An English woman asked me this simple enough question today. Thanksgiving is the biggest American family holiday. It takes place on the last Thursday of November and is also the biggest air travel date in the US. As a family holiday, it is associated with all the things people usually conjure up when they think of family obligations, and people they only see once a year, with whom they may or may not get on well. My favorite movie about Thanksgiving and the modern American family is Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter.
In grade school, American children dress up as Pilgrims and Indians and are taught how the Pilgrims escaped religious persecution in England and gave thanks for their very first successful harvest in the New World, with a celebratory feast to which they invited their new friends, the Indians. Of course some of these escapees of religious persecution didn’t turn out to be the most tolerant people themselves. Then perhaps the Indians weren’t thankful when we later killed them and took their land, but only kill-joys bring that stuff up.
Thanksgiving also comes with various required dishes that many Americans hate, but prepare anyway because otherwise it wouldn’t feel like Thanksgiving—the chief ones are turkey, sweet potatoes, wild rice, cranberries and pumpkin pie. Depending on your individual tastes, the recipes you select, and your cooking ability, these dishes can either be mouth-watering or stomach-churning. In my case, having a Mother Who Could Cook turned me into the worst of both worlds--a judgmental eater, who never bothered to learn any of the basic holiday dishes because there was always somebody there willing and happy to cook them for me and everybody else.
Since I will be away from home and want to cook my own Thanksgiving dinner, my good friend has suggested I go to the Butterball website, which even has a turkey hotline. Whenever, I despair of my country, I am comforted to see this return to our roots and thoughtful marketing, aimed at me, the consumer. The Butterball website dispenses useful information like how long to bake your turkey based on its weight, how big a turkey you should get based on the number of people you are inviting and a recipe selection that caters to the two Americas—those whose lofty and unachievable ideals that lead them to attempt a demi-glace once a year, and those who happily grab the bouillon cube and water; those make their own pie crusts and those who grab the ready-made variety off the freezer shelf at the grocery store. In the US, there’s even a new option for centrists—the roll-out circle of pie crust that you can feel good about pressing into your pan, sometimes it’s even made with real butter.
A family member who once worked in Unilever’s baby foods division described the middle-ground consumer as the Holy Grail of Marketing. I asked her what Unilever thought about women like me who breast-fed for a year and made their own baby food? She said: “We don’t even bother to try and market to people like you. Our ideal consumer is the guilt-ridden mother who is willing to pay more to give her baby healthier off-the-shelf options.” After four children, whom I duly breastfed and made healthy home-made purees for, that woman is me! I’m glad to learn that I matter, that someone cares. Thank you for giving me those choices Butterball!
By the way, it was once brought to my attention in blog comments, some of you are offended by the fact I and other citizens of the US call ourselves Americans. Yes, some of us are aware that we are only one country in the continent of North America. However, if you can’t find any grossly more offensive use of imperialist, Euro-centric, US-centric linguistic manipulation to focus on, shame on you. Please devote your energies to finding and marketing a better alternative, preferably identifying with the struggle of indigenous native peoples…and not a16th century Italian mapmaker.
I picked this up as an impulse buy at the book store, and I'm glad I did. Like most Americans, I associated Monticello with Thomas Jefferson. Although I hadn’t read any Jefferson biographies, what I had read about him lead me to admire him as a Great Man of the Enlightenment—humanist, writer, builder of nations, universities, and of course, his own very lovely neoclassical house on a hill—Monticello—Italian for little mountain.
I wasn’t ignorant of the contradictions of the writer of “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” being a slave-owner, who had a long-term relationship and fathered multiple children with one of his slaves. I just didn’t see the interest of commenting on the obvious contradictions or indulging in historical “what if” fantasies. Thankfully, neither does Annette Gordon-Reed.
Her book is not about de-bunking Jefferson. She’s more interested in members of his family, about whom much less is known—the eponymous "Hemingses of Monticello". Gordon-Reed focuses on the Hemings for two convenient reasons: their connection to a well-known American historical figure, the fact that, due to this connection, there is somewhat more documentation about them than their peers in the plantation South.
What did this South look like? Gordon-Reed describes a pre-Revolutionary population of opportunistic frontier pioneers, living off tobacco as a cash crop. The English govt. gave the settlers land based on a head-count system—a certain number of acres for themselves and every other person whose passage they paid to the Colonies. Over time, the primary labor for the plantations evolved from English-born indentured servants to imported, enslaved Africans and their descendants. She explains that the typical Colonial plantation-owner was deeply indebted, usually to English trading firms and speculates that the self-interest in canceling that debt, as well as the Colonists’ desire to further encroach westward into the Indian lands (limited by Britain pre-Revolution) were less lofty ideals that may have accompanied “no taxation without representation.”
The story begins with Elizabeth Hemings, the daughter of an African-born woman and an English ship’s captain. There is some evidence to the effect that Hemings’ father recognized that he had a daughter and may have wanted to free her, but could not because her mother was the property of another man, who refused to sell her. She explains how, the word mulatto, for mixed-race people of African and European descent comes from the word mule, an animal that cannot reproduce itself—that the Colonies had laws against miscegenation but they were only applied to poor whites or situations where the mother was white and the father was black. When plantation-owners like Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles, took slave mistresses, like Elizabeth Hemings, and fathered children with them, the law looked the other way.
The growing number of these mixed-race children and the constant fear of slave revolts, caused the colonists to significantly depart from English law. The English tradition would have granted the child the legal status of the father, which would have meant freedom. Instead the Colonies looked to Roman law as inspiration, basing a child’s legal status on that of its mother—thus the children of free fathers and enslaved mothers, would remain enslaved.
The Hemingses were Thomas Jefferson’s family in the literal sense, not just from a paternalistic plantation owner’s view. Many of Elizabeth Hemings’s children were his wife’s half-brothers and half-sisters. When he married Martha Wayles, Elizabeth and her children came with her to Monticello. One of these half-sisters was Sara (called Sally) Hemings, who became Jefferson’s mistress and the father of his children, after his wife’s death. Gordon-Reed explains how the Hemings family’s mixed-race status and blood connections to the Wayles/Jeffersons gave them a privileged status at Monticello—many of them were taught to read and write, they were given better clothes than their enslaved brethren, taught trades, exempted from field labor, given more freedom of movement. Some members of the Hemings family eventually received their freedom, something that would not be an option for the enslaved people of Monticello, outside that family. Gordon-Reed makes the point that house work, while physically less taxing than field labor, was certainly arduous enough and presented the stress of negotiating emotional and physical proximity to the plantation masters. It also cut them off from the more Afro-centric traditions/culture that the fieldworkers were able to maintain.
Gordon-Reed is careful about not generalizing or making assumptions where they cannot be made. She notes that an enslaved woman, like Elizabeth Hemings, could not refuse sex with a white man, whether the children that resulted from these relationships were the product of rape, or whether there existed some emotional attachment with the children’s father depended on individual circumstances, not documented for the historical researcher. She notes that the same was more or less true for white women and their husbands. While these women had a relationship that existed “in law,” they often did not necessarily choose or love these husbands.
One of the more striking facts that I learned about Jefferson is that his wife died from complications resulting from her frequent pregnancies and childbirth. Gordon-Reed points out that while he apparently loved his wife and was inconsolable at her death, he could not have been ignorant of his role in the circumstances causing her death. On her deathbed, Martha Jefferson made her husband promise never to take another wife, a promise Gordon-Reed speculates was likely motivated by her own experience with two stepmothers and the desire to protect her children. Jefferson kept his promise to his wife, and later when seeking another outlet for sexual companionship, looked no farther than with her enslaved half-sister, thus keeping it all in the family, with a woman who did not have a legal status and could never be a step-mother to his children in the eyes of the law.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but it does shine a not-very-comforting light on a not-so-distant era, a world where the children of the plantation owners would be given an enslaved child their own age to be a companion and later servant, a world where the house on the mountain is a symbol for the desire to aesthetically and morally distance oneself from the harsh realities of the plantation economy and the enslaved peoples that make it work; a house that was literally built and run by Jefferson’s own mixed-race family members; a reminder that the leisure to pursue the accomplishments achieved by Thomas Jefferson were underwritten by the enslaved labor of the people who tended to him, to his family, and his plantation. It also gives a face to those enslaved people, and looks at how they carved an identity for themselves, particularly, how a mixed-race family like Hemings both benefited from and paid a price for the different and ambiguous status they occupied within the Peculiar Institution.
I first heard this song waiting for carpool pick-up in my Volvo SUV☺ Not very nice to mothers are you Bowling For Soup? In cheesy recent pop, we much prefer Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom (has got it going on)” thank you very much. While I did (and still do) enjoy a lot of 80s music, I was also happy to put that decade behind me—no snakeskin miniskirt, boyfriend, or Duran Duran concerts to wax nostalgic about there.
My memories of the high school in the 80s have a lot more in common with Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep than “The Breakfast Club” or “Sixteen Candles.”
So it is not without irony that I find myself shopping for an 80’s theme party at H&M, where clothes from that decade seem to have made a comeback. They are playing “Blister in the Sun,” a female-vocalist, Euro-pop version that lacks all the angst of the Violent Femmes original. I score a pair of leatherette leggings, fuchsia satin top and black Members Only-style jacket. Paying for these clothes, wearing rather conservative and uninspired “bourge-y” sweater, slacks and Ferragamo handbag, I’m sure the register girl at H&M thinks I’m schizophrenic or have a whole alternative night-life as a street-walker.
After the H&M experience, I feel the need to explain to the 20-something sales-girl at Sephora the objective behind my request for shimmery fuchsia eye shadow: “I’m buying this for an 80s party” meaning “I don’t normally have this bad taste.” The sales girl with the dyed black hair and nose ring (who definitely was not born earlier than 1980) is impressed. “Una fiesta, anos ochenta, que guay!” She explains this to her gay male sales associate with the Clark Kent-style glasses. He’s impressed too. “Una fiesta ochentera! We wish we were going.” Are the 80s suddenly cool again, even for people too young to remember that decade?
Actual items of clothing or accessories worn by Nathalie MF in the 80s
1) Baggy sweater and leg warmers 2) Stirrup pants 3) Jellies shoes 4) Neon socks 5) Shirts with shoulder pads 6) Large hoop ear-rings 8) Stonewashed jeans with zippers at the bottom of the leg. I babysat many hours to save up the $50 for that pair of Guess jeans. 9) Overalls 10) Catholic school-girl plaid skirt, white shirt with Peter Pan collar, knee socks and penny loafers--until my transfer to “The John Knox Institute” which didn’t have a uniform, but did have a strict dress code 11) Lots of Laura Ashley floral skirts and dresses. Embarrassing but true. I spent a lot of time ironing yards of floral fabric to perfect this look. 12) Bermuda shorts and argyle knee socks. 13) Kelly green and electric blue eye-liner 7) Pouf-dress for prom 14) Total write-off year? 8th grade: braces, bad Farrah Fawcett haircut, put on a few pounds, but did not grow taller, had chicken pox the summer before, which was not good for skin, almost failed Algebra…
Then vs. Now
Favorite High School Reunion depiction—30 Rock Episode where Liz Lemon goes back to suburban Philadelphia for her 20th reunion: their private plane gets stranded in the bad weather and Jack accompanies her. She says nobody will believe he’s young enough to be their classmate and he counters: “Rich 50 is like middle-class 37.” She remembers being a nerdy outcast, but they all remember her as being mean, sarcastic and intimidating. She plays spin the bottle and winds up with Jack. They not only don’t kiss, he decides her classmates are right about her.
Sure I was: Nerdy and sarcastic, but most definitely not intimidating.
Happy I grew up then because….no cell phones, messaging or Internet. The stupid things you said and did were confined to throw-away notes or your high school yearbook--not broadcasted, mass-distributed and memorialized in the ether.
Moved on to the 90s for:
Curtis Sittenfeld “Prep” fame-whore/narrow-miss media humiliation
Graduated from college in 1994. Pitched my failure to find a job, combined with large number of interview opportunities to Rolling Stone writer for their “Gen X column—looking for the first job episode.” Used winning lines like “I discussed this with my grandmother and her friends and they said “Honey, we just don’t know what to tell you. When we graduated from college, we joined the Junior League and started playing bridge’;” “I used to write about Personality and Artistic Theory, now look at me, I’m writing about evaporators and batch digesters;” “I picked which college recruiting meetings to attend based on the quality of their buffet spread;” “I failed my interview for a derivatives sales and trading position at a large multi-national bank. I don’t think it mattered so much that I didn’t know what a derivative was…it was the moment I discussed my senior thesis on Samuel Johnson’s theories about being un-able to enjoy/live-in the present because we are constantly fixated on a past or future, which is either far worse or impossibly idealized compared to the ever-vanishing present…where The Head wrote me off as not possessing the driven, goal-oriented Derivatives personality.”
Almost (sort of, not) briefly Infamous
The article never got published and I got three good meals out of this (including one at an upscale restaurant!) on Rolling Stone’s tab.
Will never be representative of my generation because
I actually know most of the lyrics to Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone”…
My husband and his friend both assume that another friend of theirs is quite a hit among the ladies. Apparently high school and college were good times for X. “Can you imagine that they used to call him the 'Devastator'."
The irony is that neither my husband, nor his friend, bothered to ask actual women, including their own wives, what they think of X. The man in question is nice enough looking, but I haven’t spent much time thinking about him. The truth is that all above-average looking people are simple abstractions to me, unless they’ve written, said or done something that particularly piques my interest.
I don’t relate too well to the (outward) absence of obvious flaws in other people—like being too nice or too beautiful. No doubt this stems from an instinct to preserve dignity. One wonders if the unnaturally beautiful or virtuous might be applying their own (higher) standards to us: aka “could use an extra hour of treadmill every day,” or “needs to use more age-defying facial moisturizer” or “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.”
Even worse, if I suspect that an above-average good-looking person spends a lot of time improving or maintaining their physical appearance. Extreme self-discipline also makes me uncomfortable—seems too much like a self-mortification fetish. I, myself, last tried a diet in 2005—the South B(i)tch ™, which is exactly how carb-deprivation made me feel. Every time I’ve made an effort to diet or exercise more, I’ve lost the same five pounds, which immediately come back--since I haven’t been willing to make a Permanent Lifestyle Change. I do love walking and hiking, for the pleasure of these activities, not because they are connected in my mind with Self-Improvement. The irony is that all these men who spend hours buffing up in the gym would probably get more female attention if they did something like join a cooking class or book club or learn to dance.
On the self-improvement note, I recently received an email inviting me to a book signing by a former high school classmate who has written a book of lists to help people cope with those life-changing events—buying a new house, getting married, having children, getting divorced, dealing with death, and even the impossibly improbable like the World Trade Center Bombing on 9-11. I thought about this. I make lists too. This gives me a convenient sense of accomplishment, while enabling me to further procrastinate from the tedious things I mostly don’t want to do. I put things in neat stacks or star emails in my in-box. My rationale is that if something is important enough, somebody will remind me to do it and it will then pop back to the top of the list, and eventually I’ll take care of it.
Are women less judgmental about physical appearances than men? I thought about men who would not fall into the category of Somebody Whom Other People Consider Exceptionally Attractive that I would find interesting, like Salman Rushdie, for instance. I loved The Enchantress of Florence. What sort of woman, I wonder does a sensitive, deep writer-type like Salman Rushdie find attractive? Wife number four, Padma, model, celebrity chef. She's beautiful and she can cook, what went wrong there? Apparently, she wasn’t supportive enough of his career. What could the source of the “connection” he feels with most recent girlfriend, Pia Glenn be? Oh wait, that didn’t work out either…because he couldn’t get over Padma. He may write like an angel, but he appears to have the emotional maturity of a 16 year-old…
The interesting thing about getting older is that, for most people, it’s a great equalizer. Apparently X has been going to pick up his children at their school, and noticed that the high school girls in their plaid mini-skirts and knee socks still look cute, but they don’t give him a second look. However, he feels that his appearance is quite appreciated by these girls’ mothers. Sorry “Devastator” you’re cougar bait now.
“I moved back after five years, and nothing had changed. It was like re-discovering old friends.” The two French women and I were talking about the Spanish magazine “Hola” and the cast of characters that regularly grace its pages. In Spain, these people are called “Los Famosos.” Outside of Spain, with two or three exceptions, nobody has heard of them. The fact that three foreign women living in Spain, with respectable educations and otherwise challenging intellectual preoccupations and jobs had become aficionados of Hola! was intriguing, to say the least.
My Spanish mother-in-law explains it this way—“It’s a mental vacation. I can read the same article a second time and not even realize I’ve read it before.” Hola! was started in Barcelona, in the 1940s to focus on “la espuma de la vida”—(poorly translated by me) as “the frothy side of life.” Someone once told me it is the largest circulation magazine in the world. I have not verified this. What I do know is that Hola! pays people for exclusives and that many of its regulars earn all of or a decent supplement to their income selling “exclusivas”.
The Hola! formula never wavers: the photographs are authorized by the subjects and, to the extent that such a thing is possible, are always flattering. The call-outs inform us that the Hola’s cast of characters are “ready for love”, “in love”, “deceived by love”, or “recovering from love.” “So and so is thinking about getting pregnant”, “is pregnant”, "offers us exclusive photographs with her beautiful new baby.” These people give us exclusive tours of their homes, discuss their deceptions, tragic losses, projects and aspirations.”
Sus Majestades Los Reyes
At the top of the Hola! pantheon are their Majesties the King and Queen; their two daughters, the Infantas (my French friends agree there is the nicer looking daughter and “la moche”—the ugly one); the heir, Principe Felipe, who usually looks very dignified; and his brunette Barbie wife, Leticia; and the grandchildren. Their Highnesses are in Hola! by grace of who they are and tolerate the media attention with a certain bored “noblesse oblige.” Unlike the British Royals or the Princesses of Monaco, the Spanish royal family generally behaves itself and doesn’t offer much in the way of juicy scandals. This makes them less entertaining than the sub-deities of Hola, who make a concerted effort to maintain their status as regulars in its pages.
The Woman Who is More Noble than Everybody
People who know about Spanish history will tell you that among the Grandest of the Grandees of Spain, are the Albas. The Duquesa de Alba is so noble that if she were in the same room as the Queen of England, the Queen of England has to give her precedence. This is because back when the Queen of England’s ancestors were backwater Hanoverian electors, The Albas were Somebody’s. When Spain ruled the Holy Roman Empire, the Duque de Alba was at the center of things, suppressing rebellions in the Netherlands. He was immortalized as a bogeyman for later generations of Dutch children: “If you’re not good, the Duque de Alba will get you.” One of the Duquesa de Alba’s ancestors may have been the model for Goya’s “Maja Vestida” and “Maja Desnuda.”
What does the Woman Who is More Noble than Everbody look like? She has a distinctive white person’s Afro of frizzy gray hair and a face that sports the plastic surgery Masque of Death—facial skin pulled tight and immobilized by Botox, the Surprised Eyes, lifted up and pulled at the corners, and the Joker Mouth, stretched wide and tight for a perma-smile on the sides, offset by the puffy Collagen Lips. The Duquesa de Alba has an affectation for “hippie chic” clothes that might be in the closet of your teenage daughter. Occasionally, she has a health crisis and is wheeled into the front page of Hola! with mini-skirt hiked up around her waist and wild pattern stockings on her frail legs. The Duquesa de Alba has a “novio” or boyfriend. He is her son’s age and has some sort of time-punching, civil-servant job. Before her current novio, she had a second husband, a former Catholic priest, named Jesus. Real toffs debauch their Jesuit confessors. Before that she was married to some nobleman who fathered her five children.
When the Duquesa has a health crises, which happens more frequently these days since she’s getting on in age, her novio wheels her around and otherwise appears attentive to her needs. Hola! is very interested in the progression of her relationship with her novio. The Duquesa’s children are also interested in the progression of her relationship with her novio. If this relationship progresses too far, it’ll cut into their inheritance. None of these children appears to have done anything interesting with their lives besides appearing in Hola!
Tita Cervera—dite la Baronesa Thyssen
Tita Cervera also sports the plastic surgery Masque of Death, but instead of the grey Afro, she has a blond beauty shop “do”. Her wardrobe tends to Couture and is more restrained than the Duquesa of Alba’s (when you’re born Very Noble, you don’t need to make such an effort). I don’t know who Tita Cervera was but apparently she likes Art. At some point in her life she married Lex Baxter, an American actor who played Tarzan. Baxter was as a Stepping Stone. Thanks to him, she got a villa called Mas Mananas (More Tomorrows) and an introduction to the better sort of Society. In Society, she met a rich old German, called the Baron Thyssen, who inherited lots of things and also liked Art. Tita Cervera married the Baron, and became a Very Great Lady, or at least a very rich one. At some earlier point, she had a son. Nobody knows where he came from, but the Baron Thyssen adopted him. The Baron Thyssen finally had the good taste to die and leave Tita Cervera with lots of money and lots of Art. Tita Cervera had the good taste to make sure the Baron left a lot of this Art to Spain, so now you and I can go look at it in the Thyssen Bornemisza museum.
Tita Cervera has a son who looks a bit like a Spanish redneck—or maybe that’s just the rockero wardrobe and all the tattoos. He appears a lot in Hola! with his wife and their son, giving exclusive tours of their villa in Ibiza. Apparently, his mother doesn’t like his wife very much because she demanded that her “grandson” submit to a DNA paternity test. I guess that’s publicly calling your daughter-in-law a whore. Much ado about the DNA test, but the grandson passed. I think the only reason the son and daughter-in-law put up with Tita Cervera is because, otherwise, they’d have to give up their villa and get real jobs.
Tita Cervera may have the last laugh. She either adopted or genetically concocted (lots of speculation here) twin daughters. All we know is that she got them from some birth mother/rental womb rental womb out in California. Now we see lots of photos of the beaming Tita Cervera with her (not-so-cute) twin toddler daughters. Apparently it’s not just enough to triumph over the physical indignities of aging, but the limitations of childbearing as well. In the process, you can show up your ungrateful oldest son and his trashy wife.
Isabel Preysler, or How to be a Successful Ex-Wife
Isabel Preysler used to be married to Julio Iglesias and is the mother of some of his children. I think she also married a succession or combination of the following: Political Bigwig, Captain of Industry and Member of the Nobility. I can’t keep track. Since they didn’t have the good grace to leave her a widow, she divorced them or maybe they divorced her. My mother-in-law has a theory that powerful men like to be collectors, so they seek out women whose CV lists the names of many of their peers. She also says that La Presyler is rumored to have a special trick of passing out during the er, “little death.” Powerful men must really go for that too.
Isabel Preysler either has a better plastic surgeon than these other women or has the good fortune to possess the holy trinity of aging well—good skin (likely due to her Asian ancestry—she’s Filipina), good bones, and not putting on weight. My mother-in-law adds a commentary here based on the Spanish expression: “Las mujeres se enjamonan o se aparchimientan.” (With age) Women either become ham-like or parchment-like. She also offers some consolation for those of us who might be leaning in the ham direction. Subcutaneous fat does one have one advantage. It smoothes out your skin. The Hams can always console themselves with the fact that they’ll have fewer wrinkles than their Parchment friends.
La Preysler’s age-defying looks serve her well because she is one busy woman. In addition to posing for Hola!, she appears in print ad campaigns endorsing various products. Twice a year, she travels over to the US and takes a picture with George Clooney to promote Porcelanosa. There was some disagreement among the French people at the party as to whether Porcelanosa is a line of “chiottes” aka plumbing fixtures, or tiles. I think the tiles won out. To be fair, la Preysler isn’t the only one. Once you come to Europe, you realize how many “serious” American actors supplement their income here pimping out various products. George Clooney is also the face of Nespresso coffee and Hugh Laurie did a big Schweppes Campaign.
Isabel Preysler has one successful son, Enrique Iglesias, and a few other children who don’t appear to do much of anything besides appearing in Hola!
Carmen Lomana in “The Rich Also Cry”
I used to wonder what Paris Hilton would look like in her 60s. Now I know. She’s going to look like Carmen Lomana. Actual Hola! readers may wonder why I included a B-lister like Carmen Lomana. They may not even know who Carmen Loman is. That is because they haven’t seen Carmen’s YouTube video hit “The Rich Also Cry”—“Los Ricos Tambien Lloran”. Unlike her younger counterpart, Paris Hilton, Carmen Lomana’s video does not involve any physical exertions. Thank God! Carmen’s Chilean industrial engineer husband had the good taste to die at 49 and leave her a very wealthy woman. Her male-servicing days are over, thank you very much. What does Carmen Lomana do in her life/video? She shops, trys on clothes and shares her opinion about La Crisis. Researching Carmen Lomana on the Internet, all I learned is that her cleavage is a “feat of engineering” and that she wears a lot of Couture. Her interview with the journalist includes such gems as:
“Do you have lots of closets for your clothes?”
“I don’t have closets, I have rooms?”
“What do you do with your time?”
“I don’t know. What do you do? I get up at nine, I take my breakfast in bed. I spend an hour there reading the papers. I look at my agenda. I take calls from my bankers and lawyers to discuss business. I plan my day. I have a doctoral candidate who’s writing a thesis on me. That’s the ultimate luxury.”
“Carmen, are you feeling the Crisis?”
“Not personally, but it affects you…seeing my friends…people who have lots of assets but don’t have “dinero cash” to go to the supermarket…I mean those that were always poor, you know--the ones that beg--they’re used to it…but it’s tragic to see somebody who used to have a job in reduced circumstances.”
“Are you doing anything for La Crisis. For instance do you go to mercadillos (flea markets)?”
“Well, I do try to shop less, out of political solidarity. I’m wearing things that I haven’t worn in five years, and you know what? They still look great"…”Mercadillos?” You mean like those ones in the villages? Oh I love them. I’ve never been, but I’m sure they’re great.”
A recent email thread on the subject of fifth graders and why most of them do not need cell phones...let alone text messaging, called to mind this movie.
...Can't imagine why a fifth grader needs a cell phone for a school trip to France. I can barely figure out the international dialing prefixes from and to various countries, myself...but, then maybe I'm not as smart as a fifth grader. Do they actually think their child is in-danger, in their private school, guided tour over there? Reminds me of an in-flight movie I saw…
“Femme Jep” refers to a genre of movies featuring women (from the French word “femme”) in danger (jeopardy). It seems that some women have a statistic-defying penchant for encountering Mortal Danger. Or maybe it’s a vocation to one day appear as guest invitees, sobbing on the maternal bosom or sympathetic paternal shoulder of the host, saying things like “I know I shouldn’t have gotten into that car.” Think the whole tedious thread with Jack Bauer’s daughter, Kim, in the early 24s. The girl couldn’t make it further than 2 exits on the highway without encountering a psychopath or rapist.
Taken is the story of a down and out, ex-US Special Forces father (surprisingly cast as Liam Neeson), trying to build a relationship with the teenage daughter he neglected, back when he was making the world a safer place for democracy. He is nervous about his daughter and her girlfriend traveling alone to Paris. Rightfully, so, as it turns it out. Barely have the girls gotten off the plane at Orly (or maybe it’s CDG, can’t remember) when they meet a young French cheeseball, who offers to share a cab with them, on the way to their apartment. Lo and behold, he turns out to be a Spotter. Before the afternoon is even over, our two virtuous American girls have been abducted by a, get this, White Slavery Ring. Now, I know this sort of thing exists and it is perfectly awful, but the truth is they are far more likely to target girls from poor countries whose families (if they have any), can't afford to find and get them back. If I were an enterprising white slaver from Kryzhghfuckistan, do you think I would go to the trouble of abducting upper middle class American girls from the cab line at Orly, girls with ex-Spec Ops dads just waiting for a chance to Redeem Themselves, not to mention well-heeled stepfathers with private planes?
The highlight of the movie is an auction in the basement of an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris (definitely an Eyes Wide Shut “transgression among the rich and powerful” look to this scene), where wealthy buyers, including degenerate Arab sheiks, bid for the flower of our teenage American womanhood. Taken plays out like a de Sade plot, without the benefit of (intentional) social satire. Because, if you owned a multi-million dollar yacht, you’d actually need a pillowcase and handcuffs to get an attractive woman onto it?
Reading Wikipedia, I was surprised on two accounts 1) to learn that the movie had been financially successful 2) that it had been written and produced by Luc Besson. That would explain why the action scenes and suspense build-up did work well. Reflecting on Besson’s other work, I definitely like The Professional and La Femme Nikita better, but Not The Fifth Element! In the first two, the visual quality of his storytelling makes up for the limited plot.
As for Taken, part of what makes it a B movie--in addition to, as a by-product of?...the unoriginal story, and the uninspired storytelling, is its reliance on clichés—the young girl in jeopardy, the hard-boiled, yet tender-hearted father, the nefarious villains, the crooked cop. In this way, the film-maker can 1) by-pass the hard work involved in coming up with multi-faceted characters and plot 2) be assured that he is plugging into characters and themes with which his audience can easily identify. The only thing that surprised me, was that the underworld image of Paris, as such a dangerous place, was one them.
In a recent conversation with my sister, she mentioned her semi-annual “let’s look at the direction of your career” meeting with her boss, and the fact that she would need to make a decision between the “management” and “specialist” track. My sister works for a rather typical subsidiary of a multi-national conglomerate with its shares of mergers, shake-ups and spin offs—so her two main concerns were 1) job security 2) the ability to advance.
I told her to definitely go for the specialist track. When push comes to shove, the superfluous management layer is the easiest to trim. Not only is “managing people” highly over-rated (you become the person responsible for those boring-as-shit employee performance reviews); it is also highly un-differentiated. Everybody claims they can manage people; whereas, in my experience, the most effective managers were formerly People Who Could Get Shit Done. This past experience tends to make the former Person Who Could Get Shit Done good at detecting other people Who Can Get Shit Done and extracting useful work out of them. Lest you think I’m naïve, I won’t fail to mention the second and altogether nefarious breed of manager. THIS person’s meteoric rise in the corporate hierarchy owes to 1) the fact that they are surrounded by people even more incompetent than themselves 2) aware of their own limitations, they channel their energies into sucking up to their superiors and taking credit for their colleagues and subordinates’ work…until such time as it is expedient to betray those colleagues and subordinates. Such is the way of the world. Unless, you fall into the latter category of person, it is best to 1) learn to speedily recognize them 2) stay out of their reach.
Nothing is so conducive to keeping out of the clutches of The Nefarious Manager and preserving your job safety, amidst the inevitable corporate re-orgs, as acquiring some valuable skill…preferably a skill involving the company’s arcane software systems, or, failing that, a good relationship with the right geeks so that if, called upon, you actually know the people Who Can Get Shit Done. The farther people are From Getting Shit Done, the less likely they are to know whom to call on when a problem occurs. One day, for some interminable amount of reasons related to the company’s jury-rigged, legacy apps and forced upgrades from the Even More Nefarious Database and Everything Else on the Planet Vendor, X fails. Akil in department Y might know how to fix or patch X. Secure in his job, not so much because it’s an enviable job, but because the job involves the plumbing of the company’s jury-rigged arcane legacy apps that none of his superiors will come near, or possessing some more generalized knowledge that will easily enable him to get a similar job somewhere else, Akil has a decision to make 1) he can make-up some lame-ass excuse for why fixing X is impossible, an excuse that would be utterly transparent to a person with some modicum of technical knowledge, but flies above the head of The Nefarious Manager, because The Nefarious Manager has spent the greater part of his/her life studiously avoiding actual work…or 2) he can fix the problem. In this situation you either want to 1) be Akil 2) have built up a good store of credit with Akil.
Never in a million years did it occur to me that I would work in the software industry. I was nerdy person, but definitely a Humanities nerd. My school experience with Math and Science was gratitude in being able to get as far as I did, and even more gratitude for stopping where I did. The last computer class I ever took was a BASIC class in eighth grade. I had to work my tail off to get a B+ and, even then, I sensed that I reached my limits. I am not even a remotely logical person. In fact, I’m not sure I really believe in logic. My limited experience of looking at the world is that this is not a place where Logic and Reason prevail. The survival skilz I’ve developed (from being kicked in the ass by my own errors) don’t so much resemble a Philosophy as little collections of dictums along the lines of: “You are always better off working with an amoral mercenary who will double-cross you at the first opportunity to the extent that you can SEE those opportunities (concurrently or before the mercenary); you should always beware the well-meaning fanatic, to the extent that you CANNOT see into the working of such a person’s mind and, therefore, will fail to predict their behavior.
Why did I enjoy working in software? I’ve written on this theme in the past. Here’s another angle on my previous, accidental career. First, shallow but true, being a woman, in a field where women are under-represented, the male/female ratio definitely appealed to my vanity. If I’d worked in marketing or communications in some more traditional industry, I’d have never gotten a second’s notice. Second, as a writer, I can relate to engineers, to the extent that I think both professions tend to get frustrated with the Actual State of Things (the Illogical World filled with its Nefarious Scheming Individuals and jury-rigged, Crap Legacy Systems). Writers and engineers tend to like building their own worlds, where they can exert total creative control. While my husband and I became entrepreneurs by default--because nobody in their right mind with any money or gravitas in the software industry would have supported us—the latter reason is why I can no lo longer imagine working any other way. Third, in open source software, I enjoyed working in a collaborative field. The myth that other people are going to do Your Work for you, for free! (“You should be grateful I use this free POS, tell me right now, why will not JBoss scale with my app!”) is completely ridiculous. The truth is that people who tend to specialize in relatively narrow fields, where there are few people with whom they can communicate, are often very willing to share their knowledge (but not with idiots). If they enjoy what they are doing and are smart, these people have invested some time and effort acquiring this knowledge (or, if they are lucky, had a Eureka! moment), so sharing that knowledge validates their work and experience…
Little hussy with no sense of family identity or loyalty to “her people”
This is probably one of the worst things you could imply about a person in the American South. A recent, inconsequential Facebook exchange, involving a reflection on my middle-class upbringing, provoked a most unexpected, vituperative and, thankfully, private--or else all my Facebook “friends” would be having a good laugh at me now--email. The offended family member wondered how I could consider an upbringing that included trips to Europe “before adulthood!” “exclusive” private schools and membership “from both sides of my family” in “the most exclusive country club in Atlanta” middle class?
My entire life I considered myself a member of the middle class. Was this a false delusion? Was I, in fact, a class-traitor--a phony and a hypocrite who wouldn’t recognize the American middle class if it were two feet from my nose?
Why middle class? To begin with, in the US, you can’t be upper class without money. Whatever financial resources my antecedents possessed, had mostly disappeared by the time my cousins and I came around. It’s not that the money was completely gone—it helped pay for my sister’s and my private schools, summer camps, or trips to Disneyworld or cruises with our grandparents. However, money had ceased to be a comforting presence you could count on, with an air of nonchalance--described by “The Preppy Handbook,” as “the golden retriever snoozing by the fireplace: nice to have around, but not exactly something you make a big deal about.”
Ironically, the family’s most recognizable “middle class” trait, reinforced by its increasing distance from the flush days, was the need to demonstrate that we occupied a better plane of existence than the ordinary mass of humanity (whom we greatly feared sinking back into). This tendency manifested itself in little observations such as: so and so is “as common as pig’s tracks,” “country people don’t eat lamb,” “fine bone china,” “leaded crystal,” “cradle-born Episcopalian,” “the Junior League,” “debutante,” “all the men in our family are SAEs”, “only tacky people (whose marriage we haven’t been invited to) get married during Lent,” etc.
On the contrary, my limited experience reading about, and interacting with the Personages of this World (or, more frequently, their children)—where my presence was as remarked upon, to borrow a phrase from Neal Stephenson, as “a mouse turd in the pepper”--is that the upper class does not need to point out to you that they occupy a better plane of existence. This fact is blindingly obvious.
"Wait ‘till I get my money right"
Love the refrain from "Can't tell me 'nuthin" by Kanye West. The origin of my improved circumstances, in the plumbing of the Internet, is obscure enough not to attract much attention outside the middleware ghetto. In fact, the one moment of maximum public awareness was when a Personage—I’ll call him Genghis Khan—did take sufficient notice of my husband and our company to upgrade us from “mouse turd in the pepper,” to “mouse,” and, consequently--attempt to squash us. Surviving that and fading back to obscurity has been a good thing.
Growing up among inconsequential provincial snobbery, cradled in a family mythology emphasizing our participation in Great World Events and our proximity to Great Personages of this World--sometimes based on fact and, barring that, convenient coincidence--has somewhat immunized me to my current, improved circumstances. Like the French comedian, Coluche, I don’t consider myself a “nouveau riche,” but rather an “ancien pauvre.” Whatever penny-penching or profligate habits I may have, they, like my identity, were developed long ago.
I hate the word “networking”: cultivating people because you feel they can be of use to you. Thankfully, no one tries to flatter me; I would respect them less if they did--to be so deprived of self-respect to flatter somebody as inconsequential as myself. As for the occasional person who tries to cultivate me to get to my husband (or rather my husband’s money), the irony is that I spent the greater part of my career trying to shield people from my husband. If they get to him, they get what they deserve—he has very specific opinions about fools.
There’s a French expression: “pour vivre heureux, vivons caches.” This translates to “To live happy, live hidden.” The family’s picaresque repertory contained many cautionary tales, where instances of extraordinary success were reduced by unfavorable World Catastrophes—the French Revolution, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cuban Revolution (less mention was given to latter generations’ propensity to coast off the prior generation’s success, and spend down the capital). Of all these stories, my favorite was the tale of René Madec. Madec began his career as a humble cabin boy in the French East India Company; fought for the French in their ill-fated attempt to establish a foothold in Pondicherry; sometimes French corsair, sometimes British corsair; taken prisoner by the British, he deserted from the Bengal army and became military instructor to various Indian princes, rose to rank of Nawab and, later, king of Deccan, in the service of Great Mogul Shah Alam II. He accumulated great wealth, married "a descendant of Genghis Khan," before returning in triumph to his native France. Alas, as he was transporting a portion of his treasure back to France, his boat encountered a storm and was sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Mostly I’m grateful to my family their role in my sense of identity, however twisted it might be, and for their story-telling ability. One day, I hope to perfect this art myself. In the meantime, I’m off to learn more about l’Emmerdeur, the incomparable Jack Shaftoe, and his lady love, Eliza, Duchess of Qwghlm and Arcachon in "The System of the World," book three of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.
Quotes: "The Story of your life is not the story of your life, it's your story." From my sister-in-law, Carmela, would be grateful to anybody who can help me source this one.
"Success is a complication in the disease of ambition"--attributed to her father by JS Van Buskirk in Facebook update, possibly source-able elsewhere, as well.
It's that little souvenir of a terrible year which makes my eyes feel sore... from Here’s Where the Story Ends by the Sundays
Adapted from a letter to a good friend
… the work and adrenaline keep you from thinking too much. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. It’s the down time, you’ve got to watch out for, the slow-growing doubts and anxieties that creep in the void. After 5 years of building a company--eating, sleeping, living and breathing that entity, and caring a lot about a lot of the people we worked with, selling it felt like selling a child. If the purchasing entity’s culture is radically different from your own, and (you may feel in your less charitable moments) represents everything you built your company as a reaction against...that feeling is compounded. You can out-do the haters, writing your own epitaph. Not that this maudlin navel-gazing will generate much sympathy among your friends and acquaintances, either. You sound like the jilted ex-wife, complaining about the new wife coming in and redecorating the house and yanking the children out of their expensive private schools, etc. People's reaction is pretty much "Take your big-ass divorce settlement and move on." One person, in the industry, to whom I wrote, could relate. He wrote that selling his first company felt that way, but that "it gets easier each subsequent time..."
…my experience (with the meds) is that they don't "make you happy"--as I thought they would, until I tried them. What they do (when they work) is "take the edge off" and "help you cope." When I think about how I feel now versus back then, the biggest change is what (now) seem like relatively small things, used to really upset and overwhelm me. I couldn't let go or put things in perspective. I’d seize on some issue or thought pattern and gnaw away at it, like a pit bull with a bone. Things still upset me and I still get the blues, but the difference is that this is occasionally, not most of the time. Mostly, my baseline mood is a lot more calm, at peace…I don't necessarily like these people, but now I can accept them--along the lines of "They is what they is; and they ain't what they ain't…"
It's not just the lows that are more infrequent, but I can also recognize and appreciate more frequent moments of happiness…it hasn't been easy...I can recognize some of the bad old bad habits coming back. Maybe this will work now, maybe it will work later, I don't know. The good thing is that I know that, at least, there is something that will work.
What helped me a lot were two changes in my life: moving and starting a new creative project. Home was very connected in my mind with the productive start-up years, so living here felt very anti-climactic once we sold the company. Right now, I like the detached feeling of living in another country. Nobody knows you or gives a damn who you are. And, even if they did, nothing about who you were or where you came from in X is relevant in Y. This doesn’t just work with geography, but changing industries or careers, as well. Ironically, having strong roots and family ties makes it easier to let go of everything and feel at home in totally foreign places...because I can (and usually do) always go back. A cheesy reference, but the line from the movie Fight Club: "Don't let the things you own, own you" makes a lot of sense to me.
As for writing a play, I am somebody who is essentially happy when doing creative work. In my case, what I enjoy is writing. I think I read and write, in the words of C.S. Lewis: to know that I am not alone. I wrote the play with a new friend--who like so many people living parallel lives that I passed on a daily basis, I’d never gotten to know before. Working on a new creative/collaborative project has helped pull me out of my isolation, feel like I am moving forward with a positive, fun, totally different phase of my life…I am unhappy when I cannot control circumstances. What I like about writing is that I have complete control of this entity and can take all the things that have frustrated me in my life...work them out on my own terms, and have the last laugh.
it's that little souvenir of a colourful year which makes me smile inside so I cynically, cynically say, the world is that way surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise here's where the story ends ooh here's where the story ends
I liken the decision to live in some place where you have no cultural, family or professional ties to "dropping off the grid." This sort of move is easier to do if you are the sort of person who felt "a few degrees off the grid" in the place where you grew up. Even if you did fit in wherever it is you grew up or live today, you need not travel far to find someplace you don't.
I remember, the kind of reception I got in the 80's when I traveled with the debate team from my private preppy (we send 20 kids a year to The Ivy League!) Atlanta high school (see The John Knox Institute) to compete against other schools in places like Americus and Warner-Robbins, Georgia. This was a sardonic: "Well, ain't we privileged to have you Atlanta private school kids with us here today."
The beneficial effect of walking outside one's village, for the person capable of acquiring perspective, is the rapid realization that "who" you think you were, back wherever it is you are from, has absolutely zero meaning to the locals "here."
Yesterday, was our court hearing in the affair of the neighbor's noise complaints against our children. As it turns out--in the exactly 12 units in the building, the only people who have had an issue with us are the (now departed) Germans (by way of Argentina) in the unit across from us and the bat-shit crazy people in the unit below us. Rather ironic, considering the former are one generation removed from The Reich and the latter's example of triumphant child-rearing is the single adult daughter who lives with her parents, works for her father, and doesn't look a day younger than forty (to be fair, this could be the perma-mask of bitterness etched on her face).
It was both less than I was expecting from a legal point of view--all that went on was that our lawyer told the judge that we deny the accusations they make against us (like our kids make noise at all hours of the day and night--not exactly possible since they're in school all day and in bed from 9pm to 7am). From an emotional point of view it was worse. Most of you have better things to do than waste time on Facebook, but this pretty much sums it up.
Me: "Nathalie Mason-Fleury experienced the disgust of having the 80-yr old president of our building association tell his lawyer and my lawyer (AS IF I WASN'T THERE 3 meters away) that it is "not normal" for a 2-yr old to wake up at 4 am in the morning and cry."
Cristina: "ask him to come to my house yesterday night... 2-yr and 9 months crying. At 3.32. And the three were hungry and 1 with fever. drinking bottles and eating biscuits."
Karen: My 17 month old made it to 5:30am before the molar coming out of his gums got the best of him yesterday. No, crying there...
Fiona: like he would have any idea. My two year old was hollering at 5:30 am today before I bounded to his room, gave him the pacifier, and he went back to sleep.
Abigail: What alternate reality is he living in? The one where the babies are silent and the old farts make all the whining? And even if it wasn't 'normal' wtf are you supposed to do about it? It's not like you can tell your doctor 'I'd like a peaceful sleeper' and then get pregnant, can you? can you? did I miss something here?
Heather: If his own mother were still alive, she'd straighten him out. "Oh yeah, you used to wake me up at 4 am all the time," etc.
In 8 months, the first time I saw my elderly neighbor was yesterday--I imagine him, mummified in his apartment, remembering a better world, when Franco was still alive and running things, children knew their place and foreigners weren't your neighbor.
One of the first things I noticed is the way people dress here, in this up-market part of Madrid. Spanish men, especially, stand out compared to their American counterparts. The men here seem to take particular pride in their appearance. The other day I saw a man in what had to be the height of the Madrid "pijo" (preppy) look--cantaloupe-colored cotton slacks with a Kelly-green linen blazer. Now that summer's arrived, sherbet colors abound here--lemon, lime, orange, raspberry, pink has always been popular, for men. Shirts come with loud stripes and checks, and everything is always impeccably ironed. Los Pijos also seem to love labels as much as their American preppy counterparts. As my sister-in-law put it, when Izod and Burberry came back, it wasn't a problem, because, in Spain, they never went out of style.
My father who was an American child of the fifties grew up with (and continues to wear) a vibrant color-themed wardrobe. If you saw "Wedding Crashers" and the outfits that Owen Wilson and Vincent Vaughn borrowed from their hosts (I think some patchwork pants might have been involved)--you get the idea. However, for later generations of American men, it's primary and neutral colors only, scruffy dressing, absolutely no ironing except for the dry-cleaned work button-down. For a man to take any interest in his appearance and grooming immediately labels him as homosexual, although, lately, in the generation younger than mine, this has expanded to the more inclusive "metrosexual."
The children's clothing in Spain is very classic and beautiful. Think Liberty prints with color-coordinated cardigans and stockings, and Mary Janes for girls--cotton dress shirts, pull-overs or cardigans, shorts, knee socks and loafers for boys. People also take pride in dressing their children in coordinating or matching outfits. It's possible to find these sort of tasteful, coordinating clothes in very reasonably priced, mass-market stores. In the US, my complaint is homophobia-wear only for boys--see description of US menswear above--add massive truck or professional sports logo and, once your girl is older than six--and you don't want to dress her like a tart (hello JonBenet Ramsey) good luck. No I don't think little girl's party shoes need to have heels, nor do I think I should have to pay a premium to buy my children tasteful undergarments and sleepwear aka the type that does not come in heinous colors and is not emblazoned with the latest movie or cartoon themes.
For womens' clothing, I can't say much because I "don't got the look," (nor did I in the US). In contrast to the men, I would say that colors are darker or neutral and there are less patterns or large prints involved. Except for the long tops, pants and skirts are more tailored-fitting. They wear a lot more jewelry (costume and real) and accessories than their American counterparts and, if they go out, it's usually with make-up and their hair "done." Absolutely no sportswear anywhere outside the gym. They look at me with disapproval when I walk out the apartment in sweatpants, or jeans and schleppy t-shirt with barely brushed hair and no make-up. So now, I don't do that so much. I smooth my hair, wear dressier clothes, grudgingly put some powder and lipstick on my face--as some sort of armor against the disapproving stares of the neighbors.
The women my age are not so much judgmental as curious. My Spanish women friends ask me, Nathalie, how is it that in the US, with so many stores selling nice (and cheap!) clothing you Americans dress so poorly? I tell them that depends where they go in America, but they probably are right, in general. I say I don't know, I think it's because we have a car-based culture, where people drive everywhere and generally aren't walking in the streets (at least in "real" America :) Yes, we're an overweight nation but we do try to work out. So, if I am driving my car to drop off my kids at school, go through the drive-through at Starbucks, and then go to the grocery store, and trying to get a run in before the day gets too hot, it doesn't matter how I'm dressed, because nobody sees me, or if they do, it's just other mothers like me...
Ce n'est pas aujourd'hui que le ciel me tombera sur la tête...
Today, the bus monitor called me because I forgot to pick up my daughter.
It was one of those Friday half-days, which are darned hard to keep up with, what with all the Spanish holidays commemorating obscure Saints and glorious Apparitions, Assumptions, Ascensions and Immaculate Conceptions of our Our Blessed Virgin...not to mention the vagaries of the French Education Nationale labor calendar, with its various strikes and half-days (to plan how they will do less work in the next calendar year). Not that I'm going to spit on Education Nationale because my husband is a product of that and my daughter has a bona-fide, CERN-trained Ph.D. particle physicist as her fourth grade teacher, who's young, cool and lets the kids call him by his first name. Plus, did I mention that French public education abroad is a real bargain compared to anything you would pay in the US. Oh, and the school year lasts through the end of June, joy!
You may be a better parent than we are
I suppose this is an improvement over last year. That was the year my daughter's school teachers called a conference with us to discuss her "organizational issues"-- how she was turning in her homework crumpled up and forgetting to bring the appropriate red, blue and black color-coded ink pens.
My husband and I both, independently, forgot this meeting and showed up 1/2 an hour late. By this time the "educational specialist" they have sit in on these meetings had another appointment. All we could do was grin sheepishly and suggest that "Perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." "Organizational skills?" The child gets good grades, is sociable with her peers and respectful toward her teachers...give me a break, private school.
Today, my "independent-minded," au naturel (our latest idea for "shock and awe" potty training by the September 3-yr. old preschool deadline) 2 year-old shited all over our white leather living room couch. Soon after that, the latest issue of the "Potty Training Concepts" newsletter appeared in my in-box. Coincidence? I think not.
This inspired my "creative" 6 1/2 year old twin boys to use Mac Photobooth to start producing "poop films" (don't ask). I expect great things from these two.
Is in imminent danger of becoming a Twitterwhore/future Facebook updates
"Try for (fuller-figured) Lisa Cuddy look"
"What would Jack Bauer do?" Vis-a-vis the fact, Marc has "lost" 3 iPods in 7 months and need to look up iPhone app with bad-ass tracing software.
"Said no to the gym and yes to carbs!"
"Is so hep and desirable that hep and desirable people--more so than you, my dear 'friends!'--fight over the privilege taking me to hep and desirable places."
"Top 5 things my 'friends' resent about me"
1) My classic good looks? 2) My stunning figure? 3) My plastic, fantastic life? 4) My H.I.P. (Higher Ivy Potential) children!
This one is going to make me wildly unpopular... I will preface the entry by saying that I have limited experience in management. This experience has been "when it's great, it's great," but, in those cases where you may be managing the "lesser motivated" worker, management is highly over-rated.
In my brief professional career, I worked with an outside PR agency team that was very competent. In general, they knew more about what they were doing, than I did. They made me look good. In my house, in the US, I employed a nanny for my children (live-out, hourly wages). In the seven years she worked for me, I don't think she was sick once and I can count on less than ten fingers the number of times she was late to work.
Recently, though, in Spain, I have not had such good luck in the house-hold help category. I wonder if this is not due to different cultural/personal expectations about the workplace. This is exemplified by a conversation I had one day with my "interna" about the fact that the children were consistently late for the school bus. I approached this from a very American HR workplace bias:
"We have a problem. How can we work together (as a team!) to solve our problem?"
I was shocked by the interna's response, which (paraphrased) was:
"Well, Señora, you can do my job for me."
The American weakness: Need to be liked/loved.
Wonder if this comes from the joy that is the American high school experience, where popularity is generally valued above and beyond any sort of academic achievement?
In the JBoss years, it truly was inconceivable to some people that my French-raised husband lacked any concern for what people thought of him. "Not giving a damn" is a good quality to have if you are an entrepreneur. Why? Because if you are doing something truly novel and different (with no money and connections in your chosen industry) expect to be called crazy. "Crazy" is a good thing. Nobody fucks with crazy. When you are in tight situations, acting like a completely unpredictable motherfucker who would rather self-implode than let the other guy win, increases your chances of survival and coming out ahead. If you succeed, you can always console yourself with the Southern (US) dictum: "When you're poor, you're crazy; when you're rich, you're eccentric."
If you are on to something, you will spend the second half of your start-up's life fending off people trying to kill you. This includes insignificant pissants as well as the powerful Personnages/Corporations of this world. Why do they abuse their position? Because they can. Concentrate on out-witting them and extracting revenge, or acting more morally if you ever get near their industry position.
I see "needing to be liked" in the work world as a particular American weakness. Nothing is more ridiculous than the company that thinks they can under-compensate their employees because they they are such a "cool" place to work. Note: employers who think this way are probably so far from cool the light from cool would take a million years to reach them. This is on par with the housewife who thinks she can pay "Edwina" less because Edwina "loves" her children. If Edwina won the lottery, would she be working for you? It's a job, people are there because they need the money or expect a liquidity event.
As for what other people think of us, not just employees, but friends and family, we probably are better off not knowing :) In a work relationship, I see fair compensation and establishing a relationship of mutual respect as more important.
American optimism: You are responsible for the ultimate outcome of your career
OK, I just read Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" like everybody else, and he makes some good points de-bunking the individual's responsibility for her own ultimate success. However, if you don't start from this basic assumption, you will not be able to benefit from whatever Gladwellian experiential, cultural, chance advantages that come your way.
Religious bias and Social Values
I am the product of a Protestant/Catholic marriage, and was raised in, and, am comfortable with, both traditions. This is not a discussion of religion or theology, but a thought about Protestantism and the American cultural bias regarding individual self-determination. My experience with Catholicism was very laced with the "look at the birds of the air and the flowers of the field--the good Lord will provide" outlook. The Protestant outlook, on the other hand (which is nowhere to be found in the Bible): tended toward "God helps those who help themselves." The Calvinist predestination doctrine--where it is assumed that God rewards the "predestined" with material success and that material success reflects moral character--is even more pernicious...The two traditions also have different outlooks on the individual's ability/responsibility for interpreting his faith. My experience with Catholicism emphasized dependence on the clerical hierarchy to achieve an understanding of theological tenets; whereas the Protestant tradition (of course both traditions have their dogmatic sects) generally emphasized Biblical textual scholarship and the individual's responsibility to work out his own faith--an approach that has understandably led to endless dissent and schisms...
Them that has 'gits
All this is speculative divergence from what I see as two fundamentally different outlooks in the workplace. One approach is that "the world has always been divided into "jefes" and "empleados". As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, world without end, Amen. Fuck them, I am going to do the minimum I can get away with in my job. My misery/poverty is virtue in and of itself. I'll get my reward in Heaven.
Self-determination
The second approach is that "I can impact my ultimate outcome in life" and, by my hard work, I could become a "jefe". This involves taking responsibility for and pride in one's work. It especially comes into play in dealing with how people handle mistakes.
Everybody makes mistakes. This does not distinguish the former or latter category of employees, but how they handle them does. Employee A will 1) acknowledge no responsibility for his role in the mistake 2) expend endless amounts of energy telling me why it's not his fault and how he could not have done anything differently. Employee B, on the other hand, will 1) acknowledge her role in the mistake 2) spend her energy telling me what she is going to do in the future so that this never happens again.
My relationship with FB began with an initial addictive phase, kind of like getting your alumni magazine and looking up your class news—what are all those people I haven’t kept in touch with doing these days?
I, myself, never send in class updates. This is because for most of my life I hadn’t really “done” anything. And then, when I finally reached a point of my life where I had done one or two things, I felt like notifying people I hadn’t kept in touch with would be in rather bad taste--on par with the writers of The Obnoxious Annual Christmas Card.
Then followed a phase of relative disenchantment. After overcoming my initial hesitation about being in The Book, due to the fact that I’m not currently enrolled in high school or college, there came a period when The Book was discovered by many more people....
The inflation/devaluation of “friendship”
Not being a particularly socially-needy person, and someone who, throughout her life, has viewed friendship in terms of quality rather than quantity—many second-degree friend requests surprised me. If you have more than 400 Facebook “friends,” there is word for you: friendwhore.
One of my friends, who hesitated to join FB, used the following rationale—if you are my friend, chances are I’m already in touch with you. She’s right, but she's missing something.
The good? There are people in our lives that we have lost touch with, have interacted with on a limited basis or “second-degree” friends--with whom we may have a personal connection. We may not have the time or energy to call or email these people, but it’s nice to be able to keep in touch on a limited basis—thus the success of the Facebook portal approach and 140-word status update.
The bad? FB offers so many new opportunities for social awkwardness. My two FB etiquette moments and personal lows are
1) The friend request from somebody who not only WASN’T a friend in high school, but was really obnoxious and belittling back then, but now wants to sell you their investment “opportunities.”
2) Getting a friend request from somebody you considered a real friend, being excited about being back in touch with them, writing them and they never write back. You realize, so and so never really was your “friend” but just wants to offer you some portal into their life and up their friendwhore quotient.
Slippery slope to Twitterwhore?
Lisa Nova’s video offers a funny take on this tendency.
Now that I am dealing with many people, some of whom are not, strictly speaking my “friends,” won’t inundating them with the inane details of my daily life only confirm what I always suspected—that X (from high school or my circle of acquaintances) really does think I am a loser? And, shouldn’t I be above caring what X thinks of me in the first place?
The FB updates I see tend to fall in these broad categories (feel free to suggest more in comments): navel gazing, “Mom,” industry/field of interest updates, and Don’t you wish you were me/I have 140 words to convince you that a crumb of my daily life is more interesting than your entire existence.
I thought about my own updates and decided they tend to fall in the Mom and navel-gazing category—most likely because 1) I am psychologically predisposed toward navel-gazing 2) my “Mom” existence currently prevents me from doing much more than navel gazing.
Don’t You Wish You Were Me!!!
This category tends to comprise the majority of FB offenders. Now I cannot compete with Pretentious Git, who “is in Bali hanging with Bill (Gates) and Timothy (Geithner) solving the global financial crisis.” On the other hand, ZenMom, who “is enjoying a transcendent moment of motherhood” might particularly grate on my inadequacies/insecurities, since my particular experience of motherhood at that moment might be Nathalie Mason-Fleury “is up to her elbows in shite.”
Has moved beyond categorical statements
More recently, I simply appreciate Facebook for what it is—as much or little as you make it, superficiality, inanities, second-degree friends and all. Yesterday, I was scrolling through the “News” section and smiled to see that many of the people in Atlanta were writing about a thunderstorm. Now I’m Atlanta born and bred. There have been spring thunderstorms in Atlanta for as long as I can remember. There was something comforting about reading homey details such as “is happy that the storm has not delayed their flight” (yet…) or “is planning to celebrate the storm with New York strips and a bottle of Shiraz” As long as it doesn’t cause a power outage, there is nothing I love so much as a good gully washer. It feels like home. For a moment there, I felt connected.
I dropped by the French consulate in Madrid today and picked up a sheaf of papers informing me that I have acquired French nationality. This included a welcome letter from President Nicolas Sarkozy "Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur..Vous êtes désormais citoyenne ou citoyen de notre pays," the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme (Declaration of the Rights of Man), extracts from the Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958, and a copy of La Marseillaise.
I suppose it's fashionable and convenient today to collect citizenships, but somehow I was touched. My maternal grandfather was Franco-American and grew up in France (as did my maternal grandmother). However, due to American politics immediately following the second World War, American naturalization required that he renounce his French citizenship, because of his service in the French army.
When I was a child, I first wanted to learn French because this was the language spoken by my mother's Irish-American/Colombian/French family. I was certain that only my failure to decipher the French language lay between me and exposure to many fascinating adult conversations and secrets. Every Sunday, my mother and her five siblings, their spouses and children were expected for a leisurely, alcohol-infused lunch, the kind with irreverent, salacious conversation, punctuated by multiple courses, ending with salad, cheeses, desert, coffee and brandy. My grandmother was an excellent cook--would whip up stacks of crêpes for Mardi Gras, baked her own bread, croissants and cakes, made her own jellies, candied fruits. She also cooked a lot of dishes that, to a McDonald's-loving American child, were frankly horrifying, such as frog legs, tongue, and bouillabaise.
By the time I was ten, I drank water mixed with wine at these lunches and sucked on sugar cubes dipped in coffee, afterward. While I didn't learn French until middle school, what I did learn, growing up with a large and boisterous extended family, was that you had better speak louder than everybody else or say something clever, if you wanted anybody to pay attention to you.
My mother's family owed much of their financial stability to my great-great grandfather, the child of Irish immigrant parents, who found success as the owner and operator of a string of bucket shops in New York City. Unfortunately, the only inclination his son, my great-grandfather, showed to follow in his father's footsteps was an affinity for drinking and gambling establishments. Other than that, he chiefly occupied himself spending his father's money. Just before the First World War broke out, he went on a European Tour. In Paris, he was introduced to and, soon after, married the daughter of a French count. This was my great-grandmother, whom I knew very well. She came from a family that had actively supported the monarchy (and been punished for this) during the French Revolution.
My great-grandfather eventually died an early death from alcoholism. Meanwhile, my grandfather grew up in Paris, living with his mother, his grandmother and his step-grandfather. Vacationing in Switzerland, my grandfather met and fell in love with my Colombian grandmother, who also grew up and lived in Paris. However, before they could get married, World War II had started. My grandfather was drafted into the French army, fought during the brief time the war lasted for France, then became a prisoner of war in various German camps.
My grandfather finally escaped, but the experience left him with lasting psychological scars--what would be described today as "post-traumatic stress disorder." After the war, my grandparents got married and moved to the US. My grandfather had ambivalent feelings about France, the War and the Occupation. I think he viewed the United States as a new start, a place distant from the painful experience of the war years.
From my grandfather's prisoner of war stories; to the great-grandmother, whose childhood memories included the black crêpe with which her family shrouded the windows of their home, every 14th of July to honor their Royalist forebearers put to death during the French Revolution; who, in later life, proudly sewed a line of red thread on her few formal dresses to commemorate the Légion d'Honneur she was awarded for her work in the Resistance; the very foreign-ness of my French-raised maternal grandparents to me, as a child growing up in Atlanta, Georgia in the 70s--a jumble of personal associations accompany this new, official sanction of the French part of my identity -- and, finally, the thought that, in my marriage to a Frenchman, whom I brought back to my hometown, and, our formation of a family and a company together, I may have closed the circle.
If you are a foreigner and move to Madrid, do not, necessarily expect a warm welcome.
Yesterday, we, or rather
Don Mark Fleury and Dona Natali Manson
***note to Building Association of Serrrano XX, before you lawyer up, do your research. My husband spells his name "Marc" with a "c." and my first name is spelled "Nathalie;" not to mention that my honest English stone mason forbears would cringe at the misspelling of their last name to confound with that of the notorious 20th century serial killer.
received an official communication from the Juzgado de Primera Instancia de Madrid, from one Don Ramiro Blah Blah, President of the Building Association of Serrano XX, a building of exactly 12 units, half of which were owned at one time by his father in law, in which it is alleged
1) "Mark Fleury and Natali Manson" have four children
2) these children own bicycles
3)and roller skates
4) and scooters (Nathalie comment: nope sorry to disappoint building association president man, the Fleury children do not have scooters in Madrid)
5) that these children get up in the morning (Nathalie comment: yep, at 7am during the week, in order to catch the bus--per state-mandated law that my children be enrolled in secondary education)
6) that the Fleury children have been known to run, jump and shout in the aforementioned apartment
7) that the combination of the above results in an indiscernible mix of noise reflecting a most scandalous and bothersome comportment on behalf of the Fleury family
8) the residents of Serrano XX have manifested to the doorman the Fleury family's unlikeliness to modify their troublesome lifestyle due to their "American nationality and customs"
9) If these activities persist, the building association in conformity with article 7.2 of la Ley de propiedad Horizantal 8/1/1999 will begin judicial proceedings to deprive the Fleury family of the occupancy of their apartment.
To the residents of Serrano XX: Have any of you opened the window or walked outside the front door lately? Because Calle Serrano is only being gutted and subjected to extremely loud construction noise from dawn 'til dusk due to the street's two-year municipal remodeling project.
To entertain old friends and colleagues and “épater l’industrie"…An entirely scabrous and fictional picaresque narrative chronicling the adventures of Case, a serial entrepreneur who falls victim to almost every fad in the tech industry.
…At some point in his life, Case decided that he was an ideas person. As such, he sought his fortune in the late twentieth century tech gold rush, with its promise of riches beyond belief, for enterprising, entrepreneurial fellows, such as he.
____________
In 1999, a chance acquaintance with a hippie chick at a bar gave Case the idea for his Dotcom. She was cute and he had nothing better to do. So, the following afternoon, he accompanied her to a seminar at the Mind Spirit and Body Center for Holistic Animal Health.
The seminar was led by a large muumuu-clad Earth Mother type—a pet psychic, or “animal communicator” as she preferred to be called. The incense was getting on his nerves and Chase was sure the animator was on to him, when she asked him why he seemed troubled during the group meditation. He had to think fast to come up with an alternative to the actual horrifying image he'd conjured up--that of being smothered in muumuu woman's ample breasts. However, just as he was planning his exit, she read a testimonial that piqued his interest.
Dear Gwendolyn: During our session on October 5th, while talking with my cat Gandalph, you said that his spirit appeared as a Christmas tree. I couldn't believe it. Christmas was Gandalph's favorite time and he often slept under our tree.
One year, he brought in a mouse he had hunted and put it under the Christmas tree with all of the other presents. Because he loved Christmas so much, I put up his very own miniature Christmas tree on my nightstand in the bedroom.
Shortly after Gandalph's passing, the lights on the tree began burning so bright one night they actually woke me up and I touched one of the bulbs, burning my fingertip. The lights went out before I even unplugged it. I replaced the string of lights that evening. Thank you.…
As it turned out, Gwendolyn and her colleagues were eager to take their message to the Internet and Chase succeeded in borrowing money from his family to hire the two coders who responded to his ad on Craig’s List--Duane and Sanjay.
This was 1999, talent was scarce. Recruiting wasn’t exactly an option. You had to take what you could find, and even they might be picky. You had to sell them on the dream.
Case: So let me see, Duane, you actually worked at Pets.com, Wow! How was that?
Duane: Yeah man, it was great. We were gonna rule the world.
Case: So why exactly was it that you left?
Duane: My manager and I had differences of opinion about the strategic direction the business should take.
Case: Umh?
Duane: They wanted me to actually show up, Dude. Fucking slave drivers, can you believe it? Always on my back checking my code logs during my telecommute time. I’m a creative type, inspiration comes in bursts. You can’t control that man. I’m sure your psychic would know that.
Case: She’s a pet psychic.
Duane: Yeah, well whatever man.
Case: [meekly] Well, I’ll want you to show up.
Duane: It’s 1999 man, there’s the Internet. Heard of it? We telecommute. Anyway, that’s what’s on the table. Take it our leave it. [Breaks out a joint, lights up and takes a drag]. Want some?
Case: Er, no thank you.
Duane: Come on man, it’s very important to me that my employer understands my lifestyle. [Case reluctantly takes the joint, puffs and coughs]. If you don’t cough, you don’t get off.
Case: [turning to Sanjay] So Sanjay, do you have any questions about our business model?
Sanjay: Does your business model include an H1-B visa for me?
Case: Um yeah, sure.
Sanjay: I am not com-for-table with our target market. In Bangalore, nobody would pay to talk to their pet.
Case: Listen, Sanjay, this is America. There is an endless supply of fruitcakes out there.
Sanjay: What has this got to do with the Internet?
Case: Many of them are beginning to penetrate the online space in search of their own kind. The online human psychic market is pretty much cornered, but many of these people have pets. I tell you, the animal psychic market is ripe for picking. For the right person, that is. The kind of person who has the vision and the cojones to go out there and stake a claim.
An English woman asked me this simple enough question today. Thanksgiving is the biggest American family holiday. It takes place on the last Thursday of November and is also the biggest air travel date in the US. As a family holiday, it is associated with all the things people usually conjure up when they think of family obligations, and people they only see once a year, with whom they may or may not get on well. My favorite movie about Thanksgiving and the modern American family is Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter. 
