The Worst Season

Bug bites, bee stings, 

ants in the cupboard, noisy air conditioners, 

itching, ticks, Lyme disease, sunburn, 

sleepless nights, soaring temperatures, 

glare, Brown tail moths. 

Welcome to summer. 

Let's Hear It For the Jews

I was born to Jewish parents who were smart and funny. We celebrated many Jewish holidays. They took me to the theater and the opera and our home was overflowing with books. They put a high price on learning and made me do my homework every night before I could do anything else. All of our many relatives were a hoot; comedy was a huge part of my childhood. The food was beyond great. All in all, I loved growing up as a Jew!

I still love being a Jew and would not wish otherwise under any circumstances. I cannot understand why any group or individual person dislikes the Jewish people. I do understand that they fear them, for their intelligence and great powers of intuition and leadership.

To those people I say, get over it.

Breakfast With Grok

This morning my husband and I were casually chatting over breakfast, discussing where to take our friends from Florida who are arriving for a visit this week, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman joined the conversation. She was not in the room and I don't know her name, but her voice was coming in loud and clear from the vicinity of my husband's cell phone. 

What preceded this revolting development was this: Mitch, addicted as he is to technology, had asked Grok a question. I, an avowed Luddite, asked him, "Who's Grok?" Turned out it's one of those AI assistants that supposedly know everything. Okay, fine, if you say so. The question was, "What is there to do in Boothbay?" (I had already vetoed going there and Mitch was pushing for it.)

Mitch spoke his query into his iPhone, and the answer came back in written form. We continued talking, when suddenly a voice chimes in, very chummy, her sentences interjected with slang terms and "ya know" and "like" and laughing, like she was in the room with us, smoking a joint with her feet propped up on the coffee table.

I wanted to smash the phone. I kept shouting at her to shut up but she went on and on. Oh great, I thought, over-talkers are bad enough at parties but now, circa 2025, we have to put up with this not-real Chatty Cathy crashing our breakfast? I suppose I should be glad she didn't materialize in human form and demand a cup of coffee and a cheese omelet. (Mitch says that's still a few years away.)

The New Normal

This ad for a bathing suit illustrates 

just how far we have come as a nation 

in the war against obesity.

Fat Is Not Normal

Painting by Fernando Botero

Fat Americans are getting fatter every year. At the same time, being fat is seen as less of a problem and instead as just another body type. Mentioning someone's excess weight is considered rude and outrageous "fat-shaming." And just using the word "fat" is akin to saying all those other "bad words" you can't say. (You know the ones.)

I grew up in the ever-enlarging shadow of an obese sibling. Starting at about age 12, my older sister's weight was the topic of every household conversation. Those conversations became knock-down, drag-out fights by the time she hit her teen years. Plainly stated, her fatness ruined our family and totally wrecked my childhood.

So excuse me if I can't "embrace" fatness and call it "body-positivity." I saw my sister live a horrible, sad existence, unable to walk the last five years, locked inside her fat until the day she died at age 83 six months ago.

As a great cook with a big appetite, I have had my own weight struggles. But the memory of how miserable my sister was keeps me within a normal weight range. And yes, I do mean normal -- humans are not meant to be fat. How else to explain how much happier people become when they finally lose their excess weight and start feeling good about themselves and life in general?

 

Goodbye to A Golden Beach Boy

Brian Wilson died today at age 82, and I am strangely sad. I say strangely because hey, who doesn't know we're all gonna die, so no surprise there. But he was quite special to my particular generation, and right now it feels like his passing took all my youthful exuberance and memories along with him. 

Brian suffered from depression during much of his lifetime, and one can only hope he has found peace in the afterlife with all those dead rockers who went before him. Imagine the jam sessions!

One of his most personally revealing songs was also one of my favorites, from the fabulous album Pet Sounds, considered by almost every music critic to be among the greatest albums ever produced. Following are Brian's lyrics to I Guess I Just Wasn't Made for These Times.

"I keep looking for a place to fit where I can speak my mind.

I've been trying hard to find the people that I won't leave behind.

They say I got brains but they ain't doing me no good -- I wish they could.

Each time things start to happen again,
I think I got something good goin' for myself, but what goes wrong?

Sometimes I feel very sad, can't find nothin' I can put my heart and soul into.....

I guess I just wasn't made for these times.

Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around, no one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found.

Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out?

What's it all about?

I guess I just wasn't made for these times."

Maine Myths

I'm sure everyone would agree that there are more and more rules to follow every day. To be considered a good, law-abiding citizen here in Maine it's no different, and in fact it may be even worse, considering that simply throwing away a piece of trash involves three different warning
signs.

The trash can shown here is at a rest area on US Route 1, in the town of Newcastle. It puts in perspective my husband's arrest and lock-up in our home town of Freeport for missing his court date, assigned four months earlier for driving with his vehicle's registration a few month's past its expiration date.

Maine has been called "America's Vacationland" since 1936, and in 1987 the state motto -- "The Way Life Should Be" -- was born. It seems that both of those things need updating. 

Deconstructing Golf

I've never thought much about golf. I know it's very popular and considered to be a sport. I remember my father playing golf occasionally at the local no-Jews-allowed country club down the street, snuck in by his Catholic friend who was a member. And that Tiger Woods and others before and since his rise to fame make fortunes playing it. But I had no idea how odd a pastime it is until my husband and I vacationed at a golf resort two hours north of our home. 

Although neither of us play golf, we went for the peace and quiet, two swimming pools, great restaurant, and fabulous water views the place also offers, and to get away from our cat for a few days. (We hired a petsitter.) Our beautiful condo overlooked the resort's 18-hole golf course, providing us with a bird's-eye view of the proceedings, which went on almost non-stop from just after dawn until dusk.

People rode around in little carts, stopping every so often to get out, choose a golf club from a bag on the back of the cart, then walk onto the grass and hit a little ball into the air with the club. Returning to their carts they drove a few yards to where the ball had landed and got out and hit it again, until finally they got the ball into a little hole in the ground marked by a flagpole.

Everyone wore hats. Most of the men wore khaki pants and hit white golf balls while most of the women wore pink or red shorts and used brightly colored balls like magenta or yellow. 

Every time we glanced out the window of our condo, or sat on the balcony drinking coffee and reading the paper, people were doing it. Apparently some people play for as long as five or six hours, enough time to paint a small bathroom or attend an anti-Israel protest.

I have friends who love the game and I applaud them, but after what I saw last weekend I'm thinking that playing golf is sort of ridiculous.

Flab Is In

Is this necessary?

This morning I made the mistake of commenting on a Reel that showed up on my Facebook page. Silly me, when will I learn that leaving a comment online only leads to heartache, frustration, disgust, anger and depression?

The Reel showed a beach scene with people walking along the sand. Depicted were several overweight women in bikinis, their flaccid tummies hanging over their bathing suits, loose skin bouncing about. I made the comment, which might have been perceived as trying to be helpful, "Don't women with bad bodies know they can wear a 1-piece bathing suit?"

OMG! The reactions! One woman called me a "dope." Another one said I had a "bad attitude" and I should just "STFU!" A third said, "There are no bad bodies, just bad people like you!" 

The average American woman today is 5'4" and weighs 170 pounds. I am that height and if I weighed that much I would lay in my bed all day and cry. (And eat Oreos and potato chips.)

Pride Goeth Before A Fall

Like antisemitism, bagels are on the rise the world over. Just here in the United States the current bagel market is worth $6.3 billion and is estimated to reach $8.99 billion by 2032. 

What's funny is that while everyone likes bagels, not everyone likes Jews, who invented them. They first appeared in Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, during the early 17th century: "The first written mention of bagels appears in 1610, in the Community Regulations of Krakow, where bagels were noted as a gift to be given to women after childbirth." 

As a Jew, I am somewhat offended by the fact that bagels are so popular while Jews are so unpopular. It's like hating Italians but loving pizza. 

Yesterday I went to my local supermarket and found an abomination in the bakery department. My husband thinks it's a "rainbow" bagel, this being Pride Month. If so, those gays have their hands on everything! Anyway, if that's the case then they won't be around next month. One can only hope. (Rainbow bagels, not gays.)

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There's Nothing Funny About Colon Cancer

An op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal attempts to be funny in describing the prep for a colonoscopy, the diagnostic tool used for the detection and prevention of colon cancer. It tries hard but fails, mostly because there's nothing funny about cancer. The writer whines about how difficult it is to prepare for this important test, as if life really is just a bowl of cherries and nothing should ever be difficult.

Honestly, the prep for a colonoscopy is no big deal, especially when compared to the regimen required 35 years ago. Because the disease runs in my family I had my first one fairly early at age 41. It was so unpleasant that halfway through I wailed to my husband that I'd rather have colon cancer than finish drinking all the poison. (My word -- it wasn't really poison,) 

Obviously I didn't mean it, but the steps necessary for the doctor to see the walls of my colon clearly during the exam seemed overwhelming. Of course I finished the prep, but not without lots of crying and cursing.

Happily, times have changed. Yes, you have to take a bunch of laxatives and yes, you have to be on a liquid diet for a day or two before the procedure. But the possible results of not having one are far worse: I'm talking the removal of part or all of your colon, or death. And FYI, the procedure itself is a breeze, thanks to the lovely drugs they give you. I watched mine on a TV screen and found it quite entertaining.

According to the latest medical recommendations, everyone aged 45 and up should have a colonoscopy. Why not schedule one today? And please ignore that dumb essay in today's Wall Street Journal. It's not even funny.

Enough With the Tattoos

This guy makes me really sad.

When it first showed up, the tattoo craze was different, to say the least. People who got them could be seen as creative trendsetters embracing their individuality and wearing it front and center. Still, I never wanted one and told my high-school-aged son that if he got one we would change all the locks on the house and he'd have to seek other accommodations -- although we did allow blue hair and red spikes. Just nothing permanent he might regret later. 

That teenager is now 37 and from to time has thanked us for the No-Tat rule of his youth, which accounts for him being one of the few people today actually showcasing their individuality. 

Tattoos are literally everywhere, and seemingly on everyone regardless of age and station in life. Muscular young men, pot-bellied old farts, teenagers, middle-aged Moms, golf buddies with Dad-bods and wizened Gramps and Grannies all seem to have succumbed to the craze at one time or another, presumably in a weak moment or high on something. (Ex-Navy men who are now aging bikers on Harley-Davidsons are another story.)

I know we're supposed to think they're cool, but whenever I see a person who has spent so much money and time to be in lock-step with everyone else I think, "How sad." And the more tattoos they have, the sadder I feel.

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