Gossip: So Much Fun People Once Tried To Make It Illegal

I heard this on "The Morning Read" from the Wall Street Journal issue of 4 Jun 2007 and thought you'd enjoy it.

"When God created the heavens and the earth, he inflicted humanity with the presence of snakes and other slimy and oozy and pestiferous and odoriferous objects of loathing," opined a Texas newspaper in 1915. "And He also inflicted us with gossip, for what reason only He in His superior wisdom can tell."

…

By today's standards, gossip in the first half of the twentieth century was pretty tame stuff: painting, padding or lacing. Women dyed their hair, lied about their age, or — the unkindest cut — chased men. Men's troubles were usually financial or marital.

Although most respected people frowned on gossip, an Associated Press reporter, Saul Pett, came to its defense: "If four old biddies sit on the front porch sipping lemonade and chewing up the neighborhood, why call that gossip? Why not call it news analysis? Aren't they like Walter Lippman and Ed Murrow, trying to understand the world around them?"

…

I've had a mother and a husband who lectured and preached to me about gossip. Maybe that's why I so love a good tidbit here and there.

Legislators and local officials tried to outlaw gossip in the early twentieth century. What are we trying to outlaw today that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will giggle about a hundred years from now?

Made ya think, huh?

Welcome Home, Traveler

Welcome home to my friend, the Traveler, Lee Aitken. He left Tucson on Sunday, May 13th, to ride his motorcycle to San Diego, then Ontario, CA, where he met up with about 1,000 other military veterans on motorcycles to ride to DC. Once in DC, this group who had ridden the farthest led the thousands of bikers on the Rolling Thunder parade from the Pentagon across the bridge into DC and past the Vietnam Memorial.

This ride Lee does every year is called Run for the Wall.

Lee arrived home yesterday morning after a 14-hour nightlong ride through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. I can't wait to hear all his stories when we have dinner later this week. But he has to get the feeling in his butt to return first!

The Most Effective Alarm Clock Known to [Wo]man

That would be the sound of the cat, in your bedroom, hunched on the Oriental rug, hacking up a furball. Wanna see how fast I become alert, leap out of bed, and grab him to relocate him to a tile floor? Very fast!

Another Gorgeous Day in the Desert

You've heard me talk about the Gardener (Frank) and his garden. He has a sunflower growing in his garden and I told him I wanted to get a close-up shot of it before it went to seed. So he took me to breakfast this morning and then up to his place so I could have my way with his garden.

Here are the results.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Piano Lady

My dear friend, piano duet partner and Broadway show companion is 57 today. I love June 2nd, because for 20 days I can tease her about being a year older than I. And 20 days from now she teases me back. Each year we talk and wonder how we got to be this old.

In tribute to that, I share these lyrics I received in an e-mail this morning:

Some of the artists of the 60's are revising their hits with new lyrics to accommodate their aging fans!

Herman's Hermits- "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Walker!"
The Beatles- "I Get By with a Little Help from Depends"
The BeeGees- "How Can You Mend a Broken Hip"
Willie Nelson- "On the Commode Again"
Paul Simon- "Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver"
Procol Harem- "A Whiter Shade of Hair"
The Temptations-"Papa's Got a Kidney Stone"
Helen Reddy- "I am Woman, Hear me Snore"
Abba- "Denture Queen"
Bobby Darin- "Splish, Splash, I was Havin' a Flash"

Then I Googled "June 2 birthdays" to see who shares her day.

Did you know Wayne Brady is only a year old than my oldest child? Now that makes me feel old! Several composers were born this day — Elgar of John's beloved Enigma Variations, Glinka; King Henry VIII. I'll bet you didn't know Henry VIII was a composer! Jerry Mathers - The Beav - is 59 today! And Sally Kellerman is either 70 or 71 today, depending on which account you read. She looks darned good, and has a second career as a singer. So the Piano Lady is in good company.

The Piano Lady has started her second career and is very successfully bringing music and happiness to lots of kids, from 2 to 20, in Westchester County. She has a wonderfully supportive and loving husband, a beautiful daughter who just finished her first year of college, and twin teenaged sons who persevere and accomplish and succeed. She has had more than her share of challenges in her life — when I feel my life is hard, I call her and get a dose of reality. If you're a regular reader here, you'll remember that PL's mother passed away recently, so this is her first birthday without either of her parents. In my long and tortuous journey through college, I'm very lucky to have landed at Florida Technological University/University of Central Florida where PL and I sat down at side-by-side pianos and our history was born.

Here are a couple of images from our NYC trip last October.

If we smile real big, will you ignore the fact that we're aging? (And that I'm wearing a really unflattering sweater?)


Oh, the things we do to show our teenagers that we're hip.


Happy Birthday, Honey. I love you. I'll see you in October.

Niceness and Success

Marcia Gould and I have talked about commuting together to Cleveland to rehearsals of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra Chorus, but their rehearsals are on Monday nights and Monday is her worst day at work. Further, she thinks she couldn't get in. She thinks I'm much better than she. But she doesn't know I'm all ear.

Anyway, I just went to the Pittsburgh Symphony Website to research their chorus to see what I can find out about rehearsals and auditions. I notice that Marvin Hamlisch is their Principal Pops Conductor. He holds the same position with the National Symphony Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony. He also guests as Pops conductor with many orchestras including, if I remember correctly, the Tucson Symphony.

C'mon. How does this guy get all these gigs? Does he just have a fabulous agent? The man is a jackass. The man is a bloated, self-important, nastynastynasty jackass! He doesn't know how to treat musicians with respect. His tongue can be especially harsh when correcting a perceived error in the chorus or orchestra. He's just not a nice man. But look how successful he's become.

Was he a really good guy in a former life, so he was allowed to come back as a jackass in this life?! Some things just don't make sense.

A Direction A Day

I'm all over the place regarding jobs and homes and the future. Each day finds me thinking in a different direction than I've ever thought before.

I started this whole epic mind game thinking my IBM manager, Ken, would allow me to telecommute from Youngstown. After all, Al's a contractor in my group and he telecommutes three days a week when he's in Tucson, and works remotely from Montana from June through September. We both are former IBMers. The precedent has been set.

But Ken doesn't like my contract manager, so he's not going to do anything to help me out. Just my luck for being employed as a contractor. Every person within IBM to whom I speak about job possibilities tells me, "We've got plenty of contractors in our group who telecommute."

Sometimes I think I'd be happy working in Tucson three weeks out of the month and the telecommuting one week from Youngstown. If I could coordinate with Tyler's travel, then I could help Jaci during those weeks when she's a "single" mom.

Then I look at jobs on Monster and CareerBuilder and various other job sites, and I see three month or six month contract positions. I think, "Hey, I could go live in San Francisco for three months for a tech writing job." The world is my oyster. I can do whatever I want. I just don't know what I want to do!

Why does it take employers three or four months to respond to a résumé?! I feel certain that my background in development means the YSU development department is considering me, but they had my résumé on or about April 15th, for crying out loud. The very least you could do is let a person know you're either interested or disinterested.

It's very frustrating.

And then I get up early and grab an hour of sewing time, and think how much I'd like to be able to sew all the time, intermingled with volunteerism and babysitting. I fantasize about selling this house and the NC property and buying a small house in Youngstown and just retiring once and for all. I'm already networking in Youngstown. The FirstBook people would love to have me help them read to the schoolchildren and distribute books. There are about 15 Pi Phi alums and no alum club, so there's an opportunity. I'd love to teach some beginning sewing classes to young underprivileged children. So much to do, so little opportunity in my current state of chaos.

Too much. It's just too much for my weary brain.

The NC property will go on the market in a couple of weeks. And I vacillate about the Chula Vista property (my current residence). Do I keep it and go back and forth, therefore making possible continued activity with Tucson Chamber Artists and Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus? (Yesterday I agreed to take on two more responsibilities on the TCA board.) I wrote to Cleveland Symphony Orchestra Chorus, who took two weeks to respond, to see if they planned August auditions. (I learned about the May 4-5 auditions on May 7!) The woman who responded said they don't anticipate any further auditions until next May. C'mon! Where's flexibility? Where's grabbing somebody who's good and has lots of experience?

It's around the corner. I'm sure it's around the corner. Work and housing and life — I don't know the details of any of those facets of life, but I'm sure they're all just around the corner. Now if I can just perfect my patience!