Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Way He Was

Posted on August 21, 2012 | 3 comments

When Marvin Hamlisch passed away, I felt sad, like so many others who had enjoyed his music for so many years. He was a prolific and award-winning composer. According to his obituary in The New York Times, “…he won three Oscars, four Emmys and four Grammys.” And let’s not forget the Pulitzer. He wrote the music for The Way We Were, and Nobody Does it Better, songs that were written for movies, but also became big radio hits. If I hummed a few bars, you could all sing along; they were that big. He was young, only 68, which means he was in his late 30s when I met him. I had no idea who he was.

My first job out of college was as the traffic coordinator at a Boston radio station, WVBF-FM, known as F-105. The now defunct station played top 40 hits and was actually in Framingham, MA, along with its sister station, WKOX. As traffic coordinator, I was responsible for scheduling commercials and making sure that they ran as scheduled. If there was a problem, I scheduled “make goods.” If we had slots that had not been purchased, I plugged in PSAs (Public Service Announcements) and extra airings of whichever customers needed a boost. The process computerized on my watch, which made a rather simple job that much simpler, so I apprenticed myself to our Music Director and started learning how to do his job. Then he left.

In addition to my real job, I became the Assistant Music Director to – nobody. That meant that I inherited the job of meeting with artists who were touring radio stations to promote their records (by which I mean records, the vinyl kind). The record company representative would call me to arrange a time, and when they arrived with the artist, I’d listen to the new record and chat with them for a while. If I liked the record, I would add it to the rotation and we’d start playing it.

Then Marvin Hamlisch came to town. The movie, Ordinary People, had been released, along with his score which included a version of Pachelbel Canon in D. When the rep from Planet Records (no relation to the company by the same name currently operating in Cambridge, MA) called to schedule a visit, I asked him what else Mr. Hamlisch had done. He had no idea. This was 1980 and A Chorus Line had been on Broadway since 1975, but neither the rep nor I knew that Marvin Hamlisch had written the score.

When I sat down with Marvin Hamlisch, without his rep who had wandered off, bored, I smiled and said, “So, tell me what else you’ve done.”

He replied, “Are you kidding?”

I allowed as how, no, I wasn’t familiar with his work. He was not pleased and responded, “Well if you don’t know what I’ve done, I’m not going to tell you.”

Briefly, I was stymied, but I pushed on talking about this and that. At some point we got onto the subject of an elaborate stereo system that he was installing in his home. That he was happy to tell me all about. After fifteen minutes or so, the rep wandered back and they left. I’m vaguely embarrassed by this story, but I was only twenty-one at the time, and as far as music went, I was all about rock and roll.

A lot has changed since then, and when Marvin Hamlisch passed away, I took a moment to send up a silent apology for my naïveté, and my sincere thanks for having had the opportunity to spend a few minutes in the presence of what I now know was a musical genius.

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Gluten-free living

Posted on August 14, 2012 | 10 comments

We are now a gluten-free house, because one of us has been diagnosed with Celiac disease. (In a rare attempt to be respectful, I’ll refrain from telling you which one of us it is.) According to a random website that looks official, Celiac “…damages the lining of the small intestine and prevents it from absorbing parts of food that are important for staying healthy.” And the villain doing the damage is gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. No problem, right? Avoid wheat, barley and rye and you’re good to go. Putting barely and rye aside for a moment, because really, who would miss them, let’s focus on wheat.

Wheat is what makes the staff of life the staff of life. Delicious bread is made of wheat flour (except when it’s made of the aforementioned grains, which is why I said delicious bread). Wheat flour is the main component of cookies, and cakes, and muffins. Wheat flour is in pizza crust, bagels and pasta. Wheat flour is in places you wouldn’t think to look, like soy sauce, and probably under your bed. Not eating wheat is not easy.

The doctors will say, sympathetically, “You can do it, just shop around the perimeter of the supermarket.” They mean that natural, unprocessed foods (and I use the term loosely) like produce, meats, and dairy are all okay to eat when you’re going gluten free, but if you venture down the aisles, shopping becomes risky. The fact that my husband is trying to embrace his inner vegetarian makes hugging the perimeter a little more enticing, but because I don’t like to cook, providing sustenance for my little family has become quite the challenge.

It turns out that you don’t have to have Celiac disease to have gluten intolerance. According to our dietician, wheat is now the seventh most prevalent allergy and that’s good news for Celiacs. Whenever there’s a growing trend, like an allergy to gluten, there are enterprising manufacturers waiting to make a profit. Consequently, the number of gluten-free products you can find in supermarkets is growing rapidly. They cost more, those manufacturers are no fools, they know they’ve got us over a barrel, but there’s more and more of it out there. You can get gluten-free cookies, pizza, and pasta. There are specialty shops for gluten-free cupcakes and muffins, and birthday cakes. And yes, you can buy gluten-free bread. But that’s where, so far, we draw the line.

Gluten is, according to this stray video I found, a protein that helps makes wheat flour rise. When you bake bread without gluten it’s firm, inflexible, and reminiscent of Wasa, the scourge of dieters everywhere. This is not good news for lunch given that the traditional American lunch is – a sandwich! But as long as there are leftovers from dinner we can finesse lunch.

Apparently, science is working on something that will help people digest gluten, or at least keep it from damaging your intestines, much the way they’ve dealt with lactose intolerance. We look forward to that, sure, but in the meantime, living gluten free seems to be agreeing with us. We’re all eating a healthier diet, which has to be a good thing, as long as the stress of trying to keep all of us fed doesn’t kill me…

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Cured of the urge

Posted on August 7, 2012 | 3 comments

A little while ago, we babysat a puppy, in our home, for four days. You can see by the adorable picture below, taken when he was two months old, why I offered to baby-sit. Now, however, in order to preserve his reputation at doggy daycare (and my friendship with his parents), I’m going to give him a pseudonym, Tybalt. At the end of his stay, the accident count was four pees, five poops, and one vomit.

Butter wouldn’t melt in this mouth.

I don’t blame Tybalt, entirely. He is, after all, a puppy, and at his house there is a fenced-in yard. His family slides open the back door and off he goes, to pee or poop, or run around in circles.

He’s a small dog, the kind some people carry as an accessory; carry being the operative word. When he came to us, he hadn’t yet spent much time on a leash. As a matter of fact, he was delivered to us with a harness that had been purchased that day. The point of a harness is that it allows you to walk a dog without choking it to death. However, it does take a moment to put it on. If I was racing against the call of nature to get him outside, I’d skip the harness, clip the leash to his collar and out we’d go. I made that sound easy. It wasn’t.

Tybalt hadn’t yet had any training per se. The words sit, stay, come and heel all meant let’s play. Each time I wanted to take him out I had to catch him. One day, while indulging him in a game of chase, through the living room with its dark rug, thank goodness, I stepped on one of the five poops. The good news was… who am I kidding? There is no way to put a good spin on stepping on poop.

Things didn’t go too smoothly when I put on the harness to take him for a walk either. Once outside, on the ground, he resisted the suggestion we walk. It didn’t take much pull to inadvertently drag him. That was horrifying for me, and probably humiliating for him, but at least he wasn’t choking. We did meet a neighborhood dog on one of our outings, a nice older guy named Jake, a Pekingese, who tolerated Tybalt’s jumping and sniffing. The fifteen minutes he spent annoying Jake was probably the most exercise he got in the four days he was with us.

But the biggest baby-sitting disconnect was on the subject of Tybalt’s crate. When his family is out of the house, at work, school or camp, he spends hours at a time in his crate. We were told that he liked being in his crate, but somehow I didn’t translate that to, “you should leave him in his crate most of the time.” I naturally assumed that the less time spent in a crate, the better. Apparently I was projecting, because that is how modern-day dog training is done. They spend most of their time in the crate. You take them out when it’s time for them to go to the bathroom, and then you put them back in.

I haven’t had a puppy for forty years, or owned a dog for thirty. I had no idea what I didn’t know. And Tybalt’s family assumed too much about our state of readiness, and failed to provide proper guidance. I love the family. They’re wonderful people, and Tybalt is an adorable dog. When he’s grown up, if he can demonstrate the ability to sit, stay, and most important, come when he’s called, I’ll be happy to have him visit again. Until then, this dog sitting service is closed.

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Frozen yogurt? Help yourself.

Posted on July 31, 2012 | 10 comments

Remember TCBY? They were one of the original frozen yogurt chains and their soft-serve frozen yogurt tasted like ice cream. It was yummy. Most high end ice cream scoop shops offer frozen yogurt as well, but it’s the same consistency as the ice cream; if it wasn’t labeled, I’d never know the difference. I only order it to feel virtuous. I am not a fan of real yogurt, the kind you buy in the supermarket dairy case. Even doctored with bits of chocolate, or flavored like cheesecake, it doesn’t appeal to me. And yes, I’ve tried the Greek yogurt. No, thank you.

My daughter coaxed me into a frozen yogurt store in Harvard Square a few months ago, BerryLine, on Arrow Street. She’d been there and swore it was the most fabulous frozen yogurt she’d ever had. I tried it and was sorely disappointed. It was unlike any frozen yogurt I’d ever had before. It tasted like – yogurt.

You can imagine, then, how underwhelmed I was to hear that she’d visited a new shop in Lexington, called Fruitee Yogurt, that was even better than BerryLine. Did she mean better better, more like ice cream, or better worse, more like yogurt? There was only one way to be sure; I had to check it out myself.

Fruitee Yogurt reminded me of an old-fashioned automat. It’s self-serve. One wall has half a dozen soft-serve machines embedded in it. There are no instructions, no clues. Apparently the user interface is supposed to be so intuitive that anyone can do it. Alternatively, the cost of the product must be so low that they can afford to eat the cost of the yogurt that ends up on the floor, or gets licked off the hands and arms of the uninitiated. Okay, so it’s not that hard, not like figuring out how to eat a lobster the first time, but I was happy I had my husband there to coach me through it.

First, however, I asked a teenaged employee to pull me a dab so I could taste a flavor. With aplomb, he squirted just the right amount into a tiny cup. I admit it, I was impressed. Then it was time for the big moment. I tasted the Salty Caramel and… I liked it! At first I thought I could taste a hint of yogurt, but then the caramel took over and I was in heaven. According to an article in the local paper, “Fruitee Yogurt’s yogurts average 25 calories per ounce, and are either low fat or entirely fat-free.” That, of course, doesn’t take into account the add-ons, which in my case were white chocolate bits and caramel syrup, but I still felt virtuous.

After we ate, we decided to check out the other new froyo place in Lexington, Orange Leaf. It turns out that self-serve frozen yogurt is all the rage. Orange Leaf is just like Fruitee Yogurt, but it’s much bigger and has more flavors. I tasted the wedding cake (hey, I was there) and it was good. Orange Leaf, however, is a franchise, and as far as I can tell, Fruitee Yogurt is a one off. For that reason alone, I’ve already developed an allegiance to it. Now the 64,000 dollar question is, will Fruitee Yogurt, which is ever so slightly off the beaten path, be able to compete with Orange Leaf’s prime Mass Ave. location? I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they do. Frozen yogurt any one?

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Blow this!

Posted on July 24, 2012 | 8 comments

Raking leaves is my least favorite activity in the universe next to shoveling snow. I’m convinced that shoveling and raking, done the old-fashioned way, are a good way to bring on a heart attack. Even so, we don’t own a leaf blower. We do, however, own a snow blower. I used to stand at the end of my driveway, leaning pathetically on the shovel handle, coughing conspicuously, hoping a passing plow would stop and finish the job for me. Then we got a small, compact snow blower that never seemed to work right, particularly if the snow was too heavy or too high, which was always. A couple of years ago, a family friend downsized and gave us their considerably more macho machine and we were thrilled to be able to trade up.

Now, can we agree that snow is to snow blower as leaf is to leaf blower? If so, why are the former coveted, and the latter demonized?

Residents of my town have been squabbling for weeks now, about a mid-May through mid-October ban on gas leaf blowers, voted on by Town Meeting last spring. Apparently, Town Meeting does not always have the last word. If you disagree with a decision, as did a consortium of landscapers doing business in Arlington, all you need to do is collect a certain number of signatures and you can compel the town to hold a special election. The cost of running a special election, even with drastically reduced hours for the polls to be open, is reported to be between $25,000 and $30,000, which I imagine would buy the town all kinds of useful tools, if we had the money, which we don’t.

There is, however, a trick to a special election. The instigators can’t win, even if they have more votes, unless at least 20% of the registered voters in town vote the way they want them to, in this case, No. As it happens, the No votes missed the required number by the hair of their chinny chin chins. Yes, it was close.

The Attorney General now has up to 90 days to approve the change and, assuming they do, we wait another couple of weeks so the town can advise its citizens of the change through advertisements in the local paper. By then it could be mid-October, and the leaf blowers won’t have missed a day of blowing. And then, I expect the argument will begin all over again.

At first I was sympathetic to those who wanted to reverse the ban. Then I started watching landscapers more closely and discovered that leaf blowers are used to blow all kinds of things, including dirt, off driveways. Dirt. Off driveways.

You know why you don’t hear people complaining that they can’t use their snow blowers in August? It’s because snow blowers are really only good for one thing, blowing snow. I’m guessing we wouldn’t be having this discussion if leaf blowers were restricted to blowing leaves. But since they’re not, I have a plan.

If the people who want to be able to tidy up their property, year round, by blowing dirt, persist in trying to overturn this ban, I’m going to collect signatures for a special election so we can vote on whether or not to rename leaf blowers “everything-but-snow blowers.” If that passed, we’d at least all be arguing about the same thing, and the next time they tried to overturn the ban, the opposition would blow them away.

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I go Pogo

Posted on July 17, 2012 | 11 comments

Churchy, a character from Walt Kelly’s comic strip, Pogo, was obsessed with Friday the thirteenth. Sometimes, on the thirteenth, I’ll quote him and observe that, “Friday the thirteenth falls on Wednesday this month.” That can provoke a quizzical look, occasionally a hesitant chuckle, but rarely a happy exclamation of recognition. Pogo debuted in 1948 and ran for over twenty-five years; somebody had to have been reading it. Why then, is it so rare to meet people who love Pogo the way the hoi polloi embrace Snoopy and the rest of Charlie Brown’s gang?

I grew up with Pogo. My dad was a huge fan and his fondness for Pogo was something he shared with his daughters. All three of us turned to Walt Kelly when it was time to choose quotes for our high school yearbook entries. My older sister used, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” which Pogo himself said. Two years later, I quoted pup dog, a character who never said anything until one day out popped, “Poltergeists are the principal form of spontaneous material manifestation” (which to my dismay appeared with a typo, causing it to read polergeists).

Wikipedia claims the actual quote is, “Poltergeists make up the principal type of spontaneous material manifestation.” Horrified that I may have made a mistake, I set out to prove them wrong. Unfortunately, I found Wikipedia’s version of the quote at several other sites. I now have a sinking feeling that I, gulp, may be the one who is… not right. But let’s keep that between us, okay? No need to tell the other 767 people in my graduating class.

Where was I? Oh yes, three years later, my younger sister chose, “I carry the hose,” which I remember as being said by Bun Rab, a self-important little rabbit who was bringing up the tail end of a parade with a fire truck. Now that Wikipedia has shaken my confidence though, I’m wondering if it wasn’t a parade at all, but rather an actual fire brigade. I could continue to search for clarity on the web, but the only way to know for sure is to go to the source material. I could spend the rest of the summer reading Pogo compilations. It would be fun to hang out with Churchy, Albert, Mam’selle Hepzibah and the rest of the crew.

Or I could take a page from one of my dad’s other favorites, Mad Magazine, and quote Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry?” Lots of people would recognize that, wouldn’t they? After all, Mad Magazine is still going strong. Well, it’s going anyway. Even I still buy it once in a while, particularly if Father’s Day is looming and nothing else comes to mind. It works, too. Dad still lets out an appreciative guffaw when he sees the cover. That laugh is what the present is all about. The magazine itself is of less interest to him these days. It riffs on pop culture. I don’t remember the last time my dad went to a first run movie, and I’m pretty sure he’s never seen a reality TV show. Mad Magazine isn’t as much fun if you don’t get the jokes.

Maybe that’s why Pogo doesn’t have the staying power of Charlie Brown. He’s just too darn smart.

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Twisted straight shooter

Posted on July 10, 2012 | 5 comments

I’ve often been told that my emails “sound” just like I do in person. One friend said, “I hear your voice when I read your email.” That makes sense to me. I am, after all, the same person whether I’m writing you an email or speaking to you face-to-face. Of course, I have poorly-developed boundaries, so I’m likely to say things to your face that other people would have the sense to keep to themselves. And clearly, if I’m willing to say it to you in person, there’s nothing to keep me from putting it in writing.

But what about people who are unfailingly polite to your face, and then unleash their inner bitch online? It’s the electronic equivalent of road rage, with one major exception – email is not anonymous. Hello! You’d never dare say something like that to my face, how come it’s okay in email? And what about the people who are more loving in email than in person? There’s no road-related analogy for that behavior (if you don’t count cousin Bram who met his wife, Genie, on the highway, which is a post for another day). Is it simply the lack of eye contact that allows those who are more reserved in person to open up in email? If they could talk with their heads buried in the sand like an ostrich would they be more forthcoming?

Obviously people are emotionally twisted in all kinds of interesting and perplexing ways, and how they communicate, or don’t, is just one manifestation of much deeper issues. I am just as much an emotional pretzel as everyone else, but I embrace a WYSIWYG approach – what you see is what you get. I want to live an uncensored life.

When I say uncensored, I don’t mean like Louis CK uncensored. He is a very funny comedian, and you should all check him out if you don’t know him already, but I sometimes blush even when I’m watching him in the privacy of my own home – alone. So no, I’m not talking about that kind of uncensored. I’m talking about allowing myself to make observations, ask questions, or call out someone who is being cruel. I never mean to say anything hurtful, or rude, but sometimes I do. Then I apologize, on the spot and profusely. That’s also part of living an uncensored life.

Besides, I like the uncensored me, she can be funny, and not always on purpose. It’s all part of my emotionally twisted need to be liked, which is a full time preoccupation of mine, which, come to think of it, is probably why I’m the same in email as I am in person. Phew. It’s exhausting to look too closely at these things. I’m going to go take a nap. Wake me up in time for Louie.

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Ahoy there!

Posted on July 3, 2012 | 5 comments

The Tall Ships were in town; those majestic, many-masted, multi-sailed, mariners’ manors. (Cut me a little slack here. I was on a roll with the alliteration.)  Andrew had the day off, our daughter was at work, our out-of-town guests were out of town, so we decided to go down to the waterfront and see what there was to see. I was ready and raring to go while Andrew was still contemplating his coffee, so when he asked, “What time are they open?” I responded, shortly, “Whenever we get there, they’ll be open.” (I know; it’s pretty darn obvious what’s coming.)

Feeling adventuresome, we hopped off the Silver Line bus and walked around the block, enjoying the sun and the proximity to water. And then we saw the ships, lined up one behind the other at the pier. They were indeed impressive – and not open to the public until 4pm.

Dismayed, but not willing to give up on our adventure, I suggested we follow the signs to Navy Ships docked further down the road. They opened to visitors at noon, and while we were too early for that, too, it was going to roll around a lot faster than 4pm. Andrew was conflicted about visiting the navy ships and I understood his hesitation. If we walked on a naval destroyer, expressed interest, maybe even asked a question, would we be branded hypocrites by our peace-loving, liberal cohort and drummed out of the group? I was willing to risk it. I was going to salvage the outing even if it meant enlisting.

We had to go through a metal detector on the pier, past armed guards, some toting machine guns, but once through that screening we could choose from about half a dozen ships to visit. We thought one of them was a floating hospital and decided that that would be the easiest way to express interest without implying approval, so we trudged up the gangplank. At the top were several officers in spotless white uniforms and as I stepped over the threshold they saluted – me! I didn’t know what to do, how to respond. I was flattered and flustered. I blushed and said, “How nice, not necessary, but very nice.” (Particularly unnecessary because it turned out to be a Canadian ship and our taxes don’t entitle us to anything from them.)

Once aboard, we found out that the hospital ship was actually a refueling ship, suggesting that perhaps eavesdropping is not the most reliable way to get information. There wasn’t a whole lot to see on that ship, but we enjoyed our self-directed tour enough that we decided to take the metaphorical plunge and visit another one.

This time we chose the destroyer, USS Gravely. To tour that ship, however, we had to be part of a group that was led around by several of the crew. I loved it. We climbed up and down ladders that bordered on vertical, visited the bridge, stood on the forward deck where the missiles come out and the aft deck where the on-board helicopter gets tended to, once it’s been folded up small enough to fit inside its garage.

When we left the ship I was a little choked up. I think I caught something from the sailors, a touch of… patriotism.

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To fix or not to fix

Posted on June 26, 2012 | 10 comments

My husband bought me a Keurig single-cup coffee machine for one of my birthdays. It was an exciting and unexpected gift. Exciting because it meant I could get out from under the Sisyphean chore of washing a whole coffee pot twice a day, and unexpected because Andrew is an environmentally aware consumer and I would have thought that the idea of using disposable plastic, single-serve containers for coffee would make him crazy. Now, a couple of years later, the machine is acting up and Andrew’s tolerance for the single-serve cups has worn out.

No one really expects an appliance to last forever. I for one have long suspected that manufacturers build obsolescence into the specs, but when the Keurig began to malfunction, it highlighted the real problem. At what point is it okay to admit defeat and throw out the appliance?

A well-behaved appliance has the good graces to explode, or provide some otherwise indisputable evidence that it has died. The Keurig limps along, prolonging its life, and my annoyance. I can’t remember the first idiosyncrasy it developed (I must have trained myself to accommodate it), but the latest wrinkle may turn out to be its last. The coffee maker turns itself off whenever it feels like it. There’s no pattern, no trigger we can identify, no warning behavior. Sometimes it shuts off after one cup, sometimes two; sometimes it stays awake for hours at a time.

This narcoleptic behavior has destroyed what was the most satisfying aspect of this machine – a minute after I decided I wanted a cup of coffee, I had one. Now, more often than not, when I go to make a cup of coffee I have to turn the machine back on and it takes forever (by which I mean at least a couple of minutes) to warm up. Until it blows up, however, I probably won’t be allowed to replace it, because to contribute something to the waste stream before we’ve squeezed every drop of life out of it would be unconscionable according to someone in our household.

And speaking of that someone, while he hasn’t come right out and banned the use of the single-serve plastic containers, if he sees me reach for one he’ll hop up and say, “I’ll make you a cup!” He doesn’t use the pre-measured containers. He has a small filter cup with a lid that he uses instead. I use it once in a while, but to fill it you need steady hands, and when you’re done, you need to dispose of the grounds and wash out the filter. Kind of reminds me of the old days with the do-it-yourself coffee pot.

We are not the only consumers plagued by failing small appliances. As a matter of fact, a relative by marriage, Peter Mui, created and runs a series of “fix it” clinics designed to prolong the life of these mechanical miscreants. This is a growing movement (I know that because there’s a Facebook page for it) and I’m all in favor of it – for other people. I have neither the patience nor the dexterity for that kind of project. I prefer to throw money at a problem, which is what I’m preparing to do for a laptop that’s been spending too much time talking to the Keurig. It, too, turns itself off for no apparent reason.

Eventually we’ll make a decision, but maybe you and I should talk about it more over a cup of coffee – at your place.

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Throwing in the Trowel

Posted on June 19, 2012 | 1 comment

I may have mentioned my friend, Chris, in previous posts. She has M.S. and last year suffered a stroke. She has been blogging about the stroke and how it has affected her life at Who Stole My Brain?

Another friend was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of bladder cancer and has taken up blogging as a way to keep his prodigious network of friends and family up-to-date on his progress.

As you know, I have a less-disciplined approach to blogging; I write about anything that’s on my mind. This week, the two friends I mentioned are very much on my mind. Since one blog is not for public consumption, I can only offer to share Chris’ with you.

Here’s how her most recent post starts:

When I was first diagnosed with M.S., I realized it was my last chance to learn to play tennis. I told this to a friend of mine who also had M.S., and she told me that when she was diagnosed, she used it as an opportunity to give up playing tennis, and was happy for it.

I went on to play competitive tennis for several years, kept doing it until I broke my arm, kept playing very competitive softball until I couldn’t walk after the games, kept riding my bicycle until I couldn’t—well, let’s just say that it’s not true that once you learn you never forget.

This week, instead of writing my own blog, I’m suggesting you read Chris’ latest  post, Throwing in the Trowel. It will help you remember that even when life is bad, it beats the alternative.

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