YEATS ALERT: KRUGMAN AGAIN!

Compare this to his July column, cited below:

Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli. No question about it:... the moralizers are filled with a passionate intensity. And those who should know better lack all conviction.

Where are this man's editors?
See the full piece here. (yes, I'm a little behind with this one....)

YEATS ALERT!

The ideal leader in this mental system is free from moral anxiety but full of passionate intensity. This leader pushes his troops in lock step before the voracious foe. Each party has its own version of whom the evil elites are, but both feel they’ve more to fear from their enemies than from their own sinfulness.

David Brooks, shame on you. See the whole article here.

YEATS ALERT!

....this from a source I would never have expected: Frank Rich, in today's Times:

And yet here we are, slouching toward yet another 9/11 anniversary, still waiting for a correction, with even our president, an eloquent Iraq war opponent, slipping into denial. Of all the pro forma passages in Obama’s speech, perhaps the most jarring was his entreaty that Iraq’s leaders “move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative and accountable.” He might as well have been talking about the poisonous political deadlock in Washington. At that moment, there was no escaping the tragic fact that instead of bringing American-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, the costly war we fought there has, if anything, brought the bitter taste of Iraq’s dysfunction to America.

YEATS ALERT!

Paul Krugman in today's New York Times:

The point is that Mr. Obama’s attempts to avoid confrontation have been counterproductive. His opponents remain filled with a passionate intensity, while his supporters, having received no respect, lack all conviction. And in a midterm election, where turnout is crucial, the “enthusiasm gap” between Republicans and Democrats could spell catastrophe for the Obama agenda.

Surely he could have conveyed this Deep Thought without going the S.C. route. Love the Nobel Prize, Paul, but find another poem to quote.

The do that did me in

The hair that convinced me to stop coloring my own. My thanks to the stage artist who put this artful streak in Stafford Dean's exquisite hair, the hair that made me want to, um, hear more.

Now leaving the comfort zone

As I write this post, my new (from the Humane Society) Jack-Rat terrier is draped across my arms and lap. My feet are up on the sofa because my ankles are swollen. They swell pretty much every day now, even when I'm wearing TED stockings (prescribed by my doctor and purchased in the same store where you get commodes and railings for your toilet and shower), which I didn't today because it's July and hot. This would be a good reason, too, to shoo the little lap dog away, but her sweet dog sigh makes it impossible.

Leaving the comfort zone has been on my mind for weeks now. My clothes no longer fit properly. My hormones are not at all themselves, at least as I have known them these last 37 years or so. My eye glasses no longer work, so I have pairs of readers -- all in zingy stripes and polka dots -- and Internet-ordered prescription glasses littering every desk and bedside table. The client for which I did the majority of my billable work over the last several years has been forced to create a leaner profile, and I have begun working for a new client, on a Mac, and the job is different and more demanding, and I am just too old to be having to disrupt my existence so completely. It's not comfortable and I don't like it.

Xingu has lost two teeth in two weeks and looks like a gap-toothed giraffe, with his skinny long legs, brown skin and blonding hair. Krang goofs along happily, replacing his old commuter bike with another old commuter bike, mowing the lawn and piling papers on his bureau until they topple. The new dog has a dreadful name because we are reading Harry Potter and "Winky" was more apt than Luna or Padma or Fleur. We are putting in some desperately needed new windows, but only on the north side of the house: the side nobody sees but us. The job transition kept me from planting a vegetable garden for the first time in 20 years or so, and the plot that should be overflowing with green tomatoes and eggplant is filled with self-sewn mustard and cosmos leftover from last year. Everywhere I look I see some kind of slop, anarchy, lethargy, disrepair, stupidity or dirt.

I spend too much time in my fantasy world, where I live a gracious existence with household help. Not only is there enough money for essentials, there is also enough for summer opera festivals like Santa Fe and Glyndebourne. Picnics on the ground, handsome and soft-spoken and witty men, well tended women in attractive linen dresses and tasteful jewelry. We listen to Mozart, maybe a little Verdi, some bel canto. Chamber ensembles play during lunch. The air is scented with lavender or sagebrush, and the breeze blows just enough to fluff the furze of gray hair we all wear with equanimity if not aplomb. We are easy in our loose skins, in love with music and oh, so comfortable.

Guest post: "I'll get you, my pretty...."

I am happy to share the following, oh-so-pertinent guest post from Deb (see also "Life is a highway," May 3):

I looked in the mirror and I realized my face was ‘melting.' The skin was sagging at the jaw line, pooling at the base of my throat, and slipping determinedly south. Like a candle stored in an over warm room, my ‘wax’ is redistributing itself.

A 50-something cannot say “I’m melting” without flashing to the crone crumpled at the feet of Youth in red shoes and blue gingham. The witch eventually disappears, leaving a pile of loose fitting clothes and a bad hat.

I confess that sometimes I feel like I really am melting. Having shed considerable light and warmth over the years, I feel smaller. As I move within society, I move without expectation or recognition. I’m a small flicker in a halogen world. Those are the bad days, and most days are good.

The more I thought about it, the more I realize that I am not melting as much as I am breaking a mold. I no longer require the constructs that served me well in my 30’s and 40’s. I am re-forming into someone who is well rounded and softer. Sure, I have bumps and drips where I was once smooth and tapered. But now my form is unique, a result of the forces that have acted upon it. What I have given off defines me, and my new shape reflects that.

I am not ready to disappear. Perhaps my brightest days are ahead of me. I can still be the candle that keeps someone from stumbling in the darkness. I can’t always light up a room. But let’s face it; everything looks beautiful in candle light.

Old dog

HECK! said the rebel

I miss Allan Sherman. "Seltzer Boy" was always my favorite, but today Xingu and I listened to "The Rebel" several times.

HECK! said the President.

From M.D. to sex kitten

What happened to Chistiane Northrup, M.D., to make her think she had to cut herself, dye and straighten her hair, and tart herself up to try to look 20 years younger? Wasn't this the smart doctor who wrote in her first book about the "toxic" nature of western medicine and all those nasty toxic messages we receive as American women? Yet by the time she wrote The Wisdom of Menopause, she can say with a straight [heh] face:

It seems to me that it is almost impossible to go through the normal process of facial aging in this culture and not wish that something could be done about certain parts of your face, especially the eyelids and jawline. If you're one of the lucky ones who really aren't at all bothered by sagging eyelids or jowls, bless you [you dumb shit]. If, however, you want an appearance-enhancing face-lift, eyelid surgery, skin peel, liposuction, laser surgery, or other cosmetic polishing of your exterior, then bless you, too. Through the years I've referred many patients for various plastic surgery or dermatological procedures. Just about 100 percent of them have been thrilled with the results.

And there you have it. I guess she thought nobody would buy her products (Team Northrup, anyone?) if she looked old. That's real wisdom.

A Mary Lou kind of day

I cooked three meals on my new panini press. I went to church long enough to sing the choir anthem and play the tambourine, and then I left. On my way home I stopped at Linder's Garden Center, which was giving 15% of my purchase to Xingu's school so I could of course crookedly justify spending more than I should have. I came home, saw Xingu off with a friend and Krang off to some bicycle-related errands, and then I spent hours in the sun -- working on my front border and pruning the bejesus out of my failing forsythia.

Some differences from Mary Lou: (1) I was alone. Mom always had a couple of kids around when she was outside, which was damn near all the time. (2) I was wearing sunscreen. My mother never, ever wore sun protection apart from the occasional goofy hat, and after spending two-thirds of her life in Arizona she was spectacularly wrinkled. Sixty years of smoking helped on that score as well. (3) I was listening to my iPod (The Yeomen of the Guard, Bach B-minor mass, Tommy Quasthoff's jazz album, my Stafford Dean play list).

It was sunny, clear and cool today -- the sort of day we almost never had in Arizona. Our old dog Gromit was near me, always in the sun, while I was out. I dug dandelions, trimmed grass with hand trimmers, uprooted tiny trees, planted a new variety of heat-tolerant (there's one born every minute, isn't there) lobelia, fretted over the tiny red insects that have already started in on the salvia. Nothing in the border is blooming; shall I use the poison? shall I?

The lilacs are post-peak but still fragrant. Mom visited several years at Mother's Day, and usually the lilacs were just opening when she was here. It makes me sad that she never met Krang and never knew Xingu; she would have adored both of them.

In 2000, at age 40, with my mother newly dead and divorce proceedings underway, I had to face the likelihood that I would not, after all, get to be a mother. And yet I was not ready to accept it, and I looked for loopholes, strategies and signs. I told myself that if the forsythia bloomed that year, it would be a sign from my mother -- whose favorite color was yellow -- that I would, indeed, have a child.

And it did, and I did, and tonight I'm raising a glass of prosecco (okay, maybe four or five; it's not bourbon, so that's another departure from Mary Lou style) to my mother, and to Krang's mother, and to Momo -- the recently departed mother of my sister in law -- and to the generations of women in these our families who have dug in the dirt and gotten too much sun and told the same stories over and over again and loved their children beyond all measure.

Mother's Day appliance

My mom didn't believe in Mother's Day. Her children always observed it in some way, but she claimed she didn't care if we did or not because it was an entirely bogus holiday. She used the word "bogus" often, in a big voice with well-supported tone, before it became as popular as it is today. Another of her favorites along these lines was a contemptuous, "It is to laugh."

I understand her feelings, now that I'm a mother. The first Mother's Day I qualified to be feted, seven years ago, I worked it for all I was worth. It had been a rough few months after all, I was trying to nurse a tiny infant who would rather sleep, I was up in the wee hours mooing at a breast pump -- is there any less dignfied thing to do to oneself? -- and so on Mother's Day 2003 I stayed in bed and enjoyed the novelty of it. Me, 43 years old, a mother.

After that, though, it's been downhill all the way. I felt and feel much as my own mother did about this guilt-inducing, ludicrous excuse to go to Target and support the local florist. I have instructed Krang and Xingu to leave off, already. I want to be treated like a queen every damn day of the year, and I don't need any bogus displays of affection or appreciation on that particular Sunday.

What I need is a panini press. A Cuisinart GR-4, to be exact, with interchangeable non-stick plates and an integrated drip cup. I had a vast array of delicious sandwiches in Venetian bars earlier this year (when I wasn't eating squid), many washed down with a sparkling prosecco, and I want to recreate un po' of that magic in my own hovel. So I started asking for the panini press about Valentine's Day, after I had tried out the one my friends Bonnie and Phil own.



I researched the best deal. I emailed Krang all the information, and he went on Amazon and ordered it using my account and credit card number. Which was invalid. So I went back on Amazon and gave them a new credit card number. "My" order shipped, and a big box addressed to me arrived the very next day. I will wait until Sunday to see what kind of show the boys make, but I'll tell you this: it will be my most meaningful Mother's Day since 2003.

Happy birthday to my big brother

His name is Gary. He's half Dutch, although it looks a little closer to 100% in this piece, entitled "Self Portrait With 100-Thread-Count Hat."

Guest post: Life is a highway

I am delighted to share this sweet essay by my friend Deb (who is also 50):

Shortly before I turned 50, my son turned 16. The irony was not lost on me. As I sit at a crossroads, contemplating the roads taken and not taken, my son plans his exodus into the wide world. As I yearn for the back roads and byways, he seeks the route that will jettison him quickly to the next destination point. As I move increasingly toward the slow lane, he is merging into the express lane.

We’ve logged a lot of miles together. The mile markers, the detours, the bumps in the road were part of a larger journey where I was the driver and he was the (mostly) willing passenger. When he was small, we sang Disney tunes and shared fruit snacks.

As he got older, we discussed current events (his), life lessons (mine), and traded thoughts on religion and philosophy in the relative safety of the car. Increasingly, his preferences dictated our background music. The soft rock station was replaced by Miles Davis, the Who, and Beethoven—sometimes all in the same trip.

My required stops were eclipsed by a whirlwind of practices and social obligations completely unrelated to me. Currently, we work driving practice into an already packed schedule. I went from driver to chauffer to instructor. One day I realized that quite literally, I was becoming the passenger in my son’s life. Soon he will be on his own.

As I slide into the passenger seat, I have to come to terms with a few things. My son has good reflexes. He has good judgment. He will gain experience and confidence as he gains seat time. There will be worries and sleepless nights. Is he safe enough? Can he anticipate the dangers as he travels down life’s highway?

Mostly, I will miss the time we spent together in the car. I hope he will report back on his adventures—what he has seen and where he has traveled. I know too, that someday the tables will turn. I will be the one being driven to my appointments and obligations. Perhaps we will sing a few Disney tunes. The Who would be okay too.

Tryon Estates aha

A most interesting article on estrogen in the New York Times magazine this week. Cynthia Gorney, an entertaining Mary Roach-like stylist, writes about her serious perimenopausal depression and the latest thinking on hormone replacement. Near the end is this:

Every midlife woman I know keeps redrawing for herself the defensible lines of intervention in the “natural” sequence of human aging. Obsessive multiple plastic surgeries are silly and desperate. Muscles kept in good working order are not.

I saw the truth of these assertions at first hand in the mountains of southwest North Carolina. My husband’s parents spent the last several years of their lives at a place called Tryon Estates, where hundreds of people, almost all in their 70s and 80s, lived in accommodations ranging from freestanding “villas” to apartments, from assisted living to memory care to nursing home beds. Beginning in late 2001, we visited at least twice a year until my mother in law Evelyn died in early 2009. Tryon Estates gave me a new model for old age.

It wasn’t until my second or third visit that I had my aha moment. Every day we ate breakfast and dinner in a dining room that might have been a hotel ballroom, with loud wall-to-wall carpet and muted tablecloths and wait staff wearing tidy black and white. At these meals we got to know many of Evelyn’s friends quite well. (Thanks to Evelyn’s keen memory for unflattering details, we also knew the back stories of many of the residents, their children, grandchildren, ex-spouses…and they knew ours. Krang of course had met many of his mother’s friends on visits with his second wife, whom we call Maris….but that’s another story for another hour.)

One day at breakfast, I realized that there were no seriously overweight people amongst the dozens we saw regularly. It had never occurred to me because I had never been in such a large group of old people, but it’s pretty vivid: fat people don’t get old. Or maybe the members of The Greatest Generation, who grew up in the lean years of the Depression, never got fat to begin with. Or maybe it has to do with social status and income: you have to be reasonably well off (and white, and Gentile) to buy yourself in to Tryon Estates.

In any case, I also noticed that pretty much every woman who lived there looked—there’s no other word for it—old. Sweetbriar girls who had been careful about the sun, staunch New England Republicans who had had every privilege including hired help and second homes and magnificent husbands—every last one of them looked old. Their hands were ropey with blue veins. Wrinkles, age spots, gray hair—all common currency. Because there was a dress code at dinner, residents had to put themselves together enough to be admitted to the dining room—but there’s no getting around it: regardless of how much their clothes cost or how artfully their make-up was applied, the women just looked old.

In short, they were way past feeling bad about their necks.

However. The women who stood upright, the women who wore walking shoes to breakfast because they were headed outside afterward, the women who didn’t need a cane or a walker or a little motorized cart to get around—these women looked youthful despite their lines and spots. And it came to me all in a rush at some point: given finite resources of time and funding, we’re best off to invest what we can not in Botox, not in a Myotonology Micro-Current Face Lift, not even in peptides, but in getting stronger physically.

There’s no substitute for youth. There is also no substitute for luck. Once the first is past, you really need the second if you’re going to make it into your 80s without catching an untreatable cancer, sustaining some sort of injury that will eventually incapacitate you, succumbing to heart attack or brain attack or melancholia or alcohol, losing your marbles, or all of the above. Here’s the deal, as Cynthia Gorney puts it:

Should luck and longevity cooperate, we are going to grow old. We’re already old, by the standards of our children and our ancestors, but the generation to which we belong expects to live a rich messy life full of extremely loud rock music for another 30 years after menopause.

I would substitute “extremely loud Verdi” for the rock music, but never mind. Estrogen is a big issue and luck is essential. But we can take some steps now by, well, taking some steps now. Working out with weights. Building up our bones and muscles.

We need to not tarry. We’re not getting any younger.

White trash birthday party

The kids got Ding Dongs instead of cake. You can tell it's a crowd of Montessori kids when they ask, "What's a Ding Dong? I've never had a Ding Dong before!" They loved the Ding Dongs; Jack had three. The main course was Parmesan Pastry Pups from Trader Joe's. They also had potato chips (baked, natch), grapes, watermelon, and organic milk boxes. Yes, the amount of garbage was enormous. For the first time in years, playing outdoors was possible. Six little boys, all with two parents and reasonable manners and a love for all things Lego....not bad. I crashed for two hours afterward.

Today Xingu sang a little song over and over: I am seven, you are fifty! I am seven, you are fifty!

Golden birthday

Xingu was born just after 8 p.m. on Monday, April 7, 2003. He was term (barely), weighed 5 pounds 9 ounces, and looked like a space alien. Today, his seventh birthday, he is a wiry 50-pounder. He is tall, blond, and miraculous to his parents in nearly every way. Two of his grandparents got to meet him; his father’s mother got to know him. More than that, he got to know her. One of the gifts older parents often can’t give their children is grandparents.

What can we give him as we age? Perspective, tolerance . . . time. Perhaps because we have lost our own parents, we are in touch with mortality in a way that younger parents are not. We have seen enough to know that we are all on the brink of the abyss at any given moment and that, in the words of a character in one of Xingu’s books, “Now is all the time there is.”

Xingu and I go way back together. Thirty years ago, single and anxious and prone to drinking too much wine, I talked about the sweet little boy I would have someday. He reassured me from the womb throughout my fraught pregnancy, and then here he was.

He has no clue that he will be bullied mercilessly if he continues to study dance. He loves to climb, swim, run and ride his bicycle; he is learning to skateboard. He knows snippets of The Mikado, The Sorcerer, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Lion King, and various operas (“Mom, who is worse? President Bush or Don Giovanni?”). He whines and pouts and whines some more. He reads Harry Potter. He hugs old people, who love him for it. He hugs his parents, who love him for it.

The evening Xingu was born, my good doctor came in to tell me why he thought a C-section was in order. I had hoped to put it off until the next day because just then I wanted to eat more than I wanted to have surgery. Dr. W said he thought it better not to wait. I looked at my husband Krang. “Seven is an odd number…” I murmured; Krang knows I like odd numbers. Dr. W added, “Seven is a lucky number.”

It gets better

NEUROPEPTIDES

I would kill for this hair

My friend Rosemary. Ooohhh, I love her style....and the hair I can only dream about.

Quem quaeritis?

Two choirs, usually situated on opposite sides of the nave or cross-bar of the cathedral, or on opposite sides of the church doors, address each other with the first two and second two lines of this short paraphrase from the Vulgate Bible. The "three Marys"* come to his tomb on the third day after his crucifixion only to find the stone rolled away from its door and an angel standing in the doorway. The angel asks them the question in the first line, they reply with the second line, and the angel answers their request with the last two lines:

Whom seek ye in the sepulchre, O Christians?
Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, O angel.
He is not here, He has arisen as He foretold:
Go, announce that He has arisen from the grave.

From the shallow root of the first recorded dramatic embellishment or "trope," called "quem quaeritis" after its first words, a tradition of English sacred drama emerged that fused with revivals of classical drama in the sixteenth century to create the "Elizabethan drama" of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson.

Theater then, theater now. In some places, truly bad theater.

(Quoted without permission from this web site. I took the photo in Venice.)

Embarrassment of riches

The New York Times piece on the gray hair being affected by very young girls/women seems to have struck a nerve. Read the comments if nothing else (including one from Hagga [as her alterego scarpia2] doing a little blog promotion). There are so many I wish I had written, including this one, from nutsnbolts in Honolulu:

A few years ago, my 70-something father leaned over and whispered in my ear that my gray hair was starting to show. "You need to dye it" he whispered. His concern was not that it made me look old, but that the older I looked, the older he looked. With the long-dormant embers of teenage rebellion rekindled, I have refused to color my salt and pepper hair.

Now I am conflicted. I don't want people to think I am making a fashion statement. I want people to think I am a flaunting convention, declaring my independence, and pissing off my parents.

The most visible sign of my age (50) is a daily reminder of the thrill of being a teenager. I hope this trend never gains traction. If gray hair becomes chic, what will I do to recapture the excitement of my youth?

The real thing

Thanks to my stylist's husband George (also a stylist) who let me photograph his incredibly beautiful hair.

Before and after

Gray matters

O, the delicious irony of finding this on nytimes.com just hours before heading to my stylist for the streaks of gray she has been putting in my hair for a few months now. Apparently, as one of the commenters writes, you have to be young and vapid-looking for gray hair to be chic; I am neither young nor vapid- looking, much as I may try, although increasingly I do look vacant -- when I am trying to remember a word, say, or what I wanted to achieve when I walked into the livingroom, and so on. Certainly nobody has ever accused me of being chic (unless it counted when I was 25 and a coworker told me, "You're not pretty but you have style").

I get a lot of advice on my hair. Both my sisters-in-law tell me to cover the gray. A sister alto in my church choir said encouragingly, "I don't hate the way your hair looks." I will post before and after photos later today.

I learned a lot from Carol Burnett

All that I was capable of learning, anyway. Saturday nights in front of her show: a family tradition. But damn it, isn't it better to look plain old old than to look old and grotesque?

New guy group

Billy Rubin and the Hepaticats

Happy Easter

From The Chalice & the Blade by Riane Eisler:

Now, perhaps nowhere as poignantly as in the omnipresent theme of Christ dying on the cross, the central image of art is no longer the celebration of nature and of life but the exaltation of pain, suffering, and death. For in this new reality that is now said to be the sole creation of a male God, the life-giving and nurturing Chalice as the supreme power in the universe has been displaced by the power to dominate and destroy: the lethal power of the Blade. And it is this reality that to our day afflicts all humanity -- both women and men.

New girl group

Polly Peptide and the Peptones, coming to a CVS near you! I bought a Maybelline Colossal Volum [sic] Express waterproof mascara today in Glam Black/Blackest Black, "7X the volume instantly no clumps," and all this with collagen too!

It is good to be alive. To be wise enough to tell the mother of a beautiful new baby girl that the medical professionals who threaten her newborn with the slur "bottle bum" because she is drinking -- oh, the HORROR -- breast milk from a bottle are, in fact, Nursing Nazis. The next day this mom told me my comments helped her get a few things in perspective. Chalk one up for middle age.

Come to think of it, "The Bottle Bums" would be a great name for a girl group.

Magic Fingers on steroids

Anyone who took a long car trip back in the 60s and possibly earlier may remember Magic Fingers: the nearly irresistible little box between the beds in the motel room. You put a quarter in the box, and then your bed vibrated with a low hum, and you drifted off to nighty night. This all came back to me when I went in for MRIs on my neck and shoulder, ordered up to determine why I can't reach high enough to get at the Nutella.

I was offered my choice of CDs, asked for opera but they were fresh out, chose Mozart, got a Greatest Hits disc. They pipe music through headphones to distract you from the extreme noise of the MRI machine blasting magnetic waves througout your being. But ohhhh, those waves. It's vibrating constantly, just like Magic Fingers. Some of it sounds like road work, but generally we're talking low tones and DEEP vibrations. With my eyes shut and the overture to The Marriage of Figaro playing in the background, I could have been in a ride at the imaginary Opera World amusement park, or a subject in a study on how the human body responds to deep notes and tones and the vibrations they cause. I've been trying for a year to find someone interested in working with me on this line of questioning. Know anyone?

Things fall apart....

OOPSY! But seriously, Yeats probably wrote this line after he reached into the kitchen cabinet for the Nutella and discovered that his arm wouldn't go that high. He went to his doctor, was told he had an impingement, got scheduled for an MRI and a visit with an orthopedist, and then was referred back to his GP to find out why his blood pressure was on the high side.

So yer right, Billy-but, they do.

Pray It's Photoshop

But is it really as absurd as it appears?

Who you calling "gullible"?

I buy cosmetics. Three times a year I meet two girlfriends, on our respective birthdays, for lunch at Big Bowl followed by a jaunt to the cosmetics uber-store Sephora. It was there I found a Peter Thomas Roth product called Unwrinkle Lip (which, may I add, is full of PEPTIDES, more than you can even believe). The saleswoman said, "I've heard this is fabulous." Naturally I bought it.

I used it, and I feel it has done, ummmm, something helpful for my lips. I used up the first batch, bought a second, and am now on my third. I liked it so much I bought another, even more expensive lip product, Spiff Upper Lip by Bliss. I use the Unwrinkle twice a day, the Spiff Upper Lip only at night. I don't know why.

I also paid for a professional make-up application lesson. I asked the young woman who made me up if she thought I was too old to wear bright lipstick. "Nooooo," she said, "you've earned your stripes." I bought several products from her too. (One product she recommended but does not sell is Revlon Colorstay lip stain -- and I do mean stain -- available at all the fine stores that sell Revlon. It sticks and sticks, and it doesn't feather. No more lip liner! I am especially fond of Nonstop Cherry which, the makeup expert advised me, "I use on all my brides.")

So there's gullible, and there's vanity, and there's doing what you need to do to feel better at any given moment. You can buy lots of cosmetics for the price of one Botox session, and it's also probably cheaper in the long run than drinking to excess, the choice my mother made.

Watch this space for a review of the PEPTIDE facial I'll be having next month.

The center will not SHUT UP

Please, no more quotes from or allusions to "The Second Coming." Ever again.

(Thanks to this guy for messing up the prissy boy.)

One more word for you

HYDROPEPTIDES

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

Our church choir is singing a gorgeous setting of this poem by Christina Rossetti. The music is by Craig Courtney, whose arrangements and original music we sing often. As for Rossetti, I knew nothing of her except the overworked "In the Bleak Midwinter." Found this tidbit (which explains a lot) on Wikipedia:

In the 1840s her family was stricken with severe financial difficulties due to the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. When she was 14, Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown and left school. Her breakdown was followed by bouts of depression and related illness. During this period she, her mother, and her sister became seriously interested in the Anglo-Catholic movement that was part of the Church of England. This religious devotion played a major role in Rossetti's personal life.

British bags

I suspect both have had some work done on their chins, and they both look pretty good. Judi might have toned down the makeup just a wee.

More is less

As I sat in the lobby during my son's ballet class -- yes, yes, young Xingu takes ballet, mainly so he can get to the part where they tap dance -- I had my first experience with More magazine, which I believe is targeted to women in the perimenopausal years. I wish I had counted the number of full-page ads promising to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, turn back the years, deflate the puffs under your eyes, lift sagging skin, yadda yadda you know what I'm saying. Some of the ads were for surgery.

Does anyone else find this sad?

Why are so many women so gullible? I know someone who travels with such a glut of unguents that she checks a suitcase for a 36-hour trip. She has great skin, she looks at least 15 years younger than she is (a good dye job too), but she couldn't bypass the regimen for two days. Maybe that's why she looks 15 years younger than she is, and people ask me, "Are you Xingu's grandma?"

Then there was the editorial in More on how your passport photos tell the real story of "where your looks have gone."

People, we don't look like we did at 20 or 30. I for one am glad. What is wrong with looking 50? Please, tell me -- what is wrong with it?

Who you calling "dear"?

In the last month I have been on the phone with a bank manager who repeatedly called me "dear"; I have gone to the hairdresser where a woman at least my age with seriously dyed and styled hair said, "Give me your scarf, young lady," and I have been to Whole Foods where the butcher repeatedly called me "ma'am." Of the three, I like "ma'am" the best.

I can see why old people get Sick. And. Tired. of being condescended to and treated like they are effing idiots. I just haven't figured out how to respond when stupid people call me "dear" and "young lady."

In another instance, I had only myself to blame. I spent the day at a photo shoot with a bunch of 20-something creative types, and made the mistake of whining about turning 50 and feeling old. A perky as hell young woman said, "Hey, you seem pretty spunky to me, sister."

Spunky. After I punched her lights out, I determined that I would not refer to myself as old again. I slipped today, but by and large I have stuck to my guns.

And then there's Sam Ramey,

who was a hell of a bass at one time. Why oh why is he still singing? What makes it so hard for some people to quit while they're ahead? Why not teach? coach? read books? dandle the grandkids? (Or the children, as the case may be; Ramey fathered a child some years after he should have moved on to his second career.)

I'm all for parenthood, whether early or later in life. What I can't handle is a big loud singer with a vibrato wide enough to drive a Mack truck through. You're not doing us any favors, Sam.

One word for you:

PEPTIDES

"Hello, Beautiful"

"This is not just another new moisturizer. Our exceptionally nourishing moisturizer is RareMinerals-enriched to give you back the skin you were born with [which would look pretty weird on a 50 year-old body]. Thanks to its breakthrough electrolyte delivery system [am I the only one thinking of an old vacuum cleaner?], our patent-pending 100% pure RareMinerals Complex [it's always a Complex, isn't it] deeply nourishes [get it? it's nourishing] and hydrates like never before [umm, well, I thought it was new]. Its powerfully restorative and hydrating [get it? it's hydrating!] benefits deliver deep revitalization to dehydrated, stressed skin [Xanax for your outsides].

"Beautifully luminous, baby-soft skin is right around the corner [running like hell in the opposite direction]. Enjoy."

Really. As my old pappy used to say, if the baby skin has left the barn, there ain't no point shuttin' the door.

The one who dies with the most wrinkles wins.

Thought for today

Xanax is my friend.

Yum II

49 Minutes of Yum

The tv show Maverick began three years before I was born. Now it's on Netflix. Grab your bankie and a glass of wine, arrange yourself near the fireplace, and watch a 30 year-old James Garner deliver the goods.

I love this photo

...because he's looking right. at. me.

Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy

Placido Domingo is 69 years old and singing baritone, because he can. James Morris is 62 years old and singing "bass," because James Levine lets him. James Levine's cummerbund wraps around his neck as he conducts, and the Met's orchestra is one fine and elegant organism. I don't know what to think of the Simon Boccanegra I heard tonight, but the next time I whine about feeling old or having to leave my comfort zone, I hope I remember these old dudes and their never-say-die 'tudes.

How Can I Keep From Singing?

I ask myself this question every time I'm scheduled to do a solo. I had hoped I would lose my voice before today's recital, but no dice. Even two weeks of PFPSD (post-food-poisoning stress disorder) wasn't sufficient to keep me from croaking my way through "Qui sedes" from the Vivaldi Gloria.

I began taking voice lessons at age 47, a tad late in the game. But I gather that many women take a leap of one sort or another in middle age. (Having a baby at 43 wasn't enough, it seems.) The trouble is that I know exactly how I want to sound and how I perhaps might sound if I had been blessed with sufficient talent and had started training 30 years sooner....and then there's what I am able to accomplish -- absent the talent and the training.

So I blunder on and, ham that I am, get up in front of people and attempt to "sell" whatever I'm trying to perform, which is usually of the classical persuasion because that's what I listen to and love. And almost inevitably, I fail to meet even my own ever lower standards. What's changing is my attitude. I still have the capacity to feel utterly miserable after a performance, but little by little I am gaining a tough titty approach: if people find me objectionable, well, let them get up here and try it.

I've had what I call phlegm-o-rama all winter. I barfed my lungs up for a night in Italy earlier this month and have had stomach issues ever since. I croaked not once but several times today, but I soldiered on and acted as if. People were kind, and I chalked up another performance in my effort to s t r e t c h myself.

But the question is always there in the back of my head: is what I'm trying to do gutsy? Or pathetic?

My First Nebbish

The year was 1981. He was a radio announcer at KHEP FM, 101.5 on your FM radio dial. I hated hated hated the sound of him and thought it would be a blast to clap eyes on him and interview him for a class I was taking from the local newspaper arts critic -- and you can imagine what a tough job that was in Phoenix, Arizona, then or now. So I went over to the station, which was in what is now a barrio, and I met this short skinny Eye-talian looking guy wearing black wingtips and a Pierre Cardin tie. And he let me sit in the studio while he did his show, and he was very funny and I left with a major crush. I saw him again in 2000. He seemed much shorter, he was definitely stouter, and he dyed his hair.

Things have a way of working out.

Thurl

Why is it a guy can have multiple chins and still look youthful?

How to Feel Young

How to Feel Old

Spend Saturday working for The Man. Spend Sunday cleaning out a storage closet containing documents that go back to the 1920s, photos of your 23 year-old niece as a baby, notes of encouragement from your mom who's been dead for a decade, photos of and letters from and about the grandmother who died at age 26....and a 1999 Wallace and Gromit calendar. Tell your six year-old that you can't re-use a calendar, then eat your words. 2010 features the same dates on the same days of the week as 1999, including Easter.

See notations from 1999 that might as well be ancient Hittite for all the present meaning they contain. Remember the April of that year, when you finally told the deadbeat husband to remove himself, and he did. (And the April four years after that, when the present non-deadbeat husband joined you to welcome the boy who's now six.) See the notes from September 8, 1999: "51 lbs/tomatoes." And from the 12th: "6 lbs raspberries." The raspberries are long gone. The will to grow enough plants to produce a 51-pound, one-day harvest of tomatoes has long since morphed into motherhood and myriad other preoccupations.

Shit. What a way to spend the weekend.

Get thee to my lady's chamber

...and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.

Note to Self:

Always be photographed from above.

Preferably by someone who loves you.

My Brand

There's nothing like a transatlantic journey to make the circles under one's eyes look deeper and darker than the Grand Canal.

The tyranny of the photograph: whereas once some 9 out of 10 photos of me actually looked like I felt, now 9 out of 10 photos of me look like someone who's much older and wider than I am. Can anyone explain this phenomenon to me?

On the other hand, it is fun to have fun....and maybe we are better off recalling it with the mind's eye.

VOLARE (oh, oh)

My last trip abroad was 10 years ago. I was commemorating my 40th birthday, the end of a nine-year marriage, and my mother's death. I took some of her ashes and sprinkled them under a rosemary bush at the monastery where St. Francis fell asleep for the final time on a very short, very hard bed made of rock.

Different circumstances. I am traveling with a good friend who has already been around the world a few times, starting when he flew to England from Frankfurt (where he was born) at the age of two weeks. This man -- I'll call him Krang -- is also my husband, and this is our honeymoon....about seven and half years into the marriage.

When you marry at 42 and 50, hoping among other things to procreate, you can't dilly dally. By luck or grace or what you will, our son was born 10 months after we married and we've been pretty busy ever since.

As we said in our birth announcement, all good things come to those who wait. We'll see.

Thanks, Mom

She's been gone 10 years but I fill the void by becoming more like her minute by minute. Buying sweaters at Macy's two days ago, I made sure to let the sales clerk know my husband would need them for our upcoming trip...to Italy. That was my mother, coming out of my mouth. That's sobering enough.

I was born 50 years ago today.

This photo may have been shot on or near my second or possibly third birthday, in the backyard of our house in Phoenix. The old lady was pushing 40 at the time, rather glam in her own cowgirl way. This didn't last. Look at my hand in hers. I can still feel it, or it seems as if I can.

Last Day of My First Half Century

On this auspicious day I had my eyebrows shaped by a professional. This is one of many things I used to do for myself that I am now paying someone else to do. What else will I pay people to do for me in the next 20 or 30 years?

Counting Down

My year of being 50 begins on January 23, 2010.