Boomer Home Decorating

Few things make a more obvious personal statement than one’s home décor. Furniture style, fabric choice, and colors say so much about a person—her lifestyle, interests, level of sophistication. But it’s our choice of artwork and accessories that really add sparkle and personality to a living space. Of course, these items have varied over the years. For example, I once decorated with …

MACRAME

Comprised of artfully arranged knots, at least one macramé creation graced each room in my first apartment. Macrame plant hangers dangled by the window over the kitchen sink, a macramé divider studded with wooden beads separated the living room from the dining area, and macramé owls adorned the wall over my bookcase. I became quite adept at knotting.

CHIANTI BOTTLE CANDLES

How many hours did I spend with friends, singing folk songs by the light of a candle stuck into an empty Chianti bottle? Too many to count! It was a badge of honor to have one of these raffia-covered wine bottles coated with waxy drips sitting on a dining room table—the thicker the wax, the better. We could even buy special candles that would drip in a wide spectrum of colors!

BRICK AND BOARD BOOKCASES

Brick and board bookcases were almost a requirement among my friends. Housing textbooks from college and well-thumbed paperbacks, they also might be a place to put one’s hi-fi stereo and record album collection (depending on the sturdiness of the boards).

BIG MOUTH BILLY BASS

Does anyone remember seeing advertisements for these wall plaques on late night TV? According to Wikipedia, the singing fish’s repertoire included “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” (the music was taken from the original Bobby McFerrin recording) and “Take Me To The River” by Al Green.  If you’d like to experience this musical decorating phenomenon again, here’s a link to a YouTube video of one of Billy Bass’s performances: Billy Bass Singing
(No, I never really had one of these!)

What decorative items have graced your walls over the years?

PHOTO CREDITS:
Macrame Owls
Big Mouth Billy Bass
Chianti Candle
(Photo posted with permission from Cheri Dietzman, from her blog “The Cottage.” Visit her blog for more photos and decorating ideas.)

As Luck Would Have It; A Bout With Breast Cancer

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, what better time to tell my story, something I haven’t done for a long time. I don’t think too much about it any longer, for fear it will bring back all those old memories I’ve managed to store away in the back of my mind somewhere.

The title of this post may be somewhat misleading, if construed that there is anything about having breast cancer that can be considered “lucky”. But, in looking back on my experience, I can see that several things which happened to me can be considered to be happy endings as compared to what could have been a much more unfavorable outcome.

In July of 1996, I was having a bit of a problem with my internal thermostat. Hot flashes. My friends were going through the same thing and the way to get rid of them was ERT (Estrogen Replacement Therapy). I went to Dr. L. for this and he casually asked, “So, how long since you’ve had a mammogram?” Uh. He would have to ask that. Too long, I’ve been busy, my career has taken me from place to place, contracting here and there. He strongly suggested I get a mammogram, and surprisingly, I did, even though I am sometimes apt to ignore sage advice.

I should have known something was up when the picture-taker came back for a second shot, but I remained blithely unaware. Until Dr. L. himself called me with the news. They see something. I’m recommending a surgeon, Dr. C. You know when doctors call you at home the news is never good, right? And they call in person? And it’s after five? And it’s a Friday evening? And, he said, stop the ERT immediately. Do not take one more pill.

Okay, I did that. I made my appointment with Dr C. If it is the last memory I have, I will not forget how wonderful this man was. He was an older version of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and a more knowledgeable, trustworthy, understanding doctor I have yet to meet. He didn’t make me feel like I was ever wasting his time, if I had more questions, then he was there to answer them. And if he sometimes kept me waiting for an appointment, I knew he was with another patient as scared as I was, and I never minded. It was so very important, at that very frightening, emotional time in my life, not to be rushed through my appointments, and more important, my decisions.

He had an assistant surgeon, or apprentice surgeon, Dr. A., a Paul Ryan “numbers” kind of guy who was also great — in a different way. He talked to me very honestly, with his statistics and percentages, which helped me immensely when faced with all the choices to be made. He did love his numbers.

I had some bad news though. I was Stage IIB. For some reason, Stage II is the only one they divide between A and B. It’s a “size matters” kind of differentiation. A is better than B. I had lobular carcinoma rather than ductal. Ductal is a little better news, it tends to be more encapsulated. Lobular spreads it’s tiny fingers of cancer goo in amongst all the cells, the blood vessels, the fatty material within the breast. The tumor was “poorly differentiated”. This is real bad. When asked what that meant, I discovered the tumor did not in any way resemble healthy cells. “Well differentiated” would have been much better. These are things we don’t know before breast cancer, that there are tumors that are “better” than others. Mine was pretty awful.

I had a lumpectomy in September, but it was the decision of Dr. C. that he didn’t get it all. He didn’t feel good about it, so in October I had a full mastectomy.

Then came the good news. My lymph nodes were not affected, which meant the cancer hadn’t spread. It’s funny to think of it in those terms today, “Good news! Your cancer hasn’t spread!”

And then, according to Dr. C., it was “extremely estrogen-receptor positive”. He said he had never seen one with such high markers as mine. What’s that? That doesn’t sound good! But it is. It’s very good news. The ERP tumors can be treated easier than estrogen-receptor negative. Again, see the above gallows humor about Good News Tumors.

Now came a period of indecision. Dr. C. recommended “precautionary” chemotherapy and five years of Tamoxifen, a drug that sucks out the estrogen from the female body so any remaining cancer orphans can’t grow.

I was okay with the Tamoxifen, but not the chemo. I just didn’t want to do it. It’s a personal decision for me. I have a real phobia about it, and I wouldn’t view those chemicals entering my bloodstream as a “powerful army fighting against a vile enemy”. I would view it as poison entering my body, which would probably be with me always and may have side effects that last forever.

I decided against the chemo. And then, of course, second-guessed my decision for enough time that I could safely say to myself that it was too late to change my mind anyway because if there were orphans left behind that the Tamoxifen didn’t starve, then they’d already be relocating themselves in my bloodstream, liver and lungs. Even my brain.

But they didn’t. I am a sixteen-year survivor. I have been diagnosed and treated, and have not had a recurrence in all that time. I suppose it could still happen, but really, I think the odds are it won’t.

So. Back to lucky. If I hadn’t had hot flashes, I’d never have gone to seek relief. Dr. L. would never have suggested a mammogram and it would have gone undetected for much longer. Lobular carcinoma is harder to detect, it has no real lumpiness that you can feel. If it had gone on longer, my lymph nodes would have eventually been involved, which would have meant that it had spread beyond the breast and could potentially be in my blood stream already, or in my other organs. Those statistics, according to Dr. A., are a whole lot worse than the ones I had to contend with.

Don’t let anyone tell you that early detection is not the way to save millions of lives lost to this insidious disease every year.

Now the cynical part. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Every month should be. You will see no pink ribbons on this post. It is my opinion that pink ribbons do nothing to further the “cure”. We have been hoping to find a cure for decades, but if we did, what would happen to Breast Cancer Big Business?

If you feel inclined to donate to the breast cancer cause, donate directly. To hospitals, to hospice, to an individual who needs help, but please avoid organizations like The Susan G. Komen Foundation. These are fake charities, they are more big business than charity. Almost none of the funds go to breast cancer research, instead it goes to pay very highly-paid executives. They raise money because it costs money to raise more money.

Here is a good article to read if you are interested in how breast cancer is Big Business. Be forewarned that it is long, but informative and well-researched, and has an annoying advertising page that you have to skip.

The Big Business of Breast Cancer

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Clip Art

Rainbow Pie A Redneck Memoir by Joe Bageant

Reviewed by Lynn Schneider

Upon learning that Joe Bageant had written Rainbow Pie A Redneck Memoir, I wrongly assumed it would be a story of his life. There are some snippets of family history in this engaging and educational book, but mostly it is the story of the corporate takeover of America from the viewpoint of one who has seen it evolve, been a self-professed member of the “underclass”, yet also been one of the fortunate few from that environment to have booted himself up and out of it, to become a writer so he could tell others what the real deal is.

Joe tells the story of Winchester, VA, but it could be any town, any state, any area. Perhaps the South exemplifies, more than anywhere, the orchestrated post-war economic shift from an agrarian to a consumerist society which happened, beginning in the late thirties. During World War II, the men were off fighting and the women worked in factories which manufactured everything we needed to kick the butts of real villains (as opposed to the made up ones of today). Life and profits were good for those at the top, who owned those factories. When the war ended, they needed a way to keep the profits up – can’t have life returning to the way it was before the war – so they figured out ways to entice the young people into the cities where they could purchase little white houses and Buick Roadmaster sedans, to work in their factories and become consumers of their goods. One government brochure promised “an onrushing new age of opportunity, prosperity, convenience and comfort has arrived for all Americans.”

Summed up at the end of Chapter 1:

Employing the mind and body in a purposeful way was the only manner in which people like Pap knew how to be. It was an entire world and a way of being that was anachronistic even in the 1950’s … vestigial, charged with folk beliefs, marked by an ignorance of the larger world, and lived unselfconsciously under the arc of Jeffersonian ideals, backed up by an archaic confidence in the efficacies of God’s word and grapeshot. I consider myself fortunate to have caught a glimpse of a more-purposeful and meaningful way as it went around the corner, only to be ambushed by an increasingly fancy and “store bought” America – a slicker, glossier one with no handmade edges.

Joe Bageant is an excellent writer, and interspersed with the sociological picture of America – both then and now – are snippets about himself and his family, which makes it personal. He is also very funny with a type of humor I can relate to.

Here’s a good example of that:

According to our national storyline, the death of our agrarian society was unavoidable – just part of our onrushing national vitality. In the official version taught in schoolrooms everywhere, America arrived at the industrial age by means of the raw strength of a younger nation endowed with can-do spirit and vigor; at the nuclear age by sheer brilliance; and at the consumer age because God wants his anointed people to own iPods, a DVD player in every room, and at least one salad shooter per family member.

In addition to spreading propaganda about how life would be so much better in the cities, Big Agri-Business (who contributed generously to Big Politicians) used other methods to eliminate their smaller competitors. The book cites the following example. What looked like a drug law, The Marijuana Tax Act, taxed hemp at $200 per ounce, unless you had a permit. But, wait. No permits were issued. Hemp is used to make rope, and rope made of natural stuff was in direct competition with rope made with petroleum products.  By virtue of this tax, the synthetic fiber and plastics industry were able to eliminate the competition, quite nicely.

Here’s how Joe explains it:

Thus it was that, in 1937, American was at last made safe from an epidemic of “Reefer Madness”, and the planting of the evil fiber that, according to public service films, made young girls throw off their panties in the throes of crazed lust, and young men suddenly purchase switchblades and go roaming the “angry Negro streets at dawn” in search of the nearest opium den.

If I have any criticism of this book, it’s that I detect a bit of ranting. I can picture Joe tearing up the keyboard, leaving his laptop battered and bruised as he pounds out his dislike and his vengeance.

An example:

Meanwhile, you there! Yes, you, my oxi-addicted nephew, my drunken, redneck backhoe-operator cousin, you, the unemployed Holy Roller … Be assured that you will be allowed to work again. And again. For that is your sole purpose in the system, your lone value to it, as a replaceable moving part made of flesh.

He made it his life’s work, mostly, to expose what Big Business has done to us. And he’s talking about everyone. All of us have been affected, those of us who spend our days filling out forms, and selling insurance policies, and sending credit card transactions into cyberspace, and even those of us who issue eviction notices and repossess cars, brought about by the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, which is still going on, and was caused by … well, everyone knows who caused it.

Joe points out that, while he speaks specifically about the subsistence farmers of the South, it hasn’t stopped there. The erosion of jobs is still happening. The agriculture jobs are gone, taken over by the likes of Dole and Tyson and Del Monte. Factory jobs are gone, shipped overseas, and even our customer service and tech jobs too (outsourced to places where they still burn dung), which has caused a shift into two classes, the upperclass and the underclass.

The book is easy to read, easy to understand, not dry, full of wit and humor and sarcasm. It has been said that it should be required reading, though probably at the college level, when students actually begin to care about such things. Well, at least some of them do.

Here comes the bad news. Joe died of brain cancer in March, 2011, four days before Rainbow Pie was published. We won’t have any more of his wonderful books to read, that might educate us, might make us think about things a little differently than we do.

No culture in which NASCAR flourishes can possibly last another decade. But then, I’ve been saying that for thirty years. Joe Bageant, 1946 – 2011.