SOLSCMarch 22: Where Does the Time Go?

            A friend in my age group (post-80) and I were commiserating yesterday about how we have no time anymore. And here is one reason why.

            I have spent almost 40 minutes the past few days double-checking that my primary doctor got the report on my routine mammogram and sonogram. The tests were three weeks ago. On Monday I called my doctor's office to verify that she'd gotten the results (the tests were not done in the same hospital system that my doctor is attached to). Four days later a nurse in the doctor's office called me back to say they had not gotten them. Today I spent some time finding both the phone number of the site that did the tests and the fax number for my doctor. Then I called the site where the tests were done, had to wait through what seemed endless choices from the recording that answers the phone and finally spoke to the person who sends the reports. She said the report had been sent the day after the tests were done (she had the correct fax number), but she would send again. Then I called the doctor's office to alert them to look for the faxed results. The person answering the phone said she’s be on the lookout and would call me that they were received. She kept using the word “uploaded,” and I had to remind her that faxing and uploading are different methods, and this report was coming via fax.

            (I’m having trouble writing something every day. There just doesn’t seem to be any time!)

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SOLSCMarch 19: Be Prepared

            I have to have some blood work done today, so go to a nearby lab. At the reception desk is a sign saying that the person sitting there at the computer is doing other work, so I should use the automated check-in kiosks against the far wall. (One of the two kiosks is not working.) I’m a good girl and follow instructions. At the kiosk I have to show a photo ID, so I put my expired driver’s license under the reader. It’s accepted. Then it’s not clear to me if the medical insurance info is up-to-date, so I do the same with my insurance cards. Nothing changes on the insurance info page, so maybe I didn’t need to do any of that. At the end, there’s a survey asking how my check-in experience was, and I click on 1. I hate online check-ins.

            Before I finish, a man comes and talks to the woman at the reception desk. (I guess he’s not a good boy.) He says he has a 2 p.m. appointment, and it’s not even noon yet! Does he plan to sit here for two hours, or does he hope to get whatever he needs done earlier? Two people were waiting when I arrived. Four more have come in since.

            After maybe five minutes (I’ve done about half of the newspaper’s daily crossword puzzle), the woman at the reception desk calls my name and asks for my paperwork. A couple of minutes later I’m sent to Room 3. The nurse/tech is a 7.5 on inserting the needle. And I’m in and out in just half an hour. Not nearly as bad as I’d expected (an hour, two hours?).

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SOLSCMarch 18: No More Nice Girls

 

 

            No More Nice Girls was a feminist guerrilla theater group in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps Ellen Willis came up with the name at a meeting in July 1977, shortly before the lights went out all over the Northeast. I think our first action was in the early 1980s, when Reagan’s administration was cracking down on abortion rights and pornography. We wrote a skit called “Sex Cops,” with half of the group ordinary women and girls going about our lives—taking birth control, having an abortion when the birth control didn’t work, looking at porn or making porn, having sex without being married or being married having an affair—and the other half were cops arresting us for doing any of those things.

            In another skit, half of us were pregnant women being forced to keep our pregnances against our will by the sex cops. For this performance, we had to put pillows under our garments so we’d look pregnant, and while it had been about 10 years at that point since I’d been pregnant, the feeling of being so was distinctly disorienting and unpleasant. I did not even want to imagine myself pregnant, willingly or unwillingly.

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 18 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSCMarch 17: 50 Objects, Political Buttons

 

            I have a huge collection of buttons collected over  the past 60 years. Several years ago, when I still had an office, I pinned some of them to black strips of cloth and hung them from bookshelves. But I still had many others, which have been residing in two envelopes in the top of a closet.

 

           Today, I went to the Museum of Art & Design to see if I could find a bowl or basket to hold the buttons. There was this lovely ceramic, handmade by Ana Martin (her name is etched on the bottom), and a label on the bottom reads “This is Latin America.” So I don’t know what country Ana Martin is in, but I’m guessing Mexico or Central America.

            The subject matter of the buttons is varied: anti-censorship, pro-union, feminist, political campaigns, antiwar, and some just generally opinionated. Here are some of them.

 

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 17 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLSCMarch 16: Easter Eggs

            No, not the hidden message ones — a meaning I only recently learned from the Strict Scrutiny podcast (which is about the Supreme Court, not about video games).

            No, this is a real Russian painted Easter egg. I think I got this one from Valentina Uspenskaya, political scientist and founder of the Association of Independent Women's Initiatives, as well as women’s studies at Tver State University, in Tver, Russia, neither of which may still exist. Sadly, I have not kept in touch with her over the years, and do not know how she is faring in the authoritarian and patriarchal Russia of Putin.

            I also once had a Ukrainian painted Easter egg, from one of my students. The designs were quite distinct from the Russian ones. Alas, that one broke some years ago, and I had never thought to take a photo of it, so cannot show you the differences. Images I find online show some alternative designs.

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SOLSCMarch 13: A Boring Day

             I agreed to do a couple of extra days of copyediting for Publishers Weekly, today and tomorrow. This means I sat in front of my computer for most of four and a half hours, reading 15 reviews of forthcoming books and a feature about small publishers who did really well during the past three years.

            I learned that Natalie Goldberg has a new book out this summer on what she doesn’t want to call “writer’s block.” She titles it “Writing on Empty.” Also a book about how life came to be on Earth, including the suggestion that kelp forests (in the ocean?) could work to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Interesting. The feature was mostly biz info—how much sales had increased, what books were leading those sales, etc.—so I like being able to help the writing be less repetitive, but I’m not that interested in what the story is about. Though it is encouraging that these small presses are still doing well after the first two years of the pandemic sent book sales way up.

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 13 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLSCMarch 12: A Family Photo

             I love this photo because it shows so much of family dynamics that I was not aware was being revealed.

            By which I mean, that’s me, on the left, leaning away from all these other people and staring into the distance. I’m 13, and I know I was thinking something like this: I don’t know what I am doing in this family. They don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them. I sometimes wished I was adopted, or found in a cabbage patch (old fairy tales sometimes had babies found in a cabbage patch; the Cabbage Patch Kids didn’t exist in the ’50s), but I also knew my parents were married two years before I was born so they probably were my parents.

            My father, on the right, looks very pleased with himself. Maybe he’d been out in the garden, or inventing something in his workshop in the basement/garage. I know we were living out here in what was still country in West Haven, Connecticut, because that’s where he wanted to be. I didn’t know until many years later that he’d been blacklisted after WWII (“I belonged to a political discussion group,” he told me, and a woman in the group talked to the FBI), so perhaps he felt he was hiding out here.

            My sister is between us, very unhappy. She never felt she belonged in our family either; she felt stupid because her interests were spiritual, while the rest of us had no concern for anything like that.

            My brother looks like he might be the same age as my sister, but he’s two and a half years older, 11 to her almost 9 (unless this photo was taken after August 10). Was this the year she was still taller than he was? I’m guessing he might not have been comfortable with that, and I’ve never asked him.

            And my mother looks so delighted with him, like he’s her favorite, which wasn't particularly true in real life. Maybe it’s because of what he is about to read, as he’d holding a piece of paper in his hands and looking expectantly at whoever is taking this photograph—it’s probably our grandfather. What was he going to read? I have no memory.

            We’re on the patio in the back of our small house, built on an acre, from a floor plan my father may have bought from Sear’s.

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SOLCMarch 11: The Meaning of Dangerous Winds

            I have sometimes watched the weather reporters at hurricanes, with the wind blowing their ponchos and whipping at trees, and wondered what that felt like. Even considered taking the subway to a beach when a big storm was headed my way. Pictures never substitute for reality. 

            I don’t know what the wind gust speed was on my street today. But when I went out, just to walk around the block, I had to hold onto a building to turn a corner into the wind.

            To establish the setting: I live in Manhattan, Morningside Heights, on a side street known for winds blowing off the Hudson River and up the canyon of apartment buildings. The windiness is mostly unpleasant. Today was different by an order of magnitude.

            A magazine had been delivered to my door that should have been delivered to the building on the next street over. I could have just given it to my doorman to hand back to the magazine delivery people the next morning. Instead, I thought to take it over myself, just to make sure I got out of the house.

            The wind was fierce when I first went out and walked west, toward Riverside Drive, stronger than usual, but not unusually strong. (For those not in New York City, there is a big park between the Drive and the river, so wind isn't directly off the river.) I turned the corner and walked up the block toward the next street. As I reached the corner, however, a gust felt like it would push me back unless I grabbed onto the decorative cornice on the building’s side.

            Once around the corner and out of the wind, I stopped to catch my breath. A man crossing the street stopped, and I recognized the superintendent of my building. He’d seen me struggling with the wind and offered to stay and walk me back home holding onto his arm. I readily agreed, and a good thing I did.

            After delivering the magazine, I took the super’s arm and we started to turn the corner onto Riverside Drive. At that moment, there was a wind gust so strong I could not move into it. Even holding on to the super, I felt like the wind could pick me up and blow me away. After a moment or two, the wind abated enough so we were able to get down the street. If the super hadn’t appeared at that moment, I don’t know how I would have gotten home.

            I have never experienced any wind that I could not walk against, that felt overpowering. Was this a 40-mile-per-hour gust? or stronger? I can't help wondering whether my age (81) and probable loss of muscle mass makes me less able to counter this particular force of nature when it is increasingly forceful.

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SOLSMarch 9: 50 Objects, a Cuban grasshopper

This is a grasshopper woven from grass. I bought it at a bus rest stop while on a tour of Cuba in December 2016. A young man, and possibly his sister, was sitting at the rest stop with a collection of these freshly woven grasshoppers for sale to any tourist who might wander by.

            My daughter and I were with Go Ahead Tours, and this trip was focused on art and music, with stops at a music school for children and with various artists. The rest stop may have been when we went from Havana to Cienfuegos. We got out of the bus to walk around, and when I saw these hand-woven grass grasshoppers, I had to have one. Even now that it’s dried, it’s still lovely.

            This trip was just a month after our election, and on our last day, we had a chance to ask our tour guide about Cuba, but he wanted to know, what about Trump? What kind of president would he be? He was obviously wondering what Trump would mean for Cuba, since travel like ours was still linked to art and education. And Trump did ban individuals going to Cuba for these purposes in 2017 and group travel in 2019.

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SOLMarch 8: Another Gift from Eastern Europe

I no longer remember what this object is called. The friend from Bulgaria who gave it to me said it was intended hold perfume, to give scent to a space or perhaps for the user to sniff to overcome any bad smells. The top part screws off, and perfume or whatever sweet-smelling substance goes into the narrow hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did this friend also give me the lemon grass bottle? I don’t remember. I’ve never removed the lid of this one, so don’t know whether there still any scent left in the liquid there. But it’s a pretty object. 

 

 

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 8 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLMarch 7: Politics Tonight

Tonight was the State of the Union speech as a campaign event. Biden was very good. He stumbled just a couple of times, but mostly he was in control of what he wanted to say, even seemed to ad lib a bit, and he dealt well with opposition interruptions when he could tell what they were about. (Who was that man up in the balcony and what was he shouting?) And Biden took excellent advantage of knowing who his competitor will be in the general election and taking direct aim at him.

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 7 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLMarch 6: My Life in 50 Objects, a Teether

A close friend’s mother sent us this silver teether when our daughter was born. I no longer remember whether Christie used it for its purpose—maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Sadly, I have allowed it to become seriously tarnished. Maybe posting it here will galvanize me to polish it and make it shiny again.

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 6 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLMarch 5: My Life in 50 Objects, a Jewelry Case

  (Blogger's layout features are primitive in the extreme. I was able to get two images in a row yesterday, but accidentally, and can't figure out how to do it today. Plus, there's no white space next to this image, but there is next to the one below. Anyone out there have any ideas?) 

 

  My aunt Nita died in 1997. She died in Vermont while my mother, her sister, was        flying to be with her from Florida. My sister and I arrived the next day. After we         comforted each other, we set to work dividing up Aunt Nita’s belongings.         Miraculously, we didn’t argue over any of her jewelry, our tastes being so different.  

I wanted this jewelry case, but was afraid my sister would want it, too. But still, I was lucky. She had her own way of storing her necklaces. So I now have the case.

Necklaces on one side; rings, bracelets, and other adornments in the drawers. I love this case—and wish I knew where Nita found it.

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 5 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

SOLMarch 4: My Life in 50 Objects, Amber from the Baltic

 

 

 

 

 

In the summer of 1999, I traveled to Poland, to Gdansk (Danzig before WWII), to visit Malgorzata “Gosia” Tarasiewicz, the Polish director of the Network of East-West Women. Gosia actually lived in Sopot, a resort town along the Baltic Sea about seven miles up the coast from Gdansk. 

Gdansk was severely damaged when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, but after the war it was largely rebuilt, with old buildings back to medieval times restored based on photographs and other documentation. 

One day we went to the coast, where thin forests went right up to the sea. We collected amber, with chips along the beach and among the trees. The Baltic Sea area is a major source of amber, which was created millions of years ago. 

Here are the flakes of amber I found that summer, in a small pot I also bought in Poland. 

Four days later, after traveling south to Krakow, I discovered I’d picked up a tick in the underbrush along the sea coast. Roma, my Polish friend in Krakow, took me to a clinic, where a doctor, practicing his English, “unscrewed” the tick from my knee and assured me that ticks that carried Lyme disease were only in the far east of Poland, not in the north along the Baltic. 

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SOL March 2: My Life in 50 Objects, #14

In 1991, I was one of several co-founders of the Network of East-West Women, an organization to support women activists in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, where women were rapidly disappearing from public life in what were still, in many cases, patriarchal cultures. A few years later we supported a workshop on women in the region initially based at NYU and now at the City University of New York, where (mostly women) scholars, activists, journalists met monthly to hear reports or analyses of what was happening in the various countries concerning women, feminism, and gender. About 20 years ago one of our speakers was Nurgul Djanaeva, founder of the Forum of Women’s NGOs in Kyrgyzstan. She gave me this little ceramic as a representation of Kyrgyz women.

NEWW still exists, headquartered now in Poland and working with the European Women’s Lobby, among other groups.

SOLMarch 3: My Life in 50 Objects, #13

I was working as copy chief at the Village Voice in the 1980s. This meant, among other things, that I was the liaison between editorial and production. I wanted someone to give me a token of my authority, especially in my attempts to enforce writers’ deadlines. Instead, I had to find that token myself. I no longer remember where this little gavel came from, but it was exactly what I wanted. I waved it at recalcitrant writers — who paid no attention most of the time. I’d have liked to have it larger (it's only five inches long), but still, it had a graceful look on my desk. 

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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 3 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!