MainMor’s Neighborhood

まぁ、しかしこのVox This！でブックマークにするってヤツは、記事のタイトルがそのまま中身のタイトルにもなってしまうのねん。
ちょっとなんつーか、変えるとすると元の記事に失礼、でもそのまんまのタイトルになっちゃうのも困る、という中途半端な仕様なのはこのさい、おいておいて。

ご近所さんの「祝福 - Vox」　に反応してみる。

http://i-ro-ha.vox.com/library/post/%...

宮崎駿監督は「現代の子供は、祝福されていないことを知っている」

というのをちゃんと考えてみようと思う。

前に読んだ本で「劣等感とか落伍者意識は親が刷り込んでる」というくだりがあって、それと同じ文脈で親から「あんたはダメだ」とか「昔は良かったけど、あんたたちの世代は終わってる」とか常に言われ続けたら、そりゃ自分だけのことじゃなくて自分たち世代ぜ〜んぶが、「俺たちもうだめぽ」って思うのは仕方ないんじゃないかな。

だいたい昔が良かったなんて思ってるかもしれない自分（の世代）にしたって、あの頃は「サイテー」と思ってたし、学校も教師も親もまぁ、ひでぇなぁと感じてたのにね。これって時間が経つと全てが美化されるという良い見本。

だから、ダメなとこがあるのもイイところがあるのも昔と一緒。せめてこのひとが減り続けている国にちゃんと産まれてくれて生き延びてくれたことを、それだけでも十分に祝福されるべきことを、ちゃんと伝えてあげたいと思う。勿論、「うるせぇんだよぉ、オヤジ！」って罵倒されてもまぁ、いいじゃありませんか。元気があって。

なんか最近読んだ、「見えない世界で生きること」という本に、街で会ったパンクな若者が視覚障害者の著者を助けてくれるという話を読んで、「捨てたもんじゃないな」と思った。そう、いつの時代にもダメなのもイイものもある。それをちゃんと理解して自分で行動できる、声を出せるってのはステキだなと。

「見えない」世界で生きること

松永 信也

From current.com, a nicely put together collection of interviews and stories from early days of Bay Area Derby Girls and derby life in general. Not only do I love the women being interviewed, I appreciate the focus on what derby really is to the players, not just the cheap-shots and cheesecake poses that is so often portrayed in media (don't get me wrong - that part is fun too!).

Who decided to put the camera lens where my finger goes? Steve?

photo.jpg

靖国神社であります。ものすごい数の屋台が出ててびっくり。

みたままつり＠靖国神社

鳥居をくぐって真っ正面にみえるのは大村益次郎先生の銅像だ。

大村先生は何を思う。

中に入ってみる。

吊り下がってるのは何かなぁ。

靖国といえば、この人、つのだ☆ひろ（なのか？）。これからコンサートが始まる模様。

つのだ☆ひろ、出待ちちゅう。

そして中にはいってみるととこんな提灯が並んでるとこに出る。あんまり数が多いんで何が何やら。

でもこんなひとのもありました。

よしりん作。

そして相撲シリーズ。

これは達筆。

ドルジさんのは何が何やら。

ぶるがりあ〜ん。

伊東四朗さんのがいいなぁ。字にも味がある。

伊東四朗さんのおコトバ。

1 comment

で、外に出て提灯をなにげに見てるとこんな会社が出してた。おぉ〜ぅ、イイじゃん、吉田カバン！！

こんなとこも提灯出してる。

これ忘れてた。

お約束のお守り。

柄がカワイイ。

Well,  there is nothing second grade about me!!  Got the results of the MRI today -  I have a "high grade"  tear  in the tendon of my foot.

It is nearly 2 inches long and the doctor said that I must have a high pain threshold because most people would not be able to go up and down on the injured foot without a big "ouch".   I have consistently described this as "niggling" so I guess no one really took me all that seriously - and in fact, I had not taken it all that seriously myself - it was only that it has been "niggling" for 18 months that I thought I should follow up.

So now I am in a hard cast for 6 weeks!   And I was going to start back on the step machine this weekend - honest!!!

I don't think that the doctor is terribly optimistic that this is going to repair on its own but it is what they "have" to attempt first. After the hard cast I will have one of those funky walking boot casts for another 6 weeks.

Guess it is going to be a while before the step machine is fired up!!  :-)

Current difficulties -  managing the stairs!!   Hobbling is very tiring!!

Upcoming difficulties - how the hell am I going to get to and from work!!

These days you get choices in what colour your cast is - the purple, bright blue and pink seemed to scream 'pity me'  so I chose black.  Obviously I am going to have to paint my nails before Monday! 

IMG_4995a

Pickett

1 comment

Yeah, it's me and I'm still here.  You all know I've been going through some losses lately and we tried very hard to face a big loss yesterday and I think we succeeded.  We had my friend Sue's Memorial Service yesterday and it went off with only a few hundred hitches and it was just as she would have liked it.

I spent a few days trying to get this thing together but was missing a key ingredient.  The person we were arranging this for was the person who would normally take care of this type of thing for me. I was a big, fancy wedding planner in Beverly Hills but it doesn't mean much when you are doing something for a friend and have no help (because she was the help).

I wrote words down several times and met the the Hospital Chaplain and the Pastoral Care Department a few times last week.  I bought parchment paper and photo paper an discussed a few readings and musical selections. In our inimitable style we freeballed and just ended up letting it happen as it would and it therefore happened just as it should have.

It's hard getting thousands of people to abandon their work stations when life and death are on the line.  Nurses can't usually sneak off for an hour in the middle of surgery. Most people in a Hospital take their breaks, if they take one, rather on the fly and when they can so scheduling something just doesn't work.  So we decided to set a book out in front of the Gift Shop in the lobby so that all Sue's friends and collegues would certainly pass by and get the info they needed and be able to jot a quick passing memory for Sue's family.

I sat up Monday night with a picture of Sue opened in my photofilter, airbrushing shadows out.  Erasing wrinkles.  Faux tanning my friend.  You always want to make people look good.  They would want it that way.  So we do, right?  So I decided to give Sue a facelift because she was obsessed with having one.  We would tell her she didn't have a wrinkle on her face but she insisted she needed one and would get one when she could.  So I gave her one.  I tanned and toned her.  I raised her cheekbones. I puffed her lip up a hair and then I rubbed out spots and shadows and enhanced the color and the clarity of the picture. She would have loved seeing the picture so I did it for her.

I got to work and was sick as a dog.  Migraine.  Nauseating, eyesplitting, sound sensitive migraine. And a bad one! I was so close to throwing up for so many hours and the kids just said "You're just stressed Mr. Myke.  Relax, we'll take care of everything". And they pretty much did.  Flowers.Check.  CD Player, CD, sound check. Check. Photo. Check.  Pastor. Check. Guest Book? Ci. Alright then.  "You guys go downstairs, close the store and hang a sign up and I'll make a few calls". It was about ten minutes until the service began and I saw Sue's Sister-in-Law and brother come into the lobby with her niece Laura, their daughter. I had a chance for a quick hello but before I spent a minute with them a Nurse came careening across the lobby and asked me if this was Sue's family.  She and Sue knew each other as good friend's for so many years without ever asking each other what their names were. You do that at work when it's a really big place.  It's a really big place. I found her personally to share the news when we found out Sue had died.  She was very winded, almost jarred when I told her initially.  But for her family to see such an immediate response from such a busy and critically needed person to rush across the lobby to great them and share a quick moment to me was the pace for her service being set.  It was just as I would have written it if I was given the chance to.  So I showed them the Chapel and excused myself briefly.

I ran up to the Gift Shop to check on the kids.  Marian had been putting cold compresses on my head to relieve the pain and the other wee ones and old gals ran around closing shop for the very first time in over three years for Sue's service. We close at night but are open every day year round.  Their idea. They don't want people to not be able to have things on holidays.

Okay, so they all scurried downstairs and shooed a few people away (nicely). And I followed and stood in the lobby looking around for attendees.  You want there to be people there.  I was scared we wouldn't have enough room but you always want a full house to remember people with.

The Chaplain opened with a few messages from well wishers from the Memory Book we provided a day before. By chance he read mine first.  It went to the effect of "I look behind me and you're not there. I get confused and people don't recognise me without you there". Then another one from a student who said how scared she was when she first started there but Sue made her feel comfortable from the minute they met and she has loved this place ever since.

The Chaplain read from Proverbs about the Lady Merchant and her dedication and her desire to get things done, and correctly.  We picked that together. 

The room was very quiet and I started thinking "if nobody gets up soon we will have dead air time and it will feel awkward".  I jumped up and stood at the podium and froze like stone.  Then I shook a little.  Then I sobbed uncontrollably and when I finally could force a few words out the best I could come up with was "this is finally real, isn't it"? (muffled and whiney and tearie).

I shared a few things I'm sure but what I can't remember. Then my boss got up and he was crying also. He said some nice things.  His Admin was next and she began to cry and what touched me was her sensitivity given she and Sue spent many years at odds with each other. You always clear up things in the end and they certainly did.  I did the things they used to so they didn't have to do accounting with each other any more, or payrolls, or invoices. I did half with one and the other half with the other and all three of us got along.  When Aileen cried my heart lightened.  Like the Grinch when his tiny heart starts to grow. Ping.  Full blown emotion was now in progress an I was realizing my friend really died and not only that but I lost the best Assistant I ever had.

Then we started hearing from friends and a recurring theme was about how there was no Myke without Sue or Sue without Myke. We were a team, or perhaps even a show.  We were both boisterous and laughed louder than everybody but it made other people laugh just to hear us laugh. It made us laugh too,lol! She was the quiet one. She was Teller and I was Penn. 

I acknowledged a few Dignitaries and pretty much everybody else by name.  As she would for me. I heard funny stories about pranks and sensitive stories about volunteering at "Children's" but I heard so much that I wanted her family to hear and that made me happy.  I wanted them to see the playful and funny but also the sensitive, well thought of, often times turned to sister/auntie that we knew. The Kathie's were there. And Connie (I reminded everyone that Connie was the only "hippie" Sue ever liked,lol)

After a few quiet moments of nice memories my friend Will came in the Chapel door.  Will is a Rapper. An MC if you will.  His group is called ATM.  Addicted To Money.  Will and Sue were friends.  He is a thug and she is a Princess and they met on common ground and decided to be friendly since they would be in the same vicinity much of the time.  And they did.  They would laugh.  Willie would ask Sue why she wouldn't go out with him.  She would swat him in the arm or just glare at him.  He should have frozen to death from some of those looks.  They had a "mutual understanding" and I was touched that he remembered to come or that he would come at all.  Big thug and all.

Cathy shared that we were trying to get Sue to go to Roller Derby with us.  We tried so hard and she would have laughed so hard if we could have gotten her there. Kathy Wheaton, a very well to do Boston Desperate Housewive came and we hadn't seen her for months.  Sue and Kathy talked fashion for hours because Kathy had money and Sue had a history with fashion. Kathy and I are Yankees. She laughs when she tells people she's from Nashville because she has the heaviest Boston accent you have ever heard in your life.

Then Marian shared the story about Match.com and how we gave Sue a fake name and were going to call her Geraldine Pope on her profile.  We would secretly arrange dates and have Sue meet people from the internet.  She was just terrified we had already done something and that people would find out.  I always took candid pictures of Sue smoking and she thought I found one of those and we had already posted them on the net. (We hadn't, but we considered it).

So, after some rememberences from the family and some of the ladies she volunteered with it was time for us to play our musical selection.  We picked Tennessee Homesick Blues by Dolly Parton because Sue always played Dolly in the morning.  People can't be mean if they hear Dolly Parton.  You know how grumpy people are? Well her strategy was to play it and like mind control they would have to be nice to us. I looked over to Darius, the appointed DJ and our troubled youth this summer and he was asleep in the chair. Uhm, timing?  "D" I shoutedd in a whisper. "DEEEE"!, I shouted again rasping an starting to move.  I finally tapped the CD player and got his attention and we finally heard the song and it reminded me, if nobody else, of every morning I spent so happily looking forward to each day at work with my dear Miss Pickett.  My whacky nut.  My sidekick and cohort.  My dearest friend. I had flashbacks all last week and I missed our routine. "Blueberry muffin Pickett"? "Got 'em".

And now she is really gone and for Christ sakes I'm crying again.  I'm just getting too old for all this.  I can't stand that everybody I care about is dying.  Mom.  Dad. Grandma.  Gulliver.  Et tu Sue? Et tu?

I'll miss you and I can promise you that your name will be mentioned every single day that I reside at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. ( A remarkable hospital according to US News and World Report). I am guessing that before I ever get to say a word somebody will come up to me daily and say "Remember when Sue...................."?

And I will Pickie, I will.

I know you loved Johnny Cash but I refused to let the kids play "A Boy Named Sue" at your memorial . But I hummed it to myself and to you Myrtle. I bet a few others hummed it as well.

Originally published at Tupelo Geek. You can comment here or there.

In lieu of a real post:

• 20:34 Packing and getting ready. Tomorrow: Pike's Peak!

Hi All

I can hardly wait for choir season;  I always miss my choir fix when I don't have it;  Everyone needs a break I know -- even me.  Still, I am so excited!!

In the meantime, I have to satisfy my thirst with a little nostalgia.

One of my recent favorites(probably because we did it in May).  For you listening pleasure,  Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben