Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Housesitter (me!) Available

I do my best writing when I am away from home and so for several years I have been house/apartment-sitting and/or cat-sitting for friends and friends-of-friends. I have done this in Rockport (MA), L.A. (CA), Guilford (VT), London (UK) and other lovely spots. Some close friends have lent me their vacation homes – on the Cape or NH – when they are available. I am dependent on the kindness of property owners. Would you like to have me look after your home?

From my point of view, what I need to be truly productive are:

• A desk or table
• Good wireless
• Privacy (ie: empty apartment/house)
• Bathroom & Kitchen(ette)
• Between a week and a month
• A way to get around – at least to the grocery store (Hopefully, this will be within 200 miles of Boston, so I'll have my car. Otherwise I'll need public transportation or a bike or use of your car or...?)
• Neighbors close enough to hear me scream. I’m scared of being alone in the middle of the woods with no asphalt around.

I have just finished teaching and so my schedule is fairly flexible. From August, 2014 on, I am open to suggestions and recommendations. If you want references you can have plenty of them. I don't, by the way, have much experience with dogs.

Please keep me in mind.
Big thanks,
Sue

I rarely remember my dreams, certainly not in this detail

I rarely remember my dreams, certainly not in this detail. (That's Sleeping Beauty, by the way, not me.)

I am returning home from abroad. I lock up the home where I am staying with Jaya and start taking public transportation – trolley, bus, etc. (Real: Jaya lives atop a mountain in Tuscany with no cities around.) When I’m almost to the airport, I realize that I do not have my suitcase with me.

At first I think okay, so I’ll have to wait until next time Jaya comes to visit and she’ll bring me my suitcase, no big deal, but then it hits me. No suitcase means no passport and no ticket. I arrive at the airport but don’t know where to go. Without my ticket, I don’t know which airline company to talk to.

There are kiosks and casual tables set up with people selling things – like the Nairobi airport when I was there in the 90s – but they can’t help me. Then I remember: I’ve forgotten the dog. (Real: I’ve never had a dog, a cat, or anything bigger than the one-inch turtle my mother let dry up and die the only time I went to camp for a week. However, I did see the movie “Tea with Mussolini” last night and it was Judi Dench's dog that I forgot in my dream.)

The dog’s a problem, I know, but I keep trying to find the airline, when it hits me. I have forgotten my laptop as well. Okay, now I know that I cannot fly. I can do without underpants or mammalian comfort – but I can’t do without my laptop.

Suddenly I arrive at the perhaps proper counter and my friend X is working there. (Real: X makes the best mandelbrot known to human tongues and in real life is extremely generous). However, it is about 4:45 and she gets off at 5:00. She doesn’t really want to deal with this situation. I ask her to switch me to tomorrow, and she says she might lose her job. Instead she offers me a chocolate from the nearby box. I push her to do something and she desultorily surfs around her computer until it is 5:00 and that’s that.

I’ve never missed a flight before (for real) and so I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if she has let them know and cancelled or rescheduled for me. X leaves and so I must as well. I figure I have to go back to Jaya’s house but I cannot remember where I hid the key. Despite being mildly stressed and annoyed by all of this, I am never really freaked or distraught.

And that, perhaps, was the part most unlike reality.

And... here's a goodbye poem from my student Lila

My lovely student Lila moved to Boston where she didn't know anyone. But when she signed up for my fitness class at the Senior Center, she found her role. She began to be the person who quietly looked after those who needed a visit or a call or an emphathetic ear. She became a popular, reliable volunteer in the Senior Center food program. And she became the unofficial Poet. Each month the Center bulletin publishes one of her poems. Here's the one she read to the class yesterday, on my last day.

The Other Sue, by Lila Sesholtz

Not the Monday-Wednesday Sue
Whose object is to have us do
What we never thought we’d be able to.

The Sue who sees all 32 of us,
Especially when we make a fuss,
And in soto-voce cuss.

She sees us stumble,
She hears us mumble,
And, sometimes, we hear her grumble.

But where will be find another one
Who makes what’s good for us
So much fun?

So, while your feet are tapping,
And in your blog you’re rapping
Think of us – as we remember you
          Our Sue.

This ending is crappy
And I’m unhappy
To say farewell to you.
But what else can I do!

My Retirement Gesture from Trader Joe’s

Yesterday was momentous. I retired from teaching fitness to seniors – many of them now elders – after more than a decade. (I still have other jobs.) That delicious experience is a story that deserves its own piece and I will write it soon. But today I want to tell you about a Trader Joe’s gesture that is still giving me pleasure.

Having received a nice cash present from my students, I decide after my final class on some retail celebration. I head to “Urban Renewal,” my favorite second-hand store, where on Wednesday many items are half-off for seniors. For a total of $10.00, I get four pieces of clothing (two are presents for others), including a very colorful jacket. Then I head to Trader Joe’s to indulge myself in a steak to sear for lunch. They usually have a good rib eye and for $6.00 you can get a piece big enough for two lunches.

But, hell, it is my retirement day so I decide to splurge on pecan pieces and dried apples and popcorn. I see that daffodils have arrived. This is an annual treat that TJs gives to their customers: 10 stems for $1.49.

By the time I get to the check out, I have to explain to the chap – a large, tall man in his 30s – that I only brought one bag with me, intending to buy only one item: the steak to celebrate my retirement. “So instead of buying some coke or some mushrooms with the big bucks like back in the day,” I say, “I splurge on these sweet-potato chips.”

He laughs as he packs up my stuff, then says, “Congratulations. And the daffodils are on the house.” How sweet! I thank him and then he thinks twice.

“Hell, these little daffs aren’t enough. Come with me.” He leads me to the bank of bouquets and tells me to choose. I naturally turn towards the $3.99 selection – which is where I always shop – but he guides me on to the $9.99 section. I feel embarrassed – these are not bouquets I’d buy for myself. I rather quickly pick one that seems bright and cheery. He packs them for me and leans down for a gentle-giant bear hug.

I get into my car and call Tracy in California. She first introduced me to Trader Joe’s many years ago when I was there on a visit. The workers at the main regular supermarket chain were on strike at that time and lots of folks were switching to Trader Joe’s in order to avoid breaking their strike. Many Californians got introduced to TJs special product and staff selection at that time. Back when the first TJ opened up in 1967 in Pasadena, it was mainly a store of inexpensive California wines. By the 1970s, it had its own grocery brand and only in 1993 did they open a store in another state. The Brookline, Massachusetts TJ store where I get my flowers was the first store they opened in the East – and only in 1997.

Although they unfortunately aren’t unionized, Trader Joe’s staff seem to have a very different relationship to their employment than workers at other supermarkets. They certainly have a different relationship to customers. For one thing, they are everywhere, all over the store. They are accessible, available, and no matter what they’re in the middle of, they’ll drop it to walk you to the item you’re looking for and point out their favorite foods and treats along the way. If you want to taste something before buying it, they’ll take the product to the taste station and arrange it for you. They are old and young and tattooed and purple-dyed and eccentric and interesting and, many times, creative people in their time off. They speak frankly about their work conditions when I ask and many feel satisfied with their jobs. Best of all for them, they have the authority to make decisions – like giving a 66-year-old woman her biggest-ever bouquet as a present on the occasion of her heading into the scary long-delayed path of spending her time writing and publishing.

Wise Potato Chips – Don’t Leave Me

Many people have a childhood treat – a candy bar, their mother’s brisket – that remains a favorite food throughout life. For me it is Wise Potato Chips. Yes, yes, perhaps it is because they are greasier and saltier than any other – or perhaps it is because they are crispier and more well done than others. And they are union-made (UFCW Local 1776).

I have gone to extremes to keep eating Wise Potato Chips, forcing me into favor-debt. When I was abroad, I was unable to find any reasonable substitute. I had to beg friends in eastern states to ship them to me. My friend Richard Wizansky remembers my instructions: prick the blue bag with a pin and squeeze out all of the air so that the package will be less bulky. Put a strip of cellotape over the hole, to maintain the chips’ freshness, and then pack several bags into a cardboard box and hope they get through customs. I never minded their condition on arrival – whether whole or in crumbs, Wise Potato Chips of any size do it for me.

When I lived in the UK in the 90s, I did find a brand of crisps (chips in British) named Golden Wonder that was almost satisfactory, but they only existed for a few years, to be superseded by the pale Lays-like Walkers.

The very concept of potato chips started in Saratoga Springs, NY. Wikipedia “attributed the dish to George Crum, a half black, half Native American cook at Moon's Lake House, who was trying to appease an unhappy customer” in the late 19th century.

The Wise brand was, like me, born in Pennsylvania. Mr. Earl Wise, Sr. (at left breaking ground for the first production plant) made them as a solution to left-over potatoes in his deli, and they just took off. The company stayed in family hands until 1964, but the sale in 2000 to the private New York investment firm of Palladium Equity Partners L.L.C. has had dire results. I am having increasing trouble finding Wise in Boston and when I find them, there is some sort of new, subtle after-taste.

I’m surprised that the difficulty of finding Wise Potato Chips is not front page news. Why are frustrated consumers pouring into the streets? All I could find on the subject of Wise chips was this parody review by “Carl Sagan” that is actually quite accurate.

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Film Review: Al Helm: MLK in Palestine

An American playwright and MLK scholar Dr. Clay Carson takes a choir of seven African American gospel singers to Palestine. There his play Passages of Martin Luther King has been adapted as Al Helm (the dream) by director Kamel El Basha for the Palestinian National Theatre Company.

The choir will be part of the production. Award-winning filmmaker Connie Field’s riveting documentary dramatically traces the developing consciousness of the singers, who know little about the struggles of Palestinians before their arrival, as they travel around performing with the local theater company.

The wisdom of MLK bridges the African American and Palestinian experiences of racism in a way that makes the powerful emotional impact of this film accessible to many audiences. Field opens with shots of Jerusalem and Martin Luther King Jr’s voice speaking about “temples of justice, temples of peace.”

Because the choir is relatively unprepared for the relentless brutality their Palestinian colleagues suffer, there are tensions and conflicts that only innocent good will and increasing experience can solve. “I’d rather not have someone take my picture before they say hi,” one actor complains when first meeting the Americans. We viewers share this journey to mutual understanding with the actors and singers. Along the way we meet unforgettable people, from young Michael, only a year after a bout of homelessness and now stepping up as the choir’s problem-solver, to Juliano Mer-Khamis, the beloved, charismatic founder of the Palestinian Freedom Theater, who laments, “We don’t dream anymore. Even the children only dream of death.”

As the choir members discover the level of distress in Palestinian lives at the hands of the Israeli occupiers, so the viewer begins to grasp that bitter concrete reality. We see “security” in the occupied territories so pervasive that there are security towers over the cemeteries. “They even occupy the dead people,” one actor explains. We are appalled by the contrast between the imprisoned Palestinian villages and the luxury Israeli settlements built on stolen land.

When a hideous murder is committed on the 43rd anniversary of the MLK assassination, the dark magic of this documentary shines. It has, in real time, captured the very real artistic and political overlap between MLK’s legacy and the Palestinian struggle, and done so with high production values and a commitment to honesty and clarity. This is the ultimate documentary: it entertains as it instructs, and no participant or viewer is left unmoved.

The Al Helm: MLK in Palestine trailer can be viewed here