A Barbourville funeral is different from an Erlanger funeral.
For one thing, in Bar'ville, the pallbearers ride in their own limousine in the procession from the funeral home to the cemetery. (Seriously, this struck me as uber-weird; ever see this before? I mean, I've been to a lot of funerals, and Jason has served as pallbearer before, but never before have I seen them, um, honored this way.) For another thing, a Barbourville funeral is more of a social event. It's a small town, not much goes on, and everybody knows everybody, so people who maybe didn't know the deceased beyond a nodding acquaintance but who once loaned the deceased's granddaughter her bicycle which the grandaugher subsequently rode down the side of a mountain and crahsed into a ditch, damn near killing herself, will show up if for no other reason than to socialize a little during their lunch break.
I swear that's the truth. I returned from a potty break to the visitation room of the funeral home where my grandmother was "layed out" to see my older sister in lively conversation with a woman I'd never seen before.
"This is my little sister. You haven't seen her since she was a baby. Hey, Cranky, this is the girl whose bike I rode off the hill."
While it was great to meet this person who featured as a prominent bystander in my sister's first (but not last!) near-death experience, I couldn't help but wonder why she was at Granny's funeral. But then my sister told me that this woman's sister works with our cousin "Sissy", and it kinda almost made sense for her to want to show up and see who all was there that she could visit with.
Kinda.
No, I get it. I do. After all, I lived in Knox County for six memorable months in fourth grade. We went to a lot of visitations, and I would ask my mom, "How do we know this person?" And she would say something like, "The dead person's housekeeper is my cousin Emily's second cousin by marriage twice removed ," which I knew just meant Mom needed a social life.
A lot of businesses fail in Knox County, Ky., but the owners of the two rival funeral homes are the two wealthiest families in the county. Not everyone wants their car detailed on a regular basis during hard economic times, but everybody dies sooner or later. And these homes do death really, really well. They accept that it's a social event, and yet they somehow keep it classy for the family of the deceased. So classy that the pallbearers make a more dramatic getaway than the bridesmaids did at my wedding.
And one more thing...Barbourville funerals have shuck beans.
See, another Erlanger/Barbourville funeral difference is that, at least on my side of the family, we don't have wakes after the service. When Jason's grandmother died soon after we got married, and the whole fam damily and friends gathered at his mom's after the graveside service to eat food brought by a caterer friend and to drink impressive amounts of white zinfandel, I was stunned. I had heard of wakes, and seen them in movies and on TV, but thought they were a dramatic device, like the "TV grocery bag" which always has a loaf of french bread and something green and leafy sticking out the top, despite the fact the real life grocery bag is never so romantic.
Lo, in northern Kentucky, in Jason's family at least, people really do gather after a funeral to eat and to get a wee bit drunk. In my family, we all just say what we need to say at the funeral home, hug each other goodbye at the family plot, and go home. Maybe it's because it's a dry county, maybe we're just less of a party people. All I know is it just is.
But Cora Mae's shuck beans make up for it.
Mom's sister Cora Mae offered to feed our little branch of the family during a break between the visitation and funeral. Her house specialty is shuck beans (called "shucked beans" by the more educated, proper, and snooty), which are home-grown green beans hung on a line like laundry to dehydrate in the sun, allowing them to absorb even more pork fat during the southern cooking process. Bad for you? I reckon. But they taste like heaven even though they might clog your arteries and make you get there faster.
My sister, who does not generally show affection to anyone, walked up to Cora Mae after she lifted the lid on the beans and kissed her in a most European way on both cheeks.
"Cora Mae, I sure do love you."
Indeed.
Yes, a Barbourville funeral is a little different. My Knox County family does death and shuck beans better'n all you Yankees.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Rest In Peace, Granny Sugar
My last remaining grandparent passed away Monday at the age of 92.
She was my dad's mom, and she outlived her ex-husband, all but one sibling, and even one of her children. She went peacefully in her sleep after a recurrence of the abdominal infection that nearly killed her last year and left her in a nursing home. Until this time last year she was able to live independently, so I feel today that she should be celebrated rather than mourned. We should all be so fortunate as to have 91 healthy years.
Her name was Kitty Marie, but most of my cousins called her "Maw-rie" as a combination of "mamaw" and her middle name, which she preferred to go by. I had my own nickname for her; she was my Granny Sugar.
If you're not from the south, you may not be familiar with the use of the word "sugar" for kisses. When my granny and I parted ways when I was a small child, she always said, "Come and give granny some sugar." By the age of three I had started calling her Granny Sugar and for my little branch of her family, that was her given name from then on (though my mother, a true southern woman, called this proudly divorced and single woman "Miss Hyden" partly out of respect for her and partly because she didn't find her sweet enough to be called anything with the word "sugar" in it.)
Let's face it; everyone has a favorite grandparent. It's not that we dislike the others (usually), but we're usually closer to one. Favorite grandparent honors for me went to my mother's mother, my Mamaw, who I lost when I was twelve. Granny Sugar just wasn't as cuddly and open to affection as Mamaw. Like my dad, and like me, really, she measured her affection for her family with an equal part of, well, crankiness.
But she was a big kid herself in many ways. She was a tiny little woman, less than 5 feet tall, and she loved getting stuffed animals as presents from her grandkids (she kept a stuffed Snoopy and Woodstock on her bed until the day she died.) Because I loved wearing Band-Aids on imaginary scrapes as a kid, she enclosed two Band-Aids in every letter she ever wrote me between the ages of 3 and 12. Usually these Band-Aids had cartoon characters on them, and I am pretty sure these were the same bandages she kept around for her own use.
Her trademark, though, were her cards. She faithfully remembered the birthdays and anniversaries of every child, grandchild, daughter- or son-in-law, and great-grandchild. She bought the perfect card for each person and timed the sending so that it always arrived right on the birthday or anniversary. For her grandchildren's birthdays, she tucked a few dollars inside that added up to the age (up to 15; she had to stop somewhere.) I still have the card she sent when I turned 3 because it caused a sensation in my family. On the cover of the card was an illustration of a little brown-haired, pig-tailed girl wearing white tights and black patent-leathers. This fictional girl could have been my twin. This card looks more like the way I actually looked at 3 than any of the faded pictures we have from that time and mom says it almost spooked her when she opened it. Somehow Granny Sugar always found a card at the dollar store that fit her recipients' various personalities, collections, likes, and dislikes.
She was loving in her own distant kind of way to her kids and grandkids, but she could ruffle my mom's feathers like no other person on the planet. Her passive-aggresiveness was the stuff of legend. When I am at my most ornery, my mom accuses me of being just like her and my dad. I don't take that as a compliment, but I usually can't deny its accuracy.
I have never looked overly like my mom or sister and until I began to look a little aged didn't look much like my dad. I never really knew who I most looked like until the day a few years ago that mom put an old black-and-white picture into my hands that my dad's oldest brother had found and copied for each sibling. It was a picture of Granny and her ex-husband (with whom she had four kids, and who for reasons not discussed in my family, up and left her to raise them on her own) from shortly after their wedding day. Even in my earliest memories of my granny, she has short, fluffy gray hair, thick bifocals, and wrinkles earned through the harshness of her younger years that are so deep as to obscure her features. The woman in the black-and-white picture had shoulder-length black hair, a heart-shaped face, and a wry smile that turned one corner of her mouth up higher than the other.
"Alice sent this to your dad, but after seeing it, I think you should have it. Now we know who you look like," Mom said. I have that picture displayed on an end table, and people who see it comment on how much I look like the short little woman in the picture. Though I am quite a bit taller; I outgrew Granny before I made it out of elementary school.
I've only seen Granny once since my dad passed away. This is partly because like so many of my relatives she still lives three hours away in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. But there's another reason. It's not a good excuse, but it tore me up to see her or to even talk to her on the phone in the year after Dad died; she reminded me so much of my him that it was like salt on my wounds. And seeing her reminded me how unnatural it is when a child goes before a parent, even when the child is 64 years old.
Tomorrow I'll say goodbye to the woman that sent me Band-Aids in the mail, the woman who collected owls and looked a little owl-like herself, the woman who walked the one mile each way from her apartment to town every day until her late 80s, the woman who puttered around her house in dollar-store terrycloth house slippers and brought me my own pair every time she came to visit, the woman who never forgot a birthday and never failed to pick a card that would make you smile. The woman who will be referred to as "Maw-rie" a lot tomorrow, but who I will always remember as my Granny Sugar.
Rest in peace, Granny.
She was my dad's mom, and she outlived her ex-husband, all but one sibling, and even one of her children. She went peacefully in her sleep after a recurrence of the abdominal infection that nearly killed her last year and left her in a nursing home. Until this time last year she was able to live independently, so I feel today that she should be celebrated rather than mourned. We should all be so fortunate as to have 91 healthy years.
Her name was Kitty Marie, but most of my cousins called her "Maw-rie" as a combination of "mamaw" and her middle name, which she preferred to go by. I had my own nickname for her; she was my Granny Sugar.
If you're not from the south, you may not be familiar with the use of the word "sugar" for kisses. When my granny and I parted ways when I was a small child, she always said, "Come and give granny some sugar." By the age of three I had started calling her Granny Sugar and for my little branch of her family, that was her given name from then on (though my mother, a true southern woman, called this proudly divorced and single woman "Miss Hyden" partly out of respect for her and partly because she didn't find her sweet enough to be called anything with the word "sugar" in it.)
Let's face it; everyone has a favorite grandparent. It's not that we dislike the others (usually), but we're usually closer to one. Favorite grandparent honors for me went to my mother's mother, my Mamaw, who I lost when I was twelve. Granny Sugar just wasn't as cuddly and open to affection as Mamaw. Like my dad, and like me, really, she measured her affection for her family with an equal part of, well, crankiness.
But she was a big kid herself in many ways. She was a tiny little woman, less than 5 feet tall, and she loved getting stuffed animals as presents from her grandkids (she kept a stuffed Snoopy and Woodstock on her bed until the day she died.) Because I loved wearing Band-Aids on imaginary scrapes as a kid, she enclosed two Band-Aids in every letter she ever wrote me between the ages of 3 and 12. Usually these Band-Aids had cartoon characters on them, and I am pretty sure these were the same bandages she kept around for her own use.
Her trademark, though, were her cards. She faithfully remembered the birthdays and anniversaries of every child, grandchild, daughter- or son-in-law, and great-grandchild. She bought the perfect card for each person and timed the sending so that it always arrived right on the birthday or anniversary. For her grandchildren's birthdays, she tucked a few dollars inside that added up to the age (up to 15; she had to stop somewhere.) I still have the card she sent when I turned 3 because it caused a sensation in my family. On the cover of the card was an illustration of a little brown-haired, pig-tailed girl wearing white tights and black patent-leathers. This fictional girl could have been my twin. This card looks more like the way I actually looked at 3 than any of the faded pictures we have from that time and mom says it almost spooked her when she opened it. Somehow Granny Sugar always found a card at the dollar store that fit her recipients' various personalities, collections, likes, and dislikes.
She was loving in her own distant kind of way to her kids and grandkids, but she could ruffle my mom's feathers like no other person on the planet. Her passive-aggresiveness was the stuff of legend. When I am at my most ornery, my mom accuses me of being just like her and my dad. I don't take that as a compliment, but I usually can't deny its accuracy.
I have never looked overly like my mom or sister and until I began to look a little aged didn't look much like my dad. I never really knew who I most looked like until the day a few years ago that mom put an old black-and-white picture into my hands that my dad's oldest brother had found and copied for each sibling. It was a picture of Granny and her ex-husband (with whom she had four kids, and who for reasons not discussed in my family, up and left her to raise them on her own) from shortly after their wedding day. Even in my earliest memories of my granny, she has short, fluffy gray hair, thick bifocals, and wrinkles earned through the harshness of her younger years that are so deep as to obscure her features. The woman in the black-and-white picture had shoulder-length black hair, a heart-shaped face, and a wry smile that turned one corner of her mouth up higher than the other.
"Alice sent this to your dad, but after seeing it, I think you should have it. Now we know who you look like," Mom said. I have that picture displayed on an end table, and people who see it comment on how much I look like the short little woman in the picture. Though I am quite a bit taller; I outgrew Granny before I made it out of elementary school.
I've only seen Granny once since my dad passed away. This is partly because like so many of my relatives she still lives three hours away in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. But there's another reason. It's not a good excuse, but it tore me up to see her or to even talk to her on the phone in the year after Dad died; she reminded me so much of my him that it was like salt on my wounds. And seeing her reminded me how unnatural it is when a child goes before a parent, even when the child is 64 years old.
Tomorrow I'll say goodbye to the woman that sent me Band-Aids in the mail, the woman who collected owls and looked a little owl-like herself, the woman who walked the one mile each way from her apartment to town every day until her late 80s, the woman who puttered around her house in dollar-store terrycloth house slippers and brought me my own pair every time she came to visit, the woman who never forgot a birthday and never failed to pick a card that would make you smile. The woman who will be referred to as "Maw-rie" a lot tomorrow, but who I will always remember as my Granny Sugar.
Rest in peace, Granny.
Monday, September 15, 2008
And If You Don't Have Any Damage...Make Your Own!
There just wasn't enough damage to my house after the wind storm, so I made my own. When I tried to put our patio umbrella back in its stand in the middle of our glass patio table, I let go and the umbrella hit the glass, shattering it into a million teeny tiny pieces. Right now from my kitchen window you can hear the rain-like sound of glass shards falling through the cracks in the wooden slats of our deck.
Awesome.
I have swept everything up into a pile and the hubby wants me to wait until he comes home to start scooping into the can (I can't risk getting a cut with my lymphedema.) It's making me crazy to leave a neat pile of danger just sitting around. And I feel responsible, so I am itching (literally; I have glass powder all over my clothes) to get out there and get the mess out of the way.
Our neighbors have volunteered their shop vac; the only good thing about natural disaster is learning how darned nice your neighbors are.
I am quarantining myself to the couch for the duration of the cleanup process less I "help" our situation any more.
Awesome.
I have swept everything up into a pile and the hubby wants me to wait until he comes home to start scooping into the can (I can't risk getting a cut with my lymphedema.) It's making me crazy to leave a neat pile of danger just sitting around. And I feel responsible, so I am itching (literally; I have glass powder all over my clothes) to get out there and get the mess out of the way.
Our neighbors have volunteered their shop vac; the only good thing about natural disaster is learning how darned nice your neighbors are.
I am quarantining myself to the couch for the duration of the cleanup process less I "help" our situation any more.
A Mighty Wind
Now that I've had a taste of a natural disaster, I know I want no part of the real deal.
As many of you know, Cranky's abode is in northern Kentucky. I don't if it has made the news of you out-of-towners, or if you were impacted, too, but the great state of Kentucky is in a state of emergency and my county, Kenton, has declared its own state of emergency just to add the exclamation point to the level of emergency the state is in.
We were the unwitting victims here in the tri-state area of an inland tropical storm (and I am only wishing I was exaggerating this) caused by a perfect combo of three different meteorological phenomena: the remnants of Ike came up the west side of us, a strong area of high pressure hung out to the east, and a super strong jet flow came up out of the south.
Long story short: starting around noon yesterday, and lasting until around 6pm, we had sustained tropical-storm-force winds of 40 mph and hurricane-force gusts over 75 mph. I believe the strongest gust measured at just a hair below 80, with a few hours of regular 70+ gusts.
The area affected by this wind storm is so large that no one has school today. I do mean NO ONE. Not even those schools, like Jason's alma mater, that don't call off for snow unless there's enough of it to cover a kindergartner while he's walking to school.
Here's the kicker with this storm: wind takes down power lines, y'all. Having never had a tornado really close to my person, and not living near the coast, I was a little naive about what high wind does. Especially what 6 hours of high wind does.
We were one of the lucky ones; we lost power for seven hours, starting at 1pm yesterday, but hundreds of thousands in the greater Cincinnati area are still without power and may not have it for 2 or 3 more days. 90% of homes serviced by the area's main power company lost power yesterday. We have roof damage, but it's not bad and we are going to wait a day or two to even call about it because so many around us have it so much worse.
Our house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and is in a valley not surrounded by mature trees. As our entire end of the street stood outside and tried to help each other secure things around our homes as best we could after the power went out, listening to the thunder-like cracks of old trees in the woods behind out homes breaking under the strain, we heard that the damage was worse up the street and that a tree had just gone through someone's living room. I have a colleague that lives in one of those houses up the street, so Jason, Ains and I and our next-door neighbors took a walk. On the opposite side of the street from us, where the mature trees left over from when our subdivision was still a farm are much closer to the houses, trees were leaning against houses and large branches were in yards and blocking driveways. It looked like a tornado had come through. Then we saw the house with the most damage on our street: a tree fell into the outside wall of the house and crashed partway into the living room. No one was hurt there, but when a neighbor came out to help and wait with the occupants while the fire department and paramedics came, a large branch fell off another tree and hit her in the face and shoulder. She got carried away in the ambulance, bruised and bloody but alive, while the owner of the trashed living room stood talking to everyone with her blood still on his shirt.
That was at 2pm. It went on 4 more hours.
I've seen trees in our back woods move to the point of breaking during the worst thunderstorms; then, it only lasts a few minutes. For six hours, we listened to our house groan, watched the trees crack, and counted the shingles that got blown off the front part of our roof to land on our back deck. We sweated inside an electricity-less house as temps outside got to ninety. (We started out with windows open, but had to leave just a few on the back side of the house cracked after things starting flying off walls and our belongings started getting covered with small debris that got blown through our screens.) I threw out a pot of soup I had optimistically put on in the crockpot that morning, assuming this was going to be a normal day. In our part of the world, "Wind Advisory" usually means "good kite-flying weather." No one, not even our weathermen, were prepared for this or knew things would be this bad until the lines starting breaking and trees starting falling.
Food is a necessity, and we had nothing we could eat straight from our cabinets (and we didn't want to open the fridge and let out the cold air preserving our just-bought groceries), so we ventured out when the winds began to subside a little. We found a pocket of electricity off an interstate exit to our north that had a Chipotle open; lines were outrageous, but damn, that was some good Chipotle.
Driving back we saw just how widespread the damage and outages were. We saw huge uprooted trees (I've never seen a tree's rootball up in the air before, and I don't think I care to see it again). We saw siding ripped off homes and blowing like a handkerchief in the breeze. We saw roofs much worse off than ours, with bare patches and shingles sticking up at unnatural angles. It took us around 30 minutes to get back as we took a route that would let us gauge whether or not the school buildings in my district were powered or damaged (with our home phone down because of no juice, and no TV, I knew I would miss any kind of "school's closed" message). In that time, we only found one traffic light that worked.
Our area is stunned. Damage covers the entire metro area and the outlying rural counties. No one escaped unscathed. And our area, which isn't remotely close to the coast, and isn't in Tornado Alley, and doesn't usually have extremes of weather of any kind save for the once-in-a-decade dropping of over a foot of snow, isn't really prepared for this. Our damage is small, but should probably get fixed before the next soaking rain. I have no idea whether that is going to be possible given the scope of the damage and the available resources.
One woman across the river died as a tree crashed into her home office and crushed her while she worked on her computer. So we are very, very grateful that no one we know got severely injured, and that our neighbors who were visited by a tree in their living room were already able to start the repairs and, from what we saw late last night, still able to live in their house.
We will get by. Power came on a little after 8, and life is starting to look and feel more normal in our immediate neighborhood. But the footage on the evening news last night was sobering. It's like what I've seen on TV following weaker tornados, but instead of being confined to a single area, it's everywhere. It's like rain-less hurricae damage, but there's no ocean. It's surreal, and I am doing a bad job describing what it's like here. I still feel a little shocked; I've never seen something like this happen with so little preparation and notice.
Here's hoping I never see it again.
As many of you know, Cranky's abode is in northern Kentucky. I don't if it has made the news of you out-of-towners, or if you were impacted, too, but the great state of Kentucky is in a state of emergency and my county, Kenton, has declared its own state of emergency just to add the exclamation point to the level of emergency the state is in.
We were the unwitting victims here in the tri-state area of an inland tropical storm (and I am only wishing I was exaggerating this) caused by a perfect combo of three different meteorological phenomena: the remnants of Ike came up the west side of us, a strong area of high pressure hung out to the east, and a super strong jet flow came up out of the south.
Long story short: starting around noon yesterday, and lasting until around 6pm, we had sustained tropical-storm-force winds of 40 mph and hurricane-force gusts over 75 mph. I believe the strongest gust measured at just a hair below 80, with a few hours of regular 70+ gusts.
The area affected by this wind storm is so large that no one has school today. I do mean NO ONE. Not even those schools, like Jason's alma mater, that don't call off for snow unless there's enough of it to cover a kindergartner while he's walking to school.
Here's the kicker with this storm: wind takes down power lines, y'all. Having never had a tornado really close to my person, and not living near the coast, I was a little naive about what high wind does. Especially what 6 hours of high wind does.
We were one of the lucky ones; we lost power for seven hours, starting at 1pm yesterday, but hundreds of thousands in the greater Cincinnati area are still without power and may not have it for 2 or 3 more days. 90% of homes serviced by the area's main power company lost power yesterday. We have roof damage, but it's not bad and we are going to wait a day or two to even call about it because so many around us have it so much worse.
Our house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and is in a valley not surrounded by mature trees. As our entire end of the street stood outside and tried to help each other secure things around our homes as best we could after the power went out, listening to the thunder-like cracks of old trees in the woods behind out homes breaking under the strain, we heard that the damage was worse up the street and that a tree had just gone through someone's living room. I have a colleague that lives in one of those houses up the street, so Jason, Ains and I and our next-door neighbors took a walk. On the opposite side of the street from us, where the mature trees left over from when our subdivision was still a farm are much closer to the houses, trees were leaning against houses and large branches were in yards and blocking driveways. It looked like a tornado had come through. Then we saw the house with the most damage on our street: a tree fell into the outside wall of the house and crashed partway into the living room. No one was hurt there, but when a neighbor came out to help and wait with the occupants while the fire department and paramedics came, a large branch fell off another tree and hit her in the face and shoulder. She got carried away in the ambulance, bruised and bloody but alive, while the owner of the trashed living room stood talking to everyone with her blood still on his shirt.
That was at 2pm. It went on 4 more hours.
I've seen trees in our back woods move to the point of breaking during the worst thunderstorms; then, it only lasts a few minutes. For six hours, we listened to our house groan, watched the trees crack, and counted the shingles that got blown off the front part of our roof to land on our back deck. We sweated inside an electricity-less house as temps outside got to ninety. (We started out with windows open, but had to leave just a few on the back side of the house cracked after things starting flying off walls and our belongings started getting covered with small debris that got blown through our screens.) I threw out a pot of soup I had optimistically put on in the crockpot that morning, assuming this was going to be a normal day. In our part of the world, "Wind Advisory" usually means "good kite-flying weather." No one, not even our weathermen, were prepared for this or knew things would be this bad until the lines starting breaking and trees starting falling.
Food is a necessity, and we had nothing we could eat straight from our cabinets (and we didn't want to open the fridge and let out the cold air preserving our just-bought groceries), so we ventured out when the winds began to subside a little. We found a pocket of electricity off an interstate exit to our north that had a Chipotle open; lines were outrageous, but damn, that was some good Chipotle.
Driving back we saw just how widespread the damage and outages were. We saw huge uprooted trees (I've never seen a tree's rootball up in the air before, and I don't think I care to see it again). We saw siding ripped off homes and blowing like a handkerchief in the breeze. We saw roofs much worse off than ours, with bare patches and shingles sticking up at unnatural angles. It took us around 30 minutes to get back as we took a route that would let us gauge whether or not the school buildings in my district were powered or damaged (with our home phone down because of no juice, and no TV, I knew I would miss any kind of "school's closed" message). In that time, we only found one traffic light that worked.
Our area is stunned. Damage covers the entire metro area and the outlying rural counties. No one escaped unscathed. And our area, which isn't remotely close to the coast, and isn't in Tornado Alley, and doesn't usually have extremes of weather of any kind save for the once-in-a-decade dropping of over a foot of snow, isn't really prepared for this. Our damage is small, but should probably get fixed before the next soaking rain. I have no idea whether that is going to be possible given the scope of the damage and the available resources.
One woman across the river died as a tree crashed into her home office and crushed her while she worked on her computer. So we are very, very grateful that no one we know got severely injured, and that our neighbors who were visited by a tree in their living room were already able to start the repairs and, from what we saw late last night, still able to live in their house.
We will get by. Power came on a little after 8, and life is starting to look and feel more normal in our immediate neighborhood. But the footage on the evening news last night was sobering. It's like what I've seen on TV following weaker tornados, but instead of being confined to a single area, it's everywhere. It's like rain-less hurricae damage, but there's no ocean. It's surreal, and I am doing a bad job describing what it's like here. I still feel a little shocked; I've never seen something like this happen with so little preparation and notice.
Here's hoping I never see it again.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Hulu Hoop
Got anything planned this weekend? No? Excellent! I investigated a new website last night that is guaranteed to absolutely suck up all your time.
After playing around for a mere five minutes last night, I turned to Jason and said, "Well, that's it. I won't be resurfacing until roughly Thanksgiving. Make sure Ainsley gets taken out for trick-or-treating, won't you?"
The site I am talking about, and which those of you with more free time to browse cool stuff on the Internets may already know about, is Hulu.
Hulu is a legal and mostly free download site for many of your favorite shows and even some movies. Right now their biggest partner is NBC, so the NBC shows are the most heavily represented, but I found something there from all the networks.
Many networks offer whole episodes of their shows. That's not so new. What is awesome about Hulu is its archive of older shows.
Miss your favorite 80s shows from your childhood? They've got The A-Team, The Facts of Life, and Fame. (DR--they've got Welcome Back Kotter!) Need a good cry? They've got season three of Party of Five, the season where Bailey became an alcoholic and and forced a tearful family intervention. Need something more cerebral? There's Nova and National Geographic News. Missed the whole Buffy the Vampire Slayer phenomenon the first time around? Full episodes are there! You need to see it to believe it. Cult classics, one-season wonders, Emmy nominees...the possibilities for time-wasting are endless.
But wait! There's more!
They have movies.
Full movies as well as clips. I started my day with some coffee and one of my favorite moments from film ever: the diaper stealing scene from Raising Arizona.
"I'll be taking these Huggies...and whatever cash you got in the register."
The beautiful thing is I could've watched the whole movie for free if I'd wanted to.
I think my morale and mood are going to get a boost from this. Who needs Prozac when you can cue up the SNL clip where Phil Hartman does Clinton stopping into a McDonalds?
"Listen, boys...there are going to be a lot of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton. McDonald's is the least of your worries."
Sure, you can find some of these things on YouTube. But not all, and certainly not legally. I feel much better about myself as a librarian and protector of copyright getting my funny bone tickled by legally acquired clips.
What? Are you still sitting there reading my blog? Go check it out, dude! There's too much procrastinating and time-wasting to be done for you to be sitting there being productive!
Should you come up for air sometime this weekend, hit the comments with the shows and/or movies available on Hulu that you're most excited about.
After playing around for a mere five minutes last night, I turned to Jason and said, "Well, that's it. I won't be resurfacing until roughly Thanksgiving. Make sure Ainsley gets taken out for trick-or-treating, won't you?"
The site I am talking about, and which those of you with more free time to browse cool stuff on the Internets may already know about, is Hulu.
Hulu is a legal and mostly free download site for many of your favorite shows and even some movies. Right now their biggest partner is NBC, so the NBC shows are the most heavily represented, but I found something there from all the networks.
Many networks offer whole episodes of their shows. That's not so new. What is awesome about Hulu is its archive of older shows.
Miss your favorite 80s shows from your childhood? They've got The A-Team, The Facts of Life, and Fame. (DR--they've got Welcome Back Kotter!) Need a good cry? They've got season three of Party of Five, the season where Bailey became an alcoholic and and forced a tearful family intervention. Need something more cerebral? There's Nova and National Geographic News. Missed the whole Buffy the Vampire Slayer phenomenon the first time around? Full episodes are there! You need to see it to believe it. Cult classics, one-season wonders, Emmy nominees...the possibilities for time-wasting are endless.
But wait! There's more!
They have movies.
Full movies as well as clips. I started my day with some coffee and one of my favorite moments from film ever: the diaper stealing scene from Raising Arizona.
"I'll be taking these Huggies...and whatever cash you got in the register."
The beautiful thing is I could've watched the whole movie for free if I'd wanted to.
I think my morale and mood are going to get a boost from this. Who needs Prozac when you can cue up the SNL clip where Phil Hartman does Clinton stopping into a McDonalds?
"Listen, boys...there are going to be a lot of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton. McDonald's is the least of your worries."
Sure, you can find some of these things on YouTube. But not all, and certainly not legally. I feel much better about myself as a librarian and protector of copyright getting my funny bone tickled by legally acquired clips.
What? Are you still sitting there reading my blog? Go check it out, dude! There's too much procrastinating and time-wasting to be done for you to be sitting there being productive!
Should you come up for air sometime this weekend, hit the comments with the shows and/or movies available on Hulu that you're most excited about.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
United We Stood
I always find it hard to be witty or to complain about the minor annoyances of my life on the anniversary of September 11. My creative juices dry up and all I want to do is allow myself to be solemn.
This is the post I wrote last year for the anniversary. I've edited it a little, but reading over it this morning, I think my sentiments expressed here are even stronger this year than last. Are we ever more divided than we are in a presidential election year? Especially a year when a debate about lipstick tops the news instead of where these people stand on the issues of our country that so desperately need someone's attention?
Anyway, here are my thoughts on this most solemn day.
Peace.
They say
Time heals everything
But I'm still waiting.
--"Not Ready to Make Nice", The Dixie Chicks
We all remember where we were on this day 7 years ago. We know what we were doing the moment we heard, the moment we realized it was no accident. It was a day that united anyone old enough to watch, to listen, to mourn. We came together in our schools, our offices, our homes, to comfort each other and lean on each other. Regardless of whether or not we lost someone that day, we cried as we watched the endlessly repeating scene of planes, of bursts of flame, of people jumping from towers in an attempt to escape the hell inside, of buildings falling and covering an entire city with ashes and dust.
Seven years have passed, and unless you lost someone that day, I imagine you didn't become aware of today's significance until you wrote the date on a check, or switched on your TV or radio and heard a broadcaster mention a memorial or moment of silence. We shouldn't feel bad about that; as time passes, and the wounds begin to heal, it will become easier to forget between the major milestones of 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years. It will become easier to see September 11 as another day on the calendar; a day like any other, in which we focus on our little bubbles of family and work and forget how, one gorgeous Tuesday morning in 2001, we all came together as Americans, united in grief and shock and anger.
Writing this post, though, I find myself getting bitter. Like the Dixie Chicks so rightly say (love 'em or loathe 'em, you gotta admit they wrote a good song), I'm still waiting.
I'm still waiting for an end to the sorrow I feel every time I see the towers fall.
I'm still waiting for an end to the terror that I feel every time a loved one gets on an airplane.
I'm still waiting to feel some sense of finality, some sense of justice, that the perpetrator of this act has been found and brought to swift justice.
I'm still waiting for a day when the only videos or pictures released by the devil who did this are posthumous.
I am also waiting to once again feel that sense of unity that came in the months after the attacks. In our collective mourning, we came together as a nation for the first time in my short life. I would hate to think that that will be the only time in my lifetime that both sides of the aisle agree on someting. That that will be the only time we put aside differences of wealth, race, religion, and cultural values and stand up as one people.
I remember how so many of us raced to buy American flags to hang on our porches in the weeks after the attack. Nearly every house, apartment, and business flew a flag proudly that fall. Many people made banners and displayed these in front of their homes, as well. Some were sad, some showed support for the victims' families, and some were angry. I remember the night we were all asked to light a candle outside our homes in remembrance, and I can still see the tiny lights flickering on my neighbor's porches. I remember the moments of silence at the one week, one month, and one year anniversaries. I remember the wedding in Atlanta some friends and I went to that October, and how we bought small flags to stick in our car windows for the ride back home and how so many cars on the road were sporting the same. We were nicer to each other for a short time; people greeted each other, made eye contact, and sincerely asked, "How are you doing?" to complete strangers.
So soon after this, we became more divided than ever. We were reminded by pundits and political candidates of the harsh divisions between us: liberal vs. conservative, religious vs. humanist, gay vs. straight. Pretty soon even those most closely affected by this tragedy started arguing over how best to memorialize the victims and seek retribution.
Every time I go to a funeral, someone in the family says, "It's a shame that it took something like this to bring us all together."
It's a shame that it took a tragedy on the scale of 9/11/01 to bring together our nation.
And an even bigger shame that a mere seven years later, we are more divided than ever.
This is the post I wrote last year for the anniversary. I've edited it a little, but reading over it this morning, I think my sentiments expressed here are even stronger this year than last. Are we ever more divided than we are in a presidential election year? Especially a year when a debate about lipstick tops the news instead of where these people stand on the issues of our country that so desperately need someone's attention?
Anyway, here are my thoughts on this most solemn day.
Peace.
They say
Time heals everything
But I'm still waiting.
--"Not Ready to Make Nice", The Dixie Chicks
We all remember where we were on this day 7 years ago. We know what we were doing the moment we heard, the moment we realized it was no accident. It was a day that united anyone old enough to watch, to listen, to mourn. We came together in our schools, our offices, our homes, to comfort each other and lean on each other. Regardless of whether or not we lost someone that day, we cried as we watched the endlessly repeating scene of planes, of bursts of flame, of people jumping from towers in an attempt to escape the hell inside, of buildings falling and covering an entire city with ashes and dust.
Seven years have passed, and unless you lost someone that day, I imagine you didn't become aware of today's significance until you wrote the date on a check, or switched on your TV or radio and heard a broadcaster mention a memorial or moment of silence. We shouldn't feel bad about that; as time passes, and the wounds begin to heal, it will become easier to forget between the major milestones of 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years. It will become easier to see September 11 as another day on the calendar; a day like any other, in which we focus on our little bubbles of family and work and forget how, one gorgeous Tuesday morning in 2001, we all came together as Americans, united in grief and shock and anger.
Writing this post, though, I find myself getting bitter. Like the Dixie Chicks so rightly say (love 'em or loathe 'em, you gotta admit they wrote a good song), I'm still waiting.
I'm still waiting for an end to the sorrow I feel every time I see the towers fall.
I'm still waiting for an end to the terror that I feel every time a loved one gets on an airplane.
I'm still waiting to feel some sense of finality, some sense of justice, that the perpetrator of this act has been found and brought to swift justice.
I'm still waiting for a day when the only videos or pictures released by the devil who did this are posthumous.
I am also waiting to once again feel that sense of unity that came in the months after the attacks. In our collective mourning, we came together as a nation for the first time in my short life. I would hate to think that that will be the only time in my lifetime that both sides of the aisle agree on someting. That that will be the only time we put aside differences of wealth, race, religion, and cultural values and stand up as one people.
I remember how so many of us raced to buy American flags to hang on our porches in the weeks after the attack. Nearly every house, apartment, and business flew a flag proudly that fall. Many people made banners and displayed these in front of their homes, as well. Some were sad, some showed support for the victims' families, and some were angry. I remember the night we were all asked to light a candle outside our homes in remembrance, and I can still see the tiny lights flickering on my neighbor's porches. I remember the moments of silence at the one week, one month, and one year anniversaries. I remember the wedding in Atlanta some friends and I went to that October, and how we bought small flags to stick in our car windows for the ride back home and how so many cars on the road were sporting the same. We were nicer to each other for a short time; people greeted each other, made eye contact, and sincerely asked, "How are you doing?" to complete strangers.
So soon after this, we became more divided than ever. We were reminded by pundits and political candidates of the harsh divisions between us: liberal vs. conservative, religious vs. humanist, gay vs. straight. Pretty soon even those most closely affected by this tragedy started arguing over how best to memorialize the victims and seek retribution.
Every time I go to a funeral, someone in the family says, "It's a shame that it took something like this to bring us all together."
It's a shame that it took a tragedy on the scale of 9/11/01 to bring together our nation.
And an even bigger shame that a mere seven years later, we are more divided than ever.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Heartbreak of Being An Animal Lover
Last night found me at my local PetSmart. I no longer own a cat, but the cat that used to be ours and now lives with my mom still owns me, and when the creature needs food or litter it's somehow still my job.
Ainsley will never be able to have a furry or feathered animal in the house because of her asthma, but we both like to window shop at the cat adoption center in our PetSmart. We sometimes leave there a little sad because inevitably a tiny furball will steal our hearts by sticking little paws through the cage, or letting loose a pitiful mew, and we know there's nothing we personally can do to ensure the fur baby gets a good home.
Yesterday evening I was all alone at the pet superstore, save for a huge bag of Fresh Step, gazing through the glass of the adoption room. A PetSmart worker was in there showing kittens to a young couple and a woman was standing next to me holding a little black ball of kitteny cuteness.
I looked over at her direction and smiled; I figured she was test-driving a new pet of her own.
But instead of joy, I saw tears on her face and noticed an open cat carrier on the floor beside her.
She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes. She rubbed noses with the kitten, no older than 6 weeks.
"You know I'm going to miss you, right?" she said. Then she gave a quiet sob and cradled the kitten gently to her chest.
Oh, dear Lord. She was dropping the kitten off for adoption. Gah.
I found myself starting to tear up. Mind you, I didn't know this woman or her story. I didn't know whether it was the last un-adopted member of an unwanted litter, or if it was a stray that wandered into her life, or if it was a new family pet that didn't work out. I just knew that a grown woman was sobbing like a child at the prospect of saying goodbye to an adorable but helpless baby animal and putting the animal's future into the hands of unknown adopters.
I can't even write about this without feeling myself getting a little choked up.
I am a sentimental old fool anyway, but if you throw an animal, especially a cat, into the mix, then I become a blubbery mess. I get it honestly; I come from a long line of people who like some animals more than they like most humans.
As a kid, we always had a stray something hanging around. The dogs never lasted long; I think they sensed that I was a little afraid of them. But both cats we had during my adolescence were creatures that showed up, fat enough and well-groomed enough to show that they once had human owners, looking for a better life. They were smart cats; my mother never could resist anything small and helpless, and my dad had been known in his own childhood as a great taker-in and keeper of his hollow's stray cat population. They must have been able to sense that, by simply showing up in our yard and occasionally meowing at the front door, that they would be taken in and fed and loved.
My dad could be gruff and harsh-spoken and downright scary. But hand him a cat and he would melt. In the days following his death my mom told the story of when, the year before, a family on their end of the street had adopted a young cat. The family didn't keep the cat inside, and every time it crossed the street in front of dad's car or showed up at their door hungry and thin, dad threatened to take it in himself, ownership tag on its collar or not. One night mom heard him come home from work but he didn't come in the house right away. When she looked out the window she saw him cradling something in his arms and depositing in on the neighbors' doorstep. He had found the cat dead in the street, apparently hit by a car, and wanted to give the cat back to the neighbors as a release for his own anger that they had not been the best of pet owners and in hopes that the cat would be respectfully put to rest. Of all the stories I heard about my dad after he died, this was the one that made me cry because it showed a side of him he didn't let out much.
My mom's dad had a reputaion as a healer. In a place where people had to travel many miles to get "in town" for a doctor or vet, Papaw was a first stop for our family members who had sick kids or pets. He provided competent and loving care for my aunt when she was born at home with the cord around her neck and due in large part to his common sense and nurturing the first night she was alive, she is now a physically healthy woman in her late 60s who, depite being mildly mentally disabled, is able to live by herself. Among the many animals he saved was a flying squirrel named Rocky who landed in mom and dad's Knox County yard as an injured infant and stayed the pet of the family for 2 memorable years. He gradually weaned it from human care with a skill that would impress wildlife professionals and returned it to the woods; after all, fish gotta swim, flying squirrels gotta fly. I am very envious of my older sister that this happened during her childhood and before I was born; there aren't too many people who can boast such a pet.
It's a well-documented phenomenon that people often get more worked up over an animal's demise than a human's. Watch any disaster movie in a theater full of people; adult characters in the movie can die horrific deaths and the audience will hardly bat any eye. When the token golden retriever rushes into the burning building/rising water/flowing lava/collapsing building, you will hear audible gasps and sobs. Perhaps it's the innocence; perhaps it's the cuteness. Perhaps it's that animals love us unconditionally and trust us to keep them from harm. I can only guess at the psychology behind it, but I know for sure that some people who don't cry when Jack lets go of the wooden headboard will cry themselves into the hives over Where the Red Fern Grows. I myself cry until I choke at the ending of Homeward Bound.
I remember when the news story broke about the mother cat who went time after time into a burning building to save her kittens. The mother saved her babies but in so doing suffered serious injury. She survived, and thousands of people offered to take her and the babies in. The whole country was moved. Had a human mother done this it barely would have made news; we all know, and expect, that human mothers will give up their lives to save their children. But somehow when it was an animal...it became one of the most moving true stories we've ever heard and made a household name of Scarlett the cat.
I don't know if I will ever be so moved by the emotion of a complete stranger as I was when I saw that sad farewell between a woman and a kitten. It was genuine, and un-ashamed, and as real as any mother's love.
Ainsley will never be able to have a furry or feathered animal in the house because of her asthma, but we both like to window shop at the cat adoption center in our PetSmart. We sometimes leave there a little sad because inevitably a tiny furball will steal our hearts by sticking little paws through the cage, or letting loose a pitiful mew, and we know there's nothing we personally can do to ensure the fur baby gets a good home.
Yesterday evening I was all alone at the pet superstore, save for a huge bag of Fresh Step, gazing through the glass of the adoption room. A PetSmart worker was in there showing kittens to a young couple and a woman was standing next to me holding a little black ball of kitteny cuteness.
I looked over at her direction and smiled; I figured she was test-driving a new pet of her own.
But instead of joy, I saw tears on her face and noticed an open cat carrier on the floor beside her.
She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes. She rubbed noses with the kitten, no older than 6 weeks.
"You know I'm going to miss you, right?" she said. Then she gave a quiet sob and cradled the kitten gently to her chest.
Oh, dear Lord. She was dropping the kitten off for adoption. Gah.
I found myself starting to tear up. Mind you, I didn't know this woman or her story. I didn't know whether it was the last un-adopted member of an unwanted litter, or if it was a stray that wandered into her life, or if it was a new family pet that didn't work out. I just knew that a grown woman was sobbing like a child at the prospect of saying goodbye to an adorable but helpless baby animal and putting the animal's future into the hands of unknown adopters.
I can't even write about this without feeling myself getting a little choked up.
I am a sentimental old fool anyway, but if you throw an animal, especially a cat, into the mix, then I become a blubbery mess. I get it honestly; I come from a long line of people who like some animals more than they like most humans.
As a kid, we always had a stray something hanging around. The dogs never lasted long; I think they sensed that I was a little afraid of them. But both cats we had during my adolescence were creatures that showed up, fat enough and well-groomed enough to show that they once had human owners, looking for a better life. They were smart cats; my mother never could resist anything small and helpless, and my dad had been known in his own childhood as a great taker-in and keeper of his hollow's stray cat population. They must have been able to sense that, by simply showing up in our yard and occasionally meowing at the front door, that they would be taken in and fed and loved.
My dad could be gruff and harsh-spoken and downright scary. But hand him a cat and he would melt. In the days following his death my mom told the story of when, the year before, a family on their end of the street had adopted a young cat. The family didn't keep the cat inside, and every time it crossed the street in front of dad's car or showed up at their door hungry and thin, dad threatened to take it in himself, ownership tag on its collar or not. One night mom heard him come home from work but he didn't come in the house right away. When she looked out the window she saw him cradling something in his arms and depositing in on the neighbors' doorstep. He had found the cat dead in the street, apparently hit by a car, and wanted to give the cat back to the neighbors as a release for his own anger that they had not been the best of pet owners and in hopes that the cat would be respectfully put to rest. Of all the stories I heard about my dad after he died, this was the one that made me cry because it showed a side of him he didn't let out much.
My mom's dad had a reputaion as a healer. In a place where people had to travel many miles to get "in town" for a doctor or vet, Papaw was a first stop for our family members who had sick kids or pets. He provided competent and loving care for my aunt when she was born at home with the cord around her neck and due in large part to his common sense and nurturing the first night she was alive, she is now a physically healthy woman in her late 60s who, depite being mildly mentally disabled, is able to live by herself. Among the many animals he saved was a flying squirrel named Rocky who landed in mom and dad's Knox County yard as an injured infant and stayed the pet of the family for 2 memorable years. He gradually weaned it from human care with a skill that would impress wildlife professionals and returned it to the woods; after all, fish gotta swim, flying squirrels gotta fly. I am very envious of my older sister that this happened during her childhood and before I was born; there aren't too many people who can boast such a pet.
It's a well-documented phenomenon that people often get more worked up over an animal's demise than a human's. Watch any disaster movie in a theater full of people; adult characters in the movie can die horrific deaths and the audience will hardly bat any eye. When the token golden retriever rushes into the burning building/rising water/flowing lava/collapsing building, you will hear audible gasps and sobs. Perhaps it's the innocence; perhaps it's the cuteness. Perhaps it's that animals love us unconditionally and trust us to keep them from harm. I can only guess at the psychology behind it, but I know for sure that some people who don't cry when Jack lets go of the wooden headboard will cry themselves into the hives over Where the Red Fern Grows. I myself cry until I choke at the ending of Homeward Bound.
I remember when the news story broke about the mother cat who went time after time into a burning building to save her kittens. The mother saved her babies but in so doing suffered serious injury. She survived, and thousands of people offered to take her and the babies in. The whole country was moved. Had a human mother done this it barely would have made news; we all know, and expect, that human mothers will give up their lives to save their children. But somehow when it was an animal...it became one of the most moving true stories we've ever heard and made a household name of Scarlett the cat.
I don't know if I will ever be so moved by the emotion of a complete stranger as I was when I saw that sad farewell between a woman and a kitten. It was genuine, and un-ashamed, and as real as any mother's love.
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