A Seasoned Writer

As a writer I believe I should use this platform from time to time to tackle significant and poignant issues. In this vein, I have decided to write about the weather.

Many people have a preferred climate. And most have a favorite season. I like autumn. I like clouds, sweaters and a slight chill in the air.

I do not like summer.

I grew up in Memphis where the summers are brutal. Air-conditioning was the only thing that made summer bearable. My genteel Southern grandmother used to say, “Horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies glow.” She was wrong. Horses, men and women sweat – a lot. You can’t walk around the block in Memphis before 10:00 at night without sweating. And the hot, humid air comes to rest on you and envelopes you.

Maybe this is why I like autumn so much. Those first cool nights signaled the end of summer.

Then I lived in England. Summer wasn’t so bad there. Because in England summer is, more or less, like autumn to the rest of us. People wear sweaters in summer. I once had to light the woodstove in August because we were so cold. And the sun is not such an issue. It seems the weather report was often “partly cloudy” or “partly sunny” – which I could never quite figure out, as that seems pretty much the same to me.

I enjoyed the English summers because, like I said, they were really just lightweight autumns.

Now I live in Colorado. There is none of the Memphis humidity. None at all, in fact. My husband reminds me that we live in a semi-arid climate. My dry skin often reminds me of the same. And it’s not usually “partly cloudy” or “partly sunny” here as it was in England. The summers are almost always sunny and hot. That is all well and good if you like glaring sunshine. I do not.

Maybe I should move to the mountains. Or Alaska.

The British say that if you drink hot tea, you will sweat, and it will cool you down. (Here we are back to sweat again). This seems an unnecessary path to take in order to cool down. I much prefer air-conditioning, swamp coolers or fans.

I guess there is no avoiding summer. I could quit my job, somehow become independently wealthy and travel around the world looking for an endless autumn. But it might get boring to always have the same season. So this summer, I’ll just have to sweat it out.

An Education

I attended an all-girls school in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a college prep school and we worked very hard. It was also a “proper” school for young ladies. We had chapel every morning and were expected to have appropriate behavior.

At one point the school had a cultural awareness week. This was to further our education by making us more aware of the arts and culture of our community. During this week various speakers were brought in who would serve to broaden our view and understanding of our city.

One of the speakers who was invited was a celebrated blues musician named Furry Lewis. He was in his 80s when he came to our school. He had played with W. C. Handy and other legends of the blues.

Lewis began to speak. He began to tell stories about his musical career and his life. He began to use vocabulary with which I was unfamiliar.

I noticed the teachers and faculty begin to glance uneasily at each other. I could tell from their body language that they were becoming more and more uncomfortable.

Furry Lewis spoke on. I believe he was giving us details of his love life and his consumption of various types of alcohol. His language was very colorful. He was an old blues singer talking to an audience of about 200 young girls. He seemed to be enjoying this time and the reaction of his audience.

I could see some of the teachers in the back of the room trying to decide what to do. Should they interrupt the guest speaker? Could they ask him to change the subject? Meanwhile, some of the girls were beginning to giggle. Some of the seniors were trying hard to hold back bursts of laughter.

The teachers politely intervened. They thanked him for taking the time to come to our school. They said what an honor it was to have him there. And they said that he had indeed furthered the education of the young ladies at our school.

 

Le Critique de film

I don’t really watch a lot of movies. I realize people appreciate film and respond to this art form like I do to books. Still, I just don’t watch a lot of movies.

So I went to a French class and the teacher wanted to discuss films we had seen recently.

My fellow students were film connoisseurs. They had seen all the latest foreign films and discussion was all about film noir and angst and the meaning of life.

I was quiet.

The teacher kindly made a point of including me in the conversation. “What film have you seen recently, Flo?”

“Guardians of the Galaxy,” I replied.

“Pardon?” she asked.

“It’s a film with a racoon (un raton-laveur) and a green woman (une femme verte).”

She looked at me with an expression which indicated that I should probably return to French 101.

“Non,” she said, “pas une femme verte.”

“Oui,” I said, “une femme verte.”

The other students were smiling. Some of them had seen Guardians of the Galaxy.

The teacher was now interested and went online. We watched a section of Guardians of the Galaxy in French.

The movie characters speaking in French added another dimension to this film.

I was glad that I was able to enlighten my French class on a recent film. I hope they had a proper appreciation of its commentary on life.

Eating Preferences

Here’s the beginning to a modern-day joke- a vegan, a paleo, and a gluten-free eater walk in to a restaurant…

We have a myriad number of eating preferences to deal with these days. Disclaimer: I try to eat low sugar and low salt. So I’m one of those people who try to politely decline sugary/salty foods and probably cause a few people to roll their eyes, usually behind my back.

The paleo and the gluten free can get along fairly well. For the most part they can enjoy a meal together. But their vegan and vegetarian friends might not be able to join in. It makes dinner parties difficult.

Vegetables.

Vegetables seem to be the answer to my hypothetical dinner dilemma. Everyone can enjoy vegetables. As long as they are not legumes. Some people don’t do legumes. And as long as they are cooked in vegetable oil, without cheese or any meat stock.

I heard a piece on the radio the other day on people raising micro-livestock – crickets and mealworms for human consumption. This is a thing. Apparently, they kill the insects by freezing them, as would happen in nature.

Cave people probably ate insects, so this should supposedly work for the paleo diet. There is no gluten in bugs, a score for the gluten free diet. But for vegetarians and vegans, I’m not so sure. Do bugs count?

The woman on the radio said that we would have to get over our food prejudices to enjoy insects. She suggested trying fried crickets in popcorn. But wait, some people don’t eat corn. So perhaps that’s out too.

I think the thing to do these days is to go back to the good, old-fashioned potluck dinners.

Someone can bring a vegan dish, someone else a gluten free something, the paleo person can bring a slab of meat, and the other person can bring the cricket popcorn. You can wash it all down with some kombucha or some gluten free beer.

I’ll come along too, as long as no one has added extra sugar into any of the dishes.

Aging

There is something that happens after age 45 or so. The symptoms increase bit by bit from that point on. We realize that we are aging.

For those of us of a certain age, in our youth, we never even considered what life would be like in the 21^st century. We would be old people by then. It wasn’t worth thinking about. And here we are.

Back then, we thought “old” was anything over 30. When we reached 30, we thought “old” was being over 45. And so it goes. I am fast approaching 60. “Old” is what? 75? 85? At some point, I have to face the facts.

There are very helpful sayings about aging. “50 is the new 40.” So I suppose 60 is therefore the new 50. Thankfully I am only approaching the “new 50”.

There is also the saying, “You are only as young as you feel”. This doesn’t really work either. My 96-year-old mother says she feels 70, but she is definitely 96.

The other day I looked at a young woman’s driver’s license. She was born in the year 2000 – that year that seemed so far, far in the future. Not only was she born then, but she is old enough to drive now.

The eyes start to go. We’ve become those old people who can’t read a pill box, even with our glasses on. At least there are no phone books to have to read any more.

The digestive system starts to slow down. We won’t dwell on the details, except to remember our parents going out to a rich dinner and coming home to bicarb of soda or Alka-Seltzer. What happened to the days of eating a pint of Haagan Dazs, no problem?

And we are those older folks who need decaffeinated beverages after about noon. I go into a coffee shop and ask for decaf. I double check by asking the young barista, “Are you sure it’s decaf? Because if it’s not, I’ll be thinking of you at 2:00am. And they won’t be happy thoughts.”

Losing weight at this time becomes more difficult also. When I was young, I could drop 5 pounds by eating only half a pint of Haagen-Dazs instead of a whole pint. Now I have been working on losing 5 pounds for an entire decade. And it’s still there.

We have become those who discuss our health. One of my brothers is not on any medications. His doctor offered to prescribe something for him, “so you will have something to talk about at parties.”

What has happened to us? Y2K has come and gone. 2030? That’s when we’ll really have to think about things. We’ll be old then.