Ice storm

November 24, 2010 | Holidays,Iowa,Weather

Brrrrr! This is what an ice storm in Iowa does. Good thing we’re all safe and warm at home and ready for the holiday tomorrow.

Books: Graceling

November 20, 2010 | Books

I read Graceling by Kristin Cashore for my book club. It’s a young-adult novel, and this was our “what your kids are reading” selection. I don’t normally do all that well with fantasy or science fiction, but I really enjoyed this. I’m even tempted to read the other two books in her trilogy.

Television: Sarah Palin’s Alaska

November 18, 2010 | Television

I have a confession to make. I watched Sarah Palin’s Alaska on Sunday night. I couldn’t help wondering, who’s footing the bill? TLC? Sarah Palin? Alaska tourism? Because, dang! It can’t be cheap to hire fishing guides to take you salmon fishing or rock-climbing guides to fly you to the “top of the world” (Denali National Park and Preserve).

In any case, it showcases the beauty of Alaska very well.

Something bothered me, though. There was a segment with Sarah at her home with her daughter, Willow, and Willow’s friend, Andy. They walked into the kitchen, and Sarah asked Andy if he was hungry. No, I just ate, he said. Then Sarah inexplicably said that maybe Willow should cook him something for lunch. (Hello? He said he just ate.) Andy put down Willow by saying he wasn’t sure he’d want to eat that.

Did Sarah get all mama grizzly on him and defend her daughter?

Nope.

She put down her daughter too. She said, yeah, you’re probably right.

Wow. She showed her own daughter absolutely no respect.

Respect? Pffft! I don’t need to respect my children!

Actually? Yeah, you do. So they know what being treated with love, dignity and respect feels like when they go out in the world and make friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, work colleagues, etc. Because if they’re raised with disdain and disrespect? That’s what they’ll know. And that’s what they’ll find.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s what happened next.

Willow went upstairs. Andy started to follow her. Sarah stepped in and told Andy he wasn’t allowed upstairs with Willow, that he’d have to wait for her downstairs. Sarah went back to work at her desk in the kitchen. Guess who snuck upstairs. Right under Sarah’s nose and for all the world to see.

That’s right. Andy showed Willow no respect, then he metaphorically thumbed his nose at her mother in her own house.

Some might say Sarah got what she deserved. Maybe. But Willow didn’t. A child deserves to be treated better than that.

Books: Game Change

November 16, 2010 | Books

I just finished reading Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. It’s part of TLC Book Tours November tour, and I received a review copy from the publisher, HarperCollins.

The book was written by two journalists to tell “the story behind the headlines” and give “an intimate portrait of the candidates and spouses” who vied in 2008 to occupy the White House.

I didn’t want to like this book.

I mean, c’mon. It’s gossipy and tawdry, and we’re supposed to close our eyes and believe in their “omniscient voice” (I’d go for “omnipresent,” but we could argue all day about big words) without one single, solitary note or reference. Really? On pages 265, 266 and 267, there’s an extensive conversation between Hillary Clinton and Mark Penn. It’s all in direct quotes, which is not possible unless someone recorded it. I suppose that’s possible. Did Clinton record all of her conversations and then share this one with the authors? (Do you know how much she loathes the media?) Did she allow Penn to record it and then share it? Umm, yeah. That gets a 10 on my BS-o-meter.

They made up words or checked the Urban Dictionary to sound cool: buckraking, ripshit, stovepiping (I’m betting they used the Wikipedia definition and not the Urban Dictionary one), big mo, hoovering, agita, grille, grassrootsy, mano a womano, politico-industrial complex, given the high hat, liked the cut of Palin’s jib, undercard.

They abused the thesaurus: omertà, Hobson’s choice, putative priapism, j’accuses, ab initio, Mobius strip, panjandrums, sturm und drang, parlous, Houdini juju, imprimatur, rictus, pulchritudinous, dysphoria, semiotician’s fantasia, primogeniture, apostasies, chimera, confrères, calumny, sword of Damocles, comity, savvy of a Metternich, logorrhea, hectoring, outré, chary, equipoise, claque. (If you have to look any of those up, the “sexy” ones? They’re all about Bill Clinton.)

And really? Going from ripshit to imprimatur in darn near the same breath was indicative of the often bipolar craziness of politicians and the campaign trail. So, I say — whether it was intentional or not — well done.

And, oh, could they turn a phrase and paint a picture with their words.

When explaining how narcissistic and out of control John Edwards was when he was desperately trying to make deals with Clinton and Obama: “Then again, Rielle Hunter was only eight months pregnant. So Edwards still had another month to strike a bargain.” (p. 204)

“McCain had gone from a campaign bleeding internally to spilling its entrails all over the carpet.” (p. 285)

“Instead of the Cadillac campaign that his advisers once had in mind, he was driving around in the political equivalent of a Ford Pinto — with a hamster wheel for an engine, and Rick Davis sprinting furiously on the thing to keep it spinning.” (p. 301)

“Making matters worse, the lengthy Democratic nomination fight meant that the Obama forces had operations in nearly every state, firing on all cylinders — whereas McCainworld was sputtering along forever on the verge of needing roadside assistance.” (p. 328)

“On September 10, McCain and Palin appeared together in Fairfax, Virginia, a few miles from the campaign’s headquarters. Fifteen thousand people swarmed into Van Dyke Park — little girls wearing ‘STRONG WOMEN VOTE MCCAIN-PALIN’ T-shirts, their mothers chanting, ‘Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!’ Later that afternoon, Palin would board a flight to Alaska for her interview with Gibson. At the moment, though, she stood there on stage, perched atop a pair of ruby-red heels, looking less like Eliza Doolitle than Dorothy: the girl swept up in the cyclone, lifted out of her black-and-white world and deposited in a Technicolor Oz. Obama and his people certainly felt as though a house had been dropped on their heads.” (p. 373)

Pulchritudinous, no?

I followed the presidential campaign closely. I watched the debates. I shared my concerns, of which I had so, very many. I got the whole politicians-as-celebrities thing, with them showing up on late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live.

So there wasn’t a whole lot of surprises for me in this book. But it was an entertaining read. And there’s nothing better than an entertaining read. Because when it comes to politics, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“We’ve come to the point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you’re talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. … It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail [‘]72.

Books: Eat, Pray, Love

November 9, 2010 | Books

I read my friend Randi’s copy of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert this summer in Norway. I’m finally getting back around to it.

I recently wrote this on Cindy La Ferle‘s Facebook page when she was wondering what others thought of the book:

I read it this summer, and I still haven’t figured out what to say about it. In the first section, I had to put it down several times just to catch my breath. She was like a 3-year-old, distracted by every shiny object … I was exhausted. (But I love Italy, and I suppose identical Italian twins might make me breathless too.)

It was very self-indulgent (on her part), but I did take lots of notes of things she said that resonated with me. While I don’t dig meditation, blue lights & dreaming of serpents, I do believe self-examination is essential. It’s just not always easy to go along on someone else’s intimate and very personal journey. I often felt like I was reading a diary that I shouldn’t have been.

I, too, spent a year going through a midlife identity crisis. Not in Italy, India or Indonesia, though. In Iowa. I had the I-place. Just not the book deal, darnit. Or … well … anything else she wrote about, except the parts about figuring out who she is. In the true spirit of her book, which was all about her, this post is all about me. I don’t think Julia Roberts will play me in the movie, though.

Looking back is hard. And painful. But we can never really know who we are today until we know who we were. I feel as though I’ve been putting together a big jigsaw puzzle all my life, but I only had some of the pieces, some of the time. Last year, when my crisis began (that’s a nice way of saying “when the shit hit the fan”), all the rest of the pieces were dumped in my lap. I’ve spent the time since then fitting those pieces into the puzzle.

Here are a couple of passages that resonated with me.

p. 19 I inflicted upon him my every hope for my salvation and happiness. And, yes, I did love him. But if I could think of a stronger word than “desperately” to describe how I loved David, I would use that word here, and desperate love is always the toughest way to do it.

p. 68 But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog’s money, my dog’s time — everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.

The specifics may not be the same, but I get the whole “desperate” thing. Someone told me once, “You need me more than I need you.” Ouch. Damn, that hurt! Then it made me angry. But you know what? It was true. Not only that, but I realize I’ve needed everyone in my life more than they ever needed me. Oh, yes. I’ve turned myself inside-out for people. Then I’d hit a rough spot and needed a shoulder or a hand. I’d look around and … nobody was there. I hadn’t seen that clearly until recently. So, yeah. I get it.

The whole crisis killed that desperate part of me. OK, it’s not really dead, but it’s been rendered comatose. Because I’ve also realized I am completely and utterly alone. I know that now. And every time I’ve felt that way throughout my life has come flooding back to me. It’s been a really hard fucking year. But I’m getting ready to pull the plug, to take it off life support. Because really? It’s been sucking the life out of me. She’s right. Desperation is the hardest way to do it. And I need to learn to be OK with Just Me.

My track record sucks, but the puzzling I’ve done over the last year has helped me figure out why. The even harder part now will be to figure out how to change that.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey was deeply personal (some might say selfish). I was on a similar journey, though, and her words helped me.

Books: The Faith Club

November 7, 2010 | Books

I finished reading (and discussing last month at book club) The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew — Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner. They got together to write a children’s book about religions and accepting each other. They never did publish the children’s book. Instead, they wrote this book, which is a testament to friendship and learning.

TV: Himmelblå

November 1, 2010 | Norway,Television

We finished watching Season 3 of HimmelblÃ¥, full of expectation for the next season — whenever we might get our hands on it. We watched the first two seasons earlier and became fans.

I just went online to check and … what?!? The last show we watched was The Last Show of the last season. Wah! I guess you can’t miss what never will be, but we’re disappointed there won’t be more new HimmelblÃ¥ stories. *sad face*