Kathy Ewing

Tonight I stopped into Presti’s, a comfortable café in Cleveland’s Little Italy with good food, to pick up some takeout after my late-afternoon class. A bunch of older men were sitting together at a big table, hanging out and talking.

“Guess how many hot dogs that company sells a year?”one said to the others.

“Just at the stadium, or all over?” someone asked.

“All over,” he answered. “All their sales put together.”

Someone guessed, and then the man cited the real figure, some astronomical number in the millions. Incredulity all around.

Then the first man posed another question: “How much guacamole do you think they sell?”

Same basic conversation. Low-ball estimates followed by the man’s astounding real figure. Eight billion tons, or something like that.

I smiled at the young woman waiting on me and asked, “Are those guys in here all the time?” She said yes, pretty much every day, and smiled back.

They were kind of loud but not obnoxious. They were affable, cheerful, and good-natured. Enjoying themselves.

What I was thinking was that I have never experienced a conversation like that with a group of women. I have been in plenty of conversations with men exactly like that, sometimes at home with my husband and son. What’s the highest mountain in Europe? What’s the most populous city in whatever country? Where’s the deepest lake? How much guacamole does a particular company sell every year?

This is how men talk about sports. They compare what they know about statistics and careers.

I call this “sharing information,” and, I repeat, I have never been in a conversation like this with women. A woman might say that Mexico City is the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere, and the others agree or disagree briefly, and then we move on. It’s a fact, it can be checked, and there’s nothing more (from our point of view) to say about it.

I first noticed this gender-related conversation style when waiting out the conversations my husband has with other film buffs after movies.

What else did that guy direct? Did he win an Oscar for that one or the other one? Did you ever see his first movie? How many has he made?

Somebody may, at some point, mention liking the first movie or the last movie or the guacamole, and someone else might concur. But pretty soon it gets back to the sharing of information. Did that other movie come out in 1994 or 1995?

I do not mean this as criticism. The men in Presti’s today were enjoying themselves, and it was amusing to hear them. It’s certainly not my place to tell them what to talk about, but I did not want to join them. I want to exit those sports and film conversations. When my husband and son start batting back and forth some suggestions as to the relative land area of Minnesota and Wyoming, I tune out.

We have the internet now. Why not just look up populations and altitudes and land areas and Oscar winners, and talk about something else? I’m missing, somehow, the entertainment value of these conversations.Oh, yes, a male friend told me once—you want to talk about feelings all the time. He said the word with such disdain! That’s right. I would rather talk about feelings. He can feel free not to participate.

Last week, I turned on WCPN, one of our NPR stations, while I was in the car and heard the end of This American Life. The segment concerned the conditions under which Chinese workers produce our iPhones and other technological devices. This just after, as I wrote in my last post, having received a new, exciting iPhone for Christmas. Why, I wondered, did I have to turn on the radio just at that moment?

Mike Daisey, a monologist, reports on his visits to Chinese factories and talks with Chinese workers in an excerpt from his one-man show. A self-described Apple fan-boy, Daisey, like me, had never really thought about how his cherished electronic things were made.

On his undercover trip to China, he visited Foxconn sites–a manufacturer of much of our technology. He saw 13-year-old workers. He saw 20,000 people working in utter silence for 12 or 14 hours or more. He saw dorm rooms with fifteen beds piled into small rooms.

It’s a great program. Give it a listen, and tell me what you think.

Me with my iPhone

In the last few months, I have been yanked into the 21st century. My daughter got me a little iPod in September, and my husband gave me an iPhone for Christmas.

In order to appreciate the earth-shatteringness of this information, you have to understand just how Neanderthal I have been. In 1999, for example, my husband and kids bought me a microwave, and I took it back to the store. Peeved, no less. Peeved that they hadn’t listened to my declarations of lack of interest in a microwave oven.

It’s true, we didn’t remain microwave-less. My daughter’s high-school friends felt so sorry for her that they pooled their funds and bought one for us/her a couple of years later, and I no longer had the heart to be so ruthless. As it turns out, of course, as the chief cook and bottle washer at this address, I have used the microwave more than anyone else. I keep explaining to people that I knew it would be convenient. It’s just that I didn’t need, want, or crave one. (Coincidentally, that faithful machine seems to have given up the ghost as of yesterday. It didn’t live to see 2012.)

I was pretty much the last of my friends and acquaintances to get a cell phone. My husband and I shared a rudimentary old flip phone for the last few years. He kept it with him most of the time. I never even considered getting an iPod.

Now I’ve moved at warp speed, skipping over many normal technological steps, my hair streaming behind me. I’ve been spending a lot of time recently playing with both my technological devices, squinting at screens, painstakingly punching in information. Correcting punctuation and spelling, as I feel compelled to do.

I changed my thinking about this stuff. I realized that it’s certainly okay not to want these things and not to purchase them, but, if that’s your choice, you do get left behind. (If it’s not your choice and you just can’t afford them, that’s a whole different issue.) A lot of what people are doing and talking about, especially young people like your children, will be lost on you.

What are your thoughts on technology? Are you a Luddite, or with-it like me?

So, my last post gave me an idea that’s too late for me, but not for you, should you choose to pursue it.

Remember Julie and Julia? Based on Julie Powell’s book, this 2009 movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams showed Julie spending a year making each one of Julia Child’s recipes in her classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. While cooking, Julia Powell blogged about her adventures and misadventures and got a book deal out of it. And then a movie.

You have one of those overstuffed recipe boxes I described in my last post? Or your mom’s, or your grandma’s? I think it would be funny to spend a year (or however long) making each one of those recipes, a la Julie. Like me, you probably have outdated or seemingly inedible items in your unmade repertoire. Somehow you’ve just never gotten around to baking the flaxseed brownies or assembling the fudge wreath decorated with candied cherries. (I did try that one. My family was amused.)

It’s too late for me. I just threw away all my weird recipes, carefully copied onto index cards decades ago. But not you. You’ve never cleaned out your recipe box. What’s in there? What strange ingredients lurk, things you’ve never dared to try? We’d love to know!

Get out those recipes. Make one a day. Blog about it. Get lots of readers. Turn it into a book. Make $1 million.

Yesterday I winnowed through my packed, messy recipe box. I saved some old cards for sentiment’s sake. I know I will never again make Tuna Stack Pie–a stack of crepes layered with curried tuna. I made it for John (because he likes tuna fish!) when we were first married, and it became something of a family joke. The Tuna Stack Pie card stayed.

Why not just eat an apple?

But I tried to be fairly ruthless and culled the recipes I have never made and never will make. At some point in the early ’80’s, for example, I apparently thought Fruit Leather sounded like a good idea. That card is gone now, along with John’s Granola, another dated, “healthful” item. In fact, John doesn’t like granola and never has and I have no idea how that recipe got its name.

These items, unappetizing though they are, pulled at my heartstrings. Those recipes have sat in that box for twenty or thirty years, where I’d always thumb past them to find the recipes for sugar cookies and pie dough that I’ve made over and over again.

I’ve seen that Fruit Leather card a hundred times. Like all old objects, those recipes represented the past, and I already miss them a little.

I had a friendly disagreement this morning with one of my students. He said it was a great weekend for the Catholic Church, because the new translation of the Mass was introduced. He was happy that it more literally follows the original Latin. He assumed I would agree.

Instead, our argument broke down (at least on my side) into a tired old conservative vs. liberal battle, me being the tired old liberal. I see the changes as a regression, as a pulling away from the Vatican II reforms, and as a further encroachment of the hierarchical, patriarchal Church on laypeople’s understanding and involvement in the Mass and the Church as a whole.

He, being younger (though not a kid—he’s an adult), saw the changes as an expansion and improvement on Vatican II. The Mass is still in English, after all; he’s not arguing for a return to Latin altogether. He has found the translation we’ve been using for several decades unsound and weak.

There are lots of changes, but they can all come down, symbolically, to the word consubstantial. The old Latin text of the Creed said that Jesus was consubstantialem Patri, meaning that Jesus is of the same substance as the Father. That is, they’re both divine and eternal. The English we adopted in the ‘70’s said Jesus was “one in being” with the Father. The new translation resorts back to consubstantial.

Here’s a theological defense of the term, saying that we’re all one in being with the Father, but Jesus is made of the exact same stuff, and maybe it all makes sense. In fact, I like words like consubstantial. I like digging out its underlying meaning from the Latin roots. (Standing, under, and with are all in there.) But I don’t enjoy inflicting these words on other people, who are supposed to be simply praying, not deciphering long Latinate words.

Incarnatus

I suspect that underlying the traditionalist argument is an outdated preference for Latinate words in general—the belief that they’re just better than straightforward vernacular English. (So many syllables, after all!) Consider this explanation from an apologist for another switch–from born to incarnate in the new translation:

“This phraseology more accurately reflects the Latin text of the Mass which includes the word incarnatus (‘incarnate’). This theological term refers to ‘the fact that the Son of God assumed a human nature in order to accomplish our salvation in it’ (Catechism, no. 461). In the words of John’s gospel, ‘The Word became flesh’ (John 1:14). Accordingly, we now say that the Son, ‘by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.’  And this captures more of the theological point expressed in the Creed. The Son of God was not just born of the Virgin Mary. The Eternal Son of God actually took on human flesh!”

So, incarnatus has more to do with actual flesh than the word born? I guess so. Carnis means flesh in Latin (as in carnage, or carnivorous). But Dr. Sri himself says it is a theological term! Does it automatically connote flesh to most people saying the Creed? Will they have an epiphany? “Ohhhh. Jesus had actual flesh! I never thought of that before!”

To me, “incarnate of the Virgin Mary” is weird theological talk that disguises a real woman having a real baby. Jesus was a human infant, made of flesh. How does a rarely used, three-syllable Latinate word make this clearer?

Mark as Spam

For this post, I’m stealing my husband’s idea. In his last Cinema Talk column, published in the current flyer for the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, he wrote about the funny spam his blog receives. Spammers post on blogs because, of course, they want their website to appear with their comment, hoping that people will click on their link. Spam is generally caught automatically and sent into its own file, where ruthless bloggers such as myself can empty it.

But since my husband’s column, I’ve been paying more attention to my spam, which I had not only ruthlessly, but heedlessly deleted before. I never noticed how much encouragement, mystery, and fractured English these messages contained!

My last post directed readers to an interview with me at another site, conducted by an expert on dialectical behavior therapy. A website concerned with belly fat (presumably eliminating it) went out of its way to encourage me: “You’re completely right on this piece!!!”

A treadmill concern, not necessarily adept at English, was similarly appreciative. “Great! thanks for the share!” they told me.

The longest, least grammatical, and most enigmatic came from a weird website I can’t identify. The comment refers to a city in Belgium or an unpleasant vegetable–I’m not sure which. I love the jaunty final greeting!

“Hi there, just became aware of your weblog by way of Google, and identified that it is genuinely informative. I’m gonna watch out for brussels. I’ll be grateful in case you continue this in future. A lot of men and women is going to be benefited from your writing. Cheers!”