A thank you note to Father Andrew M. Greeley

Carraroe, Ireland, home of Andrew Greeley's fictional character, Nuala Ann McGrail (Wiki Commons)

A couple of years ago, Father Andrew M. Greeley, getting out of a cab in Chicago, got some of his clothing caught and was dragged. He suffered a fractured skull which, since he was over 80 at the time, was hardly likely to be a good thing. It finished his book-writing career, but not his career as a priest. He still writes weekly homilies, which appear on his website.

I am not a Roman Catholic. I am a sometimes-kinda-sorta Episcopalian (Church of England) with Druid tendencies and New Thought understanding of how it all works; in addition, I operate via existential behaviors. So it is odd that Father Andrew M. Greeley is, for me, the revealer of infinite wisdom, as he has been since I read a column he wrote about Star Wars, long ago and far away―to be precise, in my apartment in a New York City high rise, 17^th floor. The column, syndicated at the time, appeared in the New York Post, a rag I rarely read. At that moment, at the zenith of my unbelief in much of anything, Greeley captured me heart and soul with his insightful comments on that iconic movie, which was eliciting outrage from a great many clerics at the time. It has been a good, long time that I have been an avid fan of the writing of Father Andrew M. Greeley.

It is with the utmost sadness and distress that I admitted to myself this morning that the creator of stories I have loved so well for so long shall not, though he yet lives, offer me any more spirit-lifting, mind-engaging parables of the modern age and its relation to the numinous. His website has said so for months, but I refused to understand. Selfishly, I wanted more.  Except for his accident two years ago, we’d have had another mystery novel from his pen by now, and I’d have eaten it whole, relished every word, every nuance of his lovable characters developed over the past 30 years or more.

No more Nuala Ann McGrail

I realized, finally, that there will be no more Nuala Ann McGrail mysteries, populated by the world-famous but self-effacing (while being altogether fierce) singer from Carraroe, County Galway and her husband and several children, one of them fey like Nuala Ann, and the wonderful wolfhounds, going now into the second and third generations from the original pair of savior dogs.

No more Mike Casey the Cop showing up in the Nuala books and in the luminous works about the tiny fresh-faced bishop in a Chicago Cubs jacket, the Rt. Rev. John Blackwood Ryan (“Call me Blackie”) and his just-retired boss, Sean Cardinal Cronin, who also starred in an early series by Greeley about the problems inherent in celibacy, and in human relationships in general. 

No more one-offs, like the ultimate entry in modern mainstream fiction, Lord of the Dance.

And so, finally, I grieve, and feel compelled to acknowledge the gift while Greeley yet lives.

Moving house

I grieve, in the middle of my angst about finally getting to move into the house we bought in October, finally financed in December after we had danced to the unfortunate tune of an incompetent mortgage broker for six weeks, and which has been delayed by acts of God―snow and the vagaries of lawyers and builders―since then. It looks now as if my original extended estimate―Feb. 10―will be about right. We shall thus be denied a trip to London on the 9^th to meet with Simon’s boss, the lovely man who made it possible for him to move and work here while the company remains in the U.S. We shall endure an extra week in the interim rented house, where light bulbs burning out cause major power shorts (the owners need to have that looked at!) and frighten the dog into hour-long shaking fits. The event doesn’t do much for me, either.

Father Greeley’s homily concluded with the phrase “we should never let the important interfere with the essential.”

Indeed. And so I suddenly got happier, as I began to ruminate on the fact that the to-do list often overwhelms the must-attend list. The house? It’s a to-do list thing.

The scourge of the to-do list

The to-do list, I realized (as so many others have before me, and will after) that the to-do list is how we become human doings rather than human beings. It is how parents become so convinced that their children have to do well that they forget to allow them to be well, to help them to be well.

It is how marriages become hollow, targeted only on acquiring houses, boats, cars, and trips, and not on cherishing the other person and the relationship itself.

It is how careers become things such as those execrable excuses for meaningful work carried out, and finally exposed, on Wall Street..the faux work of the tycoons and tycoon wannabes; their 'work' did not express stewardship for the world and its people. Not at all, at all.

Working the do-do list is how actors become idols rather than artists, how artists become caricatures instead of the bearers of cultural understanding.

The to-do list is how cultures become the sham found in most nations these days. Not just western ones; it’s too easy to point fingers at America.. Islam is just as much at fault for putting the to-do list first:

Item One; Make westerners accept Islam, regardless.

Item Two: Repel all incursions into Islam of thought from other cultures.

Etc.

Consider how different the world would look if it followed a must-attend list rather than checking off its to-do list. Would there have ever been a 9/11? Probably not. Regardless of who did it (and I am mainly persuaded it was an inside job), it wouldn’t have been carried out because the event fails, in every possible way, to attend to the welfare of anyone. It cannot actually even attend to the welfare of whoever did it and thought to profit from it in some way. There can be no profit in destruction. If there could, then the eternal quest would be not for order, but for chaos.

Appearances abound; truth, not so much

There may be a temporary appearance of profit in harmful deeds, from 9/11 to the BP blowout in the Gulf to trashing a co-worker whose job one covets…but appearances are allied with the to-do list. “What a success he is!” we may say. “Look at all he has done.” We do not say, “Look at all that he is.” Or even “Look at all he isn’t.” We don’t look at all at human beings; we simply look at human doings, and judge accordingly. Thankfully, even this semi-atheist is familiar with the phrase “Justice is mine, saith the Lord.”

And so it is. No human can mete out ultimate justice. The universe will do it in its own time, I say. (Others would say God does it.)

Meanwhile, our task―as human beings―is to attend to those things we must do: 

• Care for others, not just about them.
• Do valuable work, whether or not for a paycheck.
• Balance our to-do list (it is, after all, necessary to vacuum the hallway sooner or later) with listening to the music of the universe, and gleaning what it can say about contributing what we can.

The judgment of the universe will be, I think, that Andrew M. Greeley is a brilliant teacher, whether he teaches through novels or homilies, through abundant life energy or in the less active moments of his current life.

And for that, and countless hours enjoying the universes he has created and mulling the spiritual food he offers so entertainingly, I thank him.

***

Dear Father Greeley,

I realize you have worked both lists for decades, and it is time for your must-attend list to be mainly about your own relationship to the numinous. And I thank you for all you have done for me for so long. But you must know: When I’ve finished my daily to-do list from here on, knowing I will lack a fresh Blackie Ryan or Nuala Ann book to please me, I will grieve. But I will also continue to thank you, and to commend your work to anyone I feel needs both a laugh and some spiritual instruction. You are a true mensch. I adore you. I wish you well.

Love,

Laura

(Oxy)Moron Bush*: Education failures to be trashed

Moron Bush's school days? (Wiki Commons)

Is Amurika goin too git smarter? Are it feesabal possabale two over tourn Goerge W. Bushes Know Child Lift BeHind inishativ? At the same time, are well we be abel to git rit of boguz collages like FeenixPheenix?

***

President Obama would like to do two things that cannot help but have a positive effect on American education. He would like to diminish the prevalence of pseudo-colleges like the University of Phoenix and DeVry. And he would like to abolish his predecessor’s addlepated excursion down a road so unfamiliar to him  (education) that his pet program, No Child Left Behind, has put American kids at the forefront of the world’s dummies in a less than a generation. That's quite an achievement for the barely educated Mr. Bush, a man who derived little from the educational opportunities bought for him by a rich daddy whose pockets were not deep enough nor connections wide enough to keep the world from finding out little George was not even a ten o'clock scholar.

The problem is, of course, that No Child Left Behind, if it were replaced tomorrow by actual education (that thing requiring scholarship, dedication, independent thought, etc.), it would take a decade for produce a crop of publicly educated kids capable of anything with greater similarity to a college or university than the University of Phoenix. To cavil about the fact that such paper mills charge outrageous fees for virtually worthless degrees is one thing; it’s quite another to instantly create an educational opportunity, or even a chilling-out place, for thousands of students short-changed by their experiences in Mr. Bush’s educational quagmire.

Perhaps the answer, then, is to create some sort of publicly funded remedial educational system that will prepare the less successful NCLB graduates (is that even possible?) to do something other than collect a dole check and skip out on humongous so-called higher education bills when they come due. If going to a for-profit culinary institute makes a student into a pot-washing grunt for ten bucks an hour rather than executive chef for a resort Hilton, then perhaps the answer is to rectify the gaps in that student’s education at public expense. And then, if he or she really wants to be a chef, let that person do it the traditional way―by working a food-prep job in a big kitchen for ten bucks an hour and learning as they go. Only a few would make it to executive chef. Some would change fields. Some would stay low on the kitchen-work ladder, and accept that. But at least they wouldn’t have $100,000 in loans to repay, and may well have acquired some general knowledge they can use for working or living.

But how would the newly impoverished, post-Moron Bush United States ever pay for such a thing, for two or more extra years of public schooling for those ill-served by the Moron’s juggernaut? Darned if I know. Possibly the government could seize some of his or Neil Bush’s assets (Neil sold the computer garbage that made NCLB lucrative for the family) to help pay for it.

Or maybe they could simply use what’s being shoveled into the pockets of the for-profit stink tanks now. According to Huffington Post:

Students enrolled at for-profit colleges make up only 12 percent of college students nationwide, yet the sector takes in nearly a quarter of federal student aid dollars and accounts for 43 percent of student loan defaults, according to a recent analysis from the Education Trust, a student advocacy group. Students at for-profit colleges typically carry an average of $14,000 in debt--almost twice as much as students at non-profit colleges, according to the Department of Education.

Preventing the student loan defaults alone would probably help the economy enough to eke out some extra dough to use for real education.

Real education encompasses infinitely more than Moron Bush’s notion (calling it a concept or even idea would be to falsely elevate the substandard snapping of his mental synapses), encapsulated in No Child Left Behind.  Mr. Obama would like states to adopt “standards that ensure students are ready for college or a career rather than grade-level proficiency – the focus of the current law.” (Could it be that Moron Bush could hope for no more himself, and in typically greedy and self-centered fashion, desired no more for others?)

Huffington Post also noted that, in Congress―THANK THE LORD AND PASS THE DIVIDED NOTEBOOKS―

Lawmakers also said they want to allow states to use subjects other than reading and mathematics as part of their measurements for meeting federal goals, pleasing many education groups that argued No Child Left Behind encouraged teachers not to focus on history, art, science, social studies and other important subjects.

Moron Bush had destroyed American education well before the end of his first interminable term. It will take a lot more than Mr. Obama’s current term, halfway finished already, to begin to turn American education around, and another decade before public schools in many locales produce graduates capable of performing well on a job or benefitting from bona fide higher education.

Moron Bush has much to answer for, but possibly the most egregious of his multiplicitous attempts to terminally weaken the United States was NCLB, a program that rewarded schools for failing to educate, and that rewarded teachers for making their students into gormless, clueless parrots unable to synthesize and analyze, unable to use logic, unable to understand ethics, unable to succeed beyond subsistence in a wildly complex modern world.

But in a Moron Bush world, it made sense. Uneducated citizens are essential to the sort of world Moron Bush―and to be fair, his one-worlder father―envisioned. A world where a few wealthy, powerful people are able to do as they please with the rest of us, making us into cannon fodder, paupers, petty thieves stealing for survival. In short, a world that would not be acceptable to a population with a decent education, and which those decently educated people would be at pains to renovate or overthrow.

*The Education President

King Henry VII has his hand in my pocket!

The fat bastard  king whose religious over-reaching just made me reach into my pocket, 500 years later! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not literally, of course. He died a few hundred years before I was born. But now that I live in England, and am buying a house in England, I have had to insure myself against his depredations.

Well, not his exactly, but the Church of England’s. When Old Hank dissolved the monasteries in 1534, making himself rather than the Pope the head of the church in England and calling it the Church of England (a bit better, admittedly, than the Church of Fat Syphilitic Henry). Before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, each one employed a rector to see to the good repair of the church building. When the church had been disemboweled by the old head-lopper, no such position remained. Churches began to fall into disrepair.

What to do? Simple. Each county’s church administration was given the power to require local residents to kick in for the repairs. Not only that, but the requirement was attached to the deeds so that anyone buying a house or farm with chancel repair liability in the deed would get the opportunity for the touch as well.

Well, you might think, each household would be apportioned a part of the cost so that the unfair burden was equally unfair to all. Right?

Wrong. There was no demand that the plot size dictate the size of the theft…I mean donation. The Parochial Parish Council, if it thinks your pockets are deep, can arrive with an articulated lorry if they want to, the better to carry away your worldly goods to make repairs to their otherworldly amusement park. I mean church.

These days, it’s even more  unfair and that’s before I get into the real unfairness of it. These days, local residents whose land is subject to assessment of this enforced tithe might practice any religion or none at all, whereas in Hank’s time they were at least all Christians…although there would be a distinct problem with that a generation later when Queen Mary the Guppy Gobbler (offspring of Henry) declared the C of E to be anathema, and her successor, half-sister Queen Elizabeth I (offspring of Henry) declared all R.C.s to be anathema. But I digress into the vagaries of a convoluted and somewhat incestuous interplay between church and state in England. The situation is bad enough without bringing Henry’s half-sibling children into it.

Bad news if your land had a chancel repair liability for this church. On the other hand, it's in Scotland and there are seven distilleries nearby to drown your pain or help with becoming a homeless drunk. (Wiki Commons)

The whole thing came to a head when the church in Aston Cantlow needed almost 100,000 pounds worth of repair. The church billed Andrew and Gail Wallbank for the amount, and the Wallbanks fought it. And lost. Now they owe well in excess of 300,000 pounds, including legal and court costs for themselves and holy mother church. They couldn’t pay the 100,000 without selling the house the right of repair liability was attached to…because of the liability being part of the deed. Who would be dopey enough to buy a house one knew would make one susceptible to rape and pillage by holy mother church?

However, like Mighty Mouse saving the day, into the fray leaped the insurance industry. They created Chancel Repair Insurance. For a nominal amount, like a one-time fee of about 50 pounds, they’ll insure homeowners against attacks by mouldering churches and the Rev. Dimwit. It behooves one to buy the insurance even if one gets a clear deed with no chancel repair liability written into it. Why? Because this stuff is medieval, literally. As our solicitor told us, the church can afford to have someone spending all their time poring over old―really, really old―deeds and writings to see if maybe local properties had been transferred and the chancel repair liability had inadvertently been left off the documentation at some time between 1543 and the present.

Our solicitor says we are probably safe, since our new house is being built on land that was either agricultural or mining property for a very, very long time and thus would not have borne the householder’s burden of chancel repair liability, since it probably was never land owned and sold off by the church. But, she also said, one never knows. There are lots of old documents lying around, and the Church of England, with a current backlog of 925 million pounds worth of chancel repairs awaiting some fresh peasants to be plucked, has only until Oct. 13, 2013, to find ALL the properties with chancel repair liability and get them on the books. Who knows what danger may lurk in old church basements?

Our solicitor recently had to advise one of her clients not to buy a field he badly wanted because the legal search had turned up a chancel repair liability attached to it…and since he was a wealthy farmer…..and the local C of E priest probably knew that… “Just buy a different field,” she told him.

As for the Wallbanks, I can find nothing about what has happened to them recently. They had until Feb. 2009 to pay up, or else. They would have had to sell the farm to pay up―thereby impoverishing themselves in their old age as they were already in their late 60s―but they couldn’t do that. Who would buy it, knowing they’d have to clear 300 pounds worth of debt to the church….and that the church could still AT WILL demand more? In any case, the legal proceedings the Wallbanks lost also resulted in the deed being encumbered with a phrase noting that any sale would need the approval of the Parochial Parish Council.

 It is interesting to note that the Appeals Court, back in 2002, found in favor of the Wallbanks. It is even more interesting to note that the House of Lords overturned that decision in 2003.

And they said serfdom had been abolished.

UK Learning Curve: Trolley storage

If you look very closely, you can see the little gray Morrison's coin box on the handle, near the yellow flower sleeve. (Wiki Commons)

I firmly believe Yanks and Brits are separated by a common tongue. I knew this for certain recently when we attended a performance by shock comic Frankie Boyle. I loved him on Mock the Week, a long-running UK comedy show also featuring Dara O'Briain, Russell Howard, Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons. Admittedly, Boyle's Scottish accent is a bit more taxing than O'Briain's Irish (music to my ears!) and the varied UK accents of Howard, Dennis and Parsons. Hugh Dennis, in fact, enjoys excellent diction and his deadpan delivery also makes him easy to understand.

And then there are the supermarkets. There, it is not so much a common tongue that separates us, as a common artifact, a shopping cart.

Today, I went to Morrison's, the UK equivalent of Safeway. Indeed, our local Morrison's once was a Safeway, and for the first several trips here together to visit our flat, my husband would say, "Let's stop at Safeway on our way from Heathrow and at least get some bacon, eggs, bread, butter, cream, coffee and nasty, bitter, horrid thick-cut Seville marmalade for breakfast and then go out for dinner tonight."

OK. He didn't say all that about the marmalade. That's me. But it's the only jam-like substance he will eat, and he has now trained our dog to prefer bits of his toast to mine, which is smeared with much tastier and less off-putting Bonne Maman strawberry. But the dog, who is sort of the color of nasty, bitter, horrid thick-cut Seville marmalade, is a confirmed devotee of the puckery stuff. (Dogs can't pucker; maybe that's how she does it.) My reaction to it is still--some 40 years after first tasting the nasty stuff at The Cookery restaurant in Greenwich Village, NYC--a cross between blech and argh.

This is Prince Charles' organic foods company. Some of this princely food is actually quite good--but you can't get it at Morrison's. Gotta go to Waitrose, the "high-priced spread." (Wiki Commons)

Anyway, it occurred to me pretty quickly that Morrison's was not named Safeway. But we frequented a Safeway in Maryland, so I figured Simon was simply using his own international shorthand for supermarket.

Regardless, I quite like Morrison's, as I quite liked Safeway in the US in preference to other ordinary supermarkets. Our Morrison's also has trolley-parking stations within the store. What, you might ask (if you are a Yank) might those be?

Carts are called trolleys here. At Morrison's one inserts a quid coin to extract one from the kiosk outside where they are kept. When one returns the trolley, one gets one's money back. It's all done with a little coin-changer thingie on the trolley handle. The process stops those trolleys going missing, as carts so often do in the US.

Today, having had coffee in town, by the time I got done with Morrison's meat and dairy aisles, I was freezing and had need of the toilets. What to do? To get to them, I had to first check out. Once the groceries were paid for, I didn't fancy leaving them hanging about unattended. I didn't so much fear theft as that the attentive staff would restock the stuff. Then I recalled the little cabinet thingies with locker keys hanging out of them next to the in-store cafe. Aha! So, I opened one, shoved the trolley inside, noted but ignored the chain hanging down inside the cabinet, and flung the door shut. I tried to remove the key. No dice.

I tried again. Oops. Paid-for groceries held hostage! I asked for help. Nothing like asking help with something any UK preteen can operate. But the US just doesn't have clever little helpful devices like this.

When a manager who shares a name with my husband (Simon, very popular UK name) arrived, he was very kind in showing the dopey Yank how it worked.

Aha! I was supposed to connect the chain, just as I would in returning the trolley outside. Then my quid would pop out and I could then extract the key and close the door. When I returned and put the key back in and turned it, I would put the quid back into the slot on the trolley handle and the chain would release and I could leave. Then I could load the groceries into the book and return the trolley to the kiosk; when I inserted the chain into the handle, my quid would pop out again and I could pop it back into my coat pocket, repository of quids for trolleys and the ubiquitous Pay & Display car parks.

All this quid insertion and quid removal does seem like a lot of kerfuffle. On the other hand, I didn't have to worry about my groceries being nicked or restocked, and I could use the toilets in peace. I used to always worry, when shopping at Safeway in the US, what would happen if I nipped into the toilets for a quick coffee extraction. Would my cart be gone, all the unpurchased items restocked? If I left the basket totally empty and used the facilities before the trek up and down the aisles, would someone put it back and make me traipse to the other end of the store, and back outside to get another one from the cart corral?

I tell you, the few times I had to go in a Maryland Safeway, it was a case of the quickest wiz in the west. Conclusion: I like the little trolley 'safes' in Tavistock's Morrison's, because I can get relief from coffee overload--something I often suffer as I am an inveterate coffee fiend--in peace.

Are you devoted to cancer? No? Are you sure?

Ancient Greek terracotta plaque of woman with snakes, probably from devotional shrine. (Wiki Commons)

In college, the term self-fulfilling prophecy was used a lot, in many different contexts.

Later, when I studied Science of Mind, I began to see how it worked; whatever you focus on, you will experience. Focus, as one of  my aunts did, on what you are  going to do “when your ship comes in” and that ship will stay out in deepwater forever. My aunt died penniless, as she lived. If she voiced the “ship comes in” phrase once, she voiced it four million times. She was devoted to it, and it served her as she bade it to.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, guru of quantum physics for the masses
Dr. Wayne Dyer has popularized the notion of creating your own physical reality in two dozen books and myriad tapes. Here are a few of his titles dealing with the issues: You'll See It When You Believe It: The Way to Your Personal Transformation, The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way, Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. All have been best-sellers.

And yet, people still don’t get it. Especially, those who make money and careers on reinforcing the misery of others don’t get it. Paramount among these is the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Huffington Post ran a story recently about Komen’s vicious attacks on any other fundraisers who dare to use a term they use―but hardly invented―and the color pink in their efforts. HuffPo noted:

In addition to raising millions of dollars a year for breast cancer research, fundraising giant Susan G. Komen for the Cure has a lesser-known mission that eats up donor funds: patrolling the waters for other charities and events around the country that use any variation of ‘for the cure’ in their names.

One woman, whose unique dog-sledding fundraiser is called Mush for the Cure, said she was warned by the National Breast Cancer Foundation to trademark her fundraiser’s name before Komen came after her.

Pit Bulls for the Cure
Too late. Komen is fighting the woman’s trademark application and will likely prevail with its enormous self-protection war-chest.

But this isn’t about the depredations of a scurrilous do-gooder organization, exactly. It is about the devotion of American women to breast cancer, and of Americans generally to cancer generally.

My mother died of lung cancer that spread to her adrenal glands and every other place it could get a toehold. She smoked for years, and there’s little doubt it was causative. I have never given one single cent to a pancreatic cancer cure organization, nor will I. I might possibly give to something trying to shut down tobacco companies, but probably not. My mother’s choice to smoke was her own, as was her choice to give it up. The damage had been done, however, and she knew why she died. She accepted it, and faced it bravely and with dignity.

Why would I sully her memory by wrapping the rest of my life around finding a cure for the disease that killed her? Wouldn’t that unwavering devotion to cancer cause more of it, either in me or some unwitting person who got in the way of my devotion and therefore inspiriting of the disease? In the rubric of Dr. Dyer, Science of  Mind and numberless college professors, yes it would. And, since quantum physics―the underlayment of Dyer’s work, Science of Mind beliefs and self-fulfilling prophecies―is not only available, but has been amply proven as the mechanics of the universe, it is just plain ignorant to hold in mind anything one DOESN’T want.

The mind works in mysterious, but known, ways
Those who are devoted to cancer are going to say, “No, no, it’s the CURE we are devoted to.”

Really? Can you think about a cure without thinking deeply and often about the disease itself? Another precept from the three rubrics mentioned here is this: You can tell someone over and over “Don’t drop the glass”….and they will drop the glass. The mind latches onto the most prominent idea, which is not don’t, but drop. If you want to avoid broken glasses, you’d do better to say “Hang onto that glass!” In this case, hanging onto the glass is the operative, cogent phrase, the one the mind―looking for positive instructions to latch onto and direct the body to follow―accepts.

All that having been said, one thing is obvious: The Susan G. Komen Foundation is invested in the continuation of cancer. It wants everyone to believe in cancer, but only its own kind of cancer, breast cancer. In that respect, since women are multiple times more likely to get breast cancer than men, it is an anti-feminist organization.

It is also a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Nothing it does can possibly, in the end, find a cure for cancer. How can an organization spending so much donor money on keeping other fund-raisers from contributing to research possibly find a cure for anything? Except of course poverty among its own executives and cadres of lawyers.

Time to let Susan G. Komen have a long, if undeserved, rest. Time to get one’s mind off cancer and onto life.

What about all those women dying of breast cancer? Very sad. But how many of them smoke? How many chose not to have children and breast feed, which seems to offer some protection? I would be among that later group, but not the former. I accept the risks.

Consider: Nuns get a lot of breast cancer, relative to all women. But they get a lot less cervical cancer, ostensibly because they don’t have sexual relations. One will die of something, usually caused by how one lives. Usually. There is chance involved, the odd safe falling on one’s head. There is genetics. There are probably factors humans will never understand.

One factor we can understand, however, is the self-fulfilling prophecy. As far as I can see, the Susan G. Komen Foundation wants everyone focused on breast cancer―but only Susan G. Komen breast cancer, the kind that opens wallets in their direction―all the time.

Good. Let them be. Pay them no mind, literally. And pay them nothing else. Then go on your way living, and not considering their coffins or their coffers anymore than the media forces you to.

Gods of New York: Ed Koch, Moonstruck and yellow snow of a different kind

Cher's neighborhood in Moonstruck...and mine for a year or so in the 1980s.

New York City is where my heart lives.

It’s true.

I was born there, lived there for many years of my youth and again, even longer, as an adult.

I loathe the NY mayors one is supposed to loathe, chief among those Abraham Beame and David Dinkins. I love those one is supposed to love, chief among those Edward I. Koch, but also including Rudy Giuliani.

I know. Giuliani has recently been tarred with a lot of brushes, and possibly his feet are more certainly of clay than many others’ feet. Still, after he became mayor, the city became liveable once again. So, for that―no matter what else emerges that tarnishes his glow among New York’s mayoral glitterati―I will continue to love him.

But my true hero is Ed Koch. Koch served for 12 years, virtually all of the time I lived in NYC consecutively, having moved back to the city during the preceding Abe Beame administration (I shudder to think) and remaining until the minus-4 temperatures and tornadic winds blowing through Manhattan’s canyons one Christmas Eve convinced me to seek sub-tropical temperatures in Florida. But then, we’re all entitled to the occasional mistake.

Anyway, Ed Koch―bless his little soot-and-Nedicks heart―used to stand at the subway steps at 86^th Street and Lexington Avenue when I first moved to the Yorkville neighborhood, saying good morning to people scurrying down that hole in the ground in the darkness of the Nixon ban on daylight savings time.

I was using the subway to get from Yorkville to my first real publishing job, as an editor for Prentice Hall business newsletters. Unaccountably, the offices were in Midtown, on Fifth Avenue at 54^th Street, almost across from St. Thomas (Episcopal) Church, which shortly became my lunchtime refuge as I realized the managing editor I worked for was N-U-T-S. I lasted a mere six months in that asylum before quitting to freelance, an enterprise that could only be undertaken because my husband had a job reverse commuting to the Stamford, CT. daily newspaper.  This meant that one or the other of us spent a minimum of one hour a day cruising the streets near our apartment to find parking for the car. We couldn’t afford a garage, and needless to say, on-street, legal parking spaces in NYC are always at a premium.

I wish I had had some more seasoning as a writer back then. If I had, I might have written a novel like Tepper Isn’t Going Out, a fictional account of parking in Manhattan by Calvin Trillin.

Or maybe I’d have written it later, when I was living in Carroll Gardens, the area of Brooklyn made semi-famous in the Cher vehicle, Moonstruck. The year I lived there, in a converted munitions factory at 505 Court Street that had the grandest 3-BR apartments with views of NY harbor you can imagine, it snowed almost as much as the blizzard of 2010. It took weeks and weeks for all the snow to melt and all the cars to be freed from their ice sculptures.

One car, very close to the corner on one of the blocks where we took the dogs to poop, had a 3-inch stack of parking tickets on it, as it hadn’t moved since right before the snow, and alternate-side parking was in effect.

When the snow did finally melt, the car began to drip. Not water; the snow was GONE.

It was dripping bodily fluids from the “missing wife” of a minor mafioso and her boyfriend found in the trunk with one bullet each in their brains.

As I said, it was the neighborhood made famous in Moonstruck.

As for me, I was glad we had found cheap, safe, permanent parking under the el a few weeks before the snowstorm so we hadn't had to do the New York parking mambo. Indeed, since we had joined the parking aristocracy, it was a wonder we even noted the stack of tickets on someone else's car. No longer our worry!

It was lucky, too, that my dogs were both Type A and very goal-oriented, basically only interested in smelling other dogs’ peepee, and not any other sort of light yellow liquids they noticed on the street. But I’ve always wondered whether we might have brought some human genetic material into the apartment on our shoes, or on eight furry paws. We always crossed right about there….

But it doesn’t bear thinking about. Not when I have all of NYC left to worship, and might travel down this holy path again soon.