Random Thoughts during the Banking Crisis

From: Rozanne

Date: February 19, 2010 4:40 AM EST

To: David & Thomas 

Subject: Re: Random thoughts

A Zebra was running on the expressway yesterday. He escaped from the circus at Phoenix Arena.

(First grade class yesterday waiting for counselor to come speak to class)  Me:  what does the counselor do?   Student:  She does what she does?

We have Las Vegas weather for a while. We will have a high of 60• tomorrow, and 55• today.

Teacher who doesn't want to teach today--I take the phone off the hook and don't return messages.

It's good everyone who's frustrated with the IRS doesn't fly a plane into one of it's buildings.   I'm also glad every professor who doesn't get tenure doesn't shoot and kill her coworkers.

I can't wait to see Ralph, the world's largest bunny, on The Early Show.  That's right up there with more about Tiger Woods' apology for adultery.  Who needs God, a 12 step program, therapy, priests and confession when you can call a press conference.  Guess it's a slow news day.

I wonder if I should call a press conference and publicly apologize on TV to my children for all my shortcomings as a mom and promise to be a better mom for the rest of my life.

Maybe today I'll start the Southbeach Diet and resume the battle of the bulge.

Thrill of the day--I take off the CPAP mask and get a cup of coffee in my new favorite cup.  I am not giving up coffee on the Southbeach Diet.

Q: What should I give up for Lent?  A:  skydiving; hiking in the dessert; trying out for American Idol, Biggest Loser, and Survivor; watching The Bachelor, Jerry Springer, and The 700 Club.  I hope that will be enough of a sacrifice.  :) 

Time to meditate and clear my mind of any other random thoughts left after sharing my random thoughts on cyber paper with my two sons.

Have a great day. love you much.

Mom

 On Feb 19, 2010, at 11:32 AM, Thomas wrote:

I don’t watch TV anymore, for months really. I think it’s uncreative. I do however have dreams similar to zebras walking down the street. Nice visual of the fish and zebras. Mom, I cancelled my Bank of America account. They screwed me for the last time. Now I’m going to devote a lot of photography to some of this.  I'm joining teams with a lawyer in town to combat them. They will eat themselves alive before it’s all over. As one of my friends says, its really Bank of India. She sends payments to them, Bank of America/India. Nothing has been returned yet. They are all crooked liars. They basically kept me on that day you and I went to the bank so they could raise the percent interest up a little more.

On Feb 19, 2010, at 11:57 AM, Rozanne wrote

Good for you. Did you get back with girl in Atlanta so she can follow up and see what happened?  She'll get something done;  she did for me but it took persistence.

Get pictures of the foreclosures in Las Vegas, interview the family, find out which bank foreclosed on them.  Document, document, document.  This is as important to history as the dust bowl, the depression, etc.  Maybe you can get an artists' grant to do your project.  I'm sure Henderson/Las Vegas has some kind of arts council.  There may be grants from national arts foundations. Google them and apply for a grant with all of them.  I had numerous grants from City and County to fund my poetry projects with kids in inner city schools and the elderly in nursing homes.  I even got a corporation to publish about 1000 copies of my book Windows back in the 70s.

  

The grants are out there and so is money from corporations.  

I bet small businesses in Las Vegas would support you at least $ 500 or maybe even $5000 as a tax write off.  Talk to the Chamber of Commerce! 

Understate by a photo and interview of what's really happening to ordinary people like you. Be sure and get a signed release for photo and interview.     

I think the economy is the biggest issue-- people going under by losing jobs, health bills, and credit card debt.  Start locally and move out.  In fact start with where you live.    

Mom

On Feb 19, 2010, at 12:45 PM, David wrote:

Yeah, I agree Thomas. NV is at the epicenter of a historical period. You're lucky to be there with talent to document.

Check out Walker Evans.

From: Rozanne

Date: February 19, 2010 1:52:33 PM EST

To: David & Thomas 

Subject: Re: Random thoughts

Yes, definitely Walker Evans. I think that's whom I meant when I said Edward Weston. Check out both of them.  You are definitely as good a photographer plus you have more technical equipment than they did.

I only had small grants, but it was enough to give me legitimacy so I could do my poetry projects. (maybe $700 or  $1000). I also got a grant from the council for intown neighborhoods and schools. This was all about the time of the custody junk-- I was the unstable artist.  David was in middle school and you were in elementary when I did the poetry in six or seven schools on my little bitty grants. It got me in the door as the city sponsored me.

You can do it, Thomas. At least you don't have two young children and a custody suit accusing you of being an unfit father. I was about your age when I did all that. David probably remembers more than you do.  I still have all the 100s of children's poems from that era during the child murders.  Also I have multiple photos and poems of the elderly in that period. I was quite prolific at the time, but soon I was in so much grief I only wrote about custody for years and abandoned my work with children and the elderly.  I bet David would help you write your first grant. Besides I bet he could write some grand haiku to go with your photos and interviews.

I think I told you for years I wanted to travel across country and live in shelters, interview folks, tale photos and write poems of folks who ends up in such dire circumstances.  Instead I've gone the incognito route substituting in schools.  Now I've lost the desire to go on the road. Do it now because this energy will not be there for long if you don't act on it.

Mom 

Chores on a Friday Morning

I. "Chores"

Watering houseplants with fertilizer,
inside the house and on the porch for the summer.
Putting dishes away from the dishwasher
and adding dirty dishes to the dishwasher.
Washing a large load of dish towels
that are now ready to go in the drier.
Some chores are so routine,
so much a part of your daily life
you almost do them on automatic
and often forget you even did them.
There have been times though
when chores are memorable,
as significant in my past as any
trip to Spain or San Francisco.
They mark a special time in our lives,

II. "Dishwashing"

The first time I washed dishes by myself.
I was five, standing on a stool
in the small kitchen in New Orleans.
I'm grown up I thought as I looked out the window.
Washing dishes by hand is something
many will rarely experience because of dishwashers,
but at our house, it was usually my job.
I'd learned in 7th grade home economics
there was a routine for successful dishwashing.
Glasses first, silverware, dishes, serving dishes
pots and pans--and always rinse in hot water.
I made my 1st tea towel in 7th grade,
huck toweling they called it
and quite pretty with all the needlework.
I later embroidered one for my Hope Chest.
I used them for years,
but now I have lots of tea towels
as I still call them, from everywhere
as well as the big flour sacks bought by the dozen.
I always washed the dishes on the farm,
and my granddaddy dried them.
He was a man of few words, but he listened well.
I know I must have told him so many secrets
during our clean up time at the kitchen sink
in the old farm house.

III.

1st draft unfinished.

Google Search: how to know what you're good at

Lost on the trail
somewhere in the weeds
no one's here but me.
I'm looking for the trail
and I miss the flower at my feet.
I miss the bird in the tree
and the clouds overhead in blue skies.
I'm obsessing on the trail.
Where is the trail?
I'm lost, I'll starve,
no one will miss me.
I cry I'll be lost in the woods forever.
Stop, breathe, enjoy just being me.
No where to go, no deadline for the trip.
Soon I'm enjoying sitting on a rock,
picking wildflowers and weaving them,
braiding them into a garland.

1st draft.

Sometimes I google a question.  I don't always get the answer I'm looking for, but it may get me to thinking about my own answer. For example, I may look up "best fabric for tea towels," "symptoms of  pneumonia," "why I feel bad today." 

Time for the Riverboat

Monday, May 2, 2011 at 2:10pm ·

The river is at 61.11 feet, 11:30 am, 5/02/2011. The highest ever was in 1937 at 59.50. Flood stage is 40 feet. The top protection of levee is 64 feet. There's no word yet when the Corp of Engineers will blow the levee. It takes 20 hours to fill pipes with the explosives, and they started yesterday. So it may be soon the Corp of Engineers blows a two mile wide hole and floods 130,000 acres of rich fertile farmland. As my cousin said we may raise catfish this year instead of soybeans. :)

Email today to older son:
Aren't you glad we own a farm in the spillway. You want me to fly you to Memphis and you rent a car to go to farm and make a documentary. The news has been overshadowed by tornadoes in AR and AL as well as Bin Laden. The flood, however, is beyond the great floods of 1927 and 1937.

It's a great documentary for you as it's been kind of a civil war between MO, IL, TN, KY. Also you've got the farmers vs the blacks in Cairo, land vs people. The small farmer is getting scarce anyway, and now the flood. People are worried about the faultline and if it'll trigger an earthquake. The MO appeal to stop the blowing of the levee at Cairo went all the way to the Supreme Court. However, the Royal Wedding, tornadoes, and Bin Ladin dominate the airwaves. Already yesterday's news about the levee is old news. It changes hourly. We're waiting to be flooded.

On May 2, 2011, at 12:45 PM, David wrote:

Wow, so it's already 2 feet above the record?


On May 2, 2011, at 12:43 PM, R wrote:

http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=pah&gage=ciri2&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1&toggles=

• • R. We all thought that would be the president's message last night! :)

    May 2, 2011 at 2:37pm ·

Flight from Atlanta to Kansas City--November 30, 2011

Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 4:57pm ·

Though I may have had reservations about flying at this time after working on the film set of  “Flight,” by the time my neighbor dropped me off at the Marta Station, I rode the train to the airport, printed my boarding pass, went through security, rode the airport tram to the concourse and found my gate, I was well on my way to Kansas City with all thoughts of the movie behind me.  I was looking forward to seeing my sister with great anticipation and enthusiasm.  Our flight was on schedule, and we even left a few minutes early.  It was not a full plane, many empty seats on my 10:10 flight from Atlanta to Kansas City.  In fact, the man across the aisle from me had three seats all to himself, alternately sitting next to the window and then in the middle seat. 

My trip proceeds with the usual announcement about safety gear and our scheduled time of arrival.  The flight attendants proceed to first serve drinks and assorted chips and cookies to the first class passengers before serving the rest of us coffee and soft drinks and those crispy cookies.  I meanwhile glanced through the airline magazines in the back of the seat in front of me.  I ask myself, does anyone ever buy any of this stuff.  Some things were enormously expensive, and other things were so strange I couldn’t imagine anyone using them.  I was excited that the plane had Wi-Fi until I realized the cost for 15 minutes.  I decided against getting on my Mac to surf the net.  Unfortunately I hadn’t downloaded any movies to watch as I haven’t learned how to do that yet.  Also I wasn’t in the mood to write anything.

Unexpectedly, the flight attendant announced is there a doctor on board about the same time I noticed a young man staggering towards the front appearing to have a seizure.  At first no one got up, then the rather athletic large man across the aisle from me walked to the front.  I assumed he was a doctor and was answering the call.  I’ve watched too many episodes of “House” on TV.  “Dr. House to the rescue,” I thought to myself.  Soon after my neighbor across the aisle got to the front, the young man started walked from the front of the plane back to the beginning row of tourist class.  The flight attendant said to him, “Not that way, this way, and several people escorted him back to the front of the plane by the restroom.  The restroom door was held open so I couldn’t see much except several people were sitting on the floor.  I assumed they were restraining the man having the seizures. 

The pilot made an announcement to fasten our seat belts and put our seats in an upright position that we would be landing shortly for a medical emergency in Memphis.    Soon we arrived in Memphis.  My first guess is we would land in Nashville, but then I saw the Mississippi River winding all around.  With no further adieux we landed at the Memphis airport.  I didn’t see an ambulance but several police cars.  Then an ambulance pulled up as well as a fire truck.  We sat there quite a while until the young man was carried off the plane on a stretcher.  So I thought we’ll be going now.

The man across the aisle had returned to his seat and assured us the man was okay when someone asked, and that he worked with Jackson County Hospital,  the county to where I was headed.  I thought how helpful it was to have a doctor on board and wondered what the flight attendants would do if no medical personnel had come forward.  But then the flight attendant asked the man to come up to first class as the FBI and someone from the airlines wanted to talk with him.  At the time it seemed a bit extreme that the FBI would be talking to him about a medical emergency. 

I was reassured soon that all was well when our flight resumed to Kansas City.  We would be there in about an hour.  I was hoping my brother-in-law had checked ahead to see that the plane was delayed.  I had called my sister but only got her voicemail.  Soon we arrived.  I say soon, because I fell asleep for a short nap so it seemed like we’d only been flying ten minutes or so.  The flight attendants came around with drinks and snacks again that was quite hospitable I thought.  The second time around I had a coke and pretzels instead of coffee and a cookie.   So between my snack and my nap the time passed ever so quickly, and I was finally in Kansas City.

I was so glad to see my brother-in-law standing there to get me, I did not even notice the TV cameras around or that someone was interviewing the man across the aisle from me who had volunteered to help with the medical emergency.  All I knew to tell my brother-in-law was that there had been a medical emergency which is the same thing he had been told at the airline counter.  Nothing more was said about the flight the rest of the afternoon.  I was just sorry I was late, and he had to wait on me an hour.

The evening news here in Kansas City was a shocker.  There was my neighbor across the aisle being interviewed on TV.  What?  The young man who was having the seizure then tried to open the door at the front of the plane and the guy had to take him down in a chokehold and render him unconscious until we could land.  As it turned out my traveling neighbor was a sheriff’s deputy and an EMT.  He had hesitated to volunteer waiting for a doctor to offer his services.  Fortunately for those of us on the plane he was perfectly qualified to deal with this kind of person. 

Now the whole scenario made sense—the FBI, all the police cars, fire truck and ambulance, and the delay while they checked out the plane.  As I was listening to the news, I flashed back to my time on the set of “Flight” and began to feel quite fortunate that this guy didn’t open the door.  I’m not an aeronautics' expert, but I’d say opening a door would have caused an airline disaster midair and I wouldn’t be hear to write about it. 

My most striking memory of the incident is how calm everyone was--the flight attendants, the pilot, and the EMT/sheriff’s deputy.  Those on the plane mirrored their demeanor.  Maybe the only sound at all was the small child in front of me asking are we going now?  Up and down, up and down, are we there yet?  And her mom reassuring her “Almost.  It’ll be soon.”

What to Do with Leftover Collard Greens

Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 2:56pm · 

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Stuffed Collard Greens

(NYTimes, 01/02/2010)

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN
If greens, raisins, nuts and grains of rice all symbolize prosperity, then you’ll do well to make this recipe for your New Year’s Eve party. Collard greens are great stuffing leaves; theyare large and easy to work with, and they can stand up to long simmering. The filling is a typical Greek dolmades filling.

1 large bunch collard greens (about 1 1/2 pounds), stemmed

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 large red or yellow onion, finely chopped

4 garlic cloves, green shoots removed, minced

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon sugar

3/4 cup rice, either medium-grain or basmati, rinsed well in several changes of water

2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup lightly toasted pine nuts (to taste)

1 14-ounce can chopped tomatoes, drained (retain juice)

2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup currants or dark raisins (to taste)

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon freshly ground allspice berries

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 1/4 cups water

2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

Juice of 1 lemon

1 lemon, sliced thin (optional)

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil while you carefully stem the collard greens, trying to keep the leaves intact. Fill a bowl with ice water. When the water comes to a boil, salt generously and add the collard leaves in batches. Blanch two minutes and transfer to the ice water. Drain, gently squeeze out excess water and set aside.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat in a large lidded skillet, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes. Add the garlic, salt and sugar, and cook, stirring, until the garlic is fragrant, about a minute. Add the rice and pine nuts, and stir together until the rice is coated with oil. Stir in the tomatoes, currants, cinnamon, allspice and salt and pepper to taste. Stir together, and add 1 cup water or enough to barely cover the rice. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer until all of the liquid has been absorbed, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat. Allow to sit for 10 minutes without disturbing. Stir in the mint and dill.

3. Oil a wide, deep, lidded sauté pan or saucepan with olive oil. To fill the leaves, place one on your work surface, vein side up and with the stem end facing you. The leaf may have a big space in the middle where you stemmed it; if so, pull the two sides of the leaf in towards each other and overlap them slightly. Place about 1 level tablespoon of filling on the bottom center of each leaf. Fold the sides over, then roll up tightly, tucking in the sides as you go. Place seam side down in the pan, fitting the stuffed leaves in snug layers. Drizzle on the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, and pour on the lemon juice. Barely cover with water, and top with a layer of lemon slices.

4. Cover the stuffed leaves with a round of parchment paper, and place a plate over the paper to weight them during cooking. This will keep them from opening. Bring to a simmer, cover and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes to an hour until the leaves are tender. Remove from the heat, and carefully remove the dolmades from the water with a slotted spoon or tongs. Allow to drain on a rack set over a sheet pan. Serve warm or cold.

Yield: About two dozen stuffed leaves.

Advance preparation: These keep well for three or four days in the refrigerator.

Martha Rose Shulman can be reached at martha-rose-shulman.com.

Saving at the Grocery Store

Friday, March 19, 2010 at 6:30pm ·

Sometimes I just don't feel like using coupons. Today, however, I saved $34.33 and another $7.81 with the Kroger card. Okay it was $10.20 from the Slimfast recall, $5.99 from Cascade because the gel dishwasher soap froze in shipping causing it to crystslize. Then $3.48 senior discount, $4.00 off by buying any 8 of marked items not just 8 of one brand (I got Cokes, Sargento cheese, Birds Eye vegetables and they were already on sale without the 8 special). The coupons and kroger card took care of rest of savings.if I wereore organized I could probably shop for free.

• •