Embracing the Fence

      Over the last 12 years or so I have spent a lot of time sitting at baseball games from Tball to High School. Being the sentimental mom that I am this means I have taken lots and lots of pictures at baseball games. Over the years the majority of his games have taken place at our city's very nice sports complex, whose chief limitation is the high chain link fences around the field. No matter how high in the bleachers one sits one is shooting thru the fence.This has resulted in a lot of pictures over the years that are more chain link than kid.

I especially like the way his body moves with the fence here

This summer I aquired a camera that allowed a reasonable amount of zooming and focusing on distant objects instead of what was right in front of me, thus allowing me to start a new photo project that I think of as embracing the fence, namely allowing the chain link to be part of the picture instead of an impediment.I began to play with the fence as a frame, and a way to highlight action.

And I got the framing just right here

2 for the price of one

aOn the whole I have been pleased with the results. And while I dont want to be all profound about it I have learned from this exercise. Too often we see things as getting in our way and our first response is to airbrush it out, or evern throw the whole thing away because one is thing is wrong. But often we mess the lesson we can learn from these impediments. And sometimes we are meant to focus on what is within the restricted area.The biggest thing  I discovered this year is that you can take an impediment and make it a framing device.

S%*t I'm Not Allowed to Say or Do (According to My 13 year old)

Today is my daughter's 13th birthday and in her honor I would like to share this list of things my daughter has told me I am not permitted to say or do, at least in her presence.

Mother is not to say:

"Epic Fail" (or "epic" or fail")

"Sadness: (as a standalone observation)

"Don't judge me" (what she always says to us when we point out her various foibles).

Moreover I  am not to:

Have cool Clothes--or anything that matches her in any way. For example, recently I splurged on a little retail therapy and bought a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt sunglasses (on clearance of course, retail therapy is useless if I wind up feeling guilty) and the daughter's reaction to it was "You're too old for cool sunglasses." I said the lady whose name was on them was nearly 90, how could I be too old for them". I was favored with that teenage shake of the head as she walked away. Another day we were in Payless  looking for that second, half price pair of shoes, and I noticed that they had the tennis shoes she had picked out in her size. I suggested matching shoes, at which she turned white, and immediately went to find a different pair for herself. (I have used this against her though. One day when she couldn't decide on a second pair, I threatened to buy myself the pair of high tops with lime green trim over the graffiti print if she didn't decide. She had a second pair in 2 minutes)

Acknowledge her in anyway on buses if anyone she knows is also on the bus. I know when to not do this when she flops the dance bag/backpack/grocery bag next to her so I can't sit down on that seat.

Use her nickname (NOT Baby girl, I quit calling her that in public a long time ago, I mean the moderately abbreviated version of her given name) anywhere but home, or at least in front of people who don't already know its her nickname.

Pick my own accessories. (The maddening part of this is that I get lots of positive feedback when she picks things out for me, which then allows her to say "I told you so".)

I realize that of every post I have made to my blog, this is the one that is most likely to be repeatedly re-edited as time goes on. Nothing on earth is more in progress than a teenage girl.

Happy birthday Babygirl!

As noted above, this is a post in progress, just like she is. Currently I am not allowed to say "jeggings" especially in reference to anything I might say. ("Only kids say jeggings mom, say yoga pants.") The instructions on shopping state that I am not to pick clothes without either her, or my more fashionably conscious younger sister along.  When she approved recently of something I picked up on clearance at Penney's I was flattered even though it was phrased as "Holy cow my mother has some fashion sense". 

The mother/daughter conversation continues....
        

Preserving Summer All Winter

     This is a depressing time of year in the family kitchen, mainly because most everything that my husband and his mom canned last year is gone now, and we have to resort to the grocery store for such things as pizza sauce, jam, and salsa. Most  all the veggies were froze last year are gone also.

Nothing is more depressing at meal time than confronting a jar of store bought pizza sauce after you have been eating your own all winter. At least we  haven't run out of ketchup yet. The kids hate the store bought ketchup.

     One of the advantages of marrying a man who spent much of his childhood on a farm is that he expects as a matter of course to can and freeze There is  always something in progress around the house, whether its cheese or vinegar or drying herbs. And although we don't have room on our tiny city lot for much more than a tomato plant or two, my mother in law lives in the country and puts a large garden in every year. For the last 4 years the whole family has collaborated, with the children and grandchildren who live nearby helping with the weeding and maintenance, while my spouse and kids who live further away, go for the harvesting and canning season.

    We can for many reasons. One is the obvious, it tastes good. Another is that my husband and is mother take great pleasure in getting to do something as it was done on the farm. And along with that is the satisfaction of seeing the work of ones own hands lining the shelves and brightening the dinner table. Also its a pleasing thing in the middle of winter to place on the table something that was growing in the garden last winter.  What we don't do it for is to save money.

    This is  a misunderstanding many people have of canning and preserving. They think

you do it to save money. They are wrong.Especially in the initial layout for supplies, it is probably more expensive than stocking up at the grocery store.(the only way you can be said to save money is in not having to buy these things in the middle of winter when bills are much higher out here in the snow belt)  So you do not can for cost effectiveness. You do it because the end results  look and taste wonderful. To my eyes nothing looks better than pantry shelves looking like they did last summer:

peppers and pickles

 Jalapeno peppers, pickles and jam

more assorted jams

Tomato sauce

As attractive as all this looks it tastes even better. Once you have eaten home canned ketchup, or tomato sauce or jam, anything from the store seems bland and tasteless. A chief villain in all this is doubtless corn syrup, which is what most commercial food is sweetened with. It gives sweetness but little flavor. Once when we ran out of ketchup, I bought the kids a bottle of all-natural no corn syrup ketchup They informed me it was the closest thing to dad's ketchup they had tasted, although it still wasn't the same thing.

We purchase our mixes and supplies in Amish country. The reason is that for the Amish, who do not use electric freezers, canning is a necessary way of life, not a hobby. They have the supplies available and they know how to advise you when there is a problem.

In addition to canning, we vacuum freeze veggies and we dehydrate herbs and veggies. One of my sons favorite things is dried hot peppers that are then ground a little at a time as needed  for seasoning food. The freshness of newly ground red pepper vs red pepper from the spice aisle is astounding.

The same is true for making vinegar from scratch (supplies for this are usually available at any store that sells supplies for making wine and beer) We buy cider in the fall and make vinegar, also we have a friend who makes her own wine and mead. When something doesn't turn out, we make it vinegar.

The nicest thing about this is the effect on the children. They have learned to appreciate the hard work that goes into food preparation and preservation. Hopefully they will choose to do this for their families one day as well, but even if they don't, they will always be aware, even in the grocery store, of what is involved in the making of the food, and most importantly they know how the food should taste. It may be the most important lesson we ever teach them.

You say its my birthday?

So today is my birthday. Not a big deal, when you are (very) post 21,  and still well short of the earliest possible retirement date, but its kind of fun too. Family tradition is that the birthday person gets custody of the TV all. Customarily I inflict black and white movies on the kids, its good for them I figure, but with one out at his summer job, and the other taking educational enrichment camp (summer school for smart kids) no one will be home to endure Casablanca, Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Nosferatu with me. I'm going to spend part of the day with my mom (she deserves some of the credit after all)  and the rest of it at family night at the scout camp making sure the boy didn't starve to death since Sunday. (What better activity for a mom on her birthday?)

In recent years the birthday hasn't been a very big deal. For one thing, my daughter's birthday is 2 days after mine, and you what happens when parent and child both have a big event the same week. My husband fixes one of my favorite meals (a great gift in and of itself) and maybe some little presents from the kids, or some friends. I might treat  myself or be treated to a new book. As previously noted any major resources will go to the main event on Friday, and that's as it should be.

This will be my 52nd birthday, and that's OK too. Other than the considerations an older parent of young children must give to certain issues (cant retire before kids are out of high school, cause I cant do graduation on a pension) I really have no hangups about my age. (Some regrets I haven't achieved international fame or world domination perhaps, but what the heck at least I have alot of company there.) When you work in a   police/fire/ems call center as I do and hear some of the tragic stories I do, you know darn well every day you get is a gift, no matter what happens that day. Making it this far is an accomplishment. So no fussing on the number of candles that ought to be on the cake.

2 years ago on my 50th birthday my mother gave me an album she had made of photographs, mostly of my life up to the time of my marriage. There were ones I knew were favorites of hers, others that I had asked for copies of, and a few surprises. Looking through the book was a reminder that for all the ups and downs, Id gotten to do quite a lot and had a good time with pretty much all of it.

And I wish all of you equally satisfied thoughts on your birthdays.

On Not Driving

I have a confession to make. I am a freak, a deviant. I defer utterly from the norm in a specific area that virtually all people in America take for granted.

I don't drive.

I don't mean that I don't drive because my license has been suspended, or because I lack a drivable car, or because I have health problems that prevent me from driving. I mean I never bothered to seriously learn, and now have become so used to my status as a non driver that its unlikely I shall ever take it up.

It wasn't intentional, at least not at first. I simply never had the time in high school to learn.  When I got to college I lacked both time and money. There never seemed to be any reason to learn to drive when there was no available funds to have a vehicle anyway. Moreover I was living in a major city with excellent public transit. Shortly after college I did try once to learn. I got my temps and a friend took me out to practice. But I was hugely uncomfortable with the entire business. I simply didn't trust myself to be in control of this big metal monster.

Since I have married we have maintained one car, for my husbands use. The cost of maintaining 2 would be too much, even if I chose to drive. Moreover I work in a business district with paid parking all that is available making public transit the more affordable option anyway.  I find I actually like public transit. I like being able to read, or listen to music, or chat with a friend who happens to be on the same bus. I find I am a nicer person when I get home, because I have had some down time after work, instead of a fight with traffic. I enjoy traveling by Greyhound and Amtrak also. (never really cared for flying, don't think its worth the effort or expense unless one needs to cross an ocean or reach some other inaccessible place) It does however mean adhering to a schedule. One cant just pick up and go, one has to plan.There are times, its true when public transit isn't available. It does mean my husband has to do out of the city picking up at times. It also means helping to kick in with someone gas occasionally to get somewhere. But I accept the inconveniences imposed on me as the price for not doing something I just don't wish to do.

In a lot of countries this behavior would not be considered unusual. Of course most countries have far better urban transits systems than most American cities have, let alone intercity transportation. In much of America you are thought of as some kind of freak if you don't drive. Its one of our rights as Americans, you know, to get behind the wheel of a car regardless of how far we are going and regardless of our skill level as drivers.

My children have had mixed feelings about their mothers failure to get behind the wheel. It never seemed to bother my son much, he has always enjoyed, like me, the challenge of co-ordinating schedules and maps to get to a destination. It used to bother the heck out of my daughter though. She used to embarrass me at school events and the like by going up to friends and trying to cadge rides for us. (My rule is has always been to ask for rides only when its too far to walk or bus service is unavailable. If you offer a ride, I'm happy to accept though)  She has gotten better about it though, if only because she really doesn't have much choice.

Here is the thing, I dont believe our car culture is sustainable. We have already learned that oversize SUVs are impractical for more ordinary activities. The cost of gas is just too great. We will always need to get around longer distances, and in rural areas. But it is absurd to see people getting in their cars to go to stores 10 minutes walking distance from their homes, to pick up milk and eggs. Its a waste of gas and its bad for the enviorment. I also think the drive everywhere culture is as responsible as anything else for the obesity epidemic.  And although I will encourage the kids to learn to drive when they can, I also am happy they know how to read a train timetable. I hope they will do their driving thoughtfully, and use alternative methods when they can.

And here is one more thought. I am always hearing people complain about the other drivers out there on the road who have no business driving. So give me and my fellow non drivers  credit, we are  not contributing to your traffic headaches.

On being a dance mom

      The new season of  Dance Moms started a couple of weeks ago. It is one of my chief guilty pleasures. I am attracted to it like a spectator at an impending train wreck. The show is so outrageously over the top, and yet I cant stop watching, partly because it is so outrageously over the top and partly because I am the parent of a dancer.

      I never set out to have a dancer child. Many of the other moms at the dance school were clearly dancer themselves (even a retired dancer carries themselves in a certain way, no matter how many years and pounds it has been since they put their technique shoes on). I did expect a child with an interest in the arts, being that I majored in theatre and my spouse majored in music. But I never considered that the genetic jumble would produce a dancer,particularly a ballerina. But from a very early age, as she was enraptured by Angelina Ballerina, and pranced about the house on tip toes that she was a born dancer. Friends with far more experience in the field said told us we needed to get her into a dance class and find out if she was really meant for this. So 8 years ago we found an excellent school and  she started, originally with just one beginner class, that has over the years worked itself up to multiple classes several nights a week. And even this is but a dip in the shallow end of the pool,the really committed children (or children of more prosperous parents)are there nightly taking multiple classes.

One thing that is like Dance Moms is that moms (and sometimes dads) do sit around the studio and talk. And we do talk about Dance Moms. We tend to watch it on 2 levels at once, both as ordinary reality TV, and then more critically, by comparison with our childrens' experiences.We also tend to watch it with a huge sense of relief, as in at least our kids teachers aren't that crazy, or at least the other moms here aren't that nuts.

My daughter's school doesn't do competitive dancing. They are focused on training, with an end of the year workshop so parents can see their progress. The  school is associated with a youth dance company that students  can audition for, they usually do one or two ballets a year, a few performances each. But no competition, no weekly trooping off to this city or that. Her dance teacher once said to me "If you want your kid to have a trophy go spend 20 bucks and buy them one. You'll save yourself a fortune". She went on to point out that schools that did competitions spent all their time perfecting the particular dance they were doing, instead of working on the fundamentals of dance.

As an experienced dance parent who knows what all this stuff costs, I am staggered to think the amount of money these moms must invest in dance classes, weekly costumes, competition entry fees, bus charters, and so forth. Only one of the mothers gives any sign of having a job or (currently) a husband, or income. How do they pay for this stuff. What life do these kids have outside dance? With the exception of one older girl who wants to do high school stuff like cheerleading we never hear about the kids doing anything but dance, and yet I know most of the children at my daughters school are involved in all sorts of other activities as well, both in school and out. We also never hear about school, home schooling or otherwise. They have to sit down an write a paper once in awhile. I am always seeing girls between classes getting homework done in the lobby of the dance school.

And clearly the moms have no other life than the dance school either. They are there all the time, and no one ever seems to worry about getting food on the table or seeing to other kids or spouses. Yet I know almost all the parents I ever talk to are hideously busy as they try to include their children's dance activities in with schooling (whether public or doing it themselves) scouts, sports,jobs, and the needs of their other kids.

Now I realize that like all reality shows, there is tons of stuff let on the cutting room floor. But it would be nice if we were given a little more idea of the reality outside the studio. Families of children in any creative or athletic enterprise sacrifice tremendous amounts of money and time to make it all work.

And here is the saddest thing. The dancing really isn't that great. Its not bad, its about what you'd expect of girls in their age groups, but its not spectacular. I can see dancing that good at any school in the area. The performances each week never seem to build any skills for the next week. There is little analysis of what they did or didnt do right in their performances. The ranking of the dancers seem to be entirely based on their placement in competition. No wonder the show focuses more on the Moms' whining that the girls' performance.

That doesn't mean I wont be watching next week. What the heck, I can use escapist reality as much as the next guy.

When you have to say "No"

There are 2 different kinds of saying "no" to your child. One is the basic you are not allowed to do that, it isn't safe, healthy, legal and so forth. This sort of saying no is basically healthy for the child. It helps them learn boundaries, rules and regs, adjust to the fact that they have to submit to authority other than themselves. It also helps them stay alive until they reach an age where they can have kids of their own to restrain. It also isn't that difficult for parents to deal with. We understand this sort of saying no is part of our job. It can even feel good to say no, knowing  have spared your child potential harm.

Its the other kind of saying no that is so hard. Usually it takes the form of "I'm sorry, you can go, we just can't afford that". Sometimes however it is a scheduling issue, or a transportation issue. Or maybe the child is available but the required parental accompaniment is not. Almost always though the reasoning is basically the same, your child cannot do/have the activity/item not for any reason relating to them, but because you, the parent, cannot provide the required element.

I think this sort of saying no is harder on the parent than the child. The kid after all knows its not his doing that the great whatever isn't happening, and aside from the social ostracism of lacking the proper tennis shoes or ticket to the midnight showing of the latest movie, he is ok. I ts the parent who suffers the remorse, not the kid. Inevitably the parent ends up feeling they have, in some way, failed.

Kids can be harsh about this stuff. "I reminded you again and again this is coming, why didn't you set a few bucks aside every week." Well because the extra few bucks bought milk and bread or bus fare. I wanted to try and set the money aside but the car always knows how much money I had, and deliberate leaks gas in just the right proportion to the quantity of my check book." Mom you ruined my life by never learning to drive, just so you know. " "I will be the only kid in the school who doesn't have new shoes when school starts." (never mind you got a pair 2 months ago that fit just fine)

I have a hard time with this sort of thing. Oddly its not the big things that I find so hard (I know we cant afford driving school, extra insurance at teenage boy level, and another car right now, so its not hard to say no to the drivers license.)  Its the little stuff  like seeing movies when they come out, or not being able to get a new sleeping bag before the next camping trip, so they have to use the old one even if its too short and the zipper sticks, or telling the daughter that she has to wait 2 weeks before I can get new pointe shoes, unlike some of the other moms. Its also bad when you tell one they cant have something the other one had, cause as a parent you want to be as fair as possible. (and boy don't they know how to play that guilt card.)

The worst is when you have to say no to something you both would enjoy and cant really repeat. Earlier this month I had to tell my daughter that there just wasn't enough money to go to DC for a concert celebrating Girl Scouting's 100th birthday. We had hoped to go up on the Greyhound, I secured the time off from work last year, and it was only about 2 weeks before the event that I fitnally threw my hands up in despair knowing that there simply wasnt the available funds. The guilt was compounded by the fact that I had managed to visit the 100th anniv Boy Scout Jamboree with her brother several years ago. We had attended the concert in 2007, and there will be another in 2017 but there was only one 100th anniversary, and only one perfect not quite teenage daughter trip to take of that sort. It helped my guilt not a bit to see press coverage the next day on the Sunday morning news shows. Fortunately the daughter was still in bed.

I know we cant give our kids everything, or that we even should give our kids everything. Goodness knows I didn't get it all when I was a kid, my parents had less money and twice as many kids as we do. Like a lot of parents I try to do at least a little bit better by my kids than my parents were able to do, on the whole I think we succeed. But of course the kids don't know where you are coming from, only where they are at right now.

I also don't think there is anything wrong with regretting the "no" a bit, or mourning that which you don't get to do or have, so long as it doesn't become more important than what you do manage to do, and what you do manage to have. Moreover, as long as we remember that for every time we look at others and feel like "have nots", there is someone else looking at us as the "haves", we will be able to keep it all in proportion.

Even  if our the kids are being deprived, mortified, embarrassed, and totally ruined for life.

Silly 911 calls

When people find out what I do for a living the first thing they usually say is "I bet you take some funny calls". The answer of course is yes we do. I can"t tell you everything. There are confidentiality issues, but all of the following are things we hear again and again. In fact one of the most surreal aspects of our job is the way it can suddenly shift from life threatening to absurd. Imagine the shift from life threateng to:     
    "I want to make a police report. The dry cleaners didnt clean my suit right."   
    "I'm 18 and I dont have a drivers license. Last night  I was pulled over driving a rental car. What consequences may  I face when I go to court? "    
    (citizen reporting accident) "The white car caused it." "Did you see it happen?" "No but thats how I heard it."   

   Some things I am tired of hearing:   
   "Can you give me the number for (fill in non law enforcement office)?     
   "That was just  my baby playing on the phone."   
   "This isnt an emergency, but I'm out out of minutes on my phone."   
    "Sorry, I must have pocket dialed (or butt dialed)"

     (I hate cell phones by the way,by the way, does it show? )
   
   "The 6 car accident here on the freeway has traffic really backed up" (and lacking helicopters the cruiser and tow truck are trying to get thru the same darn traffic)
      Lately i have realized that I spend way too much time talking to the insides of people pockets, and to preliterate babies whose parents think a blackberry is a chew toy. But as we like to say, its job security.

Christopher Lee Never Had to Sparkle

My officially teenager in a week daughter and I each have and e-reader and share an account. Amazingly enough there are actually books we both like, from classics like The Wizard of Oz and the works of Louisa May Alcott to more recent series like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. There is however one great literary  divide between us. It is vampires.

Now I love classic horror films and horror literature. Frankenstein, Dracula, Carmilla, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and their various film incarnations have been among my favorite entertainments for most of my life. From classic silents like Nosferatu and Phantom of the Opera, through all the Universal classics (especially anything with Boris Karloff), the great sci-fi/horror films of the 50s and the brilliant work of those folks at Hammer films and even current films as long as they don't go too crazy with the blood and gore: I am a fan. 

One of the appealing things about horror films of course is that they take place in a surprisingly ordered universe. Once the conventions are established they of the need to be adhered to. Mummies may seem like soulless creatures, but wait till the reincarnation of their late lover turns up. Werewolves fear silver and the full moon. Vampires can only come out at night and need to be firmly staked at the end of the story. I don't object to a little tweaking mind you." Shadow of the Vampire" was a brilliant film which postulates that the classic film Nosferatu employed a real vampire in the lead. Of course in true vampire lore they cast  no reflection, nor would they appear on film, or cast shadows, but making those allowances the rest of the rules were strictly followed. In "Fright Night" it is not merely enough to confront the vampire with a cross, one must also believe that it will work. (I speak of course of the original Roddy McDowall/Chris Sarandon Fright Night, not the more recent film that I have no intention of seeing: once you change an essential premise of the story (in this case a main charecters profession, which related directly to the plot, you have lost the reason for your story) The beauty of the horror film is that after the initial disruption, order is restored by the end of the film, even if there is a doorway left open for a sequel.
Then a few years ago the vampires of Washington State disrupted the ordered vampire universe
Its all Stephanie Meyers fault of course. In the Twilight books the vampire mythos is made subservient to teen Harlequin romance. The films are even worse because the story is being told by some remarkable attractive young people. (and some attractive older people also. In the midst of the great Team Jacob/Team Edward debate, I suggested there needed to be a Team Carlisle for moms who had to sit through the dang movies with their daughters, but could at least appreciate Peter Facinelli's talents. I got a "really mother" and a pre=teen roll of the eyes) What I think of their acting talent have to wait till I see them in better films.

As a devoted fan of the more classic horror films, I cant tell you how distressing it  to see vampires running around by daylight, playing baseball, going to school and so forth. But it is the sparkling that is the worst. Yes for those of you who have been fortunate enough to avoid the entire Twilight universe, vampires don't vaporize in daylight, they sparkle. It has to be the silliest horror film concept ever. How menacing is a creature that sparkles in the daylight? But these aren't menacing vampires anyway, they are tortured teenage adolescent vampires.

To me this is more less Gothic heresy. To me the essential vampire has always been Christopher Lee. (All respect to Bela Lugosi for creating the template, but Sir Christopher perfected it) Tall and menacing and oh that voice.  (Nobody knows how to talk in the Twilight films either, but that's a whole different column) "Christopher Lee never had to sparkle" I tell my daughter.To her Sir Christopher is Willie Wonka's father or the guy giving Gandalf trouble in the "Lord of the Rings".
Because the saddest thing about Twilight is that it turns the kids off on the more classic horror stories.  The ones that set the standards are now the deviants.I can tell this by the vampire novels she is downloading to the nook, Twilight rip offs all. The 25 classic Vampire Tales anthology is strictly for my reading.

One more Twilight movie to go, and instead of the pang of regret I felt for the final Harry Potter film last summer, there will only be a sigh of relief. And there is hope for the future. Lately she has gotten into reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now there's a show that knew its teen angst and its Children of the Night.

The Queen's Big Party

Some of my co-workers laughed at me last year when I took a vacation  day to watch Prince William  and Kate Middleton tie the knot. "You can just tape it, or watch the highlights at home after work.".
But if I did it that way I couldn't text with like minded friends during the ceremonies. Plus the replays cut out all the parts I like, the parades of horses and army companies and so forth. "All that history" I said, "all that pageantry". One co-worker understood though, she had also taken the day off.  And the last couple of weeks I thoroughly annoyed my kids with all the shows related to the Queen's Jubilee clogging up the DVR, knocking off additional episodes of  Sons of Guns and Step It Up.

I admit it, I am a full blown Anglophile. This is perhaps a sad admission from someone who is also half Irish. While not discounting the many wrongs done my ancestor, the efforts in my youth to really hate the British just never took. Too much history, too much culture. As a theatre major I fell in love with English actors, English playwrights, and English settings. And as I studied the literature and history of the British Isles I became fascinated with that long line of monarchs back to William the Conqueror. I actually memorized the line of descent from William I to Elizabeth II. And eventually when we got into the Society for Creative Anachronism and recreation of the Middle Ages, my area of expertise was the early Plantagenets, and the  tangled soap opera of Henry the Second and his wife and sons (as seen in The Lion in Winter)

Sometimes I was a bit uncomfortable with my fascination with monarchy. After all I was a proud American and a firm admirer of the founding fathers and the Constitution. I understand why they recoiled from anything to do with hereditary titles and monarchy. But there is something missing and I think deep down many Americans feel it.

It was during the administration of Ronald Reagan, which overlapped most of my college career, that I began to figure out what the issue was.Tip O'Neil once said "Say what you will, Ronald Reagan would have made a hell of a king." And its true. Mr Reagan was always at his best in ceremonial roles, where he reflected the feelings of his people: his Challenger speech,  his 40th anniversary D Day speech, or his speech at the Berlin Wall were great moments of showmanship. His hands off management methods were disastrous on the other hand. We have had other presidents who were great at management, but were turned out of office because they failed to inspire people. And I realized that the problem with the Presidency is that we expect one person to do too much. We want them to be both a political/administrative leader and a spiritual/ceremonial leader. A person who is good at one function usually isn't good at the other.

Now you don't have to have a monarchy to solve this problem. Many democracies have both a President and a Prime minister. The President cuts all the ribbons and the Prime Minister minds the store. However what the democracies lack is the sense of continuity. Some people feel this is a good thing, that after a certain period of time you can turn everyone out and start over again. But sometimes perhaps a little too much gets turned over each time we hold an election. And perhaps one reason we have such a culture of celebrity in this country is because those people are around a lot longer than most presidents.

This brings me back to the British and their thousand plus years of history. Because we are a young country and we feel a pull towards that which is older, especially when we share common roots with that history. There's something to be said for a country surviving more or less intact for so long, through war, peace, wealth, poverty, good monarchs and bad ones. Its not so much the individual kings as it that grand lineage. (I know Catholics who feel the same way about the Popes, whatever you think of an individuals performance, its still something to say you trace the head of your church back so far).

And as an outsider looking in. it seems that for the last 200 years or so, the British have had a run of really good monarchs (except that Edward VIII guy, who didn't last long in part because he forgot what he was expected to be). They were fundamentally decent people, conscientious about their duties, they really did put their country first, and in times of crisis set examples for their people by just going about their business and reminding people there were higher things than their day to day struggles.

When I was watchin all the boats sailing up the river Thames I was interested to see all the differant kinds of boats and their functions, from the ones that were actually rowed by people, to the boats that work every day on the river. One of the moving sights had to be the Dunkirk boats, some of the little boats, privately owned, that went back and forth across the  Channel to rescue Brittish  soldiers when the Nazis overran France. They are still around, England is still around (something that looked iffy in 1940) and the Queen is still around to remind them of everything they have survived together.

The present Queen came to the throne when the Empire was falling apart. Country after country sought its independence. But because she was  the one symbol that most everyone could agree upon and new organization, the Commonwealth came into being, allowing a lot of hugely diverse states (many of them democracies) to stick together. And in celebrating the Queen's reign I think the British get to celebrate themselves in a way we don't get to.  I think that's something to look at with admiration, regardless of politics.  So congratulations to Her Majesty on the grand 60 years, and good luck to all the successors who come after her.

Mr Bradbury

One of my all time favorite pieces of pop culture trivia is that back in 1930's Los Angeles there were 2 boys named Ray who hung out together at the movies. One of their favorite movies was King Kong. The one boy dreamed of designing creatures like Kong, and the dinosaurs he battled on Skull Island. The other boy dreamed of writing stories that would take people other places, just like the movies did. In a happy Hollywood ending, both boys got their wishes. One, Ray Harryhausen became the film world's greatest master of stop motion animation. The other was Ray Bradbury.

Several times their dreams crossed on screen as Mr Harryhausen made visible Mr Bradbury's written visions, most famously when Harryhausen animated the lovesick dinosaur of one of Bradburys best known stories: "The Fog Horn".

Mr Bradburys stories took to all sorts of times and places. Some were set in a nostalgic past, often a past in which a sweet innocence is corrupted by darkness and evil, as in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Or he could take us to a dark future that didn't seem to be that far from our own, as he did with Fahrenheit 451. Or through a whole series of stories he could take us to a Mars no other person had ever dreamed of.

In Mr Bradbury's stories the effect of events upon the humans in the stories is always at the forefront. Of all the sci-fi writers I have read, he is the one who most often moves to tears, perhaps because  you can so easily see yourself in the position of his finely drawn characters. One of my favorite stories is about a boy/man who is always 12. He settles in a place for awhile, finds some childless couple to take him in, then moves on again when the other moms start noticing that he never changes or grows. When you read the story its hard to say whom you feel worse for, the little boy or the foster parents who have loved him and now must watch him leave.

In "All summer in a Day" a story I just finished re-reading, children growing up on a planet where it always rains react cruelly to a new arrival from Earth who tells them of a seemingly insane world of sunshine and clear skies. I hadn't read it in a long time, and had forgotten how deeply I hurt for the little girl who missed so terribly something we take for granted. Yet I sympathise also with the other children, who act in ignorance of a world they do not know.

Many of his stories, like these two,  are told from the point of view of a child, for he never lost the ability to to tell a story from a child's perspective, filtered through an adults wistful nostalgia.

What runs through his work more than anything else is a great love of words....both the readers' love of consuming words and the writers' love of crafting with them.

He was also better served in the visual medium than some other writers. His own Ray Bradbury scifi series, the TV miniseries of The Martian Chronicles, the film version of Something Wicked this Way Comes all capture something of his vision; and another great artist, Francois Truffaut made an amazing film of Fahrenheit 451.

In that film there is a devastating image of classic books dissolving in flames. To a lover of books it is gut wrenching. But there is another image at the end of the film--when the hero encounters a village of people who have each taken the task of memorizing a great book, because books cant be destroyed when they are in peoples minds and hearts. There is this blending murmur of many voices, each reciting the stories they have given their lives to. Happily when I think of Ray Bradbury, It is not the flames I think of, but the river of words.

Transitions

     This morning we dropped our son off at the summer camp where he will be on staff this year. It is actually the second year he has worked there. For 8 weeks we will only see him on Saturday nights when he comes home to eat a real meal, revisit his computer, wash his laundry and sleep in his bed. Then Sunday morning its back to camp again.

     It is just another reminder that here in the summer between the 11th and 12th grade he is already halfway out the family door. When fall arrives and the chaos of his Senior year starts time will begin to race by.
     
    Parenting is made of such milestones of course. We all have them, certain moments that reminded us that children grow and mature (at least we hope they mature) change interests frequently, and then one day surprise you that they are nearly adults.

      With my son it really began last summer when he took those first steps into the working world, and into his independent life away from us. Now he was earning money from someone other than a relative, and had the W-2 form and the direct deposit to prove it. And just as when we sent him into kindergarten a preschooler and saw him come out that afternoon a grade school student, he came home from camp a near adult.

        This last year has been crowded with such milestones. He started seriously looking at colleges and majors. Catalogs began to show up in the mail, along with the inevitable recruiting materials from the armed forces. He took his first AP class to start obtaining some college credit. He took his ACT tests. He took a senior girl to the prom. He finished another year of baseball and got his letterman award again. Yesterday a flyer came in the mail for senior pictures. Small things many of them. but each another tick on the clock.

        The great moments are when they suddenly surprise you with their maturity. When you find out they did an unexpectedly mature or responsible thing, when a teacher or other adult tells you what a fine child you raised, when they say something profound out of the blue, you get a warm feeling that just maybe you are doing something right.

       Before we know it this year will be over, and we will be packing him not for summer camp but for college. And after that no matter how often he comes home, it will be on his terms as the grown adult he has become. And hopefully we will always look at him and get that warm feeling that we did it right.

       Meanwhile, the same fall that he will leave for college his little sister will start high school and the clock will start running again.

Things your 911 operator would tell you if anyone were asking

How often have you watched a crime show on TV and saw the program jump from the commission of the crime to the arrival of the police? Have you ever wondered how the police knew to show up? Unless it is a very small town the phone was not answered by the police officer who came out to the scene of the crime. It probably wasn't even a police officer answering the phone. It probably a civilian, usually female, who goes by the title like Dispatcher, Communications person, Call taker or 911 operator. Its a hard, challenging, rewarding, infuriating job. 911 operators are the invisible link that make Public Safety work. Here's a little information about what goes on in our world.

Most dispatch centers have anywhere from 2 to 10 people answering the phone at any given time. In bigger departments some are assigned to taking calls while others are assigned to dispatching the various services. In smaller departments one or two people may do everything. Centers are staffed 24 hrs a day, weekends and holidays also.The trend has been towards combining services...police,fire and ems together, also towards combining multiple departments, sometimes whole counties into one center.

We are often called 911 operators, but in most departments we take all incoming calls for police, fire and ems. Therefore the cardiac arrest call that we gave CPR instructions for, or the bank robbery call, can be immediately followed by a call about a junk car on the street, a loose dog, or loud music. We have no way of knowing what will be on the other end of the line. Unfortunately in some ways 911 is almost too successful, everyone knows how to call it and they don't have the time or the capacity to look up other numbers. Also, unlike many 411 services we don't charge for calls. I frequently take calls that begin either "this isn't an emergency but I didn't know the non emergency number" or "my phone is out of minutes and this is the only number I can call".

One of the most stressful aspects of our job is that we usually don't learn how things turn out after we get off the phone, especially on medical calls. The very hardest calls for most of us to deal with involve children, or people we know. Sooner or later we all get one and it can be traumatic. Every dispatcher I know has few calls they carry around with them. that they can't forget.

I have been doing this job for more than 20 years, right thru the proliferation of cell phones into the hands of virtually everyone. Cell phones can be lifesavers, but they are also a huge nuisance for us. For one thing it means that every time anything happens we have not one or two people calling, but frequently dozens of calls. They at least are calling about actual crimes. There are bigger headaches with cell phones.

All working cell phones call 911, even if they have no service or minutes. Many people do not realize this and let their children play with old cell phones. Most children these days are taught how to call 911 at preschool. I have had many conversations with 2 yr olds who are not really verbal and who don't quite get the meaning of "take the phone to a grownup". Older children are more aware that they are actually calling 911. I actually had a child take the phone to mom and say "I called 911" only to hear the parent bragging to others in the room about their child's great imagination, or even tell them to stop making things up the phone doesn't work. On the other hand I have heard really young kids do amazing things over the phone in actual emergencies.

Even more annoying however are the calls no one (intentionally) makes. This has gotten worse in the era of touch phones, which really facilitate pocket dialing, to use the polite term. Half my 911 calls in a given day are from no one at all, except the inside of their jacket or jeans or purse. The sound of people walking with their pocket dialing cellphones in their pocket can be very loud, it sounds kind of like crunching thru a huge pile of fall leaves. .

Another misconception people have about emergency services is that if they call 911 they will somehow get a faster police response simply because they called 911 instead of calling the non emergency line. Police departments do not maintain separate 911 cruisers to respond to calls that come over those lines. All calls, however received, go into the same lineup, and are taken in order of priority. A homicide or a robbery is high priority no matter how we learn about it. A barking dog or loud music is not.

I have heard profanity on phone calls that the MPAA would give a NC17 rating to. I am not talking about major emergencies. Its understandable people using excessive obscenities in life and death situations. I'm talking about routine non life threatening calls. I have taken calls about dogs and loud music in which enough F bombs were dropped to make Bully look G rated. And I won't even get into the things I have been called. Fortunately before I did this job I worked in a city rec center, so at least I am no longer being cussed out in person.

There are compensations of course. Most dispatch jobs are covered by civil service so there is seniority and benefits.There is usually a lot of job security as dispatcher centers are frequently understaffed. Voluntary overtime is almost always available, however there is also involuntary overtime in a lot of centers when not enough people can be persuaded to take it voluntarily. Not knowing when we go into work what time we will leave work is another stress factor.

911 operators are considered emergency personnel in most cities, they are under no strike clauses, and subjected as previously mentioned to non voluntary holdovers, but are classed and paid as clerical personnel. They are seldom noticed unless something goes wrong or a mistake is made, then they are viral on YouTube. But every time someone calls for help and gets it, a call taker was involved in the chain of assistance.

Like most other professions we have a "day", National Telecomunicators Day. Its April 11th (411). Guess what day was "our day" until 2001?  Police and Fire call takers and dispatchers were unsung heroes that day too. Frequently they deal with public emergencies while not being able to find out what is going on with their own homes, their own families.

Its a job with lots of ups and downs. And there are a lot of funny and stupid calls we take. And there are a lot of stories with satisfying, rewarding outcomes. But they are stories for another day.