Herban Sprawl

9 October 2009
It all started out innocently enough. I had to go to Macy’s to return a lipstick that I bought in Chicago when I had my face painted on for da Neph’s wedding. When I walked in the door, I saw a display of hats. It was a Nora Charles moment when I spotted the red cloche. It was simply darling. I popped it on my head, found a mirror and checked it out. Oh, yeah. First things first. Returned the lipstick, easily resisted the gift with purchase gimmick, and returned to the hats. I tried on a few others, but it was the 1969 Pontiac red one that stole my heart. I asked two ladies standing nearby what they thought. “Oh my!” the elder of the two remarked, “It’s right out of a Clara Bow movie! But you wouldn’t know who that is!”

“The It Girl!” I giggled! “You think maybe I need a lot of eyeliner with this?”

“Most definitely!”

I walked out of Macy’s with a hat, in a bag. Ponder that a moment…. Would Nora Charles have left Macy’s with a hat in a bag?

After a number of other errands that involved returns, a large bag of cat food and feta cheese, I wound up at T.J. Maxx. I scouted the handbags as I have had a run of good luck finding really lovely Italian purses. As I was moving toward the shoes, there they were…more hats, scarves and more scarves.

The black number was straight out of 1913…I popped it on my head, found a mirror and immediately decided it went with the Studebaker. A man passing by commented favorably. I went back and looked some more. And there it was. A chocolate brown cloche with little mink flowers. I went back to the mirror. The same guy was going the opposite direction, in search of his wife. “Oh, now! That’s the one! Get that one! Honey, come look at this hat on her!”

“Oh, it’s darling! You have to get it!” He agreed. I still held the black one and tried it on for her.

“Mmmm. How much?” She looked at the tags. “These are made in Italy! Buy ‘em both. You can’t go wrong! The black is classic. The brown is YOU!”

Sold.

I also found a pair of silk scarves in elusive colors, and made my way to the check-out. The hats got a lot of positive attention. I left with my hats, in a bag.

It’s a lucky thing to have been born when I was, lived where I lived as a youngster, and to have experienced the culture of women shopping as I did. Back in the day, Blakely’s Department Store had a couple of tiny vanities in the hat department. Ladies would sit at those vanities and the salesladies would bring them hats, put them on their heads adjust them to fit and when the selection had been made, the hat was carefully wrapped in tissue and placed in a Blakely’s Department Store hatbox. Ya just didn’t waltz out with a hat in a bag! Nora Charles brought home nothing in bags. Everything was carefully folded and placed into department store boxes - even undies!

I had a very friendly salesperson in Macy’s today. She liked my T.J. Maxx purse and lusted after my little Coach card case, which is mine because my niece couldn’t stand my cache of rewards cards held together by a thick broccoli rubber band. She liked the red hat, but wanted to see a grey one on me. I haven’t had a sales person take that kind of interest since I left Chicago in 1981! (I had a lady in Field’s undie department who would let me know when my favorite panties were going on sale.) Anyway, the red hat won her heart, too.

We live in a culture of speed and no service. Things are jammed into plastic bags and off we dash. When a sales person takes time with us, we honestly don’t know how to act. If I had been sitting at the little vanity in Blakely’s there would have been others milling about, ready to give their thoughts about this or that hat. Today, I had passersby cheering on a hat blitz.

Why hats? What else do ladies of an age do when they feel a bit blue? They shop. And today I discovered why Nora Charles and every other Hollywood character shopped for a hat when she was feeling a mite punk. Hats really do cheer up a person, and especially when they are fun. I just wish they came home in hat boxes!

For the record, Big Kitty had a Nick Charles moment, when he declared the little brown number to be strange. Nora wore her strange hat to a boxing match in spite of Nick’s assessment. I haven’t decided where I’ll wear mine, but rest assured, it will be worn. It’s too cute to stay home alone!

This piece is dedicated to Marion Talbot and Ellen H. Richards. On November 28, 1881, they invited 15 alumnae of eight colleges to a meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. Their vision was to create an organization in which women college graduates could work together to open doors of higher education to other women and to find wider opportunities to use their training.*

It is also dedicated to Ethel Born, who has taught me the true value promise of AAUW, and you won’t find it in the official literature!

It all started out innocently enough. My niece suggested we meet up in St. Louis for the AAUW convention as a special time together. It was meant to include my niece-to-be, as well, but she wasn’t able to make it. So, my sister, her daughter, and me. I was really looking forward to it.

Sometime during the course of the early spring, I received an email from a branch member alerting us to the issue of open membership being on the agenda for convention - yet again. I gave the idea a lot of consideration, but overall, it didn’t appeal to me on a lot of levels. I’ve written in this space about that topic before, so I won’t go into my opinions today.

Later, I saw something on Facebook, and without really reading it carefully, posted something that stated my opposition. That set up what I call a firestorm of responses from the moderator of that site, who kept trying to tell me I was wrong. Details aren’t important here, but when she resorted to leaving me private messages on Facebook, I questioned it. She didn’t think I’d want it on my Wall. I had nothing to hide, I told her. Truthfully, she did, because she was doing exactly what I had accused her of doing: not listening and not allowing for a difference of opinion without chiming in with her disdainful and condescending insistence that people who disagreed were wrong. After all, our esteemed president had been in tears when she had to turn away a member who would have worked so hard for our mission. sighhhh Our president needs to put on her big girl panties and deal with it.

When I blogged about it, a member of the bylaws committee wanted to comment - three pages worth of commentary. I turned him down. First of all, I don’t know what the husband of a board member was doing on the bylaws committee to start with. That is about as blatant a case of conflict of interest as there is. You know, I didn’t need to have some man blithering away the party line on this “the-sky-is-falling-and-the-only-thing-that-will-hold-it-up-are-these-questionable-bylaws” story. I told him to boil it down to 50 words, knowing good and well he wasn’t even going to try.

My comments on the Facebook page drew the attention of some other AAUW people who had the same reaction I did and who also didn’t like the moderator’s comments. We hooked up.

Pretty soon, I realized that I wasn’t in a minority at all, and that’s when I learned the value they don’t tell you about, the value they will take away from us when they do away with conventions (if they succeed). I have met so many different women from different walks of life and different ages, stripes and colors! There is one thing that unites them, and that’s where Ethel comes into the story.

Ethel finished her college degree long after her children were out of college. For graduation, her daughter gave her a membership in AAUW. Ethel is passionate about how important it is for AAUW to stick with the statement of purpose in the original charter. When we seek to promote and facilitate higher education for women and girls, we raise their standards of living and increase their opportunities. This, my friends, is where equity comes into the equation. Equity is the positive outcome of education. Education raises the prospects of entire villages of women and girls. With education, we go far beyond the simplistic notion of “equity.” We go beyond the pay Lily Ledbetter was entitled to. With education, we prevent many forms of inequity. Equity? Too narrow a concept. Education? The world is your oyster!

I don’t need “value promises” from an organization that I belong to voluntarily. To engage in the mission, we have only to look at our charter. The mission is clear, and for 125+ years, AAUW has been working to fulfill that mission.

The problem is, this organizaton has been trying to remake itself and the new messages really don’t resonate. They are just window dressing. Redecorating. By diluting our original purpose, AAUW makes it difficult for members to recruit new members. I know this. I just recruited a thirty-something and a twenty-something, both professional women. They wanted to know what we stood for. I took them to the annual meeting -the one where we distribute our scholarships - and the purpose of AAUW became crystal clear. This, they said, was an idea they could get behind.

Ethel is the chair of the International Affairs Committee. They generally present three programs each year, and they are stellar. We learn so much about the ways in which other countries and cultures approach the issue of educating women and girls, and the extremely powerful impact that has on women’s rights and their opportunities. Sometimes I wish we could telecast her committee’s programs to other branches. (I know leadership is following this blog, so one of you needs to be taking notes.)

The point is, the organization is probably in trouble. But the truth hasn’t been disseminated in such a way as to engender trust in the leadership. In other words, they haven’t told the truth, the WHOLE truth and nuttin’ but the truth. They have repeated the party line like a mantra, but their explanations are hollow and without substance they cannot expect the membership…. educated women (with a handful of men) who read and think to buy into the sales pitch.

The bylaws they are suggesting violate Roberts’ Rules. They are indicative of an organization in its death throes, and they are risky in that they easily pave the way for another organization to take us over. The structure of the board, with too many appointments that have no accountability to the membership, is such that it engenders mistrust. Without the intermediate layer of leadership, the structure they are proposing sets up a distinct we/they situation. And those rarely have a good outcome.

Additionally, open membership means the membership roster can be packed with people from another organization that seeks to seize AAUW and its lovely endowment. One member/one vote is problematic in terms of the way it will be set up. If we don’t like these bylaws, can we trust leadership to do the right thing with that process?

Bottom line: the current leadership has violated the trust of members across the country, and they aren’t happy that all these smart people are pointing out the situation to them. The recitation of the party line isn’t giving thinking women the answers they seek. There is too much latitude and too many opportunities for malfeasance. The leadership doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth here: there is something fishy going on, and something tells me it won’t provide me with my weekly dose of essential fatty acids. Carp doesn’t do that. Only fish that swim in transparent waters can.

The thing is, this reminds me of the leap churches are asked to make when their leadership tells them they have reached the size where they need to be a program church, rather than a pastoral church. Parisioners scratch their heads and wonder, “What the heck is that, anyway?”

Our branches are being asked to support a so-called mission, to give members value for belonging (sounds like a pitch for Sam’s Club), and to support an organizational structure that defies the standards and ethics of any good organizational strategist. The branches that include a lot of older women who have contributed heavily to the Educational Foundation aren’t so sure they like this. One younger president scoffed at the importance of the $140 million endowment saying it wasn’t really that much, and that the women who’d contributed to it were dead anyway.

[Oho! Marion?! Ellen?! Nell Murphy?! Helen Sweeney?! Joan Derenge?! Gertrude Camper?! Connie Anderson?! Would your spirits like to have some fun in St. Louis?]

So much for the dead ladies, but what about the very much alive ones in my branch, your branch and everyone else’s branch who have worked their hind ends off all these years to provide opportunities for women who needed that helping boost?

You would think that a younger generation whose backs are bowed by the weight of their college loan obligations would understand the VALUE in our scholarship programs.

As to conventions, Ethel says, this is where we renew our DNA. Think about that.

I really cannot wait to meet these women I’ve been corresponding with. I cannot wait to put faces to names. I feel like I’ve known some of them all my life. This is the VALUE of conventions. We get VALUE when we come together to share what has worked, and what hasn’t worked. We come together to hammer out best practices in membership recruitment, retention and fulfillment. We come together to share fundraising ideas that move us out of sorting books. We come together for fellowship and in friendship. Take away the opportunity to network and exchange ideas and processes and what are we? AARP? AAA? Those are organizations with huge staffs, boards and faceless members. If AAUW goes to being a virtual organization like they seem to be pointing us to, that’s exactly what we will become. Now what VALUE is there in that kind of organization?

Conventions are indeed expensive when the only place you hold them are hotel conference centers in big cities. College campuses in smaller cities host conferences with aplomb. Just ask the staff at Radford University about their annual blast of fun with the 1000 or so Unitarians who invade their campus at the end of July for a week of renewal, recommittment and respite. A whole week of that, plus workshop fees, is about the same as this trip to St. Louis is going to cost a lot of the delegates.

The last thing that worries me is this. In the event the bylaws do not pass, there is no provision advertised as to who will step forward to fill offices that exist under the current bylaws that the new ones eliminated. Hmmm Who wants to be treasurer? Secretary?  Furthermore, the people being considered for appointed positions are a deep, dark secret.

And they wonder why people like me don’t trust this whole mess…………..

*Paraphrased and sorta quoted from the AAUW.org website.

It started out innocently enough. I wanted to use my new flexible trug from the Plow & Hearth, but it had my tomato plants in it. I needed to empty the self-watering tomato planter (Gardener’s Supply from several years ago) and rinse it, but that meant I needed to excavate the hose from the tangle of ivy and other weeds that had imprisoned it. I piddled around, pulling weeds under the fringe tree so I could put spent tomato planter soil around it as a little mulch, potting up newer plants and finally had to face facts. The patio needed to be cleaned.

A little background is in order. Our patio is very old and the bricks are uneven. Some are also crumbling, in a rather picturesque way. The moss is thick, and so are the dandelions, violets and other undesirables. Every year I used to spend an entire Saturday weeding the thing, only to have it full of weeds two weeks later. I resisted weedkiller because, miraculously enough, there appeared a heuchera, that had planted itself in the stone wall, and then an astilbe. Finally, a really beautiful fern took up residence. You just don’t mess with gifts such as those.

Last year, I didn’t weed it and instead used my handy dandy battery operated weed whacker to try to control the mess. It sorta worked, but not enough. When The House Goddess wandered out to take a look at the hosta garden project, she eyeballed the patio and just looked at me. She didn’t need to say anything. The look was enough. But I knew I was in for it. “Girl, tell me you ain’t gone leave this thing lookin’ like this. All dis work you doin’ and you just ain’t gone leave this thing lookin’ like this. You making you some b’yootiful gardens and you gone leave this thing lookin’ like this?” (The House Goddess’s eldest progeny is a preacher and I think he gets that rhetorical question thing from his mama…)

I caved. I mixed some neo-plus-ultra-high-holy nursery strength Round-Up and sprayed a portion of the patio, but very carefully because there were some other plants that I didn’t want to eradicate!

Yesterday I had no choice. It took almost all day and only half of it is cleaned up. However, thanks to all this rain, I had the good fortune to have things come up easily, and thanks to all this rain, I uncovered a veritable bait shop in my patio. I mean to tell you, I have enough nightcrawlers to supply the annual fishing rodeo at the Illinois Michigan Canal! And I did not let one get away - that I know of.

I had cleared out a former herb tub. I got rid of a tree that had grown in it, pulled out all the Greek oregano that remained, and set aside the Blue Balsam mint. Then I cleaned through it to make sure I didn’t have any other gifts from the squirrels, added more potting mix and replanted the mint. I’d repotted a rosemary that had grown happy being next to the wall of the house, and a few other things, so the nightcrawlers were relocated to worm condos in those pots. I hope they will stay and keep those pots full of their castings. Now my neighbor, who likes to fish, and I can dig out our own bait and go drown worms in the Roanoke (Creek) River!

Doing labor intensive work like that gives me time to think. Lately I’ve had a lot to think about. Some of it concerns a couple of very dear young people who are struggling. Caught in a sticky web of financial disarray and health issues, they are overwhelmed. So as I teased up the moss, rescued nightcrawlers and set them into their new homes, I considered what possible courses of action they could take that would help them knock down the web.

People who get into these situations become afraid of making decisions because they have some past decisions that weren’t too helpful to them. They lose confidence in their ability to reason and they become trapped in their misery. The result is chronic stress related health problems. For one of them, an injury as a result of military service was never treated due to negligence on the part of a superior officer. Luckily, that problem seems to be getting some positive attention, but three years is a long time to limp around with a knee injury. It has really impaired her ability to work, not to mention the ability to do anything enjoyable. For a physically active person, it’s a severe sentence.

Pondering the other one’s health problems, I realized there was a little something I could do. Before it’s all over, I think he’s going to look at my weedy patio with new eyes. At least I hope so. I’m thinking we can plant some interesting thyme in some of those crumbled out spots. I’m thinking we can plant some new ideas and a positive outlook, as well.
For now, I can look out the dining room window and see the hose, neatly wound up on its holder, a tub of mint (that’s going to have some really stellar friable dirt in it!), a pot of chocolate mint (you want mint? keep it in pots…) and the shade treasures of heuchera, astilbe and fern. The bricks are still bumpy with stray bits of moss, but some sun will take care of that. I can now spray the rest of it with care and in a week, it, too, will be ready to weed. And that’s when I’ll open the patio counseling center. Hopefully, we’ll find more bait for my new bait business, too. Look out, Batiste, I’m your competition in the mountains! And I’m going to have plenty of mint to crush into Dave’s Dr. Pepper!

It all started out innocently enough. We were having some sunshine and I needed to mow at least the front yard. The House Goddess was due, and while I was waiting for the grass to dry out a little, I made a run to Lowe’s for one of the annual Susan G. Komen Plant for the Cure geraniums. They were out. The load that had come in were puny and didn’t do well, so they’d had to reduce them. Needless to say, savvy shoppers bought them up. However, I did find a great little obelisk trellis and a red version of a pink climber whose name escapes me - perfect for the hummers, I thought.

The House Goddess listened to my whining about the geranium and suggested the beautiful concrete planters Anna gave me needed to be “done up.” “But get you some plastic planters that go inside so if you wanna move ‘em, you can take the dirt out and it won’t be so heavy.” (This after watching me grunt and sweat just to slide one across the walk…those puppies are hefty!) So, there will be a new look, and I can’t say I’m sad about that.

The rest of the noon hour was spent rattling around, not getting anything done, and that’s when all the trouble started. All I was going to do was start to fork up the compacted soil under the dogwood for the first part of Uncle Doc’s Garden. After loosening a square yard’s worth, I decided it would be good to work in the manure as I went. Before I knew it, I had forked up the area, added 5 bags of manure, and that’s when I got so excited that I threw all those plans to carefully map out this garden totally to the the four winds.

I began plucking pots of hostas and shade perennials from their storage area, talking to them and arranging them this way and that. A little craziness goes a long way when we’re talking about gardening. Pretty soon, my neighbor yelled over the fence that it was margarita time and that she was off to the store to get the ingredients. I finished up my good time while she did that, and I am pleased to report that what was just going to be a matter of working in manure, turned into a Phase III. project!

Seven varieties of hosta have been planted, along with the Rock ‘n Roll astilbe, a tiarella and a few interesting heurcheras. My neighbor came to look, and decreed that my idea for the placement of the fountain was not optimum. She pointed out a better spot, and not only is that perfect, but it will provide the best place for the forget-me-nots I need to relocate. Uncle Doc’s Garden will now have a water feature (appropriate since he lives on the Little Vermilion River), temple bells (a nod to his love of southeast Asia), and the hunt for a cast iron garden seat will continue until the perfect one appears.

Meanwhile, I have five stepping stones to make… One will bear his trademark quote, “We never say oops in surgery.” I’m thinking all those issues of Fine Gardening weren’t a waste after all… I’m thinking the best gardens are the result of dumb luck and an innocent desire to create beauty. I’m also thinking Mother Nature approved because she sent a huge thunderstorm last night to water in the whole business beautifully!

It all started out innocently enough. Sal daBettafisha had shed some weird looking piece of skin that was settled on the bottom of his vase. When I cleaned it, I saved the hunk and went to the net to see what kind of thing had happened to him.

I wasn’t able to find anything about what it means when a betta fish molts, but I did learn that his wonderful vase wasn’t the healthiest environment. The more I read, the more concerned I became.

It has taken a long time for that stupid peace lily to amount to anything, and it was after I had decorated the vase for the holidays with glass scatters from the Lilian Vernon catalog that Sal’s predecessor, Bud, developed a tumor on his gill and bought the ranch. I have viewed the Chinese made scatters with suspicion ever since. Sal hasn’t had his apartment decorated. He just gets a holiday bow on the narrow part of the vase.

So the information I got led me to believe that if we were any kind of humane and decent people, we would provide our beautiful little guy with a better, healthier home. I began scouting the internet for possible aquariums. The one I loved was the biOrb, but it was mighty pricey. The reviews also said the lightbulbs cost a king’s ransom, and that they were a bit tough to clean. My hands are big, but not so much that I can’t get into tight places for sanitation purposes. I kept looking.

I was on the north end of town and needed a Best Buy run to return some crummy earbuds and decided to drop by their neighbor, PetSmart to see what they had in stock. I didn’t know I’d be walking into a sale on desktop aquariums, and that my handy little frequent shopper card would net a little more off, as well. I bit. I came home with a Baby biOrb and a package of small “easy plants.”

Thanks to my net reading, I ran pieces of panty hose over the greenery and knew it would tear the devil out of Sal’s fluffy fins. My first job was to pull out my tiny razor sharp scissors and to trim those puppies. I kept running the stocking over my cuts and kept checking to see if he could swim through the grass without getting snagged. When I was finally sure he wasn’t going to swim through or by them without turning into a ragbag, I started getting the thing ready for moving day.

Last night was the night. Big Kitty, a quick hand with the net, snagged Sal and slipped him into his new McMansion. He had already been fed supper, so he had only to swim around and check it out. Clearly he was stymied, but he is also a pretty curious guy, so he did a once-around-the-orb kind of thing and then hung out near the front, looking at us with fishy confusion. “What the hell is this place? Where are my slimy roots? And why did you do this to me?”

You know you’ve lost your mind when you start discussing the attributes of the aquarium to a fish.

We checked on him a lot. He didn’t seem to like the fake plants. I kept telling him I had trimmed them and they were snag free, but he was shunning them. I don’t blame him. They lack the appeal of live roots. When we came to the bowl, he would look out at us, never poufing and not showing any attitude. This was worrisome. A betta without attitude is reason for concern.

He seems to like it better when the light is on, so I pull the thing out to where it can catch more daylight, without any direct sun. (The bulbs are outrageous!) I also gave him a snack, which he ignored.

Tonight marks the 24 hour trial period I had in mind. He’s still not showing attitude, but perhaps it’s because he’s in the kitchen. His attitude spot is atop a barrister bookshelf that puts him at should height. We don’t have an outlet there, or that’s where his new digs would have gone. Nevertheless, I am still worried about him. All the net articles made it sound like he’d be in heaven to have 4 gallons of space, so I can only conclude he’s still trying to adjust.

Who knew this would turn into another source of obsessive worry?! All this for a fish? Yeah. All this for a fish. Sal’s family. He’s never been as feisty as Bud, but he’s had his moments, and he really is pretty - red with lavender shimmer. Now to figure out what to do with a hydroponic peace lily.