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News Flash: Youth Profoundly Alienated (from GOP) O RLY?

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Greenberg Quinlan Rosner | News

Washington, DC. Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner have completed a comprehensive and multi-modal survey of America’s youth ages 18-29. This major, multi-mode survey of America’s young people shows young people profoundly alienated from the Republican Party and poised to deliver a significant majority to the Democratic nominee for President in 2008. Involving a combination of land-line telephone survey, cell-phone interviews and web research, surveyors overcame the inherent difficulties and biases of researching this population.The survey finds young people profoundly alienated from the Republican party and its perceived values. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lead Rudy Giuliani—the most acceptable of the Republican offerings among youth—by significant margins. The President’s standing is substantially worse, to the degree that is possible, than we find in the broader electorate. Moreover, the disconnect we see between the Republicans and our nation’s youth runs so deep, that it likely will not only outlive the Bush administration, but potentially haunt the Republicans for many years to come.

This survey involved 1,017 young people, including 510 telephone interviews, 407 web surveys and 100 cell phone interviews. The survey was conducted between May 29 and June 19, 2007.

Here’s a novelty: profoundly alienated youth. In my day, you indicated your profound alienation by wearing black clothing, doing bizarre and otherworldly things to your hair and skin, and listening to Black Flag and X.

Well, this research item is just dandy — although I suspect that a fair number of College Republicans are pulling this to pieces and stomping on the bits. I wonder how many pages of MySpace and Facebook goo the researchers slogged through in order to reach potential respondents?

Sadly, I fear that their sample wasn’t as representative as they’d hoped, just because it’s summer and a lot of the “youth” are off traveling, working summer jobs, and so on. At about the time of the survey, a lot of college-age youth were busy with finals and masters’ theses and whatnot. This is the same group of people who’ll probably receive some “welcome new voter letters” from the Republican Party in August 2008 marked “do not forward…” that’ll get stamped “RETURN TO SENDER.” And their names will end up on “voter fraud challenge lists” for the November election, unless somebody slaps another consent decree on the GOP.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast (whose very name is fightin’ words in some quarters, I believe) was on PBS’ NOW the other night with a pretty damning report on voter caging – how it’s done, and how it might have been used in 2004. Personally, I think a less refined version was used in 2000 too, which scared the beJebus out of the GOP because they lost the popular vote and only won on the anachronistic technicality that is the Electoral College (and because the Supreme Court had had enough of hanging chats and recounts in Florida). Also, there’s a bit with former New Mexico AG Iglesias, testifying before Congress and interviewing that he believed he was being manipulated into investigating baseless “voter fraud” and “corrupt Democratic officials” cases purely for political ends, and he was fired for finding no basis for them and discontinuing the investigations. He didn’t play ball, so they sidelined him. Bastids.

Is there any scandal out there that ISN’T somehow tied to the Justice Department AG firings?

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/video.html" width="400" height="300" wmode="transparent" /]

[tags]Greg Palast, voter caging, profoundly alienated[/tags]

8th Avenue Bailout

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As the incessent moblogging makes clear, we’re not in Illinois at the moment. In fact, we’re on a 4-day weekend trip to visit some of our favorite places and meet up with my sisters for one last little item on our “To Do” list concerning Mom and her final wishes.

But more on that later. Today’s topic is urgent: a restaurant review that includes a dramatic bailout maneuver.

My husband David and I took the scenic route to Steamboat today – we were in Boulder for a couple of nights doing the sentimental journey thang, and then in a fateful decision noodled around through Rocky Mountain National Park instead of taking a more direct southern route. It was pretty, but we hit road construction – but then, we probably would have hit road construction if we’d taken the “fast” route, too.

We got into town around 430pm and found that the condo gods had put my sisters and brother-in-law (relax now, it’s a 2-bedroom) in the unit directly above ours. Which made meeting up really convenient – I had given Timmy the tip about where we’re staying (The Ranch at Steamboat, via Mountain Resorts) and a very, very nice place it is. They’ve got a 3rd night free deal during the month of June, and it’s very comfortable and homey in the condos, with a pool and hot tubs and a great view down the Yampa Valley.

Anyway, we discussed where to have dinner, and we wanted steak. There were 2 “western steakhouse” type places downtown, the 8th Street Steakhouse (“Best Steaks In Town” ) or the Old West Steakhouse. The ad for the first place, I read aloud: “Grill your own steaks on our lava rock grill.” That sounded fun in theory, but also left unspoken was the assumption that we also had the option of NOT grilling our own steaks if we didn’t feel like it. The other place had an agressively Western theme as you might imagine, and thank GOD I remembered the address correctly.

One of my sisters actually called and made reservations at the 8th Street Steakhouse, whose website blurb reads:

This downtown Steamboat tradition is known for serving the finest hand-crafted steaks and seafood in a magnificent western ambience. A great family dining experience touches every detail, from the authentic saddle seats for kids to the free s’mores desserts. Cook one of our prime grade strips, bacon-wrapped filets, juicy ribeyes, or kobe strips over our 20-foot lava rock grill; or sit back as we perfect our baby-back ribs, slow-roasted prime rib, Alaskan King crab legs, or Australian lobster tails. Start your night off with our award-winning stuffed mushrooms, accompany your 16oz prime NY strip with our fresh steamed asparagus or moist twice baked potato, and finish it off with one of our homemade desserts.

Okay, first of all, I was not aware that “magnificent” was synonimous with “dated, worn, and slightly tacky.” We should have known when we unrolled our napkins to find really cheap steak knives, but oh, well. The waiter told us that if we wanted steak, they had the best in town, but we’d have to go downstairs (we were seated upstairs), choose our steaks from the “butcher shop” meat case, and then walk it across the dining room to the lava rock grill in the front corner of the restaurant.

When we saw the prices next to the different cuts of meat, that’s when we all snapped out of the “go along with the adventure” mood – we were shocked that we were being asked to pay 3 or 4 times the grocery store price for a piece of meat that we’d still have to cook ourselves. Personally, I was concerned that I’d pay a lot of money for a ruined steak, because I wasn’t too confident of my ability to cook the dang steak without turning it into a piece of half-burned hash. Something about seeing the cuts of meat under glass made the disparity in price between a real butcher shop’s wares and the restaurant’s stuff a little too galling. And then we found that the “side” dishes were also overpriced, and ala carte.

I had found the ad for the place and felt irritated that I’d just assumed that we’d be able to order our steaks in the normal way, too. One of my sisters had called for the reservation, but we’d all sort of decided on 8th Street rather than the other restaurant, Old West Steakhouse, I’m not sure why.

So we bailed, but not before paying for our salads and drinks – we had separate checks, but the total for David and me was $21.00 and change; we had soft drinks and a serving of salad for that price.

Off we went down Lincoln Ave., the main drag. My sisters spent part of their childhoods in Steamboat, and I visited a lot here with Mom when we’d have to come in and help my aunt and my disabled cousin now and then. So the change in Steamboat is pretty marked, but some things are the same. F. M. Light and Sons, the cowboy outitters’ store, was still there. We walked down to 11th and Lincoln and there was the Old West building, with the Old West Steakhouse restaurant up on the side street.  I was fervently thankful that I’d remembered the address from the restaurant guide.

That turned out to be a good meal with good service, and we were happy to pay the going rate – and some of us ordered wine on top of it. It was a friendly place, with seating upstairs and a little bar.  In addition, they had a set of comfortable old leather couches with a coffee table that you could sit at and eat appetizers, or even your entire meal – the coffee table had one of those lids that lifts up and becomes a dining surface while you’re sitting there relaxing. And in the other room, they had these funky whiskey barrels that had been converted into tables for two… stacked up 2 high, so that the upper tables were reached by a short ladder. Fun place. And of course, by the time we left, the entire staff knew the story of how we’d walked out of the other restaurant, so you wouldn’t believe how often somebody came by and checked on us to see if we needed anything.

All in all, a lesson learned – if a restaurant ad says it’s fun to cook your own food, don’t assume that you’ve got no other choice. Actually, we could have ordered cooked entrees at 8th Street, but they were all overpriced, too. Some people might like the concept of cooking their own steaks, but we sure didn’t.  At least, not without a beach and a sunset to go with it.

She Wore Blue Velvet

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This little item caught my eye:  

CW Blog: Irregular Blogging by Irregular Writers …: Urning Potential

Evidently, the editors at the Provo Daily Herald have realized how useless online surveys are and have just whimsically started asking whatever nonsense questions pop into their heads. Here’s this week’s bizarre poll:

Which statement best describes your view on cremation?
( ) Makes resurrection difficult; cremation should be avoided
( ) Cremation should be encouraged; God doesn’t care

… because, of course, there are people in the United States who, after much thought, have realized that cremation is just a huge incovenience for God. He’s got enough to do on Judgment Day without looking all around the world for your dispersed ash particles and then gluing them all back together in the right order before breathing life into your incinerated carcass. Sure, The Omnipotent One could do it, but what a pain in God’s ass! I wouldn’t be surprised if He just decided to call the whole thing off. 

The last time I saw Mom, she was wearing blue velvet, sitting in the middle of a patio table as my sisters and a couple of my nieces sat around toasting her, singing to her, and laughing over old family stories. There was even singing – “She Wore Blue Velvet” was the big number that day.

Okay, well, her cremated remains were in a little container that was tucked into a decorous little blue velvet bag, and my sisters and I had just returned from the business of picking her up from the historic, rather stuffy old funeral home where we’d made “the arrangements” just a few days before. I’m sure the staff was rather shocked at our hard-nosed attitude toward all the nickel-and-dime crap that the death industry sticks on its carefully worded invoices.

One oddity that we had to overcome was that all three of us had to sign the cremation order – apparently it’s a quirk of Utah laws and religious sensibilities that all surviving adult children (and any spouse) must sign, or no cremation may be done. There was an incident in another branch of the family a few years back where one family member refused to sign a cremation form with the other siblings, going against their parent’s wish to be scattered near the family’s vacation cabin (where other close family were also scattered). It was a situation that Mom wished to avoid, and fortunately we were all able to sign the form, approve the ridiculous list of charges, and get on with all the other things we had to do that week.

Mom had made very specific instructions about being cremated with the minimum of expense or bother,  and an obit in the Salt Lake Tribune only (she liked reading a well-written obit, and hated the smarmy-warmy gup that passed for death notices in both Salt Lake papers, but preferred the Trib’s). We probably shocked the hell out of the mortuary counselor, or whatever his title was; but he was far too well trained to show any trace of disapproval. I did form the opinion that we were expected to spend money in proportion to our love and respect for our mother, but we knew better and actually had a couple of charges and services 86’d, because we weren’t paying for frills or junk fees.

When went back to pick Mom up and cast a carefully deadpan eye over the final invoice (gosh, it costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars to drive a dead person to the crematory and back – one at a time? I think not!) we three weird sisters waited out in the boardroom of the historic mansion while a functionary in quiet shoes fetched Mom’s remains from the nether regions at the back of the house. When the young woman appeared, carrying a blue-velvet bagged object carefully by the base, Timmy and I made sure not to look each other in the eye, because we were both thinking one thing:

Crown Royal.

crownroyal

Not only did Mom’s new outfit evoke the evuls of drinking, in a staid Utah funeral home no less, but it reminded us all strongly of how she and my Aunt Lucy used to keep their penny poker stakes in little Crown Royal bags sized for mini-bottles, so there was an air of gambling about her new look, too. Mom used to go up to Lucy’s condo at least once a week to play poker and gin with Lucy’s neighbor cronies, and it was a running joke between them that Mom must remember to bring her stakes, though “it was only a penny to play.” It was pretty cuthroat stuff, but nobody ever lost more than a few bucks. Lucy, though, had a lot of pennies stashed away. She’s been gone for years, though. 

Anyway.

So here was Mom, resplendent in blue velvet, looking almost respectable and decorous, and not dissolute or fallen in among drunks and gamblers at all. I can’t remember which of us carried her in solemn procession to the parking lot as we tried to cope with the absurdity of it all without making asses of ourselves.

We were almost to the car before the rot set in.

We started to splutter and get the giggles, and made snarky remarks about some of the fees we’d just signed off on. Hysterical laughter was breaking out all over, so we hopped in the car as quickly as we could.

We spent a good few minutes in the parking lot lot of Evans & Early, making speg tiggles of ourselves in the car over Mom’s new outfit, and laughing off the whole encounter with the professionals of mortuary care. Then we ended up calling my oldest niece and meeting at her little house in a funky old Salt Lake neighborhood, sitting around on the patio drinking and laughing and singing. It was not Crown Royal – it was some fancy-shmancy stuff that Holly had – but it sufficed.

Mom’s last wishes were to be cremated and the ashes scattered near a certain scenic overlook near Rabbit Ears Pass south of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It was at this spot (or near it since the road has probably been realigned) that she and Pop got engaged; it was their favorite smoochin’ place when Mom was in Steamboat with my sisters at a family-run dude ranch. Pop would drive up from Grand Junction, apparently, though I have to do a little more research on the details there. When Pop died, his ashes were scattered near there at Mom’s request, and so next month we’ll scatter her there, too.

It’s been almost a year… but now that I think of it, I wonder what we’re going to do with that blue bag?

Review: Kris Longknife, Mutineer

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Kris Longknife: Mutineer, by Mike Shepherd

=:) =:) =:)

That third smiling alien is flickering a bit, in my estimation. I’m not quite done reading this book, but I’ve read enough to form a reasonably informed opinion. I’ve read all or most of the Honor Harrington books (such as The
Short Victorious War (Honor Harrington (Paperback)) ) by David Weber, and although I got bored with them because the formula had worn a little thin for me, I liked the idea of reading SF books about galactic warrior women. This one struck me favorably; as the first in the series, it was the least likely to be hidebound by whatever quirks the author has saddled his title character with.
I’ve also discovered that the author’s name is actually Mike Moscoe due to an oddity of marketing in the publishing world.

I hope that this series improves with later books; for now there’s much to recommend this book to the new reader, and a few potentially serious problems with the way dialogue is written, with plotting, and with characterization.

First last, I’ll start with characterization. Kris Longknife is a young woman with unusual abilities, a wearable personal computer worth more than a dirt-farming colony world, a large and largely dysfunctional family that’s as long-lived as they are politically astute, paranoid, and wealthy, and she’s six foot tall, though not so much of a glamour puss. Thank God for that; if she’d been incredibily beautiful, she’d be insufferable (even in an eyepatch, David Weber’s Honor Harrington looks too much like Angelina
Jolie on the later books’ covers for comfort). However, she’s also supposedly flawed owing to a drinking problem she had as a very young girl (as in, around age thirteen after a horrible family tragedy laid her out for a few years). Kris has a sardonic sense of humor and is blessed with an almost inhuman capacity for getting a lot of work done, and getting people to help her get it done. She’s a lowly Ensign in the Navy of the Society of Humanity, a political entity that governs hundreds of human worlds, but
her family connections get her the kind of attention no Ensign ever wants; suspicious glances from superior officers who assume that Kris is coasting on the glorious family name as “one of those Longknifes.” Her parents disapproved of her joining the Navy and didn’t even attend her graduation from Officer Candidate School.

Thing is, she reads like a complete and total Mary Sue Swashbuckler In Space. She’s got a near-psychic pet/companion in Nelly, her wearable computer. That’s one hit. She’s got every male in human space interested in her, in spite of having a big nose and towering over a couple of them. That’s another hit. She’s incredilbly wealthy in her own right, and isn’t afraid to use her own wealth while serving in the Navy in order to cut red tape and get things done. She’s more of an altruist than most Mary Sues, but the
insane amount of personal wealth she apparently controls qualifies as another hit.

Characterization of everybody else: They all revolve around her.They take their cues off of her. They smooth the way for her or commemorate incidents from her family’s glorious past in ways to make her the noble, yet humble, center of attention. They’re willing to die for her on very short notice. They all have verbal “tics” to set them off as “characters,” but not the kind that step off the page and live and breathe as the story unfolds. One or two are a bit more than that, but all the fatherly twinkling from
the gruff older alpha males in Kris Longknife’s life is a bit much.

This brings me to dialogue. It’s short. It’s snappy. Everybody banters like… they’re characters in a tough-as-nails service movie that can’t decide if it’s a comedy or a tragedy, or they spent their formative years reading “Starship Troopers” over and over. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the dialogue is quite sharp and funny, but it’s all a bit of a muchness, The only characters that don’t get to talk all snappy-like are the ones that the author rather obviously wants us to see as incompetent drones.

And now to plotting. It’s basic stuff – start with a rousing rescue sequence, put the main character and her sidekick in a “fish out of water” scenario on two different planets, have Kris come up with a tough, no-nonsense solution, lose one or two people in action, and set up for what I’m reading now, the big conflict near the end, This is where David Weber lost me, because he used to do much the same thing – flashy opener, tragic event setting up conflict that simmers along for much of the book, put Honor Harrington
and everything and everyone she currently holds dear in jeopardy, kill off at least one well-liked secondary character from previous books, and cry havoc! Honor avenges all in the final act, but there’s some loose ends to tie up for the next book.

At least with this book, there’s some kind of mysterious goings-on related to the political turmoil that has just come to a boil – as you might realistically expect, Kris Longknife and her sidekick have been busy with their detour posting saving people on a planet experiencing a huge climate-change crisis, and they’re surprised to find out that the rest of human space is about to go to war with itself once they bother to catch up on current events. The mysterious goings-on have something to do with attempts on
Kris’ life, and with her political/familial connections, and with the planet with the weather problems being quietly bought up, piece by piece, owing to its strategic location. That part, I’m interested in finding out more about. I still don’t really have a bead on why all the aunts and uncles and great-grandparents in the family are cool, well-preserved people still very much in control of their military careers or personal fiefdoms, while her parents are such jerks (especially her mom and one of her grandfathers).
There’s no mention of any first or second cousins, though. Just one brother (and one younger brother who died in childhood). Oddly, she’s treated almost like a throwaway because she turned her back on the family business, which seems to be either politics, or making more money, or more probably both at the same time.

It’s a fun read – the story goes quickly, the adventures are adventurous, and there’s some cracking good dialogue. It’s just a lot of a good thing, without some kind of relief in the form of completely random and unexpected plot twists and character developments. Not everything has to be part of a huge, shadowy conspiracy just because a rival business and political clan is sharpening its own knives for Longknife.

Shepherd/Moscoe is actually at his best when he’s describing some of the technology that Kris and her fellow Navy officers and family members take for granted – such as “smart metal” that enables her to change the configuration of a space cruiser to atmospheric flight and back again, or to shapeshift other kinds of military materiel from a boat to a bridge to a barge. It’s described in an offhand way, just as we might describe using a cell phone or a handheld palm device without bothering to describe it in detail.
It’s pretty clear the author has a background or a big interest in military history, too.

I’ll finish this book up tonight – probably within an hour or so. I may browse the next book and pick it up, depending on how things turn out – obviously, Kris will end up catty-wampus to Naval regs, based on the title.We’ll see how that turns out, and maybe pick up with the next book in the series.

How to Do the Texas Dip Like a Deb

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NYO – The Transom – Ms. Hedberg Presents

Ms. Bush ascended the stage on the arm of her brother, with the diligent Mr. Wolk trailing close behind carrying the American flag. She then let go of her brother’s arm and proceeded  to “Texas dip.” 

First she spread her gloved arms out to the sides, plié-style, then slowly bent all the way down, transitioning further into an almost seated position on the floor. Then she touched her nose to her toes. And then slowly all the way back up, with the gentle assistance of Pierce’s hand. And all without breaking wind. She smiled.

Via Manolo's Shoe Blog 

UPDATE: Link to original article in the New York Observer fixed. Hilariously, the organizer of this biennial meat market merely updated her “some people would rather buy a watch” joke to 2008’s prices. Here’s the joke from the previous ball, in 2006:

Individual tickets to all this splendor cost $750 apiece. Debutantes pay $12,000, which includes 12 tickets. “Not everybody has the $12,000,” said Margaret Stewart Hedberg, who has run the International since 1983. (Her aunt, Beatrice Dinsmore Joyce, founded it in 1954.) “A lot of people would rather buy a watch.”

Here’s this year’s joke, adjusted for inflation:

But the experienced hands, including mothers like the duchesse who made their own debuts in society in this very ballroom, could see the subtle difference in the layout of the hall. And there were fewer debutantes, 47 this year rather than the 58 at the last biennial ball in 2006, and far fewer guests — 662 instead of 976.

The director of the ball, Margaret Hedberg, brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table — “Watches cost more,” she said — although she acknowledged that perhaps the deepening recession accounted for the smaller crowd.

Heh!! The rich are very different from you and me, aside from recycling jokes.

Laundry’s Done

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Remembering Murph 6-12-2006 4-13-37 AM 2272x1704

Mom's backyard. She loved sitting on her deck with her cuppa of a morning.

Anyway, laundry's done. I've been avoiding laundry of late, because it reminds me of Mom, and endlessly folding sheets and towels upstairs while our old Siamese cat, Beebee, scuffled under the sheets we were trying to lay out, "playing." Mom would scold her, and then ruffle the sheets and snap them out so they fell perfectlly even, requiring just a couple of sharp tugs to do hospital corners at the bottom. At this point, a suspiciously cat-shaped lump would be visible in the middle of the bed, so we'd stop to play with her for a bit before rousting her out of her cozy little hiding place to finish making the beds and folding everything else.

I've been letting my husband David handle most of the laundry duties for… quite a while, since before Mom died, but I've been pretty much avoiding it for sure since then. Mom spent a lot of her time doing laundry, hanging laundry on the clothesline, wondering if the weather would hold long enough so she wouldn't have to scamper out in the rain, or an Albuquerque red-sand duststorm, to get damp laundry in before it all had to be done over. She'd laugh hysterically can call herself " a stupe" for failing to notice storm clouds or hear the wind blowing a little too energetically.   

Rileycat was the impetus for my Return to Laundry today, because he did a number on a pile of laundry in the closet. So after dealing with that and with his need for a nice clean kittybox, I just started doing load after load, and folding everything straight out of the dryer the way Mom taught me. To this day, it always bothers me at some level if towels aren't folded in thirds, because Mom had a thing about not having the selveges (the woven edges of the towels) meeting. I think that one had to do with her sister, my Aunt Florence, who was something of a tartar… okay, she was a stickler for domestic chores. 

The funny thing about Florence is that she always had someone to boss around to do chores at the dude ranch they owned in Steamboat Springs, having an endless supply of college-age girls to train up in the domestic arts in what passed for the hospitality industry 60 or so years ago on the Western Slope. Mom came in for a lot of that, I think – Timmy will let me know if that's right or not. Anyway, a lot of Mom's ideas about housekeeping and cooking and kitchen accessories came straight from Florency; when we were in Utah last month working at the house Tim and I figured out why Mom always insisted on having a stainless steel sink when she had her kitchen remodeled. It was because Florence had stainless steel, restaurant quality sinks in the ranch kitchen. 

Anyway, getting back on topic here… I also did a laundry run for the Northwest PADS shelter this week. This isn't so aesthetically pleasing, but it's a real feeling of accomplishment when you finally get it down, especially if forced to do it in stages due to my work schedule. Forgetting all the lessons I'd learned about how to gain access to the building and maneuver the balkey home-made cart into the tiny elevator, I struggled. At least getting in the building this time was easy – there was some sort of concert thing being rehearsed, but I did have to go around the long way from the front to the back just to open the doors for loading up.

I carried the laundry around for a couple of days this week, hoping to swap it at the local hospital for the clean sets. Balked at dropping it off the night I actually had a planning meeting for the new Holy Moly/St Nicholas website in Elk Grove, because it was way too windy and cold and dark by the time we got done. And yes, the irony of my comfort and warm home and car was not lost on me.

The new Holy Moly site, by the way, will be a completely different and radically welcoming design, baby. My spiffy new WordPress blog will be a small piece of it.  We're very excited about it.

Anyway… I ended up going to the hospital to swap the sets during my lunch hour, always a risky proposition. As before and instructions to the contrary, there's no way to reach anyone by phone in the laundry area to arrange to be met and get help with the bags. At least I remembered the code for opening the automatic door. I didn't bother trying to find a cart – that's pretty fruitless, I've found, and I just dumped the full bags at the base of the ramp like the guys told me before. I ran out of time or it was way too late to drop off Thursday, so I ended up dropping off Friday before work, absolutely the last day it had to be done. The back door was already standing open, because the day care center was just opening for the day. Cool

Beautiful Things

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My time staying in Mom’s little house is drawing to a close – tomorrow I return home, and someone else will finish sorting, tossing and reminiscing over photos, knick-knacks, and clippings that fall out of books. I’ve got a couple of boxes left to pack up, while my sister Timmy has been packing up the family china for me.

Actually, Mom had two or three sets of china from different family members; this one is the prettiest, but not the most valuable, because althought it’s Haviland, it’s “seconds.” That’s all my maternal grandparents could afford. You can see little flaws in the porcelain, and some of the pieces are missing, but that doesn’t reduce its value for me: Mom loved it and I love it too. It has little pink rosebuds and is improbably delicate for a rough-handed tomboy like me.

She had some beautiful things, but I’m struck by how many of them were damaged at some time in the past, and carefully repaired. There were many more beautiful things in the house years ago, but some of them actually belonged to an aunt and were sold to help keep her and her disabled son going. Mom worked hard and sacrificed to take care of other family members over the years, and all of that labor and worry resulted in a few knick-knacks that meant the most to her. She made and saved baby clothes, she kept some of her mother’s and sisters linens, she glued broken cups and steins together and used them for something else, and she kept broken crystal tucked away in a cupboard rather than throwing it out.

She had beautiful things, but they represented more than monetary value to her and they didn’t become garbage once they got damaged. She fixed them, when possible, because they represented people she loved, good times long past, and because she was a Depression kid who never threw anything useful out.

Now we live in an age when everything is disposable. “Use it and lose it” seems to be the motto many people live by. She found this modern world more and more incomprehensible, even as her vision faded and she wasn’t able to read the newspaper without help.

She held the line for a long time against loss and decay and forgetfulness, and maybe it’s better that she won’t be around to see how things will turn out in the years to come.

Marella “Murph” Baker: Gone Bowling June 7th, 2006

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Marella Elizabeth Stockdale Baker, also known as Aunt Lella and "Murph" to family and friends, went to a better place June 7, 2006.

Marella Elizabeth Stockdale Baker.jpg

Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado on September 2, 1915 to Charles William and Florence Jane Martin Stockdale, she was the youngest of five children.

She is survived by her daughters, Marcia "Timmy" Smith (Frank), Teresa "Tudy" McCormick, and Virginia "Ginny" Gibbs (David) .

She is also survived by granddaughters, Holly Martin, Raeanne (Rick), Heather Lloyd (Tally), Sydnee Crankshaw (Eric), and great-grandchildren Collin and Paige, Ezra and Haley Lloyd, and Alexandra Crankshaw, as well as numerous nieces, nephews, friends and neighbors.

Family and friends are invited to a Celebration of Life in Marella's back yard on Saturday, June 10, 2006 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. She will be remembered for her "first snow of winter" doughnuts, her Disappearing Cookies, and her powerful rumballs.

In lieu of flowers, please make donations in the name of Marella Baker to Care Source Hospice at 1624 East 4500 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84117, or to the charity of your choice.

She is preceded in death by her parents, siblings, and husband, Paul Carver "Pop" Baker, and also by her best friend, Veda West of Grand Junction, CO. Marella leaves behind a legacy of compassion, talent, humor, and feistiness.

"Put the coffee on, Pop"

As you might have guessed, we lost Mom after a short illness. It all blew up very quickly and her condition kept swinging back and forth between "good, but tired and needing oxygen" to "unresponsive and mostly dead."

It's been an exhausting week and some family members weren't able to get there in time to see Mom when she was still her feisty l'il self, and so they're finding it harder. Those of us who were there pulling for her coped in our different ways with all the see-sawing.

Stress, grief, lack of sleep, and irregular meal times don't make for much clarity of thought. My poor family had to put up with me and my tendency to go in ten directions at once.

Still, one of the ideas that I had for the celebration party came off okay – we gave out little individual bedding plants to people to take home with them and plant in their gardens. I found verbena, which Mom 's own mother liked. The remainders got planted in the front bed by the step. They are growing (it's been a week now) and make the house look cheery.

When the celebration started, I was still out front sitting on a garden cart in my work clothes and hat, bagging individual cel-packs up for people who didn't want to mess up their clothes. I greeted people and escorted older folks around the uneven spots in the lawn.

My sister Timmy started things off while I showered and changed. Tudy circulated and Cousin Bill had created the memory table. It was truly a group effort and by all accounts, a huge success.

Meanwhile, my niece Raeanne had tied satin ribbons on the clotheslines to warn people about the wires, and to me they symbolized laundry on the line (Mom loved to watch laundry blowing in the breeze). Other family members found ways to pay tribute either before the celebration, or during it.

And of course, the STORIES. There was so much laughter and love that day. The neighbors all stood in a group to one side, just beaming, because they loved Mom,too. She was a fixture on her street, kind of like a public utility.

And strangely enough, the word "connections" keeps cropping up. It's obviously of great importance at this time. There have been many little signs and portents that tend to reassure us and to relay to us that we're on the right track. So many that we take a lot of comfort, although a person of more conventional beliefs would say that they are messages of comfort from God.

Okay, fine, but God's sense of humor is suspiciously familiar.

More later, but not reams and reams of stuff any sane person would label "TMI." There were just two readings – the Serenity Prayer and the passage "On Children" from Khalil Ghibran's "The Prophet."

And then the stories started. All kinds of people came forward after the family started things off with a couple of choice anecdotes.

EEEEdiot!

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Yes, after all that, I forgot the damn power supply for the laptop. But not to worry, David says via text message that he’s sending a power supply next day air. And within 5 minutes, I got a delivery tracking number on my cell phone. We are SUCH GEEKS.

I had hoped to watch a downloaded episode of some show or other via laptop – I did not watch the Amazing Race finale last night and don’t know who won yet. If I get spoiled, so be it – I had a lot of other stuff to do last night. Most of the other stuff did get packed as listed and yes, it’s a lot to lug around. But I’ll be leaving a book or two behind, and there’s also a pair of antique-looking reproduction Tiffany lamps shaped like blue flowers that I thought Mom would like. I salvaged them from Steve’s house.
Which has been demolished by now, and is just a hole in the ground. Change is sometimes good.

I noticed an older lady traveler with a cane at the Starbucks just now – she was peering doubtfully at the labels in the pastry case Mindful as I am currently of vision issues and cute vintage ladies, I asked her if she needed help reading the labels. We had a nice chat – she declared proudly that she was in her 80’s, had had cataract surgery, and scar tissue lasered off, and more besides. Whoa, I just wondered if she wanted me to point out the blueberry scones. But she was also telling me via back channel that
although she couldn’t see that well, she was coping pretty well. I told her a little about mom and mentioned that today was my first full day wearing the new specs with the STEALTH TRIFOCAL lenses (grrr age grr). She laughed sympathetically and remarked that it comes to us all. Yes, I agreed, if we’re lucky enough to become old. It was a pleasant exchange. More later after arrival. My flight is delayed a little due to all the flight delays with yesterday’s weather – at work we were watching the very angry pendulous
black clouds with a little trepidation, while the lines lit up with delayed travelers and their woes. I’ll get in in time for a late lunch and hopefully an errand or jaunt of some kind.

The Rest Of The Weekend

While all the boring detail? So I can remember it – so there.

It’s the end of the trip – my time on the computer for writing was somewhat limited, because the only good time was later in the evening, and frankly I wanted to get to bed earlier most of the time. My arrival went smoothly – rental car pickup, getting to Mom’s and all that. She was very happy and surprised at how quickly I got to the house after I called from the airport to say I was in. She always thinks the traffic and the freeways here are much worse than they are, but that’s partly because she avoided them
when she was driving, and partly because there were so many changes and a lot of ongoing construction.

The first half-day we yakked for hours and tried to figure out what we needed to get done with the car while we had it. On the agenda: a big family birthday party with a ton of people from the other side of the family (people who were kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids of Mom’s brother Charlie). I hadn’t seen some of them in nearly 20 years, what with one thing and another (mostly, being too busy with family doings on our side on our quick trips to Salt Lake). That was a fixed-time goal – we knew we had that
to get to. And it was nice because it was a total fluke that I happened to pick this weekend for a flying visit.

Mom couldn’t get any doctor’s appointments or other jaunts set up, so we decided that Friday morning would be weeding a particular flowerbed right under her window in the morning, and a shopping excursion to all the big-box stores on the west side of town in the afternoon, followed by lunch and relaxing before going up to my sister Tudy’s for further relaxation. It was kind of a big day of stuff on Friday – next time, fewer stops, and more regular R&R are in order. Also, breakfast and lunch on a regular schedule
worked better on Saturday, because I overextended things a little on Friday, and Saturday morning.

My first night in my old room was oddly comforting and uncomfortable – the house is so much the same that it both soothes and bothers me. But Mom is comfy and has her routine, and if that routine is disturbed she gets tuckered more easily. Again, I’ll use the phrase “what with one thing or another” rather than go into detail about why it’s best to keep Mom on an even keel. That was another reason for this trip – I just needed to observe what works best and what could be improved for her.

We got into our jammies much, much earlier than I usually do, but we talked and discussed the news and debated a few issues, and in the end I took 2 melatonin and slept like a log the whole night – something I haven’t done in months and months. The morning included Mom making instant coffee and me being a coffee snob, but I drank it in order to get the caffeine drip going.

After some computer dinking, I went over to the neighborhood Starbuck’s just to go for a walk, got a big latte, and pronounced myself ready to take on the weeds. Did that until the morning sun came over the house and made it too warm to work, but up to that point I made a dashing figure with shorts, tank top, an incredibly battered and torn-up straw gardening hat, and an orange and black silk scarf as a sweatband. It was a lot warmer than it’s been in Chicago…a LOT warmer.

Then we went to the big box stores and I did the running around – the battery on Mom’s cordless phone crapped out and I thought a replacement battery would fix it (it didn’t). We also stopped at Home Depot to get some odds and ends of things to finish getting Mom’s deck set up for the summer – she needed yellowjacket bait and that kind of thing. I stupidly bought hummingbird food, pooh-poohing her insistence that ordinary table sugar was good hummingbird food. Yep, the ingredients on the expensive little box
of superfine “hummer food” said “100% Sucrose.” Well, duh-mit to Heck.

A stop at Costco was omitted, because it was clear that lunch was needed as soon as possible, Naturally, I made a wrong turn trying to get on the expressway, so we took a scenic tour of Salt Lake’s West Side and drove back via surface streets. Oh, well, at least we thought the new baseball stadium looked nice. We ended up at a very cute little Norwegian cafe near Mom’s house that she likes a lot. Excellent food – huge portions. Next time, plan to SHARE a half sandwich! We chatted and looked at Scandinavian knick-knacks,
and I thought about how I needed to be more attuned to the new rhythms of Mom’s life.

After some relax time, we packed up stuff to go up to Tudy’s house to hit the hot tub and have a bite afterwards. We had an appointment at Mom’s favorite hair salon the next morning so she’d look sharp for the big party, and I’d decided to get my hair trimmed. So Friday was our only chance at hot-tubbing, we thought.

Tudy has a wonderful, wonderful back yard, full of vegetables growing in raised bins and bird feeders and chairs and tables. There’s no lawn, just a really nice red pavement. It’s lovely. She has a terrific hot tub, too. That part (soaking) was wonderful, but it was a little hot and we stayed in too long. Next time, a time limit and a lower temperature would be better if I’m in there with Mom – it’s too easy to get yakking and lose track. It was really not that good an idea to parboil our mother.

After we got her out and she rested and cooled off, she was better, but it was another lesson learned. Both Tudy and I wanted to make sure she got the full enjoyment of the jets and massage features, but the length of time was more than she could comfortably handle.

Dinner was very simple and light, and we went home and got in our jammies again and yakked for a bit before turning in early, as it had been a long day. Again, I was surprised that I slept so well. I suspect that it’s drinking too much caffeine, especially in the copious mugfuls that I drink at work.

Saturday morning was supposed to be our “big day out,” and I didn’t want to get Mom overextended on energy too early in the day, so we got going BUT she didn’t eat anything before we set out, and I didn’t make sure she’d eaten. I don’t often eat breakfast (especially on a work day) so she didn’t, either. I’m not really sure why. She seemed to be taking my lead on that kind of thing, rather than sticking to her normal routine. We got out to the beauty parlor so she could get “fluffed and puffed,” which means an
old -fashioned shampoo and set. We went to this place  she’s been going to for some years, because they do this kind of thing (and have a large and loyal clientele of older ladies), unlike a lot of trendier places closer to her house.

 Mom was greeted, as always wherever we went, with great enthusiasm. They were VERY happy to see her there, and they knew all the details of my visit and my sisters’ doings, and happily caught up with her as she waited for her appointment. I ended up getting a trim from a very nice guy named Bryce, as Mom’s shampoo-set hairstyle required a little dryer and styling done. Then as as was paying, I saw they did eyebrow waxes for ten bucks and thought “Huh, I’ve never had my eyebrows waxed, although I’ve had
them professionally tweezed a couple of times.” So I had that done on a whim, just to see if it was that much faster – and it was, and I’m pretty happy with the result. I’m not a girly girl, but it was nice to splurge mildly on a little grooming.

After that, we looked around for some special glasses she thought a nearby craft store carried, and then instead of grocery shopping it was clear that she needed to eat. This was the morning when she didn’t eat because I didn’t eat… and she hit the wall at about 11am. So we went home and fixed a simple snack and took it easy.  Mom then told me what she really needed from the nearby little gas-station grocery store, and I drove up there to get a few odds and ends of foodstuffs (it’s walkable, but it was
hot and I didn’t want to take a lot of time). When I got there, the owner guy had set up an outdoor kitchen and was cooking a selection of Thai foods – pad Thai, chicken Satay, and Panang curry. It smelled delcious. I grabbed the groceries and on a whim got pad Thai to go so Mom and I could share a taste.

Seriously, this was really, really good Pad Thai – and this guy sets up and does something different every Saturday at the Shop and Go near Wasatch Presbyterian. If you live in the Wasatch Hollow neighborhood, get over there if you can some Saturday, you never know what he’ll be cooking. Next weekend, he thinks he might do Indian food. If he cooks that anything like I had, it’ll be yummy and spicy and full of flavor.

Unfortunately for Mom, the battery I bought for her old phone wasn’t taking a charge, either, so it was clear that a return trip to Best Buy was probably in the cards, but when?

Tudy arrived with her friend Lou to pick us up for the party and we headed out via the freeway, right past Best Buy. She agreed to stop on the way back if we left early enough. We laughed and visited with Lou, who lives simply in Southern Utah and enjoys his visits north to his adopted family (short version: he’s a former patient of Tudy’s).

We arrived at the party and again Mom was greeted with great enthusiasm, and for me it was a topsy-turvy experience of seeing family members for the first time in 25 years or more. They all mostly live in Salt Lake, but divorce and busy schedules had intervened and often it was just too hard to keep up with all of my close family during visits, let alone extended (and extremely tenously extended) relatives.

It was just… great seeing everyone. It was a simple party with beer and sodas in a wading pool and food catered from the local grocery’ s deli department, but it was a fun time, especially when the smoke alarm went off when they lit the birthday cake for my younger cousin Tiffany (her mother Kim was celebrating a big birthday, too). Other young cousins that I had spent a lot of time playing with as a kid were there, and it was just so nice to feel that sense of kinship and shared memories with so many people.

After a suitable stay, we got going, as Tudy planned a much more elaborate grilled chicken dinner back at her house. We did end up stopping for a new cordless phone, pretty much over Mom’s objections, but she admitted that she did need a working cordless because she’d become used to toting it around with her. I ran in, called my husband David for advice while standing in the cordless aisle, and ran out 10 minutes later. We went home to relax for a bit and so I could get the phone starting to charge before going
up to Tudy’s for dinner.

We drove up past the place where the guy had been cooking earlier, and Mom was interested to see where it was. She was pretty intrigued with the whole idea, and so had our neighbor who had dropped by the deck to chat while she picked up her laundry from our clothesline (it was like that all weekend – neighborly chats and such).

When we arrived, Tudy had dinner ready to go on the grill whenever we were ready. She set a lovely table outside with all the nice picnic silverware and serving dishes and even had the screened thing that goes over the salad bowl to keep the bugs off. She’d made some smothered chicken that had been marinating overnight – and some corn cobs with slices of bread ready-buttered (in the family tradition) so that the hot corn could be rolled and buttered on the bread…mmmmmm.

We enjoyed the evening and the birdsong and the delicious chicken and the four of us (Tudy, Lou, me, and Mom) talked and talked about all kinds of things.

Mom let me know it was time to go, and we took off for “jammies time.”  I puttered around while she sat in her recliner and watched the news… and then I heard something I hadn’t heard in a while…. the Red Green show was on! I had to watch that show, especially with Mom! So we watched that and laughed, and she decided to go up and stretch out and watch it upstairs. And I watched it downstairs and got thoroughly nostalgic, because it was a favorite when I lived in Seattle, and then Red Dwarf came on, another
Seattle-era favorite, and finally I watched part of a Monty Python episode (the one with the blancmanges from outer space). All this strongly reminded me of more than 30 years ago, sitting up watching Monty Python and other British shows with Mom on Saturday nights.

Strange, but true – British and Canadian sitcoms were a staple of my young adulthood and here I was, watching them again at Mom’s house. The next morning, the sense of being in a time warp was even stronger.

I woke up a little later than I had the other mornings and finally got awake enough to get up and go out to the stairway. The scent of maple-cured bacon floated up and knocked me into my childhood for a second – bacon cooking, and the smell of coffee, took me right back to 9 years old for a second, and all that was missing  was the sound of Pop’s voice, kidding Mom about something.

I got downstairs and Mom was working on some eggs for scrambling and coffee, and I got the juice. She got the bacon on plates and I cooked the eggs in a cute little nonstick skillet that looked new, in plenty of bubbling hot butter. Mom got a tray out and we went out to the deck for the last breakfast of the visit.

And then after a little while of visiting, and more discussions, it was time to leave.

So now I’m home, back with my hubby and my kitty, who missed me. And I’m really glad to be home, but I wish I could spend more time with Mom, and run more little errands and sit around and gab on the deck. I hope to make more short visits – not sure when, but I hope I can work it out. Because I’ve really missed being around family, and I’ve especially missed spending as much time as possible with Mom.

Lovely Young Thing

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Marella Stockdale, Gene and Edward Gustavson, Signe Peterson.jpg

Through the power of the Internet, I’ve been able to get a copy of a picture of a lovely young thing named Marella Stockdale. She’s the second from the left – that’s my mama.

I will be working on this image a bit to clean up the edges – but I wanted to get this up.

When I called Mom tonight we were talking about old friends and long-ago family memories. She told me the tale of the allegedly “hot” turkey that wandered up the alley behind the family home in Colorado Springs, and how she and her sister Ginny “enticed it into the old chickenhouse” with corn. Her mother was horrified; she was sure the turkey had strayed or fallen off the back of a truck and that the girls had improperly acquired somebody else’s turkey dinner. Grandma called everyone she knew and all the grocery stores, but no one claimed the turkey. Meanwhile, she fattened it up for an upcoming holiday dinner. Time went by, and Grandma fretted and worried about the rightful owner of the turkey my mother and aunt had birdnapped.

When the time came, she attempted to slaughter it herself, using a piece of string wrapped around the turkey’s neck to haul it to the stump. Holding the string with one hand, and the axe with the other, she stretched its neck across the stump and swung, but unfortunately for her and fortunately for the turkey, cut only the string. Thus freed, the turkey gobbled indignantly at her (it was huge, at least 30 pounds and quite the monster as poultry goes). She considered as how she’d let her husband deal with it when he got home.

Quite a bit later, when she carried the roasted bird into the dining room on a large platter(staggering under the weight, most likely,) a young chum of Mom’s exclaimed loudly, “WHERE did you get that turkey??” Thinking she was being accused of theft and caught literally red-handed, she nearly dropped the bird, platter and all, on the dining room floor.

The young chum of that time was the source of the photo – he’s the fellow to the left of Mom, Eugene Gustavson. He and his brother, and the brother’s wife-to-be and Mom were all gathered for Thanksgiving.

What strikes me about Mom is how pretty and lively and spunky she looks… and she’s not wearing glasses. The other striking thing is that she looks like me, except with darker hair. Funny, I always thought I took after Pop, but I’ve got Mom’s cheekbones.

Well, she’s still pretty and lively and spunky, but has acquired a fine patina, like a vintage coin. That’s my mama.