Phoebe Kate

That’s what F. Scott Fitzgerald observed — and nowhere is that statement truer than in the Big Apple. 

Although I am a Southerner, I’ve been fated to live a lot of my life well North of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Specifically, New York City.  A sizable chunk of my childhood was spent there and a good bit of time as a working adult.

I love NYC — or at least I love the image of the city I retain in my head from years ago.  The Plaza Hotel was still a hotel, not condos.  There was a thriving middle class who hadn’t fled to the suburbs with their kids.  Museums were free because culture was something that belonged to everybody, not just those who fork out a $10 admission fee.  Broadway theatre tickets and carriage rides around Central Park were reasonably priced — and if you couldn’t afford those, there was always the Staten Island Ferry, the floating make-out mecca for indigent daters.

It’s all changed now — and not for the better, as far as I can tell from my last visit several years ago.  Hamburgers cost $20, a plate of pasta $30, a martini $15-plus, a bus or subway ride $2.25 one-way and the sky’s the limit when you step into a taxi.  Sheeesh, even the street peddlers of stolen merchandise and fake Rolexes are charging big bucks for their junk.   

Real estate — for rent or purchase – was never cheap in the city even when I lived there, but there were still some bargains to be found.  After reading a recent article in a NYC paper, however, I’m thankful I’m residing elsewhere. 

• A couple recently bought a 175-square-foot apartment in Manhattan for $150,000 and pay a $800 monthly maintenance fee.  (Their entire apartment is approximately the size of an average room.  How long do you give this marriage?  I say six months tops.)
• A 39-year-old woman pays $700 a month for a 90-square-foot apartment.  It isn’t big enough for furniture so it features a loft bed and she admits she has to sit sideways on her toilet to fit into her bathroom.
• And if you think that’s outrageous, how about this?  A man is currently renting a 55-square-foot apartment near midtown Manhattan for $800 a month.  He can stand in the middle of the room and touch the walls.  And he can’t turn around in his shower.

Now, you may be wondering, what do these people think of their grossly overpriced mouse-hole homes? 

“We love it,” say Couple #1.  

“I love it,” says Renter #2.

And, “It’s fantastic!” says the guy who will get stuck in his shower if he gains 10 pounds and have to be pried out by the jaws of life.

Now I know that the rich aren’t the only ones different from you and me. So are New Yorkers — and they’re out of their minds, too.    

~ phoebe kate        

Religion, it seems to me, can be compared with a dog. 

No, no, it’s not as it sounds.  I’m not trying to be a disrespectful, blasphemous, derogatory smartass.  I’m a nice Southern girl who was raised to be a good Christian — and as such, I’ve seen a lot of religion.  A whole lot.  So just bear with me and see where I’m going with this. 

If religion is good, it possesses the qualities of a really good dog.  It’s gentle and kindly and has learned to respect those around it.  It’s a quiet, sympathetic companion day in and day out, year after year, in happy times and hard times.  It doesn’t bite you or anyone else.  It makes life more satisfying and meaningful.  It’s a comfort to have around during long, sleepless nights.  It’s useful in practical sorts of ways.  It warns you about potential perils in the world around you.  It doesn’t cause trouble or make nasty messes or annoy others.  It has good manners and knows how to behave appropriately wherever you take it.  

Bad religion, on the other hand, is a nuisance with a problematic disposition. It is stubborn, obnoxious, aggressive, difficult to handle, often embarrassing in public and doesn’t take well to behavior modification.  It jumps on everybody, barks constantly, demands attention and is likely to growl and bare its fangs when thwarted, challenged or corrected.      

The following individuals aren’t bad people, but they are — hmmm — a little out of control.  They just…well…umm…need a shorter leash and some obedience training to remind them of the one really big rule, “Do unto others…”   

• For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Since March 2008, a cathedral in Phoenix has pealed the bells in its belltower every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Needless to say, the neighborhood wishes the bell would stop tolling for them.  After almost two years of this righteous ringing, the city officials are finally taking some action to remedy the problem.  (Obviously, the city officials do not reside anywhere near the cathedral.)
• Making a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord.  It would be fine if that was all a certain woman in England had done.  Unfortunately, she conducted her loud praising of the Lord while traversing her apartment building in the wee small hours of the morning.  After complaints by the neighbors, she ended up in court in October, where joyful noises are not music to the magistrate’s ears. 
• Where Two or Three Are Gathered in My Name.  There were quite a few more than two or three at this bizarre prayer meeting – and they hadn’t gathered in the name of the Lord, but in the interests of trying to get somewhere.  In Atlanta last November, a municipal bus driver refused to open the doors and let passengers off until they joined hands and joined him in prayer.  (Holy Hostages!  What will the overly zealous soldiers in the army of the Lord think up next???) 

~ phoebe kate  

My mother-in-law, upon occasion, ends up as the unwitting (and unsuspecting) subject of my humorous posts (such as here and here and here and here and here and here).  I swear if she wasn’t so damn funny, she’d drive me totally bonkers.

And I swear if she knew I was writing this stuff about her, she’d call her attorney tomorrow and have my name expunged from her will, then go and systematically remove any photos of me from the family albums.  She takes herself seriously — very seriously.  Which, of course, is why she’s a hoot and a half, as we say in the South.

Today she called me up and chatted so long that I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom twice.  She only got to the funny part at the very end of the conversation, when I was on the verge of pouring myself a medicinal shot of bourbon to keep up my strength.

“I have…some news,” she said in an ominous tone.

Oh dear, I think.  Who’s died that she just now remembered to tell me about?  I tentatively inquire, “Bad news?”

“Oh yes,” she replies. 

“How bad?”

“Very bad.”

To be honest, the only relatives she’s got left are people she doesn’t particularly like — so I figure that’s not the gloomy information forthcoming.  So now I think it’s something to do with her health.  She went to the doctor and he gave her a bad report.  She’s terminally ill.  She’s got Alzheimers.  She’s got something so awful that they can’t even diagnose it. 

“What is it?” I ask, prepared for the worst and ready to be Brave & Beautiful in her hour of need.

“My arms…” she sighs.

“What about your arms?”  I’m thinking paralysis, neurological disorders, a wasting disease.

“They’re — they’re — ”

“They’re what?”

“My arms are getting shorter!”  

I burst out laughing.

“This is nothing to laugh about!” she retorts indignantly.  “Today I tried on the suits I used to wear a few years ago and now the jacket sleeves hang down over my hands.  It’s like wearing someone else’s clothes!  I’ve spent the entire day hemming them up — you have no idea how exhausted I am!  I should never have sent those suits to that new dry cleaner — he did something funny to them.”

She knows full well why her sleeves hang down now halfway to her knees.  At 92, she’s lost several inches of height and every other part of her anatomy has merrily become a co-conspirator in shrinkage, too.  But hell, it’s easier to blame the dry cleaner than admit you’re getting old.

No, not getting old.  Are old.

At the same age my mother-in-law is now, her own mother used to stand in front of mirrors and the polished stainless steel of her toaster, surreptitiously pull her face back with her fingers (pretending to pat her hair in place) and smile with great content as she proclaimed, “I look just the same as I did at 20!” 

Now that lady knew how to deal with contrary and disagreeable reflective surfaces.

Aging is not a pleasant process.  I’m not enjoying it one little bit.  It’s interesting to observe the process objectively, but this isn’t a lab rat or an anonymous individual in a clinical study you’re looking at it here but your own self – and that’s disconcerting.  I am thankful for what wisdom I have gained in being around for half a century now, but the very words “half a century” make me wince.  I grew up in the 60s, where the popular catchphrase was, “Don’t trust anybody over 30.”

Sheeesh!  I’ve now been, by my own generation’s assessment, categorically untrustworthy for over 20 years.  How depressing that our casual youthful words come back to haunt us later.   

However, I think my mother-in-law unwittingly expressed a great truth about aging.  It is like wearing someone else’s clothes — and having someone else’s body and someone else’s face, too, which is even scarier.

All we can hope, as the years pass, is that we remain us, our truest and best selves, inside — in our hearts and minds and souls, the only place where it really counts.      

~ phoebe kate

A number of years ago, I worked in NYC as an editorial assistant for a trade journal (which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty.)  My co-workers were three crusty old editors who were delusional — they thought they were living in a 1940s movie about tough-talking, hard-drinking newspaper reporters.

They envisioned themselves as Humphrey Bogart or Broderick Crawford.  They wore green eyeshades and chain-smoked unfiltered Camels.  If you deleted the expletives in their sentences, you’d have no words left.  They called me “baby” and “toots” and “kiddo.”  They summoned me by yelling at the top of their lungs, “Copy boy!”  (Which was totally unnecessary because the office space we inhabited was about the size of a walk-in closet.  They could have thought,  “Copy boy!” and I’d have heard them.)  

And they kept bottles of whiskey in their desks.  Which, I’m happy to report, they were generous in sharing with Toots, their “copy boy.”

“This is a rough business for a gal,” they’d tell me, shaking their heads as they poured us paper cups of Scotch at 10 AM and gazed at me skeptically.

Rough?  You gotta be kidding.  For four years, I got to pretend I was living in a 1940s movie as the spunky heroine (think: Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis) plus have a couple of shots to start off the day — and finish the day, too, after we “put the paper to bed.”

Appropriately enogh, I recently ran across a tongue-in-cheek piece online, listing reasons why we should be allowed to drink at work:

1. It reduces stress.
2. It reduces complaints about low pay.
3. It cuts down on time off because you can work with a hangover.
4. It saves on heating costs in the winter.
5. It encourages carpooling.
6. It increases job satisfaction because if you have a bad job, you don’t care.
7. It reduces vacation time because people would rather come to work.
8. It makes fellow employees look better.
9. It makes cafeteria food (or takeout orders from the condemned-by-the-Board-of-Health deli across the street) taste better.
10. Bosses are more likely to be generous with raises after a couple of drinks.

Hmmm.  Can’t take exception to any of the above.

Two of the editors from that office of yore have gone on to the Great Press Room in the Sky.  I have no idea what’s happened to the third.  But to all three — and I know you’re drinking wherever you are — I raise my glass and say, “Here’s looking at ya, kid.”

~ phoebe kate

2009 was an exciting year for the globetrotting Son of God and his Blessed Mother, who made surprise appearances all over the world in the most unlikely places — pancakes, pots and pans and grills, jars of jam, Kit Kat bars, rocks, irons and ironing board covers, coffee stains, the woody whorls in paneling and doors, in the markings on farm animals and in the skies over various Cairo churches at Christmas.

So what does our Holy Duo have planned for 2010?  Well, I’m pleased to report that the Virgin Mary has made two appearances so far this month.  A woman in Oklahoma found her likeness in a Lay’s potato chip.  And in Norfolk, Virginia, the Madonna manifested herself in a water stain in a baptismal font in a local church.  Many of the faithful are flocking to view the phenomenon for themselves before the janitor gets busy cleaning with the Lime-Away.

Meanwhile, Jesus has kicked off the New Year by playing a new venue.  A diabetic Florida woman, who’d gone to her doctor’s office to give routine blood samples, received a sacred surprise when she got home and took off the bandage. There was the Savior’s face in the rather large, livid bruise left by the blood-drawing.  The woman’s family and friends now call her “Our Lady of the Hematoma” and I’m sure this devout believer is thanking God for the ineptitude of a certain needle-wielding nurse.

Scripture admonishes the faithful to keep looking toward the sky for Christ’s triumphal return.  In the meantime, however, I’d suggest you keep a close eye on your snack foods, kitchenware, carpet stains, shower curtains, wood floors and the spots on your dog or cat — and, oh yes, don’t forget that shin you banged on the coffee table last night, which caused you say all those bad words. 

You better watch out: you just might wake up and find the King of Kings on your leg or that !#&**! table.       

~ phoebe kate