Bobbie Wayne's Blog

I never met Lloyd H. Mears, my maternal grandfather. Due to a situation that requires a long story which I will save for another time, we had no pictures of him, or my grandmother and mother when they were young. I did find a daguerrotype which may be Lloyd as a youth, with his father. I have sought my grandfather since I was thirteen, writing to old relatives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where he and my grandmother grew up, for information or a photo. There existed a picture of him at one time, but, tantalizingly, it has vanished like the wind.

Here is the sum total of my knowledge of Lloyd: Like his dad, John Henry, he worked as a conductor for the railroad for a time. He eloped with my grandmother, Elsie Pearl, running away to New York. My cousin Earl, grandson of Lloyd’s sister, said he was a natty dresser, loved horses, the drink and had a weakness for gambling. My mom, an only child like I am, adored him. He got work as a butcher, working for wealthy folk who took him on yachts. He and my mom would eat kippers for breakfast on Sundays. My grandmother said “He was very clean, never coming home from the butcher shop with any blood on his clothes.”

My father said, “He looked like a little Irishman.” And Lloyd, like my mother, loved to laugh. Apparently, he was a practical joker, since I have this story from my mother about him:

Lloyd was waiting for a streetcar in NYC when he thought he recognized a buddy just ahead of him. So, by way of a joke, he gave him a good kick in the butt. Obviously astounded, the man turned, to see Lloyd grinning from ear to ear. As soon as my grandfather realized that the man was a stranger, not his friend, the shock of what he had just done drove any explanation straight out of him, replacing what should have been an apology with a fit of hysterical laughter.   The enraged man, not understanding why a stranger would kick him and then laugh about it, punched him in the nose. 

This story loomed large in my imagination when I was growing up. I tucked it away in my memory with the other scraps of things I knew about my grandfather, bringing it out whenever I was bored or lonely like a much-read love letter. I always wondered if he would have liked me. I was a sad, disoriented teenager who didn’t laugh often. I figured I had nothing in common with Lloyd; perhaps he didn’t want me to find him…

Our Border Collie, Liberty, will turn eight on Valentine’s Day. Where had the time gone? She and I spent the last six years training for and competing in agility trials. Each dog and their handler race around a course that consists of jumps, weave poles, tunnels, see-saws, etc. The handler (me) walks the course and has to develop a strategy for getting the dog to move as rapidly as possible from one obstacle to the next. There are many choices to be made: Which hand does one use to signal the dog? How close to the obstacle must the hander run before running to the next one? When should the handler run fast or slow? The choices are endless.

Liberty did very well, knowing the course better than I just from watching other dogs. I have a learning disability which causes me perceptual problems, making it difficult to read maps, and do arithmetic. I also reverse lefts and rights, and even have difficulty typing, writing things like “ot,” instead of “to.” I can’t remember patterns easily, so, recalling my course strategy was torture. “This will be good for me…a challenge!” I told myself. If Liberty had a better handler without a perceptual problem, she could have been a champ. She was faster and smarter than most of her classmates. All the same, we had fun competing and going to classes. Last spring, Liberty, on several occasions, appeared to limp the day after class. She was so fast and turned on a dime after a jump, that she may have been straining her tendons. Several trips to the vet and an x-ray made us finally conclude that Liberty’s agility days were behind her.

Instead, we have decided to participate in rally. This takes place on a course, as well, but there are no jumps: just cones or signs telling you what to do once you approach them. For example, a sign might say: “Off Set Serpentine Right". Below the words thereis a diagram of circles and arrows. This sign means that as you and your dog pass the sign, you will see three cones in a spread-out triangle. Your job is to duplicate the action depicted by the circles and arrows. Another sign reads: “Call Front Finish Right Halt” and has a picture of two big yellow arrows showing the motion one needs to make. Translation: your dog must face you, then walk around you and sit on your right side.

Liberty walks badly on leash. This is because there are crumbs on the arena floor from people rewarding their dogs. Rather than following me on the left at heel position with her head up, she assumes the “vacuum” position: head down scouring the floor, yanking us out of line to reach a crumb. It is also because we haven’t trained leash walking very well. We need to go back to puppy training on that.

I was fumbling with her leash and a bag of training treats, and Liberty’s constant breaking form kept me juggling everything. This made it hard for me to concentrate on each sign in time to accomplish the task required. Our trainer, Pam kept saying, “Keep your leash loose; don’t try to yank her head up…lure her up.” But, all the while, Liberty, (who only weighs 25 lbs, yet can pull me across the floor when I’m sitting on it,) was lunging right and left with all the tenacity and determination of a Pit Bull. “I’M not pulling the leash taught…SHE is!” I thought, sulking. We would come to the next sign and I would have to try to figure out which way to turn. The pictures confused me even more than the words. I kept going right, when the sign said left. I would almost have figured out what we were supposed to do when Liberty would give a yank and I would lose my train of thought.

A sarcastic artist colleague once said, “The body is not here to help us.” I was in my 40’s, and, although I was already beginning to fall apart, thought my friend was being unnecessarily negative. At thirteen, I developed heel spurs, one of which had to be removed when I was in college; then again when it returned a few decades later. By twenty, my “floating ribs” were completely calcified like the ribs of a whalebone corset.

At the time my colleague made his comment, my neck was busy building bone spurs, surrounding collapsed disks, requiring two cervical fusions in my sixties. At present my neck is pinned together with rods, screws and bolts. In my fifties, I caught my foot while running and landed full-weight on my nose. I resembled one of Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon, until after surgery, where they put my nose back in place.

Multiple foot and hand surgeries followed. This is a small sample of some of my body’s health issues; the skeletal ones. My cervical breakdown caused thirty years of migraines, which, mercifully, ended with the first fusion. There were lots of other garden-variety problems, breast and cervical scares and other gross things people have to endure. Even when I had to get braces on my teeth in my mid-sixties, I stubbornly resisted believing my friend’s dictum.

You see, my friends who, like me, were working several jobs so they could be artists, writers and musicians, were often worse off than I. We couldn’t afford health care so simple problems escalated or went undiagnosed. Living in my lower Manhattan loft in the early 1980’s was like being in a Puccini opera; everyone struggled; some died. You went on and did your gigs anyway, shaking your fist at fate.

Then AIDS hit. Who complains about bone spurs when you’ve seen friends and loved ones dying of that plague? But then I caught a mysterious virus when I was artist-in-residence in a monastery. It went, to this day, un-identified, although I was tested for Lupus, AIDS, Cancer, MS, and Parkinson’s. Too ill to perform, I moved to Nashville with my husband where for eight years I was a songwriter. As my symptoms began to finally diminish, we moved back to MA, where I became a painter. By now, I had begun to re-appraise the idea that my body was not here to help me. I may have taken it a bit further: “MY BODY IS OUT TO DESTROY ME!”

Last week, Dan and I celebrated our thirty-second wedding anniversary by going to Harvard’s Natural History museum in Cambridge. It was a lovely warm, golden fall day and Dan actually found a metered parking spot which allowed us to park for two hours. Finding a metered parking spot in the Boston area, let alone Cambridge, is like a miracle: a good start to the day! 

We walked the few blocks to the Natural History museum. Beginning on the third floor with an exhibition of dinosaur skeletons, we made our way through vertebrate paleontology, Cenozoic mammals and finally, the arthropod exhibition. Creatures with many more legs on them than mammals or reptiles were displayed; some in jars, others pinned to cases both horizontal and vertical. An entire wall shimmered with beetles as luminous as rainbows. There was a moth the size of our dog. “Wow, think of the hole this mama could make in my sweater!” I told Dan. A few visitors chuckled. We left the creepy-crawlies and toured the Asian, Central & South American and African animal exhibits, through a room replicating a slice of a New England forest with its inhabitants. I noted the tips of the grey fox’s ears had eroded a bit. The weasels, wolves and beavers stoically guarded their areas; the very opposite of the active animals they had been in real life.

Skeletons of animals that had existed before humans seemed like they were created by Maurice Sendak. Big, hippo-like creatures with oddly shaped heads, tiny ancestors of horses only a foot tall with eight delicate toes, animals with claws, horns, proboscises and, extremely impressive fangs occupied glass cases, while above us, hanging from the ceiling were huge skeletons of creatures that lived in the water. We made our way downstairs to the mammals.

The Great Mammal Hall looked like Grand Central Station at rush hour, except frozen in time. Enclosed in glass cases along with mammals from their own continents were gazelles and every other imaginable deer-like species of all sizes, equines, marsupials, bears, camels, and one giraffe whose neck was so long it nearly reached the second floor. Along the perimeter of the room were Birds of the World, ranging from a hummingbird less than an inch in length to the twelve foot skeleton of New Zealand’s extinct Giant Moa. Several little boys rushed up and down the narrow isles pulling their parents and gasping in theatrical whispers, “WOAH!” at every new case containing surprising-looking creatures.

I was somewhat uncomfortable with the baleen whale skeleton suspended overhead. I worried it would come crashing down, shattering the glass cases, sending glass, bones, dusty fur, feathers and horns, causing a virtual stampede of all these dead creatures through my dreams. One aisle away from me, Dan exclaimed, “This is the scariest animal of all.” He faced a case holding the great apes: chimps, bonobos, guerrillas, and orangutans. Next to the crouching skeleton of a guerrilla stood the skeleton of a Homo Sapien. It posessed no horns, fangs, hooves, nails or other obvious natural weapons. I looked from the guerrilla to the human. Homo Sapien was so obviously defenseless compared to the other creatures. Had Harvard actually stuffed someone, male or female, and put them in the case, the naked body would have looked even more helpless than its skeleton, with only two legs for running, ending in soft bare feet. That delicate skin, whether dark or light was a defenseless layer which bled at the slightest scratch, burnt in the sun; froze in the snow.

I am a restless soul and have moved over fifty-two times in my life. Over half of those moves were due to noisy neighbors with big speakers and bigger egos which rendered them entitled to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to. I’ve also lived in five different states ( but I still identify as a New Yorker.) Throughout my journey I have had many friends, acquaintances, associates and lovers, most of whom are not great corespondents. I am still in touch with my two best childhood friends  byl and email. Facebook has put me back in contact with colleagues and the kids I knew from elementary and junior high school on Long Island. I met my husband, Dan, in 1982. We were roommates for ten years and have been married for another thirty-two.

However, my longest on-going relationship which has sustained me throughout my many moves, careers, and low periods where there was no one else to talk to is with Plant. Plant is a Bridal Veil plant, with lance-shaped one-half inch long leaves on delicate purple stems that cascade down from the flowerpot. When Plant is happy, he/she produces tiny white blossoms. At its healthiest, Plant becomes a ball of leaves and blossoms. 

I acquired Plant during one of the great bleak periods of my life. I was living in a log cabin ( the first log cabin built in Snowdenville, PA) which was on the grounds of a greenhouse. Having left art school in Baltimore during the 1972 gas shortage, I had moved there with my lover of six months. We had been living in-between Baltimore and Philadelphia, where he worked. This required both of us to commute in opposing directions every day for an hour and a half one-way. Needless to say, this caused a great deal of stress. Having lived in the log cabin all winter, my lover broke up with me and I had to move out.

Our landlord, who owned the cabin and the greenhouse was working when I walked in amongst all the plants. Despite my resolve, I burst into tears and the poor man was so overwhelmed that he told me to choose a plant as a gift. From that time on, Plant and I were inseparable. Plant would move with me a total of ten times in the next ten years. He/she was there throughout Grad school, lived in my artist loft in Tribecca while I built it, was in the apartments Dan and I shared, moved with us to Nashville, and finally ended up here in Massachusetts in the beginning of the 21st Century. 

Each spring and fall, I thin Plant out and re-pot him/her. I often plant the thinned-put part in the garden of wherever I happen to be living. There are very likely clones of Plant wherever I have lived. I usually let Plant live outside in the summer, which I call, “going to camp."  In 2010, Plant came very close to dying. It was my fault; the weather was growing colder at night. I should have checked for frost warnings. But Plant was so beautiful; just a ball of greenery and flowers, that I thought I would leave him/her out one more night.

It’s the time of the year when I book my holiday shows. My 18th c. harp is in South Carolina being restored (narrowly having escaped being crushed by the tree that came through the luthier’s shop roof). So Dan and I won’t be performing our 18th c. Christmas show this year. Instead, I’ll be performing my one-woman show, Greensleeves, a show I wrote thirty-five years ago and have been performing nearly every year since.

The show has changed considerably over time. I’ve added new dialogue and songs but I still wear the gown I made with an artificial holly wreath in my hair. Years ago, I cut my hair quite short and found an inexpensive wig for the show which I styled myself. I’ve gone through several wigs since then, as well as harps, shoes and wreaths.

My promo photo, however, has always been the same black and white profile of a much younger me. It, like the show, is thirty-five years old. I wear my green velvet quasi-medieval gown with silver underskirt and trim. My hair is dark honey-colored and curls down my shoulders and back. My neck is slim and long and there is a wreath of artificial holly on my head. These days I am not so slim and after two cervical fusions, my neck is not quite as long. My hair is much shorter and lighter. I decided I needed a new headshot and booked one with a photographer for the following Tuesday. Monday night, I gathered together my costume, jewelry, shoes and wig box, to make sure I could leave early Tuesday morning. 

My last Greensleeves performance was two years ago. When I took the wig out of its box the holly wreath looked like wilted cabbage. Unfortunately, I had sewn the curls in place around the wreath with invisible thread. To fix the wreath, I would have to take the wig apart. The clock read three hours until bedtime. I cut the thread and removed the wreath causing the curls to un-curl. It took an hour using layers of acrylic fabric glue to stiffen the holly leaves and dry them. The remaining the two hours were spent re-curling the hair and pinning it in place. It looked very different from before I had taken it apart: more like a Dolly Parton wig than what I was after, but I was too tired to work any longer.

On Monday morning, I applied my make-up, put on a front-opening bright orange dress and the wig, wreath and all, made some adjustments, and loaded my harp, costume and stool into the car. Worrying about the possibility of my breaking down in Salem wearing my strange, festive wig, I suddenly remembered: IT’S OCTOBER! Beginning sometime in September, the Goth population of Salem had already begun increasing; the front of the invasion. In October, Salem attracts over 100,000 visitors, many of them dressed as if going to a Horribles parade. Crowds of people on street corners wearing all colors of witch’s hats have been on the rise for weeks. As I made my way through the town, people swanned by in capes and tutu skirts. If I had broken down, no one would have noticed my holly-trimmed wig. I smiled and waved as I passed them.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t been as regular in posting my blog, it is because…(trumpet fanfare,) My book has just been published and I am busy sending out notices, setting up book signings, etc.

My book is called, LIFELINES, Daily Antidotes to Anxiety and Angst, and can be ordered by going to my website, bjwayne.com and clicking on the cover illustration. The book began as a series of daily assignments I gave myself to combat the serious anxiety disorder I developed in 2012. First, I identified what my stressors were: health problems, isolation, the direction of our society, especially regarding politics, climate change, lack of self-awareness among many people. Then, I set about creating tasks that I or anyone else could perform which would improve social skills, public behavior, communication with others as well as re-introduce empathy and kindness to society. 

After 2016, politics became more vicious, dividing families and friends. Thankfully, my disorder was under control and I began posting my daily tasks on social media. The incredible reaction I got made me consider consolidating my assignments into a book. In 2020, my book was accepted by a hybrid publisher with whom I worked, creating artwork for a cover. Unfortunately for me, shortly after signing with this publisher, they retired and the editor who had barely started to work with me bought the company. She and I were never on the same page about my book. I believe she saw it as another self-help book with a cute pink cover, cartoon illustrations and worksheets. Apparently, she had never experienced an anxiety disorder.

Lifelines, is more like a map out of a nightmare. Part philosophy, part ethics, the book attempts to help the reader become happier, kinder, and better informed. It employs art, music, dance and writing to draw one out into the world. There are “lifelines” which involve doing simple, fun things with older individuals, kids, and, especially, people with whom we usually have little contact. Many of the lifelines ask us to look up words that appear in the news that we misunderstand. Other lifelines teach us how to discern truth in the media. Learning to be responsible for our beliefs and actions creates well-being; the opposite of anxiety.

The book is illustrated throughout with beautifully done prints and pen-and ink illustrations (many of them, very humorous) from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 21st century, we have become more like the digital devices which totally occupy our time and less able to effectively communicate with other humans. Lifelines seeks to turn that fact around, one person at a time.

Dan and I are in the shower, and I’m getting my back scrubbed. Through my wet, sudsy curls, I see it: a little spider climbing down the corner tiles a few feet from my face. It obviously does not enjoy getting wet, but rather than climbing higher toward the dry ceiling, the spider rappels its way down to where the spray bouncing off my body is sure to sweep it off the wall and down the drain. 

I am not afraid of spiders. I admire them for eating mosquitoes, dust mites, and flies. However, I prefer them to remain in the basement or outside, where I don’t have to clean up webby cocoons. Whenever I encounter one, I grab a small glass and a slip sheet and trap the creature. Then, I transport them to an alternate location where we won’t necessarily run into each other. I use this same method for other insects, except roaches (the natural enemy of all native New Yorkers), and centipedes, which sting and move so rapidly that they completely freak me out. 

Recently, a friend from a monthly pub sing introduced me to a song parody about the “Eensy-Weency spider.” The parody used the tune from Stan Rogers’ song, “The Mary Ellen Carter,” a wonderful song of sailors refusing to abandon their sunken fishing boat and their successful efforts to raise and restore her despite terrible odds. The chorus goes:

Rise again, rise again.
Though your heart it be broken, or life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

The parody was written by another terrific songwriter, Bob Blue. Using the same theme of tenacity in the face of great adversity, Bob employed the childhood verse we all know relating how after the rain “washed the spider out” from climbing a drain spout as soon as the sun came out, “the Eency-Weency spider went up the spout again. Much like the lyrics of “The Mary Ellen Carter,” Bob’s new lyrics about the “Eency-Weency spider” counsel us to recall other heroes who persevered: Sisypus and Jack and Jill. Bob’s hilariously clever writing style is displayed in the chorus of his parody:

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about cruelty towards animals. We are born with the capacity for cruelty, as well as for kindness. People can be brutal for various reasons: pathology, where the brain doesn’t function in what society considers to be a normal manner, learned behavior, where one learns viciousness from being mistreated, or from modeling the behavior of a violent culture.

My college roommate lives in another state next door to a woman who owns a purebred, high-strung, intact male dog she bought as a puppy to replace her old female dog. While the woman claims to have been a breeder herself and therefore, knows “what this dog needs,” she refuses to exercise the dog, although he is a sporting dog. She failed to train him as a puppy and, as a result, the dog is wild and uncontrolled. The woman works all day and keeps the dog locked in his crate for six-hour stretches. She hired trainers, but, did not do the required work. She ignores constructive criticism, and will not listen to suggestions. This woman is in her seventies and is not in the best of health or financially secure. She won't sell the dog. She wants to break him.

Since this dog has food, water, and shelter and there seems to be no physical abuse, the law can do nothing. Animal Rights is still in its infancy in many parts of the world, including the US. The fact that puppy farms, dog and cock fighting, equine abuse, and cruel treatment of animals raised for food or entertainment still exist in this country is a testament to our lack of compassion for living creatures. 

There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Being ignorant implies not having access to knowledge. Stupidity is more nefarious. Most sources define stupidity as the willful disregard of good, available information. Humans are capable of treating living creatures with abject cruelty despite subscribing to philosophies and religions that teach us to treat other beings the way we want to be treated. In other words, we pay lip service to being kind, while we turn a blind eye to cruelty.

Whether it be physical or emotional, cruelty begets more of the same. Abused children (a larger topic for another blog) have a higher likelihood of growing up to be abusers or to commit violent crimes. This is no surprise: most creatures treated brutally learn to be vicious. Speak up, write letters, sign petitions; do whatever is in your power to change things. Animals love their lives as much as we human beings. They feel pain and respond to kindness and cruelty just as we do.

I wear a lot of hats. I’m a writer with a book weeks from being published, I was an artist and still have five paintings in our local gallery and a solo show in town this January. I play harp. Many of my hats come from the different styles of music I play, write, and perform. When I took up harp, I began writing songs about the environment, which led to composing instrumentals on my Celtic harp and dulcimer.

Then I began playing with Colonial balladeer  Linda Russell’s band at historic sites. Soon, my husband, Dan, and I started doing our own Colonial concerts in costume. When we moved to Nashville, TN, where I became a Nashville songwriter for eight years, I had to change eras and learn repertoire from the 19th century. I  switched from wearing panniers and sack dresses to antebellum attire, including 19th century corsets and hoops.

Dan and I now live in New England, where once again we play popular music of the 18th century. We have a Colonial Christmas show that includes readings from the period, music, and props. I still perform a History of Christmas Customs show I have been doing since 1989, in which I sing in five languages and wear a quasi-medieval gown and a holly wreath in my wig.

When I started playing harp in 1984, most Americans had never seen a Celtic harp. People used to ask, “Is that a regular harp?” or “Why aren’t you playing Irish music on it?” I told them my harp was from a different, older tradition than the pedal harps in orchestras today. Then I would explain that I was primarily a singer/songwriter, not a traditional Celtic musician, however, my repertoire does include Irish and Scottish music.

These days, Dan and I play Celtic music when we join our friend, Michael O’Leary, who runs a Celtic music sail aboard a 19th century reproduction schooner out of Gloucester, MA. We also join a group of friends to sing sea chanteys at a Salem brew pub once a month. I often find myself rushing around, trying to remember what kind of music I need to practice for that particular week’s event. It would be easy to get mixed up and arrive somewhere in costume (or not), having prepared for the wrong event. I wrote a song years ago about being booked by phone for a recording session only to show up and find that the producer thought he was booking the other kind of harp: a harmonica, for a rock session!

I was shopping in Market Basket’s produce section last week, looking through the strawberries,  checking the bottoms of the plastic containers to find one without any spoilage. To my left, a woman was looking through the boxes of blueberries. Without turning, I was aware that she was slim, blue-jeaned, t-shirted, and was wearing a hat with a floppy brim. I would have guessed her to be in her 40s.

It always amazes me how much the human eye can see from the periphery. If humans paid attention to everything our eyes see, our brains would overload, the way mine does when I’m trying to read an article on my computer and am bombarded with flashing ads. Instead, our brains dump much of what we see in the trash folder without bothering to consult us.

So, the first time I saw the woman open the lid on a box of blueberries and pop a few in her mouth, my brain completely tuned it out.

ME: “Oh wow! Did I just see what I thought I saw?”

MY BRAIN: “Nah, just mind your own business.”

As I was dong the umpteenth “final” edit of my book, “LIFELINES, Antidotes to Animus and Angst, I noticed something I had written regarding value. I was referring to the lightness or darkness of a surface, as in saying, “That desk looks black in this dim light, but it’s actually light pine.” But I realized that the statement I had written in my book, “Values change depending upon where the light shines,” can have a totally different meaning from my original intention.

Over the last eight years, I’ve come to realize that core values aren’t shared by all Americans. This came as a shock, ushered in by the acceptance by over half of my fellow country people of a candidate running for President whose moral and ethical flaws were not just flagrant, but well-known. Donald Trump, who, like me, was born in Queens and is 77, was well-known to all New Yorkers as a rich, pretentious character whose bad-boy behavior landed him in the gossip columns. We knew him as the guy on tv who loved to shout, “You’re fired!” at young wanna-be’s. We figured his running for the highest office in the land was yet another “look-at-me, look at me,”stunt to gain more news coverage. But then things got serious.

“…grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything (when you’re a star.)” Billy Bush’s 2005 interview of Trump on Access Hollywood was aired by The Post. Actress Adrienne Zucker later joined them, which prompted Trump to confide to his host, “I did try and fuck her. She was married…I moved on her like a bitch,” 

This seemed to me to put the nail in the coffin of Trump’s candidacy. While many who run for (or hold) public office have had affairs, if it becomes public the person is disgraced, impeached or passed over as being unelectable. American values had long dictated that once a leader’s affairs are revealed, a price must be paid. The crude language used so carelessly in a television interview would surely be the second nail. Additionally, reports began surfacing that since the 1970’s, 26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct; several of them accusations of rape. Newsweek reported on the vulgar misogyny and sexism Trump displayed in 17 years of conversations with radio shock jock, Howard Stern. Many of the interviews include Trump going on about his attraction to his daughter, Ivanca’s looks and her body.

However, Americans were sick of politicians in general, especially those who acted “uppety” by  speaking as if they had a higher education or if they observed decorum. Those people made some Americans feel dumb by comparison. Many were willing to excuse Trump’s sexual peccadilloes because he was such a great entertainer. He gave voice to the prejudices that simmered under society’s surface; the nasty, divisive thoughts some folks harbored about other races, religions and ethnicities. He did it in such a diverting way that the news couldn’t get enough of him, giving him millions of dollars worth of free airtime.

The end-of-season sales are great times to snag bargains…unless they snag you first! So here I am perusing Facebook when an add catches my attention. It’s a pair of green leather Clarks sandals; at least that’s what I take them for, since the picture has them sitting in front of the Clarks signature. Clarks, as those who like comfortable shoes know, are well-made, and long lasting. I checked the price: $65.00; a good deal for leather sandals. 

I click on the add and buy the shoes. A month goes by. A bubble-wrap envelope arrives from “Uniuni Return Warehouse” in Queens, NY. (Uh-oh!) The sandals are squished down inside in plastic bags. (Double uh-oh!) My heart sinks as I remove the shoes, realizing three things simultaneously:

1. No F***in’ way are these Clarks.                                                                                                                         2. This is the third time I have been taken in by an add on Facebook which turned out to be a “bait and switch!” 3. My husband is about to find out and give me hell for being so careless!

Luckily, I had payed with PayPal. After spending some time shouting, “SPEAK TO HUMAN!” at their AI answering service I get through to an agent who is savvy and helpful.

AGENT: “Have you notified the seller?”

In 1978 I moved to Leonard St. in Lower Manhattan to a loft building in what came to be called Tribecca. My fixture fee, (money paid to a landlord to move into an illegal loft) was $3,000. My rent was $275. per month. This got me 350 sq. feet of a factory loft which included a toilet, a bathtub and a sink. There were no interior walls; we artists were expected to install those, as well as a stove, a refrigerator and electrical outlets. We had to paint our lofts, including the wooden floors with their decades of accumulated grime and industrial debris. I rarely ate; I drank bad coffee. Most of the tenants aside from me and my next-door neighbors, were there for the “Boho” life: drugs, parties, the newly-opened CBGB’s, the glamour and the fun.

I had inherited $7,000 from my mother, who had died the past summer. After the fixture fee and rent, my money went towards buying lumber, nails, sheetrock, paint and tools to build my loft. I soon got work waitressing; a job for which I was supremely unqualified. After doing some carpentry in the morning, I would hurry uptown and work until dinner, when I would return to resume carpentry. Too exhausted to deal with food, I lived on lettuce, canned tuna and coffee.

BB, the woman in the loft below mine was a well-off Californian. Once her loft was finished, she threw weekly parties where she blasted loud music on expensive speakers affixed to her ceiling. We had no insulation under our floors, so it was as if the speakers were in my loft. She was sleeping with one of our young landlords, so I had no recourse. During one of my many fruitless attempts to talk with her about the noise, she tasted my coffee.

 “You drink this?”she said. BB took me to a coffee merchant’s warehouse southwest of us. Even as I mounted the concrete steps in front, I was enveloped by a rich, all-pervading smell of coffee. The warehouse was packed with wooden barrels of various coffee beans: Columbian, Moca Java, Kona, Indonesian and dark roasted Espresso. Mr. Goldfarb, the owner, was the third-generation owner. Thrilled that BB had brought an un-initiated coffee drinker to his warehouse, he gave me a tour, occasionally handing me a bean from a barrel.

A tadpole once hatched in the depths of the darkest, slimiest marsh that fed into the Great River. He opened his fleshy lips and said, “Glumpf,” and so he was called from then on. Thousands of other tadpoles in various stages of development swam about; some with just a tail, others with their back legs, and some with all four legs. soon after being hatched, Glumpf noticed the other tadpoles were being devoured by fish, crabs and squid, so he hid within the clumps of marsh grass roots while his legs developed, amusing himself by betting on who would be eaten next.

“Hah!” he crowed as a large silver fish herded a school of minnows into a patch of translucent green sea grass. The fish wove in and out of the grasses, vacuuming up his prey. “Hah hah,” laughed Glumpf, clapping his tiny hands.

“You find that funny?” said a low gravelly voice nearby. Glumph spun around to see a huge toad, streaming with algae and covered with warts sitting next to him. Glumpf nodded, all the while planning his escape if the toad lunged. “Good,” said the toad. “You’ve got the makings of becoming a king, like me, my boy. I have eaten most of my progeny, and need an heir; keep out of my reach until you are too big for me to eat and I will teach you all I know.” They both turned to watch a crab, camouflaged in the sand seize a tadpole and bite off its head.

“Ah hah hah!” they both shouted. “‘Deserved it,” spat out the toad king. 

“Damned straight,”echoed his new apprentice.

Today, I heard that in China, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used to create an avatar of deceased loved ones. The news program stated that in cases where a person just can’t get past the grief of their loss, AI allows one to speak and interact with their loved one every day if they wish. Consider the merits: Those experiencing “long grief,” where the individual cannot recover from their loss no matter how much time passes, can function again at their jobs and in their families without crippling depression. In certain instances, the avatar can disguise the fact that an important person has passed; for example, with someone in ill health who might not withstand the blow of losing someone very close to them.

However, I thought of defects and the ways this technology could be horribly mis-used: A person might never face the reality of the death of the deceased. They might withdraw from other human contact, preferring to spend time with the avatar. As the technology develops, what would stop people from taking the likeness of someone they can’t have a relationship with and creating an avatar of the person, such as a lover who has rejected them. For that matter, for nefarious purposes, someone might create an avatar of someone who is underage. Will the law go after people who create avatars of other people without their consent?

This brings up the age-old question of what is real or un-real. Who gets to decide? I was sitting at our dinner table, over which hangs a chandelier that holds realistic-looking electric candles. Across the room, atop a small cupboard, sat our wooden barn lantern. These are wooden or tin boxes about 6” square and 16” tall with a pierced tin roof and a handle. Barn lanterns have a door on them and hold a candle. They were used in the 18th and 19th centuries before electricity to illuminate dark barns. The door prevented the candle from igniting the hay, should the lantern get tipped over. Our lantern has a glass piece set in all four sides to emit light. I glanced over at it last night during dinner and distinctly saw a lit candle inside. Knowing I hadn’t lit the barn lantern, I realized that one of the chandelier “candles” was being reflected in the glass door, creating the perfect illusion of a lit candle within.

This reminded me of Plato’s cave allegory, in which he tries to illustrate the meaning of reality: Several men are chained for life in a cave, where all they can see are shadows projected on a wall. They assume the shadows are reality. When one man escapes to the outdoors, he perceives three-dimensional reality. He returns to the cave to liberate his fellow prisoners, but the others are so invested in their own concept of reality that they kill their would-be liberator, rather than experience changing their belief.  If you have found yourself arguing with someone over what they believe to be true and you believe to be false, you will identify with this story. 

Over the last decade, Americans have come to disagree over what is real, or true and what is un-real, or false. In the olden days, say, prior to 1980, one had to have evidence to prove whether something was true or false. But today, if something “seems” true, if it is told convincingly, by someone who looks and speaks well, it is accepted by many as reality. Stephen Colbert came up with a word which describes the news-like statements in the media which have little basis in fact: “truthiness.” That was quite a few years ago, when stories presented to the public as “news” still had to have an element of truth in them. But since June 16, 2016, when Donald Trump descended on his golden escalator to announce his candidacy for president, the business people of newscasting realized they were attracting huge audiences when they published Trump’s blatant lies and outrageous statements. Donald Trump ushered in the era of “ extreme newzertainment,” which, before him, one only expected to see in the trashy magazines on the way to checkout groceries.

When I lived in New York, someone in the TV industry heard that I played the spoons. I never thought of myself as a “spoon player,” exactly but I got several requests to audition for commercials. The last one was for a MacDonald’s commercial, a lucrative payday plus residuals for anyone lucky enough to land the gig. So I showed up with my spoons and a fiddle tune recording. The hallway of the Manhattan advertising agency was filled with assorted New York characters and their spoons. Older men in costumes with ten sets of spoons in a case, characters I’d seen busking in the Village, sat on benches or leaned against the walls, clacking their spoons. Nervous actors and hungry-looking musicians lined the benches, holding their spoons.There was also a sulky-looking girl with a punk hairstyle, wearing a tight T-shirt with black and yellow stripes that made her resemble a yellow jacket. 

When my name was called, I entered the room with a broad smile. I wore a folksy-looking skirt with a leotard and boots. One of the three men facing me put my music on and I launched into a spirited spoon accompaniment. The two clients sat slumped in their chairs, watching grimly as I pranced around, whacking the spoons together on my elbows, thighs and palms in time to the music. No one spoke. I kept playing and grinning like all Halloween until one of them said, “Thanks.” I later learned that Yellow Jacket Girl got the gig. She didn’t know how to play the spoons, but she hung one on her nose which tickled the hell out of the client, who liked her “look.”

Last week, I watched the first hour of the Biden/Trump “debate.” Biden, on stage left, looked like a bleached seashell on a beach. Trump, on stage right, had the high coloring of a ripe strawberry. Biden’s voice was hoarse and papery when he responded to the moderator’s questions. For the most part, Trump disregarded the questions, blurting out lies and non-sequiturs as rapidly as possible, making what he was saying impossible to decipher. Biden began to stutter in response. As soon as Trump smelled blood, having succeeded in gaslighting his opponent, he began ridiculing Biden’s memory.

Trump’s rubbery face ran the gamut of expressions: confused, wounded, thoughtful, puzzled, disgusted, and condescendingly bored. Biden’s face was as fixed as a Noh mask for much of the first hour of the debate. His eyes are too small to see without a close-up shot. Only once did he smile that rakish, crooked grin of his that is reminiscent of Harrison Ford’s. However he displayed a third expression when Trump brought up Biden’s son’s crimes. The president turned, openmouthed, facing Trump, wide-eyed as though he had just been goosed.

Before the first televised presidential debate on September 26, 1960, between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, one’s appearance on TV was of little consequence. Aside from the nightly news on the three major networks, TV was an entertainment tool. Little by little, the way people appeared in the media became increasingly important. The news, itself, had to be exciting and entertaining to get high ratings. Americans began reading less and depending upon TV to form their opinions. The cult of celebrity had begun to take over.

I haven’t been on an airplane for eight years. During that time, I have shrunk two inches in height, going from 5’ 6” to 5” 4”. I’m also ten pounds heavier at 127 lbs. My seat on our Delta flight to Ohio seems almost spacious when compared with those of passengers nearby. We landed the last two seats in the back, next to the bathroom. Still, I have a pretty good view of the people across the isle and in the seat ahead of them. It’s not a pretty sight.

Dan Is 5’ 10” and weighs 148 lbs. He is lean like his dad. His height comes mainly from his long legs. The distance from his kneecaps to the back of the seat in front of him is exactly the length of my index finger, and I have small hands. Looking down at my own hips, I see about one inch of space from my thighs to the side edges of the seat. If I put my elbows down, there is 3/4” of space in-between each and the arm rest. 

In the window seat across the aisle from Dan is a young man. His father (I assume) sits on the aisle. The young guy is my size, so he fits in his seat, but the man is huge, with a big belly and heavy limbs. He cannot put his arms down and his sides are jammed against the arm rests. I wonder what happens if two people his size sit next to each other and have to share the center arm rest. There is no where else for those inner arms to go except, perhaps on the fold-down tray. 

The poor man in the seat ahead of them is even worse off. His legs don’t fit in the allocated space. To make things worse, the passenger ahead of him has reclined her seat. his tray upon which he has placed his arms on is sticking into his stomach. Luckily, the aisle seat is empty next to him, so his legs and torso are canted off at an angle with his feet and knees in the unoccupied area most of the time. For variation, he has to spread his legs are spread apart as if riding a draft horse or doing a split.

How many people get stuck in these tiny seats? I can see why fights break out when someone reclines their seat so that you are holding their head in your lap. Talk about shrink-sizing! I have dreaded flying since 9/11, when air travel went from being mildly annoying to the stuff of major panic attacks. And speaking of anxiety-inducing really bad PR, as we were boarding the plane, an employee was pulling people out of the line who had carry-on bags, making them fit the bag into a measuring device to see if they exceeded carry-on size requirements. One poor young woman’s bag didn’t fit. I don’t know what they told her but she began sobbing and begging them; not a reassuring sight to see while boarding.

We are a young country; our history is very short. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising to know people who are descendants of well-acknowledged Americans. I, for example, have a close friend whose ancestor was Rebecca Nurse, one of the innocent nineteen people hanged in the Salem witch trials. Rebecca’s farm is just miles from where I live and is still maintained.

Another good friend of mine is an extremely talented artist, whom I met when we both studied at a Boston atelier. She is a descendant of Ben Franklin’s. There are many people living in the small coastal towns of Massachusetts, where families have stayed for generations; often in the same house. My town is full of people whose families were extremely important during the Revolution. 

Although one of the things Americans do best and most frequently is move, our country is peopled with the descendants of Civil War generals, Native American tribal chiefs, cowboys, outlaws, politicians, civil rights leaders and famous suffragists. Even one of my doctors is related to Wyatt Earp.

It’s strange to realize what a short time ago these famous and infamous ancestors lived. For example, my college roommate’s dad fought in World War I. He was the oldest father of anyone in the class of 1969. The last authenticated Civil War veteran died at the age of 109 on August 2, 1956. When that person was young, he knew veterans of the Revolutionary War.

Like all countries, America needs to pay attention to those who came before us. Too little time is ever spent by the average American in considering what we and our ancestors got right and what needs to be changed. It has only been 248 years since we declared our independence from Britain. And unlike most older countries, our citizens come from everywhere else on the globe, as well as those of us who were here before Europeans. We have the collective wisdom of the world right here in our DNA. We can profit from the successes and failures of our forebears if we are willing to learn from them, rather than repeat the same mistakes they made.

My neighbor’s bush (the one that has overgrown and shades my grape arbor) has a wonderful jasmine fragrance at this time of year. Its long branches are covered with pink blossoms and the bush itself is about twenty-five feet tall. It looks like a big shaggy pink dog or a Cindi Lauper wig with branches sticking out every which way. For a week or so it will continue to perfume the air until all those little flowers fall off and start bushes of their own in my yard. They have to be pulled up by hand, which means hours of back-breaking work.

The previous owner kept his bushes neatly trimmed. This particular bush stood five foot tall, maximum; I never even noticed it. But because of his fastidious clipping every spring, it never blossomed. We were all deprived of its marvelous fragrance.

I confess, as a Long Island girl, brought up in America’s original suburbs, I can get pretty anal about lawns and gardens. I love arboretums, English cottage gardens, and even formal gardens. Yet, I am aware that imposing our artificial environment upon nature is one of the reasons our beautiful natural world is in such a mess.

Long Island is a barrier beach. Prior to the 19th c. the southern coast teemed with marsh and sea life; the rocky forested northern coast was home to thousands of species. The groundwater (in some areas only six feet below the surface) was sweet and clear. Streams, ponds and rivers were abundant. But soon, farms began covering the fertile soil. By the dawn of the 20th c., large industrial farms began using pesticides and artificial fertilizers. The crush of eager people moving to brand-new developments that took over the farmland following WWII began carving up the land into small, personal yards. Trees disappeared and pesticides like DDT were liberally used to control the clouds of mosquitoes and Japanese beetles that began to proliferate, having few natural enemies. Bird populations decreased and wildlife disappeared.

We kids followed the fogging trucks spraying DDT, delighted to be playing “in the clouds.” By the 1970’s, researchers determined that my own county, Nassau, had the highest rate of breast cancer in America. The groundwater is full of toxic chemicals people innocently used to create beautiful flowerbeds and perfect lawns.