Metropolis Unbound

Learning How to Write, All Over Again

2012-01-12T23:36:00.000-05:00

I haven't written in a long, long time. It's the longest span of not-writing I've ever had in my life. I'm 34. I haven't posted in over half a year. I haven't written more than an email or an article for work. I have had... I have taken some time to think about if and how and what it is I want to do with this thing I can do... And I'm still not there, but it's time to start writing again.

I have begun doing "those little things that need doing" around my home. I got a new shelf for my cabinet. I figured out how to replace the little bulbs that illuminate my stove (Ikea. Duh.) and a new spice rack. I bought a mirror to hang over my bed. I got frames for the photos I mean to hang. I figured out how to arrange my books to look less hoarder and more... just organized and good at life.

That's a phrase a friend uses when she's flummoxed or has hit a roadblock or needs to figure something out. "I'm not good at life." It just means there's a new problem that you have to work out, and it's not "right there", but it's a cute, yet self deprecating, way to think about it.

If you're not dead, you're good at life.

And I haven't always been that good at life.

(Jump ship and forward to the end if you want to skip the parts where things get hard.)

I've been thinking a lot about why I haven't been writing, what it is I would write if I could, and what it will cost me to be that honest. Yet, as I have grown, I have realized that the honesty I so feared has disappeared. I can no longer espouse absolute truths. I can offer my perspective on this that happened to me. But nothing ever happened just to me. That is the gift of growing up. Realizing that even in the deep, dark, bloody center of your own universe, you are a point at which dozens of lives interact. You are your mother's child. Your father's daughter. Several people's grandchild. The sister of many. The cousin of dozens.

More people were intimately involved in "that thing about you" than you realized were possible.

I know what I did. I know how it happened. But I know how it happened to me. Now how you saw it, or she saw it or he saw it. Or they saw it.

You get the point.

It took me... 28 years to learn the difference between these things, and again come around to being able to say "this is what happened" and accept that it was just my point of view, yet accept that as a story worth telling. It is not an absolute. It is never complete. But I am embarking on a quest. I hope to interview my doctors. Ask others to write (please reach out if you'd like to write?) and hopefully craft both a first-person memoir of a horrible thing, and a story that views a thing from different perspectives, which I hope will also touch and enlighten me. I want to know. I am finally, finally, not afraid of asking questions.

I finally learned what my old therapist always told me. That my stories of suffering hurt me to tell more than it will ever hurt anyone to listen. Because our listeners offer us love and comfort and do not share our pain, guilt, fear and shame.

They listen to help us feel better, because telling is the ultimate salvation.

When we share who we are, we forgive ourselves. I want us all to forgive ourselves. Lofty, yes. But I think hearing how we think things went down.

Case in point. A child sat in the front seat of a go cart and she couldn't reach the pedals. She put her hands on the edge of the seat. She pulled her body down so that her legs reached out, her back lay flat against the bottom of the seat. Her long, brown hair fell into the crack between the seat bottom and its back. No axel cover protected the whirling bar, covered with sticky grease. That bar curled her hair and pulled so hard it tore her scalp from her head.

Her mother ran behind the go cart, she told her. She pushed it, to make it go faster, and pushed too hard. The child fell backwards, the force knocked her down. Her hair caught. It was her fault She pushed too hard.

Who is right almost doesn't matter, since both stories will forever dictate how the teller lives her life. Unfortunate. I could have saved her so much sorrow, if she just knew I did it by accident.

I can't remember, now, ever having been angry with myself for that slip -- the slide and the catch and the fall... I never blamed anyone, Christ, let alone my parents. I always knew I lived only because they were right there to save me from what was just a terrible accident. I wrote "tragic" and erased it, because my life, while it has had its trials, has been anything but a tragedy.

The Long and Winding Road

2011-07-06T01:09:00.002-05:00

"Touch your forehead," I say to Cecilia. I want her to feel the sweat, the flesh, the weight of her forehead. It has substance. It acts. It reacts. Feel what you are made of, I think.

"Now," I say to her, offering a feel of my own to someone NotMe for the first time in my life--that I had control of. "Feel here." I guide her fingers to the fleshy, warm, wet skin of my temple. "Feels the same." I move back.

"Now, feel here..." and I guide her fingers to the thin, darker skin of my forehead. "Feel here."

I can see her face change. She moves through expressions of discovery. Realization that what she expected to feel was not what she found. The skin is smooth. It is tight. There is just skin, and then there is bone. There is no fat. There is no muscle. There are very few nerves. I do not flinch under her touch. I can barely feel it.

I tell her I was one of those people they tested skin expanders on. My hair was once one quarter of the hair on my head. We spread it. No one knew the consequences.

1.) I overheat when exercising. I have about 1/4 the pores on my head as the rest of you. When I run, play tennis, lift weights, I do not have the physiological ability to cool off through my head like you do. It took me until I was in my 30s to figure that out. Why I turned so read doing exercises my body was fully capable of handling.

It also explains why when my parents wanted me to wear hats skiing, why I said no. I wasn't losing that much heat. I was warmer inside because I couldn't lose that heat through my head.

I still can't.

2.) Head massages are useless. People seem to love head massages. There is a little patch on the back, left side, that has what I assume is mostly real feeling, and that feels very nice. Move off that one inch, and I am indulging you. Sorry.

3.) I have resisted getting wrinkles. Perhaps it's because I have lost those sagging muscles and my skin is pulled so tightly that it won't sag... Maybe it will later. I should perhaps not be shy about having that altered in the future. It was done enough in the past.

4.) If someone is operating on your face, ask to be put to sleep all the way. One of the awfulest things you can experience is the sound of someone cutting your face. The sounds it makes when they are sewing things up, when you are awake and can hear them, but you cannot feel them.

It was my last. The last I would let happen.

The last time I would live as someone who needed to be fixed.

Writing that makes me realize the strength 18 year old me had, that was lost on my own self as I grew older, thought men mattered more, thought being beautiful meant more than being me. I have never thought twice though, about that decision I made then.

I am done.

This is as fixed as I will ever be.

Take me, baby, or leave me.

For My Grandfather, An Homage to Unconditional Love

2011-05-14T14:42:00.000-05:00

I found this photograph going through my things to find the letter Phatiwe left me on the day she died. My best friend passed away six years ago today and left me a letter. I was going to make myself read it. And share it. And live by what she wished for me. It was aggressively loving and kind.

But what I found instead bears as much weight.

It's a photograph I took of my grandfather, with his favorite pie -- strawberrry chiffon. A strawberry-filled creamy delight with flaky doughy crust. Sublime. He is gleeful. I am as well, photographing it for my graduate school class. Photojournalism. Events. Making sure you capture "that thing". It's the thing I do best with the camera. In this he poses. But that smile is actually just for me.

We used to fight over how big a slice we each got, and I'm not sure it was always in jest.

Taking this photograph is among my top 3 memories of him.

First, when I was leaving for India and would miss Christmas for the first time, he came to me with an issue of National Geographic about a drought in India. If I went there would be no water! I'd die! I assured him that the family I was traveling with were doctors from NYU, and they would not let me die. I got some kind of parasite... But I came home safe and sound. He lived four more months. I will not write about our goodbye. I have that image seared in my brain. I hate it. I love it. I share with with some of you. I hope to never understand his quiet determination in those days. He did it out of love, I think. That impish glint in those eyes above. "My pie. But I'd give you the moon," they say.

Second best memory of my grandfather: sometime after I graduated from college... Oh. I guess there are more than those two. But this one first. Maybe they are the same memory...

The night before my Dartmouth graduation I sang my last set at the Lone Pine Tavern, the campus pub where I performed every other Friday. We packed the house. And sitting in the front was my family - grandmother, grandfather, parents, sisters. And the friends who had come dozens of times to support me because they loved me - and maybe liked what I was doing. Or they just loved me and knew how much it mattered to me. It was sweet and powerful and I was shy and shining at the same time.

I remember singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and meeting Jamie's eye, and seeing how proud my family was, me singing before my friends.

I was the only one of his 19 grandchildren that my grandfather watched graduate from college. He never did. I think I did him proud. At least I hope I did.

Later, when I was writing or in publishing or something, my grandfather said to me "after your graduation, I thought you'd be going into music or something, but..." I can't remember the rest. I just remember thinking he though I'd be a musician, and was proud of me, and that made me realize my own ideas about being an artist and being a success were not at odds with one another. I could be an artist and still make my family proud. He was ready to love me whatever I chose. And to support whatever that was. The least-likely supporter, in some ways, of a singer, painter, actor, writer... but that is my own prejudice about what people like. What entrepreneurs who build businesses that build stadiums should value. I thought he would think my singing was silly.

I was wrong.

I will always cherish that. And try to remember it in those times I beat myself up for this or that. Whatever failing I imagine in myself. And I will try to remember... I sang a song once, and my grandfather thought it was good enough that everyone would want to hear me sing.

And staring down my 34th birthday, I wish I could embrace myself that fully. I watch my niece, "two in June", and I see her dance. And by dancing, I mean moving whatever part of her body she thinks should move to whatever part of any song she sees fit to move to. We clap. We spin. We wave. We bounce. I adore every single move she makes. In my eyes, she can do no wrong. I adore her, and cherish her smile, with a love I didn't know I was capable of feeling.

When I am with her, we exist in a realm without self-consciousness. We exist in a place of pure joy.

Which is what I see in my grandfather's face in this photograph. That place families live. When we all just say, "Yes, I love you."

I Curate My Life Through Twitter

2011-03-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

Twitter, when used, I think, in its greatest capacity brings together the social networky-ness of Facebook and the pervasive Interwebs roundup that is the Google Reader. I find the Google reader interface to be too overbearing and I never have the time or patience to scroll back through things. I'd rather someone give me a 140 character blurb about it with a link and I can go read it, or favorite it to go back to later.

And you can find some fascinating stuff. I got a copy of a journal called Afterzine in the mail the other day because I wound up following the man who edits it because I followed the Paris Review blog editor because my neighbor Caitlin used to work there and so I followed her too. I bought the journal because its founder said he'd give half the proceeds to a Japan relief organization. About a day or two before every retailer started trying to use the earthquake for marketing.

For an indie journal printed in someone's apartment in Brooklyn, it seemed an appropriate way to raise money for a cause. For J Crew, it just seemed douche-tastic.

But poking around Twitter unearths a treasure-trove of tumblrs and blogs and articles and journals and novels and news about Book Court and what happened when four New York Times journalists were kidnapped and the crazy shit Fahmiwrite's kids say. (They're awesome.)

And sometimes I can make y'all read my stories.

Renaissance Redux

2011-03-19T00:45:00.000-05:00

So much has happened. So many things found and lost and my heart was broken again, but by someone from whom I least expected it.

I stopped writing.

I stopped wanting to share. The days were dark. The nights were long. It was always snowing. I was broken.

But I had weathered much harsher storms. And so I emerge. As one does. Slightly softer. Slightly harder. Not who you expected you would be. As you perhaps did, once the snow finally melted and you remembered what it was like to squint because the sun was shining.

I had a lot to say, but couldn't be bothered.

Now, I ask again. Indulge me.

What I've Learned About Freelancing

2010-10-07T18:26:00.002-05:00

Well, there are several things, but at the top of the list: Freelancing is hard work. Finding gigs. Getting things done on time and well, while keeping your different audiences in mind. And getting paid. That last part isn't nearly as easy as you would think.

A major media corporation has owed me $450 since May, and I don't know if I'll ever see that money. Others, like AOL -- which I'm giving a shout out because while I think they could pay better, they have a really great system -- automate payments and keep their freelancers happy. AOL pays every month, on time, directly into my account. Hooray!

Another thing I've learned is that I HATE running a business. I hate figuring out taxes. I hate marketing myself. I hate drumming up new work during slow times. I hate watching people go to work on days when I've managed to find myself with nothing to do but think about pitching stories, finding a steady job or moving to Italy and opening a bar for expats in Naples.

Other things I dislike? Figuring out how to get/keep health insurance. I've been using Fox's COBRA coverage since I left last year, and I have until February. That's not going to cut it after that, and I'll likely insure myself through the Freelancer's Union if at that point I'm still self-employed. But it's a hassle, and I do get a bit paranoid each month until they cash my check that it's gotten lost and some mishap of the U.S. Mail will mean I join the ranks of the uninsured.

Don't get me wrong. There are serious perks. For example, I am never late for work. No matter how late I feel like sleeping. Which is great for someone like me, because, well, morning? Not my best time.

I am free to come and go as I please. I go to the gym in the afternoon when it's not busy and watch Oprah on the elliptical. I can fly to France at a moment's notice and don't have to get anyone's permission. I can choose what I write, when I write and where I write.

I am ultimately free -- with all the glory and burden that encompasses.

I am an army of me. And a marketing department of me. And a communications department of me. And an accounting department of me. When my computer breaks, I have no IT department to come fix it. When my Internet service goes down, I either have to find a coffee shop (which isn't always a bad idea) or pirate it from a neighbor who hasn't password protected their router.

It's also the loneliest job I've ever had. There are no co-workers to gossip with or about. I have no one to vent to when a story isn't going well, when I've had a shitty commute or when my coffee has overturned all over the inside of my handbag (Don't ask.) I even miss those nights at Fox when we'd order Chinese food for dinner, hemming and hawing over the menu, then discovering a cheap place on 8th Ave. that would deliver AND had delicious wonton soup. It was back during my wonton soup phase.

So, I'm looking for ways to work out in the world. I want: companionship, steady work, steady paychecks and to write about something interesting. Good thing I find lots of things interesting.

Making Lists

2010-09-20T00:37:00.005-05:00

Imagine this.

You work your way through a an Ivy League college. You go to a top tier law school where you work hard. Excel. You land a job at a prestigious New York law firm. You spend your twenties working, sometimes living in the hotel across the street from your office. You never get to really see the city you moved thousands of miles to experience. You move to California to try and get a life. You get laid off. You get a job. You get laid off again. You haven't dated because you've been working your ass off for a decade.

At 30, you are diagnosed with incurable, inoperable cancer.

The woman I've described is real, a few details tweaked, let's call her Alice. An old friend -- who has known Alice for many years and loves her very much -- is planning ways to spend time with her. I haven't seen my friend in almost 10 years, but tonight we stood on a Manhattan street corner for an hour, talking about life. She's had a lot on her mind. Trying to be a good friend. Struggling to deal with hearing her friend talk about last times.

I have had those conversations, and when you know you're having them -- as opposed to the last conversations you don't know are your last -- you let go of some of the bullshit we put between ourselves and each other to make things hurt less. This is going to hurt like hell. But I'd rather have no regrets -- and tell you how much you were loved -- than protect myself. I have lost a friend like this.

What do you do with the time you have left? When you realize things really are as fleeting, as precarious, as we all pretend they are not... Who are you?

Riding home on the subway, I thought about D., my baby niece. I babysat her today. We went on the swings and the slide in the park. (The slide is very competitive. We didn't fare well.) I made a video of her eating pudding. When she hurt her hand, not only did her mom have to kiss it better, I did too.

I thought about Alice. She wants to do things with her nieces, whether they'll really remember her or not. They are babies.

I would want D. to remember me. To know that I held and and hugged her and kissed her boo boos. That I rocked her to sleep in my arms after some man broke my heart, and promised I'd try to keep her from ever knowing what that felt like. That I let her sleep snuggled against my shoulder, and though it was the cutest thing ever when I woke up to find her looking at me and say "hi." I would want her to know what my voice sounds like. What I like. What I look like. How very much I love her.

Sometimes it's hard to let people in. I've talked about this before. Sometimes just when we decide to open our doors to someone, they slam theirs shut. Or we never even work up the nerve to really show ourselves. Most of our little secrets aren't that sexy, and falling in love involves a lot of illusion, up until it doesn't.

I wrote a list once for an old lover of things he never learned about me that I wish he had.

I'll share some of it here. Little things that show my flaws, my strengths and my quirky nerd side. My softness. My secret regrets and should-haves... My wishes, favorites and near misses. To remember me by.

I don't really like eating fruit very much, but love raspberry sorbet.
Sometimes I drink too much and fall asleep on my couch.
I am afraid of having to raise kids on my own.
I love Greek yogurt with cherries and primate photography.
If I had to do it again, I would have double majored in biology and economics, but I'd still be a writer.
I feel like I wasted a lot of my twenties sometimes.
I sometimes wish Lucy were Harold. I miss him even more than I miss you sometimes.
I used to steal books from the bookstore I worked in.
I subscribe to the newspaper but never read it. I just want to make sure it still exists.
I wish I liked fish and mushrooms.
People think I read a lot more than I do.
I spent months reading trashy online fan fiction when I worked the night shift; I was that unhappy.
I loved things about you that you probably didn't notice about yourself.
A friend once talked to me about wanting to wake up next to his lover every morning and be grateful that he got to be there with her that day, and many others. I thought that about you.
I wish I had a window in my bedroom.
I love cloth-bound books and paperbacks of unusual size.
Sometimes I wish I had become a doctor.
I like my toes but not my fingers.
I love the smell of salt marshes, musk and jasmine.
I felt a little bit smug when the vampires in Twilight wanted to go to Dartmouth.
I have never been able to fall asleep very easily. I'm torn between wanting today to be longer and being afraid of tomorrow sometimes.
I never trust my intuition, but it's usually right.
I love Tom Waits' "Jersey Girl" song.
I don't always think $1,000 is too much to spend on the right handbag.
I am afraid of riding in cars in the passenger seat, but not so much in the back. Driving isn't scary.
I like being able to do push ups now.
I let myself believe the Magic 8 ball speaks the truth when it says what I want to hear.
I will spend all day watching the Lord of the Rings if it's on TV, but never put on the DVDs I own.
I want children but am afraid of being pregnant.
I think Twitter is silly most of the time, but do it anyway.
The first time I tried Scotch I was an exchange student in Scotland. I thought it was terrible.
I totally judge people by the contents of their book shelves.
I love best that time of day when you first wake up and are half-asleep and your body is perfectly rested.
I touched the South China Sea and the Arabian Sea before I set foot in California.
I don't really care if I get to all 50 states someday. Some of them don't seem that awesome.

It's a start.

Potential? I gots it.

2010-09-07T17:54:00.003-05:00

Those of you who know me have likely heard me mention Trainer.

Trainer is tall and has arms big enough to crush your average mortal. He's the kind of man who people stop on the street and stare at because he's both strikingly attractive and in ridiculously good shape. He is also my personal trainer. We hang out almost every day. And when you see someone every day, and you're on some sort of cardio machine sweating buckets and he's standing there... or you're lifting weights and he's counting... you have a lot of time to talk.

From the sound of things, a lot of his clients are talkers. While huffing and puffing on the treadmill, I listen, silently cursing him for making me do sprints at 8 m.p.h., which makes me think I am going to die (maybe someday I'll look back at this and think Aw. I thought 8 m.p.h. was fast! How precious!)

I know more about him than I do about some men I've dated. I know about his cousin. I know about his mother. I know what his philosophy is on exercise and life and that he wants to have his own show. I know that he thinks people need to slow down in relationships and get to know one another before sex makes you lose your head. I know that he wants a Bentley. He wants to be famous. He's ambitious. One time he told me God had brought us together so that he could help me be the best I could be. (And show that guy who broke my heart how hot I was, but I digress.)

That's what we talked about today -- while I was doing pushups and then while he was stretching my legs and then later when we were just standing there (before he put me on a treadmill for my post-workout workout...) -- we talked about being the best you can be. About realizing your potential.

He had recently met a life coach and motivational speaker who had talked to him about his life and his potential, and he had some very interesting things to say...

Trainer is a few years younger than me, but has been a trainer for 14 years, but the coach asked him what he had to show for it. What do you know how to do? What can you do? You train people. We know that. What else can you do? What do you want to do? How have you shaped your life to get you there?

Have you lived up to your potential? Are you holding yourself back?

He talked about how one 20 minute conversation with this coach had made him re-think how he wanted to focus his time in the next 15 months, what he could do differently that would get him where he imagined he should be. Now, trainer has an ego. He wants to be part rock star, part fitness coach and part Dr. Phil. When you listen to him talk, perhaps he'll be able to do it. "Not perhaps, Jennifer. You've gotta talk about things like they're already done. Like you've already succeeded."

How do you realize your potential? What do you want? How will you get there?

First, you have to know what you want to be. Who you want to be. You have to think about who in your life is helping you get there. Who is realizing their potential -- or working toward it. And who is holding you back -- intentionally or not. (Are the people in your life striving to be better or are they complaining about how they don't like what they have but don't make any changes? You know you know someone like that... Probably several someones...)

It made me wonder what I was letting things slide. Where I was falling down on the job, so to speak, of making my life what I want it to be.

Working out with him has changed my body, my mind and my attitude about what I'm capable of doing. I carry myself differently. I expect more of myself. I don't sit around in my apartment wallowing in woe-is-me self pity. But how good can it get? I want to be able to run a 10K. I'm not there yet, but I bet I can do it. I'm stronger. I can do pushups. A few months ago, I couldn't do a pushup. Singular.

But there are so many places I can see I let myself down, when I sit down and really think about it. When I look at what I know I'm capable of and then what I do. How I live. The choices I have made. If I want what I say I want out of life, what have I done to make that happen?

Nobody wins the U.S. Open without practicing their serve. Day in and day out. For years.

I talk about writing a book. I talk about wanting to create something. I talk about a lot of things. But what do I do? I'm never going to afford that Brooklyn brownstone of my dreams on a journalist's salary. I'll have to settle for affording it because I'm a best-selling author.

If you're going to imagine potential for yourself, you might as well dream big. Now, to actually do it...

Second Chances

2010-07-07T13:51:00.004-05:00

I know I have been a harsh critic of Elizabeth Gilbert in the past, but I am giving "Eat, Pray, Love" another look, and I think perhaps the first time I read it I was not in the right place in my life to get much out of it. I found her navel-gazing irritating. Her flakiness maddening.

But sometimes in life you have to give things another look. Re-open old books. Give old relationships another try and see if maybe who you are now will be more compatible with the other.

I am reading about Gilbert's experiences with meditation, grieving and letting go of old loves and her old life. Opening yourself up to the new and trying to move forward. It's harder than I would like it to be, and reading about her experiences has helped me both look at things in new ways and has made me feel less alone.

There's a conversation I read last night about letting go of your old connections -- in her case her last lover -- and even if you love them and wish them well, you have to stop obsessing and open your mind so that the universe can fill it with love and its new possibilities... I liked that. It made me sleep well, and I haven't been sleeping well.

Someday You Will Be Loved

2010-06-21T19:52:00.005-05:00

Love is not a reward for good behavior.

Letting yourself forget that makes for sticky, messy times and eventual heartbreak. It's a thought I've been having, thinking about conversations, relationships and the experience of my friends.

But that's not why, on the longest day of the year, I can't bring myself to watch the sky. For the first time in a while I feel comfortable in my own skin. Safe in me. Not hiding, just being alone. At home. As alone as one can be with a kitten attacking your feet with every trip to the kitchen.

I have been trying to decide what I want and what I can do to make it happen in the wake of my own minor tragedy.

I believe you can fall for someone in an instant. I believe in love at first sight. But its the dedication, the reverence and the steadiness that get you past that first flush.

And we never had that. With this one, I hoped it would come. I had begun to think it was growing. But it isn't something one can do on one's own. If I could have willed it into existence, God it would be taking over Brooklyn right now, casting its shadow across the city. I wanted him that much.

Things do not always take the course we would like, and sometimes, letting go of your hopes and embracing reality is a scary path. It's hard to accept that you have no control over the course your own life takes when you imagine a future that's contingent on someone else's choices.

It's hard to accept things in which you are not given a say. To have something inflicted upon you without letting yourself become a victim in tragedy -- whether Shakespearean or playground variety.

To let go of someone you believed was yours.

I loved how much he loved his garden. I loved how his hand felt in mine. I loved how he would sigh and smile and lean over and kiss my temple.

I made space for him in my home and in my life. I bought him a toothbrush.

Yet, I did see myself becoming less myself vying for attention amid the swirling chaos of another person's life. I could never have lived like that for long. I'd have evolved into a shell of me, and I have done that before. You wind up as dry and brittle as a snakeskin. Cast off. Frozen in time. Wondering why you weren't as valuable to someone as a nap.

I felt like I had to sometimes jump up and down and wave my arms and say "Hey! I'm over here! Remember, the woman you held as you slept last night. Who you kissed goodbye this morning and smiled down at like she was the sun."

But I wrote this myself, in my post on family:

But, and I have both learned and hoped that this is true, those who love you will take whatever curve balls you throw them -- whether it be having a "not eating carbs" phase or finally confessing your own battles with suicidal depression, addictions and fear -- and they catch them. They might bobble the ball. They might even drop it. But they will pick it back up. And hold it, staring at it lovingly and solemnly.

And then they will look up. And really, really see you.

And love you even more.

That's what we all deserve, and if that's not how we would feel about each other, perhaps he has done me a favor. I wanted to see him. He chose otherwise.

Love is neither a reward for good behavior nor something one needs to fear losing when one truly, beautifully, opens.

It only gets stronger.

In Memoriam ... Phatiwe Sharon Cohen

2010-05-11T23:50:00.004-05:00

It has been five years since I got that phone call. The "I have lied to you because she asked me to... come now," phone call.

I was maybe ten miles away.

I did not get there in time.

On May 12, 2005, between the time Sophie called me to tell me Phatiwe was dying and the time my sobbing, hysterical self had navigated the suburban Boston roads to the hospital, she leaned over to do god knows what... and a tumor in her body pushed against an artery leading to her heart, and she collapsed upon herself.

They kept her on life support for themselves -- and for me. To wait for my arrival. Minutes too late. To hold the hand of the woman my 27-year-old self considered her best friend, because she was. I was hers. She was mine. We sat in my Honda Civic late at night, parked on the side of Whichever St., and we told our stories. We laughed. We cried. We worried. We imagined futures where she was okay. We imagined my life far, far into the future.

It was the first time in my life I was grateful to have gone through surgeries, so that I could comfort her, knowing of the pain, the shock, the horror of waking up with the body you did not go to bed with. It was the only time my knowledge was ever useful. Could ever help anyone else through their own suffering. I think maybe I helped her sometimes. I think. I hope. I imagine.

When I arrived at the hospital, having parked in the garage, trekked to her floor... Sophie told me she was gone. I took too long. I was too late. I held her hand, her still, yet warm, hand. And I told her I didn't have anything to say... I had already told her everything there was I could think to talk about. I loved her. That was all there was. It was all I could say again. I love you. I squeezed her hand. I cried.

I walked out of the room, leaving her father to say his final goodbye.

In the waiting room, I wailed. I cried like the universe was collapsing around me. She was gone. My mother and father arrived before the end of that day. Friends traveled to meet us. I remember picking out her funeral clothes. I remember sitting in the front pew, shaking with grief, watching everyone else say goodbye to the first person I ever... the first person I ever died with.

When someone chooses you as the one who dies with them, they take more from you than they realize they ever will. They know it will be hard. But they of course cannot know the aftermath. I fell apart during that year she died. And it took me five afterward to put myself back together again. To be able to hold someone's hand and be consumed with excitement and possibility instead of fear and loss.

I moved to New York weeks after she passed away (sorry Shamus, but it worked out for the best, no?) and abandoned my job, my life, the home I had built for myself. I had been recruited by a technology magazine weeks after Phatiwe's death, and when I told them no thank you, I was moving to New York, they said "fancy that, our headquarters are in New York..."

And so I left. I left and I never went back. I have never, in five years, visited her grave. I wouldn't know where to find it. I won't go back to our haunts. Our neighborhoods. Our friends had moved away over the years -- by the time she was sick, everyone was gone except the two of us... She and I went through her death alone. And I say I don't visit because when you live in New York, everyone comes to you... Which is true in its own way. But I also have buried that city in my soul. It was where WE lived. And where SHE died.

Five years ago today.

I have a gold Oriental (tacky enough that its the only way to describe it) fan that hangs on my wall in my bedroom. My bedroom is otherwise entirely tasteful. I have a photograph of her and me, standing at the base of my parents staircase. I have an envelope of photographs I took to display at her funeral that have sat untouched for five years, and I have the letter she wrote me.

It seems a cliche. The letter one leaves for a loved one at the end of things.

But she left one for me. One that I read only once and then put away. She hoped I finally saw how wonderful I was. (I just read it again. Now it just makes me smile...)

Who was she? She was a spitfire. She was fucking feisty. She drank Long Island Iced Teas. She listened to the Rolling Stones while hustling people at pool. She talked about gin and tonics like they were the gospel. She loved super-sweet Dunkin Donuts iced coffees in the morning -- which I learned that summer between my graduate school semesters when I built my days around waking her up and driving her to work, stopping at a different Dunkin Donuts every day. Our late night drives, drinking Starbucks grande Mocha Valencias (caffeine bombs!) while listening to Tribe Called Quest and driving around our white, upper class, somewhat-Jewish neighborhood like thugs. Falling asleep to "The Matrix" every night as soon as we put it on and then waking up during the big fight scene, turning it off and finally going to bed.

The time I had a date and she asked me to meet her first... and she told me she had cancer... And I still went on my date, drinking martinis like a fish and begging him to forgive me for being so terrible.

I called my parents, begging them to save her.

And on this day, five years ago, a broken shell of myself called our friends and told them she was gone. And then came to me and held me and my mother made us pulled pork and breakfast and took Michael to the ER when he had a weird lip infection. I remember saying goodbye. I have a few images of the cemetery. But mostly I remember being in the car with my mother, shaking with fear that some part of me was dying too. And maybe it did?

And now, five years later, that part seems to be one of those innocent parts that doesn't know dark things. And I miss her entirely. Sometimes I smell her smell -- black girl hair and a musky perfume -- on the subway and I do a double-take. I feel her presence around me. But I also do sometimes on the treadmill, when I am full of hate for the exercise and I know she would want me to keep going, because I really want that for myself. And that's all she really ever wanted for me.

Thank you, and God care for your soul always, Phatiwe Sharon Cohen.

I miss you every single day, even when I don't remember I do.

Questions to Ask Your Family

2010-02-11T01:36:00.003-05:00

I have been thinking a lot lately about family, about what it is we're meant to be, if anything, and how we make our decisions that guide us through life. And I stumbled again upon a project I first envisioned years ago, but which I would like to make a reality this year. "2010: The Year of the Family Interview".

Years back I read an article in "Real Simple" magazine that included a several-page questionnaire that you were supposed to ask your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers... It was a real "getting to know you" set of questions -- and I loved it. I fell in love with the idea.

And then it scared the living shit out of me. Oh god. Did I want to know. Did I want to ask my aunt how she felt about being who she was? Did I want to ask my grandmother if she ever regretted the choices she made? Was I ready to hear that all the fantasies I'd built my own life and ideas about love upon were really a system of compromises? Did things that hurt me hurt others even more? (My greatest fear, even now.)

Did I want to ask my dad what he remembered about his dad, who I never knew? My grandfather was born in 1906. He died in 1968. I always imagined that he would love me. Especially now that I see my own father look at my niece like she's the World's Best Thing (which today, she still is. future children, nieces and nephews, know you will be as loved!). I feel deprived of that love, even though the grandfather I knew was the most loving, accepting person I've ever known.

But something I read today made me think of that questionnaire from years ago, and my plan to travel and film my family. And it was really just a fun idea that touched at something I was both desperate to know and afraid to know. But why am I afraid? Why am I afraid to ask my family these hard questions? These questions that have shaped who we all became and how we molded and raised each other?

Perhaps therein lies the root of my fears.

We all grow up with love and with anger. We all resent things our parents do. We all worship our parents. We wind up going through seasons of love and hate and rebellion and hopefully, eventually, figure out how to make peace with the things we wished were different and the things we pray we have done right.

I think my fear of asking these questions comes from not wanting to cause anyone pain. To not see anyone I love cry. When I have read these simple, straightforward questions, and just reading them makes me cringe a bit, knowing the answers of my mother, aunt or grandmother will be as nuanced, as contingent on circumstance and on fighting for survival as my own would be... I am afraid because I know my own answers are not pretty. I wish theirs to be. Because you never wish suffering on anyone you love.

The only questions I can find online tonight are all addressed to one's mother: here. Godspeed.

But, and I have both learned and hoped that this is true, those who love you will take whatever curve balls you throw them -- whether it be having a "not eating carbs" phase or finally confessing your own battles with suicidal depression, addictions and fear -- and they catch them. They might bobble the ball. They might even drop it. But they will pick it back up. And hold it, staring at it lovingly and solemnly.

And then they will look up. And really, really see you.

And love you even more.

Me vs. That Lady From MSNBC

2010-01-27T00:55:00.000-05:00

“Every choice has a consequence,” the trim blonde with the chic bob tells Stephen Colbert on his Comedy Central show. She is entirely serious. “And that’s sort of what I try to lay out here. But I try to lay that out here.”

The pretty news anchor has written about how hard it is to be a pretty news anchor and a mom. God, I wish I could feel her pain. I wish I could think that her life was so tough and so compelling that I’d love to read about her struggles. Oh, to be a pretty news anchor and a mom and feel like making money was important. Just because I wanted to. Not because I had to.

Because some people actually have to, lady.

“You say that mothers shouldn’t feel guilty about having to work…” Stephen says to her… And she tries to combat him and says she thinks people should talk about this.

And I want to wring her naïve neck. Because while she kept her name (I likely may?) and she wanted to keep a job, but can obviously afford childcare and doesn’t have to worry about paying for that childcare and her bills… She instead writes about the guilt and compromises of trying to be everything at one time.

Now, I will give you that I’m not your average woman. I’m an Ivy League-educated writer who has taken months off from having a corporate day job to write, think about what she wants to be when she grows up and really just give herself some slack for the first time. But while the book I’m writing touches on a lot of personal subjects, none of them deal with how hard it is to be a rich white woman with a husband and two children and a career with a national cable news network. Nope.

I’m not an asshole.

Having spent years as a rape crisis counselor and fighting for women’s rights, I am a bit taken aback by her solipsistic memoir. But I suppose the pretty blonde news anchor point of view lends one to believe that everyone wants to know how hard it has been for you to be so pretty. Everyone relates. Really. We do.

I’m not saying I’m not pretty. But for the love of god, I will never hand any of you a book that talks about how I’m pretty and smart and “gee, I still have real people problems!”

Mostly because I feel like I’ve had some pretty unique experiences, perhaps unpleasant on a unique scale (I did have surgery on my face while I was awake at 18…) but I would also never assume that my experience of work and money were at all universal. I grew up with my parents. My father was a New Jersey surgeon. My mother is a nurse. But she took time off for years to care for her four children. We were a handful. But we weren’t poor. Far from it.

Am I being self-absorbed? Maybe. Selfish? Maybe. Delusional? I don’t think so. I think I have a good story to tell, and I’ve begun crafting that book. It’s scary though. Especially when I see people who I think have written their stories and are so very earnest. And I don’t want to dislike them, but then they show up on television pimping their tales and well.

Lady, I’m sorry you think it’s really hard to have a high-profile, high-paying job and have kids at the same time. That’s not a news flash. It’s the story of so many women’s lives. Oh wait, not so many after all. Women may be making strides, but we’re still not in charge. And as long as we make the babies, I think we will perhaps never want the lives we see men lead.

I am contemplating my future career and how it will work with motherhood in the next ten years. I want three. Maybe two. But hopefully three. Then they won’t just learn compromise, they’ll learn negotiation. And they’ll learn to stand up for themselves when the majority is against them. Three is a good number. (From experience, four is better because then the downtrodden has a buddy. The fourth never lets the cheese stand alone unless the cheese is really, really wrong…)

But I digress, as I often do.

I watched a storyteller talk about her lame story and got angry about both her subject matter (so?) and her mannerisms (stop feeling entitled!), but somehow feel my own story is better?

I guess I’m so anti-that-author because I’m both jealous and afraid.

I wish I were just a pretty news anchor.

Elegance Defined?

2010-01-25T15:19:00.002-05:00

At a party at my old apartment in Cambridge, Mass., down the block from the now-defunct but much beloved B-Side Lounge (which I learned met its demise in a divorce settlement, not because people stopped loving its decadent gouda skillet and unparalleled mint juleps), back in the day, a conversation started about elegance.

What was elegance? Who has it? What embodies it? Are some things inherently elegant while others never could be, even if Audrey Hepburn herself were to wield them?

(Sometimes its important to think about things that aren't very important. It keeps us from going crazy.)

Today some friends and I were discussing the recent trend toward formality in both dress and mannerisms in the younger generation after a piece on the LA Times blog "The Art of Manliness" defended its own propensity for nostalgia. A NY Times article last month talked about the return of the suit as a rebellion against the business-casual aesthetic and who doesn't love the art direction and dapper elegance of Don Draper in "Mad Men"? I told them about the party, the list and we started to come up with our own list of things that evoked images of elegance and nostalgia for things we never experienced... Following are a few we came up with:

Top hats. Manhattans. Audrey Hepburn. Oxford shoes. The Great Gatsby. Grace Kelly sunglasses. Red lipstick. Old Fashioneds. Steinbeck. Silk scarves. Pearls. A clean shave. French New Wave films. Brigitte Bardot. Aston Martins. Chanel No. 5. Gray leather handbags. Bowties. Charlie Chaplin. White Dinner Jackets. Old rolltop desks with old-school phones. Pintuck curls. Paul Newman. Trouser socks. Beauty parlors. Liquid eyeliner. False eyelashes. Whole milk. Extra butter. Heels with ankle straps. Leather journals. Convertibles. Ella Fitzgerald. Sailboats. Oysters at Balthazar. Real champagne. Good manners.

What's on your list?

My Favorite Phone Call Ever

2009-12-21T13:24:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a story for Slashfood about a man who claims to have found a piece of a rat's jaw inside a package of frozen vegetables he bought at a local Walmart.

So, I google the man's name and come up with one listing in Texas... I don't take the time, as a good reporter perhaps should have, to figure out if the town it says this man lives in is anywhere near the one that is listed as his hometown in the local news report.

But I put on my headset and dial the number. A pleasant, older-sounding man answers the phone and I introduce myself and tell him why I'm calling... A man with his name says he found a rat jawbone in his veggies.

"Do you think the Democrats did it?" he asks me, joking, but I get the feeling also somewhat serious.

I have no idea how to respond to this... "Uh, I don't know, sir," I say, wishing he had let me make a graceful exit when I told him I must have the wrong number.

"I bet those Senators are sneaking them in there for us Texans," he says.

I'm not even sure where to go with this. If I play along, what the hell am I talking about with this old man who is probably just screwing with me because I happened to call him on a random Monday afternoon. But I hate being impolite when I make work calls, so I just kind of flounder until he laughs and says goodbye.

Weird. Weird. Weird.

Sometimes Things Just Don't Work Out

2009-12-16T20:20:00.000-05:00

Simon went back to the ASPCA on Monday, taking a good chunk of skin out of my palm on his way.

We just weren't meant to be. Mostly because he liked to bite me and pee on my sofa and my bed.

Hello. My Name Is...

2009-11-18T22:42:00.001-05:00

Simon.

Which was the name I gave him the moment I met him. And I tried to pick him up -- this regal, orange tabby cat with light green eyes and, it turns out, a flair for mischief. And when I tried to pick him up, he tried to bite and scratch me at the same time.

"Too soon..." the volunteer said, reaching to take him away.

But of all the cats that had tried to, or succeeded in, biting me that day at the ASPCA in Manhattan, this was the only one whose bite didn't bother me. He was still purring. Purring when I put him down and he kept his distance, but still leaned his head toward me so that I could scratch. One. Two. Ouch! There come the teeth.

And his teeth don't bite. They just touch my skin. Even now when he's acclimated enough to want to jump onto the bed when I'm going to sleep (he still leaves) and when he springs up when I wake and he wants me to scratch his head (yet not moving my body... once I do he bolts.) He reminds me we're new. He throws down the boundaries with the human in the only way he can. Nibble nibble.

He has peed on my couch twice and my bed once. (Thank God for water-proof mattress covers.) His poo is the stinkiest as he has some kind of... issue. And he does still bite me after a handful of pets, and nearly took my eyes out when I went to trim his front claws. Lordy.

But I had forgotten how an animal unwinds around his human. I remembered the best parts of Harold taking to me. Not the way he would sit behind me and stare at the wall. Not the scars on my arms and chest from trying to clip his nails so that he would stop ruining my sofa, my rug, my legs. Because once you're in love with your pet, you take what it gives you and you shrug and hope its not afraid. At least I think that's how you feel if you take in shelter animals.

The shelters are overflowing. And all these little critters want is a safe place to sleep. A clean place. A few hugs and to forget that it's possible to be hungry. Everything that we take in deserves that. Animals in the wild starve. Suffer. But some animals we humans have chosen to take in and make our own. To use our skills to make them depend on us. To love us. To be our family.

But they are still animals and take their time trusting. Simon (who Alyce and I dubbed Pee-Cat for his talent for peeing in inappropriate places...) ventures closer to me every day. I reprimand him when he does something "bad" but I still am affectionate. I try to make him feel safe, but to know that "behind the television" or "on the windowsill past the pots near the screen" are not good places to be.

So, a new little man lives in my house. We are learning each others edges. We're approaching two weeks together. It's like an entire high school relationship. And I find myself sometimes angry and wanting to give him back. And at other times just melt in his wee presence. And I know that with time, we'll be buddies.

I can't replace Harold, my beloved departed cat, and that relationship. So I am trying not to hold it against Simon... not being Harold. Not being like Harold. And I'm learning to accept him for who he is, and to enjoy that. I am having to let go of my expectations and just see who he is. And do my best to make him as happy and as comfortable as he can be. I took him in. His safety, his life... is my responsibility now. I choose him. I owe him.

Welcome Home, new kid.

Magnets, Magazines and Gentleness

2009-10-20T14:48:00.001-05:00

I have a special place in my heart for the cheesy and sentimental, and on my refrigerator I have one of those "quotable" magnets -- the kind that make hipsters and self-styled artsy-types cringe.

Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. - Max Ehrmann

When I open the door to refill my water bottle or take out the half-and-half when I make coffee, I read it and I smile, and I try to heed its advice.

Make choices, but do not be hasty, it says to me. Trees don't grow overnight. Neither must I.

I don't know if I've recounted this story before, but I was on the subway in Cambridge once - the red line to Harvard Square - when a kid came up to me. He was maybe 16, and obviously stoned. His eyes were red, but he looked at me with a suddenly alert compassion.

"What happened to you," he asked, looking up at my forehead.

I told him.

He exhaled, mumbled something, and said to me,"You better spend the rest of your life taking it easy."

When I have told that story to people, they bristled. "Don't let that make you think you can be lazy."

At those times, I would stammer that of course not. I was a hard worker. I was responsible. I was what I was supposed to be. I follow the rules. Yes, sir. Why people in my life have been so convinced that on the inside I'm somehow deeply lazy is a topic for another day, but what I should have said was more akin to "fuck off."

Because I think I finally understand what that boy was telling me. Be gentle with yourself.

When people ask what I'm going to do next, I tell them I am freelancing. And I am. I will. I fully intend to make it happen. But then they ask how its going, and really. I've been back in the country for three weeks and lost my pet to cancer. I'm not exactly trying to pitch anyone right now. I'm mostly trying to feel like this life I've thrust myself into is in some way my own.

Which I confess involves a lot of sitting around looking at the spines of books, half-reading New York Times columns and watching episodes of Criminal Minds. I make stacks of things I intend to read. Herodotus. Henry Miller. The new Oprah magazine. I wonder for the thousandth time if Netflix is worth it. I make protein shakes with berries because I can't be bothered to think about actually making food. I wonder how the hell I'm supposed to figure out what to charge people for taking pictures of their kids or their weddings. I wonder if I have any idea what I'm doing.

Today I came across an article in that Oprah magazine by Anne Lamott, a writer whose book "Bird by Bird" -- about life and writing -- was a staple in grad school feature writing. Her article was about finding out who you really are... and it somehow reminded me of that gentleness I had decided to show myself to choose deliberately, without panic.

"I can't tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop. I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day I did stop. I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as a radical act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights," Lamott writes.

I smiled at her words. I've had bosses sigh with exasperation as I've gone shoe shopping while on deadline. When I've flipped through photographs, stared off into space, gone walking around Newburyport and come back with a 42oz. Diet Coke because I didn't have my story nailed down in my head yet -- I'd done all the work except the writing, but the writing -- the figuring out of structure, tone, cadence, nuance... Those things happen when you're not thinking about writing. Some other part of the brain shifts through the information and then poof.

It's time to begin. Thankfully, when on deadline, you can make yourself move faster, but for me it has always involved that seeming waste of time...

So here I sit, on a cool autumn afternoon, listening to the Decemberists. I have vacuumed my apartment. I have done some laundry. I have made lists in my head of all of the things I need to organize, to throw away, to create. And I will do those things. Even a cup of coffee can't be forced into being before its done brewing.

And I will write that damned book I have had in my head all this time, so maybe someday I will get to sit and read my own words in Oprah magazine talking about how sometimes stepping forward means stepping away.

Harold (??? - Oct. 15, 2009)

2009-10-15T23:55:00.002-05:00

I remember the day I brought him home from the ASPCA shelter on E. 92nd St. in Manhattan, way back in September 2004. I had moved to New York in August, and then I went on vacation in Turkey -- boat trip again -- and when I came back, I was going to get a cat.

So, I poked around on the Interwebs, looking at who was available at the shelter. I thought this orange cat Felix looked like a good choice. He was playful, from his description, frisky... But then I went to the shelter. I filled out the forms. Julie came with me, so my dad was my character reference... who reassured them everything was fine even though at the time I worried I was allergic to cats (I am not).

I walked through the shelter, meeting all the little ones in their cages. Then I went into the "Diva Room," which had scratching posts, lounging pads and a tiered area where the cats could sprawl, all with a window out onto 92nd St.

That's where I found Harold.

He was skinny. Mangy. His hair was matted and greasy. He had a stuffy nose, a scrawny face and the moment his bright green eyes met mine, I fell in love. He began purring as I scratched his head. He did his little head-butt thing, moving my hand to where he wanted it.

He wasn't the cleanest cat, nor was he the prettiest. But I can express it no other way than to say that he picked me. I went to see the rest of the cats, and when the volunteer asked who I liked, I said Harold... She was surprised. "Really?"

"Yeah. I'll take him..."

And so we finished the paperwork and they put him in a cardboard carrier. Julie and I walked him home down First Avenue. I had gotten litter, a box and some food the day before. I was ready.

I carried him up to my fifth-floor walk-up and put down the box. I opened its flaps and he jumped out. The cat book said to let them meet their space slowly -- I figured my entire 320 square-foot apartment was probably small enough to warrant giving him free reign.

He walked from end to end, jumped on my bed, and found the brown cat bed I had put on the windowsill. He turned around in it once. Looked at me. Lay down. Closed his eyes. He was home.

And he was happy there. Sleeping in bed with me, his butt always touching my back... at minimum. As long as he was touching me, he was happy. I could fall asleep with my hand resting on him, or he could be nuzzled against me from behind. That's all he ever asked of me. To sleep by my side.

We moved to Brooklyn. We had some roommates who loved him and gave him good head scratches. They were won over by his persistent affection and his oddly old-man savoir faire. He had style, that kitten.

We moved to our own place, and he took to it immediately. Our home. Mine and the beast. Because when you live with an animal, you really don't live alone. You share your space, your time and your heart with another living, breathing creature who depends on you and who loves you. And who you grow to love like he's your family. Because he is. Because the sun rises and sets in his world when you walk into the room. And because no matter what's wrong, when you scratch his head and he purrs, reassuring you that he's there... you know you'll be okay.

And most of the time you just hang out. I pet him. I brush him. He taps my mouth to let me know he's hungry. He swings around to roll over, but still wants to be touching my back with his... I woke up one night on my side, with a man pressed against my front and Harold stretched out, pressed against my back. He was having none of this intruder stealing me away. I just smiled and felt loved.

And today, after what must have been a long, long sickness, which only alarmed me in the past few weeks, Harold passed away.

The vet did an autopsy on him this evening and found out he had very advanced liver cancer -- incurable and un-survivable. A tumor had burst and he was bleeding internally. It probably all happened in the 15 minute panic between his first alarmed meows and me taking his limp, struggling body and running through the rain to the vet's office five blocks away. I saw him and I knew he was dying.

He was tired all day. But he purred when I pet him. I sat right next to him all morning. I slept next to him on the sofa all week. I was trying to love him better. But you can't beat cancer when it really takes hold. We all know that.

When I got him in 2004, the ASPCA thought Harold was about 5. So, I told the vet he was around 9. They told me he was at least 12. So, much older... had lived much longer before I got him than I had known. But I did what I could to make his last years happy years. And, for better or for worse, I haven't really had any work to do this week, so I spent the chilly gray days sitting here on the sofa with Harold. Reading, watching movies, petting him. Trying to make him comfortable, I thought, as he recovered from an infection.

I believed, until yesterday, he was getting better. And today, his tiny body finally gave up its fight. The vet was shocked that a cat with that much cancer was still alive... but he was alive, alert and purring this morning. So I know he had a happy life here with me.

The vet left me the nicest message. He is a good man. He kept telling me not to blame myself. And I don't. I can't. Animals, like people, die. It's the dark, cold truth that comes with being alive. But... oh God... what I wouldn't do to actually feel his warm little furry body in my arms, all tense because he hated being picked up, and just nuzzle his cheek and tell him I love him... Just one more time. The little sounds he made that let me know he felt safe and happy.

But I can't. I just wiped his stray hairs from my keyboard. They're all over my home. I put his litter box, his brown cat bed, other things too into the trash tonight. The scratching post he never scratched (it was where I was to dump the cat nip so he could rub his face in it...) The post is still in the corner. I had to keep something. But I had to make it one thing. There will be enough I stumble on to break my heart in the coming days and weeks.

So, I toast with the very expensive special-occasion wine I opened tonight in honor of Harold. Because he existed, was wonderful and I loved him.

Famous Last Words

2009-08-06T01:26:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow/tonight (the drawback of the night shift is that evening to you is the middle of the night to respectable society...) Anyway...

She told me I came and sprinkled fairy dust on her... And Tom told me my laugh was contagious. I am sorry to leave them. I do so like them all.

The first night we really worked together I made her listen to a random song I'd fallen in love with on monkey speakers (Ruchi again!) plugged into my iPhone. "Snails" by The Format, a total indie rock band. Apparently she was wigged out by the old lady who played 'country music' for her on stuffed-monkey speakers on their Sunday night shift.

That damned song was stuck in my head for days. Days I say!

But as the months passed, and we were isolated from our lives on the night shift together, we got to know each other very well... And I'm blessed to have her in my life. Taryn. And Avinash. My snarky comerade in late-night banter. They kept me sane as the sun set, reflected against Manhattan office towers, as I sat and wondered what more...

And I could say so much, but what I want to do most is leave a little shard of... both wisdom and advice seem arrogant... but perhaps I leave ideas to ponder as you pursue your careers, life, love, happiness and fulfillment.

1) Always do your best. No matter what your task, even as a lame duck, do the best you can do despite unfairness, others not pulling their own weight or feeling inadequate. Show that you are putting 100% in, and you can't fail. You will always know that you gave it your all, and that is invaluable.

2) Life is not fair, but never tolerate abuse. Sometimes you will find yourself being taken advantage of, or you will realize that someone has drawn a longer stick than you in the lottery of... Yes. That sucks. It's shit. But life is not fair. Priviledge and inheritence and just straight up luck exist. But never let anyone cross the line and manipulate you. Tolerate unfair until you can either rectify it or move on, but don't tolerate anyone taking advantage of you. That you control.

3) You control your own life. We have our parents, friends, bosses, lovers. But the only person whose head you will ever have to occupy or whose life you will really experience is your own. Fight like hell to make it what you want to experience. If what you do is not fulfilling, change it. If how you are isn't making you happy, change it. The universe is essentially flexible. Shit happens that we must endure, but how you handle that is always your own choice.

4) Respect your own ideas. Throw them out there. Some will be shit. Some will be stellar. But who knows if they only live in your head? Don't be afraid to be shot down.

5) Fucking laugh all the time. Things might suck, but embrace any moment of joy you can. It makes things way more fun.

I will miss you guys. Spending our nights shooting the shit and dreaming bigger. But I promise to push you to make "bigger" your reality. You will, of course. Change is inevitable. But I wish for you purposeful change when it can be achieved. Sometimes it cannot. Sometimes it is thrust upon us.

But when we get to have -- and exercise -- our ability to choose...

We can walk into the unknown without fear.

Trust yourselves. Always. You do know. You do.

The Tipping Point

2009-07-30T10:49:00.010-05:00

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

I read those words at my high school graduation, during a speech about living without regret. At the time, it was mostly a speech to myself, about how I was going to not dwell on the things I'd suffered in the years before. I was going to college. I was being reborn.

But as my high school English teacher Linda Prady told us as we read "Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston... as you move through life things change meaning based on who you become when you experience them.

When I was in Italy last month I re-read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and was surprised to find it a bit flat. Uninspiring. In my memory, it was an astounding novel. Having read more. Written more. Lived more... Its revelations were the revelations of my youth. Maybe in the 20 years since it was written our ideas about time, love, sex and history are different. Or perhaps in the 10 since I last read it my own have changed.

Perhaps both are true.

Two road diverged... diverge... At times we stand on a precipice, and we are forced to decide which path we will chose.

In three days I will turn in my ID badge and my Blackberry and I will have officially chosen to walk away from a very safe, very comfortable, very respectable job with a national cable news network, having been given sole responsibility for the contests of its web site two nights a week and written dozens of articles... I am walking away from something thousands would fight for... Forgive me.

But I will walk away to see what it is that I've been so furiously trying to make.

I am a cynical scientist, but I am also vulnerable to belief in something... greater? To call it that seems naive. But I believe I know when we've done right by ourselves. By others. By the world. I know something more exists than myself and that which I can see.

I want to make a gallery of double-exposure Holga photographs. I want to learn all about The Blues. I want to read Herodotus. I want to absorb everything. I want to let myself believe...

I lay on the sofa in my grandmother's sunroom, sleeping, before my grandfather's funeral. And at 3:33 a.m., the lights and television turned themselves on. They did. I had turned them off. It was a funeral. I had not been drinking. I had fallen asleep in the dark, after turning the television off.

They came back on. They woke me. At 3:33 a.m. the lights and television turned on in a dark room and woke me. Me. The skeptic.

I mentioned it at brunch, uneasy... maybe I was wrong? But even if I were wrong, it had happened. My mother told me it was him. My grandfather. His favorite number was 333.

I don't know if I can accept that. This ghost story. All I know is that the lights and television went on just then. And nowhere else in the house.

My mother swears its a sign. From him -- the man who believed I'd be an actor until he saw me sing at my graduation from Dartmouth -- I was one of the performers in the tavern the night before graduation. Singing and playing my guitar. Then he thought I'd play music. Until I went to India... When he shoved a National Geographic in my face to show me how they were having a drought, it wasn't safe...

I promised I'd be safe. I was going with the chief of pediactric infectious diseases from NYU, or some such title (Ruchi?), and they were not going to let anything happen to me... I was taking photographs.

I took photographs of strangers going through the motions of their lives. I had studied photojournalism, and I was fresh from my internship with Washingtonpost.com... I was a maniac. I think I shot 25 rolls? Back when people took pictures with film. That shit cost money.

But I let it go... I let it go for a man and a dream and a life that never came to be, and followed my writing down another path, because it came with both easier acceptance and less threat. I can craft a paragraph like nobody's business.

I have just torn my apartment apart looking for a photograph from Istanbul that I wanted to scan... What could I have done with it?

When I find it, I will post it.

But I digress.

Two roads diverged, and I gave myself a deadline. I gave myself until August 6 to jump, or else who knows how long I would have waited. But I did it.

Fly.

What Matters to You?

2009-07-22T02:45:00.002-05:00

Tell me.

I want to know what you think before I go on... What forces are the strongest when you make a choice that will change things? Because I am wondering if I have been following the right ones, the wrong ones or if right and wrong don't actually even matter at the end of the day.

(Not in an "I am a criminal way".. more of an "Is this me, or is this me being afraid" way.)

I could have turned in so many ways, but I turned in the directions I did. Wound up with the things I have. The choices and the consequences. Am I unhappy? With some of them. In the grand scheme???

I would have imagined a different set of things, but I don't have those things. But what I do have was never a choice I would have known I would have...

I don't know if I make sense. I am swimming in ideas. Regrets. A half-baked state of affairs. I usually wait longer to write, until I have set something in motion.

But right now, am recently off my first break from the place of business -- a vacation in Italy with dear friends -- the first that had been on the horizon in a long time. My last was in New Jersey. Before that, the Spainish Inquisition. (God bless my lawyer.)

I again saw New Jersey -- down the shore. And I saw it as I had never seen it before. As a place I belonged. As a place that was meant to be a part of me, not a place I had to flee to make myself important.

Who could flee such a thing?

Surely not a woman who spent most of her life dreaming about the ocean, the sea, lapping waves.

The most soothing sound will always be that of the ocean. The best smell the salt marshes when you finally hit the right spot on the Garden State Parkway. Ocean, salt, sand. Coconut-laced sunscreen. Sweat and tennis practice. Bathing suits and the crunch between your teeth of a beach-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How far we come, to go back home.

La Vie Boheme

2009-07-20T02:08:00.004-05:00

I come from a line of artists. My mother paints, photographs and creates jewelry, among other things. Her passion for creating things -- above and beyond creating four lovely daughters -- is almost insatiable.

My father, a surgeon, apparently dreams of both fishing and painting -- making paintings. I had seen a small painting in his closet, when I was a child, of a... was it an old mill on a river? I just remember its colors.

But they share that thing.

My father's father was an artist. He designed cars. Planes. Machines. Created.

And my mother's father told me before he died that he thought I'd be a musician, but for some reason that art has always intimidated me more than the others. I can sing. I can play. I can feel my way through a song. But I never had the training one needs to do it for real. I resent that a little. My piano lessons fell by the wayside when my teacher moved when I was 11. I want to learn classical guitar. I think I shall.

I almost went to art school. Instead, I went to Dartmouth.

And now -- now I find myself wondering how to leverage these eyes. The hazel/olive/golden-green eyes that, I think, maybe, can see things. I pushed myself to study photojournalism. I claimed writing came easier... but it comes the same. In fact, the pictures -- framing, seeing, making art -- comes more easily than the words. I can make pictures every day. The writing must fester in this over-wrought brain. I feel self indulgent tonight. I'm certain to annoy. Solipsistic. Je suis l'etat.

We sometimes make choices because we think we need to prove ourselves. To whom, when we really get down to business, often exposes our insecurities.

I do what I do because I needed to show everyone -- to show myself -- that I could. That I can. But it is not enough.

It is far, far from enough.

My circumstances have given me the gift of choice, but I have always chosen the safe, mainstream, "right-for-my-career" path. But I have never chosen the path that was right for my heart and soul. For the things that long for release. Sharing the things I see.

Thinking about my last post, it echoes the same hesitancy to feel superior/important/listen-to-me that I shun.

We carry our parents burdens. My own feel a class disparity that I fall on the wrong side of, to some in my family. I was picking up a low-budget purple chenille sofa from a discount furniture store with my parents, in the Jeep SUV that I would eventually trade for the cost of "towing it off the lot because the cabin filled with fumes... thanks parents..."

My father turned to my mother and all I remember was "and your family were the workers..."

Not even the exact words, but I remember. And she was furious. It was the first time I had seen him breach that divide. Iron and steelworkers. Wonderful, talented people.But the teams were not the same. My grandfather never went to college, yet he built Temple University's stadium. But my father's father was also Ivy League. Got a degree from Penn. In 1929.

If I could meet one person... I would choose him. I am certain we would know each other.

I think he could unlock so many of my secrets that I ache to know what that man -- that man who Alma, my grandmother, stole from his girlfriend because she "set her hat on him," according to my mother's grandmother. Immigrant Polish Philadelphia was incestuous. Love? If not, at least a premonition.

And by some mercy, my father's parents made my father at the same time my mother's parents made my mother... Although they were more than half a generation apart in age.

And knowing the love I feel for my niece, my next-sister's daughter, our only offspring -- of course last weekend when I joked about moving into the house next door to my parents' to stay hear -- and my father turned and told me that I already had a dock and a boat and a home. Theirs was mine. I never assumed so.

Even now, how much my father loves me can crush me.

And seeing how much I love Diana, my precious, gorgeous, perfect niece, I fear crushing my own children with the weight of my love, seeing how tightly I just want to squeeze her. (I don't.) I would give her anything I could even remotely lay a claim to.

Which brings me back to the title of this essay: La Vie Boheme.

I -- for the first time -- am seeing my choices through the eyes of someone who will judge me, and I get to choose what she/he/they/our family's babies see as "Jennifer." I am a writer/photographer/artist/firecracker or I am the woman-who-makes-safe-choices....

(Yes, they are going to Dartmouth regardless. All of them. If I have to buy every admission with donations. Get used to it.)

What I am choosing requires tremendous faith in myself. And I think I have always lacked that -- and I think may of you will be surprised by that. Several of you will say "yeah, dork..." And others will mumble "it's about fucking time...."

I will spend most of my savings on my mortgage, building maintenance payments and my health insurance. Those are my absolutes.

But with the weight of every stranger's gaze I meet weighting down on me, why else was I given this gift? But it is not a philosophical essay I seek to make my end game right now.

I want to capture your soul in a picture. Let me.

Privilege

2009-06-25T00:02:00.006-05:00

It was nearing 11 p.m., and I walked into the restroom at work, and she was there, beginning to wash the sinks. On some nights, she and I are the only two people left on the 14th floor at this hour. We never speak.

She is older than I am. Maybe in her early 40s, maybe older, maybe younger. She has frazzled hair, cut into a messy bob, dyed a dark honey blonde color. But it's fading. And her roots are gray and black. She is heavyset, 5'2'' at most, and she has dark, sad eyes. She has deep wrinkles around those eyes. Rough skin. And she wears an ill-fitting, shapeless blue dress -- her uniform -- as she cleans our office at night.

I was wearing heels. Pants. A cashmere sweater. I was thinking about whether I had time to get a manicure before visiting my niece tomorrow and whether I should bring my flat iron to Italy when I went on vacation Friday...

And I felt like a terrible person, watching out of the corner of my eye as she wrung out a rag. I don't know what language she speaks, but she knows little English. We look away from each other a lot. As I edit our Web site, she tries to vacuum around my bag on the floor. I feel torn between picking it up to make it easier for her and feeling like picking it up makes it worse.

"You missed a spot."

See? That made you cringe. I feel like an ass having written it.

But so often I forget exactly how privileged I am in this world, and this woman brings it to the front of my mind, mostly because the look on her face every night, tired, worn out... We work in the same place at the same time, but I have never less "together" in someone's presence. And its particular to her. I wonder what it is that I see in her that makes me feel so... so much like I need to apologize to her for existing.

I have not had an easy life, but compared to most of this planet, I was born into a life of ease. I will likely never be truly hungry. I have a home. I have a good family that loves me that would take me in if I needed them to. I have money to travel to interesting places. I can spend $13 on a cocktail just because it looks delicious. I have an amazing education and have been given and earned extraordinary opportunities... I work in a fancy building. Eat in fancy restaurants. Can spend hundreds on a handbag and it just makes me feel embarrassed. It doesn't change a thing about my life.

Sometimes I dwell on the things that make me grouchy -- I almost wrote "unhappy," but its hard to really claim to be "unhappy," even with my current set of tribulations. And I have the luxury of walking away if the cost begins to outweigh the reward.

I am a fifth-generation American living in a posh neighborhood of New York City in the 21st Century.

I am what my ancestors came here to give their children the chance to become.

I wish we could show them.

There is a photograph of me as an infant. We are on the balcony of my great-great grandmother's apartment, above the family's bar in Manayunk, in Philadelphia. In this photograph: my great-great grandmother Sophia, my great-grandmother Helen, my grandmother Doris, my mother Karen, and me, Jennifer.

Five generations of women. Mother and daughter. From Poland to Philadelphia. From the Old World to the New. A chain of hope and optimism and striving to give your little girl a life without the things you endured.

Sitting in my grandmother's house in Saturday, in between my cousin's wedding and the reception, another photograph was taken.

My sister held her two-week-old daughter, Diana, sitting between my mother and my grandmother. Four generations of my family, smiling as I snapped my camera, looking at an echo of my own life, captured in a moment full of hope. Marriage. Birth. Future. Past. All at once.

And our wee girl, my beloved niece, has also been born into a world of privilege. She sleeps in safe, secure homes. She doesn't go hungry. She has more than enough clothes. When she is awake, around her family, we can't put her down.

We will do whatever we can to teach her, and to teach her cousins, my own children, and the rest of her generation, how to be compassionate and generous and loving. And to strive to be better and to leave things better than they found them. To encourage all that is noble in ourselves and to try and hide the ugly things until they must be confronted. She will someday squirm, forced to deal with who she is and how she fits into the world. And we will try to make that easier.

Until she was born, my thinking on these things centered on myself. On what I could do to feel less guilt over feeling I'd gotten off easy in this world in so many ways... But now I wonder how to make it even easier for someone else. But also question how to make sure she can still see. Can still know that what she has took generations to achieve. And that everyone that came before her built the world as best they could so that she could sleep peacefully at night, well fed on a soft pillow.

Older, yes. Wiser, maybe?

2009-06-02T01:03:00.004-05:00

I have a Polaroid photograph of myself, standing in the Ocean City High School library wearing a worn gray acrylic sweater that I found at a thrift store, because I so desperately wanted to fit in with my oh-so-edgy girlfriends at the time that I wore frumpy, $2 thrift store sweaters and listened to Tom Waits because that's where I had tried to fit in.

I have kept this photograph on my book shelf, half-way hidden behind a small box of Japanese incense sticks and a handful of "important' receipts, for perhaps a year. Occasionally I look at it, and I stare at my smile and wonder why I ever thought I wasn't beautiful. Why when I was that girl, I thought I was a just the most awkward, unloveable girl ever born, and should probably just stay that way. And it seemed I was confirmed. One evening at a friend's house, she turned to me and said, "I think we're good enough friends now... They say you used to be such a pretty girl. What happened to you?"

"Uh....."

Exactly. I have a scar on my forehead. Even if an evil zealot threw acid on my face because I tried to go to school (try being a girl in Afghanistan), I would be a minor flicker on the world's list of "people messed up by sh*t that just happened."

The girl in the ill-fitting gray cheap thrift-store sweater is the one who answered that question with a blanched look of panic and a "Uh, I had an accident." And when she pressed for more of an answer, I actually felt myself shut down. I answered through a veil of post-traumatic stress disorder and shame. The double-sided coin of being different, even if it is something that hurt YOU. Not any other way, lest the other way around.

I was so self conscious, I heard those words and felt like I might as well have died. I should have died. Spared everyone and myself the horror of having to look at the lines that marked my darkest, direst days.

And here we fast forward. To a time when I had finally decided that the girl in the picture, the one who was so shy she hid her hands, even though she was the "smartest girl in the whole school" and was going to the Ivy League. Even though she had the lead in the play and was the captain of the tennis team. That girl was so shy, she stood to pose for a photograph in the library and hid her hands in the sleeves of her shirt. To reach for anything would be absurd.

Who grants gifts to broken things?

Apparently time does heal all wounds. Or at least make them bearable. Less sinister. More relational. We learn to take what we can from how things change us. I, for example, have no ability to differentiate between a look from someone who thinks I'm attractive and someone who thinks I'm a spectacle, unless they catch my eyes. Our eyes don't lie. So much else in our faces can though. It's astounding.

I see people stare at me, and I judge whether its because I am different or because I am beautiful depending on my mood. If I feel strong, I get shy under the glances of admirers. If I feel ashamed, I imagine they are horrified at my scars. I am a monster. Wrecked.

When the truth is, who the hell knows what anyone is thinking when they look at you.

He could be grimacing about a fight with his wife. About laundry. About a daughter asking an embarrassing question.

She could be shy about having kissed him too soon. Too wrapped up in pleasing her boss to even actually see the woman she's staring at and scowling towards.

We all assume the reactions of others are rooted in the things we worry about ourselves, and we are seldom right.

I wish I could tell the girl in that picture that someday, the woman she would become would look at her and think she was exquisite, and to reach out and embrace every inch of her life. Thrust those hands out of those sleeves and stand proud.

Because that had always been the right thing to do. The way things should have been.

A shining, beautiful smile gracing a child -- who would one day become a woman who would look back at herself and wish for things to have been different, but know that things happened as they did to make today. And realize the elegance of a revelation that leads to self forgiveness.

And rejoice.

For My Own True Love... Lost at Sea...

2009-05-07T01:14:00.003-05:00

The heart makes its own decisions.

Whether it lasts or not, I believe that we know what is right, who we love and what is real. Just because. Whether things are chemistry or inevitable love, we know a kindred spirit when we first say hello. We may doubt and wait for proof, but in the end, we knew.

I knew you and I would adore each other from the moment I saw you...

(I remember so may of those moments -- my "first friend date" with Vanessa, when we went to lunch, dressed nicely because we felt like it mattered that this went well... Kathy at Governor's School, the coolest girl there, in my eyes, who thought the same about me... Riding the bus reading Euripides with Michael... The look in my eyes in that photograph of when I was 2, holding freshly-born Julie in my arms like I had the biggest prize in the whole world. And yes. I did. "Look what I got!" Yes indeed.)

A certain fellow has been on my mind a lot lately, and I confess, I feel like he's the one that got away, even if he was a vanishing jerk... Whatever was there was overwhelming, although it was brief... It should have been of little consequence, and yet... Yet I find he has re-emerged in my mind and the wild beating of my heart in his presence is the standard against which I judge all others...

I had woken up and his forehead was pressed against mine and we were sleeping touching noses... THAT's what I want. Just with someone who stays...

I've been a little bit obsessive with music lately -- listening to the same handful of Decemberists songs over and over and over for like 2 weeks...

One, called "A Record Year for Rainfall" has lines in the chorus: What’s the use of all of this? It’s to remember you in the entire/ Cause I’m watching it slip away...

And it reminds me of my last night with him... when I lied to myself, but I knew.

I knew I wouldn't see him again, even though we'd make love twice again before we had to get up. I lay there, memorizing his face. I wanted to remember it. Every line. Every curve. No one has ever hit me that hard just by existing...

I have no idea how or why these things happen.

So I lay there, on my stomach, wrapped in his arms as he slept, and I learned his face so that I would remember when he was gone, because I knew he wouldn't be back... And later when he left, he kissed me hard. And as he went down the stairs, his eyes never leaving mine, he blew me a kiss... and it just felt like goodbye. I died inside a little. And I pretended I hadn't felt that... seen what I had seen flash in that action... I didn't trust my instincts. Maybe, maybe he didn't mean that.

But twice I knew. Twice I tried to lie to myself in one night... and it came to pass that he did slip into wherever it is he went... Funny. In the day to day, maybe I wouldn't even like that man. But in those hours at night in my bed, the intensity of it blew me away.

I have had awkward nights. I have faked enthusiasm for a kiss. But when that bolt of lightening hits you, you can't pretend it was something else... Too bad it sometimes strikes at the very wrongest, least useful time.

Maybe it's a flaw, but I get attached very quickly to people who touch my soul, and I do not let go easily. Some get through slowly. Some hit like a wrecking ball and I am powerless to resist them -- but would never have wanted to. And unfortunately for me, I still think the best of people even when they've long since turned from honey into poison... Even as I saw. I knew.

I fought a million goodbyes from men not worth the time it took to hear them say it... Because I couldn't believe they were leaving. Thinking the problem was me. Not beautiful or captivating or worth keeping. I let my fear and insecurity cloud that voice that knew right from wrong, yes from no. That fought to cling to things that were oh so bad that I tried to make good, and saw the good in things that should have turned badly.

I knew he would go before he went. And when he did, I tried to deceive myself. Because in those moments, with his eyes closed and his mind deep in sleep, a small smile lingered on his face, cradling me close, and my heart was lost to him. Somewhere in that night though, I lost him.

I'm trying to follow my heart, so to speak, these days. Do what feels right... And I've found the signs look better than when I was emotionally fighting my lot in life. I find myself in a state of watchful waiting, and I wonder what will come to be.

Hopefully, I will learn to trust myself more as it passes.

My Own Stuff White People Like: Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-05T10:19:00.003-05:00

Every year on May 5, white people flock to Mexican restaurants and Irish pubs to celebrate what they assume to be Mexico's Independence Day: Cinco de Mayo.

White people love Cinco de Mayo because it combines several of their favorite things: multiculturalism, diversity, nachos, being an expert on other cultures and binge drinking. However, Cinco de Mayo is a potential minefield when it comes to offending white people, which they love. But when they're drinking, it can get messy.

For example, telling a white person that Cinco de Mayo actually celebrates Mexico's victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862 will most likely result in blank, slightly hostile stares, because white people hate to be corrected.

Therefore, when hanging out with a white person on Cinco de Mayo, it's best to ignore this fact and simply buy them a Corona, a shot of tequila or a frozen Margarita, the official white-person drinks of Cinco de Mayo. White people will appreciate both the free drink and the fact that you're celebrating Mexico's freedom from Spain with them.

If you do bring it up and upset a white person, you can correct the situation by telling them you only learned that fact because of your foreign study program in Mexico. This then gives them an opportunity to tell you about their foreign study program, thus alleviating any further tension because they will have forgotten all about you as they reminisce about the price of beer in Prague.

At no point should you draw attention to the actual Mexicans bringing the white person the nachos and clearing away the empty Corona bottles. White people become uncomfortable when they think about poor immigrants doing menial labor for them. However, take heart. The more tequila a white person drinks on Cinco de Mayo the more likely they are to begin over-tipping, which will help alleviate the guilt they feel over NAFTA.

Lasts, Firsts

2009-03-06T02:25:00.004-05:00

It's the stuff of movies, of novels, of fiction. It is a thing you never think will actually happen -- that thing so cliched that its reality stuns you with the force of a lightening bolt.

When she knew she was dying, she wrote me a letter.

Pen on paper.

And she left it for me.

A woman knew she was dying, and she wrote the things she wanted me to know. The last things she would say to me. The last thing I would hear. If there are ever words you should heed, they are these.

I have been thinking about this letter lately, because I'm at a bit of a crossroads. There are things I want to create. To write. To photograph. Things I want my life to be. The way I want to spend my days.

And there is the lonely, cold way that they are.

And I wonder, sometimes, if I pulled this scribbled letter out, whether it would lift me or crush me.

In my mind, I see the page. I see her always terrible, yet now lazy handwriting. The effort she put into pushing the pen onto that notepad. She left her last words on pretentious paper. So typical. So perfect. I know where I keep it.

In a brown paper envelope, it sits among a funeral notice and photographs I can't bear to look at, because maybe almost four years later I am still not whole again.

But maybe each death will leave us less whole. Each birth replenish us.

My niece will be born in three months, god willing. And I have never anticipated anyone as much.

I anticipate my own family. Lover. Husband. Children. But for now, baby niece, sweet soon-to-be Diana, rules the universe of us all. The first of our next generation. As the first of the last generation, I hope to help her on. And am glad for my own daughters that they won't bear that burden. Perhaps being the first, I chose my hesitation.

For maybe half a day I resented my younger sister marrying first. And since that day, I have gladly taken my place among the "not in front."

I have had enough standing out. Next Friday I will see her in a 3-D ultrasound image for the first time. And I'm quite excited.

The turn of this post I confess is unanticipated.

I watched a show that made me think about Phatiwe's letter. But instead, I turned towards a tangible and coming future. I meant to talk about last words, but instead found first words...

On Books

2009-02-24T01:37:00.003-05:00

I have an unnaturally strong attachment to books.

To me, they are the things, aside from photographs, that if your house were burning, you might run back and try to save. There may be a million copies of 'Song of Solomon' but that is the one that made me shiver. That copy of 'Sula', with its "Circles and circles of sorrow" changed how I thought, how I feel, how I am. Who knew? Who knew there was a word for what I felt, and that someone else had taken those feelings, those exact same feelings, and put them more exquisitely than I could have fathomed... Until I read it.

And then I knew.

I knew those feelings. That sorrow. That spiral. That prayer/poem/hymn/cry.

They are things that can evoke in us spiritual responses. Feeling that touch us so deeply that we maybe sometimes make bad decisions.

To hold on to sentences. Phrases. Paragraphs. As objects on a page. As pages in a book. As a book that we have held. As a thing, we have touched, that has touched us.

Therein lies the mystery of books, of reading and of language.

We have created this system of symbols that mean our words. Our words are symbols themselves. We take collections of lines, put them together, and through the glorious invention of writing, you are reading this. You know what I wanted to tell you. You know. Because these symbols, these lines, mean something to us.

So these things on my shelves, these cumbersome, space-sucking books... these worlds, these ideas, these revelations... I will have to pare down. I don't live in a proper house, so I have just the few shelves I own now, and the space I might use to add a new one is very small. I am New-York-City-Maxed-Out.

Bummer.

The Ego vs. Facebook

2009-02-10T01:55:00.003-05:00

This may surprise some of you, I've realized, but I always feel painfully awkward when I discover that someone has remembered me. When someone does something for me that shows they were obviously thinking about me -- about what I like, what would be very nice for me to have, what would make me laugh -- it kind of breaks my heart.

That sentiment may be echoed in the last post's story about the ring, but Facebook, oddly enough, is forcing me to confront a character flaw of sorts. One that is a bit of an irony coming from someone vain enough to blog.

It really does surprise me that people find me -- significant. That I mattered or had any impact on their lives. I keep being delightfully surprised by contact from people I haven't heard from in 2, 5, 15 years...

I'm somewhat cursed with an ability to remember most things. Conversations. Lectures. Books. Articles. Shows. Probably most of the things you ever said to me. (Remember, Matt Jenkins and Vanessa when we were eating pizza on the stoop of 1426 and the cops came because we were blasting Tribe Called Quest out the window at 2 a.m.?)If my eyes caught it, I probably can't shake it. And I remember slights. Embarrassments. We all do. I still feel shame sometimes over things I did long, long ago.

Case in point: Sunshine Forest Pre-School. 1981? 1982? It's general play-time. I go up to Alyssa - and I tell her, very matter-of-factly, that this afternoon, I am going to Robin's house to play. And YOU, are not.

Even at 4 years old, there was this insecurity. This contest. The need to violently throw myself into the world and hope it noticed me. "Screw you four year old!"

That was also the first time I was publicly punished. Banned from snack time. No "Zesta" crackers and apple juice for me (another problem with the memory, remembering a forbidden snack from 27 years ago... great. I wish I knew where I'd put my checkbook...)

Returning to my point -- you can tell this is awkward because I'm storytelling instead -- I've heard from people who I would have thought I was too insignificant to be noticed by. I get Friend Requests (which I think should be a proper noun) from people who I am stunned remember who I was. Someone I always felt was too cool, too beautiful, too sophisticated...

Example -- at the New Jersey Governor's School of the Sciences in 1994 -- when I'd been nominated by my high school for being the person they thought could get in -- the girl I thought was the most beautiful, most fascinating, coolest person wound up being my best friend there. She seemed to like being with me as much as I did her, and I admired her so. She sang and played music. She's now a marine biologist, and I'm a little bit jealous of that. I felt so lucky.

I was even excited to be her friend on Facebook. We always worship those we once adored, I suppose. Not in the way we ardently throw ourselves into the blood and guts of family love, but in that "how does someone like you like someone like me" crazytown way.

Unfortunately for me, I have always fallen in love with men who fall into the second category. Only a few have been the blood and guts love kind. I miss them always.

My therapist in Boston once asked why I assumed I had been so insignificant to the men I'd loved -- why I was shocked when one of them would reach out to me after our usually catastrophic break-up. I'd been so convinced, somehow, that fleeing me was the only natural thing to do. That they were back because they felt sorry for me. Pitiful me. Sad, leave-able me.

I have no explanation.

A few faces have re-emerged lately, not my doing -- which means they found me somehow. Maybe through others. But still. For the young'uns, Facebook is a chronicle of everyone in college they ever spoke to. But when you've got a few years under your belt (not that many) there are faces that come back that surprise you.

This isn't meant as a litany to my insecurities. Because I'm very detatched writing it -- and it's something that was preoccupying me so much so I actually put down the third book in the 'Twilight' series to think, have a glass of wine and write.

It's more of a why and a how. How do we wind up like this?

I now sit in an office almost alone at night, News Editor for a Web site (note my AP style!) Yet with one, maybe two or three other people, which is kind of torture for someone who has thrown herself at the world with such force, because she always insists on being noticed and in the fray... Who thrives on having a partner at all times.

Who needs the maddening crowd. But who oddly doesn't think she will be remembered. How does this even make sense?

Weird, right? Mostly unexplicapable and irrational.

I would bet cash money that none of you would ever bet that I'd be shocked by a gift of lemons in a plastic cup -- left on my desk at work because someone cared enough about me to notice something about me -- something I enjoyed -- and wanted me to have that.

So much so that when I wasn't around, he remembered to do it.

You've had those days.

Even if it was the tiniest gesture, it was for you and about you.

I think it started on that train platform, listening to my father's music. And then I heard from someone I was flattered to be remembered by -- on the Facebook. Not even because we'd had some intense relationship. We had been neighbors for one year. He married. Had a daughter. I moved to New York. Someone for whom I assumed I wouldn't even register.

I first started writing a "maybe" sentence, but that would have been a lie.

I love without caution, but have always assumed I was somewhat invisible.

I delight in feeling like a fool. Maybe just this time. But I wanted to get it off my chest.

Something is about to happen.

Gifts That Keep on Giving

2008-12-17T22:02:00.008-05:00

There are moments in life where you realize that you are purely and truly loved, and they usually catch you off guard.

Tonight I was walking to the Subway at 8th Street after a wonderful dinner with a wonderful friend, and I decided to switch up what I was listening to on the iPod and put on The Trip Tapes.

The Trip Tapes had originally been mix tapes that my father had made out of radio recordings and vinyl records - doo wop, 70s rock, the Beach Boys opus, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." The "rama lama ding dong" song was a special favorite on our long, oh so very long drives from South Jersey to Vermont every winter to go skiing. (With the overnight pit stop at Schnectady followed by morning pancackes and hopefully an afternoon lift ticket if we could make it to Pico in time.)

I was carrying some Christmas presents in a shopping bag, a few of which were secretly for myself, and standing on the platform...

"Foolish little girl...
Fickle little girl...
You didn't want him when he wanted yo-o-o-u."

And I just started dancing and smiling like a fool. Trying not to be too obviously delighted. I boarded the R train. "The man who shot (bang!) Liberty Valence... He shot (bang!) Liberty Valance... He was the bravest of them all...." And I was so overwhelmed with happiness I couldn't stop beaming, remembering those long nights driving in the van that always mysetriously had french fries in the seat cracks. (Even immediately after cleaning it, new fries would appear.) It has a very uncanny power, this van.

And we, a rag tag bunch of girls with matching noses and matching smiles, sang our little girl hearts out to our favorites. Apparently we were all usually sleeping by the time the Beach Boys tape rolled around. But there were so many songs -- Wham, The Doors, the late, great Sam Cook, the fast version of A Sunday Kind of Love, "New York's a lonely town, when you're the only surfer boy... around..."

Those tapes saw many, many miles.

The first and only Christmas I ever missed at home, I spent in India, and when my parents were helping me get ready on that last day before my flight to New Dehli, my father handed me a CD wallet.

Inside, 6 disks - Trip 1, Trip 2... He had found a machine that would let him record the tapes on CD - digitizing tapes that were probably pushing 15 years old and had seen their fair share of wear and tear.

I was going on a trip. Who can do that without The Trip Tapes?

I listened to them on the rickety train from Delhi to Agra to see the Taj Mahal on Christmas Day. I was listening to them as we drove through the tea fields of Kerala and on the plane as I flew on weeks later to Vietnam. On my wildest adventure, I was able to take The Trip Tapes, so that no matter what, with the push of a button, I was home. I was loved.

Listening to them brings back other memories -- and as some of my friends become fathers, I want them too to reach back and remember if they can -- two little events that to this day bring tears to my eyes because they made me feel like the most precious person in the world, so very, very loved.

I can't have been more than four or five, and we were at my grandmother's. This puts my father right around as old as I am now, I would bet. And I remember him coming in the door, and he had brought me a small plastic and metal child's ring - gold with a green stone - and I thought - and still think even to this day - that it was the best ring in the whole world.

I don't know where it came from, or what ever happened to it. Those kinds of things disappear when you're not old enough to make your own Frosted Flakes. But I never, ever forgot my father handing it to me, and how wonderful I felt realizing that he had picked it out just for me - the color of my birthstone - and gave it to me for no reason. It wasn't a special day. It wasn't my birthday. It wasn't special at all. Except for that ring.

Such a small thing, but 25 years later, it still makes me feel like I just got a bear hug. In my family there are no small hugs.

The second gift I have here in my jewelry box, and will hopefully be buried with. I want it to be the only thing in my hair at my wedding -- somewhere over the years its partner has gone missing. If the remaining one is lost, I will be devastated.

I have a single lacquered barrette. It's gold with an ivory background and dark lavender flowers with green leaves.

My father gave it to me when I was in fifth grade, after the first few years of surgeries to reconstruct my head had finally left me with enough hair to ditch the wigs, a few years after the addicent. I could brush it and style it so that I only needed my own hair, forever.

And so when I awoke from surgery, with the searing pain of being cut up, prodded and pulled back together in a new way, sick as a dog... He gave me these two beautiful barrettes in a box, like precious jewels.

It is the most precious, sacred thing I have ever received. I don't even know if he picked them out, but that will never matter. But he was a doctor, and had spared me so much. After the hours of sitting at the coffee table in the living room injecting my head with saline to fill the plastic balloon underneath that would stretch my hair to cover the rest of my bare, wounded head, so that I wouldn't have to go somewhere and have some stranger do it... To love me enough to choose to do it himself, and then to have him hand me something so delicate, beautiful and girly, overwhelmed me, and still does. It marked the end of one long road, and the beginning of another. It made me feel loved, cared for and seen. He knew how hard it was, and wanted me to feel like any little girl.

What father wouldn't?

"Tell me you love me for a million years... Then if it don't work out... If it don't work out... Then you can tell me goodbye."

Sometimes its the little things - the seemingly trivial gifts born of attention, love and time - that hold us together and can make us realize that even on the darkest night of the year, we light up the lives of everyone we touch, and smallest gestures can create a lifetime of spontaneous dancing.

Wonton Soup is my Mashed Potatoes

2008-09-30T21:24:00.005-05:00

The past two months have been filled with a whirlwind of upheaval, and I find myself smack-dab in the middle of someone else's life.

I wake up at a different time, in different pajamas. I put on different clothes and better shoes. I blow-dry my hair. I take a different train to a different building, get out of the elevator on a different floor and sit at a different desk.

And by the end of the day, I just can't think about one more thing. I know that I have to get up early tomorrow, and I go to bed before Stephen Colbert even takes the stage. I would not recognize myself if I saw me on the street.

Sometimes writing helps you sort things out, but sometimes you have to sort things out before you can start writing, and that is where I have been.

At the beginning of August I got a call from Fox News saying that finally, three months after my first interview, they had a job for me. They liked me, they had said. And so I waited through a long, slow summer during which the other thing I wanted that much slipped from my grasp. By August, I was beginning to lose hope.

But August drew to a close, I had been offered an official job and I accepted. I went from having one foot on the slide to having both... waiting to shove off.

I would be a News Editor at FOXNews.com. Whatever that meant. I had talked about the job, the pace, the world, when I had interviewed, but enough time had passed that I really didn't know entirely what I was getting myself into.

My first week went by in a blur of new software, AP Style, trying to learn everyone's names and figuring out where to sit each day - I didn't have a desk yet. I was squatting wherever there was space. I learned where the kitchen was (day 3) and by Friday had figured out that there was an exit from the subway directly into our building. Go figure.

That week I subsisted on coffee, sandwiches from Pret-a-Manger (which I heard someone pronounce like the manger where you might find the baby Jesus and it took all my strength not to correct her... she had earlier been talking about her masters degree. This makes me suspicious) and Chinese food dinners. I even went in at 7:30 on Saturday morning to fill in for someone.

I learned that Wonton Soup is my comfort food. Especially when you crush up those little Chinese noodle crackers and add them to the broth. Just thinking about it makes me want some.

But week 2 was a bit better. I moved back to eating salads for lunch so my digestive system calmed down and I no longer spent the last half of the day with a nasty pit of lava where my stomach had once been. I even cooked dinner twice! I still had more than my share of the world's Chinese food, and tried to branch out, but all I really wanted was the Wonton Soup.

At some point, I started writing. And reporting. Anything they could think of. Today, I gave Americans the U.S. Citizenship test that immigrants have to take to become naturalized. They did way better than we thought they would. What was unexpected - how absolutely impossible it was to find Americans in Times Square on a Tuesday at noon. Reliable bets? Smokers who were loitering in one place and senior citizens. Jackpot.

A far cry from the world of workgroup color printers and uninterrupted power supplies. (Yes, I have written about both.)

And here's the thing. I'm ridiculously happy.

I have bouts of fear - I don't recognize myself in the proverbial mirror - when I get a bit melodramatic about things I can't control. But for the most part, I find myself springing out of bed at 7:05 at the latest. I wear smart black boots. I like when I catch my reflection in the mirror and I'm wearing eyeliner and a cute shirt. I've lost more weight. I make time for the gym.

I even read on the Subway today, something I'd been too listless to do for months; I'm not sure why.

I've been jump started like an old car. My brain is in over-drive. It's fantastic.

So I've started moving things in, like you do with a new boyfriend's apartment.

Last Friday I finally got my own desk. It's not in the middle of the action, but it's mine. If someone else sits there, I can tell them to move. On Friday, I left my water bottle on the desk. It was still there on Monday, so on Monday, I put some napkins in the drawer after lunch.

Today, I left a sweater draped over the chair, one more small step towards making this foreigner's life my own.

The Quest for Self-Improvement

2008-08-04T19:48:00.004-05:00

First of all, thank you all for your love and support. It means a lot to me and yes, I'm doing well.

So well, in fact, that I've joined the Crunch gym near my apartment. As many of you know, I've been losing weight slowly and returning to normal Jen-size this year after a nasty bout of weight gain from a medication I took, and so far I'm down about 43 pounds from my weight when I moved to New York, got a new doctor, and got off that medication.

That means, most of the people I've met here in NYC have no idea what in-shape-Jen looks like. I was never skinny, but I was the captain of my tennis team and always an athlete. Softball. Field Hockey. Tennis. Skiing. More tennis.

So, let's suffice to say that having gotten a little bounce back in my step, I decided to take the self-improvement project one step further (and one step closer to self-love, if we are Oprah fans) and join the aforementioned gym. Yesterday.

Today I decided to start balls-out and go to a spinning class.

I was eager to get there and get the bike set up. So eager that I had forgotten to bring my little gym membership card and was there 15 minutes early, sitting in the spinning room by myself. Well, with one dude wearing headphones and stretching, so literally not by myself. But mostly. But if I had burst into flames, or some other such random catastrophe, at least there was the possibility someone would react.

Eventually the instructor arrived and helped me fix the bike so that it was high enough for me, adjusting the handlebars and the saddle. Ouch. That thing hurts the ass-bones.

At this point, she returns to her seat and says to me "Oh yeah, do you like loud music?"

"Uh, yes?" I say.

"Good. We got ourselves a virgin here." And Ludacris slams out of the speakers and into my ears and I start riding. More resistance. Stand. Sit. Kanye. Stand Sit. Stand and bounce. Sit and sprint. Stand and sprint. My legs are burning, my lungs are burning and I just pedal and try to banish any thoughts except "just keep going..." Rhianna. Prince. Nice.

There are times when I have to sit because I am having trouble keeping up. Either I need more air or my legs start to feel unsteady. So, I take a few minutes and ride slower sitting down, take a sip of water, and I get back in it when I feel it.

About 45 minutes into the class, which had been posted as a 45-minute class... She turns to me and goes "This being your first time, I should have told you. This class is an hour."

I wanted to die.

At this point, though, I resolved that I was going to push through and finish the class. Damnit. But I did take it much easier in the last 15 minutes. My brain had been prepared for 45 minutes of AAAAAHHHH! Not 60. Nope. But I never stopped pedaling and I never got off the bike. This, the instructor told me, was most excellent and she said even people that come the class all the time stop pedaling and take breaks. I kept going, even if I was sitting.

That made me feel rather proud of myself, I must say. For not having done any real strenuous exercise in months, or maybe longer, I was able to pull a 60-minute spinning class off and still have the strength to walk the 3 blocks home... I have since been either on the couch or in the shower. I have to make dinner, but I also do not want to move.

If I can move my legs, I think I'll go back Wednesday. If not, there's one Thursday, but there's also a yoga class Thursday - Virgin Yoga - a class on the basics since I haven't done yoga in ages either.... Or there's pole dancing. Anyone done pole dancing? That might be too much.

Making Connections

2008-07-28T21:02:00.002-05:00

We were having dinner at Elio's on Second Avenue in Manhattan. Me, my parents and my sister and my brother-in-law. When out of the blue, Julie turned to my father, not exactly known for his soliloquies, and asked him what he thought made a marriage work.

It was an interesting question, coming from a young woman just three years into her marriage and looking to start a family soon. What was he going to say? What was the big secret?

His answer? Chemistry.

It comes from feeling a connection to your partner and having the desire to make things work to be with them, to struggle through the bad times together, because whatever it is that causes that spark, those butterflies, as they say in Sex in the City, you are all-in. Feelings. Emotions. The Intangible and Uncontrolable.

Its like when my old therapist answered my question on how therapy worked.

"It's magic."

And in a lot of ways, it really is.

There's no good reason why someone you think is perfect on paper or who looks good in a photograph turns out to be just blah when you're actually sitting across a table from them pretending to enjoy dinner. Just as there's no good reason why catching someone else's eye turns your knees to jell-o and makes you do things that Sane-You would consider crazier than bat shit.

We really have little control over how our eyes and hearts wind up figuring things out for themselves. The plainest person could be beautiful to you, or the most attractive simply a bore. I have wonderful, spectacular friends who I think are just perfect, but who I have never wanted to kiss. My mother always thought I'd wind up with someone who I'm obviously not with, and I told her I just never wanted to kiss him, and she said, "Oh. Well that wouldn't work then..." Of course not.

I have been thinking a lot about what connects people and what makes us choose whom we're with and how we make our decisions about friends, lovers and spouses as I've made new friends, forged new relationships and made a few mistakes along the way.

How do we choose the people we keep in our lives? What draws us together? What is it that makes you feel those butterflies when someone smiles at you? Why is that the feeling we're all willing to live and die for?

And then... What keeps us together? When does someone cross that line from stranger to acquaintance to intimate? And when things go wrong, what are we willing to forgive? Why are they worth it to us? And what makes us decide its time to walk away?

I think about these things as my friends and I make transitions - some marry, some are having children, some I have had to leave, and others struggle. Some have ended relationships. Some have begun new ones. We learn when to stand our ground and when to compromise or surrender for each other. We learn who loves us and who we can trust. We learn who we are and we are constantly marveled at how we manage to persevere every time we are challenged, injured or wronged. We have each other's backs. And we are not kidding.

For a long time after my friend Phatiwe's death, I kind of shut myself into a closet and kept close what I knew and refused to engage in anything that could hurt me. I made new friends, but I wasn't open to putting my heart on the line.

Participating in a slow, painful death is a soul-crushing experience, and it takes many years to learn again to be really open to people who weren't part of your life before. My first year in New York, I started a book club to make friends and I tried to date men I met online, but I abandoned the dating when I found it too trying and it took a long time to really connect with new friends.

However, time passes and hearts heal. And its our instinct to make connections again. Its what keeps us alive and what, in the end, makes this crazy game of survival such a glorious, ecstatic, clusterfuck. We're all doomed but God Damn, it's sublime.

This year, I missed the third anniversary of Phatiwe's death. May 12 passed, and I didn't even notice. And I was proud of myself.

I was in the throws of planning and plotting and dating and kissing and laughing and cooking and smiling and watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and remembering how awesome those things are... And I forgot to be sad for what I had lost. And I'm pretty sure she forgives me 1000 percent.

Because my sadness was something she tried so hard to shield me from, even though we both knew it was impossible. It was hard to have someone love me that much. And it was hard to love her that much. My dear sweet girl, an only child who learned what it was to have sisters. As it will be hard to love my other friends, my future children, my eventual husband and my wonderful family that much when things inevitably end.

I don't mean this to be dark. But sparks and lust, and shared smiles and that instinct that makes you think someone is on your team, lead to love and commitment, and those things are not always sunshine and roses. But something makes us stay. And keep loving. And keep kissing. And keep sending birthday cards. And forgive weak moments and hurtful barrages and silly mistakes. And love as fierce as a supernova. And as soft and steady as your breath when you're sleeping.

And hold someone's hand, and tell them that you didn't keep secrets from them, so given your last words, you have nothing to say except, "I love you."

Trouble in Paradise... or why women need protection.

2008-07-23T20:56:00.003-05:00

This is a long story, but it is a story that needs telling. For me, mostly. Maybe I will feel better.

I haven't been sleeping well since I got back from Spain last week, and I think its because of what happened in Pamplona. Some of my friends know, but seeing as I don't consider such things to be shameful (because being a victim of violence is neither shameful nor a crime), I was attacked in Pamplona by a strange man who pretended he was helping me find the bus back to my hostel.

I had somehow gotten separated from Vanessa in the heat of a long night of bar-hopping and talking to strangers in a melange of English, French and Spanish, and wound up on my own on the street sometime around 2 a.m. We had been leaving the bar together but got separated in a crowd, and I couldn't find her.

I don't know how long I wandered the labyrinthine cobbled streets of the old city, but I know at one point I slipped and cut my arm, and I grew more afraid as time passed because I was alone in a city I didn't know and...

I found an intersection that had several bus stops, and began searching for the No. 11 bus, the only one that stopped at our hostel (a university dorm on the edge of downtown), and a man approached me. He asked if I needed help as I was asking each bus driver if the 11 stopped nearby and if the bus they drove stopped anywhere near the university... By then I was no longer drunk, just tired and on edge.

He offered to show me - a few blocks down - where the 11 stopped, and because the entire town was a festival, and everyone I'd met so far was good natured and celebrating, I went with him. We walked past the buses, past where the street was well lit... And then he grabbed my arm, strong and hard, and pulled me with him across the street to the other side, where there was a park.

He held onto my arm and dragged me with him into the park, grabbing my right arm with his right, and taking his left and pinning it around my waist so that I couldn't move.

I walked with him for I don't know how long, in a dead panic, terrified. And finally I started writing and fighting. There was a bench. I pushed him off and sat down. I refused to go further and told him to leave me alone. He sat, pinned my arms, and started kissing me, even though I did everything I could to move my face.

At this point, I don't know how I did it, but I know I got out of his grip and I hit him, and I started running. Running away from the bench. I know he stood up and started calling something after me, but I just kept going. Through trees, over pine needles, down a steep, steep dirt hill... deeper into the park because I didn't know where I was.

I found a parking lot, and in that lot were teenage boys in a maroon Renault minivan, and I got in their car and locked all the doors. One joked that the one trying to sleep in the middle should try to get laid... I just smiled and tried to ask them to use their cell phones to call the police for me. One poked my stomach instead and said something vulgar, and the two girls with them looked at me... One was ashamed, the other taunting. The ashamed one wanted to help me but didn't want to lose face with her friends... I had put my sweater on inside out in my frenzy, over my t-shirt. My hair was a mess and I was dirty from tripping and falling on the hill.

I left them and walked along the cars towards a building in the random parking lot I'd found, but the building was closed and the pay phone didn't work. I saw a road leading into the lot, up the hill I'd run down, and I started towards it.

Walking down the hill was a couple, probably mid-30s... maybe a little older... and I approached them and said in English that I needed the police, I needed help... I can't remember what was said after, except that the woman held me to her as we walked up the hill and back into town and kept assuring me that I was going to be okay.

This makes me cry a little to write, but I find myself telling this story at inappropriate times because I think I'm more damaged by it than I realize yet. I'm still only a week home, and it was less than two weeks ago... and this is just the beginning of this story.

I don't know the name of this woman. Nor her husband. But they both are in my mind incredibly generous, wonderful people who really did shepherd me to safety. They took me to an ambulance - the town had them stationed everywhere as the 200,000 person city became a 800,000 person festival town - where an EMT who spoke good English was able to listen to me and tell the others what had happened, and they just all hugged me as I cried.

From the way that man had looked as he pulled me into the park, the way he persisted after I fought... I knew I had just managed to fight my way out of something that was really fucking awful. The next day when the SVU police showed me the map of where I'd been, my attacker had been leading me in the exact opposite direction of both the town and my hostel. He was taking me down to the river. And he was taking me there to do something bad.

That much I knew as I sat with the EMT in the ambulance, thanking her and thanking the couple who brought me there between bouts of hysteria. I didn't learn her name either, but I will always remember her face and her kindness. At no point in my story did anyone in Pamplona ever for a moment question what I told them happened, nor did they ignore or try to quiet my sadness, fear or feelings.

From there the ambulance, with the English-speaking EMT and another woman who didn't speak English in the back seat with me, took me to the police station. There I was given to some officers wearing the traditional San Fermin festival outfit of white pants and white shirt with red scarf... One had a red sweatshirt since it was probably near 4:30 in the morning and while the days were hot in Northern Spain, the nights dipped into the low 50s. There was one whose name I forget who took charge of me, who brought me where I needed to be, who drove the car so that I would feel safe, who spoke in Spanish to me once he knew I understood "more than a little but not a lot"...

For my own part, while this was all going on I held my own and was able to communicate both what had happened and who I was in Spanish to the police... I kind of feel good about that.

In the traumatic haze and the fog of moving around at 4:30 at 5 at 6 a.m. between cops and offices, doing your best to speak a language you once knew much, much better than you do now... I survived. And then, in the car, with the sweatshirted officer behind the wheel, we turned back to the station. He had been driving me home, and he got a call saying they'd found the man who matched my description near where I had said I had been... I had to go identify him.

Law and Order Style.

I had to go into the building, walk into the room with the 1-way glass, and say that yes, that man with the square/checked pink and blue on white shirt was the one who held me and dragged me and kissed me and had probably intended to rape me in that park. Yup. That was what I thought. That's what they thought. I was sobbing as they asked me if it was him. In the typical American Girl way, I said "I think so...." and that of course is not good enought at 6 a.m. with a team of officers who have just apprehended the man who hurt you mere hours before. "Yes," I said. "Yes, that is him. Please take me home. Please."

I remember arriving at the hostel and the officer talking with the manager. I remember her alarm and her concern and her compassion. I said yes, I would call the police when I woke up. I needed to sleep. I went to Vanessa's room, pounded on her door.

She opened. I remember only falling to the ground while telling her what had happened, and I remember laying in her twin bed with her and her saying things that soothed me to sleep. She has been afraid, but I HAD been injured. It was not okay.

We woke when the phone rang at 1-something. The SVU police needed my statement. I went in the clothes I had been wearing the whole time. (Ironically, I'm wearing that shirt again for the first time as I write this....)

Vanessa acted as my official translator, and I told the story. Less lucidly but with the same details as I do here. The morning after is still laced with an adrenaline haze that will give you the gist, but memory settles in once the fear fades. Once you are no longer vulnerable to the things you endured. It took coming home to remember to be afraid. (Although I did tell a man who professed his adoration of me in Bilbao that I was flattered but not going anywhere. I would not have left Vanessa's side with a Bishop.)

I told them my story and Sergio, my attorney, provided by the lovely nation of Spain, arrived to represent me in the hearing. The next morning. He had a scruffy beard and a kind face, and I liked him from the start. He took Vanessa and I to lunch near our hostel afterwards to tell me how things could and would probably go...

I was not physically injured. I had no serious bruises, no cuts, and I had not been raped. But he had used force and had kissed me after incapacitating me. The case could be a misdemeanor assault case or a felony attempted sexual assault case. Since I didn't have any injuries as evidence, and I had no witnesses - the teens and the couple remained nameless, unfortunately... - the judge went misdemeanor. And when Sergio sent us home at 5 to sleep and then maybe enjoy our night before my 11 a.m. hearing the next day, we walked away, but walked exhausted. (Vanessa, if you can't infer, is the best friend ever, by the way.)

Sergio called as soon as we arrived back at the hostel. The judge wanted us there at 7 p.m. That night. We would not wait until morning.

So, instead of rest, which I craved more than anything - a stop to the surreal string of events that had suddenly become my reality - there was no nap. There was a quick shower, a quick selection of clean clothes that seemed "appropriate for appearing in court" from my vacation wardrobe of cotton things from Old Navy. A black tank top and black skirt made up my court outfit. Everyone else in the city, remember, was wearing white. I felt visible. And fragile.

At the courthouse, we were told we had to wait at least an hour. Go. Have a drink. I had a coffee while Vanessa and Sergio had beers. I was afraid to drink. Afraid having had a drink would make me less credible. We talked.

Sergio got a call and we went back to the courthouse. Vanessa was not allowed to translate for me. I needed an official translator so an Irish man named Collum served. I don't know his last name, but he was entirely professional, compassionate and on my team. I appreciated him entirely.

What was most f-ed up though: we met in the judge's chambers, and I had to sit in the same room with the man who that morning had tried to... (I am eternally grateful for my instincts.)

For the record, even the judge and his transcriptionist wore white pants, a white shirt and red scarves. San Fermin transcends all.

I was shaking and I had to tell my story, translated by Collum.

Hamid Rashid, 37, Moroccan immigrant, stood and said I had been looking for the bus, and he found me and decided to help me into a cab. He had found me a cab and I just "ran away". Away from a taxi that would have taken me home, from this innocent man. WHO DIDN'T BOTHER TO LIE ABOUT HAVING MET ME.

The judge found him guilty of assault - a misdemeanor, rather than attempted sexual assault - but doubled the fine. He was fined 200 Euros. Convicted of assault, and now has a criminal record in Spain.

My lawyer and the translator said that for what we had, we did very well. Women aren't passive toys to be abused. And they were happy that I had come forward and took a stand against this man. Even though I was on vacation, I did the right thing.

What's funny is that it never occurred to me to not go through with it. When the cops wanted to talk to me, I went. When it was time to Cowboy Up and say what had happened and defend myself, I didn't flinch. It never occurred to me to back down.

After the hearing, after the sentencing, Sergio drove Vanessa and me back to the San Fermin festival grounds. We had Spanish sausage sandwiches, Spanish beers, we watched fireworks. Then we took the long walk back to the hostel, across a kind of desolate part of the university campus that made me very, very fearful, but we made it. And in the morning Sergio took us to his office's balcony to watch the running of the bulls. He wanted me to have good memories of Pamplona.

And so I do.

Because of his infinite kindness, his generosity, and his commitment to making sure women are safe and well taken care of in his community, I want to make sure the U.S. knows how wonderful he was to me.

If you read to the end, I am okay. I write this as kind of therapy. Otherwise, apparently, I might drop it on you at a very inappropriate time. Trauma works that way. In my experience, its easier to justify if you're bleeding, or were bleeding.

But one of the things that has always been important to me has been protecting women against violence and sexual violence. And the most I can do at this point, being so fresh and so still intimidating to me (because being afraid is also not shameful), is tell you what happened.

This is why when Dartmouth gave me 3 months to do whatever I wanted (thank you Dartmouth), I applied for a community service fellowship to fund me working at the Greater New Haven Rape Crisis Center for free. Because Dartmouth wanted me to be able to stand up for what I believed in and try to make a difference. And because I had that strong foundation of self-security and feeling that I had rights that could not be infringed upon, and had worked to defend them, when it came to defending my own, even in a foreign country, I kicked ass.

I entirely take credit for making it through the story you've just read. It was one of the hardest things I've dealt with. I thought, at one point, I might be killed. But I wasn't. And I won. Before the legal system of Spain.

Never underestimate yourself. Trust me.

The Beauty of Deviled Eggs

2008-06-29T15:06:00.007-05:00

Those who have eaten with me before know that I'm kind of... well. Picky. I don't like fish, mushrooms, green bell peppers, things that are too spicy, pickles, mayonnaise, to name a few.

So, for most of my life, I avoided deviled eggs as they were, in my mind, a mayonnaise-based food and therefore inherently disgusting. Even the smell of mayonnaise makes me a little bit queasy. Imagining putting it in my mouth makes me hurl a tiny bit.

However, a trip to visit M & E in North Carolina in May changed my mind forever about the deviled egg. E made some using a recipe from Paula Deen that involved not only mayonnaise, but relish, a pickle-derived food and therefore, inedible in my world. I agreed, reluctantly, to try one and god damn! Deviled eggs are delicious!

In the ensuing weeks, I found myself craving deviled eggs at random times. Like at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday while watching American Idol, I decided that it was time for deviled eggs. This set off a trend of finishing with deviled egg preparation sometime around 11 p.m., which is okay, but not ideal.

I made them for myself. I made them for book club. (I would eat them in a house. I would eat them with a mouse...) And on Saturday, I made them for me and some friends before we head to a sticky hot summer barbecue. This is an actual picture of my actual deviled eggs. (I also got a new camera recently, so you'll be inundated with photos in the coming weeks...)

I also took a picture of my CSA basil plant, growing quite well where my former basil plant met its untimely demise. Caprese salad here I come!

Join a CSA of your own!

2008-06-20T10:53:00.003-05:00

Here's a link for all you New Yorkers out there who are contemplating finding a CSA program to join either this year or in the future.

Just Food is a non-profit that works to help promote and create a sustainable food system in the New York City area. They're pretty awesome.

Here's there CSA listing.

The Bounty of Spring

2008-06-19T19:09:00.005-05:00

Today I made my first pick-up from the Park Slope CSA, and lordy had I forgotten how many veggies that a full share entails. I took one canvas tote bag, and a big one at that, and it was bursting at the seams when I finished taking my portion. But how beautiful it was!

I purchased an every-other-week share, which means every other Thursday, I go to the site and pick up my veggies, fruit and fresh flowers and have a glorious week of eating fresh, organic produce that our lovely farm grew.

I've had a bit of a crazy month or so, and I've fallen behind on cooking and general healthy eating, but now that I have a fridge full of fresh produce, it looks like I'm going to have to change my decadent, restaurant-going ways.

The flowers this week are beautiful snap dragons, and I now have about a gallon of strawberries that are so ripe and so fresh that you can smell them when you walk into the kitchen. Tonight for dinner I'm having a salad of fresh lettuce and ripe strawberries with a dijon vinegarette and a glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, whose tart, crisp green apple taste perfectly compliments the delicate sweetness of the berries and the tang of the mustard dressing.

I'm not even having meat, which is like, blasphemy almost. To myself.

But even though its not sweltering like it had been for the past week, the air still has the slightly sticky warmth of East Coast summer to it, so it feels like the right decision.

The veggies this week are going to challenge my ingenuity, so any suggestions via e-mail or comment are welcome.

I have:
5 big turnips with greens
1 lb. russian kale
3/4 lb. mixed lettuce
1 head of beautiful lettuce - I think it's bibb lettuce
5 garlic scapes
1 bunch of bok choi
1 lovely basil plant, in soil, which I have used to replace my former basil plant. Whose plant carcass had been sitting in my kitchen.

1 quart fresh strawberries

1 bunch snapdragons

HOORAY CSA!

Here's how fresh the strawberries are. I took a handful from the basket and put them in a bowl. I then went to rinse them and what came off? REAL DIRT. THESE BERRIES ARE FROM A REAL FARM WITH REAL DIRT. They were picked today.

When you live in the city, the idea of being handed a bowl of succulent tiny fresh berries is probably along the lines of what seeing land was to Columbus. Some weird miracle that seems too good to be true. Ignoring, of course, economies of scale. I'm not actually crazy enough to equate death by scurvy at sea with factory-farmed berries.

If I had a functional digital camera, I could post you pictures of my beautiful produce, but I do not. So sometime in the next two weeks, before I shove off for Spain, I will be digital camera shopping. I think I'll invest in the Canon SLR... But may go high-end point and shoot.

Stay tuned because now that summer is here, we're going to have lots of "how to cook with fresh organic produce" talk. Which I personally find super awesome.

Harold = <3

2008-06-03T23:24:00.002-05:00

This is so Harold. Sorry I've been delinquent lately - I've been into the other blog about craziness. It's been very entertaining to write... But this will make you smile.

Bat Poo!

2008-05-29T15:44:00.000-05:00

My new side project: Things That Are Crazier Than Bat Shit.

I Present to you the Nudibranch...

2008-05-27T14:52:00.003-05:00

Living Color

Toxic nudibranchs—soft, seagoing slugs—produce a brilliant defense

By Jennifer S. Holland

National Geographic Staff

Photograph by David Doubilet

Nudibranchs crawl through life as slick and naked as a newborn. Snail kin whose ancestors shrugged off the shell millions of years ago, they are just skin, muscle, and organs sliding on trails of slime across ocean floors and coral heads the world over.

Found from sandy shallows and reefs to the murky seabed nearly a mile down, nudibranchs thrive in waters both warm and cold and even around billowing deep-sea vents. Members of the gastropod class, and more broadly the mollusks, the mostly finger-size morsels live fully exposed, their gills forming tufts on their backs. (Nudibranch means "naked gill," a feature that separates them from other sea slugs.) Although they can release their muscular foothold to tumble in a current—a few can even swim freely—they are rarely in a hurry.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE...

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To (dinner in) New Haven...

2008-05-27T12:05:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, my dear sweet friend Thomas Joseph Aloisius Conners (nee Piernikowski) was rewarded for nine years of (mostly) hard work on behalf of the world of linguistics when Yale University finally acquiesced and granted him his Ph.D. Hooray Tom!

I had the honor of driving up to New Haven in the front seat of my friend's Audi as he drove at ludicrous speed on the Merritt Parkway so that we could... well, so that we could miss actual graduation and arrive just in time for lunch. We were right on time.

We had a lovely lunch with Tom's family and then wandered New Haven for a bit, taking in the sights and stopping by the President's house, which was guarded by a SWAT team and a fierce looking lady guard in a nice suit. We think Tony Blair, who gave the commencement speech the day before, must have been inside.

After the walk we stopped by a friend's house for some champagne and cake and... well. That's when all hell broke lose. The party in and of itself was a lovely, civilized affair full of bubbly wine, peach cobbler and light and airy conversation. One man had been a drummer for Lisa Loeb. Another had an absolutely fantastic Mark Twain mustache. There was even a French Nuclear Physicist doing magic tricks. This is the kind of stuff you just can't make up.

As the party wound down and the last non-Tom-affiliated guest left, I was walking by the door and heard what can only be described as the sound of impending disaster. A combination clanking and flailing and thump thump thump, followed by a low, soft wailing. Yes, ladies and gents. A very nice Sociology graduate student had fallen down the stairs.

I opened the door and ran down - "Are you ok? What hurts? Your head? Your butt? Your foot? Your ankle?" - It was her ankle, and from the looks of it, it wasn't pretty, even from the get-go. I went back upstairs to fetch Tom's mother - a nurse - and some ice. Snap. There is no ice. There is no bag of frozen peas (always have one on hand for this exact purpose). Thankfully, the French Nuclear Physicist, who happened to live downstairs, had a 1/4 of a bag of frozen broccoli that we managed to turn into an ice pack. He said he'd almost eaten it the day before, but had take-out instead, suddenly proud of his decision to eschew vegetables in favor of Pad Thai.

For some reason, no one would let me call an ambulance. Someone was going to drive. It was almost drunk lady, until I pointed out that sending the person with the broken ankle off in the car with a probably drunk driver was not the best idea we'd had all day. We took two cars.

Oy. Fast forward through a misguided trip to the University Health Services building, where they do not have an X-ray machine and where I'm pretty sure they don't want to have anything to do with you on graduation day.

So we wove our way around campus to the Yale-New Haven Hospital Emergency Room. Where we learn that *someone* had gone and canceled our dinner reservation because she decided she wasn't coming. Even though the other 12 people who had been planning on eating at the restaurant were in fact already gathered there waiting for Team Hospital Visit to show up. Right? You're like "Who cancels someone else's dinner reservation without asking them? Or even telling them for that matter!" I swore somehow I'd managed to change my regular pair of pants for a pair of Crazy Pants. When had we gone through the looking glass? To top it off, there was a dude who was stabbed and the lady who had stabbed him sitting in the ER. Hoards of children were running around seemingly unsupervised, and as time went on it got later... and later... and later... and I knew my "I'm not getting home before midnight if I do this," premonition was in fact coming true.

If this weren't a family blog, I'd unleash a stream of profanity right here that would make a sailor blush. (Oh yes! AND in addition to BIRTHDAY WEEK, it's FLEET WEEK. Sometimes God shows love.)

A few hours later after an impromptu Malaysian meal that was mostly starch and salt, I was back on the road to New York City, this time sitting in the back seat of the Audi and encouraging my friend to take 95S instead of the Merritt Parkway because I was too tired to be afraid of death at every turn.

So, for the record Tom. Your friends do love you. We just want to be in charge of dinner next time.

Better Than American Idol

2008-05-22T14:47:00.003-05:00

If you're alive and on Earth right now, chances are you have been inundated today with chatter and news about the American Idol battle of the Davids in which David Cook stole the crown from would-be front-runner and all-around-adorable kid David Archuleta.

Over the course of today I've managed to forgive Fox for purposefully having the show run over its alloted time slot so that my recording on my DVR cut off right here... "The winner of American Idol is... David...." END. Yes, folks. That really happened. I have had to move on, and let it go.

I confess that I love watching American Idol, especially when the singers are bad because being a normal person, I'm wicked into Shadenfreude.

However, tonight, the real Best Reality Show Ever starts up on Fox...

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!!!!

So You Think You Can Dance is simply awesome. 20 highly trained dancers doing choreographed, costumed routines in so many dance styles your head will spin. Everything from waltzes to hip hop to krumping to the Argentine Tango. It's that awesome.

I highly advocate watching this show.

And as a bit of a teaser, I've included this snippet from one of the best performances last season.

Cross your fingers.

2008-05-21T15:05:00.001-05:00

That's all I'm sayin.

But what I really wanted to share with you is this:

Permanence.

2008-05-14T20:34:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow morning before heading in to work, I will finally surrender my Massachusetts drivers license to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.

(OMG, how precious is David Archuleta? That boy is what America is all about. But that's a different story. He fills me with love for all mankind.)

So, tomorrow I will finally take the plunge and become a resident of New York.

I have lived in New York City since August 2005. Technically the state says you have to turn your license over 30 days after you become a resident. They don't, however, get too technical about what it means to be a resident. If they're being all simple and literal, I'm almost 3 years overdue and New York can officially do bad things to me for squatting.

But I have a feeling they have more pressing matters on their hands than punishing me for dragging my feet on giving up a part of my past.

This is apparently nostalgia month on Metropolis Unbound.

You see, I've kept my Massachusetts drivers license with its picture of me with beautiful curling brown hair and a nice mid-summer tan even though I've moved on. (Hell, I've bought real estate in New York City. You'd think that was commitment enough. In fact, Citibank just sent me a check for $48.03 to clear out the escrow account on my old mortgage. That's hard core grown up New Yorker.)

But no. Its the last thing. The last piece of me tied to my six years living in Boston, moving between my Beacon Hill studio to live with the ladies of 1426 Commonwealth Ave. to my years in Cambridge. It has my final Boston address and a crease from sitting on an airplane seatbelt the first week I had it. It has a picture of me in younger times, happy and optimistic.

I don't meant to say I'm not optimistic. Quite the opposite. I'll be 31 this month and part of me is grateful every day that I'm still happy and healthy and able to appreciate all of the wonderful things I have while still continuing to strive for more and learn more.

But if I face it, I have a mortgage.

So I have mixed feelings about turning this driver's license into one that shows the face I have now. The older look in my eyes. The slightly sharper lines of my cheeks. But it will make it official in a way I've resisted.

I told an ex-boyfriend once that I had always put off moving down to New York because when I did, it would be done. I'd be home. And if I can hold out financially, I will stay. Brooklyn is now home to me. It's like I'm back with my people. Maybe if I moved back to Manayunk in Philadelphia I'd feel even more so, living back in the neighborhood where my dad's mother and my mom's grandmother were girls together. But for now, I guess I feel more like a New Yorker than anything else, even though I confess again to being raised in New Jersey.

Maybe I'll get priced out like so many people do. Or maybe I'll evolve into a new home. A new state. Or heck, maybe even wind up back on the beach in Ocean City.

The first time I saw my apartment in a photograph on the Internet, I knew that's where I was going to live. Something about it just hit the spot. I called my sister immediately. I almost passed up going to the first open house because it was raining, but I got up and went, thinking that to not go would be a mistake. I was probably right, because when I went back the next day with my sister, brother in law, two roommates and one friend (open house overkill), I made an offer.

So, maybe its exciting. Registering officially that this is where I think I belong right now. But it does mean giving up a little something that I've held on to all this time. A tiny document that I could glance down at and see where I'd come from.

Maybe its about Phatiwe. Maybe turning over this leaf means really saying goodbye to all that and it has been too hard to face. Maybe the license and the gold paper fan hanging on my bedroom wall are my talismans.

It's just a laminated plastic card that lets me drive a car and convinces the Department of Homeland Security that I am me, but what I'm afraid of losing is the smile of the beautiful woman in that picture. I got to look down at it every time I opened my wallet. But now I have to let go.

The more things change...

2008-05-07T22:43:00.002-05:00

I'm back in Washington DC for a work event, but managed to sneak away this evening to have dinner with a wonderful old friend in one of our old haunts. Cleveland Park, up Connecticut Avenue from the Boston University building where I lived in the fall of 2002 when I was in graduate school and an intern for the WashingtonPost.com.

He picked me up and drove through the District, up 18th Street through Adams Morgan, and it was as if the five and a half years in between had never happened, only back then he drove a White Volkeswagen Golf. The same bars. The same restaurants. Madam's Organ, Tom Tom, the jumbo slices of pizza... The same crowds of 25-year old girls. The same Ethiopian place that always seemed on the verge of closing, still going strong... in that "on the verge of closing" way.

We drove back to Connecticut Ave. over Rock Creek Park and up through Woodly Park, my old neighborhood. Same restaurants. Chipotle. The two Indian places... Maybe one or two had turned over in all that time, and I was amazed.

Even when we got up to Cleveland Park, most of it was still the same. In fact, what stood out was what was different. The Pizzaria Uno was some low-budget burger joint. The expensive Italian restaurant we picked at random because it had outside seating (and ridiculously bad service) was new, I think. But Atomic Billiards, where we'd spent many a night drinking cheap beers and battling it out in the pool hall? Still there.

Awesome.

This is something you don't really get in New York in the same way. Sometimes, if I go a few weeks between visiting my sister on the Upper East Side, the entire neighborhood is turned over. Penang is a diner. The diner is now called Vynl, and some souvenir shop is a new Pinkberry (yum! addiction! not as bad as "House" though...) There's a transience almost in the way things come and go in New York City. Even things that we considered staples sometimes disappear overnight, never to be seen again, or sometimes to re-open three doors down with the same tables but slightly different.

Being back in the District was like falling into a time warp, back to a time when I could drink til three and still go to work in the morning at the Capitol building and be fine.
When I thought I was in love with someone who turned out to be well... wasted space.
And when I got to photograph George W. Bush sign the order from Congress authorizing him to go to war with Iraq.
When the DC Sniper had us all terrified that we would be randomly shot walking anywhere we went.
When while photographing the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial in the rain, my camera bag spontaneously combusted. (Yes. I caught fire in a rain storm. Batteries are not toys.)

I felt young and old at the same time, and just found myself smiling and watching the lights as we drove back to my hotel, wondering where all that time had gone.

May = Birthday Month!

2008-05-01T11:38:00.002-05:00

Since just about the time I was born, I've been kind of obnoxious about my birthday. Many people I know don't even let you know when their birthdays are come and gone, but I'm not really very good at that. Sue me.

You have 30 days to prepare. Maybe now I can fixate on my birthday instead of on Hugh Laurie, although this is probably unlikely.

My father's birthday is the day before mine, you see. (May 29 and 30th. I'll leave you to figure which is which.) And I happened to be born on a national holiday, so my birthday often falls during a 3-day weekend.

This means that my father and I have been kind of obnoxious about Birthday Weekend for approximately 31 years. Before that, I'm pretty sure he was obnoxious about birthday weekend but didn't have an ally. However, once we team up, my mother wishes she could be sent into space in a pod so that she wouldn't have to deal with us.

But its very important to celebrate being born! If you've ever watched it happen, it's a major accomplishment. And then not getting hit by a bus, year after year? Definitely worth celebrating. You see, to me, birthdays aren't a time to sit and be sad about being older. Older is awesome! Older is the opposite of dead. So you're doing fine. Birthdays celebrate the fact that you're still alive, and anything is possible.

The best way to spend one's birthday is on my parents dock in South Jersey, drinking white wine and eating crab cakes. Perhaps going to the beach. Getting in a boat ride around the bay, maybe heading out and cruising by Atlantic City.

This year, however, is one of those rare years when my birthday is actually several days past Memorial Day weekend - its on the following Friday. So it's like I get 2 three-day weekends in a row! Not like. It's actually true. How awesome is that?

And I'll have friends in town. AND the Sex in the City movie opens that day. The universe is conspiring to make me happy. Now if I could only find a way to actually *meet* Hugh Laurie... but then my life would be perfect and I believe at that point, you spontaneously combust.

Is there a doctor onboard?

2008-04-30T14:43:00.004-05:00

I need rehab. I need therapy. I need something to stop the endless churning of images of Hugh Laurie in "House" from their 24-hour loop in my brain.

This is why they invented drugs. To stop people from obsessing about the show "House" before it takes over their lives.

It is a recent and overwhelming affliction, my "House"-obsessing. But it has taken total control of my brain, and much like Alcoholics Anonymous makes you first admit you have a problem (I think that's true for any 12-step program...) I'm making a helpless plea to the Gods (that's you, readers) that I find a cure before it overtakes my life and I wind up homeless in a box under the Manhattan Bridge.

I tend towards fatalism at times.

See, here's the thing. Until this season of the show, I never even actually watched it. I had caught a few snippets here and there, but then I decided to record new episodes on my DVR. Which turned into recording new and old episodes on my DVR. It now records any showing on any channel. I have seven saved. See? "House" hoarding? Unhealthy behavior.

("Lost" hording and "Battlestar Galactica" hording, however, are signs of mental health and good taste. Matthew Fox is hot. As is like, every human being that survives the Cylon attack. Why do only really attractive people survive disasters?)

Hugh Laurie is way, way too old for me. I'm closer in age to his children. But I have a very active, highly embarrassing imagination.

I've even (Jen feels the shame washing over her, hoping it gets it out of her system...) I've even come across smutty "House" fan fiction on the Internet, thanks to the awesome yet sometimes misguided power of the Google Search, AND I READ IT.

There now, I feel better.

But really. Can you blame me?

Signed, Sealed... Not yet delivered.

2008-04-14T14:06:00.002-05:00

I just licked and sealed the envelope with my signed contract for the Park Slope CSA, along with a check to pay for what promises to be a bounty of organic, fresh, locally-grown goodness. I got an ever-other-week share, as I live alone in a small apartment and don't tend to make my own lunch. And often not my own dinner... But I'm going to try this year!

A CSA - Community Supported Agriculture program - is "a partnership between a community and a farm. The farmer gets a guaranteed income and market for his produce. The community gets great local, organic food in return", according to the Park Slope group's web site. "Basically, you buy a "share" in a farm. The farmer uses your money to... farm! Then each Thursday he delivers a truckload of produce to the Garden at Union. Members stop by in the afternoon and evening to pickup their share of food."

The shares I chose include in-season vegetables from the Windflower Farm.

From the web site:

Windflower Farm is a small, organic farm in upstate New York, nestled on 38 acres in the Taconic Hill country between Saratoga Springs and the Vermont border. It's an area made beautiful by the mix of small farms, open fields and wooded landscapes.

Doesn't that sound lovely?

I'm also signing on for the fruit share, which will bring me sun-ripened, gorgeous peaches, plums, pears, apples and berries. The flower share is something I've never tried before and am looking forward to receiving fresh flowers every other week for the bulk of the summer. I also made a donation towards subsidizing a share through the program's Share-a-Share fund. (They also accept food stamps, which is awesome.)

The woman organizing the contract mailing said that new members could begin sending in their contracts starting April 16. Which is Wednesday. And mine is already waiting to hit the mailbox! I guess I'll be un-greedy and wait til then to put it in the mail, but I'm a) terribly excited about the whole idea and b) overly paranoid that they're not going to have a share for me!

But I realize this is irrational, and its a volunteer organization and returning members have priority til April 15. But that envelope is going in the box on April 16!

In the meantime, today I had a low-carb wrap and got a bottle of water for lunch from the deli across the street. I usually just refill my Nalgene bottle, but I had to put it through the dishwasher as it got a little smelly (thanks Julie!). The sandwich came in a plastic box that isn't recyclable, but the water bottle is.

After watching last night's Human Footprint on National Geographic, which I highly recommend even if the script is at times corny and the sheer volume of everything starts to be wearying, I was physically unable to let go of the bottle above the trash can, as was my normal slightly-guilty habit. It's now empty and in my handbag so that I can take it home for recycling.

Democracy in Action

2008-04-10T20:20:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago my company decided to make its four divisions more independent of one another and spun us off into subsidiaries (or something like that).

In the aftermath of the conversion, our parent company - United Business Media, a London-based company that trades on the London Stock Exchange - sent the CEO, David Levin, to talk about how these decisions were made and what they mean for the company.

The most uplifting and interesting thing that Levin said, however, was not about our company, but rather, our country. As a European, he said, America was upping it's democracy street cred (my words) by showing that it's efforts around the world to promote free and fair elections and government of and by the people wasn't actually a convoluted power grab or a scam. The Democratic primary, in which our field of many has been narrowed to a neck-and-neck battle between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, is being viewed by the globe as America practicing what it preaches.

They're interested in watching what happens. As much as we are. And the beauty of the system is that we watch and wait, and we take whatever result we get. (The 2000 election being a particularly sticky situation...) And they watch as we move from state to state to state.

I don't remember ever hearing about the Pennsylvania or Texas or Michigan or Florida primaries growing up. By Iowa it was locked up, wasn't it? But now, even citizens in far-flung Asian countries are talking Superdelegates, according to Richard Cohen in today's NY Times.

Click through on the title link to read the full article. He talks about other stuff, but in the beginning, he echos Levin's sentiment. Which almost gives me hope.

Asia’s Republican Leanings

By ROGER COHEN

Published: April 10, 2008

JAKARTA

Europe votes Democrat, but Asia tends Republican.

That’s the headline from the fastest-growing part of the world where, as throughout a shrinking globe, the U.S. election is arousing passionate interest. Many a Shanghai dumpling gets slurped to the accompaniment of chat about superdelegates.

Eric John, the U.S. ambassador to Thailand, told me the campaign was “the best public diplomacy tool I’ve had in a long time.”

Democracy at work is riveting. In Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, America has produced three remarkable candidates. It’s not surprising that a recent BBC World Service global survey showed positive views of the United States increasing for the first time in years. The rise was to 35 percent from 31 percent a year earlier. Negative views fell to 47 percent from 52 percent.

My Life in Fish

2008-03-28T13:43:00.002-05:00

When I was seven years old, I made my First Holy Communion, a rite of passage for young Catholics that involved wearing a frilly white dress and having a Priest put a cracker in your mouth. This cracker symbolized the body of Jesus, who died for my sins, I was told, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

On the morning I was to take my first bite of God, I woke up to find that while I slept someone had come into my bedroom and set up a fish tank on my dresser. It glowed with its intense fluorescent blue-tinged light, complete with rocks, water, a bubbling filter and a handful of fresh water fish. When I was a child, I could sleep through anything.

The fish tank, like the cracker, were a symbol of transformation. I was no longer just another schmuck in a house full of pets. In coming closer to Jesus, I was coming closer to being regarded as someone capable of handling responsibility. I was a pet owner. These fish were mine.

The problem with pet fish is that they aren’t the most interactive of species. Rosie, the parrot that lives in the corner of my parents house next to the pool table, often wakes the household lazybones in the late morning with a rousing chorus of shrill, intensely loud screams. Max, the 130 pound Great Pyranese dog, still thinks he’s a puppy and will saunter up to you while you sit on the sofa, and plop his giant ass down on your lap as he envelops you in a cloud of stray white hairs. My cat Harold will drag the covers off my body if he thinks I’m neglecting him in the morning, which I often am. “I’m sleeping, damn it. Go bother someone else.” This tactic is often ineffective.

I kept the fish in the bedroom tank for many years, fish coming and going. Once a beta fish, added because I thought he looked lonely in his softball-sized solo bowl, managed to eat an entire forest of guppies. A swarm of hundreds was reduced to six in a matter of days. I was horrified, but by then, there was nothing to be done except flush the beta and re-stock on guppies.

Pet fish taught people resiliency.

They also gave me my first taste of insanity, that is. Of suicide.

It was a brown, hideous “sucker fish,” universally known as such even though I’m sure they have an actual name, who was the first creature to try to end its life in front of me. One morning, groggy with sleep, I dragged myself out of bed to take a shower and get ready to go to school. I shuffled across the blue nylon carpet and my foot stopped itself. Something cold and squishy was about to be crushed, and I screamed.

My father rushed in, convinced I was either being kidnapped, mauled or otherwise done wrong, to find me staring at a four-inch, still-breathing sucker fish, splayed on the carpet.

“I have no idea how the fish got out of the tank,” I said.

Laughing in that way dads do when they find out their children aren’t actually being stolen by the gypsies, he picked it up and, opening the tank’s lid, tossed it back in the water.

We started at it for a second and then. Splash!

In the three-inch gap at the back of the lid, open to let air in, the fish had found his escape route and had jumped back out of the tank. We put it back, only to have it leap out again. This fish was determined to cease being.

So, we flushed him, still alive, hoping that in the bowels of our septic system, he’d get what he wanted.

Meanwhile, the fish downstairs lived in a 70-gallon salt-water tank that my father lovingly maintained, in a place of honor in the house: right beneath the television.

Trying to be a semi-popular, fully-relevant member of elementary school society in the 80s meant logging several hours of after-school cartoon time on a daily basis. The roster of He-Man and She Ra, the Thunder Cats and G.I. Joe. Transformers. Saturday morning Smurfs viewing. If you couldn’t name all the characters in Rainbow Brite, you were basically a heathen (or in the case of one unfortunate girl named Trisha, a Jehovah’s Witness and not allowed to sing in the Christmas pageant, Trick-or-Treat or dye Easter eggs. She was an automatic outcast even though as a white blond girl, she should have had automatic status.)

In our house, the prized spot was directly in front of the television, laying on a giant pillow on a blanket spread out like a beach towel, with your feet propped against the fish tank. It was the drivers’ seat of the television. You had staked your claim to watching “Little House on the Prairie,” and no one could do a damned thing about it until you either got hungry or could no longer hold it in, and you got up to pee.

We’d watch entire miniseries, legs crossed and writhing in pain, to not get up and lose our seats. There were four of us. Occupying a prime space involved intense calculation of tactics, careful negotiation. “If I run and get the pillows, and you slide onto the floor, we can meet back up and lay in front of the TV together, and then Jessica and Jackie will have to sit on the sofas…” we would plot. Siblings teach strategic thinking.

If they were around to tell us, my parents would demand we remove our feet from the fish tank, but it only happened for as long as it took them to leave the room again. If they watched something with you, you slowly inched them back up until they were resting on top of the tank, at which point they’d make you take them down. And the cycle continued.

The entertainment center was custom-built to hold the fish tank, but the design forgot to take into account tank maintenance and the fact that, since it wasn’t the ocean, food would have to be introduced to the tank in order to keep the fish alive.

We had a problem of access. The opening in which the tank sat was only a few inches taller than the tank, and my father was the MacGyver of fish tank masters. When fish died and fell to the bottom of the tank, he would break out his spear – a wooden dowel with a nail attached to one end with electrical tape. We would then watch him try to maneuver to stab the carcass with the nail and pull it out slowly so that he didn’t drop it. “God damnit!” He dropped them a lot.

To change the water, he’d invented a hose and pump system that would empty a few gallons of water out of the tank so that he could mix a clean batch and then pump it back in. We used magnetic pads, one on the inside, one holding onto it from the outside, to clean the algae off of the glass. When those unfailingly fell, a combination of the spear and persistence were the only ways to get the magnet back to the glass, where you’d get it to re-adhere to the other one, only to drop it again. The opening was so narrow at the top that not even Jessica, with her miniature 6-year-old arms, could reach in.

When I was in college and we moved, the tank stayed behind, and I don’t think anyone was sorry to see it go. You can only take so many years of spearing clown fish with a nail before you start to wonder why people bother keeping pet fish. If you wanted to see them that badly you could go to any Chinese restaurant, and with that you’d get the added benefit of beef with broccoli and fortune cookies.

My last fish tank was a 120-gallon impulse buy. My friend was slowly dying of cancer, and rather than deal with it, I was engaging in retail therapy of the highest order. The day before, I’d bought an oversized armchair at a Jennifer Convertibles warehouse store, and they did not deliver.

I had to rent a U-Haul van to pick up the chair, which I had arranged to do during my lunch break. I had also spent part of the morning browsing Craigslist, and came across the fish tank. 120 gallons, complete with a 6-foot long, 3-foot high wooden base with cabinets for supplies. It was $100. I was sold.

In addition to retail therapy, I’d also taken to trying to take care of things, like vagrant computer programmers and tomato plants, during that year. Remembering the intricate work involved in maintaining the salt water tank of my childhood, I thought I’d found the perfect hobby, but it wasn’t meant to be.

My friend died the next day, and I sat looking at my fish tank. “Shit,” I thought.” What the hell am I going to do with a giant fish tank?”

In the end, I sold it to a woman who came to pick it up alone with a station wagon, in spite of several emails and Craigslist ads advertising that the unit was six feet high, six feet wide, and weighed several hundred pounds. When she finally came back for it with a truck and a friend, I’d already moved out, so I don’t know what she was hoping the behemoth fish tank would do for her.

But by that point, I’d moved to New York and into an apartment that would finally let me have cats, and found Harold at the 92^nd St. ASPCA. While he sometimes watches TV if I’ve got one of those nature shows on, I can’t imagine Harold would be that fond of a big wet bubbling tank of food that he couldn’t get at, so we make due without fish, and its probably for the best. I don’t actually like them.

Up-Sizzidy-Sold!

2008-03-25T22:44:00.003-05:00

In my "new computer" haze last night, I apparently made a few mistakes and this post has been updated to reflect what actually happened. (Thanks dutchess!)

So, I went to the store intending to buy the $1499 (already not cheap) Macbook. The black, 200 GB hard drive-having, Intel-based one with the shiny display.

One comment from a salesman about how the shiny display distored color if I wanted to use the laptop for photography... And la voila. My one nerve had been touched. The one thing I do that requires a specific "look"... i.e. the color you see is the color it is... is just casually mentioned and I kick into "Yes sir may I have another!" gear. I would have bought anything he suggested from there on out. Too bad he didn't pitch a laptop carrying case or some software that cost less than $649 (bad Photoshop!)...

So, instead of the black MacBook, I got the 250 GB-hard-drive-having shiny silver MacBook Pro, ladies and gentlemen. And I intend to use it.

At the very, very, hopefully very least, this blog post was super-lovely to type. So soft. So springy.

Viva Espana!

2008-03-21T11:59:00.003-05:00

No, I cannot figure out how to make a tilde over the "n" in Blogger. Sue me.

But, ladies and gents, I've taken the first small step on this year's vacation adventure and purchased two guide books on Spain! Hooray! I chose Frommer's and Lonely Planet, because I like to mix up the high- and low-brow travel.

After several months of hostels and most likely lots of dirt acquired on her round-the-world backpacking adventure, my traveling companion will be treated to a night or two in a decent hotel. I'm not sure I want to throw myself into hostels from the get-go in the middle of the hot Barcelona summer.

Unlike the last time I tried to go to Barcelona, this time, I will make reservations. Last time, my college buddy and I were backpacking post-graduation, as one does sometimes, and decided to go to Barcelona in July. There were less rooms at the inn that we'd hoped. Even Jesus had better quarters with that manger thing. The one room in all of Barcelona we could find was in a building identified with the word "Hostal" on a buzzer. Nothing more. And when we opened the door, the first floor was a decrepit lobby full of newspapers and rats.

We abruptly left the building, and after finding an internet cafe and making plans to meet someone in Italy, we found the only place to sleep that night in all of Barcelona: the overnight train to Madrid. But I digress.

Because I've been to Madrid twice, I'd like to see some other parts of Spain, starting with Barcelona and perhaps winding up in Andalucia. It will be July, it will be hot as b*lls, and I think I will probably love it.

Gambas al ajillo por favor? :) See! I can do it!

I also looked around for some good Spanish literature to get me in the mood, but all I can find is Don Quixote. Spain apparently really did have a Golden Age and then give up.

The books should arrive next week and I can begin plotting the trip. What to see. Where to stay. I'm leaving nothing to chance, having seen the wily ways of the backpacker set, and don't want to wind up sleeping on the overnight boat to Morocco by default. Although that could actually be kind of cool, in my imagination it would involve some kind of robbery and maybe some muffled pleas through some kind of gag that I could get what they wanted by calling the embassy...

(I've been contemplating writing some fiction lately.)

It may turn out the whole trip is 10 days in Barcelona and its environs, but that wouldn't involve frantic European train travel, which is in my opinion, second only to sampling actual European food. In my memory, dinner was always better in Lyon. Unless I was in Paris. Then dinner was better in Paris.

I'm sure I'll go on about this at length for the next several months as I buy what will likely be an excruciatingly expensive plane ticket, pick hotels, map out a schedule and then decide what to pack. Feel free to toss ideas or experiences my way!

Facebook is Making Me Insecure

2008-03-20T13:08:00.004-05:00

I have Facebook Network Envy.

I put this in capital letters because at some point in the future, I'm going to petition the CDC to make it an actual disease. Not quite as volatile and hard to control as SARS, but it makes the chicken pox pale in comparison. It's like being David Sedaris all the time, and that's rough.

Anyone who uses Facebook probably already knows what I'm about to say, because even the most jet-setting and seemingly cultured among us sees friends of friends who are in Facebook networks that cause pangs of jealousy and its nasty cousin, envy. "Why does SHE get to be in the Egypt network. Why can't I be part of the Yale Club. I want to be Bear Sterns!"

Just kidding about the Bear Sterns part.

But honestly, I am secretly jealous of the Indonesia, the Paris and the Abu Dhabi amongst the (1) NETWORK HERE segment of my friends. Mostly because their lives seem more exotic and exciting than my own with its grande coffees from Starbucks, subway commutes and fixation on American Idol. I feel so pedestrian in their wake.

Yes, these pants are from the gap. Yours were made by a villager in Tibet from the wool of wild mountain yaks? That's nice.

One thing I learned very slowly as I got older was that middle school playground life IS life. Cliques, cool kids and pack-mentality last until, well, death. Adults aren't miraculously moral and ethical when they hit 21. I sure as heck wasn't.

And it strikes me that Facebook really is like that middle school playground. Using our networks we segment ourselves into groups and sub-groups, automatically creating in-crowds and out-crowds among the people we know and people we wish we knew. (We'll leave aside the people we wish we didn't know.) Who hasn't felt a little surge of happiness upon noting," I have 103 friends!" Even if it's 3 friends, it's better than no friends. Even if they are all cooler than you.

(P.S. - This post was also written on the contraband MacBook Air.)

One more thing...

2008-03-18T15:58:00.002-05:00

Just because I wanted to write TWO posts on the MacBook Air currently in my possession and about to be taken away.

In the WashingtonPost.com Lost Madness poll, the final four will most likely be: Desmond, Sayid, Ben and Charlie. How to choose?!?!?!?!

The drama is killing me.

I Am Writing This on a MacBook Air

2008-03-18T15:45:00.004-05:00

And yes, you should be very, very jealous. It is sitting on my lap right now. Or is it? It's so light I can't feel it. Oh yeah, there it is.

Our Test Center at my magazine recently reviewed this very piece of luscious computer hardware, finding it wanting in many areas. I, however, find that the only wanting going on is my own. The screen is so bright I might need to pull out my sunglasses. The full-size keyboard is smooth and springy under my fingers. I can toss the thing around like its a file folder.

I am in love. God I want this computer. I want this computer so much I'm contemplating pulling a Newsweek on it and "accidentally" throwing it away with the copy of today's Wall Street Journal that's in my handbag. I am pretty sure that not only would it fit, it would be so slender and wee that I might not have even noticed I'd put it in my bag til I got home later tonight and "Oops! How did that get in there? Pesky MacBook Air. Always trying to get recycled."

(Test Center just came and asked for its Air back.)

But seriously. I almost feel clumsy typing on this thing. Somehow un-chic, like the time in high school someone made fun of me for wearing brown shoes with a black outfit. It's way cooler than me. Even when I'm a poser and have fashionable days.

It's making my ability to resist the iPhone even weaker... Although I'm totally waiting til the new software and hopefully the 3G version come out this summer. (It will have faster connectivity, for the luddites out there.)

Tomorrow I'll tell you what I think about Apple and Starbucks teaming up to put digital displays with song information on what its playing in its New York stores.

Those were not there last week. I know. I have a caffeine addiction.

Viva la Redbones!

2008-03-04T12:23:00.004-05:00

As you probably already know, I spent a good six years of my life living in the fine city of Boston. I fled in August 2005 under less than ideal circumstances, but wound up in beautiful Brooklyn where the brownstone-lined streets and Gorilla Coffee keep me quite the happy camper. (I mean really, New York is awesome.) But this morning I've been hit with a pang of nostalgia so sharp it induced blogging.

I miss Redbones.

For the uninitiated, Redbones is a BBQ place in Somerville, Mass., right off the main drag in Davis Square, and they have the most amazing ribs outside of Texas. I'd write poetry about them if I thought my poetry skills were anywhere near good enough to wax on about Redbones Texas ribs, hush puppies, corn fritters, Lynchburg Lemonades... You get the picture. It's some serious down-home cooking in the chilly North East. And it is amazing.

I was hoping to head back to Boston this week for a conference, but now I'm heading to Los Angeles for a different conference, and my weeks of nostalgia and scheming on how to get in a trip to an Anna's Taqueria for a carnitas super burrito, how to find a few lazy hours to hang out in Harvard Square and then maybe hit up O'Sullivan's for a burger and still have time to have a few cocktails and a gouda skillet at the B-Side Lounge for old times sake.

Yes, much of my Boston memory revolves around food, but I think that could be true of most peoples' memories about most places. (Good memories that is.)

I used to drive to work every morning from Kendall Square in Cambridge across the city to Needham, a suburb, and listen to the Emerson College radio station, WERS. I was even having pangs of old radio show nostalgia this morning. Some quality indie rock was played on that station, introducing me to things like The Decemberists, Martha Wainwright, Meg Hutchinson and Antje Duvekot.

For a few years I thought going home to Boston would be too sad, but lately the sadness has moved aside and I'm filled with this overwhelming urge to re-connect with the little day-to-day realities of a life I'd most willingly left behind.

I think perhaps its time for a visit.

Saving the Earth, One Coffee Sleeve at a Time

2008-02-27T13:06:00.004-05:00

I recently came across something that I find delightful enough to share with my audience and know that I plan on ordering one (probably the one named Jennifer) because I think it's a great idea.

The re-usable coffee sleeve!

These fabric sleeves slide onto your take-out coffee cup, a la Starbucks, and keep you from burning your tender fingers while refraining from taking that extra cardboard sleeve and single-handedly ruining the Amazon rain forest.

But seriously, I've found myself becoming increasingly concerned with things like my own "carbon footprint" and actually consider "off-setting my emissions" when I fly to Los Angeles for work next week. I partly blame the incessant media chatter about how global warming is screwing up weather patterns all over the world, which it is, and then watching things like National Geographic's recent special "Six Degrees Could Change the World," which chronicles the global carnage that will result with each degree the earth's average temperature increases. If we bump that sh*t up five degree's we're all doomed. I'm not kidding. Global warming is already killing old French people by the thousand. If we hit six degrees, it's like the seven plagues of Egypt or something.

Please people. Recycle.

Even though recycling is among the stuff white people like that make them feel good about themselves, like the Toyota Prius and ethnic diversity.

Back to saving the earth. I've also been noticing that regular non-Whole Foods grocery stores are starting to catch on with greener practices. The Key Foods grocery store near my house is now selling eco-friendly tote bags next to the check out lanes. Yesterday a wine shop gave me a canvas tote to take my wine home. Fancy! So, I wind up advertising the wine shop for free by carrying their bag, but they didn't give me one of those opaque black plastic bags that wine shops tend to use which I'm pretty sure will outlast human existence.

But before I get too bleak:

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

My new obsessions:

2008-02-15T19:06:00.004-05:00

Granny Square Afghans.

Foley + Corinna Tote Bags

Elijah Craig Kentucky Bourbon

Donimo Magazine Knows its Audience

2008-02-07T17:47:00.000-05:00

I receive Domino Magazine because a lovely friend got it for me as a housewarming gift when I moved, and I think its delightful. I love its modernist yet timeless sense of style and the beautiful things that exist to decorate your home.

Just when you thought they'd found every possible way to separate people from their money with registries and wish lists, Domino takes it to a whole new level.

They've launched Domino Home Register, a "wish list" on their web site that allows you to make lists of things you want "Whether you're decorating, turning the big 3 - 0 or searching for gifts..."

Ack. It's always weird to realize you're someone's target market.

To Facebook or not to Facebook...

2008-02-06T17:31:00.001-05:00

That is the question.

Something that's recently come up in my 21st Century Web 2.0 media universe is the etiquette of Facebook Friending, the process by which one discovers known persons (or unknown persons!) on Facebook and decides to make them a Facebook Friend, giving them access to all of the things you do that frankly, aren't your job, while the hamster wheels in your mind are busy processing exactly how you tell a story about... Stuff.

For example, this morning someone I've never even heard of requested to be my friend on Facebook. This person works in PR and I'm a journalist. A handful of my co-workers were his friends already. I didn't know him from Adam.

Am I supposed to say yes?

Then there's the "Facebook Friends I Work With" issue and whether, upon discovering your boss is on Facebook, you friend him or wait for him to friend you? A brief survey of my compatriots revealed that most people think that the boss should be the one to initiate friending. However, we couldn't come up with any repercussions against being the friend-instigator with higher ups. But it seemed a better idea to wait. And then not to jump on and accept their friend request right away, lest they think you're spending your day on Facebook and not, say, engrossed in the workings of Apple.

A friend, a graduate student with a Facebook profile whose students are all on Facebook has made his profile unsearchable to them and others to keep his adult life separate from his teaching life, which is a good idea and has so far worked out well.

Facebook is, in my opinion, a delightful networking site that allows me to keep up with far-flung friends and family and to share some down time with my colleagues. I don't see it as a business tool or even a business-building or networking tool. There's too much crap out there and there really are things one wants to keep separate from one's work life, like the whole Church and State issue. Oh yeah, and the fact that everyone under the age of 30 has at least 1 - at least! - picture of themselves somewhere on Facebook in which they are drunk or drinking.

And if you don't yet, you will soon. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Extreme Home Makeover Trumps Super Bowl

2008-02-04T01:05:00.000-05:00

Okay, I began this evening watching the Super Bowl at my sister's place on the Upper East Side. I came home on the subway (after being entirely unable to find a cab) and was disappointed to find that House had been recording according to the TV Guide, not according to when House was actually on post-Super Bowl. But I digress.

I watched it in spotty chunks via DVR, and then watched tonight's Extreme Home Makeover.

Now, I have friends who see this show as a tremendous waste of resources, but it's all marketing donations and publicity stuff to essentially transform the life of a family. Lately they're taking one family from each state that's suffering more spectacularly than usual. One family had four children who all had the same weird disease - apparently not inherited but obviously genetic - that caused them to treat food like a parasite, children with super-rare immune diseases.... tonight's family however, featured an 8-year old with pediatric cancer, and she had just found out she had a reoccurance when they decided to build her family a new, safer, less polluted by mold house.

So, they send the family and this stunningly beautiful 8-year old to Hilton Head while they build them a beautiful chalet in Oregon, and they come home to a Domino Magazine perfect house and the girl and her 2 teenage brothers freak out. This family is so overwhelmed by the beauty of what they've been given, as most Extreme Home Makeover families are, that they can't actually communicate effectively about how they feel. They have been given a tiny slice of paradise, and they know it.

Now, I have no idea how much they spend or what bargains these families make to get these houses. I like to believe that ABC is willing to dole out this cash and these beautiful homes with new appliances because 1) the appliances, etc. are donated by marketing departments and 2) the show produces way more in ad revenue than it actually costs to build a suffering family a beautiful, safe home (which is a tragedy of a whole different level). I like to believe that it's actually generous.

Yet, tonight they showed an 8 year old girl, for whom they built a beautiful house. But she had pediatric cancer. For the second time.

She didn't have a prayer. How can you fight something so persistent and stealthy?

I lost my best friend to cancer almost three years ago. I watched this show with tears in my eyes. And streaming down my cheeks.

And the show, produced whenever it was actually produced, had a post script... The girl passed away in December 2007. But before she died she saw the tremendous love and generosity her existence and her life inspired, so in one respect, if just that one, she was lucky.

ABC Obviously Thinks I am Deficient....

2008-01-30T22:48:00.000-05:00

So, tomorrow night, LOST will have its Season 4 premier. This fine evening, ABC is playing the finale from Season 3, yet....

I believe that while they're trying to make this a well-informed segue into the fourth season, it plays like a pathetic episode of VH1's Pop Up Video. For example. The episode in question is entitled "Through the Looking Glass."

Any moderately educated person knows that this is a reference to Lewis Carrol's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Alice in Wonderland for all you Disney brats) and his "Through the Looking Glass." This is Literature 101 people. For serious.

Now, in the second scene, the "pop ups" tell us that this is called Through the Looking Glass and that this means things are "mirror images" of real life, like how in this episode happy-go-lucky confident Jack is exhibiting despair - his "mirror opposite."

Aside from being distracting, it assumes that even first-time viewers are kind of stupid. Its' not like Ariel making snide asides in The Tempest. Oh no.

In spite of the pandering that the "pop ups" do, what's even sadder is that the people who wrote them (ha ha new viewers!) still use the show's own slang to refer to The Others, stations, The Dharma Initiative. So it's not even all that useful. "The scary dude is Ben Linus. Leaders of the Others... he's about to get some news he won't like." SHOW DON'T TELL!

Maybe if blind people were watching that would be an excuse... "they can't see that he's obviously pissed!" but no. Blind people couldn't see the captions either.

Have we lost all powers of interpretation? Are we that reference-deprived that we can't even understand when a show makes MAJOR literary references? At this point I'm pretty sure that they'd start captioning Romeo and Juliet in case we didn't realize they weren't really supposed to be together... Forgive my rant but I hate when television executives assume that everyone is stupider than they are. For example, Jack is now in a hospital getting STITCHES. First caption "Jack is injured..." No shit, Sherlock. Nice work!

ABC, you have a spot-on brilliant show. Give your viewers the credit they deserve for being able to follow it. And if they've missed out, adding the captions just embarasses everyone.

If you really want to catch up on Lost, read Television Without Pity.

** While I may have jumped the shark and posted this before re-watching the whole episode, I now think ABC thinks people were actually born yesterday. And they think "Bad to the Bone" is an awesome song for a commercial about Sawyer. ABC. Please. Fire your advertisers.

Inappropriate subway behavior?

2008-01-30T15:21:00.000-05:00

So, I'm riding on the Q train this morning, listening to a podcast of This American Life, and I'm standing next to this beautiful man. He's tall. Has these light blue eyes. Absolutely adorable. No wedding ring. Reading The New Yorker and, unfortunately, listening to an iPod!

Are iPods ruining my potential subway-based date seeking? It's not like you can tap someone on the shoulder and be all, "Hey! Are you single! Take that shit out of your ear!" Or can you?

Is it inappropriate to kiss a stranger on a train?

Just curious.

When being nice pays off

2008-01-24T10:10:00.000-05:00

Now, those of you who have met me before know that I love a good glass of wine. Heck, I even love a mediocre glass of wine, but a truly delicious wine is a rare and delightful treat.

I shop my neighborhood wine stores as they have a varied selection, and when they do carry the same wines, there's one that I know will always beat the other 2 on price. Sometimes, however, I like to use Fresh Direct's grocery and wine delivery service to re-stock my 9-bottle Cuisinart Wine Cooler, i.e. my mini booze fridge.

Now, recently I had 2 roommates, one of whom had a taste for a delightful Malborough Sauvignon Blanc from a wine maker in New Zealand called Crossroads Winery. I took a liking to that particular breed of NZ Sauvignon Blanc, my current favorite variety, even though its winter and I'm supposed to prefer reds. One night recently, after being out with some friends and having a few beverages, I returned home and poured myself a glass of the Crossroads white.

Sitting in my apartment watching The Daily Show, I decided I'd look up the vineyard and they had a "contact us" button. So I sent them an email telling them that their wine was perhaps the best, at least my favorite, of its kind so far.

Now, there's a budding wine writer named Eric Hazard who keeps a blog of wines he's tasted from Fresh Direct, and he seems to have a lesser opinion of this wine, objecting in part to its $15 price tag. Having tasted around, I think it's a good wine at a good price. I've also discovered Kim Crawford and WhiteHaven Sauvignon Blancs, which have more subtle crispness and slightly different high notes, which make them equally delightful.

I almost forgot I'd done it. A quick little email dashed off in an altered state, telling someone I liked what they did for a living.

Then, a few days later, they wrote back! How lovely is that?

Even nicer, a day or two later I then receive this:

Hi Jennifer

Thanks for your kind e-mail which the winery has passed on to me as we are the US importers and distributors of the Crossroads wines here in NY. It’s always so nice to get positive feedback about the wine! I’m assuming that you order the sauvignon blanc through Fresh Direct and wanted to send you a bottle of Crossroads Pinot Noir to try (which Fresh Direct is also now selling). Please let me know the best address to send it to.

Best wishes
M** F***

--
Regards
Me** F***
South Pacific Wines

How fantastic is that! So, I sent her back my work address lest my gift wine be taken by thirsty vagrants prowling my neighborhood. I'll let you know how it is.

Welcoming in 2008 with beer, cheese and chocolate

2008-01-23T16:51:00.000-05:00

Beer, cheese and chocolate?

Yes indeed. Beer, cheese and chocolate at a tasting held in a basement establishment in the East Village by the name of Jimmy's No. 43, and hosted by the New York City Degustation Advisory Team.

Now, while you may not associate the words "tasting" and "beer", when combined with the right foods, beers really do have a lot to offer to discriminating palate. Although I might advise one not to meet up for a beer before going to a beer tasting. Those last beers were pretty delicious, but I fear they were mostly lost on me.

Beer and cheese and chocolate can all have similar characteristics that in the right circumstances can enhance one another and leave your mouth wanting more out of sheer deliciousness. A stout, for example, made when barley is cooked dark before used to make the brew, goes well with nutty and smoky foods like a smoked gouda, a sharp cheddar or a chocolate hazelnut truffle. Beers with creamy heads that froth in the mouth combine well with creamy cheeses or rich milk chocolate. How delicious can beer and chocolate and cheese be when consumed together with intent? My companions were doodling stick figures having sex on the program. 'Nuff said.

Try a Chimay with a milk chocolate truffle and a hint of a smooth cow's milk hard cheese and tell me I'm crazy. I dare you. You'll have a most exciting and unexpected dining experience.

The Degustation Advisory Team introduced us to a self-styled chocolate critic, Charles Gordon, who attempted to tell us how Belgian chocolate could come from Peruvian beans that were treated in Italy, but all we really paid attention to was the delicious melting nuggets of Maya Gold on our tongues as we sipped an ale.

I have to say it transformed the way I thought about beer. For the first time, the mainstay of frat boys the world over had developed the air of a delicacy. I've had good beers before. I know that there are excellent Belgian ales and then there is Milwaukee's Best, which is a sad and sorry misnomer. But never before had I considered that a beer had characteristics and nuances like a wine could. I was actually tasting the beer, almost like it was the first time I'd had a beer, and savoring its individuality.

Next month, a friend and I are attending a Bacon, Beer and Cheese Tasting. I'll let you know how it goes, although I'm bound to appreciate anything that involves the word "bacon."

Last Blog of 2007!

2007-12-31T13:07:00.000-05:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Actually, that second part is a lie. When it comes down to it, 2007 was a pretty good year all around.

It started with a slight hangover and a cup of hot chocolate with my dear friend Ruchi at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope. On top of my hot chocolate, the barista made two interlocking hearts of cocoa which she and I took to be an omen of things to come. While I end 2007 single, there has been much love and good will in my life this year. I've made some fantastic new friends and met some brilliant and inspiring people. I reconnected with a dear friend from college who lives nearby but who I didn't see for years. (Foolish!)

I started the year living in a rental apartment and am now the proud owner of a lovely Brooklyn Co-op apartment, in spite of our seriously crap plumbing and the fact that I had to shower at the gym yesterday to avoid flooding my downstairs neighbor's basement (yes, three floors down!). My neighbors are lovely, I'm healthy and happy, and gosh darnit, people like me.

So far, all factors indicate 2008 will be pretty kick-ass too. I'll finally finish painting that hallway, replace the light in the bedroom and maybe even take up spinning classes again. Although that last one is pretty ambitious...

What are your big plans for '08?

Happy New Year!

The Holiday Child Extravaganza

2007-12-21T14:53:00.000-05:00

There exists a videotape of Christmas 1982 that may be the single most embarrassing, incriminating thing on the face of the Earth.

My parents had set the video camera up waiting for us to come down for Christmas morning, and the entire unwrapping event has been preserved through the years to be sure that we never try and put them in a nursing home. This video shows the year I got the Barbie Dream House, a complex, do-it-yourself mansion of plastic parts that my father had apparently spent the entire night putting together before getting about 7 minutes of sleep before we tore into their room to see if Santa had come.

In this video, Julie's 3-year old chain-smokers voice can be heard asking for Pep Pep, her beloved toy whale. Jackie, 1 1/2 is stumbling around in her footy pajamas about to be knocked over by the frisky Newfoundland puppy at any second. I, on the other hand, am calmly sitting there with my disheveled hair authoritatively telling everyone exactly what I think they should be doing at every moment in time. I instruct Julie that she has to share things with me, but I get to decide if I have to share things with her. Oy. I am evil!

When we watched this video when Jessica was young, she was devastated. "Where am I? Why didn't you guys let me be in the movie!" And we were all "Jess, this was before you were born..." and she burst into tears. "But why didn't you guys let me be in the movie!" No concept of "pre-me" with that one at the time. Now, I think she's grateful that the videotaping Christmas era pre-dated her existence.

Next up on the X-mas Embarrass-a-thon came the Holiday Child Extravaganza, a holiday beauty pageant cooked up by my grandmother and aunt who made us sing, dance and do interviews on camera. It was the 80s. There's a lot of awful clothing and feathered hair.

I can't actually bring myself to reveal more about it. Suffice it to say that you, dear reader, are very happy to have missed out on participating in the Holiday Child Extravaganza and if I hear you ever do that to your own children I will help them put you in a nursing home when the time comes. Oh yes.

This Christmas, there will be no videotapes. We will instead sip cocktails as my dad is on a fancy fruity martini kick, and on Christmas morning no one will run down the stairs like a bat out of hell to see if Santa came. Now it's more of a "Go get your sister up it's almost 10" kind of event. No dive into piles of presents all lovingly wrapped and then thanklessly torn to shreds. Now there's coffee to be made, teeth to be brushed, dogs to be fed. Then we can gather around the fireplace next to the tree and exchange the things we got for each other.

When I was 5, I got the Barbie Dream House. This year, what I really want is a... Microwave.

Why Oprah is on my Sh*t List

2007-12-13T17:52:00.000-05:00

Because I am a writer and I want her to like me. Because if *I* wrote a memoir you can bet she'd be the very first person I made sure had a copy. Even before my mother, my grandmother and God. Oprah would read my book. And with a mere mention on her over-hyped program, I would be famous.

I say this because I want the world to know I WAS READING "PILLARS OF THE EARTH" BEFORE OPRAH TOLD ME TO! To prove it to anyone on the New York City subway who happens to read the cover of my book while I'm commuting to work, I'm not even reading one of the new, giantic copies that have suddenly sprouted up like babies nine months after a blizzard. (Oh! Isn't that the latest Oprah book?) Christ. I'm reading an old-skool mass-market paperback edition that has yellowed pages and a torn cover. It looks like a well-loved Steven King novel. It is my shield of literary street cred against all that is Oprah.

Because let's face it. She has great taste in books. At least she endorses books that I think are worth reading like 75% of the time. The James Frey thing was unfortunate, and I totally lust after and envy Joanthan Franzen for having the integrity to tell her she couldn't put her stickers on "The Corrections." Which was brilliant and sardonic and everything a book about family should be. Of course she wanted to put her name on "The Corrections." She's the King Midas of book readers. Every page she touches turns to gold. Who else could get 21st century middle-aged housewives to read Tolstoy and John Steinbeck?

I hate that.

Cirque du Crap

2007-12-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

If I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil performance before Wintuk at Madison Square Garden's WaMu Theater on Saturday, I would still have found the tepid juggling and bizarre anti-plot to be a disappointment.

I can't believe I exchanged cash money for the chance to sit and watch that load of horse sh*t.

Cirque du Soleil. What comes to mind?

Lithe, somewhat emaciated very short Bulgarian trapeze artists in elaborate costumes doing death-defying leaps through the air. Teams of men on trampolines somehow crossing paths in midair while tossing burning swords. But all with a somewhat French sheen of blase and Marcel Marceau oddity. It's compelling. It's mezmerizing. It's not Wintuk.

In the photo here note the weirdo creepy puppet dogs. At times the dogs sing. The boy in the red parka keeps babbling about how he wants to see it snow, but one has no idea who he is or why it's suddenly so important that it snows that he gets on a flying sled with a mime, a woman in a gaudy patchwork cloak who keeps throwing up her arms like she's casting spells in Macbeth, and of course, the giant dog puppets.

I don't want to slam the performers, but aside from the crappy story, the spectacle itself was underwhelming. Two women who were doing acrobatics on ropes basically just spun in circles. There was a woman who juggled 7 pink balls. Impressive if you're at a frat party, but one expects something more from the creators of Corteo, Mystere and "O". The acts were almost comically short as well.

One woman standing behind me at intermission said she felt like they were scamming people by doing the show on a small stage in New York at Christmas. It had to be a gold mine. The performance was sold out. But putting on a lackluster cash-cow of a show should be shameful to Cirque du Soleil. Hopefully next time they come to New York they'll live up to what audiences have come to expect.

Just in case you were wondering...

2007-12-06T21:50:00.001-05:00

There have been requests for photos of my wee Brooklyn abode, so here it is in its mostly-finished glory!

My apartment!

Too Many MCs, Not Enough Mics...

2007-12-05T09:57:00.000-05:00

In other words, what do you do when you anticipated that your holiday party would be ill attended as it's 10 days before Christmas and tons of people actually love you and decide to come! Ha ha. What a glorious problem to have! But seriously, turnout is on track to be better than I'd anticipated so I'm very excited and looking forward to seeing how many people can fit into 500 square feet of Brooklyn apartment space. I have decreed that no one is allowed to wear big pants or ball gowns. That would take up unnecessary space.

Skinny pants are okay, as long as you don't wear a belt with them in hipster white. That would be too much for my tiny mind to handle.

But the point is this: It's Christmas Time in New York! (Holiday time, if you want to include those other ones...)

Christmas in New York is spectacular. As the days grow shorter and one doesn't even manage to leave the office before nightfall, it's uplifting to see that the street lights are strung with garlands and snowflakes made of lights. I love the crowds clogging Rockefeller Center to get a glimpse of the enormous tree, which never fails to both impress me and make me a little bit sad. So beautiful! So festive! I can't believe we killed that tree!

Somehow the lights and the buzz of holiday shopping and throngs of tourists whip me into a Christmas frenzy and I start doing things like drinking Gingerbread Lattes and mulling wine. Suddenly stew seems like a perfectly viable meal option and brussel sprouts are back in full force. Window boxes in Brooklyn shed their flowers for those cabbage things that go all red in the middle.

When I was a kid we came to New York City during the holiday season to see both Showboat on Broadway and to see the Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Spectacular, complete with dancing girls and Santa. Ever since, I've loved Christmas in New York. Apparently lots of people do because you can't get a hotel room between Thanksgiving and New Year's without forking over quite a wad of cash. Makes having that apartment even sweeter.

In keeping with the "embarrassing things that my parents did to us as children" theme I've been developing lately, I'll share the downside of that trip to NYC back when I was about 12. Just old enough to be mortified. By what, you ask?

My mother decided to dress the four of us into outfits as "old fashioned" as we could muster without actually having to go shopping. Kind of crossed with this furry babushka thing - furry hats and furry muffs. On top of the costuming, which was almost too much for a 12 year old trying so hard to be cool to even bear, we then had to go out in the most public of places.

We had to ice skate in Rockefeller Center while she took pictures of us.

If you can't see why this would mortify a 12-year old, I cannot help you. Needless to say, it kind of killed the joy of being one of those ice skaters making endless circles between the golden angels blowing on their trumpets, under that giant, sparkling tree. Those pictures still make me cringe on the inside, remembering the awkward, clumsy girl I was at that age, bumping into things, fretting over who had the other half of my "best friends" necklace.

It makes me sigh with relief that I'm now an adult and on the other end of the Santa spectrum, as in pretending to be Santa instead of pretending to believe in Santa.

Stay tuned for notes on the Holiday Child Extravaganza, the time the pogo stick was thrown on the roof because "Santa dropped it" and the joys of the White Elephant gift swap.

The Best Thanksgiving Ever

2007-11-20T11:20:00.000-05:00

It is 1986, and my parents have decided we are going to spend Thanksgiving and my sister Jessica's third birthday "Up the Mountains..." - family-speak for visiting a tiny house near Dushore, Pennsylvania, that my grandfather's father built at some point "back in the day." The house has a gas stove, water from a well and an old fashioned wood-burning stove in the living room heats its four rooms.

We came to this house often when I was a child. I remember it's wood-paneled walls, it's room full of beds (with one set of bunk beds) and then the "master bedroom" where my grandparents would sleep. I remember sitting on the ice-cold toilet seat when first arriving late at night after a long drive from South Jersey, trying to ignore the copious piles of mouse poo. The first thing we always had to do was clean up a bit.

That year my family had gone up on its own. No grandparents. No cousins. Just the six of us. With our costumes.

That year, my mother decided she was going to dress us up as Pilgrims and Indians. Two Pilgrims. Two Indians. Jessica, whose third birthday was that week, and I were dressed in folksy regular clothes on Team Pilgrim. Julie and Jackie, however, won out in the costume contest that year. My mom took faux-fur and made them little tunics, put bands of ribbon around their heads, hair in braids, and stuck a feather in each. Oh god damn. There is a photograph of this, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to post it without the express written permission of certain members of the clan.

One of the (many) problems with this house in the mountains was its distance from civilization. Excellent when you were looking for solitude and a break from busy work schedules, but not so awesome when a winter storm knocks out the power and you're stuck going down to the creek with pails, breaking through the ice and bringing back 33 degree water.

I'm pretty sure we had power on Thanksgiving Day, but I do recall climbing into the family van and schlepping to the metropolis of Tonowanda or Tamaqua - I'm pretty sure they're mostly the same - and having Jessica's 3rd birthday party at Burger King. There were paper crowns involved. We saw a Star Trek movie. Star Trek IV, the one with the whales.

Yet, in spite of a lack of electricity and fetching water from the creek, that Thanksgiving stands out as one of the most fun we ever had, even though I think I was pretty pissed at the time about having to dress up like a freakish Pilgrim and pose for photos. Maybe I was just jealous of the furry Indian costumes.

La Beauté

2007-11-18T22:31:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make.

I have a $90 night creme.

I had gone into Bloomingdales on the way to see my dentist (who has thankfully moved to the Rockerfeller Plaza area) and I had fallen victim to the one-two punch of the very effective Chanel saleswoman and my own longing for porcelain-clear skin, devoid of wrinkles and blemish free.

If you've never been to the Cosmetics and Beauty section of Bloomingdales, it's as overwhelming and perfumed as you think it is. Bright lights. Sample sizes. Lipgloss in every shade of pink you could imagine, and very aggressive salewomen in neat black suits. They are impeccable. You are not. Your presence in the Bloomingdales beauty department means you know you are not. You are easy prey.

About five years ago I had bought a Chanel night creme - Age Delay Nuit it was called - that was like taking a cool drink of water on a hot, dry day. I had gone back looking for the same, not with any serious intent to buy, but really now. Who was I kidding?

Oh Chanel, how you upgrade!

The product that I had known and loved back when really I had 25-year old perfect skin had been replaced by one called Beauté Initiale. It was light and pink and the word geleé suit it to a T. Unfortunately for my slightly-older, somewhat dry skin, it wasn't as rich as the other one the saleswoman had lovingly swabbed onto my cheek. The Précision. Oh, it felt like she had wiped whatever they used on Mount Olympus onto my face. Only goddesses had such sweet smelling, oddly satiated skin.

I tried to feign indifference. To pretend I was weighing my options. It took everything I had to resist the coordinating eye creme. I had some from before. (Which I threw away upon arriving at home, realizing it was in fact five years old and had traveled with me between five apartments.)

I walked out with a glorious "little brown bag" with a black and white box of really expensive creme, a sample of the eye creme I had shunned (which is still in my bathroom. taunting me.) and a mini sample mascara. The sample mascara had the most unusual, most fabulous applicator brush I'd ever seen. But I'm afraid to go back. On the way out I also got a Bobbi Brown lipstick in Burnt Red and a Cole Haan handbag.

I apparently am afraid of having cavities filled.

My occasional trips to Sephora are usually not as dangerous to the budget. Sephora is about 50 yards from my office. The worlds fastest sprinters could be there in mere seconds upon leaving the elevator.

Sephora has a few things I find myself acutally going to visit. Yes, I visit sample cosmetics.

First place: Anything from Philosophy. While Philosophy is nowhere near as posh as the Chanel creme that shares its shelf in my bathroom medicine cabinet, it has a somewhat hippie, almost spiritual allure. Perhaps because their perfume is both called Amazing Grace and makes me feel like the prettiest girl in the world. To me, it's what pretty girl smells like. I love it.

(Chanel No. 5, on the other hand, is the smell of sexy, sexy woman. A man in my office cafeteria once said it made his knees weak when I wore it to work once. That one is for dates.)

Philosophy also makes cremes, cleansers, serums, and microderm abrasion scrubs and "peel pads". I have two kinds of their shower gel. I have Hope in a Jar. I am a girl-stuff marketer's wet dream.

If it's slightly different and smells like clean girl or promises clear, sweet smelling, dewy skin, chances are I'll spend $45 plus tax on it.

I also have sugar scrub and body soufleé from Om, some St. Ives scrub and Vitamin E lotion. I have several different lip colored light pink lip glosses. Nars. Chanel. Revlon. Laura Mercier. Vincent Longo. My wide array of hair care products is a totaly different story. I <3 Terax.

It's hard to be a girl, is what I've resolved. There's an entire industry out there trying to take our money and sell us lotions that they swear will make us feel better about ourselves. And what if they do? What if using a $90 night creme before I go to bed makes me feel luxurious, beautiful and pampered? Like I think my face is the most precious one on the market and should be treated like a queen's?

Worth every penny.

So much to say, so little time...

2007-11-13T23:15:00.000-05:00

So, this past week I visited dear friends in North Carolina, got really drunk, confessed all kinds of sentimental things, had to go on a hungover walking tour of Duke University and had an unsatisfying omelette. For their part, my friends were glorious, gracious hosts who make some fan-f*cking tastic barbecue. Really. I'm not full of hyperbole.

My cat is sitting three feet away purring becuase he thinks there's a chance of him being petted. This is what I think men are secretly like... or is it not such a secret? :)

On a more serious side, there's been some stuff in the media that I really want to talk about but I've been saving myself for a post book club discussion on our latest - Sick, about the health insurance industry and its affect on our health. Health insurance is almost an oxymoron after you read about its history. It cannot be a "business" or it fails to do to what it needs to do.

How can we fix it?

Please do comment if you have any thoughts. I'm saddened and stumped by what I see as failure on all sides, which ultimately hurts us all...

Hotties.

2007-11-13T23:14:00.001-05:00

If Stephen Colbert Designed the New US Passport

2007-11-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure what he came up with would be spot on when compared to what the U.S. State Department devised for us globe-trotting Americans to carry as they make their way around the world.

I had my first glimpse of the new passport standing in the customs line at the Istanbul airport on my way home from Turkey. Maybe there were 1,000 people in the lines waiting to have their passports stamped. I was next to a group of middle-aged white Americans who were holding out their brand-spanking-new passports and showing each other the garish pages.

They look like what you'd get if you put Epcot Center and a passport into a blender. Each page is more insultingly stereotypical than the one before with lame quotes, stupid pictures of idealized American landscapes, and best of all, a GIANT EAGLE on the page opposite your picture.

The New Republic had an excellent piece on exactly this the other day. Go read it. It's hilarious. Excessively weird, red-state passport, it calls it.

If you don't want to bother, you can still see the new passports here.

On Candidate Thompson

2007-10-22T20:58:00.001-05:00

Fred Thompson's character, the Manhattan District Attorney, Law and Order, just said "You take the justice you get."

Sam Waterston: "We're letting justice get lost in the fog of war."

The case: A soldier in Iraq shoots another soldier to prove that the body armor that a contractor working on-the-cheep was selling was useless.... prosecution trying to convict the armor company.

The DA sides with the armor company.

This might be fiction, but even the character Thompson plays with such folksy authority is a colossal prick.

Listening to Fred Thompson, he sounds like he might be the kind of man to vote for the armor company. Big government contract. Low quality control. Lucky soldiers.

My Local Food Movement...

2007-10-22T19:26:00.000-05:00

I have read about 75 percent of "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and I may never eat again.

I'm utterly disheartened at the idea that "organic" food just means that chemical ferterlizer wasn't used, and that "organic" chickens still grew up in really shitty homes. As did "organic" pigs, and lordy "organic" milk makes me want to throw up in my mouth. I'm so torn.

Michael Pollen discusses the implications of organic v. industrial v. organic industrial v. local food production, and it really seems that the most conscionable food choice is local - farmers market or community sponsored agriculture (CSA). Industrial organic uses the same overblown, oil-driven system to produce food on a massive scale as does regular industrial food, but it does have the perk of keeping fertilizer runoff from damaging our water supply and our oceans. (See my earlier post giving the LA Times a shout-out for its brilliant work on pollution of the oceans which won the Pulitzer this year.)

In addition to finding the organic food market disappointing, I was more disgusted by the industrial food chain than I thought I'd be when I set out. The prolific movement of corn in our food chain - from overproduced commodity pillaging what could be productive farmland that feeds teh nation - to cattle fed with corn and pumped with antibiotics because COWS CAN'T EAT CORN. God what are we doing to ourselves and the animals we depend on for food?

It's almost too much to think about.

So, this is going to be a project you hear about frequently: Jen's Food Movement. I will try to eat as locally as I can. When I can't, I will buy the most environmentally and animal-friendly food I can. I will try to buy organic produce, because at least it wasn't grown in a chemical bath becasue the land had no nutrients left after over-farming.

One thing that gives me hope, aside from the brilliance of Joel Salatin's complex Polyface Farm, where chickens get to be chickens and pigs get to be pigs, is that even CNN and the Senator from Iowa realize that corn is doing us in.

If we are what we eat, Americans are corn and soy.

The USDA recommends we get 5 servings of fruit and vegetables every day.

If this country were to suddenly give up its Coke and McDonalds for fruits and vegetables WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH.

Chew on that.

.

Dancin' in the Dark

2007-10-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Wednesday night I saw my first Bruce Springsteen concert. It was about 2 hours and 15 minutes long, and some serious, serious rock was played. While I only knew four of the songs he played (I spent a lot of money on this) the band was beyond brilliant. Max Weinberg (drummer) was like a drum machine, man. That guy can keep some rhythm.

I knew: The Rising, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark...

So I actually only knew three now that I'm listing them.

But hearing Bruce play Dancing in the Dark live was like reliving a moment from my childhood.

I don't remember where we were, but I remember coming home. I remember hearing the music shaking the entire house in our neighborhood from well down the block. There was bass in the 'hood, and it was coming from the dining room.

We walked in to find my father, dancing to Dancing in the Dark played as loud as the new stereo with its 3-foot tall speakers would play it. It as so loud the ear-ringing started almost immediately, but it was impossible not to start dancing too. I think that might be the loudest music I've ever heard ouside of a concert...

But how pricesless is that? Every time I hear that song, all I can think of is one afternoon, maybe 20 years ago, where we found my dad dancing to Bruce in the dining room. Awesome.

Vegas, baby!

2007-10-17T01:41:00.000-05:00

I am in bed in my room in Ceasar's Palace in Las Vegas. A room bigger than my apartment back in Brooklyn and oddly decorated like something out of the pages of "Domino" magazine, and this bed is wicked comfortable.

Earlier this evening, after dinner and drinks with some folks I'd attended a conference with, I was walking back to Ceasar's alone. A few nights here following a sleepless night of puppy-sitting (bad Leo) had me wiped out at 11, which makes me feel old and lame. But my flight is at 7:15 a.m. and damnit, if I miss it I won't make it back to see Springsteen tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden, and a Jersey Girl has to have her priorities.

We hadn't gotten far, my compatriots and I. Ceasars is next to the Bellagio, and I had never actually been inside the Bellagio, so we wandered that way - me, another reporter, a CEO, a marketing manager, and a couple celebrating their third anniversary. We decided to stop in a cafe on the water outside the Bellagio that had a prime view of the water show, delicious sauvignon blanc, and was prone to a gentle misting as each short performance by the water spouts wound down.

It was lovely and my company was superb. After a walk through the Bellagio's casino to the lobby where I got a glimpse of the ceiling - covered with giant glass flowers - I decided to turn in for the evening.

On the way back, I walked outside rather than back through the casino. While I was passing, a new water show began in the giant artificial desert pond, this time to the tune of Elton John's "Your Song," a song for which I have a particular weakness. The pond was surrounded on all sides by people, and as the song went on, I found myself drawn to join them at its edge. I leaned forward on my elbows on the railing, watching the water sprouts dance in time to the tune.

It's someone's job to make that water match up with the songs. To pick the songs. To choose the lighting. And rather than my usual New Yorker cynical reaction to all things, I let myself enjoy it for a moment. I was so taken with the moment that after it ended, as I was walking back, I passed two women who were taking turns taking pictures of each other. I asked if they wanted me to take one of the two of them together and they were delighted. I photographed them standing in front of the Bellagio and the pond, and even though the flash had drowned out the background, they loved it.

I walked off smiling.

It reminded me of something I'd read earlier in the day in "Water for Elephants" where the narrator, Jacob, talks about putting on his "good shirt." The idea almost brought tears to my eyes. In the story he is 90-something, and is heading to see the circus with his family, interspersed with the tale of his circus life during the Depression, caring for the exotic animals in a traveling circus. What struck me was the mention of his "good shirt" and the ways in which we all so tenderly prepare for special occasions. We all have our everyday things. Our everyday shirts. But sometimes, we decide that something is worth donning our Sunday Best.

That reminded me of an article I once read about how even the poorest of the poor, back when photography was in its infancy, would try to get photos taken of themselves, and the lengths to which people - from gentry to factor workers - would go to in order to have their best face photographed. They'd put on their nicest clothes. Whether those be with fine lace or simple cotton shirts without stains or tears, being photographed was something special that people thought was special.

Like the woman who I photographed tonight in front of the Bellagio. They might not have gone out of their way to wear their nicest clothes, but they were using photography to mark a special time. Their trip to Las Vegas together. And I was happy to get to play a small part in that.

Eat, Pray, Love Me!

2007-10-03T14:00:00.000-05:00

Last night I finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of loss and re-birth, "Eat, Pray, Love", and while I found it was one of those books that I just couldn't put down, something about it seriously irritated me.

My necessity, a memoir writer is a bit of a narcissist. They're writing about their experiences hoping against hope that you'll read them and take an interest. Bloggers, shamefully I must admit, share a bit of the same tendency, but at least we don't commit anything to paper, publisher and the N.Y. Times Bestseller list. (Yes, if you're wondering, I'm just jealous. Very, very jealous.)

The book follows the recently-divorced and utterly heartbroken Liz Gilbert as she eats her way through Italy, prays her way around a single Ashram in India, and then well, gets her Brazilian dude on in Indonesia, while also hanging out with a tiny, ancient Indonesian medicine man, who I find to be the best character in the book. In the meantime, Gilbert is seeking balance and divine redemption following a messy divorce, something I cannot associate with, so perhaps I find it hard to connect with her character at times.

In memoir, even your heroine is still a character, portrayed as they see themselves, not as they are to others. That's the perk of memoir over biography. But I digress.

In what must be a hidden streak of self-loathing, I found her putting asides in parenthesis to be utterly annoying. (I know, I know. Hypocrisy!) There were such heavy-handed adjectives.

Maybe it was reading it right after Ian McEwan's terse and compact "On Chesil Beach" that made me think she was a bit over-the-top. McEwan is able to convey the disconnect, tension and beauty of a situation without having to call it "unbearable tense," "painfully remote" or "strikingly beautiful."

She also was "that girl" who was always dating someone, always attached, to a man from the time she was 15. Heck, she had a boyfriend she was "desperately" in love with before she was even divorced. And she has an entire chapter about how she can make friends with anyone, which also just made her seem insincere. Perhaps I'm projecting my own feelings here, but they grated on me and made me dislike her just a bit.

Yet, I couldn't stop reading. I had to find out what she did next, and even though her language lacked the grace she so often sought, she managed to tell a darned good story.

Late in the game...

2007-10-01T12:54:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I finally finished watching the first season of Lost. It's highly addictive but due to some misfires in the good old Netflix queue, I got the last disk before the second to last, and had to watch 4 episodes online.

Watching them on my 12-inch Mac laptop was not as awesome as watching them on the TV. So, I stalled, thinking that maybe I could just skip over them. Good thing I didn't or I'd have found the last episodes even more confusing and traumatic than they were!

Lost is what you get if you put The X-Files and Gilligan's Island into a blender, and you decide you're going to end the show before it gets crappy. The X-Files, unfortunately, didn't realize that it had gone off track about three years before it stopped. Around the time David Duchovney realized that he didn't want to be on it anymore. When one of your two leads decides the show is done, the show should be done. I'm just sayin'.

So now I have a new addiction to add to my love of all things Battlestar Galactica. Which I recommend as highly as I recommend things like Salman Rushdie novels and Stag's Leap S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon, the best red wine I've ever tasted. Watch it! Now!

I can't remember where I was going with this post... I started it like 3 interviews ago. Busy day here at work. Anyway, Lost. Awesome. Although how likely is it that 90% of the survivors of a plane crash would be that hot? Have you ever been on a trans-oceanic flight? Not full of hotties.

Kid Nation Not as Scary as I'd Imagined

2007-09-20T08:40:00.000-05:00

Last night CBS debuted its latest "reality show", Kid Nation, where they take 40 kids, aged 8 - 15, and stick them in a "ghost town" in New Mexico called Bonanza City and tell them to build a society. When I first heard about this, I imagined what kind of coked-out parents would let their children go run amok in the deserts of New Mexico with no adults and no, um, I don't know... survival training?

But thank god it's way less Lord of the Flies and way more Double Dare than I'd feared. There IS an actual adult, a kind of cute-in-a-goofy-way man who looks about 30 who just has to say "Hey kids!" and they all come running and suddenly behave. He helps them out. He gives them challenges. He's the teacher, the surrogate dad to a bunch of latchkey kids with a mission.

They have teams, a town council, they have to figure out how to cook, and there's "laundry", which I can only assume is actual 21st century laundry complete with LG or Kenmore washing machines and dryers. The kids have normal kid clothes. The only cowboy kitsch are their hats and bandannas. The 15 year old boys are jerks (complete with 15-year old boy chalk graffiti pranks), but once they realized that good campers got $20,000 prizes, I think we're going to see a change of heart next week.

So, CBS is not as douchey as I thought they'd try to be - this isn't Survivor Pre-Teen. At each town meeting - which seem to happen every 3 or 4 days - the kids get a chance go say they want to go home. Last night 8-year-old Jimmy, from New Hampshire, wanted to go home. He had repeatedly said he was too homesick. He missed his parents. He thought he was too young to be doing this stuff. And if an 8-year-old boy thinks he's too young for something, chances are, he's right.

On a side note, I'm really not sure who they think the audience for this show is going to be. There weren't ads for the first 30 minutes or so, but towards the end, there was one for Vagisil cream. Apparently their intended audience has vagina problems.

Donovan McNabb Needs Glasses

2007-09-17T23:45:00.002-05:00

If that guy had been LESS wide open, as in NOT SURROUNDED by FOUR Redskins players, I could have imagined throwing the ball to him in a life-or-death situation in a football game. As in, if I screw this up my team is toast, or I make a good play... I know! Let's choose the shittiest play imaginable! Oh wait. I already did that.

I hate football season.

It gives me so much anxiety and rage. This is a picture of my team failing me. (See photo of ball slipping from Eagle hands...)

FOR SHAME B*TCHES. PLAY SOME FOOTBALL.

There. Ugh. I'm disgusted. You guys are going to give my dad a heart attack, and then I'm going to be SUPER pissed.

Oh yeah, and I once gave up going to see a Redskins v. Giants game on the field with the Washingtonpost.com's photographer because I wanted to see my "boyfriend", who then informed me he wasn't my boyfriend.

See? I have horrible luck with football.

Leo

2007-09-11T13:56:00.001-05:00

On 9/11/07

2007-09-11T13:36:00.000-05:00

It has been six years since that morning I woke up to hear the radio commentators going "A plane has apparently hit the World Trade Center" and then made it to the television just in time to see the second one strike.

I didn't live in New York then, but in Boston. Where we were suddenly very afraid of our airport and of flying anywhere. I had a friend who bought a fancy bed for a song from an Arab man who had to sell everything and get out of town on Sept. 10. It does make one wonder. Can that be a coincidence?

Today, New York City is gray and it is raining. It's like the city is crying. Sirens roared past my office and I shivered. A crash of thunder made my stomach crash. Sometimes, while I know it's irrational, I am afraid. And I hate that.

Maybe it's the endless re-hashing people seem to need to do on days like today. Anniversaries of tragedies are delicate times. It's important to us to remember the past and keep alive those we loved and the things we lost that were precious to us. But it's also important to remember that dwelling on suffering isn't a good way to live, and that moving on doesn't have to mean something in the past was not significant. Life-changing. Defining. I wish America had used its chance to define who it would be after that tragedy for something noble and good, rather than for a war of _____ (fill in your own depressing word). I'd call it a war of convenience if it seemed at all convenient. Every day we sink further into the mire, and every day I'm a little bit sadder that being an American isn't such an honorable thing anymore when you cross our borders.

The Taxi Strike Strikes Back...

2007-09-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's because I'm a lowly writer, but I tend to take the subway most of the time to get from here to there. Yesterday morning when I heard it first on the radio, I didn't give a hoot about the taxi strike, apparently in response to being GPS tagged so that they would be tracked... I guess on one level it sucks to be tracked, but on another, you're being a taxi driving people around. What's the big deal if you're able to leverage GPS to track where everyone is? Isn't it a semi-dangerous job?

Either way. That's another story.

This evening, I attended a Rock show. The kind that begins with a capital R. My friend Andre fronts a most excellent yet very loud band called ism that played in the Village this evening. My dear friend Carrie and I ate at Otto (I had the incomparable Carbonara) and then trekked over to the Lion's Den to see ism rock it out. Wait. I mean Rock it out...

So, awesome rock show. Chillin with old friends. Reconnecting with people I've missed for longer than necessary. Then Carrie and I jump in a taxi. I notice when we get into the taxi that there's a strange young blond man sitting in the passenger seat. And the driver has yet to turn on the meter... We've gone a few blocks... Um, I ask. Are you going to turn on the meter?

Random slurred words meant to obscure the understanding. He's not using the meter.

How much to Park Slope?

THIRTY DOLLARS, he says.

It doesn't cost $30 to get home from LaGuardia. It doesn't cost $30 to get home from 96th and Central Park West. It is NOT $30 from here.

Then I realize the blond man in the front seat is a passenger, and he's suddenly all "Yeah, how much are you charging me?" We decide as a collective, the passenger coup, that we're getting out. F*ck that.

So, now Carrie and I are cab-less. And I'm wearing new flats that are chaffing at my heels, used to wearing the flip flops. I limp. We make a last ditch effort after several blocks to catch a cab near the Prince Street subway station. A silver minivan with a paper sign that reads "Taxi" in the window pulls over. "Yeah, I'll go to Brooklyn!"

"How much?"

"However much you want to pay ladies!" rings a jolly Jamaican accent. I'm not saying all Jamaicans are Jolly, but this one definitely was.

The dashboard is lined with bobblehead dolls, a model 3-masted sailboat, and other weird dolls and hanging figurines. There is a giant Jamaican flag taped to the ceiling with masking tape. A back-seat facing TV screen is taped up with the same masking tape. There are 2 "no smoking" symbols also affixed to the ceiling with masking tape. (Like Ghostbusters, but with a cigarette instead of a ghost, for those born between 1973 and 1982). There is reggae.

Carrie asks who's singing.

Duh, it's Bob Marley, Carrie. She's so cute.

So, we're in this minivan that looks like an exploded doll house/carnival/mode of transportation, and listening to some reggae, and the dude is laughing like a hysterical hyena.
Oh crap. Is my driver on the drugs? In a moment of sober (I was actually, the whole somewhat-bad-decision-making time) I take my cell phone out of my purse and just hold it in my hand, ready to call in my own abduction.

But driver remains kind of super cool. He's hilarious. He's really f-ing happy. He's giddy and loves loves loves that he's driving two ladies to wherever the ladies want to go. I hold my phone, laughing about how NYU students are tools with the driver, who also loves them because he works there.... Apparently he plays taxi when driving home from work. At midnight? Humph.

In spite of my reservations and clutching my cell phone, he took us to where we wanted for what we offered to pay (market rate essentially) and he took our money, continued to giggle with us, and then drove off.

It really was a nice guy with a van who wanted some extra cash so giggled as he listened to Bob Marley and drove home harmless ladies.

Sailing the Wine Dark Seas

2007-09-03T18:18:00.000-05:00

I've been back in the States for about 24 hours now, and so far I've attended one dinner party, tried 9 new wines and painted one hallway (before: black::now: orange) and now I'm sitting, satisfied with my week of adventures and wishing I were still at sea.

This year's voyage aboard the HS Kybele was as delightful as I'd imagined it would be, although I did a lot less reading than I thought I would. I got in about 50 pages of Don Quixote, 100 pages of a book on evolutionary psychology and then 25 pages of The Ominvore's Dilemma. I dragged all that stuff 5,000 miles for nuthin. I didn't even finish this month's Oprah magazine.

What did I do while at sea? I did quite a bit of swimming. A bit of napping. And lots of eating delicious, fresh foods prepared by the ship's unparalleled cook, Hassan. Kofte, moussaka, lamb chops. Fresh feta and tomato for breakfast. Nescafe instead of real coffee. Dessert of fresh fruit, watermelon, grapes or figs. Salads of onion, tomato and cucumber dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. We ate well.

And slept well.

Each night we'd drag our pillows and blankets up to the mattresses lining the deck of the ship (for afternoon lounging... or morning lounging...) and sleep under the bright stars of the Aegean. Although sometimes the full moon shined so brightly it made falling asleep difficult. A few times I even woke and saw the sunrise. Delicious.

Vacations when you can reconnect with what makes being alive special, because that's all you're doing, are something everyone should get to experience. Being alive and savoring the earth, the sky and the sea. Feeling your body move in the salty water before you've had breakfast. Sleeping under an afternoon sun. Laughing your ass off at something someone you find brilliant and engaging said. Sharing stories with new friends. Gossiping with old friends that know you well enough to know that you do love figs but don't like fish... Good times is an understatement. Thank you Ayse and Zehra for a splendid, rejuvenating week. I can't wait til we do it again next year.

Netflix is even awesomer than I thought...

2007-08-17T09:49:00.000-05:00

In addition to being a great service that mails you movies that you want to watch and lets you keep them as long as you want for a flat fee, Netflix has gone and made customer service a person-to-person experience by eliminating e-mail service. If you want something done, you have to call.

In a world where customer service is becoming a bit of an oxymoron and it takes days to reach a human being to resolve a problem that can't be fixed by dialing "3" when prompted, it's refreshing to see a company making the effort.

At Netflix, Victory for Voices Over Keystrokes

However, the part about how sometimes people are lonely actually made me tear up a bit. Yes, I'm a wimp, but I hope I never become one of those people who calls the Netflix call center to have someone to talk to.

You can't climb a mountain...

2007-08-13T14:56:00.000-05:00

With a sinus infection. Or the remnants of one. It f*cking hurts your head until you feel your eyes are going to be crushed by the pressure mounting in your forehead and cheekbones and finally you have to admit that yes, the mountain has defeated me.

And so it goes.

This past weekend I traveled to Mt. Moosilauke near lovely Warren, New Hampshire. (Hey! I know Warren!) Some friends and I rented Great Bear Cabin, a cabin owned and maintained by the Dartmouth Outing Club, of which I am a lifetime member in spite of my decided lack of sportiness. My sportiness comes in the form of yoga and tennis (because I think it helps to have a dress code), neither of which involves dirt. Camping and hiking involve lots and lots of dirt, so this was my first mountain trek in quite some time.

I arrived after midnight from New York City, where two lovely friends had rented an SUV to whisk us northward. It worked. We got to the cabin in a reasonable amount of time, and were informed, after a dark, dark hike up 1/3 mile of trail, that there were no pork tacos.

It's the kind of statement you think will not affect you, until it happens. You didn't even know pork tacos were a possibility, but upon hearing you can't have one, sadness sets in. (Don't think of a white elephant).

I jest. There were no pork tacos, but it didn't crush my spirits. The team assembled in its entirety sometime near 2 a.m. and we turned in for the night to get adequately rested for some hiking.

After a breakfast of: scrambled eggs with fresh herbs, johnny cakes, which are pancakes with corn, not flour, and lots and lots of Schaller and Webber bacon, we set out on our varied hikes. Five folks went up the more difficult trail to the summit of Mt. Moosilauke. Three of us drove to the Ravine Lodge at the base. One decided it was a good day to chill at said lodge, and I should have stayed with him. Up up up I went, only to wind up with crushing head pain, no tissues and a trip back down, down, down without having seen the expansive vistas that should have awaited me.

C'est domage.

Back at the cabin that evening we drank ourselves out of wine, played a game with dice called Mentirosa which I think is my new favorite thing (it involves lying. it's awesome.) and then trundled in my bunk after eating delicious sausages.

Mad props to my chef for the weekend, and kudos to my companions for providing me with a fine woodland retreat that wasn't too dirty. Although next time I might lobby for canoing.

Arnie, the Darling Starling and the Great American Road Trip

2007-08-09T15:39:00.001-05:00

As I have mentioned, I'm going on vacation very soon and I am most excited to have the opportunity to lounge in the Mediterranean sunshine with an Effes and a book or three. So, I'm having a hard time focusing on the three articles I have due tomorrow, and in an effort to get the writerly juices flowing, I'm going to chronicle my last thirty minutes for you. A winding, information-filled trip down memory lane thanks to that wonderful thing we call The Interwebs.

I'm writing a story about healthcare. So, it's hard to focus. So, in between takes I start reading the Frugal Traveler's latest update on NYTimes.com. How this had gotten past me for the last three months is another matter, but I clicked through to read the initial story - the departure from New York, and writer Matt Gross talked about the great American road-trip authors: Kerouak, Steinbeck, William Least-Heat Moon. Who? Who's that last one?

William Least-Heat Moon wrote a book called "Blue Highways" that tells of his cross-country odyssey in his van along the back roads of America.

It had been assigned to my 11th grade honors English class "back in the day", and I remember everyone bitching and moaning about reading this old man's book about driving around in a big van. My teacher seemed to think it was the greatest thing ever. Brilliant! Authentically American! A Tour-de-Force!

To be honest, I had little appreciation for the thing. I read it because I had to, and recall thinking it was "stupid" and "lame," but for some reason, it's been popping up in my life in various places lately.

Thinking about "Blue Highways" got me thinking about high school English, which made me wonder if it would be hard to find the email address of my AP English teacher using Google. So, I Google her name and our high school, and what comes up? A chart on a web site promoting open information flow in government pops up with the salaries of every teach and administrator in the school district! Weird! I felt oddly compelled to read the whole thing, feeling somehow shameful and dirty knowing how much our teachers made. Granted, that was more than 12 years ago, so they're doing pretty well across the board. But it felt like an odd intrusion into the privacy of people who I'd known.

Which got me to thinking about teachers and reading, as I had google-stalked an English teacher. In first grade, a student teacher read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" out loud to the class. I can still remember her mousy brown hair and the look of the small book in her hand as we sat around her feet.

In fifth grade, we had another reading-aloud, but that time, it was a book called "Arnie, the Darling Starling," a memoir about raising a tiny bird that had fallen from its nest, and the life-long journey they took together. I don't remember much about that book, except that during that year the Keds that had comics that you colored in yourself were all the rage. (Like Crocs, according to the gap company's shoe outlet Piperlime.com. When an e-tailer tells you something is "all the rage", run.)

Arnie is out of print these days, but I do think I'm going to pick up a copy of "Blue Highways" this evening on my way home from work and give it another go. Perhaps with grown-up eyes, I'll finally learn to see what my teacher saw.

The High Tech Dental Experience

2007-08-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

This morning as I was laying in bed in my new apartment, waking there alone for the first time and I heard a report on NPR about how some dentists are using technology to make their patients relax during treatment. They show them movies on special goggles that are linked to a mini DVD player. Amazing, right?

"Wow," I thought laying there. "That sounds pretty cool."

So, fast forward one subway ride to midtown (my dentist is across the street from Bloomingdales!) and I'm sitting there, chatting with a lovely dentist named Julie who seems younger than I am.

She's taken a slew of digital xrays of my teeth using a device that's slightly larger than the traditional film of yore. The new device produces computer images instantly, but it cuts your mouth somethin' awful. I hate it. And I have cavities. Six, to be precise. I have cavities UNDER MY FILLINGS. This is alarming to me. I also have a chipped tooth, near an old filling, that may require a crown. So in addition to learning about the joys of interior painting on 90 degree days (don't do it!), you'll get to hear about the latest and greatest in Manhattan dental technology.

Post-picture-taking, the dentist hands me a list of movies. On this list is the Mel Gibson movie "Apocalypto." Yes, a movie in Mayan. At my dentist's office. I couldn't resist and asked if people actually picked that one, and she said yes. To her dismay they sometimes did. It's just not soothing.

I picked the first disk of Season 3 of Sex in the City. I put on the goggles, plugged the tiny ear buds into my ears, and lay back. Scraping and some kind of drilling with water, or scraping with water, ensued. Vaseline was smeared on my lips to keep them moist as a metal tool was dragged between my teeth. I promised to floss more. I have to go back three times. Three! And one is rather urgent as my tooth has chipped near the filling that has a cavity under it. Awesome. That wasn't even the one that hurt!

It was a bit random that I heard a report this morning on TV at the dentist and la voila, my digital dentist whips out TV goggles so that I can watch that instead of my reflection in her glasses. Which I still watched from time to time. How often do you get to watch someone else poking around your teeth with a sharp metal device, scraping away at the remnants of meals past? It's oddly riveting. Kind of like "Apocalypto."

A Shout-Out to SoJo...

2007-08-01T13:34:00.001-05:00

Well, it's not so much a shout out as a blisteringly funny yet somehow soul crushing blog post from an old friend from high school mocking what was, until I was in middle school, our local "mall." It's just that depressing.

Check it out.

I'm not usually a post-thief, but he does capture the essence of the Shore Mall in ways I think need no further elaboration.

Books! Boats! Books on Boats!

2007-07-31T14:18:00.000-05:00

I leave for vacation in 3 weeks and 3 days, and I'm already foaming at the mouth to get on that plane, take some Lunesta, and wake up in Istanbul ready to spend an endless day waiting to reach the Kybele, a beautiful ship that will be sitting at the harbor in Bodrum waiting to whisk me and my fellow travelers away.

I have the lists of things I'll need, like beach towels, hair conditioner, bathing suits and sunscreen, running through my head.

But the thing that keeps tripping me up is this: What will I read? I figure that with 7 days of sitting on a boat, I'll finish 3 average-length books. Part of me is also tempted to bring Don Quixote as I've never read it and it's one of those considered far-and-wide to be a tour de force and quintessential example of the perfect novel. But do I want to do that to myself? I'm having a hard enough time gearing up to start that damned book (the writing of it that is...) that maybe the great masters of fiction will daunt me out of it...

Do I re-read "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami because for some reasons visions of its story have been popping back into my mind like a movie? Do I take something like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" to get it off of my shelf of things-to-read and to feel better about the delicious, fresh Turkish figs I'll be munching on as I learn about the evils of agribusiness?

Do I take the past 5 issues of The New Yorker which have been piling up in my apartment?

It's a serious problem in my life, perhaps to distract me from the fact that in the meantime I'll be buying my first home and moving into it with just enough time to unpack the necessities before going camping...

But this is where we get all Web 2.0 and I eagerly solicit reader opinions on what books YOU think I should read while at sea... Comment away!

I (heart) Harry Potter!

2007-07-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

What a glorious final journey our hero had! Trials. Tribulations. Exuberance. And the use of the word "nargle." Fabulous really. Simply fabulous.

But I suppose I'll do the humane thing and not go on about the content of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I will comment that J.K. Rowling has a gift for storytelling and managed to weave everything she's brought to life in the past ten years into a magnificent finale that I wish had gone on even longer than it did.

Whew. Almost as big a mouthful as a 759-page hardback book is a pain in the ___ to carry around on the subway. Ever try balancing a giant hardback book in one hand while gripping a slimy subway pole in the other? Not awesome.

But the book was!

I finished it last night just before watching the latest episode of "So You Think You Can Dance," a show that actually inspired me to download music from Timbaland and Citizen Cope to bob my head to on the subway. I had to keep myself from dancing on the train this morning, which was a rather awesome way to start the first day of Life After Potter.

But really I just want to read them all over again, like I read and re-read the Little House on the Prairie (which is being reissued later this year!) and Anne of Green Gables books when I was a kid. How fascinating was it to a suburban Jersey kid that you could make a balloon out of a pig's bladder or that people actually lived in Canada? Go figure, right?

Now, the only piece of pop culture mystery in my life is where the heck Starbuck has been for the past few episodes of Battlestar Galactica until the show comes back next January.

Ten Hours to Harry Potter Time!

2007-07-20T13:27:00.001-05:00

I ordered my copy months ago from Amazon.com, and have managed to keep the fact that the final installment of Harry's epic battle against the forces of evil and the Dark Lord who threatens both wizard and muggle-kind with death and destruction somewhere in the back of my mind.

This week, however, that's been virtually impossible. Even my computer industry rag has gone and written a story about how Harry's been leaked and how computer security professionals think it could have been averted. There are photos of pages of the book on the Interwebs. There are articles about how several companies shipping the book screwed up and let it arrive before the 12:01 a.m. official release time being marked by celebrations at book stores the world over. There are spoilers threatening me at every corner. The New York Times even got a copy at a book store, or so it said, and reviewed it.

But I am determined to stay away from the fray and wait until my copy arrives to find out what happens.

This, however, is harder than I thought it would be. I imagine this is what it's like to be addicted to something like crack or heroin. Your mind constantly wanders to your next fix. Imagining its sweetness. Imagining the smell of the pages, fresh from the press. Their thick, pulpy texture. The black typeface. The illustrations... The nubby feel of the book jacket...

I'm almost drooling now. Here's to hoping Harry makes it and the forces of evil are put to rest at last. One good thing I've gleaned from trying to avoid the coverage of the biggest book launch in the history of mankind, unlike The Sopranos, the most loved mafia tale since The Godfather Part II, this one actually has an end that makes sense. Closure, if you will. Thank god.

But I guess I'll see for myself tomorrow! Anyone else suffering from Harry-lust?

I had no idea they still made Easy-Bake Ovens...

2007-07-19T11:55:00.002-05:00

One million Hasbro toy ovens recalled

Easy-Bake Ovens caused 77 reported burns to children says Consumer Product Safety Commission.

July 19 2007: 10:31 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Hasbro Inc. will recall about 1 million Easy-Bake Ovens because children could get their hands caught in the front opening and suffer burns, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday.

A voluntary recall for the ovens was first issued in February so a repair kit could be provided to address the issue. But since then, there have been 249 reports of children getting their hands caught, 77 reports of burns and one girl had a finger partially amputated, the CPSC said.

Hasbro's Easy-Bake Oven

The new recall urges consumers to stop using the oven and to contact the company at 1-800-601-8418 for details on how to return it for a voucher toward the purchase of another Hasbro (Charts) product, the agency said.

The $25 Easy-Bake Oven, made in China, was sold at stores including Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500), Target (Charts, Fortune 500) and KB Toys, among others, from May 2006 through July 2007. The recall does not include ovens sold prior to this period, the CPSC said.

Badge of Honor - Why New Yorkers WANT to Give You Directions

2007-07-19T10:30:00.000-05:00

The simple answer is that it makes us feel good about ourselves.

We love knowing the city and the subway well enough to tell you how to get wherever you're going. It's even more of a rush when you ask two of us and then we get to debate in front of you whether taking the 4/5 to the 2/3 at Bergen St. or taking the Q to 7th Ave. is the best way to get to Flatbush Farm, or if it's better to talk one block to the F train or to take the tram to Roosevelt Island. Not that tourists go to Roosevelt Island, but you get the gist.

We love that we know how to get around this sprawling, crazy city, and by god we're going to demonstrate that to you.

The New York Times recently ran an excellent article on our dear subway and how tourists think it's like descending down the Styx. Yeah, it's hot down there. Sure, it's filthy. Granted, sometimes you wait forever for the Q train or find yourself sandwiched among so many travelers that someone is actually touching your body on every single side... But having been a Manhattan car owner, I'll take the foibles and stench of public transportation over that 45-minute parking odyssey any day.

In spite of the run-down stations and the Carter-era cars, there are improvements being made on the subway: I RODE ON A BRAND SPANKING NEW N TRAIN!

It was so new there weren't even scuffs on the floor. Not a speck of dirt. And get this - they had a digital display next to the digital list of stops we were approaching in order (no more guessing which direction you're going!), and that digital display showed videos of how neat-o the new trains were! And to top it all off it was like twice as wide as the former nicest trains on the subway - the ones that run on the 4/5/6 and the 2/3 (occasionally). I hear the L trains are nice too, but I can't really imagine an occasion when I'd need to ride one. I'm a sorry excuse for a hipster.

It renewed my faith in the subway. Now if they can just wash down those platforms or something. Anything. And maybe install some fans.

I want this somethin' awful...

2007-07-16T14:07:00.000-05:00

[Addendum: 7.18.07 - The cow rug is mine. Oh yes. The cow rug is mine. I <3 eBay.]