A Secret Santa Poetry Exchange

I got a chance to participate in a poem swap this year. I thought it was such a great idea. We all dropped a poem into a hat, picked out another, and promised to post it to our blogs or Tumblrs or what have you. It got me to reboot this blog and maybe it will get me to start it up again in earnest. In the meantime, here is the poem I received:

Weight sources encounter problems

As the thrust sprinting elastic orbit

The horizon will cleanse

This calendar blank

Mucus in brisk crunchy grass

As mules kiss under grass

Wait sourcing for the believer milk

Turn the table orange juice and Oreos

Bowed cars filled with cocaine

Santa winks and puts a finger up to his lips

I love this time of year

I am so jolly

I am happy I love this year

I love this little baby year

I immerse myself in its unspoiled time diaper

And Bing Crosby compliments my sweater

I really like this. It has a very nice rhythm without being obvious and the imagery is witty and original. "The horizon will cleanse/This calendar blank" is so evocative. I think I got very lucky with my poem.

So here's to art and gifts and holidays.

One Vote

Today I will vote.

That's a rather rare act on this planet. Only about 40% of this country votes regularly in national elections and that number often drops to single digits for local elections. In other countries, more people vote, but we have many people living in countries where either they have no vote or their vote doesn't count.

So I will be in the minority today.

I will have a voice.

I will be voting for marriage equality and the education reforms covered by the Dream Act. I will be voting for a President who I believe has served us well despite a recalcitrant and stubborn opposition. I will be voting for a Governor I respect and admire. I will be voting my conscience as I best see it reflected in my options.

I will be voting to honor the women (and men) that fought for my right to vote. 

  

I Just Turned Gay All of the Sudden!

Cary Grant was one of those rather famous underground gays that most Americans loved as long as he never got too explicit about where his heart went. We have always tolerated gays, bisexuals, and trans (gendered and dressing) people as long as they kept it away from Christmas dinner and granny who probable knew more about "alternate lifestyles" than we give her credit for. But there is a movement in this country that we should really not ignore.

Gays are being granted the right to marry.

This is kind of a big deal. I certainly never expected to see it in my lifetime. And yet, I found myself living in the first state (Massachusetts) to grant that privilege. Not only that, but I lived in Cambridge which opened its doors at City Hall at midnight on the first day gay marriage was legal to welcome gay couples who wanted to make their relationships formal and public. The outpouring of support and sloppy romanticism was completely wonderful.

In a way, marriage is a rather silly thing to pursue: it's a dying art. Fewer and fewer people practice it. But in many other ways, it is one of the most important avenues toward equality that same sex couples have. Like interracial couples before them, they are fighting for some extremely basic rights. The right to visit each other in a hospital. The right to create a family. The right to have a partner who has more of a voice than a bigoted parent or sibling.

There are people in this country who have been granted civil unions who have found little benefit from that status. So marriage becomes a goal that perhaps has even more meaning than it might for straight couples in this day and age. Many institutions refuse to acknowledge gay partnerships and hide behind that one term that excludes them: spouse. 

That a person you chose to live twenty years with, to create a home with, and often have a family with, could still find doors slammed in his or her face if you were sick or dying is absolutely disgusting. It shames us as a nation.

This year, in a very close race between our two major parties, the GOP and the DNC have gone in completely opposite directions. The GOP has declared that all people deserve respect and the DNC has declared that a specific group of people deserve protection. That really isn't just semantics. 

Romney has declared that he would repeal DADT and would defend DOMA: one of the least defensible and most expensive federal initiatives in the lifetime of anyone alive today. 

There is a very clear difference in these two parties' platforms. Neither one pledges outright support for our LGBT brothers and sisters, but one of them pledges not to try to destroy them.

I know which one I will be voting for.

Breathe In Breathe Out

I've been breathing in more than breathing out lately. The writing part of my brain seems to have decided to curl up in a corner and take a long nap. But I have just finished a semester of tutoring middle school children in reading as a volunteer with the amazing Reading Partners program that has just expanded to Baltimore, and it has been one of the most moving and rewarding experiences of my life.

62% of our students are reading below grade level.

They are smart, their parents are engaged, they have wonderful teachers and administrators, but they are behind.

That's not so surprising when you consider that 25% of them are homeless. Many of them are dealing with some other instability in their family life. Substance abuse and crime are quotidian experiences for a lot of them. Just getting breakfast and eight hours of sleep is an exception rather than the rule at times. Parents may have to keep their kids at home if they want to make it to work since most of the available work is so far away they have to leave well before anyone is at the school to let the kids in.

And yet. These kids jumped in the deep end with so much energy and determination. They are mostly referred to the program by their teachers who are truly incredible. My favorite (shut up, I can have a favorite in here. Don't tell on me) Big D improved three whole levels in as many months. Their achievements humble me.

I don't remember learning how to read. It was a world that I couldn't stand not having access to so I broke down the door. My mother tells of me at a very young age trying to hide the fact that I could read once I entered kindergarten because I was so embarrassed by all the attention it invited. I would turn a book upside down whenever an adult entered the room.

Part of me was really worried that I wouldn't be able to help these wonderful kids as I have virtually no understanding of what they are going through. But the Reading Partners curriculum is so well designed that even an idiot like me can just follow the lesson plan and make a difference. It didn't matter that I had zero training in education, all I had to do was follow the directions and lo and behold, success!

Nationally, my kids aren't all that unusual. They live in a relatively wealthy state that was just singled out for the fourth year in a row for educational excellence, but they live in one of those pockets that exist everywhere. A little satellite of crappy schools, crappy housing, and almost no amenities. The closest grocery store is further than I could deal with and there are no corner stores to run to for milk or eggs. Transportation to the parts of the city that anyone might want to go to for culture or a job is iffy at best, and the population was purposefully shuttered away to one of the most isolated areas in Baltimore by planners who caved to prejudice at a time when African Americans were just beginning to make some headway in this country. The children of the Great Migration were thriving in the Northern cities their parents had fled to seeking things like the right to vote, or to graduate from high school, or just to see a paycheck instead of owing a sharecropper landlord money for seeds from the spring.

They face logistics I doubt I could navigate. And they are so isolated and cut off from the rest of the city, they must feel decidedly unwanted. Which, to be perfectly honest, they are. The police patrol their streets like an occupying force, never on foot, always in SUVs or helicopters like some sort of alien invasion. And some assholes think they should be banned from any area a tourist might visit. Assuming they could get there in the first place.

They have almost no contact with children from other backgrounds.

This is the thing that I find most depressing. Studies have shown that children who are educated in a mixed environment preform better. The kids with the greatest hurdles to overcome do better, and the kids that one would expect to do well do well without losing any ground academically and are better able to excel in social settings which expose them to people from different backgrounds, a.k.a. real life. The benefits of diversity in schools is one of those things that impacts outcome more than spending, classroom size, or almost any other measurable factor. It is simply the easiest and cheapest way to raise the outcome for all students at the expense of none that any community can exploit. But our schools are becoming, if anything, more segregated and our children less familiar with each other than they have been for generations.

I can't fix any of that. I can vote, I can write letters, but at the end of the day, the only real difference I can make right here right now, is to get in the trenches and sit down with a kid, one on one, and try to help him or her climb over that wall.

American Woman

Today one year ago was the 100th celebration of International Women's Day. I wish I could say that things had gotten better. Perhaps they have, but recent events have me feeling as though I have been torpedoed backwards to a time when women had little say in their own lives not to mention the lives of those they were responsible for. My view is undoubtedly skewed as I am an American woman and this country is failing its daughters in increasingly absurd ways minute-by-minute and day-by-day. Perhaps reality has been kinder to my sisters in other corners of the world. I certainly hope so.

Here, however, the outlook is grim.

It frankly astonishes me that discussions about wealth inequality, access to healthcare, and social justice have been swept off the table to accommodate lunatics who view women as either broodmares or sluts and prostitutes.

And yet.

I am exhausted. I am sick to death of this fight. I shouldn't have to fight it. My mother already did. And her mother before her. I belong to the largest block of voters in the country. I belong to the better educated half of this country. I belong to the majority of this country.

And yet.

Here we are, fighting to protect women when they want to consult their personal physician on matters that matter only to them. Fighting to keep them out of poverty when they become mothers. Fighting the definition of rape. Fighting over who gets to testify before Congress about whether or not biology is destiny.

So excuse me if I'm not feeling particularly festive today. I'm too busy fighting.

Thanksgiving

To be thankful requires some distance. A hangnail can derail the most mindful existence and most of us face more hardships than that on a daily basis. To be able to ignore the worst and appreciate the best in our lives is something of a gift in itself. The oldest and best advice humans have been sharing with each other always involves some variation on how to do this:

Be in the moment. Count your blessings. Don't sweat the small stuff. Live, laugh, love, learn.

We are approaching that particular time of the year when many of us take inventory. My inventory is looking pretty good.  I have work that I enjoy doing. I have loving arms to come home to attached to a head and a heart that keep me entertained and inspired. I have a mam and a brother who are as devoted to me as I am to them. And my friends are a constant delight. King Dutch teaches me every day how optimism works. And I have a safe and happy home thanks to a very generous soul.

Thanksgiving is often the beginning of a season many people would rather skip. Family dynamics, logistics, money, travel, stress. It can be horrible. I see people I dearly love who are frankly about ready to kill themselves and everyone they know because of this. I wish I could take them to where I am today.

I want for nothing. I am enormously lucky. I love you all. Thank you. You make each day a blessing.

Worker Bees and Beasts

For a brief time, I worked for one of those soulless corporate giants that returns to its shareholders a very pretty profit which ensures that the executives will get a big fat bonus and that its clients and employees will regret their relationship with them. Or some will, anyway. I did. Ours was the highest-earning store in a very high-earning region. And I was one of their highest earners (I had a friendly competition with another girl for top sales every month which was funny for us since we all shared our passwords and often closed for each other when we were ready to go out back and smoke.) We had a FU attitude toward most of the rule book because we could. They were actually a little afraid of us. HQ was in one of those parts of the country that is about 17 years behind the times, and their edicts reflected that. But for the most part, they left us alone.

Some of the rules were just laughable: gentlemen associates could not have hair that touched their collars and lady associates could not wear a skirt higher than three inches from their knee. Mind you, we were selling glasses. In the early 90s. To men with long hair and women with hardly any fabric covering their crotches.

Some of the other rules were just awful: we could be terminated for meeting outside of work if more than three of us were present. We were denied lawful compensation for travel times to mandatory conferences that we went to from the store. But the worst of all was that we were asked to lie to our patients. We were told to sell them things they didn't need, and that were not in their best interest. It was horrible.

Our parent company purchased stock in a company that made equipment to process a particular lens that is medically appropriate in a few cases but only a few. We were told to sell it to everybody. It's a shitty lens. It causes halos and distortion and visual anomalies, but that was where the company saw its profit, despite the fact that we refused to sell it and made them more money by selling designer frames. They had a business model and they were sticking to it. And we were very naughty. They swooped down on us with exhortations, bonuses, displays, demonstrations, and punishments for the reluctant. And yet we refused to sell it. We still made them a ton of money, but all they could see was lost revenue because we weren't selling this one product. What they didn't see, and what few corporations ever see, was that we had a relationship with our customers. They trusted us. Our subculture was to make sure that our clients walked out of our store looking amazing but more importantly, seeing well. That's why they came back to us and brought the people they cared about in with them. But our corporate culture was 180° in the opposite direction and they won. They fired our General Manager, replaced her with a lovely but terrified young woman who could no more handle our patients (some of Hollywood's biggest names) than she could handle us (a group of really pissed off sales people.)

She was forced to fire a bunch of us. She cried when she terminated me. I ended up comforting her.

It was an interesting lesson in just how bad the corporate world can get. When the people at the top really have no idea what the people at the bottom are doing, they get suspicious and nasty. They start to assume that their employees are up to no good, because that's their MO. (To be fair, one of ours was stealing designer sunglasses to sell on Venice Beach, but Loss Prevention went after the Latino lab rat and not the white sales guy who was actually walking off with bag after bag of frames.) Can you say "projection"?

I recently Googled my old employer, and let's just say the news isn't good. I'm not particularly happy about this. They have a lot of lives in their hands and I would rather those people be secure and happy. But little seems to have changed since those days.

I can say that they are better than these folk.

I don't even know what to make of them. Halloween is a foul mess this year.

I learned a few things about a certain cowboy that I shared on Prose Before Hos. Surprised the heck outta me!

Such a Stain

My heart tonight is with the family and with that man who had to murder his brother for a paycheck.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Les Enfants Terribles Say the Darndest Things!

My latest piece for Prose Before Hos on Galliano and bigotry in France is up.

Meanwhile

I have a new piece up over at Prose Before Hos on the GOP and their voter suppression: What’s Behind The Right’s War On Voting The research for it was really a little depressing but there are some bright spots on the horizon.

The Macaroni That Came Out of My Brother's Nose and His Bunk Bed Which Pepermint Patty and I Broke

I collect people. And I hang onto them. I am, in fact, a people-hoarder. I own almost nothing but my friends are almost too numerous to count at this stage in my life. According to my various social networks, I am in regular contact with well over 1,000 people. That's either a sign that I have a serious problem or a sign that I will live really long. Opinions vary.

One of these friends is a girl I have known since I was 9 years old. She was and is a carrot top with a wicked sense of humor. We called her Peppermint Patty since the freckle situation and hair were beyond amazing. We keep reconnecting and remembering why we connected in the first place. (Well, I know why I do. She's smart, hilarious, generous, and fascinating. I have no idea what she gets out of it.) And we recently reconnected again after more than twenty years. She has a wonderful husband, two incredibly engaging imps, a lunatic dog, and a lovely home from which she does important work.

We got to spend a day together last week and yes, I snorted. Several times in fact. I was quite sure I was going to get my giggle on but I really wasn't expecting to find in her memory a wealth of anecdotes from my early years that I had lost in a sea of slights and follies. She actually remembers the best parts of my childhood while I apparently clung to a whole lot of sibling rivalry and latchkey woe-is-me moments.

We both remember the macaroni that shot of of my brother's nose though. That was epic. It was accompanied by a rather large quantity of milk. And it sent the three of us into the kind of hysteria that only children know. I would die tomorrow if I could find that level of pure joy today. Although I came close reliving that moment with PP last week hearing her tale of how we both climbed onto the second bunk of my brother's bed and began rocking it while he sat beneath us egging us on until the entire structure came crashing down upon him from which pile of debris he shouted "GET OFF ME!!!!" while PP and I inquired whether the other had heard something as we jumped up and down. How do I not remember this?

Watching her children, the eldest of whom is the age now that her mother and I were when we met, I see before them a whole strange road of hijinks and low points. They are both as pretty, smart, and funny as their mother and they have their father's handsome carriage, seriousness, and focus as well. I have been worried about the future of this country, and I am worried for them. Although the fact that they are our future is a great relief to me. I am perfectly willing to hand over the reins to these two little creatures as soon as they can handle the ride. I just wish they were getting a better deal.

Neither one got the freckles though.

Tickled Pink

I am very proud to announce that I have joined the hilarious, provocative, and fascinating site, Prose Before Hos. My first piece inspired by the MLK Memorial and his legacy went up today.

The Unelectable Eating the Unpalatable

Apologies to Wilde, but watching the GOP field of candidates chasing their party's nomination this season has me remembering his famous quote about fox hunting, "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable" The entire debacle has taken on the surreal quality of a modern day hunt, where a bag of fox urine is dragged around some hills and dales for a pack of overbred dogs to chase, followed by a pack of overbred horses, carrying a pack of inbred elites.

Of course, I do not mean to imply that any of the GOP hopefuls are the products of the kind of close coupling that wiped out the Hapsburgs (A chin, a chin! My kingdom for a smaller chin!) but they were raised in insular, culturally incestuous environments that have left them so far outside the mainstream as to appear unreal to the rest of us.

Exhibit A in the cabinet of curiosities is Michele Bachmann. Mesmerized and mesmerizing, it is hard to look away as she launches herself at fence after gate after ditch after hedge and lands flat on her ass over and over and over again. And mounts back up. While her supporters egg her on, the media and those of us on the left are exchanging those horrified but gleeful glances that parents trapped at a school play trade when someone else's child does something truly awful.

Did she really just wish Elvis Presley happy birthday on the 34th anniversary of his death? Why yes, yes she did. Did she really solicit an interview with Kathy Griffin and does she even know who that is? Yes, and obviously no. These are just the two latest moments in what has became our long national funniest nightmare ever.

The level of schadenfreude Bachmann delivers is delicious although the fear one develops of her true believers puts a bit of a damper on it.

Scarier, is exhibit B: Rick Perry. He appears to be all sociopath all the time. Governor Goodhair hates in a big Texas way. He hates gays, he hates the poor, he hates clean air, and he hates the government he aspires to lead, although he likes the money it hands out. He has used his gerrymandered votes to ratchet up the power of his office which had been rather weak before him, turning Texas into one of the most polluted and most corrupt states in the country. Texas is dirty, y'all.

And as for that oft-touted Texas Miracle? Myth. In fact, Governor Perry has been leading the race to the bottom. One out of four children in Texas is now living in poverty. Texas: Leaving the Children Behind.

Perhaps this is why most Texans would rather vote for Greyhair than Goodhair.

Rounding out the unelectables, we have Rick Santorum of Google fame, and Karl Rove's current crush, the very hungry Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Neither Exhibit C nor Exhibit D has been able to appeal much to the nation's voters despite the attention of Dan Savage and Mr. Toad.

As for the unpalatables, we have Exhibit E who doesn't count, Exhibit F who finally exited stage right utterly confused, and Exhibit G who actually has a shot at coming close to almost beating the incumbent.

I can't explain what happened to exhibit E, F is no longer of interest, so let's move right along to Mitt Romney. Romney has two very large problems:

1) He's sane.
2) He's honest.

The rabidly enraged voters who will bother to vote in the primary have no discernible interest in sanity. And even if Bachmann pulls out (very likely given how exhausted she is beginning to look) and Perry's secessionist self makes Northern voters too uncomfortable to vote for him, Romney can't win the general election.

He and Obama have virtually identical politics, with some exceptions like abortion, but single issue voters cancel each other out. Both men are fatherly, both men are calm, both men seem reasonable. They are virtually interchangeable and Romney won't tell distort his record or his opponent's. We are too nervous as a nation to trade one daddy for another, so we'll keep the one we have even if the other kids don't think he's the cool dad.

A Death

My heart broke a little to learn of this shockingly talented and terribly sad child's death. I can't say I was particularly surprised. She seems to have been trying to erase herself for the longest time in between moments when she found a reason to stick around, mostly for her art, for that incredible toe-curling voice that could take a song and turn it inside out. She was raw, as though she had no skin.

The French have a phrase for this (of course they do, who better to describe malaise?): ne pas être bien dans sa peau. I first encountered it in my HS French class reading Camus or a North African author whom I have forgotten in a ridiculous bout of shallow callowness.

"Je ne suis pas bien dans ma peau."

I can just hear her saying that. "My skin hurts."  I think Joplin had the same pain, and Hendrix. Morrison as well. And Cobain. All dead at 27. Such a fucking waste.

Rest in peace little girl. I am choosing to imagine you and Pearl with your arms thrown around each other, open-throated and comfortable in your skin.

A Battle, a Monument, and a Bridge.

It's Bunker Hill Day! Most of us have retained some glancing acquaintance with the more notable episodes of the American Revolution from our school days. Except a certain lady visitor to Boston who ran into a spot of bother even after a refresher course on the Freedom Trail. But oh well, not everyone can be facty and she made up for her gaffes by leaving quickly.

There was a parade, held the Sunday before as (a newish) tradition dictates, that ended at the Bunker Hill Monument. And the Monument is where our story begins.

There almost wasn't one. It turns out revolutions are pricey things. Ours was no exception. The Continental Congress began to print its own money starting with plates engraved by that very same gentleman engraver who managed not only to get captured by the British, but to lose his borrowed horse on his famous ride. A better rider was Sybil Ludington who went twice as far at half his age and managed to keep her horse.

The Continentals were printed on the same presses that spread the news of the Revolution by some well-known inkers and some we have forgotten. The British promptly enlisted the help of counterfeiters and managed to ruin the upstart economy which was admittedly stressed already by debt and lack of revenue. Start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

So the founding fathers took off their tricorns and went begging. They had a particularly generous benefactor in Haym Solomon. So generous was he that he died penniless after fighting as a Patriot, being captured twice, and surviving torture because the government couldn't pay off its loans. Or he may have been involved in market speculation. His wife, née Rachel Franks, came from one of the most prominent Jewish families of the Revolution, the Levys. It was her uncle, Nathan Levy, who started the Mickveh Israel in Philadelphia, home to Jewish Patriots fleeing British occupation. The Hazan was Gershom Mendes Seixas of the equally important Seixas family. It was in response to his brother, Moses Seixas, that President Washington wrote the moving letter To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport:


For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.


And now we come full circle, for it was Judah Touro, son of Touro Synagogue's Hazan, whose donation of $10,000 allowed for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. 

Copyright Andy Ryan

This history is largely unknown to the residents of Charlestown who live near Breed's Hill, the actual site of the monument. Their ignorance was hardly noteworthy until news broke that the bridge that connects their town to Boston was to be named after not just the monument but a local Jewish civil rights activist, Lenny Zakim. A small group of Townies opposed the decision to honor this incredible man and did so with rhetoric unworthy of the legacy of those who died for freedom on that day. But, to paraphrase our first president,

Happily, the Government of Boston gave to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

A great way to celebrate our Jewish Patriots after touring Beantown, is to head over to Zaftigs Deli in Brookline. The hot corned beef sandwich is a delicious nod to two of the heritages that helped shape this country. 

Update

OH YOU STUPID IDIOT!

A High-Tech Schmear

What's a guy named Weiner to do? Mostly rise above the pokes and jokes and try not to erupt when things come to a head.


But what do you do when several determined forces align to actually try to take you down? Especially when the normal arbiters of what stories have legs and will lead have lost any sense of professionalism? And have decided to follow the absolute lowest scum to call itself a journalist since Pulitzer and Hearst sold their souls for a penny a paper? It turns out taking the high road doesn't always work.


On Friday night, a seemingly deeply-disturbed individual who had been obsessed with Rep. Anthony Weiner for quite some time, tweeted that he had evidence that the member of Congress had sent a picture of his member to a young woman follower via Twitter.


To whom did he release this screenshot of the tumescent tweet? Why to said aforementioned scum. Said scum began an assault to lower the Member's standing in the eyes of the public that ought to have fizzled prematurely over a long holiday weekend, but oddly, it just got bigger.


Instead of practicing their craft, the pillars of the Fourth Estate braced themselves and dove right in.

Pundits like Alexandra Petri on WaPo had no qualms about describing some of the women who were following Weiner as "nubile out-of-state houris" as though all young women are breathless Monica Lewinskys hoping for the chance to service a powerful pervert. Even NPR, whom Weiner had forcefully defended against defunding, succumbed to the salacious. Did no one have the common sense to question this story from its dubious origins to its despicable mouthpiece?


Actually, some people did. As seems to be the case more and more often, MSM with all of its resources, experience, and access finds itself getting shamed by handfuls of people with laptops and questions. Firedoglake did this during the Scooter Libby trial. CAAFlog caught a major error in the SCOTUS ruling Kennedy v. Louisiana. Tiger Woods, etc. etc.


Add to that growing list of important impotence, the case of Weiner's wiener. When the Representative of New York's 9th District said he had been hacked, the basic questions of who, what, how, why, where, and when were not asked by those who get paid to ask them, but by bloggers. The most likely answers came from Cannonfire.


I was on Fark when someone linked to the Cannonfire post. Several of us thought the work that Joseph and milowent had done was pretty damn convincing, so we tried it ourselves. In fact, we hacked my Twitter. We got pretty much the same results. Without getting too technical, I'll just say that the only way we could get an image that looked like the screen shot of the one supposedly sent by the Member of his member, was if it was sent by someone else to my yfrog account:

NO URL information.

With URL information.
The URL did not show up until after the image had posted to my Twitter feed. So whoever took the screen shot off Weiner's yfrog account knew it was there before it was published. In other words, they put it there.


To give credit where credit is due, Rachel Maddow did a fine segment last night on how a hack would be possible. They seem to have missed the implications of the URLess image, but I'm sure that will get out soon.
Update: Another account of the Fark hack can be found here with a better technical description of what we did.


How does one recover after a long day of being an e-dick? With a bagel and lox from So's Your Mom. The closest I can get to a NY deli.

When Good Cooks Go Bad

This is what it looks like when you drop a knife on your foot. Every cook is taught to wear smart footgear at work. I wore steel-toed clogs and boots. And I never dropped a knife. Not once. I did slice off the top of my middle finger on my left hand cleaning the meat slicer the lazy way. (Grab a rag and turn it on and you will join the ranks of every prep cook who has the same injury along with the multiple burn marks up and down your fore arm from reaching into a hot oven to grab a sheet pan.) Welcome to the professional kitchen!

But I finally did drop a knife, and I did it at home where I was wearing flip flops.

It landed between my second and third toes and hit an artery. That was fascinating. I got to watch the blood pump as I tried to elevate my foot and staunch the bleeding. Utter failure. So I called 911 and went to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot and now I am lying in bed with a hot swollen trotter that wants to bathe in the salty healing waters of the Pacific and rest atop a cushioned ledge beside me as I recline to recuperate on a chaise longue in a garden filled with citrus flowers and jasmine.

FML.

It's sort of a miracle that I haven't done this before now. My first gig in a kitchen was cooking once a week for Mr & Mrs WASP. I adored them. Mr WASP had been the chef de maison until he lost his eyesight too late in life to relearn his way around the kitchen. Mrs WASP hated cooking and put an ad in the Boston Globe back before Craigslist. I answered that ad and the rest was history. I cooked the oddest things for them. At least to my mind. Prune souffles and chicken diablo (this dish I cooked for Julia Child, a friend of Mrs WASP, who loved it and I am so grateful I had no idea I was cooking for her at the time or I might have had a stroke.) One of the strangest moments was when I was asked to prepare an eggplant Parmesan without garlic because Mr WASP found the taste too strong. I made it with shallots.

My life with the WASPs was hilarious. Besides cooking for La Julia, I had multiple moments that I will never forget. Once Mrs WASP realized that she could throw almost anything at me and I would reproduce it with the energy and enthusiasm of an apprentice in a 5 star restaurant, she began to have me come in for dinner parties. We collaborated on dainty hors d'œuvres and hearty entres. I learned to cook for a child's table in the kitchen while rolling out course after course for the adults in the dining room. I learned that beef Stroganoff was not to be made from hamburger meat but was a delicate and complicated specialty worthy of my keenest attention. I very quickly gained a working knowledge of some of the most important dishes from the best kitchens circa 1958. A very good year for food. I learned how to please a palate and fill a belly.

But my favorite moments in the cuisine des WASPs were rather more incidental. The time their eldest boy brought a girl home. She was, we discovered after all the ingredients for dinner had been purchased and each course had been prepared, a vegetarian. Mrs WASP was not pleased. She came flying back into the kitchen and unleashed a series of invectives the likes of which I had never heard.

"Can I help you, Mrs WASP?" I asked, alarmed by her rare presence in what I had come to view as MY kitchen.

"No, Opti. That fucking girl that Mark brought home is a fucking vegetarian. I will not have you do one ounce more work on this dinner, She can eat a fucking carrot."

So she threw open the door of the fridge, pulled out the crisper, grabbed an unwashed, unpeeled, filthy carrot, and slapped it on a plate. There was dinner for the fucking vegetarian. I believe young Master Mark never brought her home again.

Another rare moment when Mrs WASP invaded my kitchen was on one particularly fine Saturday morning. She had opened pretty much every cupboard in the joint and was swearing as each door swung open.

"Mrs WASP, what on earth are you looking for?"

"Oh GODDAMIT, Opti! Muffy is running late for our matinee and we don't have time for our martinis before the show, so I'm going to have to pack a fucking thermos of them to take with me and I can't find the Goddamn thermos!"

I found the thermos and watched, enthralled as Mrs WASP poured straight gin from the freezer into the coveted vessel and departed to go see her show. There may have been a whisper of vermouth but if there was it was so slight that it disappeared in my memory.

Me, Mam, and Three Aunties.

My mother has been known to flit about the country (and other countries) ISO good art. I have had the extraordinary privilege of learning how to look at paintings by watching her look at paintings. She was herself a very accomplished visual artist but her eyesight is wanting and she never drew or painted after I was about ten as best I remember. She also loves drawings and some sculpture, but my devotion to photography and architecture is a sort of grandchild to her love of the broad and beautiful brush. My brother took our visual education and incorporated his own love of the Shakeresque reverence for function to become one of the best landscape architects I have ever seen. We are truly her children. There is a quickening pulse that anyone who knows how to "read" art gets in front of some pieces, or on a particular patch of land, or in a perfectly-proportioned room that we owe her. It is a very pure joy.

She taught me many other things. I know how to cook because she made me sort and clean dried pinto beans and stood behind me as we refried them. I know a well-made piece of clothing because she made me a black watch plaid shirt with mother of pearl snaps and a yoke with the prettiest collar a girl ever had. She taught us how to iron. From the smallest piece to the largest. She grew Shirley poppies in our garden because I loved their papery frivolity.

She taught me to recognize quality. And beauty.

So she decided to come to DC and drag one of my aunties, a distinguished artist in her own right, to come see the Gauguin exhibit at the National Gallery. It drove my poor auntie Papier to distraction. "Utterly unorgnized." But the show was deemed worthy and we met up after to catch up and enjoy each other.

Painting by Mario Andres Robinson

I herded them to Locolat for baguettes which the Belgian owner, Neil, has flown in from France, and an almond truffle and then we hit up the Morton Fine Art Gallery next door as well as their PopUp Project gallery just down the street. Phenomenal.

After that we headed off to dinner at Radius, one of my favorite DC restaurants, which features a tightly-edited wine list to accompany a spectacular menu focused on local seasonal ingredients and a shockingly creative but always honest technique. We were there for three hours and I got to see two of my other favorite aunties: La Tia and La Lizzie who joined us to feast on springy splendor and a whole lot of green. (I highly recommend the pickled veg. Carrots, potatoes, and ramps (I think) in a sweet-tangy brine that turns everything a gaudy, Gauguin pink and tastes like a summer sunset.)