Global Entry to What?

     Charley and I looked straight ahead.  The only peripheral peeks we'd gotten were as we entered.   To our right were guys with "hoodies" pulled low over their brows and tattoos all over their forearms.  To our left were burly guys speaking Russian through gold teeth, their necks wadded with gold chains.  None of them bothered to look at us.  We were misfits.

     "Wait here, please."  The agent pointed to the first row of chairs lined up like a classroom.  No-one sat in the next seven rows.  Could that many people really be detained at once?

     Charley was seething.  A Vietnam vet and former banker, he was brought in with thugs?  I slithered my watch and wedding bands off and heard them clink inside my purse.

     "Do you believe this?  We applied for that stupid thing so we'd have NO wait getting back into this country!"

     "I don't care about the wait right now," I said.  "I just want to get out of here with my limbs attached."

     Months before, the two of us had filed Global Entry applications so we could by-pass Customs and Immigration lines after travelling abroad.  We'd sent in  $100 each and passed background checks.  No arrests, no outstanding speeding tickets.  No problem!

     We'd  gotten a notice that we were OK'ed for the next step - an interview with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent at the nearest office, a terminal in the port of Ft. Lauderdale.  Down Interstate 95 we went.

     Easy questions, easy answers - always first responses.  If only the security questions for my online accounts were that easy!  I can't ever remember the passwords or pins and created a folder on the computer to help me.  I have to "minimize" the website I'm working on to open the folder, retrieve the necessary number of letters or numbers or combination (with or without capitals), then "optimize" again to enter my account.  By then I wish I'd  just made a phone call.

     The agent disappeared in Ft. Lauderdale, then came back and told us to stand in front of the camera.  We didn't know if that was a good or bad sign.  The photos weren't half bad, actually - nothing like our drivers'  photos.  Technology sure had improved!

     The next step was a hands-on tutorial with a duplicate of the machine that would grant us re-entry in airports.  We inserted our hands into slots like the blower in public rest rooms.  The machine read and recorded our fingerprints and stamped our passports.  We'd been cleared for landing!

     So why did we end up in a detention room at Logan Airport, while the rest of our plane went through the lines and retrieved their luggage?  Because my dear husband's fingers were TOO DRY!  Yup - the machine couldn't read his fingerprints to get a match with the database.  We'd by-passed a long line to be held up by an electronic wizard.  After forty-five minutes we were released with special instructions for Charley.  "Before you use the machine next time, you'd better put some saliva on your fingertips.  Or your wife could carry a little tube of oil.  Of course, she'll have to put it in a baggie to get through security."

     "What a waste of money," Charley kept saying.  Now we stand in line like everyone else.

     Let me hear your worst airport stories!  Write in the comment box and post. 

Humor from the Headlines

It has been a devastating week with unthinkable catastrophe along the east coast of the U.S.  Among the photographic and video horrors, I found some items that might provide brief distractions.

First, Paula Simonds (aka Lacey Wildd ) is getting more cleavage.  Not that she doesn't already have enough.  The single mom from MTV's "True Life" series has decided to increase her implant size from triple L to triple M.  Proud to be plastic, Lacey is charging $1500-$2000 per TV and event appearance (no porn or topless, though).  Her website sells sexy Lacey bobble heads (with bobbling boobs, too?).  In-between having her six children, she had six surgeries.  Then six more.  She hopes to put her children through college on the bobbling proceeds.

When Lacey sleeps, "it's like having two bowling balls in my chest," she said.  She has two torn vertebrae and can't have routine sonograms or mammograms.  An internal bra implanted in her torso is made of pigskin and her own muscle.  The implants can shift at any time and end up in her armpits or abdomen.  If that happened, would gawkers still shout "How big are they?"

Fans donate through PayPal for her surgeries.  While under the knife last time, Lacey added butt and tummy lifts. 

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Let's get it right!  Since the third and final presidential debate, residents of Boca Raton, Florida, want their hometown pronounced correctly.  It's "Rah-tone."  The city actually passed an ordinance in 1982 to put an end to mispronunciations.

What could they do?  Jail people who make it rhyme with "baton?"

The name actually comes from an archaic nautical term meaning, "rocky inlet."  Contemporary Spanish  translates the name into something like "mouth of the rat."  Well, that's possible, too, depending on the people you know from Boca.

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Newspapers reported on November 4, 2012, that billions in aid meant to help Japan recover from its 2011 earthquake and tsunami actually got diverted to other government projects.  Among those receiving the aid were a factory that produces contact lenses, prisons for job training, and activists who are opposed to the activists opposed to whaling.  More than half of the $148 billion has not been allocated at all. 

Meanwhile, Japanese art director and designer Kenya Hara announced a top-secret new project for fall.  Would it provide temporary housing for the inhabitants still homeless from the tsunami?  No, but it does provide construction for man's best friend, dogs.  Perhaps the easy-to-assemble structures, called "Architecture for Dogs," could be modified for humans.  I wonder if Mr. Hara received any of the $148 billion for his project?

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Finally, some levity from Senator Joe Lieberman, when interviewed by Mark Leibovich in The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, November 4, 2012:

"There's an older guy on the park bench, crying...Finally a jogger stops, sees the guy sobbing.  'What's wrong?'

"'My wife of 48 years died, and I was very lonely.  I went on JDate and met a younger Russian woman.  We liked each other.  So she's moved in with me, and she's wonderful.  She's attractive, she cooks well, she takes care of me and almost every night we have fabulous sex.'

"So the jogger says:  'Well that's a wonderful story.  Why are you crying?'

"The old guy says, 'I'm crying because I can't remember where I live.'"

Senator Lieberman added, "It will get funnier as you get older."

Airedale Mixup

     Our sons grew up with a docile female Airedale named Sandy.  She was small, so they'd often wrestle on the floor together till Sandy fell asleep with her head in one of their laps.  Airedales were bred for hunting, and she chased Canadian geese, among other things.  One winter she fell through the ice and had to be rescued in a rowboat.  After that we confined her to a very large area in the backyard, where she dug up every inch of the flower beds while chasing rodents and vermin.

     When we travelled, we took her to a boarding kennel closeby.  For a reason we couldn't fathom, she couldn't wait to get there.  She would actually wedge herself in the cracked car window when we pulled into the driveway.  The owner of the kennel was always there to greet us, and she practically jumped into his arms.

     This guy was W-E-I-R-D.  With long shaggy hair pulled into a pony tail, he was a throwback to the 60's.  In fact, he often left his sentences undone and our questions unanswered.  But he loved our Sandy, and she loved him.

     We joked that the owner's pupils weren't focusing and wondered what kind of brownies he'd been munching.  Or whether he'd made doggie treats for his boarders, which might explain why Sandy was always so excited to get there.

     She was certainly well cared for and never came home sick.  When she came home to us, that is!   After one trip we talked to a neighbor who also had a small female Airedale.  He told us that both dogs had been boarding at the kennel at the same time.  When he picked up his dog and took her home, she didn't respond to her name.  "I thought that was strange, and she certainly was playful," he said.  "Then I looked at her tag.  I'd been given your dog."

     We found another kennel after that.  Sandy hid on the floor of the car all the way over.

Yoko Ono Envy

     I wish I could be more like her sometimes.  She's had to deal with kidnapping, deportation, assassination, yet she absorbs it all and still says what she believes is true, not what will make her look good to the public.  She gave up the search to find her daughter after many years, believing that her daughter would come to her if she needed a mother.  "Mothers are not supposed to give guidance," she said in 1998.  "Children should do their own thing."  Seriously??  She let John "do his own thing" when he strayed, but he did come back.
     She believes in art for art's sake, without caring what anyone thinks of her as a woman and an artist.  Her work is disturbing and yet comforting.  It can't be figured out.  She makes us look at the empty space in her paintings and go outside just to study the sky.
     I have trouble following her path to inner peace.  I guess I am too "Type A."  I rest only when work is done.  I need to know where I am going on any given day, what phone calls I need to make, and how much writing I need to do.  I have been told that in getting my manuscripts published, I "dot every i and cross every t."  Is that a bad thing?  Only when I become so manic that I drive myself and Charley crazy.
     I just attended the Florida Writers Conference for three days.  I have a manuscript ready to be sold - A Survival Guide for Grown Children with Elderly Parents (Who Still Have Their Marbles).  I rewrote it twice over the summer and then three editors read it, each from a different perspective.  I tweaked it each time I got their suggestions.  In preparation to pitch to an agent at the conference, I prepared a bio, a query letter, a synopsis, a proposal, a flash drive of the manuscript, and a hard copy of the manuscript.  I practiced my five-minute pitch twenty times, assuming the other five minutes with the agent would be her questions.
     An agent takes an average of five new clients a year.  That's from among the 80-100 query letters he receives EVERY WEEK.  If he likes a writer's query letter, the agent will ask for a proposal for the manuscript or a partial manuscript.  If he likes the partial, he'll ask for a full manuscript.  Which doesn't guarantee representation.  But at least his request saved the writer on round two from becoming "slush."  This process can take many weeks.
     Experience made me choose a skirt, jacket, and low heels to wear to the interview.  I wanted to look professional, since I'd had a television interview in 2009 when Minor League Mom was released, and I'd taught back in the dark ages, when teachers couldn't stand in front of the classroom in shorts and sandals.  Outside the interview room I saw young writers going in to pitch in jeans and flip flops.  Why can't I be more like Yoko Ono? I asked myself.  It's my work that will speak, not my clothes.
     I stayed fifteen minutes with the agent I'd chosen, and we talked about a lot in common - sports in the family, teaching - as well as about my manuscript.  When it was over, I shook her hand and thanked her for her time.  Her other hand held my proposal and a completed manuscript.  Maybe it's better to be me.

               

The Kids Next Door

     Charley and I recently visited three of our five grandchildren.  Half a dozen kids came into the cul-de-sac to shoot baskets or draw with chalk on the asphalt.


     Older brother Sam admonished a younger sister for not retrieving the ball he was pitching to her.  "Jesus Christ, go get it!"
     "Where is he?" younger sister Nancy wanted to know.
     "Who?"
     "Jesus Christ.  I want to meet him when he gets the ball!"


     One of the mothers answered questions from her daughter. 
     "Mommy, how long have you been married to Daddy?"
     "For ten years."
     "Did you get me before you married him?"
     "No, I got Daddy first."
     "Did I cost a lot?"
     "Yes, and you still do!"


     One of our granddaughters pointed to the ball protruding from my right foot.  "What's that?" she said.
     "It's called a bunion.  A bone grew that way because I wore pointy shoes teaching for many years."
     "Will I get one?"
     "Not if you don't wear pointy shoes."
     "My mom wears them.  I think I'd better clean out her closet."


     Older brother Jack told his younger brother that classmate Aidan was no longer his friend.  "He said something bad about you," Jack told his brother.
     "What did he say?"
     "He said you were a sissy."
     "I'm going to kill him," younger brother said.  "But don't worry!  It won't be on school grounds."

    

    
    

The Joys of Living in Spaghettiland

I am writing this post in memory of Vicki Lange, our hostess extraordinaire in Baldissero.  The following are some Do's and Don't's for living in Italy, based on her experiences.

DO:
-  Register to live there.    This means getting a document from the town offices where you
   reside.  Bring electric, gas, or water bills you have paid or an affadavit from your landlord (notarized and
   stamped with a wax seal) that you are in good standing with your rent.  The landlord can be bribed, if
   necessary, with a cash gift.

-  Find out first which town offices are "chiusi" (closed) on which days for which surnames. 

-  Get in the right line early on the right day.  If your name is Burgess and you wait for an hour on the correct
   day for A-L's but in the wrong line, when you finally reach the clerk's counter, she will
    explain, "You are in the wrong line.  Move to your right for residency documents."  You look at the
    twenty people in that line and realize that you will never make it to THAT clerk before the mandatory
    four-hour lunch break from 1-5 p.m.
    Repeat:  go early.

-  Register for an EZ pass for your car only if you are the owner of that car or the primary driver of that
   car.  Appear at appropriate office on the designated day for your surname (see above).  Get in the
   right line for EZ passes as opposed to residency documents or school registration (see above).  Provide
   proof of car ownership or an affadavit  (notarized and stamped with a wax seal) that you are the primary
   driver of the rental/lease. An employer can swear to this if you provide him with a cash gift.

-  Register your children for school on the correct day for A-L or M-Z.  Show up with proof that the
   children are truly yours.  Footnote:  an American mother who has taken her husband's last name must also
   provide a marriage license, since Italian women keep their maiden names and the school will assume you
   are no blood relation (different last name) and have stolen the children from a hospital nursery or
   orphanage.

-  Understand that a first-grader in Italy need not report till 10:30 a.m. on the first day of school so
    he can "adjust" to the idea of first grade.  He will parade past former teachers from the 3-5-year-old
    rooms (who are clasping their hands together and wiping tears as their proteges file to their new
    classroom upstairs).

-  Get your 3-to-5-year-old up at 7:00 a.m. so he can be at school by 8:30 a.m. on the first day of class.

-  Rush out to purchase the list of color-coded supplies (a different color for each subject)
   by the NEXT DAY.  Question:  Do the lines on the pages have to match the outside notebook color? 

-  MOST importantly, TAKE ITALIAN LESSONS.  You will learn that in Italian "later" means three hours
   later, "domani" means
   next week, and "next week" means next month.

DON'T:

-  Neglect to put out your recycling bins on the appropriate day.  Your neighbor will report you and you
    will be fined.

-  Assume workers will show up from Monday to Friday any given week.  Offices close at random and
   workers strike at random.  If you need to catch a plane and there's an imminent rail (or taxi) strike, sleep
   at the airport the night before. 

-  Conclude the Pope is visiting your town because there is a crowd of thousands gathered on the first
   day of school.  They are merely relatives of first graders who are there to weep and wish the first
   graders luck.

-  Think you will have a brief parent-teacher conference.  Conferences start at 4:30 p.m. and last till
   7:00.  Students must accompany their parents.  Is there really that much to talk about in first grade?
   Little Emma's teacher told Vicki (Emma's mother) that she was sorry Emma had an allergy to paint and
   eraser dust.  "What allergy?" Vicki wanted to know. 

  

Inexplicable Italy

Why is it Italy casts such a spell? 

Sidewalks buckle under ancient portals and gutters are lined with plastic.  Back roads bloom with last night's dinners.  We hopscotch across dog poop on broken cobblestones.  In Naples during the Mafia-controlled garbage strike, the only good thing one could say was, "Isn't that two-story formation of stinking debris interesting?"

We have found a place we love there, the island of Ischia.  Capri is across the water.  Small fishing villages have become tourist towns, but the volcanic mountains remain green and lush and vineyards climb the sides.  Every hotel has a thermal spa.  Fishermen still sputter along in moonlight next to highspeed ferries that jump from harbor to harbor on their nocturnal return to Naples.  We watch from our al fresco perch under the stars.

Even in this idyllic setting, we overlook what we wouldn't tolerate at home.  The road to the hotel up the hillside is under construction.  It has been under construction for eighteen months.  The hotel owner is in dispute with the neighbor as to who should pay what to fix the road.  Meanwhile, we can either walk up the tortuous road (which we choose to do) or wait at a turnaround area for a golf cart to retrieve us.

The roads in the Amalfi region often have landslides that block one lane of traffic.  Instead of removing the boulders, Italians install a fence around the obstacle as well as a traffic light, creating a single lane and backup for half a mile.  The traffic light might still be there when we return next spring.

It's not that they don't care.  They do.  They just don't stress over what they can't control.  Which is why it is so refreshing to vacation there (living there will be the subject of another blog).  If a sudden rainstorm forces too many tourists into a restaurant at lunch hour, the owner simply shrugs his shoulders.  "It's raining.  Wait for a table if you want."

Their priorities are different.  They love to eat.  They love to talk and will try desperately to speak English.  They love to argue and can spend an hour using sign language to make the same point over and over.  They love people who help them, and they have long memories.  They have ruled and been ruled, so they are both humble and proud. Given the opportunity, most Italian men will explain the derivation of their first name at the slightest opportunity. 

"Ambrosio" - means "nectar of the gods" or in his translation, "eternal youth."
          
"Fausto" - means "giving joy."  Be careful, he warned us, not to use "enfausto," meaning "no
joy!"
  
"Toni" - his father and grandfather were both "Antonio," so it would have been too
confusing for his mother to have another "Anonio."  He ended up with "Toni."

"Ciro" - the popular piano player on Ischia proudly explained that his name is "Cyrus,"
but "Ciro" will be remembered!