L.A. Woman

MLA was like fashion week: neurotic, image-obsessed people frantically trying to outdo and impress one another. But I loved Los Angeles. Jenni was the perfect roommate. Highlights included the Getty Center, Angel's Knoll (the park from 500 Days of Summer), and good food. Since Eric and I spent New Year's in San Antonio, it was my third state in about five days -- a feat rarely achieved since I left New England, land of the tiny states. Yesterday was our first big snow day of the year; photo at left. San Antonio was great too, aside from getting stung by a wasp and having a weird reaction to it. See photo at right. If you can believe it, this was taken three days AFTER I was stung, AFTER two shots in the butt at the walk-in clinic on New Year's Eve (one steriod, one antibiotic). Leg is all better now.

From the desk of Professor Chicken

Anyone curious about life in my neck of the woods should see the excellent film Winter's Bone, which is set in a rural Ozark community that has some things in common with the area in which I live. The things that resonated the most were the unspayed, unneutered animals chained up outside in the cold and how it was normal for people to have guns, ATVs, and a horse but no food.

Before moving here, neither Eric nor I had lived in a place with this kind of poverty. In fact, we'd only ever seen this kind of poverty in other countries. According to a woman we know from the UU church, our area is the thirteenth poorest district or county in the U.S. But this community differs from Winter's Bone in that there's a university here -- although, as the UU person put it, it's not a "real school" -- and there are plenty of people who have money and live comfortably. There's even a golf course and some McMansions. But down the street from where we live is a house with cinder blocks on the roof holding down shingles and tar paper. On the way to this house is a derelict trailer park next to a stream where a sign reads "Do not throw trash into the creek." Last winter when a friggin' arctic blast kept temperatures below 30, I saw native kids without coats in the grocery store.

Speaking of arctic blasts, it was 19 this morning. One week ago today it was 75. It was over 30 by the time I left the house, but I was cold in spite of the gloves, fleece hat, two pairs of pants (I kid you not), undershirt, long-sleeved shirt, fleece pullover, fleece vest, and down jacket. I am convinced, perhaps irrationally, that I would not feel the cold so much in a blue state. Or even a swing state.

In lighter news, Eric's birthday a week and a half ago was quite the fiesta. I baked a cake and joined him and his colleagues for lunch, but the real surprise was the entire front office decorated in a Star Wars theme. Here is a picture of my favorite storm trooper. The next day, Sasha/Snåsa was featured in the Tulsa World. Yesterday I was at the university's Broken Arrow campus, and the director of the writing center asked, "Was that your cat in the newspaper?"

Hooray for my mom

My mother, an occupational health specialist at Hartford Hospital, is part of a fall-prevention team that just won a major award.

Here is a photo of the fall-prevention team receiving medals and certificates yesterday. My mama is the tiny cute one to the left of the woman in the green dress. I am so proud!

My mother also let me drag her to Concord, MA when I visited Connecticut last week. We toured Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott lived when she wrote Little Women, and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the Alcotts are buried on Author's Ridge near Hawthorne and his wife Sophia, Emerson and his wife Lidian, and the Thoreau family. CT was chilly, especially given temps close to 80 when I left Oklahoma, but the fall foliage was especially beautiful this year. Flying into Bradley, I looked out the window and saw gorgeous autumn colors on the trees lining the Connecticut River and thought, I'm home.

Why, you might ask, is there a PENCIL on Henry David Thoreau's grave? As one of my American Literature to 1865 students could tell you, it is because his family owned a pencil factory. Henry's sister Sophia ultimately ran the production, since he was busy being transcendental. I also learned from a student -- I make them give presentations on authors from the syllabus -- that Lidian Emerson's real name was Lydia, but that Ralph decided he wanted to call her Lidian and that was that. I guess he also called her by the nickname Queenie, and insisted that they name their daughter after his tubercular first wife, Ellen, who left him her fortune.

In other, unrelated news, it looks like I may be able to tag along on a study abroad trip in May. It's an eleven-day tour of historic sites in England, France, Belgium, and Germany. I would be an assistant student wrangler, but all major expenses are paid.

Letter to the editor of the day

This prominent billboard is posted en route to the Tulsa airport. My reaction was similar to Ms McKinney's, but not nearly as eloquent.

Babies aren't missing
By Hilary McKinney, Tulsa
Published: 9/27/2010 2:18 AM
Last Modified: 9/27/2010 4:03 AM

Recently, a billboard asking "Where have all the babies gone?" was erected at U.S. 169 and 51st Street. I was unaware that there was a shortage of babies in the world. Where could all these babies be disappearing from?

They aren't disappearing from the U.S. By the end of 2009 more than 114,000 children in the United States were awaiting adoption. Only 57,000 children were actually adopted that year, according to the U.S. Department of Health.

They aren't disappearing in other countries either. The ratio of babies born to people dying is 2.5 to 1, and there are more than 143 million orphaned children globally, according to the CIA World Factbook and UNICEF.

Apparently, the babies are missing from your uterus. At least this is what "40 Days for Life" (the religious anti-choice organization sponsoring the billboard) would have you believe.

Don't be fooled. They aren't missing because of abortions. The assumption that 40 Days for Life wants you to make just isn't supported by the facts. The rate of abortions in the U.S. actually decreased by 18 percent from 1990 to 2005, according to most current official U.S. Census Bureau data.

My question to 40 Days for Life is: Wouldn't your time be better spent working on issues facing babies who already have been born, rather than praying to end a woman's right to choose?

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=62&articleid=20100927_62_A15_Bbernt932626

A real mensch

My Grandpa Stan died last Monday, August 30. He was my only grandfather and a real mensch. Growing up, I thought everyone had just one grandpa who had a mustache. My brother and I were the only grandchildren for more than a decade, and we had Grandpa Stan and Bubbe Tulip all to ourselves. The biggest treat for me was getting to sleep over at their house in South Windsor, CT on Friday nights. Matt and I fought over who got to sleep on the sofa bed in the den, which we thought was the best place to sleep ever. There were all kinds of things we didn't or couldn't have at home: Hi-C to drink, Cocoa Puffs for breakfast, and endless Saturday morning cartoons. I loved dressing up in Bubbe Tulip's Mardi Gras beads and marching around the house to Grandpa Stan's John Phillip Sousa records. He used to hide candy corns around the house and tell me that I had a mystery to solve. The candy corns were "clues," and I solved the mystery when I found the hidden bag of candy.

Grandpa Stan was sick but I didn't expect to lose him so soon. He and my grandmother were married for more than 60 years. Eric and I dropped everything last week and flew to Connecticut for the funeral. It was terribly hot the day of the graveside service, and I gave a short eulogy on the behalf of the grandchildren. It was hard, but it was good to be there and having my family around me was comforting. The loss didn't really hit me until we came back to Oklahoma. I want so much to be back east.

It was overcast and drizzling the night before Grandpa Stan's memorial at the synagogue he and my grandmother helped to found. But right before we entered the building, I noticed a rainbow in the sky. I'm not the kind of person to believe such things ordinarily, but I want to believe it was a message from Grandpa Stan. Here I am outside Temple Beth Hillel with the 1939 Weaver High School yearbook. Grandpa Stan graduated in '43 but his sister Lois graduated in '39 with Sid Swadosh, father of my best friend Jenny. Jenny's mom Pat loaned me the yearbook and graciously hosted us in her home once again and kept us well supplied with fresh fruit and Greek yogurt.

Eric and I didn't have much time to ourselves on such a short trip but we did make it to Modern Apizza in New Haven, where we had dinner with my brother and his lovely French girlfriend. We also sneaked in a few hours at Rocky Neck before flying home on Saturday.

Sasha + socks= luv

Malka Katt cordially invites you to the marriage of her brother

SNÅSA WHITBARD

to

WHITE TUBE SOCKS

Pastor Greenleaf will officiate. Purple Towel will be best man, with Clothespin and Pencil serving as Maids of Honor. Transparent Curtain Panel will be ringbearer. Entertainment will be provided by Newspaper.

I recently documented Snåsa's a ménage-a-trois with the tube socks and the curtain. He seems to think he is invisible when the curtain covers his head. Since we moved, he has staked out a Top-Secret Headquarters between the futon and the wall. This is his favorite place to hide from the big, loud, stinky men (such as the odiforous handyman from our last rental house, who wiped his hands on his shirt and referred to a 401K as a "four-okay") who are the bane of his existence. Snåsa also adopted the nickname Sasha, given by our former neighbor who could not pronounce "SNOW-suh."


Witness the come-hither look...
















































Time for a post-coital smoke?

Looking handsome and majestic.

Mary Fallin licks the crack

Just when I think I can deal, at least temporarily, with living in Oklahoma, something like this happens: Mary "God Hates Fags" Fallin wins the Republican nomination for the upcoming gubernatorial election. Of course she's the perfect candidate because, lesse...

• Sarah Palin endorsement? Check.
• Skanky-beauty-pageant-looking daughter? Check.
• Astrologer on speed dial? Check. (Hellooooo, Nancy Reagan!)
• Desire to waste taxpayer $$ on a frivolous and futile lawsuit to attempt to ban universal healthcare? Check.
• Hypocritical "family values" agenda? Check. (Hellooooo, affair with an OK state trooper!)
• Belief that "pre-born" people (?) deserve more rights than people who are actually living? Check. (She declared 2010 "Year of the Pro-Life Woman." Barf.)
  
• Wacko Christian politics? Double check! Separation of church and state is just a suggestion, of course! Fallin stated in April, “We believe in prayeras a nation.” Um, who is this fictive we?

If Jari Askins doesn't prevail over Fallin in November, I will be tempted to quit academia and run for my life.

A recent two-day trip to visit in-laws in Colorado left me seriously depressed. People riding bikes! Sidewalks! Hybrid cars! Locally owned restaurants! Signage devoid of spelling and grammar errors! Farmer's markets with ponytailed gay guys and compost bins! Actually seeing other people running while I was going for a run! To say nothing of clean air, no bugs, and practically non-existent humidity! When, oh when, can I live in a place like this again?

The minute we exited the plane in Tulsa, it was right back to fat people smoking and some fool attempting to steal a 24-pack of Keystone from the Food Pyramid. My wonderful spouse deserves a Husband of the Year award for accompanying me to this godforsaken place.