Monthly Archives: August 2006

The Bigger Picture

Posted on August 25, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

The glowing colors of a magnificent sunrise, a red fox tiptoeing through snow in the back yard, the face of a grandchild who has just discovered something new—another perfect "Kodak moment." And, of course, you don’t have the camera.

What’s the answer? You could try carrying a camera everywhere you go, hyper-alert for the next photo op, your finger poised to capture the moment for posterity.

Or not.

I remember a visit a few years ago to the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, a magnificent building filled with lush rococo gilding, carving, paintings, and statues. Its ceilings were painted with choir after choir of cherubs. It had more gold leaf than a fall New England landscape. To someone like me who thinks off-white is a color, its opulence was all more than a bit much. But even though it would be overwhelming to live in, it was marvelous to visit.

One man in our group went through the whole tour with his eyes glued to the viewfinder of a video camera. He couldn’t possibly have seen the full, wonderful extravagance of the rooms, because he limited his view of them to an inch-square screen. He was there on the spot, live and in person—and he missed it completely because he was so busy taking pictures.

I don’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with taking pictures. They can be works of art, images that stir emotions, and visual records of people we love. They can be a way to trigger and preserve memories. Still, you may not be creating any memories to recall if you focus all your attention on your camera and none on the experience you’re photographing.

Certainly, carry your camera. Take pictures when you have a chance or make an opportunity. Just don’t forget to look outside of the camera as well. When you fully experience where you are and what is happening around you, you’ll store images in your brain that are far more vivid than anything you can capture in a photograph.

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Who Is That Fuzzy Stranger in the Mirror?

Posted on August 17, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

There’s an old joke about the elderly woman who lost her glasses and couldn’t look for them until she found them. I never have found that joke to be very funny. It’s much too true.

Like everyone else in my immediate family, I have myopia. That’s Latin for "if it’s more than six inches from our noses, it’s a blur." Without corrective lenses we can’t recognize our own faces in the mirror. As my sister put it in a recent email: "What do members of this family do without their glasses? Nothing!"

I remember the evening when, at age six or seven, I announced at the supper table that I couldn’t see the numbers on the kitchen clock across the room. I remember driving home from town the first day I got glasses, noticing trees along the horizon that I had never known were there. Whenever I got new glasses, it was always frustrating to choose frames because I couldn’t tell what they looked like on my face until I got the finished pair with the lenses in. Then, if I didn’t like them, it was too late to change my mind.

I remember having kids with normal vision try on my thick glasses and say, "Geez Louise! How can you see through those things?" and trying to point out without actually using the word "dumb" that the real question was how could I see without those things. I remember as a teenager having to lean so close to the mirror to apply mascara that the handle of the applicator would bump against the glass. I remember the day I was riding Rusty at a lope and he fell. I hit the ground first, was incredibly lucky not to have half a ton of horse land on top of me—and my first emotion as I scrambled to my feet was relief that my glasses weren’t broken.

When I was a senior in high school, I became a beneficiary of one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th Century—contact lenses. For the first time in years, I had peripheral vision. I could stand at a normal distance from the sink and apply mascara. I could wear sunglasses. My first pair, a gift from the eye doctor when I bought my contact lenses, were large, round, and glamorous. They made me look like Jackie Kennedy. I loved those sunglasses, and I was crushed along with them the day I left them on the seat of the car and my mother sat on them. I’ve been looking vainly (yes, the double meaning is intentional) for a pair just like them ever since.

Then came adulthood, which led to middle age, which led to a new vision problem—presbyopia. It’s otherwise known as SAS (short arm syndrome). It can transform a woman from "cool chick" to "old biddy" faster than you can say, "reading glasses on a chain around your neck."

Actually, I wasn’t dreading presbyopia at all. In fact, I was looking forward to it, because I had a theory. It was a matter of simple logic. A: I was nearsighted. B: when you reach middle age you become farsighted. Ergo, C: the presbyopia would balance out the myopia, and I’d have normal vision.

Nice try, the eye doctor told me. It would happen just that way, too. Eventually. At say, about my 195th or 200th birthday.

In the meantime, he suggested trying a prescription of one contact lens for distance and one for close viewing. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me. So I’ve resigned myself. I now step back from the mirror to put on mascara. I’ve mastered the art of signing a debit card receipt on a line I cannot see. I’ve begun to collect reading glasses. With my office glasses, my purse glasses, my living-room glasses, and my bathroom glasses, most of the time, I can find at least one pair.

I refuse, however, to wear reading glasses on a chain. I may be myopic, presbyopic, and middle-aged, but I still have my standards.

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They’re Everywhere; They’re Everywhere!

Posted on August 11, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

I made a mistake yesterday. I took my visiting grandson to Hill City.

Let me hasten to explain that going to Hill City is not ordinarily a mistake. It’s a pleasant and lively town with several don’t-miss tourist attractions, including the 1880 Train and one of the best places to eat in the Black Hills. The Black Hills Institute, the objective of our visit yesterday, has an incredible display of fossils and dinosaur skeletons and is a perfect place to take a grandkid.

It wasn’t our destination that was in error. It was our timing. It’s Rally Week—that time every August when the more xenophobic residents of the Black Hills either leave town or else stock up on groceries and stay off the roads. The bikers are here. And there. And everywhere.

Let me hasten to explain again that I have nothing against motorcyclists per se. Half a dozen of my closest friends are bikers—or at least people who ride motorcycles. (Why, by the way, do you suppose people who ride motorcycles are called "bikers" while people who ride bicycles are called "cyclists?")

What I have a problem with is crowds. My reaction to the bikers is the same one I would have if they were all cowboys or quilters or Congressmen—all of which some of the bikers undoubtedly are. I’m sure they are great people. There are just too dang many of them in one place.

During World War II, the British had a saying about the American soldiers in England: the only thing wrong with the Yanks was that they were "overpaid, oversexed, and over here." That’s the way I feel about all the visitors this week. The only thing wrong with the bikers is that they’re out in force, out to party, and out here.

Categories: Just For Fun | 1 Comment

The Big, Bad Biker and the Little Lady

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

In the Black Hills, we have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally. It’s fun to see the bikes, we welcome the 400,000-plus visitors (and the revenue they provide), and we enjoy the notoriety the rally brings to the area. We also tend to blink at some of the costumes or lack thereof, wince at the noise, and breathe a sigh of relief when the last Harleys rumble out of town.

Most of us also like to tell our own biker stories. Here is one of my favorites. It’s a true story that happened a few years ago to my friend Jan.

One day during the rally Jan had made a quick trip to one of the big discount stores to get some shampoo. She went into the store and was heading for the shampoo aisle when she spotted the biker. He was big, maybe six foot two or three, with long hair hanging in a greasy braid down his back and tattoos swirling up his arms. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a leather vest that showed his chest—complete with more tattoos—and the hairy belly that hung over his belt buckle.

He was standing in the middle of a wide aisle, looking up and down with that confused air you have in a store when you can’t find something. When a clerk sees a customer with that look, the appropriate thing to do is go up to the person and ask, “May I help you?”

No one was doing that with this guy. Jan saw a couple of clerks in the vicinity, but they were both busily pretending they hadn’t seen the biker. Which wasn’t really surprising, because not only did he look confused—he looked angry. He looked as if he’d had a couple of small children for breakfast and needed at least one more for dessert. Other customers would come down the aisle with their carts, get a glimpse of him, and peel off down the nearest side aisle as if they’d just remembered something important they needed to get in housewares or lingerie.

As Jan came closer, the biker threw his head back and bellowed, “Won’t somebody help me!?” The two clerks vanished. The other customers walked a little faster in the opposite direction.

And Jan? Keep in mind that at this time she was in her mid-50s, a slender grandmother with gray hair, all of five foot one in her sneakers. She walked up to the man and asked him, “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”

She said later he looked like a little boy who was about ready to burst into tears. He told her he had gotten badly sunburned the day before. He’d hardly slept that night because his sunburn hurt, and he was trying to find some ointment to relieve the pain and help heal his sunburn.

Jan took him along to the pharmacy, grabbing her shampoo along the way, and helped him find some aloe vera lotion and a pain reliever. They went back to the checkout together. He told her this was his first trip to the rally, he really liked the Black Hills, and next year he hoped to bring his wife along—and if Jan wanted a ride on his Harley all she had to do was ask.

She declined the ride, but sent him on his way with a smile and a warm handshake—a gentle one, because of the sunburn. She went home with a good feeling along with her shampoo, and he went home to Indiana with a peeling sunburn and a positive memory of Rapid City.

Of all the people in the store that day, Jan was the only one brave enough to approach this scary looking guy. She was the only one with the compassion and the insight to look past his tattoos and his angry face to see the perfectly ordinary person who was tired and hurting and just needed a little assistance.

The moral of this story is: Don’t be afraid to look a little deeper than what you see on the surface. There’s much more to any of us than the way we look on the outside. Elegant fashions, grubby work clothes, or grimy leathers aren’t who we are, they’re merely what we’re wearing. Never be too quick to judge a bird by its feathers—or a biker by his tattoos.