Come to my boudoir

My Russian friend Vladimir sent me this video and the comment on it from a London newspaper:

"Poor old Russia: the rigged elections, that chronic alcohol problem, those journalists who keep dying mysterious deaths. But Russia isn't going backwards in every respect: it at least has Peter Nalitch, who has become the nation's first YouTube sensation with the delightfully shoddy video for his sort-of English language folk song, Gitar.

Much of eastern Europe has already fallen for the 26-year-old Muscovite, his "guitaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr" and his invitations to "jump to my Jaguaaaaaaar (bab-eh)". According to German news magazine Spiegel you can now hear the deliberately terrible lyrics being sung in pubs all over the former Soviet bloc. Listen to the song once and you too will find yourself putting on a Russian accent, urging people to "come to my boudoooiiirrr" and trying to Cossack dance along. Even the most official YouTube version has already been viewed over 400,000 times."

I've adjusted my attitude to speeding

I drove 35 miles an hour in a 30-mile-an hour speed zone (it was 7:15 on a Monday morning, and I wasn't fully awake yet) so I had to attend a speeding course at a police station to 'adjust my attitude to speeding.'

Almost three hours I spent listening to statistics on road deaths due to speeding, taking driving tests on a pc to see how well I responded to hazards while driving (I was below average) and watching videos of dummies being hit by speeding cars.

Then the teacher got to the real incidents. She showed us where an accident was going to occur. We saw it from the driver's perspective, then from the pedestrian's. Then she showed us where the car hit the person, where he landed first, the skid marks as the driver frantically tried to stop, then the next place the pedestrian hit after he flew up into the air from the impact, then where his head went through the car's window.

This driver was only driving 26 miles an hour too, and I had been doing 35 when I was caught.

But the real kicker was that the kid who was hit was a 14-year-old boy walking home from school one sunny afternoon.

MY son is 14 and walks home from school everyday. I felt sick when I heard that and vowed right then and there:

I will never speed again!

O stricken heart, remember

Today's post comes from my friend Elizabeth in Detroit:

"I absolutely love the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson, and this poem in particular. Recently the young grandson of a colleague of mine drowned. I can never think of what to say beyond 'I'm sorry,' in such moments, so I sent a copy of this poem."

In Memoriam F.A.S.

Yet, O stricken heart, remember, O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
April came to bloom and never dim December
Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart.

Doomed to know not winter, only Spring, a being
Trod the flowery April blithely for awhile,
Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,
Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.

Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished,
You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,
Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished
Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.

All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason,
Shame, dishonour, death, to him were but a name.
Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season
And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came.

Today I love the NHS

I went to see my doctor because I felt like I was cracking up from the strain of trying to keep going with normal life while my mother is dying. He was very kind to me and even took the time to explain to me exactly why my mother will die (she has cor pulmonale). Her lungs are filling up with fluid because she's been bedridden for so long with Multiple Sclerosis, and her heart is working harder and harder to no avail. Then the pressure builds up, and basically, it has nowhere to go.

"Your mum has no doubt suffered for years and years," he said, "and there should be an end to this." He told me that doctors give morphine to alleviate the pain in patients like her as she is suffering inside as her organs start to lose their fight.

It was like a tonic, to have a doctor sit down and explain this and reassure me that this is for the best because she has suffered too long.

Everyone criticizes the NHS in England, but finding this doctor is like striking gold to me.

Flowers -- full of promise and hope

I was just going to blog about how much I love it when the daffodils bloom in England. It's still cold over here, but when the daffodils come out, it gives you such hope -- they are a harbinger of spring.

So I was putting up a daff pic when Simon Elkins came over with a bag. Inside were tulips from Jacqui Gates to cheer me. She knows I'm suffering from this sort of death watch, waiting for my mother's suffering to end, yet not wanting her to go.

Simon explained that he was far too cool to be seen carrying tulips in a girly vase around the office, so he got Jax to cover them up for the trip to my desk.

These acts of kindness from my friends have bolstered me so much. I spend all day trying to be normal at the office, but my head hurts all the time, and I'm jumpy -- I keep thinking the next phone call or email could contain the news I'm dreading to hear.

What will the workers do now?

Reading, Berkshire, where I live is losing a huge brewery (see excerpt from article below) where families have worked for generations. There are no other manufacturing jobs for them to go to in this area. I thought this incident reflects what is going on globally. Manufacturing jobs are going away or being outsourced to countries with cheaper labour costs, leaving only service-industry jobs for those left unemployed. I am always interested when I travel in America to see how many people are working in sales or marketing for products made in China.

You wonder what jobs will be left soon -- you can stack shelves in a supermarket or be an entrepreneur or be in 'the professions' as they call them in England (doctor or lawyer) -- but where will the jobs be for the people in the middle who used to work in manufacturing?

"BERKSHIRE Brewery staff worked in stunned silence on Tuesday after Scottish and Newcastle (S&N) announced its closure.

The Worton Grange plant will close in 2010 and 362 people will lose their jobs. Union bosses claim the closure will have a detrimental impact on the whole town and says plans to retrain staff are unrealistic.

Mike Pollek, Unite regional industrial organiser, said: “Everyone is in a state of shock. It has come completely out of the blue. I have concerns about the offers to help staff gain training. There is no manufacturing industry left in the town and there is no other work for these people to go into.

“It is okay if you have got a degree in computing or want to work in a supermarket. We are talking about putting a lid on 250 years of brewing history in Reading, it will have a significant impact.”

Mother's little darling

Today's Times gives me the reason why my cute adorable son has turned into a moody teen:

"A little-known region of the brain has been pinpointed as a key factor in the transformation of mother’s little darling into a rude and moody adolescent.

Scans of adolescent brains have shown that the length and intensity of their tantrums correlates directly with the size of their amygdalas. The bigger the amygdala, a region linked to anger, the bigger and more aggressive the rows with the parents are likely to be, according to research.

Teenagers with smaller amygdalas were likely to be delights to have about the house but those with an expanded version were identified as real nightmares."

So it's the amygdala that has turned the sweet little boy pictured here:

into a irritable teen (below) who spends all his time up in his room listening to music!

(OK, so he's smiling here and looking cheerful; that's 'an atypical result' as the disclaimers in weight-loss advertisements say.)

No space to express yourself

Karen Blakeley made this comment on a post in this blog recently:
"There's a radio programme called 'Any Questions' in the UK where an invited audience ask a panel of politicians, the great and the good questions relating to current news items. One 16 year old lad asked the panel what they thought of a recent spate of suicides amongst young people in Bridgend in Wales. The panel answered and then asked the boy what he thought. He put it down to 'monotony'. He claimed that there was no space left for the young to express themselves, to create chaos and rebel. Everything had been taken over by the corporate juggernaut. You are told what to think, what to do, what to wear, what to buy, what to say."

How prescient Karen is because today in the Times is an article about how the pressures of consumerism are making kids depressed. Rosemary Bennett writes:

"Pressure on children to have the latest designer clothes and computer games is making them miserable, according to a study of modern childhood.

It concludes that the consumer society and failure to protect children from commercial pressures is partly to blame for deteriorating mental health among young people. Rates of depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses have risen in the past two decades with one in ten children now suffering from a diagnosable condition."

And we adults get the pressure too. I drive around a ten-year-old Toyota with 116,000miles on it with rust on one of the doors. The car drives like a dream, even though the CD player broke years ago. I am sort of embarrassed about it but am trying to resist changing it when it's not broken, even though a mother at my son's old expensive private school once said to me, "You don't see many cars like yours in the school carpark." When I asked exactly what she meant she said, "Cars with rust on the doors."

Oooh, I was embarrassed but at least my car is paid for!!

A shot of relief

I know it's all been doom and gloom in my blog lately but that's because I am trying to prepare for the worst with my mother, and I'm getting all of you to help me be strong for the future. Today I was on tenterhooks at work because I hadn't heard anything about my mother today and couldn't get her nurse on the phone.

After work, I went to my dermatologist and got some Botox on my forehead to ease the haggard look I have developed recently. By the time I got home, the creases in my forehead were gone, and my attitude had improved. (I've had Botox before so the results show up fast for me.)

My doctor and I always discuss investments and how we are going to make a killing on the stock market. Except we never do, of course. Today he told me how he was going to buy a Merrill-Lynch Indian fund, and I was able to advise him against the move since I just bought some myself because I was so sure that India telecoms was going to take off with the introduction of new $12 cell phones. And how is my pick doing? Tanking. In fact, my husband just said to me over the weekend, "That's quite a dog you bought." And I thought I heard a tinge of smugness in his tone.

There is no place on earth where death cannot find us

I am ruthless about throwing out books that displease me -- the fiction is flabby or the story is mawkish -- so when I need to find a book that has meant something to me in the past, it's easy to find because it's one that has survived. My prize books are on the bookshelf on my side of the bedroom. All others can be stored somewhere else in the house but the best ones have to stay nearby.

One of the books that has survived several literary purges in my house in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I'll probably mention this more in the coming days and weeks. I don't pay any attention to the parts about reincarnation; it's the Buddhist idea of death being such an important part of life that interested me.

One of the passages in the book quotes Montaigne:

There is no place on earth where death cannot find us - even if we constantly twist out heads about in all directions as in a dubious and suspect land … If there were any way of sheltering from death's blows - I am not the man to recoil from it … But it is madness to think that you can succeed …

Men come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come - to them, their wives, their children, their friends - catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair! …

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind that death … We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. -- Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592

Goodbye credit crunch. Hello fabulous new entourage

I've written about the style magazines that come with the Sunday newspapers in England before, but they are really starting to get embarrassing to read -- especially when you find yourself in the middle of an economic slowdown -- you're not sure that your job will be there long-term, your house is going down in value and your investments are tanking.

I thought magazine editors were supposed to be in front of trends, but they don't seem to be capturing the zeitgeist of life in 2008 in any way. I think we are headed into a time of greater austerity and reflection on our past over-consumption myself.

Today in You magazine there's an article called "Get a Furniture Face-lift." You'll need to do this if the upholstery on a piece of furniture is "looking tired and outdated." You can go to Squint, for example, "a seriously zany design company, with prices starting from £2,400 ($4,800) a chair."

(Remind me to call these people first thing on Monday morning!!)

In Style magazine (comes with the Sunday Times), we are treated to an article about how rich people need a "fleet of staff to cater to their needs...pilots, publicists, art dealers and bodyguards have become de rigueur, as have fake-eyelash technicians, personal record producers and jewellery curators. So, goodbye credit crunch, hello fabulous new entourage."

Time will not be ours forever

My friend Karen Blakeley gave up her Saturday afternoon at home yesterday to drive to Reading (30 minutes from her house) to take me out for coffee in a bookshop. "I'm going buy you a book," she announced. Because we have both spent so much time raising kids and working recently, spending a few hours having coffee and looking at books and music seemed like a decadent thing to do.

But Karen wanted to do something for me. And boy, did she! As we talked over coffee and cake, she told me that her father's recent death (just before her birthday last October) had profoundly changed her way of looking at life. Two things in particular struck her:

1) Her father was part of a strong community. The church could barely contain the number of mourners on the day of his funeral. Karen felt that many of us overlook the building of a strong community while we focus on our jobs or business-related networks.

2) There isn't as much time as you think! Karen felt that she needed to re-focus some of her time on things that she loved doing, such as teaching. Her father's death was sudden, unexpected, and it made her realize that our lives go so fast.

Which gives me a great excuse to trot out one of my favourite quotes of all time:

Time will not be ours forever -- Ben Jonson

We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile

I've been listening to a sweet and sad recording of the Red River Valley lately and thinking of my mother. Here's my favourite verse:

From this valley they say you are going
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathways awhile

I can't figure out how to embed a song in my blog yet so I've uploaded the song to a shared website. Go to this link, then click on Red River Valley.wma file to download it.

http://www.speedyshare.com/663584114.html

John McCain -- a good greeter at Walmart?

This is from my friend Elizabeth Applebaum, who is a devout Republican:

"My own mother just called to tell me how wonderful, magnificent, incredible etc. Barack Obama is. And she sent me an insipid quote from Toni Morrison talking about how wonderful, magnificent, incredible etc. Barack Obama is.

She told me McCain would be really good, though -- as a greeter at Wal-Mart. (She always introduces me: 'This is my daughter, the Republican. I don't know where I went wrong.')"

Speaking of Republicans, I just saw this video that I know Linda Monk and Karen Blakeley would like:

Celebrating life in the midst of death?

You know, I have this major birthday (it's one of those horrible numbers that can't be mentioned in public) coming up in early March and have a party scheduled for next weekend.

My friend Amy Meeker in Boston had told me earlier that I had to do something to mark this old-bag milestone, and not to pretend it was just another day or else I'd feel worse. But that was before my mother became so ill.

My husband said I have to go ahead with the party, and that I couldn't retreat from life, no matter what was going on in Tennessee. I know my mother wouldn't want me to cancel anything because of her either. So, I'll do my best next Saturday to be cheerful.

Mom's last battle

My mother, Laura Scanlon, is on morphine now to help her with the pain and help her rest. My sister-in-law went to her room and noticed her sleeping peacefully for the first time in days. She noted that my mother no longer had a 'stressed look on her face' from fighting so hard to breathe.

In the meantime, my aunt Susan has tracked down my mother's best friend in Natchez, Mississippi. "I think she would like to know so she can help your mother with her love as Laura struggles with this last battle," she said.

Natchez is a beautiful place, full of antebellum homes, and when the azaleas bloom in the spring, it feels like an enchanted place. My mother was just talking about Natchez and how she loved it the last time I was visiting her. Here's a pic of a Natchez home in the spring.

She can still smile

My sister-in-law wrote me that my mother "can talk a little and smile some," and my niece gave her some chocolate pie yesterday that she ate but she is still very weak and struggles for breath, despite having oxygen.

Then my aunt Susan wrote that when she and my mother were young, they loved to eat Krystals (these little teeny onion-steamed hamburgers in the South that are totally addictive) then my mother would always get chocolate cream pie. So good to think she just had a little of her favourite dessert yesterday.

My friend Linda Monk went to great lengths to find out where my mother lives and send her the most gorgeous pink roses to cheer her. My mother can't turn her head to look at the Tennessee sunshine outside her window anymore, but now she has roses so pretty that my niece said people at the home have wondered if they are even real, they are so perfect.

Elizabeth Applebaum has sent me a quote today that makes me think my mother's life was a success, despite all the tribulations she has faced:

"To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - that is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The way people leave our lives

"The ways in which people we love leave our lives are so varied. My father died on the way to the hospital after I had been trying to get in touch with him for four days (we were in different states), since there was a blizzard there and the phone was out at my mom & dad's.

I never got to speak to him at all, and basically he died while I was trying like crazy to call. That had its upside and its downside, like all things. You do have a teensy little upside with your mother in that you're not sitting there thinking everything is absolutely fine and then one minute you'll get a phonecall that shocks you, and then you have to think about all the things you should have asked her, or told her. I send this only with love, hoping that a different perspective might give you a little bit of peace."

Isn't this a beautiful message that my friend Lisa Raspopovich sent me? I'm keeping all the wonderful anecdotes and thoughts everyone has sent me here in the blog so I can easily read it all again and again for comfort. You all have been so good to me.

When life is finally measured in months, weeks, days, hours

I've been observing the different reactions to my mother's final illness of friends and family members. It seems to me that some of us can look on sickness and suffering and somehow be able to bear it, but others can't. Others want to avoid the sick person or hearing about her because they can't stand the pain.

I don't think we should judge those who can't bear it. They are suffering in their own way but are silent about it.

My friend Dr. Judy Curson (who has a lot of experience with these issues of life and death that we've been discussing) has sent me a contribution to post. Thanks Judy.

"When my life is finally measured in
Months, weeks, days, hours,
I want to live free of pain,
Free of indignity, free of loneliness,
Give me your hand,
Give me your love,
Then let me go peacefully
And help my family to understand"

What would I do without my friends?

My friends have been tremendous support to me during this hard time in my mother's illness. My friend Jacqui Gates, who has a small baby at home, took the time to bake me one of her famous fruitcakes that people in the office beg her to make. Once you taste this delicacy, you can't stop eating until the whole thing is gone. That's why we all fight over her cakes in the office whenever she makes one. But this one, she said, is all mine! I don't even have to share one slice of it. How thoughtful is that?

Another friend, Elizabeth Applebaum, is making it her job to send me one email a day with something that will cheer me up. This morning I found this stunning piece of writing waiting for me in my Inbox:

"In first grade, Mr. Lohr said my purple tepee wasn't realistic enough, that purple was no color for a tent, that purple was a color for people who died, that my drawing wasn't good enough to hang with the others.

I walked back to my seat counting the swish-swish-swishes of my baggy corduroy trousers. With a black crayon, nightfall came to my purple tent in the middle of an afternoon.

In second grade, Mr. Barta said, 'Draw anything.' He didn't care what. I left my paper blank, and when he came around to my desk, my heart beat like a tom-tom while he touched my head with his big hand and in a soft voice said, 'The snowfall. How clean and white and beautiful.'"

Rocking to Russian hits

My Russian friend at work has sent me a link to Moscow FM on the Internet so I can listen to Ruskie hits while I work. It's really taking my mind off my troubles. Why don't you listen for a minute too?

http://www.moskva.fm/artist/гражданская_оборона/

Waiting and hoping

This waiting for my mother to get better or worse, it's horrible. Wanting her to stay with me here on Earth, yet knowing she wants to go because the pain and misery of MS has become so much to bear.

My brother Kevin wrote me something that reflects this. He said, "I just don't want to feel like an orphan in the universe any time soon. I know she wants to go, but I have selfish reasons for keeping her around. It's hard to put a good spin on this, to rationalize it neatly away."

I wrote him back: "I agree with you. I felt like a big wave was engulfing me with grief. But just think that you'll always have me on the planet here with you too, and I share so many of your memories. I looked in my baby book the other day and from Day One of my life, Mom wrote, you were interrupting my naps." :)

No special pass

I had a reprieve just now. I got my husband to call the nursing home in Tennessee to check on my mother (I'm at the office now, and he's at home with the flu), and she's better. She's breathing more easily and trying to get a little food down.

In the meantime, my friend Elizabeth Applebaum has sent me a wonderful message. Here's part of it:

"In Judaism, we don't have a concept of heaven and hell, and we don't think that God has a special pass for Jews and no one else in the afterworld (we're not, in fact, supposed to be doing too much thinking about the next life; we're supposed to be dealing with our behavior in this one).

Instead, we believe that the righteous of all religions are reunited with God, so I have no doubt - none - that your mother will be safe in the world to come. But I'm not really thinking about that right now. These days, I'm just keeping her in my heart and in my prayers, where I keep you. "

We have been happy. Happy now I go.

My mother is hanging in there so I have forced myself to come to the office today to take my mind off of things. I have on her childhood bracelet that is made of copper and big blue stones, and that comforts me. I just hope no one at the office says one kind thing to me today or I will burst into tears.

As I was driving very slowly through the fog on the way to work, I reflected how everyone goes through these sorts of things everyday but we don't realize it, and I need to have more compassion because everyone has their secret struggles and heartaches.

Yesterday, I started calling friends in America that I hadn't spoken to in years just to hear their voices. By the end of the day, it felt like they had all been sitting in my living room, giving me their friendship and support. How warm that made me feel, even with the coldness of my sorrow.

On the way to work, listening to a piano concerto on the radio, I realized that all their voices from yesterday had formed a sort of concerto in my life -- all of their words of comfort and attempts to amuse me to distract my mind were like the different notes in the concerto -- and the end result was music that gave me solace and made me feel like I wasn't alone in my grief, even though I live three thousand miles away from them now.

My daughter Katie wants to contribute a poem to this grieving process that we are going through for my mother:

Farewell

by Robert Nichols

(Written on Expeditionary Force Leave, 1915)

For the last time, maybe, upon the knoll

I stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad.

Day like a tragic actor plays his role

To the last whispered word and falls gold-clad.

I, too, take leave of all I ever had.

They shall not say I went with heavy heart:

Heavy I am, but soon I shall be free,

I love them all, but oh I now depart

A little sadly, strangely, fearfully,

As one who goes to try a mystery.

The bell is sounding down in Dedham vale:

Be still, O bell: too often standing here

When all the air was tremulous, fine and pale,

Thy golden note so calm, so still, so clear,

Out of my stony heart has struck a tear.

And now tears are not mine. I have release

From all the former and the later pain,

Like the mid sea I rock in boundless peace

Soothed by the charity of the deep-sea rain....

Calm rain! Calm sea! Calm found, long sought in vain!

O bronzen pines, evening of gold and blue,

Steep mellow slope, brimmed twilit pools below,

Hushed trees, still vale dissolving in the dew,

Farewell. Farewell. There is no more to do.

We have been happy. Happy now I go.

Tell him I am coming soon

I happened to catch my sister-in-law on the phone when she was walking to the nursing home to see my mother, and she put the phone to Mom's ear for a moment. I could barely hear what she said but Mom whispered that she was fine about everything. She told me she would be seeing her own mother soon and would tell her that we were all OK down here on Earth.

When I was there visiting her two weeks ago, my mother forced me to take her childhood Jesus picture back with me to England. "But I can't do that," I protested. "You've had this picture with you your whole life. If I take it away, it'll be like you are going to die."

"But I do feel like that," she'd said. "I need to give my things away."

And now, on the phone, I reminded her that I had Jesus now, and he was on my bedroom wall. "Tell him I am coming soon," my mother said.


(That's Jesus there behind my daughter taken one Christmas morning we spent at the home.)

A Mother's Day card she'll never read

I just realized that Sunday I sent my mother a Mother's Day card she'll probably never read. It'll take a week to get to Tennessee from England, but she's dying now. (She just loved getting British Mothering Sunday cards because they always have 'Mum' on them, rather than 'Mom' and that amused her.)

I was crying about my mother last night, and I didn't want to go to bed because I was scared when I woke up, there'd be no more Mom on this Earth.

I called the home, and she's hanging in there this morning though.

Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy. -- Felicia Hermans

The tightening grip of mortality

I've been at home sick today and turned my computer on to check if I had any work messages when I saw a message from my aunt in New Orleans saying my mother had been taken to the hospital because she couldn't breathe. I was so upset, thinking this was the end. (My mother has had Multiple Sclerosis for 35 years and been in a nursing home for 15.)

I called the nursing home, and she's back there now on oxygen. I've been dreading and fearing this moment for so long, even though I know she wants peace and an end to her suffering. Also, I'm in England, and she's in Jackson, Tennessee, so not a good situation.

I've been looking at a book called How We Die by Sherwin Nuland.

One passage in it is about this painting (below) The Doctor by Luke Fildes, a Victorian painter who had seen his young son die.

Nuland writes that in this painting we see the grieving parents and "the pensive empathetic physician keeping his bedside vigil, powerless to weaken the tightening grip of mortality. When the artist was interviewed about this painting, he said, 'To me, the subject will be more pathetic than any, terrible perhaps, but yet more beautiful.'"

It helps me so much to blog about this. As Laurence Sterne said:

Writing is but a different name for conversation.

A Russian's view of England

What do you think about the points made in a new book called The UK For Beginners by a Russian immigrant? Olga Freer says that the British:

- Habitually scratch their bottoms in public places
- Never remove the price stickers from the soles of their shoes
- Fail to iron their clothes
- Are obsessed with TV programmes about buying and selling houses

She says the country is full of "prudish, arrogant people who eat healthy food for breakfast – porridge or bacon and eggs. But in reality the nation suffers from obesity". Some 60 per cent of the female population wear size 22 clothes, she says.

I asked my daughter, born and raised in England, what she thought about this, and she replied that she never scratches her bottom in public!

Junior League elects black president

Linda Monk asks if a black president of the USA can be far behind?

From the Wall Street Journal:

When Gena Lovett, the chief operating officer of a Manhattan hedge fund, was named president of New York's Junior League chapter in January, it made news. "Junior League Appoints Black Woman as President," the New York Times headline blared.

Here's the rest of the story:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120243044026852135.html?mod=taste_primary_hs

The Junior League has been trying to broaden its membership for a while now. In Jackson, Mississippi, one of their recent cookbooks was titled "Come on In" to show their new openness.

(photo above is from a Junior League tea in 1934)

Cloverfield nausea

I was feeling a bit down yesterday, and my husband suggested going to a movie. Cloverfield had good reviews, and my husband loves the TV show Lost (produced by the same guy) so we went to that.

After 20 minutes, I felt like throwing up. It was like I was on a scary ride at an amusement park that I couldn't get off of. I had to run out of there, and go sit down in the lobby and wait for the movie to finish. No way could I go back in. I thought it was just me being a total wimp but others have had the same problem --See below:

OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Two Oklahoma City cinemas have posted notices warning moviegoers that the hit horror film "Cloverfield" may cause rollercoaster-like nausea.

...movie theaters posted warnings that the J.J. Abrams-directed movie, which was shot to mimic a home video recording during a monster invasion in New York, may cause some viewers to feel sick to their stomachs, KOCO-TV, Oklahoma City, reported Wednesday.

"Due to the filming method used for 'Cloverfield,' guests viewing this film may experience side effects associated with motion sickness, similar to riding a rollercoaster," the notices read.

Some moviegoers have demanded refunds or other compensation from theater managers after experiencing sickness during the film."I heard a few people kind of whining about it," said moviegoer Thomas Dozier. "They were talking about, like, 'I have got to get out of here.' Everyone around me was freaking out."

Marching against war in 2003

It was five years ago today that Karen Blakeley and I (and my family) went to London to march in protest of the impending invasion of Iraq. What an exciting day it was. We felt like we were making our feelings known, and maybe the politicians would take notice. (Fat chance -- Tony Blair said we were misguided.)

We did have a champagne socialist moment though -- we'd been marching and marching and it was so cold that we decided to have a lunch break -- we went to the nearest place -- an upscale Italian restaurant. We hestitated before going in -- would they get upset at having anti-war protestors come in? But we ventured in anyway, parked our big "Don't Invade Iraq" placards politely near the other diners' coats and umbrellas and had a pizza and a bottle of red wine to recover our energy.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. --Martin Luther King

Running a quick errand during lunch

Made a quick trip to the supermarket during my lunch break. Was in the express checkout line when the cashier told the man in front of me that her sister had just died in a three-car pileup, and she was so upset. He was very sympathetic then when it was my turn, I spoke to her too.

"Her seat belt was on but the crash was so bad that it broke on impact, and my sister was thrown through the window and died instantly." I felt like I couldn't leave her now, even though there were loads of people in the line behind me. "There was no one I was closer to in the world than my sister," she continued. I made some sympathetic responses but finally I had to say: "Could I have some cash back on my card please?"

But didn't I feel petty for wanting cash when she feels her life is over.

A woman's remote

As you can imagine, a MAN sent me this....

What do you think? True or false?

Valentine's Day -- celebrated differently in UK and US

I have noticed how different England and America are when it comes to celebrating Valentine's Day. In America, it involves everyone -- you send Valentine's cards to whomever you want, wish anyone you want a Happy Valentine's Day, and so on.

But in England, it's just a private thing with your significant other. My British husband said he was so surprised when I received a Valentine's Day card from my own mother when we were first married, and kids in school exchange little cards with every other class member.

When I was a student in England, I received several anonymous Valentine's Day cards because that's what they do here. It's the day for