Jews Rock

Apparently by many reports, anti-Semitism is making a comeback. All I have to say about that to anyone who may applaud that news is, "Be careful what you wish for." 

Before you trash them, remember that Jews are in large part responsible for humor, bagels, philosophy, irony, Broadway plays, classical music, psychiatry, Entenmann's chocolate donuts, Levi's jeans, the polio vaccine, insulin, the diagnostic test for syphilis, potato knishes, Reuben sandwiches, chicken noodle soup and Seinfeld.

Richer is Better

The last of the sunset, as seen from the porch of the Chebeague Island Inn.

Conventional wisdom tells us that Money Can't Buy Happiness. This myth exists so all the people without money, i.e. almost everybody, will feel better about being poor, but I learned yesterday that money can and actually does buy happiness. The truth of this revealed itself to me while aboard a boat belonging to friends who graciously invited my husband and me for an afternoon sail on the Casco Bay.

All we had to do was step onto the boat and in minutes we were transported to another world, one inhabited by other people who own boats and people who live in fabulous houses on private islands, far from the crush of humanity. The air was clearer and cooler. The wind caressed our skin. We drank deeply from the well of prosperity, along with a bottle of scotch and another of French wine.

Later, our dinner at a fancy inn on a high-brow island was followed by an almost-midnight cruise back to our home harbor. It was awesome, nothing but sea and stars. Once back home, I slept better than I have in months. For me it was a rare treat; for our friends, it was something they do whenever they want, and have for years.

Boats cost money. They do make you happy. See, money does buy happiness.

Everyone Sucks in Their Own Way

"Hey, look at me! Look what I did! Look where I went! Better yet, look where I am right now!!!! Aren't I cool? Isn't my life so much better than yours? I am fabulous and having so much more fun than you. So what if I'm drunk and stoned most of the time? What's a little DUI citation compared to how much fun I'm having? And hey, look at my grandkids--aren't they amazing? I mean really, aren't they just so unbelievably adorable?!!"

That's Facebook in a nutshell. In fact, the whole social media thing is all so self-congratulatory, I'm sorry I can't vomit. (It's too disgusting so I just don't do it.) Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking: "But Andrea, you write this blog and it's pretty much got to do with you and your thoughts and experiences. What about that?" Well excuse me for being human. Yes, I admit it: I also suck, and believe me I hate it. 

Talking animals would make life so much easier.

Have you ever played that game with yourself about if you had three wishes what would they be? Here are mine:
      1. I wish God had a Facebook page and could post His opinions about all the crap people write. Also, He could tell us what He's up to (i.e., "God checked in here an hour ago" and it would be a diner somewhere) and give us the real story about global warming.
      2. I wish all animals could talk, or at least my cat.
      3. I wish I didn't suck.

Stranger Things

Ain't social media grand? It allows people you would otherwise never know to invade your life and ruin your day. Where would we be without it, I wonder? Happier, less anxious, more open to joy perhaps? Case in point: This morning, while checking overnight developments on my Facebook page, I spotted a new message from a stranger named named Jamie Cervantes, who wrote: "I hope you burn in Hell forever."

How nice. Naturally I blocked Jamie, an obvious idiot. I mean if you are in Hell, clearly you are there for eternity, so the addition of the word "forever" was just plain dumb. (Have you ever heard of anyone getting out of Hell early for good behavior?)

Wondering at the source of this hatred I assumed that Jamie is an obese transgender with anger issues who has read my blog often enough to know I have disdain for such people. Still, I never said any of them should go to Hell, even for ten minutes.

Taking the Crockpot Challenge

Recently, at the urging of several people I respect, I bought a crockpot. I made the purchase under cover of darkness at a discount store two towns from my home, hoping nobody I knew would see me. My opinion of crockpots is way down on the scale of decent cooking, despite the relatively new and uppity practice of referring to them as "gourmet slow-cookers." Call them what you will, to me tossing a pile of raw ingredients willy-nilly into an electric pot and going out for the day seemed like cheating. Besides, all the crockpot recipes I found called for things such as canned corn niblets, frozen green beans and Campbell's condensed mushroom soup, ingredients I considered appropriate only after a nuclear war had devastated the landscape and we survivors all lived in fallout shelters below ground with no access to real food.

Anyway, tired of slaving over a hot stove, especially in summer, I gave it a try. Instead of following a recipe I took my son's advice, since he is a great cook and uses one himself. "Just put a lot of stuff you like in the pot, turn it on and go out and enjoy yourself," he said. So I did. The results were nothing short of stupendous. I may eat it every night and serve it to my dinner guests forever. Try it. And hey, enjoy your time off! (See photo)

Crockpot Chicken Vegetable Dal
1 lb. ground chicken
1 large onion, chopped

32. oz. chicken broth (low sodium)
1 large red pepper, chopped
2 large mushroom caps, sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
2 small red potatoes, sliced
2 large carrots, sliced
2 Tbsp. garlic (pre-minced)
2-3 sprigs fresh dill
1/2 Tsp. cumin powder
1/2 Tsp. Cayenne chili powder
1/2 Tbsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 Tbsp. Gravy Master
1 Cup red lentils
Fresh ground black pepper to taste

In a skillet, brown the chicken and onion in olive oil for 10 minutes.
Place all ingredients except the lentils in crockpot.
Cook on High for three hours.
Add lentils and cook another hour, or until lentils have absorbed into stew and are no longer visible.

 

 

Defending Dr. Suess

These days, calling people racist is all the rage. And no wonder, since so many of us of were raised reading books by Dr. Suess. Recently some Seuss classics have been criticized for the way they portray people of color. One example given: In And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, a character described as Chinese has two lines for eyes and carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice. This is clearly racist, right?

Wrong. I learned that China has the highest rice consumption in the world, consuming over 142 million metric tons in year 2017/2018, and this figure was expected to increase in the following years. To eat all that rice, 45 billion pairs of chopsticks are produced yearly in China, requiring 25 million fully grown trees every year. 

As for the "two lines for eyes," people from many Asian countries who have Chinese ancestry are very easy to recognize. "Upper eyelid morphology is the most obvious part in the face that contributes to this fact. The unique characteristics are as follows: The upper eyelid crease is not as apparent as the crease of a Caucasian eye; the palpebral fissure is narrower and gives the look of slit-like eyes." 
-- Kidakorn Kiranantawat, Department of Surgery, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand

I'd say it's not unusual to see a Chinese person eating a bowl of rice with chopsticks, and from a distance their eyes might look more like lines than say, round circles. It seems that Dr. Suess was right on the money and everyone should just take a deep breath and relax.

Watch Out for Word Bombs

Words are funny things. They are sounds you make with your mouth and tongue, differing from grunts which come from deeper down in the larynx. (I'm guessing, I did not spend any time researching the subject.) We all learned the saying as kids on the playground, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me." All I can say about that is, "Ha!"

In the current climate of hatred throughout America, typified most noticeable by the members of our government and the media, both groups supposedly in existence to help us, words are now used as poison darts. Right now the most poisonous one is racism. (Watch out, that one can end your career, your marriage or your life!) Not too long ago it was molester or sexual predator that was the most heinous label, and before that it was Wall Street broker.

It's hard to keep up, but one word I know to avoid for sure is "colored." It's perfectly acceptable to identify someone as a "person of color." But if you slip up because you tossed and turned all night worrying about whether you have enough black friends or hate Donald Trump enough, thus wake up groggy and mistakenly say "colored person" in conversation, get out of town fast -- preferably at night.

If you ask me, these days you're a lot safer throwing sticks and stones than calling names.

Odd Comings and Goings

You're shelling peas and one of the pods has a baby in it! (Photo: Anne Geddes)

A recent news story told the shocking tale of a 60-year-old British woman who stumbled inside her own home, landing face down onto a metal straw that was sticking out of the drink she was carrying. The straw punctured her eyeball, causing a fatal brain injury from which she died a day later. Now that's just freaky, and certainly not something you could ever plan for. Just like those unfortunate souls who are eaten by alligators or fall off a cruise ship or have a tree fall on them while camping in the woods. Or, like Australia "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, whose heart was pierced by the serrated, poisonous spine of a stingray as he swam with the creature while shooting a new TV show on the Great Barrier Reef.

That got me thinking about all the odd and unexpected ways people die, yet we are all born the exact same way: floating for nine months inside another human being (!!!) until being violently ejected out of their vagina. It  sounds like something straight from an editor's slush pile of rejected science fiction scripts, yet that's how every one of us got here, and crazy as it is, nobody ever speaks of it again. We all just go on living our lives like that whole thing made perfect sense.

That being the case, it seems to me we should all die the same way, or at the very least, be born in different ways. Imagine the possibilities! Like with death, they are infinite. Forget the nine-month gestation period -- the blessed event could come at anytime, anywhere. You never know. Two minutes, two weeks or two years after conception, your baby could fall from a cloud during a passing storm. Or maybe you're enjoying a day at the beach and a huge wave delivers your new baby from the briny deep, covered in seaweed, right into your arms. Or you get a package from Amazon and instead of it being that book you ordered, it's Junior. It could be anything!

At least those birth stories would be more interesting than hearing how long the mother was in labor or that the baby was born in an elevator or a taxi. Best of all, it would be quite a conversation-starter at parties:
     "So, how were you born?"
     "Well, my mother had a bad cold, and one time she sneezed really hard...."

Talking to God on the Toilet

For young girls, learning about menstruation can be scary depending on how it is presented. Before I got the accurate story, my friend Dodie Stein in the fourth grade whispered under the covers during a sleepover that pretty soon our mothers would force us to start wearing a tight elastic belt around our stomach, and it would be so tight that it would make us bleed from down there. She looked horrified, and who could blame her? Even at age nine I was a skeptic and so scoffed at this news, saying it was pretty unlikely. Dodie insisted. "Well I'm certainly not wearing one," I declared, "Or if they make me, I just won't pull it that tight."

Soon enough I learned the facts when my mother showed me a Kotex pad, which in those days was  attached to an elastic belt worn around the waist. But instead of saying it was a terrible thing that would happen to me each month, she described at is my "monthly letter from God." She explained that every time I got my period it was God sending me proof that my body was working perfectly. Consequently I never minded it, never had bad cramps, never complained or called it "the curse" like so many of my girlfriends did. In fact, when I stopped menstruating at age 50 I was bereft. Now what? No more Godly encouragement? I had to go it alone?

Miraculously, a new thought popped into my head and since then, my proof that all is well has come through the healthy, normal workings of my body, most notably the evacuation of waste products, to put it delicately. When constipation (a common condition as one ages) comes along it's a bummer since the nine-year-old in my head believes that God has forgotten me. But when all goes smoothly, if you get my meaning, I thank Him profusely for taking the time out of his busy day to send me a note that "all is well."

Call me crazy, but I remain convinced that God and I communicate most profoundly while I am sitting on the toilet, which explains why I never go to church. (I wonder if Dodie Stein does.)

Another Medical Mystery Revealed

In my ongoing commitment to educate my readers about what they can expect to go wrong with every one of their God-given body parts if they live long enough, I offer news concerning my latest ailment that may help somebody, somewhere, saving them from needless worry that they are A, going blind, or B, have a brain tumor, or C, are going blind because of a brain tumor.

Over the last several months my vision began to suddenly blur at random, for varying lengths of time, then just as suddenly clear up. WTF? More than mystifying it was troubling, especially since I had undergone cataract surgery years ago and was told that cataracts never grow back. So what was causing this new eye problem? Hoping it was as simple as needing a new eyeglass prescription I scheduled an appointment with my go-to ophthalmologist.

The doctor ran his usual tests, but added a new one: After placing a few drops of yellow dye into my eyes, he ran some sort of metal instrument along my lower eyelid from corner to corner. After he did this in each eye, all the while making sounds like "hmm" and "humph," I asked fearfully if I had a problem. "Yes," he replied, "but it's fixable."

Microwave eye mask for 30 seconds, then apply over closed eyes for 15 minutes twice a day, forever.

Turns out I have meibomian gland dysfuction! I mean why shouldn't I? After all, I've had benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) for years, not to mention my labile hypertension which gradually morphed into paroxysmal hypertension, the cause of which remains unknown and the treatment difficult. This meibomian gland thing can also be called chronic dry eyes, which sounds a lot less scary, especially since actress Jennifer Aniston appears in a TV commercial about the condition.

It's all got to do with tiny rows of oil ducts inside your eyelids, and who knew we had those, becoming clogged and preventing the oil from seeping out to lubricate the eyeball with a constant coating of tears. Instead, the oil spurts out of the clogged ducts at random, causing intermittent blurriness and ensuing clarity.

I'll tell you one thing: I am dying to meet God. He (or She or They, but my money is on He) is quite an engineering genius. Anyway, for the fix, see photo above.

The R-Word

We now have in our Congress two Muslim ladies, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who do little more than spew hatred about America, which is certainly not what you want to hear from your very own government officials. But if you react negatively about anything they say you will be deemed "a racist," which these days is just about the worst thing you can be. The only thing worse is being a racist with a capital R.

Racism is defined as "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races." I certainly agree with that statement, which explains how Kenyan runners win every marathon and why Jews are so smart but feel guilty about everything, so I guess I am a racist. However, these days just about any little thing can make you a racist.

For God's sake don't wear one of these!

For example, if you are white and have no black friends you are a racist. If you think women in hijabs or burqas are scary, you are a racist. If you are white, if your parents and grandparents and kids are white, if you live in the American south, if you believe America is a great country, if you put your hand over your heart during the singing of the national anthem, if you didn't like the Obamas and still don't, if rap music isn't your thing, if you don't eat soul food, if you think Al Sharpton is a fool, if you want Maxine Waters to shut up already, if you own a gun, if you voted for any Republican ever in any election, if you once dressed up like Michael Jackson for Halloween, if you stay or have ever stayed at a Trump hotel, if you want illegal immigration to be stopped, if you think a barrier at our southern border is a good idea, if you ever hired a Mexican gardener or Latino nanny, if you wish Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would go back to mixing drinks, if you own or display a Betsy Ross flag, if you're a Jew and you enjoy your Jewish friends the most, if you're not a Jew and have no Jewish friends, if you think it's silly to tear down statues of Civil War generals and paint out murals depicting our history with Native Americans, if you still call them Indians, if you have no problem with the Redskins being called the Redskins, if you don't hate Donald Trump and his wife, children and grandchildren with every fiber of your being, and if you sincerely want to make America great again, then clearly you are a racist.

The only fix for being a racist is to admit you are scum and start over.  One way is to vote Democratic in every election. Another is to always carry hot sauce in your purse or pocket in case you end up having an impromptu meal with a black person.

Old is Not Dead

The number of Americans ages 65 and older is 46 million. The adult LGBT population in America is roughly 11.3 million. So how come the latter group gets Gay Pride Week and the former gets bupkis?

Admit it: In America circa 2019, being gay or any of the other letters in LGBT (and of course Q) is considered to be cool, with it, trendy, forward-thinking and something of which to be proud. Meanwhile, being over 65 is seen as pathetic, dull, boring, unworthy of mention or attention, dissipated, demented, withered and not worth a damn. If you're gay, the gayer the better! If you're old, your stock goes down with every year.

This is clearly wrong thinking. After all, seniors have survived heart attacks, strokes, diseases, wars, natural disasters, plagues and who knows what else. Shouldn't we be proud? I say we celebrate not being dead yet with a national Senior Pride Week where everyone who is not attached to machinery in an ICU and is still conscious gets out and shows the world we still matter.

Let's organize marches and rallies in every city across the land -- walkers, canes and wheelchairs allowed. Nancy Pelosi could lead the way. (I'm not kidding.)

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Fishing boats enveloped in fog in the harbor at Vinalhaven.

My husband and I spent the last three days out of this world and it was great. We never saw a TV, never caught glimpse of a newspaper, couldn't surf the Internet due to spotty service, and never heard, not even once, anyone utter the word "Trump." All it took was a 75-minute ferry ride to an island called Vinalhaven 13 miles off the coast of Maine to truly experience the state's motto, "The Way Life Should Be."

Vinalhaven is to Maine what Maine is to the rest of the United States: really out there. Occupying roughly the same land area as the isle of Manhattan (168.7 sq. mi.), although shaped differently and sharing no characteristics whatsoever, I'm pretty sure God has a summer place there. Now at this late stage of my life I want one too.

In general all things were better there, including lemon meringue pie. (See photo.) The weather was at least ten degrees cooler than on the mainland, which is blissful on a sweltering summer day. And while there are cars there's no traffic, or traffic lights, or parking meters. You just drive where you want to go and when you get there you pull over, turn off the engine and get out, leaving your car unlocked if you choose since there are no criminals either.

Colorful lobster traps stacked outside the Monhegan brewery.

But if you ask me, the best thing about Vinalhaven is the lack of brew pubs, which are suddenly and alarmingly taking over the state, and likely the world. There's a huge one the size of a factory (and still growing) less than a mile from my home in teeny-tiny Freeport, and three more in the town proper. Even the mystical, magical Monhegan Island, just 4.5 square miles in size, now has one, and last time I was there you had to wait in line for a seat, which was actually a lobster trap put to a more humane use.

It's a Great Country!

On the calendar, today is set aside for celebrating our nation's emergence. To celebrate I plan to stay off the roads and as far away from fireworks as possible, although I will attend a neighborhood party  where I will surely eat at least one Whoopie Pie. As for applauding America, it's a daunting task considering the following grim statistics:

Addiction: 21 million Americans struggle with substance addictions, according to government findings. (That's more than the number of people who have all cancers combined.)

Suicides:  44,965 suicides were recorded by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in 2016.

Homicide: In 2017 there were 5.3 murders per 100,000 people, according to the FBI.

Obesity: A grave public health threat, viewed by the medical community as more serious even than the opioid epidemic, 40% of Americans are grossly overweight.

Antidepressants: One in six Americans are dependent on antidepressant medications.

Anyway, do your part and have a Happy Independence Day!

Common Sense Doesn't Win Votes

This can be yours for 20 bucks!

Yeah, yeah, I know: Your great-great-granny was a slave picking cotton for the massa and now, a century and a half after slavery was outlawed in this country you're a homeless, unemployed methhead who truly believes your plight is all whitey's fault.

That's obviously what Sen. Kamala Harris thinks, proving it by her reference, during the recent Democratic debates, to having been a little girl who was bused to a white neighborhood so she could get a decent education. Since her line went over so well with all the, "I love hot sauce, please don't shoot me" white liberals in the audience, Harris doubled down the following day and started selling t-shirts imprinted with that slogan as a way to fill her presidential war chest.

Meanwhile, the only decent person on the stage was immediately lampooned by the press and almost all non-thinking adults as a crazy hippie leftover. Marianne Williamson, author and spiritual guru, uttered the sanest statement of the night during a discussion of our nation's sorry health care. Instead of jumping into the fray about single-payer vs. private insurers, blah, blah, blah, she said we might better serve the citizenry by closely considering just why so many Americans are sick, requiring so many costly prescription medications and hospitalizations. A great idea, of course, overlooked by every other politician eager to win votes with the promise of free health care. Hey, the sicker you are the better as far as they're concerned!

Think about it.

Starting Over

How did I get so much stuff? I'm not rich, yet I have so much stuff. It's stuff I don't use or want and it's weighing me down. I have to dust it. And move it around. Books, furniture, rugs, tables, lamps, chairs, so many that the ones I can't use are piled high in the basement. The garage handles the overflow. I hate all the stuff. I want it gone. In fact, I want it gone before my death so my son doesn't curse me out posthumously like many kids do when their parents die. I heard enough of that when I owned a second-hand shop and believe me, it wasn't pretty.

 I have three fine leather belts in my closet and I never wear a belt. I'm not sure how they got there. And the shoes! Imelda Marcos I'm not, but since I pretty much wear either my plastic Crocs or the same pair of boots every day, and sneakers at the gym, who are those other 50 pairs for? And what about the ceramic birdbath and the 40-odd terracotta pots? Why do we have four rakes? How did we get six snow shovels?

One solution would be to burn my house down and start fresh. That sounds glorious, especially the part where all of my husband's boxes and boxes from grade school, full of love letters and blue ribbons and penmanship exercises, would go up in flames. But arson is against the law, something about insurance fraud. Too bad we don't live in a flood zone.

So we had a yard sale last fall and maybe 20 people came. I sold next to nothing. Mainers are cheap. How cheap? I had something marked two bucks and a guy offered me one dollar and I said no and he walked away. That's how cheap. And besides, they all have their own stuff.

Good news! Our landscape guy just came by to drop off some plants for the yard (more stuff) and I was able to give him the bird bath. He said his wife has been wanting one. It cost $80. 00 originally but I said he should just take it as a gift. We quibbled, but I persisted. I feel lighter already.