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It was the best weather, it was the worst weather

Every year, Boston has an average of about 20 days of good weather. What constitutes “good” weather is subjective — for example, cold weather aficionados like myself find salvation in sunny autumn days with temperatures in the upper 50s. But by normal standards, good weather means a sunny, warm day in the mid 70s to mid 80s with low humidity, low winds, and not a hint of rain. And I swear we only get 20 of them. And today is one of them.

It being a Sunday, normally we’d take a day trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and bag a few 4000-footers, but social obligations kept us local. I was gratified instead to read a feature in the Boston Globe about the dangers of hiking in the White Mountains, and how “amateur” hikers often underestimate the ferocity of the weather and overestimate their preparedness. It’s nothing I didn’t already know after reading Not without Peril, an excellent book about 150 years of “misadventure” on Presidential Range in the Whites, whose author is quoted in the Globe article as saying “The biggest mistake is not turning back.”

Whenever we hike in the Whites, I’m haunted by the tragic stories in Not without Peril. I think about the woefully unprepared hikers who freeze to death. I think about the seasoned mountaineers whose experience gives them foolhardy courage to toil through storms and succumb to exhaustion and exposure. I think about the tragic accidents, the avalanches and falls into gullies and crevasses, that no amount of preparation or caution can prevent.

It’s scary and sad to think about people dying in the mountains that I revere, but it instills a great awe for the weather that this tiny range is capable of entertaining. Nature isn’t all singing birds and serene sunshine. Though, today it is.

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By Meredith – August 16, 2008

Journal Journey

I’ve been picking through my journal, the Moleskin one that I carry around most everywhere and into which I scribble long-hand musings, dreams, and fears. (My biggest fear? Losing the journal.) I decided to transcribe some random bits from the past summer. So here, with little redacting, is what I write about when no one is reading.

The First Wedding Dream

Last night I had my first dream about the wedding. Most of the guests were employees at [company where Mr. P and I met], though in reality we didn’t invite any of them. The reception was in a huge plain room with long tables arranged in a giant square. The only food was clear-broth soup in small cascading fountains, and people were sticking their bowls under the top part of the fountain. There were also basketball-sized balls of sticky rice upon which sat taper candles, and people were carefully spooning it into their soup. I introduced my Mom to Bev [accounts payable clerk who recently retired] and I remember thinking that they would hit it off because Bev was sort of a maternal figure to me when I first started working there. Bev complained to her about the presentation of the rice, and Mom asked me if any more food was going to be served. I didn’t know. I woke up confused, thinking for a minute that we really did invite Bev and all those other co-workers to the wedding. It was a prevailingly peculiar dream, with a touch of anxiety, although the presence of rice seems auspicious.

Empathy for Produce

Tonight we ate the first lettuce from the garden. I had started the lettuce from seed indoors, then Mr. P moved the sprouts outside, and they matured real fast due to all the rain. It tasted good, but what was funny is, I felt bad about harvesting and eating the lettuce that I planted and nurtured. Never mind could I kill and eat a pet chicken, can I kill and eat my lettuce and tomatoes? Christ, it would suck if I developed empathy for produce.

Pizza with Relish

I’m at Crazy Doughs in Harvard Square for dinner before French class. I’m writing this to avoid scarfing the two slices of delectable cheese pizza without measured breaks to savor and enjoy this tiny binge of junk food. Doughy, cheesy, vegetable-bare pizza on a Thursday night after spending the day sitting in an AC-ed office! I should be at Au Bon Pain with the other thirty-somethings, diligently picking at a salad. I’m surrounded by groups of college kids, all gangly and loud and eating their pizza with relish. Not actual relish, of course.

Literary Clown

I wonder if I will ever get the nerve to stop writing my website in order to concentrate on more ambitious literary endeavors. The website has become too comfortable and chore-like, and my creativity is suffering. Some days I feel like a clown, affably engaging in hackneyed verbal acrobatics, bereft of substance and true wit. Other days I can’t even muster that. Today I wrote about the Neil Entwistle verdict and wound up rehashing a discussion with Mr. P about the particulars of the trial. Ooo, so tedious and uninspired, so very very blog.

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By Meredith – August 15, 2008

Quote of the Day

People who try to pretend they’re superior make it so much harder for those of us who really are. — Hyacinth Bucket, snob extraordinaire

hyacinth

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By Meredith – August 14, 2008

In the News

I would say that the Olympics are distracting the American public from more ponderous world events such as Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the Taliban’s successful insurgency in Afghanistan, but that would imply that if the Olympics weren’t going on, people would stop watching “America’s Got Talent” and “So you think You Can Dance” long enough to pick up a newspaper and figure out that both crises can be chalked up in part to the failed international diplomacy of the Bush Administration. Instead, Americans are outraged that China would pull a Milli Vanilli with the little girl who sang during the opening ceremony because the real singer was not attractive enough to appear on stage. If only the national outcry over China’s occupation of Tibet had half of fury that we have about a lip-synching little girl! Gee whiz, I’m already sick of the Beijing Olympics. It’s been like 5 days already. Did the other Olympics last this long?

Police State

A neighborhood is so plagued with violence that police have placed it under 24-hour curfew for the past week. Any resident who ventures outside can be legally stopped, questioned, and, if necessary, jailed. Where is this degenerative city where pestilence trumps civil liberty? Iraq? Israel? China? Rio de Janeiro? Crawford, Texas?

Try West Helena, Arkansas, a town of 15,000 in one of America’s poorest regions. The police do not arrest people for violating the curfew, but only brandish military rifles while questioning people about why they are outside. Citizens who lack a “good answer” or who “act nervously” get “additional attention.” Wow, only in America. And parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

With characteristic indignant lovable fuming, the ACLU complains that these friendly little curbside police chats are “unconstitutional” and warns that any arrest resulting from the stops will likely be overturned. But the mayor of West Helena insists that “a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it … some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.” Wait, the Consti-what? The What-ution?

The what-what?

I’m Scrubbin’ It

In Ohio, a Burger King employee was fired after posting a video on his MySpace page of himself taking a “soapy bath” in a utility sink at the restaurant. The worker was understandably let go because of hygienic concerns, but let’s break it down: He was bathing in a sink that was used to clean large pieces of equipment such as mop buckets. Is the concern that he would contaminate the sink, which would contaminate the mop buckets, which would contaminate the mops, which would somehow permeate the cleaning solution and contaminate the floors, bathrooms, and equipment, and then contaminate the food or the customer? Look at the high, mighty, and righteous Burger King who makes a fortune of off hawking heart attack burgers, cancer fries, and diabetes drinks, firing an employee for purporting to contaminate the sterile and healthful fast food environment.

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By Meredith – August 13, 2008

Wedding Pet Peeves

With my wedding day less than 6 weeks away, I’m steadily freaking out… for no reason. Everything has been acquired or planned for. All vendors have been secured. I’ve gotten about 80% of the RSVP cards before this Friday’s deadline. Hell, we’re actually already legally married.

There is little to do but be plagued with doubt over our decision to forgo many of the extraneous details that the wedding industry positions as traditional wedding day essentials. Will guests be scandalized by the lack of personalized cocktail napkins? Will everyone be inwardly scoffing at the wedding party’s non-uniform attire? Will my searing contempt of and refusal to allow Hokey-Pokey type dances ruin everyone else’s night?

Niggled by these and a million other questions, I recently read a message board that discusses wedding pet peeves on Boston.com , and was gratified to note that my judgment is somewhere between “acceptable” and “impeccable.” Here are some findings about wedding pet peeves:

‘Lack of open bar’ is the number one wedding pet peeve (which is funny because ‘unruly drunk guests’ appears to be the number two wedding pet peeve.) This confirmed my suspicion that all the other wedding stuff is just window dressing. Guests won’t remember if we gave out personalized water bottles or monogrammed candy bars, but they’ll remember if they had to pay for their own cocktails.

‘Garter/Bouquet toss’ is surprisingly high-ranking. Honestly, I briefly toyed with the idea of doing one or both, but rejected it because our guest list is about 90% non-single. In fact, nearly the only single people will be my siblings and various step-siblings, and how traumatizing would it be if the guy who catches the garter is related to the girl who catches the bouquet?

‘Chicken dances, macarenas, electric slide, hokey-pokey dances’ are just not my style. I get too distracted by the dualing desires to rip my ears off and scratch my eyes out.

‘Cake smooshing’ is just a shameful waste of cake, and if there’s one thing I’ll never, ever do, it’s waste cake.

‘Games to claim the centerpiece’ seem like a nifty idea when you’re in the wedding planning mode, but I can see how the execution of a wedding game can be tricky. (That said, ‘arm-wrestling’ isn’t strictly considered a game, is it?)

‘Cocktail napkins, favors, or any other disposal paper item that is personalized with names and date on them’ and ‘Photos of the couple everywhere’ didn’t have many detractors, probably because a wedding guest must be touchy bordering on priggish to get annoyed by a couple who posits their wedding day as a special event that glorifies their love. But while I don’t mind these things at other people’s weddings, the last thing I want to do is turn my wedding into a festival of idolatry. We are Bride and Groom… worship and honor us. Besides, as states above, all anyone will really remember is if there was an open bar.

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By Meredith – August 12, 2008

Olympic Marathon

Yesterday, Mr. P and I indulged in a marathon of Olympics viewing, hunkered down in our living room as thunderstorms raged outside. The guilt-laced pleasure of devoting nearly eight hours to televised sports was palpable. It was not even Thanksgiving. By hour four, my ad-saturated brain had managed to convince me that watching as much of the Olympics as possible was not only a justifiable use of my day, but my patriotic duty. And who knows? Maybe I really did need to buy a Toyota Tundra.

NBC’s cunning marketing did not need to work very hard to reel me in. I have always been an Olympics enthusiast. There is something captivating about seeing nations come together, competing fiercely yet united on a shared global stage. Pierre de Coubertin, the French visionary behind the modern Olympics in 1900, dreamed of using athletic competition to foster peace, believing that the youth of the world could compete in sports rather than engage in war. It is an idealistic thought. No geopolitical crisis has ever been resolved by synchronized diving. Still, I live by Coubertin’s sentiment, considering beach volleyball a perfectly reasonable stand-in for global conflict.

I love the Olympic events that stray from the typical American diet of spectator sports involving ball-handling, ball-whacking, and or stock cars. I love hearing coworkers lament their lack of sleep because they stayed up late to watch a swim meet. The Olympics heighten the drama of every sport they touch. Take women’s gymnastics, which is always a crowd pleaser. During the Olympics, however, the stakes add an exquisiteness to the tension. Who does not love watching those crestfallen, muscle-wracked little girls after a lifetime of fanatical work is undone by a hop and a wobble on the landing?

The Olympics awaken the fervent patriotism of my childhood. My most vivid Olympic memory comes from the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, when American Debi Thomas faced off against East German Katarina Witt in women’s figure skating. I can still hear Thomas’s coach delivering a final pep talk before her decisive long program: “You can do this. You can do anything. You’re an American.” Thomas faltered and finished with the bronze, and I learned that the spectator’s agony of defeat is laced with helplessness. It was then that I swore a silent enmity toward Katarina Witt and, by extension, East Germany itself. Because in my young eyes, figure skating was war.

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By Meredith – August 11, 2008

Beijing Opening Ceremony: Dazzling, Frightening, and Ultimately Hollow

Last night I watched large chunks of the dazzling 4-hour Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. I was dazzled by the 2008 drummers playing on their strobing lighted Fou drums in perfect synchronicity. I was dazzled by the 2008 oscillating man-powered blocks, the 2008 tai chi masters, the calligraphy dancers, the flying acrobats, and the countless fireworks. In fact, the sheer scale of it all was dazzlingly frightening.

I started watching the ceremony sort of happy for China. I know how much energy and hope have gone into this Olympics. And same as how I don’t want to be judged by the actions of the US government, I refuse to begrudge the Chinese people for their government’s handling of Darfur and Tibet. In fact, it is in the Chinese people’s interest that I worry about the government’s human rights record. The whole “harmonious society” theme that the ceremony emphasized is chilling because China’s methods of achieving it involve jailing dissidents and restricting the freedoms of their citizens. It’s only harmonious if everyone follows the sheet music as composed by the Communist Party.

By the end of the ceremony, I felt sort of sick inside, imagining all of the effort and money that China spent in order to dazzle me and the world with inherently cheesy Peter Pan theatrics. What did it all mean, anyway? The opening ceremony is meant to honor the athletes and the universal spirit of competition, not laud the achievements of the host country. The final touch bearer, a former Chinese gymnast, was lifted high into the air to circle around the Bird Nest’s upper rim and then dramatically ignite the Olympic cauldron. Dazzling, yes…

…but it didn’t beat the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when Muhummad Ali lit the Olympic Flame. I’ll never forget the roar of the crowd upon seeing Ali receive the final torch, and this great man, this principled man who had thrown his Olympic Gold Medal in a river after being refused service in a “whites-only” restaurant, this man of legendary might, athleticism, and skill, he stood there fiercely with the torch raised over his head twice and he shook with Parkinsons. It was such a powerful sight, indelible in my brain and in my heart.

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By Meredith – August 9, 2008

Bike Path Follies

After last Sunday’s punishing jog on the rollicking trails of the Middlesex Fells Reservation, I took the week off from running. I walked, I biked, I laid on a yoga mat and breathed. By this mid-afternoon, my infamously massive calf muscles were twitching like a foxhound eager for a run. The gray sky seemed on the cusp of rupturing into thunderstorms, but I had checked the weather radar before lacing up my Nikes and running to the bike path. The severe storms in Providence and Worcester couldn’t possibly make it to Boston in an hour, so I relaxed and savored the sunless skies, foreboding breeze, and an iPod Shuffle full of Fatboy Slim.

The bike trail was being scantily used, mostly by elderly walkers toting umbrellas and groups of strolling teenagers who hang out in the adjoining ball fields. I am wary of what these teenagers think about me as I jog past them, sweating. I wouldn’t have thought they pay joggers any attention until one day when I heard a young man that I had just passed say: Dude, you see that jiggle? I cringe to think which jiggle. But today my rested muscles powered me along at a pretty good clip, and I felt that my prowess would douse any verbal or mental mockery.

Around mile 4.5, a teenaged boy on a bike passed me. He was about 30 feet in front of me when suddenly the back of his bike reared up. The entire bike flipped backwards about four feet high into the air, throwing him on the ground. He landed on his back with the bike on top of his legs. No, he wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was simply the most spectacular fall from a bike I’ve ever randomly witnessed.

Still running, I didn’t breathe until he got up and began inspecting his bike. I debated saying something to him as I passed him. He looked like a jock and I feared that teenaged macho pride would cause him to lash out at me, the sole witness to his embarrassing fall.

“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice oozing the real concern that I felt.

“Yeah, I’m okay” he said. “My jacket got caught in the mud flap.” I looked and saw a folded-up piece of fabric lodged in the metal sleeve that covers the top of the front wheel. I still can’t figure out how it go there.

“Oh, man,” I said, followed by a heartfelt “Shit.” I continued running, in disbelief that he was standing up and moving with such purpose.

About two minutes later, he passed me. “Hey, thanks for asking,” he said. “It’s a shame you didn’t have a hidden camera.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The flip actually looked really, really cool.”

He laughed and biked away with the eternal resilience of a teenager.

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By Meredith – August 8, 2008

Caveat Lector

At lunch today, my colleagues and I started swapping tales of our high school foreign language classes.

“I jumped around too much,” I admitted. “Two years of Spanish, one year of French, and one year of Latin.”

Latin? Eyebrows raised. It sounded so cultivated, so steeped in intellectual tradition.

“Well, I was really into English, and one of my teachers told me that learning Latin would help me master English grammar.” This was partly true. The less glamorous reality was that I was dodging Spanish 3 after barely surviving Spanish 2. Plus, I thought it would be pretty impressive to say I spoke a dead language.

Did a lot of people take Latin?

“There were about eight people in my class, and it was the only Latin class in the school. I remember one guy who wanted to become a pharmacist, and he somehow convinced two of his friends to join him.” (All three of them were notorious for being major druggies. Even Mr. Duffy, our stern and disgruntled teacher, knew it. Once, while explaining abstract nouns, he said, “I couldn’t put a pound of ‘speed’ on this desk. Though I’m sure some of you could.”)

Was it helpful?

“Honestly? Not really. It was brutally difficult, and I retained almost nothing.” The thing about Latin is that its vocabulary hasn’t evolved in centuries. While the students in French class were learning to talk about their favorite pastimes or ordering food in a café, we were conjugating verbs like ‘pillage,’ ‘lay siege,’ and ‘set fire.’ The practical utility was lacking, to say the least. But then again, no learning is wasted, right?” (A statement as hollow as it sounded. I can’t recall a single rare Latin phrase today, so even my bragging rights are shaky.)

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By Meredith – August 7, 2008

Green Card Day

Today Mr. P and I had the marriage interview to obtain his Green Card, the final step in a long road paved with lawyers, fees, and oodles of paperwork. At last, we would have an impartial government official to determine if our love is real or just a total fraud.

We met at our lawyer’s officer in downtown Boston so that she could accompany us to the interview at the nearby JFK Federal building. We followed her through security, and then to a mid-sized room filled with rows of well-padded seats that were less than a quarter occupied with other couples and their lawyers. Our lawyer had warned us repeatedly that we could be waiting for up to an hour, so imagine her shock when we were called 5 minutes later. “Fastest time in 6 years,” she swore.

The officer conducting our interview was a woman in her early 20s — probably in training, our lawyer told us later. She rifled through our stack of paperwork, made a few notes, then started questioning: “How and when did you meet? How and when did you start dating? Where did you go on your first date? When did you decide to make it exclusive?”

This last question stumped me. “It was always exclusive,” Mr. P declared, and we all laughed. I think the officer could sense a rapport between us, especially when I chided him for getting my birth year wrong. In any case, she then began reading off a laundry list of Yes-No questions for Mr. P about his illegal activities, like “Have you ever been arrested? Have you ever sold or trafficked drugs? Do you intend to practice polygamy? Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party or any totalitarian party?” I managed to withhold a quip about the French Fifth Republic.

Then she declared that she was approving his Green Card, and we all smiled. After 30 minutes of logistical paper work, we were out the door. What a great moment for America, to open her tenacious borders to accept this Frenchman who I so dearly love into her beacon-hand as a lawful permanent alien resident!

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By Meredith – August 6, 2008