Mother's day

We all know the drill for Mother's Day. You have to get to your Mother's house with a gift. Then you are fed a fattening meal and go home with leftovers. If you are upper middle class, you and your siblings and spouses take your mother to a restaurant where you eat an overpriced and fattening meal. If you are lucky, you may walk out with a doggy bag.

If you mother is in the grave you are supposed to visit it, put flowers on it, and stroll about and complain about the maintenance. "You'd think they could get rid of all these weeds!" you say. Later, you go to a relative's house for dinner. If your significant other has kids you may be allowed to attend Mother's Day there, however if you show up you have to bring a gift.

I realize how lucky I am. I can sit around the house all day long on Sunday in my underwear. I can drink beer, watch the game, and don't even have to shave. Needless to say no gifts.

This year, for the first time in ten years I bought someone a Mother's Day card. I realized that for the first time in ten years I did something for Mother's Day. Who knows, one day I might even have to take a shower on that day again. To all the mother's out there, "Happy mother's day!"

Clubs

Clubs are always short on cash, volunteers, and leaders. Leadership is the crucial shortage that can lead to the demise of a club.

The problem with leadership is it hearkens back to the essay I wrote a few years ago on lives. People who have lives usually have better social skills than people who don't have lives. If you don't want your club to be a total disaster, you should seek people who have reasonable social skills and can use the Internet (and probably have lives). Unfortunately time on one's hand, another essential requirement for officers in clubs, is inversely proportional to the social skills one possesses. The ideal leader is probably already involved with the church, her daughter's school, the softball league, has a full time job and is the house mother for an extended family ranging from wayfaring uncles to recent college dropouts.

Hence the dilemma of the overextended leader. I once was in a group where the only way you could guarantee that the leader would make the meeting was to have it in her house. I remember well sitting on her front porch waiting for our leader. Fifteen minutes after the meeting was supposed to begin she would roar into the driveway. Needless to say, the meetings ended late.

Happy Earth Day

I remember the first Earth day. I was in high school and we had just printed another edition of our underground newspaper and were selling it at school. Later we went to a local park where we heard speeches on Earth day. I am vague about that part.

Now we recycle our cans and bottles and buy cars, for the most part that get better gas mileage than our grandparents got in the fifties. We've done the easy stuff now. The question will be if we as a people will be willing to sacrifice our prosperous life styles for the environment. Well at least we used to have prosperous life styles.

Tea party celebrations

I was taking a stroll and encountered a demonstration of the tea party types today. They got the governor they wanted so now they're out to get rid of national health care. Not a rowdy crowd, sort of looked like a VFW picnic without the uniforms. Didn't see any tea, though. More of a steak and hamburger crowd.

The Chinese restaurant was practically empty. Guess they don't like ethnic food too much either. The prices went up and they didn't have either free fortune cookies and I had to eat with a fork since the collection of chopsticks I was looking for was gone.

It's ha ah ard times.

The Price of Beauty

The Price of Beauty with Jessica Simpson is billed as a reality show but it really isn't. It claims to be a worldwide analysis of beauty, but it really isn't that either. To me, it's just a hokey travelogue, at times a bizarre one at that. That's the beauty of the series. They go to places like Africa, India, and Morocco and do stuff. You get the feeling the advance work done before shooting is not too extensive.

There's plenty of scenes where Jessica is offered insects or other weird foods for dinner. "Oh yuk!"she responds to roast ostrich brains. The show has a thrown together feel to it that is probably hilarious after ten bottles of beer. Part Kardashians, part On the Road Again, part Hope and Crosby road movies. On VH1 and the Internet.

The public library in 2011

It's nice they put "reference" back in the old building. The other one used too much air conditioning anyhow. Fans are fine with me. And there's a computer here or there for people to type their letters on. We had to give up public Internet last January when those budget cuts went in.

I have to admit, it is quieter. All those young kids rough housing on the Internet. Let them play ball outside like the boys in my neighborhood used to do. I do admit I miss Ebsco Host, but I've gotten used to using the old Reader's Guide. Brings me back. I remember using that as a school girl. Got you there if you had the patience.

Course that bright young man who used to fix our computers got laid off. He's probably back in Arkansas with his parents now. Nowadays you can't afford a decent apartment in town on a librarian's salary. Still I guess we should go with the times.

Editor's note: There are a lot of major cuts in public library funding in the NJ budget and in state pending bills. They include cutting Ebsco products, inter library loan and grants for Internet access. I let my state Assemblywoman know my opinion, and so can you.

April Fools Day one year later

Reuters Factbox for today.


My predictions from a year ago.

Unemployment rate is 9.8% not 6.5%. That was my major mistake. And no wedding for Governor Corzine. Oh well. Happy Holy Thursday. Enjoy your novenas.