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Whew, I’m on fiyah with the reading lately! I’m not trying to make this solely a bookish blog (there are plenty of other fun things to write about along with books), but that’s kind of been my focus lately, and I’ve really enjoyed some of the books I’ve been reading.
This one was especially fun for me, because in the Days of Yore, I spent about five years in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Shortly after I graduated from college, I got married, and my husband (now ex-husband) joined the Air Force. Grand Forks is where he got stationed. When I found out, I cried. But my Dad told me, “Look at it as an adventure!” He was right, and I made a lot of friends up there, as well as getting my first job and getting some great experience that would serve me well in my career.
Anyway, I recall Marilyn Hagerty’s name from the Grand Forks Herald, and a few years ago, her review of the new Olive Garden in Grand Forks went viral. (I couldn’t find the full column online, but you can find snippets here and there...and of course, the full review in the book!) It went viral because everyone knows that Olive Garden is kind of not that great of food, right? And not all that authentic, right? I mean, it’ll fill you up when you need it, and I have enjoyed meals there in the past, but I don’t think anyone would call it gourmet dining. But Ms. Hagerty reviewed it seriously, commenting on the food, service, and decor. In fact, she praised the decor quite a bit. The DECOR!
It was a funny but charming review, and you couldn’t help but like her for writing it. Having lived there, I can report that it is a smallish city, and any new restaurant opening was indeed a big deal. When I saw a while back that many of her reviews had been published in a book, I knew I had to get it.
I can’t begin to convey how much I enjoyed this book. She reviews everything from Sanders 1907 (which was the nicest restaurant in Grand Forks at the time when I was there) to the East Side Dairy Queen. She goes to buffets at Golden Corral and to the new Arby’s. No matter the restaurant, she writes about it seriously and with kindness. She seems to have her problems about certain things (if you’re her server, do NOT ask her multiple times how everything is...let her visit with her friends, gosh darn it!), but she goes out of the way to find complimentary things to say about every place she visits. The reviews in the book range from 1987 (I lived there at the time) to 2012, and in the earlier reviews, we are treated to descriptions of decor that includes mauves and greens and light wood and brass railings. Can you or can you not picture that exact style of ‘80s decor?!
She also mentions several places that I remember. There was the Chuckhouse at the Westward Ho Motel; Whitey’s Wonder Bar across the river in East Grand Forks, Minnesota (I had a lot of beers and a lot of onion rings at Whitey’s!); Bonzer’s downtown; and one of my regular haunts, John Barleycorn at Columbia Mall. There were many times when my friend Lisa and I would head out after a rough day at the lab and hit that place for Bloody Caesars or the occasional melon daiquiri. (I have yet to find another melon daiquiri like the ones at Barleycorn.)
Some of you may recall that Grand Forks and the area was devastated by a horrible flood of the Red River of the North in 1987. It was very sad to read of all the places that Ms. Hagerty wrote about that succumbed to the flood. The Chuckhouse and the Westward Ho were one of them. John Barleycorn is no longer in operation. Amazingly, both Bonzer’s and Whitey’s are still in operation, but many restaurants (not to mention homes) were lost in what Ms. Hagerty refers to as the Flood of ‘97. Based on what I watched on the news, read in books and online, and what my friends there said, it deserves its capital F. From the book:
Bit of Norway, along with many other Grand Forks and East Grand Forks businesses, succumbed to the Red River of the North flood in April and May of 1997. Says Marilyn of that time:
“There was a period of time when I did not write because of the Flood of 1997. We had to evacuate and went down to Bismarck, where my daughter lives. My husband, retired editor of the Herald, died down there after a time in a nursing home.
“The Herald called and wanted me to write, so I started in. The Herald was being published in a school in a small town north of here. There were writers from all over the country in here during the big flood. Still, the Herald wanted writing from someone who lives here.
“The Herald, by the way, won a Pulitzer Prize for flood coverage. I can claim nothing to do with the Pulitzer Prize.”
I can tell you, that brought a tear to my eye. The whole book made me think of my time there (I was back in Indiana long before the Flood hit Grand Forks and that area) and I made an attempt to describe some of it to Ken. I felt like a stranger in a strange land at first, even though I’m also from the Midwest. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the upper prairies are a different kind of Midwest. People seem a little more insular and distrustful of people from elsewhere. So here I was, from Indiana, not really a hockey fan (that made people wonder about me from the very beginning, I’m sure!), a new graduate on her first job, and part of the Air Force community. In looking back, I had a lot of things going against me!
It really wasn’t easy at first, but I settled in and learned the job, and got to know my coworkers better, and I made so many good friends there! I’ve lost touch with many of them, but I still get Christmas cards from a couple of them, and I found my former manager in Microbiology on Facebook. (She seemed quite happy when I told her that I’ve become a hockey fan!) Reading this book made me think about all the good times we had, and I’ll be spending a little time writing letters to both Carole and Susan, who are so wonderful about sending me cards every year.
Ken asked me if I’d ever want to swing through there on vacation some time. I said, “Well, it’s not exactly easy to ‘swing through!’ It’s like just two hours south of the Canadian border, so it’s way up there.” He asked again. “Would you like to go there again one day?” I grinned and said, “Yeah!”
I don’t know when this will happen, but I foresee Whitey’s onion rings in my future!
For those who don’t have the connection to Grand Forks that I do, you might not enjoy this book to the extent that I did. However, it is a delightful read that I plan on keeping in a handy spot for whenever I have a bad day. I don’t think it’s possible to read this without a smile sneaking onto your face!
And remember...if the chef includes an orange slice as garnish on your plate, that means he or she cares. Marilyn knows.
Every week or so, I browse our most excellent local library’s website for new ebooks to borrow. I really am trying to do better about borrowing books rather than buying them, and although success in that regard has been limited, I am trying, I swear! I got a pleasant surprise when I saw this book, We’re All Infected: Essays on AMC's The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human, edited by Dawn Keetley.
You all know how much I love the show, so this was right up my alley! I put a hold on it and got the notification a couple of days later that it was available. (Seriously...what a great feature of most libraries now!)
Some might see the show and the zombie genre as mere pop culture fluff, but I’ve always felt that there was more to it than that. This collection of essays takes a scholarly look at zombies and the show in particular, looking at various sociological, psychological, and anthropological aspects. These aspects include the impact of violence and death, America’s cowboy mentality (Rick is basically a Western hero, isn’t he?), law enforcement, mourning or lack thereof, reliance on fossil fuels, the importance of language and communication (zombies can’t communicate beyond inarticulate growls), and a biomedical discussion of zombie function and breakdown.
There is a bit of history of zombies in pop culture, and that is fascinating in its own right. When zombies were first introduced to the U.S., it was as the Haitian voodoo zombies, and their portrayal in ‘30s and ‘40s-era movies was as a shambling slave under someone else’s control. Movies like “White Zombie” and “I Walked With A Zombie” reflected a fear of becoming a zombie and the loss of autonomy.
George Romero changed things in 1968 with “Night of the Living Dead,” with the zombies becoming something to fear, not just to fear becoming. This was seen as a metaphor for an increasingly violent world, and the zombie outbreak was said to be the result of some sort of massive radiation event, reflecting the fear of the Cold War. The zombies were still slow and shuffling, but overwhelming in their numbers.
This changed again in 2002 with “28 Days Later,” a movie in which the outbreak is a result of some type of viral infection. The outbreak moves quickly, and so do these zombies. This possibly reflects a fear of pandemics and terrorists, or a world moving rapidly out of control.
One of the most interesting essays to me was the one that focused on the question of time and the loss of it. The author of this essay, Gwyneth Peaty, showed how the show focuses on the lack of time. There is never enough time to mourn the dead, to process what is happening, to take a breath and focus on something other than mere survival. The one time everyone seems to relax a bit around the campfire while eating fish that Andrea and her sister Amy caught that afternoon, they all have a few laughs as Dale explains why he continues to wind his watch every day. This moment of relaxation and light-hearted camaraderie is taken away from the survivors—and from us—as the camp is attacked by zombies, and several people are brutally killed, including Amy. Andrea keeps vigil over her sister’s corpse, waiting for it to reanimate, and tells her she thought there would always be more time. Even at the end of Season 4, Hershel’s watch is still making an appearance and playing a big part. Time is important.
The zombies themselves are a constant reminder to the survivors that time is short and that humanity is lost. We mark our own mortality by the passage of time, with the inevitable outcome of death. We (hopefully) make the best of the time we have been granted. The reanimation of dead human beings into walking, cannibalistic zombies takes that outcome away from us. The zombies “live” in suspended time and take away our future. Without the prospect of a future, there is little hope to be found.
It’s a lot of fun to speculate and discuss what zombies say about our current state of mind as a society, but Romero himself is quick to point out that sometimes a zombie is just a zombie (paraphrased). He has said, “The zombies have always just been zombies...my stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react...I’m pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies.”
I think this is an important thing to note in the context of “The Walking Dead.” I often see people freaking out online because the writers are focusing more on the people than on the zombies. Some people complain that there aren’t enough zombie kills, too much dialogue, and too much focus on the human survivors. It seems to me that they are missing the entire point of the show (and the graphic novels), as well as Romero’s point about his own groundbreaking movies.
In the TV show, it’s not really the walkers who are the walking dead...it is the human survivors. The show is ultimately about the breakdown of society and how those who remain deal with it: can they manage to form a new society? How? If so, what form will it take? Will they be able to keep their own sense of humanity? When the world goes to shit and almost everybody gets bit (from a scene with Daryl and Andrea), what will our individual and group reaction be? How will we deal with not just the zombies, but with the sometimes more dangerous human survivors?
These are fascinating questions to me, and it’s why I love the show so much. This book got a little bogged down in psychobabble in a few places (it’s okay to use regular words, folks...not everything needs to be couched in psychological terms), but I found it very thought-provoking, and it gave me some insights into the show that I had not thought of before. Because of these essays, I will watch it with a newly discerning eye when it returns in the fall.
Is it October yet?!
This is #62 on the Modern Library’s Top 100 list, and yes, I’m still plugging away at that list!
I started this last summer, but got a little bogged down in it, so I set it aside for other books after making it about halfway through. (It’s an 860 pager, so I’d already read what would normally be considered a fairly good-sized book.) I recently returned to it, and I was still struggling with it a bit. Although Jones was very descriptive, he tended to get a little too wordy at times, and I was to the point where I was almost ready to give up...but I was over 60% of the way through (I read this on my Kindle), so I decided to keep going.
I’m so glad I did. By the time I got about 85% of the way through, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, and after that, I just didn’t want to put it down.
You can read the synopsis elsewhere. A very brief description is that it takes place in Hawaii, with the main location an Army base, in the time leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and our entry into WWII. We get to know several characters quite well, including Sgt. Milt Warden and Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt, and I came to care about these characters very much. We follow them through various Army-related and decidedly NON-Army activities, such as love affairs, drunken binges, and visits to town and its bars and whorehouses. One of the main reasons I kept reading was because I wanted to find out what happened with some of these characters.
The main thing this book gave me was a glimpse into the lives of the WWII-era soldier. I have never read or watched anything that brought them to life as much as this book. I read the restored version rather than the original 1953 heavily edited version. All the profanity, all the sex, all the anger and hostility and human frailty is there. With the passing of several decades, I believe we have come to see WWII veterans as noble warriors, and have mythologized the Greatest Generation to a remarkable degree. I’m not saying this is wrong. My Dad and several of my uncles were WWII veterans, and they were remarkable men who did remarkable things.
However, they weren’t saints. I don’t know how much of a hellraiser my Dad was during the war, although I know he was a bit of a one before he joined the Army! He didn’t talk about the war much, and it wasn’t until I was probably in my late twenties that he told me a few stories. I think he had his share of fun...there was one story he told me about wandering around some city in North Africa with one of his buddies. It sounded like they were having a pretty good time!
This book showed the bravery as well as the humanity. The soldiers weren’t all innocent young rubes who walked on water. They were ordinary men who went into an extraordinary situation and sometimes did extraordinary things; sometime they just did ordinary things. Like every other human being.
I am very glad that I persevered on this book. I enjoyed the weaving together of the characters’ stories, but most of all, I enjoyed it for the sense it gave me of what my Dad might have been like as a young soldier, about 15 years before I was born. I don’t think that his experience was necessarily like those of some of the guys in the book, but I bet he knew guys who DID have similar experiences. It helped me to think of them as human beings rather than vague “Greatest Generation” demi-gods.
That makes me appreciate even more what they did.
My, how time flies when you’re doin’ stuff and thangs like Rick Grimes! Here almost two weeks have gone by, and I haven’t written one word here.
Nothing major has been happening. I’ve been healing up from my abdominal hematoma and going through some blood work because my doctor wanted to check for any clotting disorders. I’m not overly worried about that; clotting disorders don’t run in my family, and I’m not a bleeder. It hasn’t been too much of a hassle, although I wasn’t real pleased with my service at my former place of employment. It was unpleasant enough (they had to stick me three times, and I have great veins) that I sent an email to the VP who runs lab operations, my former head honcho boss. I wasn’t mean about it, but it really was a quality issue, and I believe she’ll address the problem. I’ve gone back to working out, and I should be able to start lifting weights again...I’ll try that tomorrow.
As you can imagine, I was all wigged out and excited about the season finale of “The Walking Dead.” Some people seemed to be disappointed by it, but I loved it. Badass Rick is back, and I think he’s going to be more badass than he ever was. October seems like it’s a long way away!
I went to our local library with Cousin Shane and my sister Diana to do some research on a family tragedy from almost fifty years ago. One of our cousins was brutally murdered by a local cop, and although Diana remembers it well, Shane and I were quite young when it happened and we only know what little we’ve read in some saved newspaper clippings or have been told by family members. It was very sobering to page through the microfilm and see the story unfold as it happened. It was the frontpage headline the day after it happened, and we all got pretty quiet as we read through these stories. We also are thinking about contacting the county where the trial happened and seeing if we can get the trial records. We figure those are public record, so I wouldn’t think it would be a problem. I wonder if you can get that stuff digitally now? No idea, but we do want to learn more about it.
Ken was on a business trip for the latter half of the week, and I had lunch with Shane and Matt one day, and dinner with my friend Dan from college one evening. Sheeba has kept me good company at home, and I’m never lonely with books and movies.
Ahhh, books...mostly I’ve been lost in Bookland. I got through the third book in the Strain trilogy, although it was a struggle. I liked the first two books quite a bit, but was disappointed in the third one. But since it’s a trilogy, you kind of have to finish it, right? Just like you have to watch the third Godfather movie although it is nothing compared to the first two. Then I picked From Here to Eternity back up. It’s part of the Modern Library Top 100 list, and I got a little over halfway through it last year before I put it down for more fun, summer-type reads. It’s really a slog, but it’s good enough that I DO want to finish it. Interesting characters in interesting situations, if sometimes the writing gets excessively wordy. It’s almost 900 pages, so progress is slow. This will sound terrible, but I’m wishing that Pearl Harbor would hurry up and happen, because I want to see how these characters react to it. I also need to see the entire movie (I’ve only seen parts of it), because I see that Montgomery Clift plays one of the best characters, Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt, AKA Prew. I want to get through it soon, because I have lots of good books to read, including the next one on the ML List, Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Also speaking of books, I ordered a new Kindle, a Paperwhite. My Kindle Keyboard hasn’t crapped out, and I’m still using it and it’s been a good and faithful companion, but the battery is starting to drain much more quickly. Amazon was offering a deal where you could pay for it over about four months with no interest, so that was pretty much impossible to pass up, especially since I knew I was going to have to order one soon, anyway. I’ve had my eye on the Paperwhite for a while, so I went ahead and ordered it. It seems easy to navigate, and I love the slightly backlit screen. It’s still very legible in the sun, so I’m quite pleased with it. I’m looking forward to reading my first book on it!
Let’s see...we’ve got a couple of Broadway shows coming up at the Morris, tickets to see Presidents of the United States of America with Shane and Matt in Indy in June, and our annual Florida vegecation in July. We’ll fit some minor league baseball games in there, and just plan on enjoying the summer. One of the best things about it will be the warmth. Man, it’s been a long winter for so many of us. We’re usually greening up nicely by now, but all the snow just recently melted. I think it’s safe to say that we’re all more than ready for warm weather and some greenery!
I know this wasn’t a super exciting entry. Just wanted to catch up, and I’ll try to bring some fireworks next time. You know I’ve still got fireworks…! I just need to work up some good outrage about something. It’s only a matter of time.
I do my best to live and let live. I understand that not everyone is going to agree about everything, and not everyone is going to agree with me. I’m passionate about the things I hold true, but I try not to beat people over the held with it. Each to their own, right?
However, there are times when things can harm others. One of my hot-button issues is marriage equality. I do not take kindly to those who would deny people I love and value the same rights that are afforded to the rest of us. Are people physically harmed by laws that prohibit same-sex marriage? Perhaps not, but they are emotionally and psychologically harmed, and they are being treated as “less than” the rest of us. I simply cannot abide that, and I will do whatever I can to ensure that these laws go by the wayside. It’s only a matter of time.
My other hot-button issue—probably my main one—is vaccines, which will come as no surprise to many of you. I’ve gotten riled up about this before. Well, I’m even more riled up now. In fact, I’m loaded and ready for bear.
I’m downright pissed.
We are starting to see more and more reports of preventable diseases in our country and in the world. Let me reiterate that. Preventable diseases. Outbreaks of measles in New York and British Columbia; outbreaks of pertussis in California and the Midwest; outbreaks of polio in Africa and Pakistan; twenty years after measles was considered to be all but eradicated, it is once again endemic—meaning that it exists there, rather than is a rarity—in the United Kingdom.
This is insane. This has to stop. These are life-threatening infections that can be prevented by vaccines. The worst case scenario is that people will die from these infections, and that happens all the time. Other consequences of infection are deafness, blindness, sterility, and brain damage. There have been over two dozen studies consisting of hundreds of thousands of children that show that there is absolutely no connection between vaccines and autism, but there are still those who cling to their irrational and unscientific beliefs that vaccines are harmful. The initial study that posited a connection, by Andrew Wakefield in the UK, consisted of twelve children. TWELVE. His study was shown to be fraudulent and unethical, it was retracted by the Lancet, and he was stripped of his medical license. He was working for a rival vaccine company, and he completely fabricated a bowel disease caused by the MMR vaccine.
THAT is the guy that these people are still following. An unethical shill for a company that wanted to market an alternative vaccine.
I’m all for letting people live their lives as they see fit, but that doesn’t apply here. Because these decisions aren’t just impacting your child. They are impacting the newborn next door who is too young to be vaccinated. They are impacting your elderly mother who can’t fight off infections as easily. They are impacting the guy you see at the grocery store who is battling cancer. They are impacting the person with AIDS, the person who had a lung transplant, the person with rheumatoid arthritis, the person who had a bone marrow transplant to fight breast cancer or testicular cancer or leukemia. YOUR selfish and uninformed decisions have the potential to literally kill people, including people that I love.
So I am done with this “I understand your viewpoint” bullshit. Because I do NOT understand your viewpoint. You are basing your decisions on a discredited study, you know nothing about legitimate science or how the immune system works, and you have decided that your thousands of hours of Google research of fringe websites and alleged scientific papers that are not peer-reviewed is somehow the equivalent of people who have spent years in school learning about how these things actually work and who have spent their lives trying to find a way to prevent others from dealing with these diseases and their consequences.
I am past the point where I am willing to say that your concerns about vaccinations have merit. They don’t. You don’t understand the first thing about medicine or vaccines or the immune system, and you suck. You are willing to put your own child at risk because of your delusions. Even if your child caught one of these preventable diseases and survived, why would you subject them to the fever and potential trauma that can come with these diseases? Why would you take that risk? Why would you knowingly subject others to such a risk? This is monstrous. You are a threat to public health and you are a threat to a healthy society.
If you want to continue on this ridiculous pathway, go live in a commune in the woods or on an island and take your chances there. Stay the fuck out of our public spaces and deal with your infections on your own. I pity your kids, and I wish I could charge you with criminal negligence. But we’re not at that point yet, so just go away and stop infecting people because you’re too rock stupid to understand how serious these infections are and how safe the vaccines are.
Dr. Paul Offit has said that things probably won’t change until we start seeing a comeback of these preventable diseases, and people once again understand how serious they can be. I’m sorry to say that it seems that he is right. We are now seeing a resurgence of these infections, and it is up to the rest of us to push back against the ignorance and say that we value the societal contract. If we are to be a part of society, we need to understand that our actions have consequences. When you make that misinformed decision for your own child, you are making it not just for them, but for many others.
I am to the point of shunning and public shaming. I don’t want to be around you if you choose to ignore vaccines, and I will not hesitate to point out that you are ignorant about medicine, immunology, and microbiology. The tide is turning against you, anti-vaxxers. As more people come down with preventable diseases, we will blame YOU.
Count on it.
I’ve been a little on edge all weekend due to a few things: I’m still not 100%, and it really bugs me to have to move so carefully...I’ve got shit to do, people!; a story over the weekend about a measles outbreak in New York due to anti-vaxxers...I have HAD it with those idiots; another story about some tool of an Indiana lawmaker contacting the president of my alma mater, Ball State University, saying that the university’s policy of banning the teaching of creationism in science classrooms is religious persecution, and he and some of his tool buddies are thinking about filing a lawsuit against the university.
Right. Because not allowing the teaching of a religious belief in a science classroom is religious persecution. Then there were the subsequent comments from the local yokels saying that creationism should be taught, that you can’t prove evolution because no one was there, and that hoary ol’ nugget, “Evolution is just a theory.” GAHHHH! My head was about ready to explode!
However, that didn’t stop me from having fun with family and friends last night. A fun dinner at Chicory Cafe (gumbo and a muffuletta, YUM) and then “The Million Dollar Quartet” at the Morris. Great time, great show, great people. How many times are our good friends and families the last saving grace in the world? I get by with a little help from my friends. Truth.
Well, today the fourth shoe dropped. Or whatever analogy would work better. Fourth and final straw? I don’t know. Anyway, a friend on Facebook posted something about how her local library had a feminism display up, and one of the books displayed was one by Phyllis Schlafly. She said she questioned the addition of that book, and mentioned it to someone at the counter, who said they would talk to the librarian about it. I left a comment, and one of her friends responded:
Me: Good for you. That old broad [Schlafly] is a feminist like I'm an anti-vaxxer.
Her: Or a feminist.
Well, I don’t know this friend personally, but I respect her, and I wasn’t about to get into it with one of her friends on her page. That’s not cool. What a serendipitous thing to have this blog, though! I kind of figured what she was getting at, but I wasn’t going to respond. She didn’t stop there, though, and I responded to that:
Her: A feminist doesn't dismiss a woman - *even a Schlafly* - by calling her an old broad.
Me: Well, consider me appropriately chastised. LOL
And then...and then...this response:
Her: What's funny?
[falling over laughing] Oh, boy. Where should I start?
First of all, I call myself a broad sometimes, for Pete’s sake. If “broad” is a totally pejorative term in your world, then you need to lighten up a little bit. There are plenty of worse terms I could have used, believe me. Calling her an “old broad” was me pulling my punch significantly, and just slinging a mild insult her (Schlafly’s) way. Sometimes my friends and I use the term in an affectionate and joking way, as in “a couple of broads like us.” Years back, I referred to myself as a “divorced broad.” I don’t think anyone would ever accuse me of hating myself or of hating other women.
Secondly, I don’t call people I respect names or sling even slight insults their way. I do not respect Phyllis Schlafly in any way, shape, or form, and as a public figure, she is open to criticism. Simply being a woman does not entitle someone to respect from every woman, anymore than every man deserves respect from other men. Gender is not an issue for me; kindness, decency, and tolerance IS. Schlafly advocates for subservience to men based on biblical teachings and was active in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. So she deserves my respect how?
Thirdly, anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I don’t put up with bullshit from anyone, especially condescension because of my gender. Point a finger in my face and call me a “little lady” in a derogatory tone, and you’re going to pull back a bloody stump. I don’t go around beating people over the head and yelling “Respect mah authoritah ‘cause I AM WOMAN!”, though. I always just did my job—and although I made my share of mistakes over the years, I was pretty good at my job—and did my best to treat people fairly and with kindness, no matter who they were or what they believed. Do I advocate for equal pay and equal rights? Yes. Do I support Planned Parenthood and push for reproductive rights and for getting male legislators out of our bedrooms and our ladybits? Yes, I do. If you want to tell me that I’m not a feminist because I called Phyllis Schlafly an “old broad,” then fuck you. I’ll keep on doing what I do, and I don’t feel the need to be a part of the card-carrying Feminist Club. You don’t sound like you’re much fun to hang around with, anyway.
Finally, lighten the fuck up. I laugh at just about anything, and I appreciate a good—and weird—sense of humor, as well as a sense of the absurd. I’ll poke fun at just about anything. If you are so touchy that the word “broad” sets you off, then you need to get laid or something. It would be like me getting my panties in a wad every time I heard a short joke. If that were the case, I’d have that wad o’ panties so far up my ass I’d be walking on tiptoes.
There. I feel better now. I need a drink, though.
Whew, it’s been a busy time lately! As you might recall, we were on a cruise the week of March 2, and we had very limited connectivity, so there wasn’t a whole lot of internettin’ going on. A couple of days after we got back, we had about 6 inches of snow, and I spent a night in the ER with some abdominal pain that was bothersome and quite worrying. Turned out to be a muscle/blood vessel tear in my abdomen, and it is healing up, slowly but surely. My main worry was appendicitis, but that wasn’t the case, and no surgery, so yay for that!
Based on the timing and activities, I think I got the muscle tear when we were climbing a rock formation in Aruba. As I told a friend, “I got this from climbing a rock formation in Aruba” is a much better story than something like “I tripped over the cat and fell down the stairs”! So at least I’ve got a good story about it.
I hope to write more about the places we stopped and our excursions, but I’ll need to go through my pictures to do that, and I need to catch up on laundry and on my online courses first. I’ll get there...eventually.
Today, I just want to write about how much fun it was to meet new people and learn more about them. The people we interacted with the most were our tablemates at dinner. There were Dave and Gail from Canada, and Nicolas (he doesn’t spell his name that way, but that will suffice for now) and Sharon, and Sharon’s sister, Sharoline. Nicolas is originally from Jamaica and Sharon is from Barbados, but they live in Brooklyn now. Sharoline still lives in Barbados. We had so much fun getting to know them, and we even went out after dinner a couple of times with Nicolas and Sharon. They were such fun and happy people, and I’m sure we’ll meet again. Ken and I have already talked about how it would be fun to meet them all in Barbados when they go back for a visit. You just never know who you’re going to connect with!
Dave and Gail scared us for a moment when on the first night, they asked us about “Obamacare.” I decided to dive right in, and we all agreed that we support the ACA and President Obama. What a relief to learn that they think the ACA is a great start for our country, although they remain perplexed about why so many are against it. Me too, Dave and Gail, me too!
There was also the couple from Chicago on the sunset cocktail cruise excursion when we were in Aruba. He was wearing a Cubs jersey and she was wearing a White Sox jersey, and much hilarity ensued! (The bartender was making up his specialty drink for us, a Stoplight. Red, amber, and green liquor layered...I don’t know what all was in there, but it had to be about 95% booze. I was a hurtin’ unit that night, believe me!)
There were people big and small; people speaking French, Dutch, Papiamento, Chinese, German, and Spanish; there were mostly happy people, but the occasional grump, like the older lady who was giving me and Ken the stinkeye when we were sitting by the pool...it was weird and bad enough that Ken finally gave her a big grin and a howdy-do wave; there were the guys at the zip line excursion who went by nicknames like MacGyver, Gorgeous, and Hollywood...when MacGyver asked where I was from and I said “Indiana,” he said, “Indiana Pacers! They need to bring home the championship!”; there was the guide on the rum tasting tour who was so fun and hilarious that we bought not one, but two bottles of rum; there were all the waiters and staff and our cabin steward who worked so hard and were always kind.
It was a mass of humanity of all stripes and languages, and it was glorious. This introvert enjoyed every moment of it. It made me think about how although we speak so many different languages and have different experiences, we are all human beings. We have the same struggles and the same joys, the same triumphs and the same heartaches. I learned about how on the Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, kids are required to learn four languages in school, and the main language, Papiamento, is a conglomerate of African, Portuguese, Dutch, English, Spanish, and native Indian languages. It made me feel more than a little ashamed of the “This is ‘Murica, lern Inglish!” crowd here in the States.
It wasn’t just a nice vacation in the Caribbean. It was a great reminder of our diversity and our shared humanity. That might sound corny, but I don’t care...that’s really how I feel. It’s one of the reasons we love to travel so much. It’s a great opportunity to learn about other people and other cultures, and to continue our rejection of the small town, isolationist mindset. It’s a big world out there, and I love being a part of it.
Whew, I’m on fiyah with the reading lately! I’m not trying to make this solely a bookish blog (there are plenty of other fun things to write about along with books), but that’s kind of been my focus lately, and I’ve really enjoyed some of the books I’ve been reading. 
It really wasn’t easy at first, but I settled in and learned the job, and got to know my coworkers better, and I made so many good friends there! I’ve lost touch with many of them, but I still get Christmas cards from a couple of them, and I found my former manager in Microbiology on Facebook. (She seemed quite happy when I told her that I’ve become a hockey fan!) Reading this book made me think about all the good times we had, and I’ll be spending a little time writing letters to both Carole and Susan, who are so wonderful about sending me cards every year. 
