Apathy Lounge

Are you ready for the country? Because it's time to go.

My thanks to the very talented Neil Young for composing the aforementioned question which was part of a song (and not a blog title), but I know he probably won't mind.

Probably...but just in case...don't mention it to him.

I'm burning CDs and packing clothes and assembling art supplies for my yearly trip to Bosque County where I'm in charge of Arts & Crafts for a pediatric cancer camp. I'm always excited to go...and then equally glad to get back to my life and the real world.

It's an awesome facility that hosts a different medical camp every week of the summer. The burn camp that takes place there during the second week was featured in last week's People magazine. I think it's the one with (yet another) a picture of Kate Gosselin on the cover. Anyway, they don't mention the facility but there are some pretty cool pics there. Check it out. And then go hug your kids and count your blessings. I'll see you guys in a week. Meanwhile, I've got a piece up at the Women's Colony...in the Family Room. Let me know what you think!

Another Kind of Celebrity Death Match

Can I just say that this has been a really confusing week? I can't speak for everyone, but I think it goes without saying that Death needs to take a couple of weeks off to regroup. He/She has been logging way too much overtime lately. Ed McMahon's passing wasn't a huge surprise and neither was poor Farrah Fawcett's whose illness was well publicized, but she had the bad luck to die on the same day as....Michael Jackson? Talk about coming out of left field, no?

I had just climbed up the hill to my youngest son's Boy Scout campsite when I got the news. It was Visitors' Day and I was struggling to bring my folding chair and a double batch of chocolate chip cookies when a group of young teenagers greeted me with the bulletin regarding Jackson's demise.

Of course, I didn't believe it. I figured those kids were stroked out from the crushing heat index which had reached 108 degrees that day. I was sure they were --most likely--hallucinating, though I couldn't really understand why MJ would have been at the center of their collective delusion.  Five minutes with my iPhone proved them to be right and by the time I got home late  that evening the cable news channels were playing nothing but old "Thriller" videos interspersed with clips of an ambulance driving away from his residence and lots of talk about plastic surgery.

I figured that Walter Cronkite was next because...well...he's 92 and quite ill, but imagine my surprise when I read that the Oxy-Clean commercial guy went on ahead of him today. Not that he's really a celebrity, but he advertised everything from stuff that cleans to insurance and I guess that gets you some kind of fame in life, though I have to say that his shouting gave me a headache. Anyway... I was foolish enough to think that things were slowing down when I opened up my NYTimes online and discovered that someone named Gale Storm had died. Sure, you'd have to be someone of my mother's generation to even know or care about her...but still...what the hell, people?  I'm almost afraid to fall asleep given that half of these were just found dead and NOBODY KNOWS WHY!

I guess that's why my stupid hard drive picked that week to die. Copycat.  The computer-fixer-guy was really, really sorry for how crapped out the whole thing was and I was all for getting a second opinion...so I did , even though the verdict was the same. D-E-A-D in an irreversible way.  Plus the damned thing took with it my iTunes and my documents and a couple thousand pictures. Thank God for Facebook (did I really say that?) since I did store some of the better photos there. Not to mention the photo section of this blog.

I supposed that backing up my crap on the computer isn't such a stupid idea after all. Or maybe investing in that external hard drive everyone's so crazy about? Let my life be a cautionary tale for you, especially if you know as little about computers as I do. Don't wait to wake up to a black computer screen with Fortran-type writing on it spelling out the words SYSTEM FAILURE.

You might end up losing a picture like this

Rest in Peace, Farrah Fawcett

Another bigger-than-life Texas (Corpus Christi)  gal has "gone home". We at the Apathy Lounge wish her peace for the journey.

Still blogging from a remote location...

...which means that  my hard drive is still in the computer hospital having an organ transplant and should, according to the repair guy, be ready tomorrow. And when he says tomorrow, he really means Wednesday or Thursday, but he's probably too afraid of me busy to make a truthful estimate.

Today Mr. Half and Son #3 made their way out for a week  of scout camp. Of course, everyone not currently living under a rock knows it's Fathers' Day, but it also happens to be my 23rd anniversary. Wedding anniversary, that is, and if you think that the unfortunate collision convergence of all these other events means that I didn't get a date with my husband tonight...well then...you'd win the big grand prize.  Scouts is more to blame than anything, but I console myself with the rationale that Sunday's got to be the worst  date night of all the possible nights available, so I'm okay that we're waiting until Tuesday's Eric Clapton/Steve Winwood concert before the real celebration starts. The Hubs will make the hour-plus drive back from two counties over and everything will be all better.

Meanwhile, I've got work to keep me busy this week and next. Between now and then I've got to figure out a way to show one of my students that having a tan on my face (from running in the sun) does not mean that I've suddenly started wearing make-up, though I don't know how anyone could  think I haven't been doing so up until now. Last week Sapphire alleged that I had never worn make-up to school before now (the very idea of which should frighten most people with decent vision), and even though I tried to explain the concept of white skin changing color with increased exposure to the sun...she wasn't having any of it.

In other news, I'm beginning to discover certain...um...drawbacks to Facebook in that there are way too many people out there who, lacking a previous connection with me via family, school, work, blogs, personal acquaintance....STILL WANT TO BE MY FRIEND. Even creepier is that some of these people are men. There's one in particular that I'm having trouble with. He's either lonely or a creep. Maybe a lonely creep, but he enjoys starting political arguments with me (or just jumping in on those which involve friends of mine he doesn't know) and then messages me privately where he alternates criticisms of my views with strange compliments about the way I look.  After I chewed him a new one, he de-friended me and I felt a huge sense of relief before he sent me an explanation for the unfriending and then asked when we could be friends again.

Anyone else out there having trouble like this?

Things that go CRASH in the night...like my computer. This will only matter to the six or seven people who still read this blog. Film at 11.

Just Like Us

 

I'll be the first to admit my shameful addiction to crapulous gossip rags like People and Us.  They do serve a kind of purpose, if you think about it.

Who among us hasn't been stuck in some backwater town with no real bookstore in sight which leaves us no alternative other than to slink into a Wal-Mart and stock up on research reading material that we'd like to think is going to help us in some way. I call it the "As If" affliction and by this I simply mean that I'm purchasing most of this junk out of pure boredom AS IF I'm really ever going to apply anything I glean from it to my own life.

Southern Living ("As If" my garden is ever going to look this good), Runner Magazine ("As If" I'll ever complete another 10k or marathon), In Style ("As If" I'll ever have the money to buy this darling $400 bracelet or afford MAC cosmetics).  See what a I mean?

But that's not why I buy People or Us and I don't think it's why anyone else does either. None of us thinks we'll be this famous and--truthfully--I'm pretty sure all of us will agree that we take for granted the freedom to show up at the store looking our worst without being photographed buying tampons, Motrin and wine. I buy magazines like this because I'm nosy curious about what goes on in the world of the perpetually beautiful. I like reading about the stuff that I can't afford to do...not the stuff that I can. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that the magazine sections depicting celebrities doing the every day tasks that only a moron would express real shock over are what bug me the most.

I mean...sure...these people are rich and they can afford to have someone come to their house to teach private yoga lessons or whip up fabulous meals that keep their South Beach/Zone bodies photo-ready. But....sometimes they still have to walk out to get the paper. Or walk the dog. Or take their kid to the park. Or (*gasp*) take out the recycling. (*yawn*)  Photographing these people doing the stuff we do is supposed to reassure us that famous people are actual humans and not just good-looking robots. That they're...you know...like us and  that I...we... somehow need to shell out $4.95 in order to have proof.

The thing about celebrity is that all the money in the world can do just so much. It can help the rich live well and even enviably.  It can--if done right--help them appear to age more slowly than your average non-famous person, but it can't keep them  from winding up like the rest of us. Because they will...eventually. We think about stars of yesteryear...like Jimmy Stewart or Katherine Hepburn... and most likely the images we call up are those from when they were young.  They started out no differently than Jeniffer Aniston or Tom Hanks...but eventually...they got old. Spotted. Weak and shaky. Their hair got thin and gray and they were no longer sexually alluring. It wasn't a stretch for them to play elderly people when the odd role came around. No prosthetics were needed to make the ravages of aging look more realistic.

Then were the others for whom wealth and opportunity could not keep disease at bay. Alzheimers, alcoholism, suicide, cancer, heart attack...accident. I know it sounds maudlin and even simplistic, but--hey-- EVERYBODY DIES. Even the famous. Even the young and famous. One day you're dodging the media while leaving a Starbucks and the next...you're part of the "In Memoriam" segment at the Oscars or Emmys. Buried at Forest Lawn or Forever Hollywood...or reduced to a handful of ashes scattered from a beloved mountain.  If you don't believe me, check out the Find-A-Grave website. Everybody's there.  Lucille Ball, John Candy, The Three Stooges, Judy Garland, Natasha Richardson, Harry Houdini, Heath Ledger, John Belushi, Marilyn Monroe.

We know death's reality in our own little lives and--intellectually speaking--we're aware when famous people exit the planet. Stars are celebrated and mourned and memorialized over and over. We can't forget the famous because we're really not allowed to and because we keep seeing them on TVLand or Turner Classic Movies...it's as if they've never really gone. We're not really used to it.  Until you see proof that life comes to a sudden stop for everyone...not just the next door neighbor or your grandparents. At the end all that's left is a metal plaque or a marble cenotaph...often worn or tarnished and weedy...and way too lacking in words to do justice to everything that was accomplished while they were here. Just like us.

Sounds of Summer

I spent most of my childhood wishing I could be older. When my age could be calculated in single digit numbers, I couldn't wait to be ten.  A few months after I turned ten Max Yasgur offered his farmland up for the first (and best) Woodstock. I desperately wanted to be a teenager so that I could go.  I got up early on Saturday mornings to take in my minimum daily requirement of cartoons and then watched American Bandstand, featuring a young/pre-stroke/pre-cosmetic surgery Dick Clark bring on bands like Three Dog Night and The Grassroots. These were not the bands of my generation, but because I spent so much time looking forward to being older, I felt that they might be.  Musically speaking, my allegiance is all over the map.

Some of my favorite Christmas songs are from the 40s, even though that's a decade I didn't even come close to seeing.  Music I listen to while working out--The Killers or Kings of Leon-- mostly belongs to my sons' era...not mine. Similarly, some of my favorite songs of summer are from the 60s...despite the fact that I was still a young child during that entire era and not even close to being a teenager.

Certain kinds of music evoke memories of afternoons at a chlorine-drenched pool, soaking up the sun with the smell of Coppertone all around me. When I was a teenager working at Six Flags, we had music going all the time. It was perpetually summer there and I can't hear Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give it Up" or Earth, Wind & Fire's "That's The Way of the World" without it time-traveling me back to the days of working around hot black asphalt, cotton candy, overpriced souvenirs and cranky customers paying for everything with dollar bills still soggy from their recent visit to the Log Ride.

Alice Cooper still owns the month of May with his "School's Out" tribute, but to me one of the quintessential songs of our hottest season belongs to Tommy James and the Shondells. I was just a little kid when it came out, but it somehow stakes a claim to every summer I can think of...real or imagined.  Here they are, a little bit older but sounding  just as good.

Click here and tell me about the song that takes you back to the months of June, July and August.

So Much More Than That

 

In 1933 she applied for the position of secretary but ended up running the Complaints and Information desk at a small company before being promoted to an administrative position. In those days such happenings were remarkable enough for a woman, but it was her unflinching loyalty to her friend and colleague and her determination to keep him and six others safe from harm that would make her name synonymous with sacrifice and selflessness. In the end she was so much more than a secretary.

She was given the Raoul Wallenberg Award for Bravery and honored with the Righteous Among the Nations distinction .  A recipient of the Yad Vashem medal, she was also knighted by the Queen. But it was her later admission regarding something else that really caught my attention when reading her biography.

She didn't read the diary belonging to the youngest member of the hidden group after they were discovered and taken away...even when it was in her safe possession and locked in a drawer. Maybe it was because she respected the privacy of its owner and possibly because she thought there might be a chance the author would eventually return to claim it. She has gone on record saying that, had she actually read the diary, she would have most likely destroyed it due to its incriminating contents, thus depriving the rest of the world of another--perhaps more famous--symbol toward which we can direct our collective grief.  It is that admission of personal frailty and doubt...of that tiny moment of self preservation in the midst of everything else she did do that is evidence...not of her sainthood...but of her extraordinary human-ness, which is so much harder to overcome. Especially when our own lives are on the line in the process.

"I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more--much more--during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then."

                                                                                                                                     

 

The humble and yet indomitable Miep Gies celebrated her 100th birthday in February.  Despite the eventual capture of her seven friends, she is every inch a hero and an example for the rest of us. The author of the diary did not return to claim the plaid-bound volume, but her surviving father's decision to share her words with the rest of us has made me grateful since the day I borrowed a copy from the library. I was in the 4th grade.

 

Had she lived, Anne Frank would have celebrated her 80th birthday on June 12th...this coming Friday.

I Believe I Can Cry

Friday morning found me attending the Fifth Grade Graduation Promotion ceremony for some of the kids I've been working with this year. I went with two other girlfriends who also work at the school with me and it was quite an emotional experience to watch these kids proudly cross the stage to receive awards for "improvement" and "academic achievement in the face of  overwhelming obstacles or disabilities". Quite a few students were in their Sunday best, though an equal number wore donated clothing that teachers/tutors had provided. I saw more than one of my youngest sons' shirts paired with pants and a tie and there were girls wobbling on high heels and in beautiful dresses from unknown sources.

 Some of those students were being socially promoted...meaning that they've spent two years held back  in the same grade and regardless of ability (or the lack thereof), the law says they have to be moved on to middle school. The kid who only started talking last year. The Katrina evacuee whose dad abandoned the family. The boy whose story about being burned required me to call CPS. The girl whose mother pretended to homeschool her 8 children, but really kept them at home and illiterate until the same agency pulled them out and placed them in school.  More than a handful had life stories so tragic that it was difficult to imagine a happy ending for any of them once they moved on to the adolescent killing fields of middle school and beyond.

After the awards had been distributed and our hands were sore from the applause, the kids gathered as a class to face their teachers and family members to sing a beautiful version of R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly".

Internets, I let me just pause now to say that although I remembered to silence my cellphone, bring gum for fresh breath and a sweater in case the auditorium was cold enough to hang meat in it, I completely forgot to bring Kleenex. And I vastly underestimated how deeply and ironically sad it would be to listen to some of our more (*ahem*) challenging students solemnly sing the lines: "I think about it every night and day. I spread my wings and fly away. I believe I can soar. I see me running towards that open door. I believe I can fly."

Because this is also a song widely used at the pediatric cancer camp where I teach Arts & Crafts one week every summer (and on more than one occasion it's been played at funerals for kids  who didn't live to see the next summer), the double-edged message about the hope of overcoming and surviving was almost more than we could take. The part of my face that wasn't contorted into an ugly expression of grief and loss of control was trying to hold the more embarrassing demonstrations of emotion at bay.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

By the time we left the school we were totally wrung out. Sad. Angry at parents whom we had never seen before today...coming to enjoy the meager fruits of their kids' accomplishments and having little to no idea of how it had happened.  Kim suggested we stop off at a bakery that sells sinfully decadent cupcakes and wedding cake by the slice. We were so utterly verklempt that  we agreed that something was needed to shore up our emotions.

It was either that...or a bar, but it was 11 in the morning and chocolate seemed like it might work its magic faster than alcohol. Some  of you might beg to differ with us but...whatever.

 

It also counted as another installment of my "One New Thing" plan. I brought home two giant slabs of chocolate/caramel cake in a cunning pink bakery box and the reassuring smell of white death/refined sugar vanilla and almond accompanied us all the way. Later in the day the three of us visited a cemetery where the local clan's Queen of the Gypsies has been buried for decades. What's the opposite of a Gypsy Curse...because...I believe I actually felt better after visiting Rose's resting place.

 

Of course, it might just have been that margarita I had with dinner.

Your Friends and Neighbors

A couple of years ago I was still frequenting the grocery store enough times per week that the casual observer might either start to think our family was experiencing a serious struggle with tapeworms or maybe I was cruising the joint before making a play for the boy who bags my stuff.

Neither scenario could have been further from the truth.

I had three teenage boys who depleted nine gallons of milk per week and worked their way through a loaf of bread faster than a gaggle of hostile ducks. And who typically forgot to remind me about their desperate need for posterboard or deodorant until I had pulled into the driveway with eight paper bags of provisions in my car.

Anyway. There was always one particular guy I saw and the only reason why I noticed him was because he was only ever buying one thing. Wine.

I mostly saw him at the end of the work day or on weekends. Rarely did I see him buy anything more substantial with his alcohol than some bread or a pack of gum. He was about a decade or so older than me and he was always alone, but all the checkers and the baggers seemed to know him. His name, it turned out, was L-u-t-h-e-r. I spell it that way just to throw off the Googlers, though I'm not really sure I have a good reason why.

Soon I was able to spot the truck he drove which was a classic model Chevy and over 30 years old. He sported a couple of stickers that revealed we had graduated from the same university--quite a few years apart--, and that was all I learned for a while until one day while I was on a run I saw him watering his yard. Turns out, he lives about two or three streets over from me.

I used the appraisal website for our county to plug in his address and I was able to find out his name which I looked up in our alumni directory. The name and address checked out and the entry also revealed what he did for a living. He was/is a 5th grade teacher. Just down the street.

Figures. He lives exactly midway between the school where he teaches (and I'm talking an eighth of a mile at best) and the store where he must stop every single day after class. Though it made a certain amount of sense (Anyone spend an extended amount of time with a 5th grader lately?), it also made me sort of sad. I never see a second car parked at his house, even though the directory entry on him says he is (was?) married. I don't know this guy, but I hate the idea that he does his job every day and then spends the evening alone and polishing off a bottle of "Three Blind Moose".

I mean...I know just enough about his story to make me realize that I don't know much at all.  The parts that I'm missing make me more curious than ever, and the bits that I've learned make me a little melancholy. It makes me realize that behind every fence, every front door is a story...or several stories. A pageant of life unfolding that I don't know anything about, even though I live deep in the heart of most of it. We intersect briefly...at the stoplight...reaching for cereal in the store...driving past as someone mows the yard. And then we forget about them.

Who catches your curiosity?