One Blonde in a Basement

My Favorite Thanksgiving 2003

2009-11-26T07:30:00.002-05:00

My Favorite Thanksgiving 2003

Alex and I went to Richmond that year to celebrate Thanksgiving with Julian in his awesomely shabby chic Monument Avenue balcony apartment. Having given up cooking I decided to take them out for a lovely buffet at a lovely restaurant. There was no plan here but rather we were just going to go out and ride around and find one and be happy with it. Time passed. Nothing open. Not one. Up an down Broad Street and thereabouts until finally it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to go to Krispy Kreme because it was open and the neon sign was telling us hot doughnuts were up and ready.

So we went through the drive-through and ordered two dozen doughnuts and went back to the apartment and that was our Thanksgiving dinner. Best time ever – we spent the time with each other, enjoying one another’s company, which is what it is supposed to be about anyway.

After the sugar-induced coma wore off sometime late afternoon, one of Julian’s friends, Annie, came up and I decided to do a little experiment. The reason for the experiment was that “The Da Vinci Code” was lying on the sofa and hot to be read and I wanted some quiet. So I gave each of them $100 dollars to go to Wal-Mart (this was during Mr. Greenspan’s “Irrational Exuberance” period, so I irrationally did this.) There were no strings attached, just go to Wal-Mart and spend the money. Well, actually I did suggest that there could be some thoughts about doing something nice for a child who would not have a good Christmas without their benevolence.

Several hours passed and I was speed-reading Da Vinci with a vengeance. Then they returned. What an interesting choice of spending patterns they displayed.

End of Part One

One Blonde

2009-05-26T19:01:00.001-05:00

One blonde... wow

Stand and Deliver: Tom Perriello comes to Martinsville... Again!

2009-03-24T03:12:00.046-05:00

Pictures show Mr. Perriello's aides, Nicholas and Ebony

As promised, our 5th District Representative in Congress, Rep. Tom Perriello, was in Martinsville early Monday morning to meet with my business partner, Doris Berry, and me, along with many others to discuss whatever concerns we may have about anything.

Even though the announcement was buried on page 5(C) of the local newspaper we already knew that he was coming so we were there. When we arrived at 8 am, he was already there , early in fact (!) and met all of us in 10 minute increments so that we could discuss what was on our minds.

Currently we are trying to juggle selling real estate with trying to save people's homes and we hope to be able to contribute what we can in both those efforts. So far we have met with considerable resistance from lenders we have spoken with on behalf of beleaguered homeowners. The technique seems to be a rope-a-dope routine: put us on hold, make us talk with this person and then that one, promise to call us back (then they don't), and ultimately their remedy is to give the homeowner paperwork that would make the most pedantic of us shrink into a fetal position were we not just damned determined to follow the Rube Goldbergesque gauntlet of forms to the end and to get answers.

We will persevere. Our citizens are a tough group of people. Some of them may be barely literate but they are survivors and they are not stupid. While others enjoyed the fake economy of the past few years citizens here soldiered on, pretty much forgotten except for the occasional embarrasing headlines concerning, among other things: the highest unemployment in Virginia (currently 18.5%; the Henry County Sheriff and several deputies disgraced and imprisoned for various crimes; the MZM mess that tainted Virgil Goode; the Henry County Administrator embezzling over $800,000 from the taxpayers... I could go on, but I expect most readers already know all of these debacles.

People here don't even seem to react anymore to bad news and it was no shock or at least shouldn't have been to people outside our area that the economy unraveled with such rapidity. We have been there. We were the first to experience the amazing joy of free trade - our industries, primarily textiles and later furniture, were bought out in many cases, downsized and then shut down while greedy free traders without any social conscience freely chased cheap labor all over the globe, leaving in their wake workers who had no work and no prospects for finding any.

Previously the paternalistic, generational promise for nearly a hundred years had been that education was not all that important when you could get a job, buy a Trans Am, buy a single-wide, get drunk and perhaps beat up various family members, maybe do drugs, get absolution on Sunday, rinse and repeat. Once that lifestyle was gone we were given various forms of hope, but hope tastes bitter when you live on it for over twenty years without respite, as many have found when we were forgotten except during election time.

Elections are over now, except in Minnesota, so the task of repairing our economy has begun, but this time is different because we here are not alone-it now involves the entire world. Ebony and Nicholas, pictured above, were two of the people we met yesterday-gracious, kind, and caring. They took their notes on Blackberries and notepads and remained respectful and kept time so that all could be heard.

Meeting Mr. Perriello was like having someone take a psychic reading - I nearly felt he peeked into my soul and I didn't feel like I was speaking with a politician and nor did he seem anything other than completely engaged in his constituents' stories. Either he is the best politician I have ever met or he is the genuine article. His background of service more than suggests the latter and I expect he will deliver on his promise to help.

It will take all of us, however, to help him to help us. No one can do all of this alone and we are going to figure this puzzle out one person, one family at a time. And we will keep on doing this. It is what we do.

Let's get cracking... together... again.

Cat Hair

2009-03-11T17:43:00.009-05:00

Aleister. The source of joy and pain. And cat hair. Piles of it...tumbleweeds of gray kitty hair here, there and everywhere. It may not be such a good thing to live alone with three cats as they do not give a fluff whether or not their hair is all over the place. We are, of course, only here to serve their needs and I willingly signed on for the job. I did not imagine, since I already had two kitties, Blanche and Miss Kitty, and they only produced small quantities of ladylike hair, that Aleister was the culprit, the main offender. But this boy! Ooh-I can brush him every hour and still come up with prodigious amounts of hair. Sometime in mid-March it began to look like my entire house had a gray cast to it-upon closer inspection I realized it was just Aleister's fur everywhere. Rather depressing. Then last week I was in the basement (I feel certain most of you will have signed out of here by now) when I had an Oprah moment. There, next to the washing machine, was the Libman sponge/scrub mop-an answered prayer! I nearly leaped upstairs to try it out. Sure enough, one damp sponge stroke followed by a gentle scrape of the bristle brush and I could find my dhurrie rug again. There it was-yay! For those who aren't clued into this, it is genius! Or alternatively you already know this and I am brain dead. So a couple of hours later it was nearly done, which means that by Christmas the entire house will be clean. By the way, if you want to remove cat hair from upholstered furniture, put on a latex glove, dampen it, sweep in long strokes and soon you, too, will be horrified to see what you have been sitting on. I don't know a thing about dog hair anymore but my guess is it works for that too. It is still boring though...can't help you with that one!

Titanic-sized Greed + Bad Judgment = Countrywide?

2009-03-04T11:14:00.008-05:00

Ok, just read this little gem courtesy of Eric Lipton at the New York Times:

Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit From Bad Loans

I posted a comment after reading this article this morning and the last time I looked there were over 400 comments and counting. Do you remember in "The Titanic" that the architect of the finest passenger ship of its time took a cowardly leap into one of the last lifeboats? Sound familiar? I just cannot believe this one. I would say "enjoy" but that is impossible. The lunatics are once again in charge of the asylum and all of us are "guests."

FIVE

2009-02-19T06:07:00.011-05:00

I was terrified of my oldest sister. She taught me to swim way before age 5, because by then I was swimming laps doing a beautiful American crawl and had nearly perfected a dive from the low board. One day Betty said it was time for the high dive. I was not ready but she was and sometimes I later wondered if she wanted to kill me. At the time all I could do was obey. This was the same sister who made me watch televised baseball games that I hated, mostly because she made me stand at attention, hand over heart, during the National Anthem. In our den. Not at a live game in a stadium but in our den. It struck me as odd that I had to do this while she was languidly parked on the sofa smoking a cigarette but I was too frightened of her to balk. Her every wish my command, I just did whatever I was told.

Back to the HIGH diving board. Probably twelve steps to the top and then a dramatic walk to the end. That was all it needed to be, but halfway up the climb there was my first stomach grabbing sense of mortality and I silently balked by pausing. She, reading me correctly, said absolutely not, no way to come down so just DO IT! Time slowed down at this point as I knew that I was surely going to die that day, whatever that meant, and there was not even time for a "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer. I tried to remember all that she had told me about diving and then properly approached the end of the board. Both feet together, bounce up and away and down. Down indeed, after completing one of the most glorious it-started-as-a-swan-dive-then-turned-pancake-belly-flops of all time. I hit the water with the force of smacking into a brick wall, stunned into paralysis, and began to float to the bottom. There was no "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" moment here but rather a completely third person observer status of the situation. Going down, lots of water, looking at thrashing, plaid-clad half-torsos in the shallow end, wondering if anyone would notice. Then I saw the drain below me growing larger and realized I was nearly at the bottom. There was not a whit of fear-it was just so interesting that I was drowning and that it didn't seem to be such a bad thing. Surrounded by the so-blue, warm and heavily chlorinated June water, and the reflections from people, clothing, lounge chairs-all mixed in the water to wash over me with prisms to die for. Literally. I was really good at holding my breath but it did seem like a long time was passing and I supposed I would fade to black and that was just fine with me.

On the way out of this world, all of a sudden there was a huge amount of turmoil in the water and I felt myself being scooped up by a being that seemed like a dolphin and then up, up to the surface. From death to chaos again, there I was, spread out on a towel, in my brand new yellow bathing suit (one-piece of course), being gawked at and inspected by all, much like one might look at meat or fish before deeming it worthy of purchase. Smiles passed all around after a bit-cheers; she'll live. I wish I could tell you I had one of those amazing tales to tell of my life flashing before me. There wasn't even one. After all, at five years old what could have flashed? Toddling in the front yard, my older sister pinching me just for the hell of it? Throwing food under the table for the dogs and getting caught? Making my grandmother cry because I told her she should not take me out in a boat when she couldn't swim? None of that showed up in the pool; it was all just beautiful serenity and rainbow ribbons of water. And then I lived to dive another day.

Photo Courtesy of Julian Mei

I'll Never Get That Time Back

2008-12-15T16:08:00.005-05:00

I don't have the patience I used to about some things, especially when people who are employed to be helpful treat others like garbage. So I felt like having a flamed Apple.

2008-11-16T18:35:00.001-05:00

Home Shopping Faux Pas

2008-11-10T09:58:00.002-05:00

At Home With a Blonde Blogging Realtor

2008-11-10T09:39:00.003-05:00

Only One Word

2008-11-05T06:36:00.005-05:00

OBAMA

A Documentary More Relevant Than Ever

2008-10-10T07:02:00.007-05:00

Well, today seems like as good a day as any to offer up a little history, kindly provided to us via YouTube. It seems that due to the faltering worldwide economy we may all have more time than ever to catch up on the past and examine it before looking forward. Adam Curtis' 2006 documentary, "The Trap - Whatever Happened to our Dreams of Freedom", spells out in frightening detail how governments worldwide have commandeered social engineering in order to literally brainwash the masses into where they thought we should go both socially and economically. The three-part series is even more timely now than it was when the BBC released it. What does all of this have to do with us, the United States of America? Take a look - you have plenty of time.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=The+Trap+curtis&emb=0&aq=f#

Just a little question...

2008-09-25T07:47:00.005-05:00

So how is government 'deregulation' working for you? Oops-everyone forgot to factor in #3 in the Top Seven Deadly Sins-you know the one-GREED, but I have also included a Wikipedia link just in case you want to review the others. Since we no longer have separation of church and state I thought I'd throw that link out for folks to read about-it just seems very timely.
Have a nice day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins

UPDATE: September 29, 2008

Well, let's see, hmmm, let me see if anything has changed since the 25th when I was just asking the little question. Ummm, no, not really, except over the weekend we could choose to witness the heroics of Congressmen and women actually having to work-or at least it appeared so. Rotten tomatoes to all who resisted the attempted coup on the American people and voted for this bull. Hehehehe, now they have to go home to their constituents and explain why they voted as they did. Nearly 1,000,000,000,000 dollars NOT going for yet another bailout. I am thinking that we in our little corner of Virginia should get together a road show to help people out to hone their survival skills because they are going to need them. We are, for once, ahead of the curve-nearly twenty years ahead. Those who live here are somewhat worried but not panicked; we know recession and depression all too well. We are nearly on the other side of it now because we have grieved our losses, found out we lived through it and now look towards the future. No looking back at what was lost; we are looking at what remains and what we can do with it. That is a free market.

Gustav

2008-09-01T07:46:00.012-05:00

Hey-Happy Labor Day to those in labor. The rest of us are staying home enjoying one last day of Staycation. Hmmm, no comment necessary on that one. On a completely tangential note, yesterday was spent watching Hurricane Gustav churn, slouch and twist and the general suck-uppery of the 'authorities' (I don't want to be arrested as a terrorist for naming names and Camp Guantanamo is definitely NOT optimal for a quickie vacation at this time of year even if it is FREE)in homage to the cluster-fuck we call Katrina. Lots of time has been spent this go-round by Deathwishers Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel, Anderson 360 Cooper'on the ground' and at times nearly in the air giving us more news than we could possibly ingest, digest and regurgitate to others as that nasty little piece of us secretly hopes we see THE LATEST DISASTER OF THE CENTURY. Earlier today I blew a tiny bit of coffee out of my ears when Cantore jokingly said words to the effect that this is not a good time to look for a beignet. Well, hardy har har for the worst joke of the day. The rest of it is just fluff and stuff except the part where Your President said he wouldn't be able to attend the RNC due to the impending storm. Hilarious-he just didn't want to get pelted with silence-Lord knows he's accustomed to awkward moments just after he opens his mouth but silence is just deafening and he needs to keep an open ear in case his good friend Putin calls to say "hey-what's up?"

Words and phrases that need a time-out after this weekend with my super brief commentary:

'dodging a bullet' Just think about the visual of this one
'pounding the Gulf' Forgive me, but I think of sex here
'halted' misspelled by the crawlmeister on CNN as 'HAULTED' Laziness-I want that job
'vetted' Should just be permanently eliminated due to gross overuse
'what we learned today' Nothing was learned today

Oh, and by the way, this really could give Florida a temporary boost and also a bit of the real estate economy generally. If, after the worst of the storm is over and Governor Palin tidies up her inconvenient truth of the day, the best thing to do would be to simply take all of the evacuees into Florida when it is safe and put them into the unsold condos that sit empty. I think it is about an eight year oversupply right now-my business partner says real estate agents there call them 'see-throughs'-they are so empty you can see all the way through them. That will be a huge boost to Florida and it will give FEMA a lot of time to really rebuild the levees.

Dream

2008-08-31T18:52:00.002-05:00

Dream

I split, ah Gemini
Here and Paris
No bother for a dress
I wore a nightgown
At the brasserie-they said I was fun
I said I..d be right back
I went to a place that had snow
But it was in California
The houses were cheap
I decided I could live there
And they..d like how I speak
I could sell a house or two
And work in a shoe store
And then come back
And sell a house or two
And then the others arrived to tell me
That would not be ok
And I had to come back
The hostility was so great
I screamed and she smiled
Mission accomplished I suppose
And then a friend I trusted
Told my secrets
And lied and told more
And then I had no idea who to trust
I realized I had to go and change my gown
The brasserie was open
The were glad to see me
They thought it was great
That I wasn..t ashamed
In fact they laughed
Not at me, just the situation
I changed my clothes
But not my life
And then I had to come home.

Little Edie S-T-A-U-N-C-H and S***

2008-08-05T19:32:00.001-05:00

Little Edie - New Hero

For Lucy

2008-07-24T06:20:00.005-05:00

For Lucy-I Remember

Sitting at the bottom of the pool of vengeance
Looking up, praying for transference
I kiss the clouds a time perception
And know she died in full rejection
And all the spirits ride this swell
To make me speak the devil's tale

No peace can live within the fury
Your life plays out, its lies your jury
With every act your evil grows
And all around you pay your dues
I sit back and watch your spells
That dooms your soul to mortal hell

No quench for thirst in your dark sand
No way to see the light in hands
Of sisters tied to one another
You made us blind, we were your others
Your blood was cold, you made us shiver
You ripped us up until we splintered

I watched her pull the meat from bone
She starved, you let her die alone
You stole her soul, you know I know
And reveled in her death, so slow
But I'll stay here and plant my feet
In daisies for her memory.

Copyright 2008 Mary Rives Brown All Rights Reserved

Hypoheretic

2008-07-17T20:04:00.002-05:00

High-res video: http://www.vimeo.com/1080651
A cyborg from the outside, in charge of monitoring the avatar way of life, falls for a virtual celebrity and traverses the metaverse to find her.
Film created with Reallusion iClonereallusion.com/icloneFilm created by John Martin theMartinBros.com
Song by Kirsty Hawkshaw-produced by Kirsty Hawkshaw and Glen Nicols=lyrics by Kirsty Hawkshaw and Alex Mei

Babar is Running for President?

2008-05-15T08:43:00.003-05:00

But I thought you had to be born in America.....

Hey Blanche! This Reminds Me of YOU!

2008-05-15T08:39:00.002-05:00

Dearest Blanch-

Blog, darn it!
Love,
badrose

Second Life Friends

2008-02-24T11:29:00.006-05:00

These are just a few of the precious friends I have made in Second Life. In a few years I expect you will all have a Second Life of some kind or another. From left to right: "Tita" who knows how to create things out of his brain that are amazing and who has tons of patience; "KFH" aka Kirsty Hawkshaw in Real Life, who is just a wonder on so many levels there is no way to describe her-just let me say again that her presence and spirit gave me grace and a teleport to a new life; "Loverush Pennell," a fine man and close friend who is willing to go shopping on a moment's notice and who is a bright star in his own right as a DJ, producer and generally grand human; then I am on the right, the bumbling, stumbling one who drops in and they all put up with my poor flying, hysterical laughing and whatever is on tap for the times we spend together. Would that you all realize soon that your lives can be ever so much more enhanced by getting your own Second Life!

One more thing-the green picture at the top? A mistake, typical of me at many times, but to go from something like that to being able to take the other pictures? Well, learning occurs throughout our lives, every day, now doesn't it?

Viva la Revolucion!

2008-02-20T07:20:00.009-05:00

CUBA...

So I am guessing that the revolution may be about to come to an end. Castro has "retired." What an odd word for a revolutionary to give out to his people and the press. Of course this nearly-lost-in-the-middle-of-the-ceaseless-Obama vs. Clinton-saga piece of news brought up the old, which for a few minutes in the shower this morning made me think of the unyielding past memories of Castro's glory days. The good old post-WW II memories of a child growing up in the 1950's taking everything at face value with no alternate compass for comparison. By 1961, at age 10, the Cold War was raging, but what did it mean for my contemporaries? We were fed fear in huge daily rations left over from 1945. I do not remember my parents ever discussing it around the dinner table where my father held court and we listened to his days' events. To me he was fascinating, so full of life and energy and his daily tales of developing land, building houses and completing a vision his father had begun seemed like the most amazing thing to do. This went on every night.

In contrast, television news, which by that time had become de rigueur for all of us, gave one and all a daily dose of how life as we knew it was on the brink of total destruction. Once in a while I wondered why my father was doing all of this while the world was just about to come to an end. All I wanted to do was eat ice cream as that seemed like the most sensible thing to do under the threat of impending doom.

Pause...this blog has just been interrupted...a friend just asked what I'm doing and then referred me to the following youtube video. You must not, I repeat, must not, continue reading until you have watched it. Perhaps you remember it?

Okay...now that you've seen the video you've got my frame of reference.

Continuing on, this video and many others like it were shown to school children throughout the U. S. in order to prevent widespread panic. What it did, of course, now that you've seen it, was to provoke hysterical yet inner-directed terror which I have always maintained created a collective anxiety disorder that continues to this day. I've had my meds today, have you? I cannot speak for others but I suspect if I took a poll of my peers they would say this malarkey was directly responsible for a basic mistrust of government that simmered and then boiled over during the Vietnam War.

Anyway, back to the world in the eyes of a 10-year old child. So we watched this drivel and did not believe one word of it. There was not a word of discussion as we just didn't do that then but we all knew that we were cooked geese but didn't know what day it would happen. Not if but when and way before the color-coded, post-9/11 rainbow scale of imminent doom. I bet some of ya'll right now are going, oh yeah, hell, I forgot about THAT! What happened to THAT! The memory of it lingers on in the incessant scroll; that's what happened to it.

Back to the fallout shelter. This is what my parents proposed to do to save us all, which included a housekeeper, a cook, my father's driver (yes, we were spoiled), my parents, four sisters, a St. Bernard, three poodles and my turtles:

If we were lucky enough to hear a siren (not available) at school we were to calmly walk home. Okay. No problem. Then we were to go into one room in the basement, all of us mind you, and begin stacking up newspapers and magazines such as Look, Life and National Geographics against the walls as they would prevent fallout from entering this room. Oh everyone knew that. This room was unadorned with anything except a half bath that no one in their right mind would ever use, a safe that hadn't been opened in many years and the dampness and odor much like old potatoes that was noxious enough to gag a maggot. Swell. Eternity for the foreseeable future in that room with people I was quite sure were not really my family as it had all been a horrible mistaken identity thing at the hospital nursery.

Oops, one more thing. Mother had taken the time out from her busy schedule with this woman's club or the other to grab a few cans of vegetables and beef stew, because after all we did have to eat SOMETHING. We did not have Spam on hand, however, as my Father had had enough of that while adrift in the Pacific after his twice-torpedoed light cruiser Admiral Halsey thought cool to use as a decoy before the Battle of Midway. Hell, why not, they're already out there, collateral damage, cool, go for it. Apparently it worked.

So what does all of this have to do with Castro? I thought by now you'd forget but here goes. I know it is a lot to ask of a mere human, but if your whole life is lived as a revolutionary couldn't you have just pretended to live the rest of it out without the word "retired" attached to it? What a waste. One little word has diminished the whole bit. I feel almost dirty. In my secret world, the darkest pit of wishes, I was hoping he would put himself in a missile launcher and direct himself to Miami-now THAT would be totally in keeping with his character, the ultimate parting shot, AND it would make me feel better about all of the time spent under my desk or thinking about a brief time of hell in the basement with all of those people and animals.

More on Second Life

2007-11-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

If you think my previous post was nonsense about Second Life ("it's just a stupid game"), just read this Reuters article. Brilliant.

Second Life

2007-11-21T09:05:00.001-05:00

Second Life – The World of Ideas

I am 55 years old, which in some circles relegates me to Senior Citizen status, only meaning in practical terms at this point that I get discounts on medications and groceries at the local pharmacy and that I am still ten years away from Medicare benefits. It also means that I am viewed by any demographic you may choose as a dinosaur. OH, REALLY??? I think not, and here’s a lovely little story about how connections can be made and go around the world and where there is no such thing as time. This story is not about me but about ALL of us.

There needs to be a bit of short background for the whole Second Life story to be complete. I began the journey to Second Life thanks to Myspace. I joined in 2004 without the urging of my sons but I did it anyway. To be honest, it was a way to connect with them and their friends, and despite the press’ negative stories it has been quite handy on more than one occasion when there was no other way to get in touch with them. After a few months my youngest son Alex told me of some correspondence he’d been having with a singer in the UK named Kirsty Hawkshaw. Alex is a very modest person and a bit secretive so my parental ears perked up. I did a Wikipedia search and found that she had quite a history of musical accomplishments and thought how nice for her to lend a young musician a bit of encouragement. Her efforts singlehandedly saved him from a sense of hopelessness and her words inspired him to begin a never-ceasing series of brilliant poems, lyrics and ever-reaching higher aspirations.

After some months I decided to contact Kirsty and we had several lovely conversations by messaging and when Alex’s birthday rolled around she suggested which Korg device and microphone he should get so they could begin file-sharing. Present bought, files shared, music made! This eventually turned up as a real world experience when in November of 2006, Kirsty and Alex, meeting in real life for the first time, were together and where Kirsty, gracious soul that she is, actually allowed Alex to open her signature song, Just Be.

At about this time I became aware that Kirsty was experimenting with a new medium called Second Life. The first memory I have of this is that she did an Second Life video of her and Alex’s first collaboration called Hypoheretic, a song which reached 20,000 plays on her Myspace page before she decided to feature it on her newly created website, http://www.kirstyhawkshaw.co.uk/. Just for fun, guess who is now the co-moderator of her website (read ‘porn deleter’). That’s right-moi.

I joined SL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life) in March of 2007 at Kirsty’s urging, and I will tell all who read this without equivocation that it has been a life-changing event. Myspace had only created the desire for more and SL filled that space for me in so many ways it is impossible to describe them all. If you don't care to read the wiki explanation above, I can just tell you that, in short, it is an online, virtual, 3-D world filled with with the user-created content of all of its members. All of a sudden, dropping into SL for the first time I had a real-time, interactive experience with Kirsty, her fans, friends and the occasional drop-in from other sims. Now mind you I am not a techie so it was very difficult to get started, and I still suffer a bit from post-traumatic “can’t detach the dancing cow” disorder but plod through with the help from my new friends and. Kirsty had begun having Saturday afternoon theme parties at her Club Connected in Mephit and they were like no others I’ve ever attended. Just as in any Real Life party the mix of personalities defined each one as a separate, storied tale, each having in common, though, a brilliant blend of music, conversation, worldwide humor and at the end of each, a wrenching feeling that it would be six more days before we all would meet again. This is not a game. It is real, as real as any other experience that I’ve ever had-the only part missing, of course, is the reality of being in one another’s physical space.

That piece of the puzzle was filled in on August 27, 2007 when I flew from Virginia to Chicago to attend the SL Convention. I almost passed out several times from being so overwhelmed by all of it: the people in the real world, press attention, fellowship-all of it. I sat next to a lady who is an educator in RL who is very interested in the application possibilities for those diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a wide-ranging spectrum of autism. I remember one funny little multifaceted piece of time quite clearly: this lady and I are sitting in the guest area near the elevator talking about autism when ABC news people crowd around and begin to interview her. She shows them her home in Second Life on her laptop and you can see that they are not quite getting it but are curious. She has this knowing smile on her face as any good-natured, patient teacher is apt to have and tries to explain the inexplicable, finally saying “you’ve just got to be there to fully understand it.”
At about this time I glimpse Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, walking to the elevator, giving our scene a sideways glance and he has the same bemused, KNOWING smile that everyone there had all weekend. He has been onto this idea of connecting the communities of the world in an environment where the limitations are truly only the ones we place on ourselves.

A few weeks later Alex and I filled in another puzzle piece by flying to visit Kirsty in the UK and where Alex and Kirsty created not one or two but seven tracks of music in one week that was also filled with the amazing presence of others from SL, including SirHermanBingy and Elrik Merlin, each of whom brought their part of brilliance to the party of Real which was just a continuance of the world of SL.

The best part of the story is that this is not the end but rather just the beginning, as worlds collide and then merge, connections are made, information is exchanged, ideas are sprung, tweaked and tinkered with, and the Second Life universe expands. Kirsty Hawkshaw is a connector, a visionary who has since her career began, been far ahead of her time and is, on a daily basis, as a leader, encouraging each of us by example to reach out beyond ourselves. Music has a new definition for me now and I find I must define lots of things: time, space, friendship, distance, and each baby step we take towards one another makes this a better world.

More Mamie

2007-10-18T15:06:00.000-05:00

Well, after yesterday all kinds of Mamie stories started coming up and I now feel compelled to write a bit more about her. I adored her-she was fascinating in every respect. The whitest teeth on earth, one in the front with a delicate gold rim around it. She had poreless skin of the finest mocha. Her hair was always done, most often in a kind of pageboy; no small feat-it was a horrible ordeal to watch her straighten her hair, but whenever I could I sat like a curious cat to see the process.

The best part about Mamie, though, was her laugh, and I will never adequately describe it in mere words. It was most often heard as the final punctuation at the end of one of her endless stories of how she had three or four boyfriends fighting over her all the time and how she would just laugh and laugh. Her head would flip back, and I could see all of her teeth (no cavities, before fluoride!) and the laugh that came out was from some other planet. If you were the Devil himself that laugh would force you to chime right on in with her, but she had no peer in the raucous department.

I don't know if it was the laugh or something else that should be on the market right this minute but men loved her. They flocked just like sheep whenever and wherever we went. When we went to Virginia Beach in the summer, Mamie went with us, and thanks to her the delivery man brought our groceries earlier than for anyone else. And he lingered. And lingered. And lingered. He'd finally leave and then she'd trot out that laugh and we'd fall all over ourselves laughing, but we didn't know why. She probably had all of the secrets in the universe compressed into that laugh and when it erupted there was just nothing like it.

Mamie told us great long stories of escapades with men who brought her gifts of all kinds and of great expense. Apparently she took great delight in throwing them back at these gentleman callers when she was finished toying with their nuclei accumben, though I think she did keep a few of the more valuable trinkets just in case the men had re-gifting on their minds. She did wear quite a lot of rings and also told us that she had some furs. One time when she was babysitting for us at night, a gentleman came by with a Pepsi-Cola for her. Guess how many nanoseconds it took for her to blow him off the porch.

Sorry, Badrose, I just right 'em down as they come to me...this too, will be continued...

Boot Camp for Cocktail Waitressing and Life

2007-10-17T13:41:00.001-05:00

I had no idea there were so many things to learn before life was to begin. Somehow, early on, I got the impression that from birth to say, about the time I was supposed to snag a rich husband that anything I did was in preparation for THE ONE and that nothing else was really all that important. Most of this was supposed to come to me by osmosis, as my parents really never told me very much about anything. Here are the two things my mother told me that seemed really important to her:

1) Don't ever do anything with a man that would cause you to feel uncomfortable around him at a cocktail party in 30 years

2) If you ever feel bad, just put on some lipstick and you'll immediately feel better

Well, that just about sums up the parenting. On speed dial. She was really a busy person. I had no idea what she did, though it always seemed like it was really important that she go somewhere. Now I understand that she just wanted to get away from 5 children and 4 dogs and I don't blame her. She also had 0 parenting skills most likely because she was raised by her older siblings. She was born in 1919 when both of her parents were in their 40's, and my grandmother was mortified to think that people would know she'd been having sex at at such an advanced age so she more or less pushed Mother off on the others to raise. At least that is what I think based on what she told me. My aunt and uncle used to take her to the cemetery where they'd all go to drink, and they'd tell her that they'd stick her in a grave if she told on them. I am SURE that didn't warp her.

Things I was unaware of for the longest time:

1) That the real world was not black and white before color movies came along. I actually thought this.

2) That people who lived through the Great Depression were actually depressed themselves-the stories I was told made it sound almost cool to have suffered through that.

3) That it is not true that men will be forced to rape you if they become aroused-I got this one courtesy of Mamie, a wonderful housekeeper who gave me tons of lovely misinformation like this.

4) That people lie on occasion. This one is still getting to me. I took just about everything anyone ever told me as the Gospel Truth, and that gullibility still rears its ugly head quite often.

I think that is enough list-making for today, but this is just a bit of the boot camp that lasted for 18 years. When my father died that changed everything.

To be continued...

My Life as a Cocktail Waitress Part Two

2007-10-14T14:02:00.000-05:00

Actually this should have been part one, but anyway...

The last demographic figure I heard regarding baby boomers was that there are 77 million of us. That's about 1/4 of the total population of the United States. This WAS in large part a demographic of people who grew up in a time of stunning changes, not only in terms of what was happening in our tiny worlds but also in the larger world around us. We did not have the communications luxuries of the Internet, mobile phones, or even the fax machine(!). Somehow, though, our beliefs and concerns were heard, not only throughout our communities but also in political arenas, music, and activism on so many fronts. Now the problem we face on a daily basis is not how to communicate but through which method-there are even companies now whose sole purpose is to sort out for us which device is the best in terms of value, operational quality and on and on.

How is it then that with all of this communication there is such a dearth of passion for living and contributing to making the world a better place for all of us? Is it our SSRI's doing too good of a job at leveling us out? Are we so overloaded with the management of all of the "stuff" we've acquired through the past few decades that there is no time for anything else? Too much sex, drugs, and rock and roll at any earlier time? Did we long to please our parents too much and buy into an ideal that never really existed, the one that says 'me, my, mine'?

The post-World War II babies were fed a pablum of myths undercut by misery never expressed-at least in my home. It was all so very perfect on the surface, and if anything seemed unpleasant, well, when 5 o'clock on the dot rolled around we could watch our parents ease into the comfort of bourbon and water. For three hours each night. No exceptions. This was custom and routine. I thought every family did that and certainly no one ever told me any differently-I can even describe the highball glasses in detail if I like, as one of my Southern Belle training skills was to deftly whisk the empties away and back to the never-empty bar for replenishing (age 5).

This was the perfect beginning of cocktaillery (sounds rather sporting, like archery, doesn't it?); I learned so young and so well how to make things go smoothly so as to NOT make waves and cause the dreaded Dark Look of Death my mother could give-a look known to curdle milk, defrost ice cubes, and cause a general paralysis to anyone who got it from her. There were no words when the look came-just not necessary to have them, and, in fact, words may have lessened THE DARK LOOK'S impact.

It Was Just an Odd Day (postscript)

2007-10-14T13:58:00.001-05:00

Well, sadly, this lovely lady did break several bones and now has to go through the misery of recovery again. This is not even a blog post-I just feel badly for her and hope she mends as quickly and as best she can.

It Was Just an Odd Day

2007-10-11T17:20:00.000-05:00

I was out showing houses to a lady whose parents wanted to come along. Everything was going along quite swimmingly, until the lady took an unexpected nosedive down two small steps and onto a quite recently injured arm and leg. After encouraging her to lie still, covering her with a blanket, running home to get ice, and then trying to help her daughter and father decide whether to even attempt to move her (and thank goodness the rescue squad was called) at one point I was left alone with this poor lady for a few minutes. Now, she is sitting there, or rather lying there, immobile, and in great pain, and I am Pollyanna, telling her these things happen, I am sorry it is her birthday, I had an injury last year, anything to keep her from going into shock and also thinking about her impending ordeal of going through various new medical procedures.

She suddenly turns her head to me and says "You know, before I got married I was training to be a nurse. And then I got married and that was that." It was like she'd had this huge secret for all of these years about her unspoken aspirations and at last had the moment to tell me, of all people., and she made it sound as if her life was over after she got married. Why me? Why do people tell me things like that out of the blue? I don't know, but it surely did seem important to her to tell me at that particular moment. I was glad to oblige her by listening, but it made me kind of sad. I sure am running into a lot of people lately with huge regrets, not for what they've done but for what they have not done or never even tried.

It has made me appreciate all of my mistakes, all 254,615 of them-each and every one of them has been part of this hectic, well-spent life. When it is all over for me, no one will be able to say that I didn't mind taking a risk even if short term failures were on the menu from time to time.

My Life as a Cocktail Waitress

2007-09-30T20:35:00.000-05:00

MY LIFE AS A COCKTAIL WAITRESS

I recommend life as a cocktail waitress as simply the best way to observe human nature. It just came to me as I watched the C-Span replay of the 28th Annual Emmy Awards and the lovely tribute to Ted Koppel, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award Winner for 2007. As I watched the procession of tributes with the camera occasionally panning the crowd, it was impossible not to notice Dan Rather sitting there with barely contained rage, not for Ted or his award, I don’t think, but for what one can only guess is his most recently filed lawsuit against CBS, a feat that may well expose the seamy underbelly of our current authoritarian government’s assault on democracy and its eventual bleed into a news organization that was once the standard for all.

Holy, holy, up came the memories from the 1970’s-where in the world have they been all these years? Oh, right, I was consuming stuff, having babies, getting a career, avoiding dealing with the loss of my father, making a career out of sheer desperation, getting empowered (still in progress)-all that jazz.

So I am watching this and all of a sudden I go back to Athens, Georgia, where I attended The University of Georgia and where I began to grow. I didn’t necessarily WANT to be a cocktail waitress, but at the time it was the most expedient way for a female student to make money besides on her back or by marrying way too young (oops, same thing!). I had a lot of power as a waitress-I was in control of the room, with the exception of the bartender, Sully, who ranted gruff but was a Mallo Cup inside. It was such an unusual time.

As in any good bar we had a crowd of regulars, some of whom were the best people in the world and then there were-the others. Back to those guys later, but for now I’ll just say they were younger, ruder and drunker than any lifers. The classic bar fixture was Emmett, who came in at the same day every day, drank the same number of beers, tipped the same, smoked his brains out, looked at everyone and everything but never interacted with anyone in a meaningful way. He was a zero maintenance kind of guy and we were all quite fond of him, much like that comfy and shabby sofa that your mother gave you that can't be thrown away or it would hurt her feelings. There was a rumor that he may have had a wife, but I didn’t know for sure and dared not ask. He played a key part in my room scheme, serving as an anchor of relative tranquility compared to some of the others who came in and showed their worst behavior, and I think Emmett probably knew his place as the anchor in a sea of dysfunction.

“Happy Hour” in those days was a two-for-one special from five until seven in the evening. Regular price, two drinks in front of each customer, no short-shots allowed and because Sully poured a heavy two ounce shot what happened after 7:05 pm was always anyone’s guess. In today’s world of huge penalties for excessive consumption of alcohol it is amazing to look back and realize there was no penalty for drinking and driving, and in fact it was never even brought up that “perhaps so and so in the corner may need to be driven home.” It just never came up as a subject for discussion, and it is amazing that no one wrapped themselves around a telephone pole or died of alcohol poisoning or even more curiously, no one ever spoke of hangovers. After seven o’clock the tabs were cleared and usually the patrons thought, albeit only briefly, that they were not, in fact, drunk as dogs.

One of the nicest gentlemen I ever met was Reg Murphy, who at that time was Managing Editor of the Atlanta Constitution. For the longest time I had no idea who he was; all I knew was that he and the same small group came in regularly every two weeks after some at the University, had a polite couple of drinks and then left to go back to Atlanta, which at that time was accessed by back roads for those "in the know." He would always come in, tall and lean, his dark hair slicked back and with an extremely ironed white shirt and tie. A great tipper with nice manners; a fierce opponent of the war in Vietnam without long hair or blue jeans. He was just telling the story and telling it straight.

One night he didn’t show up as usual and of course I later found out he was in the middle of his two day sojourn in the hands of two bungling kidnappers. Mr. Murphy had been kidnapped by a moronic couple claiming to have an association with the Symbionese Liberation Army, that small group of self-proclaimed radical revolutionaries most famous for kidnapping Patty Hearst and making their eventual deaths in a blaze of police teargas and firearms one of the first times that the nation became transfixed by watching an event of that kind unfold in real time. As a brief aside, it is definitely worth it to take a Wiki look at the SLA story for the flavor of that time but even more interesting is Patty Hearst’s story; once you read about her it is easy to see that it has not been a stretch for her to become a John Waters darling, that master filmmaker of the bizarre who holds a John Wayne Gacy painting in his art collection.

It was no surprise that Reg negotiated his own release in exchange for $700,000 and got his own best story ever with neither the time nor need for a rewrite. A couple of weeks later he showed up and his routine began again as if nothing had ever happened. He had not contracted the Stockholm Syndrome; he was moving forward with only a brief respite here and there in the warm fuzzy cotton ball I called work.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1976 I wrote a letter to Reg Murphy to tell him how much I had appreciated him as a customer. He had moved by then to become editor of the San Francisco Examiner. Lo and behold, a few days later a letter arrived back; yes, he remembered me, appreciated my contacting him, wished me well in my travels and generally made me feel like I was just as important as he. The name of the restaurant was The Prime Time, and that was how we all felt when he popped in. What a nice guy.

TO BE CONTINUED

BLANCHE is BACK!!!

2007-09-30T20:27:00.001-05:00

And she's better than ever!

2006-09-08T20:35:00.000-05:00

Don't look here - there's nothing to see.
Blanche wanted a blog and I agreed to blog with her but she won't post anything...except a comment that she thinks is a blog. Oh well.