Nancy Martin's Blog, page 17

Broken Promises: The Working Poor

Broken Promises: The Working Poor

This has been a miserable summer.  The weather is breaking heat and humidity records, we have no more Harry Potter movies to anticipate, kids can no longer dream of being astronauts, and the politicians in DC seem particularly asshole-ish.  To mangle a Jon Stewart bit, it's like "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gets Drunk, Tells His Constituents to Go Fuck Themselves, and Blows up The Smithsonian."

This isn't a political blog - in fact, it's hard to tell the difference between the alleged parties these days.  One Asshat looks just as moronic as another.  I think, though, that there is something we can clear up, if we work together.

One of the greatest promises of our country is this: if you work hard, you will be secure.  This is the basis of the American dream.  This is what called most of our families here from other countries. This promise fuels our work ethic, our sense of pride and accomplishment, and the lessons we teach our children.

Right before our eyes, that promise is being broken.

Most people could care less about a debt ceiling that is already so obscene that we cannot imagine its volume.  Most people just want jobs.  Jobs that allow them to feed their families, hold their heads up, own their own homes, and contribute to our society as a whole.

In case you haven't been paying attention to what is really going on in DC, the people in this country who are really getting shafted by the cuts in government programs are the Working Poor.  They are NOT, as many people seem to believe, made up exclusively of crackheads and people who hold up convenience stores.  Sure, there are deadbeats, but the majority of the people who need support are the ones who are working their asses off and still losing their homes. These are people who work more than one job - they work more hours than most of us reading this blog, but they can't keep up with expenses because costs are going up and their wages are not.  These are people who have no health insurance, and rely on state and federal programs so they can take their kids to the doctors.

These are people who have to decide which bill to pay - medicine, food, or utilities.  And now we need to include the elderly - you know - the people who already spent a lifetime working based on the understanding that all the money they paid in to Social Security would provide for them after retirement.  Pension plans?  Most people lost the money they earned when their former employers went bankrupt/got refinanced/sold out/etc.  Don't miss the important part - they money they earned - by working for 40 years, only to lose it because someone got greedy and/or cooked the books.

These are not people spending money in casinos, or buying $200 pairs of shoes.  These are not people who choose between eating out at Red Robin or at Applebees.  These are not even people who get to decide whether to buy two tubes of toothpaste if it's on sale, because they barely have enough money to buy one for their family.  These are people who's souls are seared because their children go to bed hungry.

Before you tell me that I sound like a bleeding heart, or a liberal, or a socialist, or whatever term is fashionable to connote: "Tax and spend irresponsible reprobate", take a step back.  If it weren't for the whole pacifism thing, I'd be a true Libertarian.  I don't like anyone telling me how to live, especially elected officials who wouldn't know the Constitution if it grew fangs and bit them on the ass.

This debate has more to do with humanity than it does with political labels.  This is no hypothetical. People are losing their homes and can't feed their kids.  This is crisis time.  Unemployment is a reality.  People - regardless of education or experience or race or gender or religion - are losing their jobs every day.  You could be next.

What kind of country do you want to live in?  Because if America has become a country that disregards the fate of innocents in order to maintain an intransigent position on some kind of political theory, it's not a country I can be proud of.  If we sit silently by, and allow these elected officials to make decisions that break the backs and hearts of the people who just want to make a decent living, then more shame is on us than on them.

Whether you agree with me or not, the time for passive behavior is over.  Take a position.  Research the primary facts to support it.  And then demand that the men and women in Washington, DC fulfill their promise to represent their constituents.  

Enough with the broken promises.  We are better than that.  Time to stand up and act like it. 

 

 

 

**Please note that I wrote this blog prior to the Monday night addresses/commentaries/"news" coverage and other discussions regarding the debt ceiling crisis.  You should take whatever parts of those developments into consideration before you finalize your position.  

 

Y'all Come!

by Heather

Okay, I can't help it. It's my day to blog—so it is a bit of an advertisement, but for a really good reason, I promise.

Decadent, haunted, decaying elegance.

That's one of the best and most alluring descriptions I've heard regarding the incredibly historic city, New Orleans, Louisiana.

I love it! Now, it's a strange place, one of those places where people go and fall in love, or go—and decide not to go back. It's a mixed bag of unbelievable architecture, Americana, history, debauchery, music, art, and so much more.

I was there one weekend years ago with my family, filming a trailer for a book about to come out
then called Ghost Walk. That same week, Katrina came in and ripped up South Florida—and continued across the Gulf to kill and destroy all along the coast, with flooding destroying homes and lives in the grand old city.

My dad brought me there when I was very young. (No, Dad and I did not go cruising down Bourbon Street!) I saw the old houses, the cemeteries—the "Cities of the Dead," the cathedral, the art—and I heard the music. It began a lifelong relationship for me. After Katrina, I acquired another child when schools there shipped their students out. I have friends I cherish there, and in Houma and Lafayette, and family over in Baton Rouge.

So . . . after the storm, I'm talking with friends and they were bitter, of course—NOLA was failed by the city, the parish, the state, and the federal government. But they were ready to pick up the pieces, and to pick up the pieces, they needed to get back to work. So . . . thus was born Heather Graham'sWriters for New Orleans. www.writersforneworleans.com

       

The conference is at cost, and we started it out with . . . hm. Who uses New Orleans? Writers! So writers will want to keep the city going. Except that the con wasn't going to be for any particular kind of writer, just writers. Then, hey, who cares if you write? Maybe you read. Okay, if you don't read, you probably eat, so come to NOLA, and enjoy the parties we put on! Whatever, come!

Now we do some great panels, with great guest speakers. We have editor/agent appointments. Helen Rosburg of Medallion Press is putting on a champagne welcome party this year, and Kathy Love, Erin McCarthy, and F. Paul Wilson are doing an evening bash—guess your Civil War characters—to go along with the theme of our Saturday night dinner theater—Civil War Zombies for Peace.

Please come! Just check out the website (writersforneworleans.com,) contact Connie, and come spend some money in a city that is so unique, and so profoundly American. The grand—decaying and elegant—city survived the storm and the oil spill and now, the economy is taking its toll. So, if you've ever been fascinated by the cemeteries, the architecture, the music, the art—come!

We have fantastic rates at the Monteleone—$105 a night for three days before, the conferenceand three days after the conference.  

Head out to the plantations! The trailer we did here for the Krewe of Hunter series was filmed out at the Myrtles, where our group had the whole house and the Peace River Ghost Trackers to film and explore.

There's so much!

You all come on down!

 

Serious Reservations

 
By Elaine Viets

I have serious reservations about cooking. That's why I eat out whenever I can. Fortunately, Don is no fan of home-cooked meals, either.  At least not when they're cooked by me.

We've eaten some fabulous restaurant food, and some concoctions that taste like Alpo on a plate. Over the years, we've learned – usually the hard way – how spot  third-rate restaurants.

Here are nine warning signs.

(1) A big menu doesn't mean the chef is creative.            

It means an 18-year-old kid is shoving food into a microwave.

(2) Beware of places that put the staff in funny costumes.

Unless you're hiking in the Black Forest, you shouldn't see young men in lederhosen. Avoid restaurants that make the servers wear them. Underneath that gemutlich costume is an embarrassed server who would give his night's tips to wear normal clothes to work. Ditto for the waitress in the dirndl.

It's cruel to make the staff dress like hillbillies or English serving wenches. Worse, the restaurant is probably making the staff pay for their humiliation. They may have to buy those silly outfits.

(3) Music duels.

Two kinds of music hit another sour note in a third-rate restaurant. When you hear sweet strings on the restaurant's piped-in music and hard rock coming form the radio in the kitchen, nobody's in charge.

(4) Watch out for places that calls themselves "downhome" or brag about their "country cooking."

If country cooking is spelled with Ks, head for the hills. That country-fried coating can be an excuse for cheap food and sloppy service.

You can trust almost any restaurant that calls itself a cafe if it's more than twenty years old. EAT is another good sign.

                                        

(5) The French Connection.

Unless the owner's name is Claudette or Pierre, soup du jour should be the only French phrase on the menu. Fractured French usually translates as mediocre food with outrageous prices.

Restaurants that call French fries pommes frites are always pretentious.

(6) For swingers only.

Beware of restaurants that prop open the swinging doors between the kitchen and the dining room, treating diners to views of dirty dishes and sweating staff. They don't care any more.

(7) Disaster relief.

Any restaurant can have an occasional disaster. The kitchen may lose your order. Your chicken may be overcooked. It happens.

NOTE: If the place has several police cars with dancing light bars, avoid it.

But the good restaurants buy you a drink or a free dessert to make up for their mistakes. Any place that just hands you an apology isn't sorry – it's downright pathetic.

(8) Managers are not ornamental.

At good restaurants, managers help out during a rush. They get your check, pour coffee or clear a table.

When you see overworked servers darting about while the manager stands around doing nothing, watch out. The manager is too good to work. The place is run just like your office.

Would you want to eat there?

Travel tip: One sure-fire way to find good food in a small town.

Look for the restaurant with one or more cop cars in the lot. If local law enforcement eats there, the food is usually tasty and inexpensive. This is also a safe place for women travelers to dine without getting hassled.

 

 

Guest blogger, Sarah Bird

 Holly here. In the late 1980's I was working in a lovely independent bookstore on Whidbey Island (Moonraker Books -- go visit, it's great)(Oops, hijacked blog in the first sentence!). I also was on the search for a fun, kinda sexy novel. Chic Lit hadn't been invented yet, I hadn't discovered Jennifer Crusie yet, but I came across a column in a women's magazine that was just as funny and irreverent as I was looking for. At the bottom of the article, a brief bio and the title of the author's novel, Alamo House. I ordered it and inhaled it and have been a fan of Sarah Bird's ever since.

 

"Your editor asked you to reconnect with an old flame? Does she know that reconnecting with a lost love can be like taking crack cocaine?"

Okay, crack cocaine. That got my attention. Not exactly what I'd expected when I called Nancy Kalish, a developmental psychology professor at California State University in Sacramento. Kalish is the leading expert on rekindled romance and I had an assignment from Good Housekeeping to write about reconnecting on the Internet.

I repeated my mission. This time with a lot less of the professional confidence I'd been able to fake the first time, "My editor wants me to get in touch with two friends and an old flame?"

"The old flame part," Kalish said. "That's the part I can't believe." Kalish had the stats to back up her incredulity. She'd researched more than 2,000 of these reunions and discovered that Facebook, classmates.com, and our old friend, Google, have wrecked more homes than a tornado in a trailer park.

"Fifty percent of the rekindlers I surveyed report that they'd had wonderful marriages — before they reconnected. They didn't expect meeting again to pack such a wallop. Now that looking for old flames is so easy and trendy, happy marriages are crumbling." Crumbling at such a rate that her entire private practice is now devoted to attempts to save once-happy marriages devastated by Internet reconnects.

For about a second, she had me worried. I mean, I am most definitively in the happy marriage category. Then the whole thing seemed ridiculous. It's been decades and a couple of dress sizes since the old flame and I torched through our torrid romance. I knew for a fact that age had cooled those embers.

"Doesn't matter," Kalish warned. "Wrinkles, weight, none of that matters. Some neuroscience research suggests that early loves are encoded in the brain, the same way cocaine addiction is. Seeing that person again, talking on the phone, even an e-mail triggers all those visceral memories of being young and in love. Do not get in touch with this man."

I loved all these alarmist quotes, they would be great for the article. The article which required that I "get in touch with this man."

I kept telling myself how absurd Kalish's warnings were. I mean, I wasn't some sad specimen whose glory days had ended when they stuck a mortar board on my head and a high school diploma in my hand. I had a husband, son, career, two dogs, and a chubby gerbil that I loved. How could one Google search threaten that?

So I cried havoc, and let the Googling begin. Besides, it was easy to be dispassionate. I'd never searched him before since I knew the obscure object of my long ago passion to be such a diehard technophobe that there was no way that there would be a single pixel of him anywhere.

Which is why I was unprepared when, a couple of clicks later, his face filled, filled! my screen. For a split second, I recognized that he was no longer the handsome young man I had loved insanely. There were a pair of bifocals and a deeply eroded hairline. But then, like looking at a piece of fabric that magically turns iridescent when it's tilted ever so slightly, the decades fell away and he was again, exactly, the handsome young man I had loved insanely. And, just like that the years fell away and I was once again the besotted young woman, throttled by desire, whom he'd driven from exhilaration to despair. The intensity of my reaction unnerved me. But what truly gave me pause was my impulse to delete my search history so that my husband would never stumble across it.

Not that I have intimate knowledge of crack cocaine, but it appeared that Kalish was right.

In the end, me and my old beau exchanged a few innocuous catch-up e-mails that, yes, I did find I way more exciting than the ones I traded with the long lost girlfriends I found. I wrote the article and forgot about rekindled love until it came blazing back in the form of an ex-husband. Not mine. I have only ever had the one. But in the fictional form of my protagonist's lost love who re-enters her life after her daughter and her daughter's college fund disappear.

It was exhilarating to know for a fact about the strange power of a lost love. It allowed me to understand how fully just the sound of his voice would derail her and upend her world. It allowed me to write the reunion that I never had and to experience the dangerous iridescence of a rekindled romance.

 

 

Sarah Bird is an American novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. Her father was an officer in the US Air Force, and her Catholic family of eight traveled with him around the US and the world during her childhood.

Bird's first published novel was Do Evil Cheerfully, a mystery. In 1986, her comic novel The Alamo House was published based on her experience as a graduate student at the University of Texas.

In addition to novels, Bird has written screenplays for television and film and magazine articles for national magazines. She also writes a column for Texas Monthly.

 

 

 

Holly again. I have the pleasure of offering two copies of Sarah's The Gap Year (these are ARC's). Please email me at TLCbooktarts@gmail.com and I will let the random number generator choose two lucky readers to recieve these ARC's. [Note: one of these books has been read. By me. You won't be able to tell, honest. (It's really good).]

Long and Silky

 by Barbara O'Neal

The other day, I saw a woman at the grocery store pulling her long hair over her shoulder.  The day
was breezy, and she was capturing the mass of it to keep it from blowing wildly.   It was very long, past her waist, and she smoothed it with a palm, lovingly, as one might stroke the back of a cat or a child. 

As will happen periodically, the sight of such long hair made me wonder if it is time to grow mine out again. It wasn't so much the look of it, but the way her hands moved over it in that sensual, comfortable, pleased way.   There is nothing like the feel of all that hair, moving over shoulders, arms, back, breasts.   

My mother and I warred over my hair from youngest childhood. I always wanted it long, long, longest.  She, who had to take care of it (and has never had hair much past her ears), wanted it short.  She tortured my locks into tight braids and twisted it into rag curls for Sunday school—releasing into golden tumbles that drew the commentary of friends and relatives alike.  I'm sure that's where my attachment came from—all that attention pouring down on my four-year-old self. 

When I hit third grade, my mother talked me into a cut.  I thought it was going to be a little trim, but she cut it OFF, to my ears.  I felt like a boy. I felt ugly and strange and gnomelike.  I started growing it out that second.  She didn't come near it for nearly four years. 

Then at the end of seventh grade, when I was suffering from a bad case of the invisibles from being twelve, and my best friend was one of the most stunning girls in our class (who long black wavy hair) my mother suggested I might enjoy feeling more modern.  I fell for it.  The beautician showed me a drawing of a long necked woman with tendrils curling around her neck and I was seduced.  Again. 

It was the most awful haircut of all time.  It showed off the color, the most boring shade of dishwater blond that can grow on a head, and cowlicks spouted every which way, and I vowed, with God as my witness, that I would never cut my hair again.

This was also, I might add, the era of The Brady Bunch and Long and Silky shampoo. We watched the
Bradys religiously and my sisters and I all swooned for Jan and Marcia's hair.  We wanted to have the longest hair of all, the swingiest, silkiest, swishiest hair known to womankind.  The clincher was a short story, published in Redbook, called Rowena's Hair.  The woman in the story had living hair. It talked to her. Protected her.  Counseled her. 

I knew just how that felt.  When my hair was long, it was almost like an ally.  An extra blanket, a shield to hide behind.  I loved brushing it out, and feeling it swing around my body, across my back. I let it grow and grow and grow.  Nothing made me cut it again for more than a decade.

But time makes you consider other things.  Babies, for example, got tangled in it, so I cut it off when they were small. Grew it out again when I felt the invisibles of young motherhood coming on.  Kept it that way until my career meant I had to go out and speak and travel and look like a grownup.  I do not hate my shorter hair right now.  The cut suits me.  It's easy enough. 

Watching that woman in the parking lot on a breezy day, however, I heard the siren call of my hair again.  Perhaps it is the invisibles of middle age making me wish for that long, shiny flag of hair again.  Perhaps it's only that I so rarely see hair so long anymore.   Whatever the source, I suspect I will be growing it out again in the near future, suffering through the bad six months of getting it all to one length. 

Or perhaps I will not.  Perhaps I don't have the vision or the patience or the ear for listening to that rustling voice of promise in my tresses anymore.  

 

How do you feel about long hair? Did you have it? Do you now?  

 

Iron Woman

                

By Elaine Viets

My friend Mary was in a New Orleans motel room getting the nerve to try something she hadn't done in years.

Iron two shirts.

Mary didn't take the quick way out – pressing her shirts on a bed. She opened the ironing board. Afterward, Mary couldn't fold up the board.

Neither could her roommate. Doris Ann tried and failed.         

I tried next. I fought the board, and the board won.                        

Three women were defeated by the spindly contraption.

That's when I knew this was a great day for womankind: Three of us couldn't open an ironing board anymore. We'd all ironed earlier in our lives. We'd lost the skill.

The ironing board stayed up in the hotel room for three days. We tried to use it as a charging station for our computers and cell phones, but the darn thing was too wobbly.

Four days later, Kathy tackled the ironing board and folded it away.

As a teenager, ironing was my most hated chore. Even a stack of Beatles' records blasting away didn't make ironing fun. Dampened, rolled-up cotton clothes couldn't wait. They'd mildew if I didn't iron them fast. The steam iron was an anvil with an electric cord.

Here's what starched my soul: My brothers didn't have to iron. That was women's work.

It's fitting that a woman helped end this dreaded chore. Chemist Ruth Benerito developed the permanent press process in the 1950s. Too bad it used lots of formaldehyde, the stuff that pickles dead people. By the 1990s wrinkle-resistant fabrics were safer and women embraced them. We should embrace Ruth, or give her medal for setting us free from the steam iron.

I'm told some women love to iron. I'm also told some women believe that a gym workout at six a.m. gives them energy all day.

I do know that women will pay nearly $140 for steam iron called the Rowenta DW9080 Steamium 1800-watt Steam Iron with 400-hole Platinum Soleplate.

PristineAngie wrote a lyrical review about using this iron. It sounds more complicated than the Space Shuttle.

"First off, for people who are familiar with Rowenta irons, the ones made in Germany (as this one is) tend to be larger in size than an average iron," she wrote. "If you don't mind wielding a big iron, then you'll be ok with this one. The water chamber is also larger, so that adds to the weight when filled."

I had visions of muscular Valkyries, holding aloft sizzling steam irons.

 
PristineAngie believes German-made Rowentas are better than the Chinese versions.

But she warned: "FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS! . . . Being a perfectionist when it comes to ironing, I use 100% bottled spring water to eliminate any doubt."

For $140 bucks, I'd expect a steam iron to use Perrier.

PristineAngie pointed out a nifty feature on this uber-iron. "There is a trigger on the bottom of the handle . . . you can squeeze it to create what Rowenta called 'forced steam' which pushes 30% more steam into the fabric. The trigger sets off a pump that makes a fairly audible whirring mechanical noise. The vertical steam also sets a nice burst of steam into your clothing."

Pristine Angie says the iron "comes with a tall slim plastic spouted 'pitcher' to help you pour water into the iron. The front tip of the iron is extra pointed for getting perfect creases on the shirt and pleat corners."

Oh, my sister, I cannot understand your enthusiasm, but if it makes you happy, iron away. But you must not lure other women into this iron tyranny.

Couldn't you praise something more enjoyable? A good novel, a fine restaurant, a fast car?

How about a hot romance?

That generates steam, too.

 

Aspiring to Be Betty

Aspiring to Be Betty

by Nancy Martin      

My mother invited Gerald Ford to dinner, and he came.

"He was a lovely man," my mother says.  "He talked so warmly about his wife and children."

Not long thereafter, Richard Nixon asked Mr. Ford to be the Vice President, and he accepted, and we all know what happened after that, and even though my mother wasn't happy about Nixon getting a pardon, she still says Gerald Ford was a lovely man.  There is no higher praise in the socio-economic group I grew up in.

At the time, my dad raised money for Republican causes, and Mr. Ford was an invited speaker for a group of local donors, so my dad flew down to DC to pick him up.  (My mother encouraged my dad to take along my little brother, who was in high school at the time, and who remains a Republican today, but that's another story perhaps best hushed up.) So it wasn't exactly a state dinner.  My mother grilled some steaks, no big deal. She reports that Mr. Ford talked about how he and Betty raised their kids, etc. etc.  And he told a joke that Betty liked, which my mother can't remember, but she says it was very funny and self-deprecating. 

Since then, my mother has thought the world of Betty Ford--a down-to-earth midwesterner, the plucky daughter of a widowed mother. She went to college for two years and studied dance before coming home to build a career in department store fashions before she married. When her husband became ill, she supported him---a time in her life when she learned women were paid a heck of a lot less than men for just the same work. She divorced her first husband (reports say she wanted a family, but he didn't) and was soon snatched up by young lawyer Gerald Ford--a nice guy who entered politics by running for Congress.  Many people say Betty was an ideal congressional wife--a role that has certainly disappeared, I suppose.  (I find myself thinking of Huma Abedin--herself not a bad role model for her time.) Betty networked, entertained, and charmed while raising her children and doing volunteer work. For my mother's generation, those were the highest callings. 

Last week, Betty Ford shared the headlines with the likes of Octomom (whose kids misbehaved on an airplane) and Casey Anthony, who, if you live under a rock, was recently found innocent of murdering her own daughter. 

 

I found myself reflecting on the kind of woman who gets headlines these days. Tabloid journalism seems to seek out women who aren't exactly in Betty's league.

Betty Ford had her problems, too, and she spoke about them in public.  As a result of breast cancer, she had one of her breasts removed--a topic people didn't bring up in public very often back then.  (She said she vividly recalled the first state dinner after her surgery. Ceremonially coming down the White House stairs, she figured the whole world was studying her figure and wondering,  "Which side was removed?" Must have taken a lot of composure to handle that moment, right?) We do talk openly about breast cancer now, and we have Betty Ford to thank for breaking the taboo.

Betty also spoke matter-of-factly about the possibility her college-age daughter might have pre-marital sex, because she was "human." (The Pill was new around that time.  Talk about a revolution!) Believe me, that kinda talk was forbidden at the dinner table at my house!

Betty Ford is perhaps most enduringly famous for creating a center where people who suffer from substance abuse can go to get counseling, get clean, get a fresh start.  If there's a higher calling in life, it's hard to imagine, don't you think?

It's an amazing resume, isn't it?

What has happened to role models? My daughter thinks female role models are now incredibly polarizing.  Hillary Clinton?--You'll find as many people who despise her for having ambition as people who respect her accomplishments and what she's still trying to accomplish.  Female athletes don't get any press unless the fail their drug tests or lose to the Japanese. Sarah Palin? Michelle Bachman? People either scream or cheer. There's hardly any middle ground anymore. (Perhaps for this very reason, a lot of first ladies choose innocuous causes to support.  It's hard to get worked up about Michelle Obama's stand on childhool obesity.  Who could be in favor of that?  Same goes for Laura Bush on literacy.  I'm sorry neither one of them took up the cause of automatic handguns, but that's just me.) I respect Betty Ford for speaking up when what she said was unpopular or shocking.

Meanwhile, J-Lo broke up with her husband.  News reports say Jen was "sombre" as she went to a photo shoot. I find it amazing that any news agency felt this was new worthy of reporting.

Do you have a female role model?  A woman who inspired you or continues to do so? 

To Cool Off, Add Ice Cubes to Drinks

By Sarah

To Cool Off, Add Ice Cubes to Drinks.

 That was the "100 Ways to Cool Off in Summer" tip #36 in a Seventeen magazine (or maybe it was Glamour), I treated myself to in junior high to conquer a bout of summer boredom. Along with "wear cotton" and "eat cucumbers!" it was one of the more jaw dropping cutlines. I can remember distinctly thinking, "Honestly, I can't believe they paid someone to write this."

Little did I know how that stupid line would linger like the jaunty refrain to "Afternoon Delight" that invades the human brain like those alien cockroaches in Wrath of Khan. No summer, no heat wave can I endure without opening the freezer, seeing that white plastic tray and thinking, To Cool Off, Add Ice Cubes to Drinks.

Because we're in it now, the heat. The month-long Accuweather forecast shows no mercy aside from a 79 degree here or there. And let me just state right now that I am not a summer girl. I did not move to the frigid mountains of Vermont to work on my tan. I long for crisp breezes, falling orange and red leaves shuffling around my feet, wood smoke, snow.

But God doesn't take orders from me, unfortunately, and so I must persevere, trying to find joy in the afternoon read in a swaying hammock, swimming in secret river holes, freshly picked blueberries, a lush green vegetable garden and the occasional chilled glass of pinot grigio. (Note Seventeen failed to mention THAT!)

Cooking, however, falls to the wayside. To save my sanity, I basically produce five dishes during the summer and here they are:

1) Homemade pesto from the Silver Palate. Fresh basil, chopped garlic, walnuts ('cause I HATE pine nuts), really good parmesan grated, excellent virgin olive oil and light cream. Combine all but the cream in a food processor and whir but not too much. Mix some with the cream and pour over linguine. A side dish of fresh REAL tomatoes, slices, plus balsamic vinegar & olive oil dressing = fantastic.

2) Fresh mozzarella, tomato, pesto (see above), balsamic vinaigrette sandwich on Red Hen bakery's French loaf. Cut loaf in half. Smear pesto on one side (without the cream). Drizzle balsamic vinaigrette on the other. In the middle, slices of fresh mozzarella, real tomatoes and, possibly, prosciutto. Best. Sandwich. Ever.

3) Cold poached salmon with caper, dill, red onion sauce. In the morning, poach fillets of salmon in water seasoned with sliced lemons and bay leaves. Cook until red is gone. Slip onto pie plates, cover and chill. Into sour cream, whisk capers, caper juice, chopped fresh dill, chopped red onion. Serve on the side with cold poached asparagus.

4) Nancy Strohmeyer's Potato Salad. Five pounds of new red potatoes halved. Boil just until a fork can pass through. Meanwhile, chop up celery and red onion. Have bottle of Robusto Italian ready along with cider vinegar. While potatoes are still warm (no gain without pain) slice thinly mixing with chopped celery and red onion and a few shakes of Robusto Italian. Stir gently. Continue this process until all the potatoes are sliced. It's okay to leave on the red skins. Cool in fridge. Right before serving, add a few dollops of mayonnaise. (I love the canola.) Stir and serve on lettuce with REAL tomatoes. 

5) Grilled chicken breasts. Pound breasts. Marinate in Newman's Creamy Caesar. While you're at it, toss thickly chopped zucchini, mushrooms, red peppers and red onions in same in separate bow. Grill chicken and vegetables. Next day, distribute leftover vegetables on whole wheat pizza shell topped with homemade pesto (see above), a little mozzarella and grill. Awesome.

And that's it, though with Sam away, I did experiment with some new additions. I absolutely LOVED Mark Bittman's watermelon & cherry tomato salad with vinaigrette, gorgonzola and cayenne pepper and was strangely impressed by the massaged kale & mango salad I made with kale from my own backyard. Our vegan relatives introduced us to beets and Swiss chard over fettuccine, though it was definitely improved with some chevre and, rumor has it, crumbled sausage.

No matter what, though, I cannot get Charlie to eat my garden peas.

So what do you cook in the summer to keep cool? I mean, besides adding ice cubes to drinks.

Sarah

 

Bad Carmaggedon

 by Harley

I planned to blog today about "Carmaggedon," the historic closing (for repairs) of Los Angeles's 405 freeway. Unfortunately for me, L.A. wisely stopped driving this weekend, so Carmaggedon was a big yawn. Think Y2K. (does anyone remember Y2K?) As Zev Yaroslavsky, our county supervisor said, "It's dead as a doornail out there." Worthless as entertainment, except for this Hitler Rant:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlLZ4RWyyAw

So I thought, "Aha! I'll turn my Carmaggedon blog into an Armaggedon blog." You know, the 1998 disaster movie starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Billy Bob Thornton? Only I've never seen Armaggedon.

However, Armaggedon was a summer blockbuster, which brings to mind the final Harry Potter, but I haven't seen that either, due to Carmaggedon.

I have seen other current summer blockbusters, but I'm not talented enough to craft an entire blog out of Thor or even Pirates of the Caribbean #4. However, despite the fact that I can't remember the names, let alone the plots of any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, one of them contains a Personal Favorite Movie Moment. And although few things are more vulnerable, intimate, more Too Much Information than Personal Movie Moments, I feel moved to share mine with you. Especially since it's after midnight on Monday morning and I need a blog. So here goes:

SPOILER ALERT! I've written titles in bold, so squint your way through the list and if you don't want to discover, e.g., that Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes inThe Godfather, skip over it.

The final frames of  Midnight Express , where Brad Davis escapes the Turkish prison as the Giorgio Moroder theme music swells.
Meg Ryan's face as she realizes Tom Hanks is her e-mail friend at the end of  You've Got Mail .
Yes, Blond Bond in a Speedo coming out of the sea in  Casino Royale  is
heartwarming. But it's the end of the film I love, where he gets his groove back by shooting Mr. White in the leg.
Out of Africa . Meryl Streep's eulogy for Robert Redford. "He brought us joy...we loved him well. 
He was not ours. 
He was not mine."
Pride & Prejudice.  All versions, but especially the Keira Knightley one. You know the scene. Where she and Matthew Mcfayden hook up, as the sun comes up.
Blade Runner . Rutger Hauer on the rooftop, in the rain. "All those moments lost in time, like tears in rain … time to die."
Cary Grant pulling Eva Marie Saint up the side of Mount Rushmore in  North by Northwest .
Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn's "too late, too late, they cried!" sundown on the beach moment in  Two for the Road.


In  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon : When Ziyi Zhang stabs Chen Chang in the chest before having sex with him. Or the film's ending, except that it's so sad I can't even type about it.
Same movie, the death of Chow Yun-Fat. "I would rather be a ghost, drifting by your side, as a condemned soul, than enter heaven without you."
The Godfather . So much poetry, it's a toss-up between the death of Luca Brazzi, the door closing on Kay at the end of the film, or—No, okay, okay – it's when Michael blows away Captain McCluskey over pasta. Yeah, that's the one.
The chess game in  The Thomas Crown Affair . Faye Dunaway: check. Steve McQueen: Let's play something else.
  The Pianist . Adrian Brody plays Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23 for the Nazi.
The Exorcist . Ellen Burstyn: "Father, it's my little girl." (sob!)
Young Frankenstein . The incomparable Cloris Leachmen. "He vass . . .  my BOYFRIEND."
Henry V . The Battle of Agincourt. "The day is yours."
  Chinatown . "My sister. My daughter."
Wings of Desire.  Bruno Ganz's soliloquy upon the death
of the motorcyclist: "My father. My mother. My wife. My child."

  Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest .  Johnny Depp's reaction when Keira Knightley handcuffs him to his ship. ("Pirate.")

 

So now you know my deepest secrets. And you? Care to share your favorite movie moments? 

~Harley

 

 

 

 

Guest blogger, Ann Napolitano: Helpful Bumps In The Road

Joshilyn here---and above. I am the google-eyed loon glowing with fan girrrrl "radiance" (that's southern lady talk for sweat, ya'll)  as I meet Ann Napolitano. Ann is holding her book, A GOOD HARD LOOK, which I read in ARC form, and it blew me out of the water. Picked me up and set me down different. I have become a crazed evangelist for it. Some books, you simply have to make everyone you ever loved read them; this is one of those. And Ann-the-person is LOVELY, and she is HERE today, talking about how she came to write so finely, with such understated wit and grace, about our desperate, human mandate to live our finite, God's-blink lives deeply and well. 

I had just finished my junior year of college, and started a summer internship at a New York City literary magazine. I was being paid to read story submissions and was hopeful that they would offer me a full-time position after college. Reading stories for a living—what could be better than that? I remember feeling really pleased while riding the bus to work that first day. I could feel myself standing on the cusp of my future—one that I had chosen and earned—and it felt good.

   When I arrived at the magazine office, however, the good feeling disappeared. There was a strange echo in my head, and I felt hot. I ended up having to force myself through the day that I had been so excited about. I went to bed early that night in an effort to regroup. Tomorrow, I told myself, I will feel normal. But I woke up the following morning with a fever of one hundred and four, barely able to stand. That fever persisted for two weeks, while doctors ran tests and tried to figure out what was wrong. I was eventually diagnosed with the Epstein Barr Virus, an autoimmune disease that wipes out your immune system, (so you catch every cold, virus or infection that walks past you on the street). It is a lengthy illness with no known cure.

   I had to quit my summer internship, obviously. I returned to college in the fall against the doctor's recommendations—dormitories are not known to be sterile environments—simply because my parents and I agreed that lying on their couch, depressed with no friends and no activity, was not an attractive prospect. I signed up for a half-load of classes, with the understanding that it would take an extra year for me to graduate. My main recollection from that fall is sitting in a chair feeling wan while watching my twenty-year-old friends dance and laugh and basically bounce off the dormitory walls. I felt like a rickety octogenarian; they felt immortal, untouchable. I wanted to scream at them: You're not! Life can change in an instant! Look what happened to me!

   Screaming would have taken too much energy, though, so I kept quiet. Instead, I focused on a huge tome that my creative writing professor had assigned me, The Habit of Being. The book was a collection of Flannery O'Connor's letters, and her voice pulled me in right away. In her letters, the writer was irreverent, hilarious, and insightful. I read about her diagnosis with lupus, and how she gave up a full, happy life in Connecticut to return home to the family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.  I followed her as she set up a new life—an apparently diminished one—in the company of her fiery, headstrong mother. I read as Flannery came to terms with her changed situation, and decided to focus her limited energy where it would matter most—in her writing. She put aside three hours each morning, and while her beloved peacocks squawked outside her window—she wrote.

   Those letters shifted something inside me, and I found myself sizing up my own situation in a similar manner. I had always loved writing, but I lacked the requisite confidence to declare myself a writer. (Hence the idea of working at a literary magazine—I would surround myself with other people's words, not my own.) But my illness, and Flannery's example, offered up a new clarity. I was able to appreciate, in a way my obnoxiously healthy twenty-year-old peers could not, the sheer brevity of life. I felt, with every quivering, exhausted muscle in my body, that everything I'd taken for granted could disappear in an instant. And this gave me a new drive to make each moment meaningful, and to make my life matter.

   My illness disassembled, and then reshaped, my life. From within its foggy walls, I chose my path. I would be a writer. I realized that this was no dress rehearsal; this was my life and I should—at the very least—take a swing at it.

   I was sick for three long years with EBV. If someone had tapped my ill, younger self on the shoulder and told her that this miserable time would have any positive outcome at all, she would have shaken her head with disdain. The truth is that this difficult period essentially made me who I am, and I am now deeply grateful for that particular bump in my road. And to top it all off, Flannery O'Connor showed up over a decade later as the central character in my new novel, A Good Hard Look.

   Of course, I'm not the first person to benefit from some kind of adversity. Tell me, what moment or event changed your life forever?

 

 

Ann Napolitano is the author of the novels A Good Hard Look and Within Arm's Reach.  She received an MFA from New York University; she teaches fiction writing for New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for Gotham Writers' Workshop.  She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.