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"... and Katherine Hepburn as Mom"

When I set the table for that woman in the mirror, she wasn’t the guest of honor. She was (gulp) somebody’s mother.

My husband and I recently watched the 1965 classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn/Sidney Poitier classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? on television. Something has happened to me since the last time I saw the movie about ten years ago: instead of identifying with the lovestruck white girl in love with a black man, oh my God, I related to Kathryn Hepburn.

When did that happen? We have a primal urge to imagine ourselves as hero or heroine, the center of our imaginary movie Universe. When did I decide to to relate to a member of the supporting cast… and does this mean that I’m going to settle for a supporting role in LIFE, too?

I’m no longer the ingénue, but I sure as heck am not the head-patting type, either.  Someone please call Michelle Pfeiffer, Vanessa Williams, Brooke Shields and Goldie Hawn, we’re all going out for drinks and I’m buying. It’s bad enough to be a member of the audience who no longer relates to the juicy roles; I can’t imagine the frustration of actresses who need to ply their art in this twilight zone. When a woman in her prime lands a rare leading movie role these days, it’s as a dowager queen (or Prime Minister).

There is some hope if we women can make it through those hot flashes with our curves and moxy intact: thank you, Helen Mirren. Kudos, Betty White. Do I have to be perceived as ‘losing my groove’ in order to get it back?

It’s a stale plot turn for Hollywood producers and performers: women do not to be cast as “the mother.” Skilled actresses of a certain age will sigh, accept the role, then swallow hard and step aside to watch the attention lavished on the blissfully oblivious—and slightly tarty—bombshell lead.

It’s a little pathetic that some women my age take solace because we know the shell will crack and the bomb will drop (along with those mammary glands) sooner than the ingénue might think. We’ll save you a stool at the bar, Hon.

Unlike men, who seem to peak in their sex appeal much later (George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Johnny Depp, Hugh Jackman, Tom Cruise (ick), Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth…) it feels as if we women have timers forcibly implanted in our asses at the ripe old age of 25.

Stop looking at real women as though we’re imagining something. Let me tell you, when the ass reaches the point that the gravity alarm goes off, it’s damn near impossible to ignore–and swatting at it only makes it more obvious.

We have all seen women try to sit on the alarm, ignore the buzz going off in our backsides and keep on sporting miniskirts and sleeveless tops long after the bell tolls. No harm in that. If you’re offended by Granny in a tank top, there’s plenty of incentive to look the other way. There’s a continuous conveyor belt of sweet young “It Girls” (Wynona Rider, Scarlett Johansen, Debra Winger, that Victoria’s Secret model…) to distract you for oh, about half a decade.

Just because I forget what it’s like to be a tart doesn’t mean I have to be relegated to serving them to sweet young things, does it? I’m going to serve myself something juicy tonight, watch Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner again.  This time I’m gonna swoon when Sidney speaks.

The Laundry Room Lending Library

Perhaps I’m reading too much into the Laundry Room Lending Library.

If you live in a New York City co-op or condo, you might be lucky enough to have a collection of secondhand books sharing the basement with washers, dryers and wheeled wire pushcarts: the Laundry Room Lending Library (LRLL).

A well-stocked LRLL was one of the checkboxes I ticked off when I was in the market for a little Manhattan apartment–a few disheveled shelves overloaded with hardcovers and paperbacks was a sure sign of intellectual, altruistic, well read residents, the kind of smart folks who don’t need to gush or sign their names half-peeking out from under the dust jacket before passing on a good read.

When I first moved into 300 W. 23rd St., I was impressed by the Man Booker prize winners, the classic literature, the difficult anthologies and weighty reference work I found down there. OK, there was some demonstrably iffy gay fiction and there are always a few pulpy breathers and old computer manuals between heavier tomes.

The pickings are so admirable that I have a hard time snarfing no more than two or three a week; a bloated backlog soon developed on my studio bookshelf–paperback editions of Sam Harris’ The End of Faith; Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World; Junot Diaz’ Drown, a book called The New Feminine Brain, which I carried up to my apartment six months ago and haven’t opened yet (which may confirm that I have one already), and a black linen-bound compendium of essays about NYC called Wonderful Town. I actually do read that one in those rare moments when I need to be reminded.

It’s my first trip back in a few months. Most of the volumes in the LRLL autumn collection are gone, replaced with a winter crop of eclectic literature, another mishmash of fine books, many of which look oddly untouched.

I don’t know about you, but when I really read a book it loses its virginity in an obvious way.  The covers get messed, pages get stained, the spine shows evidence of an unnatural bend or two.  Many of the books in the Laundry Room Lending Library look as though they have never been deflowered.

Last October in the LRLL I found economist Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s The Black Swan, a brainy black book dipped in a thickish ego and rolled like Levantine pastry around 1,200 references of every famous penis-possessing person who ever philosophized about the limits of randomness and fractals. Taleb’s Black Swan begins with a chapter called “Umberto Eco’s Library, Or How We Seek Validation.”  Taleb’s conclusion about the essayist’s vast book collection–Eco claims 50,000+ volumes in two locations–is that, “read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

The residents at 300 W. 23rd St. may agree. Either that or I have many extremely neat, incredibly self-validated neighbors. Eschewing the appearance of being well-read, perhaps they truly ARE.

Books are being displaced, especially in the City, by e-readers. As the owner of a tiny apartment I appreciate the precious space recovered by offloading printed matter. Imagine the joy of wanting a book and owning it within a moment or two… I just don’t know if I could ever use the laundry room again after carting down my word horde. Seeing familiar titles begin to smell like stale Downy, staring at me like once beloved, abandoned cats in an animal shelter…I’d wind carrying the unpopular ones back upstairs out of sheer pity.

Why are there so many books down there? All the literacy and introspection in my building could be seeping through the old brick, plaster and ductwork, succumbing to these shelves. Could there be something about living at 300 West 23rd that makes residents want to buy books just to give them away or have residents STOPPED reading, resulting in this glut of Anne Rice and Jodi Picoult? If people are purging themselves of print, when I come back in the spring I’ll surely notice.

If, by next winter, there are only two romance novels and an old Time magazine on these shelves, I may have to move.

Eighth Avenue, from the Eleventh Floor

I’ve returned to my New York City studio apartment after nearly three months ridin’ the jewelry John Deere. Yep, it was jewelry harvest season back home at Big Sky Gold.

My finger (emptied of my five carat diamond, sold at the Holidays) is poised to post a few blogs, pitch a few ideas and probably hang a participle or two (sorry).

After a $77 supply run at Trader Joe’s (which broke the old $64 record for two Hawaiian-style grocery bags) I made a pit stop to collect three months of mail jammed in my lobby mailbox. It’s oily dark out there after a thin rain, and I removed my coat, boots, scarf, pants and just now, my grey, lace-edged camisole.

I’m tapping away at my little glass desk in panties, a strapless bra and a thin layer of travel dust, in the shadow of the Empire State building. Despite the environmental insensitivity, I love the old pre-war winter swelter. In this heat, with this view, who’d want to pull the curtains (at least for the first few nights)?

Trust me. In this City, strangers live on top of each other and don’t give a flying f*** about ogling a half-naked woman who’s six months shy of a senior discount.

I’m more interested in looking out than wondering who might be looking in.

In this inspiring apartment, in the shadow of the Empire State Building, I’ve spread out all the forgotten mail addressed to folks who lived here before I did.

Mis-sent Mail

I can almost see, years from now, a guy with an earlobe hole the size of a quarter filled with an adornment made of bone and black rubber. He’s tossing his faux-hawk to whatever’s playing in his earbuds, chucking letters addressed to me, not giving a thought to mis-sent greetings, bills, solicitations, never-opened catalogs from West Elm and CB2. This guy doesn’t even consider recycling.

Of course, he’ll stop when he sees what he thinks might be money.  Some things never change, regardless of taste, age, or tradition.

Unlike that imaginary future resident, I can’t dispense letters that belong to previous residents, but I can’t resist dispensing judgements. I always pause for pathos, Every envelope, important, irrelevant, expired or meaningless is touched and sorted. A few are even held up to a light to see what might be inside.

I got the keys to this apartment last February from Edda Laurea, a woman who moved to a larger apartment up north of Central Park with her aging mother. It would be okay if I still found the occasional department store flyer, restaurant coupon or campaign ad with Ms. Laurea’s name in my mailbox. But I have two blue envelopes that probably contain checks from the Department of the Treasury and one white envelope that appears to be money (or maybe a summons) from New York State. Seeing as how this lady hasn’t been here for almost a year and  I haven’t picked up mail since I left NYC for Montana in early October, you’d think she wonder what happened.

If Ms. Laurea doesn’t “need” the money, can we really dub these checks ‘social security’? At some point, at the point where you don’t realize you’ve forgotten to deposit several of them, isn’t it just extra income? Am I really in support of “means-testing” social security? I guess, at a certain point, which is probably right here, yep. I am.

Don’t worry, I’ll e-mail her. I have her forwarding address somewhere, but this is getting old. The same thing happened with these checks the last two times I came to NYC.

It doesn’t look like our government’s giving grunions to Leo and Doris Borg, former residents of apartment 11 J, who have missed an official envelope from the IRS. As a Star Trek fan, I can’t resist picturing the Borg Collective owing money to the Internal Revenue Service. I must enclose a note to Leo and Doris, if I find them: “resistance is futile”.

When I googled the Borgs, the first hit that came up was a picture of a 94-year old Doris Borg, “the oldest prostitute in Malta.” http://bisserjeta.hsara.com/2012/01/100-year-old-prostitute-still-going-strong/. If that’s you, Doris, don’t come back to Manhattan. The competition is fierce.

Someone from a charity called “The Doe Fund” is looking for a Gentile in my apartment. Ain’t nobody here but this disaffected Jew, but at one time there must have been a Michelle D. Gentile who lived here. She sounds so Christian, so benign, a bit vulnerable. I picture her with one of those buns under a white net. Gee, I hope she’s OK.

The most pathetic correspondence belongs to Elizabeth Librizzi: a Christmas card with no return address, written by someone who appears to be a left handed girl under fifteen. Turn me in: this is where I broke down and broke the law.
I opened up Elizabeth Librizzi’s mail.

I hoped to find a return address, but inside there was one of those charity cards that could have been painted by someone overcompensating for a missing appendage with an overdose of angelic kitsch. “May angels light your way with peace and joy,” signed “Mark, Marianne, Erin and Jamie Rose.” Awww…shit. Can’t throw it away, can’t keep it. If I can’t find Elizabeth Librizzi, I can’t forward it. I’m tempted to re-seal it, invent an address and drop it in the mail, turning the whole matter into someone else’s problem.

Politicians at least understand apartment turnover (or bulk mail laws). There were a good half-dozen congressional, assembly, and other political flyers in my ten-inch pile of mail, and each bore the salutation “or current resident”. Several of them, including New York Senator Thomas K. Duane, sent three letters addressed to different people ALL residing at my apartment. Damn, how did they all fit in here? …Wait a minute, three disappearing voters? I demand a re-count (especially if the Republican won).

I got my apartment key from Edda Laurea. I know she exists. Elizabeth Librizzi, Michelle Gentile, Jane Williams, when did you live here? I hope you weren’t assimilated by the (Star Trek) Borg, or maybe… hmmm, you’re all women... Doris Borg! Shame on you. Did you teach these ladies another, more lucrative profession and move them to a Mediterranean Isle? Is this my destiny??? If you read this post, Ms. Borg, please reply. By mail. You have the address.

The desire to find anything beyond a couple of clicks?  If it doesn’t pop up on the first page of Google, Bing or Wikipedia, well, uh…never mind. I haven’t checked Facebook in the last few hours. Hey, this YouTube video looks interesting. Hmm, do I smell lunch?

Our attention should no longer be measured in spans, which conjure images of bridges, wings and steel frame skyscrapers.  Instead, attention should be calculated in nanoseconds, measured by the instant it takes to be distracted by something else that pops up on screen in place of what we thought we were looking for.

To make matters worse, my capacity to retrieve data and articulate complex responses weakens with age. Information used to inspire me, now it tortures me. The tsunami of daily information sucks me off in a whirling rush. I lose my bearing, bob up and down a few times and grasp for something before I’m thrown back amid a twisted jumble of words, sounds, images, letters and numbers.

It frightens me that I am not alone. People making important decisions seem as lost as I am.

We humans have been reduced to crows who, despite our best intentions, wind up listening to music that sounds like advertising jingles, instead of seeking difficult truths we peck at shiny objects on backlit displays. The flatscreen itself is a metaphor for what has happened to our mental capacity. Good brains used to function like old televisions: deep, hot and heavy, a few moving images on a small curved surface. New brains are flat, wide and colorful. We have incredible capacity and mobility, but the bigger the shiny surface, the thinner our reasoning skills, the more simplistic our sound bytes, the easier it is to click away from opposing points of view, what with the bright colors and loud voices and all.

When we pull simplistic solutions from thin 30-second sound bytes, it’s easy to forget the sweaty satisfaction of hard work that has real, painful results.

For those of us with jobs, families, homes, kids–not to mention all these devices to maintain–there’s no time for deep thought and little inclination to bore through mental bedrock. Our new FlatBrains function better without being rebooted, so we leave them on all night sucking cybermilk. The result? We’re incapable of holding a full mental charge.

We humans are in danger of becoming fleshy flotsam, trapped by shallow sparkly thoughts that echo without depth, bouncing from screen to screen to screen…

Photo by Kevin Dooley Dooley http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/

(Aired on KGPR, Montana Public Radio Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011)

These are not easy times. You might have a buck or a five-spot. Maybe you’re totin’ around a ten, a few twenties, a fifty. If you’re flush, you might be able to flash a couple hundred dollar bills.

Take a good hard look at that cash. Seven denominations, printed in decayed blackish green, the unfortunate color of oxygen-deficient sludge. Our redesigned $10, $20 and $50 notes add a faded blood-tinged blush, as if to echo current monetary policy: “Help! We are bleeding money!”

I can’t help looking at these long-dead white males, our Founding Fathers and our dear martyred President Lincoln, without imagining what was going on below their shoulders when these engravings were made.

I can say with certainty that Ben Franklin was constipated when his portrait was engraved. Seriously, get the man some fiber, will you? Look at the face gracing the $100 bill, and tell me he’s not expressing particular effort.

On our fifty dollar bill, Ulysses Grant wears a thirsty poker face. Is that a sterling flask in his breast pocket?  Colonel Theodore Lyman, Grant’s contemporary, said it best. “Ulysses Grant habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall and was about to do it.” This may also explain Grant’s reported penchant for liquid anesthetic.

On the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson’s body is aimed left. His head is aimed right. This is an inside joke. Jackson was notoriously two-sided, with acknowledged strength and fearless pluck, but he could be self-absorbed and vindictive. He openly despised Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and a Cherokee Indian chief named John Ross, among others. Is Jackson, while posing for posterity, riding right on a reluctant steed, affronted by something coming from the other direction?

Alexander Hamilton’s ten dollar portrait is remarkably attractive. Other paintings of our first Secretary of the Treasury are not as flattering, but Hamilton had enough appeal to stir up a lurid affair and the poor judgement to publicly divulge disgusting intimate details. The dapper Hamilton, wearing a popped collar and white bow tie, is aiming right and looking left. Bet you ten bucks this engraving was inspired when Hamilton was two paces from Aaron Burr, looking the wrong way.

Abraham Lincoln has sunken eyes and cheeks, an unruly strand of hair over one large droopy ear, his tie askew. Our sixteenth president looks, in this portrait, to have just been awakened from a fitful sleep in an uncomfortable wooden chair. Lincoln isn’t about to waste time gussying up, and he’s not going to make chit-chat in hopes of a flattering likeness. Look at that face. He’s planning something. Something unpleasant, something painful, something necessary. Do you really need to spend that fiver? Keep a Lincoln engraving as a solemn reminder that discipline can eventually overcome disaster.

Thomas Jefferson looks vaguely distracted if not downright annoyed.  See that furrow in his brow? The two dollar bill? Hardly worthy of mention. Jefferson looks like he’s realized the backhanded compliment, which explains the part of the picture this engraving might have missed: a small spade hidden in one hand and a sharp quill pen in the other: Jefferson was equally adept at digging furrows in Virginia soil and digging remarks.

George Washington wears a look of weary relief. His overtly phallic neck is festooned with ruffles and a stylish bow. Unlike Lincoln, Washington posed while sitting back on a fine leather wing chair that was dyed the color of oxblood and tanned to a subtle sheen. His small eyes cut a dark warning. Go ahead, pull out a new $1 note and then pull out an older one: see how George’s eyes lose their intensity as this portable engraving passes from hand to hand?  Washington has lost sight of the horizon, along with the rest of us.

These long dead, brilliant, brave, fallible white men, they don’t want us to forget: these United States are a valuable and fragile gift. Never mind what’s going on below the shoulders, please.

From Mahalo.com, a Rendering of a Survival Silo

Someone stop the Air Force, please.

Cancel the four public meetings scheduled to take place this week throughout northcentral Montana. The Air Force, faced with fifty abandoned Minuteman nuclear missile silos, wants to implode the underground facilities or load them up with gravel.

I’ve got a better idea. Put ‘em on the real estate market.

The Air Force has planned hearings in Choteau, Conrad, Great Falls and Shelby. The meetings are limited to “comment about the various elimination processes being considered,” according to Dana McIntyre, the compliance and conservation officer out of Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana (quoted in the Great Falls Tribune).

Why would we destroy multimillion dollar taxpayer-funded assets without considering alternatives?

These fifty blast-resistant reinforced concrete silos, decommissioned as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) are newer than Malmstrom Air Force Base’s  “Ace in the Hole” nukes, held as a threat to Russia during the Cuban missile crisis, presumably still aimed at Kiev.

The missiles we eliminated were housed in big wide cylinders alongside very deep Launch Control Centers (LCC) with flat subfloors suspended on shock-resistant springs behind massive blast doors.

Our government is deeply in debt and these things might have market value. The timing is perfect.  Some say the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012; other doomsayers deduce that the earth will slip on its axis on that day.

This could be a fire sale for northcentral Montana real estate. From dryland farm country to tropical waterfront? Ka-ching! Riding out the polar shift in an underground silo? It’s like a first-class seat on the maiden voyage of a luxury transatlantic cruise ship.

Even if there is no polar shift, what better place to ride out the apocalypse?

from Silohome.com

The idea of selling empty silos is not new. The Saranac River Valley in New York State features the Silohome, a luxury log cabin atop a refitted Atlas-F missile silo. The website, www.silohome.com, features a 4 1/2 minute video clip, complete with jazz and classical music, badly placed apostrophes and a tour of the underground bunker, which is accessible only by keypad.

The Silohome appears ill-equipped to any savvy survivalist. Conspiracy theorists know an electrical micro-burst would seize up the keypad, leaving the multi-millionaire suckers to fry on the wrong side of the blast door. I guess the architects figured they wouldn’t have to worry about lawsuits because lawyers would be the first to go up in flames.

Our Montana nuke-proof survival shelters would be held to a higher standard.

Once buyers found out about our superior Montana bunkers, they’d sell like glowing hotcakes. While you wait for the world to end, enjoy fly fishing, hiking, cross country skiing, mountain biking, shooting varmints or just stay at home and form your own nudist colony or cult. All this isolation and scenic beauty, just an hour’s drive–later, a three-day post apocalyptic walk–to Glacier National Park.

Because some of these silos have limited access, the Air Force could throw in a bonus $50,000 gyrocopter kit–FREE with purchase of two or more silos (for a limited time only).

I found a real estate company, 20th Century Castles, that specializes in abandoned missile silos. 20th Century Castles claims to have sold 55 of these underground properties as of January 2011. Brokering our holes-in-the-ground could double their sales in less than a year.

The sales pitch is easy to write: “Are you worried about a nuclear hit, earthquake, massive global social upheaval or genetically modified food?  Perhaps you’re anxious about an attack on the power grid or you have a terminal case of TIDOH (Total Irrevocable Disgust for Other Humans)? Do all your friends have homes in Jackson Hole or Sun Valley or Aspen? No one else in your peer group owns a gutted Montana Missile silo.” The sales slogan, “Own a Piece of Montana: Your A$$ in the Hole.”

Where the Wild Things Are

Because offshore buyers are not prohibited from buying U.S. real estate, we’ll market these nonconventional shelters globally.  The influx of foreigners will be a boon: maybe Great Falls will attract a nice Indian restaurant and Conrad might put in a Middle Eastern souk right next to Gary and Leo’s IGA.

We don’t need Air Force brass from Louisiana to ask us whether we want to backfill or implode these assets. Instead of destroying them, send a real estate sales person out with a hammer and a cardboard sign on a stick.

Here’s my reply to his recent post:

I meant to send Walter a get well card, sorry.  This morning I read his blog post “Breaking Sad” and I learned I was two cards in arrears. I suppose I’ve reached the age where I should stock up on ‘get well’ and ‘sympathy’ cards, but I’m not only tardy, I’m superstitious.

Walter’s blog post exhales, “my own problems and the world’s are starting to merge.” Bodies have always been microcosms for larger struggles.  During the Deepwater Horizon crisis in 2010, I posted “The Slow Leak: Fatty Food and Fossil Fuel” on this little blog. After watching flags waving from distended lawn chairs at Great Falls’ Fourth of July parade, I wondered how long our redundant filtration systems could persevere before global webbing gave way and our collective patriotic asses wind up in the gutter.

Kidney stones? Staph infections? They’re tiny terrorists. Our modern diets and global lifestyles provide the equivalent of free flight instruction for bodily invaders, who arrive under our radar in cigarettes, airplane air, hamburger, spinach. Little pointy weapons aimed at fleshy targets. We could save some lives, make tough policy and personal changes. Instead, we come up with profitable ways to deal with the inevitable invasion–lithotripsy and the Patriot Act.

I  admit I don’t read blogs often–even my own–and I’m just passingly familiar with the TV show Breaking Bad, and its dark hero, Walt. Kirn summarized a scene in the series: “The killer had inhaled acid in Walt’s meth lab and was this far from dead but then came back to life, groaning and heaving”. Kirn could have written, “Congress sucked in the toxic news of the failure of the super-committee and was this far from dead, but the governing body came back to life, groaning at a 13-month respite from doom…” Hell, it’s no wonder Kirn is confusing the worlds‘ ills with his own.

For writers, real-life suffering gets folded over, squeezed and juiced, slo mo, until it’s black and viscous enough to flow through a pen. Kirn sucks up suffering smooth as a tortoise shell Mont Blanc and even in his state of smokeless distress, manages to place words on the page, just so.

When I hold this blog post close to my face, it feels like I inhaled the acid in Walter’s pen.