TakeYourMedicine

Papal Bowling on the Rise, Trend Experts Say

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:38:00 +0000

A successful 'strike' by a woman in a red dress at St. Peter's Basilica has trend spotters talking about the rise of papal bowling in the past year and a half.

The sport, launched last year, may prove to the a blessing for the world's ailing economy, experts say.

"I can see a whole new line of athletic gear," confided a nun who asked not to be identified. "Gloves, shoes, shirts--they're all going to be on the cutting edge to accommodate this nuance of the game. I can only hope that we'll be as fortunate as Billabong and Quiksilver."

The Pope, who recovered his balance after being temporary unbalanced by an unbalanced worshiper, cautioned his congregants to be "vigilant" in his Christmas homily.

A Chip Off the Ol' Turd, and Farewell

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:54:00 +0000

The beat goes on, I guess...

It just isn't a rhythm I want to tap out any more.

First The Dick, then The Dotter.

It's all too crazy. Time to hang it up.

Spousie can barely stand to read the news anymore, and I'm starting to see why. Who wants to think about Sarah Palin's Next Step, or even know who the so-called Birthers are?

I'm thinking about when I used to backpack in the high country out of Yosemite. It was fine, trudging mile after mile, but not glamorous or anything. At night we'd take off our hats and see whose hairdo was the worst. We'd identify wildflowers and construct elaborate lines for hanging food away from the bears. Then it'd be one foot before the other, day after day.

That's all incidental to the way we'd feel when we'd come out of the wilderness some days later. Back to Yosemite, we'd be among all the tourist noise again. Cars would whiz around. Vending machines dropped candy bars. Gas flowed from pumps, sending vapors into the air. It was jarring.

As is this particular news cycle. It's more than significant that Walter Cronkite is no longer among us. The news isn't the news anymore. I'm fine with Jon Stewart being our most trusted news source in this mad-tumbling time. His is the only show with anything like institutional memory. The rest are, as Stephen Colbert told the DC Press Club, stenographers, duty-bound to Represent The Ideas of the latest wing-nuts. Then the rest of us can hop in and talk about the tin-foil hats. It's old.

Fact is, though, I'm in no position to do anything better. I can only riff on what other people occasionally uncover, and that seems pretty third-hand to me. Other people do it better.

I want to find what it is that I can do. I have no idea what I mean by that. I do know that the act of discovery has to be the new assignment.

So thanks for stopping by. Perhaps we'll meet in some other context. In the meantime, as Walter used to say, That's the way it is.

Adios.

Tuesday Rant

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:48:00 +0000

...But can she be impartial? So Sonia Sotomayor is, according to the ABA, supremely qualified to be a Supreme. Now the assholes on the Other Side of the Aisle wonder if she, as a non-white, non-male can "understand America," can be "impartial." I guess the role model is supposed to be Clarence "Clarabelle" Thomas. Yikes. This after the appointment of Dubya's two ideologues who make no effort to be impartial at all.

So she changed her clothes on the plane. So shut up, already. Why, oh why does the press get so excited when Michelle gets on Air Force One in one ensemble, only to be in another when she deplanes? Are they fantasizing her in her undies or something? The woman just wants to get off fresh, you idiots. She doesn't want to greet foreign dignitaries with deep creases, dummies. I have lost all respect for the HuffPo (if I had any left) for even linking to this.

Rest in peace, Michael. Your antics with children made me crazy, but long ago you were a fresh lesson in overinvolving my ordinary self with the lives of celebrities. F. Scott said it best: the rich are very different from you and me. I don't know whether you were innocent or guilty of the charges against you, and I disagree with my pal Zippie's emotional assessment, but you were a hell of an entertainer, and it's time to let you be. I sure don't envy your children, even if you were a peachy dad. You have left them.

I do wish the following people would disappear permanently (after making better arrangements for their offspring than Michael did): Jon and Kate and Sarah Palin.

Our Own Beer Garden!

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:51:00 +0000

Oh, how gay the summer months are here!

Ask a Real Vermonter about summer, and s/he replies, "In Vermont summer comes every year. If it comes on a Sunday, we take a picnic." A-har!

It's been raining for the last week, with more to come, even on the 4th of July. Our beloved gardens are awash in slugs. Spousie has to soak all our lettuce (and we have had bushels of it) in buckets of salt water to dislodge all the slugs before we have the big ol' salads that dominated the dinner menu in the month of June. Everywhere I look, I see slugs.

We aren't poison-happy gardeners. I did use over a bag of Escar-go to slow down the parade. But our yard is so big and in parts so overgrown that we've had to consecrate the beer garden.

A Beer Garden! The very term summons to mind lasses in dirndls and lads in Tyrolean hats, moving merrily to the sounds of an oompah band. Here in Vermont it means no more than moving serenely to the Great Beyond in a can of beer.

We bury cans with the cheapest beer we can find near various plant-heavy parts of the garden. In the wee hours slugs emerge, head for the brewskis, and fall into one last grand frat party. What a way to go, I tell myself. Should I run into a slug during my usual garden chores, I invite him out for a tall cool one. How about a beer? I ask jovially.

Some sages tell us that we can use alcohol-free beer, but I think that is unnecessary, even cruel. No, slugs, if you are going to meet your maker in our humble yard, rest assured that you will go out in style.

Skol!

Out of Our Lives

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:40:00 +0000

What a shock to learn of Michael Jackson's passing.

I hadn't had much good to say about Michael in recent years; his isolation and self destruction were hard to see. But what a talented performer he was, and having watched him grow from a dynamo of a child to a beautiful young man was amazing to me.

Then came the endless messing with himself: the plastic surgery, the whitening of his skin. I wondered how he could have missed how much more beautiful he was, just as he was made. How could he reject and abuse that man in the mirror?

So here's an old clip of the original Michael. Most of the videos have been disabled for embedding, which is sad, because I'd like to share his beautiful dance work, in something like "Rock You" or "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough." In these he's carefree, thoroughly enjoying the moves and the music, not yet affecting all the royal epaulets and shit. Just beautiful and young, the whole world before him.

What a loss. But it's been so long in the making.

Michael, I've been missing you for years. Rest in peace.

Betty Bowers Explains Bible-Based Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:46:00 +0000

Time Passes Slowly, Except When It Doesn't

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Yesterday Spousie and I went down to the pond that's around the corner from our house and took our binoculars to do a little turtle-watching. It's something that we would find it hard to fit in if I weren't sitting around waiting for my shattered radial tip to regrow, embrace the cobalt tack that's holding things together since my surgery. I can work about two and a half hours a day, and then I'm spent. I take a lot of naps, the better to let the old body shop open up for repairs when I'm Out.

There are lots of things can't do, both at home and at work while the mending takes place. I can type, but I can't write. Sewing is out; reading is in. I can transplant little seedlings in the greenhouse, and I can water, but I can't bend over, so no digging, weeding, putting plants into the ground. Spousie's list grows as mine shrinks. She picks up what I can't do, and ours is a yard that takes two people, lost in the garden love-slave business of spring. I can't drive, but where is there to go? Spousie shleps my to my appointments, to my short shifts at work. Otherwise I gaze out at the lilacs and forget-me-nots, as if I could see them growing, chloroplast by chloroplast.

Ain't no reason to go in a wagon to town,
Ain't no reason to go to the fair.
Ain't no reason to go up, ain't no reason to go down,
Ain't no reason to go anywhere.

What else? I can still Photoshop, though my drug-addled brain is less than inventive. I surf the net, noting all the usual stupidity. Angelina has new tattoo! gushes the Huffington Post, probably via People Magazine. What is the Meaning of Michelle Obama? a newsweekly wants to know. Rush wants Sonia Sotomayor (big surprise) to fail. Conservative pundits wonder whether our new court nominee "can really understand" what America Is About, as if understanding our Constitution was the sole province of conservative and stuffy white men.

I watch the fuss about Carrie Prejean come and go, note the latest in boob job fashion as the left tries to attach some phoniness to a beauty queen's natural assets, as if it were a challenge. Some tabloid, or is it the Huffington Post again? dares me to match the celebrity with her reshaped titties. I image search and crop the empty eyes of Republican women and wonder if Meghan McCain has credibility with anybody as she tries to sell her peers on her family's Awesome Party. I learn that I can be annoyed from whatever distance, beneath whatever opioid cumulo-nimbus.

The object of the moment, as the doctors say, is to stay ahead of the pain, and I dutifully swallow the pills that keep the throb at a bearable distance. I think of all the pill abusers that used to pass through Doc's practice, back when I managed it, trying to get him to write 'scrips for backs that didn't really ache, blood that had been dropped into urine in a fake kidney attack. I am grateful that my painkillers hold no mystique for me, that I finally have come to prefer my own tacky version of consciousness.

Time passes slowly out here in the daylight,
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right-- that old Dylan song wanders through the echo chamber of my head. In three weeks I'll be in physical therapy, stretching my way back to whatever rotations the new bolt will allow. In the meantime I'll keep company with some good writers, sleep through the podcasts that pour through the earbuds, twisting and turning my dreams into writhing combinations of old baggage and new players hefting it.

Today was difficult. Mostly, though, my life seems to be a series of lessons on gratitude, and through all the pain and annoyance of these days, I don't forget it, an occasional teary outburst aside.

Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day,
Time passes slowly, and fades away.

Tripping the Light Fantastic

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:39:00 +0000

I loved the the film tribute to childhood and play, "Big," those many years ago. Today I read that Toys R Us just bought up FAO Schwartz, the toy store providing one of the film's most delightful moments: when Tom Hanks jumped on the floor piano for a little Chopsticks jig.

But these girls take play to new heights with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. School of Performing Arts? Julliard brats, maybe? I'm glad TRU are keeping a store with such an ultimate toy right side up.

Ever'body dance!

Toasting Alice Munro

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:54:00 +0000

What a joy it was to read that Alice Munro was awarded the Booker International Prize for a lifetime of excellence in writing.

If you haven't heard of Alice Munro, chalk it up to readers' inclinations to novels over the short story. Alice Munro is to the short story today what Chekhov was in the 19th Century: deceptively simple, filled with rare insights into the human condition.

The next time you find yourself without a good read, check out Munro. Go to your local library (if you don't have a card, get one), and check out a copy of her collections of stories. It doesn't matter terribly which one; hers is a talent that doesn't flag. She is particularly good on women trapped in small towns, but they aren't the only focus of her vision. If you saw the movie "Away from Her" with Julie Christie, about a woman with Alzheimer's who goes into a care facility, you saw a film based on her story, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain."

My next post will no doubt return to the snarky world of all that I abhor in the world of politics. How nice it is to sit in this moment of celebration of a writer, so beautiful and complete, inside and out.

(photo of Alice Munro / copyright Derek Shapton)

how to fly with a broken wing

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:47:00 +0000

actually, you don't fly, even if it sounds all spunky and inspirational and jonathan livingston seagull-y.

what about a busted wing don't you understand? and that red, swollen eye: it's not the best asset for taking to the skies.

if you're lucky you lie around in a snuggly place and allow yourself to be fed--
medicinal muffins or minced mousemeat-- whatever suits you. a friend brings you a helpful book, such as one-handed in a two-handed world with a special, glowing blurb by bob dole, and colleagues send a pretty hanging basket, and your spousie helps you wash your hair and makes you yummy salads, and suddenly, after having done a good deal of dashing around, you realize that you don't have to run at all:

now you can sit around and read --the abovementioned book and others. you can plan: where will the arugula go in the garden this year? did we buy too many tomato plants for the space we have alotted them? wherefore the fingerling potatoes? how green is my romaine?

you can ponder: did nancy polosi really believe the cia was't waterboarding under dubya? what was she thinking, anyway? you can remember that line from michener's hawaii: 'thou has gone whoring with a heathen' that made you giggle in high school, and you can giggle anew. nancy pelosi was whoring with a heathen! then you can read in crooks and liars that rush limbaugh thinks that nancy pelosi should resign as house speaker and wonder why anyone would care what rush l. thinks about anything... too tired for a culture war as you are...

then you can go back to your book-in-the-lap, after which you can snuggle in bed to a book on cd, and you can doze, knowing that deep sleep is the time when the body's repair shop throws open its doors and commences to take you on.

in the morning your eye is a little less red, and you say to anyone who wants to hear, yes, i'm a little better, thanks--clearly this is what i'm supposed to be doing.

Consider the Elbow

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:47:00 +0000

My ass isn't in a sling, but my elbow is.

I took an Ugly Duckling dive off the top step
of the local co-op Thursday evening, breaking my left elbow and a couple of bones in my otherwise flawless face. Surgery is Monday, since the tip of the radius broke off and lodged ever so conveniently in the joint.

Hence the surgery.

I broke my other about arm about 20 years ago, an event which underscored the many virtues of bilateralism. I am currently mourning my involuntary break from sewing and gardening and biking.

At the hospital I had to fill out a form with really subtle questions like, do you feel safe in your hime? Spousie and I looked at each other and laughed. My boss had suggested that I have a tee shirt made up that says, She didn't do it.

I have books on CD and DVDs from the library, courtesy of a colleague and friends. I have Percocet and the wariness that goes with my recovering alkie status on succumbing to too much of it.

What I want to discover is what I can do with just my right hand. (I'm a southpaw). My left eye is pretty much swollen shut, so forgive any typos.

No masturbation jokes, please. I did manage to photoshop this X-ray into some nice colors. There must bo other right-handed pursuits for lefties.

I really liked that elbow. It's going to have a metal plate that'll set off airport alarms for the rest of my life,

Sense of humor will return tomorrow.

Gonna Miss This Guy

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:25:00 +0000

The news of David Souter's retirement sure wasn't welcome.

He's been such a pleasant surprise. Appointed by Bush I, he nonetheless voted against stopping the count in Florida that gave us the last 8 miserable years with Bush II.

I guess Bush Senior thought that Souter would go along, pretty much on party lines, especially where Junior was concerned. Whoops.

Souter has proved to be his own person. He voted to uphold Roe v Wade. He upheld the rights of detainees to habeas corpus. Rather than be the anticipated sidekick to Anton Scalia that Clarence Thomas was to become, Souter maintained his independence. As University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone observed,

"In case after case, Souter parted company with Justices like Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas, and made for himself a truly distinguished and surprisingly "liberal" record on such issues as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, due process, search and seizure, racial and gender equality, affirmative action, the rights of gays and lesbians, executive power, cruel and unusual punishment, abortion, and the rights of persons accused of crime. A man of deep civility and understatement, his opinions are soft-spoken and gentle, but they resonate with conviction. His opinions are precise, nuanced, and carefully reasoned. There is no bombast, sarcasm or disrespect in David Souter."

Souter, while cherishing the opportunity to serve on the Court, has never liked DC and has longed to return to climbing his beloved White Mountains.

He's certainly earned the rest. Thanks, Justice Souter, and may you enjoy the sun and breezes in equal measure. Bush I --and I-- sure had you wrong.

Making Sure Everybody Counts

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:13:00 +0000

Boy, was I relieved when Judd Gregg turned down Barack Obama on heading up Commerce.

Not only did his rejection start the spreading of the inevitable news that the Republicans weren't up to helping to change the paradigm of politics as usual, but his remarks on not wanting to implement Obama's policies on the conducting of the 2010 census actually gave me a little hope. Judd Gregg can keep his sweaty paws off my data, thank you.

One of my closest friends, restless and retired, decided to work for the census this spring. She endured several days of the worst training experience of her life in order to earn the official census worker badge and the cool little computer that she carries around her town to confirm addresses.

Since she lives in the People's Republic of Vermont, as some New Hampshire residents like to call it, it didn't take long for one of the address confirmees to ask her if there would be a place on the official census form for recording the presence of same sex couples.

Apparently not.

As half of one of those couples, I have mixed feelings. There is a certain comfort in invisibility, as those of us who still witness discrimination on a daily basis will tell you. There's a whole lot of attention I can do without.

Back in the 70s I went with friends to see Rita Mae Brown at the Women's Building in L.A. on the Fourth of July. (Remember, Zipdrive?) Those were the days when she was speaking to women, especially lesbians, about empowering themselves by revealing themselves. "If everyone came out, there would be no more prejudice, because everyone would know someone, etc. etc. etc." Yeah, many of us thought, and if everyone was Christian, or Muslim, or whatever, there would be no more religious conflict. And how about that esperanto? Time to give it a shot.

This was all before before Rita Mae got rich from writing all those smarmy kitty mystery novels became chief Poobah of the hounds at her local hunt club and then began writing smarmy hunt club mysteries. Back when she referred to the porno-violence in our culture.

But I digress. It's only now that attitudes have shifted sufficiently, at least here in the PR of VT, that I can peek out enough to contemplate matrimony. And the balance between letting the government know more about my internal workings and standing up for my rights is a tricky one. But for once I am willing to give it a try.

So Obama, in your (I hope) eight years, two terms as president, I am expecting you to grow up and understand that the marriage issue is a civil rights issue. I am hoping that you will understand that you can either do away with the tax advantages you extend to heterosexual married couples or recognize the marriages of gay couples.

Let future census forms count us all.

Sic 'em, Bo

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:40:00 +0000

Having visited the Talking Points Memo photo gallery of yesterday's big tax protest, I realize that this was indeed a day of self-expression for some of my fellow Americans. As a self-expresser if sorts moiself, who am I to get in the way of that?

Even the tiniest emerging crabgrass was seizing its God-given, American right to express itself. Dubya was obviously behind the scenes, serving as a proofreader. It's great to help out those who would obscure the real reason for the mess we're in!

The great thing about a gathering like this is that it's a chance to make a fashion statement while expressing one's political views. A great opportunity for a lady to be complimented on her choice of hats as well. That simply doesn't happen very often these days.

Never, never pass up a chance to yank the kiddies out of school and get them out of their proximity to their Godless, liberal, no doubt fornicating and possibly sodomizing teachers. Okay, I got this cool tee shirt, but still I miss my friends. And that snake is kinda radical, but it creeps me out. I'll probably have to write a report.

Having felt out of the loop for the last eight years, I can only wish the protesters well. They were not allowed to dump all their tea in the Potomac, but I'm told they really wasted the Indiana River, evincing that environmental awareness for which their party has become so well known.

They're going to have to fine-tune their message if we're going to have a good fishing season.

Reveling in Irrelevance

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:39:00 +0000

The Republicans, having failed at governance and at any constructive thinking on extricating the mess they were so key in creating, have reverted to what they do best: cheesy showboating.

Glenn Beck is even going on a "comedy" tour to six cities! Can you feel the populist energy and rage a-rising?? No matter that it's lobbyist backed and Fox News promoted. We're all filled with The People's Anger.

These clowns are dependent upon the ignorance and empty aspirations of the American people. While it's true that we as a nation know even less about economics than we do the contents of our Constitution and history, we can't help but read the signs of companies collapsing all around us, foreclosures multiplying like so many bunnies, and the numbers of the jobless swelling daily.

What a bunch of dorks. As if the current sunsetting of tax cuts for the wealthy were equivalent to the issue of the Original Tea Party, taxation without representation. But never mind. These idiots are absolutely dependent upon our ignorance and our tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

"Jeeves, old boy, take a tea bag from the pantry and give it to Miss Snively. Tell her to send it to the White House."

"Very good, sir. But you laid off Miss Snively last week."

"So I did. So I did. Jeeves, old boy, do take up the slack."

AIG Update: I just received my latest Bad News Current Event from AIG. Guess who's gone back to the old VALIC name I wrote about recently?? Take heed, folks, VALIC=AIG!! Whatever the name, I lost $8000 more this quarter. Now, that's performance!

Moral: You can put a tutu on a turd, but don't expect it to dance.

Two Ol' Nags Are Heading to the Hitching Post

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:01:00 +0000

I never thought I'd be writing this post.

We'd watched the whole gay marriage debate from a kind of distance rather than as a couple yearning to wed. To be truthful, I'm not really hot for most ceremonies and rituals. Putting on a funky little gown and plighting my troth has never appealed to me. My partner has always gone bla-bla philosophical about her personal life and the state being none of one another's bidness.

Yet sometime after September 1, the day that Vermont's gay marriage law takes effect, my darlin' and I will stand up before a very select group and Speak the Unspeakable.

As the debate has gone on, the fundamental unfairness of this last vestige of the Last Respectable Prejudice has become increasingly, irritatingly clear. The arguments have never held water, of course, unless the entire planet's married couples are seething, closeted gay wanna-bes rather than the devoted couples we all hope they are. Gay marriage a threat to the institution of marriage? I don't think so.

But what has really pushed me over the edge, after witnessing all the heartfelt activism of those who have gone before, is the idea that anyone would attempt to separate loving and devoted couples in the name of Family. I think of all the partners pushed away at the hospitals from their AIDS patients because they weren't "family." I think of the parents of sick patients barring access to the partners, to their ailing children. In my own family I have a sibling who is perfectly capable of pulling that sort of rank, should I become incapacitated, keeping me from the one person who is my family, potentially wreaking havoc on the will I have written.

So for all these reasons, this history, these wonderful activists, and the very real love, friendship, delight, and wonder I hold for my partner of 19 years, we will take the plunge, tie the knot, link the pinkies. We'll take our vows in the maple grove of a wildlife refuge we've hiked together for years, gathered with a few close and special friends. The Maddie-dog will be the ring-bearer.

So wish us well and know that this law will doubtless unite many of the already united, bringing a little more order and dignity to their already loving lives.

Lulu Embraces a Domestic Art

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:57:00 +0000

We're in a strange phase here at the Casa de Lulu y Su Esposa: glad that our guy is in the White House but impatient at the endless nattering that goes on about him. As I mentioned a post or two ago, my retirement is in the hands of the most odious of institutions, and each new mention of Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers reminds me of all the other horrible sounds in the world, all hideously recorded in our conscious and unconscious aural vocabularies.

My spouse can't bear full newspapers in the house very often. I don't wanna be a consumer. What's an American to do?

I quilt.

Those of you who've never met me, say Oh, Lulu is a quilter. Those of you who've known me for years say, "You whaaaaaat?"

When I was a kid, I only took the Home Ec I was forced to take--you know, when the boys were off taking Shop. I got a D and never finished the fucking apron.

When I graduated from college, my mother gave me a sewing machine as a grad gift. I was incredulous (such a nice, grateful daughter). I was afraid that she was trying to turn me into Tricia Nixon. I never used the machine. It finally froze when its lubricants solidified.

So you see, this is all new. But then, what is life for, if not challenging stale assumptions?

It began innocently enough. We were looking for a better bed for the Maddie-dog. Last time I bought something online. The zipper to the cover broke the first time I washed it. The egg-carton foam sagged after a while. We looked around here for a bed, didn't like anything, and decided to go to the local fabric store in search of good, thick foam rubber and cloth. We'd stitch something up.

I'd bought a little sewing machine sometime around the end of my consuming period, an off the wall purchase if ever there was one. I pulled if off the bookshelf to whip up the bed.

Lo and behold, it was kind of fun. So I finished the bed and went back to the fabric store for another project. Decided that a warm cape for spouse's mama made sense, since she's in a wheelchair and sleeves are a drag. Made the cape. Here's a picture of it on her 95th birthday. She actually likes it very much. She just belongs to a very strict cult that absolutely forbids smiling for photographs. You can see that her daughter escaped the cult.

Then to the quilts. My good friend Susan and I had flirted with learning quilting last year. I've been drawn to the fellowship of women passing on this art for some time. Saw Bridget Fonda's film, The Quilters of Gee's Bend and was really touched. Somehow Susan and I got discouraged and we bagged it. This year I got some books from the library and struck out on my own and along the way bought a better sewing machine on eBay. So now I rotary cut and sew away. A friend at the library steered me to a quilting group at the senior center down the hill.

Last week I finally went down there with my many blocks (as they are called), about a dozen of which I'd sewn together. I emerged a couple of hours later with all of them separated by a seam ripper after some instruction by a very nice woman named Mary in Squaring the Block. I now must Square the Blocks before I sew them together again.

Whatever. It's fun or it's learning, right?

I will make this first project as a new bedspread. Then, after I've gotten some skills, I'll make a couple for some very long-time friends. After that, who knows? I look at quilting magazines and read quilting books and marvel at the longevity of interest and the skills that come from such an enduring relationship to the art. For me, I can't imagine. A couple of months ago I didn't even sew. Mama, I say to the heavens, I hope you can see this.

For now it's just fine. I'm all for Obama finding his feet without my constant criticism. Can we all remember that he's in his first weeks? I get all these angry emails from friends (mostly forwards) criticizing his every move and non-move.

We don't talk about that down at the Senior Center. We talk about Squaring the Block.

That's something I can be responsible for.

If Anybody Is Trash, It's Tammy Bruce

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:04:00 +0000

Okay, okay, I'll admit that I don't know Tammy Bruce from a hole in her ass.

But she was just quoted on the Huffington Post as referring to the Obamas as "trash in the White House."

I guess she and Rush and Ann and company are just par for the course these days. After all, they have their jobs and their snotty books and their sad little attempts at humor, most of which boil down to name-calling. It's a substitute for wit.They're insulated from the current downturn, so what do they do? Take shots at the people who are trying to deal with the problems and keep the people's spirits up.

My adopted bro' is an Irishman, and as such, he spends too much time in front of the television watching jerks like Tammy Bruce and Rush Limbaugh. He likes to argue; debate is in his blood. To his credit, he balances out his argumentative streak with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow who are more in harmony with his ideas. He is only too happy to analyze everything, to take nothing for granted. He's what a good, engaged citizen should be, if a good, engaged citizen can stand all the noise around his spirit.

I can't. I had enough fury in conversations with conservative relatives in the bad old family days to last me a lifetime. I invoke my ancestors, the ones from that nation of mute Swedes. I simply withdraw. I've heard those arguments and more, when Limbaugh and Bruce were still pissing their panties.

But in my own little cave, I haul out the Photoshop and stick old Tammy Bruce right where she belongs: in her own, personal dumpster, bonding with sour milk cartons, moldy pizza boxes, and loose coffee grounds while she exercises her Second Amendment right to plug her fellow rats.

Tammy Bruce, I don't watch TV, so I'll probably never collide with you. But you are one pathetic, lying sack of shit.

Safe in the Loving Arms of AIG

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:42:00 +0000

For the past 19 years I have lived in Vermont with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the greatest of which has been in the most recent three years, thanks to my peachy library job.

But it's clear that I am going to have to move on. It breaks my heart.

You see, like so many of my fellow educators, I invested the principal part of my retirement accounts with --dare I say it?-- AIG.

It wasn't AIG at the time; it was VALIC, or the Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company. It was like getting your auto insurance with Horace Mann: just what teachers and administrators did. That or go into real estate, at which time our most astute colleagues would check listings during their prep periods and bolt from the parking lot exactly one half hour after the end of school.

I did the VALIC thing, having a sum deducted from my paycheck before I could run off and spend it on some foolishness. I was Investing In My Future.

A few years back, AIG, which had been behind VALIC all along, dumped the V-facade and renamed our accounts in the holy name of AIG Retirement. Wasn't that a great idea?

So now you know. I will probably have to work the rest of my life: now in the library (yay), and eventually, if I don't act quickly, probably some goddam Big Box store. So I'm packing now.

I'm going to live on the palatial estate of one of those AIG executives. I can vacuum the pool and clean up the poodle poop on the acres of spacious lawn, not that I should have to do anything. mind you. I just like to keep busy.

It's the least these guys can do, feed me their beef Wellington and lobster newburg table scraps and let me bathe in their pools. They have crapped away my money, (I lost $20 grand in the last quarter alone) and spent vast sums on salaries they didn't deserve, not to mention the infamous bonuses. I can set up a little tent and invite other retired educators to join me in a cheery little city. Welcome to Liddyville! We'll buy pretty tents out of our piddly pensions: green, blue, yellow, red, and orange. Oh, it'll be so gay! In the evening we can sing Woody Guthrie songs and make school banners out of our old t-shirts. Let your colors fly!

It doesn't seem that any of the zillions allocated to AIG are meant for the likes of me, so I've decided to be a boil on the ass of one of its executives. I hope not to be alone.

Please pass this on to any similarly unfortunate retired educator. The more tents we put together, the prettier our collective canvas rainbow.

Tear-Jerk Time

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Michelle Obama makes me cry.

I'll rephrase that. Whenever I see Michelle Obama, I get tears in my eyes. She doesn't make me do anything. But it does happen on a regular basis.

I have to admit that my health has been the pits for the past 5 weeks. No sooner did I begin to recover from a long bout of asthmatic bronchitis than I was hit with a truly evil stomach flu. So I've been rather vulnerable and blue.

Not that my tears are sad tears. I am just so moved by this woman, who seems so authentic. Connecting with military families. Paying her loving respects to the people hardest hit by the shenanigans of the last years. Showing up to serve the homeless, to participate in service days. She's a one-woman statement of the values we need to see, and her warmth and compassion are palpable.

Her personal story includes loss, outsider experience, and hardship met with a serious work ethic. I often feel that her husband's upbeat, transformative philosophy has been as healing for her as it promises to be for the nation. There's still something vulnerable in her aspect in unguarded moments. She is taking to the First Lady role in ways that I've never glimpsed before.

She's very huggy, another big plus for me. Though it's been said a million times, it's amazing what a difference a hug can make. I have one library patron and volunteer, age 87, who shows up every Monday night to bring in the flags and collect a long, warm hug for his efforts. "That's my hug for the week!" he says after we finish our regular embrace. I'd love to turn him and Michelle loose on each other. They both understand something essential.

I'll never understand the Victorian response to her bare arms. (At least we can refer to them as arms. In the the Queen V's days, they were limbs. But that's not much progress in a hundred years, if you ask me.) She's healthy, she's in great shape, and part of her advocacy is for diet and exercise. What's the deal?

I'm sure that the pastiest parts of our nation are still in shock. I can tell by the endless reactions to her statements, her little fist bumps with the Big Guy, her dynamite body, that their first up-close look at a proud, healthy, African-American woman is going to take some internal adjusting on their parts.

As for me, I've long known that systematically shutting out the worth of people unlike ourselves is a sure-fire way to miss out on their substantial contributions. I'm thankful for this time, this lady and her husband, and all that they will teach us in the next four, and ultimately, I hope, eight years.

Now where did I put that goddam hanky?

Family Is as Family Does

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Is this Ken Starr in one of his Latent Moments, or have I simply failed to see the dental floss between his fingers?

No matter. As I write this he is no doubt getting ready for another big day in court as he works to divorce 18,000 California couples who rushed to be wed before the LDS church and a host of allied bigots rushed to make sure that an oppressed minority would still live under the tyranny of the majority.

What sad business this family values stuff is. I grew up in a family that was, but didn't. My mother worked her tail off to hold us together. My father wandered and rejected my brother who acted like a boy rejected by his dad. Both of them rejected me. We were well provided for materially but not emotionally.

When I was young, the saddest thing I could think about was being consigned to that model of family life. "If it was a job, I wouldn't apply for it," I used to say, full of lost bravado.

To me, happy families (and I do see them from my vantage point at the library--moms and dads taking toddlers to story time, entire broods showing up for family story night, during which time they write and illustrate their own adventures, volunteers telling me about the central place their families play in their lives) are an exotic breed. I gaze at them with the fascination of the outsider.

I remember when my mom, advanced in her Alzheimer's disease here in Vermont, took the phone to talk to my long-abusive brother in California, listened for a minute or two, then quietly placed the phone on the table and turned away. She just couldn't do it anymore, and now she had a disease that permitted her, after a lifetime of herculean efforts, to take her rest.

Sometimes I think that Mom needed that disease. She was an exceptional woman. She had a lot to forget.

In my adult life, having failed to fill in my application, I have nonetheless pulled together my familial impulses. They are hard to discard in their entirety. Here we are: two women who are each other's very best friends and life companions, a dog, three cats, a modest host of cherished friends.

How naive the Ken Starrs and those they represent are to think that they can legislate away the myriad forms that families take. They are protecting the children?? That's their excuse for this perfidy. As if you could, by eliminating a real option for people, force the straight ones among us to automatically become dedicated, functioning, creative, devoted family members. Sorry: outlawing one group does not ennoble another.

The willingness to surrender self to family isn't about sexual orientation. There are plenty of non-functioning heterosexual units, with lots of dazed children whose best hope is to get the hell out of there at the age of reason and to do their best to be authentically themselves. You can't force people to be devoted parents, doting spouses. What you can do is to create a society open enough to a variety of ways to be that we can all find ourselves in it in a positive way.

I don't know what the next steps will be, after Ken Starr's "victory" in the card game of the stacked deck, but I know that his courtroom "triumph" can't last. The thirst for justice has been awakened, and those who have come after my generation are young enough, energetic enough, to see this very real cause through. If careless couples can receive the respect of the state and all the rights conferred thereby, why can't they? Why should their unions be suspect? They are paying the dues with the everyday ups and downs of surrendering something of themselves to this stupefying idea of Us. Why shouldn't they be recognized for what they are?

Why not, indeed?

Pipsqueaks a-Go-Go

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:12:00 +0000

You know, I've been somewhat dispirited since the departure of Bush-Cheney. You can sense my ennui in the lack of recent posts.

Ass-wise, Bush-Cheney were such a broad barn-side for my contempt. They embodied so much of what is wrong in our country. The pipsqueaks they have left behind hardly seem worth the trouble of pillorying. A lingering case of bronchitis deprives me of the snark I need to bitch-slap them into place.

Make no mistake: they do continue to annoy. The idiots who call Obama the anti-Christ or compare him to Hitler are beyond pathetic, and they are several. That's the price we pay for living in a society that includes huge numbers of people who read the Bible literally and understand history imperfectly.

Add to the Rev. Mannings of the world the buffoons who currently inhabit Congress, including Rep. Bachman and Sen.
Shelby, and elected officials look about as bad. Where do these clowns come from, and what does it say about those who cast their votes in their favor?

We have gone from the age of magnificent, Cheney-scale evil to the banality noted during the Nuremburg trials by Hannah Arendt. Now we have the petty little poops who ran up the deficit lining up to denounce the stimulus package while standing silent on the actual cost of the war, something that was never included in Bush-Cheney budgets.

After the exhilaration of the B-C departure comes a certain emotional flatness. I'm weary of petty stupidity and small-town mayors who email pictures of the White House with a watermelon patch in front. I'm tired of so-called men of God whose spiritual messages consist of racist name calling. I'm sick of the knee-jerk reaction of Americans to the word socialism, and free-market worshipers who ran our country into debt and our retirement accounts into the ground.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. I'll be back, folks, when my lungs clear and my sense of humor returns.

Seth Says It Best

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:25:00 +0000

I almost bought a big box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes yesterday, because it still had Michael Phelps on it. But I've sworn never to buy their products again, not after what they did to the kid.

Really.

Norman Coleman Endorsed by God, Heavenly Hosts

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:52:00 +0000

In an attempt to resolve the drawn-out recount for Minnesota's seat in the U.S. Senate, God, flanked by a Political Action Committee of Heavenly Hosts, made a rare public appearance in order to endorse Norman Coleman for the job.

'It's true--I reallyreallyreally want him to win," the Lord and Creator of the Universe said, panting a little, in an exclusive interview. He was confirming a recent statement Coleman made in which he said that he began each morning with a prayer, and he knew that God wanted him to serve.

When asked why He supported Coleman over rival Al Franken, God replied, "Norm starts every day with a prayer. He will not leave me alone. I need to get him off my back. I have a lot to do besides worry about some six-bit post for Norman Coleman. My inbox is stuffed with pressing business, and every day there is his high-priority message, all in red letters. He's driving me nuts. Sheesh--what a whiner. The sonofabitch has worn me down. He could have my job if he wasn't such a weenie. But there are other weenies in the Senate."

He then gave a downbeat to the Heavenly Hosts, who sang on command with the candidate:

Norman, Oooooooooo-ooooh-ooh
Norman, Oooooooooo-ooooh-ooh
Norman, Oooooooooo-ooooh-ooh
Norman, my Love!

Like a Virgin

noreply@blogger.com (Lulu Maude) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000

It's not as bad as it looks: I still am mad for Obama. I just wish he hadn't fallen in with the wrong crowd.

I have long bemoaned the culture of celebrity, America's twisted departure from royalty to a bizarre meritocracy. Suddenly, rather than living our lives to their fullest, we allow serious psychic space to the airport tantrums of Lindsey Lohan, child-rearing examples from Madonna, and sermons on green living from Brad and Angelina.

From there it's a short hop to political celebrity, and to the jerks with which the most promising president in recent history has surrounded himself. While he has yet to put Lindsey Lohan into a position of responsibility, he has gone for people who should have headed his list of People To Avoid.

This is nowhere more evident (the Daschle debacle aside) than in the selection of his team of economic advisers. First, a Secretary of the Treasury who doesn't pay his taxes and a former lobbyist as his chief of staff, then the pompous ass from Harvard who was ditched for his many people skills (who can't wait to ignore Paul Volcker, the newest addition), just to show how much he has learned about how to get along.

And where, oh where, is Paul Krugman? His credentials ought to be Good Enough... his Nobel Prize in Economics is barely unpacked from the trip to Stockholm last summer. His Conscience of a Liberal, a bold title in any season, should have space on Obama's shelf, and his voice ought to ring in the Oval Office.

We are seeing too many people who are part of the problem. It's a lot to ask them to be part of the solution, unless the Age of Responsibility has taken the form of hauling a recalcitrant Junior to his cyclone-strewn bedroom: you made the mess; you clean it up. And no dessert till you do!

I was concerned (though too emotional at the time) from inauguration day on, when I spied a picture of Rahm Emmanuel thumbing his nose at someone from the dais. He was probably taking a shot at my beloved Howard Dean, his rival in national party policy, and whom he successfully froze out of any position in the administration, even though Dean'd be great on health care policy, both as a medical doctor and former governor who greatly expanded health care coverage in Vermont. That's the sort of omission we can't afford, even though he and Emmanuel were at loggerheads about the best way to build the party and funnel contributions. (Dean's 50 state strategy is responsible for the Democratic majority we see in Congress, by the way.)

If Obama wants to replicate the Team of Rivals of Lincoln, he should give Dean good breathing space in his administration and tell Emmanuel what to do with his thumb.

I don't give a shit about coats and ties in whatever official locale. An aloha shirt and hiking shorts in the heat of summer are fine by me. A well-insulated leather jacket in February would be hot.

But I don't like the smart-ass hoodlums who are hangin' with my Prez.

You're young, you're brilliant, you're beautiful, and you've got great moves, Barack... but lose these losers.