Lanaindiana, my hero.

I have been friends with Lanaindiana on YouTube and Twitter for two years. I subscribed to her blog on blogspot a while ago, and that blog gave me the courage to start my own. She writes mostly about beauty, and lately has written about her husband's battle with stage 4 cancer. I knew she spent time in an orphanage and in foster care, but for the past month or two she has been blogging about it, shaping what will become a book about surviving child abuse. It is strong stuff, troublesome reading that will tear your heart out, but Lana survived it. She just posted chapter 8, but 20 minutes of reading will catch you up with her story if you care to read it. If you want to see who Lana has become, and the success she's made of her life, her YouTube videos are not only a great resource for beauty tips and reviews, they are often hilarious. She is living, beautiful, powerful, proof that it's not what happens to you in life, it's what you do with it. Shine on, Lana, you're the best.

Harvest Home

A favorite book of mine is Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. It was also a made for tv movie, called The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, starring Bette Davis. The idea of city mice turned country mice has always been alluring to me. As a child, I often felt displaced after coming home from a stay at my Aunt's dairy farm. After a few weeks of getting up before dawn to help milk and feed cows, then doing it all again later in the afternoon, returning to my easy, pampered, concrete South Philadelphia life was weird. In my early twenties, I seriously considered buying a few acres of that land, building a small house on it and living there. It never panned out, but then in my forties, I found myself deep in Lancaster County Amish Country, and deep into culture shock.
Harvest Home is the story of a New York couple and their daughter. Seeking out a more peaceful, natural way of life, they move to Cornwall Coombe, an untouched by time village in a rural area of New England. The villagers are mostly farmers, and life is lived according to "The Ways". Not unlike my Amish neighbors, they attend school up to eighth grade, they use horse and buggy transportation, they shun modern civilization and worldly things. They do not seek the outside world, and newcomers are treated with an odd mixture of wariness and bemused friendliness.
Where I live, although I have been here 12 years, since I am not "from here" I am not "of here" and will never be fully accepted. Someone moving here from a closer, urban area like Harrisburg would be greeted with skepticism. Coming from South Philadelphia makes me the equivalent of a Martian. But back to Harvest Home, and this is where my personal experience bows out- something is not quite right in this heavenly, bucolic little hamlet. "The Ways" go further, deeper and darker than quilting bees, bonnets and sheep grazing on the hill. This idyllic setting turns chilling, with places like Soake's Lonesome, the deep woods where you should never venture to at night. The Widow Fortune, the village wise woman/ midwife/ veterinarian/ herbalist has more up her black homespun sleeves than her knitting needles. A lot more.

Disconnect

I am learning the fine art of disconnect. I am learning that you can do it with the workplace, the holidays, even people. You "show up", you do your best, but you know your heart is not in it. Less hurt, less disillusionment, less vulnerability. You honor your commitment, but in your head you're already gone.

Nesting in November

I love November. The colder air, the darker-early evenings, the leaves, then the barren trees. There's something so nice about cooking, baking, even cleaning in the house as the wind whips through the woods outside. When Maria was little, our lives were filled with fun projects in November and December. While she is making her own memories with Grace now, I still do the same things. Baking, needlework, cooking, while a happy musical or heartwarming old movie keeps me company. When we are together, we cook, we eat, we linger over hot tea and sweet treats. On Wednesday I'll spend the night at Maria's, and have Thanksgiving there. The fire will be blazing, we'll cook and laugh and outside the wind will blow, but we won't mind. We'll have November to keep us warm.

Deep dark truthful mirror.

Today I read a Maya Angelou quote that struck me like lightning. "When people show you who they are, believe them". That's so profound it's scary. Scary because we all make excuses for the people in our lives. We refuse to see what's right in front of us, because it hurts too much, it's too real, it's too awful. If we see it, we must do something about it. Better to hide our heads in the sand. Self preservation? Denial? A means of survival?
One of my favorite Elvis Costello songs is Deep Dark Truthful Mirror.
"One day you're gonna have to face that deep dark truthful mirror, and it's gonna tell you things I still love you too much to say".
Shakespeare said love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Until today, I believed that meant love is blind, blind to race, looks, gender, class. But maybe Cupid was pretending to be blind, pretending not to see. When someone, even for just a moment, showed Cupid who they really were, he had to look the other way.

Was radio always this good?

I passed music lover a long while back. I am a music freak. Ask my Sony Walkman (can't bear to throw it out) my first generation IPod, my IPod shuffle, my IPad. When my IPod crashed, I nearly gave myself a ministroke with my grief and anger. So to find myself with two old cars, one with a radio and a CASSETTE player and the other with just a radio is beyond mortification. Beyond irony. It stinks on ice. I half expect to find an 8 Track player in my car tomorrow, and by next week a victrola. By December, a rock and a cowbell that happen to clang together when I make a left turn. Yet, I am not bitter. After years of CDs and the IPod in the car, I have rediscovered radio. And there is no better time for radio than now.
If I station hop, I can hear both Gaga songs in the top 40, both Adele songs, and both Bruno Mars songs. Pepper this with the superfun, hypnotic Pumped Up Kicks, a little Pink thrown in for pure pink pleasure, and Moves Like Jagger, and what more do you need? Missed Adele's Someone Like You? No worries, it's on two stations over, you only missed the first verse. It's the same 10 songs all day, my dears, and that's okay 'cause all of 'em are good!

I Killed Vincent Gardenia

I don't mean to say I murdered him, I didn't kill him on purpose. I didn't kill him accidentally, either. But it's still my fault he's dead.
Let's go back to 1992 in Philadelphia. My brilliant friend who shall heretofore be referred to as, uuhhhh, Milton, knew how much I adored Vincent Gardenia. For the painfully young or ignorant, Vincent Gardenia was a beloved Italian actor, born in Naples and raised in Brooklyn, BROOK-A-LEEN according to the old school Italians I grew up with. He was Frank Lorenzo, Archie Bunker's neighbor. He was in Little Shop of Horrors, Bang The Drum Slowly, and best yet, Cher's father Cosmo in Moonstruck. Something about him really tickled me. He was in previews for a play, Breaking Legs, in Philadelphia. Milton called him at the theater, told him about me and my fondness for him, and my appreciation of his work. I knew every line of Moonstruck, and so did my teenage daughter. We spent hours taking turns being Cosmo and Loretta, Rose, Johnny, Ronnie, Uncle Raymond and Aunt Rita. So, when Vincent Gardenia, (and yes, I will be typing out Vincent Gardenia every time I mention his name) agreed to meet Milton and me for drinks one night after the show, I was thrilled! I thought I was it! Having rubbed elbows with some very famous rock stars, I wasn't starstruck at all, and I looked forward to a wonderful evening full of theater talk since Milton was a playwright and I a patron of the arts!
A day or two before our planned meeting, Vincent Gardenia died of a heart attack. I was sad, selfishly disappointed, heartsick. Then it occurred to me that he died to get out of having drinks with me. That it was all my fault, and the poor man, having a sharp sense of humor and great comedic timing, died to avoid me. To show Miss Fancypants Look at ME having Drinks with Vincent Gardenia, star of stage and screen, a thing or two. So, in my own, greedy, obsessive little way, I killed Vincent Gardenia. May he rest in peace.