Where the F*#k is My Italian Lover?

It's me, Katherine, today.

I'll begin by apologizing for the title.  I've been thinking through this little post for a while.  I've been re-titling it for over a week.  Nothing else worked in my brain which is evidence my creativity has waned or my sense of artistry has increased and I won't let go of what I want.  Neither choice excites me.

First of all, I don't really want an Italian lover and I'm truly sorry my favorite word in times of stress is the F word.  I sound pathetic throwing around religious swearwords and saying or writing f*#k reminds me that I learned some really useful stuff at CSU.

I really want to talk about the Italian lover thing.  A while back Jim was writing downstairs and I decided to skip a bunch of responsibilities so I could knit and listen to TV for while instead.  I scanned through the tons of channels with stuff I'd never watch (Swamp Loggers--really?).  Tucked in there somewhere was Under the Tuscan Sun.  I'd heard of it.  Never seen it.  The Italian lover thing began here.  I didn't knit.  I watched the movie.  It's a really nice movie.

Since I'm feeling all these rather illogical self failings, the movie hit home.  In lots of ways.  I want to feel like a girl rather than a matriarch.  I want to be courageous and I'm not.  I want to take my head full of ideas and just pick one and then do it.  The Italian lover is just the metaphor for whatever it is I need that will make me try or will help me try.  I don't need encouragement.  I need something from inside me and I know enough about initiations to know I can't will my growth into reality.  So--where the f*#k is my Italian lover?

Understand that even though I feel like I was a really fine teacher and I continue to be so in love with Jim it curls my toes, and the kids and the grandkids are regular delights in my life, and my work with teachers is genuinely fulfilling when all of the rules and evaluations don't get in the way--understand that sometimes I feel like I might have been a great college professor or a great painter or a great fashion designer or something different. What if the novel of my life had some adults who had believed in me when I was young in the ways adults believe in girls these days?

My own little version of Yorick's skull faces me with a good deal of pride.  I've done okay professionally and I think I have helped others and I'm so proud of the kids I can hardly see straight.  I can't believe how good it is to get into bed every night with Jim.  I can't think of myself apart from him.

Also understand that I'm looking back at this happy life and somehow I wake up angry sometimes at myself or my parents or the times I was born into or any whim of a target that my never-ending emotional roller coaster suggests.  I'm in the midst of a fifteen year menopause caused by the various chemical solutions to cancer.  I'm never sure if what I feel is me any more.  If I could find some sort of Zen acceptance for the nightly sweats, it would be a start.

I'm returning to Under the Tuscan Sun and the Italian lover business again.  I want all the kind of self-discovery that Frances finds under the sun in Tuscany.  I want all the self-discovery that comes with restoring a Tuscan villa and gathering lovely souls together while meeting with the seemingly inevitable Italian lover.  He isn't true to her (what did she expect from an Italian lover anyway?), but it frees her finally to just love and find love and ladybugs (you need to see the movie to get the ladybug thing).

Several years ago I was downright pissed at the Eat, Pray, Love movement.  In both the book and movie, the heroine (?) ditches her husband, gives up her income and then gets her publisher to fund a year of self discovery beginning with eating wonderful things in Italy and finding an Italian lover (I was reading angrily so I hope my memory is correct about the lover business).  It reassured me, I think, that Frances found real-life selflessness in Tuscany as opposed to the Eat, Pray, Love lady.  I still think her self-discovery was somehow an act of prostitution.

I want self-discovery too.  I just can't afford Tuscany and I adore my husband.  

So--here I am.  The past haunts me now and then when the hormones bite.

My Dad told me I couldn't go to the college of my choice because my brother would support a family and I would not.  I could go to any state school.  I should have known.  I saved for and bought my first car--a 62 Comet station wagon.  Dad gave my brother a car because he would have to work his whole life and I would not.  I needed to learn about work because I never would.  I have always worked.

No one at my high school, Thomas Jefferson in DPS,  ever suggested I apply for a scholarship.  I had a 3.95 average and my SAT scores were in the 1200's.

I won two national Scholastic art awards in high school.  No one suggested I should pursue art.

At CSU, my adviser suggested I avoid Fashion Design because I'd gotten a C in the first science class I took for the program (I was surprised that I would end up with minors in both science and art).  I didn't tell him I was in love and I'd missed almost all the foolishly scheduled labs at 4:00 in the afternoon.  I aced each exam and flunked each lab and was pretty pleased at passing with the C.  He was also concerned about the B in my first Art Design class.  I was proud of that given the real artists I was trying to compete with.  He made me feel badly about my very proud B.

I became an English major by default.  I had been told I couldn't do the art or science needed for my fashion design goal.  That's all it took to stop me.

I am and always was a mighty fine book reader.  The teaching thing was pretty much accidental too.  I loved it.  I wouldn't change it.  I just wonder what a push would have done because I'm a creative person who is no longer creating beyond a post here or there or a piece of knitting or cooking something really nifty to eat.  It doesn't seem like much.

I also have a hard time finding where I leave off and others begin.  The ladies with Italian lovers begin their self discovery by losing all ties.  They don't have kids.  One dumps a husband and the other is dumped.  They both have money whether it's their own or a publisher's.  It seems only money or extreme tragedy moves these women on their journeys to self discovery.  I don't have the money and I've already had enough tragedy--when you have a job and family you just muster your way through tragedy.  You don't stop and figure out who the heck you are.

I have a great life.  I have no complaints.  I have no regrets.  I just know I could have done more.  I think I could do more now.  I just don't know how to pick up any of the loose ends (a started book is one) until I find some little bit of gumption that I can do anything--even restore a Tuscan villa--all by myself.  I don't know what I can do all by myself and I don't even know if I should be slapped around for even thinking something like that.  How selfish is that?  What would the Buddha think?  What would Seymour Glass think?  I wish I knew what I think about that.

When I was done watching Under the Tuscan Sun, I knew I really loved it.  But my first concrete thought was, "Where the f*#k is my Italian lover?"  I just can't find the equivalent for a little girl like me.

Asking Congress To Walk And Chew Gum At The Same Time

I'm still thinking about the aftermath to Paul Krugman's recent appearance on MORNING JOE.  After he left the set, Joe spent the rest of the day and a good deal of time on subsequent days misrepresenting what Krugman said and then excoriating him for it.  Joe ranted and raved that Krugman didn't think we should worry about the deficit right now.  Instead, we should infuse the economy with more government money in order to create more jobs.

Actually, Krugman said a lot more than that, but Joe either didn't hear him, or conveniently didn't mention Krugman's main point because it was inconvenient to the conservative argument.  What Krugman really said was that in the best of all possible worlds we should be able to create jobs and by doing so help alleviate a good portion of our deficit problem.  Unfortunately, Krugman pointed out, we don't live in the best of all possible worlds.  Our Congress as it currently exists doesn't have the will, the intelligence, the creativity, or the courage to do those two things at the same time, and since they don't, we need to tackle job growth right now and save the deficit stuff till later when employment is better.

How do you argue with that.  Joe and all his conservative friends are convinced that if we cut away at the budget and drive down the deficit, jobs and a booming economy will follow.  The problem with that thinking is that it has never worked before.  NEVER.  We had a preview of what massive cuts will do to the economy last month.  Defense spending was cut something like 22% in the last run-up to the debt cap brouhaha and the result was an economy that shrunk during the last quarter.  The next quarter--this quarter--will be effected by the end of payroll tax holidays and I'll bet you a lot that the economy will suffer again.

Joe always talks about how it is the President's responsibility to deal with these people in Congress just like Clinton and Reagan and Bush I and Bush II(kinda) did.  But today even Joe came close to admitting that NO ONE, not even his hopelessly romantic image of Reagan, could deal with the likes of Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and House Tea Partiers.

So here's the thing.  Obama will have to do what all second term presidents do and go after things a little at a time.  If he puts his name on anything big, Republicans will block just on principle.  There ain't gonna be any grand bargains.

Since nothing good is going to happen around here for the foreseeable future, I think I'll dream a little.  Here is a partial list of the things I think our country would be smart to do if we just had the political will to do them.

*The US has the worst power grid in the developed world.  Witness the embarrassing power outage at the Super Bowl.  Our internet connections are slower and more tenuous.  Conservatives point to Germany as being the shining light of reason in the European Union.  One of the reasons Germany is doing better than its sister and brother nations is that it invested the necessary capital to create a power grid that is the envy of the rest of the world.  Business people tell me that business is all about reducing friction.  It seems to me that an investment in a decent power grid by the central government would reduce a lot of  friction and end up saving us money.  Do you think Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and company would be interested in spending that kind of dough?  Fat chance.

*The Hurricane Sandy bailout stands at around $60 billion and climbing.  Does anyone seriously believe that Sandy's assault on the east coast was an anomaly and will likely not happen again?  Please!  Most climate experts--you know, the ones who actually believe in empirical evidence--say we can expect Sandy sized storms every couple of years!  Years ago when Finland suffered from almost yearly disasters to its coast, they spent billions of dollars building sea walls around vulnerable areas.  Finland hasn't had a Sandy sized disaster since, thus saving money.  It seems to me that we have two choices.  Choice one is to fork over $60 billion every couple of years to rebuild the Jersey shore.  Choice two is to invest in some major infrastructure right now.  It will, just like the power grid proposal, create a whole shit load of jobs.  This seems like a no brainer to me, but if Obama suggested something specific like that, what would be the reaction of Fox News and the blogosphere?  They would laugh at the notion of Climate Change and be horrified at the thought of government spending on that level.  Under the expression "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish" in the dictionary of phrases, there should be a group picture of the Republican Caucus and anyone else who thinks our biggest problem is the deficit.

*Right now in this country to drive over or under 40% of our bridges is to put your life at risk.  That's how many bridges are listed as below code!  You could be like your conservative friends and laugh at those of us who worry about such things, but the scores of people on that main bridge in the Twin Cities weren't laughing when it collapsed a few years ago.  Which do you think would cost more money, making the necessary repairs on that  bridge before it collapsed, or paying for its complete reconstruction coupled with the economic cost of shutting down a major artery, plus the cost of settling all the law suits that surely followed?  Dwight Eisenhower's greatest legacy wasn't his generalship in the European Theater of Operations, it was his visionary insistence that we build an interstate highway system.   Isn't it obvious that the interstate highway system continues to pay dividends.  It was a costly, but wise investment.  How many jobs would a national campaign to repair our highway infrastructure create?  Do you think such a vision could be ramrodded through Congress today?

*Our mass transportation is a joke compared to the rest of the developed world.  How can conservatives obsess over American Exceptionalism at the same time they refuse to spend the money we need to remain exceptional.  We need high speed trains connecting our cities.  There is a train from DC to New York and all points in between.  It takes forever and costs as much as taking a plane.  That is crazy!  It seems to me that you should be able to climb onto a high speed train in DC and get off at NYC 90 minutes later.  The fact that we have no such facility is shameful.  Again, if we invested in a system of  high speed trains, wouldn't that create jobs and wouldn't it further grease the wheels of our economy.

I'm just an English teacher; I'm not an economist.  But it seems to me that these proposals make a lot of sense.  What am I missing?

Offering Testimony

One of the nice things about being out of the classroom is that I no longer have to think about what I say.  Of course, when I was in the classroom I usually shot from the hip without much care about who I might offend.  As one might suspect, I got called to the principal's office a lot over my lack of discipline.  I'm just a sarcastic guy and I will always go for a good joke if given the chance, feelings or political correctness be damned.  I remember I was in my classroom teaching CCB toward the end of my career.  For some reason we were talking about music and assigning certain musicians in the ranks of Fad-Fashion-Style.  If you were ever in any of our classes, you know about the drill.  I remember one girl mentioning that Jimmy Buffet should go under the Style rubric!  Most of the self-ordained musical experts in the room groaned and before I thought better of it I commented that Jimmy Buffet fans were sick and twisted!  Everyone in the class, EXCEPT THE OFFENDING GIRL, laughed at my obviously absurd statement.  I was, after all, just joking around.  But the next day the girl's father was waiting for me in the principal's office looking to get me fired.  It all got resolved.  I apologized for my mouth and assured the man that I would try to be more vigilant (FAT  CHANCE).

Now that I'm not in the classroom any more I can say without fear of contradiction that if you actually enjoy the music of Jimmy Buffet you aren't really sick and twisted; you just have no taste.  There are probably some folks right now (assuming people are actually reading this thing) who are offended.  Good!  Get used to it.  I am no longer giving testimony five times a day to a bunch of teenagers.

Testimony.  That's the word that has given rise to this post.  If you are a public figure, you don't get to make casual statements.  Everything you see is testimony and if it is proven wrong, or considered out of the mainstream, then people start talking impeachment and the blogosphere lights up.

There are three recent examples of this.

The most obvious one is the most recent.  Obama, in an interview with certain members of the media, said that when he was up at Camp David he shot skeet all the time.  Conservatives went crazy!  "All the time"?  Where are the pictures?  If he really shot skeet all the time, how come he's not shooting skeet at this very moment?  The president is obviously making the whole thing up so as to facilitate his planned confiscation of our guns.  The WH even released a photo of our President, looking a little like a terrorist in sunglasses and dark jacket, shooting skeet on his birthday.  Some right wing nut job immediately pointed out that the angle of the rifle was wrong for skeet shooting, thereby proving Obama's mendacity.  Come on you guys.  Maybe he shoots skeet the same way he rolls a bowling ball--badly.

We all use that expression--"All the time"--don't we?    I've told lots of people that Kathie and I eat at Mizuna "all the time."  But everybody I say that to realizes that I don't really eat there ALL THE TIME.  If I did, I would be bankrupt and at least fifty pounds heavier.  Instead of "all the time," I should say that we eat there about once a month.  I also listen to "Morning Joe" all the time, but actually I only listen to it when it is on the air.  But since I'm not under indictment and giving testimony to a grand jury, I let myself exaggerate a little.  Most people would agree that calling me on the accuracy of my "all the time" would be more than a little silly and in fact downright dishonest.

That doesn't stop the lunatics at Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck.  The same thing happened with Susan Rice.  She went on the Sunday morning talk shows after Benghazi and casually (SHE THOUGHT) filled her questioners in on what was the current info.  She offered her speculation, never suggesting that it was the whole story, and moved on with no inkling that "Meet The Press" carries the weight of congressional investigations when Democrats are on, and is a forum for talking points whenever John McCain shows up.  The result?  She will continue to be an extremely effective, outspoken and tough UN ambassador and John Kerry will continue in the tradition of Hillary Clinton and be a great Secretary of State.

Finally, the case of Chuck Hagel.  He also said some things on the talk shows that were unfortunate.  He used the phrase "Jewish Lobby" instead of something safer like the "Pro Israel Community."  He said that many people in Congress were intimidated by Israel.  When asked to produce the name of one such intimidated Congressperson, Hagel rightly refused.  He wasn't offering testimony on the Sunday shows; he was just sharing his unfiltered opinions.

It is obvious that public figures in Washington don't get to have unfiltered opinions, or at least they don't get to share them if they know what's good for them.

Thank God for people like Joe Biden.  He tells the truth, or at least he seems to.  His reward?  Until his phenomenal performance as VP, he got excoriated and laughed at for telling the truth.  Telling the truth in Washington!  And John McCain thought that Chuck Hagel was out of the mainstream!