Author: North Wynde Whispers

I've enjoyed writing since the day I first sat at that uncomfortable wooden desk in my first grade classroom, many more years ago than I care to admit. And since I have an opinion about everything (yes, I know what opinions are like; I don't care!), it seemed the logical thing to find a platform where I could speak my piece, even to an unknown and unseen audience.

A Tale of Two Funerals

Recently, a good friend made the wise decision to not attend the funeral of a distant family member, recognizing that self-care was more important than her presence at the affair. Discussing her decision, we both recalled this old post from 2018 and decided a rerun was definitely in order!

Like so many people, I often bemoan the lack of courtesy and etiquette in modern society, but never so much as during the past year, when I attended two funerals, months apart, and encountered vastly different experiences.

On the first occasion, I did not even know the woman who had passed when I attended her funeral calling. I was making the nod to kindness, in that she was the daughter of a distant acquaintance, and that she had died unexpectedly and far too young. I had already sent a sympathy card, but I felt it would be appropriate to offer my condolences in person, sign the guestbook, make the requisite kind but banal remarks, and take my leave.

It didn’t turn out precisely as I’d planned.

I arrived at the calling, and, not seeing my acquaintance, signed the guestbook and walked up to the coffin to murmur a prayer for those left behind, grieving. An inherently shy person, I am never at ease in a roomful of strangers, so I looked about, hoping to spot someone else whom I knew even slightly. Having failed at that, I seated myself. A few people in the room glanced at me, but no one spoke. After a quarter-hour or so, I thought I might check the refreshment room and the chapel; perhaps my acquaintance was taking a break from the stress of the calling. Still failing to locate her, though, I returned to the calling room; again, a few of the family members and friends present glanced at me, but no one spoke or even smiled. I had just nerved myself to ask one of these aloof strangers if my acquaintance was present when she finally arrived. I waited patiently to one side while she talked with family members, and then, when she finally acknowledged me, I spoke to her briefly, offering her my hand and extending my sympathy. Although she thanked me for my condolences, she didn’t introduce me to any of the family members standing with her. I found that odd, but attributed it to her stress and grief. Having nothing more to offer, I left, feeling as though the whole thing had been hardly worth my effort.

The second funeral I attended was so different that I felt I’d stepped off the Transporter. Again, this was the funeral of someone I barely knew—the mother of one of my daughter’s oldest friends. I’d met this lady a few times, years earlier, when the girls were teenagers; her passing, too, was unexpected and devastatingly sudden.

I was not looking forward to a repeat performance of the first funeral, but consoled myself with the thought that my daughter would be present at this calling, so I wouldn’t be quite alone. This time, though, arriving at the funeral calling in the same manner, a stranger to almost everyone present, I was greeted. A young woman, a friend of the family, stepped forward to acknowledge me, thanked me for coming, shook my hand, and asked me how I knew the deceased. When I explained my tenuous relationship, she assured me that, although the deceased’s daughter had not yet arrived, she would be so glad that I had come to pay my respects to her mother and offer her my condolences. I was directed to the guestbook and to the photo gallery for the deceased, shown where I might get a cup of coffee; in short, I was given every courtesy, set at my ease in a roomful of strangers, and assured that my effort to be present at this sad affair was appreciated.

People sometimes bemoan the lack of decorum at modern funerals – the casual clothing, the inattention as individuals focus on their phones. And while those are very valid criticisms, they are but a few facets in the overall loss of courtesy, charm and kindness that seems to infest all society, but is never more noticeable than when people are cloaked in anguish and grief.

Charm, I once read, true charm, is the ability to set someone at ease by assuring them that they are wanted, and liked. Courtesy to a stranger is much the same thing: it is to demonstrate to that person that they are welcomed; that their presence is appreciated.

We should always extend courtesy to the stranger in our midst, for we never know when an angel might be walking among us. I hardly count myself an angel, but the young woman, unknown to me, but who made every effort to set me at my ease in a stressful situation, was most certainly one.

As always, feel free to republish quotes from, or even this entire essay, as long as with author attribution.

If you found something to like in this essay, you might also appreciate “Another Talking Stick Ceremony”. You can locate it in the Archives by scrolling below. It was originally published on December 10, 2017.

The Circumnavigating Shirt!

Oh, where, oh where has my teeshirt gone?!

My most recent on-line purchase didn’t quite circumnavigate the globe, but it might as well have done.

While wasting time perusing the wilds of Etsy one morning, I came across a simply great teeshirt. I had absolutely no need for another tee, but I definitely wasn’t going to let that affect my fully-activated shopping gene. Besides, it was on sale; it had so liberal a slogan that conservatives were bound to find it offensive, which would make it the perfect shirt to stroll about in when venturing into the local Super Evil Bigmart; it would pair perfectly with jeans; and I would be supporting a small business. So, really, I decided, I had absolutely no excuse not to buy it!

IMG_20240419_103019702Since the VOTE slogan reminded others of everything at stake in upcoming elections, I definitely wanted to wear the teeshirt prior to Indiana’s primaries in May. I yanked out my credit card and started typing in numbers.

That order went in on March 22, and was immediately confirmed. All well and good. I kept an eye on my e-mail, noting that my shirt shipped from San Antonio, Texas on March 25 via US mail.

From thence, the tee ambled to Missouri City, Texas, and then skipped along to Cincinnati, Ohio.

Now, my grasp of geography has always been somewhat vague. If you slapped an unlabeled map of the United States of America down in front of me, I’d only be able to put names to about half the states. God help me if you wanted me to identify most of the countries of the world on an unlabeled globe—especially since many of them bear different names or have merged or separated from the identities they held when I was a child in school, studying them.

Nevertheless, being firmly anchored in the Midwest throughout most of my lifetime, I’m definitely aware of my surrounding states: Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan. I can easily point those out on the map. Therefore, I have no doubt whatsoever that Ohio is the state bordering Indiana on its eastern boundary. Our next door neighbor, if you will.

So, when tracking indicated that my shirt had arrived in Cincinnati, I was pretty much prepared for it to land in my mailbox within a day; maybe two.

Wrong.

For reasons that will be forever unclear to me, my VOTE teeshirt flew out of Ohio to Phoenix, Arizona.

Now, as I’ve just mentioned, my knowledge of geography is most definitely deficient. Yet even I, the geography class flunk-out, know that Arizona is a lot closer to Texas than it is to Indiana. On the wrong side of Texas in relation to Indiana, too, with a whole other state, New Mexico, plopped there between them.

At this point, on March 27, I mentioned to a friend, a former resident of Arizona, the unusual route my teeshirt had taken. She laughed and remarked that if she’d traveled this way when moving home to Indiana from Arizona two years ago, she’d still be in Arizona. For myself, the tracking had begun to remind me of watching a little ant marching about with his grain of sugar when he’s lost the pheromone trail: backwards, forwards, this side, that side, oops! Fell down a hole.

Anyway, after lingering a bit in AZ, my teeshirt then minced back across the country to Chicago, Illinois, arriving there on March 30. I looked at a map again just to confirm my suspicion that, yes, my shirt was now in the western neighboring state to Indiana. Where, I wondered to myself, might it go next? Kentucky? California, perhaps? Michigan? Timbuktu?

A day or so later, I noted that the shirt had for a second time arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Two days after that, on April 2, my teeshirt finally came to rest in my mailbox. (And it’s worth noting that a friend who ordered the same shirt a few days AFTER I did received hers at the same time.)

Now, I’ve read several alarming articles on the decline of the US postal system under Trump-appointee Louis DeJoy. Considering how difficult it is for me to just find a plain ol’ blue postal mailbox these days when I want to send a birthday card, I suspect a germ of truth in those articles. I might think that my circumnavigating teeshirt is further proof of just that situation.

Still, looking back on the crazy path across the country that my package took, I really tend to a less conspiracy-theory based explanation: some near-illiterate, on the first arrival of the package at the Cincinnati station, glanced at the address slip, misread “From: Texas” as “To”, and tossed it into a bin headed for an Arizona shipping station.

One wonders, of course, what grumbles were muttered by the receiving personnel in Arizona as they sent my package hopscotching back to the Midwest.

Whatever… I proudly wore my VOTE teeshirt, as planned, while shopping at that bastion of conservatism, the local Super Evil Bigmart. A skinny older man walking past me glanced at the slogan and did a double take. As I ignored him, searching the shelves for pizza sauce, he walked up to me, his own “Trump Pence 2020” shirt boldly displayed, and declared, “I’ve gotta say, that shirt is disgusting!”

I smiled happily at him. “I’m so glad!” I said.

As always, feel free to republish any quotes from, or this entire essay, with author attribution.

This post was tongue-in-cheek, but you might also like the more serious, “Political Civility”.  You can locate it in the Archives, below. It was published on November 4, 2020.

Tales of the Office: Jackass Bosses I Survived!

In honor of Administrative Professionals Day.

As one who was once a member of that benighted tribe, I’m rerunning this column from April, 2022.  As I said then, I say now: Administrative Professionals don’t need flowers or a luncheon. They need respect and a raise!

Every time I find myself sliding into “Retirement Guilt Phenomenon”, I remind myself not just of the forty-four years I worked full-time, but, even more importantly, the incredible number of truly awful supervisors I endured.

Their names are legend. Actually, some of their names were Schuster, Tom, Lois, Gloria, and Evil Troll. There were others, but these were the most memorable.

And I, the lowliest of the low (Trust me on this one: in an office environment, there is hardly any lower life form than the formerly-known-as-secretary-now-called-Administrative-Assistant-same-shit-different-title.)…anyway, lowly little me survived them all to emerge, victorious, un-fired, and finally, safely and happily retired. (Here picture middle finger extended high into the air. Perhaps on both hands.)

For, let’s face it: some of these people—no, a lot of them—were genuine jackasses.

Schuster was the first one, and, no, I don’t recall his given name, because we lowly file clerks were not permitted to speaketh it aloud. He was addressed, always, reverently, as Mr. Schuster.

To be fair, the toxic environment in which Schuster operated contributed to his exalted view of himself as sitting enthroned high upon Mt. Olympus while we mere worker ants scurried far below, just waiting for his thunderbolts to fall. This being in the early 1970s, conditions existed at “Railroaders” (the nickname with which we parodied the bank) that would now be unthinkable. Sexual harassment and promotion-by-office-affair were the norm, yet male and female employees were segregated into separate lunch lounges. Female employees were required to wear hideously ugly, uncomfortable polyester uniforms, because women could not be trusted to dress appropriately for business. 

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An iconic “Railroaders” coin bank.

Resembling the office of Nine to Five infamy, it was a sadly real hell where Schuster reigned supreme, with we, his “girls” ensconced in a tiny back room, invisible to the public and even most of the other employees. Fifty years on, I can’t really recall the precise events that made me completely despise Schuster, but any person who supported and empowered such a revolting office environment deserved a whole lot worse than mere contempt.

Next came Tom. Promoted to first-time supervisor of a group of, yes, female secretaries and clerks, he solved every problem by creating worse problems. One coworker, for instance, had the habit of taking overly-long breaks and lunch hours, while the other half-dozen of us adhered to the correct schedule. When confronted by our complaints regarding the unfairness of this situation, his solution was to institute a system of rolling breaks and lunch hours, so that we never knew from one day to the next what our schedule would be, thereby punishing all for the misbehavior of one. A wiser supervisor finally intervened, but the damage was done. After that, we all pretty much came and went as we pleased, Tom and schedules be damned.

Then there was Lois. Ah, the joys of working for a self-important, dictatorial, tyrannical, officious narcissist! This was one time in which difficult lessons I had learned (by careful management of a relative who suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder) came in handy. Extremely handy. Despite an occasional road-bump in which I upset Lois’s self-delusional little applecart, I survived several years under her autocratic rule, even emerging with a favorable employee rating. But it was a near thing, always. I did a bit of a happy dance when Lois moved on to greener pastures, there to devastate a fresh raft of hapless victims.

And how could I forget Gloria, the supervisor who always assumed that everything was my fault. I came within inches of being fired one day, saved only by the honesty of another employee, when the message regarding an important meeting requested information on the wrong topic.

Following the meeting, Gloria stormed back into the office like the proverbial fire-breathing dragon, furiously telling me to start packing my bags. Thankfully, the employee who’d sent the message intervened, corroborating that I’d been given an incorrect request. Gloria, neither shamefaced nor apologetic, simply told me I was off the hook. But neither then, nor any of the other hundred times it happened during her tenure, did she express any regret for her immediate assumption that I was at fault.

Finally, there came Evil Troll, the sexual harasser. The openly-lesbian female sexual harasser who backed me and other women into corners to invade our body space and sometimes press her extremely large breasts up against us; who made constant sexual innuendos in work conversations…and got away with it. Because in the 1990s we knew the cards were stacked against us. We had children to support, jobs we had to keep. Decades later, I turned cartwheels and handsprings when the Me, Too movement evolved, as I recalled Evil Troll and everything I endured from her until I escaped to another job.

Every lowly office support staff worker has tales like this; many, I’m sure, have storties that are far, far worse. To them I say: I salute you. I know what you’re enduring. Stay strong, keep on, and emerge, eventually, the victor on the other side. Or, as the mock-Latin saying goes, Illegitimi non carborundum.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you appreciated this little rant, you’d probably enjoy “Tales of the Office: Idiots I Worked With”.  You can locate it in the Archives by scrolling below; search for April 28, 2021.

A Totality of Love

Celestial events have occasionally bewildered me!

Astronomical phenomena fascinate me immensely, and I have been privileged to view several of them throughout my lifetime. I’ve treasured each of these experiences, even when I quite mystified as to what I was witnessing, such as the conjunction of Venus and Saturn in 2015.

Years earlier, in the late 1990s, the Hale-Bopp comet appeared in the sky for 18 long months. As a working mother, I had to leave for my job in the very early morning darkness each day, transporting my child to daycare. I suppose I’d heard the comet was visible, but at that moment of my life, I had preemptive concerns. So for a few days running, I glanced up at the sky and shivered—but not because of the celestial display I was witnessing. “Damn,” I thought to myself. “I have GOT to find time to get my eyes checked. That star is really blurry!”

It was days before I realized what I’d been seeing.

But I haven’t always been quite so baffled by occurrences in the heavens.

In the early 2000s, Indianapolis experienced a total lunar eclipse, an event that again occurred very early in the morning at the darkest time of year. Several of my coworkers and I, working a shift that began at 7:00 a.m., always arrived early to the office, thereby avoiding traffic and easing into our day.

But on this particular morning, as darkness still lay over the landscape, one of our number trotted in announcing, “Hey, the moon’s starting to turn red!”

The Blood Moon. Almost as one, we all bounced up from our chairs and hurried out the big glass doors to stand on the wide stairwell, gazing into the western sky where the lunar eclipse was nearly in full swing. For perhaps 20 minutes, we watched as the familiar golden globe garbed itself in threatening red, the well-known pockmarks of its face transmuting into something strange and slightly sinister. Traffic, both vehicular and foot, passed by us, drivers and pedestrians alike gawping at the crazy women standing like statues while gazing at the sky. I didn’t mind the stares we received. I was dazzled by the moon’s red robes.

A few years later, I watched another lunar eclipse at a beloved relative’s home, and found that the lustre of the experience was not dimmed by familiarity. The Blood Moon still inspired awe.

I followed the Transit of Venus, too, glued to my laptop screen, watching the broadcast from the observatory in Hawaii. Again, I experienced that same indefinable sense of wonder, coupled with a deep thankfulness that technology made such viewing possible.

In 2020, though, clouds occluded the night sky as the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter began on December 21. My heart plummeted. A conjunction of this magnitude had not been visible for 800 years, and I was mad to witness it. Seeing it through an observatory lens would not be the same! My lunar-watching relative and I texted our disappointment to one another, but I simply could not give up. And my tenacity paid off. “Get outside!” I finally texted her once more. “The clouds have cleared! You can SEE it!”

I stood, half-freezing and idiotically barefoot in the winter darkness, spellbound by this wondrous occurrence that human eyes had not witnessed for centuries. Once more, vehicles passed by me on the road, their occupants undoubtedly laughing at the madwoman out there in pitch darkness, watching the sky. No doubt they figured me for some ET-chasing nutcase. But I pitied them their ignorance, as this magnificent event hurtled by them, unnoticed.

And now, nearing the close of my life, I was privileged to witness the most magnificent celestial event of all: a total eclipse of the sun. Our gathering that afternoon as we anticipated the phenomenon included laughter and lively conversation accompanying a delicious meal (including my contribution of an “eclipse IMG_20240407_164519249cake” of sunny lemon yellow, part of its round face obscured with a fudge shadow.)  Sitting in this group of wonderful friends, my beloved daughter and granddaughter at my side, the spectacle was enhanced for me by the loving closeness of the people I’d chosen to be with to witness this event.

A bird on a nearby branch, amusingly reminiscent of the passersby that had gaped at me on other occasions, stood silent until near-totality, but then began to chirp madly at us, hopping from branch to branch: “You fools! Something terrible is happening, and there you sit with your stupid 3-D glasses! Are you crazy?” The sunless chill air closed about us, and the strange dark half-light enveloped us, and my heart soared.

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Eclipse photo by Zachary Scoville, taken at 25th St & College Ave, Indpls 4/8/24

We whipped off our eclipse glasses at the moment of totality, each of us rising from our chairs to stand, awestruck by the never-to-be-forgotten sight of the corona, blazing around our familiar mistress of the sky.  Finally, slowly, the stunning “diamond ring” appeared, announcing that the lunar shadow was moving aside.

It’s possible, though hardly probable, that I will still be here for the next total solar eclipse in 2044. But it doesn’t matter. Once in a lifetime is enough for an event of such magnitude. And sharing it with people I love gave a far more inclusive meaning to the word “totality”.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

I usually refer readers to similar posts they might enjoy, but I’ve written nothing before about celestial phenomena. Still, on the subject of closeness and loved ones, you might enjoy, “Love Travels Backward”. You can locate by scrolling below, to the Archives; it was published on June 22, 2022.

Ponder This!

When all else fails, tell the truth!

I really need to stay out of the Super Evil Bigmart. On the Weird-O-Meter Index of Bizarre Encounters, about half or more of mine seem to occur when I’m on those premises.

For instance…

I absolutely refuse to use the self-checkout lanes unless I have very few items. I can never figure out how to ring up all my groceries by first taking them out of, and then putting them right back into the same cart at these lanes. Not to mention that no matter how many times a less-than-patient clerk demonstrates the process, I can never remember how to ring up a bunch of bananas, or any other fruit or vegetable that’s not pre-bagged with a bar code.

So on a recent food shopping excursion, I trundled my cart to the only available checkout equipped with a living, breathing clerk to ring up purchases. It was, as usual, a long line.

Now, there have been a number of occasions when I’ve passed the tedious wait time in line chatting with congenial strangers.

This wasn’t one of those times.

As I pulled my cart into the line, the person ahead of me glanced back. Immediately, I experienced that brain numbing sensation of, “Oh, gosh, I know this person from somewhere; where? What’s her name? Oh, hell.“
So I fell back on a cheesy smile as she exclaimed, “Well, hi! How are you?”
Answering honestly, I replied, “I’m great. But I’m sorry to say I just can’t remember your name.”

As soon as she said her name, it clicked; I’d known her from my workplace, years before my retirement. Known her very slightly. The “small talk in the elevator” type of acquaintance. I faintly recalled having heard that she retired just a year or so after I did.

This was apparently true, for now she remarked, “I heard that you got cancer, but I must have left work before hearing that you recovered.”

I was able to give her a genuine smile as I said that I was five years cancer-free. And here let me point out that I’ve had this conversation numerous times previously, and the response has inevitably been, “That’s great!” or, “I’m glad to hear that”, or something along those general lines.

It was a bit jolting, then, to hear her reply, “Well, I hope the experience brought you closer to Jesus.”

I was trying to frame an appropriate response to this unusual remark, but found it wasn’t necessary as she rushed to continue, “Everyone said you weren’t a good Christian, so I always prayed that something drastic would happen to help you find your way to salvation.”

Uh….

I’d like to have been a fly on the wall where security was monitoring the video feed in the store. I’m sure one of them must have exclaimed, “Oh gawd, that woman in Lane Six is choking!”

Actually, I don’t know why I was surprised—well, shocked. First, it’s true: as a renegade Roman Catholic who left that church in adolescence, and as someone who rarely attends church services in any denomination, I certainly don’t qualify for the “good Christian” category. In fact, my spiritual beliefs have wandered so far afield of my upbringing that I couldn’t slap any Christian label on them. As one friend so aptly describes it, I’m “spiritually blended”. And content to be so.

Further, a friend who is an escapee from an Evangelical family mentioned months ago that her “saved” sibling found no problem at all with praying for catastrophe to strike if it meant another individual might convert to their narrow brand of religiosity.

I find this mindset utterly incomprehensible! The very notion of wishing, hoping, praying for some calamity to occur in the life of another, for any reason, is so beyond my understanding that it blisters my brain.

I found myself thinking that if there really was a God, then right at that moment the checkout next to us would open and I would dash away from this conversation, jogging over with my filled cart.

That didn’t happen…not definitively proving that there is no God, but certainly demonstrating that He/She/It was leaving me to my own devices. That whole “rational Deism” thing, I guess.

So…when all else fails, tell the truth. “I learned a lot from having cancer,” I replied. “Mostly, to treasure every moment of life and give others as much love as I can.”

Ms. Saved Christian sighed. I could see my answer hadn’t satisfied her lust for Conversion of An Unfaithful Rotter Headed Straight to Hell.

But perhaps there is a God, or Goddess, or Guardian Angel, or something, for at that moment the customer ahead of her finished paying and left, and Saved Christian had to drop the conversation as she began unloading her purchases. I escaped without further discussion of my philistine status.

Oddly, as I left the store, a fragment of biblical verse popped into my head: “And Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Ponder… To pray that troubles befall another, supposedly in the name of doing them good, well, ponder it as I may, from now until the end of time, I will never be able to comprehend that mindset.

I simply don’t even want to.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you really liked this essay, then you will probably also enjoy “A Missionary Trip To…The Hell You Say!” You can locate it in the Archives by scrolling below. It was originally published on January 4, 2023.

The Group at the Other Computer

A rant on the lack of courtesy and manners in today’s society!

I sometimes wonder if everyone today has been a student at The Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert School of Public Behavior and Manners. It seems so, I thought with bitter disgust as, a while back, my nose was thoroughly rubbed in the execrable manners of the holier-than-thou set.

At the time, I was limping pretty badly on an injured knee; using a cane if I had to walk any distance at all. That afternoon, planning to order hard print enlargements of a special photo, I made the long, slow trek from the parking lot of the Super Evil Bigmart to the photo department far at the back of the store.

Unfortunately, when I limped into the area, I discovered that a large family group had co-opted most of the photo department. There were four specialized computers in the area, accompanied by chairs; the family had moved all four chairs to a single computer, not only blocking access to two of the PCs, but making it impossible for anyone using them to be seated. A teenager, bored and scrolling through her phone, stood behind the group; the rest of the gathering perched on their chairs surrounding one confused woman, advising her.

I knew from previous experience that the one accessible computer was glitchy, so I decided to try my luck with the machines at the far end. I limped in a wide half-circle around the conglomeration, skirting the teenager with a “Pardon me, please”. She didn’t look up from her phone or bother to step aside. (And, yes, I considered “accidentally” whacking her in the ankle with my cane, but decorum prevailed.)

Sadly, I discovered that both machines at the far end were out of order. Sighing, I limped back to the cantankerous PC, only to find it was now blocked by an additional person who had wandered over and was debating with the others about how best to complete their problematical order. I approached, again saying, “Pardon me. Pardon me, please”, assuming that my presence would be recognized by someone, anyone, in the group, but was ignored. Now, as an older woman, I’m quite accustomed to being invisible, but I was getting fed up. “EXCUSE ME!” I barked in the voice of a drill sergeant addressing new recruits; then snarled at their startled faces, pointing. “Those machines aren’t working! I need this one! Would you please move!” The large man blocking the PC finally noticed me and stepped aside.

None of the crowd (all of them, except for the woman working at the computer, obviously younger than I) offered me a chair—not that I’d expected them to, but it would have been a courteous gesture, I thought sourly. Leaning on my cane, I tried to upload my photos.

This machine, though, was the glitchy PC. When it finally accepted a connection to my phone, it boomeranged back from my photo files to the initial processing screen, not once, but twice. The third time it did so, I, frustrated, muttered, not quite sotto voce, “Dammit!”

It was at this point that the woman working at the crowded computer snapped, “I don’t think we need to hear THAT!”

I stared at her in astonishment. There I stood, leaning on my cane, as younger, able-bodied people first co-opted all the chairs, made me circle them twice to get to a semi-working PC, ignored me rather than stepping aside, and did not even offer me a seat despite my obvious need for one. Clenching my cane in a white-knuckled fist, I glared pointedly around at the seated group.

The complaining woman blinked first. She dropped her eyes back to her own screen. After a few minutes I finished my print order, clutched my receipt, and stormed away.

Reviewing this incident later, I thought back to my childhood: the scoldings I endured, the fingers shaken in my face, being sent to my room when my manners failed the exacting standards set by my parents, teachers, and grandparents. In the light of those memories, I acknowledged that, yes, the holier-than-thou set probably found distasteful my frustrated exclamation of a single, very minor swearword in public.

Nonetheless, I still maintain that my utterance of one mild little “Dammit!” was, under the circumstances, far less a display of bad manners than (and a damn mild reaction to) the boorish behavior displayed by the group at the other computer.

If only I had looked at them and snapped, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

I invite you to tell me in the Comments about your experience of bad manners in today’s society! Go ahead, rant to your heart’s content! And, as always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you appreciated this little rant, you might also enjoy reading “The Person at the Other Fax Machine”, from September 16, 2020. You can locate it by scrolling below, to the Archives.

Women Exist

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

While the whole concept of “generations” is basically flawed, one of the few factors that actually point to generational divides is the group experience of those born into a certain era. As an example, I recall a casual conversation with a clerk at a shoe store in the late 1990s; a young man who was probably no older than 19 or 20. For some reason we were discussing the longevity of marriage. (I think the subject had arisen because my companion was buying shoes to wear to an anniversary party.) The clerk mentioned he’d just realized that many people who married in the 1950s and 60s were still together; were celebrating 30- and 40-year wedding anniversaries. People of those eras must have had a better understanding of what they were getting into when they married, he said. They must have made more realistic decisions about life partners.

My friend and I, both of us having been children in those decades, glanced knowingly at each other and then gently explained to the young man that, no, adults from that era were no better at choosing partners than anyone today. They simply didn’t have the option of divorce. “No Fault” divorce didn’t exist at that time, we told him; one had to prove a serious reason, usually adultery, to obtain a divorce. A spouse could actually contest a divorce, which was sometimes then not granted. Domestic violence was not even recognized as a problem, we continued, far less a reason for granting a divorce; a partner’s alcoholism or drug use, ditto. Female divorcees were ostracized, even when it was their partners who were at fault; divorced individuals were spoken of in gossiping whispers.

The young clerk was stunned. While he understood that divorce had been forbidden until modern times, he’d grown up in a world in which it was as common as crabgrass. He could barely grasp the reality of a world where one could be trapped for a lifetime in a loveless or abusive marriage, with no option to leave; in which the stigma of divorce destroyed lives. The reality absolutely flabbergasted him. I’m not certain he really believed us.

I often recall that conversation when I consider how minimal an understanding young women today have of the battles their female forebears have fought to achieve even the lopsided equality they currently enjoy. As much as the youngest generations appreciate the desperate struggles they still have on hand—the right to control their own bodies; the struggle for pay equity—they, like that young clerk, cannot even begin to comprehend the world that we older women grew up in: a world where most of our peers had no goal except to be “married young and then retire”; where the only office jobs available to women were secretary, receptionist, or bookkeeper; where a woman might become an elementary school teacher, but never a principal; where it was assumed she was working or attending college only until she could “find a man and get her M.R.S.”

Never was this better demonstrated for me than when, pondering all this, I was suddenly plunged into the memory of an old advice column, probably Dear Abby or Ann Landers, from my youth. I read those columnists religiously from the time I was 10 or 11 years old until I was a young adult, and sometimes—often–learned more from them than I did from school about life and love and human psychology, as well as courtesy, manners and etiquette.

This particular column contained a letter sent by a woman objecting to the way in which married women signed their names, protesting that they violated propriety by signing letters or cards as “Mrs. Jane Smith”. Mrs. Jane Smith did not exist, the complainant stated. There was no such person. The signatory was either just plain Jane Smith, or Mrs. John Smith.

Although I no longer recall the columnist’s response, I do well remember my acute dismay as I read that letter. All these decades later, that remembered dismay has multiplied a thousand times as I realize that many women of that era—my adolescence!–were cooperating in their own erasure. They collaborated in their own eradication.

And, terrifyingly, this still happens, I realize, looking about at a world where women must still go cloaked in burkas or endure plural marriage or genital mutilation; where they march with signs denying others of their gender the right to control their own bodies. Fifty years or more since that Dear Abby letter, and still there are women unable to oppose or actively cooperating in their own obliteration.

But then I look about at the strong, vital young women also marching, voting, struggling for their bodily autonomy and pay equality; unafraidedly naming their abusers, and calling out even an ex-President for the gross shame of his behavior, and I am encouraged and given new heart.

Mrs., Miss or Ms.: women exist. And they will never again be obliterated, from history or from life.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the essay, “Yes, Ma’am! Yes, Sir!” You can find it in the Archives, below; it was published March 8, 2023.

(Not So) Great Expectations

I’d gone to a lot of trouble. I certainly didn’t expect criticism!

I once prepared a home-cooked meal for a man I’d been dating for over a year. (And here let me just interject that, as I have said many times previously and in mind-numbing detail, I have simply terrible taste in men!) We were having a simple stay-at-home evening, dinner with a video to follow, because Mr. Perpetually Unemployed couldn’t afford to take me out anywhere, and I was tired of paying for all our dates.

I’d prepared my favorite vegetarian meal: homemade baked mac ‘n cheese, served with garlicky peppered green beans and extra-chunky applesauce with added cinnamon and nutmeg. Dessert to follow would be vanilla ice cream with fudge sauce, topping off a highly caloric but delicious meal.

I had minimal expectations for Mr. PU’s response to this meal. “Mmmm, smells great!” might have been nice; “Wow, this looks delicious,” even better. “Thanks for going to all this trouble,” would have been truly appreciated, while “It’s nice to have a home-cooked meal,” was another fine possibility. After a year of knowing him, though, I wasn’t really anticipating compliments.

What I didn’t expect was criticism.

The baked mac ‘n cheese, it seemed, was not creamy enough. I let this slide; obviously, this man’s taste buds had been formed by plastic-cheese-sauce-in-a-pouch-of-blue-box-macaroni. My baked mac ‘n cheese, however, was the satisfying product of many years of experimentation to perfect a basic recipe. It was widely enjoyed by all my family, and I knew it was good. So I merely shrugged at his remarks, responding that I was sorry he didn’t care for it.

The next criticism threw me for a loop, though: I had used canned green beans.

It was the middle of winter, I explained patiently. Fresh green beans, even when available, were wickedly expensive, as well as scrawny and old. Well, why hadn’t I used frozen ones? Now my reply was decidedly more irritated: because I had the !@#$%& canned ones sitting on the pantry shelf! The garlic was fresh, peeled and minced and sauteed with cracked pepper, then simmered slowly with the beans, or had he somehow missed these little details?

Ignoring my growing irritation, he cast a look of utter disdain at the bowl of applesauce—the kind that’s so chunky it’s almost like eating apple pie—and pronounced his most contemptuous remark of all: “What are we? Three years old?”

If I’d been a smart woman. I’d have foregone any response whatever to his criticisms and calmly continued eating my own delicious meal. If I’d been an even smarter woman, I’d have handed him the phone and told him if he didn’t like the food, he was free to pull out his overextended credit card and order pizza. And if I’d been an absolutely brilliant woman, I’d have picked up his plate and dumped it in his lap before ordering him to get the hell away from my table and out of my life.

As it was, I merely remarked that it was too bad he found the meal so disappointing, but I really didn’t have anything else to serve him unless he wanted canned soup.

Mr. PU petulantly consumed everything that had been placed before him. I believe he even had seconds on the non-creamy mac ‘n cheese.

I don’t recall what video we watched after this dinner fiasco, but I distinctly remember that I selected a movie which I knew he would find disturbing. Passive-aggressive, yep, that’s me.

I looked back on this incident recently, though, while sharing a holiday dinner I cooked for my family, one that didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I compared their responses toward the failed portions of the meal to that long ago dinner with Mr. PU. The smoked turkey breast was dry, I admitted; if I had it to do over, I’d have cooked it differently. Not at all; it was tasty, everyone protested; a little gravy, and it was just fine. The mashed potatoes were a bit grainy, I acknowledged. No one agreed. Again, with gravy and a dab of butter, the potatoes were delicious. The home baked beer bread was roundly praised and devoured by all. The Greek salad with my homemade dressing was delectable. The pumpkin and peanut butter pies were scrumptious.

I knew they were fibbing about some of it and praising where they could to soothe my feelings, but I appreciated their support.

What came home to me, though, when comparing the responses of my family and friends to the dinner failures, with those of a man who once professed to care for me, was the realization of exactly why my taste in men has always been execrable: low expectations, plain and simple.

I’ve long since connected my low expectations of relationships to my damaged sense of self-worth, and the unlikelihood of any of that ever changing at this late stage in my game. Following that epiphany, I made the commonsense decision that it’s far, far better to be alone than to be in a bad relationship.

And, besides, I like my own cooking.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you liked this post, you’re sure to love “Warming the Syrup”, from November 26, 2017. Scroll to the Archives, below, to locate it.

And Miss Sands Did

Celebrating Women’s History Month!

I grew up reading a lot of science fiction: magazines such as Analog and Weird Tales; even the lesser known (but far more interesting) books, John Carter of Mars and Pellucidar, by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Friday evenings in my hometown of Indianapolis always meant gathering in front of the TV late at night to watch local celebrity Sammy Terry present some weird or scary B-movie, many of which seemed to involve horrifyingly evil queens or Amazon women battling each other to the death.

Decades later, I’m still debating as to whether any of this was a good thing.

You see, the sci fi shows, stories and novels of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I began ingesting their messages, were, to put it baldly, ripe with misogyny. From cover art that usually featured half-naked, nubile females, right down to the chauvinistic tales within, most denigrated women. Even the original Star Trek, as advanced as it was for the distant era in which it was shown, endlessly repeated sad old tropes about women’s roles in society.

Meanwhile, I, imbibing all this, was an adolescent growing up in a landscape of blatant sexism. I lived in a world in which women were dismissed and demeaned in ways no Gen Y or Z woman could even begin to imagine. Employment advertisements were habitually separated into jobs for Men and Women (no, there were no other genders, or even the suggestion of such; homosexuality was still illegal in most states, and there was but one known transgender person, Christine Jorgensen. So let’s not traipse off into that interesting little detour!) No matter what job a woman applied for, she was administered a typing test. A married woman could not open a bank account or obtain a credit card in her own name without her husband’s signature; some banks even denied accounts to single women, as I learned to my dismay when trying to open a checking account at the age of 20, using the same bank where I’d held a savings account since early childhood. At 20, employed full-time and living on my own, my paycheck stub and savings account were not proof enough of my ability manage money; I had to present a letter from my employer.

Meanwhile, domestic abuse, no matter how brutal, was shrugged off as a personal problem between two spouses. The police would not intervene, except to possibly arrest the abuser for homicide when the problems escalated.

It was a harsh and pitiless environment through which we young women scuttled.

So I retreated, escaping to imagined futures, where a woman of any race could board an interstellar ship with at least the rank of lieutenant…while the male captain womanized his way throughout the galaxy. 2001: A Space Odyssey, taught me that I could aspire to being a stewardess on a starliner, waiting on male scientists. Reading Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, I was assured that I might someday travel from Mars to Earth, and even save the planet Venus from terrorists…but my real job was to work in the on-board nursery of the starship. Women have more important things to do, I was instructed at the end of that novel, than building bridges or piloting a starship. A sci-fi magazine story told me of a future Earth in chaos, ruled by warring groups of women who spent their days battling over men. Reading a later Heinlein book, Time Enough for Love, I was reassured that it was all right for me, as a mere woman, to be a brilliant scientist, as long as I was pregnant with the child of the ultimate alpha male. And, horrifyingly, while paging through When Worlds Collide, I would discover that I could “earn” the right to sit on the all-male governing body of a new world, as long as I had slyly seduced and then committed the bloody murder of an enemy in order to get there.

Looking back now, I understand that my constant bewilderment about my role as a woman was promoted by the literature I read and the movies and shows I watched. Meanwhile, the novels I borrowed from my mother concerning the great queens of antiquity only underscored my sense of learned helplessness. Women could, it seemed, only be in charge if that right was gained by marriage to a powerful man. Reams of historical fiction was written about the famous Queen Nefertiti, whose sole importance to history was a bust of her beautiful face, but Hatshepsut, the powerful woman who ruled Egypt in peace and prosperity in her own right as Pharaoh for 15 years, received no such plaudits in literature.

Like the fictional Nell, I have lived a small life, and perhaps it was made smaller, more constricted and confined, by the books I read and the movies I watched in my youth, all of which, purporting to modern ideals, still defined women into roles that now seem shockingly archaic.

“And Miss Sands did!” one delightful time travel story ended, as the heroine, a genius without whom time travel would not have been possible, threw herself into her lover’s arms. But I now read that ending with a different take. While only a child, Miss Sands and her brother worked together to save themselves from interplanatery kidnappers; she became the primary scientist devising the time machine that would hurtle her lover back to prehistoric times to meet her in her childhood. She journeyed to Earth’s future to meet her beloved again as an adult. She was brilliant, accomplished, and a survivor.

Miss Sands did, indeed.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you appreciated this post, you might also like the essay “The Crap They Made Me Read!”, which you can locate by scrolling below, to the Archives. It was published on March 1, 2023.

NOT an Insurrection?!

In response to the Supreme Court’s shameful, reprehensible decision that Insurrectionist Trump may remain on the ballot, in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, I publish this essay.

A family member whose political views I most decidedly do not share insists that January 6, 2021, was “not a real insurrection”. No, he tells me (by e-mail, which is probably safer, for that way my explosive reply is merely verbal, not physical); no, if you want to know what a real insurrection was, read up on the history of The Weather Underground.

The first time he made this claim, I was flabbergasted. Absolutely, totally, completely stunned. Stupefied. Bowled over. Blown away. Use-your-own-hand-to-shut-your-jaw dumbfounded.

Actually, I’m not sure why I was so shocked; I know his political views range far north of what I consider the ragged edge of reality.

Perhaps my dismay was related to the fact that, despite our shared DNA, his thinking could be so diametrically opposed to mine.

“For the love of God!” I wrote back, pounding the keys like they were enemies. “Are you out of your everlovin’ mind?! There was a NOOSE on the grounds of the Capitol! A noose! For the Vice President! People died that day. Some suicided afterward because of what they’d endured. The rioters violated one of the most sacred hallmarks of the US political system: the peaceful transference of power. Did you even watch what happened? I did! I sat here gasping at the screen, clutching my little grandchild as tightly as I could in my arms, alternately too shocked to speak or crying and cursing because of what I was witnessing. Not an insurrection? Are you crazy?”

Apparently so. Apparently, both he and many others share this specific form of madness.

He also seemed forgetful in that I am a few years older than he is, and have no trouble at all recalling the actions of the group he referenced. Before “The Weather Underground” was a cleverly-named weather forecasting website, it was a domestic terrorist group. They were active from the time I was 15, through approximately the next decade, protesting the Vietnam War, racism, and the United States government. I didn’t need to read up on their activities, because I remembered them. They began with a penchant for blowing up statues in Chicago. (And here let me just say that I was pleased as punch that every time the WU blew up the statue commemorating the Haymarket Riot, the city of Chicago erected a new statue for the same purpose. I hadn’t the slightest idea what the Haymarket Riot had been or why there was a statue to the memory of those who died, but causing terrible damage to the surrounding area each time they blew the memorial to smithereens was simply loathsome.)

The subsequent riots, firebombings, and attacks on individuals by The Weather Underground sadly killed a number of police. Like so many anarchists, idiots, and morons, though, the Weather Underground members seemed best at blowing themselves up.

They also staged protests that just didn’t quite pan out; instead of the thousands expected for their “Days of Rage” protest, only a few hundred actually showed up. (Apparently, one has to be a rapist tax cheat to command those sorts of crowds.)

But the chaos The Weather Underground created over the space of years, while very real and intimidating, in no way equaled the perfect storm of bedlam of January 6.

Very much unlike the tempest that occurred on the grounds of the nation’s Capitol that day, the Weather Underground members at least attempted not to injure or kill people: they issued warnings in advance to see that their targets were evacuated.

And, yes, the WU detonated bombs on the US Capitol and Pentagon grounds. Yes, those and their other bombings, riots, and violence against the United States were acts of insurrection. And despite the fact that they claimed that “terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate”, their “education” killed police, damaged property, threatened lawmakers, and created irremediable psychological harm in those they confronted. The Weather Underground was, undeniably, a domestic terrorist organization.

But the evil of their actions in no way compares with what occurred in our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021. The mob at the Capitol that dreadful day was every bit as determined, and felt far less compunction, than those card-carrying members of the Weather Underground.

The January 6 insurrectionists issued no advance warnings; they cared nothing about the physical and psychological damage to those they confronted. They attacked; they destroyed property; they smashed people into doorways. They attempted to hunt down and kill our duly-elected lawmakers.

They were, are, traitors.

For a long while after receiving my relative’s “not an insurrection” missive, I simply deleted without reading anything he e-mailed or texted. I had, have, no wish to further explore his mindset.

Every morning, I discover abundant shock and revulsion just by opening the news sites that I prefer to read. As much as I believe in trying to meet others’ thinking halfway, I can’t intentionally invite distress merely due to a tenuous DNA connection.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you appreciated this essay, you may also enjoy “29 Things”, published November 6, 2019. You can locate it by scrolling below, to the Archives.