Scare Tactics

When I stepped into the shower this morning, the water was much too hot.  I stood off to the side while I adjusted the temperature until it was cool enough to get under.

I smiled because I remembered my naivete when I was in grammar school.  It was during the cold war and the Russians were the big bad wolf.  We had "duck and cover" drills, where we practiced getting under our desks for when we got word that an atomic bomb was going to drop on San Francisco.  How innocent that all seems now.

Somehow, I got it into my head that the Russians would capture me and torture me.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe to tell them the secrets of Pagan Babies.   But I got it into my head that they would torture me by subjecting me to freezing cold water and then plunging me into boiling hot water, so I decided to prepare for that and whenever I took a bath, I would get into a warm tub, then turn the hot water on until I could hardly stand it, then drain it and refill with cold water.  I don't know what I did to our water bills, but I was ready for those mean Russians when they abducted me.

We had a nun who was famous for holding "health class" right before lunch.  Each class consisted of some terrible story about something horrible that had happened to a child because they didn't follow good health rules.

There was the girl whose bladder burst because she didn't go to the bathroom when she felt the urge (which seems strange in a day when you had to raise your hand, #1 or #2, in order to be excused--and even then, your "excuse" was at the whim of the nun teaching the class.  If she felt you had gone to the bathroom too often, permission was denied!)

There was also the story of the palm tree whose palm fronds drooped low enough that kids could jump up and try to catch one.  Only the hero kid of the day jumped up at such an angle that the palm frond imbedded itself in his head and began to work its way into his brain.  (Yes, these were legitimate health classes!)

The last one I remember was about the two girls who decided they were going to take diet pills.  They found an ad in a magazine and sent away for pills.   When the pills came, one girl took hers right away (it seems to me there was only one pill each, but I may be wrong).  The other girl left hers on her dresser overnight and when she woke up, the pill had become a tapeworm.  The first girl died.

We believed this crap because Sister would never steer you wrong, would she?  Some of the lessons were a bit more graphic and we often went to lunch with queasy stomachs.

My father was also a good one for scaring you.  It was years before I could go to a movie theater without spending half my time wondering if the man sitting two rows behind me was going to suddenly leap up, jab a hypodermic needle in my neck and turn me into a drug addict.

But now I shower in comfortable water, I don't duck down when I come to a palm tree, and I can actually watch a movie without worrying that I will be a drug addict before I leave the theater.

I have also never been tempted to order pills by mail, which is probably the most helpful thing I ever took away from those health classes!

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Report from the family indicates  that they are becoming aware of the extent of the effect of Bob's stroke on him.  He can sometimes answer their questions, though his speech has been affected, as has the right side of his body.  The plan is that he is going to be moved to a stroke facility, if they determine that he can be rehabilitated.  It is going to take a long time, they realize now.  It must be very scary facing an uncertain future, but I know that Peach is a very strong person and will rise to the occasion, though I know that it is going to be difficult for her and for everyone.  Fortunately, there is lots of family around willing to offer physical and emotional support.  We'll help them all get through this, somehow.

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For some reason today I have been craving ginger cookies.  I think because I keep seeing commercials of people eating a gingerbread house, and my Sentsy warmer at present has a ginger cookie scent coming from it.  It is terrible for me to make cookies because we never have drop in guests and Walt is not big on sweets, so it ends up being me who eats them all and I need cookies like I need another hole in my head.  I purposely chose a recipe of ginger cookies because though I like them, I don't like them as much as rich butter cookies or chocolate chip cookies or brownies.  But they turned out just great and I've already probably had more than I should.

Ouch

You know, I went to Catholic schools through 12th grade and a great emphasis was placed on writing, spelling, punctuation, grammar. We always thought we were better than the poor kids at the public school two blocks away, who obviously didn't have nearly as good instruction as we had (I wonder who fostered that ridiculous notion in our heads!)

But I fancy myself at least somewhat literate and so when I read something like this I just cringe:

sory but this just freaks me out! dnt read? this(cuz it really wrks). u will gt kissd on the nearest frieday by the love of ur life. 2mara wll b the bst day of ur life however if you dnt post ths comment 2 at least 3 vids u will die withn 2 days nw uv startd readn this dnt stp this is so scary snd ths ovr 2 5 vids in 143 mins

That appeared on a video on You Tube. I'm so accustomed to horrendous grammar on You Tube I hardly notice it any more, but this one seemed to exceed the worst I'd seen.

Where you really find bad grammar, spelling and punctuation is when you come up against arguments about homosexuality. I swear that all the homophobes never made it past 3rd grade...which may explain something right there.

Ellen and Shelly were interviewed about ads which have been appearing in papers around the state this week. They say things like "LOST: My right to marry the person I love. If you're not using yours, please contact me..." and variations on that theme. The interview was posted on the Internet, but the link doesn't work any more.

It has, of course, resulted in the usual firestorm and the usual cringe-worthy grammar.

As a christian, the Bible is against gay practicing but because those involved cannot change, God has given them a reprobate mind and the end for such people is distruction to hell. Because from the beginning, God greated male and female and said in Genesis chapter 2 verse 24 that a man will leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife Eve and not Adam to Adam.

It's sad to say that in God's ceation that men and woman are the top best things intended for that process to be successful. Now the issue of [profane]sexuals getting married is one that boggles the mind. Why does the rest of us in this creation have to endure the sick minds of other's trying to further corrupt the intentions of God by saying he made an mistake on them.No one has ever been born gay

To piggyback on the last statement nor will the God we all cliam to believe in will make you that why than to kill you for practicing that lifestyle. Aminals don't practice it,it's confusion so why should we accept something so confusioning,so vile an act til God calls you dogs and depicts that act as an abomnation. This world should study the history of the [profane]sexual acts. Every society dyed.

(I'm imagining the rainbow colors of all those societies that "dyed" !!)

With the seeming increase in acceptance of bad grammar and abominal spelling, it makes me wonder if I lived through the end of the "golden days" of the English language.

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The fire continues to rage in Santa Barbara. I heard from our friends Dick and Gerry, who live kind of at the base of the hills, saying they were just fine...then this morning their daughter posted a message on Facebook that they had been evacuated during the middle of the night.

Walt called this morning to say that they had received a reverse 911 call at the Assisted Living facility that they should be ready to evacuate and that if they had to evacuate his mother she would have to move to a gymnasium at UC Santa Barbara rather than to his sister's home because all the medical stuff would be at the gym.

Tom posted a messsage on Facebook tonight they couldn't take the smoke any more and were packing up and moving out of town for a bit.

I tried to call both Walt and his sister tonight to find out if Alice had been evacuated, but couldn't reach either of them.

The fire update page I found said that some 30,000 people had been evacuated and nearly that many were on the notification list of people who should be ready to evacuate.

As of 7 p.m. Friday, 8,600 acres were destroyed, 80 structures destroyed, 3,500 residences and 100 commercial properties are threatened.

The last I heard, the fire was only 10% contained, so I think there is a long way to go before anybody is going to breathe comfortably again.

Taken by my friend Roy, who is the music
director at the old Mission Santa Barbara

Friends of My Youth

(The photo is from a Halloween party held at my house in about 1957. I'm second from the left, with the black top, looking up)

I was looking at the photo from the graduating class of 1956, the Photo of the Day for yesterday and for today, and remembering things about many of my fellow classmates.

Judy Lucchesi was my best friend. We had a friendly rivalry over Stephen Calegari, who was my neighbor. When I spent summers with my cousin Peach, Judy and I would write letters to each other ending with "he's MY boyfriend," each of us trying to make the "MY" bigger than the other's.

Janet Wilhelm's father was the manager of The Emporium, the huge department store downtown. They lived in Sausalito, which even then we a sleepy little artist's colony, but not the tourist trap that it has become today.

Eddie Garaventa was the class hunk. I once hosted a Halloween party, where my father made great decorations all throughout the house and we danced on the concrete back yard. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when Eddie asked me to dance because nobody had danced with me up to that point. But I didn't really know how to dance and all he said to me was "do you always step on people's feet?" and he left me before the end of the song. I was mortified. That's the only thing I remember about Eddie.

Marie Davilla's mother was our Brownie Scout leader. She was Japanese and Marie had been born in an internment camp at Tanforan race track (which, we joked, explained her love of horses). I remember that Marie could play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the piano and we always begged her to play it. Her mother was the housekeeper for a big Victorian mansion, now torn down and replaced by an apartment building. It was all dark wood with a grand staircase. Probably not as grand as in my child's mind's eye, but whenever I read something that talks about a mansion, this is the place I envision. I remember the yard had tiny pink roses growing in it.

Mrs. Davilla did great activities with us, like baking cookies in the kitchen and making a recording of our voices on some machine that recorded us on 78 rpm records.

Marie, Vickie Handley and I were the three from that class who ended up at St. Vincent High School, where we did not really maintain our friendship.

When we got into Girl Scouts, Michele Cicerone's mother, along with Judy's mother, were our leaders. Michele's mother had some theatre background and so we put on variety shows every year. It seems like we rehearsed forever and performed at some little building in San Francisco. I went on vacation for a weekend with Michele's family one time and I remember her father hit a dog when we were driving home and I cried because he wouldn't stop for it. Michele and I were also obsessed with "Spin and Marty" on the Mickey Mouse Club.

Shows what the sign of the times was. I cringe to think what pain we must have caused her, but we all thought of Patty Leone as a "bad girl." She was non-Catholic, for one thing, she had red hair and freckles, and she had ... gasp! ... pierced ears! Only "bad" girls had their ears pierced.

Dominic Manzone's family must have been rich. Richer than mine, anyway. Whenever we had drives to raise money for the "pagan babies" in Africa, Dominic always contributed the most, so he always got the "good" prizes.

You still see trucks in San Francisco with "Servedei Service" (or something like that) on it. That was Sandy Servedei's family. They lived in the Marina, a block from the yacht harbor. Sandy was, I think, the shortest in the class, but very sweet.

Gayle Tarzia and I walked to school every day, since she just lived two blocks away. She was the one who first told me the plot of A Star Is Born and changed my life. I wrote about her earlier this year, on her birthday.

What I remember most about Eugene Sarlotte was that his baby brother had long curly hair that hung in ringlets much like my own did when I started kindergarten and his mother hadn't had the curls cut off even as he approached 5.

When you are with the same people every day for 8 years, it's very strange never to see them again...and it's kind of sad to think that, 50 years later, I have hardly seen a one of them since graduation, 1956.

(to see the full photo, with identification, check the original entry)

St. Brigid's Grammar School

That's My Answer's question to be answered today was whether or not your grammar school had a web site. I did a Google search and was surprised to find that St. Brigid School did, indeed, have a web site.

Not only did it have a web site, but it had an alumni page where it was asking for information from graduates. I sent mine to the e-mail address included.

Visiting the site did, of course, open a floodgate of memories.

The staff were members of The Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (or "BVMs" for short) and, of course, this was the day when all nuns wore habits. The BVMs had the box-like headgear, with heavy rosary beads hanging from the belt around their waist. The notion of a nun having any skin under all that black was incomprehensible. It seemed that they always carried clickers. We stood on clicks, we sat on clicks, we genuflected in church on clicks. I suspect that the idea of clicker training for dogs started by some person who went to Catholic grammar school!

I remember my very first day of school...or at least the first five minutes of it. I was starting a bit late because I was too young and after my best friend started Kindergarten, I was so sad, my mother got a special dispensation for me to go into the classroom too, so it was a few days after the start of school. The deal was that I would spend 2 years in Kindergarten, but apparently I was so good at coloring, they let me move into 1st grade with my classmates. I was always the youngest in the class (which became difficult when everyone reached puberty a year before I did).

I remember standing at the kindergarten room door, crying while Sister Mary St. Patrice was telling me how pretty my curls were as she gradually took me by the hand and led me to the playhouse in the room.

I don't really remember anything else about kindergarten at all, but that one moment when I stepped into the room, trying not to cry, is indelibly burned into my memory banks.

We got to wear whatever we wanted for kindergarten, but for the next 11 years, I would wear uniforms. August was always the month when we would head to Macy*s or The Emporium, or whichever store had the contract and get, in grammar school, the white middy blouse, the removable collar and cuffs, the navy blue tie, and the pleated navy blue skirt that I lived in 5 days a week. The boys had grey tweed slacks, white shirts and ties.

My memories of grammar school come in little chunks. We played games in the school yard -- "Lemonade," "Red Rover," and "Mother May I," for example. I participated sometime, but I was usually one of the last chosen for teams. I mostly remember sitting off in a corner reading.

I remember the day when a group of girls in my class all surrounded me and felt under my middy blouse to see if I had breasts yet, because they were all wearing bras already, but since I was a year younger, I was still flat chested. They laughed at lot.

(When I did get a bra, I was so jealous because Stephen would always snap my friend Judy's bra and never mine...we both had a crush on him.)

The school playground was next to the church, which was built of big stone blocks. Now there is a rectory between the yard and the church, but then there wasn't. I liked to stand at the church wall and flake off pieces of the stone with the tip of a bobbiepin. I would sometimes spend my entire recess period flaking pieces of stone off the side of the building.

I remember the school library. We had to have special permission to go to the library, because it was so small, but I was there as often as possible and read a lot of books about the lives of various saints and decided I wanted to be a Carmelite just like my heroine, Saint Teresa of Lisieux.

I remember hot chocolate and plain cake donuts in the cafeteria on Lenten mornings for those who went to early Mass, and that "cafeteria smell" that comes with institutions. I developed a hatred of canned green beans in that cafeteria!

The 7th and 8th grade girls had a special bathroom on the third floor of the building that the little kids weren't allowed to go in. I was always curious until I got old enough to realize that it had a Kotex dispensing machine in it.

Religious ceremonies were part of our life every day, whether things like "May processions" (where we crowned a statue of Mary with flowers) in the classroom, or a big deal in the church, like "40 Hours" devotions, and endless processions down the side aisle of the church (I nearly typed "theatre" -- same thing!) for various events.

I remember singing in the choir loft of the church. We sang Gregorian chant at Mass each Sunday, and read the words off of big plasticized cards. It was a tiny choir loft and we all crowded into a little space next to the big pipe organ.

I remember endless grammar drills in class. How I hated them ("b says buh-buh-buh," ... "s says sss-sss-sss"), and how I now appreciate them because of the excellent grammar foundation it gave me. We always knew that we had much better grammar skills than the poor non-Catholic kids in the nearby public school.

When I was in about the 7th grade our special project was to do a report on a state (I had California). It had to be in a booklet cut in the shape of the state and when all the reports were finished, we put them together into a big U.S. map on the bulletin board outside the classroom. They took a picture of us putting up the booklets. It was the year after I went on my first diet and I still remember Jimmy Whoel looking at the picture and saying "that can't be Bev. She's not fat enough."

I remember the preparation for receiving the sacrament of Confirmation and how we were expected to take "the pledge," promising not to drink alcohol until we were 21. I wonder how many of us kept that pledge (I didn't!).

I remember Christmas pageants in the little theatre in the basement of the church (which was also the place where we assembled to line up for processions).

I remember lining up on Sunday mornings for Mass, those who were having communion in one line and those who were not in another line. I had a taken a sip of water one morning, in the days when you couldn't even have water before receiving communion. I mistakenly got into the communion line and thought I was going to go to hell for not switching lines, but going to hell was far less frightening than having to admit to the nuns that I'd made a mistake and gotten in the wrong line!

Most of my classmates went on to Presentation High School. Only three of us went to St. Vincent, a decision I've never regretted, but I did lose track of everybody from my grammar school class, which is kind of sad.

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Because I always believe in passing along good information to my readers, I offer this as a possible filler for a hole that has existed for a long time. If only I'd had one with me when I went to see whales with my friend Diane....

And to counteract that, this page has absolutely THE most beautiful photos from Africa that I have seen.