A Christmas Story

photo courtesy of Spencer Greet

There are many Christmas stories in the naked city. This is one of them.

Well, there is nothing like two decades-old cultural references to reconfirm one's irrelevance (and advancing age). But no matter.

This story has nothing to do with the Jean Shepherd movie from 1983. It is more a story of a Christmas that was "belated" to use Spencer's expression.

Let's go back in time to Christmas Eve, shall we?

It had, of course, already been a busy week here at Lake Overcommitment (pop goes another cultural reference.) The previous five days had been filled events both secular and ecumenical, not to mention musical, what with the office Christmas party on Friday; a lovely Sunday morning Love Feast service at Lititz Moravian Church; an Episcopalian Lessons and Carols Evensong on Sunday afternoon sung by Norm and Spence in Lebanon, PA; a shopping trip to New York City on Tuesday, and a flurry of last-minute wrapping, cleaning, candy-making and shopping wedged in wherever possible.

So, we arrive at Wednesday, Christmas Eve, when Norm and I were scheduled to sing Christmas Eve service at our church, the Church of the Loving Shepherd (Jess and Allie sang and rang at Calvary Lutheran). We managed to get to the service where Spencer served as crucifer, sang a lovely selection of carols, and headed back home feeling pretty good about ourselves, with a bag of homemade cookies pressed on Spencer by a kind churchgoer and fellow singer.

Baked goods of all kinds are problematical for Spence, given his egg and peanut allergies. My attention was diverted when the cookies showed up, and I was not party to the discussion about the contents of the cookies (standard disclaimer language when something goes wrong). So, I took Spencer's and Norm's word that the cookies contained no allergens. Spencer proceeded to eat the cookies in the car, sharing a few with his parents along the way.

Not long afterward, Spence began feeling some symptoms that are, sadly, all to familiar to us. A metallic taste in his mouth, a lot of gas, a predictable progression that generally leads to, in this case, literally tossing his cookies.

The usual breast beating, accusations, acrimony and recrimination ensued, as we all played the "Who is responsible for this terrible breach of parental vigilance" game (one of my personal favorites.) Eventually, after an hour of anxious waiting during which Spence gave his girlfriend a play-by-play over the phone ("Wait, I think I am going to throw up. Call you back.") the cookies had indeed been tossed, and we thought the episode had cost us no more than a pleasant Christmas Eve.

We were wrong.

Spence continued to have some stomach pain which administrations of Benadryl did not alleviate. He was up a few times during the night, taking Tums. We still thought it was just the aftereffects of the cookies.

Until Norm awoke at 4:30 on Christmas morning violently ill.

At that point we realized that we were dealing with something other than allergies, since Norm does not share that issue with Spence.

Christmas morning came, and while Spence had bounced back, Norm continued to be bedridden. We called and cancelled our Christmas day dinner plans with my family, and decided to postpone our own Christmas until Norm could participate.

The day passed oddly, Christmas on hold, and by the next morning Norm felt well enough to at least get out of bed. We realized, however, that the house party for Norm's family planned for the next day (Saturday) would have to wait, since we did not know whether the virus Norm had would spread to other people (like, for example, me.) So, regretfully, we cancelled that party as well.

We decided to treat the 25th as if it had not happened, and declared the 26th to be Christmas Day (actually Boxing Day in the UK, so somewhat appropriate, given Norm's British heritage.)

Gifts were exchanged, the traditional pancake brunch was served, and with Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas music, cider, and eggnog on hand we celebrated quite nicely en famille.

By Sunday Norm was back to his old self, more or less, albeit shy a few pounds.

And even though the weather was actually pretty good, I will close with a favorite quote from Marmion, Canto the Sixth, by Sir Walter Scott:

"Heap on more wood! The wind is chill
But let it whistle as it will.
We'll keep our Christmas merry still."

Those Cwazy Squirrels

Now that my TMB has been resolved, I am back on the job, with hopes that my flow of verbiage can continue without further interruption.

Yesterday, I saw a provocative item on CNN about the disappearance of acorns. Now, if you are a seeker of useless yet interesting bits of effluvia such as myself, how could you pass up an article entitled "Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage"?


To summarize the article, it has been observed in various pockets of the East Coast that there are not as many annoyingly crunchy oak reproductive devices littering the ground as there usually are. The consensus seemed to be that it is too soon to become concerned about an oakless future. There were lots and lots of acorns last year, and the trees were just exhausted. Then, the article went on to discuss the plight of squirrels with no acorns to eat.

One would think that this would be a welcome problem, especially since it means that there is less food for the squirrels, which I think of as rats with bushy tails, or pigeons with fur. You may choose your own annoying animal simile.


Sorry, but however cute Disney-rendered squirrels may be, to me they are just a form of rodentia. They can chew into homes and make a terrible mess. They do irrational things like waiting on the side of the road until your car is almost upon them, then they dash frantically out into the middle of the road, causing you to swerve to avoid them.


You know that they are doing this on purpose just to mess with your head.

I realize that the disappearance of squirrels might lead to one of those circle-of-life issues, wherein something else that preys on them would have trouble surviving, like red-tailed hawks or foxes or owls. But there would still be other tiny vermin for these vastly more interesting creatures to eat, like mice and chipmunks.

On the other hand, perhaps squirrels can be useful creatures. My grandmother, an intrepid gastronome, served us up some squirrel at some point in my childhood. They do make pretty good eating, as I recall, and taste sort of like...chicken.

You might perhaps wonder from whence my antipathy to the chubby-cheeked chatterers arises.

Well, I'll tell you.

Years ago, I had an apartment on an older, tree-lined street in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. The apartment was in a charming old house, on the second floor. A large sycamore tree stood a few feet from the house, with spreading branches that essentially were sidewalks for the squirrels that inhabited the tree.

Sidewalks that led straight to the house I lived in.

The squirrels chewed there way into the attic of the house, where they scampered night and day, sounding like a herd of elephants right over my bed (gray squirrels can weigh as much as a pound and be 18 inches long). It was incredibly creepy.

I actually consulted the services of a pest control company, which informed me that it was very difficult to keep the bushy-tailed little monsters out of an old house like the one I lived in, without cutting the tree down.

Since I didn't own the house, and I really liked the apartment, there was little I could do but put up with the pests. So, for pretty much the entire two years I lived there, I tried to ignore them, although I did sometimes fantasize about getting a shotgun and blasting through the ceiling, like Elmer Fudd in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Fortunately, I do not see many squirrels around my current home, even though there are many trees. Perhaps the hawks and foxes are keeping them at bay.

Or, perhaps, they are all out playing in traffic.

Incommunicado

Well, I have been absent from my post, but not intentionally, and not because I was just too darned busy.

I had planned to write on Tuesday, but awoke to find the household in a state of Total Media Blackout. That means no TV, no Internet, no phone service.

Actually, we did have phone service for awhile, but one phone call to tech support and attempt to fix the problem remotely took care of that.

Just goes to show you how best laid plans gang aft agley, as Robert Burns would say.

Our large corporate media channel provider, who shall remain nameless but provides our house with FiOS, could not manage to get one of their minions here until Wednesday afternoon.

That means 36 hours with no communication with the outside world. We might as well have been living in the Dark Ages.

Well, except for the electricity, indoor plumbing and cell phones.

Have you ever tried to read your email on a cell phone? It is an extremely painful exercise. I don't recommend it.

We were reduced to actually doing something meaningful on Tuesday evening. At first I thought, well, maybe this is a good thing. We can do what families used to do, play Monopoly and Scrabble, and converse. It will be sort of a Little House on the Prairie thing, without the oil lamps and hard labor.

But, of course, that would require not just a TMB but a power outage, which really does reduce us to Stone-Age conditions, what with the well pump and all. Spence was still able to play his PS2 and simultaneously talk on his cellphone, so I could not get his attention even if I set my hair on fire. Norm was working. I had run out of Lost DVDs to watch, so I got a brilliant idea.

I'll make candy.

Those who have read my posts before know that I am powerless in the face of the gods of Chocolate. It is the only substance to which I am totally addicted. If you ever want me to do something for you, just wave a bar of 60% Cacao in my face.

I first dipped my toe into the chocolate lake last year, when I made truffles. They were cherry bombs of delight. The interesting thing is, that when working with it, smelling it, melting it, pouring it, I don't necessarily have to eat it. Chocolate is such a sensory feast just to behold, so beautiful a color, so smoothly soothing, that the rest of my senses are fully occupied and my taste buds are kind of put to sleep.

So, I got out some candy making stuff, and started in.

Pretty soon Spence wandered into the kitchen, saw the chocolate, and the next thing I knew, we were both fully engaged in a creative pursuit that certainly was kin to what the Ingalls may have done just before Christmas. Nothing mesmerizes like the product of the cacao bean.

After all, the most active chemical compound in chocolate is theobromine, which is Latin for "food of the gods".

I made some chocolate Santas with a Wilton mold I had purchased; Spence had an idea and made stars that were half dark chocolate and half red-colored white chocolate. He only made four of them, so we each had one and saved some for Dad. They were heaven.

Wednesday afternoon our communication savior showed up, replaced some dinky little wire, and we were back in business. But our candy-making project has started us down a path that may prove to be quite delicious, as well as a great family activity.

I am sure that somewhere, Laura Ingalls is smiling.

You Know Them When You See Them

I have been contemplating two figures of legend and fact recently.

I have been contemplating them together because there are an amazing number of similarities between them.

Both of these figures, who were white males, are dead, and have been for some time. Yet they have generated enormous cult followings. They brought a great deal of joy to people in their lifetimes, which is part of the reason for the cult followings. The cult followings have transcended any reality that actually existed.

In life they wore outfits, self-designed, if myth is to be believed, that set them apart from everyone else. Now their imitaters wear these outfits, and they are instantly recognizable, certainly by anyone in the western world.

The outfits include a certain amount of idiosyncratic hair, including facial hair. Everyone who dresses like these two men must wear the hair to complete the outfit.

Both men usually are known by one name. The name has five letters in it.

Many people have claimed to see the "real" figure in many different places in the world. The interesting thing is that any time one of the imitators is encountered, he is treated as if he is the real person; it is bad etiquette to suggest otherwise.


Both men have been the subject of many stories and songs. They are treated with great reverence, for the most part.

They have both been in many movies, although in one case the real person was in the movies, in the other, only imitators.

Each person represents an enormous industry of merchandise which contains the likeness of the person. Each person has an unusual place of residence; if you mention the name of the residence, everyone knows who lives there.

Anyone is entitled to pretend to be these people, even if the pretender looks completely ridiculous in the outfit. Yet, something magical happens when the outfit is assumed, as if some portion of the charisma of the real person invests itself into the pretender.

OK, this is getting kind of annoying, isn't it? You must know by now who the two figures are. The pictures at the top of the post kind of clue you in.

Elvis and Santa.

They are in a unique pantheon, these two. Many people make a living (of sorts, in the case of Santa) out of wearing the costume. Santa (the real one, assuming that you believe there was a real Saint Nick) has been dead for a long time, but even Elvis has now been dead almost as long as he was alive, and he is still the top-earning dead celebrity, according to Forbes.

Yes, the black wig, mutton chops, and white sequined jumpsuit rock on.

Sadly, Elvis looked Santa-esque in his girth by the time of his death.


Elvis has a long way to go to achieve the cultural longevity of Santa, who really didn't exist in his current form until Thomas Nast gave him life in 1881. The true origins of Santa are shrouded in the mists of time; legend has him going back to St. Nicholas of Myra in 3rd-century Turkey. But the contemporary incarnation of Santa is so ingrained in western culture that he seems likely to be with us for a very long time to come.

At some point, all of the people who were alive when the real Elvis was alive will be dead. Only then will we see if Elvis has staying power as a legend, when the only flesh-and-blood Elvis anyone living will ever have seen will be an Elvis impersonator.

Of course, we will always have Viva Las Vegas if we want to see the real thing.

Wreathed in the Holidays

I am going to go all Martha Stewart today.

Feel like doing some Christmas crafts? This is the place.

I was inspired by this month's Good Housekeeping magazine, which I keep in the library, otherwise known as the powder room. I think this is a really fun magazine, especially for all of the recipes and crafts. Actually, come to think of it, Martha Stewart's crafts seem to require too much of a disciplined, organized lifestyle commitment, and that is not in keeping with my mantra of moderation.

Good Housekeeping's offerings are more suitable for The Haphazard and Disorganized Housewife, who would be me.

Plus, you can play Mahjongg on their website; now, who doesn't like a little Mahjongg now and then, perhaps with a cup of oolong tea?

It makes me feel very Miami Beach circa 1960, just thinking about it. Where are my silk pajamas?

And then there is Heloise, who must surely be 116 by now, still dispensing valuable advice on how to get those ink spots out of your brand-new slipcovers.

My favorite thing about the current GH issue, however, is the Eco-Friendly Christmas Wreath Project. Here is the place where you can find out what to do with those 500 old Christmas cards that you have received over the last 17 years.

What, you mean that everyone doesn't save those Christmas cards, in a huge basket that gets dragged out of the closet every year, and now weighs about ten pounds?

The cards from family and friends that come in the mail and reaffirm that you are worth the price of the card and the stamp, and the time it takes to sign, address and mail them, so how can you throw them away?

The cards that you sweat to respond to in a timely fashion, which usually means that you mail your cards on December 23rd, instead of early in December when you should?

But I digress, and should not be letting my latent Christmas card guilt issues usurp my post.

The recycled holiday-card wreath is going to take care of all of those old cards. Clearly, we are not the only household that doesn't throw them away. GH provides a handy stencil to use to cut the cards into a holly-leaf shape. All that is needed is a styrofoam wreath, toothpicks and a hot-glue gun, that staple of holiday crafts, and voila!

The other wreath that really captured my fancy was the tie wreath. Norm has about 250 ties hanging up in his closet; I know this because I accidentally pulled off the rotating tie rack while rooting through his closet one day (don't ask) and had to pick them all up. The wreath only uses 19 ties, so I will have to think of something else to do with the other 200 ties he doesn't wear. Cut 18 of the ties into 15 inch lengths, wrap them around a wire wreath form, put a stitch in the back so that they don't fall off, tie one in a bow on the front, and voila!

By the way, for all of you wine drinkers out there (you know who you are) there is a lovely wine-cork wreath.

I feel all energized just thinking about making these wreaths/getting rid of those old cards. So, before that feeling dissipates, or my morning coffee wears off, maybe I will pull out the big basket o'cards, print off the stencil and start in on wreath-making.

Now, where would I find the glue gun?

18 Spots

Did you know that a ladybug can have 18 spots on its back?

That means nine dots on each wing, in a symmetrical pattern.

I know this because I just had one on the end of my finger, and I counted them. Of course, I had to put it down or I wouldn't be able to type. So, now it is crawling over a roll of stamps.

I don't know where this ladybug came from. It just appeared on my computer desk. But I have noticed times when ladybugs just seem to appear, and in great profusion. They have been known to cluster in large groups in odd corners of the upstairs hallway.

These are apparently Asian lady beetles, formally known as Harmonia axyridis. They are part of the beetle family Coccinellidae. When they cluster in a corner, they are trying to hibernate. They are not all ladies, of course. Only the really spotty ones are ladies. The ones with no spots or few spots are males.

Interestingly, as the name suggests, they are not native to this country. Asian lady beetles were introduced to several states (including Pennsylvania) perhaps as early as 1916 and continuing into the 1990s to try to control pests such as aphids or scale insects. Now, of course, they are everywhere.

There are species of ladybug that are native to the U.S., so I am not sure why it was deemed necessary to bring in foreign ladybugs. Perhaps they have bigger appetites.

In England and Australia, ladybugs are called ladybirds.

It would appear that the clustering ladybugs are the Asian ones, not the native ones; the habit of clustering indoors to hibernate can create unpleasant infestations. Also, these beetles can emit a nasty smell, although I can't say that I notice it on this particular bug. The smell is from compounds produced by the beetles to ward off predators such as birds.


Uh oh, the ladybug is now inside my coffee cup. I am not sure that the caffeine would be good for her.

Here's a creepy thought for you wine lovers out there (you know who you are). Asian lady beetles have been known to get mixed into wines because there are so many of them on the grapes when they are harvested. The compounds they emit then become a part of the wine.

Winemakers call this unusual taste and smell in the wine "ladybug taint"; it is the methoxypyrazine compounds in the ladybugs, compounds also found in wines, that could change the character of the wine; they are said to smell of bell peppers, or roasted peanuts. This is obviously of some concern to the winemaking industry.

At least one winemaker does not seem to be put off of the lady beetle, however; the Lolonis Winery is an organic winery that uses the pest control qualities of the lady beetle to avoid the use of pesticides. Lolonis Winery is so fond of these insects that the ladybug is the symbol of Lolonis Wines.

They even have a Ladybug Red and Ladybug White wine.

My ladybug is still with me. I don't mind her being in the house; she can stay as long as she doesn't bring her friends.

And, of course, the wine rack is completely off limits.

Linus and Lucy

OK, so I am following up yesterday's post with a bookend.


As I sit here, I am listening to the Christmas song that, for my money, is the best one ever. And it doesn't even have lyrics, and is performed by a jazz trio.


Can you guess what song it is?


Christmas, 1965. I am ten years old, brother Jim is eleven, and our little brother Keith is five. A Charlie Brown Christmas airs for the first time.


This is the sixties, of course, and for kids there were not many programming choices. We were restricted to three VHF channels plus PBS, and UHF channels were just beginning to program.


A new Christmas special was a big event. Especially an animated one; most Christmas specials were made up of a male crooner, a gaggle of cute kids, and various comedy sketches that were not particularly funny if you were six.

The interesting thing is that a Charlie Brown Christmas, while it has its funny moments, has a very serious message, and is really quite adult in its view of the need to keep the shallowness of commercialism from overtaking the most sacred Christian holiday. Of course, the Peanuts strip on which it was based was really an adult strip that used children to expore issues of loneliness, alienation and self-esteem.

Yet, this Christmas special hits the nail right on the head. It explains Christmas in a way comprehensible even to small children with a meaningful story, clever dialog, bad animation and the best score of any Christmas show ever, by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

When I was in college, there was a showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV that drew a rapt crowd of post-adolescents, all of whom had seen the show many times before, to sit quietly on the floor in the middle of a party for a half hour.

My favorite scene remains the one wherein all of the characters dance those unforgettable, idiosyncratic dances on the stage of the auditorium while Schroeder plays the song Linus and Lucy. This really captured the imagination of my generation.

The song was so compelling that it was the first thing I attempted to play on the piano my parents bought for me when I was 16.

Many years after the college party, I went to a George Winston concert at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. George played the beautiful, atmospheric jazz piano he is known for in a turtleneck and jeans, and stocking feet. The show was in early December; late in the concert he turned to the audience and said that anyone who wanted to dance to the next song was welcome on stage.

The he launched into Linus and Lucy.

For an instant, the audience stayed in their seats; and then, a man came tearing down the aisle, bounded onto the stage, and began the shoulder-shrugging, foot-twisting dance. Immediately, others ran to follow him, until the stage was so full no one else could have possibly fit.

Each person was doing some variation of the Peanuts dances; the sleepwalk, the twins' sideways head-jerk and hop, the zombie arm reach, and of course the Linus head-down, arm-pumping, closed-fist shuffle. All of them were unutterably happy.

I stayed in the audience, too stunned to move. It was like the cartoon come spontaneously to life.

These days, my family's custom is to trim the Christmas tree while listening to my twenty-year-old CD of A Charlie Brown Christmas. It is my son Spencer's favorite Christmas CD.

When it comes to sacred Christmas carols, the best one, in my humble opinion, is Silent Night. But for the secular, joyful, dancing in the aisles, childlike side of Christmas, you just can't beat Linus and Lucy.

Put on your dancing shoes, and let the shoulder shrugging begin.

Christmas Shoes

So this is Christmas, as John Lennon said.

And what have you done?

You have been listening non-stop to Christmas music since the day after Halloween.

Christmas music is a relative term, of course. The muzak played on the non-stop Christmas music stations mostly consists of a small, tightly controlled list of classic favorites and God-awful covers of classic favorites, with a few garish novelty tunes thrown in, mostly alternated so that the listener doesn't convert to Buddhism. They are repeated in an endless, mind-numbing loop. Many of these tunes are only tangentially related to the actual holiday, but do have the word "snow" in them.

I realize that picking on Christmas songs is akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but among these seasonal songs is perhaps the worst song ever written. With apologies to Dave Barry, I think that particular award has to be given to the song that has given this post its title.

This is a song so shameless, so horrifying, that my stepdaughter Allie stomped on the dog in a frantic scramble to get to the radio and change the station the minute she heard its opening notes.

It can induce nausea so reliably that Poison Control Centers have suggested its use in lieu of Ipecac.

My eardrums want to puncture themselves rather than risk even one more hearing of this song.

More cloying than Honey, more manipulative than Alone Again Naturally, this song breaks new ground in pandering and tear-jerking.

Let's deconstruct, shall we?

Here is a Christmas song about a poor ragged child standing in line to buy his dying mother some shoes.

Where to begin to address the issues here?

First of all, Christmas songs about poor children and anything or anyone dying should be completely off limits. For one thing, the poor child angle, has, I believe, already been adequately addressed by The Little Drummer Boy. But at least the Little Drummer Boy's mom didn't die, as far as we know. Christmas songs are supposed to be about joy, for goodness sakes.

And poor, saintly dying mothers are the ne plus ultra of tearjerking, the nuclear bomb of sentimentality. Combining them in song with poor ragged children at any time is just wrong.

Even the next most maudlin subject, the dying pet dog, does not come close. Couldn't the poor ragged urchin be purchasing a new dog collar for his soon-to-expire pet? Wouldn't that be pathetic enough?

And shoes, of all things. Shoes so that his mom will look nice in Heaven. Come on. Sick mom doesn't need shoes. She needs a cure, or medicine.

And then, the boy scrounges in his pockets for pennies, and finally appeals to the guy in line, no doubt sporting those big eyes like the big-eyed children in those Keane paintings.

And, of course, the whole purpose of the boy and his plight was to remind Mr. Man what Christmas was all about.

Even Charles Dickens, who created some of the most pitiful scenarios ever, could not outdo this. Mr. Bob Carlisle, the composer of the song in question, has him beat.

Arrrgh! There are no onomatopoetic words to describe the sounds I am making.

But they still sound better than Christmas Shoes.

Two Women

I received some really distressing news yesterday..

A friend of mine, who is also the mother of one of Spencer's former classmates, sent out an email telling friends that her breast cancer had returned, this time to her spine. She has had surgery on her vertibrae, and had rods inserted to stabilize it.

She had been diagnosed in early 2007, after her first mammogram, at age 49, revealed multiple lumps, requiring a double mastectomy and removal of lymph nodes, plus chemotherapy.

This is a lovely person who takes care of herself, who eats properly, who gets exercise, who doesn't smoke. A smart lady who likes to read (we have been in a bookclub together) and has deep, kind blue eyes.

At the time she was initially diagnosed, the mothers of two other of Spencer's classmates also were undergoing cancer treatment, again for breast cancer. Interestingly enough, the statistic for breast cancer occurrence is one in eight. There were 24 children in Spencer's class. Three out of 24, or one in eight, received the diagnosis.

It was both sobering and inspiring to see these women go about their lives, coming to school events, wearing head scarves to cover hair loss, and sometimes just forgoing the scarves. The school community closed rank around them, creating a circle of caring to provide meals, transportation, prayers and good wishes as they battled the disease.

As far as I know, this is the first recurrence among this group.

My friend is continuing to fight this disease with strength and spirit, and has loving family and friends backing her up.

Years ago, after Spencer had started preschool, I decided to go back to work. I had been a computer consultant, but four years out of the workplace made me feel somewhat rusty and useless. A recruiter with whom I had worked for years called; she had started her own consulting company and was looking to place me.

Denise had called me faithfully every six months since Spencer's birth, asking if I was ready to go back to work. I always felt that if anyone could get me a job, she could. She was a little older than I, a strong woman with a can-do attitude and the will to use it.

I received Denise's call in August, and said yes, I am ready. She went about looking for a contract for me, and in late fall the call came, from her partner Mary Beth, to go on an interview. I was hired a few days before Christmas, to start in January.

In the mail I received an invitation to Denise's company's holiday party, which actually happened after Christmas. Norm and I dressed to the nines and went to the party, held in a posh Philadelphia location. We stood near the top of a large staircase, chatting with Mary Beth. She told us that Denise would be coming to the party.

I must have looked confused, because it was Denise's company, after all; why wouldn't she come? Mary Beth looked at me keenly and said, "Did you know that Denise is sick? Very sick?" I am sure that my face blanched as she said this, because she continued quickly, "Denise was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. It was in remission but has returned, to her bone and liver."

"She got married two weeks ago."

As Mary Beth told me, I felt my eyes well up. How was this possible? Denise with her no nonsense, enthusiatic, take-charge personality?

Meanwhile, Denise was coming up the steps. Immediately after I had absorbed this information, her husband pushed her wheelchair up the top step and onto the atrium where we stood.

She was clearly dying. I ran to her and babbled something about how great it was to see her. She looked at me and said, "Gee, I really like your hair". Then her husband wheeled her away.

Denise died two weeks later. She was 43.

I like to remember her as she was at a Christmas party past, in a slinky dress, with her shiny black hair and an amused gleam in her green eyes, puffing on a big cigar.

To all the women over 40 out there, my message is simple. Get a mammogram.

Winter Is Icumen In

photo courtesy of Spencer Greet

So here we are on November 19, and we woke up to snow this morning.

Well, calling it snow is certainly overstating the case. It was more like a dusting, like the peach fuzz on the face of an adolescent Old Man Winter. He won't reach full maturity for another month, but he is already feeling his oats.

Suddenly it is cold, and even The Woman Who Perpetually Perspires is seeking the polartec and the afghan.

Up until today, I have been pretty stingy about the heat in our home. Our home is heated by hot water baseboard heaters, fueled by propane. Last winter, when propane hit $3.78 per gallon, we had one or two winter months where the heating bill closed in on $1,000.00.

At that point, I became the Thermostat Nazi. I ran around the house, constantly setting and re-setting our four thermostats depending on whether or not anyone was actually in that part of the house. Why waste perfectly good heat on an empty room, was my rationale.

Of course, as the cost of fuel rose, my settings dropped. They bottomed out at a frosty 62 degrees Fahrenheit, which, while still relatively comfortable to my overheated person, was positively frigid to some of my family members. The battle of the thermostats was on!

During the summer I got the brilliant idea of installing programmable thermostats. I checked around online, and realized that not only was this an economically feasible idea, but sensibly green as well.

The first one I installed was on our separate air conditioning system, which has only one thermostat. I was similarly miserly about the air conditioning settings, figuring if I was going to sweat so much, so was everyone else in the house. Sometimes, however, when I came home from being out for several hours, the house was somehow at a temperature that keeps lettuce nice and crisp. So, the programmable thermostat went in, and locked to boot, at the Energy Star settings.

Yes, I am a control freak.

The thermostats I have chosen are by Honeywell. They are expensive, but worth it in the long run, especially since I no longer have to play thermostat roulette.

Of course, since early October when I last wrote about this subject, fuel prices in general have fallen significantly. So, I have backed off of the draconian settings a bit, especially since winter has come to visit so early.

Unfortuately, like a freeloading guest, winter will probably stay a while, if you believe the predictions of the Farmer's Almanac. It is supposed to be colder and snowier than normal, although November was supposed to be mild, so they are already off to a bad start.

Perhaps that is what happens when you predict the weather by using a pig spleen.

Do I Know You?

Memory, all alone in the moonlight...

Well, some people's memories may be alone in the moonlight, but not mine.

Mine have plenty of company. In fact, sometimes I think that my brain may resemble a subway car in Tokyo. You know the ones I mean. There are people employed for the sole purpose of pushing people into the cars because they are already so full of people.

Presumably my brain employs some neurons or whatever to push new information in, no doubt at some pitiful minimum wage. The problem is, other information is falling out the windows on the other side, where it lands on the tracks and gets runover by another train.

In other words, memory death.

Like many femmes d'une certain age (don't you just love the French? They have a word for everything) my memory is not what it once was. Sudies have confirmed the link between memory loss and menopause. I can attest to this.

Especially my working memory. I can lose track of where I am going in about half a second. So, a typical day for me goes like this:

1. Go up the steps, get to the top

2. Stand there and wonder why I am at the top of the steps

3. Give up and go back down the steps

4. Remember why I went up the steps

5. Go back to number 1

While it is not quite that bad, it is kind of scary.

I know that part of the problem is distraction. Everything I see in my house is a reminder to do something - vacuum, dust, laundry, bills, whatever.

No doubt it was the mental shopping list, and scanning the aisles, that caused my latest memory crisis. Last week I went into the supermarket, and while tooling around with my cart, spotted a woman coming toward me. I looked at her, and thought, Gee, she looks familiar. She looked at me with expectation, and fortunately, just as she got to within hailing distance, I realized who she was.

She is my neighbor.

I got bonus points for actually coming up with her name (Janice). I am hoping that she did not see the totally blank look on my face, followed by the brightening up of recognition and the relief of the name recall, but I can't be sure about this.

Anyone with a baby or small children is familiar with the issue of lack of sleep and memory loss. Ten years ago, before the train of my childbearing years pulled into the station (hmm, subway cars? Trains? I seem to be onto transportation metaphors today) I ran into a former co-worker, whom I had not seen in about ten years. She was ahead of me in line at a toystore, and turned and instantaneously exclaimed "Valerie!" I smiled brightly and said, "Hey! How are you?" and went through the conversation desperately rummaging through the attic furniture for her name. I did eventually come up with that particular piece of information.

Three months later.

Tara Parker-Pope, in her excellent Well blog on the New York Times, has mentioned connections between sleep problems and memory loss; I wonder sometimes if Norm has this problem, because he can snore like an angry moose, and misplaces his wallet approximately every four days.

I have written before about cutting out wine or chocolate late at night to help me sleep better. Another option is using vitamin B12, which my friend Joan swears by to help her sleep. Studies show it also can help improve memory. I have used this in the past, and I think I will try it again.

Now, if only I could remember where I put that bottle of vitamins...

All Paths Lead to the Center

Last week I kind of slacked off a bit, and managed only three posts.

This week I will try to do better.

Question: if you blog about your own blog, is that metablogging?

Yesterday, Norm, Spence and I visited church, from which we have been woefully absent these last several weeks. Normally, we manage to get to church at least once a month, to sing in the once-monthly pickup choir. Lately, though, we have had other things going on and haven't managed even that minimal commitment.


The church we attend is Church of the Loving Shepherd in West Chester, Pennsylvania. It is a small, ecumenical Christian community church that is located on a twenty acre Penn land grant farm. Services are held in the converted barn on the property, which dates back to the 18th century.


During our absence, a new labyrinth was dedicated at the church. CLS (as we call it) already had an outdoor labyrinth on its grounds. The new one is actually laid out in a stencil on the barn floor. The pews are sitting on top of it. It is a beautiful swirl of maroon on the wide oak boards.

I used to think that labyrinths and mazes were the same thing, but technically they are not, althought the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Mazes are like puzzles to solve, with false trails leading to dead ends. In the Greek myth about Theseus and the Minotaur, the Minotaur is a half-man, half-bull monster that Theseus had to find and kill at the center of a maze (although it is always called a labyrinth in versions of the myth).

A modern labyrinth is formed on the Eulerian path principle that each part of the labyrinth is travelled only once. It has no false paths; you cannot get lost. The path of a labyrinth may wander in a beautiful and elaborate pattern, but there is one path and it leads only to the center.

The labyrinth pattern has been used throughout history as everything from a type of battle formation used in ancient India and mentioned in the Mahabharata, to a design element common in ancient Greece and Rome, to its use in medieval cathedrals , and the "turf mazes" cut into the grass in Great Britain; these sometimes were called the "Walls of Troy" because they were hard to get through.

Labyrinths have been used to help pilgrims achieve the feeling of symbolically travelling to pilgrimage sites, or simply as entertainment.

Recently labyrinths have experienced a renewed interest as a meditational and relaxation aid. Walking through a labyrinth while practicing the art of walking meditation can help empty the mind in a similar way to repeating a sound or concentrating on your breathing.

Labyrinths can be now be found in public parks, in schools, and of course in churches. There is even a company that specializes in building labyrinths, or providing you a stencil if you want one of your own.

I would like to get into a habit of walking the labyrinths at CLS, either the outdoor one in better weather, or the indoor one whenever it is available (meaning that the pews have been moved aside). The idea of walking an ancient path is appealing, and may help me in my quest to learn to meditate (emptying my mind is a real challenge).

And, given that my sense of direction has never been the best, the fact that you can't get lost is a plus.

Alien Vs. Predator

I have been getting into some immoderate habits lately.


For one thing, I have become addicted to the show House. I know, it has been on the air for years, and I managed to successfully avoid it, but there is apparently now a broadcasting law that says that House must be showing on some cable network at all times, and I just kept stumbling over it.


So, I have been watching it up to three times a night - yes, that is three hours of television.


Back in the bad old days, I would have submitted myself for a public flogging in the marketplace for such behavior; but now, I can castigate myself just as publicly on the Internet.


The appeal of the show House lies mostly in the character House, as fascinating a male stew of complexity as has ever been cooked up by diabolical writers. Getting to know House better as a character has brought to mind the idea of a matchup between him and another incredibly compelling fictive male.


You know the one I mean. Mad Men's Don Draper.


House and Don Draper. There's a terrible testosterone-filled twosome for you.


This thought came to me in the middle of the night, last night when I couldn't sleep. Of course, some people would use this valuable time to fret over the collapsing economy, or whether or not that suspicious mole is cancerous. I, on the other hand, am obsessing over fictional characters and how they would fare in a fight.


Imagine House and Don Draper inhabiting the same universe.


Draper with his brilliantined hair, bespoke suits, air of repressed, opaque masculine charm. He exudes mystery, angst, depth, all with flickers of his stolid, handsome face. House with his permastubble, perpetual bedhead, clothing no doubt scrounged off of the floor of his closet, and his popeyed, facetious, angry, exposed persona - he is a walking irritated nerve ending.


Both, as far as I can tell, besides being brilliant beyond comprehension, completely and utterly posessed by the urge to copulate with whatever reasonably comely female wanders into their presence (Granted that Don Draper seems to take better advantage of this).


Let's just suppose that some space-time continuum rupture placed them in the same vicinity at the same time. What if both of them needed to get their mojo on? What if they both coveted the same nubile lass?


Would House start swinging his cane? Claim that she was suffering from some horrible disease, just not Lupus? Or would he simply give Don the evil eye and limp off with a final malediction, pills popping, to soothe his ego by tormenting Wilson?


Would Don take off his jacket and come out duking, slickery dark hair dislodged like Superman when he gets in a lather, big shoulders hunched, a veritable Rocky Marciano? Or would he saunter away, disdainful and cool as a panther, to work his charm on another available femme?

Would they get down and dirty, rolling over and over on the floor, a DraperHouseDraperHouse gyration?

I think such a matchup would be simply inspired programming.


Hollywood, are you listening?

The Price of Health

The difficult economic times that we are experiencing have posed a food-shopping dilemma for me.

For years now, I have been buying as much organic food as I can, including milk, produce and meats. This was made easier by the fact that Spencer was attending a Waldorf school that was around the corner from Kimberton Whole Foods, which is, as you would expect, a whole foods store.

I could and probably will write many blog posts on the subject of Waldorf education. At the moment, the salient fact about the school and its culture is that organic, healthy food was definitely the comestible of choice. The Kimberton Waldorf School is located in Kimberton, Pennsylvania on a 500-acre biodynamic dairy farm, the Seven Stars Farm, that produces its own, really delicious yogurt. The school has a lunch program that features healthy, mostly organic, ingredients. Many community members are vegan.

When Spencer started at the school, he was not quite four, and had two life-threatening food allergies to peanuts and eggs. We discovered this horrifying fact when Spence was one, and the impact on our family, and me particularly, was significant. I had to learn to cook most meals from scratch, since in those days, ten or eleven years ago, ingredient lists were hard to come by.

Baked goods were out of the question for him unless I baked them myself, to control for allergens. Even my extended family, sisters-in-law Stacey and Laurie, and my mom, got into the eggless baking business, for birthday cakes.

When your child has food allergies, and entire categories of edibles are literally off the table, you want whatever he can eat to be as healthy as possible. The Kimberton Waldorf School's culture of healthy food appealed to me. Norm and I received an education about food, including knowledge of grains like millet and spelt.

I began to frequent Kimberton Whole Foods, which was popular with the Waldorf community. There I purchased the organic flour, egg subsitute and soy-based ingredients that I used to bake vegan muffins, cookies and cakes. Often I would bring these goodies to school, since many of Spencer's friends at school also had allergies or ate vegan.

I also bought many of our daily meal ingredients at the store.

The one drawback to the organic foods sold at Whole Foods stores was the price. Organic food has always been more expensive than non-organic. But I was willing to pay the additional cost for the benefits that eating organic produce, grains and meats would bring.

Plus, the store was a wonderful place to hang out, redolent of spices and essential oils; just walking in the door made me feel like a better, healthier person.

Food prices are reaching a point, however, that I am struggling to justify paying roughly twice as much for organic milk as for non-organic, especially since Spencer is reaching the end of his formative years. I always worried that the hormones in non-organic milk, or bovine growth hormone in beef, would have the affect of pushing him into early puberty, although in the last few years, attention has shifted from hormones in food to environmental contaminants like phthalates and bisphenol-A.

Spence is now almost fifteen and his voice hasn't changed yet, so early puberty is definitely not a problem. But, I still worry about other effects of these environmental contaminants.

The good news about healthy and organic foods, though, is that supermarket chains are starting to catch on and offer more of this fare, as this article in CNN will attest; this may help to lower the prices a bit. Also, with any luck food prices in general will drop along with the drop in oil and energy prices.

Of course, creating our own garden is also an option. But that is a subject for another day.

Hard to Port

I am a little slow getting started this week.

It was an interesting weekend, which began with Norm's mom Mildred coming to stay overnight on Friday. She is 89 years old, a lovely lady who has recently rebounded from some debilitating episodes of vertigo.

Norm's sister Gail and I had gone clothes shopping for Mildred a few weeks back. Gail then took the clothing to her mom, who was thrilled with the purchases, but as frequently happens when clothes are purchased in absentia, some of the items did not fit. I had thought to visit Mildred and retrieve the clothes and exchange them, but when I called she said that she felt good enough to visit us and go along on the exchange trip.

Norm picked her up on Friday evening, and brought her here to our home. We had a nice chat, and then Mildred said that she was tired and went upstairs to bed. She had been up there for only a few moments when she called down to us, in a panic. Poor Mildred had attempted to flush one of our temperamental toilets, which promptly overflowed all over the bathroom floor, and then leaked down into the living room.

The next hour was spent with Norm mopping the soggy bathroom floor, Spencer and his sister Allie putting buckets down in the living room, where the water was flowing out of an air conditioning vent, and me running back and forth from the second floor to the first like a crazed squirrel. I had spent all morning cleaning the first floor and the guest room, and was spent like a found dollar. Fortunately, the damage was minimal, but the hurly-burly at the end of a big week taxed Norm and me to the limit, and we both dove for the wine rack.

Which was empty.

All that was left in the rack were a few bottles of Port.

Now, Port is a spirit with which I am not terribly familiar. There have been times when I have had an after-dinner drink, but not many. These bottles were gifts and we were saving them for some indeterminate future need.

Of course, tough times call for tough action, and we promptly opened a bottle; after all, any Port in a storm. We have these tiny wineglasses that we never use because they only hold about four ounces, and discovered that they were a perfect size for a glass of this particular beverage.

Norm and I sat down and sipped our glasses of Port, and suddenly we became elegant, sophisticated creatures with taste and charm, a veritable modern day Nick and Nora Charles. The more Port we sipped, the better we became, and our commode calamity receded into the past.

Port, or Porto, is called a "fortified wine"; it is made only in the Douro Valley in northern Portugal (hence the name). It is very sweet, but very drinkable. The port that we were drinking is Ruby Port, but there are also white Ports, or Porto Branco; Tawny Ports, and Vintage Ports.

Port is not something that you would drink in large quantities, although we did manage to sip away a half bottle. But it certainly did restore our cheerfulness, and reminded us that sometimes you just need some perspective; in this case, the liquid variety.

From now on, if we need a little fortification, we know where we can get some.

*Strange little footnote - Monday night, hours after I wrote this, Mutiny on the Bounty came on Turner Classic Movies and I watched it. Inevitably, the order came, barked by Captain Bligh. You know the one I mean. It's at the head of this post.

The Hair Of The Dog

photo courtesy of Spencer Greet

Well, now that the election is over and the excessive amounts of celebratory chocolate have been consumed and the spilled prosecco has been mopped up, it is time for me to go back to my daily routine, and to the mission that propels me during every waking moment of my life.

Vacuuming dog hair.

Our dog, Joey, the subject of a hagiographic earlier post, is the hairiest entity on the planet. He is an Irish Water Spaniel, and as such, has hair, not fur. It is beautiful hair, curly and soft and dark reddish brown, and when groomed he looks quite elegant.

He has not been groomed for a very, very long time.

Grooming him is expensive, and we are watching our pennies, as is appropriate in these fiscally apocalyptic times. One would think that, since we are saving money by not having him groomed, we would be bathing him and brushing him ourselves, and feeling virtuous and responsible by performing proper dog maintenance.

One would be wrong if one thought that.

Joey currently resembles a shag rug with legs and a tail. Brushing his coat is pretty much unthinkable. It has become fetchingly dreadlocked, and we now refer to him as Rasta Dog. If we actually did attempt to brush his coat, one of two things would happen:

- The hairbrush would be completely absorbed into the coat, never to be seen again.

- The hairbrush would become immediately immobilized and inextricably attached to the coat, so that Joey would amble around the house festooned with grooming implements.

There is another problem with the brushing issue. Joey would stand still for about three and a half seconds before escaping from such an alien and peculiar ritual, leaving us to the indignity of chasing him around with a hairbrush.

So, we have established that Joey never gets brushed. He does not shed, but he does lose hair in the way that a human does. Well, a human completely covered with fine curly hair. His hair falls off, and accumulates in tumbleweeds that are now approximately the size of sofa cushions. They are everywhere.

One particular dog-hair dropping was so large, I began to think that it had evolved into a life form by spontaneous generation. But when I prodded it with my foot, it did not get up and run away.

To add to the problem of droppage, Joey scratches himself more than one would think dogly possible. Each episode of scratching dislodges another three or four sofa cushions.

I am now reduced to running around the house non-stop with a hand vac. The big vacuum cleaner somehow manages to blow the hair as much as it vacuums. I have attempted to vacuum Joey, but while this seems like an idea that would work, it actually doesn't.

The endless, Sisyphean struggle to keep our house dog-hair-free consumes me, and reminds me why Sartre wrote No Exit. It certainly violates my tenets of moderate living.

So, today, finally, we have given in and decided to get Joey groomed.

Our friend Anne, who is a shepherdess with her own small flock, recently came over and observed that Joey was looking very sheeplike. She said that she knew someone who could spin Joey's hair into yarn.

To that end, Norm took a grocery bag with him when he took Joey to the groomers. Christmas is coming, you know.

Dog-hair sweater, anyone?

A Sigh of Relief

photo courtesy of Spencer Greet

And so, history is made in a day.

Voting early yesterday, the mood was festive, the lines were long. Norm and I met a potential new friend, standing behind us in line, who bikes with a local group; we talked about the possibility of joining him on a Sunday morning.

It was an odd day of waiting. Spence and I played Scrabble, and he whupped me good.

Last night, watching the returns was riveting. Surfing around the channels, Norm and I watched everything from BBC News to CNN to Fox News to Indecision 08 on the Comedy channel.

The really interesting show, however, was the one Spence was putting on down at the computer. Spence jumped on the Obama bandwagon months ago, and spent the evening monitoring returns on the web. He mostly monitored CNN online, and would shout electoral vote tallies to us as they came in; CNN online was way ahead of CNN TV and other televised election coverage. He also worked Facebook, keeping his friends up on the states as they were called (at one point, corresponding with eleven of them, including cousin Kyle.)

It was incredibly touching and magical to see Spencer's enthusiasm, and that of the teenagers he knows, almost all of whom also were Obama supporters. Apparently the meme of the day was to "donate" your status on Facebook to encourage people to vote in support of Obama. One by one these kids did this, and the word spread; ultimately something like one million plus Facebook users joined in. I was proud of the interest of his generation in this seminal moment, and I think it bodes well for the future.

At one point, Spence was corresponding with our friend Jan in Canada, and his former babysitter Kim in Australia. It was almost like a global party. Both of these friends were relieved by the outcome of the election.

He came running in to the room when the race was called. Norm and I toasted each other with a glass of Prosecco, and we watched Obama give a speech for the ages.

We all stayed up way too late, and getting up this morning was hard. But it was wonderful to be in the moment, even knowing that life will get back to normal, albeit a new normal, and remembering that there are many problems to be faced.

Still, it is not often that we get to see people dancing in the streets. Regardless of whom you voted for, it has to be moving to see so many people happy. That particular emotion has been in short supply for a while now.

Oddly enough, here in Philly it is the second week in a row that we have had this kind of euphoria.

I could get used to this.

Citizenship

Since it is Election Day, and I just came back from voting, I decided to explore the concept of citizenship. It is a word that gets batted around a lot, but what does it really mean?


Of course, being the noodley obsessive-compulsive information glutton that I am, that means I will start by revisiting the Ancient Ones, to see what they had to say.


Going back to an earlier post, Aristotle believed that to live a happy life is the goal, or telos, of human beings. Living a happy life meant living a virtuous life; he describes the path to personal virtue in his Nichomachean Ethics as finding the golden mean (or happy medium) between the extremes of excess and deficiency, either of which is a vice.

Politics was the means by which citizens develop good moral character or virtue vis-a-vis the community. Ethics and politics were thus intertwined in his worldview. Political participation was necessary to be a good citizen, but only if you were not female or a slave, and had at least one Athenian citizen as a parent; citizenship was therefore quite limited, to about 15% of the population.


From Aristotle flowed the republican model of citizenship, which in its essence means that you, citizen, are able to participate in elected office, that you personally are eligible to rule or be ruled. This model was followed in Athens, in Italian city-states, and was direct and not representational. It has been called the "republican ideal" that all citizens be actively engaged in politics. Rousseau's concept of the General Will is congruent with this idea, in that the collective will of the people will lead to the enactment of laws that are for the good of all.


The liberal model of citizenship is broader, and stems from the Roman theory of law, and Rome's practice of extending the legal status of "citizen" to conquered peoples; it therefore, in theory, extended citizenship in an unlimited way and required no reasonable expectation of holding office. Its modern application dates to the sixteen hundreds, and involves the concept of individual rights and obligations under the law. There was a tension in the development of the liberal model of citizenship over the rights of property owners versus non-property owners. John Locke's political philosophy, with its concept of "natural law" existing outside of governmental powers and the right of all peoples to life, liberty and property greatly influenced the liberal model.

These two views are pretty divergent; modern citizenship has obviously embraced the liberal ideal of citizenship, in that we, as citizens, only occasionally participate in the political sphere by voting for representatives to carry out our political will, or by being part of a jury. The "republican ideal" is too impractical for the size and complexity of a modern political state.

Sheesh, can you tell that I was a political science major in college?

Of course, until the late 19th-early 20th century, women and slaves were still excluded from the body politic, and the full rights of citizenship, including voting participation, were held only by white men. After slavery was outlawed, all males of color were included in the full rights of citizenship in 1870 by the 15th amendment to the Constitution, but women were excluded until the 19th amendment was enacted in 1920.


Feminists in the late 20th century disdained the whole prior discussion of citizenship to be invalid, as it historically excluded anything that did not flow from the public sphere, and ignored the private sphere of the family to which women had historically been relegated. Laws that had been enacted affected the private sphere and the lives that women lived; artificial boundaries about what was an appropriate subject for political discourse were challenged; or as Carol Hanisch put it, The Personal is Political.


The concept of citizenship has continued to evolve in the latter 20th century and beyond as the concepts of diversity and multiculturalism have challenged existing wisdom about one standard of rights for everyone.


Fortunately, at this time all citizens of the United States who are over the age of 18 are entitled to participate in the political system by voting.


I hope, Gentle Reader, for all of our sakes, that all who can vote do so.

A Mind Walks Into A Bar...

Are the mind and the body the same thing?

Over the weekend, I was talking to someone about the concept of moderation. In the course of the discussion, my conversational partner declared that the body and mind are not separate entities. This led me to think about mind-body dualism.

Since I attended a Jesuit college in my youth and was forced to take a number of philosophy courses, I have had some exposure to this topic, and the phrase "Cartesian dualism" wandered into my consciousness (where it was immediately jumped by several other superficial, thuggish thoughts because of its nerdy nature, and relieved of its lunch money). This thought persisted, however, and to make it happy after its mugging, I decided to give it some attention.

This is a heavy subject for a four or five hundred word essay, so I will not attempt to present the entire history of philosophical thought concerning the mind's relation to the body. I will, however, share some of my research, and no doubt revisit this topic again, since it is so fascinating, and much research is being done in this area.

The concept that the mind and body are separate entities can be traced back (in a sense) to Plato, and his idea of Forms being separate from substances (that is, the idea or Form of a body being separate from the actual physical body or substance, which is perishable, especially if it is over 50). The intellect is a Form, and therefore has no substance.

Aristotle posited that forms are the nature and property of things, not separate entities, and that the soul is the form of the body. The intellect, although part of the soul, is intangible, however, and does not correspond directly to the mind, because having a physical component would limit the intellect.

Philosophers are still trying to figure out what, exactly, Aristotle was saying.

It was Rene Descartes who really put mind-body dualism on the map, so to speak, with his famous dictum "I think, therefore I am" which gave rise to many silly joke variations told by snotty pseudo-intellectuals (i.e., 'Descartes walked into a bar; when asked if he wanted a drink, he said "I think not" and vanished.' Rimshot.)

Descartes' Meditations put forth the concept that there are two kinds of substance: matter, and mind. This idea is called substance dualism. The body is matter, is a machine, and the mind is pushing the buttons that work the machine. The area of the body wherein they were joined was the pineal gland, which Descartes called "the seat of the soul." Really.

This idea of Cartesian duality was seized upon by other contemporary French philosophers such as Nicolas Malebranche, who was so excited by reading Descartes that he had to go lie down.

Of course, even though Descartes had his disciples, as soon as he came up with his idea, you know that lots of the other philosophers jumped on his concept of dualism and hastened to explain how incorrect it was (i.e., beat it up for its lunch money). Thus, we have predicate dualism, property dualism, interactionism, epiphenomenonism (different from epipenism, the need to constantly have one's allergy medication handy), paralellism, and many other interesting and informative isms that I will go into at another time.

I have at this point exhausted myself. Being a person of limited physical energy, and believing as I do in the mind-body connection, my mental exertions have caused me physical enervation.

I think, therefore I must go lie down.

Meditations on a Championship, Part Deux

composite photo courtesy of Stacey Keenan/Scott Smith/some other person

October 31, 2008


Further thoughts on the Phillies championship...


Is the curse of Billy Penn broken? I am speaking of the trope wherein there have been no championship titles in Philadelphia since the informal but influential building height restriction (no buildings taller than the hat on Billy Penn's statue) was broken twenty-one years ago.


Or, is it just that the newest tall building in the city has a tiny Billy Penn statue at the top, placed there by superstitious workers from Ironworkers Local 401, who were trying to appease his ghost?


And, what kind of benevolent Quaker historical figure is Billy Penn, anyway, that he would curse his beloved city in that fashion? Yesterday I said that Quakers were not showy kind of people, that they were all about community, and inner light, and so forth. They were called the Plain People, for God's sake (granted that Penn was apparently a snazzier dresser than your average Quaker.)


Still, we native Philadelphians are very quick to believe that Billy Penn, our Founding Father, was not content just to have a gigantic statue of himself above City Hall, but also had to lord it over the city by being the tallest thing in it for all eternity.


That in a fit of ghostly pique more fitting for someone like, say, Louis XIV or Napoleon Bonaparte, he prevented the four major league Philadelphia sports teams from winning a championship for over twenty years because of our architectural hubris. Presumably, he made Donovan McNabb sick in Super Bowl XXXIX, he caused Mitch Williams to throw that pitch to Joe Carter in 1993, he caused the 76ers to come up short (literally, in the case of Allan Iverson) in 2001.


Pretty petty stuff for a guy with a whole state named after him.


You would think that having his picture on a gazillion oatmeal boxes would be enough.

But, I digress.

Perhaps the tiny statue glued to the top of the new Comcast Center really did do the trick to placate ol' Bill.

Or, perhaps, he finally just decided not to torture Philadelphia any more. Maybe he thought that Phillies fans, dedicated to the last drop of blood, deserved a victory after all.

Perhaps he looked to the northeast from his perch up there at Broad and Market, and saw a fan so dedicated, so faithful, that he lifted the curse.

We will never really know.

But just look at the happiness on the face of the Phillies fan in the picture at the top of my post.

It is enough to move a statue.