Rabbit, Rabbit!

If you are reading this on the day I am posting it, I wish to remind you to greet the morrow with the phrase "Rabbit, rabbit!" so that you will have good luck in the new month.



Ordinarily, I don't remember to do this myself, inasmuch as I often don't know we're no longer in the old month until I have to write a check. (One of the joys of retirement is not always knowing what day it is---and not caring. "Oh, is it April now? Whoa!")



I also fail to utter the magical words because they are supposed to be the first ones out of your mouth on the first day of the month, and my first words of any day are commonly addressed to one of the cats sharing the bed, as in "Sidney, get off my face!" or "Shut up, Lilith---it's only 6:30!"



According to the purists at Wikipedia, the phrase is "Rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit," meaning the little brown babies at right may not be efficacious in bringing you good fortune. Phooey, I say; rabbits of any hue symbolize April as fittingly as a black cat symbolizes Halloween. Hoppy Spring!

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Not-So-Funny-Business

Mentally riffling through my reading materials of the past week or so, I can only plead, Spare us, O Lord, from the candidate for public office who pledges to "run government like a business." Out of the depths of a tanking economy I cry unto Thee, What is wrong with running government like government? Preferably an open, transparent government of, by, and for the people from whom its powers are derived...

The usual mantra of those who would turn the halls of government into an executive boardroom, the adherents of the "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" philosophy, is the claim that those from the loftiest echelons of commerce are the fittest to root out ineffiency and waste, thereby enabling lower taxes for captains of industry such as themselves. Taxpayers are not citizens, they are shareholders, and naturally, those who own the most shares get the biggest dividends.

Let's hear it, fellas, just like Calvin Coolidge taught you in 1925: "The chief business of the

American people is business."

Oh? And what business would that be? Bear Stearns? Enron? Countrywide Financial?

Which CEO should the elected official take as his model? Jack Welch of General Electric? E. Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch? Robert Nardelli, who was booted from Home Depot for rewarding himself handsomely while the company came near to circling the drain, yet who now heads Chrysler Corporation? Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco International? Surely you recall the $60,000 shower curtain and the ice sculptures peeing vodka at his wife's 40th birthday party in Crete?

To be fair, these spiritual defendants of Gordon "Greed is good" Gecko are yesteryear's news.

According to the past week's news reports, however, their spirit lives on. To wit:

• Efraim Diveroli, a 22-year-old entrepreneur, whose AEY Inc. managed to score a nearly $300 million Defense Department -contract to supply munitions to the Afghanistan army and police. The ammunition was more than 40 years old, much of it useless, and manufactured in China, which is a possible violation of U.S. law.
• Gary M. Milby, president of Mid-America Energy, Inc., who is under SEC investigation for peddling more than $19 million in bogus gas and oil limited partnerships, some $12 million of which wound up in offshore accounts and family trusts.
• ICF International, a Fairfax, VA, private contractor, which ran the $11 billion Road Home housing grant program for Hurricane Katrina victims, and which now says it wants the government to hire a collections agency to get back several millions in overpayments to people who weren't entitled to get any payment at all, while others who qualified for grants got nothing. (Heckuva job, Brownie!)
• Blackwater Worldwide, which along with its Halliburton and KBR cronies has taken the U.S. taxpayer for billions in no-bid war contracts. Most recently, Blackwater has tried to claim that its 850 operatives in Iraq are independent contractors, not employees. This claim would enable them to avoid paying more than $50 million in U.S. payroll taxes.

Not all of my reading has been in the daily press, however. This being annual meeting/annual report season, I have found highly interesting reading in the proxy materials I receive, particularly those shareholder proposals that the board of directors recommend a vote against. Almost to a corporation, the directors get prickly when shareholders show inconvenient curiosity about executive compensation and stock options, global warming and environmental policies, political contributions, and human rights in countries with which the corporation does business. This lack of transparency is strangely familiar.

Oh, wait... there's an M.B.A. in the White House.

Membership hath its privileges

What a deal! What a break! What a boon!

It's the bargain of this or any other century!

Imagine it: A bazillion books, books bound in limp leather and in faded buckram, books in glossy jackets, some with tight, razor-sharp pages, more with brown, well-fingered edges; books with such names on the spines: Jane Austen and the Brontes, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, T.H. White, J.R.R. Tolkien, Patrick O'Brian, William Trevor, Muriel Spark.

And J.K. Rowling.

You have the North Americans: Anne Tyler; Alice Munro; Johns Cheever, Updike, and O'Hara; Russell Banks and Richard Russo; Ernest Hemingway, if you like, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; Dorothy Parker. Consider the Southerners Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Spencer, Ellen Gilchrist, Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith, and Bobbie Ann Mason. (Barbara Kingsolver is only a part-time Southerner, but consider her, too.) Did I mention Amy Tan? And E.Annie Proulx?

Dame Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell (and her alter ego Barbara Vine), Denise Mina, John Harvey, and Ian Rankin are extra added attractions. Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and Tony Hillerman come at no cost, along with Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Daniel Pinkwater.

[Feel free to pencil in any of your own favorites here.]

For a change of pace, you may opt for the historians, the newspaper columnists, the humorists, and the personal essayists, from Will and Ariel Durant to Gary Wills and Karen Armstrong; from Mike Royko and Jimmy Breslin to Murray Kempton and Carl Hiassen; from Bruce Catton, David McCullough, and Kevin Phillips to Robert Benchley, David Sedaris, Bailey White, Calvin Trillin, Woody Allen, Dave Barry, and the two Annies, Dillard and Lamott. By the way, what's the news from Lake Wobegon?

But that's not all! You get all the comedy and drama you'll ever need: William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Robert Sherwood, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, George S. Kaufmann, Philip Barry, Thornton Wilder, William Inge, Tennessee Williams, Mary Chase and Joseph Kesselring, A.R. Gurney and David Mamet, to name just a few.

You get all the lyrics, too: Noel Coward, Gilbert---or was it Sullivan?---Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Hal David, John Lennon, and Ogden Nash, whose verse twisted language and rhyme schemes as if he was making balloon animals.

Speaking of poets, you get the aforementioned Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Billy Collins, Dana Gioia, not to leave out the immortal "O Holy Cow: the selected verse of Phil Rizzuto."

In the privacy of your own home you can tune into NPR and the BBC World Service, Air America, even Dr. Laura, Dr. Ruth, and Dr. Phil, for all I care. (I prefer Dr. Seuss.) You can get your political spin from Fox News. Myself, I favor "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "Real Time with Bill Maher." For hard news, there are The New York Times and The Washington Post---and The Onion, America's finest news source.

At your leisure and in your jammies you can revel in unforgettable lines from classic movies on cable---"Play it for me, Sam...Play 'As Time Goes By.'" "Merry Christmas, you old Bailey Savings & Loan!" "Leave the gun; take the cannoli." "Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night!" And, as Mel Brooks points out, "It's Franken-steen." You can kick back with memorable episodes of "M.A.S.H." or "Seinfeld" or "Star Trek." You can numb you overactive brain and your posterior with back-to-back episodes of "Law and Order."

As added bonuses, you get The New Yorker, the Times crossword puzzle, much truly creative advertising copy ("Volkswagen. Think small."), and some ancient Anglo-Saxon exclamations that still get the job done today.

Here's the clincher, the piece---as Archie Bunker used to say---of resistance: You get to play with all the toys yourself. You can sit in the driver's seat and steer, play with all the bells and whistles. You get to stand sentences on their heads, stretch them out to see how far they'll go, then let them snap back. You can color outside the lines, write outside the box. You've got the motive, means, and opportunity to tinker with language all the live-long day.

You "get" all of these marvels free, gratis, absolutely nothing down and nothing to pay, no PIN, no plastic card, no ID required, as members of the group Winston Churchill---whose written and spoken language is in a class of benefits all its own---described as "the English-speaking peoples." (He also quipped that Great Britain and the United States were "two nations divided by a common language," but I'm sure you get the joke. Of course, you do; to paraphrase the noted linguist Chris Tucker, you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth.)

If your parents were English-speakers, you're a legacy. If English is your second language or even your third, congratulations! You've been accepted on your merits and are entitled to full member benefits even if you don't speak the Queen's English as well as Helen Mirren does. ('Struth, the Queen doesn't speak the language as well as Helen Mirren does.)

However you qualified for membership in the group, if you understand, speak, read, and write English, thank a teacher, then thank your god, your muse, and your lucky stars for the privilege. All these riches of the language---priceless!

An Easter invitation to walk awhile in my shoes

Gracie---who is all togged out for it---and I---who am not---wish you a very Happy Easter and hope that all your eggs will be chocolate creams.

Much as I love them, however, it is neither chocolate nor spice jelly beans nor potted white lilies that revives memories of Easters Past so clearly. No; as I waded through the advertising supplements in the yesterday's papers, I realized that the holiday is vividly tied up, so to speak, with getting new shoes, typically a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes.

Given my family's circumstances and my place in 20th century chronology, it's not surprising that such a mundane purchase could mean so much. To begin with, World War II loomed large over my early child-hood, and even after V-J Day, consumer goods of all kinds---but especially those like shoes, made of leather and rubber---were rationed. In addition, money was tight, particularly for a family of five in wartime New England.

Keeping shoes on our feet was no small accomplishment (I almost said "feat"), as my sister and brother and I persisted in growing and requiring larger sizes. Since my sister, who is older by two years, inherited the petite frame of our Polish grandmother and I the heftier build of our Irish forebears, hand-me-downs were not an option; my feet were bigger than hers from second grade on.

Hand-me-ups were not an option either, since I was blithely and unthinkingly hard on shoes. I well recall our mother's fury when she caught me deliberately scuffing my toes on the sidewalk because I liked the sound it made and because it was the easiest way to brake my tricycle.

Although we did not make it easy for them, our parents did manage to keep us in footwear---three pairs of shoes per kid per year. As noted above, the dress-up shoes arrived at Easter and were meant to last the year for special occasions, wearable to school ONLY if we were taking part in an assembly program OR if our school shoes were at the cobbler's being repaired. (In those days, sneakers were not allowed in school---even assuming the previous summer's pair was still intact.)

We got our sneakers---basic white Keds for my sister and me, PF Flyers for my brother---the day school got out, and woe betide the kid who ruined them before it was time to go back-to-school shopping the day after Labor Day. ("Pleasepleaseplease, Mom, can I have saddle shoes or strap shoes instead of those ugly brown oxfords?") I didn't manage to talk her into letting me have penny loafers until I was in junior high, and that was only because I bought them myself with my babysitting savings. They were red, and I loved them---the beginning of a lifelong passion for cute shoes. (Just ask my daughters, who refer to me as "our very own Imelda.")

In retrospect, it seems that, for me, Memory Lane is paved---I should say "soled"---with the shoes I wore:the dressy flats for the ballroom-dancing class in which we learned to execute the box step; the ballerina flats we wore on first dates; my first heels, which were purchased for Easter, red, what we now call a "kitten heel" and was then known as a "baby Louis heel;" evening shoes with heels calibrated to the height of my prom escort; dirty white bucks for those of us in the college prep program; white pumps for Class Day and graduation.

In college I wore black cotton strappy China doll shoes and spent horrendous Syracuse winters slogging up to campus in Keds and knee socks. Boots? Are you kidding? When the sneaks got too impossibly soggy, I went to Manny's on Marshall Street and got another pair for ten bucks. (My parents never knew this and also never knew I lost almost a week of classes with nearly-pneumonia.)

In most of my professional life I spent five days a week in mid-height heels. To my dubious credit, I did not give in to the hideous fashion of wearing running shoes with a business suit when commuting or going out to lunch. (I did wear floppy silk bow ties, however.)

It was a great day when I started working in the court law library and could wear flats again. (It is a little-known fact, according to my younger daughter, that Aerosoles are the official shoe of the American Library Association.) Low-heeled shoes, in addition to being newly chic and available in myriad attractive styles, are really the only practical choice for one who must frequently leave the circulation desk to help a patron or clear a copier paper jam. Indeed, given some of the contretemps I've had with book carts, steel-toed boots might not have been a bad idea.

These days, I wear whatever feels good on my feet---your basic white Keds, ancient moosehide moccasins I've had since forever, flip-flops (despite my ugly toes), or, for yoga practice, nothing at all. My latest love are suede thong sandals lined with faux fleece; not only do they keep my feet warm, they're cute!

Not as cute as black patent leather Mary Janes, I suppose, but I can't find those in my size anymore.

In defense of 'stupidity'

This past weekend, when a late winter storm dumped nearly two feet of snow in my driveway, I spent a cozy and happy couple of days in my upstairs studio/workshop playing with paints and reading on the daybed. I wasn't entirely alone.

The two cats, Lilith and Sidney, were glad to share a soft place to stretch out; Aretha Franklin belted her way through her greatest hits on the CD player, and the south-facing windows were crowded with lushly blooming plants. These last, commonly known as geraniums, are more correctly known as Pelargonium, as one of the garden catalogs I received the other day rather sniffily insisted: The "true Geranium" is a different variety altogether, a noble addition to the herbaceous border, and perennial to boot.

At more than a hundred dollars for six plants, they'd better last more than one season!

Funny... Nobody told my geraniums they had to shrivel up and die at the end of last summer. Or the summer before either. I have a white one and a couple of coral ones that have been wintering indoors with me for a couple of seasons now and cheerfully blossoming year round. All I have to do in May is repot them, give them their spring haircuts, and
they're good to go back outdoors.

A large part of my affection for Pelargonium is the way the species thrives on neglect and drought conditions. Indeed, I first started buying the plants for the hanging baskets on my garage because they were the only ones that could take
the full brunt of summer sun from late morning until sundown. They are undemanding, unassuming, dependable, sturdy, generous, carefree, and inexpensive. Some of the more lyrical prose from a catalog less exclusive than the one aforementioned says of the putative "false geranium" that it "stands up to the worst weather," exhibits "great vigor and weather tolerance," and "flowers forever."

Think "domestic goddess" or Cinderella before the fairy godmother, at home in cottage window boxes and on kitchen window sills with the potted herbs, affable and eager to please, with nothing of the prima donna aspect of more exotic flowers. Unperfumed, both flowers and leaves have a clean, soap-and-water scent.

Yet, the tight flower heads that call to mind elderly ladies with new perms come in a gorgeous array of vibrant colors: scarlet, baby pink, rose, lavender, plum, white, peach, bi-colored red and white, magenta with a reddish-orange center. They make a pretty, unexpected addition to a bouquet of mixed summer flowers.

Surely, I thought, admiring the contrast of tropically colored blooms with outdoor snowscape, Pelargonium, in the Victorian language of flowers, must have a meaning that recognizes all of these excellent qualities.

Unfortunately, no.

After checking several lists of the meanings of flowers online I learned that your basic, common, or garden, variety geranium most often denotes "stupidity" or "folly"---although the denoters don't say whose, the donor's or the recipient's. I'm guessing the former: A gentleman would have to be pretty dense to give his lady-love a plant in a heavy clay pot without assuring her it meant "How could I have been so stupid..." Or, "If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right!"

Possibly, the garden purists deem the plant itself not terribly bright for giving so much of itself for so little in return. If the geranium's generosity is dumb, then I'm with ---> Stupid!

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Bumper Sticker of the Week, spotted in the Orchard Park (NY) Public Library parking lot:

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Out with the old, out with the good?

Last week, when pundits on all gradients of the political spectrum mourned the demise of William F. Buckley, Jr., several lauded the consistently high quality of his talk show, "Firing Line." One columnist, in fact, noted that the erudite and conservative Buckley managed to draw quite a respectable number of viewers to PBS on Friday nights and in so doing racked up a tenure as host that was two years longer than Johnny Carson's on the "Tonight Show."

Obviously, this fun fact was intended to be a tribute to Buckley's on-air persona, but I wonder, in the light of a recent essay by Charles McGrath, whether some of the credit shouldn't accrue to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I say this because the The New York Times piece, "Is PBS Still Necessary?," (Sunday, February 17) argues that it may be time to pull the plug on publicly funded television programming and hand off Ken Burns to cable. After all, McGrath points out, these days there is a cable channel devoted entirely to everything viewers used to love about PBS: history, science documentaries, classic movies, cooking shows, home improvement, and Britcom reruns.

(Public radio, McGrath concedes, is a different matter altogether, a medium that has managed to survive, thrive, and multiply its listening audience exponentially.)

As my checkbook shows, I am a loyal supporter of public broadcasting---two local public radio stations and the Buffalo-Toronto PBS channel---as well as a subscriber to cable television with an extra movie package, and I have to say that any idea that PBS's long-running programs can simply be parceled out to new homes on cable makes my remote shoot red death rays. The problem is, if PBS's glory days are behind it, so are cable's, as ratings have become all.

Take the case of A&E, formerly known by its full title, Arts & Entertainment: It was supposed to be cable's version of PBS, and indeed in the beginning its scheduling was chock-a-block with reruns of PBS's "Mystery!" and "Masterpiece Theater." Nowadays, its primetime log is rife with true-crime shows and back-to-back episodes of "Intervention." (While Jane Austen's "Emma" did her share of intervening, I don't believe she would be comfortable on A&E these days.)

Bravo was initially a haven for viewers who enjoy movies outside the mainstream and arts programming. About all that's left of that promising beginning is "Inside Actors Studio." The rest are mean-spirited "reality" competitions like "Top Chef," "Project Runway," "Make Me a Supermodel," and "Real Housewives of...(fill in the blank)." Bravo's movie lineup has become the Independent Film Channel---for which movie buffs must pay a surcharge.

One must also pay extra for BBC America, to which I subscribed briefly in hopes of being able to watch series like "Prime Suspect;" what I got was "How Clean Is Your House?," the transatlantic version of "Antiques Roadshow," "Torchwood," and "Hotel Babylon"---dreck with a British accent.

"Flip This House" is not in a class with "This Old House;" for all his "Bams!" Emeril Lagasse can't beat "America's Test Kitchen." How do you suppose "Dora the Explorer" and "Arthur" would stack up against "Sponge Bob Square Pants" in kiddie prime time on the Cartoon Network? Could the Disney Channel lay claim to "Sesame Street" and the Children's Television Workshop without preschool educators' firing a shot? What news and public affairs channel would willingly take on "Frontline" but agree to give its producers a free hand? Does a cable channel even exist that would run "Great Performances?" The idea of live theater, classical music, and opera as pay-per-view is ludicrous; that kind of programming was why public television was created, to air the kinds of programs that commercial television would not.

Please note that I said "would not," not "could not."

I'm old enough to remember TV's so-called Golden Age, the black-and-white days of "General Electric Theater," "Playhouse 90," "The Twilight Zone," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "See It Now," Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, not to mention all those marvelous half-hour comedies and Steve Allen's "Tonight Show." Just as bad money drives out good, bad shows drive out good---why should cable be any different?

Do you imagine (to return to where I started) that if William F. Buckley was still here, his "Firing Line" would survive a smack-down with Hannity-Colmes on Fox? I don't think so, either!