It’s cold this morning in Tucson, and colder elsewhere say the weather men. But Boston’s ducklings have been dressed for it, as you can see in the above photo, which I came across while reading my email.
I spent a couple of days at the ducklings’ home on the Boston Commons back in 2006 during my RVing days. I parked my RV in a small town an hour’s drive from the city, and took the commuter train into town for a week of sight-seeing of historical sites like The Old North Church and Paul Revere’s home. I wrote about all this in Travels with Maggie.
I found everything quite educational and interesting, but nothing charmed me as much as the bronze Mallard Family statues, created in honor of the 1941 classic children’s book, Make Way for Ducklings.
Designed by Nancy Schön in honor of the book’s author, Robert McCloskey, the ducklings were installed in the gardens in 1987. The book tells the story of how Mr. and Mrs. Mallard came to Boston looking for a home, and eventually settled in the gardens.
Daddy Mallard, however, is missing, for the statues only consist of Mother Mallard and her eight babies: Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack.
The family is often dressed for holidays and the weather, but they were only in their birthday suits when I visited Boston. Because I was so charmed, I guess I’m still a child at heart – and thankful for it.
The ducklings were being enjoyed by kids like me when I visited them. — Photo by Pat Bean,
Travel writer Paul Theroux, in his book Deep South, said few people he met while traveling to such places as Greensboro – Catfish Capital of Alabama – knew his name. But the unlettered person, he added, “has other refined skills and is often more watchful, shrewd, and freer in discussion than the literate person.”
But when he met up with a reader like himself, he noted that “a reader meeting another reader is an encounter of kindred spirits.”
How true, I thought, remembering how delighted I always am when I meet someone who has read some of the same books as I have. We end up having what I call the best kinds of conversation. We talk about ideas, writing, characters, human traits and differences of opinions about what we read, among other things. The talk is almost always interesting and exciting.
I recently got my best friend reading the Mrs. Polifax books by Dorothy Gilmore, which I’m currently rereading, and that has resulted in interesting texts back and forth about her upbeat philosophy. I have many a quote from Mrs. Polifax, as written by Gilmore, in my journals.
As an old broad myself, I especially like these: “I have a flexible mind – I believe it’s one of the advantages of growing old. I find youth quite rigid at times,” and “It’s terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise, a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality,”
Meanwhile, when I first started reading Deep South, which is about Theroux’s travels on backroads through small towns, many of which were dying, I thought he was writing about a bygone area. But I began to see things different as he wrote about the gun shows and Black churches he visited — two extremes of Southern ongoings. I then realized the author was writing about the background of what’s going on in the world today. I’m being educated as I read.
I’ve been a reader all my life, having begun by reading everything in my late grandfather’s library, which was all stuffed into a chest at my grandmother’s home. He had had many classics, including the complete works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens. I even read Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor before I understood it was all about an unmarried woman having sex. It’s actually quite tame compared to what’s written in many non-erotic books today, in which the author forgot to close the bedroom door.
When I was in junior high school, I heard some girls talking about the “naughty” book, Forever Amber, and so I went back and reread it. I was still too naïve to understand what the fuss was all about.
But being a reader is one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
If my art had to be perfect, I would never draw. As Leonard Cohen said “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
I’m Not Perfect, But I’m Enough
“Doesn’t it feel fabulous to be an entirely reborn person with flawless habits, unbroken willpower and a rose-tinted view of the future? Oh, that doesn’t describe you? Me neither.”
The above comment, which I recently came across in an opinion piece about books to read in the new year, had me belly-laughing. I rarely get through a week before any New Year’s resolutions I was foolish enough to make are broken.
Once upon a time, but not in a galaxy far away, this foolish writer strived to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother. The milestone marker in my life, which didn’t happen until I was in my mid-30s, was the day that I realized I didn’t have to be perfect. And not only did I not have to be perfect, I no longer wanted to be perfect.
When someone assailed me about something I had done wrong, I began simply replying “You’re right,” which always took the sails out of whoever was harassing me. I even reveled in the childish delight of their dismay.
But while I’m not perfect, I’m enough. I’m not mean, and I have never intentionally tried to harm anyone. I take pride in knowing that, and that I’ve finally joined the rest of the human race in not being perfect.
Now, as for books to read, if you’re a mystery fan, but would like a little something beyond cozy, you might want to check out Louise Penney’s Inspector Gamache series. I recently discovered the books, which delve deeply into just how imperfect we humans are. I’m currently reading The Brutal Telling, which is Book 5 of 17.
I love it when I find a new author who has a long series. Now, that’s what I call a perfect moment.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Thistles look pretty but are prickly, just like us humans.
The Meaning of a New Word
I was scanning through the New York Times this morning in search of something to write about when I came across the word schadenfreude. As usual when I come across a word I don’t know – and this has been a habit even before I hit my teens – I stopped reading and looked the word up.
Schadenfreude means taking pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. Now who in the hell would want to do that, I instantly thought. But then I remembered how much pleasure it gave me over the years when I heard my narcistic ex-husband was having a bad time. So much for my momentary feeling of superiority.
And I knew if I thought about it longer, I would come up with other instances in which I took pleasure from someone else’s pain. We humans are not a nice lot. I’ve long known this, but it was confirmed in my head even stronger after reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It’s a book I highly recommend, by the way.
The book concluded that we humans were the cause of most extinctions and that groups of more than 100 humans quickly found something to go to war over – beginning with religion and politics. The big item in today’s news that has everybody disagreeing is Covid. Masks, no masks. Vax or no vax. Isolation or herd immunity.
I wonder how humankind is still managing to survive?
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. — Photo by Pat Bean
Connections
I just learned that when the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum renovated its hummingbird aviary in 1992, the new hummingbird nests kept falling apart. Museum workers scratched their heads for a while, but finally realized why this was happening.
During the renovation, all the old vegetation inside the aviary was removed, and replaced by new plants. The removal took away any spiders that inhabited the vegetation and the hummingbirds needed the web spiders produced to hold their nest materials together. The problem was solved by workers gathering branches that held such webs, and placing them inside the aviary until the spiders could reestablish their presence.
While digesting this bit of information, I came across a mindfulness tip about how to stay calm during these chaos-filled days when the news is all about Covid, political shenanigans and tornado deaths. It came from TV writer Cord Jefferson, who said traditional meditation didn’t work for him. What did, he said, was to just get lost in the gentle pulses of jellyfish for a short mindfulness break during his workday,” Cord then noted that Monterey Bay Aquarium has a jellyfish cam that can be bookmarked on a phone or laptop browser.
I’ve watched hummingbirds at the desert museum and the jellyfish at the aquarium in person, and found both these things calming. I think it’s just letting ourselves get out of our heads a bit that does the trick.
But reading these two stories back-to-back, made me realize how interconnected we beings on this world are. And by beings, I don’t just mean we two-legged sapiens. It’s certainly something to think about. Meanwhile, if you’re in Tucson or Monterey, you might want to check out the desert museum and the aquarium. Both are great places to visit.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
I had an enjoyable conversation with my granddaughter and her wife last night about working women and overcoming myths about the female gender, long considered the weaker sex.
Having myself given birth to five children, I find that idea seriously demented, but I’ve heard it hundreds of times in my 82 years.
Then, this morning, as I was reading Madelaine Albright’s book, Hell and Other Destinations, I came across the chapter about her pins, and the suggestion that she write about them.
Her answer was a resounding “No way,” noting how demeaning it would be for the first woman secretary of state to write about her jewelry. It would be like one of the male presidents writing about their ties, she wrote, despite the fact that she often wore pins to convey how she felt about an issue. Just as one president was known for saying “Read my lips,” she became known for urging others to “Read my pins.”
Some years down the road, Madelaine relented. While the Smithsonian put together the pin exhibit, she wrote Read my Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewelry Box.
In writing about this, Madelaine noted that in her day – and my day — women emulated men in order to succeed. It’s time that ended, Madelaine suggested, noting that “punctured earlobes do not mean a leaky brain.”
Now that’s a quote I’ll keep in my head for the next time my granddaughter and I have a gender conversation. But then she, and her wife, already know that women don’t have to emulate men to succeed.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
I can’t count the number of Lassie books, movies and TV programs that have left me in tears. How many of you young oldsters remember this photo? And who the young boy is? And did you know that Lassie was usually portrayed by a male dog.
A Good Old Girls’ Club in the Making
I haven’t seen a movie or television show that has left me crying in at least a couple of years. Now, you should know, when I make this statement, that I have cried a water tank full of tears over the years, beginning with books like Lassie, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Black Beauty to a couple of Marvel movies.
Surprise of all surprises, the crying jag was restarted with Wednesday’s night’s episode of The Challenge All Stars, Season 2.
Now I know that people consider this peace-loving 82-year-old a bit strange — for someone who doesn’t like conflict, nastiness and mean people – because I’m a fan of both Survivor and The Challenge, whose weekly episodes usually display all of these traits.
I excuse myself because the participants are all playing a game, like Poker, in which dirty tricks, lying and outwitting your competitors are all allowed –Actual hitting gets you expelled from the game. I love the outdoor adventures and competitions. And amazingly, I also find memorable minutes of good sportsmanship and of finding some good in even the meanest people.
I’ve watched every episode, so far, of Survivor. I came late to The Challenge, but have watched as many episodes as have been screened.
So, what, you might ask, made me cry in The Challenge. It came at the end of a combined puzzle and weight-pulling competition, where one of the two female competitors simply wasn’t strong enough to do the weight-pulling, The other woman, by the way, outdid even the two men who competed in the same competition earlier, which, of course, thrilled me.
When the female winner finished, she went over to her competitor, and said “Come on, we’ve got this.” She then helped her pull her weight to the finish line so the woman could finish strong. It was one of the best female support actions I’ve ever seen. Even some of the bystander competitors even had tears in their eyes. (Just to note, I have seen men support their losing competitors in similar ways many times.)
But both these two women are mothers – and not so young anymore. The All-Stars episodes brought back players from 15 or more years ago. I found it very inspiring to see women staying active and supportive of their gender. Perhaps it’s the start of a good old girls’ club to compete with the good old boys’ clubs that have been going strong for way too long.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Amy Hale Aucker, in her book Ordinary Skin, writes about her choice to camp in a primitive area near a natural hot-spring pool despite warnings against doing just such a thing. While her mother only told her to be careful and not talk to strangers, others asked where she was going to plug in the hair dryer.
Even the campground host Jim, an older gentleman, asked if she was sure she wanted to do this.
She did, and she talked to strangers, even a rough-looking vagrant who joined her in the hot pool one night. Jim just happened to wander by, a few times, just checking out the campground. But Amy knew that he was making sure she was OK.
“He was taking care of me,” Amy wrote, noting that other men had also taken care of her during her life.
My first thought on reading this was the campground host, also an older gentleman, who daily checked up on me at a lonely Michigan campground during my solo RVing days.
It felt nice. Taking care of women was how most men were raised in my generation. And some of then took it very seriously. But then along came the female rebellion, when women decided things like opening doors for them wasn’t a good thing at all because it let the man feel superior.
Ha! Men have felt superior from almost the moment they were born, often simply because of the way they were treated by their loving parents, who gave them more freedom than their sisters, and made sure if there was only enough money for one child to be educated it would be them.
I was even told by a male high school teacher that females had no reason to go to college. They would be taken care of by a man. I remembered that clearly the day I realized nobody in my life would be taking care of me, but me. I had no problem with men opening doors for me. All I cared about was getting equal pay for equal work.
That, at least, was/is my generation, and I’m an American woman. In some eras and countries, female babies weren’t even allowed to live. Even today, in some countries, women can’t walk outside their homes without a male escort.
Hmmm. This essay took an unexpected turn, which often happens to me when I have my fingers on a keyboard and they take charge of the brain. My original thoughts were to compare Amy’s experience of Jim looking out for her, with the times men looked out for me.
And, like Amy, I, too, wouldn’t let the fear of being harmed by men stop me from doing the things I loved to do, like my solo RVing across America, or hiking a mountain trail alone because that was my favorite way to be in nature.
And also to note that if I saw a man with his hands full, I would quickly open the door for him. It’s the little courtesies between us all that make life more pleasant. And we don’t have enough of them in the world today.
Sorry for the detour from my first nice thought. But it’s hard escaping the real world.
Kindness, meanwhile, knows no gender.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
A storm’s brewing — but the sun will come out tomorrow. — Watercolor by Pat Bean
Trying to Think Positive
Sometimes stuff – translate shit — happens that might be a blessing in disguise. At least that’s what I would prefer to think about losing a writing folder on my computer.
About a year ago, I started writing a book about my journalism years. I’ve titled the book Between Wars, because it’s how I see my 37-year newspaper career. My first significant bylined story was an interview with a mom whose son had been killed in Vietnam – we cried together; and one of my last pieces was an editorial urging the president not to take us back into Iraq a second time – he didn’t listen.
Anyway, I got about 10,000 words into it when I realized what I had written was garbage. OK, maybe not quite garbage, but I’m a writer, and like most writers, I usually feel that what I write is never good enough. But this time I believed I was right – my narrative bored me. So, how in the heck was it going to keep readers turning pages
I finally just put the project away because I couldn’t figure out a way to go forward. Lately, I’ve been reconsidering tackling the project again. Perhaps you’ve even noticed that I’ve been using my blogs, writing about journalistic events in my life, to stimulate my thinking. And I started a new computer folder to keep track of research and ideas for the book.
Yesterday, I decided it was time to go back and read what I wrote a year ago, and salvage anything usable. The folder, however, was missing – which had me saying that four letter S word numerous times.
Had I accidentally deleted that old Between Wars folders when I had done a cleanup of my computer a couple of weeks ago? Maybe. Then I started asking myself if that was actually a bad thing? Or was it a good thing because it meant I truly had to start over?
After a bit of wailing and hair-pulling, my silver-lining syndrome kicked in and I began thinking positive. But excuse me while I stamp around and rage, and maybe even cry, for at least another hour.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
I never felt like a fish out of water when I was in a newsroom, but there were many times I felt like I was alone in a fish bowl with everyone keeping an eye on me simply because I was often a woman doing a man’s job. — Art by Pat Bean
A Shared Past
I’m listening to Madelaine Albright’s latest book, Hell and Other Destinations: A 21st Century Memoir, which she reads herself. As I read, I find myself greatly identifying with the author because of our shared years of experiences. She’s 84 and I’m 82.
Although I never reached the fame Madelaine did, we were both working mothers during a time when that was looked down upon; we both survived working with men before the Me Too Movement; and we both side-stepped inappropriate work-involved situations so as not to hurt our chances of advancing in our jobs.
Madelaine, I thought, summed it all up with her comment after an incident involving a male chauvinistic quip while she was seeking campaign funding during a Dollars for Democrats fund drive. One man told her he had “No money for Democrats, but five dollars for you babe.”
“Then being then,” she said, she chose to simply ignore the comment and move on with her task. It made me remember the many times something similar happened to me and I, too, ignored it.
Madelaine and I also both lived through a time of female firsts, like the first woman to become a Fortune 500 CEO, the first woman to drive in the Indy 500, the first woman on the Supreme Court, and on and on. As a working journalist when these events and many others on lesser scales happened, I wrote newspaper stories about the achievements – to the point I never wanted to do another first woman story in my life.
On my own personal level, I was the first woman to infiltrate several, all male newspaper editorial decision-making meetings. I quickly learned that the first words out of one of the men’s mouths would be: “OK guys. We have a lady present. We have to watch our language.”
Translated, I understood that to mean she can’t handle our world, and considered it a big put down.
While I’m not exactly fast on the uptake, I think I got this one right for then being then. I, who never cussed, followed the man’s comments with my own. “That’s right. You mother #@&*%#* sons of a #@^%&* just better watch your language.” That got a laugh, and the point across that I could handle just as much as the men could.
And that’s kind of how I handled most of my career. While I one hundred and ten percent supported the equal rights movement back then, I never talked about it at work, or complained when I wasn’t treated equally, (well, except for equal pay for equal work) because I saw that feminist-talking women were thought uppity and the Good Old Boys Club – why in the hell isn’t there a Good Old Girls Club frustrates me — edged those women out of advancement. I saw it time and time again. Meanwhile I stood by feeling helpless … Because, as Madelaine said, “Then being then.”
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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