Talking back to newspaper clippings

On July 30, 2012 I plan to register for a post-graduate English course in memoir writing and other creative non-fiction  offered online at ucla.

But here are some other non-fiction matters on my mind:

Dear Abby’s column from a few days ago, “Having a cancer-stricken son excuses e-mailed thank-yous."

I continue to marvel that so many people think that writing thank you notes is a question of expectations and etiquette.  Jeanne Phillips (Dear Abby) says herself “wWriting personal thank-you notes (is )the proper thing to do.”  Only one person showed an understanding that it goes way beyond propriety.  This is what he wrote:

Handwrite those notes.  Make them brief.  Flollowing my wife’s death two years ago, I hadnwrote about 400 thank-yous to those who had sent cards and flowers or made donations.  It was cathatic for me, and it recognized the efforts of those who contributed.

I remember years ago reading about a young college graduate who confided in a friend that he was terribly depressed and didn’t feel like doing anything.  She advised him to start writing thank you notes for his graduation presents, and he thought she was incredibly insensitive.  But he did it, and it worked! 

I remember how much it helped me after the death of my sister Missy.  Yet, some people obviously thought I was doing it out of a sense of duty and expressed their alarm.  It was only later that I found out that it was considered “correct etiquette.”  I certainly wasn’t doing it for that reason! 

The Chronicle wrote a really crazy anti-Mirkarimi editorial “It’s about the sheriff” on July 13, 2012, and here’s a really good response:

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/letterstoeditor/article/Letters-to-the-editor-June-17-3711417.php

According to Marisa Lago’s Capitol Notebook (July 21, 2012) Chinese merchants and leaders in the Bay Area (Chinatown Neighborhood Association and Asian Americans for Political Advancement) this week have a nnounced a federal lawsuit agins the law banning the importation and selling of shark fins.  I had been so impressed when my students—including the Chinese ones—were aware of the reason behind the ban—that it was depleting the number of sharks in the ocean so that the food chain was out-of-whack--and putting back the sharks, who couldn’t survive without their fins.  I’d apologized for the original words in Grant Avenue from even the new David Henry Hwang version of Flower Drum Song  had these lyrics:

You can eat if you are in the mood.

Shark fin soup, bean cake fish.

We changed  those lyrics: 

                You can eat if you are in the mood,

                NOT shark fin soup, but bean cake fish. 

 

They understood.  Ho can the SF Chinese cry “racism” whenin China itself they’re banning shark fin soup at official banquets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/world/asia/china-says-no-more-shark-fin-soup-at-state-banquets.html?_r=1

It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to people who’ve made  a living selling sharp fin soup—or foie gras.  But Just as with tobacco, we’ve got to acknowledge what’s harmful and teach other trades. 

https://apps.wwf.org.hk/eng/noshark_ind.php

And on the subject of Planet Earth, Here’s the latest from Earthweek:  A Diary of the Planet for Friday, July 13, 2012

The Arctic melt has a new record.

Bird parents and their babies can no longer communicate because of being drowned out by the noise of modern citis, and this has lead to “an alarming decline” in the numberof sparrows.  There’s been a historic drought in the US—the worst since 1956.

According to Don Asmussen, CNN says that Romney’s offshore moey is hidden in the Grat Pacific garbage Patch.  He also says that as cars burst into flames “FLOR C. WARNS CUSTOMER TO ESCAPE ESCAPES/  CEO:  ‘Just jump out now.”

Considering the environment, I should be glad,  I guess, that electronic books now have surpassed print ones in sales: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/technology/20kindle.html?pagewanted=print

But I’m not!

Frustrations with iPad and iPhone

At the moment, computer-saavy Geary is with me and baffled by the fact that my e-mail has disappeared form my inbox not on my computer but on my iPad and iPhone.  The first strange thing was that when I clicked on a link Jerry Nachman sent me for the Washington Times, it said"Oops, we can't seem to locate the page you were looking for."  But when I clicked on the link from my computer, my browser could locate it and read it!  Why this difference?  Then everything disappeared from both my iPad and my iPhone inbox.

Karen's Reading with Bill Hopes Fulfilled

I used to think that things never work out as we hope they will, but in the case of Karen's reading with Bill, it was a dream come true.  More later~

When a Mission Becomes High Priority

           

            Just when I was feeling irreconcilably hurt by a friend’s priorities (which didn’t include reading one of my few published short stories or accepting an invitation I’d extended or responding to the texted birthday greeting “Happy Birthday!  Am in Atlanta.  Aunt died.”), she surprised me by putting something else high on her list:  A visit to check on two elderly relatives who live in Tacoma Washington—relatives I love but worriy about whenever they, great communicators, don’t communicate.  I had mentioned this mission earlier, but it was only this morning that I wrote to another friend, the friend who was traveling with her and whom I still considered a friend.  To avoid continued clumsiness, the clumsiness brought on by adjective clauses, I’ll give these friends names:  Ella—the one who hadn’t hurt me irretrievably-- and Essa—the one who had. 

            Ella was the one I still considered a friend and a kind human being.  She had responded to my short story and even said nice things about it, and as anyone who writes knows, we are extrememly grateful when anyone is willing to read what we’ve written, and when they’re willing to say something nice about it, we are friends for life.    So this morning I wrote to Ella asking whether she could look up my relatives Bee and Emma  just in case she and Essa had the chance to stop by Tacoma, Washington on their way to Vancouver, where they were traveling together.   I gave Ella their address.  I didn’t have their telephone number, which I hoped to get if this mission could be carried out.  I didn’t get a response from Ella and figured that she wouldn’t even get my request until it was too late to make this house call, which probably needed more planning.

            Then, as I was planning a reading for a friend whose published stories are not as rare as mine, my cell phone rang, and it was Essa, saying that she and Ella were in the home of my beloved relatives, and she was about to put Bee, my mother’s 94-year-old cousin, on the line.   I got to talk to him and to his wife, Emma, who together write the best Christmas letter I get every year:  Two people facing old age and serious health problems who still express the joy they feel being connected to friends and families and give supporting details!  They are the people who best illustrate the adage about how happiness comes not from our circumstances, but from within. 

            My friends had carried out the mission, and the one putting my old cousins on the phone was the one from whom I’d decided nothing good could ever come again.   How quickly resentment melts away when priorities are re-appraised, and I very quickly reappraised hers!  Along with Ella, Emma had gotten the directions to my cousins’ home and found the way there to reassure me that they were all right and to get me the information I needed—phone numbers, their grandson’s contact information—to check on them in the future. 

            Carrying out a mission like that shows good priorities, the kind I’m reassured to find in a person who appears to be a friend after all!  Happiness may come from within, but circumstances sometimes nourish what lies within!

Stern Grove 2012

That was such a magical afternoon.  Since I'm too tired to describe it, I'll just quote a woman's comment:  "The most miracle happened was when the wind blow through the trees during the Orchestra played."

Foie Gras and Animal Cruelty Law

I guess anyone with my hair color should refrain from criticizing what's unnatural, but I hate force-feeding.  I hate torture in general.  The host of our View and Chew (Deguster, Visioner, et Parler) group send a couple of us a video on foie gras, something called Force-Fed to Death, which another person in our group--someone I adore--found "ridicule."  I still cant get sound on my online videos (though I can get sound on iTunes), so all I could do was watch, but that was more than enough.  Here's what I wrote:

Foie gras is gross, but there are even worst things that don’t get much attention, though that’s starting to change.  I’m glad there’s some “humane” way of doing the unnatural, as Jana has witnessed, but I suspect most foie gras procedures are like the one we see on this video, and that’s why—even though according to John Burton, Foie gras isn’t mentioned in the new law—restaurants that serve it are up in arms (as well as down in throats) about it:  They know that their method IS animal cruelty, and that’s what the law is all against.

                I became a vegetarian when I saw factory farming.  Until then I was very philosophical:  Everyone has to die.  Animals romped around happily until they landed on my plate.  But once I saw that there was no romping—not even the chance to turn around or turn their heads or suckle their young other than through iron sections of cages—I changed my philosophy.  The same year I became a vegetarian I became acquainted with a Beverly Hills woman whose husband had gotten rich through his meat business.  As we rode around in her chauffeured car (a first for me!) and lunched at her place at the Four Seasons Hotel, she said, “I know everything there is to know about how meat is processed, so I never eat it.” 

                Before I returned to Tonga in 2008, I thought I might eat pork because the pigs really do have a life before death.  They romp freely, cross roads, camp under discarded SUVs--the whole happy family together.  But once there, I simply found no need to eat meat.  There were plenty of other things to eat. 

                Oh, I just realized that I’m responding to the video Jana sent, not to the one you sent, Robert. 

                Now I’ve seen yours too.  The procedures look repellent in both.  But maybe what is said is pleasanter on the one Jana considers more balanced.

                Thank you both for your thoughts and for this forum.

And here’s the letter-to-the-editor from John Burton:  http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

I also sent the link for the pigs in Tonga: 

<https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+pigs+in+tonga&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=6rD8T8qaE4aTqQHz2ZWMCQ&ved=0CFYQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=864>

 

 

Priorities--Families always in a crisis

I have a strange sense of priorities, I know.  I come back from a trip and don't unpack.  I go straight to the computer and upload the photos and start writing about the experience before it occurs to me that I should let people know that "I've arrived safely."  In the case of Atlanta, I wrote a thank you note immediately.  That wasn't out of a sense of etiquette but a sense of urgency:  What I really felt like doing.

There's a new novel out, How Should a Person Live? and it reminds me of Virginia Woolf's question about One Thing that Matters.  How do we know?  We don't. The only thing we have to guide us on how to live and what matters (besides doctrines) is our instinct.  So I no longer fight my own sometimes absurd-seeming sense of urgency.  I do what I feel like doing.  In the case of my cousin Nancy and her husband George, I felt like thanking them because they had been heroically kind and accommodating.  They had helped all us cousins feel loved.

And that brings me to my own family and our sense of urgency.  We actually have a lot of emergencies, a lot of them pertaining to my brother, so many of the communications between my sister and me and my son are about David.  I was impressed by the priorities of my meque Javier who had waited for 5 hours (in my home, not at the airport) for my delayed flight and yet immediately agreed to go with me to Alameda to see David, who was in the hospital when I returned.  So after we'd slept a little, we dropped our afternoon plans and headed for David's bedside.  That filled me with love for Javier.  But it also worried me.  For years my mother and I had almost no time one-to-one except for our trips to Napa to see David.  Our phone calls were also about David.  We were the team to go see David, and I'm glad we were.  But I'm not glad that that constituted our relationship for so many years.  So I worry when I see that concerns and shared information about David constitute almost all the exchanges between my sister, Jonathan and me.  (This is not true of exchanges between Jonathan and me, fortunately, but I'll get to that later.)

Today, after several exchanges pertaining to David, I finally wrote to Suzy and David about our cousins in Atlanta and about a visit from a friend I've had since seventh grade.  But I wrote sort of asking permission.  Could I tell them about Atlanta?  I explained my hope that our shared communications be about more than taking care of David. 

I thought of my nephew who just got back from Kenya, where his medical school sent him.  I didn't even know he was there until my sister called me about another matter, the resurgence of a baby she hadn't seen since he was born.  I hope to see this nephew this week, and when I do, I'm glad I won't have to ask his help with anything.  I'll be able to ask him about HIS life and, maybe, share my life with him.

As for my son Jonathan, we have that built-in Jo-Mama Book Club that meets once a month and we do talk about other things in between.  But if I ever call him (I hate the telephone), it's about some airlines reservation I need to make or a computer glitch.  He interjected into a three-way-e-message that he was on his way to Montreal.  When I responded to the David-care part of the Suzy-Jonathan-Tina exchange, I also responded to the trip to Montreal, but when I called him about the volume being off for all online soundtracks on my computer, he became my kind, smart tech help.  It was only hours later that I remembered his trip to Montreal and asked him--in an e-mail--about it. 

I know that Suzy has ongoing needs with her new house.  But I wonder how much attention our nephew got to HIS life when he visited her.  Maybe they really did talk about him and his trip to Kenya, him and his newly-found half-brother.  But all I know is that they took a trip to Home Depot for her house and visited David together. 

Our family always seems to be in a crisis.  Today my urgent calling was to respond to Jonathan's e-description of his trip to Monterey and to tell him and Suzy about our cousins in Atlanta, so I did. 

What I Come Across

Actually, this is also a morning of reflection on how I come across (as opposed to how I feel) as well as what I come across, but let's start with the what. 

Yesterday, I thought Karen and Bill, here preparing for a reading Karen will give on July 14, might want to use the computer, so I took all the piles of stuff from the study to the bedroom, where Javier will be tonight.  So now I'm going through piles in the bedroom.  I just wrote to Jonathan:

  I’m going through piles of stuff and came across an album I made of your art pre-school—I guess while you were at Kids’ Corner.  It was obviously after our move to Chattanooga, and you were drawing pictures and saying, “This is my mommy, and this is me, and this is  the kidnapper, and the kidnapper is going to kidnap me.”  “This is Tina.  This is Jonathan.  And this is the giant.  And the giant’s saying, ‘Hee hee hee.  I’m going to get these little people.’”  Oh, I see that you were a bit older.  I’ve written January 1985, and the paper of the one with the kidnapper says CAMP FIRE  I’M SAFE AND SURE SESSION 1.  Clearly, you felt very safe and sure.  With love…

Oh, and I’m listening to Dave Egger’s Hologram for the King, and the last line before I turned it off to focus on you and your art was about the characters (having difficulty making love) “They were so in love with the world, and so disappointed in every aspect of it.”  As you may know, one of my favorite lines is from Fiddler on the Roof:  “Life has a way of confusing us.  Blessing and bruising us.”  

So Jonathan felt frightened without his dad, just as I had felt that last night frightened OF his dad.  It's telling that he doesn't say a giant or a kidnapper.  It's the giant.  The kidnapper.  The one we know is lurking in the shadows.

Back to the piles

Office Depot

I went into Office Depot today to get some photo paper, and the attendants attended, which is like the help helping except that you expect the help to help.  Someone greeted me with earnestness, and someone else was sent over to help me find and choose the photo paper to my liking.  The attendant even opened a box for me so I could see a sample instead of insisting that I buy blindly.  Then when I said I wanted hanging files, someone told me where they were without my even pleading with them.  They kept trying to help, so I burst forth with, "Everyone's so helpful today!"  "Yes, an attendant named Jerry said.  "We're trying something new.  There's a new system and it's gone all around the country, and it's coming to us last, and we're trying to get used to it.  If you like it, you could speak into my microphone."  He indicated a little microphone that he was wearing.  After asking my name, he said, "This is Tina, a customer.  Would you like to say something?"  I said, "Yes, it's really nice to get some help instead of having  to hunt someone down.  This is a really nice system you're trying to get used to.  I'm willing to try to get used to it too."   Jerry showed me his name tag, and Christine rushed up and showed me hers.  "I've really been helped today by Jerry and Christine,"  I said of my coaches.  At the cash register, the cashier told me I had "a killer smile."  "Is that good?" I asked.  "Yes!"  She said.  "Well, I really wouldn't want to kill anyone," I said.  "Especially when they're helping me so nicely."  And then my killer smile and I headed home to welcome Arezki.