Archive for the ‘Columnists’ Category
When Mother’s Day rolls around every year, I remember my mom’s often-said favorite lines that my sister and I called the 7 Deadly Sayings. And how much we hated hearing them. I suppose my own kids are saying the same thing about me, since I unwittingly carried them forward with the next generation.
Maggie van Ostrand
I expect most moms have their own 7 Deadly Sayings but, just in case you want to compare notes with mine, here they are.
1. On a slovenly room: How many times are you going to step over those dirty jeans before you pick them up?
2. On whining, such as “OMG, the prom’s tonight and I’ve got this huge pimple … ” That should be the worst thing that ever happens to you.
3. On abject misery: Give up your pain for the poor souls in purgatory. They’ll get out sooner.
4. On a way to make me shape up: Do you want me to tell your father about this?
5. On a mini skirt: Are you really going out like that?
6. On bad behavior: Just wait until you have kids of your own.
7. On how she apprehends a transgression: I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.
Along with my dad, she would sometimes spout off with:
If a job is once begun,
never leave it till it’s done.
Be the labor great or small,
do it well or not at all.
I especially loathed that poem, partly because it took so long to hear. I never wanted to hear it again in my entire life. I hadn’t realized back then how much and how subtly it influenced me. I learned that lesson in the most embarrassing way: when my own daughter was encouraging me to stop procastinating, she said the hated poem and she said it imitating me, as I used to imitate my mom. Nonetheless, hearing it once more, I was forced to complete my tax returns.
The worst thing about mom’s sayings, and that dreaded poem, is that they were usually right, and they always worked.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you but, I’m weddinged out. There hasn’t been this much media coverage of an event since Lindsay Lohan’s last arrest. Nothing wrong with the Royal Wedding’s bride or groom, and nothing wrong with the opulent setting of Westminster Abbey, though I’m resisting the temptation to criticize some of those hats that looked like the women’s heads had exploded in spaghetti, bowling balls and a
few birds.
Maggie van Ostrand
Questions were raised by my kids who viewed the event and thought there would be “at least 100 other people watching this, right mom?”
Questions from our kids can drive a mom insane because it’s humiliating to have to say “I don’t know dear,” when moms are supposed to know everything. It’s no longer enough for them to know we really do have eyes in
the back of our head, now they want answers, too.
“Mom, what’s a troth?” I thought it was a lazy troll (troll + sloth = troth.) My daughter had to wait another full day before I had time to find out that when we pledge our troth, we are pledging fidelity. Seems like overkill to
me, since they had already pledged to “forsake all others” and keep one another “only unto him/her.” Poetic and lovely, but redundant. Not wishing to editorialize, I just told her “fidelity” and to look it up.
Prince William and Princess Catherine
The kicker question which required research was “What’s that square in the floor that everybody is walking around?” I wanted to know that as well and learned that it is the burial place of The Unknown Warrior from World War I. In that hallowed spot upon which not even kings and queens may trod, lies an unidentified British soldier killed on the battlefield during World War I. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on November 11, 1920. There are many graves on the Abbey floors, including Chaucer, Dickens, Austen, both Bronte sisters, Kipling and, well, you get the point, but The Unknown Warrior’s is the only grave which is forbidden to step on.
Thanks to the Internet, I was able to answer the questions of my curious kids, all questions except one. We just cannot figure out why everybody calls the bride Kate with a K when her full first name of Catherine is spelled with a C.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
I pass the gracious home on Elm Street in London with its “For Sale” sign out front, its spacious porch still looking as welcoming as ever.
I realize that things have a season, a time, a purpose. Can the time and season of Our Community have come and gone so quickly? Say it isn’t so — but know that each issue of this publication makes me feel like a better person, a stronger member of our community, and more positively focused on our part of the world.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
My familiarity with March weather is from the perspective of a Buckeye, an Ohioan in the United States of America. In this part of the world, March is a tempestuous siren, a flirt bringing balmy weather one day and a slap-in-the-face with snow and ice the next. Wind can be a beast that seeks to peel one’s warmth away with its bonechilling fingers.
Days lengthen, nights grow more brief, and the powers that be tell us we are “saving” daylight when we have a 23-hour-long Sunday.
Birds arrive from sunnier climes and set up housekeeping, always on the alert for “cheep wrent.”
At this point in time, winter brooks no interference from spring, though the snows don’t last like they did just one short month ago. Icicles and snowmen vanish, to be replaced by green sprouts coming up through still semi-frozen ground.
It’s fair to say that, while April may be fickle, March in Ohio can be a real weather scoundrel with April tagging along behind!
Maggie van Ostrand
All is not lost in networkland. In an effort to liven up the otherwise snooze-worthy Oscars for next year’s telecast and bring back the millions who dozed off right after Kirk Douglas’ earlobes presented Best Supporting Actress to Melissa Leo, Charlie Sheen has been hired to host in 2012.
Celebrities attending the annual event will be encouraged to wear their own jewelry, buy their outfits off the rack, and say how they really feel about attending. It is felt that women viewers might favor hearing celebs respond to the hackneyed question, “Who are you wearing?” with “WalMart.” Actresses, now referred to as “female actors,” will be asked to butt out and be photographed only from the front. Celebrities will continue to walk the carpet, which will be green in an effort to attract Westminster Dog Show viewers.
Because of the conventional mid-show sag where awards are given out that nobody outside the industry has any interest in, the second half of next year’s show will be co-hosted by Sheen and Jerry Springer, the theory being that bad taste is better than no taste at all.
While I was blessed to have many fine teachers, Mrs. Dora Hobbs and Mrs. Orpha Strong stand out. Mr. Wilkie, Mr. Ron Houser and Mr. Campbell are also remembered in warm memories. Mrs. Strong’s quiet, grandmotherlylike demeanor, while still being a fine teacher, are a fond memory, but it is Mrs. Hobbs who remains the cornerstone of my twelve years of structured, official schooling.
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
My first two years of school were in houses, because the housing subdivision north of Dayton, called Huber Heights, outpaced Wayne Township’s school capacity. In second grade, our teacher became ill and was replaced by Mrs. Dora Hobbs. As little kids, we only knew that our teacher was sick, and Mrs. Hobbs helped us in many ways that she may never have known.
I brought home glowing reports to my parents about how beautiful Mrs. Hobbs was & how kind she was to all of us. Then Mom attended a PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) meeting and returned home in tears. She told my dad, “Honey, Mrs. Hobbs is a physical wreck! She is crippled from polio, wears very thick glasses & barely gets around.”
All I knew was that Mrs. Hobbs cared, she loved us — and that memory remains strong as ever, 51 years later. It is my hope that this dear woman — who worked full time teaching youngsters at a time in her life when her health might well have kept most people home — would be proud of the curly-haired, blue-eyed student that told her parents about the beautiful Mrs. Hobbs.
Each of us has a precious memory of one teacher that stays strong throughout our lives. What’s yours?
You don’t like the President’s budget proposal? Try the Top 10 from the People, who kept it simple so members of Congress can understand it.
Maggie van Ostrand
First a few reminders: Salary for a House member is $174,000, not counting perks, one of which is called their “allowance.” This is a euphemism for lots of extra taxpayer money ($900,000, commonly called “almost a million”) given to them for office supplies and salaries for almost 20 loyal underlings. They get about $250,000 (commonly called “a quarter of a million dollars more”) for office expenses (what, that wasn’t covered in their ”allowance”?), including travel (we’ll bet they don’t go Economy and we also bet these might include golf trips). You don’t even have to be alive to get this money, as evidenced by the late Robert Byrd’s continuing salary of $193,000 even after he’s been in the ground since last June.
We the People aren’t crazy about learning that Senators get even a bigger allowance for their office expenses … more than $3.3 million. Each senator is given $500,000 to hire up to three legislative assistants. If they’d only learn to type for themselves, that taxpayer money could support ten taxpayer families. Let us now get to our simple Top 10 Items, to wit:
… And still teaching: Wiggles Blue Heeler
Julie Kay Smithson and Wiggles
How can it be that I’ve continued living in the seventy-one days since Wiggles Blue Heeler — my companion, confidante, best friend forever, and so much more — shed his earthly body? Born on Sunday, July nineteenth, 1998, Wiggles Blue Heeler aka Many Kisses, left the cares of that earthly body behind on Sunday, December fifth, 2010, at 7:14 AM. The last physical kiss he bestowed upon me in the vet’s office, on the floor as we waited for the help that he needed when there were no more options left. He kissed the young lady vet and her younger gal assistant, too, trusting the three of us to keep my promise to him not to let him suffer.
Wiggles’ spirit is with me constantly, shoring up my floundering, grief-stricken one. Proof of his presence manifests in many ways, and it is comforting.
Contractors are all the same. They just have different faces so you can tell them apart. It’s a nightmare for a single home-owning woman to deal with male contractors who seem to think we’re not the ones paying them. For one thing, they don’t look you in the eyes, they look you in the chest. They don’t talk to you as a human being, they talk to you as a dimwitted slug. In fact, they don’t really want to talk to you at all, they want to talk to a man, preferably your husband, the one they assume pays the bills.
Maggie van Ostrand
For some reason, when contractors can talk with your husband, it brings a lower job estimate than if they have to talk to you, a woman, otherwise known as someone who thinks a Philips Head is the head on the neck of someone named Philip, when it’s a special kind of screwdriver with a wonky tip.
What if you haven’t got a husband at the moment? You are defenseless, powerless, and apt to sign the contract they so presumptuously shove at you with the pen they just happen to have in their hand. I’ve experienced shoddy workmanship without a husband to direct and inspect their work before final payment is made. And that was before I realized I needed a new roof.
When it dripped rain on my sleeping head during a recent storm, I realized the old roof wouldn’t last another winter, and started calling roofing contractors. I learned how to deal with feckless contractors; there’s nothing more frustrating than to handle a contractor with no feck.
It gets tiresome listing all the things you want to change about yourself but know in your heart you’re bound to fail. Again. Like you do every year. My resolutions were getting too elastic anyway. I kept resolving to not get hysterical every time I got lost while driving somewhere new, and then I loosened it to blaming Map Quest and then loosened it further to shrieking at my new GPS because it didn’t know left from right. What’s the point of making these resolutions?
Maggie van Ostrand
Instead of doing that this year, I’m going to thank the unsung heroes who invented things that will continue to make life easier for yet another year.
The Whistling Tea Kettle
Since I tend to be absent-minded when concentrating on a topic to write about, or if I’m on a phone call, or if I find myself deliriously embedded on the Internet researching a story, I would’ve burned the house down years ago, if not for that shrill whistle, alerting me to water reaching the boiling stage. So I consider English inventor Sholom Borgelman (changed to Borman) a hero for inventing the whistling tea kettle in London just after World War I. Read the rest of this entry »
