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Gotta Jetta!

Please excuse the gushy nature of this post, as I generally loathe gushing. Especially when it comes to objects. Especially when those objects come with a hefty price tag. And especially when they carry an eco-friendly badge that, when scrutinized, reveals a bit of a green-washed smirk.

But… it’s here. Our 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI (black exterior with black leather interior, touchscreen radio, seat warmers, alloy wheels, turbocharged clean diesel engine that qualifies for a $1300 alternative fuel tax credit) has come home. And it is the most wonderful, amazing, stupefying car ever.

What would Jesus drive? If the answer isn’t a 2010 Jetta TDI, I don’t know what is.

Did I mention that it’s manual transmission? How daring am I, buying a car that I can’t even drive? In preparation for the Jetta’s homecoming, Mr. P has been giving me stick-shift driving lessons on his Honda Civic. Miles of confusion, frustration, and some yelling (reminiscent of when he taught me how to ski, only no crashes) and finally I can drive around the neighborhood without stalling and dissolving into whimpers. Still, I have yet to actually drive the Jetta because its gearshift is different from the Civic’s (6 gears instead of 5), so Mr. P will have to give me more lessons on the Jetta. Which, honestly, he doesn’t seem eager to do. I think he has designs on my car.

It’s ironic that the Jetta’s homecoming falls on the same day that I lost one hour of my life during a disastrous morning commute when I spent literally 40 minutes in a tunnel on a disabled train. (I know I’m prone to exaggerating train delays, but this time, I’m being truthful). After the train was pushed into Porter Square station by another train, I squeezed onto the packed platform, and watched three jammed-full trains roll past. It was a nightmare. I used yogic breathing to refrain from punching someone.

So yes, I’m aware that my excitement over my shiny new car isn’t the most eco-conscious or civic-minded sentiment. But after a decade of being at the mercy of the MBTA, the thought of commuting with this beauty, with its reassuring purr and heated seats, feels like salvation.

And there it sits, gleaming in the driveway, promising freedom, independence, and an escape from the whims of public transit.

jettatdi

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By Meredith – October 28, 2009

Harvard’s Breakfast is Getting Cold

Harvard University became a minor laughingstock last spring when they announced that, due to budget cuts resulting from a precipitous fall in endowment, they no longer had the financial resources to provide hot breakfasts for students. A recent New York Times article entitled “Leaner Times at Harvard: No Cookies” (here) highlighted Harvard’s draconian budget cuts, like no more cookies at faculty meetings and no more free warm-up suits for athletes. But it’s the loss of hot breakfasts that has become the symbol of Ivy League deprivation. Says the student body president, “Students generally feel that if you come to Harvard, for what you’re paying, you should probably have the right to a hot breakfast. They want to preserve the things that are at Harvard that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Actually, a hot breakfast isn’t always a right. I always feel that if I go to a $220/night Hyatt hotel, for what I’m paying, I have the right to a hot breakfast, but I have to pony up another $19.99 to hit the buffet the next morning. Yet the $79/night Holiday Express offers a free, hot, all-you-can-eat breakfast. Similarly, I went to UMass Amherst (the collegian equivalent of the Holiday Inn Express) and we had hot breakfasts galore! Everything was hot, even the yogurt. So, it seems that the right to a hot breakfast is, inexplicably, inversely correlated with wealth.

Harvard student athletes who practice in early-morning are particularly upset (here). One swimmer complained that the breakfast changes were especially “limiting to vegetarians, who will have to rely on hard boiled eggs and cheese as their only sources of protein.” Exactly what were the vegetarians eating for breakfast protein before the cuts? Baked beans and steaming hot tofu? Another swimmer speculated that the lack of hot breakfast “may negatively affect Harvard’s ability to recruit student athletes.” Hear that, Harvard? Penny wise, pound foolish. Harvard may lose all its athletic talent to Yale! (I hear that at Yale, every morning after practice, the swim team spit-roasts a poor person.)

According to Harvard, the elimination of hot breakfast will save the University $900,000, primarily through the cost of labor (here). So there’s about a dozen former dining service employees scrambling to find new jobs instead of scrambling eggs for Robert Joseph Harrington Watson III’s omelet. Finally, some actual pity is welling in my heart.

But… isn’t it sort of comforting to know that the recession is affecting all echelons of society? From the family of 5 living in a hotel room because Dad lost his factory job and fell behind in the mortgage, to retirees forced back into the workforce by decimated net worth, to the upper-class under-privileged richies at Harvard hunkering down over bowls of Cheerios, we’re all in this together!

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By Meredith – October 27, 2009

In Case of Loss, Please Return to: Margaret Atwood

I don’t know what possessed me to buy a $25 ticket to see Margaret Atwood read from her new book Year of the Flood at 7pm on a Sunday night. On Sunday nights, I like to be a homebody: enjoy a semi-elaborate meal with Mr. P, watch football or a movie, tie up any loose household ends, and prepare myself for the work week ahead, much like a yogi prepares for asana by sitting still and meditating.

But there I was, in Harvard Square at 6:15 , standing in a line for an optimal seat to see the literary legend Margaret Atwood. “What’s going on?” one college dude asked his friend as they walked past the line outside of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist church. “Probably a battle of the bands,” the other dude said, which made me snicker, because half of the line had their noses buried in books and the other half awkwardly fiddled, with their tickets, their phones, themselves. A group of meek-looking co-eds in front of me were talking about mysterious laundry stains. “Maybe it’s my deodorant,” the stained girl said, the urban symphony hushing slightly right before her words shrilly rang out. The conversation stalled and one of the girls took out her phone and announced “I’m going to Tweet.”

So yeah, Margaret Atwood. I went through an intense Atwood phase circa high school, fueled by The Handmaid’s Tale (my bff Amy and I were sooo into dystopian fiction) and Cat’s Eye, which I read at least 20 times because I related deeply to the narrator, an artist who reflects on her childhood and the “mean girls” who tormented her. None of her subsequent works have sparked similar devotion, although The Blind Assassin was certainly masterful, and I find her forays into science fiction to be not that horrible.

I was surprised that the First Parish church was far from full, perhaps because of the hefty $25 ticket price (copies of the book were not included; proceeds go to the environment). Atwood came out to affectionate applause from the roughly 66% female crowd. Some items of interest from Atwood’s talk and the Q&A:

  • Atwood lived in Cambridge for 4 years while doing her doctorate at Harvard (which she never finished). She claims that many of the buildings in her dystopias are inspired by Cambridge architecture, a comment that bewildered but pleased the crowd.
  • In Year of the Flood, one of the characters is holed up in a spa during an environmental catastrophe. Said Atwood, “I think a spa would be a good place to survive a pandemic, because there’s lots of towels, and the facial products are edible.”
  • I believe that Year of the Flood is the first book I’ve ever heard of with a soundtrack. The book contains hymns sung by a religious sect, and a friend of Atwood’s recorded a CD of these hymns. Atwood played us 3 of the hymns, which were folksy C&W gospel (“not all of them are this peppy”), and she even danced around.
  • Atwood read a few excepts in a soothing, warbly voice. Later, she sang us another hymn. She can barely carry a tune (“I know, I should stick to my day job.”)
  • On why she often writes from the point of view of the underdog: “I always preferred Batman to Superman, because Superman was cheating. He was from another planet. Spiderman had psychological problems, and he had a girlfriend. I didn’t like that.”
  • Atwood is a Trekkie. Who would’ve thought? She also took her mother to see Star Wars “because I knew there would be no S-E-X in it.”

As much as I enjoyed the reading, I declined to buy a copy of Year of the Flood, simply because I’m trying to curtail my purchases of hardback books. I’ll get it from the library. So at the end of the talk, when everyone lined up to get their Margaret Atwood collections signed (one man had a stack of 10 books), I only had my trusty moleskin notebook. But I paid $25 like everyone else, so I wanted my Atwood signature! Gathering my nerve, I handed her my notebook, opened to the inside cover page. To my horror, Atwood began flipping through my notebook, and I hastily motioned for her to sign the inside cover under the “In case of loss” text. She chuckled — yes, I made Margaret Atwood chuckle — and obliged.

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Margaret Atwood, First Parish UU, Cambridge, MA

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By Meredith – October 25, 2009

Poems for Strangers who I Know

This morning I sifted through a stack of old, abandoned notebooks in which I used to scribble and found a series of vers libre poems filed under the organizing principle “Poems for Strangers who I Know.” I probably wrote them 5-6 years ago and I’m 99% sure that they’ve never seen the light of day (and there’s a probably a reason for that, but whatever. We tend to lose our shame as we age.)

Man on Fort Point Channel Bridge

You walk faster than me, and you never carry an umbrella.
You are bothered by a little rain, tiny drops
Flecked into your matted gray hair,
Targeting your eyes.
But when it pours, you relax your neck, and streams
Run down your face onto the floppy collar
Secured around your neck.

Woman with Sunglasses on the Red Line

You always have a seat in the morning. You
wear a variety of sunglasses with darkened frames.
You sit with precision and boredom, as if daring
the train to crash.

Man Behind the Counter at Central Convenience

You punctuate every sentence with the word “Boss.”
“Good morning, Boss.” “Yes, Boss. “Thank you, Boss.”
I think you are Indian.
You look happy as hell to be selling me chocolate.

Woman with the Leather American Flag Jacket

You work in the copy shop downstairs. You sit outside
next to the doorway of the fire stairs, with
a steaming cup of coffee and smoldering cigarette,
your Leather American Flag Jacket loose
on your boxy frame. You’re a stranger who I know
who I want to know better.

Man at the Harvard Coop Bookstore

You sit in an arm chair, your girth folded
over a book. You read. You turn pages
gently. All the world’s a library,
and all men and women merely commas.

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By Meredith – October 23, 2009

Fed Up

About a month ago, the naked and bound body of a 51-year old part-time census worker in rural Kentucky was found hanging from a tree in a cemetery with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest in magic marker (here). This story shocked me, which is saying something, because nothing shocks me anymore. Like, I was totally unfazed by the whole Balloon Boy saga, in which an idiotic fame-seeking hick perpetuated an ill-conceived media hoax that unraveled due to Balloon Boy himself buckling under Larry King’s gentle probing. Surprised by Balloon Boy? Hell, I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen with clockwork regularity.

But I am haunted by this dead census worker, killed and hung naked from a tree. It suggests that Red State discontent — stewed under a fire of conservative media, tea parties, and townhall meetings —  is bubbling over into murderous rage. It signifies a muddled, schizophrenic embodiment of “patriotism” that I frankly find terrifying. It harkens lynching. What next, will postal workers be run out of town by venomous mobs? Will burning crosses appear on the front lawns of meter maids?

The FBI is investigating whether this census worker was a victim of anti-government sentiment. Well, it’s either that, or, um… oh heck. I can’t think of a goddamn reason, not even a snarky jokey reason, why someone would hang a census worker and scrawl “fed” on his corpse except for anti-government sentiment coupled with mental derangement, paranoia, and old-fashioned violent tendencies.

In Massachusetts, we don’t have this mentality of lowly government workers being tentacles of the beastly leviathan that is the Federal government. Rather, we see lowly government workers as former D students who cannot be entrusted to consistently exercise good judgment, intellect, or creativity and thus must be restrained by a sprawling bureaucracy that functions quite like a straight-jacket.

But Kentucky, we understand that you’re different. You don’t like the Federal government, with all their fancy “questions” and “statistics.” You don’t want the Federal government sticking their noses into your household to see how many people are there, and how old they are, and if they are male or female, because that’s an invasion of your privacy. But do you have to go and kill the census workers? Can’t you just pretend not to be home, like the rest of us?

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By Meredith – October 22, 2009

Take this Job and…

I’ve been dropping hints around it for a few months, but it’s official: Today I accepted a full-time job as a documentation manager for a software company that develops literacy software. Yea for career advancement, personal fulfillment, groovy co-workers, and a brand new Volkswagen Jetta for my suburban commute. (Boo for no more Fridays off.)

My new gig starts in mid-November, but today I alerted my consulting gig of my decision to leave. They countered with an offer for a full-time job, which I immediately rejected, though I offered to continue after-hours consulting in the short-term to get them through upcoming releases. Why not, right? My schedule isn’t batshit insane enough. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

By the way, my new title – “Documentation Manager” – may imply that I will be managing people, but no. I will be managing documents. (Which are much easier to manage than people, incidentally, because you can burn them and they won’t scream.)

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By Meredith – October 21, 2009

The Fruits of Our Constipated Eggplants

This year, our tiny backyard garden produced many heads of crisp n’ tart lettuce and a bumper crop of sweet n’ juicy tomatoes. However, our eggplant crop was atrocious, probably due to the plant’s delayed move from the seed-starting pots to their final resting place in the garden. We should not have waited until the first week of August. The seedlings’ diligent growth in the hot sun seemed promising, but alas, blooms did not appear until Labor Day. And though the warm weather held up through September, the eggplants seemed reluctant to yield any fruit. Then, last week, we noticed a deep-purple bulb cowering under a mess of floppy leaves, and another one on a neighboring plant! Two eggplant fruits, round and squat rather than oblong and smooth, harvested from a total of eight hardy-looking eggplants that are now in bad shape after last Sunday’s snowy Nor’easter.

Honestly, these eggplants don’t look right to me. They look as if they came from very constipated plants.

The Fruits of Our Constipated Eggplants

The Fruits of Our Constipated Eggplants

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By Meredith – October 20, 2009

Barbara Ehrenreich Wants You To Stop Thinking Happy Thoughts

Last week I went to see the celebrated writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich (best known for Nickel and Dimed, her undercover exposé on minimum wage living) talk about her new book, “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” (here on Amazon). Yes, that’s right, someone finally wrote a book about the banality of positive thinking. So flush the happy pills down the toilet and get in touch with your inner sourpuss!

The fact that this sounds so evil only supports Ehrenreich’s contention that America’s insidious “mandatory optimism” has turned us all into soul-leeched smile zombies (my words, not hers). As Ehrenreich said, “People wonder how I can take a stand against positive thinking. It’s like taking a stand against world peace, or motherhood, or Ellen DeGeneres.” (Actually, I’m sure thousands of God-fearing Americans would take a stand against Ellen DeGeneres, but they probably weren’t sitting in the audience at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Mass.)

But what Ehrenreich argues against is not positive thinking per se, but the ideology that everyone must be happy, and if you’re not happy, something is wrong with you. Ehrenheich’s crusade against the cult of positive thinking began when she battled breast cancer in the early 2000s. She was angry, because she wanted to know why she got breast cancer, she wanted to know why the survival rates are dismal, and she wanted to know why the treatments are so horrific. But what she got from the cancer support groups were pink ribbons, teddy bears, and reassurances that positive thinking could cure cancer, a claim that Ehrenreich says is unsubstantiated by research (and substantiated somewhat by the fact that Ehrenreich survived breast cancer despite not viewing cancer as a “life-changing growth experience.”)

Ehrenreich began to notice this “happiness industry” that uses positive thinking to prey on people, emotionally and monetarily. From “Life is Good” t-shirts to inspirational knickknacks to motivational speakers to self-help books to megachurches, all of these speak to the belief that there is not problem that cannot be solved by changing your thinking. Need a job? Positive thinking! Need money? Positive thinking! Have cancer? Positive thinking!

She holds up George W. Bush as the perfect example of the dangers of optimism. GWB could not stand to have pessimists around him, he dismissed generals who warned about possible doom in Iraq, and he ignored any hint that the economy could collapse. Bush just beamed optimism. Even when his Presidency was in shambles, he remained convinced that history would vindicate him, which is so optimistic as to be batshit delusional.

What Ehrenheich advocates as an alternative to optimism is not pessimism, but realism. Realism won’t make you happy, but you can’t have happiness without it. If we truly want to alleviate poverty and unemployment, we have to stop hoping it will get better and start making it better. If we truly want to help cancer sufferers, we have to stop waving around commercialized pink ribbons and start asking tough questions about the causes of cancer. America has an international repetuation as ‘artifical optimists,’ but as Ehrenheich jokes, “I’m positive that we can overcome it.”

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By Meredith – October 19, 2009

Mounts Wildcat 4422′ (Oct 16, 2009), Carter Dome 4832′, South Carter 4430′, and Middle Carter 4610′ (Oct 17, 2009)

We are on the cusp of attaining our long-held goal of hiking all of the White Mountain 4000 Footers thanks to the weekend’s propitious trip to the Carter Notch Hut, when we bagged 4 of the remaining 5 peaks. Now, only one 4000 Footer remains: The rugged, beautiful, elusive Bondcliff, which, barring a freakish heat wave, will have to wait until the spring. Our gear has reached the limit of its effectiveness in the wintry elements; hiking season has ended.

We made the reservation at Carter Notch Hut last month, a crap-shot in terms of the weather, but the huts are popular this time of year because they are “self-service,” meaning that you must pack in all of your food and bedding. Not fun, but the cost is only $30/night. Mr. P has vacation days to burn, and my Fridays off may shortly come to an end, so we left for New Hampshire on Friday morning to allow plenty of time to summit Wildcat Mountain that afternoon.

We took the Nineteen Mile Brook trail to Carter Notch Hut, an easy 3.7 jaunt with some patchy ice and snow. No one was at the hut, not even the caretaker, which was sort of worrisome, but we claimed our bunks in the unheated bunkhouse, ditched our food and stuff, and set off to summit Wildcat Mountain. It was a 1-hour near-vertical hike to the summit.

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Summit of Wildcat Mountain

View of Carter Notch Hut from Wildcat Mountain

View of Carter Notch Hut from Wildcat Mountain

We returned to the hut. Still, no one else was there. We ventured into the kitchen and fiddled around with the stove to boil water for tea.

Carter Notch Hut Kitchen

Carter Notch Hut Kitchen

The sun was setting and the cold was beginning to permeate the unheated hut. Finally a young man burst in, out of breath. It was the caretaker, full of apologies. It turned out that we had arrived in the window between caretakers’ weeklong shifts. He told us that we were the only guests on Friday night, but a full house of 40 was expected on Saturday night. I had a hard time picturing 40 people in the main hut; no wonder it was nicknamed “Cozy Carter.”

Cozy Carter

Cozy Carter

The caretaker made his dinner, then Mr. P and I heated up the stew that we brought. Perhaps because there were only two guests, the caretaker didn’t light a fire, so we were already pretty chilly when we headed to the bunkhouse. It was about 20 degrees when we jumped into our sleeping bags. I was so cold that I opened a pair of handwarmers to restore feeling to my appendages.

“Mr. P, did you hear about how those people died in a sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona last week?” I ask as I pressed the hand warmers into my numb feet.

“No,” he answers. “What’s a sweat lodge?”

“It’s like a really intense sauna,” I say. “The Native Americans did sweat lodges as a ritual, and now New Age people seeking spiritual and physical health  pay thousands of dollars to sit in a cramped, hot, steamy room and sweat profusely.” Pause. “Doesn’t that sound heavenly?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Mr. P says.

“I’d rather be in a sweat lodge than a shiver hut,” I add.

We woke up the next morning at 7:15, alive. After breakfasting with the caretaker, we set out on our 9.4 mile trek across the Carter range.

First up, Carter Dome. The air was crisp and cold, but we warmed up quickly on the steep climb out of Carter Notch.

View of Carter Notch Hut and Wildcat Mountain

View of Carter Notch Hut and Wildcat Mountain

Summit of Carter Dome

Summit of Carter Dome

There was a smattering of past-peak foliage in the lower altitudes. The contrast between the autumny copper and the wintry white was beguiling.

View from Carter Dome

View from Carter Dome

Next up was the minor peak of Mount Hight, which is touted as having the best views in the Carter Range because of its unobstructed view of Mount Washington and the Presidential Range. Lovely Alpine Zone scenery, too.

Mount Hight

Mount Hight

Mount Hight's Alpine Zone

Mount Hight’s Alpine Zone

View of the Carters from Mount Hight

View of the Carters from Mount Hight

We continued onto South Carter. We had a hard time finding the summit, but then Mr. P spotted a tiny wooden sign on a tree.

Summit Mark for South Carter

Summit Mark for South Carter

The day before, when we were driving towards the White Mountains, the snow-covered peaks loomed above the leaf-covered trees like ghosts. We couldn’t stop marveling over the beauty of the day.

The Presidental Range

The Presidental Range

Near Middle Carter Summit

Near Middle Carter Summit

Summit of Middle Carter

Summit of Middle Carter

We were making incredible time on our hike. The snow and ice was a little cumbersome, but we wore microspikes on our shoes, and the snow actually helped us walk easily on rocky paths. We made it back to the hut at 4pm and decided to hike back to our car and drive home. After the previous night of sleepless cold, we needed a good night’s sleep.

Before we left, we stopped in the hut for a hot tea and a nip of whiskey, and promptly fell into conversation with a group of eight 50-something hikers who brought up ten bottles of wine and wanted to share. They were hilarious and outgoing, and we had to tear ourselves away from them. But we had our warm beds on our minds…

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By Meredith – October 18, 2009

apppppple picking!!!

Some months ago I wrote about how I get a fair amount of email for other Meredith Greens, because I hold the coveted Meredith Green [at] gmail [dot] com address. The emails continue to roll in, at least 3-4 per week, sometimes more. In fact, I have a theory that the Meredith Green in the Washington DC metro area is attempting to takeover my email address by freely giving it out to all her friends and colleagues, hoping that I’ll buckle under the sheer amount of non-spam spam and surrender it to her. Which might be the fair thing to do, since I’m not even Meredith Green anymore and whenever I give someone my email I have to explain that I still use my maiden address. Which makes me sound… I don’t know, noncommittal?

Anyway, today’s mis-sent missive (below) is a doozy. Of course, I’m an old-fashioned grammar snob who would sooner paint her face red than allow anyone to see a piece of writing that has not been proofread against the Chicago Manual of Style, but Jesus Christ. Show a little pride in your written expression.

Equally incomprehensible to the text of the email is that a person with such a freakishly undeveloped grasp of basic written English participates in crunchy yuppie frippery like weekend apple picking. Shouldn’t she be shoe-shopping? But, I guess since the author is befittingly unemployed (recession do tend to thin the herd), then apple picking would be, liek, !!!

Subject: apppppple picking!!!


hey guyssssss! (+ meredith and issamu whose emails i dont know)(+anyone else, like tom, etc)- plus i talked to some other people about it but was getting it set up first

LETS go apple picking!!!! I have touched base with most of you and sounds liek most people are free. would saturday or sunday be better? I am open to either day. we could all meet at my house before driving out. i have been looking at a few that are pretty close down 66. plus i thought we could then make late lunch reservations or take picnic food or something.

this one: http://www.striblingorchard.com/map.html is liek 50 minutes from my house but looks super nice. and there are a few others in markham, va. http://www.pickyourown.org/PYO.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hartlandorchard.com

anyway, probably you guys are too busy to check through em bu ti am looking for closer. i have a second interview, very close to a job! just let me know when works!

theres like a 40% chance of showers both days….but if we dress appropriately still fun1!

shannon


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By Meredith – October 15, 2009