Halloween Greetings to All

Walked: 3 miles.

Three Days to Go: A Snapshot

Last night I happened upon a posting elsewhere quoting a bone-chilling "Christian" website urging  "Christians" to consult their Bibles for guidance as to how to vote.   It ran through seven or eight issues, purporting to give the "Christian" position on each.   I thought about writing a diatribe in response, but I'm too tired.  You can read it for yourself here.  In response, particularly with respect to environmental issues, you can read what Terry Tempest Williams has to say here.  In particular, check out the last week or so of her diary online.

A friend called this morning to see if I wanted to spend the day making phone calls for Mr. Kerry.  She was at the phone bank already, and told me that three other moms there have college kids who have not received their absentee ballots.  Among our families, that's five votes for Kerry.  One mother is flying her daughter home for the day so she can vote; another's son has come home for the week-end and is staying through Tuesday morning so he can vote.

At my regular Saturday morning get-together, it was apparent that one of the moms is a Bush supporter.  Her gentleman friend did four tours in Vietnam and is "unimpressed" by Kerry.  He remembers well his feelings of betrayal by Vietnam protesters and apparently feels aligned with the Swift Boat Veterans for truth.  She mostly didn't believe anything that I had to say on the basis of the movie Going Upriver, which she could go down the street and see if she wanted to.

My brother, a solid Bush supporter, has told me that the fundamentalist Christians next door to him are driving him insane with their humorless approach to the election.  He finally said to the dad, to get him off his back, that he had changed his mind and was voting for Nader.  The dad didn't even crack a smile.

Oh, there's more... .  I need another walk.

Walked: 3 miles.

 

 

Autumn in the Cemetery

I've had kind of an odd day.  Lots of action -- students and teachers alike wired about the election, an unpleasant phone call to a parent, more than an hour at the gym, and a couple of very productive preparation hours at the computer tonight.  I'm worried about my stepmother's still uncertain diagnosis, and about my college sons -- Halloween college week-ends are prime opportunities for trouble.

But it's peaceful here tonight.  My husband and daughter went  up to read and sleep long ago, so it's just me and the cat with her funny little sounds of satisfaction.  I'm going to stay up late and read some Thomas Merton, since for the first time in months I don't have to be somewhere early on a Saturday morning.

Neighborhood Walks

Talk About Walking

Where am I going? I'm going
out, out for a walk. I don't
know where except outside.
Outside argument, out beyond
wallpapered walls, outside
wherever it is where nobody
ever imagines. Beyond where
computers circumvent emotion,
where somebody shorted specs
for rivets for airframes on
today's flights. I'm taking off
on my own two feet. I'm going
to clear my head, to watch
mares'-tails instead of TV,
to listen to trees and silence,
to see if I can still breathe.
I'm going to be alone with
myself, to feel how it feels
to embrace what my feet
tell my head, what wind says
in my good ear. I mean to let
myself be embraced, to let go
feeling so centripetally old.
Do I know where I'm going?
I don't. How long or far
I have no idea. No map. I
said I was going to take
a walk. When I'll be back
I'm not going to say.

-- Philip Booth
From Lifelines: Selected Poems
1950-1999 (Viking Press)

Walked: 2 miles, and worked out at gym.

Theme Thursday: Signs, Etc.

I guess I could waste the entire day playing with my photos.

The sign is from the boardwalk at the nature center where I often walk.

Theme Thursday is here. 

Moon Night

I'm just keeping an eye on the moon, waiting for the eclipse.

My daughter's soccer team lost their tournament game tonight, so high school soccer is now a thing of the past for me.  As I watched tonight, I remembered many other games -- a soccer tournament when she was a very tiny five-year-old and I heard a mom on the opposing team ask whether we had a three-year-old on our team; a soccer game when it was snowing so hard that the girls, who were about ten, all looked like Frosty the Snowgirls as they finally won in overtime; the middle school field hockey game that ended for her with blood all over the field, a trip to the emergency room, and her definitive announcement that field hockey was not her game; and so many fall afternoons with shadows stretching from the blazing trees across the field and a ball sailing across the deep blue sky.

All over tonight.

All In An Autumn Day

High school student, upon hearing explanation of Ptolemy's understanding of the universe (earth at the center): "Wasn't that when the earth was square?"

Election board: Sent out son's absentee ballot two weeks after receiving application and one week before election.

Two high school students, one of each gender: "I would never vote for a woman for President of the United States."

Election board: Sent other son's absentee ballot out without apartment number.

Daughter's soccer team: Third game of district portion of state tournament today.

Husband: Working at least 75 hours a week for a few months now.

Red Sox: Won the third game.

Stepmother: Undergoing lengthy series of tests for what is most likely lung cancer.

Life: Jumbled and full.

Walked:  3 miles.

 

Another Election To Be Decided By The Court System?

We live in a critical county in a critical swing state.

One would think, therefore, given the Florida debacle in the last presidential election, that the officals of the Board of Elections of said critical county would have spent the past several months dotting every single stray "i" and crossing every single elusive "t" to ensure that things run smoothly here next Tuesday.

One would think.

Neither of my college sons have received their absentee ballot.  I contacted our local councilman and neighbor tonight, and he told me a horror story of mismanagement over the past month or two down at the Board of Elections.

Tomorrow I will be following his advice and contacting the Board of Elections, the local Kerry headquarters, and the newspaper.  The newpaper is another interesting story... but I'll save that one for a day when I'm slightly less disgusted.

I am just dumfounded that ANY  Board of Elections anywhere in the U.S. would be screwing things up this year.  Bush and Kerry are supposed to be visiting our state several more times in the next week -- not much point in that, is there, if it's going to become the battleground for a lawsuit over absentee ballots.

 

Episcopalian Morning

Walked: 3 miles.

You Want Me OFF The Couch?

Our dog lives well.  She's the one my husband pointed to the other night as "Exhibit A" when our daughter was discussing the problematic aspect of volunteering at the APL: her inability to come home without an animal.  (The cat hiding in a closet somewhere is Exhibit "B.")   Our little dog had been treated badly in her previous life, but she adapted rather quickly to the comforts of her new home.

Not so for all dogs. Many know only abuse, starvation, and pain.   Yesterday,  Jersey Girl posted a link to a website on "The Pit Bull Problem."    It takes a few minutes to watch and you need a strong stomach, but it's well worth a look if you care anything about animals.

 

 

Autumn Morning Walks

Walked: 3 miles.

Another Autumn

October Maple

I've added another entry to my other journal.  I did try to convey the humor of those early teen years :) .

http://journals.aol.com/oceanmrc/ALaywomansLectionary/

The Campaign Isn't Everything

Several hundred miles north of here, the Algonquin woods shed their leaves in silence.  It's chilly now, and the loons are packing up for their long journey south.  The beavers can't fly, so they are preparing to defend themselves against winter, and the moose are in love.

None of them have heard of George Bush or John Kerry.

Walked: 3 miles.

Passing Through

Finally finally finally -- the sun is OUT.  I took an incredible walk this morning, and discovered that the migrants are back, headed south this time.  In one tiny triangle of sunlit space where I had stopped to watch a noisy tufted titmouse,  it turned out that ruby-crowned kinglets, golden-crowned kinglets, white-throated sparrows, and white-breasted nuthatches had also stopped by.  One of the lakes was covered with geese, and most of the trees have reached their peak of color.  It's a great morning to live in the midwest.

Walked:  4 miles.

"The Preeminent Nature Writer of Our Time"

It was my enormous privilege last night to hear author Terry Tempest Williams speak, as our Museum of Natural History and the Nature Center where I do so much of my walking sponsored a stop on her Open Space of Democracy Tour.

The tour itself has become an emblem of her quiet battle to promote the open spaces of democracy in the form of freedom of speech and dialogue.  Her invitation to speak at Florida Gulf Coast University was rescinded by the university president, who was apparently feeling the hurricane-strength winds of suppression in a  Bush-governed state (and, therefore, state university system) a few weeks before the election.  The resultant student and faculty protest and ensuing correspondence with Ms. Williams resulted in a new invitation to her, issued by a coalition of student groups rather than the university.  The president blocked that invitation but, bowing to a further storm of protest, permitted it to be reissued, and she will speak at the University on Sunday.  The details can be read in her diary and in the press releases on the foregoing website.

The irony, of course, is that she travels in order to encourage and support dialogue.  While there is no question that she has a position on the issues of war and environmental protection, she is just as passionate about the need for all people to engage in conversation with one another, and it is impossible to imagine any way in which this soft-spoken and eloquent woman could offend an audience with her presence.

Her talk last night  was a blend of her concerns about local, national, and international issues; readings from her new book; and her thoughts on local conservation matters.

The most moving portion of the evening for me came when she described an interchange that she had with her senator, also a friend and a bishop in her Mormon community.  He had called her in response to a speech she had given at her alma mater, the University of Utah, to express the strength of his disagreement with her positions and then, running out of time, had promised to send her a letter.  The letter was four single-spaced pages.  It took her several months for her to think through her response but, when she did, it was in part an invitation.  She suggested that she accompany him to Iraq, where she would try to see the war through his eyes, and that he accompany her to the wildernes outside her door, under seige by the administration's plans for drilling, and try to see it through her eyes.

Her willingness to listen to others at the same time that she speaks with forceful conviction was so distinctly at odds with the tenor of the ongoing presidential campaign that it seemed as if she had arrived from another planet.  I don't know when I have heard a speaker listen so intently to the questions posed to her, or respond with such care and generosity.

I've had quite a month.  I am usually a great hibernator in the evenings, unwilling to climb back into my car once it has settled into the garage.  But in the past few weeks I've seen and heard John Edwards, Tim O'Brien and Terry Tempest Williams.  I'm thinking that I should make it a habit to get out more.

 

Colorful

Thanks to alphawoman1, I have a new place to put some photos: the Thursday Challenge.  The week's theme is "Colorful."  The photo is of my son's dorm at University of Chicago last year -- other corners on other sections are turquoise and yellow.  Most of the U of C boasts architecture more in the mode of Gothic in the Extreme, but this building was designed by someone who focuses on themes related to the American Southwest:

The structure in the front is a monument marking the site of the first self-sustaining controlled nuclear chain reaction, which was initiated in an old handball court under the University's old stadium bleachers on December 2, 1942.  Whether or not there should be such a monument is a  matter of opinion, but there it is.

 

 

Fractured Humanity: Book Review No. 7

I have just about inhaled In the Lake of the Woods (1994) over the past two days.

I came home from the Tim O'Brien reading Monday night, asked my daughter for her copy, and got started before bed.  I read it off and on yesterday and through the last three innings of the game last night.  I read it while I was drying my hair this morning, and I slipped home at lunch and finished it instead of grading papers.

At first, I just thought: my kind of book.  My friends know that I am an ending-first reader.  I have no tolerance for suspense, so as soon as I've made it far enough into a novel to know who is whom, I flip to the back and find out what happened to who and whom.  Then I can settle down and enjoy the book.

In this one, we know almost from the beginning that political-wife Kathy Wade is going to disappear, and that we will never find out what happened to her.  Did she run away in fear?  For a premeditated tryst?  Did she take the boat out and get lost in the north woods?  Did her husband, broken into bits and their mirrored pieces by the anguish of youth and the sunlight of Vietnam, murder her?  Did she and her husband jointly plan the ultimate getaway? We don't know, and we never will.  Does he?  Does anyone?

The portrait -- of disintegration, of loss, of the center that cannot hold in one person and the rupture between two who were, perhaps, never connected -- is dazzling.  Tim O'Brien is not one for big words or wandering paragraphs, but his ability to weave a story, many stories, is spellbinding.  The novel seems to flow right into the water of Lake in the Woods in northern Minnesota.  And, as he raises the final question, you realize that your ability to distinguish between what constitutes evil and what constitutes humanity has been sorely compromised.

The result?  I violated my 12-step BA (Bookbuyers Anonymous) program today and purchased Going After Cacciato.

Walked:  3 miles.

Halloween Reading List

Here's a list, in no particular order (except possibly alphabetical), of what I'd like to get read in the near future (I've actually thought of several other books since I put the list together earlier today, but this seems like enough for the time being):

Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (1994)

Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague (2001)

Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews (1998)

Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)

 Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003)

James Carroll, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (2001)

John Dominic Crossan and Joanthan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus(2002)

Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (2003)

Fodo Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866)

Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (2001)

Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire (1998)

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997)

Ross Kling, Michaelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling (2003)

Camara Laye, The Dark Child (1954)

Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History (1999)

H. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (1951)

Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato (1978)

Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief (2003)

Sarah Patton-Boyle, The Desert Blooms: A personal adventure of growing old creatively (1983)

Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy 1400 to the Present (1999)

Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters (2001)      

 

GO-O-O-O-O- RED SOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Heading South

I haven't had anything much to write about today other than the invisible meteor shower (yes, I just checked, and it's raining), so I thought I'd write about another October morning, 25 years ago.

My husband and I are backpacking on Isle Royale, an island national park in Lake Superior.  To get there, we had to drive 16 hours and take a float plane, but we've discovered that an October trip is much better than an August one.  The influx of human visitors has almost entirely abated.  We see several moose every day, and we hear the wolves howling one night.  We hike along the Greenstone Ridge, the backbone of the island, and see autumn laid out in blazes of color below us.

It's early morning and it's really, really cold.  I crawl out of the tent, having reached the point of no return as far as needing to go to the bathroom, and clutch my down vest around my thermal top.  After I take care of business, I walk my stiff and frozen self the short distance to the water's edge.  The sun is rising over Lake Superior, its golden rays streaking through the clouds low over the horizon.  And the geese begin to rise as well -- hundreds and hundreds of Canada geese, stretched in long skeins  across the entire expanse of northern sky. 

The only sounds are the lapping of the waves against the shore and the melancholy honking of the geese, following the route set by countless generations before them.  It's really the only way to begin a day in late October.

Meteor Shower

Apparently we are having a big meteor shower.  It is, as usual during such events, impossibly overcast here, but maybe there will be a change in the next day or two.  I saw Orion bright in the sky early yesterday morning, and am happy to have now identified Sirius.  Anyone know what that extremely bright star or planet directly to its east is?  That one was impressive, too.

The Orionids

Orionid Main • Observing
History • Links

Observing the Orionids

The point from where the Orionid meteors appear to radiate is located within the constellation Orion and is referred to as the radiant. The radiant is located in the northeastern part of that constellation. The following charts will help you find it from both the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere:

Northern Hemisphere

This represents the view from mid-Northern latitudes at about 1:00 a.m. local time around October 21. The red line across the bottom of the image represents the horizon. (Image produced by the Author using SkyChart III 3.5 and Adobe Photoshop 5.5.)

The radiant rises around 10:30 p.m. local time. At about 3:00 a.m. the radiant is about 50 degrees above the southern horizon.    

Words and Meaning

I got back a little while ago from the presentation that author Tim O'Brien made this evening for the parents at my daughter's school, where he spent the day.  Although he won the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato and much acclaim for In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien is probably best-known for his Vietnam-era The Things They Carried.  I re-read about the first half of it last night; it's one of the few of the hundreds of books that I've read in the past few years that has stayed with me.  My daughter's entire school read it over the summer, and her AP English class has just finished In the Lake of the Woods (a very different book, she tells me, that is now high on my list).

Tim O'Brien is as elegant a speaker as he is a writer.  Slightly built and wearing jeans and a baseball cap, he began by noting that his interest lies not in bombs or weapons, but in matters of the heart -- a statement he amplified later by explaining that while his context is war as, for example, John  Updike's is suburbia, what he has to say has to do with what goes on in the human heart.  He ended nearly an hour later by affirming  that we write "to make the absent present."

In between, before he began to read from The Things They Carried, he told a lengthy tale of youthful experiences.  I have no idea if the stories, or any portion of them, are true in the factual sense, but the telling of them was so vivid that I could only believe in every word as he spoke.  There is no question but that the stories are true in the real sense.  His point was that,  as we live our daily lives, the ordinary words that we use in the course of that living become transformed and packed with meaning for us and, in his case, become the words from which he tells his stories.

There is no way that I can do justice to his presence or to the integrity of his presentation.  As a writer, he conveys tremendous weight and authenticity in his capacity for pulling meaning from experiences that in the hands of others would simply be lost to the wind.  As a person, he reminds us that the particularities of our lives and the ways in which we choose to remember and convey them have the potential to bind us all in the universality of human pain and joy.

I am extremely pleased with myself for having skipped my own class to make a long drive in the dark and rain to hear him speak.

 

Another One

(Autumn Leaves)

I added another entry to my other journal yesterday:

http://journals.aol.com/oceanmrc/ALaywomansLectionary/

Walked: 3 miles.

Pathetically Lazy

The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.

-Thomas Jefferson

I purchased a year long pass to the community center today, so I have no more rain-snow-ice-clouds-cold excuses for not walking.  It's amazing how badly a couple of weeks in the sickhouse can disrupt all those good intentions paving the way to hell!

Morning Musings

I just got back from a quick trip for croissants and The New York Times.  It's another gloomy day, so no walk yet -- but I did drive home slowly, winding through neighborhoods where I've spent a lot of time over the past 28 years.

I'm looking at my city with new eyes now.  Like most of our friends, my husband and I are in the process of watching children fledge.  Our big, old, dilapidated houses are emptying rapidly.  We bought them two decades ago, entranced by the architectural detail of the 1910s and '20s, oblivious to the effort and cost that would be required to maintain them.  And now that the children are moving on, we have to figure out what to do.

On the whole, we seem to be deciding to stay.  The cost of preparing a house for sale is beyond reach.  There was a -- to me -- hilarious article in the Times a couple of years ago about a woman who is making a fortune writing about her home in its various states of disrepair.  Missing ceilings, exposed lathe, crumbling tiles: "No one else would live like this!" proclaimed the Times.  Since I know many people who do, in fact, live like that, I got a good chuckle out of it -- and then wondered why we, too, weren't earning fortune and fame from caved-in ceilings. 

In fact, in our house we are missing only the portion of one ceiling at present.  But we need electrical repairs, plumbing repairs, tuckpointing, painting, and, according to the city, a  new driveway.  Not the kinds of things that we could do all at once.  So, unless a job transfer results in a move paid for by someone else, we will be here at least another 15 years, making slow headway against our home as it turns 100, and hoping for grandchildren to fill bedrooms that used to be cluttered with Legos and markers.

Two sets of friends have homes in states of major rehabilitation at present.  Trucks and ladders everywhere.  Others are struggling with layoffs rather than contractors and paint cans.  Some are adjusting to the abrupt downsizing that so often follows divorce.  Everyone is staring down college tuition bills.

So I drive around and wonder what will become of all of us.  Will we manage this transition and still live within walking distance of each other a decade from now?  Will we throw baby showers for each other's daughters in the homes in which they grew up?  Will any of the children settle here permanently?  Will we?

For 28 years I've taken where I live completely for granted.  I know where things are in the grocery store, and I have lots of people whom I can call in the middle of the night.  But I'm beginning to see how ephemeral it all is, and to pay a lot more attention as I make my daily rounds.

Cemetery in Autumn

Evening

My daughter is off to her homecoming dance.  Most of the first floor of the jungle -- oops! -- I meant house -- is now penetrable.  I'd guess there were 500 pieces of paper on this table a few hours ago:

I've had enough.  I have two books to read for Monday night, so that's just what I'm going to do.

Late Afternoon

You can see the top of the dining room table now.  And I've filled one huge trash bag.  I see that I underestimated how long this project would take, though, by maybe 10 hours or so.

When I was finally ready for a walk, it was raining.  I did get out to the cemetery eventually:

Noon

I can't say that I've made a lot of progress.  I did get out to buy the groceries.  I stopped by the coffee shop where I usually meet a group of friends on Saturday morning, but no one was there yet, and I had a trunk full of groceries, so... . I've made a tiny dent in the papers piles, and done four loads of laundry.  More importantly, my daughter actually wrote a first draft of her college essay!  And she let me read it! And we got so excited that we forgot all about her voice lesson.  So her dad raced her over there, and I'm off to pick her up in a few minutes.

Early Morning

The dawn is just breaking outside and it's quiet in the house, except for the dog who is whimpering for some breakfast.  My husband and daughter both love to sleep in on week-ends, and won't be heard from from awhile.  I'm confident that my college sons are also sound asleep, albeit far from here.

This is the first time in a few weeks that I've felt like getting up and taking my usual long Saturday walk, but it's dark and gray and windy outdoors, so I'm not in any rush.  I had really looked forward to the arrival of this morning, after missing so many warm and sunny fall days due to illness.  The leaves are going to peak by the end of next week, if the rain and wind doesn't knock them all off the trees first.  Today feels more like November than October.  We've had an extended Indian summer, but I think that it may be over.

My dining room, where the computer desk sits, is a disaster area, and my plan for the day is to get that under control.  One of the many reasons that we purchased this home 20 years ago was its separate and potentially elegant dining room.  The house was built in 1917, so all the rooms have molding and mahogany woodwork.  The dining room has built in cupboards recessed under arched spaces.  Most of the furniture is pretty old -- my great-grandmother's Empire dresser, an 1800s gateleg table that we received as a Christmas gift from family many years ago, and chairs of the same era that we found in an antique store.  It's hard to believe that we ever had a life with time in it for furniture shopping.

The room, like the rest of the house, has never reached that potential for elegance that I saw when we moved in.  That has something to do with the three children who arrived in the next three years, but more to do, I suppose, with my own ineptitude. Now that the children are almost gone, I would like to rectify the situation, and the place to begin is this haven of chaos in which I sit. We would like to move the computer and associated paraphernaila into the sunroom in the back, but there's no point in doing that until the ceiling in there is replaced.  That job will involve plaster dust, not to mention money that we don't have, so it won't happen for awhile.  And now that winter is almost here, it can't happen for awhile anyway -- who wants uninsulated rafters exposed when it hits ten degrees outside?

So the workspace will stay in the dining room, but the computer desk can be closed up and the room itself could be a pleasant gathering space if it weren't for the piles of bills, school papers, books, homework, photographs, and God knows what else occupying every flat space. 

I also have to make up my next eighth grade major assignment today -- The Giant Map Project of the western hemisphere, with at least 100 items for the kids to locate and chart.  We have just reached Christopher Columbus's arrival on San Salvador in our studies, and the task is for them to know the geography of North, Central, and South America by the end of the month.  I'm hoping to avoid having to include the 13 colonies, so if anyone knows the names of any obscure rivers, mountains, or other features of the landscape, let me know.

My dog is obviously about to expire of starvation.

Wasp Woman

Failed again!

This past week, some internet friends and I decided to give Flylady a try.  For anyone who's missed the Flylady phenomenon, she (yes, there's a real one) is a woman in Brevard NC who's created an empire around daily messages (about 1.5 million of them) designed to help slovenly housekeepers get on top of things.

Her ideas are terrific, and women (and some men, I presume) across America swear by her.  She helps you divide your house into manageable (assuming, of course, that you are capable of managing something) chunks per week and your day into bits and pieces.  A little here, a little there and voila'! -- over a period of weeks or months (or, in my case, decades), your house will be transformed into a welcoming home.

I don't know how I got myself into this.  I already failed Flylady a few years ago.  I really can't accomplish much in little chunks of time -- it wears me out just to think about it.  (Not that I accomplish much in big chunks of time, either.) Of course, you're not supposed to THINK about it -- that's the beauty of the system.  You're supposed to just DO it -- "it" being whatever has popped up on your computer screen in the past, oh 2.5 seconds.  But I am on and off the computer all day long, so I have now subjected myself to endless berating by Flylady for my failings. 

Here's what I DID so far today (and it's 8:50 a.m.): saw my daughter off to school, which entailed finding $15 for a picture order and discussing her plans for homecoming tomorrow night, while steeling myself against even alluding to the college application process; finished grading a set of tests that I almost fell asleep over last night; analysed why most kids got As on but some failed said test; pulled up makeup tests for two kids in two different classes; read online about the hullabaloo over Mr. Kerry's remarks about Mr. Cheney's daughter; read part of a section of the real newspaper that appears on the porch every morning; organized some new materials  for AP history; threw in a load of wash; showered and dressed; deleted several Flylady messages; looked for a wasp graphic (!) -- and now here I am, playing yet again.

Here's what I did NOT do: put on my shoes before I started working (Flylady is big on shoes, but why would I want my shoes on to curl up in a blanket on the couch?); pick up the bathroom, pick up another room, or exercise.  And guess what? I'm not going to, either!  I'm going to have breakfast and go to work instead!

Hmmmm.  I'm afraid that Flylady brings out the latent rebellion fostered in Catholic boarding school.  I have failed yet again.  I do have to figure out some way to gain control over my home, yard, laundry, errands, and bills -- but I'm going to do so in my newly developing persona: WASP WOMAN!

Discouraged

I haven't felt motivated to write anything lately.  I am mostly trying to contend with my daughter's nonexistent college application process, and it is draining me of energy. 

On other fronts: as a teacher, there are few things more discouraging than reaching the conclusion that your efforts are, as with your own children, all for naught.  In the past few days I have:

Spent two full days prepping my 8th graders for their first big test -- going over an outline, making suggestions for learning vocabulary and geography, reviewing how to write a comparison/contrast esaay, allowing them to prepare  4"x6" notecards to bring with them.  One student had to take the test early -- today -- because he's going out of town.  He forgot his notecard, failed the test (he doesn't know that yet), and told another teacher that he's sure he aced it.

Discovered that one of my other classes has, as a group, virtually no retention, so told them to prepare for a vocab quiz today on a short list of words that we have already reviewed twice in class.  While most of them did do well (it was a multiple choice test -- how hard could it possibly have been?), two of them got Ds.

Tried very hard to counsel a senior whose college choices are completely unrealistic and to give him some other ideas.  He just laughed and told me that one of his schools is a "shoo-in." 

Discovered that of a group of "non-honors" students with whom I spent a great deal of time last spring on the college process, not a single one took my suggestion to take the SAT and ACT at the end of the year.  As a result, they are just now taking the tests, and coming up with completely random lists of schools because they have no scores to bring them down to earth and help them plan realistically.

If only all the wisdom, or at least basic knowledge, that you accumulate by the age of 50 could be of any use to people who are 17!

 

Just Stopping By...

I added a new entry to my Lectionary journal today:

http://journals.aol.com/oceanmrc/ALaywomansLectionary/

Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry

If you haven't seen this movie, about John Kerry's Vietnam War experiences and his subsequent transformation into a Vietnam Veteran Against the War and a national spokesman for a disillusioned generation, then go and see it tomorrow.

Let the river rock you like a cradle
Climb to the treetops, child, if you're able
Let your hands tie a knot across the table.
Come and touch the things you cannot feel.

And close your fingertips and fly where I can't hold you
Let the sun-rain fall and let the dewy clouds enfold you
And maybe you can sing to me the words I just told you,
If all the things you feel ain't what they seem.
And don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream.

**************************************

And close your eyes, child, and listen to what I'll tell you
Follow in the darkest night the sounds that may impel you
And the song that I am singing may disturb or serve to quell you
If all the sounds you hear ain't what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream

**************************************

The sun and moon both arise
And we'll see them soon through days and nights
But now silver leaves are mirrors, bring delights.
And the colours of your eyes are fiery bright,
While darkness blinds the skies with all its light.
Come see where your eyes cannot see.

And close your eyes, child, and look at what I'll show you;
Let your mind go reeling out and let the breezes blow you,
And maybe when we meet then suddenly I will know you.
If all the things you see ain't
quite what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream .
And you can follow; And you can follow; follow...

--Jerry Merrick, Follow, performed by Richie Havens

(It's in the movie)

 

For Little Ones: Book Review No. 6

As I've mentioned before, I spent part of my childhood in Vero Beach, Florida, where author Debra Frasier grew up.  Out of the Ocean is her creative and charming tribute to her Atlantic Beach, the same one that I grew up loving.

The text is minimal; the pages of collages are what enchant the reader.  Photographs and cut-paper combine to illustrate the treasures at the water's edge:  shells, sea glass, feathers, egg pouches, water, sunlight, and sand.  A glossary at the end describes each picture in detail: lots of information about sea turtles, beach remnants, and the pull of the moon.

If this book had come out when my children were young enough, I'm sure that I would have read it to them every night.  But it was published in 1998, when my youngest was already turning 11.  So I bought it for myself and my future grandchildren.  I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago when the hurricanes hit and I was checking the Vero paper online every day for pictures of the damage.  It reminded me of the ocean on the days we all want to remember it.

Northern Gannets or, Why I Hate the SATs...

 

and the ACTs and the SAT2s and the APs...  .  And yes, I've just dropped my lovely daughter off at the SAT.

Gannets breed on rocky islands and coastlines of the North Atlantic, but they migrate south in the winter -- often as far as St. Augustine, where we have vacationed for 20 years.  When storms churn up the ocean, the gannets are seldom far behind.  Built like torpedoes, they dive with elan and present themselves with far more elegance than do their comical counterparts, the brown pelicans.  The adult plummage is extraordinarily beautiful: sleek white edged with black along the wings and trimmed with yellow on the head and shoulders.

I love gannets.  I love to think of them soaring across vast expanses of ocean, and raising their families far north of where I see them.  I love their speed and strength and acrobatic abilities.

I hate the SAT, because it does nothing whatever to promote a love for gannets, or pelicans either.  My daughter knows a little more algebra today than she did a week ago, because she spent a bit of time this past week practicing problems that she's tried to block from her memory since 8th grade.  And she does know what words like perfidious and truculent mean but, for heaven's sake, she knew those anyway.

She does not, however, love gannets.  And so I have to ask: of what possible use have her years of college and test preparation been? 

This 'n That

 So...I'm walking again.  What a bummer, to have lost almost my entire Sukkot break to whatever that awful virus was.  But, thanks to Vivian, I have a Halloween skeleton to motivate me.  Vivian, by the way, has suffered a disastrous break-in, and there is a movement afoot to help replace her graphics collection, which unfortunately departed with her computer. 

I'm happy to report that the dog is much improved; she walked with me today.  Whatever happened to her leg was surely painful, as she has spent most of the last two weeks moping on the couch.  But she was her bouyant self this morning, trotting along and plunging into the lake for an occasional drink.  She's out sunning on the back porch now, recovering from a much needed bath.

I see that the gentleman who writes about Richards' Bend is an Editor's Pick this week.  I've been following this lyrical journal for some time, and it raised an interesting question yesterday: Would you really want to live as he does?  We've all read Walden and we all -- well, most of us anyway -- have too much stuff, so there's a certain appeal to getting off the grid and back to the woods.  But how far would you really be willing to go?  I find that in all honesty my own Laura Ingalls Wilder days are definitely over.

AOL has lately taken to bumping me off without notice, so I'm going to go ahead and save this and come back to add the links.  Then I'm going to run some errands and THEN I'm going to grade more papers.  Lucky me.

Homework

I'm just in a mood -- well, to procrastinate really.  But, whatever.

There aren't that many things that irritate me too much.  At least, not enough to write home about.  But there is one that drives me crazy as a teacher, and it's pretty simple: Parents Who Do Their Kids' Homework.

OK, so I was lucky.  My own kids went to Montessori schools, which don't really believe in homework, at least not beyond math facts and spelling words, until middle school.  And the schedule and the rooms in Montessori schools are set up so that kids can do their work -- and they do a ton of it -- during the day.  Several times during the week, a child has a short lesson with a teacher, either in a small group or on her own, gets an assignment and a deadline, and then it's up to her to handle it.  The kids spend the vast majority of their time working on their projects with whom and as they see fit.  The rooms are packed with books and other materials, the teachers are almost always available for consultation, and the parents can't possibly help -- they aren't there.

When it works, a child arrives in Montessori middle school prepared to manage her workload and do her assignments without parental prodding or assistance or -- gasp -- interference.  I could probably count on the fingers on one hand the times each of my children has involved me in a homework situation -- and the youngest is now 17.

As a teacher, I try to assign homework that my students can do.  On their own.  And that they can organize.  On their own.  If research is involved, I give them lots of suggestions for where to find relevant material.  If writing is required (and it usually is), I review, again and again, what constitutes an acceptable sentence, paragraph, and essay.  I desperately want them to become independent learners.  I want them to approach questions and problems with the confidence that comes from knowing that they do, in fact, know where to look for material and how to organize it and what constitutes an effective written and oral level of communication.  And guess what all that means? It means: forget the homework hotlines, the online parent homework calendars, the adult-generated compositions.  It means: They have to do it themselves. 

Today I saw both ends of the spectrum.  I received an email from a parent advising me as to the address to which I could send his child's homework assignments.  This child is a high school student.  Is the parent planning to send the same missive to his college professors?  I also graded a stack of 8th grade papers, written during class time.  And you know what, folks?

Those kids are capable.  Very capable.  Yeah, it was their first set of papers for me, and some of them are missing theses, and some are packed with generalizations rather than illustrations, and some avoid capitalization entirely.  But they represent a great start -- and the parents of the authors had nothing to do with them.  Two of the papers are positively brilliant.  Another sparkles with ideas that are completely original.  A few indicate that we have a long year ahead of us.  But every one of those kids worked really hard for two consecutive class periods and produced a piece of written work entirely his or her own.

Stand back and let them go to it!

Halloween Already?

 

Vivian is back at it again.  As the hostess with the mostess, she is now organizing J-Land to celebrate Halloween big time.  Take a hike over to her journal to find links to all the great stuff!

A New Journal

Some of my friends know that I am interested in pretty much everything about the spiritual aspect of our lives.  Somehow -- and I've already forgotten the exact path -- I stumbled upon a group of intriguing journals a few weeks ago, and decided to start a new one of my own.  I'm going to try to write something each week about one of the Lectionary passages (and if you need to find out what the Lectionary is, you can take a look at the first entry, now that the journal is up and running). 

I'm not making an offical start on the Lectionary itself until the end of November, just before the first Sunday of Advent, which is the beginning of the church year.  (Didn't know the church had an offical year?  Well, now you do.  It differs a bit from a secular western calendar year, or a fiscal year, or a year as defined in other religions and/or cultures.)  In the meantime, I'm going to get started on a weekly schedule by posting a little bit at a time about my own spiritual journey.  That way, anyone who comes across the journal will be able to discern to her satisfaction that I have absolutely no qualifications whatsoever to embark upon this project.

I have a lot of friends who have expressed a lot of hesitation about getting involved with religion in a formal way.  I have other friends who are active Christians and others who are observant Jews and a couple who are devout Moslems and a couple who are practicing Buddhists.  My own perspective is a Christian one, but I hope that anyone and everyone feels free to visit and leave comments.  Here's the link:

http://journals.aol.com/oceanmrc/ALaywomansLectionary/

Comments, Interaction, Etc.

 

My friend Pamela wrote a quizzical entry yesterday, wondering about proper J-land etiquette with regard to comments.  When do we comment?  Do we hafta? What's the proper response to someone who leaves a comment in your journal?  Well, you can read her entry for yourself. 

I've been thinking about this myself, as I suppose we all do.  Here, for what they're worth, are my thoughts, in abbreviated version (for which you will no doubt be thankful):

1.  Although I started this journal for myself, I quickly realized that I love getting comments.  Suddenly I began to wonder how my favorite newspaper columnists manage without the instant gratification provided by the internet -- although my guess is that most of their readers who have something to say call or email almost immediately, so all that they are missing is the public forum nature of online comments.  Anyway, I've found that it's very satisfying to get responses. 

2.  There is a certain competitive aspect to the whole comment-thing.  Let's  admit it -- most of us are probably very aware that some journalers are getting 20-30 and more comments a day, while many of us plod along with 0-10.  I know that I'm disappointed when friends email me personally rather than adding a comment (and you know who you are) -- I want to say Hey!  World!  Someone else read my entry and you just don't know it!

3.  I do try to comment in the journals I read, and I always visit people who've visited me.  Sometimes, though, I just don't have much to say.  And I feel a tad New Agey writing something like, "Wow, I really appreciate what you've shared."  Especially if I don't appreciate it at all.

4. I've notcied that J-land is, on the whole, a supportive and encouraging place.  All these fragile writers' egos, I suppose -- we are very gentle with one another.  It's a long way from the TWONTW ("To Work Or Not To Work") message boards of the old Moms Online, where the representative tone went more like this:

One View:   So women who don't work are complete morons who pretend to find intellectual stimulation in the baby poop smeared on the car seat and actually fantasize that they are making contributions to society by stuffing PTA envelopes, when in reality they have tossed their valuable educations out the window and have about as much to offer as a toad sitting under a rock.

Opposing view, posted within seconds of the above:   Women who "don't work" actually work far harder and many more hours for no pay than the selfish corporate fast trackers who abandon their children to institutional day care 27 hours a day and delude themselves into thinking that their paycheck makes any kind of contribution to the well-being and future security of their children, when in fact they are missing out on the best experience that life has to offer (that poop on the car seat thingy).

First poster:   You b---h.

Second poster:   B---h yourself.

Yes, indeedy, J-land is a major improvement over exchanges such as those.

5.  But the overwhelming generosity of tone here, which is a GOOD thing, does make it harder to develop a discussion, much less an actual debate.  There are journals I read that reflect lives far different from my own.  I really enjoy the different stories and perspectives -- but I hesitate to comment, because I don't want to come off like I'm dissing someone for making choices different from my own.

6.  I also find a certain sense of proprietorship in J-land.  Very frequently I find that I would like to link to someone else's entry and continue the discussion, as I've done here, but there isn't a lot of that going on. I just finished a book (The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie -- more on that later) about four major authors who do, from time to time, make contact with one another, or comment on each other's work, either directly or in letters to third parties. Those interactions are so appealing to me -- I would love to see that  kind of discussion happen here.  As long as the subject isn't my typos.

So, for what it's worth: there I am, all alone up there typing away on my computer.  If anyone ever wants to comment or continue a discussion elsewhere, please: go forth and do so!  Just keep me linked, so I can participate in the fun.

Walked: 1 mile.

Walked so far this month: 8 miles.

Le Plus Ca Change

I've only been to one personal appearance by a presidential election candidate before. In 1964, Barry Goldwater was running against Lyndon Johnson.  He made a whistlestop campaign trip through our predominantly Republican state, and  my dad took me to the train station for the Goldwater speech to our small town.  My dad wasn't planning to vote for Goldwater and, I far as I knew, didn't think much of Republican politicans in general, so I asked him why he wanted to go.

"He could be President," said my dad.  "You should get a look."  My dad was a history major in college and I'm sure that the event had far more significance to him than he articulated to an 11-year old. 

I couldn't find a Goldwater picture, but this one, from the University of Rochester collection, is close enough to represent events in my hometown:

(Thomas E. Dewey and his wife Frances at a whistle stop during the 1948 presidential campaign.)

Things looked a little different yesterday:

The exterior accoutremonts have changed.  I'm sure that the only member of the press corps to greet Senator Goldwater would have been our town's weekly newspaper's editor.  The only televised news in those immediately post-Kenendy years could be found in the regularly scheduled programming of the three networks.  The people I knew were farmers in overalls, small town businessmen in slacks and narrow ties, teachers in boxy suits, and housewives in full-skirted dresses.  I don't know whether there were any Johnson-Goldwater debates; the memory of the Nixon debacle might have been too close for Republcan comfort.

Yesterday, news crews were everywhere.  The crowd was an upscale one: students, professors, professionals.  The Edwards Family appearance at the post-debate rally was preceeded by a slew of local politicans, trying to keep the crowd warm and to garner votes for themselves.  Rock music blared from the speakers.  I called one of my sons at college and held my cell phone aloft so that he could hear his old favorite, Jimi Hendrix, and know what a campaign rally sounded like.

One thing hasn't changed, though, and that's the American election process.  I found it particularly moving to watch portions of the conventions last summer, knowing how frequently other peoples of the world are subject to violence in transitions of power.  I felt the same way last night.  I could see the shining face of  friends' stunningly beautiful daughter across the crowd, where she stood with a group of her own friends from her high school political theory class.  I was surrounded by people willing to stand for four hours to catch a glimpse of John Edwards in person.  Everyone was good-natured and courteous.  Of course, I know that that's not always the case -- but it was still impressive, even if it was only going to last for a short while.

It's amazing that we are able to do this every four years.

Hope Is On The Way

11:45 p.m. 10/5/04

The John and Elizabeth Edwards Family

Hangin' out with friends after a little interlude with Mr. Cheney

Almost Time!

Teamsters for Kerry/Edwards

Setting Up for Tonight -- Great Guys!

Walked today: 6 miles.

Childhood Friends: Book Review No. 5

Today, according to The Writer's Almanac, is the birthday of Edward L. Stratemeyer, born in 1862.  He created The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew series, among others.  He wrote few of the books himself, parceling the majority out to a band of ghostwriters employed by his biggest creation, The Stratemeyer Syndicate.   I gather that something of a scandal erupted when the documents produced in a lawsuit eventually revealed that Laura Lee Hope and Carolyn Keene, two of my favorite writers, didn't actually exist.

 It doesn't matter to me who wrote the books.  Neither series was a shining pinnacle of literary achievement.  But Nan and Bert and Freddie and Flossie were among my best childhood friends.  Like mine, their lives seemed ordinary in the extreme -- and yet they found so much adventure lurking in the most mundane of situations!  When I was eight and we spent just a couple of weeks in Florida, I walked the two blocks to the bookstore every morning and laid down my dollar for another Bobbsey Twin book, which I would devour in the next couple of hours.  They were as addictive as online journals are today.

Try as I might, I could never muster up any mystery in my grandmother's attic, or behind her old dog pen, or in my small town's dilapidated hotel, circa 1900.  That I never gave up hope is thanks to Nancy, Girl Sleuth, and her girlfriends Bess and George.  Nancy was the example par excellence for a girl without a mother -- no need for one as

 she and her friends raced from one triumph to another in George's little roadster.  Her bemused father and devoted boyfriend stayed in the background, where they belonged, while Nancy's curiosity and genius blossomed.  

I don't know much about The Stratemeyer Syndicate, but I hope that the real writers made a decent living.  They certainly sparked a lifetime passion for reading in generations of children.  

Walked: 1 mile.

 

October

My mother died on a day exactly like this.  A day in early October in which the sky was a limitless blue and the trees hinted at sublime changes to come.  A wholly ordinary day in which she started a load of laundry, packed her three children into the car, tooted her horn as she passed my grandmother's house, turned left at the bottom of the hill, glanced behind her, crossed the middle of the road, and ran headlong into the car coming over the hill toward her.

 My mother was young when she died.  Twenty-eight.  I was seven and I barely had a chance to know her, but the same is true of everyone else, including, most likely, herself.   

I know, of course, that I grew up without a mother.  And I know, in a way, what that is like -- but in something of an indirect way, although I am the one who lived it.  When you experience a direct hit at such a young age, it becomes part of the fabric of your life.  Too young for reflection and analysis, incapable of the evaluative process that is second nature to a well-educated adult, you simply absorb searing pain into the heart of your being and carry it with you ever afterward, without particularly noticing it.   

A little girl takes life as it comes.  An adult, not so much.  If you are seven and your mother vanishes from the face of the earth, then you have learned that that is what happens.  Beautiful, loving, needed and beloved people die senselessly.  That is what happens.  If you are an adult, you resist the crises of your life with everything that you've got, but children have no adult illusions of control.  

If you are a young child when your mother dies, you keep putting one foot in front of another, while surreptiously becoming a keen observer of adult behavior -- all the adults in your life having gone temporarily or, perhaps, permanently insane. But you don't rail against the gods.  What happens, happens.  The determination to move mountains comes later, when  you have children of your own.

What I wonder now is, who was that young woman?  My mother missed so much.  She did not share in our school days, hear about our first jobs, witness our first romances, or sit proudly at our graduations.  She never got to talk over our college and career choices, caution us about marriage, or babysit our children.  She didn't get to go back to college or embark upon the career that would surely have been hers for the taking.  She didn't even get to go back and sing in the church choir when her children were old enough to be left on Sunday mornings.  She never got to hear the Beatles or Joni Mitchell.  She never got further than Massachusetts or Florida.  

I have a picture of the four of us, my mother and her children, taken in the Florida cottage in which we we lived that last spring.  She holds the baby in her lap, and embraces my other young brother with her free arm.  I sit at the far end of the couch, turning the pages of a book.   What would she have said to that girl at the end of the couch, already making her move toward independence, already finding the world in a book?  Who might we have become together?  

Most of us want big things.  I want to hike long trails, spend a week at Chartres, kayak in the Mediterranean.  But if you told me that I were going to die tomorrow, all I would want is one more clear October day with my children.  I suppose she would have taken that as enough.

An Autumn Saturday

1.  Slept badly last night:  Nyquil, Dayquil, Tylenol Cold, Flonase -- something every hour or two.

2.  Got up and showered through cluster headache.  Kept wondering when I was going to die.  Preferably sooner rather than later.

3.   Took dog to vet.  She needed some shots and a look at her leg.  Last week-end when we were out walking, a Huge Dog came out of nowhere -- well, out of his back yard, actually -- full speed ahead.  I don't know whether he nipped her or whether she got hurt when I yanked her away, but she's been limping all week and I've been too sick to deal with it.  Apparently just a pulled muscle.

4.   Took daughter to voice lesson.

5.   Took daughter to Tulane University program at a local hotel.  It turned out to be fun.

6.   Took daughter to Panera's, where we changed clothes and grabbed some takeout sandwiches.

7.   Took daughter to her soccer game.

8.   Was changing money at parents' fundraiser when I startled everyone by yelling "Oh S--T!" as I realized that I had completely forgotten a friend's conflicting 50th birthday party.

9.   They won!  Went to bookstore to purchase gift and mea cupla card while husband brought daughter home and dropped her off for a ride to a party.  My birthday friend has a daughter studying in Turkey for a semester so I wanted to find a CD with some music from Turkey.  It wasn't so easy, but I succeeded.

10.  Dropped off present and card.

11.  Went out to Italian restaurant with husband.  He is coughing way  worse than I am.  We make a pathetic pair.

12.  Negotiated my way out of a church responsibility for tomorrow night because I am now Way Behind on everything else.

13.  Trying to stay awake because husband and I have to drive across town at 11:00 to pick the girls up.  (This party is a lousy neighborhood and an interstate away -- luckily other parents agreed with us so at least we only have this one part of the drive.)

Nighty night.

Saturday Six

Well, I had to get up, because I have to do about six things today whether I want to or not, so why not add the Saturday Six to the mix? Maybe it will take my  mind off how miserably sick I still am.

1. Which of the following do you trust more:  a politician, a televangelist, a lawyer, a reporter, or a doctor?

A lawyer.  But then, I am a lawyer.  And most of the lawyers I know are incredibly hardworking, conscientious and honorable people.

2. What's the last song you liked enough that you actually took the time to look up the lyrics?

Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," sung at the end of a West Wing episode.  My daughter tells me that it's heard frequently on tv shows.

3. Which deceased relative would you most like to spend one more afternoon with?

My mother.

4. What is your preferred brand for:  a) toothpaste, b) soap, c) shampoo, d) laundry detergent

Crest, whatever, Clairol's Herbal Essences, Cheer.  Although I can't say that this is something I ever really think about.
 
5. What is your favorite poem?

"Ash Wednesday" by T.S. Eliot comes to mind.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #25 from Tara:  How did your parents select your first name? Were you named after a particular friend/relative/fictional character or did they just like the name?

My first named is also my paternal grandmother's.  I'm actually called by my middle name, which was her mother's.

Angels in America

I'm still pretty sick, so after running some absolutely necessary errands this morning, one of which was returning late videos, I was able to pick up the second Angels in America DVD and spent most of the afternoon watching that.  I don't even know what to say.  I am speechless.  It is such an intimately painful and universally powerful piece of work that my responses are flying off in all different directions.  Maybe I will be able to write about it some other time.  For now, though, just a recap of a scene that spoke right to me.  (As it happens, I have the screenplay on my kitchen table.  I purchased it after the the Catholic priest who was my professor last December (and, as it happens, now as well) raved about it.  We don't have HBO, so I read the play long before I saw it this week.)

In this scene, Harper, the young and slightly off-balance Mormon wife trapped in New York and on the verge of leaving the gay Republican lawyer husband and Roy Cohn protege' who has just about abandoned her, seeks strength from the wax figure of a Mormon woman pioneer lodged in a display at the Mormon Center .  Harper has been finding temporary refuge there with her mother-in-law, who has come from Salt Lake to the foreign shores of New York City to deal with the dislocation created by her son's coming-out announcement and who winds up as one of the heroes of the play.  (Now: if that cast of characters and scenario doesn't send you out to your video store tonight, I don't know what will.)

**********************************

Harper:     In your experience of the world, then, how do people change?  

Mormon Mother:     Well, it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.                

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his  grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain!  We can't even talk about that.  And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn.  It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper:     And then get up.  And walk around.  

 Mormon Mother:    Just mangled guts pretending.  

 Harper:    That's how people change.