Sometimes I Text My Mom from the Train

Me: Were you afraid of Russia in the 80s?

Mom: No

Me: Why not? 

Mom: I was too busy beating you children

Aaaaaaaaaand I snorted out loud on the train and freaked out the lady next to me.  THANKS MOM.  The hits continue...

Me: I'm reading Rachel Maddow's book "Drift: the Unmooring of the American Military" and the first couple chapters are about Reagan's development of a"RUSSIANS ARE SCARY" motif 

Me: Obviously since I was busy being beaten/an infant at the time it's hard for me to know how effective/pervasive it was

Mom: I honestly do not remember being afraid of the Russians. I was more mortified that a B actor was president of my country

Mom: I had no idea what madness lay ahead...

Mom: W!!!!!!!!

The Closest I've Come to Being in a Cult Was Taking a Shower in New Jersey

When I was little, I had to constantly be reading.  When I was eating my breakfast, I was reading the cereal box.  And the milk.  Later, I'd start reading the paper, or a book, or a magazine.  When I was in the shower, I'd read shampoo bottles.  This took an interesting turn when I visited my aunt and uncle's house in New Jersey, because they used Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, which has a label like this:

Click to enlarge

I took really long showers when I was in New Jersey.

For those who don't have 20 minutes to read this, let me say this: the passage "For one God's Spaceship Earth, with Bomb and Gun we're all-One or none!  All-One!  All-One!  All-One!  Exceptions eternally?  Absolute none!" happens, and it's not even the most frantic thing on there.  Dr. Bronner was an interesting guy, and the company is still run by his family following his death in 1997.  The soap, incidentally, is really good.  It rinses cleanly and it doesn't dry out your skin.  Plus, it's a culty-fun adventure for the whole family!

I grew up with this soap, and as I got older, I realized that Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap was the kind of thing hippie-type folks were prone to having on hand, which makes sense given my context for it.  I recently read about coconut oil being great for your skin (and a million other things; Jenna Marbles sums it up nicely), and wanted to try it - regular readers of this blog may remember that I usually clean my face with olive oil - and someone suggested that Dr. Bronner's was the best place to get coconut oil.  I was disappointed to discover that there is no pseudo-religious babble on the coconut oil container, though it does say "Dr' Bronner's MAGIC 'ALL-ONE'," which I suppose is pretty good.  It IS fair trade and organic, which in reality is probably better than having a bunch of rambling on the label, so it has that going for it.  However, I'm sitting here, having used some Dr. Bronner's coconut oil on my face and some of it in my morning smoothie, about to take my multivitamin and "Women's Treasure" herbal supplement with my nettle infusion as recommended by my herbalist (the fantastic Melanie St. Ours), and I'm kind of realizing that hippie is genetic and there's just no escaping it.  And you know what, I'm cool with that, because since taking my herbs my hair and nails have been super strong and luxurious and my whole life is more balanced, and right now guys my face is as smooth as the most angelic little cherub's butt.  I embrace the hippiedoodlery.

Note on the coconut oil: barring any weird skin freakouts, I will be switching over to coconut oil for everything.  I find that the olive oil still removes makeup a little better.  However, there was always the "smelling vaguely like a salad" aspect of using olive oil, and now I can instead smell like a coconut, which is preferable by far.  Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I bet you could add in some other essential oil to make a scent you might prefer, as long as you chose something that wouldn't irritate your skin.  The main challenge would be blending it properly; the coconut oil is a solid at regular room temperature, so I guess you could warm the oil in a pot of water (i.e. put the open jar in a pan of water), mix the additional oil in, then let it set up again.  I'm going to try it!  I will report back soon.

This Above All: To Thine Own Self Be True

POLONIUS

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

                          Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3

My friend Kym and I seem to be creating quite a little echo chamber of sentiment this week.  She incorporated my recent post on the Tragically Hip into her thinking about her life and where it would and should take her.  She  is in the process of thinking more about who she is and who she wants to be, and this, I think, is when you really know you're going to be okay: when you're able to look at the good and bad of your life and face it all with an understanding of who your past makes you and just how much freedom you have to choose who you will be.  I loved how Kym understood my babbling about nostalgia, and the way she was able to use it as a lens through which to consider herself.  It can be hard to figure out how to balance a longing for former glories with the need to direct your life forward.

Kym's considerations of her life and future reminded me of something my Mom did for me.  When I was young, I was really freaked out by going to the bathroom at my elementary school, and this meant that I would often come home having walked a mile while desperately having to go to the bathroom.  Mom had a talk with me about listening to my body (presumably while thinking "this is just great, my child is going to make her bladder actually explode. Why did I have children, again?"), and the next day I opened my lunchbox and found a note that read "This above all: to thine own self be true" and this:

That's a little cat from a Red Rose Tea box.  Red Rose has been including these little things - called whimsies, adorably - in their tea for decades, and we used to have a lot of them.  I've kept this little cat since then, and it's probably the possession I've held onto the longest; I've had it since I was 6 or 7.  It reminds me of several things, first, of course, being of how amazingly lucky I am to have a mom who not only thought it was appropriate to counsel her elementary school daughter via Hamlet, but also knew she was correct to do so, since my reading level was such that I could figure out that older diction and not get thrown by "thine."  It also reminds me that listening to myself is what will keep me on the right path, and that it takes continual reflection.

I bring this little cat with me whenever I'm feeling nervous or trying something new.  It was with me at my high school and college graduations, with me at American University and Assumption College.  It was with me at orientation when I started my Ph.D at Boston University.  It was with me when I debated the Cambridge Union Society and when I sang the National Anthem for the first time at the DCU Center.  It was with me when I went to Obama's Inauguration and when I was inducted into Phi Sigma Tau, the Philosophy honor society.  I was with me at my book release parties, at opera recitals, and next to my computer when I sent articles off to journals and conferences.  It will be with me at many other key intersections of my life, because it will never stop being the most useful reminder I have.

This above all: to thine own self be true.

Measurement

We had some startling and problematic snow up here right before Halloween.  Huge power outages, chaos everywhere, the whole nine yards...the heavy snow on the still be-leaved trees wreaked absolute havoc and pulled branches down all over the place.  The power was out at my house when I came home from the hockey, and stayed off for much of the next day.  I went over to my parents' house, which is apparently some kind of impenetrable fortress and/or has Doc Ock's fusion reactor in the basement.  When I pulled up, I saw this:

That is the damaged remains of the dogwood tree my parents planted when we first moved to Worcester when I was just six months old.  I had to sit in my car for a while just to compose myself, and I was struck by how powerful my response to this scene was.  I thought of all the times Mom and Dad had sent us out to shake the tree in the fall and how many neighborhood bikes had been dumped under it and how many swerve moves I'd run around it on my way to wherever...it's funny how things you don't always think would be so important really are.

Goodbye, tree.

Friday Round Up!: Why No One Except Grandma Can Have Nice Things

I missed last Friday's roundup because I was busy contemplating whether or not I should just drink myself into oblivion to cope with the debt ceiling fallout.  Luckily, I've decided against it, so here's this week's hit parade!

• Steampunk Fashion on Display at HCC (ABC13, Texas) First on the list is my grandmother's upcoming exhibit in Houston, TX, because Grandma is awesome and so is this exhibit.  She is a fashion historian and recently gifted her historical collection (which, by the way, is about 5,000 pieces strong) to her American Costume Society compatriot Kay King at Houston Community College.  Some of the pieces were used to put together a fabulous steampunk exhibit, and my Dad, Grandma and I will be headed down to Texas at the end of September for Elizabeth Brown Day and the exhibit's opening!  Here's the news clip from the local ABC affiliate:
• What's Happening With the London Riots? (Mother Jones)  Mother Jones routinely posts these rolling update articles about major events, and I find them immensely helpful.  As far as the riots, I encourage everyone not to dismiss the rioters outright.  Of course there are some people who just want to watch the world burn, but this is not that simple.  I point you to this quote from a young man who NBC was asking if rioting really achieved anything: "Yes.  You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?  Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."  These are people fighting for a voice.  
• States Can Now Opt-Out of No Child Left Behind Provisions (Amy Bingham, ABC)  No Child Left Behind is the single most damaging thing to happen to American education in its history, full stop.  The decision to let states opt-out of its ridiculous and useless provisions is a huge step in the right direction, and I'm proud of both Secretary Duncan and the Obama Administration for taking it.  I hope that it is fully dismantled in the next few years.  (For some smackdown on NCLB's shitty test-based standards, you can read this report from the National Academies.)
• How the US Media Marginalizes Dissent (Ted Rall, Al-Jazeera)  I recently submitted a paper for publication - cross those fingers, everyone! - about the way media frame debates compared to public opinion polling.  I found that overwhelmingly, the media preferred to polarize complex issues, establishing two fairly extreme poles as the dominant views and completely dropping the grey area out of the debate.  I suspect few people will be surprised to hear that most of public opinion is, in fact, in the grey area.  This article takes a similar approach, examining the language used to marginalize voices that don't fit the media's established framework, particularly with references to people as being "serious" or not.  [NB: I have been so impressed by Al-Jazeera as a whole lately.  I'm not sure if their quality has gone up or I'm just bumping into their articles more frequently, but I think they're putting out excellent, excellent work.]
• Canada Has Lessons, No Answers, for US Debt Woes (Randall Palmer and John McCrank, Reuters CA)  Americans often think that we are or must be wholly unique.  This was particularly visible in the healthcare debate, where other nations' systems were critiqued and held up as examples of why "universal healthcare, full stop" would not work, but not examined as systems that we could either pillage for parts or learn from to build a better system.  Instead, the discourse went something like "we must create a system wholly new or nothing."  Our politics have suffered from this mindset, because it disconnects us from historical context that provides balance and depth for our political system as a whole.  This article talks about Canada's own happy fun time with debt problems and explains a bit about how they recovered, though it rightly admits that exactly replicating Canada's approach would not be a perfect fit. 
• Megyn Kelly Destroys Guy Who Called Her Maternity Leave a Racket (Maureen O'Connor, Gawker)  I can't usually stand Megyn Kelly, but this clip is absolutely glorious.  She is dead on, the guy looks openly embarassed - as he should - and he has zero response.  I hope Kelly remembers this interaction the next time she's railing about entitlements (as Jon Stewart pointed out the other night).  
• Us. And Them. (Chris Carroll, National Geographic)  An interesting article on the progress of humanoid and "helper" robots, and the ethical challenges posed by their development.  I know I'm That Girl Who Always Talks About Robots, but this is a serious thing - military funding is pushing a lot of robotics development while shelving ethical considerations, and with the push for AI, there's a very real danger that technology may progress beyond where we CAN place ethical frameworks on robots.  This needs to be talked about.
• Falcon HTV-2 is Lost During Bid to Become Fastest Ever Plane (Ian Sample, The Guardian)  Speaking of DARPA funded projects, the Falcon HTV-2, a rocket launched unmanned aircraft capable of travelling at Mach 20 and crossing the continental United States in 12 minutes, was lost during a test flight.  This makes me sad even though I know it's a weapon of war, because I've been clinging to wild aviation projects like this following the death of the shuttle program.  
• Rare Sand Cat Kitten Gives Hope for Conservation (Zooborns)  WARNING: WEAPONIZED CUTENESS AT LINK.  A sand cat kitten was recently born at Zoological Center Tel Aviv - Ramat Gan, and is currently wiping the floor with all other comers in the Adorable Baby Animal Olympics (Cat Division).  This is a big, exciting deal, as sand cats are endangered and have great difficulty breeding in captivity.  
• Every Picture Tells a Story (Janice Harvey, Worcester Magazine)  A couple weeks ago, Janice Harvey wrote a column about how totes grody laydees with tattoos are.  Not surprisingly, people did not like this, and proceeded to call her an asshole loudly, publicly and aggressively.  She published an apology the other day, and while I appreciate the guts it takes to apologize publicly, I think this apology is kind of a template for how NOT to do it.  It basically amounts to "you just didn't get it" (if you click through to the original, you'll see why her trying to play it off as humor is either incredibly disingenuous or demonstrative of a fundamental lack of understanding about how humor works) followed by "you guys were mean just like I said you were, you trashy bitches."  I give her points for trying to change her attitude, but she has a long way to go in understanding that there is no single type of woman (or man) who gets a tattoo.  (That it was shitty to use a public forum to trash a specific demographic still seems to elude her, so...whatever.)  Janice, maybe this will help: I've owned my own businesses, I'm a Ph.D candidate in a very conservative field, I'm married, I wear makeup and heels, and I have tattoos.  Keep your shit in your own basket.
• Teaching With Twitter (Kohenari)  This is a very cool project wherein a professor at the University of Nebraska is teaching his political theory course with Twitter, and invites outside folks to join in.  I'll be doing this course and I hope you will too! 

This week's music comes from the Great White North Courtesy of Chief Economic Adviser Len Badwin, who unfortunately linked me this video when he was upset about missing a music festival at which the Tea Party would be playing.  While it's sad he missed the festival, I'm glad he linked me the video because I quite like it. As with so much Canadian music, good luck finding it on iTunes.

What the HELL, iTunes.

Navigational Difficulties

Once upon a time I got lost in Pennsylvania.

If you've driven though Pennsylvania, you may know that large swathes of it kind of all look the same.  It's beautiful, all rolling hills and nice greenways and the exact same gas station in all 46,055 square miles, why, WHY I ask you is it like that, but if you are not sure where you are, it can be a little disconcerting.  I got lost pre-GPS (in my life anyway) and didn't have a Pennsylvania map.  You would think that my Quakerness would come with some kind of inborn Pennsylvania-specific GPS system, but this is not in fact the case.  I threw a Hail Mary pass and called my Dad.  This is how it went.

Me: Dad, I'm lost in Pennsylvania and I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Dad: Okay, what was the last road you were on?

Me: 84.  No.  81.  Maybe.  Or 78.

Dad: What did the last exit you saw look like?

Me: [describes median and shape of exit.]

Dad: What are you looking at now?

Me: The Pennsylvanian variety of gas station.  It's kind of blue.

Dad: Oh, okay.  Here's what you do.

And then he gave me directions from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, including exit numbers.  There may be slight paraphrasing in here, but the bottom line is that I described my surroundings to him and he managed to give me exit-by-exit directions home.  He used to drive trucks, so he's been all over the place, and appears to have spent much of his time on the road memorizing America's highway infrastructure.  This is both awesome and useful.

I've inherited a lot of Dad's traits, but the navigational skillz are not on the list.  I rarely know what street I'm on, and this includes streets in Worcester, where I've spent the vast majority of my driving life.  If you ask me to give you directions, I will force you to navigate by trees and sculptures.  This is totally confusing to Dad.  Now, he is a strong believer in forcing you to work your own shit out.  At one point in high school when he was trying to force me to work out navigation at the kitchen table before I went somewhere, I snapped, grabbed a piece of paper, and sketched something like this:

No, it's not some kind of black magic diagram.

This was my explanation of how I understand American public planning.  What this indicates is that there is one path from my house to various locations I frequent, the paths never cross, and I don't know what I'm passing through on my way.  This does add a certain excitement factor to driving, because I occasionally pass one of my known landmarks on my way to another known landmark and get all excited about this newfound knowledge.  Over time, I've gotten better at navigation, but I still rely on a GPS if one's available, because occasionally my brain snaps back into "AND THERE IS NO OTHER PATH" mode and I immediately get lost.

The genetics, they are strong...but they can't save me.

Bli Sterk, Norge.

I've started trying to write about Norway many times this week, and every time I get stuck.  I'm a political scientist, so I want to say something comprehensive and true about the political factors that were in play during this violence, but that's not what I, the person who is incidentally a political scientist, want to say, and it's not what actually drives me to write about it.  There is no dearth of writing about Norway, and I could probably just leave it alone and no one would notice.  But I can't leave it alone because it won't leave me alone.  So I thought about this and I think I know how to write about it.

My Mom spent a year in Norway after her graduation from Middlebury, making friends and taking classes and learning Norwegian.  When we were kids, she used to swear in Norwegian so even if we DID repeat what she said, people probably wouldn't know.  Crafty lady, my Mom.  Unfortunately, we eventually got older and increased our powers of persuasion, and we used them to make her tell us what she was saying.  This wasn't as satisfying as one would hope, as is so often the case with swearing in other languages; you're expecting a one-to-one translation but it often turns out that someone's getting called a moldy foot or something.  The standby for road rage was pretty good, though.  It went fy faen i helvete, du er en drittsekk, which is "the devil in hell, you're a shitsack."  We adopted "drittsekk" as a kind of family shibboleth, because we're really classy like that.  This led to a really great family moment several years later when we were visiting Norwegian friends in South Carolina and overheard a tantrum-throwing six year old call her mother a drittsekk, to our immense collective amusement.

Many of Mom's friends came to visit us over the years, and we still exchange Christmas presents with many of them.  One visit was from her host parents, and Reidar, who was a beautiful painter, went down to Little Indian Lake to paint and somehow, despite speaking no English, managed to charm the faces off some kids fishing down there.  They sent him home with a still-flopping and fairly large fish in a plastic bag (?????).  He came rolling up the front walk with this fish in a bag yelling "fiske, fiske, fiske" and we put it in the clawfoot bathtub and fed it fish food flakes for three days before sanity was mustered and we took it back to the lake.  (In retrospect, he probably expected that we would kill and eat it, as you do when you get an edibly-sized fish.  He did not realize he was dealing with suburbanites.)  All of these visits were equally great, because Norwegians are generally wonderful, and Mom seems to have befriended the absolute best of Norway, which is not surprising if you have ever met my Mom.  The longest visit, though, was from Cecilie, my parents' exchange student.

Mom and Cecile at my wedding in 2009

Cecilie arrived in Worcester in 2006, and she is awesome.  Longtime readers of this blog may recognize her as "the Weege," who came on a cruise with my college roommate and I in an incredible lapse of good judgment on my mother's part.  ("Take the underage Norwegian entrusted to my care on a cruise under the supervision of two drunks?  Absolutely!"  IT WAS FINE, DON'T WORRY, MOM.)   [NB: longtime readers will also be glad to know that Cecilie, her family and her friends are all okay.]  Cecilie and I really hit it off, and we had a total blast going on adventures and talking and hanging out.  She was also a constant source of unintentional humor.  For example, she once came home from school having removed large chunks of skin from her legs by falling off her bike.  I know that doesn't sound very funny.  Here's why it is: she fell off her bike because she was eating yogurt while riding.  With a spoon.  She and I have kept in touch and she came back to stand up for me at my wedding.  This allowed us to relive another humorous incident.  Cecilie was going to prom and wasn't interested in, you know, Googling dress size equivalents, so she just kind of ordered a dress in a size that sounded good.  I'm still not sure how she breathed at prom, because it took Mom and I both to wrassle her into it.  Who does that?  The best part is, J. Crew, whence my bridesmaid dresses came, doesn't ship to Norway, so she had to ship her dress to my parents' house and see if it fit a couple days before the wedding.  Kind of time sensitive, so obviously, she did the pick-a-size-any-size routine again.  I don't know, you guys.  It worked out okay both times though, so maybe I shouldn't mock.

In any case, we talked a lot about politics and culture, because there was a lot of stuff that Cecilie ran into that made her wonder what the hell was in the water over here, as well as a lot of stuff that she was simply curious about.  It's thinking about these conversations that make me feel so sad for Norway in the wake of this massacre.  Talking with Cecilie showed me that Norwegian culture simply does not include violence and guns in the same way that American culture does.  This is not to say that there's no crime in Norway and everyone has a faintly glowing halo floating above their heads at all times.  Instead, it means that you would not buy a gun for "home defense" because first of all a human life is more sacred than physical property and secondly, why would you stand and deliver when you could escape, stay safe, and call the cops?  Resorting to violence is simply not a thing, and in many cases, not an option, because there are so few guns.  I offered to take Cecilie up shooting with friends while she was here, and she was amazed that average people would just HAVE guns to take to the range to shoot around.  She didn't totally get what I meant when I said we could go shooting because her prevailing understanding of guns did not include random people having them.

It's hard for Americans to imagine a culture so bereft of guns and so adverse to violence.  Even if we don't own guns and even if we don't like guns, we are still bombarded at all times with violent imagery from every kind of media.  Guns and violence are glorified and held up as solutions to problems, and even when they're not being glorified, they are often treated as a common fact of life.  That is simply not there in Norway.  Now, imagine that you are in this culture, and let's even assume that you're pretty cosmopolitan and you know about gun culture in the US and you kind of get it even if you think the American gun fixation is weird.  It's still something that's Over There.  Imagine this, and then imagine Anders Behring Breivik.

Breivik's actions were shocking even for we jaded Americans.  The idea that someone would gather children around and open fire on them, that someone would fire on children swimming away in a desperate bid for the mainland, that someone would bomb government buildings...these are shocking ideas.  These are shocking ideas even to people who remember Timothy McVeigh.  These are shocking ideas to people who remember September 11th.  They are the acts of a dangerous and evil man.  But even as we are shocked, Americans should remember that this is a thousand times worse for Norway, not only because the death toll was proportionately worse than September 11th and because it happened on Norwegian soil, but because these attacks represent a leap in conception of violence so much greater than it would be for us.  We shouldn't count our high tolerance for violence as a positive, but we can understand how it would be some insulation against at least a small part of the trauma.

I read an article today that included some texts from one of the young women stuck on Utøya who survived.  She texted her mother "I love you even if I still misbehave from time to time." Her mother told her to "give a sign of life every five minutes."  For me, all of Norway is in those two sentences.  That Julie, a 16 year old, would think to mention that she still misbehaves from time to time while hiding from a gunman, seems to express such a fully realized love that my heart breaks as I think about it.  Her mother's asking for a sign of life every five minutes - five minutes!  How could you have the strength to ask your child for something so reasonable, instead of begging for continual interaction?  I could write another 10,000 words and never hit on what it is about these phrases that is so Norwegian.  They are so real, and so practical, even in the most chaotic possible circumstances.  It is my hope that that same resolute attachment to truth, strength and the Norwegian way will carry Norway through this terrible time and emerge stronger than ever.

Bli sterk, Norge.

Moving Train, I Get a Dollar!

My Dad really likes trains, so over the years it has become our family business to spot trains at every opportunity.  In fact, we have a reward system whereby the moving train spotter gets a dollar.  The program is mostly obsolete at this point, and I'm pretty sure that it started out as a quarter, but either way, it's how we get down.  I was waiting for the commuter rail at Union Station in Worcester last Thursday when I saw two CSX engines and a Union Pacific boxcar trundling up the way.  I got out my Blackberry and took a video to send to Dad. 



The engines pulled up on the second track from the platform, and some poor soul waded through the snow to tinker with a connection at the back of the boxcar, and then the mini-train backed up a little, went forward, then backed up all the way back whence it came.

It was a nice little dad/kid bonding experience.  I went on to classes and to ride several more trains - commuter rail, red line, green line - without incident.  A few days later, I got an envelope in the mail from Dad.  Christmas thank you notes had already been exchanged, so I figured it was an article he'd found or something.  I opened the envelope and found this:

 I assume this came from his favorite store in Florida, Nifty NicNacs, which specializes in retro doodads.  Here's what was inside:

My dad is adorable. I was on the phone with Mom and I asked if she knew he'd done this, and she goes "uh, YEAH, I reminded him to do it!"  You almost can't look at the cuteness for fear of going blind.  It's like looking at the sun.

Useful Products and/or Poison

My family has a habit of taking up residence in places that are very beneficial for me, which I'm sure is their number one objective. I'd like to take a moment to thank my sister for living in the North End, allowing me to live with her during school nights, and my parents for buying a place in Florida and allowing me to come down and invade their personal space on Spring Break. I have spent the past couple breaks with my parents in Florida, and these visits have conveniently overlapped with my birthday, which is great because a lot more of my social life than I'm comfortable admitting revolves around my parents and I get sad when they go away for long periods. Last year, my grandmother, who also has a winter house in the area, couldn't decide what to get me for my birthday, so she took me to this cute little import shop in Venice, FL called Parichat House and told me to pick something out. I chose a gorgeous hammered silver necklace, and Parichat (of the House), polished it up for me before sending us on our merry way. She used this weird powdery stuff to clean it, and it worked so well that both Mormor and I were fascinated. We bought a box of it to try out.

I used it yesterday to clean the necklace that Rich got me for our six month anniversary (aww), which I LOVE and which is a total bitch to clean, because it has this lovely floral stamp with very fine lines and detailing. I scrubbed a little of the powder onto a toothbrush and worked it right into the pendant, and it worked amazingly well. Of course, the problem is that I'm not sure how to find this stuff online, so you might just need to go to Parichat House. I will probably stop by there when I go for a visit in March, so I'll ask Parichat what the scoop is. Of course, part of why it's blocking my Google-fu is because I can't read Chinese, and the writing on the box is all in Chinese. Unfortunately, that means I also can't tell if it's deadly, deadly poison. For all I know, I'm polishing my jewelry with arsenic. But would they put arsenic in such a pretty box?

Probably not poison.

Why don't we package stuff like that? The other silver polish I use - the purple gunk Wright's makes - is just blue and white plastic and all it does is like, tell you what it does. LAME. In any case, I'm going to throw up the props here and try to find out where to find it, because I highly, highly recommend this to any jewelry wearers.

No Seriously, What Are They Up To?

I present, in its entirety and without comment, an email I got from the Floridian Outpost.

From: Dad
Date: Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 5:39 PM
Subject: My new business!
To: Josie Brown

Ken

Sent from my iPhone


PS - Okay, one comment...it's really the "sent from my iPhone" that does it, isn't it?

Sometimes I Wonder What Mom and Dad Get up to Down There in Florida

Dad: Can't wait for 8:00
Me: Why? What's at 8?
Dad: Sara Palin's Alaska!!!
Me: Dad DO NOT WATCH THAT TRIPE
Dad: ...where Sarah cuts down trees and operates heavy equipment in the bush!!!
Dad: I only have a few minutes until I tune in!
Me: How many drinks HAVE you had?
Dad: You'll be watching won't you?
Me: Shit no. lol
Dad: What?!?!
{conversation about coffee}
Dad: Got to go. You know why.
Me: You are not seriously watching that are you?
Dad: You should tune in so you know what the 'other side' is watching.
Me: Dad, NO ONE is watching that.
Dad: You should watch too.
Me: It just got canned because even Tea Partiers don't give a shit.
Dad: So you know first hand what she's saying/doing.
Me: Le sigh. I'll rely on you. We're watching football.

Guerlain Owns My Soul

You probably know Guerlain because they sold a bottle of Shalimar perfume to every woman on the face of the planet at one point, and you vaguely remember some female relative or friend wearing it. My designated relative was my Aunt Cheryl, who is the epitome of glamour and probably to blame for some of my susceptibility to fabulous packaging when it comes to cosmetics. Here's the bottle you probably saw.

You just smelled the woman who wore this, didn't you?

Luckily, only the suspicion that anything my Aunt the glamourpuss would wear cost $1M Adult Dollars kept me from haranguing my parents for a bottle of this stuff. I was dealing in Teenager Dollars Earned at the Greendale Mall Popcorn Stand at the time, so I was in that weird phase where $20 still seems like a fair amount, but you also kind of get that it's not, unlike early childhood when you're like "I have $6, which means I can buy the whole ice cream truck. I am the richest person alive." You know, the more I think about this, the more it might have been better for all involved if I had worn down my parents and gotten a bottle of Shalimar, since I went through first a Love's Baby Soft phase and then a CKOne phase, the latter of which was less a "spritz, spritz, go" process than a bathing experience. I eventually moved on to Dior's J'Adore, which was less offensive generally but I still used in a volume one might consider more appropriate for stunning cattle. Sanity wasn't truly mustered until I moved to DC and discovered Sephora and Demeter perfumes, which are very subtle fragrances that smell like everything from "Wet Garden" to "Gin and Tonic." Now I have several perfumes I use - Lolita Lempicka's Fleur de Corail, Marc Jacobs Daisy, Miss Dior Cherie, Aquolina's Pink Sugar, Demeter's Salt Air, Michael Kors' Very Hollywood - which I like but Rich hates because (cuteness alert, danger) he "likes when I wear the same one because then when I'm not there my comforter smells like me." (Awesome husband for the win!)

So okay ANYWAY the actual point of this was not to give you a detailed history of my perfume wearing history - though I bet a post about vetting perfumes would be interesting...hmm - but rather to explain that the hold Guerlain's Shalimar had on me as a young woman has now transferred easily to their totally spectacular eyeliners that I am addicted to partly because they are amazing cosmetics and partly because they look like I robbed Greta Garbo's vanity. The first one I got was their Terracotta Loose Kohl Powder in brown.
This stuff is magical. Admittedly, I can see how it might make some hesitant, because it gets applied right on the waterline of your lower eyelid with the little stick - you just tap it on - but it's so worth getting over that hump, because it gives you the perfect smoky line for day or night. The brown is just the right color for the day/night switch, though the black would probably be nice if you were getting ready to go out for the night. But seriously...do you even care how good the makeup is? Look at that goddamn packaging! You own this and you're instantly a makeup professional, even if you can't put on foundation with two hands and a mirror. It is instant glamour for your dresser. It just sits there saying "this woman wears satin gowns for every occasion and smokes from a jeweled cigarette holder but never ever gets cancer because there is too much glamour in her system for it to take hold."

I've been totally obsessed with this stuff since I got it about a year ago on a recommendation from Apocalypstick Now. I am a total pusher, too...people will be like "hey, I need eyeshadow, any ideas?" and I'll respond with something like "sure, get Eyeshadow X but what you REALLY need is Guerlain Terracotta Kohl Eyeliner because it is magical." Probably bad.

A couple days ago, my Mom called me and she was like "hey, I'm getting a Sephora card as a gift, does thee think that I should get something else to complete the gift?" I, being a genius (okay, mostly a pusher), said "you should get a nice eyeliner, since [REDACTED] is an eyeliner master, plus it's a nice small item." Since my Mom isn't a big makeup person, I offered to find a couple options for her to pick from. WELL.
Yeah, Guerlain has a new formulation of eyeliner, and once again, it is effing magnificent. Needless to say, I ordered a tube of this Khôl Kajal* liner for myself, because what do you do around Christmastime but buy yourself stuff**? Again, it's a beautiful smooth product that goes on well and stays put without irritating your eyes, and once again, who cares, because it looks like magic! This one actually reminds me of another Aunt, my Aunt Karen, who went to Egypt with me and my Dad and who cheerfully obsessed with me over how the gorgeous ladies in their abayas did their eye makeup (hardcore, perfect smoky eyes everywhere). Kohl seems the obvious answer, but these women clearly had their ninja certification in application and probably didn't need slick packages like this to produce their looks.

I am such a sucker for packaging, man. Luckily, these products are also excellent cosmetics, rather than just nice packages, because I have definitely bought snazzy looking packages that turned out to be cheap crap. You should all go out and buy yourself some***!

* NB: I went to Sephora's website to check the name of this product, and I noticed that my "previously viewed products" section looks like a shopping list for a drag queen rave. There are five kinds of glitter, fake eyelashes, and random lipsticks (purple) on there. I think maybe Sephora is something I should not have.

** I am kidding, but unfortunately this DOES seem to be A Thing. All of these ads about "getting a little something for yourself" creep and gross me out. Feel however you want about Christmas - too much Jesus, not enough Jesus, too commercial, pointless, whatever - but it is a gift GIVING holiday. Gift giving is not the same as buying crap for yourself. I don't think I should have to explain this.

*** That's right, even you men. Guyliner is a thing now, didn't you hear?

The Gift of Sisterhood and Sometimes Jewelry

My sister and I have fashion sensibilities that meander along separately and bump up against each other more or less at random. When we were in Italy, she admitted to swiping numerous items from my closet in high school, which just goes to show that the Sisters Stealing Each Others' Clothing trope even works when the bulk of your wardrobe is hockey related and/or colored jeans. (Note to fashion: the latter is why this whole 90s Fashion Revival is a terrible, terrible idea.) Sarah has always been much better at following trends and particularly at the successful application of belts (???) than I have, and I seem to be better at finding and applying classic pieces and dressing them up with non-belt accessories. In that light, it's interesting that this necklace, which I wear all the time, was a gift from my sister.
It's exactly the kind of piece I like - nice color, interesting detail, symmetry (ooooh I love symmetry), just big enough for a statement without being too aggressive. Sarah gave this to me for Christmas about eight years ago and I still wear it on a routine basis - if you follow the Makeup Is Easy posts, you've probably seen it a couple of times already.

Sarah worked with me over winter break, and the commute gave us a good amount of time to catch up. We talked a lot about our family, and how lots of our respective friends have commented on how much members of our family love one another. I sometimes get frustrated with my relationship with my siblings because we don't talk as often as I would like and neither of them ever answers their damn phones (to be fair, I don't always either), but whenever we're together I so enjoy my time with them, and it's like we do talk every day. I'm amazed all the time at what interesting, vibrant humans they are.

In a way, my occasional dissatisfaction with our levels of casual communication comes from a soft, quiet knowledge of how present they are in my life; so many of my stories center around them, and all of those stories - even the ones where one or the other plays the role of Bane of My Existence - resolve into a great enriching influence in my life, without which I would not be the person I am today or will be in the future. The above picture is just a necklace, but that my sister gave it to me years ago, at a much younger emotional age, and with a persistently divergent fashion sense from me, speaks to a larger phenomenon that exists between the two of us.

Sometimes the Understanding of "Garden Center" is a Little Foggy

Lots of gardening this Memorial Day weekend, beginning with the installation of the long awaited raised dahlia bed:
It's an 8'x5' bed made out of untreated wood (for better flower health), constructed by the crack construction team of Brown & Brown, Inc. Dad helped me go to Lowe's, where we got a bunch of wood and some nails, then we went out back and went to town using Pioneer Woman's advice on building a raised garden bed, which was very helpful (though I think Dad probably could have winged it). Some stakes remain to be screwed in, but that's a quickie job. The tough part was leveling everything and getting it situated. I still need to get some dirt for it, but I will have to run out tomorrow. Then we will have the planting!

Mom and I also went over to a nearby nursery to pick up some plants for my back garden. Now, I don't run a garden store or anything, but I'm just saying that MAYBE if I was going to open one I would hold off on the order for "the jive-talkin', stereotype-livin' Jim Crow crows from Dumbo in lawn ornament form," you know?
Then again, if you're already making room on your shelves for the "Water Worm" then I guess there isn't much reason to hold back:
Umm, that is a dildo. I understand that they're trying to say it's something that indicates when your garden needs watering, but...it's a dildo. I mean, an epic, somewhat terrifying dildo, but still. Moreover, it's one of those completely useless items that is a redundancy to something that comes standard on your body, because the best way to tell if you need to water your garden? Is to touch the soil. With your finger. [NB: Most humans come equipped with ten of these highly specialized tools.] You're supposed to put this thing on your soil, and if the terra cotta is dark, the soil is okay. If it's light, you need to water it. I am amazed I haven't seen a deranged infomercial for it.

On the other hand, we did get several nice plants and we saw both my accompanist and a hummingbird:

Garden Update: Dahlias...Alive, Planter Planted, Epic Weeding

So about three years ago I went to the nursery with Mom and Dad for Mothers' Day, which was notable not only as a demonstration of why our family can't really be trusted to behave in public (we downloaded the lightsaber app onto Dad's iPhone and promptly became completely unmanageable), but also as a total giant planter score. Big dramatic planter pots can be pretty pricey, and certainly more so than I'm willing to shell out when I have lots of excitingly plantable dirt surrounding my home. When Mom and I stopped for a bathroom break, we had to walk through the sale zone, and found a gigantic white clay planter with handles marked down from $65 to a practically-free $30. I was stoked and hauled it right out of there.

And then it sat on my driveway for three years.

In the spirit of the Getting Stuff I Like Doing Done Summer, I put it on my list of gardening things to accomplish. I got a $100 gift certificate for our wedding last summer, so I rounded up my Local Plant Advisor - Mom - and off we went to Southern Exposure in Rutland, MA (run by one of my neighbors, as chance would have it) to find some plants for my planter. I wanted at least one traily plant and one to give it some height, accented with some great color. Here's what we came up with:

From top spiky left: "Red Spikes" Cordyline, "Survivor" Geranium, "Margarita" Sweet Potato Vine, variegated golden sage Salvia, and Million Bells.

The Red Spikes will get nice height, and I just love the combo of foliage. I really like the Salvia because it looks like a lizard (....is that weird?). We came home and potted the whole thing right up, and it looks awesome. I can't wait for them to fluff out and really develop. We got a bunch of other plants too, and I'll have to write about them some more later because I want to take pictures of everything to go along with the descriptions. Mom is such a wealth of knowledge that I'd like to pass it along.

Oh, and also, there were chickens:
Maximum cute factor!

I went on a weeding binge, which was long overdue. The dandelions have been freaking epic this year...I assume they're colluding with the chipmunks, but I can't prove it. It seems like they're knee-high as soon as James the Lawn Guy pulls out of the driveway. (Side note: When James started mowing our lawn, he was in high school and using our mower to mow our lawn. Now he has a trailer and a ride on mower and the whole thing. It hasn't been that long. Why am I working a desk job again?) There is now a heap of murdered weeds on the driveway waiting to be carted back to the mulch zone...I'm going to let it stay there for a day or two as a warning to the rest of the dandelions.

The dahlias are mostly potted up and growing. My Memorial Day project is the installation of a raised garden bed in the back to house said dahlias, so they should be in the ground this weekend. Mom paints her dahlia stakes this great purple color and I'm thinking about painting mine as well - they just look so festive! The bed will be 8'x5' and it will be a great chance to provide the dahlias with nice loose, healthy soil from the get-go. Can't wait until they start blooming!

My Mother is My Biggest Fan

The Sharks are in the playoffs, and Suzanne at the front office got in touch to ask if I could sing the National Anthem for Game 1 of Round 1 against the Lowell Devils. I did, and it went really well, but unfortunately it was kind of the best part of the game since the Sharks rolled over and just failed all over the place. But they rebounded, won the series, hooray! On to Manchester. Game 2 comes around, I sing again...they lose again. At this point the problem makes it to one of the Sharks message boards:

Although Josie sings better then most people that do the anthem I don't think she should sing any more before the playoff games we are now 0-2 when she does. Just a thought lol

Oh dear. The man has a point. I figure I'll just wait until next season to sing, fine. Last night we were up in Manchester, and I texted my mom to tell her that I'd met up with some family friends who live in New Hampshire and attended the game. She responded:

Hope the Sharks do better tonight...fingers and toes crossed! Give the [Friends] my best xxx

I texted her back saying that every time the mom of the friend family came down, the Sharks scored, so I just needed to get her down to our seats one more time and we'd be good. She texted me back a minute later:

Just don't sing the national anthem!!

Thanks, Mom.

Next time any of you readers out there wonder how I've accomplished the things I have in my life, here's your answer: years of support from my family.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

For those of you not on Facebook and thus subjected to the innundation of my page in photos, Rich and I got married this Independence Day. It was a complete blast and a wonderful day!Huge thanks to everyone who made it out and made it such a stunning day. More to come later, but for now, please feel free to swing by the ole Facebook or check out our wedding blog for some information on the day.

Family Always Wins, Even When Things Are Great Already

Went in to work today, and it was hectic. We're moving around one section of the building and since I'm in facilities I get to be involved with all the organizing and shuffling. I love where I work, and even though it was chaotic, it was nice to be able to help the people I work with and be in the middle of everything. No one will be surprised to hear me say that a certain part of me loves a little bit of mayhem and thrives on it. Fun day, changed outfits in the bathroom like the classy babe I am and left a little early.

I went from work to a Jim McGovern fundraiser where Bill Clinton was speaking. I would actually stab someone to write for him. He has such wonderful wit and a fantastic ability to get intimate with his audience in a very short amount of time. I had a total blast.

Left the fundraiser to go to Michael's to watch game 7. Last year's Penguin loss in the final was heartbreaking; it's always tough to see grown men cry, but these guys didn't even seem like grown men. They'd wanted it so, so badly. Watching them win this year's Stanley Cup was supremely cathartic, and it was great to watch playoff hockey without the hair falling out of my hair in clumps from stressing. Well freaking done, boys, and congrats to Hershey as well. On our way out, we stopped to watch the Red Sox beat my Grandad's Phillies in extra innings with a couple of great plays.

I came home and there were a couple packages - it is wedding season indeed - one of which contained the garters that my Grandma wore at her wedding in 1944. Her mom, Pansy Blossom Logan Schmeck, made them for her for the occasion. Grandma included a note, which was 100% sweet and had some phenomenal passages, to wit:

Your Grand-dad and I were married July 29, 1944, in Sage Chapel, at Cornell University, up there in Ithaca, New York. He was a civilian teaching navy officers about engineering, and I was teaching in the College of Home Economics (now Human Ecology) in the Costume Shop, a wonderful place. I met him in January, and we were married in July. When he died, we had been married 62 years!!! It lasted.

With very much love, I now give you my wedding garters, made by your great grand-mother, Pansy Logan, from Kentucky.

"It lasted." I mean, really. Best day ever.

Out of Office Message

Sorry folks, I know I've been lacking in the update department, but it's because I'm here:

Caspersen Beach in Venice, FL

I'm tan for the first time in five years and having a blast relaxing and reading, so I'll be back on Sunday with more book reviews and more random blither.

Dogs

When I was little, I sucked my finger. Not my thumb, but my index finger. I apparently really enjoyed doing so, because we went through every possible kid-breaking technique to make it stop...the gross nail polish, band-aids, threats of violence. Finally, around the age of ten, I managed to kick the habit when my parents promised me I could have a dog. I actually really wanted a black cat for some reason, but since we already had two cats my parents convinced me that a black dog would be even better. So one day after school, the day after Bill Clinton was elected to his first term as President, we came home and there was what looked like a black sweatshirt under the kitchen table. It wound up being an adorable golden retriever mix, and I named her Hillary Clinton Brown.

Hillary was an awesome addition to the family, and she was always there...in pictures of every dance and every holiday at home. She would come and sit with me through my various teenage angst. She was horrible on the leash, frankly, but it was so much fun to take her over to the sports fields at Forest Grove and let her run around. She had eight puppies, and we kept the runt who was last to master going down the stairs to the back yard, named Emma. Hillary kept guard at the front door, mauling the mail as it came through the slot in the door and ultimately chewing a large chunk of door away before my parents wised up and got an external mailbox.
When we went to visit relatives in Hilton Head, Hillary went out on the boat with us, sitting with her little doggie lifejacket in the front of the boat. There were dolphins out there and we have a great video of her touching noses with the dolphins as they went back and forth under the boat.
Hillary got old, the way dogs do, and she got shaky and developed cataracts and weird lumps and white fur on her muzzle. She lived a great life out in the garden with my Mom and hanging out with my Dad, and she lived for sixteen years, long enough for Clinton to serve two terms, Bush to serve two terms, and Obama to be sworn in. She lived through my graduation from high school, going to college, coming back from college and finally going to a new college. She was there when I got engaged in our living room. She was there when my brother and sister went to college and London and Philadelphia. When she got too weak to get around, my Mom and Dad carried her up and down the stairs to sleep in their room so she wouldn't be lonely. When she couldn't be left alone, they started taking her in the plane with them to their house in Florida, where she could amble around outside where there wasn't any ice to trip her up. She was a good dog, when she finally passed away, it was in my parents' house, at home on Ash Wednesday, surrounded by people she loved. What more could anyone want?