On the Contrary

Goodbye Men

Marsha — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:40:16 GMT

The likelihood of my sleeping with a man again is nil. This isn't me being gloomy and negative, it's me being realistic. It's been a dozen years since I've had sex successfully. Since then, there've been two stabs at it; one with a nice man who couldn't maintain his erection, another a try at mild kink, which was interesting but not really me.

I've kept fit but I look my 51 years. Then there's my bad leg, which all will rightly say shouldn't matter but will wrongly, privately, admit does. We never lose our primitive craving for robust health and symmetry and even women and men past breeding age are more attractive when whole. And never having been married or in a long-term relationship (something I don't advertise but comes out eventually) sends a message to men: Watch it.

I don't blame the men. A lot of the rejection comes from me. I try to overlook much, telling myself beggars can't be choosers, but there are limits. Softened muscles and enlarged guts are fine, but foul breath or body odor, and visible nostril hairs will still flip the switch off every time. I laugh off the personal minor annoyances that bring out the school ma'arm in me; saying "I could care less," pronouncing the "t" in "often," but too often something slips out, a belief of some kind and, though I give them another chance, my respect for them dwindles to a point where I can't imagine being intimate with them.

Oh, the advice of friends over the years! The dumbest: "Forget about it! It's when you're not looking that things happen!" I've gone years at a time not seeking male affection, happily single, being myself, not a whiff of desperation on me. And nothing. And I've done dignified versions of the opposite. Dates arranged by friends, classes, parties. The result is the same.

People are optimists by nature. We swim in oceans, fly great distances, get in hired cars driven by strangers. But the trite chant of the starry-eyed -- There's someone for everyone! -- may just not be true, or if true impossible to verify. My perfect match may live in a small town on the west coast of Australia for all anyone knows.

So, while keeping the door always ajar, I'm saying goodbye to men, enjoying their friendship but accepting that I'll live solo from here on out. I'll miss them. Their stubble. The broadness of their chests, the balls of muscle in their shoulders, the thick forearms, the deep voices, ease with authority, firm touch, hint of danger. Their fascinating external genitals.

There are other things to live for. Those in need, aging parents, friends. Literature, art, learning to see, hear and perceive the beauty around us. I've lived in cities my entire adult life. It's been decades since I've been in the darkness of the country side with my eye crammed against a telescope's eyepiece, looking at binary stars, the rings of Saturn, shadows on the Moon. I must do that again sometime.

Two Letters

Marsha — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:45:58 GMT

The best letters magazines and newspapers publish are more than letters expressing opinions; they're miniature articles or op ed pieces in their own right. The condense and restate the article's premise and add an insight or fact it may have lacked. If you never read anything else about talking on a cell phone while driving, please read these two letters. The first is a little scientific (magnetoencephalography?) but you'll get the idea. The second has such a good idea in it I'm amazed it's not a nationwide requirement. Both letters were in the New York Times last month and were responding to a lengthy article about driving while distracted.

To the Editor:

Your July 19 front-page article relating cellphone conversation to increased probability of auto accidents relied on anecdotal data with a sprinkling of accident statistics. A follow-up article (front page, July 21) briefly mentioned a number of scientific studies demonstrating impaired brain function during cellphone conversations, whether hands-free or hands-on.

We would like to point out that it is studies of brain function that solidify the case against the cellphone.

For example, in our lab we have conducted functional magnetic resonance and magnetoencephalography studies during hands-free phone conversation using a film simulating driving. (Magnetoencephalography is a functional brain imaging technique with millisecond time resolution and millimeter spatial resolution.)

We showed that during hands-free phone conversation there was decreased activity in the right parietal area (an area involved with multitasking) and increased reaction time. The observed changes in brain function are independent of the design features of the phone.

Susan Bowyer
John Moran
Norman Tepley
West Bloomfield, Mich., July 21, 2009

The writers are senior scientists at the Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit. Dr. Tepley is also scientific director of the Neuromagnetism Lab.

•

To the Editor:

Nearly 40 years ago (long before cellphones), my high school driver’s ed instructor, Mr. Tansee, made me, and the rest of the class, write a fictional letter to the parent of a child explaining how and why we had struck that child while driving.

It had to be a serious effort. I guess it was his way of impressing upon us the awesome responsibility we were about to undertake.

Every day I see multitudes of people, young and not so young, who could benefit from this not-so-simple exercise. I don’t believe that Mr. Tansee would have accepted “Sorry, I was on the phone” as a reasonable explanation.

John Fletcher
Ringwood, N.J., July 20, 2009

Forwarded Email

Marsha — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:58:02 GMT

You know the email. The one from your mother or one of her friends that gets your bullshit meter clicking right away. The one that says you're flirting with danger when you heat up water in a microwave oven, the one that says a gang initiation has prospective members killing innocent citizens who flash their high beams at them to tell them their own are on. The one debunked in a minute by Google, in 30 seconds by Snopes.com. Then there are facts and quizzes. They, too, are often wrong, at least in part. I've seen one marveling at the day-long life of the dragonfly when, in fact, dragonflies live for several weeks. The one below, forwarded to me by, yes, my mother, isn't too bad of its kind. Its approach, like many similar ones, was that of a bully with an obscure fact it hopes to humble you by. I got rid of that. It also had a lot of code and weird spaces I've tried to get rid of. I hope I've succeeded.

Quiz

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. a. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons.

All other vegetables must be replanted every year.

3.b. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters "dw" and they are all common words. Name two of them.

7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter "S."

Answers To Quiz:

1. The one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends. Boxing

2. North American landmark constantly moving backward. Niagara Falls. (The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.)

3. Only two vegetables that can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. The fruit with its seeds on the outside. Strawberry.

5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle? It grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.

6. Three English words beginning with dw. Dwarf, dwell and dwindle.

7. Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar. Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

8. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh. Lettuce.

9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet beginning with "S." Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.

</td></tr></tbody></table>

The Important Thing About Obama's Press Conference Tonight

Marsha — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:10:02 GMT

Did you hear that sound in the background during the president's news conference tonight? At random but frequent intervals there was something that sounded like several people typing on manual typewriters. What is it? you ask. Cameras.

When I was a reporter for a small weekly newspaper I'd sometimes have to take photographs for my stories. One tip I got from one our full-time photojournalists was that when photographing someone speaking, wait for him or her to gesture; there's nothing duller than a photograph of someone gripping a podium.

Sure enough, once you know what to listen for you realize that the sound increases greatly the more vividly he gestures. Two hands versus one, hands held high versus low. If you know what's going on, it's fun to watch. You'll notice that every photograph you see of a speech-maker is one with a significant gesture in it. Politicians gain the power of a conductor during newsers, though the sound of shutter planes clicking is music only to photographers' ears.

Don't Read This

Marsha — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:49:13 GMT

The big story in the New York Times today, the story you'll be hearing about all week, is the one on cell phone use by drivers.

I was going to come here and say, Read it! Now! It is an open-and-shut case after reading this!

But why bother? If you feel as I do, that it should never be done while driving, it's only affirming your beliefs. If you use them, you simply won't read it. Nothing in it, not all the logic and statistics it ably provides, not all the experts cited, will change your mind. I understand this. If I came across an article about the flaws of people my age, race, beliefs and background, no matter how well-reasoned and correct it is, I'd skim it, if that, and move on. It would be like having a photograph taken of your worst body part in bright light then blown up and posted in your dwelling. You'd avoid that part of your wall. We're all only human.

Reflections on the Moon

Marsha — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:04:51 GMT

I think my jaw actually dropped a little when Jennifer, a young coworker, a college grad headed for graduate school, said she didn't believe America landed people on the Moon in 1969.

But after some thought, it made sense. She was born in 1986. I have books I bought then I haven't read yet! Over half of Americans living today weren't alive when the moon landing occurred. (Makes those of us who watched it on black and white TVs feel like dinosaurs, no?)

Jennifer's generation has been around only long enough to see exploding space shuttles, bungled wars of choice, one president diddling his intern and another incompetent in even his native language, car companies making the exact wrong cars, lying journalists, corruption, greed, and other countries reaching parity with us and often more in the sciences. They've seen enough credibility given to electronic publication that wildly unsubstantiated conspiracies of the type my generation saw in mimeographed sheets handed out on street corners by unkempt men with rheumy eyes are indistinguishable from those published by legitimate news organizations. Is it any wonder that now 6 percent of Americans think the landing was a hoax?

And the latest. NASA erased the original tapes of Neil Armstrong's famous steps. (Oops! Silly us.) What's left looks like something low-level techs in any Hollywood studio could put together in an afternoon. What better fuel for denial of an event?

To these young 'uns, however, I say this: Look in the mirror.

Not yours, the one on the Moon. That's right. Hours before they left, the Apollo astronauts put a prismatic retroreflecting mirror on the lunar surface and angled it toward the Earth on July 21, 1969, just hours before leaving. Two more were left during subsequent Apollo missions, and the Soviets have one on a lunar rover. The purpose was to have surfaces that could receive and reflect back pings from laser beams. By measuring the time it takes light to reach and return from the Moon, scientists can gauge the distance with great accuracy -- to within an inch or so. Four decades after the landing, they still do it, making it the longest running experiment to come from the Apollo missions.

It turns out the Moon is leaving our orbit, albeit at a rate of less than two inches a year, due to the Earth's ocean tides and that the universal constant of gravity is very stable. Phew!

A box about two feet square sits on a dusty, gray surface called the Sea of Tranquility offering proof to all that the late Walter Cronkite (goodbye, old friend) was telling the truth when narrating over images that were indeed live from the moon.

Footnote: Right now there are 13 people on the International Space Station. That is the most ever in space at one time.

Dear Whiteowl

Marsha — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:56:18 GMT

I don't often read Whiteowl's posts. They're hard to get through, with the poor spelling and grammar. The nearly random punctuation makes you have to backtrack to read sentences sometimes to get their meaning. But heck, I'm on vacation this week and just for fun cut and pasted one and answered it.

I have always been sympathetic to those that cannot afford or are unable to get healthcare. I believe there should be a way for them to get coverage. In my opinion Obamacare is not the answer and is in fact a hugh disaster on many fronts to the American people. And, like every other Obama Plan, he is trying to push it through without proper evaluation and trying to make it so important that it has to be done yesterday.

Let's discuss what is really happening. The Democrats claim that there are 46 million people without healthcare. What they don't tell you is that 12 million of those are Illegal Aliens that they want included in a Healtcare Plan. There are another 15 million that are eligible for either Medicare or Medicaid, but do not apply for it for whatever reason they have. So, why can't we give the rest, the same courtesy we give to Illegal Aliens who get coverage at the taxpayers expense? (1) Why would you want to change the best Healthcare System in the world and spend over $1 Trillion to do it, get rid of healthcare for over 130 million people who would be forced to go to government plans, put the government in charge of your health needs and create a bureacracy so big that it will be uncontrollable. (2) Every worker in the country would be paying for it in higher taxes. (3) Approximately 39 states would end up with a tax rate approaching 50%. I am sorry folks, but there simply has to be a better answer for the 15 million. When has the government ever run anything efficiently or with your interests in mind. (4) Businesses would be crippled by the requirements put on them, jobs would be lost and a bad economy would just get worse. The Budget Office has stated that there will be no savings and the costs will just continue to rise. Socialism is simply not the answer. It has worked nowhere. (5) When is the luster of the Obama Charisma going to wear off and have sensible Americans realizing that this is NOT, "The Change you could believe in." This plan is another HUGH DISASTER FOR AMERICA. (6)

1. Sounds like you got some of these ideas and numbers from Fred Thompson's June 21 appearance on "Meet the Press." Thompson, the Republican senator and actor who was laughed out of the presidential race last year, quoted 2007 numbers and rounded those down. If anything, the numbers are much higher now. The number of undocumented aliens, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management, is 5.6 million. Eighty percent of the uninsured are U.S. citizens, according to the nonpartisian, non-lobbying Kaiser Family Foundation. About 12 million who are eligible for Medicaid are not enrolled. No one is sure why.

2. A remarkable number of factual errors in just one sentence. Best health care in the world? Hardly. We pay more and get less than any other industrialized nation. The trillion dollars is over a decade. Funny how that's not mentioned -- you're supposed to think it's in one year. No one with existing insurance will be forced into a government program. The administrative costs of private insurance are huge and one reason American health care is the most expensive in the world. Those costs would be hugely reduced if run by the federal government. Why would it be uncontrollable? And you're just plain wrong: Obama has long said he would allow individuals or small businesses to buy insurance through a public plan – like the one now available to members of Congress. Nobody would be forced to drop his or her current insurance, and private plans would exist as they do now. This was the health care plan he promoted as a presidential candidate.

3. Not true, as anyone who's been keeping up with the news knows. The rich would pay a slightly higher tax. If you make $350,000 a year, your tax will go up 1 percent. If you make $1 million a year, it'll go up around five or six percent. This is called a progressive tax. Nothing new; income tax started out that way.

4. Well, let's see. Our military, while misused lately, is second to none. We have an excellent federal parks system, great interstate highways, a wonderful space program. Our national forests are protected by the federal government, 300 million aces of them. Wetlands protection policies since 1990 have saved over 832,000 acres of coastal wetlands. Species once thought endangered are recovering. And the Environmental Protection Agency, founded under that bad old Richard Nixon, has helped reduced toxic emissions by 54 percent since 1970 even though U.S. gas consumption has gone up. By 2015, harmful chemicals are expected to be reduced by 70 percent over current levels. These are reasons you have government. Altruism is seldome a motivation for private enterprise.

5. Nowhere? I lived in Japan for three years and never heard a complaint. Same's true of most Europeans I meet, the French, Danes, Swedes, Fins, others. Yes, I've actually met people from those countries and talked about it with them. I met a Canadian where I work once who had elective surgery scheduled in two months and said he wished his system was like ours. I said, "I've worked here for a year and have no health insurance. If you were fired tomorrow, you'd still have that operation." He had nothing to say to that. Imagine if getting police and fire protection depended on your company paying a monthly fee for you and you lost your job and, because you called 911 for a kitchen fire six years ago the premiums were too high for you to afford. Would that be fair? Why is that different from health care?

6. Now we're getting someplace. It seems you object to Obama personally. Still can't get over the loss? Understood. But try to be objective. Hey, it's not easy if you dislike someone, I know, but it is possible.

The Animals

Marsha — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:54:12 GMT

I'm on vacation. And housesitting in the suburbs. Two cats, a parrot that bites. Interesting creature, the parrot. Bred in the United States, hand raised, yet violently opposed to me. His owner, a woman in her 70s, has asked if I'd take him if she dies before he does, which is likely given his probable longevity. I said yes. How strange it would be to have a living companion, a pet, that you could never touch.

The cats. There are two, a male and a female. They're ragdolls, a breed known for their gentleness. Long hair, blue eyes. Both are young. They run and frolic in the house.

When I'm in the bathroom the male tries to come in. Tries. The door is ajar. He pokes his head through the opening and moves forward, where he meets a wall. The distance is too near, the angle too steep for him to turn, so he presses forward without success. He reaches his goal via random batting with his paw and nuzzling.

It amuses me, his inability to cope with the primitive technology of the hinge, but I'm being unfair. He has all the innate abilities to live outdoors with no tools or clothes, finding shelter, catching food in darkness with his claws and teeth. That his brain, which would fit in a tablespoon, is not hardwired to understand the lever, the inclined plane, the screw, is no deficit on his part. I should respect this sample of his species; he is at least highly as evolved as I am.

Michael the Molester

Marsha — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:17:25 GMT

I'm amazed at the number of people who speak in such absolute terms about those who molest children who have compartmentalized Michael Jackson's behavior with young boys in this overlong, media-hyped post-mortem love fest.

Does anyone honestly think all charges against him were made up? Have any of you read the transcripts of the trials, all available on thesmokinggun.com? I have. They will make your hair stand on end. Do you really think anyone, especially someone in great financial trouble, would settle out of court for $20 million to make a case go away if he were entirely innocent? If so, you've been drinking a little too much "Jesus Juice."

And don't give that, "But he was abused as a child!" "He was an artist!" crap unless you're as willing to overlook the actions of the creep in the playground boys room who probably suffered as much if not more.

Some are actually saying, "He's in heaven now, surrounded by children." It sounds like yet another Michael Jackson joke along the lines of Q: Why does Michael Jackson like 28-year-olds? A: Because there're 20 of them.

The Birds

Marsha — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:58:47 GMT

As a child I was the one who tried to rescue the fallen baby bird, the injured rabbit, the turtle with the shell cracked by an automobile. The result was always the same; a continuation of agony before death. As I matured, I learned to kill the creatures who blindly intersected with humans or their pets and were mortally wounded for their mistake.

At 14, I drowned a rabbit after a hopeful night of wishing it were stunned and would great the next day alert and friendly, with gooey, Disney eyes and buck-toothed smile. In college I came upon a groundhog writhing on a rural Ohio road, alternately choking on and expelling its blood, hindquarters crushed. I dispatched it by slamming a jack handle on its neck. The number of blows it took with the heavy piece of metal shocked me and since that hot afternoon I've never questioned any being's instinct to fight hard for life despite impossible odds.

Last summer, I returned from work and entered my parents' backyard to feed the fish in their small koi pond and found a drowned fawn, its legs bound by the pump's power chord as if by a sadist, the result of its struggle to escape the drinking source it had fallen into. A freak accident, the only one in the pond's two decades. Its mother probably watched it tire, then go under, helpless against the plastic and copper tendril tightening on her offspring's hind legs.

I dug a deep hole in the yard and buried it. An urban dweller, I was housesitting while they were away and I never told my parents about it. What good would that do?

Then there was this evening. Walking the half mile from the train station to my parents' house for dinner, I heard the battle cries of small birds. There were sparrows, robins and catbirds, darting about a small but lush tree, no more than a dozen feet tall. A territorial dispute of some kind, I assumed. Then a huge brown figure exploded from the tree's crown. A hawk. A big one. Such birds in the suburbs were rare when I was young and seeing them now still startles.

The hawk sought altitude, heading for a taller tree, as a half dozen of the smaller birds tailed and harassed it, nimble fighters chasing the lumbering bomber. The hawk clutched something small in the talons of one foot.

The tree was on the side of the road and as I drew closer I could see on the road a nest and, near it, a bird. A robin, young, weeks from flight, its eyes were open, body quivering. What to do?

I was tempted to crush it underfoot, but the bird appeared to be fine despite its recent trauma. Hand feeding only rarely works. And am I to take unscheduled time from work to do this?

I scooped it up, put it in its nest and wedged the nest in the tree as high as I could reach. That mother birds abandon nest, eggs or their young if they've been touched by humans is a fallacy. Most species of birds have no sense of smell; those that do have a poor one and only the strongest odors drive them away. I stood across the street after replacing the nest. A robin neared it within two minutes. I left.

My father drove me to the station after dinner (chicken). Passing the tree, I saw nothing at its base; the nest remained. Next week, I'll pass the tree on foot. I'll have choices. One will be to look into the nest and see if it harbors a rotting corpse. The other will be to cross the street before the tree, and imagine my own ending to this feathered drama.

A Health Care Point

Marsha — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:35:05 GMT

You know how sometimes you think you're smart and then you read or hear an idea so well thought out and expressed yet so obvious that you doubt whether you should even be counted on to use a can opener? That's how I felt Sunday when I read what I've stolen and pasted below, the first paragraphs of a newspaper article.

Throughout all the, well, let's call them discussions, I've had over the years on health care with my brother, an insurance lobbyist, it never occurred to me to make the comparison made in the first three paragraphs.

The article is by Jeff Gelles of the Philadelphia Inquirer and was published by them Sunday, June 28:

Imagine living in a society where reliable police and fire protection were available only to those who worked for the largest employers. In this fictional country, people with enough money might be able to buy personal protection - but perhaps not if they'd suffered a burglary five years ago, or once called 911 for a kitchen fire.

Would people with good ideas and a little bit of money be willing to give up personal security for the chance to start their own businesses? Or would they cling to the safety promised by a job at a big company or institution?

Substitute health insurance for police and fire protection, and you have one of the best - and least-heralded - arguments for universal health care, according to a small but growing number of economists.

It is an argument with potential appeal across traditional partisan boundaries: that severing the link between reliable health insurance and employment could unleash a wave of pent-up entrepreneurial energy, much as conservatives often argue that cutting marginal tax rates stimulates the economy.

The Time is Near

Marsha — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:38:00 GMT

My pupils are small. This gives me a bird-like gaze people politely call "penetrating" or "piercing." I never had the wide pupils said to show, on a subliminal level, approval or sensual delight. My eyes take long to adjust to darkness. While others run in darkness outside and find movie theater seats during the previews I stumble on rocks and sit on strangers.

A side effect of having pinpoint-size pupils has been that, like stopping down the aperture of a camera, they see in great detail. As a child I could read tiny print, astonishing an eye doctor, and see words where my peers saw grey lines. In adulthood I could see periods and letters on paper as separate things, and observe the deformation of the arc of a serif as it curved through miniscule hills and valleys inherent in the texture of paper.

In middle age, this meant not needing reading glasses as soon as most. Needing them is an inevitable result of aging as the lens stiffens and no longer flexes enough for close work and generally occurs in your mid 40s. In my case, however, at 51 I don't need "readers."

But I will soon. I need bright light to read normally in bed now, and when text is at an angle I have difficulty.

I won't enjoy wearing them. I suppose no one does. They go along with sagging breasts, grey hair, loss of energy, and hardened forehead skin. Most of my coworkers are younger than I and while I don't pretend to be of their generation it will still cause a pang when I first reach for my spectacles in their presence. And what will I do in the unlikely event I ever have another date? I've read that men chasing younger women go to restaurant Web sites and read the menus online before a date so they can order without giving away their age. Would my pride have me doing that? Or, as men often pick the place, would my dating life be one of eating only the specials?

I picked up a pair left behind where I work. Minimum strength, clean. They sit on my night table now, waiting. The look up at me, stern their glass both judging and reflecting me, as if saying, "Get ready, you spinster, to put us on and show the world your eyes are as inadequate as you are."

E-Ink Support

Marsha — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:39:30 GMT

Earlier this week I read something that made me, like many of you a long-time lover of print, yearn to see books abolished in favor of electronic ink media like the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle.
(It turns out the below is crap, though I'm quoting the magazine accurately. Read a comment below. Bottom line: It's one book per seat. I should have checked further but didn't think of checking Robert's own Web site. A lesson learned.)
It is this, from The New Yorker's June 22 profile of Nora Roberts, the romance writer: "There are enough Nora Roberts books in print to fill Giants Stadium four thousand times."

Not four times, not 400 times, but 4,000 times. And not cover, but fill. The writer was trying to give readers a concrete image of the huge numbers of Roberts' books in existence, but in my case I had to back up and read the sentence again, then once more, and I still can't quite picture it. I mean, take just one seat in the stadium and stack Nora Roberts books on it. How many feet high would that stack of two or three books have to be to show the amount of her books one large bookstore would hold? Ten? Twenty? And get a square yard on the field and stack it to the height of the stadium. That would be a great number of books. Do that with the entire field and all the seats and then repeat it 3,999 times. Picture a grid 63 by 63 and in each square is a Giants Stadiums. This would dwarf most cities and you'd still be 16 stadiums short. Then you'd fill them all with Nora Roberts books.

What I'm getting at is if you think of all the trees, chemicals and energy used to manufacture that many books and the transportation of them, storage and disposal, it's hard for me to champion print. And this is just one author. Think if every other book, newspaper, magazine, office document or advertising flier in America were no longer on paper. Then spread this worldwide. Sure, there are environmental impacts when you make an electronic reader, but when I see how much paper I bundle for recycling every two weeks -- and my amount is low -- I can't imagine that if I had a reader that lasted even only two years the impact wouldn't be much less.

I can get as sentimental about the old way as anyone else, but something clearly better quashes such feelings.

Sunday, June 13, 2008

Marsha — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:12:35 GMT

The man waits for his parents in his ninth floor apartment which overlooks his city's museum and part of its largest park, long a source of pride. The day is bright, clear, a perfect June day that carries no hint of the Mid Atlantic state mugginess that will stifle the city in the weeks to come and now, at five in the afternoon, the sun hovering high in the dry sky, visible through the open glass door leading to the man's balcony, is still a welcome presence.

The man is young, in his early 20s, and in turmoil. A month ago he received his B.A. and he has been waiting ever since to hear back from the graduate school that he wants most -- more than anything, ever -- to enter. He learned Friday that he had not and now, this day, this Sunday, he must face his parents and tell them. His parents emigrated to America and he is their great hope to assume powerful positions in this beacon of meritocracy. They worked hard at jobs beneath them so he could study long hours from childhood to his last year of college without having to sacrifice study time to perform similar menial labor.

And for nothing! the man thinks. His admission to the school that would have made so much of a difference has been declined! You're not good enough. There is no alternative plan acceptable to him or his parents. There was only this, and he has failed.

It is five minutes after five. His phone rings. The building his parents have paid so much money for him to live in is a good one. It has a front desk and the halls are clean, light bulbs are replaced, the plumbing system maintained and reliable.

It is the front desk, telling him his parents are here. He tells the clerk to admit them.

The man waits. His heart pounds. They are having dinner not to celebrate so much Fathers' Day, this bizarre American holiday, but what his parents think is the man's good news.

He hears his parents' voices through the door. The sounds of the simple doorknob mechanism. A click. The door opens. His parents begin to enter. The man stands in the narrow living room, watching them. They are nicely dressed, his father in a tie, his mother wearing a dress. They smile when they see him.

The man turns from them, a clumsy pivot, and runs. It takes a few steps and just seconds pass before he is at the railing of the balcony. He sees his hands on it as he vaults, a graceful move. He falls. Every sense is magnified. He sees each leaf in the tree across the driveway. He feels the air buffet his body with more and more force as his speed increases. He notices there are differences in how it feels against his clothes and his exposed skin. His parents' shrieks are muffled, barely escaping the carpeted interior of the apartment, but he hears birds sing with purpose, children shout, all vowels, as they play a block away, the metalic crunch of a car door slammed shut. These sounds start below him and rise as he falls, gaining presence as he enters their plane.

The fall lasts seconds. When his head is as far from the ground as it would be if were he standing there's an instant -- far too short to process into words but known nonetheless -- in which something seems as natural as it does wrong. He is his height, a normal man on a normal street, like everyone except for the terrible speed. He is still, a stationary object; it's the planet that is moving up to strike him.

He lands on concrete. Bones shatter, internal organs rupture. His brain is severed from its stem, rendering the other damage and attendant furious nerve endings moot. His heart, pierced by knives of broken ribs, shivers a moment, and stops.

The building is near a police station. An officer arrives in minutes, does a quick check, makes a call, and covers the body with a sheet. The officer knows by the way the body has fallen several feet from the building that it was likely a jump, not a fall, and takes comfort knowing that the dead man, just a boy, really, at least for a moment, wished to die. Still, thinks the officer, no stranger to what he's seeing, Who would want to die on a beautiful day like this?

At twenty after five a woman returning home from work sees the sheet-covered body. The sheet is white. It is marked by blood, a growing stain of about a square foot. The color is shocking, a vibrant, cheerful red.

I Love My SUV

Marsha — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:09:03 GMT

I Love My SUV

My SUV is big and strong.
Rids Earth of all that gas.
Oil’s been trapped much too long.
Burns lots, small cars I pass.
I sit in the seat, way up high,
Feel better than all of you.
It is my ship, I’m Captain Bligh!
Do what I tell you to!
Mini Cooper? Bike? Pedestrian?
I just might knock you down.
I’ll close my eyes and count to ten,
While you glare at me and frown.
At intersections can’t see past me,
Wait till I’m off the phone.
Because even though I’ve room for twenty,
I’m traveling alone.