near impossible to ask around here but Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I'd be the first to admit I'm probably a mole-ish creature at heart. My first conversation of the day from this morning, for instance, underscored fact that I spent countless hours from childhood-thru-latent-adulthood hidden among the bookshelves at the library. For a Person O Color, I was kind of a pasty kid.

DEE: Rise and shine, dear! Time to drop you off to work!

ME: Oh wah noooo! I've been up since practically pre-dawn. I got up to go to the bathroom and afterwards I could hear the heater making funny noises. Then the birds had to start in with their chirping. Tweet tweet tweet tweet...There was a whole chorus outside, including a particularly high-pitched soprano. Tweeet tweet TWEET!

DEE: Say what?

ME: I got my eye shade and ear plugs, but it still took FOR-EV-ER to fall back to sleep.

DEE: Why the eye mask?

ME (rolling eyes): Uh, because the glare of the morning sun broke in through the windows...

DEE *: Sounds like spring is in the air!*

*If I recollect correctly, Dee actually said "Will you stop being a crab-ass".

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Speaking of March-April madness, we saw Disney's new Alice in Wonderland on the big screen this weekend. Maybe Tim Burton's storyline didn't to stick too closely with the book or previous film, but we both thought the animation stole the show. Alice's animal crew were totally cutified! On the other hand, we were somewhat taken aback by the movie's 3-D violence (a la IMAX). Fight scenes with eyeballs and sewing needles = eeewww. Several days later...

DEE: Emergency Room, Charge Nurse.

ME: Hello, how are you? How's work?

DEE: We're on Psych Divert. What's up?

ME: You're right! The fighting dormouse was a girl.

DEE: How do you know?

ME: I read it on the internet.

DEE: Basically, you'll take the word of some movie reviewer over what I was telling you before.

ME: Or...hooray for investigative journalism resolving our difference of opinion!

DEE: G'bye.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Seriously though; while other peeps may have spent their Easter Sunday running around after hardboiled eggs, Dee and I were putting "Lost Tabby Cat" posters in mailboxes and on telephone poles throughout Em Island.

Two weeks is a long time for cans of usually coveted whitefish with gravy (WET food for goodness' sake) to remain untouched, even for an indoor-slash-outdoor cat who's never been shy about "visiting" with mice and other woodland creatures around the cottage. I mentioned to Dee that her rascally tabby--sorry, cherished kiddo--isn't the same madcap explorer anymore at 14, 15, 16 (?) yrs old but I'm loathe to crush a stubborn hope (which has turned into nightly dreams) that Annie's alright. I would love for Dee to be right believing in that Little Annie will emerge from her rabbit hole once the rainy season dies down a bit.

Aimee Nezhukumatahil's "Swear Words"

Even now I laugh when I see the look on my mother's face
when I swear in Tagalog. I have no idea what these phrases
really mean, but they've been spattered on me since I was still
a fat, bawling baby--and scattered onto my head when I've toppled

juice glasses on white carpet or come home past curfew.
Sometimes even the length of my skirts or driving her through
a red light produces ones with a bit of a gasp, a wet sigh
of disapproval. Now I catch myself saying them out loud

when I knock my knee against the coffee table,
slice a bit of my knuckle with paper. When I asked her,
she told me one phrase meant 'God,' so of course I feel guilty.
And another is 'crazy female lost piglet," which doesn't even

make sense when I think of the times I've heard her use that,
and still others, she claims, are untranslatable. But the one
I love best is Diablo--devil--pronounced: Jah-blew! She uses it
as if to tell me, "I give up! You do what you want but don't

come running to me, " after I tell her I bounced a check
or messed up a romance with a boy she finally approved of.
Diablo! Diablo! Here comes a little red devil, tiny pitchfork
in hand, running past the terra-cotta flower pots

in my mother's sunroom Diablo! Diablo! And still another from behind
the kitchen curtains, a bit damp from the day's splashes of the sink.
Today when they meet, they dance a silly jig on the countertop, knock
over the canister of flour, leave little footprints all over the place.

Super Extra-Special Valentine From 2005

"Mommy"--Mom's mom, my last surviving grandparent--passed away last week and her funeral is this Valentine's Day.

Writing in this journal is supposed to be mind-clearing, and I don't know when I'll be "ready" to confront [or finish coping with] the loss of the woman who helped raise me until I was three years old; the person I nicknamed "Mommy" as soon as I learned to speak English.

In a way, I'm grateful to be unavailable for the Wake. I'd like to remember her as she was the year Before, when I flew up for Daddy's funeral. The image of my newly inked back delighted my grieving grandmother. Mom, true to form or Nature, was aghast by the shoulder-to-shoulder design. While she scolded her only daughter--a lesbian!--over unfeminine tastes, Mommy sat shaking in her wheelchair, hysterical-laughing over the tattoo and absurdity of the situation.

C. Masikat (a former seamstress and then teacher by profession, whose first name bears my namesake) was a bright and enduring presence. She never lost her courage or sense of humor in spite of increasing physical debility. Following in her footsteps, I don't mean for this post to sound morose. In the Philippines, death is just another excuse to throw a party. It's like celebrating a birthday only you're saying goodbye to a loved one.

Bye Mommy. Love you.

(Mahal kita, 2/15/2005)

Robert Frank continued

The couple on the motorcycle they mentioned.

The segregated trolley car.

Yet another street candid.

Three queers with a sign behind them that reads "Don't Miss...?"

Art-e-fact Friday: Robert Frank +Sharon Goldstein

Heard on All Things Considered
August 30, 2009 - GUY RAZ, host:
Let's flash back now to the 1950s. Jack Kerouac had just rambled across the country, trying to capture a gritty side of the American spirit. The result: his landmark book "On the Road." And a young man from Switzerland set out to do the same thing only with a camera.



Robert Frank delivered a collection of photos in his book called "The Americans." The photos were far from the well-lit, tidy compositions Americans were used to. They were dark, grainy and candid images of ordinary people: a couple sharing a motorcycle in Indianapolis, whites and blacks riding a segregated trolley car in New Orleans and a girl working an elevator in a Miami Beach hotel.



Jack Kerouac wrote an introduction to the book that included this line: That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up, sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons. What's her name and address? And for half a century, we didn't have an answer until now.



Ms. SHARON COLLINS: My name is Sharon Collins, and I'm the elevator girl in Robert Frank's "The Americans."



RAZ: That photograph that Jack Kerouac writes about, the girl in the elevator, became one of Robert Frank's most recognizable. And for decades, you had no idea that you were the subject, right?



Ms. COLLINS: Yeah. No.



RAZ: Tell me about when you first saw it.



Ms. COLLINS: When San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art first opened, I think it was more than 10 years ago, I went through floor by floor. And I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it, and then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me.



RAZ: It's now the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank's book, "The Americans," and there's an exhibit in San Francisco. What made you decide to come forward now, especially when you've known about this for several years?



Ms. COLLINS: Well, it came back this past summer. And there was a review of the exhibit in the San Francisco Chronicle, and pictured on the front of the entertainment section was the photo of me. I told my two sons about it, my husband, and they said, you've got to call them. So I called.



RAZ: Sharon Collins, you were known as Sharon Goldstein back then in 1955.



Ms. COLLINS: Yes.



RAZ: So you got this job at the Sherry Frontenac Hotel.



Ms. COLLINS: Sherry Frontenac, yeah.



RAZ: And that was in Miami Beach. And…



Ms. COLLINS: I grew up in Miami Beach. And when I was 15 years old, all the other kids were going off to summer camp. My mother was the sole support of our family. And I couldn't go to summer camp, so I made - I guess I made my own.



RAZ: So you got this job as an elevator girl.



Ms. COLLINS: Yeah, all the skill for that.
(Soundbite of laughter)



RAZ: Do you remember Robert Frank taking that photograph of you, this iconic photograph?



Ms. COLLINS: I wish I did. I don't remember it. There were lots of tourists that came through, and lots of people had cameras. And guys used to like to take pictures of me, and I'd bat my eyes at them and flirt.



RAZ: In this shot, your expression is almost unreadable. Kerouac guessed that you were lonely. Do you think Jack Kerouac captured you accurately?



Ms. COLLINS: I think he saw in me something that most people didn't see. You know, I have a big smile and a big laugh. So people see, you know, one thing in me. And I suspect that somehow Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac saw something that was deeper that only people who were really close to me can see, and it's not necessarily loneliness, it's, I don't know, dreaminess.



RAZ: Sharon Collins recognized herself as the elevator girl from Robert Frank's famous 1955 photograph. She joined us from KQED in San Francisco. Mrs. Collins, thank you so much for joining us.



Ms. COLLINS: And thank you. It's a pleasure.



RAZ: The 50th anniversary exhibit of Robert Frank's photos is en route to New York, where it opens next month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And you can see Frank's photo of the elevator girl then and an updated photo now at the new npr.org.

Small Packages

Normally I'm not a huge fan of surprises, so Young Blood went ahead and told me to look for something fun in the mail. He also said what to expect, sorta. "If I bought you a scarf from my trip to P-town, would you wear it?" "Sure." "What if it were a wig?" "Yeah, ok." "Cool." Hmm, I guess I'm not getting another necklace.

YB is, in many ways, different from me. He writes thank you cards. And he remembers to send them in a timely fashion. He also wakes up at 5am, 5 days/week to go to The Native Plant Center near his school where he does work-study in inevitably 100 degree weather (80 degree humidity in the Fall). Whereas I doubt that I'll ever call myself a "Morning Person" and I keep one small fern at the office. Still, last year's gift of a single strand of red seeds and beach-colored stones was artfully sprung. He hadn't bothered to ask what type of accessories I'm into (earrings) and I figured he chose red because it's popular (at least around the Xmas holiday). Wait, Mom used to say it was her favorite color--and maybe it's mine too?

This time around, I won't ask Young Blood for a reason ("You know, you don't have to snail mail me anything. I know you're looking for a job-job."). I'll just have to thank him for thinking I have such good taste.

Methinks there should be longer 3-day weekends

There's nothing like going to bed at 1:00am on Sunday night after a weekend out-of-town, KNOWING that you need to get up at 6:00am, and proceeding to wake up EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR until the alarm goes off at zero.five.hundred.thirty.hours.

Your ever-patient Squeeze, rubbing a shoulder blade.
"Hey, it's going to be okay."
"No, it's not," you snarl back...

More to come soonish.