By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

A sign declaring him a sesquipedalianist adorned his office door. How like him, the lover of one-and-a-half foot long words, to proclaim his eccentricity so proudly and chuckle at it with the same enthusiasm. He ushered me in, showed me his computer, the Mobius strip I’d sculpted for him proudly displayed on a shelf, a mounted segment of sharkproof fiber-optics cable — his latest delight. It was my first visit as an adult to the place that consumed my father’s focus, second only to his church. I looked for clues to reveal his character, to teach me who was this man I’d known only as a father.

Returning briefly from another life, the opposite coast, his prodigal daughter, I was presented to his colleagues, had lunch in the executive dining room — and worried that he had designed a chance encounter with one of the bearded young PhDs. But the tensile strength of such an unlikely coupling was not to be tested, for I knew better: “Never marry an engineer,” my mother said, “They’re a humorless lot, too anal-retentive, your father excepted, of course.”

As we traveled the broad halls of Bell Labs, I saw a man in love with the potential of the human mind to realize a vision. A man honored by his peers and humbly delighted with their affections.

But still, I did not know him, this man who rolled up his sleeves but left his tie in place to putter in the yard after work. The weekend warrior who spoke not a word of the broken bodies he flew home from Vietnam. The same man who taught me to ride a bicycle, to catch and cradle a lacrosse ball without flinching, to search for answers not his own, to embrace the written word, to dream of fairy tales while digging life’s ditches.

There were many visits after that, one or the other of us leaping the bounds of human mobility to soar into the other’s living room and reminisce, dance around discussions of religion, gossip of absent family members, dine on ice cream and other sweet succor.

And as we aged together, my Great White Father slowly gained human proportions. He suffered a dose of cancer with discomfort and graceful humor, sobbed at a loved one’s addiction, lamented his failure to produce a hellfire of fundamentalists.

In his retirement, he built a boat in which to scour the seas for adventure. While it sat in his yard, never quite finished, he rigged a chair on deck and enjoyed his morning coffee — not too hot and just shy two-thirds of a teaspoon of sugar — at one with his horizon.

And I, at last, began to know him, this man who wanted me to be happy but was afraid to ask if I were. A man who reveled in sharing tales of the women he met during the last Great War, of the love letters he saved for fifty years. The man who drew lush pictures of my mother reclining nude and handed them down to those who drew their own. The man who danced with the feet of youth and cupped the ears of an old fogey to catch and cradle my words.

Later, he talked fondly of lost war buddies regained. He remembered the dying highway commuter he held, whose last words of love Father carried to the man’s wife. He bemoaned the foolishness and brash decisions of his youth, his failures as a father, his walk with a God unknown to me. And he laughed at escapades survived, disappointments endured, offspring playing the fool.

At times, when we met halfway across the country, I struggled to feel comfortable alone with my father, uncertain intimates in an uncommon place. No meal preparation for distraction, no siblings to bicker over bridge or charades. Just the amorphous relationship between us.

And then I watched him sleep, curled as a child, and I saw the vast years spread over him: seventy-three years, more than half of which we shared. There were a few I spent determined to hate him, but now I rue that we share them no more, for Father is long dead. But he surely soared to rest in the succulent hues of an Aubrey Beardsley landscape, his boat set to sail, for his is the soul of an artist, a fearful, brilliant artist turned to Christianity to sooth his passions and direct his life.

He was an aesthete, he was a genius, he was a holder of patents and a builder of sailing ships, he was one of the truly faithful and he was forgiven. Though he was not at peace with his progeny, he was loved and adored by us as only a good and kind man could be. And I am grateful to whatever God guided him that the Colonel Father Sir was mine.

He once said to me, “I am a dilettante; don’t follow in my footsteps.”

So tell me: How can I help but become him? Why would I want anything else?

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Dear Readers,

I am pleased to introduce a new contributor to Excuse Me, I’m Writing: Brother Mitch from Fireside Chats’ KGAP — not Satan’s store but God’s agape love! — the hometown station of Fallbrook the Friendly Christian Village.

Perhaps an alter ego, a fanciful twin brother, a resurrection of innocent faith, I’m not sure what, but Brother Mitch will be providing occasional commentary on our little town and beyond, rendered with his loving wisdom and pointed wit. Kind of like receiving a blessing, a hug and poke with a sharp stick all rolled into one. … Er, whatever. … Enjoy!

Love,
K-B

Friends of Marriage, Take Heed!

It is with deep sorrow — but also with God’s abiding love and hope — that I’d like to chat with you, my Brothers and Sisters, about Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Brother Brian has made a controversial career of preaching from the mountaintop that marriage needs protecting.

“From what?” you might ask — and well you should.

According to Brother Brian, we must protect marriage from homosexuals whom he fears will be the death knell of the hallowed institution.

And just how are homosexuals going to rend the sacred commitment of marriage from the prayerful hands of heterosexuals?

According to Brother Brian and NOM, “Marriage is under assault! Marriage is under assault!! Marriage is under assault!!!”

My, oh my, oh my! One would think from Brother Brian’s cultish rhetoric that gays must be conducting a malevolent campaign to prevent heterosexuals from being married; that homosexuals are buying up all the wedding gowns and tuxedos for their cross-dressing parties; that they are barring entry to all the places of worship and rituals, all the perfect sunset beaches and the VFW halls, for their female impersonator AIDS fund-raisers; that they are hording all the flower arrangements and tulle for their own perverse use — and God knows where the Jordan almonds are ending up!

But, because common sense prevails, we must acknowledge, Brothers and Sisters, that such a scenario is idiotic — if for no other reason than that the bridal industry is not about to give up the huge segment of their market represented by heteros.

Well then, if homosexuals are not bent on destroying the heterosexual dedication to gift registries, honeymoon packages, and the inevitable second guessing — lying there the next morning snoring, halitosic drool pooling on the sheets — then we must pursue our query: Just how are homosexuals going to rend the sacred commitment of marriage from the prayerful hands of heterosexuals?

And it is at this point that Brother Brian resorts to reasoning that is shady at best. But, of course, Brothers and Sisters, he is counting on you, on your generosity of spirit, your wish to lend credence to a Brother, your inclination to let others think through the tough issues for you — come on, admit it, Dear Ones — yes, Brother Brian is counting on you to let his Orwellian logic slip by unnoticed, unchallenged.

Hence, our little chat.

First, let’s take care of a quick point: Brother Brian’s parent-baiting tactic. He warns that children will be taught about homosexuality in our schools.

Well, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! They are already learning about homosexuality — on TV, on the playground, from the furtive body language their parents reveal when encountering a homosexual. Better they should learn the facts in school, don’t you think, Brothers and Sisters? Say amen!

And, compared to the supposed biblical lesson likely perpetrated on the children of misguided “Friends of Marriage” — that homosexuals are an abomination — whose children do you think will turn out the more loving and accepting, the more true to Christian ideals? Those who are normalized to homosexuals’ natural existence or those who are taught to fear and revile them?

Next, consider a few of NOM’s “Marriage Talking Points.”

Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose; they don’t have a right to redefine marriage for the rest of us. … The people of this state [will] lose their right to define marriage as the union of a husband and a wife. … That’s just not right.

Nor is it accurate. Contemplate the above statement, Brothers and Sisters, and find the wisdom so artfully excluded: Heterosexuals will still define their marriages as being between a man and a woman. Legalized same-sex marriage does not bear with it a conversion clause that all straights must go gay. (Besides, with the struggling economy, the homosexual recruiters are out of toaster ovens.) Legalizing same-sex marriage simply allows gays to accurately define their own marriages, while straights continue in happily hetero bliss (or divorce courts). But seriously, now, Brother Brian and his Newspeakers should not be so silly as to suggest that straight and gay marriages cannot cheerily coexist, because, in essence, they do. Say amen!

Next…

If courts rule that same-sex marriage is a civil right, then people like you and me who believe children need moms and dads will be treated like bigots and racists.

I have accepted the holy burden of speaking God’s truth on this issue, so, although it pains me to say it, it must be said: Brother Brian and his “opposite-sex marriage” marauders are indeed bigots. And God knows that gay marriage does not put heterosexuals’ parenthood at risk; only their ungodly behavior does that. However, in the spirit of tolerance and love, let me try to temper that reaction with this: In our great United States, Brother Brian and his “traditional marriage” cult have every right to be bigots, and we will continue to love them despite themselves — as we pray for their salvation from the sins of discrimination. Say amen, Brothers and Sisters!

They do not, however, have the right to force the rest of us to join in their idolatrous bigotry. Try as they do, they cannot force the entire nation to kneel before the false god of “Marriage and Religious Liberty” they have so cleverly sculpted with words and hate and Beelzebub’s wily ways.

No, indeed, Brother Brian — and I pray you are listening. Leading your followers to vote away the rights of a class of people in the name of “Religious Liberty” is a thing of the Devil! Encouraging the fearful to celebrate their prejudice — presumably in God’s name! — is downright satanic, Brother Brian, satanic! And I fear for your soul. You are slip-sliding toward Hell in a bigot basket, straight toward Hell. The Evil One’s snaky tail is wrapping around your troubled heart and pulling tight. He has tempted you with the sinister lust for advantage, the craving for power, and you have succumbed as he pulls even tighter! Your soul is at risk of an eternity of fiery damnation, Brother Brian. Repent before it’s too late! You must drop to your knees and pray to God. Pray for God to exorcize the demons from your heart. Pray for God’s great and abundant forgiveness for the sins you have perpetrated on the voters of Maine and California, New Jersey and New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C. Throw yourself before God’s merciful heart and thank Jesus for suffering your bigoted sins. Repent, Brother Brian, repent before Satan’s snaky tail has an unbreakable grip on your soul and you are lost to his hellfires forever! …

Yes, well, Brothers and Sisters, I am sure you can understand the need to bathe Brother Brian and his hornswaggled disciples in the truth and the light. There is no other way to save them.

Although — and I admit this because I remain only an imperfect child of God — it would be so much easier if the poor boy would get caught with his drawers down, figuratively speaking, of course. Come to think of it, the revelation of a spanking fetish would be so, so delicious! Say amen!

With love, your Brother in Christ,
Brother Mitch

A short film by Constantin and Nikos Pilavios — thanks, Kim!

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Many moons ago, before the birth of my daughter in California, my mother and father made the trip from the other coast to bestow their approval on our new home. They came bearing love gifts and rituals, tales of family who dared be absent, the comforts of a senior generation. We sat down to dine on the opportunity — the tumbling repartee and laughter that is our wont. We ate and gossiped and reminisced, and then did it some more.

Those who know our family, would not find it odd that we also determined the visit a fitting moment to explore the far end of life’s spectrum: Mother, a positively inveterate social worker, and I took a class on aging and family.

The course was interesting, fun, poignant, challenging, great fodder for dinner table conversation — and ultimately useless.

It did not result in our soundly preparing for my parents’ oldth and eventual demise — our own error. We did not follow the course’s wise counsel to create a financial plan for their elder years, to plot a rational and sensitive path to a final home where physical and emotional wellbeing — and independence — could be best assured within their projected means and sensibilities. We did not define roles and responsibilities suitable for each offspring to take on as our parents’ capabilities diminished.

Oh, we knew what we should do, the right and reasonable things necessary for when that distant time comes, we even gave them a nod or two, but we just never got around to doing them. Life was far too busy for us all to lend thought to aging and death.

And then Father up and died — first! — surprising everyone, most of all Mother.

Well-entrenched in congenital math anxiety and her generationally ascribed role, she was not disposed to address their small investment accounts and tangible assets. She was not prepared to manage the documentation of life that had been Father’s bailiwick. She was sure as hell not ready to be alone.

And so, we have gradually cobbled together a semblance of a care system, the nearest offspring providing Mother a nest, the analytic one taking on things financial and legal, the others providing counsel and encouragement. It is not enough, it is imperfect, it is riddled with ill-defined expectations and sibling dynamics, but it is imbued with love.

Still, for all the eager voices in our family, we are stunningly silent about the inevitable truths that roar around us. Amidst the roiling waves of emotion, we harbor concerns and conceits, doubts and distrusts; fear and sadness are muzzled. And the gossip that would entertain us at dinner is spun into pain. The mourning of loss, current and foreseen, is silenced with discomfort. Questions become accusations. Sorrow becomes depression. Goodwill becomes dismay.

Yet life persists.

We bumble along and babies are born. Hurts are soothed. Marriages are made. Familial waters are calmed, until the next storm. And our younger generation chalks it all up to humorous family dysfunction, overlooking the quiet shadow of age that gently embraces their own parents.

And what of my progeny, an only child; have I set upon her the prospect of an unbearable burden of elder care? Or can we do any better?

It’s possible.

With the lessons of many moons ago and those of today, our plan can be made, falteringly at first, but surely with good intent, perchance with the realization denied my parents. Things will go in my getting-old file — advance directives, wills, a reminder to toss the ashes on the vegetable garden. And I hope my daughter and I can ultimately give voice to our aging, the celebration of life entertainingly-lived, the acknowledgement of limitations and gifts, the acceptance that we each come to an end, one way or another, but preferably with grace and love intact, however imperfect, and the tumbling repartee and laughter that is our wont — and that, in our oldth, makes us clench our kegels.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Remember kiddos, MAMMA says talk about same-sex marriage every chance you get!

Thanks to MAMMA Kim for this entertaining speech by  …

Patricia Clarkson at the 2009 Human Rights Campaign Dinner

The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken the Rocks

President Barack Obama on Federal Benefits for Same-sex Couples

Wrongs We Intend to Right Today

And, MAMMA Says Yippee!

2010 Census Will Count Same-sex Couples

Wall Street Journal article from 19 June

Huffington Post article from 19 June

In a valiant effort to join my husband in one of his rituals, I recently girded my loins and settled into the serial viewing of an evening’s news shows. I was set on ignoring the racist and misogynistic slurs against President Obama’s Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I planned to zone out as the strategically matched, aesthetically pleasing male and female co-anchors blathered segues from story to story. I was determined to avoid imagining the thousands of autoworkers’ families poised for despair as industry and political leaders negotiated in the billions. I even committed to withholding my normal rant that the commercials require reducing the television volume three or four bars. And, my fail-safe device, I had an adult beverage in hand, ready to comfort when reports of violence cut through my emotional insulation. But, despite my intent to remain unresponsive, I was wholly unprepared for the revelation that hugging among teens is a phenomenon — and a bad one according to some schools.

Where have I been, lo these many — apparently naïve — years? With my head up the armpit of an inappropriately affectionate hugger? Have the countless embraces I have received and committed been the subtle precursors to sexual harassment or — horror! — the authority-challenging pursuit of “excessive displays of affection”?

I learned that term when I couldn’t stand the news anymore and got up to research this phenomenon of affection that made it from a feature in The New York Times to my coast’s evening drivel. Our local high school’s 2008-2009 Student Handbook says, “Excessive display of affection is inappropriate on school grounds or at school sponsored activities;” the Band Room rules preclude everything but handholding; and violations have consequences:

1^st offense — 2 hrs of Thursday school
2^nd offense — 4 hrs of Saturday school
3^rd offense — 1 to 5 days of home suspension, parent contact Ed. Code 48900 (k)

I don’t know what Thursday school is, but it sounds bad, and Saturday school? That’s definitely bad. Home suspension could actually be OK, but the referenced education code says a California public school student can only be suspended if he or she has been really bad — violent, in possession of a weapon or drugs … disruptive of school activities or defiant toward a “valid authority.” Hmm, hugging on a par with violence?

This means if a California student were to hug someone and if a valid school authority observed the hug and deemed it disruptive and demanded the hug be discontinued and if the student defied the request, he or she could be suspended.

Oh, the idiocy of it!

My daughter attended a charter high school where public displays of affection (PDA) were de rigueur — same and opposite sex. So I called Kate for a reality check. She’s now 20, not much removed from her high school years.

Me: Honey, did you hear about the problem with hugging?

Kate: What?

Me: Hugging.

Kate: What? (Lots of background noise.)

Me: HUGGING! Apparently it’s a problem with teens. It was in the news. Some high schools have prohibited it. One put a time limit on it: Two seconds max or you’re out.

Kate: Whaat! People should be embracing the fact that kids are open and warm with each other instead of being hostile and hateful — like the adults who are persecuting them. This is one step closer to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

I love my kid’s sense of wordplay. And her literacy.

Kate: This is really offensive to me. My friends and I — everyone I knew in high school, boys and girls — hugged each other to say hello. It’s not like we were trying to get off. We were being friendly. It’s a human thing to do. This isn’t the dark ages. It’s not like we’re whipping out sex toys and going at it. It’s just saying hello. There is a difference!

Kate was with a couple of friends in a coffee shop, probably surrounded by folks hugging unfettered, and her friends were equally passionate about PDAs.

Vartuhi: This is why people hate Americans! I’ve been hugging my friends since junior high, so I really don’t understand why this is an issue. We watched [the video] and we all thought we were back in the 1950s, where these moronic “problems” were an issue to people — it’s puritanical! It’s sad that people think it is an issue when there are actual issues they should be dealing with – teen pregnancy, drugs, violence, all the budget cuts in schools.

Ariel: So much of kids’ socializing is on the computer, texting and Facebook and stuff, parents should be glad their kids can connect in person — hugging is a way to compensate for all that. If kids are hugging, it’s filling a social, emotional and physical need. There are so many things the schools should be focusing on, like sex education. [Hugging] is a way for kids to learn to be comfortable with their own bodies and other people’s bodies, without being sexual.

These gals are smart. They represent three well-populated and distinct ethnic groups for whom teen hugging has long been healthy and normal — and they know a violation of the human right to express affection when it whops them upside the head.

So that’s it. I’m not taking it anymore. It’s time for a revolution! I’m marching over to Fallbrook High and organizing a hug-in. Guess I better start with the WASPy kids.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by antes yo no era ahora soy via a Creative Commons license.)

(Editor’s Note: This piece is cross-posted with www.ivorytowerz.com.)

Heard at Major Market

Shopper 1: Did you hear the court upheld Prop. 8?
Shopper 2: Prop what?
Shopper 3: Did I hear? Oh, yeah, I heard — I got two text messages, half a dozen emails and three phone calls. How can these homophobes not see it’s an equal rights issue? How can they not see that? What is the matter with these people? Are they so insecure, so hateful that they have to trounce other people’s fundamental rights? How can they force the rest of us to take such a damn leap backward? And I can’t even seek comfort at church, because my idiot pastor is one of them! Well he can just suck on his empty collection plate. That’s it for me. I’m not giving one more red cent to bigots. God, I wish I was gay!

Other posts on same-sex marriage:

Sex and the Suspect Class

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Equality

Protecting Marriage and Children? My ass!

Isn’t Love All You Need?

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Today is the day we honor mothers, and in this great country of ours, marketing geeks nationwide have provided us myriad ways in which to do so.

For those with unlimited resources and abundant aversion to their mothers, there are some very nice travel deals that put the old lady and her European houseboy well out of sight and sound for an extended stay — the perfect gift for sucking up in abstentia while securing one’s inheritance.

For those who’ve learned to stop blaming their mothers for whom they’ve become — moneyed or not — there are plenty of less extravagant options, in keeping with our doddering economy, for letting her know of your undying gratitude.

Most facile, perhaps, is to send her flowers. And to make sure the token is deeply felt, the price of those precious carbon dioxide absorbers typically leaps skyward the week leading up to Mother’s Day. You want to honor the loins that bore you with a fragrant tchotchke? Be prepared to pay more than you would the rest of the year when Mom is just the babysitter.

If you actually want to be with your mother on her special day, and get a little more bang for your buck with some face time, you could take the old gal out for brunch.

And what an unfortunate drag that is.

Despite Google’s producing 1.08 million options, every adult with plastic and a mobile mother within commuting distance shows up at your local elder-friendly eatery at the same time. The pubescent hostess, who has yet to connect the dots from her backseat activities to motherhood, herds you to a table. The bedraggled waitress, a mother who at the moment has a deep and dangerous loathing of Mother’s Day, fills you up. And then you pay the bill and you’re herded out again, with a wilted red carnation pinned to your mother’s sagging bosom, next to the dribble of egg yolk, and her cheeks aflush from the supposedly free glass of cheap champagne that came with her meal — no substitutions, please.

Instead of the Mother’s Day special, you might try a nice book about bird watching or a World’s Best Mom mug or slippers to compensate for her poor circulation. Although devoid of originality, they do provide some tangible reminder that you are her progeny and though she might have forgotten, you haven’t. Even one of the plethora of banal greeting cards might do: It will last a lot longer than flowers and there’s significantly more room to write a poignantly appreciative message to her than on that teensy card some florist fills out for you in the handwriting of a troglodyte. Sadly, though, the greeting card industry has yet to produce a reasonable rhyme for “mother,” which leads to insipidity and egregious grammar. (Of course, there’s “brother,” but that’s a relative distraction, and “smother,” which too strongly suggests a dysfunctional maternal bond).

Whether by default or natural inclination, some of us do reject the commercial crappola and go for the direct approach we’ve been lucky to inherit from the powerful women who bore us, the smarm-be-gone style of honoring our mothers.

Yo, Dear Mother of Pearl, we say, looking deep into her wise and witty eyes, thanks for birthing us and bearing the seemingly endless pain we have caused you with such extraordinarily unconditional love and delightfully profane humor, targeting whichever offspring isn’t present at the moment.

Thanks for agreeing that most men are swine and not worthy of the many fine pearls we shouldn’t bother tossing before them. Thanks also for strategically ignoring that thought and pointing out to us when we found the right ones — just in case we weren’t recognizing them.

Thanks for taking our unrepentant children during the summers so we could recover from their daily discourse on what terrible mothers we are. Thanks for comforting us, while we wallow in the latest abject failure, with the prediction that one day we will pee in our pants laughing about it. Thanks for reminding us how exceptional we are when we feel like utterly mundane caca.

And thanks for teaching us both the heartening and horrifying aspects of motherhood, but holding back just enough of the truly sucky stuff to assure we would perpetuate the species.

Love,
Your adoring daughter

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

(Photo of Venus by Dequella Manera 1993, via a Creative Commons Attribution License.)

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

In 2007, a wildfire blew into my little California town on the fickle winds of Santa Ana, and all of Fallbrook was evacuated. Reverse 911 calls alerting us to leave town went out to some neighborhoods but not all — and people who use only cell phones were out of the loop. Without personal plans for evacuation, many of us tossed whatever was at hand into our vehicles, leaving behind vital documents, medicines and priceless keepsakes. We tried to beat a swift path to safety, but were confused about where we were supposed to go. One public agency’s outgoing message directed us to an evacuation shelter that didn’t exist. Then the firefighting teams from far and wide that came to our rescue ran smack into incompatible radio systems, but the engines and strike teams did their utmost best. Erroneous reports of the fire reaching the center of town, of rampant looting, of the burning of one of our schools were not corrected for hours.

When we returned three days later, the camaraderie of crisis made for some hilarious and poignant stories, but we were sobered by one compelling lesson learned: Be prepared to take care of yourself in a disaster, because the organizations we count on could be overwhelmed. More significant disasters have revealed the same lesson, New Orleans’ wrenching encounter with Hurricane Katrina, not the least of them.

H1N1 influenza virus

And now there’s a new influenza strain lurking, swine influenza A (H1N1), that has flirted with pandemic status. So what’s a wannabe self-sufficient person to do?

Don’t panic is perhaps the best first advice, despite Vice President Biden’s impassioned suggestion that we stay away from airplanes and subways, a suggestion that evoked the standard pokes. Actually, his advice is not so far off the mark: If you didn’t have to, would you board a plane or subway right now? And, when a pandemic inevitably occurs (those in the know say it’s “when” not “if”), mass transportation will likely be discouraged.

In planning for a pandemic, an effort long underway by our government, worldwide mobility is a critical factor: The World Health Organization reported that H1N1 has already reached 23 countries, thanks to the ease with which we hop into planes, carrying on nasty viral baggage with us. So preparing for the worst — and hoping for the best — is recommended throughout the chain of command, including President Obama, because if H1N1 doesn’t cause a pandemic now, another more virulent wave of the virus could strike later, or a new strain could rear its ugly head. Unfortunately, pandemic planning is something far too few organizations have adequately addressed.

I worked in this industry until a year ago and couldn’t find one company in the supply channel that had prepared a comprehensive plan for a pandemic scenario, despite government guidance to do so — and despite common knowledge that being prepared is a key indicator of successful emergency response.

The government certainly seems prepared for a pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has conducted an effective prevention campaign for years: cough into the crook of your arm, not on your hands; or cough and sneeze into a tissue; if you or anyone in your household has symptoms, keep your germs at home; and wash your hands like crazy. Health and Human Services (HHS) produced a VIP webcast last week, reassuringly taking questions from the frightened public. We have national and state stockpiles of antiviral treatments for influenza. And, according to brand-spanking new HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, manufacturers of influenza vaccines and antivirals stand ready to ramp up development and production upon request.

However, suppose we have a severe pandemic and the folks responsible for distributing influenza vaccines and treatments, those who ship them, and the airports and trucking infrastructures through which they pass, find themselves with employee absentee rates approaching the 40 percent figure projected by the government — and without plans in place for maintaining essential operations. Then extend that scenario to all industries.

Oops.

This is why planning at the family level is necessary; we must prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Know where to go for accurate information — the CDC avoids hysteria and denial alike; be prepared to work from home if possible, to care for sick family members, to avoid mass transportation; and follow CDC planning guidelines for families. You don’t have to go nuts, but you can go shopping for extra necessities to keep on hand — just in case.

And remember: H1N1 is not a food-borne virus. So when the first conspiracy fruitloop accuses the Obama administration of infecting pigs to create a pandemic to distract us from the economy, help out a slandered industry and plan on natural pork for dinner.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

(Photo of H1N1 virus from the CDC.)

My mother is a child of the Depression: She throws out nothing.

We always knew this without ever consciously acknowledging it, because as children we were plagued a couple times a week by Mother’s lovingly prepared olios of leftovers. Oh, they started as wondrous things, her exquisite curried cauliflower and Maryland country ham or marinated skirt steak and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. But recycling the remnants of her popular dishes into something akin to string bean and cream of mushroom soup casserole adorned with onion rings, hurriedly served on choir practice nights, proved a challenge to the palates of kids who had never been allowed so much as a whiff of the Hostess cream-filled cupcakes so seductively pitched on the Howdy Doody Show.

The lesson of salvage Mother learned during the Depression became impressively clear when my siblings and I descended last week on our widowed mother’s home for the final accounting and dispersal of its contents. We opened a lovely hatbox, anticipating a trove of fashion treasure topped with feathers and veils and rhinestone-studded hatpins. Instead, we found a hoard of decades old batteries, light bulbs for appliances no longer made, shoe button hooks with broken handles. The antique wooden box with hand-carved dovetail joints, oozing historicity and the hope of another era’s baubles, opened to a stash of carefully compacted plastic shopping bags from Foodtown. The bits of felt, fake gems and snippets of grosgrain ribbon with which Mother once created tally cards for the bridge clubs of yore were still tidily organized in the brittle lining of a faded cherry cordials box. A multitude of photographs — Ye gods!, as Mother would say — filled copious recycled containers: shoeboxes of forgotten brands, reused envelopes, file folders with thrice relabeled tabs. And fifty years of humor-filled letters and greeting cards reflected the gradual acceptance of scatological content in polite conversation (surely, our family pioneered it).

Nope, my mother throws out nothing.

We found an iron skillet full of bacon grease in the oven — ready for frying an egg or a chicken thigh or our favorite, creamed chipped beef. Six styles of black dance shoes, in graduated states of wear, rested in a closet, one for each of the last six decades, and a lonely Keds sneaker waited in a bathroom corner for Mother to happen upon a lucky match at a yard sale. The stubs of every check our parents ever wrote told the history of their cautious consumption, when they weren’t paying with the evermore reliable cash. A vintage milk box held ­— guess what — carefully compacted plastic shopping bags from Foodtown. And Mother held onto every card tablecloth she ever owned, whether hand-me-downs from her mother or later acquisitions. She even kept the quilted covers that went under the linen cloths to protect ladies’ dainty wrists from the table’s edge — neatly folded in a box from a dress shop long out of business.

As we harvested the house, it was sometimes hard to know what was a family treasure and what was the result of Mother’s penchant for yard sale and thrift store shopping. Should we really part with that little rug? Was it saved from a neighbor’s curb on junk day, before the garbage truck could haul it away, or was it made of our ancestors’ threadbare suits and camel’s hair coats a grandmother or great aunt cut into strips and braided into renewal? We worried about tossing all the plastic shopping bags released from countless caches while Earth Day was upon us. We fretted how we could possibly stuff eighty years of recipes and books and art and music and living into our four homes already filled with the fruits of contemporary consumption. And we occasionally bickered — not about what went to whom but about the proper style and order of the packing. Just like our parents.

Ultimately, it took the seventy-eleventh fingertip cut on the dreaded packing tape dispenser, and the consequent round of sobbing and laughter, to stop the desperate grasp for our parents’ life and face the exquisite loss of it. Father is dead and Mother’s delightful light is subtly fading, just a few decades before our own. No manner of memorabilia, no family heirloom cum childhood fort, no book with a hundred-years-old inscription will perpetuate our family. Our stories and aspirations, our love and anger, our sorrows and joys; these things cannot reside in objects.

But Mother and Father’s wisdom lives on — as we forgive each other our foibles, as we recycle with added vigor, as we take the previous generation into our homes and nurture them to their deaths, as we honor the ingenuity, love and humor that helped them survive the Depression by emulating those things today.

If nothing else, I hope our offspring learn the lesson that a plastic shopping bag, if they absolutely must use one, is actually packing material for china or throw pillow stuffing or a litter box liner — and that however downward the economy might spiral, we will always be rich in family. … Oh — and that laughing at elevator farts is far preferable to excusing them.

Love,
K-B

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photograph is from the U.S. Library of Congress.)