I'm A Believer!

I never did get around to writing my toast for No and KT's wedding during that week in Mexico. I kept thinking I would and then suddenly it was the wedding day and then it was the reception, and then it was dinner, and I didn't even have a paper napkin to write on. Now that I temporarily have the DVD, I took the time to transcribe my toast. I wanted to share it.


I had given it a lot of thought so I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to say. This being No and KT's wedding, where pretty much everything was ad libbed, my little speech came out pretty well. If I had written it down ahead of time, it probably would have come out more smoothly, and I was afraid that without a script I would cry and/or babble, and I did neither.

Samatakah


I'm a big believer in love...

(cries of Yeah! and Woo!)


The first thing is, being an older sister - and those of us are are the older sister, we have a perspective on our younger sibling that might be a little bit less than the most generous.

(laughter)


One of the things that KT has given me is to see No as a man, to see No as a person who is willing and able to take on responsibility and love. And what I would say to everyone here who's loved KT longer than I have - longer than we [meaning Mom and myself] have - is that No will take care of KT. She can take care of herself, but what KT gives No is someone to take care of. No, the most loyal friend, is going to do that always.

Here's to love! Always, always!

**Photos by Michelle Turner.

No Big Deal

Last night around 830 Zirpu and I were coming back from Kaiser and the second session of the diabetes class. We were having an animated discussion about the tree pruning and removal that we are planning - he is planning, which is why it was animated, because I wasn't clear on for much work Zirpu was getting the estimate. Both of us had been extremely annoyed by one of the people in the class, which was adding to the "animation" of our conversation.


Anyway, I was driving a little too fast when we turned off the highway and I didn't feel like I was paying close enough attention. People tend to be a little careless about red lights (and about getting out of the way of emergency vehicles) in Hayward, and I ran a yellow light. We were approaching another light and when I saw it was turning yellow I decided I would stop for it, even though it would be a rather sudden stop.


Did you know that I've had to take two defensive driving courses for jobs I've held in the past? I saw that there was a car waiting to turn right from a gas station, but we were in the left-hand lane. I looked out the rearview mirror to see that there were no cars behind us, and I slammed on the brakes and we stopped. Right afterwards, we got bumped.


I was severely startled. Mind you, the last time I was bumped by another car it was when I got t-boned on the highway and she hit me going probably at least 50mph. My first thought was that we had to get out of the road and was momentarily confused about whether to leave the car in "drive" and move it, or just put it in park and turn on the blinkers.


I asked Zirpu to hop out and talk to the guy. I needed a minute to catch my breath and pull myself together. A minute was about all it took for Zirpu and the other driver to determine that our bumper was slightly scratched on the right corner and he'd lost a left headlight, and neither were worth exchanging information over. Zirpu got back in the car and advised me that "sometimes it's better just to go through the light."


I was furious.


I took a walk when we got home. I could feel that my lower back was cramping up and my left hip was hurting. I figured that the hip was a psychosomatic reaction, and that walking was probably the right thing to do, plus I had some adrenalin that needed expressing. For the first two years after the big wreck my big fear was that I would be in another car accident before I was recovered from that one. One of the reasons I keep doing weight training and in particular exercises for my back and hips is that I think I was in pretty good health when I was in that wreck and wasn't hurt nearly as badly as I could have been. When I wasn't in the best possible health, when I was still recovering, being re-injured was a huge concern for me. I want to be in the best possible health should something like that happen again.



It was no big deal. But it seemed like my body thought it was.

I realized that I have struck the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" from my speech.

"No one joins a cult. No one joins something they think is going to hurt them. You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like."

- Deborah Layton Blakeley, who escaped Jonestown in June 1978



I watched "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" the other day and it's really given me the heebie-jeebies, almost making me physically sick at times. I remember standing outside Saint Mary's Cathedral during George Moscone's funeral, but I remember nothing about Jonestown, which happened the same year. I think this is because at ten years old I didn't read newspapers or watch the news - and anyway I'm fairly certain that had I been a kid who watched the news my mother would have kept me from seeing the pictures from Jonestown.


Things I Didn't Know:

I didn't know that the Jonestowners knew what was in the Kool-Aid; I have always thought that most of them were tricked into drinking it. I didn't know that one person had questioned the plan for "revolutionary suicide." I didn't know that as many as eighty of the thousand people in Jonestown survived, most of them because they were not there that day. I thought only a few had lived through it by hiding under bunks or in the fields, like Jews in Nazi-occupied countries. I didn't know that elderly people went to Guyana because I didn't know that Peoples Temple had a lot of middle-aged and elderly members. I thought it was full of a bunch of young people from SF or new to SF, a city famous for seekers, who were sucked into Jones' church because they were looking for answers to their own questions and to social problems and he seemed to have answers for both.


I'm sure everyone made what seemed like (to them) rational decisions all along. It sounds like, though, that people's ability to think for themselves was usurped, through lack of sleep and through total involvement in Peoples Temple and Jim Jones' charisma. How do you know when you've allowed someone else to do all your thinking for you? If you can't think for yourself, how do you question it, especially if you are totally isolated by fear while surrounded by others who are equally isolated? How do you know when the leader is going crazy, when there's no one there to tell you so?


Every time the subject of Jonestown comes up my mother says that the butcher at Petrini's from whom she used to buy meat lost his daughter in Jonestown. When I was talking to her the other day about this documentary I'd just seen and about the Moscone/Milk murders, she said in a very sad voice still full of helplessness, "Jonestown was the last of the murders. That was a terrible, terrible time. A terrible time."

Published again!

The Hayward Daily Review has published me again! About three weeks ago they asked for people to submit recipes for macaroni and cheese and I submitted mine. Well, I should put "mine" in quotations because it really belongs to the Moosewood Restaurant, I just don't bother with the topping and I put in more cheese than their recipe calls for.


I sent in my recipe because I knew it was likely to get published with its probably lower amounts of calories, fat, sodium, and cholesterol, and because regular mac-n-cheese, good as it is, is just so darn bad for you. Indeed, compared to the other recipes submitted it does have lower numbers, though I wouldn't turn up my nose if offered any of them. I think they all sound good, even the Velveeta one, because there are two places for Velveeta and they are mac-n-cheese and Ro-Tel dip. I wanted a version that would give people an option and who knows, maybe even introduce some folks to Westernized ways to use tofu.


I'm particularly proud of "Lest you mac-a-holics think the tofu version isn't worth trying, let it be said it was the very favorite of more than one taster." My brother, himself a fantastic mac-n-cheese maker, and his wife (hee, hee, so fun to write that!) also really like it.


I told a friend that the Review had contacted me saying they planned to publish my recipe and she said it means that I can now never compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. I think it means that I'm more of a housewife than I think I am. Never mind the fact that I am a poor baker with few specialties, I looked up the rules: Because I haven't been paid for my "food writing" I could still compete if I wanted to enter.


Now I'm off to the newspaper office to get a couple more copies of today's food section.

The Dragon Lady

I read in my college alumni magazine that one of my professors is retiring this year. I was intimidated by her from the beginning because she had questioned my ability, as a mere first-term sophomore, to keep up with a 300-level history course. She was stern in class and demanding on papers, which we had to write every week. I was majoring in English so I wrote pretty well but even so I received back papers bleeding corrections and suggestions all over them. I said"groovy" in a discussion once and she let me know that word was too casual for an academic setting.


I respected her, but she scared me, so I called her The Dragon Lady.


One afternoon, perhaps as class was starting (because I can't imagine the context otherwise), she walked from the window side of the room to the middle and announced, "On my fiftieth birthday, I turned to my husband and said, 'I thought growing up would be easier than this, and I thought I'd be done with it by now."


As I remember it we all looked at her, mouths agape. Not only was everyone intimidated by her, but we were all under 22 years old. At the time I was thinking it was a funny thing to say to a bunch of people half or less of her age.


Now I know that it's the most valuable thing I learned all semester. I tell stories about my professors, but The Dragon Lady is the only one I quote word-for-word.

Taking a risk

My dental office is on Mission Street. Even once I started working in the east bay I stayed with them, because although the dentists (and the owners) have changed several times, it's the only office I've ever been in where I haven't had to explain my teeth x-rays to the hygienists. The dentists have all been great too. I was just there for a cleaning (thank you Sonicare!) so the appointment didn't last long, but I was pretty hungry by the time I got out of there since it's my habit to not eat before visiting the dentist.


I was walking up Mission to the BART station and thinking about breakfast. I was considering a coffee-and-pastry type breakfast when I looked up and saw a restaurant window filled with Latino men in baseball caps and jackets. I can't remember the name of the restaurant but I went right over: !Huevos Rancheros! I love huevos rancheros and I've never had them in Mexico or even in Texas. I think part of the appeal is that I love to eat with my fingers and I love eating things wrapped in tortillas with beans. I sat at a little table and ordered HRs, over medium, and decaf coffee.


Now, I knew that ordering decaf was a risk, but I was on my way to work and I needed to be able to concentrate. It wasn't even 10am so I thought it was a strong possibility that the pot on the coffeemaker had been cooking there for at least an hour if not since the place had opened. I've had my coffee snob days and am over it - besides, I like milk in my coffee.


The waitress returned shortly with a small plate on which were sitting a coffee cup, a few sugar packets, several little plastic cup things of half-and-half (what are those called, anyway? They look like really big white thimbles) and a little teapot. I thought something along the lines of "How classy, they brought me my own little coffeepot."


As is my wont (ha ha, I've always wanted to write that) I poured the milk into the cup first. I then picked up the little silver coffeepot and poured steaming-hot water into the milk.


One of the sugar packets was actually a packet of Sanka.

Between bad and bad...

Perhaps you've heard that there's a big stink over Don Imus calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "some nappy-headed hos" and his apology for doing so. MSNBC, which carries the show, can't get far away enough too quickly - though so far no one at his home station, WFAN, or his distributor, Westwood One, is saying anything about canning him.


I have never listened to him as my taste in talk radio runs to NPR, PRI, and the BBC on KQED Radio. It should be said also that I do not follow college or professional basketball.

On Tuesday morning, when Rutgers' [Women] Scarlet Knights and the Tennessee Lady Volunteers would be playing in the NCAA championship game that night, Imus and his producer Bernard McGuirk, who seems to be some kind of idiot in his own right, were discussing it when:

Imus: "That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos ..."

McGuirk: "Some hardcore ho's."

Imus: "That's some nappy-headed ho's there, I'm going to tell you that."

Since then Imus has been falling all over himself to apologize for the racist remark and, I understand, will be appearing on Al Sharpton's radio program tomorrow (4/9) despite the fact that Sharpton is clear he wants Imus fired.


What I don't hear anyone pointing out is that McGuirk's remark was disrespectful toward women, in particular these women, by calling them "ho's" in the first place. It's all about Imus and "nappy-headed" and that Imus should get fired, with only one story pointing out that there were sexist remarks made as well as racist ones. Nothing I've seen says anything about McGuirk at all, except in excerpts like the one I've posted above.


I'm definitely not saying that there shouldn't be consequences for racist remarks. I just don't get why there's not even half the stink about the sexist remark by the sidekick.


Oh, wait, those last five words are probably why. . .



Update: Someone else makes the point in the SF Chronicle on 4/10.

Another update: Imus lost his job on 4/12 because advertisers were leaving in droves. Because everyone else and her brother commented on the Imus remarks (and eventually others were pointing out the sexist remarks as well) I suppose I sound like "just one more voice" that was ranting. I had no idea it would receive so much attention - and, of course, neither did Imus or NBC...

Too bad Ann Coulter doesn't have a radio program from which she could get canned.