My "Toy" Estate, NRFP

Weekend Assignment #74: Forget about the things you need -- Tell us about something you want. Preferably something useless and/or expensive. In other words: Toys! Something fun and/or sparkly and/or indulgent that you don't already have but wouldn't mind getting, if someone were offering.

Extra Credit: Do you really think getting that toy would make you happier?

Toys, huh?  I don't suppose a million-dollar midcentury modern home in the foothills qualifies, does it?  'Cause that's what I want.  It would be the work of a known architect (it doesn't have to be Frank Lloyd Wright), at least 5,000 square feet, in perfect condition and unadulterated in design, on an undivided five acre parcel.  The landscaping would be an intriguing combination of modernist design, desert wilderness and English garden.  Tuffy would have a one-acre estate of her own.  Dozens of birds would nest on our property, especially near the small stream coming down from the mountains.  Coyotes, javalina and tortoises would stop by on a daily basis, and mountain lions, bobcats and coatimundi would put in an occasional appearance.  It would also have a bathhouse and an amazing lagoon-style swimming pool, a stable for the retired thoroughbred race horse the previous owner threw in for free, a 1,000 square foot built-in library, a four-car garage, a private gym, and best of all, room to have every single thing we own instantly accessible, and all the pretty stuff on display.  Every piece of furniture we own would be replaced or reupholstered or refinished as needed, supplemented by large purchases from Herman Miller and IKEA.  My office would have room for all my files, both computers, and lots of workspace for paper printouts and digital media.  John would have the perfect workspace for downloading or reading or writing.  And every room of the house would be energy-efficient and perfectly climate controlled.

(Neither of the houses shownhere is quite good enough, but they're the best I found on Saturday.)

Hmm.  Better make it a two-million dollar home.

That's what I want.  Really.  I want it badly.

Instead I've got this:





The mold tester came to the house today.  Donna from Snoops Inc. was friendly and knowledgeable, and the testing was high-tech and thorough.  But I'm $524 poorer, John is seriously bummed out, and I'm now seriously aware of water stains and such that were little more than background noise to me before.  (I should add that this is NOT representative of the house as a whole.) We'll have the mold test results around Monday.  The roofer doesn't even come by to do the estimate until a week from now.  And I hope to talk the appraiser into coming onto the roof about the furnace thing.

Okay, I'll confess that a something-million-dollar house probably isn't a toy.  It sure would solve a lot of our problems, though.

My second choice would be a new, top-of-the-line Honda Elite scooter, to replace my 20-year-old one with all the broken parts.  I have no pictures on that, though.  Not tonight, anyway.

All right, you want me to covet a toy?  Something a little less ambitious than a "major purchase" house or vehicle?  Then let's go back to the subject of Barbie dolls.


Commuter Set Barbie, 35th Anniversary Barbie (reproduction of the 1959 doll), and Solo in the Spotlight Barbie.  NRFP.


Iwant every vintage repro Barbie on this page, and several more besides.  Heck, I want the original dolls, in mint condition, of course.

I'm actually doing better on the Barbie front than on the gracious living at home front.  I have 3 of the 24 dolls on that page, and a number of other reissue dolls not shown there.

My collection of vintage Barbies isn't quite as impressive as some of you seem to think it is, but it's pretty satisfactory.  I have all of the fashion dolls I had as a child except one unknown brand "Peggy" doll (no great loss), plus several types once owned by Cindy or Lori or neither.  Condition is an issue with some of them, because after all, I don't have a thousand dollars or more to throw at this collection.  I'd be happy to just get a few more complete vintage outfits for each of them, in very good condition, instead of bedraggled bits and pieces with torn seams and broken snaps.

Silken Flame Barbie and the real thing - except that one shoe is missing, the other broken, the dress won't hold its shape, the purse won't stay closed, I don't have the gloves, and I'm not quite sure where the hat and belt are right now. (Update: I found the shoe.)

But failing that, I'd like to have the rest of the repros.  They display better than the less-than-pristine older Barbies, and aren't as vulnerable to green ear and such, largely because they no longer ship with the metal accessories that used to cause such problems. On the other hand, the repro dolls have issues of their own:

1.  Some of the repros are expensive even when first issued, and appreciate in value.  That means that I can't just buy these things as they come out - I couldn't afford it! And the fact that they appreciate is nice, but it means I have to be more careful with the doll.  That 1999 Commuter Set Barbie I displayed next to my vintage bubble cut on Monday is now going for $150 on one website, half again as much as the most optimistic value for my 1964 doll.  (I did see the Commuter Set available for $75 on another website.) With a price like that, I don't dare do anything but leave it in the box.  I've never even opened the booklet that came with it. I've had the doll on display in its open box for years, and its hat and clothes are all dusty now.  Uh-oh!

2. NRFP.  To a hardcore collector of dolls, Star Wars figures, Hot Wheels or whatever, NRFP means "never removed from package."  "NRFB" means "never removed from box." The moment you open a sealed package, as I did, very carefully, with my Silken Flame repro, you lessen the value of the thing.  So how are you supposed to play with the dolls, or even look  at them close up?  All you can do is display them in the unopened packages, which are bulky and fragile. They don't photograph well, either.  Eventually they go in a storage box, because what else can you do with the darn things? Tonight I discovered that I had some of my photo albums and photo boxes sitting on top of an open box containing my repro Midge and Francie and Silken Flame Barbie.  All three packages were slightly crushed.  Drat!  The Francie was crushed when I got it, but the Midge used to be mint.

35th Anniversary Midge, 30th Anniversary Francie.  NRFP, but I prefer my less-than-mint, vintage Midge and Malibu Francie.

Well, maybe you can get around the NRFP problem by buying two of everything.  Open one for display and close examination, and put the other away in a closed storage box.  That way, one doll appreciates, and the other one can be enjoyed directly.  But when these things are $50, $60 or $75 new, that doesn't seem like an acceptable option.

So how do I answer Scalzi this week?  What one frivolous and expensive toy do I want?  Assuming that I can't have a genuine, MIB (mint in box) #1 or #2 Barbie from 1959, I guess I'll take an out-of-production, hard to find Suburban Shopper™ Barbie® from 2001. I've always liked the summery and casual bluestriped dress ensemble from 1959 that's reproduced here.

Delivery instructions are available on request.

Karen

P.S. Extra Credit:  Happier?

The house - definitely

The scooter - probably

The dolls - maybe.  For a while, anyway.

Tags: Weekend Assignment, Dream Homes, Barbie

Meanwhile, in Another Part of Town...

It turns out that the clouds that made the Catalina Mountains so dramatic yesterday dropped a record amount of rain on other parts of Tucson.  According to an article in the Tucson Citizen,  it was the 10th wettest day ever recorded here, with 2.29 inches falling at the airport (a ten-year high), and much more than that elsewhere. The Santa Cruz River (which is usually mostly dry) crested at 14 1/2 feet at the Congress Street Bridge.  A couple hundred people were evacuated from their mobile homes, and flood damage was estimated at about a million dollars.

But along the Wilmot Road corridor, where I spend my days and nights, it mostly just sprinkled.  The extent of the flooding can be seen below, in a photo I took of a storm drain near St. Michael's.  It was really no big deal, except for the pretty mountains.

 
Tonight, my dad phoned to make sure that we weren't flooded out of our home, and that I wasn't taking his call from a rowboat.  I told him that the only consequence of rain for us was a roof leak and a lot of digital photos. 

But we did have trouble with our roof today, not from dripping but from the bank, or, more accurately, from the underwriter on our refi.  It turns out that the appraiser recommended in his notes that the house get a mold certification, a roof certification, and a certification that we have a working furnace, permanently attached and continuously fueled!  Say what?  First of all, I was told just last week that the appraisal came through without any conditions attached.  Second, I can understand the roof thing.  I was afraid that would happen.  But mold, in the Arizona desert?  And now we have to pay to prove we have a furnace?  Come on!

Okay, the roof does need patching.  That's one of the things the refi was supposed to enable us to pay for.  Now, presumably, we have to pay before getting the money to do it.  Still I guess it's fair for the bank to insist that the property it will have an interest in have a good roof.

The mold thing, though.  That's not common around here.  Despite all my monsoon pictures, the truth is that it doesn't rain very often in the desert, and when it does, the water doesn't hang around very long.  (For example, the storm drain seen here had dried out by the end of the day.)  The lady at the bank had to do a lot of calling around to get a lead on anyone who does mold work, aside from one in Phoenix a hundred miles away.  I told her that with my severe allergies, I'd know if there was mold.  There isn't.  But that cuts no ice with the unseen underwriter.  We'll have to do it anyway. Based on his experience editing law books at his previous job, John says that it's because people are afraid of mold litigation, even though very few lawyers deal with such suits.  But who would be suing whom here?  We're not trying to sell the house.  We're only trying to fix it up a bit, and deal with our credit card debt at the same time.

But the condition that really galls us is the one about the furnace.  When the appraiser asked where the furnace was, I didn't know or remember the answer.  I only knew that it's a gas furnace, it works, and we don't use it much 'cause it's not needed.  After checking the hall closets, though, the appraiser gave up on finding the furnace.  If he'd gone up on the roof, he would have seen it, but he didn't do that.  He didn't even turn the thermostat up, to see if the heat came on.  No, he just marked us down for the extra expense of having someone else come out to climb on the roof, and say, "Yup.  They have a working furnace!"  Grrr.

Well, we'll cope.  I've left a message with a roofer that two people recommended as being inexpensive and reliable.  The lady at the bank is going to get back to me about the mold people, and I'm told that Southwest Gas will give me some names for the furnace thing if I call their 800 number.

In other news, a nurse at Dr. L's office was unimpressed by my headache last night, since it improved as I hydrated myself.  She's going to get back to me about a skin condition I have, possibly with a referral to a dermatologist.   I've mentioned my three month battle with a red, rough, itchy left leg to a few of you.  Dr.L. thought it was folliculitis and prescribed an oral antibiotic, but I see no marked improvement after nine days.  I can almost imagine her saying now, "Then I don't know what it is." 

To get back to the weather issue for a moment, since I want an excuse to post a few more pictures, it didn't rain today, at least not in this part of town.  I took the last mountain picture above yesterday after work, in front of a local school.  Had I taken the picture today, the air would not have ben quite as clear, but it wasn't very cloudy, either.  You can see what clouds there were in these sunset pictures.  The last one I took at Safeway as usual, but the other one was part of an experiment, to see what kind of sunset photos I could capture from a car going 35 miles per hour.  No, I wasn't the one driving.

Karen

 

The Return of Dramatic Weather - and Oh! My Head!

This entry wll be more photo than essay, I''m afraid.  There's a scheduled AOL-J outage less than two hours from now, and I really need to wash my hair and get to bed at a decent hour tonight.  But I have a bunch of new pictures to show you.  As usual, the hard part will be in choosing which ones to use.

 

This was the scene near St. Michael's when I went to lunch around 1 PM today (Tuesday).  Only the tops of the Catalina Mountains could be seen above the cottony ribbon of cloud.  The monsoon had taken a week or two off from, um, monsooning, but as of this week it's back, with more "dramatic weather" as John calls it.



Two minutes later, it was pretty much impossible to see the mountains at all.



Weather conditions change rapidly around here in the summer.  By the time I left Safeway with soup and a sandwich, the mountains were re-emerging.



They still looked pretty dramatic from my street, though.


 
By the time I started back from eating lunch at home, the clouds were starting to clear up, at least in the immediate vicinity of Mount Lemmon. There was enough of both cloud and mountain showing to make a dramatic backdrop for this decrepit old sign.  Poor old Oxford Plaza was once named the ugliest shopping center in Tucson.  Since then they've knocked down one end of the building (briefly revealing an old S&H Green Stamps sign) and built new stores at the other end of it.  Cory's Eastside Cafe, a neat old diner with not-so-good food, was knocked down a year or two ago, shortly after a Pizza Hut went up next to it. The part of the sign you can't read here used to say, "31 Merchants to Serve You."  It still pretty much says this, but I don't think the current layout could accommodate that many businesses.



By the time I reached the area around St. Michael's (yes, I work in that general vicinity), most of the clouds had vanished.  Wow, that was fast!



When I left work, just past 5 PM, the mountains were exceptionally clear.  I could see green forest and residential foothills, and faulting and folding made more dramatic by late afternoon shadows.



A friend of mine reminds me that my "beloved monsoon," as she puts it, is more than the pleasure of dramatic views, needed rain and a break from the heat.  It can also mean treacherous driving.  You don't have to drive through a wash, thus running afoul of our famous "Stupid Motorist Law," to get into trouble during a flash flood.  My friend was driving during a big storm a few weeks ago, possibly the Friday one I wrote about, or the Tuesday one I photographed.  She's a safe and careful driver, but for some reason she had to drive in the curb lane.  One problem: no curb.  It was under water.  Unable to see it, she hit it and blew out a tire.  "Yes, I do blame the monsoon," she says.

A quick update before I get offline for the night.  Monday evening, after several large doses of ibuprofen and a slight reduction in stress at work, my back pain was much reduced.  I went to the gym for 25 minutes on the treadmill, and got away with it.

Tonight I had my first session with the new trainer.  He talked about breathing and nutrition, two subjects my previous trainer had neglected.  He had me on about five machines, a few of which were new to me.  During my second set on the first machine, I got a sudden, horrible headache, which faded somewhat when I finished the set.  Jeff had me drink a lot of water between sets, noting that it's easy to drink too little water on a humid day.  The water seemed to help, but I still have a headache now.  This has never happened to me before!  I hardly ever get headaches of any sort, and the ones I do get are typically gone in a couple of minutes. (Lucky, huh?)  But  this exercise-induced headache is totally new to me, and it's freaking me out a bit.  Nevertheless, I got through the session, followed by 30 minutes on the treadmill.  And yes, my back hurts right now.  So does my head.  Odd, that.

Karen

Two By Two, Eyes of Blue

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of two of something. Two of what? I leave that to you. But they have to be two of the same type of thing. Don't just put, like, a cookie and a Hot Wheel in the same picture and say it counts as two things. Two cookies, two Hot Wheels. You know. Double your pleasure and all that.

John Scalzi used up the best idea with his double exposure trick, so I'll settle for showing you pairs of dolls from my Barbie collection.  Each photo has two versions of the same doll, more or less.  I'll explain each pair as we go along.

1.  Two Barbies. 

Which of these is the valuable one, the Bubble Cut Barbie (left) or the Ponytail Barbie?  If the one on the right were a vintage doll, it would win, hands down.  However, it's a repro from, I don't know, probably about five years ago.  The doll reproduced was the Blonde #3 Ponytail, circa 1960.

I bought the dark-haired one on eBay, about a year before the repro ponytail doll came out.  It's a 1964 straight-leg bubble cut Barbie, the same exact kind as the one I traded for with Cindy R. when I was about nine years old. In my childish ignorance I used to claim it was a Midge, because I "knew" that older Barbies had ponytails.  Cindy said it was a Barbie.  Cindy was right.  By then it was an older model, though, and Cindy had the latest and greatest, the twist & turn Barbie.  She was quite willing to trade away the relatively unposeable older doll.  I didn't really like it very much, but it was the only actual Barbie I had as a child.

The bubble cut doll shown here had "green ear," a condition caused by leaving metal earrings in a plastic doll for too long.  The discoloration was on about half of the face until I used something called Tarn-X to leech away the green.  (It's much better now, but not perfect.)  The doll also had a bad metallic odor, which I reduced but never quiteeliminated.  And on top of that, this Barbie has some baldness on the back of the head.  But even with all the condition issues, it's probably still a $100 doll.

2. Two Skippers.

Here are two versions of Barbie's oldest little sister, Skipper.  The one on the left is one of the 1964 ones, Model 950.  Another straight-leg doll, this Skipper is a little ahead of its time in that it sports a tan.  Barbie didn't get a tan until 1970, but Skipper had one right off the bat in 1964.  This particular doll I got by leaving a written bid at a local auction house and then hightailing it for work.  I ended up with Skipper, some clothes and a case, and, in a separate bid, a Fisher-Price wind-up "radio" that played "Jack & Jill."

The second doll in this photo is a twist & turn Skipper, Model 1105, from 1968. I also have a Malibu Skipper, not shown here.  Again, Cindy and Lori and I preferred the twist & turns at the time, but as an adult I like the look of the older Skipper much better, especially in the red sailor suit swimsuit it came with (not shown). 
 
 
3. Casey and her double, Malibu Francie.

These two dolls are supposed to be friends, not twins, but they have the same head mold.  The one on the right is Casey, Francie's friend from 1966.  The one on the left is Malibu Francie.  Back in the day, Cindy and Lori had Francie, but I had Casey. I liked Casey better, so it all worked out. 

Casey came in a gold lamé fishnet swimsuit.  The swimsuits are very hard to find in really good condition nowadays, and Casey is subject to green ear from a trendy single dangling earring. 

This was another eBay purchase.  Before I got it, I spent a lot of time staring at pictures of brunette and red-headed Caseys, trying to remember which version I had back in 1967.  I eventually decided that the brunette one looked the most familiar.  This Casey has little or no green ear.  I upgraded the swimsuit later,but I usually don't have it on the doll.

Barbie's "MODern cousin Francie" first appeared in 1965.  This family relationship was de-emphasized in two black versions of the doll, which came out that same year.  Barbie herself did not have a black version until 1979, so Francie was a groundbreaker in that respect.

By the time Malibu Francie (left) came out in 1971, Casey was no longer being made, officially.  But look at the doll's face! The distinctive Casey features are there.  I've even seen this doll listed as "Malibu Casey" on eBay.  Officially that's incorrect, but sentimentally,it's true.  Again, this is an eBay purchase.

 
4.  Two Friends of Barbie (A Cautionary Tale).

Sad to say, in the late 1960s Barbie traded in her earliest best friend for one who was infinitely hipper.  See for yourself:

Midge (right) had curly hair and freckles, and kind of an odd, old-fashioned name. The box is dated 1962, but my book says the doll was around from 1963 to 1966.  This is another straight-leg doll, of course.

Talking Stacey was the 1968 successor to Midge's initial replacement, 1967's Twist & Turn Stacey.  Talking Stacey was incredibly cool, very much in step with the times.  Not only did she talk, but she had an English accent, very Carnaby Street. One of her spoken phrases pretty much sums her up:  "I think mini-skirts are smashing!"

This particular Stacey replaces the one I got for Christmas in 1968, which is of course long gone.  I had to send this eBay purchase away to get the voicebox fixed, and now pull the string only occasionally, and very carefully.  Even then, it doesn't always work.  Also, this doll's left leg has a tendency to fall off. 

Midge outlasted the competition.  Stacey was only around until 1970.  Midge disappeared for a couple of decades, only to re-emerge in 1987, still freckled but having had a serious makeover.  It must have worked out for her, because the most recent versions of the doll are part of the "Happy Family" series.  Alone of all of Barbie's peers, Midge is now married, with two small children of her own. 

Darn it.  I wasn't going to anthropomorphize these dolls by calling them "she."  But I had to acknowledge them as characters to tell the story of Barbie's first two best friends.

Karen

Almost Too Late to Celebrate

This is a photo I submitted to Steven for the AOL-J 2nd Anniversary "Jallery."  Unfortuately, I submitted it too late for him to use it, but here it is anyway.

 

The date of the AOL Journals two-year anniversary is already over in two U.S. time zones.  I've almost missed it, but not quite.  It's been that kind of day.

See, I was up late Saturday night for all the usual reasons, including a trip to the gym, laundry, and writing my Mall of installment. I didn't feel quite up to snuff as I did the leg and hip machines, and I quit after only ten minutes on the treadmill.  I wasn't quite sure why.  I was just more tired than the night before, and breathing harder. Minutes eight through ten felt as hard as minutes twenty to twenty five (on the way to 30) usually do.  So I stopped and left, and bought chicken wings on the way home as usual.

Today I woke up with a killer backache.  I took four ibuprofen, and went to church anyway.  Fortunately, I didn't have to serve at Mass.  I was able to sit in the pew next to my friend Kevin, with my purse for a lower back cushion.

Is it stress, or did I injure myself somehow on the hack squats?  I dunno.  But I was going to put in an estimated six hours at the office, doing fixed assets.  Instead I went to bed, and woke up with my back all horrible again.  Then we went shopping at Safeway, and when we got home John popped in the first episode of Magnum PI on DVD. That was pretty much it for the day.  Not what I planned, at all!  I never made it to the office. I feel guilty about that, even though nobody asked me to go in, even though I can work around the stuff I wanted to get done. So it could be a stress backache, or an injury, or both.

So what have I to say about the anniversary? Not much, really.  It seems to have been very quiet, quite unlike the month-long blowout people put together last summer.  And that's okay.  For those of us who blog here every day (or even read them, nearly every day), the AOL-J community is part of our lives.  We celebrate it every time we click on a new entry or comment alert, every time we write an entry, every time we're out and about, seeing whatever is around us in terms of how we are going to write about it for photograph it for our next posting.  Tonight, when I told John I wanted to see more of Hawaii, he said, "You just want to blog about it."  No, that wasn't why, really!  But of course, I would blog about it.

At its core, an AOL Journal does two things for its owner.  First, it's a wonderful combination of diary and soapbox.  Within the bounds of TOS, we can be as personal as we want, as political as we want, as silly or profound as we want, sad or funny or both.  We can name names, or be more circumspect.  We can write whatever we want, photograph whatever we want, and get it published instantly.  And the more we do that, because the beast must be fed, we better we become at the writing or photography or both.  That's powerful.

And if we put forth any effort at all in making our journals known, people will come to see what we posted, and sometimes leave a comment to tell us what they think.  That's powerful, too, because by and large, we want an audience for this stuff.  That's the second thing an AOL Journal does.  It connects us with readers, most of them other bloggers.  People offer us their approval, their appreciation, their support, and sometimes their outrage. Link by link, we find our way around to other journals, learning the stories of the people who post on them.  Then we're posting our own comments of appreciation and support and occasional outrage.  And along the way, we become a community.  And some of us become friends. 

I'm very grateful for both of these functions.  I love being able to write about whatever is on my mind, more or less, knowing that at least a few people will read what I have to say.  I love following an alert the moment it pops up, to see what Becky or Carly just posted.  I love that I now have friends at opposite ends of the country, whom I never would have met otherwise.  I love that when I'm upset, people cheer me up via comments - and do their best for other AOL-Jers with far more serious problems.

I think I'm going to be here for quite a long time.

Oops.  Another time zone down.  I'm going to throw in the survey from Patrick that Old Dog posted half an hour ago, and call it an entry:

Here are the questions:

1. The first one involves what you'd call this set of questions.  Here's a list...pick the one you like best and make it the title of your entry when you answer these questions in your journal:

AnniverSurvey
AnniversaryAdmissions
Anniversary Appraisal
Anniversary Assessment
Anniversary Audit
Anniversary Examination
Celebration Survey
Celebratory Census
Commemorative Confessions
Festival Feedback
Milestone Marker
Party Poll
Party Proclamations
Revel & Reveal
Second Celebration Confessions
Second-Year Survey
Special Day Disclosures

2. Are there any certain AOL Journals that you can't do without?  List a few of your favorites.

Ellipsis, Where Life Takes You, Jersey Girl Journal, Alphawoman's Blog, Aurora Walking Vacation.  Links to these and more are on my sidebar.

3. What are the best and worst things that happened during J-land year 2004-2005?

I don't read as many journals as, for example, Becky, so I've missed many of the traumas.  I know that people have lost loved ones, or struggled with illness, been caught in insoluable family dramas with parents or siblings or in-laws, or had to make tough decisions about jobs and careers.  The one that probably meant the most to me personally was learning that an extremely talented photographer and blogger has had esteem and mental health issues.  I don't want to point to her here in that context, but I wish her well, always.

As for the good news, I finished school and got a more lucrative job.  It was a terrible wrench to leave WWT after twelve years, but it was worth it.  I think one of my AOL-J friends is stronger and happier because of this past year of blogging, and she's probably not the only one.  I'm sure there's more, but that will do for now.

4. What changes would you most like to see made to AOL Journals during the third year?

1. Easy, relatively painless archiving.
2. More and customizable "moods."  I quit using that function over a year ago because it was too limited.  I still use the ones on LiveJournal because there are a zillion choices, and they're illustrated.
3. What's it gonna take for someone to fix the glitch that makes 12 point text display as ten point, huh?  It's been that way since I started in March '04, and it's a pain.
4. Background options without having to know HTML.
5. Larger and more customizable templates for the journal as a whole, most especially a bigger About Me area to accomodate more graphics and text.

5. Has one of your favorite reads disappeared?  Who would you most like to see return to AOL J-land during the third year?

Come back, Mumsy!

6. What's the silliest/stupidest/most embarrassing mistake you've ever blogged and overlooked?
Back in June, I was outraged by a hoax website that I took at face value.  D'oh!

7. What's the newest journal you've discovered that you've put into your daily rotation?  (Not necessarily the newest to J-land, but the newest to you.)

The Daily Snooze.

Thanks for answering these questions  and  for being a part of AOL J-land!


Thanks to Patrick and Jennifer and Vivian for this survey.

Karen

Fiction: Mall of Mâvarin, Part Twenty-Three

Sara (qelenhn) has set up a page of links to make it easy to read her Ruby Horse serial in order.  This is a fun and funny thing, and you should be reading it, if you aren't already.  What's more, you should be voting, because she has it set up along the lines of a Choose Your Own Adventure. LiveJournal users will find it easy to vote, but I'm pretty sure you can also vote without an LJ account.

As for my two current serials, Joshua Wander: My Favorite Ghost (which is by email only) and Mall of Mâvarin (which can most easily be read on my Messages from Mâvarin blog), neither one is doing very well right now.  I've been so darn busy with cleaning up the house, blogging, the trip to IKEA and now unpaid overtime that I've let myself get behind on one, and nearly stalled out on the other.  I've handwritten at least one JW installment that I haven't typed yet, and I apparently haven't actually mailed an installment since the end of July.  I've done better with Mall of, posting every Saturday night no matter how uninspired I was.  But the results have been, well, uninspired. 

I worked about three hours today at Unnamed Largish Company, and will probably work double that tomorrow.  But things should ease off after Monday.  Maybe then I'll be able to get things back on track.

The easiest way to catch up on past installments of this serial is on Messages from Mâvarin at http://mavarin.blogspot.com. Synopses to Parts One through Six can be found at the top of Part Seven. Synopses to Parts Eight through Thirteen can be found at the top of Part Fourteen. Synopses to Parts Fourteen through Eighteen are at the top of Part Nineteen.  The installments themselves can be read in order on Blogspot using the sidebar.

Part Nineteen:  Li Ramet, Lee Ramirez and Joshua Wander go off to try to reverse the effects of Li's modified portal spell, which, along with the appearance of Josh's magic castle, apparently caused all the trouble.  Meanwhile, Rani and Randy announce they have successfully returned their own minds and spirits to the right bodies.  Rani sets out to try to help Carl and Carli do the same.  Despite being only a bookish high school student in a strange and magical land, Randy Foster thinks he has acquired sufficient magic and knowledge to sort out Cathma and Cathy as well.  They sit down together to let him try.

Part Twenty: In mindtouch with Randy, the girl who thinks of herself as Cathma is told that she is really Cathy after all. According to Randy, Li's spell is more an accidental "mindpush" (magical brainwashing) than an actual transfer mind and spirit.  Randy takes Cathy on a whirlwind tour through the memories of her own life, until she feels like herself again rather than the Queen of Mâvarin.  At the same time, Randy helps the real Queen Cathma to reclaim her own identity.  The process leaves Randy exhausted—and there are still dozens of people from Dewitt and Mâvarin who need similar help.

Part Twenty-One: Since Rani and Randy are too tired to do mind magic with anyone else for the moment, Cathy suggests going back to "Plan A"--seeing that Li, Lee and Josh successfully reverse Li's spell, getting everyone home both mentally and physically.  Although leaving the castle once again floods Cathy's mind with Cathma's memories, this time it does not overwhelm her sense of who she is.  Shoppingtown Mall now looks intact again, albeit in Mâvarin instead of Dewitt.  Li and Lee are proud of this accomplisment, Josh less so.  Cathy points out that the point is to get the mall and the people back where they belong, not to reassemble the building in the wrong world.

Part Twenty-Two: Li and Lee propose to leave Shoppingtown in Mâvarin, at least temporarily, until the people are restored.  When Cathy and Cathma press them on how that part of the problem is coming along, they say that the people who actually traveled with the mall (as opposed to safely in the castle) are "feeling much better now."  They have mindpushed these people from a state of emotional shock to one of relative normalcy.  The mall employees have even started selling their goods and services to customers--including curious Mâvarinû, who have started coming in from outside.

Part Twenty-Three: Media of Exchange

Fayubi and Fabian both looked intrigued.  “People are coming in from the King’s Gate Inn?” Fabian (really Fayubi) asked.

“And from the city, and stopping on the way to the city,” Lee (really Li) said.

“What do they use as a medium of exchange?” Shela (really Sheila) asked.  “The mall employees would naturally expect to be paid in dollars, but the Mâvarinû have only suns and crowns and coppers.”

“That’s all right,” Li (really Lee) said.  “We told them it was all right to accept Mâvarin coins.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Cathy said.  “What can they do with crowns and suns, if and when they get home?  They can’t deposit that stuff in the bank.  They can’t even ring it up properly.”

“Oh, they can always sell the coins on eBay, if they don’t decide to keep them as souvenirs,” Li (really Lee) said.  “What’s the harm?”

“He’s not far wrong,” Fabian (really Fayubi) said.  “The metal alone is probably worth quite a bit in a world where coins have not been pure silver in decades.  And these things will probably be highly collectible, as evidence of what happened.”

“But how do the store people know how much to charge?” Carl asked.

 “Oh, we worked out a reasonable exchange rate with the manager of J.C. Penney,” Josh said.  “The other stores agreed to it right away.”

“The manager of Penney’s?” Randy said.  “You mean my mom?”

“Is your last name Foster?” Josh asked.

“Yes, it is.  My mom is Ruthie Foster.”

“That’s her then,” Li said.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Lee said.

“I’m going to go see her,” Randy said.  He did not wait for a response, but sprinted toward Penney’s without a backward glance.

“Listen, I hate to say this, but I’d really like to take off for a bit myself,” Joshua Wander said.  “It’s been decades since I’ve been able to shop at a mall.  Do you suppose they have Beatles records here somewhere?”

“You mean CDs?” Carl asked.

“What’s a CD?”

Fabian (really Fayubi ) laughed.  “You have been gone a long time, haven’t you? CDs replaced LPs nearly twenty years ago.”

“There aren’t any music stores at the mall, though,” Carl said.  “Once all this is over, we’ll take you to Target or something.”

“Well, I’d still like to look around,” Josh said.

“I have to say I’m a bit curious myself,” said Fayubi (really Fabian).  “Assuming we do get the mall back where it belongs eventually, this is the only chance for those of us who live in Mâvarin to buy electronics and odd fashions.”  He looked down at his shapeless traveling robe.  “I could use something different to wear.”

Fabian (really Fayubi) laughed again.  “Very different.  And I’m quite interested to see, as a psychology teacher, how the different groups here interact, and how the people who traveled with the mall are coping.”

“We told you.  They’re fine,” Li said.

“So, are we all going shopping, or what?” Josh asked.

“It seems like an awfully low priority right now,” Jamie (really Jami) said.

“Well, Randy and I have to rest a little longer anyway, before we can do anything useful,” Rani said.  “I expect Li and Lee are tired, too, from all the magic they did.”

“True,” Lee (really Li) said.  “You people may as tell go shopping while you can.  You’ll never get another chance like this one.”

“About that,” Rani said. “There’s something you should all know, before you make assumptions about what you will or won’t be doing after today.”

“What’s that?” Li (really Lee) asked.

“None of you, other than Cathma, Cathy, Carli and Carl, are who you think you are,” Rani said.

Welcome to Mâvarin

Messages from Mâvarin (use sidebar to get to the individual installments)

*Whimper*

No pictures tonight.  I'm not in the mood.

Call me thin-skinned.  Call me oversensitive.  I'll even agree with you.  This is a fault I've worked to overcome over the years, but I've never entirely succeeded.  For example, I always get upset when a conservative Christian pops up out of nowhere to attack something I wrote online.  Usually the comment is anonymous, so I can't even respond directly.  Instead I look the comment over, and consider again whether the criticism has merit.  I second-guess myself.  I feel guilty for any deficiencies I think I see in my own writing, beliefs, or character.  I get upset and frustrated for not having communicated effectively enough to be understood, to win the person over.

But really, it usually comes down to one thing.  What parts of the concepts of compassion and tolerance don't these people understand? I'm not talking about all Christian conservatives, mind you, but occasionally I get a comment like this one, that basically takes me to task for loving my neighbor.

This time, the comment in question was posted to the St. Michael's & All Angels Arts blog.  This blog is ancillary to the main church (news) blog, started so that parishioners can contribute photos, essays, prayers, poetry, art--well, pretty much anything, as long as it is compatible with the fact that it's a church's blog. But nobody sends me (or the church) anything for it, so rather than leave it completely neglected, I occasionally post something on it, usually adapted from something in Musings. 

The comment that upset me so was posted to an entry of pictures and a tiny bit of text provided by Ila Abernathy, about her annual trip to Guatemala to help displaced Maya in remote villages with medical supplies and training.  That happened to be the oldest entry on the face of the blog at the time.  The newest entry, the one this anonymous person was talking about in the misdirected comment, was my rant from June about how poorly a Wiccan friend of mine is treated by doctors, social workers,etc. because of her affiliation with a fringe religion.  The commenter felt that I --and St. Michael's generally--was betraying God by advocating compassion and tolerance toward this friend.

But for me, the story of the Good Samaritan, the edict to love one's  enemies, and any number of other passages from the New Testament, demand no less.  The idea that you can and should be mean to someone, discriminate, condemn, maybe even beat up or kill that person, all because he or she is not one of Us, not a Christian/ Muslim/ Jew/ Democrat/ Republican/ American/ Whatever, is exactly the sort of thing that leads to suicide bombings, the Holocaust, and really, most of the evil in the world.  Not that the commenter was advocating anything of the sort, but clearly, my plea for tolerance was being condemned. So what is the person advocating, if not intolerance? The difference between that and those other horrors is one of degree, not one of concept. A person can be wrong about something, terribly wrong, but that doesn't give us the right or the responsibility to treat that person with hostility. 

So as I said, it's appropriate for me to disagree with my friend's religion, but it's not appropriate for her pain doctor to refuse to see her, or for someone to label her a troublemaker and deny her services, solely on the basis of religion.  And really, how does preaching at her, shunning and mistreating her, and implying that anyone who defends her is betraying God...how does any of that follow Jesus's teachings and examples, or convince D/S to become a Christian again?  How does the song go?  They'll know we are Christians by our hate?  Of course I want her to find her way back to Christianity eventually, but this is no way to accomplish that.

Maybe I'm being harsh.  Maybe it's a mutual misunderstanding between me and Mr. or Ms. Anonymous.  Maybe I made this person feel attacked, and this was the response.  But either way, I'm feeling all hurt and insecure here.  I want to go in a corner and whimper.  You don't like me!  You think I'm bad! 

And have you ever noticed that saying you will pray for someone can sometimes be a passive-aggressive attack on a person with whom you disagree?  The implication is that I'm on the fast track to Hell, and only your prayers can turn me around, so that I will agree with you and go to Heaven after all.  Yes, sure, go ahead and pray for me, and for my friend. I pray each night for everyone everywhere, no exceptions. I pray that we will all come to know that God is real, that God cares, that we will all understand better what God wants from  each of us, and for help to get through the difficult times in each of our lives.  I pray that we will learn to live up to our potential, using our talents well.  I pray that we will learn to truly love and help one another, not just our particular insular groups but everyone.  But don't tell me you're praying that I will see the error of my wicked ways. I'm far from perfect, but I'm not all that wicked.  Your prayers will neither keep me from Hell nor send me there. 

One of the commenter's criticisms was the claim that I had posted an "evil symbol" on a church blog.  This confused me at first.  I looked at the entry where the comment was posted, and saw pictures of Guatemalans, and a picture that a child in Guatemala drew. Was this person seeing something in the drawing that wasn't there?  But no, I later noticed that I had a right-side-up pentagram in the entry about my friend, mostly because I didn't have any other illustrations for it.  This symbol is not Satanic, but perhaps I should not have put it on the church blog, even as an illustration of the beliefs of others.

Understand:  I am not a minister, priest or deacon.  My only formal course in religion was nearly thirty years ago at Syracuse University.  I've read much of the Bible but not all of it, and I've read some modern translations of rejected (non-canonical) scriptures and other modern scholarship.  I am the church webmaster, and I help out at Mass in minor ways, mostly as crucifer and lector.  But I don't speak for the church, except to post announcements, mostly written by others.  The opinions I post on the Arts page are my own.  They're intended to be one person's opinions and spiritual journeys, to be interspersed with the contributions of others.  Unfortunately, others don't contribute.

So what should I do?  Should I let this comment spook me, again?  Should I stop posting to the Arts blog until I find others to contribute, so it's not all me, assuming an authority I don't have or want? 

Or should I still express my opinion from time to time, and hope that most people will see Christian values in my words, instead of anti-Christian ones?

Karen

P.S.  I took the advice below, and posted a version of this to the SMAAARTS blog.  I also emailed Father Smith, who was also attacked in the original comment, asking for his input.  And I received a lovely, loving email today from a self-identified conservative Christian and fundamentalist, saying that I was right to love others, to keep my chin up.  Thank you, and God bless you all--whether you agree with me or not.