Hanging Out

I'll be looking after two grandsons for a few days while their parents are away. Since they're 8 and 10 years old, "baby-sitting" doesn't quite seem like the right term. So I've decided to say I'm "hanging out" with them.

Hanging out, as I understand it, means spending time with other people, but without a definite schedule or agenda except for being together and talking. This past-time can take many forms. My kids' generation hung out at the local mall or recreation center. After complaints from teen-agers of my generation that there was nothing to do (which I never understood), teen centers were created to give them a place to hang out. At other times and in other places, people have hung out in pool rooms and pubs. I suppose you can't really hang out at a library (one of my favorite places to be) since patrons are not supposed to talk.

I've been transcribing a diary my mother kept, starting from the day she graduated from high school in 1930. She lived in a small town where there wasn't a lot to do. There were certainly no teen centers, and I don't think there was even a movie theater. (Though watching a movie may not qualify as hanging out since there's a time factor and a specific activity.) Her version of hanging out was "going up-town". She must have walked the mile several times a week, sometimes to buy some small thing, but often just to have something to do. At least she got some fresh air and exercise.

Now people hang out virtually. That's what social networking websites are all about. We slump down in front of our computers and check in to see who else has checked in. We make brief, often trivial comments, just to make a connection. Crafting very brief, cryptic and intriguing posts can rise to an art form, but multiple reports about people's status in the virtual world of game apps is just annoying. I may eat my words, though. I saw one game app that looked interesting, and I could get sucked in.

Reading at Random

We don't have a TV and I seldom go to movies, but I read a lot, often two or three books a week.

When go to the library, I try to choose a variety of books: one whose author I've heard interviewed on the radio, one someone has recommended, a mystery (for relaxation), fiction, history, biography, art. But I may also pick up at random a book that catches my eye as I walk through the stacks. (The enormous value of open stacks!) One thing leads to another. When reading one book, if another book is cited, I may write that down and look for it the next time I'm at the library. Thus I often read a short sequence of related books

This summer, "The Fifties" by David Halberstam, was the last unread book in the batch from the libaray. It is very thick, and looked like it might take awhile to read. But once I got started, I couldn't stop. The decade of the 1950s is the first decade I remember well. For the first time, the book provided me with a context for all the names, events, trends and fragments from my teenage years. It verified what I'd vaguely felt, that life in America changed a lot after World War II.

Many aspects of our present-day American culture had their beginnings in the 1950s and are still with us: consumerism, corporate greed, the credit economy (more realistically called the debt economy), energy consumption. Other aspects of the culture have changed a lot since then: much improved (but still not perfect) gender and racial equality, information technology, ecological awareness.

Once started on this sequence, I also read "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan, "How Rich is Too Rich" by Vance Packard, and a biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Then I was ready to change to a different topic, so I picked up "Acedia and Me" by Katherine Norris, a book relating one aspect of medieval spirituality to the author's life. But a funny thing happened. This book had a surprising relationship to "The Feminine Mystique". Friedan felt that all educated housewives should get out of the house, and engage in a demanding, professional career for the good of society. Norris found spiritual nourishment in the daily routine of household tasks. Each author represents an extreme view, formed by opposite personalities living in very different life circumstances.

All this is fascinating to me and provides a certain perspective, but I've lived long enough to feel comfortable with having lived my life on my terms.

Now I'm reading about the Cranbrook Academy, a community of artists, architects and craftspersons whose design philosophy influenced the arts education I experienced in the late 1950s. So I'm inadvertently back to mid-century!

Can You Read Cursive?

As a summer job, a bright college student friend of ours has agreed to type a handwritten diary from the 1930s into a digital file. The old handwriting looked quite legible to me, but the student remarked that she didn't read cursive very well. I was surprised, and even more surprised when I remembered that another bright college student friend who had done the same work for me last summer, had made the same remark.

I'm in the process of transcribing some old German church records, written in old style German handwriting. This style was taught in German schools until about 1920, so anyone educated after that has a hard time reading this cursive script (meaning not many living people can read it easily.) I can muddle though the records I'm transcribing which consist mostly of names and dates with a few other notations.

Will my grandchildren have the same difficulty reading my handwriting as I have reading the old German handwriting? I asked my grandson about it. He has just completed fourth grade and told me he learned cursive last year in third grade. The students in his school are required to form their letters according to a set pattern and they are graded on the quality of their handwriting when they turn in homework. Apparently, his school (a charter school that emphasizes traditional standards --- everyone takes Latin, for example) is in the minority. Many schools have de-emphasized handwriting skills and the students, even in the lower grades, use computers for their assignments.

When I was a student 60 years ago, we learned a cursive alphabet called Zaner-Blosser. It may have been a variation of the Palmer Method of handwriting. Spencerian script was the predecessor of the Palmer Method. The alphabet that my grandson wrote out for me was a simpler version of Zaner-Blosser, minus all the little loops that I always thought were ugly and silly. Some calligraphers have advocated teaching children an italic hand, drawn with a chisel-shaped nib.

We'll see how the bright college student friend does with the 1930s handwriting. And time will tell if my grandson in his old age is one of the few people who can still read cursive.

Too Many Deaths

Last Sunday on Pentecost, during the time for members of our congregation to voice prayers and petitions, there were an unusual number of people mentioning sudden deaths. This Sunday, it hasn't been much better.

Although we have not been confronted with an unexpected death among close family and friends, there was the death of the 40-something daughter of a friend, the drowning death of a colleague of my husband, and the separate suicides of two teen-agers from the local high school. This last has affected several of the teenagers we know and their families. Arriving home from church this morning, the answering machine was blinking, and we learned of the death of the husband of a friend. He'd been sick, but we'd thought he was getting along OK.

What's going on?

Slow or Fast?

They're digging up the street near my house, and for a block there's only one lane of traffic at a time. The workman holds up a sign that says STOP to the traffic going to and SLOW to the traffic going fro.

I understand STOP. But I'm confused when the sign says SLOW and the sign-bearer is whirling his arm frantically to get me to go fast.

Home Again

I've just returned from a two-week trip to Ohio. We had a very enjoyable time, visiting with several friends and relatives. We talked and talked and then moved on, shifting to another group, another branch of the family, another life-style. It was emotionally and physically intense, and we were never alone.

Now during my first day at home, I'm cocooned with myself, silent, recovering in blessed solitude

Another Kind of Mothering

Thinking about Mothers' Day yesterday led me to realize that although my kids have been away from home for more than 20 years, and my kids and grand kids don't live nearby, I've recently begun another kind of mothering. It's like this:

I'm now the Street Steward Coordinator for our neighborhood emergency preparedness committee. That's a mouthful, and more simply means that I'm looking after the people in each neighborhood who have agreed to meet with their neighbors and give them information about emergency preparedness. The job includes keeping in touch, teaching, supporting, answering questions, reminding, facilitating, encouraging, thanking --- all the things that mothers do.

In turn, I'm meeting new people and performing a support function that will help everyone in case we experience an emergency; earthquakes and wild fires are our most likely dangers. We hope we'll never need to implement our emergency plans, but if we do, we know that the outcome will be better than if we had not prepared. And we're learning that there's an immediate benefit, too: community building. Neighbors are meeting long-time neighbors for the first time and forming new bonds: neighbors helping neighbors. I might even begin to use the verb "to neighbor".

Other Mothers' Days

One Mother's Day when my son was elementary school, I spent Mothers' Day morning with him in the parking lot of the medical center, waiting for the doctor to arrive. My son had an ear infection. It was not serious, but he needed an antibiotic. But what seemed like a boring wait in the car turned out to have unexpected consequences. The next day, the police phoned and asked if I'd been at the medical center on Sunday morning. "Yes," I said.

It turned out that while we'd been sitting in the car, the medical center had been robbed of drugs. The police looked at all the appointment books to find people who might have seen the robbery, and although I hadn't realized it at the time, we had been witnesses. I recalled a beat-up car driving away from the medical center at a high speed and was able to give a partial description. I don't know one make of car from another, and thought my son might know, but he was too shy to talk with the police. The police asked if I was willing to be hypnotized to see if I could recall a license number or more details. That sounded like an interesting experience, and I agreed. But I never heard anything more about the case. It only remains in my mind as a memorable Mothers' Day.

The second memorable Mothers' Day was one I spent all alone. The kids were grown up by then, and I was in Cincinnati by myself, doing some genealogical research. I got up on Sunday morning, had breakfast in the hotel, then went to church where I heard the Bishop preach. After a nice lunch, I walked over to Riverfront Stadium and watched a baseball game. Several dad's with young children were sitting nearby, obviously giving Mom a day off at home. The guys were interested in the game, but one poor little girl had no idea what was going on and didn't know what to do with herself. So I talked with her and pointed out things she could look for on the playing field. That helped, but I faulted her dad for not paying more attention to her and helping her understand the game.