How long ‘til my soul gets it right…

The last Concert on the Square, a tough day, two wonderful young women who keep me going… (one of them pictured here, helping me along).

Nothing beats an endless drive where you are not the driver but your daughters take charge, with their lovely voices adding to the old tapes from years gone by.

Does anyone else recognize this: how long ‘til my soul gets it right? How long indeed…

sometimes help comes from those who are younger than you 

This day belongs with the trash bags that went out on garbage day

Might it improve still? Please? Memorable moments from the a.m.:

* Getting up in the morning without much sleep under the belt. It was one of those nights where no one in the household slept. Maybe we had poisonous gasses leaking somewhere and our minds clicked into the self-preservation mode, I don’t know. Mainly, though, no one slept, me included;

* Finding that the first thing on my calendar was an early dental check up during which the hygienist kept telling me that she hated her job (it was only her first month of work, btw) and wished she lived in England;

* Learning from the dentist that some of the cheap dental work that I had done way way back in the years of poverty (grad school) was done incorrectly and there are many who would be oh so willing to fix things and start afresh; yes, that’s indeed what I want – a Fall affair with the dental office;

* Discovering that I had created morning email messes galore, some fixable, some – jury’s still out; understanding that in the future, attempting to write at 4:30 am when one can’t sleep, hasn’t slept, will not sleep is perhaps not a clever idea;

* Getting a call from the “Rejects” Office of the IRS (the name tells you something right off the bat) telling me that I owed hundreds of dollars because I had failed to properly compute some figures on one of their complicated stupid tables inside. Had I done so, I would have correctly concluded that a line on the 1040 should have had something other than a “0” on it;

* Being late for a meeting simply because I was late for a meeting; I have no other good reason to offer.

And so on.

But, as always, the mood is like a bouncing little ping pong ball and so I’m submitting this as counter evidence to the general atrociousness of the day:

* It’s sunny outside, isn’t it? I mean, let’s not be picky here, I need to fill that cup at least to the half-way point;

* My old law school friend whom I last saw in Arizona in February (she now lives in Texas) is here for a few days and the first thing SHE got out of me was a long long whiney walk and talk, where I enumerated all my disgruntlements, one by one. After all, what are friends for. She was a saint, she did not once say “it’s all your fault so quit complaining and get it together.” Instead she said things like “you’re fine, you’re fine, it’s okay, it’s okay..” Wonderful woman, I love her!

* Three of us will be going to the Concert on the Square – it’s the last one of the season and I can sob and bawl to my heart’s content, just like during all previous ones. That’s what one does at these nostalgic-melancholy events, isn’t it?

* There isn’t really a fourth point, but I’m sure one will emerge. It’s only 5 pm after all, the day’s young.

Our local paper opts for the cute

Sure enough, today's headline is “On ferry with Kerry.” As the candidates make their campaign rounds I can hear the cutesiness pick up. Imagine: “Eating sushi with a Bushie” or “Allegheny with a Cheney” “Drinking Rheingold with a Feingold.” One could make a game of this. But what about Edwards?? My mind draws a blank.

Can I outsource the very idea of over-the-phone computer fixes?

Day two of computer issues: three far, far away Dell technicians later and one close-by geek and I am still without a diagnosis and without a solution. That is all fine. The local geek has sworn up and down that he knows what needs to be done (by Dell, under warrantee). But how to get there?? Still more steps ahead of me: first I have to find another distant, distant Dell techie to again mislead me about quick fixes by phone and then, at that moment, I have to shout “AHA! Gotcha! It’s not working! Now please, just send me a new hard drive and we’ll call it quits.”

Yeah. That’s the conversation for tonight. After that, it’s back to the geek who can then install the new hard drive and we’ll be coastin’ along.

Money spent so far saving files (without being near a solution): $104
Time spent so far (2 hrs + 3 hrs + 2.5 hrs + 1 hr. + 2 hrs): 10.5 hrs

Expenses ahead (presumably moving us closer to a solution): $200 maybe more
Time still left to handle the techies, geeks and tired Dell employees who’d rather be sleeping in their time zone I’m sure, rather than walking me through irrelevant steps that WONT WORK, damn it: 10 hrs. maybe more.

Anxiety level: marginal disturbance noted, but in reality, I am getting so used to this. I feel almost jovial if truth be told. It is the fourth laptop I have had crash. I know the routines. It’s like taking out the garbage – I’m on automatic pilot now.

Years of practice

This afternoon I met an attorney friend for a cup of coffee downtown on the Square. In the time I spent there, I saw many many familiar faces – mostly people from the Court, people with whom I had almost daily contact back in the days when I worked with law students on custody and abuse & neglect cases.

Two years have passed since my last court appearance, but I remember it vividly – down to the clothes my client wore. It was a custody battle and we lost. There wasn’t much chance of our winning since the attorney representing the child’s best interest hated, absolutely hated my client (the mother in the dispute). The judge almost never overrides the opinion of the child’s attorney. Still, I had been convinced that my client could survive the brutal questioning and that she would be seen not as a loser, but simply as a sometimes-down-and-out mom who tried her hardest (she really did), even though she could not always get it together (neither could the dad – let’s just say they both had their issues).

I can’t say I was sorry to stop trying these cases. I felt that after all those years representing parents, many of whom allegedly neglected or even abused their children, I would welcome the break. When parents come to you bewildered, stunned by the callousness of the process, not able to comprehend why their children were being taken away from them, your head can spin from their agony.

But although I do not really miss the Court routines, I do miss speaking on behalf of people who truly needed my help. And I miss sitting with them outside the Court room, waiting for the trial to begin. And meeting their extended families. I miss seeing all that human grit and spirit in the face of stress and chaos. We seem like a pretty whiny lot over at (UW) Bascom Hill by comparison.

Can a person be happy because they will be a few kilometers closer to their homeland?

YES! Next week I’m setting out for Europe. I typically do not preannounce on the blog activities that are about to happen, but this time, my head is already over there.

When I was slightly younger I could not have enough of Italy. Before I even finished my senior college thesis, I packed my bags and moved to Italy for a while, renting an apartment in the Dolomite mountains. It was a bittersweet period. I invited lots of people to come join me – but in the end, only my sister did. People think of a million reasons why they can’t just pack their bags and GO. I can never really fully appreciate those reasons, but I understand that others do have them.

Still, during my time there, I grew restless in the mountains. I soon discovered that if I took a long (vomit-inducing – I swear, one time I watched a nun vomit all three hours of the ride) bus ride, followed by a long (but much more pleasant) train ride, I could get to Venice within a day. Thus, during my winter hiatus in the Dolomites, I made the trip to Venice 13 times. I was in love with the incongruity of it all, of life, of building a city on the lagoon, of me being there alone in March, wandering the dark dank drizzly allies, I was mesmerized.

Since then, I’ve gone back to Italy in saner frames of mind. But each time, I feel the pull of the place in ways that defy description. And in spite of everyone’s grunting about Venice these days (Too crowded! Too many tourists! Too few Venitians!”) I am undaunted. Listen, the city was build on a fantasy, the grandest one of them all. How could I not take note of that?
[I’m not just going to Venice. But I am also going to Venice. Oh, I can hardly believe it!]

my last look at the canals, two years ago 

Is it true that France and Poland are bickering about G W Bush, Michael Moore, and the American way?

I would imagine that it is a given that Poland and France would be at odds about the value of conducting politics in the American Way. That's more or less a certainty.

As to the rest -- the issues of Bush/Kerry and Moore right now loom large in both countires. Consider what the French are saying these days: The IHT reports today (here) that neither the right-of-center (Le Figaro) nor the left-of-center (Liberation and, too, Le Monde) newspapers in France credited Kerry with sufficinetly distancing himself from Bush during the Convention, especially on the question of Iraq (it is ironic that none of the papers have much good at all to say about Bush, mainly due to his recent isolationist foreign policy).

Of course, they should be reminded that Kerry could hardly attack the electability issue if he wore an “I love Fahrenheit 9/11” button instead of an American flag in his lapel from now until the time of the elections. (The French papers, on a continued love fest with Michael Moore, noted that Moore was conspicuously absent from playing a major role in the Convention). The French news media might want to ask the more important question of who, in the next four years, is more likely to pay heed to the European nations who had opposed the military conflict, Bush or Kerry?

In the meantime, Moore's film made its first appearance in Poland last week. Although one major Polish newspaper was reported by the AP and the BBC (read about it here) as positioning itself substantially in opposition to the content of the movie, my reading of the Polish presses reveals a more generous set of responses. One major movie review website gives the film on average of 8 out of 10 stars and other news sources (here, but in Polish) claim that the film begins a new era in the role of cinematography in shaping political discourse.

Interestingly, Moore taped a special opening message to Poles and this is displayed before the showing of the movie. In it he states that “democracy isn’t carried in on the barrel of a gun,” that the “desire for it must be born within a people.” He analogizes here to the historic transformations occurring in Poland in recent decades.

What reaction on the part of the Poles? One of my favorite of the weeklies, „Polityka,” (here, though it is in Polish) is adamant in its belief that Moore’s film is not a simple piece of propaganda. The news weekly applauds Moore’s effort to piece together disparate events and speaks admirably of Moore’s gift of building a brilliant cinematographic argument. I would guess many movie-goers in Poland would agree with this statement. I should note that „Polityka" continues to be one of the more popular news weeklies in the country. Does it represent the voice of the majority? Perhaps it does -- at least of the "Fahrenheit 9/11" movie going majority.

Then and now

I read a short little piece in the New Yorker today (here) about New Year’s Resolutions, seven months later.

The thing is, to the naked eye, one could say I have been A+ ahead of myself even, in terms of resolutions: what, with all this healthy living, walking, eating, I am a paragon of organic virtue.

But on the inside – I know better. Not only am I the same old, same old bag of warped goods, carrying with me scars from battles that raged during the first 50 “new years” of my life, I have added some on! Why stay with just fifty years’ worth when I can have fifty one!

So, at least looking at the list in the New Yorker, I can boast my superior command over myself: I don’t smoke (never liked the stuff so I guess I can’t claim great virtue there), I keep my weight under control, I try to be nice to colleagues (last week was the exception – I was just getting back at a grave injustice that befell me!), and I don’t carry around a stick.

Or do I? It’s invisible, but sure enough, I think I do carry a stick. Darn it. I’m not even superficially perfect.

The nonsensical world of machines

A computer problem has swallowed me. I no longer exist. This morning I have been but a slave to Dell’s distant instructions, torn between what they say and what I know in my heart to be true: that the computer took my soul and ran with it and neither can ever be retrieved.

(However, the local computer store is having a go at setting things straight. Good-bye distant Dell rep, hello local computer geek.)

Queries from an afternoon on the lake

Q: Why are the reeds bending fiercely in the photo below? Why is the water so rippled?
A: (Yes there is such a thing as a stupid Q.) It was windy, damn it, windy on the lake!

the winds against the water lilly... can she survive their fierce strength? 

Q: Must have been wonderful to go sailing, therefore?
A: Yes. Sailing would have been two thumbs up! Paddle boating? Well, that proved to be a bit difficult. And especially so if you thoughtlessly went with the wind for the first leg of the journey, then turned around only to realize that paddling furiously against the wind just kept you virtually standing still.

Q: What would you do if you were stuck in some marshes, battling the wind, far, far away from where you wanted to be?
A: Cry? I don’t know. We* made it back. Hours later, but we made it back. [Pictured below: my last few pushes before the ultimate collapse.]

* Three women, one boat, 6 tired legs.

are we really standing still? worse, going backwards?? 

This one’s for YOU!

Today is the birthday of the following people:

Herman Melville (he wrote: “friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth…”)
Yves Saint Laurent (arguably the greatest fashion designer of all time, he made women’s pants popular…)
Dom Deluise (he acts, directs, sings, cooks as a chef, writes books…)
Lionel Bart (when he was 6 his teachers told his parents he was a musical genius…)
my daughter (too long! The list of accolades is too long!)

Happy Birthday, S.C.!!

Move over, moon, between the orange and the blue (see post below) we get a pushy sun burning through the early fog.

Yet another Saturday morning foraging for L’Etoile…

Is it tedious to get up at dawn every week to go to the Market?
No. (I get to see the sun rise; see photo below.)

a dramatic awakening

Is it lonely walking around and around the Square with that rickety old thing that some like to call a red wagon?
No. (I meet more people at the Market than I do all week elsewhere in Madison. The Square is overrun by faculty types. Students drag in as well, but they normally get there toward the close of the morning, when my own work is done.)

Blogger "B" makes a Market appearance