What’s a Girl Gotta Do to Browse?

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When I took that class a few months ago on white privilege and fighting racism, one of the reading assignments was on a website called Medium, which aims to curate “Stories to keep you informed, sane, and entertained,” with a liberal bent. It’s definitely a quality site with respected sources, and they send me daily emails with stories that cover the gamut of racism, Black experience, women’s rights, and lighter fair in dating and relationships. The daily feed is a bit too much content for me — I’m a delicate flower and these days it doesn’t take much to push me into overstimulation. But as long as I can browse and pick and choose, I’m good. Kind of like radio, you know that old-fashioned thing — I pick the station like Emerson College radio or classic rock and they do the rest.

But then I got an email that said, “Hey, we noticed you read some articles on this topic, here’s a bunch more for you.”

Wait, what? No, no, no! Don’t algorithm me! This is why I stopped liking songs on my Pandora Donna Summer station. I was young and naive when I first started listening, so I clicked on the little thumbs up icon and “liked” an ABBA song, and suddenly I was deluged by ABBA deep cuts. No, no, no! I don’t like them that much, I was just being electronically nice. So now, I don’t “like” anything, and am content to listen to repeat songs after an hour of listening. It’s a small price to pay, and feels a lot like an actual radio station.

I get that a lot of people want to control every aspect of their lives. In certain aspects of my life, I’m looking for less control. Job, family, and friends take a lot of my energy, which is good and right. Do I want to spend what’s left on micromanaging my music and reading? Not really. If I want to hear or read something specific, I’ll go find it myself. Otherwise, I kind of want you, Pandora station and Medium articles, to throw random things at me. I’m cool with it, really.

But the algorithms are on the prowl, and trying to turn me into a more narrow reader than I already am. Talk about the “echo chamber” effect. This is like the echo of the echo. I’m already a lefty leaning snowflake, so please don’t make it worse by just sending me the stuff I read. I’m not really the best judge — if I had my druthers, I’d mostly read funny articles about bad dates. But I do have some curiosity and if you show me something well-written on another topic, I may read that. But then I may be done, or I may want to know more. But I don’t know that until I get there.

While I’m browsing the shelves at the library or a bookstore, sometimes I prefer to wander the aisles and see what catches my eye. This is how I stumble upon a book I wouldn’t normally read. Or I may go right to the bodice rippers section and dive in, cuz that’s what’s on for this week. But I don’t want the librarian or the bookshop person to see my books and start telling me all the books that are similar. Unless I ask first. See how that works?

I get that places like to customize the customers experience — what with that incomprehensible alphabet soup of “UX” and “UI” and UTI, oh, wait, that’s something else. But maybe you can give me a choice first? You can even make fun of me. I would totally check a box that says, “I grew up with the randomness of radio and get crabby about having my echo chamber double echoed back at me. Please keep your algorithms to yourself.” Look you can even roll it into your goofy “branding.” Like the store Moosejaw (HQ in Michigan, don’t ya know) where I bought a coat online and had to call customer service about an issue. Those poor souls have to answer the phone, “Welcome to Mooooooooose (higher pitch) jaaaw (lower pitch).” They could make the option say, “Would you like our Mooooooooose jaw antlers to stay out of your coat buying choices? Then go ahead and click on the moose hoof. We don’t mind!”

That would actually make me crazy too, but I’m trying find a compromise here. I’m not quite sure what to do about Medium; Pandora at least gives me an option to not press the like button. How do I not read articles? Or do I have to read all of them and go crazy, or do I have to go to the main website and sift through pages of filter choices (if they even have them). Ah yes, turns out I do:

  • Recommended stories
    Featured stories, columns, and collections that we think you’ll enjoy based on your reading history
    OnOff

Off, please! OK. fine. That works. I’m still crabby that I had to go to the site in the first place to turn off something I didn’t ask for. If your algorithm really worked, you should have known that about me and turned it off yourself. Or you could at least use my wording — that’s a customization I can get behind.

 

The Garden of Gardner

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On a recent visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I found myself drawn to the center courtyard, an enclosed space with water, plants, and a skylight 4 stories up. It’s one of my favorite places to escape in the cold winter weather. Isabella designed the garden and building with the Renaissance palaces of Venice in mind, and also incorporated numerous architectural fragments from European Gothic and Renaissance structures.

In previous visits I looked at the garden for a little while and headed the other rooms and three floors of artistic treasures of paintings, furniture, tapestries, ancient statues, and more.

But in this visit I decided to just stay near the garden and try to see everything I could in it. To look at it in a way I never have. Sort of in a meditative way, where you actually see the object, not the imagery and thoughts your mind thinks of when you look at it.

gardner 2

I don’t know how successful I actually was, but I periodically moved from seat to seat slowly making my way around it, to see it from different perspectives. I was also trying not to photo bomb all the young women who were taking selfies and then photographing each other on the stone bench with the garden in the background. One young woman spent so much time fussing with and flicking her long blond hair in preparation, I started to wonder if Vogue was doing a photo shoot. It made me feel wise and superior — oh look at those vain, young ones — as I leaned in slightly toward them to see if I could make them take a photo of themselves at an awkward angle to keep me out of the frame. Ah, youth. So fun to mess with.

There was a lot to see, and even though I spent about an hour and a half looking from the different angles, the details just kept coming–there was no way to see it all.

On the other side of the garden I found a book about it. It’s set out on the bench, so you can learn a little more. It said that most of the garden statues were of powerful women and goddesses, like Athena and even Medusa — death by snakes is pretty powerful. It teasingly mentions that Odysseus is tucked in the corner (I never did see him), and then the booked asked if that was Isabella making a statement about the power of women. Heck yeah! Her wealth and presumably a husband who was a good partner allowed her the independent life she led. So, yeah, I’m going with strong chicks in the garden for $500, Alex.

Then I noticed that the flowers in the book looked very different from the current flowers I was looking at — mostly white, which is a color I was getting all too much of outside. There were pages describing the careful attention to changing flowers for the seasons, spring, summer, fall — and all the elaborate cultivation of “warm” purples and oranges and yellows. Strangely they didn’t mention any elaborate preparations for winter, when the visitors are at their most color deprived.

Then in my little Zen experiment of being calm and really “seeing,”  I started to feel ripped off. In fact one passage said they start these long hanging orange flowers called nasturtiums with seeds in June and then grow them for 9 months, like a baby, until they are 15 ft long. There were pictures of the flowers hanging two and three stories from the gothic windows along the sides of the garden. Suddenly I’m counting 9 months after June — wait a minute. That’s right now. Where the heck are my pretty orange cascading nasturtiums? All I get is bunches of cold white flowers? There were a handful of pretty flowering maples in the back, which remind me of my beloved Memere, who grew them, but still. Mostly white flowers.

Where are my pretty, “warm,” colorful flowers?

I might as well have been flicking my gray/brown wavy hair and taking a selfie with all of the “wisdom” I was feeling right then.

Then the book explained what the big stone box was that I was sitting next to:

grapes

Because of all the grapes along the top, and because it is a good-sized box, I thought it was maybe used for crushing grapes to make wine. Can’t you see Lucy and Ethel stomping around in there? What? I’m a child of the 70s and 80s. Plus all the carved people are either looking at each other, or trying to grab their neighbor’s beautifully carved buttocks while also gazing at the other neighbor’s accurately carved naughty bits. Usually alcohol is involved in these situations.

However, the little book that taunted me with pretty flowers informed me it’s a sarcophagus. As in coffin. Excuse me, the Farnese Sarcophagus. According to the website:

‘The Farnese Sarcophagus is one of the most important works of art in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Its glorious images of cavorting satyrs and maenads has inspired generations of artists, collectors, conservators, and viewers.

This large, rectangular marble coffin was created in the area of Rome in the late Severan period, around 225 AD. The occupants of the monument are unknown, since the lid was lost or destroyed. It was rediscovered in Tivoli in about 1535 and its beauty inspired Renaissance artists.”

So, what do I know? I looked, and with my I Love Lucy education, made a really wrong guess. How can we ever really know what old things mean to the people who made them, 1,800 years ago?

We can’t. All you can do is be quiet and look as best you can. And try to not to photo bomb the young ones’ pictures.

 

 

Let Us Now Praise Spike Lee

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Today I want to sing the praises of Spike Lee. I have been a big fan of his work since I saw “She’s Gotta have It” in 1986. As I started to write this blog, I felt like I was repeating myself, which is either a sign I’ve written about him before and forgot (plausible), or I keep writing about him in my head, and I can’t access my Jedi powers well enough to just transmit that to the blog without typing (also semi-plausible and a writer’s occupational hazard). I  searched my posts, and so far I have only mentioned him a few times. So this is way overdue.

I’m so happy that he and his fellow writers (Kevin Willmott, David Rabinowitz, and Charlie Wachtell), won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman”; the movie is based on a true story of a Black undercover cop in the 70s who infiltrated the KKK using his white voice (echoes of “Sorry to Bother You”) and his white, Jewish partner. I never watch these award shows — they make me stay up too late for movies that I like, don’t like, or won’t be seeing. What do I care if they win a prize? And that’s not just the sour grapes talking because the movies I like don’t often win awards — like most of Spike Lee’s movies. I know some people don’t even watch it for the movies, but for the fashion, which it also lost on me. Nice dress! Weird dress! Red dress! Repeat!

I tend to tune the whole thing out, so as it happens, I learned Spike Lee won by reading about the comments about his acceptance speech. That’s kind of messed up, but here we are. This broke down in two ways: white people — He’s too political! He’s racist! (Because apparently talking about race is racist.) He’s using the platform inappropriately! And of course Cheeto flea had to tweet his illiterate nonsense. The Black people were more like: Yes! Thank you, Spike! We love you! Actually I think they said it in a cooler way, that was me white paraphrasing.

Now I was intrigued. Hmmmm. What did that fiery artist say now? He has always been outspoken about race and social justice — have you seen the pivotal scene near the end of “Do the Right Thing” where his usually non-threatening character has to decide — does he join a riot prompted by the unjust death of a Black man in his neighborhood or hold back and not destroy the pizza shop window of his white employer? As I was leaving the theater after that movie, all the black people were pumped up, and all the white people looked pale and uncomfortable. As they should. Spike has been telling us what’s what for more than 30 years now, He’s directed more than 24 movies and produced and created even more short films and documentaries. There’s even a Netflix series, based on the movie “She’s Gotta have It,” but I haven’t seen it — I’m experiencing FOMMM (fear of messing with my movie).

What does my artistic role model and inspiration have to say now in 2019, such as we are? I watched the clip, with some anticipation.

And there he was, a man of middle age, gripping a piece of paper, visibly shaking and doing his best to speak the Truth in his allotted time of almost 3 minutes. And what did he say that got some people’s panties in a twist? Calling on remembering the slave ancestors and the sacrifices they made. He named his grandmother, the daughter of a slave and graduate of Spelman College, and thanked her for saving her social security checks so he could go to Morehouse and NYU. She called him Spikey Poo. He called for remembering the genocide of the native people and said connecting with our ancestors would bring us wisdom and help us regain our humanity. Oh, and there was a bit about 2020 presidential election being right around the corner: “Make the moral choice between love versus hate.” Then he said “Do the Right Thing,” and he laughed, “You know I had to get that in there!”

So, yes, it was altogether shockingly … calm? Inspiring? Heartfelt with personal thanks to his grandma? Funny? Similar to what any non-Trump supporter is saying about 2020? Rooted in facts that are already established? Yes, Black people were brought here from Africa as slaves, Natives were definitely killed en masse, and there is documented hate going around.

I can totally see how shouting out to your grandmother is really just wasting people’s time with useless personal thanks. Thank your industry buds, your spouse, and move it along.

None of it matters. Spike Lee, after 5 nominations finally was recognized for the work he has been doing tirelessly, with integrity, honesty, and passion. Thanks Spike for your inspiration and for setting this white girl on a path of better understanding 30 years ago about what it means to be Black in America. And thank you for doing it with humor, music, clear-eyed Truth, and without apology. I’m going to watch your video again and get to work.

 

Lights Out

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I’m renting an amazing apartment in the Boston neighborhood of my dreams and feel like I won the lottery. It’s in an old building and as my friend who I’m renting from likes to say, there are no straight lines in this place. That’s what living in Boston means, with its 100+ year-old housing stock. All those kids living in the high-rise luxury apartments springing up in Boston like a toxic algae bloom have no idea what they are missing. I guess as the youngest child of four, I’m used to adapting to people and things that are bigger than me.

Unsecured doors swing open on their own, the bathroom door is loose and the closet door across from it door sticks. That doesn’t bother me a bit.

Then I encountered the light fixtures, which I believe predate my friend’s ownership (at least I hope so, or I may find myself knocking the toxic algae bloom door. Love you, landlord!)

It started with lights going out in the kitchen — fancy track lighting spotlights. Fancy to me because my idea of lighting is 40, 60, or 100 watts, and if you’re really getting crazy, use a 3-way bulb. I have tall ceilings, which I love, so, OK, I took out the tall step ladder Lora left for me, thank goodness. There are 3 little lights, and they don’t screw in, and they are flush to the fixture, so there is nothing to hold on to to get them out. Lora said there was a little rubber suction cup to pull them out. Um, OK. I couldn’t find that, but I like to think I’m pretty resourceful, so I thought I’d use a sticky ball of duct tape, which works only on the bulbs coming out. Putting them in, not so much because they get hot instantaneously, and then it just makes a melted mess and the bulb gets junked up. It took some coordination, what with being at the top of a ladder and reaching up awkwardly, but when I finally got it loose, I see the bulb has these two prongs you have to push in and twist to lock in, high up on a ladder in the middle of the kitchen. I’m not really looking forward to that part, but first things first.

You have to get your mitts on replacements.

It took a couple of stores to find the right bulbs. And then it took a couple of tries to get that first one in. I’m trying to match up the prongs into the holes and then twist it to lock it in, which sounds simple, except I’m on top of a ladder and can’t see anything. Just blindly stabbing the thing in there, hoping for the best. It finally feels like it snaps in. Great!

So when the second one went out a few weeks later, I thought I was ready. I had the bulbs, had some duct tape, had some experience. Not so fast, girlie. The second one wouldn’t go in. Or rather, felt like it was going in, only for me to climb down the ladder, turn it on and see it not light, or flutter on and off from being loose. I went from calm to a hot, sweating, swearing mess in about 10 seconds, which as you know, makes these tasks much easier. Sweating and swearing while teetering on top of  a ladder is not a good look for me, so I let that bulb stay out for a few days. Off course it’s the one pointed at where I cook,so my annoyance won out. It took another couple of tries, and it’s still isn’t clicked in quite right, but whatever. I moved on.

A few months later the living room overhead light bulb went out. It looks like an ordinary overhead light. I climb up the ladder, unscrew the glass bowl and discover more of these pronged light bulbs. Seriously? What is this, like the Betamax version of light bulbs? What the hell is wrong with plain screw in light bulbs? I gave a pass on the track lighting, because it’s seems like a fancy kind of lighting, which naturally requires extra things like suction cups and prongs. Fine. But an overhead light? With regular sized bulbs? Prongs? Really? Who even sells these things? Even more puzzling, it was one of those swirly tube bulbs — you know the ones that cost 10 bucks a piece and came out at a time when we’d only ever paid like $1 or $2 and the electric companies were giving us all discounts to buy them. Save energy, shine your environmental hero halo! Only to discover now that they are filled with mercury! Oops! Hey, don’t throw those away! True they did last longer, but you still have to get rid of them somehow. So not only did I need a light bulb with prongs, I had to hope they still make the non-swirly kind.

Light bulb people! Why do you feel the need to make a different kind of bottom for a light bulb? Just make the top more efficient and without mercury? Just focus on that, OK?

OK. Again, I had to make a couple of trips to different stores to find  a replacement. The young man who helped me, who most likely was born around the time these stupid swirly light bulbs were invented, gets a gold star for customer service,  because I went all “crabby old lady” on him. What with the prongs and the mercury swirl. He was appropriately sympathetic, in part because he only had one kind of replacement. I had no idea if it was the right wattage, I didn’t have a choice. That’s the other thing with these fancy/weird bulbs; they have no wattage or markings of any kind on the bulb or metal. So you can’t order them online, because you only have a picture to compare to, and guess what: size does matter. And, what, one wattage fits all? Or you know it’s not going to last on the market so why bother?

OK, I bought two bulbs for $20 bucks and change from the nice young man who did not judge me to my face. The package says they will last 10 years. Yeah, right, just in time for them not to be made anymore. I went back up the ladder and anticipated a prong wrestling match like the track lights in the kitchen. But lo, it’s amazing what leverage and easy access can do. It was in!

Phew, OK.

Not even a month later the dining room ceiling light bulb goes out. Ha! You can’t fool me twice. I’m ready with my pronged, efficient, non-mercury filled light bulb. Come at me bro! I get to the top of the ladder, unscrew the bowl, and there it is, laughing at me.

A conventional screw in bulb.

Screw the bowl back in, down the ladder, put the prong bulb away and fish out a conventional bulb. Back up the ladder. OK, done. Whatever.

Not even a few weeks later, a bedroom ceiling light bulb blew out. I’m really starting to hate all these ceiling lights and make a promise to myself to only use the floor lamps.

I climb up the ladder, but I’m not really paying attention. I mean, I have prong bulbs and I have conventional bulbs. What else could possibly be in a traditional-looking ceiling light fixture? I unscrew the bowl, which by the way is becoming a major pain in the butt. All these lights have pull chains and you can’t get the bowl off the chain, so you have to hold the bowl, while your taking out or putting in the bulb.

But I digress.

And what do you think I found behind light bulb door number 3? Three small lights, apparently called “torpedo candelabra” bulbs, and two of them were out. I thought of a few things I wanted to torpedo. Sigh. At least they have conventional screw bottoms.

Another trip to the hardware store, with bulbs in hand, and I was only  a little grumpy with the young worker. At least these bulbs seem more available. And the prongs taught me to be happy with the screw in version.

So the only light left to change is the bathroom light/fan set up. I’m going to stop using that thing tout suite. 

Photo Credit: Beautiful Halo: Ha, good luck replacing lights in that sucker.

Quilt Trading

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Although I don’t have a comforter, I own 2 store-bought blankets, one of which is the infamous, 70’s polyester indestructible f***ing pink blanket, reserved for outdoor movies at the Hatch Shell in Boston. The other is a more conventional cotton number that is on my bed, but before you start a gofundme for blankets, know that I am not bereft of warmth, and that I don’t need to depend on my occasional night hot flashes. What have served as my blankets and bedspreads (do people even use that word any more?) and, yes, comforters?

Quilts. Specifically, ones made by my grandmother and my mother. Most of them are at least 30 years old, but there are a few younger ones. At least one, what we used to call a car blanket, is older than me. You put it in the back of the station wagon to pad the four kids rolling around back there unbuckled on long car rides. Then we pulled over on the side of the road to eat bark in caves. Go ahead and laugh, I’m still alive and use it as a picnic and beach blanket.

My Memere passed away in 1994, and my mom is now 88 and has Alzheimer’s and has lost a lot of her sewing ability. But I still have their quilts, and by proxy pieces of their happiest moments. As a kid my Memere made us summer quilts and winter quilts. When I was a teenager, she took requests, and I asked for with one with horses, which I still have. I received a larger one as a wedding present (it’s the one on the far right in the top photo). The marriage dissolved at the 20-year mark, but the quilt is still around — a little worn in places, but it still works and still has the tiny stitches Memere lovingly sewed all those years ago. Then my mom picked up the quilting bug, and so I have a smaller fun quilt she made that folds into a pillow for those trips to see movies at the Hatch Shell. She made it after coming with us a few times when she visited. She was so excited to find the pattern. It’s a perfect annex to the pink blanket, and more recently has started to serve as a warm place to sit in my wood floor for meditation. Then when her grandson came along, she showered him with several baby quilts and then a quilt for his “big boy” bed. As a teen, he got another quilt with colors he picked  himself.

My mom found a bunch of quilt tops Memere never finished, so she started on those. Those are amazing twofers because they have the stitches and love of both. My favorite is made up of Memere’s handkerchiefs. Back in the day no respectable lady was without a handkerchief. She had many of all designs — scalloped edges, birds, flowers, and even states. After I divorced, I changed out my wedding quilt for the handkerchief one. When I moved last year, I noticed that some of the delicate handkerchiefs had holes and were worn. I told my mom, and she still had some of Memere’s handkerchiefs and sent them to me in the mail.

My preferred fiber arts activity is crocheting, which Memere also did; despite my rich legacy, sewing for me is a utilitarian skill — buttons and small holes primarily. For a good year, I looked at the quilt and then looked at the replacement handkerchiefs, felt fear in my heart and then picked up a book or the remote and told myself I’d tackle it another day. So many tiny stitches all in perfect straight lines or perfect curves! So many tiny stitches. I liked the idea of adding my stitches, but I also didn’t want poor Memere to roll in her grave when they came out all big and uneven. My mom continued to encourage me and tell me it didn’t have to be perfect, which is easy to say for people who make perfect stitches. I knew she was right, though, so I started asking her about the steps, and what I had to do. Finally, I took a deep breath and dove in. The easier part was removing the damaged handkerchiefs. A seam ripper and several episodes of Modern Family are all you really need and are quite cathartic. A little more challenging was picking new handkerchiefs, placing and pinning them and sewing around the edges. I started that last winter and just recently finished. I bought some time by declaring the summer too hot to work on a big quilt that has to be spread on your lap.

I rested on my laurels a bit, but those darn seasons keep coming and soon it was winter again, and I had to stare down the barrel of the actual quilting — this is the free-form thread that either follows the along with the pattern of the fabric or can just be an outline of an object like a heart. Unlike the stitches around the border of the handkerchief, which are not the focus of the quilt and can hide on the sidelines, the quilting itself is like the front and center cheerleader, at the top of the pyramid, doing a split. Did I mention I favor crocheting? But my mom kept telling me to not worry and just put the stitches anywhere and have fun. I told her I might even use bright, colored thread, just for kicks. She was delighted. On this snowy Presidents Day I took the plunge — making the initial “L” for mom and Memere’s names (Lorette and Lumina), and then I’ll spell out Memere and Mom. Wish me luck (you can already see “Memere” ain’t gonna fit in that space)!

quilting

So while the handkerchief quilt is being repaired, I put my old wedding quilt back on the bed, but it too was fraying and in a way that is not as easily repaired — “easy”! Ha! While I have a decent quantity of quilts, only those 2 fit on my queen bed. Just buy one, you might say, and I might say, after all this time, I’ve been spoiled and am a handmade quilt snob. I’m not putting any mass production quilt on my bed — it might give me hives — or heaven help us a “comforter,” which is hot and heavy, and not in a good way. What can I say? I’m a delicate snowflake flower.

Then I thought of my aunt who caught the quilting bug and does beautiful machine quilting. She laughingly declares she doesn’t have the patience for hand quilting, and after quilting the letters “L” and “M” today, I am totally in her camp. In our little quilting world, machine quilting is on the edge of blasphemous, but I’ve seen her work, and it’s stunning. I also love her passion and that she is carrying on the tradition in her own way. I thought I might commission a quilt from her.

Before I could though, my sister said she had a quilt that mom made that never really fit on her bed, and that it was actually making her sad because of mom’s decline. Was I interested? She sent me a picture.

It was perfect. It’s my mother’s Quilting Opus — made of 56 squares that feature a different quilt pattern, with fabulous names like log cabin, bear’s paw, crazy house, and windmill. So the quilt made its way to me — no hives, just gorgeous, artistic comfort.

quilt3

And the trading doesn’t stop there. My brother has a few decorative quilts my mom made to hang on the wall, and when I moved to my current apartment, he gave me one that he didn’t have room for. I’m still deciding on the perfect spot. I’m sure as we reconfigure our homes and lives, we’ll continue to trade, swap, and share the quilts.

In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of crazy quilting to do.

Photo: Left to right, my sister’s weding quilt, the handkerchief quilt, and my wedding quilt.

Unplugged

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I took a few days off to go to Conway,  NH, and I knew there wouldn’t be WiFi. Conway is not that remote — it’s a popular summer and winter vacation spot, so I wasn’t expecting that the cell signal would be nearly non-existent. I took most social media off my phone after the Cheeto flea made it a collage of constant nastiness, so I was pretty smug and confident that I would be fine without service. And I was for the most part. Texting was kind of maddening. Suddenly one bar would appear and my phone would buzz with texts coming in. I’d read them, and just as I would try to respond, the service would go down again. Nothing was very urgent, except to make sure a few key people knew I had spotty service and not to wait for my answer.

It did make me realize how much I do check texts and email, and so I was surprised at how freeing it was to not have to answer. To just leave it alone. For a few days, I had no idea what was going on in the world, and all I had to contemplate was the fire place, and these beautiful scenes on a couple of hikes.

Well, that and relearn how to use a map instead of Siri.

diana

Diana’s Bath

champney 2

Champney Falls

I’m back and checking the phone too much, but I’m going to try to put it down for a few hours on a regular basis. Now I just need a fireplace.

You Stink

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In the snowflake state of Massachusetts, we legalized medicinal marijuana in 2012, and recreational marijuana in 2016. Although, I guess now we’re professionally calling it “cannabis,” and if you are a recreational user, “weed” or 420. My teen has informed me only old farts like me still call it “pot.” Whatever you call it, it’s not really my thing. The one time I tried it as a teenager, it made me laugh so hard, I annoyed myself. I didn’t like the untethered feeling it gave me, and as I was floating around, I remember thinking, god, who is laughing so much, and why doesn’t she shut up? Then I realized it was me. This was followed by a very intense case of the munchies, where mass quantities of chips were consumed. I have always had a slow metabolism. I could barely afford that level of eating then, never mind now.

Be that as it may, I have no feelings either way about other people who partake, except for one. Your habit smells like skunk. It really does. Maybe you don’t smell it because as you puff away on that weird kazoo thing, you’re leaving the potent, smelly molecules behind you. But I come along, minutes or hours later and it stinks like skunk — it’s not really clear how long the smell sticks around because when I get a big whiff of skunk, I have yet to see anyone actually smoking. It’s kind of maddening. I get hit with the intense smell, and I whip my head  around, to see if I can either 1) go in the opposite direction of you, or 2) grab that kazoo thing you are using to smoke it and throw it dramatically in the street so it will get run over.

But no. The weed is like a cloak of invisibility for you, while I have to smell skunk for several blocks. It didn’t always smell so bad. It always a distinct smell, but whatever it is they are cooking now, that crap is more intense. Look, the cars have had to lessen their smelly exhaust, and cigarette smokers have been pretty much run off, so let’s not take an olfactory step back, OK?

It’s not just me who smells skunk. My friend who was a big pot head (there I said it) in college asked where the skunk was as we were walking down the Boston street. You’d think she’d know. While it’s true you can sometimes smell skunks in urban neighborhoods as they root about in the trash, they tend not to hang out on main Boston thoroughfares.

So please, cannabis users, can you please smoke or vape or whatever at home? Or if you must do it while you are walking around in public, can’t you buy edibles at those new fancy dispensaries? Although I’m just judgey enough to point out that I’d have to drink my wine from a paper bag, so you, what, don’t have to look at me imbibing? Well, I shouldn’t have to smell you partaking. Just saying.

I and all of those with noses thank you for your consideration. Cuz, seriously. You stink.