De-lighted for 44 hours

I woke up in complete darkness just after Tuesday ended and Wednesday began. Outside the wind was banging around the house, tossing garbage, tearing limbs off the trees, and howling like a hungry wolf. It raced through our city at 90 mph with six small tornadoes tucked in its pocket, which it set down here and there like spinning tops with winds up to 120 mph that tore roofs off, split trees clean in half, and then snapped a dozen telephone poles, tangling their power lines and extinguishing the lights for over 50,000 people. We were in that de-lighted number.

We sleep in modified darkness, a lonely universe with pinpoints of light here and there dimly shining. I have a digital clock by my bed that counts the minutes in blue-green numbers and we have motion-operated lights in the bathroom, hall, and kitchen that protect our toes from stubs and our shins from furniture. All night the lights shine – digital clocks in the living room and on the microwave, and on/off indicators on the TV, modem, Time Capsule, printer, computers, and toothbrush.

It has been a long time since I’ve experienced darkness. No lights inside; no lights outside. Only a glow in the night sky to the southwest where electricity still flowed.

Our grandchild slept in the spare bedroom when the storm hit but never woke up. We ate cold cereal for breakfast, opening the refrigerator to get the milk and closing it quickly to keep the food cold. I scrounged through the cupboards and found some coffee tea bags. Then my husband heated up water on the grill so I could have my coffee. On the way to the grandchild’s summer program, I saw some of the wind’s work and heard that it would probably be days before we would be back on the grid. We felt blessed to have water, including hot water from the gas water heater.

Wednesday I read more than usual. We could get on the Internet by setting up a hotspot on one of the iPhones, but the connection was slow. My husband drove outside of our area to find ice since all the nearby grocery stores were closed. We ate what we could from the refrigerator and put the rest of the food on ice. He bought a small propane burner and we cooked on that and made tea. I read myself to sleep with a flashlight.

Thursday I had classes. Our school had the power back on by then, and none of the international students in my class had lost power in their apartments. All were alarmed at the idea of living in an area with tornadoes, so we spent the first hour talking about tornadoes and what to do if one touched down. That conversation led to ice storms, blizzards, wind chill, and frostbite, which are all as much a part of living in northeast Wisconsin as bratwurst, cheese curds, fish fries, and bubblers.

Cheese curds

Bubbler

Thursday evening after I got into bed with my book and propped my flashlight up, the lights flickered on and off. When the electricity began to flow again, some neighbor children ran outside whooping and hollering. I had to get out of bed and turn lights off.

I am thankful for the men and women who spent hours working on downed wires, broken telephone poles, and local generators. I had forgotten or never realized how much noise the lights cause. We live in a restless world of illuminated nights that leave little space for silence. Although we experienced some inconveniences during our short time without power, I slept well, wrapped in the quiet dark beneath the starlit night.

The land of giants

When I was small I lived in the land of giants. People and building loomed large, towering over me in a world that pulsed with power and strength. In my first eight years when the year changed, I sat on my grandparents’ porch, coated and mittened, to watch the New Year’s parade march down the broad street. The porch stretched half a block in length surrounded by concrete walls I first had to tiptoe over to see the marchers.

When my years grew large, my grandparents’ home grew small, their porch unable to hold more than a few chairs, a table, a bench, and two or three small children.

I knew a man once who slept in my mother’s bed, a man not my father but who owned her when he changed her name. He walked in fierceness, his words the mace he swung to shame and mock and ridicule. He slew me more than once. Though I had more than a decade to stand on, he towered over me, an insurmountable wall that kept me in a place of fear. I hated him.

A full generation passed before I saw him again. This past week we met. The years have left him frail, thin, and sick. His legs hesitate when he tries to walk, and his ears fail to listen to the soft voices around him. Old angers still smolder in his words, but the flame no longer leaps out to scorch and singe.

All of us come to rubble eventually. The mortar weakens and our walls collapse. We lay down our weapons and surrender to the years.

We talked, the two of us, and told our stories. I searched for my old hatred and found it gone, lost on some path I took decades and decades ago.

I left that man, surprised at my great peace and my great guilt. I am not innocent. I have wrecked havoc, too, shook the ground with anger, pierced hearts with sharp-edged words, and held others hostage behind walls I built myself.

I have grown small again and hope to stay that way until I leave. I have had my share of hurts, but I have also hurt others and must make amends, for none of us escape this world unscathed or guiltless.

Village vacancies

They don’t make idiots like they used to. Once upon a long, long ago, in the late 1400s, an idiot was an ordinary person who lacked an education, someone without professional training, a layman in the church, or simply a private person. Clearly, idiocy was nothing to be ashamed of, and during the day the word hobnobbed with people like the author of the alliterative, allegorical poem Piers Plowman (who may or may not have been William Langland) and John Wycliffe who along with others translated the Bible into Middle English.

After a hard day of being charitable, however, the word would head to the nearest pub, have a few pints, and start calling everyone in sight a fool. That’s how Chaucer uses the word in the Wife of Bath’s prologue in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer and others used the word idiot both in this sense and in the sense of being mentally challenged. These three meanings were used concurrently until the end of the 17^th century when the kinder meaning moved out of town. From that time on, the number of self-proclaimed idiots decreased dramatically, until the advent of the Internet and YouTube.

From the beginning, the word worked as both noun and adjective. The highly quotable Victorian poet, Lord Tennyson, verbified it in the phrase “Much befool’d and idioted.” I rather like it as a verb because it expresses the feeling I get from my fellow-drivers who have an inordinate interest in my bumper and try to inspect it while traveling 60 mph or who pull in front of me, curious to know whether or not my brakes still work. After any time on the road, I come home feeling idioted out.

I don’t consider myself an idiot driver; my skills in idiocy lie more in the why-did-I-wait-until-now-to-do-what-is-due-today type of situation, or the you-already-know-what-your-foot-tastes-like-so-why-do-you-keep-putting-it-in-your-mouth situation. Plenty of people have these problems, but the wise ones keep quiet about them. The others, like me, create blogs and wander around the Internet village broadcasting their idiocy. I am a private person by nature and back in the Middle Ages would probably have been called an idiot by my friends. At this point in my life I am advancing beyond my own middle age, wandering around the Internet village, unashamed, speaking to strangers and telling my secrets. Every village needs an idiot or two, and I’m here to fill the vacancy.

Addendum: No Comment

As a blogger, I’ve never wanted to be one of those drive-by likers, the ones who visit hundreds of blogs per day, indiscriminately liking posts in the hopes of getting liked back. I don’t always comment on posts that I like, but I occasionally try to write something that is spelled correctly, even if it doesn’t make sense.

These days, however, WordPress (which is easily flummoxed by what I write and thinks you will be too) will not let me comment when I want to. Over half of the comments I try to post are denied. I get the message that you see below.

 Sorry, this comment could not be posted.

If you are a blogger, you probably consider this good news. But I warn you, no system is idiot-proof. I will find a way to comment and flummox you again. Only because I think it’s good for you and helps build character.

To blog or not to blog

To blog, or not to blog; that is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler to make readers suffer

These posts and arouse outrageous mention

In the comments section and cause trouble,

Or opposing, end this scrawl today, to write

No more; and by to write to say I end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

My posts are heir to, ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d …

As you can see, I write a lot like Shakespeare, especially the parts that are his very own words, which I will put back later. I promise. I took them off an obscure website, so I don’t think anyone will notice. And no, I’m not plagiarizing; I’m merely borrowing. I learned that from my students, who often borrow entire essays.

In case you haven’t noticed (because you can rarely make it through my posts, and believe me I empathize: it’s hard for me as well), I have a lot in common with Shakespeare.

• He was born brilliant, and I was also born.

• We both had early lives.

• He managed to write 30+ plays (comedies, tragedies, and romances) and about 154 sonnets; I manage to write a now weekly blog.

• He liked hoop earrings, and I do too.

• He was a bard; I have been barred (due to excessive punning).

• He was from Avon; I have used Avon. *

• He was buried after his death, something I am planning myself. Not the death, the sequence of events: death, then burial.

Eerie, isn’t it? If I didn’t know better (and I rarely do), we could be twins, separated merely by talent, gender, legacy, facial hair, and about 450 years.

*Hi Miss Avon Representative: If you would like to give me free beauty products because I inadvertently advertised for you on my blog by using your company’s name, please feel free. I believe your products will make me look young and beautiful again. I also believe in unicorns. Just ring the bell.

If you are one of those I-can’t-look-away-from-this-train-wreck kind of reader and happen to have arrived here at the second ending of this post, both relieved and horrified, go here to see a 1960s “Ding Dong, Avon calling” commercial.

The body remembers

The body remembers.

The sun-scorched skin can number the days beneath the sky’s great torch, planting grain, lying on the beach, and walking to the train. The knees recall each road they travelled and the weariness of sidewalks and pavement. They can count the ups and downs of stairs you’ve long forgotten. The back has followed every step you’ve taken, holding you upright through the hard days, willing to bend at your command and lift small children, boxes, and bags and bags of groceries. The bones empty themselves to make space for all the memories of stillness. They languished those hours, longing to carry you, to feel the heft of life and movement. In the unseen places, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage journal every blow, fall, jolt, jump, stroll, dance, and spin; most of which you cannot remember.

The body grows weary of silence.

Year after year the body waited, remembering. The few times it spoke, you listened, tended to its needs, and heard no more. Stories must be told and now the body speaks. The skin brings up memories of the sun, like old photographs printed on your face. The knees insist you listen to the recitation of burdens borne; the back wakes you at night to tell its tales. Day after day the memories excavate within the bones, hollowing them out for a place to rest, nestling within the fragile spaces of the clavicle, radius, and femur. Tendons, ligaments, and cartilage lose themselves in remembrances that stretch across the years.

The body must tell, and should you turn away, it speaks more loudly. Listen it says, this is where I’ve been, this is the road I trod. And you must listen. Where else can you go?

Elderly woman:  Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Eating summer

We eat the strands of sunlight that the plants spend their days gathering. We eat the roar of volcanoes, old memories of fires and dinosaur bones, forgotten car trips, purr of cats, chatter of blue jays, breath of smokestacks, and all of our words, even our silence.

We eat earth’s metals – magnesium, zinc and copper – that the plants mine. They find the wells of sweet waters far beneath the soil and draw it up for us.

One day in July the garden calls us to eat spring and summer, sweet, salty, tart, and juicy. After we slice the sunlight into a blue bowl, we pour the sun’s golden liquid that we gathered from the tight fists of olives, and eat until our bellies fairly shine. Then we lick the bowl like it was the sky itself.

Vegetables

Is it 2013 or, well, 1984?

I’m not paranoid. Really. I’m just very wary, chary, leery, and highly caffeinated. I take after my Big Brother that way. He feels compelled to spy on me all of the time because you just never know about those older teachers who live in the Midwest and teach English to foreigners. Foreigners who come from foreign countries and are foreign. And since you never know about those Midwesterners or other Americans or other people in the world, based on super-secret, too-critical-for-anyone-to-be-told-so-don’t-ask national security reasons, highly trained cryptologists need to monitor e-mails, phone calls, and Internet usage of all users, including LOL cats. (There’s a special clause that covers cats.)

Of course, text messages also can and must be intercepted. So specially trained agents spend hours reading texts from potentially dangerous teenagers who write indecipherable messages like: wuzup…your L8!!!! NGL im bord…this moveez a wot! WUWH¹

By now the NSA (National Snooping Agency) knows more about you and me than our own mothers or even than we do about ourselves. Remember that story you told about your boss? Oh, you forgot already, well, not to worry, it’s all been recorded and soon to be stored away in Bluffdale, Utah. I am not bluffing. Real name, real story.

Meanwhile cryptological experts sift through all our data looking for snarky references to Big Brother’s clubs like the NSA and the TSA (Touch, Scan, Annoy). Then they flag you. And the you I’m referring to is me. The me that reported a theft by TSA agents in New Orleans who kindly recycled my iPad because they knew it was time for me to get a new one. Now when I fly, I get body-scanned. Often.

Earlier this month on my trip to Texas, I was scanned three times: once in Wisconsin and twice in Texas. According to the TSA agent in Houston, I moved. Actually I think it was because I asked why I was selected to be scanned again. The whole procedure is something out of Star Trek: Stand still and don’t say a word or we will radiate you! And yes, I realize I could opt for groping instead, but that too is something out of Star Trek: To boldly go where no man has gone before….except my husband and not in public.

Afterward I complained to the agent, fully expecting to be taken away, have all my body cavities searched, and be put on a no-fly list. It didn’t happen, but you’ll have to excuse me for a moment while I speak to a NSA representative.

Hi! How are you? I didn’t mean a thing by my comments to the TSA officer. Really. And I love my new iPad. Please pass my thanks to the officers in New Orleans. By the way, could you do me a favor? Last month, around the 4^th or 5^th I deleted an email with Aunt Edith’s secret fowl sauce. My goose is now cooked, and I need something to cover it ASAP. It was the only existing copy of the recipe. Sadly Aunt Edith died last week, but of course you already knew that from the email that Uncle Willard sent me. Thanks a bunch, and remember I’m nothing if not patriotic.

Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, once upon a long time ago, reasonable people drafted a reasonable document called the U.S. Constitution. Just to make things perfectly clear and reasonable, they included amendments. The Fourth Amendment mentions that U.S. citizens have certain rights:

…the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be searched.

Since the U.S. government can access all of my personal and professional information and everything I say or write electronically, what probable cause do its representatives have that warrant searching my person? Like the great majority of people, I present zero threat. I know it and the government knows it. In order to appear fair, TSA must consider all of us as potential terrorists: guilty until scanned.

Are you bugged by all of this? I am, and I bet you are, too. In fact, I know you are. All us of are bugged now, continually, and by our very own government.

This is a rant.

¹Translation: What’s up? You’re late. Not gonna lie, I’m bored. This movie is a waste of time. Wish you were here.

Want more wary, chary, scary, leery stuff? Read this New York Times opinion piece or this story on AOL.

A child after my own brain

Brain disorders run in my family. People are often surprised to hear this because they didn’t even know that we had any brains to disorder.

I diagnosed the disorder, Foerster’s Syndrome, after reading about it in a book. As a diagnostician, I rank up there with the best – probably a full colonel or possibly a general. Once I am given the symptoms of a disease, I have the uncanny ability to discover it in either myself or my loved ones. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve saved my life by catching a disease early.

Just last month I narrowly escaped a serious problem after reading an article about a man with a runny nose who mistakenly thought he had allergies. My nose happened to be running when I read the story, so I realized I probably had whatever he had. And what he had was a leaky brain. Every time he blew his nose and even when he didn’t, brain fluid leaked out. Please stop for a minute and re-read that last sentence. Brain fluid! Leaked out! Of course, the first thing I did was tell my husband that I loved him but I wouldn’t be able to do anymore housework. I needed to spend my last days savoring life and the box of dark chocolate truffles in the cupboard.

Miraculously within a week and most of the box of truffles, I recovered. My brain stopped leaking and I went back to finding excuses not to mop the kitchen floor.

I’ve diagnosed a number of family members with Foerster’s Syndrome, which causes compulsive punning: my husband (moderate), brother (severe), brother-in-law (chronic) and me (egregious). Due to excessive exposure, both of my children are allergic to puns, which thankfully does not cause their noses to run. When the punning becomes excessive, they themselves run, taking their noses with them, but that is a different problem, one I’m still trying to diagnose.

My despair over not having a child who can put up and pun up with me vanished last week, however, when we visited family in Texas. Three conversations, all with my grandchild, convinced me that the brain disorder would not die with me.

The First: My grandchild discovers that Uncle Harley’s grandchildren call him Pawdaddy.

“That’s because his dog has paws!”

The Second: My daughter mentions to the child that the eggs are excellent.

“That’s because they’re eggs—cellent.”

The Third: My niece shows the child a picture of a tarantula taken at their ranch.

“It must be a ranchula.”

My daughter is still trying to recover from the pain and shock. I, however, feel delighted. A child after my own heart. A child after my own brain.

Photos: Paw Egg Tarantula

Deep in the spleen of Texas

Now and then a person’s ears need some loving, so this week I took both of them to Texas for a vacation. They are now happier than a dog with a dead skunk. Everywhere I take my two ears, I hear people using Texas’ most personal pronoun, “y’all,” which like the humdrum pronoun “you” can be either plural or singular. (Note to you grammarians and punctuationists out there: I know some of you write the possessive for Texas with an extra “s” as in “Texas’s most personal pronoun.” However, I don’t like it and if I see it I’m likely to ask you to move your “s” elsewhere.) My heart’s been soothed hearing people speak proper and without those accents the Yankees are so fond of.

I have been traveling with my daughter and grandchild visiting family in Houston, basking in hot and humid weather and enjoying every minute of it. That’s what Wisconsin’s 9-month winters will do to a person.

Houston is a great big old city built on a bayou. Unless you are from the South, you may not know that “bayou” is a fancy name given to rivers and ditches to make songs more interesting. Just imagine if the refrain in Hank Williams’ song Jambalaya “Son of a gun we’ll have big fun on the bayou” were “Son of a gun we’ll have big fun at the ditch.” It just don’t sound right and kind of makes your toes stop tapping right in the middle of the song. And yes, that “don’t” is there on purpose, thank you very much.

Our last few days of vacation, we have been staying in Katy, Texas which is just down the road from Houston. We were able to make a run up to San Antonio, but we never made it to the heart of Texas, which approximately 5500 people swear is Brady, Texas. (That’s the population of the city and please don’t tell their mommas about the swearing.)

Houston has set up home near the Gulf of Mexico and southeast of the heart of Texas, so I believe it’s appropriate to consider it the spleen of Texas. Spleens store and filter blood, and Houston does the same with oil, which is pretty much the blood of our nation, so the analogy seems to fit.

I have never lived in Houston myself, but if I did and if I had a son, I would name him Billy Rueben just because it would tickle me every time I thought of my sweet Billy Reuben living in the spleen of Texas.

Today we return north. I sure do hope they didn’t have summer while we were gone. I’d hate to miss it.

Photo: Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries.

Planned fascination

According to my husband, I plan to be fascinated at 9:30 a.m. this morning. I’m going to be vaccinated, but since he heard “fascinated,” I’m sticking with that. So, in a few hours, a shiny, sharp needle will be sticking in my arm transferring some of the varicella zoster virus (VZV) into my system.

It won’t be the first time I’ve had VZV in my body, although I have no recollection of that first encounter. Sometime before age eight, the crazy chicken that carries the virus got inside my house, pecked me all over my body, made me itch like crazy, and forced my mother to cover me in pink dots. It also left a small scar on my forehead as a memento. That’s what my mother told me. (Not exactly the part about the crazy chicken, but the part about the itchy sores, dotting me with pink Calamine lotion, and the scar.)

Almost everyone my age (calculate 114.71 Fijian dollars into U.S.) had the chicken pox as a child, due to the fact that we all breathed. Those that didn’t never got the disease. The rest of us inhaled and exhaled everywhere we went and then hung out with friends who not only snorted milk through their noses but also coughed and sneezed at will without covering their mouths or noses.

Now all of us (yes, we put the “us” in “virus”) are at risk of reactivating the VZV that has been lurking in our bodies all these years. The virus is like a tiny egg that the crazy chicken laid in our bodies all those years ago, just waiting to hatch and peck us again, only this new crazy chicken can cause extreme pain and nerve damage.

The CDC reports that the vaccine can cause redness, itchiness, soreness, and headache – much like watching reality TV. But I will not chicken out or scratch my plans. (Forgive the puns; I’ve been cooped up all week due to the 50-degree weather in Wisconsin.)

Once I’m fascinated, I have a 50-50 chance of avoiding shingles and/or reducing nerve pain and damage. I think it’s worth a shot.

Needle & Chicken

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

year-struck

old age and other jokes I know