Cinema Survey

I have felt "pre-cold" for the past couple of days (throat, nose, aches), starting last night.  So I kind of took it easy today, except for a run to the post office to send off a package to Peach and a Swap-Bot package.  I called my mother to tell her I was taking a couple of days off so as not to expose her to my germs, if they exist.  So there is nothing really to write about today (she says, judiciously avoiding any discussion of Washingon, DC), but I found this in my files that I never did and thought it might be fun to do, since it's right up my alley.

1. What is your favorite movie starring William Powell and Myrna Loy?
I have probably seen several of their movies, but the only ones that I remember are The Thin Man series, which I always enjoyed.

2. Name a screen team that appeared in only one film together but are still noteworthy for how well they complemented each other.
I loved the relationship between Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger in Shadowlands. Winger was less annoying that usual.

3. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' best film together?
I have seen all of their movies together and don't have a favorite, though the Gershwin score for Shall We Dance made that one fun to watch

4. Your favorite actor named "Robert"?
Robert Downey, Jr.  I will never forget being blown away by his performance in Chaplin.

5. An actor/actress who, when you see one of their movies, you always wish that someone else was in his/her role?
I never liked Randolph Scott.  

6. An actor/actress that someone close to you really loves that you can't stand or vice versa?
I'll go vice-versa.  Nobody shares my love for Judy Garland 

7. An actor/actress that you both agree on completely?
Walt and I both like Jacques Tati.

8. Complete this sentence: Virginia O'Brien is to Ethel Merman as...
Vera Ellen is to Rosemary Clooney

9. What is your favorite film starring Ray Milland?
Dial M for Murder ... always go for Hitchcock (though Lost Weekend was pretty good too!)

10. You had to have seen this one coming: what is your favorite movie of the 1960s?
Wow...that's a toughie.  So many, but To Kill a Mockingbird is at the top.  Also The Manchurian Candidate and The Music Man.  

11. Best movie kiss?
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief.  Never have fireworks been more x-rated.

12. Who was your favorite of Robert Montgomery's leading ladies?
I had to go look up Robert Montgomery's filmography and discover that I don't think I've seen any of his movies, except possibly Meet Mr. Jordan.

13. You think it would have been a disaster (or, at least, not as good) if what movie starred the actor/actress who was originally asked to star in it?
Shirley Temple was originally supposed to be Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but her studio wouldn't release her.  I think MGM lucked out on that one!

14. An actor/actress who you will watch in any or almost any movie?
Duhh.  Judy Garland, of course.  I love them all, though like the later ones better, but I have seen each more than once and A Star Is Born probably 100 times. Seriously.  As for actors, I have probably seen all of Cary Grant's movies.

15. Your favorite Leslie Howard film and role?
Intermezzo. Leslie Howard was such an odd duck.  So Ashley Wilkes...but I loved the chemistry between him and Ingrid Bergman.  (I never really did like Ashley. Too much a marshmallow.)

16. You have been asked to host a marathon of four Barbara Stanwyck films. Which ones do you choose?
Stella Dallas, Double Indemnity, Sorry Wrong Number and even The Thornbirds...That pretty much spans her entire career., 

17. What is, in your mind, the nearest to perfect comedy you have ever seen?
I am not into slapstick, so the Marx Brothers, most W.C. Fields and all the 3 Stooges (as well as more modern slapsticky type movies) don't count for me.  My very favorite comedy is The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, near the start of his career.  Also several Mel Brooks movies, like The Twelve Chairs, To Be or Not to Be, and, of course, The Producers.

18. You will brook no criticism of what film?
The 1954 version of A Star Is Born.  However, if you want to critique the Barbra Streisand remake, feel free...I'll happily join you!

19. Who is your favorite Irish actress?
Hands down Maureen O'Hara, especially inThe Quiet Man. Oh how I loved that movie!  I wanted to dye my hair auburn, though in watching it today, there is an awful lot of spousal abuse going on.  I don't want to think about that!

20. Your favorite 1940s movie starring Ginger Rogers?
Kitty Foyle.  She was probably also good in The Barkleys of Broadway, but since she took the role when Judy Garland was fired, I can never quite like her.

21. Do you enjoy silent movies?
Some, yes.  You can't find a more emotional movie than The Kid.

22. What is your favorite Bette Davis film?
I like schlocky movies, so I would choose Dark Victory, though there are others far better.  I always liked her softer side better than her hard edged side.

23. Your favorite onscreen Hollywood couple?
Definitely Tracy and Hepburn!

24. Who is your favorite Hollywood costume designer?
Cecil Beaton. His costumes for My Fair Lady were exquisite.  But then there was Edith Head....

25. What is your favorite tough action film?
Not much for tough action films, but I still marvel at how much glass was broken in Die Hard (the original)

26. Franchot Tone: yes or no?
My mother always hated him, so I grew up not liking him.  Now she can't remember who he is or ever not liking him. . Go figure.

27. Favorite actor?
Spencer Tracy

28. Favorite actress?
Judy Garland, of course

29. Of those listed, who is the coolest: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, or Patrick Stewart?
Probably Paul Newman.  He was not only a good actor, but his charitable works push him into the "cool" category.

30. What is your favorite movie from each of these genres:
Comedy: The Frisco Kid / The Fatal Glass of Beer
Swashbuckler: The Princess Bride
Film noir: The Third Man
Musical: A Star is Born (Garland, of course)
Holiday: Miracle on 34th Street (the original, with Maureen O'Hara and Margaret O'Brien)
Hitchcock: North by Northwest and Vertigo

The Rambler

What is it with some people and their cars? (I wont’ be sexist and say "men and their cars" because I’ve known some women with attachments too.)   This morning I was reading over the Sunday Stealling answers of some other people and I read the answers of one man whose first car was a 1964 Rambler.  Out of all those answers for this week's Sunday Stealing, that was the one people commented on.   Apparently Ramblers have a certain mystique.

I should have known this about Walt before I married him. When we were dating, he drove the 1953 Rambler that he bought when he was in college and which carried him from Maryland to California in 1960. (If you ever watched the old George Reeve "Superman" TV show, Lois Lane drove a car just like it, only it hers was shiny.) It was a convertable, but it was unlike any convertible I’d ever seen before--and a lot of the top was held together with safety pins. It got great gas mileage, but went through oil faster than a fry cook at a greasy spoon. We once drove to Los Angeles and stopped once for gas and 15 times to put another quart of oil in the car.

(the license, LWU 504, stood for
"Liquor, Women, and Unity of the church."
Don't ask)

The car had...character. It had a clock that refused to stop. No matter what went wrong with the car, the clock always worked. 

It also hated me.

I don’t mean to anthropomorphize an inanimate object. But this damn car was alive. It was the 1953 version of "Kit" or "My Mother, the Car." And it hated me.

Walt would occasionally let me drive it. When he went off to boot camp for six weeks, he left it with me. Whenever I got behind the wheel, things fell off. Things locked. Things leaked. Things rattled and clattered. It coughed, sputtered and died. I paid the equivalent of two weeks worth of my salary to get the damn brakes fixed when they went out while he was gone.

When Walt got behind the wheel, it purred. Walt always thought I was making it up when I complained that the car hated me. But trust me. It hated me. And I hated it too.

When we got married, we bought an "us" car. It was another convertible. A red Tempest convertible. Very flashy. Very nice. 

(We left the wedding in the Rambler, and
transferred to the Tempest which was hidden on
a nearby street)

But Walt couldn’t bear to get rid of the Rambler, and so we parked it on the street with our new car and it sat there. Occasionally Walt would start it to keep the battery running. It would be enough to start the clock and it would continue to tick.

Jeri was born and then Ned was expected so we moved to a larger rental house. By now the Rambler really didn’t work at all (except for the clock, of course). So it would be logical to get rid of it, but we didn’t. Instead, Walt put it in the garage of the new house, leaving the brand new flashy car out on the street in the elements. The Rambler sat there for the year or so that we were in the new house.

Then Paul was coming, so we decided to buy our own house. I finally convinced Walt that we had pushed, pulled, and towed the Rambler all over the place and it was time to get rid of it. Reluctantly, most reluctantly, he agreed. (We did, for a time, discuss the possibility of having it pressed into a coffee table with the clock imbedded in it, still working, but decided it would probably be too heavy to move)

We tried to call junk yards to find a place that would take the car, but discovered that junk yards are elitists. They won’t take a car older than a certain age, and the Rambler had long since passed the cut-off point. We couldn’t even give the damn thing away!

Walt finally found a place which would reluctantly take it, if we could get it there. They wouldn’t come to pick it up.

They closed each day about the time Walt got off work and we knew we couldn’t just drive it there and turn it in--getting it there would be a slow process and there wasn’t enough time. So we took it to the junk yard after hours (Walt drove very slowly and I followed him, ready to push or whatever when the car stopped) and parked it across the street, intending the return the next day and drive it into the yard.

When we returned home, the next door neighbor asked what had happened to the car. Walt told him the story.

"That’s too bad," he said. "I would have taken it for my son."

A home for his baby!

We went back to the junk yard and brought the Rambler back to the house and gave it to the neighbor, happy, finally that it would have a new home.

And then we moved.

We moved to the other side of town, maybe 10 miles away.

Shortly after we moved, we drove off in the shiny new car one day, turned the corner at the bottom of our hill and....there was the Rambler. Just parked on the street. It had an "abandoned car" sticker on it, placed by an alert police officer. We didn’t know what to make of it. The neighbor didn't even know where we had moved. What was the car doing here?

We called the neighbor. It turns out that the son wasn’t quite as enamored of the car as Walt was and so he gave it to a friend of his. The story was that the friend had been driving the car and it got to this street and just died.

My story is that it smelled Walt and refused to go farther.

The problem was that we no longer had the key to the car, and we had never transferred ownership, so technically it was our responsibility. But we couldn’t find the kid who had abandoned the car. It sat there for many days while we tried to explain to the police that we couldn’t move the car. But we waved at it whenever we passed by.

One day it was gone. We didn't know who had taken it, but were glad to see that we no longer had to worry about it.

The next day Walt was taking the bus to work, got halfway there, looked out the bus window and...there was the Rambler! It was now parked on his bus route. This was one stubborn car.

But it wasn’t abandoned now and so it just sat there, parked legally, and Walt passed it every morning for weeks until the day when it finally disappeared.

Near where it had been parked was a junk yard and there was always a huge mountain of car bodies heaped up, awaiting crushing. We always expected to find the Rambler turn up on top of the junk heap, but we never did. It appeared that we had finally seen the last of the car.

I may have hated the car and it may have hated me, but we've never had a car since that has as many memories or has such a great story to tell.

Man's Inhumanity to Man

Long before we went on our trip to Ukraine, I purchased he book, "Babi Yar," by A. Anatoli (Kuznetsov). intending to read it so I would know something about that place when we visited.  In truth, I had heard the term for many years, but didn't have a clue what it was, whether a mountain, a river, or a building.

From the book, I learned that it was a deep ravine in the middle of Kiev where the Nazis had killed many Jews.  I wanted to know more, but somehow the thickness of the book and my preference to read mental cotton candy at the time prevented me from even starting it.

When we got to Kiev and were standing at the site of Babi Yar and I was listening to our tour guide, I was kicking myself for not having read the book first.

When we were there it seemed a lovely sylvan setting and difficult to visualize the things that went on there.  We only stood at this one end.  The ravine actually stretched for a mile.

After we returned, I started reading "Babi Yar," and found it was a book I could not take in large chunks, but would have to read awhile and then set it aside and then go back to it.  Logos was great for that, because I have taken it to work with me for the past 3 weeks and finally got to where I needed to finish it, and so read the last couple of chapters here.  When I finished, I decided that it was fortunate that I had not read it before we left.  It was so much more vivid now, having been to the site and seeing what the area looks like today.

The author was 12 when the Nazis came to Kiev and somehow he survived those years of torture and oppression and made up his mind that he would one day let the world know what it was like to live through it, and the things that the people of Kiev and the surrounding area had to do to survive. The book was heavily censored by the Soviets when it was first published, but was re-published in 1969 in an uncensored form after the author's defection to England (bringing with him all of his notes)

Towards the end of the book, the author writes, "I cannot for the life of me understand why, on this beautiful, blessed earth--among people equipped with brains and the capacity to think, who are not just animals with instsincts, among thinking, understanding beings--it is possible for people to indulge in such absolute madness as war, dictatorship, police terror, to kill each other and to humiliate each other sadistically."

The conditions under which those who were not slaughtered at Babi Yar were forced to live made me realize why the Nazis could get away with their exterminations without the objection of those who knew it was going on.  The first two days, 33,771 Jews who thought they were being relocated to Palestine, were stripped naked, and exterminated at the edge Babi Yar, their bodies falling into the pit. Over the next two years, the Nazis continued to kill...well, just about anybody they wanted -- gypsies, the mentally ill, and sometimes a hundred people would be chose at random to be punished for the misdeeds of one or two people.  It is estimated that over 100,000 met their deaths in the ravine.  It is the largest massacre on record for the war.  

The killings became so commonplace that for people who had to survive on, if they were lucky, one loaf of bread a week for a family and whose whole life was trying to exist one more day, escape one more raid, dodge bullets, put out fires, etc., the sounds of machine guns at Babi Yar were just a part of everyday life in this new hell in which they were living.

There are scenes in this book of torture so egregious that you cannot believe it.  It's hard to know how a people can survive anything so terrible. 

When the war was winding down and the Nazis knew they were losing, they tried to hide the evidence of their massacres.  Prisoners were sent into the pit to haul up bodies, which were stacked on gravestones taken from the Jewish cemetery.   The bodies were placed, side by side, horizontally, then vertically on top, then wood on top of that and repeat until the stack was ten feet high.  Then it was doused with accelerant and burned, thick black smoke filling the skies over Kiev.  The ashes were examined for remaining jewelry and gold teeth and then it was done again.  It's difficult to hide the remains of 100,000 victims.

The U.S.S.R. decided to remove all evidence of Babi Yar from history.   They built a dam across the end of the ravine and proceeded to pump pulp (a mixture of water and mud) into it through pipes from the neighboring brickwork quarries.  The ravine was turned into a lake.  The idea was that the mud would separate and settle, while the water would flow away through the channels in the dam.  And it actually did for several years.  Each year the dam was strengthened and increased in height until by 1961 it was the height of a six story building.

And then in March of 1961, it collapsed.  A wall of liquid and mud thirty feet high poured out of the mouth of Babi Yar.  Eye witnesses who managed to escape and who watched from a distance say that the wall of mud "burst out of the ravine with the speed of an express train and that no one could get out of its way."   Hundreds were smothered in half a minute.

The police cordoned off the whole area and took care that nobody took photographs.  Helicopters were forbidden to fly over and the affected area was hidden behind high walls.  It took two years for all the bodies to be recovered.

Today Babi Yar is a lovely park, with several memorials to all the people who perished there.  When we were there, I found it odd to see mothers and children playing in the playground which covers the grave of so many.

It is said that we must never forget the victims of the Holocaust because if we remember, it can never happen again.  But it has happened again in places like Rwanda and Congo.  It is happening in other places in Africa and perhaps other areas around the world.  I don't know what there is about being put in power over helpless people that turns men into monsters who can treat other human beings worse than they would treat an animal.

There is a Babi Yar memorial video on YouTube (well, there are several), which I watched after I finished the book.  It was very moving, but more striking to me was the horrible, horrible, horrible comments made by people in reaction to the video.  It makes me realize that the Nazis were not alone in their ability to be killing monsters. Given the opportunity such a thing could happen here.  And how would those who are not immediately affected respond...?

My heart often hurts for the human race.

Sunday Stealing

What was your first alcoholic drink?
I don't remember, but probably bourbon and ginger ale.  My father used to fix me a very weak drink whenever the family had a gathering, as a way to teach me about drinking, and bourbon and ginger ale was his drink of choice for me.
 

What was your first job?
Washing bloody test tubes and poopy slides in a Medical Arts laboratory.  I often gagged when there was too much "stuff" to wash.  I also held down nervous patients having blood drawn. Whoda thunk I would later spend most of my entire working life in medical offices?

What was your first car?
I have never owned my own car, but the first car Walt and I bought just before we got married was a red Pontiac convertable (which we traded in for a family friendly car after Jeri was born).

What was your first mobile phone?
Oh lord I don't remember, but it was a phone we had in the car and it was huge...about the size of a Princess phone, I believe.

What is your first proper memory?
I remember just bits and pieces of a train trip my mother and I took to So. California.  She tells me I was 18 months old at the time.  I also remember being taken up on the roof of our flat to look at smoke billowing over San Francisco.   I assume it was some sort of big fire, but somehow I decided we were watching the war...I don't know how old I was, but able to understand the concept of "war" anyway.

Who was your first teacher?
Sister Mary St. Patrice.  The only thing I remember about her was her complimenting my Shirely Temple curls when I first entered her classroom.

Which fictional character do you wish was real?
Claire Frasier.  I want to talk about her time travel experiences.

Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?
I won a cruise for my mother, Karen, and me, from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a President Lines ship.  It was a one-way trip, so we flew home after spending the day at Disneyland.

Who was your first best friend?
Before starting Kindergarten, it was Stephen Calegari, who lived in the apartment around the corner from our flat.  After I started school, it was Gayle Tarzia, who lived a block away from me and with whom I walked to school every day for 8 years.

What was your first detention for?
I don't remember ever having detention.

What's your strongest sense?
My sense of humor!

Who was your first kiss?
Billl Farrington, who is now a Jesuit brother.  I don't remember the actual kiss, though.

What was the first film you remember seeing at the cinema?
I'm sure I saw other movies with my mother, but the first one I remember was Show Boat, which I saw with my grandmother.  We arrived in the middle of the film (in the scene where Gaylord and Magnolia are on their honeymoon) and stayed to see the whole thing over from the beginning. 

What's the largest amount of money you've ever won?
I have won small amounts of money in Reno, but I don't like to gamble and am very unlucky so only do it if forced (someone gives me money and says "play it").   I don't remember ever winning enough to be a "large amount of money."

What's the largest amount of money you've spent in one spree?
I don't do "sprees," but it would probably involve the impulse purchase of a camera, which I have done a time or two.

If you had a warning label, what would yours say?
Caution:  contents fragile.

Have you ever got sweet revenge on anyone?
Oh yes.  Hell hath no fury..., as they say.  When I wrote the second Lamplighters book, every single word in the book is true, but it was deliberately written to cast my former friend, who was very cruel to me after Gilbert died, in the worst possible light.  I gave him his due for the wonderful performances he gave, but in talking about off-stage events, I told the truth, rather than covering up his very bad qualities.

Have you ever been to a live concert? Of course.  Frequently.  The first was Judy Garland's show which came through San Francisco in about 1956.  I saw it three times (I later saw her Carnegie Hall show in 1961 from the 3rd row and shook her hand at the curtain call).

Have you ever been to see stand up comedy?
I'm not a big fan of stand up comedy, but have seen some shows.  The last was one of George Carlin's last performances.

Have you ever needed stitches?
Only after giving birth.  There are no visible scars that anybody is likely to see, unless they are a gynecologist.

Let's Take a Walk Around the Block

One of my most recent swaps on SwapBot was to send a postcard to someone and on it list the things you see walking around the block.  I really didn't expect much, but it turned out to be kind of fun.

I started by taking a picture of Villanova Drive today so that I could make a postcard of it onto which to write all of my observations.  I was excited to make the postcard because I just spent nearly $30 on a box of postcards to print yourself.  Only using Avery's template everytime I got it all set up, it crashed Firefox and I had to start over again.  Grrrr.

But I found a work-around and got the postcard printed and started off on my voyage of discovery.  The very first thing I saw on my walk around the block was Lizzie sitting in the window staring at me.

(I know she was upset because I didn't give her a treat before I left!)

I found the mundane things I expected to find -- dead leaves, our neighbor's nicely manicured lawn, moss growing on the curb and in one of the messier yards, a discarded empty yogurt container.  On the corner, where the water drains into the sewer was a sign warning people that this was for rainwater only because the water drains into the nearby wetlands.

But then I looked across the street and saw this:

At first I thought someone had TP'd the yard, but then I noticed that the whole lawn was decorated for a spooky Halloween.  This and one other tree were covered in a kind of foamy white which I guess was supposed to be a spider web, though it looked more like cotton candy.  

In the driveway of the house across the street I saw a pomegranate lying there, cracked and already showing signs of decay.  On the porch of that house were 2 fresh pumpkins.  They were the Laurel and Hardy of pumpkins, one tall and thin, the other short and fat.  A little farther down the street was a house with jack-o-lanterns on the porch, but those were artificial.

I passed an old man in a motorized wheelchair being helped into the car by what I presume was his son.  I didn't take a picture!

Several yards had tricycles or big wheels and I saw a woman pushing a stroller, which I thought a nice contrast to the son putting his elderly father into a car.

I passed three basketball hoops set into concrete in tires and at the same house where one of those was I also saw a skateboard ramp.

Across the street from this was a real tree that had been TPd, not just for Halloween and across from that was a macrame hammock hanging from a tree.

There are lots of little metal coverings over cable wires and stuff.   They look like gigantic green pills cut in half and stuck in the ground, but one house had discovered how to make theirs look less "technical" and more artistic.

(Unfortunately right near that was a discarded cigarette lighter someone had thrown in the bushes...actually the only sign of smoking I saw on the walk--no cigarette butts.  We are a politically correct city, after all!)

The last thing I noticed, but didn't put on the post card because it would require too much explanation was this traffic sign.

Many years ago Villanova Drive was a big wide thoroughfare and a race track for students coming from the nearby high school.  At least once a year for the first several years we lived here there was an auto accident from people taking the little curve in the street too fast.  One of those accidents sent a car careening into our front yard and landing atop our recently planted tree.

The bad year was the year that a car went out of control, ran through the wall of a house and came to rest at the foot of a little girl's bed, setting the house on fire.  The fire was put out and all of the people in the house were safe (though I think the cat died in the fire), but following that accident we had neighborhood meetings with representatives of the city trying to figure out a way to slow the traffic.   The city said speed bumps could not be put in (though a few years later they were put in on other streets) and they finally settled on planting trees in the middle of the street.  

 This actually must have helped because we have not had a big accident since that was done, though it is a slight inconvenience for those of us on this side ot the street because we had to eliminate parking on this side...but there is always room for one or two more cars in our driveway.

But one of the other suggestions was to lower the speed limit to 20 mph on the curve.  Apparently that was not possible, for some legal reasons, but they said that they could put up this sign, which would be a warning to slow down, but if people went 25 mph they could not be ticketed.  I don't think anybody knows that and people do slow down, which I guess has also helped kill the accident rate around here.

When I got back from my walk, Lizzie was here demanding her treat.   I finished writing my postcard and realized that I could actually make a journal entry out of it too (only the journal entry is better because it can include photos).

October at Logos

Halloween has come to Logos Books.

There are little touches of Halloween in several places, like this jack-o-lantern which looks out onto the side street.

And this one, tucked away on a high shelf.

Incidentally, the pumpkin sits next to a book called "The Book on the Book Shelf" and what you see is the front cover, not three books standing upright.  If I weren't so close to finishing "Babi Yar," I would have taken this to read.  It's the history of the book and one thing it discusses was how it was decided that books should stand on a shelf, upright, like this.  From the little I thumbed through it, it looks fascinating.

This being a new month, we have a new artist on display with a collection called "Surprised by Life."  These are pen and ink animal drawings by Ann Wright and all of them quite whimsical.  I keep commenting on these two paintings.

I've been telling people that the fish on the right is food for the fish on the left.  My humor is not appreciated.

It was really a pretty quiet day today.  A guy came in and spent nearly $50 on an eclectic selection (and then went to the "new" book store in the next block and bought three books there and then came back and bought another book at Logos.  His purchases will help make this a decent day, moneywise.

I did have a few high points.  This guy on the right came in.   He's been in before.  He looks through all the books, and never buys anything (from me, anyway), but the noteworthy thing about him is that he appears to make his own hats.  The last time he came in he had a ball cap (like the one he is wearing here)   made out of a newspaper.  I don't know what this one was made of, but perhaps paper plates.  Today he had on regular shoes, but the last time he had on very ratty, holey shoes.  Both times he was dressed all in white.

When I started reading "Babi Yar" today, on the first page, I found the word "tendentious," which I remember finding the last time I was at Logos and at that time I had looked it up.  It means "strongly favoring a particular point of view in a way that may cause argument : expressing a strong opinion."  When I came across it today, I felt good that I knew what it meant.

A couple of women "of a certain age" stood outside for a long time.  The woman on the left here was on her cell phone the whole time while her friend, with snowy white hair, looked through out bargain shelves at mystery books.

Eventually she came into the shop and bought "I, Michael Bennett," the James Patterson book that I took home with me last week and returned today. She said she was looking for something to read on her fight to Madison, Wisconsin.   I didn't tell her it was a terrible book.  Let her find out for herself--she might like it.

When the guy with the $50 purchase came to the desk, I had to ring him up three times because I kept screwing up.  At one point I had his bill up to $140.  But eventually I got the right amount rung up.  And then at the end of the day, I discovered I had forgotten to enter one purchase and it threw the whole column of numbers off.  First time ever I've done that.

I think I've been at Atria too long.

At the end of the day, I had a helper ring up almost every sale.

I had a single fly attach itself to me last week too.   Almost makes me believe in reincarnation and think that this was a long lost friend come to pay a visit.

The Wait for the Mail

Mail delivery has been a Very. Big. Deal. for me all of my life.   Probably started when I started having pen pals, and started a correspondence with Peach, which has lasted on-again, off-again for the better part of my life (now, of course, e-mail).  

I got spoiled in my early years because we had such fantastic mail delivery.

The mail came into San Francisco and was sorted at the main post office down near the waterfront, the same place my father went to work when they took mail delivery by train off and started sending it by buses.  That main post office caused my father to have a nervous breakdown, ultimately.

Anyway, local mail carriers would pick up their sorted mail to start their routes and then travel by public transportation to where they began their day (trucks would then take the rest of the mail and deposit it in street mail boxes around the city where the mailmen would pick it up after finishing the first batch).

Our mailman took the  41 Union Street bus and got off at Leavenworth and Union, which was the intersection closest to our house.  We were the third stop on his route.  First he delivered to my aunt Jean (and later my boyfriend's aunt Leah), then to our landlords, and then to us.  We almost always had our mail by 9:30 in the morning and I would sit on the window seat in the living room on mornings when I was home and watch for the bus, so I could see him arrive.

It was great for someone who waited impatiently for their daily mail delivery!

Christmas time was best of all.  Everybody sent Christmas cards in those days, of course, and there was so much mail to deliver in December that we would often have two and sometimes three mail deliveries a day.  My father hated Christmas because his work load on the train would triple.  He was angry from the middle of December to New Years day, which always made for pleasant holiday activities.

I don't know if I actually got that much mail when I was a kid, but I sure clung to the mail delivery times.

When we were hosting foreign students here in Davis, and they would return to their home countries, I would get lots of mail, regular mail from the kids who stayed with us and who wanted to stay in touch, and thank you letters from the members of the groups I coordinated and whom I got to know so well.

We knew our mailman in those days and he once told me I received more international mail than anybody in Davis (Davis was smaller then!).  Getting international mail was such a common thing for me that when someone in Brasil wrote to me and addressed it to "Mrs. Beverly, Davis, CA," our mailman delivered it to me!

Our regular mailman eventually was transferred to the main post office and I've never really "known" our mailman since then; just about the time we get to know somebody, he or she is replaced by a new carrier.  But I remember going to the main post office once to pick up vacation mail and when the clerk asked me my address, the guy sitting next to him (who happened to be our old mailman), told him my name and my address.  I loved that.

For a long time now we have been getting our mail regularly between 12:30 and 1:30.  When it gets to be 1:45, I start getting antsy.

But within the past month, our mail has started arriving very late.   Sometimes as late as 5 p.m.  I hate it when they toy with my mail addict sensitivities like that.  These days I get a lot of mail again, what with the swaps that I participate in on Swap Bot and mail from the Compassion kids, but the worst mail days are when I wait all. day. for the mail carrier to arrive and then, like today, he delivers two newsletters for Walt and the daily pack of junk mail.  Nothing for me.  It's like wasting most of the day!

* * *

I made a short trip to Atria today.  My mother had asked me to buy bread and milk for her (I know that a week from now I will probably throw both out) and I had noticed she was out of ice cream, so I bought her some ice cream too.

We sat down to visit and within 15 minutes I had reassured her at least 10 times that Ed would be by to visit her tomorrow and would bring checks for her.   She would then turn around and say "that's good because I need to go to the bank and get checks."

When there was a gap in the conversation and she asked "How much longer do you think I'm going to live?  I'm old, Bev.  I'm 94.  All my family left me behind." I had to get out of there.  I just wasn't up for the "I'm old--when will I die?" conversation today.  It's the conversation we have at least three times every time I visit her.  It's a terrible thing to say, but on one level, I am almost wishing for her death.  I don't want to lose her, but she wants to go so badly.  I remember when she went through this with her mother-in-law and had exactly the same conversations with her.  Catherine lived to be ~102 and spent a good five or six years refusing to become involved in anything at the very expensive facility where she lived.  My mother was so frustrated with her and I wish she could understand (she can't) that she is doing exacty the same thing.

Peg told me today about a woman who lives at Atria who is 102 and who makes clothes for babies of low income mothers and homeless people and who volunteers in several other activities in Atria.  I mentioned that to my mother and she just said she was too old to get involved in anything.

I came home and read another book on dementia.  If there is anything comforting in these books it is realizing that as dementia patients go, my mother is high functioning.  And that, believe it or not, is comforting.