TRANSLATION:
Sennan, who was Alison's boss when she worked in a pub in London, taught her a phrase from his Irish youth—he was one of 11 children—that could be used in times of stress without dooming oneself to Hell: "Jesus, Mary, and Tap-Dancing Joseph!" (I've always thought that Sennan taught her that because she was way too fond of using the f-word as a verb and an adjective.)
Now, pretend that you've just heard me yelling Sennan's cuss at the top of my lungs.
My VW Beetle, the only "thing" I've ever really cherished, was rear-ended today by a Ford Explorer. Its forthcoming visit to the body shop will be its third this year: It was hit while parked on our street in Brussels. It was dented during the trip back to the States from Belgium. Now this.
I know that Jesus said, "If you wish to be perfect, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven," but, damnit, I love that little red car, which was bought with some of my inheritance after my Dad collapsed and died from a stroke on my 50th birthday. (Dad worked in the auto industry for most of his life. When I drive the Beetle, I often see him—despite his large size—riding shotgun.)
Dear God, is this latest accident a message that I should just sell the damned car?
JESUS, MARY, AND TAP DANCING JOSEPH!
My brain finally clicked on why this pair in the shelter look so familiar. Rascal and Semoran are living, breathing, snuffling versions of Snowy, companion to Tintin, the most beloved of Belgian comic strip characters. 2007 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hergé, Tintin's creator, and images of the boy and his faithful dog were even more ubiquitous in Brussels than usual.
Perhaps Steven Spielberg could use these little fellows in his upcoming film of Tintin's adventures.
. . . what is actual is actual only for one timeT.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
When we moved to Brussels, what I missed most—aside from friends and family—was my job in a public library. Like every worker in every workplace, I complained, but the fact was that "Public Relations/Public Services Librarian" was the perfect job for me, one that drew fully on my education, skills, and interests. That many of my colleagues came to feel like the sisters I never had was icing on the cake.
Although I was sorry to leave Europe ahead of schedule, I assumed that I'd be able to jump right back into the public library world. Bad, bad assumption.
In the seven months since we arrived in Colorado, there have been only four (4!) public library jobs posted that a) I was qualified for (it wasn't a Youth Services position); b) I was interested in (it was what librarians call a "front-desk" position, as opposed to a "back-room" position); and c) I could get to with a commute of 25 miles or less.
Job 1: This position was actually posted before we moved back to the States. I had no Colorado address and no local phone number, so it's no surprise that I didn't get an interview. Hiring is hard enough without having to chase down candidates halfway around the world.
Job 2: I got an interview, but not the job. Ironically, this particular library district seems to be the only one hiring right now. It has had several openings since spring.
Job 3: My application—online, as many job applications are these days—apparently vanished into a black hole.
Job 4: I received a lovely letter saying that the library had decided not to interview for the position at this time, but that I might hear from them in the future.
Which leaves me with the problem of, "If not a library job, then what?" Writing? Editing? Barista-ing? Cleaning kennels? Part of me is desperate for intellectual stimulation, as I envision my brain turning into a bowl of mashed potatoes. Another part of me would be content to give a person or an animal a moment of happiness.
Just two days ahead of setting a new record for the latest "first snowfall of the season" in Denver, we woke up to a white backyard this morning.
Snow is serious business here. An editorial—an editorial, not just an op-ed piece—in yesterday's Denver Post gave us something else to worry about other than the global financial crisis, the Iraq war, and whether there will be any jobs for newly minted JDs when Patrick graduates next month. The headline read "Little snow, quick lifts create chaos on slopes," adding the ominous subhead: "With resorts opening earlier and thousands of skiers urged to use one or two runs, dangerous situations are likely to result."
Although, as the editorial further observed, "Dude, we totally don't want to look like wussies," it was a relief to see real—as opposed to machine-made—white stuff sticking to the Front Range even after it vanished from our yard. Moving from the gentle slopes of the northern Lower Peninsula to skiing the Rockies is going to be challenging enough without having to worry about getting run over by a cast of thousands.
The combination of angry autumn sky and forbidding peaks reminds me of "Lord of Rings." If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can even see what appears to be a castle turret rising on the far left side of this range, which is between Arvada and Boulder.
He fathered five children, but my paternal grandfather never knew what to say to his twelve grandchildren. How he managed the small talk required by his career, first as a journalist and later as the alumni relations director at a Jesuit university, continues to baffle me.
Nearly 40 years after his death, my verbal memory of Grandpa Pfau comes down to two sentences, repeated throughout my childhood: "You know what our last name means in German? It means peacock!"
Which of course ensured that I would always think of him while visiting a zoo . . .
Through the bushes, we glimpsed a tall bird sprinting back and forth in a large enclosure at the Denver Zoo. From a distance, it appeared to be a stork wearing black cut-offs. Up close, it looked like an exotic amalgamation of many birds, with its eagle's beak, peacock's goofy head plumage, and stork's long, jointed legs. Although its otherworldly appearance recalled Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix, its name was oddly prosaic: a Secretary Bird. A native of Africa, it is a raptor, but, unlike eagles and hawks, it pursues its prey mostly on foot. Hence the long legs.
The Denver Zoo owns two of these curious creatures. The runner seems to have been the male of the pair, trying to impress his mate. She turned her back on him and folded herself to the ground in a neat, Origami-like series of steps that totally concealed those unlikely legs and made her look, from certain angles, like a seagull wearing one of those feathery hats currently favored by the British aristocracy.
Gail Collins has replaced Maureen Dowd as my favorite humorous/satiric columnist on the New York Times Op-Ed page. In her picture, Gail looks like someone I could go out to lunch with. At the end of the meal, we'd both order dessert without ever uttering the words, "I feel guilty, but . . ." Maureen Dowd, on the other hand, looks like she would eat me for lunch and then regurgitate a neat little pellet with my non-digestible remains.
Gail's post-election column was classic Collins. Our daughter attends school in and voted (for Obama, duh) in North Carolina, so I e-mailed her this paragraph from the column:
By the way, I believe that during the campaign McCain’s great friend Senator Lindsey Graham said something along the line of promising to drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama. I believe I speak for us all, Senator Graham, when I say that we are feeling extremely mellow today and you do not have to follow through.
Read Gail's entire column at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/opinion/06collins.html?ref=opinion
I was too superstitious to include this quote in Monday's blog.
What Obama said about the race during his conference call to the campaign field offices late Saturday night: "We've got John McCain on his own five-yard line."
Unlike our beloved Michigan Wolverines this football season, Obama's team pulled off the win.
In an attempt to curb my election anxiety ("They've stolen it before, they can steal it again"), I'm planning to spend part of the day with the pit bulls at the shelter where I volunteer. My job there is "dog enrichment," which means taking individual dogs outside to run, chase balls, and exchange love--I give them belly rubs, they give me kisses.
I spent nearly eight hours over the weekend (including a 7 p.m. to midnight shift Saturday) at the small, local Obama office entering voter data gathered from the massive phone and door-to-door canvassing effort into the campaign's database. The staff--paid and volunteer--are a mixed bunch, ranging from a young campaign field manager who used to work at a PR firm in Manhattan (he plans to backpack around the country after the election) to a middle-aged character in cowboy attire to retired couples who dote on the younger workers as if they were their own grandchildren. A couple of volunteers are Californians who flew in to help with the last weeks of campaigning in Colorado; "It's so much more exciting here than in California," one San Franciscan told me last night.
The highpoint of the weekend came late Saturday night when Obama phoned in on a (nationwide? swing states only?) conference call to thank his field office staffs for their great efforts and to encourage them to hang tough for the next 72 hours. He acknowledged their shared exhaustion, adding, "Listen, no one needs sleep [right now] more than I do."
By the time Obama called, there were probably only a dozen or so people left in the office. The regular staff gathered around the speaker phone, but turned it up loud enough so that the volunteers, spread around the office on computers, could shyly listen in. Even though I had seen and heard Obama in person the week before in Denver, hearing his disembodied voice rallying the troops in that quiet little office in a suburban strip mall was pretty magical.
And one more thing: Obama used a football analogy to describe his position--as of Saturday night--relative to McCain. I won't repeat it, because I'm overly superstitious about jinxing the election, but I found it pretty hilarious that even a guy who's already made history and may be on the verge of making even more history still reverts to that Y-chromosome-generated tendency to explain the world in sports metaphors.