Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

A visit to Richistan

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So La Maya calls at 7:15 and announces that instead of our daily constitutional she wants to make a run on an estate sale advertised to be full of Native American crafts and Southwestern artwork. It’s in a ritzy part of town, a detail that makes the ad highly enticing.

We journey east into the rising sun and the rush-hour traffic. Takes us a half-hour to reach a hidden development nestled discreetly in the shadow of Camelback Mountain. “Ritzy” understates matters.

camelbackAn enclave of large but subtly designed houses on vast lots, the place is way too classy to be gated. This evidently is where the old money fled after the parvenus moved into the Biltmore and started building hideous McMansions. The houses sprawl low to the ground: no second stories and few two-story-high cathedrals. Landscaping is what you wish you could buy with your ten or twenty grand…looks like what some designer figures the Sonoran desert would look like if only it could afford him.

Shortly we found the estate sale. Apparently the property was owned by an artist, or by someone who fancied him- or herself an artist and had plenty of money to indulge that conceit. Unbelievable. All of the walls were hand-painted with sepia-toned murals in cowboy themes. Someone had plastered river rocks around the base of a set of clerestory windows and painted the surrounding wall a brilliant cobalt blue. Windows and walls were festooned with Indian and cowboy objets: feathers and spurs and cowboy hats and silver medallions encrusted with turquoise.

Whoever lived there had interesting taste and plenty of cash to spend on it. With the exception of a couple of custom-upholstered Ethan Allen chairs and a pair of gorgeous tan leather sofas, none of the furniture was mass-produced. Everything was one-of-a-kind, either artisan-made or antique, and most of it was very handsome. The view out the back: astonishing! Camelback mountain close-up filled the sky over the backyard.

The sale featured a lot of Indianoid pottery and small tourist-size rugs. I don’t know enough about Navajo rugs to recognize the genuine article at a glance, but I do know that bright colors are questionable…and too many of them featured splashy reds and blues. As for the pottery: the glaze designs were a bit crude for authenticity. Of my pots, the ones I know are real (from New Mexico and Peru) are signed; the one I know is a knock-off is unsigned. None of the estate-sale “Indian” pots were signed. I guessed they were high-quality tourist stuff. Prices ranging from $30 to $95 suggested the same: estate sale operators usually know what they’re looking at, and they set prices accordingly.

La Maya picked up a large Talavera pot, very pretty. But as we drew near to the cash register, she realized that what she thought was a $15 price tag actually read “As IS.” They wanted $50 for it, crack and all. She decided not.

Though we came away empty-handed, we had a good time exploring the ways our betters live. As we were standing in the backyard gazing at the landmark mountain, La Maya remarked on what I thought was the neighbor’s expansive Santa Fe-style house.

“That’s not the neighbor’s place,” said she, “that’s on this piece of property. Look: the cabana and patio extend back to it—it opens onto them.”

Holy mackerel. These people had two full-sized houses on a gigantic slab of prime real estate, one of them eccentrically decorated in late Southwestern artiste and the other a quieter and more conventional dwelling.

I think the house that hosted the sale, whose layout was open and whose decor was artsy-fartsy to the nth degree, served discreetly as the artist’s studio and gallery. Unlikely anyone would want to live in it: really, it was pretty bizarre. But if your clientele was very upscale and your product wildly expensive, chances are your business would attract so little traffic that the neighbors wouldn’t complain much.

It was strange. The rich are not like us.

Some days it’s not worth getting out of bed…

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{sigh}

Yesterday Costco had two new pairs of glasses ready: a new pair of progressives plus what the optician described as “intermediate” lenses.

I’d asked him to clone the pair of ancient close-ups I use to grope around the house, because my new close-up prescription is way too strong: I can’t see my feet through them, and so it’s unsafe for me to walk when I have them on. The old pair was perfect: I could see to walk around, but they sufficed to read most kinds of copy.

But no. He (being a man and so therefore certain he knew better than the little woman, eh?) insisted on making an “intermediate” pair that he thought would be better.

Apparently, the people who make glasses assume most wearers do only three things in life: watch television, drive, and sit down to eat at a restaurant. Evidently most people don’t read. For the life of me, I can not make these people understand that I need to be able to see more than one or two lines at a time, and that my livelihood depends on being able to see an entire sheet of paper! They just. don’t. get. it.

The progressives are good for those sorts of basic tasks: watching the television (yeah! like I do a lot of that!), driving, and forking food into my mouth. They’re useless for computer work, and they’re just barely adequate for short bursts of reading things like newspapers. Also, I thought it was odd that when the optician’s assistant marked these spots on the progressives where some part of the gradation was supposed to go, she kept getting the one on the right about 1/4-inch higher than the one of the left. She remeasured twice, and every time that’s what she got.

And as I suspected, the lenses on the progressives are not coordinated. When I try to read an 8½ x 11 sheet of music in the half-light of the choir loft, I can see the score OK (sort of) with my left eye, but everything’s a blur out of my right eye.

The intermediates are OK for reading a few things, but not for the variety of copy I read. Neither of them allows me to see enough of a page to parse out more than a three or four words at a time (I read a line or two or even three at a time), and  I can’t even begin to make out the photocopies of photocopies of music that probably was set in hot type. Microscopic hot type!

So this morning at rehearsal, I couldn’t sing because I couldn’t follow the music. I couldn’t see the stuff at all. I finally gave up and came home.

Guess I could have grabbed my bifocals and raced back to the Cult Headquarters—I could’ve made it just in time for the procession. But by the time I got home my mascara had run all over my face, because I cried all the way home, mostly out of frustration. I would have had to wash my face, remove the gunk around my eyes, and reapply make-up. Adding those tasks would have made me late.

Oh, damn it, how I hate that. Once I start to cry, all the loneliness and despair that haunt the corners of my life come bounding out into full daylight, and then I can’t stop crying.

Welp. Let’s get out of these uncomfortable clothes, wash the paint off the face, take the dog for a walk, stop crying, and grade some student papers.

Most coveted junk

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So, what do you want for Christmas? The New York Times “Home” section, one of my favorite catalogs for the aspiring nouveaux, has any number of inspirations for valuable junk you can give to friends and relatives, or, better yet, ask them to get for you. I love looking at this stuff. It’s so hilarious! Consider, for example, the stone platters edged in gold leaf, at $375 apiece an item you surely will treasure for the rest of your life and hand down to grateful children. Speaking of leaf, we have these fine leafy spoons, designed to scrape the hide off your palate, at $195 to $275. And who wouldn’t appreciate a framed collage of dried weevils, your loved one’s for a mere $700!

Surely we must all be guilty of coveting some useless object that costs more money than anyone has good sense.

Moi, I want a set of Christofle sterling silver flatware in the Cluny pattern. The going rate for this stuff is $990 a place setting, or $7,920 for eight place settings; but one place online will let you cobble together eight place settings for a mere $4,640 (shipping free!).

What makes this wee craving especially ridiculous is that I already have a perfectly fine set of Cluny in silverplate.

Yes. But…I want it in sterling.

Having received precious few of the pieces of the Royal Danish we registered for our wedding, after my ex-husband made full partner in the tony law firm where he worked, he and I set off to San Francisco one year in search of a set of sterling that would meet our tastes, which had evolved somewhat since the day we were joined in holy matrimony. As a young thing I had selected Royal Danish because it vaguely resembled the pattern I really wanted, which was George Jensen’s Acorn. Why did I think I had to have that? Because one of the other budding partners’ wives selected it.

She and her groom, however, could afford it. We could not, and amazingly enough we had enough sense to realize that we never would: today eight place settings will  lighten your load by $11,625. IMHO, it’s not that much better than Royal Danish: they’re both kinda ugly.

By the time XH and I went in search of sterling, I had decided that I wanted something astringently, Spartanly plain. No frou frou. None. No curlicues, no roses, no leaves, no “acorns,” no acanthi that look vaguely like “acorns” that look like acanthi. What I wanted was something that would resemble the few 19th-century coin-silver pieces handed down from my great-great grandparents through my mother.

Do you know how hard it is to find sterling flatware that is free of gew-gaws?

It’s hard, that’s what it is.

We had just about given up when we stumbled into Neiman’s—it was the last place we were going to look. If we couldn’t find what we (i.e., “I”) wanted, we would resign ourselves to living with our perfectly fine, breathtakingly expensive Danish stainless. We explained what we hoped to find to the sales lady (at Neiman’s, we don’t drool over the silver in its glass cases: we ask to be shown the silver). Forthwith she led us to the sliding wooden cases where the Christofle resided, and by golly, there was a perfect rendition of what I had in mind.

However, in those days Cluny was not produced in sterling. You could only get it in plate. At that time and in that place, the silverplate cost as much as an American set of sterling. XH was prepared to buy sterling, and I expect he would have bought it in sterling were it available. I’m sure, however, that he was privately relieved when I announced I loved the pattern so much that I had to have it, plate or no plate.

Polished and ready for Thanksgiving. Note how similar the Cluny is to the antique pieces in the lower right quadrant of this photo, some of which are dated 1864.
Polished and ready for Thanksgiving. Note how similar the Cluny is to the antique pieces in the lower right quadrant of this photo, some of which are dated 1864.

I’ve treasured this stuff since we got it. After I exited, I left the fancy Danish stainless with XH and decided that I would use the Christofle every single day, the theory being that when you save things for special occasions, you never do use them. And I have. Not only that, but I wash it in the dishwasher. It has held up well: the plate is so thick that after 18 years of daily use, it shows no sign of wearing through.

But, it being plate, it goes clunk when a couple of pieces bump together. I want my Christofle to go ping!

I ask you: is that unreasonable?

Almost ready for Thanksgiving. We actually had more people, and wine glasses were lined up on the kitchen counter for immediate use by arriving guests. I should've put the plates on, since all the food was brought to the table.
Almost ready for Thanksgiving. We actually had more people, and wine glasses were lined up on the kitchen counter for immediate use by arriving guests. I should've put the plates on, since all the food was brought to the table.

Let us count our blessings

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How lucky we are. How incredibly lucky we are to have been born when we were born and where we were born.

Every now and again, I cruise the Web looking for my grandparents and great-grandparents, whom I never saw and about whom I know only some tantalizing hand-me-down legends. Because the pool of public records online grows deeper with each passing day, occasionally I come across something new.

Last night, what should I find but the 1900 census records listing my father’s parents, living way to hell and gone out in some godforsaken patch of east-central Texas. My father was not yet a proverbial twinkle, but both of his brothers had come into being in the early 1890s.

His mother was born in Arkansas. Her father came from Ohio, her mother from Indiana. His father said he was born in Illinois and that his father came from Tennessee.

With a banjo on his knee, no doubt.

By the time my father came on the scene, they were living near or in Fort Worth. He lied about his age as soon as he could get away with it and ran off to join the Navy. He used to say the best thing about being from Texas was being from Texas: as far from it as you could get. I found Google satellite and street-level photos of the wide spot in the road where his parents and brothers must have lived in 1900. Gives technicolor meaning to my father’s words.

Ever have the privilege of visiting east-central Texas in a blue norther? God help us, it’s as cold as you’ll ever get, this side of Antarctica. That’s when you’re inside a house. The icy wind seeps in through every microscopic crack it can find. Imagine living through a Plains winter in a tent, a dugout, a mud hut, or a log cabin! Imagine working through a Texas or an Arkansas summer without air conditioning. Imagine what Illinois and Ohio would have been like before there were cities, before towns, before even a lean-to on the grassland.

Sometimes I think about those folks and I wonder: what on earth were they coming from that this looked good? It’s hard to conceive of the desperation, the poverty that would spur a man or a woman to take off across the Great Plains on a horse or a wagon. Think of that. It’s the equivalent of climbing on a camel and riding into the Sahara Desert. Imagine how hard they must have worked, how hungry they must have been, how tired they must have been, how sick they must have gotten. Imagine giving birth—facing down death to do it—in the middle of nowhere. Really, literally, nowhere.

What drove those people?

We are so lucky to have a roof over our heads and four walls (sometimes more!) around us. Miraculously lucky to be able to turn on a heater when the cold wind wails in from the north, to flick a switch to pump in cool air when the sun starts to bake, to make our livings as wage slaves rather than having to dig our lives out of the rocky soil or chase cattle across the desertifying plains. Lord, what lives they led.

And what lives we lead!

Where my great-grandfather hunted buffalo
Where my great-grandfather hunted buffalo

Image: The Llano Estacado, Texas. Twenty-First Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey. Wikipedia, Llano Estacado.

Paper

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Like dust, paper sifts into my house and settles on the countertops and furniture. If I don’t get to it, before long it stacks up in great dunes of paperwork, forms to be filled out, bills to be paid, statements to be entered in Quicken or Excel, junk to be filed away. Whether its ultimate destination is a return envelope, a file folder, or the trash can, every single piece of it has to handled, examined, thought about, and acted upon.

I’ve known for a while that I would have to get to the stacks on the dining-room table and on my desk. It couldn’t be put off another day, nevermind the stack of student papers and the remaining work to do in the index of medieval & Renaissance history, forget the housework that hasn’t been done in three or four weeks, the empty gas tank, the long shopping list hanging on the fridge. Somewhere deep in the pile was a Visa bill and a car insurance bill, both of which needed to be paid. Soon. Maybe yesterday, for all I knew.

So, having overslept Saturday morning, along about 8:30 I dove into the dreaded task. And…

It took a good four hours to dig out from under all that crap!!! Filling out the forms and copying all the receipts and supporting information for the Avesis claim was probably the most infuriating. Why is it necessary to ask the customer for policy numbers, group numbers, and individual numbers that do not appear on the insurance card, were never sent in the mail, and have to be retrieved by calling the company? What is the point of demanding repetition of facts that are already in the company’s records?

And how, pray tell, do my gender and birthdate bear on my purchase of one, count it, one pair of cheap glasses? What is the point of wasting paper, ink, postage, and my time on this redundant and irrelevant trivia? By the time I finished, I’d filled out a two-page form and photocopied nine more pieces of paper to stuff into the envelope with it. Postage consumed two of the USPS’s pricey little stamps.

Then there’s the form required to ask for the $10,000 of tax-free funds residing in a Northwestern Mutual whole life policy. Is there a reason a form has to be incomprehensible? What, for example, do you suppose is meant by “cash value of,” “face value of,” and “to cost basis”? These terms have exactly zero meaning to me, and I can’t even imagine where to go to look them up and try to figure out how they apply to my particular request, which is a simple “please give me back my money.” No one’s home at Northwestern Mutual, of course: on a Saturday, only the customers have to work.

The Hartford sent not only the current policy and two copies of the piece of paper the State of Arizona requires one to purchase each year and carry around in one’s car, but also three more envelopes full of paper. Lots of dense copy there, too, much of it mind-numbing. The vast amount this company charges to insure my aged car, OF course, requires me to get online and transfer funds from the money market to a checking account, another time-consuming bit of ditz that has to be entered in Quicken, after the credit union’s receipt is printed out and filed. More paper, more ink: more of mine.

By the time I was finished, along about half-past noon, the house was still filthy and the larder still bare. Half the day was absorbed by dealing with paperwork, much of it pointless and way too much of it invasive demands for information that is strictly none of anyone’s business.

A nation of sheep is what we are. If, as a people, we were not passive and indolent, we would rise up in full rebellion at corporate demands for private information that go way beyond anything needed to get a given job done, at the deluge of unnecessary and wasteful paperwork, and (most infuriatingly!), at the newest trend that requires consumers to download and print out online forms, thereby wasting their own ink and paper for no very good reason.

Allons, enfants de la patrie!
To the barricades!

Where does the junk come from?

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Does junk reproduce inside closets, the same way wire coat-hangers spawn in the dark? How does so much JUNK accumulate, after you think you’ve shoveled out every drawer, closet, and cabinet in the house? Where does this stuff come from?

Well, some of it just blew in from the Great Desert University: a week or ten days ago I hauled the last of the junk out of my office and deposited it in the storeroom, where it filled countertops and shelves, waiting for me to find a place to put it away. About half of it, I should’ve thrown out without ever letting it escape the campus. However, I figured if I get the Glendale job, I’ll need the yard-sale lamps, the battery-run clocks, the odd little Mexican mirror, the useless books, the sweet little fan that fits on a bookshelf, oh god what to do with all this junk?

That’s easy: dispose of the unused junk that’s already in the closets and cabinets to make room for the transplanted unused junk.

This inspiration led to half an afternoon’s worth of winnowing out junk, cleaning out drawers to accommodate shifted valuables, wistfully going through beautiful old linens made by or belonging to my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, folding them back up, finding a new place for them… Oh, well.

Tomorrow St. Vincent de Paul will get…

• a DVD player
• an AM-FM radio & CD player that runs on batteries or electricity
• a set of electric curlers
• an old smoke alarm
• two decorative ceramic dustcatchers jars
• a Braun electric coffeemaker
• 4 books
• a Bissell hand-held carpet spot cleaner gadget

And as I was about to sit down to tap out this post on the keyboard, I could hear the muted mating calls of the creatures still hidden in the closets:

• an old VCR player
• a keyboard so old it connected to a now-defunct computer with a pair of plugs, one purple, one yellow
• an ancient Toshiba laptop incapable of running any current software of any kind
• a straw basketful of old electronic hoodahs and doodahs
• a plastic basketful of old PC and Mac software
• the Evan Mecham television
• an old Mac keyboard
• an ancient flatbed scanner
• busted JBL speakers still sitting nonfunctionally on my desk
• two empty straw basketweave things for holding magazines

Where did this stuff come from? How did it get here? What is it trying to do?