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#Best09: Gwen Bell’s Best of Blog Challenge 09: Best Car Ride


2009
12.19

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Last night I didn’t sleep, and this morning I started a bout with the stomach flu – vomiting, diarrhea, all that.  I’m trying to sit up long enough to write a blog but I feel non-compliant, so first I’m going to reference a couple of Road Trip blog posts from this year, and then I’m going to write what I want.  I’ve been especially impressed with my cats today and I want to tell you about it.

One problem I have is the inability to pick just one of anything.  So one terrific car ride was I70 through Utah with dear friend Michael Purcell.  Another was a drive to Fossil Falls, although that was a mistake.  A third was a drive to Red Rock Canyon, where I meant to go in the first place instead of Fossil Falls.

Now, the cats.  I was catless in Bakersfield and not happy about it, so last April I went to the animal shelter and got two six-month old female cats.  Tiger and Lily.  If you’re a regular reader, don’t be confused.  Tiger started out as Jujube, became B’Elanna Torres, and settled on Tiger.  There’s a problem with cats letting you know their true names.  Lily went from Abba Zaba to Beverly Crusher and settled on Lily.

I know they are just cats, but I think they were very aware that I wasn’t well, and they stayed on my bed all day.  Since I wasn’t moving much, it didn’t matter that cats were draped over my legs, etc.  I’m very grateful for that.  Now that I’m in a chair typing, they’ve gone outside, but Lily just came in to check on me.

I was going to write more, but I’ve used up the current energy supply.  So while Scotty gets some more dilithium crystals, I’ll take another nap.

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Best of Blog ’09 – Catching Up- Life Changes in a Flash


2009
12.18

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I’ve missed writing about Challenge, Best Place, Album of the Year, New Food, Change to Place I Live, Rush, Best Packaging, Tea of the Year, Word or Phrase, and Shop.  Why so many?

We were on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, all going well, when we got an email from my sister saying “sad news,” and then in the body that my uncle had died.  He’s my dad’s only surviving sibling – but my dad is 91 so what can you say?  But then came an email saying “critical, not dead.”  My mom, whose short-term memory is gone, mixed up the message and told my dad his brother was dead.  Then another the next day – my mom had broken her elbow and wrist after slipping in the rain.  She’s 86.

All in a matter of a few days – and dealing with my mom and the fall, my sister and I realized irrevocably that the next step in my parents care had arrived.  We needed someone in the home with them at least four hours a day, at least five days a week.

All I’ll say about that is how do you get someone when your parents keep forgetting they’ve agreed to it?  Is it possible to preserve their dignity?  All I know is that my sister and I need relief or we’re going to crack.  So that’s what’s kept me from doing the Best of Blog, and I’ve missed writing.  Today, the 18th, is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and think.

Challenge I’m in the midst of the challenge of the year right now, dealing with aging parents.  Stubborn, aging parents.  I hope I remember that I’m conditioning myself to be fine with help, fine with anything.  I’ve told my kids I want them to visit me regularly when I’m old but please, don’t get involved with my day-to-day care, errands, cooking, shopping, etc.  Get someone to do this.  Have me live in a place that takes care of things.  The burden my parents have placed on us kids by not even considering they would get old is just about too much.  I’m trying to face the challenge with grace and patience, but it isn’t easy.  My son-in-law’s grandma was hospitalized in this same time period with congestive heart failure, is home now, and on seven meds.  Her daughter, my husband’s mom, says when it’s her turn, just push her out the second story window.  I must tell her that it’ll have to be higher than the second story!  This challenge will be ongoing.

For a sampling of what this is like – before it got as bad as it is now – I have a story posted about my parents which is also recorded for our local public radio station.

Best Place Am I allowed to say my bed, with my wonderful latex mattress, my own pillows and my Chinese silk comforter?  That’s about my best place, besides my bathtub with bubbles.  We didn’t travel much this year so I have no new best places.  It seems like comfort is high on the list, though.  So I’m going to list two things besides my bed and my bathtub.  One is our cabin in Alta Sierra.  I go as much as I can, often alone, and work up there on my art.  I write, sit, watch the blue jays, walk, let my mind go.  I enjoy the silence.  I never even put my iPod on the iHome because I don’t want to break the silence.  My other best place is my studio at home.  We converted the grandkid’s playroom to a studio and I love to be in there working.  My best places are all close to home.

Album of the Year No brainer.  For Your Entertainment by Adam Lambert.  It would be my best album of the year even if it wasn’t any good because I am a glambert, or grambert, through and through.  But it IS good; in fact, it’s fantastic.  Adam’s voice is the most amazing instrument with such a preternatural range.  I love listening to him.  The album itself has so many types of songs on it that it can’t be confined to type.  Just buy it, listen, you will be amazed AND you will be entertained.

New Food This really isn’t a new food, but I’m in the midst of a duck craze.  One of our local restaurants, Valentiens, cooks duck to die for.  I’ll go soon again.  When will I be out of my duck rut?  Who knows.  I love it.

Change to the Place I Live This is so easy!  We have an entire room in our house that we use as a playroom for the grandkids.  They’re getting older now, and the young ones live in Colorado.  I’ve been itching for a studio – so we made the room a studio!  Wow.  An easel, paints, photos, a paper cutter, all my stuff, everything I need.  It’s a new life.

Best Packaging and Tea of the Year I have no idea.

Best Rush I think it is yet to come.  Monday afternoon I’m going to the Leno show and Adam Lambert is the guest!  I may actually faint for the first time in my life.  I feel positively giddy at the thought of being so close to him.  Sigh.  My kids read this and they will think their mom has gone bonkers. But I took my two oldest grandkids shopping today (15 and 14) and someone thought I was their mother, not grandma!  So maybe I can get by with semi-bonkers.

Word or Phrase I’m more interesting in banishing words and phrases than adding them because so many redundancies emerge.  But I will say this – I love the vocabulary that is Twitter – tweets, tweeps, tweet-ups – perhaps because I love Twitter!  I hear that 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of tweets.  Can that be so?

Shop I’d love to be clever about this and tell about my wonderful discovery, but I can’t because the best shop is and will always be Trader Joes.  Trader Joes fans out there?  Here’s a story.  A couple of years ago, my husband, a friend and I were sitting in a church in Rome waiting for an opera concert to begin.  Yes, in Italy.  We were talking and one of us mentioned Trader Joes.  The woman in front of us turned and said, “Did you say Trader Joes?  I love Trader Joes!”  We then discussed our love of Costco, I would add Target and Cost Plus World Market.  That does it for me.

I don’t think I’m interested in being a ground-breaker right now in terms of discovering new things.  I’d like to stabilize my life first is all.  Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to happen, so that brings me right back to the first topic – Challenge.  The challenge is to meet the daily changes that keep coming and coming at me (at us all) with grace and patience.  The challenge is to find the good and the fun and make the most of everything.  After all, the fact that so many things are hitting me at once right now – not-so-good things, must in itself be good.  Because if I didn’t have a large, loving family and people I cared about, I also wouldn’t have the challenges.  I’d be sitting in a sterile, controlled vacuum and it would be boring.

Life is anything but boring.  I’m not knocking boring.  I’d love to experience it for a day or two or maybe even three.  But not for long.

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#Best09: Today’s question – a moment of peace


2009
12.08

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From the Carnival Splendor rounding the Baja peninsula, here comes Best of Blog 09: to describe a moment of peace. Many to choose from, blessedly, but this will be short. I immediately remembered a thought I had one night before bed. It was January 11 (which I know because I wrote it in my journal) and I was up at our cabin. Some of our kids and grandkids were there and we were having a fun sledding weekend, about two feet of snow fell, and as I was going to sleep I had a thought. This is what I wrote in my journal.

Last night as I was going to bed I had a happy thought – the cabin was warm and cozy and happy because it was doing what it was supposed to do – giving fun and pleasant times to family.

Now that I write it, I see that I attributed the moment of peace to the house, but I’ll claim it anyhow.

Tomorrow – a challenge.  No shortage of those!


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Best of ’09 Challenge – My Blog Find? MJ’s Big Blog or course!


2009
12.07

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First I looked at the question for today – best blog find of ’09.  Gotta be honest here, I don’t spend a lot of time surfing the web.  Actually, I spend no time.  If I find something it’s because someone else told me about it, or I’m looking for specific information.

BUT I did make a marvelous find thanks to Twitter.  Love Twitter.  Love my tweeps.  And I love Adam Lambert so I was idly doing a twitter search on him one day and I found…MJ’s BIG BLOG.  Oh my God, what a treasure chest!  What a cornucopia of Lambert information.

So let me say this before you all start thinking, OMG, what’s a 63-year-old woman doing being obsessed with Adam Lambert?  I’ll tell you what.  He has a HUGE fan base amongst cougars, which is a term I object to because I am most decidedly not on the prowl.  But it seems to be the term applied to older women who are still breathing and out there.  Or rich.  Something else I am decidedly not.

I think it started like this.  We saw this alien from the planet fierce on Idol.  He was gorgeous, he was daring, he was sexy, but most of all, he could sing – I don’t think there’s a note he can’t hit.  And we loved him and as he began to reveal himself, we loved him inside and out.  We became Glamberts with an instinct to protect this beautiful person.  He was our secret fantasy but not for long because soon we became his mothers, his grandmothers, his protectors.

Did you know that during the Idol tour he asked his fans not to give him gifts but to donate instead in his name to Donor’s Choice to raise money for arts programs in public schools?  And raised over $250,000?  Like I said, gorgeous on the inside.

And then there was MJ’s – found it on Twitter, and MJ subtitles it “American Idol – I Love this Cheesy Show.”  Anything idol can be found on MJ’s including news round ups, sales figures, video, anything.  If she’s missed something, someone sends it from her loyal followers.  And not just Idol – she covers So You Think You Can Dance and X-Factor, which I’ve never watched, and that amazing show Glee.  If she covered Survivor and Top Chef, it’d be perfect.  (For all of you that have been holding your breath, wondering if I would reveal my television habits, I just did.)

She live-blogs every single show so anyone can follow the commentary. I ashamed to say how many shows from the Idol Concert Tour I “watched” with MJ.  Just to gauge the fan reaction to our alien from the planet fierce.

So that’s my blog find – MJ’s Big Blog.  And it’s fun.  It’s fun to have something to be interested in besides global warming, wars, Iran, etc. Not that I don’t have plenty of interests – I do.  But you know what I mean.  Something frothy to be consumed by, something fun.

So this glambert, who goes by Grambert on MJs, says thanks, MJ.  Thanks, Adam.

P.S.  I have a granddaughter named Daxton – an unusual name.  Never heard of another one.  While searching Adam Lambert on Twitter, I came across a fan called “daxtonsnini.”  What?  Turns out her name is Nita but her 3-year-old grandson calls her nini, and his name is Daxton!  Wow – a 3-year-old little boy Daxton in Oklahoma!


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#best09 Dec. 6 – Conference or Workshop that was Great? It was a Conference of One, a Workshop of Self, and a Community of Women


2009
12.06

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I went to no formal workshops and no formal conferences.  I’m retired and there was a recession going on.  (Had I been able to, I would’ve taken a National Geographic photo trip to New Mexico.) This year, 2009, was more about teaching myself than getting outside help.  Specifically, art.  Photography.  I realized I know more about photography than I thought I did.  I have quite a few articles on eHow, and as I was writing them, I shocked myself. (I have an eHow button on my sidebar if anyone wants to look).

That’s how knowledge is sometimes.  It sneaks up on you.  You do something for years and then all of a sudden, you realize you’ve learned something.  Writing the eHows and some articles for ezines was like a Conference of One – I found out what I know.  I’ve sold photos, I’ve exhibited photos, I can write about photos, yet I have trouble calling myself a photographer.  I’ve sold photo collages, I’ve had collages accepted into museum shows, had my own show at Metro Galleries, and been part of several others.  But I have a hard time calling myself an artist.

The photographer problem comes from the fact that even though I know the most important attribute of a photograph is having a good eye because cameras, even point-and-shoots do such a good job, I feel I ought to be more technically informed.  But numbers scare me.  Yes, it’s true, I have to admit it.  I start learning about f-stops and ISO and speedlite flashes and proportions and distances and my mind stops.  It might be self-induced, but I do think I am mathematically-challenged (actually, I know I am – if I hadn’t had an extremely high SAT score in language, I might not have gotten into college based on the math score).

I’ve already set a goal for next year and it’s to finally learn the technical stuff about photography.  It might be a private workshop – me and someone to tutor me.  I can’t do it in a class or a group because I’d need remediation right away! But I can and will do this.  Even though it terrifies me. Then maybe I can call myself a photographer without flinching.  I know I’m pretty good, I know I can exhibit and sell, but I want to feel more complete.

My Workshop of Self was art.  Something took possession of me.  I had NEVER used paint outside of childhood, except for paining some metal chairs. ( You can see how successful that was in terms of having the paint land where it was supposed to.  Actually, the link to my story has a photo which doesn’t look too bad – it’s reading the story where the incompetence is revealed.)  But I so longed to do something with a canvas!  I bought small canvases, acrylic paints and a few brushes and went for background.  I used some vintage fruit labels as collage material and wow! I actually did something that was accepted into a juried show!

Metropolitan

Then I did another one.

rayo

These were even used as the show poster and I won some money!  My dad said I could call myself an artist -that my stuff was good.  He knows.  I encourage you to click on the link because he’s a pretty famous and amazing guy in the art world.  Anyway, my dad said my work was good even though I broke all the rules.  Not hard to break rules you don’t know.

So in my Workshop of Self I learned, I produced, I had a million ideas, and again, a lack of technical knowledge.  That doesn’t bother me as much as with photography though.  Because I’ve been learning from a community of artists in Bakersfield - BECA (Bakersfield Emerging Contemporary Artists).  These women are astounding in their acceptance and encouragement, their drive and passion.  I also have been learning from people all over the United States, the world really, in last month’s Art Every Day Challenge. I think it was only, or almost only, women who participated oddly enough.  It’s open to anyone.  These women were also encouraging and through their posts I learned so much about technique and materials and I got inspiration.

Now I want to go crazy and try all kinds of art forms.  I am going to do something with the head gasket from a Model A Ford my husband is restoring for this month’s Creative Every Day challenge of using recycled materials.  I have an art journal going.  I’m trying to actually paint something.  I painted a pear.  Poorly, but it’s a start.

So I take it back that I didn’t attend any workshops or conferences that wowed me.  Having written this, I realize I attended the best workshop of all – that of learning from supportive, talented people everywhere.  Wow.  The power of the Internet.  The power of Jen Raven who got me involved in BECA and Burn the Witch.  Me and all the enthusiastic young people who luckily don’t know their limitations, and because of that, they are going to exceed them.  I think that’ll be a goal of mine for 2010 – exceed my limitations by taking part in a workshop of willing teachers and participants all over the web.

For that I have to thank Gwen Bell for this Best of 09 Challenge – you can link to it from the button on the sidebar.  Because without this, I wouldn’t have discovered what I just wrote!


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Blog Challenge Dec. 5: A Night Out that Rocked My Socks on the Papagallo II Yacht


2009
12.05

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You know, at 63, we just don’t have that many nights out.  At least the drinking, raucous revels.  Not because we don’t like it, but the next day is just too hard.  So I can’t tell you about something wild and crazy, but I can tell you about a completely special night for many reasons.  A surprise party for a best friend on a yacht in Morro Bay…and more.

We were on the road again – and I won’t detail the drive that involved ignoring the engine warning sign, backtracking to rent a car at the Bakersfield airport, and turning a three-hour drive into a six-hour drive.  I won’t mention that my husband should have listened to me.  Oops!  Anyhow, we were on the road to the coast from hot, dry, dusty Bakersfield to cool, refreshing Morro Bay.

road

Morro Bay is a small town on California’s central coast and it’s dominated by this huge rock in the bay that is beloved by almost everyone but me.

town

You can see that it dominates the landscape.  But that coastal air was so refreshing and exhilarating that I didn’t care about the rock.  We saw a seal that seemed to be in a blissful state of meditation.

seal

We saw fascinating pelicans.  I really like these pterodactyl-like birds.

pelican

And finally, we found the yacht – the Papagallo II.

papagallo

When we moved to Bakersfield in 1979, the first couple we met, Wendy Wayne and Gene Tackett, became our closest friends.  We’ve done so much together over the years, watched each others’ children grow up, shared joy and sadness.  We had a common bond in that all four of us had been Peace Corps volunteers – Wendy in Kenya, Gene in India, and my husband and I in Morocco.

This evening was a surprise birthday party for Gene that Wendy organized.  This is the first very special aspect of this night out since Wendy had just come through a huge battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  She was terribly sick and it took a while to find out what was wrong even, she completed chemo and went into remission, she relapsed, and then she had a stem-cell transplant.  That transplant was an arduous experience but it saved her life.  So far, all systems are go.  Wendy was well enough to plan this party.

I should mention that when Wendy was ill, our boat was rocked almost to sinking.  I’ve never been hit like that in my 63 years, and I don’t ever want to be again.  My whole family was devastated.  Besides being a friend, Wendy is a pillar of the community and just about the most loving, giving person ever.  So this night was special.

Wendy arrived first while Gene was parking the car, and we were ready for the surprise.

surprise

We ate, drank, danced, drank, talked, and the boat chugged on – for all we knew, we were going around in circles.  It didn’t matter.  Everyone was having a super-charged excellent time.

me inside boat

That’s me inside the boat with a friend from Palm Springs.  People came from all over for this party.

me and morro rock

Me outside the boat with that dang rock.  There was a cool fog bank in the distance, but it didn’t affect us.

fog

And there was a sunset.

sunset

There were good friends – here’s Gene with my former principal John Hefner, a fantastic man.

john and gene

And here’s another thing that made this night special and did indeed rock our socks.  We got to meet the newest member of Gene’s family, Little Loretta.  Wendy and Gene’s son Benji and his wife Amy had their first baby and named her after Gene’s mom.

family

We probably could have had a more exciting night, or a night with more thrills, but this night couldn’t be beat.  Everyone had a magical time.  The boat, the company, the food and the wine, Wendy’s recovery, Little Loretta, the great guests, whatever it was, people are talking about it still four months later.

So that’s the night that rocked my socks.  But if you want a different kind of night, we could mention the American Idol’s concert.  I prefer to think of it as the Adam Lambert concert.  Woohoo – did that ever rock my socks!

Inside the Staples Center

Inside the Staples Center

Inside the Staples Center with three of my grandkids, a friend, and my Adam Lambert shirt.  Had to buy it.  I’ll never wear it.  But I’m a Glambert.

adam resized

OK, that was just for fun and so we could hold our collective breath for a moment at the sheer awesomeness of Adam Lambert, person as beautiful inside as he is outside.

The stand-out evening of the year was Gene’s surprise party.  An homage to strength, spirit, love, courage, recovery, family and friends.  Couldn’t ask for anything more.


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Best of Blog: What book touched you? Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees and Dexter Filkin’s The Forever War


2009
12.04

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Question for December 4 is What book- fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it?  I need to talk about two: Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees and Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War.

maytrees annie dillard

If the measure of whether a book touched you or not is how many of the quotes you remember, the work of fiction that has stayed with me is The Maytrees by Annie Dillard.  When I was a seventh-grade language arts teacher, I’d tell my students that what we take from a book depends upon our life experiences.  A book read ten years ago can be a whole new book on the next reading depending upon the happenings in our lives, the knowledge we’ve acquired.  So I have to say that aging must have been heavy on my mind last year.  I think I have that worked out mostly,  but it doesn’t mean that books and articles that touch upon aging won’t resonate more than others.

The Maytrees was one of the first books of the year for me, and at first, I didn’t even like it.  I’d never read Dillard – not even Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek. Dillard’s prose is spare, but as I became accustomed to it, the book began to speak to me.  It builds slowly with characters that seem like a motley bunch and made me question, could there possibly be this many quirky people in one small community?  As I searched my own experience I realized the answer was yes, there could.  Many of us could string together events in the lives of neighbors and friends and decide it has to be fiction because these lives couldn’t be so complicated, messy or strange – but they are.  And The Maytrees, set in Cape Cod I think, or at least a very small similar sea-town that would attract artists and summer vacationers, and perhaps the more eccentric who live year-round, gives us an ultimately believable cast of characters.  Characters who, when you strip the quirks away, are just people after all.

I’m just going to put in a few of the quotes that struck me – probably because of where I am in life.

“Their summer friends in particular harvested facts row on row from newspapers like mice on corncobs.”  This sentence made me remember how good I am at Trivial Pursuit with all these miscellaneous facts taking up storage space in my brain.  How do we get through life without accumulating knowledge we won’t need, or more important, how will we know what knowledge we will need when we are assaulted on all fronts every single day with more information than any one person can process? It’s so easy to get caught up without stopping to think – is this how I want to spend my day? Do I really want to read this article? Watch this newscast? Or should I just take a walk and let everything settle?

And this one: “How constantly, Lou thought, old people claim to have been once young.  It is as if they don’t believe it. ..that old people were old never jarred her, but it shook the daylights out of them.”   Watching my parents and intimately aware of my own thought processes and the position aging has in our society, this sentence made me realize (oh, I already knew it but this brought it into focus) how much time I spend in mild distress at getting older.  I think old age does shake the daylights out of the elderly because every day is a challenge and getting dressed can be an act of courage.  I think we still feel the same inside but our outsides won’t cooperate so in a way we don’t believe we were ever young. And that nicely transitions to the next quote.

“The tragedy of age, Jane said, is not that one is old but that one is young.”  This is profound.  At 63, I still feel like that 18-year-old setting forth on my own, my thoughts are youthful (not the same as immature I hope), I AM young.  But my body betrays me and the disconnect leads to Dillard’s “tragedy of age.”

One last quote from this book.  I’ve thought about this constantly throughout the year.  How many times a day do we say, “I don’t have enough time.”  “I can’t do that, there isn’t enough time.” “I wish I had more time!” This quote about the main character Lou: “Everyone envied her the time she had, not noticing that they had equal time.”

Powerful, huh?  In its simplicity.  Why has this stuck with me? Because we all DO have the same amount of time: 24 hours in a day.  It’s how we use it that matters.  We make choices.  Life is about choices.  If we need more time, we should evaluate how we spend our time.  Simplify.  Discard the time-wasters.  Of course doing that takes the time to think about it, and thinking time is the hardest of all to get.  I frequently told my students that time for thought was not appreciated in our society.  Say you’re at work, sitting at your desk staring into space, and your boss walks by.  S/he asks what you’re doing, and you say “thinking.” How does that go over? Not well.  We’re industrious Americans and should be churning out whatever it is we churn out.

The Maytrees isn’t a great book but it comes close.  At least for me, at this particular time in my life, it came close.  I sure remember it.

the forever war dexter_filkins3

BUT WAIT – there’s more.  I have to include a non-fiction book too.  I know that everyone reading this blog is a thinking person or you wouldn’t be here. You owe it to yourself and to our soldiers to read this eminently readable work of non-fiction by reporter Dexter Filkins.  He was stationed in Iraq – I don’t remember for how long, but over a year I believe – and the way he narrates his experiences takes you somewhere you really, truly don’t want to go.  But you have to go there because thousands of our troops go there in this forever war, and this makes crystal clear why they are not coming home as whole people.  Sometimes literally if they make it home at all.

Read this book and you will “get it.” You’ll have to take this on faith because I can’t communicate like he does about the real hell war is, especially an undefinable war started on false pretenses.  And the complete impossibility of comprehending life and war in an Arab country. I lived in an Arab country for two years so have a foot up, but anyone who doesn’t have first-hand knowledge can come as close as possible with this book.

If you are intrigued, read Desert Queen, a book about Gertrude Bell, and you’ll get the whole thing.

Tiny adendum – I really enjoyed a book called Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, and The Wild Things by genius Dave Eggers is pretty profound on many levels.  And a great kids book that may  not really be for kids is Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.  All three easy reading but requiring much thought.  You’re lucky the battery on my kindle is dead, or I’d go on forever!

sum GraveyardBook
wild-things

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Best of 2009 – What article did I read that blew me away?


2009
12.03

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Posted in Essays about Life | 2 Comments »

Death.  Dying.  If we’re lucky, it happens later rather than sooner.  As a 63-year-old, I watch my parents age and put myself in their shoes.  My children will become me, watching me age and putting themselves in my shoes.  It’s been of sufficient interest? consternation? to me that I wrote an essay about it, Stuck in the Middle.  Today’s question asks, “What article did I read that blew me away?”

Last year, one article captured me.  In fact it just about screamed my name.  Waiting for death, alone and unafraid, by Thomas Curwen, L.A. Times, 2/28/09.  We are all “waiting” for death, but some of us are closer than others.  Perhaps because I’m watching my parents, at 86 and 91, either suffering from Alzheimers or waiting for death, this article resonated.

SchneidmanEdwin

Edwin Schneidman

It’s about Edwin Shneidman who, at age 90, is at home attended by caretakers around the clock.  Shneidman has spent his entire career with death as co-founder and co-director of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, chief of the National Institutes of Mental Health’s center for Studies of Suicide Prevention, and professor of thanatology at UCLA. He himself almost died two years ago from high blood pressure. Curwen: He expected everything to go dark, and when they pulled into the bay of the UCLA Medical Center, he started to cry, knowing that the doctors would save him. I understand.

Here are the passages I underlined, so they resonated at the time and still do.  These are the author’s words: Today will be the same as yesterday, the same as tomorrow, every day a waiting and a hoping for a good death, a death without suffering.  This is my father’s life at 91.  He’s tired.  He might have gone by now but for worry about my mother.  This is what life is like.  We want him to go now, both of them, before they succomb to full-time care and the indignities that come with helplessness.

Shneidman says people ask him often what the end is like and he answers: You’re driving down a road in the desert, and the engine suddenly stops, no Pep Boys, no Auto Club to help.  Whether the road continues is of no consequence.  It has ended for you.

He also says, and this statement grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go: No one has to die, he is fond of saying; it will be done for you.  It’s living, however, that takes effort – to weather the sleeplessness and worry, the relinquishing of pride, the dependency upon strangers, the plea for respect and the struggle to remember.

My sisters and I watch my parents, my dad especially because my mom pretty much isn’t processing, struggling with this, and we struggle right along with them. We care about their dignity, respect, and dependency; the struggle to remember feels like a physical struggle and we’re in the ring.  We wrestle with it. We care about our own dignity when we are their ages, and we feel trepidation whenever Mom doesn’t remember.  Which is always.

But Shneidman redeems that struggle when he explains his philosophy of life. Because he believes life isn’t contingent upon a god or upon prayers. There is no heaven, there is no hell. Happiness lies in the here and now and the satisfaction of living a good life without religion or myths to guide you.  He takes nothing away from others’ beliefs.  He just prefers Moby Dick to the Bible.

He just explained my philosophy, especially in the sentence starting with “happiness.” If we’ve fulfilled that, we can only trust those we love to respect us in all the indignities that occur with old age.

And then this poignant, powerful passage.  Poignant especially because when my mother-in-law died several years ago and we were cleaning out her things, I looked at her pile of chipped, broken collectibles – that had so much meaning in her life – and thought, wow, does that sum up a life? It was a sobering thought.  So to the passage: In death, things become mere things – the statue of Venus in the backyard, the gyotaku print in the kitchen, the Melville-inspired shadow boxes – no longer animated by memory, the story of their provenance.  It is as if their atoms loosen and dissipate.

You can find the whole article here.

You can find Shneidman’s obituary here.

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Best of Blog Challenge: Best Restaurant Experience – Hassano’s and Bastille Day at Valentiens


2009
12.02

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Posted in Essays about Life, Photography | No Comments »


Gwen Bell has a Best of Blog Challenge on her own blog, (there’s a button on the sidebar linking to it) and although it’s one more thing to do in Dec., it sounds like a fun way to keep the juices flowing.  It’s a way to reflect on the year too, because even a “best” that seems insignificant (like December 28′s question, “Stationery.  When you touch the paper your heart melts.  The ink flows from the pen.  What was your stationery find of the year?”)  can potentially open up a floodgate of memories.  Memories lead to reflection, which leads to how things can change.  I know I operate on what I call CSI – Continuous Self Improvement – and even if I don’t attain great heights or become spectacular, I can take small steps in making life more fulfilling.  And I believe that the more fulfilled we are, the more we can positively influence other’s lives.

So, after deciding to participate in the challenge and printing out the list of questions, I thought, What the heck, I just finished Art Every Day Month, I’m pooped, it’s the holidays, and I wrinkled up the paper and threw it away. Now, of course, it’s been retrieved from the waste bin and I’m about to embark on December 2.  Already, the implications lead far beyond the question.

Restaurant moment: Share the best restaurant experience you had this year.  Who was there?  What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?

I have two.  The first occurred in Spring.  I was up at our cabin in Alta Sierra by myself working on photo collages.  I had a show coming up and found it easiest to work where I could focus just on art – or not, as I chose.  The show is now finished, but you can see the collages that were in it here.  I went to upload photos to my computer and – oops! – I’d forgotten the camera connection.  I called my husband and he agreed to meet me halfway, in Glennville, for dinner and to bring my cord.

I can’t say our conversation was profound, but we were knocked out by the food.  This is a small foothill community and I doubt if the population reaches 300.  But there’s a restaurant called Hassano’s.  The only restaurant. So there we went.

hassanos rs

I had chicken picatta expecting some reheated version.  What I got was a totally fresh, perfect, tantalizing dish.  And the vegetables!  I could rhapsodize about them but I’d rather go back and get more.  I asked the waitress to tell Hassano how fabulous the food was and she said he has hired someone he sent to chef school.  Well, this is a well-kept secret, because Bakersfield folks could take a beautiful drive up there and have fabulous, inexpensive food.

Bastille Day:  Alors enfants de la patrie, la jour de gloire est arrive.  The day of glory sure did arrive in Bakersfield.  We have an exquisite restaurant called Valentiens.  Their Bastille Day celebration sounded like fun, but the major impetus for going was that I’m making a determined effort to become part of the community again.  That isn’t quite as dramatic as it sounds, but I retired from teaching a couple of years ago.  When I taught, my world shrank and I had tunnel vision.  School and seventh-graders were all I had time for.  My post-retirement “career” is heading in the art and photography direction so that means getting out there again, meeting people, entering a different circle than the teaching world.

Also, at 63, I find I could easily become a hermit.  I’m tired after getting through a day, especially when we were giving a great deal of assistance to one of our daughters.  And with nine grandkids, six in town, the tendency at dinner is to not even make it and just collapse.  So I told my husband we weren’t going to melt into the woodwork, but get back out and have fun.

This was amazing because of:

Music, the fantastic accordianist.  We could have been on the bank of the Seine.

accordianist bastille day

Then there was the wine.

wine glasses bastille day

Corkage was free if we brought a bottle of French wine, which we did.  We saw Steve Mayer, a reporter for the Bakersfield Californian, and asked him to join us.  We gave him a glass of our wine and he immediately  told us what it was and all about the region – this man knows his wines!

Then there were the artists working throughout – we could have been on the Left Bank.

artists bastille day

Vikki Cruz and Yvonne Cavanaugh own Surface Gallery in town.

The evening was more amazing because everyone was in costume.  The artists, above, and the co-owner Jennifer Sanderson, below.

jennifer bastille day

Did I mention food?  I can’t even remember what we ate, but I know it was delicious.  Maybe I had the succulent duck breast with crispy skin.  I love their duck.  We finished with waiter races!

waiter races

Wow!  This was a LONG post about a dining experience.  But it was so much more.  None of these people – Yvonne, Vicky, Jennifer, Steve, and other friends we saw there – Leighann and David, Jennifer and Larry, knew this was helping bring me back from the brink of social extinction.  Ok, dramatic.  But really, it was good to approach a new era with so much fun!  Next year, we’re there for sure.  We’ve been there quite a bit since, actually.

Tomorrow’s blog may be just as long – an article that blew me away.  I knew immediately what it was, so I’ll be talking about aging and death.  That’s an upper to end with, isn’t it?


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