South Carolina, Summertime, and Tomatoes

In the summer time in South Carolina, the rich red Southern earth produced the sweetest tomatoes on god’s green earth, her father used to say. She loved the red beefeaters, the dark orange oblong tomatoes her mother used to make salsa, she loved the funky green smell of tomato plants – fresh after the rain – so beautiful she had once bought a perfume called “tomato” so she could smell like that plant. The feel of the warm prickly stems that cradled that delicious fruit when you were sent out in the morning to harvest the fresh ones. The best way to eat them, it was commonly agreed was to pick them fresh and hot out of the garden, or freshly purchased from the old man who sold them on the highway turnoff to John’s Island. You took some white bread, it didn’t matter what kind – even wonder bread was fine, and a lash of Miracle Whip (although fancy people sometimes used Duke’s mayonnaise), and then just slices of that luscious tomato with a little salt on top. It was best to eat these drippy delicious slices of sunshine over the kitchen sink, leaning forward so as not to ruin your shirt. The sweet warm taste of the tomato, slightly salted, summoned up long summer days lounging by the pool, or swimming at the beach, or just sitting with her mother and father in the air conditioned dining room when her mother just didn’t feel like cooking. Tomato sandwiches and sweet tea.

4th of July: Bangkok Style

I think I've always celebrated the 4th of July (or Independence Day), no matter where I am. Now for most of my life that meant living on a US Military base (where of course you celebrate), living in South Carolina, or Washington DC (where how can you NOT celebrate? Its the nation's capitol!)

I know I sponsored a barbecue one year in Amsterdam at the Vondelpark where I made potato salad. One memorable year, I went with my sister to Iowa where I managed to offend my cousins by writing about the pie auction. 

Last year at this time, I was in Bangkok and knew about 20 people (mostly Americans) and I invited them all over to my friend Carol's house for the 4th of July. We celebrated it, as you do overseas, on the following weekend. Last year we called it the "Ambivalent Americans and the Coalition of the Willing" and we served Oscar Myers hotdogs (or weiners as my dad called them), hamburgers, my dad's famous potato salad, and jello. We had lots of beer and wine and partied out on the front porch with Bruce Springsteen and other "American" tunes playing from my iPod. It was a rousing success as it continued on throughout the massive rain storm and all the neighbors came to play and there were kids and drinking and dancing.

This year, I know only 2 people still in Bangkok - one American. The 4th of July was a Wednesday and I met two more on Independence Day at a wine bar where we ate tapas and got to know each other. So, in order to make sure my American citizenship was not taken away from me for forgetting to show sufficient patriotism, I went to the American Chamber of Commerce Fourth of July picnic at the KIT school with 3 of my American friends in Bangkok. In some ways, this celebration was more American than any of my previous 4th of July parties! Below are some of the snapshots I took. 

There were four or five different bands that played- mostly roots rock and classic rock (including Jump! by Van Halen and It's my life by Bon Jovi) but also some great bluesy rock. The bands were inevitably filled with middle aged to straight on OLD men with young 20s looking drummers. It was hot and humid and since its rainy season here - overcast but still hot. Nothing says 4th of July like sweating your ass off sitting outside in the sun. 

One of my favorite parts was the ability to take your photos with Barack Obama and Michelle Obama which I took advantage of...

Many different corporations had bought or sponsored games and boothes. Considering how many old men were there, it was heartening to see that many of the international hospitals were sponsoring activities.

There was a chili cook off and you could purchase Singha beer or Thai wine or coca-cola. 

There was a children's section with face painting and popcorn and clowns making balloon animals. There was a bouncy castle, a bucking bronco, and a climbing wall. There was tug-of-war, egg toss, a pie eating contest, and other classic American picnic games. 

There was even Apple Pie!

Old Man sang the American Anthem and Little Girl sang the Thai anthem.

It was a great mix of Americans and Thais. Lots of bi-racial kids running around with very very old white fathers and young-ish mothers. But also some young American teens who got very drunk and ruined the pie eating contest.  Just like America! 

They played the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem, and the US Ambassador was there. Speeches were made, we all got a bit teary during the national anthem and I marveled at just how young the marine color guard was. I thought about how happy I was that they were stationed in Bangkok and not Afghanistan but how they probably felt a bit annoyed about it and consoled themselves with the bar girls. 

So on this 4th of July as I feel a bit blue and wondering where I am going with my life, I thought about my "traditional" 4th of July growing up. Often one of the families that we were friends with would have a picnic. I grew up in a two culture household although it was British and American rather than Thai and American. But me and the other bi-cultural kids would run around in the heat, playing games, getting into fights, and sometimes swimming in a pool while the parents got drunk, cooked hotdogs, and hung out. And because I grew up in a military family, we always got out the flag and sang the national anthem. And I was taught to stand very straight and tall and put my hand over my heart. 

So when I stood there alone during the national anthem and sang, I felt like I was going back in time to all those summers in South Carolina and then in Washington DC where we celebrated our life in the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave". And I got a bit nostalgic and felt a little bit of love and pride in my country (which is an unusual occurence). For all its problems, I still love the USA.

A Sort of Homecoming

I drove all night to come home. My estimated time of arrival was 3am – not a reasonable hour to invade a friend’s home but my temp job didn’t let me off until 5pm and the traffic around Washington DC is like a big snarled ball of yarn and I inched through it for hours.  There were no mobile phones in those days and it was expensive to make long distance calls so all you could do is drive like hell and hope to make it in time.

As I finally escaped the urban sprawl and suburban traffic, I rolled down the windows in the car and in oozed the Carolina spring that had not yet penetrated above the Mason-Dixon line. The smell of pine tree pollen, kudzu creeping through warm soil, and sweet humidity made me drive faster – singing along to the classic rock on the radio, stopping only for gas and for caffeine. As it got warmer, my musical taste became more Southern - Lynyrd Skynyrd turned into swamp rock and evolved into what we used to call “college rock”.

Six years before, I rode with a stranger in the opposite direction up through the Carolinas to meet my lover in the North. Driving through the dark listening to REM and Tom Waits – my first exposure to the grown up music that my teen years had denied me. My desire to see my beloved mixed with the thrill of taking my first road trip… “Radio Free Europe” and lust mixed with the exhilaration of getting in a car and just going where I wanted. “Just Drive She Said” was the name of my mix tape.

Now I was driving in the opposite direction – driven by homesickness and a desire for warmth and spring and adventure. Driving to visit an old lover and eat shrimp and soak up the southern spring. 

I had never felt like a Southerner. I arrived in the South when I was 8 and had been tortured by the fact I never fit in. I had a British accent, my mother braided my hair, I didn’t know to say ma’am and sir, and I said hello not hey. I was labeled conceited and weird and spent my youth plotting my escape from the South. Yet here I was, anxious to return. Craving the smell of plough mud and swamps and the taste of salty air and brackish water. Yearning for the friendliness that radiates from Southern people and the slower pace of life. My heart raced from the Mountain Dew and desire as I turned off I-95 and headed to the upcountry of South Carolina.

Driving through old back roads, passing lonely country churches, and listening now to Poi Dog Pondering  -“Elizabeth would you come down? With your wood guitar now”. Feeling the connection inside me to the odd quirky nature of Southern college music and the artist-writers I had left behind in South Carolina to join the world leaders of Washington DC. Letting my creative energy start to surge and letting the striving ambitious policy wonk sleep. Putting on my bangles, tying ribbons in my hair, taking off my shoes… the y’all crept back into my speech. I flirted with the gas station attendant who smiled indulgently at me. It was the first smile I had gotten from a stranger since I left home six months before.

I turned off the rural route towards his house. There was a light burning in the upstairs room. I pulled up in the driveway and ran up the stairs. He opened the door, shirtless in jeans. “Welcome home, darlin’, ” he said with a smile as he handed the bourbon on the rocks to me, “I’ve been waiting for you.”  

Review of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I remember very clearly reading this book while living in South Carolina, dreaming of a different life. I was 22, working as a bartender, and already pushing the limits of what was acceptable at the time. I sat in some crappy Hardees or Lizard's Thicket eating by myself obsessed with the prose. The zooming enthusiastic embrace of the everyday and the possibility that you don't know what the next day will bring. Through the lens of the book, I saw my crappy surroundings as an adventure.


I'm afraid to re-read it. It's a book for the young and the confused. It's a book to inspire you to find beauty in a place like Hardees. In 2005, when I was 38, I went to the famous La Cucaracha in Mexico with a woman I met at my guest house there. She loved Jack Kerouac. We talked to 18 year old punk american kids fleeing the law, toothless drunk guitar players with heroin problems, and horny Mexican waiters trying to pick up gringas. I didn't enjoy it. I wanted to go someplace nicer with better service and more sophisticated people. I had grown too old for Jack Kerouac.


View all my reviews

Best of 2010 to date

Here's a few of my photos from my life in 2010 to date. I traveled to India - Delhi/Taj Mahal/Manipur/Kerala, Turkey- Istanbul and the roman ruins near Selcuk, the post-earthquake devastation of Haiti -Port-au-Prince and Carrefour, Edinburgh Scotland, a nice trip with my sister to Charleston South Carolina, and a bike ride with friends through the Tulip Fields of Holland.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

Alyson and I spent the day today in our house in Sumter, trying to make sure anything valuable is put away or brought to Columbia. It was in the 90s and it was hot and dusty. I came across some boxes of photos that I haven't seen in ages. I sat through and thumbed through them tonight and I am going to try to scan some of them electronically in the next few days and post them here. Our beautiful house in Sumter was the setting for so many of them and so many fabulous memories.

* Prom photos from 1982 (Mike), 1983 (Kenny), and 1984 (Mortie) - Mostly posed by the stairs in the living room. My hair stayed remarkably small considering it was the 80s but I have a dress copied from Princess Diana's wedding dress that my mother labored over and sewed for me. Usually she sewed in the sunroom and there was nothing she couldn't make - EXCEPT a bathing suit. We tried that several times and it never quite worked out right. I wish I had paid more attention to the sewing. I can cut out the pattern (my job) but could never thread the bobbin.

* Band uniform photos. I think these should be burned. Posed by the sunroom in the living room. At least I didn't wear braces like Alyson but I do see some monster zits on my face. Alyson also has piano recital photos. I played flute and piccolo - don't see any photos from symphonic band - just marching band.

* Photos of me and my friends from high school and college - rugby shirts, t shirts with sayings, dropped waist dresses, lots of teal. Playing cards, playing scrabble, playing drinking games in the den, draping ourselves across cars in the driveway, and posing in front of the front door in Sumter.

* The house after Hurricane Hugo - my favorite dogwood tree ripped up by the roots, the roof in shambles. Photos of Alyson and I playing in that tree. I remember pretending I was a gymnast in the Olympics.

* Gatherings with Grandma Sis and British relatives when they came to visit in the back yard (before its renovation into a Charleston gated garden) and on the side sunporch patio before we realized it was way too hot to ever sit there in the sun in the summer.

* Dinner with the Winsteads, the British Wives' Club, and other friends of my parents. Usually in the dining room. Often, Alyson and I were banned from the grownup parties and sent upstairs. We would try to wheedle ice cream out of our parents by sending notes down tied to the cat's collar.

* Christmas presents opened and displayed - usually done in the living room with a tree in the sunroom or living room and all of us in bathrobes in front of the fireplace in the living room.

Two sides of South Carolina

Last night, I met up with an old friend with whom I worked at a restaurant (Motor Supply Company) and a health food store (Rosewood Market) in South Carolina in the early 90s, right after college. It was great catching up with her but it was also really interesting to walk down memory lane a bit. I was a bit early to meet with her and didn't have anything to read with me so decided to walk around Five Points to look at my old haunts. Frighteningly enough, in one of the restaurants I worked, I saw two waiters who worked there when I worked there (from 1989- 1993) and in a bar that I also worked, I saw two of the regulars that always hung out there.

My friend and I went to see a band called Grey Egg, composed of some of the people who work at Rosewood Market. The lead singer is a Women's Studies professor at USC too, I think. There were lots of familiar faces in the band and in the audience. It shed a different perspective on the familiar faces I had seen in my old haunts. It reminded me of how out of step I often felt while living in South Carolina. Whereas in DC, what you do for a living identifies who you are as a person, in South Carolina - what you do for a living can be your passion but it can also be the economic way that you feed yourself while you pursue your real passion. So many of the people I knew in SC when I lived here were musicians, artists, writers, and just creative people. The restaurant business was how we all made our living and some of us branched off to working in the macrobiotic deli or organic produce department of the local healthfood store. But in general, we were all in our early 20s, staying up all night drinking and talking and dancing and bouncing around. In the morning, we shook off our hangovers and went to work to serve rich beautiful people their chicken salad croissant or their macrobiotic special of the day.

But there were also people who had hopped off the consumerist capitalist machine that drives the day to day American life. Many of my old friends who are in their 40s now and still performing in bands and being creative and living their life without fretting about how the next step in their life will impact their career climb like I am. It was a welcome reminder that the South and the US is not so bad after the past three weeks where I pass the same chain restaurants every day on my way up and down the highway to the hospital and the rehab facility to visit my father. I haven't walked further than down the hallway to the vending machine to get a coke since I got here!

Then this morning, while I was emailing at work about responding to the Sudanese press about confidentiality for rape survivors, I got an essay from a friend written by a homeschooled child about her day taking care of her Evangelical family. Its pretty easy in the secular world that I travel in to forget just how important religion is to many people in the US. The South has always been considered the Bible Belt. I have a lot of respect for people of faith - I have several friends who are religious, attend church regularly, and I also worked for a faith-based organization, Witness for Peace when I first left graduate school. Since I've been back in South Carolina for the past three weeks, I've witnessed our presidential candidates go to the largest Evangelical church in the US to pass a test of fire about their beliefs so they can woo the religious vote. Every day when I walk through the lobby of the Palmetto Heart Hospital to visit my father, I pass piles of New Testaments on the tables in the lounge. While there is the politically correct "Meditation Centre" in the hospital - presumably to cater to the ever growing population of Hindus and Muslims living in Columbia - all the literature and sign up lists were from Southern Baptist ministers. My father had at least four visitors of devout African-American women ministers coming by to visit him. Many of the cashiers, security guards, and nursing technicians wish me a "blessed day" when I talk to them. There are hundreds of churches in various old buildings all over town. I pass the "Church of the Spiritual Guidance" in what appears to be an old insurance company building on the corner of Main and Sunset every day.

I myself went to many religious "teen activities" growing up in South Carolina. I have very vivid memories of one particular "teen activity". They told us that we were going to watch a movie and there would be free popcorn (I'm a sucker for popcorn). Instead, it was a movie about the apocalypse and the rapture and how all of us secular non believers would be left on hell on earth. A particularly striking scene was a guillotine that the nonbelievers were executed at. The condemned was forced to wait for the blade face up and the point of view of the camera was of the condemned's view of the blade slicing down upon them. Then after freaking us all out (I was 12), they invited us to come up to the altar and embrace Jesus as our saviour. I hid in the bathroom until it was over.

In many ways, the Netherlands is not so very different from South Carolina. There are free spirited thinkers who resist the capitalist imperative and there are strongly religious conservatives co-existing side by side in both places. The conservatives in Holland aren't a part of the accepted script about Dutch tolerance and the free thinking artists and leftists of South Carolina aren't part of the accepted script about life in the Bible Belt.

Alyson and Dad's House in Columbia

Here's the house that Dad and Alyson are renting in Columbia. It's near Sunset Drive and Main Street in Earlwood, a nice little neighborhood. I'm staying in the office/guestroom with the crazy orange cat named George.

Photos from South Carolina

Just saw this guys photography in the Starbucks in the Vista (boy has that place changed since my days slaving away at Motor Supply Co. Bistro) and I liked a few of his things.


This is the Congaree Swamp near Sumter where I grew up.


This photo is lovely - I once went down here for an afternoon with a boyfriend I had named Shrimper.


The Gervais Street Bridge that leads from West Columbia (where we once saw the Ku Klux Klan recruiting at the Kmart) to the Vista (where I worked for some time and the site of many a debauched evening). Some will remember my infamous vomiting episode on this bridge after the famous snow storm of 1988.


The State House in Autumn SANS the confederate flag on top, thank god.


Shrimp Boats in Mt Pleasant. I have fabulous memories of eating fresh shrimp, ice cold budweiser, and dancing to the English Beat with Mike Dumiak and Bill McIntosh and his wife to be, Holly. What an amazing weekend.

Kudzu - a poem

... Up telephone poles,

Which rear, half out of leavage
As though they would shriek
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows

At night to keep it out of the house
The glass is tinged with green, even so,

As the tendrils crawl over the fields.
The night the Kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead.
Silence has grown oriental
And you cannot step upon the ground...

ALL: Kudzu by James Dickey
Photo by Jack Anthony

Scenes from the South

A few pleasant memories from an unpleasant time in the South:

* Sitting on the back porch listening to the sounds of a hot summer night while drinking cold beers and listening to music with friends. I never could afford a place with a back porch or even a front porch outside of the South.

* Buying fresh tomatos and peaches from an old black man from John's Island at the gas station on Main Street.

* Watching a man cut his son's hair on his front porch. For some reason, cutting your hair outside on the front porch sitting on a hard back chair strikes me as so very deeply southern that it makes me nostalgic. My sister cut my hair for me once when I lived on Kiawah Avenue and worked at the Rosewood Market.

* Intense lightning and thunderstorms that turn the night sky purple and toss the crepe myrtles around resulting in carpets of small pink blossoms all over the driveway. Torrents of tropical rain that leave the air clear and crisp the next morning.

* The park completely choked by kudzu at the turn onto Sunset Drive. While kudzu is the scourge of the South, its so beautifully densely green and lush. Combine that with the smell of gardenias and honeysuckle and its like Proust's madeleine.

* Tomato sandwiches on white bread with hellman's mayonaise, a little salt, and fat slices of aforementioned John's Island tomatos. Must be eaten over the sink.

Bad Idea

File under: Bad Idea. Eating Sushi from the Piggly Wiggly.

Scenes from Sicko

Last night, I watched a prisoner who is on the intensive care unit that my father is on, being led on his physical therapy prescribed walk down the hall with his IV pole and his ankles shackled together. The respiratory therapist sitting with me mentioned "The Corrections officers are hard core. They'll keep a prisoner shackled who are on ventilators".

SICKO: the South Carolina version

On Tuesday night, the air conditioning at the hospital in Columbia where my father is currently went out for 12 hours. The temperature was over 96 degrees (36 degrees for you non Farenheit speakers)and it rose to almost 90 inside the hospital (34). I brought a fan from home and we stripped him down and kept cold wet face cloths on him and put him under the fan. The nurses told me that there used to be fans in the hospital but they were nowhere to be found nowadays.

While I was surprised that there was no back up system for the a/c dying in the middle of the brutally hot July-August months, I wasn't that perturbed until I read the news media spin where the spokesperson from the hospital said it was uncomfortable but nothing to worry about and praised the staff for bringing fans to the patients. I was in that hospital with frantic families from all over the city bringing fans in. The CVS next to the hospital was selling out. In the hospitals that I routinely visit in Africa and Asia, there are usually no air conditioning for anyone. There aren't even fans usually. But there are open windows to catch breezes. In the hermetically sealed highrises that are the modern US hospital, there's no opportunity to open the windows and cool yourself down. It was a good 20 degrees warmer in the hospital than it was when I went outside. Some patients had families take them out into the cool evening air. Since my dad was on an IV and oxygen, we weren't able to do that. To my sister's undying embarrassment (you are such a radical! she says), I decided to write a letter to the editor in the local newspaper in response to this article.

Regarding Dr. Caughman Taylor's statement about the air conditioning breakdown at Palmetto Health Richland that "It was not a safety issue; it was an inconvenience", I beg to differ. My 80 year old father was hospitalized when the air conditioning went out on Tuesday night. For the elderly, extreme heat is a serious life threatening condition. They are often the first to die when there is no air conditioning as we saw in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and in heat waves in the mid West. It was family members that brought in fans and window units for their loved ones, not the staff. Staff complained that they were unable to access or find fans that used to be plentiful and spoke about equipment malfunctioning in the emergency room due to the excessive heat. While they were also suffering from the extreme heat in the hospital, they did the best that they could to provide care. CEO Singerling said that "practice makes perfect" so I hope the Palmetto Health Richland has found those fans and are prepared to have emergency plans for seniors and others with respiratory problems in case of another unexpected air conditioning malfunction during the hottest months of the year.

Photos from Home

George Iowa Veenker Martin, monitoring the house from the window.



Warren Street Side of the House



Front Yard


Back Yard

Farewell Sumter

I'm back from Sumter, South Carolina, my home town where I was taking care of my father as he recovered from a broken arm and a nasty infection from the hospital. He and Alyson will be moving into a new house in Columbia in the middle of June... So I said goodbye yesterday to Sumter, not quite for good as I have to return over Xmas and figure out what to do with everything that they left behind and whether or not to sell the house in this market. But goodbye to my childhood home. It's a bit sad but I am happy that I was able to return to South Carolina during spring time and catch Sumter at its best.

I moved to Sumter in 1975 and went to Washington Elementary School, Crosswell Elementary School, Bates Middle School, Council Street campus of Sumter High School, and finally the "new campus" of Sumter High School out at McCray's Mill Road. I left in August 1985 to move to Columbia but still spent every Christmas in Sumter since 1975.

Gradually, all my high school friends left - not really surprising since Sumter is a military town. My neighbors, the little old spinster and widow ladies on Warren Court who kept an eye on me and taught me how to eat divinity, Mary Jane candies, and narced on me to my mother when I kicked a kickball into their azalea beds, have all died off or gone off to nursing homes. New people moved in and I got to know them as adults but my job kept me traveling and I never got home as often as I should. I also liked to keep to myself when I was home - recovering from Washington DC. My friend Mike and I used to try to meet for a Christmas Eve drink to try to rock some fun out of the town and relive our crazy summer whee he was constantly grounded and I was the good girl who drove all those crazy boys around while listening to Dire Straits singing "Money for Nothing".

The town has not done well in the 30 plus years that I've lived there - the businesses have all been hollowed out of the downtown area where we live and new "Generica" restaurants line the highway to the military base interspersed with "pre fabricated housing" and car dealerships. The downtown attempts to revitalize itself but the only decent lunch counter closed down while I was home. The library is lovely - a new beautiful building with plenty of internet terminals for the youth and adults of Sumter. The beautiful old houses are stil there - some lovingly cared for, others falling apart genteely. The crime is still there. Prostitutes walk down the street in front of my father's house and con artists have no problems walking up to our open window and asking for money.

Still, its sad to go. I know all the back roads and all the places where I ripped around town - first on my bicycle and then in my little Ford Escort. My father has good friends in Sumter that he will miss. We will try to bring him back as often as possible to stay in touch with them. And my childhood home is being dismantled. But the memories are all there and my father and sister will be safe and happy in their new home. And that's what a home is really about - not the physical building, after all.

Fresh eyes on the US

I'm currently home in South Carolina looking after my father who is recovering from surgery for a broken arm. I've been here about two weeks and I'm seeing things in a whole new light after living almost a year in Europe. It's not that I didn't know these things before, they are just so in your face now. Maybe I was isolated in Washington DC living in Dupont Circle surrounded by upper middle class people. But here in Sumter, South Carolina - its quite frightening.

Insanely sensational tv news: CNN, Fox News, and every tv media outlet has seized on comments that Barack Obama made about working class voters being bitter about the economy and seizing on illegal immigration, religion, and guns. But people are bitter! That's why they are voting for someone who is not politics as usual! Duh! Suddenly, Hillary Clinton - she of a Wesleyan college and Yale Law School education is proclaiming how she loves guns and shooting them, as well as doing shots of whiskey. Ridiculous! I can't believe how she panders so shamelessly. I will vote for her if she gets the nomination but this whole primary battle has shown her to be as morally shifty and willing to lie as her husband was. 8 years of Clinton was good for economy but it certainly set the tone for the crazy partisan politics that we have to deal with now.

Guns and Religion: I was in the Wal-mart looking for a little exercise bicycle wheel for my fathers physical therapy when I noticed that I could just as easily buy a rifle for about $150 (or 100 Euros). The guy behind the counter selling them was about 18 years old and wished me a "blessed day" when I left. One of my fellow shoppers was wearing a t-shirt that said "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead, hands" and another one had a "What would Jesus do?" t-shirt on and both were shopping for ammo (which is on the shelf next to the tennis balls).

Gloom and Despair: I have to read the shallowest gossipy magazines in the world to recover from the gloom and despair of the nightly news. The world is ending. There is a 99% chance that there will be a MAJOR earthquake in California in the next 30 years. Or as they put it on the news (It could be tomorrow!!!). Salmon population has declined so much that ther are only 30,000 left. A 27 year old football player was found dead from crack cocaine in my hometown. Women college basketball players are caught selling marijuana and thrown out of college. MOre riots in Pakistan. More people killed in Somalia. Over 4000 US soldiers killed in Iraq. A story in the SC newspaper about a US army doctor going undercover in an Afghanistan hospital to help out while wearing a gun strapped to him to defend himself, probably making more and more hospital workers in Afghanistan legitimate targets of insurgents now.

Obesity and ill health: My father is almost 81 years old and is generally in pretty good health for his age. He's skinny - too skinny- so I'm cooking him anything that he wants to eat to help him recover. So lots of bacon, cream, eggs, and sugar. I live near the poor part of town in Sumter and the nearest grocery store is a Piggly Wiggly where one can buy any kind of pork product in the world (except pate - here its called hash). The amounts of processed foods, fried foods, sugary sodas, and transfat desserts is frightening. The most expensive thing I bought at the store when I went the other day was fresh basil (which I was surprised to find) and an avocado (which you couldn't find until Mexicans moved into town). I could probably buy my weight in twinkies and pork fat for less than I spent on some tomatos. The children here are hugely fat, the adults are fatter, everyone drives big gas guzzling cars which they will sit in and weight for a parking space next to the entrance of the grocery store rather than walk a few feet. I've seen one person riding a bicycle since I got here. Only the wealthy can afford to go to gyms, eat organic food, or be thin in the South. The biggest growth industries in Sumter, South Carolina are drug stores and the hospital. The cancer and diabestes rate is outrageous.

And the list goes on and on....

Last Days in DC

Well - I'm officially gone from DC now, as shocking and weird as that is for me to write! I arrived in South Carolina at my dad's house last night at 7pm and my boxes and such are due to arrive later this week.

The last few days in DC were a blur -

Wednesday - I carried 100 lbs of books to the postoffice to ship to Amsterdam. A final humiliating submission to the US government bureaucracy as I had to shuffle through the USPS line filling out and re-filling out forms and apologizing for having heavy boxes to the haughty ladies of the Florida Street Station.

Thursday- the international shipping company sent an old man who appeared to have a heart condition to my fourth floor walkup to get my boxes to ship to the Netherlands so I ended up helping him carry them all down the stairs.

Friday- after being informed that the moving company would not be able to pick up my boxes in the AM as I had organized, they then changed their mind and arrived 12 hours early - interupting my goodbye drinks with my former boss at the Tabard Inn. Two hyperactively strong Mexican men proceeded to tear through the apartment taping up and hauling away everything while the Iranian truck driver smoked cigarettes on the sidewalk checking out the Friday night happy hour crowd on their way to Adams Morgan. God only knows what will arrive in South Carolina. I tipped the Mexicans with that bottle of tequila that I had been eyeballing as a solution ot the anxieties of moving all week.

Saturday - Spent the day throwing things away, freecycling, having lunch with Bernice at our 'usual' and then drinks with Cat, Rick, and the kids. And then! the goodbye party- during the worst Nor'easter that the east coast has seen in ages. Amazingly, people actually showed up for the party. We all met at Perry's where they cordoned off part of the bar for us. What fun! I'm so happy and thrilled that so many of you made it out on the wet, stormy, cold evening to wish me off in style. Sean and Alec outdid themselves with Dutch names for all the guests and tulips galore. I hope someone was able to gather the tulips since I got hammered on farewell shot after farewell shot and the end of the night is a blur. Thanks to William who put up with my insanity and managed to dump me back into Diana and Marco's house that night! From what I recall, I left Angles (where the after party raged on until 3am) and then demanded that he go get the car while I went into Rumba Cafe and danced for a while.

Sunday morning, I awoke to find that the world's biggest hangover had settled on my head. Somehow, through that fog, I managed to get back over to my apartment and give away things through freecycle some more. If it weren't for Kevin and Brian coming to meet me and Alec for brunch, I don't know what would have happened. I would probably still be there lying in a ball on the floor in my empty apartment. Big thanks to the gentlemen from New York who assisted my friend Megan by carrying her television down to her car. After a hilarious brunch discussing "pirate novels" (It was called skye o'malley - Kev!) among other things, Kevin and Brian dropped Alec and I off at the car rental shop where I got a lovely white minivan to haul the rest of my belongings away.

Sunday evening, we had bookclub which was a lovely way to spend the last night in DC. Talking about Black Swan Green, eating ziti, laughing about the good ole days when I was a dirty hippie. Some final photos. Absolutely lovely. A few short trips up and down that damn fourth floor walkup with Gus, Neil, and Alec and the van was packed, the trash was hauled (mostly), and I was out of there. Goodbye little purple apartment with a view of the Washington Monument and a great roof deck. Goodbye Jolt and Bolt and fabulous lox bagels and mango smoothies.

And then Monday rolled around - Alec and I jumped in the minivan and after a last minute goodbye to Simon, my Siamese cat that April is kindly looking after until I get settled, we hit the road. The weather got progressively warmer, sunnier, and lovelier the further South we got. We stopped off at the Ava Gardner museum where I have decided to become the "Ava Gardner of the humanitarian world." Ava moved to Spain and England after growing weary of Hollywood where she had love affairs with bull fighters, arguments with her neighbor - the deposed president of Argentina - Juan Peron, and a 'normal life' of sightseeing and entertaining her gentlemen callers in London.

Sadly, my reverie was rudely interupted by a certain North Carolina State Trooper C Bell who pulled me over for speeding 83 in a 65 on I 95 right outside of Fayetteville. I hadn't been pulled over for speeding in YEARS! In fact, I think the last time was right in that spot where the cop looked at me in disgust and told me to "get out of his state". I will have to skip the court proceedings of fighting the ticket, I guess and just pay it (or not) - $140 of Heinekens and gouda cheese down the drain.

Luckily, Alec and I arrived in South Carolina with no further incidents and enjoyed an evening of twenties music and spaghetti with my father. Now, I have ten days of rest and a short trip to Charleston for some sightseeing before I leave for Amsterdam and my new life and new beginnings in Europe. More to come as it occurs.

The Fall Funk

Well - I'm deep into the Fall Funk. I'm off to Northern Uganda and south Sudan at the end of October which should be exciting me but its not. I don't know why. I've wanted to go to Uganda for ages. It must be the fall funk!

I'm getting sick of DC. I love my apartment and friends but there is nothing to tempt me out of my little hidey hole. When I was in Park Slope this weekend, everything was exciting and cool. I loved the bar that i went to with Kevin and Brian - Slavic Soul! A band that plays Musette Accordion music from 30s France! A million different cute restaurants! I don't even walk up 18th Street anymore. I have tried to shake it up by going to Rumba cafe and Bossa but I don't really have anyone to go with. We're all in a rut. This whole damn city is in a rut. I blame it on the Republicans. Under the Democrats, I'm sure we had more exciting bars.

I am headed to South Carolina this weekend which should be fun and relaxing. It will also be bittersweet- Mr. McElveen, my neighbor from when i was growing up just died this past week. He was 93. His wife has Alzheimers now. They were married for 69 years. Noone in this generation will ever be married for that long.

My neighborhood, Warren Court, was notable in the fact that when my family moved there in 1975, we were the youngest family on the block. Everyone was in their 60s with grandchildren. I grew up on a block of maiden aunts and divorced southern women and was watched over by grey haired women who drove cadillacs and wore driving gloves. I would buy their cut glass vases and old church hats at yard sales. They would call my mother when my sister and I would pick the flowers out of their gardens.

Mr. McElveen always had the most beautiful garden. He grew lovely azaleas, wonderful chrysanthemums, delicious tomatos, and sweet pecans. I remember being a young girl and sitting in his garden and smelling the pungent Chrysanthemum smell mixed with the sweet sweet smell of Magnolia seeds ripening in the autumn sun. The McElveens also spurred my parents to get me baptized. They scared Mom and Dad to death by taking us to Crosswell Baptist church on Sundays so my mom and dad sent us off to the Episcopal and Catholic churches so we wouldn't become Southern Baptists. The McElveens were old timey Southern. Mrs. McElveen would call people "colored" and "nigras" but she would also make divinity and fudge and cookies for Christmas every year and deliver them to everyone's house. She was traumatized when the first black family moved into our neighborhood but sure enough, they got the cookies at Christmas time and the polite standing in the yard complaining about the mosquitos conversation in the summer. When Joey,their grandson, got a Springer Spaniel (very popular for hunting in South Carolina), Mr. McElveen had to walk it - and that dog would pull him down the street. However, he always dressed in his shirt and tie and hat to walk around the block.

Here's to you, Mr. McElveen. I hope you found a lovely plot for gardening and that the tomatos are just as sweet as they were on 6 Warren Court.

Biker Week at Myrtle Beach

Good Times in Myrtle Beach! I went with my dad and sister and we rented a little house called the Ocean View in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. It was just what I needed. I could feel the annoyance and stress melting away as I hurtled down I-95 in my little rental car. As you leave DC, you can tell you are entering the South. There is nothing on the radio but classic rock and the air even starts to smell different. Honeysuckle, dark thick brown rivers, pine trees cooking in the sun.

Summer in South Carolina - eating shrimp, tomato sandwiches and my dad's famous potato salad, drinking cold beer, buying fresh peaches and tomatos from the roadside stand, sitting in the sun on the beach with my toes dug down in the sand, reading books until late in the night, jumping over waves in the Atlantic. Heaven on earth!

As for activities, we went down to the Strand and played some skeetball (but were unable to collect enough tickets to get a backscratcher) and bought Alyson some new sunglasses. The hucksters were bored so tried to sell Dad a henna tattoo. We drank a beer and ate some fries at my dad's favorite boardwalk hotdog stand. Alyson kicked our asses in putt putt at the Mt. Atlanticus Minotaur Golf. The only thing I didn't do is eat boiled peanuts. I guess I have to save something for next time.

The weird thing about Myrtle Beach is that it hosts two biker weeks which overlapped while we were there. One is the "White" Biker Week - fat bald white guys in black tee shirts with skanky looking old women on Harleys and the other is "Black" Biker Week - muscley rich black guys on Kawasakis in neon colors and hot black women with bandanas in thong bathing suits. Two completely different cultures. I saw a bunch of guys in matching vests that said "Dawgs on the Strand." I think I prefer black biker week.

It was fun hanging out down in the cheesy downtown near the Pavilion and watching the bikers show off but I'm glad we stayed in the "family beach" area which was quiet. I've turned into such an old woman. What happened to the 16 year old girl that used to borrow her dad's car and drive up and down Ocean Drive shouting at boys with her girl friends? What happened to those days of greasing up with Hawaiian Tropic Oil in a bikini and flirting with the carnies on the Tilt-a-Whirl? Now it's 45 sunblock and a 'tankini' and a big hat to keep my nose from burning off my face. In bed by 11 with a book. Lame Lame Lame.