The Flies Have It

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Liza Blue

Stories require a setting and a few workable details to set the mood.  Often this is weather-related (“it was a dark and stormy night…”), but here is my sure-fire suggestion to set a scene and provoke a mood.

Add a fly.  And give him human characteristics.

In his essay The Supremacy of the Housefly, Twain gives his flies a conniving personality complete with facial expressions, all to comic effect.

“All human ingenuities have been exhausted in the holy war against the fly, and yet the fly remains today just what he was in Adam’s time – independent, insolent, intrusive and indestructible.  Flypaper does nothing … There are no two marksmen in fifty that can hit a fly with a wet towel at even a short range, and this method brings far more humiliation than satisfaction, because there is an expression about the missed fly which is so eloquent with derision…”    

Death and decay are the most obvious roles for flies.  Be careful.  Don’t add too many flies.  You risk going beyond a mood into the land of symbolism.  Think of the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, where a severed head seething with flies is a stand-in for rot and corruption.   The Bible is full of flies symbolizing the wrath of God and sin.  That might be more than you need.

Continue reading →

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Pot Pouri | 2 Comments

Open Letter to Peg Bracken

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Liza Blue

 

Dear Peg,

I am writing to thank you for saving my mother’s life, not in terms of death and dying, but in the sanity sense of the word.  She clung to your 1960 cookbook, The I Hate to Cookbook like a life raft, that slim volume always right next to the kitchen telephone.

The recipes in your book were beside the point.  I don’t think she every made your “Hurry Curry,” or “Clam Whiffle (a soufllé that any fool can make)”  It was your irreverent tone that let her know someone out there was like her, chafing at the limitations of the stereotypical housewife – in her case a woman who had given birth to six children in ten years. Continue reading →

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Elegance of the Hexagon

Posted on July 29, 2019 by Liza Blue

Not that there was any pitched battle for my loyalties, but I have to say that the hexagon is my favorite geometric shape.  I first became enamored in biochemistry when introduced to the basic building block of the carbon ring, illustrated as a hexagon of carbon atoms with other molecules hanging off of them.  In medical school I spent hours of quality time with glucose, and even though the molecule can be folded and twisted, I appreciated its simplified depiction as an equilateral hexagon.

The next step of my hexagon journey was Charles Darwin and the conundrum of the honeycomb.  The precise hexagonal structure of the honeycomb has fascinated naturalists for thousands of years.

In 36 BC the Greek mathematician Marcus Ternetius Varro suggested that a tile of hexagons produce the smallest total perimeter of wax compared to a square or a triangle, the two other shapes can make an unbroken tiled surface.  The bottom line is that hexagons minimize the burden of wax production.  This theory became known as the “honeybee conjecture.”  Though widely accepted, the theory was not proved mathematically until 1999, some two thousand years later.  Darwin proposed that economy of wax was the engine driving the natural selection advantage for  those bees who could make a hexagon.

While this hypothesis explained why bees do what they do, Darwin faced the bigger challenge of explaining how they do it.  The biggest hurdle was the church.  Theologians had made the honeycomb one of the poster children for intelligent design.  William Paley, an influential naturalist in Darwin’s time, provided a detailed analogy to a watch, stating that there could be no watch without the guiding hand of a watchmaker.  Paley believed some sort of governing intelligence was the only explanation for a design that flummoxed human engineers.

I can understand this line of thought.  As I try to construct a quilt in a pattern of interlocking hexagons, I think of the bee doing the same thing in the dark, working alongside other bees to construct a three dimensional hive.  I’ve got a ruler and precise cutting tools but frankly, it’s a bitch to get precise 120 degree angles so that the three corners snug in together.  If one angle is off kilter, the mistake is compounded in the next, to the point of ripping the whole thing out midst a string of expletives.  But the uneducated bee, with its mere smidge of a brain, does it effortlessly.  Oh and by the way, the hive is tilted just so from the horizontal to prevent the honey from dripping out.

The cornerstone of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is that there is no agenda to natural selection, no plan to make a watch or a honeycomb.  Form simply evolves in response to survival pressures.  If Darwin could not show that bees could change over time and become more efficient, his entire theory would crumble in the face of religious skeptics who believed “as it was in the beginning, now is and ever shall be, world without end.”

The hexagonal comb was my gateway into the relentless curiosity of Darwin.  One summer I thought I might read the Origin of the Species.  After a few chapters, I abandoned the project.   The writing is so dense, filled with long descriptions crying out for a diagram or even better a YouTube video.  But leaf through and you’ll find a vivid demonstration of an insatiable curiosity at work.

Darwin starts his description of the honeycomb by commenting that only a “dull man” could not be impressed by the hexagonal skills of the bee whose geometry skills outshine even the most accomplished craftsmen.  He then blithely brushes aside thoughts of intelligent design and states, “But the difficulty is not nearly so great as it first appears; all this beautiful work can be shown, I think, to follow from a few very simple instincts.”

The next ten pages are a recitation of his extensive empirical research, which included a vast correspondence with other naturalists studying the honeycomb.  Darwin was looking for a transitional structure, a simple comb that would demonstrate the starting point of its evolution.  And thank God, a colleague sent Darwin a honeycomb from a Mexican bee that made circular, not hexagonal, cells.  No special skills were needed to explain this geometry.  The bee could simply rotate around a single point.  However, the wasted spaced between circles put this bee at a survival disadvantage.  Its hive was inefficient.

Darwin communicated with Francois Huber, another honeycomb expert.  Huber was blind, but still managed to make meticulous observations of honeycomb construction with the assistance of his patient wife.  He discovered Darwin’s “hive” bees start cell construction with a circular blob of wax which they then excavate.  As the two adjoining cells compress against each other they form a straight edge.

Problem solved.  Based on the evidence that simpler forms of hives exist, Darwin wrote “Hence we may safely conclude that if we could slightly modify the instincts already possessed by the [Mexican bee], this bee would make a structure as wonderfully perfect as the hive-bee.”

Darwin then described his own experiments where he inserted wax of different colors and configurations into a hive and observed the bees.  I like to imagine him pitter-patter-puttering around his beehives, magnifying glass in hand and enduring the occasional sting, all in an effort to make his theory of evolution bullet-proof.  He was simultaneously studying such things as earthworms, barnacles, the dispersal of seeds and the webbed feet of upland ducks.  I smile to think of the mailman delivering yet another unusual package to his home.

One of the Darwin’s charms is that his experiments are simple and clever and could be duplicated by amateur naturalists in their own backyards.  In fact, I think this would make a noteworthy science project for the motivated grade school student.  Perhaps not start by putting colored wax into a beehive – I can’t imagine how many times Darwin got stung – but rather earthworms.  Darwin played them music to test their hearing.

Once sensitized to the hexagon, I began to see them everywhere.  The compound eyes of the dragonfly are hexagonal, the sea turtle shell has hexagonal plates, both presumably driven by the efficient packing of the hexagon.

Cell phone companies use hexagonal shaped cells to efficiently map the location of phone towers so that there will be no gaps in coverage.  Settlers of Catan also uses hexagonal tiling.

There are some very practical advantages to the hexagon.  Consider the pencil.  It typically has a hexagonal shape, perhaps to provide a better grip, or better packing in a box or maybe to keep it from rolling off the table. (Personally, I would like hexagonal raspberries.   My floor is stained with raspberries that have rolled off the table and gotten squished.)

The hexagonal heads of nuts and bolts are the perfect compromise between round and square to provide the necessary torque for the wrench.  An eight-sided nut would be too circular and the wrench would fall off.  A square shape would provide inadequate surface area for the torque.    A quick perusal of our garage revealed a variety of hexagonal gas caps and knobs.  The bathroom plumbing at my local library provided another example!

Chicken wire is hexagonal.  A rectangular configuration loses its spunk if one wire fails – chickens can easily escape by squeezing through the vertical slit.  In a hexagonal structure the wires are wrapped around two separate strands, if one fails, the fence retains its integrity, at least for chickens.

The overall shape of a snowflake is hexagonal, many crystals are hexagonal, (including the graphite in the pencil), all driven by the underlying chemistry of attraction and repulsion.  Our physical world boasts some impressive hexagons.  The Giant’s Causeway in Ireland consists of a lava field tiled in hexagons.  The shrinking of the cooling lava created tension across the field leading to cracks.  According to fracture mechanics, a hexagonal shape of cracks releases the most tension.

A similar configuration of basalt piles exists in California, called the Devil’s Postpile.  The imperfection of the hexagons is related to the variable rate of cooling across the field.

Darwin must have known about the ubiquity of hexagons.  Certainly he’d stared into the compound eyes of a dragonfly as he pondered the evolution of the eye.  He constantly received animal specimens in the mail and would likely have a collection of hexagonal-plated turtle shells.   Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway became widely known in 1692.  Chicken wire was invented in 1844.  Darwin, ever curious, must have also noticed the practical hexagonal design of nuts and bolts.   Perhaps the hexagon was bringing it all together for him, from micro to macro, the surprising overlap of the physical, chemical and natural world.

Darwin died 100 years too early to appreciate the vast hexagon on the northern pole of Saturn, identified during the 1981 Voyager mission.  This hexagon is 18,000 miles wide.  I can imagine Darwin’s cosmic curiosity with this huge cloud swirling around a churning storm at its center, producing the exact same geometry as his humble bee.  “What wild wind is at work here?” he comments as he taps his hexagonal pencil filled with hexagonal graphite crystals on his desk.

 

 

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Nature | Leave a comment

My Life in Guinea Pigs

Posted on April 27, 2019 by Liza Blue

A Harsh Reality

I found the guinea pig nestled in the back corner of the linen closet.  He had escaped from his cage a couple of days before, at least that’s when somebody noticed he was gone, because my brother had lost interest in his pet.  My mother organized a search party.

He stared up at me from his comfortable nest of shredded toilet paper.  I admired his ingenuity and thought perhaps he was relishing his freedom.  Then I spotted two crayons next to him, a red and a blue one.  I could see tiny teeth marks striating the crayon tip.

At ten years old, this was my first introduction to the harsh world of survival.  This guinea pig thought he could survive on crayons.

In my secure and tidy suburban world, the idea that some didn’t have enough to eat was a novel concept.  This was in the early 1960s and the post-war deprivations lingered in my parents’ minds.  I remember my mother saying, “Finish your dinner, there are people starving in Armenia.”  Why she particularly chose Armenia was a mystery and her logic escaped me.  As I looked into guinea pig’s beady eyes, I saw starvation.  I had saved him from a slow and agonizing death.

Convenient Lies and Willful Ignorance

On Christmas morning my four brothers and I would rush into the living room to see the vast array of presents, both under the Christmas tree and in our designated spots on the sofa and chairs.  After the initial flush of excitement,  we all looked at others’ piles to see if everything was equal.  My mother knew this, but this balancing act was tricky.  She would peruse the piles on Christmas Eve as she laid out the gifts and would address any mismatch by switching gifts around.  If that didn’t work, she might leave a note describing a make-good gift for the underserved.  That’s how my brother got his cat, and I assume that’s how someone acquired another guinea pig.

Any delight in the rodent was fleeting.  Nobody wanted to take care of it.  My mother was left to cope with sprayed woodchips, little pellets and the odor of urine.  She probably hoped the guinea pig would get lost in the house again, but more aggressive measures were required when the guinea pig survived until summer.  “Hey everybody,” she said, “I’ve got a great idea.  Why don’t we let the guinea pig out for the summer?  He can eat the grass and stuff, and then in the fall we’ll find him and bring him back inside.”

Even my youngest brothers, eight or nine at the time, must have know we were dooming our pet to a premature and violent death at the hands of our dogs, a fox or a coyote.  The slightest show of remorse by anyone would have scuttled the scheme.

But we collectively grabbed onto the convenient lie.

We tacitly convinced ourselves we were acting in the best interests of the guinea pig who would surely value a cage-free life.  In mid-summer I spotted him behind a bush.  He looked happy and well-fed.  The days grew shorter.  Summer faded into fall.  I briefly thought of the guinea pig, experiencing frost for the first time, shivering in his little nook, but it was too late to right the wrong, there was no search party.  Collectively our convenient lie had segued to willful ignorance.

Individually, convenient lies and willful ignorance are vital human skills to help us through tough days, but this was my first experience of lethal nature of the collective and casual combination of the two.  When everyone is at fault, no one is.

A Personal Vow

I was working full-time when our children were in grade school.  Most mothers worked part-time or had flexible schedules.  They relished school drop-off when they would gather over a cup of coffee.  I was never able to participate in these bonding moments and felt disconnected from the school scene.

I  tried to make amends and participate.  In a weak moment of selective amnesia, I  agreed to host the class guinea pig for the summer.  Within a week, I was sick of the damn thing and predictably my kids had lost interest.  Taking a lesson from my mother, I decided to let it go free, but with a twist.  I knew I’d be ostracized if I returned an empty cage to the school in the fall, so I built what looked like a sturdy enclosure in the back yard.

The guinea pig escaped as I transferred it outside.  Guinea pigs were slow moving objects, weren’t they?  How fast could they move on those little stubby paws?  This one bolted, streaked across the lawn and scurried under the porch.  I lay on my stomach to peer under the porch and saw him crouched against the house’s foundation.  eyes.  I was in a contest of wills with a guinea pig.  My children’s school reputation was at stake.

I inched my way forward in an agonizing army crawl through rocks and rubble until he was trapped.  I nabbed him.  The guinea pig emitted breathless squeals, and I realized I’d better loosen my grip.  Passively letting a guinea pig die a death of freedom is one thing, strangling it another.

At that moment, I vowed never again to allow any pet into our home that pooped inside.  No cat, guinea pig, hamster, mouse, reptile.  I was not cut out to be a genial guinea pig steward.

The Future

I thought my journey with guinea pigs was complete.  Then I heard they are a staple of the Peruvian diet, particularly in the Andean highlands.  Guinea pigs have been domesticated for thousands of years and serve as an important source of protein for highlanders.  Peruvians eat some sixty-five million guinea pigs per year, often in elaborate cultural rituals.

They can be raised in a small area, even in urban environments, and are twice as efficient in converting food into protein.  Heifer International, which focuses on providing sustainable livestock to rural communities, is now promoting guinea pig husbandry.  Two males and twenty females can create a sustainable source of protein for a family of six.

Will guinea pigs begin to show up in the meat section of the grocery store or on restaurant menus?  Unlikely.  Americans have trouble eating anything resembling a pet.  French grocery stores are filled with rabbit, but in this country, rabbits are endeared as bunnies and have a starring role at Easter.

In the movie Roger and Me, the director Michael Moore interviews a woman who is selling bunnies for pets or rabbits for food, she doesn’t care which.  The customer decides the rabbit/bunny’s fate.

In one horrifying scene the woman fondly pets a bunny and then calmly whacks it with a lead pipe, skins and guts it.  She displays no remorse, no recognition of the bright line between a pet and protein source.

Would I eat a guinea pig?  Sure I would, either baked, roasted, fried or barbecued.  I’m not driven by revenge or in search of bizarre food credentials, and it would take some psychological rewiring for me to bludgeon one to death.  However, the fact that guinea pigs are an alternative to carbon-costly beef cannot be ignored.  I anticipate the day when everyone will need their own personal emergency protein supply, either a dovecote with pigeons on the roof, a hutch of rabbits, or a herd of guinea pigs on our back patios.

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in My Life in... | Leave a comment

My Life in Typewriters

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Liza Blue

1960s

It was one of those in-between summers.  I had outgrown sleep-away camp and wasn’t old enough to be a camp counselor, so my mother had to patch together activities to keep me occupied.  Typing class was the solution.

Even though I had no occasion to use a typewriter, I didn’t question the wisdom of this choice.  Instinctively I knew that typing was an essential skill for a woman in the working word.  In fact, my class was only girls.  My mother briefly worked as a secretary before she got married.   She had her own typewriter and I remember her setting it up on the kitchen table and typing out recipe cards, presumably to keep her QWERTY skills sharp.  She would pull out the recipe card and gaze at it with evident pride.

I used my mother’s typewriter for the class.  It was too bulky to put in the basket of my bicycle, so my mother dropped me off three mornings a week. I felt a sense of pride carrying the black typewriter in its case, imagining what it would be like to carry a briefcase filled with important papers to deliver, neatly typed, to the boss.

I liked rolling the unsullied sheet of white paper into place.  The distinctive clacking of the manual keys echoed around the room. sometimes in unison as everyone practiced the same phrases.  I cursed the perverse inventor of the key board.  Why make my feeble left-handed pinkie in charge of the pervasive “A?”  Why not swap it out with the seldom used “K,” occupying the prime spot of the middle finger of my dominant right hand?

The target was to reach 45 error-free words per minute, the threshold for the marginally adequate typist.  Finding that balance between speed and accuracy emerged as another life skill, one that would have served me well when taking the SAT test in a few short years.  I quickly learned it was not in my nature to take my time, go slowly and do it right the first time.  My general impatience inevitably sabotaged any consistent attempt to reach the 45 WPM target.  I was an obedient child, a rule follower, but typing offered a safe opportunity for risk-taking.  I enjoyed the thrill of pushing the limits until the delinquent “A” would get entangled with the adjacent “S,” resulting in a smudged mess.

The College Years, 1970-1974

The manual typewriter segued to an IBM Selectric, a typewriter with true heft.  I could hear the electric hum of progress coming from its innards, and there before me, more visible than a mother board or a whiz-bang chip, was technological ingenuity – letters rotating on a ball, eliminating any tangling of the arms.

In high school, term papers were still hand-written, but college professors expected type-written papers.  This standard spawned several work-arounds for the inevitable errors.  Liquid Paper was a real life-saver but required a deft touch to apply a thin veneer of white paint that could be typed over.

Thin pieces of paper dusted with dry white ink were another option to correct single letter misspellings.  Both strategies required the immediate recognition of errors, since rephrasing or even changes in the length of a word were impossible.  This meant all initial drafts and revisions were still hand-written.  Typing the manuscript was the last thing you did, often in the early hours of the morning as the deadline loomed.

Typing was still mostly gender-specific, leading to interesting social dynamics.  A girlfriend who could type was a real asset to a “hunt and peck” boyfriend with limited typing skills.  From the girl’s point of view, typing a boyfriend’s paper into the night demonstrated loyalty and commitment.  The boyfriend might respond by assigning her a coveted drawer in his dorm room where she could store her clothes.  A boy without a typing girlfriend was shit-out-of-luck, resulting in ill-considered relationships.

This dynamic was not without risk.  A hack job could scuttle a romance.  I bungled the references in one paper I typed for a boyfriend.  This error was beyond anything Liquid Paper could rectify, though in my defense the reference style was not clear in the draft I was handed at 2 AM.  The references had to be hand written in.  The relationship barely survived.

Summer Job, 1975

Ideally, one would like to have scintillating and intellectually stimulating summer jobs that leave you enthused about the working world and post-college prospects.   Not so the summer of 1975 when I had a job in a botanic garden stamping metallic tags for trees.  Words per minute were not a job qualification since I had to bang down on the keys one by one.  The sound was metallic, dissonant, rasping, brutal.

Forget about using my pinkie for the letter A.  Only my two index fingers were strong enough to press down the keys.  Each day my typing assignment consisted of a list of the trees arriving from a nursery.  I might arrive to find a list of 235 individual tags for Prunus padus, 215 for Quercus alba, or 135 for the more challenging Viburnum prunifolium.  All day long I sat at the stamping machine in a stifling airless garage.  The machine blew hot air up my mini skit leaving tender thighs exposed to the hot metal chair.

This miserable job was inspiring in a way.  It lit a small lamp of feminism.  I was never going to accept typing as women’s work, nor would I ever type for anyone else again. Men were on their own.

Working World, 1984 -1990

After college, I went to medical school followed by a pathology residency.  My entire medical school education consisted of scattershot multiple-choice questions, first a question on hematology, then perhaps cardiology, followed by some bizarre weeping skin disease.  All I had to do was fill in little bubbles on the answer sheet and pray I didn’t get them misaligned.  I didn’t type for eight years.

After my training, I went to work for the American Medical Association, writing reports on new medical technologies.  Still I didn’t have to type.  Secretaries were on call to type my handwritten drafts using an early version of a word processor.  I would receive the first typed draft, make handwritten revisions, return the document to the secretary for multiple rounds of revisions.

I felt ashamed asking another woman to type my work.  It was also an inefficient system.  Inevitably, the well-meaning secretary would introduce new errors while correcting old ones.  It was far quicker to do my own damn typing, and I was grateful for those long-ago lessons on the manual typewriter.  I became a fine typist.

Current Day

I have been firmly ensconced in the word processing world for 25 years.   The deliberate clacking sound of the typewriter has evaporated, replaced by a softer, almost murmuring click of a keyboard as my fingers race across the keys with abandon.  A balance between speed with accuracy is unnecessary.  I imagine an invisible minion scurrying behind me, tidying my impetuous errors.  The evolution of my typing has reached a resting point, at least until I get an iPad and devolve into a silent and tactileless word of hunting and pecking.

I cannot imagine creating a hand-written first draft, and I wonder how word processing has changed the way I think.  Before I had to carefully organize my thoughts, perhaps write up an outline.   Now I can just barf up anything on the screen and work my way into the essay.  The handwritten first draft may have squelched creative barf blasts, but the flexibility of the word processor might be dampening a more deliberate process.  I no longer have to turn my ideas over and over before committing them to paper, polishing their rough edges like a smooth stone.  Ernest Hemingway wrote out his first drafts in pencil commenting, “Wearing down seven #2 pencils is a good day’s work.”

I shudder at the new standard of perfection.  Typos are no longer tolerated.  I have spent hours searching for the last rogue typo, and then start the search again in case I have introduced a new one. Submitting a story for publication demands a slavish devotion to format.  Any slight deviation can result in a fatal ding by an editor who is looking for an easy reason to reject something by the second paragraph.  To me, that is like rejecting a cake with tilted tiers and uneven frosting (as mine always are) without tasting it.  Typing for a punitive taskmaster is a tyrannical process that can suck the life out of creativity.

I regret that word processing has usurped the fine art of penmanship.  My class eagerly awaited third grade when we learned grown-up cursive.  I was proud of my grade A efforts.    Opportunities for any handwriting are now minimal, limited to grocery lists, thank-you notes and condolence letters.  My pencil sharpener sits idle on the back counter.  I miss my handwriting, readable and beautiful.  I particularly like the way I make the loops of my below-the-line letters – my lower case g’s and y’s and are peppy and confident.

I still recognize my father’s careful and cramped writing filled with his unique misspelling of the word “stuff” as “stough.” My mother’s writing was loopy and fluid as if she was in a rush.  Both styles reflected their personalities.  I regret my children do not have many occasions to reflect on how my handwriting defines me.

My children grew up in the era of word-processing.  They never had to hand-write a first draft, nor navigate the gender politics of college typing.  Word processing was just handed to them as if it always existed.  Just as I cannot believe that my parents grew up without TV, my children cannot believe I grew up without a TV clicker, nor can they believe that Liquid Paper was a coveted item at 3 AM.

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in My Life in..., Such is Life | 2 Comments

Dear Lady in the Front Row Who Gasped

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Liza Blue

I was at the podium and you were sitting in the front row when I heard you gasp.  Some may not have heard it, others thought it was nothing more than a quick intake of breath.  I am going to call it a gasp because it changed my life.

You validated me as a writer.

I was one of four performers at a story-telling event.  You were probably there to see family or friends.  That’s the composition of the audience.  Few people come in off the street.  I was the last storyteller, so your job as a supportive friend was over, but you were kind enough to stay for the entire program.  My friends and family were in the audience, but you were a complete stranger to me.  That meant a lot.

My coming-of-age story was reaching its climax.  Abandoned in the middle of a lake, I had nothing but a frantic dog-paddle to keep me afloat.  I can’t say I felt tension building in the audience or that people were on the edge of their seat.  I had no immediate feedback until I heard you.

You see, I am pursuing story-telling as an alternative to the against-all-odds world of publishing.  I am a writer, or at least I thought so until my MFA program told me I’d be labeled “a hobbyist” unless I got something published.  At the same time, I learned publishing was a grim business with no pay.  The work-around was to embrace rejection as the noble pursuit of a writer.

A classmate asked if I wanted to join a competition to see who would be the first to get 100 rejection letters.  The record was one year.  Only dispassionate, impersonal rejection letters counted.  Any letter with the slightest whiff of encouragement – a closing line of “looking forward to hearing from you,” or the giddy (but now vanishing) experience of a handwritten rejection letter with a coffee stain on it – well, this was no rejection, but quasi-acceptance.

An MFA faculty member waved his ragged sheaf of ten years of rejection letters from the New Yorker. He was a successful, self-sustaining writer with his own Wikipedia page, but he seemed prouder of these rejections than acceptances.  He wanted us to know he was out there, aiming high and laying it on the line.

I get it, I’m never going to win races I don’t enter, but his locker-room pep talk fell flat.  I have experienced rejection, both social and professional, and have learned to accept it with grace and good humor.  But it has never occurred to me to rebrand rejection as success.

Yes, I can send my work off into the abyss and wait for months as some bleary-eyed editor slogs her way through a towering slush pile.  Even if I pass this first hurdle, I want more.  I want direct feedback, not from forgiving family and friends, but from strangers who have no vested interest in me.  Publication only guarantees that strangers will have access to my work.  This is not enough.

I needed a work-around to the opaque layers of publication.  Mark Twain became my mentor.  His early platform was built on his public story-telling.  He reveled in the audience feedback and used that to refine his literature.  He moved between the two worlds, each leveraging the other.

I joined a story-telling troupe, and with trembling hands looked into the eyes of my audience, beyond familiar faces to my target audience of strangers.  I scanned the audience for drooping eyelids, slumping shoulders, heads in hands, and was gratified to see none.  I happened to look down at you when I reached the climax of the story.

You gasped.  I had you.  You thought I was about to drown, didn’t you?

You made me a writer and a storyteller.

With grateful thanks,

Liza Blue

 

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Pot Pouri | 4 Comments

In Praise of Kitchen Gadgets

Posted on November 17, 2018 by Liza Blue

 

There is nothing like a visit to Bed, Bath and Beyond to restore one’s confidence in American ingenuity.  I’m not talking about the whiz bang intelligence required to send a man to Mars, invent the Internet, or thwart Russian hackers.  I’m talking about the everyday can-do spirit of ordinary Americans who tinker in their kitchens and garages to devise a better way to make it through the day

These humble inventors live in obscurity.  I imagine them fiddling with a spatula or whisk, muttering their mantra, “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

The fruits of their labor are on display at Bed, Bath and Beyond, a dizzying collection of specialty spoons, spatulas, scoopers, slicers and dicers, each exquisitely designed to fill a sliver of a niche.

The 1950s saw an explosion of kitchen appliances, all intended to improve the life of the homemaker.  These innovations represented low-hanging fruit.  The demand for a clothes dryer was obvious.  This was an era when it wasn’t yet a cliché for a husband to give his wife an appliance as an anniversary present, perhaps a new-fangled toaster that toasted both sides simultaneously, or a garbage can with a foot pedal to open the lid, leaving both hands free to scrape a plate.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth, born in 1878, is known as the “First Lady of Engineering,” an industrial psychologist and efficiency expert, who studied housewives to identify the most efficient approach to kitchen chores.[1]  It was Lillian who invented the garbage can with a foot pedal in 1920.  Her other standouts included shelves on the fridge doors, such as a butter tray and egg keeper.  Yes, “why not” indeed.

The current generation of gadgeteers face a crowded landscape, and only the most enterprising can identify and exploit an empty niche.  The recent movie Joy profiled the entrepreneur Joy Mangano who made a fortune with a self-wringing Miracle Mop, designed so you don’t have to touch that wet dirty thing.  The movie closes with Joy interviewing a young couple who are seeking their fortune with their ergonomically designed lint roller.

If you want to see where dreams can still come true, go to Bed Bath and Beyond.

The following are the most intriguing items I harvested on a recent stroll through the store.

But I warn you.  You will also confront the silly excesses of our culture.  I think of the millions who make do with a single dinged up bowl and a combination knife/machete.  They must be astonished Americans are so pressed for time that they need a special device to crush garlic cloves, that they are so consumed with presentation they need a special serrated knife to keep the cut edge of lettuce from turning brown, that they have no concept of portions given the plethora of storage containers and that they have unlimited storage space for all this inventive crap.

1.  Measuring cups marked on the inside

My existing Pyrex measuring cups, which have served me well for over 30 years, require me to either bend over to see the volume markers or lift the cup to eye level.  I have meekly accepted this annoyance, but an enterprising housewife banged her fist on the counter and said, “NO MORE!!  Let’s Keep America Great and spare ourselves the agony of Making America Great Again!”

These angled measuring cups allow me to look down into the cup.  No bending or lifting required.

The elimination of bending is a general theme in kitchen gadgets, starting with the aforementioned step-pedal garbage can, followed by the bendable straw patented by Joseph Friedman in 1937.  I grew up with the humble dust pan, but now I have a long-handled one.  I don’t need to bend over anymore.  I gratefully stand on the shoulders of those who came before me.

2.  Angry Mama Microwave Cleaner

My pet peeve is not the grease-spattered microwave, it’s dishes left in the sink, particularly when encrusted with old egg yolks, but I do appreciate the strategy of targeting frustrated housewives.  The steaming mad character captures the mood, but Angry Mama execution does present conceptual problems.  First you have to rip off the Mama’s hair and then her head in order to fill the body with vinegar and water, which comes across as an act of vengeance.  Then you twirl Mama  in the microwave until a vinegar steam bath erupts from the vents in her head.  The package notes that after the steam bath, you have to wipe down the microwave, then clean the woman, so Angry Mama is not a time saver.

I bought the woman to celebrate its creativity, however misguided, but returned it the next day.  In my disorganized hands, the parts would certainly become separated.  I didn’t want a decapitated head rolling around my “things accumulate” drawer.

2.  Scissors-cutting board combination

Chopping carrots has always been a two-step process – first the cutting and then the nano-second time-suck of transferring the carrots from the cutting board to the bowl.  The obvious solution – combine the two by attaching a miniature cutting board to the lower blade of the scissors.

I bought one but always forget to use it.  It takes me more time to find the scissors than use a standard-issue cutting board.  Scissors come in many styles, including one with multiple blades that can mince herbs with one cut.  Over a course of a year, a nano-second here and there might add up to a full second of saved time.

 4.  Collapsible whisk

Oh, the clutter of bulky whisks!  Such an annoyance, particularly when the bulbous whisk jams the drawer that resists all jiggling and jimmying.  I applaud the inventive mind who realized this is no way to live and then did something about it!  I hold the nifty flat whisk in my hand, twist the base and marvel as the head elegantly blossoms and clicks into its full-bodied splendor.

5.  Egglettes

Egglettes address the nightmare of hardboiled eggs that refuse to peal.  Just crack the eggs in the little plastic containers then boil them.   Genius.

However, the bigger question is why some eggs peal like a dream, while others leave you with a flea-bitten egg that is hardly worth eating.

The answer is related to the anatomy and chemistry of the egg.  I’m sure you’ve noticed the membrane that separates the egg white from the shell.  This keeps the sticky and acidic proteins in the egg white from glomming onto the shell and making it impossible to peel.  You can guess where I’m going here.  It’s all about the membrane, the difference between success and failure.  Is that flimsy membrane stalwart enough for the job?

Here’s the kicker – the fresher the egg, the lower the pH of the egg white and the stickier it becomes.  The membrane is overwhelmed.   Old eggs don’t have this problem

Egglettes are the clever work-around.  Hard boil the egg outside the shell.

I love this product.  It provides an ingenious and time-saving solution to a truly annoying problem.  I hope the inventor makes a fortune, but I didn’t buy any Egglettes.  They would take up too much room.  I’m waiting for the  next-gen, collapsible Egglette.  Besides, there’s and easy work-around.  Problem solved if you let your eggs languish in the fridge for a few days.

6.  Hydralight Flashlight                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             The Hydralight makes the list as a cautionary tale illustrating the hyperbolic advertising that accompanies gadgets.

I responded to the claim that the flashlight “runs on water,” and “no batteries needed.”  Here, midst the maze of Bed Bath and Beyond, I was privy to the fruits of another inventive tinkerer who had tapped into the energy potential of good old H2O.  I looked around to make sure that I hadn’t stumbled into the thermodynamic or cold fusion aisle of the store, but no, the aisle was devoted to other “As Seen on TV” items.

I bought a Hydralight, excited about the prospect of living in a world without the crushing disappointment of a flashlight with dead batteries.

On closer inspection, which required a magnifying glass, I saw the “Runs on Water” claim came with an asterisk.  The faint print on the back of the package noted that water was not the energy source, but merely activates the “fuel cell.”  I was in the presence of champion dissembling!  In smaller, fainter print the package made a clever distinction between a battery and a fuel cell.  Specifically, “a battery makes energy stored exclusively inside the battery.  A fuel cell requires external elements, such as water.”  Rocket scientists may embrace this distinction, but for the pedestrian flashlight, the subtleties of a battery vs. fuel cell are irrelevant.

Chastened, I returned the Hydralight the next day.

The missing words in the following poem are a collection of anagrams, i.e. words that share the same letters like spot, post, stop, etc.  The number of asterisks indicates the number of letters in the word.  One missing word will rhyme with either the previous or following line, giving you a big hint.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for the answers.

In the American kitchen, not one convenience should be ******,

Time saving gadgets are a particular point of pride.

******, time spent bending over is time that is lost,

So my purchase of a special measuring cup is well worth the cost.

However, gadgets have accumulated and without even knowing.

* ***** ended up with drawers and shelves, cluttered and overflowing.

 

 

 

[1] Lillian Gilbreth (1878-1972) is a trail blazer on many fronts, one of the first women to get a PhD in engineering and psychology.  She was a full partner with her husband Frank in their engineering and consulting firm.  The two had twelve children together, and the children participated in many of their efficiency studies.  The novel Cheaper by the Dozen, written by two of their children, is based on their well-organized home life.

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Lists, Pot Pouri | Leave a comment

The Slippery Slope to Sloth

Posted on September 20, 2018 by Liza Blue

 

Definition: Sloth

/slôTH,slōTH/

noun

1. disinclination to action or labor; spiritual apathy

Symbolized by a Lazy Boy in the living room.

2.  A slow moving tropical American mammal

Derived from the activity level of a human in a Lazy Boy

My anxiety spikes as the burly delivery men settle the Lazy Boy into my living room.  This isn’t a discreet model, but a full-on Lazy Boy with oversized, plush pillows and a lever to stretch the chair into a near horizontal position.

I insist the Lazy Boy will be temporary, something my husband Nick will sleep in as he recovers from rotator cuff surgery.  Social media testimonials agree a Lazy Boy is the only way to get even a partial night’s sleep.  I can’t understand why a strategic configuration of pillows on our bed won’t serve the same purpose, but after two agonizing nights, I cave and usher the devil through the door.

I shudder to think that anyone who enters our home will be assaulted with the visible symbol of the deadly sin of sloth, pure sloth.  Right in the middle of our living room. Continue reading →

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Pot Pouri, Such is Life | 2 Comments

The Banana Incident

Posted on August 25, 2018 by Liza Blue

I hate bananas.

Actually, hate is inadequate to describe the depth of my feeling. So is despise, detest, abhor, loathe and revile.

Bananas assault all of my senses.

The wet sticky sound when you eat them reminds me of dogs licking themselves. The smell gags me. The cloying drape of the peel makes me shudder. When I was a kid, my brothers tortured me with banana peels, laying them across my face while taking a nap. I’d wake up, sputter and fling the peel across the room.  I’ll admit I haven’t tasted a banana in at least 60 years, but I’m not about to give them another chance.  The phallic implications of the visual are disturbing.

I’ve always been discreet about my banana issue, except for one salient event about thirty-five years ago.  Nick and I were newlyweds in the Chicago, looking to expand our social circle.  Jay and Sallie, also newlyweds, were prime candidates.  We had some mutual friends, all of us athletic and sharing the same hobbies and interests.  I could see a long friendship, the type that becomes as comfortable as a pair of old shoes.

I was excited to solidify our friendship when Sallie invited us for dinner.  They were also newlyweds and I wondered if they shared my agenda.  Sallie had invited another couple – young, athletic and cute. I felt a bit of competition and jealousy, particularly since this couple was younger and more athletic.  After all, his name was Jock.  Maybe Sallie thought they’d be their perfect friends, but I knew I had a leg up.  The couple was from the East coast, transferred from some New York bank. They were just doing their time in Chicago waiting to be called back to their home town.

I knew the type. Dartmouth squash players who’d be surprised you couldn’t see all the way across Lake Michigan or wonder if you could turn right on red all the way out here in the Midwest, or say they missed the smell of salt water. I wanted Sallie to know I was in it for the long haul, I was a Midwesterner, a low key and loyal friend. I went into the kitchen to help while the other nibbled on hors d’oeuvres in the living room.

She was stressed out, worrying about the entrées, the timing, whether or not she had the right garnish. I told her to relax, everything would be great and then offered to take over the dessert.  She wanted to duplicate a soufflé she’d seen Julia Child make.  She had set a high bar, not only Julia Child, but soufflé, a very fussy dessert requiring exquisite timing and a deft hand with the soft white peaks of egg whites.  Sallie handed me a bowl and I prepared to whip up some egg whites.

It wasn’t egg whites.  It was a bowl of over ripe bananas.  “Here, can you mash them up?” Sallie asked.

I was anticipating a chocolate soufflé, a lemon soufflé, anything besides a banana souffle.

Decision time. Big decision.  I’m not kidding, bananas are a serious problem for me. The sight and smell of the bananas set my salivary glands gushing and I had to repeatedly swallow to keep from succumbing.  My usual work around is to find a plausible reason to leave the room when bananas are present. This was not an option.

If I took that bowl and started mashing, that would be a lie, and not the most promising way to begin a friendship. I also might upchuck in the process. And if I mashed those bananas I’d be committing myself to eating the soufflé – another possible upchuck event. If my acting skills were good enough, Sallie might think banana soufflé was my favorite and make it her “go-to” dessert at all our meals together. Until we died.

And then there was the tyranny of the lie. Once made it would be hard to undo. If I ate bananas once, and then again, and then fessed up, wouldn’t Sallie think this was the worst kind of betrayal? Or patronizing, trying to make her feel good about her cooking skills?  I could tell her right up front about my troubled relationship with bananas, but I didn’t want to aggravate her frenzy. I had come into the kitchen to help, not to reveal that her dessert would make me vomit.  What kind of friend is that?

I felt the tightening grasp of the humble banana.  It held the power to scuttle a promising friendship.

Options and their implications whirred through my mind in the second or two to decide whether to accept the assignment. “Hand me the bowl,” I said, “I’ll mash them for you. Banana soufflé, what a great idea for dessert.”

I kicked the can down the road, embraced the lie, accepted the consequences, the most immediate being eating the dessert.  But it seemed worth it.  I could handle it.

I mouth breathed to block the smell as I mashed the bananas into sticky, dog ball-licking slurry.  Eyes wincing, swallowing hard, but I got it done.

I whipped up the egg whites, folded them in, shoved the concoction in the oven.  I have no recollection of the entrée, which was probably a thing of beauty.  I was numb, reading the final course.

The desert looked gorgeous.  Julia Child would be proud.  It had risen well outside the bowl and had a nicely browned crust. Sallie served it with a flourish.   “Look what Liza helped me make. It’s a banana soufflé. It looks just like Julia Childs’!”

I steeled myself for the final assault, hoping a massive dollop of whipped cream would blunt the taste. Nick looked up surprised. “Sallie I can’t believe Liza helped you. She hates bananas. In fact she can’t be in the same room as a banana.”

I was outed. Ashamed, devastated, a friendship in ruins before it even started.

The room fell silent. I didn’t know what to say. I had been prepared to live with the lie, but wanted to manage its inevitable reveal, soften the blow. But my lie lay openly on the table for everyone to see.

My sweet husband sensed the disaster he’d created and rose to my defense. “Sallie, you should be honored. Liza has never given me the same consideration. I love bananas, but she makes me eat them by myself in the car. I’m impressed.”

Sallie, to her great credit, blushed. “Liza, I’m so sorry.  You didn’t have to do that.”

And then I covered myself in apologies as I pushed the dessert aside.   Everyone else raved about the dessert.  Nick ate mine as well.

Nick’s outing was the best resolution to the dilemma.  An impulsive lie, following by a quick reveal.  It was like ripping a band aid off, positioning the banana incident as a testimony to my loyalty and support.  We’ve been best friends ever since.  That other couple has long since scurried back to their motherland on the East Coast to smell the salt water.

Someday I’ll get around to telling Sallie about my issues with peanut butter and black olives.

 

 

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Food Stuff, What I Did | Leave a comment

First Evers, Chapter 2

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Liza Blue

1.  Respect

I had heard about athletes being “in the zone.”  I particularly remember the Kansas City A’s hall of famer George Brett talking about those out-of-the-blue days when a baseball inexplicably looked as big as a melon.  Brett just couldn’t help but hit a home run and “go downtown.”  It never occurred to me that I could ever be in that zone.  This special grace could only envelop true athletes who had honed their skills with daily work outs, practices and swing coaches.

This was not me.  I was a slow moving first baseman whose offensive output was meager at best.  Feeble pop-ups landing in the mitt of an immobile center fielder were my specialty.  I had slowly drifted down in the batting order of our slow pitch softball team.

One nondescript humid summer evening it happened.  As I stepped into the batter’s box, I felt a cone of magical light shining down upon me.  Everything slowed down as the first pitch came in, the ball hung there as big as George Brett’s melon.  I stepped up and crushed it in a perfectly choreographed display of hand-eye-muscle mass coordination.  This was no bloop, dying quail or Texas leaguer but an absolute frozen rope to dead center, blazing far beyond the dazed fielder.  Not bad for the 7th batter.  I slowly jogged around the bases to the cheers of my stunned teammates. Continue reading →

Follow Liza Blue on: Facebooktwitter
Share: Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Lists, What I Did, What Words Mean | 1 Comment