I’m back. It’s been a month since I last wrote. I lost some numbers on the calendar –around 7 of them-- due to a pulled/strained/f-ed lower back or specifically the SI (sacro-ileac). Not something I’d recommend. After the excruciating pain subsided about four to five days in, I could at least settle down enough to read while I lay on ice then heat packs in between naturopath and acupuncture treatments (thank you, Doc Bergie). It’s bad when you have to call a friend over to get the landline phone out from under the futon where it had rolled impossibly out of reach. The worst though was when I had to muster up all my determination to sit and then stand up knowing the sharp pain that was going to immediately shoot through my body. It was about a six step process. Roll on side, curse; lift on elbow, call on the sharpest profanity; up to sitting, ow, ow, ow, ow; the final though requiring-the-most-intake-of-breath stand; don’t pass out because I’d have to start all over again; and then try to remember why I got up in the first place. This was not fun.
But here was the worst part. I had watched The Secret DVD a couple of days before I reached for the fateful water bottle in the backseat of my car, felt a snap then shooting pain and found that I could no longer stand erect. The Secret is a documentary that has gone from word of mouth and finally tipped over into wide media attention a la Oprah and thus become the latest embraced and mocked quantum physics, “you create your own reality” trend. Months ago a friend since grade school called me to insist that I get the DVD. I had every intention to look it up on the web but then forgot. Then I came across Bev at the Myrna picking up her loaner copy that had been dropped off there. She said that I could borrow it. Now, this is a very The Secret thing: set the intention (sure, Tricia, I’ll get it) and even though I forgot about it and didn’t do the next few steps of imagine and feel the result, the DVD fell into my lap. So I finally watched it. Once I got past the (to me) very hokey visuals and the idea that this principle had been lost and denied the masses until now, I had no argument with the basic point, the Law of Attraction. However I had a hard time believing that a starving child in Africa could accomplish what the little white, well-fed boy in the documentary did: cutting out a picture of a red bicycle from a catalogue, obsessing/imagining his ownership of it, and then finally getting it. Then again, it’s context, I suppose, that creates one’s greatest desire is (i.e. bicycle v. food, bicycle v. bringing your child back to life). The steps are straightforward: ask, believe, receive. What one puts out there is what one gets back. Put out negative, get negative.* Put out positive, get positive. Keep your mind and attitude in check and you will attract what you ask for. Fostering gratitude is crucial as well.
(* Insert: there is fundamental problem to imply that a parent "asked for" a child to be killed by a stray bullet or millions of people drew to them by negative thoughts devastating hunger or AIDS.)
I watched the DVD, thought positive thoughts, felt gratitude and what happened?! I ended up with a sprained back and laid up for a week. For one, on my best days, these kind of Secret deals including intercessory prayer and "you are what you think" philosophies really make me paranoid. I get obsessed with chasing the thoughts around my brain trying to catch up with the negative ones to beat them into submission and find and rally the positive because my life and all good things depend on it. (BTW, is there a difference between negativity and sophisticated sarcasm?) So when something like a thrown back comes flying out of left or right field, I rack my brain figuring out what I was thinking but knowing it’s too damn late, all the while saying, “I’m bloody grateful, okay? I am. I know I’m lucky and privileged and don’t take for granted that I can move, think, laugh, all righty roo? I am grateful already SO WHAT’S THE FUCKING PROBLEM?” This I yell to the universe.
My wise counselor/spiritual director, after ranting about my back and The Secret for about $40-worth of my session, told me, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And since it was phallic Freud that described the cigar, it had to be true. Maybe bad-backs happen and I hadn’t somehow drawn it to myself. It took about five days to accept that, coinciding with the day my doc said that it very likely wasn’t a disc problem and just a hell of an outraged bundle of nerves out of whack. Let me throw in here that I have had times in my life that can be described as “a hell of an outraged bundle of nerves out of whack” but I’m not there anymore and haven’t been in a long while. I’ve got a great, relaxed, creative life here. So what gives?
I must put in here a couple of quick examples of paranoia-reinforcing experiences. Twenty-three years ago I fell asleep reading Something More, a book about claiming joy in life, and about three hours later I awoke to my apartment building on fire. I had to jump out of my second-story window to escape. I definitely got something more than I bargained for and don't believe it was joy. So either a cigar is just a cigar or I’ve got a dyslexic relationship to the Law of Attraction. I’ve also worked for two organizations that I ended up with an employment lawyer to broker mutual severance, organizations with lofty names including words like human understanding and reconciling. The shadow side lurks. In fact, key people who participated in the development of The Secret documentary are in conflict over who gets credit for the film and its origins. To one couple’s great credit, they are not suing because it takes “energy away from their own pursuit of the law of attraction.”
As my back got better, I was able to go out more. It was when I was sitting outside a bakery/cafe with Emma that I realized that Emma had mastered The Secret. I had spent about an hour of sipping my latte and reading the New York Times Book Review when out of the blue one of the young women from the bakery came out with a little doggie treat for Emma, “the very good dog.” I looked at Emma sitting so charmingly to receive her treat and realized she constantly draws treats to herself. (It helps that she is a golden retriever. If she was a wild boar, I don’t think she would be as successful.) I know Emma puts out a lot of treat energy and she does attract the biscuits back to her. “Treat, treat, treat,” she pants. When we go to the bank’s drive-up, she adds drool to the “believe and receive,” cocks her ear to the voice coming over the speaker, and leans forward when I get the treat-carrying capsule in the car to receive her beloved baked bones and my deposit slip. She is also pro-active in her search and retrieve of goodies (she does not retrieve balls by the way). At work, Ed does not give her treats when she begs, but later he comes in my office to give Emma what he calls “random reinforcement.” In actuality Emma may be still calling the shots with her power of attraction. For even when she sleeps, she imagines and believes, “treat, treat, treat, treat.”
Now two weeks after my bent-over pain, I realize that the week prior I had been tuned into people going on vacations or taking time off to hang out. Could my desire for time off attracted my back ailment? If so, I need to not only chase down the negativity but also clarify the positive desires. Vacation without pain. I’ve projected more monthly expenses over income before (many times) and wondered where the dough would come from only to have the above-mentioned fire or legal settlements bring in cash. Again, checks without lawyers or insurance companies. Cigars that are just cigars.
I don’t belittle The Secret. Being in tune with the universe, with one’s desires, and aligning oneself accordingly is a great way to live along with a fine dose of gratitude. But it is also good to recognize and allow anger, grief, frustration and indignation. These seemingly negative emotions are signals, process, storytellers, and essential warning signs. Other than that, what’s the harm with “pant/chant-ing, drooling, and receiving?” Gulp.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
AND THE AGITATOR AWARD GOES TO
I’m agitated today and the Laundry is a good place to be for that. There are at least 16 agitators in here not counting the other people or the dog and even then they would only make 18 though every now and then it rises to 19 when the leather-jacket guy comes in to check on the dryer. But Emma is quiet and the woman sitting in my usual space is reading so they don’t seem agitated right now. It’s just me and the 15 inner workings of the washing machines. I’m irritated by the limited help that I’m getting from my San Antonio book publisher on promoting my book. There, that’s it. I have calmed down some though after filling a page with the f-word (my mother is reading this) in the many ways it can be used in a sentence. That helped me blow off steam and see that the biggest frustration is not having enough time to work my day job, write on two different manuscripts, and market a book that’s been out for ten months without much selling success in a city where 5 million visitors come every year and a state where Texas History is required for every child in public school. San Antonio is key to TX history. I’m not the only one that made a model of one of the five missions out of toothpicks. Besides, I was told that schools were a secondary market when my chapter on a juicy, online sex-solicitation blackmail story got cut. I forgot that there was a classroom audience. My bad. Besides, what’s the difference between a story about a whorehouse and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the husband and wife tag-team solicitors presenting settlement agreements to entrapped paramours except that the incidents were over 100 years apart. I know. Online-sexual encounters and school children are a sore subject even if the children aren’t involved. However, it did seem like a teaching opportunity though not the kind the adolescent boys would take away. I agree on that point entirely. (FYI, my editor and friend, Patrick, has been very helpful so he’s good. This is a corporate agitation-causing shenanigan and the business of books.)
Okay, I feel better.
I will be in San Antonio hopefully doing some book signings (see above) April 11-13 and in Dallas April 14-17. For those of you in Dallas, I’ll be letting you know about the book signing open house on Sunday afternoon, April 15.
To more interesting agitators and topics: the jailhouse theme of the sandwich shop fits very well with peaceful, non-violent resistance types of agitators. I’ve only been arrested twice for civil disobedience and those were pretty staged, nothing like the kind with billy clubs, fire hoses, police dogs, tear gas, and bullets. Nothing like that at all. In D.C. the plastic handcuffs on my wrists in front of me kept coming off and I had the darnedest time keeping them on to maintain the image of resistance. My jail time experiences (or experience as one of the two I paid my fine only 20 steps from the police wagon that brought me in after which I walked about 20 steps to and out the front door of the police station) were not particularly world-shaking though they taught me a lot, especially because of the people who I was arrested with.
The first time was in Cleveland, Ohio in May, 2000, outside the United Methodist Church (UMC) General Conference, the major big deal, every four years, lasts for two weeks, legislative branch of the denomination meeting. They conduct their business much like Capitol Hill with committees, sub-committees, bills/amendments/propositions, lobbyists and blowhards but without the sensitivity about prayer or the separation of Church and State. Not that C&S are separated, check out Institute for Religion and Democracy (i.e. Religion for the Unification of C&S) and their plan to take over the leadership in the UM, Presbyterian, and Epicopal Church denominations and the correlation of how that will infect Congress with a Christian Conservative agenda. I met the then executive director of IRD months before the General Conference. We were sitting at the same table for dinner. I’d lost my name tag, so he didn’t know who he was sitting and chatting with. Nor did I as I was new to the gig. We’d gotten pretty familiar before he asked what organization I was with and we realized that we were each talking with the enemy. We paused in silence for a moment and then went on with our conversation. Make of that what you will.
Back to agitators, the organizers of this arrest were Mel White and his group, Soulforce. Several historic figures of civil rights and civil disobedience were in their number, informing their spiritual foundations and direct actions. Some of these included Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mahatma Ghandi; Yolanda King, Martin King’s daughter; Jim Lawson, a leading strategist on peaceful non-violent resistance in the civil rights movement including the training of the students who staged the lunch counter sit-ins and the Freedom Rides; and Robert Graetz, who had his house bombed after he stood with King during the Montgomery bus boycott. In earlier arrest, these folks and their ancestors were not shackled in plastic, slip-off handcuffs.
I forgot to say that we were demonstrating against the UMC’s policy and practice of discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“Queer” in political parlance) people. We were outside the Cleveland Convention Center where the conference was held. Everything was well planned. The mayor’s office and Cleveland police all knew ahead of time what we were doing, all 218 of us. After a walk around the center in silence, we lined up 20 at a time in the driveway so that we blocked traffic. It was a very moving experience if only for the company of people who I was arrested with. Their historic roads of heartache and persistence in the ugliness of violent discrimination gave credence to our cause. Still I knew that as I was in the holding cell, later finger-printed, frisked, and put in a regular cell that I was not suffering as those that had gone before me. Another civil rights mentor and dear friend who I was arrested with was Gil Caldwell, the co-author of one of the manuscripts I’m working on (and why agitators are on my mind). He has continued to teach me about the realities of racial discrimination even as he says I am teaching him about Queer civil rights.
The next day when Goliath-over-David arrests were made inside the convention center on the floor of the conference, we weren’t so organized but we got through. Picture 35 or so people disrupting Senate proceedings and you’ll have a bit of the picture. Okay, so the convention center auditorium is also used for basketball games but it was that somber –a line of us going down the center aisle between rows and rows of tables, seating 1,000 delegates, the room in utter silence and solemnity. Now that was a traumatic experience, several amps up from standing in a driveway blocking traffic. I could feel the anger and hatred rising like steam from those who despised us (voting tallies would say that there were about 650 of that sentiment, though some of those just found us distasteful). The scene got especially harrowing when a woman, not in our group, almost jumped off the balcony above us in an anguished and tearful lament. I’ve never seen 6 white men in dark suits scramble so fast to move the table below out of the way and somehow prepare to catch her –it would not have been pretty. Fortunately, upstairs other men caught her legs and body and pulled her down. What followed were several intense hours of negotiations, reports, and votes, ending with the group moving up onto the stage just behind the presiding bishop. Quickly the Cleveland police entered stage right and arrested the protestors including a couple of bishops who joined the group as they were taken away. I had left the floor earlier with another coalition leader during a break so that we could bail the group out of jail. They were released several hours later after an $11,000 credit card charge, biggest bill I ever signed. I did not leave a tip.
The arrest in D.C. was outside the Catholic Bishops Conference. The difference between Catholic and Protestant demonstrations was that the Catholic songs that we sang as we circled were in Latin instead of English. Other than that it was the same. I was getting terribly sick as we stood out in the cold and drizzle. By the time we got to the police station, all I could think about was getting back to the hotel and bed. But then I recognized a woman two people in front of me. She was one of the drag queens that threw the first spiked heels at the New York City policemen in what is now known as Stonewall, the riot that many mark as the beginning of the Queer rights movement. (Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots for more history.) I was in line paying my fee before I caught a car back to my sickbed and I realized that yet again I’d been arrested with someone that was there in one of those important beginnings with the real tear gas, barricades, and time of sacrifice. She was still fighting, resisting, and inspiring. And for those who are wondering, she was wearing tennis shoes.
My heart is with these agitators today and the machine kind too. This part of the wash cycle is essential to jarring the dirt out of the fabric (social or otherwise) –some loads need more than others. I’ve found it tricky to time pushing clothes I forgot to put in the machine down into the suds before the agitation starts. One, the sudden change makes me jump. Two, agitators aren’t called agitators for nothing; they can beat your hand up pretty badly (different from the non-violent kind). The rinse cycle eventually comes and then the spin, much like press conferences and damage control. Then the moment of truth arrives, did the wash come clean or is there still more dirty laundry?
Okay, I feel better.
I will be in San Antonio hopefully doing some book signings (see above) April 11-13 and in Dallas April 14-17. For those of you in Dallas, I’ll be letting you know about the book signing open house on Sunday afternoon, April 15.
To more interesting agitators and topics: the jailhouse theme of the sandwich shop fits very well with peaceful, non-violent resistance types of agitators. I’ve only been arrested twice for civil disobedience and those were pretty staged, nothing like the kind with billy clubs, fire hoses, police dogs, tear gas, and bullets. Nothing like that at all. In D.C. the plastic handcuffs on my wrists in front of me kept coming off and I had the darnedest time keeping them on to maintain the image of resistance. My jail time experiences (or experience as one of the two I paid my fine only 20 steps from the police wagon that brought me in after which I walked about 20 steps to and out the front door of the police station) were not particularly world-shaking though they taught me a lot, especially because of the people who I was arrested with.
The first time was in Cleveland, Ohio in May, 2000, outside the United Methodist Church (UMC) General Conference, the major big deal, every four years, lasts for two weeks, legislative branch of the denomination meeting. They conduct their business much like Capitol Hill with committees, sub-committees, bills/amendments/propositions, lobbyists and blowhards but without the sensitivity about prayer or the separation of Church and State. Not that C&S are separated, check out Institute for Religion and Democracy (i.e. Religion for the Unification of C&S) and their plan to take over the leadership in the UM, Presbyterian, and Epicopal Church denominations and the correlation of how that will infect Congress with a Christian Conservative agenda. I met the then executive director of IRD months before the General Conference. We were sitting at the same table for dinner. I’d lost my name tag, so he didn’t know who he was sitting and chatting with. Nor did I as I was new to the gig. We’d gotten pretty familiar before he asked what organization I was with and we realized that we were each talking with the enemy. We paused in silence for a moment and then went on with our conversation. Make of that what you will.
Back to agitators, the organizers of this arrest were Mel White and his group, Soulforce. Several historic figures of civil rights and civil disobedience were in their number, informing their spiritual foundations and direct actions. Some of these included Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mahatma Ghandi; Yolanda King, Martin King’s daughter; Jim Lawson, a leading strategist on peaceful non-violent resistance in the civil rights movement including the training of the students who staged the lunch counter sit-ins and the Freedom Rides; and Robert Graetz, who had his house bombed after he stood with King during the Montgomery bus boycott. In earlier arrest, these folks and their ancestors were not shackled in plastic, slip-off handcuffs.
I forgot to say that we were demonstrating against the UMC’s policy and practice of discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“Queer” in political parlance) people. We were outside the Cleveland Convention Center where the conference was held. Everything was well planned. The mayor’s office and Cleveland police all knew ahead of time what we were doing, all 218 of us. After a walk around the center in silence, we lined up 20 at a time in the driveway so that we blocked traffic. It was a very moving experience if only for the company of people who I was arrested with. Their historic roads of heartache and persistence in the ugliness of violent discrimination gave credence to our cause. Still I knew that as I was in the holding cell, later finger-printed, frisked, and put in a regular cell that I was not suffering as those that had gone before me. Another civil rights mentor and dear friend who I was arrested with was Gil Caldwell, the co-author of one of the manuscripts I’m working on (and why agitators are on my mind). He has continued to teach me about the realities of racial discrimination even as he says I am teaching him about Queer civil rights.
The next day when Goliath-over-David arrests were made inside the convention center on the floor of the conference, we weren’t so organized but we got through. Picture 35 or so people disrupting Senate proceedings and you’ll have a bit of the picture. Okay, so the convention center auditorium is also used for basketball games but it was that somber –a line of us going down the center aisle between rows and rows of tables, seating 1,000 delegates, the room in utter silence and solemnity. Now that was a traumatic experience, several amps up from standing in a driveway blocking traffic. I could feel the anger and hatred rising like steam from those who despised us (voting tallies would say that there were about 650 of that sentiment, though some of those just found us distasteful). The scene got especially harrowing when a woman, not in our group, almost jumped off the balcony above us in an anguished and tearful lament. I’ve never seen 6 white men in dark suits scramble so fast to move the table below out of the way and somehow prepare to catch her –it would not have been pretty. Fortunately, upstairs other men caught her legs and body and pulled her down. What followed were several intense hours of negotiations, reports, and votes, ending with the group moving up onto the stage just behind the presiding bishop. Quickly the Cleveland police entered stage right and arrested the protestors including a couple of bishops who joined the group as they were taken away. I had left the floor earlier with another coalition leader during a break so that we could bail the group out of jail. They were released several hours later after an $11,000 credit card charge, biggest bill I ever signed. I did not leave a tip.
The arrest in D.C. was outside the Catholic Bishops Conference. The difference between Catholic and Protestant demonstrations was that the Catholic songs that we sang as we circled were in Latin instead of English. Other than that it was the same. I was getting terribly sick as we stood out in the cold and drizzle. By the time we got to the police station, all I could think about was getting back to the hotel and bed. But then I recognized a woman two people in front of me. She was one of the drag queens that threw the first spiked heels at the New York City policemen in what is now known as Stonewall, the riot that many mark as the beginning of the Queer rights movement. (Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots for more history.) I was in line paying my fee before I caught a car back to my sickbed and I realized that yet again I’d been arrested with someone that was there in one of those important beginnings with the real tear gas, barricades, and time of sacrifice. She was still fighting, resisting, and inspiring. And for those who are wondering, she was wearing tennis shoes.
My heart is with these agitators today and the machine kind too. This part of the wash cycle is essential to jarring the dirt out of the fabric (social or otherwise) –some loads need more than others. I’ve found it tricky to time pushing clothes I forgot to put in the machine down into the suds before the agitation starts. One, the sudden change makes me jump. Two, agitators aren’t called agitators for nothing; they can beat your hand up pretty badly (different from the non-violent kind). The rinse cycle eventually comes and then the spin, much like press conferences and damage control. Then the moment of truth arrives, did the wash come clean or is there still more dirty laundry?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
RED LIGHT
RED UNBALANCE LIGHT INDICATES WASHER HAS SHUT OFF. RAISE LID – DISTRIBUTE CLOTHES EVENLY – CLOSE LID – CYCLE WILL RESUME AUTOMATICALLY.
We could all use a “red unbalance light” if not for ourselves, at least for others to see, register, and avoid. Not that we’re not a bit unbalanced all the time, shifting weight, opinions, contradictions, priorities, but the red light indicates that the load is so off that the machine has come to a stop. Only a re-distribution will get things going again. Really what we need is the yellow light, the one that comes before the red one, the warning that the wet stuff better be shifted or it’s coming to a grinding halt. (I’ve always thought that an “Asshole Crossing” sign would also be a helpful forewarning.) This light would come on even before the machine started to shake and bounce around, prior to the loud knocking noises. However, if you come into the laundromat, start the load, check the clock, and plan to come back about the time it finishes, then it’s a real pain in the ass. You come back thinking stage one is done only to find that it’s the lean-over, pull-on-heavy-wet- towels, threatening-lower-back-spasms time. This is a very similar feeling when coming back to the dryer to see that the door wasn’t all the way shut so the dryer never turned on and the wet clothes look a bit bewildered laying on the floor of the botched circular ride. Hopefully, the timer only starts when the dryer goes and not when the quarter went in. Either way, the laundry process has been interrupted and efficiency lost because when it all comes down to it, no one really wants to sit in a laundry waiting on clothes. Except for me maybe.
That thought reminds me of a guy who told me that if you love what you’re doing, you’ll do it for free. He looked at me, then my writing pad, and back at me to make his point. We had been talking abut food stamps, disability, and anti-employment sentiment. I’d met Eddie several months before when he’d first come to town, pack and tent on his back. He was living up Grizzly Gulch near the old lime kilns (built in the late 1860's). In fact, some other guy came back with him one night and was so drunk he fell into one of the tall old brick structures. Not so good, bad in fact. Didn’t know what he’d look like when the sun rose. He was okay though.
Anyway, this conversation with Eddie was in winter and he was telling me that he was now living with his girlfriend in her place near the Laundry and describing the last time he went down to get food stamps –he was a regular. The food-stamp worker had said that he looked young and fit and employable and why didn’t he get work. He didn’t know why but he answered back that he didn’t want to pay taxes.
"Does it bother you that I work and pay taxes that go to paying for your food stamps.”
“No, not really.”
We talked on about getting money when disabled and that his girlfriend received social security benefits for psychiatric reasons. He was musing about ways he could make that work for himself. I gingerly asked what kind of work he’d want to do if he was working. He replied a bit too quickly that he’d had work, done this or that, but that he really didn’t want to put all his time into something he hated. I sure understood that. A couple of years ago, trying to find income here in Helena, I answered an ad for a marketing job in grocery stores. I got the packet in the mail with full instructions on how to market products from my little cardboard table cheerily decorated with little American flags (one example) to attract grocery shoppers to sample the new food or beverage. Relatively, effort expended to dollar received (except for having to schlep one's own table, cloth, said flag, microwave or crock pot), it was an okay job. What threw me though was the hairnet and apron that I was required to wear. The woman on the front of the instruction book looked very happy, eerily so. Fortunately, I had to go out of town and by the time I got back all the positions were filled. The name of the company was New Concepts in Marketing. Isn’t there a truth-in-advertising clause somewhere? I’ll never look at the food-sample people the same ever again. Flag or no flag, they are moving the economy along.
I then applied at Osco because I saw that they did not have to wear uniforms. However, as part of the application process, I had to sit at a computer and answer a 100-question (maybe it was 300) survey that they used to determine team spirit, level of happiness per hour of subservience, anger management, and patience. After being asked the same question the 25th different way, I was certain that I would flunk the test. They kept asking if I’d ever had problems with a supervisor, been angry enough to use profanity in public, and if I played well with others. By then, I was broken, cursing, hated team players, and knew I would not get a call. I didn’t.
I’ve gotten out of whack before. I shouldn’t have needed a yellow or red light, the machine was shaking and quaking and making a loud racket but I kept going. By the time things grounded to a halt, my engine was burned out. I know what employment disability is like and redistributing the heavy stuff afterward so it wasn’t hard at all to understand where Eddie was coming from. After he left, I pondered how the world could manage without work and pay, the money exchange. I’m no economist or cavewoman so I didn’t come up with any good ideas. There are people that like, even love, to work. There are people that don’t care to “pull their own weight.” There are people that can’t do either one. Green, yellow, red lights. I don’t know that this is a case where “it takes all kinds.” I do know that there are Like Kinds and the piles really shouldn’t be washed together but if so, on cold.
My present job (have I mentioned that I work as the development director at the Myrna Loy Center?) took me to the State Capitol this week to give a 3-minute testimony at the HB 9 Cultural and Aesthetic Grants Program Hearings of the Long-Range Planning Appropriations Subcommittee (I worked really hard to get all the words in the right order). The grants are funded by interest earned on the Montana Cultural Trust, its corpus established from coal money long ago (meaning I can’t find the exact dates or type of levy/tax information online) provides funding to at least a three-page, single-spaced, type-size 10, excel spreadsheet list of non-profit organizations. I got to listen to about 20 of them before I testified for the Myrna --as we affectionately call the center. The best and l o n g e s t testimony was from a senior citizen of the town of Conrad, population 2,500. She said that when she found out that their grant had been cut in half, she cried so much and was so sad that she had to go to the doctor to get Zoloft. She was a gem of a citizen and quite funny in her persuasive, older-woman-from-one’s-childhood-church way, sweetly reprimanding the committee about funding her town’s art council. In a nice touch, one senator leaned over to the chairperson and said, “Now, you know her son.” I bet they got a grant. Another testifier was told by the chairman, “Be sure and tell the Weisners hello.” Back to our million citizens in this giant land of Montana, I do like that neighborly way. The only drawback is that sometimes (not all the time) if you don’t have a mama from Montana or know the Weisners, you don’t get to play with the big kids.
The best part of going to the capitol though was taking pictures. My friend Barb works in the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs and she showed me around. My friend and fellow Myrna staff member, Krys, was also there that morning. Both were game for Kodak moments, as you can see.
Along the photograph lines…I went cross-country skiing on Saturday as the snow was bountiful and the day gorgeous. However, I have not put on a pair of those narrow sticks in about 25 years. There is a particular muscle on the inner thigh that hadn’t made itself known to me in about that long too. Friend DD tells me that there is a certain age that it is okay to take Advil before and after exercising. She also said that face-plants, full-body spread-eagle falls, are reminders of how much we loved tumbling in the snow when we were children. That was way more than 25 years ago so that memory will take longer. Still it was a beautiful day and the snow tasted really good.
It is very quiet at the Laundry this afternoon except for meeting the Drew Family, two adults and three children. Kim and Joe are the new owners of the Jailhouse Sandwich Shop and Soup Kitchen. (I had The Smuggler today, roast beef with whisky garlic cream cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, onions and some other things on wheat with the potato salad.) They moved to Helena in the late 1990’s and their son grew up coming here. He knew Sambo as the “sandwich man.” Kim and Joe both seemed very happy to have their new business. Kim said that this neighborhood is the friendliest in town, “people wave at you when you go by it's a community within a community.” She’s certainly not the first or the last to make that comment. They have just added to the cheer.
Meanwhile, Emma is trying to figure out a sound, that of a crumpled dollar bill going in and out of the change machine. She’s cocking her doggie head and ears. Ah, finally the quarters. Back to nap for her. Not much of a fan base today, only a few brief, “you’re dog is so cute.” One admirer was a young woman that came in with her friend and happened to say “fuck” as she was sorting through her laundry. She quickly apologized to me. I said that I didn’t fucking care what she said. “That’s my girl,” she laughed. Emma twitched.
Until next time, remember:
FOR PERSONAL SAFETY: AFTER RAISING LID BE SURE TUB HAS COMPLETELY STOPPED BEFORE REACHING IN.
We could all use a “red unbalance light” if not for ourselves, at least for others to see, register, and avoid. Not that we’re not a bit unbalanced all the time, shifting weight, opinions, contradictions, priorities, but the red light indicates that the load is so off that the machine has come to a stop. Only a re-distribution will get things going again. Really what we need is the yellow light, the one that comes before the red one, the warning that the wet stuff better be shifted or it’s coming to a grinding halt. (I’ve always thought that an “Asshole Crossing” sign would also be a helpful forewarning.) This light would come on even before the machine started to shake and bounce around, prior to the loud knocking noises. However, if you come into the laundromat, start the load, check the clock, and plan to come back about the time it finishes, then it’s a real pain in the ass. You come back thinking stage one is done only to find that it’s the lean-over, pull-on-heavy-wet- towels, threatening-lower-back-spasms time. This is a very similar feeling when coming back to the dryer to see that the door wasn’t all the way shut so the dryer never turned on and the wet clothes look a bit bewildered laying on the floor of the botched circular ride. Hopefully, the timer only starts when the dryer goes and not when the quarter went in. Either way, the laundry process has been interrupted and efficiency lost because when it all comes down to it, no one really wants to sit in a laundry waiting on clothes. Except for me maybe.
That thought reminds me of a guy who told me that if you love what you’re doing, you’ll do it for free. He looked at me, then my writing pad, and back at me to make his point. We had been talking abut food stamps, disability, and anti-employment sentiment. I’d met Eddie several months before when he’d first come to town, pack and tent on his back. He was living up Grizzly Gulch near the old lime kilns (built in the late 1860's). In fact, some other guy came back with him one night and was so drunk he fell into one of the tall old brick structures. Not so good, bad in fact. Didn’t know what he’d look like when the sun rose. He was okay though.
Anyway, this conversation with Eddie was in winter and he was telling me that he was now living with his girlfriend in her place near the Laundry and describing the last time he went down to get food stamps –he was a regular. The food-stamp worker had said that he looked young and fit and employable and why didn’t he get work. He didn’t know why but he answered back that he didn’t want to pay taxes.
"Does it bother you that I work and pay taxes that go to paying for your food stamps.”
“No, not really.”
We talked on about getting money when disabled and that his girlfriend received social security benefits for psychiatric reasons. He was musing about ways he could make that work for himself. I gingerly asked what kind of work he’d want to do if he was working. He replied a bit too quickly that he’d had work, done this or that, but that he really didn’t want to put all his time into something he hated. I sure understood that. A couple of years ago, trying to find income here in Helena, I answered an ad for a marketing job in grocery stores. I got the packet in the mail with full instructions on how to market products from my little cardboard table cheerily decorated with little American flags (one example) to attract grocery shoppers to sample the new food or beverage. Relatively, effort expended to dollar received (except for having to schlep one's own table, cloth, said flag, microwave or crock pot), it was an okay job. What threw me though was the hairnet and apron that I was required to wear. The woman on the front of the instruction book looked very happy, eerily so. Fortunately, I had to go out of town and by the time I got back all the positions were filled. The name of the company was New Concepts in Marketing. Isn’t there a truth-in-advertising clause somewhere? I’ll never look at the food-sample people the same ever again. Flag or no flag, they are moving the economy along.
I then applied at Osco because I saw that they did not have to wear uniforms. However, as part of the application process, I had to sit at a computer and answer a 100-question (maybe it was 300) survey that they used to determine team spirit, level of happiness per hour of subservience, anger management, and patience. After being asked the same question the 25th different way, I was certain that I would flunk the test. They kept asking if I’d ever had problems with a supervisor, been angry enough to use profanity in public, and if I played well with others. By then, I was broken, cursing, hated team players, and knew I would not get a call. I didn’t.
I’ve gotten out of whack before. I shouldn’t have needed a yellow or red light, the machine was shaking and quaking and making a loud racket but I kept going. By the time things grounded to a halt, my engine was burned out. I know what employment disability is like and redistributing the heavy stuff afterward so it wasn’t hard at all to understand where Eddie was coming from. After he left, I pondered how the world could manage without work and pay, the money exchange. I’m no economist or cavewoman so I didn’t come up with any good ideas. There are people that like, even love, to work. There are people that don’t care to “pull their own weight.” There are people that can’t do either one. Green, yellow, red lights. I don’t know that this is a case where “it takes all kinds.” I do know that there are Like Kinds and the piles really shouldn’t be washed together but if so, on cold.
My present job (have I mentioned that I work as the development director at the Myrna Loy Center?) took me to the State Capitol this week to give a 3-minute testimony at the HB 9 Cultural and Aesthetic Grants Program Hearings of the Long-Range Planning Appropriations Subcommittee (I worked really hard to get all the words in the right order). The grants are funded by interest earned on the Montana Cultural Trust, its corpus established from coal money long ago (meaning I can’t find the exact dates or type of levy/tax information online) provides funding to at least a three-page, single-spaced, type-size 10, excel spreadsheet list of non-profit organizations. I got to listen to about 20 of them before I testified for the Myrna --as we affectionately call the center. The best and l o n g e s t testimony was from a senior citizen of the town of Conrad, population 2,500. She said that when she found out that their grant had been cut in half, she cried so much and was so sad that she had to go to the doctor to get Zoloft. She was a gem of a citizen and quite funny in her persuasive, older-woman-from-one’s-childhood-church way, sweetly reprimanding the committee about funding her town’s art council. In a nice touch, one senator leaned over to the chairperson and said, “Now, you know her son.” I bet they got a grant. Another testifier was told by the chairman, “Be sure and tell the Weisners hello.” Back to our million citizens in this giant land of Montana, I do like that neighborly way. The only drawback is that sometimes (not all the time) if you don’t have a mama from Montana or know the Weisners, you don’t get to play with the big kids.
The best part of going to the capitol though was taking pictures. My friend Barb works in the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs and she showed me around. My friend and fellow Myrna staff member, Krys, was also there that morning. Both were game for Kodak moments, as you can see.
Along the photograph lines…I went cross-country skiing on Saturday as the snow was bountiful and the day gorgeous. However, I have not put on a pair of those narrow sticks in about 25 years. There is a particular muscle on the inner thigh that hadn’t made itself known to me in about that long too. Friend DD tells me that there is a certain age that it is okay to take Advil before and after exercising. She also said that face-plants, full-body spread-eagle falls, are reminders of how much we loved tumbling in the snow when we were children. That was way more than 25 years ago so that memory will take longer. Still it was a beautiful day and the snow tasted really good.
It is very quiet at the Laundry this afternoon except for meeting the Drew Family, two adults and three children. Kim and Joe are the new owners of the Jailhouse Sandwich Shop and Soup Kitchen. (I had The Smuggler today, roast beef with whisky garlic cream cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, onions and some other things on wheat with the potato salad.) They moved to Helena in the late 1990’s and their son grew up coming here. He knew Sambo as the “sandwich man.” Kim and Joe both seemed very happy to have their new business. Kim said that this neighborhood is the friendliest in town, “people wave at you when you go by it's a community within a community.” She’s certainly not the first or the last to make that comment. They have just added to the cheer.
Meanwhile, Emma is trying to figure out a sound, that of a crumpled dollar bill going in and out of the change machine. She’s cocking her doggie head and ears. Ah, finally the quarters. Back to nap for her. Not much of a fan base today, only a few brief, “you’re dog is so cute.” One admirer was a young woman that came in with her friend and happened to say “fuck” as she was sorting through her laundry. She quickly apologized to me. I said that I didn’t fucking care what she said. “That’s my girl,” she laughed. Emma twitched.
Until next time, remember:
FOR PERSONAL SAFETY: AFTER RAISING LID BE SURE TUB HAS COMPLETELY STOPPED BEFORE REACHING IN.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Countdowns
When I was in Chicago in January, I was given a keychain by two dear friends, Mary and LG. It has on it a digital running countdown of the days George W. has left in office. Right now it is 715 Days, 9 Hours, 8 Minutes, and 56.2 Seconds (I had to type that fast because each .something really moves the clock). This little keychain makes me happy every time I look at it. When I first laid eyes on it, there were 750 days left. Each day is one day closer to the end of an administration that I have no good words for. (Go to http://www.backwardsbush.com/ to get your own.)
715d, 9h, 5 m, 34.4s
I’m thinking of other countdowns today as I sit at the Laundry. The count stopped this week on the life of a one-of-a-kind, national, political, biting voice: Molly Ivins. She long-reported on the Texas Legislature but didn’t stop at the borders, there wasn’t a powerful politician that was free from her sharp wit and keen wordsmithing on behalf of the powerless. She’s the one that nicknamed George W. Bush, “Shrub.”
One column I remember well from 1992, she wrote that Ross Perot’s economic plan was as welcome as a wanton woman at SMU Theology. (Some papers ran the word, “whore.”) Working at SMU Theology at the time, I wrote to her and told her how proud we were to be mentioned in her column, invited her to our Women’s Week conference, and signed my name and “the other wanton women of SMU Theology.” Not long after I got a postcard of Ralph, the swimming pig, jumping off a rock at Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas. It read, “Dear WW of SMUT, Would love to come to talk to WW, but this year is out. Booked to the gills. But keep me on your dance card for further on down the line. Best Wishes, Molly Ivins.” At first I thought that someone had played a joke on me but then I knew that few would have access to Ralph’s card, a performer that Molly Ivins favored. I’m only now noticing how she addressed it, simply,
Marilyn Alexander
c/o the Wanton Women of SMU Theology
Dallas, TX 75275
A couple of years later she spoke at SMU and when I asked her to sign my copy of her book, I showed her the postcard. She laughed, said that she remembered and then wrote, “For Marilyn, another wanton woman, Raise more hell!” Kindred spirit for sure.
I’m looking at the obituary from last Thursday’s New York Times. She had countless good lines. “After Patrick J. Buchanan, as a conservative candidate for president, declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention that the United States was engaged in a culture war, she said his speech ‘probably sounded better in German.’” Another quip: “There are two kinds of humor… One was the kind ‘that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity… The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That’s what I do.’” Her voice was passionate, insightful, and powerful. To check out her final column, Stand Up Against the Surge, go to
http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins/stand-up-against-the-surge.html
I’m still in shock that we won’t be reading her fresh words and cunning commentary anymore and her loss is just way too soon after the death of her friend and another extraordinary Texas woman, Ann Richards. We’ve lost two national treasures.
715d, 8h, 46m, 51.3s
Then there is the war in Iraq that has no countdown. Besides the above three people giving rise to things political, I’m in this frame of mind because I’m writing up an interview to be included in my book on Laundry stories. Through the Laundry community, I found a soldier to interview that had just come back from Iraq (that was in the Fall of 2005). Living in Helena has made me much more aware of the troops serving in this dreadful quagmire. The National Guard and Army Reserve are big employers here and because it is a small state (in population, real big geographically), it seems that when a Montana soldier dies, I pause a bit longer in thinking about him or her and the soldier’s family, kind of like neighbors down the block. Also, I’d not been to a homecoming parade for returning soldiers before but on Thanksgiving Day in 2005, I was on Last Chance Gulch, the main street through downtown, with the crowd waving little American flags and cheering to the troops hanging over railings of military trucks and sitting on top of tanks. I was moved that they had returned from sights and sounds and experiences that those of us present could not imagine --except maybe for the WWII and Vietnam veterans in the crowd. Hats and signs helped identify them.
I disagree terribly with this war that we are in. We shouldn’t be there and we’re going to have a hell of a time getting out. Our administration has really made a mess of things, a horrific calamity in a land that already had plenty. But even with these personal thoughts and convictions, I wanted to hear from someone who had been there. I needed to hear a soldier’s perspective, even if it was only one of many.
He agreed to come to my house on a December morning. The smell of the freshly-baked pumpkin bread filled the air. I put on tea and we sat on my couch. He was very gracious, trusting and generous to tell his story to a stranger after he finished, but two hours later, he told me that he hadn’t been able to tell anyone about it from start to finish. He said that either people didn’t have that much time or hadn’t asked.
He didn’t come home to a big fan-fare because he did not go with his unit but was sent with one from Missouri. But those that were there when he stepped off his plane wept with joy to have him back. Because he joined another unit, he entered into an already-established pecking order. He was an outsider from the start and had his authority challenged from day one. To sum up his overall experience, he had a supervisor that made work and life hell, oversight of troops that needed his emotional support as much as his logistical direction, and travel on roads that constantly had to be checked for IED (improvised explosive device). In order to do his job as a communications technician he had to travel out to three different hubs to work on internet satellites and internal networks with the threat of an explosion at every turn. He didn’t dwell on the danger as much as the working conditions with his boss. I came to see his experience as a really bad job but in the pit of explosive hell. He had a very humbling story and I was in turn humbled that he would tell it to me without knowing my political persuasion or any reason to think that I would really listen.
715d, 8h, 22m, 44.2s
There is the time running down until the kick-off for the Super Bowl this afternoon. Now, let me say, it is thought that all lesbians follow professional football religiously, as well as other sports. In contrast to a gay man who once said, “Organized sports are optional for my people.” However, for this woman-loving woman, I am not one to sit and watch football games on a given Sunday afternoon or Monday evening or whenever they are televised. My sister, Liz, has to call me the first Saturday in November to tell me who the victor was between our rival alma maters: Texas Tech (hers) and Texas A&M (mine). I never remember that they are playing.
Today I’ll make an exception as I did back in the hey-day of my youth when the Dallas Cowboys were quite the thing. Since the Chicago Bears are in the line-up this afternoon (Mountain Time, 2 hours earlier than Eastern evening) so I have some positive sentiment and loyalty to my friends in Chicago. In fact, two just called me on my cell phone, Jim and Terry, ones for which the sport is optional though the parties surrounding the grand sport are not. I’m also interested that this year marks the first time that both head coaches are African American: Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy. Both seem to be extraordinary men of great character and steady leadership. No matter which team is victorious, it will be the first time an African American coach won a Super Bowl. So the televised game for its historic meaning is another good reason to join the millions of viewers. Still, you can see, my reasons are so not-lesbian, but so be it.
715d, 8h, 18m, 23.2s
Finally, here at the Laundry, a count-up has just begun. There are new owners for the Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen. Sambo retired on Friday, his last day to serve up grub. We wish him well. I’ll keep you posted on the new developments in the lunch fare.
There are beginnings and endings all the time. We wait, we mourn, we listen, we cheer, we part, we greet, and the clock keeps ticking.
715d, 8h, 16m, 17.3s
715d, 9h, 5 m, 34.4s
I’m thinking of other countdowns today as I sit at the Laundry. The count stopped this week on the life of a one-of-a-kind, national, political, biting voice: Molly Ivins. She long-reported on the Texas Legislature but didn’t stop at the borders, there wasn’t a powerful politician that was free from her sharp wit and keen wordsmithing on behalf of the powerless. She’s the one that nicknamed George W. Bush, “Shrub.”
One column I remember well from 1992, she wrote that Ross Perot’s economic plan was as welcome as a wanton woman at SMU Theology. (Some papers ran the word, “whore.”) Working at SMU Theology at the time, I wrote to her and told her how proud we were to be mentioned in her column, invited her to our Women’s Week conference, and signed my name and “the other wanton women of SMU Theology.” Not long after I got a postcard of Ralph, the swimming pig, jumping off a rock at Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas. It read, “Dear WW of SMUT, Would love to come to talk to WW, but this year is out. Booked to the gills. But keep me on your dance card for further on down the line. Best Wishes, Molly Ivins.” At first I thought that someone had played a joke on me but then I knew that few would have access to Ralph’s card, a performer that Molly Ivins favored. I’m only now noticing how she addressed it, simply,
Marilyn Alexander
c/o the Wanton Women of SMU Theology
Dallas, TX 75275
A couple of years later she spoke at SMU and when I asked her to sign my copy of her book, I showed her the postcard. She laughed, said that she remembered and then wrote, “For Marilyn, another wanton woman, Raise more hell!” Kindred spirit for sure.
I’m looking at the obituary from last Thursday’s New York Times. She had countless good lines. “After Patrick J. Buchanan, as a conservative candidate for president, declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention that the United States was engaged in a culture war, she said his speech ‘probably sounded better in German.’” Another quip: “There are two kinds of humor… One was the kind ‘that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity… The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That’s what I do.’” Her voice was passionate, insightful, and powerful. To check out her final column, Stand Up Against the Surge, go to
http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins/stand-up-against-the-surge.html
I’m still in shock that we won’t be reading her fresh words and cunning commentary anymore and her loss is just way too soon after the death of her friend and another extraordinary Texas woman, Ann Richards. We’ve lost two national treasures.
715d, 8h, 46m, 51.3s
Then there is the war in Iraq that has no countdown. Besides the above three people giving rise to things political, I’m in this frame of mind because I’m writing up an interview to be included in my book on Laundry stories. Through the Laundry community, I found a soldier to interview that had just come back from Iraq (that was in the Fall of 2005). Living in Helena has made me much more aware of the troops serving in this dreadful quagmire. The National Guard and Army Reserve are big employers here and because it is a small state (in population, real big geographically), it seems that when a Montana soldier dies, I pause a bit longer in thinking about him or her and the soldier’s family, kind of like neighbors down the block. Also, I’d not been to a homecoming parade for returning soldiers before but on Thanksgiving Day in 2005, I was on Last Chance Gulch, the main street through downtown, with the crowd waving little American flags and cheering to the troops hanging over railings of military trucks and sitting on top of tanks. I was moved that they had returned from sights and sounds and experiences that those of us present could not imagine --except maybe for the WWII and Vietnam veterans in the crowd. Hats and signs helped identify them.
I disagree terribly with this war that we are in. We shouldn’t be there and we’re going to have a hell of a time getting out. Our administration has really made a mess of things, a horrific calamity in a land that already had plenty. But even with these personal thoughts and convictions, I wanted to hear from someone who had been there. I needed to hear a soldier’s perspective, even if it was only one of many.
He agreed to come to my house on a December morning. The smell of the freshly-baked pumpkin bread filled the air. I put on tea and we sat on my couch. He was very gracious, trusting and generous to tell his story to a stranger after he finished, but two hours later, he told me that he hadn’t been able to tell anyone about it from start to finish. He said that either people didn’t have that much time or hadn’t asked.
He didn’t come home to a big fan-fare because he did not go with his unit but was sent with one from Missouri. But those that were there when he stepped off his plane wept with joy to have him back. Because he joined another unit, he entered into an already-established pecking order. He was an outsider from the start and had his authority challenged from day one. To sum up his overall experience, he had a supervisor that made work and life hell, oversight of troops that needed his emotional support as much as his logistical direction, and travel on roads that constantly had to be checked for IED (improvised explosive device). In order to do his job as a communications technician he had to travel out to three different hubs to work on internet satellites and internal networks with the threat of an explosion at every turn. He didn’t dwell on the danger as much as the working conditions with his boss. I came to see his experience as a really bad job but in the pit of explosive hell. He had a very humbling story and I was in turn humbled that he would tell it to me without knowing my political persuasion or any reason to think that I would really listen.
715d, 8h, 22m, 44.2s
There is the time running down until the kick-off for the Super Bowl this afternoon. Now, let me say, it is thought that all lesbians follow professional football religiously, as well as other sports. In contrast to a gay man who once said, “Organized sports are optional for my people.” However, for this woman-loving woman, I am not one to sit and watch football games on a given Sunday afternoon or Monday evening or whenever they are televised. My sister, Liz, has to call me the first Saturday in November to tell me who the victor was between our rival alma maters: Texas Tech (hers) and Texas A&M (mine). I never remember that they are playing.
Today I’ll make an exception as I did back in the hey-day of my youth when the Dallas Cowboys were quite the thing. Since the Chicago Bears are in the line-up this afternoon (Mountain Time, 2 hours earlier than Eastern evening) so I have some positive sentiment and loyalty to my friends in Chicago. In fact, two just called me on my cell phone, Jim and Terry, ones for which the sport is optional though the parties surrounding the grand sport are not. I’m also interested that this year marks the first time that both head coaches are African American: Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy. Both seem to be extraordinary men of great character and steady leadership. No matter which team is victorious, it will be the first time an African American coach won a Super Bowl. So the televised game for its historic meaning is another good reason to join the millions of viewers. Still, you can see, my reasons are so not-lesbian, but so be it.
715d, 8h, 18m, 23.2s
Finally, here at the Laundry, a count-up has just begun. There are new owners for the Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen. Sambo retired on Friday, his last day to serve up grub. We wish him well. I’ll keep you posted on the new developments in the lunch fare.
There are beginnings and endings all the time. We wait, we mourn, we listen, we cheer, we part, we greet, and the clock keeps ticking.
715d, 8h, 16m, 17.3s
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
UPON RETURN
In the summer of 2005, I was treated to the stories of an 89-year old Dr. Haney Cordua from San Diego, California. I noticed him when I walked up as he was having his picture taken under the Rodney Street Laundry sign which hangs in perpetuity on the side building wall. It’s not often that the laundry is a backdrop for a Kodak moment so I immediately became intrigued. I figured this had to be a certain occasion and I approached the threesome: elderly gentleman, younger female photographer and younger male completing the trio, as soon as I saw an opportunity. We were all headed into the building for the same purpose of lunch at the infamous Jailhouse Sandwich Shop and Soup Kitchen.
While we sat at our respective tables I asked if the older man was here for something special. Sure enough he was back to visit his birthplace. He was born in Helena in 1915 but moved away in 1918 and he’d only been back once since then. He readily agreed to talk to me once I explained that I was the resident writer, which he got a kick out of. I quickly saw that he had a keen mind as well as memory. I first asked him where he went after Helena and immediately realized my tactical error because it seems that the earliest memories are often more accessible and we were now starting at age 3 and had 86 more years to go. Fortunately he had a great sense of humor and could spin a good yarn. His family had moved to Florida when he was three in their 5-seat Franklin Chummy Roadster.
“This was 1918 and still close to the Civil War (which, I thought, is still pretty close to some Southern hold-outs). Kids in the neighborhood teased me about being a damn Yankee. My father told them that I had been born in the Montana Territory, he in the Republic of Texas and my mother in Canada and yes, we were damn Yankees and proud of it!”
By 1922 the family had settled in San Diego. He said that there are goofy things that happen in life that for some reason or another stick with you. For example in kindergarten a clown taught his class how to chew milk (he demonstrated and I witnessed his lips together but slightly puffed cheeks moving with the chewing motion inside his mouth). He said that he still thinks about the clown’s lesson whenever he has milk and faces the dilemma of drinking it down or chewing on it a while.
He changed topics to his mother and described how she was going to be a nurse in San Francisco but took one look at a bedpan and decided to enroll in medical school. Later she was taking exams when the great earthquake ruptured the city. After school she had a difficult time finding a job but she sent an application to a Butte mining company under the name O.B. Brazien and was hired. It wasn’t until she arrived that they found out she was a woman. Later in 1918 during the flu epidemic his mother was one of the few doctors that would make house calls.
Harney was named after his father who was named after a General Harney, a famous general in the Civil War (a name I have since run across in researching for a book on San Antonio). His grandfather was Captain May Cordua, served under the general in South Dakota, and had hopes if his child was named Harney that he would be made a major. The promotion didn’t come to fruition but the name stayed in the family.
At that point in our interview Harney’s daughter (the photographer) with a nudge from her husband (the younger man) redirected the conversation back to Helena and their sojourn that day through city and county records to find the addresses of his homes. Remarkably, after 83 years, he still remembered one of the addresses, on Lawrence. The records confirmed it. He laughed when he said that he was going to ring the doorbell of his childhood home and when the inhabitants answered he would say, “Remember me?” He also recalled his walks downtown by himself at three, almost four, where he sat in people’s cars trying to drive them. The owners would call his father to tell him to come and get him…again.
He lived his life in San Diego and, like his mother, had a long career as a physician. Still he was pulled back to his earliest roots. I could tell that he had many stories in him but his daughter and son-in-law sensed that he was tiring so they prepared to go back to theirhotel. I left feeling my life was far richer for having met him.
While we sat at our respective tables I asked if the older man was here for something special. Sure enough he was back to visit his birthplace. He was born in Helena in 1915 but moved away in 1918 and he’d only been back once since then. He readily agreed to talk to me once I explained that I was the resident writer, which he got a kick out of. I quickly saw that he had a keen mind as well as memory. I first asked him where he went after Helena and immediately realized my tactical error because it seems that the earliest memories are often more accessible and we were now starting at age 3 and had 86 more years to go. Fortunately he had a great sense of humor and could spin a good yarn. His family had moved to Florida when he was three in their 5-seat Franklin Chummy Roadster.
“This was 1918 and still close to the Civil War (which, I thought, is still pretty close to some Southern hold-outs). Kids in the neighborhood teased me about being a damn Yankee. My father told them that I had been born in the Montana Territory, he in the Republic of Texas and my mother in Canada and yes, we were damn Yankees and proud of it!”
By 1922 the family had settled in San Diego. He said that there are goofy things that happen in life that for some reason or another stick with you. For example in kindergarten a clown taught his class how to chew milk (he demonstrated and I witnessed his lips together but slightly puffed cheeks moving with the chewing motion inside his mouth). He said that he still thinks about the clown’s lesson whenever he has milk and faces the dilemma of drinking it down or chewing on it a while.
He changed topics to his mother and described how she was going to be a nurse in San Francisco but took one look at a bedpan and decided to enroll in medical school. Later she was taking exams when the great earthquake ruptured the city. After school she had a difficult time finding a job but she sent an application to a Butte mining company under the name O.B. Brazien and was hired. It wasn’t until she arrived that they found out she was a woman. Later in 1918 during the flu epidemic his mother was one of the few doctors that would make house calls.
Harney was named after his father who was named after a General Harney, a famous general in the Civil War (a name I have since run across in researching for a book on San Antonio). His grandfather was Captain May Cordua, served under the general in South Dakota, and had hopes if his child was named Harney that he would be made a major. The promotion didn’t come to fruition but the name stayed in the family.
At that point in our interview Harney’s daughter (the photographer) with a nudge from her husband (the younger man) redirected the conversation back to Helena and their sojourn that day through city and county records to find the addresses of his homes. Remarkably, after 83 years, he still remembered one of the addresses, on Lawrence. The records confirmed it. He laughed when he said that he was going to ring the doorbell of his childhood home and when the inhabitants answered he would say, “Remember me?” He also recalled his walks downtown by himself at three, almost four, where he sat in people’s cars trying to drive them. The owners would call his father to tell him to come and get him…again.
He lived his life in San Diego and, like his mother, had a long career as a physician. Still he was pulled back to his earliest roots. I could tell that he had many stories in him but his daughter and son-in-law sensed that he was tiring so they prepared to go back to theirhotel. I left feeling my life was far richer for having met him.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
It’s good to be back on my little computer screen after a month away though I didn’t mean to be gone so long. There was the week in New York City for Christmas with a couple of days in Callicoon, NY, followed by a whirlwind-week of fun in Chicago to bring in the new year, and ending with ten days of a nasty bug that clobbered me when I got back to Helena. I feel like a new season has arrived now but that may be because the temperature here has risen to the 30’s rather than the single and below-zero temperatures of the last two weeks. It’s a beautiful sunny day in Helena.
I intended to write an entry from NYC and Chicago but that fell away pretty quickly. However I did bring back some snapshots of a sampling of Laundromats along the way. One universal bond is the repetitive task of doing laundry. Yes, there are those sayings of music and love and laughter and such that we name as the common language of peoples around the globe and throughout history but washing clothes is definitely an experience that could be the foundation for peace accords –maybe a wash day truce. There are those that do not go for clean or even slightly-freshened clothes but the rest of us think, smell, and wish that they did. And there are those that have never done a load of laundry in their lives but hopefully they can at least imagine the process (much like knowing carrots come from the ground and not just from the produce section) even if with-or-without-bleach, cold or multi-temperature-wash detergents are foreign terms. So in honor of our global unity, I offer some laundry snaps.
Getting back to Helena and the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen (the soup kitchen part just means that they serve soup with their sandwiches unless you want potato salad…and though original, “& Potato Salad Kitchen” is not as catchy), there was a great event in the neighborhood last Saturday, the Snow Sculpture Contest. It took place in the parking lot between the Laundry and B&B Market in a festive winter carnival atmosphere, two fires going to warm up by, and plenty of slick ice to slide around on. And it was COLD, really cold, subzero cold. Emma was actually shivering which she never does unless she wants to really act like it is a humongous problem that she is being left at home. I think the ice was chilling her little paws and on up her doggie legs though that did not keep her from eating snow. But the really cold ones to feel sorry for were the sculptors, especially as they had to take gloves off to do the finer touches like spray on the color. I talked to two that had worked side by side all day and were trying to uncurl their frozen fingers by the fire, one on a mountain lion, the other on a queen (Helena is known as the Queen City). As frozen as they were, they seemed invigorated with their accomplishments and should have been, they won the top two prizes respectively. I was pulled in as the third judge after the first two had come to different un-bridgeable conclusions. Third place went to a slide sculpture that a group of children created. Other works were very good: a penguin with baby (see the movie March of the Penguins), a buffalo head, and a van in a likeness to an icon long-parked in the neighborhood. There had been a sculpting workshop held the weekend before led by Charlie Carson. The result was a colorful Sponge Bob that stood in front of the B&B all week to entice entrants and spur curiosity. Besides the sculptors, about 150 people dropped by the carnival throughout the day.
At least one pick-up truck was parked nearby with signs in its bed of the snow that had to be hauled in from MacDonald Pass and Cox Lake as there hasn’t been a good snowfall since November (maybe October, it all kind of runs together). I admired the straight-forward, can-do attitude of the organizers: Snow Sculpture Contest, bring your own snow. Not, “we want to have a contest but we might not because there might not be any snow.” Nope, this was going forward no matter what.
Both the Christmas Caroling Party and the Sculpture Contest were the result of a neighborhood organizational meeting back in September. Set up as a part “get to know your neighbors” and part town hall, the event pulled in about 150 people and filled the Myrna Loy Center (MLC) auditorium.
The MLC is another extraordinary, dynamic fixture in the neighborhood, around the corner from the B&B. Housed in the old county jail (the reason for the Jailhouse in Jailhouse Sandwich Shop…), it is a performing and media arts center that screens films nightly; offers music, dance, and theater performances throughout the year of local, regional, national and international artists, a number who come for artist residencies and work with area schools. In one year one could rock out to a local high school age band complete with teen groupies, groove to the sounds of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary Chico Hamilton” (as one of his group announced often…we all could use someone like), vibrate to the drumming and dancing of an African dance group, and be awestruck by Alvin Ailey’s younger dance troupe, Ailey II. To me this is an amazing place in a city of 35,000 and a state population of about a million people and is a fabulous part of the one-of-a-kind Rodney Street neighborhood. The center is named after the (Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary) glamorous actress Myrna Loy who lived in Helena for a time and started her acting legacy in local productions. (Gary Cooper also grew up here, possibly in the RS neighborhood but maybe I’m making that up.)
The old jail-turned-MLC is across the street from the county courthouse, the present jail on the other side of the courthouse. The MLC is also a community center of sorts as many organizations rent the auditorium or gallery space for their performances, meetings, or receptions. So the MLC was a natural setting for the neighborhood gathering and perfect for a meeting to discuss the past, present, and future community –a living history.
The snow might have to be trucked in and is different each winter but the sculpting of a neighborhood is always in process. On Rodney Street the neighbors are reviving a rare awareness of the past that forms the present and envisions the future in fine detail, with colored water frozen on a snow queen. Even though she will eventually melt into the ground, she was here on a cold winter day, and her formation was cheered by a carnival of people
I intended to write an entry from NYC and Chicago but that fell away pretty quickly. However I did bring back some snapshots of a sampling of Laundromats along the way. One universal bond is the repetitive task of doing laundry. Yes, there are those sayings of music and love and laughter and such that we name as the common language of peoples around the globe and throughout history but washing clothes is definitely an experience that could be the foundation for peace accords –maybe a wash day truce. There are those that do not go for clean or even slightly-freshened clothes but the rest of us think, smell, and wish that they did. And there are those that have never done a load of laundry in their lives but hopefully they can at least imagine the process (much like knowing carrots come from the ground and not just from the produce section) even if with-or-without-bleach, cold or multi-temperature-wash detergents are foreign terms. So in honor of our global unity, I offer some laundry snaps.
Getting back to Helena and the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen (the soup kitchen part just means that they serve soup with their sandwiches unless you want potato salad…and though original, “& Potato Salad Kitchen” is not as catchy), there was a great event in the neighborhood last Saturday, the Snow Sculpture Contest. It took place in the parking lot between the Laundry and B&B Market in a festive winter carnival atmosphere, two fires going to warm up by, and plenty of slick ice to slide around on. And it was COLD, really cold, subzero cold. Emma was actually shivering which she never does unless she wants to really act like it is a humongous problem that she is being left at home. I think the ice was chilling her little paws and on up her doggie legs though that did not keep her from eating snow. But the really cold ones to feel sorry for were the sculptors, especially as they had to take gloves off to do the finer touches like spray on the color. I talked to two that had worked side by side all day and were trying to uncurl their frozen fingers by the fire, one on a mountain lion, the other on a queen (Helena is known as the Queen City). As frozen as they were, they seemed invigorated with their accomplishments and should have been, they won the top two prizes respectively. I was pulled in as the third judge after the first two had come to different un-bridgeable conclusions. Third place went to a slide sculpture that a group of children created. Other works were very good: a penguin with baby (see the movie March of the Penguins), a buffalo head, and a van in a likeness to an icon long-parked in the neighborhood. There had been a sculpting workshop held the weekend before led by Charlie Carson. The result was a colorful Sponge Bob that stood in front of the B&B all week to entice entrants and spur curiosity. Besides the sculptors, about 150 people dropped by the carnival throughout the day.
At least one pick-up truck was parked nearby with signs in its bed of the snow that had to be hauled in from MacDonald Pass and Cox Lake as there hasn’t been a good snowfall since November (maybe October, it all kind of runs together). I admired the straight-forward, can-do attitude of the organizers: Snow Sculpture Contest, bring your own snow. Not, “we want to have a contest but we might not because there might not be any snow.” Nope, this was going forward no matter what.
Both the Christmas Caroling Party and the Sculpture Contest were the result of a neighborhood organizational meeting back in September. Set up as a part “get to know your neighbors” and part town hall, the event pulled in about 150 people and filled the Myrna Loy Center (MLC) auditorium.
The MLC is another extraordinary, dynamic fixture in the neighborhood, around the corner from the B&B. Housed in the old county jail (the reason for the Jailhouse in Jailhouse Sandwich Shop…), it is a performing and media arts center that screens films nightly; offers music, dance, and theater performances throughout the year of local, regional, national and international artists, a number who come for artist residencies and work with area schools. In one year one could rock out to a local high school age band complete with teen groupies, groove to the sounds of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary Chico Hamilton” (as one of his group announced often…we all could use someone like), vibrate to the drumming and dancing of an African dance group, and be awestruck by Alvin Ailey’s younger dance troupe, Ailey II. To me this is an amazing place in a city of 35,000 and a state population of about a million people and is a fabulous part of the one-of-a-kind Rodney Street neighborhood. The center is named after the (Ladies and Gentlemen, the legendary) glamorous actress Myrna Loy who lived in Helena for a time and started her acting legacy in local productions. (Gary Cooper also grew up here, possibly in the RS neighborhood but maybe I’m making that up.)
The old jail-turned-MLC is across the street from the county courthouse, the present jail on the other side of the courthouse. The MLC is also a community center of sorts as many organizations rent the auditorium or gallery space for their performances, meetings, or receptions. So the MLC was a natural setting for the neighborhood gathering and perfect for a meeting to discuss the past, present, and future community –a living history.
The snow might have to be trucked in and is different each winter but the sculpting of a neighborhood is always in process. On Rodney Street the neighbors are reviving a rare awareness of the past that forms the present and envisions the future in fine detail, with colored water frozen on a snow queen. Even though she will eventually melt into the ground, she was here on a cold winter day, and her formation was cheered by a carnival of people
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