Hey Funny Girl, you’re on in 5

By Karla Lester

This one’s for all the funny girls. The sound system is crummy, but the mic is turned on. The stage lights that feel like heat lamps have been switched to blazing. The crowd of hecklers is trickling in. Seats are being filled in the basement bar and watery drinks are being poured. It smells musty in here. Time to dust off your jokes and get your set ready. Go ahead and use your memopad notes so you remember your punchlines. You are needed now more than ever. This is no time to be nervous. 

You’re on in 5,4,3,2,1…..

Funny is the most powerful currency. Laugh or cry. At least that’s what I learned as a kid without money or control over anything in my life. I learned early, maybe before age 3 to get funny or cry all the time. That laughing or making other people laugh, especially my mom , Barb, could change my little world. Funny is survival currency against a stack of ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences). 

Rich Little could do a mean Jimmy Stewart impression, but could he pull off a spot on impression of my piano teacher’s husband? Impersonating my piano teacher’s old husband who walked funny and rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, I’ve been planting my apple trees,” was comedy gold at my house. Your Dad leaves you. Jokes stay. Watch Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers. Listen to Carol Burnett answer the audience’s questions. You’ll start to get some material. 

I miss my funny Mom, Barb. She died seven years ago and was funny in a real and down to earth way. Without intention. Without trying. There was never a moment of my life with Barb when I couldn’t fully be myself. There was no walking on eggshells. No way. A soft place to land to be myself. Barb let me discover my funny. 

Barb hated shopping so much she made me try on bras over my shirt in the middle of the department store. Barb never let my sisters and I quit anything. Other than dance, that is. On the way to a recital at John Knox Village, a retirement home, my Mom was getting lost, driving us in our broken down car and we were fighting as usual. Barb accidentally got hit in the head with a tap shoe and she had it. “That’s it. You’re quitting dance.” I’m sure my sisters and I cheered. 

Barb ironically went on to work at John Knox Village in the payroll department with a woman named Rowena who used to really enjoy her lunch. A little too much. She hummed with every bite. A daily report from Barb on Rowena’s lunch and how much she enjoyed it was always something to look forward to. 

When I was a little kid, I didn’t cut my teeth on Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers. It was Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence. Of course, I loved Lucille Ball but it was the stand up comedians for me. Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller made fun of their appearance and women’s issues. They got ahead of it in true feminist comedian fashion. 

Phyllis Diller probably wrote 1,000 jokes for her 1977 stand up routine. I watched it recently and can say that a lot of it went over my head when I was a kid. She touched on some touchy subjects. She got ahead of the jokes about her looks. Beauty was currency for women, but funny was her currency. “I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my Mother.” “The only man interested in my legs is Colonel Sanders.” Joking about Jimmy Carter, “I have bad news about Jimmy Carter. Three of his front teeth died from exposure.” “Inflation has hit everything but my chest.” Her made up husband, Fang, was a character who she said she pigeon-holed along with other characters. 

Joan Rivers made fun of herself as an overweight child. She said her sensitive father called her Lump and took her for a drive in the UHaul It behind their car when she was sad. She told a joke on Ed Sullivan, “When I was having my baby, I screamed and screamed. And that was just during conception.” Ed Sullivan got letters from across the country, but he said, “She’s a funny girl.”  Her jokes about her husband, Edgar, were really self-deprecating. The dark humor helped her deal with grief after his death.  

When I learned that you shouldn’t ask a woman her age, I ran next door to ask Frannie, our neighbor, rang the doorbell and asked Frannie to come to the door. “Frannie, how old are you?” Frannie wasn’t the nicest. I took the answer she gave me, went home and told Barb how old Frannie is. Barb said, “Karla, you’re not supposed to do that? How old did she say she is?” And then, “That’s not true. She’s older than that.” Then, “Where are you going?” “I’m going back over there to tell her she lied about how old she is. If I’m not supposed to ask, Frannie’s not supposed to lie.”

I took my jokes on the road. I’ve always been good with the stinger. In High School, on the school bus coming home from the Science Olympiad, one of my fellow athletes, yelled that I didn’t have any points, which wasn’t true. I yelled back, “Shut up, Twelve Year Old Body Boy.” The nerds chanted all the way back, “TYOBB!” 

Elayne Boosler, a stand up comedian in the 80’s, bankrolled her HBO special Party of One because she had to. I watched her special and she had whole bits about how to date and have safe sex in the 80’s as a single woman. To test your blind date for HIV, when he comes to the door, you can be sewing on a button and then accidentally prick his finger and run it back to your home lab for testing. She had whole bits on condoms that were so funny.

My favorite stand up comedian these days is Wanda Sykes. No one holds a candle to her. I loved Rosie O’Donnell on Jimmy Kimmel. She slayed. Watch for a new SNL castmember, Grace Reiter. I’ve been a fan of hers on TikTok for years. She’s absolutely hilarious. 

I grew up to have funny kids. My girls are funny. Instead of calling me fat, Katherine said, “Let’s just say having three kids has been pretty hard on your stomach.”

Audrey talked around her thumb and asked me as a toddler, with her glasses all dusty and smudged and off kilter, “Can you count higher than a google?” 

I’m not sure.

“Are you stupid?” 

Thestaceyshow is making me laugh on TikTok. You have to check her out. She’s about my age and does videos in her car with the AC blowing her blonde hair, the radio blasting out a funky song, “Good morning and *%$* Donald Trump. Ain't nobody getting $5,000.” Then, sing along with “Ain’t nobody love me better.” 

Funny is not born of boredom. It’s from having someone in your life who lets you be you and listens and laughs and doesn’t criticize your observations of the world around you. You can’t be fake and be funny. You can’t care what other people think of you and be funny. 

Humor is resilience. Some things aren’t funny and never will be. Humor will help filter out the junk, the distractions, to have the reserve, the courage to speak up for what matters. I don’t take myself seriously. I take what I do very seriously. Humor is serious funny business. 

There’s nothing funny about the POTUS telling people to “cheat like hell” to win. There’s nothing funny about McConnell, out sick for two months, voted against medical leave 23 times since 1985. There’s nothing funny about the war in Iran, Gaza and ICE Detention centers. 

When Barb was in her 80’s and had COPD and was on oxygen and had CHF from AS (aortic stenosis), I took her to the cardiologist who proceeded to go through his whole spiel on what he would recommend, a procedure called a TAVR or valve replacement and what that would entail. Glasses were resting on her nose as she let him go through his sell job until she interrupted him, “Excuse me. Do you have any idea how old I am? Oh, to heck with all that. I’m not doing any of that.” I knew that one was coming. 

Oops, It’s time for me to go on….

I’m trying out some new material. I’m working on the transitions. Don’t steal my jokes. 

A woman’s body is a victim of gravity. But, as you age, stuff starts falling out. Literally. The only thing keeping my organs in now is my zipper.  If this zipper pops, all hell will break loose. 

There are two forces keeping women down. Gravity and the patriarchy. In America, these days, it’s easier for a woman to escape gravity than to escape patriarchy. Katy Perry and Gayle King did it. All it took was a billion dollar ride on a Jeff Bezos rocket. 

You know who we owe a massive apology to? I know. There’s a huge list. You know the people who’ve been saying the government is spying on them? Or, the ones who believe they are being watched through their TV? The ones we’ve been calling crazy, psychotic or having delusions of grandeur believing they’re God. Well, they’ve been right along. With flock cameras and even LG TV’s, our personal data is being tracked everywhere we go. They haven’t been out of their minds. They’ve been right all along. America even has a President who believes he’s Jesus. 

That joke is a good one, but needs some tweaking. 

You know Mitch McConnell is no longer with us, because he’s holding up a peace sign and smiling, the two things he’s never done in his entire political career. Poor Mitch McConnell. Let me hear you now. How poor is he? Mitch McConnell is so poor he’s getting pushed around, propped up just so Trump can make him look good. The economy is so bad under Trump and the Republicans, they have to keep Mitch McConnell on life support so they can steal his social security check. 

Did you see Trump at the 911 ceremony? He was asleep again. This guy falls asleep everywhere. We’ll take a Sleepy Joe and give you a Comatose Mitch and a Delusional Donald. It’s a 2 for 1 deal. 

In medicine we use the Glasgow coma scale to determine the level of consciousness a patient has. Did you hear that is being changed to the Mitch McConnell coma scale?

• Freezes when he speaks 
• Gravely sounds come out of his mouth, but no actual words
• Doesn’t know his name
• Doesn’t respond to well, anything
• Barely has a thready pulse
• Holds up a peace sign on handler’s command to show proof of life
• Votes with Democrats unless corrected by handlers

Speaking of parenting, parents are not really parenting these days. It’s gotten so bad, they’ve gone from gentle parenting to permissive parenting and now have you heard of the latest kind of parenting? It’s called Parenting by AI or Parenting by ChatGPT. Just plug any problem you have in and AI will have a list of ready answers for you. Little Johnny won’t eat his vegetables. No worries. Read the list of AI suggestions and Little Johnny will still likely have scurvy, but AI parenting still counts. You’re not phoning it in. You’re typing it in. AI is parenting your kid and it shows. 

Speaking of AI, the Republicans have come up with a plan to solve the childcare crisis. It’s really helpful for parents. Just drop your baby or toddler off at your local AI data center and ChatGPT will watch them while you go to your job that AI took away. 

Speaking of RFK Jr. Have you heard of the new invasive species taking over the country?  It survives on beef tallow, tylenol, measles, and sniffs cocaine off toilet seats.

I’ll be here all week.

A ‘mother hen’ shares tales about her flock of goofy characters

 By Anna Swartzlander

Three Easter’s ago, I decided to get chicks. I had wanted chickens for a while – not only for the eggs, but also because I have a wild Border Collie mix (Max – short for Maxi Pad Twinkle Toes Swartzlander) that needed a "job." After years of contemplating chicken-hood, I was gifted with a chicken coop for my birthday, so I decided it was time. 

I had no idea what I was in for. 

I started by going online to research hatcheries. Living within city limits, I knew I could not have roosters, so I had to make sure that I only adopted hens. After finding a hatchery that was reputable, I asked my two daughters to pick out a chicken breed. 

Who would have thought that picking out chickens is like online dating – there are a million different types, and you can filter them by characteristics. For instance, there are “meat” chickens and “good egg layers.” There are chickens that are considered “friendly” and those that are more likely to be aggressive or broody (sit on eggs). 

There are blue-egg-layers, green-egg-layers and brown-egg-layers. Some chickens are heartier in cold weather, some in hot weather, and then there are those that are simply “weather resilient.” There are rare chickens that are so sought after, you must reserve them months in advance. There are extremely cheap chickens ($3) and there are chickens that cost over $1,000. There are Polish chickens (ones with top feathers that you can put up in a ponytail to help them see), silkies (birds with silkie feathers that aren’t great in cold conditions because their feathers will freeze) and bantams (smaller chickens) and even chickens considered “funky.”

It was a whole new world. 

After agonizing over which chicken breeds would be best – we selected friendly, good-egg-laying and weather hearty – both of my girls picked out a chick to purchase. However, when I went to reserve our chickens, I found out that they weren’t going hatch at the same time – one lineage wouldn’t be ready for another month. Research shows that purchasing chicks/chickens at the same time is important to prevent the larger chickens from bullying the smaller chicks. 

But my daughters were set on their favorite types. 

So, we ended up purchasing chicks from two different hatcheries – each with a minimum of three chicks per order, so they would keep each other warm during UPS transport. Then, we decided we also needed some Polish chickens – because at this point, why not? In total, we ordered nine chickens. (I figured some would perish during transport, or soon after, so we might as well purchase a few extra.)

Then, there was the waiting. It was a mild March – up until the day that the chicks were to be transported – and then, of course, it turned into blizzard-like conditions and extremely low temperatures. I was like a nervous nine-month-pregnant mother during the day of their arrival. I must have spoken to the post office half a dozen times before they actually arrived. (As if the post office doesn’t know what it’s doing – it’s been transporting chickens via mail since 1918!) They arrived in small ventilated cardboard boxes, similar to McDonald’s happy meal boxes, three day-old chicks per container. 

I rushed them home, where I had a children’s playpen waiting for them to live in until they were “feathered” and ready to go outside, complete with a hanging heat lamp above to keep them warm. As I opened the boxes, one by one, I found all the chicks to be healthy. One hatchery even sent an extra “neighborhood” chicken, so we ended up with 10 instead of nine. All were alive. All were healthy. All would make it through their first year of life. 

They were adorable as chicks. My daughters named them all, we held them daily and watched them grow, month by month. It was outright entertainment. There is no need for electronics when you have 10 chicks to watch. We spent hours just gazing at them. We made them “chick houses” out of carboard boxes. We watched them nod off, at the drop of a dime, like little old men. We watched their chick fur turn into soft, beautiful feathers. We watched them learn to use those feathers, until one day, they could fly up to the top of the playset – ready for escape.

By early summer, they were feathered and gangly and defiant and ready to move to the outside coop. I had ordered a 6 x 10 dog run and had used hard-ware cloth to wrap the entire run – including the bottom – to keep out predators. I had purchased an additional (larger) coop, since the one I was gifted was technically supposed to house only three or four chickens. However, they all piled into the smaller coop – and to this day, they only use the smaller coop, sometimes perching on top if space is limited within. 

Then, we introduced them to our dog, Max. At first, Max was overly curious, so we kept him on the leash, slowly and carefully getting him closer and closer to the teenage chicks. At first, he snarled a bit, but pretty quickly he became calmer around them, until he could lay outside – with the chickens all around him - in reach of his paw or mouth – and simply ignore them. 

Today, Max and chickens co-exist (mostly) happily, like family. And the chickens seemed to calm down our dog, as he no longer has been eating holes in his forearm as he did prior to the chickens. 

However, there have been problems. Chickens are mostly low-key pets, just needing water, chicken feed and space to rove. My chicken’s roam free (free range) all day long and stumble to their coop at night. 

However, there are the escape artists – one chicken can flap herself up to the roof of our house and routinely perches herself on top of the dog run to sleep. 

There are medical concerns, such as bumblefoot (a foot infection one chicken suffered from), and two other awful maladies we’ve thus far avoided: lash eggs (a staph infection) and scaly leg mites. 

They love “dirt baths” and will rip up patches of lawn to roll around in fresh dirt. 

They invaded my raspberry patch, and they poop EVERYWHERE. 

And sadly, we have lost two to predators, one about a year ago, and one just earlier this summer. Each time, I cry and ask myself why in the heck I got 10. 

But they are hilarious to watch. They each have their own personality:

• There is Buckeye, the red hen, who acts tough and comes charging anytime you open the back door. 
• There is Mrs. B, who likes to get her beak into whatever you are doing, and waddles around because she is quite robust, with very short yellow legs. 
• There is Dusky, who perched on the ledge outside the bathroom window for weeks after there was a murder in the coop. 
• There was Dawn – who was Dusky’s twin, but sweeter – who had extremely bad luck, coming down with Bumblefoot and subsequently being eaten by a predator. 
• There is Snappers, a beautiful grey hen, who thinks she is a queen and who loves to sit on eggs and be petted. 
• There is Skye, a small, dove-like white hen who is stand-offish and does not take any sass from the larger birds. 
• There is Campbell, an aloof, gold-laced Polish hen (this is the one who can flap her way to the roof and sleeps on top of the coop, like Snoopy). 
• There is Progresso – my absolute favorite – who is a black and white Polish hen, never quite seems to know what’s going on and has been found laying on eggs under the raspberry.  
• There is Jigwin, who is a beautiful black and white speckled bird, who walks around with an attitude of royalty and is nearly impossible to catch.
• Finally, there was Alfredo, a little frizzle hen who went by multiple names, including Frizzy and Ms. Frizzle, unfortunately beheaded by what I assume was a raccoon earlier this year. 

Beyond loving this flock of goofy characters, we also get fresh eggs by the dozens every week, many of which we share with neighbors for putting up with our shenanigans. 

Truth is, I guess I’ve always been drawn to farming and find it fascinating. I have investigated getting a miniature milking cow as well, but apparently, despite their name, they are still 500+ pounds and eat 50 pounds of hay daily. I have also played around with getting a pig, but my daughters have told me “No.”

Ultimately, I love farming chickens in my urban abode. However, I can’t say that I will be replacing them when they are gone. Nurturing 10 chickens has been enough experience for this mother hen. 

I am not resigned ...

 

By JoAnne Young

 

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

 

This Gloria Steinem quote was taped to my desk at work for thirty-six years. It reminded me every morning of what I had to do that day as a reporter at the Journal Star. Seek the truth as a woman. Seek out women’s issues to report on. Seek out female leaders and sources to add to my  stories, because women frequently view things differently.

 

Gloria Steinem came on the scene when I was in high school and she solidified her position in my consciousness beginning in my college years. She helped to change my life and those of many in my generation. Because of her and others like her, I knew I could have a career, that I could fight to be a visible member of my community, state and country. I knew that women’s rights were within our grasp. That I should not fail, ever, to vote. 

 

In a fairly recent interview Gloria Steinman talked about how many of us who grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s had mothers who could not be fully be their own talented, autonomous independent selves. In some ways, she said, many of us are living out the unfulfilled lives of our mothers. 

 

My mother had been a registered nurse, like her mother, until she married and gave up her career to be a military wife and mother to two daughters. I’m sure I got my love of science and all things medical from her. As a little girl, I would sit on her bedroom floor and drag her American Journal of Nursing magazines from under the bed, flipping page by page. As I became a journalist, my interests turned to politics, medicine, hospitals, health and human services, prisons for the paper. I watched every medical show I could find, from Dr. Kildare to St. Elsewhere to Grey’s Anatomy to The Pitt, and now volunteer at Bryan West’s emergency triage area. 

 

As Steinem said, the sorrow is that our mothers should have been able to complete their own lives and continue with what they loved. Many just didn’t.

 

Steinem came to Lincoln several times to speak and lobby and rally women. In 1991 she spoke to 2,300 women and men at the Lied Center, telling them it was clear they had the makings of a revolution right here in Nebraska. 

 

It was true. Somewhere in that decade I remember going to Misle Chevrolet, a couple of children in tow, to look for a new used car big enough for two adults and three kids. We walked onto the lot and a young man greeted us. I told him what I was looking for. His first question to me was: Does your husband know you are here to buy a car? I looked at him for a few seconds, trying to gather my composure, turned, and I and the children got back in our car and left, never to return. 

 

Yes, things are better now. A woman is mayor of Lincoln, women’s sports are taking the country by storm, a woman sold me my new Subaru last year and another woman handled my one-year service check. 

 

Still, there are men in power today, and some women supporting them, who would drag us backward, out of the workplace and into the role of trad wives. You women must, they tell us, have more babies. Many babies. They want to take money out of funds for subsidized child care for working mothers and give it to stay-at-home moms. 

 

So this is no time, Gloria Steinem, for you to be taking leave of us. But I know you have fought the good fight and now it’s time for others to take up our cause. The problem is, there are a lot of good, important women we need who have also left us. That’s the way this works. Our bodies can take so much. They start looking for an exit, before we are ready, while we are still needed. 

 

These women leave a legacy, but is that enough for our granddaughters who never saw them in action. They can read their words, watch interviews, but they don’t have that comfort and encouragement knowing Gloria Steinem, Jane Goodall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dolly Parton, Toni Morrison, Leola Bullock are in this world and we can ponder, what will they be up to next? 

 

There are those they may never remember, like physician and researcher Marthe Gautier,   because a male colleague took credit for her work in identifying the extra chromosome cause of Down syndrome. She had cultured the cells, prepared the slides, looked at them through the microscope, counted the chromosomes and shouted “Yes!” on her discovery. Dr. Jérôme Lejeuneautier offered to get pictures made of her slides, and then he proceeded to offer the findings at scientific meetings and journals as his own. 

 

“The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.” 

 

Keep these women in your thoughts, and in your words to your daughters and granddaughters. 

 

I offer these words, this Dirge Without Music, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a brilliant poet and feminist, who left us before I could ever feel her presence. 

 

“I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

 

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

 

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled

Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

 

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.”

Holy Ground

 

By Marilyn Moore

It’s late afternoon on the last Sunday in August.  There’s a quality to the late afternoon light…it’s more golden, softer in some way, than the late afternoon light in mid-summer. It’s still summer weather, with temperatures above 90, but the sun knows, the light knows, that summer is nearing its end, and autumn is approaching.  

It’s been a frantic week, with a near-declaration of economic war with our closest neighbor and most significant trading partner, Canada.  Court cases regarding executive orders on voting procedures leave me uncertain as to what the rules are, and who makes them…more on that in an upcoming blog, when/if I get it sorted out.  Cherry trees, a gift from Japan from decades ago, have been cut down to renovate a golf course.  The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, China is supplying Iran with essentials, Russia is bombing Ukraine, people are dying in Gaza, diplomatic efforts are nowhere to be seen.  The US seems to have claimed Venezuela’s oil, though the details are sketchy, and questions of legality abound.  A climate-change glacial collapse caused a flood unlike any we’ve seen, racing down the valleys of the Himalayas, on the border between Nepal and China; the death toll will not be known for days, likely months.  The videos are simply horrifying.

Fall is a busy time in Nebraska.  School starts, and I marvel again, as I do every year, how quickly teachers and students and parents and the community pick up the habits and patterns of going to school.  So many cute first-day photos…then on to the serious business of learning and building community and fall sports and choirs and orchestras and school plays and newspapers.  It’s an election year, and I’m already tired of the political ads, especially those that demonize the opponent.  (“Keep boys out of girls sports” must be this year’s must-use phrase…candidates for offices that should be far removed from deciding who plays on sports teams can’t seem to leave it alone. And that phrase, of course, is yet another stone thrown at our most vulnerable student group, teens and young adults who are trans, who just want to live their lives.)  There are many excellent candidates for public office this year; I’ve been to several campaign meetings, campaign rallies, campaign fundraisers, and I’ll go to more. I’m grateful for wise, compassionate, smart people who step forward in public service.  The amount of money required to do so, and the abuse heaped upon them, is daunting; they are brave, and I am grateful.  

And in the midst of all of that, Dolly Parton’s death gave the world a blessed one-day pause, focusing on her goodness and kindness and stellar talent, setting aside the greed and avarice and horrors of the week’s events. That day, that blessed day when the headlines were about a truly good human being, and today’s late afternoon light, a harbinger of autumn, call me to set aside, for just a moment, the frenzy of the past week, and breathe.  

A political writer who I read daily wrote this past week about the upcoming commemorative service at the site of the Twin Towers in New York, a service that is focused on the people who died, the people who tried to save them, the first responders, the families of the victims.  She likened that space to the cemeteries at Normandy, calling it holy ground.  I believe there is a human need to seek, and find, holy ground…spaces that remind us of what is deeply important, what it means to be deeply human, what it means to be in connection with one another, and with all of Creation.  

I breathe, and I think of some holy ground moments in the past couple of weeks.  Two eclipses…how can one person be so lucky.  The partial solar eclipse, viewed from the Douro River in Portugal, and the nearly-total lunar eclipse, viewed from our front lawn in Lincoln, Nebraska.  No photos of either; my phone camera doesn’t have the filter to safely photograph the sun, nor does it capture the disappearing moon.  The afterglow of the solar eclipse is beautiful, and calming…a moment of stillness.  The lunar eclipse played out in our skies for several hours, from a bright, full moon at shortly after 8:00 to a mere pinpoint of light, more like a smudge, three hours later, and then re-emergence of the full moon over the next three hours.  Holy ground…or holy skies….connections with Creation, with a universe that is vastly bigger than the planet we call home.

From the skies to the earth, Nebraska’s prairies are holy ground.  Willa Cather says, “As I looked about me, I felt the grass was the country, as the water is the sea…And there was motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.”  Time on the prairie is time on holy ground.  Much has been said recently about the importance of “touching grass,” as a means of maintaining presence, of connecting with what is real rather than what’s on screen, of stepping away from the chaos of the moment.   Walking at Spring Creek Prairie or Nine Mile Prairie is a holy ground moment, a breathing space.   

From grasses to the earth’s water….  A little more than 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, creeks, rivers, lakes, seas, oceans.  Essential for life, fearsome and awesome in its power, the site of miracles and rituals and ceremonies in many of the world’s religions, and the setting for stories of exploration, danger, adventure, starting anew, and finding home.  I’ve always been intrigued by the mouths of rivers, that space where the river empties into a larger river, or an ocean, and becomes a part of something larger than itself.  Whether in reality or as a metaphor, that space is holy ground. Looking ahead at the point where the Douro River would empty into the Atlantic Ocean was a holy ground moment, a breathing space.  And at the same time, I thought of all the persons whose hearts and souls have compelled them, across countless centuries, to leave the river that they know and set out on the ocean that they don’t, in search of something bigger, some place better, perhaps, to call home. 

Those stories are holy ground, too.  The stories in There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, one of this year’s finalists for One Book One Lincoln, are holy ground moments for me.  Three characters, spanning two centuries, two continents, and set on the Tigris River and the Thames River.  Their stories intertwine, as do the drops of rain and snow that fall on them and find their way to the rivers.  The Yazidi grandmother, telling the family and cultural stories to her granddaughter, wisely knows that stories are holy, that they must be kept and preserved and told again and again and again, because the life of the community depends on its story.

In a day or two, I’ll reengage with all the reality of the world…I cannot leave the anguish and the conflict and the very real dangers alone for long, nor can I ignore the courage and bravery of those who step forward to be the helpers and the leaders.  But for this evening, in its golden light, I pause, I breathe, I give thanks for holy ground.

In light of an eclipsed world, balancing clarity and bamboozlement

 

By Mary Kay Roth

I started dreaming about cruising down the Douro River in Portugal almost a year ago when my friend discovered a river boat journey specifically featuring views of the summer solar eclipse. We signed up.

Lo and behold, several weeks ago we set off, flew to Porto, then languished in the beauty of the country and life on a river boat. We hiked, kayaked, strolled cobblestone streets of Portuguese villages and sat atop the boat’s top deck watching river vistas pass by.

The morning of the eclipse dawned clear as the crew passed out solar glasses and invited us to a special eclipse presentation. Late afternoon, passengers filled the top deck, gazing skyward while temperatures dropped and skies grew dark. As the moon began gobbling up the sun – like Pac-Man – we all oohed and awed. We reached perhaps mid eclipse.

Then the entire solar event disappeared behind a mountain.

We gasped, a boatload of disappointed – sometimes angry – passengers who were left wondering what had happened. We never saw the rest of the eclipse. We never got an explanation. 

I was upset and disheartened, but mostly just down-right confounded. 

The cruise line had advertised this journey for a full year.  And nobody had figured out there would be a mountain in the way?

Then again, I must admit, I’m confused a lot these days.  

Sure, I don’t understand people who can’t calculate the intersection of an eclipse and a mountain. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

I don’t understand the absence of common-sense to reach all kinds of reasonable conclusions: Protecting parks and forests for the future of the earth – honoring the significance and value of public education – battling the cruelty of separating migrant children from their parents.

I am bewildered by bitcoins and cryptocurrency. My son has a bank that has no building. A cup of coffee at one of my fast-food stops costs $1.09, but they won’t give me change anymore if I give them a dollar and a dime. So, doesn’t the coffee really cost $1.10?

I’m baffled by people who never use their turn signal.  Or why Harry and Meghan are coming “home.”  Or semicolons – does anyone really understand those? And don’t get me started on “six-seven.”

In fact, we now live in a mixed-up country where despicable people like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson radiate cult appeal. Where a vagina apparently prevents you from becoming president of the United States. And good grief, where people imagine the song American Pie is the work of the devil – and that the election of 2024 was rigged because a crazy man tells them so. 

Then of course, please explain how citizens of Nebraska can vote for a variety of initiatives, then state legislators have the ego and audacity to override them. Or how our state senators can transform a group of trans individuals into villains, when they are simply humans trying to live their true lives. 

Explain how an awful creature like Elton Musk can be the richest man on earth – with $873 billion – while a hard-working family of four is barely able to cover increasing costs of groceries, lodging, utilities. 

Or, why on earth is your god better than mine?  And vice versa.

Sometimes I wonder if all these misunderstandings are a function of age and that I’m simply becoming a curmudgeon. My dad worked for the telephone company for decades, yet never figured out how to use a cell phone.  He kept waiting for the dial tone.  

Still, on these sweaty, late-summer days, it seems there are new horizons of bamboozlement.

True confessions, I can’t really tell you how wifi works. Or dry cleaning.  Or mahjong.  Or black holes.  I’m muddled by commercials that never tell you what they’re advertising. And the elusive strategy of Lincoln’s street repair.

This week I read the United States currently carries a record $40 trillion in national debt. I’m at a loss to wrap my arms around that number.

How big is $40 trillion?  Google tells me that $40 trillion is more than the median value of every single-family home in America. Forty trillion dollars is twice as much as the combined net worth of every single billionaire on earth – in fact, it would take more than 50 Elon Musks to equal $40 trillion. And if you stacked 40 trillion $100 bills, the pile would be about 27,000 miles high (enough to wrap around the globe).  

I’m told the national debt has reached $40 trillion because the federal government consistently spends more money than it collects in taxes, a debt that includes all money owed to others, as well as – believe it or not – what the government owes itself.

Owes itself? 

Last I checked it was pretty risky to borrow cash from myself. And when my car loan is overdue, I barely have time to come up for air when I am warned to pay up.  

The world befuddles me. 

The richest 10 percent of the global population owns roughly 75 to 85 percent of all personal and household wealth worldwide – leaving the bottom 50 percent of humanity with roughly 2 percent or less.

Yet we are boosting the national debt by building gilded ballrooms, ensuring luxurious tax cuts for the rich and funding ridiculous wars – at the same time a family without a home cannot qualify for a reasonable loan and we can’t cover basic health care for our population.  

So, at this point in my rantings you may wonder if I’ve written this blog to see how many synonyms I could use for the word, “confused.”

Yes, I am flummoxed by why manual cars now cost more than automatics.  I am perplexed that my new refrigerator will never live as long as my trusty old one which survived three decades. I am bemused by $500 blue jeans and the money we spend poisoning our front yards.

But this blog is about more than synonyms.

I suspect many of you are just as confused as I am these days, taking plenty of deep sighs and aspirin.  So, I’m thinking this is a most important time to clearly identify what does NOT confuse us.  

Bottom line, I’m not confused about grandchildren.  Grandchildren are gold. 

I’m not confused about the importance of protecting our most vulnerable against cruelty and inequity – about remembering to stand up for those core values of kindness and empathy.

Honoring scientific conclusions does not confuse me: The necessity of childhood vaccinations. Sheltering our good green earth. During COVID, using treatments recommended by wise medical officials. 

Frankly, I’m confident honest politicians still exist – along with election commissioners who stand firm.  I’m surely not confused about the absolute and essential necessity of voting.   

And though I’m a little confused about cappuccinos, lattes and frappes, I’m not confused about the delight in a simple cup of black coffee.

I’m completely clear about Bob Marley’s song, Three Little Birds, which will consistently and always make me feel better. And, apologies to Judy Collins, but I do really know clouds – they’re grand. 

I’m not confused about the rightness of public education.  I’m crystal clear about the importance of continuing to read and finding good sources and resources.

I am absolutely not confused about friendship.  Friends are my salvation.  Or my dog, Pip – and the love of a rescue pup.  Or family dinners, the warmth and wonder around the table, even when we don’t always agree.

And, finally, believe it or not, I’m not really confused about remarkable celestial events. Just loan me a cool trillion and I’ll go find another solar eclipse.

The invisible GenX woman

By Karla Lester

Video killed the radio star by The Buggles launched MTV 45 years ago and changed things forever. GenX is the MTV generation.

GenX is the middle child generation between Boomers and Millennials. We had big hair and listened to Hair bands. We watched Brat pack movies like St. Elmo’s Fire, Breakfast Club and worked fast food. John Cusack, my favorite, held up his boombox in Say Anything, blaring In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. 

GenX made mixtapes for friends or their crush. The girls had big hair and the guys had mullets. Most of us weren’t Valley Girls, though we quoted the movie. GenX women had feathered hair and lots of perms. We put Sun In in our hair to make it lighter. Side ponytails were a thing and so was Madonna. 

Diet culture of the 80’s was really big. We were told to eat low fat and low calorie and marketed Dexatrim. It was never about health. Only about weight and seeking the male gaze. Jane Fonda started working out and the aerobics craze took off. Leg warmers and all. Food was convenient and not always healthy. Olivia Newton John sang Let’s get physical, which was about anything but fitness. 

GenX is smaller in population because of the introduction of the birth control pill in the 1960’s. The sexual revolution was stifled by the AIDS epidemic. We learned about “safe sex” and were taught to “just say no” to drugs by Nancy Reagan and her war on drugs. Some of us were Like a Virgin because we were more of the science olympiad and marching band ilk and others were navigating HIV risk and practicing safe sex.

In War Games, a teen hacks into a U.S. military supercomputer from his personal computer and accidentally simulates a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. We grew up in the silent fear of the Cold War, the Iran Contra scandal, knew all the words to Purple Rain, feared acid rain and Chernobyl. Though we had MTV, we were not watching cable news or following politics 24/7. Many call us the first tech-savvy generation.We were the first to have cable television and MTV and personal computers. We went from Atari to personal computers to iphones and now AI. ChatGPT did not write this blog, though they will likely steal it. 

The GenX woman is self reliant and independent. She is very achievement focused. The male centered life of their mothers didn’t always work out for them. Told we can’t have it all when we were just trying to make it work while working.

Sometimes, the forgotten generation or first generation of latchkey kids. There were more children of divorce, single parent homes, and dual income families. My parents got divorced when I was five years old, finalized in my first week of kindergarten. I was one of two kids in my grade with divorced parents and then over time, that grew. A lot of GenX women grew up in dysfunctional families that cared more about what people thought of them than what was happening at home. 

Between Saturday morning cartoons, School House Rock and watching Love Boat and Fantasy Island, we were marketed, “I can bring home the bacon. Fry it up in a pan. And never ever let you forget you’re a man.” GenX women said, “Gag me with a spoon.” 

The Equal Rights Amendment told us we could be a Girl Boss. We watched 9 to 5 and then went off to a very patriarchal workplace. More GenX women went to college and closed the gender gap in higher education, but the gender pay gap still exists. 

Work-life balance was the unattainable goal. GenX women were told to do it all, but we can’t have it all. GenX women were still doing most of the work at home. “The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home” by Arlie Russell Hochschild was published in 1989. I read it in a women’s studies class in college and was incensed to learn that women had been fed a bunch of lies. Women who go to work come home and work a second shift too. 

GenX women laughed off a lot of aggression, harassment and discrimination. We said sorry and still say sorry a lot for things that weren’t and aren’t our fault. 

Most of us drove not so nice cars. Some of us barely got access to really shitty cars that could be used only to go to work and then broke down on the way to McDonald’s where my Mom got me a job on my 16th birthday. That’s where Assistant Manager Barry shoved me up against the drive thru window, my fake topsiders dangling an inch off the ground, my polyester McDonald’s uniform and visor askew. “You and your Smart Ass mouth need to shut up.” I think Barry thought he was in Die Hard. 

“Thanks for calling me smart, Barry. Sorry I can’t return the compliment.”

Barry should have been fired. But, every GenX woman knows there’s no way he would have if I had reported him. I quit, even though I just got a nickel raise to $3.35/hour. Next job I worked at a bank opening accounts, CD’s and got paid $4.50/ hour. Take that Barry! The VP of the bank was a short guy with darting eyes who wouldn’t stop staring at my chest, his eyes searching for something that wasn’t there. So sorry, Jeff. I just need to know how to change the printer toner. 

GenX guys didn’t always have it going on. 

“All the nerds love Karla,” my Mom, Barb, used to tell everyone. “It’s because she’s so nice to them.” 

Just to shut him up, I went out on a date with a guy who kept bugging me. He put his arm around me in the movie and I thought I was going to barf. I told him I had to go to the bathroom and I called my Mom on the pay phone outside the movie theater and asked her to come pick me up. She couldn’t, but told me to tell him I just want to be friends. He was leaning in for a kiss as I broke the news. One foot out the door, “Hey, let’s just be friends.” He was bragging about the gas mileage of his Dad’s Ford Escort the whole date. Boring was this guy’s first, middle and last name. 

GenX women don’t like disappointing people. Another guy I hung out with wore a trench coat, had a beat up car and spray painted U2 on it. He asked me to prom and I said no because I didn’t have romantic feelings (not that I would use those terms) for him. He didn’t go to his senior prom. I was a junior. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I stopped feeling bad about it when my own son asked a girl to Homecoming and she told him she wouldn’t have time to get a dress. They were friends and he was bummed. But, I thought good for her to say no if she didn’t want to go with him. 

Roe v. Wade passed in 1973. It’s been undone. Peri menopause and menopause hit GenX women hard and we didn’t even know we were in it. We were the generation of women who couldn’t have hormonal replacement therapy and are now past the window where it might be helpful. We lathered baby oil all over us to get tan and are now going to the dermatologist to get checked for skin cancer . 

Though we screamed until we lost our voices at concerts, our voices have often been silenced. We are invisible at times. We are non confrontational and have no clue what we are really feeling because no one was ever listening or asked us. We had the empowerment of being free range kids in the neighborhood and no one caring about where we were and no one asking or caring about our feelings. It’s time to get internal and to stop saying Sorry. 

GenX women can grind out a goal and become exhausted and burnt out. Like women of every generation, there is invisible labor that is layered on GenX women, many sandwiched and caregiving. Moving into the next chapter of our lives, GenX women can get intentional about what we want. Instead of self-reliance, GenX women can rely on each other. 

There is an authenticity, a humanity, a sense of humor that is GenX. Girls just want to have fun. Yes, and we also want meaningful and impactful lives and connection with people we love. 

Don’t stop believin’ that GenX is the best generation. For sure, the coolest generation. A rad generation of resilient women. Totally. GenX women, I see you. I hear you.