I Am Recovering From the Epic Nor’easter

First, I want to say that I send my sympathies to all those adversely affected by the storm in New England. What a mess, what a pain and hazard. That said…it did provide some very interesting moments.

One was a very serious report documenting the sad fact that you could not buy a generator anywhere in the area. A serious reporter in cold weather gear advised us that people went to the Home Depot and there were none to be had. Really. Two thoughts occur.

First, this story is as predictable as a reporter riding the elephant when the circus comes to town. Generators always sell out. Not only is this not news, it’s not even a surprise. A story should be a run on generators in July when right-thinking people decide to prepare for the winter which is no doubt ahead – unless they die in the duly-reported heat wave.

Second, standing out in a blizzard is going to be cold and messy. One reporter told us it really hurts when snow gets blown into your eye. Another confirmed that the roads were slick. We saw lines at the grocery store. We were reminded to stay indoors.

This time, the weather forecasters generally overestimated the amount of snow that would hit New York. Like giddy children, weather group-think encourages them to do this. I think it is better to prepare for the worst and then be happily surprised when it’s not so bad. But, oh no – DO NOT do that. You’d better hit it exactly right or you will be accused of overplaying the danger. But if you underestimated, you would have a worse situation, it seems to me.

So, which is better? Keep folks off the streets in warm shelter with some food supplies, or encourage them to take only regular precautions and gamble that you will be right?

We rode out the storm quite nicely here in Texas with warm temperatures and blue skies. We were all quite interested in what was going on, especially my family because our younger son is in New York. But all is well.

All of this makes me think of the general societal problem of LACK OF CONTEXT. My sainted father would say that some people are like geese – they wake up in a new world every morning. And that’s what is happening now. Reporters, editors, producers, bloggers, tweeters and communicators of all stripes have apparently never had ANYTHING happen to them before.

Like super-annulated babies they awake to discover their hands and toes. Everything is a surprise – usually an unpleasant one. Blame must be assessed for every misstep.

I am so deeply bored by them. It is no wonder that people have stopped reading newspapers and pay little attention to what largely passes for news.

The downside to this trend is that these are very dangerous times. We should be paying attention. There are real things to worry about. There ARE monsters under our beds. We just aren’t paying attention because we are worried about generators at Home Depot.

There’s a Robin Sitting Outside My Window

There’s a Robin Sitting Outside My Window

Yes, there is. Oops…he’s gone. But that’s how robins are, I guess. My desk overlooks the giant trees in our back yard. It’s full of birds and squirrels and bunnies. They are all fat and happy and living in their own kind of heaven. I like that. And, I like January in Texas. We’ve had just about enough cold weather. It lasted for seven or eight days. Everyone has been grouchy because it’s just too damn cold. We even had to cover the azaleas.

There will probably be another week or so of that mess next month, but everything should start blooming by the end of February, which is just about right. I’ve discovered I do not have the attention span for a prolonged winter.

As with so many things, it is the tedium that gets to me. That’s always been the case. Routine bores me. I have virtually no interest in repetition which means I simply am locked out many, many enterprises.

It also explains a great deal about how my children have turned out. I am impatiently waiting for my first grandchild and it has made me start to think about what kind of mother I was. And I’ve been paying more attention to the mothers I see around me.

Yikes. I feel so sorry for their little kids. Yesterday I was leaving the gym and this hateful bitch with a son about 5 and a girl about 3 was marching through the parking lot to the Dollar General. The little girl was walking by herself about 30 feet behind her mom and brother, crying. The loving mother turned and told her to shut her mouth and get moving, not even breaking her stride.

Bad as that was, I was even more shocked by a horrible mother walking with her child through the grocery. The kid asked some kind of innocent question and mom sing-songed “I don’t know…” and walked away from the kid with a smirk on her face.

Who are these people? Why did they have children? Once you get sensitized to it, horrible parents are everywhere. Like crabgrass in the lawn or dog turds in the park…you cannot seem to avoid them.

Is this merely an example of the scientific principle “you get more of what you count” or is this an increasing trend? I hope it’s the former and not the latter.

How did your parents treat you? Most of my childhood memories are very good. I do remember some less than perfect moments…both from me and from my parents. But nothing like this casual rudeness and simple, hateful bitchiness that I’m seeing now.

It is something to worry about. But it’s much more interesting to observe.

Upon Thinking About Peter Pan

I have been thinking about Peter Pan. This was brought on by the recent live special, which I was predisposed to like. I remember the Mary Martin versions in black and white when I was very little and I was enchanted. I knew she was on wires and I was certain Tinker Bell would not die but I loved it anyway.

And I adored Cyril Ritchard and frankly still do. What a delightful non-threatening villain. (By the way, I found a delightful blog post that is written by a woman who has wonderful childhood memories of him and their unique relationship. Click here for it – but then please come back to me:

http://drkathleenmccoy.blogspot.com/2011/07/remembering-cyril-ritchard.html

So, where were we? Oh yes – why I was not thrilled with the new Peter Pan. I thought what’s her name Williams was adequate, but barely. I love Christopher Walken. He was almost good but he was too careful. It was as if he was concerned he would slip and fall or throw his back into a spasm. The children were limp and production was a mess. But it was the very lameness of this version that started me to thinking about what is really wrong with Peter Pan itself.

Most important, Peter Pan really should be played by a very boyish young man. In the original story by J.M. Barrie (written for adults) Peter is never fully described. He does mention that Peter still has his “first teeth”, with a beautiful smile. He is “clad in skeleton leaves and juices that flow from trees” – whatever that means. And he plays a flute like Pan. It is only in the theater that Peter Pan is traditionally played by an adult woman, which I think is weird.

It did make a great vehicle for Mary Martin who had a peculiar type of talent and was prone to strut around the stage anyway.

But an adult woman with very short hair is not the same as a beautiful boy. When you do that to Peter Pan, you mess up the sexual subtext and undercurrent that, to me, is the whole point of the story - unless you are trying to remind parents to keep the windows locked and get a fiercer dog. And don’t go out for dinner.

To me, the story is about the pull between staying a child and embracing sexual maturity. If you refuse to grow up – if you don’t want to go to school, learn to be a parent and find it beneath your dignity to climb trees – then your option is to run away to Never Never Land and live on the island of Lost Boys.

Sadly, we have plenty of men in our culture today who have done just that only now they just go to a sports bar or Hooters. Or Monster Truck shows. But I digress.

The other sexual subtext is the issue of Captain Hook. He is camping around with Smee and the pirates and is worried about being further eaten by a crocodile (!). He is obsessed with the prepubescent Peter Pan and is paying far too much attention to the Lost Boys.

Meanwhile, Peter Pan is falling in love with Wendy. This is where the wheels fall off when Peter is being played by an adult woman. To keep the creepiness factor down, they have to lean pretty hard on the idea that Peter is longing for a home like Wendy’s and her two brothers with parents and a dog and all that is “normal”. This longing is driven home when the first thing Wendy does for Peter is to give him back his shadow – a shadow of his former self? – even stitching it on so it will stay.

But if Peter were played by a male, it would all make much more sense. Peter could be imagined as growing up. That’s impossible when Peter is clearly an adult already and female at that. The shadow thing would make much more sense. He would grow up “intact”, shadow and all. He would eventually find his way home from Never Never Land.

Even when I was a kid and certainly would not have known how to articulate my feelings about all of this sexual awakening business, I always knew this was what Peter Pan was about. And that’s why, as much as I loved Peter Pan and Mary Martin and the Indians and the Lost Boys and the pirates and Smee and especially Captain Hook (because I loved Cyril Ritchard), I wanted to see a Peter Pan played by a beautiful boy.