Saw a banner outside a church the other day–a photo of a bewildered guy wondering something like–”Isn’t there more to life?” That is not the question I pose. Isn’t there less to life would be more like it. There’s too much noise, too much clamor, too much media after our attention, and not enough space between our ears. I want less in front of my eyes and less rattling around inside my head. Last night after sitting through a workshop at a public library, I walked outside just before closing time and had a bit of a deja vu. Something about the air and the bare trees and the high school kids rushing inside to pick up whatever they needed for tomorrow’s homework, made me feel like I was somehow in every library parking lot I’ve ever been in on a winter’s night: Wheaton, White Oak, Bon Air, Tuckahoe, etc. etc. I didn’t have any homework due or children with projects hanging over our heads. AHHHH. This was Plato’s ideal world perhaps. Why I couldn’t find the ideal world on a tropical beach rather than a suburban parking lot, I’ll never know, but I had a few moments of space in my head that I appreciated after getting it filled up with banal workshop terminology the previous 2 hours. Empty-headedness gets a bad rap. Another case of less is more.
It is not a good thing to think about paperwork whilst one sleeps. No one wrote the lyric, “I’m Dreaming of a White Pile of Papers” for a reason. Running a marathon can seem daunting–even after you’ve done one. But the real hard stuff isn’t any of that-dealing with paperwork—Delta’s rules for using an unused ticket that cost a small fortune are no more fun than wandering among a few circles of hell. Just gave up on that one, which is of course the point of their rules.
And then there’s been the fun of the Costa Rican visa process for students. It’s a lot like the road to Quepos–long and winding and really bumpy and seemingly no end to that road. I wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic for my daughter to take her Costa Rican journey had I known how inane and expensive the visa process would be. I’m only now writing this because at least she’s there–on a tourist visa–which will, after hundreds of more dollars thrown at bureaucracy will ostensibly give her a student visa good for the length of her program. We have different last names, so I’m hoping no one from CR will read this and put 2 + 2 together to equal $400 more dollars in fees.
Notaries, secretaries of states and airline employees have all had a piece of this action. My daughter needed a recent original copy of her birth certificate from South Carolina and a copy of her non-existent police record from Virginia. Requests had to be notarized on our end and then the forms notarized on their end. Once they were mailed back to us, they needed to go back in the mail to the Secretary of State of the respective state–and no, there was no way the one state agency was going to forward it to the other state agency. There, in SC and VA, the secretaries of state had to stamp stamp and say, yes, the notary on this other form really is who he/she says he/she is. Good to know. Then once we got that back, it all went into an envelope to the Costa Rican Consulate with a request for the documents to be authenticated.
So now after many checks out the door, we wound up with a stack of papers that say (in Spanish and English) that what we say we say really is what we say we said. Charles Dickens had David Copperfield say it more simply: ” I am born.” Then after we’ve done all of the check-writing and notarizing and sending in of the silly forms, we got an email that said, “GOOD NEWS! Costa Rica has changed their process as of Dec. 14th” so you might not need this, and this will work instead though you still might have to pay extra for that. And the emails just kept coming with new and contradictory information that really didn’t warm the cockles of my heart. Things like, “We’ve been having trouble getting the visa process to work and many U.S. airlines won’t let you on the plane without a student visa (even though Costa Rica doesn’t issue those until you are in their country). True to form at the airport yesterday, the airline folks were hesitant about letting our daughter get on the plane–very friendly and helpful, but letting us know that other students had been turned back at other airports without proper documentation. After we produced two letters–one in English and one in Spanish that said let her on the plane for Chrissakes,” she was let on the plane. True to form, when she landed in Costa Rica, they could not have cared less and stamped her passport without looking at anything else. Tomorrow she gets to deal with the bureaucracy down there to turn her tourist visa into a student visa. The U.S. has not cornered the market on wasting paper, I can assure you.
I have thought more about high school basketball this past week than I did when I played it in high school. Not exactly true, because I’m not really thinking about it so much as thinking, “I used to play basketball. That was a long time ago.” I don’t really remember much about it other than awful uniforms, long bus rides, and wanting to play but being scared to play at the same time. I don’t have clear memories of this game or that–just vague bits of raucous gyms and silly cheers. I’ve always loved the smell of the gym and the feel of a basketball and the sound of it hitting the floor. Jump shot motions and follow-through and ballhandling drills have stuck with me more than makes sense. It does make we want to get out on a court….
When I first coached basketball, I was 21, fresh out of college and teaching English at an all-boys, Catholic independent school outside of Boston, St. Sebastian’s, C.D.S. It was unusual for a female to coach boys back in the early 80′s, but it didn’t faze me. It didn’t take much to impress those boys–a female making a shot was more than they could comprehend. When I scrimmaged with them, they were terrified to come near me, so I was a star rebounder for the only time in my life. I was an assistant coach and the head coach was completely ignorant of basketball–he taught religion–he might have been completely ignorant of that, too. I remember being in an opposing team’s gym, down by many points. At a time-out, unnamed head coach gathered us round and told the hapless and frustrated boys, “Take the ball down the court and shoot!” Words to not win by.
When I coached girls bball 10 years ago or so, I finally found my stride. Every once in a while I needed to jump in and scrimmage or demonstrate something that when I played in high school or college I probably wasn’t that skilled at. But here, with 30 years on these timid, unathletic girls, I was finally a player. So that was all it took for me to be decent. Beat up on people 30 years my junior. Good times.
Actually, as a coach I’m equally interested in cracking jokes as teaching skills. Too bad I’m not coaching now to impart these morsels to hungry minds: There is no I in team. But there is a me, and those are my initials. And also worth noting–team spelled backwards is meat. Yes, it is true I was an English major. Comes in handy, on the court and off.
Who knew that I would ever have to contemplate what to wear to a hall of fame induction? It’s not sensible (except from a fundraising point of view though they’ve misjudged me in that regard) for me to be inducted into my high school’s athletic hall of fame though that is what happened on Friday. I was one of dozens of women who decades ago were part of the Academy of the Holy Cross Varsity basketball teams from several seasons that were coached by beloved and no longer with us Bill Sheahan. Once we started winning, the team didn’t stop–for 6 years. I, of course, played the smallest role possible in this era. I didn’t lose a game for the team. Sitting on the bench most of my junior year and deciding not to play at all my senior year adds up to a hall of fame career. Well-played! Except I’ve known for oh, about 32 years that it was one of the dumbest things I ever did not to play on the team my senior year so I missed being a part of the season the team broke the Washington D. C. area high school record of 55 consecutive victories and kept on going over the years to 115 or some such. That adds up to a lot of people at a lot of schools hating good ole AHC. It is pretty cool to be reminded of just how many of the girls who went through the program wound up playing in college–when that wasn’t a halfway regular thing to do. My class had girls go to JMU and UVA on scholarship. Others played at William & Mary and St. Mary’s and University of Richmond. Even I played a year in college though I hated it for reasons that included having 3 different coaches in one season–each worse than the previous one.
Off the bench to hug the nun.
I don’t remember much about the era, other than hanging out in the halls waiting for games or practice to begin and having so much fun cheering the varsity romp when I was on j.v.. Catholic girls can hate opposing teams like no other: sorry bout that Regina, Seton, Immaculate Conception. I’m thinking the Virgin Mary wasn’t our biggest fan. The bus rides to games, singing slightly risque versions of our alma mater. “Holy Cross, we sing to thee, pledging our virginity… Cross and Anchor emblems bright, guiding us to heaven’s light….” Not sure it’s worked out quite as the sisters planned.
It was odd to be back in the gym the other night for the festivities. Lots of semi-familiar faces and familiar names attached to them. I would have preferred that we play an old-timers game or at least play a game of HORSE. I could take most of those gals now. When I coached middle school and JV girls basketball in my 40′s it was clear to me that I was a late bloomer. I was a player with those kids as long as I had 30 years on them. And it is a sad state of affairs that I was in better shape than too many of those young ones. Now that I’m 50, I still think I could show those punk kids a thing or two, which is funny since when I was a punk kid I couldn’t do much. It’s unlikely I’ve become a better basketball player in the intervening years. But at least my delusions are in good shape.
no more fast breaks
a misnomer based on my reading of it...
It wasn’t supposed to go this way, but I’ve found a really crappy way to start the new year. I started reading Home Comforts, the old Cheryl Mendelson heavy-duty how-to about everything I don’t do that I picked up for a song at Chop Suey Books pre-Christmas thinking it would at the very least give me fodder for more RHOME columns forever and ever. Maybe even make me make my bed and make my home office less frightening to the other inhabitants of my home. I paired that with plowing through Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. The result is feeling instantly and utterly inadequate, inconsiderate, possibly even inhuman (because I could barely stand Didion’s book–even accounting for her rotten situation and even though I had been moved and awed by The Year of Magical Thinking), and certainly unclean.
Nowhere to go but up this year? Perhaps that was my strategy all along.
Christmas has come and gone, but not without my family celebrating it in a degenerate way that I don’t exactly recommend: spending too much of Christmas Eve and maybe even some of Christmas, and certainly the days after watching Seasons 1 and 2 of Sons of Anarchy. My husband tricked me into watching some episodes of season 4 this fall and with the Netflix instant thingie suddenly working on our tv and our children home, it just seemed like the thing to do to use our quality family time to watch people killing and swilling. It’s hard to argue with the warmth of the family gathered round the profanity-and blood spewing television. I have to admit, I do a damned good Katey Sagal cussing impression.Makes my kids proud.
During our holiday preparations, my daughter was baking molasses cookies and simultaneously catching up on an episode she’d missed on her laptop. I came in to the kitchen to see this and couldn’t resist snapping a photo.Blood and guts and batter. Such a heartwarming scene.The cookies turned out quite well, I might add.
Yum
As of yet, we have not been struck by lightning or more likely if we lived in Charming, the town where the motorcycle club’s activelifestyle takes place, gunned down by a hail of bullets with all the violent and disturbing (and occasionally funny) viewing going on here during this season of peace. Katey Sagal does say “Jesus Christ” an awful lot, so maybe we’ve got the Christmas spirit, after all. And I can remember the Jesuits who taught me in college sending out a Christmas card one year with the message, “Born to die” or something durned close–ok maybe there was a reference to the resurrection there, too, but I don’t remember that. I remember being somewhat shocked by the starkness of the message–exactly their point. So Jesus would feel right at home with this gang.
As this holiday season comes racing round the corner and the last Christmas cards are in the mail (unless I get one from you and I didn’t already send you one because I forgot all about you), I feel I must take full responsibility for the problems the U. S. Postal Service is having. All it takes is one look at my awful handwriting on the cards I sent to know that it is so unfair that anyone is expected to decipher the mess and actually deliver it to someone somewhere. And I often scrawl a return address on there–just as a cruel joke, really. From looking at it, you can’t get there from here. Most of my family suffers from the same lack of purty handwriting. I would show you a picture but you wouldn’t know what it was. Thomas Aquinas had some pretty crappy handwriting, it turns out, so that will have to do.
it isn't a sin to have bad handwriting
It does remind me of a time years ago when my son filled out his high school application to a very competitive regional school in handwriting so technically tight and perfect and completely indecipherable. Perhaps because it was microscopic. Especially his name at the top of the application. I don’t exactly remember how well I handled the scene I made in our family room when I looked upon this piece of paper that was to determine oh so much of his future since I knew that an extra application was not going to be easy to come by–pre-download everything off the internet days–and it was due the next day. I bet I said small words in a big voice–easily decipherable.
So sorry, U. S. Postal Service. You should make me use 3 or 4 stamps per envelope to compensate you for the trouble. Actually, never mind. I’ve stood in my share of eternal lines at the post office, so maybe we’re even.
Continuing my Twitter RVA Holiday Gift Guide from an earlier post:
Holidays#rva Gift Guide #13 Cool books and jewelry from@Va_Architecture What will those architects think of next?http://twitpic.com/7svsli
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #14 Chocolates from @GearhartsRVA@LibbieGrove See the gingerbread house, too! The sum is yum!http://twitpic.com/7t7uoa
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #15 A stay at a @HistoricRicInns Lovely B&BS that are getaways in the middle of go-to places!http://twitpic.com/7tnalt
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #16 Dreaming of a Light Christmas?Take someone to @lewisginter GardenFest of Lights MT @rvanewshttp://rvanews.com/features/gardenfest-of-lights-in-beautiful-pictures/54263
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #17 Insiders’ Guide to Richmond available at @FountainBkstore & Chop Suey Books Read it & leap!http://twitpic.com/7ulq1e
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #18 @vmfa membership so no one will have blue Christmas–Elvis will be in the bldg Dec. 24-March 18, FYI.
Holiday RVA Guide #19 Hanukkah candy: pretty sight-a better bite! Easy to buy @ For the Love of Chocolate in @Carytownhttp://twitpic.com/7vk72c
Holiday RVA Gift Guide # 20 Hatch Show Print Posters from@LibraryofVA Letterpress Love!http://www.thevirginiashop.org/search.aspx?find=Hatch
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #21 Built by Blacks. Book or pamphlet. Fascinating guide. Buy @ Black History @Va_Architecturehttp://twitpic.com/7welwr
# 22 will be sending you to Virginia Street Gallery in Shockoe Slip for goodies of food, art, and handmade cool things. It’s open 11-8 today through Christmas Eve.
Though I’ve been stocking up on Christmas baking supplies, I haven’t fired up the mixer or oven just yet. It seems too early since I have no plans to give what I bake away unless you show up at my house. How generous of me. If I start baking too soon, I’ll eat it all myself. But I feel the lack of happy Christmas tastes, so lucky for me I went into For the Love of Chocolate in Carytown today and bought one of my essential Christmas treats–Guittard mint chips. I tell myself I’m buying them for mint brownies for Christmas parties and such, and that is somewhat true. But I sliced open the bag already this afternoon with no party in sight and mixed a small handful with a small handful of Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate chips for the easiest Christmasy snacking ever. Joy to the world-or at least my mouth.
simple pleasures
The green is a little harsh–a bit sickening–reminiscent of Seafoam Green Crayola color back in the day. For several months as a child I loved that color. I was wrong to. Perhaps the first in a series of fashion mistakes I’ve made was when I overused it in coloring books for men’s clothing. This was before leisure suits even. And if the seafoam ever looks like that green above–run the other way. Actually, having that green on the top of brownies might make people choose sugar cookies instead, which is fine by me.
To sum up and flesh out my RVA holiday gift guide from Twitter for the first 12 days of December:
Holiday RVA gift idea #:1 Rusty’s Cream Puffs from Aziza’s on Main St. Too big to be stocking stuffers; they’re stomach stuffers instead!
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #2 Dollop Desserts Nicole Lang’s treats will have recipients shouting whoopie!
Whoopie!
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #3 Chef Bundy +3 regional chefs do 5-course James Beard Foundation Dinner at Lemaire 1/14. SOLD OUT as of 12/12.
Holiday RVA gift #4 Andy Bality James River/Huguenot Bridge print. $20 at Riverside Outfitters and Once Upon A Vine/South in Stratford Hills wine/south.
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #5 Real Richmond gift certificates. Food tour fun for all. Fairly obvious. Awfully easy. Doesn’t expire!
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #6 Steve Hedberg holiday cards of his gorgeous wintry paintings– available at TaZa in Westover Hills.
in case you forgot what snow is like
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #7 Clean up your act! Not the sexiest present, but if you hate Lexus commercials, see my previous blog post. A recycling cart to love.
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #8 Anything from Virginia St. Gallery in Shockoe Slip. Open 11-8 Thursday -Sat. Til 5 on Sun. Art, food etc. Great photos, small paintings, sweet and savory items.
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #9 Any number of cool Richmond books and ephemera at Black Swan Books on W. Main. St. I can’t say what I bought!
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #10 Handmade items, including Terrarium ornaments, at Bizarre Mkt upstairs at Chop Suey Books in Carytown.
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #11 Ben Campbell’s new book, Richmond’s Unhealed History. Book-signing at Fountain Bookstore Dec. 21st.
Holiday RVA Gift Guide #12 Lovely and local cards of Jackson Ward scenes and spots. Available at Box Brown, 518 N. 2nd St. in Jackson Ward, right near The Hippodrome.
Recent Comments