Happy Ever Aftering Whenever we sit down to dinner, my mom always asks, "Shall we have some music?" And my dad and I say, "Oh yes!" or whatever and we wind up the two music boxes, a unicorn that plays "Camelot" and a Santa that plays "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

And sometimes we bring in the lovely Chinese lady that my dad brought back from Taiwan years ago and gave to my daughter that plays a distinctly un-Chinese melody that sounds like a strident Methodist hymn.

You get the three going together and you get an idea of what my mom's world is like. Then she always tells me how much her friends have enjoyed the music, and it's all due to me because I took her to the tag sale where she got the unicorn.

I can laugh about it now, but having someone say the exact same things to you every day is really frustrating and annoying at first. You start treating the person like a child and when they don't learn something, you naturally get frustrated. You have to realize they're not going to learn anything. They're going to unlearn everything.

Plus, did you ever think your mom was deliberately trying to drive you crazy? Did you ever think that? Sally's too far gone to even deny it. We're late to church and she has to change her boots, but to do that she has to look at every boot in the house and wonder which ones are whose.

And you tell her she's driving you crazy and she smiles happily. After all, driving my dad crazy has been her daily goal for more than fifty years. I've often said I would rather die alone in a rat-infested flophouse than spend 15 minutes in a relationship like theirs.

He was always expressing his deep devotion to her, but at bottom he felt the same way. They were one of these couples that kind of looked at you the third day you stayed with them with a look that said, "Please go away so we can bicker."

Later on they bickered away regardless. I once worked out for two weeks at the gym and lost two pounds. Then I went up to their house in New Hampshire for the weekend, drank beer and ate my weight in cheese sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and lost five pounds. Effective as that was for weight loss, please don't ask me to do it again.

So now my dad and I look across the table with the three music boxes going, and I sing along with the unicorn: "In short there's simply not/ A more congenial spot/ for happy ever aftering than here... in... Cam... ul... ott!"  ¶ 9:43 PM 1 comments

  Clinging to Love and Laughter I'm so proud of my mom. Her mind is disintegrating very rapidly, more rapidly than I have ever seen, in my limited experience of dementia, but she clings faithfully to love and laughter.

"I think people who laugh are happier," she told me today, and it makes me want to hang on to the many times we have laughed and laughed and laughed.

Now we have to work with the home health aides on manicure/pedicure, tooth brushing and other hygiene issues. At this stage it is so important to date all leftovers in the fridge, because, if ancient, they can be dangerous for people with dementia.

Every time I see her, I ask my mom, "How's it going?" and she always replies "Well now I'm happy because you're here."

Then sooner or later she takes hold of her diamond brooch in the shape of a heart and asks me if I know what it means, and I say yes I do, it means 'I love you.' Sometimes I say that's the 'sacred kidney bean' and we get a few laughs that way.

Then she goes to her refrigerator door and points to two playing cards showing George Bush and Dick Cheney as jokers. Just in case that might give you a laugh. I look forward to telling her if and when they are held accountable for their vile deeds, if that ever happens. I do believe she will understand. She has often suggested that what's needed is a lengh of rope, and I cannot say I disagree.

I recently bought her a picture book of the Obama inauguration, and she dug up her Obama button and put it on her sweater, so I think she understands, in her own way, the great things that are happening. We had a great time looking at the pictures of Malia and Sasha.

Every day it's a little harder to remember things, and this has to be really scary for her. I thank providence for our helpers, who are wonderful, inventive, caring people.

But Sally is cantankerous.

If you google the word cantankerous you get a lot of negative definitions like difficult, irritating, ill-tempered, quarrelsome and disagreeable, but these definitions do not capture the positive connotations of the word. It means you still have spirit and that you will never surrender, even if the gift of clarity is denied to you.

I think, based on that definition, I have been cantankerous all my life, but that's another story.

In the face of terrifying mental confusion, my mom clings to love and laughter, and it makes me happy and proud. And we still laugh every day.

Just a note: I put up a note by Sally's telephone titled 'Liberry Ours' to show when the library is open, and although she doesn't know who her sons are, she laughs every day at those two misspellings and points them out to me. Everyone knows it should be 'Library Hours.'

Labels: http://www.gonomad.com/armchairtravel/2008/12/we-laugh-and-laugh.html

  ¶ 8:12 PM 1 comments

  Ernie Pyle's Private Hell Ernie Pyle and Dwight Eisenhower and Grace Metalious are the three main reasons I started this blog back in ought six. Their works were all showing up at flea markets and tag sales and I was getting a lot of enjoyment and erudication from them which I thought I might be able to share with the world.

I was particularly curious why their works had showed up side by side in the collection of a naval officer from New Hampshire who served in the Pacific, along with his copy of None Dare Call It Treason, a post-war anti-Communist Work that my grandfather also owned, as did the grandfathers of many old farts out there.

The answer is in my very first blog entry, titled Journeys Through History and Literature. I just went back and added a comment.

The very first time I ever read a line by Ernie Pyle, I decided I wanted to read everything he ever wrote. I never met him, but I feel like he's one of my closest friends, and he had that effect on a lot of people, even before the war.

Once the war came, he spoke for the soldiers as no war correspondent ever has or ever will. I posted a photo once that shows Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley looking sheepish because they're having their picture taken with Ernie Pyle.

There is simply no way to measure the American soldier's esteem for Ernie Pyle, which he earned with his columns. He was the first American to own a Volkswagen. The 101st Airborne captured it in Tunisia and gave it to him "for sweating it out with us at the Kasserine Pass." The army later made him give it back. Figures.

Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt were early fans, when he first wrote an aviation column and then went on the road with his wife Jerry, and then later when he reported from London to a neutral America about the blitz. I think his column This Dreadful Masterpiece is the most masterful use of the English language I have ever seen -- on a par with Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

Ernie was a one of the many hard-drinking, free-thinking journalists in Washington in the 30s, and he and Jerry ran a kind of beatnik/hippy crash pad before there was such a thing as beatniks or hippies. Visitors remember waking up to Jerry playing the piano.

Ernie served out his time as reporter and city editor, and through some serendipitous circumstances got the freedom to go on the road. At some point their drinking, particularly Jerry's, became a serious problem. And then, I read that word (in Lee Miller's biography of Ernie): methedrine.

From then on, in my opinion, Ernie was fighting a losing battle which he knew he couldn't win, but fought on bravely anyhow.

His friend and one-time boss Lee Miller put it all in his biography of Ernie, letter after letter, futile gesture after futile gesture, and while I'm glad he did from my own point of view, because I really wanted to know all about it, even for a fanatical fan like me it became a bit tiresome.

But it showed the amazing volume of Ernie's personal correspondence, on top of his professional writing, his columns for Scripps-Howard, which were printed on the front pages of newspapers all across the county.

He and Jerry got divorced, and she went to the sisters in Colorado to recuperate for the bajillionth time, and she did so well that they got married again -- by proxy! While he was still overseas. You could do that in wartime.

But the actuality was vile treatment and vitriol every time Ernie came home, culminating in a bloody suicide attempt in their home in New Mexico. It was simply a nightmare -- like Lincoln's, but a lot worse.

Ernie died tragically at the very tail end of the war in the Pacific, and Jerry survived him by only a few years. To her credit she gave Lee Miller access to all their letters. Miller included them in his biography, so they are there for future researchers.

I think someone could make a brilliant libretto from a story like this.  ¶ 9:54 PM 0 comments

  Barack Obama Finds the Force When he began his presidential campaign, Barack Obama and his advisers were disappointed in his performance as a speaker. He experimented with different styles and was his own worst critic. I learned all this from a copy of Newsweek I found in the sauna at the gym.

In South Carolina on November 2, 2007, before a largely African American crowd in South Carolina, he tried to loosen up and use the "call and response cadence of a black preacher" and nearly fell flat on his face.

But he studied himself and learned. At the Jefferson-Jackson Day speech in Des Moines, Iowa, November 10, he told a story about addressing a bored crowd in Greensboro, South Carolina, when a woman in the crowd revived his flagging spirit by chanting "Fired up! Ready to go!" Over and over.

According to the story I read, by a team of Newsweek reporters, "Slipping from an easy, bemused tone to a near shout, Obama egged on the crowd at the J-J dinner (in Des Moines).

"'So I've got one question to ask you. Are you FIRED UP? Are you READY TO GO? FIRED UP! READY TO GO!'

"The Washington Post's David Broder, the Yoda of political reporters, was watching and understood that Obama had found the Force.

"The speech became Obama's standard stump speech, and in the weeks ahead it never failed him. Broder described the effect of Obama's thumping windup:

"'And then, as the shouting became almost too loud to hear, he adds the five words that capsulize the whole message and send the voters scrambling back into their winter coats and streaming out the door: "Let's go change the world." And he sounds as if he means it. In every audience I have ever seen, there is a jolt of pure electricity at those closing words. Tears stain some cheeks -- and some people look a little thunderstruck.'"

That was one week before the Iowa caucuses -- just in time! I hope they find that woman in Greensboro and give her a medal and the thanks of a grateful nation.  ¶ 9:25 PM 0 comments

  An Old Yankee and His Wood Supply I heard it's 50 below in Omaha, so I guess the frigid air is headed this way. We've had a lot of balmy weather this year, which has been money in the bank for all us frugal Yankees, but now Old Man Winter is getting down to business.

I'm looking at my woodpile and wondering if I should call Lashway Logging to come dump another couple of cords.

I love busting up cordwood and stacking it and filling the woodbox and loading the stove. In the Fall it gives me a sense that I am doing something to allay those buzzing nonspecific insecurities that beset old Yankees at that time of year, like being too cold because we forgot to put on longjohns or too hot because we did.

In Winter I get "twice warmed" as they say, and the effort I put into it helps give expression to that 'F___ this sh__' feeling you get when it's twenty below. Good to get that stuff out of your system if you plan to live in New England for any length of time.

Some friends and housemates have offered to help me stack cordwood, but I really don't want them to. My woodpile is like a sculpture I look at all winter long. I don't want any irregularities.

For years I toted the wood into the house in one of those hand carriers, until I figured out how to back the wheelbarrow onto the porch. Pretty amazing how dumb I was all those years.

Then again, I got a better workout in those days. Even with the wheelbarrow, filling the woodbox is a good chance to get some exercise. I do it very slowly and deliberately, which is the way to avoid injury.

Then I stoke up the old potbelly stove and defy the elements. If it's not too windy, I'm in good shape.  ¶ 8:39 PM 0 comments

  The Heirs of Gandhi
  ¶ 8:39 PM 0 comments

  Erratic in Heels The blogosphere is abuzz with the advent of a new blog entitled Erratic in Heels.

It's written by a self described "neurotic idealist just outside the city," and it describes the hectic life of a New York fashionista.

I came upon it due to my longstanding interest in high fashion.

Shown at left is a neurotic idealist in a black dress from Marshalls.  ¶ 4:43 PM 1 comments

  The Palaver of Chowderheads I'm very, very happy about the election of Barack Obama, but I'm deeply concerned about his proposal for a college football playoff.

I feel that the best team in college football should be decided the American Way -- by free and fair debate among sportscasters.

Let's face it. In these uncertain times, the American people don't want the college football champion to be determined by some last-minute on-field heroics.

We have to remember that college football is different. What works really well for professional football, and high school football and basketball and baseball and hockey and lacrosse and soccer and curling and tennis and badminton and ping pong and track and field and rugby and swimming and water buffalo racing, couldn't possibly work for college football.

Remember, there are a host of NCAA officials with bloated salaries and expense accounts. These men are not employable anywhere else in the economy, under any circumstances, and if there were a straightforward playoff system, they would surely be thrown onto the public dole.

Not only that. Sportscasters would be deprived of fodder for the entire year -- which teams had momentum, which teams were under- or over-rated, and hundreds of other inane topics.

So let's continue to let our college football champion be determined by the palaver of chowderheads. Isn't that the American Way?  ¶ 10:13 PM 0 comments

  Eyeless in Gaza Eyeless in Gaza is a novel by Arduous Huxley that I read when I was young and remember little about. Except the opening scene with the exploding fox terrier. I hereby vow to reread it and write an entry about it. The title is a reference to Samson, I think.

The title came to mind as I read and heard the news from Gaza and recalled Mohatma Gandhi's observation that "'An eye for an eye' leaves the whole world blind."

Now I'm not second-guessing anyone here. I'm just an average American trying to figure this out.

As I understand it, a bunch of criminal idiots, that's all one can say about them, launch rockets against civilians in Israel. These would be much the same kind of guys who thought it would be a good idea to murder Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. A real PR triumph.

Now the whole world wants these criminals to be apprehended. If stuff like this happened anywhere else in the world, it would be a matter of securing the cooperation of local law enforcement officials and apprehending them. But we can't do that here. Why is that?

If a resident of Brooklyn were to murder a resident, or even several residents of Queens, law enforcement officials in Queens would not be authorized to fire a tank round obliterating three floors of an apartment building in Brooklyn where the killer was reported to be.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a friend who is trying to save his grandfather's farm in Nahalin, near Bethlehem, in the West Bank. He happens to be a Christian, but that has nothing to do with the justness of his cause. And my cousin's ex-husband was a diver at the Munich Olympics.

I also think it is important to observe that we as Americans are not standing idly by. In a terrible, tragic, ancient conflict such as this, that might be an acceptable course of action.

But we are not standing idly by. We are actively participating. There are bomb fragments in the street marked 'Made in USA.' And those bombs killed people's daughters, mothers, friends, grandmothers, etc. Can you think of a better way to increase recruitment for suicide bombers?

I remember the great John Rassias once expressed his concern that the United States of America might become 'a deaf and dumb giant in the council of nations' and it's true. We don't see the devastation in Gaza. We don't even see the children we ourselves have maimed in Iraq.

Europeans see this. Asians see this. Africans and South Americans see this. American's don't see this. It might upset them. American's don't even see flag-draped coffins. Why? It's because American reporters, lacking a key anatomical feature, have agreed to a lot of rules to protect the American people from images that might upset them.

I still say that the more we can regard these problems in a law enforcement context instead of a military context, the further we can go toward imprisoning criminal idiots and protecting innocent civilians.  ¶ 7:46 PM 0 comments

  Way to Go, Roman

  ¶ 9:27 AM 1 comments

  My New Year's Resolution I make the same New Year's resolution every year, and even though it's a resolution that is impossible to keep, I think it's a good one.

My resolution is never to be annoyed by the bad manners of others.

Even though this is impossible to do, remebering this resolution changes my reaction to bad manners. If you try to correct someone's manners while you're still annoyed you are very unlikely to improve the situation in any way. And if you're driving an automobile, it can be fatal.

Instead I focus first on not being annoyed, because if you can succeed in this, you can see the humor in the situation. Then you can either laugh it off or improve it in a good-natured way.

And if I ever find myself saying, "I'll teach you..." I take a time out. Whenever anyone says that, teaching is the farthest thing from their mind.  ¶ 6:47 AM 1 comments