Cat Faces and Hairless Chihuahuas

          I have discovered Jigsaw World on Facebook. I used to love to do jigsaw puzzles, when life was slower and simpler. Now they require too much space and use up valuable time – unless they are on Facebook where I waste most of my valuable time anyway. They are my addiction of choice right now, and it is easy to access new ones. The puzzle I did just a little while ago was a collage of cat faces, just their faces – no ears or paws or tails. Just a set of 36 cat faces.

          It was hard, but not impossible to do because I could line up the eyes and the lines between pictures. It got a little creepy fitting together all those eyes, but they were all pretty cats. There were no hairless cats or those Siamese cats with the heads like anvils. Those kinds of cats are just simply ugly. Like mole rats and hairless Chihuahuas.

          The word ‘ugly’ is no longer politically correct, I’ve noticed. Whenever I say, “That is ugly!” I either get no response or the ameliorating “Oh, noooo. I think they’re cute.” Pardon me, Polyanna; some things are just plain butt-ugly. I don’t care how much they cost or how rare they are, hairless animals are ugly. And it seems to me that if we can have a culturally stipulated definition for beauty, we can damn well have one for ugly as well.

          My legs are ugly. They have cellulite and moles and wrinkles and I don’t care to bare them in public anymore. I even use a cover-up as soon as I get out of a swimming pool. Somehow, it doesn’t matter to me how ugly they are at the beach. I will never see any of those people again. If they observe my ugly legs and judge them, it really isn’t any of my business. At a neighborhood pool, it isn’t as okay. Someone might know me and tell my husband or my son that I have ugly legs, and my protectors might punch the bastard. That would be bad. On the other hand, my husband and my son might agree with the bastard, in which case they would be bastards, too. But my point is that there is such a thing as ugly legs, and I accept that.

          What I do not accept is the idea that I am not considered beautiful because of my legs, breasts, stomach, neck wrinkles, or hair style. Taken all together, I am not particularly sexually appealing; but I am still quite beautiful if you look at my eyes, hair color, and smile. True, you have to ignore my nose, but I should still be able to pass for beautiful. Therefore, my definition of beauty for people would be “Parts is parts, but people are beautiful somehow, so look for it.” My definition of ugliness would still be hairless animals. And I would add trashy streets, Hummers, puce, and television satellites. When you leave humans out of the equation, you should not be in danger of offending someone when you say, “Good God, that is ugly.”   

           And now I must return to Jigsaw World. I’ll try not to think so much this time. The next picture is some kind of big-eyed monkey-thing hanging in a tree. I don’t think I will have any comments on that.  

Porch Song: September

I Loooove My Porch.

        I love to sit on my screened-in porch and observe things. It is, by both chance and design, a sensory smorgasboard. I have several gardens and a bird feeder. A variety of birds and butterflies flit about. Squirrels and rabbits are numerous and even an occasional chipmunk races by at lightning speed. Many of my plants are grown for their scent – rose, lavender, lemon verbena. A small fountain blends its trickling with bird-calls and breezy leaves. An open vista of sky extends across the alley, over my neighbor’s back yard, and on to the tall, 50-something aged trees along her street.
        It is the third week of September in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. As is typical for the area, the first week was a perfect autumnal temperature in the upper 70’s. Last week we barely survived humid, oppressive 90’s. Today it is high 60’s, low 70’s again. Until today I had only one hour all week of tolerable discomfort on my porch. And, I told you, I love my porch. So perhaps that hour is exaggerated by its rarity, but it was memorable. A tree waved at me.         

          One of those trees – about 150 yards distant and 3 stories high – waved at me. I don’t mean the trunk or the limbs or a branch. I mean a hole appeared in the wall of green leaves, and the leaves waved at me.

There was nothing visible inside the hole that opened among the leaves. Just  the leaves waved at me.

           Now, there was nobody else on the porch or in the yard between me and that tree. I think it was therefore natural for me to assume that the tree was in fact signaling ME. What remained was to figure out what that meant – to me and potentially the tree. My first instinct was to wave back. So I did. The tree waved again.

          The tree is alive, it waved, and I thought we had satisfied the needs of the moment. I had been gazing at its beautiful green leaves, the tree interpreted it as a friendly stare, and waved. End of conversation. A second wave must have another meaning, I reasoned, but what?  Cross-species,  first encounter – a cultural exchange?  I flashed the peace sign. The tree waved again. I grinned at the tree, and winked. The tree waved a fourth time.

           At this point I thought things were getting a little weird.

           I am, by nature, a fairly eccentric individual. The outlandish and quixotic are very welcome in my mental landscape. In fact tweaking my curiosity makes me happy to be alive. When there is something new, different, worthy of further exploration – Whee! Fun! But there seemed no way to investigate the waving of a tree, and no chance to ascertain its meaning. I sure wouldn’t find anything on Google - or would I?After a few tries, some sites on the web informed me that trees communicate with each other using fungi,  they have large auras,  they  want to communicate with us but they do so very slowly (like the Ents in Lord of the Rings) and we must rely on mental images and intuition to understand them.

           Nothing about trees waving.

           I was clearing my mind and opening it to intuitive knowledge from the tree’s aura when the damn squirrel stuck its head out of the leaves. The little bastard snickered at me from behind his tiny claws. So you say you saw that coming? Well you need to develop a greater sense of mystery, I think.
           Besides, I hate squirrels. Now if it had been a crow… I love crows. I think they can talk…

Citizen's Arrest #1

Did you know you have a little arsenic in your chicken?  How much is a little, how safe is that amount, and where can you have your chicken tested? Did you buy local, organic chicken? What feed do they use? What kind of feed is safe?

You probably are not accustomed to asking these questions. You probably thought that the God-blessed FDA was checking up on these things and keeping you safe.

You would be wrong.

In considering who to arrest for this crime, I checked on who is selling the poison. That would be Pfizer. However, for the time being, they are graciously not selling one form of the drug voluntarily in the United States. It might be that they are making enough profit on the drug overseas, where they can sell it with impunity. According to an article by Johns Hopkins, scientists measured the amount in commercial chicken from 2010 until 2011 before announcing there is too much arsenic in the chicken feed. Arsenic has been a legal additive to chicken feed for decades. So this is nothing new. How reassuring is that?

So where to cry “Foul” ?

Our health industry sure piddled around with this one. Pfizer is profiting from some unethical business practices. The FDA has failed to bring that to our attention. The conspiracy theorist in me has some heavy judgments to make on that score. But that is all common practice all over the place round here.

I have decided to blame the FDA. And the next time I’m in White Oak, Maryland with a boatload of time on my hands, I am going to find the office, march right in, and serve papers. I’m gonna go all Michael Moore on Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg’s butt.

Right after I save the money to get my own butt out of jail.

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“Poultry Drug Increases Levels of Toxic Arsenic in Chicken Meat.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Johns Hopkins University. 11 May 2013. Web. 7 September 2013.    

Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Divas in Tiaras?

I watch the Phillies for many reasons. I can goof around on my computer and never miss a play.  I feel a connection with the team, the announcers, the people in the crowd. I smile a lot when the Phillies are playing well. If they show a cute kid in the stands, I smile even when they’re losing! Baseball  has a wholesome, family-style orientation for me, and if that is naïve – let me keep it that way. I imagine that if I ran into one of the players at a restaurant, we could sit down and talk about the game. If I get on an elevator with someone wearing a Phillie’s cap or shirt, we can talk about how the season is going. It is just a very simple, down-home kind of thing.

Imagine my dismay when I turned on the game and there were Miss America contestants WITH CROWNS ON sitting in the stands. Nay, standing on the field to sing “Take me out to the ball game,” while wearing spiky gold crown-things on top of their heads. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I screamed.

There are many reasons why it is wrong to have Miss America Pageant Contestants be part of a Phillies baseball game. Women in Miss America contests are cheerleaders in disguise. Baseball does not have cheerleaders. This is a law. Women may not line up in front of the dugout and kick their skirts up (or model swim suits) for better at-bats. Picture the carnage.  Muffy’s shoe flies into the manager’s coffee while a line drive knocks Patty out cold. The team rushes onto the field, breaking each others’ legs to get to give Patty CPR. The manager heads for the locker room to put ice on his third degree burns. The umpire spits on home plate.

Hats are important to building team spirit or blocking the sun out at baseball games. These are the only reasons for wearing hats at Citizens Bank Park. Sun visors and ball caps are acceptable in other colors, but look best if they are red, white, or both. Phanatic hats make people happy. There is no purpose for crowns at baseball games. They might block the sun in spots, but the tan pattern would make people look like zebras. And crowns are dangerous. This could happen: a towering foul ball is dropping right over a crown-wearing fan. The catcher reaches for the ball, the fan jumps to get out of the way, and the crown pierces the player’s underarm. The catcher screams, the fan faints, and the ump spits on home plate.  

Finally, people who take part in beauty pageants are pretty much in la-la-land when it comes to competition. The closest they’ve come to a team effort is meeting with the seamstress and the hair dresser on the same day. Runs happen to hosiery, tags have prices on them, pitches are recorded for advertisers, and batting is done with one’s eyelashes. The person who doesn’t sweat, get dirty, or forget her other glove wins. Imagine that Janis, in a mauve sateen sheath, steps to the plate on her black leather pumps, waves to the pitcher and cries, “I want to help bring world peace to the world!” The pitcher falls off the mound laughing, the players wolf-whistle in relays, and the umpire yells, “You are OUTTA HERE” before he spits right next to Janis’s shoes on home plate.

Everything has its place, its season, its moment in the spotlight. Women in crowns and sashes should be nowhere near a baseball diamond on a game day. Lose the crowns ladies, or get back on the bus, I say.

Into the Breach

This is the place where I begin to follow directions. My Mom said it. My English teachers said it. My friends said it. I tell my students to do it all the time.

So I guess I'll listen!

This is the place where I'm going to let my babble flag fly. I'm gonna shoot the breeze, cut the crap, lose the attitude and take it to the streets.

In short...be prepared for just about anything. I'm figuring I'll be the one reading it the most, so I'll write what I like.

And now...I have to stop writing about writing and just
 "Write it, Lari Jo."