It's a Hard-Butt Life

Some things that happened this week:

I overheard a girl on the bus pronounce the store's name as "Weg-a-mins." This tickled me.

At work, I found a resident in the hallway looking particularly lost and confused, but it turns out she was just throwing shade at one of our more creatively-attired, eccentric residents who had just walked by.

For our Friday Feast gathering, Ledbetter & I watched the 1982 film Annie. This was easily my favorite movie as a kid. I had Annie's red dress and her broken locket. I remember seeing it at the movies with my family. During the scene where Annie's hanging off the elevated railroad tracks, I remember my mom leaning down and asking me, "Aren't you scared?" and being surprised that I was too entranced to be frightened at the thought of a little girl my age about to possibly plummet to her death.

Punjab was fascinating, too. What on earth was that turban made of that could support his weight and Annie's suspended in the air?? How handy that he always had that right at his fingertips! I remember being completely befuddled when I later learned what a Bolshevik was, because my only knowledge of them previously was a wild-bearded dude who threw a round black bomb with a sparkly fuse into Daddy Warbucks' office. Last year I finally watched Camillle with Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor and I had to admit the only part I was familiar with was the "Marguerite!" "Armand!"

"Marguerite!" "Armand!" exchange they showed when Annie, Grace Farrell & Daddy Warbucks saw it at the movies.

It can't be right that this was the first time I'd seen it since 1982, but it felt like it. Two things struck me:

One, how utterly perfect Carol Burnett was as Miss Hannigan. So boozy, so floozy. Such ability to hiccup on command! "Bonus Ay-rees"?? I really want to start referring to people as "my little pig-droppings."

And two, how clear it was that Aileen Quinn, playing Annie, was really a little girl. She was my age when this was filmed- actually a year older than me- but watch it now, and she's so obviously a small child. This shouldn't be remarkable, but child actors nowadays are such polished, skillfully styled professionals that they seem less like children and more like small adults. This Annie was clearly a KID, messy hair and all, and maybe that's the reason so many of us little girls at the time related to her so strongly.

The other item of note this week was a local news story, out of Syracuse, that when I posted it on Facebook, the most common reaction varied between, "This can't be real" and "Is this a joke?" and quick checking to make sure the publication wasn't The Onion.

Yes, Rick Springfield is in court again for damages incurred by his rear end.
Uh huh.

Vicki Calcagno, 45, of Liverpool, said Springfield, a 1980s pop icon and actor, struck her with his buttocks while performing in the crowd during a 2004 Chevrolet Court concert at the State Fair. She said she was knocked unconscious.

"Struck her with his buttocks."

Apparently, what happened is that Springfield went out into the audience during the show, stood on a fence or bench, lost his balance and fell on this woman, who was injured. It makes it sound like he directed his ass at her like a weapon and assaulted her with it.

Apparently, Rick Springfield is very upset over this. "Rick Springfield yelled and cried while on the witness stand this afternoon for the retrial of an injury lawsuit against him... Springfield was emotional again when his lawyer, John Pfeifer, asked him about going out into the audience to be closer to his fans. Springfield choked up and was given a tissue for his tears."

He should have taken the apt advice of Syracuse.com article commenter, James Bafaro, "Don't Twerk to Strangers."

Or from Oy gevalt: "Syracuse. We'll sue your butt off."

One can only imagine Tina Belcher's reaction to this story. 

Hard Time with Dirtbag Alice & Emily Spinach

Tidbits this week:


On Friday I watched a documentary on prisons called Hard Time with my friend Ledbetter. (It was narrated by Thurston Moore. Yeah- Sonic Youth Thurston Moore. Am I the only one who finds that weird?)  In one episode, there's a prison break where they discover two men have escaped. One of the guards was interviewed about his worries after the men had been missing for over 24 hours. Ledbetter shook her head and said, "I know just how he feels. It's like when your hamster gets out and you just want him back in the cage."



Awhile back, I found a piece on The Toast.com that tickled the hell out of me: Dirtbag Teddy Roosevelt.
I adore T.R. and I thought this was funny as all get-out.

The comments on The Toast were awesome as well- these are people who know their T.R. My new favorite word ever? UberRoosevelt.

One person commented that this was great, but what she REALLY wanted to see was Dirtbag Alice.

Which led me to believe I should finally dig in and start reading the biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth that I bought eons ago. It has not disappointed.

Alice was one of my favorite kind of people- independent, intelligent, witty, weird.

Her mother, T.R.'s first wife, died two days after she was born and T.R. was so distraught he gave the baby to his sister Bamie (sometimes known as Bye) to raise. (Alice admired her aunt so much, she once said, "If auntie Bye had been a man, she would have been president.") After Teddy married Edith Carow, they made the child leave the only home she'd ever known and move in with them- and their five children which were soon to follow. (Ted, Kermit, Ethel, Archie and Quentin. As another Toast reader said, all hail Edith's naming skills.)

In the White House, Alice relished the attention she received as First Daughter (or Princess Alice as she was often known) and HAD HERSELF A TIME. During a diplomatic mission to Japan, Alice jumped into a pool fully clothed and coaxed a congressman to join her. On May 11, 1908, Alice amused herself in the Capitol's gallery at the House of Representatives by placing a tack on the chair of an unknown but "middle-aged" and "dignified" gentleman. Upon encountering the tack, "like the burst of a bubble on the fountain, like the bolt from the blue, like the ball from the cannon," the unfortunate fellow leapt up in pain and surprise while she looked away.

"In her purse, she could be counted on to carry four essentials: cigarettes, a fertility image (no doubt sanctioned by the RSC), her green snake named Emily Spinach (after her thin aunt), and a copy of the Constitution."

EMILY SPINACH. I cannot tell you how much I love this.

Once, a White House visitor commented on Alice's frequent interruptions to the Oval Office. The exhausted president commented to his friend, author Owen Wister, after her third interruption to their conversation and threatening to throw her 'out the window', "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both."

When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Alice buried a Voodoo doll of the new First Lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard.

She was banned from the White House in 1916 for making a bawdy joke at the expense of Woodrow Wilson.

 Alice demolished Thomas Dewey, the 1944 opponent of her cousin Franklin, by comparing the pencil-mustached Republican to "the little man on the wedding cake." The image stuck and helped Governor Dewey lose two consecutive presidential elections.

In 1965 her black chauffeur and one of her best friends, Turner, was driving Alice to an appointment. During the trip, he pulled out in front of a taxi, and the driver got out and demanded to know of him, "What do you think you're doing, you black bastard?" Turner took the insult calmly, but Alice did not and told the taxi driver, "He's taking me to my destination, you white son of a bitch!"

Alice is credited with the saying, "If you haven't got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me." She had it stitched on a pillow.

Senator Joseph McCarthy jokingly remarked at a party, "Here's my blind date. I am going to call you Alice." She responded, "Senator McCarthy, you are not going to call me Alice. The trashman and the policeman on my block call me Alice, but you may not."

Alice, who lived to age 96, was known as The Other Washington Monument.

While I very much enjoyed Ken Burns' The Roosevelts when it aired on PBS a couple months ago, I agree with Lyetteann on The Toast that it needed more Alice. I would've watched the hell out of "Come Sit Next To Me: the Story of Alice, Bamie and Some Dudes Who Were Related to Them."

Hello, 2015

Well, here I am again.
I'm starting the new year with a resolution to post more frequently- once a week is the goal I'm setting for myself.

It may be crap, it may be whining, it may be something funny that I saw, it may be me standing on my soapbox outraged about something, it may be gratuitous photos of my dogs, it may be the Uggly Wugglies taking over again. I can't guarantee it will be good, but it will be weekly.

So to start us off, here's some photos of my adventure with Minchy today.

Minchy is a very high energy beagle- Jack Russell mix. In spite of his twelve years, there is nothing he loves more than a good walkie. We tend to favor the South Hill Rec Trail because it's in the neighborhood- just a couple of blocks away. But we keep a NY State Parks Pass because we're blessed/spoiled with several amazing parks all within a couple minutes of us.

These are not fitness walks- not for me, anyway. The beagle in him really comes out and I would estimate he spends about 3/4 of the time sniffing and peeing on things. It's a challenge sometimes, especially when we're by the lake, because I want to check out the water and he wants to pee on the trees and barbecue grills.

It's also our special time together when he gets all my attention. Frances and Ozzie are such love-hogs that I rarely get to cuddle with Minchy without one of them barreling over and pushing him out of the way to get to me. So we make a big deal of it- when we're driving to a park, I'll usually stop for coffee and we share a sandwich on the way to our destination. (We used to share the teeny hash browns from Dunkin Donuts but all of a sudden he disliked them which has made me think maybe I shouldn't be eating them either.)

He's going to be extra happy because he doesn't usually get an adventure on a Thursday.

An open letter to the people who had my dog before me

Dear folks,

Hi.

I don't know anything about you.

I don't know if you had my Ozzie as a teeny baby puppy.
I don't know what you named him.
I don't know what you fed him or where he slept.
I don't know how you house trained him or if you taught him any commands like 'sit' or 'stay.'
I don't know what your circumstances were or what cards life had dealt you.
I do know that it's a shitty thing to abandon a dog on a country road.
And I am pretty sure that that's how he came to be picked up by animal control.
He's too little a guy to have escaped or run away and gotten that far.
And if you had really loved him, you would've done everything in your power to find him and get him back. I know I wouldn't leave an inch of this green earth uncovered if he was missing from me.

But you didn't.

Fortunately, the people at that mechanical shop out on that lonely country road saw him trying to get inside. They checked for a collar, tags, any kind of ID. Nothing. Animal control came and picked him up and delivered him to the local animal shelter.
He was lucky.
He was kept safe, warm and dry, fed and cuddled and coddled by the nice staff there.
And meanwhile, we kept flipping back to his photo on Petfinder.com.
And we made a call.
And submitted some paperwork.

And took a drive.

He has a lot of "Squiggy-like" behaviors.

And came home with the sweet boy we would name Ozzie.
(Ozymandias Squiggman Spampobello, formally.)

No, I don't know anything about you or what led you to give up this beautiful dog.



But I know he makes funny, cow-like groans when he's comfortably cuddled up to sleep.

I know he likes getting up early in the morning and getting right to the playtime.

I know he's scared of the rain.

I know he doesn't like getting his feet wet.

I know he loves mealtime almost as much as Frances. Almost.

"Got my eye on you, Ginger."

"Play Graceland again, Lady!"

I know he loves Paul Simon.

I know he's smart.

I know he hates Opie Taylor.

I know he gets the zoomies at least three times a day.

I know he loves, loves, LOVES his brother Minchy.

I know he's happy.

I know he makes ME happy.

So, I'm not writing this to castigate you, unknown folks.
I'm writing to thank you.
If you hadn't given up on him, I wouldn't have him in my life.

Cuimhnigh cé tusa

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, but in spite of my Irish heritage, I do not plan on drinking green beer. I will not have a shamrock painted on my face.

(I abhor face-painting anyway; I am aware of the irony of someone who has tattoos eschewing body art, but I've always hated being drawn on. My mom got called in when I was in nursery school because I refused to let the teacher draw faces on my fingertips for playing Where Is Thumbkin and in fact, sat on my hands to deny her access. They couldn't understand why I wouldn't let them draw on my fingers when all the other children were allowing it. For a nursery school run by 'hippies' they sure did like to push conformity. But I digress.)

I will not wear a "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" tshirt or the "Pog Mo Thoin" model that's become popular in the last couple of years. I plan on a quiet celebration tomorrow, even though I do not begrudge those who will wave their flags and play their Clancy Brothers (or did this weekend and are still probably recovering).

Since my husband and I visited Ireland a few years ago, I haven't been able to see those green beer and gigantic green foam top hat kind of celebrations in the same light. While I've certainly enjoyed my share of rowdy gatherings in celebration of ol' Patricius, (most notably in San Francisco a few years ago, boy howdy), it's important to remember what it really means to be Irish, and it has nothing to do with getting loaded and dressing up like a leprechaun.

Back in 2005, we rented a car and drove around the south and up the west coast of Ireland winding up in Dublin, staying in small B&Bs, avoiding the places the tourists would be and choosing places to eat and stay based on the recommendations of the locals we met. You can't escape history there- it's everywhere. And even though it's been incredibly difficult for the Irish to start talking publicly about their suffering, Ireland hasn't forgotten the Famine and won't let you either, if you go to the right places.

The place where we spent our first night in country- Cobh (formerly known as Queenstown)- was Ireland's principal emigration port. More than five million people emigrated from Ireland in the nineteenth century and most of them left from Cobh.

There's a museum there called The Queenstown Story which has exhibits designed to put you in the shoes of someone leaving their home country for good, including a spooky room that will make you experience what it was like to be in the hold of a coffin ship as it lurched across the Atlantic Ocean.

Cobh is also home to St. Colman's cathedral. Many immigrants, my great-grandfather included (whose saint's name was Colman, coincidentally), sent money for its construction once they'd settled in the US, Canada or Australia.

We decided to pass on the Cliffs of Moher and went to Slea Head instead, a gorgeous cliff looking down at waves crashing up against the rocks with the ruins of Dunbeg Fort at its head. On the other side of the road is a preserved Famine Cottage where you can pay a cranky woman sitting in a booth at the foot of the drive to walk inside and get a feel for what it was like living in a cold, drafty, smoky stone building in desperate poverty.

In Westport, at the foot of Croagh Patrick is a massive iron sculpture depicting a coffin ship, the lines of the ship eerily made of skeletons tossed by the wind.

And the finale was the Strokestown Famine Museum. Representing "the first national attempt at confronting and discussing the history of the Great Irish Famine… developed… to balance the history of the 'Big House' using the original documents from the Strokestown Park Archive to tell the tenant's story. … The fact that nothing of a physical nature remains to represent the lives of the Irish tenants at the time of the Great Irish Famine further underlines the importance of the documents and letters on display." You are toured through the Big House first, the silk wallpaper, china and crystal, and fine furnishings pointed out to you by cheery guides. You see where massive dinners were held, the enormous bedrooms with their cavernous ceilings and delicate linens.

The tenants who worked the land are invisible. As the official site statement said above, the fact that there's nothing left is testament to the hard times these people faced. When we were there, there was a long hallway where documents like bills, receipts and letters were on display. There was information on the potato and details about the blight that killed it. That's about it.

(There's a restaurant on-site now, which seems a little inappropriate for a famine museum, although I am ashamed to admit we were so hungry after leaving the museum that we sought out the nearest pub down the street for sandwiches.)

Anyway, what all this leads to is the real history of what it means to be of Irish descent. It doesn't mean getting drunk and wearing green beads and shamrock-shaped sunglasses and getting in bar fights. Our American St. Patrick's Day celebrations started out as a way of acknowledging pride in an ethnic background that others derided. The first St. Patrick's Day parades were of a similar nature to Gay Pride parades- in spite of what you think of us, say about us, and how you mistreat us, we are proud of who we are. For a people who had come to this country broken and battered, facing stereotyping, discrimination and targeting by the KKK (oh yes, Catholics and especially immigrants were favorite targets) it was an enormous source of pride to march the streets wearing the green, hearing the pipes and singing the old songs.

Like so much in our country, it got bastardized and commercialized. Now we have leprechauns selling furniture.

But if you're of Irish descent, remember tomorrow that your heritage means more than just "partying."
A man named John Carberry wrote a beautiful opinion piece in my local newspaper back in 2006 that has always stuck with me. Have fun, he says, but "remember who you are. You are the product of thousands of years of Celtic determination. … It was seldom easy. At its best, it was the ancient battle to scratch a life from the earth, to beat back hunger and disease and build a culture. At its worst, it was genocide, with half of Ireland's 6 million natives killed or driven off in a single generation and much of that ancient culture erased."

Most of all, you have an obligation. As someone of Irish heritage, we have an obligation to help those who are starving like our ancestors were. We have an obligation to speak up for immigrants who have no choice but to leave their home in order to make a better life for themselves and their families, as our great-grandparents did. We have an obligation to stand up for those who are oppressed and forced to give up their culture and language the way those who came before us did.

I can't say it better than Mr. Carberry:

"When someone points out the poor or the homeless with disgust and waxes aloud about how they are the way they are because they lack the intellect or the character to improve themselves, remember you're the child of a people once made poor and homeless.

When someone tells you that some ethnic group is inherently inferior because of its alleged laziness and tendency toward violence, sexual obsession or drug addiction, remember you're the child of a people whose rights and rich culture were disregarded with these same claims."

It's our party tomorrow, my fellow Hibernians. We get the honor of watching the world celebrate our

St. Patrick and our heritage, however "misdirected and uninformed" our guests may be. But remember that with that honor comes duty. Enjoy your corned beef & cabbage and hopefully a large hunk of soda bread. May your Guinness be poured well, and your bartender not stingy with the whiskey. Sing "A Nation Once Again" at the top of your lungs and stumble your way through "Whiskey in the Jar." Please be sure you have a safe way home and be considerate of your fellow revelers. But most of all, remember who you are. Cuimhnigh cé tusa. Today and every day.

Carberry, John. "St. Patrick's Day: A time of honor and obligation." The Ithaca Journal. 17 March 2006: A 10. Print.

In Defense of Valentine's Day

Since it's only a few days away, Valentine's Day is really getting some flack.

It seems to be the favored holiday to hate- everyone from single people to florists to restaurant staff to those who regularly bemoan our consumerist society.

But I must respectfully disagree.

Valentine's Day is one of my most favorite holidays, right up there with Thanksgiving, for being at its purest a celebration of something wonderful- love.

Yeah, certain powers that be want you to think that you have to spend a great deal of money to make this holiday significant, whether it be candy, stuffed animals, flowers or jewelry (while we're on the topic, could that Kay Jewelers necklace that Jane Seymour is hawking look any more like butts?)

Who knew Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was such a perv?

And yeah, you could fall for that. But honestly, the commercialization of Christmas hurts my heart far more than aisles of pink and red heart-shaped boxes of mediocre chocolates. There's something far more obscene about people celebrating Jesus' birth with big-screen tv sets than buying some flowers for your loved one.

And I must also disagree that it's a holiday that solely serves to taunt the unattached, the single, and the lonely. And I think I have my parents to thank for that.

You see, I grew up believing Valentine's Day wasn't about mushy romantic love. It was a day set aside to make sure you told the people you love that you loved them. That was it. My parents made a big deal out of Valentine's Day for us, because they saw it as a day to celebrate their love for us. My dad bought me flowers for my very first Valentine's Day, when I was barely two months old.

And then when I was ten, two days before Valentine's Day, we had a horrible house fire late at night that only reinforced my love for this holiday and what it really represented.

My brother and sister and I were taken to our grandmother's to stay while my parents tried to salvage what they could of our house and find us a new place to stay and new stuff. When they came to pick us up, in spite of everything, they had a Valentine's Day card for me. It was simple- an illustration of a pink ice cream soda that on the inside said something like 'You're So Sweet.' But my mom and dad wrote how much they loved me and that everything was going to be okay, words I really needed to hear at a time when I was wearing borrowed clothes and had lost everything I had ever owned in my short life up till then. I still have that card. It's the essence of Valentine's Day to me.

And my parents also brought another special treat: my 4th grade classmates had saved my valentines for me. Looking through the cheesy little punch-out cards bedecked with Smurfs and other cartoon characters, I felt normal. I felt like a normal little girl, not one that had just a few weeks ago gone running through a smoke-filled hallway dodging sparks that were shooting down from the ceiling. Those tiny cards with their ink-blotty or smudgy pencil signatures were the greatest gift I could have received.

So give Valentine's Day a break. Don't give in to what Jane Seymour and her butts necklace want you to think the holiday is. Use it as an opportunity to tell people in your life that you love them. You can never do enough of that, anyway; what's the harm in a day set aside to remind you? And if you're really feeling lonely, make your way to your local animal shelter and heal a heart you find there. You'll never find love as generous and unconditional as a pet's.

Oh, and don't forgot that you can load up on candy super-cheap the day after.