Category Archives: Choices

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Homemade Faggots Or Food For Thought

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Of all the adjustments people ask me about in my relocation from US to the UK such driving on the left while sitting on the right side of the car or learning how to use different systems of measurement or money, the most interesting is the difference in what certain words mean here versus in America. Take faggot for example. Last night John had faggots from the special’s board at our local pub.

Being raised in country where faggot has a whole other meaning, I had to snap a couple of photos to use in discussion here later. This caused a bit of chatter at the table we were sharing with our friends, Jean, Robert, and Jeff. Robert had the faggots too and after seeing my interest in photographing both the menu board and John’s dinner we talked a bit about faggots and the meaning and use here in the UK.

After doing some research this morning, I found more than a few sites which talk at length about how the word faggot came to be used in America as a derisive word that is often thrown about to bully or dismiss someone of a different sexual orientation. While one might assume that Americans were wholly responsible the shift in perception, I discovered this morning that at certain points in time, Britons have themselves used it to describe more than meatballs and wood for a fire.

It seems that during its evolution down the ugly path it has been used to describe not only a homosexual male, but according to a post over at The Straight Dope, it has also been a way to label and dismiss women during certain periods in history, ” Nineteenth century Britons also heard “faggot” used in reference to an ill-tempered woman, i.e., a ball-buster, a battleaxe, a shrew. That meaning of the term continued into the early 20th century, and the usage was gradually applied to children as well as women.” How all of this evolved from what was originally used primarily to denote a bundle of sticks is discussed in detail here, and to a lesser degree here as well.

This post was originally intended as a post about food and word use and the differences in people and countries, but another thought kept nudging me, tickling the edges of my concentration saying, ” Hey, why are you skirting around the really ugly stuff ? “

Which led me to something other than the neat wrap up I had intended. I wish I could forget how word use and name calling are linked to bullying by people with a need to wield power and control over others.

Most of us have experienced some form of it growing up or even as adults, but I can’t imagine a life tainted by some of the horrendous acts that I have read about over the last few days. Some of the blogs I read have offered points of view not really touched by the news media and there are a few I want to leave you with.

A little food for thought.

Anniegirl1138 sometimes shocks my toenails off with what she has to say, but she almost always leaves me with something to think about as is the case with her post today. It is well worth reading and I would suggest you watch the video if you have time, but be prepared.

Jennifer Petkov is You over at Anniegirl1138

Penelope Trunk wrote a very interesting post the other day which while dealing with what looks like a different subject matter is really more of the same with regard to bullying and ugly places some people go to when trying to dismiss someone’s value and credibility.

Generation Y in Politics: Krystal Ball’s Candidacy can be found at Penelope Trunk’s blog.

Jayne Martin usually focuses on the funny, but gets very serious with her post below.

How Many More Kids Have To Die ? which can be found over at injaynesword.

I will finish with a gentle and important message from Karen Walrond.

love thursday: on bullying, modeling behavior and making it stop which can be found over at her blog home, Chookooloonks.

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Special Delivery – First Giveaway Produces A Winner

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Most of you are probably aware that last week I held my first giveaway, but you may not have gone back to check to see if you might have won. I borrowed the image above from Benjamin Wagner to show you just what Cindy won when her number came up using random.org to help choose a winner.

Benjamin used one of his images of his daughter to grace the cover of his new release, ” Forever Young “ and I am happy to say that Cindy’s copy is on its way. I could not wait to get mine and downloaded it from iTunes after writing my post about how Benjamin had included an image of me and others in the music video for ” Forever Young.”

I ordered Cindy’s copy from CD Baby and after receiving this funny little thank you and update from them, I have to say that I kind of prefer their endearing bit of marketing mixed in with what is clearly good customer service. I’ve included the email content below so you can have a smile too.

Thanks again to all who took time to enter the contest and congratulations to Cindy.

CD Baby’s Email:

Elizabeth-

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

USPS

(1) Benjamin Wagner: Forever Young

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, October 12, 2010.
We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh…
We miss you already. We’ll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
—
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

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Paris Fashion Week 2010

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Paris Fashion 2010

 

When I began planning my trip to Paris with my sister, I went through my wardrobe looking for what might be comfortable for all the sightseeing we had planned and managed to pull together enough for the week. While I am sure my fashion choices did not scream tourist, they also did not attract any positive attention from Parisians with more fashion sense either.

Attention however, is not always a good thing especially when what you are wearing is so atrocious that it garners sneaky glances from people passing by like the woman in the sunglasses on the left. Double click on the image and check out the expression on her face. I find it ever so ironic that her hair resembles Meryl Streep’s when she portrayed a character in The Devil Wears Prada, based on Vogue fashion editor Anna Wintour.

I happened to catch sight of the serious fashion faux pas above while walking down a side street near the Paris Opera House where the fashion greats have had models strutting their stuff during Fashion Week. I’m willing to bet that no one invited this guy to attend any of the events.

I had to sneak a quick photo of him so that the next time I travel I can remind myself not to worry so much about what I take to wear as I can never splash out quite like the guy pictured above. After snapping a picture or two, I turned my sister and said, ” I sure hope he’s not an American.”

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Shakespeare And Company – Surviving And Thriving

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Elizabeth Harper - Shakespeare And Company - 2010

Some of you may be thinking,” What does the famous Shakespeare And Company bookstore in Paris have to do with Surviving And Thriving? ” Aside from the obvious fact that American George Whitman’s bookstore has survived and thrived since he established it in 1951 across from Notre Dame, today’s post has to do with the ways in which we may unknowingly affect others in the blogging community.

I can’t remember if I visited this bookstore the first time I came to Paris in 1980, but I do have a photograph of myself standing in front of it in 2000 and again in 2009. While it may seem pretty touristy to have your picture taken in front of such a well-known shop, it has become a bit of a tradition for me now to stop by George Whitman’s eclectic bookstore to see what’s happening.

It’s funny how people pop into your mind when going through your day and when I mentioned to Donna Freedman in an email recently that I thought of her during my trip to Paris last month and she could not imagine how or why Paris might have triggered a thought about her. It makes perfect sense to me as I am sure it will you once I share a few things about the day.

You may remember that I have mentioned Donna in the past. She writes a great deal about living frugally and makes it sound almost like a game to enjoy versus anything close to deprivation. While strolling in and out of various places in Paris, there were endless opportunities to open my wallet and spend on things I did not need. I found myself having conversations in my head that generally went something like, ” Oh, isn’t that just the cutest thing, maybe I should get it to help remember my trip to Paris.”

Never mind that I had already accumulated about 3,000 photographs of Paris to help trigger my memory, while walking through Shakespeare And Company I decided ever so briefly that I needed another canvas tote. How many of these bags I currently have did not even matter when I discovered the cool bag in the photo below. I went back and forth, buy it – don’t by it … until finally I thought about what would Donna do and I put it back.

Bag Design By Badaude And Image From Her Site

It was a lovely bag by Badaude and I would have snatched it up in a hurry if I did not already own more bags than I have use for, but that did not stop me from considering several books just as I always do. I was on the verge of another purchase when I picked up the book below. (The full image is in the first photograph)

It’s Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and finding it reminded me of how many in the US are struggling just to get by and how the scarcity of jobs has many people working for far less than they would have considered in the past. That thought led me to frugality, which once again made me think of Donna Freedman and even though she didn’t write this book, I still said to my sister, ” Take my picture for Donna.”

Earlier this morning I finished reading a piece she wrote for Get Rich Slowly that has tons of information and tips for both the underemployed and the unemployed. Donna writes regularly at MSN Money as well and has her own site that I mentioned in the title above. She also has a contest every week over at her blog home, Surviving And Thriving and even though I have not won anything yet, I feel like I take something away with me every time I stop by to see what she has to say.

So there it is, a message about how Donna Freedman inspired a thought and photograph in front of a famous bookstore, in the shadow of Notre Dame. It could be you next time.

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Sorting Things Out

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It feels as if it has been a long time since I posted although today is actually only day four since the post about my dancing ladies guiding me home. After traveling so much during the month of September with my sister, I  must admit that I have been sitting around with my feet up a good bit more than I normally would. Put plainly, I feel tired in a way that is difficult to explain. It feels like more than just travel weariness and I am spending more time than I probably should thinking about why.

My habit when getting get stuck in my head is generally some sort of physical movement such as cleaning out closets or giving things a good scrubbing. So far the closets still need a bit of rearranging and the spiders are taking over the house. It is difficult to clean when one’s feet are crossed at the ankles and resting the coffee table, but I am managing to get some work done even though my brain has been disinterested in writing and cleaning does not seem to be the answer this time.

Instead of sorting through old clothes or pairing stray socks, I have been sorting through the new and old images residing in my Aperture file. Having wrapped up the end of September with almost 12,000 new photographs, my computer was bursting with around 33,000 images. In preparation for my sister Margaret’s visit, I had moved about 15,000 off my MacBook to an external hard drive, but quickly filled it back up again to the point where I began to receive messages about how I needed to clear some space before trying to add any more.

It’s funny on reflection to think about how I tend to keep photographs where I did not get what I hoped for from my subject when so many good ones are sitting right next them. With the same sort of scarcity mentality that made my depression era grandmother save old things she should have tossed, I have kept photographs that I thought I might need in the future even though they were imperfect images. I held onto to the idea that I might shape them up with a bit of time and Photoshop.

Never mind that several perfectly good images sat on either side in the same grouping, I have always been slow to press the delete button on the imperfect, afraid like my grandmother … that I might need them one day.

I can see a correlation between my saving photographs that would be better deleted in the same way that I find it difficult to let go of many things such as beliefs, ideas, dreams, and even people, who clearly no longer wish to be included in my memories or life.

I hold on … shifting them over to an external hard drive of sorts in my memory, letting them take up space that would be better served by something else. For the last few days I have been ruthlessly deleting thousands of images and the big clear out is not over yet.

I should have done this years ago and when I pause too long before pressing the button, I remind myself that I am making room for new images that will give me what I want without all the effort of trying to shape them into something they never were from the beginning.

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Are You Missing The Big Moments

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Yesterday it was if Paris knew it was our last day and showered us literally with gifts all through the day. We felt as if we both received personal messages (I may share mine later) as we spent our last morning in Paris at Pére Lachaise visiting and photographing some of the graves there. I finally managed to find the graves Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, and Moliére after having searched without success on past visits.

Later when the rain sent us running for cover, we made our way to the Metro and found ourselves on a rooftop overlooking Paris just as the sky went wild with a light and cloud show that had everyone within viewing range watching in amazement.

Everyone, but the young woman you see in the photograph above. I took a series of shots as the clouds shifted and rolled and she never looked up … not even once. If you look below, you can see where her attention was so completely focused.

I know whatever was on her phone might have been really important and she may have been dealing with a horrible emergency or hopefully reading some good news, but to not even notice that this was happening all around her  … what a thing to miss!

It made me a bit sad when I reviewed these photographs because I remember when I was that woman and I can’t help but think about what I might have missed when everything else seemed more important than just sitting for a moment in awareness and appreciation.

Cornwall is calling us back and we will be leaving Paris today with some new memories and gratitude for having had a chance to walk its streets again.

Goodbye Paris!

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Day Two – Unexpected Gifts Of Spirit

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Tower Of London (Lower Right)

Yesterday was a day where I felt contemplative for the most part. The Underground line we needed was overcrowded and Margaret and I made our way on trains that made me feel a bit claustrophobic. After much waiting, we finally arrived at the Tower of London which had a fair amount of people milling around and we split up like we tend to do taking as Margaret put it the other day, “ separate field trips.”

Having been to the Tower before, I went more slowly than I would when exploring a historical space and spent a lot of time thinking about the lives of the people who had lived within its walls as both the keeper and the kept. There is no escaping the burden and responsibility of those who had the power and those who coveted it.

As the afternoon wore on a rainstorm came up suddenly, sending people hurrying for shelter and I went in search of my sister. I was tired of thinking too much anyway … stuck as I was on what memories we leave behind when we die. It is difficult not to think about when all around you are the stories of those whose lives were impacted by their own actions or those of others.

All Hallows By The Tower

All Hallows By The Tower

Walking away from the Tower, we came across a small church of great significance. All Hallows by the Tower has been as they put it a “ A Christian Beacon on Tower Hill since 675 AD. ” If you are ever in London, I would suggest you visit this place where The Saxon Abby of Barking founded the church as their literature states in 675 AD.

Underneath in a crypt there is a small museum complete with tiny cobblestones from a Roman floor and other evidence of city life for almost 2000 years. There is a link to American history as well as details about the almost total destruction it suffered during WWII.

All of its history and artifacts made for interesting reading, but the important part of our visit was found as one usually expects or hopes in its service. Margaret and I happened to arrive as they were getting ready for a something called a Taizé Service which is a short service using prayer, chants and silence. Simple and meditative was just what it was with a perfect mix of scripture readings and music made up only of voices.

All Hallows By The Tower

It was exactly the thing I needed to lift my spirit and an unexpected gift on a day heavy with too much contemplation and dark thoughts. There was biblical reading about, “ all those who seek me … “ and the service finished with a simple prayer that ended gently with the words … “ Have the courage to live your life.”

Afterwards when I stepped outside on to a wet London sidewalk and looked up to see the image below, I couldn’t help but remember from the bible stories of childhood about the message from God found in each rainbow. It was an interesting finish for a doubting, but still seeking ” Thomas.”

While I don’t usually ask for gifts and I am generally funny about receiving them, I wonder if I might ask for one from those of you who are reading this today. It doesn’t matter if you come across this after September 10th, I will still see a comment if you leave one for me. If you would … please take a second to tell me your favorite post I’ve written here at Gifts of the Journey or maybe a little something about yourself if you’d rather.

I’ll be back tomorrow with Day One, the final post of the big birthday countdown and I want to say thanks to all of you who have been reading and commenting over the last few days in particular. It makes all the writing mean just a bit more to know it matters to someone other than just me.  xo


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Day Seven – The Larger Life Lesson In Teaching My Daughter How To Spit

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Elizabeth & Miranda - 1993

Life lessons from spitting … if you’re someone who actually reads my blog titles, you’re likely thinking, ” What in the world could she mean by that! ” Let me begin by saying that I am afraid I have not been the most conventional of mothers over the last (almost) 23 years that I’ve had the good fortune to mother my daughter Miranda.

Teaching my six-year old daughter how to spit might look like page from a ” Bad Mothers R Us ” book unless you consider as Paul Harvey used to say,  ” … the rest of the story.”

Joining the army at eighteen opened my eyes to many things. Despite having lived in different states on the east and west coasts of the US while growing up, I was shockingly naive to the differences in cultures and habits in the mix of people I worked and served with in the military community.

As enlisted soldiers we all had our different reasons for swearing to protect and defend, some of which were very personal and not easily shared. I quickly became known for asking what some considered to be too many questions as I was always more interested in the part of the story that people were less likely to want to reveal. I knew my own reasons for joining were more complex than the snappy answer I would toss out when asked what made me want to become a soldier and I wanted to know their real motivation as well.

Adjusting to a world dominated by men and too much testosterone was difficult for me right from the beginning. Being the sixth female in a unit that had only recently begun to allow women a place in its ranks, I found myself challenged on a daily basis by the men in my platoon as to my worthiness and my ability to compete beside them as a soldier. When you are part of a team that might be called on to protect each other in battle, the expectations can become a bit more fiercely defined. Things you would not have considered important can be magnified and your performance evaluated in even the smallest areas.

Although I was good at many things in the military, some of my obvious deficiencies were cracks in the carefully constructed armor I tried to create in order to keep the jokes and disrespectful comments to a minimum. I did not want to be one of the boys, but neither did I want to be considered one of the girls. Being female in the military in the late 70s and early 80s was a burden for most of the women I knew who served then and one way to keep harassment at bay was to stand out only in the best ways.

While I excelled in most areas, my physical readiness was clearly a weakness. Lacking in the ability to run as far or as fast as I should have during our morning PT runs, I was usually at the back of the platoon and frequently would end up by the side of the road with a tubby guy who never could complete a run without falling out of formation either.

After taking a lot of grief for my ” wussiness,” I set a goal to get past the barriers that were mostly in my head when it came to running and within six months went from struggling over morning runs with my unit to completing my first marathon, a race of 26 miles that taught me that I really could do what I had once considered impossible.

What I did not do well during all of my training runs was something that embarrassed me despite my achievements as I piled on the miles leading up to my big race. What special skill did I lack you say … you know what’s coming here don’t you? I was miserable at spitting. I’m sure many of you are thinking … spitting, really Elizabeth!

That said, I need to paint a picture for you. Imagine you are running in formation moving along at a fast clip, you are singing whatever awful cadence is being sung by the folks you are running with and you are hanging tough, not falling to the back, but right there with the men who’ve previously made fun of your weakness. So you’re singing and running and looking strong and suddenly, a bug flies inside your mouth hitting the back of your throat so hard you cough instinctively and move to spit it out.

Having been taught that spitting is nasty and ill-mannered, you are totally lacking in practice so you end up spitting so poorly that you either spit in a way that it slides down your own chin or worse, you spit directly on the guy running next to you.

In one motion you undo months of hard-earned respect in less time then it takes to clear your throat. Suddenly, all the things you were taught that ” ladies do not do ” begins to look more like holes in your education rather than lessons for living in the real world.

In an ideal world, women wouldn’t have to be one of the boys to be valued nor would we need to be perfect ” ladies ” to be respected. In an ideal world we could be ourselves and spit when necessary instead of swallowing that bug or choking back something we really wanted to say.

Growing up as I did set my feet on a less conventional path, but I recognized fairly early the balance needed to live within the rules of polite society and how and when to break those same rules.

In the photograph above you can see a mother and daughter acting silly putting on our best monster faces for the camera. We had just finished our lesson in spitting … a sort of how to, where to, and where not to spit primer that was really more of life lesson than she could have known at six.

I remember explaining to her that spitting was a skill that required a mix of precision, timing, and discretion and thought then as I do now that some of the best things we can teach our children are the lessons that deal with self-care rather than group acceptance. I mean after all if the guy next you wouldn’t swallow the bug, why should you?

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Day Eight – Setting The Example

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Margaret Harper

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life
~Charles M. Schulz

Growing up, big sisters walk a fine line between setting the good example that most are told is their responsibility and becoming a bossy mother substitute while they are still children themselves. Once they’ve heard that, ” you are the oldest, you have to set the example ” speech enough, they can become rooted in a role model position that morphs easily over time into a caretaker role that can be difficult to give up.

Having a childhood where you are told you need to be the responsible one can create a life long struggle between trying to live your life as you desire and trying to ensure everyone around you is okay. Children need a chance to be children, even those born first. Can you tell where I am in the birth order? I am the eldest of four girls.

Being prepared for worst possible outcomes has been a by-product of the big sister syndrome for me. When I was about six, I remember hearing on the news or in adult conversation that a tornado was possible and the impact it might have on the city where I lived with my mother and only sister at the time. For some reason, I decided that our mother was not on top of things enough to suit me so I took it into my own head that we needed a plan of action complete with an escape route and a place to meet should we be separated by the storm.

Decision made and because Margaret was only about four, and I packed our little kiddie suitcases with a few things I thought we might need and put it all by the front door sometime after our mother had gone to bed. I remember being very surprised the next morning that we had not had to flee in the night and I can’t remember what my mother might have said when seeing the important pile by the door.

We moved from the house in the photograph sometime before my seventh birthday and years later I went back to see it. After a quick look at the front of the still unremarkable red brick, ranch-style house, I walked past the carport and went around the backyard to see the “safe” place I had planned to lead my little sister in the event of a tornado.

The designated place was not such a good pick after all as I had chosen a concrete pipe that while large enough to hold us both, would have been filled with water very quickly as it emptied groundwater from the neighborhood into a depression that ended behind our house.

It is funny the things you remember and what inspires them. My sister Margaret is holding her umbrella on a day that appears sunny and bright. Some people might say … “oh look, she’s showing off her umbrella” because it’s not raining. I see it and think about the natural disaster I was so worried about while the real challenges in our young lives were still to come.

Margaret arrives today from Alaska and will be here for the rest of September. I’ve been planning this visit for months and while I’m not the same worried six-year old, I must admit to a bit of anxiety. I was on iChat with her several times yesterday going over last-minute details and made sure she had John’s brother’s phone numbers ” just in case ” as I later told John so that she would not be stranded in the airport if  ” we were injured in a critical crash or unconscious in the hospital.”

John in his easy-going way suggested something much less dramatic might hold us up while I laughingly tried to attribute my worst case scenario thinking to my creative writer’s mind while really knowing that it’s just me planning for the worst, while hoping for the best.

Margaret’s response to my over planning for an unlikely situation was to say that in the event of our hospitalization, she was still going to see London and Paris rather than hang out at the hospital with us. Spoken like a true younger sister … seriously, Margaret has morphed into a planner with a keen sense of preparedness all her own so the best way to ensure a good visit will be for me to remember that she’s grown and not such a ” little ” sister anymore. We haven’t traveled together or spent more than two weeks in the same space since we were twelve and fourteen so it ought to be an adventure in many ways.

As we were going over her what to pack list I started to tell her that she did not need an umbrella as we had plenty, but she popped a nice striped one up for me to see on camera. Having seen the raincoat she’s bringing as well, I can rest assured that not only is she able to plan for changes in weather without her big sister’s help, but she will be fashionable on the city streets with her color coordinated coat and brolly. Given what I had planned to wear, it might be time to let her set the example for a while.

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Day Nine – My Friends Can Call Me E

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Elizabeth Harper - Times Square - December 31, 1994


December 31,1994, it’s New Year’s Eve and I am in Times Square waiting for midnight to arrive so Mayor Giuliani can drop the big crystal ball on the city that never sleeps. In 1994 no one ever called me E. I was always very adamant when asked, ” My name is Elizabeth and no, I don’t shorten it thank you very much! ” Well, I was actually more polite than that, but underneath I always thought if I wanted people to call me something else, I would have told them in my introduction.

For reasons unknown to me, some people would feel obliged to come up with nicknames for me as if Elizabeth was too much of a mouthful and I was usually okay with that as long it was not a generally recognized nickname for Elizabeth such as Liz, Beth, or Betty. I have always liked my name, but have been willing at times to accept a nickname that was more of a term of endearment and specific to me.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve mellowed a good bit in some parts of my life and what I’m willing to answer to is one of those areas. I am not quite sure when I began to feel as if E was an acceptable nickname, but my friend Patrice has called me E  for as long as I as I can remember and at some point in the eight years that I’ve known her, it’s become okay with me for my other friends to call me E as well.

Of course if you’d prefer to call me Elizabeth, I’ll always be happy with that. John doesn’t have a nickname for me and I love hearing him say my name with his darling English accent so I’m pleased that he prefers Elizabeth.

In the photograph above I am perched at the junction of two barricades that actually say, ” Police Line Do Not Cross.” When I look at this picture from 1994, it makes me think of several things, one being how easily I seem to be balanced on the barricade (I’m not sure I could pull that off now) and two, the message underneath me. I tend to read it as, there’s a line with E (me) that one does not cross … which translates in my mind to boundaries.

I can be a bit rigid with some of those boundaries and a barricade of sorts can easily come up if someone pushes too hard or crosses a line with me. For years my name was one of those areas. I was polite but firm in my corrections and pretty much insisted people address me by my proper name.

As 50 approaches, I have to admit that I may be beginning to mellow because Gary (the man who owns our village pub) keeps calling me Lizzie and I am really not bovvered by it at all. I choose to see it as a term of endearment and acceptance into my new community.

Let me add here, while I prefer Elizabeth to anything else it does make me smile when my friends call me E.

If you are late to the party and have no idea what Day Nine means … you can catch up by going here for a quick read.

PS. I just found this photograph from the same night and had to add it to show you a bit more of the city getting ready for the ball to drop. My mouth is hanging open … we’ll say in amazement, but who knows really. Sorry it’s a bit blurry, but it was a pretty big party night.