Monthly Archives: December 2007

Ink, paper and friendship

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I just got off the phone with raja who complained about the persimmons being left so long on the blog–I’m supposed to keep writing. Raja and I have been friends for thirty or forty years. We no longer see each other very often but we talk and read each other’s blogs. Good way to keep in touch.

It’s kind of a slow week. I’ve been exercising, riding buses, another form of exercise, because my car is in the shop for three days. I usually ride the bus, but it feels different when I have no choice. I’ve spent most of the last week working on making the Japan blog into a book. It’s slow work; I’m adding more pictures and retrieving some of the information from the links. I have already created 42 pages and I’m only up to October 25. Like I said: it’s slow work.

I’m still wrestling with the pictures. I love the printed page, but there are too many pictures to consider printing them all out. I have a few videos; one of these days I might even get them posted on the blog. I suppose what I really want is something like that new device Amazon came out with, but not quite that one. Something where I can put slides and videos into the printed page so I can touch the paper.

Persimmons

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While I was traveling in Japan I saw, usually at a distance from a train, trees with orange balls and no leaves. I speculated that these were persimmons, but confessed that I didn’t know how persimmons grew. Today I got the whole story about wild persimmons in this wonderful blog I’ve been following about living in Japan.

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Driving, snow and public transit

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Much of the week I was focused on snow that came on Wednesday and is continuing in wetter forms today. I was supposed to go for Hanukah candle lighting and dinner on Wednesday night, and I watched the snow collecting on the driveway with some apprehension. My car is garaged under my apartment. I back out of the garage, pull forward and make a sharp right turn up a slope in the driveway, an ideal setting for getting stuck in the snow.

I have become something of an apprehensive driver in my old age. I keep telling myself I know how to drive in snow. I come from Chicago; I’ve been driving in snow for fifty-some years, one time as 18 inches of the stuff was falling. I never let a little thing like weather stop me, until now. I persuaded my landlord to come and shovel the slope in the driveway, (he is supposed to do it, part of the lease) and I got out. On Thursday, even though it was still snowing, I took the car up the driveway without giving it a second thought, and couldn’t figure out why I am being so fearful. Aging effect, I guess.

Learning to drive and getting my own car was very important to me. I always saw the car as liberation and drove fearlessly all over this country and in some other parts of the world. I don’t feel that way anymore. I would cheerfully give it up if we had better public transportation. And while I’m on the subject: why can’t we have high speed trains like they have in Japan. In fact, why can’t we have all kinds of great public transit like they have in other parts of the world.

The distance from Tokyo to Kyoto is about the same as the distance from Pittsburgh to New York. The Japanese train covers the distance in about two and a half hours, and gets you to the center of each city. On my last trip from New York I left the city about 5:30 pm and I did not get home until 12:30 am. That was flying, not driving. Why is it that the Japanese can have these wonderful services and we can’t?

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Tai Chi is not the same without you, Grace

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I started going to the class again last Thursday. The class is huge, and I only know about a third of the attendees. But I haven’t found anyone else to laugh with. Louisa asked about you and seemed surprised when I said I spoke to you. Just want you to know you are not forgotten.

The annual Christmas party will be next Friday. I’m not planning to attend. You were the most interesting person at the last one. Also, I think Robin is doing something special next Friday night. Enjoy Indianapolis and think of us working away every Tuesday and Thursday.

Come back soon, Ronni

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One of the blogs I have read religiously, Time Goes By, is shutting down. I always felt that Ronni Bennett spoke for me. She tackled issues I often thought about, but was too lazy to write about. She was eloquent in a way I could never manage. I am disappointed that I will no longer have Ronni Bennett as my spokesperson, and I am disappointed in Ronni for giving up.

Of course, this is the pot calling the kettle black. How many times have I given up in frustration. I’ve been trying to change the world for more than half a century. The world has changed; I can’t take any credit for it, good or bad. I was one of the mothers marching against the war in Vietnam. After being photographed by the FBI a jillion times and suffering many insults and frustrations, I gave up. The war ended, but I never felt I had anything to do with it. One of the things I learned painfully, as I grew older: never giving up pays off.

Ronni has dealt with so many important issues in her blog, most recently raising an alarm about a new attempt by our government to curtail our First Amendment rights. Her research and her arguments about this resurgence of witch hunting and McCarthyism are powerful. I lived through the McCarthy era. It affected me psychologically, and affected the livelihood of several of my relatives. I am dismayed to think I might have to witness another period of this nastiness. Read about it here.

The last straw for Ronni was the response she got to a post titled "Is There Really Nothing Golden About Getting Old?" I didn’t see that post until it was too late to respond, so I will tell her now: the golden part of getting old for me, is that I am completely comfortable in my old skin. I am who I am; I cannot pretend to be anyone else, not even a little bit. It is golden for me that I have learned to be patient, to follow my inner voice, to not let the "bastards get me down."

Hanging out at the Fitness Club and other miscellany

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I’m not going to complain about the weather in Pittsburgh. It’s better than all that snow they’re talking about in much of the country. But it wasn’t walking weather. I decided I have to spend more time at the "club." I went at 9:30 this morning and didn’t get home until almost noon–a good start. I used the bicycle, the treadmill and all those fancy machines. Are you bored yet? I am. But I will persist. Tai Chi tomorrow and possibly another exercise program they call Silver & Fit. I love these euphemisms.

I’ve uploaded more photos to the Flickr site. Still not happy with it, but I’ll persist with all the photos from Japan. Then I’ll rethink my use of it. I just don’t have enough control over how the photos appear.

I’m still musing over the fact that I got more visits to my Japan blog from my post on toilets than I got from the Post-Gazette article. Should I consider it blog power, or toilet power?