Phoebe Kate

I read the other day that the American Academy of Pediatrics is throwing its weight around to get the federal government to mandate warning labels on foods that pose a choking hazard to small children.  The AAP also is lobbying for hot dogs to be re-designed for safe kid consumption and for the FDA to establish a national reporting agency to monitor choking events and initiate recalls of “dangerous” foodstuffs.        

Huge changes to the food-manufacturing industry and to the government as well – and not cheap to accomplish, either. But it’s worth it, right?  None of us wants thousands of little tykes a year to suffocate on a frankfurter or a gum ball that’s stuck in their gullets.

Except there aren’t thousands — or even hundreds – in America.   According to statistics, less than 100 children a year die from food-related choking incidents.

There’s no epidemic of childhood mortality here — but there is an epidemic of stupidity and loss of common sense amongst people who ought to know better.

If the AAP is so up-in-arms about these statistics, why aren’t local pediatricians giving instructions and handing out brochures to the parents of their young patients?  Aren’t local doctors and clinics the frontline of education in this matter?  Isn’t it their responsibility as health care providers for children?

I guess not.  We’ll leave it to the Feds instead.  Of course.

Unfortunately, all the warning labels in the world won’t benefit people who are already too oblivious to notice the obvious – that little kids have little mouths and not a lot of teeth and tend to take big bites and then get tired of chewing and swallow it whole, usually while laughing or crying or trying to talk.  Sheeesh, that’s why Gerber invented their whole line of age-appropriate food products.

Well, the good news (if it can be called such) is that if the AAP gets its way, nobody will be to afford to buy hot dogs for their rug rats anyway.  The cost of R&D for companies to re-create the frankfurter into a tiny, mushy morsel will most certainly be passed on to the consumer, making it a luxury item for most folks with kids in America these days.

But let’s take this premise one step further.  If we wreak havoc on the food industry and create yet more national debt for more government agencies for the sake of less than 100 fatalites, what about us big people?

Statistically, over 3,000 adults die from choking on food every year.  That’s over 30 times more than our toddler counterparts. 

Don’t we deserve some warning labels on our steaks, chops and roasts?  What about cocktail olives and pickled pearl onions?  The bar nuts we toss up in the air and catch in our mouths to impress the pub’s other patrons?  I recently read that “leafy greens” are a choking hazard.  Why shouldn’t our garden-fresh bags of spring mix and hearts of romaine and Swiss chard caution us that good nutrition can be fatal?  And what about all those stringy things, like bok choy and celery?  And sticky things, like oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs?  Why doesn’t Quaker and Eggland’s Best tell me I’m potentially taking my life in my hands consuming their products?

And what about small, round, hard fruits?  They do in both kids and adults every year.  How should they be genetically engineered for our safety?  What shape is safe for a grape, I ask you? 

Labels or no labels on our food. re-designed hot dogs or not, reshaped grapes or not, the reality of the matter remains the same.  As Will Rogers said, “You can’t legislate common sense and intelligence into people.”  And that, my friends, is the bottom line.

~ phoebe kate

Well, actually it’s not a view from my window.  It’s from my patio.  Even better than a window for neighborhood observation…more up-close-and-personal, you know.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I moved last September to a townhouse-style complex in the Raleigh area from an old house on 2 acres at the coast.  I don’t really miss the place because maintenance and upkeep were a perpetual pain in the butt and the bank account.  Homes that have been around for decades provide a panoply of never-ending problems.  A yard as big as a city park demands constant attention.  Being on a budget means everything becomes a do-it-yourselfer.  And since everything’s constantly falling apart, there’s no time to have a life that doesn’t involve tools and tiresome hours spent in Lowe’s Home Improvement looking for the cheapest whatever.     

So I’m content to live in a more manageable setting.  A clogged drain or a malfunctioning dishwasher?  I call the maintenance office who dispatches one of the crew to fix it for free, of course.  Sheeesh, even if I need something so simple as a light bulb replaced in the stove hood or a new HVAC filter, those cheery Mr. Fix-its on their golf carts show up at my door and make my little world all good again.  This is carefree living.

And it also has turned out to be the ideal environment for an ever-observant writer.  Although my community is gated, I think the purpose of the security measures is less to keep sketchy people out and more to keep the strange ones who live here in.          

From the mildly curious to the truly bizarre, here’s a sampling of what I see from my patio-on-the-world:

• 3 curvaceous Middle Eastern ladies in berkas who’d combined their traditional headdress with skinny jeans, sequin-studded low-necked sweaters and Sex And The City stilletos.  Now if that isn’t a mixed metaphor, I don’t know what is.
• On a sub-freezing Christmas morning, a 2 or 3-year-old boy racing by in his Superhero cape, no shoes or any other clothes on and no parents or older siblings in hot pursuit of him.  He did have a maniacal grin, however, and was cackling gleefully — he’d escaped. 
• At 4 PM on a recent school day, a solitary teenage boy trudging along with a girls’ backpack strapped on him – Hello Kitty, to be exact.  Little wonder he walks alone.          
• A very proper-looking 30-ish man, who wears a Mormonesque black suit and white shirt every day, sitting in his parked car late at night, rap music blaring from his CD player as he smashed his head repeatedly against the steering wheel.
• On a frigid February morning, a male neighbor pattering by, uncharacteristically clad in a short fuzzy pink bathrobe.  He was bare-legged, bare-chested and barefooted.  I assumed he was going a couple of doors down to see a friend.  Instead, he wandered off the complex grounds and into the woods.  I haven’t seen him since.
• Late last night, a young man was swaggering down the other side of the street.  He had spikey hair and was dressed in 1950s punk style: tight blue jeans and massive black leather jacket with unfriendly-looking emblems and symbols emblazoned on it.  He had something in one hand that he was merrily swinging –nunchucks? a dead animal?   No, it was a woman’s handbag.  At first, I thought he’d snatched it and then realized if he had, he’d have concealed the evidence under the meanness of that big jacket.  I had to conclude that Mr. Tough Guy, appearances notwithstanding, is obviously in touch not only with his feminine side, but with his Inner Fashionista, too.

Needless to say, I’m renewing my lease for a year.  Move somewhere normal and miss stuff like this?  You gotta be kidding.

 ~phoebe kate      

Recently, someone who’d read my Facebook page and blog asked me, “Are you religious?” 

Well, there’s nothing much on Facebook to indicate my beliefs, such as they may or may not be.  For my profile, under the “Religion” category, I put “Eclectic.”  I write friends who are going through a hard time that I will pray for them — and I do. 

But for all anybody knows, I may worship cats and get my spiritual guidance from the wee leprechauns who live in my yard and from the Mother Ship who transmits instructions directly to my brain.

Obviously, the person in question read my posts here on Jesus and Mary sightings.  Does writing about religious stuff make you religious?  Or maybe just a writer with a taste for the weird and an eye for a good blog subject?

That being said, I admit that a lot of my fiction has a spiritual element to it.  In fact, it’s hard to think of a story I’ve written that doesn’t use religious symbolism, allegories or themes in some way.   I can’t help it — it comes naturally to me.

I was raised a Catholic.  I studied comparative religion in college — and after that, decided I needed to conduct some first-hand field research.  I spent time in churches of every Christian denomination from Adventist to Unitarian as well as in Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed synagogues and even one religious cult.  My Grand Tour of Religions took almost 20 years.

However, I haven’t been in a Catholic church in three decades.  My Mass-attending brethren say I’ve “fallen away.”  I haven’t been in any house of worship for the last 15 years.  My Evangelical and Pentecostal brethren call it being “backslidden.”  My atheist and agnostic friends say I’ve “come to my [humanistic]  senses.”

Well, I don’t quite agree that I’m an errant piece of pickle that slipped out of the One True Holy and Apostolic Cheeseburger or I’m dancing with the devil to eternal damnation or I’m recovering from a case of temporary theological insanity.  But in response to those who think I am, I just smile and nod.  We’re all entitled to our different POVs.

While, as I said, my religious exploration often lurks in the background or behind the scenes for my stories, there is one fictional piece where it boldly takes center-stage.  I invite you to read “Goo Cares.”  It’s not long, it’s sad and funny and, scarily enough, it’s based on real events. 

http://www.slowtrains.com/vol3issue2/fostervol3issue2.html

My thanks to editor Susannah Indigo of Slow Trains for publishing this story and for suggesting a change in title.  I originally called it, “Saving Gracie.”  Susannah, with her usual editorial incisiveness, cut right to the heart of the matter.

~ phoebe kate

It seems that I’ve been derelict in my duty to keep you informed on where the King of Kings has been cropping up.  He’s been busier in the last few months than any of us ever realized. 

Of course, you understand that such news doesn’t rate national reportage, although why I don’t know.  It’s a lot more interesting than what the anchors and talking heads usually blather on about.  How Tiger Woods’ sex life  and the death of Marie Osmond’s son manage to rate such coverage and an appearance by the Son of God doesn’t sure beats me.

Oh well.

Anyway, here are some sacred sightings that I just found:

• An suspecting diner in an Italian restaurant in Syracuse NY had consumed half his entree before brushing away the garnish on the remaining portion.  He looked down and exclaimed to his friends, “I think Jesus is on my chicken!”  Now, if that isn’t an attention grabber at a dinner party, I don’t know what is.  Fortunately for us, the gentleman didn’t eat the Lord before seeing Him.  Or after, either.  The piece of grilled chicken breast now resides in a Ziploc baggie in the guy’s freezer.  At least he didn’t sell Jesus on eBay, like so many modern-day Judases have done.
• Last summer, a woman in Texas found a baseball near the back door of her kitchen.  She picked it up and there was the likeness of The Holy One residing in a dirt smudge.  She showed it to her kids, who identified the image as well.  What she’s done with the Blessed Ball was not mentioned in the article. 
• A year ago December, an Australian man was taking photos of a dramatic stormy sky over his farm.  When he developed the pictures, lo and behold! the clouds formations portrayed a scene of the King of Heaven surrounded by angels. 
• Again in Australia, a cook spooned out some lemon cream sauce and forgot to turn off the burner when he put the pan back down.  Later, while he attempted to scrape the charred pan, he realized his unsuccessful cleaning had revealed the face of Jesus.  He says the divine manifestation has restored his faith — ah, another cooking mishap turns into a very happy Holy Accident.  I presume he retired the sacred skillet from further service in the kitchen.

According to Vatican sources, Pope Benedict XVI is quite skeptical about all this and is compiling a handbook for bishops around the world to de-bunk these bogus apparitions. Such phenomena, in his opinion, pose a risk to the Church.  He proposes to silence the “pseudo-mystics” who have seen Christ in a Cheeto or His Blessed Mother in a blueberry muffin and subject them to examination by demonologists, exorcists and theologians. 

And oh yes, psychiatrists, too.

Let’s give a big, warm welcome to the New Inquisition, 21st century style.   

It sounds to me like it could possibly be a case of ecclesiastical jealousy.  Has the Pope seen the Son of God or the Virgin Mary in his piece of Margherita pizza?  If he had, it truly would make international news – and there wouldn’t be any battery of wig-pickers and Ghost Busters to question the authenticity of his divine sign — or his sanity.

If there really is a Supreme Being, then nobody can put limits on what He/She/It can or cannot do.  If the faithful don’t find faith in their house of worship — whatever denomination it is – then maybe, just maybe, the Man who said He was ”meek and lowly in heart” may step in and do the job Himself.

~ phoebe kate

I’ve always been a person who reads labels.  I don’t usually read them because I don’t know how to use what I’ve bought, but because I’m somewhat OCD and we compulsively read everything. 

We know how many additives, calories and fat grams are in our food, which country our produce and ground beef originated from, the name of the manager in our local Taco Bell, the inspection rating of any restaurant we patronize, where the fire exits are in any public place we happen to be, where the emergency doors are on airplanes and how to open them and save the lives of our fellow passengers, and all the fine print in any contracts we sign.

Labels can be useful.  However, the following caveats on products probably won’t be noticed by the people who most need to read them:

• A toilet brush with a tag that says: “Do not use for personal hygiene.”
• A scooter warning, “This product moves when used.”
• On a digital thermometer box: “After using rectally, do not use orally.”
• On a food blender box: “Do not remove food while the machine is in operation.”
• On a bag of air used to cushion a fragile product: “Do not use this as toy, pillow or flotation device.”
• On a can of pepper spray: “Do not spray at your own eyes.”
• Instructions on a catsup bottle: “Put on food.”
• “Not for human consumption” on a can of fish food.
• On a package of ear plugs: “Are non-toxic but may interfere with breathing if caught in windpipe.”
• “Avoid contact with face and eyes” on a container of foot spray.
• “Do not ingest” on a lava lamp.
• On a power tool: “Not intended for use as a dental drill.” 
• A fish tank label that suggests additional purchases: “Rocks, aquatic plants, fish.”
• A deoderant that has the advice: “Use only on underarms.”
• On a bottle of hair dye: “Do not use as a topping for ice cream.”
• On a package of Clearasil: “Do not use on infants under 6 months of age.”
• A foaming face wash warns: “May contain foam.”
• A tampon box lists as its final instruction: “Pull up underwear.”
• On a toilet bowl cleaner: “Safe to use around pets and children, although it is not recommended that either be permitted to drink from the toilet.”

I used to think that it was the label writers who were looney.  Now, I’m not so sure.  So many crazy labels…on so many products…

What’s the matter with us, America?  What’s happened to our minds?  Our common sense?  Haven’t we been wearing our aluminum foil hats to keep the aliens from stealing our brains?

Or did Reynolds forget to put on its box, “Not for human consumption.  For external use only”?

~ phoebe kate