A vicar's musings

I still receive the village newsletter from a wonderful little place we used to live in -- Sherborne St John in Hampshire. My favorite part of the newsletter was the vicar's monthly column. Some months he seemed to be pre-occupied with sex, so I looked forward to each month's offering to see what he'd say next. (I first blogged about the vicar back in December here.)

This month some renovation work is going on at the parish, so the vicar's mind turns to DIY (home improvements without professional help, to you American readers). How will he link this to finding Jesus, one wonders. A few sentences later, all is revealed:

"We tend to think we’ll be OK - we can do it ourselves - cobble together a few good deeds and make ourselves presentable. But we fail to recognise the fundamental fact that God is absolutely holy and righteous. His standard is 100%. By comparison to his requirement we all fall short. Indeed the Bible says that ‘all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.'"

Vicar, that's harsh! All our good deeds are like filthy rags? I'm depressed now.

He concludes with this interesting point:

"Not to decide for Christ is to decide against him. There can be no presumption that we will one day change our minds before we die. Experience shows that hardly ever happens. And that is not surprising for the day of decision is now."

Don't you think it's interesting that the vicar has 'experience' that most of us don't have time to convert to Christianity before we die? I guess his implication is that we need to do so upon reading his column.

Your phone is your bank too?

I have to brag about my friend at work JD (pictured above) who went out to Kenya to see how people there use their cell phones, and what they needed from the technology to help them in their everyday lives.

"In December 2007 JD Moore took time out from his day job as a user interface designer for Nokia to visit Kenya and further his passion for contexual user design and its role in developing markets. He ran a series of workshops with Kenyan children, exploring their views on mobile handset design and the features most important to this new generation, which may be the first to grow up with access to wireless technology."

This is some of the stuff JD discovered:

"In what is being touted as a world first, Kenya's biggest mobile operator is allowing subscribers to send cash to other phone users by SMS.... In time, this application will allow people to borrow and repay money, and make purchases. Companies will be able to pay salaries directly into workers' phones - something that has already attracted the interest of larger employers, such as the tea companies, whose workers often have to be paid in cash as they do not have bank accounts."

Just think, your phone could become your bank in the future. JD works on such cool stuff while I am just stuck in the office...not that I'm jealous.

Selfishness v. selflessness

One of our commenters is having a discussion about selfishness on a board somewhere. He sent us the exchange to see if we wanted to add any of our 2 cents....

OUR BLOG COMMENTER WROTE:

Selfishness has gotten a bad rap. We are all selfish. Nobody ever does a single purely unselfish act. If you feed, clothe and shelter the poor 24/7 you are helping yourself feel good about yourself through your acts of generosity.

If we didn't look out for our own best interests nobody would. But not to worry, it's an automatic process. Nobody can do anything that doesn't serve their self interest in some way. It's actually impossible to be purely selfless.

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THE OPPONENT’S REPLY:

Bah! This is just semantics. If we are to accept that all acts are selfish, then we're going to have to make a distinction between two kinds of selfishness -- selfishness that helps others and selfishness that only helps one's self. But, wait, we already have terms that could do this. We could, thus, redefine altruism as acting from self-interest to help others (Because it feels good), and redefine selfishness as self-interest that only helps oneself. There are other complications with this, but I won't bother to get into them.

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OUR BLOG COMMENTER WROTE:

I prefer to make the distinction between rational selfishness where you are mature
and responsible enough to act in life-affirming ways that do no harm to yourself or others and that of irrational selfishness where you (for example) substance abuse or engage in behavior that is harmful to yourself or others. But I stick to my assertion that we always behave selfishly. No need to split semantic hairs. We only have one perspective from which to act, that of our own wants and needs which are what drive our behavior.


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THE OPPONENT’S REPLY:

I reject your definitions on the grounds that they're unnecessarily a pain in the @$$. And because I think it's silly to broaden the meaning of words with negative connotations so that they can be applied to anyone and any action. And, consequently, require another descriptive term (so that they can be used coherently), i.e. a distinction between rational and irrational selfishness.

I also think your distinction fails to account for a specific behavior people need a term to describe-- selfishness (I'm using it for the sake of argument) that helps others ( not just selfishness "that do[es] no harm to yourself or others"). Your "rational selfishness" label is not specific enough for this. I think we can just use the term we've used all along: altruism. All it needs is a slight tweak in definition to quell the egoist's cherished argument that everyone is selfish.

Why didn't they finish breakfast?

My daughter Katie and I were watching the Gossip Girls on TV before she went back to London on Sunday. I was getting upset over crazy plot developments and implausible character reactions -- "That couldn't have happened," I would interject into the darkness, "She wouldn't have put up with that."

"Hmmm," Katie would reply, watching the flickering images on the TV.

"No, no, no," I said to yet another turn in the plot. "That's ridiculous; who would do such a thing?"

"Mummy," Katie finally said. "I think you're getting a bit too upset. This is just a TV show. It's not real life."

That observation straightened me out right away, and I enjoyed the program more after that.

You know how bad I am with this problem though? I get upset when characters are served a delicious meal that I would love to tuck into myself but they never get to eat because of plot developments -- the phone rings, someone gets killed, etc., so they invariably have to dash off with the food uneaten, and that bothers me for minutes afterwards. "Why didn't they finish their breakfasts?" I'll ask, like a simple-minded child.

Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts

Which of us feels, or knows, that he wants peace? There are two ways of getting it...Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea indeed, but safe beyond all others; only they need much art in the building. None of us yet knows what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thoughts -- proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful savings, precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb nor pain make gloomy -- houses built without hands, for our souls to live in. John Ruskin

I was reading this Ruskin quote and thinking how my blog is my nest of pleasant thoughts, my proof against adversity. I can always come in here and say what I think, read the witty and insightful comments of the community here, and leave this site refreshed and cheered.

But before you get too high an opinion of John Ruskin, though, I was reading in Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose what an ogre of a husband he was to his wife Effie. He wouldn't even sleep with her, telling her that her body disgusted him. And she dearly wanted children too.

He wrote this about Effie:

"Had she treated me as a kind and devoted wife would have done, I should soon have longed to possess her, body and heart...Perhaps the principal cause of it -- next to her resolute effort to detach me from my parents -- was her always thinking that I ought to attend to her, instead of herself attending me."

No wonder Effie ended up running away with the pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais! (That's his painting up there of Ophelia drowning in a stream.)

They are all heathens here

I belong to an American expats in the UK group on the Internet. Usually discussions are confined to where to find Aunt Jemima's pancake syrup in the UK or what does 21 Celsius translate to in Farenheit (so the person can figure out what temperature it is as they only give it in metric amounts on the radio).

But last week a woman from California put a note in the conference to ask how people really felt about living in the UK as she was a bit apprehensive about her upcoming move, and a firestorm of emotion erupted.

Women began to write long messages about how much they hate it here. They listed in detail what they hated: the weather, high prices, unfriendly people, hooligans, crime, neighbors letting kids trample all over their flowerbeds, etc. As I read these lists, I was surprised at the vehemence of the writers' emotions. One woman would set off another who came out of the woodwork to list all she hates and on and on. Finally someone entered the single comment that people who live here are "heathens."

The poor woman who entered the original query must be shaking in her boots at the thought of moving here. When another poster asked others to calm down and list some positives about living in England, she was shouted down with cries of, "I'm just being honest! Do you not like honesty? How do you know what I've experienced?"

It's all such naked emotion; I never expected to see such raw stuff on a Monday morning. I think if they want to be honest in there, they should rename the conference from American Expats in the UK to Let me Count the Ways that I Hate England.

He captained her onto the pillowy pier of her Posturpedic

The Christa Worthington murder was in the news recently, and it made me recall the time Elizabeth Applebaum sent me a book to read called about the crime called Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod by Maria Flook.

Elizabeth didn't tell me what she thought of it, so I took it on vacation and started to read it. Well, this book was so bad, it was unbelievable; I had to throw it across the room a couple of times in frustration before I finally gave up reading it. Elizabeth hated it too, and we felt so strongly about how awful it was that we put horrible reviews on the book's Amazon site. Then people would come on and argue with our reviews saying 'experts' had loved the book so we must be wrong, then we would go and write additional reviews to try and drag the number of stars down so no one else would spend good money on tripe like that.

One reviewer who agreed with us on Amazon said:

I'm only several chapters into this book, and though the story is interesting, I can't believe the poor level of writing. Does this author write cheap romances? A few examples speak for themselves:

"...he captained her onto the pillowy pier of her Posturpedic."

(I was ready to drop the book after reading that one)

"Casanovia college boys, their surfboards strapped onto their cars like fiberglass codpieces..."

(this allusion makes no sense at all, you do not strap a codpiece on a roof, it would more resemble the "bras" on sportscars. Now if she had said fiberglass phaluses it would be bad, but at least closer)

Only 375 pages to go.

Flook however "rejects any criticism as to what's true in the book, and what's speculation. For instance, there's a scene that Flook describes between Worthington and her mother, both of whom are dead. There's another scene where Ava sees a mouse when her mother's body is on the floor.

"This is what writers do," says Flook. "They dramatize scenes to create a 'felt-life,' in fiction and in non-fiction."

And finally, a man was arrested and convicted for the crime who was never even mentioned in her book, so what was the point of all that?

You can see what you think of it yourself if you want. You can get the book on Amazon now for about 45 cents.


Background info:
Christa Worthington (1956 – 6 January 2002) was a United States fashion writer who worked for Women's Wear Daily, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper's Bazaar, and the New York Times. She was also a co-author of several books on fashion.

Worthington was raped and stabbed to death at her home in Truro, Massachusetts (on Cape Cod). Her body was found on January 6, 2002, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, clinging to her body. The child was unharmed.

My son finally went to Cockfosters

My teen son is a typical boy and has always wanted to visit the London suburb of Cockfosters -- in his mind, any place with a name like that must be so cool. I don't know what he thought would be there -- strip joints, naked women, general debauchery? Anyway, my in-laws in London go out sometimes on a Saturday night, and they invited us up to meet them for a curry. When my sister-in-law said the restaurant was located in Cockfosters, I knew this was Mikey's big chance to investigate this vice den.

We drove up yesterday as evening was falling. "Look," I said in mock excitement, "there it is, at last!" I began snapping photos to recall this moment in the future:



More fun to me, however, was not the thrill of being in Cockfosters, but of eating at a swell Indian restaurant. British people love to have a curry on Saturday nights, which consists of drinking as much Indian beer as you can handle, stuffing your face with poppadoms that have been dipped in a series of spicy or fruity chutneys, followed by onion bhajis and chicken tikka, or some very hot dish. The hot chilis in the food lift the spirits immediately, and by the end of the meal, you feel that all is right with the world.

Here we are last night:

(My sister-in-law Paula had just returned from Paris where someone had taught her that you need to pose for photos, hence her arm on the table here.)

Jogging our memories

You know you totally forget about something then someone else brings it up as a meaningful memory then you can suddenly recall a slice of your past life vividly?

That happened to me when I read about Kevin Sessum's memoir, Mississippi Sissy.

Here's a summary of the book from some literary website:

"...the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South. As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word "sissy" on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin's long road north towards celebrity begins."


Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

“Fuck,” said Frank Hains. “I knew I shouldn’t have given that last bourbon to Eudora.”

It had taken me almost a decade after that day of my mother’s funeral, but I had finally found the only equivalent that Mississippi offered to a What’s My Line? life. Frank — a John Daly–like presence in Jackson — was the arts editor of the state’s afternoon newspaper, for which he also wrote a column called “On Stage.” Eudora was writer Eudora Welty. We were at a cast party for New Stage Theatre’s latest production, Long Day’s Journey into Night, starring Geraldine Fitzgerald as Mary Tyrone. Frank and Miss Welty were active members of New Stage, and he was playing host that night at Bleak House, the name given facetiously to his antebellum home by the local literati of Jackson. The Dickensian nickname derived from the house’s outward appearance of haunted dilapidation where it sat, rather spookily, on a hill opposite Jackson’s lone Jewish cemetery....

Frank would often allude to his “dusky endeavors,” as they had come to refer politely to his interest in young African Americans, some of whom had touched him deeply with their aspirations and narratives of maternal love. Miss Welty welcomed these stories of nuanced carnality, as Frank was careful not to tell her the details.

I was in high school when Frank Hains was murdered, and he'd just directed a play in Vicksburg, Mississippi, that my brother and a friend were in. We used to sit there as he'd explain his inspired plans for the set, and we thought he was so sophisticated.

Then he was murdered. Everyone was shocked. My father, a forensic pathologist, told me that the crime scene indicated that it was a homosexual murder. I was additionally shocked by that news.

My brother then started a gag where some of us would go around confessing that we were the murderer of Frank Hains. (The crime was unsolved.)

A friend from high school recalls how my brother would "creep around muttering, 'I murdered Frank Hains.' It was SO funny because we'd be watching TV or making cookies, or whatever, and he would suddenly appear and say that, in a sepulchral voice, then just walk off."

Also a friend from Jackson recalls actually attending the party that Sessums writes about. She wrote: "Do you remember the very first page of the book, when he describes that party where Eudora Welty got drunk, and Frank Hains was oozing around hosting so urbanely? I wuz thar (as Tom Joad would say.) That very exact party, for the cast of Long Day's Journey into Night. I felt mighty sassy and grown-up, there among the big folks, rubbing shoulders with Geraldine Fitzgerald and all. It made me feel better to read that Miss Welty was so drunk that Kevin had to drive her home because she was horribly rude to me that night. It never occurred to me that she was full of bourbon---I was so naive I didn't think old ladies drank anything but coffee."

I enjoyed the whole experience of thinking about something again that I'd forgotten, and the memories of others from that time rounding out the story for me. Hope someone else is out there writing a memoir that will jog my memory again soon.

Lie back and enjoy the rolling tides of language

Readers of the Times in London can be a bit stodgy and suspicious of change. Today a woman writes:

"I am a big fan of American novels and have noticed the phrase 'second-guess' being used in the English language instead of 'predict.' What can we do about this?"

The answer the columnist gives is to "Lie back and enjoy the rolling tides of language," then proceeds to explain to the English reader what 'second-guess' must mean to American readers.

I'll bet this woman doesn't even own a computer, or she'd be exposed to a lot more innovative American language than just 'second-guess.'

Friends at a distance

My husband Mel said last weekend that he would love to meet one of this blog's most astute commenters, Lisa Raspopovich. I consider Lisa one of my best pals -- she's so witty and smart, and I can tell her anything.

There's only one problem though: I've never met her.

We got to know each other through an American expats conference and became fast friends. Time passed quickly, and a month or so ago I e-mailed her that we really must meet sometime. But we got to talking about it and decided that actually meeting face to face could ruin our beautiful relationship.

No wonder my husband gave me a funny look when I said he wouldn't be able to meet her for some time....

Nothing makes the earth so spacious as to have friends at a distance. Henry David Thoreau

Are you a hundred yet?

I went for a quick drink with two of my friends -- Madeleine Cotter and Di Allen --last night. Here are Mad and Di with the diary out planning our next girlie outing.

"I have to take photos for my blog," I said, forcing them to pose for individual shots.

"Oh, your blog...." they said -- did I hear a teeny bit of exasperation in their voices? -- figuring hideous photos of them that hadn't been vetted would show up the next day on the Internet. So I chose this one that they couldn't possibly object to.

We didn't have much time together as Mad and Di had to pick their kids up from rugby practice so we quickly caught up on family and work news.

I don't think there is much blog-worthy news to report from last night except that Mad told us her five-year-old daughter Oonagh is very curious about age. She is trying to understand what it means to be a teenager or 30 years old or 50, etc., then she turned and asked her mother:

"Are you a hundred yet?"

Embarrassing parents

You try to be a good parent; you raise your kids to the best of your ability, then you would like to spend some time with them because they are all grown up, but they don't want to be with you anymore because you are uncool. What a dagger in the heart this is to mothers.

My sister-in-law Paula in London wrote:

"My kids hardly ever come out with us anymore. sob! The other Sunday Louis and I were told by our kids Sam and Georgia that we are an embarrassment. I took great offense and when they left the table burst into tears. I took the dog for a long walk, sobbing intermittently, but not before slamming the front door so hard it nearly came off its hinges!

After I stomped round the park for an hour blubbing I decided I better go home as I was all out of tears, and it was starting to rain. Just as I approached the house, I spotted one of the lads who has his eye on Georgia walking down the driveway with a bunch of flowers in his hand. So I had to hide behind a tree so not to spoil the moment. Can you imagine a bleary-eyed middle-aged woman wearing an old Barbour jacket arriving at the door pushing her way between love's young dream!"

Here is a pic of Paula and Louis in Tuscany last summer. They don't look like embarrassments to me.

But wait, on the other hand, here's a pic of my husband and Louis 'taking the waters' in a spa in Italy on the same trip. Now this is embarrassing:

News for art lovers

After a short stay in America, Michaelangelo's David is returned to Europe.

Thanks to Brenda for this post that came via her friend Bob in New York City.

He would have been 80 today

Today is my father's birthday; he died in 1994. I don't have many photos of him so will use one that I've posted already.

It's strange to be able to finally speak on this blog about what I could never discuss as a child. There's an odd freedom when people die and you can say what you like at last -- then sometimes you don't even feel you need to because it's finally all over. I couldn't believe it when my father died -- that at last that strident critical voice in my life was silenced. I thought somehow he would overcome that final obstacle and still be able to get to me.

I wrote a short story in college about my problems with my father that was published in a mag. Here are the first few paragraphs:

An arena -- I am in a huge arena, dressed in white. I look up to see the crowds -- masses of people -- cheering. Cheering what? Where did they come from? What am I doing in an arena? Suddenly, a deafening roar from the crowd; they are pleased. Then I see a lion; golden, untamed, fiercely graceful, coming toward me.

"And the lion is on the 20 yard line, first down and ten," shouts a football announcer.

"Ungrateful child." My father is the official. "Spurn me and take my money anyway." A crash of the whip against my unsuspecting back. "Why aren't you what I wanted in a daughter?" My father becomes the lion.

"I'm sorry, so help me God." I fall to the ground weeping. I am devoured by the lion. Blood, gnashing of teeth.

I don't have the intense feelings about all this that I used to have; I think I'm reconciled to what was. The ferocity of emotion has been replaced with a kind of wistfulness for what might have been.

St. George's Day

Today is St. George's Day in England. He's their patron saint, and on my way home from the office, I saw English flags flying all over the place. Some people want this day to be a national holiday. There are also articles in the paper about how we must save England from the clutches of the European Union, who want to take away British sterling and replace it with Euros, and also stop the English from doing things like printing pounds and ounces on food items (must use the metric system). It's all very interesting for an expat like me to observe the nationalism of another country (not the USA).

Here's info on George from the BBC website:

"Very little is known about the real St George. He is thought to have been born into a noble Christian family in the late third century in Cappadocia, an area which is now in Turkey. He followed his father's profession of soldier and became part of the retinue of the Emperor Diocletian. The emperor ordered the systematic persecution of Christians and George refused to take part. In 303, he was himself tortured and executed in Palestine, becoming an early Christian martyr.

The legend of George slaying a dragon and rescuing an innocent maiden from death is medieval. St George's Day is celebrated in England on 23 April, reputed to be the day of George's martyrdom in 303."

The wisdom and madness of crowds

The company website at Nokia, where I work, is always full of interesting things. Today there's information on how groups can make better decisions than individuals and mentions a book that illustrates this theory:

"The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, first published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group...

The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton's surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts)."

Web links to this book led me to discover another book that I really must read on a similar subject:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a popular history of popular folly by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its targets in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions".

The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, beards (influence of politics and religion on), witch-hunts, crusades and duels. Present day writers on economics, such as Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles."

One of Mackay's chapters about bubbles describes the tulip bubble (similar to our housing bubble?):

"Among the alleged bubbles or financial manias described by Mackay is the Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century. According to Mackay, during this bubble, speculators from all walks of life bought and sold tulip bulbs and even futures contracts on them. Allegedly, some tulip bulb varieties briefly became the most expensive objects in the world, until the bulbs bubble burst in 1637."

One degree of separation

I have a wonderful cousin in Jackson, Mississippi, named John Scanlon. I also have a fabulous god-daughter in Jackson, Mississippi, named Lizzy Jones. These people had no connection or knowledge of each other until last week when they met on a beach in Florida. Then they realized they both knew me, and they could easily tell me what had happened because we are all in Facebook.

I just love the 21st century. Even though I haven't seen either of them in a couple of years, I am feeling close to them right now due to the wonders of modern technology and the Web 2.0 revolution that lets us do collaborative websites like Wikipedia, blogging and Facebook.

Brenda's big adventure

One of our regular contributors was unusually silent last week, but we didn't mind because she was in Venice studying Italian and seeing the sights.

Here is Brenda Ware Jones' report:

"I had truly a great week with three great friends from my Monday-night Italian class.

Our hostess was Daniela, a former art-history professor who now teaches Italian language/cooking/culture classes, and lets her students come live in her house on the Lido island. The four of us had a wonderful time, learned more than we'll ever remember, and drank gallons of prosecco (the light sparkling wine made in Venice.)"

Daniela taught us many drop-dead-delicious Venetian recipes, hauled us around and gave us detailed insights on the artwork at the Correr, Accademia, and Palazzo Ducale, and...point of the whole trip...made us speak Italian for hours! A highlight was seeing the opera Il Barbiere di Seviglia at the grandly-restored Teatro La Fenice.

Thanks for that contribution, Brenda; take us with you next time!

The day my son was diagnosed

Since April is Autism Awareness month, I'm going relate what happened the day I was told my son was autistic.

Mikey was over three years old and still didn't talk, and I was very worried. I took him to be assessed. The doctor asked me questions about his development and observed Mikey while writing notes on her pad.

“I know my son has some developmental delays,” I finally said after nervously watching the doctor watch my son, “but the prognosis is good for that, isn't it? I can work with him myself and get him into speech therapy.”

The doctor’s face had a slight tense smile on it. “Your son is autistic. I could tell as soon as I began to watch him.”

I had been picking up a toy from the floor as the doctor spoke. The toy crashed back down to the floor as I tried to absorb the doctor’s words. My brain was frozen in some sort of blind panic. My instinct was to rush out of the room so I couldn’t hear another word.

“But…but,” I spluttered. “At the last check-up he had, no one said anything about...” My sentence trailed off as I noticed Mikey spinning in circles. The doctor’s glance followed mine.

“I know this must be a shock to you,” the doctor said, still smiling in a stilted professional way. “But I’m making this judgment based on the following observations.” She looked at the notes in her lap. “Since I entered this room, your son has shown no interest in me. Most children are curious about strangers. And do you see this big bag? I put it away from me after you sat down, and slightly opened it. Most children will try and see what’s inside. Your son has shown no such curiosity.”

“Well, why would he care what’s in your bag,” I began, but the doctor’s next words ran over mine like a truck flattening a Coke can.

“Have you noticed how obsessed your son is with small things like screws? He’s found every screw on the equipment in this office already.”

“But he’s just interested.”

“He’s not interested – he’s obsessed. Children developing normally don’t display these characteristics.”

Then the doctor said: “Your son should also have a vocabulary by now. Yet all I’ve heard him say this afternoon is one word– ‘no’.”

I put my head in my hands to steady myself against the medical onslaught.

The doctor scanned her notes then looked at me. “Does your son play with children his age? Does he have any friends?”

“No,” I whispered.

“Isolation from other children,” she nodded, “that’s another common trait in autistic children. They don’t like socializing.”

After the appointment was over, I walked around my house like a zombie, not knowing what to think or do. I was in such a daze that I even went to a drinks thing at my domineering rich next-door neighbour's house that evening because I didn't want to let her down. How stupid I was to put everyone else's needs above my own.

I wouldn't do that now. I guess getting older does have some benefits.

My husband is not the Anti-Christ

There used to be a joke among my friends in our younger days that my husband Mel was the Anti-Christ. We were living in Boston then, and I kept trying to get him to go to church so I could meet people. He hated going, except when we started attending the Unitarian church at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. People there were so warm and intelligent.

But because of Mel's revulsion to organized religion, and the fact that he was tall, dark-haired and only 31, he matched a description of the Anti-Christ then making the rounds on evangelist television shows. So we began to tease him.

Now twenty years later, our daughter Katie has written an email to me with the news that Mel cannot be this person. She says:

"I've just found out Daddy can't be the Antichrist.

The Antichrist is an agent sent by Satan to corrupt the church from within. He is not an overt image, but rather rose by stealth and deception, pretending piety and reverence while in fact inverting and perverting the values of true religion. Doesn't sound much like him, does it."

A lonely man

My brother Mike bought this man's picture in a beautiful little frame at an antique store a few years ago and gave him to me. There is something so poignant about this man not having a home in his descendant's houses but having to live in an antique store, hoping someone will adopt him, otherwise, he'd end up in the trash and gone forever.

Who is he, and how come no one wanted him anymore? I have been throwing stuff away recently but I can't let him down and get rid of him too. I'll have to look after him; someone abandoned him once -- I can't do it to him again.

Struggling with Asperger's Syndrome

Some people have kindly shown an interest in my family's struggles with Asperger's Syndrome. I wrote some columns for my friend Elizabeth A's parenting magazine when my son Mikey, now 14, was younger. Here's one of them:

"It was 90 degrees outside. I was inside an air-conditioned shop trying to find long sleeve shirts and pants for my three-year-old son Mikey. He’s autistic and will only wear winter clothes, even in the blazing heat of summer. The boys’ section just had shorts and T-Shirts. ‘Don’t you have any winter clothes?’ I asked a surprised clerk. ‘But it’s summer,’ she said. Then I saw the straggling remains of a sale rack out of the corner of my eye. Ah, there’s some long-sleeved stuff. For girls, though. I bought the clothes anyway, and snipped off the floral decorations and pink bows before giving them to my son.

All normal parenting rules are out the window when you’re dealing with an autistic child. If I interfered with Mikey’s obsessions such as wanting to wear certain types of clothes, the resulting tantrums could last hours and I’d be unable to get him to nursery or my daughter to school or myself to the office. Until I could learn how to cope with his autistic behavior, I had to give in. Imagine how odd he looked at our local swimming pool, wandering around in winter clothes with a jacket on, trying to find where each of the pool’s drains was located. ‘Doesn’t your boy want to get out of those clothes and swim?’ asked a woman baking in the sunshine nearby. How could I explain to her about his autism?

Autism affects children in different ways. But basically, autistic children don’t participate in what we consider normal life. They find comfort in routines - the same clothes, the same rituals, the same habits.

I have trouble thinking about much besides autism whenever I'm around other people’s children or even looking at photos of them. When I passed a colleague's desk at work and spotted a large picture of his new baby boy, I thought involuntarily: I hope that child is OK. I hope he doesn't turn out to be autistic. Not that I don't adore my boy, but his diagnosis has been like an earthquake in my family. Our expectations, hopes and aspirations lay like rubble around us, and now we must rebuild our foundation.”

Hammie 2 RIP

I think it was noticing his little feet were at an odd angle when I passed his cage that let me know our last hamster was dead. He was eating last night but I saw that breathing was harder for him and that he was sleeping too much.

Anyway, he's gone now, and we just buried him. My bluebells are in bloom so we decorated his grave with them. They smell so nice too. He would have liked that.

Joy comes from simple and natural things, mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water. Even rain and wind and stormy clouds bring joy, just as knowing animals and flowers and where they live.

Sigurd Olson

Cinderella before the pumpkin

My friend Jane Gilmore just sent this photo of me at my birthday dinner at Langan's Bistro in London. The waiter and I had the same birthday, and it was so late that no one was left in the restaurant but a table with his family singing Happy Birthday to him, and my table with my pals celebrating my birthday. So he came over to greet me. I was like Cinderella on that night, with a limo full of champagne, friends, balloons and presents, taking me from one cool place to another to party.

What amuses me about this photo is that it's so glamorous but only hours later, I turned back into just an ordinary woman living in a semi-detached house in Reading with laundry to do and dinner to cook.

Detritus -- a person from Detroit

My husband and I were having a lively discussion (yelling) about the word detritus. I tried to use it in a sentence but couldn't remember how you pronounce it so it ended up sounding like 'deleterious.' My husband, Mr. Cambridge Educated, said, 'it's pronounced di-TRI-tus', and I said "No, it's not! That means someone is from Detroit."

Of course he was right. Argh.

Here is the definition of this fine word that I will restrict myself to only writing down from now on, and not saying:

1. Disintegrated or eroded matter: the detritus of past civilizations

2. Accumulated material; debris: "Poems, engravings, press releases he eagerly scrutinizes the detritus of fame" Carlin Romano.

The scales must be broken

Eek! The scales say I've put on 10 pounds, and you know, I only eat like a bird! (ha, that's what we all say, isn't it?)

Part of my battle plan is to eat healthier stuff that will fill me up so I'm less tempted to eat a bunch of Oreos. I tried this recipe (below) tonight, and it's surprisingly good.

I just don't want to end up like those women on the beach that we've been arguing about in an earlier post, Overheard on the Beach.

Lebanese Bulgur

1/3 cup olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 cup bulgur
1 cup tomato, seeded and chopped
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth, heated
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon tomato paste
salt and pepper
1 pinch cayenne (optional)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Stir in the tomatos and basil, cooking 2 more minutes. Stir the bulgur into the tomato mixture, making sure that the bulgur is well coated. Stir in the hot broth, reduce the heat to low and cook, covered, for 5 minutes. Add the honey, tomato paste, salt, pepper and cayenne to the bulgur mixture. Continue to cook, covered until the bulgur is tender and all the liquid has been absorbed, about 25 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit for 10 minutes. Sprinkle the parsley over the top.

Advice from a graveyard

About seven years ago, my family went through a hard time. My son was having problems with Asperger's Syndrome, my husband and I were arguing about this and that and nothing seemed to be going right. Hoping for better times for our family, we bought a Victorian cottage near a church ruin and antique graveyard that had cast a spell on us. Each morning I'd take a cup of tea into the graveyard and walk, marveling at the beauty and peace I found there.

While I pondered the best way to proceed with my life, I took solace from walking among the graves, reading faded inscriptions. I stopped at the grave of Victorian babies – I counted three dead and the mother taken in childbirth with the last one. Reflecting on that poor woman having to look into the chilly darkness of her children's graves put my modern problems into perspective. I didn't want to be careless with my own children's lives by doing something irrevocable simply because I was angry with my husband. The weight of what the mother had gone through gave me an anchor for the afternoon.

When I noted how many young people buried there had been brought down by cholera, malaria or some other condition we no longer worry about, I decided it's a privilege to live long enough to have problems exacerbated by a long life and marriage. I strolled past the grave of a girl 'who left us in her 13th year'. She was the same age as my daughter at the time. Her sad mother had written: 'The flowers appeareth on the Earth. The flowers fadeth.'

Walking home, I finally decided not to be a modern wimp, but to keep strong and fight for my family's future. I thought my friends in the graveyard approved, for as I walked away, the sun suddenly shone on a tombstone that I'd never seen before: "Whether we wake or sleep," the inscription affirmed, "we live together."

Happy Passover??

Every year I ask my friend Elizabeth Applebaum what I should say to her when Passover comes. Passover starts on the 20th of April, so I have my annual problem again because I can't remember from one year to the next what she told me to say.

You can't just say 'Happy Passover,' can you?

Last year Elizabeth wrote me: "Passover starts soon, and I'm not ready at all. In fact, I should be cleaning this very moment but I just don't want to. We start the seders late and continue throughout the night (last year I think Yitz and Phil and Adina made it until 3 a.m. It's very fun, just talking and discussing all kinds of issues)."

From the website Judaism 101, I learned this about Passover (Pesach):

"Of all the Jewish holidays, Pesach is the one most commonly observed, even by otherwise non-observant Jews. According to the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS), more than 80% of Jews have attended a Pesach seder.

The name "Pesach" comes from the Hebrew root Pei-Samekh-Cheit , meaning to pass through, to pass over, to exempt or to spare. It refers to the fact that G-d "passed over" the houses of the Jews when he was slaying the firstborn of Egypt. In English, the holiday is known as Passover. "Pesach" is also the name of the sacrificial offering (a lamb) that was made in the Temple on this holiday."

This website still didn't tell me what to say to Jewish friends when it's Passover. If anyone can help me, please do so I'll know what to say to Elizabeth A.


And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the L-RD, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree. - Exodus 12:14-17

Addendum:
People have been searching for how to say Passover and landing on my site then leaving quickly because I don't actually tell them what to say, so here it is in Hebrew:

"Pessah sameakh": In Hebrew, 'Happy Passover'.
"Hag sameakh": which means 'Happy Holiday'

For more info on celebrating Passover and how to say Happy Passover in Russian, look here.