Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Our neighbor was kind enough to spend several minutes with his blower the other day to shift the leaves from the lawn to the curb.  It was very nice of him.  The second town collection of the year was due, so it was also just in time.  Did you ever notice that the first time the leaf collection is done, there are hardly any leaves?  This week the wind gusts had conveniently knocked the trees bare, so it was just a matter of getting them off the lawn to where the super duper leaf sucking truck could get them.

I do wonder, though, when in history it became unsightly to have leaves on the lawn.

In forests worldwide (those that haven’t gone condo), leaves have fallen, composted and regenerated the earth’s surface for centuries.  Once houses spring up, however, leaves suddenly become an eyesore.

There are many great unwritten rules about life, and leaves on the lawn is one of them.  The law reads something like this:  the first person to rake their leaves is considered the most diligent neighbor on the block while, at the same time, becomes the most abhorred because the act of clearing one’s lawn mandates that the rest of the block must follow suit immediately.

So the rakes and blowers come out at 7 in the morning and 9 at night, and parking on the street becomes impossible without running the risk of a car exhaust igniting dry leaves.  The piles never match the size of the trees around them, usually because the wind blows one trees’ leaves onto a treeless lawn like Murphy’s Law of Leaf Placement.  The houses without trees normally don’t own rakes but, if there is a man in the house, there is inevitably a blower.  Men must have their toys with high-powered engines on them, you know.  In the absence of a motorcycle,  it’ll be a blower.

Leaves have fallen out of favor (excuse the pun) in the digital age.  Sure there are “leaf peepers” who drive miles to see fall foliage, but when was the last time you saw a youngster collecting leaves to press between two sheets of waxed paper?  In the digital world, such as Second Life, fortunately there are virtual leaves (really).  Nobody minds if they fall all over everything.  At least in some places other than forests, leaves matter.  Besides, if somebody turned on a blower in a forest, would it make a sound?

Before we know it, Black Friday will be held the week after Good Friday each year.  What’s with the retailers that we can’t get through at least two weeks of November before they start bombarding us with holiday early sales pitches?

They’re downright brazen about it, too.  Get all your holiday shopping done now, they trumpet.  Best prices of the season, they promise.  So what will they do with the weeks to go before the actual holidays, call off the sales?  Not on your charge card, my friends.

I do admit that I shopped early.  The annual “winter celebration” office parties have been set up, so I grabbed a gift exchange present three weeks ago.  But I only did it because I know that when office parties get planned eight weeks in advance, the best gifts to meet the pre-approved spending limit will be sold out seven weeks in advance  if they’re not scooped up immediately.  Besides, I know that most folks get more expensive items for gift exchanges by getting them on sale for the spending limit price.  That $15 heated ice scraper is only worth about $5 anyway, right?

Can we really trust holiday food gift tins that were assembled in a hot factory in mid-July?  If we buy them now, how much worse will they be by the holidays?  They may be on sale, but I think I’ll pass.

Do we really need to buy all new stuff to throw about our homes just to impress people who only stop by for five minutes?  Take those specially scented candles that you can’t use on December 26 because they look Christmas-y (and you’re too pooped to light them anyway).

Traditionally–at least when I was a kid back in the stone age–Black Friday was the day when the department stores unveiled their holiday trimmings.  Putting them up in advance was inconsiderate and lacked class.  Santa used to climb into the window of the department store after the Thanksgiving parade to “prepare Toyland” for the kids.  The store had a display window that opened on Black Friday:  they didn’t put out a sales circular that took out a forest tree (not to mention the back of whomever had to deliver the daily paper with it tucked inside with 2,000 other ads).

When I was a kid, Black Friday started the countdown to Christmas.  Of course, there wasn’t mention of other religious celebrations, which was not particularly indicative of America’s tolerance agenda, but I don’t think we should discuss that subject now:  that’s for another column in which I may well get myself in trouble for telling another side of the story.  When I do, though, I hope those other forgotten December celebrants will be happy I mentioned them.  The stores won’t care:  they don’t set up pre- other holiday specials, do they?

Do you work for a company that gives you stuff?  This year my company gave out two tee shirts within weeks of each other.  The problem with tee shirts is that you usually can’t wear them in the office after you get them.  Even in a casual dress environment, tee shirts are out of the question.  Besides, it was winter and too cold for tee shirts.

Sometimes companies give out mouse pads.  People with carpal tunnel syndrome often stack them to improve their pointing and clicking angles.

When the workload gets heavy, the company feeds us lunch (pizza) or brings in coffee.  Unfortunately I don’t drink coffee, but pizza is an essential fifth food group, and sometimes we get donuts with the coffee.  Pass a cruller, please.

Many jobs in America these days involve prolonged sitting.  Two weeks ago we received free pedometers with instructions to take a one week “baseline” measurement of how far we walk, then try to increase our steps weekly.  For those of us who sit for eight hours a day, it can be depressing to look at the readout and realize that we take more steps between the living room couch and the bathroom at home than at work going from the cubicle to the car.

Sure, companies mean well when they give us free stuff, but in a health conscious society we could use something besides pizza and pedometers.  They cancel each other out anyway.  Give us a $10 gift card during the holidays when parents struggle to make their kids happy, or thank us with a coupon for some extra time off or something.  Heck, if I spend that extra time walking the mall and don’t visit a single store, my pedometer would look a whole lot better for the extra steps taken.

You know the rest of this modified phrase, which is commonly given as  “suppose they gave a war and nobody came?” but it gets modified to suit new purposes.  Well sometimes people come into this world with the same expectations as everybody else, but even though they may not be undesirable folk like tyrants or mass murderers, they go through existence largely unnoticed.

I’d like to take a few minutes to remedy that.

Here’s to you, just because you exist.  You may not have come into the best world possible.  People made mistakes with you, and you’ve made a few that affected others.  Maybe somebody has abused you, or maybe somebody overindulged you.  You may have had a cookie cutter education, or maybe the teachers didn’t know why you didn’t “get it.”  You may have been married three times or not at all.  You may know folks better off or worse off than you.  You may be having some trying times right now, or things may be bright and sunny.

Whether you’re the greatest or most despised person alive, you are just that:   a person who is alive.  Your existence is part of this world as it is right now, and you are being counted.  You matter.

Do one thing for me, a lowly existing person:  remember that others matter too.

So Halloween falls on a Sunday this year.  I don’t think the goodness of church cancels out the “evil” of the spooks and specters or vice versa, but it does throw a wrench into the trick-or-treating.  Folks go away for the weekend or, if they are home, the guys want to watch football and munch on chips and beer, not malted milk balls.

Halloween is not what it used to be.  The television networks put on hours of good classic scare flicks, the good costumes came out of cardboard and cellophane windowed boxes, the treats came in really eatable sizes and nobody had to worry about where they were canvassing for treats because folks were trustworthy.

Now the networks run Jason or Michael Myers on consecutive nights (because heaven knows there are enough of those sequels to last a week), costumes are pinioned to hangars, treats are “fun size” as in two seconds of fun and a lifetime of obesity, and some neighborhoods just aren’t child friendly anymore.

Maybe it’s time to relegate the trick-or-treat part to the schools or community centers where the activities can be monitored  while everybody still has fun.   No matter when sundown begins in the fall, it gets dark fast and kids in unfamiliar garb have trouble navigating strange sidewalks and front lawns inundated with expensive gargoyles and miles of fake spider webbing.

Halloween should be a safe and social event.  Even on Sundays.

I was in New York to see the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the first part of his four-opera masterpiece Der Ring des Nibelungen (“The Nibelung’s Ring”).  After 20 years of what many consider the Met’s best production, the Met staff decided it was time for a change, and this new version is being debuted as part of the 2010-11 season opener.  The second in the series, Die Walkure, will premier in the spring, and the last two will debut in the 2011-2012 season.

Change isn’t always digested well, but life cannot remain stagnant, so neither can an opera.  For the marathon operagoer, for whom seeing this production usually takes four days and about 14 hours,  it’s always interesting to see what a new director will do to a traditional story.

The tradition is, in short, that a lowly dwarf steals gold and creates a ring which gives him world power.  The gods interfere and, in trying to prevent disaster, bring the end of their reign on themselves.  There are complications, of course, such as a curse on the ring, mortals falling in love with the wrong people, manipulation, murder and a giant who becomes a dragon just to guard the ring and the amassed treasure that goes along with it.

The most popular adaptations keep some of the mythical elements, such as taking place in forests, but modern versions have gods in business suits or characters in outer space.  Audiences may cheer or pooh-pooh the ideas, and the Ring is one opera that can make or break a company budget.

This production includes a major all-purpose prop:  dubbed “the machine,” the set consists of a 45-ton centerpiece that includes 24 planks which can be moved to various angles to serve as a projection screen or scenery (or both).  A touch sensitive computer program allows the actors to touch parts of the screen and cause movements on the projections.  For example, the fire god Loge produces flame effects with each step he takes on the planks.  There is a “gutter” between the machine and the edge of the stage, into which performers can move or land if they do stunts like slide down the machine’s inclines.

The performers were all top notch and included Bryan Terfel and Stephanie Blythe as the gods, and Eric Owens as the dwarf Alberich.  At the podium is the great conductor James Levine, who celebrates 40 years conducting the Met’s magical orchestra.

Without seeing the entire production, I reserve judgment on whether this new vision of Wagnerian culture will be a hit, but having been entranced by the Ring since childhood, I welcome the chance to see what new and magical imagery can be brought to life.  It’s what makes opera relevant in any century.

A lot of attention has been given to the subject of bullying lately. Some subjects, such as minority group rights, have taken decades or hundreds of years to come to the public’s attention.  Bullying is one such topic.  It’s something that has always existed, so why change it, some say.

It’s been 11 years since the Columbine High School massacre (04/20/1999), and that event is considered by many to be the starting point for the discussion, but ever since human beings began congregating in groups, there have been societal rules that have included bullying as a way to classify the social hierarchy.  The question is how to deal with a problem that can isolate people for no or insignificant reasons.

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, at least half of all children are bullied during their years of schooling, and ten percent are regular victims.  The bullies and their victims ultimately end up in the world with a high school diploma in their hands and minds altered by the experience.  Adult bullies often start out as child bullies.  Adult victims can easily become prey for dating and spousal abusers.  Both have trouble keeping jobs and relationships stable.  In short, nobody wins.

Nobody seems to know how to handle bullies or their victims.  They both need healing, but in different ways.  Until somebody addresses the roots of the problem, it will continue.

So will this blog topic.

I’ve just come from a book fair.  This was my first experience with sitting in the middle of the street, surrounded by tents and tables, pitching something to passers-by.  Vendor events have been around for a long time, but until you’ve been on the selling end of one, you can’t appreciate the full experience.

We had to be at the location between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning.  The main street would be closed at 8:30, so we did some initial setting up at curbside while our cars were still permitted in the area for unloading.  One of our trio of participants brought the chairs, and the other packed the folding table, so it was vital for both of them to be there.  I was the first to show up, carrying the non-setup ephemera, so I found our spot on the street–identified by a painted number against the median strip–and after a short wait both of the other team members pulled in and unloaded our meager setup items.  We didn’t have a big poster like the vendor next to us.  He had a seven foot airbrushed cover blow-up in a heavy pipe frame that drew the eye for blocks.  we got a standard 8 x 11 sign with our name and vendor number on it.  Unfortunately for the big poster, the breezes blew it over a few times, so the two vendors took turns sitting on guard duty keeping their main drawing card up and visible.

We brought a decent supply of products, our receipt book (yes, cash only) and brochures.  We did manage to forget that, if customers were paying cash, we might need to give out change.  However, we were happy to give out our last dollar bills and scrounge in our change purses to accommodate them.  The customers didn’t seem to mind because it was, after all, a local event.  The folks on both sides of the display tables work at other jobs, so we don’t carry petty cash.

The event was a success, and we did well for our first try.  We checked out the other vendors, many of whom were authors in the early stages of post-publishing bliss and anxious, as we were, for good sales.  Some did better than others, but I think most of the people there experienced some positive results.  At least we have proof that real authors, and real books, still exist, and people want to buy them.  We haven’t discussed the idea of attending other events, but if the wind is right and I have some spare ones for change, I wouldn’t shy away from another shot at being on the selling side.

The company summer dress code goes away Thursday.  That means sandals will be forbidden as of Friday, along with mid-length pants and sleeveless tops.  The hosiery comes out again, along with clunky shoes.  Since it doesn’t feel like autumn quite yet, this change causes quite a few complaints.

I finally got a pair of sandals I really like, and I’ve worn them this summer.  The toenails got painted, too, which I never did before.  Of course,  just because the toes will be hidden in shoes doesn’t mean I still can’t paint them, but what would be the point if nobody sees them but my shoes and me?

As a woman, I’ve accepted the fact that I must suffer some discomfort when wearing shoes, because they must look nothing like one’s feet to be considered fashionable, and they never really feel good even when they’re fitted well.  Since the caveman days, the best footwear is soft buckskin, and you just can’t wear them to the office.

Dress codes are challenged daily when office personnel feel that their naturalized American freedoms are being repressed, so I don’t know what will be done with the new open toe boots coming into fashion this year.  Will lopped-off toe caps be allowed in a non public contact office environment, or will unfortunate wearers be sent home to change into unsullied boots with pointy enclosed end pieces?

I don’t intend to buy a pair of those trendy boots.  Trends have too short a shelf life for my wallet.  I will, however, stock up on more sandals for next May, when the toes can legally come out of hiding again.  Meanwhile it’s time to break out the clunky shoes and make Dr. Scholl’s retirement fund grow again.

I went to the cell phone store to update my plan.  In the old days, you called the phone company and they did it all for you, but nowadays the phone is more like a Barbie:  once you get one, you spend months or years loading up on the accessories.  You also have to do it yourself.

I must admit that my phone is for emergencies only, so over the years I’ve only had to upgrade it once, and I never worry about using up the minutes I’m allotted.  The fellow next to me at the massive eight-register counter, on the other hand, had gone over his texting and call limits, and his bill was the cost of a new television.  He didn’t seem to mind.

Mine carried a balance, and this caused me a problem.

There is a limit on how much of a balance one can bank on the cell phone plan.  The most cost-effective way to load minutes is by the year, so that’s what I wanted to do.  The computer, unfortunately,  wouldn’t let me do that because I would have had a few dollars more than the balance limits.

The customer service rep was pleasant and apologized for the wait while he hashed out the problem with the headquarters office.  I wound up being in the store for about 45 minutes for what could have taken five.

The final solution was that the phone company had to remove the amount that would have put me over the balance limit, and they will give it back to me in a few days.  Their recommendation was that I use the phone a lot between now and then.  I laughed.

I suppose I could blame myself for not having a life, since I obviously don’t use the phone often enough to hack away at the balance, but if one uses a cell phone for emergencies only, why should the cost be so astronomical and the limits so incapacitating?  Sure there are plans for $10 a month, but this was better than that plan and I don’t feel I should have to pay for a convenience I truly need.

Of course they won’t give me any of that money back, so I’m stuck with money I don’t use, and heaven knows what will happen next year this time.