More rants than links but, hey, at least I found the time to read some of the e-mail....
Aging
Reddit thought I'd want to weigh in on the question of whether a fifty-something woman should apply for a job as waitress in a strip club. Bleep would I know? I've not seen her. I've not seen the club. I may have seen the sort of customers the woman would have to work with, but I was trying to move quickly along.
But, ironically...A fifty-something woman who could still enjoy restocking store shelves isn't going to get the courtesy of serious consideration if she applies for that kind of job, although some of us think that would be a hoot, or kicky, or something. A fifty-something woman might get an interview at a strip club because people can believe that she thinks that would be a hoot, and she just might have the look the job demands.
I'd like to see more respect for middle-aged people who want a little part-time gig, so they apply for jobs as store stockers, or library pages, or receptionists, or nightwatchmen, or maybe busboys. The McDonald's where I spent some time today badly needs a good busboy. There is no reason why I, or someone my age, couldn't be it. I don't know any fifty-somethings who have any kind of problem wiping sausage grease and pancake syrup off tables.
Meanwhile the question arises whether Karen Pence, shown looking miserable at Jimmy Carter's funeral, "snubbed" Melania Trump. I know this face. Allowing for some differences of bone structure and color, this is my face on the days when instead of being mistaken for a cousin who's twenty years younger I get mistaken for one who's thirty years older. Observe the temporary wrinkles, especially along the jawline. Observe the dress that suddenly looks painfully tight ("But it hung like a sack the last time I put it on"). That's a fine-looking woman who is feeling sick and wants to go home. If she had had the
star quality to rise above what she was feeling and make politely funereal conversation with Her Radiance,
that would've been news.
(But the thing is, we've seen video of The Radiance That Is Melania on days when we were told Melania Trump was feeling below par. She does have star quality. And she's met the Big Five-O by now, too. Talk about your red-hot Mamas doing menopause with style...that's what we tend to expect the First Lady of the United States to do, but The Melania is a world champion.)
Disasters
It is not a bleeping competition. People in North Carolina (and Georgia and Tennessee) still need shelter because it's cold where they are, and construction work goes slowly in cold weather. People in California need shelter because they had their fire late this year, and it's not cold where they are, but humans are built to seek shelter at night. We all paid taxes. We all gave FEMA money to take care of people in North Carolina, in California, in Florida if they still need help, and people are tweeting some things about Hawaii. So take care of those people already, FEMA. Anybody in North Carolina who has spent the winter in a hotel is going to need to stay there through March. Don't even talk about trying to move them until they find somewhere to go. I'm sure they're looking as hard as they can!
Gentle Readers, if you can see a way to help some of these people, please do. As it might be when students who came home for Christmas went back to school, talking about plans to spend spring break somewhere else, and there is this room just sitting there until June.
Meanwhile, the Arizona Cardinals offer Los Angeles football fans relief...
Californians think their late fire season has been deeply weird. This web site won't attempt to sort out the accusations and conspiracy theories. This web site will just say that some people clearly were making deliberate attempts to aggravate the fire, and those people are likely to find themselves in a place that is hotter than a California wildfire, soon. And this web site will remind the incoming presidential administration that its mandate is to restore property rights to individuals and families, with heavy penalties on any interference with disaster recovery that could potentially be part of a land grab, as in offices shut down, bureaucrats ruled unfit for decision-making positions for life...We need a positive movement to restore land to private ownership, preferably entailed to families as in the Bible to check real estate speculation, perhaps allowing some land to be retained as public parks or historic shrines but requiring it to be owned by private persons.
Robert Reich shared a fire-fighting fantasy, for which I thank him; it was nice. He mentioned that California requires prison inmates to work, and one of the jobs they can "choose" is fighting fires, for five or ten dollars a day. They're not "professionally trained," may be sent into more dangerous situations, and are more often injured than other fire fighters. How, he asked, would Donald Trump be likely to do? My guess is that Donald Trump, or Robert Reich, or I would not do brilliantly as fire fighters...but any of us would do a lot better than might be expected, given our ages and sizes. All hillbillies used to have to be fire fighters and one of the more inspiring sights I've seen in my lifetime was watching a smaller, older man who was supposed to be staying off an injured leg lead a younger, stronger crew. Because fires are for fighting, and our fighting instinct is for fires, and fighting a fire is fun. Most people are both braver and stronger than they think.
Senator Fauxcahontas Warren wanted to make the California fire a political fundraiser...Call her out, Gentle Readers. I want to see her working with newly homeless people. Sharing some of her houses. She wants people to thank Democrats for doing something in disasters, let her give them something to thank a D--her--for.
Some correspondents think "Trump hates California." I have, of course, no earthly idea. But a lot of people have memories of California that don't really arouse love. I should know. I was born in some part of the mess of urban sprawl that is Los Angeles. They were having a fire that week too, an especially ugly fire because the color wars were involved, and my little White mother was afraid to go to the hospital where she wanted me to pop out into the world because she would have had to drive through a Black neighborhood and people were literally killing each other for being the wrong color. The'rents had spent their twenties in California and made friends and contacts there, and we kept going back and living in different parts of the State, and I remember some beautiful views and even some nice people, but...I saw a cartoon once. The cartoonist claimed that New Yorkers turn the stress of being crowded outward and spew unprintable curses when they mean "have a nice day," while Angelenos say "Have a nice day" when they mean unprintable curses. There is some truth in that. There is a moral and emotional callosity...San Francisco was where someone actually had a heart attack, collapsed on the street, and was promptly trampled to death by neighbors who didn't even want to bother to step around him.
And, in a disaster, who cares? Some victims of large-scale disasters may lack human feelings. We don't. My memories of Michigan aren't the fondest, either, but I still think even Wolverines ought to have safe drinking water. Trump may have real reasons to hate California. I certainly have reasons not to have ever even given a serious thought to going back there. I still feel something for people watching walls of flames blow closer to their homes, and the air is so dry out there that people don't even try to water their grass but just call it "gold," and at the last minute they throw their valuables into their cars and drive away, knowing their homes are going to be ashes if and when they ever go back.
Inauguration
In with the "disaster" e-mails come the "inauguration" ones. Inaugurations just get crazier. I remember when they were dignified grown-up events. Not lately. There's a new tradition of "counter-inauguration" demonstrations of disrespect. There are the so-called "inaugural" events staged by and for people who may belong to the new President's party but have no connection with his inaugural event schedule--in the Clinton era it was reported that Hillary and Bill Clinton managed to dash into and out of eight of over a hundred "inaugural balls," and dance one short dance at each one. Trump-hating takes the weirdness to a new level. Someone claiming to be President Trump, and the whole spam campaign is so ridiculous I could almost believe the person is working for today's Republican Party, wants to bring YOU to D.C. for the last rally and some of the inaugural festivities! Donate to the Rs and you'll be entered into a raffle in which somebody will get a plane ticket to the capital city and...
There is one thing about this spam campaign I like. They're not encouraging people to bring their own cars to D.C.
However: I can believe e-mail may actually be coming from Tracy Jones, R campaign worker. I could even believe that e-mail used to come from Team Obama, because cyberspace used to be a small, rather selective place where whole e-mail services were "by invitation" and--yes, we were a global elite, albeit a young, low-income, messy, geeky one. I do not believe e-mail from the President of the United States, today.
And if I did...I saw the last Trump rally in Washington on Twitter. I am too little, too old, and too much a lady for that kind of shenanigans. If I'm going to be trampled and deafened and choked on weird gases, I'd rather be fighting a fire.
Introversion
Some people still seem to think that affirming and celebrating introversion means rejecting company or friendship. No such. It means celebrating our own natural approach to friendship, which develops slowly, usually lasts a lifetime, and has a kind of passionate intensity that can be better than sex--at least it lasts longer. Introverts are sort of notorious for making what might be seen as extravagant gestures of friendship and not even wanting to talk about them, because, as C.S. Lewis wrote, "We are sorry that any gifts or night-watching should have been necessary" and, once the friend is out of debt, or out of the hospital or whatever, we want to get back to what we do with the friend that is fun. We're also famous for having odd collections of incompatible friends, because we do different things with different people. Some introvert friendships seem suitable or predictable to other people, and some quite the contrary, and that's none of those other people's business, thanks all the same. We have to avoid the trap of trying to make just anybody, especially the pushy extroverts who want to claim us as friends, into a friend but income, education, race, or belonging to an enemy tribe have nothing to do with it. We do things like marrying people nobody in their right mind would ever have suggested we'd want to date, and staying "in love" for ten or twenty or fifty years.
Thomas Jefferson died poor because he gave money to a friend.
Warren Brown lived to write more of the world's best car reviews, some of them in poetic forms, after doctors thought he was dying, because a writer friend gave him a kidney. Twice.
C.S. Lewis wrote about personal feelings and experiences he would not normally talk about, because fans sent him things that were hard to get in England during the War, and he could share them with his friends. Everyone should read Lewis's book, so confusingly printed as both The Four Loves and The Five Loves.
Productivity
An e-friend with a leg injury notes a funny thing about leg injuries. I remember this from mine (which wasn't as bad as hers). You think you're going to tear through your crafts-to-do list, right? No distractions like going out and doing things, just knit, knit, knit...No such. You don't feel right sitting and knitting, or sewing or whatever. The leg distracts. You don't get knitting done.
You don't enjoy things. You know that there are things in your life that are enjoyable, that will never come again, but the leg is not letting you enjoy these things. You have, let us say, a four-year-old relative who is adorable. You know that that child will never be four years old again. This is the one and only summer when he will recite Hop on Pop and bat balloons across the coffee table with you. Next summer he'll be a different, older, larger child, interested in different things. You cannot properly enjoy that child's being four years old, anyway. You have this stupid leg constantly itching at your consciousness, making things not...feel...right.
So you're not happily productive, either. Your crafts aren't fun the way they normally are. You do not get into that mental groove of sitting in your favorite spot with your favorite crafts. Friends wanting to cheer you up buy you supplies and pay in advance for things you can make. Making things doesn't feel like making things. Ideas don't come to mind. You sit down to knit, feel all out of sorts, go and lie on the couch. Watch TV. Fifty-seven channels and nothing good on. Phone a friend...well, people did that back when I had my leg injury anyway. Pick a fight. Quarrelling with friends is the kind of thing the leg suggests to your mind, because everything feels all wrong anyway. "Doomscroll," go to web sites you don't even like, read a lot of drivel that you don't enjoy reading and that's very likely not even true. I had a stack of short articles to publish on Associated Content, which at the time would probably have paid for all of them, and I needed the money, and I did not feel like sitting up and typing short articles into a webform. The leg just seems to want you to spend time doing things you don't even enjoy doing, because nothing feels right anyway.
If you are a person with a leg injury, or a friend of one, please know that THIS TOO SHALL PASS.
