Martin Heavisides has invited me to a game of revelation tag.

These are the rules: 1. The rules must be posted by each participant at the beginning of the post.
2. Each player posts 8 facts about himself/herself.
3. Tagged parties post their own 8 items in a blog, and post these rules.
4. At the end of the blog, each player or 'tagee' must post the names of eight people s/he is tagging in turn.
5. And inform said tagees by e-mail, telegraph wire or telepathy if blessed with such ability, but in any case inform them or they'll have trouble participating.

Here are my random facts:

My Catholic school didn't have speech therapists, and I had a bi-lateral list until I was 28, when a drama teacher traded me speech therapy for movement classes for his acting students. He taught me exactly where to put my tongue when I made certain sounds. I practised night and day and after three weeks the lisp was gone! Somewhere in Wyoming a TV station may still have a tape in which I lisp (earlier interview) when I first appear, and I don't when I'm interviewed live.

I remember walking around my family's new house when it was under construction and wondering how we were going to live without a roof. I was 2 and a half.

I'm much more gullible than I let on.


I've never been any good at sarcasm, and have only just learned not to be intimidated by those who are.

Eight, huh? When I auditioned for Juilliard, I slipped at the beginning of my solo and slid under the judge's table. i think that's why i got in. They remembered me.


i would like to fall in love again. No, I like to think I would like to fall in love again.


I stayed drunk the entire year of l981. I haven't had an alcoholic drink since january of l982, So it goes...

I never expected to become so fond of certain people who I know only through my computer. I'm a little uneasy that they'll disappear. I hope not.

i've tagged: Diana Ferraro, Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick, Becky Soto, Frank O'Connor, sj sumner, Mike Woof, Yvette Nmi Managhan

July 23, 2007 11:30 PM

Stop Yelling at Me!

I am not going to accept responsibility for global warming, the war in Iraq, the corruption of our politicians, the poverty of 37% of American children, FEMA's response to Katrina, or any of the rest of the horrible things in the world that i hate. I will accept responsibility for voting according to my conscience, after trying to become educated through sources that I have been told throughout my life, maybe do, maybe don't tell me the truth.

For fifteen years I taught special education but ,all, I could do, on a daily basis, was my job. I could work ten hour days, love the kids, and do what I could get away with about teaching them things that would be useful to know, as opposed to things that would be on a test, and what I knew about solving problems. I couldn't overrule the school boards, build the children who were homeless, homes, or put their families back together. I couldn't even put people in my own family back together, once they had fallen apart.

Everywhere that I've lived as an adult, except for New York City and southern England, places that had realistic public transportation, I've always had a car. I've had to if I wanted to work, eat, live. I will buy a hybrid as soon as I can-but that might be tricky because I'm on disability for heart disease, which developed when I was teaching and may well have had something to do with frustration. There are many Americans on fixed incomes because they are sick or got old, who would also like to buy hybrids and live in solar heated homes.

i vote for people who say they are doing what they believe will help the environment, but I can't send money to every foundation that wants me to save the polar bears, as much as I'd like to. Or the wolves. I'd like to save them, too. But in defense, I did spend a year caring for my elderly mother during the last year of her life, and now I look after my father and my brother, who also has a serious health problem.

I do not spend hours writing to representatives, making phone calls or campaining for people who I think might do a better job running the country than the...crew running it now. I'm too busy trying to cope with doing the best I can with my family, myself, my neighbors, and yes, dammit, my art.

I don't feel like I got what I asked for, and I don't think I'm an Ugly American. Since reaching adulthood during the Vietnam War, no, since my teenage years during the Civil Rights movement, I've, with lapses certainly, done my best to make things right. So stop yelling at me for being responsible for the mess. I did not acquiesce to the current state of the world. i didn't. I never did. And now, I'll go check on my father.

Man of my Dreams

I have a new crush. Bigger than the ones I have for George Clooney, johnny Depp, and a mandolin player I met in Savannah. This crush is huge. The guy wears glasses, has grey hair, broad shoulders, dresses in good suits, and spits his words with courage and decisiveness. Yes, that's right. The man who used his MSNBC spot to ask, no, demand, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney search their souls for any remaining smidgens of decenecy and patriotism and resign from their offices.

Mr. Olbermann left movie stars and mandolin players in the dust. He's my new dreamboat, fantasy guy, companion for the proverbial desert island. His wife and kids, if he has them, (I'll google) need not worry, however. I've yet to stalk, write, call, or camp on the doorsteps of my other crushes during the course of my life. But, I gottatellya, his speech on July 3rd, during "Countdown" stirred my loins, put a gleam in my eyes, moved my heart to race, stopped, for a bit at least, the merry-go-round of my repetitious, disgusted, political thought-tape.
Bravo Mr. Olbermann. My heart is yours.

Nonnie reading poetry at the ArtCoop, Panama City, Florida

New to me-"Religious" Massacre-20,000 dead

Yes. On the morning of July 22, 1209, FRENCH Catholic Crusaders murdered twenty thousand men, women and children. Through the stupidy of young Cathars who went out that morning to kill a few of the "Host" they spotted on the bridge to the city, the gate was left open and the Crusaders stormed the city of Beziers, a stronghold of the Cathar movement in Languedoc region of southeastern FRANCE. Pope Innocent lll called for this Crusade of French against French, because the Cathars were heretics. The mis-named Pope was quite sure that these heretics deserved to die. The nobility of northen France were happy to go to war, because winning meant gaining power in a region where they had none. I won't go into the whys and wherefores-anyone interested can look up this incident, and the twenty years of war that followed, or they might be interested in the Spanish Inquisition, rooted in this European Crusade and which rose from people being disagreeable in the extreme about matters of faith. I mention it here because a) religion drove the killing, b) the winners stood to gain power and wealth, c ) everyone involved was, by their reckoning, on the right side, and d) there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to atrocities committed in the name of god.
Bezier was decimated almost 800 years ago. Two car bombs were found in London yesterday. I imagine Pope's soldiers would think of me as a heretic. I know Islamic fundamentalists think my beliefs are those of an infidel. It's okay, because I know the truth. God's on my side.

PC backlash

Hey, I know a lot of things went into la la land with PC stuff. The jokes about being politically correct were funny for awhile. I taught Kindergarten when we were going through the transition from Halloween parties to "Fall Festivals." Didn't make any difference, really. The kids still bought Halloween costumes, and I read my collection of whimsical, and even spooky, picture books. No worries.

Then it became Winter Break, and for most of December we were busy in the classroom doing crafts and studying, well, in a five-year old style all kinds of celebrations and customs that roughly coincided with Christmas. Didn't much matter. The children had a good time doing all of it, and the adults knew that the kids knew that whatever went on in their homes would be the real deal. Or whatever didn't go on in their homes.

But, you know, being politically correct had its beginnings in ugly stuff. Racial slurs. Religious bias. Bigotry and hate. No one expected mountains to move; mountains didn't move. But more books featured multiracial children in less stereotypic situations. Families in books were more diverse, more confused, more realistic, and multi-ethnic. Moms in the books went to work, and not just as teachers or nurses. Children needed these changes, and educators, most of us, welcomed them.

What's going on today? What is this thing about free speech meaning it's cool again to say any damn thing one pleases about whatever group of people that's caught the attention of the speaker? I'm confused. You know? If it's square to be PC, is it cool to verbally abuse anybody and everybody again? Isn't a racial slur still a racial slur, but it's okay because, "well, no one's going to call ME politically correct?" Humor doesn't have to be ugly. There are more problems with hate groups than ever, and you know what? That's still a bad thing in my book. But hey, I know I'm not the only one who feels that way? I don't want to gag anyone that wants to talk. But I'm not going to listen to them, white, black, male or female, if what they're doing is spouting something that is belligerant, abusive, and, well, stupid.

We're not there yet, you know. We are not on the other side of the struggle and in a place where so-called "jokes" don't offend, and further the hate. I live in the South-and my neighbors aren't the Huxtables.

Of course, the grocery bill is higher. Why is it not as clear to people who eat as people who buy that food costs more? I'm talking about intelligent, news-watching, Time magazine, aware of the war on the middle class family members looking at me-the shopper-with accusation. How can I spend that much on groceries? Am I spending it on groceries? Why, yes. Not lipstick. Not Mont Blanc pens. Oranges. Fresh vegetables. Meat!

It's time, you know, to put two and two together. Household budgets are stretched. We spend more on gas. Truckers spend a fortune on gas. Prices go up at Piggly Wiggly, Food Lion, Publix, you name it. There was a time when buying fresh, rather than frozen or canned, was something home-makers did because they cared about health and were willing to spend extra time preparing nutricious dinners. And keeping the fruit bowl full was a matter of course. We are, we middle class, are, returning to a day when Christmas stockings were full of oranges, because they were a luxury for all but the rich. We are getting there. No, we have gotten there. The news on CNN-you know, about the war in Iraq? About oil companies making profits and the price of a gallon of gas changing, often rising? About the agrinomics? They translate to higher prices for everything we stand on lines to pay for. Those spanking, clean, new supermarkets with enormous parking lots sell food. Survival. I may have to cut costs. Maybe I'll try a week of beans and rice, and see if I can save on the weekly food bill. Maybe that will bring some hard facts home to the folks eating the meals someone does the shopping for. Accusatory looks, indeed. it ain't me, baby. It's the 2007 American way.

Rant-What's with these acres of wasted indoor space?

I just caught an IBM commercial. Dad had a football game on. There are four suits, i think four, certainly no more than five, and I think I saw one small red-clothed doing-nothing table, in this HUGE space. A wall of windows climbing stories high, and I'm no good with judging space, but it looked like acres of immaculate, empty, fake marble,"area." I suppose the purpose of it is to walk through to get to the offices where people work in cublicles.

I mean, really. All that space needs to be heated, or cooled, cleaned, lighted. Materials go into building all that indoor emptiness, and it's everywhere-the inside empty space. Maybe out of the photo frame were groups of elevators, (there's a word for that but I forgot it) but they certainly weren't close by. Even here in PCB, the new medical center they built on the beach has wide, wide hallways with maybe a couple of people using them at a time. Every SINGLE elementary school has at least a dozen portable classrooms in this town-taking up grounds that were once used for play.

I remember when they built the new Juilliard at Lincoln Center. The dance department got two (beautiful) dance studios. The rest were leased to New York City Ballet to help pay for the building. They were supposed to be our studios, of course. And guess what? Acres of empty space for no practical reason at all. And guess what else? They built the practice rooms for the musicians WITHOUT SOUNDPROOFING. The pianists could hear the violins who could hear the trumpets, oh it was awful. They had to hang every little practice room with insulating curtains. Unbelievable.

Okay, the outside public space at Lincoln Center is cool. Day and night filled with people, a huge, cooling fountain, performance events all the time. (We even staged an anti-Viet Nam war protest after the students were killed at Kent State.)

No, what infuriates me is all this acreage devoted to what? Ego? Someday we'll run out of space. And fossil fuel. And people who can afford to live close enough to these enormous buildings to work there in little cubby holes.

July 27, 2006

So now I'm going to learn how to write a script. I wrote a short story and sent it to another writer. I asked him if he thought it could be developed into a screenplay and he was enthusiastic about doing just that. Imagine. I think, however, that there are quite a few writers who think they have a story that would make a good film. The only reason I am serious about following through on this one is because I've written many short stories, and this is the only one I've ever imagined as a screenplay. It's a gut thing. My friend sent me many scripts to read, and I've ordered software. One thing that has amazed me my entire life is how generous artists are. Good ones, not phonies. The good artists, in whatever field, want to share what they know. They will take time out of their day or night to dig up just what someone wants to know. I think that's a truly wonderful, dare I say spiritual, thing. Money, if it comes along, is always a help, but I haven't offered anyone a penny since I started writing, apart from workshops, books, and software I've bought, and I've gotten help whenever I've asked. Help with my writing projects. And, and, I give help away. Gladly. Quite a thing. Could it be spiritual?

May 11, 2006

We had a gathering at our home today to mark my mother's death. From the first knock on the door, the first guest, my tears finally began to flow. I had been numb. After months of being with her day and night, yes, sleeping in her room, it struck me as terribly unreal that she was gone. But when people came to pay their respects, I understood. The house was beautiful with flowers, I shined the silver, and there were crystal and gemstone colored glass dishes full of food. Neighbors came, friends, my brothers business contacts, and so many people from Hospice found the time to come by. My Dad made a lovely speech and I read a piece I'd written for my Mom on her 82 birthday, two years ago. The guests have been gone for hours now, and my tears have stopped again, but I understand they will come back. My eyes will fill; I am not a dry-eyed monster. I loved her so much, and know I will miss her, but until today, I couldn't cry. I'm grateful that a party like so many Mom prepared for anxiously, and enjoyed wonderfully, happened today in her beautiful house, and some of my tears were released at last.

TEXTURES

TEXTURES

Wear your grief like soft silk;
a shimmering air-light cloak
against your skin, barely felt.
But, when the transparent
blue dusk and the north star shines alone,
perception loosens, solitude releases,
wear the purple velvet of queens and kings.
Let it drag against limbs and feel the heaviness
rounding your shoulders until you reach
full stop and must wait for the velvet to journey
through brocade, damask, satin, lace.
It will again become
weightless silk and
return to the blessed, fine
binding you can carry on with.

Nonnie Augustine
May 7, 2006

I care as much about Anna Nicole Smith winning her case with the U.S. Supreme Court as I do about dryer lint. My mother will probably die before dawn. The process of dying from congestive heart failure is a long drawn-out business. In her case it started with her heart attack in 2001. For the next two years she still left the house, even drove, but she has been house-bound since 2003 and bed-bound since September of 2005. I have been her full-time caregiver, which is not as noble of me as it may sound, because my own life came to a crashing full-stop when I left my husband and my home in Maryland a year ago. Taking charge of my mother's care was the next best thing I could do. I had no home, no money, and was badly wounded. Mom and my Dad had a home to offer me and needed help as almost all people in their eighties come to need help. I have some money now, because our marital home has been sold, but their physical problems and my emotional troubles have proved to be a good match. While the Web, CNN, and the "real" and tabloid papers have been giving us eyefuls of Anna Nicole, slim and sexy in dark glasses as she struts her stuff in and out of court, my Mother is gasping for breath, her hands are turning blue, and all I can do is administer eye-drops of morphine so that the business of her heart stopping is as quiet for her as possible. She was the best that she could be her whole life. Born in 1922, child of a flapper and a World War I veteran, she had four younger siblings. My grandmother knew all the songs and nursery rhymes any girl could want their "Nonnie" to know, but I gather as a parent she was content to let her oldest daughter take care of the other children. My grandfather became a politician, with some success, but the thirties hit the family hard and they barely kept their household going during the Depression years. In 1942, my Mom and Dad married, in 1943 he went to the European front, and soon after my mother gave birth to my brother. When Dad got back, they had another son, me, and my younger brother. By 1955 we were all born, and she was a full-tilt, wonderful mother, except when unreasonable fears, clinical depression, and fatigue got the better of her and everyone would have to wait until Mom was herself again. Those waits sometimes seemed long, but she always came back to us before her clinical depressions caused severe, or even fatal, damage. She turned 84 a month ago. She and my Dad have been married a couple of months shy of sixty four years. She never had anyone but my father. She was never a stripper. She didn't sell herself to a billionaire, or make a fool of herself on television, or spent a lot of time getting manicures or shopping for clothes. She never did anything that put her on T.V., or got her a hearing in front of the Supreme Court. But when a holiday came around, whether we had money or not, no one in the neighborhood could touch our home for warmth, food, trimmed trees or Easter baskets, and heart-felt celebration. The least I can do is stay up with her until the sun rises.

March 16, 2006

My mail, e-mail, and phone calls go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Apologies for the cliché, but I can’t resist its perfect applicability:
In my mailbox today yet another catalogue of boob jobs in bikinis and an invitation to explore the grandeur of Europe on Queens I or II.  I am no more likely to buy a minute leopard-skin thong bikini and its transparent cover-up, (oxymoron, that, isn't it?) than I am to embark on a cruise on which I can expect to experience a personal sense of ease and well-being due in no small part to a phenomenal staff whose sole motive is to ensure my complete comfort at all times. This same staff will also present me with award-winning delicacies presented with a flourish, grace, and intimate knowledge that is the ultimate in civility.

I hope that marketing geniuses afoot today waste recycled paper on us. An aging hippie like me would not relax among the privileged diners in tuxedos (silver-haired) and designer dresses, (always blond) even were she to win a state lottery. I did win an English football lottery apparently, but I didn't play fairly, looked up their address with Mapquest. I replied to them asking why their offices were in a discount clothing store. They told me they were in an annex to that building, but the jig was up, (it's cliché day) and our correspondence ended.

Does anyone buy from the telemarketers? I don’t know anyone who does. I know pitifully few people here in Florida, so I'll just ask you. Do you even know anyone who knows anyone who buys from them? Of course not! They are to a man and woman loathed. People have been trying to squelch them since the day they began calling us at home and yes, I lived long enough to remember a time before. Don’t they know everything about us these days? Isn’t that the going theory? Do they just plague us willy-nilly? Is it to stir discontent? What do all those courses colleges offer in marketing teach?  Certainly the students don’t pick up any useful information about selling to me.

Why does a middle-aged woman who is not fat, but not bikini material either get catalogues trying to sell her plunging flimsies and snob-appeal cruises when she has a by-pass scar between her breasts and collects cruising-prohibitive disability checks? Things weren’t any more luxurious for me when I worked—I had the bad economic sense to choose modern dance, then special education and never did get much past paying what I think of as Everyman bills. That’s not right is it? The homeless and the families in refugee camps don’t pay mortgages, rent, telephone, dry-cleaning bills do they? So I suppose I’m wrong in thinking of them as Everyman bills. Damn. Duh.

However, I have spent these moments of whining distracted from my mother's sick room. I've vented about silly complaints with the world and moved off from my seriousness, sadness, helplessness. Mom is sleeping and seems to be comfortable so I've been tripping over some shoelaces, some foibles of modern life and gotten time off from thinking about death. Our watchdog minds, our tenacious grips, our stubborn souls come through for us just in time, just enough for the necessary lift, until we level. At least, that's our hope, isn't it?

My mother was white tonight. The palor of her skin was the color of her hair, her head laying on a mountain of white pillows. When she collapsed into bed she couldn't move, and I wasn't strong enough to make her more comfortable. My brother had to help. She whispered to me that I looked sad. I suppose I did. Failure to thrive is a horrible way to die. Slow weakening until every word, ever gesture takes such effort. I don't want her to decline any further and be conscious of her helplessness. I would rather see her go in her sleep tonight than spend another day losing senses, muscle tone, appetite. It's hard for her to imagine life outside her bedroom now, and I suppose it is making perfect sense that I share her confinement. As much as I appreciate her, love her, am baffled by her, I know I need time out of the house. They all say that, you know. Care-givers need respite. What if the day I pay someone to sit in the blue leather recliner at the foot of her bed, she decides to leave. She may want to go when I'm not there— spare her only daughter the moment of her death. But I want to be there. So I procrastinate about getting help. One week blends into the next week of waiting. The days go quickly though. They are quick with stangeness. I'm tired, and I fantasize about the places I'll visit when she's gone...but for tonight, I'll be here. At 3 or 4 tomorrow morning, when her sleeping pills wear off—I'll be here. I believe the soul lives. And in this life and whatever's next, we need and will need each other.

So-Tony's on the floor bleeding. Uncle June is hiding in his closet, having thrown the gun under the bed, Christopher's AA sponsor is a grade A forger, Carmella has a new Porshe, the Feds had a new guy, but he killed himself-and the usual suspects hover about. I don't think going 21 months without a new episode has hurt anything. Except Tony's weight has gone up to 280. I doubt he'll die from this wound, but I bet all hell will break loose with the Captains and various Made guys. A good hour of distraction. My mother's leaving us, and today was dicey. I don't know if she can leave us much more completely than she has-but I guess there's more, because she's still breathing. Barely. I'm doing what I can, but I don't think that's much. I wonder if I should keep her sedated? Maybe she isn't supposed to be? Who knows these things at this point? Not me.

You know what they say about how hard it is to care for a dying parent? Care-giver groups, counseling, and hospice all make a point about the family member needing to get away, get out, not spend all their time in the sick room. I suppose they are right. But I'm ignoring them. I don't want to be at the movies when my mother needs me. I don't want to be shopping, or in my case window-shopping, and leaving her to the care of a stranger who will help her get on and off the commode. She is so quiet now I miss the way she needed me every two minutes a week ago and I couldn't get anything done. What did I want to do that was so important to me I'd get irritated? I can't remember now. Last night she tried to put her robe on while I was out of her room, and she fell. She looked so sad. No broken bones, but how terribly sad to find yourself unable to put your own housecoat on without help. I'm her only daughter, so I'm the one she can ask for help with "private" things. She and my Dad have been married for 63 years, almost 64, but they never shared the bathroom I guess. He couldn't help anyway. He can hardly walk. My brother and I got her settled on the bed she so rarely leaves. When we were out of her earshot (doesn't have to be far for that) I asked him, "How do you know it (helplessness, weakness)is going to get that bad until it gets that bad? Until you are there?

There is no reason why I should receive a catalogue of babes in bikinis. But for the last few months, I have. Printed on less than grade A glossy paper, are page after page of young women in revealing bathing suits, sportswear, even a dress or two, all with low-cut necklines, each outfit designed to showcase the model's boob job. These women are young, lithe, sun-tanned, long-legged, wear size 4 on the bottom and must need at least a twelve on top to present themselves in public legally.
See, I don't get this. I have yet to meet a man who has admitted to preferring big fake breasts, over the old-fashioned flesh variety. Maybe plastic surgeons are the silent partners in various swimsuit enterprises.The breasts on these models all look exactly alike! They are round, large, and have a good three inch spread between them, even when the model is obviously dressed in a garment that pushes them up, and tries but fails to push them together. Are these carbon copy chests required equipment for these modeling gigs?
I haven't done much research. I don't know, for instance, what, if indeed any, effect they have on breast-feeding. Does the milk get a saline flavor?  What happens to them in ten or fifteen years? What happens if a woman wearing these breasts gains a lot of weight? Anything? A while ago I saw a beach brochure with different models, same chests, except that one teenaged brunette had before and after pictures. She had the distinction of being on both the front and back cover of this tourist-trapping bit of photojournalism. On the front cover she wore a yellow bikini barely covering breasts obviously designed by the same plastic guy who'd enhanced all the other girls, and on the back cover she wore a bright orange bikini that showed off her slender figure, and yes, you got it, her original, not terribly round or bouncy but certainly real looking size 34 B's. I wonder if anyone else noticed? Just me? Okay. I'll move on. Fixations, eh?