Donna Sandstrom's Open Salon Blog

Dear Abby's Best Advice

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:01:06 -0500

Like many of you, I grew up reading Dear Abby. The L.A. Times was my window to the world - Robert Hilburn shaped my musical taste, Conrad my politics, and for everything else - there was Dear Abby.

There is a column that has stuck with me all this time. Just last week, I shared it with a friend who's considering a mid-life career change.

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"DEAR ABBY: I am a 36-year-old college dropout whose lifelong ambition was to be a physician. I have a very good job selling pharmaceutical supplies, but my heart is still in the practice of medicine. I do volunteer work at the local hospital on my time off, and people tell me I would have made a wonderful doctor.

If I go back to college and get my degree, then go to medical school, do my internship and finally get into the actual practice of medicine, it will take me seven years! But, Abby, in seven years I will be 43 years old. What do you think? -- UNFULFILLED IN PHILLY

DEAR UNFULFILLED: And how old will you be in seven years if you don't go to medical school?"

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Her reply was vintage Abby - witty, wise, and deceptively simple. It worked on my friend like it had so many others, with the power of a Zen koan - an answer posed as a question; a little nudge towards a big Aha.

For years, people wrote in to share examples of how this letter had inspired them to change their lives, too. How many? We'll never know. But for all of us who were emboldened to find true north, thank you, Dear Abby.

Source: http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20000119

Where's My Pony?

Thu, 8 Nov 2012 15:11:08 -0500

Tuesday night when the coast was clear, I decided to take a walk through a parallel universe. That is to say, I decided to watch Fox News. One quick click of the remote and I was tumbling like Alice down the rabbit hole, and everything grew curiouser and curiouser.

I tuned in just in time for the Karl Rove meltdown. The first stage of grief is denial, and he was deep in it. As most of you have probably heard, he disputed Fox’s calling Ohio, and thus the election, for Obama.

The co-anchor was sent on a mission to confront the Deciders at the Decision Desk, deep in the bowels of the Fox building. She strode through the long, bleak hallways, high heels clicking.

I watched in fascinated horror – what was going to happen to these poor fellows who had incurred the wrath of Rove? Like facing the Eye of Sauron, would they be incinerated on the spot?

Bravely, they explained about the ballots that were still out, and why there was no chance that Romney could win Ohio. The anchor asked what confidence they had in their prediction. 99.95% certainty, they said. (By the way, has anyone checked on those guys today?)

I learned a lot of things when I was in Foxland. But the biggest of all was that apparently, all of us who voted for Obama did so because we want free stuff. And Obama’s going to give it to us! Bill O’Reilly is very, very clear about this. And that, my friends, is why Romney lost the election. Who would vote against Santa Claus?

Huh? My dear fellow Obama-voting 51%ers, either you have been holding out on me, or Obama’s been holding out on us. I mean, I voted for him twice, and all I have to show for it is a bumper sticker and a mug. But the mug was a birthday present from a friend so that doesn’t count.

I looked everywhere I could and no one else knew about the free stuff. So yesterday, I decided to go back in. There on a show called The Five, I heard it again! Eric Bolling knew about the free stuff too! I swear, it’s like they all are on a private mailing list.

Unhelpfully, he did not provide an address of where to get the stuff, or even what the free stuff is. I mean, is it a box of shamwows, or a hot tub, or a shiny new car?

Or – I know! I bet Obama put Oprah in charge of this. One day we’ll all wake up and our porches will overflow with cashmere sweaters and cameras and iPads and we all get a trip to Australia, too!

I don’t want to appear too greedy of course. If it’s all the same to the Obamas, I’d be perfectly happy with a gift certificate to Costco.

Of course Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin were way ahead of the curve, and have known about this for awhile. Apparently there are two kinds of people in the U.S. – Takers and Makers. And the Takers all voted for Obama because we want Free Stuff, not Freedom.

Hmm. Now that is a tough choice. But you know, if they throw in some Springsteen tickets…

Levon Helm and Lessons Learned

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:04:20 -0400

The only Levon Helm story I have is the ticket I didn't buy to see the Last Waltz - the concert, not the movie.

I was 20 years old, working part-time at an ice-cream shop in Santa Cruz while I went to school. It was a great gig - paid a little above minimum wage, had flexible hours I could fit in around classes, and came with a discount that made me the most popular person at every pot luck I went to.

Polar Bear made its own ice cream - the only place in the County that did, back then. There were plenty of flavors, from rocky road to bubble gum, but by far the most popular were the flavors made with honey. Pot-addled students, surfers and musicians couldn't get enough of the carob mint and fresh banana. People drove from over the hill for the honey almond and cafe au lait.

Hot summer nights, the line would be out the door for hours. We developed great arms from carving out the giant scoops, hand-packing pint after pint.

When things were quiet, we made Bear Paws - ice cream sandwiches made with oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies, and a scoop of vanilla or Turkish coffee ice cream, all dipped in chocolate. Truly a treat ahead of its time.

One night Tom, a regular, told me about tickets for a concert he'd heard were going on sale - The Band's last concert, at Winterland. There were going to be special guests - and they were going to serve Thanksgiving dinner, too. Tickets were $25. Did I want to go?

I had to decide quickly. $25 was a lot of money, on an ice-cream scooper's hourly. I liked the Band but decided it was too expensive. No, I told him. Too much.

::insert sobbing sounds::

When he came in to the shop the day after the show, still glowing, and told me who had been there, I felt a little sick, and not from the Bear Paws. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison...Ringo! Dear god, it was a gathering for the ages. And I missed it.

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I am not sure what the moral of this story is except - go see live music whenever you can. You never know when it might be your only chance to hear a true, original American voice - something that will change your life forever.

A few years later, in 1978, friends asked if I wanted their extra ticket to see Bruce Springsteen at Winterland. I hadn't really listened to him, and didn't own a single album. It would be the first time any of us would see him live. This time, I said yes.

I don't remember how much that ticket cost, but I do remember Bruce tearing up the stage, jump-starting my heart. Lesson learned.

R.I.P. Levon!

Sad Men and Breaking Bad

Mon, 2 Apr 2012 23:04:41 -0400

"What is wrong with you people? You’re all so cynical – you don’t smile, you smirk." (Megan in Mad Men Season 5, Episode 2)

Like a lot of people, I loved Mad Men its first few seasons. I was attracted as much by the characters as the novelty of the setting. The 60s looked fresh and new all over again. I loved watching to see how the seminal events of the decade would play out on the screen, compared to how I remembered them (I am Sally’s age).

Over time, I realized that the writers may have gotten the details of the period right, but they’ve totally missed its soul. Like the clueless Don at the Rolling Stones concert in last night's episode, they’ve missed the essence of the decade even as they're surrounded by its trappings.

The series revolves around the question, who is Don Draper? Despite more twists and turns than Hwy 1, Don turns out to be exactly what he seems - a vacuous cad, who cares about, what, exactly? Who knows?

Last season, I watched with interest when he got together with the one character who was his equal in intellect, age and power. Of course, he broke up with her.

I tried to find another character to root for. Betty slapped her daughter. Joan cheated on her husband, the CFO lied to his wife, and they all began to seem like a smarmy, interchangeable lot.

By the end of the season, I realized there was not one character I liked. They were equally self-serving, dishonest, and despicable —variations on a thoroughly modern theme.

Mad Men is set in the 60s, but steeped in a narcissism that has much more to do with the Bush years than the Kennedy era. Like the ever-present smoke drifting through the impeccable sets, the writers filter the era through a cynical, toxic, and utterly predictable haze.

The writers of Breaking Bad, on the other hand, have made every character on that show someone you can’t ignore - fully drawn, human, and somehow recognizable.

Over several seasons, the series traces the evolution of a mild-mannered chemistry teacher into a meth-making drug lord - every step as believable and surprising as the next.

How did the writers get me to feel sympathetic for a meth-head who shoots a man point-blank as he opens his front door, or a man who is in the process of selling out everything and everyone he once cared about?

Hubris is the last sin, and Walter White is living it. Dare you to look away.

Set in the flat bleakness of the Arizona desert, Breaking Bad's characters tell a timeless story in a modern era.

Mad Men takes place in one of the most dynamic eras of the last century, but its characters ring as hollow as the Barbie and Ken dolls that Sally will soon outgrow. It has no more connection to the 60s than it does to the moon.

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I tuned in for the first episodes of Mad Men this year to see if anything had changed.

Nope.

Don doesn’t have the grace to see his three young children safely to the door of their mother’s house, but he does have the time to make a snarky comment about her to them.

Betty’s chief concern about dying is not that she will leave her children motherless, or miss them, but that she won't be represented fairly to them by Don's new wife. Sheesh.

Why does anyone care about these characters? (And why, exactly, are the writers so fixated on characters who have sex on the floor with women who say No?) I don’t know, I don’t care, and I don’t want to.

My prediction: Don’s new young wife is going to tire of his cynicism and break up with him soon. Me too.

Truth and Consequences

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:11:33 -0500

Yesterday, a story was posted here about a woman in Seattle who reportedly miscarried days after being pepper-sprayed and kicked by police. The story was an Editor's Pick and cross-referenced on the front page of Salon. Like a chant echoed by a crowd, the headline was borne aloft through social media. Commenters piled on, outraged.

If it is true, the story is horrific, and the outrage is deserved. But - the story might not be true.

I followed the links in the post to an article in one of our local papers, the Stranger. Almost immediately, the Stranger was having trouble corroborating the protester's story. Today, the Seattle Times reports the same problems trying to verify her account.

There are plenty of things to be outraged and horrified about. Can we save our collective energy for things that have passed at least the first level of fact-checking?

Otherwise we risk devolving further into a nation of Fox-watchers, mistaking memes for truth, and blindly repeated stories for investigative reporting. As writers, editors, and readers, we need to be more careful. The truth will out, so long as we have the patience and tenacity to find it.