![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydySo, I've been home for...a week? About. I am still settling into my normal life. Being away for a month was interesting, mostly lovely, but it's long enough that I feel like I'm still catching up with myself. In addition to just settling into my usual routines, I'm integrating stuff that changed in the interim (like masks and bikes). If you wonder why I haven't been in touch, it's because I"m still finding bits of myself scattered all over the house, and bolting them back on.
Cats
I missed my cats. It is less clear that the missed me. Except for Lady Jane, but she always seems so delighted to see me it's a little hard to be sure. On the other hand, I am the only person that she lets brush her, and she let me brush her for an extraordinarily long time, so I think she's been missing that. Also, she's a medium hair, and she matts, and I think she notices that, too. Ninja took about three days to get back to his importunate self. Nuit has been friendly, but neither more nor less than before. Of the three, I think she's the one that noticed my absence the least. Although, that might not be true. David says that she was less horrid to Lady while I was absent. While I was gone, Pamela did all the litter box cleaning, and David did the medicating of Ninja. I cannot say thank you enough to either of them. I was gone longer than I intended, but they rolled with it, and did not complain.
Hermoione
I kind of expected my sourdough starter to need some large number of days to recover from having been shoved in the fridge and abandoned for a month. Practically the first thing I did after I unpacked was to take her out and feed her. She rebounded with extraordinary vigor, to the point where I just went ahead and made bread the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. At this point, I'm about to bake my...sixth loaf of bread tomorrow, I think?
Hey, anybody need sourdough bread? I am still having fun making it. Will deliver anywhere in the Twin Cities.
Chez Nielsen Hayden
Patrick and Teresa live in Brooklyn, which is to say, their apartment is small. I mean, not postage stamp, but small. One bathroom, one bedroom, a living room, a dining room, and a surprisingly well set up and capacious kitchen. (It was clearly remodeled at some point, with a priority put on upgrading the kitchen.) They have two very large air conditioners, which are installed at either end of the apartment. They just about keep up...except the one in the kitchen started acting incredibly fractious while I was there. It has since been replaced (under warranty) but that happened after I left. I slept in the living room, on the couch. I was grateful for the ceiling fans. It wasn't horrible, but there were nights when it was a bit warm.
I was genuinely surprised at how well I fit into their daily life. I have known them for 22 years, and stayed a week or two with them most of those years. But this was an extended stay, and in an apartment with no separate place to retreat to (unlike their previous apartment). There were definitely some fraught moments (small apartment, people not used to living with each other, general stress which is why I was there in the first place) but over all, I was able to slot into their daily life quite well. Both Patrick and Teresa are larks (Patrick more so than Teresa) which was a trial to me. Patrick is typically asleep by nine or ten in the evening, and up around four in the morning. On my own, I tend to go to bed between two am and five am. This was obviously not a workable strategy in that environment. I did sleep with my eye mask, and generally slept until eight or nine, which was workable. Except on the mornings where, by prior arrangement, Patrick would get me up early (with coffee) so that we could go riding before the heat of the day. Yes, I have become one of those people that gets up early to exercise, at least while living with Patrick. Which leads me to ask, what have I done with the real Lydy, and who am I, now?
Teresa is a marvelous cook. I am an adequate sous chef, when I can get her to give me direction. She's so used to cooking on her own that it was sometimes a struggle to get her to assign tasks, and sometimes the job of articulating the task was too irritating she she just did what needed to be done. Nevertheless, we got better at cooking together, and that was fun. Because I mostly went to bed later than they did, I also often put the left overs away, loaded the dishwasher and ran it, and wiped down the kitchen counters. It was pleasantly domestic. I think that our relationship was improved by this extended stay. That wasn't one of my goals, but it is a pleasant benefit.
I will say, I got damn tired of sleeping alone. The couch is perfectly comfortable, but I slept alone for an entire month. That's a long time.
Castle Valentine
I spent...three days at Kevin, Bernadette, and Arthur's. That was also a lovely visit. I know them considerably less well. I haven't been dating Kevin a year, yet, I don't think. (I'm bad at anniversaries. And dates. And math. And time.) It was fun to see the family at home. They are a lovely married trio. I was fascinated to see that they all have domestic responsibilities, and that they are comfortable reminding each other about undone tasks, or communicating upcoming tasks, and generally managing the work of living together with clear and uncontentious communication. There is a guest bed at Castle Valentine, but it is not large enough for two people to sleep in, so even there, I slept alone. Oh, woe is me. The last day I was there, I helped Bernadette color her hair. That, too, was fun and domestic and just calming, in an odd way. We also had a lovely walk around her garden, with her showing me all her plants. She has a startling variety of daylileies, and many other wonderful plants. I am not a plant person, so I did not retain the information, but I will say, her gardens are really beautiful. All three of them seemed not just welcoming, but genuinely happy to have me there, and I delighted in being there.
Tallyrand
No, not the French diplomat, my large stuffy. (No, I don't know why he chose that name, either. Some of my stuffies just...do that.) It's a 30 inch Squishmallow in the shape of a grey tabby cat, kind of. Ok, it's basically an egg-shaped stuffy with some embroidery to suggest a cat's face, and ears and a tail. When I was packing to leave, I thought, "Well, hell, I've got all the room in the world, why don't I just pack Tallyrand?" To my surprise, I did not get back aches, either in the hotels I stayed at, nor on P & T's couch, and I'm pretty sure that it's because I sleep with my off arm on Tallyrand. This is an incredibly delightful and serendipitous discovery, but I'm not sure how to replicate it if we ever get to the After Times and I am flying to NYC rather than driving. Tallyrand is big. Really too big to put in my luggage. I already have a pillow in storage at Chez NH, I don't think I can justify a very large stuffy, too. Perhaps I shall mail him ahead.
Biking
I mentioned earlier that Patrick and I did a lot of biking while I was there. My phone app reports that I put in 95 miles. It was glorious. There was a day where we went to Manhattan, and rented a very nice Cannondale e-bike, and biked all over Manhattan, over the Williamsburg bridge, over to the Brooklyn Bridge, back across the Brooklyn bridge, and then returned to the rental shop. It was about 18 miles, all told, and it was more fun than I can possibly say. Also, the views from the bridges were glorious, which is why Patrick chose that route. Ebikes are certainly less work than regular bikes, but they still provide exercise, especially on the hills. Returning home, I found that my stamina has definitely increased (my average speed is up from 8 mph to 9 mph, for instance) and my saddle time is significantly increased. I have been out biking almost every day since I got home. And I love my bike, Jasmine, so much.
While I was in Brooklyn, I acquired a bad case of pannier-envy, and after a lot of messing about on eBay, I bought, used, a Bontrager double-pannier set, which was waiting for me when I got home. They fit the bike just fine, although the straps to hold them to the frame are velcro and not as solid as I might prefer. Today, I decided to pretend to be a European, and I biked to the Wedge Co-op (about 2.5 miles from my house), and bought flour, coffee, and some produce, loaded up my basket and panniers, and biked home. It worked beautifully, and the panniers worked beautifully, and I even made it up the hill that is unavoidable without having too dismount. I'm very proud of me.
I also took my bike into Freewheel Bicycle, where I bought it, for her 100 mile free tune-up. I had them raise the seat about an inch, which I am hoping will help with my knee pain. I continue to wear braces when I ride. And my knees continue to hate me. I mentioned to the nice boy at the bike shop that the tires seem to lose about 10 pounds of pressure every 48 hours, and he looked puzzled, agreed that this was probably excessive, but provided no solutions. I have a bicycle pump. So, I dunno. I add air every couple days.
He also admired my bike rack (which I bought just before I left for Brooklyn). It's a Saris RS, I think. An older style. It will carry three bikes. I got a second frame adapter, which has meant that I can load both my bike and Beth's bike onto my carrier, drive someplace (so far it's been Lake Nokomis, but we'll probably branch out) and bike together. We drive with the windows down, and both wearing masks, which I believe to be reasonably safe.
Masks
As I said in a previous post, Park Slope's mask game is excellent. And it has gotten me into the habit of wearing a mask when I go out, which is great. Any time I stepped outside the apartment, the first three people I saw were wearing masks, and if I'd forgotten mine, I was instantly reminded to go back and get it. I have decided to try to keep the habit up, here, even though most people are not masking when outside. In the first place, I don't want to lose the habit. In the second place, I kind of think maybe Minneapolitans should be wearing masks when outside. I get that outside is a lot less risky but...the numbers here don't look good. I even wear a mask when bicycling, now. And there are days when I'm out of breath that I think I should take it off so as to breathe better, but you know, I'm not sure that's even true. I mean, being out of breath is uncomfortable, but I don't think that the mask actually impedes my breathing, although it may feel that way. I am reminded of all the people in the lab who would insist that they were getting less air on CPAP, when that was simply not true, although I'm sure it felt that way. So I suspect that even if it feels like the mask is restricting my breathing, it's not actually doing so.
Masks in the rest of the places I visited were not nearly so prominent. New Jersy, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin... yeah, not so good. Most people did at least mask up to go into the rest rooms. In Wisconsin, there was a woman who did not wear a mask. She was, I dunno, roughly my age? I said, "You know, you really should wear a mask." She said, in a very triumphant and "gotcha" tone of voice, "My body, my choice." I said, "Well, but it isn't just your body now is it? It's also mine. You do understand that you wear a mask to keep from giving other people the virus, and that you might not know if you have it?" She snorted and said, "My choice." It wasn't until afterwards that I realized that her triumphant tone of voice was probably because she was so pleased with attempting to weaponize a pro-abortion rights talking point against a "liberal". Dear god, these people really do want to kill me, don't they?
Ann McBurney Norman and the Atlantic Ocean
So, I met Ann when we were...ten? twelve? Not sure. We were attending the same church, in North Hills. (Weird side note. There were four of us, Ann, Barb, Rita, and me. We would forage after services, run around the woods behind the church, pick wild berries, explode touch-me-nots, dip our toes in the crick at the bottom of the hill, and ruin our nylons. Ann, Barb, and Rita all had identical twins. Rita actually had two sets of identical twins. Me, I never got pregnant. I assume if I had, I would have had twins, too.) I haven't seen Ann in at least 30 years. We've had some sporadic correspondence. I knew she had done missionary work in Thailand, had become an atheist, is a huge fan of the Thai band Carabao, and that she adores Kim Stanley Robinson, and has written a bunch of fanfic in one of the Star Trek universes, possibly Deep Space 9. When I conceived of the idea of driving through Pittsburgh on my way home, I sent her email to see if she would be free to just say hey, outside with masks. Turned out, she was in Tom's River, NJ, babysitting her grandson during the week. So, we agreed to meet there.
Tom's River is about 3 hours from Brooklyn. I drove to her son's house, and, my god, she's still herself. So very much herself. It was a delight. She was really, really respectful about my mask requirements, even though I don't think she thought it was entirely necessary. And that, in and of itself, was a bit of a relief. You don't see someone for three decades, it's hard to predict how respectful they might be of your boundaries.
She drove me to a beach that her son has paid to have access to (I don't know how these things work, all I know is that we had "tags" and that no one seemed to check for them. We wore our masks except when we were in the ocean. Which made us literally the only people on the fairly crowded beach wearing masks. We were well away from other groups. (There was one encampment with about 10 people which had two American flags flanking a Blue Line flag (the one which is an American flag, except in black and white with one of the stripe in blue. Honestly, the thing isn't much better than a Confederate flag, or maybe worse, in my opinion.) I have not been in the ocean in....decades, I think. The waves kept literally knocking me on my ass. It was glorious. Then we went for a walk in a park, then we went back to her son's house, where she fed me home made pumpkin curry (so delicious) and we floated about in her son's pool for several hours. All in all, we spent about six hours together.
Ann has always been incredibly smart, and funny, and she still is. She is very involved in Thai human rights. She has done a lot of work to demonstrate that the current king has ordered the assassinations of at least ten people. She has been working with a Thai organization that has been supporting dissidents, and in one case helped one of them escape Thailand to France. She does translation from Thai to English, and did some work that was, if I understand her correctly, read on the floor of the United Nations. She also, for fun, translates the songs of the band she adores, Carabao, into rhyming, scanning English which can be sung to the music. She has met the band leader, and sung her translations for him, in person. (It is this incredible story, that I cannot do justice to.) She has had a series of incredible chance-met opportunities in her life, and she's taken advantage of them. I am so glad I got to spend time with her.
Pittsburgh, My Home
I love Pittsburgh. I truly do. I am not so sure I like driving in Pittsburgh, though. I got to Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. After I checked into the largely abandoned hotel, I decided to drive to my childhood home to see what it looked like. Thank god for Google. On the way there, I uttered the words, "How is this even a road!" four separate times. And I meant it each and every time. Also, I do not think that it is kind of Google to expect a girl who learned to drive in the Midwest to make a 170 degree turn, downhill, where the oncoming traffic is coming from around a bend, and where one cannot easily see either the oncoming traffic (due to steep hill and curve) nor the street that one is intending to turn onto (due to steep hill and trees masking line of sight.) All I can say is, no one died.
My old neighborhood...oh dear. Just oh, dear. I didn't expect it to be great. Ann had warned me that Penn Hills had gone down hill.
When we moved there in 1970, my mother got her first block-busting call within the first week. In nine years, the neighborhood went from 80% white to 80% black. It is a lovely, lovely area, wooded and hilly, with solid little brick homes built in the first third of the last century, good Craftsman homes with strong bones and character. It is good housing stock, and a charming area. Except. Well, when they finished block-busting, all public investment stopped. They have built a slum out of my lovely, charming, childhood neighborhood. The sidewalk outside the house I grew up in is rubble. There was no one home. The front porch is filled with trash. The driveway (which they are very sensibly not using as such, and have turned the garage into a storage shed, again, very sensibly, because the hill to the garage is insanely steep) had a POD unit and a broken down van in it. I snuck into the back yard. The bbq and the grape arbor are gone, as are the two apple trees. The yard is completely overgrown. At some point, someone built a second-story deck, which now looks like it passionately wants a divorce from the main structure.
The last transfer that Zillow is aware of is a sale in 1979 for $42,000. That would be when my parents sold the home. Zillow's current estimate of value is...$63,983. The home is listed as a 5 bedroom, 1.5 bath, with 1831 sq. feet. That would mean that they either turned the den into a bedroom, or they put a bedroom in the finished portion of the basement. Probably the latter? Not sure. The taxes are...dear god, $236 for 2020 a decrease of about 2%. I will grant you that when we sold the home, it needed a new roof. But gods, gods, gods. Driving around the neighborhood, I saw exactly three people out, all of them black men. This is probably not an integrated neighborhood anymore, is what I'm saying. There are a number of foreclosures. Also, some fairly flossy cars: several Audis, a Land Rover, a Mercedes. Which tells me that people have decided that it makes more sense to spend money on their cars than their houses. Nor are they necessarily wrong.
I drove over to where the East Hills Shopping Center used to be. It was a reasonably thriving strip mall, back in the day. Across the street was a Zayres. (Think...um...Kmart, maybe? Pamida? That sort of thing.) It was now an International Ministries, and looked like it had money. Very clean, very antiseptic. I mean nothing against religion when I say that this looked like a money pump designed to take money from a poor neighborhood and pump it into the pockets of slick evangelical ministers. Where the shopping center had been was, I kid you not, an auto junk yard, one of the "pick and go" type places. These sorts of things tend to be environmental disasters, and one doesn't normally find them that close to residential neighborhoods. Also, they take up a lot of space, so they need a place where the land value is quite low. The intersection of Frankstown Road and Verona Road used to have a number of small business. Now it has a Family Dollar store, a Get and Go, and a lot of buildings without windows or discernible business.
I don't feel sad. I feel appalled. I feel angry. This is a textbook case of injustice and prejudice destroying value, squandering wealth, it's devastation and destruction. It is heart-rending, but not in a nostalgic "can never go home again" sort of way. This is what happens when black lives don't matter. And it's not as bad as being murdered by the police, but it is part and parcel with it. This is the destruction of everything we say we love, in service of oppressing people. Dear god, what a terrible waste!
Pittsburgh, The Beautiful Bits
Because i was traveling alone, and could do anything I wanted, and didn't have to justify it to anyone (not even myself, shut up, self) I went to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America Theological Seminary. We had attended church there when we first moved to Pittsburgh, before we switched congregations, and I remembered the building with great fondness. It is still a beautiful building, and I wandered around, taking pictures. At some point, a very nice young man came out (unmasked) and asked me, very politely, what I was doing. I explained that i had attended church there in the early 70s, when my dad was the head of publications for the denomination, and I remembered the building as being very beautiful. I didn't need to come in, I just wanted to admire it. It was really very lovely. We chatted for a bit, he told me about the work restoring the wooden gables (which are very pretty, and very much in need of restoration) and that the beautiful Buckeye tree I remembered had died and they'd had to take it down.
I asked him if he was a seminary student, and he said that he had graduated, and was hoping for a calling to a congregation. I wished him luck, and hoped that his calling would bring him and his parishoners joy. (I did not realize until later that in that sentence, I had firmly established myself as being unchurched. This is a denomination that has pot-providence dinners.) He asked me the name of my father, and I told him. He asked me where my father had been pastor, and I said, "He was a pastor in Lisbon, NY until we moved here. He didn't have a church when we lived in Pittsburgh because he was head of publications, but then he took a church in Washington, Iowa, and was a pastor there until he was excommunicated." I paused, then said, reflectively, "It didn't go well for him, I'm afraid." The nice young man went a little white around the eyes. I said, "My mother still attends the congregation there, though." It was meant as a sop. At any rate, shortly after that, we decided we really had nothing else to say to each other. I really, honestly, didn't mean to be mean. I was just, you know, answering the question.
I also went to the University area, Oakland, where I went to high school (St. Paul Cathedral High School for Girls) and hung out at the Cathedral of Learning, volunteered at the Sarah Scaife Galleries, and hung out in the Carnegie Museum. Oakland is still just gorgeous. There's a restaurant on Craig Street currently called Ali Baba's which is, I'm pretty sure, the place where Lawrence took me on our first date and the first time I'd ever had Syrian food. (It was not called Ali Baba's then, but I can't remember what it was called, 35 years ago.) The security guard at the library wouldn't let me in, but we had a lovely chat. Turns out, she has some relatives who lived in Penn Hils, so we commiserated on the state of the neighborhood.
My biggest disappointment was that the Cathedral of Learning was closed. Patrick has referred to it as a "grand, giant wodge of Gothic cheese" and so it is. I attending monthly meetings of the Barony Marche, there. I read in the great hall. I wandered around the Nationality rooms. (I still have a 1970s cook book sponsored by them. It's...very 1970s. It thinks that pine nuts are an exotic and difficult to find food stuff.) The Cathedral is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, in it's overblown, very gilded-age, pseudo-medieval concrete. I love it extravagantly. (You should google it. There are a lot of pictures. They don't do it justice, it's marvelous as hell.) But it was closed. I pressed my nose to all the windows I could find. At one of the entrances, there was a security guard there. He came out, and asked me what I wanted. I said, "You have no reason to say 'yes'---"
"Then the answer is no."
"I just...I haven't been back to my home town in almost 40 years, and I used to study in the great hall, and I was wondering if there was any way at all you could let me in, just for a few minutes."
"Were you a student here?"
"Oh, no. I went to St. Paul Cathedral High School for Girls, it's on Craig Street just a couple of ---"
"Oh, really! My sisters went there. When was that?"
We established that his sister, Maureen Cook, had been at the school the same time I was. She had been a basketball player. He said, "Do you remember the coach, John Kovacs?"
"Him! My god, I heard he knocked up Mary Rae Kosko and had to marry her!"
"Oh, yeah, I heard that, too. You know, my dad would not let Maureen go on overnight trips. He said it was sounded pretty hincky. There was a lot of tears, but he held firm."
"Well, in this case, I think he was right! I mean, that's how Mary Rae got knocked up, on one of the overnights."
We had a lovely half-hour chat, and he was really very nice. He still wouldn't let me in the the building, though.
I also went to Point Park, and walked around the fountain. It is very, very large, and the lip is broad enough that three can walk abreast, at least if they are teenage girls. Point Park is at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, where they join to create the Ohio river. You can see the Duquesne Incline from there. There is a path along the river away from the point in both directions. I googled about, and discovered that there was a ride-share station quite close. So, I rented a bike, and rode around the point, down the river, back up to the point, and down the other way a little bit. It was hot as balls, and I had already walked a large number of kilometers, so I was exhausted and only managed a couple of miles, but it was so worth it. Mind you, I wouldn't bother trying to cycle in most of Pittsburgh. Most of Pittsburgh is at a 30 degree angle from the rest of Pittsburgh. Ok, maybe on a really, really good ebike. I thought it was interesting that the ride share bikes in Pittsburgh are six speeds, not three speeds like here and New York City. It was a short but glorious ride. Then I went back to my hotel, and fell the fuck over with extreme prejudice.
In Conclusion
Yeah, this was a bit long. Sorry. I wanted to record it so that I don't lose it to my own bad memory. I had a lovely trip. I am glad to be home. Life is weird. Hey, anybody want to go for a bike ride? I am, like weirdly possessed with it.
Also, I'm too tired to proofread this, so I apologize for all the errors. Possibly I'll pretty it up tomorrow.
Cats
I missed my cats. It is less clear that the missed me. Except for Lady Jane, but she always seems so delighted to see me it's a little hard to be sure. On the other hand, I am the only person that she lets brush her, and she let me brush her for an extraordinarily long time, so I think she's been missing that. Also, she's a medium hair, and she matts, and I think she notices that, too. Ninja took about three days to get back to his importunate self. Nuit has been friendly, but neither more nor less than before. Of the three, I think she's the one that noticed my absence the least. Although, that might not be true. David says that she was less horrid to Lady while I was absent. While I was gone, Pamela did all the litter box cleaning, and David did the medicating of Ninja. I cannot say thank you enough to either of them. I was gone longer than I intended, but they rolled with it, and did not complain.
Hermoione
I kind of expected my sourdough starter to need some large number of days to recover from having been shoved in the fridge and abandoned for a month. Practically the first thing I did after I unpacked was to take her out and feed her. She rebounded with extraordinary vigor, to the point where I just went ahead and made bread the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. At this point, I'm about to bake my...sixth loaf of bread tomorrow, I think?
Hey, anybody need sourdough bread? I am still having fun making it. Will deliver anywhere in the Twin Cities.
Chez Nielsen Hayden
Patrick and Teresa live in Brooklyn, which is to say, their apartment is small. I mean, not postage stamp, but small. One bathroom, one bedroom, a living room, a dining room, and a surprisingly well set up and capacious kitchen. (It was clearly remodeled at some point, with a priority put on upgrading the kitchen.) They have two very large air conditioners, which are installed at either end of the apartment. They just about keep up...except the one in the kitchen started acting incredibly fractious while I was there. It has since been replaced (under warranty) but that happened after I left. I slept in the living room, on the couch. I was grateful for the ceiling fans. It wasn't horrible, but there were nights when it was a bit warm.
I was genuinely surprised at how well I fit into their daily life. I have known them for 22 years, and stayed a week or two with them most of those years. But this was an extended stay, and in an apartment with no separate place to retreat to (unlike their previous apartment). There were definitely some fraught moments (small apartment, people not used to living with each other, general stress which is why I was there in the first place) but over all, I was able to slot into their daily life quite well. Both Patrick and Teresa are larks (Patrick more so than Teresa) which was a trial to me. Patrick is typically asleep by nine or ten in the evening, and up around four in the morning. On my own, I tend to go to bed between two am and five am. This was obviously not a workable strategy in that environment. I did sleep with my eye mask, and generally slept until eight or nine, which was workable. Except on the mornings where, by prior arrangement, Patrick would get me up early (with coffee) so that we could go riding before the heat of the day. Yes, I have become one of those people that gets up early to exercise, at least while living with Patrick. Which leads me to ask, what have I done with the real Lydy, and who am I, now?
Teresa is a marvelous cook. I am an adequate sous chef, when I can get her to give me direction. She's so used to cooking on her own that it was sometimes a struggle to get her to assign tasks, and sometimes the job of articulating the task was too irritating she she just did what needed to be done. Nevertheless, we got better at cooking together, and that was fun. Because I mostly went to bed later than they did, I also often put the left overs away, loaded the dishwasher and ran it, and wiped down the kitchen counters. It was pleasantly domestic. I think that our relationship was improved by this extended stay. That wasn't one of my goals, but it is a pleasant benefit.
I will say, I got damn tired of sleeping alone. The couch is perfectly comfortable, but I slept alone for an entire month. That's a long time.
Castle Valentine
I spent...three days at Kevin, Bernadette, and Arthur's. That was also a lovely visit. I know them considerably less well. I haven't been dating Kevin a year, yet, I don't think. (I'm bad at anniversaries. And dates. And math. And time.) It was fun to see the family at home. They are a lovely married trio. I was fascinated to see that they all have domestic responsibilities, and that they are comfortable reminding each other about undone tasks, or communicating upcoming tasks, and generally managing the work of living together with clear and uncontentious communication. There is a guest bed at Castle Valentine, but it is not large enough for two people to sleep in, so even there, I slept alone. Oh, woe is me. The last day I was there, I helped Bernadette color her hair. That, too, was fun and domestic and just calming, in an odd way. We also had a lovely walk around her garden, with her showing me all her plants. She has a startling variety of daylileies, and many other wonderful plants. I am not a plant person, so I did not retain the information, but I will say, her gardens are really beautiful. All three of them seemed not just welcoming, but genuinely happy to have me there, and I delighted in being there.
Tallyrand
No, not the French diplomat, my large stuffy. (No, I don't know why he chose that name, either. Some of my stuffies just...do that.) It's a 30 inch Squishmallow in the shape of a grey tabby cat, kind of. Ok, it's basically an egg-shaped stuffy with some embroidery to suggest a cat's face, and ears and a tail. When I was packing to leave, I thought, "Well, hell, I've got all the room in the world, why don't I just pack Tallyrand?" To my surprise, I did not get back aches, either in the hotels I stayed at, nor on P & T's couch, and I'm pretty sure that it's because I sleep with my off arm on Tallyrand. This is an incredibly delightful and serendipitous discovery, but I'm not sure how to replicate it if we ever get to the After Times and I am flying to NYC rather than driving. Tallyrand is big. Really too big to put in my luggage. I already have a pillow in storage at Chez NH, I don't think I can justify a very large stuffy, too. Perhaps I shall mail him ahead.
Biking
I mentioned earlier that Patrick and I did a lot of biking while I was there. My phone app reports that I put in 95 miles. It was glorious. There was a day where we went to Manhattan, and rented a very nice Cannondale e-bike, and biked all over Manhattan, over the Williamsburg bridge, over to the Brooklyn Bridge, back across the Brooklyn bridge, and then returned to the rental shop. It was about 18 miles, all told, and it was more fun than I can possibly say. Also, the views from the bridges were glorious, which is why Patrick chose that route. Ebikes are certainly less work than regular bikes, but they still provide exercise, especially on the hills. Returning home, I found that my stamina has definitely increased (my average speed is up from 8 mph to 9 mph, for instance) and my saddle time is significantly increased. I have been out biking almost every day since I got home. And I love my bike, Jasmine, so much.
While I was in Brooklyn, I acquired a bad case of pannier-envy, and after a lot of messing about on eBay, I bought, used, a Bontrager double-pannier set, which was waiting for me when I got home. They fit the bike just fine, although the straps to hold them to the frame are velcro and not as solid as I might prefer. Today, I decided to pretend to be a European, and I biked to the Wedge Co-op (about 2.5 miles from my house), and bought flour, coffee, and some produce, loaded up my basket and panniers, and biked home. It worked beautifully, and the panniers worked beautifully, and I even made it up the hill that is unavoidable without having too dismount. I'm very proud of me.
I also took my bike into Freewheel Bicycle, where I bought it, for her 100 mile free tune-up. I had them raise the seat about an inch, which I am hoping will help with my knee pain. I continue to wear braces when I ride. And my knees continue to hate me. I mentioned to the nice boy at the bike shop that the tires seem to lose about 10 pounds of pressure every 48 hours, and he looked puzzled, agreed that this was probably excessive, but provided no solutions. I have a bicycle pump. So, I dunno. I add air every couple days.
He also admired my bike rack (which I bought just before I left for Brooklyn). It's a Saris RS, I think. An older style. It will carry three bikes. I got a second frame adapter, which has meant that I can load both my bike and Beth's bike onto my carrier, drive someplace (so far it's been Lake Nokomis, but we'll probably branch out) and bike together. We drive with the windows down, and both wearing masks, which I believe to be reasonably safe.
Masks
As I said in a previous post, Park Slope's mask game is excellent. And it has gotten me into the habit of wearing a mask when I go out, which is great. Any time I stepped outside the apartment, the first three people I saw were wearing masks, and if I'd forgotten mine, I was instantly reminded to go back and get it. I have decided to try to keep the habit up, here, even though most people are not masking when outside. In the first place, I don't want to lose the habit. In the second place, I kind of think maybe Minneapolitans should be wearing masks when outside. I get that outside is a lot less risky but...the numbers here don't look good. I even wear a mask when bicycling, now. And there are days when I'm out of breath that I think I should take it off so as to breathe better, but you know, I'm not sure that's even true. I mean, being out of breath is uncomfortable, but I don't think that the mask actually impedes my breathing, although it may feel that way. I am reminded of all the people in the lab who would insist that they were getting less air on CPAP, when that was simply not true, although I'm sure it felt that way. So I suspect that even if it feels like the mask is restricting my breathing, it's not actually doing so.
Masks in the rest of the places I visited were not nearly so prominent. New Jersy, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin... yeah, not so good. Most people did at least mask up to go into the rest rooms. In Wisconsin, there was a woman who did not wear a mask. She was, I dunno, roughly my age? I said, "You know, you really should wear a mask." She said, in a very triumphant and "gotcha" tone of voice, "My body, my choice." I said, "Well, but it isn't just your body now is it? It's also mine. You do understand that you wear a mask to keep from giving other people the virus, and that you might not know if you have it?" She snorted and said, "My choice." It wasn't until afterwards that I realized that her triumphant tone of voice was probably because she was so pleased with attempting to weaponize a pro-abortion rights talking point against a "liberal". Dear god, these people really do want to kill me, don't they?
Ann McBurney Norman and the Atlantic Ocean
So, I met Ann when we were...ten? twelve? Not sure. We were attending the same church, in North Hills. (Weird side note. There were four of us, Ann, Barb, Rita, and me. We would forage after services, run around the woods behind the church, pick wild berries, explode touch-me-nots, dip our toes in the crick at the bottom of the hill, and ruin our nylons. Ann, Barb, and Rita all had identical twins. Rita actually had two sets of identical twins. Me, I never got pregnant. I assume if I had, I would have had twins, too.) I haven't seen Ann in at least 30 years. We've had some sporadic correspondence. I knew she had done missionary work in Thailand, had become an atheist, is a huge fan of the Thai band Carabao, and that she adores Kim Stanley Robinson, and has written a bunch of fanfic in one of the Star Trek universes, possibly Deep Space 9. When I conceived of the idea of driving through Pittsburgh on my way home, I sent her email to see if she would be free to just say hey, outside with masks. Turned out, she was in Tom's River, NJ, babysitting her grandson during the week. So, we agreed to meet there.
Tom's River is about 3 hours from Brooklyn. I drove to her son's house, and, my god, she's still herself. So very much herself. It was a delight. She was really, really respectful about my mask requirements, even though I don't think she thought it was entirely necessary. And that, in and of itself, was a bit of a relief. You don't see someone for three decades, it's hard to predict how respectful they might be of your boundaries.
She drove me to a beach that her son has paid to have access to (I don't know how these things work, all I know is that we had "tags" and that no one seemed to check for them. We wore our masks except when we were in the ocean. Which made us literally the only people on the fairly crowded beach wearing masks. We were well away from other groups. (There was one encampment with about 10 people which had two American flags flanking a Blue Line flag (the one which is an American flag, except in black and white with one of the stripe in blue. Honestly, the thing isn't much better than a Confederate flag, or maybe worse, in my opinion.) I have not been in the ocean in....decades, I think. The waves kept literally knocking me on my ass. It was glorious. Then we went for a walk in a park, then we went back to her son's house, where she fed me home made pumpkin curry (so delicious) and we floated about in her son's pool for several hours. All in all, we spent about six hours together.
Ann has always been incredibly smart, and funny, and she still is. She is very involved in Thai human rights. She has done a lot of work to demonstrate that the current king has ordered the assassinations of at least ten people. She has been working with a Thai organization that has been supporting dissidents, and in one case helped one of them escape Thailand to France. She does translation from Thai to English, and did some work that was, if I understand her correctly, read on the floor of the United Nations. She also, for fun, translates the songs of the band she adores, Carabao, into rhyming, scanning English which can be sung to the music. She has met the band leader, and sung her translations for him, in person. (It is this incredible story, that I cannot do justice to.) She has had a series of incredible chance-met opportunities in her life, and she's taken advantage of them. I am so glad I got to spend time with her.
Pittsburgh, My Home
I love Pittsburgh. I truly do. I am not so sure I like driving in Pittsburgh, though. I got to Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. After I checked into the largely abandoned hotel, I decided to drive to my childhood home to see what it looked like. Thank god for Google. On the way there, I uttered the words, "How is this even a road!" four separate times. And I meant it each and every time. Also, I do not think that it is kind of Google to expect a girl who learned to drive in the Midwest to make a 170 degree turn, downhill, where the oncoming traffic is coming from around a bend, and where one cannot easily see either the oncoming traffic (due to steep hill and curve) nor the street that one is intending to turn onto (due to steep hill and trees masking line of sight.) All I can say is, no one died.
My old neighborhood...oh dear. Just oh, dear. I didn't expect it to be great. Ann had warned me that Penn Hills had gone down hill.
When we moved there in 1970, my mother got her first block-busting call within the first week. In nine years, the neighborhood went from 80% white to 80% black. It is a lovely, lovely area, wooded and hilly, with solid little brick homes built in the first third of the last century, good Craftsman homes with strong bones and character. It is good housing stock, and a charming area. Except. Well, when they finished block-busting, all public investment stopped. They have built a slum out of my lovely, charming, childhood neighborhood. The sidewalk outside the house I grew up in is rubble. There was no one home. The front porch is filled with trash. The driveway (which they are very sensibly not using as such, and have turned the garage into a storage shed, again, very sensibly, because the hill to the garage is insanely steep) had a POD unit and a broken down van in it. I snuck into the back yard. The bbq and the grape arbor are gone, as are the two apple trees. The yard is completely overgrown. At some point, someone built a second-story deck, which now looks like it passionately wants a divorce from the main structure.
The last transfer that Zillow is aware of is a sale in 1979 for $42,000. That would be when my parents sold the home. Zillow's current estimate of value is...$63,983. The home is listed as a 5 bedroom, 1.5 bath, with 1831 sq. feet. That would mean that they either turned the den into a bedroom, or they put a bedroom in the finished portion of the basement. Probably the latter? Not sure. The taxes are...dear god, $236 for 2020 a decrease of about 2%. I will grant you that when we sold the home, it needed a new roof. But gods, gods, gods. Driving around the neighborhood, I saw exactly three people out, all of them black men. This is probably not an integrated neighborhood anymore, is what I'm saying. There are a number of foreclosures. Also, some fairly flossy cars: several Audis, a Land Rover, a Mercedes. Which tells me that people have decided that it makes more sense to spend money on their cars than their houses. Nor are they necessarily wrong.
I drove over to where the East Hills Shopping Center used to be. It was a reasonably thriving strip mall, back in the day. Across the street was a Zayres. (Think...um...Kmart, maybe? Pamida? That sort of thing.) It was now an International Ministries, and looked like it had money. Very clean, very antiseptic. I mean nothing against religion when I say that this looked like a money pump designed to take money from a poor neighborhood and pump it into the pockets of slick evangelical ministers. Where the shopping center had been was, I kid you not, an auto junk yard, one of the "pick and go" type places. These sorts of things tend to be environmental disasters, and one doesn't normally find them that close to residential neighborhoods. Also, they take up a lot of space, so they need a place where the land value is quite low. The intersection of Frankstown Road and Verona Road used to have a number of small business. Now it has a Family Dollar store, a Get and Go, and a lot of buildings without windows or discernible business.
I don't feel sad. I feel appalled. I feel angry. This is a textbook case of injustice and prejudice destroying value, squandering wealth, it's devastation and destruction. It is heart-rending, but not in a nostalgic "can never go home again" sort of way. This is what happens when black lives don't matter. And it's not as bad as being murdered by the police, but it is part and parcel with it. This is the destruction of everything we say we love, in service of oppressing people. Dear god, what a terrible waste!
Pittsburgh, The Beautiful Bits
Because i was traveling alone, and could do anything I wanted, and didn't have to justify it to anyone (not even myself, shut up, self) I went to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America Theological Seminary. We had attended church there when we first moved to Pittsburgh, before we switched congregations, and I remembered the building with great fondness. It is still a beautiful building, and I wandered around, taking pictures. At some point, a very nice young man came out (unmasked) and asked me, very politely, what I was doing. I explained that i had attended church there in the early 70s, when my dad was the head of publications for the denomination, and I remembered the building as being very beautiful. I didn't need to come in, I just wanted to admire it. It was really very lovely. We chatted for a bit, he told me about the work restoring the wooden gables (which are very pretty, and very much in need of restoration) and that the beautiful Buckeye tree I remembered had died and they'd had to take it down.
I asked him if he was a seminary student, and he said that he had graduated, and was hoping for a calling to a congregation. I wished him luck, and hoped that his calling would bring him and his parishoners joy. (I did not realize until later that in that sentence, I had firmly established myself as being unchurched. This is a denomination that has pot-providence dinners.) He asked me the name of my father, and I told him. He asked me where my father had been pastor, and I said, "He was a pastor in Lisbon, NY until we moved here. He didn't have a church when we lived in Pittsburgh because he was head of publications, but then he took a church in Washington, Iowa, and was a pastor there until he was excommunicated." I paused, then said, reflectively, "It didn't go well for him, I'm afraid." The nice young man went a little white around the eyes. I said, "My mother still attends the congregation there, though." It was meant as a sop. At any rate, shortly after that, we decided we really had nothing else to say to each other. I really, honestly, didn't mean to be mean. I was just, you know, answering the question.
I also went to the University area, Oakland, where I went to high school (St. Paul Cathedral High School for Girls) and hung out at the Cathedral of Learning, volunteered at the Sarah Scaife Galleries, and hung out in the Carnegie Museum. Oakland is still just gorgeous. There's a restaurant on Craig Street currently called Ali Baba's which is, I'm pretty sure, the place where Lawrence took me on our first date and the first time I'd ever had Syrian food. (It was not called Ali Baba's then, but I can't remember what it was called, 35 years ago.) The security guard at the library wouldn't let me in, but we had a lovely chat. Turns out, she has some relatives who lived in Penn Hils, so we commiserated on the state of the neighborhood.
My biggest disappointment was that the Cathedral of Learning was closed. Patrick has referred to it as a "grand, giant wodge of Gothic cheese" and so it is. I attending monthly meetings of the Barony Marche, there. I read in the great hall. I wandered around the Nationality rooms. (I still have a 1970s cook book sponsored by them. It's...very 1970s. It thinks that pine nuts are an exotic and difficult to find food stuff.) The Cathedral is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, in it's overblown, very gilded-age, pseudo-medieval concrete. I love it extravagantly. (You should google it. There are a lot of pictures. They don't do it justice, it's marvelous as hell.) But it was closed. I pressed my nose to all the windows I could find. At one of the entrances, there was a security guard there. He came out, and asked me what I wanted. I said, "You have no reason to say 'yes'---"
"Then the answer is no."
"I just...I haven't been back to my home town in almost 40 years, and I used to study in the great hall, and I was wondering if there was any way at all you could let me in, just for a few minutes."
"Were you a student here?"
"Oh, no. I went to St. Paul Cathedral High School for Girls, it's on Craig Street just a couple of ---"
"Oh, really! My sisters went there. When was that?"
We established that his sister, Maureen Cook, had been at the school the same time I was. She had been a basketball player. He said, "Do you remember the coach, John Kovacs?"
"Him! My god, I heard he knocked up Mary Rae Kosko and had to marry her!"
"Oh, yeah, I heard that, too. You know, my dad would not let Maureen go on overnight trips. He said it was sounded pretty hincky. There was a lot of tears, but he held firm."
"Well, in this case, I think he was right! I mean, that's how Mary Rae got knocked up, on one of the overnights."
We had a lovely half-hour chat, and he was really very nice. He still wouldn't let me in the the building, though.
I also went to Point Park, and walked around the fountain. It is very, very large, and the lip is broad enough that three can walk abreast, at least if they are teenage girls. Point Park is at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, where they join to create the Ohio river. You can see the Duquesne Incline from there. There is a path along the river away from the point in both directions. I googled about, and discovered that there was a ride-share station quite close. So, I rented a bike, and rode around the point, down the river, back up to the point, and down the other way a little bit. It was hot as balls, and I had already walked a large number of kilometers, so I was exhausted and only managed a couple of miles, but it was so worth it. Mind you, I wouldn't bother trying to cycle in most of Pittsburgh. Most of Pittsburgh is at a 30 degree angle from the rest of Pittsburgh. Ok, maybe on a really, really good ebike. I thought it was interesting that the ride share bikes in Pittsburgh are six speeds, not three speeds like here and New York City. It was a short but glorious ride. Then I went back to my hotel, and fell the fuck over with extreme prejudice.
In Conclusion
Yeah, this was a bit long. Sorry. I wanted to record it so that I don't lose it to my own bad memory. I had a lovely trip. I am glad to be home. Life is weird. Hey, anybody want to go for a bike ride? I am, like weirdly possessed with it.
Also, I'm too tired to proofread this, so I apologize for all the errors. Possibly I'll pretty it up tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 09:44 pm (UTC)On my way from Penn Hills back to my hotel, I used Google to get me to Trader Joe's so I could buy some goat cheese (I had forgotten the cheese I bought in Brooklyn in Brooklyn), and found myself driving by the Tree of Life Synagogue. It was a bit startling. I hadn't even known I was in Squirrel Hill.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 05:07 pm (UTC)Welcome back!
Date: 2020-08-08 06:42 pm (UTC)Re: Welcome back!
Date: 2020-08-08 09:44 pm (UTC)Re: Welcome back!
Date: 2020-08-12 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 04:16 am (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 01:41 pm (UTC)Good for you for speaking with the lady about mask usage and it sounds like you managed to be less confrontational about it than I feel capable of. Hopefully you helped her see us as human and not demons of baby killing... Or whatever.
I would love to go on a bike ride if we could figure out logistics...
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 03:58 am (UTC)Sounds good, except (big except) for the systemic racism part. Glad of P&T, glad of Castle Valentine, especially glad of Ann.
Poor graduated seminary student. But can you translate the intent behind "this is a denomination that has pot-providence dinners" for me? Is it just, "Joy is not part of their equation" sort of thing?
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 05:28 am (UTC)The pot-providence thing has to do with Calvinism and predestination. Covenanters do not believe in luck, because predestination. They don't approve of board games which use dice to determine number of moves, do not approve of any sort of gambling, and do not admit that there is any such thing as luck, because god in his providence has fore-ordained all things. So, one can't have pot luck dinners, now can one? So they call them pot providence dinners. Because my god, if there is any way to suck a little bit of joy out of any social occasion, they are right there with that.
No, I don't like the church I was raised in. At all.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 02:12 pm (UTC)Probably this is too lengthy and/or private to get into, but now I'm curious -- why *did* your father get excommunicated?
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 06:32 pm (UTC)My dad...funny story -- eh, maybe not, since it involves me getting kinda sorta raped at the age of 16. I mean, I can tell the story so that it gets a lot of laughs... At any rate, one of the weird pieces of fallout from my losing my virginity is that my dad confessed to my mom that he was spending a lot of time, as in a lot of a lot of time, cruising gay bars. We then moved to Iowa, probably because Daddy thought there weren't any gay bars there? I'm not sure. Of course, we were only 40 miles away from Iowa City, and I guarantee there were gay bars there.
Mom, finally given a "biblical" reason to divorce my abusive father (adultery) went to the Council of Elders to tell all. Which included (and this part is genuinely funny) her sleeping with two of my boyfriends, and my father's infidelities. She got to stay in the church, my dad made a half-hearted attempt at suicide (shot a hole in the garage roof, probably entirely performative but who knows) and was excommunicated while he was still in the hospital for mental health treatment. I do not know, for sure, if the suicide attempt came before or after my mother went to the Council of Elders. I was not living at home.
The funny version of this story is called "How I lost my virginity and destroyed my family, a comedy" and I may get back to telling it again, after I've processed the rape at the heart of the story. I had left it in a box, not revisited it, until the Kavanaugh hearings. I have a long post about that, back a bit, if you care.
Sorry, that got weird and heavy and long. But the point is, the POINT IS, I was being very kind to that nice young seminarian.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 02:52 am (UTC)I mean. I say that recognizing that it was one facet of a post about your re-traumatization, for which I hurt for you then and also now. And wish any of your biological parents had been the adults for you they should have been.
But yah, these things take time, once they come roaring back. And the occasional ice cream break, after therapy and/or a particularly difficult moment.
And, to get back to the original question -- That is indeed quite sufficient reason for them to excommunicate him. Pity it was more the homosexuality and not the abuse, of course, buuut yes, this is a Certain Kind Of Church Culture.
(Oh, and: pretty/handsome is not just a fundamentalist thing, it's also a Red Blooded American Male thing and lord knows to some portions of this culture, a Real Man can't be anything but a certain specific kind of masculine. Gnar.)
no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 03:27 am (UTC)My argument that my boyfriend was pretty, not handsome, was that he was not conventionally handsome and therefore that word was misleading, and pretty fit him better. My mother's argument was that I was perverting language, and that by doing so, I was perverting my younger sisters' belief in an immutable world of good and evil, and creating fertile ground for a belief in situational ethics. The argument got weird from there. (The fact that my sister Bethany had, earlier that day, found birth control pills in my purse also featured in the argument. Again, I was corrupting youth.)
My church would have fed Socrates hemlock after he had uttered his third sentence, I tell you what. No way would he have been allowed an entire dialog.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 02:39 pm (UTC)We have been dating for 2 years--since June 2018. (I could probably figure out the exact date.)
And of course you are encouraged to return whenever you can; once things get a bit further Back to Normal, I will find reasons to have my company get me to Minneapolis.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 09:00 pm (UTC)I long for normal. How I long for it.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-17 10:14 pm (UTC)