New Rule #1,284 (aka The "There is no crying in baseball" Rule)

After The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver made me tear up on the subway yesterday afternoon while on my way to a (useless) meeting, I hereby institute the following rule for myself:

I will not read anything other than:

A) magazines;
B) thrillers (like Bangkok 8);
C) amusing capers (anything by Carl Hiaasen, although his last book reeked worse than a body decomposing on a 105 degree day in the Everglades);
D) satires; and/or
E) politically witty tomes (like Sarah Vowell or Beth Lisick) if:

1) I slept less than 6 hours the previous night;
2) I have not seen Husband in more than 24 hours; and/or
3) I am using some mode of public transportation, such as a subway or airplane.

This rule shall be invoked to prevent embarrassing episodes of me bawling (in public) because I am emotionally overwrought, and the book that I am reading (or the movie I am viewing) took a dramatic turn that breaks my over-feeling heart. Yes, yes. I am all about pretending to be stone cold, what with all my ranting "mothering this" or "cunt-face ass-eater that," but it is all a facade. The reality is that underneath my mean, mocking, hard exterior, I am the biggest fucking softie on the planet. These devastating books and movies (for example, the love story between Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) fucking impact me. I'm a wreck for hours after a book/movie gives me a truly earned sob (not like those manipulative pap movies - The Other Sisiter, anyone? - that Steph so dearly loves but bring "a fucking tear to my eye").

So this new rule is for the good of my mental state, as well as my public image. And don't you fucking forget it, motherfucker. Now I'm off to the Kleenex box and/or Husband's t-shirt to wipe my nose.

RIP Benazir Bhutto

I turned the laptop on this morning to complain that my foot still hurts and that I also seem to have been eaten alive by some nasty bugs (my legs and arms have itchy red welts all over them, which began appearing on Christmas day and I am hoping are not from bedbugs...), but then I found out that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The first female leader of a Muslim nation, she continued to have thousands of supporters although she was dogged by corruption scandals and power-hungry. Some of this is no doubt due to the popularity of her father, but I was always fascinated by her. She seemed to break down barriers. I only hope that this sad event leads to something positive outcome - more democracy or increased women's rights - somewhere in the world.

Prosecute the Prosecutors

Back in the dark days of the late '80s, when greed was good and Bush continued Reagan's work of systemically dismantling governmental mechanisms put in place to ensure at least a small measure of fairness and equity for all living in the US,* L.A. Law ruled the airways. I was in junior high, struggling with the bullshit of adolescence and developing a moral radar for political and religious hypocrisy. L.A. Law highlighted all these issues. I was hooked.

Mostly I loved Susan Dey's character. She was a prosecutor who worked to protect women and communities from evil criminals who preyed on them. Although she didn't make nearly as much money as the vile divorce attorney Arnie, she was doing good for the world. I decided that this was exactly the job for me.

More than a decade later, I dropped out of law school on my third day. While I still wanted to help people, particularly those living in low income communities, I learned that there were many ways to do this that did not involve the torture of law school's Socratic method. It also came to my attention that the mentality of many district attorneys was far less noble than L.A. Law led me to believe. Time after time, evidence would appear that indicated that a defendant was innocent. The Cult of the Prosecutor, however, refused to acknowledge that they might have the wrong person. Instead of trying to serve justice, they stubbornly insisted on continuing cases. Even after DNA evidence exonerated those wrongfully convicted, the Cult insisted that the person did the crime.** Nope, I wasn't cut out for the District Attorney's office.

All this ran through my mind this morning as I read a story in today's New York Times about a woman released from prison after serving 13 years of a sentence for killing her teenage daughter. DNA evidence revealed that her boyfriend's blood was mixed in with the victim's body. Of course, the DA's office doesn't apologize for her conviction, partly derived from her boyfriend's testimony against her, which they secured by granting him immunity from the crime. No, instead, the DA is planning to retry her on a charge of second-degree manslaughter. Even better, even if she is convicted of the lesser charge, she won't return to prison because she already served the maximum sentence that charge carries. No, there's absolutely nothing wasteful about a second trial. Really, a second trial would not just be about vindictiveness. It's about justice. For who, I don't know. It sure is way too late for the poor kid, who was neglected at times by her mother, abused by her stepfather, and then killed by someone who is immune to prosecution for her murder.

*The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sigh.
**This is why shows like Law & Order are my favorite forms of escapist entertainment. The cops and ADAs always drop charges against people who are innocent so that they may find the real perpetrators and justice can be served. If only real life were like TV in these cases...

Has Anybody Seen My Bra?

While dressing this afternoon, I realized that the bra I wanted to wear under my Red Stapler t-shirt was not in my undies drawer. As I dug through piles of cheap cotton underwear, other bras, and ratty slips, it occurred to me that I haven't seen the particular bra in some time. Was it lost in the laundry? Did I leave it somewhere when I went on a trip? When the hell was the last time I wore that thing?

Since I doubt putting a picture on the back of a milk carton (Have you seen me? 34 B beige bra with little bows on it. Missing since sometime in 2007. If found, contact the Center for Misplaced and Runaway Lingerie) will lead to my bra's discovery, I am going to have to replace it. Unfortunately, it seems that the price has increased dramatically since I bought it two years ago. Harumph.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

The worst part of the devastating effects of the Bush administration on this nation may just be how much more cynical many people like me have become. It's not that I wasn't cynical to begin with, but it's gotten to the point where even a natural disaster makes me roll my eyes and heave sighs. I read about how efficient FEMA has been in providing aid to evacuees in San Diego County - which is great; no one should have to suffer like the people in New Orleans did - and instead of thinking how glad I am that FEMA got its shit together, I sigh because I am sure that FEMA got its shit together because San Diego County is 66% white and about 80% Republican. Oh, and nearly a quarter of people who live there have household incomes of more than $100,000 per year.

Again, this is not to say that upper middle class white Republicans should not be helped in disasters, although I actually do sort of think that people who voted for Bush should be forced to live in the same horrific conditions that the administration wrought on New Orleans residents, 67% of whom are black and 54% of whom have household incomes of less than $30,000 per year. (I don't know what percent are Democrats, but I think it's safe enough to assume that it is a number proportional to the percent of Republicans in San Diego County.) Years ago, I would have just hoped that everyone who lived through a tragedy would get the help they need and I would be proud that our government was serving them. These days, I just wonder if the fires where in Compton or South Central if FEMA would have managed to get 25,000 cots delivered to the local stadium safe haven on time. I suspect not.

Some day, I may be able to get over the polarized, punitive political environment that Republicans have worked so hard to craft since their "revolution" in the 1990s. Until then, I will be suspicious when good things happen to wealthy white Republican areas, and worse, a small part of me will wish that they didn't get help in times of need since they are only too happy to deny the same courtesy to others. (Is it wrong for me to hope that the random fires only consume the homes of Republicans? They are most likely to get the best recovery assistance, right?) Very sad comment on the current state of affairs in our nation.

Hocking Some Family Jewels

Call me Scarlet O'Hara. In less than two hours, I will be pawning a family "jewel."



This 1950s or '60s Baume & Mercier watch has a sad story behind it that of course turns somewhat ridiculous when in my hands. Basically, my grandfather was born in Warsaw and fled to Russia when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. My bubbe evacuated Minsk when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Both wound up in the Ural Mountains. They got married, and my dad was born in Magnitgorsk after the war. When he was less than a month old, the family left Russia to find my grandfather's family. No one was alive, Jews were killed on a regular basis in Poland, and so they joined the tide of other refugees and lived in displaced persons camps for five years until they came to the US.

While living in the DP camps, my grandparents befriended another couple, Norm and Helen. With no blood relatives, they became family to each other. Norm and Helen eventually relocated to South Haven, MI where they owned an orchard. Happily, my family wound up not far away in Chicago, and my dad spent many happy summers in the fresh air with Norm and Helen. Fast forward 50 or so years, in preparation for her own death, Helen began giving her jewelry to my bubbe, including this watch. To me, this is horribly morbid, but apparently a common Jewish practice.

Once my bubbe has the watch, she becomes obsessed with giving it to me. Except that it is not my style and I don't particularly want it, so I repeatedly refuse it. When Bubbe semi-accepts that I am not going to ever wear the watch, she decides that I need to hock it. I take it to some estate jewelry buyers in both Chicago and New York. All say the same thing: I'm not the only person who thinks the style is dated, and they can't sell such an item. It is worth only the gold from which it is made. The best offer I get is $200.

Bubbe, however, is convinced that it is a priceless object d'arte and is very displeased with what I report.

"Don't let them cheat you!" she intones in her Eastern European accent.

Dutifully, I continue schlepping it to different jewelers until I accidentally overwind the watch and break it. Since the value of the watch is in the gold and not the time-telling, this appears to have no effect on its value, but I use it as an excuse to stop my aimless wanderings, although I consider selling it and lying about the price. The watch thus sits on my nightstand for another few years.

In the past few weeks, I see a number of ads for an estate jewelry buyer in New York City. On Sunday, I decide to email them and see if they are interested in the watch. Yesterday afternoon an extremely chipper woman calls me and asks me to bring it in. I call my sister and tell her whatever I get for the watch, I'll share with her 50-50, and she tells me to just sell it already. I decide that I am going to give my portion to charity. Originally, I thought Planned Parenthood, but Husband suggests that I select a Jewish organization, which makes sense.

At the end of the day, no matter what the watch sells for, it will never undo the loneliness and torment suffered by Norm and Helen as they rebuilt their shattered lives in America, and celebrated their success with a gold Baume & Mercier watch. Reflecting on this saga on Sept. 11 and the day before Rosh Hashanah 5768, it is obvious that they already paid the highest price.

In the Dark

Every Wednesday night around 8:30, I call my parents. A set time ensures that we check in with one another despite busy schedules, and is a tradition turns 13 on August 28, when I moved to New York for college, although the day and time has changed many times over the years. Of course, if something important comes up between our time to talk, we just call each other. I assumed that included natural disasters.

Turns out that there was a huge storm that hit the Chicago area on Thursday night. My parents assumed that the devastation would make the national news and that I would see it, so they didn't bother calling me and were slightly surprised when I didn't call them to see how they were. However, I don't watch TV news so I had no idea what was going on or if it even made the news here in New York at all. I did notice an article in Friday's New York Times about flooding in the Midwest, but a quick skim of the information revealed only flooding in Ohio and Indiana, so I moved on.

On Thursday, I tried calling my friend Rachel to wish her a happy birthday, and found it odd that a recorded message saying that all circuits were busy came on. When I tired her again yesterday, the phone was still out, so I rang her cellphone. She was in the process of digging out her flooded basement and still had no electricity. I decided to call my folks. The phone was also out, so I worriedly called my dad's cellphone. They were out at their monthly Couple's Club event, but cheerfully informed me that their power was still out and the basement filled with 12-15 inches of water and mud.

They are fine, but I don't think I've felt more useless or father away since I moved here.

Still Not Sunny

As far as I can tell from my small dining room window that looks into a courtyard and has a small slice of sky available for analyzing, it is not sunny today. (My dining room window has almost the only vantage point for weather analytics, as my street-facing bedroom and living room windows are shrouded under scaffolding that's been up for at least a year already, and my kitchen window looks mostly into the building across the courtyard. It's a good thing that my childhood was spent living in darkness - Husband freaks out at the lack of good natural and artificial lighting whenever we visit my parents - preparing me for City life.) I wanted it to be sunny today so that I could really enjoy my visit to the UN Sculpture Garden, where a bull elephant statue with a 2 foot long penis resides.

Also not improving my mood was the research I just did for an article about single women, subprime lending, and mortgage foreclosures that I posted on BlogHer. It should be obvious that women are going to get especially fucked up the ass by the mortgage default crisis, but I haven't seen much about it. However, there is ample evidence that single women, along with non-white and low income people, were railroaded into subprime loans. Yeah, you can buy your dream in America, but it's temporary and will cost you everything in the long run. Bah.

I need to eat ice cream and/or cookies today.

New York Steamroller

Does anyone else suspect that the Bush administration hoped that they could claim that yesterday's steam pipe explosion in my beloved city was an act of terrorism?

Just curious.

Laziness Pays

New York City is enveloped in sauna steam. Everywhere I go, I must use my mental machete to cut paths through the heavy air. Buckets of sweat ooze from me. If anyone had the urge to interview me for a news program, I would certainly not agree to do it outside. Even if I didn't wear sunglasses, my sweatiness would make me look guilty.

Tuesday night I sat around my apartment reminding myself that I should shave my legs and pits so that I could wear a cute navy sleeveless dress with beige stitching to my big meeting at work in the morning. Hours later, I still had not touched either my razor or my electric depilatory machine thing that removes hair with dozens of rotating tweezers that supposedly yank hairs out by the root so I needn't bother with shaving again for weeks, but it never lasts longer than a few days. Pants and a blouse were thus donned Wednesday morning.

My laziness wound up to be beneficial, as a few minutes into the meeting, a woman wearing the exact dress I had planned to wear waltzed into the room. I breathed a sigh of relief. How awful would it have been if there were two of us in the same dress?!?! You know how women are; the whole meeting would have bombed, and thousands New York City's children would continue to be deprived of quality child care. Ha.

At the end of the successful session, I approached my middle-aged wardrobe twin.

"My laziness prevented us from an awkward situation," I began and told my tale.

She laughed. "Well, there aren't too many options for us petite women out there. I have a colleague who has all the clothes I do. When I know we have a meeting, I make sure I don't wear anything from Ann Taylor."

Now I know that we will pull off the new child care system. People with such extensive planning skills can achieve anything.

Tired Dogs, Horns, and a Husband for Dr. P

Foot massages never appealed to me. I hate feet in general, so I recoil at the thought of subjecting a stranger to my tootsies. My opinion on foot massages changed around 2 pm. At this point, my feet hurt so bad from walking every day for hours and hours that all I could think about was how nice to would be to have my feet rubbed. And then I walked around for another 5 hours. (Incidentally, when I travel with others, I don't subject them to this insanity.)

The day began with a visit to a church that has a statue of Moses carved by Michelangelo.Isn't his dedication to anatomical correctness in the face of policital correctness inspiring? I mean, I've seen another Moses that he sculpted, and Michelangelo always captures his Jewish horns so perfectly. It seems that since Moses was thrown into a basket and sent down the river to save his life, his parents didn't have time to do the ritual horn removal that all Jewish boys undergo when they are also circumsized. (Might as well take everything off while the baby is wasted, right?) Girls have ours chopped off or filed down at birth since we don't get any other infant surgeries. My parents have the cutest picture of me right after I was born with my little Jew horns sticking out through a tiny shock of hair. I should post it some time. (Sigh.)

Anyway, it wound up being a day of Jewishness for me, although first I stopped off at a very cool 12th century church built on a 4th century church built on a 1st century structure used by a cult. The layers are excavated and you can go through them. While I was wandering around, I somehow wound up tailing a high school group from Texas, which was great because I learned a lot from their teacher.

My next stop was the synagogue and Jewish Museum, although on the way I stopped at another church, which surprised me by having the relics of St. Valentine. My photo will make the greatest Valentine's Day post ever, assuming I don't forget that I have it. I learned about the sad history of the Jews (is there any other kind of history when it involves Jews?) in Rome. The first Jewish community documented settled in 160 BC and evolved into a special Italian Judaism similar to Sephardic Jews, but with its own culture and traditions. I won't bore/depress you with all the ups and downs of Roman Jewish life over 1,850 years, but I was psyched to see that a tour of the Jewish Ghetto (1555-1870) was offered in the evening.

Only two other people signed up for the tour, a Jewish couple from Ft. Lauderdale. When I mentioned that I would be in their 'hood next week helping my friend Dr. P move to start a fellowship down there, the woman was excited.

"Is she married?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

"Oh, my son is a doctor. I'd love to introduce them!"

I nearly fell down laughing. Dr. P may not be as amused.