Slice of Life, #16

            I visited to a new bookstore today, Book Culture on Columbus. It's the third branch of Book Culture (which is in the Columbia University neighborhood, used to be Labyrinth Books until one owner bought out the others, who took over the New Haven store still named Labyrinth). The New York owner called his “new” old store Book Culture. (The second branch was also in former bookstore space, what used to be Papyrus Books, which closed years ago, then became Morningside Books, until Book Culture took over the lease in 2009.)

            The newest store also used to be a bookstore, but before that it was on the ground floor of the Endicott Hotel. Originally built in 1889, the Endicott had been a majestic building with a palm court and such residents as the gangster Dutch Schultz. By the 1960s, however, it had become an SRO, housing people on the lowest  economic rungs. I lived around the corner from it then, and on Saturday nights we would sometimes hear screams or drunken shouts. On weekdays mornings as I headed to work, I'd pass half a dozen men sitting on the Endicott stoop, already drinking, but they recognized me from the block and greeted me good-naturedly. A police precinct was built next door, and the Endicott was converted to a luxury co-op in 1981, with a large bookstore also called the Endicott. It was a lovely bookstore, with a large selection of fiction ranging from literary to commercial, and thoughtful nonfiction as well. Then it closed, in 1995.*

            I was happy to hear that Book Culture was opening there, and today I had a chance to go in. It's the same expansive, airy space, with lots and lots of books,  and also lots of imaginative sidelines (bookseller jargon for anything that isn't a book): besides the usual Moleskin notebooks and note cards, there are, in the cookbook section, colorful ceramic teapots, plates, and bowls, as well as tote bags and an odd collection of colored spoons – or maybe that was just a table decoration. Even though I have more books than I have time to read, I bought the second volume of John Lewis's graphic memoir, March 2, and a recycled Decomposition notebook.
*[Blogger is making me look like a complete layout dunce, arbitrarily changing fonts and sizes and not allowing me to correct such design mistakes. Any Blogger users out there who can help?] 

 

Slice of Life, #15

            My mother kept a small (it’s only 1¾”x2½”) framed photo in her bag. It’s from my father’s 70th birthday party.

From left, it shows my daughter, Christie; my sister, Carla; my father’s sister, Helen; (in front) Carla’s daughter Emily; me; my father; and my mother.

            In 1987 my parents had been divorced for about three years; he’d moved to San Diego, and she’d stayed in south Florida. It was an amiable parting, at her instigation, and they remained close friends, because physically distant. Carla was also divorced, from her first husband, and had not yet met her second one. Helen was widowed for the second time; the first was when her children were young and she was a single mother for many years. My husband hadn’t come all the way across country for this party; he wasn’t much for family reunions, his or mine, in those days.

            Emily was just eight, looking oddly formal and solemn in cotton skirt and blouse. I don’t recall her being like that. Christie was 15 and seemed to be enjoying her teenage self at this gathering of family and friends.

            Who was taking the picture? My brother? Possibly. He also lived in California. How had our family settled with the men on the West Coast and the women on the East? That sounds like a Disney sit-com, and while my family may have been a sit-com (whose isn't?), it wouldn’t have been a Disney one.

            Four of those in this picture are now dead – but their smiles remain, cheerful as long as the photo exists. 

Slice of Life, #14 (technically even if the time stamp says otherwise)

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            Out tonight to see a play written and produced by an old college friend, about difference (racial, ethnic, gender) and the varying ways people find to make sense of reality and the often incompatibility of these ways: scientific, religious, capitalist, hedonistic, childish. It was allegorical rather than realistic, with a Greek chorus who, in the end, play “God,” with some funny bits, much to think about, and excellent performances.

            It was in an off-off Broadway venue, I learned today that whether something is Broadway, off-Broadway, or off-off Broadway is determined by the number of seats: off-off is under 100 seats, off- is 100 up to 499 seats, and Broadway is 500 seats or more (there are many “Broadway” theaters that are not on or even that close to Broadway). The play tonight was in a former loft building on 14th Street, up two steep flights of stairs (the freight elevator only ran during business hours). There might have been 50 seats, or maybe only 40.

            Afterwards, the friends I was with went out for drinks and dessert and ended up talking about race and how difficult it is to talk about with each other and with people of other "races." ("Race" isn't the same as skin color, I think, since colors come in all shades, and "race" as racists define it is supposed to have clear-cut boundaries. Perception, self-perception, a very long conversation.) We were all white and over 60, but a table near us of six consisted of at least three different colors and they were all young. If we don’t destroy the planet in the next 100 years, maybe there will be hope of burying racism – and I think that was the message of my friend’s play.

Slice of Life, #13

            Last December my daughter and I went on a tour of India, seven cities in two weeks. We hit the high spots – the Taj Mahal, Mumbai, etc. – including Cochin in the south. There, in a neighborhood called “Jewtown” (seriously, it’s where Jewish people have lived for 2,000 years), we went to the Spice Market, with burlap bags of spices outside

and dozens of jars of spices inside 

Among the many spices we bought was a jar of tandoori spice powder, and tonight I made tandoori chicken.

            Last night I mixed the spice powder with yogurt, minced garlic and ginger, olive oil, and lime juice to make a paste. Put skinless drumsticks and thighs in a large ziploc bag, added the paste, and massaged the paste into the chicken pieces. Squeezed most of the air out of the bag and stuck it in the refrigerator. A couple of times today, I took out the bag and squeezed the paste around the pieces to make sure they were marinating well. Tonight, I put the chicken pieces on a rack in a roasting pan, roasted for 35 minutes, turned over and roasted another 15 minutes, then turned off the oven and let the chicken rest for another 30 minutes.* Served with rice and Indian spiced green beans, and I was almost back in India. (Interestingly, neither the tandoori chicken we ate in New Delhi nor the chicken I made had the characteristic red color I associate with tandoori dishes I’ve had in New York.)

            And here is a culinary poem inspired by dinner last night, with apologies to the B. Kliban cartoon:

            Love to eat them parsnips

            Parsnips what I love to eat

            Cut they little hearts out

            Nibble on they fleshy meat.

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* If you’d like a more exact recipe, e-mail me privately.

Slice of Life, #12

            Dana’s post on the Slice of Life blog this morning about writing not what you see but what you hear, taste, smell, feel was inspiring. I’m a very visual person, learning mostly through my eyes, so this is a particular challenge for me. When I went out for errands this afternoon, I thought I’d try it.

            It was sunny, but windy. Wind gusts broke like surf, and I buried my face in my scarf. It buffeted me both front and back, especially as I crossed the streets that led toward Riverside Park. But it wasn’t cutting, as it is when the temperature is much colder. When the wind ebbed, the air was almost balmy, especially when I walked through small areas of sun. Stopping in a new bookstore, I was wrapped in warmth and quiet.

             Outside, car and truck engines grumbled and churned as they idled at red lights or turned off of or onto Broadway. Rich meat aroma from a halal food truck parked curbside enveloped me, rousing my olfactory tastebuds.

            A three-year-old girl with her hand in her mother’s was not happy about the weather. “Mommy, I want to go home,” she repeated many times, as they followed me for a couple of blocks. Another small child just cried. Wisps of voices from people passing in the opposite direction brought sound but no coherent sentences, except from one couple arguing. At least, she was yelling, “You got yours,” as they passed me, while he was silent.

Slice of Life, #11

I'm taking part in a reading series called Big Words, where the audience chooses the theme for the following gathering. This month's theme is "All or Nothing," and here is my contribution. (Does this qualify as a "slice of life"?)


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All or Nothing

When I was 15, I wanted to know everything there was to know in the universe.
If I couldn't know all of it, then I didn't want to know anything.
If I couldn't have all A's, just give me all F's.
If my hair couldn't be blonde and wavy, I’d rather be bald.
If my eyes couldn’t be blue, I’d rather be blind.
If I couldn't be the star of the junior play, I’d rather sit in the back of the audience.
If I couldn't be class president, I might as well leave town.
If I couldn't dance all night, I’d rather be deaf.
If I couldn't be queen of the prom, I might as well stay home.
If I couldn't play the piano like Dave Brubeck, I’d rather lose my fingers.
If I couldn't sing like Nina Simone, I’d rather be mute.
If I couldn't write like Virginia Woolf, I might as well lose my mind.
If I couldn't grow a prize-winning orchid, I’d rather plow under the garden.
If I couldn’t cook like Julia Child, I’d rather go hungry.
If I couldn't win the hundred-yard dash, I might as well lose my feet.
If I couldn't find a cure for cancer, I might as well die.

Then I got all C’s in college.

I dropped out, and had more fun.

Now I’m past 70.

I know I’ll never know everything there is to know in the universe.
And I know that no one else ever will either.
I can’t play the piano like Dave Brubeck, but I can play well enough for me.
I can’t write like Virginia Woolf, because I can only write like me.
I didn’t become an actress, but I can stand up here and read my own words.
I was never queen of the prom, but I can still dance all night.
My hair is now exactly the way I want it, and if I change my mind, I can change my hair.
I can cook like Julia Child when I follow her cookbook, or I can cook anything else I want.
I’ll never find a cure for cancer, but I have helped women activists in Eastern Europe,
My name is known in those circles.
Everything I have is all,
Until I die,
When it will be nothing.

There are hundreds more slices of life over at the Two Writing Teachers' blog. Check them out.

Slice of Life, #10

            It’s taken me most of my life to realize that almost nothing is all good (well, maybe orgasms) or all bad (okay, slavery, genocide, serial killers). Most everything else has something both good and bad about it.

            Take retirement. While too many are forced into it by a layoff, or a mandatory retirement age, or illness or disability, retirement is usually seen as freely choosing not to work full-time, and that’s what I decided to do two years ago. Since then I have noted the pros and the cons.

            I am not a morning person. It can take up to an hour for my brain to clear and I can have a reasonably coherent conversation and feel like I am truly awake. So retirement was freedom from the tyranny of the alarm, the need to have breakfast, run out of the door, and get to the office on time to get my work done. Taken to its extreme, though, freedom can feel oppressive.
            I’ve taken to setting my alarm so I won’t sleep away too much of the morning. Take today:

• --radio goes on at 8:30
• --not really awake until almost 9
• --out of bed shortlt after 9
• --reading about Joseph Roth in a magazine in the bathroom until 9:45
• --stretch on bed (for spinal stenosis) while continuing to read about Roth until 9:58
• --start to read about Syria in the same magazine, return magazine to bathroom, remove J.’s bench from the bathtub, fold up clothes from drier and put them away, finished by 10:15
• --make bed, shower, dress by 10:35
• --eat breakfast, read the paper, to 11:35

            I'm not ready to "do" anything until almost noon. I don’t feel happy about this. Yes, I can lie in bed and doze on and off while listening to Morning Edition. Yes, I can read as much of the New York Times as I want to. Yes, I can read a magazine article that strikes my fancy, when it strikes my fancy. But there’s so much more I want to do (writing, reading, going to movies and museums, etc.) and need to do (errands, exercise, filing insurance claims, etc.). Even in retirement, there’s never enough time.

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            Is this a privileged whine? I know I am fortunate compared to many, especially those forced to retire and unable to find work they want and need. Maybe this “whine” will kick me into using my literally free time more productively.

Slice of Life, #9

            It was in the 50s today, and the sun was spring cleaning. The sidewalks looked like the inside of an old-fashioned freezer being defrosted. As the pavement warmed, snow mounds began to melt from underneath (I feel the need to apologize for the litter of cigarette butts, even though none are mine) as well as angular frozen piles softening on exposed surfaces.*

Isolated snow piles resembled icebergs.

Some tree wells were still filled with snow, while in others the snow had melted fast.

One shop owner jump-started the softening process with a hose, 

while around the corner others attacked the frozen piles with shovels.

 

The warmer day with its heaps of dirty snow evokes my inner five-year-old. I crunch the edges of a snowbank with my shoe and watch it crumble. I kick a chunk of snow down the sidewalk like it's a soccer ball. I wish I had a little shovel so I could dig out my own snow cave. 

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* March 9: I must apologize for the confusing placement of the photos. Blogger's editor is clearly not WYSIWYG -- the pictures are supposed to be in  pairs. I must have chosen a very poor template for mixing text and visuals. At least now I know what I need for a template with the most flexibility. 

** March 31: I found a way to create a layout that displays these photos somewhat the way I wanted them. Much, much better.

Slice of Life, #8.5*

J. and I were watching a spring training game on TV between the Mets and the Red Sox. Gary Cohen, was one announcer, a longtime sportscaster for the Mets. The other voice was new, yet sounded vaguely familiar.

Around the fifth inning, two outfielders came too close to each other, leading Cohen and his associate to reminisce about a time 10 years ago when Mike Cameron and Carlos Beltran did collide while each dived for a ball neither caught. Beltran had a concussion, and Cameron had numerous facial injuries and was never the same player again. The unknown announcer remembered seeing the collision from left field -- and immediately, I knew he was Cliff Floyd, one of the Mets' better left fielders. When I said it, J. remembered that he'd read that Cliff Floyd was going to do some sportscasting for the Mets this year.

I'm a big baseball fan, but not one of those obsessives who can name every lineup for my team back to its beginnings. Every now and then, though, a trivia fact will surface, and I will know something I didn't know I knew. It was fun.

*I've already posted to the Slice of Life Writing Challenge, but this was something I wanted to write about today, as well.

Slice of Life, #8

             J. walked outside today, the first time in five days. (Background: my husband fell on the ice over a year ago, and isn’t fully recovered yet – broken arm, complications from blood thinner, three months in the hospital and rehab, and a long-lasting neuropathy randomly causing his feet to feel like they’re on springs.) Walking outside in snow or ice, or even slush, is impossible, so the past week, with three snowfalls and below freezing temperatures. have made him feel imprisoned. Today, the streets are clear, it’s 50 degrees, so he was ready to give it a try.

            We live on a side street in Morningside Heights, in Manhattan, and the wind sweeps up off of the river, especially in winter. J. is still using a cane, and wind makes him  feel even unsteadier than his feet do. As we walked up toward Broadway, the wind was at our back and not too strong. We slowly got to Broadway, where there weren’t many people. The only obstacle he had to watch out for was a pink balloon at eye level tied to a storefront and bouncing erratically from air currents when the store door opened.

            When we turned at the next corner, the wind was in our faces. J. walked a short distance until he felt the wind more an enemy than a zephyr – and we retraced our steps. I’m glad he decided not to forge ahead; walking slowly is hard on my back.  When we were first together, I was the slow walker, and I often had to run to catch up; now he is the one pulling at my coat to slow down. I’m also glad it’s March, because it has to get warmer, and soon J. will be walking outside every day, and by himself.

Slice of Life, #7

            Today I spent a few hours at MoMA as part of the Art+Feminism Edit-a-Thon to upgrade Wikipedia’s quantity and quality of entries on women generally and women artists specifically. The Wikipedia world is arcane and complicated Beneath its veneer of populism, Wikipedia, founded in 2011, is run largely, 84%-92%, by men, and its entries largely reflect these men's interests and range of knowledge.

            We were given a half-hour training, in which we were introduced to the structure of a Wikipedia page, the purpose of the various tabs, how to create our user profile (and how to use Wiki markup, a simplified html), how to make an edit, how to add a citation or new text, how to communicate with other Wikipedians. Then we were allowed to start working, either by finding some women artists’ entries to add citations or new information to or, if we had more time, to try to create a new article entirely. Most important, we were told about the Wikipedia guidelines: (1) be objective (and avoid conflict of interest); (2) articles must be verifiable through reliable, published sources; and (3) entries had to be notable, notability being shown by having at least three different references from major publications in the field.

           Notability, to me, is the elephant in the Wikipedia universe. Since women are still often overlooked in mainstream culture and history, how will they pass the standard of notability? I never got a good answer to this question.

            I tried to create a new article, and immediately ran into the problem of finding enough outside sources online to meet “notability” guidelines.  Next, I found the director of an organization I helped start, but her entry was in Polish. I learned how I could translate it into English using Google Translate, edit it into idiomatic English, and reformat the footnotes. But the conflict of interest question arose, and I will need to do more research.

            While I didn’t make any changes to Wikipedia, I did meet some very interesting women: Debra Harris, who runs hip-hop tours for tourists to New York; Lady K, a hip-hop artist; a journalist who’s had to turn to corporate work as it’s harder than ever to make a living in journalism; and the various Wikipedia editors both female and male who were so helpful. It was a fun and exciting afternoon, and I hope to keep trying to get more women and better citations, and writing, into Wikipedia.

Slice of Life, #6

            My mother died five years ago. She was a pack rat. I have pack rat tendencies. One of the things of hers I’ve saved is her address book, a black six-ring pseudo-leather “Made in China Rolodex” notebook.

            Why have I kept it? I don’t know most of the people in it, other than family members, but certain items bring up memories. An envelope postmarked May 27, 1997 (a month after her sister died), from Lois Toby, the postmistress of the Vermont village where my aunt had lived. Several pages from my mother’s passport of her visas to China and Hong Kong (Apil 10, 1975; October 4, October 17, October 25, 1978). A page listing all the organizations she donated to in 2008; as they continued to solicit her in 2010 and 2011, I informed them all that she had died, using the collection of stamps she had amassed in her zeal for commemoratives – there was about $75 worth of them.

            One woman I never heard of, Vivien Horowitz, has the note: Plays Canasta. I learn that my mother had phone numbers for Florida Atlantic University’s Holocaust & Judaic Studies, the School of Arts/Museum, and Friends of Yiddish (which may no longer exist, as a search of FAU’s Web site today turns up links no more recent than 2007).

            Few of my mother’s interests are mine, but I miss her talking about them or telling me the latest U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association news or controversy, or about learning to play mah-jongg in her 80s. I want to tell her about the video of Leonard Nimoy talking about growing up speaking Yiddish. I want to keep our conversation going, and I’m sad that her end of it no longer exists. Only her address book is still here.

Slice of Life, #5

            A Delta flight landing at LaGuardia Airport this morning skidded off the runway and into an embankment and fence. With only a few minor injuries, all passengers were evacuated by chute. Immediately New York’s broadcast channels went into all news mode, with reporters reporting every tiny piece of information, as well as speculation, and misdescribing the video of we were watching. Once the TV news directors had decided to cover this “Breaking News,” voices had to fill the air.

            All of which reminded my husband, J., a former New York City reporter, of the following story. In the 1970s, J.’s newspaper assigned him to find out about a story an editor had heard about a charter plane carrying 40-some U.N. diplomats off for a retreat that had crashed in Pennsylvania. He called the F.A.A., whose spokesman said they had no information about a missing plane or crash, but J. was the third person who had asked about it, so they would look into it. J. called the U.N., and they didn’t know about any retreat, but they were also getting inquiries, and said they’d get back to him. No airport had any information about a charter plane departing its space. He continued to make calls, and to hear that other news organizations were also making calls, so he wrote a story about what he knew, which was mostly speculation, and the story was typeset and ready to go.

            Until just before the next edition, J. was told to keep working the story, but the news editor was not running with it yet, because it was just so “iffy.” And as J. continued to make his phone calls, it all evaporated. There was no plane crash, there was no plane, there was no U.N. retreat – there was nothing.

            J. was never able to trace the source of this nonexistent story. But in today’s world of “citizen journalism,” when everyone can have a blog or a Twitter account, rumors, misinformation, any information spreads quickly. Even when something unequivocally happens, like this airplane accident at LaGuardia, it’s far better for the sake of truth to not fill the air with words (like the ABC anchor saying that passengers were leaving the plane by walking on the wings, when those watching the video could clearly see they were sliding down a chute). Wait until you know something for sure, wait for confirmation from at least two sources, before repeating the latest “I just heard about...” 

Slice of Life, #4

             After days of sorting through receipts and documents last week and two hours today, my income taxes are filed! I went to H&R Block for the first time (long story), and my tax preparer was a former lawyer, a little heavyset, spotty gray mustache, wearing a green oxford shirt and striped tie of black, blue, and silver. He was chatty, too, becoming inquisitive when he saw our TIAA-CREF 1099-Rs, and asked where and what we’d taught. I explained my teaching saga – editing and journalism at NYU – and he inveighed against the poor writing of most young people today. But not his daughters, he hastened to add; they went to Brearley, which emphasized writing, so its students were at least adequate writers, and at best superior ones. Then he let me know that his younger daughter was in Turkey for her junior year and really loved the country, even though most tourists didn’t go there, preferring Paris or London. I chimed in that my daughter had gone to Turkey a few years ago and also loved it.

            Then he told me that his older daughter was in her second year of Teach for America in an inner-city school in St. Louis, and that now she understood how privileged she had been. The district she’d been assigned to had lost its accreditation, and in its reorganization, her high school had been designated college-prep STEM. But the school had no language teachers. Since she was a French teacher, she became the head of the language department of one, until the school hired an experienced Spanish teacher.

            His daughter isn’t going to make a career of teaching, but she’s become very interested in education policy, a trajectory too many Teach for America participants take. Does it really help schools that most need good, committed teachers to bring in recent college graduates for two years, then have them leave to be replaced by another cohort of two-year teachers? There is so much more I would have liked to know about this young woman’s experience, besides her learning that teaching is really hard. But my tax time was up and other clients were waiting.

Slice of Life, #3

           Maybe it’s the weather, but I keep thinking of dead people. Such as, the people no longer around for me to talk to about what I’ve just read or seen. I just finished reading a fascinating article in “The New York Review of Books” about France between the wars, learning among other things that the French government’s response to the Great Depression was to go the austerity route, so much that the military budget by 1936 was essentially zero. No wonder the French army succumbed so quickly to the Germans.  And eerily reminiscent of our own time, France’s first Jewish, and Socialist, prime minister, Leon Blum, prompted such hatred that government was stalled, making it impossible to overcome the Depression or rearm the military. I wanted to talk to my aunt and uncle who lived in France for several years in the 1950s, but they’ve been dead since 1997 and 2008.

            Then I watched Leonard Nimoy’s video posted at the Yiddish Book Center, talking about his youth and the role that Yiddish played – and he’d break into Yiddish occasionally. I couldn't understand the Yiddish, but I so wanted to be able to send that link to my mother, whose first language was Yiddish even though she was born in New York City. But she’s been dead for five years. All those incomplete conversations, unanswered questions, lost knowledge.

Slice of Life, #2

            On my way to the grocery store this evening, I hear a voice behind me in an admonishing tone: “It’s your body. You’re the one responsible for it. You have to use deodorant, you have to brush your teeth. It’s your friends who are going to smell you...” As they passed, I saw that it was a mother speaking to her, I guess, 12- or 13-year-old son.

            As they passed out of my hearing, I was reminded of the extremely controversial, if delightful, video of a few years back by Bomani Armah, called “Read a Book.” It took the message of “read a book, brush your teeth, wear deodorant, drink water, buy land, raise your kids” and wrapped it in hip-hop rhythms and language. BET played it like a public service announcement, and some (many?) black parents were deeply offended by the language and the booty shaking. But some (many?) kids got the message. (On YouTube, you can find at least one one, as well as Armah and his director being grilled on CNN.) I was also reminded of a Tina Fey and Amy Pohler “Weekend Update” skit parodying a few grown women’s attraction to teenage boys, how sexy their green teeth, bad breath, “skid marks in their shorts.” But I was also reminded of real (white) teenagers who wore the same sweater, even with food stains, for days because it was their favorite sweater. Or when I took baths maybe once a week because baths took so much longer than showers, and I didn’t like showers. And I drank Coke instead of water well into my 30s.

            Civilizing the human child into a grownup is hard work, maybe even a constant struggle throughout that human child's life. Remember that mom: “It’s your friends who are going to smell you...”

 

Slice of Life #1

            Technically, this is yesterday’s slice of life, not today’s. Today I did go outside the apartment. Yesterday I did not. I haven’t stayed indoors all day in many years. It was not a good day.

            Outside it was cold and breezy. My husband, who’s somewhat disabled since a fall on the ice over a year ago, was willing to go outside, but also willing to be talked out of it. I didn’t push for the walk.

            So I spent the day online. Visiting Facebook, seeing who had commented or shared my links, commenting on other’s posts, feeling like I was part of conversation moving slowly and erratically through virtuality. Watching a video of Leonard Nimoy talking about his relationship to Yiddish (I didn’t know he was Jewish!) and thinking about my dead mother, who would have enjoyed this article immensely. Becoming a FB friend with a woman who, it turns out, I may have known slightly 30 years ago. Discovering a small-world connection between my daughter and a woman I knew years ago, through a mutual acquaintance. Reading my e-mail and discovering I’d lost notes from a meeting, so missed some actions I maybe should have taken – and feeling bad about that. Learning that an early second-wave feminist I’ve met once has ovarian cancer.

            Offline, I finished reading “Freedom in the Family,” by Patricia Stephens Due and Tananarive Due, for my book group. Checking online (yes, back onto the Internet), I learned that Patrician Due (Tananarive’s mother) died three years ago, and her husband, John D. Due Jr., wrote a piece for CNN last fall about restorative justice. 

            Finally, I cooked up a Moroccan chickpea stew from a New York Times recipe, and it was truly delicious. That alone made the day worthwhile, and not as claustrophobic as it felt while I lived through it.

6 more full-time days of work

On my four-day holiday, I started cleaning out my paper files at home, which will take days if not weeks. No writing, though. A little depressing. Especially after seeing On the Road, which shows Kerouac writing regularly when he isn't drinking, smoking dope, or taking bennies. He did do a lot of writing.

I had a brief fantasy of my replacement e-mailing me and my boss at work saying that he just couldn't do it, the job would be too much for him. What would I do? I would not stay, no, no, no. I'm leaving for my trip at the end of January, no matter what.

19 and counting...

I've been miscalculating, counting down to the first Monday I don't have to report to my office. But shouldn't I be counting down to the my last day in the office? That's 19, not 21.

My replacement has two weeks to learn everything. He'll miss the week between Christmas and New Year's, but that's only three work days anyway. And he's doing pretty well so far.

The Perils of Being a Dilettante

I'm very undisciplined and easily distracted. Unless I have deadlines from others (like going to an office, having specific work to do), it's too easy use up my time doing things I like doing, but that aren't essential to what I want to do. I could easily spend two hours reading the New York Times (in print) and then another hour or more playing Luxor Maj-jongg or Bejeweled, and another hour or more reading Facebook and clicking on the links friends have posted, and another hour or more reading all my e-mail and the various links other friends have posted -- and there you have it: almost seven hours just reading stuff that's interesting (many things are interesting to me) but not focused.

So I have to learn to set priorities, my own priorities. If I'm semi-retiring to write, writing has to be the first thing I do. If it's not supporting my writing, the reading has to wait. Writing, the writing group, reading books on writing, talking about writing: those are priorities. Reading for fun counts, but not online. Reading online is an open-ended temptation, links to links to links. Print books keep you in the book.

33 Days

My boss is on vacation, I'm doing his job and mine, and the new staff person, the hopefully-to-be-my-replacement, worked today. He seems to be doing okay, at least the questions he's been asking are good and reasonable ones. I haven't checked his work to see whether he missed anything egregious, but the editors whose work he read will doubtless give me feedback. I'm still feeling half in/half out. I need to remember how to do everything so I can fill in the replacement, yet I'm finding myself not caring about details that used to concern me.

Meanwhile, I had to make a phone call about my father's life insurance and only learned a crucial piece of information by using the old journalist's interview technique of asking, "Is there anything you want to tell me that I didn't ask about?" What I learned added an additional step to the process, but simplified another step. I still need to get in touch with my retirement account person and one of my father's accounts, and make some informational phone calls about Medigap and Part D. Retiring is such hard work!

What I Most Fear...

... that when I don't have an office to go to every day, I will just sleep into the afternoon, spend three hours reading the New York Times, go to the gym, and get home too late to make dinner out of one of my many new cookbooks.

When I told this to a colleague, she pooh-poohed my fear. Sleep, she said, read whatever you want to. Your time is your own, and you don't have to do anything. Enjoy yourself, you'll figure it out.

This will be much easier if I can follow her advice. Can I?

Retirement = Death?

That is stark.

But think about stages of living: after high school comes college (often), or perhaps a job; after college comes a job (or maybe graduate school); after a job comes moving in with someone, usually eventually getting married; after getting married, having a kid(s); after working for a while, getting another job, perhaps changing careers if you're lucky enough to have that freedom. After working for a long time, retiring. And what comes after retiring? A new career, yes, that's always a possibility; travel, if you've got the money. But what comes next? There's always something coming next. Until, inevitably, the end. Death. There's no avoiding it.

So retirement makes death feel that much closer. Leaning over your shoulder, perhaps. Breathing down your neck. Poking its hands in your pockets to keep warm.

What day is it?

Keeping track of what day it is, is not going to be easy when I no longer have to go the office. My husband is retired, and he can only remember what day it is by what day I am going to work now. But when we're both retired and semiretired, how will either of us remember what day it is? Will I have to write the day of the week on the medicine chest mirror before I go to sleep each night? Or cross off each day on the calendar in the kitchen before I go to bed?

At my father's retirement village, one resident would announce, at each meal, "Today is Wednesday, November 28" (or whatever day of the week and date it was). So if you woke up that morning and couldn't remember, at least you would be reminded at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And will it matter what day of the week it is?

Countdown...

In six weeks, I will leave the full-time workforce and no longer have to go to an office. Right this minute, that feels really good. But there are so many steps that still need to taken:
1. Sign up for Medicare Part B: two forms that need to be filled out
2. Sign up for a medigap policy and Part D  prescription coverage by December 7
3. Make sure my replacement at work will really work out (the first choice didn't at all)
4. Get used to using my to-do list again (I lost track of it the past few years)

There's more, but isn't this enough?

Delay, delay, delay

It was a whole month ago that I said I would work out my feelings and plans for this next stage of my life, semiretirement. And the first step was disappointing myself by writing nothing. I haven't posted here in 31 days. This is not new. Of course there have been conflicting demands. I'm still working. Then we had an almost hurricane, which fortunately did not cause me anything but inconvenience. Nothing like what happened to others in the region. Then work problems arose, which need to be extricated from. NaNoWriMo began, and I haven't done much with that either. 7,267 words in 16 days; at that rate I will have to write more than 3,000 words a day to get to 50,000 by the end of the month. That will never happen.

And then my father died yesterday. So there is the pull to write about that, to write about him, to write about why I feel only relief, or mostly relief. I will never have to call him again on the phone. I will not have to worry about him outliving his money. I will not have to worry about sending him to a nursing home or negotiating with California Medicaid. We just have to wind up his affairs, pay whatever outstanding bills there are -- and since Medicare is very slow about processing claims, I may not be able to distribute the estate until some time next year. Maybe after his taxes are filed.

So my idyllic dream of working a few hours a day a few days a month, and writing what I want to the rest of the time just isn't going to play out.

Let's see how long I go before posting here the next time.

Retirement, no, semiretirement

I'm moving into semiretirement in January, which is a major change for me. Working at home, setting up my own schedule for my own work and for the work for which I will be paid, not seeing other people (except my partner) unless I make the effort to see them -- all this will be new and diff-erent (or should I have written "diff-icult?).  So I will use this space to prepare and work through How to Go About It.

Twelve years ago Carl Klaus, founder of the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa, wrote a whole book on preparing for his impending retirement, Taking Retirement. Nine years ago Nan Bauer Maglin co-edited a volume of women writing on retirement, Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide. I doubt this will become a book. But I do invite anyone out there with thoughts, suggestions, questions, pitfalls to chime in. Let's have a conversation about this stage of life without the gung-ho, false cheeriness, and Hallmark card sentiments or the moan and groan of how bad things are now. However, hearty whining accompanied by action prompts are welcome: what can we actually DO about what's bothering us, whether it's the deterioration of our bodies or the deterioration of the body politic.

So, let's go...