Thanksgiving food for thought

We’re about to head out the door to go down to John’s parents’ for Thanksgiving. And of course, first and foremost on my mind is: “how will I get a post up tonight?” So I’m dashing off this bit of a placeholder.

And also taking the opportunity to share something new I learned about Thanksgiving from a video I saw this morning. Apparently, Thanksgiving was created as a national holiday in 1863. Sarah Hale, publisher and editor of a magazine, Gode’s Lady’s Book, was the motivating force behind getting Abraham Lincoln to declare the holiday, and to have it be during the workweek. She motivated women around the country to harrass their congressmen and senators to bring about the holiday. According to the folks interviewed in the video, the bits and pieces of myth and knowledge about the pilgrims were collected together and made part of the holiday, along with the recipes collected in the women’s magazine.

I just thought that was interesting. And not something that gets mentioned when we learn to draw hand-trace turkeys in elementary school.

wearing my serious pants

Society for the Prevention of Pants
The Fund for Pants Awareness
Pants Across America
The Right to Pants Association
Friends of Pants

This week’s Monday Mission solicits donations in the form of posts about a charity, real or imagined, serious or humorous. (Wow, I just started to type “humourous.” I think it’s a side effect of reading so many blogs by Canadians.) With so many options, it’s hard to narrow down. How can I pick a favorite? Usually, I take every opportunity for silliness. But with things going on in my personal life right now, I’m moved to actually write a serious post, and mention a real charity.

My friend Elizabeth was a beautiful person. It hurts me to write about her in the past tense. But there it is. She died on Friday after a 2-year valiant fight against cancer.

I saw Elizabeth on Tuesday at the hospital. She was still herself, in many ways. Quieter. It was an effort for her to talk. But she still had her sense of humor intact. A close friend of hers flew in from out of state, who I got to meet for the first time. We sat around talking, then reading questions from Trivial Pursuit. Elizabeth and her husband and parents, who had spent much time in hospital rooms with her, had devised a variation of the game. They’d gotten rid of the board ages ago. Instead, they’d read and answer all 6 questions on 6 sequential cards, and total the score out of 36. When an awkward silence started to creep over the room, Elizabeth called for a round of questions. “With three smart women like us, we ought to be able to beat the high score.”

When it was time for me to go catch my train home, I hugged her and told her that I would see her again once she was back home, but I didn’t want to be a pest. I told her she should tell me if I was being a pest. And I hugged her husband, and told him that he should tell me if I was being a pest. And then I turned to the friend, and said “I just met you, so you don’t get to tell me if I’m being a pest.” And we all laughed. Elizabeth, too. I said my good-byes and left. I didn’t dream that it was the last time I would ever see or speak to Elizabeth. I worked on a letter to her that night, determined to share things with her about how much her friendship has meant to me.

She did get to go home. I called on Friday, hoping to make plans to see her over the weekend. When I got the answering machine, I was worried that perhaps she was still in the hospital, that there had been more complications. But then her husband called me back a bit later with the news. Elizabeth had died that morning. It was a huge shock to me, and I dissolved into a blubbering wreck on the phone. “I’m sorry. You don’t need this from me,” I apologized to my friend’s husband through my sobs. But maybe that’s what I’d want in his shoes. To know that my grief and pain were shared.

I’ve had a bit of a rough few days. I’ve had to share the news with our mutual friends, most of whom were not in regular contact with Elizabeth. Some of whom had not even known she was sick. This was a new job for me. I can only imagine what my friend’s husband is going through. He has so many things to take care of. I am so sad for him. And their little girls. And the rest of her family.

I’m still in shock that this has happened. My friend was 35 years old.

She underwent 2 years of procedures and treatments, including chemo, radiation and multiple surgeries. She showed an incredible amount of strength through it all, even as her body became weaker. She didn’t give up hope. She kept living. Kept being a wonderful mother to her 2 beautiful little girls. She was wife, sister, daughter, aunt, friend. And she played all these roles amazingly well.

Time after time, she got bad news from the tests. She would share the news with me at times. The cancer was spreading. The chemo drugs weren’t working. Then the next chemo drugs weren’t working. That she had basically maxed out for radiation. Two weeks ago she told me that they had reached the end of the FDA-approved treatments. She still had hope for the experimental treatments. It turned out she didn’t qualify. Just last Monday, she was told that the next step was hospice.

I found myself very angry that she couldn’t get those experimental treatments. I find myself thinking that things didn’t have to be this way. Science is making great strides in determining causes of cancers. Strides are being made towards the prevention of certain types of cancer. Treatments are much more effective than they were even 10 or 20 years ago. Or 30 years ago.

My own father died of cancer 30 years ago. And I’ve lost others to cancer, too. My much loved grandmother, who was a powerful force in my life. The father of a close friend, who treated me like family and called me “daughter.” A dear stepfather, who I only knew a short time. Even my beloved dog. With my new grief for my friend, I revisit the past grief. I think especially of the loss of my father, how I not only miss him, but missed getting to know him since I was so young when he died. And I think of how Elizabeth’s daughters will miss out on getting to know Elizabeth as the friend that I knew and loved. Cancer robs us of people that we love, of their contributions to our lives and our world.

And I find myself thinking that things could have been different. That with more research, things will be different.

So I end this with a nod to the American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society is the nationwide community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and service.

throwing together a themed list (even though it’s not Thursday)

125_125_banner_a.jpgI came across¹, a site that I think is pretty fun. It’s got a bit of a running vocabulary quiz. At the same time, the site is set up such that for each word you get right, 10 grains of rice get donated through the United Nations. (The rice is paid for by advertisers.)

It’s kinda cool to see the running totals they have posted, too. The site only started on October 7th of this year. Yesterday, 198,342,51 grains of rice were donated, whereas 6,645,520 were donated 1 month ago.

Anyhow, that’s getting to be a decent amount of rice. And it’s inspired me to throw together a bit of a list of rice things. Even though it’s not Thursday. It’s a short list, anyhow.

A Few Grains of Rice

  1. One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale A picture book by Demi.

    It’s the story of Rani, a clever girl who outsmarts a very selfish raja and saves her village. When offered a reward for a good deed, she asks only for one grain of rice, doubled each day for 30 days. Remember your math? That’s lots of rice: enough to feed a village for a good long time–and to teach a greedy raja a lesson.

  2. On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast, edited by Geraldine Kudaka. An erotic anthology. I like the name, what with the mixed meanings of food and sex. And if there are two things I like (aside from pants), they’re food and sex. (I also just found myself thinking that a somewhat similar phrase would make for an interesting book title, too. “On a Bed of Noodles.” Perhaps it could be an erotic humor anthology.)
  3. “Rice, rice baby,” by Weird Al. I think you can guess which song it parodies.
  4. 米国 beikoku, a Japanese term for the US, which means “rice country”

——

Aside from the bit about donating rice, I find it fun to test my word knowledge and learn new words. So far, my favorite new word that I’ve learned is, without doubt, omphaloskepsis. It means navel-gazing. And then I thought to myself, “now that would be a fine blog name.” Indeed, it is.

Other words I have encountered which make me happy include the following:

    eructate=belch
    anserine=gooselike
    bumbershoot = umbrella
    edentulous=toothless
    demulcent = soothing

Anyone want to go play for a bit and bring me back some tasty word morsels?

—–

¹ I came across links to this site at least 3 times, though I can only track down one, which wasn’t even the first place I saw it. Anyone else reading this post about it?

getting down to business (even though it’s not Wednesday)

This was a favorite video of my friend’s. I think I mentioned that she had a great sense of humor.

Here’s “Business Time,” by Flight of the Conchords.

And here’s a romantic bonus video:

good-bye, dear friend

I am immensely sad to say that my good friend, to whom I wrote my fond letter earlier this week, did not have as much time left as I’d hoped.

I don’t believe that she had a chance to read what I wrote, but I hope that she knew those things without me telling her. I am so grateful to have been able to spend time with her this past week. Those hours will always be precious to me.

slow and steady

Slow and steady about sums up a lot of the work I do. Well, slow at least. Slow like a turtle.

Here’s a list of turtles for this week’s Themed Things Thursday. We’ve got turtles and tortoises, and possibly even some terrapins (though I haven’t identified any as such).

A Stack of Turtle Things

  • Yertle the Turtle, Dr. Seuss. As Lisa Simpson says, “this is quite possibly the best book ever written on the subject of turtle stacking.”
  • What Newt Could do for Turtle, Jonathan London.
    A picturebook of friendship between 2 friends, a newt and a turtle, who live in the swamp.

    • yertle.jpg       what_newt_could_do.jpg

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Comic book characters, of the mutant turtle persuasion. And presumably adolescent. And possibly also Ninjas. Have branched out to TV, movies, and of course, merchandising.

    • bert2.png

  • Bert the Turtle, from the “Duck and Cover” film on preparing for a nuclear attack. (You can watch it on YouTube, and learn how even covering yourself with a newspaper can help protect you from a nuclear blast.)
    Bert has a catchy song:

    there was a turtle by the name of Bert
    and Bert the turtle was very alert
    when danger threatened him he never got hurt
    he knew just what to do
    he’d duck…and cover
    duck…and cover…

    • the_tortoise_and_the_hare_-_project_gutenberg_etext_19994.jpg

  • The Tortoise and the Hare: A fable attributed to Aesop. A fast hare has a race with a tortoise, but loses since he figures he has time for a nap. The tortoise wins since he kept moving. “Slow and steady wins the race.”
  • The Great A’Tuin: The Giant Star turtle in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. The world (which is disc-shaped) is supported by 4 elephants standing on the back of this giant turtle. This is most likely based on…
  • Chukwa, from Hindu mythology. A giant turtle who supports the earth, sometimes also with an elephant on its back. (The turtle may also be standing on more turtles, such that there are turtles all the way down.)
  • chocolate turtle: Not really a turtle at all. Or at least not the reptilian kind. A confection of nuts (usually pecans) covered in caramel and chocolate, typically forming a dome shape that resembles a turtle.
  • turtle trap: When I was little, maybe 4 or 5 years old, I thought that people had called this one Sausalito shopping center a turtle trap. I’m not sure at what point it became clear to me that people had called it a “tourist trap.” Not being clear on the concept of tourists, I assume I’d interpreted the word I’d heard as “tortoise,” then remembered it as “turtle.” To this day, I still think of that place as the Turtle Trap. Especially since I can’t remember its “real” name.
  • “Turtles are quiet.” A page from Leslie Patricelli‘s most excellent book Quiet LOUD. The book is full of quiet things, and loud things. But somehow this is the one we remember when trying to encourage Phoebe to be quiet: “Quiet like a turtle.”
  • “I like turtles” I just saw this in a post on riddlebiddle, but it has apparently been making the rounds for months. And kicked off a lot of video responses. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look at this video on YouTube (It’s only about 17 seconds long.)

turtle.jpg
A turtle at our local zoo. Or a tortoise at our local zoo, if you want to be particular. Or if you want to be British about it.

book, book, book, book

I am once again behind in my memery. YTSL tagged me for this book meme a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like fun. (Admittedly, two weeks behind is practically early for me these days.) You may see a wee bit of overlap with my earlier list of 18 favorite books, which was based on another meme YTSL tagged me for. (That one was supposed to be about a single favorite book. I had trouble following directions.) This time, the instructions mostly involve giving lists of four.

Four childhood books

  • Small Pig, Arnold Lobel. Possibly the first book I read by myself. About a pig. A small pig, even. Who likes mud.
  • The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis. This book really captured my imagination. I think I was always hoping to stuble across some otherworldly portal in my grandmother’s house.
  • The Gammage Cup, Carol Kendall. A quirky fantasy book about individuality and evil mushrooms.
  • The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster. A quirky fantasy book with lots of wordplay. Right up my alley.

Four authors I will read again and again

  • Sarah Caudwell
  • M. M. Kaye
  • Rumer Godden
  • Jane Austen

    • It’s hard to list just four here. I also considered Gregory Maguire and Connie Willis, though for each of them, there’s really only one book I tend to read over and over. (Wicked and Bellwether, in case you wondered.) Actually, I tend to reread kids’ books even more. The Chronicles of Narnia and the Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper) get picked up often.

Four authors I will never read again

  • The Horse Whisperer dude. I can’t even be bothered to look up his name. That book irritated me beyond measure.
  • Amy Ephron. When I ran a book group, we once haplessly picked a little book called A Cup of Tea. The best thing about it was that it was short.

    • Other than that, I can’t really think of authors I hate. I don’t generally like to generalize from a single book (with the above exceptions). There have been a number of books I haven’t liked, and either I don’t remember the author’s name, or there have been other books that I’ve liked, or others that I still might be willing to give a chance.

The first four books on my to-be-read list

  • The Pirates!: An Adventure with Scientists & An Adventure with Ahab, Gideon Defoe. This the most recent book given to me as a gift.
  • Ulysses, by James Joyce. This damn book has been at the top of my to-be-read list for over a decade. It seems a shame to ever remove it…
  • Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. I have been commanded to read it once I listed it among my unread books.
  • The Ph0nology of T0ne and Int0nation (by Carl0s Gussenh0ven). This is actually the book I’m reading, as part of one of my degree requirements. (You may have n0ticed the zer0s here. I don’t like the idea of the author googling his name and finding…me procrastinating. That doesn’t seem quite right.)

    • Another book I’d like to read soon is actually a reread: The Golden Compass. I want to reread before I see the movie.

The four books I would take to a desert island

  • Thus was Adonis Murdered
  • Shadow of the Moon
  • The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I figure it would keep me busy. (Funny, I saw that this was also listed among the desert island picks of the person who tagged YTSL.)
  • I can’t decide.Bellwether or maybe Wicked or the Poisonwood Bible. Or maybe something new to me.

The last part of the assignment is to write the last lines of one of my favourite books. I can’t really do this just now, since I have work to do. If I could, I’d look up the last lines of Thus was Adonis Murdered. However, I gave away my copy of that, and have yet to replace it. And I shouldn’t go digging around in other books, since I have work to do. I do remember, though, that the last line of Shadow of the Moon was “And it was Alex.”

There it is. Damn, that ended up longer than I expected. Sorry about that. As for tagging, I think I have to pass, since tagging always seems to take me a lot of time. I agonize over who to choose. Please feel free to tag yourself if you are so inclined, and I’d be happy to link you up here.

some words

Dear E,

I don’t know where to begin, because I have so much to say.

You are an amazing person, and I don’t think I’ve told you how much I not only like you, but admire you. You have a strength and wit unmatched in my acquaintance. Even with all that’s going on in your life, you can still make me laugh. You still offer me support.

I’m sure you realize that it’s a testament to you how your family and friends are rallying around you. You strike me as someone who doesn’t like to ask for help, but there are so many who want to help. There are so many who love you.

Ever since I learned you were ill, I have been torn. I have wanted to spend more time with you, but I haven’t wanted to intrude. I don’t want to be a pest.

I can’t believe how long it’s been since our used bookstore romps and binges. Or since we went outlet shopping. Or even how long it’s been since we just went out for a movie or dinner together. I guess that’s one of the ways in which parenthood changes things. But now I find myself wishing we’d found more opportunities. More opportunities to at least hang out and do nothing.

I always like seeing you and your family. Your husband is one of the nicest people I know. (“One of the nicest?” you ask. Well, possibly the nicest. But I haven’t taken a full inventory and measured the niceness of everyone I know. I do know quite a few nice people. But I can’t think of a nicer person just now.) He is smart and funny and likable, just like you.

Your kids are cute and beautiful and impressively bright. I love how much H looks like you, and acts like you. And R is such a force of nature. Even when they are driving you crazy, they are still wonderful. I love to hear you talk about them. Because you are funny and clever, and yet your devotion to them shows.

You guys have been models for us in the parenting department. You’ve given such helpful advice when I’ve asked, though you’re not someone to foist unsolicited advice on others. (If you did, though, I expect it would be good advice.)

I love to talk with you about books and movies and music. You have such a wide range of tastes. You love great literature, but you still enjoy some cheesy sappiness.

I love that you don’t hold back when you don’t like something. You have a talent for cutting through the crap.

Another thing I admire about you is the way you have been happy with your life. While I know you have had hard times and that there are things that don’t go the way you’d like, you have not let those things dominate. I was always impressed to hear about how much you loved your jobs, for example. Not that I thought you had bad jobs, it’s just that so few people I know actually like their jobs. Most people I know are always trying to figure out what else they can do with their careers. Part of me thought that with your talents and intelligence, you could have some sort of higher profile career, or maybe something more directly creative. I could see you as a professor. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn you had Jane Austen-like writing talents.

I’ve wanted to tell you these things.

And then there’s something else. I know you sometimes read my blog. And I feel like the biggest dork in the world bringing this up. I have wanted to write about you, but I haven’t done so out of respect for your privacy. I write all sorts of silly stuff on my blog, as you have seen. I write about all sorts of random crap. Part of me feels like it’s tacky to write such light and silly stuff when people are going through such heavy and serious times. When you are going through such serious times. But I know that you like to be cheered. So I actually often think of you when I am getting silly. I hope you know that my pants have been for you. (Well, I will admit that I have learned to appreciate pants as much as squid. Which is another gift that you’ve given me. So the pants are for me, too. We can share the pants.)

And I have felt like an ass even worrying about what to write in my blog when you are going through some of the worst possible crap life can deal.

But there it is. I want to tell you these things, but I also want to share them. Because you have been in my thoughts so much that it feels like a lie to continue not to talk about you. And because I think you deserve to get some recognition. From me and whoever reads this, of how fabulous a person you are. I want to acknowledge how terrible this is, how grim things are in spite of how hard you’ve been fighting. I’d give you a medal if I could.

I’d say I can’t imagine what things must be like for you. But that’s not exactly true. I have been imagining. And my heart aches.

I’m scared for you. I’m angry that this is happening to you and your family. I want to do something to change things, but of course I can’t. And I’m sad, too, of course.

But I’m also happy that I get to have time with you. I’m so glad to know you.

So, there it is. I’ve said a bunch of stuff I’ve wanted to tell you, but haven’t managed to say in person. I have more things I could say, too. But I’ll stop here.

I hope that you won’t be offended that I’m writing this so publicly. If it bothers you, I will take it down. But in any case, you are required to forgive me. Because I selfishly can’t bear the thought of alienating you.

Much love,

Alejna