Tomorrow, think red carnations

I would have thought that Hallmark would have picked it up in a big way: what other holiday is there that'll sell the cards, between February 14 and March 17? And, if you are not of the shamrock heritage, even March 17 doesn’t work. So why hasn’t March 8th been heralded as the holiday to end all holidays?

In my years in Poland it was perhaps the most important of the winter celebrations: a day for the proverbial red carnation-- International Women’s Day. I have never thought that the day received much attention in the States. Most years, I can hardly remember it’s here. Do I miss the red carnation I would have gotten in Poland from male colleagues, friends too? No. But I miss the significant attention brought on this day to women’s issues. It was an excuse to get the nation to focus, if only for a day, on persistent gender inequality and discrimination, particularly in the home and workplace.

No, I never did much care for the carnation: it was a mummified flower that seemed to withstand days on end without water. It would last the same amount of time whether you left it in plastic cellophane, neglected in the closet, or placed it in a milk bottle on the kitchen table. But March 8th was just a touch early for the tiny violets, the lilies-of-the-valley, or the forget-me-not bouquets that would be sold by old women from full buckets at every major intersection in the city just a month or two later. This was March, and so it had to be the carnation.

Waiting for a call

There is a reason why the phone is not a favorite of mine. I’m always wishing that it would ring, or, more often, wishing that it would not.

This time, while waiting for a friend and reader to call back, I was staring at the closed phone book, and I saw on the cover of the White and Yellow Pages a little pop-up ad announcing: Homeland Security Guide; see “H” for Homeland Security.

Thinking that perhaps there might be some things I could learn about – like what I could be doing even now to protect myself, for example, I flipped through the pages in search of this Guide. First I checked the red business pages: nothing. The listing went from “Homedco” to “Homemade.” Next, yellow pages: nope, straight from “Home Warranty Providers” to “Homeopaths.” Well, of course, I should have checked US Government: no, nothing again. It moves from “Highways” to “Horses” (horses?? Oh, it’s the phone number for “wild horse and burro adoption”).

I knew I had problems adapting to new technology, but this is a phone book, damn it. I should be able to manage a phone book. Good thing there isn’t a real crisis.

Up up and away

A story caption in the NYT caught my eye –“If You’re Thinking of Living in Exile...” it read. I had assumed it was targeting those who will be disenchanted with the results of the November elections (up to 50% of the population after all, or, in the style of 2000, perhaps even more). In fact, the story is about the lives of exiled dictators.

Could the world do no better than offer a home on the Riviera to the “Cannibal Emperor” Jean-Bedel Bokassa (from the Central African Republic), who, in his time, had the reputation of killing then eating his enemies? Or how about Idi Amin Dada, whose milder sin was to rename Lake Victoria the Idi Amin Dada Sea, and whose great atrocity was that he allowed a quarter million of his country men and women to be murdered? Why would the international community leave him to bask in his Saudi Arabian retreat?

The article in the Times reminds us that lest we rush to criticize the French or the Saudis for taking in Bokassa or Amin, we might recall that the US gave Marcos a posh villa to run to on the Hawaiian coastline not too long ago.

Trump trumps Pepin

Did Donald Trump consult chef Jacques Pepin before snaffling the Apprentice title for his show? Pepin wrote the memoir in 2003, so it’s not as if it’s a text from a more distant past. Or, maybe Pepin and Trump are one and the same? I don’t really know the show – I tried watching once, but truly could not stay with it.

How about the publication? This is from the Apprentice, the book: “I was thirteen and a half years old when I quit school…My parents somewhat reluctantly—but wisely—went along with my decision. To be sure, I was an “old” thirteen, hardened by the war. At an age when most kids don’t know how to cook their breakfast, I had already worked in four busy restaurant kitchens.” And later: “I had loved to forage for food in the forests.” And: “my tastes have remained simple. I like straightforward food that is well seasoned and elegantly presented without fuss or deception.” Finally: “On television I wanted to teach viewers essential techniques of cooking… I became convinced that the only requirement for getting my own (TV) show was raising half a million dollars, an undertaking that I knew nothing about.” Okay, that seals it: different men, a world apart.

BTW, in trying to find out more about the Trump show, I came across the site where you can apply to be on the Apprentice in the second season (here; on that same site, you can also read about THE DONALD. The Nina did not do that). Only four days remain, thus you should act quickly. If a friend got on – I’d watch.

A long detour along roads poorly described

From my earliest posts here, I’ve admitted to being a fan of travel writing, consummately working through shelves of essay collections in bookstores, searching out pieces that may offer a touch of whimsy or a more serious reflection, sometimes pointedly witty, sometimes ponderous and brooding.

But over the last few years, reading travel narratives has been a bit of a disappointment. So many books, magazines and publications contain journalistic, snappy texts that are functional and impersonal, with a minimal amount of asides, so that the pieces no longer meander [oh, say, along a buckwheat strip of yellow blossoms in a Slovakian village, where the only wealth is in the mouths of residents whose rotting teeth have been replaced by gold crowns, and where the most coveted piece of clothing is likely to be a tight fitting Frank Zappa t-shirt, worn on Sundays only, of course], but GET YOU THERE RIGHT AWAY, with bold purposefulness.

And I’m not thinking of travel guides (these have improved considerably over the years). I’m thinking of the classic travel essays, on topics as different as Parisian booksellers and the disappearing hutong neighborhoods of Beijing. For me, travel writing should not be hurried or terse. But neither should it distract with an overabundance of history or geography. These forays into factual accounting have cropped up especially in works of traditionalists of the genre–for example, writers for the NYT Sunday Travel Section—who are more likely to immerse you in historic asides these days than to offer a personal statement or an insight on a destination.

So, every quarter, I look forward to the NYT Sophisticated Traveler, and each time I toss it aside with great resignation.

But not today. Messud’s piece on Washington – a city where she once lived and now remembers with the kind of nostalgia that is reserved for places one has left behind—is sentimental but not sweetly so: “Perhaps perversely, I miss Washington’s almost puritanical streak, that it is no place to window-shop, no place for luxuries: all the fancy stores have long been pressed out to the suburbs, leaving the city center for industrious pursuits like the making of laws and money—but leaving room, potentially, too, for thought, rather than stuff.”

Mewshaw’s essay on pre-Olympic Athens hoists you, along with the author, into the cab which he takes from the airport: “the cabdriver smoked, as does apparently every man, woman and child in the country, and he fretted with worry beads as he tuned in bouzouki music on the radio.” The cab hits a gridlock. Mewshaw observes “It’s estimated that Athens has more than 2 million automobiles and 500,000 motorcycles, and at any given moment all of them appear to be stalled in anaconda coils of exhaust. For more than 20 years, motorists have, in theory, driven only on alternate days, according to whether they have odd- or even-numbered license plates. But rather than halve the volume of traffic, this law has prompted many people to buy two cars.”

And finally, there is the Livsey piece on wombats and kangaroos. It begins thus: “As a girl, growing up in Scotland, I knew exactly how to reach Australia. All I had to do was dig deep enough, and eventually I would emerge on the other side of the world, where everyone walked upside down and strange animals would hop to greet me. I was a determined child, but after several attempts yielded holes only a few feet in depth, I admitted defeat.”

Perfect essays. Travels writing took a detour, but now seems to be finding its animus and wit. That’s great news for the addicted reader. The future looks good again.