Green Shoots! In My Garden

I do love this time of year, with the blossoming trees, the lime green of newly sprouted leaves. It gives me hope for the rest of the year, which another disappointing summer is likely to ruin. But hey ho.

I'd like to share a tale of one of my first frenemies. She was, I thought, my best friend in high school. That illusion was shattered with one phone call. In the summer of 1975 my world as I knew flew apart quite violently and quickly when my dad informed my mother he had moved out and wanted a divorce. We had been in Wyoming most of the summer clearing out my grandparents' house and preparing my grandpa to move in with my aunt. My grandmother had died the previous May. As so often happens with deaths in the family, it brought out a lot of latent grievances between my mother and her sister and brother. Also, my dad kept not answering the phone (he'd stayed home that summer to "work") when my mother called. And my brother and I were snotty teen-agers.

We drove home as quickly as possible. My mother's ESP was in overdrive, and she wanted to get back to my dad as soon as she could. On our last day we drove about 15 hours in the car, arriving sometime after midnight. I still remember that quiet drive through downtown Tampa before hell let loose. When my mother took in what my dad had said, she ran to the bathroom cupboard, grabbed a bottle of Valium and took as many as she could. She spat most of them out, but swallowed enough to knock her out for quite a few hours. Over the next few days, she attempted suicide again in other ways and threatened my dad and me. I forgive her completely for her actions. I understand why she did it.

In the middle of this turmoil, my erstwhile best friend called and asked what was happening in my world. I told her about the divorce. She said, "I can't talk to you about this," and hung up. And never did talk to me about it. Soon afterward, I started on a downward spiral of drink, drugs and sex that I eventually extracted myself from a few years later.

This frenemy came to mind the other day as I sat in the kitchen of one of my current frenemies. She and I supposedly are training for the Race for Life, but one or the other of us keeps crapping out. I have hardened towards this particular frenemy over the last year as I felt she had been pushing me away exactly when I needed her support. The other day, it was her turn to need my support. She is worried sick about her elderly parents, in particular her mother. She is also very scared that one or both of them may need to go into a home. She burst into tears in her kitchen, and despite my best efforts, I could not help but go to comfort her. I hugged her and found some tissues and dried her tears. I couldn't say things would get better. They rarely do with people in their 80s. I sat and listened, which is all I could do. And I realised that being a frenemy isn't something I can do.

A footnote about the high school frenemy: she grew up to be a psychologist, has gained about 50 pounds, acts like she's on something, has had one divorce and no kids. I hope she's learned something about empathy since we were friends. I can't imagine her telling clients that she can't talk to them when they're going through a tough time.

When the Dog Bites, When the Deal Dies

When I'm feeling sad... Forget Julie Andrews, I take a Valium.

Jake bit me for the first, and I hope the last time, about a month ago now. I was trying to dry him off after his walk. I stepped backwards, and I may have stepped on his tail or leg. He went for me quite viciously. Luckily, I had my coat on or he would have ripped flesh. Two weeks later he did the same thing to hubby as he was trying to load him into the car.

I've been on the phone to the animal behaviourist, of course. We've stopped taking him in the car temporarily so we can break the negative cycle (and save our clothes and ourselves). But he continues to growl at least twice a day. I'd rather have growling than biting, but I'd rather have none of this at all. We are persevering because we know it would be next to impossible to rehome Jake. And I don't want to put him down.

Our plan to buy a publishing business crashed and burned yesterday. The owner sprang a surprise demand of £70,000 more for the business on Wednesday. I feel he wasn't being forthcoming because he knew for a month that he wanted more for the business but at no point came right out and said so. We also discovered he'd fiddled his books. The last set of accounts we saw had the business in the red by £30,000. Then he sent us his final accounts. Lo and behold, that £30,000 in arrears was gone or rather, "redistributed." How creative! So we were very uncomfortable about all this. Hubby sent an email to one of the employees to finish up a conversation we'd had with her on Wednesday. She forwarded it to the owner, who sent us an email saying this was no way to do business and he never wanted to hear from us again.

So, that's that! You live and learn. And take a Valium (or a quarter of one, in my case) when it gets really bad. Shall I go on about the other bad things in my life?

Nah. I'll leave you with this: I met Fire Byrd for lunch on Thursday and left, as I told her, feeling wrapped up in a warm blanket of friendship. Spread the love, everybody. We all need some.

It's All in the Accent

Yesterday we saw hubby's brother and wife and two daughters. As the girls walked in the house, they started talking and didn't stop till they left four hours later. In between I was fascinated by their accents -- Leicestershire. Very different to my children's -- almost-but-not-quite Scouse.

Since I moved to this country 17 years ago, I have been amazed by the number of different accents within such a small geographic area. To the untrained ear, an English accent is an English accent, and a Scottish accent is a Scottish accent. And South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders sound like the English. But they don't. And sometimes even the English don't sound like the English. Try talking to a Scouser on the phone sometimes. To me, when I first moved here, they sounded German.

After my ear became more attuned, I was able to pick out Geordies from Glaswegians (though I still struggle to understand both). I could distinguish the differences between a Southern accent and a Northern accent. I could even place where the Northern accent originated (Manchester, Yorkshire, Liverpool, etc.)

All very My Fair Lady. Remember the scene where Rex Harrison moans about why can't the English speak properly? "Aw, gwon," said Eliza Doolittle. But even Londoners have variations in their accents.

But because of all these different accents and variations in how some words are pronounced, I don't always understand what's being said. Many people think I have a hearing problem, which I probably do. But a lot of it, I'm sure, is because I still have to concentrate on what's being said just as I did during my first encounter with a Glaswegian. I'd asked for directions on a visit there and understood only two words -- "Turrrrrnnn rrreet." I had to learn what my mother-in-law meant when she said bewk, lewk, and cewk.

I have trouble with Irish accents as well, but for different reasons. Northern Irish accents sound somewhat Welsh or Scottish to me sometimes. Southern Irish, depending on the origin, can sound American. Oh yes, I have embarrassed myself by asking an Irishman if he was American. And I have been asked if I'm Irish or Scottish. By the English.

Accents matter a lot in the UK. People make assumptions about you based on your accent -- whether you're intelligent or stupid or rich or poor or honest or dishonest. This happens in the U.S. and elsewhere too, I'm sure (I'm thinking about In the Heat of the Night).

Apparently, even dogs in the UK growl in regional accents. Now that's taking things a bit too far.

Tongue-tied by Macrame

It's happened again. Just when I think I have mastered all the quirks of the British English language and its various odd pronunciations, one reaches out to bite me on the ass.

The culprit this time is the innocuous word macrame. Remember macrame? It was all the rage in the 70s. For some reason the other night I felt the need to speak its name -- MAC-ra-may. My companions hooted with laughter. Apparently not MAC-ra-may, but ma-CRA-may. I don't know which pronunciation is actually correct. I don't care. In my country, the way I said it is right. Sorry, my home country, the land of my birth. In my adopted country, apparently the second way is correct, and humiliating those who say it wrong is socially acceptable.

This has happened to me before, many times. The first word was oregano. My future mother-in-law peered at me over her glasses when I said o-REG-a-no. Politely, she corrected me -- or-i-GAN-o. I already knew about the to-may-to/to-mah-to debate (we Americans preserved the Elizabethan pronunciation apparently). I knew about lu-ten-ant/lef-tenant. I discovered Van Go/Van Goff, ga-RAJH/gar-ridge, and jag-wahr/jag-u-arh.

The British have a way of taking foreign words and making them their own, with their own pronunciations. Take poor Jose Mourinho. In his home country, and probably the rest of the world, he is HO-say. Here in Britain, he is Josie (as in Josie and the Pussycats). When I order Mexican food with my friends, I have hal-i-pen-yo peppers while they have jal-i-pe-no peppers.

I don't know if the Brits should be criticised for pronouncing foreign words their own way. Every language contains bastardized forms of words from another language. Even French. But I do think that some Brits show their ignorance of other cultures by making fun of those who pronounce words differently. Not that ignorance is something only the Brits have. They just are more pronounced in how they show it.

And You May Ask Yourself, Well, How Did I Get Here?

That's a question I've asked myself a lot since I was a teen-ager. Sometimes I ask myself, How the hell did I get here? Like when suddenly I find myself at home and having no memory of driving myself there. Other times it's a why question. Why am I here?

I've been taking a philosophy taster course these last six weeks at my daughter's school. I think the seven of us who attend have basic philosophical questions about the meaning of life (which Monty Python answers somewhat) and the origin of life. Of course, we're all in middle youth, so we've come to a few conclusions already. The neurologist thinks along the lines of Richard Dawkins, though he claims not to like him. The grandfather is more traditional in his views. I'm an "intelligent design" sort of person. I think atheists take the easy route and agnostics are just fence-sitters. It's easy to say there is no god. It's easy to say religion is the root of all evil. But contemplating the creation of the universe, what caused those factors to happen at that time, is more difficult.

I suppose going to parochial schools spurred on my curiosity about religion, or more specifically humankind's need for religion. The neurologist in our class suggests humans are hardwired to need religion or to believe in God. Then what happened to atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Madelyn Murray O'Hair? Are they anomalies? Are they faulty somehow? How did we come to be hardwired in such a way? And why would we become hardwired in such a way? Some scientists suggest that those who believe in God are not as intelligent as those who don't. Hmmmm. Who created intelligence tests in the first place? Scientists. Could it be they created them in their image, so therefore anyone who thinks differently won't score as well?

Then again, there are those who hide their ignorance behind their religion. Is ignorance bliss? Or is it stupidity? So many questions.

I've been taking another class as well: How to start your own business. This, too, has opened up my mind and provoked me to think in a different way and to ask myself the questions, Where will I be and How will I get there?

Our attempt to buy a publishing business is not going as well as planned. The owner is throwing a few spanners in the works, to use a British phrase, which we hope can be sorted out. But we've had to face the possibility that we may need to walk away. And then what? Hubby has been out of work for a year now. He has applied for several jobs. He has narrowly missed out on many of them. I can't begin to describe the roller coaster ride that has been the last year.

But the second course has given me food for thought. It's given me confidence that we could go out there and make our own way in the working world. The course was run by a marketing guy, so of course the emphasis was heavily on marketing. And you know what? I think I could do it. Market myself, that is. I do it every day in fact. We all do as we stand in front of the mirror getting dressed for the day. We are preparing ourselves to send out a message to the world: this is who I am.

The philosophy course has helped me answer the next question: this is how I think I got here.

One of My Hang-ups

About 18 years ago, I was living on my own in my beautiful pink apartment in suburban New York. I'd split with the first husband and was enjoying, for the most part, my independence.

But there can be a price for independence, such as having only two cats to talk to all weekend. Or buying a six-pack and sharing it with -- myself. And, for women, there's a safety issue too. I lost my job, though not employment, the same week my marriage went belly-up and went from having my own office, editing a Sunday magazine, to a broken drawer in a metal desk working on the copy desk till about 2 a.m. Still, I had my pink apartment. And the cats.

I used to call my answering machine several times a night from work, convinced the ex was going to beg me to come back. One night the phone was busy. Hmmm, strange. Are the cats calling sex lines while I'm out. I called again an hour later. Still busy. And still busy a few hours after that. Maybe something was wrong with the line?

I got home about 2:30 a.m. I had to park a few blocks away and struggled back with my drycleaning, which I'd picked up before going into work. I put the key in the flimsy lock on my front door. One cat was there to greet me, but where was the other one? I walked into my beautiful blue bedroom... and there he was trussed up with telephone line. He'd been like that for ages and had wet himself. I extricated him from the line and thought about how this had happened. I had two playful cats who would chase each other all over the apartment. Could one have knocked the phone off and the other one in play have gotten himself tied up? I chose to believe this line of thinking.

Until.... the phone calls started. They were brief, a bit of heavy breathing, then hanging up. They were infrequent too for a time. Then they started coming more often and at all hours. Once, having been awakened about 3 a.m. (I had moved on from the copy desk by this point), I called the ex's number. No answer. He must have been at his girlfriend's. I started to rack my brain for who could be making these calls if not the ex. People at work? The cable guy? I didn't want to think of the most obvious suspect.

When I moved in, I met my neighbours -- a middle-aged couple and their two grown sons. The husband was a dentist, the wife was an alcoholic as near as I could tell. The sons did nothing but wander round all day plugged into their Walkmans and not making any eye contact with anyone. One of them got into the habit of stealing my New York Times till I cancelled my subscription.

A few months after I moved in, I happened to meet the previous tenants who were friends of people I worked with. They told me of the fights they would hear from next door, the sons calling their parents all sorts of names, the furniture being thrown around. I heard them too, sometimes turning the TV up to drown them out.

The phone calls persisted, even after I met hubby and he answered the phone a few times. Why didn't I have the phone company trace the calls? I think I was afraid of the truth. I was afraid of having my suspicions of my neighbours confirmed. The only time I heard the person's voice was once when I let my answering machine pick up. "If you're there, pick up the phone. If you're there, pick up the phone," he said over and over till I unplugged the phone and the answering machine.

I moved not long after that. No more phone calls. Except once in the middle of the night. I froze, wondering how the person had found me. But it wasn't a person. It was BT testing the line. Safe at last.

We Were Gannettized

When I was growing up, we took two newspapers every day: The Tampa Tribune and The Tampa Times. The Tribune was -- and is -- a morning paper; the Times was the evening paper. Around the time I was 8 or 9, we stopped taking the Times. No time to read it, my parents said. And the absence wasn't felt in the slightest.

Still the Times continued to publish into the 80s, when it died the death of an afternoon newspaper.

It was a similar story in newsrooms across the nation. People had changed. TV was to blame mostly, I suppose. People got their news and entertainment from the little boxes in their living rooms.

Some PM newspapers formed an alliance with the AMs to create a 24-hour news cycle. But it was too little too late really.

In the 70s, I approximate, news corporations started to take over newspapers. What had been mom-and-pop operations became slick corporate products. One man, Al Neuharth, was a genius at this. Al Neuharth started as a reporter, I believe, on a paper in upstate New York. But he had a genius for business and created the corporate Goliath Gannett Inc. He started buying up small and medium-sized papers across the country in places such as Coffeyville, Kansas, Fort Myers, Florida, and El Paso, Texas. Not exactly full of bright lights and big streets. What these small markets had, though, was a captive audience.

Neuharth wasn't satisfied with his empire of tiny papers. He wanted to create a newspaper for the nation. Thus, USA Today was born. Neuharth cannibalized his newsrooms in the smaller markets for the staff of USA Today, and the newspapers had to carry the salaries of these people for some time. USA Today was mocked as McPaper by serious journalists. Yet, today it thrives.

Somewhere in the 90s, Neuharth remarried, started a new family and passed the reins onto other more ambitious corporate guys. They now wanted quality, not quantity, and decided to buy it. They bought the Detroit Free-Press and the San Jose Mercury News, among others. But quality requires money. The 90s were perhaps the start of the beginning of the end for newspapers. Budgets were squeezed to maintain the bottom line. Gannett was very, very good at maintaining the bottom line and rewarded their investors many times over. But I believe this squeezing mentality is where Gannett and other corporate news organisations got it wrong. News coverage shrank and editorial space was limited as ad revenues started to dry up. Quality was sacrificed. Readers noticed.

Now in the noughties newspapers are dying or moving online. There is a great hue and cry across the world, mostly, it seems, from journalists or ex-journalists. Where did this decline begin? I think it goes back to the 60s and 70s. Changes in lifestyle and changes in ownership. Corporate greed over corporate good. The internet has just hastened the decline and fall of the media empires.

Where will it all end? I don't know that answer. Do you?