The Burrow

One thing I'm sure we can all agree upon - the man can control the room. I can't remember ever seeing a President so relaxed in the pulpit. And that was the thing of it - he was preaching, and not only to the choir. He had something to say for and about everyone,

A while ago, Nance commented thusly: The Blog Universe is a rather nice place... haven't made so many boon companions since Jazzercise! That's a statement which can be parsed and responded to in many ways. So, Nance, thanks for the prompt........ here goes:

Mamacita was writing about snow days and it was discombobulating for a second because I was wearing a short sleeved polo shirt and cotton pajama pants. Then, I remembered that it was real wintry weather in most of the rest of the country. Of course, it's wintry weather here, too, but here is Tucson, after all.

Watching the less-than-an-offensive-juggernaut that was the faux-Browns vs the used-to-be-Baltimore-Colts on a football saturated weekend, the commercials became a welcome respite from officials reviewing a call. Still, having watched one network consistently over a few weeks (think March Madness or the Olympics or American Idol if you want to experience the feeling and football analogies leave you cold) we'd been reduced to yelling "Not Again!!" at every commercial break. TBG owns the remote in our house; even the Cuters cede it to him. As the cameras panned up from the field and the music swelled, his nimble fingers pressed mute and then, amazingly, he didn't minimize the picture to peruse the on-screen guide. He was mesmerized. Two seconds into a commercial featuring a woman's face turning, the camera doing a slow pan as she is gazing and TBG says "This is a car commercial." There were no logos on the screen. There were no vrrrooooming noises in t...

Messers 6 and 4 waited excitedly but patiently on the concrete launching pad separating the rows of cars from one another. The fairly-busy-lots-of-the-time entrance lane was blessedly empty as I watched through the wall of windows in the gym's lobby. Amster caught up with them as Mr. 4 was leaping into his brother, his Globe-bought cowboy boots propelling him to ever greater heights. They each grabbed a hand and skipped across the road and came to the really-heavy-and-hard-to-open door. Mr. 6 struggled mightily, pulling with all his strength, and managed to get it open.Then,to my horror, he slid through the opening he'd created and ran towards Kids' Club. Big mistake. First he had to get past me. And I was pissed. Amster is the woman I admire most here in Tucson, and her son had just treated her rudely. This would not stand. Once all 4 of us were together, I asked the boys if they knew what we were? " A group of ladies and gentlemen" I told them, and we tr...

The Little Cuter and SIR spent the long weekend on a Chicago stay-cation. SIR planned the whole thing; all she had to do was pack. Here's her review of the experience --- my guest post for Friday: Wednesday & Thursday- Harrah ’ s HILARIOUS and good times at the casino … except it ate all my money … . Damn slot machines! I gave up on the slots after I lost $40 and then gained 10 back playing roulette. I ’ ve decided I ’ m no longer intimidated by the tables.... We stuck out like sore thumbs being the only under 60 year olds in the place, but we had a great time nonetheless. I also learned that winning a free dinner buffet might sound like a huge score, but using the coupon after having a few rounds of beers will leave one so uncomfortably bloated that one must retire to the room for an hour and unbutton one ’ s pants whilst groaning. Hint : never eat pizza AND mashed potatoes from one plate . Friday — Bulls Game The NBA is difficult to watch nowadays. The first hal...

I've always enjoyed going out to lunch with my mother. Even during those awful awkward early teen years I was able to be tempted into impersonating a human being for an afternoon with the offer of a shopping trip and lunch at the luncheonette across the street from A&S in Hempstead. The short version, if you don't want to read the whole article, is that, after some inter-marriage, one brother's family owned Macy's and the other brother's family owned A&S. But, I digress. This may be one of those posts which give TBG a headache - yes , an actual physical pain in his head caused by my inability to follow one train of thought through to completion. I do believe that this has something to do with the female/male brain disconnect, but that is fodder for another post. Anyway, when I was a very little girl, we used to go to Pasetti's . As I grew up, it became the place that was safe enough for 6th graders to dine without parental supervision. After the ...

Find 8 minutes and 33 seconds and watch this whole thing. Kseniya Simonova, 24 and gorgeous, won Ukraine's Got Talent . She creates pictures on an illuminated sand table .... which makes no sense at all until you watch her. After you've watched the video, click here for the annotations. I was perfectly content making up my own story, which was close but not exactly what the explicator explicates. The site identifies the music and translates the (few) words. The audience is sobbing, the judge is wiping her eyes, and I was a bit flummoxed by their reactions until I read and then thought about what it meant to be in the Ukraine when the Nazi's invaded. Like you, I bet, my mind went straight to Ilsa telling Rick what the megaphones were blaring as the Germans marched into Paris. But the notes go on to tell us that almost every person in the audience had lost a family member to the Great War and what I thought was religious iconography were historical memorials like the li...

Overheard while leaving the gym today: "I don't call him when his team loses." There are a lot of people who aren't receiving phone calls today. ** Events have proven me wrong and, much as it pains me to admit that I was in error, I have to say that Brett Favre probably was right to come out of re-retirement and play with the Vikings. He's 40 years and 100 days old when this is posted and he's 1 game away from the Super Bowl. Damn. ***** Daddooooo was a true Jets fan, ugly green cap and all. To be totally accurate, Daddooooo's hats all had mesh backs and plain fronts. The only logos he would wear were "Proud Grandpa" and the NY Jets. *** Whenever the Jets were playing one of our teams, Daddooooo always had "a nickel bet" with TBG. Sometimes the nickel actually changed hands; mostly it was a ruse for a phone call and a connection. Sure, the Colts and the Bengals may have handed the Jets their playoff berth, but I'm thinking t...

..... which is not a sentence one gets to type every day. But, there I was, crouching over the gorges I'd dug in the courtyard in an over-enthusiastic attempt to create rainfall collecting berms. Instead of my neighbor's lovely undulations, I had created slot canyons. Gravel (which we use for ground cover and mulch and which can be seen in all its glory underneath my sat-upon friend above) does not adhere to sheer walls. Ugliness existed and I was down there attempting to create beauty. Timing the pruning of the lantana is a mystery to me. No two authors agree. Out in the courtyard, with lantana to the left of me, lantana to the right, there I was, stuck in the middle with my pruner. (Is anyone else humming a little Steve Miller Band right there?) A controlled experiment presented itself to me. The same plants exist in basically the same environment : close to the reflected heat of the house, sheltered by the courtyard wall, equal access to irrigation and run-off wat...

(I can't believe I actually typed that headline.) Colin Powell, two weeks after refusing to run for President, said in a speech I attended that his race wouldn't have been a problem because he is light skinned and from Jamaica and "so I'm not that scary a black man". Post-racial? NPR and Pew reported a survey yesterday where most whites saw Obama as mixed race and blacks, to a much greater degree, saw him as black. Come back in 50 years.... our voting populace will all be a lovely shade of ecru... or burnt sienna..... and "flesh" will not automatically send the brain to white. Well, that's my dream, anyhow. And then there's Harry Reid. No one has read the as-yet-unpublished book, but his quote has certainly stimulated advance sales. And yet, as Leonard J. Pitts, Jr wrote, he got it right. We all have our own "ethnic dialect" - whether it's Brooklynese or Ebonics or a Valley Girl's Whatever insouciance - and we bring that ...

For some reason, Blogger won't let me fix the fonts in today's main post. It's not my intention to be screaming at you.....

According to Facebook, the girls in my life are doing a lot of smiling these days. Listen to this thread between two sisters: I am just happy to live in a world where the people I care about can be themselves. No matter what that means. Als o, a world where there are so many kinds of pie. status update Yesterday you better not be eating pie without me. Yesterday at 5:34pm You remember the baker lady from the Beth El craft fair? She did the desserts this Shabbat. Had those AWESOME pecan pie squares. Worth eating even if I can't help thinking of that horse. Yesterday at 5:40pm meh, i don't count pecan pie as real pie :) Yesterday at 10:14pm I have this tooth . . . Yesterday at 10:15pm hurl. Yesterday at 10:16pm **** There are many questions one might ask: What horse? What tooth? And what was it about the combination of the two that made one want to hurl? But the facts were less important to me than the laughter I could hear in my heart as they reprised family history in short...

Cooking's not my thing. Never has been. Probably never will be. It's not that I mind it, it's that I'm not very good at it. The Little Cuter says that the thought is the father of the deed and that it's all in my attitude. TBG says I ought to slow down and pay attention and take my time -- not behaviors usually considered when those I love think about me. In order to stay interested, I need music on the radio and a glass of something in my hand. Preferably a refillable something. I can watch the sunset out the window and dance around the kitchen and pretend that I'm having fun. I don't let myself reflect on the fact that I'd rather be sitting on the patio furniture, reading the WSJ's Weekend Journal, which is winking provocatively at me from the newspaper basket. I need distractions. When 92.9 goes to a commercial, I turn to the big tv where TBG is watching the national news. It's frightening. There's a brief report on a tremendou...

The house is really empty now. I told TBG that we had to get some more stuff out right away and he looked at me as if I'd grown another head and wondered why in the world I thought there was something wrong with the simplicity that was our un-decorated home. I am suffering from Decoration Deprivation. Though TBG volunteered, unsolicited, that the tree was beautiful and that I should feel free to leave it up as long as I pleased, the consensus seems to be that after Epiphany (I don't know what that is, but it seems to be important) your Christmas pillows are no longer adorable. Rather, they begin to speak to your need for clutter and your inability to clean up after yourself. So, I began to dismantle the house. This counter in the kitchen isn't used for anything (a design flaw to be rectified in my dreams). I figured the stuff I stashed there could live there for a looooong time. I never figured out how to water this kissing ball from Auntie M and family, and it...

Ronni Bennett is the proprietor of Time Goes By , a blog for people who aren't interested in organic baby food recipes any more. She wrote about her frustration with the cultural perception of aging. Youth preservation and ill health seem to cover it all. Where, she wonders, are the visuals of those of us who are aging without surgery, triathlons and a pre-occupation with our medical conditions. She got me thinking about G'ma. My mother - known here as G'ma - sleeps in late, has her breakfast brought to her on a tray, reclines on her couch, ignores the activities available to her in the pod-castle she now calls home, and always has a smile on her face. When asked if she'd like some more excitement in her life her reply is always the same: "It's taken me 86 years to figure this out - leave me alone!" It's that understanding of the way life is (walker and pills and all) and the acceptance of what is possible that is so striking to me about her...

Dr. deA asked me about a volunteer opportunity in Marin this morning. Let's just call it the VO for now, because I like the organization and I don't mean to besmirch its reputation in this post. But certain aspects of the process pricked my conscience and my ego and my sense of fair play and reminded me that memories are often less prickly than the actual events. Huh? Seems that Dr. deA has had a house guest for the last two weeks. A nice guy, with lots of common interests to be shared with the Dr. and his Mrs....... but he's been there for two weeks and enough is enough already. With his customary " Hey, kiddo...." the doctor welcomed me into the embrace of his space. It's a palpable feeling of comfort and security and brains and kindness rolled into a nice looking face under a well-worn hat. Believe me, it's a very good place to be. Could I give him some information on the VO? Was it worth pursuing? Did I have a contact? Would they take his fr...

I'm enjoying the fruits of this New Year's Resolution , which, for those of you who are averse to clicking back and seeing the actual post, revolves around an Abe Lincoln quote on happiness. First and foremost, I've enjoyed having Mr. Lincoln hanging around my life. He was a pragmatist with a sense of humor and the tall man's inner confidence that I've always found attractive. I don't care how over-blown the stories are - I will carry the image of the young boy reading by the firelight forever close to my heart. Long after my bedtime, I would lie with my feet on my pillows and my head at the foot of my bed to catch the light from the hallway through the half-opened door. I read and re-read Shirley Temple's Book of Washington Irving's Tales that way, and I still shiver when I remember the illustrations of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman in that pale, reflected light. Then and now, I thought of Abe, reading by pale, reflected light. Silly ...

(This is an expanded version of the answer I gave to the survey .) *************************************************************************** The Big Cuter was born in 1983. He thinks he is 2 years behind those who were "first" to be "raised on the computer".... computer natives according to the Pew Internet Predictions survey. He has never had a teacher whose classroom experience in elementary school or high school included computers. There was no body of knowledge shared by those in pedagogy on the appropriate use of the medium - including search. Now that his generation is moving into the professional workforce, siring children and living daily with electronic search capabilities, that situation will change. I couldn't encourage my children with any specificity in a medium I didn't understand. My grandchildren (god willing!) will be blessed with parents who've grown up with an understanding of the technology and its capabilities. There will be...

Wondering if Boise State can win on a green field. The smell of lamb chops on the grill...... and wearing shorts while I'm inhaling the aroma... and it's January. Reading a new Sharon McCone story all afternoon, knowing that the bills are paid and the box of "to do" items has been reviewed. Making myself happy as a resolution seems to involve dealing with my marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth. The two of us finishing an entire Baskin Robbins chocolate chip ice cream pie birthday cake in one very happy ninety minute period and then wondering: can a pie be a cake? Watching Aaron's face as he describes power walking with his daughter while pushing his son's son-in-his- stroller up and down the long dirt driveway on their ranch in the Mendocino hills. The man has made lemonade and limoncello and lemon Italian Ices and Hawaiian lemon shaved ice out of what could have been a very big box of lemons. Discovering the wonderfulness that is Ukrainian Br...

I found the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project's 2009 Predictions Survey on Time Goes By and found myself waxing eloquent while making predictions on issues I know nothing about. Nor did I have any notion if what I was saying was true. But it was fun to rant and rave in someone else's venue... and the instructions said that they'd take you more seriously if you started the screed with your name. THAT gave me cause for pause. Was I me myself going to be answering the questions or would Ashleigh weigh in? Because this felt somewhat less public than the Burrow , and because it seemed scholarly and worldly, A/B took a back seat and I was on my way..... though with the question of identity firmly lodged in my brain. Will Google make us stupid? I giggle now when I think of it. It's a great question. It's also not an easy one, and I wanted to get it right. The pressure was on. From "how will we think" the survey moved on to ...