Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012

That there could have been some error in the reporting, some grotesque misunderstanding.  But it was true.

That there could be some measure of comfort to the parents of the children and all of the other victims; and comfort to the grandparents and aunts, uncles, and godparents.  But how.

That there could be words.  But after these, there are none.  For the moment, that is, till the serious, adult conversations start.

Book Comment: Among Flowers - A Walk in the Himalya

Among Flowers - A Walk in the Himalaya
by Jamaica Kincaid
National Geographic Directions, 208 pages

This book was exotic, interesting, and odd.

But then, how can a book about a fervent gardener going to Nepal not  be interesting?   When so much of a modern person's life is focused on enhancing their level  of coziness it's surely a delight to see someone like the author endure deprivations and take on extraordinary physical challenges  towards a lovely goal.  Really, who among us wouldn't prefer reading about tent-camping in a soggy field filled with leeches or facing down grumpy Maoists than experiencing it?

The goal is to acquire seeds for  plants that will survive and thrive  in a Vermont garden.  The book is at its best when she encounters a  beautiful specimen she had only seen in another context or a  variation.  The reader feels the author's delight in seeing a flower that's  humdrum at home come to full, enormous, technicolor life in a tiny,  remote Nepalese village.  Even a person whose interest in gardens plummets after sniffs of basil and sightings of tomatoes can  understand the author's tremendous joy.

Which leaves us with the odd, starting with the stilted syntax.  It's part  eighteenth century, part Hemingway, part Book of Genesis rewritten  into the first person singular.  Maybe this is her signature style?  The reader doesn't actually  hear the author say "And I found it all good. Good, I found it," but  it wouldn't be a shock.
She sems to take contrarian pride in being rather a pill on the  trip--continually asking the others in the group, "What is this?",  losing interest completely if the answer involves a plant that wouldn't cope in Vermont, and--why not?--a fair amount of whining.  If the author regrets taxing her companions so on an already arduous journey she  stoically keeps that sorrow to herself.

Then there are the perplexing Where Was the Editor? bits. Once  you establish that you're using Fahrenheit there's really no need to  add it to every temperature forever and ever, amen.   The author will express a feeling somewhat poetically only to use that same phrasing for  the same experience a few paragraphs later. She'll describe what was for dinner and quickly tell she didn't eat.  Did every night's trip to the bathroom need to be recorded?  And she makes so many  references to "My son, X" a fed-up reader might conclude that she  doesn't have a son at all, let alone one named, X.

Lastly, it isn't a moral stain that the author refers to the Nepalese  man who cooks for the group as Cook, or the man who lugs the table and chairs as  Table, but man, it sure would have been nice if she could have  remembered their names. Even the phonetic rendering of what it sounded like would have been a step up.  Is it cultural denseness or again this contrariness, this sense of my way, right or wrong?   And as the author doesn't hear the porters' names is she really, truly seeing the Nepalese girls, each one of which she declares beautiful? 

None of the apparent cross-cultural hiccups would mind if the trip in and of itself didn't scream of  First World class privilege.  Despite the loveliness of the idea, aspects of the book come across as just another example of the West's determination to Get What it Wants--be it South American bananas, Iraqi oil, or perhaps the seeds is a lovely flower in the Himalaya. 

Film Comment: Lincoln...

 ...wherein Daniel Day-Lewis gives us a moment's fright early on as his characterization of the 16th president flirts with parody. Are those cornpone anecdotes heading somewhere or is the great actor channelling a heretofore unknown love of SCTV?

No need to worry. DD-L, screenplay writer Tony Kushner, and of couse Steven Spielberg know what they're doing. The seemingly off-topic stories--parables, if you will--always come to the heart of the issue at hand.

The issue is the 13th Amendment. Lincoln wants an amendment outlawing slavery ready to sign before his second inaugural. The Democratic Party just took a lickin' in the election but instead of softening their absolutist views they had become more rigid. Secretary of State Seward, and a talented trio of patronage-jobs-offering oddballs desperately try to secure the votes. Lincoln's concern is that the Emancipation Proclamation was only a war-time measure, and that come the end of hostilities black people who had been free--indeed, who had joined the Union army to fight for their freedom--would be forced back into slavery.

It's difficult not to flinch at the anger-slash-fear of those opposed to the amendment, their dread of the country absorbing 4 million free blacks, 4 million people hell-bent on revenge and ready to snatch and grab from decent, God-fearin' folk. What next, they ask? The franchise for black men?

Secretary of State Seward was played by the wonderful David Strathairn (who probably could have played a first-rate Lincoln, too). A plumped up James Spader shone as one of the get-the-vote trio, totally unafraid of DD-L. Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens was a marvel, really giving us a taste of the days when people spoke beautifully as opposed to our "like, you know" caliber of political discourse. (Nice last scene with him, too. Was Kushner being creative or is fact more fascinating than fiction?)

While the up for anything Joseph Gordon-Levitt did what he could with the small part of Lincoln's son Robert, Sally Field's Mary Todd Lincoln didn't really work for us. Yes, the real-life woman was rumored to be "tetched", but the wimpering and scenery chewing and the googly eyeballs and pursed lips...it was a wee bit too much. We realize she knew heartache but as a modern person would say, "It's all about you, isn't it?"

We sat anxiously as the votes were cast, even knowing the outcome.

In the second inaugural Lincoln wondered if the horrific cost of the war - 600,000 dead, eight month's worth of 9-11's - was due to the moral sin of slavery. Was every drop of blood equal to the blood drawn from the lash? A reasonable question, posed by an extraordinarily reasonable, creative and bright man.

Recommend Plus.

One Campaign: Check, Please!

We spent a lively Thursday evening in Santa Monica learning about One. org. This advocacy group is dedicated to getting U.S., G8, and G20 money to help with crises such as HIV-AIDS in Africa.

But, why should Americans send money abroad when there's so much need right here at home? The question is answered in an eye-opening short film. "Man" in the street Q&A's show people over-estimating the amount of aid the US gives (it's 1%, not 10 or 15 or 25%). The number of kids able to go to school now is in the tens of millions, not one million. And there are similarly impressive results for people being alive and babies not having had the virus transmitted due to the program getting appropriate meds to people.

All of which should make a taxpayer feel pretty good.   See for yourself here.ONE.org.

Bobby Shriver spoke at this event. He explained that One never asks for money (Cockatoo can attest to this, having been on the email list for years). What One wants, he said, is to be able to tell a congressman, a senator, the President, We have 500,000 people who want help for Africa.

One wants our voices.

They have mine.

Film Comment: Cairo Time...

...wherein the ordinarily ball o' energy firecracker Patricia Clarkson takes it down a dozen notches to play a wife holed up in Cairo while her U.N.-employed husband is held up in Gaza. Back in the States Juliette's a workaholic magazine editor - twelve hour days if she's on a deadline, she says. In Cairo, though, she's in a dream state, almost a sleepwalker. It's as if the director said, Remember, it's very hot here so always move v-e-r-y- s-l-o-w-l-y.

Everything she sees seems to merit a dazed, almost stoner degree of attention--cups of coffee, women, children, the Pyramids... "Your hajib is pretty," she tells the hotel worker. (It seemed odd that a ultra-modern American could separate the cloth's beauty from what it represents).

The main object of Juliette's gaze is a kindly Egyptian man, Tareq, played by Alexander Siddiq. Tareq straddles both cultures having been a former colleague of the husband.

When the two are together the film comes to life. The husband remains tangled up with some conflict so Tareq plays tour guide to Juliette. His wry humor, lovely manners and looks clearly appeal to Juliette. For Tariq, one wonders (with fear of trading in sterotypes) if she represents a combination of femininity and modernity. (e.g., the flirty dresses mixed with the sass, and her returning to his coffee shop even after finding out it's for men only).

When Tareq rescues her from an ill-advised bus trip to Gaza to see her husband, he's clearly pissed. But is he angry because it was a foolish thing to do, or because he didn't like her running away from what was developing between them?

Recommend.

James Taylor...As If We Need Reminding

Now that the elections are over and we can exhale Cockatoo has been looking at videos we were too nervous to watch when they occurred.   Exhibit A, the incomparable James Taylor at the Democratic National Convention, here.  Sixteen minutes of that most perfect voice, singing melodies that are woven into our DNA, with lyrics--snark- and irony-free lyrics--that still have the power to nudge out tears.  But wait, there's more!  Consider this audience--all races, both genders, all abilities, swaying, singing along, and just enjoying the hell out of the performance. 

Beautiful.

Travel + Leisure Subscription Lapse

Instead of harrumphing about how shallow we find T+L nowadays--how overly concerned with cool shopping and boutique hotels--we will, instead, merely remark that we apparently are not the demographic for this journal.  There's hardly a full page of prose to be found, anymore.  Perhaps to keep up with the television/smartphone age where folks have no more patience every page had garish charts and info boxes and snarky quotes in silly fonts.

EAT.  SHOP.  SEE+DO.

We won't spend time on the confluence of advertising and articles.  If memory serves a recent issue had an essay about a certain brand of watch.  Watches do in fact come in handy when travelling but we didn't see why this particular brand of timepiece needed to be singled out. 

Grumblings aside, the photographs, though, still stop one in their beauty.  There's one of Page 84 of two Indian gentlemen holding some beautiful textiles, grogeous yellow and red.  The simplicity of the shot contrasts with the richness of the hues, the craft needed to create the rugs. 

This disenchantment with T+L  is especially sad as it was our first introduction to non-family vacations.  Cockatoo used to spend part of the high school summer break  with her Godmother who had a collection of T+L.  We would pore through them excitedly, as if trying to pin down the fact that, really, one can actually get on a plane and go to another country.  

Cockatoo can never truly give up on T+L.  It--along with a college course on the Renaissance--did provide the spark that got us to Florence, a place we've visited twice and long to see again.  (Last time we stayed Oltrarno, steps away from the Piazza Santo Spirito, pictured.)

Still, one worries.  Could a working class person look at today's magazine and get that same sense of possibilities?  Or would they look at the astronomical rates of the featured hotels and decide travelling isn't for them?

Forward! The Election and Bicycle Wrap-Up

It's taken us all this time to absorb the enormity of the President's re-election. Obviously we are delighted. We are grateful that this bright, decent, hard-working and empathetic person will continue to build upon the enormous task of righting the country from the deviancies of George W. Bush's terms in office. While the progress has been slow there's no denying we're moving in the right direction.

Although we haven't gone too deeply into Gov. Romney territory we became increasingly troubled during the campaign with the idea that somehow, despite the polling numbers on Daily Kos, the Governor might somehow slip into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His flaws ran the gamut from farce (the Mitt-astrophic overseas trip during the flawlessly-run London Olympics) to mean ("No one ever asked to see our birth certificates") to the outright disdainful (being far too grand to condescend and make the case for his presidency to 47% of the public. In a democracy.) Even now he's muttering to his donors about how the President was re-elected because he gave "gifts" to people; he's dim-witted enough to think the brouhaha last summer was about "free contraceptives," not insisting that employers offer women employees all contraceptive options available under the insurance plans for which women paid premiums.

Well, we knew he drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the roof of his car, and witnesses said in high school Gov. Romney tackled a kid in high school and cut off his hair. Nice to know that $300 million in filthy Koch - Rove money couldn't obscure his essential character. Please proceed into oblivion, Governor.

As for Congressman Ryan the less said the better, unless the person doing the saying is David Letterman. Letterman Ryan Top Ten

What can we expect in President Obama's second term? (Besides, according to the defeated Teabaggers, socialism, Adam marrying Adam instead of Eve, and foodstamps?)

We don't know but there's this: We bought a new bike a couple of weeks back, a lovely Giant Escape. It's aluminum, some six pounds lighter than our previous bike, Carmella, and shaves 5-8 minutes off our commute home. The first Monday on it we felt a panic since it's a bike for a person half our age and twice our fitness level. But then we realized: This bike could make us a better rider.

May President Obama feel a lightness in his heavy, heavy tasks next term, may he slice through resistance with continued grace.

Endorsement: President Barack Obama

Perhaps we're in the minority here at Anyone's Cockatoo but we like - appreciate - President Barack Obama more today than we did four years ago. (And four years ago we were deliriously smitten.)

We like that he never whines despite being handed a Bush-generated house a'fire.

We like that he seems to be thinking constantly about how to make things better for the American people.

We like that he cut out the financial institution middle-men in the student loans system so as to be able to give out more student loans. (Sometimes he'll make a speech on the subject and we think, "What, again with the student loans?" But that's how one gets people out of the poverty / the working class and into the middle class, so good on him.)

We admire him for taking a chance on the auto industry bail-out, and are glad that it paid off for the workers and the country.

We admire him for (1) realizing that it isn't right that people - Americans - go bankrupt and/or die because of our insurance company-dictated healthcare system and (2) fighting with every ounce of muscle to get the Affordable Health Care Act passed and signed into law. BFD, indeed!

Again, we like that he never whines, despite the insane, racist, dog whistles and direct attacks he's been subjected to. A lesser man would not have handled the nonsense with such grace. Particulary egregious is the oddly-coiffed New York man demanding proof of the President's academic records, passport records, etc. It puts us in mind of the publisher who demanded that the black abolitionist get a white man to vouch for the authenticity of his book.

We like how comfortable PBO is in his skin - whether with world leaders, grieving townspeople, or the NBA champs, PBO always strikes the right tone.

Michelle Obama.

We like how he incarnates the best of this country, this experiment in democracy. A smart, hard-working young man with a non-cookie cutter background gets to be POTUS. And we're all the better for it.

We're moving in the right direction and he clearly deserves a second term.

Would just ask in the second term that he ools-it-cay with the ones-dray - the targets can't be worth the cost of civilians; stand up to the rat bastards at the NRA; and for the love of God, sign some executive order only allowing public financing of campaigns - and no televisions ads.

And here's the punchline about PBO: For all of the insinuations of his otherness, his supposed exoticism, at the end of the day do you know what he his? With those exquisite manners, the self-deprecation, the work ethic, the sincerity? HE'S A MID-WESTERNER. Yes, his father was from Africa, and yes, he happened to have lived in Hawaii and Indonesia. But his character - the content of his character - is that of a plain, ol' mid-westerner. You know, the good folks Fox News commentators claim to adore but, it turns out, don't know one when they see one.

Cuts

It was a small cut, maybe a quarter inch. We were weilding a scissor-point against a seamed canal on the side of a new bra. Pinch, poke, pinch. We cut ourself when the scissors slipped, making a small slice alongside our middle finger. It turned red, but wasn't near deep enough to bleed.

The object was to pry out a tiny yet diabolical strip of clear plastic. It was the shape of a short, slightly wide popsicle stick. It's purpose on either side of a bra? Who knows. Someone's antiquated notion of how the glands should appear in a blouse, under a tee-shirt. As if we were Marilyn Monroe or some other performer. All I knew is that they hurt like heck, and even if they did gave us a silhouette that made people stop, stare and applaud I didn't want the ridiculous discomfort.

Imagine being pinched hard on either side of yourself. All frigging day.

Looking how we want to look and feeling how we want to feel is a basic human right.

I fingered the pieces of plastic and wondered what kind of sick, twisted bastard would inflict such a thing on half the country. Well, the answer was in the question.

#############################################################################

Cockatoo is perhaps the last progressive in the country to just become aware of NYT reporter's Nicholas Kristof's Half the Sky, a book about the obstacles placed in front of women throughout the developing world. The documentary was on television last week and it was beautiful, maddening, lovely and crazy-making.

While we were relieving our garments of pinching plastic strips, somewhere on earth - in Africa - little girls were in a hut, bound, their trauma and pain coalescing into a lifetime of physical difficulties. An unnecessary, malignant act performed in the crudest manner.

Kristof, along with a progressive African health worker, and his crew were in a hut in (we believe) Kenya. They listened to an ancient, ancient woman talk about her "job" of grabbing the girls for the "ceremony" and performing the mutilation. She said she performed ten mutillations a day.

(Cruelty engenders cruelty, and we had a sick fantasy of the reporter turning off the camera, just snapping the crone's neck on the spot, and back on camera, claiming it was self-defense. Fool-proof, really; who would expect such a thing from journalism's biggest bleeding heart? And actress Diane Lane who accompanied him looked sufficiently pissed off to corroborate any "she came at me with a knife" story Kristof concocted.)

Obviously the only answer for ending mutilation is education, education, and since we're at it, more education. Westerners needn't go into full-on screed mode; the best thing, I think, would be for other African women, like that wonderful health professional in the film, to just lay out the facts to their sisters:

Mutiliation leads to infections, dismenorrhea, and makes basic hygiene difficult. It increases the likelihood of maternal death.

A tiny cut endured for my rights and freedom. A mutilation because...we've always done it? Tradition? To reign in the mere threat of promiscuity?

There are cuts and there are cuts.

Carmella's Little Sister

We're a bit ashamed to report that the process of searching for and researching a new bike has become as pleasurable as actually riding. We've been finding ourself in shops talking about aggressive geometries, comparing aluminum to steel, and handing our driver's license and credit card to random dudes in exchange for a block's length long test ride.

The poor kid at my favorite shop (approx. three visits in the past couple of months)! He must be thinking, I just want to sell bikes, not be priest-slash-therapist to some boomer who desperately needs a life.

I've had two dreams about bike shops. Walking inside a new one is like a lucid, wide-awake dream. The smell of the tires, the hope everytime one turns over a price tag.

The possibility of falling - finally falling -in love.

So, no decision yet. There's a frightening risk that all of my research will be for nothing: I saw a bike painted "claret and silver", a rich, luscious purple. (We are swooning even as we type it.)

Courage, Cockatoo! Enjoy the process!

Nuthin' Says "Summer" Like Wallace Shawn & Tony Kushner (Really)

What a treat to read the interviews with playwrights Wallace Shawn and Tony Kushner in the Summer 2012 issue of the Paris Review. In Anyone’s Cockatoo's dotage we have shied away from literary magazines, having been scarred by a newsstand-bought copy of The Three Penny Review a couple of years ago (our subscription had long lapsed). We tried our best to make sense of the articles, the fiction, and the poetry but came up blank. Worse, we didn’t recognize any of the contributors; the names could just as easily been the enrollment list of an international pre-school for how ignorant we were.

But we digress.

Anyone’s Cockatoo was fortunate enough to see Wallace Shawn perform his one-person play "The Fever" on stage during the Los Angeles Festival of Arts. Shawn recounts that the play was “pretty brutally denounced” by critics, but what were people fed a diet of bland, conventional plays to make of this millefeiulle of a monologue?

The Fever’s narrator is recounting his experience in an unnamed country that, as he’s holed up in his hotel room, is going through some vague kind of turmoil. Vague to the narrator, one should add; the people and victims on the street know exactly what’s happening. It had been happening to the oppressed since forever.

He remembers his privileged childhood, how coddled he was. He thinks of his current life where he holds the Right Opinions and so forth. And that all of it means nothing.

Shawn says in the interview, “I was trying to explain to all the nice people out there how it could be possible that from our point of view we’re so nice, and we’re so lovable, and we’re so cute, and so sensitive, and yet from the point of view of people who are weak and powerless we are an implacable, vicious enemy.”

Not an idea any American – critic or not – would be eager to lap up.

There is a line in the play that we’ve remembered all of these years – decades – later. Gene, a friend of the narrator, is a proud holder of Wrong Opinion. In today’s currency maybe some appalling Limbaugh-Fox Commenter-Tea Party Congress critter amalgam. The narrator has an epiphany – he realizes that his desires for what he wants (a certain kind of coffee, a comfortable life) are more a part of his identity than the lovely charm he has, the Right Opinions he holds.

“I’m no better than my friend, Gene”, he admits sadly.

We can laugh at what one commenter called the “failfest” of the Republican National Convention last week-- the sociopathic lying, the full flowering of Obama Derangement Syndrome, the desperate attempt to palm off rotten goods to the American public. Even so, as Anyone's Cockatoo makes our way around town, seeing and passing people hauling all of their possessions in trash bags, loons with matted hair and nasty clothes, the thought “I’m no better than my friend, Gene" resonates and indicts.

It should serve as a spur to action.

*

Tony Kushner (Angels in America) is, of course, much better known than Shawn (although some people may recognize Shawn from his many character actor roles over the years).

Anyone’s Cockatoo read some snarky, shark feeding frenzy criticisms of Kushner’s latest play, 'The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures."

We concede the title is gaggy. We also admit we haven’t seen the play; let's hope it's a line in the play that's supposed to test the audience's gag reflex.

Would just comment, though, that his interview reads lively and, yes, intelligently. Kushner is passionate about Herman Melville (!), recounts his studies with a professor who had studied under Bertholt Brecht, and cites Proust on the topic of writers’ fears. Maybe that’s typical water cooler chitchat for the sophisticates who tore apart the play; I don’t know. I’ll just say that here in Hooterville, where strip mall hair salons announce “Moe Hawks” and menus offer “Ice Tea”, the Paris Review interviews with Mr. Kushner and Mr. Shawn were a delicious summer escape.

Gore Vidal - My Favorite Writer

Such a sadness over the death of writer Gore Vidal.

I saw Gore Vidal a few years back at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.  A wonderful spring day, as it always is for the festival.  As was his custom, Gore (I will use his first name, if you don't mind; when I thought of his quotes I would think "Gore said," not "Vidal said.) was in the tent for The Nation, the progressive journal and book publisher.  He was feeble, in a wheel chair, with odd crinkles on his cheek.  The great beauty was gone but there was still that mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"Is Gore Vidal...OK?" I asked a man wearing a Nation tee-shirt nearby. 

He shrugged.  "He's old."

The New York Times - Gore's nemesis - published a lengthy obituary.  It mentioned that Gore and his life partner Howard Austen moved from Italy back to their Hollywood Hills house to be near to Cedars-Sinai hospital.  True, but tin-eared compared to Gore's saying they returned to L.A. for their "Cedars-Sinai years."

(The NYT obituary also had this head-scratcher:  Gore claimed his books were blacklisted - not reviewed in the NYT - after Gore's The City and the Pillar with it's same-sex sex, "and he may have been right."  May have been?  Dude, get your arse out of the chair, go find the oldest reporter in the building and frigging ASK.)

*

At an earlier LAT Festival of Books, also at UCLA, I got a book signed by Gore.  I was a close to him as you are to your screen reading this blog when someone called out a question to him.  That voice, that voice.  I don't even remember what he said but the baritone still reverberates.

*

Many have expressed their preference for Gore's essays to his novels, and I join that contingent.  The breadth and depth and layers of his own life outshone any fictional character.  Born at West Point to a Olympic medalist who later ran FDR's aviation department.  Mother was daughter to Senator Gore of Oklahoma.  Young Gore reading legislation to this beloved Grandfather, who was blind.  Maybe the father had had an affair with Amelia Earhart; Young Gore asking her questions about their planned trip around the world.  Gore's socially ambitious mother divorcing his father to marry Hugh Auchlinsloss, becoming a kinda-sorta step sibling to Jacqueline Bouvier.  Etc. Etc.

The essays allowed that dry wit to come through without any filters, and also provided a platform large enough to contain his wide-ranging interests.  Literature, antiquity, politics both from the inside and out, imperialism, cinema (he had - of course - a cameo role in a Fellini film)...he was human, as Terence said, and nothing human was foreign to him.  

Dry, but refreshing.  We're fed a non-stop diet of scam and red herrings and piety in so much of popular media; it's rare to come across someone being completely straight-forward.  The first thing I remember reading by him was an op-ed piece he had in the LAT when he was running for Governor of California in the 1980's.  There was a line in there about the carvings on Mount Rushmore ruining a perfectly lovely mountainside.  I chuckled, but even as I did so I realized what a bold, unconventional thing it was to write.  I mean, Mount Rushmore! 

Turns out, that was about one of the tamest lines he ever wrote.

I won't give a top ten list of my favorite essays.  Grab his National Book Award winner United States collected essays.  If you like literature, start with his book reviews; political junkies, check out his State of the Union essays.  The humor, the intelligence, and even the flashes of pettiness reveal a mindset that will make you see the world differently.

Finally this.  Gore said the role of the writer - the artist - is to tell the truth, and the role of the politician is to not give the game away.  Some things he wrote make one wince but for the large part, Gore Vidal was an artist. 

Carmella and Me, and BikeSnobNYC

Carmella is my significant other.

Carmella is a 7-speed hybrid bicycle with 700cc tires and a champagne finish.

Today is my fifth day of riding ten minutes to the train station to work, then riding the full 30-40 minutes home at the end of the day.  Half of the homeward commute is in a bike lane, which helps enormously.  The first twenty-five pedals are up an incline.  I think, "Why am I doing this?  I'm too old.  I should have driven.  I feel too vulnerable."

BikeSnobNYC says in "Systematically and Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling" that "if you're not riding your bike because you might get hurt, you might as well just seal yourself inside of a hypoallergenic bubble and never leave your house."

  In a few minutes, though, I reach the peak which happens to be the overpass to the freeway.  I look down on the people trapped and still in their expensive cars and think It sucks to be them.

BikeSnobNYC says a Cadillac pickup truck "allows you to look like an idiot at the country club and at the ranch."

And off I go, gliding on a downward slope.  Levels of happy start to rise.  Car commuters, taxis, buses, trucks within an arm's reach....

BikeSnobNYC says, "So lose the fear.  Cycling is dangerous, but it's simply not that dangerous."

By then I've got my breath, my rhythm, and start to enjoy the ride.  There are a few ups and down, nothing major til I'm about halfway home.  I gear down and crawl but so far I haven't abandoned the saddle and walked Carmella up. 

It's less fun for most of the second half of the commute just because there are so many people on the sidewalk (it's legal in L.A., BikeSnob, but, yeah...) and I keep having to either slow down or walk.  But once the pedestrians clear out (and really, only a few streets have walkers out here) then I'm happily back in the saddle.

Strangley, coming home by bike takes pretty much the same time as driving (walking to the parking lot, waiting for long lights, etc.) 

I get lots of Wow, you ride to work?!?  It's almost embarrassing to describe how utterly simple it is, let alone how pleasurable.  By the time I turn onto my street the endorphins are sizzling, my legs feel great, and I know I've just had about the best 40 minutes possible.

Beats all hell out of the gym. 

Joy.

Thirty million more Americans will have health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court upheld today.

No insurance company shenanigans about pre-existing conditions or, "Sorry, Pal, you've reached your lifetime limit!".

Just sensible, compassionate, and utterly practical steps towards a better life for Americans. One where they concentrate on getting better if illness befalls them, not spend energy stressing about obtaining care.

It all sounds so wonderfully patriotic to me.

What a splendid way to celebrate the Fourth.

Ciclavia 10-10-10

1. To Church

A meditation on pleasure tinged with nervousness. A new experience , riding Carmella to church. Olympic, Crenshaw, Venice, then Hoover with it's blessed bike lane.

A meditation on ascent, on descent, and the illusion of "flat". Subtlety.
A meditation on fortune, on the gift it is to even be able to pedal, to sense grade , to shift gears. The thrill of firm thighs.

A meditation on the Americans with disabilities act wherefrom every curb is friendly, inviting for riders, too.

A meditation on how fast cars go,
On what kind of people swoosh past like you are an obstacle,
Drivers who open their doors full on, oblivious to you, to all. Wondering who am I when I'm driving.

A meditation on fossil fuels and war,
Sniper fire erasing humans and dwellings. Fittings for an artificial leg.

A meditation on obesity in America,
Rolls and innertubes and love-handles and spare tires, On Michelin children, their little eyes sewn shut with adipose. Expressionless.

A meditation on my riding partner,
His sweet glimpses back to see how I'm doing ,
That wild left he made from the center lane, like a car! Like a frigging car!

A meditation not on boredom but on those moments when there is nothing to do but continue.

A plane descends in the blue over Vermont Boulevard, heading to LAX. homecoming. Arrival at the bike rack, then a moment to absorb what has transpired.

2. Ciclavia
Ten minutes up Figueroa,sw then a right turn onto 7th street:
The day apartheid ended,
That weekend when the wall came down.

A meditation on pure joy,
On child-like exuberation as you bike goes through an intersection,
Safe safe safe.

A meditation on seeing what's in a block--
This shop, this stand, these little places to eat that are invisible at 35 miles per hour.

A meditation on City Hall, it's soft undulating green lawns that belong to me, the people all around, whose bikes are tilted softly against the trees while they eat their sandwiches, sip their water.

A meditation on we the people who have the right to decide on every day being ciclavia, or at least a day safe for bicyclists.

A meditation on how that would feel, how would that day feel.

Bankruptcy Court (Los Angeles, Anywhere)

The address says Figueroa
Yet the door's around the corner, on Seventh.
An additional insult, needing to ask strangers where.
We know what they want before they stop us.
They ask us wearing sweatpants and sneakers on a business street,
Their flannel shirt jacs, their canes.
Chubby grandkids are afoot as the desperate oldsters tilt their undyed hair backwards, scanning the tops of the skyscrapers, their hands a shield against the glare.
"Where", I imagine, is the last question they ask, the last words they speak all morning.
Upstairs, on a greige decor floor,
The dead air hangs heavy with ancient laws,
With Latin cognates that pre-date Crawford Texas and Herbert Hoover and Dickens;
Rules that formed those primordial seasons
When the vegetables did not thrive
When the skinny animals shivvered and fell.
My friends today will sign what they're told to sign,
Fold up the grimy xeroxed sheets into tattered manila envelopes.
When they leave 725 their hearts will beat slowly, the rhythm altered forever by the private Vesuvius that crashed down upon them, that brought them low.

Heh Heh Heh Culture

Strangely, these two very annoying print advertisements were at the same bus stop.

The first ad was for some kind of liqueur.  The scene was a party with all of the leggy, pouty young women wearing white outfits except for one woman – a famous for being famous person whom I won’t dignity by naming here.  She was melted into a green dress.  “Dress” might be an exaggeration as the outfit left nothing to the imagination.  Most of the other women had bland expressions that bordered on catatonia.   A couple looked at the ad’s protagonist with a “Who does she think she is?” sneer, as if it were a still from the Maury Povich show.   The main, perhaps only, male in the ad wore  a white suit but appraised Ms. Green Dress with lusty approval. 

The beverage being promoted is colored green, thus the color of the woman’s dress.  I believe the caption was something like “Stand Out.”  Anyone’s Cockatoo’s Baptist upbringing  sadly disallows us from being able to comment on the quality of said product.  Still, we must confess that the idea of consuming a mass-produced green liquid does not appeal.

But, cat fights? Dressing full-on bimbo to “catch” a guy and make all of the other women hate you?  In this day and age?   One wonders how they could not have noticed the gender of the last few Secretaries of State.  It’s an ad that could have come from the mind of a right-wing radio aficionado, someone who believes with all of his aggrieved mind that women have a quiver full of tricks to gain power. 

Heh, heh, heh.  You know how them dames are.

The second billboard has only been up for a couple of weeks; it just feels like it’s been longer.  The image is of a quite lovely, solitary tree.  Beautiful branches all thick with leaves.  Harmless, right?  Except for the word “bano” in large letters above it.  “Bano” means bathroom in Spanish.   Lower down, “Es facil ser hombre” – It’s easy to be a guy.  The product being sold here is for a brand down-market beer; our Baptist upbringing is becoming more precious to us by the day. 

“It’s just a joke.  Nobody would actually go against a tree just because of this ad.  No one would take it seriously.” 

Heh, heh, heh.

Maybe if I consumed a few cans of the product I’d find the ad to be a knee-slapper.  Sober, though, and longing for a summer break outside of the city, it my reaction is just disgust.  Yes, there are people starving in the world, and abandoned animals are being put to sleep.  How can I waste outrage on behalf of a tree? 

I can’t move past the implcations of the ad, the assumptions.  Domination.  Assault against nature.  Indifference to the next person along the trail, to the creatures big and little situated nearby.  The mentality of “What I want is what I shall have.”  It aims for Kerouac-ian freedom but just lays in its own puddle, greedy and reeking.

Which is just how the corporations want us to be.

Mr. Peale, Master Peale, and Ms. Cole

"Caught in the Cycle of Poverty"
LA Times Caught in Cycle of Poverty
May 24, 2012


The painting this week in my National Gallery desk calendar has "Rubens Peale with a Geranium" by his brother, Rembrandt Peale. Young Rubens has clean, fluffy hair--I'm thinking no easy feat in 1800s---and is wearing a nice coat and an off white neck-scarf around his neck. Two other things he's wearing stand out--spectacles and an intelligent, calm expression.

Today's LA Times has a front page article on poverty. The protagonist in the piece is a Ms. Cole--27 years old, unemployed, high school dropout with four chilldren.  She never married the children's fathers ( plural ).   Ms. Cole couldn't bring herself to retake the food safety test she  flunked when trying to get a job at a pizza place, and she chose not to write out a resume to apply to be a janitor at a nearby school. She lives on a thousand dollars a month, so naturally housing is a continual crisis. One child was diagnosed with asthma, thus increasing the public assistance somewhat.

In short, the article was poverty porn wherein housed and well- fed commenters could get their jollies by revelling in Ms. Cole's bad choices.

(And she obliged, coming up with some bad choices one wouldn't even think possible, like ignoring health concerns so as to avoid "more bad news". She has diabetes, high blood pressure and possibly depression.)

Rubens' brother Rembrandt lived to be in his eighties. Before penicillin.

Most commenters treated the article like a popcorn movie; one could almost hear the crunching and the slurping of soda pop while reading the remarks. The word "breeding" came up often, as in, How could taxpayers afford to let someone like that keep on breeding?

While a handful of commenters professed some begrudging, nose-turned-up compassion for Ms. Cole's children, a smaller number had compassion for Ms. Cole herself.  The most insightful of these deserves quoting:

The hardest thing for regular middle class people to get is the belief in helplessnes and hopelessness that poor people have inside their heads. They've never seen any success, they've never known any success, they have had no examples around them - most of us middle class and above had that all our lives and never even had to think about how much it did for us to somehow KNOW that we could succeed if we tried. If you were surrounded by "You can't, you're stupid, you'll fail, you don't get it" your whole life, your optimism and ability to grab opportunity would be seriously diminished. Really try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who was NEVER taught she had options or that she COULD succeed even when the going was hard. That's the environment of hopelessness that perpetuates poverty, and it's very difficult for a person raised in a supportive and encouraging world to understand.  (Emphasis added.)

And this, I'm certain, is what Ms. Cole is up against.  If one's life has been a continual beat-down then, no, you don't bounce back and say, "I'm coming back tomorrow and by golly, I'm gonna ace that food safety exam!

Rubens Peale, and his brother the celebrated artist. Talented, cared-for white males in a new, there for the taking country.

 Ms. Cole, left slashed and bloodied on the Los Angeles Times comments section floor.  No one cared enough to figure out how to get her a nice warm coat.  No yearly trips to the optometrist to check if she needed glasses.  No one was able to provide a stable home life that allowed her a calm expression.  No school was able to overcome all of the hurdles that determined that her intelligence would never be developed.  She said her grandmother struggled, her mother struggled, and now she herself is struggling.  This awful hopelessness is woven into the fabric of multi generational poverty.

Not a mind-set conducive to noticing the loveliness of a geranium plant.

Festival of Books

Today was the first day of the annual Los Angeles Times book festival. Rode my trusty 21 gear steed out to USC to check it out (after a breakfast panaderia stop with DH).

It wasn't as crowded as in year's past and one wonders how the economy is affecting book sales. I saw Pulitzer Prize winning The Swerve at the Book Soup tent, but thought, Eventually this will be at the library....

Similarly, the Harvard University Press tent had a book titled Florence and Baghdad. The thesis was that the art of perpective actually originated in Baghdad. The book had beautiful color plates, and obviously the author was quite learned. Even so, I just made a mental note to remember that "perspective originated in Baghdad" and walked away empty-handed, but with $40 still in my account.

My first purchase was from The Travelers Bookcase (their delightful bricks and mortar shop is on 3rd Street, just east of La Cienega). They sell slightly damaged (undetectable to me) Lonely Planet Guides for half off. I picked up a Rome city guide and two titles from the new Berlitz "Secrets" series--Paris and Marrakech.

(I've been thinking about Rome a lot these days, just way more than is normal or appropriate. I nearly bought a Rough Guide Rome but was embarrassed, seeing how I had a Fodors Rome at home and that would bring the total to three.)

What else? A book about older ladies backpacking ("We're in the Mountains, Not Over the Hill", or somesuch), and a volume by Carol Muske-Dukes. I loved her anti-Iraq war poem, and she also wrote a kind remembrance of Adrienne Rich.

So, antiquity-art (Rome), adventure-inspiration (Mountains), one city I'd like to get to know better (Paris), another city I don't know at all (Marrakech), and new poems to tuck into.

I love it how one can spend $70 or so on books and feel fantastically (en-)RICH(-ed).

Try doing that on frigging Rodeo Drive.

What Did You Do During the Run-up to War, Governor?

Our sisters and brothers on the right bristle at any mention of former president George W. Bush yet his presidency remains just as pertinent to the current campaign as it was to the 2008 campaign.  The former president, unlike his parents and one brother, may have decided to not endorse any of the GOP hopefuls but surely the candidates should go on the record about their opinions of the 8 years of George W. Bush.

Governor Romney, you've been relentless in your criticism of President Obama yet silent on the Bush presidency.  Do you believe President Obama has been a worse president than George W. Bush?  If so, how?

Imagine that President Obama was elected by way of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, with cases of people being turned away due to false felony lists.  That he had appointed a horse trainer college roomate buddy to head FEMA and Katrina occurred under his watch.  Or that he took the more vacation days than any other president.

Think Govs. Romney and Santorum and Speaker Gingrich might mention it once or twice?  Maybe?

But those, incredibly, are actually small matters compared to the diseased core of the George W. Bush presidency:

Imagine that President Obama had manipulated intelligence and public heartache over 9/11--and repeatedly outright lied--to enter the United States into war with Iraq under the guise of looking for "weapons of mass destruction."  And there were none.

I'm pretty sure the GOP candidates would mention that little "whoopsie" had President Obama been the instigator.  The question is, why do they lack the integrity to mention it against Bush?  What's their defense?  That it's old news?  That it doesn't matter?  Would they recycle Bush's own after-the fact defense that the hundred thousand deaths and trillion dollars were worth the cost to get rid of a dictator? 

Any citizen, let alone one running for the presidency, would have an opnion on the subject, so put the questions to them:

How did you feel when you realized the Bush Administration misled the American people into going to war?  Were you suspicious that CIA employee Valerie Plame's identity was released shortly after her husband shot down the uraniun from Niger tale?  Were you angry?  Did you think it was appropriate that the prosecution of the war was "kept off the books" so it didn't gouge a hole into the budget?  And speaking of books, what books have you read about the lead-up to the war?

Are you just willing to let bygones be bygones over the largest ethical collapse since Watergate?

We as a nation can talk about the GOP budget later, but let's put first things first and have the conversation about the origins of the Iraq war.  Because of all of shortcomings real and imagained critics of the president whine about--the Affordable Care Act, that he's a secret Muslim / Socialist / Kenyan, that he's uppity / arrogrant / elitist, that he uses a teleprompter, that "he thinks he's better than you," etc. etc.--President Obama strikes me as being tempermentally unable to do anything as heinous as to lie his way into a phony war.

Adrienne Rich - What We Can Still Find There

How sad to read of Adrienne Rich's passing this week. Yet, circumstance aside, seeing her gentle, wise face on the NYT page brought back the joy I felt when I read her collection An Atlas of the Difficult World, Poems 1988-1991 (W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. 60 pp.).

Supposedly a melon-baller scoop of black hole is of such density it would make endless piercings of Earth, up and down til the blue planet was no more. So, it is with the poetry of Adrienne Rich; this thin slice of her genius is about all my allotment of brain cells can absorb.

Which is fine. This volume alone is brilliance enough for a lifetime.

Remember when Bush Sr. decided on the Gulf War? (I marched against it, but Good Lord! The Gulf War was as noble as Gandhi's salt campaign compared to his Bush's son's high crimes and misdemeanors-laced tenure. Of this era Rich said

Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossoming

And in one short but truthfully massive line she captured the visual for recession and war.

Upon reading of her passing I set out on a hardbody, living quarter-wide search for my copy of "Atlas". On dog-eared page 5, the last six lines are underlined.

I drive inland over roads / closed in wet weather

I can see these roads; she lived in Santa Cruz, and these words put me in mind of the road north of the city, in the woods, that take one to Big Basin State Park.

Later:

These are not the roads / you knew me by. But the woman driving, walking, watching/ for life and death, is the same.

I just alway loved the duality and danger of this person, this woman who doesn't look like she can handle a pickup on slick roads parallel to the height of redwoods is doing just that.

Her power derives not from bravado, from tough talk ("dead or alive"). It comes from watching. From listening. Paying attention. Only such a human being is equipped to notice the sadness of flags blossoming where little else is.

Thank you, Adrienne Rich.

Wrecking Ball: Bruce's Master Class in American Music

In an article entitled "Why It's Impossible to Talk to a Liberal" (Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2012), Charlotte Allen prefaced a point by referencing "the leftist novelist E.L. Doctorow".  

The leftist novelist.  Wow.  

E.L. Doctorow has written nearly a dozen novels.  He's also published four short story collections, one play, and about a half dozen collections of essays.  One would think all of his published works were printed on cheapo, ink-smeared, pre-Gorbachev newsprint, the greige covers all stamped with a hammer and sickle, and that every plot was a  thinly-veiled, cobbled together apology for Stalin.  In other words, a hack.  Not someone to be taken seriously.

Allen's argument with Doctorow?  He wrote an "incendiary anti-George W. Bush op-ed piece" wherein he painted the former president as being uncaring.  A friend of hers passed along the piece to Allen in an email, who right away sniffed out an error.  "It was not 40% but 40 million Americans--more like 15%--who lacked health insurance for various reasons."

Which completely refutes Doctorow's silly idea that Bush was indifferent to people being uninsured.  Well, actually not.  In fact, Allen's huffy "correction" kind of doubles down on Bush's alleged indifference and raises to to a level that would have embarrassed Richard Nixon, who at least made a pro-business stab at getting Americans health insurance.  (Nice bit, by the way, Allen's "for various reasons".   She didn't cite any particular reasons why people didn't have health insurance, but reading between the lines something tells me shiftlessness played a part.  People making "poor choices".  Or this country being full of proud rugged indivualists who would never accept it.)

Only forty million, silly Doctorow.  Not forty percent, you foolish leftists.

Mercy-phobia and The Affordable Healthcare Act

When President Obama pressed for and eventually signed the Affordable Healthcare Act I thought, Great, it's about time. What a wonderful thing that more people will have health insurance, that insurance companies can't deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions, and that, somehow, the White House crafted the bill so that over time it will lower the deficit.

Good news, right? Apparently not. From former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's lies about eugenic death panels to shrieks about socialized medicine, our brothers and sisters on the right still bemoan the Act. Obamacare, candidates Romney (!), Santorum, and Gingrich say with a sneer, like it's a step down for them to even have to utter so vile a phrase. Promising to dismantle it on their first day as president is a sure- fire applause line at their rallies.

How could something so obviously beneficial to the country be seen as something sinister to be stamped out?

Yes, there are the insurance companies who stand to lose some profits under fairer rules; naturally they will instruct their pols to scream bloody murder. And of course there are people who yearn for the Obama presidency to fail on all fronts (hi Senator McConnell!).

What about everyday folks who claim to hate the law? What's their beef?

I think there's a large demographic of Americans suffering from mercy-Ahobia--a paralyzing, crazy-making terror that someone, somewhere may receive a benefit that he or she does not deserve.

From Ronald Reagan's (afterwards deified) welfare queens and young bucks to today's women being called horrible names just for demanding their employers offer the full gamut of benefits, mercy-phobes see themselves under attack by sub-human parasites.

Mercy-phobes would rather go without universal health care, excellent public schools, or, say, four weeks mandatory vacations if it means the great undeserving "they" would get these things, too.

At some level mercy-phobes are correct. Out of 100 people certainly a handful will try to game the system, will not "deserve" easier access to healthcare, would have "derserved" to go bankrupt after a self- induced illness.

Another handfull out of the 100 will reach a great old age without ever spending one night in a hospital.

The great majority, though, will surely benefit from The Affordable Health Care Act's fair, responsible, and quite sensible health care reforms.

It's time to let go of the dead-weight burden of mercy- phobia. If you suffer from it, try spending one day without it. Feel the lightness. Enjoy the new energy you have from not lugging it around.

Tibet: Culture on the Edge

By Phil Borges, Rizzoli, 2011. 207 pp

A beautiful book of photographs of Tibet ( what the Chinese government calls TAR - the Tibetan Autonomous Region). Mainly the images are portraits of the Tibetan people. The book has three main sections: Climate change, which has affected glaciers; development--one gets the feeling the roads &c weren't put in for the local people's benefit but the zillions of non-Tibetan people pouring in; and Devotion. Despite no pictures of His Holiness the Dalai Lama being allowed in Tibet the people cling to their belief.

I wonder if the Dalai Lama has seen these photographs. He isn't allowed in the country of his birth, having been forced to flee decades ago.

Lake Manasarovar has to be the most beautiful lake on the planet. Maybe even the universe--the waters shimmer an other worldly blue. It's holy to the Tibetans and the cover photo of it surrounded by dar gray mountains and light gray skies--with a red-robed monk to the side--makes their reverence seem completely appropriate.

God bless and keep the Tibetan people, and thank you Mr. Borges for this document to their lives.

Readable Poetry! Praise for Matthew Dickman and Devin Johnston

All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman (2008 - The American Poetry Review, 83 pp)
Traveler by Devin Johnston (2011 - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 65 pp)

Readable poetry - it sounds like linguist Noam Chomsky's famous nonsense sentence, "green colorless ideas sleep furiously".  Yet these two volumes actually contain poems an ordinary, MFA-less human being not only can read but would derive pleasure from reading.  Strange but true.

Let's start with Mr. Dickman, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize.  (Do we have to disclose the fact that he signed this volume for us at a reading?  This Very Important Blog must adhere to the highest literary ethical standards.)   We enjoyed the live out loud exuberance of these poems.  One sees it right away in the first poem, The Mysterious Human Heart where he declares "...facing the street where my heart is president / of the Association for Random Desire".  The reader is right there with him on that street, willing to be led wherever he wants to take us.

It isn't all just wit and wordplay.  There's love and longing and grief in these pages.  Solace, too; in Byron Loves Me are the lines "You could have been in that car.  You could have / been like her / but you sat on the floor and pulled Lucille Clifton / off the shelf instead." 

Devin Johnston's poems in Traveler are not as immediately accessible as those in All-American Poem, and we're ashamed to admit how many times we wished to be reading it on a Kindle with it's built-in dictionary.  (Even though it probably doesn't have any listings for nacred, rhinarium, or pleroma.)  One hates to describe them as being "exquisitely wrought"--it might make them sound precious.  It's just that the skill in "poem-smithing" is so obvious one is willing to give the poems the second (or third) reading they deserve. 

I concentrated on Iona, which starts "Arriving damp with sea spray, fingers cold / I disembark a day already old..."   The reader gets to spend time with this traveler, watching with him as whiskey is made ("the kernels dried in ovens, milled to grist / oared to mash, the wort drawn off and mixed / with yeast in wooden washbacks").  We benefit from Johnston's keen eye, and we delight in his ability to tell us what his "Traveler" has seen. 

Readable Poetry - an idea whose time as come.

Coastal California - A Great Guidebook

Coastal California - Fodor's Compass American Guides
Written by John Doerper
Photographs by Catherine Karnow and Galen Rowell


No, it doesn't tell you the latest restaurants or the newest boutique hotels.  It doesn't tell you what the cool shops are.  The star of the book is coast itself; we are merely the supporting characters.  Which is how it should be. 

What this book does offer is page after page of  mouthwateringly gorgeous photographs, suberb histories, and excellent descriptions of the wonders of the state.  Trust me, You will be checking the car's tire pressure and throwing some clothes in a backpack within minutes of thumbing through this book. 

Have you ever been up PCH (Pacific Coast Highway)?  We were on part of it recently coming back from Ojai.  We stopped just at the border between Ventura and Malibu and walked along the near-empty beach twenty minutes before sunset.  I've been on four continents but, simple as it was, watching the huge orange sun drop down into the sea was one of the best travel moments in my life.

Pay attention to the guide's comments about California State Parks, too.  El Capitan--a bit north of Santa Barbara--is well great.  While it can get a big crowded in the summer, it's worth it to be able to wake up, take your fixin's down to the bluffs, park on a picnic table, and have your breakfast overlooking the grey, white-capped Pacific.

Oh, yes--the maps are good, too.  Not as precise as what your smartphone can conjure up but going "low tech" fits the mood of a good coastal tour better anyway.

Heavy, Season 1 - The People We Carry

Have just viewed the first season of Heavy, a semi-dignified reality show that aired on A&E.  The male clients weigh in at 5- or 600 pounds, the women at 3- or 400, and the show follows them as they began a program of physical exercise, diet re-education, and therapy. 

What's contained in those centuries of pounds?  Deceased mothers.  Living, negative mothers (one said of her aspiring singer daughter, People want to see Madonna; they don't want to see her.")  Family members members who interfered with young girls.  Fathers felled by suicide.  Sons lost to untreated mental illness or drugs.  A range of situations and events over which the clients can't let go.

Weight Watchers, for example, asks, What are you eating?

Mariane Williamson's A Course in Weight Loss asks, What's eating you?  Or more pointedly, What's going on with you that you aren't treating yourself well?

The clients seem high strung and overly emotional.  One isn't sure if it's just due to the presence of the cameras or if they're so used to eating through every emotion that, without continual food intake, they're a  bit raw and naked.

The toughest job the trainers, coaches and therapists seem to have is explaining to the clients that greasy, sugary, overly processed junk really isn't a good thing, that consuming masses of such food is really an act of self-violence, self-abuse--a one-person Fight Club.

God bless Alice Waters and God bless the First Lady for encouraging us to take good care of ourselves by way of our food choices.  And shame on those who attack them as being "elitist".

John Keats - Ironman (Who Knew?!)

Have just finished "Walking North with Keats" (Yale University Press, 1992) by the aptly named Carol Kyros Walker.  The poet had taken the walk in 1818 with his good friend Charles Armitage Brown through England, Ireland and Scotland.  Ms. Walker retraced that walk and documented it with understated lovely photographs as well as commentary on the letters and poems Keats wrote to his ailing brother Tom and semi-cloistered sister.

One thinks of Keats as being this delicate, fragile hummingbird given that he died at age 25, but there he was on this trip hiking 5, 10, 20 miles a day!  And mind you, this is before Gore-Tex and Timberlands and toasty fleecy pullovers; when one got wet one stayed wet.  Which, of course, is what happened--Keats took a nasty chill on Mull and really never completely recovered from it, dying 3 years later.

What stayed with this reader, though, was the purpose of the trip.  Keats had trained to be a physician (apparently in those days it was just an apprenticeship), but, as we know, wanted to be a poet.  Walker says Keats saw the journey as a sort of Poet's Apprenticeship--a way to shake off the his previous life and to enter fully into his new profession.

Alors, moi aussi.  Welcome to the first post on Anyone's Cockatoo.