What I'm Reading

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For mother-daughter book club, we are reading The River Between Us by Richard Peck. It is the story of the Civil War told from a girl’s point of view. I love the Civil War as a metaphor for families in conflict.

For my friends’ book club, we are reading Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (we had previously read March. Loved it!) For workplace book club, we’re reading What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn. All three of these have astute girl narrators, nice!

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I wrote this a few weeks ago and never posted. So now I must update. In my workplace book club, we are reading Hanhunt: The 12 Day-Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson. And for friends’ group, we are reading The Hunger Games (though I’ve seen the movie!) by Suzanne Collins.

I am not very far in either of these books. But I know that they are quests. I love novels about a hero’s journey, especially when the hero is a spunky heroine!

Valuing Beauty

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Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. – William Morris

I love this golden rule. And I love and value all things useful and beautiful.

I am not always good at decluttering. I think, Wow, this old broken hand mixer might come in handy. Not!

Sometimes in our disposable and materialistic culture — YES! America, I mean YOU! — we need and want a quick fix, but beauty takes time. (So does decluttering and throwing away the old hand mixer!)

Yesterday, my techie son helped me download about 9,000 photos from my iPhone to a hard drive. He handed me the hard drive and said, “Here’s your life.”

Among those photos I noticed this random photo from the Stony Point Retreat Center. I thought. Wow. Beautiful sun room. Useful. I want my home to be as full of light as this room. I want to find beauty in my home. I want my home (my life) to be of use. 

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Fleet Week

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I feel sorry for all the sailors dropping anchor in New York City’s harbor for Fleet Week this year. They’ve hardly had one sunny afternoon with all this rain.

But let’s face it, the sailors look for sunshine at the piano bars after dark in Manhattan during Fleet Week. That’s when the men and women in their crisp white uniforms laugh and smile and sing.

If you’re a New Yorker long enough, you know where to find the sailors. They flock to Marie’s Crisis and Don’t Tell Mama’s. As well they should. No more fun can be found on land nor sea than singing show tunes in New York’s cabaret scene after hours. I think my workplace chums are planning to go out and sing with the sailors tonite!

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Moving Is Better than Exercising

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I bike to work and do Pilates twice a week at lunchtime in my workplace. Sometimes I feel that I should have nobler fitness goals. This is why I love this blog post by Nick Crocker about Finding Exercise in Life’s Margins at Harvard Business Review.

Weaving exercise and intentional movement into the fabric of my life feels way more possible (though less sexy) than training for a triathlon.

I let our family gym membership lapse because I just wasn’t going. And I felt guilty — for not going, for the expense, for the lack of family pool time. I felt I was a fitness failure. But I wasn’t. Just because exercise is easy — like slowing down on my bike past the flower gardens in Riverside Park — doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.

You don’t have to hate exercise in order to get fit, feel good, or even lose weight. (The same goes for time at work — you don’t have to hate it.) Why not love what you do? I love playing tennis. Consistency is more important than breaking a personal record.

Personal brag: my son just won an athletic award this week. He was a triathlete — competing in three varsity sports as a 9th grader. But of one of the sports, track, he said he lacks passion. I say, Fine, drop it, if you like. Just keep moving.

Drop your gym membership too. Just stay active.

Weave fitness into every day. A little moving regularly is way better than a lot of fitness once in a while.

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A guy on the bus seated in front of me was carrying
this bundle of flowers. A rosy outlook only costs $3.99.

Workshop on WordPress

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One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be viewed as an expert. So I have been teaching a lot since January. Teaching is a great way to find out how much you know and how much you still need to learn.

I’ve been teaching middle school kids comedy and creative writing. Beth Buchanan (on the right) and I’ve taught communicators social media skills at the Religion Communicators Council and at the United Methodist Association of Communicators. (I love team teaching — much less stressful than solo teaching.)

Me and Beth Buchanan. She’s my social media guru. Because of Beth, I got on Facebook and it’s been all downhill from there.

My next (solo) teaching gig is at Word Camp at Baruch College in New York City from June 9 to 10. The title of my workshop is “Social Media and Social Movements.”

My session, one of 80, is hands-on — perfect for beginners, non-techie types, and people devoted to a cause. But there are a lot of workshops that are geared to people who love ideas like digital marketing, shared hosting, HTML5, and hyperlocal. (Attend this conference to find out what those terms mean. What’ve you got to lose? It’s $35.)

I love WordPress for being my landing page — a place to post my resolutions and then achieve them. And along the way, help others to become experts too.

Day of Rest

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I rode my bike very fast across the walkways in Central Park to get to my day of rest. (I note the irony.) I thought I’d take a short cut behind Belvedere Castle. But I hit Shakespeare’s Garden and endless steps. Shoot. I had to slow down. I had to bounce my bike up and down the steps.

I do not like being late. Yet I am frequently late. 

I got to 95th Street and Fifth Avenue but felt lost. I’d expected a church. Instead, I got a mansion, a beautiful retreat center, the House of the Redeemer, just off the park.

Our small group from Rutgers Church talked about times we’d felt refreshed. We reported that we’d felt relaxed during a storm with the lights out, while laid up in the hospital, on vacation in the Caribbean, or pausing for a moment when we ran near the ocean. I felt relaxed just talking about relaxation.

But I could not rest long. At lunch time, I had to bike again back across the park to meet the kids at the post office to renew and reapply for our passports. (I avoided the gardens.) I don’t know where we’re going, but I know we must be ready to go.

We will probably be late for wherever we are going. We will probably go the wrong way. We will probably hit steps when we least expect them. But I bet the place will be better than we had imagined, once we do arrive.

Riverside Park

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The girls did gymnastics.A butterfly stayed close by.Toes in the grass.

Last year on Mother’s Day I was disappointed — no presents, no dinner out. Ultimately I just wanted to be alone!

But this year I let go of expectations. My motto? Low expectations = high results. High expectations = low results. So when one of my BFFs suggested a picnic in Riverside Park, I jumped. We spent hours with our toes in the grass, talking about work, books, politics, kids, health, mothering — all the usual.

We fought off a bold squirrel who kept inching closer, stalking our Middle Eastern and Mexican food. We watched our girls turn cartwheels. A hawk flew low with a squirrel dangling from its talons.

Mother Nature put on a show this Mother’s Day. Who needs a bouquet of roses when you have friends, Riverside Park, ethnic food, and nature? My beautiful New York.

Hysteria

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I learned a lot from this movie in which many Victorian women have pleasure at their doctor’s hand. Here are my take-aways:

1. Female pleasure cures many ailments.

2. While many Victorian women sought help from doctors, it is likely that their husbands were not able, willing or interested in doing their duty. So, alas, women turned to Hugh Dancy.

3. The doctor needed a little relief as well. Hugh’s vulvic massage technique became a hardship, causing his cramped hand and overwork! Poor dear!

4. The doctor, while doing his duty, asked the female patient things like, “Is that all right?” Sweet! (The expressions on the women’s faces were priceless!)

5. Settlement Houses for the poor did (and do!) a lot of good. Especially when a headstrong woman like Charlotte, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, was in charge.

6. In running the Settlement House, Charlotte had a secret agenda — to empower women. Love that! (Also, she refused to put down socialism — the French would agree!)

As you probably know, Hysteria is about the invention of the vibrator. This is the first movie I can think of in which female pleasure is seen as a cure-all. But even in this movie, the women are seen as slightly silly or “hysterical” if they want or need sexual enjoyment. (For example, Charlotte is too busy tending to her flock at the Settlement House to need this middle-class luxury of sexual release! “She’s a tough case.”)

In most mainstream movies, it is a given that men must seek pleasure — usually from flawless, scantily clad woman wearing black lace. In this movie, there’s a bit of lace but it is found in a high collar or a long skirt. When the women are pleasured by the doctors, they are fully dressed, and their lower bodies are hidden behind a velvet curtain (which resembles a puppet theater).

This delicious movie opens in a week. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about another feel-good English movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in which senior citizens discover that they are still entitled to pleasure. First, senior citizens and now women! Such radical notions coming from England — all adults are entitled to pleasure! We’ve come a long way, baby.

The Cherry Orchard

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Chris was so proud of his translation of Chekhov’s play and was pleased when it was so well received (see my My Beautiful New York and the Cherry Orchard). He was thrilled to be nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival.

Tonite was the awards ceremony. He called home several hours ago (I didn’t go because the tickets were pricey). He said he’d doubt that he won because he’d been seated in the back, in the middle of a row.

He was wrong. He won. He called us and reported to us on speakerphone that in his acceptance speech he said, “My father told me to be brief and my mother told me to be grateful, so ‘Thank you.'” But then after walking away from the mic, he walked back to the mic and thanked Dianne Wiest several times. (She was his champion!)

He’s not the only one who’s proud. The whole family is. We’re waiting for him to come home. We just made signs and hung them on the front door. Chris worked very hard on this translation. He’s always worked hard. Though he has challenges, he does not let his challenges keep him from leading a creative, artistic and productive theatrical life. This is no small feat. And I’m glad that his work was recognized for the genius it is.

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Other Religions

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I love experiencing other people’s religions. There is something true in all of the worships.

Today I was at our dear friend’s Bat Mizvah. It was a bit long. So my mind wandered and I got thinking, the Jewish service is more kid-friendly than the Christian service.

Seems on most Sunday church worships, if your kid’s a little loud or cranky, people glare at you. But at today’s synagogue service, people smiled at the noisy baby. And nobody seemed to mind all the restless teens milling about, ostensibly heading to the bathroom, but probably just stretching their legs. People are nice. When I was a little lost in one of the books, some usher-type guy came over to instruct me, kindly, on the proper page number.

What I really loved? The 13-year old Bat Mizvah girl led the service. She delivered the message. She read a ton in Hebrew from the Torah. I think it’s beautiful when kids — especially young women — can be seen and heard in a religious service.

I like hearing what kids have to say. Like I like eavesdropping when I drive my girls anywhere. They usually talk about relationships. And say things like, “Do you like ____?”

I think the bible reading was about relationships today too. Bible stories are usually about relationships, rules, myths, and journeys. And churches and synagogues are usually beautiful spaces to listen to stories, especially when they are stories told by girls or women.