The Big Check Came!!!

I got my cut of the class action suit today! (Well, never mind that I didn't know I was one of the plaintiff's and had never heard of the suit....)

What matters is the suit existed and I got my cut today!

The lawsuit was 'Citizens of the US vs. Angie's List, Inc.

What happened was, I joined Angie's List so I could write a favorable review of the guys who did our roof last year. They were great and even paid for me to join Angie's List to see if the compelling nature of my prose could get them business. I hope it did.

That was the first and only time I ever went on Angie's List except for going on a month later and cancelling my membership--or that's what I thought I did. Bern pays the bills so I never look at credit card bills unless she asks me about that charge to "Too Foxy for You". She catches false charges from time to time and handles it. But I do the taxes, which is when I start going through bank statements and credit card bills looking for deductions.

And lo and behold, charged to my card every month for the six months since I cancelled was a $7.99 item to Angie's List!

So, I called and complained and finally got off the damn list--which I don't get anyway...when I needed work done I asked friends and neighbors to recommend folks.

Apparently, I was far from the only one who cancelled on line and kept getting charged because a big old Law Firm filed a class action suit against mean old Angie....

How they found out I complained, I simply don't know. Does a business have to report complaints to some agency or something?

Anyway, the check came. It came in the form of a post card with a cover on it. I undid the sticky and there was my post card sized check. I took it to the bank immediately (actually I was on the way to Stop and Shop where I bank is anyway....)

The Teller had never seen a postcard check but it was obviously good. The grandchildren don't need to worry about college costs now that I got my $5 settlement!

Five measly dollars to thousands of people and thousands of dollars (who knows how much?) To my lawyers and Angie's lawyers.

Well, at least justice was done....

Why I love New England

When I tell people who don't live here why I learn New England I always start with the 'we have four seasons' line.

Truth is, I only love three of the seasons we have here. I often imagine I love winter and the snow and the chill and all--but I don't. I love that we have three seasons I love...winter, with just these few cold days...winter, I think I could do without.

Is there anywhere to live that has 3 seasons? I doubt it. Autumn has to have Winter waiting behind it right? Or why else would the leaves fall so the snow doesn't always break the trees?

So, I guess I have to endure the next few months. Lordy, Lordy, I really don't like the really cold weather. The snow is beautiful but it would be great if it would melt between storms so it doesn't pile up and get dirty and turn to ice.

I still love New England, it's just a little harder to remember why as Winter comes.....

I'm not as dumb as I look...seem...appear to be....

So, in my last post, I took down an earlier post in which I thought I'd been unkind or unfair or cruel.

Then, one of the 3 people who read the offending post (only 3 did) emailed me this:

You wrote:

"This morning, I removed a blog post that I did last night. Only 3 people saw it before I took it down and I hope they keep quiet about it."

Yes, I read it, and thought it a bit out of character for you.

 

(having copied that, I can't get back to the original font--Lord, I hate computers!)

 

But I was correct about what I did. Thanks, Charles. Even if I can't find the correct font.... 

 

Something I've never done before...

This morning, I removed a blog post that I did last night. Only 3 people saw it before I took it down and I hope they keep quiet about it.

I took it down because I went beyond ironic to cruel in it. It was about the Congregational Church here in town and some of my interactions with the staff. I thought I was being humorous, but I was being unkind instead. So I took it down.

One of the problems about writing on a screen is that there aren't the same internal limits that we have we writing a letter by hand. The physical experience of holding a pen, it seems to me, opens up a sub-conscious area where we actually imagine the person we're writing to reading what we wrote a few days later.

Email, Face-book (which I don't do), Twitter (which I don't understand much less 'do') and all the other media things (isn't one called Instagram?) free us from the image of the person reading what we write on a screen--mostly because we  have no idea, really, who all will read it.

I've gotten in trouble trying to be ironic or humorous in emails (mostly one's I've sent to bishops or members of the staff of the Diocese--see my other post from 11/17!) and it's not easy to straighten out. I actually believe we 'read' stuff on a screen differently than we would read a hand-written letter that we hold and touch.

The 'touch' is missing on a screen. And I lost 'touch' last night when I wrote something more cruel than ironic, more unkind than humorous.

I'm glad I removed it. That reminded me of the letters I've torn up and never sent (bet you have some of those if you remember when we used to 'write letters'...) It felt good to remove that post, just as tearing up a letter because you finally realized the person who would read it might be confused or hurt by your words in ink on paper.

I've torn up lots of letters. But this morning was the first time I took down a post. Though I've never done that before, it felt 'good' and 'right' to do it.

Taking nothing that seriously...

I had lunch with one of my best friends today and she was bemoaning the nature of the Episcopal Church in her part of the woods. "They're just to 'self-important'," she was saying.

"Do you mean they take themselves too seriously?" I asked.

"They take everything too seriously!" she said.

Then she reminded me of an ordination to the priesthood sermon I gave for Michael Spencer, about how I made him stand up and told him, "always remember, Michael, that you are an almost irrelevant functionary is a mostly irrelevant institution."

"That's what I like about you," she said.

"My clinging to irrelevancy?" I asked.

"In a word," she said, "exactly...."

And it is true. I don't ever 'not' think of myself as mostly irrelevant. Some people I have told that get rather huffy. "Why, for goodness sake, you're an Episcopal Priest," they say.

And I reply, in a word, "exactly...."

You need to hear me out on this. I'm not saying priests don't 'make a difference' and a contribution to the world. We do, quite often. But so do other irrelevant things. Take poetry--poetry brings beauty and truth and wonder and insight to me...but poetry, in our time and culture, is essentially irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. The economy is relevant. War and Peace is relevant. Poverty and discrimination are relevant. Climate change is relevant. Disease is relevant. The vast distance between the rich and poor in this country and even more so in the developed and developing worlds is hugely relevant. The incredible deep divides among people is relevant.

But poetry and the Episcopal Church? Give me a break.

There is nothing wrong with being irrelevant. Actually it's a great way to go 'undercover' and make a difference in people's lives. Poetry and the Episcopal Church do that--behind the scenes of what is Important and Relevant and Serious in the world. It's that poetry and the Episcopal Church simply aren't that big a deal in the day-to-day relevancies of Life. (My spell check didn't like 'relevancies' though it offered 'irrelevancies' as a doable option--but that would make a really awkward sentence structure to say what I said, so I'll go with my, apparently, new word.)

My bishop at the time, who heard me say the 'irrelevant' stuff, tried to tear me a new one in the vesting room after Michael's reception. But Michael had some very good wine at the reception and I'd had enough that I just said, "Bishop, think about it! You are the mostly irrelevant titular head of a mostly irrelevant institution." And left him gaping at my audacity...or,, perhaps, my accuracy. (I don't think I've used the word 'titular' in conversation before or since. But it cut him short and I went back for another glass of Michael's good wine.

So here's an example: our bishops in CT have been very vocal about gun control since the tragedy in Sandy Hook. I appreciate their stand and find it moving, but it is irrelevant. Gun control is fought out on the political front--the NRA vs. 'gun control groups'. Nobody is ever going to say, "oh, my God, the Episcopal bishops of CT are for gun control, obviously we must do what they want!"

Even more irrelevant are Episcopalians who are members of the NRA getting upset with our bishops. I know a member of the Episcopal Church who has, for all intent and purpose, left the church because of what our Bishops have stood for. In the first place, what Episcopal Bishops say is irrelevant to the larger discussion. In the second place, to, in effect, leave a loving, irrelevant community because of what a bishop thinks is cutting yourself off from the love, affirmation and affection 'church' can give and does give for some irrelevant (in the 'big picture') conversation.

It's OK to be irrelevant. That doesn't mean the ministry of the church doesn't matter. It does 'matter' on the individual level, just not globally. The irrelevancy of the church in no way precludes the church 'making a difference' in an individual's life.

We just have to stop taking ourselves so seriously about everything. In the 'forest', the church doesn't matter, but it matters greatly to the 'trees'.

And that's good. That is healing. That is life-giving in many ways.

We just to have to stop thinking we 'matter' on the Big Picture stuff and deal with the day-to-day of ordinary people stuff.

Really.

You can be vital and life-giving and important without being relevant.

Really.

Ponder that for a bit....Don't take stuff too seriously, just notice how it IS serious on the micro-level. Just that.

My Dad's day

I know it was in Princeton, because I can see my Mom and Dad around the table in the Dining Room there. They were doing the bills. That's what they did every month, together. Bern does our finances and has for years. If she dies before I do I'll have to get a CPA to do my finances as well as a cleaning service and a yard service. (I don't do anything of importance besides empty the litter box, take out the trash and feed the creatures.)

So, I must have been home for a holiday or summer vacation from college, because I never lived in Princeton until I went to college.

Anyhow, what happened was this: it was the first month ever, in their marriage, that my father made more money than my mother. She was a school teacher and he had lots of jobs--running a bar, working my uncle in a grocery store, picking up dry cleaning and finally, as an insurance agent. I have no idea how insurance agents are paid, but it has something to do, I believe, with a cut of each policy they sold.

And that day, sometimes after 1965, his cut of policies was more than here teacher's salary.

He was delighted, that I remember, as excited as I ever saw him, happy and fulfilled. Given that he was a man born in the first decade of the 20th century, to have gone that long having his wife make more money than him must have stung.

That's all I remember. His unhidden joy to, at last, have been the main wage earner in our family.

I don't remember what my mother said, though I'm sure she was fine with the reversal. She, after all, was a 'woman' of the early decade of the 20th century. She might even had been uneasy about bringing home more bacon than my dad for all those years.

I'm not sure why I'm thinking of my parents so much these days. They've both been dead over half of my life.

But I remembered that night around the dining room table when my father finally was the 'wage earner' of the two.

I remember that clearly.

I'm always finding stuff in my desk....

Maybe I should just clean out my desk once and for all, make a clean break with the past and the things I find in it when I open it up and root around from time to time.

But I've come to think of my desk as a Keeper of Memory that I should only dip into from time to time and find something wondrous.

Tonight it was a picture of my mother: Marion Cleo Jones Bradley.

Cleo, which is what everyone called her, was a school teacher, so she had her picture taken when the folks came to take school pictures. The one I found tonight must have been taken in the last years she taught, before she grew ill and died. She was teaching in those years in Switchback Elementary School, though all the years I was growing up she taught at Pageton Elementary School. Pageton was closed at some point when I was in college and she moved to Switchback, further away but because my parents moved from Anawalt to Princeton when I was in college, she didn't have to cross any mountains to get there.

Her hair is turning gray in the picture. She has on a blazer with one of the pins she always wore--costume jewelery and a tad tacky for my taste, on the left lapel. She has on a blouse with wide collars and her head is tilted to the left, probably because the photographer told her too. She is smiling slightly. Her glasses are clear, like a pair I had not too long ago. I have her nose and her hair.

She died when I was 25. She never met her grandchildren. She died young, in her 60's. I am five years older than she was when she died.

And here's the awful truth: I don't remember much about her at all. Not at all. Not her voice or her manner or her smile (which looks forced in the picture) or her laugh or her smell. She died 42 years ago and all that detail has faded.

My father lived another 12 years or so. Miserable without her. So I remember lots more about him.

They were older parents--much older in those days. She was 38 and he was 40 when I was born. They were the age of my young friend's grandparents.

And I don't remember her voice.

That haunts me.

Both my children are a decade older than I was when my mother died. I hope they will never forget the sound of my voice. I hope they are never haunted that they don't.

I stare at the picture and don't make any emotional contact with it. It looks kinda like I remember my mother, but not quite. She's too thin--maybe she'd lost weight because this was near the end of her health. She had a series of strokes and died. Once, at our kitchen table, she grabbed and pill bottle and put a pill under her tongue with no comment. Just a deep breath as the pill dissolved. I looked at the bottle later and realized it was nitroglycirin and my mother's heart was in deep trouble. She's never mentioned it to me and I was already married. Two years later, she died.

One thing I realized long ago is that my parents kept me from knowing 'what's wrong?' always.

Even when I was grown, they didn't tell me my mother had a severe heart problem. My father never told me he was having memory problems until the dementia was full blown.

I was an only child of older parents. Their instinct was to shelter and protect me. I know they meant well and thought that was best.

But it wasn't.

And I can't hear her voice. I never dream of her, almost never. I dream of my father often.

Flesh of my flesh and I can't remember her voice....Maybe looking at the photo every day might bring it back. Who knows?

Who knows anything about parents and children? Really....

If I can figure out how to do this, I'll share a post from August of last year about all this.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Another found poem

Looking through these papers is like experiencing deyavu "all over again" as someone wise (I've narrowed it down to William James, Mark Twain and Yogi Berra) once said.

Marion Cleo Jones Bradley was my mother. God bless her for that. She grew up during the depression and had a hard life. She somehow, climbing out of poverty and ignorance, became a teacher and taught 1st or 2nd grade for years, decades.

I found this poem about her. It seems a bit harsh, but I wrote it over seven years ago and who knows (certainly not me!) what I was thinking when I wrote it. But it was like meeting an old friend in Grand Central Station to find it. And I share it with you.

As the Africans say, 'this is my story, receive it with a blessing and send the blessing back to me...."


MOTHER'S DAY

Well, every day is 'mother's day',
if we are to acknowledge the broad, inclusive
knowledge of our best friend, Dr. Freud.

Who among us can disentangle from the clever, ubiquitous web
of deceit, devotion and dread she wove around us?

"Step on a crack and break your mother's back."
She didn't make that up,
but she would have, given the choice.
Control, control and more control:
that is the currency of Mother Love.

However, this is about my mother 
(write your own poem about yours!)

My mother made a mistake in timing.
She died the week of my 25th birthday.
Elsie, her younger sister, my aunt,
put her hand on my shoulder as I sat
by my mother's death bed, feeding her vanilla ice cream
from a little paper cup with a weird wooden spoon
as if it were exactly what she would want
as she lay dying--which is True as True can be.

"Happy birthday, Jimmy", my aunt Elsie said,
(though she may have said "Jimmie"--the spelling
of my nickname was almost Shakespeareanly varied)--
"did anyone else remember?" she continued,
into more ice cream I was feeding to an almost dead woman.
No one else had--not even my father,
not even me--I'd forgotten my own birthday,
twenty and five: a Big One.

He, at least, could be forgiven.
His wife, after all, was dying.
But why did I forget such an auspicious date?
Because 'mommy' was more important?
Of course she was--she'd made it so
through innocence and guile
and the web she'd woven around me
in all the years before.

She never hit me--not once--I swear it is true;
except with guilt and 'responsibility' and the sticky
lace of Mother Love.

I've lived a life-time since she finally died,
sated on ice cream from my hand.
I only remember her face from photographs
and remember her voice not at all.
She was a good mother--believe you me.
She did all she knew to do and more besides.
And she loved me. She did--she did.
And would love me more if she knew
the man I am today.

Yet, over three decades later, I remember this:
my father and I standing on the loading dock
of Bluefield's hospital, watching the dawn.
Nurses were unhooking all the lines that had held my mom
to this life. I expected some tender moment,
sleep deprived as we both were.

What I got was this: my father looked down at my shoes
and handed me thirty dollars--a twenty and two fives.
"Buy some new shoes for her funeral," he said.
And I said, holding the bills in my hand,
"this isn't enough...."

Although, in those days, it really was.

jgb-1/19/06