Category: Writing a Book

This is a writing accountability blog. I have committed to publishing a book by March, 2024. I invite you on the journey as I plough through the internal and external obstacles I face. As the great Bette David loosely said in the movie “All About Eve.” “Buckle your seatbelts. It’s (likely) going to be a bumpy (ride.)”

Coffee, Tea or Cyanide

Nothing like an early morning flight to remind you how precious sleep is.

Over years of intermittent early morning flights, I have come to rely on my internal alarm clock.

I don’t rely on it so much that I don’t set an actual alarm, mind you. But inevitably, I wake before the clock chimes the hour. I rouse myself no matter how sleepy I am when there is something important to be done. Like catching a flight.

I used to travel enthusiastically. I am not sure what has taken off the edge of excitement. These days I dread travel like I used to dread going to the dentist. Given my druthers these days, I think I’d happily hop in a dental chair.

I’ve been to a lot of places in the world, so there’s that. But no, I think it is that the overall quality of travel has dipped precipitously. My recent flight plans were a shining example.

Flying Leg #1 from North to South was straightforward enough. But at a central hub on the Eastern US seaboard, Mother Nature had her own secret plans for a messed up travel day. A messed up heyday, in fact. Thunderstorms. Complete with thunder and lighting. Travel cyanide.

I have to admire how cleverly the airlines handle such disruptions these days in their own best interests. There was a time when the merest hint of bad weather would shut down flights. The airline would hie its’ passengers off to a nearby hotel with meal vouchers to ride out the storm. Ancient history.

Instead, the airline’s tactic today is to keep passengers baited and on the hook. “We regret to inform you your flight will be delayed by one hour. It is now departing from Gate Whatever at whatever time one hour from now is.”

The same email and text message gets sent out hour after hour after hour. It keeps people dangling and on the hook. Clustered sleepily in the airport waiting lounge sipping bad coffee and chewing on hope.

To be fair, the airline finally made a humanitarian offering of “hydration and refreshments”: warm bottled water and Goldfish pretzels. You’d be within your rights to see the close comparison to the “bread and water” regimen they once served incarcerated prisoners as punishment.

Until finally, when pilots can no longer safely fly because they have passed the allowable FAA regulations deadline, the airline cancels the flight. I don’t know what people do or what happens to them when that happens. I didn’t stick around to find out.

Operating on fumes, I finally bailed at around 7 PM to find a hotel room for the night. I would have felt foolish if my flight actually made it out that night. Luckily it didn’t and I didn’t feel foolish. I awoke this morning to find a text message advising all passengers at close to midnight: “The flight has been cancelled.”

Ominously I had been checked into Room 911 at the hotel. That was particularly ominous in light of today’s chilling anniversary. It was a minor nuisance to learn there was no bathtub, so I asked for a room change. Thus I avoided two undesirable scenarios and my uncomfortable feeling.

There was an eeriness in seeing the room number 911 assignment in a Washington, DC hotel exactly 22 years after the fact. And a “shower only” bathroom. I’m old school and need a bath to relax. Especially after a travel day like this.

The flakiness I sometimes exhibit both confounds and comforts me by times. So many had so many more feels to wrangle on this horrible anniversary and likely still do. But damn, travel is different. No room service. “Only at dinnertime,” said the chipper young thing at the front desk.

I pleaded illness and incapacity to get a basic breakfast delivered. (“Oh, we can give you a mask when you come down.” CYT offered, cheerily.) The whitener served with the coffee was totally oversold. It barely turned the coffee a dark mocha to say nothing of the host of chemicals that cannot be good for man nor beast.

I am about to go all Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz on myself after this necessary travel jaunt. “There’s no place like home!” At least, I can count on a full breakfast any time of the day or night and a readily available bathtub to soak away the cares of the day.

Travel was once the playground of adventure, learning and tolerable inconveniences. These days it is a passage through purgatory to get to wherever it is you absolutely want or need to get to.

Purgatory is a polite way of putting it. Occasionally it can be hell on earth.

Yesterday’s travel came perilously close to that.

Ask anyone who was waiting all day yesterday to board Flight 4424.

Which, of course, they never did.

RIP Peter Newman

Author, editor, historian, and darned frustrating writer to fact check is how I will remember Peter Newman. I was a lowly fact-checker at Maclean’s, Canada’s weekly newsmagazine, back in the day. Peter Newman roamed the halls at deadline, checking on everyone’s progress and making light conversation. Extremely light conversation.

Peter Newman was a man of words but not particularly inclined toward the spoken variety. He ruled the roost at Maclean’s in that way that intimidating figures do. If Peter wanted it this way or that way, then that is what Peter got.

Peter Newman was old school. A Vienna born Jewish refugee from Nazis, he barely escaped being shot as he was about to board the ship that would take him to Canada. He had a fierce drive to find his voice and his place. He certainly accomplished that in the firmament of Canadian journalism and literature.

As a fact-checker, our job was to review the copy submitted by the writers and then painfully, line by line in red ink, underline the ‘facts” in the piece and verify them. We had an array of reference options in the Maclean’s library as our go to. Facts on File was a standard reference guide. Webster’s dictionary to check spelling. No internet back then.

We would also have to call people mentioned in stories to verify facts. I remember a dear colleague (Ann MacGregor gone way too soon) had to call Harold Ballard, then-owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs to have him confirm if, indeed, he had “steely blue eyes.” She never admitted whether she asked Ballard if his eyes were “steely” or not. Confirming the color was likely as far as she got. Ann was tenacious but a little timid.

The point of fact-checking was verification and corroboration. A directive from legal to avoid libel and slander suits, no doubt. That meant we had to have two and preferably three verifiable sources to support the facts in the story, complete with the usual bibliographic elements: source, date, edition, page number, author, etc.

Peter Newman wrote a weekly editorial column for the magazine. Woe betide the checker who got Newman column to review. Peter helpfully provided his own “references.” They would be passed to us along with his copy in clipping shards from one magazine or another.

No author’s name. No identified publication. Page number and issue or edition number was a joke. We trembled when it was our turn to “fact-check Peter.”

We could not properly do the job we were supposed to do with Peter’s copy. It was impossible. But it was Peter Newman and Peter Newman’s word was gospel. We shakily passed our finished copy along to research department head Arlene Arnason. She would swallow any misgivings she might have had about any other writer and say, ”Well, if it came from Peter, I am sure it is okay.” We all sure hoped so.

On Friday nights when we had to work late to put the magazine to bed, Newman would make arrangements for his secretary to call up his buddy Ray Kroc, Canadian McDonald’s CEO. We ate Big Macs and quarter pounders to our heart’s content. Those were the days when it didn’t matter how much cholesterol we ingested. Or booze when I think of it. (After the magazine was put to bed.)

The old guard of Canadian journalism from the 20th century is leaving. Many have already left. It is ever the case as one generation hands the torch to the next one. The world has evolved in such a way that the job we pursued with such passion as young journalists seems a little quaint now. The accusation of “fake news” makes my blood boil in a way that maybe only journalists steeped in the exactitude of our research traditions understand.

I harbor deep concerns that the world of facts and information is nowhere near as regulated and important as it once was. In World War II, posters warned citizens: “Loose lips sink ships.” If anyone understood the power of words to shape and distort the facts and negatively impact people’s lives, it would have been Peter Newman. RIP.

Unwell

My head is foggy. I feel feverish.

The only thing I can think of saying today is that I need to curl up in a ball and rest. I think that is a legitimate message to put out there.

This is the yoga nidra of blog writing. Those who know, know.

And a mark of self-care. So I am. Heading for my favorite place to curl up and drink tea and do nothing.

Isn’t that exactly the advice U gave me the other day?

This is me. Taking that advice.

After taking a rest, I will have more to say.

Consider this a punctuation post.

A pause in a music score.

And for the same reason.

To catch my breath.

What value would there be in a blog about healing if the author didn’t take her own advice occasionally?

Yay Me, Yay You

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau

Here is what I am learning these days about a theme I have explored before. I write for myself and only myself. If it hits a chord out there in the world, that’s good. Not essential but good. Welcome aboard.

I believe in the sanctity of the individual and exploring inside ourselves to find out who we really are. What we think, believe, care about, fear, love. Not because we are all that on our own, but because we as individuals are all there really is.

What is in your brain is your life. Full stop. Not a bit more complicated than that. Don’t believe me? Remove your brain from your body. See how that goes.

I hate to go all Henry David Thoreau on you, but I am going to. Collectively, we like to step-to and mind our ps and q’s to fit in and enjoy our perception of being “normal.” Being “seen” as normal in whatever society we are in is an important prerequisite for living a “normal” life. In other words, in larger society, to feel like a person “just like everyone else” and in smaller groups fitting in with people “just like us.”

We gauge our social success by the degree to which we have engendered the regard of our fellows. We spend a great deal of time in our youth preparing ourselves to become our version of what we believe a normal person is and should be.

There was such a brouhaha around Thoreau’s seminal book Walden, Or, Life in the Woods when it was published in 1854. He wrote a lot about being self-sufficient and celebrating himself. He was accused of all kinds of unseemly personal characteristics and hypocrisy and humorlessness. Mostly he was regarded by many as selfish for stepping outside the normal bounds of society. Even for a short two years.

For some reason this scared the living bejeezus out of good folk. Many branded him a narcissist and ne’er do well. But I see Thoreau’s attempt to elevate himself as an individual as a call to all of us to respect and nurture our unique individuality. He urges each of us to respect the dictates of our individuality for indeed, without that, we ain’t got much.

It is funny, in retrospect, that Thoreau contributed so many great one-liners and dorm room poster fodder to our culture. March to the beat of your own drummer, for example. Celebrating myself, another. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

What I like most in reading about Thoreau is that he didn’t seem to give a fiddler’s fig about what others thought of him or his odd lifestyle choice. He hied himself off to a cabin in the woods where he lived a sparse life for a time devoid of most creature comforts back in the days of mid-1800’s sensibilities. This bothered some people and marked him as distinctly odd.

But I liked that Thoreau subverted the expectations of people around him. He essentially said with his choices and musings: “Let others think what they will. This is what I am doing and how I choose to live my life. Deliberately. There is a price to pay for marching to the beat of a different drummer and I am paying it.” (He didn’t say any of that. I am writing what I think he might have said and thought. How presumptuous is that.)

However, it was Thoreau who said: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

It is a reminder and an invocation to explore our own inner dreams and pay attention to the directives of our “small, still voice.” It is a tall order. Swishing around in society’s daily routines and taking care of a hundred chores and necessaries every day, that voice is often hard to hear. Dead silent for many people. But it is always there. Small and still though that voice may be.

As fragile human beings who choose to act on the prescriptions inside each of us for each one of us, in the face of overwhelming odds by society to push down and push back our individuality, it is really all we have.

We don’t really need a cabin to figure that out and pay attention. Modern life is full of homilies and advice about getting in touch with that directive through meditation and mindfulness. But it is a wonderful occurrence when you and the voice connect occasionally and for the more attuned, regularly.

For that voice is ours and ours alone. Rare. Unique. Original. Just like we are. I feel it best to constantly listen for that voice and to remind myself that it is always available to us whether we can hear it at the minute or not. I celebrate myself. You celebrate you, too. The voice inside you will get louder.

Words Matter

I am burned out. The following will explain a bit about why. In these deep life trenches that we all face occasionally, we look to who and what might lift us up or, at the very least, keep us from sinking ever deeper in our own morass.

Gratefully, there is available to us all the great universal arithmetic that a problem or situation divided by two becomes half as difficult to manage. Or bear.

These words below are from a lifelong friend who is as dear – dearer, in fact – to me than both of my own siblings. By a lot.

Draw near if you are struggling and stumbling or know someone else who is. This advice is universal and I don’t know who else needs to hear it today. I sure did.

I can only hope that you are equally blessed with such a “partner in crime” in your life who is willing to lift up the other side of the yoke and walk with you awhile. Even when your friendship is separated by time and geography and circumstance.

My friend refers to my dismay over the razed forest that came down behind us and was completely unanticipated when we moved into our new home just over a month ago.

A towering and beautiful canopy of old oak trees were summarily taken down in two days to make way for yet another ticky-tacky little Florida house. There are millions of them already. My friend calls it the Oak Tree Massacre (OTM, for short).

The right words at the right time can mean the difference between sadness or happiness, success or failure, life or death. Les mots juste. Does that sound over the top? Try making it through life without someone like my wise and wonderful friend.

She disparagingly calls it twaddle. (U is also good at self-deprecation.) I call it emotional manna from heaven. And an example of what we factor in on a daily basis to calculate the meaning of life.

Thank you, U. for making my load a little lighter and my heart, too. Plus you essentially wrote this post for me today. There is no greater sacrifice than to write a post for one’s friend. I am sure that is a reliable old truism time-tested by the ages. And if it isn’t, it should be.

U Words

You are exhausted, bone marrow exhausted— the deepest kind.

 I’m putting on my therapist hat on top of my friendship head. I’m going to give you something to consider. If it is helpful— great. If not— ignore.

Life in 3 abbreviated (and incomplete) sections, predating the Oak Tree Massacre (OTM)

1. The exhaustion and stress of moving. The looking, the disappointments, the excitement, the lawyers, the paper work, the electrical hookup, internet hook up, physically demanding and emotionally fraught scenarios of where’s my coffee maker, shit ! Did I lose my favorite pair of socks in the move, etc. etc. etc. – all multiplied by 2 people. Tough going, very tough and requires a lot of patience 

2. The exhaustion of caregiving for someone you love who is older. In different circumstances I looked after my parents. The phone calls in the middle of the night, or at work, that one of them had fallen, gotten sick, couldn’t find whatever… buying groceries, finding cleaners, cleaning for hours on end myself. And yet, I had the opportunity to escape to my home, to breathe, to see some good friends. You are isolated and you are worn down.

3. The 2 lists above are external contributors to what’s happening to you now, post OTM. The third is not and is probably the hardest. The propaganda we all buy as women about what it means to be a good spouse, wife, partner and the silent pressure to have and keep a perfect home.

In essence, the dream. The bargain on some visceral level inculcated from birth and whipped up further in our 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s that we can be everything at all times to all people. And if we believe that if we succeed in being all these things  life will be a dream incarnate. It’s not. It’s shit. But in amongst all that shit, we continue to find hope, faith and love. 

We hope that things and people will be good and kind to us, and we try to be and do that ourselves. We do this without guarantees. We should also hope we can be kind to ourselves. 

We have faith in our partner’s love even in the midst of a Donnybrook. We have faith that we have the knowledge to do as you’ve said “less said, soonest mended. ” We need faith that there is a solution of some sort— not a dream but a solution, if we but give it time.

And the love… we love when there is a fantastic sunset, flowers, and a cuddle. But we also love, as you well know, when there is shit quite literally in front of you. But please love yourself. You are lovable, and everyone of us is flawed. It is ok to be flawed. You are a good person. God only knows you try so hard.

The hardest thing to do is to do nothing. Please do nothing. Do nothing several times a day, and several times a week. Go to a Buddhist retreat. Sit on a rock. Drink a cup of herbal tea. Or caffeine if that suits you better. 

And so ends the sermon by U. I can be a pompous twat so ignore all of this if you wish— In short do nothing😉❤️

Choices, Choices, Choices

Lack of choice has been a constraint from time to time throughout history. Sometimes people know they have limited choices. Other times, people are blessedly oblivious. They accept what is, is, and for what it is.

In the past, people didn’t really expect anything as much out of life, or love or telephones. Heck. They didn’t even realize there was anything else to be had because there likely wasn’t. Limited choices made life less confusing. A little boring, perhaps, but infinitely less confusing. And clearer about the rules and priorities of life and living.

Fast forward say a hundred and fifty years to today from the invention of the telephone to its widespread implementation in North America and across the globe. We have evolved into a high maintenance consumer society that is offered and expects “everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Oh, you “need” a new cellphone? What color would you like? What size? What brand? Do you want a case with that? Glass screen protection cover? Warranty protection? What features? Voicemail? Call back options? (I admit the last two are standard on most cellphones but I am trying to make a point here.)

It amuses me to think that it wasn’t that long ago when telephones were hailed as a wonder of modern communication. Pick up this handle? Dial (or punch in) a telephone number? Talk with Aunt Beatrice five houses down the road? Wow.

I can remember when a telephone number was only five digits. Even less in rural areas. In country settings, there were telephone operators who manually patched and connected one call to another. They were usually party lines, too. In some areas you could not get a “private line.” You had to share with several nearby neighbors.

And oh, the scandals and subterfuge the party line ushered in. The telltale click when someone else on the party line picked up their phone to listen into your phone call. Or maybe the operator, a fearsome gatekeeper of local communications, never quite hung up after she’d made the connection.

I am sure some people would have paid good money for the information tidbits the operator carried about in her head about the neighbors. Talk about power! And there was only one style of phone on offer. It was black. It usually hung on a wall.

To connect to the operator who would connect you to Aunt Beatrice, you would have to turn a little crank on the side of the telephone. The number of cranks indicated which number (person) you were trying to reach. The world was that small and manageable.

Well, those days are clearly gone forever. I was in Home Depot today commiserating with a gentleman about the ridiculous amount of available choices for something as simple as window shades. Gone are the days of hanging a repurposed sheet or tablecloth to block out the light. Although sheets clearly did a very questionable job.

Today (hallelujah!) we have blackout curtains. In every imaginable color and style and fabric and size. Hundreds (and maybe thousands) of them. And after poring over Amazon and Wayfair and BlindsRus offerings for days and maybe longer, we make our choice.

They arrive at our front door and darn – they are two shades off the ideal shade we were looking for. “They looked entirely different on the website.” or so we write into the Amazon Reason for Return box.

Have we ever drunk the Kool-Aid! First, that we think that kind of nonsense is important or even matters in the grand scheme of things. It may matter some. Even I appreciate the nuance and subtlety of a fitting color match between this paint color and that shower curtain’s pattern.

But is any of that really important? Will we look back fondly on our shower curtain pattern as we lie on our deathbed? Obviously not. I wonder how many children are neglected today because Mom is focused on fitting in through fashion. I wonder how many Moms still wear their collection of 4 inch stilettos after their first child is born. Props if they even can.

Our focus of daily living and priorities are seriously out of whack. We will never go back to the days of a single style of phone or a few good gingham dresses to pick from in the Sears catalog.I am a Luddite, not a regressionist.

But of this I am sure, when little Sally made her first call to Aunt Beatrice, it was thrilling. There was respect and a little wonder for whatever magic it was in that clunky black machine that had brought that ability into being in the first place.

Today when people encounter a random instance of joy and wonder, they are eager to capture the moment on their cellphones. Then that the moment of magic quickly and emphatically passes and disappears.

I don’t believe we were ever meant to hold on to joy and wonder indefinitely. What we need to know is that those moments are out there and available to us, if we but stop, watch and listen. They often appear unbidden and when we need them the most.

How quaint is that? Who even does that anymore? But from my wheelhouse, it’s a collective loos of wonder and very sad that we don’t watch for wonder. Not often enough at any rate.

Fight, Fight, Fight

Fighting fascinates me. I wonder about its purpose sometimes. Its many manifestations. Its goals.

Defense obviously. But what mysterious forces in us are triggered to know it is time to fight and when it is time to beat the retreat? Hope figures large in this I think. If there is a fight spoiling to happen, and we have a notion we can prevail, we engage.

I am currently in that position where I have engaged in the fight. I am operating on hope and will until I no longer can.

There are so many different kinds of fights. Boxing comes to mind. Fencing, too. And then the largely orchestrated (think WWF) and much narrower world of competitive sports. Not a platform available to everyone and not “fighting” per se. There is fierce competition at play in every basketball, football, baseball, soccer and every other sports match.

And then there is the big one: life. I’m not sure how intentionally we are prepared for the daily fight we all engage in. The methodologies of how we fight that every day fight vary as wildly as the individuals in it.

Preparation for life takes many different forms. We call it education. We call it character building. We call it “learning to play nice with others.” Through our activities growing up, we learn the rules of how to be in life and act on what we believe it takes to succeed and excel.

The fallacy that is perpetuated, of course, is that we all have an even shot at the spoils of living. We know it isn’t true. We know that many different factors influence our chances for success in life. Indeed, it is our background that determines the type of education we get or have access to.

I am currently engaged in a fight that matters to me. A lot. What I am currently reflecting on is how to approach this fight. In the past, I sat on committees and boards where I went to the wall for what I believed I wanted or believed in. I researched ad infinitum. I spoke ad nauseam. My perception of what I wanted to get out of the fight often seem a bit silly in retrospect.

I am fairly aware I am fighting a losing battle. Still I am compelled to fight. I believe it will be important to me to look back and know that I stood up for myself. That in the face of odds weighted in my opponent’s favor, I did not back down or just slink away.

I am less shrill and desperate than I have been in past fights. I am using different strategies. Stall tactics. Dragging my feet. Asking for more information. Digging desperately through building codes and wildlife preservation regulations. Approaching our HOA for advice and background and direction. (A largely impotent exercise based on early information that came back to me.)

Doing it this time while maintaining my cool.

That’s a big difference from my usual modus operandi. In the past, I left a lot of broken relationships and bad feelings in the wake of my certitude and aggressive “take no prisoners” approach.

I am approaching it differently this time. I am doing so if, for no other reason, these people may very well be my neighbors in the not-too-distant future.

I don’t like it one little bit and I am doing everything in my power to avert that outcome. Meanwhile, I have to concede that may very well be the outcome.

Best prepare myself to suck it up.

If it is, what am I going to do about it? The bigger fight about that is going on within me. Most of the greatest fights in my life always have.

Quick Fix, Not

Here is a basic dichotomy these days.

We are inventing fools. Interpret that however you like.

Forget the industrial revolution and the upheaval it brought.

The technological revolution is on a whole other level.

There are so many new and improved appliances, processes, gadgets, vehicles out there for us. They are supposed to make our lives “easier.” And “better.” And “happier.” And more “personally satisfied.”

You feeling all that, yet? I know I’m not.

I laugh now at the early promises of “new technology.” We were all sold on how these new abilities were going to make our lives easier. The four-day work week. Paperless offices. More time for “leisure” and “creativity.” I snort in my coffee.

That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

So here we are awash in the daily frustrations and idiocy as a product of countless “technological solutions.” I’ve talked about this before.

What I’m experiencing later in life is the huge social deficit caused by diminishing face-to-face interactions. Like connection. Like getting to know each other. Like shared experience. Isn’t that quaint?

It has left us vulnerable to all manner of snake-oil salesmen. Because if we don’t know anyone well, and don’t have access to information about their track record and have never met their parents or siblings, anyone will do in a pinch. Right? We need to believe.

Ideas about belonging to a community of like-minded individuals who know and support each other seem quaint and pedantic now. We imagine, crave and seek out a community of similar seekers who might be out there for us to connect with. At this particular time, it is harder to do than it was in the past.

So what do we do instead? We join online groups. We have countless ZOOM calls. We sign up for Facebook groups with people who have causes or interests that we also believe in or care about. We “lol” and “ffs” and “FOMO” ourselves into low-grade stupefication.

No wonder FOMO is so prevalent. People are so disconnected from the ebb and flow of life and each other that the manic chase to “keep up” is reaching epidemic proportions. Young people no longer have a shared social history that taught them how to be part of a group or community.

I believe many believe the internet is the way, the truth and the life. What will happen to them if it ever fails them?

The anonymity of the internet nourishes all kinds of negatives: bullying, sexting, false information, false scenarios and facts. Oops sorry. I didn’t mean to post that. Oops sorry. I have no way to retrieve that post and obliterate it from the internet.

No problem. Instead of overcoming their shame or finding ways to deal with their pain, young people injure or kill themselves. Is that surprising?

What stupefies me is the tolerance we all exhibit in light of widespread social and psychological deterioration. Rigid, conservative, prejudicial attitudes and actions have always been with us. That needed shaking up. But the parameters of human civility and interaction were tighter then.

People once seemed to understand that humans had a limit to their capacity for enduring pain. They had enough sense of belonging that they understood their actions were a vital part of the collective whole.

How does that tee up with how you are experiencing life these days? Safe and happy with a community of people you know you can count on and who know you and support you and love you anyway? No wonder the internet and Facebook and who knows what else are awash in corrective “positive affirmations” and meaty memes that promise to guide us to the “meaning of life.”

Our heads are in such a constant twist scrambling after the next “big thing” in guidance and insight, we have collective whiplash.

My heart aches for young people today. Young people desperate for individuality and attention and belonging dye their hair fuschia, wear three inch fingernails and one inch eyelashes. They tattoo meaningful Chinese characters on their arsm.

For those for whom this is not enough, they simply pick up an AK-47 with their allowance money at the shop around the corner and go out and murder a bunch of people. That we have collectively managed to breed such troubled, alienated souls reflects our failure to inculcate the fundamental “rules” of becoming a human being in our children: with all the warts those rules contained.

I believe a majority are scrambling to make sense of life today and need to understand where we fit in it. I watch my adult children struggling to internalize the reality of out of control housing prices. Once a surefire road to financial security, more and more that is reserved for fewer and fewer. It has affected their future and family planning and stability.

Who wants to start a revolution?

Excuse My Dust

If I have a literary heroine, it is without doubt journalist/author/poet Dorothy Parker.

Some called her style sardonic, and labelled her a “wisecracker” (a term she apparently hated). Raised in a unhappy home, Parker went on to become one of the greatest writers of her generation.

Her legacy is – I hate to say and apologize to you, Dorothy – a body of the best wisecracks and witticisms in our modern era.

Her genius was her ability to manipulate words and offer up her wry, dry wit and perspective to turn heads and eke out a chuckle on just about every topic.

Damn she was funny. And smart. What follows below is a sampling of her poems.

She never fails to delight or provoke me. I hope her wiseacre persona impacts you likewise.

**************

Parker died on June 7, 1967, of a heart attack at the age of 73. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. Following King’s death, her estate was passed on to the NAACP. Her ashes remained unclaimed in various places, including her attorney Paul O’Dwyer’s filing cabinet, for approximately 17 years.

Her ashes were ultimately buried in Woodlawn Cemetery on August 22, 2020. Attached to her urn was a brass plaque that read:

Dorothy R. Parker

1893-1967

“Excuse My Dust”’

Here are some quotes and poems by Dorothy Parker for your consideration:

____________________________

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

― Dorothy Parker

_________________________

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

― Dorothy Parker

________________________

“If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.”

― Dorothy Parker

________________________

“Ducking for apples — change one letter and it’s the story of my life.”

–Dorothy Parker

____________________________

Résumé

Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.

― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

__________________________

Men

They hail you as their morning star

Because you are the way you are.

If you return the sentiment,

They’ll try to make you different;

And once they have you, safe and sound,

They want to change you all around.

Your moods and ways they put a curse on;

They’d make of you another person.

They cannot let you go your gait;

They influence and educate.

They’d alter all that they admired.

They make me sick, they make me tired.

― Dorothy Parker

_______________________

A Dream Lies Dead

A dream lies dead here.

May you softly go

Before this place, and turn away your eyes,

Nor seek to know the look of that which dies

Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,

But, for a little, let your step be slow.

And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise

With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.

A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:

Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-

Though white of bloom as it had been before

And proudly waitfull of fecundity-

One little loveliness can be no more;

And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head

Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!

–Dorothy Parker

_________________________

Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;

I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.

I hate my legs, I hate my hands,

I do not yearn for lovelier lands.

I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;

I hate to go to bed at night.

I snoot at simple, earnest folk.

I cannot take the gentlest joke.

I find no peace in paint or type.

My world is but a lot of tripe.

I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.

For what I think, I’d be arrested.

I am not sick, I am not well.

My quondam dreams are shot to hell.

My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;

I do not like me any more.

I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.

I ponder on the narrow house.

I shudder at the thought of men….

I’m due to fall in love again.

― Dorothy Parker

______________________

Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you’re his,

Shivering and sighing,

And he vows his passion is

Infinite, undying –

Lady, make a note of this:

One of you is lying.

–Dorothy Parker

____________________

“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

― Dorothy Parker

Amusing Ourselves to Death

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” – George Orwell, 1984

Neil Postman first floated into my consciousness in the 70s. His 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, was a seminal critique of television and similar distractions and their alarming place of their increasing influence in society.

Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell’s work, 1984, where they were oppressed by state violence.

Postman’s theory was that the frivolity and ubiquitousness of “entertainment,” as so easily available and consumed on television, would ultimately diminish society in countless ways. Television, Postman argued, denuded thinking, originality, innovation and creativity in individuals.

Below Postman comments on two iconic works of the twentieth century. Both 1984 and Brave New World focus on the gradual dehumanization of society, if by two very different modalities.

As articulated in Brave New World, distractions (or amusements) would create, ultimately, a lessening ability of the masses to focus and apply problem-solving skills to solving social problems.

1984 takes another tack and is a study in a society subjugated by powerful politicians who keep the electorate in check through fear and violence.

Postman predicted back in his 1985 book what the future could eventually look like if frivolous entertainments took precedence over intellectual development and character-building.

Welcome to our overarching modern day dilemma.

“Postman references George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World that was published in 1932.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

“In 1984“, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.”

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us.

Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. ~ Neil Postman

(Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death https://amzn.to/3OTfAfr)