Fashion Emergency, Again!

There is a benefit that FFP really wanted to attend on Friday. The fashion designation is "Texas Flash, Texas Trash." He got an e-mail from the organizers with some suggestions for the ladies from Neiman Marcus. Yeah, right! I was thinking about black jeans, a silver lamé turtle neck and a tuxedo jacket. But I did suggest that I could use some boots. Now FFP is all over me to go out and buy boots.

The picture is recycled...taken at least five years ago in a junk shop.

I Didn't Report on Austin Film Festival

And I should have. Reported on the festival, that is. It was a great festival. I've never made a film (unless you count little thirty second or less bits with the point and shoot digital camera), written for film or anything of the kind. I did once consider making stop action films with my bendable, posable collection like these delightful Fido Dido figures. (Photo taken in office long ago.) But no...I'm a dilettante of filmdom. Still, we went to the Austin Film and heard how it was done and saw the results. We went to some interesting panels. We saw some great movies and some that made us go 'hmmm.' We enjoyed getting out and going to the venues. (We always set aside other social things and dedicate ourselves to being film dilettantes.) While downtown we explored old and new haunts.

We enjoyed seeing Dan Petrie, Jr. again. (We visited with him when he came to town for an event the AFF put on in August.) He said 'hello' during the Film and Food benefit and said how delighted he was to be presenting one of the festival's awards. To Glenn Gordon Caron, I believe. FFP and I failed to pull the trigger on getting luncheon tickets and it was sold out so we didn't see the awards presented this year. We enjoyed Dan's discussions and antics in a couple of panels. He took the fest's title of one panel, 'Shot of Inspiration,' literally and showed up with a bottle and tons of little mouthwash cups. The bottle was empty before he got to us, but we still thought it was funny as he diligently tried to pour a little 'shot' for the scores of panel attendees.

I'm not a screenwriter. I'm an admitted dilettante and live by the motto you see on this page: "Pretending to write but really just blogging." But I learned a lot about screen writing from the panelists. Gems like "Don't let method close your mind." And techniques like making your story into a simple myth-like tale and constantly referring to that structure. A friend of mine who has done some plays by retelling the stories in operas has used that idea in his own way.

In one of these panels someone said that introducing a problem and solving it in the same sequence is a waste of time. Now that's a mistake I don't make in blogging. I have introduced tons of problems: too much stuff, the inability to focus, the distractions from what's important. And I've solved virtually nothing! Oh, but in the movies the resolution must come.

One of the panelists advised the attendees to "write a movie you want to see that only you can write." Now, this blog is a blog that only yours truly could bring to life. That's for sure. Whether I really want to see it or reread it later. Well, that's another matter.

What else did I learn from the accomplished writers who were panelists at this premier screen writing festival? Hmm...well, don't use ellipses in screen plays. And in that 'Shot of Inspiration' deal I learned that inspiration probably doesn't come from a bottle, but that it often comes when we aren't thinking about writing. But I knew that in my heart of hearts. Oh, and someone advised that you should write a scene that you know isn't going to be in the movie just to get to know your characters. Maybe that's why I blog but also write on my computer in a 'mostly for my eyes only' journal.

Some of the writers were strong proponents of the written outline. That often cited thing about "characters taking over and doing and saying things you didn't expect?" The experts said it happens and it's a good thing. On writer's block someone said (or quoted someone as saying): "The creative mind flees from its obligations." Ain't it the truth?

I always have trouble, when trying to write fiction with dialog. (That would make it difficult to write plays and movies, huh?) Aline Brosh McKenna (who adapted The Devil Wears Prada for the screen) said "If the story is working, then the dialog is obvious." Someone suggested just writing dialog without character names and not in screenplay format and then format and then cut, cut, cut. Nicholas Kazan advised looking at a speech and figuring out its purpose. And then cutting everything that didn't serve the purpose.

Someone in a seminar claimed that David Mamet said that in a scene where someone is going off to war, everyone will have them come in and say "I'm going off to war." But, he allegedly added, "Few can resist having them say 'I once had a kitten.'"

I liked this advice, too: "The viewer is happy to come in right in the middle of the action." Or this, similar gem: "Writing a scene is like going to a party...arrive late, leave early."

Someone said that the greatest invention in script writing was multi-colored post-it notes. (Trademark 3m.) He (it was a he I think) said use a different color for each character. Your characters, we learned, have to be put through something.

When you are all done? Don't send it to the big talent agents. "They won't even recycle the paper." But in the "Groundbreaking TV" panel we found out that "Groundbreaking things happen when you are being ignored."

So what to make of all this? Is it just me transcribing notes? And recycling old pictures? You bet. Get used to it because I've signed up (mentally at least) to post every day in November and December.

Things That Stop Progress

Cleaning out some of the 'souvenirs and archives' boxes the other day I came across several copies of this picture. It is Forrest's dad. He might be in his twenties. That brought me up short and I had to scan the picture and consider how I might use the image for a card for his next birthday---his 97th.

Progress has been slow. Things stop progress. Including a weird dental problem I've been having. Assuming it is a dental problem.

There are bumps in the road. The first thing it seems to stop is the great downsizing effort. I go on with dealing with finances and playing my dilettante role...playing tennis, exercising, going to myriad social events.

Change

I have published a photos before of the reflection of downtown in the shop windows at the South Lamar center than includes Alamo Drafthouse. The 360 (right side in this reverse image) has almost reached its full height. In prior photos here and here it was shorter. Things change. Everything influencing everything else.

Reflecting from a Slight Distance

Sometimes you need to step back a little and take a longer view. Instead of sitting in your office surrounded by piles of newspapers, paper ephemera, books, magazines and things that need doing,typing on your desktop, you need to take your laptop and your digital camera somewhere and watch the results of creative young people expressing themselves. Snap a bunch of silly pictures, log onto wireless somewhere and think about how, when you get back to the house, you are going to ruthlessly toss stuff, efficiently organize, etc. I did bring along a couple of old New Yorkers, though. Can't change things too fast.

Daily? Every day?

Actually blogging every day is easy. I struggle a little over at Austin Daily Photo because a picture is required and I want the picture to be fresh, not too much like the one the day before. But just writing? Er typing? Easy. My personal diary Word doc on the computer reached 134 pages the other day. And I started typing in it in May. Over at the Journal of Unintended Consequences we have to have some fodder from the real world so that slows me down. Not that there isn't fodder enough. It's just getting the facts organized from other sources.

But truth is easier than fiction. A friend of mine had an idea for a movie. So I was helping her shape characters, writing little bios; and doing timelines and prose sketches of 'scenes.' Last night I tried my hand at a page of dialog using a demo of Final Draft. Fiction is hard. Characters are hard. Dialog is hard. Formatting a screenplay? Hard even with 'helpful software.' However, typing paragraphs into blogs is easy. I just did two paragraphs here. And I've done ADP for today.

I'm tuning up for NaBloPoMo and Holidailies. I officially like the latter name better and the portal for participating in Holidailies has been the bee's knees in years past.

[Note: Photo is randomly selected. It is the (as yet unfinished, I think) conference room at the Ballet Austin Butler Dance Education Center.]

One Little Thing

Sometimes I sit at my desk and I'm overwhelmed at all the stuff on the desk waiting to be dealt with (business cards, receipts, little notebooks with 'to do' lists or notes that need transcribing, bills, postcards, souvenirs, etc.) When I was cleaning out a file cabinet I came across a folder labeled 'Wimbledon' and inside were some souvenirs. This was a credential from my visit in 1984. This got you into some lounge and we had a Center Court ticket, too. Unfortunately there were four of us so we stood in a miles-long line to get grounds passes and then took turns seeing a few games on Center Court and also saw lots of tennis on the outside courts. The souvenirs got scanned, saved and safely filed away and cataloged.

The desk is still messy and cluttered. But with a few less things.

The Daily Strain

I signed up for something called NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) which is just a bunch of blogs trying to post every day in November. Now, we have been very religious in posting daily at Austin Daily Photo. But that is a different sort of animal. The Visible Woman is a spot for more introspection where a mere picture and a bit of explanation thereof won't do it. No. Here at TVW we have responsibilities to discuss the issues of our time: aging, art, collections, downsizing (especially downsizing), drinking, exercise, found objects, happiness, organizing, museums, music, retirement, shop windows, stuff, wine, words and more. But I'm going to flex my daily writing muscles here in preparation for the big flurry of words that November is sure to bring. (And who knows, December, too, maybe if my friend Jette offers a Holidailies site.)

Today I offer a picture taken six years ago in the very office where I now sit. The really funny thing about this picture? Most of the computer equipment you can see (and a number of other items) are no longer here. But. It looks just as messy today. Sigh. I use the excuse that I've emptied file cabinets, closets and drawers and am busy sorting through stuff. But, really, this isn't going quickly enough, is it?

Spiraling into the Rabbit Hole

Yesterday, Sunday, had a delicious free quality to it. We had a little social event in the evening and one that didn't elicit a fashion emergency at that. This was the first day in a few weeks where there weren't daytime commitments as well as evening ones. Don't get me wrong...it was all fun or self-improving stuff for the most part. Still I'd been busy. Here was a nice time to maybe catch up on the downsizing or get something tidied up around here. Or just relax and read. So how did I waste my time?

I decided to run virus and spyware scans on one computer and watched them run part of the time. I tried to work The New York Times magazine crossword on the computer and later tried to fill it in in the actual magazine. (No joy until today when I could unlock the key and get help. Clever puns in this one.)

At one point I thought I'd attack a pile of magazines that had survived other attempts to move them toward recycling. I managed to discard a few. In one I just had to read a piece before letting it go. Most of the ones I looked at got saved. A Harper's because of a piece by Jonathan Lethem about plagiarism that was completely plagiarized. (I later read this on the exercise bike but still saved it because I hadn't completely read his notes about where he extracted everything.) I saved a Summer Fiction edition of The New Yorker from 2004 even though I have it on DVD because you never know when it would be handy to take along to read. I saved another Harper's because of an article about Werner Herzog. I saved a June issue of The New York Times magazine not to work the puzzle (which looks quite hard) or to read the serialized novel (I haven't been able to get into any of these and this is chapter five of the last one they did). No, it was a bunch of articles about the rich getting richer and the poor...you know. I'm still trying to figure out which I am much less the whys and wherefores and politics of that economic idea. So...interesting and maybe I should read it.

Then there was The New Yorker issue (too new to be on DVD yet) which had a review of the Edith Piaf movie I missed at the theaters. I saved a Harper's because of an essay on the virtues of idleness. The irony was not lost on me.

I saved another issue of The New Yorker because of an article about the Queen Mary 2. The issue is on the DVD collection. But I'd really like to read it. If I ever get downsized and escape real estate hades, I'd like to go on that ship. I've been on the QE 2. But I digress.

Another issue of The New Yorker survived because of an article about neurosurgery and a Woody Allen casual. And another because of an article about mathematics. So sue me. I must confess that there is a 2005 issue in one of the bathrooms because of an article about Angela Merkel.

So the result of all that activity was that one pile had become two, reduced by three or four magazines that will make the recycling truck on Friday.

During my bout with the magazines, FFP arrived in my office with a 'home for sale' brochure from a house in the neighborhood. We spent a bit of time looking the place up in the database of the local tax collector and calculating a price per square foot.

I sorted through some current newspapers and tossed some ads in recycling. I glanced at Marilyn Vos Savant's column in Parade. She had an interesting puzzle. I didn't try to work it out but when I read the solution I thought it was amazing and wrote a small proof about why it worked. Seriously.

I managed to get to my gym for some exercise (mostly riding the recumbent bike while reading the Jonathan Lethem piece). I thought briefly about a trip to New York, too. Because in New York once, in the Village somewhere, we found a mystery book store while waiting for time for a jazz performance at the Vanguard. And I bought Motherless Brooklyn because it seemed interesting, I wanted to support the store and it was set in Brooklyn. I later bought Fortress of Solitude because I liked Lethem.

Yeah, those were the kinds of "accomplishments" and reveries I managed on this day of little obligation. Oh, and I put together a letter about my great nephew Jack's Flat Stanley's adventures in Austin and ordered and picked up prints of pictures of his (F. Stanley's) visit here and wrote on postcards and put the whole thing (along with Mr. F. Stanley with arms and legs folded) in a package to mail back to Jack's teacher.

I wanted to accomplish things in my retirement. I didn't anticipate how much my adult attention deficit disorder would affect idle times. And my greatest accomplishment seems to be becoming a dilettante. And learning to spell dilettante!

Film Stupid and Flat Stanley

I was going to try to update more regularly here. But events keep getting in my way. We are going to a bunch of Austin Film Festival events. Saturday we spent the entire day downtown from around nine in the morning until after ten. We saw four panels in the conference, watched "Born on the Fourth of July" and an Q&A with Oliver Stone afterward and saw a set of shorts in the palatial (NOT) Hideout Venue. (Shorts. Hideout. Necessary for any Austin Film experience.)

My great nephew sent me a Flat Stanley and we took him downtown with us. Above he visits the W Hotel and Condos sales office. He's considering getting a place. In the model.He has to go back to the boy's teacher. He lives in Colorado but he might make a second home here, reversing the trend of Texans living here and having second homes in Colorado to retreat to in the blazing hot Texas summer.

Anyway, I'm so film stupid that I'm ignorant of the work of icons like Oliver Stone and new phenoms like Jason Reitman. Not that I haven't seen their films. But still. Film Stupid. Oh, and who is this cultural flash Diablo Cody (aka Brook Busey-Hunt). I'm so out of it. Flat Stanley is more hip, I think, than I am. We saw Diablo's movie "Juno" last night. It is a teen movie. And I liked it. Amazing. It was funny and poignant and developed four major characters and two more minor ones in interesting and believable ways. Flat Stanley liked the movie, too. But all cameras were banned from the showing so I couldn't even get his picture outside the Paramount.

How on Earth?

Collections that are oh so cute and seemed like such good ideas at the time. Now which ones to say goodbye to and which ones to save. These remain, patiently awaiting my decision.

Swimming in the Past

My house is turned inside out, secrets exposed. As the spirit moves me I go through closets and boxes and drawers and the 'pencil cups' scattered around the house. The above closet has had a going through resulting in a lot of stuff being sent to the thrift store or thrown away and other things just pulled out for sorting. (The green and yellow paint is left over from the former owners. They sold us the house three decades ago I'm embarrassed to say.) The room that has this closet is rather a disaster of sorting and piling as is my office where the closets and drawers and shelves are becoming more empty and organized as the floor becomes littered with piles and boxes.

On my desk I have the small notebook where I'm scribbling current ideas, to do lists and expenses. But I also have notebooks from 1992 and 1996 open to the pages where I stopped transcribing contents I wanted to save. There is also a micro cassette recorder loaded up with a tape from 1989 that I've been listening to, seeing if I wanted to capture any of the contents. There is a large folder open on a chair with printed bulletin board messages and journals written on the computer and other paper correspondence. I've been reading a journal I wrote in Berlin in 1995 from the folder. On the floor is a pile of more or less current newspapers I haven't gotten around to reading, a pile of hanging file folders I've emptied of no longer relevant content, a pile of magazines (mostly New Yorkers) I haven't been able to give up and a pile of current information for my board duties at the country club.

The sorting in my office and the spare room (home of the above closet) is harder than, say, the kitchen. Things aren't merely things here but memories. It is interesting to see what clippings and printouts and photos survive the sorting. One moment I'm thinking what a full and interesting life I've had and the next feeling much has been wasted. I'm not one to dwell on the past or worry about the future but sitting here among my decades with a file in the drawer labeled 'condo ideas' it's hard to stay in the moment.

Saved by the Boa

No...that's not us last Saturday night. (It is us at some event in 1996 before we had the good sense to abandon big glasses.) I snapped a picture of FFP in that prior entry but I don't have any of the two of us from the party night before last. Which is a good thing I'm sure because I was in a long black velvet skirt, a black velvet top with a cowl collar and cap sleeves and had on a gold watch and a gold chain with a small diamond. In other words: boring! But. I was saved by a boa! Yes, read on.

The party was absolutely the best, most flawless party I have ever attended. I am glad I got myself up, didn't feign illness due to dowdiness and went.

It was a surprise 40th birthday party for a guy whose wife managed to surprise him with a white tie party. They have a lobbying firm and I understand that she told him it was a client's event then at the last minute said she'd have to meet him there and that he had to go with the mayor who managed the stalling tactics to let everyone else arrive first.

When we got there, the valets took our car right in front of the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum. There was a red carpet and four guys were blowing those long trumpets as if to announce each guest. Inside there were Vegas show girls handing out boas for the ladies and pocket squares with the birthday boy's monogram on them for the guys. That boa made me look less dowdy as we milled around and took in the scene. There were sushi chefs making rolls, a huge bar (we didn't wait in lines for drinks all evening), waiters handing out champagne in those old-fashioned squatly glasses that make you think of all those old Fred Astaire movies where people wore long dresses and white tie and danced like the pros they were. There was an ice table that was about eight feet long with shells carved in it full of shrimp. The whole table, legs and all was ice and the birthday boy's initials were frosted into it. We milled around talking to people who looked oh so elegant. The wife of birthday boy was in a gown with a black silk top and a skirt of white feathers. There was a cake about six feet high.

I think the guy was surprised. He looked a little stunned actually. But he managed to blow out a bunch of artsy candles arranged on the gigantic cake's tiers with his little daughter's help. Then a big band that included Tony Campise, Elias Haslanger and a pretty good singer struck up some of those old and lovely tunes for dancing. We had some of the sushi rolls, lovely prime rib on rolls, cheese and some of that shrimp cooling its heels on the giant ice table. We had drinks. We danced a bunch. There were tables and chairs around the dance floor as well as cushioned seats with tables for resting or putting a drink down.

We were having a great time and had already decided it was the best party ever when they announced...fireworks. While we stood near the door of the museum we were treated to a fireworks display launched from the parking lot across the way. It was amazing.

So, OK, this was the best and most fun party this country girl has ever attended. And my fashion fumbles were saved by a boa.

The Me That Filed Things in the '90's

Apparently I decided to turn over a new leaf some time in the '90's and took every piece of loose paper in the office and organized it all in folders neatly labeled with the label maker. Only problem was I lost the mojo pretty quickly. I had placed all the resultant folders in a drawer in a lateral file and forgotten that drawer. Except to occasionally toss something inside for 'filing later' or simply to hide it. The result was a lot of files whose contents could be tossed wholesale. A file for a DSL service that we not only no longer use but that went out of the business. A file of articles meant to help with an abandoned project. Maps and hand-written directions for places we'd just get an Internet map for today. Some of the unfiled stuff included magazines and unopened junk mail from 1994. I'm not kidding.

So, yeah, downsizing really resembled an archaeological dig today.

Fashion Emergency Part 3

It's very calming to help him with his studs and his tie and take his picture to deflect having to contemplate how dowdy I will look next to thirty-somethings in ball gowns. Ah, well. So it goes. I was going to get a haircut and try to do something radical with my hair but I waited until today to think about it and the barber had car trouble. I'm not kidding. Well, at least FFP looks like a diplomat.

Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

I haven't said a peep in this space in a week. Not that anyone has complained. We remain faithful over at Austin Daily Photo but that venue doesn't seem as demanding. The downsizing is getting weird. I'm trying to find homes for strange oddments. I believe we are tossing more stuff than we acquire. But it isn't going fast enough. One challenge is not to be wasteful and find good homes for some things. Today I saw a bike rack in front of Shoal Creek Saloon that had been made from old bike frames welded together. Oh so clever. Of course that joint has the ceiling decorated with old water skis.

Right now I have several cubic feet of knick knacks, collectibles and, let's face it, junk in my car that I hope to pass off to the Settlement Home Garage Sale. I have two cubic feet (the approximate volume of a paper box) of stuff that I'm going to store for my sister and her kids and grandkids to have.

Yesterday I was thinking what I might do with a set of twelve dinner and salad plates that I bought just for a certain party. (They were pretty cheap.) Then I opened a cabinet and realized I had another set I'd also gotten for a party. Also a dozen plates each. Also cheap. I'd just wanted something that looked right with the 'theme.' I'm sure I can find a home for both sets. Can't believe I'd forgotten even having one of them. Comes from having too much storage. In the condo we won't be able to seat twelve for dinner. I'm keeping an assortment of small salad/dessert/cocktail plates for entertaining.

I spent a bunch of time organizing old newspapers and other artifacts FFP and his parents have saved. The stuff that we want to keep I'm trying to preserve and store and catalog in a computer file saying what box they are in. It is all very tedious but I feel sure that I am making progress. Aren't I? Or will I be scrambling to do a bunch of this at the last minute?

Fashion Emergency Redux

This picture was taken in 2003. Where I'm not sure. I offer it to illustrate fashion emergency, part 2, of the nascent season. We have been invited to a party where the dress code is given as "white tie and ball gowns." Uh. OK. FFP has consulted with his sartorial gurus, spent less than a hundred bucks on the tie, has everything else to make it work. I told him that for a woman my age, I will do the best I can: long black skirt and top. People keep suggesting expensive stores and fashion gurus or the rack of (can there be anything bigger than six 6?) shop worn ball gowns at Last Call (the Neiman Marcus outlet store). I am, indeed, getting much too old to care. FFP is excited about the whole white tie thing, though. I'll get his picture. Maybe on his way out the door while I feign sniffles!

Letting Go of Stuff and People and Creatures

One thing I'm letting go of is always having a picture on these blog entries. It's enough that my Austin Daily Photo blog requires one. Go there is you just gotta get visual.

I've been cleaning out drawers in my office. Tossing things in the trash. Also, decided to organize all those little thing I do keep into a compartmentalized tackle box I had thought of trashing. Keychains, clips, pencil lead and erasers, velcro ties. Somehow this seems like an excellent idea because when we move to the condo rather than have those things you might need will be all organized in something instead of lurking in the ten drawers we will no longer have.

I'm letting go of Chalow, too. Every time we come home from being away we automatically start looking for her to let her out. When we get up each day, we once again notice that she isn't there.Today I was talking to a woman at the gym about moving to the condo and she asked if we had pets. I told her we put Chalow down and she started crying. I didn't mention my friend's death or that another friend had lost a son and another a husband. I had her in tears at the dog.

I'm letting go of my departed friend, Margaret, too. In writing her tribute I dug out a file labeled "Messages and Mid-Nineties Correspondence’." I've been reading that and I feel like my life is kind of unraveling backwards at the moment. I've also been shredding decades old carbons of checks. Memory lane.

I'm normally a forward-looking person. So I can normally let stuff go and look to tomorrow. I've got lots to let go of at the moment, I guess. So I'm a bit mired.

Goodbye, Friend

There weren't as many social opportunities online in 1995. But there were some. Like-minded people had been getting together in Usenet Groups for over a decade, bonding over similar technical and non-technical interests. I would scan a group called rec.travel.europe. The name meant it was a 'fun' or 'recreational' topic and not a technical one about the Internet itself or Usenet and such and about travel and, more specifically, in Europe. In July of 1995 I was giving advice on Berlin, where I'd just been, on the thread. Thanks to Google collecting archives I can still find the message I read in the summer of '95. The message was from a woman who'd traveled alone in Europe, something I'd done a bit of and something I might do again. FFP didn't travel too far then, because more than four or five days away from his one-man business didn't work well. I went places without him, for business and pleasure, or maybe had female traveling companions. So I thought it would be interesting to talk to someone else who traveled alone and was close to my age.

So I wrote a reply. Not to the thread but to the author: magie@iafrica.com. I didn't realize when I did that she wasn't living in the states. Just didn't notice the e-mail address, I guess. But she wrote back and said she lived in the Cape Province of South Africa and was a Scot who had emigrated to Canada in her teens, met a South African, moved there, raised two boys and divorced after over thirty years of marriage. And we began to exchange long e-mails about our travels. I had just made a trip to Berlin where Christo and Jeanne-Claude had wrapped the Reichstag. I probably sent her a journal from the trip. She managed to send me a journal from her '92 trip that inspired her Usenet posting. In November '95 she was off to Kuala Lumpar and gave me a detailed account of the trip. We began exchanging mundane details of our lives: friends, neighbors, outings, charities, work, family. She told me all about the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club where she volunteered training kids to become beach lifeguards and about her work with a handicapped workshop.

Margaret began to mail me postcards of the Cape with brief notes designed to entice me to come for a visit. At some point we decided that I would visit, in January/February 1997.

I went to Toronto on business in June '96. At some point Margaret had mentioned that her twin sister lived there. She insisted I contact her and meet her. And I did. After a meal and sharing some wine and a tour around where she worked, she said, "Margaret and I are nothing alike; but you two will get along well, too." Indeed, the non-identical twin sisters were very different, in appearance and personality, but both lovely, fun, warm women.

So, I traveled thousands of miles in January 1997 to arrive at the Cape Town airport and meet a woman I'd never met face-to-face. Three weeks later I had met so many of her friends that it just seemed right to have a 'going away' party to say goodbye. The above picture was taken at that party. (This trip deserves being blogged some day.)

In the spring/summer of 1997, Mags was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery and treatment. But she mustered her strength and came to the U.S. in 1998, visiting Austin and other places with us and with other friends. (This elaborate travel itinerary deserves a blog of its own as well and maybe, one day, will get it.)

In 1999, a couple of my girlfriends and I went to London and Scotland. We met up with Mags and a friend of hers from the Cape in Edinburgh (they were attending the rugby world cup and visiting with Mags' relatives and friends in her hometown) and we met her younger brother and many friends of hers.

Mags would suffer a relapse of the cancer again in 2001, but would still manage a visit to her sister (now living in New York State) for the holidays. A friend and I flew to New York City on New Year's Day, 2002, to meet up with her and visit a few days with her on her way home.

In 2004, Mags' son was living in Dublin and she was planning a trip to Edinburgh with a side trip to visit him. She suggested I meet her there so we could be tourists while he was at work. Then he decided to move to Namibia. Undaunted, she rented an apartment at Trinity College and we still met there for a visit. One morning she woke with a swollen eye. We wouldn't know it for over a year but this was another tumor announcing itself.

In 2005, I once again flew to the Cape and visited Mags and other folks who felt like old and dear friends after meeting them in '97 and hearing about them for years in e-mail. Mags didn't feel well and when her eye became swollen again she asked me to take a picture of it and print it on her computer so she could take it to the doctor in case it had gone down when she visited him for an appointment that was scheduled after I would leave.

Finally the doctors decided a tumor was causing the eye swelling and gradually Mags became unsteady and had trouble seeing. She moved to a retirement home from her apartment but had her computer there and through March of this year was writing me with some of her usual wit and vigor. Then I had to rely on her son typing for her or reports from others. In one of the last messages she typed from the retirement home, in March, she said:

Yesterday afternoon I went with the singing group to Frail Care and then to the Alzheimer’s unit. They sing all the old songs like Hokey-Pokey. Some actually know the words while others clap their hands to the music, while others manage to sleep right through it. Fun though and I am sure they all enjoy it. I met up with an old friend, Joey Swanson, in the Alzheimer’s unit and she said “oh are you down here now?” Sometimes feel maybe I should be. Occasionally, I don’t know whether I am Arthur or Martha

You were neither Arthur nor Martha, my friend. You were a special one. Margaret, Maggie, Mags, whatever we called you, you were one of a kind. And you brought so many people together all over the world. Margaret's son, in reporting her death through her e-mail account said it best: "I miss her so much already." I will also miss all the friends I made through her because she stitched us together, communicating with us all and telling my tales to them and vice versa. I fear that I'll lose track of Babs, Gary, Jim, David, Rusty, Don, Dorothy, Dawn, Colleen, Sue, Brian, Buntu, two Andrews, Beatrice, Bryan, Patricia, Francois, Nick, Penny, Vaughn, Ralph, June, Ann, Paul, another Ann, Tom and many others. It was fun meeting all those folks and more. But Mags brought them to life with her e-mailed stories, too. And no one could do it like she did it.

Tennis and Stuff

I took up tennis after I got out of college. Before that my entire experience with the sport was a tennis racket my sister used in a college PE course and some discarded balls and a garage door. I'd wanted to take it as a PE course in college myself, but I never managed to get in and dispensed with college PE by taking gymnastics, field hockey, folk dancing and badminton. (PE was required back then. Do they still do that?) I hadn't every played any organized sport save a season of softball when I was eight or nine.

But after college, I was commuting to my job in Dallas with a co-worker from my old college town, Denton. I was taking a graduate course at night or on Saturday or something and living in a ramshackle apartment I'd shared with college friends but was now renting more or less by myself. My friend and co-worker was a good tennis player and showed me how to hit a forehand and a backhand. Using the practice wall at the college and that old racquet, I started playing.

Without ever having a lesson, I built up some simple skill and started hitting for fun with friends. When I moved to Dallas, I got serious playing with co-workers and with a retired guy I met in a bar. I bought another racquet, but it was a discount wooden model (wood was it then) and cost about five bucks. When I moved to Austin, I found a few people to play with and, at some point, organized a USTA team. I was so into tennis! I played, I bought clothes and equipment. People gave me tennis-themed knick-knacks. I coveted all things tennis. I bought my first color TV in 1977 because I noticed in a store that the ball in a tennis match showed up so much better in color.

I finally realized having a team was a lot of work to give other people an opportunity to play tennis. I just played in parks with friends. I had several long-term games where I'd meet a friend in the park at 6:30 or 7, play an hour or an hour and a half and go home, shower and go to work. Or I'd meet a friend early on a Sunday morning and play at the park and then maybe go to a joint for Mexican breakfast. I watched TV coverage intensely. When we got our first VCR, my big focus was recording tennis matches. (That's why I have all these as-yet-undiscarded VHS tapes of twenty-year-old McEnroe matches and such. Yes, they are deteriorated. But I'm still having trouble tossing them.) I used to have an elaborate Breakfast at Wimbledon party, complete with multiple TVs, pastry, coffee, champagne, strawberries and cream and tennis and Wimby-themed door prizes.

I finally decided that tennis was too complicated and made me buy too much stuff. Not to mention inspiring others to give me tennis-themed pens, posters, bookmarks, etc. I still buy new shoes now and then and have my tennis racket restrung or regripped. I have an oversize Wilson Hammer of composite something and it is about ten years old. I bought a backpack tennis bag I intend to keep for a long time. I have to buy balls, of course. If I find a case at Costco, I'll buy them and use them for a year since other people pop cans all the time in my games. I have three pairs of shorts I like to play tennis in and some polo shirts. I have to get a new cap now and then due to profuse sweating. My current favorite is grimy and rusting from a metal button in the crown. I bought some wonderful new socks the other day but only after I had discovered severe wear in the ones that were used over and over, for tennis and gym. These new high tech ones are reserved for tennis now.

In 2000, we joined a tennis club. I didn't immediately find a lot of games at the club and they restrict guests to two visits a month. But gradually I became a substitute for regular fun doubles games that had been going on for years and for teams organized by others. Now I play two or three times a week. I'd like to play more singles but so it goes. There is a singles championship coming up and maybe I'll sign up for that in the duffer division. (Actually they are ranked by USTA levels.)

I've greatly reduced the 'stuff' and bother surrounding my tennis passion, though. There are some towels, head bands and wrist bands in my bag and my spare glasses with the clip on sun glasses and a spare hat in case I forget one. I try to have a new can of balls at ready in case it's my turn. I give away the used balls mostly although I have some in the trunk in a ball hopper in case I'm inspired to practice my serve. Which I rarely am.

In going through my stuff I've found some tennis 'souvenirs' (other than those old tapes) and think maybe I'll offer them to the kids who run my club's tennis programs. Somewhere around here I have a Wilson T2000.

And the picture? (You still reading?) Well, it's a bendable posable figure of a tennis player. But, I think, maybe not one I own. Maybe it is one someone was selling on ebay. Then again, who knows? Because the boxes of bendable posable figures are still lurking under the stairs.

Tennis is still my passion. But I'm not so into the stuff of tennis anymore. Nor likely to organize a tennis event or give a tennis-themed party. Still, after I escape from the year of real estate heck, carefully timed for the year of world real estate crisis, I plan to try to make trips to each of the grand slam tennis tournaments (in London, Paris, Melbourne and New York). And, OK, maybe I'll bring back a little souvenir!