Clutter: How to Manage the Junk in Our Homes
House & Garden
Marta Randall – 12:19pm Sep 2, 1999 PDT (#726 of 734)
Exciting news from the world of science!
Wilford’s The Mapmakers discusses a French expedition to Peru in the mid-Eighteenth century, and says:
[Pierre Bouguer] noticed … that the value of gravity in the mountains … was less than that in the plains not far away. He had expected the opposite to be the case, thinking that the huge mass of Andean rock would exert considerable added attraction on his pendulum. … Bouguer’s obsrevation was the first hint that the density of the Earth’s crust is not homogeneous and, consequently, that the Earth’s gravity is not fixed but varies from place to place on the surface … The difference between observed values of gravity at one place and the mean value are called Bouguer anomalies.
What does this mean for us? Everything! That section of the kitchen counter where everything lands, and stays? It’s because there is more gravity and it’s harder to pick things up. My daughter’s bedroom floor is a HUGE Bouguer anomaly. They’re all over the place.
We’re not slobs! It’s gravity that’s to blame!
The Grandparent Factor
Mothers Who Think
Kelly Walters – 06:04am Sep 1, 1999 PDT (# 15 of 52)
My maternal Grandmother was awesome, to a kid anyway. She was a tall, classy looking woman who had been through a marriage of abuse with my alcoholic Grandfather. He was hit by a drunk truck driver while staggering down the street, drunk himself. Sort of poetic justice.
She pulled herself together, worked her way out of the typing pool at Purdue university to work for the vice president, dated the dean of students. drove a convertable (this was in the 70′s) and on birthdays everyone got a present. She made all of the grandkids feel special and at one time or another we each probably thought that secretly, we were the favorite grandchild. We kids called her mom instead of Grandma for reasons I’ve never figured out. She was diagnosed with parkinson’s disease and was in a nursing home by the age of 51 and died choking on an apple at the age of 52.
I remember visiting her at the nursing home and I think that it was best that she died, it was awful seeing such a vibrant woman in a lifeless, sterile, cold place with old people, when her life had really just begun. Its horrible to think that my mom or her two sisters didn’t take her in. She was engaged to her dean by the time she was diagnosed with parkinson’s and broke it off so he wouldn’t have to go through another tragedy, since his wife had died of cancer. He loved her very much and was 100% willing to marry her in spite of the disease. This ran long, but I’ve never written anything about her, nor does anyone in the family say much abou her anymore, so this is a tribute of sorts to my Grandma. This is for you mom.
Are all “gifted and talented” students REALLY gifted, or are all the other students simply way behind and dealing with their mediocrity?
href="http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@.eea1cca/56">Education
Jon Jude – 08:18am Sep 3, 1999 PDT (# 57 of 57)
I spent many years teaching students in theater, music and art programs. Most were very successful in traditional educational schemes. In fact, the discipline required to excel in the arts is the same discipline required in academics and athletics. That statement just feeds the myth that “when they shook the school, all the loose marbles rolled down to the arts.”
Gifted and talented sees to be a misnomer growing from political correctness. Throughout my education we were labeled as “accelerated’ by the schools and “those really smart kids” by the students. Sometimes it was a compliment, sometimes a pejorative, sometimes simply an adjective. It reflected an advanced level of understanding, discipline and study skills usually backed up by highly supportive and motivated parents. To call that a “gift” dismisses years of positive family influences and makes it seem as if it is a matter of predestination.
Truly gifted and talented children display their abilities without regard to academic success or failure. Most of the TAG kids would benefit from a system that didn’t strictly correlate academic achievement with age and grade number.
A great “dope slap moment’ in my life came when my design teacher and mentor in grad school one day before graduation sat me down and said he wished he had one-tenth of my talent. Then he said he wished I had one-tenth of his work ethic.
Family Phrases
Books
Jeff Taylor – 10:47am Aug 24, 1999 PDT (# 669 of 669)
My dad could fix all broken specimens of the inanimate and crochety persuasion, using only a few reliable tools: an ancestry melding all the outlaws of the Old World, a military grade of verbal abuse, an audience consisting of the Almighty and some ghosts, and a box of rusty, broken wrenches. His tools always looked like they’d been stored in the bilge of a sinking scow, and he cursed them as adequately as the project itself. Sometimes, after all else failed, he would invite the project in question — leaking P-trap, haunted electrical circuit, screwed-pooch remodeling — to a drinking contest. Nothing on this earth could withstand his Mensan intellect when fueled by black rum. It sent him into frenzies of understanding, entire schematic visions of Escherian complexity. I have seen the raising of household appliances from the dead, the healing of plumbing with compound fractures. When other methods failed, my dad summoned the very elementals, and lo, the broken was fixed.
Which is why we say at my house, when the screen door on the submarine needs repair: “Time to fetch the black rum.” The genes are still here. With some tinkering, a black-rum solution will always work.
Creative Writing Programs
Writing
Bard Cole – 02:34pm Aug 26, 1999 PDT (# 304 of 313)
I’m not an MFA basher in general, and I know many students do learn a lot and have great experiences. I also understand that for certain needs, the contacts one makes at elite MFA programs like Iowa and Columbia provide fairly substantial benefits, and it’s in the material interests of everyone involved to try and use these programs as the literary equivalent of a minor-league baseball team — a feeder program. One could argue that the literary audience is drying up for a variety of reasons, but I definitely think the influence of MFA programs has an important role in this.
There is a growing ‘elite’ of literary writers whose books consistently sell a few thousand copies, who start teaching at MFA programs at age 28 or 30, whose names are impressive only to a small world of people interested in being literary writers and getting teaching positions in MFA programs. And few people within that little world would even think of looking outside their circles for literary quality. I think many of them regard the idea of normal people reading their books as somewhat distasteful, at best irrelevant. I don’t know if I should feel resentful about this or not. I suspect they take up space that could be better used by real writers.
Among some of these kids I know, it’s regarded as ‘cute’ that I’ve got a book coming out, maybe one of them will do me the favor of reviewing it even. Never mind that in the past 8 years, I’ve sold more copies of a godawful xeroxed chapbook than they have actual hardbound books from a major publisher. But it does feel good to have earned the respect of fellow writers who are older and established by being a writer rather than by having been handed them as a teacher. I mean, does a blurb by John Barth on a young novelist’s book mean anything? Don’t you just assume this was a nice kid in one of his classes at Hopkins?
I’m not always bitter… but reflecting on this subject does bring it out in me.
Call Waiting, then Cell Phones…”Convenience” for Idiots
Social Issues
John Tataryn – 12:55pm Aug 24, 1999 PDT (# 6 of 123)
I once knew a man who was a senior vice-president of a major Canadian bank. This was truly a high-powered financial sector kinda guy, regularly travelling the world (operations in 44 countries, etc.) and putting in 20 hour days.
However, he did not have a cell phone. He said two things that really impressed me. First, if he gives 20 hours a day five days a week, the rest of his time was his alone (even his bosses didn’t have the phone number of his weekend retreat). And second, nothing belittles a person’s status (status WAS important to him) more than being accessible to anyone, anytime.
Having said that, I have a cell phone, since I live in the country, and drive out in the middle of nowhere regularly. But that’s ALL it’s used for…emergencies.
“I’m getting married!”
Private Life
Anne V – 11:02am Aug 18, 1999 PDT (# 582 of 584)
The actual getting invited is not that hard. What’s difficult is the slow crescendo of nausea and horror, as you realize over a period of months that you rsvp’d yes – yes to everything in a wild moment of uncharacteristic courage and friendliness, and now you have committed to 1. a shower which is also a sleepover party, because it’s taking place on a tiny useless island with very intermittent ferry service and there is no power, and a very high percentage of your fellow guests are going to want to a. read your chart b. read your cards and/or c. tell you how they hit on your date at the last wedding you were all at together, where does he live now, anyway? 2. Finding a date who will be able to pretend not to be panic-stricken when he sees that there will be dancing of unfamiliar sorts at the reception 3. Completing the card that the caterer sends around to make sure that the vegetarians and the vegans and the parents will all be able to eat, and realizing only after you have mailed it in that your date will eat none of the foods which you have selected, because he doesn’t like anything that tastes like more than one thing 4. Finding a date who will not go sit in the car after he has been kissed about 30 times by complete strangers of all genders and orientations, many using their tongues, in church 5. Going to the rehearsal dinner, at which, if any of the family dinners of the last 6 months are adequate predictors, the bride will drink 2 glasses of wine, and have a screaming fight with her mother and the mother of the groom, who will pour her more wine and describe her vituperous shrieks as openhearted truthfulness 6. riding herd on the grooms younger brother, a friend of one of your children, who will be the first best man that you have ever seen do an ollie at the altar. By the time the wedding actually happens, the service seems really beautiful, and the reception like raw heaven, because very soon you will get to go home, feed the date some really simple food, and stare at your nice white walls for a bit.
Science Fiction and not Fantasy
Books
hello_c – 02:25pm Aug 19, 1999 PDT (# 64 of 79)
Here’s a rhetorical question: why do mainstream writers who dip into SF write such bad SF, even when the results are good books in other ways? Richard Powers, Lessing, Margaret Atwood… I feel they explain too much, which leaves them little room for unexpected consequences, which makes their speculative constructs oversimple and overexposed, like bad stage machinery. I wonder if mainstream editors force them to do it; Cryptonomicon is certainly farther in that direction than Stephenson’s other books.
Diana Wynne Jones said her one book aimed at adults (fantasy, sorry) turned out poorly because editors for adults said everything had to be explained in detail; she could get away with allusion and ambiguity when writing for children, who know they have incomplete knowledge.
No evolution in Kansas. What’s next, gravity?
Headlines
Jenny Reece – 12:08pm Aug 14, 1999 PDT (# 103 of 420)
Technically, Kansas teachers are not (yet) “forbidden” to teach evolution: the teaching of “macroevolution” is no longer “required”– there IS a difference, although of course this ruling is the wedge in the door. But let’s not overstate the power of this decision. Teachers with scientific training will still be able to present their students with the building blocks of the scientific method they will need to understand their world, even in Kansas. I would even like to propose that the creationists have one good point: there are things in our lives and universe that can’t be explained by empirical science as developed in the West in the last few centuries. Myth is, “as a matter of fact” a good way to think in a non-linear way about the imponderables of human relationships with each other, with other beings of various kinds, and with themselves. Myths, whether Hebraic, Babylonian, or Roddenberrian, help us to tell the truths about Life, Death and Whatever which that religion we know as Science can’t handle. I’ll even add Yet to the end of that sentence, because, who knows? Obviously the Hebrew myths (which indeed share a common world view with many other ancient cultures– the notion of “plagiarism” is a silly anachronism in their oral-culture context) have lost a lot of force for some modern people–including some contributors to this thread. The creationists and fundamentalists, alas, have increased this disconnect by their wanton misrepresentation of their own Bible, which is deeply offended at being read as if it were a compendium of empirical scientific factoids. Many of us continue to revel in the wonder, humor, mystery, and yes, truth made available through the Hebrew Scriptures (aka “Old Testament”) as well as through the sacred writings of other traditions. Please don’t think that Fundamentalist religion represents the only alternative to materialism and existentialism. Many scientists also have room in their universe for a Prime Mover, a God/ess within whom and with whom we are all evolving into something we have not yet been able to imagine.
L.A. Jewish Community Center / Daycare Shooting
href="http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@.eea197b/41">Headlines
Jor-El – 01:24pm Aug 10, 1999 PDT (# 42 of 373)
…Home schooling is an option. But even that won’t be the panacea one might
think. The next step for deranged gun-toting wackos will be the mall. Or the
movie theater. Or the skating rink. Or the public pool. It goes on and on.
Trying to figure out when and where the next attack will occur will make you
a basket case. All anyone can do is roll the dice, send your child out into
the world as prepared as possible, and say a prayer.
Some have questioned why race was interjected into the discussion. I don’t
speak for everyone, but when a Black kid is blown away on the grounds of a
schoolyard, you won’t have a CNN news helicopter flying in circles above the
school. MSNBC won’t have on-the-scene updates. And SWAT teams won’t be
combing the neighborhood searching for the shooter. There won’t be a
psychologist dispatched to help the surviving students cope with their fear
and anger. I know this to be true because in Chicago, where I spent 10 years
of my adult life, there were shootings in more than one instance at public
schools where Black kids were shot. Yeah, it made the local news, but that
was it.
So when Black folk see the whole world (seemingly) mobilizing after White
kids shoot other White kids, the cynical among us have to take pause and go
“What the fuck?!” This takes nothing away from the victims who were shot or
the relative who grieve. It makes us wonder about the discrepency of
coverage when the victims are Black.
Anybody care to tackle this one?
Incredible Shrinking Actress Syndrome
href="http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@.eea1a4b/16">
Mothers Who Think
Irene Berry – 12:07pm Aug 12, 1999 PDT (# 17 of 68)
… You’re right about this “trend” toward Lollipop people. Strange:
especially in an era where a wasting disease continues to fell people right
and left, and definately has a frightening, saddening presence in the
entertainment industry: my gosh, how can it forward the notion that
Underweight-ness, of all things, is a beauty ideal? We talk about this kind
of stuff all the time, at home – my 6yo already has the vague notion that
“fat” is a Bad Word. Scary. I keep telling her to Look Around You, do the
people you see look like television?
Strange Road Stops
href="http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?14@@.ee9fccf/15">Home and Away
Serin McDaniel – 10:04am Aug 11, 1999 PDT (# 16 of 21)
Driving back to Illinois from honeymoon in New England. We had failed to
make hotel reservations in advance for the trip back, so when we got
exhausted, we stopped at the first lodgings we saw: The Stardust Motor Inn
in Schenectady, N.Y.
It was about dusk and already the music from the club/restaurant was so loud
we could barely hear the desk clerk. She was dressed as a witch, with long
black fingernails and green-tinged skin, and it will tell you something
about the Stardust Motor Inn that for most of the transaction it didn’t even
occur to me to wonder why. Then I realized: Oh. We’ve been out of touch
with calendars. It must be Halloween.
Our room had a stale-cigarette funk you could almost see. It was horrifying
to touch the pillows with your face.
At 4 a.m. the phone rang. I picked it up and a drunken voice said, “Eric? Is
Eric there?” The spouse said, “Judging from the smell, Eric’s corpse is
under the bed.”
I think we still have some of the stationery from that room to remember it
by.
