Dichroic Reflections

Yiddishkeit

Yiddishkeit

A Jew is like cloth dyed in tea
Soaked and steeped until the essence
Will never leave her pores.
When you prick her,
She bleeds mama-loshen
In the backs of her ears
She hears the voices of old women
A hundred generations of them behind her
Brewing their tea and their talk, as old women do,
Their words, in Yiddish and still older tongues
Prickling the edges of her understanding.
It pigments her corneas, to color her vision.
She may choose what sort of a Jew to be
As she can choose what sort of a woman to be
But like her brown eyes,
No mask can change the essence
Of a people's ancient memories
That dance, for this daughter,
In her irrevocable soul.

Harold Kushner has had a lot of good things to say, things that made sense for me. One of the best is from his book, "To Life!". Paraphrasing from memory, "When you ask, 'What do Jews think about such-and-such a thing, the answer will alway be, 'Well, some think this, some think that, and some think something else entirely.' " This is how being Jewish is for me. I am sure it is different, and maybe a more vibrant thing, for Pigtails and DrunkTina, who are more observant Jews; different again for my mother, whose Judaism is also her social life, or for my friend S who I think identifies more with Israeli culture than the older Ashkenazi ways. And Judaism may hold a different flavor still for Egret, a quarter Jewish by blood but raised in another religion, or for Mechaieh who is not Jewish at all but for whom the teachings and language resonate deeply.

I'm being a bit presumptuous here, in describing other people's experiences in one line, so I ask pardon and hope they will let it slide by just for the sake of the argument.

It is coincidental that I started work on this yesterday, thinking about the coming High Holidays, Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur. Today I read Mechaieh's latest entry and was struck again by the difference in associations. For me, "Oleinu" invokes not the literal meaning of the prayer, but a chanted tune and the ending of a Shabbat service, with the procession out of the sanctuary and into a recption room for cakes and tea (on Friday evenings) or tiny cups of schapps (after Saturday morning services. And that brings back the voice of the rabbi with his odd careful accent, the memory of the time my brother got drunk on a dozen of those tiny cupfuls, memories of making small talk with my mother's friends. Then I begin remembering old dresses I wore, Hebrew school classmates I haven't seen in two decades, holidays, and the ensuing holiday family dinners, which of course reminds me of my grandparents, who are the key to a host of memories in themselves. Memories do chain like that, and we are, more than anything else, a people who remember. ETA, May 2, 2019: This poem used to say "Like her female chromosomes / no surgery can remove the essence". That passed without comment back in 2002 when I first wrote and shared these words. In 2019, I got called out for them; the world has changed - or rather, it hasn't, but our perceptions have, and our understandings of ourselves. XX chromosomes are not the determining factor of a female identity, so I have edited accordingly.

the body is leaden and the mind befuddled

Jeez. Drink one beer, stay up half an hour late, and everything goes to pot. I
couldn't do anything in the gym this morning -- slow on the erg, low on the
weights, even wimped out of some of the reps. Or maybe my body is just drained
from an intense workout yesterday. Yeah, that's it. Unfortunately ths would be
more convincing if yesterday's workout were actually hard enough to require
recuperation. Though I did sdo some full-pressure bits, which I do tend to feel
longer...for the same reason weight lifters don't exercise the same muscles
everyday.

We're going camping for the Labor Day weekend, which should
be nice and unstressful, at the Airpark so we can participate in their annual
meeting and throw our vote behind changing the covenants to allow the use of more
stone and faux-stone, instead of requiring all-flammable-wood siding. Camping is
also a good cheap way to spend a weekend which is nice because September is car-
insurance month. One problem with buying your vehicles around the same time of
year is that the insurance payments all come due at the same time. Because the
Honda was cheap to lease and not cheap to insure, the insurance costs almost half
as much as the entire car payments each year.

I need to be better
with money anyway. I've been offered a promotion at work (well, sort of a
sideways-and-up move -- this is the work stuff I kept saying I was waiting for).
The catch is that I'd have to convert from being a contractor to being a real
employee, which translates to a pay cut of nearly 20%. This company has great
benefits, but I get decent medical coverage through Rudder anyway, so the only one
that means much to me is the three weeks of vacation I'd get. ANd of course,
there's more security as an employee. Company rules only allow contractors to
stay on for a max of 24 months (actually 18 with one allowable 6-month extension).
So if I want to stay on -- and I like it here -- I'd have to convert in a year and
a half anyway, and of course there's no guarantee that they'll be hiring then. I'd
get very good and useful training, and great experince if I took the new position,
but I'd get some of the same experience plus more in-depth technical knowledge if
I stay on in what I'm doing, though the latter is probably less transferable. And
the new job might be more flexible, as far as being able to transfer to another
site, say one nearer home. It's not a bad choice to have to make, because the
"pro" list for either option is long, but it is a tough one.

Oh, and
did I mention that the pay cut would leave me making $10K more in base salary
than in the job that laid me a year and a few weeks ago?

It's my face and I'll frown if I want to

I'm having a bit of a case of "my sport is harder than your sport". After this
morning's slightly short but intense interval workout (well after, what with the
necessary shower, dress, and driving activites) I decided coffee, though of the
wussy decaf variety, and sugar were required. As I schlepped my weary body down to
the little cooffee bar on the floor below, I passed two leads who were talking in
the hallway. They looked at me and said "Smile!"

I ^%*& hate when
people tell me to smile.

I told them, "It's my face, anyway!" though
I did smile as I said it (wouldn't have, but I like these people otherwise). The
woman pointed out, "But we have to look at it!" Point to her.

Then I
pulled out my ace in the hole. "If you had rowed before work this morning you
wouldn't be all that bouncy either." One said, "I ran this morning," and the
other, "I used the NordicTrack. I even got up at 5 to do it."

Well,
humph. I got up at four, but the point is rowing is harder than what they
did anyway. Unfortunately I can't really go off and explain that, for a variety
of reasons. First and foremost, I'd look like an idiot and a snob. Second, I don't
think I could run two miles if I tried. Third, cross country skiing (and thus the
NordicTrack) actually is one of the few things that burns as many calories as
rowing. And fourth, as anyone who's still reading will be thinking now, nobody
cares. But dammit, I still bet my workout was harder than theirs.

Sigh. The things I put up with for my sport.

In other
news, I have an errand to run at lunchtime and a 12:30, so this needs to be a
short entry. Bye!

confuddling the cats

I think Rudder and I managed to thoroughly confuse the fuzzballs this morning. He
left the gym a bit before I did. I went off to the locker room as usual, showered,
started to dress .... and only then realized I'd forgotten a couple of small but
important items. One was especially important because I'd brought a lightweight
white sweater to wear to work. I was hoping to make due (read: go commando), but
when I tried on the top it was distressingly apparent that there was nothing under
it. (Yes, the locker room was a bit cool.) So I had to run back home to redress
the error, or rather re-dress myself. As I opened the door from the garage, the
older cat, who usually doesn't bother, was right there to check who I was. When I
got upstairs, I realized Rudder had been home to shower. I must have just missed
him. Usually, he does that at work, but will sometimes go home if he's got a bit
of extra time. So no wonder the fuzzballs looked confused; they're used to having
the place to themselves all day. They must have wondered why they had so much
company!

Because he showers at work and has a locker there, Rudder
can keep an extra change of underwear and pair of shoes there for jus such an
emergency. Because gym lockers are not permanently assigned, I can't. But the
saddest part of all is that I've only just realized that yes, I could keep spare
lingerie in my gymbag -- after all, it doesn't take up much space -- or even in
the trunk of my car. On eof the regulars at the gym who does carry spares and who
is about my size offered to loan me a bra, but that just felt too weird. There are
some items you just can't share. (I think she may have been relieved when I turned
her down politely.)

The other sad thing is that when I started
writing this, I thought I've have a nice entry on cats, for once, instead of my
usual three B's (boats, books, bras). Clearly I'm in a rut.

this is why

This is why Ashcroft's raids on the US Constitution bother me so. I grew up on
this stuff, and childhood impressions are strong.

Oyfn furl ligt dos kelbl,

Ligt gebundn mit a shtrik,

Hoykh in himl flit dos shvelbl,

Freyt zikh, dreyt zikh hin un krik.

Chorus:

Lakht der vint in korn,

Lakht un lakht un lakht,

Lakht er op a tog a gantsn

Mit a halber nakht.

Dona, dona, dona, dona...

Shrayt dos kelbl, zogt der poyer:

Ver zhe heyst dikh zayn a kalb?

Volst gekert tsu zayn a foygl,

Volst gekert tsu zayn a shvalb.

(chorus)

Bidne kelber tut men bindn

Un men shlept zey un men shekht,

Ver sÕhot fligl, flit aroyftsu,

Iz bay keynem nit keyn knekht.

(chorus)

And for those of you who don't speak Yiddish (well, all right, me, too -- I just
like the sound of the original):

On a wagon bound for market,

ThereÕs a calf with a mournful eye.

High above him thereÕs a swallow

Winging swiftly through the sky.

Chorus:

How the winds are laughing,

They laugh with all their might,

Laugh and laugh the whole day through,

And half the summerÕs night.

Dona, dona, dona, dona…

"Stop complaining," said the farmer,

"Who told you a calf to be,

Why donÕt you have wings to fly with,

Like the swallow so proud and free?"

(chorus)

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered,

Never knowing the reason why,

But whoever treasures freedom,

Like the swallow has learned to fly.

(chorus)

nonconflicting emotions

You know those diaries that have the little face icons to say how the writer is
feeling at the moment? I have no idea how on earth I could summarize all
that in one little icon -- much less leave it there to symbolize my emotions for a
whole day. Just at the moment, I am happy, scared, thoughtful, annoyed, and
proud.

Happy: The past weekend lacked only a bit of socialization to
be successful by my standards, having comprised time spent with Rudder, some
exercise, and an outdoor activity. (And sex, of course.)

Because I do now have a bunch of stuff to look forward to this fall,
professionally and personally. And because href="http://batten.diaryland.com">Batten is back!

Scared: Last
week I found out that Atty. Gen. Ashcroft hopes to set up href="http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-turley14aug14.story">camps where he could
"order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of
their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy
combatants." This morning I found out that the American Patriot Act (what wincing
irony!) already allows law enforcement officials to href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020820/ap_to_po/patriot_
act_congress_1">demand that librarians turn over a patron's library records,
to see what books one of those suspected "enemy combatants" has checked out and
may be reading -- and the librarian may not even inform the patron that his/her
records have been subpoenaed. I am both pissed off and very frightened at what
seems to be happening in my country and am beginning to wonder Just how closely
Ashcroft has been studying Mein Kampf. And check href="http://www.aclu.org/action/tips107.html">this out. Perhaps he's been
reading up on the KGB also?

Thoughtful: SWooP ended her latest diary
entry with this "And obsessions can be narrowing." Of course, it's easy to see how
that can apply to some obsessions -- see the paragraph above. But she was talking
about literary obsessions. Somehow, that phrase just struck me, and I'm still
thinking about its implications.

Annoyed: Just typical work stuff,
with people promising to get stuff to me by a certain date and not doing
so.

Proud: Because I rowed 11,200m this morning, and wasn't even
wiped out afterward. And went off to a responsible job. Because I've been a "card-
carrying member of the ACLU" forever. And a bunch of other reasons too small to
talk about, but special to me, that make Dichroic someone I can like and respect
just at this moment.

collecting my namesake

We spent today in Jerome, an old mining town north of here and enough higher that
walking around outside was tolerable, even in the middle of the day. They call it
a ghost town, but it's not really, since it's got a population of 500 or so.
Still, it had 15000 at its peak, so there are lots of old empty buildings - though
fewer than you'd expect. It's built into the side of Mingus Mountain, on top of
several faults that were aggravated by the mining activities, so old buildings
have a tendency to slide on down the montain. It's become a home for artists now,
with its main streets lined with galleries.

The Jerome State
Historical Park, in an old mining mogul's mansion, was definitely worth the $4
charged; the Gold King Mine and Museum as definitely not, unless you enjoy looking
at old machinery sitting out in the sun.

The galleries were much
better than I remember them from our last visit, with lots of cool glass,
metalwork, and pottery, and fewer boring paintings. I realize this may betray my
own philistinism, but I also suspect that a medium-good glassworker can make
something far more interesting and beautiful than a medium-good painter. On the
other hand, a painter who is more than medium-good can say far more in a painting
than any glassblower. Therefore, the sort of galleries Jerome has are more likely
to be interesting when they focus on glasswork and other arts of a similar nature,
though this is not necessarly true of museums that can get the really good stuff.
In the interests of decorating myself and my house without making my checkbook and
ugly thing, I restrained myself to two purchases; a pair of earrings and an egg-
shaped lump of glass -- a paperweight, I suppose. Naturally, both are of dichroic
glass. If I ever have scads of money to spend there, though, I may have to go back
to where I bought the latter, to invest in some truly spectacular kaleidoscopes.
(Including, naturally, some made with dichroic glass!)

downtime

Yet another quiet weekend here. We seem to have run out of steam. When we first
moved to this state, we went camping almost every other week in summer. Now,
though, we've seen and done almost everything in the state that we wanted to see
and do. Of course, things like hiking and mountain biking aren't the sor tof
things you'd only want to do once, but the other factor is that between jobs and
rowing, by the time the weekend rolls around we're just plain too tired to want to
pack up for camping.

Still, tomorrow we're planning to head out to a
mining town north of here that's become something of an artist's colony, and next
week we'll go camping on our property and attend the airpark's annual meeting.
September may be quiet, but in October and November, we have four trips planned so
far, so things will definitely be heating up. I'm sure there will be a day in
there where I'll be wishing for a quiet day like this.

soundtrack to a workout

Coolth. Blessed, blessed, coolth.

(That's a quote, but I couldn't
give you the provenance. I'm thinking either Edward Eager's Magic by the
Lake or one of Elizabeth Enright's Melendy books. Anyway.)

This
morning for the first time in a long time, the temperature was under 80F when I
got to rowing, and there was a nice breeze, just enough to feel good but not
enough to roughen the water. It wasn't really coolth, but it was the nearest
thing to it I've seen since getting back from Alaska. There were just enough
clouds to make the sunrise pretty, not enough to hold in heat. Not entirely
coincidentally, with the drop in temperature, a couple of old friends had come out
to watch me row. I've seen Luna on and off all summer, but today she was low,
full, and bright. I hadn't seen Orion since last spring; today was the first time
since then that sunrise was late enough to let me see stars while rowing. Orion
was gone by the time I'd rowed my first thousand meters, leaving only Venus and
another bright star visible, but Luna stayed around. Judging from how low and
bright she was today, she's beginning to think of harvest time -- only just
beginning, because she's still pure white.

Of course, the flip side
to the pleasant weather was that now I have no excuse for taking things lightly.
It took some force of mind, but I convinced myself to row my first 5000m piece of
the season. I rowed down to the east dam, about 3500 meters, as a warmup and then
went into the piece, at, I'd say, between 65-75% of full race pressure. On our
lake, 5000m is a bit less than a full lap; generally, I don't row more than one
length (half a lap) before stopping for a water break. Endurance, as regular
readers will have gathered, is not my strong point. But I did it, and the cooler
air made it possible and not intolerable.

Five thousand meters is a
long way, though: over 25 miinutes at the speed I was going. Though I enjoyed at
least some of it, I noticed that the tenor of my thoughts (not to mention my
rowing form) went distinctly downhill over the course of the workout. I usually
have a song in my head as I row, partly because I usually have a song in my head,
period, and partly because it helps keep the rhythm steady. When I started out in
the relatively-cool air, and noticed Orion, the song in my head was Gordon Bok's
setting of William Carlos William's href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/goldblue.html">Peace on href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/ypoetry.html">Earth. (You can tell how
much I like that poem, since I've included its entirety in here twice.) As I got
started on the piece and upped the tempo, the song switched to Stan Roger's comic
song, Athens
Queen (fortunately I hadn't then read the note at the bottom of the lyrics I
linked to there, saying that Athens Queen can also be sung to the tune of the
Gilligan's Island theme. I don't know what would have happened, but it couldn't
have been good.) As I started to really sweat, my mind urged me on with the chorus
from Come On Eileen. The part
where they sing "Come on, Eileen, taloora aye" about six times in a row works
particularly well with stroking a boat, and you get to grunt before each
repetition.

When it got up toward 4K and I was having to be very
stern with myself to keep the pressure on, I was probably rowing a bit raggedly
and my soundtrack descended to the chorus of an old sort of proto-hip-hop thing
that went, "Put your mind on it, girl, come on you can get it, get it girl,
anytime. (Say what?) Tonight's mine. Huh!" (Apologies to anyone old enough to
rememebr it and now have it stuck in their heads.) And after I finished and had to
row another couple thou to get back to the beach, my mind plumbed even further
depths, with the intro to the old TV show, Fame: You got big dreams....you want
fame. Well, fame costs, and right here is where you start paying .... in
sweat. Not that I dream of fame (fortune, yes), but I was certainly paying in
sweat.

a mysterious woman

I am in Limbo. Not in any big dramatic sort of Purgatory, but a hundred tiny
simultaneous Limboes, waiting for this, needing that to happen before I can do the
other thing. It's too early to talk to him, too late to talk to her, and I forgot
to think about them, and oh yes, am I ready for that.

In other words, I'm a bit bored at the moment, even though I know it's just a lull
between two moments of crazy business.

And just because it amuses me to realize that this is as close as I ever get to
the sort of enigmatic entry some people write every day, here for your humming-
along pleasure are the lyrics to Christine Lavin's Mysterious Woman. (The
song dates back to the 1980s -- I think she had Suzanne Vega in mind when she
wrote it.)

Mysterious Woman

Words and Music by Christine Lavin

Copyright 1988, Flip-A-Jig/Rounder Music

I want to be a mysterious woman

I want to write mysterious songs

I want everyone to wonder

what is she thinking about?

existentialism? nihilism? wrong

I am thinking about

defrosting my refrigerator

but I could get into mysterious mood

watch me ask the bartender

for a drink he cannot make

watch me order mysterious food

food even Julia Child

cannot pronounce right

from cookbooks that time has forgot

then maybe I will read

Crime and Punishment for fun

then again, maybe not

I want to be a mysterious woman

tantalize you with my come-hither stare

maybe it will work a little better

if you pretend I'm not wearing underwear

If you pretend I was never a Girl Scout

and I never learned how to twirl baton

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

I feel a mysterious song coming on

I think I hear I scream

I think I hear ice cream

melting all over

the rock hard bread

which is stuck to

the chicken parts

long since dead

they're in a cold box

within a cold box

within a warm box

(which is my room)

there's a ceiling

there's a floor

there's a wall

there's a window

look at the moon

it's a marble, it's a button

it's a sequin, it's a polkadot

stiched into the velvet sky

the pocket of Sir Lancelot

who is riding on Pegasus

who is fighting with the Pleiades

who is fighting Cassiopeia

who is fighting with Hercules

who is fighting with Betelguex

who is fighting with the Milky Way

that is stuck to the Bird's Eye Peas

that is stuck to the ice cube tray

that is stuck to the chicken parts

that is stuck to the rock-hard bread

hey, what am I doing here? I should be home defrosting my refrigerator instead

But I want to be a mysterious woman

I hate being so easy to read

hey, bartender, give me a light yeah, a Bud light

and a plate of pommes frites

is all I need.

the fine line until stuff happens

Yet another thing that really sucks is being stuck in a telecon at the time when
you normally go to lunch. Pfaugh.

Last night I was a Very Bad
influence on Rudder, and when he hinted at the possibility of skipping rowing this
morning, I toally jumped on the bandwagon. I'd actually really wanted to row but
couldn't because of an early meeting that meant I'd either have to cut it short or
stay home and erg instead, so I figured if I can't row, I'd just as soon sleep
late. And I was even able to persuade my psycho-rower husband to join me! (It's
his last week before starting to row with the club, and when he has other people
depending on him to show up he won't be able to just decide to take days off like
this. And ooh, it was niiiice. And I didn't even have to offer him the Usual Bribe
(TM).

I suppose this means I really ought to row both tomorrow and
Friday. I think my calluses are up to it, and the weather has cooled down a
snitch, so maybe. (A snitch, in this context, would be like a titch, only less
so.)

I'm waiting to find out about some cool training I might get to
take at work, and yesterday I broke down and did a bit of binge-shopping at
Amazon, so I'm in waiting mode for that shipment also. (In Amazon's case, "waiting
mode" involves checking the UPS package tracking about every ten minutes.) So now
I'm torn between the fact that I Like anticipation, but I don't like waiting. It's
a fine line.

reply to Service

A Reply to Robert Service

Dedicated to Jo March

There are women born that don't fit in
But unlike their brothers wild,
They're not allowed to run away;
They're bred for home and child.
They're taught to stay within the bounds,
To keep a house and hearth
And raised to find a husband's love
The highest form of worth

Though work she may, even climb the rungs
It's steadiness she learns to prize
A job near home, a steady wage
A life well-organized.
And as she's taught, so does she live
And what she does, does well
Unlike her brothers of gypsy blood
Who'd sooner stay in hell.

For though she loves her family,
Though her career succeeds
The tamer joys do not suffice
To fill her deepest need.
She never shares her yearning soul,
Her friends don't understand
A different breed, content, complete
Preferring birds in hand.

Some days she gets the yen to bolt
Her feet plain itch to roam
Her spirit strains at manacles
Forged of love and home.
She'd like to take the rover's road,
To leave her hearth and kin
To 'range the field and rove the flood'
And find where she fits in.

But home's a leash and job's a chain
And Duty's call is loud
And so she stays to satisfy
The sedentary crowd.
But when she's got a minute free
She likes to close her eyes
And leaning back, about untrammeled
Freedom fantasize.

But it's never more than a minute
Til someone calls her name
And once again she has to play
Pretend-I'm-happy games.
And then she stops and wonders
What her daughters' dreams will be
And she adds a bit to a hoarded stash
To set a young rover ... free.

I want

I want, I want, I want, I WANT ... only I don't know what it is I
want.

It's not stuff I want; I sometimes buy stuff to fill the gap,
but the satisfaction of that fades quickly. (Though at least afterwards, I may
still be dissatisfied but I'm dissatisfied while playing with cool stuff.) Books
are the only exception, because books are not objects but windows.

I
don't want things to have, I want things to do. I want adventure, travel,
experience, things to do that I can be passionate about. Things that will reward
my pasion. I want to go and do and be and feel and try and care.

I
want to live big. I don't want to live inside a caul that binds me in and blinds
me to the world, even if that caul is called a cubicle, or a status quo, or an
outside expectation. I don't want every day to be the same and I don't want to be
comfortable in the sameness of my life. I want to be completely alve in the
minut, whether it's a minute with candles, bubblebaths, and being careful not to
drop my book in the water, or a minute of slow drugging kisses and warm skin, or a
minute on a hilltop with me and the biting wind and the stark glory of high
places.

I want, I want. Veruca Salt in the Willy Wonka movie sang
about wanting the whole world. I want it too, only not to have, but to live.

Dum vivimus, vivamus!

recommended reading

Recommended reading: first, the sensible ones.

href="http://bastion.diaryland.com">Bastion, to read about how a marriage is
still an ongoing work (replete with the imperfections of a living organism) even
after 60 (?) years.

href="http://thistledown.diaryland.com">Thistledown, on how to classify
prioritize life-sucking activities.

href="http://ak.diaryland.com">AK, to read about how even the best of us fall
down sometimes, on even the things that are most important to us.

Then it's on to someone who needs to work a bit more on her
logic skills. Someone recently wrote to href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=104&e=2&cid=104&u=/020818/1
55/225kg.html">Ann Landers about the increasing prevalence of self-destructive
behaviors among Americans: "As we descend further and further down the slippery
slope of addictions (which include not only alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, but
shopping, gambling, overeating, sexual obsessions, and more), we are becoming a
nation so harmful to itself that terrorists need only sit back and watch us self-
destruct. How can we be truly strong and healthy as a nation when we are comprised
of individuals who are not strong and healthy?" Interesting opint, though I tend
to think it's not entirely that simple an equation.

Ann's answer
included this: "People usually engage in self-destructive behaviors because they
are trying to avoid dealing with unpleasant emotions or situations -- so they
comfort themselves with substances or behaviors that when used to excess can be
damaging." Valid so far, but that's where her logic falls short. That paragraph is
crying out for further analysis. If, for the sake of argument, you assume Ann's
right, and her correspondent is also, then those two propositions lead irrovocably
to the conclusion that Americans are experiencing an epidemic of 'unpleasant
emotions or situations'. I don't know. Maybe we're not -- maybe one or both of
those premises is untrue. But if we are, then that's a problem worth some serious
study and it might be more profitable to go to work on the root cause than to try
to treat each manifestation of symptom individually, as we have been
doing.

---




Sports report:

I rowed 10,500 meters
today, That's not quite 2 full laps so I'm still a weenie compared to my husband,
who's been trying to row 4 laps once a week. Ick. I have no desire to do that,
ever. The city program and the juniors were back out on the water today after
their summer hiatuses (what's the correct plural of that?) so the boatyard was
unpleasantly crowded. I've gotten spoiled lately, having to share the lake with
just a few other scullers. If I don't watch it, I'll be slacking off again, or
going to rowing on only two days. I'm going to tentatively plan to do the race in
Newport, CA, this year, just to give myself a training objective.

---

Slightly disappointing: when I went to check out href="http://www.mythoslogos.net/journal/blogger.html">Mer's report that MSN
is cataloging online diaries, with blurbs about each one, I found, regrettably,
that it's true but that all Diaryland diaries are lumped together as "A community
of writers who keep online diaries." Well, I suppose.

Posted by dichroic at 11:21 AM

no, really, I jumped

I didn't fall in , I jumped. Really, I swear.

It seemed like
the beter part of wisdom to practice tipping a boat over and getting back in now,
in daylight, when the water is warm. In 12 years of rowing, I have never yet
fallen in, but someday it will happen, probably at 5AM on a February morning when
the air is about 35 degrees and the water's nearly as cold. At least while I'm
worrying about hypothermia then, I won't also be worrying (as much) about the
simple mechanics of getting back in the boat.

Surprisingly they did
turn out to be simpler than I had expected (having seen other people flop around
while attempting to climb back in after a flip). I had Rudder coaching from the
sidelines, for safety. The boat itself didn't flip over; apparently that's hard to
do, what with 10' oars sticking out either side. My feet did slip out of the shoes
easily, something I had been worried about. It's all too easy to visualize broken
ankles, with me flopping about with my head in the water as the boat remains
resolltely right side up.

So: fall in, pop back up, grab an oar,
attempt to grab the other oar. Wedge near oar on top of the boat, pop under, try
to grab other oar. Tilt the boat the other way, watch formerly-wedged oar handle
rise and float free, but mercifully it stays perpendicular to the boat. Grab near
handle, reach up for far one, heave up and lay across the boat. Still hanging onto
both oars, wiggle into sitting position. Look around to see if anyone is watching.
No one is, so I don't have to yell, "Don't worry, I meant to do that!" Row in,
hand oard to Rudder, sloch back up to boatyard in uni that is not nearly as quick-
drying as youd think. Change in corner of boatyard, with creative use of towel to
preserve modesty, having cleverly remembered to bring by a towel and dry clothes.
Go to breakfast.

restful Saturday

Ahhhh, sleeping late. Really late this time, all the way to nine or so. Errands
today, including a waterproof box for the digital camera and new sunglasses for
me, and steaks and wine for dinner. I took the waterproof case down 11 feet or so
to the bottom of the proof (being for once intelligent enough to take the camera
out *first*) and it passed with dry flying colors.

Tomorrow, I plan
to go fall in the lake. I want to practice getting back into a boat -- not the
easiest thing when your boat is only a foot or so wide -- while it's warm and
light out. If you don't hear from me by Monday, assume the lake water is even more
toxic than I had thought. Maybe I'll let Rudder take the camera.

watch out, Charlie Brown!

center>

href="http://www.lavenderdisaster.com/lj_quizzes/ambiguous/dyke.html"
target="_new">

src="http://www.lavenderdisaster.com/lj_quizzes/ambiguous/patty.jpg"
border="1">

href="http://www.lavenderdisaster.com/lj_quizzes/ambiguous/dyke.html">I'm Patty,
which ambiguous dyke are you? Quiz by href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/turi/">Turi.

Must have been the Gatorade question. Currently we have ... hold on
...at least five different kinds in the house, and I mean five ways it comes
packaged. I'm not even counting differnet flavors. I never really think of Patty
as a granola-head, despite the Birkies. I, on the other hand, was once accused of
having "granola" tattooed on my forehead, so I suppose it's appropriate. 'Course,
I'm not a dyke (I would be, except that whole sleeping-with-women idea doesn't
really do much for me), but Patty's really more attracted to Charlie Brown than
Marcie, so it all fits. And I say this as something of an expert in the field,
having at one point in my youth had the Peanuts oeuvre from 1950 to the 1970s damn
near memorized.

Not that this is relevant, but fuck, weekends are a goooood thing.

rough day for the girls

My breasts had a very rough day yesterday.

First, of course, there
was the erg workout, so they got all squished into a sports bra, but they're used
to that, so it doesn't really count. And this was one of the slightly looser ones
I can take off without surgery.

Next, though, there was the
mammogram. And yes, it hurt and all (they just don't go that flat, or sit
at those angles, and I think one of my ribs might be bruised. One on each side,
that is.), but I still think all those women who complain about how awful they are
should just being whiny. I mean, these are the same women who get yearly Pap
smears (one hopes) and in some cases, who have given birth. Mammograms hurt a bit,
but compared to those things, they're just not that bad. Heck, it wasn't even as
painful as rock climbing can be, and people do that for fun. Still, it's
definitely a spinach thing: totally sucky but for my own good. (I actually like
against spinach raw or slightly stir-fried, but when I was growing up, Mom used to
served frozen creamed spinach, so I still think of it as the epitome of really-
nasty-but-good-for-you.)

After the usual long day of work, there was
the Seven Nations/Great Big Sea concert. (Young Dubliners were playing too, but
it was around 11 by the time the first two bands were done, and we both had
morning meetings.) If I am ever lucky enough to go see GBS again, someoe, please,
remind me to wear a bra. I hadn't expect there to be quite so much pogoing
involved. Some of it was because the very nice but very tall people who had stood
behind us in line moved in front of us. (There were tables in back but the front
2/3 of the room was empty for people to stand.) Seemed like every time I'd move to
see the stage one of them would step in front of me. Some of the jumping, though,
was just in response to the music -- me and lots of other people.. GBS is even
better live then recorded.

The three bands (Young Dubliners, Seven
Nations, Great Big Sea) are touring together, and apparently switch spots as they
travel around. Each band played for an hour or so. YD are from LA, so that's
probably why they were last; evidently they were expected to be the best-known
here. From the sound of the audience, though, most of them had come to see GBS. I
was far from the only person there who knew all their songs. I think the next
largest contingent were affiliated with the AZ Irish Music group and just come out
to hear anything vaguely Celtic.

Seven Nations played first. The
band wasn't bad, but their sound mixing sucked. It was sometimes difficult to get
a sense of their melodies or understand the lyrics. The best part was when the
fiddler had a break where he wasn't playing in a song and started to dance. I
slipped up to the front so I could see whether he was clogging or just goofing
around (I couldn't see his legs from where I'd been standing) and he was clogging
all right. I've never seen anyone's legs move so fast. The band consisted of
drums, guitar, bass, fiddle, and bagpipes; their songs were modern ones with only
one instrumental traditional jig, but most of their songs incorporated wild reels,
played just on the feathered edge of control, moving in and out of harmonies, with
throbbing drum beats I could feel in my chest. I'd have to hear them with better
sound quality to tell if I like the band but I did love the wild taste to their
music.

After that, GBS came out. They played songs from all of their
recordings (at least, all of those releaseed in the US), and did do both originals
and trad music -- I had been afraid they'd skip the traditional songs in this
setting, since the other two bands don't seem to do much of it, but they did a
resonant a capella version of General Taylor is Dead and Gone that even
Rudder (who went more to keep me company than because he lies this stuff) said was
far better than the recorded version. They also did Lukey's Boat and
finished up with Mari Mac, which really is sung that fast. Amazing. The
only song they skipped that I'd have liked to hear was Boston to St.
John.

My breasts were a little sore afterward, though, from their
traumatic day. While we were waiting to get into the show, I laughed at a couple
girls running by, with arms crossed to support their large chests. Rudder told me
it wasn't all that funny but I don't think he understood how much I was laughing
with, not at, them. Anyway, they were laughing too -- they knew exactly how funny
they looked. It's underwires today for me.

all about

I have to go get a mammogram this morning, my first baseline one. Blech. But I get
to go see Great Big Sea tonight, along with the Young Dubliners and Seven Nations.
Yay! (Actually, the billing is YD, with SN and GBS, but it's GBS whose music I
know and for which I bought the tickets.

There were two
entries I wanted to write today, but the other one will be a lot harder to put
together so I'll do that later. Meanwhile, here are the answers to href="http://dichroic.friendtest.com">How Well Do You Know Dichroic?. I doubt
there's anyone left who hasn't taken it and wants do, but if you haven't and you
do, don't read the following. I set up the quiz so that some questions have
partial credit.

1. What was my underaduate degree
in?

• Electrical engineering (0 points)
• linguistics
  (3 points)
• mechanical engineering (10
  points)
• folklore (3 points)
• computer science (2
  points)

I majored in Mechanical Engineering as an undergrad. I
gave partial credit for folklore, because I took serveral classes in it, partial
for linguistics, in which I actually once considered getting an MA< and partial
for computer science, because that's what I do for a living.

2. Where did I get my
MS?

• Texas A&M (-10 points)
• Penn State (0
  points)
• University of Houston (10 points)
• ASU (1
  points)
• Penn (2 points)

Actually, technically it
was the University of Houston-Clear Lake, but I figured UH was close enough.
Partial credit for Penn, my "real" alma mater, where I got my BS, and for ASU
where I took my linguistics classes.

3. How
many years have I been rowing?

• 4 (0 points)
• 5 (0
  points)
• 10 (0 points)
• 12 (10
  points)
• 15 (0 points)

No one got this right, not
even Rudder -- pretty silly for the guy who talked me into taking my first rowing
class, back in 1990. I just counted continuous time since I started, not
subtracting the first few years after we moved here, when there wasn't a lake to
row in. (I cheated a little and told Rudder that, so he has no excuse.)

4. Which of the following have I not
done?

• flown a plane (0 points)
• jumped out of a
  plane (0 points)
• bungie jumped (0 points)
• hang
  glided (5 points)
• paraglided (10
  points)

Paraglided (Like hang gliding but with a parafoil.)
Partial credit for hang gliding because I only did it once, and that was
tandem.

5. Which of the following have I not
done?

• climbed a 5.10 rock face (0 points)
• run
  2 miles (10 points)
• wind surfed at the Columbia River Gorge (0
  points)
• scuba dived at the Great Barrier Re (0 points)
  
• Parasailed over Negril Bay (0 points)

I have
never in my life run more than a mile. I don't do distance.

6. How many boats do Rudder and I currently
own?

• 1 (0 points)
• 2 (0 points)


• 3 (5 points)
• 4 (10 points)
• 5 (0
  points)

Four -- the two new singles, the double he and T2 own,
and the Julien single hanging from the roof of our back porch, not currently
rowable.

7. How many piercings have I had
done?

• 2 (0 points)
• 3 (5 points)
  
• 4 (10 points)
• 6 (8 points)

None of
the above (0 points)

This one's a little tricky, which is why
the high partial credit. I have four piercings currently open: both earlobes and
my navel. I also had an ear cartilage piercing, which I've allowed to close, so I
counted four as the right answer. However, you could argue for six, because when I
was about 10 and first had my ears pierced, one got infected and I had to let them
close and get them redone. I figured, though, that that's not something anyone
would know from reading my diary.

8. Which city
have I not visited?

ul>

Anchorage (0 points)

Sydney (0
points)

London (0 points)

Taipei (10 points)

Seoul (0 points)

Taipei, though Rudder's been
there a few times on business. Alaska and Korea this year, Europe in 1996,
Australia and New Zealand in 1998.

9. How many
years have Rudder and I been married?

• 3 (0
  points)
• 5 (0 points)
• 6 (0 points)


• 9 (10 points)
• 12 (6 points)

Nine
years. Lucky for him, Rudder got this right. We've lived together for twelve,
though.

10. In which time zone have I lived
longest?

• Eastern (10 points)
• Central (3
  points)
• Mountain (1 points)
• Pacific (0
  points)

22 years in Philadelphia, 7 in Houston, nearly 7 in
Phoenix, 0 west of that.

And now you know all about Dichroic.

talkin' Ashcroft blues

"But she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor,
Only as free as a padlocked prison door,
Only as strong as our love for this land,
Only as tall as we stand...

Here is a land full of power and glory,
Beauty that words cannot recall
Her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom,
Her glory shall rest on us all."
by Phil Ochs

Should be our national freaking anthem.



Talkin' Ashcroft Blues

I ain't free if you ain't free,
And you ain't free if she ain't free,
We'll all be free, equally,
Or we ain't free at all.

My friend out in Australia wrote to me,
Said, I ain't gonna visit you no more.
She said, "it's not safe out there in the land of the so-called free,
And I'm not goin' there while you're at war."

I said, "Oh, that. No need to worry. We got the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, INS, the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, and some new groups that don't even have names yet watchin' for terrorists. You're prob'ly safer here than you are at home!"

She said, "It's not the terrorists that have me in a stew,
There's worse than that worries me.
It's those held on suspicion that you don't see on the news
When they lock the door and throw away the key.

I laughed. "But you're Australian, and they won't take you away,
They only do that when they have good cause.
It's not the KGB here -- this is still the USA,
And you'll be safe, protected by our laws."

No search and seizure. Habeas Corpus. The Bill of Rights!

She said, "Oh yeah? How can you tell?
They've got no checks and balances at all.
They're trying foreign nationals and locking them in cells
No bail, defense, or media on call."

So here I am now wondering just what the truth might be
And if there's any way we can be sure
We only lock up bad guys, and leave the good ones free
And still welcome freedom-lovers to our shores.

Meanwhile where do I get a ticket to Australia?
copyright dichroic

Blame Natalie, who sent me a copy of Woody Guthrie's autobiography, and Ducks and Eiluned, who do their freedom fighting with words.

and about time, too

Here are two very different poems. The first one just left my head this minute, based on something I saw yesterday morning.

Birds

Something's going to change.
The birds know
I saw them at sunrise
Flocking in patterns
Three, six, a dozen.

There's no sign of fall on the land here
So I can't tell if that's the change they see
Or if it's something else; just weather
Or a scent blowing in from somewhere else
Or maybe there's no change at all
And it was just a good morning to flock together.

Every morning is different from every other, though,
Like the birds, my own body reacts differently to each.
Some are for sleeping, some are for bounding out of bed
Some, like the birds', are for flocking together.

This is the first one I ever wrote that I thought was good enough to share, and the only one I've read in public. I can't believe I've never posted it here before. It's got a few weaknesses as a poem, because it's really meant to be a song, to the tune of Bill Morrissey's Birches. Morrissey's lyrics struck me as so sad that I wanted a happier ending, so I wrote one. This is also abolutely autobiographical. Minor things have changed since (Rudder reads more and watches TV less, and I have a pilot's license too) but not any of the major things.

Differences

He didn't like her music,
They didn't like the same books,
In fact, he didn't much like to read at all,
While she was always curled in some library nook.
And he liked watching TV,
While she found it a bore.
He was tall and calm,
She was short and sharp,
They were different to the very core.

Then one day without warning, in the middle of a fight,
She asked why they stayed together,
When he was so far from her Mr. Right.
The answer came back swiftly,
As if he'd thought on it awhile,
So perfect that it floored her.
Anger ended, she began to smile.
He said, "It's cause we give each other
Room to be who we are."
Then he left to fly his airplane.
She kept on playing her guitar.

read hair dreams

Work's going full blast and my List's getting a bit testy again. It's amazing how
irritated people could avoid getting if they'd just read things before
responding to them -- and not just on the list. Yet another Rule for Happy Living,
brought to you by Dichroic.

On a happier, if also stressful, note, I
have an appointment with Cool Salon Guy this afternoon. That means this is the
Moment of Decision: am I really going to let my hair grow out, or am I going to
get it cut short again? I am still leaning toward the former; longer hair behaves
so much better when you've just woken up and haven't showered. At least, if it
doesn't you can tie it back. Very short hair, though, has an avant-garde air I
like -- don't we all like to think of ourselves as rebels, no matter how great the
evidence to the contrary? (And that's a whole entry, but one for another day.)
Also, it sets off my eyes. Unfortunately, that also means it sets off the lines
around them. Later note: I think I know what I want: the hairstyle Asia Argento
had in xXx. Unfortunately, it will be a while before my hair is that long, and it
just doesn't do that anyway -- too curly. In need of a plan
B.

Whatever I decide to do, at least I know I'll enjoy talking to
Cool Salon Guy, as always. Even if I don't post the line-by-line conversations
like Weetabix, everyone's pick for
most humorous breakfast food.

Mentioning Weetabix reminds me that I
had a dream the night before last I wanted to post here. Unfortunately, I didn't
note it down soon enough, and I've now forgotten it. I know SWWooP was in it, and
I think Natalie was too -- she was a
little vaguer, which makes sense since we haven't met IRL. And then there were a
bunch of people I know in the flesh, but I just can't remember what we were all
doing. Drat.

the usual scattering of topics

Q. What sucks worse than having a friend die young, unexpectedly? A. Getting in a
major car wreck on the way home from his wake. Go check out href="http://batten.diaryland.com">Batten's page for the full news, kindly
posted by her sister, and join me in sending good thoughts and wishes her way.

news about Batten

Q. What sucks worse than having a friend die young, unexpectedly? A. Getting in a
major car wreck on the way home from his wake. Go check out href="http://batten.diaryland.com">Batten's page for the full news, kindly
posted by her sister, and join me in sending good thoughts and wishes her way.

putting it to the test

If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would I? Well, yeah, probably. I'm a sucker
for peer pressure in some ways.

So anyway, SWooP talked me into
putting up one of those tests on "How well do you know Dichroic?", because
everyone else is href="http://bafleyanne.diaryland.com">doing href="http://caerula.diaryland.com">it. And also because it was kind of fun to
put the quiz together -- I tried to pick questions that someone who's been reading
here a while would be able to answer.

On the other hand, I'm a little
reluctant to post it, because I'm not quite sure anyone will want to take it.
Still, it's kind of fun to try to get in someone's mind enough to figure out when
they're faking. So if you do wnat to take the quiz, href="http://dichroic.friendtest.com">here it is. And if you score low, I
promise not to make fun of you -- speaking as a woman who's scored 40% on every
one of these "how well do you know xxx" tests she's taken so far.

of inept cutting and Celtic rock

A stranger looking at my forearms would conclude that I am a) suicidal and b)
inept. Actually, a more accurate description would be c) more averse to
overheating than to abrasions. When we went to up to the property on Saturday to
relax and clear our more of the (fire-hazard) low growth, Rudder wore jeans and
boots, while I wore shorts and sndals. (This is why he's always the one to do the
hoedowns/tribal dances to crush down brush in the truck bed.) Not that more leg
and foot protection would have helped my arms but I've got matching cuts just
below my butt, from inadvisedly sitting on brush and low branches while trying to
maneuver a saw in some awkward areas. It's symptomatic of my general attitude
anyway -- when I'm going to be getting hot and sweaty I'd always rather wear less
clothing and let my skin take its chances. After all, it heals, and I don't seem
to scar easily. This is why you can generally tell on Monday how lively a weekend
I've had. I'm usually more or less cross-hatched after a rock climbing weekend.

This is an eventful week; I had an interview first thing this morning for
selection for an internal position that would get me some intersting training.
It's a follow-up from the one last Wednesday. The woman who href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/girlspit.html">saw me spit wasn't there
this time, but called in toward the end. (One other higher-up who was supposed to
be there also didn't make it -- I don't know if that's a sign they aren't
impressed with me, or just a sign of busy schedules. I prefer to belive the
latter, at least for now.) On Wednesday, I have a hair cut acheduled, and on
Thursday a baseline mammogram (just because I'm 35) first thing in the morning and
then a Great Big Sea concert that night. It turns out they're not alone; the show
is actually billed as "the Young Dubliners with Seven Nations and Great Big Sea. I
hope that "with" means GBS is playing more than just a short opening set, though
it would be nice if they were on first. This show starts just around the time
we're usually in bed, turning off the lights. (Rowers are generally not among the
great party animals of the day. Not past college, anyhow.) I expect I'll like the
other two bands, anyhow. A quick look at the web says they have the same sort of
kick-ass Celtic folk/rock fusion I like so much in GBS and Brother.

Fairport
Convention has a lot to answer for ... thank goodness. Lots of people have done it
since (the bands named above, for example), and lots have done it well, but
Fairport did it first. I'd still like to hear Richard Thompson perform live. Most
of his songs have a harder-edge these days, but you just have to hear the guitar
line and ballad story of 1952 Vincent Black Lightning to know where he
comes from.

Said James, "In my opinion there is nothing in this world

Beats a '52 Vincent and a red-headed girl.
Your Nortons and Grieveses and
Indians won't do,
They don't have a soul like the Vincent '52."

And he
reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys,
Said "I've got no further use
for these.
I see angels and aerials in leather and chrome
Coming to my
bedside to carry me home."
And he gave her one last kiss and died,
And he
gave her his Vincent to ride.

xxx

Yeah, VIn Diesel's kind of hot. At least some of the time. We really liked his
movie, mostly because the special effects are dope (Diesel's word). And though
it's not the sort of thing you go see for the plot, at least it doesn't have the
sort of plot holes and logic gaps you could drive a small submarine through, like
90% of action movies built on the same lines. Also, unlike James Bond, Diesel's
character actually has a reason for knowing how to do all the stuff he can do. And
I kind of liked it that he kept having to rescued by a girl, and sometimes by his
boss. And finally, though I wished he'd used a rope in the rock climbing scene,
neither it nor any of the other stunts had the physical impossibility of the
climbing scene in Mission Impossible. At least, not that I could spot, and I've
done most of those things, at least once, at last in a weenie kind of
way.

But yesterday's href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/hotitude.html">question on hotness still
remains, and I really want to know your opinion. Speak to me!

an analysis of hot-itude

Spent another nice day up north, breathing clean air and cutting off low-hanging
branches, with the result that my arms and legs appear to have had close
encounters with a briar patch. Rudder asks me to relay that he does not
perform hoedowns in the truck bed, to crush down a load of brush and make room for
more, as Mechaieh once
reported, but rather something more in the nature of an Indian tribal dance.
(What the hell, he's got ancestors who performed both kinds of dances, though
probably more hoedown-types than tribal-types in the pedigree.) However, he didn't
take it kindly when I started chanting "Hey-ya, hey-ya-yo" as he stomped.
Something about what the neighbors would think.

On the way back, we
were discussing going out tomorrow to see XXX, and I said that I hadn't decided
yet if Vin Diesel is hot ot icky -- he sort of straddles the line. That led to a
discussion of the meaning of the word "hot"; Rudder claimed it denoted strictly
physical attractiveness, while I maintained it's a measure of fuckability, which
is not entirely based on appearance. We debated if Sean Connery and Harrison Ford
could be called hot, since at this point in their careers, their appeal is
certainly not all physical. (Actually, Connery's a bit aged for my taste, though
his character in that recent movie where he played a master cat burglar was
definitely beddable.) So, readers, if any of you there are, what do you think? If
hotness purely a visual physical thing, or does it encompass other things like
pheromones and maybe even personality?

I wouldn't be surprised if
this one splits across gender lines.

girls who spit

If I haven't mentioned it already, on Wednesday I had an internal interview. If I
get selected, I'd be trained to be a local lead in a big company-wide program. I'd
be working on it anyway, but if I get this I'll have better training and
resources, and maybe be groomed a little for future leadership roles. (Why does
that sounds so icky written out like that?) I think it went well, because they
scheduled me for another interview first thing Monday morning (eek), this time
with even bigger wigs including a VP (eek again). Anyway.

This
morning I got to work, fumbled in my backpack, and failed to find my badge. I
happened to get here early this morning, about 7:05. I couldn't get to the North
building, where I work, in my regular door so I walked around to the nearest
lobby, only to find a sign saying it would open at 7:30. Next I walked west and
then south all the way around the buiding, and the next building, past several
other lobbies whose doors opened only to those armed with the magnetic-encoded
badges. I thought I would be able to get in at a lobby near the the south-west
corner of the complex, where I had been sent the day I first started this job.
Wrong again; that lobby isn't opened until 7:45. By that time, I probably could
have walked back and gotten to the North lobby just as it opened, but not thinking
that creatively, I buttonholed a passing stranger, explained that it was my first
time forgetting a badge, and asked where to go. He directed me to the guard shack
on the south side of the building. I walked around there, getting hot by then
(they're very large buildings) and I had been tired before I started the
trek, from my gym workout. By now I was going through a relatively empty parking
area, away from most of the people coming to work.

About then, I had
another bout of the cough I'm not quite over. Afterward, I, well, I spit ... and
just then, I saw one of the people I had interviewed with, the one whom I suspect
will have most influence on that decision. She waved and smiled and called over to
me, so I'm sure it was her. She was 30 feet away or so and she was on the opposite
side, so I'm hoping she didn't see. I feel so uncouth. ANd I was trying so hard
not to snorfle during the interview too.

By the time I got the
temp badge and got to my desk it was about 7:35. I figure I had walked a mile or
more. And of course, an hour later I was looking for something else in my backpack
and found what was was apparently the one pocket I had missed looking in before,
completely with badge. Dammit.

the Quest

Speaking of food, I was starving by lunchtime today, which makes sense
since I probably burned more calories this morning than I had in two weeks. Aside
form the cough and a residual hoarseness, I think I'm officially Better. (Q.
Better than what? A. Never you mind, missy.)

You know what sucks?
What sucks is that, though E.Nesbit's The Treasure-Seekers and its sequel,
The Wouldbegoods are easily available, the third book in the series, The
New Treasure-Seekers is neither in print nor available online. There are
several copies listed on Bookfinder, but that
seems hardly sporting, the Great Book Hunt that is my life. (Coming across a find
in a used bookshop is a thrill; looking on out on the Internet seems too
easy.)

On the other hand, that sort of thinking once lost me a copy
of Polly Learns to Fly, part of Lillian Elizabeth Roy's Polly of Pebbly Pit
series, circe 1921. For one brief moment, Bookfinder admitted its existence, in a
solitary copy. Neither Amazon nor Powell's lists it even as Out of Print. Not only
do I like the series and own some other volumes, but I'd absolutely love to have a
book about a girl learning to fly in the 1920s for my flying shelf and as a
companion to Betty Cavanna's Girls Can Dream, Too! in which a high school
girls wins a contest and gets flying lessons in the late 1940s. Still, it's
pleasant to have a quest. Someday a copy will turn up, and in the meantime I have
that as an excuse (as if!) for plundering used book stores.

growing up Philadelphian

This is for Tygerchild, for
mentioning The Al Alberts show and giving me flashbacks. And maybe a bit for href="http://bastion.diaryland.com">Doug, whose remembrances of the Denver of
70 years ago are fascinating for those of us who remember only half
that.

So, Fluffyans, all together now: "Send your pictures to dear
old Captian Noah, send today, send right away...." Or to misquote another of the
Captain's songs, for those who remember when the Rocky Horror Picture Show was
screened every Saturday at the TLA, "Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and
orange and blue, I can make a monster, make a monster, and I can f*** him too."

Soft pretzels. I miss soft pretzels! They were only $.25 (you
can still get three for a dollar) and were real soft pretzels, not
prefrozen and none of this pizza dough crap they're selling at malls these days.
And water ice (pronounced wooderice), which is fine-shaved (not crushed) Italian
ice you eat from a paper cone. You could buy either, as well as hot dogs, sodas
and chips, at sidewalk carts all over town. In Center City and University City,
you can buy almost any other kind of food, too -- Chinese, sandwiches, bowls of
fresh melon and berries. in the late 80s, some of the best Mexican food in town
was from a little cart on 36th and Spruce.

My family's been in Philly
for three generations. Jewish neighborhoods were in South Philly, where my great-
grandfather owned a candy shop (wish I could still collect rent on that!) and
Southwest Philly (where my grandmother grew up and was thereby a social step up),
then moved to West Philly when my parents were kids, and then into the Northeast.
Mom remembers when it was all farms after you got off the El at Bridge Pratt --
they'd go out to visit the cemetaries. At least they could take a bus -- in my
grandfather's young days they'd get off the train and walk miles across fields to
visit family graves. Now people my age are either still in the Northeast, which is
a bit more diverse and was on a downhill slide but seems to be recovering, or out
to the 'burbs.

I can remember getting milk delivered every day, and
the vegetable an who came by once a week, and the Charles Chips trucks that
delivered big cans of pretzels or, for a treat, potato chips. In the evenings, we
used to have Good Humor trucks bringing ice cream, then later those were replaced
by custard (what Dairy Queen calls "soft-serve ice cream") trucks that also sold
all sorts of candy. My mother remembers when ice was delivered door to door. My
grandmother remembered when she was twelve and the landlord installed indoor
plumbing -- big excitement. (An entire block of row houses with outhouses sounds
pretty stinky to me!)

Roosevelt Mall, 3 blocks from my parenst is
entirely outdoors. There have been indoor malls in the are for a long time
(including Neshaminy Falls, built on the site where Chistopher Morley wrote of the
falls themselves, and canoeing in the creek and visiting an amusement park there,
just after WWI) but Roosevelt was "the Mall" to us and it was a long time before I
realized most people mean a giant building when they talk about going to the mall.
Actually, in Philly, they pronounce it more like "gaowin' to the moo-
wall"

When I was little there was an amusement park on Roosevelt
Boulevard, with a boat ride for little kids, and ferris wheel and the Salt Shaker
for bigger ones. When I got older they build Six Flags Great Adventure in New
Jersey and we'd get to go there every year or two. There was always at least one
trip down the shore in summer, usually with my grandparents. My grandmother never
let me get more than ankle-deep in the ocean. I was astounded when I visited my
uncle in New York (age 8) and he took me to the beach and I learned you could
actually swim in the ocean, just like in a pool.

Red
brick everywhere, even on the sidewalks in the old part of town. Rowhouses in the
Old City dating from the 1700s and even the 1600s, rowhouses in the Northeast from
the late 1940s, products of the postwar housing boom. On summer evenings, kids
from about first grade up to 6th or 7th would all play running games out front,
games like Doors and Manhunt which were variants of Tag adapted for rowhouses. Or
the younger ones (I always think of myself as a younger one, maybe because fewer
of us played in big groups by the time I got older) played Mother May I or Red
Light Green Light. The adults all still sit out oon the steps and talk to the
neighbors on summer nights, and the kids still run around chasing fireflies.

The shore is its own whole entry, Soft pretzels are a whole
entry. Rowhouses, fireflies, local TV, water ice, University City vs. the
Northeast ... easy to write a page on each. And don't get me started on the
Philadelphia accents. But I think the gestalt of my memories is in that last
paragraph: red brick and hanging out with neighbors and summer nights back when
the only thing summer meant was freedom.

I miss fireflies. Kipling
wrote about the changes in Philly from Revoluntionary War days to his time, as
well as things unchanged: "And the fireflies in the corn make night amazing".
There are still fields and fields of corn as soon as you get outside the city, and
at least by the late 1980s when I was there, the fireflies on a June night were
still amazing. I'm sure they still are.

Encounter with aliens

Oh, THIS is why I row! I won't say it was cool today, but it was finally,
gloriously tolerable. (Only Arizona heat can make that combination of words make
sense.) And while I still had to stop occasionally for the periodic cough-hack-
blow session, I was finally able to put a bit of power into it. My body works
again -- yay!!

I did noticed I was tired and losing energy after the
first lap so I just did half of a second one. Wouldn't want to push things -- and
it's still the farthest I've rowed in about two weeks,

Then on to get
gas, which I did do in sports bra and spandex shorts because I was too hot to be
able to face putting a shirt on and like href="http://mechaieh.diaryland.com/deltoid.html">Mechaieh, I'll all about
comfort, and then it was on to the gym to shower. My routine involves soaking my
navel piercing first, while I get undressed (which involves some no doubt highly
comical snuggling up to the locker to prop the cup held to my stomach against the
locker door so I can use both hands to remove the sports bra. I floss my teeth at
night the same way.) Whie I was preparing my salt water soak, I overheard two
women whose immense collection of personal care items took up most of the space by
the sinks -- I'm always astounded at how many products are necesary to prepare
some people to go out in public. They were discussing the diet one was on. Here's
a rough transcript:

Dieting chick: I've actually gotten to the point
where food is something I have to do, you know?

Sympathetic chick: Yeah I
know what you mean -- just calories you have to eat.

Dieting Chick: Yeah,
just fuel, not something, like, pleasurable. So that's
good.

(Dichroic thinks: No, it's not!!! I've felt like that too,
lately, but only because I've been sick.)

Dieting Chick: The snack I really
look forward to is the afternoon one -- I have yogurt mixed with cottage
cheese.

Sypathetic Chick: Oh yeah, that's good.

(Dichroic, who doesn't
like cottage cheese, thinks: No, it's not!!!)

Dieting Chick: Those
protein bars taste like ass.

Dichroic, trying to avoid the visuals of that
last statement, can't resist jumping in: Luna bars aren't bad, especially the Chai
Tea flavor.

Dieting Chick and Sympathetic Chick, in harmony: But they
have so much sugar!

Dichroic: Well, isn't that why you work out, so
you can eat what you like?

Both Chicks, staring at Dichroic like
she's from another planet: Uh, no.

At that point, I had my saltwater
mixed, and I walked away, realizing they were clearly another species and I'm no
Jane Goodall. But really ... isn't that (at least part of) why you work
out?

I understand the idea of cutting down on food temporarily in
order to lose weight faster, but I still suspect eating normal food but less of it
is easier to maintain in the long run. And even Slimfast markets its probduct by
claiming it tastes good. (I'll never know. It reminds me too much of the Ensure
they kept making my grandmother eat in the nursing home, when she was dying.)
Emphasizing raw veggies and yogurt makes sense fot nutritional as well as caloric
reasons, but those things taste good. Food should be a pleasure. There may be
times when it's better to indulge moderately, just as you don't (well, I don't) go
around having sex with everyone you meet. There may even be reasons to cut back
severely for a short period. But what's the point of life if you can't not only
smell the cherry blossoms but pick and eat the cherries?

Those high-
maintenance Chicks are welcome to their protein-ass-bars. I'm going out tonight
for a beer.

not old...just mature

I'm not sure whether I feel old today, or just grown up.

I've just
started growing my hair out, and right now it looks as short as it did but is just
a bit pouffier -- sort of the way my mother-in-law's looks when she's had it set
for a special occasion. In my case it's the result not of a blow-dryer but of the
natural curl. The main challenge is to keep bits from sticking out in odd
directions. However, because it's a little longer more of the gray strands end up
in front where I can see them. Denial of gray is one side benefit of very short
hair. Suddenly I find myself wondering if maybe I have morphed into a short-haired
person by temperament, after all.

I'm dressed like a grown-up today
too, because I have an interview (at this company; they're looking for people to
train for an internal program). I'm wearing a little black dress I always forget I
have, in a very plain sheath cut with a round neck and princess seaming. Somehow
it manages to make me look round and curvy in all the right places even though
it's closely fitted, so I look corporate, but I look like a hot corporate babe.
(At least in my own mind.) The high heels help, and show off the definition in my
calves. (Calves are about the easiest things to get in shape. Almost everyone has
good calves, except those who are extremely stick-thin.) The only problem with
the dress is that, like many of my clothes, it blouses out too much in back when I
stand up straight. I think they expect the front to be a bit better-filled, as if
there were many busty women who wear size 4. Clothes designers clearly live in
fantasy worlds. At least the dress looks good from the front, and at least it fits
-- I think there was one point a few years ago when it was too tight. Now it's
just tight across the shoulders.

I wonder if my age is also
responsible for how long this cold or whatever is hanging on. The thing about
being 35 is that you can do still anything you ever could, but it hurts more when
you stop. When I was in my early twenties, I played Ultimate Frisbee, on a team
where lots of the other people were in their early to mid-thirties. They could all
outrun and outplay me on the field (I'm not good at traditional ball sports and
Ulttimate uses the same sort of skills). Afterward, though, we'd go out for food
and beer, and there would be much groaning as they stood up after sitting still
for an hour right after strenuous exercise. I could bounce right up without a
twinge -- that was my first glimpse of my future. Now I can sit in any odd
position at my desk, and often do, but I limp for a bit after uncurling myself. I
don't notice problems after sitting still post-rowing, but mostly I go straight
off to the showers -- and I'm often so wiped afterwards I don't notice any
gradations in the pain. I wonder if that loss of the ability to bounce back is
responsible for my lingering phlegm issues. At least I erged a little this
morning.

Another symptom of aging is loss of memory. I'm pretty sure
there were other related issues I wanted to mention..............

John and Abigail Adams, in their honor

I have been learning so much from my recent Adams immersion: reading Joseph
Ellis' Passionate Sage while listening to David McCullough's biography,
John Adams. Here are some of the salient points, big and
little:

• John Adams was probably the single most important
  person in getting the Continental Congress to declare independence. It was clearly
  the will of the people by then, but his writings, as well as those of Paine and
  others, had had some effect on that as well. This is the opinion of the men who
  were there, not just that of partial biographers.
• He was of equal
  importance with Jefferson in shaping the character and direction of the new
  republic. Again, this is the opinion of those who were there in its early days;
  Jefferson's rise in the opinion of history began some years after their nearly
  simultaneous deaths, while Adam's reputation only began to rise again (mostly
  among professional historians) in the 1950s.
• Massachusetts is a
  Commonwealth, not a State, largely because he decided to write it that way when
  writing the state constitution (which is incidentally, the oldest one still in use
  anywhere, according to McCullough).
• Many of the unpopular actions
  of Adams' presidency have been vindicated by later historians, especially his
  managing to keep us out of what seemed an inevitable war with France -- though
  really nothing can whitewash the entire wrongness of the Alien and Sedition act,
  no matter how strongly John Ashcroft would like to reinstate it. Whatever else he
  did, Adams did make mistakes.
• A lot of things about government I
  had never understood make more sense now. Though happy to be a beneficiary of
  governmental support of education and scientific research, and glad that there are
  at least some safety nets in place, I had never understood why they were there. My
  understanding of the proper role of government was limited to the words of the
  Constitution itself, plus the tag (probably wrongly) attributed to Jefferson,
  "That government is best which governs least." Adams' writing, in the
  Massachusetts Constitution, explains and lays the foundation for governmental
  presence in education, science, and charity.

While
Jefferson's idea of government was strictly a guarantor of individual liberties,
Adams' ideas were more complex. In fact, Ellis theorizes that his relative
obscurity may be mostly due to the fact that, not only do Adams' ideas and persona
not boil down to an easy sound bite, but that Adams himself fought his whole life
against that sort of reduction of history to simple pictures. (Also, he had a
quixotic tendency to fight agains any trend that seemed to be gaining popular
ascendancy. As fiery an American patriot as any man, he defended the British
soldiers who took part in the Boston Massacre when they were brought into court,
simply out of a belief that laws ought to be fairly and impartially applied. And
he won his case.) Adams believed strongly in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness", but he also believed that government was a compact between each person
and the body politic (the amalgamation of all pople concerned, society as a whole)
and that while government's power did indeed derive from the consent of the
governed, a government's duty to its people was balanced by the individual's duty
to his or her society.

Absolutely fascinating stuff. John Adams was
apparently a very warm, human man, much unlike Washington's Olympic superiority or
Jefferson's contradictory reticence. (I probably need to read American Sphinx
next.) Here is an example that struck me as telling: in May of 1776, Adams gave
what observers recalled as the speech of his life, a masterwork of oration
equivalent to those of the ancient Greeks, an immeasurably powerful and passionate
speech that convinced Congress finally to officially declare on that day that
these colonies "are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states". After
he had spoken for an hour, several New Jersey delegates wandered in late, asked
what he had been saying, and requested him please to repeat it all for their
benefit. And he did. (There is no mention of bitch-slapping or even eye-rolling in
the any of the records of the incident, proving Adams was a better man than
I.)

Though the immersion has deepened my respect for Adams, and
convinced me that he was an entirely likeable man as well as an admirable one (as
opposed to his son, who sounds only admirable), it's really made me feel with
Abigail. They married purely for love, not material advantage, arrangement, or
anything else, and it was one of the great love affairs by all accounts. And yet,
the country's business and both of their conceptions of honor and duty, kept her
husband away from her for months at a tmie -- they reckoned they were apart for
half of the first fourteen years of their marriage. I know what it's like to be
away from a beloved husband, but I had a phone and email. She had nothing but
letters, and the delivery of those subject to the vagaries of war. At one point,
he had to be away while she was pregnant. The child was stillborn, and the anguish
of their letters is not any different from that in anything I've read from the
latest online diary of a mother who's lost a baby this very year. And se was a
business woman, no idle flower who could retire to a fainting couch with her
smelling salts, or flirt away her days in society; she had a farm to run and a
family to raise, and she did both well, while still asking her husband to indulge
her with more "sentimental effusions" in his letter, as they were all she had whil
he was 400 miles away. Or, worse, traveling an ocean away, in winter, in wartime,
along with her oldest son. And in wartime, she also had to deal with shortages of
everything from pins to shoes to food. But her pain at the separation comes
through, and is one of those things that does not and has not changed across the
gulf of centuries. Neither has the fact that Abigail, the primary counselor of one
of this country's greatest men, was a hell of a great woman.

googles and gametes

Along with the usual googles for "dichroic" and for songs and books I've written
about, I've gotten two recently that are worth mentioning. One surprised me only
becuase it is so antithetical to everything I think and do and say and am. I had
written about the awful "music" they sometimes play at my gym, quoting from a song
about 'real women and real men'. I got googles for that line, which is a bit scary
because I had thought fans of that music would only be able to tolerate it by
litening to the catchy tune and ignoring the lyrics.

An even more
interesting hit was for the phrase "my brain doesn't work after a shower". Now
there are quite a lot of times when my brain doesn't work well, but after a shower
isn't one of them. I often come out of the shower with ideas to solve a problem
I've been working on. It's true, though, that my brain doesn't work well before a
shower, especially if I've just woken up.

I also got a hit for "I am
fire" Actually, as I've written, I am more href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/aboutme.html">water, but that was for this
specific poem. I still think
it's one of my better ones, even by Joan Houlihan's standards. I like the internal rhymes,
assonances, and references (I'm especially proud of Yahwist/burning bush). Though
I also still think the last line is weak.

After my href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/nochange.html">bored entry the other day,
I keep finding myself thinking that maybe I was right, maybe I should have a baby.
Since I do have a tendency to internalize everything I read (just ask Rudder -- I
know I treat him differently depending on whether I'm reading something warm and
cuddle or cold and intellectual or unpleasant and off-putting), href="http://fluffbaby.diaryland.com">all href="http://caerula.diaryland.com">of href="http://starbird.diaryland.com">the href="http://ziggym.diaryland.com">diaries and emails I've read lately from
people who are or want to be pregnant have definitely had an effect there. I'm a
bit old for it (35) but as far as I know have no health problems that would make
it hard to conceive. (If what I were reading were statistically accurate, I'd be
thinking more women had PCOS than not. I suspect it's just that people who have
problems are the ones who need to write about them.) I've always been ambivalent
on the matter, though, and much of my reason for wanting one is the idea of having
something to look forward to plus the fear of missing out on something important.
Rudder, though he likes kids and would be a grewat father, says he doesn't want
one, but that seems to be mostly a matter of fear -- fear of what I'd be like
pregnant, and fear of change to a lifestyle he likes perfectly well as it is. I'm
not crazy about my current lifestyle in some ways, but much for the problem there
is the constant business and having a kid would make that even worse. The 'pro'
reasons aren't strong enough to rationally overcome the 'cons', and I've never
really had the sort of strong emotional need for a baby that would sweep away all
the rational opposition. Also, for every time I've thought, "this would be fun to
do with a kid (hiking, climbing, flying), there have been times I've thought,
"Thank goodness we don't have a kid" (when I feel like crap and am glad not to
have to deal with a crying baby or also-sick cranky child). I think we'd be all
right as parents, but it's only right to consider what we'd owe to any child we
brought into the world -- not just to be brought up according to our best efforts
but to be wanted, yearned for, and dreamed over. Some of those things would kick
in when hypothesis became reality, I'm sure, but would it be
enough?

Probably not. We need nieces and nephews, blood or honorary,
that's what we need. So the rest of you out there, who do want pups of your own,
get busy. I'll baby-sit.

news at 5

First, go look at yesterday's href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/otwpics.html">cool pictures. Those are
from the digital cam -- we're hoping at least one of the film versions of the two
of us will come out well enough to have made into a poster, with Robert Frost's
The Master Speed superimposed. (Hey, if it comes out well, anybody want a
cool rowing poster? Good wedding present.)

Anybody watching the local
news at 5AM today might have caught a glimpse of me. Um, on further thought,
perhaps "glimpse" is not the correct word for it. "Eyeful" may be more like it.
Evil Coach DI (he's not my problem any more but I still consider him Evil because
his coaching methods with those kids remind me of Bela Karolyi's, only without the
winning results) had a TV news crew out there to film the juniors this morning. He
must have asked the kids to show up early, and he himself was there before I was,
which may be a first. Now, last night on the news there was a story about a dead
body found in that same lake -- they're still not sure how he got there, whether
it was murder, suicide, or accident. So I walked up to a cameraman, figuring that
since the light on his camera was out it wasn't running, and asked, "Are you here
about the juniors or the body in the lake?"** Some newsman type came running up
and said, "You just walked into a live camera!" Oops. So I got into my boat and
called, "Well, sorry but I'm here to row -- you guys are on *our* beach!" but I
think he was ignoring me as soon as I stepped back.

I do think it's
more important to row than to televise rowing and they were definitely in my way,
but the most irritating part is knowing that no one will have mentioned that there
are not one but three local juniors rowing programs, or much of anything else but
how wonderful DI is. I entertained myself for the rest of the row with fantasies
of being interviewed, of the weaknesses in his program I could imply while never
speaking one word of overt criticism. Actually, even speaking directly to a parent
whose child wanted to learn to row, I wouldn't advise against DI's program. I
don't like him but his coaching style might mesh perfectly with someone else's
learning style. In theory, anyhow.

True confession time: It was
pretty obvious the TV people were there to televise the rowers. I asked about the
dead body largely to see if any of the kids would freak out, but I don't think
anyone heard. Bad Dichroic. No pretzels. (Yeah, right.)

Actually,
it was a fairly miserable morning to row -- almost as muggy as rowing in Houston,
not a good combination with all the crud still riding around in the my sinuses,
throat, and lungs. And to add make it worse, She-Hulk pointed out yesterday that
there's a scratch on my pretty brand-new boat. Drat. So I only made it one
easy lap around the lake. I figure though that every meter I row is at least
better for me than one I don't row. I'll start pushing again when I feel better
and the more when things finally cool down. Meanwhile, today's goal is: trying not
to cough up a lung. Or lunch.

on-the-water boat pics

We got She-Hulk to come out with us today and take turns taking pictures in our
spiffy pretty boats. Here she is, with Rudder, in her double:

src="images/kdouble.jpg">

Here I am:

src="images/paula_in_single.jpg">

and, the piece de resistance, here
we are, Rudder and me, rowing in formation in "Sunrise" and "Sunset",
respectively:

As always, all images copyrighted 2002 pkb

authorial prejudice

In the middle of rereading Podkayne of Mars for the first time in years, I
keep noticing how dated it is. Partly it's small details, like Poddy taking along
two hats when she travels. (Did most people still wear hats that often in 1963?
That was after JFK's inauguration, which I had understood was their death-knell,
fashionwise.) Mostly, though, it's the ingrained sexism of the time, which
Heinlein seems to have thought would still be around a hundred years later, or
whenever the book was set. It's a good sign that Poddy even wants to be a
spaceship captain, but surprises me that she changes her plans because it's so
hard for a girl to be accepted for training, and even harder to get hired.

On the other hand, it's never entirely safe to surmise an author's own
opinions from his or her fiction. Dorohy L. Sayers is a prie example of this, in
the way that her own faith was not shared by her best character, Lord Peter
Wimsey, but there are pitfalls of that sort throughout Heinlein's work too. In the
contemporary Starship Troopers, women are actually preferred to men as
miltary spaceship captains; supposedly we are able to withstand greater
acceleration (this was probably based on the result of a real study; I don't know
whether it's still thought to be true). So it's possible RAH was just postulating
a specific future with the same attitudes toward the sexes that held in his own
milieu. Knowing him, it was probably specific decision. It's also possible that
the decision to do so was made for marketing reasons; perhaps a book in which
girls were fully equal to boys would have been too subversive for the youth market
in 1963.

I actually agree with the part in the end in which he says
that people who will not take the time to raise children properly should not have
any (one reason I don't). I will note, though, that I find infuriating the hint
that this is more a matter for the mother than the father: "...building bridges
and space stations and other useful gadgets is all very well, but a woman has more
important work to do." Humph. Phooey. Change "woman" to "human" and it doesn't
bother me. Again, I still wonder if that was Heinlein's own voice or just his
character's; it's very clear that the message about parenthood in general was not
only his own opinion (maybe that's why he also had no children?) but the raison
d'etre for the entire book. Seeing athors limited by the endemic prejudices of
their times doesn't generally bother me, or I wouldn't be able to read Sayers,
Conan Doyle, Alcott, Twain, or pretty much anyone who wrote before the 1970s. It
does bother me in RAH's case because he was able to think outside the limits of
his time in so many other ways.

I can spell eschatology, anyway

At least part of yesterday's entry should probably be put down to the divine
discontent that is part of the human condition. (I can't remember who wrote that
phrase, and I'm not sure how it can be simultaneously divine and human, but I like
it anyway.) People who don't wonder at all if the world could be bigger than they
know are just piggies in their extra-comfortable sties complete with couch and TV.
People who have too much of it are ramblers who can't handle being pinned down.
People just short of either extreme can be very happy and productive, though,
either building a snug home and stable business, on one extreme, or turning
wanderlust into a profession like travel reporters and photographers on the other.
I definitely lean toward the wanderers: I like change, and to my mind, better
poetry has been written but none more viscerally thrilling than Kipling's
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go, and look behind the Ranges -- Something
lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you . . . Go!"

turn and face the (lack of) change

One of the worst things about living in such a mobile area is that as soon as I
make a friend, they move away. That never happened in Philadelphia, and only
rarely in Texas, so I don't think it's me. In six years here, we've lost at at
least four good friends as well as some more distant ones. One of the latter moved
back, but she was more a friend of a friend (who's moved away) and we don't see
her much anymore). Yesterday I learned that Queue is moving away in less than two
weeks. This one is especially rough because we never did get to be really good
friends, even though there was no reason not to be. She's smart, funny, well-
educated, slightly wild when you get her out, responsible otherwise, and a hell of
a rower when her shoulder is cooperating. There are her flaws: she's not good at
saying no when people ask her to do too much. And ... and ... that's about it. So
why did we never become close friends? I don't know, but laziness on my part has
to be part of it. And now it's too late, though of course I'll ask for her new
email address and we'll keep in touch sporadically. I hate losing the opportunity
to make a friend, because although I have lots of acquaintances, I really don't
have that many close friends. I never have, and marriage hasn't helped; it's easy
to be lazy about other relationships when your best friend lives right there.
Also, I have so little spare time that, paradoxically, it's easier for me to
maintain long-distance friendships than local ones. I can send emails from my desk
or make phone calls while doing laundry, but it takes a major time investment to
actually go somewhere. It's not that I don't want to; it's just that most of my
time is eaten up by rowing or work and I generally need to spend what's left
maintaining that one most important relationship. (This is one reason I miss Egret
and T2 so much; their life was so similar to ours that the little crannies of free
time matched up well and no one was offended when we had to go home at
ridiculously early hours.)

I envy Queue, as well, for all the changes
she's making. Right now I have nothing to look forward to. It's not because
my life is bad, but because it's good; I like my job, I have a great marriage and
a comfortable (though not fancy) home. We have no vacations coming up except for a
few races this fall, and in general no changes in the foreseeable future. For some
people this would all be ideal, but I'm restless. I like change. I keep hoping
something wonderful will turn up, but even if it did, down the line I'd want to
change it. Much as I hate the heat, we're stuck here for at least a few more
years, because Rudder's reasons for staying are better than mine for going. I'm
not stupid enough to cheat on Rudder and ruin the best part of my life -- I want
to do something different but I want him to do it with me. I suppose I could go
back to school but that doesn't seem like a good idea without some plan of what to
do after graduation -- I'd probably want to study either linguistics or cognitive
science, but I'm just mostly interested in the idea of learning more about them,
with no idea of what to do with what I've learned.

I read other
diaries and people are wrestling with major life dilemmas or trying to conceive or
breaking up with long-time boyfriends or clawing back from the brink of oblivion.
My inner drama queen is stifling, I tell you. I can think of plenty of ways to add
changes to my life, but they all seem like very very bad ideas. I want changes,
but I want good changes. Yes, I am spoiled. I'm almost tempted to get pregnant
just so there would be built-in excitements and milestones ahead. Or maybe start a
garden. (At least I wouldn't have to worry that I was bringing plants into the
world for all the wrong reasons.)

I didn't expect the above to come
out quite so whiny; I'm not really functioning at a high level today. I think I
may have blown my brains out (through my nose into a tissue, not with a gun). Or
perhaps I'm just not getting adequate oxygen to the brain. My appetite is coming
back, and I'm hoping to be well enough to erg or at least row tomorrow, so maybe
I'll be more cheerful then.