Strippers for the Lord

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Coming East

Every Monday morning I volunteer at church with a group known simply as “Peanuts.” Fifteen or more of us meet in the parish hall at 8:30 and painstakingly strip the skins off of raw Virginia peanuts after soaking them in boiling water. Then the kitchen crew takes them and cooks them and packages them in quart containers for sale. The money made on these peanuts is used for outreach. Some goes to support the food pantry, some may go to Habitat for Humanity, or to buy equipment needed at a homeless shelter, or it is used for various other projects. We usually make about $12,000 a year stripping peanuts. Our peanuts are the best I’ve ever tasted and are always in high demand. Some people even get testy if they haven’t gotten their order in on time and they cannot get their peanut fix.

I go to Peanuts every Monday because I feel it’s important to volunteer in your community. I go to Peanuts because I believe the money we’re raising through our endeavors helps a lot of people. But the reason that I would rather be nowhere else on Monday mornings is because I love being with my amazing volunteers. You see, I am one of the youngest there, by far. At 63, I am a good fifteen years younger than most of the other peanut strippers. Our oldest volunteer is J. who turned 91 last September. He was a fighter pilot in the South Pacific in World War II. The majority of these oldsters have lived in the Hampton Roads most of their lives. They know everyone. I love listening to them tell their life stories with their soft and genteel Tidewater drawl.

These people have lived a lifetime, worked hard and retired, suffered the deaths of children and spouses, had serious health issues they’ve had to cope with, yet they have the most delightful sense of humor and joie de vivre. It’s impossible to be around them and not come away with that same exultation of spirit. Yesterday morning the topic of discussion was cataracts. One Peanut Lady said that after her cataract surgery, she  could see better than before she had cataracts. She actually didn’t need glasses anymore. When I marveled at that, she said, “It’s not all good, you know. There’s always a downside to everything.” She looked a little solemn, and I asked what the bad part of the surgery was, expecting something very unpleasant. “Well,” she said, “when I got home, I saw how really dirty the house was. And I looked at those walls and wondered what I was thinking painting them that horrid color!”

These wonderful seniors are my role models. Some have returned to Peanuts after going through illnesses that brought them close to death. If they cannot drive, they find someone to bring them. They continue to be relevant in a world that so easily dismisses people their age. I am privileged to work with them as strippers for the Lord.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Distorted

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Coming East

I took this picture from the inside of a monastery on a little island outside of Mystic, Connecticut.

Through a monastery window in Connecticut

A Bonus of Blogging:

I’ve been following Big Al’s blog and he’s been following mine. Recently, after discovering that I live in Virginia Beach, Big Al, a Virginian himself, proposed that we get together next time he and his wife, Patty, came to town. Because we travel so much, we’ve missed a couple of opportunities, but this past weekend we finally met.

Al and Patty invited my husband, George, and me over to their house for a glass of wine and snacks before the four of us went to dinner. I could tell from Al’s writing that he and his wife were going to be people we would enjoy, but we couldn’t have imagined how much we would enjoy  them our first visit.  As we talked about our families and life experiences, we were delighted to see how many things we had in common.

I told my daughter, another blogger, about our meeting and how well it went, and she laughed and said, “Blogging is like a dating service for finding friends.” She is so right. Maybe we should call it Blog.com. We’ve lived here for three and a half years and have not been able to make any close friends. It’s so hard when you start over at our age. But now, through blogging, we’ve made instant friends, ones whom we know will become dear to us very quickly. And the bonus is that they are moving here in June. I love blogging!

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I Disagree With the Experts

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Coming East

I just read an article in the paper this morning about a study reported in the journal Sleep that examined the quality of sleep in more than 150,000 Americans.  The study purported to debunk the myth that you sleep worse as you get older.  According to their study, older people actually sleep better than younger people with fewer sleep disturbances.  I disagree with their findings for a specific reason which will be made clear when you read about a recent dream I had.

I usually don’t remember dreams, but this one was so terrifying that it has stayed with me in clear detail.  My heart still pounds when I recount it.  In the dream my girlfriend of nearly fifty years and I had decided to go on a little trip together.  She chose going to a rustic cabin in the deep dark woods, far from any civilization.  Might I point out that in real life, she and I consider staying in anything less than a three-star hotel as “roughing it,” and even in my dream, her decision to go into the woods was a tad unsettling.

The woods were lovely, dark and deep (thank you, Robert Frost), but as soon as we entered the cabin, something didn’t feel right.  I sensed a menacing presence in the forest, a presence that felt like it was getting closer every minute.  My friend felt it, too, but we thought we must be two old ladies letting our imaginations run away with us.  Then we heard it.  It started as a low rumbling we could feel in the pit of our stomachs.  We looked out the kitchen window, but it was nearly dark, and we couldn’t see anything.  As the rumble became louder, we realized it was growling.  We clutched each other, secure in the knowledge that we were both pathetic cowards.  Whatever it was, we were safe inside.  Just to make sure, we went around and locked all the doors and windows.

The growling increased and now seemed to be coming from all sides of the cabin.  We had drawn the shades against the coming of the dark, but we ventured to peek under one.  The shriek was awful to hear, all the more awful when I recognized it as my own.  For there, on the other side of the window, was an enormous bear, but not just any bear.  It looked like a giant, stuffed teddy bear with no eyes but ferociously sharp fangs and claws.  (Now that I think of it, it looked a little like Walter, the teddy bear my youngest son had when he was five, without the fangs and claws, of course.)  And not only was it not just any bear, it was not the only bear.  We were surrounded by the hideous creatures and more were pouring out of the woods.  Surely we’ll be safe inside the cabin and they’ll be gone in the morning, I thought.  But as soon as you have the thought “surely,” you know you’re doomed.

Picture this with fangs and claws

The sound of breaking glass heightened our terror, and my girlfriend grabbed my arm, pulling me towards the door.  “We’ve got to make a break for it,” she said.  “The car’s right outside the door.  Let’s go!”

As much as I wanted to oblige, I had one problem that kept me rooted to the spot.  “I can’t.  I have to go to the bathroom first.”

“Forget the damn bathroom (my damn, not hers).  We’ve got to get out of here now!” she yelled.

“But I really have to go bad!”

Picture this:  the ghastly monsters are starting to climb through the windows, snarling is at a fever pitch, my girlfriend is screaming and yanking on my arm, and I’m staying put because I have to pee.  The bears are so close now, we can smell their stinking breath.  And then…I woke up.  Yikes!  I really did have to pee, I realized as I ran to the bathroom.  How I hate not sleeping through the night anymore.  Aging sucks sometimes.

And that’s why the experts are wrong.

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We’re Losing the Voice of Reason

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Coming East

The decision of Olympia Snowe, the moderate Republican from Maine, to retire from the Senate is more than a little troubling. We’ve suffered through more than three years of gridlock as senators and congressmen from both sides of the isle refuse to work together. They point fingers at each other like little children, accusing the other of not playing fair, of not having the country’s best interests at heart. Fewer and fewer of our elected leaders are willing to work together, and the moderates are starting to leave what they perceive as a sinking ship. But where does that leave us as the passengers?

Olympia Snowe was one of the increasingly few voices of reason in the Senate, willing to work with Democrats and Republicans alike and find compromises that would result in solutions that moved us forward. The online edition of the Washington Post said, “Snowe has made a reputation, over 33 years in Congress, as someone eager to build political bridges between moderates from both parties. But in recent years, she has become an increasingly isolated voice in a Congress hobbled by partisan gridlock.”

The easy answer, to vote these uncompromising people out of office, is no answer at all because we only know some of them, the very verbal ones whose names are always on the news, and there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable people to take their place. What’s even more disturbing, though, is that not only are our leaders unreasonable, I see an increasing number of our citizens who are caught up in the same uncompromising nonsense, the same mean-spirited name-calling of people in the party they don’t support, and I haven’t heard any voices of reason loud enough to be heard over their shouting.

I don’t blame Senator Snowe for leaving. There is a limit to the nonsense that reasonable people can suffer before they’ve had enough. It’s all well and good that we have our wonderful Constitution, but that document isn’t what governs our country and the people that were elected to do so are not up to the task. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling very helpless right now, and I don’t have a good feeling that things will change come next January, no matter who is elected.

ADDENDUM:  I opened our paper this morning and this was the headline.  The gridlock is at every level of our government, not just the federal.

Front page of Virginian-Pilot, March 1. 2012

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The Face of Poverty

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Coming East

Front page of the Virginian-Pilot, February 29, 2012

I was planning on writing another light-hearted post this morning, but reading the newspaper at breakfast put an end to that.  On the front page was a picture of a young woman, Kimberly Meade, crying in her car.  She had lost everything she owned in a fire at a cheap motel. She said, “We moved here two days ago after we were evicted from our home.  All my stuff is gone.  I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

We drive by that motel fairly often when we’re driving across the Hampton Roads Bay Bridge Tunnel on our way to Williamsburg or Richmond.  It is in a run-down section of Norfolk, right on the Chesapeake Bay.  Even had the motel not been ravaged by fire, it would have been a less than ideal place, to say the least, for a single mother to have to raise a child.  Now this young woman and her four-year-old daughter didn’t even have that.

The Red Cross stepped in, as they always do, to help the people displaced by the fire, but, of course, that is just a temporary fix.  There are so many Kimberly Meades out there that do not know where they are going to go, what they’re going to eat, how they are going to survive.  The children of these people are destined to continue this cycle.  I don’t know what the answer is, but political elections should be about finding a solution.  Politicians can talk all they want about the rights of the unborn, but if they would put as much effort into helping those who are born, we might see some change.

Much has been said about continuing unemployment benefits for those who have lost jobs, but we don’t talk about those people who aren’t eligible for unemployment because they didn’t have a job in the first place.  What about people fresh out of college or technical schools who couldn’t find any employment when they graduated?  If they have a strong family support system, they will make it, even though it may be a struggle for themselves and their families.  But so many people do not have that support system.  I worry about them.

Sometimes I feel like Ron Paul does, though I definitely do not advocate isolationist policies.  But why do we spend so much money on people who hate us when we have so many people who are hurting right here in our own country?  I know throwing money around doesn’t always fix things because we have to get at the root of the problem, whatever that is, but it still seems like a better use of taxpayers’ money than throwing it to countries who would love nothing more than seeing our destruction.

I have no other reason for writing this than that I saw that picture in the paper this morning, and it made me sad.  It made me cry.  Kimberly Meade.  Remember her name. Remember her face.  Poverty has a name.  It has a face.

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Maybe It’s Never Too Late!

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Coming East

I have the pleasure of following a blog called Life with three boys!  Jenny, the author is pregnant with her fourth and final child, and she says she is a little sad that this is her last.  I remember having those same feelings when I was a young mother.  I was sure I would go through depression when my childbearing years were over.

Imagine my excitement when I read in the paper yesterday morning about a Harvard research team that has discovered hidden egg stem cells in mice.  They think that women might have these hidden stem cells, too.  Previously, scientists thought that females were born with a finite number of eggs, and when these eggs were gone, that was that.  But that might not be the case with women, just as it apparently isn’t with mice.

I know that it will take the researchers several years to see if women have these hidden egg stem cells and if these could lead to viable eggs, but that gives me time to prepare.  I’m picturing what life might be like if I could have a baby in a few years.  My babies have always been tiny ones, so that’s good, because I might have trouble lugging a big one up and down my stairs.  I’m a little stiff in the morning.  Having been a La Leche League leader in the ’70’s, I’m a big proponent of breast feeding.  Hmmm…that might present a problem.  Mine have shrunk a tad.  I wonder if working out more at the YMCA will help.  Now I have a new reason to lift those weights!  Gee, I hope I will be able to remember where I put the wee babe down.  It took me three weeks to find my sunglasses because I  left them in one of my traveling bags I had shoved in the linen closet. Surely, the little tyke’s crying will give me a clue to his or her whereabouts.  If my hearing hasn’t gone by then.  And if I can find my glasses.

You know, I think I’m remembering the feeling I experienced once I knew I couldn’t have any more babies.  Relief!

NOTE:  This is a real study, and if the research leads to viable eggs, this could prove useful to help infertile women.  Young, infertile women.  Worth following.

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What Are Your Favorite Movies?

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Coming East

This will be short because I’m still tired after staying up to see the Oscars. Don’t know why I did that since this year it was pretty clear what would get best picture. I like to see the acceptance speeches, which you miss if you just read the results in the paper. Of course, watching the show made me think about what movies have been my favorites. I’ve watched many outstanding movies, great movies, some that even received an academy award, but I don’t count them my favorites if I haven’t watched them over and over again, loving them each time. For example, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List were terrific, but they are too tough to watch more than once. Here, then, are some of the movies that do make the category of favorites for me:

  • Without a doubt, my very favorite drama is To Kill a Mockingbird.  Was there ever a more admirable character than Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck?  For years I watched it once a year with my students at the end of our study of the novel.  It is one of the few movies that does  justice to the novel it is about.
  • In the comedy category, two movies come to mind, Princess Bride and When Sally Met Harry.  Princess Bride is hilarious all the way through, whereas only one scene in the second movie stands out, the one we all know quite well, but that one scene is enough to make me want to see the movie more than once or even twice.
  • As for the best Sci-fi movie, a genre I dearly love but which doesn’t produce nearly enough excellent entries, the original Star Wars movie wins out for me.  I remember  watching it at the Cape Cod Mall when it opened in 1977.  We had two kids then, and the youngest was two and fell asleep in my arms before the movie started and slept right through it. The movie was nothing less than the classic struggle between good and evil, with young Luke Skywalker taking on the role of David against Darth Vader’s Goliath.   Characters, both the leading ones and minor ones, we’re fascinating, making me marvel at the imagination that created them.
  • Finally, in the category of scary movies, my two favorites are Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Psycho.  The suspense in both of those is so intense that I can feel my heart palpitate.  Even when I know what’s coming, my heart races again and again.

Those are a few of my all-time favorites.  What are yours?

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Come On, Women! Where the Heck Are You?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Coming East

My daughter recently volunteered to babysit an adorable five-month-old baby boy to help out a struggling family. Having been the mother of baby girls, my daughter was unprepared for how quickly she could get sprayed while trying to change his diaper. I told her about these little “tents” I saw in a Hallmark store. They are designed to fit over a certain part of a little boy’s anatomy to give the mother, or whoever changes the baby, time to take the old diaper off and put on a new one without getting a mouth full of pee. We both laughed about the clever little device.

That got me thinking about other little devices we women could think up for the big boys that might curb the number of unwanted pregnancies so we wouldn’t have this whole reproductive rights issue on our shoulders. We should share the burden because, last time I checked, women can’t get pregnant all by themselves. It takes two to tango, as they say. Yet only women are singled out as the “culprits” in unwanted pregnancies as if we are sultry seductresses preying on poor helpless men.

I have no idea what measures we could propose to hamper a man’s sex life, but whatever they are, they should be invasive and humiliating. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? And the measures should be voted into law so men can’t wiggle (no pun intended) out of them. I’m open to suggestions. Mandatory vasectomies in certain situations shouldn’t be ruled out.

The problem is that these measures would be impossible to vote into law because men make up the vast majority of lawmakers. Women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought hard for a woman’s right to vote. According to the 2010 census, there are more women of voting age in this country than men of the same age. Why are women so underrepresented? Why have women so passively given up their voice?

I started following an excellent blog recently called Broadside. The author, Caitlin Kelly, said, “The last time I looked, American women do have the vote. But you’d never know it.” Men dictating what women can and cannot do with their bodies is nothing less than tyranny of the minority. It is long past the time when we women need to step up and vote into office some of the many competent women out there. If we won’t speak for ourselves, we let men do it, and we see where that is going. I have a huge knot in my stomach thinking that some of my rights could be abridged while a man gets to skate on by with no responsibility, for unless I missed it, only women’s rights seem to be the subject of political discussion these days.

But back to my original discussion, starting with those little tents. Ladies, are your brains working? Are you getting any ideas? No, no, don’t send them to me. Send them to the presidential candidates so they can see what they might be in store for when we women finally step up to the plate. They should be afraid. Very afraid.

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What a Bargain!

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Coming East

When I got the mail yesterday afternoon, I found a bargain book catalogue. Making a lovely cup of Earl Grey for myself, I propped my feet up, sat down and began to peruse the catalogue for books I might like to add to my collection. The following are some of the ones that didn’t make my list.

  • And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.  Though written by two greats, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, the  blurb said this work of fiction ( thank God!) ” tells a hard-boiled story of bohemian New York during WWII, full of drugs and art, obsession and violence.” The authors were unknowns at the time and the manuscript was rejected time and time again and sat in filing cabinets for decades.  Aren’t we lucky to finally get access to it!  (My typing is dripping with sarcasm, in case you couldn’t tell.)
  • What To Say To Get Your Way:  The Magic Words That Guarantee Better, More Effective Communication.  Don’t need it.  I already know those words and use them quite often.  “Feeling Frisky?”
  • Never Be Lied To Again:  How to Get the Truth in 5 Minutes or Less in Any Conversation or Situation.  Now if they had a book entitled Never Lie Again:  How to Tell the Truth in Five Minutes or Less, I’d buy a bunch of copies and send them to the presidential candidates.
  • Spam:  The Cookbook.  I don’t need to elaborate why I’m not getting this one, do I?
  • 101 Things to Do With Canned Soup.  I can think of only one:  READ THE SODIUM CONTENT ON THE LABEL!
  • Totally Potato Cookbook.  Can you picture the people who would actually get excited about this cookbook?  Remember the children’s song “I’m a Little Teapot, Short and Stout?” Somewhere in that title is the answer to my question.
  • Collector’s Guide to Pez, 3rd Edition.  Darn!  Can’t believe I missed the first two.
  • The Encyclopedia of Wood.  Now I enjoy a good thriller as well as anyone, but I think this may be over the top, even for me.
  • The Plot to Seize the White House.  Yeah, me too.  I thought this was about current politics, but it’s really about a “shocking true story of conspiracy to overthrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1930’s.” I think what you and I were thinking it was about is even more shocking.

I’m only on page 9 and there are 80 pages, so I’ll have a few moadd books to add at a later time.

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Some Things You Didn’t Know About Me

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Coming East

During the course of this blog, I’ve shared many things about my life, but I’ve also left many interesting facts out. For example, I bet you didn’t know that I graduated at the top of my high school class when I was only sixteen, and then I took a break from my education and went to New York where I had bit parts in off-Broadway shows for a couple of years before I returned to school at the University of Connecticut. I was able to finish in three years and then went on to get my Ph.D. in applied mathematics at the University of Chicago. Though I was offered a high-paying job as an F.B.I. analyst, I turned it down to marry the love of my life and have his children.

Sigh. The truth is I graduated at seventeen somewhere in the top quarter of my class and got an English degree at UConn, married the love of my life (that part, at least, is true!) and we moved to rural Connecticut, lived across from the cow pastures, and I stayed at home, baking bread and raising kids.

The Supreme Court said it will review the Stolen Valor Act which makes it a crime to lie about receiving a military honor. A Federal Appeals Court found that it violates free speech rights. This will be an interesting case to follow because, as it stands now, it basically gives the government the ability to decide which lies it deems worthy of prosecution. While I think lying about receiving a service medal is despicable, I’m not sure I would want to say it isn’t protected by the First Amendment, I’ll be listening to the arguments very carefully.

The problem is that so many despicable things are protected under the First Amendment, you can’t start picking and choosing which things are too despicable. Its all in the eye of the beholder. For example, it was ruled that people could gather outside a military funeral and shout anti-military or anti-gay slurs. “The Supreme Court ruled decisively Wednesday that a fringe anti-gay group has a constitutionally protected right to stage hateful protests at the funerals of dead servicemen, saying ‘such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.'” (Washington Times, March 2, 2011). That makes me spitting mad, but I still don’t think I want the government being the truth police. That’s a dangerous path to take.

Some argue that lying about the facts has never been supported by the First Amendment. If that were the case, it would shut the mouths of all our presidential candidates. Hmmm…maybe I need to give this more thought.

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