The Gazelle and the Groundhog, or Pilates

My daughter and I are going to Brazil in two months and I need to get in shape for a beach vacation. I also haven't bounced back from my abdominal surgery in March and I need to regain strength in my core. I recently read the best health insurance is exercise, so getting in shape will save me both money and agony when I get older. For all these reasons, I am taking pilates.

Back when Claire-Adele was in kindergarten, I met a pilates instructor at her elementary school bus stop. I had thought about taking pilates then, but the classes were expensive and at that time I rarely spent money on myself. Now I have time and money that doesn't need to be spent on my kids. Those years of self-sacrifice are over.

I also want to take pilates because every pilates instructor I've known looks like a gazelle. They are long-limbed, lithe and graceful. Many professional dancers practice pilates.

Since Pedro was born, I've slowly gained weight. The gain has been imperceptible, but this morning I saw the whole sixty pounds I've gained standing in the mirror next to my pilates instructor. 

She looked like a gazelle. I looked like a groundhog.

I looked like Ernie. She looked like Bert.

She looked Laurel. I looked like Hardy.

You get the picture.

I've been to five sessions so far, and posture is improving. I felt my muscle memory come back from when I took ballet, using my core to support me in some of the exercises instead of brute force from my thighs.

We will see where this goes. I am not sure I'll ever look like a gazelle, but maybe I'll feel as light and fleet footed as one. I would be nice to be nimble again.

Bad Poetry: The Moth

 I wish I had

a dude

in my life

to kill the giant moth

in my bathroom.

Instead,

I have locked 

the little critter

in the bathroom

waiting for it

to die.

I hope it dies soon

because 

I really

need

to pee.

Boy, Interrupted

After work today, I was at a used book store in the Market. On the table was a copy of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen about her two years of treatment at McLean, the famous mental health hospital in Massachusetts. The book was later made into a movie starring Winona Ryder and Angelia Jolie.

I owned a copy of the book years ago, when I was reading everything I could find on mental illness after my brother's breakdown.

I started to cry today when I saw the book, as so much had happened when I read the book in 2007 and now. When I read the story, I had no idea my son would spend time in treatment, and that I would be the one who would ship him off. 

I remember reading the story, and feeling like the parents were the villains, the ones whose shitty, distant, or unaccepting behavior drove their kids nuts. Or, maybe the kids weren't the crazy ones, but the parents were, but because the parents had the power and the means, the kids were the ones shipped off, even if the parents were just as fucked up, or maybe more so.

When I look back to when I first read the book, I saw my own naïveté, my own innocence for what was yet to come. 

I could blame myself, but I won't. I can, however, take responsibility for my own behavior and how it impacted my family and those I love. I did the best I could do at the time, and I continue to grow and heal.

Toxic Capitalism

I am reading a fascinating new book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World, by Malcolm Harris. I haven't finished it yet, but the history it describes is compelling, and much I didn't know. I studied history in college (mostly European) and I had always thought it would be interesting to study the rise and fall of organizations, companies, how they grew and thrived.

This book is the history of California, specifically Palo Alto, Stanford, and Silicon Valley. I am about a quarter of the way through, and I am shocked at how much I am learning. While I may disagree with the author's theme that capitalism is the root of all evil, I think he has some good points. His challenge is that he sees the world in black and white, good and bad. I am not going to go all Gordon Gekko and say "Greed is good," but the money put into innovation can give this world amazing things.

That being said, I now believe in Toxic Capitalism, according to my own definition. Does a company or an organization do the following:

• Was genocide or slavery involved in the production of goods?
• Were land and other resources stolen from a group or state? 
• Did the company creating the product clean up their own mess, or did they leave that to others? Can the mess even be cleaned or rectified?
• Outside of slavery and genocide, are the people doing the work paid a fair wage? 
• Outside of slavery and genocide, are there reasonably safe working conditions? (I am not talking about fire fighters or others whose jobs are inherently dangerous.)
• If the wages are fair, are the job opportunities open to more than the dominant power class? Does the company hire women, LGBTQ people, people of color, etc, for any position, not just menial labor?
• Does the organization have a responsible plan for how to dispose of the product once its usefulness is done?
• Does the product cause harm to people?

As time goes on, I think of more things to add to the list. 

Here is my thought: Can we have Responsible Capitalism? Can we produce goods and have innovation that doesn't hurt people or the planet? 

Claire-Adele was recently in Denmark and Sweden, home to some of the happiest people in the world. the social safety net there is remarkable, and as a result, people feel safe and secure. Is this purely a Robin Hood case of steal from the rich and give to the poor? Not exactly. The poor might be given a roof over their heads, but the country also works to see that people have meaningful work. Claire-Adele told me about a small town in Sweden that used to be a ship building. When the industry went away, the country decided to support the town and see what else could be done there. The town had a ferry that was a portal to the rest of Europe, bringing in goods. Then they built a bridge, so the ferry business went under, and the town was re-invented a third time. (I don't recall the details of this incarnation.) 

Can we have Compassionate Capitalism? Can we have Kind Capitalism?

As I have Returned to Office, I realize that big businesses also need small businesses. I work for a large corporation, but I need to eat lunch near my office, and get coffee and breakfast. I might need to run an errand or two on my lunch break. These small mom-and-pop shops make working downtown not just tolerable, but pleasant and fun. (I don't want to say all big businesses are bad and all small businesses are good, but big companies have a bigger footprint so the impact of their toxicity is greater.)

I guess I feel like Responsible Capitalism could be called "Mom Capitalism," as Toxic Capitalism feels like the world is run by punk-ass teenage boys. I am not convinced we need to get rid of capitalism, but perhaps we just need the capitalists to grow up.

Hypercraftophobia

Hypercraftophobia.

It means "fear of having too many crafts."

I made that word up to describe what I am feeling.

Lately, I've been on a crazy craft buying binge. Why? I don't know. I clearly understand why I had a craft buying jag before my surgery last winter. I was looking at five to six weeks with no place to go and nothing to do. 

I don't have any surgeries coming up. Why now am I shopping for crafts like the world is coming to an end?

I don't know, but this week I bought two paint-by-number kits, two needlepoint kits--which are super cute and one is complicated, a fancy embroidery kit from England where I have to cut a bunch of little felt pieces out and sew them on the background for a Christmas decoration, iron-on embroidery sets, and a punch sewing thing that I don't even know what it is.

WFT? Why?!? I already have a large, unfinished stash of projects, many that are half done and more that aren't even started.

So, instead of being all excited and like "Wow! Look at all of these cool things!" I am freaking out like these crafts are just a million more things to add to my to do list. Because I bought all of these crafts, I feel like I am like behind, that these crafts magically inserted themselves on my To Do list.

Every now I then, I promise myself that I need to finish 

books

make-up 

shampoo

fancy lotions

fancy face creams

crafts

food in my freezer

before I go out and buy more.

Am I turning into a bear and getting ready to hunker down for winter when it is too miserable to be outside where I can sit and stitch by the fire? It is August! I can see having these feelings in October, but man, this is too early in the season to be planning my winter weekends.

When I was growing up and I was working on crafts, my mom would always tell my brother and I not to rush and finish things up, to save it for later. Then, the craft would get put back in the box, back on the shelf, forgotten, never completed.

It was odd, her frugality.

When my mom got Alzheimer's, my dad needed something to do for himself, so he bought drones. 

Lots and lots and lots of drones

plus a bunch of little toys and gizmos that he assembled out of wood.

Every time he felt low or down, he'd head over to the hobby shop and get something for himself. He read that somewhere in a self-care book for losing a partner to dementia. Feeling sad? Go buy something for yourself! To be clear, my father is the opposite of a shopaholic. His hobbies are well within his budget, as are mine.

What are these crafts, these too many crafts that I likely won't have time to do? I have friends who say you always need more crafts than you can do, more books than you can read: that is your stash, your bunker, where you can go to to refill when you are empty. How can you be creative if you don't have supplies on hand for when we are inspired?

Is that it? Am I looking for inspiration? Perhaps, but I think it is something else.

Maybe I am like my dad, buying his drones. His drones and his wooden projects were a way when his life was in transition to grab a hold of himself, and remind him who he is. Those drones were the branch he extended to himself to help him from getting swept away in the river of my mother's dementia. They were a small investment in himself, in his own interests, outside of his marriage to a woman who was gone but still here.

Before my mother died, my father bought a big and fancy drone. 

"This will be my last drone," he said. He loves this drone. I don't think he meant that as he was done flying drones, but he was done buying them. He doesn't buy wooden projects anymore.

He doesn't need to. He's doesn't need the branches to keep him out of the river anymore.

My crafts are my branches, helping me through the transition from the divorce. All of these activities are in part solitary activities. We do them alone, but we can also do them together. I have my sewing circle, women who get together to chat over dinner once a month, but we use sewing as an excuse and as a topic to gather..

But mostly, I do these crafts alone, which is fine. I need this time alone to ground myself, to remind myself who I am. 

"Mistakes"

I was talking to two different friends this week and they both mentioned mistakes that they have made in the past, and were ruing their decisions.

In the past few years given Pedro's treatment, my divorce and my own spiritual journey, I don't see things as "mistakes," or poor decisions. I see people doing the best they could do at the time with the skills they had. 

At this stage of my life, I have friends who are caring for elderly parents who can't fully care for themselves, and with that comes difficult choices. I see friends wanting to care for their relatives, but then they might discover the task is more than they can handle. They were optimistic, hoping for the best. Was the decision to care for their family a mistake?

I don't think so. In crisis management, we have to make decisions with incomplete information. What if we make a "mistake" or a wrong decision?

We make a new decision. We have the freedom to change our minds and change directions. It doesn't mean the past was a mistake. It means we didn't have complete information. Now we have more information, information that may tell us we need to change.

I have another friend who made some bad relationship choices. Actually, I have lots of friends who have been in relationships that needed to end. Does that mean those relationships were "mistakes?"

I recently read Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christine Tate about her experience in group therapy. Her goal was to find a steady, stable, and fulfilling relationship. Her story was brilliant in how she dated loser and after loser, but each loser was a notch better than the one before. This was her learning. She learned from each miserable relationship what she wanted, what she liked, and how to relate. She didn't wave a magic wand and all of a sudden Prince Charming appeared. She had these painful experiences in order to grow.

Are there such things as mistakes? Sure. I think most mistakes arrive when we are self-centered instead of self-focused. (We are self-focused when we operate from our soul. We are self-centered when we operate from our ego.) Maybe we are afraid to end a relationship, so we misbehave, act out, and throw tantrums instead of ending things in a respectful and dignified manner. Our mistakes more lie in how we do things than what we do. It isn't wrong to break up with someone. I might be unkind and hurtful to ghost people or dump them and call them names. 

Glitter and Girl Power

Taylor Swift is in town, the same weekend that Barbie is opening. Claire-Adele and her friend are in town for the concert. Claire-Adele is dressed in the Midnight theme, with a shimmering navy dress and pearls in her hair. Her friend is wearing hot pink sequins.

I was on the Light Rail this afternoon, along with dozens and dozens of women young and not-so-young decked out in sequins, cowboy boots, and glitter cowboy hats. 

And I mean decked out. The Swifties are in town, and I feel like a Muggle. A happy Muggle, but a Muggle nonetheless.

It was like Halloween and prom and a wedding all mixed into one, except unlike prom or a wedding, a date was not required. This is a girl power event. Moms and daughters. Sisters. Besties.

The common accessory are homemade beaded bracelets that fans can exchange with each other during the concerts. The beads spell out names of songs, lyrics or albums, and the colors match the "Era."

At the Light Rail, I saw dads dropping off their teenage daughters to go downtown to the show. I started getting teary. I am so happy for these girls and women, all going to see the show of their dreams. I am so happy for my daughter. It is cool to see her so excited. It is really cool to see a woman performer embrace so many young women fans.

Tomorrow, I am going with some friends (I hope) to see Barbie. I'll confess: my friends and I played with Barbies until I was twelve. My favorite Barbie was Ballerina Barbie, who wore pointe shoes and had a crown glued on her head so she could twirl. The only reason I stopped playing was because I moved to Ohio. Greta Gerwig*, the director, played with Barbies until she was fourteen. Maybe if I played with Barbies for another two years, I'd be an award winning director.

Barbies were my social toy, the toy that I loaded in a grocery sack, plopped in the basket on the handlebars of my bike, and rode around town to my friends' houses. It was awesome.

Fun facts about Barbie that I read in the NYT article about Greta Gerwig. Barbie was the first doll that represented an adult. When Barbie was introduced in 1959, dolls were babies. Barbie has a Dream House before women could get a credit card. Barbie made a few missteps, like her infamous quote, "Math is hard," but we can't blame the doll for that. Was it a dude in marketing that said that? Or was it someone who really struggled to understand Differential Equations? Yeah, math is hard. I studied applied math in college. I should know. Bow down before me, motherfuckers. You all should be impressed. 

I'm just kidding!

 

(Not really.) 

Lots of things are hard. It doesn't mean with can't do them. Maybe they needed to revise Barbie's quote to be "Math is hard, but you are smart. You can do it!"

I am looking forward to Gerwig's movie for other reasons, besides it being the toy of my childhood. 

• Gerwig directed Ladybird, a beautiful movie about a mother and her daughter leaving for college.
• Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls is in the Barbie movie, which is awesome. Close to Fine is one of my favorite songs. 
• Gerwig would spend Friday evenings on her childhood at the home of her Jewish neighbors. No matter how good or bad Gerwig's week was, she felt comfort in the prayers said by the family's father. Gerwig says she wants everyone who sees the movie to be reminded they are a child of god.

I look forward to the next Seattle Sounders and Seahawks game. I wonder how long the stadium will have glitter, sequins and beads embedded in it. I'd love for a the football players to come up from a tackle more sparkly than before they went down.

* I googled "Greta Gerwig" today and the search page turned pink and had pink sparkles. Check it out!

"Keep Calm and Carry On"

Yesterday I almost witnessed a police shooting.

I was walking to work with one of my neighbors for a few blocks and I had picked up my breakfast from Starbucks. Outside the Starbucks on First Ave, I thought I had heard gunshots. Cities are load with traffic and trucks and dumpsters. "Bang Bang Bang" could be anything.

I walked another block and I saw a garbage truck pick up a dumpster. The crashing noise of metal on metal sounded about the same. 

In another block, I saw the police cars and up the hill I saw six cops clustered together. I asked a group of people standing on the corner.

"The police shot a guy they thought had a gun," one of the men said. "The guy said he had a gun." Later, I read the man who was shot was sought in a stabbing a few blocks away.

I nodded, and kept walking to work. As I continued to my office, I saw dozens of police cars, a firetruck and ambulances drive to the scene. I kept walking. 

Yesterday was the first official day people were required back in the office. People were already afraid of coming into big, bad downtown, so I didn't tell anyone what I saw. I just went to work.

My biggest surprise was how acclimated I have become to the craziness. I felt like I was living in London during the Blitz. Government officials had thought that English subjects would cower in fear as the Germans bombed the city.

Nope, a majority of the people carried on with their lives. When the air sirens wailed, people tucked into their safe spaces. When the all clear came, people went back to cooking dinner or reading a book.

After I passed the chaos, I thought to myself "Keep Calm and Carry On." Granted, I was not at all directly involved in the shooting, nor was I stabbed by the guy. Clearly, I'd be way more distraught if I had been a direct witness or running for my life. 

Nevertheless, I wonder: was "Keep Calm and Carry On" an order from the monarch, or was it a description of what people did?

And to let you all know -- my biggest fear of walking downtown is still getting hit by a car making a turn while I am crossing the street. I am more worried about that than getting shot by the police or getting assaulted by a cracked out vagrant.

The Problem with Kings and Queens

I've been reading more about this scandal of abusing football* players at NU. Stewart Mandel in The Athletic writes about how Pat Fitzgerald was "king" of Northwestern football, turning down offers to coach at Michigan and in the NFL. 

Therein lies the problem: Fitzgerald was the king, and the problem with kings and queens is that their power is unchecked. They can say and do whatever they want. They aren't accountable. As Mandel says,

No one questions them. No one scrutinizes them. It’s not hard to see how such a toxic culture could have gone on undetected for years. And yet, the investigators said that “there had been significant opportunities (for the coaches) to discover and report the hazing conduct.”

One of the best lines from the article came from the comments from Dan K.:

I always love the concept that a football or basketball coach has intimate knowledge about every detail of every aspect of their program, but never knows about the bad stuff.

We can hope that our kings and queens will be benevolent, but we are at a loss when they are not. 

Fortunately, Fitzgerald wasn't a real king, and he could be disposed, but not after the hazing situation got grossly out of hand. His royal status allow this problem to grow without anyone checking it. He could have stopped this behavior. He was in charge. He could have pulled scholarships on kids who abused other kids. He could have had an open door and open ear policy with his players and coaches, where he listened to their concerns. 

Hazing is a sticky issue, because I'm guessing it doesn't start out as hazing, but rather evolved from teasing and testing other players into abuse. The abused kids might have put with with low teasing that then evolved into harassment. At what point do kids who have been bullied stand up? 

The very nature of kinds and queens is that we don't stand up to them. Literally, we bow. It takes courage to stand up and speak truth to power. 

As awful as this situation is, the behavior has been called out, and now the abuse can stop. The interim will be painful, but in the end we can hopefully have a safer system.

* The baseball coach was abusing players, too.

For Shame and "My Government Means to Kill Me"

Everybody loved Fitz.

Pat Fitzgerald was the coach of the Northwestern football. He was recently fired after a six month long investigation proved sexual abuse in the program. Fitz was a player for the Wildcats who when to the Rose Bowl in 1997/8.

As an alum, this hurts. It really, really hurts.

First, it is devastating that this happened under Fitz's watch. NU scored when we landed him as a coach. Since he was a player at NU and he grew up in Tinley Park, IL, he was a devoted Chicagoland guy. It was unlikely he was going to be recruited away to a football powerhouse like Notre Dame (see Ara Parseghian.)

Kudos to The Daily Northwestern for breaking the story. When I looked this story up in the New York Times, they referred to the articles published int The Daily.

This isn't like the Penn State scandal where that creepo coach was grooming children. This is where the NU players would haze and sexually humiliate the new players.

This is so wrong, and not because I am a prude. I am currently reading My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson about a young, gay, black man in New York City in the 1985, the heat of the AIDS pandemic. It is a brilliant and engaging piece of historical fiction. There is also a lot of gay sex, and some pretty wild stuff.

So what is the difference between a gay bathhouse and a college football team? Heck, even a fraternity?

Consent.

The guys who went to the bathhouses went on their own free will. Fraternities used to haze--and probably still do--but again kids can choose or not choose to participate in Greek life.

When these kids joined the football team, they did not know they were signing up to be sexually abused by their teammates. These abused college athletes were in no way able to consent or excuse themselves from this hideous behavior. These were college freshmen--still kids--who were away from home for the first time. As NU is a Division I school, a lot of these kids were on athletic scholarships. To speak out against this abuse as freshman might have jeopardized their free ride.

These players are having their own #metoo movement, and in some ways against themselves. Some of the players who were perpetuating the abuse were probably also victims of it in earlier years.

This is so heartbreaking. I feel bad for everyone involved.

Yet, the abuse needs to stop and people need to be responsible for their harmful behavior.

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

One of the restaurant owners in my neighborhood was killed Tuesday in a senseless act of violence.

There is a little sushi place in my neighborhood, Aburiya. It is owned by a young Korean couple who live south of the city. During the pandemic, I would order my salmon bento box to go. It is delicious. In addition to the sushi, it came with miso soup, salad, shrimp shumai, tofu, and the little green seaweed salad. As covid restrictions eased, I continued to order my salmon bento box. The woman who owned the place met people at the door and worked a a waitress. I never knew her name, but she knew mine. She knew me as "Lauren with the salmon bento box."

Wednesday, I called there to order my usual salmon bento box, and no one answered the phone. I was too cheap to pay the $4 up charge from the Uber Eats and the like, so I decided that I would eat at the restaurant for a change. When I walked by, a sign in the window said, "Closed until further notice." I had thought they had gone out of business, which was sad enough.

This is the thing about living in a big city -- you get to know many of the people within a one block radius of where you live. I know Bryce the guy who owns Cedar and Spoke coffee. I know Jae vegetable guy at the market. I got to the know shopkeeper at the craft store, Ugly Baby, in the market when I was recovering from my surgery. I know a handful of the dog owners who trot out their pets at the same time I walk Fox. I recognize a handful of others from other places, even if I don't know their names.

The sushi woman died this week. She was 34 years old and 34 weeks pregnant. The shooter had an automatic weapon, and I am going to take a wild guess that the dude was strung out on drugs. He was immediately apprehended. I am assuming this was random as this woman was sweet and kind and beautiful, always smiling. Her husband's arm was shot up, and he is out of the hospital.

Who are the people in your neighborhood? Downtown is such a mixed bag. We have residents and workers, tourists and tramps. What is an urban core? It is where people live densely, and you need a certain mindset to embrace that. We know people and we don't know people. Because we are dense, the human flotsam can blend in a little more than they would in a less dense area. I love the word flotsam -- it means the wrecakge of a broken ship. These broken people turn to drugs and violence to cope with god-only-knows-what horrors they might have seen in their lives.

As much as I pray for Eina Kwon and her devastated family, I also pray for her shooter and those who live on the street. May they find peace in their hearts instead of resorting to violence.

Blocking v Joy

I am taking an improv class, and my therapist thinks this is great. He studied improv and recommends his trainee therapists study it, as well. 

In improv, you are present. You can't be in the past or the future. There is just now. You connect with your team, listen to them, and respond. You respect the pause, the quiet. You give space for laughter.

One thing you don't want to do is block and shoot someone down. It kills the energy between two people, and dead energy is bad.

Let's say one person pretends to open an umbrella and says, "It is raining." The other person could says a million things, like, "That is strange because we are inside," or "I've never seen it rain gumdrops before" or "The is the first time I've seen rain in Hell." The scene can move forward.

Now let's say the second person blocks and says, "No, it isn't." 

The scene is dead. The first person is stuck. They have nothing to respond to.

I've been thinking about blocking in the real world, and how often people do it without even realizing it. Adults do it continuously to children. I am not talking about "Don't put your finger in the socket" kind of blocking, but "That's a dumb idea" or "That's not the right way to draw an apple" or teachers who make the students guess what they are thinking and they get prize if they guess correctly. That is blocking the creativity of the child, and it builds distrust in the relationship. Who made that teacher or parent god?

Most of this blocking probably comes from a place of fear, but it is so damaging to relationships with others. Who wants to be in a relationship with someone who always is stomping on your ideas, your dreams, your efforts? When our ideas and dreams are stomped on, that kills relationships. I know some parents who think it is their job to stomp on their kids' ideas. Oy.

The person I block the most is myself. I was listening to David Sedaris recently talk about writing. He said a good writer will say yes to new experiences. (He added the caveat using common sense, like about not going home with a stranger when you are drunk in a bar.) Sometimes I need to get out of my own way.