A Face For Hats

Despite the fact I only read it last year, on Tuesday I couldn’t remember the name of one of my very favorite books.

But, on Saturday, burying a hand trowel into earth made forgiving by Spring rains, I remembered being eight and being dubbed “Messy Bessie” by my brownie leader.

I forgot to buy an onion at the supermarket.

But every time I see a hat, or a lady wearing a hat, or even a hat-rack, I remember being twelve and standing in the millinery department at Macy’s. My sister and I were accompanied by my grandmother in what was an annual After-Christmas walking tour of Perimeter Mall. I call it a walking tour because, while occasionally an item was returned, nothing was ever actually purchased.

My sister and I donned hats. Both of us posed in front of mirrors.

“Laura!”, my grandmother called. “Laura, you don’t have a face for hats. You need a plain face to wear a hat.”

There was a slight pause as we looked at one another for an answer to the question neither of us would ask before she provided it.

“Stacye…”, it was a statement. “Now, Stacye has a face for hats.”

At work on Monday, I panicked at the idea of creating a whole new set of contracts, only to discover I’d already done it, weeks before.

Wednesday night, as I reclined against the cold ceramic part of the bathtub not filled with warm water, I remembered John O’Conner turning in his desk to ask in his most sardonic voice “Was that really necessary?”, before I even had a chance to lower the hand I’d raised, in vain, to prevent the burp from escaping my fourteen-year-old lips.

I sometimes struggle to remember which son was born on what date. Although in two different months, their birthdates are just two weeks apart. Which one was born in April and which in May?

And, just the other day, as I pinched dead blooms from pansies’ heads, the image of long, yellow hair swirling around my sister’s snarl flashed across my brain. Anger reddened her cheeks.

“I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world!”, she growled.

The toddler at my feet pressed her back against my legs as instinct tightened my hold on the baby in my lap. We all shrank.

They come in quiet moments, reflections of mis-steps, things I’d rather forget. They’re etched there, burned onto the surface, easy to retrieve. They come unbidden.

They are not who I am but they are, in part, what makes me, me.

A Face For Hats

Despite the fact I only read it last year, on Tuesday I couldn’t remember the name of one of my very favorite books.
But, on Saturday, burying a hand trowel into earth made forgiving by Spring rains, I remembered being eight and being dubbed “Messy Bessie” by my brownie leader.
I forgot to buy an onion at the supermarket.
But every time I see a hat, or a lady wearing a hat, or even a hat-rack, I remember being twelve and standing in the millinery department at Macy’s. My sister and I were accompanied by my grandmother in what was an annual After-Christmas walking tour of Perimeter Mall.  I call it a walking tour because, while occasionally an item was returned, nothing was ever actually purchased. 
My sister and I donned hats.  Both of us posed in front of mirrors.
“Laura!”, my grandmother called.  “Laura, you don’t have a face for hats.  You need a plain face to wear a hat.”
There was a slight pause as we looked at one another for an answer to the question neither of us would ask before she provided it.
“Stacye…”, it was a statement.  “Now, Stacye has a face for hats.”
At work on Monday, I panicked at the idea of creating a whole new set of contracts, only to discover I’d already done it, weeks before.
Wednesday night, as I reclined against the cold ceramic part of the bathtub not filled with warm water, I remembered John O’Conner turning in his desk to ask in his most sardonic voice “Was that really necessary?”, before I even had a chance to lower the hand I’d raised, in vain, to prevent the burp from escaping my fourteen-year-old lips.
I sometimes struggle to remember which son was born on what date. Although in two different months, their birthdates are just two weeks apart. Which one was born in April and which in May?
And, just the other day, as I pinched dead blooms from pansies’ heads, the image of long, yellow hair swirling around my sister’s snarl flashed across my brain.  Anger reddened her cheeks.
“I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world!”, she growled.
The toddler at my feet pressed her back against my legs as instinct tightened my hold on the baby in my lap.  We all shrank.
They come in quiet moments, reflections of mis-steps, things I’d rather forget.  They’re etched there, burned onto the surface, easy to retrieve.  They come unbidden.
They are not who I am but they are, in part, what makes me, me. 

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Net-Overworked

>

When it came to market, I was among the first in line for the IPOD.  I had one of the early models, the one that looked like a space-age tic-tac dispenser.  I later traded up to the Nano, which I rarely mentioned without thinking of Robin Williams, prompting the duplication pronunciation as in, Nano-Nano.  My I-touch came soon after my son received one.  Two years later, I’ve yet to meet a cooler gadget.  Mine goes with me everywhere. 
In all the time I’ve “podded”, I’d never downloaded a podcast, but that was before I ran out of treadmill diversions.  Music doesn’t do it for me.  Music provides a soundtrack.  Rather than taking me to another place, it helps me focus on the task at hand.  I don’t want to focus on the treadmill. 
Television was an option for a while.  Several years ago, I watched an entire season of American Idol on the treadmill.  Since then though, I’ve moved it.  I’ve taken over the Living Room, turning it into a Game/Workout room.  It’s not carpeted, inviting every little noise to travel through a stoned foyer, down a similarly bare hallway, to the door of my son’s bedroom, and that’s a problem.  Sometimes I use the treadmill before work.  Waking my son at 4:30 AM would only mean trouble for us both.
After hearing someone on television discuss their favorite, a podcast seemed a viable solution; not to mention a reason to spend another hour or so poking around in I-tunes, which is for me, similar to shoe shopping in that I could do it until I run out of money or someone I’m related to shouts “Mom!”.
It took a few minutes to get acclimated, but after perusing “Staff Picks”, and “New and Noteworthy”, I chose a handful of podcasts to audition.  I clicked on each icon, downloaded the latest entry, and it wasn’t long before I began to notice a pattern.  Many podcasts are supported by websites, and those websites encourage participation in a social network of like-minded listeners.
Really?
Later that day, a friend sent me a link to a site dealing with Kabbalah.  I know two things about Kabbalah.  I know followers wear a cool, little, red, string bracelet, and I know Madonna is one.
You might say I’m a student of religion.  I’ve studied and/or read the text of many religions, from Daoism, to Mormonism, to good old Southern Baptist theology.  I even read “Dianetics” and, afterward, sent an email requesting information on becoming a Christian Scientist.  I got no response.  I never decided if that was a good thing or a bad thing…
I visited the site my friend suggested, and submitted the information required for a fourteen-day, free trial.  Almost immediately came the email suggesting I join their social network for those new to Kabbalah.     
Really?
Open Salon, too, has become something of a social network.  The fact is, you can post all you want, but if you don’t take the time to read other’s posts, add them to your friend’s list, and message them when you add another post, your post probably won’t get read.
I joined Facebook.  We all did, didn’t we?  I mean, even if you didn’t join to catch up with old friends, or to cheat with old friends, or even just to lurk on old friends’ walls to live vicariously much as you did in high school, you joined to monitor your kid’s activity, right?
Facebook is THE social network of all social networks.  All my “friends” are there.  I put “friends” in parentheses because I have “friended” people I have never met or even conversed with, in any media, at any time, anywhere.  These are people my “real” friends have suggested I “friend”.  So, I did.
The fact is, I feel pressured.  When a “friend” suggests a “friend”, I feel pressure to friend.  When I post on Open Salon, I feel pressured to read.  I am 4 days into my free, fourteen-day trial of Kabbalah Online and I feel pressured to rush through the videos so I’ll have something to offer the “group”.   
Enough.
Are we this lonely?  Where are our friends?  Don’t we have anyone to talk to, to share air with? 
Or, are we talking everything to death?

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Writing Yoko

>

My mother insisted I write letters…mostly to my grandmothers…mostly to her mother.
Grandmother Eakes (We called her “Eakes” to distinguish her from Grandmother “Howell”, though the two were as different as night and day.) never answered.  Never.  I don’t mean to suggest she forgot.  I don’t mean to infer she was busy.  She just never answered.  Period.
I mentioned it to my mother once…the lack of response.  The meat of her answer escapes me now, some thirty-plus years later, but the flavor remains.  I taste it often.  It serves me well.  After all, there are many occasions in which when we are called upon to “rise above”.
Eventually, my mother presented me with a pen-pal.  The how’s and why’s faded over time, but I know her name.  It was Yoko, as in Ono, but no…Ono was not her name.  It is, however, the way I’ve thought of her since John Lennon died. One day she came to mind as she always had; she was Yoko Yakushima.  And, the next, she was Ono.  I don’t know…
I can’t stop thinking about her.
We exchanged letters for a couple of years.  Hers were always enthusiastic, filled with life, and all the drama a thirteen year old girl could muster.  I tried to keep up.  I pretended.  I crafted excited sentences and feigned filial frivolity I didn’t feel; until I didn’t. 
I stopped writing Yoko.  Her letter came, wrapped in onion skin that labeled it foreign even before seeing the postmark.  I read it, but I didn’t answer.  I felt guilty for as long as allowed between volleyball games, swim meets, and clandestine bumper pool lessons given by Bernard, a seventeen-year-old boy my parents hated that I would have followed to the ends of the earth. 
Even without response, Yoko continued writing for weeks; until she didn’t.
And now, I wonder where she is. 
I hope she’s okay.  I wish I’d kept writing. Are her children safe?  Did her house wash away?  Was hers one of the faces standing in bread lines?   I worry.
The tragedy in Japan compelled me to break my years-long boycott of television news.  I watched as death flowed onto the beach and kept on going.
Over and over and over, again, I watched houses join other buildings, unidentified debris, and the occasional vehicle, in a watery swath that wrapped its arms around everything in its path, until I couldn’t breathe. 
Yoko wasn’t the kind of girl that would have left home. 
Days passed.  I continued watching. 
An elderly man excused himself as he passed between two people standing in a line that wrapped around the grocery store he exited.  He walked down the line handing out loaves of bread from his ration.
Diane Sawyer, appropriately devoid of makeup, happened to be standing nearby.  In a voice filled with just the right amount of disbelief, she asked the man why he was giving away the food he’d waited in line for hours to receive. 
“I only need one.”, was his answer. 
And I wonder, “Would that ever happen here…here in the land of “me”?”
No matter her actual proximity to the destruction, nothing I have survived can come close to what Yoko has endured. That knowledge serves me every day; that and the image of that man, the one who shared his bread. 
Combined, they are grace.  In deference to their sacrifice my spirit quiets.  I am more giving.  I strive to share what they have taught me.
Today the earth shook again.
And still I pray.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Collateral Damage

>

I’ve never given much thought to birthdays.  They come, they go, I mark them in the usual way.  I pay little attention to the numbers that go with them.  One year in fact, after expressing surprised delight at all the celebratory gestures that shouldn’t, after this many birthdays have been much of a surprise at all, I realized with genuine amazement that I was a year younger than I had thought for the entire preceding year. 

This past August though, as my birthday drew near, I felt something nag at me. I studied myself in a mirror.  I searched every tiny crevice time has stamped upon my face, but the answer wasn’t there.  Long ago I realized there are good days and there are bad days.  On good days, the lines are there, I just don’t notice them. 
Was I worried about being attractive to men?  After all, as a late bloomer, I had a short window.  I tried to remember the last time I stopped a car, or just caused one to slow down.  It seemed it had been a while.  There was a time in my late thirties and early forties when I could still attract a man eligible for coverage under his parent’s insurance policy.  Those are generally the ones who stop.  After all, it’s easier to hang your head out the window and/or yell “Baby” over the din of Atlanta traffic if you stop the car first.
Then I remembered a day not so long ago when it rained, as per usual, during rush hour.  About half my drive is bumper-to-bumper, and on this particular day the two men in the front seat of the car to my left seemed determined to get my attention.  There’s a certain look in a man’s eyes when he’s hoping to catch yours.  These guys had probably switched insurance companies a number of times.  They may have even added dependents.  That’s okay.  They still had eyes.  It felt good.  Some days, I’ve still got it.
I am bothered by a sudden sense of the finite, the certainty that you’re over halfway through, the knowledge that there’s less left than you’ve already lived.  It’s as though one day you think, as you have for the preceding decades, “I’ll get to it.”, and the next you wistfully wish you had. 
And then it hit me.  It wasn’t about me.  It’s about them, the people who pepper my life; the ones who listen, the ones who’ve been there, the ones who know me and love me anyway.  Because, I’m not the only one getting older. 
One of my closest friends is eighty-six.  She still works three days a week and puts dinner on the table for her husband every night at seven PM;  not six, not seven-thirty, always seven PM.  Four times a year, she drives her 1996 Toyota Corolla over 200 miles, alone, to see her daughter in Tennessee.  She is blessed with a sharp mind, a keen wit, and a nose for good perfume.  But…realistically..for how long?
Another friend is sixty-five.  We joked, for years, that she was old enough to be my mother.  She loves to eat, she loves to read, and she loves her grandchildren.  Despite medication, her blood pressure often peaks to stroke level, and a valve in her heart isn’t working.  She should have surgery but she already owes the cardiologist money she’ll never be able to pay.  Sometimes she doesn’t hear the ring on her new smartphone which she describes as “good for everything but making telephone calls”.  When she doesn’t answer, my first instinct is to joke with her about it.  But what if it isn’t a joke?  What if she doesn’t answer because she can’t and never will?  I don’t leave a message.  I call back later. 
I resent having to think about these things.  It’s one thing to face my eventual demise.  I can put that away.  When it pops to the surface I can push it down with a sense of purpose.  After all, I’m healthy.  I’m active.  I’m doing the things I can to prevent the outcomes I dread.
But, I can’t do that with the others.  The folds around my friend’s seawater-green eyes remind me.  The sound of exertion as she painfully plods towards the entrance to the grocery store worries me.  The certainty that one day they won’t be there saddens me. 
So I do the only thing I can do. 
I love them.
Now.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>They’re Still Dead

>

I never met Neibi Brito.  And, despite passing it almost daily, I never saw her children playing in the yard of the house in which they lived.  I would have noticed.  It was a great house, cottage-like and quaint, a small-scale Cape Cod.  Someone painted the exterior powder blue.  Had I been consulted, powder blue would not have been among my first choices but, accented by white trim, it worked.
My subdivision sits just a block off the main thoroughfare which acts as a sort of suburban life-line.  It’s the way I get to the market.  It takes me to my son’s school.  If I follow it one way, it takes me downtown.  The other way takes me to the highway and, from there, I can go anywhere.  My house sits on one side of this road and what’s left of Neibi Brito’s powder blue cottage sits, smoldering, on the other.
On Thursday evening, my friend’s teenage daughter reported seeing Neibi running around her front yard.  She was screaming and waving her hands.  One of her neighbors later explained she was screaming “My babies!”. 
A construction worker, drawn by the commotion, stopped and went into action unloading a ladder from the back of his truck.  At times like these, communication barriers are of no consequence.  Desperation is a universal language.
Seeing the construction worker leaning his ladder against the side of the house, two nineteen-year-old neighbors offered their assistance.  By now, flames licked the outer edges of the front window frame, and black smoke billowed towards a street filling with onlookers and distracted rush hour motorists. 
The men worked as a team to remove three children from a second story bedroom, through a window, down the ladder, to the ground where it was confirmed that three-year-old Ivan Guevara had died.  His four-year-old brother, Isaac Guevara, and eighteen-month-old sister, Stacy Brito, immediately began receiving treatment from paramedics who had arrived on the scene minutes before.  They arrived alongside firemen, whose boots flattened the garden hose Ivan Gonzalez had grabbed in hopes of squelching the flames without the assistance of emergency personnel.  The last thing Ivan Gonzalez wanted to see was men wearing boots and badges.
As the children were loaded into waiting ambulances, Ivan stood attentive, just outside the vehicle’s gaping back end.  The right side of his face oozed anew as soon as he removed the soiled rag with which he dabbed at it.  He was missing an eyebrow.  He relayed, to the paramedics, his intention to follow the ambulance to the hospital.  It was a request made by most fathers; fathers who made awkward attempts at smoothing hair while crooning their children safely inside the emergency room. 
Ivan did neither. 
Ivan never showed up.
Ivan wasn’t their father.
Ivan was their mother’s boyfriend.
Twenty-six-year-old Ivan Gonzalez was a chemist,
a chemist who cooked methamphetamines,
a chemist who cooked methamphetamines which were later sold by his girlfriend, their mother, twenty-two-year-old Neibi Brito.
And that explains a lot.
That explains the fire.
That explains the $193,000.00 stashed between two slabs of drywall which explains how, despite appearing unemployed, they paid rent for a home in an area that demands anywhere between $1, 200.00 and $700,000.00 per month.
That explains what one neighbor dubbed “unusual activity” at their home.
Tragic as it is, that even explains the “signs of child cruelty” reported in the local newspaper.
What it doesn’t explain is the question the rest of us keep asking, “How could THAT have happened HERE, in THIS neighborhood?”
The question is asked in shock at the realization that our triple digit incomes don’t provide immunity from a “certain element”, which is a good Southern girl’s way of describing illegal immigrants, criminals, drug dealers, child abusers, or any other unsavory individual, or group of individuals, from which we hope to protect ourselves by ensconcing our families inside gated communities, which offer the privilege of being able to touch the house next to yours by simply extending an arm from an upper level window.
Anyone who looked at Neibi Brito, particularly as she wheeled her 2011 Cadillac into her rented driveway, knew she didn’t belong.  She was twenty-two.  She had three children under the age of five.  She lived with a man who was not her children’s father, and neither of them left the house everyday at the same time and returned at a different same time.  There was no visible means of support.     
I’m not here to point fingers.  There’s plenty of blame to go around; from the real estate agent, to the car dealer, to the neighbor so eager to share her suspicions of “unusual activity” on the 6:00 news.  Ivan Gonzalez had been arrested just days before as an accessory to a child stabbing case.  We could go there.  But we won’t.
Three children died, and it doesn’t matter whose fault it was.  They’re still dead.  What matters is that next time something doesn’t fit, we ask the questions, we be the “buttinsky”,  we care. 
Suppose a neighbor had shown up on Neibi Brito’s doorstep on moving day?  Suppose she carried a basket of muffins, and when Neibi answered the bell, she handed her the muffins and took time to speak to each of the three children pulling at Neibi’s legs?  What if she came back, with her daughter in tow, the next day?  What if she offered to take the children for a walk, while Neibi had some much needed alone time?
Would a drug dealer have set up a meth lab in Gladys Kravitz’s neighborhood?
Sometimes caring really is a matter of life and death.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Valentine Red

>

It seems as though Valentine’s Day always fell on weekdays when I was a kid.  It feels that way because I have this image.  It’s an image of my father, work-weary and possibly a little buzzed, leaning forward in order to catch the screen door with one mud-encrusted workboot.  The lean caused the shopping bags dangling from his huge Dad-hands to swing, leaving flashes of red, and white, and chocolate in their wake. I fight the urge to clasp my hands in anticipation…
Mother’s box came first, and it was huge.  Though he may have chosen pink on occasion, my memories are of red, bright red, deep red, heart red, love red.  And white; white lace, the scratchy kind, bunched along the border.  The largest of these heart-shaped, satin-wrapped boxes featured silk flowers in the center, roses, of course.  As my mother tore through the plastic on the outside of this candy-stuffed work of art, my sisters and I leaned forward slightly, in anticipation of a chocolate waft. 
She never ate one right away.  There was no spontaneity to the way my mother chose chocolates.  Should you have happened upon the still beautiful box even a day or two later, you would have found most of the candies pinched.  She always pinched before she ate.  She was picky that way.  And, I couldn’t help but think that at least part of her motivation lie in making her candy less palatable to those of us with smaller hearts, emptied sooner.
In elementary school we made valentine boxes.  At first, we crafted as a class.  We bent construction paper, and scrunched doilies, and shot arrows through our hearts with red and pink crayons.  Later, left to our own devices, the boxes became more ornate or, maybe, just more shiny.  Either way, they were impressive…and, to a girl who feared her valentines would be few, somewhat menacing.  As I slid my box between two others whose owners’ low expectations directed them to end of the table furthest from those expecting the most traffic, I began to devise ways to remove it with as little fanfare as possible. 
There was always a party during which someone else’s mother served cookies or cupcakes.  We drank red juice and peeled red foil from thick chocolate hearts.
At the end of the day, I’d jump from the bus and run up the driveway, through the door and up the stairs to the first bedroom on the left.  Closing the door, I’d dump the contents of my now disheveled valentine box onto the folds of my unmade bed.  My favorites were the ones with red lollipops threaded through the message.  They had white hearts painted on them and tasted just like Luden’s cough drops. 
In high school, Valentine’s Day was marked by the Band Department’s carnation sale.  In what proved to be a stroke of marketing genius, strategically placed posters throughout the school suggested that carnations weren’t just for “couples” anymore. Carnations could also be purchased for friends, and at two-for-a-dollar they were a steal.  The Popularity Derby was on!    
In high school, Valentine’s Day always seemed to fall on a Monday.  It feels this way because I have vivid memories of Sundays marred by an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment yet to be experienced, and dread.  Or, maybe it was just dread, and the embarrassment is embellishment supplied by experience. 
Flowers were distributed during homeroom when two or three flute players interrupted morning announcements with a tentative knock on the institutional door.  I know they were flute players because flute players didn’t look like anyone else in the band.  Flute players were exclusively female and cloned apparently, as all were thin, and wore their wheat-colored, stick-straight, long hair parted in the middle so that, at times, it fell forward in cascades, hiding, for just a moment, their carefully cultivated poetically pained expressions. 
They flitted about the room, dropping carnations on desk corners, often making return trips to the same two or three desks, over and over, again.  White carnations were sent by friends.  A pink carnation meant someone wanted “to know you better”.  Red carnations were the real prize, and usually only appeared on the aforementioned two or three desks.  Occasionally a boy received a red carnation causing the boys with empty desks to shoot him glances filled with envy later hoisted on pointed barbs.
As it does for so many things, age takes the guesswork out of Valentine’s Day.  It isn’t about wondering anymore.  You either have a Valentine or you don’t.  If you have a Valentine you get a valentine.  If you don’t, you don’t.  For someone who used to retrieve her box from the other end of the table with as little fanfare as possible, it’s a better plan.
Roses are a mainstay.  I’ve received them singly and in bunches.  They’ve been wrapped in paper, shipped in boxes, and presented in vases.  I enjoy them presented, preferably at the office.  After all, it’s not about the flowers; it’s what they represent.  Whoever came up with the idea of shipping in boxes fails to understand the power of presentation.
And, while I like roses, I would trade every one, even the salmon-colored ones and the yellow ones with red-tinged edges, for a single tulip.  A red tulip. 
Today I woke to winter sunlight filtered through empty branches swaying in winds that carry the hope of spring.  In front of the window sits a table and on the table a vase filled with a fountain of red tulips.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>The Huff, The Peas, and the Egghead

>

Like many before me, I write from angst.  I haven’t had much lately…
Today, though, I feel need.  It’s a nice place from which to write.  I much prefer it to sitting in front of a monitor willing an idea to form in between the occasional guilty click on my facebook page, which mocks me from its shrunken state on the bottom of the screen.
I’ve got a few things stuck in my craw…
Arianna Huffington sold out.  Despite the rather dismal projections offered by many who know much more than I about these things, I understand the motivation from a business point of view.  But I didn’t see Arianna as a business.  I saw Arianna as a pioneer, sort of a new age Annie Oakley with a sexy foreign accent.  And, I ask you, would Annie Oakley have sold her gun?  Even if it meant she could grow her audience?  What if more people took her seriously?  Would she have sold it then?  I don’t think so.
For me, Arianna represented “The Total Package”.  She is smart, beautiful, savvy, brave, maternal, and charming.  She gave the appearance of having “It All”.  Recently, I listened to an interview in which she was asked why she wasn’t “seeing” anyone.  (The fact that this is considered a pertinent question in 2011 is something that could get stuck in my craw if I let it.  For now, I’ve decided not to let it.)  Paraphrased, her answer was that she just hadn’t found anyone who was worth it.  She was busy.  She loved her life.  She was a self-fulfilling female.  I suppose she still is…in a way.
Did I mention I actually like the “Black Eyed Peas”?  I do.  They opened for “No Doubt” about a million years ago in a lofty, former Baptist tabernacle-cum-tiny concert hall now called simply, “The Tabernacle”.  My date hated them.  I suffered them in anticipation of things to come.  But, even so, I could see their appeal. 
Will. I. Am., despite obvious identity issues inherent in the chosen spelling of his given name and the unfortunate choice of headgear, is a brilliant musician and businessman,   which is precisely why Intel recently named him “Director of Creative Innovation”.
Let’s agree they were over-ambitious.  And, given that, and Mr. .Am’s recent recognition, there was no room for mistakes.  If your desire, Will. I. Am., is to be known to the world as a creative genius, then you’d better think before you take on a job of this magnitude.  Before you decide to create a light-show the size of a football field, teeming with human bodies, you should be absolutely sure the mikes will work.  It’s a small thing, but in the end when we’re watching, and Fergie is singing, only we can’t hear it because her mike is going in and out, over and over, that small thing becomes huge. 
As she lay bleeding, the vultures wheeled.  If I had a dime for every time I’ve read a headline that promised tantalizing details of the time Fergie wet her pants, I could buy a cup of coffee…and a biscotti.  Okay, so Fergie wet her pants.  Video evidence is unequivocal.  And, so what?  She didn’t wet her pants at Cowboys Stadium, but she did do a bitchin’ Axl Rose impression. 
Why is it that, once the bleeding starts, that’s all we know?  We smell the blood, and nothing else matters.  Why do we work so hard to bring down those we worked so hard to elevate?  What is wrong with this picture?  Are we really that bored…jealous…unhappy…small?  Well, I guess we are.
Sometimes I only read the headlines; case in point, the recent brouhaha over abortion rights. 
When I was in college, our English teacher gave us a choice of essay subjects.  We could write about abortion, or we could write our own “Bill of Rights”.  Declaring abortion rights a dead issue since it’s particulars seemed to have been bandied about since the time of my birth, I chose to construct a “Bill of Rights”.  The paper is one of few I socked away for future generations.  In it, I addressed the quandary that is dishwashing and made what proved to be a convincing case.  After all these years the A+, written in red ink, shines bright atop the cover page. 
And yet, here we are some thirty years hence, and my inbox is deluged with emails from “Move-On” and “NARAL”, imploring me to take action against Republicans who, they insist, would rather a woman die than end an unwanted pregnancy.
Oh, how I have waffled. 
On the one hand, I sincerely believe that a woman who doesn’t wish to be a mother should not be.  On the other hand, I have trouble arguing the point that a human is not conceived at conception.  I know it’s just a bunch of cells.  But, it’s THE bunch of cells.  It’s the only bunch of cells capable of human life.  Doesn’t that, in and of itself, constitute life?
And, on the other hand, why are we legislating human anatomy and physiology?
I don’t have answers, but I am fascinated that we are still talking about it.  And, by the way, whatever happened to those cool foil suits our professors said we’d all be wearing by now?  Nobody talks about THAT anymore…
I can’t decide if it’s cool or scary.  Facebook may have incited a war.  The headline reads “Inspired by Tunisia, Egyptians Use Facebook to Set-up Protest”, and we all know what happened next.
According to “The Social Network”, Facebook is controlled by a 20-something, egg-headed cuckold.  I have children older than he, with much more life-experience, and still, I wouldn’t be comfortable following them “as to war”. 
Once again, I find myself torn.  I’m awestruck by the way Facebook shrinks borders.  My friend’s list, alone, covers several continents.  I socialize with people living in other countries every single day.  I’m not sure my mother ever met someone from another continent, and if she did, I’m sure they didn’t converse daily.  Facebook has improved my life in many ways.  I’m more intelligent.  I’ve learned things from people I never knew I wanted to know.  I’m more worldly.  I ask questions of my international friends.  From them, I’ve learned more about Ireland and South Africa than I ever learned in Social Studies class.   I’ve broadened my horizons.  I’ve found new music, read new authors, and picked up health tips.  Through Facebook, I’ve cultivated my interest in photography and found a new audience for my blogs.
And, I waste lots of time.  There’s just no two ways about it.  At least half the time I spend on Facebook is empty, mindless, and most important, time I should be spending looking at, or into, someone else’s face. 
Like it or not, though, I believe Facebook, or something like it, to be a permanent part of our culture.  Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to learn how to maximize the positive parts of the experience and still have plenty of face-time with our favorite faces.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Not Watching

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I’ve always meant to watch “The Biggest Loser”.  Over all the seasons it’s been on television, I may have seen one and one-half episodes.  Many of my friends find the program inspiring and motivating, and it’s not that I don’t like it.  It’s just that I had to choose between that and writing.  And, writing won.
I’m not sure I’ve ever watched an entire episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” even though I’m a sucker for medical dramas and found myself falling for Kate Walsh, in a big way, while watching her in stilettos, pressing the accelerator in a Cadillac commercial.  The ad came on during football time-outs.  I always make time for college football.  But it’s difficult to fit in other television programs, and still find time to write a blog post that must then be submitted to three different websites.
I did watch the first installment of “Downton Abbey”.  I tend to forget how much I enjoy Masterpiece Theatre.  Of course, I had to reschedule my manicure.  I wonder if I can fit that in while watching “The Biggest Loser”? 
I have, of late, listened to interviews with Jon Stewart that convinced me I am truly missing out by not being able to stay awake past 10 pm.  I’ve considered recording the show, but that would engender watching and when would I?  I’m committed to posting one photograph every day for a year.  And I have to actually take a photograph first.
My son and I love tennis.  John Isner’s marathon performance at Wimbledon last year placed him atop my son’s list of favorite players.  I like Rafael Nadal for obvious reasons.  It doesn’t hurt that he’s a great tennis player, too.  The Australian Open opened on Monday.  So far, we haven’t watched a set, but they’re still in the early rounds.  The important matches will be played next week, and I’ll watch some of those when I’m not watching my son play basketball or trying to fit in an extra thirty minutes on the treadmill or catching up on emails I should have been answering when I was watching Denis Leary’s latest stand up routine, which I recorded last week while I was completing my profile on yet another blogging website.  This one is aimed at recipe hounds.
I’ve watched American Idol with my children since the very first season.  I took my son to the live show the year that the pudgy, gray-haired guy won when everyone knew Daughtry should have won. We have never, and will never, do that again. 
I was very excited to hear that Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez are joining Randy Jackson at the judge’s table.  While not attractive in the traditional sense, Steven Tyler is one of those men who grew into his unattractiveness.  Kind of like a Shar Pei puppy, he’s so ugly he’s cute.  And, of course, he’s got mad skills….
Jennifer Lopez, on the other hand, is like Paula Abdul 2.0.  She’s beautiful, she’s sweet, she’s talented, she’s experienced…she’s younger, she’s relevant, she’s someone the contestants’ Moms don’t have to explain.
We don’t usually bother with the first few weeks.  I get no kicks out of sharps and flats, and the segments appear contrived.  Last year, they allowed a contestant who is old enough to be my father to try out.  I couldn’t tell you what he sang or even if he was on key.  All I could think was “What is he doing here?  Whatever happened to the age limit?  Why aren’t they following the rules?”  Of course, next day “Pants on the Ground” was an internet sensation.  That guy got his fifteen minutes of fame…and yours…and mine…
I had hoped to catch the premier performance of Tyler and Lopez, but last week’s record snowfall left a pile of white stuff on my desk…paper, lots and lots of paper, paper that must be looked at.  Some of it actually requires reading.  All of it requires shuffling.  I worked late that night…
I’ve taken steps to simply my life.  I’ve ended time-stealing toxic relationships, I’ve downloaded scheduling software.  I meditate.  I sacrifice.  I sift through the unimportant in the interest of “being there”.  And still, there just isn’t enough time in the day to catch up with “Brothers and Sisters”.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The seasons of our lives are fleeting.  The day will come when I’ll have more than enough time and I’ll remember my season of chaos as some of the best years of my life.  For now, I’ll take solace in the knowledge that as long as I have a DVR, there’s a chance I’ll get to see an episode of “Glee”.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>The Forecast: Rain

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It rained today.  As often happens, the storm coincided with rush hour.  A colleague wished me luck as I left the office since it’s a well known fact that people in Atlanta don’t know how to drive in rain, or snow, or ice, or at night, or any time except daytime as long as the sun is bright and traffic light. 
Other than the obvious road hazards, I don’t mind rain.  I’m an avid gardener, and even though I am not actively gardening, I think of water soaking the ground and I know we’re putting in reserves for next summer, when all the hand-wringing in the world won’t make it rain.
I’m not crazy about the old adage “raining cats and dogs”.  I’m a visual person and this is not a pretty picture.  It doesn’t make sense. Who decided domesticated pets best describe heavy rainfall?  Wouldn’t it be more descriptive to evoke elephants and hippos?  Couldn’t we could just say, “Wow!  It sure is raining.”?
I remember the first time I heard “It’s Raining Men”.  I loved it immediately.  It is a big song, sung by big women, with big voices and even bigger personalities.  The song skidded in on the last lap of the disco era and hearing it today reminds me why we all loved disco; even those of us who won’t admit it.
On Monday, it rained birds in Arkansas.  On Tuesday, it rained birds in Louisiana, and today Sweden reported the same.  Some scientists are explaining the deaths by speculating that large flocks, alarmed by New Year’s Eve fireworks, might have flown into each other.     
Call me cynical, but I don’t think so.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net