It’s high time I wrote an examination of driving in Massachusetts, since I enjoy making fun of it in polite conversation. Massachusetts drivers generally, and Boston drivers specifically, are oft-maligned by passers-through, for being, consistent with their personality, pushy, aggressive, and rude. And this reminds me of hearing people talk about California drivers in the same way, though, for different reasons. So, it struck me one day that we can highlight some interesting things about Massachusetts drivers and culture by comparing them to California ones..

The first thing that struck me as I began driving here is the prevalence (nay, ubiquitousness) of horn-honking. To my sunny, polite, California sensibilities, this was a startling invasion of my ear-space and a horrendous polluter of many perfectly nice moments. Not to mention the fact that it’s a laughable attempt to influence a situation that the honker is powerless to affect. In California, there is something utterly distasteful, even socially unacceptable, about honking your horn. If you need a little space to get around someone in a parking lot, or if you’re looking away when the light turns green, you get a little cushion before someone lays on the horn. Horns just aren’t that useful to a populace who is generally laid back and usually in a good mood. But to a Masshole, the Horn is as important to the makeup of the car as the blinker or the steering wheel. If someone is backing out of a space in front of you, you don’t back up a little to accommodate them – you give them a honk. If someone drifts toward you in a lane, or interferes in any way with your God-given right of way, you give them a nice, loud honk, so they get the hell back in line. One time as I was driving a friend reached over from the passenger side and laid on MY horn. I gasped, predictably, and he said, “hey, it had to be done.” It’s a constant attempt to inform one another of one’s right to space. It’s as if to say, HEYYYY. I am RIGHT HERE. You IDIOT. And this honk is an assertion of my RIGHT TO BE HERE. Around here, horns are an educational tool, like a dog whistle; if you use them enough, we can slowly train all of our drivers to be a little less stupid.

The second trait I’m struck by is the pure aggression. I always maintained that California drivers were aggressive, but that, for the most part, they we’re smart about it – more like assertive. Drivers know that they have to follow the person ahead of them closely, they have to drive fast, and they need to change lanes a lot, because California is humongous and otherwise they’d never get anywhere. But people in California, as I said before, are a happy, polite people, so they are assertive without being reckless. And when they arrive somewhere, even if they sat through loads of traffic, they’ve accepted traffic as a part of life – a part over which you can achieve small wins here and there, but one you simply have to accept, and workaround. Once they get where they are going, you rarely hear someone detail the traffic they experienced on the way. They probably planned on hitting traffic, left a little early, and are still vaguely on time and relatively unscathed.

In Massachusetts, once someone arrives at their destination, you are treated to glorious detail of the epic battles they endured to get there – the conditions on each and every road they traveled, and their cunning responses to them. In Massachusetts, every traffic jam is a rage-inducing, mind-blowing event. It is one that must be met with the heart of a lion, the aggression of a honey badger, and the shrewdest of maneuvers and short-cuttery. When a Masshole arrives at an event, there is a dramatic retelling of all the road conditions, all the reasons (mother-f*cking-Foo-Fighters-concert!), and all the brilliant side street routes and daring feats of speed and lane-changing that led to their being even remotely able to attend.

And what’s more, if you are the unlucky, or perhaps distracted or visiting driver who is not sure which lane to be in, or who in any way adds seconds on to the commute time of this Massachusetts driver, don’t expect any detached forgiveness like you might receive in California. Oh, no. In Massachusetts, every mistake, every interference with your fellow citizen’s driving plan is met with real, actual rage. And not the kind of undirected, anonymous moment of frustration that a Californian might experience. No – if you have sinned against our dear Masssachusetts driver, it’s personal. Don’t be surprised if you hear them shout something like “I hope you DROWN AT THE BEACH you sonofabitch!” (This actually happened on a sunny 4^th of July weekend). Or, “why don’t you go drive right off this bridge you stupid fat f*ck?!” They might also go out of their way to speed up alongside you, just to get a real good look at you, and mouth only-a-lip-reader-knows-what from behind their window. Sometimes they even go out of their own precious way to make your life more difficult. “No,” they say, out loud to themselves, “no way are you turning here now.”

So, my fellow visitors, pay attention when you’re driving. Make sure you know which lane to be in at all times. Make sure you drive at least 10 miles over the speed limit. And for chrissakes, make sure your horn works.

Going back to Colorado turned out to be pretty emotional for me. I was coming off a horrible winter and a non-existent spring, and Colorado was, of course, sunny and warm. The leaves were on the trees, and the flowers were blooming, unlike in Boston. I spent many years living in Colorado feeling like “home” was California, and as soon as I got picked up at the airport and was driving on I-70 I had an overwhelming sensation that I was home again. It was the first time I ever felt that way about Colorado.

Boulder Creek

Even more than that, I was with my sister and so many of my best friends. I can’t believe how much I miss having girlfriends around all the time! Alison had a party in her cute new home, and I got to see a ton of people that way. (Thanks Alison!) I laughed a lot. I even cried. I stayed up late hearing and telling stories. I had my lovely and talented stylist friend Lindsey cut all my hair off. I went on a hike and talked about literature and business with Michele. I got to go to the art museum, and to my sister’s restaurant, and sit outside and barbeque with buddies. It was a wonderful and relaxing weekend.

some of the girls

Once again, I don’t have many pictures, but I was too busy catching up with everyone I guess. And I can’t wait for some of those lovely ladies to make trips to Boston!

I had a bagel and lox the first morning and a bagel with whitefish salad on my last day. I would have loved to have tried many more of their colorful offerings (Smoked salmon tartare, red beet and herring salad, yes please!) but it’s difficult to do that when you’re by yourself. Too bad I couldn’t pack things up in dry ice and bring them back to Boston. I did bring home a few bagels though. So good.

I was not very good at taking pictures when I was there, but here are a few moments that made me smile.

A fence covered in tiles that glittered with the changing colors of streetlights

A child tentatively dancing to an accordian player in the park

The Picasso exhibit at the Moma

a plastic sculpture at the same place

a painting of Julius on a shelf in a bar

and a giant rubber-band ball

Next time I go I expect the weather to be better so I can take better pictures. But this will do for now.

Piero giving his speech after dinner

Sheila and me, joining the clean plate club

One of several very elaborate courses

I tried lots of new things that night, including beluga caviar and duck liver (served over a puff pastry with a sweet relish of some kind), which was my favorite thing of the night. (Those of you that know me will be as surprised as I was at that fact.) I was also happy to see a lot of family in one place. Look at all this cuteness:

Lil' P

and Lil' G

I’ll do another post on the non-family stuff. There is a lot to love about New York City.

My mom, 1982, with my little brother and me

My mom is one of my very best friends and I feel very lucky to have her in my life. She is so wonderfully kind, supportive, talented, fun-loving, hard-working, adventurous, generous, and wise. Besides being a kindergarten teacher, she likes to travel, cook, shop, and spend time with friends and family. And the woman throws really great parties. She is fun and likes to laugh – one of my favorite things in the world is making or hearing my mom laugh really hard. We’ve done quite a bit of traveling together over the years, including last year’s trip to India, where I took the pictures below.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I miss you!

I haven’t blogged in a long time. Apologies to my readers (ahem, friends). I’ve been busy, but mentally lazy. I did get a new job though! And that takes effort. I will start writing again soon, but I thought a little Fill in the blank Friday would help me get my fingers typing again about things that don’t have to do with eBook format complications and normalizing publisher names. I did do a lot this winter. (And what a winter it was…!)

To fill in your own blanks, visit Lauren’s blog and follow her instructions.

I went with my friends Kate and Doug and their little daughter Nora to Applecrest Farm in New Hampshire. It was quite a scene. There was a bluegrass band playing, hayrides, a petting zoo, and even a “build your own” scarecrow table where you can bring in some old clothes and stuff them with hay. They sold apple pies, apple crisp, apple jam, apple dip, etc.

Applecrest Farm

We took a tractor ride (I think? maybe a hayride) out to the orchard, where they described the difference between Washington apples and Red Delicious apples and which part of the orchard to pick from depending on your apple preference. So we were off, with our little bushel bag, through the orchards.

Of course I couldn’t reach anything, and even Kate couldn’t, so she finally resorted to climbing trees.

And then, when we still hadn’t filled our bag, we headed back up to the front and cheated by grabbing apples from these big beautiful bins. They really make it easy on you.

It’s been so long I can’t even remember what I made with all of the apples. Probably juice. But it was a fun, new experience for me. Now, if you want to have a laugh, head on over to the Stuff White People Like blog for their entry on the pick-your-own fruit phenomenon. I’ll paste one small selection below. So long!

When white people harvests a crop it’s known as “berry picking” or “pick your own fruit.”  Under these conditions, white people are expected to work leisurely with no real expectations and then they pay for the privilege to do so. In other words, berry picking is the agricultural equivalent to a private liberal arts college.

1) Carriage: Shopping cart. Do you need a carriage for all that bee-yah?

2) Bureau: A dresser. Please fold the laundry and put it in the bureau. Sometimes you will also hear ‘chest of draws’ – “draws” being the pronunciation of the word ‘drawers’.

This post is dedicated to the McAnespies and the Bakers. :)

During his talk he went on elegantly about fiction, storytelling, and the relationship between storytelling and our reality, both scientific and political.  He explained how, in his opinion, writers and tyrants are natural antagonists, because they are both trying to impose their narrative on the world. For Rushdie, nothing is just a story. “By describing the world you change the possibilities of that world,” he says. Things begin in the imagination before they are ever made into reality, so stories very literally create/construct our world. As democratic citizens, storytelling (and its complement, story-listening) is critical to our liberty, our progress, and our union.

Shortly after the event, I came across an Op-Ed by Stanley Fish in response to some “Browne report” published in England on Higher Education. In it he bemoans the report’s recommendations that higher education should look more like a consumer-choice model, in which students “invest” in courses at a university based on whether or not they produce “improved employability.” Therefore, courses which do not directly influence one’s employability (presumably the arts, philosophy, history, etc) will be allowed to wither away. In contrast, courses that would presumably affect employability (science, technology, finance) would be subsidized by the state “just in case” the students chose poorly.

And it got me thinking that perhaps our stories are less in danger of censorship than they are in danger of being ignored. As our economy continues to plummet, particularly in California, “non-essential” courses in the arts are being slashed and students are forced to speed through their major courses and get the heck out of school. What that means is that we are producing generations of young people without the skills to deconstruct a story where they see one, and even more without any interest in storytelling at all.

Where I went to college (Cal Poly), the school motto was “Learn by Doing,” which was, in its best light, a manifesto for a hands-on, experience-based pedagogy. In its worst, which is really just teasing out its practical implications, it was an outright dismissal of theory, of context, and of anything you couldn’t ultimately do with your hands. It was a university, but it was a “Polytechnic” University (wtf does that mean anyway) in which requirements in the humanities were minimal, not to mention funding, course availability, faculty, and consequently, the number of students that chose the humanities as their course of study. The school is known for producing top-notch engineers and architects, but these students left taking nary a literature course and were lucky if they took it from a tenured professor from a research university.

Even then, it made me sad. I saw all these bright kids that had no idea how to articulate, for instance, the subtlety of a politician’s speech because they never learned how to critically receive a narrative. (I also saw loads of people copying one another’s scantrons in philosophy class because they had absolutely no interest in learning the concepts of philosophical ethics.) I also remember my grandmother being shocked when I told her that logic was not a required class. They don’t think we need it, I remember telling her. And they don’t think we need much literature either. And literary theory? Forget it. It won’t make them any money.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, who needs censorship if no one is reading these stories anyway? Or if, when they’re reading them, they don’t understand them? So, Sir Rushdie, while we caution against losing our storytellers, let us also caution against losing our listeners. And God Bless English teachers.