Alexis Rankin Popik's Blog, page 2

LESSONS IN HAPPINESS

Pure Happiness in Hanoi*

Last night I learned a couple of lessons in happiness. The occasion was an informal reunion of my husband’s 1963 high school class. It wasn’t the every-ten-years formal event, just a gathering organized by Shirley V. (the “class mom” my spouse says) of school mates who were around and wanted to spend a few hours together at Harry’s Hof Brau. I knew some of the women through Facebook and also via this blog, but if we met at the last formal reunion I attended (in 1983), none of us remembered.

My readers know that happiness is a subject I come back to time and again, likely because it is something we all seek and it is sometimes (or often) elusive. Take the current political divisions (please! take them!), COVID, the next flu coming our way, our grown kids, their kids. As Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” And after all these years, there are lots of “anothers”—divorces, deaths of spouses, serious illnesses—the normal results of living a long life. But everybody at Harry’s was happy to see each other.

A conversation I had last night with Marcia F. R. somehow very quickly got around to the subject of happiness. Marcia has had the usual allotment of difficulties, and she remains very happy. How does she do it? She looks for the happinesses in daily life. What I too often see as burdens (appointments, weeding, grocery shopping, blah, blah, blah) Marcia views as opportunities: fixing a problem, being outdoors, running into friends, creating opportunities to meet new people. She thinks about being happy. She notices that she’s happy.

Arthur C. Brooks* writes a weekly happiness column, How to Build a Life, in The Atlantic and also has a podcast (How to Build a Happy Life) devoted to the subject. And (whaddaya know?) he has a similar prescription for happiness:

Notice the connection between physical pain and unhappiness

Practice a form of spirituality: religion, meditation, other means

Don’t suffer alone: build bonds of friendship

HAVE A HAPPY WEEK!

Photo by moi

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Published on September 26, 2022 00:00

HOME AND NEW BEGINNINGSONE FAMILY’S HOME IN SAN PEDRO TO...

HOME AND NEW BEGINNINGS

ONE FAMILY’S HOME IN SAN PEDRO TOWN, BELIZE

As I pack up to head back “home” from a place I also consider home, I have been listening to the audio version of Frances Mayes’ new book, A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home. I didn’t get very far before my earbuds fell out too many times (who do these things fit snugly?) but it was long enough to know that Mayes and I disagree about what it takes for a dwelling to feel like home. You will need to read her book to understand that she feels like many, many places have felt like home. I have lived in several houses but only a few have felt like home.

Another view of “home” my childhood friend, Janet Compiano Alonzo, who wrote in this space:

“Home is the place where from every view I can find a memory. The dining room table is a good spot to begin. I always sit at the end nearest the kitchen and my husband always at the opposite end. In between we have watched our family grow from a young family of 5 to small army of 16: three grown kids and their spouses, eight grandkids, and the two of us. And there’s also the spot where my mother always sat, so bravely filled when our daughter stepped up that first holiday without her Grandma…. I understand, of course, that home is a state of mind and not merely a chunk of real estate, but after so many years in the same spot it would be hard to imagine living anywhere else on earth. It seems our home has acquired a soul!”

The prospect of returning home in September leads me to think about how, in my view, the new year begins. Some readers who responded to last week’s blog agreed with me and others did not:

Gail L. from Cape Cod believes the year begins on January 1: “When you see the lighted cod dropped over the pond at midnight who can doubt that another year has begun. [ed: Whaaa? Do they really do that? It seems that they do!] Apropos to nothing, my children haven’t been in school for many years but I still feel the need to be home around 4 pm, perhaps due to years of waiting for the school bus.” [It never occurred to me why I have this same feeling.]

Merry H. wrote that the school year is a new beginning: “September is when the year starts for the same reason. Thanks for making me think!”

And Marcia R. has a completely different view: “The new year for me begins in the warmth of spring when everything is just beginning to bloom and come back to life. It is also the time when I can shed my winter clothes and put on shorts and less restrictive summer wear. A time for flip-flops, shorts, and cotton dresses. A time to sit on the patio watching the hummingbirds flit from feeder to feeder and to watch the squirrels duck under the lid of the squirrel feeder to pluck a peanut to munch on while dropping the shells on the ground before diving in for yet another nut. Being a born and raised CA girl I love the warm weather and for the freedom to enjoy the great outdoors and observe the abundant things in nature that surround me every day. Thanks again and keep on writing.”

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

ABOUT THE WRITER: Recently Janet Compiano Alonso, a friend since childhood, sent me this moving description of what home means to her. A former teacher and current writer, Janet is working on a book of historical fiction set in California’s Sutter Basin.

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IT’S SEPTEMBER–A NEW YEAR BEGINS!

Photo by Zach Vessels via Unsplash

Officially the New Year begins in January, but in my mind, September is the month when everything starts up again. Even after I finished all my schooling, I couldn’t shake the notion that September was the true beginning of the year. Sending my three children off to school by foot, bicycle, bus and (eventually) plane only reinforced that feeling.

January just doesn’t feel like the proper month for New Year. When we lived on the East Coast full time, January seemed like the beginning of the depths of winter—three or four long, dark months to endure until May. (Maybe if I had been a skier, I would have had a different attitude.) And now, in California, when January comes, I wish, hope and pray for a rainy winter.

In New England, September is a clearly delineated time of endings and beginnings. In small towns near the coast and inland lakes, the “Summer People” leave, taking with them crowding in restaurants, extra traffic, and the liveliness of the season. The marsh outside our window is turning from green to yellow. Signs of birds migrating are everywhere. The feeders no longer need daily replenishing. I haven’t seen a hummingbird for a couple of weeks.

On the other hand, the Fall foliage display in October is a celebration of Autumn color that everyone looks forward to. And in my garden, several clumps of are already showing off. Why this plant is called a “weed” is beyond me, but I love it not only for its violet blooms but also for its name.

When does the New Year begin for you? Send me a note; I’m interested in your opinion. And meanwhile,

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

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Published on September 12, 2022 00:00

DO RHINOS REALLY CRASH?

Photo by moi

No surprise that I like words and some of the weirdest are used to describe groups of animals. Some are mysterious (A murder of crows) and others are descriptive (A bloat of hippos). I have had reason to know just how apt A Crash of Rhinos is….so read on!

A few years ago my husband and I accompanied rhinoceros trackers in Namibia. According to the trackers, the rhino we were tracking always took a nap beginning at 10:00 a.m. and would be impossible to find if he was lying down in bushes. The nap story sounded to me like the sort of claim guides would make to impress gullible tourists.

After hours of bouncing over boulders in the back of a Land Rover, we met up with two trackers who had located the rhino. He was not black, as I had expected, but the greyish dusty color of the bushes he stood among. Even from a long distance, rhinos look preposterous, huge, and preposterously huge. An adult male black rhino can be as tall as 69 inches at the shoulder, 13 feet long, and more than 3,000 pounds. They are not friendly critters and can charge at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, so trackers move silently and carefully.

It was 9:50 a.m. when we got to the site and the men were genuinely worried that we wouldn’t have time for photos. I decided to watch at a safe distance while my husband and a tracker moved closer very slowly and downwind of the rhino. At 9:55 they found a good angle. With his camera on silent mode, Bill was taking as many photos as he could. At 9:58 the big beast moved a little and I prepared to run for my life. Nothing happened. Then exactly at 10:00 a.m. and without any warning or sound, the rhinoceros just tipped over onto his side and all 2,000 + pounds of him crashed among the bushes. I will never doubt a guide again.

And lastly, a few more goofy herd names: a skulk of foxes; an implausibility of gnus; a wisdom of wombats and a dazzle of zebras.

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Published on September 05, 2022 12:00

I’M ALL EARS

BIG EARS

I had big ears as a child—great big, stick-outie ears. My kindergarten picture shows an enthusiastic five-year-old with the biggest ears in the class. Those ears were a source of misery for me through eighth grade and then I forgot about them. Since I began writing fiction, they have served me well. In an earlier blog, (You Will Never Be Bored If You’re a Writer May 12, 2014) I wrote about how everywhere I turn, there’s material. Here are a few overheard snippets I have either used or intend to use as a basis for a story or as a scene within a larger story.

Overheard at Peet’s Coffee House, Berkeley, CA, 1981
“It just takes the right combination of drugs.”

Outside a Hartford jazz club, 2000
Nerdy-looking man in line is putting moves on the woman standing between him and me. He’s chatting her up about music, the guitar, etc. Woman #2 comes out of the club and walks toward him very quickly. She takes his arm and turns him away from Woman #1, keeps her back to #1 the entire time she whispers emphatically in the man’s ear. Woman #1 ignores the whole scene and calls her child on her cell phone. Woman #2 begins crying while man berates her for her jealousy. He tells her that he “won’t tolerate it.”

St. Joseph’s Hospital, Stockton, California, August 2012
My mother has Stage IV lung cancer. She is having radiation treatments and I am in the waiting room. The speakers are playing “Lullabye and good night.”

Hartford, CT, October 2012
The Hartford Courant includes the obituary of an elderly French Canadian woman who was married for 52 years and lived on a farm. The obit added that, “She enjoyed gardening, laundry and peeling potatoes.”

On the Jazz Cruise, Caribbean, 2014 A man in the deck chair next to mine says to wife: “I don’t give a fuck what it is. I’m not co-dependent like you are.” She responds, “All right.”

I wonder what kind of relationship yields her response. THAT is the stuff of a good story.

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Published on August 22, 2022 00:00

BUZZWORDS: BUZZ OFF

Photo by Jon Tyson courtesy of Unsplash

As readers of this blog know, buzzwords really get on my nerves. Luckily, buzzwords fall out of favor after a year or so; unluckily, they are replaced by other annoying buzzwords. Apparently, though, some of the most irksome have persisted since I wrote this blog in 2018. I have been keeping a list of irritating words and the only one I have to add to this lineup is: Tranche.

TRANCHE If you watch too much news, as I do, you have within the past few months heard the word Tranche several times per day. It is used to describe a lot of papers–i.e., a tranche of documents. I worked as a legal secretary during college, typing what must have been several tranches of legal papers but we called them by their names: pleadings, affidavits, transcripts….You get the idea.

WOKE
If you are “woke,” you are aware and likely sympathetic regarding a current issue. It is commonly used to describe a man who is a feminist. Ex: “He is so woke!”

CURATE
Here’s another irritating one. As Brian Sullivan of CNBC points out, “Curating used to be a word we only used in museums. Somewhere in the last year ‘curate’ has morphed into a word people are using anytime they pick something and want to sound like it’s more than just picking something.” As long ago as 2012, Scott Simon of NPR wrote, “How do I love thee? Let me curate the ways…”

UNPACK
Formerly applied to situations involving suitcases, to “unpack” has come to mean to examine in detail. Ex: “We really need to unpack this concept before we pursue the idea further.”

REACH OUT
Recently someone thanked me for “reaching out” to him. I had either called him or sent an e-mail. I had reached out as far as my phone or my keyboard. I put “reach out” in the same category as “sharing” (i.e., conversing).

If you are a regular reader of this page, you are woke to the fact that I curate my weekly blogs so that when I reach out to my readers, I write in such a way that these little essays are easy to unpack and add to the tranche of previous blogs.

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Published on August 15, 2022 00:00

JONI MITCHELL AND LOST LUGGAGE

Photo by Tijs van Leur via unsplash.

Joni Mitchell’s triumphant return to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival last week has got “Both Sides Now” playing in my head for days. It is an experience more pleasant than its predecessor earlier this month (“Baby Beluga”) but an “ear worm” nevertheless. Joni Mitchell’s voice was part of the ether we breathed at UC Berkeley in the Sixties and just hearing the original recording brings back memories of that wonderful and difficult time. I didn’t think much about Joni Mitchell then. She was just in the air, like the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the dozens of other musicians all around us.

I hadn’t thought about her for a long time, but a video of Mitchell singing “Both Sides Now” from a chair on the Newport stage, older, with a much lower voice and a joyful expression prompted me to look into what has happened to her. A brain aneurysm in 2015 took away her ability to speak, to walk and to play the guitar. You can read about this all over the internet right now. What I particularly recommend, though, is the Canadian Broadcasting Company interview with Mitchell before her injury. In it Mitchell discusses her paintings (she says she considers herself a painter first, then a musician) and the ways in which music and art are “two different languages.” It’s fascinating.

As to the saga of my lost luggage (and thanks to those of your who wrote to me expressing your sympathy), what I learned was: (1) don’t wait for anyone to respond to phone calls (2) don’t expect any of the forms to get read and acted upon; (3) find one or two real human beings in the airport who are willing to talk to you. I was lucky enough to find two such women and, based on what they said, I thought it would never be found if I didn’t take action myself. I contacted the airport police, flew to Washington DC and met up with a young officer who took me to the place my luggage was (based on its air tag and my Find My app). Within minutes my purple carry-on was found. Whew! I was so giddy that I asked a stranger to take this picture and he was happy to oblige.

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

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Published on August 01, 2022 00:00

7 WAYS TO DEAL WITH LOST LUGGAGE

Photo by Caroline Selfors via Unsplash

First, be sure to put all expensive electronics in one piece of carry-on luggage (by carry-on, I mean don’t have anything on the bag that identifies the airline you are using, the flight number, or your destination).

Second, make sure you are tired after an international flight, rushing through customs and discombobulated by the orders to hurry up. When you are told to put your luggage on the conveyor belt for transfer to your next flight, be certain NOT TO REMEMBER that your carry-on is supposed to be carried on and PUT IT ON THE CONVEYOR.

Third, when you reach your final destination and your carry-on luggage isn’t there, REMEMBER that it didn’t have any tags on it identifying your airline or flight, though it did have a tag with your name, address, phone number and email. As a corollary to this third step, be sure to arrive at your final destination late at night when Baggage Claim is closed and there is only one clerk at the airline counter and she is new to the job.

Fourth, spend the one-hour drive home listening to a recording of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and a periodic voice that tells you someone will be with you shortly.

Fifth, in the days that follow remind yourself that you are still a lucky person and don’t act like a big baby about this. Try to carry this attitude with you through multiple phone calls, endless musical interludes, and connections with people from all over the world who assure you that they will help you with your luggage loss. Fill out as many on-line forms as you can and don’t be upset when some of them are inexplicably rejected.

Sixth, actually locate your luggage with your phone’s “Find My” application but be unable to call the Lost and Found number at the airport because it’s closed for the weekend.

Seventh, wish you had followed the advice of the book that you read during the entire international flight, the one by Lisa Genova called Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting

DON’T FORGET TO HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

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Published on July 25, 2022 00:00

SWIMMING WITH WHALE SHARKS

Photo from i stock.com

Last week’s blog, Taking a Week Off, was unexpectedly mis-titled. Instead of kicking back, my husband and I went to Cancun for a family visit. Our son Ben planned an outing for us to snorkel with Whale Sharks. Spoiler alert: Whale Sharks are neither whales nor sharks. They are gigantic fish who feed off plankton and could not be bothered with humans. They range in size from a small camper to a school bus. If you look carefully at the photo, you will see in the top right lit space, the faint outlines of some teeny tiny humans. Soon I hope to have some photos of myself snorkeling near one, but that could take awhile. I hope fear can’t be seen through a snorkel mask.

Bill marked up a photo of himself (small orange spot) alongside one of the Whale Sharks.