Well, school is starting soon. Do you know how I know this? That’s right—the fresh-faced freshman, embarking on a new stage in life, who move to Boston and Cambridge each September. Here’s a few tips on riding the T so that you don’t piss off the locals (i.e. me) the next time.
1. When waiting on the platform, be mindful of those around you. I don’t care what ‘art house’ film you have just seen and I doubt those around me do either. No once cares who you think is more ‘valid,’ Noam Chomsky or Arundhati Roy. And really, I doubt your friends do either.
2. When the train pulls up, step aside and let people off. It’s merely common courtesy. In fact, everyone pay attention to this one.
3. When on the train, don’t cluster around the door. You have time to get off the train at your stop, trust me. You see, I don’t want to stand so close to you that I can smell your patchouli. I just can’t get by your giant backpack/messenger bag.
4. Don’t lean on the poles. Others have to use them too. That soft thing you keep smushing? That is my hand. I need it.
5. Again, no one care about your opinion regarding Foucault and Paris Hilton. God, even I know her dog was recovered.
6. When you exit the train and get on the escalator to exit the station, stand on the right side, or walk on the left. Don’t stand on the left. I am trying to get away from you as fast as possible. I can’t do that when you block my escaoe route.
Yes, I sound like a grouchy old lady here. You would think that I had never been 18 or a freshman. I understand your excitement and your desire to fit into a new city, I swear. Look, just stay out of my way and I will stay out of yours. Okay?

Can’t.blog.too.hot.so.humid.ugh.

Rather than bore you with info on books (I am still reading the same two books, if you can believe it. They are very good, but very long. And I am distracted by the Olympics each night, so I am not reading as much.) I will tell you about the great afternoon I had yesterday. I don’t know if many people know what the weather is like in New England, except those of you who live here. Generally, we seem to get a lot of extremes. Hot and humid summers and cold as hell winters with nice mild springs and falls. but this week has been particularly delightful—-70’s and sunny. Yesterday was so fucking nice that I couldn’t concentrate on work. Indeed, sitting outside for lunch gave me a taste of what I was missing sitting in my dark office hunched over the computer. Okay, I wasn’t really hunched, but casually perched in my chair in front of the computer and the office is fairly bright. Regardless, I decided to escape early and walk home. On the way, I decided to get some ice cream. Now, another thing you may not know is that Bostonians love, I mean love, ice cream. This may seem antithetical to our natures, what with the 5 months of hard cold dank winter we deal with here. You think Chicago is windy? They got nothing on us. We still regard ice cream as the best dessert ever. So I trotted over to Herrell’s on the way home. And had a scoop of the most delicious ice cream ever—Peanut Butter Swirl with Cookie Dough. A scrimptious vanilla with peanut butter swirled in and chunks of cookie dough. So I ate that and walked in the beautiful sunshine home. I didn’t even mind when the bus almost ran me over.

This will probably be too much info for most folks (all 2 of you who visit here), but for lack of anything new and exciting to relate to you, I will just tell you anyway. First, one thing you must know about me is my dislike of the color pink. I don’t care for it. I am a girl who does not like pink. Last night, my dear boyfriend included a red shirt in our laundry. Thank god mostly his clothes were ruined. His underwear and t-shirts came out an evenly colored bright pink. I am talking cotton candy pink. Hahahah. And a few of my things did as well. Everytime I have gone into the bathroom today, it still shocks me. Pink! Argh!

Two of the things you get used to when you tell people you are from the South are the stupid questions and the automatic assumptions. From the age of 9 until I graduated high school at 18, I lived in the Deep South—Alabama to be more precise. I moved there from a small town in Connecticut in 1984, when my father was out of work. The only job he could find was in Alabama. So my whole family packed up. I can’t say I loved all of it, but it is where I lived. At least I have the perspective of having lived in two completely different areas of the U.S. At least they seem different on the surface. Sure, the people talk a little more slowly and they seem more friendly. But to use the cliché People are people. No matter where you go, people are basically the same. That’s why when I read Maud’s post yesterday I felt I had to put in my two cents as well.

Maud takes umbrage with Charles Simic’s article in the most recent New York Review of Books, an essay titled ‘Down There on a Visit‘. And she was not the only one. The Morning News’s Clay Risen, from Nashville, wrote a great response to Simic’s article. And I just found Jeff of Syntax of Things response, which is eloquently written. We (and whomever else has read Simic’s article and hails from the South I suspect) feel like Simic already had his mind made up about the South even before he went on his two week trip through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.

I agree that the South is not perfect. Changes still need to be made. But so don’t things elsewhere. The South is not the only area of the country where racism exists unfortunately. Simic talks about the mostly white enclave Fairhope, Alabama, a wealthy artists’ community. It was founded in 1884 as a model community where land was a cooperative and free from private monopolies. Now it is an upscale resort, writes Simic, where the citizens do not notice the growing disparity between rich and poor. Honestly, you can name a hundred towns like that all over the U.S. that sound just like that. Nantucket isn’t exactly a social paradise, where everyone is treated equally rich or poor.

It is not that I disagree with what Simic sees on his trip. It is just the paint he uses to make his picture, to use a poor metaphor. He talks as if nothing has changed down South, while the rest of the country has evolbed into some sort of utopia. He does acknowledge that New Hampshire has it’s share of heartless politicians. But he is also quick to say that the New Hampshire politicians don’t “invoke God as they go about ensuring that the poor stay poor”. And he mentions that Americans as of late have been voting against their own self interests, caring more about ‘family values’, guns, and the teaching of evolution. “They squabble, as they did on Alabama recently, over whether the Ten Commandments ought to be posted in a courthouse while the education of their children continues to be underfunded and their overcrowded public schools are violent and dangerous places.” See only in Alabama do they the ignorant parents fight over religion when there are more pressing issues at hand. Only in the South are people so obsessed with religion and guns. Yeah. Only in the South.

I am sure if I not been white, my experience would have been different. But the South tries. And I don’t find things much better up here in New England either. Boston is segregated still too. There is much racism in this city. And in other cities across the U.S. Why then does Simic and other authors continue to portray the South as this backwards region populated with ignorant but friendly folk (they are always friendly they make sure to say)? Why do people I know talk about being scared of the South? Scared of getting harassed or something? They are bad assumptions that continue to endure because people like Simic continue to write articles like ‘Down there on a Visit’. Risen is correct when he says the most of the readers of Simic’s article won’t be shocked. Rather, it will be affirming what most of them believe already, what they have been taught.

I doubt anything I say here will make much of a dent in the South’s poor reputation. I suppose I just want people to know that its not that bad. And why Southerners always seem to be on the defensive. We just get so much crap from everyone. Take a look at where you grew up. Is that much different? I didn’t think so.

Normally when a celebrity dies, I figure they get enough coverage elsewhere. No need for me to acknowledge that person’s life and death. But Julia Child died! I loved her! Her cookbooks inspired me. She took ‘fine’ cooking and made it seem easy. She had such integrity for a celebrity chef and was a huge supporter of public television. You know she was not in it for the money, but rather for the love of good eating and drinking. Dammit, I am gonna miss that gal.

From NYT:

Is it just me or does this look weird?

This almost made me pee in my pants.

Geoffrey O’Brien has a wonderful piece in the New York Review of Books on Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Regardless of your politics, I think it is an important movie and O’Brien expresses the reason why:

Fahrenheit 9/11 serves as a necessary reminder that, to put it in the simplest terms, we need to see and hear more than the government and the various news channels allow us to see and hear. We need to play back the tapes to refresh our memory of what seems consigned to instant oblivion even as it unfolds. We need to see those images —of Americans and Iraqis alike wounded and dying, for example— that American television tends to withhold, as if the reality of the war could thereby be kept at bay. Michael Moore’s version of what has been happening lately is only one possible narrative; but by its very existence it encourages a more active, more confrontational approach to the images that surround us, anything to break through the numbing effect of the endless flow of TV news broadcasts and official bulletins that has become something like the wallpaper of a distorted public reality, a stream of images that moves forward without ever looking back.

I think that most people know I am fairly liberal. I don’t care for Bush or his administratin. I don’t like the war. So I admit I am biased. But I think everyone should see this movie. Not to convince them about Bush, but so that everyone can see what the media has done. How they have manipulated and filtered what we see every day. How we have no real good source for news anymore. How biased they are one way or the other. I think Moore’s movie, regardless of the politics, and the record numbers of attendence, show that Americans are willing to deal with hard hitting news. We do not need or want to be pandered to nor coddled. We want the honest facts so we can make up our own minds.
So read the above article for an honest assessment of Moore’s movie.

From NY Post page 6:
“NATALIE Portman tried to get her “Vote for John Kerry” message out to the masses last week, but she was stymied. Arriving from Boston, where she attended the Democratic National Convention, Portman was scheduled to tout her “Garden State” on “The Charlie Rose Show,” “Good Morning America” and CBS’s “The Early Show.” She showed up in a Kerry T-shirt, but only Rose let it be seen on-air. According to the movie’s publicity people, “GMA” tried to cover up her shirt by strategically placing a flower pot in front of the pro-Kerry logo while “The Early Show” cameras only showed Portman from the shoulders up to avoid spreading the message. ”
I suppose they can claim they were trying to remain objective, but somehow I don’t think that was going through their minds.
On a side note, I used to see Natalie Portman on a daily basis. She lived in the building where my office is located.