A Condo Decorates for the Holidays

After Thanksgiving, I asked our new condo manager if there would be any Christmas decorations hung along the street in front of our buildings.

To the north, our neighbors had strung colored lights that transformed the bushes between their two entrances into carousel horses that pranced with the breezes. White and red poinsettias filled urns beneath the columns at their gates.  We remained in darkness.

Along the street on the south side of our complex, strings of white lights wound upward around eight palm trees three stories high.  Under the fronds, the lights were strung tightly together, resembling a circular box encrusted in jewels.  The fronds burst from their box laden with lights. We remained in darkness.

"I don't know.  I'll have to check with the Buildings and Grounds Committee.  What's been done in the past?" the new manager said.

It wasn't his fault.  He was our second manager in eighteen months and didn't want to piss anyone off.  The manager who'd run the place since it had been built had retired after thirty-two years.  Under his watch the Christmas decorations - always the same - had gone up like clockwork:  white lights at the street, around the lamp posts, and on top of the guard house; wreaths on the doors of the buildings and on the columns at the entrance; garlands along the railings; and a decorated tree in the garage.  The green garlands had begun to turn brown and the tree had grown tired, but no-one complained.

"Mr. Thomas bought a lot of new decorations last year," I said, "but I don't know where they are."  Mr. Thomas had been hired next and fired after eighteen months. His decorations from Home Depot - purchased with funds from the annual budget - included three-foot nutcrackers, manger scenes, menorahs, and new garlands.

"I think they were disposed of," the new manager said.  In other words, the staff probably took them home.

"May I put something on the landing of my floor and in the garage and first floor lobbies? I've done that for twenty years."

"I'll go out on a limb and say I wouldn't want to disrupt a twenty-year tradition.  Go ahead."

I put out my bowls of glass balls and wrapped the front staircase in a garland of berries.  The outside remained in darkness.

A week later, the Building and Grounds Committee put up wreaths on the doors of the buildings and on the cement columns at the street entrance.  The outside remained in darkness.

One of the Board of Directors took matters into his own hands.  He purchased $500 worth of white lights, which the staff strung around the lamp posts and guard house.

A week later a menorah appeared on a table outside the manager's office.  A couple of days after that a decorated tree stood on the table.

It looked like the same disheveled tree we'd seen during the thirty-two years our first manager had reigned. Apparently it passed the Building and Grounds Committee's requirements.



Wishing all of my readers happy holidays with those you love and a healthy 2016!

Girlfriends' Night Out

My sister sent me this on the internet several years ago, and it's worth another chuckle.  Unfortunately, I don't know the original author.  I'm re-posting to celebrate the wonderful holiday lunch I had with girlfriends this week.

A group of 15-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Dairy Queen next to the Ocean View Restaurant because they had only $6.00 among them and Jimmy Johnson, the cute boy in Social Studies, worked at the Dairy Queen.

Ten years later, the group of 25-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because the beer was cheap, the restaurant offered free appetizers, the band was good, there was no cover charge, and there were lots of cute guys.

Ten years later, the group of 35-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because the cosmos were good, it was right near the gym, and if they went late enough, there wouldn't be too many whiny little kids.

Ten years later, the group of 45-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because the martinis were big and the waiters had tight pants and nice buns.

Ten years later, the group of 55-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because the prices were reasonable, the wine list was good, the restaurant had windows that opened (in cases of hot flashes), and fish is good for cholesterol.

Ten years later, the group of 65-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because the lighting was good and the restaurant had an early bird special.

Ten years later, the group of 75-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because the food was not too spicy and the restaurant was handicapped-accessible.

Ten years later, the group of 85-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner.  Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View Restaurant because they had never been there before.

Menopause: Two Points of View

Menopause from a man's point of view:

Today I wanted to talk to you all about a problem that has plagued both men and women since the dawn of well, men and women—menopause. Now lest the ladies out there take umbrage at including men in this discussion, allow me to explain.

My darling wife, who is not yet sixty, but close, has been undergoing the change for several years now. In the beginning it wasn’t so noticeable until one day we were watching a documentary about oil drilling in the arctic wildlife refuge.  Of course, no documentary on drilling for oil in the arctic would be complete without showing archival footage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The documentary was interrupted for a commercial and I turned to my wife to ask her if she wanted anything from the kitchen.  That’s when I noticed that she was crying. No one wants to see birds and otters covered in oil, and by nature my wife is a compassionate person, but tears? “What’s wrong dear?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she answered between sniffles.

“Can I get you a Kleenex?”

“OK.”  That was my first experience with how menopause wreaks havoc on a women’s emotions—and it wasn’t going to be my last.  Fortunately, the mood swings didn’t last all that long and I was able to weather even the worst of the onslaughts. 

What hasn’t changed is the problem of hot flashes. Now, I haven’t experienced a “hot flash,” but my wife has compared it to being inside a microwave oven and being cooked from the inside out.  Many is the night that I have awakened to find my wife’s side of the bed empty, only to discover that she has been up for hours, unable to sleep because her internal body temperature has reached the same temperature as a medium rare steak. She turns down the A/C and lies there uncovered while on my side of the bed, I’m lying with the blankets up to my chin, shivering like a puppy at the vet.

So dear ladies, have sympathy for your husbands - we’re suffering right along with you!  It’s called MEN-o-pause for a reason.

Menopause from a woman's point of view:

I sat down at the computer in a gray sweater to write this blog.  Two sentences into the draft, I pulled the sweater off.  I was overheating.

I don’t mean overheating as in, “Come here, honey, let’s have some fun!”  I mean overheating as in, “Turn the a.c.down to sixty degrees so I can get some relief!”  We live in Florida, don’t forget.

This bodily reaction has been going on for twenty-plus years.  It started around the time my hormones left me and took up residence I don’t know where.  I refuse to take Hormone Replacement Therapy and instead pop nightly soy supplements and drink soy milk for breakfast and dinner.  The milk tastes better than niacin tablets, which turn my face and neck into a prickly red minefield of zits resembling the rash I get when Charley’s chin scrapes me with a two-day growth. 

Time out…now getting cold and must put my sweater back on.

On any random night Charley knows that our blanket will be thrown off sometime before midnight and then yanked back up at an ungodly hour.  He tucks his side of the sheet and blanket under his body so it won’t move.  He has grown used to my saying that I’m burning up and would he please roll to the other side of the bed because his body is like a coal furnace and I feel like the burning coal.  He knows if I’m out of bed and he doesn’t hear the toilet flush it’s because I can’t sleep and have my head in the freezer to cool down.  He also knows things won’t change anytime soon – my mother passed away at ninety and was still having flashes.  Sometimes he knows during breakfast that I want to pick a fight over why he didn’t secure the cap on the orange juice, which spilled all over the table when I shook the container, so he’d better vacate to get the newspaper.

Excuse me…must take the sweater off again. 

At a dinner party Charley actually counted four times I took a jacket off and put it back on.  I reminded him that testosterone doesn’t last forever, either.

Thanks for the male version on menopause to Don Weiss, guest blogger and author of the mystery novel PICTURE PERFECT, available as an e-book through major distributors soon.

Gun Advocates Can Now Pack Their Weapons in Texas Zoos

Visitors to the Houston Zoo can now pack their firearms, in addition to their back packs.  Gun-rights advocates have pressured zoos in Texas to lift their age-old firearms ban.  The supporters say publicly-owned zoos have misinterpreted laws and illegally posted bans.  Zoos have claimed they are considered amusement parks, day-cares, or educational institutions, which are able to legally enforce gun bans in many states.


WONDERING WHAT THE ANIMALS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT LIFTING THE BAN?
All photos are mine from a safari in South Africa and a cruise through the Galapagos.


From the ostrich:  "If I bury my head in a shoot-out, what about my arse?"


From the lion:  "Your face looks almost as big as this paw.  How 'bout a souvenir?"

From the rhino:  "Do NOT shoot at my horn or you'll be blowing it!"


From the giraffe:  "You may not see my head up here, but I can make you a missile in a minute."

From the zebra:  "There are stripes and there are stripes.  Orange will be attractive on you."

From the elephant:  "That ain't no peanut wedged up my trunk!"

From the hyena:  "OK, you're the clown here."


From the king of the iguanas:  "Look at these nails, dude.  You wannna mess with me?"

And finally, from the monkey:  "I'm a swinger, remember?  Later."

A free downloaded photo courtesy of Shutterstock

A Little History of Westport, Massachusestts

We are residents of Westport, Mass., five months a year.  The town snuggles against the coast of Buzzard's Bay, below Cape Cod and above Newport, R.I.  Its residents are primarily fishermen and farmers who remain fiercely independent and protective of their land, their rights, and others' rights.  Swagger here goes only as far as the American flag that hangs outside each front door.

Which makes it surprising that the town has a history of slave-owning.

Westport Historical Society records show African-American slaves named Zip and Violet were property on the Cadman farm in 1762.  George Cadman freed his slave, James, in 1722, and his son freed both Zip and Violet in 1766.

Like many coastal New England towns, Westport had a "significant presence (of people of color) during the colonial period.  Most of these people would have been slaves, and some are specifically identified as such in the records." (www.wpthistory.org/elizabeth-cadman-white/blacks-slavery)

The black population in the areas including Westport, Dartmouth, and Little Compton, R.I., grew after 1720 with the expansion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade out of nearby Newport.  The number of blacks in Bristol County, concentrated in Dartmouth and Taunton, between 1754 and 1776 rose from 61 to 585 (Greene, 82, 342 and Piersen, 164).  They comprised 2.1% of the population in the County by 1776 (Greene, 337). The slave trade was abolished in 1808.

Paul Cuffee montage

Mixed marriages were common between blacks and Indians.  Locals of color were of mixed black and white, black and Indian, Indian and white (Adams and Pleck, 16).  Some Indians were themselves enslaved. Cuffee Slocum, of African descent and freed by one of the largest slaveholders in colonial Massachusestts (Quaker John Slocum of Dartmouth), married the native American Ruth Moses in 1746.  One of their sons, Paul Cuffee (a free black Quaker who became the wealthiest African American and Native American in the U.S. in early 1800's through shipping, established the first racially integrated school in Westport, and became involved in the British effort to resettle freed slaves to the fledgling Sierra Leone) married Alice Pequit, a native American in 1783.

In 1711 in Dartmouth, Mass., there is record of a complaint at the Monthly Friends Meeting against a Quaker woman, Abigail Allen, for "cruel and unmerciful beating or whipping (of) her negro manservant.  The servant died from the abuse.  Abigail Allen was disowned by the meeting but readmitted three years later (Dartmouth Monthly Meeting Minutes index, Worrall, 156).

The Quakers as a group did not begin to officially question the practice of slavery locally until 1715 (Lowry, 21).  In that year, the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting of Quakers "pressed the R.I. Monthly Quarterly Meeting to decide whether Friends should own slaves or participate in the trade." (Dartmouth Monthly Meeting Minutes index, Worrall, 156).  Influential Quakers in R.I. buried the issue temporarily, waiting to see what Friends elsewhere would do.  The local Baptist churches, likewise, didn't actively oppose slavery until after the Revolution (McLoughlin, Soul Liberty, 146).

In the 1750's, American Quakers began to push for abolition.  The last black slave was freed in Dartmouth by Isaac Howland in 1777.  The following month the last Indian held in bondage was freed (Grover, 43).

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 did not exclude blacks from voting, but custom and tradition "apparently still barred them from exercising the franchise" (Lorenzo Greene, 302-303).  In 1778, Dartmouth records showed no Negro, Indian, or mulatto among its voters.  In 1780, Paul Cuffee and his brother John, after refusing to pay their income taxes without representation, petitioned the Bristol County council for the right to vote.  In 1783 the Massachusetts legislature granted voting rights to all free male citizens of the state.

How ironic that the area in which Roger Williams championed religious freedom still sanctioned the institution of slavery for one hundred years after Williams' death!

This post is based on original research done by the Westport Historical Society and posted on their website as the article, "Blacks and Slavery," at www.wpthistory.org/elizabeth-cadman-white/blacks-slavery.

Rewriting History

It's not the first time history has been rewritten.  In 1976 while we visited Germany, Marvin Chomsky's television mini-series "The Holocaust" was aired in the U.S. Germans under age twenty were shocked at Nazi atrocities. While in Japan visiting our son in 1996, that country's prime minister admitted publicly FOR THE FIRST TIME that his country had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Governments, politicians, corporations, and sometimes families, rewrite history for their own purposes...even school districts.

Last week Ms. Dean-Burren, an African-American from Pearland, Texas, pursuing her doctoral degree in education, called it "erasure."  That was the term she used to describe the World Geography textbook's substitution of the word "workers" in America for "slaves."  Her 15-year-old son had called the terminology to her attention with a sarcastic quip on his cellphone: "we was real hard workers, wasn't we."

Photo of random schoolbooks

To quote the section of the textbook describing America as a nation of immigrants: "The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500's and 1800's brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations." Another page referred to Europeans coming to America as "indentured servants" but did not describe Africans the same way.

Ms. Dean-Burren posted shots of the text on social media, along with her objections. She also made a video flipping through the book and pointing out the many academic consultants, teacher reviewers, and the state advisory board who approved the book. The video received nearly two million hits.

It is estimated there are 100,000 copies of the textbook in school districts in Texas. A spokesperson for a district in south Texas said, "Students use the textbook, but the section with the caption was not part of the curriculum."  Do they skip the entire topic??

McGraw-Hill responded in a statement on its Facebook page that the caption would be updated "to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor."  The digital version will be updated immediately, but the textbook version will be updated in the next print run.

It's not the first time Texas textbooks have come under fire.  Said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, "We have a textbook adoption process that's so politicized and so flawed that it's become almost a punch line for comedians."  The state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks.

School photo from 1910

Information in this article is from "Texas Mother Teaches Textbook Company a Lesson on Accuracy" by Manny Fernandez and Christine Hauser, New York Times, October 6, 2015, p. A10.

A List of Books

I was most fortunate to participate as a speaker throughout New England and Palm Beach County when my first book, Minor League Mom, appeared in 2009.  The same process reoccurred during 2014-15, after the publication of Elderly Parents with All Their Marbles.  Among the venues in South Florida and New England have been bookstores, public libraries, writers' groups, clubs and associations, gift shops, a Red Sox minor league stadium, and Brown University and Colby College events.

After I send in the final galley proofs for publication, I have no idea if what I've written will ever speak to anyone at all. When the book finally appears, I may begin to hear from readers online, but that can never replace meeting readers in person. I love to discuss the subject matter of my books with those who are interested. Their voices and faces convey the emotions my book has evoked and they begin to relate situations in their lives that are similar to situations in my books.

In addition, I love meeting other authors to share writing secrets, journeys to publication, and marketing strategies. The following are some of the published authors I know personally or have met along the way.  I have read their listed accomplishments, among others, and recommend them to you.


Berge, Ruth Hartman                    
     Growing Up in Northern Palm Beach 
     County:  Boomer Memories from 
     Dairy Belle to Double Roads
     Nostalgic memories of quaint coastal towns from Riviera Beach,      
     Florida,
     to Jupiter, woven into the history of the people and places the author
     loved as a child

     Betty Tales: The True Story of a Brave Bobblehead Cat (children's)
     Betty is a little cat with a real-life disability, but her attitude says,
     "I can do that!"

Bolton, Barbara McGillicuddy
     Lulu Goes to College   A Novel
     In the fall of 1961 - before the sixties became The Sixties - eighteen-
     year-old Lulu Delaney of Meduxnekeag, Maine, packs up her
     two baby blue plastic suitcases and takes the bus south to Lovejoy,
     the private, coeducational Maine college to which she's won a
     scholarship. This is the story of her freshman year.

Bowen, John                              
     Eleven Months and Nineteen Days
     An illustrator finds himself in the middle of the Vietnam War during
     1968 and records his experiences.

Boyle, Gerry
     Once Burned
     There's something smoldering in the drop-dead pretty town of Sanctuary,
     Maine, and veteran crime reporter Jack McMorrow is back to sniff it out.

Bradlee, Ben Jr.
     The Kid   The Immortal Life of Ted Williams
     During his 22 years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified
     crowds across America with the highest batting average recorded
     to this day - and shocked them, too.  Here is the
     definitive biography of a hero who clashed with the press and spent
     most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage.

Brooks, Geraldine
     People of the Book
     A novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional
     intensity, this book depicts the journey of the famed Sarajevo
     Haggadah (15th Century Spanish hand-illustrated Hebrew manuscript).

Cummings, John B., Jr.
     The Last Fling     Hurricane Carol 1954
     These are first-hand stories from more than 60 individuals and family
     members about the devastation to their homes and town (Westport, Mass.)
     as wind and waves crashed ashore without warning.

Eno, Paul
     Footsteps in the Attic:  More First-Hand Accounts of the Paranormal
              in New England
     A first-hand record of some of the twentieth century's most stunning cases,
     written by the expert who investigated and interpreted them according to
     an entirely new approach to the paranormal.

Galvin, Jack, and Mark Pfetzer
     Within Reach:  My Everest Story
     In 1996 sixteen-year-old Mark Pfetzer was the youngest ever to attempt
     to summit Mt. Everest.  He also witnessed the tragedy of eight climbers
     whose story was documented in Into Thin Air.
   
Goodman, Howard and Ellen      
     Disoriented
     The Goodmans turned 60 and their careers tanked in the Great
     Recession.  Then opportunity beckoned in up-and-coming China.
     Disoriented is a travelogue, a cultural critique, and a love story with a
     country few Americans really know.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns
     Team of Rivals:  The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
     Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the story
     of one-term congressman and prairie lawyer Lincoln, who rises from
     obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of renown.

     Wait Till Next Year   A Memoir
     Set in the suburbs of New York in the 50's, this book re-creates the
     corner store, where stories and neighborhood were equally divided
     between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.  Goodwin's mother and father
     are prominent figures, her mother housebound and her father a Dodger
     fan who taught her to read the baseball box scores.  Goodwin describes
     the Dodgers' leaving Brooklyn in '57 and the death of her mother soon
     afterward - both marking the end of an era.

Iannuccilli, Dr. Ed
     Growing Up Italian
     Smell the aromas, feel the childhood anticipation, relive the joys, fear,
     and mysteries growing up in a second-generation Italian family in
     Providence, Rhode Island.

LeDuc, J.M.                                  
     Cursed Blessing, first of a trilogy
     The Ark of Endowment is hunted for its content,
     but could mean certain death for humankind if it gets in the wrong hands.
     Brent must accept his new role as savior.

      Sin
     Recruited by the FBI for her intelligence and attitude, SIN
     is released by the Bureau for the same reasons.  Now they need her
     back, after six girls have washed up along the Florida Keys and
     four agents are dead.

Littlefield, D. M.
     Journey into the Land of the Wingless Giants (children's)
     Eight fairy children, three inches tall, need all their skills in magic
     to survive a dangerous quest where everything is enormous and deadly.

Ling, Sally
     Who  Killed Leno and Louise?  Based Upon the Cold Case Murders of
     Flamboyant Boca Raton Sculptor Leno Lazzari and His Wife Louise
     Sunday morning 1948 - a couple is murdered at point blank range
     and the sculptures stolen from their home.  Read about the victims, the
     witness, the suspects, and the devious police who investigated.

Mallegol, David                            
     The Bronze Horsemen
     Based on an actual Bronze Age group who dominated southern Russia
     for 600 years, Mallegol's novel describes the group's
     domestication of wild horses to ensure the group's survival (the first humans
      to do so).

Miklas, Margie                              
     Memoirs of a Solo Traveler:  My Love Affair with Italy
     My Love Affair with Sicily (a memoir)
     Colors of Naples and the Amalfi Coast (photo book
     released May, 2015).
     
Mykle, Robert                                 
     Killer 'Cane:  The Deadly Hurricane of 1928
     A hurricane blew up from Puerto Rico over the Everglades,
     creating a 20' wall of water that killed 2,000.
     Mykle weaves Florida history with the social tapestry of the area
     at the time of the storm and during its aftermath.

Patchett, Ann
     Bel Canto
     Still my favorite among Patchett's novels!  A band of gun-wielding terrorists
     takes an entire party of So. American politicians, businessmen, and
     an opera star hostage.  Terrorists and hostages forge unexpected
     bonds as the novel builds to a crescendo of danger that cannot be
     stopped.

Quindlen, Anna
     One True Thing:  A Novel
     A mother - a daughter - a shattering choice.
     A novel of life, love, and everyday acts of mercy.
     
Reynolds, Bill, and Christopher Herren
     Basketball Junkie
     This book tells what happens when a town and a family pressure a
     local basketball star to embody their dreams, which turn into a nightmare.
     Chris Herren (my nephew) recounts his descent into hell and back,
     first with alcohol, then drugs, as he reaches the pinnacle of success
     in the NBA.

Ritchie, Michael
     Cuba Libre
     Fidel Castro is near death, if not already dead.  His brother, Raul,
     has begun to cut a deal with the U.S. to renew diplomatic and trade
     relations.  And the whole deal is about to come down in laid-back Key West.
     But the "Miami Mafia" has other plans.

                                               
Schreiber, Maxine                        
     The Story of Daphne the Duck (children's)
     A Muscovy duck discovers a flowerpot on a Florida fifth-floor balcony
     and decides it will be a safe place to lay her eggs.

Tripp, Dawn Clifton
     The Season of Open Water
     This is the story of a woman caught between the brother who completes
     her and the man she loves during rum-running days on the coast of Massa-
     chusetts.