Author: Bev

My mental discography may not hold up forever, but here goes another song lyric: “Why do you build me up (build me up), buttercup baby, just to let me down (let me down), and mess me around.…” – Tom Macaulay & Mike d’Abo, 1968, The Foundations.

What I’m talkin’ (I’ll soon get away from lyric-speak and write in English, but I’m on a roll) about in this piece, is not another bad girlfriend, but antithetical celebrity.

We build up idols only to savor tearing them down; the very definition of antithetical (two aims, in opposition to one another).  How many statues of former idols have been torn down in recent years because we no longer feel comfortable with or like the history they represent?  As energetically as we generate fame, we just as abruptly replace celebrity-idols with new versions. 

Can you say Megxit from the U.K. to Canada and Megxit2 from Canada to Los Angeles, no less?  From the noble insularity of royalty to the base familiarity of celebrity.  It’s like moving from a castle to a theme park.  Shouldn’t we know their names for their greatness, not for their fame?

When I think of celebrity idols the most obvious reference, for me is the “reality television” series, American Idol.  The mechanism involving the audience to “vote out,” these entertainment wannabe’s, vested the public with the power to vehemently judge strangers, like we’re experts.  “We kicked out the right guy, he can’t sing for anything.”  “We don’t like her; she was such a bitch.”

Idols are objects.  Celebrity-idols are not born, they’re made.  “They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths” Psalm 135:15-17.

Although our celebrity-idols are human beings, living, breathing, seeing, hearing persons; we regular people who make them, treat them like nothing more than mannequins.  They just look like people.

We behave like we know celebrities because there’s such an overload of information, true or untrue, about them available to us, at the wave of a finger over a screen or a glance at a magazine in the grocery store checkout line.  But even though we know their names, we don’t know them.

Celebrities are well-crafted idols, familiar but unknown to us.  They’re not living, breathing human beings.  They’re a green screen over which someone speaks.  I’m a Weather World watcher (WPSU on PBS).  I’ve seen their behind-the-scenes making of a weather broadcast.   The maps we see on air, are projections, not unlike the Star Trek holodeck.  The forecaster is really standing in front of a blank, green screen.

Another example of the mirage of celebrity is in Advertising, ironically another media-driven concoction.  I used to show a film in my Introduction to Sociology classes about the manipulation of the public mind by Advertising.  It showed the elaborate make-up that is applied to that hot, juicy-looking fast-food burger that we’re enticed to consume.  The milk in cereal commercials is most-often glue because real milk looks blue on camera.  Roasted turkeys/chickens are minimally cooked and inedible, but they are painted brown and shellacked, to a delicious- “looking” shine.  You get the idea.

Just like painted-on abs, the media in all of its forms, tells us what to want.  We want those abs even though they aren’t real.  We want “that” hamburger even though the real ones don’t look like that – in fact, they look downright anemic, compared.  “Why isn’t my taco big like the one on TV?”

“I use the high-end hair conditioner and my hair doesn’t look like Jennifer Lopez’s.”  But what we don’t know is, Jennifer Lopez likely sat in a make-up chair for six hours before being shot by a professional photographer/filmmaker, for several more hours to produce that 30-second commercial, we so admire her in. In real life, she’s still “Jenny from the block.”

We want to be her, until we “learn” something real about her that doesn’t fit the image she projects.  Then, we accuse her of being fake.  This is antithetical.  We like the perfection of fake until some aspect of it is revealed to be painted or glued on.

Personally, I’m not enamored with celebrities.  Is any columnist?  There’s something about the analytics of celebrity that rankles the logic of an essayist.  This doesn’t mean I’m numb to their impact on popular culture.

I appreciate certain actors’ acting finesse in a select few films or television shows.  But I find it annoying when a celebrity actor, about whom I’ve “heard” something disturbing in their personal life, appears in a favorite film.  What used to be entertaining is now muddied, just a little bit.

Tidbits of extraneous personal information about actors is none of my concern.  I don’t care.  Furthermore, I didn’t want to know about their personal business in the first place, but one can’t avoid popups on news-feeds or the checkout-line-media at the store.

Curiosity about celebrity doesn’t just kill the cat, it kills our rationality too.  We get all worked up about nonsense.

Talented actors, musicians, athletes, artists, authors and entertainers make a valuable contribution to a culture.  Is it possible to appreciate the works of these individuals without knowing gossip about their personal lives or cluttering our minds with their opinions?  I prefer to imagine actors in character.  Celebrity fame, for me, gets in the way of their job performance.

I mean, how absurd is it that Gwyneth Paltrow made and marketed a personal body part-scented candle (the scent of HER personal body part), AND IT SOLD OUT!   Come on people.  I now have a bit of a problem watching her performance as Emma, in the Jane Austen film of the same name, with that v-scent loitering in the air!

The “halo-effect,” wherein we think that if a person is good at one thing, is successful at it, maybe acting, then they must be good at everything, say lifestyle-coaching, product-selection, or personal counseling, is utterly daft.  If we’re conned into thinking a celebrity’s knowledge about society is above the average individual, for example, in political, environmental, scientific, or social causes, then we need to do some research into their educational background and the experiential basis of their in-your-face opinions.

Because she is deemed by some to be a good actress, makes me want to buy Gwyneth Paltrow’s v-scented candle?  I think not, mon ami.  You can’t make this stuff up.

“Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities” (Daniel Boorstin, American historian & educator).  Might the new normal following our time in the throes of pandemic, include some dissolution of a few celebrities, and highlight a few heroes?  Hopefully so.

Those celebrities who’ve attempted to insert themselves publicly into the discourse of the pandemic have been mostly and embarrassingly cast aside, as irrelevant to the discussion.  How they shelter-at-home in their multi-million-dollar mansions, along with their household help, might impress one of their tribe, but just doesn’t hit home with most of us.

Because a real celebrity is typically an oxymoron, maybe the small circle of people who know who we really are, should be the ones to whom we look for advice, appreciation and acceptance.  It shouldn’t be necessary to fabricate who we are with glue and paints, all for the want of being celebrated, famous, wanted, appreciated, or placed on a pedestal to be admired. 

Maybe our handful of “you guys” who know our hearts, and not just our names, will do just fine.

“I’m not dumb but I can’t understand,” is from Lola, the 1970 song by The Kinks.  The song is about an ordinary guy attempting to sort out the ambivalent gender of a transvestite named Lola.

I’m not dumb because I’m from rural America.  It doesn’t mean I’m dumb if I’m trying to sort out stuff and occasionally get it wrong.  There’s so much to process through my little gray cells these days and it’s easy to be confused, fooled, duped, or harassed for what I believe.

Nor does it mean I’m dumb because I’m “older.”  My adult daughter had to keep me from assaulting a Sam’s Club cashier for telling her, with me invisibly standing there, fiddling with my membership/payment card that just wouldn’t work, “sometimes these older people get confused with technology.” 

I thought I was calm when, accompanied by “the look,” I said, “I’ve  successfully run a business for over twenty-five years and I daresay I may be adept at more technology than you are,” when I felt my daughter’s hand gently land on my shoulder, keeping me from leaping into that woman’s face.  She rolled her eyes, dismissing me as dumb, in spite of my cogent argument to the contrary.

We’ve all gotten words mixed up, believed an old wives’ tale, forwarded a hoax on social media, or been the victim of a prank.  Who hasn’t named the wrong name?  Have you ever been fooled once and then turned around and done it again?  You’re not dumb for having made mistakes.  You’re human.

You’ve got gumption, for trying.  Even if you failed, you had the moxie to make the attempt.  Sometimes the limb breaks when you step out onto it.  That doesn’t mean every limb, or even most of them, will break.

“They” point fingers and say, In the “fooled me once, fooled me twice tradition,” shame on you, shame on me.  We all seem to be walking around ashamed of ourselves for saying the wrong things, falling prey to a scam, or lately, we’re shamed for our racial identity.  Pay no mind to “this they,” says Hercule Poirot, of Agatha Christie’s imagination.

I’ve long-observed (commencing in the mid-eighties when my husband developed a jazz program at a traditionally black, land-grant university in Kentucky, and I supervised a reading lab in the developmental studies program), that African-Americans freely use the n-word among themselves and it is not considered pejorative.  But, if a white person uses the same word (I can’t even imagine doing so), it is highly debasing.

This isn’t a double standard.  It isn’t apartheid.  It’s two subcultures in contemporary America, living out their cultural mores (pronounced morays, as in the eel) in intersection.  I wonder if we could more simply, “live and let live” (1622 from Dutch trade policy).

 “Politically correct,” is a concept originating around the time the song Lola was released, and when at around twenty years old, Denise Bouch and I worked in D.C., she at Sharpe Electronics and I at Auto-Train.  She was invited to an African-American co-worker’s wedding in the south, and I was her plus one.  Long story short, we were the only white faces in the crowd, and were seated, quite literally in the back of the church, sort of segregated. 

As I recall, we thought, “okay, in this setting, this is probably where we belong.”  Were we comfortable? No.  Did we belong?  Not really.  Did we kind of want to retreat to the familiarity of home?  Probably.

If I were to compare how we felt at that southern wedding to some people of color all across this nation, being relegated metaphorically, if not literally, to the back seat in every building they enter and every institution they engage with, I might come close to describing Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 academic bandwagon of “white privilege.”  I don’t love the term, because it reads to many a white psyche, that it’s about individual privilege, which many individual whites do not enjoy, nor do all people of color suffer from it.

The term, instead, is about belonging, and who’s in control of the gathering.  Just because I’m invited to someone’s party doesn’t mean I’m made to feel welcome once I get there.  This may be the reality for some, if not many American people of color.

During the pandemic quarantine, a saying circulated on social media: “I miss people, places, and things.  I miss nouns, really.”  About nouns, we all sort them into mental boxes.  We organize our nouns into categories in order to keep track of the over-abundance of informative stimuli coming at us, to make sense of life.

This innocent sorting of nouns can run dangerously close to a bad sort of classification, called prejudice, bigotry, racism, stereotyping…. or not.  It either is or isn’t bad, based on intent.

“There’s only one race, the human race.” From my perspective, this is a kind, inclusive sentiment, acknowledging the value of every human being.

Unfortunately, there are some intentional, and mean-spirited racists and bigots among us.  It may not be realistic to think we will change their individual prejudices through education, protest, shame, or rioting.

Nudging a racist out of their comfort zone, literally, might help them see the light, or not.  Seeing other parts of the country and how “the other side” lives, might show, not tell a racist what it’s like to wear the shoes of another, or not.

I’m not an activist, called to fight systemic racism or join any other fight.  However, following Edward Hale’s example, “I am only one, but still I am one,” I can live the best, open-minded, life possible, expressing kindness to everyone I meet; and not be ashamed for the life I was given.  I can encourage others to do the same.  That’s what I can do.

Judging other’s categorizing, based on the intention of their heart is tricky business. Juries get it wrong all the time, maybe as often as they get it right.  And that’s the best system we’ve got.  Perhaps God, alone, knows the intentions of the heart.

Life is complicated and there are so many details and fine distinctions in these politically correct, hyper-sensitive times.  For example, those of us who’ve said, “we’re all in the same boat,” to mean, we’re in this viral contagion together, thus the term pandemic, have been corrected to say, “we’re all in the same storm, but in different boats.” I get it; not everybody’s experience is the same with the big issues we have in common.

But one could also see it as, toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe, or, “same-difference.”  It’s so very easy to be misunderstood.

There’s often an optional section at the end of a survey, “for classification purposes,” where you indicate your race, age, gender, ethnicity, education, and income.  I wonder, since it’s optional, who opts in and who opts out?  What possible statistical purpose can this information serve if the population participating is optional?  Do only poor people answer surveys?  Do people of color answer surveys but opt out of the classification section?

Most of us acknowledge it’s a privilege to live in this bucolic, rural, geographic setting and we’re grateful.   But many of us know, here is not everywhere.  Some of us have been, not everywhere, but many a somewhere else, to have seen a thing or two.

I learned back in the 70s when I got my driver’s license, that along with privilege comes responsibility.  As to our diverse perspectives, identities, and beliefs, might we responsibly extend mercy as we have received it?  Can we please exercise the common courtesy of opening doors for one another, and mind our manners?

From Lola and me, “It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world,” that some of us are trying to understand. 

There’s so much to say on this subject, I’m not sure where to begin.  So, why not start with good ole’ Pennsylvanian, Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers, that is.

Many of today’s young American adults grew up alongside the kindly Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, on PBS television.  His cardigan sweaters and gentle demeanor helped children feel safe and nurtured.  He was a helper.

Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”  There’s a boatload of scary news to navigate these days.  There are also many helpers, to combat it.

Primary for me, to the concept of helping, is the helpmate, originating with the word, helpmeet, from the Bible’s book of beginnings, Genesis.  The creation story has wo-man, fashioned from man’s rib, as an uber-companion/helper, “meet,” or created intentionally and precisely as his spouse, joined to him at the hip, almost.

We were created together, as a pair.  He was an unfinished work, without her.  One shoe, when you have two feet, doesn’t do you much good, but a pair will take you anywhere.  This sounds like Dr. Seuss, but alas it is Mrs. LeVan.

We don’t hear that word, helpmate, used so much in today’s parlance for marriage partner, spouse, husband, wife, girlfriend, or boyfriend.  I wonder why the word fell into disuse?  Perhaps because we’ve grown an attitude of “I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”  (Note: stay alert, lyrics from the Beatles song, Help! will be interspersed throughout this piece.)

We Americans are an independent lot.  Way back when, Frank Sinatra proudly sang the other American anthem, “I did it my way.”  We were a nation fully ensconced in the “look out for number one” mentality by Sinatra’s time.  Trained to think primarily about ourselves and do what helps “one” the most, we shunned helpers, turning them away when they offered help.

It’s too remarkable not to mention a prophecy from the Bible’s, 2 Timothy, chapter 3, about the self-centered character of this age we live in.  Is it smack dab on target or what?

“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, ungrateful, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, conceited….” (paraphrased and abridged).  What can I say?  Help!

“When I was younger, so much younger than today.  I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”  I think it begins around the age of two, or maybe three.  “I’ll do it myself.”  With my child, it was with storybooks.  Having memorized her favorites, she no longer needed mom or dad to read them, she took book in hand, turned pages willy-nilly, and recited the story herself.

Help.  It’s not an utterance reserved just for crying out in a crisis.  But we often feel ashamed to ask for it.  I shouldn’t need help, should I?  If my parents raised me right, shouldn’t I be prepared to do stuff by myself?

“But now those days are gone, I’m not so self-assured…. Help me if you can I’m feelin’ down.  And I do appreciate you being ‘round…”.  Then we grow up a little bit and moments creep into our lives when we find that we need a little help.

Suddenly, it seems, we need a helper.  But not all the time.  Helpers.  How many Human Resource professionals have heard the phrase, “I just want to help people?”

Back when handicaps became disabilities, we were told that some people don’t want our help, even if they appear to need it.  How does one know when to help others?  It’s unclear, unless you ask.  And even then, they may respond, “I don’t need any help,” when clearly, they do.  Oh well.

Just the other day, at the grocery store checkout, I couldn’t resist helping the conveyor belt move my stuff toward the cashier.  I reorganized the stuff as it too quickly passed toward her, fruit with fruit, deli stuff together, veggies with veggies; oh no, the blueberries were with the canned beans!  I laughed but sort of panicked as I nearly threw the blueberries (“clean up aisle 3”) at the scanner, and said, “I’m sorry.  You probably hate it when we try to help.”  She was gracious but almost certainly agreed, likely muttering in her head, “crazy lady.”

My husband is an awesome helpmate.  The Beatles sentiment, “I do appreciate you being ‘round”-thing, fits us to a T.  He’s there with me in the ups and downs, through thick and thin, sickness and health, all of it.  But sometimes his “help” just isn’t necessary.

For example, after he says, “I was just trying to help,” I’ve been known to say, after cleaning up a mess related to too many cooks in the kitchen, “I didn’t need your help with this.”

Again, at the Everett Foodliner – is everybody this brutally transparent in the grocery store – when we shop together, my spouse likes to help with the bagging.  If a bagger is not immediately at the ready, he asks if he can do the task.  The cashier usually lets him have at it because he’s so willing, but there is a reluctance, in that it’s not his job.  Cashier calls “number 3” or some such code for “get a bagger here now.  Some guy is trying to help us bag.”  His help isn’t needed after all.

As I grow older, I agree more and more with the Beatles in saying, “And now my life has changed in oh so many ways.  My independence seems to vanish in the haze.  But every now and then I feel so insecure.  I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.”  John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in their early 20s when they penned these words in 1965.

We still should ask others if they want us to help.  Our good intentions can backfire and our offer to help can seem spurned, if they want to muddle forward by themselves, in their own way.  Also, the help we offer might not be the kind of help they want.  Again, oh well.

Helplessness is a feeling most Americans with a traditional work ethic find hard to stomach.  We want to do something about it, “it” being anything that needs attended to, fixing, or helped forward.

We can’t help it.  We grew up in a broadly, working-class system.  We were born into an ideology known originally as the Protestant Work Ethic.  In this ethic, hard work, discipline, and frugality result from values espoused by Puritanical Protestant faith.

Helplessness and hard work are two concepts that do not correlate.  So, if we find ourselves in a truly helpless situation, where our efforts are useless, oh my.  “Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.”  And, I’ll “get by with a little help from my friends” (With a Little Help from My Friends, The Beatles, 1967, Lennon-McCartney).

“I need somebody     (Help!) not just anybody     (Help!) you know I need someone     Help!”

Is a house eternally a “Fixer-Upper?”  I fear this is a rhetorical question.

I can think of three principles driving the concept of DIY.  One is an outlet for one’s personal creativity.  Another is frugality.  And the third is based on the thought that “if you want it done right, do it yourself.”

I’m not sure if when we do it ourselves, it’s fair to say it’s always done right, with “right” being a relative term.  But, when you do it yourself at least it will have been done the way you wanted or intended it to be done.  Maybe DIY is a reflection of hope.

Okay, I’ve succumbed to the pressure of redecorating, under quarantine.  Prior to this secondment, my philosophy about fixing-up our house was directed to our daughter, and I believe it was out loud.  It went something like this, “You can do anything with this house when we’re dead and gone.  I, however, have done all the fixer-upper stuff I’m going to do with this place.  At this age, I have zero, zip, zilch, nada interest in DIY.”

Well, sh–!  There I go lyin’ again.  I’m telling you, like I said in that other column I wrote about DIY being a slippery slope, redecorating couldn’t be more infuriatingly slippery.

Wheee!  Here we go.

This time it started with a new living room rug.  Having had the rug for more than twenty years, our newest cat has been finishing it off slowly and excruciatingly over the last three years of his furry, soft, purring, anthropomorphized personage, wrapped in killer claws.

Also, it’s classic and pretty flowered pattern of rose, peach, blue, and teal colors on a beige background, in 2020 parlance, all-of-a-sudden screams grandparent style.  It has to be replaced.  I’m a grandparent of sorts, a step-grandparent.  And I love that kid but he has nothing to do with keeping me in the 90s as to our décor.

Then there’s the wallpaper border (what were we thinking), with subtle peach vine y-flowers on a beige background.  I think we’ve already been through this, grandma.  That border holds us back in some way.  It has to go so that our décor can advance our bodies and souls into the 21^st century.

The wallpaper border is the more slippery of the DIY slopes.  It skates awfully close to remodeling.  It requires a lot more commitment to the process than does a new coat of a different color of paint, which is almost a requirement of redecorating.

I’m grateful that my DIY husband doesn’t mind painting.  Our daughter actually likes to paint.  Painting is not my thing.

As to that border, I, like a fool, believed the home-grown advice on the Internet that a little spritz of vinegar-water (let stand for 15 minutes) and a heat gun applied to that wallpaper, and voila, it peels right off.  Yeah, sure.  For me, it was 45 minutes later, 3 gouges, and half of my orange vinegar squirted on that blessed wallpaper border, and, if I stretch the truth a little, I got most of an 18-inch space of paper removed.

My hands cramped up all evening, mimicking Actor, James Coburn’s famously arthritic hands.  My fingers spastically tried configurations like Star Trek’s Vulcan-salute introduced by Spock’s Leonard Nimoy, which I could never accomplish before.  Thanks for that useless skill, wallpaper.  Then there was the hammer-toe of multiple fingers.  That position was fun.  Don’t you love my clinically eloquent descriptions?

I think tomorrow I will change my methods, having found some DIF left over from our daughter’s removal of her bedroom wallpaper border when she transitioned from tween to young adult.  Maybe I’ll keep you posted on our progress, or not.  Maybe we’d all just rather forget it. (Tee-hee, update: the DIF worked as advertised; spritz the gel, wait 15 minutes, and it pulled right off, for the most part.  We used a heat gun to enhance the process.)

I’m the visionary in this DIY process and I have two visions.  Neither scenario has anything to do with that border but both are born from my need to hang on to and re-purpose that old living room rug.

First, it would just fit our master bedroom.  This, however would require repainting that room.  Don’t ask me why, but trust me, it would.

Then, our antique bed frame, a family heirloom, needs TLC repair/maintenance for the dozenth time and our almost-as-ancient mattress/box spring needs replacing.  Believe it or not, this is the simpler option.  But, when did we ever vie for simple or easy around here?

Option number two for a new home for that darn rug, is to restore our once finished basement back to living space from its many years of various levels of water damage and relegation to a storage-only space.  This is truly skirting the remodel word, and it sort of terrifies me.

Walls, ceiling, sump pumps, dehumidifiers, professional consultants, load-bearing walls, trenches….  These things start to scream a lot of work and a lot of money.  These concepts conjure visions of backhoes and not the Bob the Builder ones from the dreams of little boys and girls but the nightmare ones that unearth skeletons happily buried years ago.  Welcome to the DIY slippery slope.

However, we’ve lived long enough that part of our roadmap legacy to our child and her family is the concept that the upheaval which almost certainly comes with DIY redecorating or remodeling, often, if not usually brings beneficial change to your thinking as well as to your dwelling.  When you’re in it, not so much.

When you’re in the midst of redecorating or remodeling, it’s a mass of confusion, turmoil, spats, differences of opinion, changes of plan, dirt, dust, messes, and the like.  This is not a task for a troubled marriage.

Soon, thereafter (not the marriage, but the job) you notice the good stuff, the benefits, and I don’t just mean the job completion.  You notice that not only has your dwelling changed, but so have you.

For example, just prior to the pandemic inspired paper “shortage,” we bought our customary 6-pack of Corona beer, just kidding, other things come in 6-packs, like paper towels.  I noticed today that we still have two rolls remaining.  Hm. Why is that?

I instituted a new household policy to use paper towels only when it’s too icky to clean up with a peroxide soaked rag or soaked sponge that has been sterilized in the microwave for two minutes (thank you Mary Hutchings, my Renaissance-woman, older sister).  The beneficial result has been a massive reduction in our use of paper towels.

We’ve always tried to employ the three R’s of conservation (Recycle, Reduce, Reuse), but habits sometimes encroach upon our ideals, it seems.  Since we burn our paper and most yard and garden debris (some argue that’s a carbon issue but in our small quantity, I doubt it’s measurable and the conservation effort is likely acceptable), we didn’t pay attention to the quantity of paper towels we used.  But the hassle of restricted supply during the pandemic panic buying of paper products, redirected our attention to a place where we had grown sleepy.

Thank you again inconvenience.  Once more you have, in your characteristic style of seemingly misdirection, guided us to a better place.  “It’s all good.”

I’m not a big fan of that saying because to me, it smacks a little bit of denial.  For example, when I see not- so-good stuff in the wind and someone says, “it’s all good,” something doesn’t sync for me.

I wonder, however, if this contemporary missive derives from the scripture, “All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes” of Romans 8:28?  The literal implication of this scripture implies that the good stuff atop the boatload of bad stuff – all stuff mixed up together in a stew, might just turn out to serve me in the end, as a benefit.  If I hang in there.

When our daughter was a toddler, a friend of ours, a former kindergarten teacher, gave to us a bunch of books.  Thank you, again, Janice.

Among the books, the one that became one of our favorites was, “If You Give a Moose a Muffin,” by Laura Joffe Numeroff.  Sixteen additional books in the series, began with, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.”  But the Moose/Muffin one remains our stalwart favorite.

Having read the Moose book a million times and simultaneously having embarked on one frustrating DIY project after another, on a budget, I wrote the ditty which follows in the Joffe, Moose/Muffin tumbling, compounding style of the slippery slope.  I take no credit for the style, but the experience was mine.

Rather than pulling my hair out in exasperation, and because bumps and ridges cover the entire real estate of my scalp, I felt sure I couldn’t pull off the bald look, so I wrote.  Have you heard of journaling to communicate with yourself about, and unearth, what’s happening in the depths of your psyche?  Perhaps this technique prevents baldness.  I don’t know, but it’s a theory.

Speaking of frustrating, how many of you, new to the homebody-corps have done some, maybe a lot of, redecorating or remodeling, DIY-style, in the 2020 weeks of quarantine?  Some call it sheltering in place.  Most of us, I dare say, have worked a bit on our shelters, or our place, whatever you call your abode.  Whether our work could be called home improvement, I can’t say.  I’m not here to judge.

Here goes, If You Get a New Vacuum Cleaner:

If you get a new vacuum cleaner,

You’ll need new floor coverings to go with it.

If you get new floor coverings,

You’ll need new furniture to compliment the floors.

If you get new furniture,

You’ll need to paint the walls.

 

If you paint the walls,

You’ll need new window treatments to go with it.

If you get new window treatments,

You’ll have to have new windows.

If you get new windows,

You’ll need a new heating and cooling system to finish the upgrade.

 

If you get a new heating and cooling system,

You’ll need to switch to a gas stove-top.

If you get that new stove-top you’ve always wanted,

You’ll need an electric wall oven to go with it.

If you get a new wall oven,

You’ll need a new subzero refrigerator to finish the trio.

 

If you get a new refrigerator,

You’ll need new plumbing to go with it.

If you get new plumbing,

You’ll need to move the laundry room.

If you move the laundry room,

You’ll need to remodel the entire kitchen.

 

If you remodel the kitchen,

You’ll need a new bathroom to go with it, if you’re a woman, that is.

Kitchens and bathrooms.  Kitchens and bathrooms.

If you get a new bathroom,

You’ll need a soaking tub with jets, bidet, and towel warmer to go with it.

 

After you’ve relaxed your overworked remodeling muscles in the jetted soaking tub, you’ll notice you need a new sun-room to go with it.

If you get a sun-room,

You’ll need a new roof to cover it.

If you get a new roof,

You’ll need a new porch to go with it because you’ve always wanted a porch.

 

If you get a new porch,

You’ll need a new garage to go with it.

If you get a new garage,

You’ll need a new lawn shed to clear out the mess and keep the garage tidy.

If you get a new lawn shed,

You’ll need a greenhouse with a rainwater recycling unit, attached to it.

 

If you get that greenhouse,

You’ll need the driveway regraded and repaved to go with it.

If you get the driveway regraded and repaved,

You’ll need a new car to go with it.

If you get a new car,

Drive away from that old house as fast as you can!

And take your new vacuum cleaner with you, to clean the car.

 

Once you’ve entered the slippery slope of DIY redecorating and/or remodeling, nothing is found to be as simple as the theory.  Always, at first thought, it seems like it will be a straightforward process.  Then, reality sets in and all of a sudden, you’re a whole mile and a half past simple. And, all plans of frugality – thus the whole concept of DIY – fly out the window, that you just installed last week.

 

By the way, I know a good Realtor if you just want to sell that old house.

“Say my name, say my name,” is the catchy chorus to a Destiny’s Child song (1999) about a cheatin’ boyfriend.  The remaining lyrics have nothing to do with this piece, but that chorus certainly does.  I could add a relevant lyric of my own: If you want to hand me fame, say my name, say my name.  Repeat, again and again as many times as possible.  A few famous first-name celebrities, whose names we’ve all heard a few million times, include:  Exhibit A: Beyoncé.  Exhibit B: Cher.  Exhibit C: Adele.  Exhibit D: Madonna.

Honestly, have you ever checked a box on a ballot, one of twenty choices running for office, lets’ say for judge in the 419^th district court, because you’ve heard or seen that particular name somewhere?  I’m truly and civically sorry, but I have.

His or her name rings a bell.  Factoid, I think this saying derives from Pavlov’s experiment with a salivating dog, behaviorally-trained to respond to the sound of a bell, with a hunger reaction.  Can we be manipulated as easily as Pavlov’s dog, to want what we’re told to want by a powerful media master?

I recognized the name and none of the others, so I checked that box.  Maybe it had a ring to it, that name.  Maybe it sounded sophisticated or ordinary or smart or the charming kind of ethnicity that tickles my fancy.

It didn’t matter that perhaps I saw the name in the Criminal Court column in the newspaper or I saw the name in a smear campaign from his or her opponent’s political commercial on television.  The name was familiar so I checked the box.

If your name is familiar enough to enough people, you might just be a celebrity.  I’m no Jeff Foxworthy, but when a name has been repeated three trillion times, I may feel like I know that person, in the familiar but not really, “I know you from…somewhere, but I don’t know where…” kind of way.

It’s a fact of social science that the more people who know your name, the more famous you are.  Thus, the “no publicity is bad publicity” mantra of the fame-machine; the get your name out there in public, campaign of every Hollywood publicist worth her salt (can you say Kris Kardashian?); and every person whose goal is more followers and more friends on social media, are all publicity techniques in the game of how many people can I get to know my name.

Yes, it’s a game that celebrities strive to win at all costs.  And, they pay.  Sometimes they pay with real dollars.  Other times they pay with their privacy.  But often they pay with their dignity, and a moral compass gone haywire.

Why?  Power?  Clout?  Ego?  An antidote to poor self-esteem?  Or, is it as base as mo’ money, mo’ money?

Do you know the name, Alissa Milano?  First there was a television career, back in the 80s-90s.  Lots of acting roles followed, including hosting a fashion-design show.  Then she emerged, quite vocally in the “me too movement,” paving the way to a visible stint in political activism.

Besides a name, who is she?  And, why should anyone listen to her political or social opinions  as opposed to those of my neighbor or yours, or a preacher, scientist, therapist, attorney, plumber, doctor, teacher, barber, or bartender?

Why would we listen to a celebrity about anything other than the substance from which their fame originated?  Certainly, if I want to know something about acting, I should consult Meryl Streep, or Robert De Niro, and hear them out.  If I’m pursuing a career in vocal music, the popular version, or need to know what it feels like to wear a meat-dress, Lady Gaga is the one to see.  If a professional quarterback is my goal in life, then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consult with Terry Bradshaw or Tom Brady.

However, if I need help to decide who to vote for in the next election, should I seek the opinion of an actor, singer, or athlete?  Moreover, would I even consider their opinion as valid if they tell me in no uncertain terms, that I’m stupid, unfeeling, unchristian (or too Christian, whichever is more pejorative), deplorable, an unsophisticated degenerate hick, hateful of minorities, gays, women, illegal immigrants, and any number of others if I don’t vote the way they say I should?

On the other hand, might it be better before casting my vote, to consult an historian (or history book), a political scientist (or poly-sci journal), a retired lawmaker, with little to no vested interest in my decision?

I’ve seen memes (sayings) on Facebook, throughout the pandemic period, saying in essence, who’s essential now?  It’s not professional sports figures, actors, musicians, entertainers, artists and celebrities of every ilk (can you say celebrity-politician?), whose names we know without even tapping into our long-term memory.

It’s, guess who?  Retail workers, nurses, police officers, first-responders, doctors, and so many of us out there, with names unknown but to a handful of loved ones, friends, or maybe some hundreds of acquaintances we call Facebook friends.  We’re just going around doing our jobs, unsung, and not living in the realm of privilege, that celebrities call normal.

In the sociological literature, celebrity is boiled down to renown, literally the sum of all the people who have heard a person’s name.  “Herd dynamics,” and the “bandwagon effect,” perpetuate celebrity, upping the public discussion of certain individuals, exponentially.  Did you hear about…?

However, the “knowing your name” thing can backfire.  Like with most things, there are exceptions.  For example, Jesus is quoted in the Bible books of Matthew, Luke and John as saying, “no prophet is accepted in his home town” (paraphrased). 

Why? Maybe the thought goes something like this: “That’s JUST Jesus, the aimless, illegitimate, carpenter’s son who’d rather sit around outside the temple listening to esoteric meanderings of the priests than help his dad make a living.  Why would I listen to the stuff he’s spouting?”

It’s about HOW you know that person.  For example, when I say the name, Dolly, do you imagine Dolly Parton, Dolly Madison, or Dolly, the advertising animated-cow?  Could you readjust your imagination to elect Dolly, your president, when you knew her as the four year old kid that ate her boogers or the teenager that the popular kids called a slut, or the drunk college girl who streaked the coed dorm and would have been charged with a sex crime hadn’t her powerful mom made the charge disappear?

It begs the existential question, “can anybody ever really be ‘known’?” and William Shakespeare’s equally philosophical question, “What’s in a name?  that which we call a rose.  By any other name would smell as sweet.”

(stay “tuned” for part two…)

 

The raison d’ etre of my writing this piece was teased out of my dream-like memory-store, in the form of the theme song of The Jefferson’s, an old television show.  It went like this in my head: “we’re movin’ on up, to the East Side, to a de-luxe apartment in the sky…we’ve finally got a piece of the pie-ie-ie-ie.”  Then there were references to baseball, “Now we’re up in the big leagues…Gettin’ our turn at the bat…”.

Back in the day, the 1990s specifically, and before a certain friend called Pam Foor rocketed to the top, and deservedly monopolized the genre, I won the Hershey Cocoa baking contest at the Bedford County Fair.  I have the brown ribbon from Hershey and the Best of Show blue ribbon from the Fair, stuffed in a cupboard behind some old cookbooks, to prove my win.

My next-door neighbor deemed me Betty Crocker or Suzy Homemaker or some such moniker indicating my locally publicized baking prowess.  For five minutes, it was heady stuff being recognized for something I had baked.  I didn’t fare so well at the Farm Show in Harrisburg in January, searching high and low for fresh mint in the middle of winter, and failing, to garnish my mint chocolate cake. I knew nothing about nor cared one iota for “decoration.” My poor step-sister of a cake looked anemic and sad.  But those who love me assured their Cinderella, “I’ll bet it tasted better than those ‘show-pieces’ that probably tasted like cardboard.” 

It’s been twenty-five years and compared, I don’t bake much anymore.  I lost the verve.  Besides my specialty Christmas cookies, birthday cakes for my husband and daughter, dictated by tradition, and the odd enticing new recipe, baking is in my past.  Until this week.

My other next-door neighbor and I share a “waste not want not” philosophy about food.  Having to throw out food feels to us like we’ve squandered a resource.  So, we both have been known to get creative with our food stores and often bake or make meals with what’s on hand.

We have some apple trees.  Last year’s apple harvest was good and given my relative disinterest in baking, I had quite a bunch of apples stored.

This week, “quarantine boredom” hit me.  I’m ever so grateful to be healthy and safe.  However, the stay-at-home rule, for those of us who have abided by it, has made a few of us, the word for it in the common vernacular is, crazy!

So, yesterday I baked an apple tart, from a recipe found many years ago in a Gourmet Magazine.  It became a favorite apple recipe, first for my mother-in-law, then me.  I also tried an apple ginger upside down cake which sits firmly in the okay-but-will -toss-the-recipe, category.  Given my baking reluctance, recipes that don’t rate in the can’t-live-without-this, category, get binned, as the Brits say.

Tomorrow or as soon as I can muster the baking-energy, it will be an apple cake and an apple pie or two, for my husband.  He’s a “real American,” who loves apple pie.

“As American as apple pie,” originated in the 1860s.  The 1974 ad jingle touting apple pie along with baseball, hot dogs, and Chevrolet, personified this pie as American.

I don’t like apple pie.  Not even a slice, a piece, or a taste.  In fact, pies in general get a response from me of a neutral or disinterested “meh.”  Of all the dessert categories to choose from, pie is at the bottom of my list, unless we’re talking peanut butter pie.  But I would argue it is a parfait atop a graham cracker crust.

And, cutting a pie into pieces.  I can do precision but I’d rather not.  I’m not all that fond of rulers, and in my kitchen they just don’t belong.  I’m not even keen about the pie chart.  It’s too exact.  I want some leeway, wiggle room, space for creativity and imagination.

It comes down to temperament.  I’d rather write the explanatory essay than answer true or false; “well, if you mean this…, then it’s true; but if you mean, that…, then, it’s false.”  For me, there are too many ifs, or if you need to be scientific, variables, in the true or false and multiple-choice question-answer format.  I’d rather explain, sometimes in detail.

So, the American dream of upward mobility, with its baseball and apple pie were alive and well in the 1970s when The Jefferson’s aired.  I wonder if the American Dream, the concept coined by Writer and Historian, James Truslow Adams, in his 1931 book, Epic of America, remains relevant in today’s cultural landscape?

“That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”  In 1931, the same year the Star-Spangled Banner was adopted as the United States national anthem, and the nation saw the Empire State Building completed, experienced the Dust Bowl and lived the Great Depression, those words outlining the American Dream were penned.

Notice that in 1931 the apple pie of opportunity was divided among each and every person who contributed to America via “ability or achievement.”  In a way, we were all relieved of the duty to contribute to the nation through our abilities or achievements, when President FDR, from 1933-1939 instituted The New Deal as a temporary umbrella to help America through the financial storm of the Great Depression that produced widespread financial hardship.

The Jefferson’s worked hard to climb the ladder to their de-luxe apartment in the sky and to get their turn at bat.  It “took a whole lotta tryin…Just to get up that hill.”  And, they were African-American.  No excuses.  Opportunity was limited.  However, those who were determined to accomplish the dream, worked, sacrificed, and persisted, until they achieved their goal, located some steps up the ladder.

Theoretically, those who could not work, via disability of any sort, were and are helped by the necessary New Deal programs that remain as an umbrella for the hard times.  Social security and Medicare, although part of the New Deal, were and are “insurance-like” programs that workers invested in through payroll deductions, to reap the benefits at retirement when working would no longer be an option. 

If nothing else, I believe perhaps today’s perceived path to the dream has put a kink into the dreaminess of the dream.  Are today’s American dreamers biding their time with hands out, hoping for pie in the sky?

Work was always built into the American way.  The predominant rule for getting a piece of the pie, which is to work hard, can be followed by anyone who wants a chance at the opportunity formerly known as the American Dream. 

Have some pie, and Bon appétit.