On this day, I give thanks for… [50 things, in no particular order]

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Pat Greene

Starbucks Venti Nonfat No Whip Decaf Salted Carmel Mochas.
That I do not  have to worry about having a roof over my head.
That I have enough food to eat on a regular basis.
Turkey sandwiches with stuffing and cranberry sauce.
The Food Network.
Alton Brown’s turkey brining instructions.
The very nice lady at Safeway this morning at 7 am, where I went after discovering that we had gotten evaporated milk instead of sweetened condensed milk, and so I could not make the pies. As I said to her, I’m really sorry she had to work Thanksgiving, but I was really glad she was there.
That all the cooking came out okay.
Cable television.
Parades.
Stephen Sondheim.
Straight No Chaser.
“Brave,” by Sarah Bareilles.
“Raise Your Glass,” by Pink.
“Do It Anyway,” by the Ben Folds Five.
That I can now start playing Christmas music.  Except in the house, where I have to play Hannukah music.
Latkes.
Doctor Who.
The BBC.
Pride and Prejudice.
Colin Firth.
Jane Austen.
The Voice.
Waze.
Facebook.
Cracked.com.
And, okay, I admit it: Wikipedia
Wordpress.
Blogging.
Beading.
The iTunes store.
The Quizup App on my iPhone.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
My job.
My coworkers.
Good insurance.
That Daylight Savings Time is over.
My doctors and therapists, physical and psychological.
My meds that, whatever their side effects, keep me alive.
My DME, likewise.
Oceans, of all stripes.
The color purple.
That the Red-Headed Menace has had such a great cross-country season.
That Railfan is enjoying his classes, especially photography.
That the Not-So-Little Drummer Boy is still pursuing his passion for music.
My friends, who like me, even though they don’t have to.
My family, who loves me even in spite of myself.
Art.
Love.
Life.

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Down from the attic.

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Pat Greene

There really is no other way to begin this post than…

Hello, my name is Pat. I have bipolar disorder.

I am not alone in this:  an estimated one to five per cent of people in the United States are bipolar, an estimated 10 million people.  The disorder affects men and women equally. I am Bipolar Type II, which means that, as far as I or anyone else can tell,  I have not had episodes of full-blown mania, instead suffering from the lower level hypomania. According to the psychologist who leads my Dialectical Therapy Group who is an expert in BPD, the disorder is increasingly seen to exist on a spectrum.  It’s all labeling, anyway.

I have not written about my mental illness before, although some of you either know me well enough that I have spoken to you about it, or you guessed by hints I dropped in previous posts about mental illness. Some of those posts were not exactly subtle, and I am sure anyone reading them would wonder about my  own mental status.

Why disclose this now?  After all, aren’t I worried that a future employer might find this post and hold it against me?

The reason is simple enough: it is going to be in the public domain soon, anyway.  I have written a chapter for a book titled Motherhood, Mental Illness, and Hope: Stories of Recovery, edited by N. Benders-Hadi and M. Barber, Springer-Verlag, 2014.  The book is a compilation of professional articles interspersed with stories of women who have lived with mental illness and dealt with the challenges that it poses.  My chapter is called, rather prosaically, “Being a Mother Saved My Life.” (It did, too, but that is a story for another time.) Even though I have a really common name, I expect that any employer Googling me would find the book, so there really is not any reason to keep it secret here.

I have to confess, part of this is vanity: I wanted to be able to crow about being published again, and it seemed a little silly to say “I’ve written a chapter for a book, but I’m not going to tell you what it’s about or what book it’s in.”.  Even though I volunteered for this gig (and wasn’t paid), the fact that at least some number of people out there are going to read what I wrote makes me happy. I am also pleased that the editors praised my writing, indeed that they accepted my writing to begin with.  When I was told about this project by the Resident Shrink (who had received notice of it through professional mailing lists), the editors were going to either interview women or have them submit their stories in written form.  The editor told me that they were happy that my contribution needed only very minimal editing.  When I got it back, there were only a few corrections to grammar, and one change where I misidentified the criteria for bipolar II as opposed to bipolar I.  Go me!

I also would like to include it on my resume, because it does mean something to write well enough to be published. I would like to use it as a writing sample if I need to (I happen to think it is one of my better pieces of writing), but that might spook people.

I actually have written a much longer piece – about twenty pages, whereas the book chapter is six – about my experiences generally as a mentally ill person.  I would love to publish it somewhere, but I am not sure where: it is too short to be a book, and too long to be an article. I might serialize it here. (Be forwarned! : ) )  If anyone is interested in reading it, for whatever reason, shoot me an email (or comment below) and I’ll send you the PDF. (I don’t think I can send the book chapter to anyone, but I’ll certainly tell you when it comes out.)

I have disclosed difficult issues before, and I suppose in some sense I might appear to be a emotional exhibitionist.  But as I said in this post, sometimes we tell our stories so that others in a similar predicament might know that they are not alone, and to change hearts and minds of those who would fear or condemn us.

There are a lot of people who feel uncomfortable around mentally ill people.  Why tell us, they say.  It’s private.  I understand privacy: I do not talk about my sex life, since it really is not anyone’s business and, truth be told, I find people talking about their sex lives to be boring.  Sex is fun; talking about sex is uninteresting. I really don’t want to bore people.

But the discomfort people feel around people coming out as being mentally ill strikes me as different in quality. The statements I have heard around that are very similar to those I used to hear about sexual orientation.

The reason for disclosing mental illness is the same for disclosing that one is gay:  standing up to stigma.  It is freeing to announce to the world: yes, I have bipolar disorder. My condition is not a moral failing.  My disorder is not an intrinsic personality flaw. I am not my disease.  I refuse to be put in a box any more.  I refuse to be silenced anymore.  I refuse to allow your disapproval to be my problem ANY LONGER.

[Cut for length — rather long and rambling.]

Continue reading →

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More thoughts on my Voice obsession

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Pat Greene

Last night’s show (the top 8 performances) was terrific.  This group seems to be more talent deep than last season. There were no performances that were bad, although there were a couple that were less than stellar.

I’m sorry, but all those emotionally laden songs that Christina Aguilera has Jacquie Lee sing are simply not convincing.  She oversings them — perhaps brokenhearted subtlety is a little much to ask for from a sixteen-year old.  Really. Even the show’s judges wondered what she was tapping into when she sang.  Unlike me, they seemed moved by her performance.

Which brings me to the “Pat’s axiom about love songs”: the more extravagant the lyrics, the more calmly you need to sing them.  Singing broken-hearted lyrics with full-throated exuberance just creates melodrama, which is in the end boring.

My man James Wolpert covered Queen, which was inevitable given how much he has spoken of Freddy Mercury as an influence.  Unfortunately, he chose the one Queen song (“Somebody To Love”) that for personal reasons I have trouble listening to without wincing. (I could not bring myself to buy his version on iTunes, even though that means I did not vote for him.)  I really wish he had chosen “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” instead.  On the other hand, James did knock “Somebody to Love” out of the park — the tuxedos and standing on the piano were very showy.  Over-the-top, in the way that Freddy would have loved.

TessAnne Chin was great channelling Gwen Stefanie on “Underneath It All.”. Ska is a good choice — it sounds more authentic from her than from No Doubt.  Christina was happy; TessAnne allowed her Jamaican accent to show.  Christina’s suggestion that TessAnne do “What a Girl Wants” next week is a good one, I hope Adam Levine takes her advice. (I do agree with People Magazine, for once — Adam Levine is really the Sexiest Man Alive. And the homoerotic playfulness (I really hate the word “bromance”) between Levine and Blake Shelton is in its own odd way pretty subversive for such a mainstream show — especially given that Shelton is a country singer.)

When Adam Levine gave Will Champlain “At Last” to sing, I shuddered.  But, wow.  I loved his version — a lot more raw than the seductive Etta James original (of course! no one is Etta James), but it worked.  And as Christina said, it was cool hearing a guy do the song. (I did end up buying this one, although since I bought it after the voting window ended, it won’t count.)

Cole Vosbury was pleasant; Matthew Schuler was, sadly, boring.  And Ray Boudreaux? Sorry, man, but you’re no Spencer Davis.  Really.  Which brings us to Caroline Pennell.

I was not wowed by her performance, but I loved the song, “Dog Days are Over.” So I have hunted up the Florence + The Machine original, and bought that.  I discovered that the group had done a wonderful cover of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” and bought that as well.  So once again, The Voice leads me to artists I never would have heard otherwise.

Digression: can I say once again how much I love the iTunes Store?  It’s been around so long that it is easy to forget how great it is to be able to experiment and sample songs from different artists and genres without having to buy entire albums, or engage in piracy.  I really do like to not trample on people’s intellectual property whenever possible.

As of the time I write this (2 pm Pacific, 5 pm Eastern) the iTunes standings are: Will, Cole, James, Jacquie, TessAnne, Caroline, Ray, and Matthew.  My prediction, if this stands up and the bottom three are Caroline, Ray, and Matthew, is that Matthew will be saved via the new Twitter instant save.  (Speaking of which, the Twitter instant save automatically disenfranchises the entire Western half of the country.  We see the show on tape delay, not live — so the only people who get to vote are in the Eastern and Central time zones.) Matthew has been more consistent week to week, and people will still remember his “Hallelujah” of a few weeks back, which — typical coach hyperbole disregarded — may well have been one of the best performances on the show I’ve ever seen. It was so good that it went to number one on the iTunes singles chart, and three weeks after the fact  remains on the iTunes singles chart, even above his performance this week.

We’ll see in about six hours.

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Architecture and privacy.

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Pat Greene

The Economist recently had an article titled “Every Step You Take: Google Glass, Ubiquitous Cameras And  The Threat To Privacy.” I got to thinking about privacy, and how in some sense it is a twentieth-century, suburban phenomenon.

In small towns, everyone knows everyone else’s business, or at least a lot of it, or so I have been led to believe.  People know – and are concerned about – their neighbors.  This is true to some small extent in cities — among people in an apartment house, for example, sometimes — in my experience it is not the case in the suburbs.

Part of this may be architecture.  Ranch style houses are not necessarily conducive to neighborliness.  This is particularly true of some forms of modern architecture found in California, namely the Eichler and similar styles by other builders.

I dislike Eichlers, notwithstanding the fact that I own one. (Why buy a house I was less than enamored of?  It was affordable –a very big deal when we bought it, and God knows we could not afford to buy it today — in a good neighborhood, close to good schools, and ten minutes away from the Rocket Scientist’s workplace.  I’m willing to overlook architecture in that case.) They are designed to insulate families from ever having to interact with anyone else.

Privacy for the family is paramount. In many Eichler designs, unlike other house styles, there is no front window or porch.  The front of the house is a blank wall — the garage.  The door is on the side of the house, not the front, and in many cases is behind a gate. Unless you make an effort, you never see your neighbors unless you both are heading out the door to go to work at the same time.  You can’t sit in the living room and watch the world go by, as I had in previous houses I lived in.  I sit in the living room and watch the squirrels and think things like “Damn, we’ve got another feral fig tree. Those things are worse than kudzu.”  Nice enough, but a little lacking in the human touch.

(Eichlers are also a complete bitch to climate control.  They have huge floor to ceiling windows which let in lots of light but which leach air-conditioning and heating like crazy.  Their one absolutely wonderful feature is radiant floor heating: it is really lovely to wake up in the morning and walk on a warm floor.  The cats like it too.)

I don’t know my neighbors very well.  In the other houses I have lived in, I did.  I would see them walking their dogs or children.  When I lived in Virginia, in a split-level house with a huge from window, I would sit and watch the kids play in the front yards of my house and the house next door.  I knew the people next door — my kid used to stray into their yard.  I really enjoyed living in that house.

Of course, I am shy by nature. My neighborhood is pretty good in trying to foster relationships between neighbors: there is a neighborhood mailing list, not to mention the bi-annual ice cream socials.

I liked having a porch.  There was something welcoming about a porch and a large front window.  It invites the world in, rather than determinedly shutting it out.  If you have tendencies to be sort of a loner (who, me?) it helps foster a sense of connectedness with the outside world.

I could use that a lot of time.

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Theme song for geeks

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Pat Greene

Raise your glass
If you are wrong in all the right ways
“Raise Your Glass,” Pink

“Do It Anyway” is one of two songs I have been playing in heavy rotation to motivate me.  The other is “Raise Your Glass.”  I wish I had had this when I was a teenager.
“Raise Your Glass” is an anthem for each of us who was different. Geeks were not always considered interesting the way that they seem to be now.  Of course, I am not sure that geeks are ever attractive to highschoolers.

I’ve never, ever been “cool.”  I could, when I was younger, sort of manage adorkable, except I was generally too neurotic to be convincing.  Neuroses are never attractive, unless you’re physically attractive, which pretty much counts me out.

One of the shows in the past few years I have managed to see was The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  The title is one of those rare cases where what the show is spelled out there, right above the lights. The musical is about middle-schoolers in the county spelling bee.  The writers manage to wring a surprising amount of humor and pathos out of a normally quotidian situation.

All of the characters in the play are outliers. They’re odd, they’re never going to sit at the popular kids’ table in the cafeteria. “People love to hate us ‘cause we’re too damn smart.” They’re the kids who grow up and go to good schools where they may finally find a tribe to call their own, if they are lucky.  If they are not, they get to be loners.

“Raise Your Glass” is for those kids, and the adults they become.  You’re okay, the song says, even if you are stranger than most. We’ll always be nothing other than freaks. 

And that’s okay.

So if you’re too school for cool,
and treated like a fool,
you can choose to let it go,
We can always party on our own...

To hell with the popular kids.  Let’s go.

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Today’s miscellany.

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Pat Greene

I think I am getting sick.  I have felt cold and achy all day.  I just hurt.  Of course, both my eldest son and my most affectionate coworker — the one who enveloped me in a big hug when a person on the phone reduced me to tears by screaming at me loud enough that I had to hold the earphones away from my ears — had colds last week.  I love my coworker, a very sweet young woman, and I know her heart is in the right place, and I know she needed to come to work because as temporary workers we do not have paid sick leave and she needs the money, but I really wish she had not hugged me.

I want not to get sick in the hope that I will be called in to work on the other project I have been trained for, and if I’m sick I cannot in good conscience go and expose a bunch of preschoolers to my germs. I know preschools are vectors for all sorts of viruses, and I don’t want to add to that just before everyone goes home for Thanksgiving.  Undoubtedly some of those children are going to go visit their relatives, and Grandma Jo may be recovering from chemo and Cousin Ollie may have HIV,  or Uncle Jerry has to take immunosuppressants because of the heart transplant he had two years ago, or Aunt Shawna has a six-week old baby, any of which could develop serious complications from something as simple as a bad cold. Having a nurse for a mother will make you tend to see not exposing others to illness as being an important civic duty.

Usually, not exposing others causes no real pangs.  I mean, I sometimes (not always) hate work, but I hate being sick worse, and if I can stay home and get better sooner I will do so.  (I feel guilty being out of work.  Aside form the money and the fact that having structure in my life is good for me, I always worry about others having to pick up my slack.) The only time when I really was tempted to go into public and expose a large number of people was the year that Return of the King came out.  I had stayed in line to get tickets to the marathon showing of the three movies, as a present for the Not-So-Little-Drummer Boy’s birthday.  (Much to the displeasure of the middle school authorities, I was going to yank him from school the day of the movies — because how often do you get to give your kid such a cool present?  It’s not like we did it all the time, and we definitely took education seriously in our family.)  All well and good, but I came down with the flu that morning. I contemplated just taking a lot of NyQuil and going anyway, but in the end my sense of responsibility won out and I got a family friend to take him. (The NSLDB had had the flu the week before and was well over it, so I was not worried that he was going to infect anyone.) He had a blast, but it was just as well I stayed home: by the time that the Battle for Helm’s Deep was won in the second movie I had a fever of 103, and I no longer cared that I was missing the biggest movie launch since I stood in line for hours for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

For all the troubles that technology has brought (yes, I’m a Luddite, or would be if I did not have this stupid Internet addiction), the ability to work from home is a godsend for a lot of people.  No one has to come into the office and expose all of their coworkers to everything from a cold through the flu or worse. Of course, the fact that people can work from home  is also used to make them work far more hours than is good for them, which may lead to them being more susceptible to getting sick in the first place.

Then there is the whole class issue.  Your average service or trades worker has no option to stay home unless they have paid sick leave.  In some cases, it is not merely a matter of not having paid sick leave, but of losing a job if you are out sick.  When I was home with my injured leg and rib, unable to go to work for pretty much an entire week because of the large number of painkillers I was chewing on, I did not have to worry that my job would not be there when I got back. I work for decent people. Other people, especially fast food workers, do not always work for such decent people.  (I think paid sick leave should be mandatory for anyone in food services. Other service personnel are problematic, too, but not nearly so much as restaurant workers.)

On the work front, we have the whole week off, which is a bad thing for a lot of people who need the money.  On the other hand, I understand why my employers decided it was not worth it for us to call this week.  Not to mention that the website was down Sunday for maintenance.  I can just imagine what calling people on the eve of Thanksgiving would be like.  It’s not a pretty picture.

For me, it is not just the money. It seems strange not to head out the door in mid afternoon. The structure matters, as does the interaction with my coworkers, whom I almost all like. Oddly enough, even though it has only been two days off at this point, I miss them and the work, as stressful as it has been the past few weeks.  As more and more problems arise with the Affordable Care Act, and as more and more people are subject to the whims of insurance companies in the days leading up to actual implementation, the tougher things get.  As I said, a caller completely reduced me to tears last week, the first time that has happened. Part of the frustration on my part was that if he had just calmed down, gotten past his rabid hatred of Obama, and talked to me, I could have helped him.  I hate situations like that, because it feels like I have failed in my mission, even though I know it’s not my fault.

I may end up being out two weeks, because I may travel next week, but that’s not quite set.  I’m a little worried about losing my phone mojo, but not that much.  The project may end two months early as it is: the union which contracts with my employer is reconsidering whether at this point they could get more bang for their buck by doing more targeted marketing.  As much as I would miss my coworkers, and as much as I would worry about the economic effect on all of us, and the effect of the sudden lack of structure would have on me, I certainly understand their desire to get better results for the money they are shelling out.

We’re getting down to the wire in the college application process.  The UC/CSU applications go out this week, the rest by January 1st.  I will be so grateful when all of this is over. Especially if both everyone involved in my family can get through it without having any more meltdowns than is absolutely unavoidable.  Then there is the waiting.  Best not to think about that.

I am not making dinner tonight, even though I will be home for dinner, which is unusual.  The Rocket Scientist is making his seafood casserole, which in addition to being a dish I like, brings back fond memories of when we were graduate students at Georgia Tech.  We need to find a meat grinder and start making our own ground beef, like we did back then. Food processors tend to grind the meat too fine  There is nothing like chili made with fresh-ground beef, home-grown tomatoes and peppers, and served with hot cornbread out of the oven. I have no appetite (see, being sick, above) but the memory makes me smile.

I have decided not to sweat the 50K writing challenge I set myself.  I’m pretty clear that I am not going to make it — I’m just going to push to see how close I get.  I realize that trying to write as many words as I can in a month has resulted in some, shall we say, less than stellar posts (kind of like this one), but hey, it’s not like I do this all the time.  Well, actually, I do, but I am hoping you guys are not too bored.

Posted in Family, Health, Work! | Leave a comment

How can you not love a band like that?

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Pat Greene

I have written about my fanaticism for The Voice, the NBC singing talent show.  My favorites — James Wolpert, the uber-geeky former Apple Store employee and TessAnne Chin, the former backup singer for Jimmy Cliff — are still on the show, which is great.  Best of all, I am being exposed to new music.

I don’t listen to the radio, except for NPR.  I don’t stay on top of what’s happening in music unless it has such a sledgehammer effect in popular culture that I can’t help noticing.  Even then, I was about eight months late jumping on the “Call Me Maybe” bandwagon, by which time the song was completely passé. (The video still remains darling, however.)  Along with catching the Grammys when I remember to (that’s how I found out about Mumford and Sons, Gnarls Barkley, and Taylor Swift) watching The Voice introduces me to music I usually have not heard before, by showcasing covers of songs by bands I usually have not heard of previously.  And so, thanks to a trio by the show’s more rock-minded contestants, I have found Fall Out Boy.

I love the song I first heard covered, “Sugar, We’re Going Down,” (with its delightful phrase “loaded God complex”) but even more I like the titles to their songs.  Some of these gems include: “Hum Hallelujah,””You’re Crashing, But You’re No Wave,””The Carpal Tunnel of Love,” and my absolute favorite, “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Won’t Get Sued.”

How can you not love those?  Whether the music is any good is almost besides the point.

Posted in Culture (popular and otherwise), Music | Tagged | Leave a comment

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Pat Greene

I am sitting contemplating the evolutionary advantages of boredom. I can’t think of any, but that might simply be because right at this moment I am bored out of my skull.

Edited to add, later: I  might have written  more, but I was testing out my WordPress app on my iPhone, while I was waiting in the car for Railfan.  All I learned out of the experience is that it is a pain to actually post anything using the screen on an iPhone.  I type about 30 words a minute on a bad day (42 on good ones) and hunt and pecking the teeny-tiny letters is annoying beyond belief. (I don’t like iPads for similar reasons.) Even with my pull out keyboard on my Droid I was able to do better.

I don’t foresee actually using the WP app much, unless I am stuck somewhere for a very long time and have nothing better to do, or unless I find myself in the middle of an earth-shattering or historic event.  I might be more likely to use Twitter in that case, anyway. (I actually only signed up for Twitter because at the time I was working in an unreinforced masonry building and I wanted a way to reach people if the structure collapsed during an earthquake.)

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An open letter to Alexander Coward

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Pat Greene

Dear Dr. Coward:

I found your letter to your students about why you would not be participating in the one-day strike by workers at the University of California intriguing.  Like them, I am a product of top-tier educational systems.  Like you, I believe that the world is an increasingly complicated place, and that we need increasingly sophisticated thinkers to find solutions to the myriad of problems that will arise in the future.  I agree that students need to take their educations seriously. A good education is a treasure.

Unlike you, I seem to recognize that the start of that education has to be with an understanding of the interconnectedness of people and systems.  Your students are privileged.  You are privileged.  You refusing to strike because “having class is too important” is a slap in the face to every underpaid healthcare and campus worker in the system.

This was not an unlimited strike.  It was a one-day walkout. Would it really have damaged your students’ college educations to miss one day of class?  Would it have hurt you to have found another way to impart the material? In your letter you stated that you were well on time to finishing the syllabus with “a few lectures in hand for review.” Not missing a review session was more important than showing solidarity with people not so fortunate as you and your students?

You are a prime exhibit in why labor has been struggling so much in this country.  You demonstrate the “it’s not my problem” mentality that abounds in American society.

Whatever the alleged injustices are that are being protested about tomorrow, it is clear that you are not responsible for those things, whatever they are, and I do not think you should be denied an education because of someone else’s fight that you are not responsible for.

Ah, so it is morally acceptable to ignore the plight of others because “you are not responsible.” Care of people less fortunate is not a value you wish to impart to your students, it seems. Nor is the ability to understand holistic systems, like universities, and see the way that the injustices affecting some should not be simply overlooked by others because “it’s not my problem.”

This is a shame because, given the economy, some of those students may have jobs just like the campus workers who are striking.  In fact, I suppose that it is possible that some of the striking workers were students of yours. I guess at that once they graduate it’s not important to take a stand on their wellbeing.

You had a chance to teach a valuable lesson to your students.  You could have written that same letter, compellingly extolling the importance of education and why you believe so deeply in it, and at the same time say, “in spite of this, workers are being exploited, and it is our responsibilities as fellow members of this campus community to stand up in support of the hidden people who make your education possible.”  You could have encouraged them to find out what the strike was about, to talk about it among themselves.  You could have taught them to care.  You chose not to do so.

You failed.

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It’s that time again!

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Pat Greene

Ah, Thanksgiving.  That means… cooking. A lot of cooking.  I rather enjoy it, provided I am organized (ha!) and spread the work over several days. I’m putting this here because it is easy for me to access regardless whichever computer I’m on, and it is useful to have a record for future years:

Tuesday: make cornbread and sourdough croutons for stuffing. (Normally, the dried bread would be processed until fine, but I am thinking that I want to try for a little more texture. I love the tang that sourdough adds.) It is important to use the cornbread recipe on the Quaker corn meal box — other recipes tend to result in a sweet, soft cornbread, and the Rocket Scientist will complain. The cornbread has to be gritty, and not sweet.  Check to make sure we have ingredients for everything.  Shop as necessary, including going to four different Safeways until I find the one that carries Bell’s Poultry Seasoning, which is the only acceptable poultry seasoning since it has been used in the Rocket Scientist’s family since time immemorial.  (It’s also the best.) Go to BevMo because I have to have a Gewurtztraminer to drink with the turkey, and there wasn’t any at Safeway. Remember to call Hobee’s to order coffeecake. Argue with other members of family about what type of pies we’re going to have. Decide on pumpkin and key lime, even though only one member of the family really likes pumpkin, and promise the disappointed Railfan that I will make chocolate pie at Christmas.  Wonder with vague resentment when I’ll get to have pecan pie on a holiday.

[Edited to add: the brand-spanking new Safeway near me, which a coworker who is also a Safeway checker told me is the largest in Northern California, had both Bell’s and Gewürztraminer! Hurrah for one-stop shopping.  I nonetheless just realized I forgot to get crystallized ginger for the top of the key-lime pie. Better now than on Thursday. Still haven’t made the cornbread, though.]

Wednesday morning: prepare brine for turkey, after agonizing over which of twenty brine recipes I found on the web I should use. Decide that you really can’t go to wrong with Alton Brown. Obsess over how we’re going to fit everything in the refrigerator.  Decide which poor sap is going to have to play fridge Tetris. Figure that as long as it’s not me, it’s all good.

Wednesday midday: brine 20 lb. fresh hen turkey, stick back in fridge after removing refrigerator shelves. Figure out if there is anything that can be frozen to make room. Make cranberry sauce, being careful not to add so much chipotle this time, since last time you made it, it was er.. a bit on the spicy side. By a lot.  Roast and skin sweet potatoes. Put sweet potatoes in Ziploc, mushing them so you can somehow fit them in the fridge. Take all the veggies that you need for the stuffing out of the fridge so you’ll have somewhere to put the container of cranberry sauce. Pick up coffeecake.

Wednesday evening: chop celery, red pepper, and onions for stuffing. Sweat veggies until soft in a stick of butter.  Set aside in Ziploc bag, which can be molded to fit around the cranberry sauce in the fridge.  Crumble cornbread, combine crumbled cornbread and sourdough croutons with Bell’s poultry seasoning in a large bowl. Make key lime and pumpkin pies.  Coin toss with Rocket Scientist over who has to get up to get the turkey in the oven.  Lose. Remind myself that if I cook the turkey, I won’t have to put up the leftover turkey.  Doesn’t help.

Thursday 6:30 am: Get up. Drink two cups of strong coffee. Combine bread mixture and sautéed veggies with other stuffing ingredients. Retrieve turkey from brine, rinse off. Put shelves back in fridge.  Put in three bottles of Martinelli’s and one of Gewurtztraminer in the fridge to cool.  Stuff turkey, ignoring the voice of Alton Brown yelling in your head that “Stuffing is eeeevil!.” Place extra stuffing in dish so the vegetarians will have something to eat. Get bird in oven, after placing olive-oil soaked cheesecloth on breast (turkey’s, not mine).  Baste at twenty minute intervals, or whenever I actually remember to do it.

Thursday 9:00 am: warm up coffeecake and make scrambled eggs. Get everyone up for breakfast.  Or at least tell everyone that I’m having breakfast, by God, and if they decide to sleep in I’m not making breakfast for them later.  Drink more coffee.

Thursday 10:30 am: peel and section tangerines and cut grapes for fruit salad.  Swear loudly as I realize I forgot to buy miniature marshmallows for the salad, even though I got the big ones for the sweet potato soufflé.

Thursday 11:00 am: furtively slink into the closest Safeway, hoping against hope that they won’t be out of stock of the mini-marshmallows. They are. Try to decide whether I could simply cut up large ones.  Sigh deeply.  Go to a larger Safeway.

Thursday, noon: having returned from the marshmallow hunt, sit down to watch parade or football game, whichever, since the Rocket Scientist needs the kitchen to make the sweet potatoes. Half are covered with marshmallows, half with pecans since marshmallows are not vegetarian, unlike one-third of our household.  Wonder whether I should sneak some of the bourbon being put in the soufflé.  Fall asleep on couch.  Wake up and try to remember whether we were having regular mashed potatoes, as well as sweet, decide screw it, and fall back asleep.

Thursday 1 pm: Wake up and nag designated son to set table. Decide it’s late enough that I need to finish making fruit salad. Notice that Rocket Scientist has cut up turkey. Get food on the table.

Thursday 2 pm: Say grace.  Everyone says something they are thankful for. Think — but don’t say — that I’m really thankful all the cooking is done. Drink a couple of glasses of Gewurtztraminer but don’t eat a lot because, quite frankly, by this time the sight of all this food makes me feel vaguely nauseated. Watch everyone eat — especially the Red-Headed Menace, who eats an enormous number of rolls, sweet potatoes (the side with no marshmallows, because he’s a vegetarian), and fruit salad, and a little dressing, because he is a runner in training and needs to consume some insanely large number of calories. Everyone else eats more moderately, but not by all that much.

Thursday 3 pm: everyone decides they have really had enough.  Suggestions of dessert are met with groans. The people responsible for putting up the leftovers (not me, since I got up early) go to work; everyone else naps to sleep off all the fat and tryptophan they have consumed.

Thursday 5 pm: everyone decides they’re ready for pie.  Pie is consumed, with some whining by people who wanted a pie I did not make.

Thursday evening: Board games and leftovers. Hopefully Trivial Pursuit, but probably not. More likely Apples to Apples, since it requires next to no thought and all of our brain cells are oxygen deprived because the need to digest way too much food.

Friday morning: turkey omelettes. And pie.

Friday lunch: wonderful turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce sandwiches (the entire reason for the holiday as far as I am concerned). And pie.

And so on….

And only  a month until I do it all again at Christmas.

Posted in Family, Food | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

The “I have done nothing of note with my life” virus is running strong through my veins this evening. It is a weird combination of green-eyed envy, deep sadness, great shame, and and a surprising amount of guilt. The combination is devastating to my sense of self.

What started it all off was looking through Amazon and running across a book (their second) written by an acquaintance of mine. Because I am the sort of person who picks scabs off of wounds, I started hunting work by other people I know.

I wish my mind would not pull this crap on me. I need to put all of it behind and get stuff done.

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Pat Greene | Leave a comment

I have been worried about the increasing influence of churches in America in the past few years.  This may seem odd, since religion — particularly Christianity, particularly Protestantism — has always had some level of influence in America. I find it annoying the extent to which especially right-wing evangelical Protestants have shaped our national discourse.  They do this while getting quite a number of tax benefits.

Fundamentalists scream all the time about the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment (usually declaring that this entitles them to push religion — or their particular view of religion — into all sorts of civic places) and completely ignore the second part, the Establishment clause.  Nice to see someone remembers it. 

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Pat Greene | Leave a comment

Medical outrage.

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Pat Greene

Another entry into the “what has our government turned into” category.  It doesn’t revolve around law enforcement or terrorism, even though both of those are bad enough. No, this is an appointment to a position of power by a person supremely unqualified (anti-qualified? is that a word?) to hold it.

An anti-vaccine advocate, Stephanie Christner, has been appointed to the FDA Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products.  She is the consumer representative.  This is horrible.  Studies have repeatedly exposed anti-vaccine rhetoric as hoaxes.  We now have outbreaks of measles and pertussis, diseases which were though to be well on their way to extinction years ago, because of anti-vaccine hysteria.

Dr. Christner claims her daughter died as a result of vaccinations.  There is little to support that claim. If she truly believes that vaccination is dangerous, what chance is there that she will be a decent advocate for their use?

Anti-vaccination people infuriate me more than any other proponent of “junk science,” more than climate change deniers, more than AIDS denialists, more than young-earth creationists.  The harm they do can be measured in children and adults affected in the here and now, and costs incurred to control the spread of disease today, rather than the uncertain future.  Of course, the truth is that most of these deaths occur in the developing  world.  But there have been outbreaks of measles in the U.S. and the U.K. in the past few years.

There is a reason vaccines were developed: these childhood diseases can cause permanent damage or kill.  Most at risk are newborns too young to vaccinate and people who cannot take the vaccination for medical reasons.  Previously, such individuals were covered by “herd immunity,” which occurs when a large enough percentage of the population is vaccinated.  Outbreaks in recent years have demonstrated how that immunity is undermined by fearful and selfish parents.

I say this because one of the most common excuses is a fear of autism.  I have an autistic son.  There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that his vaccines caused that.  And even if it had?  I would still have vaccinated. The danger posed by diseases such as measles and pertussis is too large to ignore.  To not vaccinate is to ignore a civic duty, to abrogate responsibilities to society at large.

Not vaccinating children is a luxury available only in societies such as the United States that have heretofore had a strong history of vaccinating against diseases.  If no one you grew up with got rubella because they got vaccinated, it is very easy to pretend that rubella does not exist anymore, and that vaccines are superfluous.  This poses a threat to the well-being of children now, but it poses even a much greater threat to potential children down the road: children whose mothers contract rubella during pregnancy can suffer extreme fetal abnormalities.  What lies in store for all of those girls who will grow up unvaccinated?  I have always said that when my sons bring home potential (female) mates, I will ask “Have you been vaccinated for rubella? If not, why not? When can I make an appointment for you to it?”

The cases that anti-vaccination advocates put forth as demonstrating the dangers of vaccinations are all “after the fact” evaluations of children that suffered harm.  Correlation is not causation. And I know, from personal evidence (I know, it’s anecdotal, and the plural of anecdote is not data), that when you have a child that develops a serious health condition you look for anything to explain what happened.  Vaccines are an easy culprit.

I’m just waiting for — and dreading — polio returning to the United States.  Polio has not been eradicated in the Middle East, for example, and with air travel it is entirely possible for diseases to jump continents. At least anti-vaccine nuts can’t dismiss polio as just another “childhood disease”: there are too many stories of people dying and being permanently paralyzed by the disease.

Which brings us to our next outrageous piece of anti-vaccination news: local leaders in Pakistan have outlawed the vaccination of children.  This is fallout from the CIA using the vaccination of children to obtain DNA samples to determine the whereabouts of  Osama bin Laden. Vaccinators have been jailed, even killed.  Pakistan remains one of the places in the world where the polio virus still thrives.

That the CIA could use a ruse as doctors to try and elicit information is unethical beyond belief.  It beggars the imagination that doctors could cooperate with such a program, but then again, doctors have assisted at executions in the U.S. and helped torture detainees at American facilities.

Posted in Science, The World | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Criminally Minded.

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Pat Greene

I’m watching 48 Hours, a show I almost never watch.  I am usually quite skeptical of shows dissecting unpopular acquittals in criminal cases.  Often such shows are simplistic and sensationalistic.  The television producers take a single case, present as much damning evidence as they can, and fail to place the jury’s actions in any sort of context. Juries arrive at verdicts based on the evidence placed before them.  Some of the information presented by the program, mostly involving the alleged motive for the murder, was not information the jury was allowed to hear.  The judge ruled that the prosecution had not shown the evidence in question to be relevant enough to outweigh its inflammatory nature. Did the judge make a bad decision in disallowing the evidence in question? Maybe. Did the television cherry-pick the most sensationalist evidence, hoping to throw the verdict in doubt, creating another “this is how broken the system is” screed? More likely.

One piece intrigued me, though.  The show included an interview with the jury consultant who helped the defense pick the jurors that they would try to keep and those they would try to get rid of.  (I have rather mixed feelings about jury consultant firms. I’m sure they work — or they would continue to exist — but their existence makes me feel uncomfortable for reasons I cannot quite articulate.) The jury consultant talked about how she and the defense used the television shows the prospective jurors liked to determine whether or not they would try to exclude them.  According to the consultant, liking The Good Wife meant that you were likely to be skeptical of law enforcement, whereas liking Bluebloods or Criminal Minds indicated that you would be more likely to favor the prosecution.

Really? I can’t speak for Bluebloods, but Criminal Minds is one of my favorite network shows. I like that there is ambiguity — even though the series is about serial killers, a lot of the villains are humanized.  There is a sense that the underlying message is that all of us are closer to the abyss than we like to think about.  I think it asks more of its viewers than, say, CSI.

I love Criminal Minds, and I tend to be very suspicious of law enforcement. I would be a great person for a defense team to have on their jury.

(Well, maybe not: in the case under examination on the show, the theory of the case that resulted in an acquittal (namely, that all of the DNA evidence at the crime scene was a result of DNA transfer) was only introduced in the defense’s closing argument.  I would have wondered why they did not mention it earlier, and note that they introduced it in such a way that the prosecution could not produce expert witnesses to rebut it.)

Posted in Culture (popular and otherwise), Justice | Tagged | Leave a comment

In these pages, I have often spoken of my love of the work of Stephen Sondheim.  I always knew I was not alone, and now I have proof: “22 Signs You Were Raised by Stephen Sondheim.”  Guilty.

At least half the numbers referred to have been in heavy rotation on my iTunes at some point in time. I have a favorite Bobby (as much as I love Neal Patrick Harris, Raul Esparza sings rings around him); I have tried, unsuccessfully, to be able to sing “Not Getting Married Today”; I have not yet given up on learning “Will I Leave You?”.  Along with #8, “Your knowledge of art history comes mostly from Sunday In the Park With George” I think they should have included “Your knowledge of early Japanese-American relations comes from Pacific Overtures.” I’m annoyed that they didn’t include “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story.  (This video is from the movie.  The version from the stage is, IMHO, sharper.) I hope to be reincarnated as Bernadette Peters. (I love Patti LuPone, but if Aretha Franklin is God, then Bernadette is the Chief Angel.) I can (or at least I used to be able to, I haven’t tried lately) name all of the Sondheim musicals that made it to Broadway, including the flops, such as Bounce and Anyone Can Whistle, and the ones Sondheim only wrote the lyrics for, such as West Side Story and Do I Hear a Waltz?.

I have both volumes of Sondheim’s annotated lyrics, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, both Christmas presents bought for me soon after they came out. And I know where the title comes from. (In case you don’t, it is from the song “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday In the Park With George.)  The Sondheim quote on my sidebar, “writing is a form of mischief,” comes from Look, I Made a Hat.

So, while I wasn’t raised on Sondheim (I did not start listening to him until I was in my late thirties), my kids sure were.  I’m not quite sure how they feel about that — with the exception of Railfan, who played Rapunzel’s prince in a middle school production of Into the Woods, Jr. — less than enthusiastic, from what I can tell.

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Pat Greene | Leave a comment