The Voice of Treason

Woke up again to bombs planted in London. I don’t need an alarm clock - British accents wake me right up. Happily, this attack was not as destructive as the one on the 7th (terrorists have technical difficulties, too, it seems) so the more fascinating story was that of the Boston woman who jumped from the 24th floor of her building, clutching her infant daughter as she plummeted to her death. She was twenty-eight, the baby was nine months old. She left two suicide notes - one on her person, and one in the apartment. Apparently her husband had just walked into the apartment; she grabbed the baby and leapt.

A case of a woman’s right to choose? It appears the husband and baby had no choice in this matter.

Unless you’re one of those people who believes that Neil Armstrong took that famous small step in an undisclosed location somewhere in Arizona, today is a day of significance. On July 20, 1969, we watched a man on the moon. Say what you will about the 1960’s - they were heady times. We were drinking Tang, eating Space Food Sticks (could someone explain to me what those things were made of?), watching Star Trek, and looking at the moon in a whole different way. Someone had been up there walking around. And we all got to see it. How cool was that?

So it is ironic that on the anniversary of this momentous occasion, we learn that Scotty has been beamed up. Actor James Doohan was eighty-five years old and was suffering with Alzheimer’s. He died from - well, of course! - pneumonia. What some didn’t know was that Scotty was Canadian (ah, like William Shatner) and had suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, which doctors attributed to his exposure to hazardous chemicals during his military service in World War II. He was wounded as an infantryman during the D-Day invasion of Normandy and returned to action as a fighter pilot. He had quite a career in radio, film, and television, but was best remembered for playing Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott, the chief engineer aboard the starship USS Enterprise.

Doohan auditioned for the part in several European accents before Gene Roddenberry asked him what nationality he thought best suited the part. “It’s got to be a Scotsman,” he said. (Doohan learned the convincing brogue from a Scottish soldier he bunked with during the war.) The rest is history.

Also deceased is the inventor of the Swanson TV dinner. When we weren’t eating those awful (but addictive) Space Food Sticks, we were eating Swanson TV dinners. My sister liked the fried chicken. I kind of liked the simplicity of the Salisbury steak dinner, but the one that floated all our boats was the lasagna. If I remember correctly, there was a spinach side dish that made spinach highly edible, and a fruit compote. And this creamy, indescribable concoction that made the whole thing irresistible. And it was always so hot you had blisters in your mouth for days. Ah, that was good stuff.

Soon people will forget the riots, the war, the assassinations, the urban decay, and the destruction of the public school system, and they’ll just remember the Swanson TV dinners, the Space Food Sticks, and Scotty. And that’s a problem. It might explain why, in 2005, with all the remakes and ugly clothes and comparing Iraq to Viet Nam, we keep trying to get back to the sixties.

Bush’s announcement, televised nationally in prime time from the White House, made me happy. I raced home from work so I could catch it, then watched the pundits on FNC react. Have I mentioned lately how much I adore Brit Hume? Anyway, Brit had the basic panel. Fred Barnes said it was a safe choice. Safe? I think not. A few days ago reporters cornered Bush and said Laura said she wanted to see a woman nominated. That would have been the safe choice. A minority? Another good move. A minority with ovaries? Excellent.

But what did Dubya do? Exactly what I said, then Bill Kristol said, minutes after I said it. Bold, I said. Choosing a woman or minority was the expected move. Bush chose the white guy. Bill Kristol, with his Cheshire Cat/Dr. Loveless grin (am I the only person who thinks of Michael Dunn when I see Bill Kristol?) went one step further. Not only was it bold, it was “courageous and impressive.” Bush’s numbers are dropping like water balloons from a third floor Chicago apartment - he would have done well to choose a more PC nominee. But he did something unusual. He chose the person he wanted to choose. The most qualified.

His resume is impeccable. As Bill says, John Roberts will move into the Rehnquist position (makes sense - Roberts clerked for Rehnquist after graduating from Harvard), then Bush will choose an even more conservative nominee. Fred backtracked a little and said that what he meant by “safe” was that Roberts is less conservative but more confirmable. A la Rehnquist — not a Scalia or Thomas.

The whole “Laura wanted a woman” thing was all choreographed. Once again, Bush showed that public opinion won’t sway him from doing what he thinks is the right thing to do.

Roberts is a Roman Catholic. Instantly, women came out against him, promising he’ll overturn Roe v. Wade and end abortion as we know it. They said that about Reagan in 1980, and they said it about Bush in 2000.

Yawn. It’s time for a new script.

I broke down and ordered something from QVC. This is something I used to do so often that at one time I thought I knew more about my UPS guy than my own relatives. But I’ve curtailed my QVC habit over the years. Today I ordered shower gel. Well, it’s not really a gel. It’s sort of creamy and colorful and it smells good. Every few months QVC will send me another collection. This is the second annual collection I’ve ordered.

Does it clean and moisturize my skin, leaving a delicious long-lasting scent? Well, no, not really. It’s a great scent, but it doesn’t stay. The reason for that is because the scents are sugar cookie, pumpkin pie, banana nut bread, coconut cream pie, orange sherbet, strawberry milkshake, crumb cake, cheesecake, toasted coconut and marshmallow, vanilla cream puff, chocolate coconut macaroon, lavender pound cake, white chocolate hazelnut - you get the idea. The product’s designer doesn’t think women want to smell like food all day long, so it has no staying power whatsoever. And that’s a shame. Call me crazy, but I don’t think I’d mind smelling like a chocolate dipped strawberry all day long.

It’s something I don’t have to worry about dusting or losing, and it won’t make me gain weight or boost my cholesterol. Bathing, showering, shaving, and shampooing is a routine that suddenly becomes an event when I have scented product. It reminds me of decadent foods and it won’t kill me. Unless, of course, I slip in the shower and break my neck.

I enjoy the scents and wonder why they don’t leave the shower stall. I used to think that there would be no single women if someone would produce a cologne that smells like a Krispy Kreme. Food scents are fine by me. It’s the florals that turn my stomach. On me, they smell like bear grease.

I’m still waiting for a scientist to capture the scent of Russian olive. If that’s possible, I’ll break down, set my Oriental collection aside, and wear a floral.

It’s freakin’ National Geographic in my yard. I was never one of the Rocky Mountain High folks that thought life would be perfect if it was just one big camping trip. I like plumbing and electricity. It’s one reason I chose to buy a house in the city and not in some isolated village nearby. I like my roads paved. (My ancestors were Romans. We’re into roads.)

I like nature. It’s…natural. When you’re a kid you want to be outside playing. I preferred more solitary adventures: to be on a swing or my bike. I probably just wanted to be somewhere else. What I liked back then was to get as close to the real city as I could without being abducted and dumped into the Chicago River. On clear days I could stand on the beach, a block from our apartment, and look down the shore to see Big John in the distance. Yes, the John Hancock Building. The place where I discovered I had a phobia. On a trip back to Chicago in ‘72, I had a chance to go inside the building and see Chicago from one of the top floors. I started to walk towards the window, then realized I wasn’t moving. I tried again. My knees were locked. “Do I have an issue with heights?” (I think it’s safe to say that.)

I digress. It’s just that back then I’d ride my bike to the Edgewater Beach Hotel and beyond, wanting to cruise up Lake Shore Drive to where all the tall buildings were, but always turning around and going home before I ever got that far. After years of living in the West, a trip to New York was startling. Our plane was over the city and the clouds parted to reveal the concrete jungle below. I’d forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by skyscrapers. And suddenly I wanted to ask the pilot to turn the plane around.

Of course, I kinda felt that way when we left Chicago in 1970 and moved to a small town in Arizona. That was the year of the Great Cicada Invasion. See, nature, for the most part, equals bugs. In Chicago, there were cockroaches - your basic German variety - and an assortment of very large flies and mosquitoes. In summer there were beetles and grasshoppers, and we had ants and moths. I saw caterpillars. Spiders, of course.

In Arizona, I met cicadas. And mantises. And walking sticks. And ants that were big and had teeth. All the exotic insects I’d seen in books but never thought I’d see up close and personal. The cats would climb the trees on the property, capture cicadas, and bring them into the house to offer as gifts.

“Look what we have brought you!”

“Why, it’s a three-inch long insect with red eyes that looks and sounds like a helicopter. Just what I’ve always wanted!”

We have a friend, Bob, who still lives in the Bay Area. Bob comes out to visit once in a great while and for some reason, the natives always come out in grand numbers to greet him. Exotic things that we don’t see on a daily basis suddenly appear in the house and yard. At one point, we were making up his bed and noticed it was surrounded by a variety of particularly unusual and deadly-looking specimens. “They like you, Bob.”

It was like the night that T had been on the computer and he kept feeling something on him. He brushed at it and continued working. A few minutes would pass and he’d feel it again. He finally stopped to investigate. I was half asleep on the couch when I heard the bloodcurdling scream. The mother of all centipedes (kinda like the ones in Iraq that look a lot like the Tingler) was having its way with him.

We also have these things called “Children of the Earth.” Ah, bug lore. There are stories about how they got that name - markings on them that look like the face of an infant; others say they cry out like babies when you set them on fire. I think they’re merely a Jerusalem cricket: unattractive, very large, but relatively harmless.

For years I liked to be indoors, in dark theaters, away from sunlight and wildlife. Read: bugs. Now I like to go out in the yard and watch all the activity. I’ve planted things that attract a large number of different creatures. One day I was on the patio watching the birds and I saw something fall off the roof. It was a lizard. We have a lot of them in the yard, but this one is enormous. We named it Komodo, and we see it often.

Occasionally a hawk will visit. We have rare squirrels. For years we wondered if there were any in this city or even the state, and then we saw King Nut on our retaining wall. Years passed and we saw Queen Nut. There’s a whole Nut family now.

I sat one day on the swing in the yard and watched the bees on the rosemary, the butterflies on the butterfly bushes, the lizards on their hind legs, and the birds on the feeders and bath. Four hummingbirds hovered in front of me, then sped off. The pigeon I named Martha walked up to me. “Get yourself a drink, Martha.” She looked at me, then jumped up onto the edge of the birdbath, sucked up some water, then jumped down and returned to the area under the feeders to look for stray seeds.

All the while, I felt something on me. Ants. My feet and legs were covered in ants. Ah, nature. It’s here you learn to take the bad with the good.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to Harry Nilsson. I keep playing Remember (Christmas) and Over the Rainbow, over and over again. (Harry is the only person other than Judy Garland who should be allowed to sing that song.)

Anyway, I hear certain songs and I get sad. I see my snake plant and…

I guess I have to explain what happened on the day two airplanes flew into the World Trade Center. As I’ve said, I sleep with FNC on. Early that morning I heard the crew on Fox & Friends say something about a small plane crashing into one of the towers. One eye opened. “That doesn’t sound good.”

I kept listening for more details. Finally, I just got up and looked at the TV screen. T and I watched the coverage, knowing we were due at work at 8:00. He got ready for work as I shouted updates to him: “They hit the Pentagon!”

He left for work and we spoke to each other on the phone as he drove. “The tower just collapsed. It’s gone.”

Frankly, going to my job was the last thing on my mind that morning. My country was under attack and our lives just took a sharp turn. I got dressed and left for work, knowing I was going to be late.

When I got there, there was a Post-It on my monitor from my boss: “See me now!”

I left my office and walked past the breakroom. I saw the TV from the training room in there. “Thank God. Thank God someone thought to put this out there.” I continued walking towards my boss’ office, thinking that it was a good thing T called his employees immediately and told them what was going on. They were probably the first to know. Maybe they spread the word, and that’s how the TV ended up in the breakroom.

I walked into her office. “Did you see that? Did you see what they did?”

I assumed she was talking about the maniacs who just murdered almost three thousand innocent human beings.

“The TV’s in the breakroom!”

I started to say that I noticed that and I was so happy that someone thought to do it, but before I had the chance, my boss went straight into a tirade about it. When I said that people needed to know what was happening, she glared at me and brushed me out of her office with a hand gesture. Our Human Resources Manager.

I knew that my life was going to change dramatically after that day. I knew I didn’t want to work for this person. Two months later - almost to the day - I was laid off. The company tried to blame the layoffs on that event. Offensive, because I had predicted layoffs eight months earlier. It wasn’t terrorism; it was substandard management.

Our sister company, across the parking lot, had failed and closed. The only good thing there was the expensive potted plants which my boss decided to auction off. She posted sign-up sheets for a silent auction. I had a plan. I was going to bid on all the snake plants and line them all up on a wall unit. I had the highest bids. The plants were mine. But this is a company that makes policies, then changes them however and whenever it suits them. Suddenly it wasn’t fair for one person to “win” all the snake plants. I didn’t win them, I was paying for them. No matter, I was allowed to buy only one.

It’s not the plant’s fault, of course, but every time I look at it, the details of that morning come back. I heard from someone who is leaving the company that things are so bad that there will be no raises or bonuses. If you want to take a lunch, you won’t be paid for it, but you can use vacation time. You are not allowed to leave the premises. The company is constructing a fence to put around the entire facility. When my friend asked how they could afford such a fence, he was told that no price is too high when it’s a case of terrorism. Yes, the fence, he was told, will protect the employees from a terrorist attack.

No terrorist in his right mind would waste a bomb on that place.

Maybe it’s all because of Theodore Roethke. For almost thirty years I’ve gotten weepy over his poem, The Geranium.

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine–
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me–
And that was scary–
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

I didn’t know that Roethke had been raised by greenhouse owners. Makes sense now. Odd, but geraniums are one plant my mother dislikes. The smell reminds her of cemeteries, overturned earth. And that’s what I like about them. They smell like dirt. Their leaves are furry. Their petals are bright and velvety. They’re sturdy. Every year I plant geraniums in pots and put them in the yard. Last year I planted dozens of red ones exclusively. They were breathtaking. Then we had a cold day in October and they all froze.

This year, I didn’t buy geraniums. Instead I bought red verbena. I have to say that I love this plant. I bought so many of them and planted them everywhere. Quite a few have died. But the ones that have survived are re-enacting The Day of the Triffids. It’s fun to watch.

I’ve gotten used to dead plants in the yard. I live in one of the most hostile environments in the country. This is the desert - and I’m not talking the beautiful, lush low desert of Arizona. No, this is another state and another desert. High desert. The land of sage and tumbleweeds.

T and I have lovingly mixed the perfect combination of sand, soil, compost, and soil builder, placed specimens in the ground and watched them keel over dead. They just give up. I have killed trees. People move here, determined to conquer the desert. I will grow a birch and it will live! I will have all the plants I had in (fill in the state name) and it will be just like home!

Then they realize that they live in Hell. Hell doesn’t have hibiscus. Hell doesn’t have azaleas. Fuschias do not live in Hell. What lives in Hell has roots like anacondas and spikes and thorns and stickers. What grows in Hell can hurt you.

On my last day at work, I got lucky. Our phones had been disconnected. This meant I would have fewer interruptions. I had so much to do and I had to work quickly, because the few remaining staff members and former ones (they outnumbered those who remained) wanted to take me out for martinis at four o’clock.

I tore through boxes and cabinets and filled hefty bags with three years of paper. I tossed anything I figured wouldn’t be worth moving when the organization had to vacate the building.

A board member appeared with a lovely goodbye gift. One of those dish plants that’s filled with a variety of plants and bark. I’ve given and received many of these over the years, but this was the prettiest and healthiest I’d ever seen. At four o’clock, my colleagues were restless.

“We need a drink! NOW!”

I told everyone to grab a garbage bag and head to the dumpster. Another person grabbed what I’d set outside my door and put it in my car. As I drove to the martini place with the music director, I told myself to remember to bring the new plant and the pothos into the bar with me. It was a hot day and I didn’t want to leave them in the car.

For some reason, I pulled into the lot and went inside without the plants. Hours later I returned to my car and was instantly filled with sadness and remorse. My plants had cooked.

I am neither a Catholic nor a Jew, but I have enough guilt for all the Murphys, Angelottis, Romeros, and Rothsteins in America. How could I have done something so stupid, so thoughtless?

For years that pothos sat in a cheap pot in a moldy old building in the ghetto and I was finally going to take it home and put it in a beautiful ceramic planter and give it good soil, water, and sunlight. It would probably come to my next job. There it would sit in an art-filled office on a polished wood counter. It would move up in the world.

But instead, I held it in my hand and wept. It was no longer the rich green, firm plant I’d sat with for three years. It was now black spinach. I thought there was a chance of saving it. Perhaps new growth would sprout from the roots. But looking at it made me so angry and disgusted at myself that I put it in the garbage and the city came for it that day.

I told T. “It’s a plant. Please get over it now.” He pointed out that, at last count, I have seven - maybe eight — pothos plants in my house. The dish plant was also mortally wounded. Part of it was a croton. I admit that I’ve never had much luck with crotons - I currently have one particularly tenacious one in the bathroom that has managed to survive. Another part of it was a dracaena-type that turned to overcooked linguine. A third plant was a pretty little heart shaped leaf thing - peperomia-type but different - that I really liked. Could I bring this trio back?

Am I sad because of something horrible I’ve done? Do I feel bad about the event or my decision to leave the plants in the car?

I just hate it when I’m stupid or thoughtless. I dwell on it. I obsess. I make arbitrary decisions I can’t explain. For instance, I recently saw a spider. It was difficult to catch, but I was determined to capture it and put it outside so it would live a happy life in the garden. I removed the spider, then came back into the house and saw another. Without even thinking, I ground it into the carpet. Why? Why did I do that? I took the other one outside - why didn’t I do the same for this one? Why did I murder it?

You can see why Buddhism is not for me. I would have to stay home and weep in a corner over every violent act in nature. The bird just flew into the window and can’t fly. The butterfly broke its wing. The rabbit got nailed by the car. The bear was shot by the ranger. The family pet was tortured by bored teenagers.

My stupidity usually doesn’t harm anyone but me, but this time it was deadly for the pothos. Perhaps I’m overly sentimental. I attach meaning to things that probably have no meaning. T mentioned recently that if we sell the house and move to another state, the plants can’t move with us. I have thirty or forty houseplants right now that don’t know this.

I sit in the yard and look at the trees, shrubs, and flowers that weren’t there when the house was built. We’ve created a bird sanctuary out of a giant sand pit. There are trees and bushes that attract many varieties of birds and bugs, and we have lizards and squirrels, gophers and hawks. The gophers are determined to kill everything and have succeeded in maiming or murdering several trees. I would like them to go away.

I think about selling the house and the first thing the new owners would probably do. The same thing the owners of my mother’s properties did. Rip everything out. All the things my stepfather’s mother planted, my stepfather planted, my mother planted, my sister planted, and I planted are gone. The roses, the fruit trees, the exotics, the things that shouldn’t have grown but did.

Ripped from the earth after decades of life. Home and shade for creatures. Sustenance. The hours of digging and planning and pruning. Varieties of roses that are difficult to find, if they even exist anymore. All wiped out for a lawn and a tree and a couple easy to manage shrubs. Curb appeal. Low maintenance.

Why is this haunting me? When I tossed the pothos into the garbage, I grabbed another plant that had been ailing and tossed that, too. I don’t wake up thinking about that one. I’ve replaced dead verbena with white, orange, and yellow zinnias. Some of those have died, but I’m not wringing my hands over it. I have a lucky bamboo in my bathroom which, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been all that lucky for either of us. Every day I look at it and consider tossing its pathetic little one leaf stalk into the trash. So far I haven’t

The plants I left behind at work are probably dead. The large pothos and spider plant might have found homes, but I’m positive the two plants in water are past tense.

I had two extraordinary goldfish plants that died recently for no apparent reason. Did I go into a funk? No. I was disappointed, but not morose. Is it the waste that bothers me? A perfectly good plant killed? Am I putting myself in the plant’s place? Dwelling on what it must have felt like to sit in that hot car and slow cook? Do I have a fear of frying?

Should I not have been so quick to toss it? Should I have tried to bring it back to life? When I mention that I’ve done this (confession is good for the soul, I hear), most people look at me like I need a hobby. Or they’ll tell me that they’ve killed every plant they’ve ever owned. A few just look at me in horror. “You killed a living thing.”

I think a normal human being feels bad about killing. I cannot criticize those who object to war and capital punishment. I do object to getting by with murder by reason of insanity. But as soon as we state that a person has to be insane to murder, we open up a weird can of worms.

We kill every day. Insects fly into the grill on my car. I walk down the street and step on small bugs on the sidewalk. I have a London broil in the fridge. Someone died because I wanted to use up a bag of potatoes. I support the war. When I hear that a Ted Bundy has been executed, I feel pretty good.

Am I insane? Cold-blooded? A danger to society? I don’t hunt, but I buy meat in the grocery store. I’m responsible for the deaths of innocent animals. And I murdered this plant. Is it because I grew up during a time when people named and talked to their houseplants? Was that the beginning of the plan to make Americans psychotic?

No, I’m not seeing a professional - should I? Is it more normal to dismiss the plant thing or feel bad about it? Maybe it’s normal to feel bad, then quickly move on. It’s abhorrent to mourn the death of a plant when little girls are being buried alive by pedophiles and young, good-looking men with wives and infants at home are being blown to bits by car bombs. Or maybe grieving over something that seems insignificant by comparison reminds us that there’s more important things to feel sadness about.

When I told my friend who used to work with me about the pothos, she said (tongue in cheek) that it wasn’t all that bad. Her significant other also worked there and had a pothos. The mother of all pothos plants and it dominated his office. When he left the job, he brought it home and now it has taken over their livingroom. Every time my friend sees it, it triggers a memory - usually unpleasant - of that job.

I know what she means. I have a snake plant. Every time I look at it, I’m reminded of September 11, 2001…

I have a succulent sitting happily outside my front door. At one time it was on my former Executive Director’s desk. A shallow dish with two succulents and a cactus.

When T got tired of hearing me complain about my low-tech non-profit arts organization (we had no e-mail or Internet access, and our website was a tragedy), he volunteered to hook us up. When the Executive Director saw that there was a male in the building who wasn’t homosexual, and that years of pitching and catching in Little League produced some muscles that other men even commented about (”Hey, where exactly do you get calves like that?”), she decided it was time to rearrange her office furniture. She wanted her large desk relocated to get better feng shui for the ailing plant.

T looked at her, then at the plant. “How ’bout feng shwatering it?”

Anyway, feng shui didn’t help much, so when she left the organization, I inherited the plant. One of the succulents and the cactus finally expired. But the one succulent hung in there. I put it in my window at work and feng shwatered it often.

When I started there, there was a pathetic pothos in the office. It barely had soil, so instead of bringing it home to repot, I brought a bag of dirt in and added soil to the cheap plastic planter. Our music director immediately knocked the plant off my bookshelf and the new dirt scattered. I put everything back together and hoped for the best.

A few months later, I moved to a good-sized office in the building. The plant was still alive, and a piece of it was so long that I cut it off and stuck it in water to root it.

Time passed. Three years.

Have I ever mentioned that my mother could stick an eggshell in the ground and it would grow? We’d go for walks and she’d find something that looked like a seed and she’d swoop down on it. “I’ll plant this!”

She stick it in the ground and a few weeks later it would be a tree. She had two pieces of property in California: one, the house my stepfather bought for his mother after the war, and two, the house my mother bought for herself after my stepfather died and I graduated from college. He was a fine man and she didn’t want to marry him.

“I hate that house!”

“Forget the house - marry him or we’ll kill you!”

For years she’d drag him through new models, hoping he’d break down and buy a new house for her. His was paid for. He actually spent less for that house than I’d spent on my 1984 Renault Alliance. He’d look at the new houses going up all over the Bay Area and say: “There’s no way I’m paying twenty thousand dollars for one of these!”

If his tiny bungalow had been in better shape when it was sold a couple years ago instead of being sold as-is, it would have fetched between $800,000 and a million dollars. I think he’s somewhere shaking his head about that.

Anyway, my mother, after years of apartment living (except for that short stint in Arizona where she encountered her first cicada and I heard her scream - and I was inside my friend’s home a block away), she was in a house. She gave domesticity her best shot. She cooked and baked. Something she did well. She cleaned house. Something she didn’t do well. The house had beautiful wood floors. To clean them, she’d pour full strength Clorox on them and let it sit. She liked cleanser and she scoured. Everything.

She gardened. Suddenly the orderly, well-manicured yard became an Amazonian jungle. My stepfather and the rest of us who were of normal height (read: tall) couldn’t go out in the yard without being knocked it the head by low-hanging limbs or poked in the eye by some exotic vine. My mother, who was three feet tall, could maneuver quite easily through the thick brush unharmed.

I recall that even in our apartment on Sheridan Road in Chicago, we had large houseplants in the livingroom. She actually had grown an orange tree in a pot. This is something I’ve inherited. My apartment in college looked like Brazil. I had to move into a large artist’s studio with two-story tall windows to make room for the plants.

Currently, I have a plant in my bedroom that looks like it should be in the middle of a rain forest. Its average leaf is twenty inches long, and almost as wide. Because I have had so many of my houseplants for so long, I tend to get attached. They have sentimental value. When my beautiful, wonderful Barbara Ayn died, a coworker gave me a small plant. That was over nine years ago. I’m looking at the plant now. And it’s looking at me. It’s an aspidistra-type thing with exotic blooms. I cut it back occasionally so I can get to the sink.

When I was a child I fantasized about living in Alaska. I read books about how the extra hours of daylight produced monstrous heads of cabbage. They looked like Volkswagens. Produce was big. Really big.

Have I mentioned that my mother also grew large pets? We had big cats with heads like softballs. My raccoon was enormous. Our dogs - even if they were purebred - would never be shown because their size exceeded the standard. Stewart the Collie was the size of a Shetland pony. George the Am Staff was probably 130 pounds. Humphrey the Basset Hound took up the entire sofa. My Boxer was always mistaken for a Bullmastiff. At one point she weighed 105 pounds. Even with pancreatic cancer she was 85 pounds. The same weight as my Doberman when she was eleven months old.

When I called about the ad for Boxer/Dalmatian puppies I was told that they’d had a couple litters before this one. And the dogs got pretty big. Forty pounds!

That’s a bag of kibble, not a dog. I’m looking at my diabetic boy now, asleep on the couch. He weighed 108 pounds at one time and is now a svelte 79. His sister’s at a consistent sixty-nine pounds. She’s petite.

Like the pathetic pothos. After three years, it stayed pretty much the same size. It was healthier-looking and its leaves were a good-size - and perky. Good color, nice shape. But it wasn’t taking over my office. It looked good enough so that people would give me their plants to look after when they were out of the office. People who had plants at home that looked like they were dying brought them in so I could revive them. When I was getting ready to leave, there was a large pothos outside my office and a spider plant that I’d resuscitated. A lucky bamboo was in the window by the fax machine and it was only lucky because I remembered to water it every morning.

An ailing schefflera went home with a volunteer. That left the three plants in my office: the succulent, the pothos, and the piece of it that was still it water. I brought the succulent home on Wednesday and should have grabbed the pothos, too. I don’t know why I didn’t. And that decision will haunt me forever….

Years ago National Review sold a series of magnets that featured different breeds of dogs and words.

Loyalty: a spaniel with an issue of National Review in its mouth.
Well-traveled: a terrier with a large satchel — in it a copy of National Review.
Acquisitive: an English bulldog sitting and smiling, surrounded by stacks of National Review.
Educational: Bill Buckley reading to his spaniels, passages from National Review. (Must be Rob Long or Florence King - the dogs are riveted.)

I’d stuck them all over my file cabinets in my cubicle. (This was always fun when our mayor - a Democrat - would come to the plant for a visit and get “the tour.”) At some point we acquired a new manager whose first words to us were: “You weren’t my choice. I would fire all of you.” See, he knew how to hire supervisors. He brought a new one in and gave us all a personality test. You know, one of those tests that your employer tells you is important because they want you to take it, but it’s not so important that the results will have any bearing on your future. Oh, and the results will be confidential, of course.

We took the test. It was long. About the time we’d forgotten about it, the manager appeared in my cubicle.

“I’ve got the test results. You should be a friggin’ interior decorator.”

I looked at him. I looked at my cubicle.

“You can look at this cubicle and tell me that test is accurate?”

Well, that pissed him off. What pissed me off what that he announced my test results in front of other employees, and his prodigy turned out to be the biggest loser ever. When the guy finally had to be fired, I found out it was my fault for not telling the manager how bad this guy really was. I had been telling him. Everyone had been. He just wasn’t listening.

What this tells me is that companies who administer strange personality tests do it because they don’t know how to hire. I had a phone interview for a job that I could have done quite well. It was managing a doggy daycare facility. The question that probably killed it for me was:

“What do you think about in the middle of the night, during those wee hours of the morning?”

Huh? What’s the answer to that one? World peace? I don’t think about anything, I’m sound asleep? Binding and torturing my employer?

All I’ve really learned from this is that most employers don’t know how to hire and that employees should limit the number of personal items they bring into the workplace.

The Republicans are getting lazy again and depending on Americans to be smart. George Bush (43) is starting to make the same mistakes his father made. He thinks voters know the score. He doesn’t think he has to explain or spell out anything in big purple crayon because Americans know what’s going on.

It was like the campaign of 1992. I think George Bush (41) looked at Bill Clinton and told himself that Americans were too smart to vote for him. And George was too classy to point out why. There was all sorts of dirt that his aides dug up, but George didn’t want to play dirty. The worst thing he did was call Bill and Al bozos and suggested that Millie, the Springer spaniel, knew more about foreign policy than they did. This was not a vicious personal attack. As far as I’m concerned, George was simply stating a fact. Millie, after all, wrote a book that was far more readable than anything Algore ever penned, and, unlike Bill, when she was on the carpet in the Oval Office she was probably taking notes - not taking panties off an intern.

Time has passed. Now George and Bill have become fast friends. Impromtu trips to tsunami-devastated villages, affectionate press conferences, chummy TV interviews. This is a weird friendship; should I be cynical? No, instead I see how it makes sense.

Bill never had a father and his mother was, well…a floozie. Virginia Divine Cassidy Blythe Clinton Kelley was no Barbara Bush. I recall during the campaign, the only photos they could produce of Bill’s mom were those of her with a cigarette in one hand and a sailor in the other. She knew how to have fun. And frankly, I don’t think Hillary was all that distressed by her passing. Ginny was, at best, an embarrassment to her.

The Bushes, on the other hand, represented the perfect American family. A record of public service, wealth, good looks and education. They had dogs. This new kinship says to me that George Bush is the father figure Bill Clinton never had. Someone strong, wise, secure.

Bill “he’s just like us” Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Chelsea the only child, and Socks the only cat represented the new American family. I wanted to gag every time a reporter stuck a microphone in some average citizen’s face and asked why he was voting for Bill Clinton. “He’s just like us!”

Hey, don’t include me in that, buddy. Call me crazy, but I don’t want a president who’s just like me. I want something better. I want my boss, my teacher, my physician, my veterinarian, my mechanic, and my significant other to be somehow better. I want to look up to them, respect them. I want to trust them.

If I remember correctly, Republicans were disgusted by Bill Clinton for many reasons, but one in particular was the fact that Bill was a renter. Some sources say that this isn’t entirely true, but many more refute that. He and Hillary had never purchased a home and paid a mortgage. They lived in the governor’s mansion in Arkansas, but didn’t actually have their own house to return to. Read: they never paid a mortgage.

The American Dream: owning your home. Every American fantasizes about the joys of ownership and the outrageous property taxes that accompany the new abode. The days of phoning the landlord to say: “Fix this now” are over. You are now the fixer. And it costs.

A President and First Lady who don’t know what it’s like to struggle to pay a mortgage and all the taxes? How is that just like me? How are they supposed to feel my taxpaying pain?

George W. Bush has a home. A ranch house in Crawford. Ron and Nancy had a place in California. It’s good to elect someone who has a place to go after they leave the White House. This way they’re not tempted to overstay their welcome. It’s like Jackie Kennedy, after Jack took a bullet and ruined her pink suit. The Johnsons showed more class here than anywhere else because they were patient and gave her time to collect herself and her things and vacate the premises. But she was in no hurry. Eventually they had to go in and pry her fingers off the table legs and pull her out.

And that is the problem with American culture. Too many Americans think that money equals class. Money does not equal class - just look at the Kennedys. And poverty doesn’t mean you’re classless. It just means you have fewer options.

There are all these horrible new TV shows that feature the Gottis, the Hiltons, and the Browns. They all have money. Contestants on the Hilton show are trying to win a chance to be just like Kathy Hilton. Why? She was a failed actress who did little except marry money, and if you’re familiar with Bernard Goldberg’s new book, she’s the nation’s most horrid parent. Bobby Brown, the human rap sheet, and his druggy wife have a show. The Gottis…well, what more can I say?

Americans have got to stop thinking that clothes, cars, and a lot of jewelry give you the class you weren’t born with. There are poor people who have more class than any of these people who star in their own shows. Occasionally I surf to one of these and pause to watch: “No wonder the Islamofascists want to kill us all.”

I believe there’s a very fine line between the War on Terror and the Culture War.