The Lipstick Chronicles

How Would You Spend Your $50 Billion?

How Would You Spend Your $50 Billion?

by Michele                              

If you had $50 billion to throw around, what would you do with it?  Save the planet or buy a fleet of private jets?  Or both?               

On the same day that Bill Gates retired from Microsoft to devote himself to rescuing the human race, I happened to catch two separate movies about its demise.  The choice of films -- Wall-E and Planet of the Apes -- was a coincidence.  We were watching lots of movies to allay our anxiety about my oldest going off to sleepaway camp the next morning.  Wall-E had just opened, and Planet of the Apes happened to come up in our Netflix queue.  When you're anxious, a movie can be a great escape.  Unless of course the movie is about the apocalypse and the woeful period afterward when the plucky survivors are forced to cope with mass disaster.  (Check out that final scene in Planet of the Apes, by the way -- a true classic.  Nobody delivers a maudlin, campy, melodramatic line better than Charlton Heston.  "You maniacs! You blew it up!"  And while you're at it, try this one -- "Soylent Green is people!"  My fave post-apocalypse films also include Terminator and Children of Men.  Others?)

You gotta love those movies.  They give vent to our worst fears while managing to hold out a last bright hope for survival of the species.  Older and wiser, mankind will rise from the ashes.  Charlton Heston rides off into the sunset with his Eve to repopulate the planet.  (Add in the fact that she's mute, and plenty of male viewers would likely sign on).  Today, with skyrocketing fuel prices and global warming, we're surely headed for mass disaster.  The point is, we need saving, and Charlton Heston is no longer available.

Enter Bill Gates.  This is the guy who put Windows on a billion computers worldwide.  He changed technology -- and the way we live -- forever.  In the process, he wrote the handbook on ruthless business practices and made $100 billion. For a long time in the 90s, he was the richest man on the planet.  (Microsoft stock has declined, so he's down to a measly $50 billion and got shoved off the list by a bunch of Arab oil billionaires.)  Now he's decided to give his kids a mere $10 million each, and give the rest away through The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, devoted to solving problems of global health, development and education.  This seems to me to be a pretty good way to spend your $50 billion, and I have to ask myself -- would I do the same, if I were in Bill Gates's shoes? 

I enjoy that game where you ask, if I suddenly came into an extra million bucks (say, like by selling a big book!), what would I do with the money?  But because the amounts I dream of are relatively small, I never really think about using the dough to save the planet.  What would I do with a million bucks?  Blow it all on one item.  I just got a circular in the mail yesterday advertising a smallish, not gorgeous lakefront house on a prime piece of property on a lake I love.  If I had an extra million dollars, I'd buy it, and have enough left over to do some renovating and buy furniture.  That's all.  Planet -- fend for yourself.  I don't have enough to save you.  But $50 billion?  That number seems to impose some real responsibility. 

I confess -- if it were me, I'd skim off more than $10 million for each of my kids.  $10 million is enough for them to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives, but not enough for them to experience great wealth.  And having grown up with no money, I would find great wealth too hard to walk away from, for myself or for them.  Why would I deny my kids their own jets?  Or tell them they can have a primary residence, and a nice second home, but not a string of residences around the world?  A housekeeper and a nanny but not a large staff?  Enough to afford college tuition for their kids, but not enough to buy the grandkids' way into the college of their choice by donating a building?  No -- I'd give each kid a billion, and still have $48 billion left over for the planet.  I guess this makes Bill Gates a better man than I.

Okay, so how do I spend the remaining $48 billion?  (Other than on shoes?)  What are our most pressing problems?  Suggestions?  Post it below, or if you like, write to Mr. Gates.

Here We Go Again

Here We Go Again -- Obama's Baby Mama?

by Michele

                                                           

Have you seen this video?  It's a compilation of all the truly vile and disgusting things that male pundits with fat contracts said on-air about Hillary Clinton and other female politicians (and women in general!) during this primary season. 

Here's just a small sampling.  A Fox News anchor saying of Hillary, "A ho is a ho." Tucker Carlson lovingly displaying the Hillary nutcracker and confiding that he involuntarily crosses his legs every time she comes on t.v.  Mike Barnicle saying Hillary reminds him of "everyone's first wife standing outside the probate court."  Bill O'Reilly asking Mark Rudov what the downsides would be to having a woman as the most powerful person in the world, and Rudov answering, "You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings?"  Morton Kondracke comparing Nancy Pelosi to the wicked witch of the west; another pundit commenting on her botched face lift.  And no list of sexist doggerel would be complete without Chris Mathews, who brings his brainless frat boy mentality to national television five nights a week.  I'd include a choice few of his comments, but they'd take up the whole rest of the blog.

I've gotten into a few debates with friends and acquaintances over whether the ugly tone of Hillary's coverage is due to sexism, or whether it's simply that people legitimately hate her because she is in fact a castrating manipulative bitch.  For those of you who've managed to convince yourselves there's a distinction between these two propositions, I have two words for you: Michelle Obama.

Here we go again, folks. We're getting in on the ground floor, with a front row seat to the demonizing of another proud outspoken (potential) First Lady.  Add the race card, and what do you get?  Fox News calling Michelle "Obama's baby mama."  Right-leaning websites spreading the rumor that a videotape exists of Michelle Obama railing against "whitey" from the pulpit of Reverand Wright's church.  Or how about Sean Hannity's entire Michelle Obama montage on Fox news, where he calls her "bitter" and "angry" over and over again as video with unflattering lighting and camera angles streams on the screen.  Or the video produced by the Tennessee Republican Party interspersing her "proud of my country" statement with "good" Americans talking about their patriotic pride.

I've been confining myself to the mainstream stuff, the news anchors and pundits who reach millions of Americans in their living rooms every night.  If I even tried to address the ugliness of what's out there on the internet, I'd ruin everybody's day.  Try blog posts with titles like, "They Don't Come Any Blacker Than Michelle Obama."  How long is it before entire websites are devoted to hating Mrs. Obama, as they are to hating Hillary?  (Check out www.AgainstHillary.com). Hey, we live in a 24/7 information cycle.  Between the time I write this blog and the time it posts, such a site will probably have spawned from the primordial dreck of on-line hate.

The image of Hillary as castrating bitch was carefully and intentionally crafted over a period of decades.  It started in the world of right-wing talk radio, with people like Rush Limbaugh who were against Hillary for partisan reasons.  But there's enough deep-seated sexism out there that it easily made its way into mainstream discourse.  Men and women, liberals and conservatives -- everybody bought into it.  The Obama campaign bought into it, and used it for political gain. Hillary's wicked witch image is so ingrained that media bigwigs continue to insist that there was nothing wrong with her coverage, that it was her own fault because -- well, she's such a bitch.

We can sit here and watch the same thing happen to Michelle Obama.  (And as a Hillary supporter, I confess to having moments where that seems like poetic justice.  But I fight them.)   It's too late for Hillary, but it's not too late to stand up and say no, we will not let this happen again.  Give the woman a chance to talk.  Treat her with respect.  Be glad that she has a brain in her head.  And when the brainless frat boys of punditry make their nasty, insidious comments, turn off your t.v.

 

                                 

Dreams of Faraway Lands

Dreams of Faraway Lands

by Michele                               

Just at the moment when air travel most sucks, the dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on and the world is more dangerous than at any other moment in my lifetime, wouldn't you know -- I've been bitten by the travel bug again.  This is not the first time this has happened to me.  I grew up in a family that didn't have the resources to travel much.  My childhood memories of airplanes and hotels (and room service; what kid doesn't love room service?) are few and far between, and very precious for all that.  So by the time I got to college, I was ready.  I was doing that post-graduation Eurailpass backpacking adventure thing, no matter what it took to pay for it.  (It didn't end up being anything sordid, folks; just a lot of boring secretarial work.)

Is there anything like that first taste of faraway places?   Do you remember yours -- whether it was the next state over or halfway around the world?  For me, I spent a little over three months seeing the sights of Europe, and I think I did it all for under a thousand bucks including airfare. The places I stayed were -- uh, let's call them gritty, and there was no such thing as a taxi, not even once.  And yet those little pensiones and youth hostels with the people having loud sex on the other side of the wall and the stale rolls for breakfast seemed oh so romantic at the time.  I remember the smell of the orange trees in Granada, the taste of the crepes in Paris.  I visited a chapel in Portugal constructed entirely of human bones.  I saw England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, and then the money ran out and it was time to go home.

I understand that some people don't see the appeal of this at all.  The hassle of finding your way around, the stress of not speaking the language, the bother of the crowds at the tourist sights -- it's too much.  And they'll tell you meaningful interaction isn't possible anyway when you're a tourist.  Who knows, maybe they're right, although I certainly didn't believe that at 21.  My Spanish was never better than during political discussions at midnight with friends of friends who put me up in Madrid.  I learned a lot. Even back in 1985, the anti-Americanism was eye-opening, and worth hearing about close up. 

I got the bug again during law school.  This time my traveling was disguised as an externship that I actually got course credit for.  What a racket -- I lived in London, in a mansion on a student budget because the dollar was so strong.  The externship was supposedly . . . hmm, where?  Manchester, which I visited once.  I researched at the British Library during the week and spent my weekends traveling.  In the fall in Europe,  wherever I went, it rained.  But Paris in a downpour is still beautiful, as is Bruges.  And I saw Stonehenge, one of the eeriest and most magnificent places on earth, I'm certain.  I wasn't at all surprised by reports last week saying they've figured out it was an ancient burial ground. Anybody who's been there has already felt those spirits.

Other amazing places I visited during that time of my life?  Egypt ranks pretty high.  Again, eye-opening in many ways.  As a woman two decades ago I was not comfortable eating in a local restaurant in Cairo, even accompanied by my boyfriend, because there were simply no women on the streets. People shouted "Jew" at my boyfriend because, hey, he was American and looked Jewish.  And yet, we would routinely get surrounded by people saying, "American?  I love America.  Welcome to Egypt," and I met some of the kindest people I've ever met anywhere.  Not to mention that the 5000 year-old temples constructed before the wheel and mortar are more beautiful and sophisticated than any building in New York.  Morocco was similarly amazing.  Oh, and Thailand of course, which has the best food and the nicest people on the planet, not to mention the most serene religious places.

Then my kids came along and I didn't go anywhere exotic for over a decade.  They're old enough, finally, to travel now.  They can handle long plane flights and walking for a couple of hours on a hot afternoon if that's the best way to see the sights.  And not a moment too soon, because there are so many places to see and only -- hopefully! -- another 50 years or so to see them in. 

So here's what's on my list (a partial list) of places to see before I die -- Angkor Wat, the Parthenon, Machu Picchu, the Serengeti, Victoria Falls, Easter Island, Patagonia, Antarctica, Pompeii, Ephesus, Petra, Fiji, the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Wall, India (if only for the food!), Vietnam (same reason!), the towers of Hong Kong, Dubai, the Cote d'Azur, the fjords of Norway, St. Petersburg, Vienna, the whales calving in Baja California, and on and on.  What's on yours?

Power Failures and Other Freaks of Nature

Power Failures and Other Freaks of Nature

by Michele

Last night the lights went out in my little town.  It was a warm, wet, blustery evening, so you can imagine the scenario.  Power line.  Wayward tree branch.  Everything goes dark.  The only surprise is that it doesn't happen more often.

                                                         

At the time, my husband and I were in a restaurant the next town over having dinner with our neighbors.  My older son was out at a concert.  And my younger one, who's eight, was home with a babysitter.  He'd just gotten out of the shower and was trying to stick his wet legs into his pajama bottoms.  He lost his balance, fell over and bumped into the wall pretty hard, and the next thing he knew, the lights went out.  He actually thought it was his fault.  He called out to the babysitter, and by the light of her cell phone, they found the closet where we keep our camping equipment.  Pretty soon they were reading by lantern light and having a grand old time.  A while later the rest of us got home, and we all ate cookies in the kitchen, surrounded by candles.  There was nothing I wanted to do that I couldn't accomplish, including reading for half an hour before bed.  (I used a flashlight.)  It was all a lovely adventure, and when I woke up in the morning, the power was back on.   

Life without electricity can be cozy and romantic . . . as long as you're prepared, and you know it'll end soon.  I enjoy camping.  We've spent as much as two days in cabins with no electricity or running water, cooking on a wood stove and eating by candlelight.  I love it for a while, but two days of that once every six months is plenty for me.

 

Some people are looking for utopia, god bless 'em, and they genuinely prefer life like it was lived two hundred years ago, close to the land, with no modern amenities.  Me -- I've never had to go without electricity and all that it brings (toilets that flush, refrigerated food, working telephones, my computer, this blog) for long, and I'd like to keep it that way.  But what if I had no choice in the matter?

No question, the world is rife with disasters on a grand scale.  The tsunami.  Hurricane Katrina.  Wildfires in California.  The cyclone in Myanmar.  The earthquake in China.  For a long time, my personal belief was that such things would happen in far-off lands.  This expectation seemed to be borne out by the facts, until eventually disasters visited places that I lived, because, well, it was time.  Even then, I was lucky, and my personal belief morphed into: disasters may strike close to home, but they won't affect me.  That big earthquake the year I lived in San Francisco?  I was in Alabama on a business trip.  9/11?  I lived uptown.

9/11 affected me psychologically, of course.  Being trapped on an island with millions of terrified people (all the bridges and tunnels were sealed so we couldn't leave) while buildings burned and food supplies dwindled will give rise to a certain level of paranoia.  For a while I had tape around my windows in case of a chemical attack.  (Don't laugh -- an anthrax letter came through the mailroom of the building where my husband worked.)  Eventually we took the tape off, but we still kept one of those escape bags.  You know, medical supplies, important documents, contact lens solution.  You wouldn't want to have to wear your glasses while fleeing a mass disaster.  Even years later, I had a habit of keeping non-perishable food around past the expiration date.  An old bag of Pepperidge Farm stuffing?  It might come in handy in the event of nuclear attack. 

Lately, though, I got nothing.  I'm complacent, I'm unprepared.  The batteries in the flashlights are old, and the only emergency supplies in my basement are a couple of cases of wine that need to be stored in a cool place.  I have no idea how I would react if I had to contend with true hardship.  But then, who does?  In light of all that, the best thing I can think of to do is say a prayer for those poor people in Myanmar and China.   

You Know Summer's Coming When . . . .

You Know Summer's Coming When . . . .

by Michele

                                       

Our seasons up here in the northland are a little bit behind everybody else's.  (I've almost come to think of you guys as the lower 48).  Right now, we're in the midst of the most glorious spring I have ever seen in my life, and I don't think that's just because the winter was so awful.  This spring is truly perfect.  Daffodils and tulips are everywhere.  Flowering trees perfume the cool air, and everybody's yards are full of that delightful, innocent shade of pale green that turns much darker as summer comes on.  So I can't say I'm not enjoying myself.

But for me, there's nothing like summer.  I've started my vigil -- now I keep my eyes peeled for signs that summer is on the way.  Well, what do you know?  The other day I happened to be driving with my family past our favorite seasonal ice cream shack, and lo and behold, it was open!  You know the sort of place I mean.  It operates out of the side of a building, or a roadside shed, or even a trailer.  It's only open when the weather is fine, and the only place to sit is a grungy old picnic table or the fender of your car.  But the ice cream there tastes sweeter than anywhere else.  And you'll go miles out of your way on a summer night to get to it.

  Aaah, sublime.  I had a vanilla soft-serve cone dipped in chocolate!

Any signs of summer down your way?

Take Our Culture Wars Quiz

Are You a Bubba or a Bobo ?  Take Our Culture Wars Quiz

by Michele

We're not going to talk about the actual election today.  Talking about the actual election could lead to unpleasantness.  The unpleasantness might go something like this.  I have a candidate.  You have a candidate.  If your candidate is not the same as my candidate, then you are wrong.

Luckily, we don't need to talk about the election, because we have people called pundits to talk about the election for us.  These days, especially on Fox News, most pundits are blonde and have 36-double Ds.  (Real?  I think not.) Some people think this is okay because pundits are so vacuous anyway that they might as well look the part.  Personally I prefer to get my news from somebody with a brain. Such as:

  If I want somebody with a brain who is also gorgeous, I pick:  . (And yes, I know he'll never love me back.)

Even though most pundits are brainless and annoying, for some strange reason it's hard to stop listening to them.  Maybe that's because wherever you go, there they are.  On the radio, on the t.v., in the newspaper, in your house and your car.  They're all saying the same thing.  They're saying that how you vote depends on who you are.  That it's all demographics.  Here's a relatively well-written piece from The Times that makes the demography-is-everything argument.  (Actually, the exit polling does support this.)

When we at TLC learned that voting is all demographics, we got worried that we might be supporting the wrong candidate.  What if we mistakenly voted for someone who is not cool to others in our age and education cohort?  That would be as upsetting as wearing the wrong shoes to an important event.  To address this critical problem, and to help others who might be facing it also, we devised a simple quiz. 

Step One: Answer the questions below to determine which side of the culture gap you fall on. 

A.  My beverage of choice is:

1. A nice cold Budweiser
2. Red Bull
3. A glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc
4. A Venti Skim Latte

B.  I prefer to tote:

1. An AK-47 and extra ammo
2. A gas can for when the tank runs out
3. An Hermes Kelly bag
4. A "green" grocery bag

c.  My idea of a good time is:

1. Hunting
2. NASCAR
3. gardening
4. windsurfing

D.  The degree that added the greatest number of zeros to my income is:

1. the GED
2. the B.A.
3. the M.D.
4. the MRS (Ladies, given recent statistics on backsliding in wage equality, you might want to think twice about this one).

E.  I prefer to cling to:

1. guns
2. my teddy bear
3. the ACLU
4. George Clooney

Now it's time for the moment of truth.  Add up the number of points and correlate your score to your candidate using the simple chart below. (Warning: Write-in votes or drafting nominees at the convention may be necessary.)

• 0-5 points -- Charlton Heston (so what if he's dead?)
• 5-10 points -- Ron Paul
• 10-15 points -- Al Gore
• 15-20 points -- Sean Penn

Voila!  Voting couldn't be easier. 

Dream, Dream, Dream

Dream, Dream, Dream

by Michele                          

Early on in Annie Hall, Woody Allen confesses to Diane Keaton that he's been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years.  "I'm gonna give him one more year," he says of his silent, disapproving Freudian shrink, "and then I'm going to Lourdes." 

What's funny about that line is the idea that after fifteen years, he wants to give his shrink more time.  Why did all those self-involved New Yorkers stay in analysis forever? Because they loved to talk about their dreams, that's why.

In college, I read The Interpretation of Dreams, where Freud spelled out his theory of the unconscious mind.  He believed that many of our most important thoughts aren't accessible on a conscious level but are buried deep below the surface.  The only way to get to them is through our dreams.  Dreams aren't just random moving pictures. They're coded messages from the unconscious, revealing our deepest wants and fears.  Every element of a dream is an important symbol that needs to be plumbed for its meaning.

Freud did all that plumbing and figured out what everyone's dreams mean.  We all know what he said, right?  Sex, sex, sex.  Objects symbolize genitalia and actions symbolize masturbation or sexual intercourse.  Period, end of sentence.  You might think you're dreaming about baking your Aunt Betty a chocolate cake for her birthday.  But really you're dreaming about throwing Aunt Betty down on the kitchen floor, covering her in chocolate body paint and having your way with her.   

Here's a dream dictionary that makes a little more sense.

Recently, I happened to see Fellini's 8 1/2 again for the first time in years, and if you've seen that film you'll remember that it opens with the all-time greatest dream sequence ever filmed, starring this man -- .  Mmmmm.  Eat your heart out, George Clooney.

But the real reason I've been thinking about dreams is that my recurring anxiety dream has suddenly changed. I've always been partial to the test dream.  You know that one.  You show up for class, and not only is it the day of the final exam and you didn't know it, but you forgot to do any of the reading, ever.  Or maybe you were never even registered for that class in the first place, but you still have to take the test.  Or maybe all of that, plus you're naked.  Those are the anxiety dreams I know and love. 

But now I have a completely different anxiety dream, and it's very upsetting. In the new one, I'm in an airport far, far away, and I urgently need to get back home.  I look at my ticket and see that my flight is leaving in a few minutes, but it's leaving from a gate in another terminal that I can't possibly get to in time.  Sometimes it's even leaving from a different airport altogether.  And sometimes I get to the gate, but I forgot my ticket and they won't let me board.  Bottom line, I can't get home.

What does this dream mean?  Simple.  I want to do it with Aunt Betty.

TLC's Virtual 1000th Anniversary Party

by Michele

                                   

Welcome to Our Virtual 1000th Anniversary Party!

There's too much crappy news in the world, folks, but here's an antidote.  Today marks our 1000th blog here at The Lipstick Chronicles, and we're celebrating!  Can you believe it-- we've been sharing laughs, sorrows, joys, sexual predilections and pet peeves with you for ONE THOUSAND BLOGS!  Me being a great party planner, and my blog day falling on the one thousandth blog anniversary, the other Tarts put me in charge of throwing the party.  What was I aiming for?  Glamour and excess, natch!

My first task was to pick a virtual location. I had to plan for one to two thousand guests, since that's how many unique visitors we get each day here at TLC, and naturally, everyone is invited.  (Although loyalty has its rewards.  Regular posters, you know who you are.  Stop at the concierge desk in the lobby to pick up your wristbands for admission to VIP entertainment suites and swag rooms!) 

Today's party is taking place at the Bellagio on the Las Vagas strip. Plenty of fountains to jump into! 

    The Bellagio not in your backyard?  No worries! My brother Michael and his pilot buddies are running virtual private jet shuttles. Just give a holler and wave a colorful scarf or interesting hat when you're ready to get picked up.  Once on board, the champagne starts flowing and doesn't stop!

The food is to-die-for, because there's a branch of Le Cirque at the Bellagio.  They'll be passing exquisite virtual hors d'ouevres all day long, and providing mind-boggling buffets for lunch and dinner.  No boring banquet-style sit-down meals at this party!  We all need to be free to mix and mingle and take advantage of the fantastic entertainment, not to mention the swag suites and free hotel rooms (to spend some private moments with those we meet along the way.  Just do the secret TLC hand signal and the concierge will give you a key.)  The bar is open all day, and if you don't feel like waiting in line, just flag down one of the many waiters circulating with trays of mojitos.

           

As for virtual entertainment, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock are doing stand-up throughout the day.  And if you stay for the big midnight send-off -- when our fireworks are timed to dance along with the Bellagio's fabulous fountains -- the Stones will be performing.  (Hey, if they're good enough for Bill Clinton . . . .)  But there's more!  If you're lucky enough to qualify for a VIP wristband, your entertainment options are even more lavish.  Stop by any of our ten (count 'em!) super-top secret entertainment suites, where famous music personalities and movie stars will perform for you in more intimate settings.  Don't see the star of your dreams on our marquee?  Never fear! B.Y.O.C. (bring your own celebrity) -- just let us know who you want and we'll get 'em in here. 

Now, what's your role in all this?  To have fun, of course, and then to tell us about it.  Come in, enjoy, and post below about what you saw, what you wore, who you met, what you ate, what swag you nabbed, what entertainment made your heart sing, and who did what to whom. Delicious gossip and lurid tales are much encouraged, because here at TLC, the party never ends!

Death to Pantyhose

                                           

Death to Pantyhose

by Michele

Recently I was thinking about head gear.  The heroine of my favorite series of time travel books, a thoroughly modern Twentieth Century woman, found herself in the Eighteenth Century and absolutely refused to wear a kerch.  What the hell is a kerch? I wondered, and why would she rather piss people off than wear one?  I'd just had a similar experience trying to visualize the racy "French hood" made popular by Anne Boleyn -- until the movie poster for "The Other Boleyn Girl" came out and I saw Natalie Portman wearing a kind of saucer thing on her head.  Wouldn't you know, my kerch question got answered in the same way.  Last weekend I watched the premiere of "John Adams" on HBO, and there was the admirable Laura Linney wearing a stupid little scrap of lace that I wouldn't be caught dead in either.  Aha, kerch!, I thought, no wonder.  Even worse were the men in their ridiculous wigs. I'm sure everyone's happy we dispensed with that nonsense centuries ago. 

                                                

Kerches and French hoods naturally set me thinking about JFK's inaugural address and its great unintended consequence -- the death of the modern millinery trade.  One guy takes off his hat to give a speech, and suddenly sartorial history is cut into two parts.  The part where you wouldn't any more leave the house without your hat than without your shoes or your pants, and the part where wearing a hat marks you as a weirdo.   Think about it, who just wears a hat any more?  Monica Lewinsky in her black beret? Proves my point; Miss Fashion Savvy she ain't.  The fedora and the pillbox have gone the way of the French hood and the kerch.  People reading about them in the 22nd Century won't even be able to imagine them without visual aids.

I'd been ruminating about head gear for a while when I had a sudden revelation.  Hats aren't the last thing to fall into the fashion black hole, and they're not the most important either.  A week or so ago, I was admiring the pedicure of Kelley from the Lee County Library System at an event in Fort Myers.  (There's your shout-out, Kelley.  Now you'd better post!)  Kelley had elaborate designs painted on her toes, flowers in black, white and silver.  Fancy pedicures were de rigeur in Florida, she explained, since women no longer wear panty hose.

She was right.  We've been liberated!  I was born and raised in the era of pantyhose, and I have lived to witness its death.  This, to me, is a much greater historical moment than the fall of the powdered wig.

I'd sort of realized this a number of years earlier, based on my experiences as a woman lawyer wearing  -- or not wearing --pants to work.  The year I started in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Bill Clinton was President and Janet Reno was Attorney General.  My boss in General Crimes was a tough woman, a liberal and a feminist.  My first week on the job, she called me into her office.  "You're pantsuit is beautiful," she said, "but you can't wear it to the office.  Pants are not appropriate for a woman in the courtroom."  I was pissed, but I listened, especially since she told me that certain male judges might refuse to let me appear in their courtrooms if I was wearing pants.  Who wants to risk humiliation like that, even at the hands of some crotchety old geezer whose days on the bench are numbered? 

For the eight years that I served, I heeded her advice and wore skirts to work without fail.  Then one day toward the end of my tenure, I made a bunch of arrests on a big case and spent some time doing bail hearings in magistrate's court, a place that as a senior prosecutor, I rarely visited.  All the baby prosecutors were hanging out there, stuck with bail duty.  I didn't recognize them or know their names, but one thing I couldn't miss.  The young female prosecutors all wore pants.

I looked down at my outfit -- skirt suit, with the skirt hitting above the knee, and heels.  I look like a slut, I thought.  They look like professionals. It was obvious.  Women in pants are taken more seriously.  Women in pants are de-sexed.  Nobody's looking at your legs while you're arguing legal precedent.  And moreover -- no more pantyhose!!! No more huge runs just when you have to stand up to deliver your summation.  No more feeling like your nether regions are tied up in a strait jacket.  No more wading through the pile of ratty old hose, none of which are presentable to wear.  No more freezing legs in winter time.                                                

   Hallelujah!

Climate Change

Fabulous news, Tart fans!  Our very own Elaine Viets just won the Lefty for Most Humorous Mystery for her book Murder With Reservations.  We're so proud.  Congratulations, Elaine! 

Climate Change

by Michele

No, this isn't a blog about global warming.  If I were experiencing a little more warming at the moment, I might be capable of writing about something other than the weather.  This is a blog about moving from a moderate climate to an extreme one, from a climate I could handle to one I can't.  It's about knowing your own weather personality profile, and choosing to flout it anyway, and what happens to you when you do something that self-destructive.  Take this blog as a cautionary tale.

After a day (yesterday) in which I was thrilled to see fourteen straight hours of driving rain because hey, at least it wasn't more snow, today we're back to normal -- meaning frigid temperatures and snow flurries.  I woke up to find that the rain hadn't washed away the thigh-deep snow in my backyard.  Of course not!  That snow is too resilient and durable to bow down before something as wimpy as biblical flooding.  The snow here is supernatural.  You can't kill it.  If I go out there and attack it with my blow dryer or pots of boiling water, it comes back deeper and stronger and more determined to defeat me.  (I now understand Jack Nicholson's meltdown in The Shining much more deeply than I used to.  All snow and no sun makes Jack a dull boy.)  I haven't seen the ground since November, and I don't expect to see it until late April.  Which means that I somehow allowed myself to move to a place where there is snow on the ground for fully six months of the year.

There are people who like this weather.  Two of those people are my husband and my older son.  They go outside without coats when it's twenty degrees.  They see a forecast of more snow and instead of curling into a ball, sobbing, and reaching for another bottle of red wine, they get out their skis.  I can't be like that, and it's not my fault.  One's tolerance for cold is hereditary.  I have this weird allergy.  I am allergic to the cold.  This is not a joke!  If my skin is exposed to the cold for an extended period of time, I break out in hives.  This means it is my weather destiny to live in a warm climate, yet here I am.

Everyone wants to live in a  warm climate, right?  Millions of people retire to Florida.  Millions more pay good money to vacation to tropical islands.  All for love of sunshine and warmth, and for hatred of cold.  But I've recently learned that not everybody shares these views.  I know.  Shocking, right?  There are people who prefer, if not truly cold climates like the one I now live in, at least places with a real winter.  My own father, who was born in Puerto Rico into a climate I would kill to live in, spent some of his happiest times in Alaska, and loved the seasons.  He had no interest in the tropics.  Why is this?  I can't understand.  Can someone explain why cold is attractive?  Doesn't it hurt you the way it does me?  People?  Don't you know you can die from it?  The cold is your enemy!

How much did weather figure in where you decided to live?  For me, three of my happiest years were spent in California, in Palo Alto.  Why?  To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's the weather, stupid.  (I don't count the fourth year I spent in San Francisco, which has one of the suckiest climates in the world.)  Palo Alto had the perfect Mediterranean climate.  Yes, we had earthquakes.  Yes, we had the occasional wildfire in dry season.  But these earthquakes and fires were manageable and they didn't last for six months out of the year.  Bring on earthquakes.  Bring on fires.  Tornadoes?  Yes.  Hurricanes?  Hell, yeah.  I can handle it all.  Just get this damn snow out of my back yard.

There is nothing I can do.  I'm here for another decade at least.  Vacations -- well, you can't vacation for six months out of each year (although, believe me, sometimes I think I ought to I try that).  I need a more creative solution.  But so far, all I've come up with is taking over the garage, filling it with sand, planting a few palm trees, buying a hammock, installing sun lamps, and pretending I actually live in Puerto Rico. 

Nah, that won't work.  I somehow need to reprogram my weather personality profile.  I need to change my weather destiny.  I need some sort of behavior modification or aversion therapy.  Or at least I need another bottle of red wine.