Another trip down memory lane

 

Photo of my mother

Originally this was a picture of me and my mother. But, as she often did, she tore the part with her likeness off, making the picture very weird. Mother often did this to pictures of herself, as she hated to have her picture taken while she was fat. Consequently we have only a handful of pictures of her.. She never did lose weight. Nevertheless we loved her and wouldn't mind having more pictures of her to remember her as she was. I have no idea why this gibberish appears. Posting pix to blogger is like swimming with cement shoes. : 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"> 

Family picture

 

I finally was able to load a picture onto blogger--don't even remember how it happened. This photo was taken eons ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and our children were little. Also, my feet were perfect. Nowadays I feel like I have rocks in my shoes--not pebbles, boulders.

Too hot

Everyone who can manage it is away this weekend, and if I had sense I'd be away too. Mostly I've been hanging around taking care of administrative stuff, like writing the IRS asking them not to send me any more computer generated requests for my 2010 return, which they seem to keep losing no matter how often I submit it. The there's all the health stuff, from teeth to feet.

I'm not having too bad a time of it, actually. I've got some interesting books to read; only some of them are about the Civil War, which seems to be my new obsession. I was never that interested in the Civil War; it was Mr Charm's cup of tea. But he left so many books about it that I started to get interested in it.

So I've been puttering around the house, reading books about the Civil War (or not), watching old movies, eating the occasional sandwich or something. The only thing that bothers me a little is that I am starting to feel like a fictitious character. possibly one from the work of Barbara Pym. Well, I'd rather dwell in a Barbara Pym book than one by, say, Joyce Carol Oates.

Sexual harassment victim dies

I read Virginia Johnson's obituary this morning in the local paper. The obit was by Jim Salter, Associated Press.

It turns out Ms Johnson, a single mother of two, went to work at the medical school of Washington University as a secretary. Now the bit which has since been scrubbed from the online version:

It was a strange indoctrination: Masters convinced her that having sex with him was part of the job.

Lucky for Dr Masters that he was not a hapless male college student, for instance, a Duke Lacrosse team member, in the 21st century, or he would have been--shall we say, screwed?

Had he been a Republican, say a Wall Street lawyer, we would consider this sexual harassment. Actually, it was sexual harassment, if the term means anything. Moreover, it is morally appalling.

But Masters is one of the gods of our time, and can do no wrong. If he did it, it wasn't sexual harassment. It was science.

The story goes on to laud Masters:

"He was a rigorous scientist most comfortable in a white coat," said Dr Robert Kolodny

I wonder if he took off the white coat at certain appropriate times?

I'm not sure whether their work was valid science, either. I consider it Al Gore Science--you know, the settled kind? Nobody is going to argue with it, at risk of being called a Christian or something equally appalling.

What's wrong with Wells Fargo Online?

I am not the only one with complaints. This awful bank's awful website is a nightmare. It has been down for a solid week. I have been forced to pay several bills by mail. But I can't acccess my account to see what's in it.

Doing well by doing good

The director of Delaware's United Way gets a pay raise.

Dozens of charities are scrambling to keep their programs running in the wake of funding cuts from the United Way of Delaware, which fell short of its campaign goal this year but managed to give its executive director a pay raise and bonus.

The cuts come as nonprofits struggle to make ends meet after several economically disastrous years. The groups have trimmed programs, staff and overhead costs, frozen salaries for years and pursued new revenue sources wherever they can find them, their leaders said.

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One item that escaped the ax is the salary of United Way President Michelle Taylor, who made about $257,000 last year and received a raise and a bonus this year, although officials would not offer specifics. In 2012, the organization’s budget was $20.7 million.

Those documents show that from 2010 to 2012, Taylor’s income, including bonuses and benefits, rose 35 percent while the United Way’s income dropped by 15 percent.

United Way also gets to keep around 10 percent of contributions--sort of like an agent's fee, if you had an agent and weren't a non-profit organization trying to survive.

Sweet deal, isn't it?

These United Way thugs go to citizens' workplaces and try to persuade the employees to kick in out of their paychecks. The money can be taken right out of your paycheck, saving you the trouble of writing a check or something hard like that.

Needless to say, they won't be getting anything out of me. You can check out charities on the web, and find out how much of the money they raise goes to "administrative expenses." The Salvation Army, among others, spends very little on these.

Domestic violence

And it wasn't even my own domicile. Some backstory first, to set the scene. My hairdresser operates out of her house, specifically out of her basement. When I walked into the house, there was a certain je ne sais quois in the air. Her husband was sitting in the kitchen, looking both grim and downcast. We went downstairs to her studio. With a face that looked like thunder, she seized a huge hank of hair from the left side of my face and hacked off a huge piece of it. It was about an inch and a half long, and she continued to hack away at it. She then proceeded to do the same thing on the other side. I couldn't see what she was doing on top of my head, but when she was done it felt like a three day growth of stubble. Yuck. I truly didn't recognize myself. It turns out, dear reader, that she and her husband had had a quarrel.

Urban hospital setting

I just returned from the University of Pennsylvania Hospital gynecology Department without seeing the doctor. The place looked like photos I have seen of Ellis Island, only these huddled masses weren't huddling; they were eating, drinking, talking on their cell phones, shushing or feeding their babies. It was like the emergency room in a large urban hospital, only no-one was actually bleeding. After a couple of hours, I went to the desk and asked the receptionist if I would be seen soon. She told me that there were plenty of people ahead of me. Apparently this was a clinic they held once a month. But why I had to be there on that particular day was not explained. The room didn't actually have a sign over the door: "Abandon hope ye who enter here," but the vibe was definitely there. There were too many people there, doing too many things to too many patients. Something told me I would not like to be treated in this hospital or by these people. So I decamped. The search for a surgeon moves forward.

Our career as brewmasters

I can't believe I never mentioned it, but Mr Charm and I once brewed our own beer. It was not bad either.

We got the idea from a neighbor and fellow graduate student. He made his own beer, due to being an impoverished graduate student. We were pretty poor ourselves, and had a couple of years more to go before Mr C got his PhD. We had tried hand rolling our own cigarettes, but it was tedious and hard to do. We bought a little machine to roll them with, tobacco, and cigarette paper. The hard part was getting the right amount of tobacco in each cigarette--and you'd be surprised how difficult that was, and in the end, more than we bargained for. So we got rid of the machine, the papers, the tobacco, and eventually, the habit of smoking.

But, back to the beer. We discovered that our local supermarket sold malted barley with hops. Yeast was also available, I can't remember what kind. You mixed the barley with the yeast, put it in a large crock, which we placed in the corner of the kitchen. I believe water was also involved, but I don't remember. Occasionally a burbling sound came from the crock, as if a frog had taken up residence in it. After a certain number of days, we strained it into washed soda bottles, which we capped with a bottle capping tool. You had to be careful pouring it out, as there was about a quarter-inch of sediment in the bottom. But it tasted okay, and we kept up making it for a while.

The problem was that this beer had a punch. Ordinary beer has about 6 percent alcohol, but ours had about 20 percent. Mr Charm found he could not drink it with his dinner and then prepare for the next day's classes, because he was pie-eyed. I didn't have to teach classes, but I just lurched around the kitchen, totally forgetting to put the kids to bed, or wash them, or remember I had them. So we stopped production.

As it happened, we were living in an old building at the bottom of a steep hill, which was divided into four apartments. Our fellow tenants were two old ladies with a cat and a dog, respectively, and the aforementioned graduate student and his family. The ladies felt that the young men should do all the heavy chores, taking to garbage up the hill, shoveling snow, etc. The men felt that the age of chivalry was over and that the ladies should hire someone to do the scutwork at least occasionally.

Now I have set the scene. well, not completely, because I forgot to mention that there was a capacious attic in which we stored things we were not using, including a case of the beer. Occasionally, we would hear the faraway sound of one of the bottles blowing up--but it was very far away. Perhaps it was a mouse, or the wind? Or just the house settling? We did not inquire.

After a couple of years we moved on, and moved away. We seriously planned to get rid of the beer, but one of the ladies made a cutting remark about the beer, and we got mad. We left it there.

I liked to think of the old ladies lying in bed and hearing the faraway explosion of the beer in the middle of the night. But the reality of the situation was that the college donated the building to the city, which turned it into a low income housing development. hrthe reamreality

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I am not blogging as frequently because...

blogger has become less user-friendly. I have an enormous collection of photographs in Picasa. It used to be super-easy to transfer photos to blogger; there was a button which said "blog this," you pressed it, and there it was. I've been using blogger for 7 years now and it was ever thus. However, the button has now disappeared. My daughter tells me to figure it out--it will stimulate my brain, according to her. But the last thing I want is stimulation of my brain. Thinking through problems is frustrating, vexing, and a waste of time. I have half-heartedly tried to go around this problem, but doing it the roundabout way is clumsy, kind of like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time. I thought this was a subtle inducement to using blogger+, but it isn't. Blogger+ is just a pointless new way to waste time on the Internet. Like Facebook and its peers.

Data mining

Why are we worried because the government is recording our phone calls, e-mails, and for all I know, bowel movements? The various governments in the nation don't know what to do with this data.

For example, a man hired to demolish a building in Philadelphia managed to kill 6 people in the process. A cursory background check of this person would have revealed numerous arrests, two jail sentences, and the fact that he was a pothead. Why this individual was hired to handle heavy equipment when there is 7.5 percent unemployment was not explained. Clearly, the government's methods of using the information it collects on individual American citizens needs tweaking.

Military ceremony

We had a military ceremony at Mr Charm's interment. I felt like a bit of a fraud when they gave me the flag, because he got more out of the army than they ever got out of him. He trained as a mountain climbing instructor, but was sent to Austria where he was company clerk and everyone was very nice to him, because he had control over who got furloughs and when. He also drank lots of beer and ate lots of cake topped with shlag (whipped cream), causing him to gain 40 lbs.

But the best thing he got out of the army was the GI Bill, which enabled him to go to college. It changed his life. He went to Brooklyn College, a very fine school which was free in those days, good going for a young man who dropped out of high school because he didn't want to read Silas Marner. No, that's not accurate--he refused to read Silas Marner.

Let's go easy on the IRS

People without a sense of humor are giving the IRS a hard time over a line-dancing video.

I applaud these jolly tax-masters for having a sense of humor. Do you know what librarians do when they have conventions? Powerpoint presentations, that's what! I'll take line dancing any day.

Miss Delaware's weird family

An article about the current Miss Delaware in the local paper is making me crazy.

A paragraph about how pretty she is includes the following statement: (her two twin sisters – one identical, one fraternal – are knockouts as well).

How can she have two twin sisters, one identical, one fraternal? Is she a triplet?

You can't say no to this offer

I am continually getting offers from "financial planners" who want to "educate" me in how to save and invest my money. This is quite a common way for financial planners to troll for new customers. Usually they bribe you to attend by offering a free meal. The one I got today was a little different. Of course it was from a self-seeking "investment counselor," but this was under another guise. The offer was sent by the University of Delaware, and advertised as a "course" given through the university, at the university campus. Instead of getting a free meal, the university required a tuition payment of $39.

When I was a library director these financial gurus were always after us to let them offer a seminar in our library. I always refused because it was all about a hidden agenda, and I didn't want the library to be used for profit. Not that I am against making money--I'm all for it. But the library is a tax-supported institution and should not be recommending an investment scheme under the pretense of educating the public.

Why is the University of Delaware pimping for some financial advisor? Are they that hard up?

Festive

In December, I decided to get a pedicure from my bespoke pedicurist, Mr Tran. Mr Tran used to have a special way of doing Mr Charm's pedicure. He would roll the chair out to the car and help Mr Charm out of the car. The pedicurist used to josh with him, asking what color polish he wanted and sometimes getting a smile for her pains. She also washed his feet and lower legs, put lotion on his skin, and massaged him. When we were ready to leave, Mr Tran would help him into the car.

I continued to go there after Mr C had moved to a nursing home. Wouldn't you? He knew our whole family and asked about them. The pedicure and manicure were the same as offered everyplace else, but the service made us feel loyal.

So, back to December. I chose a color for my toenails, a shell pink. Mr Tran countermanded my choice. "No, no! Not festive enough for holiday season!" He chose a bright red, and I went along with it and achieved festive feet.

It was April when I came back, just for a manicure. "Manicure and pedicure?" asked Mr Tran. No, just a manicure. "Get manicure and pedicure," he insisted. So I did.

Jihadi mom

The Boston Bombers' mom clearly needed Dr Kermit Gosnell's services a couple of decades ago. It would have saved everybody a world of trouble.

Getting old(er)

Years ago, when my grandson was in elementary school, I would occasionally drive him and a few of his buddies to a movie or baseball practice. They were a noisy and unruly bunch, and the topic that amused them most was, er, digestive problems. Mostly farting, but they also enjoyed talking about belching, vomiting, and diarrhea--or anything else that was gross. Twenty years later, and this mindset has taken over the film industry. I just watched the movie Bridesmaids. Vomiting, diarrhea? You want it, you got it.