My family moved me to The United States in the first years of the 1970's.  My natural Mother was Eritrean and when she died I was adopted into my Father's first family.  I recall the terrible problems of changing households and countries at the same-time with great vivid irritation and anger.  But I have now started looking back at the upheaval and strangeness of a new home with a softer lens.  Maybe it is because of the ages of my three children or the last ten years of loss that has inflicted my small family now here in the States.  But should I meet my brother, father and mothers again I think I have a place in mind where we could all be at peace.

I would like to meet on Lake Shore Drive in Colchester, Vermont, in the big raised ranch house that is painted so badly. The Jarvis' owned it and kept a horse in the backyard during the 1980's. I believe it was their family that first painted the house flesh pink, they never did have much taste.

The house on Lake Shore Drive, was originally painted dark green and had Volkswagens in the driveway. If you were driving away from the Mallets Bay Boat Club toward the house, then you would have to turn left into the driveway when you arrived. There was a corner of trees that grew dense by the road, and you would be aware of them as your car came around a corner. Then there would be four or five houses before our driveway could be breached.

The Matheiu home was either the second or third home from the tree-grove. The Matheiu's were a French Canadian family, three girls and three boys. Mr. Mathieu played the accordion and the kids all played guitar. Mrs. Mathieu spent all day baking bread and making berry-jams and Maple syrup. Culturally, the boys from this family fit in as badly in that neighborhood as I did. They would shoot and kill anything that flew, walked, ran, crawled and played in their yard. Including pets. There was no absence of open comment about how the neighbors felt about Julian, Daniel and Guitan Mathieu. Looking into my life's side view mirror, I am mostly shocked by the memory of these boys musical tastes. Olivia Newton John albums were about the only thing they had in their collections, a few John Denver and Lynnette Lynn Anderson.

There used to be a field across the street from our houses, and wild grapes grew in the bushes that lined the road. The field bordered on an unpaved road that wove along the lakes edges and held really-pretty, shore-line homes, none of which I ever entered. Some of the cabins on the lake held only seasonal visitors.

The house's backyard butted up to a forest of Aspen, Birch and Maple trees. Birch lined the properties to the left of the house that from 1974 held the Proventure family. Richard, Jeanie and Jay. Their family dog, Bozo (half-terrier, part shepherd and wolf-hound), spent most of her days guarding the small children of this neighborhood, along with a Siberian Husky named Wolfie and a black Labrador retriever named Moo-moo. One picture exists, taken by the ice-cream man, of 4 children with their dogs standing in the mouth of the driveway wearing bathing suits and summer rags by the highway, waiting for ice-cream, saying "cheese".

I look at this photo and I still admire my thrusting-tummy and sway-back pose. And I still wear pigtails and sport the fashions of those early-seventies summer days. Jean shorts and sleeveless, striped shirts. Blue on blue with some more blue, and I wear that with blue. At this moment I look at myself and find I am wearing a thin black-blue/gray-now, single-pocket t-shirt, covered in white paint splotches. And to the mid-thigh, un-hemmed, patched jean shorts that are two sizes too big. My fifth grade pen-pal, Lisa, always wrote to me about what she wore. I lost her when I tried and failed to send a letter that addressed her as "Dumb Lisa", I then mocked her clothing-awareness stance on the happenings of tenyearoldism. My teacher, Mrs Whitney, had the very right idea of reading the letters before handing them out. Everyone dresses well who grows up in Vermont.

The picture was taken at the mouth of our driveway, next to the natural, log-posted, wooden fence. The fence was useless. A great place to sit and an attractive border to the highway. But the two logs per segment, play-school architecture worked as badly at keeping things in the yard as it did at keeping anything out. The fence never made it's way to the house and stood as an ornament of our middle-class uselessness.

Our garage was at the bottom/end of a sloping driveway, that was housed under the furthest most bedroom window. We had a ping-pong table in there, and my older brother's rocket-ship workhouse.  I spent hours of my childhood closed up in the garage discovering different methods for beheading dolls and containing the small animals I would catch running free through the forests behind our house.  I had cheap aquariums full of frogs and salamanders, buckets that housed small mice and snakes.  Brian Sherwood, the boy my age who ran a bait shop down the street, would often give me turtles and strange baby fishes that he caught along with the fry he would sell to fisherman.  I would stare at the animals for hours imagining myself smaller and living in their world.

Far to the other-side of the house, up the stairs, were the kitchen and dinning room. Their spaces separated by a long counter and a breakfast nook. The kitchen overlooked the back yard from a two story view. And there was a back door that led out from the kitchen onto a wooden landing attached to stairs.  This door was my main entrance into the back yard, and I often caught the spiders that nested under the stairs.  Spiders had many uses, their main use being the constant torment and horror of my elder half-sister who still refers to herself as "prissy".  

The dining room door arched open into the up-stairs living room. My favorite memory of this house was the huge window in that living room. Many of my dreams take place while I am looking out that window from that room.  This is where I host parties while looking for my pants.  This is where my ex-husband stands in black turtlenecks, arm stretched out over the mantle, and says "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."  I have dreams of tripping into this room and immediately being covered in moss.  I have dreams of glass coffins and Partridge Family reunions, Bobby Sherman and the "Age of Aquarius", radios that only play "I've got a Nickel" and "I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller-Skates", dreams that all take place in this room.  This room was completely colorless and only used when my father wasn't at home.

The upstairs living room was visible from the front doorway, but only if you looked up and to your right. The stairs separated at the front door. The staircase on your left went down into the basement where there was a laundry room (Just a little to the right and in front of the landing at the bottom of the stairs). The layout went something like this; garage door, mud-room entrance, laundry, small-bathroom, den/office, sewing room, spare bedroom. To the left of the downstairs landing was the inside door to the garage (two car +). And if you walked to your right you'd be in the downstairs living room in less then 3 steps.

Our family lived in this living room at the bottom of the stairs.  On the far right wall there was a fireplace where for a decade my father's gazelle head hovered, red-nosed in winter (thanks to an artfully placed christmas tree bulb). To our left were the doors to 3 small rooms. The second door was my bedroom up until I turned 12. All mine, I didn't share. I want it back now.  My Mother's Father's piano was in this room on the far opposite wall from Rudolph.  I can close my eyes, still, and feel the chipped ivory with my memories.  The piano was sold when our 'garage sale to move to Iowa'  took place.    My shock at seeing the large, red-wood, lion-clawed upright in full daylight kept me from crying in front of strangers and family.  I have never been able to hold a garage sale without the memory of the terror of that day, the loss and the renewed sense of upheaval.

The bedroom situation started with the upstairs. A quick turn to the left at the top landing and we all faced the hallway. The only hallway in the house. And when I was young this hallway appeared to me as a cavern. The first right-side door was to a magenta-painted bathroom, and I own the Asian printing upon which this daring color scheme took place. The second door on the right was my parents bedroom. My memory has this room painted deep, bright green. And I believe there was a master bath in their quarters. The first door on the left owned my Older brother's occupancy, and I clearly recall the over indulgent hand of my mother's sewing machine crazing up the windows and bed-coverings in American flag regalia.

At the end of the hall was my sister and my bedroom. Painted a terrible peach, this room housed cat births and butterfly's in underwear drawers, Astrological posters and tape separations plotted out in anger. We were the best of friends. There may have been a party thrown when we moved out of each other's space. I do recall her first bedroom in the basement having a 'pop-out' window feature that helped rocket her to social, sky-box seats status. One of my favorite pictures of my sister from this time, is of her head bent to one side to release her hair, Marsha Brady-style, over the shoulder. She is wearing a matching out-fit of reds and blues that show off an impressively flat stomach and pre-teen, nonexistent hips. She has a face of freckles and the look of someone trying hard not to tell you off.  I have a permanent visual filter on my eyes that keeps her from ever aging.  And it is this picture of her,  in her bright pre-teen self, that is forever displayed on the screen.

This was the last time we lived to ignore. This was the last time we lived all together and all alive.  She tells me that I rarely listened to her talk at me, and often just acted like there was no-one home in my head to get the door. After our move to Iowa, I would wish openly for the ability to shut the world out in that way. Even now, I place a great value on my long-lost super-power.  The down side of that ability is in the lack of conversations stored.  I have no recollection of ever having had talked to anyone in my family.  No stories and no information about the situations that they faced in youth at the time of their youth.  All my information is visual and recounted in cloud.  My 'not-a-clue' power can never accurately give me back that world.

When I started conversing with people the vast state of Iowa had become the background.  Racism and intolerance now became the cloud that colored most of my memories.  I have no friends on my-space from this time in my life and only two friends on my face-book page that remember any of my teenage years.

I have done half-assed searches of names like Brain Sherwood and Jane Lockerby.  I believe the Mathieu's moved to Connecticut and that my younger half-brother might still be friends with the little Proventure boy from next door.   I am sure that the quality of those days is greatly improved because of my huge language barriers at the time.   But from the future I still see paradise and when I go home that's where I am.  And this is where I will be waiting to meet you.

  All the good stuff came today!  Two days ago I left a present for our mail-lady in the box with a card.  The weather here is SOOOOOO hot and I figured positive reinforcment was the best way to win this round.. I loved all the advice everyone gave me, though I deleted quite a bit.  But I decided that straight out handing my heart over to her on a platter was the best way to get the ordeal over with and hopefully cross one more stop off on my husbands drive home.

  So she came up to the door today and thanked me for the gift and the note.  I then had the chance to introduce myself to her.  She was really pleasant and now I keep thinking why don't we all do this with our mail delivery people?  my mother used to leave a bottle of scotch for our mailman at Christmas time.  I now see that that is my new way of reviving my family's old ways.

  I now look forward to my children growing up and remembering mommy making friends with the mail-lady.

  Oh, and I was handed two packages in the exchange!  Thank you, Post people!

March of The Small Business Owner
Current mood: Pissed Off
Category: Pissed Off Jobs, Work, Careers

How many businesses are moving to internet because of the recession and how many because of the implementation of bad city policy?

"There's A Big Ugly City Out There" *, I've been trying hard to ignore it. But it's killing me. It's smoking out the soul of Tucson Arts district. It's making Small Business impossible to float a month at a time.  There are now 4 empty business facades on Fourth Avenue.  Piney Hollow, Betts Print Company, the tree killing thrift store on the 5th and 4th block, the now residential housing that used to be a recording studio next to my store, and The Jewel Thief on 5th Street block.  And The CO-OP and Small Planet Bakery are moving.

These signs can't all point to the same place coincidentally. I am not a Mullder. I am not even his red haired wonder partner. I am more like Wednesday Addams meets Charlies Angles' Jaclyn Smith Character. But I can smell a stinky diaper and I detect a disabling, crap-charged wind.  The City fueled kind and shutting shop-down kind.   I believe I saw it all coming with the likes of this...

This "Garbage Tax" for instance:
1. In the last 7 years my quarterly retail tax payment has never been over $2.38.
2. My business license is $24 a quarter.
3. The 'Garbage tax', which is a bill, is $24-16 a month.
4. 16 x 12 = $192. if 'They' are doing you a 'favor'. That's more than twice what I would pay in "legitimate taxes for my business"
5. Everybody pays?
6. All 'Garbage' goes to the same place
7. Tucson has no recycling center, it is a ruse.
8. How many people live here who are paying the City of Tucson over $200 a year?
9. I have 3 small children and $200 is allot of money to my family. Oh, and did I forget to mention, I ALREADY PAY THIS BILL AT MY HOME! So really they want $400 + out of my family! I have been fighting this "tax" that comes in the form of a water bill, since 2001. I have never been late on my payments at my residence.
10. I don't even pay water at the complex where my business is located!
Why this sucks for me So Hard!

I really am in the ideal place for a small business owner. My over head is minimal and the space fantastic. I love the area, and there is parking and foot traffic.  People are so used to my business being where it is that moving now would put me at a real disadvantage and my stability as a main attraction in that area is the priority to most locals.  They like to see me there.  They like to look in the window.  They come by at night, while I am working and chat and have a smoke or a drink and talk about Tucson.  I can't up and leave my neighborhood anymore than I can leave my family.

But My reasons for having a business are more for sanctuary than money gluttony. My generation has been called, 'A different breed of people' undefinable because sales tactics don't work on us, you can't bribe us and we don't gamble. The unsell-able born after the Baby Boomers and born before The X Generation. We float and we like words like 'Moist'.

Math isn't hard for me. What City & State Government ask of me is simple. It takes me all of 2 hours to get 3 years of paper work and the math to go with it together.  So I am offended when the worms in my public office pass the garbage taxes and increase the number of traffic cops in my area of business to over ticket clients and business people and locals.  City officials need to compensate for their inability to efficiently run local government and they reach down into our pockets to get back what they need.  They are collapsing our district of funds.  We are not able to create income fast enough to repair the flooding dams of seeping losses caused by "taxes" and bill increases and fines and tickets that we incur just by leaving our houses.   Yesterday my husband was given a speeding ticket, he speed for a total of 3 seconds to get out of the way of another driver.  The ticket cost more than our monthly car insurance.  The ticket was for more than we spend on groceries for our children over a two week period.  

In what failed fairy tale do we import to our children that better driving begins with respect to "the road"?  My children, all three where in the car when Officer Enos effected his righteous duty, have no respect for an officer's duty.  Mainly because this idiot turned around and came back to the car to ask if I stuck my tongue out at him.  Right, that was very impressive, and no, I didn't.  He was 2 blocks away when he thought he saw me do just that.  Interesting, how often do these little visions come to Mr. Enos?

Back To My Beloved Arts District
So back to our smoked out Arts district. Studios are all closed down.
Write me if you're open write me if you're closed. Contractors on individual projects in the Downtown area, not connected with the CITY, have gone over budget by $70, 000 estimates!
Our businesses on 4Th Avenue have been cut off from Downtown and South Tucson. I have never seen more than two guys working at the underpass, and they do nothing but shuffle. Currently my sources say the construction won't START for another year. No one polices the alternate pedestrian route to the downtown clubs and cafes. You walk alone in darkness. I hum that song, "You can't get there from here"? I'm certain I have all the words wrong. But it motivates me to walk with purpose and not look like a potential victim. Downtown is scary. And with the on and off ramps at Congress shut down, Downtown suffers. I have the feeling I am in the movie 'Escape From New York'. Even with more lighted intersections on Congress and Broadway, it is hard to get to The Grill, Wig-O-Rama, The News and Tobacco stand, Congress Hotel, The Fox Theatre, The Monkey Box, Cafe Poca Cosa, Vaudeville, and So much more of the old guard. Maybe soon to become extinct.

And like Downtown, The Highways have been shut down to 4th Avenue. Three lighted intersections from 4th Avenue by Speedway and St. Mary's. The City of Tucson has closed down ALL the off ramps from Highway 10, both North and South bound! This diminishes 4th Avenue to the point that we are accessible only to our poverty stricken selves.

The city government is governed by a group of people TOTALLY UNGOVERNED THEMSELVES.  Rio Nuevo is going to kill us off. We're going under microscopes and getting hunted down and crucified by courts elected by the foothills by ballots counted by people paid for by Raul M. Grijalva. Mayor Walkup can fly his plane or sail his boat so we in Tucson don't need lighted or policed or even good bike paths Downtown.

There is a MY-Space page for a Tucson, Arizona profile that has this quote under 'television' , "When we aren't infront of the idiot box watching Gilligan's Neighbors, We make a point of Trafficking the Pennington, 6th Avenue, Toole triangle on foot and bike to get from Downtown to 4th Avenue and back again. 7th Street and Toole are another favorite haunt of ours as this area goes highly unpoliced. We recommend walking and biking alone at all hours of the night. The rush from fear is chilling in this summer heat."  My point exactly.  


Hey, the officials of Tucson may not get the exercise us peons do, but they do know philanthropy. The City of Tucson will give you free rent for a year if you bring your business to Tucson. If you are Tucson, well? You are out of luck.  Care to consider yours? As long as you don't sell coffee or have a tattoo shop, you might even be welcome.

Yesterday was my daughter's 9th birthday. Our family decided to skip the party mess and instead decided on a road-trip to the Ikea just outside Stink City (also known as Phoenix). There we bought her a whole new room. She has hit that point in our lives where half her life with us is already over. 9+9 people. 18 is the age they leave home. I hated yesterday because of that. And I wore a clown face and was hopped up on migraine meds all day. But I kept it to myself. I wanted my daughter to think I was having fun.

We gorged on chocolate and cinnamon buns and caramel cookies and soda. We dipped fudge chocolate-truffle bars into fudge-chocolate frosting, then we ate that on spoons. AND THEN we ate more ... and then the whole bag was gone. She is sleeping right now, I swear I feel like my heart is giving out.

My children are beautiful. And I bought them both new rooms thanks to tax returns. My 2 year old does not have his own room yet, but he greatly admires my sons masculine aura. This would be an excellent time for me to beg a friend with a truck to drive me to Phoenix to pick up a bunk bed for my boys. To all my truck friends out there ... Beg, beg, beg.

But my point to the big ebay-blog here, is how nicely old ebay purchases blended with the new Ikea themes.  

My son has a color palette that has not had much adjustment since he was 10 months old.  Chocolate brown, Prussian-blue with a little cobalt, and a 1970's flat Sap-green filled out with just enough white to keep it from becoming a true olive.   He had us buying him a new bed cover in green, a new rug in blue and brown, a clothing basket in blue, and a bed net in green.  He won us over for a new sheet set of olive and navy circles.  A throw with a bright green-embroidered map of the world.  He now has a head liner of 6 new dark blue throw pillows that look wonderfull on top of his coveted 7 foot long brown-velvet pillow log.  The kid loves a cuddle island.

Back in that first winter that I started ebaying,  One of my biggest passions were Mid-Century light fixtures.  I had been combing thrift shops for the better part of 3 decades buying up all the swag lamps and teak hanging lights I saw.  But I was unsatisfied that I'd found my "lamp of dreams".  The one that'd bring my room, mood-genie.  So I was still shopping.  And not just for the pull string, hanging kind, I bought the cord and switch and the table and the install-into-your-celling varieties.  All within a 6 month time period.  And they were all nice.  

One such lamp hangs above my head, true some screws were missing and the wooden slats slid out of place when I first tried to handle it out of the box.  But  I spent $.15 at the Ace Hardware and now my friends and neighbors are very jealous.  The light has 6, 1/4 inch thick, 18 inch by 2 inch long strips of solid teak wood that curve in the air around a 12 inch glowing globe .  All the mountings and screws are solid brass.  The light is iconic of an era of Modern Design that will never be outdone.  Simple,  pure lines, and  high quality materials.   I won this lamp for $24.  I still get chills.

The hanging light in my son's room is the focal point by which all his coveted objects extend.  The light hangs low into the room and is attached straight into the celling.  Turning on by the overly, elaborate relief-sculpted Batman light switch-cover by the door.  I would describe the design as a 1975 false-coptic swirl.  And the color of green that goes great with the Hazel Atlas Eldorado glass series of 1968.  Including shipping and handling that lamp cost me less than $30.

My daughter has moved on to add red and orange to her pink and purples of toddler-hood.  And hanging above her new, red duvet is an amazing orange-red sculpture that illuminates her red-orange rug and the hutches so big she could smuggle "illegals" in them (and she does, making sure all her groovy girls who play the immigrants, have clean water and the local rangers get bulldozed and stomped by her Motivated Stuffed Animal Humanitarian Brigade).  Having "out-sourced" all her old baskets and grating systems of organization to a younger school friend, she is now using the Eames era fabric that I won on ebay for $45, to separate off a section of her room to play with all her small toys.  Ikea sells a suspension wire kit with clips, that can be strung from wall to wall at any point in a room.  We used this wire system to hang the cloth to my daughter's specifications.  This beautiful ream of cloth extends 2 1/2 yards and flows down 3.  The weave is of long lines of intersecting reds and oranges (I have it's cousin in greens)  And at the points were the lines meet, squares form and produce hybrid colors.  One single thread of gold runs through at every square's creation to punctuate the production.  When the orange light hits this cloth, the play of color is exquisite.   

The light fixture in my daughter's room was once the main light in the entrance of my store.  A 1940's hand blown glass sconce that sits inside an elaborate wrought iron containment.  Within and under the 1/4 inch thick Red-Orange bubble of glass, sits another glass container, and it is within that container that you find the light fixture where you change the bulb.  ' "It was hell", recalls former child'*.   Changing that bulb requires a two day meditation.  The cost of lighting for the Sunshine of My Life?   $50, I cannot tell you how much shipping and handling charges might have been.   I am delighted to say that I was able to "do a local pick up".  Something that I fear only happens in California, Brooklyn and Boston for the stuff I really want.   Or maybe I've just bought Tucson out.

*Kliban

We've been cleaning house. And by cleaning house I mean, tossing the nearly old and somewhat out dated along with the broken and useless.
Our old 27 inch Philips Magnavox, smart series, and 2 dvd/vcr players went into the pile. The tv works in a limited capacity; no remote control, extremely ugly, not a digital model, and takes up an enormous amount of space. We knew throwing it away was kind of waste full. So when our 7 year old son said, "...robot parts, please, Daddy?", we sorta kinda caved.
As for the 2 dvd/vcr players, one won't play dvd and the other won't play vhs. I don't mind the not playing vhs, I just don't need the extra bulk attachment. A dvd player without a broken vhs player is only $25 bucks.


Two days passed of our children's summer vacation and the quiet was chilly. Our little Dexter kept his lab door locked tight. He came out for meals and to rummage through boxes in the hall closet.
At one point he rescued two more boxes that were going to the Casa de los Ninos, a local thrift and charity that we support.  It was that evening that we first became aware of the true meaning of "Robot".

"Dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, daw. Dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, daw. Dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, dant, daah. Dant, dant, dant, daw."

He wrestled in the closet with extension cords and RCA connectors. He grabbed the boxes with the tapes and the remote for the dvd players. He connected them all together all by his 7 and 1/2 year old self and tada... Star Wars! That's what my Baby did for the first week of Summer Vacation!