K is for Kumquat

Eric says it better than I ever could, in his post Specter, you kumquat, regarding Arlen Specter’s supposed pro-choice stance, and his betrayal of his word to his constituents over Alito’s nomination and confirmation.

Specter is one of the few pro-choice Republicans around, and the only Republican senator I’d ever considered voting for.  He really lost my respect, and a huge chunk of his supporters, over this one.

Specter, you kumquat indeed.

J is for Job

It’s been a long time on the alphabet update, I know.  The letter J had me stumped for a while, and then I was out of town, and just now – really, NOW – I realized that J stands for Job.

My job for ten years has been variations on the term "librarian."  I’ve worked at Louisiana State University, a state school in Iowa (neither of the 2 you probably can name), and Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia.  And for a long time, I thought I’d be at Swarthmore for a long time – like ten or more years.  But one thing happens, and then another happens, and then life decisions get made, and then all of a sudden Amy and the dogs and I find ourselves driving up to Boston on Wednesday night so we can look for an apartment within 30 driving minutes of Wellesley College, where I will start working at my new job in mid-February.  

I’m very excited about this change, for a whole slew of reasons.  And I’m equally saddened by leaving Swarthmore and Philadelphia.  I like my life here, a LOT.  My co-workers are wonderful, the campus community – while imprefect – is familiar and comfortable, I’ve got wonderful friends I met through knitting and hockey and work, and Amy and I both have our first purchased homes here.  And yet, yet.  Boston.  90 minutes to family.  Friends from college (Amy) and grad school (me).  And a job that’s going to challenge me in all the right sorts of ways, with people who I very much liked at my interview, on a beautiful campus in a lovely suburb outside of an amazing city in a state that will legally recognize a committed relationship between my love and me.

So we were in town for a couple of days and found a dog-friendly apartment in a part of Boston that we both like.  Our lease runs till the end of summer, by which point we want to have sold both our houses and found a house to buy somewhere nearer to campus.  And I leave soon – in 3 weeks – to start my new job.  Amy comes a couple of weeks later, after she’s done with her next spate of classes.  I can’t wait!

I is for Italy

My first two years of undergrad were spent on-campus, in the dorms.  My brother had gone on a study abroad program his junior year, and I decided I was going to do the same.  Silly me, not only did I go to the same college he went to (well, as close as I could considering that he went to a men’s college and I went to a women’s college…), but I also went on the same study abroad program he did, the Greco-Roman program.  We spent the first two months of fall semester in Athens, Greece, two weeks in Istanbul, and two more months in Rome, Italy. 

I loved Athens in a somewhat distant way – she was a little gritty for me, and she scared me a bit.  It probably didn’t help that our hotel was in the middle of the red-light district, and was two blocks away from the city square that was home to a couple of hundred homeless Albanian refugee men.  But Rome, oh Rome.  Italy, ma bella Italia!  How I love Rome, and by extension, Italy….

My first memory of Rome came after two horrendous flights – Istanbul to Athens and Athens to Rome.  While in Istanbul, several of us got food poisoning, me among them.  I’d never taken a final while in the throes of being sick before, but I took one in Istanbul that way.  The flight to Rome saw several of us rotating throughout the bathroom.  So anyway, that first memory was of our group – all 28 of us – waiting for a bus to come pick us up and take us to our hostel.  Two of our number had been detained on their way in to the country, and they showed up shortly before the too-small bus did.  I had taken an air sickness bag from the plane when I was disembarking – which turned out to be a wise choice.  As we careened through the outskirts of the city, and slowly made our way in, I remember taking out the bag, looking off to the left, seeing a pyramid (which turned out to be in the Protestant Cemetary [halfway down the page]), and using said bag.  The girl sitting next to me, Teresa, looked at me with surprise, saying, "Wow!  You threw up really quietly.  I’m impressed!"

Nice first memory.  Fortunately, they got better after that.  We stayed in a hostel run by some Irish Dominican nuns, and they put up with exactly NO nonsense.  S. Katie ran the joint, and no one crossed her.  (Except Teresa and Ru.  But that’s their story to tell, not mine.)  There was a nun who sold us all stamps so we could send postcards and letters to our friends and family back in the states.  (This was in 1991, pre-widespread-email days.)  She did all the math longhand, and let me tell you that adding up all the zeroes in the lira took her forever!  

One of my favorite solo jaunts was to go to the Roseto Comunale, the community rose garden, that was a five-minute walk from the hostel.  The roses were gorgeous, and the feral cats who lived there had wonderful personalities.  I have many photographs of those cats amidst the foliage.

In later years, I’ve been back to Italy a few times.  Every time I’ve spent time in Rome, but the last time I went was with my parents and brother and his family.  We spent a week in a villa in Tuscany.  There was this one meal we ate, in the tiny walled town of Monteriggioni, at a restaurant called Il Pozzo.  I had the most amazing truffle ravioli – they were cooked and served in parchment paper.  And the wine we had with the meal was stunning too – it was a Fonteruttoli 1998 Chianti Classico Riserva. 

I fully intend to go back to Italy someday, and will bring Amy with me when I go.  I only hope she loves it half as much as I do.

H is for Herge

Like many kids, I was a big fan of the Tintin books. I owned five or six of them, and read them over and over again.  My favorite was Tintin in Tibet, where he resuces his friend Chang, who had been in an airplane crash. 

Recently, I checked out the 7-volume series containing all 21 Tintin adventures. Some of them I’d never read before (Tintin in America, the Blue Crab, etc.)  It was quite fun to read those for the first time, and to re-read my old favorites again.  But OH!  Let me tell you about imperialism!  And racism!  The horrors!  And do you know that other than Bianca Castefiore, there are NO women in these books who have any speaking roles?  I know that these were written in a certain time and place in history, and need to be viewed somewhat through that lens.  But still.  There could have been at least one woman, or spunky girl, or something.  Yikes.

I do love Snowy, though. Such a great dog.  My dogs are funny, but not quite as spunky as Snowy.  And I don’t think they’d ever try to get into the Captain’s whiskey.  Well, Otter might, but not Maggie.  She’s too refined to drink whiskey.

G is for Grandparents

When I was born, three of my four grandparents were alive.  It was only a couple of years ago when that changed.  So I’ve been very lucky to know most of my grandparents for over 30 years.  Not a lot of people are that blessed.

My dad’s mother was Granny.  She went by Peg in everyday life, even though her name was Celeste (also my niece’s name).  Granny was a spitfire – she never hesitated to let you know exactly what she was thinking!  (She also seemed to have a thing about her father-in-law, Charlie, which made me laugh, but never when she could see or hear me.  She and Charlie must have been like oil and water.  I can only imagine.)  Granny also made a wicked vodka martini.  I never got one, as she stopped drinking before I was old enough to imbibe.  My brother, on the other hand, came home from her place more than once with a pretty healthy buzz going.  From Granny I get my love of word puzzles and words in general.  She worked the crossword puzzle every day, and in fact, was working on one the morning she passed away.  My dad talked to my granny almost every day, as he was driving home from work.

My mom’s mother is Grama, or GG (short for either Grama Grant or Great Grama).  I like how that sounds.  Gram spent the week after Christmas with my folks, Amy, and me up at the Dome.  While her first name is Margaret, my grandfather used to call her Muggs.  When we were at the Dome, I stumbled across some letters that she’d written to my grandfather when he was a POW and she was a new bride in Minneapolis with a newborn (my mom).  I confess that I cried to think of the fear and anxiety she kept out of those letters, but must have felt profoundly, not knowing when he was coming home.  One of my favorite things about my Gram is her love of travel.  She and my grandfather traveled all over the world when he was alive, and after he passed away, she kept on traveling with her kids.  I think it’s one of the many things that keeps her so young.  From my Gram, I got my night-owl tendencies, as well as a love of fiction.

My mom’s dad, my grandfather, was nicknamed Bumps when my brother, the first grandchild, couldn’t say grampa.  He used to say Bumpa, and that morphed.  Everyone knew him as Bumps.  A tall, strapping man with capital-P Presence, you knew when Bumps came into the room.  He shaved his hair off at some point before I came along, so he was always completely bald.  Fortunately, he had a really nicely shaped head.  He used to offer his grandkids a nickel a minute for shining his head or scratching his back.  If you think about it, that was $3/hour, which isn’t a bad rate for child labor… Just kidding!  We always got bored after a minute or two.  Bumps could tell stories like it was no one’s business.  I remember the first day he really told the story of his POW experience.  It was at the Dome, shortly after we’d moved, and he quietly sat at the dining room table and started talking.  Soon, 10 or 12 of us were huddled around, with rapt attention, for the next 3 hours.  My cousin Jason had the foresight to get him on videotape a few years later, telling the same story, shortly before he passed away.  Amazing.  From my Bumps, I got my goofy sense of humor, and the ability to play gin (NOT gin rummy, though).

I never knew my dad’s father Red (Marvin), but found a few photos of him when we were going through photos for my Granny’s funeral.  I know where my dad gets his height (me too!) and I bet my legs look like his did.  My uncle’s oldest boy looks a lot like him, and he and his brothers and grandsons definitely got the hunting gene from him!

How blessed I have been, to have known most of my grandparents well into my adulthood.  What about you?  Do you know your grandparents?  What are/were they like?