Tuesday, February 26, 2008
getting closer to George Clooney
I met a distant cousin of his! Unfortunately she does not know him. Also Georgie boy jogged right past a friend of mine, Lee, in Mexico -or Maine-this rich guy -my friend has houses everywhere. His car broke down outside Jennifer Aniston's Santa Barbara home years ago and Brad stopped to ask him if he could help-he didn't even know he was talking to a movie star! The CHP filled him in when they showed up...Maybe I just better hang out with Lee
Monday, February 25, 2008
Country more Sexist than Racist
I'm tired tonight. Tired of work, tired of feeling like women are second-class.
My boss is an African American male who told me years ago that we would have a minority male President before we'd have a woman because our country is more sexist than racist. I was shocked then but not anymore. Don't get me wrong-I like Obama-and if there wasn't a smart woman running for President I'd be pulling for him 100%. But it's sad to me that half of America's population has never been represented unlike England, India, Sweden, and so many other countries who have had women CEOs.
I grew up in Iowa where girls were groomed to marry well. My mother encouraged us to attend college to meet husbands and prepare for practical jobs like nursing and teaching in case our spouses died, but as soon as we had babies we were expected to quit work and stay home. Purposefully I didn't learn how to cook or sew or type so I wouldn't be able to fall back on those traditional skills. (I have regretted not paying attention to typing in the past-thank God for computers).
I love babies but the thought of staying home all day while my husband got to be in the outside world seemed very confining. I used to argue with my mother about women's liberation in the 70's --she didn't understand why I wanted to go to UC Berkeley when I could just marry the town's rich boy. But I was the school's first "girl" president of the junior class and dreamed of something beyond this small town.
I watched old movies with working women like Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, and Katherine Hepburn and longed for the day when I would take the world by storm. My Aunt Ruth, my mom's sister, was an inspiration in the 70's. She worked at her store until she was 88 and would frequently tell us that things had changed so much, "It's a woman's world."
The world is changing, but slowly. I am so happy (and jealous) that my nieces are active participants in sports when my only option was cheerleading. Unlike me, my nieces avoided the 5th grade drop in math grades that scientists have shown so many young girls experience at puberty. And they have no problem with attending the prom with a group of gals, rather than waiting for a boy to ask them-or the right boy. But they also worry too much about their looks, their weight, and what boys think about them. I still hear comments from college women that they don't have to study--just marry well.
I never thought I'd see a woman and an African American male vying for the Democratic nod for President and in a way it's an embarassment of riches. On the other hand I just wonder if my boss is right and whether there will ever be a woman in the White House.
Young women especially don't seem to understand what feminists went through to get this far. They scoff when I say I want a woman in the White House-no matter what- which makes me really sad. They don't realize how far women have come in just 30 some years and how the tides could turn or the strong symbolism of a woman in charge.
I'm still frustrated in meetings when I have a good idea and it's ignored until a man says the same thing and then it's considered brilliant. If women get angry they're hystercial while men are strong leaders. I loved Tina Fey's riff on Saturday Night Live and couldn't agree more. If you're not a bitch you can't get anything done.
Guess I'll quit bitching and go to bed.
My boss is an African American male who told me years ago that we would have a minority male President before we'd have a woman because our country is more sexist than racist. I was shocked then but not anymore. Don't get me wrong-I like Obama-and if there wasn't a smart woman running for President I'd be pulling for him 100%. But it's sad to me that half of America's population has never been represented unlike England, India, Sweden, and so many other countries who have had women CEOs.
I grew up in Iowa where girls were groomed to marry well. My mother encouraged us to attend college to meet husbands and prepare for practical jobs like nursing and teaching in case our spouses died, but as soon as we had babies we were expected to quit work and stay home. Purposefully I didn't learn how to cook or sew or type so I wouldn't be able to fall back on those traditional skills. (I have regretted not paying attention to typing in the past-thank God for computers).
I love babies but the thought of staying home all day while my husband got to be in the outside world seemed very confining. I used to argue with my mother about women's liberation in the 70's --she didn't understand why I wanted to go to UC Berkeley when I could just marry the town's rich boy. But I was the school's first "girl" president of the junior class and dreamed of something beyond this small town.
I watched old movies with working women like Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, and Katherine Hepburn and longed for the day when I would take the world by storm. My Aunt Ruth, my mom's sister, was an inspiration in the 70's. She worked at her store until she was 88 and would frequently tell us that things had changed so much, "It's a woman's world."
The world is changing, but slowly. I am so happy (and jealous) that my nieces are active participants in sports when my only option was cheerleading. Unlike me, my nieces avoided the 5th grade drop in math grades that scientists have shown so many young girls experience at puberty. And they have no problem with attending the prom with a group of gals, rather than waiting for a boy to ask them-or the right boy. But they also worry too much about their looks, their weight, and what boys think about them. I still hear comments from college women that they don't have to study--just marry well.
I never thought I'd see a woman and an African American male vying for the Democratic nod for President and in a way it's an embarassment of riches. On the other hand I just wonder if my boss is right and whether there will ever be a woman in the White House.
Young women especially don't seem to understand what feminists went through to get this far. They scoff when I say I want a woman in the White House-no matter what- which makes me really sad. They don't realize how far women have come in just 30 some years and how the tides could turn or the strong symbolism of a woman in charge.
I'm still frustrated in meetings when I have a good idea and it's ignored until a man says the same thing and then it's considered brilliant. If women get angry they're hystercial while men are strong leaders. I loved Tina Fey's riff on Saturday Night Live and couldn't agree more. If you're not a bitch you can't get anything done.
Guess I'll quit bitching and go to bed.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Six Degrees of Seperation
I was watching Torchwood, a sci-fi show on the BBC last night and started thinking about weird connections in life. Don’t you have a feeling sometimes there are forces out there beyond our control?
Let me give you a few examples in my life:
One time when I was babysitting in college I picked the phone and it was a wrong number. I was about to hang up and the woman on the other end said, “Wait, I know you, I recognize your voice, who are you?” She was my cousin Barb.
I recently wrote a story about a new golf course in Ireland and interviewed an American who had bought a home there. Turned out he lived near me but more importantly he had grown up in the same small midwestern town as I did -a block away from me-and his mom was a teacher at my grade school!
One of my former bosses came to my house (70 miles from the job site) and realized he had been there to a party before I lived there and my husband had been to my boss’s vacation home some 15 years earlier with a mutual friend.
When went to College at UC Berkeley the dorms were surrounded by poster shops. I bought a painting of a blonde girl who reminded me of my younger sister. Some 25 years later I was standing in the Prado Museum in Madrid staring at that same painting, Las Meninas (Spanish for The Maids of Honour), by Diego Velázquez. I had no idea that was what I bought until then. (Okay so I wasn’t an art history major!)
I have been happily married for 25 years but resisted getting “set-up” with Rich…instead a chance encounter brought us together. A mutual friend at the TV station where Rich and I worked tried to arrange a date, but the silk scarf around his neck put me off. (Turns out he thought it made him look like director-I told you he's Kramer!). My boyfriend at the time, a reporter, suggested that I arrange a blind date with my sister because Rich was so nice. My sister was four years older than me Rich was six years her senior so he was closer to her age- it seemed like a good idea. I was with sis when I ran into Rich one night at a bar in the San Francisco area we called the Bermuda Triangle because there were three bars on opposite corners of the same street and singles were known to disappear from there for days. I couldn’t shake this assertive guy from Australia in red pants so when Rich called out hello from another table, I told the Aussie I was the Iowa pork queen and that Rich was one of my judges. Sitting at Rich’s table, I was thinking this was the perfect opportunity to set Jane up but as we began talking, I decided, “No I’m keeping this one for myself.” Rich asked me out on a date to Santa Cruz on Monday (we joke that we got together because we were one of the few people who had that day off) and in 1989 we moved to this romantic city.
I like to tell people my sister Debbie got together with her long time partner because of me. When she was going through a messy divorce in France she couldn’t leave the country with her three kids so my 9 siblings decided to have a reunion in Bordeaux. I was planning to go but couldn’t get away from work at the last minute so my brother Dave invited his friend since College, Doug. A lifelong bachelor, he and Deb fell in love and five years later they are all blissfully happy living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But the strangest story I ever heard was from my friend Lora who was with her husband Phil on a train in Prague. She started chatting with a mother and daughter across the aisle and when they mentioned their last name, it was the same as Phil’s, an uncommon surname. After much discussion it turned out that the daughter was Phil’s half-sister and the woman his father’s ex-wife-0a family Phil never knew about!
Maybe there really are only six degrees of separation in the world. I slept with one of Sharon Stone's ex-husbands so my husband likes to think he kind of slept with her. I like to say Sharon’s ex couldn’t have me so he had to settle for a movie star.
I am hoping this separation theory is true because my time is overdue for meeting George Clooney. I’m sure we’d be perfect together-he’s an Oscar award winning director, but you never see him wearing a scarf around his neck!
Let me give you a few examples in my life:
One time when I was babysitting in college I picked the phone and it was a wrong number. I was about to hang up and the woman on the other end said, “Wait, I know you, I recognize your voice, who are you?” She was my cousin Barb.
I recently wrote a story about a new golf course in Ireland and interviewed an American who had bought a home there. Turned out he lived near me but more importantly he had grown up in the same small midwestern town as I did -a block away from me-and his mom was a teacher at my grade school!
One of my former bosses came to my house (70 miles from the job site) and realized he had been there to a party before I lived there and my husband had been to my boss’s vacation home some 15 years earlier with a mutual friend.
When went to College at UC Berkeley the dorms were surrounded by poster shops. I bought a painting of a blonde girl who reminded me of my younger sister. Some 25 years later I was standing in the Prado Museum in Madrid staring at that same painting, Las Meninas (Spanish for The Maids of Honour), by Diego Velázquez. I had no idea that was what I bought until then. (Okay so I wasn’t an art history major!)
I have been happily married for 25 years but resisted getting “set-up” with Rich…instead a chance encounter brought us together. A mutual friend at the TV station where Rich and I worked tried to arrange a date, but the silk scarf around his neck put me off. (Turns out he thought it made him look like director-I told you he's Kramer!). My boyfriend at the time, a reporter, suggested that I arrange a blind date with my sister because Rich was so nice. My sister was four years older than me Rich was six years her senior so he was closer to her age- it seemed like a good idea. I was with sis when I ran into Rich one night at a bar in the San Francisco area we called the Bermuda Triangle because there were three bars on opposite corners of the same street and singles were known to disappear from there for days. I couldn’t shake this assertive guy from Australia in red pants so when Rich called out hello from another table, I told the Aussie I was the Iowa pork queen and that Rich was one of my judges. Sitting at Rich’s table, I was thinking this was the perfect opportunity to set Jane up but as we began talking, I decided, “No I’m keeping this one for myself.” Rich asked me out on a date to Santa Cruz on Monday (we joke that we got together because we were one of the few people who had that day off) and in 1989 we moved to this romantic city.
I like to tell people my sister Debbie got together with her long time partner because of me. When she was going through a messy divorce in France she couldn’t leave the country with her three kids so my 9 siblings decided to have a reunion in Bordeaux. I was planning to go but couldn’t get away from work at the last minute so my brother Dave invited his friend since College, Doug. A lifelong bachelor, he and Deb fell in love and five years later they are all blissfully happy living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But the strangest story I ever heard was from my friend Lora who was with her husband Phil on a train in Prague. She started chatting with a mother and daughter across the aisle and when they mentioned their last name, it was the same as Phil’s, an uncommon surname. After much discussion it turned out that the daughter was Phil’s half-sister and the woman his father’s ex-wife-0a family Phil never knew about!
Maybe there really are only six degrees of separation in the world. I slept with one of Sharon Stone's ex-husbands so my husband likes to think he kind of slept with her. I like to say Sharon’s ex couldn’t have me so he had to settle for a movie star.
I am hoping this separation theory is true because my time is overdue for meeting George Clooney. I’m sure we’d be perfect together-he’s an Oscar award winning director, but you never see him wearing a scarf around his neck!
Saturday, February 23, 2008
The Absence of Noise
I'm a writer but I have a hard time concentrating in silence. I usually have an old movie (I guess old is relative depending on your age-for me it's the great era of Cary Grant, Betty Davis and Katherine Hepburn) playing while I create. I'm married to a photographer and we have no kids so I could have total silence but growing up with nine brothers and sisters I have no idea how to work with no sound. My youth was spent doing homework to the sounds of a TV, the screaming fights of my siblings, my parents arguing, babies crying, (there were ten kids in 13 years!), the phone ringing, the washing machine going-no dishwasher--too expensive, (my dad said"I have ten dishwashers (his kids) what do I need a dishwasher for," radios playing and friends knocking at our front door.
I'm sure I waste a lot of time with distractions-my father would always yell at us- "how can you do your homework with the tv/radio on?"-but it also keeps me going. When it gets to crunch time, I turn it all off and zone in but in the early stages I need inspiration. Inviting my 17 nieces and nephews over would be overload I'm afraid. My mother could probably handle it fine. She used to laugh at women with four kids. "With four kids I could reinvent the world! What do those women do all day?" she'd say. My younger sis Deborah Kuhl (www.deborahkuhl.com) has inherited her energy and her hot bod (after ten kids my mom was still a perfect size 8) and Debbie looks like a size 6 or 4 model after three kids. A single mom, Debbie works full time, sings her original compositions at various venues, and still manages to have perfect children. My sister Jane has two (also perfect) kids, (I'm not biased:) ) works full time, is in the Army reserves and now getting a Masters.
Having babysat-and feeling like I needed a week's vacation afterwards-I am in awe of their accomplishments. If I had a kid I don't think I'd ever leave the house. I feel like such a slacker-all I do is work and write freelance travel stories.
Good thing I have KuhlBella to keep me from my impending deadlines...guess I better go back to work.
I'm sure I waste a lot of time with distractions-my father would always yell at us- "how can you do your homework with the tv/radio on?"-but it also keeps me going. When it gets to crunch time, I turn it all off and zone in but in the early stages I need inspiration. Inviting my 17 nieces and nephews over would be overload I'm afraid. My mother could probably handle it fine. She used to laugh at women with four kids. "With four kids I could reinvent the world! What do those women do all day?" she'd say. My younger sis Deborah Kuhl (www.deborahkuhl.com) has inherited her energy and her hot bod (after ten kids my mom was still a perfect size 8) and Debbie looks like a size 6 or 4 model after three kids. A single mom, Debbie works full time, sings her original compositions at various venues, and still manages to have perfect children. My sister Jane has two (also perfect) kids, (I'm not biased:) ) works full time, is in the Army reserves and now getting a Masters.
Having babysat-and feeling like I needed a week's vacation afterwards-I am in awe of their accomplishments. If I had a kid I don't think I'd ever leave the house. I feel like such a slacker-all I do is work and write freelance travel stories.
Good thing I have KuhlBella to keep me from my impending deadlines...guess I better go back to work.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Facebook Addict
They say the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. Okay, here it is, I am addicted to facebook. They want me to go to rehab but I say No, No, No. Admittedly I am a little late getting into this trend but give me a break -I'm 50 and I can still kick and stretch. My "friends" are a pathetic mix of my 16-year-old nieces and old farts who complain to me "I can't figure this thing out." Right now my husband and I are in a contest to see who can get the most friends-I was winning but he went to one of his photography organizations and sent a mass email and now he has more "friends." I think you should know the people on your site but if I start feeling really competitive I'm just going to get all of my nieces zillion friends to sign up and wipe the floor with his ass. It's a great way to see what my nieces are up to but I am sure they have confabs about "what if Auntie tells mommy what's on our sites?" So far I have been cool...with them...in life I am so out of it. Did you know that every message now has to be decoded: hw is homework, and pos is parent over shoulder. They also use "ha ha" a lot. I'm sure I have ruined their street cred.
For all you Larry David fans out there, here is my hubby's latest...I overheard him talking to his older brother today about how to close the porn on his website before his wife comes in the room. "You need to get a motion activiated sensor that alerts you when someone enters the room or a closed circuit camera." And he wasn't kidding.
I gotta go and see if anyone put anything on my fun wall....Ciao for now
For all you Larry David fans out there, here is my hubby's latest...I overheard him talking to his older brother today about how to close the porn on his website before his wife comes in the room. "You need to get a motion activiated sensor that alerts you when someone enters the room or a closed circuit camera." And he wasn't kidding.
I gotta go and see if anyone put anything on my fun wall....Ciao for now
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