George Jetson?

There was a Segway parked in the front lobby of my office this morning. I'm very leery of this machine, to say the least. For many reasons but the first being that people are lazy and any excuse not to have to move around physically is good enough.

Don't we have enough problems with obesity and physical degeneration? I fear that to further add to the problem will most likely push us past a point where our bodies are no longer self-ambulatory. Modern man is already weak enough. Hell, people can't even function when the AC is broken.

The Segway was designed to help eliminate vehicle traffic. San Francisco has banned the use of Segways on sidewalks fearing the safety of pedestrians. I'm terrified of the way people drive and generally frustrated by foot traffic. The thought of combining the worst of the two has me very worried. These things travel at a top speed of 12 miles per hour. Can you imagine being hit by something like that while walking along? People cannot be relied on to be careful and aware. Not even people like our President (see pic).

I can concede that the Segway might be a technological inovation for those that are physically impared but in a lot of cases even that would be a stretch. How many people would suddenly have a condition where the Segway was necessary for them to get around. Like the morbidly obese that use wheelchairs to move around in?

Give a Hoot!

Following up from yesterday's mascot post, I'm trying to find out why different decades have a specific animal motif. Owls will forever remind me of the 70s. Why the owl? Is it because of the back-to-nature movement of the early 70s? Is it because of mascots like Woodsy the Owl?

I had one aunt who was really into macrame and another aunt that collected owls. That resulted into many beautiful wall hangings (see pic) that are still in the family's possesion.

I remember owls appearing everywhere. Wall hangings, guest towels and soaps in my grandmother's bathroom, t-shirts, and housewares.

Why did we gravitate to specific animals for a certain time? What would our animal motif be for this decade?

Kill All Mascots!


I was assaulted by our mascot this morning, while trying to get in the front door to go to work. Exactly the thing I need on an incredibly humid morning. All I wanted to do was get in and get to my desk as quickly as possible but instead I had to pose for pictures for the visiting UW rep from Korea.

Our mascot, which is just our company logo with a face, legs, and of course, giant, white, four fingered hands, has been resurrected after a 3 year absence. The woman behind the mask is the partner of another employee who was laid off. I guess the pay was just too good to pass up?

I've always hated mascots. I hate the fact that you can't escape them when they are around you. I don't know what is creepier, when they talk or when they are silent.

I hooked up with a mascot once. My senior year of high school I worked for Chi-Chis as a hostess. I started hanging out with one of the servers who in addition to being his school's mascot was also a complete alcoholic. I think he was a hawk or something.

I have an easier time with animal mascots instead of human ones or fantasy creatures like the Philly Phanatic. Giant human heads with eyes that never move or blink and mouths that are always open and smiling are terrifying.

Mascots.

Kill All Robots!


I've started to address my need to control everything in my life. This has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. In fact, at one point, I remember actually saying to myself, in a very Scarlett O'Hara sort of way, that I was never going to appear as if I didn't know what I was doing, ever again. I think that was my first week in high school when I was determined to put behind me the social torture of jr. high, once and for all.

Control issues were obviously present in my life before that particularly defining moment, but it's interesting to me that we are actually concious of our need to control more than we would care to admit. As I begin to look into my life and my actions, it is unbelievable to me how often I tighten the reins on myself and others.

The various ways of control are also completely fascinating to me. The title of this post comes from how I physically and emotionally withdraw around my immediate family to the point where my husband has described me as acting like a robot. It's really strange because I was (and I'm hoping still am) one of the most animated people, especially within my family. It just got to a point where I could no longer keep up the charade around them and stopped trying.

Copping out that way is one thing, controlling them through my cop-out is another. It's scary because although I can see how I am acting towards them, I can only observe it. I don't know how to let go. The dynamics and my control are so strong that it's easier to maintain the dysfunction than it is to change. Don't get me wrong, I want to very much but it's that first step of letting go. That one's a killer.

For me the most frightening thing would be to find out who I was if I wasn't telling or showing everyone how I wanted to be seen, constantly. What would happen if I just took the risk and let go, but in a positive way? I have lived my live as a giant "fuck you!" to the rest of the world. What would it be like if I were to stop that and let go?

Control makes things static. Nothing in life is static.

I'm so tired...
In spite of being both physically and mentally energetic, I have had a problem with what appears to be some kind of narcolepsy since I was in my early teens.

I can fall asleep anywhere. I have fallen asleep while driving, while writing, and even at a choir performance while standing up! It is impossible for me to stay awake during lectures or while riding in any kind of vehicle.

I would have these weird blackouts where I would take a short nap and immediately go into a dream state of sleep. I would have the most intense dreams.

Since making changes to my diet, alot of this problem has abated. I'm thinking that a portion of it had to do with blood sugar imbalances, although I have never been tested to prove that theory. I am starting to realize that more so, it's my mind's way of saying enough is enough to me and uses sleep as a way to reboot itself. I find that sometimes when I am sleepy and try to take a nap, my mind doesn't shut down but uses the relaxed state to work things through.

If I'm careful with my eating and don't allow myself to be overwhelmed with mental bullshit, I can avoid these episodes altogether. I want to find out why my body and mind choose this as a way to deal with stress and imbalance. I'm at a point with the work I have done on myself, that it is possible for me to begin to look at the underlying causes. In the past, I was either at best an embarrassment to myself or at worst, a danger. I hope to eventually supplant this default with options that I consciously choose and control, like meditation.

In the meantime, don't ever expect me to keep you company during a long car ride.

Sleepy daschunds.

My husband suggested I take swimming lessons after watching me wipe out in the surf earlier this summer. I don't want to have to admit this, but I think he is right.

I first learned how to swim when I was five through some athletic program. I remember being the youngest in the class and the instructor spent a good portion of the time babying me and not teaching me how to swim. I spent most of my summers at the pool club. I do remember swimming a lot and not being too horrible at it.

In jr.high, swimming was a gym requirement. Every girl hated it because it meant your hair looked like shit for the rest of the day because there wasn't enough time to restyle it before class. Also, it was co-ed, neither group wanted the other to see them in their bathing suits. I was completely humilitated in one class when my bikini bottom became undone and flopped open as I was getting out of the pool. I used the "I have my period excuse" as many times as I could even though I didn't actually get my period until I was 15!

Our swimming instructor, Mrs. Mack, had been an Olympic swimmer sometime in the 1950s. There were all of these black and white photos of her with her medal in her office which was a broom closet in the girls locker room. By 1982, she was grossly obese with thick coke bottle glasses and a steel grey helmet of hair. She never got into the pool with us but preferred to bark commands from the side bench. There was a story going around that during one class, Gupta, the girl from India, fell into the deep end of the pool and started to drown. Supposedly, Mrs. Mack took a running dive into the deep end and pulled Gupta to safety. Everyone who was at that class said that even people who were in the bleachers got soaked from the impact.

I'm not really looking forward to these lessons. I'm skeeved out by most indoor pools and although I'm definitely not a strong swimmer these days, I do have some experience and am not interested in having to start from square one! But, I want to learn how to surf, so in order to keep me from either killing or hurting myself or others when doing that, I will need to just get over it and jump back in.

Favorite Female Icons, Part I

I love Vanessa Redgrave.

I had a weird dream last night where Vanessa Redgrave shot me in the arm, at close range, with a crossbow.

I first saw her in the made for tv movie "Playing for Time". A holocaust drama written by Arthur Miller about the french singer, Fania Fenelon's internment in Auschwitz. For some reason, my mom thought this was ok material for an 11 year old to watch.

Her performance in this picture is superb. Usually made for tv movies are really bad. They tend to chop up and dumb down the subject matter to make it digestible for mass audience viewing and also to insert commercials. The writing and her performance in this film save it from that fate.

I think she has a kind of masculine beauty. She brings this strength, elegence, and measured intensity to all of her roles. I loved her in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe for this very reason. She recently performed Hecuba onstage. I would have given anything to be able to see her live in this production. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/93064.html

I also love that she has never compromised her politics and views, even when they were considered extremely unpopular in this country and in the film industry. http://www.myvillage.com/pages/celebs-oscars-worst-speeches.htm

Blue Jeans Bubble


There was an interesting article on the market bubble of designer denim on slate.com. http://www.slate.com/id/2124237/?GT1=6772

Recently, I have considered purchasing a pair of custom-made jeans. They are not cheap. This is a total luxury purchase and one that for someone whose body changes pretty frequently, might not make that much sense.

For me this purchase or I guess investment, has to do more with owning custom-fitted jeans more than anything else. My history of jeans goes back to the stiff and itchy as hell Toughskins my Mom bought us from Sears. No matter how long you wore them or how many times you washed them, the only place that these jeans wore in and became soft were the knees and that was because we were constantly rolling around on the ground. So inevitably the jeans remained course and stiff-legged with white circles on the knees, until we outgrew them and got new ones.

Hand-me-downs didn't work in my family because my brother Terry and I were both kind of chubby and our younger brother and sister, Katie and Ian, were both rail-thin. We were all stuck wearing these.

My mom got a pair of Gloria Vanderbilts when I was about 9. She would send them out to be drycleaned and pressed! I remember her wearing them out to parties with a thin sweater or satin shirt, a gold and silver fish scale belt, and high-heeled boots. My mom used to purchase her designer jeans from a woman that sold them out of her home. Looking back, it seems really weird but it was a lot nicer to try on jeans in your mom's friend's bathroom instead of the changing room of Strawbridges department store.

My experience with designer jeans began in jr. high. Jordache was a fashion essential in 1982. Initially, I was too chubby to fit into Jordache and was stuck wearing Gitanos, which had a more generous cut. I made up for it though with my Jordache purple sack purse. That was until I was 13, that summer I lost a lot of weight and could finally fit into Jordache. I would lie on my bed and suck in my stomach to get the zipper up. It was like a denim girdle.

The history of denim, from its utlitarian beginnings to its high fashion status of the past 30 years, is fascinating to me. http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/denim2.html It's fascinating to me the different ways fashion has dictated how denim should be worn. And how we are more than willing to go along with every trend.

Have you tried to wear a pair of jeans from the 70s or the 80s? The waists are really high! We can't even conceive of wearing pants that hit our natural waist, even though for many years that's what was in fashion. I've talked to kids who have no idea of what their waist size is because they wear pants that are oversized. I still have problems wearing jeans with a considerable low-rise. It's just too uncomfortable and too exposing, both front and back.

I'm hoping that with a pair of custom-made jeans, I can settle with a pair that will stay with me for at least the next five years. I don't know if that is possible but I'm hoping for a design and fit that will ride out whatever trend is handed out.

Children of the Corn












All Americans have eating disorders. I know very few Americans who have any idea of what is a healthy and balanced meal. All Americans are addicted to sugar and salt and the taste and texture of processed food. It's what we are familiar with, it's what we have been fed as soon as someone was able to put a spoon into our mouths.

It is a huge ordeal to find food that does not have some sort of refined sweetener in it. In fact, most foods contain five or six sweeteners in them, the most common is high-fructose corn syrup. There's a very interesting reason behind this. Check out this article. //http://www.usc.edu/org/InsightBusiness/articles/print/article1.htm

Consumption of food in this country is generally viewed either as an entertainment or an inconvenience. The only time we as Americans celebrate in the act of sharing a meal is during a holiday. Then we just gorge ourselves and the pleasures of eating are lost in the excess.

A few years ago, I wanted to become a nutritionist. I figured I could fight the system from within. I returned to school and less than four weeks into the program I realized that there is absolutely no way to beat the system. That healthy food and a healthy culture are really beyond our grasp as a country. Corporations and their promises of effortless results and rewards, no matter how far-fetched, will ALWAYS win over taking responsibility for your health and your life.

Two things struck me this weekend regarding food. I was at a vegeterian restaurant with my husband and there was a sign on the wall saying that healthy food was "the food of the future". It occured to me that although these people who frequent this place might have a better sense and practice of health, I highly doubted that many of them have or will have the drive to make this the food of the future. That would require us to not only eat healthy but also take the extra step to make this into more than a fad. This requires things like voting with your voice and your dollar.

How many of us belong to CSAs (food shares from local farms) or even frequent farmer's markets? How many of us are active in voicing dissent for food politics or farmland subsidies or protest food marketing in our schools? Until this happens, we will continue to head towards a future where food is less and less whole. Especially, and this is the second thing that struck me as I watched my family indulge my two year-old nephew with slice after slice of sheet cake, when we actively taught poor habits and ignorance from the very beginning.

A good site to check out for food politics is Michelle Simon's Center for Informed Food Choices. http://www.informedeating.org

Happy Birthday Dad!

Yesterday, Chuck Wall turned 60. My Dad is a very unassuming man but actually really complex if you take the time and pay attention to him. He has the strangest combination of favorite things. Here's a few- Hot rods, funnycar racing, basketball, the Beach Boys, Doo-wop, The Muppet Show, WWII, Sci-fi, VS catalogues, really bad Martin Lawrence movies, Vienna Fingers, old, stale Peeps, and the Blue Man Group.

My Dad tried to get us kids to enjoy his favorite pasttimes. I played on the Our Lady of Grace basketball team for two years with him as my coach. Our team was pretty good. However, I really sucked. I hate any sport that involves balls. I think I made two baskets the entire time I was on the team. One was by accident. I did get my love of all things mechanical from him, my lifelong interest in WWII and Sci-fi. And this year I am hoping to work on a project with him restoring a vintage motorcycle we have stored in a shed.

My father loves restoring old cars. He used to race them when he was younger. He finally got his dream job when he started working for a mechanic eight years ago. It's what he has wanted to do his entire life.

He's a much different man now than when I was younger. He and I went head-to-head on a daily basis and to be honest I really couldn't stand him until I was in my twenties. I'm thankful for the chance to be able to get to know him as an adult. As I get older, so much of his behavior that was completely baffling and hurtful, is finally beginning to make sense.

This man knows the meaning of balance.





















George Ohsawa is (or was) the most yang man ever! I think that Wilhem Dafoe might be his physical sucessor. Ohsawa is the father of modern macrobiotics, having brought it to the western world when he moved to Paris in 1922.

Ohsawa dedicated his life to macrobiotics, teaching, writing, opening schools, etc. The health food movement owes it's existence to Macrobiotics. The first health food stores in the US were started by students of Ohsawa.

The most fascinating thing about Ohsawa (he was a freakshow from all reports) is that he constantly learned and practiced the art of balance all the time. Often he would experiment on himself to see what would happen if he fell out of balance and what it would take to restore himself. He gave and then cured himself of Tropical Ulcers just to prove to Albert Schweitzer that Macrobiotics worked! His eventually died of a heart attack after one such experiment.

I practiced a healing version of Macrobiotics for two years and wound up looking like the Crypt Keeper. It was the thinnest I have ever been in my life and I was so ridiculously yang that it took me another two years just to relax!

Balance is a lifelong pursuit. Sometimes I am very close to achieving it, often I am not. I don't see it as a failure, I see it as simply that's how the process works.

I'm so tired....



This week has been a ridiculous act of balance for me. Normally, I like to have multiple things going on. It keeps me entertained, engaged, and out of trouble. However, this week instead of my normal routine I feel like I'm trying to juggle three bowling balls with a chainsaw and a burning torch thrown in to keep things "lively".

So, I'm exhausted and left trying to figure out once again how to strike a balance in my life. Really, that's all I think we can ever hope for, finding balance. It's delusional to think that we can do what we want, whenever and however we want to. One's life is never 100% their own and I think the sooner people come to accept and be ok with that, the sooner you can find what works for you and what doesn't.

I'm too fried to give it much more thought than this.

August equals the Grange Fair.











I have been going to the Bucks County Grange Fair for as long as I can remember with the exception of ages 14 to 17 when the allure of livestock, crafts, crappy rides, and tractor pulls wasn't great enough to compete with whatever I was doing at that time.

I love the timelessness of county fairs. It's like an event that is caught in a timewarp and is resurrected every year. You can go to any county fair in this country and it will be the same exhibitions of homemade jam, tacky crafts and, of course, tents reeking of livestock. The concession stand will always sell lemonade, some kind of hot dog or sausage, and funnel cake.

It's funny because even though I grew up in a rural area and my house was in between two very large farms, my parents were not farmers. In fact, you couldn't find two people who were less suited for that kind of life. My dad grew up in Northeast Philly, for christ's sake!

It's a weird love affair I have with farming and rural life. Large, open spaces with very little contact of neighbors is what I grew up with and what ultimately feels right to me but I only have the tiniest of firsthand experience when it comes to farming. Although, I love to romanticize it, it's an experience and lifestyle that I think were I to actually live it, it would quickly bring me to my senses. One day, I will have my rural home with a garden that feeds me and my family but until then I have the Grange Fair.