What's on Your Shoulder?

I recently saw an insect that had taken up residence on a woman's shoulder.  The woman stood ahead of me in line for an ice cream and appeared to be in her fifties.  I wanted to warn her before I whacked the thing. "I think there's a dragonfly on your shoulder," I said.  "I'm going to get it off."

"No!" she yelled.  "It's my tattoo."  She gave me a hard stare with her round brown eyes and vacated the ice cream line.

Even without my glasses, I could see the dragonfly had lost its ability to get airborne. Which led me to thinking about the tattoos I see on younger women.

I suppose despite the pain, expense, and time in getting a tattoo, particularly one with several colors or an intricate design, the appeal is to catch eyeballs.  Tattoos are believed to be the epitome of femininity.  Some exposed designs certainly do make me stare to the point of rudeness.  Is that really a snake taking a bite where I think it is?

Designs are endless, ranging from entire works of art covering both arms and legs (almost nothing needs to be worn with those designs) to simulated collars starting at the chin and leading down into the bosom. Other smaller exposed designs that have caught my eye are red cherries behind one ear and interlocking feathers around an ankle.

The symbols are supposed to convey messages:  hearts for love and devotion; butterflies for readiness to change; flowers for beauty, purity, and hope; birds for freedom (hummingbirds) or strength (eagle); stars for a starlet; anchors for stability or our Navy.

But what happens as age takes over? Does a woman in her sixties really want to wear low-cut tops for every occasion because she has a tattoo that simulates a collar?  Doesn't she know that the collar will begin to droop downward as the "girls" sink toward her navel?  Cleavage over age sixty is not a pretty sight. People might try to straighten the collar for her, just as I wanted to swat the insect!  A flame on a neck might begin to bulge outward resembling an iguana in heat, as the wearer develops a double chin.


Entire torsos are covered in monsters, tigers, vampires, unicorns, and dragons.Smaller designs, such as skeletons, bats, skulls, seashells, hearts, flowers, and ribbons reside on hands, feet, hips, belly buttons, and groin areas, presumably for the benefit of loved ones. Needless to say, the bikini is a favorite choice for summer wear among women with belly button and hip designs. Jeans must be low-cut. However, there's the small (or not-so-small) issue of love handles flapping over the design that often distract my attention. 

The biggest area available on the body for tattooing is the lower back. Supposedly the lower back resists aging the best, without much droop or resemblance to leather. Still, I wonder about the corset design I saw on the back of a young woman on the internet.  The ribbon pulled tightest between the shoulder blades, becoming more open with more flesh popping as it progressed down into her buttocks.  At age seventy, it might be impossible to lace up her booty!

And then there's the spider web I saw encircling a woman's shoulders and back. The spider sat comfortably in its web on the left shoulder.. Eventually, I'm afraid, the web might resemble a shawl, draped over a drooping back.


There's also the matter of removal. We've all seen someone who's attempted to have her tattoo removed through more pain and needles, not to mention the danger of hepatitis or worse. Unfortunately, in most cases the outline of the previous design is still
                                                 visible.  Which makes me wonder if  she got her money back?

The New England Boom

There's a boom going on in New England, but it isn't where you'd think.  It's going on offshore in the haul of a little fish called the Atlantic herring.

This herring travels in groups sometimes numbering in the billions and was caught in the greatest numbers last year in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.  New England fishermen caught more than 95,000 metric tons of the fish last year for the first time since 2009, according to federal statistics reported by Patrick Whittle in The Providence Journal, July 13, '15, p. A10.

This was good news for fishermen, right?

A Herring Catch
Photo uploaded to public domain by Gentgeen April, '05

Yes and no.

Cod and tuna fishermen complain that the herring trawlers have left sections of the ocean bereft of the herring species, which cod and tuna rely on to eat.  Whittle quotes Maine tuna fisherman Steve Weiner as saying, "Everything from seabirds to whale-watching boats rely on a steady supply of herring for stability."  With strict cod quotas, Cape Cod fishermen are struggling to make a living.

The herring trawlers can be more than 100 feet long and drag 300-foot nets. Environmentalists claim the nets sometimes kill marine mammals, including four pilot whales, three seals, and a dolphin through incidental catch in 2014.

Herring is in high demand because it is the preferred bait for Maine's lobster industry (also reporting record catches in recent years).  Herring not used for bait become canned, smoked, pickled, or salted.

According to Whittle, the Northeast has struggled with herring quota cuts as recently as this decade.

Regulating fishing in the area is the New England Fishery Management Council, which will solicit feedback from the industry and the public.  "It will be important to develop scientific metrics for localized depletion," said Mary Beth Tooley, who sits on the Council and works for a corporation operating two herring trawlers. "The issue has become political," Tooley said.

What else is new?

Old Reliable

It seems every family has a favorite restaurant, one they never tire of.

It could be the particular food, the servers, the ambiance, or the price that brings us back year after year - or all of the above.  It's a place the family relies on for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, or even weddings.

If the restaurant survived the decades of recession, it's probably family-owned.   I'm not talking a pizza joint or a chain restaurant here, the kind we frequented after our sons' hockey games or baseball practices for a quick meal.  I'm talking a place where the tables are covered in white linen with cloth napkins and there is a fresh rose as the centerpiece, maybe a candle, too.

Outside Trieste, Italy

Our family loves all things Italian, especially the food, so we used to take our young sons to DiMeglio's in Woonsocket, R.I., to celebrate the end of school or a birthday of Charley's or mine.  At that point the boys still had birthday parties for their friends.

On the sidewalk outside DiMeglio's you could smell simmering tomatoes, basil, and freshly-shaved Parmesan. The spaghetti sauce (gravy) had simmered all day in a gargantuan gleaming  pot.  Portions covered eleven-inch white dinner plates, so we always had left-overs to take home.  It wasn't a big place, squeezed beyond some warehouses and near some mills, but the owners knew their customers.  Mrs. DiMeglio, in her apron, greeted us with a hug - we became so welcome that our older son was a frequent visitor to the chefs in the kitchen. Diners sat close to each other, getting into animated conversations that often necessitated raising our voices to be heard.


Then DiMeglio's closed.  The family who remained weren't interested in continuing the long hours, and the rent soared. We began going to the Old Canteen on Atwells Avenue in Providence, R.I.  A little more formal than DiMeglio's -  the paint was pink, soft music played, and a mural of Venice dominated one wall.

We celebrated graduations and engagements there with champagne and Veal a la Mike. We celebrated house completions and house sales.  We celebrated birthdays and births and book publications.  Last week Charley and I went back to reminisce over a marriage that's lasted 50 years.

Joe Marzilli, the owner, was no longer there.  His son greeted us as we opened the door from the front staircase on the street.  Sammy, the busboy in his sixties who always brought extra garlic bread to our table, was no longer there.

But the pink walls remained, and the candlelight, and the pink leather chairs. The waitstaff's smiles were there, though they were no longer exclusively male.  The sauteed escarole and spaghetti a la Canteen (with chicken livers and mushrooms) and artichokes in l'olio and garlic and my faorite Prosecco were still there, and the Italian families from "the Hill."  Our "old reliable" made time stand still, even though we hadn't.

Wedding Gifts

My parents, 1938

This is the season for weddings, and I love everything about them!  I love attending them and watching movies about them.  In both cases, I'm usually in tears.  I don't watch much television but must admit I'm addicted to the TLC shows, "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Four Weddings."  Both of these shows are the perfect combination of my love for fashion and design. They also bring drama among the bride's entourage (who squabble or often reduce the bride to tears of frustration or humiliation); they bring laughs when the bride tries to squeeze into something totally unflattering to showcase her "girls" or her "booty," and in the case of "Four Weddings," they bring competition.

However, there is one aspect of weddings I can't get a handle on.  It's the gift-giving aspect.

Italian bride 2012

Most brides have a registry to make it easy for her guests.  That's a good thing. There is usually a range of gifts on the registry for those who want low-end gifts for a shower or mid-to-high-end gifts for the wedding. That's a good thing.

But I get confused when a bride has registered a majority of either low-end or high-end gifts or not registered at all.

Our niece, 2014

I like to target $100 as an outside price for a wedding gift, but sometimes can't stay in that target zone. For $100 I would have to give five gifts of $20 each on a registry, if the bride has listed mostly low-end.  How are these supposed to be shipped? Separately in dribs and drabs?  I can imagine as she receives the first one, the bride's saying, "That's it?"  How many companies would have all the items in stock to ship together in one big box?  Zero.

If the bride lists only a few items on the low-to-mid range on her registry, they're probably already bought by her guests anyway.  That leaves the high-end items, meaning over $100.  So my budget's shot before I scroll down...but not to the point of looking at the $350-and-up gifts.  The only time I'd ever spend more than $350 on a wedding gift is when it's a very close relative - so close that I'd be bumping into her/him on a regular basis - like in our house!

Bride in Italy, 2012

 And then there's the bride who doesn't register...which I assume means she needs anything and everything. That's great, unless the couple has been together long enough to acquire a household of stuff and you have no idea what the stuff is!  In which case, I usually order something I would like myself and stick to my budget.  If she doesn't like it, the bride can return it herself.  Not very convenient, but then she didn't make it convenient for us, either.

Of course, there's the added cost of shipping and taxes ordering from a registry. I figure it can't be helped and don't factor that in.  It saves us from carrying a gift to the wedding that I purchased locally.

Sure, I know it should be the thought that counts and dollar signs shouldn't be attached to a gift.  But let's get real! When you get a wedding invitation, you're expected to send a gift.  Brides create registries for a reason - and it's not just to let the world know what she needs.  It's also to create parameters for her level of expectation.  The trouble is, her level of expectation may not be mine.

June 26, 1965

What's your average price for a wedding gift?    

Reflections on a College Reunion

Colby College Chapel
Waterville, Maine

I have just returned from an extended Colby College reunion.  There was a disconnect I couldn't grasp between the date of my graduation, June '65,  and the years that have intervened since.  There was another disconnect between the faces I remembered and the faces smiling at me over the weekend. Thank goodness for name tags!

Colby classes '63 and '65

I wanted to reconnect with those who'd shared four very impressionable years with me...the years we morphed out of childhood and wiggled into adulthood.

New buildings scattered along the dazzling, closely-trimmed grass were unfamiliar to us. New wings on the art museum housing remarkable multi-million-dollar collections were unfamiliar. The downtown area where our drinking hangouts had been demolished was unfamiliar. Our collective memories were not.

We'd lived together through the turbulent sixties.We remembered a wall erected in Berlin and missiles in Cuba aimed at possible targets like New Orleans, Houston, Miami, Cape Canaveral.. We remembered the exact spot on campus where we heard the news of President Kennedy's assassination. We remembered those who left to march in Washington, D.C., and Selma. And we remembered those who left to be "advisors" in Viet Nam, a place we hadn't been able to identify on a world map.

Our newspaper editor-in-chief,
Jan Parsons, leads us in the parade

We'd selected Maine as the location for our college years, where winters got down to forty degrees below zero.  We bundled up and RAN through tunnels of snow between classrooms, library, and dorms. The inside of our noses froze anyway.  The women (not the men) had curfews with housemothers and we all had Saturday morning classes. And comprehensive exams. If a woman broke curfew, she was called up before the Judiciary Board for a warning or probation -like my freshman roommate - depending on how many times she had climbed in a window. If you skipped more than three Saturday classes, any grade above a "C" was out of the question... even if you were on the football team and had to travel on Saturdays.  And if you didn't pass a comprehensive exam at the end of senior year that covered all four years in your major, you made a dreaded call to your parents to inform them you wouldn't be graduating this year.

Colby, a liberal arts college, required courses in English, the sciences, languages, and the arts to graduate. Even the scientists among us had to write essays coherently.  We were a small freshman class - only 346 . Around one hundred ten of us returned - survivors who'd tried to influence change.  Isn't that what all graduates try to do?

With new Colby President David Greene

At the reunion there were no facelifts among us, nor designer jewelry. We wore jeans, sweatshirts, and jackets against the stiff wind of early June.  We didn't talk much about our professional careers or accolades, although there were some who'd become household names and some who were still engaged in their fields. There was talk of hip and knee replacements, heart bypasses, and cataract surgery. And world travel and hobbies that had become obsessions.  And involvement in the community.  But mostly we talked.of kids and grand kids and how far away they lived from us. And professors who'd influenced us and coaches who'd gone on to glory and fraternity parties before Colby banned them and long-term marriages among us. And deaths.

Only a few tried to relive the glory days in a time warp, last to leave class headquarters with a drink in hand, heading downtown to postpone morning.  A few searched out the bands playing on campus to work off their dinner.  Most of us were happy to read in bed.

My reconnections would continue - during another reunion day; during a visit to a classmate's home on an island "down east"; through emails, letters, and get-togethers.  

Sometimes a look back at what shaped us is a good thing.

Developing an Attitude...for Gratitude

Eleven of our immediate family just returned from the island of Bermuda, where we celebrated an early fiftieth anniversary.  There were five grandchildren, ranging in age from ten to almost-five-year-old twins.

Elbow Beach, Bermuda

There were many special memories, of course -  seeing the five kids tumbling in a hammock or choreographing a water ballet for us (the girls) or holding hands to walk the paths between our rooms, or defending each other when obnoxious kids tried to chase them from their tunnel in the sand, or taking photos of each other with old wind-up cameras that would make them wait for development at the drug store.

But perhaps the most special take-away for Charley and me was the GRATITUDE the grandchildren exhibited during the trip - for each other, for what they were enjoying, for the staff who waited on them, for their families, and for us old folks.

They hugged each other throughout the day and exchanged rooms for sleepovers.  They told Charley and me how much they loved pristine, pastel Bermuda, where autos with steering wheels on the "wrong" side of the car drove on the "wrong" side of the road. They distributed kisses to their parents, with minimal interference from cellphones or computers.

"I don't want to leave," one granddaughter told Charley and me.  "Thank you for bringing us here!"

"Can I live here?" asked a twin.

"What would your parents and your sister and brother do without you?" I said.

"I could live here with you," said the granddaughter who didn't want to leave.  "You could do the cooking, since you want to be a chef anyway!"

Gratitude:  they told waitresses who took their orders "thank you" and requested meals with "please."  One of the twins announced he wanted to be a chef and asked to pay a visit to the chef at each restaurant in our hotel. By the end of our stay, he was wearing a chef's hat.  After hearing a "Please" and "Thank you" for a cranberry juice on the plane home, one stewardess said of a granddaughter, "She's adorable."  I guess she didn't always hear that.

How does a sense of gratitude develop?

An article in The Providence Journal ("Restoring a Sense of Gratitude" by Rita Watson, 5-31-15, pg. H4) suggests that acts of kindness - giving and caring for others without expectations for a return on the investment - help develop a sense of gratitude.

So how do kids learn empathy and kindness?  By example.  And repeated lessons in behavior provided by their parents.

Lessons like helping a classmate who's just moved here from a foreign country learn English so she could do her homework; like having inner-city kids for play dates at their homes;  like always writing thank-you notes to grandparents and making special cards for their birthdays; like having a birthday party in a warehouse so the party goers could sort and fold clothing donations for the needy; like working a lemonade stand whose proceeds would go toward research for premature infants; like donating piggy bank savings to help rescued dolphins at a marine facility.

Kudos to our daughters-in-law and sons!  It was a real pleasure.

For the Birds

Monk Parakeet
Photo courtesy of Christopher L. Wood

Let's talk birds. I never had one for a pet, but I know people who have loved them, cooed to them, stroked them, and paraded them.  I recently learned some things about them.

First, according to an article by Marc Morrone in the Providence Journal (May 17, '15, Sec. H2), there is no way a bird can have any idea of the sex of a human, as we are just too far removed from their species on the evolutionary scale.  That means that although you may think a parrot squawks at you because he is a male and you are a male threatening his space, it "just ain't so, Joe."

A bird may prefer the company of men to women and vice versa, but the choice is based on the bird's interpretation of human actions, voice, or appearance.  Not whether it shares the same estrogen or testosterone.  Sounds like a good plan for humans!

If you are searching for the sex of a bird, you needn't peek "down under."  There is a test to determine that, and it's not the kind you think.  Pluck a few feathers from its breast (male and female) and mail them to a laboratory.  You will be charged a fee, but the lab can extract the DNA and within a few days answer your crushing question.  An example of a lab is Research Associates Laboratory at vetdna.com. Wouldn't want to have two female birds in a cat fight in the cage as you sip your morning coffee, would you?

White-headed woodpecker
Photo courtesy of Dick Tipton

Ladder-backed woodpecker
Photo courtesy of Gerrit Vyn

Here is an interesting fact about woodpeckers.  Woodpeckers sing.  Not with their throats, but by pecking on a piece of metal or anything that makes a ringing sound. This is again according to Marc Morrone, not me.  The noise makes a sound that's bigger and stronger than other male woodpeckers, who use mere trees made of wood. The bigger the sound, the prettier the mate and the better the nesting area.

If you have a woodpecker that's disturbing you during mating season, you'd better determine first whether it's causing damage to the wooden frame of your home.  If not, get on a ladder and cover the woodpecker's favorite pecking area with cloth secured by duct tape. Or Marc suggests taping a few children's pinwheels with long ribbons to the spot the woodpecker loves.  As the wind blows, the pinwheel ribbons in the wind will chase him off. Either that, or they'll chase your neighbors off!