Also, HGTV's $250,000 challenge where families win even if they lose. It's fun and on a subject ALL females are concerned about.
BravoTV's The Fashion Show reality contest continues on and it intrigues. But a "jock" look with fringes on stockings?
Finally, Dancing With Stars sexy Marini has new role and how did Kris Allen really win American Idol 2009?
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"The Pursuit of Something Better" is a story of a small cellular service company that rockets from the bottom of the pile when a new and visionary CEO joins the team.
Read this story by David Esler and Myra Kruger about how paying attention to ALL employees and good leadership brings results in both employee morale and the bottom line.
Plus, how could my local Walmart benefit by a lesson from Rooney's "Dynamic Organization"?
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The protagonist of this story "Can of Peas" grew up believing that a humble can of peas saved her parents from certain death on the rocky immigrant boat of their passage from Italy to America.
But was it a can of peas or something that sounds like a can of peas that saved the lives on that vote and changed the fortunes of the believers soon to be born of the survivors?
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Food Network begins its annual foodie contest "The Next Food Network Star" and it began with a bang and intrigue.
Plus some boring dishes, some lying contenders, some awful desserts and questionable personalities introduced to an eager public looking for the next Guy Fieri.
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So okay Michelle Obama wears an outfit obviously created by a bedazzler and a handy glue gun. What the hell was she thinking? We've got pics, natch.
Also, Bad Guy of the Week, David Letterman, and his hilarious liberal talkinig points and Republican Good Guy of the Week, Sen. Grassley, who didn't let President Obama get away with protecting his child pervert California political patron.
We've got it all in Thoughts of the past week.
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It's the final episode in Guest Writer Michelle's sad story of Bounty's oddyssey.
It's bittersweet as Bounty awaits Michelle and her husband at the foot of Rainbow Bridge where pets wait to meet their former owners in a heaven with no pain or sorrow.
Pic of the Day
Michelle Obama Gets Out the Bedazzler
Hey I’ve written very kind words about Michelle Obama’s fashion, even defending her more questionable choices. She likes to wear her belts fastened under her breasts. She will sometimes wear sweaters that are a size too small. Her penchant for exposing her arms, even though well-toned, in mid-winter is another fashion oddity.
But come on, folks. This bedazzler and glue gun concoction has got to be a joke, right?
And the fawning press calls it “fashion forward”. It’s like The Emperor Who Has No Clothes.
It’s tacky! It’s something Sasha made for one of her dolls, surely! It’s ugly.
And Michelle O wore that top while touring around Europe.
The woman does not have a clue.
Dave Letterman So Funny I Forgot to Laugh
All week David Letterman’s had one helluva good time telling stupid and terribly unfunny jokes about Sarah Palin. Oh, and about Sarah Palin’s kids.
Details on story HERE.
Evidently the liberals have assembled their talking points on Sarah Palin and it involves cracks about her unruly, prostitute-wannabes, deserving-to-be-raped-as-a-14-year-old daughters.
Goodness this is just so funny somebody slap me as I keep forgetting to laugh.
I think it’s a perfect, though weak, criticism of Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin that liberals are so terrified of that they throw away any shred of decency that they ever had, that perhaps Palin didn’t do such a good job of raising her children that she might not be good presidential material.
Except this would make most of us hypocrites in some form or fashion in that many of us have someone in our families or even our own fine selves guilty of thoughtless sexual behavior at some point in our lives. To include, I suggest softly, the fine Dave Letterman, whose own son is about five years old and whose mother he just wed a few months back.
Americans are mostly a fair people and they aren’t likely to get all wrankled about a president with a daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock. Considering, I add softly again, that we recently had a president engaging in all sorts of sexual shenanigans in the oval office with a young intern and we forgave him.
But it’s all the liberals HAVE on Sarah Palin. Oh they tried to fan the flames of some stupid ethics problem that had no basis in fact at all. That kind of stuff works when there’s something to the accusation. Seriously, Sarah Palin has a following and the Libs fear that she will convert even more.
So they sit around and try to come up with something, ANYTHING, with which to vilify the woman. And they come up with attacks on her daughters, constant references to her daughters and sex in the same sentence. Like Dave Letterman saying that Willow Palin got knocked up by Alex Rodriguez in the seventh inning. Willow is 14 years old but Dave, he said he didn’t mean Willow, he meant Bristol.
Well dear Lord, referencing the 18 year old as getting knocked up by a baseball player during the seventh inning stretch makes it okay.
And funny? Dear lord it was the funniest line of the year. In fact I find myself laughing deep into the night when that joke’s punchline runs through my mind. I mean wasn’t it so damn clever you could slap your knee at the cleverness of it?
Letterman’s reference to Palin’s “slutty flight attendant” look was probably fair game but, in a surprise to everyone, the National Organization of Women did put Letterman in their Hall of Shame. NOW is supposed to file complaints about nasty references to women’s looks and upon public pressure they did.
All Dave Letterman did with his stupid and very unfunny jokes about young girls was make himself look old and mean.
We’re not impressed Dave, and we aren’t laughing.
Senator Grassley-Good Guy of the Week
So the mayor or Sacramento, California is a big deal basketball star who happens to really like girls around the age of Bristol Palin. Maybe Dave Letterman could craft up a belly-buster about Bristol and this Johnson guy.
It’s the story of the week that is currently flying under the radar. Be on the lookout because of Senator Grassley, President Obama and his fashion-less wife Michelle are knee deep in firing an Inspector General just doing his job. For this Johnson guy stole over $800K from the public treasury for alleged work with Americorps, there’s that bit about young girls, and Obama wants to ignore the law and fire the guy doing his job by turning him in.
The details of this story are hot and the Obamas, including Michelle’s brother all deeply involved in basketball, are up to their knees in it.
Read the stories at HOT AIR and POWERLINE
This Walpin guy is an Inspector General, a watchdog type of position assigned to monitor all funds distributed from the public till. The president appoints the IG but he or she must be approved by the Senate.
So too, by law, must the removal of the IG must be approved by the senate. The idea, correctly, is to keep one branch of government from controlling an IG, which would defeat the purpose or protecting public funds.
Such niceties do not bother President Obama, however, who demanded that IG Walpin turn in his resignation for the crime of daring to find that the fine Mayor Johnson has been stealing public money plus consorting with underage girls.
Obama don’t like this, that someone should make one of his buddies look bad.
But Iowa’s Senator Grassley stopped this nasty tactic in its tracks. Grassley wrote the President and said that he has no right to make Walpin resign his position. And if Obama wants to terminate Walpin, as is his right, he must follow the law and present his case before the senate.
Grassley stopped this most dishonest President EVER, right in his tracks. A Republican with gonads! And opposition party! They even have an opposition party in Pakistan for God’s sake.
As of now Obama’s backed against the wall. For the fine, fine fashionable Michelle, her brother, and Obama are in this knee deep. They wanted to protect their friend, the child rapist basketball star Johnson.
Keep ears to the ground this upcoming week, folks. This is big, real big.
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HGTV’s $250,000 Challenge
I rather enjoy this show although I am quite sure those Kate people plus eight aren’t worrying about this HGTV reality show contest knocking it off the air.
The contest involves a group beginning with five couples, all from the same neighborhood. Each week the couples are charged with doing an overhaul on one room of their house. They are given a set amount of time and dollars. The “BEFORE” is shown to the audience and the judges. Each week there is a guest judge, usually a star from another HGTV decorator show. The namesake from HGTV’s “Myles of Style”, herself a former interior design contest winner on HGTV, was one such guest judge.
Each challenge also has some additional unique mini-challenge within. This past week the mini-challenge involved each team adding a creation of some sort designed and built by their own selves.
I think it’s a fun show, probably little known and likely to disappear next year.
Pity if so. For there’s lots of women out here that consider re-decorating rooms in their house to be a major part of their life. Well men too, but mostly females, let’s get real. The most humblest of abodes has pictures and knick-knacks at the least in the surround.
The couple who survives the weekly elimination rounds down to the last team standing wins the $250,000. It’s win-win in a way. The couples DO get to decorate rooms in their home with expert advice and money provided. Thus even if they do get eliminated for as long as they remain in the contest they will continue to get money to decorate.
New shows air on Thursday nights at 10 pm on HGTV.
NBC’s “The Listener”
NBC’s Home Site The Listener HERE
So the series star is cute as a puppy. His name is CRAIG OLEJNIK and he plays Toby Logan. I never heard of him and he’s young enough to be my son.
Further, I am not at all sure how Toby Logan got his ESP powers, such as they are, except for some vague connection to his mother.
I only watched one show and will likely not watch another. The Listener is one of those lame shows put on in the summer doldrums to see if there might be some audience palpatation of joy.
A drama series will succeed due to many and diverse factors. A really adorable main character is one such factor. But the young teeny-boppers need to be tuned in because that’s the female demographic that will fall in love with Olejnik’s character.
The show I watched involved a complicated plot involving a woman, her young son, a cop gone bad and his partner then dead. The woman was in a car crash. Cute Toby Logan happened to be on the scene, saved the mother, learned via his ESP that she had a son, went looking for her son, discovered the bad guy’s dead cop partner, again via his mysterious VIP gift, in the trunk of a car.
Toby, a paramedic all busy solving crimes and saving lives in his spare time, manages to discover the bad guy cop who was by this time ready to kill the mom and the son.
There’s some weird love interest going on in this show. This in that Toby’s FORMER girlfriend is a nurse at a hospital and his potential love interest of the future is a detective. I suspect these characters are part of the cast because if Toby’s to continue his quest to save lives and bring everlasting happiness to strangers with his ESP gift he will need contacts in a hospital and on the police force.
If I sound slightly mocking well it’s because I am.
Get all the young girls who voted for this year’s American Idol winner and have them watch this show. If their attention span can last an hour then this show will be a hit.
It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
BravoTV’s-The Fashion Show
BravoTV’s Web Site for This Show.
I first did a review on this reality contest series In May of this year.
I continue to watch this unique show and it has become one of my favorites.
First, I can’t sew a lick. This show involves sewing, designing, creating patterns and most important, creating a fashion “look” upon command.
Isaac Mizrahi is the show’s MC and Mizrahi is one of the few of our homosexual brethren fashion designers who does not try to make women look like little boys.
Every week the designer contenders are given a fashion challenge and they are quite unique. This past week a young woman running for a class presidency job was the guest. For a “mini-challenge” the designers were charged with designing a Tshirt featuring various cliques and groups found in a normal high school. I have never heard of a “Bgirl” but I do know such as “jocks” and “nerds”. There were a few others, also foreign to me but then it’s been a while since I’ve been to high school.
After the mini-fashion challenge of the Tshirt, the elimination challenge then involved designing an entire outfit based on the same high school group as assigned for the Tshirt challenge.
I thought the different designs to be quite interesting and creative.
The judges will choose, based on fashion show attendees’ comments, two of the best designs and two of the worst.
The fashion design that wins the contest, with the judges choosing the final winner, is then featured on the BravoTV web site as an outfit that can be purchased by the public. This is an interesting twist.
The two bottom of the group’s fashion submissions this past week included a “jock” ensemble and one for something considered a “B” girl. The designer who came up with the B girl look was sent home as what she had designed included nothing that would be considered proper “B” girl attire.
A “B” girl, by the way, is considered a Be-bop girl, a female who dances to rapper-like be-bop music. Well hey, I wouldn’t know either. But then I’m not a contender in a Fashion Show struggling to win one hundred grand.
The “jock” outfit, designed by outrageous deisnger Jonny D, was a really stupid thing involving boxing trunks with fringes on the stockings. It was more like a horse outfit than one fit for a female jock, if there is such a thing.
So far it looks like contender Reco is going to be a top guy in this thing. I’ve included the BravoTv’s web site ‘s biography on the talented Reco, just so yon reader has a clue what sorts of folks enter this kind of competition.
Reco's creative outlook on fashion goes hand-in-hand with his larger-than-life personality. Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, one wonders how this country boy developed such a creative outlook on fashion. Reco is proud of his modest beginnings. He realized his interest in fashion at a young age, while watching a Valentino fashion show on Oprah.
Reco obtained his B.S from Tennessee State University and has a strong background in architecture and performing arts. He describes his style as ultra glamorous and oozing with high voltage sex appeal. Reco has moved up in the industry from designing costumes for campus queens to dressing celebrities, and is now approaching his tenth year in the fashion industry as a freelance designer. Reco currently owns the studio 423 Clothing Boutique of Chattanooga and is the Creative Director of his own line, “The House of Chapple,” which he describes as a lifestyle line focusing on everything from luxurious gowns to sexy swimsuits and most he is delving into fragrances, jewelry, and even books aimed at helping young entrepenuers.
When it comes to fashion tips, Reco declares, "Do it!" And then, pause of reflection, states "…but don’t overdo it."
Updates-Dancing With the Stars and American Idol-2009
American Idol’s Kris Allen Cheated?
I’d been right along asserting that Adam Lambert was a shoo-in to win the 2009 American Idol contest on my AI Blog HERE.
From Popeater.com:
New evidence pin-points AT&T as the culprit behind Kris Allen's 'American Idol' victory, N.Y. Times reports. During the final performances, the mobile company provided phones for Kris Allen fans to cast blocks of votes. There appear to have been no similar efforts to provide this service to supporters of runner-up Adam Lambert.
I hasten to add that perhaps the extra votes Allen got due to these large blocks of votes might not have mattered. American Idol typically generates many millions of votes. Block votes in the thousands would likely not change the outcome. And as I heard it Lambert beat Allen handily.
Still, it makes one wonder.
”Dancing With the Stars” 2009 Hunk Gilles Marini Gets Role on
“Brothers and Sisters”.
I often remark on these sorts of shows bringing fame and fortune to the entrants.
Else why would they do it?
Now I understand sexy Gilles Marini is going to be the love interest of “sister” Rachel on “Brothers and Sisters”.
I kind of like this series as it follows my fave “Desperate Housewives”. It’ll be cool to have Marini on the series. Rachel’s one lucky character.
He might have already bared it all for the "Sex and the City" movie, but fans of Gilles Marini will see even more of him this summer.
The sexy runner-up of "Dancing With the Stars" will appear in several episodes of the ABC series "Brothers & Sisters," opposite actress Rachel Griffiths, reports Usmagazine.com.
"We just sealed the deal," Marini said. "I got a call that producers wanted to write a part for me. I'm thrilled it worked out and that I get to prove myself. The writers and I had a long conversation, and they wanted to know who I am, inside and out."
After enduring the pressure on "Dancing With the Stars," Marini insists he's not nervous about working alongside the likes of Sally Field and Rob Lowe.
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Food Network Star 2009 Premieres
Food Network Star Web Site HERE
It’s considered the Ace of Cooking Show competitions, although BravoTv’s Top Chef is closing the gap.
But Foot Network’s annual cooking competition that features an award that has the winner’s getting their own show is a tried and true contest formula for foodies across the fruited plains.
Each show features a mini-food challenge at the beginning. It might involve cooking up an egg dish as it did in this premiere show. There’s usually a short time to accomplish the challenge and the winner of the mini-challenge is often given immunity from elimination for that week.
In this premiere show, the challenge was to prepare a buffet for Food Network TV’s 16th anniversary celebration. All the Food Network stars would be in attendance. Their thoughts would be gathered on comment cards.
It was a daunting challenge.
The contenders were divided into two teams. Each team chose a leader and each team submitted a main dish, a vegetable dish, a dessert item and other specialties as suggested by the individuals involved.
I’m just getting acquainted with this year’s contenders and already the contender who submitted a very mundane and unimaginative green bean, red onion and almond salad was sent home. The general concensus was that the dish was not outstanding enough for Food Network, that such concoctions are available in any corner grocery.
The other submissions were interesting, boring, bad, outstanding or somewhere in between. At the end Judge Bobby Flay and his cohorts offer critiques of the food choices.
This was also the first opportunity for the contenders to introduce themselves to the many Food Network stars and first impressions are important. These introductions, their verve and boredom, too were critiqued by the judges.
Stay tuned for the next nine weeks as we watch the new Food Network Star get selected and emerge from a cocoon to a beautiful butterfly winging it on his or her own.
Look at Guy Fieri and how he’s taken off from his start as The Next Food Network Star.
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The Pursuit of Something Better by Dave Esler and Myra Kruger
This past week I made a trip to a super-super Walmart near me. I needed a lot of things and intended to stock up in a store that I think is the least expensive of any other in my area, hands down. I rode an extra fifteen miles out of my way just to purchase those items in one large trip that would keep me from such a jaunt for a few more months.
I needed some cheap wash cloths. Sure we all put out our prettiest things for company and such but I wanted a couple to hang behind the shower doors and put to gritty use.
Sure enough I found nice, adequate wash clothes for $1.00 each. They weren’t the softest in the world and would likely only survive thirty washings or so. But get enough of the things and I’d be set for wash clothes for a couple of years.
I got three rust colored wash cloths and two oatmeal colored ones. I I also needed some dish towels and quick I found some for $1.50 each, indeed I purchased five dish towels in the same color combination.
The cashier rang up all of the dish towels, no problem. She rang up the three rust colored wash cloths, no problem. The two oatmeal colored wash clothes…no UPC code.
She presses the thing that makes the problem light come on at her station. “I am going to need a UPC code on these,” she said and continued to ring up the rest of my considerable order. In fact, the total of my order that day came to over $310.00 so I was a customer who’d spent some bucks at the store.
I shrugged because since she had to ring up the rest of my order I didn’t care if the light blinked until help arrived to find the UPC code of the oatmeal wash cloths. Which were exactly the same as the rust wash cloths at $1.00 each and the dish towels were $1.50 each so the cost was no big deal to ascertain is what I’m saying here. I asked the cashier why she didn’t use the UPC code of the rust colored dish cloths because the price was the same.
“They are a different color,” she said, firmly and in a tone that would brook no nonsense.
Of course she rings up the total order of over three hundred bucks and still whoever was supposed to show up to find the UPC code of oatmeal color wash clothes was nowhere to be found. There were a couple of people in line behind me after my big order and the cashier just, poof, stopped and waited for the phantom savior or missing UPC codes to show up as I, the customer who’d just spent three hundred bucks, and others, tired and ready to ring up their orders, waited.
“So we should just stand here and wait?” I asked.
The cashier shrugged. “Somebody will be here soon.”
“Serious…” I continued…”you can’t use the rust colored cloths UPC codes?”
“They are a different color,” she said. Well hey, I get this. But they are the same PRICE. We were talking a transaction here with a grand total of…count ‘em…TWO DOLLARS. For this she was holding up a customer who’d just spent considerable money and others waiting in line?
I told her to just forget the oatmeal colored wash cloths. She shrugged, completed my sale and that was that.
Now I understand that inventory is affected in these sorts of transactions. Had she used the rust colored wash cloths’ UPC codes well damn, the system would have deducted two rust colored wash cloths from the inventory while two oatmeal colored ones would have remained in the inventory and we can’t have that.
This sort of thing would NEVER happen at U.S. Cellular under the leadership of Jack Rooney. Because in that company, with a reknown CEO who has gained a reputation far and wide for bringing his company from the dark shadows of obscurity to one that wins awards and became the benchmark for corporate success.
That Walmart cashier could have used the UPC codes of the rust colored wash cloths and made a note for some IT type to manually adjust the inventory. Computers have the ability to do such things but obviously Walmart is not headed by Jack Rooney, the man who changed U.S. Cellular to a company of corporate envy.
Amazon Code for “Pursuit of Something Better”
Employees of U.S. Cellular, via a closely watched system of surveys and leadership encouragement, would learn almost immediately upon hiring that leaving a customer standing like I was left cooling my heels, or the folks in line behind me, all to maintain a COMPANY convenience, would never do.
Walmart has the ability to keep prices low and very competitive down pat. Walmart obviously doesn’t think enough of its employees to trust the MOST important person on the Walmart team to lead the charge to better service to, well lead the charge to better service. Who is most visible to most Walmart customers? That would be the cashier!
U.S. Cellular is mostly a Midwest company, marketing, as its name would imply, cellular phone services. It was in competition with mighty Sprint and Verizon. It was the era when cellular phone companies had the advantage as cell phones were being bought by every American as the technology and mastery of manufacture made prices affordable by the vast majority of the public.
Enter Jack Rooney.
Rooney made a name for himself as CEO of other technological companies before being hired on by U.S. Cellular. Jack Rooney had a vision.
He called it the “Dynamic Organization” and yes, many called it meaningless psychobabble.
If Walmart were a Dynamic Organization that cashier would have smiled, rung up my oatmeal washcloth using the rust colored one’s UPC code. Discretely she would have made a note of the transaction and when appropriate she would approach her leader and asked that a manual entry be made to correct any inventory error that might remain because of how she handled the sale of the oatmeal wash cloths.
Her leader, in a Dynamic Organization, would have congratulated the cashier for how deftly she handled the situation and praised for having sent a customer home happy, kept the ones in line unaware of any snafu and would insure that the inventory affected would be handled by the department in charge of such things with a smile and good wishes.
The word “dynamic” implies any energy, a pleasant movement, brought about by an interaction in which all participants in the interaction get involved and work with all other participants eagerly to a pleasant outcome.
A Dynamic Organization would therefore be one that has all parts of the company working with joyful energy with all other parts creating a zeal and joy that almost feeds upon itself.
Jack Rooney did more than just talk about an organization that had all parts working together to achieve the final goal of a profitable company with happy customers. Jack Rooney followed his concept through, using “Culture Surveys” that had employees feedback on how well they perceived the company was doing as well as thoughts on their own leaders.
These “Culture Surveys” became the engine that drove Rooney forward to achieve that Dynamic Organization. They were not just mindless employee surveys that were dutifully taken and just as dutifully ignored. The Culture Surveys were closely watched. Issues as addressed in the surveys were addressed by leaders in charge of the manner. In due course employees at U.S. Cellular became intrigued, almost enchanted, that the company REALLY did care about them.
Dave Esler and Myra Kruger write a clear and happy book about the U.S. Cellular success story. It’s a story of how a struggling little known company came from obscurity to win five consecutive J.D. Power awards for customer satisfaction.
As I read the book I became eager to sign up for a company with a leader such as Jack Rooney. For in my lifetime I’ve had the opportunity to be a leader of many departments for various and diverse employees. I was Accounting Manager of a busy hospital accounting department as well as of a government contractor. I managed up to 15 employees. I know too well the value of a dedicated employee and I’ve learned that in order to inspire employees to better things there is nothing more important than leadership that presents a good example and follows through.
It’s not as much about a Dynamic Organization or any other catchy names one might put to it. It’s about a leader who cared and continually cared. It’s about a CEO who didn’t sit back and ride it out until retirement.
Read “The Pursuit of Something Better” for a real lessons, well-written with optimism and the sound knowledge that it CAN be done inculcated into every upbeat word.
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Can of Peas
I held the yellowed, crinkled piece of paper tightly in my fists. I did not, literally, know whether to laugh or to cry. I could, given any tiny impetus, have screamed to the gods above, raised my fist in a strange combination of hilarity and anger and irony and, screamed and screamed and….
“It is a can of peas,” I remember my mother telling me in her sing-song English with her funny Italian accent. I was only five or six years old and had somehow climbed up to the tiny window above our small kitchen sink to reach that round object that had captured my toddler fancy since I’d been born. Or at least so my mother told me. I bowed my head and did a quick sign of the cross in reverence to my dear departed mother who’d so carefully cultivated and passed on the history, wisdom and sobriety of the family’s cherished can of peas.
“You can learn a lot from a can of peas, Nina,” my mother told me. By then I was holding the can in my little girl hands, twirling it round and round, ready to roll it across the floor as if the toy I thought it surely was. My mother’s hands prevented me from abusing the can of peas in any fashion and my childish self was frustrated. I wondered about all the adoration of this can and for what? I couldn’t even roll it across the floor, watch the faded and old-fashioned label rotate as the can rolled over the cracked linoleum, maybe catching one of our cats’ eyes in the action?
Mama chucked me under the chin and carefully removed the can of peas from eager fat hands and for about five more full years I never gave that odd can of peas sitting in the alcove of that little window another thought.
Then my father opened his factory canning peas and tomatoes. For this was America after all, home of the free and the brave and in our case, the well off who’d finally found their riches in pursuit of a happiness that found an eager market selling a product for which people were willing to pay.
Oh we were not fabulously wealthy, the Biancos of Bianco Canning Factory fame. My family’s canning factory was located right outside of Baltimore’s Little Italy. We canned two products: tomatoes for the tomato sauces that would dress the pizzas in Little Italy or cover the huge pasta bowls for which this part of Baltimore was famous. Also,
Bianco’s Canning Factory was also the only place in the state of Maryland that canned peas.
~~~~~~~~
“Hi Mom. Has Donnie been out yet?” I looked at my beautiful daughter then asking about her brother and wondered for a second just where I was and why.
“He’s in the back,” I said distractedly to Bennie, short for Bernadette. “He’s giving a private tour to some local bigwigs. He’s hoping to get some funds to finance a world wide tour featuring his art.”
Bennie’s eyes glowed. She was so proud of her little brother. I noticed a crowd of people behind her and I smiled. Bennie said she was bringing everybody she worked with to Donnie’s private art show and it looked like she had.
“Come on, guys. Let me give you an upfront and personal tour, all special by the sister of the artist whose work you will be seeing tonight. He’s taking bids on EVERYTHING so don’t hesitate to ask for a price quote if you see anything you like. If all goes well Donnie will be going on a world tour with his art. I’m betting none of you has ever seen the lowly pea presented in so many forms and fashions.”
Bennie’s voice faded off as she led her entourage off for their personal tour and I had to smile. For Bennie was right. My artist son Donnie had always been infatuated with the family’s business icon and he’d painted, drawn, penciled or sketched cans of peas, boxes of frozen peas, peas still on the vine, peas sitting on a plate swimming in butter and, in one very controversial work of art that first brought Donnie to the attention of the Baltimore Sun, a beautiful green pea actually nailed to a cross, a spear piercing it’s round middle, ruby red blood dripping from the wound.
I was the first one to get angry about that picture. It was a sacrilege as I saw it. I’d tolerated Donnie’s unusual fascination with peas since he was a toddler, even the drawing of a pea wearing a sexy yellow bikini. Donnie was an artist, my husband, sweet Sal now departed for ten years, and artists do not think like most of us, so Sal explained to my dismayed self. For myself I’d just as soon Donnie take a few accounting courses at Baltimore Community college, maybe minor in this art stuff but get a degree and a normal life and pursue that artistic side as more of a hobby.
Both of my children had enough money in a trust fund established by my parents that they didn’t have to work a day in their lives if they did not want to. I however had not been raised in a huge house with a live-in Nanny, a cook to make my meals, with money enough to pursue hobbies and obtain the latest technological baubles. I knew what it was like to live in a tiny home in the projects, to have the winds blow cold through cracked doors on winter nights, to listen as my parents worried about rent, food, shoes.
I looked at Donnie’s huge oil painting of a box of frozen peas that hung above my head and sighed.
~~~~~~~~~~
As I understood it, the can of peas was considered some sort of divine revelation in my side of the Bianco family. The Biancos were originally from Sicily, a dirt-poor clan that dabbled in crime although nowhere near the glamour of the Godfather. My grandparents somehow bribed a ship’s captain to board a bunch of us in stowaway for a trip to America, back in the day when such things were possible and when immigration authorities willy-nilly stamped new arrivals’ fake passports as if genuine, often giving them new, more pronounceable names in the process. There were eighteen Biancos on that boat for a trip to America. As I understood it there were cousins, second cousins, third cousins, uncles, aunts. Few kept contact with each other once on land but my grandparents were on that boat as was my 14 year old mother and her secret love crush at the time, her 16 year old boyfriend.
The boat hit a terrible storm while at sea and the story was told to me many times through the years, by my mother and my father, but their English was heavily-accented and it all happened when their memories were young and fresh and told when their memories were older and half-forgotten. As best I understood, it was a can of peas that saved everyone on board, the same can of peas that occupied that special perch in the kitchen window of my early childhood as I believed.
Now just how the can of peas saved the lives of all passengers on that horrific journey is not clear. As I remember my mother’s tale of the event, and as I splice it in with my father’s version of the story, all were asleep on the boat, including all stowaways then hidden deep in the bowels of the boat. Suddenly the sound of a can rolling around on the oak flooring of the ships bottom woke up one of the babies on board. The baby started crying and soon its parents woke up. The sound of the can rolling around grew louder although I’ve concluded that maybe it was the sobs of the baby accompanied by the movement of the awakened parents that woke all the stowaways but soon everybody was up and about and my father grabbed the can of peas to stop the noise. In short time somebody went up on deck and found the captain of the ship passed out cold.
A storm was tossing the ship as if were a toy on that restless ocean and this is how that can of peas likely got dislodged although no one knows how the can of peas got down on the lower level in that all foodstuff was, obviously, stored in the galley, clear on the other end of the ship. A couple of the adults managed to get the captain awake. He had an awful hangover and worse, his crew of five were totally missing.
The story is that the adults all pooled their talent and resources and managed to bring that ship to shore. The rest of the crew, it is believed, fell overboard from their drunkenness but thank God, as my father would tell me after making a thoughtful sign of the cross, the captain didn’t fall off the boat as even with all the stowaways helping, nobody knew how to pilot that boat.
I think that there might not even have been any “crew” on that boat, that the captain was the only guy in charge and once he got drunk and passed out, well the can of peas rolling around did somehow, according to the stories, wake everyone and save the day.
But this is all just speculation on my part. My parents were young teenagers, it was dark, they were terrified. They lived, they married, they did well in their new country. And they figured they owed it all to a can of peas.
Stranger things have happened is how Sal would phrase it with a playful mocking wink at how much my parents respected a damn can of peas that Sal figured probably had nothing to do with nothing.
Sal didn’t much appreciate our own son’s obsession with all things pea related but for the most part he would shrug. “He’s got talent, Nina. He’s got a nice trust fund. What else is money for but to give you freedom to do what you want to do?”
My parents, Donnie’s grandparents, didn’t help much. Through the years the lowly pea, either canned, frozen or raw in the garden, became an icon for all wisdom, for deep thought, for meaning religious.
“Peas mature in a pod, maybe five, six…even seven or eight them all in a pod. The snuggle next to one another and they don’t argue or fight. They get along until as a group the peas mature until they, as a team, burst the confines of the pod and are free.”
“When peas are frozen they take on a totally different texture than when they are canned. Their skins remain firm and a pea eaten from a can is a whole different thing than a frozen pea, both of which are far removed from the raw pea from which they all started. Shows the ability of the pea to be many things, depending on the need.”
“The vine of the pea is a most beautiful thing. It twirls around, using tendrils to attach itself to anything nearby, climbing high to allow its pods to hang far from the dirt and to quickly dry from the rotting rains.”
Of course I paraphrase the above statements given through the years by either my mother or my father. My father did raise peas in our backyard but as far back as I can remember, we never ate a pea one in our house, Italians that we were we had no particular allegiance to the humble pea that could be better used on a beloved zucchini. In fact, I think my Dad took a loss on the line of canning peas and most of his profit came from canning tomatoes. Peas grow better in cooler climes so canning factories up around the Great Lakes made money from canning peas while tomatoes love Maryland’s heat and humidity.
But the legend of the peas grew like the sweet pea vines in my Dad’s garden and while I could have laughed it off and left it behind with my childish things, my son’s fascination and obsession with the vegetable wouldn’t let me leave it alone.
Now I held the crinkled letter, left at the front desk for me by my cousin Sabrina. She found it in an old suitcase in her grandparents’ attic. Sabrina phoned me earlier in the day, excited at her find.
“It’s neat, Nina. Did you know that the old boat they cross the Atlantic in almost sunk?” I told Sabrina that I’d heard that story often. I asked her if she knew that everyone on board was saved by a can of peas.
“Yes!” Sabrina responded with zeal. “It’s the neatest thing, isn’t it? In fact, my grandparents had one of them at their wedding!”
I was busy this morning but the notion that my cousin’s grandparents, however on earth they were related to me, had a can of peas at their wedding did stop, briefly, in my mind, as I tried to imagine the concept. Sabrina, who I think was probably my fifth or sixth cousin, said she would leave the old letter she’d found from her grandmother’s sister in Italy to her grandmother at the front desk of the gallery when she stopped by to see Donnie’s show. She wanted me to get a price for archiving the thing. Sal dabbled in the art of archiving and Sabrina felt that this letter was valuable and would be cherished by the Bianco descendents of the day and the descendents to come.
“Dear Cassie.” I read the Italian greeting, all I could understand, from the yellowing note written in the small neat handwriting of what was obviously of a woman’s script. Sabrina’s Great Aunt wrote the letter in Italian but Sabrina had it translated. I held the original document in one hand and the translated version in the other. I pondered that errors in translation might have caused what had to be a huge error in how it all originally came down.
“I am so glad for you and your new American husband Benjamin. It is so wonderful that he has a good job selling outdoor furniture and how you influenced him to that career. Your little boy looks just like you!
“It’s been so long since I saw you. I pray to the Virgin Mary that Rocco makes enough money that we can come to America to visit you. I worried for so long if you made it safe to America and I wonder if I made the right choice in staying behind. But I had little Rocco and you were only ten years old. You could start a new life in a new land. I had a husband and two little children.
“It’s just as well that I didn’t know how harrowing the trip was. That awful storm! How you had to hold onto the ship’s canopy to keep from being swept overboard. How the baby’s bottle rolling around in the ship’s hold woke you up. I cannot imagine a ten year old child going through such a thing.
“I am sure that Jesus forgives that you got pregnant before you married Benjamin as His own mother was not married when He was born, do not forget. Besides, neat how you remembered how that ship’s canopy saved you, how you talked Benjamin into taking a job selling lawn chairs, awnings, canopies. It’s wonderful how well you’ve done and your house is huge. And gorgeous!
“Yes, Maria, a canopy does cover and protect. There is a symbolism there. Look at how well selling them has served you and your family!”
The letter went on for two more pages but it was just the more normal verbiage of an older sister from the old country writing her lucky young sibling living happy and rich in the great country of America. My eyes would read, then stop and stare, at the story of the ship’s canopy, how Sabrina’s grandmother remembers holding onto it during the raging storm. Ships do have canopies, as my research indicated. But surely it was a coincidence? Perhaps it was a flag pole that Sabrina’s mother called a canopy? Or the whole story got confused and interchanged in the translation?
But it was a baby’s bottle rolling around the floor of the ship that stormy night, according to Sabrina’s grandmother. It was not a can of peas as my parents believed. The “can of peas” was a canopy that saved the lives of those on board. Or maybe it was the baby’s bottle that saved the lives. Maybe there was no canopy. Maybe there was no can of peas. Maybe my parents’ version of events was right and Sabrina’s grandmother got it all wrong. I didn’t know. I knew the ship went through a storm. Something rolled around in the dark of the hold. Either a canopy or a can of peas were given attribution for saving the stowaways.
~~~~~~
“Mom!” I quickly folded up the letter from Sabrina’s grandmother and its translation. My son was hurrying toward me and he looked excited.
“They are going to finance my tour, Ma,” Donnie told me. “Tomorrow I am packing and on Thursday, I am heading to Europe! And every single painting has a bid on it, Ma. Before the night is over I will have all my artwork sold. But don’t worry Ma,” Donnie told me, a twinkle of joy shining bright in his eye, “I am only too happy to paint more peas. It was a can of peas that saved the day for my grandparents and it will be a can of peas that will make my future. Hell I could paint anything but an artist needs to have a symbol, something that keeps him different from the rest of the pack. The humble pea is my symbol.”
Of course I did not say, or will I ever say, a word about that letter to Sabrina’s grandmother from her sister.
My father’s factory canned peas. My son painted them. Sabrina’s grandfather sold canopies.
This great country blessed us all. There was a belief, a talent and the willingness to work at it.
In the end, it’s all that really mattered.
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First installment of Bounty’s Saga
Second Installment of Bounty’s Saga
Bounty wins dog contest on this Blog
Final Installment on Bounty’s Sage
You know it's awful when I just use a name for the Drivel subject line, don't you? No clever plays on words for serious, somber news.
Bounty was put to sleep at 8:23 am.
He had a truly awful time the night before, and when I asked him to go outside to go to the bathroom at 1:30 am, he couldn't get up. I carried him outside and he stood on wobbly legs, ears down and looking miserable. He couldn't control his back legs very well.
I carried him back inside and laid him down on the huge stuffed pet pillow by the side of our bed. He didn't move at all that I could tell until 7:30, not even looking up when Harry went to work at 3:45 am. The sound of the deadbolt on the front door usually sends him into joyful barking and speed mode to get there and see who's coming in or out. This time, not so much as a twitch. He also hadn't finished all his food for the last two days; highly unusual for him.
When the vet's office opened, I was there with my boy. The vet examined Bounty thoroughly and made sure - with a series of questions - that this almost-paralysis didn't have some other, curable cause. He had no suggestions.
You could easily see the cancer's progress: Bounty's skin was a mass of flakes and scabs, his hair was thinning out so much you could see his pink (inflamed) skin through it in many places, he had developed multiple lumps in his skin and there was a pus-covered, matted mass on the inside of one thigh.
Rather than have Bounty suffer, I made the decision to have him put to sleep. Harry had said his goodbyes already, in case. I went with my faithful friend to a room in the back and stroked his head as he drifted off into final slumber.
Back at the house, Hunter is excited to finally have the whole building to play in. The cats can get away from him if he gets too pesty, but we'd kept him locked in a room or a portable play pen most of the time so he wouldn't stress Bounty.
Today his puppy antics distract me, and how can I not smile through my tears when he misjudges his pounce and slides sideways across the floor?
The house is not dogless, but the memory of Bounty is still here, everywhere around me. He is not curled up by my feet as I type, and he doesn't leap to follow me when I go to a different room for something. Even Hunter's name has a memory of Bounty in it, as we remember the groomer's joke "Bounty Hunter" when we call him.
Somehow, that feels very appropriate.
Michelle
winebird@winebird.com
The Desk Drawer, writer's exercise email list
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