Just returned from vacation with the hot husband and the kids… behind on everything now, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. Emails to answer, blog stuff to catch up on, writing to do and oh yes, cruise pounds to lose. So, if you are waiting on me, rest assured, I’ll get there, promise.
In true grade school form…
What I Learned Over Spring Break 2012
Texas is a land of strip malls, churches and porn stores… oh, yes, and wires, lots and lots of wires. It’s a huge place, so I’m sure there are plenty of gorgeous places, too, I just haven’t seen them yet. (I can’t wait for the “Don’t Mess With Texas” comments.)
Just a lot of wires... a lotta, lotta, lotta wires.
It takes approximately twelve minutes for the caffeine and sugar in a coke to hit the blood sugar of a twelve-year-old boy.
Dolphins are, like, awesome at surfing the wake of cargo ships. Like, so awesome.
There are very real reasons why there exists a stereotype of an American as a loud, rude, fat jerk. Like every stereotype it’s wrong, unkind and not true, yet there is a reason it exists.
The Hunger Games Book #1 is worth the hype, so few things are.
Little sisters are still tattletales.
My busy, busy girls... their poor brother!
All I really need for a great vacation are: a cold beer with fresh lime, the whisper of the waves, the laughter of my children catching the wind, soft sand under my toes and, of course, Eric.
“All You Can Eat” is a terrible thing to do to a body.
It just takes ONE Lay’s potato chip to create an angel fish feeding frenzy.
One potato chip=lots of FUN!
Caribbean white sand is magic. You’ll never get it all out of your swimming suit. Ever.
For word on the anger level of the Texans, how the other two Hunger Games books stack up and whether I ever get all the sand out… well, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, have a truly wonderful, stellar and otherwise blissful day.
This week’s song choice may surprise a few of you, though it shouldn’t, at least, not my close friends. I’m sharing The Dance as sung by Garth Brooks. I was surprised to realize that though Brooks is an accomplished songwriter, he did not write this particular song. The Dance was actually written by Brooks’ friend, Tony Arata and appeared on Brooks’ self titled 1989 album. I talk about my deep and abiding love for the heavy riffs and soaring melodies of metal music, but I’ve been known to go for a country diddy, now and again. In fact, at our wedding, Eric and I danced to Garth Brooks’ The River for our first song together. It still holds a special place in both our hearts.
This song is a simple, beautiful tune and it has a double meaning. It is a typical country theme, one of love lost. However, it is also the tale of a life ended whilst chasing a dream. Not being a huge country fan, I happened upon the ballad some time in early 1994. I caught the video late one night on tv. The images found me completely off guard as they feature fallen Americans, icons and heroes to many of us. These include (as detailed by the online site, Wikipedia):
Lane Frost- World Champion Bull rider, who was killed by a bull after riding it for a full eight seconds in the arena.
Keith Whitley- Country singer who died young of alcohol poisoning, he’s seen with his then wife Lorrie Morgan (a country star in her own right)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
John F. Kennedy
The crew of the Challenger Space Shuttle which exploded after launch in 1986, with many of us watching it live on tv (I was in Mr. Graf’s AP American History class), killing all seven crew members on board, including teacher, Christa McAuliffe.
John Wayne
Later Brooks was invited to sing The Dance in 2001 at a NASCAR event honoring racing legend Dale Ernhardt after his untimely death.
What hooked me, besides the haunting melody, was the video itself. Not simply that these are some of our nation’s heroes, taken too soon, but that the piece featured personal scenes of JFK playing with his children, Dr. King kissing his wife and snuggling his little boy, even Keith Whitley joking with Lorrie Morgan, and all of them happy, vital and so alive. It reminds us, no one is a monolithic hero, that “icon” truly is a four-letter word and quite simply, people are people. While they were public figures to so many, their passing becomes much more poignant when you see them as the husbands, wives, parents, and friends they were in their own lives. Yes, they were a loss to the world, but how much more of a loss were they to their loved ones and how much more did they themselves give up in their early exit from life’s stage?
I really wanted the original video, the one that had stuck so firmly in my mind’s eye. It was important to me to find the piece which had made such an impression so even now, some eighteen years later, it still exerted a powerful hold on my heart. Surprisingly, it was difficult to find, even in today’s instant gratification of the Internet Age. That being said, when you click on the link below, it will take you away from my site, just hit back to finish reading this piece. There is also an advertisement, which I hate doing to you all, but it’s what I found I had to work with. I did find other sites with the video, but they all had something wrong with it, ie, the voice track wasn’t synched to the visual (most annoying and it undercuts the power of the story). Also, I wanted you to hear what Garth himself had to say about this song and why he chose to tell the story in this way.
Our lives are a miracle and I can only think one of the reasons we are able to blithely ignore our own fragile mortality lies in the joy of not knowing. So long as we have the luxury of not marking the number of our days, of not seeing the end of our path, we can revel in the moment. We can enjoy the fantasy of infinity, the endless tomorrows of the road before us. Put a number, a countdown in the mix and it becomes a vastly different proposition altogether.
We are all travelers and, whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re just passing through. No one gets out alive. With this in mind, be gentle on your fellow travelers. No matter how different their views, their beliefs, their decisions may be from your own, no one wakes up in the morning bound and determined to completely mess things up. In each of our own very different ways, we all strive to do the best we can. No one knows where the road leads and none knows when their dance ends. Though life can be cruel, this is the ultimate kindness, the illusion there is always another tomorrow, another chance to do better, to change and continue our dance.
As Ellen DeGeneres would say, “Be kind to one another”. We’re all in this together.
I do so love to dance.
“Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel–you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.”
First off, a big shout out to my friend Carla for this week’s song, You’ll Be Mine.
It’s by a duo of sisters, Allison and Catherine Pierce, simply called The Pierces. It has a light, lyrical sort of pop meets adult contemporary vibe. The harmonies remind me of some of the best things I like about Fleetwood Mac when they had all creative cylinders firing. There’s a little bit of the Bangles a la Hazy Shade of Winter or the Mamas & Papas (if they’d only been mamas, of course). If Gotye owes Sting and Peter Gabriel each a nice muffin basket (and he so does), the Pierces should definitely be calling Edible Arrangements for a little something for Lindsay Buckingham, not to mention a spiritual shout out to the late John Phillips. Just saying.
Their album containing this song is called You & I. It was produced by Coldplay’s bass player, Guy Berryman. He and Coldplay’s drummer both play on the album. I’m intrigued to see where these sisters end up. Pop music, read here, commercial and mainstream success and acceptance, is such a simplistic and narrow field. The charts are dominated by the latest Disney star, hiphop and Katy Perry. Every once in a while, something of quality like an Adele or a Florence and The Machine sneaks in there, but honestly, how often does that happen? The Pierces on paper seem made for pop. It’s approachable music; lots of fans from other genres will be able to appreciate it. Both sisters are distractingly pretty so that works with today’s shallow visual based media. However, their music is actually good… so, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. If Adele can make it, maybe there’s room for others as well.
So, right now you’re looking at this blog’s title and waiting for the other shoe to drop… you aren’t wrong. Though I adore music and it is a huge part of my daily life, I didn’t start doing Musical Mondays just for the catchy hooks. I usually have a point.
Home schooling is an interesting topic.
I say this because Allison and Catherine come from a very interesting background. 1.) They were home schooled while growing up in Alabama. 2.) They, unlike 75% of today’s home schooled children, are NOT right-wing Conservative Christians. 3.) They are only a few years younger than me and as they describe the music they listened to as children: Simon & Garfunkel, Seals & Croft, Cat Stevens, Carole King and Joni Mitchell. I know what their house sounded like, a lot like the house my sister and I grew up in once upon a time. 4.) They come from the tradition that actually invented home schooling, yep, they’re the children of hippies. Cool, huh?
It shows in the above video, doesn’t it?
At this point I just KNOW my mom would want me to point out that my parents weren’t hippies. They didn’t have time, what with college, meeting, getting married, having me, my dad holding down three jobs, though they did love the music.
Where was I? Oh yes, home schooling, not a fan. I liken it to parents who decide to have their young children on a strict vegan life style. Can it be done well? Yes. Is it usually? No. Most parents simply aren’t qualified or have the time and the patience to be able to make a vegan lifestyle work with the nutritional demands of a young child’s developing brain and body. Kids need fat and protein. Likewise, home schooling, can it be done well? Yes. Is it usually? No. I look at the parents I’ve met who home school and I usually see people who are not qualified or do not have the time and patience to be able to make home schooling work with the societal and educational demands of a young child’s development and interaction with people not like themselves. Kids need exposure to new ideas and the freedom to explore the world. You remember the world, right, folks? It’s where we live.
When I was researching this blog, I expected to find lots of negatives to home schooling. I did find negatives, but I found a few concrete positives as well. Some positives that I can really relate to are an educational setting without bullying or peer pressure. Also, home schooling offers gifted or special needs children a chance to learn at the pace that suits their needs. Parents have the option of emphasizing the values they feel are important, or the aspects of history they feel most strongly about. (Clearly, I would include a women’s studies section!) On the other hand, the negatives were not what I would expect. One mentioned was cost. You’re still paying for public schools through your taxes, yet need to purchase educational materials for your curriculum. Not to mention, home schooling requires a substantial time commitment, necessitating one parent staying home. This definitely affects the household earning potential.
As late as 1993, home schooling was still illegal in many states. While it now legal, and a growing, more accepted phenomena, it is under regulated and its effects are not well-known. Proponents point to good scores by home schooled students on standardized tests, however, there is no way of knowing if those same children would not have scored just as well, if not better, with traditional schooling methods. After all, one could argue that home schoolers have more involved parents, so the active parenting, combined with main-stream education could yield an exceptional student. Impossible to say either way.
Regardless, I respect the right of parents to make this decision for their families. That being said, I think if you are going teach your children, you should have a teaching credential. Only ten states currently require home schooling parents to have even a high school diploma, let alone an advanced degree or teaching expertise. I also believe, despite the bullying that sometimes occurs, it is critical for children to go through the pain and joy of dealing and bonding with their peers. I want my children to develop relationships with authority figures other than my husband and myself. It’s a big, wide world and my children will be better prepared to face it and thrive in it if I let them find their wings, rather than clipping them, keeping them safely caged in the home coop.
Regardless of how you feel on the topic, these sisters are undeniably talented and in this instance, home schooling clearly resulted in two multi-dimensional, creative, individualistic, strong women. Good for them. You can learn more about The Pierces on their website.
"You and I" EP by the Pierces Released May 30th, 2011
This week’s selection goes back a ways. It’s Journey’s classic song, Lights; their ode to the city by the bay, San Francisco. Added bonus, this video features original keyboardist Gregg Rolie who left the band just before the Escape album (he was replaced by Jonathan Cain of The Babys) and goes into the song Stay With Me.
I love the band Journey. As a female growing up in the SF Bay Area in the 80′s I think it was a requirement to be a rabid Journey fan. It’s been interesting this last decade or so watching a kind of Journey revival. The band’s hits have popped up in movies and TV shows, on karaoke, they even regularly show up on the iTunes top singles chart. I have to say that every time some American Idol wannabe or The Voice hopeful attempts a Journey song, I am just reminded of how good Steve Perry’s voice is. Listening to those bozos on the singing competition shows slaughter Faithfully or Don’t Stop Believing is deeply painful.
My parents moved around a bit for the first eleven years of my life before settling in Santa Rosa in 1980. I was half way through fifth grade at the time and came to consider Santa Rosa my home town, but I was born in San Francisco. I’m sixth generation San Franciscan and I feel very connected to the city, although I haven’t lived there since I was a small child. For some areas six generations might not sound very impressive, but for California, hey, I’m like, old school.
The lights and the bridges of the city beckon we Bay Area residents to it. My likes and favorite places in San Francisco have altered over the years as I have changed and grown up. I began by loving Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Park and the zoo, then it was dance clubs and bars. Nowadays, I tend towards the restaurants. Here are five of my current favorite places. Should you ever visit, I hope you enjoy them!
1.) Land’s End- It’s part of Golden Gate Park on the Outer Richmond. Fabulous views of the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate. If you can hike the trail at sunset, so much the better. Best to do this on a week day though, when it is virtually empty, weekends can be a bit much.
Land's End Maze- a great place to clear your head
2.) This one is less a place and more a food. I had a hard time trying to decide between talking about good SF Cioppino and good SF sourdough. While I love both, many of you have heard me mention my deep sourdough addiction over the years (it’s why I cannot, will not leave the Bay Area), so I have to go with the bread. I love Boudin’s, but for a really classic loaf with that pure sourdough bite, you have to try Wedemeyer- YUM. They do not have any stores, but they do Fed Ex. You can even call in an order and pick it up the next time you are in the city. They are at:
I cannot overemphasize the yum factor here, people.
3.) One of my favorite restaurants is just off Union Square. It used to be the site of Trader Vic’s (a San Francisco classic) and now is the home the French-Vietnamese menu of Le Colonial. It’s impossible to put into words how good their food is, I can only make yummy sounds and I do not know how to effectively spell those without this reading like goobly-gook. I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. Their website is:
Mind you, there are so many good restaurants in San Francisco, there’s no reason to ever have a meal that is not delectable.
4.) The Fort Mason Community Garden- Established in 1979, the garden is tucked away in the bluffs looking out over the Bay, across from Alcatraz. There are now one hundred and twenty-five plots in this community park. It is a beautiful spot with interesting hidden walks and lots of surprises. You can even walk to the Golden Gate Bridge from there if you are feeling adventurous.
Fort Mason Community Garden
5.) City Lights Bookstore- now that A Clean Well-Lighted Place For Books has closed, this has to be one of the best independent book stores left on the planet. They are a book store and a publishing house, super cool. They can be found at:
261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway San Francisco, California 94133 Phone 415.362.8193
There’s bonus here in that they are located in one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city, North Beach. This means you’ll simply HAVE to stop off and eat some really delicious, soul satisfying Italian food. Incidentally, to visit their website click here.
No blog, travel book or one person can ever hope to hit even a fraction of all the lovely places and things to love about San Francisco, but I hope you’ll check out some of my recommendations. Also, I would love to hear about yours. It’s one of those cities that you can never tire of, never see it all. No wonder Journey missed it so much when they were on the road.
Here are the lyrics to Lights, in case you would like to sing along:
When the lights go down in the city And the sun shines on the bay Do I wanna be there in my city?
Oh, oo, oh Ohh, oo, ohh Oh, oo, oh
So you think you’re lonely Well my friend I’m lonely too I wanna get back to my city by the bay
Ohh, ohh Oh, oo, oh
It’s sad, oh there’s been mornings Out on the road without you Without your charms
Oh, oo, oh My, my, my My, my, my Ohh, ohh Oh, oo, oh
When the lights go down in the city And the sun shines on the bay Do I wanna be there in my city?
(Oh, oo, oh) Ohh, oo, oh Oh, oh, oh
When the lights go down in the city And the sun shines on the bay Do I wanna be there in my city?
Let me preface here, while this blog post is clearly going to be a complaint, I do not want to come across as the old lady saying, “In my day we walked barefoot in the snow twenty miles to school, uphill, both ways!” Because, that’s not how I roll. I do not necessarily believe that things were better in yesteryear. In fact, most things clearly were NOT. I’m a progress kind of girl. That being said, really? So much plastic, and what’s with the desire to create a super bug bacteria? I mean, honestly.
There are many things about life today that I find decidedly odd. For instance, when I was a kid and I wanted a drink of water, I went to the cupboard, got a glass and filled it with water from the faucet. Now people are addicted to those stupid plastic bottles and it’s become an environmental nightmare on several different fronts. The plastic bottle and the huge amount of plastic bags and other petroleum-based items increasing our dependence on foreign oil combined with a staggering waste disposal problem make me crazy, but that’s not my gripe du jour.
No, I want to talk bacteria. Sexy, right?
I scratch my head when well-meaning adults offer me and my children hand sanitizer when there is a perfectly functioning sink with soap just yards away. Are you kidding me? Why? The soap and water are being offered to you free of charge. The hand sanitizer you had to buy. On top of that, it’s another one of those blasted plastic bottles. (Even those of you who think you are recycling your water bottles, they’re actually being loaded on barges and shipped to a landfill in China, by the way.) The salient point here is, we’re sanitizing our way back to pre-antibiotic days, folks.
People look at me like I’m a teensy, weensy bit nutty when I bring this up, but it’s simple math. Hand sanitizers, disinfecting wipes and sprays all claim to kill 99% of bacteria. Some even go so far as to make the claim of 99.9%… well, color me impressed. There’s just one problem, the 1% or the .1% left behind. (That’s if the product actually works as it says it does, most of them do not.) Let’s take the rosier, cherubs and rainbow-farting-unicorns scenario, shall we, and say the disinfectant knocks out 99.9% of the bacteria. So, of one thousand organisms, one will survive your cleansing efforts. The one that’s survived has some sort of a genetic difference to it which makes it resistant to our arsenal of hand sanitizers. It’s going to reproduce, because that is simply what bacteria do, and all of its progeny will be likewise tougher to kill. Remember, bacteria reproduce exponentially, so it goes pretty quickly. Our cleaning efforts simply build a better bacteria.
For years a few voices of reason have been trying rein in this behavior, thus far, to no avail, I might add. In 2007 Tufts University, in conjunction with several other well-respected establishments, expounded upon previous studies, some dating back as far as 1980, supporting the use of soap and water over antibacterial products. (To view this paper, click here.) Antibacterial products do not work as well as advertised and even if they did the bacteria they leave behind is that which is good at surviving- think of it as the cockroach of the bacterial world. Soap and warm water works better, guys, I promise, and it doesn’t breed a more resistant bug.
Sadly, hand sanitizer is the least of our problems. The biggest culprits of spreading antibiotic resistance are misuse and overuse of antibiotics, both in and out of the field of medicine. For instance, we all know the patient or often, the parent of the patient, who simply insists on a prescription for antibiotics, “just to be on the safe side”. Or you’ll hear someone say they’re going to the doctor, “to get some antibiotics” as though if they don’t get the prescription the physician hasn’t done his or her job. Part of a doctor’s job isn’t just this illness; it’s your overall health and well-being. Antibiotics you don’t need do not contribute to your long-term health or, as we’re seeing with the super bugs, society’s health as a whole. For a great, plain terms explanation read this quick article from the Mayo Clinic. Don’t try to insist or bully your doctor into a prescription if they think there’s another way to deal with your condition. American doctors are finally starting to adopt the Europeans’ “wait and see” approach. It’s worked in other countries for years. Basically, if it is a virus your body will usually begin to get better on its own as your immune system revs into action. If you don’t get better, your doctor can call in the prescription at that point.
One third of antibiotic prescriptions in the United States are for the common cold. The common cold is caused by one of over two hundred viruses, usually a variant of the Rhino virus. Antibiotics work against bacteria, hence the name, and are useless against viruses. Actually, they can be worse than useless, as they’ll wipe out all the local flora and fauna a person needs in their body. By this I mean that in all of us are lots of good strains of bacteria that significantly contribute to our daily well-being. Send an unnecessary antibiotic through your system and you are actually more vulnerable to a harmful bacterial intrusion. (Side bar, this is why after a course of antibiotics some doctors recommend eating foods like yogurt, to help bulk up the “good” bacteria again.)
Another abuse of antibiotics is not finishing your prescribed dose. You’ve got a Strep infection, you start your meds, you start to feel better so you stop taking the drugs. Bad idea. You stand a very good chance that by not finishing the treatment you’ve killed off the more vulnerable organisms, but you’ve left the more resistant ones to repopulate once more. Ever have an infection that kept coming back? Finish the medicine the first time, that’s all I’m saying.
It’s not just human abuses that are contributing to the new Legion of Doom-esque bacteria. (Does anyone else suddenly really miss Saturday mornings with the Super Friends versus the nefarious Legion of Doom?) In the United States the beef, poultry and pork industries routinely use copious amounts of antibiotics for non-medical situations. Antibiotics are used in the healthy animals’ feed to promote growth and as a “just in case” to ward off disease. Due to the large doses these antibiotics are excreted in the animals’ waste. From there the drugs make their way into the soil, the local water systems and, of course, their presence in the animals’ flesh means they are worked into our food chain as well. (Another great argument for organic and small farm options.) The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at this time 70% of our current selection of antibiotic drugs is employed in the meat industry on healthy animals. That’s 70% of our treatment options in this field being rendered less and less effective for actual sick animals and humans. More illuminating (read frightening) is that in January of 2011 the Food & Drug Administration found that 80% of the total antibiotics produced in the US went to the farm industry. That, my friends, is a whole lotta’ drugs.
I think “drugs” is the operative word here. Antibiotics tend to be thought of as such a good and miraculous thing, and they are, don’t get me wrong, that there is a tendency to forget what they actually are. They are medicine, not Jelly Bellies. Like any medicine they should be treated with respect. They should not be overused, nor should we think we know better than our physicians. These drugs certainly have an important place in our health care, but, as with all things, moderation is the key here.
Lecture over, gripe done, putting away my soap box now.
Hmmm, of course, we still have all this plastic to deal with.
A nightmare of our own creation, big, bad bacteria- a modern day Legion of Doom.
“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.” – Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
