News You Can Use

This morning I woke up happy and, coffee in hand, sat down to see what's new in the world. Stocks plummeting, people throwing bombs at each other in foreign countries. Three brothers on a crime spree were arrested after shooting several people; their parents must be so proud. A killer of eleven women, all found buried in his backyard, got the death sentence but his lawyer is trying to get that changed to life in prison without parole. More men want handbags: "The Coach customer is young, or at least appears young," says that company's head designer. President Obama is either a fool or a god. Many high-end department stores, like Saks in New York City, employ personal shoppers to pick out clothes for their customers, saving them the trouble. The typical female client who employs this service spends $250,000 annually on clothing.

I might try not reading the newspaper for a while. Turning instead to my bookshelf, I pulled down my personal bible, "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth," by nutritionist Jonny Bowden,  and learned some interesting facts that might actually do me some good. For example, cantaloupe is loaded with potassium and can greatly reduce the risk of high blood pressure and stroke. Who knew? (Not me, and I have high blood pressure--I must have missed that page.) It is also loaded with vitamin A and beta-carotene, thus boosting your immune system. Apparently, eating just a cup of cantaloupe cubes a day--or a wedge or juiced or however you like it--can ward off a cold, not to mention cancer. And those ladies at Saks might be interested in knowing you can also make shoes out of them. (See photo.)

Dismayed in America

All was calm and still in my neighborhood, so I was stunned to enter downtown Freeport, less than three miles from my front door, and find the streets literally clogged with people and traffic at a standstill; it looked more like I imagine downtown Tokyo than rural Maine. Undaunted, I used my "insider" knowledge to find a parking spot and ran into L. L. Bean's to purchase a gift for a friend. Inside was even worse than outside; it was all but impossible to move, reminding me of Woodstock but without the LSD. Determined, I joined all the other shoppers in their quests for something that was Maine-made and with an L. L. Bean label, since that is so classically American.

Here's what I found:
L.L. Bean Classic Logo T-shirt, Made in China
L.L. Bean Stowaway Backpack, Made in Viet Nam
L.L. Bean Women's Backpack, Made in Viet Nam
L.L. Bean Mens Knit Shirts, Made in China
L.L. Bean Hooded Logo Sweatshirts, Made in India
L.L. Bean Aluminum Bottle Canteens, Made in China
L.L. Bean Infinity Jugs, Made in China  
L.L. Bean Helix Fishing Waders, Made in China
L.L. Bean Fishing Shoes, Made in China
L.L. Bean Flannel Shirts, Made in Viet Nam
L.L. Bean Tassel Loafers, Made in El Salvador
L.L. Bean Men’s Chino Pants, Made in India
L.L. Bean Men’s Chino Pants, Made in China
L.L. Bean Logo Flip-Flops, Made in China
L.L. Bean Dockers Shoes, Made in China
L.L. Bean Men’s Boxer Shorts, Made in Sri Lanka
L.L. Bean Towels and Facecloths, Made in Turkey
L.L. Bean Large Duffel Bags, Made in China
L.L. Bean Women’s Coats, Made in Bangladesh 
L.L. Bean Women’s Fleece Jackets, Made in El Salvador
L.L. Bean Women’s Raincoat, Made in China
L.L. Bean Men’s Blazer, Made in Viet Nam 
L.L. Bean Women’s Jeans, Made in Mexico
L.L. Bean Runabout Classic Cruiser Bike, Made in China
L.L. Bean Student Monogrammed Book Bag, Made in Viet Nam

I freaked out and pushed through the crowds to the exit to get some fresh air. Outside, I plopped down into a Classic Maine Adirondack Double Wooden Rocker to catch my breath, confident that at least that was made here. Only it was made in Viet Nam. Really.

Whence the Weather?

Early this morning I had two appointments in opposite directions. Each was about a half-hour's drive from my home, which meant that getting from the first to the second involved almost an hour on the road. When I left my house it was just starting to drizzle, but when I turned onto 295, the drizzle turned into major rain which lasted all morning, drastically cutting down my visibility on the highway. Throw in a couple of 18-wheelers and some road work complete with orange cones and Jersey barriers, and the whole thing was a total drag. At times I could barely see. Occasionally things would improve momentarily, then start in again.

The rain finally stopped as I pulled into my driveway four hours later. Now that I am indoors and planning to remain indoors for the rest of the day, it's nice out. The sun is shining, in fact it's a beautiful day for a drive. Even though this is the sort of thing that happens to me frequently--really, a lot--I am trying not to take it personally and instead think of it as a coincidence.

Alternatively, I could hang out a shingle and pass myself off as a Weather Prognosticator, certainly with as much credibility as some other "professionals" out there. Last week I came across a website for an online psychic who promised to answer one free question to illustrate her expertise and gain my trust. "Ask me anything, anything at all," she boasted. I asked, "Should my husband have the surgery?" The answer came back in a few hours: "I advise you to follow your doctor's advice on this."

As for my weather-forecasting service, call me if you're planning an outdoor wedding and I'll try to stay home during it.

The Curse of Creativity

Every morning as he's leaving for his short drive to the office or his long drive to the airport, my husband asks me, "What are you going to do today?" This question stymies me, unless I am lucky enough to have a doctor appointment or a dentist appointment or I need to go to the bank or buy some cat food--something concrete. Otherwise I draw a blank and have no answer, at least not one that would pass the "doing something" litmus test. I do not go to an office where I will answer phones and make appointments and send out faxes and open mail or enter data into a computer, perhaps with a birthday party up on the fifth floor in the middle of the day, or a Mexican burrito lunch to celebrate someone's arrival/departure/retirement. I am not flying to Chicago for a business meeting. I am not going to work at a hospital where I might save lives or draw blood, along with all the paper work and insurance forms and disinfecting of bedpans. Instead, I work at home and my job is an artist, and let me tell you, it's harder than it looks.

Artists never know what they're going to do until the Muse shows up. Sometimes she's gone for months at a time, and then suddenly she's back, having arrived under cover of night, and you wake up craving oil paint and clean brushes and blank canvas and you're instantly deep into that whole painting thing. This feeling lasts for a few days or a few months until one day, it ends. The Muse packs up and leaves, sometimes right in the middle of a brushstroke which is really annoying since you certainly can't finish it alone. You're nothing without her. You're just a regular somebody. You putter around, maybe write a few blogs, work on the novel. Send off a letter to the editor. Do some laundry, clean the studio, submit slides to an art gallery, apply for editorial jobs. Go buy art supplies, you'll need them someday. Go to the museum for inspiration, maybe you'll run into the Muse there.

When I least expect it, she's back and demanding we do something, anything, immediately. Look over there, what about that, what are those for? Next thing I know I'm gluing tiny beads onto a porcelain ball bought for that express purpose over a year ago--it's finally time. And so I glue beads onto this ball for hours and hours, to what end God knows, but when it's finished people will ooh and ahh and ask how long it took me, and I never tell the truth, that it took an eternity and all that time they were out for lunch with friends or at the movies with friends or lying on the beach with friends or hanging at Starbucks or shopping for clothes at the mall, doing all the things I don't do but my husband wishes I would so I would seem more normal. "Go shopping with friends," he suggests. But I'm not normal, I'm an artist, and when the Muse shows up, I drop everyone and everything to hang out with her and only her. She brings out the best in me, and really isn't that what friends are for?

Lose Weight and Gain Self-Respect

We've all seen those once-tubby actresses who come on TV looking thinner and thinner and tell you to "Call Jenny today!" Gee, that Jenny sounds great! Besides being my personal weight-loss coach, she'll even send me packaged foods all ready to eat!

News flash: there is no longer a Jenny. She sold her business years ago: "In May 2002, Jenny Craig, Inc., was acquired by MidOcean Partners, a New York and London-based private equity investment firm, and ACI Capital, a New York-based private investment firm. On June 19, 2006, they announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell the company to Nestlé in a transaction valued at approximately $600 million. The company is now operated as part of Nestlé Nutrition."

Here's another news flash: The United Nations estimates that more 11 million people in East Africa are affected by the worst drought in 60 years, with 3.7 million people in Somalia among the hardest hit because of the ongoing civil war in that country. There is no water for the people or the animals or the crops, which means there's no food now and won't be anytime soon.

Compared to those starving masses, even the thinnest Americans are obese, let's not talk about the true fatties who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on weight-loss programs. So before you call the huge corporation once owned by a woman named Jenny Craig, or pay Weight Watchers, another international conglomerate, to let you stand on their scale each week and enter the number into one of their note pads, why not reflect for a moment on how much gruel your money could buy instead, perhaps nourishing a baby born into the hellish reality we glibly call "the Third World." If you still insist on calling Jenny, just ask her to send all those frozen packaged meals to Mogadishu instead of to you.

Film Review: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Choosing today, a rainy Sunday, for one of our rare trips to the movies, my husband and I saw the latest blockbuster movie raking in dough for its producers. Even though the popcorn wasn't great and the theater smelled sort of funny, we were not disappointed: Rise of the Planet of the Apes grabbed us from the first frame, and we stayed pretty much grabbed until the final credits. It's not all just monkey business, however, so leave the little kids at home. Besides the intense violence and considerable bloodshed, most of which I missed because my hands were over my eyes, there's a tearjerker of a script that is heartbreaking, having to do with letting go of your children and watching your parents die. I saw the film two hours ago and I'm still sniffling.

It's all about an adorable baby chimp that grows into a not so adorable and very pissed-off ape, capable of despicable deeds and yet with a heart as big as Texas, reminding us that the movie was made in Hollywood after all. Despite all the phony baloney, of which there is plenty, you buy into it because so much of what transpires is true: Money-grubbing pharmaceutical companies really do render animals helpless and perform hideous experiments on them, all for man's benefit. Manufactured weapons really do allow us to dominate creatures that are naturally stronger and more powerful than we are. Animals are kept caged in zoos across America, living wasted lives of quiet desperation, all for man's enjoyment. It's tough to watch. I'm pretty sure I am now a vegetarian.

The fun part is the ape prison break, during which the hateful human guard who enjoys torturing our hero finally gets his comeuppance via a water hose. Free at last, all the computer-generated monkeys storm the Golden Gate Bridge on their way to eternal peace and happiness in the great outdoors, intent on climbing those giant redwoods in the California sunshine--at least those who aren't killed by San Francisco's finest shooting at them from helicopters. When it comes right down to it, apes are just like people: All they really want is to have a nice day.

The Bachmann Brand: What's the Dizzle?

Borders Books & Music was a wondrous place in its day, and its day lasted 40 years. It was the perfect antidote to the blues, especially if you weren't in the mood to put on makeup. You could wander the aisles for hours, browsing travel books promising adventure and excitement or skimming diet books promising a new you. The children's section offered picture books and teddy bears, and likely a Lego table or Brio train station open to all ages. Hang out reading magazines or just make a beeline for the cafe for a coffee and a scone, screw the diet. There was no place better at Christmas, with its seemingly endless rows of greeting cards, wrapping paper and calendars. And for severe depression, you could slap on some headphones in the music aisle and hear the latest tunes from your favorite artist.

This is all in the past since Borders has closed, squeezed out by advancing technology. Now you order up that trashy novel on your Kindle and read it on a flat screen with an eerie glow, perhaps while you're huddled over your laptop at Starbucks, answering email and texting on your iPhone at the same time. Oh well, at least I have memories of great times and great days: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Marrakesh Express, Beach Boys, Poco, Jackson Browne's unbelievably sweet fountain of sorrow harmonies. I can always imagine John Lennon, instead of the angry, criminalistic, blingified, out-on-bail rappers proclaiming, "I got a living room full of fine dime brizzles, waiting on the pizzle, the dizzle and the hizzle." (Whatever that means.)

Nowhere is our cultural downward slide more evident than in politics, where anyone can run for office as long as there's a sharp PR firm on the payroll. Today's Wall Street Journal talks about the "Michele Bachmann brand" being honed to a razor's edge by her team of image consultants. It involves kissing babies and signing t-shirts and hugging teenagers and yakking with farm wives. She makes an emotional connection with her audience, so what if she's against abortion and gay marriage? She's down-home! She's warm and fuzzy! People love her! That's great if you're looking to hire a kindergarten teacher and possibly even a president--maybe of the PTA, surely not the USA. Come on, people, what's the dizzle with that?

Does This Beer Can Make Me Look Fat?

Sales of Budweiser beer have been slipping for the past two years, both here in America and abroad. Naturally the company's leaders are hoping to turn things around, seeking to save a brand that has kept college students happily drunk since 1936.

So to attract new customers and keep the old ones, they have decided to:
A. Change the recipe to improve the flavor
B. Alter the ingredients to make it more effervescent
C. Add more hops so it pours smoother with more foam
D. Change the design of the can so it looks cooler 
E. Skimp on ingredients to lower the cost to the consumer

If you guessed D, you're right. The top dogs at Budweiser have decided that how the can looks to others while you're holding it is more important than how the product tastes, reminding us once again that superficiality reigns supreme in today's fast-paced world. The redesigned can sports a red background instead of a blue one, and that's certainly a plus in some political circles, although I'm not sure which. Either way, that bold new color is bound to perk up the dullest outfit.

Finding Dr. No

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Concerning my arthritic hip, several doctors have suggested installing an artificial one as the only fix, so when I went to the alleged "best hip guy in Maine" earlier today I expected to hear the same thing. Instead, miraculously, he said "no." This was an earth-shattering event, at least in my experience, since other surgeons I have met with in the past concerning other body parts have warned that if I did not have surgery right away-- i.e. the next available hole in their schedule-- I would get sicker and possibly develop cancer (if I didn't already have it) and die, or else just be really miserable forever until, of course, I did die. Naturally, being a sucker for feeling good, I've always caved, and thus have had two surgeries that were declared unnecessary after the fact by the very same practitioners who swore I needed them in the first place.

So I was delighted, amazed and relieved when Dr. No (not his real name) said I did not require his services. Eliminating the possibility that he is overbooked and on the verge of a nervous breakdown or that he has all the money he needs, I concluded that there actually are some altruistic doctors out there. He still kept me waiting long enough to read the entire Car Issue of Consumer Reports and find out that my brand new Saab 9-3 is not even rated because their editors think it sucks so much, so it's not like he's a total saint. However, my faith in the medical establishment has been partially restored. Plus I get to keep my own hip, at least for now, and really, isn't that all we ever really have?

Keeping the Peace and Alienating the Public

So far today, the fish guy at Hannaford's supermarket, a receptionist on the phone at my doctor's office and two waitresses where I had lunch all wished me well. The first said, "have a good one," the next said "have a nice day," and the last two wished me "a pleasant evening." These days, it seems like every time you turn around some stranger is telling you to enjoy yourself. Unless, of course, that stranger happens to be a cop, and then it's a whole different ball game: They not only don't wish you a nice day, they try to ruin as much of it as possible as fast as they can.

Last week a friend of mine, a distinguished-looking adult in his mid-fifties, was arrested for the crime of sitting in his car around midnight and talking on his cell phone. In order to make his call safely and not block traffic, he had pulled off the road into a parking lot in front of a small business. Within minutes a police car approached, and the officer informed my friend that he was on private property. In Pleasantville, the cop would have suggested he kindly move on, then gotten back into his patrol car and with a friendly nod and maybe even a wink, driven away.

That is not what happened. What happened is the cop demanded to see my friend's license and registration, perhaps assuming the car was a stolen vehicle. Then, because he smelled alcohol lingering from the one beer ingested not long before the incident, he asked him to get out of the car and walk a straight line. Since my friend suffers from a mild inner ear disorder that affects his balance, he failed that test. Before you could say, "Beat it--the fuzz," the cop slapped some handcuffs on him, threw him in the back of the patrol car and took him "down to the station" for a breathalyzer test. Five hours in a jail cell later, having passed that test he was free to leave and try to come up with the $140 in cash to get his car out of the impound lot.

I thought that was a sad story until I heard from my son who, short on cash and long on attitude, received a $50 ticket for disturbing the peace in Burlington, Vermont because he had snarled at some nosy old coot to "stay out of it," the geezer heckling from the sidelines as the cop was lecturing my son about the biking ban on city streets. That seemed sadder since, by the time you're middle-aged you know the cops suck but in your early twenties you still have time to form a positive opinion of the men in blue.

Ahh, life in these United States...ain't it grand?

Emergency Stash

The reason we moved to Maine is known by all our friends, but I repeat it here to make a point. Three years ago my brother-in-law went over the handlebars on his bicycle, landing on his head. Had he been without a helmet, he would have died instantly. Instead he spent a couple of months in a coma and a couple more in a Boston rehab facility. We moved here to aid his recovery, which involves him often beating the heck out of me at Scrabble. Despite that, he still has memory and balance issues and minor, but still plenty annoying, impairment of his sight, hearing and taste.

All this explains my recent distress over seeing a random Internet photo of my very own son perched on his bike without a helmet. Granted, he is only 23 and they say the human brain is not fully formed until age 25. Let's hope his gets there.

Working against mothers is the state of Maine, which does not even require motorcyclists to wear helmets! This is just plain dumb, and goes hand in hand with the recent declaration of the whoopie pie as the state treat. Maybe those bikers, including my son, should just pile a few whoopies on top of their heads when they're out riding. Not only would those cakes soften the blow in an accident, but the ambulance drivers could snack on them on the way to the ER.