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Monday, April 25, 2005
Five Families Did It All
This A.M. Pork Chop and I did our large lap around civilization. Particularly admired the dogwoods, wisteria, and lilac. Just magnificent. Excellent dog-walking weather, seventy degrees. Local persons we passed all wore parkas. A block and a half from home, we came upon a fellow my age out planting ivy. Porky and I stopped to congratulate him on the beauty of his environs. He took off his hat, leaned up against the ivy wall, and gave us a short history of this community. He said that starting about 1970, Colonial Place looked like becoming a victim of white flight. Realtors, happy for the business, engaged in frantic block busting ventures. This chap told me that he/his wife/four other couples incorporated as a Community Preservation League. None of the members of the league were big shots or wealthy people. They were ordinary folks determined not to allow their neighborhood to turn into a slum. Over the ensuing years, they organized every single block in Colonial Place. They worked with the legislature and the city to obtain favorable legislation, grants, advice, whatever they needed to save Colonial Place as the pretty area it still is. He said that as a result C.P. is now a friendly mix of races, all proud property owners and maintainers. He said that the average property during that time period escalated to at least three times its original assessed value. Then he did a sell job on me, to get me into the Preservation League. I hedged. Seems like he has the job well in hand. He assured me that my house, no matter the adjacency of those yellow apartments, is a great investment. "Your property value will certainly double in five years at the most." My, my. On and on he enthusiastically chattered, pointing out each delightful feature of his and his neighbors' homes. "Look at the big nest in that tree. Do you know what is nesting there now? Well, it's a yellow crested heron from over on the boat canal. How about that? Have you ever heard anything so lovely as the song of that mocking bird? What a versatile performer it is. And do you notice how each house here is different from those around it? The variety makes this place easy on the eyes, doesn't it?....."
Bottom line; people who know what they want, have a chance of achieving their goals. I like to hear about those who set out against great odds, but who succeed in doing great things. Too many stories end with a shrug of, "Oh, well, what can you do?"
Looking For The Promised Land
Out little tribal group is on the hunt for a new church. The church which Lydia attended until I moved here fell short of the Lydia standard for houses of worship. In what respect did it fall short, do you ask? Several respects; 1)the child care situation went from bad to worse, and 2)Lydia felt like one of only two people actively dedicated to institutional improvement, and 3)the new pastor confused sermon time with a chance to kick back and tell long, droopy tales of how it was when he grew up in the hills of Kentucky, and 4) when Lydia decided to take a bit of a Sabbatical to give herself time to see how she really felt, that church previously unable to act in any way, immediately changed the locks, threw out all of the curriculum materials she had developed, and denied her access to Benny's riding toys still in the Sunday School area. I said, "Forget it. We'll buy new toys," but you can see the situation and imagine the feelings. Lydia decided that we should sniff around all the other local churches and then when fall arrives, make a decision, and start over in a new location. So, OK.
We've been visiting churches from Sunday to Sunday. The first was an enormous all-black church where the service lasted almost three hours and I was so exhausted afterward I needed until Wednesday to get on my feet again. My WORD! that church was a work-out. Up dancing and rocking and rolling one minute, laughing until I cried the next minute at the antics of the church comedian (no, I'm not kidding), crying over the extreme emotion engendered by the pastor's message a few minutes later, at all times bombarded by ultra-loud inspirational music...whew! Black people may be the super race...just going to church takes enough energy to run a small city for a month. I'm not strong enough to attend that church. The kids loved it. Little Sadie danced in the aisle and everyone nearby helped her, laughed and had a good time. Benny beamed from ear to ear, clapped and swayed and just got into it. Lydia was kind of grim about the decibel level. So it was interesting, and a VERY good and happy place, but not for us.
Then we went to the nearest church, a gigantic fortress of Lutheranism. Lydia's main complaint was the music...it had some kind of stuttering, meandering, arythmic sameness from beginning to end of the festivities. I noticed that the congregation consisted of my peers and eight children...yes, that is EIGHT children. How do I know? Well, all the kids had to go forward to assist with the service for a few minutes and Benny made eight. Beautiful, beautiful building. Mean cranky people sitting next to us. At time for communion, I kept Benny with me in the pew. When others in our pew returned from receiving the bread and wine, I stood to allow them access to their seats. The first woman looked at me, did a doubletake and recoiled as though for the first time noticing an actual stranger in her vicinity. She dramatically pulled back, and went all the way around the back of the sanctuary to get to her seat from the other side. Those behind her followed like ducks in a row. Benny and I sat down. One crabby old guy at the end of the line apparently decided he wanted the short cut after all. Once Benny and I were back down in our seats, old guy entered the pew, walked firmly toward us and ...here's the nutty part...lifted his foot high and put it down onto Benny's leg, snarling, "GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!!" I jumped up, "Get your foot off that little boy!" He literally knocked me aside so that I fell onto my side against the pew, crammed himself past me and went to his former seat. OK. That was all I wished to know about that particular church...well, that and the fact that the sermon was the most anemic, no-content amalgum of meaningless chiches I have ever heard. The funny part is that since we went to that church the day has not passed without someone claiming to be a greeter who calls here and asks my impressions and if there's anything they can do for me. Yeah. Quit calling.
So then we visited an immense, gorgeous, historic Presbyterian church so bursting with congregants that I doubted we'd find a seat in the vast sanctuary. Crammed to explosion with young families. FANTASTIC music. Lovely service. One of those sermons which, after it's over, you can't remember having heard..kind of fungible sound coming out of the man's mouth. One sound was so very much like all the others that it added up to nothing. But it was short, I'll give him that. We were warmly welcomed by all in our vicinity. The soloist turned out to be one of Benny's ex-teachers and she, too, rushed to greet us. Very nice. Maybe the pastor lost his notes on the way up to the pulpit.
Then we visited a stupendous cathedral, home of the oldest Christian congregation in the USA, descendants of worshippers in the Jamestown colony.
This church, too, is close to home. Incredible carvings and stained glass art. The music was absolutely right. Child care was superlative. The children's service which Benny attended let out prior to communion and the leader brought all children down to sit with their parents. It was a long, long line of cute little people and after their arrival, the place whispered and bustled with the presence of wiggly little kids...a good thing, in my mind. Excellent, thought provoking sermon. Best thing....on our way out, I noticed a woman carrying her little Yorkshire Terrier. I said, "Hey! I love it. How do you get to bring your dog, because my chihuahua would like to go to church with me, too?" The woman said that her dog is a 'service dog' which I took to mean that he'd been educated to perfom some sort of exotic Episcopal Church canine accolyte function. She explained, however, that service dogs help the handicapped and she is brain injured. OK, now I know how to procede. I'm going to find a doctor who will say that I need a dog with me at all times, too. If I can't get a doctor to declare me brain injured, I will be gravely surprised. Pork Chop would absolutely like to go to church. Another good thing; seated across the aisle from us was the family of a very intelligent child similar to Benny in that he is a handful in karate class. Both he and Benny behaved in the children's service...says something good about that service, wouldn't you think?
And so it goes from Sunday to Sunday, we wend our way through the wilderness from church to church. We began in the high end houses of worship, but who knows where our odyssey will end? Might we finally choose the little hip hurrah church on the corner by my house? Could be a great place. They sponsored the neighborhood Christmas parade of teenagers yelling, "Welcome, Jesus, Prince of Peace!" Also, they send a mob of teenagers throughout the area every two weeks armed with garbage sacks, picking up stray trash. What's not to love about that? Lydia and I have a running argument re. their out-front sign. It says Pentecoastal Church. Yes, you noticed the coAstal. I say that is an example of a creative religious pun; they're a Pentecostal church here on the coast. She says they can't spell their own religion. I think we may have to go there one Sunday.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Howling At The Moon
I knew it!!!! Last night listening to local wildlife howling in the darkness, I knew this had to be the full of the moon. Howling front and back.
Across the street, yellow apartments gave of their plenty, many a lunatic out making hideous noise all night long. I wondered that no one called the police because the yelling and fighting were so angry.
Then around midnight, the back yard lit up. Neighbors two houses away built a metal outdoor fireplace. I got up to see what caused the noise, and there they were literally dancing around the fire roaring and screaming, drunk out of their tiny minds. It was loudest at 2:19 A.M. Shocking, idiotic, outrageous noise. No I wasn't afraid of them because they were two fences away and they were in no way interested in others. They just had much too much of a good time. Drunk as they were, I wondered about their safety with that fire...all the dancing and staggering, someone could have landed on the hot seat.
At one point I got up to check the sky and sure enough, the moon appeared full. I just checked an online moon phase calendar. Yep. April 24 is the day.
When You Feel Fat, Put Your Dog On A Diet
I feel and am wretchedly fat. Just all sick and wrong. Fat is so inconvenient. Inside my head I'm not fat. However, if I undertake some fairly physical activity, the fat is there and soon sinks me into a chair.
In common with most fat people I constantly struggle with guilt about the whole fat thing. I mean, how can an intelligent person not manage to control this? What is so hard about NO? I wake up each day determined to strive for thinness and then along about 11:00 A.M. feel the need for something tasty and there goes the diet. Solidarity with Winnie-the Pooh, about sums it up.
So anyway, I've found a palliative for my shame and gloom and feelings of failure. I put my fat chihuahua on a diet and am doing well. That dog is thinning down and will outlive me for sure. What this means is that I need a giant to take over my care and feeding like I have done for this little dog. If someone too big to be intimidated would enforce my diet, I'd be fine. I'd be thin by the Fourth of July. So, it's not my fault I'm fat. Simply, I am one of those people who need to be on a dog diet in dog circumstances and it is not my fault I'm human. I'm proud of the good job I'm doing with pork Chop's diet. Any giant who would like to undertake managing my food intake is welcomed to apply for the post of Joanna's diet administrator. Absent applicants, I'll just continue to be fat. You know, I've been wondering if there are places for people like me...way out in the boondocks somewhere out of reach of stores and friends sneaking Cheetos into one's room, boot-camp type fat farms where your family abandons you and then they come back in a few months and don't recognize you because you are half the size you were...? The kind of place where a fat person could cry and plead and try to bribe the guards without result, where the only nutrients were a recurring dosage of thin gruel. I might agree to that kind of rehab.
Friday, April 22, 2005
A Well-Deserved Tribute
Last night Lydia took Benny to a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Benny is a little red-haired five-year-old boy. I expected the worst.
Fortunately Lydia prepared Benny. She told him the story. He and she made pictures. She provided him with a check-off list of cast members and a marker for writing on his list. They had seats on the center aisle, five rows back from the stage.
Benny had such a good time his hair was on fire. He entirely loved the play.
Lydia, as a mother and in every other way, is a genius.
Don't Try To Be Deep While Stuck With A Stranger In An Elevator
Stuck with the company of a stranger for a three hour period, I broached various topics, hoping to find something we'd both be interested in discussing. After all, anything to take your mind off circumstances when you're trapped in an elevator. When everything I tried met with a cold silence, I finally resorted to the weather but she sniffed what sounded like a scornful sniff, then riposted, "Weather is always there for those who really have nothing to say." Ouch. Alright, she was a deep one, wanted to take on philosophy/religion/politics?..I guessed. Determined not to stand silent in the dark with a stranger, I dived into an age old controversy.
"Hey," I sidled into a hopefully deep enough subject, "Don't you find that religion provides endless opportunities for discussion? How about this situation? My daughter was in parochial school so we had to attend a certain number of services in that church. One Sunday the pastor grabbed my hand and gave me the hard sell about joining. He went on and on about the benefits of memebership, then indicated that if I wanted in on the good stuff, I'd need to attend instruction for a few months. This was too much. Up until then I had only let him run on because I was too polite to tell him no. Now, I saw, I'd have to take a hard line. Pastor earnestly, seemingly unaware that he still held my hand and was absently pumping it up and down, Pastor continued, "I'm sure that you'll have no difficulty doing the classes. It's all quite simple."
I raised a cautionary other hand from the one still in Pastor jail. "With all due respect, you really, really don't want me to attend your doctrine class."
He: Well, I sure do. That's just what I do want.
Me: No, you don't. I have questions and issues.
He: Of course you do and that's what the classes are there for, to help you find answers.
Me: Maybe. Try this one and see if you think the teacher will appreciate me in his class. Communion.
I have read doctrine, read it all, and you claim magical properties for the bread and wine after the minister prays over them. You claim that they are the literal body and blood of Jesus. If you want to believe that, I wonder where you got it. At the Last Supper, Jesus said to his disciples, "Do this in REMEMBRANCE of me." Clearly he provided this ceremony as a time for reflection about His life, work, and Person. How did it get to be a time of eating Jesus? At the Last Supper, He did say, while passing the edibles, "This is my body. This is my blood." However, when He got back to his seat, he did not have twelve bites missing from His arm and He didn't feel like he'd just been helping at the blood bank. That is true because even at the Last Supper, those words were figurative. If Jesus used a metaphor at the Last Supper, when did the language He used become literal? And why?
He: Reluctantly I must confess that you may not be a candidate for religious instruction.....
and he let go of my hand.
Now. How might you have handled that situation...or are you one of Pastor's fellow believers, and if so, why?"
The woman trapped with me hissed, "I have always been taught that those who talk religion to strangers are the worst sort of boors." She sniffed a DEEP sniff.
Somehow I wasn't encouraged to undertake a little chit chat about philosophy or politics. I said, "So, who are you rooting for on America's Next Top Model?" She babbled happily for almost half an hour about her favorite contestant on that TV show.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Culture Vultures
Yesterday Lydia called and asked if I might be interested in watching Sadie plus Lydia's friend's little boy. Lydia and the friend were given tickets to a Shakespearean play, enough tickets for two adults and two kids. Of course I agreed to babysit. Ordinarily Dan would babysit Sadie but tonight is one of his scuba diving class nights. I don't understand why the other little boy's father doesn't babysit him, but there may be a good reason I simply haven't heard. Anyway, tonight is my babysitting night while Lydia, Benny, Veronica and Zoe go see some Shakespeare. Now I am entirely glad to babysit. That's not the issue. The problem is that I do not think five year olds will like Shakespeare. I think Benny in particular will carry on so that he has to be dragged out howling and struggling. For one thing, Olde Englishe verse recited at speed is nearly incomprehensible to American adults and totally so for young children. As a young adult I attended a Shakespeare play done at Mystic, Connecticut. Then I attended another one in Ontario. Both of those plays were familiar to me but I hardly understood a word of the spoken dialogue. As a matter of fact, my strongest impression from both experiences was this; I had a front seat both times, a bit to the right of center stage. The stage front curved out into the audience and lights burned up from recesses at stage front. While those actors declaimed their lines, I watched with interest the storm of spit flying out of their mouths, and across the footlights into faces of the 'lucky' ticket holders directly in the center front row. That got me through long stretches of barely understood verbosity. Five year old Benny may turn out to be more of a culture vulture than I ever was...but I doubt it. I'm betting that persons attending the play will not go home talking about the play...they'll be exclaiming over the energetic performance of a little red-headed boy whose mother had to wrestle him out the door because he 'acted up' so vehemently.
A Nice Warm Day
TV weatherman chirped, "Well, we finally had a nice warm day after this whole miserably cold spring." He meant yesterday, a day so hot that my hanging baskets of pansies collapsed into drizzles of potential compost, a ninety-degree day. This morning I got up before sunrise, took down the pansy baskets, drenched them repeatedly with cold water and left them out of the sun. Later I had to run Pork Chop to her beauty salon appointment (bath, ears, nails). A quick check on my way showed the pansies staggering back up to their feet. After Pork Chop got home again all cute and smelling good, I gave the pansies one more cold drink and rehung them. Waiting for Pork Chop's appointment to happen, I grocery shopped, then drove around the streets in my area, places I haven't yet seen. What a marvelous array of flowers everywhere; wisteria, pink dogwood, white dogwood, forsythia, magnolia, camellia, fruit tree blossoms, azalias in all colors, annuals, perennials, all these as well as flowering trees, bushes and plants which I do not yet recognize. This is my first spring as a southerner and I am dumbfounded at the wall-to-wall flowers, flowers everywhere. In addition to appreciating flowers, I enjoyed the houses. Yes, most of them are old and falling apart, but the variety of architecture makes each street interesting, a mixture of humble homes and mansions. Everywhere I looked, homes were in process of being fixed/and/or/painted. I followed the street Pork Chop and I use for her daily walks, went all the way down to the tidal basin and then came back by the water. I understand why these old wrecked dwellings sell so high...the big trees, beautifully landscaped yards, various architecture, and the views of boats on the water. Just across the inlet a popular lunch spot yielded gusts of rowdy laughter from early lunch patrons eating outside in the sunshine of another 'nice warm day'.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Ghetto Lego
Yesterday our anticipated building boom got under way by 7:30 A.M. Whatever you may have heard about lazy minority persons, none of it applies to the fellows across the street building cement block walls. Without appearing to hurry, gracefully, efficiently, singing, laughing, calling greetings to passers by, the cement block workers put four walls under the house-to-be. First a man arrived in a car driven by a woman, a car also containing a tiny boy. The man got out, began to walk the site, checking out tools and materials. Directly behind him the tiny boy walked in over-sized teddy bear slippers. This child obviously jumped out of bed to help take Daddy to work. Each small gesture, the exact way of walking, the pause, the hand to the chin, all of it was copied precisely by tiny boy behind big man. Soon two more men pulled up in a white truck. The car with woman and boy left. Immediately another truck drove onto the space...two more men. The men unloaded cement tubs, buckets, hoses, electric cords, tools, wheel barrows, a surveyor's stand-up siting tool, and a cement mixer. Then three men began distribution of blocks around the foundation as the fourth man started to mix cement. By the time cement was ready, blocks were in place and all four guys got busy building the walls. From time to time throughout the day one man made more cement while others distributed more blocks. Once the owner showed up, plans in hand. They all sat on the grass and watched the plans as Mr. Owner explained what went where. This must have been a mere courtesy since the workmen already had part of the job done. At lunch time, two men went away in a truck and two stayed onsite eating home sandwiches and drinking from water bottles. By 4:30 P.M. work ceased for the day. All tools went back onto the trucks and left with the men.
This morning the cement crew awakened me...7:30 again. A good bunch.
Yesterday afternoon I sat on my porch watching the job for a while. My street and sidewalk are always busy during the day and every passerby commented that the new house is a harbinger of better things to come for 38th Street. Even my taciturn neighbor, a person who says as little as possible and avoids having to look people in the eye, he came out onto his porch, watched the work, turned to me, beamed, and said, "Good," turned and went back into his house.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Home Decor
Lydia, kids, and I visited the largest furniture emporium in the mid-Atlantic region. I wanted various items likely to make my crazy ghetto domicile more habitable. An item which I did not buy, but which lingers in memory as a good thing was a painting of pansies. Loved it in the store, but doubted it had much longevity over a sofa...too slick. Since then I have thought about what might be a good idea over the dining room sofa. The room has pale beige carpet, a round antique oak table, and a deep red sofa. Also, this is the location of the bigger TV and video game things. What could go on the wall over that sofa and be so wonderful that I might not tire of looking at it?
OK. Here's what I think...if I purchase a poster-sized version of this photo from Shutterfly, frame and hang it, I could enjoy it forever. Lydia took this picture at the playground the other day. Yes, Sadie played in a lovely long dress; Sadie is Lydia's little Barbie doll-child. Sadie, in the picture, twiddles her ears with both hands, an unconscious signal to Mommy that baby needs a nap.
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