Put Yourself to Bedlam

“To escape criticism – do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” -- Elbert Hubbard

Perhaps my fifteen minutes of fame has yet to arrive. Or perhaps, like a cat has nine lives, I'm destined to experience repeated quarter hours over the course of my life and career. This time my fame comes from controversy (who's surprised?).

This weekend, Burlington held its annual ART HOP and through a series of unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate?) events, I found myself at the center of an old debate: What is art? Is it decoration? And when a business agrees to host an art show, do they have final editorial license (or in my case ultimate veto?)

This was my first (and likely last ART HOP) and I signed up to exhibit two pieces - one for the outdoor juried show, and one for the indoor juried show. Through a clerical error, ART HOP assigned me an additional exhibition space to hang a personal show.

I found this out late last week when they phoned to tell me the time and place to drop off my artwork.

"Um, Mr. Art Organizer...I didn't sign up for a show."

"You didn't? Oh."

"Does this mean my name is printed in the program as showing somewhere?"

"Yes, but we could put up a sign that says you're not showing if you like."

"I don't think so. I'll have something for you as soon as possible."

So I put together a show of 24 postcard sized images of mostly bucolic postcardy stuff. The ferry returning for the evening on Lake Champlain. Scottish Highland cows lined up and staring into my lens. Macros of flowers etc. All benignly beautiful and uncontroversial except for the few images of dolls and mannequins I slipped in for my own good pleasure.

Three of the images were of a snow covered doll.

A day after I hung the show, and two days before the public exhibition officially began, I received a phone call from the organizers.

"Kimberley, I'm afraid I have some bad news....The business owner has asked that you take down your show."

"WHAT?! WHY?"

"She said that she didn't appreciate that you hung pictures of 'dead baby dolls' in her space."

"Baby dolls can't die because they were never alive."

"Well, she doesn't want them there."

"Ok."

He offered to let me move the show to SEABA headquarters. The problem was (other than the obvious) that I didn't really have time to move the show and anyway WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO?

So I thought about it and ranted about it some and thought about it some more. I decided to take the show down and wear it on the main day of the festival. I made a poster with an enlargement of the offending image that said, "Does This Photo Offend YOU?"

I also made fifty copies of the image with that slogan and my contact info that I gave out to people at the ART HOP and friends who wanted to support my cause.

The two local papers interviewed me. The 7Days blogged about it at BLURT (their staff blog) and the Burlington Free Press published it in this Sunday's paper (today).

For the record, I did not want to make this a pissing contest between me and SEABA or the business owner but the papers and their readership are sure trying to make it into that.

All I want is for this to stimulate dialog about how to avoid this type of situation in future. If I'd just sat still and done nothing about it - the business owner would have had the advertising she'd signed up for, the traffic funneled to her site and I would have had my name in the program with a blank space where my art should be simply because the host had a reaction to my work (isn't art supposed to illicit a response? Any response is good, right?).

People are pretty pissed that I didn't allow the situation to be swept under the rug, but I'm sticking to my guns (again, who's surprised?). I feel I represent all artists and that the business owner represents all business owners.

The question is, who has editorial control to decide what is and what is not appropriate for showing at businesses? What is art? Are these art shows, craft fairs or is this plain old fashioned business as usual?

Quixotically,
XXKHT

”Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway .” -- Eleanor Roosevelt

News from the Home Front...

The Word of the Day for April 10 is:
velleity   \vuh-LEE-uh-tee\   noun
     1 : the lowest degree of volition
    *2 : a slight wish or tendency : inclination

That is what I have to get back to blogging - a slight wish or inclination.

However, these are my distractions:

and...

and the deadline for Burlington City Arts Market is next Wednesday so these have to be dealt with:

on this:

and lest we forget even though we try....

and this combination of unfinished art and clutter...

Oh! Add on the ever distracting nursery:

Well...this was a clever waste of a half hour. Now which thing to start on first?

XXKHT
              April 10, 2008

1. Libra (9/23-10/22)

               

   You've got a lot of things going on right now, but you don't have time to deal with all of them. Solution? Delegation. Give away as many errands, tasks and jobs as possible today. You have plenty of family members, coworkers or friends who would be fine with taking something off your plate, so give them a call. Find out who can help you out. By the end of the day, things should start getting back to normal. Don't forget to thank them for their help -- so they will want to help you again!

(already made the call...)

“I'm disappointed, but I'm not going to run around like Dennis Rodman and head-butt somebody.” ~ Greg Norman

It's one a.m. and I am not looking at the total lunar eclipse on this calm, clear night because......

IT'S OVER!

Usually I'm on top of these things. Normally, I'm the one telling everyone else not to miss the celestial event.

Last time we had a lunar eclipse (some time last year) I must have told 20 people about it, and then it turned out to be overcast and completely obscured. I was terribly disappointed because a couple of years before that - the very same year we had incredible aurora borealis from an enormous solar storm, and I think the same year that Mars was closer to earth than it gets in some thousands of years, and also some incredible planetary alignment -  I saw my first one and it awed me with its luminous color and the detail the lack of brightness afforded the naked eye.

This evening, my daughter's friend told me about it. I'd heard nothing till then; probably because I take my news from World Headlines and Buzzflash; and so, I gratefully took her at her word that it would be from about 1:30 to 3:00 a.m. I didn't bother to look it up, but I did make a date with my daughter to meet up and watch it.

I put on a movie and waited. She didn't call but I didn't consider anything out of order - I knew she was out with her friends. By 12:50 I hadn't heard from her yet, so I called. Clearly caught red handed blowing me off, she said, "Mom, I thought you'd be asleep or it was too late to call you....we've been watching the eclipse all night.....it's probably over by now."

Kids.

So here I am, bright eyed and bushy tailed with no plan. She invited me over, but it's like -10 degrees out and I'm not schleping into the bitterness unless there's a spectacle for my effort.

I should have double checked. Still, it's a small price to pay for a life free of mainstream media I suppose. It makes me want to sign up for a NASA alert or something just so it won't happen again.

As for my daughter....that minx. What kind of 20 year old would rather hang around with her friends on her first night back in town instead of sky watching with her mommy? Sheesh!

But one unexpected nice thing happened as a result of the mishap. I went looking for celestial quotes, and came across this exquisite passage from one of my favorite artists....

“Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have."”  ~ Henry Rollins

I've had such a crush on him for so long. Tonight maybe I'll be that angel - and he can be my beautiful gift, if only in the celestial colors of our dreams. 

XXKHT

Signs. Signs. Everywhere is Signs.

 

It's my first post of the new year, and I had some lovely photos to share of snowshoeing in gorgeous Stowe with my gorgeous friend Stephanie and her even more gorgeous baby daughter.

I had good things to report about the passing of the old year to the new. I had good things, and good pics and then as Tilly says in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, "all hell done broke loose."

As I finally flopped down with my laptop on the first night of the new year, I turned it on and as I started the usual run from mailbox to site meter to comments boxes etc. I didn't make it half way through  before ...pffft/click. Black screen.

No big deal. This had been happening with some regularity; but as the computer had yet to fail to turn back on again, it had been little more than an annoying delay. I turned it back on and started up Firefox again and again a few seconds into it...pffft/click/black screen.

One more time and I noticed the weak-with-age battery showed a few minutes power and no new power was coming in even with the new power adapter (which is another boring, ongoing computer saga)

Anyhoo...to make a long story short(er), my lappie is ailing. The following morning, I took it in to the apple doc and was heartened to find that it may have just been the crappy cheap (twice replaced now) adapter; so I bought a sturdier version from the officials and left hopeful and only 50 bucks poorer.

When I got home and plugged her in, I reached to phone my aunt B - who's been following the saga because a) she's my closest confidente and b) she bought me the danged computer in the first place, so naturally she's interested in knowing why an $1800 computer that's only 2 years old* is crapping the bed already.

I flipped open the 4 month old mobile and after failing to dial, I read "Searching for Service" next to zero bars  on the screen - in my house - an unprecedented event (did I mention I was in my house?). I used my bfs phone to call my aunt and turned the mobile off in case it was cold, or needed a rest, or whatever...what was happening to my electronic equipment?!

I tried to ignore the phone and put together a philosophical and hopeful piece about the promise of a new year, highlighted with lovely pics of my gorgeous mini vacay in Stowe, but I couldn't prod my heart into it and everything came out exactly like what I hate about many blogs - all personal and about stuff nobody other than the writer or their very best and kindest friends would want to read (kind of like this post, only schmaltzier) so I closed up shop and decided to try again the next day.

Well, Eight in the morn arrived and the cock, rather than crow, dumped all my clean clothes all over the floor of our room because, "Are these clothes clean, or what?!" followed by, "Do all these sweaters go in the wash?"

Mmmppfh, I groused from beneath the covers where I was shielding myself from the glare of our interrogation-like bedside "reading" lamps with their 500 watt florescent energy saver blinding bulbs.

This is a common example of my bfs (aka"the cock') obnoxious habit of starting shit before I'm out of bed. Passive/Aggression before the quarry has opened her eyes. He's very aware that she can go from asleep to homicidal in one dumb sentence and a laundry dump, and yet, the cock, for inexplicable reasons,  loves this game. What puzzles her is why he never fails to act amazed that she still wants to kill him 2 hours later when nothing can return her mood to the usual cheery morning version - highly enhanced by said ritual coffee guzzling.

The day degenerated from there. Next came the plumbing fiascos.

It started with the shower leak that the landlord was scheduled to come and look into. It seems that for some weeks or months, whenever we showered, water trickled down into the neighbors basement - the neighbors being 25 y.o. boys (going on 19), and as we're renters, they, not surprisingly, could give a rat's behind about things like water damage etc  - or in my case, possibly falling, naked, through the ceiling of their basement; which appears to be possible because the form of our molded shower stall is clearly visible if you look up into the unfinished ceiling over their basement stairs - suspended as if by magic - but which logic suggests is probably not the case.

The landlord arrives to fuss around with it - presumably sealing it or whatever, but (for some reason) I'd forgotten he was coming and as he's leaving, he says over his shoulder, "So you don't need to take a shower today, do you?" "I guess not," I say, but inside I'm thinking, "of course I need a shower dammit! I haven't had one yet!" (I'm the type to take two showers a day, ecology be damned! and bad moods can cause even more showers because they are where I go to hide).

So the cock leaves for yoga, which I foolishly refused to attend because I didn't want to be a with the laundry throwing ape man of my waking nightmares - and while he's away, I began preparing lunch. As I'm standing at the sink, I notice my socks are getting wet on the bottom.

We have a pretty shallow sink in the kitchen, and I'm a very sloppy dishwasher, so at first, I blame it on over-splash and take my socks off and carry on. A trip to the other side of the kitchen, however, reveals a few centimeters of standing water, which is moving in the direction of my bedroom.

I grabbed a towel, and started mopping it up (What is this swiffer thing? Where's the cotton mop? WTF?) and now I've got a soaking wet bath towel that I can't twist out in the shower stall because our seal is drying till tomorrow - and I can't wring it in the kitchen sink because that's what's producing the water in the first place, and so I'm left with the toilet or the tiny bathroom sink. Six wring-outs later, the landlord shows back up to look under the sink cabinet. A flashlight reveals a rather large hole in the drain pipe. He applies a wrench. The drain pipe disintegrates onto the floor of the cabinet.

"Wow" he says.

"Yeah, look at that" I say.

So now I've got two large wet rugs, a dirty soaking wet towel, wet sweat pants and very cold feet, along with congealed eggs in the pan (where I left them) and he says,

"I'll be back in the morning to fix this"

"Morning. Great." "I'll just go find someplace else to be until tomorrow." Only I can't go anywhere, because I can't call anybody because my f'ing phone is dead!**

With no recourse, I scarfed down my cold eggs and went downstairs to visit with the 25/going on 19 y.o. neighbor boys, to share my woes (they love to hear me complain; it's a fact).

While I'm down there, my bf comes back from yoga, and after finding my note comes to find me and stands there staring until I agree to come back out with him to complete our errands for the day - one of which is picking up my newly sharpened skis to go with my spanky new boots (a gift from the bf, one point in his favor) so that we can go skiing tomorrow at Jay Peak.

First we stopped on what was supposed to be a quick errand to cash in some rolled coin my aunt gave me - when he annoys me by parking as far away from the entrance as possible, on the witches tit coldest day of the year, so that we can lug the cold heavy coin farther than necessary; after which he plops down in a lobby chair expecting to wait out my cracking open what turns out to be $220 worth of at least half pennies (by weight). Fortunately, a gentle, "Would you mind helping me?" gets him back up and by my side to expedite the process.

After returning to the house for a forgotten ski boot - "essential" he claims because they won't release my sharpened skis without double checking it against the bindings - a requirement, btw, I've never heard of but complacently fetched the forgotten boot anyway - again he backs the truck into a place across the street rather than just drop me off in front and then parking - a move he already knows I hate, but when I predictably say something, he replies in his best whiny imitation of me, "So what! I made you walk 3 extra steps!"

Finally, we drive to the ski tuners where he parks my door into a far away snowbank - (god forbid anyone harm the precious truck!) and as I'm halfway up the sidewalk to the store, he calls from curbside, "BOOT!"

"What?"

"You forgot your boot!"

I didn't even know how to argue. I was so amazed that he was calling me back to the truck he was standing next to at the time, to get the boot out myself so that I could carry it into the store, as to be struck dumb. He then proceeded regally, a dozen feet ahead of me, and as I passed him on the way to the counter, I threw him the most defiantly hateful look I could muster. It was like a scene from a movie where the pimp is showing the prostitute that he is the man and she's like, "Bring it, asshole. You only think you own me."

I childishly insisted on carrying my skis and boots out of the store and to the truck like a big girl, and  sent him away after which I headed directly to the shoe store and bought a pair of winter clogs I'd been coveting for two years.

That's a woman for you. When all hell breaks loose - we buy shoes.

Happy Stupid F@#&ing!! New Years Everyone. I hope your year is going better than mine.

XXKHT

*old in computer terms yes, but not old enough to DIE

**as in dead dead. As in the sassy clerk at Verizon mall outlet says, "You have to take it to South Burlington. We don't do repairs here." I don't have a working car of my own, and I'm currently not speaking to "the car," so I guess I'm phoneless until someone gives me a ride because I'm not taking a bus on the witch tit coldest night of the year!

Music: The Police - Any Other Day

Here is a pretty picture of the happiness that was day one of 2008 before it turned uglified:

It seems to me... that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy. -- I. Asimov; Foundation's Edge

What is privacy?

We all claim to want it, yet we all willingly give it up in various ways nearly every minute of every day - and the internet is the gossip queen of the global neighborhood.

Yesterday, I signed up for a site meter widget because it was free, and because I'm curious, and because I would like to know if anyone's actually reading this blog.

I openly confess that, to me, blogging is a kind of mental masturbation; it's absolutely the kind of intimate act meant to be viewed in public - an exhibitionists revelation of their mental process. Of course, I can't speak definitively for other bloggers, and though there are exceptions to every rule, I'm pretty sure this is a universal truth, even as most bloggers would be loathe to admit it (for obvious reasons).

The thing is, I'm super conscious of our loss of privacy in this day and age. With each lazy concession, we  give more and more power to those who would harm us with their data collections, as we set our minds ever more rigidly into the denial that the bad guys won't get us (yet), somewhat like a child believes that if they stay beneath the covers the under the bed monsters won't know they're there.

This one thing is for certain: The monsters are hungry, and they definitely know you're there. And not just that you're there, but what your bed covers are made of, where you got them, which method of payment you used, if you bought them out of state, how much tax you paid, and when the last time you purchased a blanket was, and perhaps even an estimate of how many blankets you have in your home; and while they're at it, what your average heating bill is and which fuel you use.

I read somewhere recently that your cell phone can be used to eavesdrop on your conversations even when you're not talking on it - even when it's OFF. Apparently, you have to take the battery out of the device to be safe from this type of surveillance.

Additionally, a few years ago, I read that Gillette announced it was using the latest cheap nano-technology to install tiny cameras in their product packages in addition to the aisles that the products are placed in - to monitor - for scientific purposes of course - who's buying their products and where they're taking them.

This particular personal product/surveillance tool really really bothered me because, where does a person shave? Ahem. In the bathroom or shower of course. Talk about the Naked Truth!

Even with rampant willful ignorance, there can't be a person alive who hasn't considered that we just may have reached critical mass on this issue.  London has a camera on every street - 10,000 of them and this just in: some with machine guns attached! Every mall, shop and many street corners in America are on not-so-candid camera as well; the situation has surpassed absurd. Our bathrooms people! Our bathrooms.

And so this afternoon, as I toured the features of PYTB's spanky new traffic widget (did I mention it was free?), I experienced a mixed reaction of info-junky rush and dogmatic philosophical shame. My ethics are definitely in question for using this device. I'm not selling anything! I don't need to know that a surfer from San Francisco spent 10 minutes here and looked at 3 pages while he/she was at it, and oh by the way, they use Mozilla Firefox as an operating system which they connect through comcast cable, and they arrived via so and so's blog link, and left to go to such and such place.

I don't need to know all that. But I love to. I do.

Apparently, I'm not just an exhibitionist, but a voyeur as well. And while I'm at it, better toss masochist onto the heap. Joy.

The words of Schleprock are gloomily repeating inside my head....
"We're doomed. We're all doomed."
(especially me..)
XXKHT

"He who would trade liberty (or privacy) for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty (nor privacy) nor security." --Ben Franklin (and KHT)

Post script:

I received the following in an email from a good friend immediately following this post:

"I guess I won't be visiting your site anymore...Would you send your blogs to me directly?"

Here is my response (a bit defensive, I admit): 

(Dear Friend:)

If you think any of the sites you ever visit aren't using the same surveillance, you're completely in denial.

The site meter widget I added is not unique; it's just one of a gazillion options for traffic monitoring - and at least my blog wears a button telling the visitor that it's being done. The typepad website was monitoring visitors with a less comprehensive version (only to me!) from the git go, and the site meter widget is merely an improvement upon what information I get to view of that surveillance.

Allow me to use your favorite site as an example: here's a quote from (Insert Political Watchdog Site* here):

"(Insert Same Political Watchdog Site* here) provides headlines, news, and commentary for a geographically-diverse, politically-savvy, pro-democracy, anti-hypocrisy web community, reaching  five million* people a month and growing.
*"Visitor statistics courtesy of Urchin Web Analytics v5.6.00r2"

I wrote to them to ask for sure whether they use a tracking device before I found the above in their About section. I'll let you know what they say specifically about it, if anything.

I'm very eager to stimulate a discourse on this topic, so comments are encouraged and as yet unmoderated. Bring it on.

**the name of the site is withheld because I did not ask permission to quote it, but their own description, sans name, is intact:

“If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal... whose acts and moves threaten and trouble the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real..universal enemy is preciseley Yankee Imperialism."

I worship George Carlin....

Are we seriously going to sleep through our own destruction? What's it going to take to stop collectively smacking the snooze button on realization? Of course, the bed is warm and comfy (just like they made it for you) - but your house is on fire!

With love,
XXKHT

**you can purchase the flag in the video at adbusters.org:  The United Brands of America

We are growing serious, and let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull." --Joseph Addison

I just spent the morning giggling my arse off over funny blogs. During the rounds, I noticed something interesting: funny blogs get a LOT more attention than serious ones.

Although I think this is endemic of our times - the eat drink and be merry attitude, that is, it totally ignores the next all important line: for tomorrow we die.

I am funny.

Ha ha.

It's odd to put it down like that, and it looks ridiculous sitting there all alone. It's like saying "trust me." If you have to say it, it's most likely untrue. But seriously...I am funny (Can't you see how funny I am?!)  In my real life I'm funnier than I am preachy (I swear!) - something you may never gather from this blog.

I began Put Yourself to Bedlam less than a month ago. At the time I had (and still have) no idea what it is or should be about; only that I wanted to write regularly, as a discipline and as a means to broadcast issues I care for (there are so very many competing these days), and as a cure for boredom - something we've an excess of around here these days.

In addition to the uneven attention given to funny blogs, I also noticed that they have a definite goal: to make you laugh. Sure they're just like other blogs in that they're means of self promotion, soliciting acceptance, and ego fuel (if you're lucky); but in most cases they are waay more successful in achieving these ends.

I truly believe that laughter is the best medicine (yawn). For instance, even though I'm over 40 and have four kids, I'm frequently mistaken for someone much younger (often in my early twenties - shaWING!). And I don't think it's just my tendency to keep younger company, and definitely something more than good genes or staying out of the sun.

After much thought, I've concluded it's the laughter that keeps me so young.  I have a pee in my pants moment at least once a day - and I don't mean literally, thankewverymuch (keep the old woman comments to yerself). I mean I lose myself to fits of uncontrollable laughter often so loud they're embarrassing to me and others.  Certain people in my life bring this out- especially my daughter Ashley. We get going and it can go for hours. I'm so lucky to have this. I love to crank her up and keep her going (see picture of Ashley wetting her young self below).

So what's my point? I guess that I would like to figure out how to express myself here without coming across as a moldy curmudgeon while I put readers to sleep in the first paragraph (like magic!). But I also want to do what I set out to do which is inform on the issues I care about.

The trick will be in finding how to slip in serious points (and make them stick) while amusing enough to draw and keep readers. What's the value of point making if there's nobody standing still to point at? In other words, I'm searching for a way to sneak the vegetables in without the kids finding out - like my favorite fake newsmen: Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. Colbert is a master of this method: By obscenely promoting the opposite of what he really thinks, he gets viewers to find the point on their own, which is the very best way to teach anything.

I must find balance and define my form. Clearly people need a spoonful of sugar to get the medicine down. Since nobody's really reading this...I suppose I have all the time (and do overs) in the world...

Yet another not funny entry, sent, with hope, into the ether,
XXKHT

"No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language." --Theodore Bikel

.....he left out resumes.

In October, after I lost my lousy stinkin' fetid torturous job as a lowly cashier at Burlington's only downtown grocery store (that happens to pose as a benevolent union co-op), I took a vow: Never again would I debase myself to such a degree just to eat and put a roof over my head - or in their case get health insurance.

Lofty declaration, eh?

Well, things have been coming along swimmingly thus far - If I'm ever posthumously famous, this period will merit a name - perhaps the "Self Discovery Period" or "The Time of Creative Reconciliation."

The Department of Labor however, has other plans. This coming Thursday, I'm expecting their phone call by which they're expecting  proof that I've been actively searching for another crappy job. They'll have no use for my epiphanies, and to them there is no such thing as becoming a full-time artist unless you aren't expecting them to support you while you're doing it.

The thing is, I really think I can do this....I just need a little time. I've kept myself busy. I write every day; articles to sell to magazines as well as blogging (as you can see here) with only a few jokes here and there because I am ridiculous that way.

I've also been networking with local crafters and buying supplies while coming up with ideas on what to make and how to sell these things after they're produced.

I applied to join The Burlington Craft Mafia just before logging on to write this and after meeting with one of their mafiosas at the Vermont Women's Craft Fair this past weekend.

And there is the issue of 20,000 photographs that need to be edited and filed of which I expect at least a  few hundred to be suitable for stock and a hundred or so for fine art prints. This is supposed to be my dead-a-winter project, in addition to turning many of them into art cards for which I currently have paper supplies enough to make several hundred to start (sans prints).

Lastly, I entered the Montpelier SculptCycle competition yesterday. The design package was ready last week, but I didn't want it to lose impact by arriving just before Thanksgiving while the organizers could only think about getting on with their holiday, and I strategically held it back.

So what am I supposed to do? I started by revisiting the resume I have been avoiding  - it reads like the rap sheet of a criminal underachiever. I mean, I've done some big stuff, working for celebrities etc., but there's enough cashier, waitress and customer service representative, in addition to the huge hole left by insisting on being available to my children during their formative years as to appear pitiful, particularly to me.

I'm painfully aware that prospective employers are not going to read the survivor in between the lines - they're just going to see a year here and a year there doing this or that like a vagabond.

I knew all along it would catch up to me. I've been dreading the inevitability of being forced to rue the brazen decisions of my youth despite having carried a continuing disdain for the conditions and expense of higher education. Yet I plodded along hoping (just this once) I might be wrong as I kept leaping the hurdles as they appeared before me.

Here's my concession to the D.O.L....I sent the rap sheet version along with my artist's resume to an advertising firm here in downtown Burlington, along with a long, rather cheeky cover letter explaining why they're getting two similar but also strikingly different CVs. Their advertisement was similarly cheeky, and though I'd set out this day to avoid getting a job while still applying for them, I am allowing a tiny shred of hope for this one place. There's travel involved. They also claim growth potential, and more importantly they're all about my beloved internet and it's magical networking powers.

Meanwhile, back to the want-ads to search jobs I don't want while attempting to ensure they won't want me. Here's hoping I can finesse the obligatory audit, and keep paddling as hard and fast as it takes to get somewhere before the luxurious sum of $266 a week runs dry and I'm left to eat my Imelda Marcosesque (but utterly useless in Vermont) shoe collection.

Mmm yum, that's some fine Italian hand tooled leather....

XXKHT

"Christmas is a season of such infinite labour...

...as well as expense in the shopping and present-making line, that almost every woman I know is good for nothing in purse and person for a month afterwards, done up physically, and broken down financially." --Fanny Kemble

Out and about on Church St. today. The Christmas lights are half up and there are throngs of shoppers everywhere. The parking garage sign blinked "Lot Full," and every cash register had a winding line of unseasonably weary shoppers.

I actually went shopping for paper to make a new cover for an exposed light fixture in my bathroom and afterwards was to meet a friend for coffee. While I was out, I was struck by the unseasonably early sense of holiday urgency.

I am a self confessed Humbug. I dread the holidays mostly because I'm almost always separated from my children, and because I rarely have any money.

The last year I was married, I tried to save Christmas and my marriage by hand-making everything I gave away. I asked the extended family to similarly keep it simple, and then sequestered my brood at my father's cabin in West Virginia for the duration.

The kids and I cut a tree and baked cookies for decoration. I made a lovely traditional Christmas eve dinner (just like my ex-husband's German mother) of smoked pork chops, saurkraut and mashed potatoes, begun by a soup course of chicken broth and dumplings - nice comfy, starchy yum food.

That night I read to the family my favorite short story, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote and choked up like I always do on the last paragraph where he remembers his dead aunt and best friend "Buddy" from childhood.

Regardless of my efforts, my marriage ended the following February. My husband would not be warmed  by my gestures. Ever since, something has been missing, and I've faced the holidays  like a school kid looks forward to a final exam.

Last year, my 19 year old daughter and I tried to cancel it all together. But then the time grew closer, and I had to buy presents to send the younger kids anyway, and one thing led to another....

Before you knew it, our presents were around the tv cabinet. We had our traditional German dinner. We got through it...and here it is again.

Happy Holidays...
XKHTX

"And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven." --Truman Capote; A Christmas Memory