Things are Looking Up

I'm feeling excited and energized about the way things are going this summer. Jason has a summer job at the Aquarium, working in the cafe four days a week. He's also up for another part time job doing some typing for a home business, but I don't know yet whether he will get an offer.

Those of us who have been disappointed by the recent events at The Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture are forming our own "club" and looking into programs we can start up that will please us and bring back the flavor of Ethical Culture we enjoyed in years past before the trouble started. We're having a meeting on August 11th to form committees and solidify plans for the fall.

So far we have a possible location that might offer us free rent, a few people volunteering to run platforms, reflections and meditations, a possible film night (watch a film and discuss the ethical issues involved), and of course, we should keep right on partying. I loved the potlucks we used to have once a month and I want to definitely continue that tradition.

I've also accepted a three-day a week position at a nonprofit organization, where I'll be writing grant proposals. I was pleased to learn that they are doing a technology upgrade and there will be training; I am always happy to learn a new software program or application. When computers behave I truly love them (though, when they are bad, just like the little girl with the curl, they are horrid!). So I'll be kept busy part of the time and can pursue other projects the other days.

That should keep some of the empty nest blues away as Jason departs for college on August 30th. I'm sure having a job to go to and learning new things will keep my mind happily occupied. So the summer is going well and things are definitely looking up!

More Coney Island Memories

I seem to be packing in a summer of Coney Island memories just in case Coney Island as we know it now really disappears under the control of condo developers. I hope not, I hope they preserve some of the original flavor, but right now that's very much up in the air. So whenever there is a special event this summer we are heading over there.

Yesterday we went to the Sand Sculpture contest. We arrived very late in the day, around 4:20 PM when the contest ended at 5. That's because we spent the early part of the day shopping and doing other errands. Some of the entries were already eroding away and not recognizable but there were a few excellent sculptures still visible. I especially liked the Coney Island castle, the sleeping mermaid, and the "Davy Jones" creature as he appeared in "Dead Man's Chest."

I've discovered a new hero, Dr. Couney. Dr. Couney believed in incubators to save premature babies and he set up clinics at various places including a sideshow at Coney Island. That's because before the late 30's incubators weren't accepted by the medical profession, and it was expensive so a lot of hospitals didn't even bother with them. They just let the preemies die!

Dr. Couney had 8,000 preemies at Coney Island and saved 6,500 of them. For those days that's a pretty impressive record considering the mainstream medical profession wrote those babies off. Ironically, Dr. Cooney died in 1954, the year I was born, and since I was six weeks premature and weighed 2.5 pounds at birth, I was in an incubator until I gained weight up to 5 pounds. Maybe his work -- even if it was a sideshow and people came to gawk at the tiny babies -- helped to save my life. Thanks, Dr. Couney!

At the Coney Island History Project I did some major arm twisting and got Bruce to record his story about his mother chasing the little clown who swatted her with a slapstick at Steeplechase Park. He was so reluctant until he realized he would be talking to a computer and not interviewed by a live person. Now it's on record and maybe it will show up in a book and on the Brooklyn College website. If it does, I'll put the link on here.

Siren Festival, Coney Island

On Saturday Bruce and I visited Coney Island for the Siren Festival. It was geared to the younger crowd but still was amusing even though we did not stay for the music too long. We left it to the background for the most part.

Instead we visited the sideshow and the Coney Island Museum. The sideshow was mostly sophomoric humor but it had a little of the old fashioned "carny" atmosphere. We saw "Chewie" the Wolfman who supposedly had an incredibly rare condition where hair grows all over the body. He had hair on his face all right but his hands were smooth! It was so obvious that this was makeup. Then "Chewie" did a "death defying" tightrope walk -- about three feet above the stage. On his way back, the MC increased the tension by putting a mousetrap under the tightrope. Wow, how scary, if Chewie slipped he might end up with the mousetrap attached to the seat of his pants!

There was a snake charmer, a woman who brought a large albino python onstage and struck a number of erotic poses with the serpent. She looked remarkably like the woman who had "power over electricity." Then there was the contortionist/sword swallower, a young lady who had some interesting abilities. Finally there was the "blockhead," the MC himself who somehow drilled a hold in his head or up his nose, without shedding a single drop of blood. Then he licked the "snot" off the drill. It was adolescent and weird, perfect for Coney Island!

The Museum is small and has some photos and artifacts. There were 3D photos of the Mermaid Parade, shimmering and changing as you looked at them from different angles. There were the woven rolling chairs that people sat in as they rode up and down the Boardwalk. There were also some ancient beach chairs and picnic coolers. I remembered the plaid one from my childhood; we must have had something like it, perhaps a thermos.

There was a movie that you watched while cranking the handle. Bruce looked into the viewer and was repulsed because it was a short film of an elephant being electrocuted. Ugh. I'm glad we don't consider that a form of entertainment today. I decided not to upset myself, and avoided that item.

There were posters on the wall describing the various parks. Bruce had a story from his childhood about Steeplechase Park, and the artifacts corroborated his tale. At the entrance to Steeplechase Park there used to be a system of blowers under the grating, and as women entered the park a blast of air would blow their skirts up. A dwarf dressed as a clown would smack the lady on the backside with a slapstick. This was all in fun and probably 99 women out of 100 laughed it off.

Not Bruce's mother. This time, the supposedly keen eye for "which woman with the severe and pinched expression will not relish any monkeyshines" failed that little clown, and Bruce's mother charged after him in a fury. Bruce was a small boy at the time and had the distinct impression that if she caught the clown he was going to be a dead man! She was gaining on him and he leaped over a barrier to escape from her. I always got a major chuckle out of that story.

In the glass case devoted to Steeplechase Park, there was a photo of a woman with her skirts blowing up, and also one of the slapsticks. I told Bruce that might be the very one that almost got the clown eviscerated!

After viewing the museum we were tired and caught the bus home. This Saturday, if it doesn't pour, there's supposed to be a sand sculpting contest, and I would sure like to see that.

A Thousand Country Roads

I just finished reading A Thousand Country Roads by Robert J. Waller. It's intended as an epilogue to the much more famous Bridges of Madison County. This book wouldn't stand well on its own, and Waller admits that. However, it fills in some of the missing pieces in the lives of Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid, the lovers who shared four days of ecstasy in 1965 and never saw each other again. Yet they both kept their love alive for the rest of their lives.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

Kincaid is 68 in this novel, in his last year of life, dogged by age and illness and loneliness that has finally caught up to him after a lifetime of wandering. There is a poignant chapter where he returns to Madison County and spends a little time with his memories at Roseman Bridge, just missing Francesca by moments as she makes a pilgrimage there on foot.

Unknown to Kincaid, a child conceived out of wedlock with one of his earlier shortlived relationships is searching him out and finally he comes face to face with both the mother and the son (but not all together at the same time). It gives his rootless life a little more meaning and he looks forward to seeing them all together, but it never actually happens.

Along with Bridges, A Thousand Country Roads tugs at the heart. We can't fault Francesca for sacrificing her dreams in order to nurture her family. We can't fault Robert for his wanderlust, either. All we can do is commiserate with the two of them as they approach the ends of their lives, still longing for what couldn't be. At least, Robert finds out that he is not alone and that he has left a part of him behind.

For fans of The Bridges of Madison County, this is a touching coda.

A Garden in the Rain

Yesterday I finished A Garden in the Rain by Lynn Kurland. Just what is it about Scotland, I wonder, that inspires all of these tales of ghosts and time travel? There seem to be so many of this new sub-genre popping up.

In this story, Madelyn has just been dumped and fired by her ex-fiance, a high-powered and spoiled lawyer. She arrives in Scotland to take her dream vacation of a lifetime only to find that the jerk has usurped her hotel reservations and gotten her credit card revoked.

She's rescued by Patrick MacLeod who seems to have a strange attraction to her, something that seems like a past life memory.

The usual romantic yo yo ensues, with both of them falling in love but not quite sure enough about it. Patrick gives up on the relationship twice and sends her home but of course, he loves her too much to make it stick. Somewhere along the way she falls through a time gate and is kept for several weeks in a cage, captive to enemies of the MacLeods. Patrick finds his way through after much difficulty and rescues her. Even her nemesis, the ex-fiance, has a brief and unpleasant stay in a medieval dungeon, which very much serves him right.

Naturally it all works out in the end and it looks as though she will devote herself to family rather than going back to her fast lane attorney position.

I liked the book overall though it became slow in places. The formula works but at times I wanted the two of them to just get on with it. Sometimes it's maddening reading these romances and knowing pretty much what is going to happen. And yet, it's fun, and the time travel element as well as the paranormal spices it up for me. I always loved science fiction and time travel was my favorite type of story.

While it's a little overly long for its own good, A Garden in the Rain is worth reading.

Computer Insanity

We've been engulfed in computer insanity ever since we started getting serious about Jason's need for a laptop up at college. The school help desk personnel insisted that we needed to have Windows XP installed on the laptop and not brand new Vista, which apparently has some kind of compatibility problems with a lot of existing software. A patch is coming in the fall but in the meantime they wanted us to stick with XP.

Thus began the search for the elusive Windows XP, which has almost totally disappeared off the market in favor of Vista. That's how much Microsoft wanted to force us to change operating systems, like it or not.

I found a Dell Inspiron 1501 that carries XP but has enough memory to accommodate Vista at such time as it is tamed and Jason is ready to install it without fear that it will make everything else go haywire. So we bought it. Got it into the house, and promptly discovered that it could not connect to our wireless router. We have DSL and they supplied us with a Westell 327W modem and wireless router when we signed up for the service.

First we called Dell and asked for help. The person who assisted us was continually trying to push us into buying a software support package for $239. I refused to buy it. So far as I knew I'd paid extra for us to have 4 years of lojack plus a 4 year warranty where they would come to the house and fix whatever was wrong. He connected to our Inspiron, diddled around in the software, and was unable to get it to work. Finally he concluded that we needed to speak to Verizon because it was a "router problem." This made it sound like our router didn't work.

Next, I called Verizon. First I got a fellow who sounded hesitant as if he was unsure of what he was doing. I should have taken this as a warning but I didn't. I let him try to help us make sure our router was working. At one point he had us do a hard reset on the router, which was a major mistake. This knocked us entirely off the verizon network and we had to sign on again as if it was an entirely brand new DSL system. Another hour to hour and a half down the tubes! Finally the Verizon techie admitted he had no way of knowing whether the problem was with our router or with the Dell computer.

Next, I thought of a way to test it. Jason's friend Noah was spending the night and his Mom Stephanie is pretty much of a computer techie herself. So I asked her to bring over a laptop and see if it could connect to our router. She came over with her thinkpad and after a little initial trouble she was not only able to detect our router but she got online with it. She also discovered that moving our computer around seemed to change connectivity.

So, she concluded that something was wrong with the wireless card inside the computer, it was loose or not properly connected or something. At one point Jason was able to detect our own router but at no time was he able to connect to it. A day or two later, he was able to get online but using other unsecured routers from nearby. This, of course, was unsatisfactory because it was completely unreliable.

I called Dell and refused to go through the troubleshooting rigmarole again. I asked for them to send a technician to repair the card but they would not do that. Instead they offered to send us a replacement computer. I agreed.

The computer showed up yesterday and was not any better at getting connected than the first one. Once again we called Dell, and this time got a manager on the line since I said that if something wasn't done I was going to return both of them and get a refund. The manager said there was a connectivity incompatibility between the Inspiron and our router. Wow! First time we heard of that. If we'd been told this clearly on the first phone call we could have saved a bit of time. He went through the sharing and tried to download some software to fix the router but it did not download. Our connectivity was slow and we got an error message that the software was corrupted. Gee, just lovely. Now I wonder whether we have to get rid of what was downloaded in order to get a new router to work. I bet so, because these computers are certainly nothing less than a royal pain.

So I called DHL and at least they came promptly and with no problems to pick up the replacement computer which was of no more use to us at this point than the first one.

And that's the way it is. With any luck the next phone call will take care of it. I sure hope that by August 30th when we head up to Delhi, Jason has a computer that actually does connect to wireless. After all we're paying for it!

The Spirituality of Food

On Sunday Bruce and I went to the First Brooklyn UU's and the topic was "The Spirituality of Food." There was a lovely ritual with bread and olive oil. People brought trays with delicious gourmet breads and bowls of olive oil to us, and instructed us to hold the tray for the next person until he or she broke off some bread and dipped it in the olive oil. So we were all serving each other. That can be a spiritual experience in itself. It reminded me of the "Kin of Ata" book where people did not feed themselves but instead went around at mealtimes serving each other, and there always was enough food.

As we ate the bread and olive oil, the people leading the service read aloud some quotes about olive oil and olives, and their significance in history and in Biblical times. Olive oil is very healthy, but olives had a great deal of symbolic significance as well. I felt as if this was an alternate communion, instead of bread and wine, we ate bread and olive oil that tasted like liquid sunshine.

Two people came up and gave short speeches on the spirituality of food in their lives. Both mentioned foods that had become "sacred" in their families because they were associated with certain holidays or family rituals. One woman spoke about her many anxieties about food because she has a restricted diet and always has to think about what she will be able to eat when away from home, or what to make for dinner when she is. I could certainly relate to that because I have so many restrictions on my diet that sometimes I feel as if I have more foods I am not allowed to eat than foods I am permitted. It can be disheartening especially when going out with friends and I can't sample something new and exotic.

But she went to China and had a wonderful time eating out in excellent restaurants where she was able to get foods she was allowed. By contrast, she told me afterwards that street vendors in China sell dumplings that are 60% cardboard. That's pretty repulsive!

There was also a guided meditation with fruit. This time baskets of fruit were passed around and we were encouraged to pick out a fruit (mostly apricots and cherries) and really sit with it and contemplate it through out senses. We looked it over, felt the skin, felt the stem if there was one, punctured the outer skin and smelled the juicy flesh inside, and finally ate the fruit, with far more mindfulness than I ever devote to eating.

After the service ended I spoke with a man from British Columbia who was visiting New York on business for a week. He is a UU member back home so he was pleased to find a UU church in Brooklyn and decided to attend. He said that he had lived in Fiji for a while and that the diet there is very exotic. But he also pointed out that people from other cultures are just as horrified by some of the things we eat as we are by their diets. He described someone from another culture's disgust at the "huge, ugly insect" that was served in a restaurant in America. Well, of course, it was a lobster! But if they were to serve crickets and grasshoppers here, most people would run out of the restaurant screaming. I sure would.

And yet, in many parts of the world, insect protein is part of the diet. It's certainly plentiful but I'm not about to rustle up a cockroach stew, no thanks!

Another item he mentioned was corn. Someone he met was upset at being served corn on the cob at and American barbecue, because where he came from, corn on the cob is strictly animal feed and humans don't eat it.

Now that's pretty amazing but even something we would view as completely innocuous could seem insulting in a different context (as if we went to someone's home and received a plateful of canned dog food for dinner). It certainly was an eye opener.

When I think of the spirituality of food I think of people eating together (breaking bread). It's supposed to be bonding. I also think of ritual foods that have symbolic meanings, like matzoh at Passover and the wine and wafers of a Catholic communion. We like to say that Jews eat our religion, particularly during the two Seders of the year (Passover and Tu B'Shevat, the new year of the trees), but other peoples do this as well.

Foods that are eaten only on special occasions or just very rarely become "sacred" and take on a symbolic meaning. Food can mean love, and people use it to reassure themselves that they are loved, which can become a dangerous obsession. There is a great deal of spiritual meaning to the very mundane and universal need for food, and the way in which individuals and cultures meet that need.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Yesterday Bruce and I took a few hours to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. First I ran over to Lucille Roberts for the Step class at 9:15. I got home a little after 10:30 and Bruce and I were able to get to the Botanic Garden before noon. Admission is free before noon on Saturday mornings so we were happy to be able to get there in time for a freebie.

Although I love the flowers and plants there I have not always been happy with the policies so I'd rather attend when I don't have to pay. We smuggled in grilled cheese sandwiches cut into quarters because they are very strict about eating in the areas outside the cafe. That would not be so bad if they allowed you to bring in your own food and eat it there but they don't. So we walked along the paths keeping an eye out for security guards and cramming small pieces of grilled cheese sandwich into our mouths.

I was happy to see quite a few bees at work. I don't know if the bee population has rebounded any since we heard reports of honeybees dying off by the millions because of some mysterious ailment. But there were bees busy doing their pollinating thing at the Garden and that was heartening to see. There were also monarchs and cabbage whites fluttering about pollinating the flowers.

When we got to the Shakespeare garden, we could hear Bob Marley's "One Love" and "Three Little Birds" playing, followed by Cat Stevens' "Wild World." It turned out there was a festival in a nearby playground, but it wasn't very big or exciting. The music was good though and I kind of danced out of the park.

"Cats in Our Lives" by James and Pamela Mason

Yes, this is a book by the famous James Mason and his first wife, Pamela. They were avid cat lovers, especially Siamese cats, and chronicled some of their favorite cat stories in Cats in Our Lives. James also showed off his talent at drawing by illustrating the book with many line drawings (probably pen and ink) of the cats.

The cat names, "Topboy," "Zeke," "Lady Leeds" and the like are charming. James and Pamela took turns writing sections of the book and identified which sections, so that they did not have to attempt to meld their writing styles. The cats had fairly run of the mill adventures except that they belonged to a famous and quite itinerant family. Their travels by railway and across the ocean, and their adjustments to various new households as the Masons changed locales frequently, make the story lively.

Today's treatments for sick cats have changed greatly so it is an interesting window on the past to read of the remedies used in the thirties and forties (the book's copyright date is 1949). Although the Masons clearly loved their cats, I think today's pet owners might be appalled at their willingness to put down newborn kittens when there were just too many to keep. Today's remedy would be spaying the would-be parents, but back then it was apparently considered too dangerous an operation to spay a female cat, and therefore they allowed Lady Leeds to reproduce continually and only kept alive a couple of the males from each litter.

Despite this, when a cat was sick or lost they went to great lengths to try and find the cat or cure it, and they were clearly quite devoted to their four-legged children. I enjoyed this insight into their private lives and their thoughts, and I'm grateful to a Mason fan in the Netherlands who mailed this book to me. It's a keeper for sure.

Summer's End by Danielle Steel

Another book on my summer reading list! This one, Summer's End, came to me by serendipity. I was heading home from the gym one afternoon after a brief spring rain, and spotted a shopping bag full of discarded paperbacks. Some of them were damaged by water and too soggy to be useful but at least a dozen were in good shape. I brought home a few of these and Summer's End was one of them.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Summer's End was entertaining and not an overly serious book, although it includes a shocking tragedy that I found unnecessary. It's the story of Deanna, a bored and neglected wife, and the love affair she has with Ben, a true soulmate who shares her passion for art and encourages her to paint and show her work. This is in contrast to her stuffy and snooty husband, Marc, who considers artists to be "hippies" and has kept her in a gilded cage throughout their marriage. Even their teenage daughter, Pilar, has been turned against her and considers herself completely French despite having an American mother.

Marc, of course, is embroiled in a love affair over in Europe where he spends a great deal of his time, supposedly travelling on business. Deanna doesn't know this but she does know that the relationship is stale, and that Marc doesn't really appreciate her for the person she is. Ben is the man who sees the real Deanna and adores her.

The jarring tragedy is the death of Pilar late in the book. This comes as an ironic catalyst for getting Ben and Deanna together even though at first she leaves Ben and tries to be there for Marc, who is devastated. But soon Deanna realizes that Marc's love affair with the young and possessive Chantal is not over, and she comes to feel she has made a mistake in leaving Ben. And then there's her pregnancy and the delicate question of paternity...

That's one secret I won't give away, and I won't give away the ending though since it's a romance novel the ending is pretty predictable. It was an interesting book, probably out of print now since the copyright date is 1979, but for a romance reader, if you run across it, it's good beach reading.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

I just finished reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. What an excellent but incredibly painful story. It's set in China, I believe in the 19th century, and tells the story of two women, Lily and Snow Flower, who are linked together in a contractual friendship that is much like a marriage. They communicate for many years by means of a fan on which they write in nu shu, the women's secret language unknown to men.

Yet the book is ultimately about a failure to communicate. Both women go through some terrible suffering. The description of Lily's footbinding is excruciating and something that will stay in my memory forever, just as I have never forgotten the passages on how sausages were made in The Jungle. (They almost made a vegetarian out of me).

But Lily, born to a farming family that doesn't amount to much, has the good fortune to come through this ordeal with beautiful feet that make her marriageable to a young man of high status. She is also "matched" to a young girl of a good family (but one that has fallen on hard times) and they swear their lifelong allegiance to each other.

Sadly, that allegiance doesn't last a lifetime. Lily becomes somewhat spoiled and overly conventional as a result of her relatively easy life with her husband and in-laws. She still lives a life of oppression, forced to put everyone else first and herself last, but at least she isn't abused. Snow Flower, married off to a butcher (seen as a great defilement -- yet people eat meat), is not so lucky. Her mother-in-law reviles her and her husband, though he enjoys her in bed, beats her unmercifully when he is unhappy. Lily does not respond with her true feelings; even though she is writing in nu shu and could feel freer to express herself, she takes refuge in conventional responses to Snow Flower's heartfelt pleas for help.

And so, finally, when Snow Flower tells her that three sworn sisters are going to help her, Lily mistakenly believes that Snow Flower has betrayed their union, and she reacts just like a jilted wife, cutting off Snow Flower and burning her messages. Only when Snow Flower is dying does she come and show the friendship she should have shown all along. Then she learns the truth , that Snow Flower always loved her and never betrayed her. Lily writes as an old woman who has survived past 80 years old, practically unheard of for a Chinese woman of her times. She finally confesses her cruelty to Snow Flower and seeks through her writing to find forgiveness.

There is an element of eroticism in the relationship and as young girls on the threshold of adulthood Lily recalls an erotic and loving scene where they "write" nu shu characters on each other's bodies and then translate what they are writing into the first lines of a famous poem. It seems these relationships between women had a great deal of meaning for women who were strangers in their husband's households and had very little status unless they bore sons.

The book was a window into a world that no longer exists. I'm not sorry it has gone by the wayside, for footbinding and the other mistreatment of women in that culture were not something to be preserved. It's interesting, though, to learn a bit of hidden history and forgotten culture that the author, Lisa See, brings to us. She apparently traveled to remote places in China where foreigners had never before set foot in order to gather her information, and I'm grateful that she did. I highly recommend this book.