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September 3, 2018September 5, 2018

51 things that drive me nuts

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This post is “all about me” and all-about-me-isms, inspired by the inanity of self-promotion and the Internet.

Medium article titles that begin with a number: I signed up as a subscriber to Medium some months back, thinking that I would enjoy reading the writing of a lot of smart people. With rare exceptions, I have found the content to be lacking. Every other title begins with a number; 3, 5, 7, and 10 are the most popular. Seven things that will change your life. The 10 most imporant things you need to know. Three steps to your future. The site exemplifies all-about-me-ism, and is turning out to be nothing more than another self-promotional platform.
Passwords: Like you, I have hundreds of them, and I am using software to manage them. My own passwords are hard enough to deal with, but now I also am responsible for keeping track of 91 year-old mother’s passwords. What once were relatively simple tasks to complete, like logging in or changing one’s password, have become onerous occasions of stepping through an endless sequence of security tasks. Which brings me to…
Verification codes: I understand why companies have turned to these as a means to verify that you are who you say you are; it is an extra task that I have become accustomed to. However, my mother, once a tech goddess, no longer can see well, and has some difficulty with processing and information. She also has difficulty with typing, so makes a lot of mistakes. Verification codes are a complete nightmare for her, and therefore, a nightmare to me.
Security questions: Of course, I can usually answer my own security questions, unless they are case-sensitive, which sometimes they are. If you have three that need to be submitted at one time, and you have not consistently used cases in their creation, it is almost impossible to resolve. Add to this scenario, keeping track of my mother’s security questions. I now have a lengthy record for her that includes everything from her social security number to the name of her first pet, first teacher, favorite teacher, first car, color of her first car, where she met my father, etc. Sometimes she can remember these things, and sometimes not.
Frauds: People who are not who they pretend to be. See 5 through 10.
Phishers: We all have received a phish in our email or messages. Some of us have fallen for them, some of us have not. I don’t judge people who have fallen for phishing schemes. I don’t even judge people for liking the band Phish! Phishers, however, are evil people who prey on the trust of others for financial gain. Often these people are elderly, and sometimes, they are young and naive. I have witnessed it at both ends in my own family, and fortunately we caught the phish before it caught us.
Donald J. Trump: The So-called President might be the greatest phisher of all time. His phishing scheme is brilliant. He doesn’t even need to steal people’s identities; he has other people do it for him, members of the dark web, so that his continuous stream of (f)lies can be broadcast over the news lake, hooking unsuspecting and unknowing prey on his line. He reels them in and eats them for lunch. He phishes for souls.
Liars: See previous.
Cheats: See number 6.
Back-stabbers: You know who they are in your own life, in the Whitehouse, in the workplace, at school, and possibly in your own family, and we get to see them in action every day on broadcast and social media. Life has become one giant reality television show, with each person out for him/herself.
Recruitment gamers: This is a very specific type of fraud that I have to deal with in my profession. There is a class of people, who game the market research industry to qualify for and participate in paid research studies for which they are not qualified. They are a complete waste of time and money.
Bad drivers: See items 12 through 16
Oblivious drivers: You know them, you might be one of them. They are the ones who back out of parking spaces without looking. They are the ones putting on their makeup or texting at a stoplight. They are the ones who don’t hear honking, or notice a long line of traffic piled up behind them.
Indecisive drivers: You may remember the Portlandia skit where there are two cars at a four-way stop, and each of the drivers politely indicates for the other driver to go. They sit at the intersection forever. That is real. And then, there are the people who can’t decide which way to turn, whether to turn, or which lane to drive in, or which parking spot they want. Pain in the ass.
Angry drivers: Scary.
Drunk drivers: Dangerous. Stay home or take a Lyft.
Bad cyclists: Entitlement is a dangerous thing, especially when you don’t wear a helmet or follow the rules of the road. A cyclist once chased me down and swore at me after weaving around me to cut me off from a turn that I had started long before he was in the picture. I almost hit him.
Bad pedestrians: The same people who are oblivious drivers are probably oblivious pedestrians. Pedestrian right-of-way does not mean that you can cross the street at any time, any place, without looking up from your mobile screen.
Narrow shoes: Lately, I have been inspecting bare feet in sandals, and have noticed that a majority of women have deformed feet, giant bunions and corns, the product of narrow shoes. I myself have a bunion on my left foot. Turns out that foot is wider than my right foot. For some reason, our culture values dainty feet and daity shoes on women, which has led to millions of deformed feet. Drives me batty.
Indecisiveness: My own is bad enough. In others, it is intolerable.
Dinner: What should we have tonight?
Phone solicitors: “Don’t hang up. This is not a sales call,” is a sure sign that it is. I have gone to picking up and hanging up without even listening. The National Do Not Call Directory doesn’t work. Nothing works.
Nickel-and-diming: Being a good citizen, I give to a number of charitable causes that matter to me. It drives me bonkers to have them call me every other month, asking if I couldn’t just up my donation a few dollars more. And then there are the airlines with their add-on fees, the assisted living center where my mom lives, and the list goes on.
Bad food: There is no excuse for it. Cooking is not brain surgery. Fresh. Whole. Use herbs and spices.
Doctors: In the pocket of big pharma. They don’t know as much as they pretend to know. Most of them don’t care about their patients, let alone care for them.
Bad bosses: There are a lot of them, people who have climbed the ladder through fraudulent means or by virtue of having a penis, or by virtue of pretending to have one.
Boring work: We all do a lot of it for a paycheck.
Undependable people: People who say that they will do something and then fail to do it. In corporate life, this is particularly insidious when you are doing a “collaborative” project and you end up doing all of the work, and the other person ends up taking all the credit.
Calves liver: No, just no. I don’t like it in a house, or with a mouse, or in a tree. Your mother does not make it better than my mother. It is just gross, no matter how over or undercooked it is, even if it is slathered in caramelized onions. Ick.
Bad coffee: Starbuck is the worst. The best part of waking up is not Folgers. Mr. Coffee is dead. Drip.
Bad smells: Feces, farts, rotten eggs, body odor, perfume, skunky pot, bad breath, wet dog, dog breath, especially after your dog has polished off a snack from the cat box.
Kids loose in parking lots: I don’t blame them; I blame…
Inattentive parents: We live on a park that has a porta-john, and one day I looked out and saw a kid bouncing up and down on top of it, and some sort of brownish liquid was splashing up like old faithful. His dad was standing nearby focused on his phone. I politely suggested that he might not want Johnny to do that, and he just shrugged. If you don’t want to watch your children, don’t have them.
Cancer: It kills. I’ve had it. My friends and relatives have had it. We have all had enough of it. I pray that science will prevail, and that one day a magic bullet will be discovered.
Death: There is no cure.
War: I am against it.
Irresponsibility: Making mistakes is a natural consequence of living. Taking responsibility for our mistakes and not blaming others is difficult, but not impossible. No excuses. Just apologize, forgive yourself for your mistakes, and forgive others for their transgressions, and move forward. Life is too short for the blame game.
Greed: 99.9% of the problems in our world are caused by greed.
Inspirational quotations: They do not inspire me.
Climate change: I hate what we are doing to our planet. No laughing matter.
People who do not believe in climate change: Idiots.
Religious extremism: There is no place for it in the world.
Extremism in general: Very bad things happen to good people when extremism prevails.
Platitudes: Good things come to those who wait. WTF? Hard work always pays off. Really? Tell me about it. Great minds think alike. I hope not.
TED talks: A boring, formulaic self-promotional tool. Formula: 1. Create well-crafted visuals 2. Open with a joke or cute story 3. Plan a spontaneous moment. 4. Make a statement with complete certainty. 5. Don’t forget to have a snappy refrain that you can repeat in your talk at least 7 times. 6. Be relatable by telling the audience a story about your institutionalization, or the time when your family lived on the streets and ate bugs, because we can all relate to that, right? 7. Make sure that your thesis is one that nobody in their right mind would agree with. Note: Always have 7 steps. TED talks are nothing more than personal infomercials.
Social media has become like MySpace: Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) have all become inane platforms for self-promotion. You remember what happened to MySpace, don’t you? Social media should be social, not “all about me.”
Workplace politics: You can’t avoid them, no matter how hard you try. Best solution I have found is to find the door.
All-about-me-ism: Everything today is “all about me.” What about my needs? Identity politics and its prevalence in public life is an example of it. With each day, we become ever more fractured. We believe that our problems are unique to “our tribe (I know, ‘tribe’ is not politically correct),” be it by skin color, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, non-gender, sexual orientation, or whatever. We are all people! And, please don’t tell me to shut up because I can’t understand your experience because I am a member of a priviledged class. You are right, I am priviledged, and I am sorry for that, and you don’t understand my experience either. Nobody understands anybody’s experience, but we can, and must, try to understand each other and work it out together if there is ever any hope for our society.
Anti-government-ism: Present anti-government sentiments in this country are truly terrifying. Imagine a country without laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Imagine a country where equal treatment under the law is an impossibility. Imagine a country without publicly supported roads, bridges, schools, and medical research. Imagine a future in which Donald Trump is king and he has gotten rid of government as we have known it. Imagine hell.
-isms: Yep, they all drive me bonkers.
Lists: They are terrific when I go shopping, or have a lot to get done. Otherwise, I would rather read some thoughtful prose. I apologize for this list against lists.

May 13, 2018May 14, 2018

I am sixth-born, the youngest of five surviving children, and I owe my life to my mother; she brought me into this world, and then made sure that I had what it took to become a conscientious and moral human being. She provided me and my siblings with delicious and nutritious food, shelter, clothing, a sense of wonder about the world and universe, an appreciation of all forms of artistic endeavor. She taught us the value of humor in the face of adversity. Above all, she gave us love, and in demonstrating love, taught us how to love others.

My mother is a survivor, and given what is known today about the lasting effects of childhood trauma I have come to understand that it is nothing short of a miracle that she has been as incredible a parent as she has been. She suffered countless injustices at the hands of many adults as a child, first living as a ward of Los Angeles after her mother abandoned her in the hospital at birth, and then for the next 14 years in the Los Angeles foster-care system during the Great Depression. She had very little that she could call her own, save for a little rag doll she had made whose name was Miranda, and even Miranda was not a permanent fixture; her foster-mother took Miranda away from my mother because she felt that my mother had “an unhealthy” attachment to her.

When she was an adolescent, and her foster parents felt that she was too difficult to handle, they shipped her off to Denver to live with her “real” family—my mother’s people, sinners, like her. The train she rode on to Denver was mostly full of Japanese people being shipped to internment camps in Colorado, a fact that left a strong mark in my mother’s consciousness. For a few surreal years during the war, she lived with her biological mother, where she was thrown into the world of Denver society, after her austere childhood in LA. Her older half-sisters and their friends taught her how to smoke, drink, dress, and how to be part of the popular crowd at East High School. For the first time in her life she had friends, and people thought she was pretty.

After high school, she started as a freshman at the University of Denver. She was rushed by Pi Phi, a point of pride and jealousy from her half sisters. She met my father in one of her first college classes right after the war. They married somewhat quickly for the reasons that people did back in those days. She dropped out of college, and had babies. And then, she had more babies, and after that a couple more.

Although my parent’s marriage was relatively long-lasting, it was never good. My father, who had been through WWII as a strafing pilot in the Pacific Theater, in all likelihood, suffered from PTSD. He had a volatile temper, which he mostly exercised on my mother when he had too much to drink. In spite of this my mother stood by his side through undergraduate school, medical school, internship, and residencies. She might not have had she not been trapped by children, and a lack of her own means for making a living.

Because his education was paid for by the government through the GI Bill, he went back into the navy to repay his debt. He was stationed on a ship in the Mediterranean when I was born, returning from duty when I was 6 months old. My mother managed to muster the resources to leave him by the time I was 9 months old after a violent incident that made her fear for hers and her chidren’s safety, and so it was that I came to be raised by a single mother, at a time when that was not so common. I joke that I was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I often thank my mother for sticking it out in her sorrowful marriage for as long as she did; if she hadn’t, I would not have been born.

When I was two, my mother, at the age of 35, began as a freshman in college again. She woke each morning at 4 or 5 to do her homework, and was careful to schedule her classes so that she could be home with us for meals. She made sure we had a hot breakfast, whether we ate it or not. We lived in married student housing at first, and then in a series of other circumstances, some better than others, over the next several years. She finished her Ph.D. when I was 9, truly a remarkable feat given all of the barriers that she faced as a single mother in sixties.

She went on to become an English and Women’s Studies professor. All of us children benefitted from our mother’s education; she showed us what was possible through her example. There was never a time in my life when I didn’t know that I would go to college myself one day and become something, someone. That all five of us children went to good colleges of our own choosing, and that we each felt empowered to follow the paths that we chose is testament to our mother.

My mother is 90, soon to be 91. She has hated getting old, and more than anything, being dependent on others for her physical and emotional well-being. Like most parents, she has found it especially difficult being dependent upon her children. Earlier this year, she worried aloud that she had not done enough for us. She fretted about all of the parenting mistakes she imagines having made. I am sure she made a few mistakes, because what parent does not make mistakes? What she got right far outweighs her wrongs, and her children are proof of it.

Thank you, Mama, for giving me life, for helping me live it through some very difficult times, and for being with me every day. You are a wonderful and courageous human being. I am proud to be your daughter.

April 13, 2018April 15, 2018

My Friend John: Part III

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Read Part I
Read Part II

Back in Santa Fe for the summer, Blake and I moved into a rambling adobe house in a small compound off of Canyon Rd. That summer between Junior and Senior year turned out to be an emotional roller coaster that resulted in Blake’s* and my break-up in the first month of our senior year, and I asked Christy if she could recommend me for house sitting jobs to her friends. I couldn’t afford much for rent, since I already had paid for my room on campus, but I didn’t feel like living where I would constantly be reminded of all of the friendships that had been destroyed in the wake of Blake’s and my relationship, and I didn’t want to see Blake any more than I had to. She offered to rent their guest quarters to me for a small sum. It was mutually advantageous since they were traveling a lot. My dad agreed to help me pay for it, and also offered to come and beat up Blake. I accepted the money.

Looking back at that period in my life from here, I can see that I was a mess. This year, and the years that followed, were full of missteps and poor judgement calls on my part.

Although not consciously trying to become somebody else, that is what I was doing. I had always been a granola girl, crunchy, exactly what one would expect of a Colorado girl. I was an athlete, outdoorsy, and natural. I wore my hair long, often in a French braid, wore no make-up, and donned colorful casual clothing. I did not smoke, drank very little, and had been a dedicated student. Blake was my male equivalent, or so I thought, my destined match; some said we looked like we belonged together, which I mistakenly believed meant that we did.

The demise of our relationship had not been sudden; it likely began to erode the day it started in the first week of our freshman year, but it only became obvious to me in the first semester of our Junior year for reasons I did not understand until many years later. Blake ended up transferring to Annapolis for a semester, ostensibly to figure things out away from me. We had only half-broken things off though, and I went to see him over spring break, during which time we decided to make another go of it. In retrospect, that was a huge mistake. We spent the following summer tormenting each other with petty jealousies, and then the dam broke. At first it was a trickle of leaked lies, secrets that I was among the last to know, and then it was a flood.

After that, I broke it off for good. I had probably read one too many Greek tragedies at that point, pre-disposing me to dramatic expressions of mourning. I cut my hair short, started wearing a lot of black, and began my new less-than-healthy lifestyle as a smoker. I moved from one unsuccessful relationship to another. I did everything to distance myself from who I had been with him. I felt confused and angry.

In this condition, living in the guest quarters at the Ehrlichmans’ turned out to be less than ideal. Unlike when I was staying there as a house sitter, John and Christy were home a lot. I felt like they were too aware of me and my comings and goings. Christy was offended by my newfound habit of smoking, and had made it clear that she didn’t want me doing it anywhere in the vicinity of the house. I had also become a bit of a partier, and came home at odd hours of the night, or didn’t, and I did not always come home alone. John and Christy worried about me, which was something I didn’t really want. I felt cramped and watched over, and I sensed that they felt intruded upon, so I decided to move back on campus for my last semester.

One highpoint of living there that semester, was when my mother came to visit and got to meet John in person. They seemed to genuinely like each other, and why not? They had so much in common: a couple of years apart in age, both had five children, each divorced, both had lived through a lot of the same things in their lives. The age-set effect is a powerful cultural binder. In the end, meeting John, and talking to him humanized him for her just as it had for me; she shifted her perspective on the Watergate criminals. Good men can become bad men, especially ambitious men.

After moving out, I didn’t work for John and Christy very much. I was too busy with my senior thesis, and all of the other activities of my last semester, but I remained on good terms with them. I invited John up to campus when I learned that a prosecutor from the Watergate hearings was going to be on campus to discuss Executive Privilege. John wanted to be there. He and I sat together at the event in the front row. When the speaker came in, he and John met eyes and nodded in recognition at one another.

John’s presence at this event changed it from one in which a man on the “correct side,” the prosecutor, would be talking to an audience that completely agreed with everything that he would say to an event that forced the audience to seriously consider alternative views. Namely, we were forced to examine executive privilege in the context of Watergate from the perspective of the accused and convicted. Nixon repeatedly used cries of executive privilege to prevent the testimony of his closest counselors, not to protect them, but to protect his office. Throughout the discussion, John was courteous, even gracious, in his interactions with the college’s guest. Many people later said that he had really made it a great moment for them.

John and Christy were there for me in meaningful ways throughout the remainder of the year, inviting me over for dinner, and even attending my graduation ceremony, something my own father did not do. After graduation, I moved to Toronto to live with my new love, Will*, but that move was short-lived, and I returned to Santa Fe before the summer was over. Upon returning, I stayed with a guy I had met during my last semester, a handsome alum named Tom* who was several years older than I. I ran into him after I got back into town, and mentioned to him that I was looking for a place to live, and he offered a spot at his place. He was living in a cabin up in an Arroyo near the college. It was a wonderful place, but it had no electricity and no heat, so with winter coming, we were forced to find someplace else to live within a couple of months.

I asked John and Christy if we could rent their guest quarters. They agreed to it, and so we moved in and played house there briefly. I was not in love with Tom, and he turned out to be untrustworthy in some fundamental ways. I fled Santa Fe, seeking refuge with my mother in Denver, leaving Tom behind living at Christy’s and John’s. When he finally moved out of the Ehrlichman’s a few months later he left their place a mess. I ended up owing them money, and they never forgave me for leaving them in the lurch. That was the end of my friendship with them. I tried to make amends, but I never succeeded.

Christy and John ended up divorcing in the early nineties, and John moved to Atlanta. He remarried. I had completely lost touch with both he and Christy by that point. And then in 1999, two years after my own father died, I heard that he also had died at the same age as my father, 73. I felt sad that I had lost touch with him. He was not a great man, but he was a man; he had his flaws, just as I have mine. He was my friend for a time, and I will always cherish that.

I leave you, and this story with this quotation from John that I found in his NYT Obituary, a lesson for current times, children, and councelors:

”I abdicated my moral judgments and turned them over to somebody else, and if I had any advice for my kids, it would be never — to never, ever — defer your moral judgments to anybody: your parents, your wife, anybody.” [NYT, 1999]

THE END

Note: This story is a recollection of events that took place nearly four decades ago. In creating this narrative, I have constructed dialogue that approximates real conversations that I might have had.

*Pseudonym

April 4, 2018April 15, 2018

My Friend John: Part II

Portrait

Read Part I

Summer flew by between sophomore and junior year, and soon I was back in the throes of school, but I continued to work for John and Christy. The job paid well, and they gave me the run of the house.

It was a tastefully decorated rambling Santa Fe adobe house up on a hill. I enjoyed spending time there. Christy had been in the interior design business before meeting John, and she had furnished this house to be comfortable, not too fussy.

Christy and I got along pretty well, especially in the first year and a half of our relationship. She had come to trust me, and to rely on me to be there when she and John could not be, but she did not confide in me. There was something slightly cool and a little brittle about her, but she was generous and kind toward me.

One day I had arrived at the house to babysit, and found John home alone. Christy was out picking up Michael from a play date, and was running a little late. John invited me to sit. He put down the newspaper he had been reading. Making small talk, I said, “I love the furniture in this room! It is so comfortable.” John said, “Yes, Christy’s work! I am afraid I can’t take credit for that.”

He went on, “That is how we met. She was one of the first people I met when I got out of prison. I was shopping for furniture. I felt completely lost at the time,” he mused, “and she came to my rescue.”

I asked him what prison had been like. He laughed uncomfortably. “Not too bad…it wasn’t quite a country club, but it wasn’t all that bad.”

“How did you spend your days there?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Well, I read a lot, played a bit of tennis, and after a while I was allowed to leave on furlough to work. It wasn’t high security or anything like that.”

Didn’t sound like the prison part of prison had exacted much punishment. “Hmmm…I said, sounds like a country club to me! How much do you think it cost us taxpayers to keep you there?”

“I know it was on the order of forty thousand per year,” John replied.

“Now that is a crime if you ask me,” I said, “That is almost four times what my mother makes as a teacher! You should have done hard labor for what you did!”

John laughed. “And here I thought you were my friend.” We went on to talk about what might have been a better alternative to prison. “My punishment came in losing my family, and my dignity, not in going to prison,” he said. I think that was true. He agreed that there would have been better ways to make reparations, consequences with more value to our society that would cost taxpayers less. White collar criminals should have to pay their own way.

I loved working at John’s and Christy’s house, and getting a glimpse into the life of someone who was infamous, and there was some comfort in learning that they were ordinary people with ordinary problems and aspirations. They fretted about what to make for dinner, who was going to pick up the kids, and they had a few rip-roaring arguments, one right in front of me that ended with Christy throwing a wad of keys at John and stomping out of the room. He deserved it, as I remember.

John was always very nice to me, but he had a mean streak that I witnessed a few times, mostly aimed at Christy, but I also saw it rise up when anything related to Nixon came up. He hated him, a fact I first came to realize one day when I was doing my homework in his office, something he encouraged me to do. I was bored, and started browsing his bookshelves. I pulled out The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, and began skimming through it; John had marked it up with underlines and margin notes. It made for fascinating reading, but also gave me some insight into how John’s ambition and misplaced sense of duty toward the office of the president had clouded his judgement. He considered Nixon to be a complete liar. After reading his margin notes, I came to think that he blamed Nixon for what had happened to his life more than he blamed himself.

One time when I was house sitting, I was hunting around in the office for a legal pad to write on. I opened a drawer and saw a file folder in it that was labeled “The 18-minute Tape Gap.” I immediately closed the drawer, feeling as if I had stumbled upon something that was possibly dangerous. I felt a surge of adrenaline. In the press, the tape gap continued to be a source of great speculation. Some people believed that it was a damning conversation between Nixon and Haldeman. Nobody ever discovered the truth, but I am sure that somebody knew the truth. Maybe it was Ehrlichman, I thought.

The next few nights, I lay awake in the room next to the office obsessing about the folder and whether I should look at its contents. I knew that it was wrong to; it was a level of snooping that was morally reprehensible, and yet, after several days, I decided to look. I nearly fainted from anticipation as I opened the folder, and to my great disappointment, it contained nothing but newspaper clippings about the tape gap. I felt pretty stupid to have thought that I would find the smoking gun sitting in almost plain sight.

By the end of my Junior year, I had been working in the Ehrlichman household for a year, and had developed a genuine friendship with John, but I felt vaguely ashamed to admit it, especially to my mother who despised all of the Nixon cronies and criminals. Just thinking about the possibility of a conversation with her about my job made me sweat. I decided that I needed to tell her though. It seemed like too big a thing to hide from her.

That summer when school was out, before my return to Santa Fe for my exciting summer job at the “Pink Adobe” in the “Dragon Room” as a cocktail waitress, I told my mother about my job at the Ehrlichmans’, and also about the unexpected friendship that John and I had developed. I told her how much I liked him. He seemed smart, nice, and like a real person. He reminded me of my own father who I didn’t know all that well. She, initially, seemed surprised, and a little concerned, but she found the news interesting, at least, and she was willing to withhold judgement for the time being.

Read Part III

Note: This story is a recollection of events that took place nearly four decades ago. In creating this narrative, I have constructed dialogue that approximates real conversations that I might have had.

March 31, 2018April 4, 2018

My Friend John: Part I

Towards the end of my sophomore year at St. John’s College, Blake*, my then-boyfriend and I were hanging around Peterson Student Center near the mailboxes chatting, waiting for the mail to arrive, as people did back in the days before email. It so happened that the student job bulletin board, a physical entity where people posted jobs for students, was also located there. A man in his fifties, balding, bearded, and over-weight, walked in the door, and pinned a note card to the board.

Blake’s eyes darted toward the man, and his face brightened as he leaned in close and whispered, “You see that guy?”

I looked and nodded affirmatively.

“I know him.” Blake said. “He was a neighbor of ours in Virginia.”

“Wow,” I exclaimed, “How weird. Are you going to say hi to him or something?”

“Nah” Blake said. “He wouldn’t even know me. I was just a kid.”

“Hmmm…is he somebody?” I asked. Blake grew up in the D.C. suburbs, had gone to Langley High School, an affluent high school attended by the children of Washington’s elite. His own family was tied into the political establishment in mysterious ways.

“Well, yeah, actually, that is John Ehrlichman.”

“No way!” I said. “Old Sneer Face?” My mother had forced me to watch the Watergate hearings when I was in sixth grade. History in the making, she had said, just as important as the first man to walk on the moon. I remembered being bored out of my skull, and not understanding what was going on. I had no idea what was at stake. To entertain myself, I had come up with nicknames for the various characters. Ehrlichman was “Old Sneer Face.” Haldeman was “Flat-Top.” John Dean was “The Rat.” I hated them, even though I didn’t understand what they had done wrong. They were the enemy.

“Yep,” Blake replied. “I am certain of it.”

By then the man had left and we had moved over to the job board. The contact name on the posting was “Christy Peacock” and it was a tutoring job for her 7 year-old son.

Blake looked at me with a shit-eating grin. “Trust me, you should apply for that job,” and so I did.

I called the number on the card, and a day later made my way to the house for my interview with Christy. When I got there, I was warmly greeted by a friendly golden retriever whose name escapes me. I was surprised to see how young Christy was. She appeared to be in her early 30’s, a petit redhead with a pixie-cut and smooth skin. Perhaps the man who posted the job was her father? I was still a bit skeptical about its being Ehrlichman. I got the job, and we agreed that I would start the next week. Christy said that her husband would pick me up and bring me over.

On the following Tuesday night at the appointed time, the man who had posted the job was waiting for me at the curb in a late-model manual transmission Toyota Celica. Definitely her husband and not her father. Hardly seemed like the kind of car John Ehrlichman would drive. I opened the door and poked my head in.

“Hi,” he said, “I assume you are Anne?”

“Yeah!” I said as I slid into the seat.

“I’m John. Nice to meet you. Christy has said very complimentary things about you!” His name is John. My heart pounded. I thought, well, John is a common name.

I studied his face, racking my brain to match this man to Old Sneer Face, but I couldn’t see it. This John seemed warm, friendly, charming, the complete opposite of the calloused and angry man I remembered from our black and white television screen. He had a nice smile, not a sneer, and he had a jolly beard.

We made small talk on the short trip to their house. He talked about their two sons, one seven, the other not quite three. The boy I would be tutoring was Christy’s son from a previous marriage. He had been diagnosed with dyslexia, and they didn’t want him to lose gains that he made during the year in his reading. He didn’t live with them full-time, so the tutoring job would last just through the summer.

For the next several weeks, John picked me up and drove me to their house. He asked me about my studies. We talked about philosophy, politics, and a variety of topics, but he never gave away his identity, and I was still uncertain that he was who Blake said he was. I was curious, but I didn’t dare ask. He told me that he was writing a novel. Over time, I found myself spending more and more time at John’s and Christy’s, first to babysit, and then to housesit when they traveled.

On my first night of babysitting, I went in to use a bathroom that I hadn’t used before. Upon entering it I saw a large framed Doonsbury cartoon. It was about Watergate, and specifically about John Ehrlichman. I wish that I could remember what it said. What I do remember is that Gary Trudeau had inscribed it to John with warm wishes, as if they were friends. I don’t remember the exact words of the inscription, but it implied affectionate familiarity. I knew then with certainty that Blake had been right.

I continued to interact with John on the same terms as we had been. I burned with curiosity though. Then one day, when he drove me back home after a babysitting gig, he asked me about my family. Among the things I told him were that I was the youngest of five—two girls and three boys, that my father was a career military man, and that my parents had divorced.

“Really? I have five children from my first marriage. Same distribution!”

“You do?” I asked. “How old are they? Where are they?”

“Grown,” he paused before saying, “I am a little estranged from most of them.”

I wasn’t sure what to do with such adult information. I was not quite twenty, and found myself feeling vaguely embarrassed at hearing a man who was my father’s age with so much emotion in his voice. I wondered if that is how my father thought about his own children.

“How so?” I asked uncertainly. “I mean, what happened?”

“I went to prison,” he said matter-of-factly. “I don’t think they will ever forgive me for what I put them through.”

Not knowing what to say, I offered, “People can be pretty forgiving. Maybe with time…”

We rode along in silence the rest of the way.

Read Part II

Note: This story is a recollection of events that took place nearly four decades ago. In creating this narrative, I have constructed dialogue that approximates real conversations that I might have had. Doing this exercise, reminds me of just how thin the line is between fact and fiction.

*Pseudonym

March 19, 2018March 19, 2018

Cups, pets, and meaningful objects

The Schwa, Soren’s current black and white cat, and brother to Jasper Junior (JJ) who recently passed away, pondering all of this fuss about the Lupe cup.

A few weeks ago when I was helping my mother move to assisted living, and packing up dishes that she would be taking with her, I reclaimed a coffee cup that had been mine, leftover from my last stint of living at home. I was 31 years-old, and Ken and I had just returned from the Azores where we did our dissertation fieldwork—I was pregnant with our daughter, Zoë. The cup, a black and white coffee mug with a repeated graphic of a tuxedo cat, is what I have always called “my Lupe cup,” so named for Ken’s and my first jointly cared for pet, “Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe.”

As a graduate student at Brown I worked part-time in the anthropology library at Giddings House. It was one of the most boring jobs on the planet, but a good job for getting paid to do homework. One morning, Bob, one of my classmates, popped his head in. “Hey Anne, I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor?”

“Depends,” I responded cautiously. “Like what?”

“Could you keep an eye on my box of kittens while I go to class?” Bob opened the box revealing the six squirmy fur balls.

My heart skipped a few beats. “Sure! I would love to do that.”

An hour and a half later, Bob returned for his box, and left one kitten lighter. I had picked out a hefty black and white female with giant paws. For the rest of my library shift, the kitten sat contentedly on my shoulder purring and sleeping while I studied. When mid-afternoon rolled around, I gathered my belongings, and walked over to Ken’s office with my new kitten on my shoulder.

When I got to Ken’s office, he was busily working, as usual.

“Hi,” I said, “How are things?”

“Give me a few minutes,” he said without lifting his eyes from his screen, “I just need to finish this one email.”

Had he noticed the furry critter on my shoulder? He didn’t seem to have. I stood next to his desk expectantly. He finally looked up at me. I grinned. He returned a stern gaze.

“No,” he said, “Just no. I don’t like cats.”

“Aw, come on,” I pleaded.

“No,” he said adamantly.

“Okay, I will give her back to Bob. I told him I might not be able to keep her, but could you just do me a little favor?”

“Depends what it is.”

“Can you just hold her until I get back from my class? After that I will call Bob and arrange to return her.”

I knew I had been devious, as devious as Bob had been with me. Only the most callous and hard-hearted person, can resist a kitten. When I returned after class, Ken was busily typing away with a little black kitten curled up sleeping in his lap.

“Okay, I am back,” I said, “I can take her now.”

He looked up at me. This time he was grinning. She had won him over. “No,” he said, “She’s mine.”

Our kitten went nameless for a couple of weeks. We just couldn’t decide on a good name for her. We thought with her markings she looked like a Catholic nun, and settled on Guadalupe.

Lupe turned out to be as good a cat as ever was. She grew quickly into an extremely large cat. Bob speculated that this litter was part Maine Coon cat due to the number of extra toes and overall size of the kittens. Lupe had two extra toes on each of her paws, and while at first sight she was a tuxedo cat, upon closer inspection, she was an extremely dark tabby, especially noticeable when she was laying in the sun, as cats are wont to do. She was a gentle giant.

Many people think that cats are not very adaptable, but that was not so with her. While we had her, she adapted to many changes and several moves quite easily. She lived with other people for two long stints of her life, one that included living with my mother and her dog Maude when Ken, Zoë, and I moved to California to go work at Apple in 1993. That is how the Lupe cup had come to live in my mother’s cabinet; an artifact of our having lived with her, of our cat having lived with her. That cup had meaning for her, and a different meaning for me.

Today, as I was loading the dinner dishes, I noticed the Lupe cup in the sink. My son, Soren, home from college for spring break, had used it. He always favored this cup when visiting my mother as well, not because of his fond memories of Lupe, but because of his fond memories of his beloved Jasper, his black and white gentle giant, one of the cats we got shortly before he was born to fill the void left by Lupe’s sudden demise.

Thinking about this cup and the evocations it stirs in me, makes me feel my mother’s pain. Every object and every piece of furniture in my mother’s apartment had meaning for her, a story hidden within. Helping her select which belongings to take with her to assisted living was a difficult task for me, but it must have been excruciating for her to part with so much of her past life in the many objects she left behind, especially her books, which she once described to me as being “like people.” She said, “They are my friends.” I can’t imagine what it must be like to see one’s life packed up to be forever stored, sold, or shipped off, but I do feel some solace in knowing that many of the things she cherished will continue to bear meaning because they had once belonged to her and have gone to people she loves and who love her.

March 15, 2018

Move over, Harriet and Harry! Make way for Lucy and James.

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As a pre-teen, I fell in love with Harriet the Spy in the way that many pre-teens fell in love with Harry Potter a decade ago. I often attribute my adult profession of anthropologist to my love of Harriet. She was my idol. I dressed up like her, kept a notebook, and even got caught once “spying” at one of my neighbor’s houses in Billings, Montana. I had heard that their house had a dumbwaiter, and in the book Harriet had hidden inside the dumbwaiter to spy. I got caught before I had even found the dumbwaiter! Nonetheless, she inspired me to listen, to watch, and to write.

S. B. Stein’s new Lucy & James series has the potential to captivate a whole new generation of young readers and to inspire young people to go out into the world, to learn everything they can about it, and most importantly to make it a better place.

Lucy and James are young teens, each with strong senses of self; they are moral and global thinkers. Lucy is from New York City, has been homeschooled, but mostly schooled in the Museum of Natural History where her parents both work as diorama artists. (I want that job). Her parents decide that it is time for her to go to “real” school, something she dreads, as she tried it once before and barely lasted a day. Through her own ingenuity, she finds a perfect school, The World Academy, halfway across the planet, and manages to convince her parents to send her there.

Lucy has a passion for animals, especially endangered species, and has set some lofty goals for herself; she wants to save them all. In the first book, she has set her sights on saving the plowshare tortoise of Madagascar. On the Star Ferry en route to the World College she meets James. James, like Lucy was home schooled, or more like “world schooled,” having spent most of his life traveling the world with his tour guide family. He is less cerebral and more physically inclined than Lucy, but he longs for more meaning to his life; he finds his match and meaning with Lucy, and together they take an amazing and dangerous adventure to save the turtles and break up a smuggling ring based in Africa.

I hope that S.B. Stein’s next adventure for Lucy & James, which is set in Iceland, is as riveting as this one! And, I can’t wait for the movies!

February 27, 2018February 27, 2018

Just Say No to Easy Fixes

Many years ago, when I first moved to Portland, Oregon from Colorado, I began suffering from a bout of depression, undoubtedly related to the absence of sunshine (Solar Affective Disorder). It wasn’t a true clinical depression, as I could still function relatively well. The worst symptom for me was how irritable I was. I felt that my irritability was getting in the way of my work relationships, and I mentioned it to my primary care physician who was more than happy to prescribe 10 mg of Prozac for the condition.

I began taking the drug, and immediately felt more energized with improvements in my mood. After about four months, I decided that I would stop taking it. My doctor, didn’t see why I would want to stop taking it if it was working. “I don’t want to be dependent on a drug,” I had said. “I would prefer to figure out how to be happy without it.” I tapered off it, and have never looked back. I think the drug was a good thing for me in that moment; it helped me to break some mental behavioral habits that I had fallen into, but it didn’t seem like something I wanted to be locked into for life.

A couple of years later, a teacher suggested evaluating our middle-school daughter for ADD. We did that, and left the doctor’s office with a prescription for Adderall. I felt ambivalent about it at the time, as it seemed wrong to me that so many children were being put on drugs for the sake of classroom management, and frankly, nobody really knows what the long-term impact of drugs like these will have on children’s developing bodies and brains. We gave it a go anyway. Our daughter began taking the meds, and we could see an improvement in her ability to concentrate. After about ten days on the drug, however, she began to complain of headaches, and generally not feeling great. By the end of a month, she was still complaining, so we honored her wishes and took her off it. We have never looked back.

Recently, in my own life, after going through treatment for an early-stage breast cancer, and then having a serious post-surgical infection that required the use of six different antibiotics to cure it, I experienced a bout of anxiety and depression. I had to take a leave of absence from work, as I was fairly dysfunctional. When I tried to get my short-term disability (STD) insurance to cover during my absence from work, I was denied. I wondered if I should appeal the decision and began doing research. I learned that STD will deny coverage for mental health absences if the patient is not on drugs and not seeing a psychiatrist at least twice a week. I had said/done all the wrong things.

Of course, my primary care physician offered to put me on drugs when I casually mentioned that I was experiencing anxiety and depression, but I had declined. My reason for declining was that I had no idea what was causing my altered mental state. I suspected that it was the last antibiotic that I was on, Zyvox, a weak MAOI, but it also could have been the result of dealing with the traumas I had endured for the months prior, or the fact that my situation at work was less than stellar, or that due to my cancer treatment my estrogen level was at zero, or all of the above. I wanted to solve the problem through proper nutrition and exercise, which is what ultimately I did. I did yoga, walked and went bike riding daily with my daughter. I rested. After about six weeks, the anxiety and depression dissipated, and I was back to being myself. It upset me that the insurance, which I had paid for, and never tried to use until then, would not cover me unless I were on drugs, as if somehow being on drugs proves that one is suffering from a bona fide mental illness.

This morning, I stumbled upon an article about menopause, and treating it with ADHD drugs. During menopause, as estrogen declines many women experience what is known as “brain fog,” an inability to concentrate for which many doctors are prescribing attention deficit disorder drugs. Then I Googled “Menopause and ADHD.” Lo and behold, a slew of articles popped up touting the benefits of all sorts of amphetamines for menopausal women. It turns out that doctors are handing out amphetamines to women like candy. I have several friends and relatives who are taking them, ostensibly to treat their late-diagnosed cases of ADD. No doubt, menopausal women experience hormone related attention issues, but I would argue that taking amphetamines is not a wonderful long-term solution. The list of side effects for amphetamines is daunting, and some of the long-term mental and physical consequences are dire.

What disturbs me most about the suggestion that menopausal symptoms, and menopausal women, should be treated with powerful psychoactive drugs is that it reflects the medical industry’s continued view of women as psychologically fragile. I am reminded of a story my mother tells of having high blood pressure back in the sixties that began as the result of taking birth control pills. Her doctor prescribed Meprobamate, a tranquilizer, a practice that was driven by the belief that women are prone to neurosis by virtue of their hormonal imbalances. The drug was intended to subdue her as much as it was to lower her blood pressure.

Gender bias in diagnoses and treatments is a well documented phenomenon that doesn’t just have an impact on women; it has an impact on everybody. According to the World Health Organization, men suffer from mental health disorders at the same level as women, but “doctors are more likely to diagnose depression in women compared with men, even when they have similar scores on standardized measures of depression or present with identical symptoms.” Furthermore, being female “is a significant predictor of being prescribed mood altering psychotropic drugs” (https://tinyurl.com/yythl5d), a fact that bothers me greatly.

I am not anti-medicine. There are many compelling reasons for people to take medications for mental health issues, for hormonal imbalances, and for any number of other health issues. I feel strongly, based on my own family’s experiences, that doctors are too willing to hand out pills as easy fixes to difficult problems. Looking at people’s whole lives–their families, diets, cultures, physical and mental activities–and helping people make changes without lifetime use of drugs should be a preferred goal. We need to question the biases and motives of our medical practitioners. They do not know everything, and they come with all of the cultural baggage the rest of us do.

January 26, 2018January 26, 2018

I Am My Own Orchestra

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I played the cello in my childhood. I chose it over the violin or viola because it was bigger and bolder, and had a voice that more resembled mine. I sometimes regretted that decision when I found myself lugging my cello to school and back during Montana winters. Mostly though, I loved my cello, the mellow sound it made when I accidentally played it correctly, and the way it felt to play a tune with the other people in the orchestra. I thank my mother for tolerating the squeaks I undoubtedly produced, and for renting my instrument, something I took for granted when it was likely a hardship for her.

In seventh grade, when I went to school at Centennial Junior High in Boulder, Colorado, the orchestra teacher was Mrs. Ford. I loved her, and she inspired me to want to practice. We lived on my mother’s family’s farm at the time. My mother was in her “season of loss,” that stage in life when one seems to be losing everything. She had recently lost her mother, then her job, and now was taking care of her sister, Cynthia, who was dying of breast cancer in a nearby care facility.

We lived in what one of my classmates described in a hushed voice as a “shack,” as she asked her mother with urgency to please come pick her up. In truth, it was an old dairy barn, a little worse for the wear, which my uncle Neil had repurposed as his home away from home. It had a rudimentary kitchen, a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. It smelled of my uncle’s cigars, was filthy, rodent infested, and a definite step down from the big house that we had lived in Billings, Montana on Clark Street. Even so, I didn’t think it was all that bad.

With no job, and no house, my mother still rented my cello, and finally, I was getting tolerably good at playing it. Mrs. Ford had moved me into second chair. Gretchen, the first chair cellist was definitely better than I was, but she had been taking private lessons since the second grade. I still felt that I could catch her, so every day, I closed myself into the bedroom of the dairy barn and practiced diligently.

My mother was collecting unemployment at the time, and to fulfill the requirements for receiving it, she had to apply for three jobs per week. Given her situation with her sister, she really did not want to find a job right away, and if she did find a job, it needed to be close enough to Boulder that she could be near her sister. With a Ph.D. in English, the availability of college-level teaching jobs in the area were sparse anyway, and so she ended up applying for jobs that she was over-qualified for, which included one temporary job teaching at the Secondary School in Idaho Springs. To her chagrin, she was offered the job, and had to take it. The job would start after Christmas.

In the meantime, my aunt Cynthia had passed away. It didn’t make sense to stay on the farm and to commute to Idaho Springs, especially during the winter. And so, we moved, and I had to say good-bye to my beloved music teacher, Mrs. Ford, the bright spot of 7th grade. When I arrived at my new school, the one where my mother was teaching, we learned that they did not have an orchestra. My mother felt terrible, and offered me the choice of continuing the cello with private lessons, but I declined, knowing that without a Mrs Ford, or a first chair dangling in front of me, without the satisfaction of playing in an orchestra, I would lose interest very quickly.

After a few years, I lost my desire to ever return to the cello, and when I was in college, where I studied some music theory, I came to wish that instead I had played the piano, an instrument that one could not easily carry from place to place, and that had an even bigger and deeper voice than a cello. The piano was a perfect instrument that embodied and illustrated all of music theory. It was a stringed instrument and a percussion instrument all-in-one.

And so it was that I came to purchase an upright grand piano the moment my son was old enough, and had exhibited the slightest musical talent and inclination. At first, he was excited about piano lessons, and then he realized it was going to require some work, and then I managed to convince him that learning to play the piano was as important as learning to swim, or to breathe. He was getting pretty good around the time that his beloved piano teacher, his Mrs. Ford, passed away somewhat suddenly. I never could get him to go back to lessons after that. It made him too sad.

Our piano, a 1908 Mason and Hamlin piano with a lovely curly Mahogany case, and real ivory keys, sits squarely in the middle of our house, where it has sat untuned, and not played for the past five or more years. It is a beautiful piece of furniture. I now realize, in my own season of loss, that I did not buy the piano for him, but for myself. On a recent visit with my sister-in-law, Valeriya, a piano teacher, I casually mentioned that one of the things I was planning for my new year and my new life as an unemployed person was to learn to play the piano. She sprung into action. Within minutes I was laden with the instructional tools that I would need to teach myself the piano. She assured me that I could do it.

I began my self-teaching two weeks ago, and have made excellent progress. I eagerly await the arrival of the piano tuner because I know I will sound even better with a tuned piano. The most important thing that I have discovered since starting to learn the piano is that with a piano, you can be your own orchestra, and that you are always sitting in first chair, no matter how poorly you play!

January 25, 2018

The Season of Loss: Everybody’s Mother Dies

Yesterday, a famous American writer died at the age of 88. She was the mother of a good friend of mine. I met her once at his house, and we had a nice conversation. I didn’t know her well, although I would have loved to have. She reminded me of my mother. They both were/are (my mother is still alive) two years apart in age, both writers, both accomplished, both brilliant, both overly critical of other people, both justifiably angry about the lot that women in this country, and in the world have been cast. They both fought in their own ways to bring about social and cultural change. They both loved cats. They both loved their children.

When I read in the Times that my friend’s mother had died, I cried like a baby, not because I mourn her specific loss, although her passing is a great loss, but because she represents my mother, and all of our mothers. Everybody’s mother dies. I cried for the sorrow that my friend and his sisters must be feeling about the loss of their mother. I cried for the inevitable loss of my mother, the death of my husband’s mother earlier this year, and the death of the numerous mothers of my various friends over the last few years.

One of the privileges of having survived into middle age is that we get the honor of entering into what I have started to call the “season of loss.” For some people, it begins in their forties, and for others their fifties. For the truly unfortunate, it can span decades. A lucky few don’t enter it until later in life. It depends to some degree upon how old your parents were when they had you, and on the genetics of your family. I remember my mother’s season of loss. She was in her forties and fifties, during which time she lost her true love in a car accident, the woman I am named after, her mother to old age, two of her sisters–one to breast cancer and the other to a probable suicide, a brother to emphysema, and a number of close friends, mostly to cancer.

The season of loss is something that nobody is properly prepared for even though every single person who lives beyond a certain age will experience it. Nobody’s friends, parents, spouses, or children will live forever. Everybody will die, and, in fact, is in the process of dying with each living, breathing moment. Knowing this brings little comfort. There is no preparation. The season of loss is an experience, a developmental stage, if you will, of mid-life. One can no more prepare for it than one can prepare for the vicissitudes of parenthood, or the ritual transformation that marriage brings to a relationship.

Although I mourn the loss of all of our mothers, I find solace in the thought that the season of loss is our rite of passage into an “age of wisdom,” a time in our lives when we know with certainty that we are mortal, that our time on this beautiful planet with our beautiful people is finite. With this knowledge, perhaps we can make better choices, do more meaningful things, enjoy ourselves a bit more, worry a little less about things that don’t matter.

Category: Writing

My Mother is Awesome