Harriet the Spy's blog

But I like Comic Sans!

2012-01-12T11:58:00.007-05:00

Back in 2005, when I was opening a bakery, I looked for a fun, casual typeface for all my signs and labels. I wanted a font that said, “Relax! There is nothing in life so serious and dire that a whoopie pie won’t help to lighten the mood!” I wanted my customers to walk in and say, “Well, here’s a fun little place with great cinnamon rolls in the bakery case, crazy colors on the furniture and walls, and a lovable, funny proprietor in the kitchen!”

I chose a font that seemed to say exactly what I wanted. How was I to know that Comic Sans, which was created in 1994 by then-Microsoft designer Vincent Connare to evoke hand-lettering of the sort most often seen in comic books, was—by the time I stumbled across it and thought, perfect!—the subject of worldwide ridicule?

OK, OK, so I understand that the fun, lighthearted Comic Sans is not an appropriate typeface for, say, the resumé you’re sending to Pompous & Stuffy, Inc. Or your Aunt Sally’s gravestone. Or Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s angry letter about LeBron James’ betrayal. Or this sign, warning people of the imminent danger of death at an electrical substation:

But does this casual, innocent little typeface really deserve the amount of vitriol that has been expended toward it over the past 15+ years? Does it deserve to be the subject of the “Ban Comic Sans” movement that has exploded in articles, blog posts, and even the Ban Comic Sans Official Website (which asserts that using Comic Sans in the wrong context is like wearing a clown costume to a black tie dinner)?

Just because people make mistakes about where and how Comic Sans can be appropriately used, do we really have to blame the font, and call for a total ban?

Google “Comic Sans,” and the first result is the Ban Comic Sans website. Among others near the top: “What’s so wrong with Comic Sans?”, “Comic Sans Criminal: There’s help available for people like you!”, and “Comic Sans: The font everyone loves to hate.”

Now, because of all of this negative press, when I look back at my “pie lady” logo and the “Amy’s Bakeshop” I so proudly painted on my sign, had embroidered on hats and aprons, and used on every label on every pie, cake, and loaf of bread that left my bakeshop, I’m a little mortified.

To tell you the truth, it’s not unlike the nagging feeling of doubt I get when I look back at photos of me from high school and realize that maybe (just maybe) farmer’s overalls, flannel shirts, and my father’s gold pocketwatch hanging on a chain around my neck did not combine to create the stylish look I thought they did. Aughh! What other significant aesthetic mistakes have I made in my lifetime? (Don’t answer that, please; I have a feeling they may be too numerous to list.)

Holly Combs, who runs the Ban Comic Sans website with her husband, Dave, says, “Comic Sans is in the hands of people that shouldn’t have it. Secretaries and librarians, they don’t use it well.”

Besides the fact that Ms. Combs’ statement is offensive to secretaries and librarians (implying that if they had access to a clown costume, they wouldn’t have the good sense not to wear it to a black-tie dinner), it’s probably not even true. After all, it wasn’t Dan Gilbert’s secretary who chose Comic Sans for his vitriolic missive—he owns that mistake all by himself. And librarians? Please! Do you really think a segment of the population most often caricatured by horn-rimmed glasses, sensible shoes, and the constant admonition to “Shhh!” is going to suddenly go rogue with a font that has been described as frivolous and irreverent?

People seem to take their hatred of Comic Sans quite seriously. Comments on the Combs’ website include “It is a disgusting font – immature, frivolous and visually jarring” and “conveys silliness, childish naivete, irreverence.” There is even—I am not making this up—a book, due out in April, titled Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans.

It all makes me feel kind of sorry for poor Vincent Connare, who undoubtedly has many worthy accomplishments to his credit, but is probably doomed to be best remembered for creating the typeface that font geeks love to hate. He has surely spent a disproportionate amount of time and energy responding to Comic Sans detractors, which is why he has included a page titled “Why Comic Sans?” on his own website, in which he explains that “Comic Sans was NOT designed as a typeface but as a solution to a problem with the often overlooked part of a computer program's interface, the typeface used to communicate the message. There was no intention to include the font in other applications other than those designed for children when I designed Comic Sans. The inspiration came at the shock of seeing Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way.”

That’s right, Connare was “shocked” when he saw Times New Roman used inappropriately. And I think you’ll agree that Microsoft Bob’s friendly, helpful pup Rover would never speak in Times New Roman.

Because that would be like showing up to make balloon animals at a kids’ party…in black tie.

Resolved:

2012-01-01T18:45:00.008-05:00

Happy New Year! Despite the fact that it comes in the middle of the darkest (and usually the coldest) part of winter, and on the heels of the frenetic pace of the Christmas season, I really like January 1st. I love the concept of making a fresh start for a new year.

Although, come to think of it, I would like New Year's Day even better if it came in the spring, which really seems like the most appropriate time to make a fresh start. But maybe it's better this way--if we get dragged down by the long, dark winter and stumble in our resolutions, we can always start over again when the sun gets higher and the days get longer and everyone feels that springtime sense of renewal. My birthday is March 2nd, and I always see that date as a sort of second chance to make all those changes for the better that I promised myself I'd make on New Year's Day.

But I have to make those initial promises, or resolutions, or whatever you want to call them, first, just on the chance that they'll actually take the first time.

I woke up this morning feeling quite resolute, and thinking about the ways in which I'd like to change my life in 2012. I've decided not to make any resolutions about exercise, weight loss, or healthy eating this year, even though all of those are areas in which, like just about everyone I know, I'd like to make changes. However, if I'm successful in achieving The Big Goal I'm setting for myself this year, I believe it will have a positive impact on every aspect of my life.

My Big Goal is simply this: to make measurable progress toward living my Authentic Life.

Here's how I envision my Authentic Life: I have very little stress. (There is some research that argues that a certain amount of stress is actually good for you, but I think that argument pertains more to competitive young professionals, or those in military training, than to 50+ women seeking simpler lives. I'm pretty sure I can get by without much stress at all, thank you very much.)

In my Authentic Life, I live in a house that is comfortable and homey, with enough well-loved possessions to make me feel comforted, but not so many possessions that I feel possessed by them. I don't ask for extreme tidiness, just enough clutter control that I can find things when I go looking for them, and I don't always feel like hiding when someone unexpectedly comes to the door. (Chances are there will be many times when I still feel like hiding from unexpected company, even if my house is clean, and that's OK. Another part of living my Authentic Life involves embracing my introversion.)

In my Authentic Life, my family and friends adore me, and marvel at my wonderful sense of humor and my calm, relaxed approach to everything. I do fulfilling work, and earn at least part of my income by writing.

That last one is important. It's been the missing piece of the puzzle for me for a long time, and I'm determined to figure it out. One of my writing goals for the new year is to pitch some story ideas to magazines, and, hopefully, to sell at least two stories in 2012. In other words, to get started on the freelance writing career I've been talking about for...oh, decades now.

I've made a list of steps I think will get me to my goal. Most of them are about self-discipline--"Write something every day, or almost every day" (I always give myself an out, in case there are days when I wake up paralyzed, or barfing, or just in a terribly foul mood) and "Blog regularly--weekly?" (The weekly part is my daughter's suggestion; I think it may be a little too ambitious, but we'll see.)

Many of the steps concern improving my relationship with time. For example, "Recognize how much time tasks actually take to complete." (I procrastinate on simple tasks because I can't seem to get it through my head that washing a sink full of dirty dishes takes 5-10 minutes, while "checking in on Facebook" may take 30-60 minutes--instead of the other way around.)

I will learn to prioritize. When I make a daily to-do list, I'll stop putting "Read?" and "Write?" at the very bottom, as a tentative afterthought to "Clean bathrooms" and "Go to dump," and, instead, schedule time for reading and writing during my most productive and clearheaded hours of the day.

I'm also challenging myself to continue getting up early--I'm targeting 5 a.m., seven days a week--and to use the early morning hours productively. I'm resolving to attend a writing class, workshop, or retreat, and to schedule mini writing retreats throughout the year.

Last, I resolve to minimize the time I spend on housekeeping chores by (gasp!) trying to stay on top of them, instead of letting things get to a state of emergency before I grudgingly tackle them. Admitting my particular weakness for horizontal surfaces, I vow to keep the big table in my writing room (a.k.a. the dining room) clear for working on projects (whether writing, paying bills, or folding laundry), and to keep the kitchen table clear for purposes of meal preparation (I don't have much counter space), eating, and just generally keeping the peace.

That's it--the steps to my Authentic Life. Time to get started.

Mother's Day

2011-05-07T13:48:00.004-04:00

I wrote this a few years ago, but decided to revise it a bit and post it in honor of Mother's Day.

I take a book of writing prompts from my bookshelf and allow it to fall open where it will. “Take a moment to think about the phrase ‘What matters today…’ then begin to write.”

I think back to this morning, when I sat on the rock at the edge of the lake and looked down into the cold, clear water. What matters today is the way brown and yellow leaves were suspended there in the water, like objects caught in acrylic resin. Some had sunk to the bottom, many more were floating on the surface, but what matters to me today are the leaves that were caught between floating and sinking, catching the sun and sending it back to my eyes, like the light reflected in the yellow diamond from my grandmother's ring….

My mother was ten years old when her mother died, leaving her in the care of her father—distant and brokenhearted—and a succession of live-in housekeepers—thoughtless and preoccupied— and in charge, to some extent, of three younger brothers. She had her mother's eyes, her buoyant spirit and sharp wits, and, in a keepsake box on the dresser of her tidy white room, tucked next to an ordinary bobby pin, her mother's yellow diamond ring.

When my grandmother was in the hospital, recovering—or so everyone thought—from some sort of unnamed “female trouble,” my mother, the oldest child, was allowed a short visit. My grandmother was feeling better—was, in fact, sitting up in a chair when my mother arrived, and she spoke cheerfully of coming home in just a few days. Then she said, “Ruthie, your hair's hanging in your eyes,” and lifted her hand to brush back my mother's dark hair. “Here,” my grandmother said, and, taking a bobby pin from her own hair, she fastened back the stubborn wisps.

My grandmother relapsed; she died the following day. “I kept that bobby pin for years,” my mother told me, not long before her own death. In fact, she said, it had been in her jewelry box for seven decades, disappearing, somehow, only recently. When, later, my sister and I were sorting through her clothing and jewelry, we ran across several bobby pins, caught in the crevices of drawers or tangled in the chains of necklaces. With each one we found, I caught my breath, wondering...but they all looked the same, and who could tell?

The yellow diamond has a more satisfying story. For a dozen years or more it remained in my mother's keepsake box. I imagine her as a teenager, opening the box every now and then, drawing out the ring and holding it in the palm of her hand. Perhaps, on an afternoon filled with sorrow and angst and the frustration of being misunderstood, she escaped to her room and slipped the ring on her finger, holding it up to the light, gazing at the yellow stone through angry adolescent tears. Perhaps, preparing for a high school dance, with no one to help her dress and her awful state of motherlessness suddenly overwhelming her, she put on the ring and felt, almost, my grandmother's cool hands lifting the hair from the nape of her neck to hook the tiny clasp of her dress.

In the mid-1940s my mother, newly married herself, gave her mother's ring to my Uncle Don, her second brother, so that he and his sweetheart could become engaged before he was sent overseas during World War II. Many years later, my aunt and uncle returned the yellow diamond, now set in a gold pendant, to my mother, and she often wore it on a chain around her neck.

My mother had only ten short years with her mother, while I had more than four long decades with mine. While most of my mother's memories of her mother were half-formed impressions, freeze-frames from her very young childhood, my own mother shaped my personality and my life in ways I am still only beginning to discover. More than seven years after her death, I converse often with her in my mind, and, as odd as it seems, I sometimes find it easier to write her part of our dialogue than my own.

I have the yellow diamond pendant now. And sometimes, on an afternoon filled with sorrow and angst and the frustration of being misunderstood, when my awful state of motherlessness overwhelms me, I escape to my room, take out the yellow diamond on its gold chain and feel, almost, my mother's cool hands lifting the hair from the nape of my neck to hook the tiny clasp.

I am an introvert...no, really, I am!

2011-03-20T20:25:00.007-04:00

People make me tired. This is not to suggest that I’m unfriendly, or that I don’t like people (some of them, anyway). But being around them makes me tired.

It’s been this way all my life. In junior high, when we had about three-quarters of an hour for lunch (divided between the cafeteria and the playground, two places I avoided like the plague, for reasons that would fill a blog post and then some—suffice it to say that we moved to a new school district before seventh grade, and it pretty much ruined my life) I walked home, all by myself, every single day. I may well have been the only student from Mathewson Elementary School who went home for lunch, but, as far as I know, there was no rule against it—at least, no one ever tried to stop me from leaving the school grounds the minute the lunch bell rang.

By the time I had gotten through a morning of non-stop human interaction, I really needed that break. It was about a ten-minute walk, and since my mother worked, I came home to heat my can of Campbell’s soup in a house that was blissfully silent and empty. I don’t remember what else I did during my solitary lunch breaks, except that I know I talked to myself a lot. But, even though I hated having to go back to school afterward, that 45 minutes of solitude gave me the energy and courage to get through the afternoon.

For the next 15 years or so, I often felt overwhelmed by too much “people contact.” Sometimes I was able to recognize the signs and carve out some time for myself before I reached the breaking point. But more often than not, thinking I wasn’t “supposed” to need time alone—or at least, not so much of it—I ignored the warning signs until I felt like this:

Then, sometime around the mid-1980s, I got hold of a copy of Please Understand Me, by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, which (despite its pathetic, self-indulgent title) was enlightening, mainly because it offered a definition of “introvert” that I had never heard before: someone who draws energy from solitary activities, in contrast to an extrovert (or extravert, the spelling Keirsey and Bates use), who draws energy from being with other people.

AHA!

Keirsey and Bates go on to say that when introverts interact with others, “it drains their energy in a way not experienced by extraverts. Introverts need to find quiet places and solitary activities to recharge, while these activities exhaust the extravert.”

Again, AHA!

I also learned that about 75% of the population is extroverted, making extroversion the norm—which explains a lot about why introverts are often regarded as shy, anti-social, selfish, boring, or just plain odd. (I myself am, in fact, all of those things, at least at times, but it’s grossly unfair to attribute those qualities to all introverts just because they need a little solitude and space.)

Over the years, I’ve learned to cope pretty well in this extroverted world. In the same way that left-handed people usually become considerably more ambidextrous than right-handers—because of all the times when, dammit, there are just no left-handed scissors available—most introverts learn to spend more time than they would prefer with other people, and to give the appearance of enjoying it more than they actually do.

Sometimes I think I’ve done too good a job of “fitting in,” like when people express surprise that I consider myself very strongly introverted—I get a score of 10-0 on that part of the Keirsey and Bates assessment (or maybe 9-1 if I take the test on a day when I’m feeling especially friendly).

People often assume that, like them, I enjoy lots of Fun Group Activities, and invite me to participate, putting me in the position of having to:

(a) go along (because, despite being an introvert, I have a nearly pathological need to please people and to be liked) and, very often, end up feeling frazzled and peevish because what I really needed was some alone time;

(b) make up a phony pre-existing commitment (and how many times are they going to believe I’m visiting my sister, or that my cat has a vet appointment for a pesky skin condition?); or

When I was younger, I almost always opted for (a), mostly because I had such lousy self-esteem that every time someone asked me to do something, I was stunned into acceptance: Me? You want me to come to your Tupperware party? Really? That sounds like great fun!

More recently, I’ve used (b) quite a bit. The obvious problem with (b), besides my general discomfort with any kind of dishonesty, is that it can lead to all kinds of complications and intrigue: I can’t be seen in the grocery store if I’m supposed to be at my sister’s for the day; I’ll have to remember my story, and anticipate that someone might ask me if the cat’s eczema is clearing up.

Obviously, (c) is the best choice, but it has taken me my whole introverted life even to begin to be able to express my need for down time without apologizing for it. It’s probably only the fact that, as I get older, I need more and more solitude that has made me brave enough to stand up for it.

So I’m developing a repertoire of appropriate responses, all of which seem to have three parts.

First, they start with some variation of “That sounds like fun, but…” This is the part that I hope people understand to mean “I like you/you are a wonderful person/it means a lot that you thought to ask me.”

Second, the excuse part. (I know, I know, if I had really good self-esteem and felt entirely comfortable in my introversion, I probably wouldn’t need this part, but I always feel as if people deserve to know that it’s really me, not them, that’s the reason I don’t want to attend the party/go out to dinner with a gang/join a knitting group.) This is usually something like, “I’ve had a busy, overwhelming week and haven’t had much time to myself.” (No matter how the week has gone, for an introvert, this is always absolutely true—we’ve always had a busy, overwhelming week, and we’ve never had enough time to ourselves.)

Finally, the part where I suggest what I might be doing instead: “I’m really looking forward to just sitting in the recliner with a book this weekend,” or “I’m planning to take the dog for a long walk after work,” or “I’ll have the house all to myself tomorrow and that’s an opportunity I can’t bear to pass up.” My hope is that this type of response helps to dispel any notion people may have that I’m not really an introvert, and I must just be waiting to be asked to join the next fun group activity.

And by the way, yesterday, while I was out for a nice, long, solitary walk with the dog (having—politely, I hope— turned down an invitation for a group snowshoe hike), I came up with

The Top Ten Signs You May Be an Introvert

You may be an introvert if you think organizing your stamp collection is a reasonable excuse for not going out for drinks after work.

You may be an introvert if you think Henry Brooks Adams was a genius for knowing that “One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.”

You may be an introvert if you’ve ever heard someone use a line like “I’m just not one for crowds” and filed it away in your memory, thinking, that’s one I can use!

You may be an introvert if the statement, “I never feel lonely, except in a crowd” makes perfect sense to you.

You may be an introvert if you secretly (or not so secretly) hate weddings.

You may be an introvert if you can’t believe your good fortune when you get home and find no messages on the answering machine.

You may be an introvert if you’ve ever had to be bribed to attend a party. (When I was about seven, I refused to attend a friend’s birthday party until my mother told me a secret: the prizes for those ridiculous games like musical chairs and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey were going to be…live dime-store turtles! Obviously, this was before the sale of baby turtles was banned due to concerns about salmonella.)

You may be an introvert if, in high school, when couples were slipping into supply closets to neck, you were slipping into them just to be alone for one goddamned minute!

You may be an introvert if the part of a recent party you enjoyed most was the 30 minutes you spent reading the label on the Listerine bottle in the hostess’ bathroom.

And…the number one sign you may be an introvert: if you’ve ever left a gathering to get something from your car and instead found yourself driving home, leaving your purse, coat, and spouse behind.

The Last of the Best, or Why I'm Girlcotting Johnson & Johnson

2011-02-06T14:17:00.009-05:00

Please don't say you weren't warned. If you have no desire to read a post about feminine hygiene products (FHPs), stop right now, because that's what this is. Although I will try not to be especially graphic, if you're one of those (mostly male) people who gets queasy at even the thought of FHPs, who blushes when the person ahead of you in the grocery store plunks a box of tampons on the counter, I implore you to stop reading right now. If you insist on continuing, then I ask you, at the very least, to refrain from comments such as, "Ewww...I can't believe you wrote about this!"

I've kept my mouth shut about what, to me, is a Very Big Issue for long enough, and it's time to add my voice to those of a few other bloggers to complain, because Johnson & Johnson has permanently discontinued production of their o.b. Ultra Tampons!

That's right, permanently. As in, never coming back.

Let me tell you about my loyalty to o.b. tampons. Unless I was desperate, I have not bought any other brand of tampons since sometime in the mid-1970s. (That's about 35 years of passionate brand loyalty to a product most of my friends have never even tried. Considering teenage susceptibility to peer pressure and advertising--I'm trying to think if I've ever even seen an ad for o.b.s--I think that's pretty remarkable.) I don't think I can say that about any brand of anything else, except maybe cream of mushroom soup. (Never anything but Campbell's for me, although I still haven't completely forgiven them for that "improvement" some years back that made it less lumpy, more creamy...I didn't realize how much I enjoyed those little phlegm-like lumps until they were gone. But I digress.)

There are several reasons for this intense loyalty, the top one, of course, being effectiveness. Since I promised not to get graphic here, all I will say is that, without o.b. Ultras, I never could have made it unscathed through the white-painter's-pants craze of the late '70s, or my year in culinary school (white chef's pants every day). (If you want to read more about why o.b.s are simply the best, there's a good description of how they work in the third paragraph of this article on The Consumerist--written, incidentally, by a man.)

Besides the relative security they gave me, I always liked the fact that there was no applicator to toss in the landfill--we children of the '70s were pretty cutting-edge when it came to being green. (And yes, I know there is a not inconsiderable segment of the female population who thinks an applicator-less tampon is "just gross." To them I say, "Get over it, you spleeny twits.")

Then there was the convenience of their compact size--about the same as a Chapstick--which meant I could carry a whole day's supply in the pocket of my jeans (or white painter's pants, or chef pants).

So I am incensed that Johnson & Johnson has chosen to reward my loyalty by discontinuing my favorite FHP, and that they don't even have the decency to offer a real explanation. (All they've said is that the temporary absence of all o.b.s in stores was due to a "supply interruption," and the permanent discontinuation of Ultras was "a business decision.")

If I had had some advance notice that o.b. Ultras were going to be discontinued, I might well have bought up enough to last me until menopause, although, as my husband points out, I have no idea when that might finally occur. So what? I say--I could have bought, say, 50 boxes of the damn things, and if I didn't need them, I could have made a killing selling them on eBay, where, as of today, they're going for up to $50 for a box of 40, which used to cost about $8 when you could get them in stores.

If you're not an o.b. user, all of this probably means less than nothing to you, and I read in a Reuters article that o.b. sales account for only a "tiny portion" of the $830-million U.S. tampon market. But I also read, in the same article, that "o.b. rang up about $38.7 million in sales in the 52 weeks ended December 26, 2010, excluding sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc, club stores such as Costco Wholesale Corp, gas stations and convenience stores" (which, it occurs to me, is a list that seems to exclude most of the places I personally have ever bought them...).

So I guess $38.7 million is chump change to Johnson & Johnson. But do they really want $38.7 million worth of business going elsewhere? Sheesh.

Because that's where my business is going: elsewhere. As of December, when I first heard about the discontinuation of o.b. Ultra, I vowed not to buy any Johnson & Johnson products. No Tylenol, Sudafed, Mylanta, or Benadryl. (Not a problem; I never buy brand-name OTC drugs anyway.) I don't anticipate needing to buy an e.p.t. pregnancy test anytime soon. If I ever get any grandkids, they'll live without J&J's baby oil, shampoo, lotion, and powder, at least when they visit Grandma.

The toughest part will be going without BandAids. I really like their Flexible Fabric ones; they stay on really well. And I'll be really sad when I use up the last of my Hello Kitty BandAids. But I suppose I could try these Jesus bandages, like the ones I got Donna for Christmas ("because what wound couldn't use a little divine intervention?") or maybe these bacon ones. Curad makes Curious George and camo bandages. I think I'll be OK.

Even if you ignore the financial aspect, as the article points out, "O.b. users, many of whom have a cult-like loyalty to the product, said they were outraged when they could not find the brand in stores late last year." Actually, all o.b. tampons were absent from store shelves for a few months; production has since been resumed on all absorbencies except Ultra, which the company says it won't be bringing back.

The Ultra absorbency, in particular, was a favorite of women with heavy periods (translation: cranky, angry, desperate women, many of them, like me, in the throes of perimenopause--already sufficiently pissed off from dealing with years of pointless periods and wondering how much longer this sh&% is going to continue, anyway? without adding insult to injury by unceremoniously, without warning, yanking our favorite FHP from the shelves).

Seriously, does Johnson & Johnson really want to contend with the wrath of a legion (OK, so maybe we're a small legion, but boy, can we make some noise) of vengeful consumers?

I'm joining with others (well, a few others, anyway) to boycott--no, make that girlcott--Johnson & Johnson, as long as they refuse to bring back the o.b. Ultra.

In the meantime, earlier today, I was ecstatic (an emotion that should be all out of proportion to the event) when I discovered, tucked in the very back of the cabinet under my bathroom sink, a forgotten, nearly empty box with two o.b. Ultras left in the bottom! I actually did a little happy dance...but now I'm fretting about whether to use them, or enshrine them.
P.S.: Please don't confuse Johnson & Johnson with S.C. Johnson, the Wisconsin company that makes things like floor wax, Glade, and Pledge--I'm told that, just like their ads say, SCJ really is "a five-generation family company." No reason to girlcott them!

It's not just about the pie

2010-11-25T11:21:00.005-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This will be a short post, since I still have rolls in the oven and squash to warm up before we head out to Steve and Peggy’s for dinner, but I woke up thinking—as I should every day, but seldom take the time—of everything I’m thankful for.

I’m thankful for Tony and the kids, and for living here in western Maine, exactly where I’ve always wanted to live, and for the 45 years of friendship I’ve shared with Donna, and for all my other wonderful friends, and for a job I like and great coworkers, and for not being cold or hungry, and for a million other things, big and small.

But today I’m thinking a lot about my birth family, which has expanded over the years from a tight little group of five kids and a widowed mom, figuring out together how to take on the world, to an extended and riotous gang of about four dozen, counting original siblings, kids, step-kids, grandkids, step-grandkids, and grand-dogs.

Even though we live far apart, have busy lives, and don’t get together very often, even though we’re without our original matriarch, even though two of the original five siblings won’t be with us today, whenever I think about the family I was lucky enough to be born into and grow up with, I always feel surrounded by their love, and I always feel blessed.

Now, bring on the pie!

Milk: A Moral Issue?

2010-05-06T07:10:00.007-04:00

This post will not be about deplorable conditions in the dairy industry and why we should all go vegan (sorry, Annie), or about why it's probably not a good thing for the National Dairy Council to have launched a campaign to promote milk as an aid to maintaining a healthy weight when the actual data is inconclusive and may even point to the opposite effect, or why we should boycott the makers of baby formula who push economically disadvantaged mothers to choose formula over breastfeeding. (Those are all valid issues, and if you'd like, you can find out all you ever wanted to know about them from the website milksucks.com.)

No, instead, this post is about a burning question of ethics in my own household: whether or not it is morally acceptable, when selecting a gallon of milk from the dairy case, to dig behind the front row or two of jugs and pull out one from the back which has more time remaining before its "sell by" date.

I have always considered myself to be a rather highly ethical person. I've been known to ask the supermarket checker, "Are you sure that rang in?" as she passes an item over the scanner. If I found a wallet, I would return it without thinking twice. I once bought a pair of shorts for $5 in a local second-hand store and discovered a $20 bill in the pocket, so I called the store and tracked down the previous owner of the shorts and gave it back to her. (She was really, really happy about it.)

I believe in karma, and I believe in living your life in a way that allows you to sleep well at night, but I have never thought twice about choosing the gallon of milk with the "best date." When my kids were at home I often sent them to the store for milk, always adding, "Make sure it has a good date!" It never occurred to me that I might be leading them down the twisted path of immorality and corruption...until today.

Usually, I'm the one who buys our milk at the grocery store, or stops to pick it up on my way home from work. Lately, however, I've been consuming less milk myself--I still use it on cereal, and I cook with it (and I have no intention of giving up ice cream or cheese, two foods without which my world would be a gray and dreary place), but, for whatever reason (probably partly from reading the information on sites like milksucks.com) the idea of drinking a big glass of milk no longer appeals to me, so I've switched to drinking water or iced tea and taking calcium supplements. Since Tony still drinks milk every day (even though [nag, nag, nag] I keep suggesting that he could have a mild [or moderate] intolerance to lactose, and it could be the cause of some of his chronic gastric distress, and I keep reminding him to take the Lactaid tablets I bought for him, just in case they help [they don't seem to]), he's often the one who notices when our milk supply is getting low, and a few times recently he's stopped at a small convenience store and picked up a gallon.

This morning I noticed that the partial gallon of milk in the refrigerator is dated May 15th, while the unopened gallon he brought home yesterday is dated May 12th.

"Did you notice that this gallon of milk you bought is only dated for May 12th?" I asked.

(Today is May 6th, and we'll probably use the new gallon up before May 12th anyway, so, in retrospect, it was probably completely unnecessary for me to say anything about it at all, but the fact that I said it anyway is evidence of the fact that nearly 21 years of marriage have not taught me much.)

"Yeah," he said. "I just took the one that was in front. I saw that it had about a week left, so I figured it didn't matter."

Didn't matter? Didn't matter? When the possibility exists that just behind this particular gallon of milk was another gallon that was several days fresher? Aughhh! To me, that's like bidding on a job and finding out that there's good news and bad news--you got the bid, but you bid twice as much as the next bidder. Well, OK, maybe it's not exactly like that, but anyway....

Well! It turns out that not only does Tony think it "doesn't matter," but he actually thinks there is something morally wrong in digging through the dairy case and helping oneself to the freshest milk! He wouldn't buy milk that was outdated, or only had a couple of days left before its last sale date, he explained, but if there's enough time left before the date to use it up, he "doesn't think it's right" to bypass it in favor of the fresher stuff in the back of the case.

This is a revelation to me. And, of course, the dairy case is not the only area of the grocery store where I'm guilty of what Tony would call "high-grading" (which, in logging, is the practice of cutting only the best, most lucrative trees on a woodlot, regardless of which trees need to be harvested for the overall health of the forest)--I regularly sort through rows of those plastic boxes of baby spinach and unstack piles of peppers in the produce department, and pull loaves of bread off the shelf in the bread aisle to get to the fresher ones behind them. (Note: I always put everything back neatly the way I found it, and I never move other fresher stuff to the front for other people to scoop up; I figure anyone who wants the freshest selection should be willing to do the work to get it.)

Tony feels this is wrong, because "if you always take the freshest stuff, someone else always has to take the older stuff." I tried to argue with him, but now I'm actually starting to second-guess myself. Is it morally wrong for me to take the freshest milk (bread, peppers, spinach, or whatever) and leave the tired stuff for someone else? Is it unfair to those little old ladies in electric shopping carts who can't reach to the back of the dairy case, or to the top of the pepper pile? To harried grocery-shopping mothers who send their little kids to "grab a gallon of milk and meet me at the check-out"? To the illiterate, mathematically-challenged, and careless shoppers among us? I wonder about this.

Anyone who has spent a lot of time in grocery stores knows it's a dog-eat-dog world. Haven't we all heard the phrase "come early for best selection"? One store brags that it has "the freshest meats;" another says it knows that, when it comes to freshness, its customers are "picky, picky, picky" and guarantees they'll be satisfied. If I figure out exactly when my store puts out the freshest produce and time my trip to coincide with that, am I doing anything wrong?

And, of course, there have always been jokes and parodies about people who squeeze the fruits and vegetables to check it for quality and ripeness. Remember those old "please don't squeeze the Charmin" commercials? OK, they were ridiculous, but they were obviously based on the idea that grocery shoppers are in relentless pursuit of the best quality, right? My friend Maria's uncle once yelled at Paul Newman (yes, the Paul Newman) for squeezing a grapefruit in his market in Bridgeport, Connecticut. (He didn't recognize him, but another customer did, and tried to get Paul to autograph the grapefruit for her. I don't remember if he did it or not.) I personally don't squeeze produce because it falls outside of my moral comfort zone, but I will pick it over pretty carefully and reject anything that's been bruised by someone else's over-zealous handling.

But Tony, who I suspect may have an over-developed sense of morality, was pretty serious about the fact that high-grading the dairy case is inconsistent with the Greater Common Good. (When I told him I didn't really think it was, he actually said, "Well, I may just be better than you." Grrr.)

I'm actually kind of surprised by the vehemence with which he defended his position, since, when it comes to most of our food, he's something of a freshness fiend. If he grew corn, he'd be one of those people who has to make sure the water is already boiling before he picks it (not that there's anything wrong with that), and he's always asking me "how long things stay good in the freezer." (The answer to that question, I'm sure, falls somewhere between Tony's opinion--"nothing should be frozen for more than a few weeks or it starts to go downhill" and my mother's opinion [which I've largely adopted]--"nothing ever goes bad once you've put it in the freezer! Freezer burn? What freezer burn? Why, I had a hot dog just the other night that was frozen in 1998, and it was just fine!")

[Aside: just yesterday, I found a container in my freezer marked "4 cups apple juice for jelly, 11/6/99." (It was most likely liquid I drained off after making a huge pot of apple sauce with overly juicy apples.) I thawed it out, and it still smelled fine--like apples, not like freezer burn, but I dumped it down the drain, not because I don't think it would make perfectly lovely apple jelly, but because if I haven't been moved to make apple jelly any time in the past 10 1/2 years, it's not terribly likely that I will any time soon. My mother would certainly have used it, though, rather than "let it go to waste."]

I may not worry much about how long foods will keep once they've been frozen (or canned--we just ate a jar of bread-and-butter pickles that was dated 2004, and they were just fine), but fresh foods are another story, and unless someone is able to convince me otherwise, I'll probably continue to dig around in the back of the dairy case for the freshest gallon of milk. It probably won't keep me up at night as much as worrying about the milk souring in the refrigerator before we can use it up.

Goodbye to Auntie Bet

2010-04-27T20:27:00.013-04:00

This morning, my Auntie Bet passed away. She was almost 90. She had had a good, long life, and she was ready to go, as she had been telling her family for a while now.

(The tough part is that, just because someone is ready to go, it doesn't mean you're ready for them to leave.)

My mother and Betty Baxter met in Connecticut in the 1940s, when they were both young mothers. For many years they lived across the street from each other in Newington, and from the stories my mother told about those days, it always seemed to me as if the two families had raised their collective seven children--Betty and Elmer's three boys and my own parents' three boys and one girl (I didn't come along until later)--as one big brood. As fellow exiled Mainers, these suburban Connecticut parents encouraged (or at least did not discourage) their offspring in such rugged pursuits as camping, hiking, shooting arrows, firing rifles, and trapping muskrats. (Perhaps the kids spent so much time together because no one else in the neighborhood was allowed to play with them? Hmmm.)

After my parents bought land on a lake in Maine and began building their camp, the Baxters visited them there in the summer.
(1957...that's Greg, my mom, Steve, David, Leddy, and Betty in the back, with Andy and Ben in the front. I'm not sure where Leslie was...she was only seven, but I suppose she could have been behind the camera. Look at my mom and Betty in their skirts...I don't think I've ever worn a skirt at camp, but I guess things were different in 1957.)

I suppose it must have been terribly hard on all of them, perhaps most especially my mother and Betty, when my parents moved their family to New Jersey in the mid-50s, but the families stayed friends, visiting as often as they could.

Betty's daughter-in-law, Nancy, recently emailed to tell us a story: before they left, my father and Elmer carried our family's picnic table across the street and put it in the Baxters' backyard where, remarkably, it has lasted through more than 50 years of family gatherings. (Steve says that's because of some "old school oil" our father put on it when he built it in 1952.) "At some point," Nancy wrote, "we would like for you to have it if any of you would like to have it back." Later, she reported that Betty "was delighted that the table will be with your family. Her words were something like, 'Good, that's where it belongs.' "

After our father died suddenly while the family was living in New Jersey, and after I was born (eight months later), the family moved back to Connecticut. We lived about an hour away from the Baxters, but we went there often, especially on Sunday afternoons. Their house was a wonderful place to visit, because it held so many quirks and treasures--a third-floor attic where the boys slept; a system of buzzers so that Betty, in the kitchen, could communicate, using a special code, "Dinnertime!" or "Time to get up for school!"; a lush, terraced vegetable garden in the backyard, at the bottom of which was the scummiest, most brilliantly green frog pond; a dug-out doghouse cave in one of the garden's terraced hills where Ben's German shepherd, Phantom, slept to keep varmints away from Elmer's vegetables; a tiny dining room that quite comfortably contained--apparently by some trick of spatial geometry--an enormous table, an enormous sideboard, and an enormous upright piano; an upstairs room entirely devoted to Elmer's model trains; a big black-and-white tomcat named Tim; a kitchen drawer full of shoestrings and wooden beads, paper and colored pencils, and tin soldiers; and a startling number of clocks that dinged or bonged or cuckoo-ed every hour.

I would spend the afternoon exploring the nooks and crannies and marvels of the Baxters' house and yard, while my mother and Betty, boring old ladies that they were, would be content to do nothing at all but talk.

When I was six years old, I met Donna and discovered the wonderful concept of Best Friends. We spent all day together at school, and as soon as the bus dropped us off and we had checked in at home, we would get together at either her house or mine for the rest of the afternoon. If for some reason we weren't together, we were on the phone with each other. I remember asking my mom, who worked and cooked and cleaned and went to meetings but never seemed to spend much time with friends, if she had a best friend.

"Yes," she answered without hesitation. "Auntie Bet."

"But you don't get to see her very much," I mused, thinking of all the time Donna and I spent together.

"When you've been friends as long as we have, that doesn't matter," my mom said.

In a letter she sent me a year or so after my mother died, Betty concurred: "I do miss your mother!" she wrote. "So often we shared thoughts without even speaking."

Last December, after a surprise breakfast birthday party for our uncle in Bangor, Steve and Leslie and I continued on to Bar Harbor to visit Betty and Elmer in their retirement home. They treated us to lunch and we spent a bittersweet afternoon reminiscing, all of us knowing, I think, that it would be our last visit with Betty. I brought a tin of Christmas cookies, and she said, "These are all the kinds your mother used to make!"
Betty was no-nonsense, outdoorsy, and strong. She was smart, creative, and well-educated--a college graduate (Colby, 1941) at a time when few women were. She was a historian, a writer--she wrote a history of Newington, a real, actual book you could hold in your hands!--and a formidable bridge, cribbage, and Scrabble player. She was a mom, and a surrogate mom--she had three sons but no daughters, so she liked to borrow Leslie and me now and then.

She was our mom's very best friend for sixty years.

Nancy wrote to us this morning, "Elmer was holding her hand and Joan said she actually heard her laughing and conversing with someone earlier this morning. If she was laughing with anyone, it would have been your mom."

50,000 words in 30 days

2010-03-01T20:43:00.008-05:00

Over the past 30 days, I wrote a 50,000-word novel. I'm not saying it's a good novel, or a finished novel. I'm not even saying that it's the sort of novel that a year of rewriting, revising, and redeeming could whip into any sort of presentable shape.

But the point is, it's a novel, it's 50,000 words, and I wrote it. In 30 days.

Writing a novel in 30 days was not, of course, an idea that originated with me. There's a guy named Chris Baty out in California who came up with it. Back in 1999, he got together with 20 friends who had each decided, for no very sane reason, that they would like to write a novel in a month. Since then, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, has spiraled out of control: in 2009, there were upwards of 200,000 participants, with about one in five actually completing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

February is not National Novel Writing Month. (It's too short, for one thing, which is why I had to borrow two days from January to get started.) The official National Novel Writing Month is November. I briefly considered signing up last fall and trying to write my novel then, but November is not a good month for me--too much pre-holiday stress, and then there's Thanksgiving to deal with at the end of the month. (Obviously, Chris Baty does not have the weighty responsibility of producing six kinds of pie to interfere with his November noveling.)

February, on the other hand, was looking pretty good. If you're not a cold-weather person, February in Maine doesn't have a lot to recommend it, and I'm usually perfectly happy to seek indoor pursuits in the winter anyway. Will was headed back to school at the end of January after five weeks at home, meaning that I would be sharing the house with only one person who might become resentful if I gave up cooking, grocery shopping, and speaking in full sentences for a month. And I had a week of vacation smack in the middle of February, and no plans for it.

So, with equal measures of excitement and trepidation, I decided to plunge in. By starting on January 30th and finishing on February 28th, I figured I would get ten weekend days, plus five vacation days, so I wouldn't be working at my real job on half of my allotted 30 days. That made the whole thing sound surprisingly doable. If I could just write 3,000 words a day on each of those 15 days, I'd barely have to write at all on work days. Piece of cake, right?

It turns out that writing 3,000 words a day can be far easier than you'd think. On the other hand, writing 3,000 words a day can be far harder than you'd think. It all depends on the day. In the beginning, I actually thought I might "put words in the bank" by writing in the evening after working all day, or by writing more than 3,000 words on some days.

I did write in the evenings, and I did write about 4,000 words on one of my early weekend days, which turned out to be a really good thing when I started to slow down toward the end of the month. (Or maybe the only reason I started to slow down toward the end of the month was that I had those extra words in the bank. Hmmm.) But one of the many things I discovered during my month of nearly non-stop noveling is that 3,000 words in a single day is just about my personal limit. After that, I start looking for excuses to take breaks. Wrote a page? Check Facebook. Wrote 100 words? Check my email for the tenth time in an hour. Wrote a paragraph? Make some hot cocoa. Wrote a sentence (or a fragment thereof)? Get a snack. You can see where this is going.

However, I did write nearly half of my 50,000 words during the nine-day period that included my vacation and its two book-end weekends. Having that vacation occur during Week 3 of the process turned out to be nearly perfect timing, since by then the story was well enough developed to allow me to (occasionally) reach my peak rate of about 900 words an hour. Most of the time, though, I slogged along at a much slower pace, more like 400-500 words per hours.

In the end, I estimate that I spent about 100 hours writing during that 30-day period, not including frequent breaks for stretching, snacking, and maintaining my sanity. One hundred hours to produce 50,000 words seems like a surprisingly tidy figure, but that's about how it worked out.

Although I didn't watch much TV, do a lot of cooking, or clean the house much during February, I did manage to catch all I wanted to see of the Olympics. I made mostly passable meals on a fairly regular basis. (I even baked a couple of times.) The Board of Health did not declare my home a health hazard, and we usually had clean clothes for work. Perhaps most amazing, besides writing a novel during February, I also found time to read two 500-page novels (The Cider House Rules and The Grapes of Wrath) during the same period.

What that tells me is that, in all of the other months, when I'm not writing a 50,000-word novel, I'm obviously somehow spending 100 hours of free time doing something else. One hundred hours is being frittered away each and every month! This is a revelation for someone like me, who constantly feels pressured, runs perpetually behind schedule, and frequently bemoans the lack of sufficient time to clean the house, read a magazine, connect with friends, and, of course, read and write as much as I would like.

I'm going to have to do some serious thinking about how to harness the wealth of free time I've obviously had all along, and put it to Really Good Use...right after I check Facebook, and email, and maybe fix a snack.

"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing." --J.D. Salinger

2010-01-28T21:39:00.003-05:00

I'm posting this here, even though it feels a little like cheating, because I'm tired and I have a cold, but I wanted to say something here about the passing of J.D. Salinger, and I remembered this piece I wrote a couple of years ago:

“Here is the Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, January first, 2008,” Garrison Keillor says, and he goes on to tell me that it was on this day in 1892 that the Ellis Island Immigrant Station officially opened, and a 15-year-old Irish girl named Annie Moore became the first of more than twelve million immigrants to pass through it. He reminds me that on this day in 1953, country music legend Hank Williams, Sr. died in the backseat of his baby-blue Cadillac, on his way to a concert in Canton, Ohio. And today is the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, in which, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared freedom for all slaves in the southern states.

“It’s the birthday of writer E.M. Forster, born in London, 1879,” Garrison says, and I remember that I mean to read A Passage to India sometime soon. It is also the birthday of J.D. Salinger, born in New York City in 1919. Novelist J.D. Salinger, Garrison calls him, although The Catcher in the Rye is the only novel Salinger has ever published. His three other published books are collections of short stories or novellas, and he has published nothing at all for more than forty years, although, as Garrison says, “his friends and neighbors claim that he still continues to write.”

In fact, Salinger is probably famous as much for his reclusive lifestyle as for his published works. He last granted an interview nearly thirty years ago, and is said to rarely leave his New Hampshire home. But The Catcher in the Rye, more than half a century after its publication, continues to sell a quarter of a million copies a year. “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

Here is how I imagine my life as a writer: On weekdays, Tony will leave the house for work by 8:00 a.m. and the house will be mine. I will look around at my empty house and throw my arms in the air and say, “Whoo-hoo!” because I am a writer, and I know that my muse, and nobody else, is here waiting for me. I will feed the cats. I will finish reading the paper at the kitchen table, and then I will go into my writing room and tune the radio to NPR. I will half-listen to the news while checking my email, dashing off a quick reply to my brother’s short message, but saving my best friend’s longer one to savor later, during a break. I will read my favorite on-line advice column, look up the author of the book I’m reading and scan his bio (he wasn’t published until he was well into his fifties, which I find encouraging), then check out a couple of possible markets for the magazine articles and essays I’ve been working on.

Garrison Keillor will come on the radio for the “The Writer’s Almanac,” and I will know it’s 9:00, almost time to get down to business. He’ll run through some highlights of the day in history, briefly profile a writer or two, or some other famous or not-so-famous personage who was born on this day, read a poem, and conclude with his signature, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

In my imagined life, my parallel universe, I will close my eyes as Garrison begins to read the poem—one that I probably wouldn’t even enjoy if I read it myself, but that, in his wheezy, Midwestern accented, everyman’s voice, is transformed into something poignant and unique and, somehow, beautiful beyond its ordinary words. I concentrate on the words, the images the poem calls forth, and allow myself to slip into my writer’s skin.

“The Writer’s Almanac” will be followed by three hours of classical music, the perfect, unobtrusive background for a morning of productive writing. And I will write! My fingers will fly over the keyboard; words will pour forth—good words, magical words. I will finish an essay, revise an article, begin a poem. I may work on my novel. By noon I will already have done a good day’s work, but I’ll be caught up in the writing, unwilling to leave it for long. So I’ll take a break, go for a walk, fix some lunch—but none of this will break my stride. In early afternoon I’ll be right back at it, the magic unbroken. The mail will bring a check from a major magazine, an acceptance from another, and, perhaps, a rejection or two, but nothing very unexpected, nothing paralyzing, nothing heartbreaking.

That is how I imagine my life.

This is something more like reality:

If it’s a day when I don’t have to go to work, I see the whole long day stretching ahead of me, and I think I’ve got plenty of time to do just a few things before I sit down to write. When I finally get to my computer, the classical music has already started and I haven’t even checked my email. I think maybe I won’t check it just yet, that I’ll resist the urge to go on line at all, that I’ll just open a blank document in Microsoft Word and start to write. I’ve only lost a few minutes of time so far; there’s still plenty of time to get that idea pinned down.

An hour later, I’m still staring at a blank screen. I’ve typed a sentence or two, revised it, deleted it, rewritten it, deleted it again. I know I should stop worrying about that first sentence, that requisite “attention-grabbing lead,” and just start writing. By the time I fall into the flow of the piece, that perfect first sentence will write itself, and I’ll go back and replace those uninspiring opening lines.

But that idea that seemed to hover at the edge of my peripheral vision all night apparently flew off with my dreams in the hard-edged morning light. I get up from the computer to stretch and remember the laundry in the washer, so I make the trek to the basement, put it in the dryer, start another load. I get a glass of water and sit back down. I’m hungry and realize that I forgot to eat breakfast, so even though it’s getting close to lunchtime, I go back out to the kitchen and make some toast. A light snow has started falling, and back in my writing room I think about coffee and wish I were a coffee-drinker. I think it would feel cozy to sit at the computer while snow falls outside my window, cradling my favorite mug in both hands and thinking about what to write. I picture a gray-haired children’s author with her “World’s Best Grandma” mug, or a haggard poet, bent over his keyboard, eyes ringed with dark smudges, hands shaking from the caffeine surging through his veins. I wonder if I can really be a writer if I don’t even drink coffee.

If, as Salinger says, “there is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” I suppose I should feel very much at peace. So why am I growing more agitated, like the insomniac who lies rigidly on his back, repeating to himself, “I’ve got to get some sleep”? I’d like, at least, an opportunity to know the difference between how it feels to publish and how it feels to not publish. I’d like to be able to make that choice for myself.

But the rest of Salinger’s quote, “I write just for myself and my own pleasure,” makes sense to me. Perhaps I’ve been going about this all wrong, trying to figure out what might sell and then write it, going around in circles, trying to come up with an idea that might capture some editor’s interest.

I return to my blank screen. I set a timer, place my hands lightly on the keyboard, and free-write for five minutes. I pull out a book of writing prompts and open it at random. My instructions are to think about the phrase, “What matters to me today…”—but not to think for too long—and to simply begin writing.

By noon I’m actually writing, and by mid-afternoon, I’ve made some headway on a new essay. It’s not the Great Idea that teased me all night, but it’s a start, a few hundred words that I can point to with some measure of satisfaction. It’s a start. It may turn into something.

Update: Why I Love My KitchenAid (But You May Not Love Yours)

2010-01-03T09:31:00.016-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about making bread with my KitchenAid stand mixer, and I mentioned that my mixer, which is 23 years old, is still going strong after mixing an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 loaves of bread, not to mention plenty of cakes and cheesecakes, as well as innumerable batches of cookies (I made over 1,800 cookies for Christmas this year; suffice it to say that I bake a lot).

However, after receiving a comment from JWD (someone I don't even know, who apparently stumbled across my post only hours after I wrote it, while doing research on--imagine!--the merits of making bread with a bread machine vs. a KitchenAid stand mixer [I have to admit that I get excited all out of proportion to the event whenever someone I don't know finds my blog and leaves a comment, as if it might be the first step on the road to the kind of wild success enjoyed by Julie & Julia author Julie Powell...]), who found my post helpful in her process of deciding which appliance to buy, I felt that perhaps I should post again, this time on the topic of Why I Love My KitchenAid (But You May Not Love Yours).

As I mentioned yesterday, my KitchenAid stand mixer was a Christmas gift in 1986. (It was one of the two best inanimate gifts I ever received from my first husband [from whom I also got two wonderful children]. The other was a portable Kenmore sewing machine he gave me for Christmas in 1977, back when they were still made with almost exclusively metal parts. [It was the first year we were dating. I was 18, and my mother seemed concerned when I got it, thinking it was an inappropriately intimate gift.] If it weren't for the time a few years ago when I started to sew while Remy was sleeping under the table, startling him awake and causing him to leap up in a panic, becoming entangled in the electric cord, and yanking the machine off the table so it crashed to the floor, I'd still be using it today. The two newer used machines with which I've attempted to replace it have both been rather fragile and plasticky.)

My KitchenAid is the model that I think is now called the "Classic," with a 4.5-quart metal bowl and a 250-watt motor. It's a workhorse, but I can only mix two, or possibly three, loaves of bread at a time in it, so in 2005, when I decided to open a bakery, I knew I'd need something bigger. Much bigger.

I had been lusting after a used 12- to 20-quart Hobart dough mixer, but they were prohibitively expensive for my shoestring operation. Before I found the used 12-quart Univex pictured in yesterday's post, I bought a brand-new KitchenAid Professional 600, a totally cool-looking machine with a six-quart bowl, a 575-watt motor, and the bowl-lift (rather than the tilting-head) mechanism.

Here's how the KitchenAid website describes the Professional 600: "The overachiever of the stand mixer family, it has a Flour Power Rating of 14 cups. That means it can mix enough dough for 8 loaves of bread or 13 dozen cookies in a single bowl."

Excuse me, but this is bullshit. For one thing, 14 cups of flour makes about five loaves of bread. Maybe even six, if they're not too big. But eight loaves? No way.

However, I was still pretty happy with my Professional 600, because it easily mixed up big batches of cookie dough and cake batter, and four- or five-loaf batches of bread. And I had this really cool antique dough bucket that I used to mix most of my bread dough anyway.(I got it from our former neighbor, Aunt Bertha, when she was cleaning out her house, prior to moving out so the state could bulldoze it and reroute the road. I liked using it because it was such a simple, non-electric thing [such as one might find in the awesome Lehman's catalog--except that I just checked, and they don't have one], and because it made me think of Aunt Bertha, and because I developed some pretty impressive biceps muscles during those first few months in the bakery, turning the crank that turned the paddle that mixed the dough. [These are the directions on the lid of the bucket: Put in all liquids first, then flour. Turn 3 minutes. Raise in pail. After raising, turn until dough forms a ball. Take off cross-piece. Lift out dough with kneader. It doesn't get much simpler.])

But...only a month or two after I started using my Professional 600, as I was mixing a batch of dough of a perfectly reasonable size, it started making a funny noise and smelling very hot, and then it just quit. I called the KitchenAid people and they told me it was probably "just overheating" and I should leave it alone until it cooled and try again, but that didn't fix the problem. Every time I turned it on, it would run for a minute or two, smell funny, make a noise, and shut down.

I consulted my owner's manual for information on their "Hassle-Free Replacement Warranty"--after all, it was practically new. That's when I read this: KitchenAid Will Not Pay For: A) Repairs when Stand Mixer is used in other than normal single family home use.

Excuse me?! This mixer--this Professional 600 model--is covered under the warranty only if I don't use it professionally?? If that's the case, shouldn't it be called the "Home-baker 600," or the "Big-family 600" instead?

Having spent $350 for the darned thing only a couple of months previously, I was pretty unhappy. I was unhappy enough to decide to adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to my conversation with the KitchenAid warranty people. I think all I told them was that I had four kids and I made a lot of bread...which was true. They didn't ask if I had just opened a bakery in the front room of my house, and I didn't mention it, either.

They sent me a new mixer. And I loved it. I loved it for more than a year, which is to say, until after the warranty expired. (Not that I would have dared to try to get away with the "don't ask, don't tell" thing again, anyway. Probably.) And then it quit. After learning that it would cost me a bundle just to ship it to a repair center and have the problem diagnosed, to say nothing of what it might cost to fix it, I stowed it on a corner of the porch, where it rests to this day. Sigh.

I moved my old reliable Classic into the bakery and used it when I needed to make small batches of bread, cookies, and cakes. The Univex took care of everything else.

I thought probably I had just had an isolated case of bad luck with my two Professional 600 models, and, given my wonderful experience with the Classic, I was still prepared to defend KitchenAid's quality. Until, that is, in the process of writing yesterday's post, I spent entirely too much time doing on-line research about KitchenAid mixers, and what I found was pretty interesting.

It turns out that KitchenAid used to be a brand of the Hobart Corporation. Hobart invented the electric mixer 100 years ago, and their mixers are still the gold standard for the foodservice industry. (They make floor models with bowls of up to 140-quart capacity. It boggles the mind.)

However, Hobart sold the brand to Whirlpool Corporation in 1986. Remember that I said my KitchenAid Classic was a Christmas gift in 1986? It was apparently one of the last KitchenAids manufactured by Hobart, and I think that probably explains why I've been so happy with it.

I found several sites where people could rate and review their KitchenAid mixers, and, while the reviews were generally positive, each site had a smattering (maybe 10%) of very negative reviews. Since, in my experience, the majority of people who have fancy kitchens and high-end appliances don't actually use them all that much, I'm guessing that the negative reviews are probably coming from frequent bakers like me (who are the only ones really putting their mixers to the test).

One Amazon reviewer wrote: "No, KitchenAid is not top-of-the-line anymore. They aren't as high quality as they used to be, they are noiser than earlier models, and have only a third the life expectancy of the old ones." Ouch.

Another reviewer pointed out sadly that "the reputation comes from the days when it was a brand name of the Hobart Corporation, through 1986...KitchenAid mixers no longer have any Hobart DNA in them; they are Whirlpool through and through."

So, be warned: if you buy a KitchenAid mixer today, you won't be getting the same machine I got for Christmas 23 years ago.

That leaves me to worry about what I'll do when my 1986 model finally does bite the dust. I guess I should be keeping an eye on eBay to see if anyone is selling a gently-used, quarter-century-old KitchenAid Classic. (Or a late-70s-vintage Kenmore zigzag sewing machine with all metal parts.)

It's On: The Bread Machine vs. The KitchenAid Stand Mixer

2010-01-02T14:31:00.020-05:00

(I drew this myself! Which probably explains why I've switched creative outlets, from drawing and painting to writing and baking.)

After a recent Facebook discussion about the relative merits of making homemade bread with a bread machine vs. a KitchenAid stand mixer, I--a firm advocate of the KitchenAid mixer method--became curious about exactly how much hands-on time it requires to make a loaf of bread in one.

The Timed Experiment

I started making a two-loaf batch of oatmeal bread at 1:40 this afternoon, and took it out of the oven at 3:55. That's two hours and 15 minutes (which is actually less time than I expected; I always tell people that making homemade bread takes "three or four hours," but maybe I'm just trying to add to the home bread-baker's reputation and mystique, and garner the awe and respect of non-bread-bakers [kind of like that Rice Krispies Treats commercial where the mom throws flour on herself before emerging from the kitchen to make her family believe that making RKTs is a Really Big Deal]), BUT while I was making it, I kept track of all the actual hands-on time it required, and you may be surprised at the total: 14 minutes. That's right, 14 minutes. And I ended up with two loaves of bread, not one. And this oatmeal bread recipe is one that requires cooking the oatmeal and letting it cool before mixing the bread; using my other oatmeal bread recipe, in which I throw the oats into the bowl with the flour, would probably have saved me two whole minutes.

Here's how it broke down:

Put water on to boil; add oats, salt, and butter (actually, the recipe only calls for a tablespoon of butter and I usually substitute canola oil in case I end up freezing one loaf and taking it out when Vegan Daughter happens to visit) and stir--2 minutes. (While it was cooking, then cooling, I washed some dishes and cleaned the kitchen a little, so that time doesn't count; I was going to have to wash those dishes eventually anyway, and they had nothing to do with the bread-making.)

Mix yeast, warm water, and a little sugar in my KitchenAid bowl--1 minute. (Back to cleaning the kitchen for five minutes while it proofed.)

Add the oat mixture, brown sugar, molasses, and flour to the bowl while mixing; turn out on the counter and knead for a few seconds by hand (I think this step is totally unnecessary. I just do it so I can feel At One With The Bread; it's a holdover from the days when I kneaded all my bread by hand and considered it something akin to a religious experience); put in a greased bowl and set someplace warm to rise--6 minutes. (Yes, that's all. When I used to knead by hand, I never kneaded for less than 10 minutes, but the mixer is more efficient and five minutes will do it.)

After about 40 minutes, punch dough down, divide in half, and place in greased pans--2 minutes. (I used the rising time to tear the house apart looking for the pencil drawing I did of my KitchenAid mixer seven years ago when I was taking a drawing class, and to scan it so I could use it here.)

After about 25 more minutes, turn on the oven to preheat--1 minute. (It doesn't take that long, of course, but I had to walk from the computer to the kitchen and back.)

After about 10 minutes, put the loaves in the oven--1 minute.

After 30 minutes, take them out--1 minute.

So that's it--14 minutes of hands-on time for two loaves of "real" bread.

You can buy a cheap bread machine for around $50 or $60 now, and a fairly good one (I'm making an assumption about quality here--it's a Cuisinart, so it should be fairly good, right?) for a little over $100. Or, if you want to, you can spend over $200 for something called a Zojirushi Home Baker that makes a 2-pound loaf and brags that it can also be used to make several other things, among them quick breads, cake, and jam. (Seriously, jam? In a bread machine?)

A quick, unscientific review of information about bread machines available on line seems to indicate that they only last a couple of years with regular use. I got my KitchenAid mixer for Christmas in 1986 and it's still going strong after what I calculate to be somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 loaves of bread. That number doesn't include the estimated 5,000 loaves I made during the two years when I ran the bakery, because I mixed those in this awesome 12-quart mixer, which still lives in a corner of the former bakery kitchen, and which I refuse to part with because it's handy when I get the urge to make 6 or 8 loaves of bread at a time (something that happens more often than you might think).

I don't want a bread machine, partly because of the cost, but mostly because I don't have room in my kitchen to house an appliance that, let's be honest here, only does one thing well. (I would love to know just what percentage of Zojirushi Home Baker owners have actually used the thing to make jam.) A KitchenAid stand mixer takes up about the same amount of counterspace, and I use mine just about every time I bake--for bread, cakes, cookie dough--and I bake a lot. (Way too much. Way, way too much. Weigh, weigh, weigh too much.)

Also, should you be so inclined (surprisingly, I never have been, but someday I might), you can buy attachments for your KitchenAid that will enable you to do some pretty diverse things with food: slice, shred, and grind everything from veggies to meat; stuff sausage; mix, roll, and cut pasta (even ravioli!); juice citrus fruits; make ice cream; and open cans. (Yes, a $50 can-opener attachment is one of the optional accessories listed on the KitchenAid site. Who knew?)

C'mon, bread machine...show me what you got. Yeah...I didn't think so.

Roxie was quite a girl

2009-12-13T20:32:00.009-05:00

Roxie was a tortoise-shell cat with odd, scary yellow eyes, a perpetually peevish expression, and long hair that tended toward impossible mats.

She didn't particularly care for human companionship, even that of the humans who fed her. She didn't scratch me when I tried to hold her (usually), but she objected quite vocally, with a low growl, gradually escalating into a piercing yowl, which continued until I set her back down.

In recent years, she was old and skinny and she slept a lot, but when she was a young and vigorous cat, she made a habit of attacking the first thing to come down the stairs each morning. Sometimes that thing was my leg in a new pair of nylons I had just put on to wear to work. Sometimes it was the hapless Caitlin, stumbling half-asleep toward breakfast on a school morning.

Eventually Cait figured out that if she threw a shoe down the stairs ahead of her every morning, Roxie would leap on it, and would be so busy trying to kill it that Cait could slip past her unnoticed.

We were all a little afraid of Roxie, including Remy, who learned as a young pup that she had no sense of humor whatsoever. The first time he playfully tried to jump on her, she hooked him in the lower lip with one of her fearsome talons, and he dripped blood all across the kitchen floor. After that, he always gave her a wide berth, and frequently found himself trapped in a room, whimpering but unwilling to risk her wrath, when she chose (deliberately, I'm sure) to park herself in the doorway.

Roxie was a good mouser, and although she liked to devour her prey, she was always kind enough to leave their heads in a convenient place for me to find, often by stepping on them barefoot in the dark.

As a mouser, she was both clever and cruel. She used the bathtub in our second-floor bathroom as her own personal Coliseum, where she would dispatch mice like Christians thrown to the lions by the ancient Romans. She would catch a mouse, sometimes as far away as the basement, carry it up two flights of stairs, and drop it into the tub, where she would proceed to torture it to death. There were many mornings when I pulled back the curtain to step into the shower and found the tub covered with tiny, bloody footprints. (Yes, it's horrible and gross, but you do have to admire her resourcefulness.)

Roxie died last Friday, December 11th, sometime between 7:30 in the morning, when I left for work, and noon, when Tony checked on her.

It was not unexpected. She had essentially been in hospice care here at home for about a week, and she had gradually been eating less and less, until she had stopped eating altogether a couple of days earlier.

Up until a few weeks ago, she had been as active as ever (which is to say, not terribly active, sleeping most of the day, but with occasional bursts of energy). I actually saw her chase a spider across the kitchen floor with great interest just a couple of weeks ago, but it had been pretty clear for a while that she was nearing the end of her life.

She didn't seem to be sick: she didn't cough or wheeze or throw up. She didn't seem to be in any pain: she didn't cry or wince when I petted her. She just got very skinny.

There are probably people who will read this and think that I should have taken her to the vet when she started losing weight, to see if anything could be done to get her eating again, to prolong her life. To those people, I will point out that Roxie did not like cat carriers, car trips, or vets--well, really, Roxie didn't much like anyone, but she had a particular aversion to strangers who pinned her down on stainless steel tables and treated her in undignified ways--and there was a special notation on her chart at our vet's, reminding them not to attempt to examine her without first donning shoulder-length falconer's gloves. Since she was quiet, calm, and apparently comfortable, I considered allowing her to die on her own terms, without all of that upheaval, a kindness.

Also, she was old. I didn't realize just how old, because I have heard of cats living to age 20 or beyond, but I did some research and learned that 12-15 years is the average life expectancy for an indoor cat, and Roxie was nearly 17.

I could say a lot here about our (human) health care system in America and the sometimes ill-advised heroic measures we take to prolong life long after it should be prolonged, but for now I will just repeat two things I heard recently:

1) Nearly 30% of Medicare is spent during the last year of our lives, and half of that is spent during the last 60 days, trying to prolong what in many cases is no longer a reasonable quality of life.

2) Nearly everyone who is polled on the question says he hopes to die a "natural" death, at home, surrounded by family, yet the fact is that most of us die in intensive care units while undergoing complex and often invasive medical treatment.

I will miss Roxie, but I'm glad I let her die peacefully at home, and if I'm ever in her position (which is to say, old, tired, peeing on the floor, and no longer interested in mice), I hope someone will do the same for me.

It's so frustrating!

2009-11-21T09:50:00.001-05:00

Aunt Bertha

2009-11-15T22:50:00.008-05:00

On Friday the 13th of November, Aunt Bertha died.

She was 99 years old, and had been living in a nursing home for the past couple of years. Before that, she lived in a seniors apartment complex in South Paris for several years. But before that, for about five decades, she lived in the oldest house in the village of Locke Mills, which was on the corner of Route 26 and the East Bethel Road, and directly across the street from our house, until the state tore it down to reroute the road and make the corner safer. And before that, she lived about a mile and a half away, on Bird Hill, where she was born and raised.

When Tony first bought our house, a few years before we were married, he told Katie that the old lady across the street was a witch (a good witch, of course). I'm not sure Aunt Bertha really knew how to take that, but she was a good sport--she dressed up as a witch every year for Halloween to give out candy.

Aunt Bertha didn't have any kids of her own, but she enjoyed watching all of ours grow up, just as she had watched the three Swan boys grow up in this house for the previous 30 years. She had an unobstructed view of our driveway and the front of our house from the kitchen window over her sink (she kept one corner of her cafe curtains pinned up, just to be sure) and she didn't miss much that happened over here. The photo above was taken on the day we got married (the ceremony, which was performed by a justice of the peace who also sold fish from a truck in the mill parking lot on Saturday mornings, took place right here in our yard, beside Tony's vegetable garden). She was 79 years old then, and had recently had surgery (hip? knee? I can't remember, but whatever it was, she bounced back from it very quickly), but she came across the street with her cane, and when Tony and I walked down to meet her, she scrunched up her face in one of her almost-perpetual smiles and asked, "Did you two just get married?" with a characteristic twinkle in her blue eyes.

Aunt Bertha loved to talk, and it didn't matter if you had places to go or things to do--a "quick stop" at her house never lasted less than half an hour. Tony used to take her vegetables from his garden and say, "If I'm not back in half an hour, come rescue me!" She loved to tell about her most recent visits from the many members of her extended family, about her trips to Eastern Star events, about the man on the phone who tried to sell her aluminum siding. When the kids were old enough, we sent them across the street to deliver the vegetables, and although they sometimes complained, they also quickly learned that, in addition to her stories, Aunt Bertha usually had a stash of cookies to share with them.

We loved having Aunt Bertha living across the street, and missed her badly when she--and her house--were gone. When the road was moved (it now goes right through what used to be her house and driveway) we gained a lot of front yard...but we would rather have had Aunt Bertha.

There's a hill in our front yard now that used to be her side yard, on the other side of the street, where she used to hang her laundry. A couple of Aunt Bertha's old rosebushes still grow there. Tony says that from now on we're calling the hill "Mount Bertha."

"Alligators love dog meat."

2009-11-08T20:54:00.006-05:00

“Alligators love dog meat” – just one more thing I’ve learned from faithfully reading Mark Trail.

Years ago, in the 1960s and ‘70s, I used to read the strip in the New Haven Register. Now I read it in the Lewiston Sun-Journal, where it vies with Nancy for the title of Most Boring Comic Ever (and wins, hands down, for Most Badly Drawn).

From Wikipedia: “as noted by Jack Hill [the son of cartoonist Tom Hill, who drew many of the Mark Trail strips from 1946 until his death in 1978], ‘the quality of Mark Trail declined after 1978,’ with a loss of accuracy and detail and ‘a free-floating approach to perspective.’ In addition, time froze: scenes and plots have been recycled from the past. According to King Features, Mark now stays ‘forever 32’. The characters no longer evolve or show much of their earlier personalities. Ironically, these changes, along with predictable villains (who invariably have facial hair with especially pronounced sideburns), uneven art work, quirky dialog, and misplaced speech balloons (often pointed at foregrounded animals), created an amusing charm that attracted a new following among fans called ‘Trailheads’.”

As bad as it is, reading Mark Trail is like watching a train wreck—as much as I don’t want to, I just can’t pull myself away.

And I’m not alone. A couple of years ago, the Sun-Journal dropped the strip, along with Spiderman (the only comic I never even bothered to glance at), and replaced them with Baby Blues and Crankshaft—one strip that resonates with parents of young children, and another that speaks to middle-agers looking after their own parents—a nice balance, I think.

It probably wouldn’t have taken me long to stop wondering whether Andy, the loyal St. Bernard, would arrive on the scene in time to save Mark from the latest sideburned villain, or whether the competitive, immoral, and annoying Kelly Welly would make yet another play for Mark’s affections. But after about three months of fielding vociferous complaints from loyal Trail fans, the newspaper reinstated the strip by moving Dilbert to the business page. (Now if only we could get them to bring back the TV Preview that used to come in the Saturday paper….)

Come to find out, Mark Trail is a pretty popular guy. Over the years, he has appeared in a number of coloring books published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, aimed at educating kids about conservation and the environment. (Although I don’t personally know anyone who ever owned the coloring book Mark Trail Tells the Story of a Fish in Trouble, I’m sure it was an exciting and informative read.)

There were two different Mark Trail radio shows in the early 1950s, one on ABC and one on Mutual Broadcasting System. A third radio show, Mark Trail Radio Theatre, ran for 11 years, from 1991 until 2002, on

Minneapolis-St. Paul public radio station KFAI.

In 1991, Congress designated 16,400 acres along the Appalachian Trail in Georgia as the Mark Trail Wilderness. (Do you think they know he’s a comic strip character?)

And in 1997, Mark became the official mascot of the NOAA, and the voice of the National Weather Service. (“What th’?! Another hurricane?!”)

Of course, Mark has also garnered his share of less than flattering attention. The blog Nobody Loves Rusty, which is devoted entirely to the strip, calls it “one of America’s oldest and most terrible comic strips.”

Then there’s the website that offers five “Bad Guy Rules,” just in case you should require assistance in recognizing Mark Trail artist Jack Elrod’s cleverly drawn Bad Guys for the villains they are:

• If a character has long sideburns, he is always evil to the core.

• Men with hair any longer than collar length are bad news.

• Any character, even if innocuous in appearance, is suspect if they hesitate when responding to a legitimate question.

• Unless smiling and of a friendly visage, Heavy-Set Bald Guys are always villains

• Bad guys often have bent or broken noses.

Here are a few other tidbits I learned today:

• The strip was drawn in a second floor studio in creator Ed Dodds' home (which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright). The studio overlooked a 130-acre forest in suburban Atlanta called...you guessed it--Lost Forest.

• In the early days of the comic strip, Mark was rarely seen without a pipe clenched in his teeth, but he gave it up in 1983 under pressure from anti-smoking activists.

• Mark and Cherry finally got married in 1993, after a 47-year courtship.

• Supposedly, according to numerous websites, Andy was neutered in 2000, although I wasn’t able to find out any more details, such as whether Doc performed the surgery (he is a veterinarian, after all) or whether the procedure was prompted by any specific behavior on Andy’s part, such as a propensity for humping the furniture or a dalliance with a neighbor’s poodle. In any case, Andy had better watch his step because, as we keep reminding our dog Remy when he misbehaves, “Alligators love dog meat.”

Marriage equality takes a hit in Maine

2009-11-06T22:48:00.005-05:00

I was hoping that I would wake up Wednesday morning, turn on the radio, and hear the wonderful news that Question 1 on yesterday’s ballot—the “People’s Veto” referendum to overturn the Maine legislature’s decision to make same-sex marriage legal in our state—had been soundly defeated.

The earliest poll results looked promising, with No On 1 leading, 55% to 45% when only five percent of the votes were in. But by the time I went to bed, 38 percent of the votes had been tallied, and the race was a virtual dead heat, with No On 1 leading by only about 250 votes, and I began to consider, for the very first time, the possibility that the referendum might pass.

I knew from the beginning that it would be close, but I honestly thought we Mainers would live up to our reputation as fair and decent human beings, not inclined to meddle too much in other people’s business.

I’m sorry to say I was wrong.

I never heard a single solid argument against retaining the law allowing same-sex couples to marry that wasn’t based on religious grounds, and I’m frustrated a) that people were apparently unable to separate the concept of religious marriage from that of civil marriage (you know, civil, as in “civil rights”), and b) that the religious argument would sway so many people in a state that ranks 6^th from the bottom in regular church attendance.

Since most of the time I think I come across as kind of a shy, quiet, frumpy 50-year-old mom, some people are probably surprised when they discover that underneath the dowdy exterior beats the heart of a flaming liberal, at least when it come to social issues. (This is probably why I get approached by people like the “Yes On 1” people who tried to interest me in signing their petition at the dump one day last summer.)

I try to be respectful of people whose viewpoints are diametrically opposed to mine, which isn’t usually very difficult, since I’m a big believer in the avoidance of confrontation, and since I usually figure that in most cases, people are a product of their upbringing and it’s pretty hard to change after the age of ten or so.

But I’m having a hard time watching the news footage of the jubilant “Stand for Marriage Maine” people (“Praise God for the work He has done!”), as they celebrate the “preservation of marriage,” without entertaining thoughts of sucker-punches, or at least the judicious application of a Nerf bat to a few thick skulls.

Because the thing is, those folks on the “Vote Yes On 1” side woke up on Wednesday morning with all their rights intact and their lives virtually unchanged—whereas if Question 1 had been defeated, they would have woken up on Wednesday morning with…all their rights intact and their lives virtually unchanged.

When it gets right down to it, they just didn’t have that much at stake…certainly not enough to warrant the kind of effort they put forth to deny others their basic civil rights.

And even if your viewpoint on this issue is a result of your upbringing, or your religious views, or your homophobia, or whatever, I’m sorry, but it’s time to grow up and think for yourself.