They Don't Know What to Do With Us

A couple of weeks ago I was sad to read Anna Quindlen's last column in Newsweek. She's making room for newer, younger columnists.

Many young professionals would appreciate it if we oldies would just go away.

In 1952 the average life expectancy of an American was 65.

Now 65 year olds are hogging all the best jobs, wearing the tight jeans and, in some cases starting whole new families.

More than a few people have questioned my referring to this wonderful man in my life as my boyfriend. After all, he hasn't been a boy for several decades. One reason I use it is because it's so silly to refer to ourselves as "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" that I find it fun. But what other term is there? A couple of times over dinner or whatnot people have offered alternatives but most were not appropriate and some hurt my feelings.

But I understand. For the first time in history I and my peers are traveling abroad to be Peace Corp Volunteers, building Habitat houses, working full time and (cringe) dating.

I visited my grandmother once when she was my age. I noticed she was wearing broken glasses and when I asked her why she told me that she was probably going to die soon so why get a new pair?

I don't wear glasses. I wear contacts - and I'm thinking about laser eye surgery so I won't need those.

It's a whole new time in history. We need to make room for all these new graduates but I'm still here and and have big plans for the future.

So does Anna Quindlen.


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Comfort Food

The entire country is stressed. We need comfort food. What's your favorite?

Sales are way up for:

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
Hershey Candy Bars
Spam
Dinty Moore Beef Stew
Hormel Chili


Also Alka-Selzer, Pepto-Bismol and all kinds of anti-acids.

One of my favorite comfort foods when I was feeling bad used to be Kraft mac 'n cheese. I say "used to" because I haven't eaten it in years. I have no interest in the homemade kind. No chopped ham inside or bread crumbs on top for me.


I wanted Kraft Deluxe. The box with the can of processed cheese inside (not the packet of dried stuff.) I liked it hot, really cheesy and eaten from my favorite cup, while sitting on the couch.

Years ago radio talk show host, Jim Philips used to have a mac 'n cheese recipe for women who wanted to go into labor. He pretty much guaranteed that it would work within 24 hours.

The requirements were precise. (The first one was what made it work.)

- You had to be at least a week overdue.
- You had to have your suitcase packed and by the door.
- Your husband had to make the recipe using Kraft mac 'n cheese.

I've forgotten the other ingredients. No, wait, one was Worcestershire Sauce.

Anyway, macaroni and cheese is back in favor with adults - as well as children. Like many things, it doesn't cure what's ailing you - but it does make you feel better.





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I Love Florida Crackers

Two of my very best friends (Power Rangers) are Florida Crackers. I'm not. I'm a Hoosier.

One of these friends is also one of my favorite writers. She responded to yesterday's blog posting about the definition of the word "Cracker" by giving us the best one ever.

Following are Julia's words:

My family, way back, always liked to call themselves Crackers. Probably every family has its own spin on what it means.

We took it to mean people who had an "insiders" view of the real Florida. That meant the natural Florida that we had learned to cope with and fully appreciate and call beautiful.

Someone who found squirrel and quail stew and swamp cabbage a very superior rendition of a Thanksgiving feast. A Cracker kid knew that you could pick up and play with a king snake but not a coral snake - and never mistook which was which.

Crackers, to us, usually made their living in some earthy way such as raising oranges or cattle, turpentining or timber, or fishing. There was a certain resourcefulness and resilience involved.

There was a lot of the outdoors in a Cracker. Even housework was done outdoors or on the porch. Rain would call one to the porch rocker from the interior of the house.

There was also a facet of being Cracker that meant you knew how to hold your own on the evening front porch story-telling time. Those blow-hard stories usually had a teasing quality which ended in a joke being "cracked" at somebody's expense but in a gentle way.

I do think Crackers were always a bit smug to "outsiders" but not so the outsider would know it because that wouldn't have been charming.

Other times I think that isn't so because I remember Crackers extending a helping and inclusive hand to newcomers. It's just that no matter how many decades passed they were still newcomers.

We didn't much cotton to someone from the North calling us Crackers because we had an innate sense that a Northerner did not hold our same exalted definition of the word. To them it might have meant an inferior and small view of the world, inferior taste and intelligence which we knew was not true but sort of hard to prove standing there in one's bare, sandy feet so rooted in the earth.

And, yes, it is a kind of architecture that is very comfortable, oriented as it is to cross breezes and hunting dogs. Most Cracker houses have a dog trot through the middle and a porch - preferably a wrap around one. The roof has to be tin, the ceilings high and the windows long and open.

Thanks, Julia, for this definitive - and fun - definition.


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Does Tragedy Ever Change Us For the Good?

A couple of weeks ago I started reading the book, "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb. Now I'm reading "Maybe a Miracle" by Brian Strause.

Very, very different books.

But they have this in common: In Wally Lamb's book a couple, both from very dysfunctional families and subsequently both making huge painful mistakes as adults, find themselves reeling from the tragedy of the Columbine experience. He was a teacher at the school, she was a nurse.

In Brian Strause's book, an 18 year old boy, living in a very dysfunctional family, has to deal with the near drowning of his little sister in the family pool.

I haven't finished either of the books. I'm on the way with Strause's book. Wally Lamb's book will have to wait for a couple of weeks.

I'm hoping that both families fine redemption in their separate and very different tragedies. I'd like to be reminded that this is possible.

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Florida Cracker

A while back my boyfriend asked me the definition of the word "Cracker" as it applies to Floridians. I gave him some background but ended up saying:

I don't know.

I don't think anybody has the definitive answer to that question. In this morning's "Florida Flashback" column Joy Wallace gives it a try. So here are a couple of hers and a couple of mine.

DEFINITION OF THE PHRASE "FLORIDA CRACKER."

A person born in Florida.
A Florida cowboy.
A bigoted backwoods Southern white.
A self-reliant, independent, and tenacious settler.
A kind of Florida architecture.
A person who "cracked" rawhide whips.

My favorite definition is the one of the early settlers. Not the Northerners who came down for the winter and stayed in grand hotels - but the men and women who hacked their way through the jungle and tamed the land. And who stayed through the miserable, mosquito infested summers. For them, Florida was - and is - home.

Be careful who you call a cracker unless you mean it as a compliment.


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The Entrepreneurial Spirit Lives

Joshua Witter is a true entrepreneur. He should be an inspiration to the millions affected by our economic downturn.


According to today's paper (that I read while waiting for my Oldies to show up for breakfast this morning) Joshua is into making "Told You So" cards for those who are taken up in the Rapture (soon) and will delivered by Joshua afterwards to their friends and family who are not completely sold on the concept of the Rapture coming right around the corner.


His concept works this way: For a fee he will deliver cards from the "Raptured" to those left behind. Since he's read The Left Behind Series Joshua knows he'll have to deliver his cards while he's covered with boils and will have to fight his way through perpetual darkness, clouds of insects and meteors falling from the sky. But he says he's up to it.

And he has several orders.

The basic message is: "I Told You So!"

I guess some other themes could be:

It's too late for you now.

You should have listened to me when you had the chance.

Na, na - na - na, na.

I'm Raptured and You're Not.


As we all know, some of the current sure signs of the fast coming Rapture are Swine flu, the economic collapse and, of course, the election of Barack Obama.





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Prehistoric Woman

For years Hollywood has presented us with cheesy movies of prehistoric women.

One of the cheesiest was the insanely brutal "One Million Years B.C." with Raquel Welch who is, by the way, my age.

Were we ever really supposed to believe that prehistoric woman looked like this?

Now archaeologists have discovered a 40,000 (that's 40 thousand) year old figurine of a woman. She's pictured above and, while it's difficult to make much of this picture, we can tell that she's not Raquel Welch.

Carved from ivory, this figurine sheds new light on the origins of humans and the origins of art.

I was seriously excited when I read about this find in a cave in Germany. They also discovered other items like the remains of horses, cave bears and mammoths.

Besides learning something about this early time, we might even learn something about ourselves.

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