Los Angeles, California
Though not yet at two thousand posts, I feel it's time to reiterate my blog mission statement. Except, I don't have a blog mission statement. When I started WWSD, I made a flexible commitment to myself that I would write at least two posts each month. I would include a recipe in roughly every other post. The recipe part came about as I was following a rather famous food blog, which is this one, and I had some inclination towards homage (polite term for blatant imitation) of it. Then, of course, there was the advice angle -- presenting some moral, ethical, practical, whathaveyou, problem and postulating what Sandra would do about it. Interesting, but could I always be accurate in what I presented? And, God forbid, what if someone acted on my advice, even if it was unsolicited? Probably not a good thing. So, blogwise, that leaves salsa dance. But writing about an activity, any activity, is just not the same as doing it. Though that hasn't really stopped me from writing about it (there's no stopping me . . . don't even try, I'll just drag you down with me). And one more, I think very important, thing. I wanted my posts to be humorous. At least most of the time. And, therein, lies the crux of the problem of writing this post.
These days, I'm just not in a funny mood. Without going into much detail, and thereby losing the remaining readers who didn't peel off in previous posts or the last paragraph, Billy and I are plain, damn tired at the moment. Billy's been working ten hour days, each weekend, at our rental property, trying to repair all the damage done by our evicted tenant. I've been running back and forth, daily, to the rehab facility where my mom has been placed, and which is not close to us. Between time, regular life and regular work continue, after a fashion. Following a sorta kinda busy summer, with lots of recreation and celebration, we find ourselves pretty much stuck, with our pair of noses to the grindstone. I don't mind the work. In college, when I was working two jobs and carrying seventeen units, I wrote in an independent study journal that I could take on anything as long as I knew that there was a finite end to it. And, more or less, there will be an end to both of these things -- the house will be rented; my mom will be placed in assisted care, and I will eventually cut back on the daily visits to her. But, right now, we're both exhausted all of the time. There just isn't enough time to recoup our resources. And that makes it difficult for me to attempt to be funny (attempt, because even though I think I'm being humorous at times, I may be the only one who is laughing . . .).
Now, to switch to another subject, today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Even though I am not Jewish, I have many friends who are, including my close frister, Diana. She once told me that I was welcome to observe Rosh Hashanah, even if I'm not Jewish (perhaps this is reformationist thinking?). Anyway, her philosophy of this is that everyone should get two start-overs for the year. First Rosh Hashanah, then January 1st. I like this idea, and, especially since I am not a big fan of New Year's Eve, I like the idea of a start-over in Autumn. Fall has always had that new-beginning feeling related to the change of season, and I suppose, the new school year. I also like what I read this morning on a blog I sometimes visit, which is called goop. This was written by Michael Berg, who is a Kabbalah scholar and author. He writes that an . . . important connection is how we think and behave during Rosh Hashanah . . . we should act in only ways of sharing, forgiveness and care. No anger, no doubt, no jealousy, no sadness, at least for these two days. How we are during these two days will influence the next 363. A worthy goal, indeed. And perhaps my observation of this could be in the form of thinking of these friends of mine who check up on me, and send me good thoughts, and have given me an education in Yiddish that is part of my daily vocabulary (and more often than not, the only word that fits a situation -- these days, in particular, farklemt). And to wish them all peace and grace in the year to come.
As for my year to come, I hope to get back to the mission of my blog. I hope to send comfort food recipes out, and humorous anecdotes. I would like to veer away from the collective groan I imagine I hear, when readers land on a post and find my mood hovering over them like a gray cloud. Not my intent, I must assure you. It's just the nature of things at the moment.
So, in the spirit of chasing my blues away, let me close by sharing a story regarding my friend, Susan. For a long time, Larry and Susan were our movie buddies. On Saturday nights, we often went together to see a film, and to dinner afterwards. Often L&S picked the movie, as Billy and I were either too busy or too stupid to read reviews regularly (NPR has helped a lot on this front, but now we're too busy or too stupid to get outselves out to see movies...). Now, the really good thing about that arrangement, was that we often saw films we probably wouldn't have seen on our own. One of those was a film entitled Golden Door, written and directed by Emanuele Crialese, about Italian immigrants coming to the US around the turn of the twentieth century. It depicted a horrific crossing with graphic scenes of turbulence and strife. In the style of a Bertolucci film, the scenes were visually panoramic and lengthy. The steerage-class immigrants were thrown out of their bunks during an interminable storm which ravaged their primitive quarters. Passengers were injured, and inconsolable. A baby died and had to be buried at sea. This was a brutal, rough crossing. But near the end of their passage, there were these wondrous scenes which included scores of nude men in communal showers, and a multitude of women in a line, one behind the other, combing and pinning each other's hair. And more scenes followed, showing all of these bathed and coiffed men and women dressing -- obviously putting on their poor, shabby-best clothing to greet the new world. At this point, Susan, who was sitting next to me, leaned toward me and whispered . . . Looks like tonight's the Captain's dinner . . .
I laughed till I cried. And that is one of my favorite things to do. Wishing that for you all in this new beginning of the Autumn season. And to those of you celebrating, Shana Tova. And thank you for reading my blog.
September 30, 2011
September 15, 2011
Anniversaries
Los Angeles, California
My mom started taking us on a Girls' Cruise each summer, starting back in 1995. That first cruise to the Caribbean was transformational, as both my sister and I started off not liking the experience at all. This just isn't my thing, my sister said to me just a day or so out of Miami. I suspect I replied, me neither. But as the days went by, we were seduced into the relaxation of traveling on what was, essentially, a moving hotel, and we kinda sorta started to enjoy ourselves. As the years passed and we cruised each summer, we learned to zig when the rest of the passengers were zagging. We learned to stake out opposite ends of the ship from where activities were going on. We learned to return to the ship early, when most people were still ashore. We found the adult pool. But, in truth, even that first year, we got into the cruise experience, even as we began to adapt it to fit us. Good grief, I said to my sister at one point. We'll probably be playing bingo by the end of the trip. Can't remember if that happened. But, it might have . . .
One of the best things about that first trip was that we made friends with two of our table mates. They were also a mother and daughter traveling together. We went on to cruise three more times with them, and, the daughter, Diana, and her husband, Brendan, are now both close friends, and our favorite house guests who come to stay each July 4th.
I think my favorite of what turned out to be about a dozen of these trips was in 2001, when we cruised to the island of Bermuda out of New York Harbor. We flew to New York on Delta, in first class -- this when first class more closely approximated, well, first class. The day before we left, my friend, Max, sent me an email from New York, writing that the weather was going to be beautiful -- around 80 degrees with puffy clouds and a light breeze. And it was. We stayed at The Essex House on Central Park South, and after unpacking, I suggested that during the three days we would be in New York, we might make a plan to do a lot of touristy things. And that is what we did. We had coffee (tea for me) and a bagel or pastry each morning from a kiosk in Central Park. My sister and I walked all through the park on at least one of the days, coming out on the west side where we walked past both The Dakota and Lincoln Center. We went to see the renovated Grand Central Station and ate lunch at The Oyster Bar there. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and toured the Jackie Kennedy Onassis exhibition of her wardrobe collection (a very girly thing to do). We had drinks in the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center (30 Rock), and had dinner at Tavern on the Green. We saw a Broadway show, and had a late dinner afterwards at Esca. My sister and I walked a significant portion of Park Avenue, and ducked into both St. Patrick's Cathedral, and (veering over to Lexington) Bloomingdale's. On our last morning, it rained. We took a cab to the harbor and boarded The Nordic Empress.
Now, the Nordic Empress had experienced an engine fire during a cruise just a few weeks before ours. It was out of commission while repairs were completed (or almost completed, as it would not run on all engines while we were aboard -- which meant it was a slow boat to Bermuda). While it was being repaired at King's Wharf in Bermuda, the entire crew were given a week's shore leave. They still resided on board, and ostensibly became passengers. They ate in the passenger dining rooms, lounged around the pools, and were entertained in the theatre each evening by the on board performers. In other words, they were serendipitously brought out of their chronic exhausted state. We were on the second cruise after the ship resumed service, and that crew was rested and HAPPY. That was when we learned that a happy crew makes for even happier passengers. We called it the little ship that could, because it was a ship on the small side (Bermuda limits the number of ships that can visit at one time, and the number of passengers on those ships). It took us a full day and half to get to Bermuda, and our first port was King's Wharf. After a day or so, our ship moved over to dock at Hamilton, and that was where I fell in love. No, it wasn't a crew member (this was not the cruise where we had the attractive Turkish waiter named Ishmael), it was Bermuda, the most beautiful island I've ever seen. And, by the way, I've seen a lot of islands -- Moorea, Bora Bora, Mallorca, Sardinia, Cozumel, and almost all of those in both the Hawaiian and Caribbean chains. I've been to Prince Edward Island, and Friday Harbor, and do I even need to mention Catalina? I've even been to what was once called Christmas Island (famous to those of you who are fans of the Andrews Sisters -- are there any of you out there?) which is now part of the Republic of Kiribati. I mean, seriously, I collect islands. And Bermuda has all of them beat. The combination of an ocean that is the clearest color of turquoise that I have ever seen, with the pink sand and pastel, white-roofed houses, and the abundant red and purple bougainvillea means that everywhere you look is a visual explosion of color. And all those knees! Yes, businessmen wear suit jackets, shirts, ties, and Bermuda shorts to work. You see this everywhere, and I think I was always smiling because of it. Hamilton was like a combination of Lahaina, Cornwall, and the Caribbean (Bermuda is not Caribbean and the climate is not classified tropical but rather temperate, like the Mediterranean). What, I mean to ask you, WHAT is there not to like about this place?
A few days later we cruised back into New York Harbor, the same way we had cruised out a week earlier -- past the Statue of Liberty, past lower Manhattan, which reminded us of the aerial view at the beginning of the movie West Side Story. Past the World Trade Center towers. It was late July, 2001.
We returned to New York again in 2004 -- a very different trip. At that time, we made a pilgrimage to Ground Zero. We got out of the cab at St. Paul's Chapel, the small Episcopal church across from the site. Immediately, you could smell the residual smoke. Visiting Ground Zero was controversial. Some people felt that if you went there, you were contributing to it being turned into a tourist site, and it was, frankly appalling to see people hawking tee shirts and the like there. But visiting the church where George Washington had once attended services, and the volunteer rescue workers and firemen had gone for rest and respite, meant a lot to me. And, I had to see where the towers had been. In spite of what we all saw on TV, in some sense I could not accept that the soaring edifice, that Billy and I and our friend, Curt, had gone to the top of when we were in New York together in the late '90s to attend a wedding, could simply cease to exist. I just couldn't conceptualize this, until I saw where they had been.
Last Sunday, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Billy and I had dinner with the friends with whom we had traveled to New York for that wedding back in the late 90s. We couldn't think of a better way to spend that evening than with old friends. And, it kept us away from the TV -- always a good thing, but, we thought, even better on that night.
A lot has changed. Ok, you could say everything has changed. Certainly, travel will never feel as secure as when we flew to New York that summer before 9/11. And neither will our sensibility about the safety and cohesiveness of life, in general. The Girls' Cruises ceased in 2004, ironically after a return to Bermuda with our mother-daughter friends whom we had met on our first cruise. Emma, the mother of my friend, Diana, has since passed away. My sister, whom I had to convince (beg) to not disappoint our mom by refusing to go on a cruise each summer, has ceased all communication with me, ostensibly so that she doesn't have to help, in any way, with my mom's care. And my mom is now in a skilled nursing facility. She has dementia.
Perhaps, on an anniversary like this, besides mourning the loss of lives, the greatest lesson of 9/11 is to acknowledge what is important, and who is precious in our lives. I've written a lot about passion and how I feel about cooking, dancing, and writing. But, while I do have that fire for those things, they are still just pastimes. My diminished family, my mom, my friends, and in particular, my fristers, AND BILLY are who and what I cherish the most in this changed world. How many of those individuals who perished on 9/11 used their cell phones to reach out one last time to those who were most important to them? We are admonished to never forget, and the importance of that almost goes without saying. But along with not forgetting, I try to not take for granted all that I have in this good life. I remember feeling helpless after 9/11, and finally realizing that it was because I felt I couldn't make a change in a situation so large. But what I could do was make a difference in my circle. That I could make a greater effort to be kind, patient, and generous in my community, and in my home. I always try to think about balance. And, as this anniversary passes, and I think about the pervasive darkness it recalls, I try to balance that with the light: family, friendship, compassion, and tolerance for those who are different from us. I am a long way from achieving this balance, for anger and frustration reside within me. But when I am feeling those emotions, I try very hard to think about what is meant, in a larger sense, by love. I want to believe that maybe the Beatles were right. Maybe, in the last analysis, it really may be . . . all you need. Wouldn't that be something . . . Never forget. And, thank you for reading my blog.
My mom started taking us on a Girls' Cruise each summer, starting back in 1995. That first cruise to the Caribbean was transformational, as both my sister and I started off not liking the experience at all. This just isn't my thing, my sister said to me just a day or so out of Miami. I suspect I replied, me neither. But as the days went by, we were seduced into the relaxation of traveling on what was, essentially, a moving hotel, and we kinda sorta started to enjoy ourselves. As the years passed and we cruised each summer, we learned to zig when the rest of the passengers were zagging. We learned to stake out opposite ends of the ship from where activities were going on. We learned to return to the ship early, when most people were still ashore. We found the adult pool. But, in truth, even that first year, we got into the cruise experience, even as we began to adapt it to fit us. Good grief, I said to my sister at one point. We'll probably be playing bingo by the end of the trip. Can't remember if that happened. But, it might have . . .
One of the best things about that first trip was that we made friends with two of our table mates. They were also a mother and daughter traveling together. We went on to cruise three more times with them, and, the daughter, Diana, and her husband, Brendan, are now both close friends, and our favorite house guests who come to stay each July 4th.
I think my favorite of what turned out to be about a dozen of these trips was in 2001, when we cruised to the island of Bermuda out of New York Harbor. We flew to New York on Delta, in first class -- this when first class more closely approximated, well, first class. The day before we left, my friend, Max, sent me an email from New York, writing that the weather was going to be beautiful -- around 80 degrees with puffy clouds and a light breeze. And it was. We stayed at The Essex House on Central Park South, and after unpacking, I suggested that during the three days we would be in New York, we might make a plan to do a lot of touristy things. And that is what we did. We had coffee (tea for me) and a bagel or pastry each morning from a kiosk in Central Park. My sister and I walked all through the park on at least one of the days, coming out on the west side where we walked past both The Dakota and Lincoln Center. We went to see the renovated Grand Central Station and ate lunch at The Oyster Bar there. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and toured the Jackie Kennedy Onassis exhibition of her wardrobe collection (a very girly thing to do). We had drinks in the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center (30 Rock), and had dinner at Tavern on the Green. We saw a Broadway show, and had a late dinner afterwards at Esca. My sister and I walked a significant portion of Park Avenue, and ducked into both St. Patrick's Cathedral, and (veering over to Lexington) Bloomingdale's. On our last morning, it rained. We took a cab to the harbor and boarded The Nordic Empress.
Now, the Nordic Empress had experienced an engine fire during a cruise just a few weeks before ours. It was out of commission while repairs were completed (or almost completed, as it would not run on all engines while we were aboard -- which meant it was a slow boat to Bermuda). While it was being repaired at King's Wharf in Bermuda, the entire crew were given a week's shore leave. They still resided on board, and ostensibly became passengers. They ate in the passenger dining rooms, lounged around the pools, and were entertained in the theatre each evening by the on board performers. In other words, they were serendipitously brought out of their chronic exhausted state. We were on the second cruise after the ship resumed service, and that crew was rested and HAPPY. That was when we learned that a happy crew makes for even happier passengers. We called it the little ship that could, because it was a ship on the small side (Bermuda limits the number of ships that can visit at one time, and the number of passengers on those ships). It took us a full day and half to get to Bermuda, and our first port was King's Wharf. After a day or so, our ship moved over to dock at Hamilton, and that was where I fell in love. No, it wasn't a crew member (this was not the cruise where we had the attractive Turkish waiter named Ishmael), it was Bermuda, the most beautiful island I've ever seen. And, by the way, I've seen a lot of islands -- Moorea, Bora Bora, Mallorca, Sardinia, Cozumel, and almost all of those in both the Hawaiian and Caribbean chains. I've been to Prince Edward Island, and Friday Harbor, and do I even need to mention Catalina? I've even been to what was once called Christmas Island (famous to those of you who are fans of the Andrews Sisters -- are there any of you out there?) which is now part of the Republic of Kiribati. I mean, seriously, I collect islands. And Bermuda has all of them beat. The combination of an ocean that is the clearest color of turquoise that I have ever seen, with the pink sand and pastel, white-roofed houses, and the abundant red and purple bougainvillea means that everywhere you look is a visual explosion of color. And all those knees! Yes, businessmen wear suit jackets, shirts, ties, and Bermuda shorts to work. You see this everywhere, and I think I was always smiling because of it. Hamilton was like a combination of Lahaina, Cornwall, and the Caribbean (Bermuda is not Caribbean and the climate is not classified tropical but rather temperate, like the Mediterranean). What, I mean to ask you, WHAT is there not to like about this place?
A few days later we cruised back into New York Harbor, the same way we had cruised out a week earlier -- past the Statue of Liberty, past lower Manhattan, which reminded us of the aerial view at the beginning of the movie West Side Story. Past the World Trade Center towers. It was late July, 2001.
We returned to New York again in 2004 -- a very different trip. At that time, we made a pilgrimage to Ground Zero. We got out of the cab at St. Paul's Chapel, the small Episcopal church across from the site. Immediately, you could smell the residual smoke. Visiting Ground Zero was controversial. Some people felt that if you went there, you were contributing to it being turned into a tourist site, and it was, frankly appalling to see people hawking tee shirts and the like there. But visiting the church where George Washington had once attended services, and the volunteer rescue workers and firemen had gone for rest and respite, meant a lot to me. And, I had to see where the towers had been. In spite of what we all saw on TV, in some sense I could not accept that the soaring edifice, that Billy and I and our friend, Curt, had gone to the top of when we were in New York together in the late '90s to attend a wedding, could simply cease to exist. I just couldn't conceptualize this, until I saw where they had been.
Last Sunday, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Billy and I had dinner with the friends with whom we had traveled to New York for that wedding back in the late 90s. We couldn't think of a better way to spend that evening than with old friends. And, it kept us away from the TV -- always a good thing, but, we thought, even better on that night.
A lot has changed. Ok, you could say everything has changed. Certainly, travel will never feel as secure as when we flew to New York that summer before 9/11. And neither will our sensibility about the safety and cohesiveness of life, in general. The Girls' Cruises ceased in 2004, ironically after a return to Bermuda with our mother-daughter friends whom we had met on our first cruise. Emma, the mother of my friend, Diana, has since passed away. My sister, whom I had to convince (beg) to not disappoint our mom by refusing to go on a cruise each summer, has ceased all communication with me, ostensibly so that she doesn't have to help, in any way, with my mom's care. And my mom is now in a skilled nursing facility. She has dementia.
Perhaps, on an anniversary like this, besides mourning the loss of lives, the greatest lesson of 9/11 is to acknowledge what is important, and who is precious in our lives. I've written a lot about passion and how I feel about cooking, dancing, and writing. But, while I do have that fire for those things, they are still just pastimes. My diminished family, my mom, my friends, and in particular, my fristers, AND BILLY are who and what I cherish the most in this changed world. How many of those individuals who perished on 9/11 used their cell phones to reach out one last time to those who were most important to them? We are admonished to never forget, and the importance of that almost goes without saying. But along with not forgetting, I try to not take for granted all that I have in this good life. I remember feeling helpless after 9/11, and finally realizing that it was because I felt I couldn't make a change in a situation so large. But what I could do was make a difference in my circle. That I could make a greater effort to be kind, patient, and generous in my community, and in my home. I always try to think about balance. And, as this anniversary passes, and I think about the pervasive darkness it recalls, I try to balance that with the light: family, friendship, compassion, and tolerance for those who are different from us. I am a long way from achieving this balance, for anger and frustration reside within me. But when I am feeling those emotions, I try very hard to think about what is meant, in a larger sense, by love. I want to believe that maybe the Beatles were right. Maybe, in the last analysis, it really may be . . . all you need. Wouldn't that be something . . . Never forget. And, thank you for reading my blog.
Taped to the wall of FDNY Engine 10/Ladder 10
Ground Zero - 2004
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About Me
- Bronte Healy
- California, United States
- Once, I came up with this brilliant idea (well, I thought so, anyway) that the key to happiness was to concentrate on three things -- to choose three interests, then focus and funnel your energy into that trio. I was an English major in college and have always written in some shape or form. So, my first choice was writing. I've always kept journals, and have also written plays, novels, poetry, and shopping lists. I do have a day job. It deals with numbers (assets and finances). Go figure. I went to college at a California University. I live in California, Los Angeles, but not downtown. No children, and sadly, between dogs at the moment (dog person, not a cat person). Enough info? I was going for just enough to not be a cypher, yet not enough to entice a stalker. And, I started my blog after being dragged, kicking and screaming, to do so. Blogs! Read about ME here, right? But I have been advised that this is a way to write regularly, and to put your writing OUT THERE. So, here goes. My name is Bronte Healy. Thanks for reading my blog.