Phoebe Kate

This weekend, I had to go out of town because of a family emergency.  An elderly relative had become gravely ill and been hospitalized.  She has now been moved to a rehab center to start physical therapy as soon as she is well enough.

I’ve seen this kind of situation before, but it never ceases to astound me how fast a golden oldie can go from perfectly fine to totally incapacitated.  Every hour that passes with them bedridden means more risk of life-threatening complications, greater debilitation and loss of motor skills and strength.  It serves as a reminder of exactly how frail and tenuous this human existence of ours really is.

Just because we’re not yet packing an AARP card doesn’t mean it can’t happen to us.   As a healthy young woman, I suffered a severely herniated disk in my back when I was eight months pregnant.  To save me from life in a wheelchair, they had to operate immediately, before the nerve damage to my legs was irreversible.   I was in a hospital bed for almost a month to recuperate from the surgery as well as to keep me from going into premature labor.  After the baby was born (healthy and full-term, thank God), I virtually had to re-learn how to walk.  The expression “Use it or lose it” is an all-too-accurate one — the muscles even of young, strong people can atrophy from disuse with shocking alacrity.

I’ll be away for a week or so and will try to post as often as possible. Please keep Ruthie and the family in your thoughts and prayers.

–phoebe kate

I hear a lot on TV about what we need.  More sex (thanks to Viagra, etc.).  Better schools.  More sex.  A better cell phone plan.  More sex.  Really good cookware.  More sex. Voluminous hair.  More sex.  More vitamins to keep us young forever.  More sex.  A cure for depression.  More sex.  Happy mealtimes thanks to instant dinners.  More sex.  No wrinkles.  More sex. 

It goes on and on.

So today, I found the answer to what I really really need.  

As I ate lunch, I watched a show about a South Carolina bed-and-breakfast haunted by a ghost with a peculiar habit.

She tucks in her guests as they sleep.  Though they went to bed with sheets flapping, in the morning they awake tucked in as if they were tiny babes.

I don’t know about you, but I could really go for that one. 

I have one very ample and restless husband who hauls the covers to his side. I have a 20 pound cat who can displace blankets to such a serious degree that I am bare-assed by the morning.  I have a nine-pound cat who sits like a brick weighing four times what she does and possesses a magnetic power to draw all wool to her.  All the blankets end up under her. 

What do I need?  I need that ghost!

–phoebe kate

That’s how the old saying goes — and one canine in Oregon is proving it, big time.  Maximilian, a fox terrier, is running for mayor of Jacksonville, a small town in the south central part of the state.  When his owner learned that there was only one candidate in the race, she thought the voters deserved some other options.  If elected, Maximilian promises that there will be “kibble for all.”  Now how’s that for spreading around the wealth?

Oregon has no statute stipulating that candidates for public office have to be human.  Hmm, I wonder if there’s any law requiring presidential and Senate nominees to be homo sapiens…  I mean, wouldn’t it be a welcome change to have a politician who doesn’t put his foot in his mouth every time he (or she) opens it?  And after all the unseemly and embarrassing public scandals involving people in high places, an elected official who was neutered might not be a bad idea, either. 

–phoebe kate  

Poetry Friends has published one of my poems, “Enjoy the Cold.”

Thank you to editor Susan Culver.

–phoebe kate

Tony Hillerman, award-winning New York Times bestselling novelist, died on Sunday. 

I only learned of his death today.

As far as I know, it was not reported on any of the cable TV news stations.  I read numerous online news sources every morning and it didn’t show up there either. 

The only way I found out about the death of a fellow author (albeit much richer and more famous than I will ever be) was in a piece of spam in my inbox trying to interest me in $$$$ writers’ conferences in glam places.

Meanwhile, the news media diligently reported on Lindsay’s feud with Ugly Betty and Miley getting a bad rap in the tabloids and Posh Spice modeling Armani underwear and everything having to do with Britney. 

Is it my imagination, or do we in this country have no regard for writers?  No, let’s broaden that accusation.  We have no regard for real artists.  We’re too damn busy idolizing the latest flash-in-the-pan Hollywoodite to care about someone who contributed to our contemporary literature and to our collective consciousness of other cultures in our country.

Hillerman’s books were set in the Four Corners region of the West.  It’s a strange place, an eerie place.  The vibes are not very good.  I’ve spent time there and it’s a little like dropping into an alternate reality.  The scenery verges on surrealistic and you sit in a little diner in a nowheresville town, drinking your coffee or your Coke, and you can sense there’s all sort of stuff going down and tensions that you know nothing about.  The folks are civil enough, but they’ve got their own world.  You are not a part of it and they’re politely waiting for you to move on.  It’s a microcosm steeped in its own history and they don’t have any need of or space for you there.

There are many places like that in this country.  Four Corners is one of them.  I remember it well and Hillerman described it flawlessly.

I hear that in Europe, artists are still highly regarded.  I hope so.  A pity they aren’t here.  Shame shame shame on us. 

Rest in peace, Tony. 

–phoebe kate