holidays, the days and nights would totally spin out of control with no anchors to hold us our past.
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