Grateful this morning, at 4:30 a.m., for Colin’s choice of 52″ inch HD.

Eschewing Jon Stewart’s cynicism, for blogs on exotic millinery.
Sharing the Royal Love feels sweet, pure; held whole
A soft, cold, unpeeled orange.

I am a Londoner again, today, splayed spread eagle
In St. James Park at noontime–
Between meetings–
Hogging first slices of sunshine
After a long winter’s damp.

I’ll go back to work.
I’ll go back to arms’ lengths and
Cigarette laced multi-pint dinners and
Hiding myself inside the Metro
Inside the Circle Line.

But today I am
Lying still, veins hot,
American-open and streaming the beat
Of squawking tourists,
Greedy pelican, and diesel revvings.

Beyond the ice cream cart queue
Where I’m knocked flat by pageant and love
Buckingham winks and waves.

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I listen to The Moth podcast because it almost never fails to make my whole spirit roil with tittering champagne bubbles of hilarity. I don’t guffaw out loud, mind you. It’s just that frothy happiness that fills me up — not unlike the pool scene in Peter Sellers’ classis, The Party.

Today I listened to satirist Tony Hendra’s recent podcast about his time at a monastery and the monk who changed the way he lived. Although it wasn’t really all that “funny,” the craft of the story made me remember why I love The Moth: the combination of real voices conveying vivid chunks of their life makes such compelling listening.

In the case of this podcast, Hendra uses fantastically subtle juxtaposition — of pedophilia and satire, ironically — to tell a beautiful story about peace.

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It’s taken, literally, 6 weeks to sort out the issue of a small car accident. Insurance, repair, parts, claims, ice, rental vehicles, customer service surveys, fuse boxes, indicator lights, supervisors, reports, emailed photos, DRUs, and more.

This is only one item on the To Do list for the week.

HIGH ANXIETY

- the side effect of our non-stop lives.

You know– it’s buzzing in our purses. It’s pinging from our TweetDecks, it’s flashing from the answering machine. The nonstop demand on us is raising the bar of stress. And according to the New York Times, it is pulsating through our sick buildings and homes, electromagnifying our stress to epic levels.

My brain/soul/body has screaming at me to LEAVE for awhile now. Go! It says. Get out of here! This is ridiculous and it is not normal and it is killing us all!

I keep logically explaining to it that I am tethered. There is no escape. Leave to where, I ask? Waldon Pond or the Big Woods?

My mind keeps conjuring a magical land of disconnectedness where no one uses anything electronic.

And where the streets are lined with sweet old homes and porch swings, snuggled next to each other. And behind each door lives MikeTimPeterFrancesAlexMomDad JeannieDeronLaneFordBryanStacyBobAmy GregKarenMaryJayEllenPeterNickHeather KarinBonnieAbby and parade of other friends and family, tootling ’round in one lovely home after another in a Utopia of human Facebook life.

What we’d do then is just, like, shout out  our “status updates” to each other, across the way. Share soup and talk to each other a great deal.

Or maybe, if we are feeling really high tech, string up a Dixie Cup phone system.

We’ve got CULTURAL ANXIETY:

From news of Libya (that’s going to affect oil prices which is going to affect the cost of our vacation!)

to Wisconsin (now I have to decide what I think about labor unions. And teachers. And the “state of education”)

to the economy, the housing market, job loss, which isn’t just numbers in the news, but the lives of our friends and our neighbors and ourselves: questions hovering around constantly about whether or not we go to work, sell our house, move, buy a new car. Everything buzzes now with questions and uncertainty.

The Actual Questions – Who Are We?

When I lived in London from 2004-2007, I felt a similar kind of cultural anxiety among the British. They were no longer the power they had been during the Colonial years. They were slowly becoming just an island in the Atlantic with its own currency and no special power.

Actually, at the time,  it was much worse. They were George W. Bush’s bitch. So there was the war so many of them disagreed with and the relationship with US cocky jerks which they didn’t like at all.

At the same time, the country was dealing with an unexpected crush of Middle Eastern and Eastern European immigrants that was rapidly changing every part of the landscape– culturally, politically, and economically. All in a very small geographical area, relatively.

The British were suffering from a painful, terrifying identity crisis.

I see this happening in the U.S. right now too. Here’s how:

1. The People  Issue. As individuals, we are redefining our understanding of personal relationships. We have shifting personal networks and “friends” that are sometimes more intimate with us than our own living-in-the-house family. Those friends might live thousands of miles away and, oddly, we might never have physically met. Meanwhile, we are barely maintaining the LOGISTICS of life in front of us: school, family, marriage, kids, church.

2. The Chronology Issue. Old friends and lovers from the past are popping up. We are making MORE friends than ever, from multiple time zones. We have access to them at any time through multiple platforms and devices. Our days are no longer chronological– they are amorphous blobs with no beginning and no end. We need more time for everything and there seems to be NONE and an unending supply.

3. The Work Issue. Uncertain economic situation + continuous feedback = imbalance in self-perception. This can be either positive or negative. We can either use this uncertainty to a more creative and purposeful end. OR, we can have the opposite response: to devastate ourselves with fear and to cling to the crumbs. At work this means that we settle, that we allow inferior perceptions of ourselves invade our mindset while real fears about economic stability try to tilt our priority scales.  Or maybe we cut the strings and become the next Apple.

4. The Health Issue. My friend Tim posted a photo of his lunch on Facebook. It was ALL sorts of Burger King. His caption read: “just having a cr@p day so figured I would fill my body with the same .” As we feel anxious, we respond with higher blood pressure, emotional eating, depression, dieting tragedies, and eventually, that place of “ignoring” — where too much information sends us into overload and we say: Enough. We give up on being “healthy” and just do what “feels” right.  Even if it means sitting on the sofa for hours on end, eating a whole box of donuts, and watching “Jersey Shore.” (You aren’t telling me that DOESN’T sound like some good crack right now? Mmmm, glazed!)

5. The Information Issue. There is no more Edward R. Morrow or Walter Cronkite to guide us. We live in an information dumping ground and there is almost no way to know what is credible, what is reliable, what is meaningful. It is all noise, and we are slowly becoming deaf.

The Anxious Result

To me, this is nothing less than living in a devastating earthquake zone and experiencing aftershocks day after day. How can we do anything well or with any meaning in this kind of climate? How do we even get our feet under us?

The daily pressures of a culture working through identity crisis is affecting not just me, but all of us, individually, and as a community.

I know why now the moments in yoga, or floating in the swimming pool, or just weeding the garden feel so precious. They are slices of pure escape from the electrified hamster wheel that has become “our modern life.”

The “normal” things — peeling and eating an orange, talking to a friend in person, uninterrupted, sitting on the front stoop — are no longer even halfway considered a regular part of our lives. They are extras.

“Forget for this moment the smog and the cars and the restaurant and the skating and remember only this. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.”

– Harris Telemacher – “L.A. Story”

What can you do to reduce Cultural Anxiety today, tomorrow and for the future?

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#reverb10 is asking:

Prompt: New name. Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?

My answer would be easy:

ZED.

“Zed” is the nickname my in-laws gave me when they met me.

It differentiated me from the OTHER Elizabeth that would eventually marry into their clan in a same summer. That Elizabeth was actually an ‘Elisabeth’ (“with a continental ess‘” my London-born father-in-law did drawl).

So they called me after the letter that made our named different.

Z.

Only in Canada (like all of the Commonwealth), the letter “Z” is pronounced:

Zed.

Which I love.

I had, after all, outgrown the babyish “Beth” of my youth.

I don’t much care for “Lizzy-Ho” — an accident of cell-phone abbreviation which became the beloved shortname my friend Frances calls me.

I get tired of answering: “Do you go by THAT? EEE-LIZZ-UUH-BETH?” As if itis some form of name torture. I am sure there are some potential friends who have heard my answer and looked at their watch after saying it a few times and just gave up..

And, I am just NOT a ‘Liz.’ Sure, I like the gays, but only one husband for me.

So Y Nt, U ask?

Simple answer: Mom won’t let me. My mom heard my brother-in-law refer to me as “Zed” at my wedding. She then leapt into the nearest grave, tossed out the coffin, and proceeded to roll around and around, shouting: SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO??

Mom isn’t much for cute names. The only reason they let me go by “Beth” when I was young was to control the nickname avalanche that ensues with a name like mine. Betsy/Betty/Bitsy for the old-lady, Hamptons set. Lizard-Breath for that certain awful fifth-grade time.

Yeah, I’d love to have a sassy, short name again that I like, one that suits me. I’m getting a bit bored of belaboring the syllables.

Any other suggestions?

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I had pancakes for breakfast yesterday and I took it totally for granted. God, how quickly we forget the hard times.

Back in the day, (when I was living on nothing but beer and chicken-flavored potato chips), finding any kind of American baked good was like a treasure hunt.

I was reminded of this when I visited Lisa Taylor this morning and she mentioned tea cakes. Mmmm don’t “tea cakes” sound just delightful? Well, they aren’t. They are just an amalgamation of flour and baking powder and sugar backed in a tiny formed pan and having the consistency of sea sponge.

British food, almost without exception, is awful. It’s mushy when it should be fresh or extra deep fat fried when it should be soft and flakey. Or it contains “bacon” which is actually ham. It is hard and stiff-upper-lipped when it should be warm and comforting.

Historically, this has resulted in binge drinking at delightfully lovely pubs in the evening– to blot out the horror of the day’s eating and also to avoid having to eat supper. Don’t worry– the protein in the salted peanuts will get you by.

More recently, with the advent of aeroplanes and Chinese shipping containers, it has resulted in the import of “real food” from other places, such as the great frontiers of America (made in Taiwan). Nothing hits the spot after a late night round like a stop at HRH’s KFC.

Thanks Lisa, for reminding me how much I am missing. And thanks Colin, for the pancakes.

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I took this photo in May of 2007, which of course seems like about two weeks ago. We’ve been in this small state for almost two and half years and I see how time gets compressed–I’ve erased the afternoons and the mornings and the evenings and all that remains is the back and forth motion of time, tightly sequenced and carefully structured so as to take care of our little passengers who are moving through it — at the moment –thoughtlessly.

I am the ponderous oaf, the deep resounding bell that drops in slow motion —-DONNNNNG then releases for a sweet moment, only to fall again, repeating the sound with whatever momentum is left, because I have to —-DONNG! The sound forms on dusty bell curves, dust that flies up manically for a moment and which then also forgets itself soon enough, and settles down again after the vibrations silence themselves past dusk.

Inside the bell tower, there is no drudgery and there is no satisfaction. The rain falls and we are damp– rather we are blindly scorched by the summer’s rays. Unhappy hasn’t found its way up the winding staircases or inside the ringers’ sleeves yet.

It’s only that we are just not sure where to land on the issue, inside the bell tower, as we pass another hour for the time to complain again.

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Or, The Continuing Saga of the Toast Rack

In a new series I am offering, English Things I Miss, I recently I opined about the great mystery of the toast rack. A mainstay of the British Bed and Breakfast, I found this piece of kitchenware a great and strange object. It is one of the first things I want to chat with Gordon Ramsay about, at my Great Dinner Party, to which I believe he may be invited.

But that is another story. THIS story is about Bryan and Stacy, my humble and wonderful friends in KC, who also lived in England for a year. Before Colin and I moved to London, Bryan and Stacy were very useful. Bryan regaled me with many stories on the hilarious missteps of our common language (ask him about fanny packs!) and Stacy warned me of the dire consequences of not flagging a bus down when you wanted one. They both made sure I knew not TALK SO LOUD, especially on the Tube, where virtually no one talks at all, except the  driver, to tell you of delays because of someone flinging themselves on the track at Euston.

Well, it’s the season of delight and wonder, and to keep with that theme, I found a package on my doorstep a day or so ago, with return address “Stacy Kearney.” Inside, wrapped carefully so as not to get damaged in the delivery, was a delightful addition to my kitchenware collection: My own personal TOAST rack (see photo above)!

I am sure I have done Bryan and Stacy a favor by taking this ridiculous souvenir artifact (and problem of storage– you can stack these things!) off their hands, but I am sure they did ME the bigger favor by bequeathing me this tool of British toast love.

Look at it! Not only will it hold my morning toast and cool it to crunchy-cold perfection, but it will constantly remind me (if turned correctly) what I am eating!

I can’t even tell you how long and hard Colin and I laughed over receiving this. Stacy’s Christmas card note reassured us it wasn’t an heirloom either — they’d gotten at the “Everything’s a Pound” store. Its worth lies in sentimental value then, as I doubt it is dishwasher-safe.

In return, Bryan and Stacy (and everyone else who can’t get enough of toast racks), I have this little delightful wonder for you! Enjoy while I go make myself some more toast!

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Our Farm Table, by David Ellison of Lorimer Antiques

We recently had our “new” dining room table delivered to us. It was the last piece of the renovation puzzle in our “green” family room.  It really is green… the walls are not only painted green, but were painted with low VOC paint (low harmful fumes) from Benjamin Moore called “Aura.”

Part of our continuing effort to throw out less, reuse more and just generally reduce our carbon footprint was to invest in furniture that will last and have meaning to us. We bought (at rock bottom prices) a leather sofa, chair and loveseat that was a bit dinged up, but was more flexible than a sectional and we expect will take a beating better than regular soft fabric.

Then, we reconditioned the big, ugly brown wall unit, painting it glossy white and getting rid of the pressed board and laminate top (we’ll reuse the top in the laundry room renovation.)

But the star of the room (other than the drunk-dial 52″ inch TV that sort of cancels everything else out) is our new farm table. Made by hand by David Ellison of Lorimer Workshop in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the top is crafted from reclaimed boards. David, a ex-patriate from Scotland, says the wood comes from the interior of old railway stations in the area that have been dismantled.

The table has removable legs, as you can see, and no leaves. David doesn’t work with leaves on farm tables– however he does have a fantastic concept for a workaround, if you are interested.

My in-laws, Linda and Henry Phillips, were visiting when it was delivered. They were good enough to help us give it a test run. The table works very well… holds up food and plates of all sorts, and fulfills one of my primary requirements: no water rings! I really wanted a table that was NO FUSS– no need for placemats or runners or coasters. This table is really the answer! It is finished with a food-grade polyurethane that is earth friendly called EZ-DO and a bit of wax. And I can just wipe it clean with a wet cloth.

Colin found David online when he was considering building the table himself. The tables were so beautiful and the prices so reasonable (and he could custom make our wall unit top as well), that we couldn’t pass up the chance.

One note here: If you think a custom-made table is expensive, you have to think again. It might have cost a bit more than a table from Target, but we also got so much more in return. Besides the bench and the wall unit piece, we got a real wood table, made from a piece of local history. And though we wouldn’t necessarily get every piece of furniture handmade, Colin and I agreed the table is the place where a family gathers, kids do homework, friends get together and laugh, eat and tells stories. For us, it was the single most important piece of furniture we were going to acquire together. We were really glad we found David and we able to visit his workshop and be part of its creation.

By the way, interesting note of serendipity. Turns out my F-in-L, Henry, and David both grew up in the same neighborhood in London, Battersea. Small world.

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Here’s a new, non-regular segment for you that perhaps will help me cope with the grieving process of no longer living in London: English Things I Miss, subtitle, Though Not Necessarily So Much That I Would Move Back to the God-Forsaken Land of Clouds and Complaining.

First English Thing I Miss:
The Toast Rack
It might seem random that I would say “toast rack” as my first choice in things to miss from Over There. But consider the simplicity of this device and the sheer madness that it is still in use.

The Toast Rack is exactly what you think it is, for anyone who has never been to England. It’s a toast holder. You can see from the image that it is doing its job, with a fairly simple design.

I can attest, from our travels to many Bed and Breakfasts, that the toast rack is still widely used by British people. They want their toast orderly, I gather, they want it in triangular shapes, and they want it stone cold.

Our good friend Sarah from Maida Vale explained to me the reasoning for the toast rack. “It’s to keep the toast from going all soggy! If you stack the toast, the condensation gives you a soggy mess!” I pondered the alternative–toast crumbs covering my shirt–but I didn’t mention it. I’d like to keep Sarah as a friend.

Sarah admits she herself does not use a toast rack. Instead, she has invented a highly-elaborate system for cooling that involves leaning two pieces of toast against each other in teepee formation. Once you have mastered the balance of bread, this system can be used during the dangerous “condensation phase” of cooling. Once it has passed, you must then quickly butter and shove the toast down during the remnants of the “warm phase.”

However there are flaws. This technique does not allow Sarah to enjoy only one slice of bread, ever, or to have her toast in neat triangles (cutting time might use up the last of warm phase). So that might explain why her version hasn’t caught on.

I never owned a toast rack, but I admire the idea of it. The toast rack and the solid cold, hockey-puck like bread you eat from it is a symbol of the British people’s unwavering fortitude and dedication to tradition. Over here, Colin and I just waited 8 weeks or something for an expensive Kitchen Aid toaster to get delivered. I don’t know why. But the toaster does have a fancy “warming” button! I haven’t asked Colin, for fear he might beat me with the toaster, but what the hell is that for? Isn’t the toaster supposed to warm the toast?

I am not sure, but I am sure that I would be a better, stronger, more resilient person if I stopped whining, ate my toast cold and organized, off a rack and complained about the weather instead.

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We’ve got the fatties back in our yard, and I am responsible. Squirrels get happy around Halloween here– they love to snack on our jack-o-lanterns, 5 times their size. I encourage it, really, sort of hoping that they will end up just too slow to move, and find themselves trying to dodge the car tires, unsuccessfully.

Being the environmentalist I am, I feel a little bad about wishing my squirrel friends were dead.  I mean, I am supposed to love animals, want the whales saved, eat dolphin-friendly tuna and such, right? I guess, but there is just something about stories of untimely animal deaths that amuse me. Not like funny hahahahah, but more like “Check that out… a mangled Bambi in the school crosswalk. Huh. Wonder what the kiddies will think of that.”

We are all just a bit too serious about death, I think. Roadkill is great for reminding us about the important things in life, like death: “Hey, it can happen anytime, and in the worst way imaginable!”

One of my favorite Trigger Happy TV videos is the Squirrel Gang incident, set on Portobello Road.

We have to be careful, and take measures, such as overfeeding our squirrels with jack-o-lantern flesh, so they’ll get slow and fat, to avoid problems like these.

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