Somewhat Grumpy Friday Round-Up

It’s true that I’m watching Julia Child make shrimp mousse. And I’m remembering how many times, in that era, I suspended various items in gelatin, which isn’t exactly mousse but as close as I ever came. One of my favorites was canned sweet cherries in cherry jello which, at the time, I thought was lovely and luxurious. I learned early not to put bananas in jello, no matter how tempting, because they never failed to disappoint with their immediate mealiness. Now I don’t need to worry since no one would be caught dead with jello, or shrimp mousse for that matter. “It’s unthinkable not to have a sauce with it!” so says Julia while she stirs the shrimp shells in butter.

We own land on Lake Superior which is now marked by wooden stakes and pink flags. This is because we have a new neighbor, as yet unseen, who seems bent on counting grains of sand to make sure none have landed on ‘our side’ erroneously. She will be building a house between ours and a neighbor’s which will interrupt our very mellow exchange of dogs and hellos, the whole conversations we have from porch to porch, a hundred feet apart, but that is what happens next. That we are resigned to this situation doesn’t mean we aren’t paying attention. We hired a surveyor who came out a few days ago and put in the stakes and the flags. The new neighbor has her sand. Well, we have ours. And now we know exactly where it is.

Quitting things makes room for new things. For years, I have just layered things on – commitments, contracts, obligations – not wanting to let anything go, holding on tight to every identity, every role I ever had. But now I have quit not quitting things. And in so doing, I am creating vacant space which is both exhilarating and paralyzing.

A young woman running for office asked me to talk to her about aging and homelessness which are, apparently, the two things people think I know about. Part of me is flattered by that and part of me thinks, it’s about time someone thinks I’m an expert on something! She would never have known to call me had it not been for social media, our vastly different generations would never have crossed, our circles not have overlapped, had it not been for Facebook. That’s why people who eschew social media frustrate me – do you already know all the people you need to know?

Yesterday, I listened to a guy on a Zoom call say he was going to ‘nail [so and so politician] to the wall.’ And my eyes haven’t stopped rolling yet. Oh Lord, where did we learn to talk like that? Moreover, where did we learn that talking like that would impress other people, ingratiate ourselves to them, build a case, gather support? It’s hilarious. We used to call talk like that ‘Bogarting,” but that gave it a sheen of cool it doesn’t deserve. Tough man threat talk bites, and tough woman talk as well, like that coming from our new neighbor secondhand. It doesn’t make me admire you, tough talker, or fear you. It doesn’t impress me or bring me to your side. It just makes me want to build a fence.