Basket Making

photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

If pressed, I'll say “basketball is my sport.” This gives me some street cred, and assures my listeners that I actually HAVE a sport, thus allowing me to identify as American. Because we all have at least one sport, no? The need for fandom is inherent in our USA genes. I recall reading about the colonial passion for baste-the-bear and stilt walking, and can just picture George W. (the original one) tossing his powdered wig in the air during a swell bandy ball match. 

 

Here's what I like about basketball: even I can follow it. It moves quickly, but the players are very tall, and the court is finite. There are only a couple of things you can do to score, and only a couple of points awarded for those things. As my favorite comedian Gary Gulman muses, it’s also the only sport where, if a player so much as touches another player, the game stops instantly, and the offended one gets several unimpeded shots before two silent teams. “Think about what you did!” is the implied scolding. 

 

Whereas football is—fuggedaboudit. Wildly overhyped, horribly violent, I can't keep track of where the darned ball is. And the rules? Downs, field goals, various yard lines! And with all the stops and starts it takes HOURS. I remember watching Patrick, our only homegrown high school footballer, and slowly perishing from boredom between plays. There was one super obnoxious parent in the stands with us, who kept up an incessant, shouted commentary--with a cowbell!!—and I was so miserable that I welcomed the diversion!!

 

Baseball is something I really feel I should like better than I do, given my pedigree. My Grandpa Berrigan played minor league ball for the Bronx Giants, and my memories of him in his latter years largely revolve around his rabid enthusiasm for televised playoff games on his black-and-white set. Heck, Sheridan was even a star pitcher! (Sher wasn’t major league, nor minor league—he was middle school league, but still…) To me the game’s pace is glacial; even with the much vaunted speed-up innovations, it’s about as thrilling as watching paint dry. 

 

Aiden and Peter love to shoot hoops up at the neighborhood court, and their style of play is perfect for me. “Great shot, honey!” is always appropriate to shout, whether they make it or not. And if things get a bit dull, there’s the inevitable ball that escapes the playground and rolls downhill towards the street. Luckily, traffic is usually light and drivers are cautious, but there’s still that pulse-quickening moment as Mr. Basketball bounces onto the road. Bonus: after the daring rescue, I feel totally justified in saying, “OK, guys, time to go home!” 

Several years ago, I had the rare, delightful experience of making a few baskets myself. Sometimes I think of trying again, but why ruin a perfect memory? I’d rather cheer for LeBron and Steph occasionally, qualifying me to assert that, if I need one, basketball is, indeed, my sport.

 

Aiden and Gil on the court

Limelighting

Sarah Bernhardt

We’ve all heard about so and so or such and such being “in the limelight,” as in “currently famous/celebrated.” Sounds like an exciting place to be, right (never having been there myself)? 

Hate to break it to you, friends, but an examination of the word’s origin tells a different story. It seems that, back in the 1860s and 1870s, actors on theatre stages would be spotlit in a curious way. Thanks to inventor-with-the-coolest name-ever Goldsworthy Gurney, a pipe filled with hydrogen and oxygen would be blown towards a lump of quicklime (calcium oxide). The contact would create a flame that gave off a bright light, “limelight”, and so actors both famous (Sarah Bernhardt) and infamous (John Wilkes Booth) alike were illuminated for their rapt audiences. 

 

Only one little issue, though. The process was extremely dangerous. One can imagine the peril of flames near fabric curtains, wooden stage floors, even the costumes of the day. By the 1890s, limelight had been replaced by electric arc lighting. But the phrase continues to be widely used, perhaps because “Meryl Streep has often been in the electric arc lighting” is a tad clunky. 

 

I was struck by the idea that being in the limelight meant a) being in a dangerous situation AND b) being in something that is extremely fleeting. And there are countless instances of performers whose time in the limelight was fraught with sadness—the child stars whose “stage parents” or agents exploited them, the gifted actors lost to addiction or suicide when the pressures of fame became too great, etc. 

 

We know this, but so many of us seek the limelight anyway. We can handle it, we think. It won’t change who we are deep down. This is true for politicians, as well as singers and dancers. I myself am guilty—I write, not just because I love it, but because I crave even a tiny little bit of renown. Not for me the reclusive scribe life; Emily Dickinson, whose writings were mostly discovered after her death, pops to mind. Poor Em! She could have enjoyed making the late night talk-show rounds! Or how about Keats, Melville, Plath, Orwell, Thoreau? None of them were much recognized in life—were they around today, I’m sure they’d have been just tickled to make the New York Times bestseller list (though it’s unlikely they’d unseat Colleen Hoover). Do I wish I was Colleen Hoover? I think she’s a mediocre writer, and I’m also extremely jealous of her rocket-ship to fortune from her self-published beginnings.

 

So of COURSE I wish I was Colleen Hoover! It’s all about the limelight! Dangers and brevity are OK by me if I can stand in that bright spot. I have several family members possessing talents that far eclipse mine—an actor/director husband, an artist sister, two composers (son and daughter-in-law). I marvel at their modesty, and wish I too was a fraction as humble.

 

But not as much as I wish I was Colleen Hoover. 

Or Meryl Streep. 

Sigh.

The Rocky Road to Nirvana

Photo by Prasanth Inturi on Pexels

Meditation and I have always had a difficult relationship. For one thing, I hate to be alone with (or without) my thoughts. I hear that’s kind of a non-starter with meditation. But I am determined! Finding a mantra (a calming and focusing thought/word/phrase) seems to be key. I’m a writer! Words are my jawn! This should be both easy and peasy! Herewith, a selection of popular mantras and my takes…

Om: Mantra numero uno, “om” is said to be the first sound of the universe. Really? When I think of the noise that shattered the eternal silence, I think more along the lines of “Helloo? Anybody out there?” or maybe “Winner, winner, tofu dinner!” NOT “om”! “Om” is what you mumble when the teacher asks you to recite the preamble to the Constitution.

 

I am healthy: Who are we kidding? Compared to whom? “I am healthy compared to an asthmatic wombat! I am relatively healthy compared to my grandmother, who if she were alive today would be 130 years old!” Perhaps better: "I hope to be healthier someday, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

 

Fear does not control me: OK, so getting into some trouble here. Am I supposed to chant an obvious lie, in hopes it might someday be true? I might as well say, “I am prettier and more talented than Taylor Swift.” Because, believe me, fear is ALWAYS in the driver’s seat.

 

Perfection is a myth: Again, having some issues. If perfection is a myth, what about Santa? Please don’t tell me Jolly Old St. Nick is a fraud? I spent my NYC childhood justifying the lack of chimneys in my Manhattan apartment building (Santa rode up in the service elevator late at night!) If I have to live in a world without an actual M. Claus, at least reassure me: there IS an Easter Bunny, right?

I surrender to the flow of the universe: Now we’re getting a little lengthy. I thought mantras were supposed to be bite-sized and easily repeatable? This one I could see getting all tangled up: “I surrender to the flow of the universe. I surrender to a universe that flows. It’s a flowing universal--flow. I flow with the universal surrender. I surrender. I surrender.” Now I sound like a cornered criminal. “Ya got me, coppers.”

 

So, since the popular mantras don’t do the job, here are a few suggestions. Feel free to use (with appropriate attribution-©2025 by Elise Seyfried)

 

Yum: perfect for contemplating a jelly donut, or plate of pasta carbonara

I am stealthy: I like to lurk around, especially when there’s a jelly donut involved

Bears do not control me: What I say under my breath in the woods, or even around my trash cans.

Complexion is a myth: When I look in the mirror and see another pimple. At age 68.

I surrender to the woe of the universe: Darn it. It’s rough out there. I surrender. I surrender, coppers.

 

Bring on yoga class!! Mantras ready!! 

Namaste.

Popeye's mantra (I Yam what I Yam)

Dear Diary

  

Photo by Min An on Pexels

Dear Diary,

 

I can’t believe it’s been 56 years since I’ve written in you!!!! Wow!!! I’ve been a little busy, but that’s NO excuse!! Thank you for patiently waiting for me to finally find the tiny gold key that unlocks your pink-lined pages, and the pen with the purple ink I always used for my notes to you.

I confess that I gave you no thought over the decades, but that neglect ends NOW. I can’t wait to tell you all about my secret crush on Bobby Sherman and the white Slicker lipstick I bought with my babysitting money (Dad said I looked like I swallowed Maalox. Hahaha Dad NOT funny) and the time that mean girl Peggy C. made me cry at the big sleepover. Oh, and my wedding and our five kids and my three careers--them too. 

 

But, Diary? I have to mea culpa…I cheated on you, and not just once!

 

You see, after I lost you, I bought and wrote in LOTS of other journals. When I was in high school, I decided to keep a diary just like Samuel Pepys, the famous British diarist of the 1650’s, because I was a literary snob in those days. Every entry would end, “and so to bed!” because that’s what Sam would write.

Later, when Steve (my husband--he’s even cuter than Bobby Sherman!) and I were on the road traveling with children’s theatre (yes! Dear Diary! I can drive a car now!) I wrote an entry every single day for two years. Some of it is interesting, like our weekends in Toronto and Montreal and Vermont and Boston, but a lot of it is super boring because I wrote down every show we performed in every school and town. If you ever want to know the name of the school in Boltons Landing, NY where they gave us coffee that had been made three days earlier (yuck!!!!!) well, it’s in there!

 

Then, when our children were born, I bought a journal for each one of them (or really for me to write to each one of them). I learned a couple of important things about myself Dear D: I hate writing by hand, so it’s all chicken scratch I can’t even read AND I always start strong and peter out (each journal ended for good when the kid was about seven). 

 

For about 20 years I’d fill in those little Hallmark date books, but that routine ended in the mid 1990s.

 

Since then, I only keep a journal when we travel, and that is on the computer. My other life is a great big question mark because all I have to go on is my daily work planner, and that doesn’t tell me much.

 

But it’s all going to change now, my cheap plastic friend! I will pick up where I left off, starting tomorrow! And I’ll tell you all my secrets, and keep you locked up and NOT lose the key this time!

 

TTYL, Diary!

 

Love ya, 

Elise

So...Volume V? Really????