Sunday, March 2, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Walking by the river in February
Yesterday after the arts workshop it was sunny and cold, late afternoon shadows creating sharp contrast against the buildings downtown – black outlines against pale inanimate shapes like the color of human flesh after a winter-long hibernation under clothing. I talked my husband into going for a walk with me. We headed down the bike path near the river. Everything was still naked from winter, trees bare, the brown water’s surface reflecting the sky and shore like a bowl full of mercury. Only the sounds revealed that Spring is on its way.
Above us, pairs of Canada geese honk their chatter to one another. Assorted chirps, quacks, and gurrrumphs from thickets of spiky brambles reveal each creature’s cry for a mate and the search for a nesting place in the bright watery cold. In the water, small groups of ducks gather and start to pair off. One pair of iridescent green mallard heads goes head-to-head in a stand-off like Bighorn sheep. I noticed at least six different varieties of webfoot waterfowl, and some that looked like a cross between wild and domestic varieties.
Mallards are easy to identify. “Make Way for Ducklings” was one of my favorite children’s books, and I read it to my daughter, same as my mother read it to me. There are the Canada Geese of course. One large white goose floats among the wild ones, like the rebel who escaped the barnyard in another children’s book “The Day the Goose got Loose.” I don’t recognize the small black, white-beaked bird that sits on a log with a pair of mallards, but I think it is some kind of duck. When the three jump into the water, the mallards drift smoothly across the surface, but the little black one’s head juts forward and back, like the walking birds that scour grocery store parking lots for morsels of food. With its white beak jerking brightly back and forth against the dark water, it seemed to me that the motion might attract predators from above. But I am not the one who designed this creature or its predators, and so I decided to relax and enjoy the show.
Far across the water, a large dark crane or heron stands alone. Nests of sticks are showing in leafless trees above. They wait for the next generation of these solitary exclamation points that punctuate our waterways in summertime. Ducks and geese slide in circles in the water around the crane, and one gigantic Canada goose poses on a stump nearby. He spreads his wings in a display certain to attract a female desiring strong and healthy offspring. He poses like that for outstretched minutes, so that no girl goose can miss him, and no gander will dare challenge him. Far above in the naked tree branches perches a pair of bald eagles.
The white head of the male flashes in the lowering sunlight, and the large brown female rests on a branch slightly lower, near her mate.
There is so much stillness. The eagles, the crane, the gander with outstretched wings; it feels as if the birds are conserving their energy, their life force, for the burst of life about to be fulfilled in the coming weeks.
Under the vegetation at water’s edge, a pair of nutria burrows in the mud. They turn to dip into the briny water, swimming a bit, diving slowly, coming back up, but never venturing far from the muddy banks. One of them has gray whiskers, making me think of men who cycle the Eugene bike paths with their neatly trimmed gray beards, or pull up next to me in a hybrid Prius or economy sedan, at a stop light when I’m driving home from work. Men who are friends of my husband look like this too. Their short gray beards make them appear wise, like college professors who spend their days behind a typewriter in a wood-paneled office, heavy tomes lining the bookshelves. I have to remind myself that they are probably the same age as I .. and I think about their childhood paralleling mine in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of them look better now than they did as young men, and I wonder if they know it.
Anyway, it’s just a thought, and it will pass. Like the nutria, fulfilling its life’s destiny along a muddy river bank on a cold and clear almost-spring late afternoon in February.
Above us, pairs of Canada geese honk their chatter to one another. Assorted chirps, quacks, and gurrrumphs from thickets of spiky brambles reveal each creature’s cry for a mate and the search for a nesting place in the bright watery cold. In the water, small groups of ducks gather and start to pair off. One pair of iridescent green mallard heads goes head-to-head in a stand-off like Bighorn sheep. I noticed at least six different varieties of webfoot waterfowl, and some that looked like a cross between wild and domestic varieties.
Mallards are easy to identify. “Make Way for Ducklings” was one of my favorite children’s books, and I read it to my daughter, same as my mother read it to me. There are the Canada Geese of course. One large white goose floats among the wild ones, like the rebel who escaped the barnyard in another children’s book “The Day the Goose got Loose.” I don’t recognize the small black, white-beaked bird that sits on a log with a pair of mallards, but I think it is some kind of duck. When the three jump into the water, the mallards drift smoothly across the surface, but the little black one’s head juts forward and back, like the walking birds that scour grocery store parking lots for morsels of food. With its white beak jerking brightly back and forth against the dark water, it seemed to me that the motion might attract predators from above. But I am not the one who designed this creature or its predators, and so I decided to relax and enjoy the show.
Far across the water, a large dark crane or heron stands alone. Nests of sticks are showing in leafless trees above. They wait for the next generation of these solitary exclamation points that punctuate our waterways in summertime. Ducks and geese slide in circles in the water around the crane, and one gigantic Canada goose poses on a stump nearby. He spreads his wings in a display certain to attract a female desiring strong and healthy offspring. He poses like that for outstretched minutes, so that no girl goose can miss him, and no gander will dare challenge him. Far above in the naked tree branches perches a pair of bald eagles.
The white head of the male flashes in the lowering sunlight, and the large brown female rests on a branch slightly lower, near her mate.
There is so much stillness. The eagles, the crane, the gander with outstretched wings; it feels as if the birds are conserving their energy, their life force, for the burst of life about to be fulfilled in the coming weeks.
Under the vegetation at water’s edge, a pair of nutria burrows in the mud. They turn to dip into the briny water, swimming a bit, diving slowly, coming back up, but never venturing far from the muddy banks. One of them has gray whiskers, making me think of men who cycle the Eugene bike paths with their neatly trimmed gray beards, or pull up next to me in a hybrid Prius or economy sedan, at a stop light when I’m driving home from work. Men who are friends of my husband look like this too. Their short gray beards make them appear wise, like college professors who spend their days behind a typewriter in a wood-paneled office, heavy tomes lining the bookshelves. I have to remind myself that they are probably the same age as I .. and I think about their childhood paralleling mine in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of them look better now than they did as young men, and I wonder if they know it.
Anyway, it’s just a thought, and it will pass. Like the nutria, fulfilling its life’s destiny along a muddy river bank on a cold and clear almost-spring late afternoon in February.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Running in Circles
I woke up in the dark this morning, after dreaming about my found friends and I started again to think about this: it's such a cool thing about this medium of communication -- myspace, wordpress, e-blogger, and it all started on the found comment board..
We become friends with people that we never met. We are able to share our entire lives, not just the right-now lives, so it seems we can get to know each other as whole people, as we might have known each other if we had met 20 or 30 years ago. Some of us have even crossed paths on the same physical landscape along the west coast over the past 30+ years, and I'm sure if we had met along the way, we would have run in similar circles. And this is true for those who were not at the same age at the same time, as well as for those of us who were - because out here in Internet Land all events really are simultaneous. Like Einstein said.
For me it feels like there are no lines delineating age, gender, appearance, or any other physical characteristic that tends to limit and define us in "real life." In real life, it's hard to be friends with the opposite sex or people of different generations. Here, if we choose, we can have relationships based purely on what we think, what we feel, and how we treat each other.
It's just really really cool. I like it a lot.
The sun is coming up now, on another rainy day in beautiful gray-green Oregon. The daffodils are shooting up their green signals that spring is on its way. The circles continue, and we keep running in them. Or walking, skipping, jumping, limping, swimming, flying, tapping away on a computer key board -- whatever the case may be. Out here, it’s all the same.
We become friends with people that we never met. We are able to share our entire lives, not just the right-now lives, so it seems we can get to know each other as whole people, as we might have known each other if we had met 20 or 30 years ago. Some of us have even crossed paths on the same physical landscape along the west coast over the past 30+ years, and I'm sure if we had met along the way, we would have run in similar circles. And this is true for those who were not at the same age at the same time, as well as for those of us who were - because out here in Internet Land all events really are simultaneous. Like Einstein said.
For me it feels like there are no lines delineating age, gender, appearance, or any other physical characteristic that tends to limit and define us in "real life." In real life, it's hard to be friends with the opposite sex or people of different generations. Here, if we choose, we can have relationships based purely on what we think, what we feel, and how we treat each other.
It's just really really cool. I like it a lot.
The sun is coming up now, on another rainy day in beautiful gray-green Oregon. The daffodils are shooting up their green signals that spring is on its way. The circles continue, and we keep running in them. Or walking, skipping, jumping, limping, swimming, flying, tapping away on a computer key board -- whatever the case may be. Out here, it’s all the same.
Monday, January 21, 2008
First Kiss
“Two little lovebirds
sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”
(Remember the rest? … first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage! So glad we had that rhyme to teach us how it works!)
Anyway, my friend Mona’s blog made me reflect about my first kiss.
When I was in 7th grade, one of my best friends lived in the rural farm town of Ridgefield, Washington, about 30 miles from the Portland suburb where I had recently moved. David Baker was a year older than I. My friend had a huge crush on him; in fact all the girls at her school did. He was a quiet, shy, skinny kid, light brown hair, blue eyes, and a few freckles across his nose. Maybe it was because I was a mysterious stranger, an unknown girl from the city, that he took a liking to me.
In my new home in an upper-middle class suburb, living next door to doctors’ and lawyers’ kids, I was the plain and homely kid wearing sale-rack clothing. My parents’ teacher’s salaries were not on the same level as theirs. But when I went to visit my friend in this rural farm town, the other kids didn’t look down on me; in fact just the opposite. They thought I was cute and cool. Probably it was the novelty of the “new girl” in a small town, because I was nothing much to look at during that awkward growing-up stage.
It was the first of May, the fresh sunshine of spring in the air, and Ridgefield was having their annual May Day celebration that Saturday. There was a small town parade in the dusty streets, and all the kids were out looking for fun. We found David and some other friends, and went out to hang out in a wooded spot somewhere nearby. David and I climbed a tree and sat on a large branch side-by-side. He was holding my hand, and then he leaned over and kissed me.
It was more of a peck than a kiss, awkward (we were trying not to fall off the branch) and as I remember we were sitting a few inches apart. Both of us shy and not certain what to do. To be honest, I was more thrilled by the fact that a boy liked me, than by a feeling of attraction toward him in particular. The fact that this was a boy that the other girls considered hot, added extra appeal, of course.
Perhaps there was a tad bit of guilt about the fact that it was my friend’s crush. But she had been chasing him shamelessly, embarrassing him in front of the other kids, loudly proclaiming her love for him. It was obvious it was going nowhere. She was a fun and funny girl, always had everyone in stitches, and she didn’t seem to mind much that he liked me. In fact, she quickly transferred her affections to one of his friends, and continued to try to “fix us up” after my departure. But, like Mona said, boys don’t write letters. I think David did write back to me once, though. And he called long distance a few times. But I fell in love with another boy in my own town soon thereafter (my “first love” at age 13) and I didn’t miss David.
A year later when David got his driver’s license, he and some friends drove to my town to visit. They weren’t very interesting to me. I was attracted to the bohemian, artistic, hippy boys with long hair. David and his friends were country boys, cowboys, with short hair, playing country-western music on the car radio — not my type at all. He probably felt the same way about me, because he didn’t pursue it.
As my life traipsed along its own path, I protested the war in Vietnam, and held disdain for the young men who didn’t resist the draft, those who went to war unquestioning. Now I have more compassion for them, more understanding about why they did it, but back then, I held the opinion that if they would just refuse to go, the war would end. I felt it was an unjust war, and it needed to be over, and in my idealistic teenage brain I thought that if people would just refuse to participate, it would end. That was the rhetoric at the time, and it seemed to make sense.
Not long after his visit, David went into the army. I don’t know whether he enlisted or was drafted. I stayed in contact with my friend from Ridgefield; she married (I was her maid of honor) and had three children before I finished college.
It wasn’t until many years later that I visited her town, and we were reminiscing and sharing laughter about our teenage foibles and I said, “I wonder whatever happened to David Baker.” And she said matter-of-factly, “He was killed in Vietnam.” I was incredulous… how could that have happened, that my “first kiss” — a boy I would never forget — was killed in Vietnam so many years before, and I hadn’t known? My friend assumed I knew, of course. Everyone in their town had known, and certainly he wasn’t the only casualty. Still, I was surprised at how emotionless she sounded.
The next time I saw her was probably 15 years later. I asked her, are you sure that David Baker was killed in Vietnam? She said yes. I don’t think I really believed her. I wondered if his name was inscribed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. and I thought I would look for it if I ever had the opportunity to go there.
Then in 2005 a traveling version of the Vietnam memorial came to where I live. Set up in a grassy field in a park was the black wall, along with photos, messages and other memorabilia left by families and friends of the dead sons, brothers, husbands, fathers… Along with the other visitors, I was moved to tears.
I thought there would be no hope of finding a name… but there was! Under a tent were several books on stands, huge volumes with names of all the dead whose names are on the wall. I found David’s name, David Wallace Baker, Ridgefield, Washington, his birth date and the date he died. That’s when I remembered that his birthday had been the day before mine. He was less than 6 months past his 19th birthday when he died; he did not even live to see adulthood.
And the book told what section of the wall to find his name, so I went to look.
It wasn’t until that moment that I truly believed that this was how my first kiss’s life ended, just in the bud of youth, right after I graduated from high school, probably on the same day as my first day of college. The skinny quiet, freckly kid, who shyly gave me my first kiss, sitting on a tree branch, that sunny dusty day in May 1965.
I didn’t have any photos of David, but I found one online. I have a few of myself and my friend and some of her high school events around that time. David was there, but I didn’t take his picture. I also have a few of my friend’s wedding, which I think was in 1970, the year David died, the year I graduated from high school.
Also, I would like to share a few of the pictures I took on the day that I last *saw* David Baker, his name on the Vietnam Memorial Wall.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Christmas Cards
These are some of the Christmas cards I've made over the years. The earliest one was when I was 10. My mother mimeographed it on the school ditto machine. The copies were in purple mimeograph ink. I scanned the image and changed the colors for our family Christmas card a few years ago. I started making my own designs in high school art class in 1967-68. The earliest ones were silk screen prints. In subsequent years, I used linoleum block prints. When copies became easier and less expensive, I was able to easily duplicate line drawings. In later years I have taken some of my lino cuts, scanned them or changed the images for new cards. I also enjoy using vintage images from magazines or childhood photos of Daniel's and my families. As a theme, I may be inspired by events in our lives. Or the inspiration may come from something I've been thinking about, a dream, a fairy tale or family heritage. This is the one time each year that I do an art project. Dates approximate.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Concerning the Blog Bog: What technology has done to writing
blog (noun)
to bog (verb)
~Intransitive
1. (often with down) to become mired or stuck (especially in mud).
2. bog off (slang) to go away.
3. to bog up - to make a mess of (col).
~Transitive
1. (often with down) to cause to become mired or stuck, especially in mud bog (noun)
2. An expanse of marshland.
3. (slang) A toilet.
Here I am stuck in the blog bog again.
Words on screen. Lightning-fast I type them. Spelling errors magically correct themselves before my eyes. Zip zip! Writing is faster than thought and thoughts appear bluntly in bleak cruel incomplete incoherence. There it is for all the world to see: My spelling is perfect, but my mind is all wrong! EEEK!
Whatever happened to the privacy of writing?
Think back 200 years: Writing, what joy! What freedom! Feather plume in hand, dip in ink and take flight! A feather carries lightly on the wind, the thoughts, dreams, fantasies and wild wanderings of the mind. For birds, feathers are hollow for effortless riding of the wind; for writers, hollow to form a reservoir for ink. When the ink line dwindles on the paper, pause briefly to re-dip, then it’s back to the air currents. Splatters and splashes may punctuate the rough draft, but don’t interfere with words spewing forth on vellum like buttons from a jar: Colorful and contrasting, a clattering array of silver, bone, wood, and shell, later to be sorted and organized.
Stop! Enough fantasy! It’s a pretty image, but feathers are meant for bird-flight. In truth, writing with feathers is earth-bound and laborious. Human thought is quicker than a pen governed by gravity. However, the push of pen nib across the paper’s surface has a physical quality to be enjoyed for its own sake, and the writer’s effort has a specific, usually formal, purpose. It ends with the painstaking production of the final document; the artist-writer crafts it with beauty and solemnity, creating a product suitable for viewing. It is as beautiful to behold as it is thought-provoking to read.
The room is still. No TV, no chatter from the radio. The dimness of the room, the golden lamp glow, are comforting, reassuring. There’s no awareness of the missing-ness of TV, radio, record player, CD player, computer or cell phone. You just write.
The twentieth century converts the plume to fountain pen. Fuel stops are greatly reduced. The ink well is relegated to the artist’s shelf, while the writer pauses pen scratches only long enough to change the cartridge. Soon writers have an array of writing tools at their literal fingertips: ballpoint pens, pencils, or a heavy black typewriter.
Imagine you are there, mid-20th century, let’s say, 1952. What are you writing? A journal? A letter? A newspaper article? A poem or story? Why are you writing? To record events or organize domestic needs? To express affection to someone who will receive your message a week or month later? To express an opinion to the community via typeset printing press?
Whatever the case, you know who is going to read this thing you wrote down. You may do some revision later, but your thoughts are coherent as you write, because time is vast, the pace of life in step with the pace of human thought. When you work, it’s between you and the paper. It’s personal. You spend time with it. You live with it; you interact with it in a physical way. This combination of processes mental, corporeal, and spiritual is to writing, as water, earth and sunshine are to growing plants.
Now we have computers in all their incarnations: laptops, palm pilots, digital-this and digital-that. We have illustrations and graphs at our fingertips, at the ready for insertion into our documents. Finally, there are no more ink spatters or scribbles and scratches. Revision takes place during creation. Best of all, everything we write can be shared with the world via weblog, AKA “blog.” This is better, right?
I saw a TV show recently, Dr. Phil or Oprah, where a woman was asking for help. She had too much stuff. She couldn’t throw anything away. She was depressed. The camera panned her home, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes, piles of papers, pathways so narrow they could barely navigate from the living room to the kitchen. The woman was bogged. She couldn’t pull herself out, couldn’t arise or lift even a finger to begin to sort or toss or make any sense of the mountainous gluttonous piles. The reporter picked up a single used sock, and suggested this was a good place to start – toss that in the trash can. “Oh, but I could find a use for that,” the woman said, “I could polish my dishes with it.” This is an actual psychological disorder, called Narcissistic Personality Disorder! A product of too-much-stuff-consumer-culture, an abnormal cell growth, a cancer. Humans survived for centuries on thrift. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a healthy adaptation gone awry.
The blog bog is like that. Write think write thinkwritethinkwritethinkquestion . . . question? I have a question! I don’t have to wait for the answer! I don’t even have to get out of my chair, or reach out to the encyclopedia on the shelf next to my computer. Google! Down the Google Path! La la la la-la! What a merry trail I trod, wherever curiosity leads . . . but wait! What was the question? Oh yeah, I’m writing a paper about the blog bog! But it was very interesting to read so many experiences about too much stuff. So . . . copy paste copy paste copy paste . . . now I have a place to put it – so interesting, all this interesting stuff, I really don’t want to forget it, so I copy paste copy paste and it’s safely tucked away in a saved MSWord document called “Saved stuff for paper #4.” Now I feel better. I’ll have it forever – in case I need it – unless . . .
. . . computer crash, disc malfunction, file overload, mind overload, I forgot where I put it, lost it in an overzealous trash-purge!
But everything is fine, safe, protected. Just make a backup file. Put it on your thumb drive! Dragging files back and forth, saving saving saving, doubling and saving, backing up and saving – then the dreaded question:
‘This folder already contains a folder named ‘OWP’ If the files in the existing folder have the same name as files in the folder you are moving or copying, they will be replaced. Do you still want to move or copy the folder?’
The wrong answer could be FATAL! Precious files forever vaporized! Eeek! Stress! Fifteen files later, all labeled “OWP” or variations thereof, and I’m beginning to fear for my sanity! Perhaps someone has already named this version of mental illness. Bloggagooglebog Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I am NOT going to search for that. I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS PAPER.
I want to finish all my OWP assignments now, so I can read what everyone else has written. I want to have time to think about what they write, and send them comments. I want to do this before the end of the workshop. Also, I want to go further out into Blog World, travel abroad, read blogs from France, Canada, Africa. It’s like going inside the minds of people from every imaginable corner of the earth. No more wondering what other people are thinking. Now we know – at least the thoughts they want to blog at us.
And so, I’m done. This paper is over. I’m going to post it on the blog. Oh no. That means everyone can read it. EVERYONE. There it is. My crazy mixed up bogged up blogged up mind, exposed for all the world to see. Not to mention my sentence fragments, punctuation errors, and erroneous writing style in 2nd person P.O.V. Or is it 1st person?
Stuck. Wedged. Jammed. Lodged. Trapped. Having difficulties. Blocked. EEEK! If you’ve read this far, you know it all.
Here goes.
Originally posted July 12, 2005 at 07:04 AM - Oregon Writing Project
1. An online journal, typically comprising links to current news stories or other Web resources, and/or social and political commentary, and/or a personal diary, sometimes with replies from readers or RSS feeds.
to bog (verb)
~Intransitive
1. (often with down) to become mired or stuck (especially in mud).
2. bog off (slang) to go away.
3. to bog up - to make a mess of (col).
~Transitive
1. (often with down) to cause to become mired or stuck, especially in mud bog (noun)
2. An expanse of marshland.
3. (slang) A toilet.
Here I am stuck in the blog bog again.
Words on screen. Lightning-fast I type them. Spelling errors magically correct themselves before my eyes. Zip zip! Writing is faster than thought and thoughts appear bluntly in bleak cruel incomplete incoherence. There it is for all the world to see: My spelling is perfect, but my mind is all wrong! EEEK!
Whatever happened to the privacy of writing?
Think back 200 years: Writing, what joy! What freedom! Feather plume in hand, dip in ink and take flight! A feather carries lightly on the wind, the thoughts, dreams, fantasies and wild wanderings of the mind. For birds, feathers are hollow for effortless riding of the wind; for writers, hollow to form a reservoir for ink. When the ink line dwindles on the paper, pause briefly to re-dip, then it’s back to the air currents. Splatters and splashes may punctuate the rough draft, but don’t interfere with words spewing forth on vellum like buttons from a jar: Colorful and contrasting, a clattering array of silver, bone, wood, and shell, later to be sorted and organized.
Stop! Enough fantasy! It’s a pretty image, but feathers are meant for bird-flight. In truth, writing with feathers is earth-bound and laborious. Human thought is quicker than a pen governed by gravity. However, the push of pen nib across the paper’s surface has a physical quality to be enjoyed for its own sake, and the writer’s effort has a specific, usually formal, purpose. It ends with the painstaking production of the final document; the artist-writer crafts it with beauty and solemnity, creating a product suitable for viewing. It is as beautiful to behold as it is thought-provoking to read.
The room is still. No TV, no chatter from the radio. The dimness of the room, the golden lamp glow, are comforting, reassuring. There’s no awareness of the missing-ness of TV, radio, record player, CD player, computer or cell phone. You just write.
The twentieth century converts the plume to fountain pen. Fuel stops are greatly reduced. The ink well is relegated to the artist’s shelf, while the writer pauses pen scratches only long enough to change the cartridge. Soon writers have an array of writing tools at their literal fingertips: ballpoint pens, pencils, or a heavy black typewriter.
Imagine you are there, mid-20th century, let’s say, 1952. What are you writing? A journal? A letter? A newspaper article? A poem or story? Why are you writing? To record events or organize domestic needs? To express affection to someone who will receive your message a week or month later? To express an opinion to the community via typeset printing press?
Whatever the case, you know who is going to read this thing you wrote down. You may do some revision later, but your thoughts are coherent as you write, because time is vast, the pace of life in step with the pace of human thought. When you work, it’s between you and the paper. It’s personal. You spend time with it. You live with it; you interact with it in a physical way. This combination of processes mental, corporeal, and spiritual is to writing, as water, earth and sunshine are to growing plants.
Now we have computers in all their incarnations: laptops, palm pilots, digital-this and digital-that. We have illustrations and graphs at our fingertips, at the ready for insertion into our documents. Finally, there are no more ink spatters or scribbles and scratches. Revision takes place during creation. Best of all, everything we write can be shared with the world via weblog, AKA “blog.” This is better, right?
I saw a TV show recently, Dr. Phil or Oprah, where a woman was asking for help. She had too much stuff. She couldn’t throw anything away. She was depressed. The camera panned her home, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes, piles of papers, pathways so narrow they could barely navigate from the living room to the kitchen. The woman was bogged. She couldn’t pull herself out, couldn’t arise or lift even a finger to begin to sort or toss or make any sense of the mountainous gluttonous piles. The reporter picked up a single used sock, and suggested this was a good place to start – toss that in the trash can. “Oh, but I could find a use for that,” the woman said, “I could polish my dishes with it.” This is an actual psychological disorder, called Narcissistic Personality Disorder! A product of too-much-stuff-consumer-culture, an abnormal cell growth, a cancer. Humans survived for centuries on thrift. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a healthy adaptation gone awry.
The blog bog is like that. Write think write thinkwritethinkwritethinkquestion . . . question? I have a question! I don’t have to wait for the answer! I don’t even have to get out of my chair, or reach out to the encyclopedia on the shelf next to my computer. Google! Down the Google Path! La la la la-la! What a merry trail I trod, wherever curiosity leads . . . but wait! What was the question? Oh yeah, I’m writing a paper about the blog bog! But it was very interesting to read so many experiences about too much stuff. So . . . copy paste copy paste copy paste . . . now I have a place to put it – so interesting, all this interesting stuff, I really don’t want to forget it, so I copy paste copy paste and it’s safely tucked away in a saved MSWord document called “Saved stuff for paper #4.” Now I feel better. I’ll have it forever – in case I need it – unless . . .
. . . computer crash, disc malfunction, file overload, mind overload, I forgot where I put it, lost it in an overzealous trash-purge!
But everything is fine, safe, protected. Just make a backup file. Put it on your thumb drive! Dragging files back and forth, saving saving saving, doubling and saving, backing up and saving – then the dreaded question:
‘This folder already contains a folder named ‘OWP’ If the files in the existing folder have the same name as files in the folder you are moving or copying, they will be replaced. Do you still want to move or copy the folder?’
The wrong answer could be FATAL! Precious files forever vaporized! Eeek! Stress! Fifteen files later, all labeled “OWP” or variations thereof, and I’m beginning to fear for my sanity! Perhaps someone has already named this version of mental illness. Bloggagooglebog Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I am NOT going to search for that. I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS PAPER.
I want to finish all my OWP assignments now, so I can read what everyone else has written. I want to have time to think about what they write, and send them comments. I want to do this before the end of the workshop. Also, I want to go further out into Blog World, travel abroad, read blogs from France, Canada, Africa. It’s like going inside the minds of people from every imaginable corner of the earth. No more wondering what other people are thinking. Now we know – at least the thoughts they want to blog at us.
And so, I’m done. This paper is over. I’m going to post it on the blog. Oh no. That means everyone can read it. EVERYONE. There it is. My crazy mixed up bogged up blogged up mind, exposed for all the world to see. Not to mention my sentence fragments, punctuation errors, and erroneous writing style in 2nd person P.O.V. Or is it 1st person?
Stuck. Wedged. Jammed. Lodged. Trapped. Having difficulties. Blocked. EEEK! If you’ve read this far, you know it all.
Here goes.
Originally posted July 12, 2005 at 07:04 AM - Oregon Writing Project
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Driveway Philosophers
Garrison Keillor’s column this morning so moved me that I want to share it. Yesterday my dad stopped by to drop off some produce from his garden. We stood in the sunshine at the front door to chat. The sun was warming my pajama-clad legs and Dad leaned against the house. He’s 81 years old, and this summer kept two community gardens, supplying our family with fresh produce all summer long. And his garden is still producing. He’s going to give up one of the gardens next summer. But before he leaves it, he will plant a cover crop, being a good shepherd of the land he’s passing to someone else’s hands.
Here’s what Garrison Keillor has to say about men like my dad:
“Bright chill October days of sweet dry smells, smoke and apples and pigskin, memories of touch football games on grassy fields strewn with dry leaves. “You go deep,” our QB said, thinking that a big lanky kid like me must be a good receiver, so I galloped deep looking back over my shoulder, but I was not, in fact, all that terribly interested in actually fighting for possession of the ball. I was brought up to share, not to snatch things away from other people.
“Aggressiveness was not a prime value in my family. Only two of my 15 uncles played football and not one of them was a hunter. They were gardeners, not warriors. Gentle godly men with husky voices who leaned against cars and talked quietly about manly things which, for them, included:
1. Cheap Things That Are Better Than Expensive Ones
2. The Peculiarities of Neighbors
3. The Relative Merits of Makes of Cars
4. Amazing Coincidences in Everyday Life
5. The Art of Raising Strawberries
6. The Absurdities of Urban Life
7. Road Trips, Past and Future
“Sports and politics didn’t loom large in their world. So when I tune in to talk radio and hear guys ratcheting on and on about the home team betraying them or how much they hate Hillary, it has an exotic tinge for me, like hearing space alien dialogue in a movie. My male role models didn’t raise their voices. They stood with their backs to a 1947 Ford and looked off across the field and murmured.
- So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?
- Oh, not so much. Keeping busy.
- How’s that car of yours running?
- Got us to Idaho and back.
- So how was that?
- Well, she burned a little oil but she was getting almost 20 miles to the gallon.
“Gas mileage: they lied about that, though they were Christians and all. It was a main bragging point. And now oil is $93 a barrel and I hear owners of hybrid cars brag about gas mileage - they can read it right off the instrument panel. My uncles would’ve loved that, and also the GPS map on the dashboard - my dad would’ve driven around and around in circles, just to watch that blue dot moving along the street plan of Minneapolis.
“The radical feminists of my day did not grow up with men like my uncles, or perhaps they forgot, and other intellectuals who explore maleness do not include the Men Leaning Against The Car Murmuring archetype, but I remember them well, especially on these golden Saturdays in late fall, the gentle voices of the philosophers of the driveway.
“What they say is that life is made up of a richness of small things and you need to keep them all in perspective. Read the Bible but don’t forget to cover your strawberry beds or change your oil. Go places, see things. Don’t get carried away. Moderation. Don’t get mad. Don’t make things more complicated than they are. If you’re too busy to stand around and talk, you’re not living right.
“Some of us veered away from their example and galloped into the stone canyons of careerism, which has warped us somewhat. We are expected to give up our lives for work. We have a tendency to obsess and orate and that is something the driveway philosophers didn’t go in for. They were a chorus, not an audience, and they spoke softly and contrapuntally of the wonders of the world, the benefits of pruning and mulching, the qualities of apples, the science of forecasting winter by observing woolly caterpillars, the plans for flooding the backyard to make a hockey rink, the difficulties of growing roses, the trials and tribulations of plumbing.
“The driveway philosophers are still with us. Whenever I escape from my stone canyon, I find them here and there, talking uncle talk. They constitute a large invisible bloc that looks at candidates for public office and gets an intuitive sense of who is real and who is not. They know that politicians live in stone canyons and hire smart designers to create their personas, but they check out Hillary and Obama and Giuliani and Romney and they wonder who knows about gas mileage, who has a normal relationship with children, who can truly appreciate a really good apple. And that’s why Iowa is important. It’s a major of driveway philosophers.”
Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.
Here’s what Garrison Keillor has to say about men like my dad:
“Bright chill October days of sweet dry smells, smoke and apples and pigskin, memories of touch football games on grassy fields strewn with dry leaves. “You go deep,” our QB said, thinking that a big lanky kid like me must be a good receiver, so I galloped deep looking back over my shoulder, but I was not, in fact, all that terribly interested in actually fighting for possession of the ball. I was brought up to share, not to snatch things away from other people.
“Aggressiveness was not a prime value in my family. Only two of my 15 uncles played football and not one of them was a hunter. They were gardeners, not warriors. Gentle godly men with husky voices who leaned against cars and talked quietly about manly things which, for them, included:
1. Cheap Things That Are Better Than Expensive Ones
2. The Peculiarities of Neighbors
3. The Relative Merits of Makes of Cars
4. Amazing Coincidences in Everyday Life
5. The Art of Raising Strawberries
6. The Absurdities of Urban Life
7. Road Trips, Past and Future
“Sports and politics didn’t loom large in their world. So when I tune in to talk radio and hear guys ratcheting on and on about the home team betraying them or how much they hate Hillary, it has an exotic tinge for me, like hearing space alien dialogue in a movie. My male role models didn’t raise their voices. They stood with their backs to a 1947 Ford and looked off across the field and murmured.
- So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?
- Oh, not so much. Keeping busy.
- How’s that car of yours running?
- Got us to Idaho and back.
- So how was that?
- Well, she burned a little oil but she was getting almost 20 miles to the gallon.
“Gas mileage: they lied about that, though they were Christians and all. It was a main bragging point. And now oil is $93 a barrel and I hear owners of hybrid cars brag about gas mileage - they can read it right off the instrument panel. My uncles would’ve loved that, and also the GPS map on the dashboard - my dad would’ve driven around and around in circles, just to watch that blue dot moving along the street plan of Minneapolis.
“The radical feminists of my day did not grow up with men like my uncles, or perhaps they forgot, and other intellectuals who explore maleness do not include the Men Leaning Against The Car Murmuring archetype, but I remember them well, especially on these golden Saturdays in late fall, the gentle voices of the philosophers of the driveway.
“What they say is that life is made up of a richness of small things and you need to keep them all in perspective. Read the Bible but don’t forget to cover your strawberry beds or change your oil. Go places, see things. Don’t get carried away. Moderation. Don’t get mad. Don’t make things more complicated than they are. If you’re too busy to stand around and talk, you’re not living right.
“Some of us veered away from their example and galloped into the stone canyons of careerism, which has warped us somewhat. We are expected to give up our lives for work. We have a tendency to obsess and orate and that is something the driveway philosophers didn’t go in for. They were a chorus, not an audience, and they spoke softly and contrapuntally of the wonders of the world, the benefits of pruning and mulching, the qualities of apples, the science of forecasting winter by observing woolly caterpillars, the plans for flooding the backyard to make a hockey rink, the difficulties of growing roses, the trials and tribulations of plumbing.
“The driveway philosophers are still with us. Whenever I escape from my stone canyon, I find them here and there, talking uncle talk. They constitute a large invisible bloc that looks at candidates for public office and gets an intuitive sense of who is real and who is not. They know that politicians live in stone canyons and hire smart designers to create their personas, but they check out Hillary and Obama and Giuliani and Romney and they wonder who knows about gas mileage, who has a normal relationship with children, who can truly appreciate a really good apple. And that’s why Iowa is important. It’s a major of driveway philosophers.”
Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Barbies
Last night at the high school football game, the homecoming princesses marched out to the balloon arch with their princes in the freezing cold, wearing spikey high heels and short little spaghetti strap dresses and tiaras. They looked like Barbie dolls shivering in the icy air.
Barbie dolls came on the scene when I was about 10, and my mother wouldn't let me have one. And there is no way I would have stood out there in the cold, even if I were homecoming queen.
Barbie dolls came on the scene when I was about 10, and my mother wouldn't let me have one. And there is no way I would have stood out there in the cold, even if I were homecoming queen.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Chatty Cathy
"Kathy" was the most common name among girls in my class. One year in summer camp 4 of the 6 girls in our cabin were named Kathy. I loved my Chatty Cathy doll. Mine was the dark haired one, which I liked best. Back then I never wondered what the little tape player inside Chatty Cathy looked like. It must have had a little speaker attached to a tiny audio tape on a little reel with some kind of spring action attached to the string. How did it hit each of the 11 phrases randomly? The mechanism didn't hold up very well. Slowly the sound quality wavered and faded, and eventually the string just went limp. I still think she was a cute doll, though. She had freckles, like the real Clover so many years ago. I wonder whose voice was recorded all those years ago? I wonder if her name was really Cathy?
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Thoughts on a football Saturday
I hate games! Not the kind lovers play (although those stink too) but the kind everyone else seems to love. From football to monopoly to red rover... I do not enjoy them.
First of all, I can never remember the rules. That makes me feel stupid.
Second, I hate competition. Why do people constantly have to find ways to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, better-looking, richer, more successful, etc., than someone else? I hate that. I mean, what's the point?
Third, I can't understand extrinsic motivation. Competing for money or a prize or working for brownie buttons or grades, or even for praise or to go to heaven -- it's meaningless to me. If I don't get some pleasure out of what I'm doing, no amount of extrinsic reward is going to motivate me.
I think I am the only person in the world who feels this way.
When I was in elementary school and there was going to be a test, the teacher would say, "Now children, we're going to play a game." I would sigh... Then when I found out we were really having a test, I was happy. I much preferred tests to games. I like answering questions on questionnaires. I like filling in blanks. It's fun! (Not tests where I don't know the answers, of course, that's no fun. Like math tests. Ick.)
This is really really weird, I know.
So I'm constantly pretending! Because in American culture this attitude is unheard of. I pretend, at least, to tolerate games. Sometimes I pretend to enjoy them. What makes it easier is trying to identify with the feelings of those who love them. I have good friends who are very competitive. They have described to me how it feels, how much they enjoy competition, how it gives them a rush. So I try to understand, just like I understand that some people enjoy cooking (I don't) and gardening (I don't) and shopping (I don't).
So I can cheer for my student who is a football star this year. I can gather with my friends and drink beer and celebrate the Ducks' football successes, but I do it for the camaraderie with friends, and it's hard for me to resist making fun of the announcers, "..he's here to play ball..." "..end over end bouncer down the endline.." "..you gotta be serious about playing football.." "..when you dive over the top of people it really exposes the ball.." "if there's a word in the dictionary called escapability.." "..I mean that ball was just rollin' rollin' rollin'.." "..and Oregon threatening again.."
It's hilarious when you take the comments out of context, but I try to keep my thoughts to myself. Because no one else gets it.
On the other hand, I just can't get upset when "our" team loses, which is rather liberating. It's just a game after all. Still, I have compassion for the losers.
Surely I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Maybe other people are pretending too?
First of all, I can never remember the rules. That makes me feel stupid.
Second, I hate competition. Why do people constantly have to find ways to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, better-looking, richer, more successful, etc., than someone else? I hate that. I mean, what's the point?
Third, I can't understand extrinsic motivation. Competing for money or a prize or working for brownie buttons or grades, or even for praise or to go to heaven -- it's meaningless to me. If I don't get some pleasure out of what I'm doing, no amount of extrinsic reward is going to motivate me.
I think I am the only person in the world who feels this way.
When I was in elementary school and there was going to be a test, the teacher would say, "Now children, we're going to play a game." I would sigh... Then when I found out we were really having a test, I was happy. I much preferred tests to games. I like answering questions on questionnaires. I like filling in blanks. It's fun! (Not tests where I don't know the answers, of course, that's no fun. Like math tests. Ick.)
This is really really weird, I know.
So I'm constantly pretending! Because in American culture this attitude is unheard of. I pretend, at least, to tolerate games. Sometimes I pretend to enjoy them. What makes it easier is trying to identify with the feelings of those who love them. I have good friends who are very competitive. They have described to me how it feels, how much they enjoy competition, how it gives them a rush. So I try to understand, just like I understand that some people enjoy cooking (I don't) and gardening (I don't) and shopping (I don't).
So I can cheer for my student who is a football star this year. I can gather with my friends and drink beer and celebrate the Ducks' football successes, but I do it for the camaraderie with friends, and it's hard for me to resist making fun of the announcers, "..he's here to play ball..." "..end over end bouncer down the endline.." "..you gotta be serious about playing football.." "..when you dive over the top of people it really exposes the ball.." "if there's a word in the dictionary called escapability.." "..I mean that ball was just rollin' rollin' rollin'.." "..and Oregon threatening again.."
It's hilarious when you take the comments out of context, but I try to keep my thoughts to myself. Because no one else gets it.
On the other hand, I just can't get upset when "our" team loses, which is rather liberating. It's just a game after all. Still, I have compassion for the losers.
Surely I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Maybe other people are pretending too?
Everything is True
Everything is true...proven by 70 questions! (haha!)
I took a paper version of this survey in grad school when I was learning to be a teacher. I think it was an Ed Psych class. It turned out pretty much the same way, as I remember. If you like this quiz, you can find it under "Long Personality Test" on okcupid.com.
Your Score: ENFJ- The Teacher
You scored 72% I to E, 21% N to S, 9% F to T, and 31% J to P!
Your type is known as the teacher, or the educating mentor. You also belong to the larger group, called idealists. You tend to bring out the best in other people. You lead without seeming to do so. People are naturally drawn to you. You expect the very best from people which takes the form of enthusiastic encouragement which is so charming that people try their best not to disappoint you. You share your personality type with 3% of the population.
You need to feel a deep and meaningful connection to your romantic partners, and go to great lengths to understand and please your mate. Harmony is vitally important to you, and you often put others' needs before your own. You have a pretty thin skin and are easily hurt. Although you strive for harmony, when your values or ethics are violated, you can be very emotional, confrontational, and even punishing. However, you are very insightful about the underlying cause of conflicts, and an excellent communicator, so you have the tools to bring about a quick and peaceful resolution as long as you can keep control of your facilities. You want to be appreciated for your thoughtfulness and compassion. You need your partner to make a real effort to get to know you. Above all, you need to be able to express your feelings and have them taken seriously.
Your group summary: idealists (NF)
Your type summary: ENFJ
I took a paper version of this survey in grad school when I was learning to be a teacher. I think it was an Ed Psych class. It turned out pretty much the same way, as I remember. If you like this quiz, you can find it under "Long Personality Test" on okcupid.com.
Your Score: ENFJ- The Teacher
You scored 72% I to E, 21% N to S, 9% F to T, and 31% J to P!
Your type is known as the teacher, or the educating mentor. You also belong to the larger group, called idealists. You tend to bring out the best in other people. You lead without seeming to do so. People are naturally drawn to you. You expect the very best from people which takes the form of enthusiastic encouragement which is so charming that people try their best not to disappoint you. You share your personality type with 3% of the population.
You need to feel a deep and meaningful connection to your romantic partners, and go to great lengths to understand and please your mate. Harmony is vitally important to you, and you often put others' needs before your own. You have a pretty thin skin and are easily hurt. Although you strive for harmony, when your values or ethics are violated, you can be very emotional, confrontational, and even punishing. However, you are very insightful about the underlying cause of conflicts, and an excellent communicator, so you have the tools to bring about a quick and peaceful resolution as long as you can keep control of your facilities. You want to be appreciated for your thoughtfulness and compassion. You need your partner to make a real effort to get to know you. Above all, you need to be able to express your feelings and have them taken seriously.
Your group summary: idealists (NF)
Your type summary: ENFJ
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
French traditions bite the dust (farewell to the smoke-filled café)
Posted by Charles Bremner on October 02, 2007 at 03:07 PM in Europe, France:
"One of the sure-fire themes for correspondents in Paris is the death of French institutions.
"Generations of reporters have filled slack news days with dispatches on the demise of the great French café, the baguette, the béret, the concierge, the Gauloise sans filtre, the language, driving habits, the snail, the truffle, movie, cuisine, wine, couture, and so on. Next February, when tobacco is banned in all indoor public places, it will be time for 'farewell to the smoke-filled cafe.'
"After ending 'the era of', you can sometimes revive it. In recent years, this has applied to most of the above as pendulums have swung and fashions changed. Even bérets enjoyed a return a few years back. The Gauloise and the nosey concierge have not returned and it's pretty unlikely that we will see smoky cafes again. Bad driving seems to be making a come-back, though.
"Sometimes it is sad to see a tradition disappear at a ministerial stroke. I wrote about a new one in the newspaper today -- the end of the car license plates that advertise where the owner lives...
"There are sound arguments for centralising vehicle registration. It conforms to the European Union's push for a lifetime Vehicle Identification Number and also to President Sarkozy's campaign to shrink the bureaucracy and the public payroll. It will also mean less time waiting in queues at the prefecture to change la carte grise, the registration paper, when you move département.
"But it takes away one of the little pleasures of French life. After a few years in France, you automatically scan the final two digits of cars around you, noting outsiders and sometimes guessing what distant province they might hail from. This probably doesn't make much sense to US, Australian or Canadian readers. They wouldn't replace distinctive state plates, with their slogans and boasts about sunshine, gardens and lone stars, with anonymous federal ones (I have always found Quebec's 'Je me souviens' to be one of the most obscure).
"Le Parisien newspaper summed up the general French reaction nicely. 'For many people, these number plates are one of those little things which are so anchored in our daily existence that we cannot imagine living without them.'"
"One of the sure-fire themes for correspondents in Paris is the death of French institutions.
"Generations of reporters have filled slack news days with dispatches on the demise of the great French café, the baguette, the béret, the concierge, the Gauloise sans filtre, the language, driving habits, the snail, the truffle, movie, cuisine, wine, couture, and so on. Next February, when tobacco is banned in all indoor public places, it will be time for 'farewell to the smoke-filled cafe.'
"After ending 'the era of', you can sometimes revive it. In recent years, this has applied to most of the above as pendulums have swung and fashions changed. Even bérets enjoyed a return a few years back. The Gauloise and the nosey concierge have not returned and it's pretty unlikely that we will see smoky cafes again. Bad driving seems to be making a come-back, though.
"Sometimes it is sad to see a tradition disappear at a ministerial stroke. I wrote about a new one in the newspaper today -- the end of the car license plates that advertise where the owner lives...
"There are sound arguments for centralising vehicle registration. It conforms to the European Union's push for a lifetime Vehicle Identification Number and also to President Sarkozy's campaign to shrink the bureaucracy and the public payroll. It will also mean less time waiting in queues at the prefecture to change la carte grise, the registration paper, when you move département.
"But it takes away one of the little pleasures of French life. After a few years in France, you automatically scan the final two digits of cars around you, noting outsiders and sometimes guessing what distant province they might hail from. This probably doesn't make much sense to US, Australian or Canadian readers. They wouldn't replace distinctive state plates, with their slogans and boasts about sunshine, gardens and lone stars, with anonymous federal ones (I have always found Quebec's 'Je me souviens' to be one of the most obscure).
"Le Parisien newspaper summed up the general French reaction nicely. 'For many people, these number plates are one of those little things which are so anchored in our daily existence that we cannot imagine living without them.'"
Monday, October 1, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Thoughts on September 11th
Just a few thoughts that come to mind as I reflect on the events since September 11, six years ago:
I'm realizing that many of my younger friends have lived almost their entire adult lives with the reality of the world after 9-ll -- in other words, ever since theywere old enough to be aware of worldly goings-on. They have heard that "the world changed" on that day, but might not remember what it was really like before it changed.
That morning I was driving to work, for the first time listening to French music instead of NPR on my 20-minute drive. When I got to work, I noticed my answering machine blinking. I played to the recording, to hear my husband's voice shaking as he told me there had been an attack on the World Trade Center. I called him back immediately, and as we were talking the second tower was hit.
We are on the west coast. My first thoughts? Now we won't be able to travel freely around the world. This is the death of freedom as we know it. Honestly, those were my immediate thoughts, at a time before the second plane hit, before the buildings fell, before anyone knew there were four planes of terrorists that day -- and before anyone even began to connect the dots.
Suddenly images of war and soldiers and weaponry and fear reappeared in the American consciousness. Those who are in your late teens or early 20s have never known anything different. Those in my generation have lived through fear overshadowing us during the Cold War, images of death and losing friends to war during Vietnam, and then, miraculously, through more than a decade of relative calm and peace.
But then everything changed. Travel changed. For awhile, flying was cheap uncrowded in the months following 9-11. Even though they took away our scissors and tweezers. I was not afraid to fly after that day. I was afraid of the limits our government would put on our travels and flights. I had recently discovered the thrill of flying to Europe, traveling to other countries where I could speak French with real French people. I was never afraid of other countries, cultures, or people who were different from me. In fact it felt deliriously liberating to be able to travel and explore other countries. Pure joy.
So it made me mad to have that taken away. I don't know if we will ever have that sense of freedom again.
After that day I wasn't afraid to fly, or afraid of being the victim of terrorists. What I am afraid of, and angry about, are the restrictions on the freedoms that so many Americans have died for in numerous wars. The innocent people who have been delayed or jailed, or worse, around the world in the name of "freedom." The loss of habeas corpus, and the threat to our constitution. That doesn't feel like freedom to me.
I'm realizing that many of my younger friends have lived almost their entire adult lives with the reality of the world after 9-ll -- in other words, ever since theywere old enough to be aware of worldly goings-on. They have heard that "the world changed" on that day, but might not remember what it was really like before it changed.
That morning I was driving to work, for the first time listening to French music instead of NPR on my 20-minute drive. When I got to work, I noticed my answering machine blinking. I played to the recording, to hear my husband's voice shaking as he told me there had been an attack on the World Trade Center. I called him back immediately, and as we were talking the second tower was hit.
We are on the west coast. My first thoughts? Now we won't be able to travel freely around the world. This is the death of freedom as we know it. Honestly, those were my immediate thoughts, at a time before the second plane hit, before the buildings fell, before anyone knew there were four planes of terrorists that day -- and before anyone even began to connect the dots.
Suddenly images of war and soldiers and weaponry and fear reappeared in the American consciousness. Those who are in your late teens or early 20s have never known anything different. Those in my generation have lived through fear overshadowing us during the Cold War, images of death and losing friends to war during Vietnam, and then, miraculously, through more than a decade of relative calm and peace.
But then everything changed. Travel changed. For awhile, flying was cheap uncrowded in the months following 9-11. Even though they took away our scissors and tweezers. I was not afraid to fly after that day. I was afraid of the limits our government would put on our travels and flights. I had recently discovered the thrill of flying to Europe, traveling to other countries where I could speak French with real French people. I was never afraid of other countries, cultures, or people who were different from me. In fact it felt deliriously liberating to be able to travel and explore other countries. Pure joy.
So it made me mad to have that taken away. I don't know if we will ever have that sense of freedom again.
After that day I wasn't afraid to fly, or afraid of being the victim of terrorists. What I am afraid of, and angry about, are the restrictions on the freedoms that so many Americans have died for in numerous wars. The innocent people who have been delayed or jailed, or worse, around the world in the name of "freedom." The loss of habeas corpus, and the threat to our constitution. That doesn't feel like freedom to me.
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