A Little Perspective

  

Long may we wave! Photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash

I LOVE writing about math! Almost as much as I love writing white papers on "Forensic Accounting in Virtual Economies," apology letters from Dentina, the Tooth Fairy, who was always late visiting our house, and the same to-do list that I’ve been tweaking since, well, 1976. 

 

JK. Math is NOT my favorite subject.

 

But I do enjoy expanding a relatively small number by breaking it down into teensy bites. Par example, I am currently on a bit of a weight-loss excursion, and my recent diminishment by 15 lbs. doesn’t pack quite the emotional punch I’m seeking. So, instead, I consider the fact that I’m down a whopping 240 ounces (W-O-W), and I am then happily motivated to continue drinking enough water each day to float the QE2. 

 

Right now, we’re all about the 250^th anniversary of Our Country Tis Of Thee, and we’ll continue to wildly celebrate this milestone until at least 12:01 AM on July 5th, after which we will collectively return to marking our cherished Taco Tuesdays instead. 

 

Sadly, unlike the Centennial and the Bicentennial, this year is the Semiquincentennial (or Sestercentennial, meaning quarter-millennium). Neither of these words rolls trippingly off the tongue. The first sounds like a new GLP-1 drug (which, for the record, I refuse to use myself, because I believe in suffering). The second sounds like a festive gathering in Utah of 100 “sester” wives. For starters, then, we need another appropriate Latin term for this Big Party Year. My Latin expertise begins and ends with Catholic prayers, so unless we agree to call 2026 the “Pater Noster,” my contribution will be useless.

 

While we’re pondering, let’s revisit my Theory of Making Big Numbers Out of Little Ones!

 

Sure, 250 years seems like a long time ago. I barely remember those carefree childhood days of rolling my hoop down the dusty cobblestone streets of Colonial Williamsburg, wearing my cute little powdered wig. But what if we consider that it’s also…

 

3000 months? “3000” refers to the MLB “3000 Hits” Club, whose illustrious batters include Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb and Pete Rose (*). USA, you’re in good, if sweaty, company!

 

And it’s 13,000 weeks as well! AI informs me that 13,000 weeks is the average human lifespan. My goodness! That would mean the average Joe or Jane makes it halfway to 500 years old? You goofed, AI! Though I DO believe another artificially intelligent assertion, that the beloved soap opera The Young and the Restless hit 13,000 episodes on November 13, 2024. Because of course it did.

 

91,000 days too!! 91,000 tons is the weight of the Washington Monument (it might consider trying some Semiquincentennial?) In any event, it’s a scale-busting number!

 

I could go on, but my 500-word limit looms. Suffice it to write, it’s been quite a while since our Bouncing Baby Republic’s birth. 

 

As my childhood bestie Benjy Franklin would say, ours is “the best form of government, if we can keep it.”

 

I vote to keep it. Happy Birthday, dear America.

Ty Cobb: known as "abrasive, combative and difficult." Note Stephen Miller resemblance.

Sentenced to Harvard

photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

I forgot to finish college. No matter! I just stumbled upon a PhD’s worth of info (and saved myself $400k), via a little-known interweb gem called The Harvard Sentences! Oh, sure, the website SAYS the sentences are a collection of 720 phonetically balanced sentences used for telecommunications, speech and acoustics. But that’s just an attempt to make "The 720" sound boring and un-relatable, so that we’ll never discover the amazing intellectual secrets contained therein. Those ivy-covered elites love to mislead the poorly educated! I’m on to them, though! The wisdom of these phrases is all in their "interpretation."

So, in the spirit of the generous Harvard postgrad that I now am, I’m sharing some of these actual sentences with you, faithful readers (italicized comments are mine). Read and learn!

It’s easy to tell the depth of a well. Jump in, and if you drown, it’s deep. 

The juice of lemons makes fine punch. Harvard has such a way with words!

The hogs were fed chopped corn and garbage. Thus the quote “Discerning as a hog.”

Read verse out loud for pleasure. Do it! Right now! It will be a pleasure!

Wipe the grease off his dirty face. Do it! Right now! It will be a pleasure!

What joy there is in living. Ah yes, life is like the juice of lemons punch, and garbage.

The friendly gang left the drug store. With pockets full of stolen drugs.

He ran half way to the hardware store. Before he remembered he needed SOFTware.

A tame squirrel makes a nice pet. Oh, no, it doesn’t.

The horn of the car woke the sleeping cop. It was the getaway car of the friendly gang.

The fruit peel was cut in thick slices. And the fruit was thrown away.

The lawyer tried to lose his case. But the case found him anyway.

Oak is strong and also gives shade. Oak is strong, like a hog full of garbage.

Thieves who rob friends deserve jail. The friendly gang robbed each other? Oh dear!

A cramp is no small danger on a swim. Cramp is BIG danger. Why are we talking like this?

Bring your problems to the wise chief. Not to the sleeping cop.

A salt pickle tastes fine with ham. Yup. Have some sodium with that sodium!

The office paint was a dull, sad tan. But the POST office paint was a dull, sad red, white & blue.

Fairy tales should be fun to write. Of course. That’s why the “Grimm” brothers wrote them.

She has a smart way of wearing clothes. She wears them…wait for it…on her body!

The fruit of a fig tree is apple-shaped. I guess so, but should be FIG-shaped?

Find the twin who stole the pearl necklace. Don’t go back to sleep, cop! You have a Twin with a Pearl Necklace to find.

The prince ordered his head chopped off. Cheer up, Your Majesty. No need to lose hope!

Feel free to sprinkle these into all your convos, you smarties!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

School's Out for Summer

Aiden's fifth grade graduation, June 2025

Tra-la! Joy abounds in the Seyfried household! Aiden and Peter are sprung from Sandy Run Middle School and Jarrettown Elementary until Labor Day. Almost three whole months to sleep in, to play, to swim, and to forget 90% of what they learned during the past school year! 

 

Or maybe that was just my experience as a kid.

 

I recall my grim return to the hallowed halls of whatever fine institute of learning I was attending (there were seven between first and twelfth grades, in three different states—we moved whenever my dad took a new job). Oh, the longing to daydream and lollygag and fritter away the days again! The first several weeks back at school were always recaps, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who needed the reminders BADLY. Gerunds? Linear coefficients? Sumerian cuneiforms? None of it rang any bell anymore—it was all too, too far in the past! In place of memorizing state capitals and creating baking soda volcanos, my summer brain busily amassed (and retained) the entire plot of Arthur Hailey’s blockbuster, (very inappropriate for 12-year-olds) novel Hotel; exactly how many hours I could stay on the beach without any sunscreen before my skin began to blister; and ALL of the songs, EVERY week, on Cousin Brucie’s All American Music Countdown on WABC.

 

It took until at least mid-October before I kicked into “education” gear again. 

 

Over the decades, I’ve heard arguments for shorter, but more frequent, breaks from school. I know it works well in many other countries, and I think it makes a lot of sense—always something to look forward to, not enough time for total academic amnesia. Parents wouldn’t have to shell out big bucks for various camps and swim clubs and other ways to keep the little darlings occupied during the endless hot days. Children could spend more time enjoying the outdoors in every season, not just the sweltering one. 

 

But, like other common-sense changes (such as an earlier school start time for the littles, a later for the bigs), this idea isn’t getting much traction here in the USA. We’re a loyal country all right, never abandoning our current, totally screwed up healthcare system for the evils of universal coverage! We LIKE paying thousands for one small hospital bandaid, and we enjoy fighting with insurance reps over the phone to get ANYTHING covered! And don’t get us started on the metric system either! Inches and quarts forever! Stubborn Americans? Not us!!

 

Climbing down from my soapbox, I grant that it does take time to fully decompress after the ever-increasing demands of school. Incoming kindergarteners these days are expected to be already reading independently, and not Goodnight Moon, either-weighty tomes, such as Arthur Hailey’s blockbuster, (even more inappropriate for 6-year-olds) novel Hotel. Too much, too soon!

 

Anyway, Aiden and Peter truly love the long summer breaks. They never seem bored, and they always find something fun to do. 

 

Like it or not, Elise, school’s out for the summer.

 

 

 

 

 

Un-henged

The Roving Sheep of Avebury!

Planning our trip to the U.K. in 2024, Stonehenge was on our must-see list. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by those massive stones, set ages ago in a mysterious pattern on a plain?  As someone who finds hoisting my 19-month-old grandson Dimitri a heavy lift (and he’s NOT a big baby), I am so impressed by these prehistoric folks, locating those huge boulders (from God knows where) transporting them (God knows how) to this little corner of Southwest England, and aligning them with the sun, as part of some religious ritual. Wow! 

But apparently every tourist on earth has the same idea. After we read about the endless parade of tour buses, we realized that Stonehenge would NOT be a mystical spiritual experience--not with a jillion people, plus their iPhones, jostling for space. So, we focused instead on a lesser-known “henge,” Avebury.

 

 “A-henge” (my affectionate, made-up nickname for it), is an equally baffling collection of equally large stones, but spread out over more acreage. Another plus—it was much closer to where we were staying (Bibury).

 

Still, when the time came to drive over and check it out, I hesitated. For one thing, it was a dreary, drizzly afternoon. For another thing, while Steve had done an amazing job navigating the very narrow, winding country roads in a rented car, on the left side of the road to boot, I was weary of being the wind beside his driver’s seat. He’d never admit it, but it was ME who kept us from crashing into stone walls and running over random sheep.  My method was simple but ingenious—I constantly leaned my body waaay over, indicating where the car needed to be. While I didn’t actually SEE our vehicle obey my body-language commands, the results spoke for themselves!

 

Anyhoo, we arrived at the site, only to discover that we were virtually alone. Sure, the misty rain probably dampened (get it?) visitor enthusiasm that day, but still--it was just me, my hubby, and some random sheep (most likely the EXACT same sheep whose lives I had saved earlier!) We moved slowly among the stones, silently, reverently. We were enchanted, and felt a strange but genuine connection to the ancient Aveburians (Aveburites?) and this, their sacred place of worship. 

 

I would highly recommend A-henge, but of course if you ALL went there, it’d soon be ruined like S-henge! So, just forget I wrote about it!

 

Good news though, there’s another henge of note, much closer to home! It’s Manhattanhenge, a remarkable annual phenomenon when the setting sun perfectly aligns with the east-west street grid, creating a glowing canyon of light running through midtown Manhattan. 

 

Some future day, our descendants will move, silently, reverently, past the vast empty skyscrapers lining the streets of what used to be NYC. They will marvel at Manhattanhenge, and they will guess that the ancient peoples worshipped Saks Fifth Avenue and Grand Central Station, and brought offerings from Ess-a-Bagel to appease their gods. 

 

And they won’t be wrong.

Hats Off!

 

ready for my dentist appointment!

I pride myself as being “fashion forward.” If you want to be in the vanguard of The Next Big Thing, just get a load of the clothes I’m sporting, and go ye then and dress likewise. Why, I was among the very first to wear band tee shirts (never mind that the band was The Glenn Miller Orchestra), and I was a flip flop fan long before the flip flop fad (I believe they used to be called “thongs,” which term was later co-opted by the lingerie industry for a completely different item).  And I always mark the biennial return of high waisted jeans by just wearing them all the time. 

 

But one area I have sadly neglected, is the top of my head. You see, no matter the length or style of my hair, it instantly becomes both flat and frizzy on contact with any kind of hat whatsoever. So, when all around me folks are snug in their knitted winter chapeaux, I pretend that I’m not cold at all (even as my ears freeze solid and are in danger of snapping off). In summer, I eschew a sunhat, and swear that SPF 8 sunscreen is more than enough to protect me from a burn. 

 

Steve is a wise one, with a hat for every occasion (usually the SAME hat, a jaunty plaid flat cap). Sure, he looks a little weird wearing it on the beach, but he’s easy to spot if he wanders off!

Even our offspring (and now grand-offspring) see the value of donning a baseball cap from time to time. But not Wifey/Mom/Nana! I used to read the delightful old children’s book Caps for Sale to my kiddos--you know, the story where the guy piles a jillion caps on his head and goes around selling them, only to have some mischievous monkeys swipe them all. My sympathy was always with the monkeys, because they were merely staging a hat intervention, to spare the ridiculous-looking salesperson some embarrassment. 

 

But I’ve just had a “change of hat.”  

 

My sister Carolyn is a huge straw hat proponent. She also slathers on SPF 400, and wears very modest beach coverups. When at the shore with her, I am reminded of the gals of the 1910's, who put on more clothes (“bathing costumes”) than they took off, when by the sea. But here’s the thing—she looks cute, and is surely adding years to her life to boot, by avoiding sun exposure.

 

In Honolulu last month, C convinced me to try a floppy straw hat myself. Lo and behold! I actually liked it! And the hat head was minimal! I have since bought the same style hat, and plan to wear it to church, the supermarket, in the office and on the ski slopes. Why should beach goers have all the floppy fun? 

 

Now then, enough hat chat! Being “fashion forward” as ever, I’m already anticipating The Next Big Thing: 

 

Tap shoes and tutus.

 

You read it here first.

Life in the Craft Lane

                                     Abalone shell I got in Tamsui, Taiwan.                                                                                 Wouldn't it look even prettier if I glued buttons on it? 

Show of hands. How many of you have a “craft room” in your house? You know, a cozy retreat chock-full of colorful ribbon and fabric swatches, charcoal sticks and super glue. A veritable Santa’s workshop, in which you spend golden hours creating gorgeous gifts for friends and family.

Got one of those?

 

OK. Hands down.

 

Well, if you are in possession of such an oasis, or even if you just spend blissful evenings in your family room, watching Jeopardy! while crocheting gorgeous afghans, I commend you for reading this blog. It proves you are open-minded enough to enjoy the scribblings of someone completely different from yourself. Oh, we might both love bacon cheeseburgers, or standup comedy, or sunrise at the beach, and I do also watch Jeopardy! (though only to shout the answers at the TV.) Yet the essential connection between us, will never be there. I will never adequately appreciate what you découpage.

 

I lay the blame for this major flaw in my character squarely where it belongs: on my mother. Joanie should have been my creative role model, teaching little me to embroider ashtrays (or whatever it is that people embroider). But Mom was both untalented and impatient in the arts and crafts dept. What’s worse, she thought she was terrific at it, all evidence to the contrary, and spent her life flitting from one messy, unfinished project to the next. My sisters and I would look at the dining room table, laden with Mom’s latest attempt at mod podge-ing, or gluing random buttons to picture frames (we’d pray those were NOT presents for us), and sigh. We’d be eating dinner sprawled on the floor, again.

 

I am a big improvement over Mom in one way. I don’t even pretend to have any ability along those lines. My respect for true artists (especially my incredible watercolorist sister C, and my friend Marda, Queen of Crafts) is immense; indeed, I admire these gifted folks far too much to make a ham-handed attempt to replicate what they do so effortlessly and so well. I hope they appreciate my restraint. I can write, and I can cook, and that’s plenty for me. Stay in your own lane, is my motto!

 

But once in awhile, I spy a clever little objet d’art in a shop (as I recently did in Hawaii), check the eye-popping price tag, and begin to daydream. What if I made a cute little ring holder from a painted seashell myself? Surely I could succeed this once, and save myself the $58 (plus tax)! It might even be fun!

 

But then I wake up, to an image of me, surrounded by dried-up paintbrushes and broken clam shells. In terms of the value of my time, I’ve just spent 100 hours @ $30/hour, with zilch to show for it but cramped fingers and misery. 

 

So, the next time I am tempted to try making anything that isn’t either readable or edible, please remind me:

 

Stay in your own lane, Seyfried.

Image by Annabel Jacobs on Unsplash

Ah, the Good Old Days!

  

 

 

Lend an ear, my young friend, while I sit in my recliner and recall the good old days that I miss so much. A time when all the men wore fedoras (including plague doctors) and the women vacuumed up pearls from the living room carpet. I ask you, where did all that elegance go? 

 

We may not have had the latest technology, but we could communicate just fine through improvised “phones” made from rusted tin cans and lengths of barbed wire. We may not have had bikes to ride, but we did have unicycles made of junkyard tires, that we’d tie together to make one treacherous “vehicle” careening through town. We didn’t follow dangerous internet trends like the Tide Pod Challenge. No, we came up with MUCH MORE dangerous ideas, all by ourselves! Life in those bygone days was pretty rough and tumble, but you know what? We survived! Except for those of us who didn’t.

 

Instead of modern fancy-schmancy colleges, we all attended Ye Olde Schoole of Harde Knockes, learning to construct catapults with which to hurl projectiles over castle walls, in anticipation of lucrative careers as knights. We were so proud, clanking down the street in our shiny suits of chain mail! Can you imagine going through the TSA checkpoint at Newark Airport wearing those today? You would be laughed at for sure. Then probably arrested.

 

My grandchildren are not allowed to hitchhike on the turnpike. They are forbidden to throw lawn darts at one another while jumping on a trampoline. Nor do their overprotective parents permit 2 AM swims in the old abandoned quarry. What a shame. Those poor kids will never experience the thrill of being picked up by a psychopath in a windowless van, the exhilaration of surviving a catastrophic backyard fall while bleeding from dart wounds, and the joy of almost (but not quite) drowning in 30 feet of frigid, inky-black water.  

 

I cherish the memories of my band of buddies roaming freely through our neighborhood, those jolly games of pickup baseball, and the informal mastodon hunts.  We used our bats instead of spears, and believe you me, those prehistoric beasts stayed clobbered! We’d play until it was time for our late-night quarry swim, and no one ever came looking for us. With households averaging 40 kids, only the most doting parent could keep track of everyone. In the interest of simplicity, we were all named Gorg. 

 

Now, in 2026, I am a stranger in a strange land. My skills as a rower on a Viking longship are no longer marketable, and it seems no one wants to hear me play “Babylonian Rhapsody” on my Mespotamian lyre anymore. I’m just whiling away the centuries, waiting for my final journey to Elysium Fields. Or New Jerusalem. Or the Happy Hunting Ground. One of those places.

 

Thanks for listening, kiddo. 

 

Say, how about we go grab some rotten meat that has been heavily spiced to cover the smell? 

Gorg’s treat!

 

Not hungry?

 

That’s OK. More for me.

image by Echonn on Pixabay

Remembered Laughter

Baby C's grin. Mo must've just told a joke.

I laugh a lot. It helps to have quite a few funny friends, and my hubby and kids (and now grandkids) are hilarious too. I’ve also learned to laugh at myself, the best approach to my daily catalogue of mishaps and missteps.

But I had forgotten the unique delight that is laughing with a sibling. Back in the day, my sister Mo would laugh until she literally fell off her chair at something one of us had said (and she was plenty side-splitting on her own). In the 44 years since Maureen’s death, my other sister Carolyn and I have drawn ever closer, largely because of shared funny memories. There’s something about having the same family of origin, that makes for prime humor material. 

 

Who else remembers the wit of Uncles Jack and Gerry (who, had they not been insurance execs, could have gone on the road as a comedy duo)? Who else survived a comically horrific rental house in Marshfield, Massachusetts, as Mom and Dad frantically house-hunted so that we wouldn’t end up living permanently in said rental? Who else embarked on boredom-inspired trudges down Peachtree Industrial Blvd. in blistering Atlanta August heat, ducking into the air-conditioned Robert Hall clothing store, not to buy anything (of course not!) but as a cooling respite en route to our reward—day-glo blue Slurpees at 7-11? Who else found all of this hysterical? Only my siblings.

 

Fast forward to the 1990s, when our life paths really diverged. C and Rob found each other, while Steve and I made a life with our five children in suburban Philly. Even during Carolyn’s seven years in Lewes, DE, we knew we were on borrowed time, proximity-wise. And so it was that we parted ways in September, 2012, when my sister and brother-in-law at last put down roots in Honolulu.

 

Our visits since have been wonderful, but quite sporadic, and as I prepared to travel to Hawaii this month, I wondered if we could still crack each other up.

 

Now, back home again, I recall the crazy experiences C and I shared during this time together in Paradise. Riding with a clueless Uber driver, who relied on us to constantly redirect him, while driving in ever-widening circles away from our destination; our ridiculous plod from a Maui condo billed as “oceanfront,” across a huge, sodden field to reach a teensy strip of windswept beach; our Plein Air art morning in Ala Moana Park--my pathetic watercolor of a nearby tree, her beautiful one (were we even painting the same tree?) We both decided that, instead of joy-killers, these were memory-makers that transformed adventure into entertainment.

 

My sides still ache from laughing, and I’ve been home almost a week. I will never forget this special time with my precious sister, and I vow to pay the chuckles forward, into a world badly in need of cheering up.

 

We all have to get through this life somehow, right?

 

Why not with tears, not of sadness, but of mirth?

One of these was painted by an actual artist. Can you guess which?