Herban Sprawl

22 November 2009

Several years ago, my friend the accountant, Godfadda, told me I didn’t have to hang onto financial stuff for as long as I did. I made a mental note to get into the storage area and do a purge, and I sort of did it. By that time, the whole identity theft scare had come into sharp focus, and I got wary of dumping canceled checks and such into the trash. So it all got dumped into a bag, then a box, and…well, you get the idea.

Big Kitty and I bought a shredder when they came out for home use and I started on the first bag. I wore out the shredder. Big Kitty grumbled. We bought another one that did cross cuts. It was great. I burned it up, too. And none of this was for that stuff that was still waiting for disposal, mind you. This was for the daily poundage of credit card, AARP, insurance and other “Important Do Not Shred With the Junk Mail” stuff.

Then last year I bought a fire pit on sale at Target. It was an end of season bargain and it was nifty. I had made up my mind to burn the stuff because then burning it up wouldn’t bear the previous bad connotation! But first I have to admit I tried burning the stuff in the Weber Smokey Joe. Not a good idea. I experimented with the fire pit and I knew I was on to something great. I just never got around to building a bonfire.

But recent cleaning frenzy events led me to one of those looks from The House Goddess. “You gonna get rid of this? Ain’t this the stuff you threatenin’ to burn? You gonna burn it or what?” Today was not a windy day, so I went out with a firelog and got the business set up. I also grabbed a fire shovel (hand made by my dad, the Village Smithy), the shopping bag of detritus and started in. The fire log was going along nicely and my timing was perfect. I spent a considerable amount of time out there, stirring from the bottom to the top, folding in more paper and keeping the whole thing smoking along. I’m sure the neighbors were wondering if there was a new pope in the offing.

As I stuffed paper in, I saw my history wafting up into the atmosphere. There were canceled checks from stores that no longer exist, but stores that clothed us, fed us and provided everything from wine glasses to pictures for the walls. There were receipts for things that had long gone on to the Goodwill or the trash bin. And there were receipts for some really wonderful presents that we gave the kids, the sib, her spouse, and Dad. A lot of memories went up in smoke, and that’s as it should be.

The process of clearing, ridding, cleansing… it opens up the spaces and it moves us on. Tossing the things that no longer apply to us is our way of growing and leaving behind what doesn’t work or doesn’t fit who we are. In some regards, this could be a frightening prospect, but I’m not feeling that right now. I am thinking ahead to when the kids stand before me and decree, “Auntie, it’s time for the home.” I don’t want them to have to deal with all my junk. I don’t mind them having to deal with good stuff that they can sell on eBay, but I object to all the other crap that I can accumulate so easily.

Besides, this house is small and it’s cramped because there is just too much stuff in it. There is no point in wanting a bigger house just so we can move junk that should never in a million years need to be toted anywhere by Mike the Mover. No, indeed.

My hair smells smoky, so I’m thinking about a bubble bath before bed, but I’m feeling awfully pleased to have that sack emptied. The House Goddess will be so happy, and one of her ‘atta girl’ grins is enough to keep me at this miserable task until it’s truly all under control.

19 November 2009

This one’s for you, Mom. I’m cleaning my room, as directed.

There are some people who cannot stand the slightest amount of disorder. I am not one of those. However, I do get to the point when I cannot stand the build-up of papers and project materials and go into what used to be a reliable monthly cleaning frenzy. (So nicknamed by my long-suffering spouse.) Hormones not being what they used to be, I get the cleaning urge less often and as a result the mess is even worse and engenders a lot of resentment.

We have had a spate of inclement weather so I have sequestered myself in the basement, first tackling the storeroom and now my office. To be fair, my office is a multi-purpose room. It functions as an art studio, writer’s study, cat bedroom and could be a spare guest sleeping area, if necessary. Cramming all the attendant flotsam and jetsam into this small space is challenging to begin with, and arranging it so that it functions well is monumental.

Yesterday I put away a lot of art-related things, which also meant I needed to invent some new storage. The shelves dedicated to art stuff are already overloaded, so there will need to be some additional weeding. The good news is that I have this fabulous label machine that Big Kitty gave me for Christmas last year, and I have been one labeling fool. I have only to look at the label to see where things are stashed.

Then I got into some things that I brought down from my former headquarters, which is now Big Kitty’s territory. The recycled paper box filled quickly and what was left is in piles, awaiting file folders. That, too, was easy. The place honestly looks worse than it did when I started, but that’s because I have disrupted formerly organized areas in order to reorganize.

Today I tackled my desk. I have a bone to pick with computer desk designers. We still need drawers! No matter what anyone thinks, we still have need of a place to stash the stapler, hole puncher, staple claws and paper clips. We also need a place to put the legal pads, sticky notes and rubber bands. I found a plastic drawer thing that fits into the space under the slider where I put my laptop. What a great find that was!

The problem to be solved was the matter of two printers. I use my laser printer for most things, and the color scanner/printer only when I need to. I’m kind of cheap when it comes to printer ink, but at least I use it enough that the inks don’t dry out. Anyway, neither one was in the optimum location for a kinda short old broad. Today I took the entire business apart and did a massive rearrangement. It was while I was under the hood, so to speak, that I found a feline watering hole.

My level of profanity proficiency reached a new high. I knew I had been smelling something and hadn’t been able to locate it. However, undaunted, I finished the printer task, cleaned surfaces and then retrieved the Oreck and the spray on carpet cleaner. The stench of carpet cleaner is bad, so that offered a good time to take a lunch break. When it dries and gets vacuumed, then I can douse the area with enzyme stuff. It creates a timing set-back in that I had wanted to put things back today, but that’s okay. Finding that spot was important. Dealing with it was even more critical. Little pischers!

I learned, by posting the progress of this event on my Facebook status, that I’m not the only one who hoards stuff. Being cheered on by fellow hoarders in private messages where they confide their own peccadilloes in this area has been heartwarming. I have been referring to this horrid room as my awfiss, and today I realized it was the cats’ awpiss. The punsters among them will be amused.

Those of us who engage in artsy craftsy tasks tend to collect a lot of things for doing what it is that we do. I’ve been into using recycled items for storage, such as the very large Hershey cocoa containers for the Major Sharpies. Binder clips are in a recycled clear plastic jar, and colored paper clips are in recycled Republic of Tea tins. Besides the stacking trays from Target that are great for rubber stamps, and the oddball sizes of Rubbermaid totes, there are other ways to store things. Old oatmeal cartons hold ribbon spools very, very nicely. You can put all the Halloween ribbons in one, Christmas in another and so on. It becomes a challenge to find the best way to keep something organized, and that in turn is good for one’s creativity.

Years ago I bought Big Kitty a rack for audio tapes. He never used it. Eventually, I got sick of them being all over the place and filled the thing. Then one day, I realized stamp pads are about the same size as a cassette case. The tapes got packed into a box and the rack now holds most of my stamp pads. The trouble is, I do not have the wall space it needs to mount it. So, it is on the floor and that isn’t satisfactory.

Cleaning like this is cathartic in many ways. It forces us to discard that which no longer applies. Even a packrat like me has to face facts and get rid of supplies that have become obsolete. People who sew collect lots of fabric and thread. Now you want to talk about a space eater! One of my college classmates laments his wife’s collection of sewing machines! I can relate. We have a lot of old computer equipment.

The issue boils down to being willing to get mad enough to clean it all out and try to consolidate. It also means getting creative with ways to store the small stuff so it can be used up. There is nothing worse than finding a marker in a good color that has gone dry because it was buried in a box of unrelated stuff. I’m sure other people have similar woes.

Maybe it’s an exercise in futility, but last year when I attempted this task, I made a lot of progress. This year I am not having to sort through years and years worth of clippings, but rather the junk that has just piled up in the past year. Rearranging the printers will make my work easier. None of this is so difficult, but making ourselves take it all the way to the finish line is the hard part. I’m already liking what I see and cannot wait to get it to the point where others can come down here and not need a hard hat and steel toed boots!

There are a lot of reasons to be superstitious right now. As a long-suffering Cub fan, I’m on tenterhooks. I want desperately to write about how I eagerly turn to the sports section in the morning paper, but I’m afraid to jinx them! I haven’t even watched a ballgame except at my nephew’s, for the same reason. During the weekend of the 9th, I listened to John McCutcheon, one of my favorite musicians, talk and sing about baseball (he’s still, in his heart of hearts, a Milwaukee Braves fan -). I even listened to his baseball album - told him how it gave me hope for the Cubs. But I have this fear that the walls will come crashing down.

Back in the year of the Miracle Mets, my friend, Lil Linda, had her heart broken. It was the year of the yellow bleacher bum helmets and her team left her standing at the altar. She, like me, is afraid to breathe. No matter what, though, she wouldn’t switch her loyalties.

When the National League took its annual beating by the American League in the popularity contest known as the All-Star game, they gave the Cubs a disadvantage in the event of the culmination of The Hundred Years War. And, indeed, a dispirited team had a post All-Star slump that had me thinking it was all over even before Labor Day. It was depressing.

This morning, however, they have the same record as the Los Angeles Angels - the Cubs having gained, and the Angels having lost percentages. Dare I hope? Dare I ask my nephew to start investigating play-off tickets? Dare I plan to raid my savings to finance that? Better not. Might jinx them. If I don’t get my hopes up, I can’t be disappointed, right?

Hey, hey. It’s the Cubs and God loves Wrigley Field, just as it is. Sunshine, hot dogs and cold ones are the sacraments in a place that honors the divinity in the cynics known as Diehard Cub Fans.

This knee business is inconvenient. I knew I had something brewing about seven years ago when using the stairs at school began to be a dicey proposition, but it took an afternoon of gardening on our steep backyard hill for the acute effect to cause a lot of trouble. I had to jump through the hoops of paying money to the primary care physician’s office, having X-rays and then fiddling around for two weeks to see if it went away or got better. It didn’t.

A visit to the orthopedic doctor revealed nothing new except that this is a common problem for women in their fifties. It’s nothing more exciting than osteo-arthritis, the thing I’ve heard The Uncles and Big Kitty’s family grumbling about for years.

As long as I’m navigating on fairly level terrain, this is no biggie. It’s the stairs and the hill that cause all the consternation. Nothing new in any of this, is there? Common complaints lead to visits to the physical therapist to strengthen the leg muscles that protect the knee.

My last bout with physical therapy was with a darling named Suzie who mother-henned my progress and made sure my shoulder went back to normal. She fussed over my technique and she measured my range of motion and she made sure that whatever I did, it didn’t cause pain, but rather challenged me enough to keep the process going forward. She was really, really good.

Unfortunately her business closed when the owners were unable to negotiate a lease agreement, and now I’m going to what can best be described as an assembly line office. The therapists have new appointments arriving every ten minutes, and while they work with the patient the first few times, they are in and out a lot. By the third visit, the patient is moved from activity to activity by an assistant, who may or may not spot the patient.

I am skeptical of this arrangement, to say the very least. I need Suzie. Suzie stood right there and corrected improper technique so that I was always moving forward. Suzie did not leave me alone on a machine. When the stationery bicycle caused me extreme pain, the therapist ignored me. When “the rack” caused me extreme pain, the therapist ignored me. The assistant was slightly better about the rack, but I had already been in agony on the bike, so what difference did it make? She did correct me a little on one of the exercises, but I noticed she didn’t catch me doing it differently from the directions on my home exercises – Suzie would have stopped me and explained what I was doing wrong and started me over. I should note, I did it wrong deliberately to see if she even noticed. That’s when I realized I missed an attentive therapist.

My network is telling me to call them on this when I go today. I am a little squeamish about telling professionals how to do their jobs. I have had so much pride in my professional work that whenever it was suggested I do something better, I got really upset. It was like saying I wasn’t giving something my best effort and that never went over well with me. If I apply my own sense of pride to this situation, I know that I am likely to cause the same feelings and those are ones that can manifest in extreme defensiveness. That never solves anything and generally will create a barrier that is difficult to overcome. I’ll have to get wily…

Here in Chi-town, specifically in Lincoln Park, the buzz is about the upcoming wedding. Indeed the date hasn’t been set and the immediate concern is the melding of two households, the resettlement of the two cats from a previous tenant, and so on. Nevertheless, there are the ubiquitous wedding magazines, and since I love to look at pictures, I browsed.

Weddings have come a long way in terms of complications. However, I think it’s a matter of what the two people involved want, and I certainly cannot use myself as an example of bridezilla, or any of the other variations on that theme. I really didn’t give a rip about the whole thing. Our minister told me that if we didn’t have a regular wedding my father would never accept that it had happened and was legitimate. Furthermore, he advised me to have him walk me down the aisle because “he will need that to make it official.” I caved because he was right.
Back in the day, it was hard to find a wedding gown suitable for a 35 year-old bride. Nowadays, the magazines are crammed with elegant wedding gowns. Indeed some of them are as ridiculous as the big ball of fluff Carrie Bradshaw wore to her thwarted wedding, but some are quite lovely. The pricetags are unbelievable, too!

One of the magazines had an interview with a wedding planner for celebrities. She opined that black bridesmaid dresses are back en vogue again. Ugh. Yeah, you read the utter disgust in that three letter word correctly. I was in a hotel when the bride and her entourage of pretty maids all in a row, coupled with their groomsmen were lined up, ready to march into the reception hall. They looked like two rows of penguins. It wasn’t a pretty, festive look, either - more like a funeral in black tie. My niece was a sport and compromised, using navy blue. In daylight, they looked nice, and the bouquets she chose set them off effectively. In the dark reception hall, they were, for all intents and purposes, black.

The other interesting thing I have noticed is the return of favors. We aren’t talking little tokens, either. We are talking about gift bags for the out-of-town guests (aren’t they all?), little boxes of pricey gifts and so on. It amazes me.

So this raises the question for the auld aunt, is all this really necessary for a beautiful and meaningful wedding?

I guess it depends on your point of view. If you are a woman who wants to be a fairy princess right out of a Walt Disney movie, yes. If you feel like you have to throw a society page wedding, yes. If you just want to get married and get on with it, no.

If you fall into the last category, there are still a lot of pressure points where the prospective bride and groom will get the raised eyebrow look. But the main thing is, make sure the reasons are good enough. Don’t be pressured into spending thousands of dollars on details that don’t mean anything to you. A quick look at an older volume of Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt will give any bride the basics, will keep her well within the boundaries of good taste and allow her the latitude to plan a beautiful wedding. Notice, I don’t use the word event.

That’s another pet peeve of mine. A wedding is a sacred ceremony between two people. It is NOT an event. An event is a party to shake big checks out of prospective donors for a non-profit. In spite of the more mercenary aspect of weddings, the two are not the same. The distinction is fine, to be sure, but it exists.

The other trend is the inclusion in the invitation of the gift information. Miss Manners writes about this constantly. No, no, and no. Tacky, tacky, tacky. Please, Brides, listen to Miss Manners. There are certain rules of deportment that will never change, and that is one of them, no matter what a wedding planner will blithely tell you. Don’t come off looking like a grabby little brat instead of a woman about to make a lifetime commitment to the guy of her dreams. Leave it to your relatives to politely and discreetly spread the word as to where you have registered. Believe me, it will get around - and, remember, just because it isn’t on your list doesn’t mean it’s not an acceptable gift.

Maybe it’s because of my age, but when I got married, the big splurge was for engraved invitations and a bodacious hat that got me out of wearing a stupid veil. (I think they are ridiculous, but they definitely are a tradition that has stood the test of time.) Beyond that, it was pretty simple. I didn’t even micromanage the bridesmaid dresses - I left it to the two who’d be wearing them, including the color. My only requirement was that they match so they’d look nice in pictures.

This should go a long way in explaining my bemusement at all the hoopla of the current trend of weddings. If it wasn’t such a big money-making industry, I guess I’d be wondering when the trend will swing back to simple and to the point. As long as Vera Wang is designing beautiful gowns, the answer is never!

My pupil and I are reading Summer of My German Soldier. In one scene, Patty comes home to Ruth who is washing clothes with a wringer washer. There are generations of Americans who have no clue as to that rather crude saying, “Whatsa matter? Get yer tit caught in the wringer?” They have no idea what a wringer washer is. I had to make sketches and explain how one worked.

In those days, sorting laundry was taken to unbelievable lengths because the same tub of water was used for successive loads. If the first load got bleached, then the next loads got some, too. I tend to go in the opposite directions with my Maytag, simply because I don’t want the stray droplets to find their way onto something I don’t want bleached. The House Goddess cleans with bleach, so you can well imagine her work pants! She laughs about it. She brags that she even drank bleach as a child and lived to tell the tale!

And so, as I was on the second to last load of TBHG’s laundry today, I filled the tub with hot water, added a prodigious amount of bleach – I would have earned The House Goddess’s Seal of Approval – and then dumped in extra detergent. We are talking socks. We are talking strap undershirts  like old men with hairy ears used to wear outside at night while they tended their tomatoes in the 100 ° heat of the prairie evenings. I am here to tell you, I gave it my mother’s best tricks, and she was star launderer. Those clothes flapping on the clothesline were sparkling.

I came down to check. The wash water was the color of mud. It didn’t look good.

I came down when I heard the dryer go off, emptied it, and opened the washer. Ick. I had wanted to add more bleach, but I was afraid it would eat the knitting. I needn’t have worried. They looked just as bad as they had looked when I put them in. You’d never know I had even bothered.

I put on my handy dandy latex gloves and separated the old man undershirts from the socks and threw the socks into the dryer. The fact is, the old man undershirts did come out somewhat better in a second go-round with more bleach, but still not up to my pristine standards. When you consider how filthy and odoriferous all these things were to start with, there really is an improvement.

Some might wonder about the sanity of such an adventure, but there comes a time when a person has to stand up for what’s right. The Colonel was right when he advised to “never get into a pissing match with a skunk.” But no one should have to live with such a slatternly skunk in his/her midst, and especially not when the circumstances are driven by the forces of obstinacy for the sake of obstinacy. Sometimes it takes an outsider to call a spade a shovel and help that family get on with it.

Big Kitty has taken note of the gallons of water this has taken and suggested the price needs to be raised. Actually, I am pretty sure I’m washing these things for the Goodwill, so I’ll ask our tax guy if I can deduct a month’s water bill. If I write someone off, you better believe it’s because they belong in the File of Lost Causes.

Yesterday’s post was probably a mystery to most of you. As it happens, The Big, Hairy Galoot was living in a trashed out room that reeked. I could smell it every time I went down the hall to use the bathroom. It doesn’t have a door because TBHG lost door privileges a long time ago. He hangs a sheet over the doorway.

One day the sheet was down and I made the mistake of looking in. My mother would have been rolling in her grave! I was telling The House Goddess about this and she did what The House Goddess does. She declared in no uncertain terms that if he thought he could pull that in her house, he’d soon find out what was what. As we talked, I began to reflect on the different things parents have done over the years to get the attention of their wayward teens.

I was feeling really bad for the others in that house, but I was feeling even worse for the slob that claimed that space for his own. That kind of reeking disorder is indicative of what is going on within that person. It gives pause, if you know what I mean.

Armed with three contractor sized trash bags and a pair of latex gloves, I invaded Galoot’s space. I didn’t tell his parental unit, and I made his sister go outside so she couldn’t be accused of being a party to the event. I scooped up every item of clothing that was out and not on a hanger. I filled all three bags. It was a nasty business. That room needs to be fumigated!

I actually found an uneaten sub sandwich, wrapped in foil, buried in a laundry basket of dirty clothes!

After loading it all, I left him a note, pinned to the curtain, explaining that if he wanted to know what had happened, to go to my blog. Pops and his intern came home to help his daughter with her bathroom needs and we all had lunch. I wouldn’t comment on what I had done, since the point was to alleviate that parent of any responsibility in the matter. It was a matter of perjury. I didn’t want him involved because this had become my battle. I was the one who decided to act.

Once home, I dumped the contents onto my front yard, and with yet another pair of latex gloves, fished through the mess to sort laundry.  If there was anything in the pockets that needed to be saved, however trivial, it got saved, but other than that, the trash was trashed and the clothes were carefully sorted. Then I began laundering. The dirty socks are still outside. We’re talking teen-aged boys, here. If any of you saw Zits when Jeremy stuck out his foot and a plant wilted, you understand why they’ll stay outside until it’s time for their load. For now, they are getting a good airing. My basement, however has nonetheless taken on a disgusting odor!

I was in the process of putting dinner on the table when TBHG called, fuming and carrying on. The excuses were stellar. His time is limited, he has dinner out on Thursday night for a friend’s birthday, etc. etc. It was all designed for what he thought would be an inevitable and easy negotiation. Oops. Auntie doesn’t negotiate. Ask Kody, John, Troy or Jessica. Auntie says what the deal is and that’s the deal. Either follow the program or suffer the consequences.

We ignored the constant ringing of the phone, and not until I had finished dinner did I pick up. That’s when I told him for the second time to quit wasting time; just get started. He wanted to negotiate but I didn’t give him a chance. Then he committed the fatal error. Do. Not. Tell. Auntie. To. Shut. Up. I hung up.

Interestingly enough, he had time to throw all the wrought iron patio furniture around the back yard, but no time to clean the pigsty. He had time to go to a friend’s to cook up a lie about some of the filthy clothes that were stuffed hither and yon in that pigsty. (They belonged to someone else who got them from someone else who died and he’s gonna press charges. “I’m gonna press charges, too,” he told me in his phone message.) But no time to clean up the pigsty.

This battle probably raged in that house all night, and all because he’s lived in that mess for 18 years and won’t accept that no one else in that house wants it around anymore. He’s also not understanding that at 18, and considering the unnecessary grief he’s caused, that his parental unit can very easily tell him to pack it all up and vamoose. I would, but that’s me. His parental unit isn’t mean. Tricky and sneaky, yeah, you betcha. Mean? No. Emphatically no.

On one level I feel sorry for the kid. He’s had some sad things to have to deal with, but it’s time for him to quit making excuses and start acting his age. “You want this stuff?  Then you’ll need to manage your time very, very carefully. You might have to forego dinner out with your girlfriend. Meanwhile, don’t skip out on work because you owe Auntie $50 in laundry charges!”

I pointed out to him: he had two piles of laundry in front of the washer, so if he was desperate enough for something to wear, he could have done some laundry and that would have been that. My holding his other clothing (the pile on my lawn was about two feet high and five feet in diameter) had nothing to do with the fact that he just didn’t want to be responsible and he was determined to show me what a badass he could be. In the time it took for him to demonstrate his own stupidity in managing a situation, he could have had the room cleaned - before I had finished the last load, which as of this morning is still on the front lawn (I wonder if the grass is dead).

It was more important for him to maintain his persona of mean little kid than it was to show the maturity of an eighteen year old. It’s easy for me to shake my head. I don’t live with the little snot and it wasn’t my patio furniture he flung to the winds last night. But as Big Kitty and I discussed it over dinner last night, given our dispositions and given the fact that our families had cursed us with the vow of the frustrated (I hope you have one just like you one day!), we really don’t think we would have allowed a kid to gain the upper hand in our household. We subscribe to the House Goddess’s way of doing business. We probably would have gone in the other extreme of strict, just to be on the safe side! (We were holy terrors – both of us!)

For someone who doesn’t even know if the folder he receives on graduation will actually contain a diploma (or a letter saying, see you in summer school, sucka), he’s got a lot of nerve tossing the wrought iron patio furniture hither and yon. Like I said, his parental unit is very, very patient. I’m starting to wonder if he doesn’t have a few more surprises he’s waiting to spring on that brat. I sure hope so. I could use the gold brick he excretes if Dad actually parlays my antics into some real sh**! (Come on, Guy, I KNOW you can do it! You are one of the smartest people I know…have some fun. Empty the rest of the smelly mess into the driveway today. I’ll even help! I’ve got more latex gloves!)

As to The Big, Hairy Galoot, the final auntly words, “Kid, I told you I don’t play. It’s time to grow up, face your responsibilities and learn how to deal. Your way doesn’t work. When you destroyed your dad’s property, you sealed the deal with me and there will be hell to pay. If it doesn’t come directly from me, it’ll be the very next time you pull something stupid. Landlords don’t much like holes their walls.”

She calmly set out the tools of her trade, coolly aligning them, caressing the blades as they glinted menacingly in the ribbons of sun that filtered through the tree canopy. She silently advanced, closer and closer. With one perfectly aimed slash, the quarry fell. Not content, she reached behind her, and with the impassive technique of a trained assassin, she opened the brown bottle. She inserted the syringe and emptied its contents into the gaping wound. This one wouldn’t have a chance to marshal his defenses.

Repositioning her weapons, she quietly crept closer to the bigger one. Her outstretched arm had the muscular twist wrought by weight training. She braced herself for the certain resistance this one would doubtless mount due to his sheer bulk, and swung. Snap! He went down, never knowing what got him. Again, she inserted the lethal dosage.
Carefully and quietly, she crawled back to her weapon stash and considered her last victim. She had glimpsed his position in the thicket and realize he was taller than she had anticipated. Furthermore, he was amply protected by the apothecary. She gazed at her arsenal and selected the longest blade.

Getting into the thicket was tough; it was thorny and painful, but without a direct hit to this last enemy, the war would drag on endlessly. It had already gone on long enough. At last she squirmed into position. She froze, hoping she hadn’t attracted attention. She braced her feet, and keeping a wary eye on the apothecary, she sprang. Swish. He was down and she was out of there before the apothecary could react.

The heat was oppressive and the clouds danced overhead with the insouciance of a band of hookers on First Street at dusk. Working alone, she pondered the events that had led to this existence. It had begun promisingly enough, but for some reason the bad guys kept returning and multiplying. The gangs of thugs had settled in despite her growing collection of weaponry and her facility with chemical warfare.

Safe under the canopy, she wiped off her tools and reflected on the early days when she had begun this kind of work - the pleasure it gave her. Granted, there were still moments, but her knees and lower back ached after each job and no matter how hard she worked out, she knew the time would come when there’d be no further profit from the guerrilla tactics her generation had mastered. These days it was all about instant gratification.

She sighed ever so quietly as she inched her way back to the cell. “I gotta get a real job,” she thought.

“Marriage is like a 1953 Studebaker Lowey Starliner. It requires constant work on the desirable things that made you want it in the first place.”  “Steve”

Why are men unable to communicate in relationships? All day long they communicate in their workplaces, but when it comes to the kinds of revelations they need to make in their love lives they suddenly become deaf and mute.

I have a friend whose romantic interest has recently shut down emotionally. There have been subtle changes in the relationship, but the effervescence of the the first year or so has fizzled out. He won’t talk to her.

To be sure, he has a plethora of personal problems that don’t ever seem to get resolved, but he won’t even discuss those with her, let alone allow her to help with them. And she could.

Years ago our good friend Eddie bailed from his toxic marriage. It was a good move. He later met a great woman and as it happened, she met Big Kitty before she met me. She later told me that he was puzzling to her because he yakked on and on about all kinds of things, but never about anything personal. At the time I laughed and said, yeah, he was a Swede. Those little old emotions were locked up in a steel box that had been welded shut, tucked into a waterproof bag, and bound with duct tape. They didn’t come out no way, no how.

But back to my friend. I really get what she’s going through because I’ve gone through it with her guy friend, as well. There was an event that occurred in his life when I first moved to the sunny south and he has yet to tell me about it. And it was no ordinary thing. It was big, it was heart-breaking and it was tough. The thing is, when it happened, I would have been there for him, but I didn’t get the opportunity to be the kind of good friend he needed.

And now this is what he’s doing in his relationship. He’s playing keep away with someone who are sooooo capable, sooooo on top of things, and sooooo wanting to be supportive. It’s one thing to play keep away with me. I get that. But with her?! Is he crazy? Does he have a death wish for the relationship?!!!

Part of me is taking a sensible approach – the teacher approach: he can’t do what he doesn’t know how to do. The other part of me is taking a harder line: an intelligent person involved with another intelligent person - one who can lead the way through the minefield of sharing what’s in the heart – and who won’t open up and lay his cards on the table is in the same boat I was in when I lost an eBay auction. I wasn’t paying attention so I lost.

I don’t have any easy answers for her – only sympathy. On the other hand, I know there’s a piece of 2×4 around here somewhere…

There was a piece in yesterday’s paper about a mother who had moved her family out of Washington, D.C. into Maryland so they could go to school without all the distractions of an urban neighborhood. It was a good idea in that her kids liked their new school and were doing well. There was one hitch in the whole plan. Turns out the school and town had some real issues with racism. Suddenly, her daughters, who were churning out good grades and enjoying the extracurricular activities, were the subjects of racial taunting and waving of the Confederate flag. They got kind of subdued after that, but they kept on keeping on. The last straw was when they saw someone outside their house, taking pictures.

The school tried to bring about some peace, but the flag-waving continued. One mother went so far as to declare that the Confederate flag was part of her son’s heritage.

I want it understood up front that my family had no part in that mess from 1860-1864, nor did they have any part in the Jim Crow nonsense. They were busy harvesting olives and grapes in the north of Italy, and growing fruit in the groves of Sicily. They were raising goats and farming in the mountains near Trieste. They didn’t get here until just after the turn of the last century. So what I am about to say is colored by their experience.

When they got here, like other immigrants, they learned quickly that they had to learn to speak English in short order, and in order to not be kept on the bottom rung forever, they had to leave behind their culture.

I want to focus on that idea of leaving behind a culture in order to be able to function in a civilized fashion in a civilized society. My grandfather was in the position of leaving behind a heritage of Tuscan literature, art and science – he could quote Danté and even named my mother for a Danté character. He could sing the entirety of Rigoletto. He left behind the art of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, not to mention the scientific feats of Gallileo and Brunelleschi’s dome. This was the heritage he had to leave behind in order to become Americanized.

The heritage of the Confederate States of America is a much less honorable one, when you look at what it really stood for. There are those who insist it had nothing to do with slavery, but rather states’ rights. Well, yeah, and the states’ rights they particularly wanted to preserve included the use of slaves to run to massive rice plantations, cotton plantations, tobacco farms, sugar cane plantations…

So now you have this group of people who were descended from those too poor to afford slaves defending a heritage that has highly questionable morality, especially in the sense of Christian morality, which is usually part of the argument for some strange reason. From the vantage point of an outside observer, it looks to me like the only heritage those people want to preserve is the tenuous one that helps them believe they are better than their black brethren. Hmm That doesn’t feel very Christ-like to me.

And to help them demonstrate their superiority, and to cling to their heritage, they terrorize a couple of black girls who are going to school, doing their homework, playing in the band, and doing all the things a normal high school kid should be doing.

These are the same people who loudly proclaim that immigrants need to “talk ‘merican.” (I’ll leave the argument for whose English for another time!) They despise bi-lingual signage and complain about welfare for immigrants. Uh, the immigrants I see around town are all gainfully employed, but again, that’s for another time.

Attilio Pisaneschi had to leave behind his heritage of a beautiful language, the art, music, literature and architecture of Italy. Unlike some of the folks whose heritage involves the inability to accept that they lost a war over slavery, he got over it and made sure his kids spoke English correctly and went to school. His grandkids are college graduates.

Sometimes you just have to leave your heritage behind – like the polyester leisure suits, patent leather platform oxfords, Confederate flag belt buckles and Elvis sideburns.