Duh!

Another paucity of posts, this time caused by an influx of guests. Most of them were expected, but there was one set of surprise visitors. Every woman’s magazine has tips on how to tidy your house in fifteen minutes, and I was prepared. I had tucked away a packet of “Furniture Polish Wipes”, which I unzipped and flourished with gay abandon. At one point my curiosity got the better of me and I read the “instructions”.

• When wipe is soiled, throw in trash. OK.
• Do not use on untreated unfinished wood. Makes sense.
• Do not use on floors as they may become slippery. I found that out the hard way.
• Not for personal hygiene.

Heavens to Betsey.

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait …

I bought a T-shirt at *macy*s recently. It was a brown T–shirt. I had bought one in a different color a few weeks previously, so I didn’t need to try it on. I simply removed it from the display, looked around for the nearest customer service station (guest assistance administration area?) and presented my T-shirt to the woman standing there. Then I ran my credit card through the machine, punched the buttons as prompted and signed my name. She put the T-shirt in a bag, removed the receipt from the machine and wrote her name and badge number on it. “Please go online,” she said, “and comment on the quality of my assistance.”

I’d send you to the URL if I still had the receipt, but I didn’t keep it. I bet you can guess why.

First, Do No Harm

Contrary to popular belief, these words do not, in fact, appear in the Hippocratic Oath, but they make a good title for this post. I am pleased to pass on the news that in spite of the salmonella caused by our tomatoes and the E coli in the ground beef purchased from the local grocery stores, there is one place in Michigan where we will soon be in less danger from bugs and nasty organisms. Our hospitals. According to an article in today’s paper, “Metro Detroit hospitals are stepping up efforts to reduce costly and often traumatic medical errors, in preparation for new rules that will make them bear the cost of the mistakes they make when treating patients.” Traumatic medical errors and hospitals are two concepts that should not appear in the same sentence.

We’re not just talking about amputating the wrong leg, or “surgery on the wrong patient, surgery on the wrong body part and carrying out the wrong surgery,” as the article succinctly puts it. Read this paragraph:

One low-tech practice recommended by the hospital association to improve hand hygiene among staff -- a simple but crucial way to prevent the spread of infections -- is for hospitals to deploy workers, secret-shopper style, to watch over their colleagues on whether they've washed their hands before entering a patient room. "It is not a high-tech intervention, but it does have an enormous impact on the hospital setting," said Peters of the hospital association.

I have noticed in some public bathrooms a sign indicating that we should wash our hands for as long as it takes to sing a couple of verses of “Old MacDonald had a farm”. That’s the sign that appears next to the one that says “Employees should wash their hands before returning to work.” Obviously this sign should be amended in hospital bathrooms to add “Please add a couple of extra barnyard animals if you intend to perform open heart surgery.”

Too bad that it is concern about Medicare changes and not concern about patients that is bringing about these initiatives.

Ya Gotta Love the Pointes

Thursday today and the mail brought the local paper. The usual stuff: water rates, expanding the library, notes from the school board. I turned to the Public Safety Reports. You may remember I quoted from this section some time ago because I found the reporter’s vocabulary so funny. You should know that the Pointes are made up of five different communities and Grosse Pointe “crime” is itemized by community. We live in the Park, which is a pretty nice place to live, though it isn’t as fancy as some of the other cities, and our crime is pretty basic—a bike-jacking, a “home invasion” resulting in theft, a gas grill removed from a yard in the wee small hours, and the attempted theft of a 2005 Dodge Caravan from the 800 block of . . . hold it, that’s our block. Don’t worry, the thieves were thwarted: the car didn’t start.

We move on to the more esoteric crimes reported in the rarified air of the Shores. Three of them:

• . . . officers were unable to confirm an unknown caller’s report of five coyote puppies playing on a front lawn. . .


• . . . officers investigating reports of a smoking street light discovered the fixture’s cover had come off. Fish flies were being zapped by the light, which caused a little bit of smoke. . .


• . . . two officers investigated a complaint of four turkeys running around the yard of a residence. Officers herded the birds back to a neighbor’s pen. Police said the complainant “does not mind the birds as long as they stay in their pen”.

Never a dull moment.

A Matter of Convenience

For more years than I care to remember, I cooked three meals a day for seven people. Eating out was an occurrence rarer than the appearance of Halley’s comet, especially as the kids got older and our “party of seven” included teenage boys who grew to 6’7’’ and 6’3”. Keeping the food bills under control was a full-time job. Even if there had been the huge array of today’s convenience foods available, the additional cost would have ruled them out in our household. (In the interest of full disclosure, I confess to using cake-mixes. I don’t do cakes. And there is an apocryphal story the kids like to tell involving me, driving lessons and Hamburger Helper, but you don’t need to know that.) So I chopped, pared, peeled and diced with the best of them.

Now there are just two of us and it is not unknown for me to buy a bag of salad or a container of melon pieces. But here is where I draw the line.

Click on the photograph for more detail: 14 ounces of individually wrapped apple slices. I didn’t check the ingredients carefully, but these apples are surely packed in something pretty chemical to stop them turning brown during their shelf life. And even if the company could prove to me that there is no health hazard involved, they can’t prove this product is a bargain. On the day I took this photograph, the pre-packaged apples were almost $4.00, while these tempting looking fruit were on sale for 99 cents a pound.


Do the math.

Change of Plans

Up early today. We were looking forward to going to Elizabeth’s to look after grandchildren while she went for her (possibly) penultimate check-up with her doctor. For once, the weather forecast was correct and there was a healthy snowfall on the ground and snow coming down, soft and fluffy, but relentless. It looked pretty and it wasn’t really enough to keep us from venturing out, but Jeff’s company had told everyone to take work home, so our services were not needed. There will be plenty we can do to help in a few weeks.


There’s something luxurious about “found” time: the time you didn’t expect to have. I started with an extra cup of coffee as I dealt with the newspaper. It was somewhat disheartening to read this article. If Detroit doesn’t get its 2005-06 and 2006-07 audits filed in a couple of days, the city stands to lose $52,000,000 in state revenue sharing. Apparently city officials figure they will have the earlier audit(14 months late) done in a day or two, but the 2006-07 audit hasn’t been started yet. A councilwoman said "This is a matter of grave concern to me. It could have a dramatic impact on our ability to deliver services." Duh.

So I turned to something more fluffy and learned that the preliminary ratings for the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast are 14% lower than the least-watched ceremony ever. I am not surprised. TV executives will deconstruct the events. Who should host next year? Were the jokes too political? What film clips should we use? But they miss the point.

Time was people flocked to the movies and became enamored of “stars” for their acting ability or their looks. Then the Oscars were a huge bonus. It was a rare opportunity to see your favorites, what they had chosen to wear and whom they came with to the ceremony. Did they smile and look friendly? Did they applaud each other?

It is all so different now. Tabloids and E! Online and Entertainment Tonight and You-Tube and People Magazine and even the mainstream newspapers write stories and show photos of romances and addictions, babies and rehab, infidelity and Hollywood haute couture. You know what the stars are (and aren’t) wearing every day and if you wonder about their fashion sense, you need go no further than those witty, vitriolic women at go fug yourself. I watched a couple of Red Carpet shows and heard the same dresses being labeled both the best and the worst. One tatty-looking Brit-sounding man with a blue satin rag instead of a tie (or shirt) was gobsmacked that the most spectacular woman a on the Red Carpet was a model, Heidi Klum, and not an actress. Hadn’t he noticed that none of the people entering the theatre was required to perform a Shakespearean monolog? Rather they minced and posed and made a moue for the camera. What’s that got to do with film?

Once inside the theater we had, as John Stewart promised, a bunch of people giving each other awards. I think I might actually enjoy a segment explaining what a sound mixer is, what he does, what he is attempting to achieve. But I do not enjoy seeing a bunch of sound mixers bound on the stage and start thanking a lot of people I have never heard of. I doubt the “stars” do either.

The recent crippling writers’ strike was caused in part by an industry refusing to acknowledge that times have changed. New technologies and delivery methods require new compensation procedures.

And maybe someone needs to re-think the whole Oscar business.

Embarrassment de Riches

I love tomatoes. A big, juicy tomato, its bursting skin still warm from the rays of the sun, is my idea of good eats. I have written before about our inability to grow decent slicing tomatoes. No matter, I have resigned myself to a lifetime of cherry and grape tomatoes and we get through plenty of them.

In any event, homegrown tomatoes are only readily available in Michigan in August and September. Then I buy tomatoes for salads at the grocery store or at farmers’ markets, and as the winter gets more oppressive and comfort food beckons, I turn to recipes calling for cans of tomatoes to supply color and, so they tell me, lycopene. What could be easier than adding a few cans of tomatoes to my shopping list?


What indeed! For years recipes for soups or stews stipulated, “Add a can of whole tomatoes and break them up with a wooden spoon.” It seemed an exercise in futility, so I was happy when the manufacturers introduced diced tomatoes. But look what Messrs. Hunt, Kroger, Dei Fratelli, Red Gold and Del Monte have come up with now. We can buy our tomatoes stewed, peeled, whole, crushed, diced (even petite diced) or chopped. We can buy organic versions of all of the above. There are subsets of the main varieties: steam peeled, chopped Mexican and chopped Italian. Our choices are not limited to cut. We have to decide whether we want our tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano, no salt added, chili ready, fire roasted, all natural (as opposed to . . . ?), zesty chili style, with jalapeno peppers or with garlic and onion.

I have headache writing about it. I must go and get dinner, which tonight will feature pork chops and applesauce. That’s chunky applesauce, as opposed to organic, unsweetened, home-style, natural, cinnamon flavored . . .

Peccavi

When we returned from Chicago, we found Detroit enmeshed in a mayoral scandal. The Free Press, in a piece of investigative journalism reminiscent of Woodward and Bernstein, had unearthed text messages between the mayor and his chief-of-staff indicating that the testimony Mayor Kilpatrick had given at a trial last year was less than truthful and that the two of them were indeed engaged in extra-marital hi-jinks . Apparently hizzonner had been absent the day they covered perjury in Law School.

Now I am not going to give a homily here. Enough stones have been cast and the windows of my glasshouse are thin. So I am not going to write about the fact that the mayor’s select memory on the stand cost the city of Detroit $9,000,000 plus some considerable lawyers’ fees. I am not going to write about the firing of decent public servants who were doing their jobs with honesty and integrity, presumably with the acquiescence of the mayor’s stable of bodyguards. I am not going to discuss the fact that the “other woman” has resigned from her position as chief-of-staff and, since she is currently in Law School, will presumably never be allowed to practice law if the Wayne County prosecutor lines up her ducks. I am not going to mention that the mayor went “into seclusion” and got together a group of writers (from a Hollywood picket line?) who wrote a speech which was a masterpiece of obfuscation. I’m not going to mention the obvious parallels to another politician which came to mind as the mayor of Detroit sat there clutching his wife’s forgiving hand.

I am going to talk about language. Semantics. Word choice. Here are two extracts from the mayor’s address to the citizens of Detroit:

• I ask you not to have helicopters flying around our home. I ask you to leave them alone. I am the mayor. I made the mistake. I am accountable.
• I told my sons this past weekend that when you make a mistake you learn from it. You get up. You dust yourself off and you keep moving forward.

See that word that crept in there? Mistake. Somehow a mistake doesn’t call for atonement or remorse, compensation or forgiveness. Forget about the nine million dollars or the ruined lives. Mistakes are harmless little things, aren’t they?

I might not have labored the point had I not listened the very next day to an interview on NPR between Jack Lessenbury and Rep. Paul Condino. I missed the beginning of the broadcast and when I tracked it down, it appears that it dates back to 2006 and I didn’t follow up to see the outcome of the legislation that Rep. Condino was proposing. I am not opposed, under certain circumstances, to offererring clemency to a prisoner who committed murder as a juvenile. But in his analysis, which you can hear in the audio story, Mr. Lessenbury (who I think is a fine journalist) supports the legislation by saying it isn’t right for someone to be imprisoned for life for a mistake he committed as a juvenile. Murder as a mistake? If I were on the parole board I would want to hear an applicant admit to a crime, express sorrow and remorse, and prove he was ready to live an exemplary life, not take refuge in the word “mistake.” Same goes for the mayor.

And the title of this post? Let’s introduce a little levity here. It seems like the perfect time to tell my favorite classical anecdote. Anyone who remembers their Latin will tell you that “peccavi” is the Latin for “I have sinned.” Here’s the story, adapted from a letter to The New York Times:

The 1840's was a time of British expansion in India. There were those in Britain who doubted the wisdom of too rapid an advance, and in particular, the capture of the province of Sind, which was thought likely to lead to an overextension of lines of communication. (Sir Charles) Napier was therefore under express orders not to capture the territory. Once he discovered, however, how little resistance there was, he took the province with ease. He telegraphed back to headquarters a marvellous double entendre—Peccavi.

Enough of history, ethics and rhetoric for tonight.

Decision Time

John Copeland usually has something to say about the absurdities of life in “Lax Britannica”—a country of which he is really rather fond. Last week he referenced an article in The Sunday Times of September 23 detailing the prohibition on emergency services against saving lives.

Officers like Sergeant Craig Lippitt, who attempted to rescue Jordon by stripping off and diving in of his own volition, were acting against instructions, although they would not be disciplined for rescuing someone, the spokeswoman said.

Firefighters who attempt the same are not necessarily so fortunate. In March a 42-year-old firefighter, Tam Brown, saved a woman in the River Tay. He was later informed he could face disciplinary action.

Read the article: see what you think. John’s verdict? “Presumably the day is not so very far away when the Health & Safety Executive comes up with an edict that soldiers must not fire bullets in case they hurt themselves. I really do live in a daft country.”

Alienation

“Why,” you may ask,“ did you not go apple picking with your family in Canada"? The answer is simple—my “green” card expired. Note the apostrophes, real ones, exactly as used by the United States Government. The “green” card is actually salmon pink, but since it was historically green, the INS had to reconcile history and fact and that’s how they did it.

Here’s the back-story. I received my green card in 1964, thanks to a letter from my chair at Southern Cal indicating he couldn’t find an American to do my job and promising I would not be a financial burden for at least a couple of years. I remember going down to Long Beach to go through the process. I also remember that at that time I had to report myself and my current address every January. After a while that was no longer necessary, but I do recall phoning the INS and asking if I should get a new card since I had changed my name. I was told that neither a new card nor a new photo was required. So life went on uneventfully until about 10 years ago when I began to hear rumblings that the green card was to become obsolete. I eventually got a new card, but what a business that was. Telephone trees that never delivered an actual person, a visit to the immigration office to be fingerprinted, less than friendly personnel and a photo with an ear prominently displayed. That last requirement was the source of much consternation to the mother of a friend who wanted to keep her ears to herself, thank you.

Fast-forward to this year when I happened to look at the card and realized it had an expiration date in September of this year. No-one had warned me this was a 10-year card, and indeed an Australian neighbor, a very well-organized person, found herself in Ireland with an expired “green” card, so I expect many of us have been caught short. Times have changed: there is now an efficient web-site. Efficient, but hardly user friendly for a permanent resident struggling with English. Then there is the cost. $290! In the post 9/11 world, I suppose that is a small price to help put together a comprehensive data base, so I am not complaining. The forms now come from the Office of Homeland Security. But since I had needed my card to cross over to Canada a couple of weeks ago, I did not have the replacement in time for our annual trip to Theissens nursery.

That should be the end of the story. I am one of the lucky ones. Every so often we hear heartbreaking stories of families being broken up as a father or mother is deported for residency violations and someone will justify the resulting tragedy by pointing to the absolute nature of law. Allow me to introduce you to Roy M. Bailey of Romulus, who was acting field office director for detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Detroit, and who is charged with accepting bribes, conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit extortion, conspiracy to defraud the federal government, and failing to report a felony. I am not quite sure why this story was tucked away on page 3B of today’s Detroit News, or why he is on paid administrative leave.

I hate to say, “Only in Detroit”, but in this instance, I hope it is the case.

Customer Service

I took our Taurus in for service the other day to Roy O’Brien Ford. What a nice experience! The service bay was sparkling clean and Tina listened respectfully to my concerns. There was good coffee in the service lobby and it wasn’t long before I had a rundown of my problems and their probable solutions and Tina got a sprightly driver to take me home. The repairs were made and I picked up the car later in the afternoon. I don’t have much experience with car dealerships and how the treatment I received stacked up against what happens at other dealerships, but I was left with the certainty that when the time comes for another car, this is where I will return.

Customer service is a much-discussed topic amongst my friends. John Copeland has an apocryphal composite figure called “surly Sharon”. We have all met our share of “surly Sharons.” You know, the representatives who argue with you for ten minutes, tell you there is nothing they can do and then end the phone conversation by saying, “Is there anything else we can help you with?” I actually got pretty good results from Thermador this year, mostly by being polite but insistent after the greeting, “Why are you calling me? Your warranty is expired”. I had to fax in my original purchase agreement and the invoice for the first repair of this part, but I fortunately could put my hands on them. I suppose it is my responsibility to keep these bits of paper, but I am here to tell you that any company who keeps their own records and doesn’t force me to prove that I own the appliance in question will get my repeat business. One repairman I hired this year (from a firm that has been very satisfactory in the past) told me he could fix the hose on the GE refrigerator, but that he “doesn’t do digital.” And the factory authorized repairman who came next insinuated we were witless and charged me $70 to tell me I don’t have a problem with my settings. I do. Don’t get me started on the building inspector from the city of Grosse Pointe Park. The electrician was a gem, but now we have to deal with the replacement window people. One window sill is coming adrift.

All this is to explain why I was so happy to read a column in last week’s Free Press entitled Good service means I’ll be back. I am pleased to report that Claire Nelson of Bureau of Urban Living who is so highly praised by Georgea Kovanis is someone I know. She has the added double distinction of marrying into a wonderful family we have known for a long time and having the loveliest wedding dress I have ever seen.

Now let’s just hope I can get through this week without having to call Comcast. Or Macintosh. Or the immigration people. I’ll get to them in a future post

Public Safety Reports

Here are two articles (somewhat abbreviated) from our local newspapers. They describe the same incident, though one of the reporters can’t tell his big hand from his little hand. From the Grosse Pointe Times :

An officer observed a vehicle at around 1:24 a.m. July 31 parked in a driveway of a home in the 400 block of McKinley with its headlights on but the car not running…The officer opened the driver’s door to check on the well-being of the 52-year-old City man and could immediately smell alcohol.”

And from the Grosse Pointe News:

A 52 year-old City of Grosse Pointe man was arrested for drunken driving after police found him passed out in his vehicle parked in a driveway in the 400 block of McKinley at 3:37 a.m. Tuesday July 31…Police suspected he had been drinking after detecting a strong odor of intoxicants coming from his facial area….”

Facial area? I immediately assumed that the News had hired a new reporter who was determined to add to zip to the Public Safety Reports with some flowery language, so I phoned the newspaper to ask. I was told that for the past couple of years, all the police reports in the Pointes have used this circumlocution. There must be a reason. Fourth Amendment? Help me out, any lawyer who happens to read this. Maybe it is a new Grosse Pointe misdemeanor—having a facial area smelling of intoxicants. It can go down with the current favorite—being an annoying person.

But it must make life very difficult for anyone who still uses Bay Rum aftershave.

Choose One from Column A . . .

We were once amused by the menu of a restaurant in Rome. The owners, obviously hoping to appeal to English-speaking tourists, had translated their menu valiantly, if a trifle unsuccessfully, into English. “Tepid” apple pie didn’t seem so bad, but we were reluctant to discover the true identity of “hog scraps”. I suppose it could have been julienned ham, but . . .

So I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of translations of 2,753 dishes and drinks to solicit public opinions and to ensure some conformity in preparation for the Olympics. According to the article at CHINAdaily.com, “Bad translations of Chinese dishes are headaches for foreign epicures. There used to be translations like "Virgin Chicken" and "Burnt Lion's Head", which are actually dishes based on young chicken and pork ball resembling lion's head. These translations either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding on China's diet habits.” I should say so.

After an explanation of the guidelines used to establish the new translations, the article goes on to note two examples of dishes described based on the materials used. The first is "Mushroom-Duck's Foot". It is the second that piqued my interest—“AmentJuice-BalsamPear”. You can imagine why.

It also piqued the interest of Garreth Powell, who writes for ChinaEconomic Review.com. In his September 4 post he recognizes that the purpose is to help foreign guests to recognize the materials and content of the dish. “Except”, he continues, “that the writer in his pitiful ignorance has no idea what Ament Juice is although there is a singer in Pearl Jam with the second name of Ament but that may not be the connection.”

He ends the article,”The committee also plans to launch a training program to equip waiters and waitresses with knowledge of the dish names in case customers demand explanations. They can start by explaining Ament Juice to one ignorant Westerner.”

Make that two.

Let Me Help You with That

The new Northwest Airlines building at Detroit Metro-politan Airport is impressive. Visitors to Detroit arrive in a clean, shiny and vibrant terminal. Also a long one. It is a real hike from one end to the other and pretty daunting from the middle, where you enter and exit, to either end. There is a train thingy, but I have only used it once. You need to go up a level to the station, hauling whatever carry-on baggage you have, and even then—unless your gate happens to be right where the train stops—you still have a walk. I find it quicker and easier to jump on the moving walkway and hoof the rest.

Back in June when I picked up Ernie’s sister at the airport, I wondered how she would cope after her recent knee surgery. I kept an anxious eye on the escalator from arrivals to the baggage area. At one point I glanced toward the baggage carousel, and there she was. . . in a wheelchair, pushed by a friendly employee.

So although I have been mulling over the problems I may shortly face as an aging traveler, I wasn’t fully prepared for the grim picture painted in Ronni Bennett’s recent post.

This entry is a study of callousness. There is institutional callousness on the part of the TSA and the airlines (not to mention the airport architects). Just read some of the comments made by other fellow sufferers. I was about to endorse the suggestion made by one of the commenters,”I ask that you send your post to the highest levels of airport authorities, airlines, appropriate elected officials, consumer groups, and others. This might bring at a minimum some relief to the predictably hardest hit victims.”, but that plan of attack won’t have immediate results. It does, however, seem to me that we can all do our bit to prevent the other type of callousness exemplified here, individual disregard and apathy.

My blog entry, when I returned from England last year, contained these words: What surprised me the most? The courtesy of the people we came across and the fact that I never once got on a crowded tube without someone offering me a seat.

So here’s the challenge for today. We can all of us examine our attitude to the elderly person in the grocery store who can’t reach the beans on the top shelf, or the pedestrian who holds up traffic. It may involve actively helping, or merely showing patience and human decency. And those of you with small children—use these situations as teaching moments. Those people who gave up their seats to me on the tube were for the most part young: it would be wonderful to have a whole generation for whom the phrase “Let me help you with that” comes more readily to the lips than, “Have a great day.”

Dear Palmer Heenan

You’re my mayor, and all, and you have my best interests at heart. In the recent Park Communicator you described the new housing lifestyle you are initiating for Grosse Pointe Park: “Brownstone houses of the style that characterize neighborhoods of old Boston.” I like that Boston reference. Classy. Sort of Harvard Square meets Ted Kennedy.

Like many other long-time residents of the Park, I am saddened by the lack of suitable housing for the older generation. Much as I would like one of those splendid new condos on the lake by the War Memorial, there's nothing under a million, so we all know that's not going to happen. No, I would prefer to stay in the Park, so I was excited by your announcement. But wait—there’s more. You are obviously aware of the parking problems in the streets where you intend to build, so your plans call for homes “in the townhouse style with two-car garages on the first floor.” But that gives us three, count ‘em, three floors. You therefore describe this housing as "suitable for young people, single buyers and retirees who don’t mind steps.”

Retirees who don’t mind steps is an oxymoron waiting to happen. Once again, I am saddened. Why can no one ask us what we want?

On the positive side, there may be an answer to the problem—I can outsource myself. I’ll take having flowers braided in my hair over climbing all those stairs any day.

A Rose by Any Other Name

My newest grandson was two weeks old last Wednesday. Already he has two strikes against him.

First, we took photos of him as he is, not as we thought he should be .

Now, thanks to an feature cited in Arts and Letters Daily, I realize that Marcie and Andrew were pretty cavalier about the choice of his name. They chose it because they liked it. How silly! The article in The Wall Street Journal gives prospective parents hints on how consultants can (for a hefty fee) give advice on an appropriate name for the up-coming child. Does this sound odd? Well, if the parents cited in the article with the last name “Stone” have to pay money to be told that a child with the name Flynn may have problems running for President, maybe it is a good investment. (Cheap hint: Wilma and Barney aren’t a good idea either.)

The article was written by a writer with the name of Alexandra. I already have a grandson called Alexander, but Alexandra would be quite acceptable for a girl.

And is spite of what the article says about “Zoe Rose” . . . well, I’ve no objections.

A Matter of Degree

I do not have a Ph.D. Lots of people I know have earned this distinguished degree. I am, however, ABD, but that is about as much use as a maxi-skirt in Paris Hilton’s wardrobe.

Why am I telling you this? Well, you see, I am a bit forgetful and if I should be applying for a job or creating a resume, I want to be sure I don’t “make a mistake” about the degrees I have earned. It appears that this was the fate of the Director of the Detroit Zoo. In common with a number of public officials and former football coaches at Notre Dame, he claimed to have earned a Ph.D., while in fact “it never got finalized” and he omitted to take it off his resume. The obvious question is, “What was it doing there in the first place?” What about the little matter of orals, and signatures, and diplomas and transcripts?

I suppose we could ask why someone at the Detroit Zoo didn’t check his credentials more carefully when he was hired, but I am not an investigative reporter. I just want my friends to keep a close eye on my claims. And my integrity.

How Clean is your House?

When Comcast offered us a bundle that included BBC America, I jumped at it. I wasn’t exactly starved for offerings from the BBC: the international edition of the news crops up everywhere, and because we live so close to Canada, we have regular access to CBC and such cultural gems as re-runs of The Benny Hill Show and Coronation Street. No, I thought that I might be able to watch shows which kept me abreast of current British thinking and ideology. I like the shows on Mystery Monday, but I’m not fond of the reality shows where people wander in and re-do their neighbors’ house or where gardeners create an instant landscape while the inhabitants of the house are off visiting their mum.


But then I found How Clean is your House? I have seen most of about four shows and although I am fascinated, I am not sure I can bear to watch many more. Our two protagonists, Aggie (nice Scots accent and glasses) and Kim (penchant for twin sets and pearls) come to the rescue of clueless individuals who live in unimaginable chaos and filth. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that no one has ever accused me of being too meticulous in my housekeeping, but even I have standards! In one case it looked like an intervention as a quite normal daughter tried to shape up her mother who was flitting around the house with chaplets of flowers and feathers on her head and communing with deities who didn’t preach cleaning. Then there was the artist who had been saved from disaster by her cat. Mishka was therefore allowed to perform her feline functions all over the carpets and the kitchen floor. In a couple of cases confused looking husbands aid and abet their wives with no clue about what needs to be done.

Kim and Aggie to the rescue. They are delightfully non-judgmental. Kim preaches the virtues of natural cleaners, wielding borax and vinegar while muttering, “Now, lovey, we can’t have his, can we?” Aggie takes samples to send to the lab and isn’t reticent about announcing the results: “Now you do know what e-coli is?” she asks firmly.

A team of cleaners comes in to banish rubbish and grease and cobwebs. Mishka’s offerings, too. There’s no attempt to paint or re-model, but the transformations are amazing. Our dynamic duo comes back a couple of weeks later to check up on their patients. The voyeur in me is fascinated, but the show leaves me depressed.

Anyone know where to buy the marabou trimmed rubber gloves?

The Times They are A-changin': Secular Version

Back in the 70’s, 808, 810, 814 and 817 Barrington Road housed seventeen children under twelve. That meant that the kids always had someone to play (or fight) with and we mothers always had someone to help us out in a crisis. We were all “stay-at-home” mothers and we could always count on a neighbor to watch our children while we took care of errands, doctors’ appointments, school conferences etc. If our immediate neighbors couldn’t help, there was always someone from church or school we could phone. If our charges were around when a mealtime rolled around, we fed them and we usually figured out eventually which ones were in diapers and which ones had to be reminded. It didn’t require complicated scheduling and on one occasion where a lot of blood and an ambulance were involved I just shoved the remaining kids in someone’s back door and ran.

I was always happy to do my bit. We didn’t keep records of how many hours who had done what, but we always had a vague sense of when it was our time to cash in. I can only recall one really traumatic experience. My friend Theresa had just had a baby, so the doctors didn’t take her stomach pain too seriously until they realized she needed an emergency appendectomy. Her next door neighbor had been watching the two and four year old and the brand new baby, but she had take her five year old to a doctor’s appointment (and leave behind another two year old.) So Lucy, who was all of four, and I went down to help out. There were two immediate problems:

• Although I had five children, I had never prepared a bottle of formula.


• There was a large and much beloved dog. He ran away.

I can’t remember how I figured out the formula business, but I think I must have. Then came the question of what to do about the dog. I decided he was on his own.

What brought back all these memories? It was a syndicated article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled What to do before your child begins a play date. Man, did I do it all wrong. Delma Francis, the author, believes that “managing play dates is among the earliest and greatest challenges for parents.” Apparently I was supposed to woo the mothers first. She quotes a mother (called Muggy) who “ prefers the first play dates to be on neutral ground — at a park or a lunch spot. That's when the moms begin to build a relationship; then the kids can move on with theirs.” Apparently a note wouldn’t have come amiss ("Tony wants to play with Connor. Come on over. The coffeepot's always on.") The article cited play date etiquette involving rules of the house and choice of snacks, “whether there are guns in the home, any concerns with pets, the ratings of movies that each child may watch and so forth.” Give me a hungry baby and a dog any time.

By the way, the dog came back and Christopher grew and flourished.

The Need to Organize

When we were in Chicago we visited The Container Store. It’s Ernie’s favorite store: Al’s too. Al indoctrinated us by taking us to the store near the Clarendon Metro station. He’s done a good job with keeping his stuff organized and it paid off when he found out that his Honda was part of a class action suit. By being able to put his hands on all the necessary paper work, he has made himself eligible to recoup $5,000 worth of repair bills. Ernie has not been quite so successful. Although he has bought containers for “stuff” and then containers to organize the containers, he’s not quite got the whole thing mastered.

I have no business being critical. I’m pretty organized, but after living through a friend’s nightmare as she attempted to assemble all her treasures in a meaningful way in preparation for her move to a retirement community, I decided to spend some time thinning, organizing, labeling and reviewing my current “system. “ Because appliances have a habit of breaking down, I have been religious about keeping files with the instruction booklets and assorted literature. There were too many for one file so I divided them into “Small Appliances” and “Large Appliances.” But there were still too many, so I moved on to “Mid-Sized Appliances.” But how to classify things? Is a garage door opener a “Mid-Sized Appliance” or a “Small Appliance?” What about an electric fan?


So it isn’t so much doing the job as deciding how to classify things that’s the problem. Right now I am working on bookmarks on this computer. I had at one time made a fine—but significant—distinction between “journals” and “blogs” and had labeled folders accordingly. But then people like Eliza and John switched from their previous format to blogs. Should I leave the link where I was used to it and let the redirect take me where I wanted to go, erase the journal link and use a new one in the blog folder, keep both? You don’t really care, do you? Another computer related problem is my ability to add tags to blog entries under the new Blogger (known to Blogger users as the “bad” Blogger as opposed to the old “good” Blogger.) I’m not sure if I will ever use them: some bloggers are adding 10 or more to each post. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Of course, some things are really easy. By my sewing machine I have containers marked “Tape” and “Buttons” and “Zippers” and I have a fine old time labeling them with a splendid hand-held label maker Andrew and Marcie gave me a couple of Christmases ago. There is always the question of whether I should use different colored labels for different categories . . .


But the Container Store hasn’t given up on me. I’m on their mailing list now and they sent me a catalog with this stunning illustration. This is a garage. A garage, folks! It is cleaner and neater than any closet in my house. Cleaner and neater than any room in my house.

Maybe I need help. Organizers Anonymous. I’d like to think Organization with a capital “O” is a fad. But apparently it is not. I ran across an article citing the work of anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who advocated neotony, the idea that human beings are built to grow and develop their childhood traits rather than minimize them. He cites 26 of these traits. They include joyfulness, a sense of humor, curiosity, the need to know, the need to learn—and, surprise, surprise, the need to organize.

Of course, we must not forget the most esoteric of all organizational schemes, feng shui. Did you see what that’s being used for these days?