Busy, Busy

by Janet Levine

Clichés, I have found, generally turn out to be true. Like the one about the asking the busiest person you know to do the thing you really need to get done. But make sure it is truly a busy person and not just someone who says he or she is busy all the time.

Those people are all too busy telling you how busy they are to get even their things done, let alone yours. They are the same people, I’ve noticed, whose problems are bigger than yours, and whose successes overshadow yours by a mile. Everything about them tends to be bigger, better, more important.

That’s irritating enough when it is true. But in my experience, their hangnail is far more grievous than your amputation and the fact that they have to meet someone for dinner trumps your needing to feed 15 people.

It’s their self-importance—and by definition your unimportance that really grates. Recently, I asked a client to approve a blurb. A 238-word blurb. He informed three days later via email that he was too busy to read the blurb. It took him 2,779 words to tell me how busy he was and why his busy-ness made it impossible for him to read my blurb and approve it (or not).

Is it just me or can you see how reading the blurb would have HAD to taken less time than writing his busy missive? And why did he think that I would have the time to read all of his 2,779 words? But then, to those people, the rest of us are always chopped liver.

Why I’m Voting NO on Proposition 8

The message below about Proposition 8 (on the November '08 ballot in California), has been sent out widely by Brenda Star Adams, who lives in San Francisco. Brenda is my goddaughter and namesake, and the daughter of Chris and Fran. I'm very proud of this young woman and I hope that her story touches you as it did me.

-- Brenda Knepper

------------------------------------------------

Important Message from Brenda Star Adams

My name is Brenda and I am the daughter of lesbian parents. I am writing this message in hopes that if there are those of you out there questioning whether or not to vote against Proposition 8, that you listen to my story and understand exactly who proposition 8 would effect.

I am 28 years old. I am an attorney working for a nonprofit organization in the bay area, helping low income tenants avoid homelessness. My husband, Matt, is also an attorney working on mostly civil rights cases. We have been married almost two years and have an adorable but emotionally challenged dog named Abe.

My parents are Fran and Chris. My biological mom is Chris, and Fran is my "second" mom. They met when I was two years old. When I was around 11 years old my parents announced they had to talk to me about something very important. They looked incredibly somber. I got very upset and yelled "Are you getting a divorce??" Which they thought was hilarious because the real news was that they decided to make their commitment official after 10 years of being together with a small ceremony. As a child, it felt like they had been married all along so it made no difference to me. I was just happy they weren't separating! But of course their ceremony was not official, because in 1992 lesbian couples could not be married in the eyes of the law.

On July 30, 2008, however, after the California Supreme Court decided that prohibiting CIVIL marriage between a same-sex couple violates the Equal Protection Clause of our Constitution, my parents WERE officially married at City Hall. The best part about their wedding was not the service, not the flowers, not the limo. The best part was that when I got to their house to accompany them to the ceremony, they were both a nervous wreck! They had not expected to be so nervous and to feel so excited after 26 years. It was as if they had convinced themselves their entire relationship that they didn't really need the state to recognize them as a couple, because they HAD to believe that, and as soon as it was available to them and truly happening, they realized how much it really did mean to them. They realized how long they had been waiting for the moment to commit themselves in law to each other for the rest of their lives.

The ceremony was beautiful. Simple, and beautiful, just like my parents. You may be wondering, What is it like to grow up with lesbian parents? I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked that question. My answer is always the same - totally normal, and probably much like a typical heterosexual household. Fran is the disciplinarian - without her I would be a completely spoiled brat. Chris is the pushover. I can pretty much get her to agree to anything (although I try to use restraint!) Like many mothers, Chris taught me the meaning of kindness. To not sweat the small stuff. The immense power of love over hate. Above all else, she taught me to always listen to my intuition and to follow my heart. Fran taught me the meaning of responsibility. The value of my word – that if I promise to do something, I must unquestionably do it. And of course the importance of honesty and integrity. Chris taught me through her wise words and never-ending love – she is one of those mothers like a sage on top of a hill – she always knows exactly the right thing to say just when you need to hear it the most. Fran, on the other hand, taught by example. She is beyond a doubt the most honest person I have ever known, and merely expects out of others what she expects of herself. I have spent my life with her voice in my head, and it has pushed me to constantly try to be the best person I can be. Both of my parents love me completely, and unconditionally, like most parents do. In this respect they are completely normal. But in reality they are not normal – they are exceptional. And I often wonder what I have done to deserve such amazing parents.

I know that it is hard to discern the truth amongst all the propaganda, TV ads, and emails about Proposition 8. But the truth is that the Supreme Court decision does not mean that gay marriage must be taught in schools. It does not mean that churches and synagogues and mosques must conduct gay marriages or else lose their tax exemptions. It doesn't mean any of that – those are just tactics used to scare those of you who are unsure into believing the worst. The truth is, all the court said is that the state cannot discriminate against people like my parents who have chosen each other as life partners. I think we have all at one time or another hoped that one day we might be blessed enough to find someone to share our lives with, raise our children with, grow old together with. Some of us have dreamed since little girls of our wedding day, what dress we would wear, what our vows would say. And some of us have never wanted to get married – and that is the choice that each of us has the privilege to make. But my husband and I are no more deserving of the right to make that choice than my parents. None of us are.

All I ask is that, as you sit down and try to determine how you will vote on November 4th, you consider my family and vote NO on proposition 8. I do not know if I can bear to watch us take a step back when we have come so far forward. And I really don't think I can bear to see my parents robbed of the happiest day of their life together.

Regardless of how you vote, thank you for taking the time to read my message. I truly appreciate it.

Defining Moments

by Janet Levine

I’m sitting in the Family and Friends Support Group. I should be empathizing, sympathizing, supporting the addicts in the room and, especially, the addict in my life. Instead, I simply want to whack them.

”Get on with your lives,” I want to scream. Stop loving your addiction. But that, I have come to realize, is my fantasy. Theirs is a very different dream.

My sister tells me how she knows few, well two—her husband, me—people who can break their addictions alone. She wonders why, and I think back to the Family and Friends group. They not only love their addictions, they define themselves by them.

When I was first trying to stop drinking, I went to several AA meetings. I hated them. I did not want to stand up and introduce myself as an alcoholic. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life “recovering.” I wasn’t in denial. I was well aware of the fact that I had a drinking problem. But being an alcoholic seemed to me akin to being a teacher, a doctor, a salesperson. It was a definition. It told people who you were, what you did, how your saw yourself. And I did not see myself in that way.

So I stopped drinking—and no, it wasn’t all that easy. I pushed alcohol off the stage of my life, and decided that I would never, ever, ever let it back on. And when I wanted a drink, when I craved the feelings that alcohol brought me, oh well. I just could not, would not take that drink.

It wasn’t the only way to do it. It may not even be the best way to do it. Getting help from professionals is surely a smarter way than my insistence on going it alone. But the professional can only help the addict get where he or she really, truly, honestly wants to go. The addict in my life says all the right things, but doesn’t match his actions to his words. I don’t believe that he wants to go to sobriety yet.

It’s scary looking at the world through clear lenses. There is pain and fear and rejection and unhappiness. There is also warmth and security and acceptance and joy.

A friend who had far more reason than most to blunt her pain with drugs or booze says she got through by simply putting one foot in front of the other. Nothing heroic, just doing it, every day. While she wouldn’t, I define her as a hero.

I’m back in the group, looking and listening to too many people who don’t want to give up their addictions. They may stop drinking or taking drugs eventually, but most will cling to the persona of the alcoholic or addict. I am annoyed and disappointed with myself that I am so judgmental and yet, as I sit here, listening to their stories, I realize that this, too, is a defining moment.

I cannot chose their side; I’ve been there and it is not a place to which I will ever return. I also know that I can’t say anything. My very words would be suspect. Only they can chose how they want to be defined. Perhaps above all, that is the choice that shapes a person’s life.

Off With Their Heads

by Janet Levine

I’ve long been a fierce opponent of the death penalty. No matter how horrific the crime, I’ve always been a believer that if you lay down with dogs you get up with flies. In other words, killing someone for his or her crime makes you no better than the criminal. But lately, I’ve been having some second thoughts.

Yesterday, while walking through the Parco Monte Mario in Rome where I am traveling—already on edge from the visual assault of all the graffiti, everywhere in this Eternal City—I found myself both elated by the beauty and distraught over the vandalism, the litter and yes, that ever-present graffiti.

These people should be shot, I thought. Alas, it wasn’t the first time such a thought has occurred to me. In LA where I live, I frequently find myself appalled and worse at the blatant disregard for our city. I live around a park, and despite the presence of trash pails every few feet, in the mornings when I take my dogs for a walk, I am constantly confronted and affronted by the debris: fast food wrappers, bottles, cigarette butts, and assorted other trash.

At least at home there is an effort to clean things up. And over the past dozen years, the graffiti issue has lessened. Still, it wears on me.

Perhaps if the graffiti were pretty. Or interesting. At the very least, if it didn’t obscure interesting architectural lines or information it would be helpful to have. But none of the above is true, and so I find my thoughts turning as ugly as what I am finding so abhorrent. And what can you say about the wanton destruction of lampposts, park benches, windows, and more?

In Rome, the problem seems to be worse. My husband calls this the “land of the broken escalator.” It is also the land of parks overgrown with weeds (or when some particular point has been reached, weed-whacked into a barren desert), beautiful buildings gone to ruin, abandoned appliances and defaced walls.

I feel something shrivel inside of me. Worse, I am angry. I want to punish them. I think it is the selfishness, the arrogance, perhaps the pure spitefulness that makes my blood boil. And again I think about how appropriate it would be to deface them, these perpetrators of such heinous visual aggression. Death, I think, may be justified.

Ah, I know I am overreacting. Execution does seem a bit excessive. And what, really, would it solve? Maybe, I think, whack off their hands so they can no longer destroy. Or take out their eyes, so they can see no beauty. But they don’t see it now, so that would not stop the destruction.

What would be onerous enough to give these destroyers pause? I run through the usual punishments, rejecting all. And then, and then I know. It would be perfect. Make them clean up the mess they’ve made.

The Naming

by Janet Levine

The minutes of the committee meeting came via email at 10 am that Monday morning. We hadn’t gotten together for quite a while, so I was surprised by their appearance, but when I read the list of attendees, I realized I must have missed a meeting. Paul, the chair, attended, of course. As did Sally, Deb, John and Graham. And someone named Martha Lewis. I didn’t know a Martha Lewis, but the campus was large and I didn’t know everyone. I wondered what she did.
A woman named Martha Lewis would, I decided, do something substantial. Probably from the business office. Financial. I could picture here, this Martha Lewis. A large, solid-looking woman. Her no-nonsense clothes would be blocky and mostly brown. She’d have oxford-type shoes at the end of her stocky legs and her hair would tidy. Martha Lewis, I just knew, would be red faced and wear no makeup.

At first, I just skimmed the minutes. There really was no point in reading them carefully. Committee meetings were solame. Everyone talked around the issues, too afraid to take a concrete stand on anything. But then, suddenly, I found myself nodding and murmuring little sounds of assent. This Martha was taking a stand. She was saying meaningful things. Things I wish I had the gumption to say. I would, I realized, have to rethink this Martha Lewis. The woman, after all, made sense. She was reasonable but not priggish about it. There was a flair in her ideas and her sense of humor shone through.

All right. She was, yes, definitely tall, but not really large. Her clothes were comfortable, but not mannish or dull. Stylish, but not slavish. Her make-up—and I now saw that she must wear some—was tasteful, bringing out her best features. Her honey-colored hair would frame her strong face, lightly brush the high cheekbones and her un-furrowed forehead, bringing out the color of her clear, direct eyes. Martha Lewis, I was now convinced, was a woman to reckon with. A woman I wanted to know. A woman I wanted to be like. I would have to ask Paul to introduce us.

Paul, however, just laughed when I asked about Martha Lewis.
"I guess,” he said, “I can see how someone could mistype and get Lewis from Levine. But how in the hell do you get Martha out of Janet?

I almost choked on my coffee. I was Martha Lewis? I said sensible, substantive things? With a sense of humor, no less. Could I really be a woman to reckon with, just as Martha Lewis had been?

For a nanosecond I felt the power. I sat up straighter, my shoulders flung back. Then it passed and I slumped down in my chair. They were, then, my words. Words that would lack the heft and weight of what would have been spoken by a Martha Lewis.

Completely forgetting my first impression, I fixated on the final Martha Lewis of my imagination. “Martha,” I was sure, gave those words dignity. “Lewis” added an arrogance that was somehow compelling. If you googled Martha Lewis, you wouldn’t get 517,000 hits as you did with Janet Levine. People wouldn’t call you monthly to ask if you were the Martha Lewis who…like they called me.

If only my parents had given me a substantial, uncommon Martha-like name. If only my first husband hadn’t had such a common last name. If only I had had the right name then, like Stanley Kowalski, I coulda been a contender.

David's Gift

Brenda: My adopted brother, David, killed himself in February after struggling for many years with alcohol addiction. Unfortunately, the anguish and despair that drives someone to such an act is compounded by isolation that often prevents others from knowing how serious the situation has become until it is too late. His mother, Sally, died a couple years ago very unexpectedly and her death took a heavy toll on the family. I wrote this essay in an attempt to find some meaning in these terrible losses.

David’s Gift
by Brenda Knepper

My stepmother, Sally, once told me that she had a near-death experience during surgery when she was a young adult. During the experience, she said she hovered above her unconscious body observing what was happening below. Even though she seldom set foot in church, she believed that she had a soul and that there was something beyond this life; she believed in an afterlife. Who or what was the “her” that was doing the observing and was not located in her body?

I choose to believe that life goes on after this physical existence and that we are all moving towards reconciliation with a healing and loving God and a “peace that surpasses all understanding” – some of us slower than others, some by more direct paths, some by very wandering paths, and some by paths that may look like the wrong path.

I choose to believe that God was waiting for David with an open heart and outstretched arms, along with David’s mother, his aunt, grandparents and others who love him. I believe that there was healing waiting for David that was not possible on earth.

Megan Kanka and Polly Klass were children whose abduction and murder caused laws to be changed and organizations to come into being that have helped to prevent other children from suffering their same fate. They were seven and twelve when their lives ended and their true missions were revealed. I choose to believe that with David’s suicide, his mission in life was revealed – his life and death now dramatically serve as an example and catalyst for me and others to learn everything we can about how to stop cycles of abuse, provide support for loved ones and their families who suffer from substance addictions and depression, and prevent suicide from ever happening again in our families.

From the very night that I heard of David’s death, I have been taking a critical look at my relationship with my son. I ask myself what isn’t working, what works, where can I get additional support, and what should my role be in empowering him to lead a full and responsible and joyful life? One of David’s gifts to me is to understand more fully that how we love and support each other may be a matter of life and death.

While we are saddened that the light of David’s personality was dimmed by the battles that he and his family endured, we can hold on to the good times – when his true self came through – hopefully calling on those memories to help ease the shock, anger and sorrow of his death. David had many friends! He had the gift of an outgoing friendliness and charm that attracted lots of people to him over his lifetime. He was engaging, fun, and connected with others. He had also developed impeccable skills in the trades. I remember younger days – long days at the swimming pool in Georgia when we first met Sally and her boys. Both David and his brother, Don, were lively and bright-eyed guys; they are my adopted brothers even though we have been present in each other’s lives infrequently. I have always told people that I’m the eldest and only girl with six younger brothers.

The last time I saw David, I admired the beautiful flagstone patio that he had built at the back of the house in South Carolina and was surprised at how he instantly connected with my eight-year-old son, taking him on a long hike in the woods with the dog. I could see in David a person who might have made a good father, if he had not had to struggle with, what we can only see in hindsight, a terminal illness.

When one door closes, others open. While honoring the terrible grief that my Dad and Don have experienced with the tremendous losses of those most close to them, I hope that there is some comfort in the deepening connections and renewed relationships with the rest of the family that have resulted from these life changes. I know my other brothers feel the same as I – we are very grateful to have our Dad and Don more closely in our lives.

David left behind a note asking that his ashes be spread off the Gulf Coast of Florida where his Mom’s were spread. He signed his short note, “Love, David.” I choose to believe that David sincerely meant the very last two words that he chose to write – with everything his heart and soul had to give in those final moments. His life and love have been offered up, to learn from and to perhaps save the lives of others. Maybe David’s gift to you is different, but that is David’s gift to me.

Reader's Block

by Janet Levine

Hi. My name is Janet and I am a biblioholic.

It started when I just a kid. My sister wanted to be a teacher. When she was almost 9 and I not quite 4, I became her first captive student.

She made me read. And I haven’t been able to stop since.

I’ll read anything. I prefer books, but if they are not available, I’ll read newspapers, cereal boxes, can labels. Once I even read a People magazine. I know, and I am ashamed.

Reading has kept me from more important things in life. Like TV. There was a time when I tried to read and watch TV, but I haven’t set my eyes on a sitcom since 1978. It’s bad enough that I didn’t see the Sopranos (is that too last year?) , but I’ve never even watched a reality show. I’m not sure I even know what a reality show is.

I don’t think I’m a bad person. Just addicted. But I do know it’s not my fault. My sister pushed me into reading. Then school continued what she started. It’s a good thing that our schools learned their lessons. My older daughter is as addicted as I am, but my younger son, mercifully, views reading as something you sometimes can’t avoid. I’m sure my grandson will not have even that problem. Schools have stopped teaching. I was going to say they’ve stopped teaching reading, but I realized that was too fine a point.

I did stop reading once. In a way, it was very liberating. There weren’t any new ideas to play with and get tangled up in. Not too many facts cluttering up my thought processes. But it was a bit lonely. There were no other people crowding my head. It was all what I did; what I thought.

In a very short amount of time I found that I was desperate for a fix. Words. Any words. As long as they were printed. I tried to ease back slowly; keep myself from constantly gorging on all those beautiful letters. I joined a 12-step program.

I then read the twelve steps and realized that I was doomed.

The reading was fine, but I don’t actually believe that there IS a higher power than words. And I can’t think of many better mentors than book. I do admit my addiction, but I just can’t fathom a life without weekly visits to the library, or evenings spent without a book in hand.

My name is Janet and I am a biblioholic.

The Girl in the Flatbed Ford

Joanie: I wrote this last summer in the wake of my separation from e, a slightly fictionalized snapshot of our life together... the wounds were a bit fresh back then for me to share it, but the fact that i was able to even get it down was probably an indication of recovery...

It indulges my obsession with the tiny burg of Winslow, AZ, as immortalized in the Eagles' song, "Take it Easy"... and the one thing that was - and probably always will be - a bond between me and my soon-to-be ex-hubby: rock and roll...

The Girl in the Flatbed Ford
Or
Why I Should Have Left You Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona

by Joanie Harmon

My editor told me that you would be standing on the corner of 2nd and Kinsley in the town of Winslow. I remember seeing a sign by the road one summer on the way to the Grand Canyon that read, “Winslow, 2 mi.” I thought, it couldn’t be, not the town in the song. As a kid, I never thought of it as a real place, just a random word that could be forced to rhyme with “standing on the corner.” I also thought, what a loser the guy in the song was, shouldn’t he be the one driving around in the flatbed Ford?

I pulled off at the exit and followed the arrows. I saw rundown houses that looked like the ones in an R.E.M. video, kids playing on Slip N’ Slides on dry, yellow lawns. The rough pavement gave way to roads that were in slightly better repair. I had read your books and heard your show on K-DIK when I was just a 15-year-old in my dad’s Malibu. Now I was going to meet you, ask you all sorts of pithy questions and write the story that would win a Pulitzer prize, assuming the award committee was aware of periodicals like Turtle Bay Today.

I arrived at the four corners, which was apparently the center of the town. Conveniently located on two corners were a couple of souvenir shops, one of which was blasting an Eagles soundtrack. The third corner was graced by the Winslow Tourist Information office. Finally, I saw the “Standin’ on the Corner” park, replete with bronze statue of the aforementioned vagabond with a guitar slung across his shoulder. Behind him was a mural on a crumbling wall of a desert, some horses and a blonde smiling from the window of a pickup truck. You were sitting on the lone bench in front of the mural with your eyes closed, your hands lying palms up and open on your knees. Your eyes were shut and apparently you were meditating. Or asleep.

I nervously checked my camera battery and the microphone on my Ipod. I clambered out of the rental truck, nearly missing the running board in my self-conscious attempt to seem calm. I sauntered over to you and introduced myself. You smiled your indulgent smile and gazed at me with those aquamarine eyes. Yet, something was amiss, as if you had knowingly served me some pork tamales from Trader Joe’s whose serve-by date had expired.

You asked me if I wanted to talk over drinks at La Posada and I said, why not. So we jumped into my tourist-white rental and drove down the block to the rustically decrepit hotel. I don’t know if it was the wrought iron candelabra, the two mojitos or the chance to meet one of my girlhood idols, but I lost my head that afternoon. The bar proved to be too impersonal a venue, so we checked into the Douglas Fairbanks suite and the rest is history. I got the story, you got the girl. Everything was going to be great.

It’s hard to know when it started to go so wrong. There were so many times that I could have walked away, but didn’t. You lied to me about the strange sunglasses in the car, the night you didn’t answer your phone just minutes after we hung up when I let it ring about fifty times. If you were there, wouldn’t you have picked up and told me to knock it off? I didn’t know any better and thought that everyone with a drinking problem slurred his speech, danced around the room with a lampshade on his head and wove in and out of traffic when he drove. You never did any of those things.

You simply lost all civility if you didn’t have your first glass of sauvignon blanc by 4:35 p.m., stared over my bare and perfumed shoulders at the redhead behind me at the Brasserie on New Year’s Eve and jovially asked my old boyfriend if you could compare notes sometime. I nearly killed myself on the nights that our lovemaking was scheduled, driving like a madwoman trying to get home before your twist-top bottle of Australian syrah took away the possibility of marital bliss.

The most innocuous questions about where you were all night or why you didn’t answer your phone for hours would get me an angrily roaring response that I would try to quell unsuccessfully by backing down out of desperation. No one had ever gotten that angry at me in my life, about so little. I even stopped drinking my own measly glass of merlot, which I had taken up mainly to keep you company. I had started to think it was my fault and my amateur drinking caused the fights to get out of hand.

But the uncontrollable rage continued, as did my now-routine retreat and attempts to calm you by just backing down. The only thing that would end it would be your eventual collapse into bed, where you lost consciousness as soon as your head hit the pillow. The next morning, as long as I didn’t speak to you before rushing off to the gym and as long as you got to meditate before I got home, everything was back to normal, even great, until the following evening.

The only thing that held us together sometimes was the music. I thrilled to your stories at first, about your early days as a party DJ in the disco-soaked 70s, your distinguished career on K-DIK as “The Lone Pony,” the time you partied with Linda Rondstadt and Stevie Nicks. When I was falling asleep with my ear to my Fred Flintstone radio, you were doing god-knows-what to the same songs I dreamt my pre-adolescent dreams to.

We each thought we had hit the jackpot, you with a bright-eyed young thing who knew what the Summer of Love was, me with a charming and distinguished Pygmalion who thought everybody should Wang Chung tonight. But maybe time can’t be transcended that way. Maybe I was too young, you too old, and both of us unable to understand what lay under the chords that created who we were inside. A seemingly shared history of what passed over the airwaves couldn’t hold us together when you didn’t want to sing a new song with me.

Last summer, I went back to Winslow to cover the “Standin’ on the Corner” Festival. As I threaded my way through the beer-swilling crowds, I saw an old couple sitting on the bench under the mural. As they watched the revelers, they would occasionally turn and gaze at each other, heads bobbing to some internal rhythm. As I got closer and nodded a polite greeting, I saw that they were both plugged into the same Walkman with two sets of earphones. His eyes were an aquamarine blue and he held her withered hand snugly in his own.

Out the Window

Joanie: In my youth, I thought that a great writer had to live somewhere squalid in order to really suffer for their art... guess I'm making up for lost time... I read this at an open mike night at a local art studio last weekend... like the song goes, they all laughed...

Out the Window
Or
Don’t Look Up…

by Joanie Harmon

Having grown up in the suburbs, where one is shag carpeted and mini-malled to death, I longed to feel the grit and grime the big city and live in a place that didn’t feel like it was built 15 minutes ago. So the charming (old) and picturesque (dingy) apartment on Lime Avenue seemed just perfect. The three windows of the corner unit afforded a view of rooftops, telephone poles and palm trees straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. A faux fireplace graced a corner, while the rounded cornered ceiling and arched doorways gave the place a romantic retro feeling.

In the glow of that fall afternoon, I neglected to notice that below the shingled roofs and dormer windows lay an alley. The skyline that I had admired belonged to a series of bungalows and other apartment buildings, which shared two or three dumpsters below, peppering a calm Sunday morning or a quiet weeknight with the slamming of their lids.

Unlike the car chases through alleyways on “The Streets of San Francisco,” where suspension brakes and driving skills are put to the ultimate test, the cars that drive through the alley at all hours of the night are more like an endless stream of shuttlebuses, dropping people off and picking others up. At least, that’s what I assumed at first. Then my inner cynic kicked in and I surmised that the visitors were buying drugs. Or that they were selling and delivering them, through a kind of home shopping enterprise, perhaps with a snappy name like CannabisClub.com or CrackFinders.net.

The most memorable episode featured the loud and inebriated voice of a man who yelled, “Heil, Hitler! Heil, Hitler!” while walking down the alley. Roused from a deep sleep, yet startled by his proximity and volume right under my window, I pictured him wielding a meat cleaver or some such instrument, although the yelling was brutal enough. I’ve been awakened by the screeching of mating cats and neighbors returning home from a night out, their stereos thumping away in the wee hours. This is accompanied by sounds of what is either the release of passengers from every door of the car and the trunk or the passengers exercising what we kids used to call a Chinese fire drill.

One Sunday morning, I saw an elderly woman in a pink jacket sorting bottles and cans into separate plastic shopping bags and hanging the bags neatly on the bar of the dumpster. I assumed this was for her more environmentally minded fellow street dwellers. I imagined her as someone who had perhaps slipped off her meds or had no one to take care of them, which was depressing. But I was heartened by her fastidious method of recycling.

When I finally locked myself out of my apartment last Sunday, leaving my keys on the desk, I went next door to our building’s manager to use his spare. As I waited outside his door for his wife to find it, I found out that the lady in the pink jacket lived across the hall from them. I saw her getting ready for a busy day, packing her bags and donning her pink jacket. I wondered if she went to church or visited anyone before her chores in the alley. I smiled guiltily as she passed me, thinking of the time I “spied” on her. But she had no way of recognizing me. When you’re in the alley, you never look up. I know I don’t when I walk through, keeping my eyes on the ground lest I step on something sharp, gooey or formerly alive.

Spring fever has hit the alley. What I first thought was a pair of amorous felines, turned out to be only one Miss Lonelyhearts of a cat in heat. I am tempted to place a personal ad for her manhunt, as she has been wailing for two weeks straight, with no prospects in sight. I have to admire her tenacity though, and wonder, as do many of my single girlfriends, where are all the men?

On any given night, I can hear sirens announcing the officers who are presumably protecting and serving our fair city, hordes of Roscoe’s diners, sluggish from too much fried food, moving slowly and often noisily toward their cars, and the comings and goings of my building’s residents, many of whom fell compelled to slam the metal screen door out back as hard as they could when they fling themselves into the alley.

But my favorite moment was on New Year’s Eve, when at the stroke of midnight, I had braced myself for a volley of traditional gunshots. This is the LBC, after all. Instead, the amplified chords of “Auld Lang Syne,” played a la Hendrix, twanged out tentatively across the night. I pictured a pimply faced teen, overcome by his abilities, thinking his performance was the ultimate homage to 2008 and the gods of rock. I hoped other people heard it and enjoyed it as much as I did. Evidently, he hoped so too, because he played it again five minutes later. And louder.

I think I’ve had my fill of big city grit and grime and will be a lot more observant when I pick my next apartment. I won’t be seduced so easily by a picturesque view. I can’t help but think that the alley has given me a new appreciation for the tranquility of the suburbs. But I will miss the microcosm of humanity below my window. And hope that my musical neighbor starts a new tradition and continues to greet the New Year with guitars, not gunshots.

- Long Beach, 2/08

A Meditation on Rejection

by Janet Levine

Stomach pains, a feeling a dread, the sense that everything is dull and dark. All the symptoms of gloom and doom.

I don’t do well with rejection. Most people don’t, I suspect, but while I can be empathetic about many things, rejection is just too personal. It is all about me, and it’s not a pretty sight.

When it happens, I try to remind myself that in a day or two, I will have gotten over it . Perhaps I will have recast the facts in my mind to make it feel less like a rejection of me, and more as if it were actually my rejection of it. Often, of course, it’s not that difficult. As rejections go, most are truly small potatoes. But still, when it happens, it hurts.

You’d think that someone who has spent most of her adult life asking people to do things they are most likely to trigger a response of no, would have a better perspective on rejection. Intellectually, I do. I spout all the clichés: If you don’t ask, you can’t get. No just opens another door. It’s not as if you lost anything…you didn’t have it when you asked, so a no just means you still don’t have it. And my favorite: It’s not personal.

But, you know, it is. It always is. I told you it was all about me.

It doesn’t generally stop me from getting out there and doing what I need to do, but it does take a lot of psychic cheerleading. And it has, over the years, caused me to take a variety of paths more to avoid certain things than to get somewhere I actually wanted to go.

I wanted, for example, to be a writer. With great joy, I would sit at my typewriter (ah, those were the days) and create. Then with anticipation, I would slip my manuscript or query letter into a manila envelopment along with the requisite SASE and place it reverently into the mailbox on my street corner. Remember those? They’ve gone the way of the typewriter.

Acceptance would bring a happiness I won’t even attempt to describe. They liked it. My article or story would see the light of day. But rejection, ah, that was a different story altogether.

I don’t expect anyone to be overjoyed when someone says no to something they’ve done. I, however, would go into a blue funk and for weeks could not bear to touch my typewriter. I could think of nothing but the fact that an editor said no. No. To me. Even though I knew from experience that another editor might just as easily say yes. All I had to do was re-type any smudged or dirty pages, re-do the cover letter and send my precious piece back into the world.

First, however, I had to pick up the pieces. It got so, that I couldn’t bear the process any more. Besides, I reasoned, there were already too many words in the world. And so, with a logic that still eludes me, I became first a salesperson and finally a fundraiser. What was I thinking? Did I think that I would harden myself against rejection and learn to love the word no?

If I did, I have to report that it didn’t work. I still hate no. I’ve never gotten used to the fact that not everyone wants/likes/cares/needs me, my product, my organization.

But, still, I persist in putting myself out there. Probably because no matter how bad rejection feels, there is nothing in the world that feels better than when someone says Yes.

Size Matters

by Janet Levine

Moments before it happened we were in my car, sitting at a red light, discussing the relative morality of driving an SUV. Even a smallish one like mine. My passenger was of the opinion that I wasn’t a bad person, I was doing a very bad thing. She drove a much smaller car which left only a tiny carbon footprint.

I didn’t disagree with her. But I like being high up and able to see where I am going. And in a city where it is statistically probable that you will have more than one accident during your driving career, I find myself weighing safety against the environment.

But her little car is cute and a lot of fun to drive. Not to mention the much better gas mileage. Maybe I should look for a more eco-friendly car.

And then the noise, followed by the sensation and our bodies, even tethered by seatbelts, thrown about. Finally, the recognition that someone had careened into us. Hard.

I pulled over to the side and the behemoth Lexus SUV followed. The driver was young, newly licensed and terrified. She had been driving her aunt’s car, and it was pretty well beat up. The front was crushed, the hood all funny angles, and she couldn’t open the driver’s side door. More, there was something ominous leaking from underneath.

The rear of my car was not a pretty sight, but it was just the rear and the thing was clearly drivable. After we exchanged all our information and I called my insurance company, I pulled slowly away.

So, said my passenger, completely reversing her former position, maybe driving an SUV isn’t so bad. Her car, she avowed, would have been totaled. If a huge SUV hit her, she very well might have suffered a bit more than surprise.

Our Kids in Long Beach are Being Murdered

by Brenda Knepper

On a Halloween evening a little over a year ago, a close friend of my son’s was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Up until Richard’s death, I had been oblivious to how many of our young people in Long Beach were being murdered.

Did you know that the candlelight vigils honoring those who have been killed, are rituals that kids seem to know to perform, without deliberation, in order to begin to heal? I didn’t, until I went looking for my son a few nights after Richard’s death and found him and his friends sitting around a makeshift altar on the sidewalk in front of Richard’s house. They were clearly in shock, trying to process what had happened. Money that would usually have been spent on something else had been used to purchase altar candles at the 99-cent store. Was this not a plea for help? Instead of being angry with my son for not letting me know where he was, I felt compelled to drive to the 99-cent store and buy candles to join the group. Although I’m not Jewish, the term “sit shiva” came to mind, as we sat there by the sidewalk memorial honoring this young man whose life was too brief. These boys seemed to innately know what they needed to do to mark the tragic passing of their friend.

Did you know that the weekend car washes put on by teenagers around Long Beach are frequently held to raise money for funerals for friends or relatives who have been killed? I didn't know that -- until kids who knew Richard and members of his family quickly put together two car washes over the weekend following his death to raise money for his funeral and provide funds for his girlfriend who was pregnant at the time. One was held at the AutoZone parking lot on Atlantic in North Long Beach near my home. These Hispanic kids knew what needed to be done as soon as they heard the news, because they had probably been through it before. I hadn’t.

A couple weeks following Richard’s death, a car wash was held in that same AutoZone parking lot for a 24-year-old who had been found in his car in Compton, riddled with bullets. According to one of the girls that I spoke with who was helping at the car wash, the young man had fallen asleep in his car in front of a friend’s house, waiting for the friend to come home, and had been killed as he lay there sleeping. Okay, so he wasn’t killed in Long Beach, but his car wash took place in Long Beach. Close enough.Several times since then I've passed car washes as I drive through town and I've wanted to cry because, inevitably I find that it's for a young person who is no longer with us. I had never noticed. For some reason, I thought that most car washes were put on by church groups to raise money for youth retreats. As I passed corner lots with kids busily washing cars and soliciting donations, I had never looked closely at the posters tacked to nearby telephone poles, with their photos of slain young men.

Do you think that reporters from the local newspaper always know when someone from your community has been killed and will automatically report the story? Such as when an 18-year-old from Jordan High has been killed in Wilmington by someone wearing a wolf mask on Halloween night . . . wouldn’t you think that a young man being shot in front of his younger sister who was in the back seat, and his cousin who was driving, would be a newsworthy event? I thought so. I thought that the reporters closely monitored police scanners or logs, but after weeks of there being no mention of Richard’s death in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, I finally wrote a letter to the editor, because I wanted my son and his friends to know that the adults in the city cared that their friend had died. The young people knew that they themselves cared, because they were texting each other and paying homage to Richard on their MySpace pages (R.I.P. RICHIE! Ill nVr fGet U!). Without a peep from the adult community around them.What’s a boy to do? Seek revenge? I’m sure it happens -- when it seems like no one cares, or that nothing can be done.

As it turns out, no one had called the paper about Richard -- it's not that the editor didn't want to write the story; they were just unaware of the story. I think there's a lot of apathy in communities where drive-byes and murdered kids are a common occurrence. And unfortunately, three white girls in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood were beat up by black youths from North Long Beach that same Halloween night and you can be sure someone called the paper about that. That made headlines, even national news, for months afterwards.To their credit, the Press-Telegram did finally write about Richard several weeks after his death and they wrote a follow-up front page story when, unbelievably, Richie's girlfriend gave birth to the first baby of the New Year in Long Beach that following January 1st.

Do you think that the reason some of our teenage drivers recline their front car seats so far back is to keep their heads out of the range of a bullet? I didn’t think that -- until the bullet went through Richard’s head, causing his mother to have to make the awful decision to take him off life support two days after the shooting. He was made a vegetable upon impact, with no chance of recovery. After that, I not only worried about how vulnerable my son’s head was while he was out driving in his car, I also worried about my own head.

Have you ever thought about how the term "drive-by" waters down and minimizes what it really is? Murder or attempted murder. I mentioned this to someone recently and they said, 'yeah -- like someone was just out for a nice Sunday drive and whoops! shot your kid. They were just driving by.' My son visited Richard in the hospital before he was taken off life support, and you can imagine that Richie was not looking or feeling too good. In fact he was in a coma, with his face swollen and bandages wrapped around his head. What happened to Richard was not merely a drive-by; it was a violent, bloody act that not only ended his life, but ripped through and devastated the lives of his friends, his family -- many people, for many years to come.

His son will grow up without a father. And although he was young, Richard was really looking forward to being a Dad. And I'm really angry that, for my son, losing his friend in this manner was undeniably a defining experience in his young life. Something I would never have wished on him.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘She’s not talking about my neighborhood or my kids.’ But you're wrong. Long Beach is our neighborhood. Our kids in Long Beach are being murdered. They are being brought up in a war zone. And we just aren’t angry enough yet to stop it. But I’m getting there.

The Height of Perfection

by Janet Levine

When I was younger, my sister never failed to remind me that I should be careful of what I wished for. I might, she always said, actually get it.

I should have listened.

What I wished for most when I was young was to be “a perfectionist.” I thought that those were people who did things perfectly. And I so wanted to do things—any things at all—really well. No matter what I did, I didn’t think it was good enough.
And so my wish became true. I became a perfectionist. Hell, I was one already. I just didn’t understand that perfectionists don’t DO things perfectly, they just want to and, because they (we!) are such stickler’s for detail and so demanding of everything they do, they never, ever believe that they do anything well enough. I resemble that greatly.

The problem, of course, with perfection is that you can’t ever get there. From anywhere. It’s kind of like living at the tip of a promontory or high in the beautiful but distant hills. The bigger problem, however, is the fact that you continually have to motivate yourself to do things. Things that you just know will never be good enough. For you.

The other thing my sister always told me was that no one really pays that much attention to anyone else other than them. Or, as I frequently tell my daughter when she is freaking that she is not beautiful or smart enough (what? You didn’t believe that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree?), to the degree that anyone is looking at you it’s not to giggle at your real or imagined flaws. They are not really thinking of you at all. They are thinking, “I wonder what that person thinks of ME.”

Thoughts on Beauty

by Brenda Knepper

In 1973, as a freshman at George Mason, I wrote an essay for an English comp class that comes up as a topic of conversation every now and then. In it I ranted about how unfair it was that women “had” to wear makeup and girdles and pointed-toe shoes throughout their lives to keep up a certain level of attractiveness; whereas, men could allow themselves to get fat, go bald, and never feel the need to apply a speck of face powder (remember that?) to their aging skin, all the while accumulating power and wealth.

I argued that a line of cosmetics should be developed for men and that they should feel just as compelled as women to “keep up their appearances.” After all, why should women be required to work so hard to stay beautiful, while living with fat, balding, possibly disgusting, spouses? My professor seemed highly amused by the paper and read it to the class. It got some laughs and I remember being surprised, because I was serious.

At that time in my life, I was spending an hour or more each morning applying thick, black, clumpy mascara to my delicate eyelashes to make them appear longer, darker, fuller; and using all the other cosmetics that Seventeen magazine told me were necessary for a beautiful face . . . foundation, eye shadow, lipstick, gloss, blush . . . all that on a pretty-enough 18-year-old face.

I also used an eyelash curler prior to applying mascara. That’s a scary contraption. They are still on the market and haven't changed much over the years. To use, you have to bring the curler close enough to your eye so that your eyelashes can be caught in its “mouth,” and then squeeze it closed so that two rubber-covered bars clamp down and basically bend your eyelashes upwards. You have to be careful not to get your eyelids caught in the thing, or it could really hurt. Who thinks of these things? Not only that, who thinks them up and then convinces lots of women in the world that they are necessary?

Are men ever that concerned about the hairs on the ends of their eyelids?

Each morning, I also plugged in a set of hot rollers, waited five minutes until the dot on the top of each turned red, and then wrapped clumps of my hair around those heavy, spiked, hard plastic curlers, so that Voila! my hair would be lovely for about two hours. I would then hurriedly put on an outfit that I had composed the night before and then finish off my "look" by cramming my young feet into a pair of too-small, too-high, or too-pointed shoes. I envied men who had only to wet their hair and comb it back, put on a uniform suit without much thought, and slip into shoes that fit.

Thoughts about beauty and gender inequity came to mind a few years later, when I happened to see Tip O’Neil emerging from an arrival gate at National Airport (now Reagan National) one evening. It was the early eighties; he was Speaker of the House and I recognized him from seeing him on the news. He was walking with an entourage of colleagues, exuding power. You couldn't help but notice him in the center of this important group of men. I took all this in and thought: my, he is HUGE . . . a really big fat man . . . and what a large, bulbous nose he had on that mug of a face -- yet he has position and power.

I don't recall the media making an issue of his weight, unlike poor Liz Taylor, whose ups and downs we were made well aware of. If Tip were a large woman with a big nose, his political career would have been quite a different story, wouldn't it? Or no story at all. Twenty-some years later, the first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, illustrates my point. You have to admit she looks like a cute Barbie doll . . . petite, well-dressed, with impeccable hair and make-up. Just the type of woman we want to look at when Congress is in session.

I say three cheers for former Attorney General Janet Reno; I'd like to see more like her.

A few years ago I was up past midnight reading, with the TV turned on in the background. At one point, I glanced up at a program that featured Priscilla Presley and other celebrities. These women were sitting around chatting with each other and exclaiming about a wonderful product they had discovered -- miraculous hair extensions that turned limp hair with no body, into gorgeous, fluffy, sexy and majestic manes. One after another, the infomercial showed “before” shots of the actresses with lifeless, bland hair and then incredibly beautiful “after” clips. Not only did their hair look beautiful, after applying these wonderful, easy as 1-2-3 hair extensions, the women found they were more confident and energetic, more prosperous and successful.

As I watched one story after another, I realized that this too, was my problem: thin hair.

No wonder I was feeling low and unloved, with my career stalling and an angry adolescent at home -- I had thin hair. It was getting late, so I quickly wrote down the 800 number so that I could order the extensions first thing in the morning. And if I ordered quickly, I would get a free brush or extra extensions or something! It was going to be a new day!

The next morning I got up, took a shower and started getting dressed; I seemed to have forgotten about the miracle extensions I needed to order. When my eye caught the scrap of paper with the 800 number laying on the coffee table, I slowly remembered how I had gone to bed thinking that thicker hair was surely going to change my life . . . and yet . . . this morning . . . I began to have second thoughts. And the more I thought about, the more I realized that I must have been out of my mind.

Yes, actually I was. Did I really think that I was going to be able to glue or tape locks of hair all over my head, fluff it out, and then feel better about myself? Yeah, right. You know where those hair extensions would end up very quickly -- in the Halloween box out in the garage.

That’s almost as crazy as the rising plastic surgery trends due to “makeover” reality shows.

Think about this: we think the practice of Chinese foot binding was bizarre -- what could be more barbaric than having someone slice open your chest, insert round “perky” gel bags into your mammary glands, and then sew it back up? Perhaps having someone slice the backs of your thighs open and suck out the fat in them with a vacuum cleaner.

I realize now that the thesis of the college paper I wrote when I was younger, was incorrect. We do not need to have men wear make-up or toupees, or squeeze themselves into tight corsets or the latest body stockings the way that women do. We do not need for men to adopt the insecurity and self-hatred that drives women to slice and dice their bodies, attempting to freeze-capture fleeting youth and beauty.

My grandmother is in her nineties. I love the way her age and her life's history are written on her face and body. She was a very beautiful young woman in the 1920s and 30s, without makeup. And now she’s 95. Her cheeks sag and there are lines around her mouth. She laughs and will show you how, if you pinch the skin on the back of her hand and lift it up – it will stay there for quite awhile because the elasticity is gone. Her white hair still curls the way mine does naturally without hot rollers and the blue eyes that I also inherited shine in a way that lights up her face.

She is slowing down a little, finally, but is still healthy. When you sit down to have a conversation with her, she is totally present. I called her recently and she said she had been sitting on her front porch, watching a squirrel carry a heavy ear of corn partly up a tree, drop it, and try again -- over and over. She is easily amused.

As often as possible, I remind myself to aspire only to the health, beauty and contentment of my grandmother.

My first post is "in the bag... "

Joanie: I wrote this in the early '00s as a recent college graduate trying to break into print... it's a bit sentimental, but always gets a laugh... and it bears the distinction of being the second-most-viewed story on www.pursestories.com... I have two other posts on the site, "The Perfect Man is in the Bag" and "Where Have All the Purses Gone?".

So, without further ado, here is:

Man-Purse Interface

by Joanie Harmon (2004-ish)

When all the psychobabble and checkout stand magazines have failed to decode the mysterious behavior of men, it may be time to turn to a more primitive, yet no less canny method. Your Man from Mars can be easily read by his attitude towards that omnipotent symbol of Womanhood, the handbag.

Ever since his first encounter with his mother's purse as a child, modern man is perplexed and terrified by this quintessential female accoutrement. He doesn't know why it has to match your shoes. He doesn't understand that a woman's purse holds the tools needed to build and rebuild, when necessary, with safety pins and paper clips, civilization as we know it. A man's comfort level with this supreme proof of woman's resourcefulness and femininity is a good indicator of his comfort level in the relationship.

The most common dilemma of Man-Purse Interface (MPI) is the unwillingness of a male to hold onto one's bag when one is engaged in an activity that is not purse-friendly. This includes trips to unclean restrooms, trying clothes on in a fitting room and changing the baby's diapers. No woman would willingly abandon her Coach bag unless there was an awfully good reason. Men who protest and fidget when asked to do this simple favor are uncomfortable with their "female" side. Their concern is not for the well being of your patent leather, but for their reputation as a manly man. However tempting, try to resist the urge to whisper "Sissy" when passing an obviously disgruntled Steward of the Purse.

A unique hazard of MPI is the guy who swoops in and puts his arm around you while walking, regardless of the large tote bag that is wedged between the two of you. He often ignores your attempts to gently move it to your other shoulder. Until he is actually stopped in his tracks and told that this is an uncomfortable way to walk, he won't budge. The red flag here is a fear of intimacy and the need for a buffer zone to function in a relationship. It also displays an oblivion to immediate surroundings that is disconcerting and possibly dangerous. Steer clear of the guy who decides to make the best of it by switching sides and walking backwards. He is either mentally unstable or a long-lost Marx Brother.

Men whose MPI results in making you carry their "extra" stuff in your purse are needy and extremely high-maintenance. The most frivolous item the average man carries is a comb or among models of a certain vintage, a handkerchief. Don't let them fool you into thinking that these basic human necessities are too much of a burden for their square shoulders. They have failed to realize that the average woman worth her salt carries at least these items and the contents of a small medicine cabinet. If they were such solid and dependable men, they wouldn't need a woman to schlep their things for them. At best, they are incurable mama's boys. Worst case scenario: closet crossdressers who couldn't find a bag to match their loafers.

The most valuable litmus test provided by MPI is the ability to witness the greatest fear of all men. Somehow, being asked to fetch something out of the "forbidden" conveyance is akin to asking them to pick up Tampax at the store. Reactions range from complete refusal to simply bringing you the entire bag with the attitude of someone who is handling a dead cat. The childhood training that says "Stay out of Mother's purse" is ridiculously adhered to in the context of an adult relationship. This may mean that he does not want to get to know you on the inside. He is afraid to learn what makes you tick. It may also mean that his mother kept loaded mousetraps and live grenades in her Louis Vuitton satchel.

The House Next Door

by Brenda Knepper

One of these days, I’m going to go over and introduce myself to my new neighbors.

A few months ago, the woman who lived next door to me was killed in a drive-by shooting. I had often seen her sitting out on her front porch smoking cigarettes for the year or so that she and her three children had lived in the house next to mine. She was a young, pretty African American woman with very well-behaved kids -- two boys and a girl, all under 10. She had a boyfriend who was there some of the time. The boyfriend was very outgoing and usually had a big smile on his face. He chatted with me a few times -- he was a driver for a towing company in Compton and I had once told him the only tow truck story I have in my repertoire. She was quieter than he was, but would usually give me a little wave whenever I pulled into my driveway.

The family was a welcome change from the psychotic weirdo and his perpetually angry girlfriend who had lived in the house previously. This other guy stalked the young neighborhood boys -- slowly driving along side of them in his car as they rode their scooters down the sidewalk, glaring at them and cursing them. What the hell?? I saw him do this on a couple occasions and took to calling the police regularly to report this and other threatening behavior he exhibited, such as pacing in his front yard, swinging numchucks over his head on any given day. He seemed to want all the neighbors to know that we had better not mess with him. Why would we want to?

His mad-faced girlfriend would occasionally come out and fanatically spray, what I think must have been pet repellent, around the bushes in front of the house whenever a stray or our little cat, Sassy, wandered into their yard. Sassy didn’t know any better -- the neighbors before them had put food out for her. They LIKED her to come over.

When these two whackos finally moved out, many of us on the block were very happy. And relieved.

After a year of truly enjoying the new family with the friendly-enough adults and polite children, a few months ago I was shocked and saddened to hear that the young mother had been killed by a bullet from a passing car as she was coming out of a local mini-mart. Hit in the chest and died at the hospital a few hours later.

Within a week and a half after her murder, the house was empty again. Her poor, bereft children went to live with their poor, bereft grandparents. I have a picture, permanently etched in my mind now, of their young mom sitting on the porch, never growing any older.

I wish I had taken the time to walk across the yard and say hello. I didn’t know her well, but God I miss her.

This I--Maybe, or Perhaps Not-- Believe

by Janet Levine

For some time now—maybe months, maybe years, time really does fly when you---I’ve been hearing the This I Believe essays on NPR. I’ve long known that religiously I’m pretty much a live and let live non-believer. That is, I don’t much believe, but it’s okay with me if you do. Mainly, I don’t want to argue about it. What I didn’t realize, until I was listening to This I Believe, is that I’m pretty much that way about everything.

I wanted to write a This I Believe essay. But I couldn’t figure out what I believe. At first I thought about randomness. Then I realized that I don’t particularly believe in it, I just accept that it happens. Or that, maybe, there is a causal reason. So I believe in acceptance, except I think that I am in charge of most of my own life. I won’t ever go quietly into any day or night. In short, I’ll accept what suits me. And reject everything else.

Does that mean I believe in self-determination? Yes, to the degree that we can determine. Sometimes there is that randomness. Or other’s self-determination which impedes your own.

And then there’s…but, wait. On the other hand. But perhaps. Then again. And so forth.

A friend tells me she believes in the power of yes. I like that. But I’m not sure I believe in it. I’m not sure I can commit to something so concrete, any more than I could commit to any other ideology. And then it hits me.

I believe in But. And Maybe. And even Perhaps.

Then again, it’s possible that I don’t.

The Vision Thing

by Janet Levine

All it takes is standing on the back patio of Beatrice Wood’s former home/studio in Ojai to understand what is missing in my life. Vision. Well, actually view.

I know, when I look out across the valley that if I had this in my life, I wouldn’t always want to be doing something else. I would be content to sit in my garden, thinking deep thoughts (deep because they wouldn’t be fettered as they are now, confined within the walls of my living space).

Deep thoughts are as essential to my well being as is my rich fantasy life. For deep in whatever passes as my soul, I know that if I had a view like the one Beato got to look at daily, I would still be craving something else, something new, something different.

Maybe, after all, it is better to drive off with friends, go to beautiful sites, eat interesting and different foods, and above all, don’t expect any of it to translate into your every day life.

Okay, so it's this easy

Well, we all thought that creating a blog would be difficult, but this took two minutes. -- Brenda Knepper

MINI-REVIEW
Black-Eyed Pea Cakes at The Village Jester

These were very tasty, reminiscent of crab cakes I enjoyed years ago on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, only without the crab meat. Oh, and using black-eyed peas instead. And using a spicier bread crumb mix and serving diced mangos on the side. Hmmm . . . maybe they were nothing like those crab cakes after all.

Nevertheless, eating them in the company of my dear, dear friends Ann and Janet at The Village Jester restaurant in Ojai made the experience very enjoyable. Well, after Janet requested that the annoying rock music be turned down.

The Village Jester
139 E Ojai Ave., Ojai CA 93023
805-640-8001