Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley's lovely tribute to his mom, Patricia Buckley, and infamous father, William F. Buckley, Jr., Losing Mum and Pup, is the only book, other than Moby Dick (the original) that I've read with a dictionary in my lap (actually Wikipedia up and frequented).

A short list of phrases and words that I circled in pencil to further investigate include: droit du seigneur, paradigmatically, perfervid orison, intransigence, apparatchik, exigent, diktaks, adipose, adduce a tropism; and that's just about three-pages-worth!

It's not that I haven't heard or seen these words, it is just that Christopher Buckley throws them around like slang, and I loved it. I loved it because for the too short period of reading this book, I felt transported to another world - a world of the intelligentsia - and indeed, which wasn't as important to me, a world of uniquely east coast heritage, entitlement, wealth and privilege, that is as alien to this little west Texas gal as Martians.

Crazy for the Story by Norman Ollestad

Crazy for the Storm, by Norman Ollestad, is getting lots of media buzz, and rightfully so. An 11-year-old kid, who has been pushed into dangerous sports and adventure pursuits his entire life by his overbearing father (off-piste skiing, surfing in storm swells, etc.), is in a small plane crash on top of a very steep mountain. His father and the pilot are dead, his father's girlfriend is seriously injured, and it is very cold. Although I couldn't stop reading this book, several things bothered me throughout. First, it is written in the voice of the 11-year-old kid. Maybe it's just me, and I apologize for the irreverence, but when prepubescent kids-talk endlessly, it makes me want to load them in a plane and crash it into a mountain.

Word of The Day - Erudition

I came upon erudition when I was researching William F. Buckley, Jr., for a book review that I am working on (Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley - stay tuned.) Mr. Buckley's writing style was described as " famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words." Although I've heard erudite and erudition used, and gleaned the meaning though context, I wanted to know what it really, really meant.

Erudition, surprise, surprise, comes from the Latin word, eruditus, which means (according to the gospel of Wickepedia), "when instruction and reading followed by digestion and contemplation have effaced all rudeness ("e- (ex-) + rudis"), that is to say smoothed away all raw, untrained incivility." The big "W" also says that "common usage has blurred the distinction from 'learned'." So consider yourself straightened out on that matter! Unlike Mr. Buckley, I will never be known for my my erudition. But hey, I just used it in a sentence, so there!

Valete! (Latin for Goodbye!)

The Wedding Hat!

Check out this outrageously wonderful Dolcevida hat that I bought to wear to my great nephew's wedding this weekend. Since the wedding is outdoors (June in Austin?!) this will be a perfect umbrella! HA!

SueAnn

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 7

#7 - "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
As adults, we seem to forget that children tend to take things very literally. When I was a little girl and my mom would say, "Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat," I would picture a dead cat, hanging upside down by a rope, mom standing there with a knife trying to decide which way to skin it this time. I never saw my mom skin a cat, but I was sure she must have. Otherwise, how would she know that there was more than one way to do it. I never said to my mom, "Why would you skin a cat?" Kids often don't ask about things they don't understand , and adults are often oblivious to their confusion.

Of course I eventually figured out that what mom was talking about was tolerance, and gal-howdy is this a big one. Of all of the one hundred things my mom taught me a million times, this may be the most important. I suspect that few would say that tolerance is bad, but many would say that when we don't stand up for what we believe, our life becomes a compromise.

MY GARDEN!

Our first heirloom tomato! Nearly ripe! What you can't see are hundreds of ripening tomatoes, what seems like thousands of beans, about eight watermelons, cucumbers, squash, basil and tarragon! Yummmmm! Jason Minshew, owner of JBird Landscaping, our gardener, adds something new for each season!

SueAnn

vive la différence!

A Commentary on the Wonderful Differences Between Women and Men
Chapter 1

He tried to hide his excitement, but she could smell it woven in amongst the tar and heat. He seemed a leopard, crouched in the cover of the jungle, waiting, controlling the massive power of that which made him so obviously different from her.

His steps quickened in the quiet pensive moments of their approach, as tiny pearls of sweat popped out on his smooth, tan forehead.

The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson

I don't usually write a review 66-pages into a book, but either the caffeine from my morning coffee has taken over (not unusual) or I am just too inspired to hold off until the end of the book. I want to believe it is inspiration.

When I was childbearing age, women just weren't very informed about all the things that could go wrong for our babies. Our biggest fear was that our child might be born with some type of physical deformity (i.e., the still-prevalent counting of fingers and toes at birth). Little did we know that the absence of an appendage was the least of our worries. Through massive public awareness, books, movies, and of course "Oprah," we now know more than we even want to about the seemingly endless list of disorders that can impact the life of a child and family - Autism being one of those. It's not that I don't want to know about Autism, I am in fact intrigued by, and have read a lot about Autism, which has not impacted my family, and another similarly tragic disorder Schizophrenia, which has.

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 6

#6 - "Never say headache, allergies, or nervous."

Mom truly believed that you are what you say, what you think, what you believe. Therefore, if you never said, thought or believed you had a headache, or allergies, or were nervous, then you weren't, or didn't (sorry about saying these words, mom.)

She not only believed this, she lived it. She never said those words, and if they ever crept into my vocabulary, she would quickly and enthusiastically shush me, as if I had just uttered a profanity. I seem to recall that those words gained a lot of social traction during the fifties and sixties. It was during this era that TV began advertising Bayer aspirin and Alka-Seltzer; it became vogue for parents and children to proudly declare that they had the "a" word; and I first heard a furtive, and therefore intriguing reference to a "ner____ breakdown" in a movie. I had no idea what a headache, an allergy, or nervous breakdown were, but I desperately wanted them.

The Alka-Seltzer ads really made me want to try alcohol - the party scene, lots of laughter, lampshade on the head - looked like fun to me, and when you felt bad later - just pop an Alka-Seltzer into a glass of water, enjoy the bubbles, and in minutes you were smiling again! But mother was never lured by those ads. I vividly recall that 104 degree fever and "death’s bed" being the only occasions when a half of an aspirin might be called for. Now I justify taking aspirin by telling myself it's good for my circulation. I don't take it for "you-know-what."Click On Read More Below...

Columbine by Dave Cullen

I thought a long time before reading Columbine, by Dave Cullen because I wasn't sure I wanted to know the gory details of that horrific event. I read numerous reviews of the book first because although I was curious to see the analysis ten years out, I didn't want to read about it if it wasn't well written. All the reviews I saw were positive, in terms of writing, reporting, balanced, interesting, etc., but they were all also like this post, cautious, pensive, a lot not said. There is much to learn from Mr. Cullen's book about Columbine, and it certainly provided much better information than gleaned from news reports, but it still felt like something I didn't want to know. Like, both of the kids that committed the murders were raised in good homes with no apparent reasons for why they did what they did. Like, the police had plenty of information in advance to stop the slaughter before it happened. I don't even want to talk about it anymore, but I am glad that I read the book.

I'm going to go have a glass of wine and try to forget about Columbine (the event) and The Shack (the book).

SueAnn

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 5

#5 - "Above all else, never be common."
As you've heard me say before, mom was subtle in her lessons, so I had to think about this one for a while, and the more I thought about it, the more complicated it became. What is "common?" Who says? In the words of Leon Trotsky, "Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures," so trying to measure commonness felt tricky, illusive, and a little dirty. My measure of common tends to look like a high-school dropout with three crying babies, living on welfare and watching soap operas in her trailer while a pit bull on a chain barks all day. However, if I asked that gal her measure of common, it might be her meth-junkie mother who raised her kids in a car while she did tricks on the street for drug money. Someone probably thinks I am common because no one would recognize the name of the college I graduated from, and because I buy my clothes at Target and consider Ellen Tracy "designer."

Michelle Obama - Inspiring Women Around The Globe

Click on the above title to link to a brief and interesting CNN story about how having a woman of color in the White House is viewed by women around the world.

SueAnn

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 4

#4 - "Things Lay, people Lie."

I have been called pretentious, and having spent most of my life trying to appear smarter, prettier, and more successful and interesting than I am, I'd have to agree. Of course that is relative to how smart, pretty, successful and interesting I really am, so I don't think my pretension is particularly psychotic, but perhaps that last statement was.

How does all of this relate to mom's lesson #4, "things lay, people lie," which she taught me a million times? Well, mom was all about appearances, and grammar was one of the many rungs on the ladder to being smarter, prettier, and more successful and interesting. Mom believed that grammar, if executed poorly, doomed you to being "common," which in her mind was the seventh level of hell.

Conversely, she believed that if one executed grammar well, one could avoid the hell of commonality. By the way, I never heard my mother say hell, or damn, or any other expletive other than "deeee-ern," which wasn't even "darn," but when said signaled unparalleled anger. Not being common is lesson #5, so I'm not going to get into that one just yet, but like "the uncertainly of life (lesson #2)," "not being common" is an overarching theme in the one hundred things my mother taught me a million times. Oh, and for the record, not all of my mother's lessons stuck; I know that. Click on Read More Below...

LOGGING ON TO THE IVY LEAGUE

Well, it's official. I have to give up sleeping. There's just too much out there to learn and I can't stand it. I've always loved to learn, but am terrified of the scholastic environment because I don't test well. I absorb information like a sponge, and seem to have an above average capacity to understand it, but then it just seems to go somewhere, I don't know where. Ask me to regurgitate information, i.e, on an exam, and I panic! Actually, I can do it, I got through college with pretty good grades, but it required lots of memorization, and sheer terror. I guess all the reading and learning I've done over the years is in there somewhere and surfaces in an occasional brilliant idea or solution, but instant recall, which my husband has and for which I am extremely jealous, doesn't exist for me, and it makes me sad because I love learning and I wish I could remember everything I've learned. I guess I just have to keep feeding a craving that is never satiated.

Movie-A-Minute

OK. This is too funny. Click on the Movie-A-Minute title above, which will take you to the Movie-A-Minute website. Then click on a movie title and read the summary.

I thought The Bridge on the River Kwai was particularly funny.

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 3

#3 - "Never accept the first table the host tries to give you at a restaurant."

I remember this being one of those things my mother did that embarrassed me when I was a child. Now it is something I do that embarrasses my husband. I rarely accept the first table offered by a restaurant host. It's not an arbitrary "snob" thing; it's because, just like mom said, hosts try to get rid of the worst tables first - the one by the bathroom, the one by the service area, or the one by the entrance where you spend your meal looking at other people's behinds while they wait for their table.

I'm not worthy to touch the hem of Malcolm Gladwell's garment, (Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers) but he and I do share a fascination with human nature, so I have a couple of observations about this issue of the crappy table - the prime distinction between Malcolm and I being his observations are researched while mine are gut reactions. Malcolm gives gut reactions great credit in his book Blink, so I feel justified. Besides, it's my blog. CLICK ON READ MORE BELOW...

Word of The Day - Aphorism

The word of the day is aphorism, which is "a succinct statement expressing a general opinion or truth." Of course I have always knows what aphorism meant, simply by the context in which it is used, and the "-ism" (note the Sue-ism in the left column) is a dead giveaway, but I never use this word and being a lover of cool words, I really love aphorism (even though it sounds like a medical condition). I ran across an aphorism this morning in a Conde Naste magazine article about New York Yankees (baseball team) owner, George Steinbrenner III, who is said to have loved aphorisms, one of his favorites being "The speed of the pack is determined by the pace of the leader." Gal-howdy do I love that aphorism, and I'll tell you why in a minute, but first, I want to talk about this and other magazine articles that are in a collection that comes out every year called The Best American Series.

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 2

#2 - "Always wear clean underwear. You never know when you could be in a wreck or get sick and have to go to the hospital."

A reoccurring theme of  ‘one hundred things my mother taught me a million times’ is the uncertainty of life. As I pondered this inclination, my first reaction was that my mother's generation had such a hard life that they became wary and paranoid. Two world wars, the depression, having to fight for the right to vote, prohibition - I can see how swimming through all of that would tend to make you cautious.

But then I looked back on my own history. The Vietnam War looms large in my memory, an icon of horror, futility and heart-stomping reality. Then there were the gut-churning conflicts of race and the flood of drugs constantly beckoning to a youth desperately seeking a haven from the harshness of life. It is a freaking wonder we ever left the house - clean knickers or not. Click on Read More Below...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Prologue and Chapter 1

Prologue:

My mother taught me one hundred things a million times. Ironically, from my earliest childhood memories of my mother and until she was in her seventy's, I don't believe I heard her say more than ten words a day (and that's another story). So how could she possibly have taught me one hundred things a million times, and those one hundred things become so indelibly cemented into my memory? Perhaps the more important question is why.

Some of the one hundred things are universal; things that every parent teaches their child, but I think that some are backlash to unlearned lessons, bad experiences, or realizations. Don't we do the same thing, share life lessons that have been branded into our memories, good and bad?

What follows is a closer look at those one hundred things my mother taught me a million times, examined through the lens of my memories of my mother, my life experiences and my hopes for my children and grandchildren.

Over the last ten or so years many books have been birthed from blogs. One of my fondest and most recent references being Julie Powell's book, Julie and Julia, soon to be a movie, (http://www.powells.com/ink/powell.html). Hopefully, One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times will get noticed, too.

Lesson # 1 - You can fall in love with a rich man as easily as you can fall in love with a poor man.

There's so much to say about this lesson, I hardly know where to start. My mother didn't marry a rich man, she married my dad, twice, which I didn't even know until he was dead and she was 80 years old! Being the last of five kids, and an "accident" when my mom was 40 and my dad 60, I must have missed out on a lot of drama. Did she try to teach me this lesson a million times because she wished she'd married a rich man, or did she just want me to have security, or is there another reason? CLICK ON READ MORE BELOW…

MORE BOOKS

In case you haven't noticed, I read a lot. Actually I read a lot and listen to a lot of books on my iPod. By the way, just FYI. If you purchase audio books from iTunes and lose them, you have to re-purchase them, but if you purchase them from audible.com, they keep your library and you can re-download them anytime you want to!

SueAnn's Tunes

Here are some tunes that I like. Feel free to take a listen.

Oh, and by the way, when I get time, my next big post will include something I have been wanting to write about for a long time, and soon to be my first book: "One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times."

Stay tuned, and get some tunes...

SueAnn

THE GALS - VERY SMART GALS BLOG HAS ARRIVED!

Dear Gals - Very Smart Gals:
At the urging of another very smart gal (actually, there were threats made), I have created the Gals - Very Smart Gals Blog. My goal is to share my thoughts, get yours, and connect very smart gals who have common interests and/or needs. Most of you have received my Gals - Very Smart Gals email commentary about books, food, politics, children, movies, fears and joys, and most have responded positively.

Today my topics are free directory assistance, class distinction, Risotto, stay-at-home working very smart gals/moms, my decadent garden, and the word for the day.