john wayne said that courage was being scared to death but saddling up anyway. i guess today was my john wayne day.
i am afraid of flying. i’m not sure whether i’m more scared of dying in a flaming aluminum tube of destruction or of having a panic attack so furious that i end up as a lead on fox news. but if i’m going to make my new years resolution and meet every single facebook friend i have, i will need to get on a plane. to seoul. to taipei. to mumbai. to istanbul. to mexico city. and to homer, alaska.
i figured i’d start small. tallahassee. my facebook friend is justin, who is my dad. he has been having some cancer issues and he asked me to see him. that’s unusual in itself. but this morning i went to o’hare, stepped on a plane to charlotte north carolina and got on a plane from charlotte to tallahassee to see justin. i didn’t panic when the kid seated behind me kicked my back. i looked out of the window sometimes. i raced across the charlotte airport and found my gate. i know these are the things that everybody does every day. the proof is that the airports were packed.
but now i’ve done it too! i’m starting my journey.
justin is not feeling well at all. the cancer has metastasized. we talked tonight about a lot of things, including our bucket lists. here’s his:
i met tao zhang about ten years ago when we were both working on a pta benefit. at the time, tao was just starting to explore the notion of being a photographer. today, he’s one of the most sought after photographers for weddings, christenings, graduations, and other important occasions. he has a particular whimsical and personal style that exactly matches whoever and whatever he’s photographing. i was talking to him about the strange journey he has made from being a radio announcer in china to a gentleman of the north shore.
and he’s happy! really happy with the career that he’s developed. but we couldn’t just talk–that would be a waste of a perfectly talented photographer!
we went to the stairwell of his building and took a few shots. i’m wearing my carharts which are absolutely essential for this weather! tao also does photography for many north shore magazines. he’s a real treasure!
you can see more of his work or even book a special occasion picture (how about an early valentine?) by going to http://lensworkstudio.com!
tao zhang and i had an appointment i was determined i would not miss! so out i went into the tundra, meeting pam koster along the way and she agreed to take this video:
later today, tao will send me the photos he took and i’ll post them here! along with a video of him talking about how he turned disaster into great happiness!
every winter, there comes a time when weather prognosticators get their groove on. and an outpouring of forecasts, each more apocalyptic than the other, scares the bejesus out of chicagoans. today, the general consensus is that the upcoming snowstorm will be worse than, ahem, the snowstorm of 1967. the winnetka community house has already announced it will be closed. ohare airport, out of which i was to fly off to tallahassee, is on full ground stop for tomorrow. and mc kato has been forced to postpone the concert he was to do at my house. his dj and the rest of his posse are going to try again later this month. it will be the “welcome back for a little while” concert for my face to facebook project. sometimes i am reminded that friendship requires flexibility. especially in the face of the elements.
i thought this past weekend that a friend had defriended me. and further, when i tried to email her, i thought i was being blocked. i felt awful. a little rejected. a little concerned about whatever i had done to have her not want to count me as a friend anymore. then i did something totally retro–i called her. she said that no, she was still my friend and i wasn’t being blocked but that she had deactivated her account for a while. the reasons are not for discussion here, but i hadn’t known you can deactivate and then reactivate and then presumably redeactivate again. i learned from f2fb #4 winston chang that many people on active duty in the military deactivate their accounts so that if they are, say, held hostage, their captors can’t use information gleaned from their page in order to harm them or their families.
and this is not to say that i haven’t been defriended because i have been by one person since this enterprise got started.
regardless of the weather, i’m fighting my way onto the first flight out of chicago to tallahassee so that i can see my facebook friend justin leiber, who is also my father.
today is the release of MC KATO’s new album glissando. he will be performing at my house at a face to facebook launch party! seven o’clock and yes, you are invited! you can also pick up or download his songs on itunes today. yippee!
i have made airline reservations with expedia for my trip to tallahassee. i don’t see my dad very often, mostly when he goes to his class reunions for the lab school here in chicago. so i was really surprised when he asked me to visit. then i found out he’s been having a bit of a dust up with his wife barbara. yesterday, he called to give me the entire play by play over the course of an hour. he wants me to “observe” the situation. i’m thinking the most placid part of the weekend will be driving up to huntsville alabama to have dinner with jonathan boyd and his family.
my reaction to justin’s call was to go blind in my right eye. this happens about once a year and is the opening volley for a full on migraine. i start off by saying “oh, this has happened before, i know what it is” and twenty minutes later i’m crying and thinking i’m having a stroke. sometimes i get so overwrought that i call an ambulance, but yesterday i decided that if i was going to die it would be preferable to the embarrassment of e.m.t.s reassuring me that everything was going to be all right while jabbing me with needles–besides, there was ice on the front steps and one of them was bound to take a fall.
so i practiced self-medication: two ativan, six ibuprofen, and six pepcids. repeat as necessary. the purpose is not to restore my sight but to make me so relaxed i don’t care.
tom evans is a member, as i am, of the winnetka northfield rotary club. he marks out his office at the caribou coffee every morning along with three other regulars. he does something related to health benefits and, after he lost his position at northwestern university here in chicago, he took a job at loras college in dubuque. he spent the weekdays in iowa and then drove home for the weekend–but always managed to be in the “office” on saturday and sunday mornings when i came in for coffee.
you know how you ALWAYS know when one of your friends sells avon or amway or is doing a walkathon for irritable bowel syndrome? oddly, i didn’t find out that tom is a reliv representative until very recently. and yet, it is something he’s very passionate about. so there are now three cans of powdered formula that are in my kitchen right now–the “classic”, the “innergize” and the “fiberstore”. i’m to take a little of each, put it in a glass and stir it up with water. tom said i could use vodka instead but didn’t recommend it.
theodore kalagaris (the dude who devised the reliv system) was told by his parents to “be ashamed to die before you score a victory for mankind” and he devoted himself to serving others, mostly through medicine. i wish i were as selfless. and i wish i weren’t so shameless that when tom described the variety of medical woes that could be fixed with reliv i didn’t really focus until he got to weight loss. if i am five pounds lighter at the end of the month–well, let’s just say i’m ready for filming the infomercial!!!
in other news, after the face to facebook concert tomorrow night by mc kato (yes, you’re invited! just email me for details if you don’t remember) i swing out of chicago and begin an arduous journey to . . . warm, sunny florida. nobody said this job was going to be easy!
my father justin is there and my half sister casey is coming down as well. it’s a little unnerving because it will be the first time i have gone to see him since. .. . ever.
two weeks ago, i came to the kankakee-bourbonnaise-bradley area to visit with eric and heather who are facebook friends of mine. eric is friends with some of the people i went to college with (although he never went to north central with me) and he has played online scrabble with me a lot. i won’t do mafia wars, sorority sisters, or farmville with him–he’s way too good. heather is his wife. she and i had lunch at the target two weeks ago and for some reason eric and i couldn’t get our schedules coordinated.
yesterday, i came back to kankakee to see eric (f2fb #27) but in the intervening two weeks, tragedy had struck the couple once again–heather had been fired from target. being fired is no fun because you feel like a failure. but it’s also no fun because there’s a lot of work to be done to guarantee food on the table and your health insurance covered. their car had been repo-ed so me coming down was actually an unintentional blessing.
the first place the three of us visited was the food pantry. people who needed food congregated in the lobby of the church of the nazarene. eric got a slip of paper with the number 65 on it. the food, mostly canned goods and dried pasta, was laid out on conference tables. a woman started calling out the numbers, beginning with the number one. we looked at the food available, at the people surrounding us. eric suggested that i take heather to the grocery store to get the fresh food that they’d need for the week and i was really happy to do that. when heather and i returned, the pantry was helping the fifty fifth person. eric said he was going to turn in his number. i was puzzled, but he explained that since you can’t use this particular food pantry more than once every two months, the paltry selection wasn’t worth it. he’d rather reserve his option to come to the pantry next month. as we left, an older gentleman was loading up his car with items he had gotten from the nazarene food pantry. eric helped him by sharing information about other food pantries in the area and their schedules.
i have had rough times in my life, but nothing such as this since i left college. i will be checking in with eric and heather a lot this year, and not just in a facebook way. although, of course, facebook has helped make it possible for me and the couple to contact each other.
in other news, be careful driving in the kankakee-bourbonnaise-bradley area. the residents seem to take it as a point of pride to never look in the direction they are driving. i believe they think to do so would suggest weakness. they all own pick up trucks and are truly astonished when other vehicles present themselves in their path. i am a wary driver.
there are people who are spiritually evolved and then there are people like me. not evolved. when i met with ann silberman yesterday i was hungry for the spiritual. .. . but when she said she wanted to color, i said “uh, what??”
ann has everything–she looks and talks exactly like what kathleen turner would look like if kathleen turner’s life hadn’t had a few wrong turns. she has three wonderful children, the oldest of which is an indigo (which is a term i have never heard before but let’s just say genius doesn’t even begin to describe leah) and ann has business in new york, hollywood, all the glamorous places. ann and peter have been married for twenty seven years and when annsays she’s totally in love with her husband, you want to smack her. . . . until you realize that she’s absolutely telling the truth. she’ll tell you bluntly that sometimes her aura is so outsized that it bumps up against people.
you can’t envy ann all this, you can only adore her and feel that every color in the room, every scent in the air is deeper because of her. she has been a life coach and spiritual healer and i’d like her to do some of that for me, but she decided that i needed to do some coloring instead.
so, coloring. ann sometimes likes to buy djeco brand coloring kits. yesterday, she showed me the atelier art nouveau design kit with a series a prints by elene usdin.
i used to get into all sorts of trouble in kindergarten because my coloring was all over the place. and i’d bet ann was the same way. but she taught me yesterday that sometimes it’s nice to stay inside the lines. when you want to.
next up: road trip! and i have my wallet this time. . . .
i met with face to facebook friend #25 max henderson today. i first met max when he and joseph were four years old. they quickly became best friends. his father colvin developed mesothelioma when joseph and max were in fifth grade. on the day that colvin passed, max came over for a playdate with joseph and we planted hostas in the front yard. i became a rotarian because colvin, seeing what was ahead, asked me to join the club. i promised him i would never resign.
max and i talked about some serious issues, in part because max is doing a class in comparative religions and he is required to interview a catholic. i’m not a great catholic, in fact i would rank myself as pretty awful. but i converted to catholicism because stephen wanted to convert from judaism to catholicism and it was important to me that the family all be the same religion. joseph, eastman, stephen and i were all baptized in the same mass by father mark. he later left the priesthood and i’ve often wondered why and what he’s doing now.
max is somebody who makes me pretty relaxed. i’m glad he’s majoring in psychology because i think he’d be better at it than at being an assassin.
now, a milestone! i have booked my first airline ticket of my adult life. i used expedia. i’m heading for tallahassee, but i’m hoping to see face to facebook friends in palm harbor, huntsville, savannah and atlanta. i am fifty years old and have never figured out how to buy a plane ticket!
to celebrate that milestone and to kick off the world tour to follow, the rapper mc kato has agreed to give a free, private concert in my home on tuesday. email me for details. if you’re reading this, you’re invited!!!
gretchen miller neuman’s love affair with wine began when she was fifteen on a field trip to france. she developed into an oenophile although that didn’t prevent her from enjoying the bottle of cold duck her grandparents gave her for her sweet sixteen birthday!
gretchen manages good grapes in winnetka where one can get a fantastic bottle of something. whenever i’ve gone in, she’s offered me a sample and we’ve sat down to talk. mosty about raising kids. she has two, i have two, and we have pretty much come to the conclusion that one is always giving you trouble and the other is doing okay, but they switch positions all the time so that it’s a little like a seesaw. but i have never seen gretchen outside the store until yesterday evening.
gretchen wanted to demonstrate how the russian soldiers reacted when they stormed through france (i couldn’t tell you which war but i’m assuming after napolean sort of lost interest in taking over moscow, deciding it was way too cold and josephine was out with other guys in paris). they were pretty keen on that champagne. . . .
in order to do it up right, you should probably yell “bistro” while whacking the cork because bistro means “fast” or “hurry” which is what russians would say when they wanted their food in a little more timely fashion than the french would allow. now i know where the word “bistro” comes from. it’s fast food for france.
gretchen and her family have gone through their difficulties, just like all of us. and it’s made her reconsider her original career as an urban planner. she now sells wine, but she also uses that urban planning background to make maps of the american vitacultural areas. you might ask what is a vitawhateveryoujustcalledit area–it’s a place where there are wineyards. when this girl develops an app for this, we’re all going on a road trip with gretchen! she’s a resilient woman who has taken what she’s learned, what she loves and what she’s good at–and it’s coming together in an interesting career for her!
here’s how i did on my tutorial with a cheap bottle of the bubbly stuff and a sciabola del sommelier (aka a saber)
somehow i don’t think i’ll be doing this at the next dinner party i host! too alarming! but a lot of fun!
January 27
since that post, i’ve had some questions about how to saber your champagne bottle. i’ll try to be concise:
1. hold the bottle with your thumb in the indentation at the bottom of the bottle at a forty five degree angle. point the bottle towards a pretty fair expanse and yell “fore!”
2. slide the blade from the middle of the bottle down the stem in a long, steady, forceful manner. you’re not hitting it, you’re sliding it.
3. do as i say not as i did: don’t act so surprised when you’re a success. assume the air of one who is bored by life, because then you will feel most french! yelling “bistro!” is always good because nobody except us knows why you’re doing it, so somebody’s bound to ask you to expound.
arlynnpresser 