If I want to learn how to make minestrone, chicken cacciatore and spinach frittatas, I can pay $44 and head to the local recreation center for a three-week class on Italian cooking. After ingesting an abundance of carbohydrates, I could take a clogging class, throw some pottery, or learn the basics of cartooning. If I was looking for a low-cost outdoor adventure, I could go hiking, break out the bow and arrow for some archery, or tackle my fear of heights with rock climbing. If I was an athlete looking for a team sport, I could play basketball, flag football, softball, or kickball.
However, the one thing that I cannot do at the recreation center is take a writing class other than “How to Be Travel Writer.” It is true that short story writing, poetry creation and playwriting classes do not result in a bunch of sweaty guys drinking bottled water or culminate with cheesy watercolor paintings of sailboats and wild flowers configured with a poor sense of perspective and illogical proportions, but the end result of a writing class is no less than dramatic than a good kickball game and no less creative than fusing glass or making a mosaic in a day.
Sure, the administrators at the recreation center can blame their exclusion of writing classes on a lack of instructors and limited participation. This is the excuse they gave me last Fall when they canceled the playwriting class that signed-up for in order to have some guidance to complete the my one-act play. Their bureaucratic and pleasant response to pacify me and to subdue my outrage actually was just an attempt to conceal the fact that writing classes are not sexy or marketable. E.B. White was absolutely correct when he asserted that essayists are second class citizens, and in my town all writers are dismissed. We are unappealing to recreation planners because writers are mostly grumpy and moderately crazy. Our craft is horribly laborious and tiresome. There is no instant gratification as in the case of swimming, bingo playing, and belly dancing.
It also appears that our community college has adopted the same discriminatory attitude against writing classes on their roster of non-credit continuing education classes. I could learn how to improve my digital photography, pick up some conversational Spanish, or enroll in a motorcycle riding class, but I will not be learning anything about plot or setting in a junior college environment that should want to promote communication. With both affordable outlets blatantly ignoring “writerly types” in the community, I am left with the option of taking classes with the local writers group (which I think consists of scam artists who prey upon people’s dreams of becoming bestselling authors), or enrolling at the state university down the street and subjecting myself to high expectations, stern demands, tough criticism, a heavy workload and grades. I was looking for cheap and easy, not an expensive commitment that will just result in self-loathing.
So kids, here is the lesson to be learned from my dilemma: pick a hobby that either results in body secretions or pretty works of art.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Two Year Anniversary of Being T.V. Free
A family relocated in Colorado with their T.V. stuck in the Lone Star State equals a crisis of Texas-size proportions. Panic struck the household for about two weeks, and the kids had nothing to do but punch each other and throw their toys all over the floor. Eventually, their sibling fights became theatrical Kung Fu street fights in homemade dramas and the mess making was replaced by craft creation.
The number of books read in the household tripled and family game night meant playing Uno and Rummikub instead of watching a football game. Family hikes, backyard baseball games and Frisbee throwing occurred many times a week. I started blogging shortly after our television moratorium and wrote roughly 500 to 1000 words daily, spending about as much time writing as I previously spent watching soap operas during the day.
We were one-hundred percent television free for about a year until the discovery of the Hulu. Then, it went to hell for most of the family, except for me who has not watch a television show on a computer or television set since June 17, 2008. (However, there has been a strong case made that I have replaced my television time with Facebook; there might be something to that argument.) With the use of Hulu, the kids just duplicated their old TV watching patterns. A huge, disappointing setback until I figured out a little thing called password protection. I now hold the key or should I say password for their TV watching.
Being a T.V. free family is not easy. As most moms know, television sets are great babysitters even if our pediatricians do not approve. But once screen time is eliminated, family communication, physical activity, and creativity appear more regularly and fully.
The number of books read in the household tripled and family game night meant playing Uno and Rummikub instead of watching a football game. Family hikes, backyard baseball games and Frisbee throwing occurred many times a week. I started blogging shortly after our television moratorium and wrote roughly 500 to 1000 words daily, spending about as much time writing as I previously spent watching soap operas during the day.
We were one-hundred percent television free for about a year until the discovery of the Hulu. Then, it went to hell for most of the family, except for me who has not watch a television show on a computer or television set since June 17, 2008. (However, there has been a strong case made that I have replaced my television time with Facebook; there might be something to that argument.) With the use of Hulu, the kids just duplicated their old TV watching patterns. A huge, disappointing setback until I figured out a little thing called password protection. I now hold the key or should I say password for their TV watching.
Being a T.V. free family is not easy. As most moms know, television sets are great babysitters even if our pediatricians do not approve. But once screen time is eliminated, family communication, physical activity, and creativity appear more regularly and fully.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Muma and Pookie
Her trembling fingers made her knitting needles clink together like drumsticks in the hands of a novice, but she was no neophyte. A three time Blue Ribbon Winner at the local farm show and a two time Honorable Mention in the county fair, Muma (the appellation given to her by her oldest granddaughter and pronounced muhm-uh) was a champion knitter who did not allow her arthritis to thwart her while she alternated her knit stitches and purl stitches with an occasional Italian curse word. Celebrex did not stop her pain, and neither did the stroking of her Rosary beads, but she developed an addiction to both. She rocked back and forth in her shabby and tattered blue recliner that surprisingly never crumbled under her rotund figure, commonly associated with Italian grandmothers who hocked Ragu spaghetti sauce on television. She intended to make five blankets—one for each of her grandchildren—while she still had some yarn.
She twisted burgundy and rose together in a traditional two-row afghan for her first grandchild, Pookie, who sat at her feet spinning a different kind of yarn. Pookie, a seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed feminist, had no time to learn how to knit, and she never paid attention when she was forced to make pizza dough or homemade pasta. Domesticity seemed futile and frivolous in relation to her plans for an adventurous career in tabloid journalism, mostly focused on UFO sightings, Elvis conspiracy theories, and alien babies opposed to predictable and mean-spirited celebrity gossip.
“Please tell me, Muma, the story about what happened in the kitchen,” said Pookie.
Muma sighed, continued to twist the yarn, and replied: “You already know this story. It is nothing really special and no one knows for sure what happened. It was his word against hers, and she was too dead to talk. The police weren’t able to prove a thing. My brother-in-laws, your great uncles believed that their mother, your great grandmother Magdalene was shooting off her mouth; probably telling your great grandfather to stop drinking, work more hours at the railroad, pick up his clothes off the floor or something like that. Supposedly, she was a real nag of a woman. Your great grandfather, who was known for his temper, his love of his booze and his preference for young women, probably threw her against the wall. She hit her head and died immediately. Grandpa Rudolph never confessed, and the police ruled it an accident. It was an accident and not a murder, which is why the family never sold the house. I still use Magdalene’s ravioli recipe to this day in her house.”
Disappointed by her grandmother’s disinterested delivery of the most scandalous story in the family’s history, Pookie moved onto a mystery that captured Muma’s imagination—the disappearance Amelia Earhart. Muma, who was 19 at the time of the pilot’s failed trip around the world, recounted all details of each explanation of her disappearance and insisted the female pilot simply was too astute to run out of gas or to navigate to the wrong destination. Bad flight planning, sudden crash, or capture and murder by the Japanese. These theories bored Pookie, but stitch by stitch Muma tangled the clues into the blue and gold blanket for the second grandchild.
By the time Muma started the third blanket, the setting changed once again. This time to a poor Italian immigrant community along the Jersey shore. Muma was the third oldest out of eleven children, 7 girls and 4 boys. The sisters shared two adjoining bedrooms and divided up shoes, dresses and make-up. None of them were allowed to date, so they would take turns covering for each other. When the youngest daughter ended up pregnant at the age of 16, a baby boy named Anthony was adopted by the oldest sister and her husband. Muma told Pookie never to repeat the story. It was a family secret that no one knew (Her recounting was the third time that her granddaughter heard that tale).
The fourth blanket started with the romance of Muma and her husband Rodolpho, who was called Rody. She was working as a waitress, and he was regular customer. He tried to pay her with sand dollars when she explained with a stern but slightly flirtatious tone that only legal tender could be accepted, he offered to pay dollar bills if she would go for a walk on the beach with him. She accepted, and they were married 7 months later. She gave birth to her first daughter at the age of 35 and the second daughter came along when she was 37. The second birth occurred in 1954 when women were more concerned about traditional maternal moirés than the risks of “advanced maternal age.” After telling the tale of her daughters’ births, Muma completed a navy blue and white blanket for the Pookie’s oldest cousin.
With four blankets complete and one blanket to go, Pookie assumed that with every stitch and with every word, they will get another minute that would turn into another day, another week, another year. Muma would knit and Pookie would record stories as if they were characters in a magic realism novel creating a great blanket of words and fibers that would be thicker than the Tallgrass Prairie and longer than Appalachian Mountain Range.
Pookie planned to delay the completion of the fifth blanket, an elaborate royal blue and cream pattern. The twisting and twirling started with the death of Rody and Muma’s life as a widow and a single-mother to two girls, ages 5 and 3. As a woman with an eighth-grade education, she took a job at the local shoe factory; she put buckles on women’s shoes until her knuckles bled. They were poor but proud. Both girls stayed out of trouble, married young, and never took the time to learn how to knit. They both dreamed of store bought clothes and new furniture. “My hopes for them came true,” she said as she completed the fifth blanket, and a few weeks later, all her knitting came to an end. The five blankets were distributed to the five grandchildren.
Today, Pookie keeps the yarn alive as she tells her own daughter about the mysterious death of the woman who created the family’s ravioli recipe.
She twisted burgundy and rose together in a traditional two-row afghan for her first grandchild, Pookie, who sat at her feet spinning a different kind of yarn. Pookie, a seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed feminist, had no time to learn how to knit, and she never paid attention when she was forced to make pizza dough or homemade pasta. Domesticity seemed futile and frivolous in relation to her plans for an adventurous career in tabloid journalism, mostly focused on UFO sightings, Elvis conspiracy theories, and alien babies opposed to predictable and mean-spirited celebrity gossip.
“Please tell me, Muma, the story about what happened in the kitchen,” said Pookie.
Muma sighed, continued to twist the yarn, and replied: “You already know this story. It is nothing really special and no one knows for sure what happened. It was his word against hers, and she was too dead to talk. The police weren’t able to prove a thing. My brother-in-laws, your great uncles believed that their mother, your great grandmother Magdalene was shooting off her mouth; probably telling your great grandfather to stop drinking, work more hours at the railroad, pick up his clothes off the floor or something like that. Supposedly, she was a real nag of a woman. Your great grandfather, who was known for his temper, his love of his booze and his preference for young women, probably threw her against the wall. She hit her head and died immediately. Grandpa Rudolph never confessed, and the police ruled it an accident. It was an accident and not a murder, which is why the family never sold the house. I still use Magdalene’s ravioli recipe to this day in her house.”
Disappointed by her grandmother’s disinterested delivery of the most scandalous story in the family’s history, Pookie moved onto a mystery that captured Muma’s imagination—the disappearance Amelia Earhart. Muma, who was 19 at the time of the pilot’s failed trip around the world, recounted all details of each explanation of her disappearance and insisted the female pilot simply was too astute to run out of gas or to navigate to the wrong destination. Bad flight planning, sudden crash, or capture and murder by the Japanese. These theories bored Pookie, but stitch by stitch Muma tangled the clues into the blue and gold blanket for the second grandchild.
By the time Muma started the third blanket, the setting changed once again. This time to a poor Italian immigrant community along the Jersey shore. Muma was the third oldest out of eleven children, 7 girls and 4 boys. The sisters shared two adjoining bedrooms and divided up shoes, dresses and make-up. None of them were allowed to date, so they would take turns covering for each other. When the youngest daughter ended up pregnant at the age of 16, a baby boy named Anthony was adopted by the oldest sister and her husband. Muma told Pookie never to repeat the story. It was a family secret that no one knew (Her recounting was the third time that her granddaughter heard that tale).
The fourth blanket started with the romance of Muma and her husband Rodolpho, who was called Rody. She was working as a waitress, and he was regular customer. He tried to pay her with sand dollars when she explained with a stern but slightly flirtatious tone that only legal tender could be accepted, he offered to pay dollar bills if she would go for a walk on the beach with him. She accepted, and they were married 7 months later. She gave birth to her first daughter at the age of 35 and the second daughter came along when she was 37. The second birth occurred in 1954 when women were more concerned about traditional maternal moirés than the risks of “advanced maternal age.” After telling the tale of her daughters’ births, Muma completed a navy blue and white blanket for the Pookie’s oldest cousin.
With four blankets complete and one blanket to go, Pookie assumed that with every stitch and with every word, they will get another minute that would turn into another day, another week, another year. Muma would knit and Pookie would record stories as if they were characters in a magic realism novel creating a great blanket of words and fibers that would be thicker than the Tallgrass Prairie and longer than Appalachian Mountain Range.
Pookie planned to delay the completion of the fifth blanket, an elaborate royal blue and cream pattern. The twisting and twirling started with the death of Rody and Muma’s life as a widow and a single-mother to two girls, ages 5 and 3. As a woman with an eighth-grade education, she took a job at the local shoe factory; she put buckles on women’s shoes until her knuckles bled. They were poor but proud. Both girls stayed out of trouble, married young, and never took the time to learn how to knit. They both dreamed of store bought clothes and new furniture. “My hopes for them came true,” she said as she completed the fifth blanket, and a few weeks later, all her knitting came to an end. The five blankets were distributed to the five grandchildren.
Today, Pookie keeps the yarn alive as she tells her own daughter about the mysterious death of the woman who created the family’s ravioli recipe.
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