Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

The Location of my Three Disasters

It has been hard to bear the run-up to Hurricane Irene. Full-on Irene, Irene, Irene. Yes, Irene, all week we’ve been entirely monogamous with you. Joblessness, Libya and Palestine have been wiped off the screen. We hardly had to listen to those Repuglicans all week, except for the ones who insisted that there shouldn’t be any federal help during natural disasters.

The region’s retail outlets have been stripped of flashlights, candles, and food that can be consumed without cooking. Our bathtubs are now filled with cold stale water to use to flush our toilets, just in case, as per directions from TV and government experts. We have looked in on our vulnerable neighbors and we have dragged every last piece of crap off the balcony and into the crowded living room so no items will be flung too far or wide by this hurricane – which all the meteorologists promise will be a “monster.”

Why has this particular weather occurrence so warranted the somber attentions of the country’s officials, including the President? It certainly looks good on one’s resume not to have screwed up a disaster. Let’s not forget that a lot of politicians (but not enough) and other officials lost their jobs after the catastrophe called Katrina. So this wave of politicians has been busy out-doing each other in evacuations and preparations and exhortations. What a cascade of press conferences they’ve staged with mayors and governors in the middle surrounded by a gaggle of pale males – Coast Guard officers, generals in the National Guard, meteorologists, traffic officials and such.

My copious lawn furniture and usual apartment furniture are joined by we three humans - my California visitor Sandy Oppenheimer, the brilliant collage portrait painter who did the cover of my Sarah Palin book; Barry Hock, communications maven, editor of my Palin book and photographer; and me. Our biggest asset is my incomparable 7th floor balcony, now nude and very wet, overlooking a wide swath of trees. The tops of trees from up here are so much stormier and spectacular than they appear on the ground in windy situations. They make a noise of intense rustling that compliments that whistle of the wind. The tops of the trees sway and bend and carry on like a speed-freak diva with a hand fan on a scorching day.

It is from the balcony that I spy the tree sprawled across the road to the pond in the town where I moved a couple of years ago – the first middle-class setting I’ve ever rented in. The town had earlier sent an email with every conceivable emergency resource, including a number to report fallen trees. A guy answers right away, takes the details, and within a half hour three large vehicles are hoisting the tree trunk up into a big truck for removal. I try to imagine when it would’ve been taken care of in most other neighborhoods I’ve lived in.

Although we spend a good deal of time slipping out to the balcony to watch the torrential vertical rainfalls or the horizontal bursts of squall, but mostly to watch the trees dance and twist, we still get a bit of cabin fever by the afternoon and decide to brave the local bike path. We bundle up in crazy combinations – not really wanting to get dressed after so much lounging but not wanting to be exposed. So no bras, but Sandy insists on large scarves to wind around necks and ears. The three of us set out.

Down on ground level, it is warm, and there is barely any wind, compared to the 7th floor, and no rain. We are over-layered and giddy, all at once. It is a photo op and we make fools of ourselves pretending to hang onto trees and posts as the mild breeze blows us horizontal near the pond. We pose on the bike path with a few fallen branches and leaves as if it were the ruins of an empire (below).

My local area has suffered only mild damage and discomfort. By the next day we will realize, mainly via YouTube, how much horrifying flooding there was in NJ and Vermont, including Brattleboro where I’ve visited often since 1968. And then there are the millions of people without electricity – not a small matter. We now know dozens have died and many more have lost their homes and businesses. It’s a matter of location, location, location. We escaped.

A friend from London calls to find out if, as it seems from Europe, there has been more hype than hurricane. We talk about the lack of infrastructure commitment in this country, the vulnerable electrical system that is so easily and frequently disrupted. We mourn the millions of unemployed people who, with a governmental jobs program, might be doing something about the poor flood controls, the weak bridges and the wonky electrical wires.

For me it has been a week of triple disasters. First there was the earthquake on the East Coast that I felt quite intensely. In fact, I was sitting at my desk writing when suddenly my desk chair shot backwards away from the keyboard. I was stunned. I pulled myself back up to the desk, but the floor was undulating. I thought I was having a dizzy spell, the vapors. When the scarves I keep hung on the back of the closet door started flying every which way, I realized that it was an earthquake. I tried to stand up but the building was swaying from one side to the other. I mean seriously swaying. I thought the top floors would crack off. I left the flat to run down the backstairs, but quickly returned for my cell phone. I left again but came back up for my bag with all my ID. By the time I went one story down, my neighbor underneath was out in the hall and the swaying and waving had stopped. The 15-second earthquake was done. I called the office on the ground floor of the building. They had felt nothing.

A couple of days later the office called me. They asked me if I would remain in my apartment for a little while. I finally peeled it out of them that the guy across the hall – a vulnerable guy in his 50s  who was always desperate to chatter – he was dead. Found after a couple of days face-down in his bedroom, probably as the result of a heart-attack.

So if you take the neighbor, the earthquake and the hurricane, that gives me three experiences that were more intense because of my living where I am living – up high. Good thing I love “intense.”

Thanks to Barry Hock for the hurricane photos.

Newport Mansions: Squinting at The Gilded Age

Entering Newport, I’m surprised by how old and beautiful it is. Founded in 1639, the town is full of tourists, twee shops and handsome 18th century houses. Down many side roads are views of the yacht-laden harbor and always-nearby shore. There are renowned attractions we won’t get to – from the popular Cliff Walk to the peculiar collection of 800+ living sculptures in the Victorian Green Animals Topiary Garden.

No, we’re keeping our eye on the prize. We stop at the Preservation Society – the owners and care-takers of 11 ornate mansions that the descendants of the Gilded Age residents can no longer afford to maintain. And no wonder. These extravaganzas, now deemed National Historical Landmarks, were constructed in an age without income tax, so the Robber Barons had nothing to do with their looted millions but compete with each other by building their imitation European follies on Bellevue Avenue. Mark Twain coined the phrases “conspicuous consumption” and the “Gilded Age” (the interiors are all drenched in gold) with a sneer. My companion observes:

“The income tax of 1913 stopped their avarice and it’s taken them less than 100 years to get it all back.”

The personable woman at the Preservation Society’s desk, Lila, has my press pack all ready. Through the day I am to meet a stream of well-coiffed, well-dressed white women who have chosen Newport as their retirement destination because it is small enough to walk and there are lots of activities. Lila sends us to the crown jewel The Breakers first, and there we receive the first of the audio tours that are included with the rather expensive ticket of $24.50 (each). I am to find these tours uniformly insipid, lacking much inside gossip, social critique or the substantive analysis one often gets at good museum exhibits. I am to be disappointed too, that none of the three houses we visit (too many – stick to two per day is my advice) includes a single staff bedroom on their tour.

THE BREAKERS
The Breakers was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, one of the richest of a total of 25 NYC millionaires. He was the grandson of Cornelius, son of William, and inheritor of railroads. The Breakers combined opulence with the latest technological advances, like central heating and lots of bathrooms. It has 70 rooms including 33 on the top floors for the help, 750 doorknobs, an unheard-of 20 bathrooms, and it cost $12 million ($310 million today, according to Wikipedia) to build. It required 20 servants to keep it going. In fact, 2,000 servants worked the big houses of Newport each summer, many of them immigrants. Some things never change.

For just a little contrast, I found some annual salary figures for working class people in City Journal:

“To understand what a million dollars was in 1892, consider that a factory worker earned about $446 a year, a railroader $563, and a miner $393. Clerks took home about $885 annually, schoolteachers a paltry $270. A family could live in middle-class comfort with servants on $2,000 a year.”

Between the European marble, the rare woods, the Tiffany wall sconces and the amazing massive crystal chandeliers, a visitor is hard-pressed to take in the details of the different rooms, not the least the 500 year old French stone fireplace in the library, the walls of which are made of gilded wood that looks like aged leather book covers. Now why didn’t I think of that for my “library” – i.e., my twin Ikea pine bookcases.

And then there is the bathtub, carved from a single block of marble and so thick that it had to be filled up several times in a row in order to warm the stone. It also has four taps – two each for fresh and salt water, thought to be a healthy bath medium.

When you’ve got 70 rooms, you break down activities so that each (music, reading, eating breakfast, eating dinner, etc) has a room of its own. The servants too were specialists. Footmen were on their feet all day for their job was to deliver messages. To look impressive, they were required to be over 6 feet tall. Male servants like butlers and footmen were visible, a sign of the wealth of the household.

Chambermaids were generally invisible, traveling along the back corridors and staircases and slipping into rooms by hidden doors. They spent their days dusting, plumping up pillows, changing bed sheets twice a day and switching towels after every use.

MARBLE HOUSE
It is time to move to our next destination, a perfect cube named the Marble House and famous as the home of Alva Vanderbilt, a suffragette. In fact it was the first of the over-the-top “cottages” (i.e. predates The Breakers et al) and changed the lazy summer resting spot of the rich into a hyper-competitive struggle between old and new money. The old money cottages were wooden structures, impressive on their own but nothing like these new palaces. The new money people raised the bar so high that those still holding their noses, like the Astors, were forced to socialize with such riff-raff as the  Vanderbilts. This house started it all. Marble House cost $11 million ($260 million in 2009 dollars says Wikipedia), much of which went for the marble. Alva oversaw its construction on the understanding that her husband would give it to her outright, which he did on her 39th birthday.

The Grand Salon is covered entirely in 22 karat gold, a la Versailles. Every doorknob is a unique dolphin design. The art gallery’s light is dimmed by the astounding stained glass windows liberated from a European church. The house is a mix of French rococo style (library), medieval French doors (art chamber) and fluffy fantasy ruffles for her own princess-like bedroom.

Alva felt herself excluded from the rights and privileges of the wealthy because of her gender and she had raged against such restrictions since childhood. She was a tomboy – riding bareback, punching boys and considering herself, she said, “a law unto myself.” A couple of years after Marble House was completed and turned over to her, she got fed up with her husband William’s philandering. She decided to divorce him, which was considered scandalous. William and everyone in their circle pressured her to just effect a separation, but she insisted on a complete break. “I longed to be a pioneer in my class,” she said.

She further shocked her peers by marrying her ex-husband’s buddy Oliver Belmont shortly after her divorce kicked in, moving a couple of doors down the road to live with him until his death in 1908. She kept Marble House simmering – it was known as her very expensive extra closet, but after being widowed she moved back and began using Marble House as a center for suffragette meetings, supposedly open to women of all classes. But she charged $1 for women to sit on the grass listening to speeches and $5 for a tour of the house (excepting her own bedroom) – a sum that surely was beyond the reach of shop girls and servants. One wonders what her own laundresses and housemaids thought about the extra work these movement gatherings caused. She was certainly a problem for progressive suffragettes who needed Alva’s wallet but could have done without her extravagance and arrogance. And racism

Wikipedia notes:
“By this time, organized suffrage activity was centered on educated, middle-class white women, who were often reluctant to accept immigrants, blacks, and the working class into their ranks. Belmont's Political Equality League only partially broke with this tradition. She established its first "suffrage settlement house" in Harlem, and she included black women and immigrants in weekend retreats at Beacon Towers, her Châteauesque style castle in Sands Point, New York. However, she also contributed to the Southern Woman Suffrage Conference, which refused to admit blacks.”

The relationship between Alva and her adored daughter Consuela gives some insight into Alva’s deep conflicts. She decided very early to marry Consuela off to a European aristocrat, even decorating her daughter’s Marble House room like a muted English castle chamber. Playing on Consuela’s obedience but against the younger woman’s better judgment, the wedding to Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough took place the same year of the divorce. In fact, it was a huge party for the visiting royal suitor that manipulated the snobby old-money Astor family to finally see Alva socially. Luckily, the marriage was later annulled by joint agreement and Consuelo married a second time for love, finding for herself real meaning in social work.

I’m curious: Where do Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt fit into the family tree?

THE ELMS
We concluded our visits with a spin around The Elms, built in 1901 for the Pennsylvania coal baron Edward Julius Berwind – thus of particular interest to a Pittsburgh girl like myself. A copy of a French château, it cost $1.2 million (or $22 million today) and was meant both as an art gallery for Berwind’s growing collection and a place to entertain befitting the captain of an industry that was then the number one producer in the world. Being one of the most powerful men of America meant that he had buddies like Teddy Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Berwind was big on new technologies and The Elms the first of the houses to be fully electrified.

When Berwind’s wife, Sarah, died some 20 years later, he moved in his sister Julia as hostess. After all, he was busy making millions and only visited The Elms on occasional weekends till his death in 1936, so Julia happily held down the fort until her death in 1961, probably the last of the old school Gilded Agers. For example, she hosted a bridge game each afternoon, but if she was lacking a player, she would draft in her butler to make up the fourth. He, however, would have to stand throughout the game. Julia conducted her social events according to the most traditional rules of etiquette, such as the dictate in one of her reference books, “Do not use a classical saying in front of a lady without apologizing or explaining.”

When guide books (and the audio tours) tout Newport as a woman’s town where women ruled, the evidence is an odd assortment of points, focusing on their hosting duties while their husbands stayed back in NY to do business. The steps of the grand staircase at The Breakers, for instance, were shortened by two inches so that women descending into the Ballroom appeared to be gliding. Women were the social definers, delineating with their visits which households belonged to which lofty social spheres. But they had time for little else as they changed clothes at least a half dozen times per day, with separate outfits for breakfast, day dress, luncheon, an outing, dinner and evening activity.

The grounds of The Elms include some the most beautiful gardens in town, all very 18th century French, but despite the name, no elms are to be found, having succumbed to disease. For compensation there are the most glorious, enormous weeping beech trees, like giant tents dotting the lawns.

As we finish our tour with a stroll through these grounds, I am reminded of perhaps the most telling, if enraging, comment on the audio tour. The melodious voice, without even a hint of irony, tells tourists from around the country and the world that Edward Berwind successfully guided his business through three cataclysmic events: World War I, the Unions, and the Great Depression.

Nuff said.

Thanks to Barry Hock for all the outside photos of buildings and grounds.

Film Review - Gloria: In Her Own Words

HBO has done a fabulous one-hour documentary about Gloria Steinem called “Gloria: In Her Own Words,” revolving around a recent interview with her. All the best things I remember about her from the earliest days are highlighted , not the least her constant insistence on having a speaking partner – inevitably a black feminist – who also was to be hired before she accepted a gig. Steinem grasped the interplay of gender and race and understood, too, how class changed the experience of women. This was not always true of her colleagues at Ms. Magazine – whom I met in Boston before the first issue was published when they were trying to gain support. But Steinem had her own set of admirable principles. She also had a great facility of the tongue, combined with courage, which she began to exercise when she was unable to get her journalism about the budding women's movement published.

Her relationship with her beloved friend Bella Abzug is showcased in the context of their amazing perseverance in feminism. Flo Kennedy, too, was always a large part of her life. Steinem’s exhilaration at being part of a movement is palpable and her utter commitment is obvious.

A documentary about her is, in many ways, a documentary about American feminism since the late 60s. I found myself in the film – not literally but very personally, for it was in some ways also the story of my own life. I was going through parallel thoughts and changes in Boston as she came of ideological age in NY.

What I forgot was the degree of painful attack and misogynist insult that she suffered over and over and over. Each time, she said in one of the many interviews that are excerpted in the film, she felt that she never wanted to go out of the house again. Each time, Bella helped her remember why they were fighting the good fight.

Today, when the war on women is a major component of the right –wing agenda and when we all feel that we are living in perilous, dreadful times, this film is inspirational. It is just a shame to see that we are fighting the same battles over and over.

It is "On Demand" on HBO already, so if like me you don't have HBO, find a friend who does.  Here’s a 90 second piece of it that I found on YouTube:

 

The Impact of the London Riots on Vulnerable People

I have a dear London friend who has long been a health service professional. She sent me this message about how she suspects the riots impacted on people receiving care – an aspect of the tumultuous recent past in England that I didn’t see anyone else writing about. It took a few days to get her permission to use this and considering the draconian response of the government – and she works for the government health service – I’m going to leave her name out of it. I thought you'd be interested in her take on things (she's from Hackney, where troubles were intense.)

There is a sense of relief that the riots are over.  It made me feel sick to see my beloved Hackney being damaged and buildings destroyed.  The way the violence spread so far across London and to other cities was frightening.  I was aware of close friends who were just around the corner from the riots in Hackney, who could so easily have been caught up in it.  Thankfully everyone we knew was okay.  It also made me think of my old work place just up the road, St Joseph's hospice.  Lots of people have mentioned the small businesses devastated by the riots.  I also thought about how many seriously ill patients and vulnerable people didn't get the care they needed at home because of the riots, district nurses and carers not able to get to people who can hardly survive without basic care at home.  People terrified in their homes, especially on the Pembury estate, the epicentre of the action in Hackney. 

I feel sure, as do many people I've spoken to, that gangs were predominantly behind the looting and violence, with lots of other very naive and disenchanted young people joining in for a cheap thrill, to be part of something, not wanting to miss out on the action, and to get their hands on some stolen goods.  Some who didn't care about the consequences, many of whom just didn't think.  Hearing politicians at the time suggesting that parents needed to find out where their children were and call them home seemed totally unrealistic, just an indication of how out of touch they were with many young people.  The results of this will be enduring.  A part of Hackney which had been seen as improving, regenerated - it's become popular with young trendies, lots of cool coffee shops, lots of artists.  But isn't part of Hackney's appeal always it's edge, isn't that part of why it's seen as cool, unfortunately this has shown the harsh reality behind that image.  Hackney will bounce back eventually, but it will take a long time.

Don't Poke Me & Other Facebook Etiquette Suggestions

This is my periodic attempt to keep some control over one of the places where I live: my Facebook wall. I’d be very interested in any additions, corrections or reactions.

If you know me, you know that traditional etiquette is not my strong card; I pride myself on privileging ethics over etiquette, but there is enough crap pouring unwanted into our lives (cuts to services; occupations; wars; sickness; stolen futures – and I don’t mean those investment thingies whatever they are), without the annoyances we can avoid on FB.

Friending Strangers
If you are sending a friend request to someone you don’t know and have never really communicated with, add a little message introducing yourself and saying in a few words why on earth you are approaching them. Perhaps, “I love your comments on the wall of our joint friend So&So.” Or, “I’ve read your piece on Alternet and I’d like to discuss it.” Or, “I’m trying to expand my list of friends so that I don’t look so pathetic, so I’m pretty randomly trying to friend anyone I think is more popular than me so that I can friend all their friends.”

Similarly, if you’re suggesting that two of your friends should be friends with each other, do tell them why.


Respect the Boundaries of Others
If someone agrees to be your FB friend, do not instantly sign them up for some “closed group” that you’re in, without consulting them and asking for their permission.

Don’t “tag” friends in photos unless you know that they’ll be happy to have themselves identified in that particular picture. I hate when people post pics of me that I haven’t seen before, because I am very careful about the images I scatter in digital-ville and I like to control them. Just ask first.

Don’t put other peoples’ business out there for the world to see without their permission. I don’t want a real-life friend posting publicly, “So what did the Dr say about that big pus-filled swelling on your earlobe?” Or “Did you ever get those bounced checks straightened out with your bank?” Or even worse, “When are you coming back from New Orleans?” This last message is also known as an “Out-of Work Burglar Alert.”


Be Generous
If you see an article on someone’s wall that you want to repost, credit them as you would credit a poet you are quoting. People often use: via So&So. To hotlink their name (which is what credit is usually about), type an “@” and then start typing their name. If they are your FB friend, their name will come up below, you click it, and it appears in your status or comment box hyperlinked. Don’t be a leech or a thief of someone else’s work in spotting a good article or video clip.


Control Your Playful Self
If you play games or send virtual fruits (the kind that grow on virtual tress) or otherwise do things for which Facebook has required access to your info and that of your friends, don’t assume anyone else does. I don’t. I have particular uses for Facebook – and those morph from time to time – but they never include playing. I prefer to do that with myself or with a certain friend.


Remember, You Have Other Communication Tools
Don’t inflict what should be private individual messages on all of your FB friends. Instead of tagging Bobby and her him publicly if she wants to go to the Roller Derby with you, just use the FB message facility or that old-fashioned method called email or even that archaic tool called the telephone, and save the rest of us precious seconds of our life reading something irrelevant. Obviously, this does not apply to a general message, such as, “Anybody wanna go to the Roller Derby with me?”


Not Everyone Lives On FB
Do not assume that by posting something on FB, you have directly and definitely communicated with someone. If I am offline for several hours, hundreds of messages build up and I do not get to rewind and see more than a fraction of them before a gazillion other messages come in. This is one problem of having a lot of FB friends, but no smart phone. I don’t want to hear, “What do you mean, why did I stand you up? After all, I posted on FB that I was in a traffic jam.”


Don’t Poke
No one likes a finger in the ribs, virtual or otherwise. No one on Facebook knows what it really means and no one wants to be a pokee.

Vermont August 2011, Left on Pearl

Friday August 5, 2011
There is a dangerous stretch of road, beginning around Athol, passing right through Erving, home to Erving Industries with its bales of paper and mounds of toilet rolls, over the hill to Bernardston. What’s dangerous is that I sometimes cannot keep awake. Even though Route 2 between Athol and Erving is at its most treacherous, I start to nod out. Luckily, the rattle strip has woken me more than once. Then after the turn to the right, I mount and descend the mountain on a highly curvy two-lane road that is a white knuckle experience without taking a snooze only to awaken and find oneself where one should not be, but still lucky enough not to have met up with anyone coming from the other direction. If you get my drift (pardon the pun).

Once up the mountain in Guilford, I stop by to see Verandah (the poet) and we have just minutes together before I must run to the log cabin (on left) to settle my foodstuffs into the fridge and my belongings in the cozy bedroom that is mine for the weekend. Kopkind is having a camp for filmmakers. I’m too late for tonight’s showing, but the filmmaker and his partner have the big bedroom beside me and the filmmaker Susie Rivo, who made the documentary "Left at Pearl” about a feminist action in 1971 that I was involved with, will bed down in the living room from Saturday. This is a log cabin that I have rented more often than any vacation spot in my life, but have never had to share it with anyone other than the person of my choice.

I store the freezer logs from my cooler in the freezer door and stuff the bits and pieces I brought with me from home – salami, a bagel, etc - into one of the little fruit & vegetable drawers in the totally empty fridge. This is the act of a woman, I realize as I write this. A man would use a shelf. Or two. Feel entitled to a main shelf. A man would probably not have packed picnic makings, assuming that someone would feed him.

Everyone else is already gathered on the sumptuous pond-side deck of my friends Susan (the bookmaker) and Gil (antiques guru), sipping cocktails and nibbling appetizers, when I arrive. Dinner is soon laid out – a delicious ham, cukes in a salad and tasty beans – all fresh from the garden that hour, potato salad rich with the day’s garden treats. The neighborhood musicians set up (Susan on bass – a sexy sight indeed; Jeremy on violin and guitar and vocals; and the incomparable Patty Carpenter on keyboards and vocals.

Gilbert has constructed a ring of flame-burning tiki torches that establish a no-fly zone right in the middle of bug season. It is astoundingly effective and when he builds a fire later in the evening in his big iron fire pot, the smoke is yet another deterrent. I sit in shirt-sleeves and do not suffer – an unprecedented experience.

Finally they take a break for dessert: a fluffy banana cream pie from Patty and a still-warm-from-the-over blueberry and blackberry pie Jeremy and Heidi made from their own garden fruit. My taste buds win any potential negotiation with my thighs. I eat and am merry.

No dark is darker than country dark and so I make my way back to the log cabin deep in the woods with more fear than danger – but get there with no real issue. Flashlights rule!

Saturday August 6, 2011
I spend the day between the home of Susan and Gil and The Farm where I have lunch with Verandah. Both places have wireless – an essential disruptor in my effort to write, plus the only way to keep up with Barry’s campaign efforts in Wisconsin where he has gone to help the re-call elections.

Yesterday the local paper had a photo of me from 1971 – me in my black leather motorcycle jacket and my lace up leather boots leaning all, well, lean and butch against a fence. Today they have a feature article entitled “Witness to a great revolutionary moment,” based on an interview I did yesterday by phone.

I join the “campers” – grassroots film makers spending a week in the country with mentors, getting rare support – for a barbeque at the Kopkind Colony (photo below left) and then the guests begin arriving. It is the first time that the annual grassroots session has ended with a women’s film and not all of the organizers know what to expect.

But then the punters start pouring in – many women and some men from near and far. The standing-room-only audience laughs and cries and responds very strongly throughout this wonderful film, “Left on Pearl,” about our takeover and 10-day occupation of a Harvard building in 1971. When it ends, Susie Rivo gets a standing ovation for the film and she and I conduct a Q&A that is warm and fuzzy and sobering (when people ask about all the losses in recent years for women’s rights in this country), including the inevitable question from a man about why men aren’t better represented. Duh. An exclusively women’s action. But surely, he insists, some man must’ve been actively involved, supporting us or behind the scenes. Sigh.

Sunday, August 7, 2011
By 8:15, my bags are in my car and I’m ready for breakfast before heading back to Boston. But breakfast at Kopkind has been rescheduled for 10:00 on account of a highly celebratory late night party that I missed. I’ve had a very interrupted night’s sleep due to rashes and bites and itchiness, especially on my right ankle, so I search out my friends for some sustenance.

I go to Susan and Gil’s for a cup of tea and some toast with homemade fruit jam and run into the women on their way down from their daily joint climb of Belden Hill. The last time I joined them was when Tomer, my strapping young lad, was visiting and he put his hands on my ass and pushed me up the hill.

I show them my red, inflamed, itchy swollen right ankle and people try to decide if it is poison ivy or stinging nettles or several other scary things (tics!) that can happen to you when you trot around the countryside – which I didn’t do, except to get from car to homes across more-or-less mowed grass and one visit to Verandah’s food gardens. Susan puts on some calodryl lotion. Then Verandah has me wash it all with “technu.” We make a stop at Lana’s place for juice, and she lends me a few novels for the summer. On the way down the hill I run into my friend Heidi out in her yard. She cuts some “jewel weed” and shows me how to slice open the stalk and rub the inside sap on it. Soothing. Plus she gives me a stick of “AfterBite” to run on all my many mosquito and other bug bites.

It is always a balm to see these friends of mine – some friendships reaching back to 1968 - and always a treat to be able to promote this inspiring historical documentary “Left on Pearl,” a decade-long labor of love for a small group of devoted women. Today and tomorrow, though, my focus is on the Wisconsin recall elections which, if successful, would be a taste of optimism long missing from my life.

Cousins Island, Maine: Life in a Living Museum

Do you remember my friend Sue who visits me often from London and whose massive 70th birthday fund-raising gala I attended in London this spring? She was actually born and raised in the States, although she’s been living in London for some 50 years. Her parents bought a summer home named Avalon near friends in Maine on Cousins Island in the 1940s and Sue has visited it virtually every summer since. The rambling house, built in 1912, is perched above the sea. Part of its inestimable charm is that when Sue’s folks took over the house, the purchase included all the contents: furniture, kitchen utensils, horsehair beds, porch furniture, clothes – even the family dictionary. From the start, Sue’s parents did not consider these inherited household items precious: they were to be used, and used they have been.

I spent the weekend there with Sue and her London family (ex-husband John, son Dan and his partner Jo, and two grandchildren; Sue’s older son, Tom, is to arrive later) and it’s like being in another world, one that bridges centuries.

So I don’t hesitate to sit down at the no-longer-tune-able Square Grand piano from Vose & Sons, established in 1851 in Boston. The discordant notes are more than compensated for by the piano’s exquisite carvings, the unusual antique shape, and the pile of disintegrating sheet music, nearly a century old, that Sue encourages me to rifle through.

The house is a living museum, where nothing is sacred but many things are irreplaceable. While nothing has been taken away, plenty has been added – electricity, two bathrooms and a wonderful outdoor shower. There are comfortable couches and new mattresses to replace the horsehairs; a sunroom added when Sue and her brothers were kids; and now there is even a wireless Internet connection, although even an addict like me is able to resist in favor of relaxation.

For after all, just outside the door, over the spacious veranda and down the grassy mound is the sea (photo: view from porch). The ocean. The Atlantic. Every day Sue takes her confident, enthusiastic, affable grandchildren – Lois (5) and Henry (3) – down to lovely beaches that are found on the island. They think it is normal to follow Sue into the frigid Atlantic waters – but then again, they are products of Britain and know nothing but cold oceans.

You used to be able to access Cousins Island by ferry only and the old-timers, Sue’s neighbor, a fifth generation resident tells me, were none too happy when Wyman Energy Center established a huge electricity plant at one end of the island, bringing with them the bridge from Yarmouth, Maine, and the dreaded traffic. I’m sure when John Cousins bought the island in 1645 – before which it was known to the Abenaki Indians as Susquesong – he didn’t imagine it would become so crowded with, well, other white people.

It takes a while to adjust to being on a quickie vacation in this heavenly setting. The first night we all dine together and hang out a bit. I go to my room, shutting the fragile paper-thin old pull-down blinds and the curtains to keep the sunrise out of my eyes come the morning, and sleep in utter darkness. I have the oddest nightmare. It is very rare for me to remember dreaming or to recall the dream, but here it is in brief.

I am in a hotel and become enamored of a little girl who is being mistreated (not abused) by her father and another man, or so it seems to me. I get to know her and am increasingly disturbed by her situation. I snatch her and take her to my room, but she is filthy. I put her in a big pan in the sink and run some water. When there is a pounding on the door, I leave her, close the bathroom door and play innocent with the hotel detectives. When I shut the room door behind them a few minutes later and race back to the bathroom, the little girl is very dead. Her clothes have disappeared and she is trussed up like a skinned and headless chicken. I don’t know what to do. Various impossible plans flash through my mind. She is repulsive. I can’t hold her – she’s rather slimy. I don’t want to go to the police in case they do me for kidnap and murder.

I leave it to those who feel they are able to make sense of dreams to play with that hideous story, but to me it is all about how life feels now – to so many of us in the country who are struggling to survive in what is a spiraling descent into, if not fascism, something akin to a feudal distribution of wealth and rights. You turn your back for a second, and everything is ruined. Too many people reading this will identify, empathize.

This makes it hard to be on vacation. It is hard to shed the feeling that every email, phone call and, gawd forbid, snail mail is going to be yet another threat to life. I don’t want to receive the results of my medical tests, my investment statement or my job application response. Out here on the island, I have about 36 hours to forget all that and take advantage of a different world, an incomparable view, lovely company and an uncommonly interesting house.

I am myself very lazy, declining invites to the beach or walks to the harbor. Instead I welcome this rare opportunity to read books in a rocking chair set on a seaside porch, a breeze cutting through the 90 degree heat wave. By Saturday afternoon, I am approaching a vacation sensibility, shedding my stress very temporarily, in the rapture of holiday.

We decide to go see the Double-A minor league baseball team the Portland Sea Dogs, where the players are being trained and sorted out for the Boston Red Sox. Unlike major league games, the tickets are affordable and available. We are four seniors ($4 each), two adults ($8) and two children ($4). We sit in general admission seating in the shade, load up on hot dogs and fries and fried fish and sodas, and enjoy what is a really nice stadium. The Sea Dogs are playing the Altoona Curve, who feed the Pittsburgh Pirates (my home town team), so I’m afraid that I’m cheering for the visiting team. Or I would if there were enough of a game to provoke a cheer. Instead, the Sea Dogs seem disinterested and lazy, while the Altoona Curve pull ahead and do only what is necessary to stay there.

It is enormous fun, though, and full of local people. The ads are a hoot – the sound of shattering glass when a foul ball goes out of the park followed by a recording, “Uh oh, better call Portland Glass.” Many of the guys have gloves to catch balls that might make it up to our benches on the third base side of the field, which is reassuring for those of us who prefer the batters hit in another direction, thank you very much. Sue’s neighbor on the bench is happy to explain the finer points of the game to her, although at least once she has to swallow deeply to keep from scalding him after his comment about immigrants.

Saturday night Sue gives me a tour of the 1889 Webster’s Dictionary, almost a cube in shape, covered by disintegrating leather which rubs off on my black cotton pants. We thumb through the pages, onion-skin covering those with illustrations, and it is simply astounding to think that this served Sue and her brothers as their Scrabble dictionary as kids. We didn’t have a dictionary in my house growing up. The information that precedes the actual word listings is copious and the definition of each word is a generous slab of background, examples and synonyms. It so far surpasses any dictionary I have ever actually touched that I feel like a time-traveler.

Sunday morning I find a 1967 paperback of a 1945 novel by Evelyn Waugh I have never read The Loved One. Sue immediately lends it to me and I see that it is dedicated to his friend, the writer Nancy Mitford. Sue gets everyone around the table in the sunroom. We feast on blueberry pancakes and then reluctantly say our goodbyes and set out for the home stretch. We have neither researched nor planned our return itinerary but manage to luck into a woman who recommends a terrific restaurant in Kennebunkport. We tootle around this seaside tourist town and then take a drive out towards its very farthest point at the end of a peninsula where the George Bushes summer.

There are lots of people parking at the side of the road and looking over the rocks, the water and then the rocky side of their mansion with the many out-buildings. “For the servants,” I mutter to the guy next to me. “For the Secret Service,” he adds. “We’re paying for them,” someone else says, “for them and for that,” waving across to the huge edifice and its various security structures. “They should go back to Texas,” the first guy sneers, shaking his head and returning to his SUV where a woman sits waiting impatiently.

We get back in the car and head home. Traffic is a bitch. Several days of my mail is stuffed into my little mailbox with apparent venom. I have unpleasant messages on my home voicemail, things that require almost immediate attention. I miss my friend Sue and her peeps. I want to go back where only the mosquitoes are trying to suck my blood.

Photos by Barry Hock, with thanks.