The Wild Winds of Fortune

By the way, in case anyone is interested, my blog cards and hat came in.  I like them.  Vistaprint left out the pen, but are shipping it separately after I complained to them.  I have been walking around wearing my new, “official,” Wild Winds of Fortune hat, and loving it.

Glinda:  You can still be with the wizard, what you’ve worked and waited for, You can have all you’ve ever wanted….
Elphaba:  But I don’t want it… No, I *can’t* want it, any more…

In the car yesterday, I was listening to one of  my mix CDs, and the song “Defying Gravity” from the musical Wicked came on.  I  love this song, about freeing yourself to be who you are, and this small section is the part I find most intriguing.

We have a notion in society that desire — for people, for things, for events — simply exists.  We want what we want, and there is nothing we can do about that longing.  We can choose to “overcome” it, to suffer without the object of desire, but we still want them or it.

This passage suggests otherwise.  That people can recognize that one’s desires are unwanted, unethical, immoral* or simply bad for one’s peace of mind, and reject that longing.

Part of the societal belief about longing is part of what I think is a larger misunderstanding about the nature of feelings and thoughts.  (Mood, as part of a larger issue involving mental health, is a different issue.) How many times have you heard someone say “Your feelings are your feelings”?

Yes, “your feelings are your feelings” and other people should not try to change how you feel.  That is intrusive, demoralizing and infantilizing. It is an insult to your intelligence, and your sovereignty over yourself.

And those feelings have purposes.  They can be a spur to action, or a recognition of loss, allowing mourning and closure.  The anger engendered by hurt has on occasion transformed not only people, but the world.  I would not want to change that. And recognition of the pain caused by others is important.

But sometimes feelings simply get in the way of living a healthy life.  Or of acting in one’s own best interests. And they can often be changed.  This is the basis of many recent developments in psychotherapy: both Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy involve changing how you feel by changing how you think.

Elphaba seems to know this.  Wanting what she wants — indeed, getting what she would be able to get — would involve ignoring an important part of herself.  And she refuses to do that, refuses to even consider it.

The Rocket Scientist has pointed out the flip side to this.  Before she rejects her longing, Elphaba first admits that it exists.  Has to admit that it exists.  The flip side is people who never understand or admit their feelings to themselves, placing them at the mercy of things that they won’t let themselves think about.  This is no more healthy than hanging on to feelings that have out lasted their useful purpose.

I have to respect Elphaba.  I have to respect letting go not just of what you want, but your desire for what you want.  Even if you can get it.

*This is clear in the context of the play.

On a whim, I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 at 12:03 am last night.  It was  not the smartest decision I have ever made, since I needed to be at the job center at 7:00 am to sign up for a PowerPoint class.  I am not twenty any more, or thirty — the Rocket Scientist and I were the oldest people there by probably a decade.  Sane people our age were home asleep.

That said, I am not going to review the movie, since most of you have not seen it yet, if you’re going to, other than to say I liked it, it suffered from the same defect as the book, there is a very lovely added scene not in the book, and lastly…

They sure find a lot of occasions to show Daniel Radcliffe without his shirt on.

Edited to add:  In retrospect maybe it was only three or four scenes.  But it seems like more, especially given… oh, wait, I can’t tell  you that.  Also, I don’t recall them ever showing him shirtless in any of the other movies — clearly, Radcliffe doing Equus on stage has had some effect on how people view him.

I need to hunt down  Railfan’s hockey skates.  Fortunately, I already know where Echidna Boy’s figure skates are.  Unfortunately, ever since I broke my ankle in college (a long and embarrassing story, there) I can’t skate. This is a problem…

Because….

My college-sophomore eldest son friended me on FaceBook this weekend.

I expect the ice sheet coming up from Hell to hit here any moment.

Wait, was that a pig I just saw flying by?

Last weekend a local college had a program of various classes for junior and high school students.  Railfan (aka middle son) took a fascinating class on the impact of Japanese culture on gaming, which after we talked about it, I wished I could have taken.

Echidna Boy took three classes: one on using your Macintosh productively,* one on the cosmology of black holes, and one on the sociology of sex, dating and marriage. (The last two reserved for high school students.)

We had a fascinating discussion after the last one. (As opposed to the cosmology course, where I could only decipher about half of what he was enthusiastically talking about.) During our discussion, he turned to the issue of “types.”

“I figured out I have a type of girl I’m attracted to, Mom,” he said.  “My favorite type of girl is very smart, athletic, and thinks for herself.”

Whoa… no pretty? no popular? no sweet?  His type of girl is smart?  athletic?  independent-minded?


Yesssss!!!!

I have trained this kid well.**

* Since he was later that evening trying to access root on the iMac to get “superuser” powers, he didn’t really learn much he didn’t already know.
** Okay, I would have been slightly more happy if he had said “creative” rather than athletic, but that’s only because athletic people intimidate me.

Most great works of art have a theme which holds them together.  This one doesn’t.  Harry Chapin, “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”

I have written a fair amount about music, what I listen to, what I think.  I guess you could say it is an important subject for me, albeit from the perspective of a middle-aged white woman who tends to be set in her ways.  In fact, this entire post may be completely redundant.  So feel free to skip this.

Libra: A big promotion is just around the corner for someone much more talented that you; Laughter is the very best medicine, remember that when your appendix bursts next week, Weird Al Yankovic, “Your Horoscope for Today”

Music is an important consideration in my choice of vehicles. I have been known to decide which car to drive based on which of our older cars has a functioning stereo at the time.  (The green Mazda, which is my preferred vehicle, has a flaky MP3 player, which is very good when it functions, but has an annoying tendency to short out when you’re miles away from home.  Then again, the car has over 200,000 miles on it.)  You know how some people smoke when they drive?  I have to sing along with the stereo. 

When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary; When troubles come and my heart burdened be; Then, I am still and wait here in the silence, Until you come and sit awhile with me.
Josh Groban, “You Raise Me Up.”

Singing makes driving easier, even possible on some days.  I hate driving people in my car I am not related to because then I can’t sing. (I never feel compelled to sing in other people’s cars, unless they are singing.) It just doesn’t feel right. It raises my stress level.  If I’m sleepy, driving without music makes me even more so. 

Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care?  “Will I”, from  Rent.

I like having a variety of music in the car.  I know that I have little hip-hop and no rap, and I save instrumental music for times when I’m not driving. I have not found much rap or hip-hop I like, anyway, which may be a cultural and generational thing as much as anything else. 

So I own not a notion, I escape and ape content; I don’t own emotion, I rent… “What You Own,” from Rent.

But many other genres are fair game: country, rock, pop, gospel, folk, Broadway. (Speaking of gospel, let me just say right now, that if there is a heaven, and if I get there someday, I fully expect God to look and sound like Aretha Franklin.) 

It’s astounding, time is fleeting, madness takes its toll, “The Time Warp,” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

With the MP3 player in the Mazda, I am not limited to 22 songs — I can put four times that many on a CD to play.  So I tend to pick a much more varied selection of songs.  Which is great, sort of. 

At night I could hear the blood in my veins , Black and whispering as the rain,  Bruce Springsteen, “The Streets of Philadelphia”

I do not have a rational, musical reason for the selection of songs I put on any given CD (except for my Great Big Sea mixes) — they can run the gamut of styles and subject matter.  I do sometimes make mixes with songs with all the same tempos, but that is the exception rather than the rule. The other members of my family hate this, because I have a whole lot of CDs in the car labeled with the date and n of n, and they have no clue what’s on them.  Neither do I, for that matter, but I don’t care.  I do occasionally do a theme mix: “Numbers,” Geography” and my favorite, “Occupationally Speaking.” 

But that’s just a lot of water, underneath a bridge I burned; and there’s no use in backtracking around corners I have turned, Trisha Yearwood, “The Song Remembers When”

I sort my mixes either through iTunes shuffle or alphabetically by title (either forward or back), which serves much the same function.  This presents a bit of a problem: listening to the songs fully requires a certain level of emotional and cognitive shape-shifting.  Because my  music will veer from topic to topic, often eliciting the comment “Umm, interesting segue there, Mom,” the change in mood can be extreme.  You think it is a jump from Weird Al to Josh Groban, or even worse, from “Time Warp” to “Streets of Philadelphia” ? On “Occupationally Speaking,” I had a segue from “Prince of Darkness” by the Indigo Girls to “Dentist!” from Little Shop of Horrors.  The emotional transition was severe enough I usually would skip one song or the other, depending upon what mood I was in that day. 

I’ll eat when I get hungry and I’ll drink when I get dry; Get drunk whenever I’m ready, get sober by and by, Great Big Sea, “River Driver”

I’m not sure what the answer is to this, or even if I need an answer to this.  If nothing else, I could turn my iTunes over to the Not-So-Little-Drummer-Boy, who is very good at  mixing music, and once he stopped laughing, let him create my mixes. 

Is it too much to demand, I want a full house and a rock-and-roll band?  Pens that don’t run out of ink, cool quiet and time to think? Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Passionate Kisses”

I’m having a hard time ending this post.  Most posts have a theme which holds them together.  This one doesn’t.  Other than if you see me tooling down the street, singing, and my mood seems to shift, it’s not that I’m crazy, just that alphabetical imperative and its resulting change of song have hit hard.

Last Christmas, the Not-So-Little-Drummer Boy was home from college for Christmas.  We were talking about his classes, especially a class in Afro-Caribbean music.    “I can never listen to Jimmy Buffett again,” he declared.  “He just appropriated everything from Caribbean cultures.”  I agreed at the time, but now, I’m pretty sure he’s wrong.

I love Jimmy Buffett.  I am the first to admit he is not the best songwriter or singer in the world.  Some of his lyrics grate painfully.  His voice, although animated and amusing, is average.

But he resonates, in large part because I understand the world which he is coming from.

Yes, there are some songs that clearly and unabashedly rip off Caribbean rhythms and nuances: “Volcano” and “Great Heart” (from Hot Water), come to mind, as does “One Particular Harbor.”   But most of his music doesn’t.  First of all, most of it is straight ahead pop-rock.  (Closer to country, really: his duet with Alan Jackson on “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere” is really very similar to most of his other music.)  Unless you want to define the addition of steel drums to a rock song as being culturally appropriative, or referring to pot as “ganja” as being disrespectful of Jamaicans, or the references to tropical subject matter objectionable, the argument doesn’t hold up.  (By the way, I have heard pot referred to as “ganja” since before I heard Jimmy Buffett.  I have also heard of it referred to as “square grouper,” but that’s another story.)  Yes, you can pick and choose to find songs he’s done which seem more objectionable than others, but to toss out a man’s entire oeuvre because of a few songs seems overkill.

Coastal Florida is a melting pot of cultures.  (I have recently thought of it as being a cross between Southern California and Georgia, with Caribbean influences thrown in.)  It has its own rhythms, its own feel.  Jimmy Buffett has captured some of that: the seniors at my high school had lyrics from “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” painted near the lockers for a reason. His music does not sound strange or foreign to me; it sounds like home.

Buffett is not Paul Simon going to  South Africa for Graceland.  He is not walking into a culture he has never experienced and lifting music wholesale from a world he has no stake in. Buffett has been part of the South Florida landscape since the seventies. You think Florida has no tropical or Caribbean overtones? You have clearly never been to Key West. Or Miami.  Or even Tampa. And it always looks south for its inspiration.

Actually, I think a more interesting discussion would be the extent to which Buffett has possibly appropriated Cajun culture for songs such as “I Will Play for Gumbo.” 

Rock music has always taken from many cultures.  If Jimmy Buffett allegedly appropriating Caribbean music is objectionable, what does that say about the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin channeling black American bluesmen? Or the myriad white performers who have written or performed reggae songs? Why is one acceptable and the other not?

For that matter, why does music differ from food in this regard?  Bobby Flay, born in Brooklyn, is a master of Southwestern cuisine. Nobody bats an eye. Which is, perhaps, the way it should be: the world is a varied place, and incorporating what we find to make new and interesting things does not strike me in and of itself as being bad.*

*That said, I think it is true that there is far too little understanding or awareness of Caribbean music in general (especially if you remove reggae from the mix), but I chalk that up more to typical American myopia than to being Jimmy Buffet’s fault.

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T. S. Eliot

I was looking at my hands lately.  They are not particularly interesting hands, neither large nor small. They have a small scars on them, cuts and burns, the evidence of clumsiness with knives and toaster ovens.  There is a spider-web shaped one on my left hand, but where it came from I don’t know; the large red scar on my right, the result of trying to fit a 25 lb turkey in an oven more fitting for a 15 lb bird and getting my hand pinned to the side for my efforts, is mostly faded into nonexistence.

They have done a lot of things, these hands.

They have cast fishing line with my father  and skipped stones with my sons.

They have held crying babies, and changed countless diapers. They have stroked hair and held hands and wiped away tears. They have tied baby shoes and baseball cleats and figure skates.

They have opened books, for myself, for my children, for other people’s children. They have patted the bunny.

They have signed countless papers: checks and mortgages and student loans and time sheets and IEPs, with a signature that with each passing year gets slightly more expansive, more defiantly extravagant.

They have written thousands of words, letters (far too few) and papers and, on a few occasions, diary entries.  They have, under pressure, scrambled to complete finals and the Bar exam, stopping only so I could try to rub away the cramping.

They have flown over keyboards, racing to keep pace with the information from my eyes.  They have sat, frozen, on the keys as my brain struggled to produce the right words.

They have dug in the dirt and planted; they have pruned and watered.  Ten years ago — long enough that I cannot remember how to do it — they wired light switches and cable jacks.  They have painted walls.

They have touched the stone walls of castles in Scotland, and held a baby sea turtle in Georgia.

They have created: baby blankets and bracelets.  They have drawn and painted. They have made Halloween costumes and Advent wreaths; and helped other hands make collages of buttons and a model of the Santa Barbara mission in Styrofoam and salt clay.  They can wield a knitting needle (not very well), wire cutters, and a charcoal pencil.  They have cooked: Thanksgiving dinners, Easter hams, a chocolate cake for a friend’s ordination.  Brownies for coworkers, key lime pie for friends.

T. S. Eliot notwithstanding, they have not, as of yet, murdered.

What of your hands?  What do they say about you?

Are they slender and delicate?  Broad and strong? Are the nails cut neatly, or bitten ragged, or painted in wild colors? Do the fingers taper neatly? Or are they blunt and thick? Are they sure-fingered and nimble, or are they sometimes clumsy? Are they smooth and soft, or covered in scars and callouses?

What have they done? Where have they gone? Have they rappelled up a mountain, or photographed a polar bear?  Played a piano or a guitar? Made sand castles or snowballs? Held a bat, thrown a ball, reached for a finish line? Helped those who had fallen?  Given a pat on the back in appreciation or rested on a shoulder in encouragement? Stroked a lover’s cheek or a child’s head?

Have they built a house? A dream? A life? A world?

I love you man.  I think you’ve gotten a bit too strident over the past five years or so, but then doing what you do every night, having to face what’s going on in this country, would make anyone foam at the mouth a bit. Still, I agree with you on most things.

But…

Your employer had a policy.  Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter.  Fair or not, it doesn’t matter.  Whether other alleged “news” organizations were doing other things, it doesn’t matter. 

Your employer had a policy, of which you were presumably aware, and you chose to flout that policy.

Of course they were going to suspend you.  I would have too, even if I were sympathetic to the causes to which you donated, which I am.

Sorry, but you had this one coming.

I decided not to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) after all, my extensive research *cough* drive down to San Simeon *cough* notwithstanding.  I really need to spend the time job hunting, and besides, further contemplation convinced me that it would not be possible to write this novel at all convincingly — or even at all, really — unless I did extensive research that involved driving from the Bay Area to Ocean City, Maryland by way of Chicago. (Don’t ask.)

I may someday, however,  “So don’t ask where I’m going / just listen when I’m gone / And far away you’ll hear me singing / Softly to the dawn…”*

It’s just as well that I didn’t do NaNoWriMo — I have no laptop.  I am sitting uncomfortably writing at the desktop Mac we have on our counter, which requires me to perch uncomfortably on a bar stool to reach the required height.  (The kids do just fine with this which is why it hasn’t  been moved somewhere lower.)

 This is also why I have not written anything here in several days — freaking laptop computer won’t boot off  of anything.  And while it is possible to post short FaceBook updates standing up, standing is not conducive to composing longer pieces, especially anything that requires a) thought or b) revisions. I have a piece I am dying to write about Jimmy Buffett and cultural appropriation but which is going to have to wait until I have a more comfortable computing environment.  Retrieving my resume is going to be a joy all its own.  Sheesh.

Speaking of this blog, I was retrieving my email in a very silly mood this morning, when I got an email offer from Vistaprint for 250 “premium business cards” for $1.99.  Now, I already am awash in business cards:  I have my personal ones which I am supposed to use for networking (hah!) but which are not terribly business-like (pretty, and reflecting my own aesthetic sensibilities, but too colorful to be business like), I have ones from two years ago when I was actually making jewelry enough to sell (pmgDesigns) and some my husband made for me years ago, when I complained that all those contests for free breakfasts in restaurants required you to drop in a business card and I didn’t have any.  He put the url of this blog on them, but also put an email address I now normally only use for business email, and not the one associated with the blog.

So… I bought business cards, with a picture of windmills on them, “Wild Winds of Fortune,” the url, and our unofficial slogan: “Tilting at Windmills Since 2006.” I also bought a single pen (free!) and a cap (free!) with the design, blog name, slogan, and url. It was a moment of insanity, but a cheap one — less than ten dollars including shipping.  What I am going to do with blog cards rather escapes me just at the moment.  Anybody want some?  I’ll let you know when they come in.  The hat and the pen, however, I am excited about.

My housemate claims that this is simply a way of me affirming my commitment to writing here.  Nah, I just wanted to have cool looking cards. And a way cool cap.

As I said, I will be posting from odd places,** so don’t expect a lot until I get a new laptop or at least a desktop with a chair I can feel comfortable in.  I’ll check in when I can.

*”Corner of the Sky” from Pippin
**As opposed to my normal posting places: Starbucks, Red Rock Cafe, the public library…

Cornflower blue.
Lapis lazuli.
The Hermitage.
George Gershwin.
Aaron Copeland.
“Rhapsody in Blue.”
“Take Five.”
“Appalachian Spring.”
“The Kitchen Maid.”
“A View of Toledo.”
Tapas.
Madrid.
“Guernica.”
London.
Harry Potter.
The British Museum.
Stonehenge.
The Musee d’Orsay.
Big Sur.
The ocean — any ocean.
Great Big Sea.
“Walk on the Moon” and “Helmethead.”
Jimmy Buffet.
Key West.
St. Croix.
Really good rum.
Really good Riojas.
Paul Simon.
Rent.
Boston.
“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Less Traveled.”
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond all experience.”
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Dogma.
Stardust. 
Criminal Minds.
Master and Commander.
Pride & Prejudice.(The book, and the BBC miniseries.)
Romance.
Sex.
Love.
Chocolate.
Writing.
Good people.

I am not sure, but I wonder how rare it is to be able to identify a single book — no, a single chapter — as being formative in developing what one believes about the world.  I have heard libertarians talk about Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in that vein, and I have also heard some people talk about the works of Robert Heinlein like that, especially Stranger in a Strange Land, but outside these few, I think most people’s influences are not so neatly identified.

For me, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was that book.  It is  not the best writing Steinbeck ever did (that honor goes to Of Mice and Men) — it is too polemical, too pat in some ways. But I found it, correction, I still find it moving and influential.

For those not familiar with the book it can seem somewhat long and daunting.  (I notice a distressing trend in my kid’s high schools to read relatively short books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird.  Not that To Kill a Mockingbird is not influential and important in its own right: my youngest is talking about it being a major influence on how he thinks.)  It tells two narratives: the tale of the Joads, a family misplaced from their Oklahoma roots, and the story of what happened to all of the migrant workers who came to California during the Depression.

It helps a little to understand the context with which I approached the book.  I was a teenage Roman Catholic at the time.  While in political terms these days Catholicism is know primarily for its opposition to abortion and gay rights, it had at that time a deep commitment to social justice, and to teaching care of others.  (I happen to think this very Christian of them, and wish some fundamentalist churches would do likewise.) By coincidence, shortly before reading The Grapes of Wrath, my church youth group had visited a migrant labor camp with gifts of clothing for the workers.  I had seen what their lives were like, and was appalled and angry.

It was in this frame of mind that I began reading the novel. The lives it described meshed with those I had seen of the workers in the migrant camp.  It resonated.

And then I hit the twenty-fifth chapter. It was a denunciation of the profit system, of the way economic disaster destroys everyone in its wake. Of how property is more important than people’s lives. Steinbeck was, no doubt, a socialist, and it shows through every sentence in this chapter.

One would think that the farmers would be the villains in this scenario, but they are not.  They are caught up in the trap as much as the workers: the prices they are offered for the fruit is so low that they cannot afford to pick it:

The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vats is poisoning the air. And taste the wine—no grape flavor at all,  just sulfur and tannic acid and alcohol.

This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have
choked the owner.

And the result of this systemic failure is tragic:

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

I have lived a great deal since I first read this book.  Going to law school has taught me that there are many answers to the question of hunger and despair, not all of which I agree or believe will work or will result in any change.  It taught me that there are no right answers, and most of the time we are groping in the dark for solutions.

Law school taught me that we have a difficult time with the answers; The Grapes of Wrath showed me how important it is to ask the questions.

A few posts ago, I wrote about the subversive nature of Dr. Seuss.  I mentioned that I felt it had shaped my children’s view of the world for the better.  But what of me? What books did I read?

In my earlier reading days, there were the Little House books.  Like the Harry Potter series, these books start out simple with Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie and get more complicated and dark: The Long Winter and These Happy Golden Years.  The Long Winter presents a stark picture of just how dangerous life on the edge of civilization can be, and even in These Happy Golden Years the heroine boards in a household where the adults are clearly dysfunctional.  The messages all these books carry is that life is hard, often unfair (how fair was it that Mary became blind?), but in the end rewarding. and that the most important thing is taking care of each other.

There was From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the best book I know of about adventure and caring deeply about something.  And art.  I would not go as far as to say that my love of art was created by this book, but a desire to run away and live in a museum was.  I have yet to fulfill that ambition.

I read every book about horses I could read.  I adored the Walter Farley Black Stallion books. I still love horses.  (You guys need to watch the Breeder’s Cup this year; it will probably be the fabulous Zenyatta’s last race.)

There was every book written by Louisa May Alcott.  There is a tendency I think to sometimes view these as reinforcing gender stereotypes, which to some extent they do, but they also create interesting, fully-dimensional, strong female characters who are not victims of their circumstances (Beth in Little Women notwithstanding).

There were the fantasies: Tolkien, with his messages about how the most insignificant seeming can be the most important; Lewis’s Narnia, with its Christian allegories about the nobility of sacrifice and responsibility (it is from Narnia that I developed the notion of only telling one’s own story); Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, which was  my favorite, with its stories of how the search for meaning takes you far and wide until, inevitably, you end up finding meaning in yourself and your actions.

I read mysteries — Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen — which, besides the wonderful exercise of a good puzzle, also gave the misleading impression that all problems can be solved if you think hard enough.  The resolution might be painful, even tragic, but there is always a resolution. 

When I got to high school, I read  a lot of classic and modern literature. I went on a bender where I read every single Eugene O’Neill play.  I read Catcher in the Rye.  (Holden Caulfield is the single most annoying character in all literature, followed closely by Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.)   Shakespeare, Bronte (both Emily and Charlotte), Kozinski, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Huxley.  An amazing amount of poetry: Frost, Dickinson (whom I did not care for), Browning (both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett), Eliot, to name just a very few.

Somehow, through all of that, I developed a political and aesthetic personality: progressive, poetic (even if my own actual attempts at poetry are pretty pathetic) and deeply committed to the idea of justice and care for human beings and suspicious of society’s attempts to control them (thank you, Aldous Huxley!).  (I was never exposed to Ayn Rand, or I might have turned out very differently.)

All of these were important to me, but the most important, I think, deserves its own post.

…. is for Farm Rich snacks.

The video shows various shots of kids of various ages doing the sort of things kids do — including a toddler throwing a watch in the toilet.  The voice-over says “When they were babies, my kids were so sweet, I wanted to eat them up.  Some days, I wish I had.”

A perfect summation of motherhood.