3:45 in the morning

NOTE to SELF: Large latte at 2 pm is BAD idea.
Since 1 am last Tuesday, our lives have been on other folks time tables. Since last Wednesday we have been in sleeping in a strange bed  [Hampton Inn's].
Dick's mother died Tuesday morning, and the funeral was Friday.
Until last night's 11 o'clock news, I had successfully blocked out the chaos of US politics. But we are listening to the book, Citizens of London, which is about the Americans in London prior to the United States declaring war in Dec. 1941. The US did not enter the war until after Pearl Harbor because Republican isolationists from the Midwest controlled Congress and public opinion. The US and Roosevelt were happy to let one tiny island attempt to fend off the advancing savage by itself. British citizens endured nightly bombings and severe rationing of food and clothing, while Congress insisted that Britain was exaggerating its plight and need.
Congress could not understand that the United States of America, the land of milk and honey, was a world citizen, not a world unto itself.
Sixty years later, the US Congress again does not understand that the United States of America is not just a world citizen, but for now, we are expected to be leaders in that world. The American debt ceiling is our private affair; it is about US taxes and spending. It has nothing to do with world finances.
George W. Bush took a healthy economy, lowered taxes for his wealthy buddies and corporations, started two wars, and left the country with enormous moral and financial debts. He used the excuse of a single attack on the United States that killed a few thousand people to engage in a war essentially based on his own need to avenge his father who had been threatened by one country's leader. He left the American people with a deficit in the trillion dollar figures. I had never heard the word trillion used before another Republican, Ronald Reagan, left the US with a 10-digit debt.
We are a selfish, self-absorbed nation that suffers under the illusion that we can have it all  without paying for it. We have a grid-locked Congress that cannot see beyond the next election and definitely cannot see beyond our own borders  [we are building a fence to protect us from our southern neighbors].
The world is filled with despots and tribal leaders who maintain their power by slaughtering thousands of people; large parts of the world have been living with drought for decades and trying to exist with very little food and water. But only one despot was worthy of an all-out American war, he happened to control a lot of oil.
We are going to be away this September 11, and I am so glad because the US will go on and on and on about how we were wronged one day 10 years ago.
I enjoy the niceties of the United States, I am happily married to a man who is very well off and has provided that his children and I will be taken care of financially. Our house is paid for, and we have the luxury of not having to work. But I fully understand that we are the privileged class. And  although I am not ready to sell all that I have and give it to the poor, I do want to share generously.
It is now 4:30, and I am still not sleepy, and I will pay later today for my stupidity of yesterday, but I am so glad I have gotten some of my frustration and anger out. It has been seething inside, and I cannot speak freely of it.
Listening to Citizens of London has once again made me aware of how selfish and self-centered we Americans are.

When is a check not a check--or this is the 21st century

Many years ago, someone told Madeleine L'Engle that the signature on her check didn't really matter, that tellers looked only at accounts and amounts. Flabbergasted, Madeleine tested it out. She wrote a check and signed with a name from literature. No questions asked. She felt like a nonperson, someone who wasn't even a name on a check. In the ensuing days and weeks, she had a grand time with all her favorite characters--one day she might be Elizabeth Bennett, or Alice in Wonderland, or Charlotte Bronte, or Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She eventually went back to being her honest self--Madeleine L'Engle.

In the meantime, some banks got smart and started asking for IDs or comparing the signatures with electronic file copies of signatures.

Today I discovered what I consider to be a 21st century equivalent.

I admit I am a dinosaur; I still write checks for groceries, clothing, prescriptions, etc. Two young men in the family have made it clear that they resent standing behind someone in line who is writing a check. Some day they will be dinosaurs of some sort, and this current generation will die out. Until then, be patient guys.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon, and I had a bill for $37.15, so I wrote a check for $67.15. I signed the sworn statement that I had money to cover the check and if not I would pay some outrageous penalty. The clerk handed me my receipt and the postage stamps I had bought. When I asked about my $30 change, she looked at the "check" receipt and the grocery receipt. Both read $37.15, but I was holding a canceled check in my hand that was clearly written and signed for the amount of $67.15.

She told me nothing could be done about it; the amount on the "check" receipt had been debited from my account. I could go buy something else and write another check  with the $30 extra. She also said that her keyboard was sticky [right, I have a bridge to sell you]. When I went to the office desk for help, a pleasant young man said the same thing, but he was willing to take a check for $30, without my buying anything.

I stood there staring at my check and the various receipts in total disbelief. Not only was my check a non-check, but I had just discovered how easy it would be to steal from my account.

Friends regularly send me emails that are looking back lovingly on another, better time, or they are casting aspersions at the current state of the world. I usually don't read them; nostalgia isn't very helpful in the present. It can be fun and memorable, but we are living here and now.

However, experiences like this make me look back and wonder whether the new electronic age is all that it is cracked up to be.

Signed,
 A Friendly Dinosaur

A Yarn Crawl--sorta

Yesterday my friend Risa and I took off midday and went to Hillsborough for a ladies lunch, then we hit the Hillsborough Yarn shop. The owner, Ann, describes her store as similar to a department store shoe department. She has one of everything out on display, and the rest is in the back and she can get it for you. I would love to walk through the back room.

I took a couple of pictures of yarns and wares. The colors and textures were a joy to the eyes and fingers. The photos don't begin to recreate the sensation.

While we were there, a van-load of ladies from Wake Forest arrived on leg two of a yarn crawl. They had been to a shop in Henderson and were off to Carey next.

Risa had never witnessed a full-fledged yarn crawl. Given the size of the shop, it was overwhelming; there may have only been five or six women, but it felt like a busload. The group was having fun. They are part of a group that meets every two weeks at a library. It was delightful to hear the back-and-forth among the knitting friends.

Ooh, feel this!

Does this yarn go with that one?

I think I must be buying this one; it hasn't left my hand since I picked up.

As a true-blue knitter, Risa was right at home.

One thing we all agreed on is that a real yarn shop is filled to the ceiling and overflowing and overwhelming. Now I understand why the shop we had visited in Rockville two weeks ago was so underwhelming. It had aspirations of being a boutique not a yarn shop.

I'm hoping to go back to the Hillsborough shop on Tuesday. I fell in love with a stitch used in one of the sample sweaters--a star stitch [of course]. I was willing to buy the book just to get that one pattern stitch, but they didn't have it. However, the owner said she would work it out for me if I came back at a quieter time. And she added that Tuesday and Wednesdays were dead. [In the wall photo, the sweater is the second on the right, the bright colorful one].

The Night before Easter

I wrote this piece in 1964. It conveys a bit of what memories of Easter mean to me.

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The Night before Easter

Although it is only 10:30, the house is quiet now. We have to be up early tomorrow for the Sunrise Service, and Papa still has to finish up preparation for the morning service. Mama is lying quietly beside him, listening sleepily to his occasional comments; she will soon be asleep. Debbi is already asleep; she had a busy day cleaning the house and is tired. I’m tired too, but I’m not quite ready to sleep.

As I lie here writing, I am remembering many of the Easters I have spent in parsonages. There always was a happy air about the house. Gramma and Grampa were usually here. Gramma would spend the evening finishing our new Easter dresses, while Grampa helped Debbi and me to decorate eggs. Sometime during the evening we would all go over to the church and add the finishing touches to arranging the flowers.

As soon as the dresses and eggs were done, Debbi and I would be sent to bed; Papa would go to the study to finish his sermon notes. Mama, Gramm, and Grampa would talk quietly while folding the bulletins in the dining room.

This year Gramma and Grampa didn’t feel up to coming to Pittsburgh, so we’re going to their house after church tomorrow. Debbi and I are now too old for Easter bunnies and colored eggs; our Easter suits were purchased at a local dress store.

Even though Gramma and Grampa aren’t here, even though we aren’t coloring eggs, and florist decorated the church early this morning, there is still a happy, gay air to the house, but this year it is a mature air. This year we are happy with a spiritual fervor; we aren’t waiting for an Easter bunny, but for an Easter savior. This Easter marks the beginning of new grown-up traditions.

I’m ready to go to bed now. I know that Papa will be awake for quite awhile yet. As I fall asleep tonight, a mysterious feeling of anticipation creeps over me, and I roll over hoping that the beautiful, new morning will come quickly, for tonight is the night before Easter.

Note: I wrote this piece the night before Easter 1964. In the fall of 1964, Grampa Starr was hospitalized with blood clots; and the following spring, he died of a major stroke just before Easter. I had no idea how much Easter was changing for us.

Easter 1954: Sporting my new glasses.

Easter 1955, Masontown, West Virginia. Debi and I are wearing Easter coats and dresses that Gramma Starr made for us.

Easter New Florence, 1956: Janet Colbert was our foster sister.