Nancy Martin's Blog, page 14

School is Sexy

By Nancy Pickard

 I LOVED going back to school, and might even still love it--for a day.  Loved the excitement of seeing the friends I hadn't seen all summer, the smell of chalk and cafeteria bread and sweaty kid bodies.  Loved recess.  Loved buying and opening the new books even when they (usually) weren't new.  Loved seeing my class schedule and who my teachers were.  Loved the textbook stores.  Loved the new clothes, even when there (usually) weren't many of them.  
One time my mom bought me a loden green slim wool skirt with matching twin set that was supposed to wait for freezing weather, and I insisted on wearing it the first day of school--in September, in Kansas City, when it was about 300 degrees in the shade. I sweated, but I felt cool.  Ridiculous, but cool.  I actually remember kids asking me, "Are't you hot in that?"  "No," I lied as sweat trickled down my sides.

It's a wonder I loved school so much, considering how inauspiciously it began. . .

I didn't love my kindergarten teacher, whoever she was.  I don't recall that she had a personality; perhaps she got a transplant later.  I only remember lying on mats in a darkened room for naps, and I hated naps and could never fall asleep.  Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, Kindergarten was nice.  No, it wasn't.

I hated my first grade teacher, Miss Fricke.  She was a mean old witch who was forever adjusting her bra straps.  We girls used to crawl under the bathroom stall doors and chatter while we took turns on the seat, and one time, thinking a little friend of mine was in one, I bent down, peeked under. . .and there was Ms. Fricke with her skirt pulled up and her panties down.  Ack!  Childhood trauma lasting a lifetime!

I adored my second grade teacher, Ms. Sudvarg, who was beautiful, but so utterly selfish as to get pregnant and leave us.  The nerve.  I'll bet she loved her child more than she loved me, too, the bitch.

Loved, loved, loved Miss Perry, my third grade teacher, who was big and plain-faced and as kind as a human being can possibly be, and I loved tiny, prissy Miss Perry who was my fourth and fifth grade teacher and who even made geography interesting, and I had a huge crush on Miss Wilhoit, my very cool sixth grade teacher, and I hated and felt sorry for Mrs. Katz, my seventh grade teacher, who wasn't as smart as we were and who didn't grasp the crucial, life-saving importance of recess and had us stay in when she didn't feel like going out. 
Okay, this photo doesn't show a seventh grader, but I love it and it perfectly captures how a kid feels when she's DEPRIVED OF RECESS.  I still haven't forgiven Mrs. Katz, may she eternally monitor the juvenile delinquent's playground in hell, and may it always be raining there, and may the monkey bars be greased, and may fights break out every few seconds, and may the bell never ring to return her to the classroom! 

Not that I ever felt strongly about it, or anything. 

I almost always got a ride to school with my mom on her way to her teaching job in another school, and I almost always walked home, which was a lot of fun, especially in high school when we walked in clumps of kids and stopped for Suicide Cokes at Parkview Drug Store, or soft ice cream cones  at Velvet Freeze, or little red and white paper bags of popcorn out of the automatic popcorn machine at TG&Y.  ( Tizzy, Giddle & Yiddle, as the father of my best friend called it.) A Suicide Coke, for the sadly uninitiated, was a Coke into which the soda jerk squirted a bit of every other flavor at the fountain, including chocolate, cherry, vanilla, and root beer. From Southeast High School to my house was a mile and a half in sunshine or sleet, and swear to god, I really did walk home in a blizzard one time. . .

I loved going back to school. Of course, not everyone was so lucky.  Where did you fall on the love/hate scale?

p.s.  Today, I thought I'd be live blogging hurricane Irene, but fortunately for Florida, she snubbed us and whirled on toward some of the rest of you who ALSO have my sympathy.  How's it blowin' or shakin' where you are?

 

Filophilia

Margaret Maron

Although my mother always swore that I was completely potty-trained well before my second birthday, some people declare that I'm an anal-retentive when it comes to my file cabinets.

Before I became a fulltime writer, my favorite jobs were secretarial. I didn't know shorthand, but I was a fast and accurate typist; and my bosses soon learned that instead of dictating very...verrrrry.... slowwwwwly....., it was more efficient to tell me what they wanted to say, let me compose the letter, then make their minor corrections and have me retype it.  I loved opening and sorting mail (authorized snooping!) and I adored filing. Bringing order to chaos.   
 
No wonder the mystery form so appealed to me when I did begin writing. In fact, my first novel, One Coffee With (now an eBook!), was loosely based on my experience as the secretary to the chair of the art department at a NYC college.

I ordered my very first file cabinet from a Sears, Roebuck catalog soon after we moved back to the States.  Four drawers, steel construction, $39 plus tax.  I emptied out all the cardboard boxes labeled "Bank Records," "Taxes," and "Guarantees and Instructions" and spent a happy week sorting them into manila folders.  One drawer was devoted to letters from friends.  And because I had friends and relatives strewn up and down the East Coast, I began saving carbons of my letters to them so I could keep it straight as to whom I'd written about what and not repeat myself.  As long as I was typing anyhow, a carbon copy was no extra trouble.  (Some of you may never have seen carbon paper nor used a manual typewriter.  Get your grandmother to describe them to you.)  My letters became my journals.

Three years later, I had begun to write and sell short stories.  Because I kept all my submissions and rejections, I had to buy a second file cabinet.

A few years after that, I needed a third. I had become vice-president and then president of Sisters in Crime during its formative, contentious period. I believed in openness and paper trails and I kept copies of everything.  Same when I joined the MWA national board in another contentious period.  My personal detailed records helped clean up a rather messy situation that would have dragged out longer without them. 

After 28 novels and 5 or 6 dozen short stories, my current office has 31 file drawers.  I'm hoping they will see me out.  All the SinC files have gone to the SinC archives at Douglass College in New Jersey and several feet of files—rough drafts, speeches, and business correspondence—have gone to UNC-Greensboro.  Lots of empty drawer space, right?

Not really.  Our son is a father himself now, yet I still have the instructions for putting the training wheels on his first bike. I keep telling myself I need to start culling, but he was so cute on that little bike and my mechanically-challenged husband was pretty cute, too, when he turned the air blue trying to fix a broken chain. When our first video camera malfunctioned two weeks before the warranty expired,  I produced the warranty and saved us the cost of a new one.

I now have nine drawers of letters: four for mystery writers, two for NC writers, three for friends and family who don't fall into the first two categories.  I have witty, funny friends and some of the friendships go back to childhood. It's impossible to keep all their eMails but if an interesting or amusing thread pops up, I admit that I'll print it out and pop it into the appropriate folder.

 When friends were celebrating their 25th anniversary several years ago, I dug out the letter the wife had sent me around the time of their fifth anniversary.  She was so much in love and so sure that the marriage was going to last forever.  I sent the original to their children who were putting together an album for them. Another twenty-five years later, she still gets tears in her eyes when she tells people about seeing that letter again for the first time.

Next to a good mystery novel, my favorite books are letters, but I have to wonder if we're nearing the end of that literary form.  Back in the age of pen and ink, so many wonderful letters were tossed into the nearest wastebasket or used to
start a fire or thrown out in ignorance by the heirs.  In our electronic age, what will survive to take their place?  Will a biographer offer a telephone bill with a date circled to indicate that this was a conversation between two important world leaders?  Will 140-letter tweets replace the long letters Flannery O'Connor or Edna Millay or Raymond Chandler wrote?

Will we care?

If you could retrieve one single letter from the past, yours or some historical figure's, which would it be?

News Vacation!

News Vacation!

By Kathy Reschini Sweeney

In case you have no idea what is going on in the real world, we are on Day #2 of the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert 2-week vacation.  When I lamented that my only sane source of news was MIA, a certain genius who will remain nameless (okay, it was Ramona) suggested a News Vacation.  Genius!  After due consideration (okay, five seconds) I decided to try it.  No 'official' news for a week.

This does not mean I am going to plug in my Dr. Dre headphones (no kidding, it is like you are THERE) and crawl under the desk. Although, it is nice and cool under there and sometimes when people look in they don't know where I am.  Anyone who has spent any time under desks can tell you that it's not a bad place to be, assuming you have a good cleaning crew.  Moving on.

What it means is that I am not watching anything that claims to be news.  I'm not just talking Brian Williams and  Diane Sawyer here.  I am talking all of CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the whole segment.  No newspapers.  Which is no big deal because we cancelled the local paper a couple of years ago when we found out they out-sourced all the support jobs.  No online news sources - NYT, HuffPo (home of the most misleading headlines on the web), People (yes, I know it's a stretch but they claim to be news).

This experiment will not work for everyone.  Hank, for example, cannot just stop watching the news. It's tough to read the teleprompter if you don't look at it.  Also, rude to just walk out while the rest of the news team is doing their jobs.  Same with our friends in the investment banking sector, who's fortunes can rise and fall based on a single news blurb.  You get the picture.

I am confident that I will find out the really important things without subjecting my brain to the garbage dump that contains the real news, albeit covered in crap. Weather?  Please.  I can see that there is a thunderstorm out my window, but thanks for the timely (not) emergency (not) warning. This weather news business has become a real life boys and girls who cried wolf.  Sports?  In this town?  You can tell by the flags and banners on the houses what is going on.

Politics?  Good grief. I am already exhausted by Undecision 2012 and we are only in the third quarter of 2011.  World News?  Wars.  Economic crises. Anyone who doesn't think those two are related needs to take three big steps back and look around.  Local news?  It's a full time job just keeping up with my extended family and friends.  I do love my Regent Square Patch News, but there is a big neighborhood event this weekend, so I will catch up with Stephanie Rex and see what I missed. (Seriously - find your local Patch news - it's a great development in online communication. Here is the link to ours: http://foresthills-regentsquare.patch.com/)

In real life events, we are approaching the 10th anniversary of September 11th. I have mixed feelings about the upcoming media coverage.  I understand the 'never forget' concept - I have both the music and the t-shirts - but there is not a chance in hell I could forget.  But then, not everyone had friends and family in the towers or the Pentagon, or even in an airplane, that day.  Hell, some people weren't even born.  BUT-  I fear that we are going to see a lot of hate and fear-mongering masquerading as patriotism for the next five or six weeks.  Before you label me as a pinko-commie bastard, I must tell you that I wasn't kidding about the music or the t-shirts.  Or the donations to survivors and memorials.  I still get teary when they sing "God Bless America" at baseball games because I remember the time Ronan Tynan did it at the Yankees game in September 2001 - you could hear the anguish in the crowd's voices as they sang along, their grief slowing parts of it down to a dirge.  Hell, I get misty watching the Clydesdales tribute, and that is just photoshopped horses!  But I am also older and wiser enough to know that emotions are easily manipulated, especially by people with political agendas and tricky methods.     I defer to the great Hagrid and remind you that "Not all wizards are good."

So that's my plan.  A week's vacation from talking heads and inflammatory headlines and useless dreck that pretends to inform and enlighten.  I feel refreshed already!

Want to join me?

 

 

A la recherche du temps perdus

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  The three h's are Horrified --time is going by so quickly--but Happy to be here today. Isn't it amazing? The crickets are cricking, the dahlias are revealing their colors, the basil is going to seed (if you're not careful) and although I refuse to look carefully, I swear I saw a leaf turning. But if might just be blushing in embarrassment about how quickly the season is changing.

So today, we think of the fragrance of Bain De Soleil and coconut oil and remember the sound of the ice cream truck....but wait. There's still the rest of August to go! Hold on to summer...was  it a good one?   

Remember when it was June? What did you plan? Did you do it?

 HANK: June. I know there was June. I know, because I, um, what did I do again?

 HARLEY: I didn't lose 10 pounds and I didn't find True Love. I did, however, get my teeth cleaned.

HEATHER: I barely remember June. I know that I had a lot of plans that I didn't see through . . . there were a lot of conventions, and I spent a lot of time thinking that it was the last summer I'd get Chynna home from college, I wanted some quality time with her. The time has all slipped away, and I'm sad. I did get several great occasions with all five of my kids--and my nephew niece in law and the little ones. I'm grateful--even though I didn't get a lot done I intended to do!

HANK: Oh, wait! My dear darling agent sold my new book THE OTHER WOMAN! Hurray hurray hurray. BEST JUNE EVER. Or maybe that was May. Either way. It was at least two months of goodness.

July?

HARLEY: See June; replace teeth cleaning with root canal.

HEATHER: I dimly remember it, yes, it came and went.

HANK: Oh, July I have down pat. I was working on a big big big project with a deadline of June 20, or something like that, so I worked ALL THE TIME, all the way through July 4th dinner party and the grandkids visit and several outings which I did NOT attend. I made the deadline, hurray, good for me.  And the project--is now on hold. (I got paid. Fine. I'm sure it will all work out for the best.)

August?

HARLEY:See July; replace root canal with new crown on Tooth #30.

HANK: Revisons, revisions. I love revisions. I do. I really do. I'm serious! I really do. The book is getting better and better. If I do say so myself...and I'm almost finished. Very excited. And our dahlias are exploding. Very nice August. And still underway, imagine that!

 HEATHER: It's August now, and I'm in a panic, of course. Derek goes into his last year of nursing school, Chynna goes into her last year at CalArts, and I'm frantically trying to finish everything for our benefit workshop, writers for New Orleans. And of course everyone involved with me on the project is also panicking at the end of summer . . . .

What are you proud of?

HEATHER: Always proud of my kids.

 HARLEY: I took my kids on a great New York City adventure. They turned out to be natural subway riders. I could not have been more proud.

HANK: Okay, if we're talkin' kids...my grandson Eli is adorable, brilliant, and at 8 years old, he told me the BEST idea for a YA book. Truly, it's so good I can't even reveal it to you . I have to call him,soon,  to see how it thinks it should end.

What did you learn this summer?

HEATHER: That when you really see a problem, grab it at the onset!

 HARLEY: I learned I'm a lot happier when I'm playing the piano and painting with acrylics on canvas (not at the same time) even though I'm not that great at either one.

HANK:  I re-learned that no deadline is impossible. You just do what you can, and be done. (It happens all the time on Project Runway, right?) 

Favorite food of the summer?

HEATHER: Sushi. Chynna is a sushi girl, so we do lots of sushi when she's home. Seasons 52!

HANK:  Chicken salad. I know it's weird, but I never liked chicken salad. Suddenly, I do. Yummy chicken, yumy mayonnaise, yummy celery, and grapes.  Now I have a new mantra: "Know what would make this better? Chicken salad!" 

HARLEY: Frosted circus animal cookies.

Favorite drink of the summer?

HANK: Palmyras: vodka, mint, lime juice, simpe syrup. Also! Those little bottles of diet Coke? You can freeze them, til they're slushy. Oh, delicious! Just be careful openign them, they splatter. And beware of forgetting you're put one in the freezer.

HEATHER: Of the summer, and always. Ice tea.

 HARLEY: Lipton Green Ice Tea, Berry flavored.

Favorite outfit of the summer?

HARLEY: White Dockers shorts; Cole Haan patent leather flip flops.

HANK:  I found this dress, I had purchased it last summer, and it wasnt right, but suddenly, shades of chicken salad, now it is. It's khaki, and wraps, and looks like a sleeveless trench coat. I've worn it about five million times this summer.

 HEATHER: As always . . . black.

 Favorite book/movie/tv show?

HEATHER: Shameless, great show, love it! Book--I'm reading a bio on Humphrey Bogart. Movie . . . I saw several that I liked a lot. My favorite . . . The Conspirator. Brilliantly told, historically excellent, Robin Wright just as I might have imagined the character to be.

HARLEY: Nancy P.'s The Scent of Rain & Lightning/Pirates of the Caribbean Whatever Number They're Up To/Buffy reruns

HANK:  Oh, we got hooked on The Killing. And Zen, which was just okay, except for the third one, which was great.  Movie, let's see..oh, we finally saw the King's Speech. Yes, yes, we're SO behind. Happy that Project Runway is back! Books? I'm an Edgar judge. Nuf said.

What will you DEFINITELY do different next summer?

 HEATHER: Ohhhhh . . . been trying to fix me for years. I will try not to pull out my back again. It really hurts! Stretching, yes, stretching.

 HARLEY: Lose 10 pounds; find True Love.

HANK: Read while floating on a raft on the swimming pool.  It's so relaxing..and I didn't do it t all.

 What will you DEFINITELY do the same way next summer?

 HEATHER: Try my hardest to see all the people I love!

 HARLEY: Get my teeth cleaned.

HANK:  Finish my next book! Now all I have to do,sigh,  is start it.

How about you, Tarts?  Any summer memories, or resolutions? Favorites you can point the rest of us to--while there's still time?

BREAKING NEWS: Hank says:  I just had dinner with Carla Neggers (gazpacho, scallops with corn salsa, peach pavlova) She's such an amazing friend of the Tarts--and in honor of the publication of her newest novel of suspense SAINT'S GATE (which comes out tomorrow) she'll send a signed copy to one lucky commenter!

 

Change in Fortune

 
By Elaine Viets

I don't believe fortune cookies. I know they have nothing to do with luck.

Besides, they're about as Chinese as I am.

The best guess is that fortune cookies are Japanese and were first made in San Francisco.

The Japanese senbei were made with miso and sesame rather than the fortune cookie's vanilla and butter.

Fortune cookies are "introduced by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese and consumed by Americans."

Americans had to open the first fortune cookie factory in China by Wonton Food of Brooklyn. Alas, the business quickly crumbled. Wonton's vice president said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it just didn't pan out. Fortune cookies are too American."

Back in Brooklyn, Wonton makes 4.5 million fortune cookies a day, mostly for Americans. So why do I always get dull, earnest fortunes?

No mysterious strangers or unexpected riches await me. I am exhorted to keep plodding.

Here's what I mean: "Luck happens when hard work meets opportunity."

If fortune cookies came in flavors, mine would be oatmeal-raisin with lots of fiber. Moral fiber.

This cookie urged me to be a good sport: "Your smile is a curve that can get a lot of things straight."

This fortune patted me on the head like a faithful, slightly stupid pet: "Everyone around you is rooting for you. Don't give up."

Another cookie seemed to blame me if things weren't going my way: "Today, opportunities will present, if you're keen enough to see them."

And if you don't see them, you blind twit, you'll be chomping the cheap half-order of chicken with vegetables for the rest of your days.

A friend told me about the fortune cookie game, where you add "in bed" to your fortune. Even that was discouraging:

"Never give up – in bed" seemed rather desperate.

But recently, my fortune cookies took a turn for the better. Now they no longer tell me to work hard and wait. They promise adventure.

"Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid," said one.

It worked, too. I carried a forbidden third item right past the nose of the gate agent on a recent flight, and a handsome stranger helped jam my suitcase into the overhead compartment.

My next fortune was even better: "May successes will accompany you this year," it said.

That's when I found out "Murder Between the Covers," my second Dead-End Job Mystery, was named one of the 100 Best Mysteries of All Time. Check out the list here. http://tinyurl.com/3rpok9h.

Encouraged by this good news, I ordered more Chinese takeout. This time, my fortune said, "Your wisdom will influence others."

I'm sure that's why you're reading this blog.   

O Joy, O Rapture Unforeseen

By Cornelia Read

 

So, today I was supposed to be all productive and stuff. Packing, mostly. As I am leaving New Hampshire

for Brooklyn

 

at some point next weekend.

And have finally decided to get storage up here and maybe rent a truck Wednesday or so, and had pretty much figured out what to take with me for the tiny temporary Park Slope digs and all... so was going to buy boxes and bubble wrap and all that good stuff this morning. You know... get serious about it all...

I am pretty good at packing and moving, having done it all my life. Which doesn't mean I like it, but as my pal Candace's mom used to say, "three moves is as good as a fire."

All the sentimental tchotchkes are already in storage in California. Someday my crap might all live together again, but not this year. On the bright side, this means less to pack in New Hampshire, as everything I have here is pretty much craigslist and IKEA boodle that I scored since the move east, except for my grandmother's sideboard and a couple of pictures and stuff. So I figured I'd be making pretty rapid progress.

But, guess what happened instead? A lovely summer stomach bug this morning. Yea.

 

It is of course a tossup as to which is more hateful, packing or puking, but those are DEFINITELY not two great things that go great together.

So I blew off buying boxes and bubble wrap and booking a truck at U-Haul, and have instead been lying in bed moaning and watching the entire fourth season of Californication while sipping Theraflu

(since I watched all of The Big C last night on my computer, and there's nary a new episode of Weeds, Nurse Jackie, or United States of Tara to be had. Not to mention no True Blood until Sunday night. Vey ist mir.)

Oh, and cramps. Did I mention the cramps?

So let's just add a million milligrams of ibuprofen and some Tylenol to the mix. With the Theraflu.

And if I were actually LIVING in NY already, I could pick up a telephone and ask someone to please bring me matzoh-ball soup. But they don't exactly deliver that this far above 96th street, so I'm pretty much SOL unless I want to get up and cook myself a batch.

(Okay, admittedly not from scratch, because, hey, I'm an Episcopalian and stuff, so I am not exactly talented with the schmaltz and the dill, especially while running a fever...)

Which I have done (making myself a pot of not-from-scratch matzoh ball soup, while sick in New Hampshire), often, but I'm not really up to it today.

I don't know, other than the not-really-handy-with-schmaltz thing, I kind of like being an Episcopalian...

 

Wow... total tangent. Sorry. I'm a little feverish.

Where was I? Oh yes, moaning in bed. And not in a fun way.

I am running out of steam, here. And don't have much of a point. Except David Duchovny is fun to watch when you're sick. Because in this series he is such an idiot it just generally makes me feel better about my life. And also very happy not to be married, may I just say.

TANGENT... ooo... shiny! Over there!!

I think I'd better wrap this up. So, dearest Tarts, any tips for moving? Or making yourself feel better when you're sickly? I'm all ears... and I hope everyone else is having a WAY better day today!!!!

The Transformation of a Teacher

Mrs. Westpfahl was at least a thousand years old, tall and skinny with knobby elbows and old lady hair of an indeterminate color. That first day of history class—my least favorite subject next to math—she told us "I don't care what side of an issue you're on, as long as you're not sitting on the fence." It was my junior year and for the first time, we were required to write essay papers. Mrs. Westpfahl  taught us how to do it, and slowly a new world opened up to me. In the ancient, beautiful, and soon to be replaced Plainfield, New Jersey library, I stood on wobbly stools to pull down books from the shelves, searching their indexes for Jim Crow laws or the history of birth control (which had been legalized for married couples only the year before! Hard to imagine.) I pored over the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, thrilled by the fact that so much information was at my fingertips. I sat at the old library tables, the same tables my mother had studied at forty years earlier, and wrote snippets of information on note cards, stacking them lovingly, watching the pile grow. I put the cards in order, created an outline and typed the essay on our old Smith Corona, never guessing I'd just completed a process that would one day be the same I used to write twenty-one novels (except for the Smith Corona, thank God).

It was the era of the civil rights movement, the year Plainfield was torn apart by riots from which it's never fully recovered. My essay on Jim Crow opened my eyes to the roots of what was happening in my city and when I joined the marchers downtown, I knew which side of the fence I was on.  I went into my essay on birth control with the premise that abortion should not be legalized (good Catholic girl that I was) but as I researched the history of women's reproductive rights, I found myself leaping completely over the fence on that one.  

By the end of the year, Mrs. Westpfahl had changed dramatically. She was fifty-eight at best, slender, smiling, beautiful and wise. She's the person I think of with gratitude with each book I write, each newspaper I read, and each time someone asks me the question "Who was your favorite teacher?"

Who was yours?

Uniform Cure

Elaine Viets 

Gangs in schools. Students pressured to buy cool clothes. Students divided by social barriers.

School uniforms can cure all these ills and more.

The pro-uniform faction makes these claims. The anti-uniform people – including me – respectfully disagree.

Okay, I'm not respectful. I don't have kids, but I wore uniforms for twelve lousy years, from first grade through senior year in high school. I've heard all the pro-uniform arguments. I'd like to give them a good kick in their navy pleated twill pants. Here are a few:

 (1) Uniforms make students equal. Rich kids dress the same as the poor ones.

Wrong. Uniforms are expensive. A standard teen girl's uniform of navy cardigan, navy pleated skirt, white blouse, knee socks and shoes costs more than a hundred dollars today.

The rich teen's family will buy her five white shirts, and three to five navy skirts and two or three cardigans.

The poor teen will get one uniform, possibly a hand-me-down from an older sister. Or Mom bought it secondhand. The poor teen will have two or three blouses, if she's lucky. Her parents – or the girl – will have to wash those blouses. If not, the poor kid goes to school with spaghetti sauce on her shirt. The rich kid will have a fresh blouse and ironed skirt each day.

By the end of the week, the poor teen's skirt needs ironing. By the end of the school year, the seat is shiny.

(2) Not all kids are equally neat.

Put two kids in the same uniform – rich or poor – and within an hour, the natural slob will have his shirt tail hanging out. Miss Piggy will have half her hem hanging lose. She won't notice, since she wasn't born with fashion radar. Buttons pop off the shirts of young slobs and their socks slide into shoes.

Other children always stay neat. At the end of the day, their blouses are unwrinkled. These children can eat sloppy joes and not get a drop of sauce on their uniforms. Cherry pie never falls off their fork and their milk never spills.

(3) Uniforms fight the peer pressure to buy trendy clothes.

 
Dream on. The cool kids know how to stand out, even in uniforms. They'll wear trendy watches or the latest hairstyles. They get better haircuts. Their moms don't trim their bangs at home.

In my school, the cool kids had genuine Bass Weejuns. The rest of us wore cheap knockoffs. Our mothers thought those shoes looked the same. But we could tell. Real Weejuns said "Bass" on the sole.  Prop your feet up on a desk and everyone at school knew.

(4) Uniforms encourage discipline.President Clinton came up with that gem. My Catholic school was orderly, thanks to some terrifying nuns. They whacked kids with rulers. One, who used to work for the CIA, was adept at enforcing discipline by sticking her fingers under a kid's shoulder blade and pulling up. That hurt, but left no marks.

 The boys got the most discipline. Few parents would tolerate that treatment today.

(5) Uniforms prevent gangs from forming on campus.

This one makes me giggle. No, we didn't have gangs at my Catholic high school. But gangs already wear uniforms. Even with a school uniform, they can indicate their gang allegiance by the right color ribbon, wrist band, shoe strings, tattoo or hand signal. That's if they're still in school.

Let's not forget the scariest gang of all – the Hitler Youth. They were taught in school that the German "race" was superior and Jewish people were inferior, lazy and evil. The Hitler Youth's extra-curricular activities included beating up Jewish people and wrecking their businesses.

But, golly, they looked sharp in their uniforms.

 

 

 

 

 

The Dress Code

The Dress Code

by Nancy Martin   

In the summertime, newspapers and internet articles abound on the subject of appropriate dress for the workplace.  Since I mostly wear yoga pants and t-shirts to work--always with my bedroom slippers--this subject is beyond the limits of my expertise. Plus, it turns out I live in the 3rd worst dressed city in the nation.  (#1 is Boston. #2 is LA.  # 3 is Da Burgh.) Here in Pittsburgh, you can wear a Steeler jersey into just about any social occasion. (Where do you think the "black" in black tie comes from?)

But every summer my husband comes home from the bank at least once remarking upon the summer interns who wear sandals to work.  And I'm not talking about the female interns. (The young ladies wear flipflops!  Only once, of course. Bankers do not--uh--pussyfoot when it comes to wardrobe disapproval. I have predicted here before that if spats make a comeback, the trend will start with bankers.) Guys in sandals?  Can I just say, generally: Ew? Hairy toes with raggedy yellow nails? Double Ew!

Summer shoes are a big workplace problem, I gather. Peep toes and sling backs--iffy choices if you want to be taken seriously.  And the height of a woman's heel is apparently inversely related to how seriously co-workers are supposed to take her.  In your view, how high is too high?  I wear flats most of the time (except in winter, when it's Dansko clogs) so I have no perspective except to say that--like porn--I think know too high when I see it.

                        

But every time I am tempted to criticize footwear, though, I remember the time I went to my job (teaching junior high English, if you can imagine) and shortly after lunch I realized I was wearing two different shoes entirely.  (Long story short:  I couldn't decide which pair went best with my outfit.  And I neglected to make the final decision.)  So I can't be trusted.

The other big summer dress code issue deals with young ladies who show too much skin.  "The more skin you show, the less power you project," said one HR expert recently.  Lawyers, in particular, have to be careful what kind of image they're projecting in court, apparently.  My daughter, recently hired to teach at a law school in Texas, has gone rooting through her closet--digging past her maternity wardrobe and her new mommy shirts--to find the suits she used to wear a few years ago when she was practising law.  She reports all the suits are big in the armpit.  Now.......how can you lose weight in your armpits, we wondered?  Except it probably isn't weight loss as much as a style change, but it's an expensive issue.  Getting a tailor to cut new sleeve holes--and maybe it's impossible to make them smaller?--might be more expensive than simply buying a couple of new suits, right? Seems to me, a good tailor is worth her weight in thread, but I have never successfully sewn a proper sleeve, so I think this could be an expensive fix.

My sister, a former journalist, used to have a hot button when it came to bra straps.  (That was before her paper went kablooey and she became a "freelance writer.") She said any glimpse of bra strap was too much.  Nowadays, it seems bra straps are part of the outfit, so I can't tell.

Another workplace issue is perfume.    

Now, I don't wear perfume, and I'm not terribly interested in the subject which makes me a throwback to Neanderthal days, but a few weeks ago, my husband and I went to the movie theater and sat behind two couples who were clearly out for a good time. Except one of the women was wearing so much perfume that my husband and I had to get up and move.  It was overpowering! From two rows away, it smelled very nice, but how did her companions stand sitting next to her?  I can't imagine trying to work in an office where somebody doused themselves in perfume. What's your opinion on this? Do you think years of wearing heavy perfume just renders your nose incapable of sniffing what everyone else smells from across the parking lot?

Not long ago, my husband and I attended one of those depressing workshops where an investment expert spends four hours explaining how much money you need to retire and how many more decades you'll need to work like dogs to acquire that much dough.  I got so depressed that---okay, I'll admit it---I gave up mourning our 401K and started studying the other poor smucks---er, lovely people in the workshop.  A single lady in the front row--she had planted herself as close to our (handsome and presumably well-invested) speaker as she could get without climbing into his lap---had a habit of fluffing her hair.  It was amusing for the first half hour, but eventually I began to wonder if she had lice.  Maybe she was unconsciously trying to call attention to herself, but, really, it got to be kinda disgusting. Keep your hands off your hair unless you're trying to make people think about Head n'Shoulders--that was my contribution to the investment workshop, but my husband didn't feel that was the kind of thing anybody wanted to hear that night, so I waited out in the hall while he asked an investment question I can't even spell, let alone explain, which is why he has the responsible job in our household and I left teaching long, long ago.  (My7 mother reminds me that I'd be retired with a pension by now, but I told her no, instead I'd probably be in jail for murdering somebody.)

All in all, I'm glad I work alone. But lately I've heard a snarky opinion that yoga pants don't qualify as real pants.  Now--hold on!  What does that mean, exactly?  I hesitate to ask, of course.  I suspect Tim Gunn will disapprove of my daily wardrobe.  (I am a big fan of Tim.  But when he started to snark about my girl Hillary--well, I Am Not Amused.) But....if yoga pants aren't really pants, can I just go straight to plaid pajamas and forget the whole thing?  I mean, college campuses all over the country seem to have decided pajamas are suitable classroom attire, so maybe the UPS man won't be horrified if he catches me in giant pink tartan?

Today, however, I am---of all places--in Vegas.  (Yes, in August. Another long story, but I hope it will make an amusing blog in a couple of weeks.) If I can tear myself away from the poker tables---Hey, there's more than one way to beef up that 401K, right?--I hope to be able to share some insight into appropriate casino wear.  Meanwhile, TLC fashionistas, please share your opinions.  I can't wait to hear a little hot summer venting.

The Help!

By Sarah

After fifteen years of wonderful employment, my house cleaner, Rita, is fulfilling her dream by packing up, leaving this godforsaken state with its interminable winters, and heading south with her daughter to North Carolina.

I'll miss Rita. I'll miss our conversations and her tips on how I should clean my house. ("To dust the ceiling fan use the small attachment on the vacuum," she'd say, watching to make sure I did it right.) Okay, so Rita didn't clean ev-er-y-thing. She scrubbed the toilets and that's worth more than $20 an hour right there. I can count on one hand the number of days she missed work in almost two decades.

Plus, I learned stuff about the neighbors. Like who had pot growing in their basements and which ones insisted that Rita dust the forty picture frames on her wall, whose checks bounced. This is news you can use. There were some weeks when I was on deadline and Rita was the only adult outside of Charlie to cross my path and I was damned glad for the company. She read my books and gave me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. She brought fresh vegetables from her garden and also crystals.

Rita's a witch. No, honestly. She was born on October 31 and she used to work for a local company that made Wicca products. My dog, Ben, had it out for her, though my other dog, Fred, who's about as psychic as a brick, never cared. The cats, I swear, scattered in her presence.

If it hadn't been for Rita, I never would have had a career. Rita kept me from wasting my time on vacuuming and washing the floor. I know Sara Paretsky insists on cleaning her own sinks, but I'm not Sara Paretsky. I'm German and I cannot work in a dirty house. Because of Rita, my family stayed relatively healthy. I owe her a lot.

My new cleaning woman used to work for my next door neighbor Trish - who died last year - and the only upside to that is Trish was the messiest person, ever, so I know that when Jasmina walks through my door she won't be shocked. Unlike Rita, Jasmina's religious, a Muslim in fact, which means that this month she's cleaning during the blasted hot August temperatures without a sip of water because of Ramadan. I find this cruel and unusual punishment.

Also, Jasmina gets down on her hands and knees to wash with a rag. She wipes windowsills and - gasp - windows. She straightens up, something Rita refused to do, and vacuums only half as much. When she is done, she says, "Sarah. You come and inspect, eh?"

She is Bosnian so I know there's some funky stuff in her past. But I don't know her well enough to ask. Rita would go outside for a smoke after the vacuuming and talk. Not Jasmina. She works straight through. Rita used to wear headphones that played NPR and we'd spend way too much time having political discussions. Jasmina barely speaks English.

There's something peculiarly intimate about inviting another human being into your home to whisk away the stray pubic hairs and sanitize the toilet seats. It's wrong, like SaraParetsky says. I know that. But I also know that when I come down the stairs and see my gleaming kitchen and sparkling living room, I feel inspired to walk the straight and narrow.

That is until SOMEone lets a few brownie crumbs drop onto the floor. Or the dog drools. Or the husband tracks in mud. The daughter spills the yogurt. The cats deposit the bleeding mouse.

In the meantime, there is bliss and order and the smell of orange oil. And all is right in the world.

So, who cleans your house?

Sarah