Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 40

In Praise of Procrastination

There once was a writer who was uptight

Planning tasks to avoid working all night

Procrastination was a stranger

Which put her sanity in danger

She wrote about it today on Tue/Night.

(Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody. Check out my essay, “Why I Will Never Pull an All-Nighter,” over on Tue/Night. But, you know, no rush. You’ve got plenty of time.)

                    CommentsOh now don't blame me. If I had anything to do with it, you ... by Nancy Davis KhoSee? See? One woman's bad habit is another woman's life goal. by Nancy Davis KhoHa! I love limericks. I also loved your piece on ... by Claire HennessyI love when you give me the giggles…and the permission to put ... by KirWhy thank you. I thought it was a C- limerick at best, but ... by Nancy Davis KhoHa! Beautiful green limerick, and great article! by AdriannaRelated StoriesA Mixtape For Mercy LouisA Partial List of Lenten Failures, 2015Primer for New Riders on the “Grantchester” Bandwagon 

A Mixtape For Mercy Louis

 

Friendship has its privileges, and one of the privileges of being friends with The Flying Chalupa blogger Tarja Parssinen (you know, the Fleetwood Mac fan) has been getting to know her sister, author Keija Parssinen…and getting my hands on an advance copy of Keija’s newest novel, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis. I ripped through this book in two days, so invested was I in whether young Mercy Louis, a basketball prodigy being raised by her grandmother, would survive the pressure that seems to accrue unfairly to young women everywhere and especially those living in small towns where escape plans aren’t easily come by. Parssinen brings the whole town of Port Sabine to life, full of mystery and unspoken secrets, moments of sweet adolescent romance, and above all a heroine filled with promise who just needs guidance from people not wholly distracted by their own needs. Kirkus gave it a starred review, calling it “a modern Southern gothic with a feminist edge and the tense pacing of a thriller…Beautiful and awful, enraging and sad, atmospheric and page-turning: an accomplished novel.”

When I invited Keija to write a guest post for me, I asked that she talk about how music influences the character and what she’d recommend Mercy listen to after her story ends. I love the mixtape she came up with…

A Mixtape For Mercy Louis

by Keija Parssinen

Mercy Louis, the titular heroine of my second novel, leads a cloistered life, thanks to her strict upbringing by her grandmother Evelia, a fierce evangelical who believes in an imminent Rapture. The only music in Mercy’s life comes from church, and from the warm-up tape played before her team’s basketball games, so she knows an odd mix of hymns and classic uptempo sports anthems like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Eye of the Tiger.” But over the summer, she meets Travis, a guitar-playing sweet-talker who broadens her world. In one of my favorite scenes, he takes her to a famous dance hall on the bayou to listen to Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, and Mercy two-steps for the first time:

“We spin around and around the floor. Sometimes he lifts me clean off it, and I can’t help myself, I laugh and laugh; something about moving like this, encircled by his arms, hair flying, makes me whoop, whoooo, my cry melting into the crowd…it’s almost criminal when the band pauses to tune up fiddles and banjos and guitars and sip bourbon before moving on to the next song, their faces shiny with seat. Slowly, we come down from our high, grinning like maniacs.”

The music and dancing combine to make Mercy ecstatic, but her happiness is short-lived, and her mental and physical health begin to deteriorate from the many stresses in her life. By the end of the novel, Mercy has found freedom and begins to fight her way back to stability. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but to celebrate her escape from the damaging forces in her life, and to give her courage, I would make this mix-tape for her—mostly songs by bad-ass female vocalists (many of them with Texas ties) who know how to sing about pain, coming back from hard times, and lighting out on your own. There are some serious country leanings here, because Mercy is a small-town Texas girl, after all. I threw in some Cajun music (Mamou Playboys, the Balfa Brothers) because Mercy is a seventh-generation Cajun. And of course I included some Willie Nelson. Because no mix-tape is Lone Star legit without Willie.

“Down on Me,” Janis Joplin “Real Love,” Lucinda Williams “Passionate Kisses,” Mary Chapin Carpenter “Not Ready to Make Nice,” Dixie Chicks “Wide Open Spaces,” Dixie Chicks “All the Roadrunning,” Emmylou Harris “Unsuffer Me,” Lucinda Williams “Pancho & Lefty,” Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard “Listen to the Radio,” Nanci Griffith “Lyons Point,” Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys (got to have a little Cajun flavor!) “I’ll Fly Away,” Gillian Welch “Jambalaya (On the Bayou),” Hank Williams “Port Arthur Blues,” Balfa Brothers

 ***

Want to hear more about Mercy? I’m giving away a copy of the book! To enter, leave a  comment below with the song you’d add to Mercy’s “bad-ass female vocalists” mixtape to inspire her and give her courage. (I’d throw some Sleater Kinney up into that joint, myself.) I’ll take comments until Wednesday, March 18 at 12 noon Pacific Time then I’ll pick a winner using Random.org.

And if you’re in Oakland, come out to Great Good Place for Books in Oakland (6120 Lasalle Avenue) on Wednesday, April 15 at 7 pm, where Keija and I will be talking Port Sabine and Mercy and music to write by. Please join us!

                    CommentsHow is this the coolest book review IN THE HISTORY OF TIME! ... by alexandraI am so excited about this! And ironically, I can make the ... by Janine KovacYou had me at “Mamou.” I would add “Listen to Me When I ... by Ron ThibodeauxI love this and I need to read it. Congrats all around. by LanceI can't wait to read this. I'm close to buying it because I ... by Stephanie RossI loved this! And had forgotten how much Nancy Griffith I ... by TarjaRelated StoriesTurn Down the Music and Read: Emergency AnthemsHappy National Readathon Day!Turn Down the Music and Read: Mad World 

Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Martin Sexton

The Band: Martin Sexton, singer songwriter and a nice boy who (like me) hails from Upstate New York. He’s a longtime fixture on the rock/folk/Americana circuit, eschewing traditional corporate labels and eventually forming his own label, KTR, in 2002. Sexton is on tour with his eighth and latest album, “Mixtape of the Open Road,” which is meant to be exactly the carefully curated musical journey the title implies. And how much do we love a.) the album artwork and b.) the fact that this is actually available for purchase on cassette tape?

The Venue: An Airstream trailer parked in a downtown Napa parking lot. Not just any Airstream, though; it’s the official vehicle of Feast It Forward, a new media network meant to unite people from the culinary, wine, and entertainment industries in support of philanthropic endeavors. The deal is this: twice a month, musicians who are playing City Winery Napa are invited to get on the bus with Feast It Forward impresario Katie Hamilton Shaffer and play a 30 minute set to a small (miniscule) audience. These Fun Size concerts are livestreamed, and the artists have a chance to talk about the charities that are important to them – in Sexton’s case, Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for kids with serious illnesses. Then an hour later those artists play a full show to City Winery crowd.

I met Katie a few weeks ago at LeadOn and we gravitated toward each other, as music nerds do in large crowds. I loved the idea of Feast It Forward and asked how I could help: she told me I should come hear Martin Sexton play from inside the Airstream. Now THAT’S what I call a volunteer job.

The Company: My husband. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you know he’s not so much into the concerts anymore, but this one – on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Napa on a tricked out Airstream stocked with pizza and win – this one, he agreed to attend. He’s also from upstate New York, and he and Sexton got into a “do you know this place in the Adirondacks?” discussion while we waited for filming to begin. Answer, on both sides: yes.

The Crowd: I can actually tell you the names of everyone at the show. There was my husband and me. There was the nice young couple who runs Bos Wine. There was David Miner of Miner Wines, whose wares we were savoring, and his two kids. There was Katie and her husband. Oh, and the band. So, like, 12 people.

But here’s a hint: the Airstream is parked up right along the Napa River, next to the pedestrian walkway. You could, theoretically, be strolling by City Winery between 5 and 6 pm next time Feast It Forward is filming, and you could, theoretically, stand on the patio of City Winery and hear the music coming from the Airstream and watch it on the big screen tv they set up. You could totally do that. I would. I would also “Like” their Facebook page if you want to stay apprised of upcoming shows.

The Opening Band: The Brothers McCann, a redheaded, red-bearded trio from Boston who opened for Sexton for the full show and climbed on the Airstream to harmonize for his first two songs. Like I assume many Bostonians after this rough winter, they were a shade of pale that one of the Brothers characterized as “primer white.” I wanted to shoo them off the bus and back into the Napa sunshine for some vitamin D – but only after they lent their vocal grace notes to songs like “Pine Away.”

Weirdest thing about the Brothers McCann: they not only had heard of my husband’s small Adirondack hometown, they’d eaten at Clare and Carls, a diner I was always a little nervous entering for fear the entire place would collapse. The Michigans (that’s basically a chili dog for you non Upstate New Yorkers) may not have been Napa-gourmand worthy, but they were worth braving the ramshackle structure.

Age Humiliation Factor: Not hardly.

As if, in my twenties, I would have ever been invited to something as civilized as this. Or if I had been, I probably would have been too dumb to say yes.

Cool Factor: Leaving everything else in its dust

Pretty much blowing through the top of the Cool Factor scale. The Airstream alone earns top ratings, but to pack it with talented artists and do it all in support of a good cause? I’m so grateful to the Feast It Forward people for including me, and look forward to doing some *actual* work to support them in the future.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? You don’t have to.

Well, this is kind of fun. You can judge for yourself. The entire 31-minute Airstream session with Martin Sexton and the Brothers McCann is right here for your viewing pleasure (the audio is hinky until just before the one minute mark so start there.) The man in black is my husband, I’m in the blue print shirt I’m only now realizing I wear everywhere, and Katie Shaffer Hamilton is our able hostess/emcee. Feel free to watch and call this your March concert if you haven’t picked out another one.

But there’s a good chance that Martin and the Brothers are coming your way, if you’re west of the Mississippi, so check out the tour schedule. And when your teenage babysitter comes over, make sure he/she knows what a mixtape is. You don’t want to leave your kids in the wrong hands.

Next show on the calendar: George Ezra, April 9, The Fillmore

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Modern Work Life

I’m in the middle of researching an article about venture capital investment trends in the digital publishing world. Luckily this coincided with my pledge to try out some new stock photography I came across online that, I think, presents a really authentic view of the American work world.

Business fulfills each and every one of them

Many of these VC websites include job listings for the companies in which they have an investment stake. I’m always willing to jump down an internet rabbit hole, especially when the alternative is synthesizing 60 pages of interview notes into a 2,000 word article. So I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about jobs that would absolutely kill me.

I know my GenX is showing, but I take my hat off to the twenty-somethings willing to work in the manner that tech start-ups require (or maybe it’s that they know if they don’t smile and perform, the next 20-something will.) With the smartphone stapled to your hand, you’re never unreachable so you’re never not working. Yes, you may get free snacks and a keg in the breakroom, plus free yoga classes. But is that worth giving up any semblance of a private life?  Maybe I shouldn’t admit this publicly but I really enjoy time off from work. Always have. Another question: if you’re working this hard when you’re 26, how do you deal with the inevitable scale up that comes with more experience and seniority? Some sort of implanted chip that allows you to keep working even when you sleep at night?

Nothing left to chance – Business Strategy

One start-up I read about in the real estate information world is looking for people who are “happy to work 60+ hour weeks on projects that matter.” Among the benefits listed for having the kind of work hours that led to the rise of the labor movement and child labor laws? “You get to change the world.” That is a LOT of pressure to face every morning when you clock in and haven’t yet had your coffee. As for changing the world, well, with a malaria vaccine, maybe. But with a real estate app? C’mon.

Successful applauding executives sitting at the table

Another company is looking for candidates who are “unafraid to have their opinions changed. Strong beliefs, loosely held.” What does that even mean? I picture a giant room full of people (I assume none of these companies offer offices, just cubes and long worktables and maybe a lime green beanbag chair) charging around yelling, “Black!” only to bank off an exposed brick wall onto a new trajectory, yelling “White!” until the next redirection comes.

Then there is the company that describes a work culture so idyllic that “we work together and we relax together. And sometimes we even relax alone.” I’m guessing that rare alone time happens when someone finds herself in the bathroom at the same time her smartphone battery runs out of juice.

Business team enjoying victory

Of course, many of these companies are brand new – otherwise why would they need outside investment funds? So their pay packages are cute: pretty much poverty level for the Bay Area, where the average one bedroom apartment rents for more than $3k, but with promise of a big equity payoff over the long term.

In fact, it occurs to me that there is a perfect class of potential employee suited for these jobs: accustomed to nonstop pressure, the requirement for 24/7 availability, rapid course readjustments, and of course low entry wages that are offset by the potentially huge payoff. Here’s one now, stock photo style:

Happy mom with cherub…or perfect start-up employee?

I have been enjoying this peppy, upbeat little song by Knox Hamilton all winter. I know we can work it out.

***Hey, want to go to a concert with me on Saturday night? Seriously. I’m super excited to be attending a private show by Martin Sexton hosted by Feast It Forward, a new venture that combines food, wine, and philanthropy at City Winery in Napa. The venue is an Airstream trailer in the City Winery parking lot which is all kinds of cool. If you’re in the area, you can enter to win tickets (see below.) I’ll post my review on Tuesday. 

Post by “Feast it Forward”.

 

                    CommentsSeriously. We are on a Soylent Green trajectory, man. by Nancy Davis KhoThis Gen Xer is thinking “Veal Fattening Pen” to the ... by LindaFirst of all, I love that you found a way to use these Vince ... by EllenRelated StoriesLead On, Ladies(AP)pending US HistoryColor of the Year 

A Partial List of Lenten Failures, 2015

We’re not even a full two weeks into Lent and I’ve been trying and rejecting Lenten vows faster than a Millennial flips through Tinder. Herewith, a list-in-progress. It will probably get longer:

1. Whole food eating. I thought I could jump on the big health trend of eating whole foods only for 30 days and do it one better, by adding God and stretching out to 40 the number of days for which I ate only unprocessed, minimally prepared fresh food.

But wait. What’s that you say? Crusty sourdough bread is considered a processed food, and so is the butter with which it is designed to be slathered?

Excuse me driver, can you pull over here? I’m definitely on the wrong bus.

2. No sugar. When not one but TWO sermons in a row are about how merely giving up chocolate for Lent is an incomplete, immature understanding of the opportunity for reflection that Lent gives us, I don’t argue. Say no more, chocolate and its decadent peers are back in the daily rotation. I don’t want anyone to think I’m immature.

3. No more single nightly beer. Most nights, I drink one to ease me into a state of grace as I cook dinner. Giving it up serves no one in my family well. No.

4. Write 2,000 words/day on my book project. On Ash Wednesday I wrote 2,001 words. The next day: 165 words. Every day since: zero, but it’s accompanied by at least 3,000 words of daily self-recrimination.

5. Three gratitudes and a kindness. I read a great article somewhere about a company that saw its worker productivity and satisfaction skyrocket when it handed out journals in which to record, every day, three things to be grateful for, and one kindness done for another person. Apparently the simple act of recording those things helped buoy happiness and overall satisfaction. Sounded easy enough.

But first, I chucked the idea of actually writing it down. (See #4.) I decided I could just reflect on it in bed after I climbed in for the night. This vow may actually have some staying power, at least on the nights when I don’t fall asleep by Gratitude Thing #2 and never even get to the kindness party. Which is, so far, every night.

6. Acceptance of my flaws and shortcomings. See this blog post? There. I did it.

I was looking for songs about “failure” which led to “laziness” which led to this surprise: Leonard Nimoy, may he rest in interstellar peace, starring in a Bruno Mars video. It’s awesome.

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Lead On, Ladies

When I was eighteen months old, our next door neighbor Mrs. Fitzsimmons called my mom to see if I wanted to come over to play with her daughter Mary Beth, who was the same age. My mother said, “Well, she’d have to learn how to walk first.” Don’t judge. I was a third child and there were four other people in my house willing to carry me places. What reason did I have to figure out that whole bipedal thing, until Mary Beth wanted to hang out?

The point is that from a very young age, I have experienced the motivational benefits of female friendship. I know there are women who prefer the platonic companionship of men, who think “female friendship” is an oxymoron because of jealousy and pettiness. I know those women are out there, but I do not understand them. Female friends have been the throughline, the lifeline, the punchline of my whole life.

Mary Beth and I at an important networking event circa 1971.

The minute I COULD walk, I started hanging around with Bethie, and the other girls on our street, Liz, Carol, and Amy. We evolved into a rough and tumble, banana-seat-bike having, roller-skate-wearing ‘70s girl gang that wilded up and down the streets of our subdivision, playing games, doing each other’s hair, and generally presenting a united front against the boys. In elementary school I quickly glommed on to Kitty and Kim, and in middle school it was another group of four girls who used to play Bionic Women on the playground at lunch every day. (Complete with sound effects as we fake slo-mo-ran around the lawn.)

High school, college, grad school, motherhood: each stage of my life allowed me to layer in another tight group of female friends who had my back, gave it to me straight, pushed me when I needed a push. At every level there were disagreements and temporary cold spells, but nothing that I can recall with any specificity. I was friends with boys, too – well, not during middle school, see the aforementioned Bionic Woman story – but there has always been a built-in level of comfort, of trust, of familiarity that lent my friendships with girlfriends richness and depth. When I headed off to the work world, I didn’t expect it to be any different.

Now is the part where you think I will write about having bitchy female bosses and unsupportive female managers. Nope. The opposite was true. Even in the work world I felt supported, encouraged, and empowered by the higher-ranking women around me. The single woman who wasn’t – a partner at McKinsey where I temped as a receptionist when I first moved to D.C. after grad school, and who mocked me in front of a group of new associates for using my master’s degree to answer phones – stands out simply because she was such an anomaly. (It’s ok – I was only there two weeks before I got a cool job doing strategic planning, with nicer people.)

On Tuesday I had the great fortune to attend and speak at the LeadOn Silicon Valley conference for Women, presented by the Watermark organization. Picture the biggest convention center ballroom you’ve ever been in; now picture it packed with 5,000 high-achieving woman, virtually all of whom were there to learn how to empower their careers and increase feminine representation in the work world, in government, in every arena where the half of us humans who are women hold a disproportionately small number of seats at the table.

As I’ve been acclimated to expect, the women I met were friendly and encouraging, challenging one another to “lead on” but offering support in the process. Business cards were flying, Twitter handles were exchanged, LinkedIn was linked in. I got a bead on a concert that I am so excited about I can’t stand it (can’t tell you quite yet what it is.) I imagine everyone who spent the day in Santa Clara on Tuesday grew her network of potential helpers and helpees by at least 15%.

Hillary Clinton was the big keynoter, but for me the high point came in two different sessions when Gail Sheehy and Brene Brown reflected on the importance of failure. I know “failing fast” is a big Silicon Valley buzzword right now. What I appreciated that Sheehan and Brown talked not just about failure, but about that painful next step of brushing yourself off and trying something new. More importantly, they reminded 5,000 of us how important it is that we, as women, reach back and pull each other along. Brown put it this way: “When you’re so flat on your face that all you can see is my ankles, I promise you my hand is already on the way down.”

In that spirit, I am making a modest offering of help. I facilitated a roundtable talk on Tuesday afternoon about using social media to enhance personal brand, and the session was swamped – there is a lot of interest and confusion on the topic of how you can effectively use social media to communicate your values, experience, and expertise to potential clients, employees, and contacts. At the request of the attendees, I’ve pulled together a quick list of resources and further reading and you can check it out here for yourself. Both the talk and the resource list are a work in progress and I’m looking forward to evolving them with the feedback and questions from the LeadOn conversations – thanks for the challenges, ladies.

And if your personal brand is locked up tight, more power to you. Let’s do a celebratory dance with Bey.

 

                    CommentsSo perfect, yes, the women that have helped me along the way. ... by alexandraThat's awesome. I totally would have done the same thing. ... by Charlene RossI think they're always trying to stir up dirt with stuff about ... by Nancy Davis KhoI'm glad that's been your experience too. I guess the duds are ... by Nancy Davis KhoIt was pretty heady, I'm not gonna lie. I held it together ... by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 3 more...Related StoriesPrimer for New Riders on the “Grantchester” Bandwagon(AP)pending US HistoryDon’t Impinge On Me 

Primer for New Riders on the “Grantchester” Bandwagon

I don’t want to brag, but I’m a bit of a soothsayer when it comes to PBS shows destined to become huge hits. I come by it honestly, what with my grandpa having been a gardener at a great house in Yorkshire back in the 1920s, and a mom who raised me on a steady drip of Masterpiece Theater. I was down with Downton Abbey so early that I remember when Thomas was only grumpy, not outright evil.

So when I tell you that you have to start tuning into the dishy, PTSD-afflicted vicar on Grantchester, on Sunday nights right after Downton, you should probably believe me. As played by dishy, hopefully not PTSD-afflicted , it’s a fabulous hour of murder mystery, a village that looks like it knows its way around hedgehogs, and Church of England vestments. From my careful study of the show, in fact, I’ve figured out exactly what it took to be an Anglican priest in 1950s England. In the interest of helping you catch up, or consider whether you might want to travel back in time to be a man of the cloth, I present this primer.

Primary Responsibilities of 1950’s Anglican Clerics as Gleaned from PBS’ Grantchester

(In descending order of importance)

Whiskey drinking Ale drinking Staring at girls, especially raven haired ones Backgammon Having random conversations trigger sudden, murder-solving flashes of insight Eye rolling at curmudgeonly yet loveable housekeeper More whiskey drinking Riding a fixie through the village Church stuff

Now when this show breaks wide open, all you have to say is, “Did you see him at the pub? Staring at the dark haired girl? Before he magically figured out exactly how the murder was committed, had some more whiskey, then went on his bike to deliver a sermon, just before the credits rolled?” and you’ll sound like you were in from Day One.

I like this show enough that I am even putting up with its jazz soundtrack. Here’s the vicar’s favorite, Sidney Bechet.

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(AP)pending US History

So apparently people are freaking out over the reconfigured AP American History course being advanced by the College Board. The main criticisms that I’ve read are that it “frowns at American history” by including “a consistently negative view of the nation’s past.” You know, mentioning slavery and anti-Indian policies alongside the Declaration of Independence and the rise of religious tolerance, that sort of thing. The fear seems to be that we will raise a generation of self-loathing American historians out of a misguided sense of “political correctness.” Because if we as Americans lose our sense of entitled exceptionalism, what do we have left?

This is the kind of thing that makes me frown, though not at American history.

First, full disclosure: when I signed up for an AP history class as a high school senior, I didn’t even take American history; I took European history. Then I majored in International Business – twice – which shows what a self-loathing American historian I’ve been from the get-go. I’m one of those scary people who has been radicalized by living abroad, if by radicalized you mean “sees the value of a single payer healthcare system” and “understands how a parliamentary republic differs from a constitutional republic.”

Still, I had years of American history in school before taking the European fork in the road, and I continue to read about it: great books by historians like David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jared Diamond and my “offbeat history” favorite, Sarah Vowell, people who have dug deeper into the stories that shaped our nation, bringing in research and perspectives that have emerged and evolved since the Pleistocene era when I was in high school. And – shocker! – American history hasn’t been all tea parties and maize bouquets.

Yet I’m still enormously proud and relieved to be American. Because one of the main ways that we are exceptional is that we’re willing to look back at history, through mechanisms like AP American History, and admit when we’ve made mistakes. A full body embrace of Freedom of Speech sort of demands it.

I mean, we could be like Russia where people are just disappeared from official photos when they fall out of power, no further explanation necessary. Or Austria, which when I studied there in the ‘80s retained an awkward national narrative of, “Remember the Anschluss? We were actually Hitler’s first victims – we never wanted to be Nazis,” even though Hitler was a native son. Only when Kurt Waldheim, a former officer the paramilitary wing of the Austrian Nazi Party, was elected president in 1986 did the country have to even consider whether maybe they’d gone a little too easy on themselves, Nazi-wise.

There are plenty of ways that America remains a breathtaking bastion of self-delusion, but at least the revised syllabus for AP American History that incorporates new learnings and enlightened perspectives isn’t one of them. High schoolers, especially the kind of high schoolers who sign up for AP classes, aren’t stupid. They’ve been spotting phonies since Holden Caulfield’s day. Teaching, for instance, that Europeans landed on our shores without mentioning that they believed they were culturally superior to the native Americans and behaved accordingly, leaves a hole big enough for a high school junior to drive his/her family car through. Study the noble promise of the Emancipation Proclamation without turning your eyes toward the depressing reality of the Reconstruction Era? The triumphs of World War II without the shame of the Japanese internment camps? It would be like teaching AP German without multisyllabic verbs, or AP Physics without (please fill in something appropriate here, the thought of taking that course terrified me then and continues to.)

I think the real threat of the revised AP US History curriculum is that it requires critical thinking, through which high school students are encouraged to recognize that issues are rarely black and white but rather fifty shades of grey. When you have a populace with the ability to roll with nuance, it’s harder to sell them on “us” vs. “them” and “bad” vs. “good” storylines, harder to use fear as a sheepdog to keep people in line.

The whole sordid affair smacks of Kanye defending Queen B when Beck won the Grammy last weekend, someone barging in to interfere without asking whether help is required. It ascribes us a level of vulnerability that’s insulting. Americans have grappled with far harder challenges than an educated populace; in fact, that would be a great problem to have. One that even the Founding Fathers – especially the Founding Fathers – would encourage us to face.

This just in: take a bow, Oklahoma.

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Don’t Impinge On Me

I can only dream of giving myself a half-hug like this again someday.

Remember when your injuries came with good back stories? In my own storytelling archives, I have “My knee is ripped open because my best friend rode her bike down a hill, while I held on to the banana seat behind her wearing roller skates, steadily gaining velocity until I wiped out on a pile of gravel” (age 8) and “I’m wearing a sling because I got tackled playing no-tackle football in gym class and broke my arm,” (age 14) not to mention, “The scar on my chin is from when I fell underneath a cantering horse” (age 16.)

Those were the days. Now I can’t lift my right arm above my shoulder, because I blew it out throwing a pine cone for the dog to fetch. That’s not a story, that’s a Sordid True Life Confession.

It happened eight months ago, and it turns out that eight months of willing an injury away does not prove the effective antidote that you might think. Back in the fall I even visited a physical therapist, my friend Dawn who gently encouraged me to go see a doctor and gave me exercises to do. You know I didn’t do the exercises – I didn’t even lift the shoulder to hold a phone to my ear to call the doctor.

Instead, I followed the path of slowly reducing the number of things that I could do with my right arm, starting with a complete ban on dog-pinecone-throwing. Then I switched from my little leather backpack, which pulled backward the shoulder back uncomfortably, to a purse I could put on my forearm. Then I had to switch the purse to my left arm. Now I put money and a credit card into my pants pocket and pray no one asks me for ID.

Similarly, I went from shifting carefully onto my right side to sleep, to sleeping on my back, to placing a rolled towel under my right shoulder so the pull of gravity wouldn’t wake me up at night. There are at least three shirts hanging in my closet that are off limits to me now, requiring as they do a zip up the back, and depending on how I pull a t-shirt on it’s an exciting adventure in pain. Reaching back to hook or unhook a bra is so excruciating that I just ordered one that zips up the front, like what a toddler would wear if toddlers wore bras. Sexy.

The last straw was the February Dance Party. You know that quiet part of “Blister in the Sun,” and how you explode out of it into the loud chorus afterward? I went WAY too hard, waving both arms overhead, then had to sit down on the stairs to the DJ booth to recover from the jolt of pain. When I can no longer wave my hands in the air like I just don’t care, something has to be done.

So I went to see my doctor who put me through my shoulder mobility paces, such as they were, for about 60 seconds before she referred me to a Shoulder Specialist. She thinks I may have Shoulder Impingement Syndrome. I liked the sound of that – “Syndrome” automatically conferring a whisper of seriousness to things, and Impingement being a straight up fancy word that we should all be saying more often. “You’re impinging my ability to reach the pretzels,” I plan to murmur to the stock boy at Safeway. “Dreadfully sorry, did my car impinge your egress?” I’ll ask the San Francisco homeowner who’s pissed that my bumper is hanging 1.5 inches into his driveway, but what else can I do as there is only ever one open parking and legal parking spot left in San Francisco at any given time, and it is definitely NOT on the street where you are looking?

My regular doc explained that my shoulder is basically operating like a door that you’re trying to close, when someone has wedged a piece of wood between the door and the frame. Untreated, it’s just never going to close right, frozen into an ever decreasing range of motion. My shoulder’s been shimmed, and not in the fun ‘60s “shimmying” sense of the word.

Unfortunately, Shoulder Doc can’t see me until the end of March. Now that I’ve managed to screw up my shoulder so royally, about all I can do is pop Advil by the handful and wait.

But maybe there’s a silver lining. Does a bleeding ulcer from self-medication strike you as a more dramatic story than throwing a pinecone?

                    Comments“That’s not a story, that’s a Sordid True Life ... by Charlene RossOh that ain't right. by Nancy Davis KhoOh, it wasn't so bad. Until I just kept ignoring it. by Nancy Davis KhoHope you heal up soon so you can at least do the safety dance. ... by LanceBummer. I had no idea it was so bad. Sigh. by JillRelated StoriesMore Sincere Valentine’s Day SentimentsDance Party FAQs Based on ‘80s Song TitlesHappy National Readathon Day! 

More Sincere Valentine’s Day Sentiments

I had a vision of love, and it looked like a coffee brought to my hotel room.

It’s the time of year where card aisles at CVS and Hallmark are shaded like a two-bit bordello in red and pink, with rows and rows of cards meant to encapsulate, in a few pithy lines, the depth and breadth of your emotions toward your loved one. I flip through them quickly, struck by how lofty the declarations of gratitude and devotion sound.

Many are variations of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sentiment, “I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.” Or there’s the You Are My Everything approach: “You are the sun and moon, the ocean and sky, all that I need to have in my life.” The “racy” cards always sound so awkward, like jokes whispered in 6th-grade health class.

None of them are ever quite right. If I wanted to express the things that I really, really, I mean from the soles of my feet to the top of my scalp appreciate about my husband, I need a card that communicates one of the following:

I love how you make me feel pampered. Like when you clean the girls’ long hair out of the upstairs shower drain, because even though it makes you gag, you know it makes me gag worse. You’re the tops. Just like the cupboard shelves you reach for me, because lately my shoulder hurts. Tendonitis, I think. When we go to a party, there’s no one I’d rather be there with than you. Because you get the Asian flush from liquor, so you don’t bother drinking, and are therefore always my designated driver. When it comes to regular scheduling of oil changes and tire rotations, your rigid masculinity makes me weak in the knees. Call me honey, call me baby, but above all call me grateful that your job comes with health benefits. You surround me in warmth, like the slippers you let me wear when I’m too lazy to find mine. The stars in the sky bear witness to something I love about you most: you take the dog out to do his business before bedtime, and you usually throw the accumulated recycling stuff in the bin at the same time. We’re partners for life. No, seriously, because when you reached 100k flier status for United, I go the companion Premiere Gold card with no expiration date.

It may not be all violin concertos, champagne, and roses around here. I know that more than any sweet nothings I whisper, my husband values my willingness to pick up his dry cleaning each week, fill out all the back-to-school paperwork, and schedule the gutter cleaning each fall.

But it’s still plenty steamy. Like the large black coffee my husband will voluntarily leave the hotel room to fetch me in the morning whenever we’re on vacation.

I had to email DJ Rosalie at KFOG to ask for the name of this song after I heard it on Acoustic Sunrise. She sent me a sweet email about the fact that she gets a lot of flack when she plays this for  the “gender role aspect.” And also, “…Craig wishes it to be know he no longer crushes the spider; he takes it outside!”

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