She had had her eyes out for some time now, looking for a certain type of blouse or shirt, something she could wear on cooler days under something else, I forget which. If you know Portland, Oregon, you will agree that the place is better known for covered wagons than for fashion. There is a Nordstrom’s, though, but they had no such blouse or shirt. Which is no surprise if you consider her specifications: cotton, long sleeves, a certain style of collar, form fit, not blousy or baggy. Oh, and it had to be white and show no small pictures of crocodiles or horses.
Let’s not worry, I suggested. We were scheduled to fly to London three weeks hence. London is full of world class stores. This will give us some fun shopping abroad. What excitement, I promised.
Well, we did get to London. The place is indeed full of Kleins, Armanis, Hermeses, La Costes, Bosses, Diores, Michael Korses, Pradas, Ralph Laurenses, Ferragamoses, Burberries, and Chanels. They all had everything but not what we needed. Sure, we found a blouse with sleeves. But it had the wrong collar. We did find one with the right collar but it was made of silk, not cotton. After three days of exhausting shopping, including Harrods, Selfridges, and Marks & Spencer, we still had no blouse (or shirt).
We had planned to fly home via Paris, anyway. It made sense, therefore, to postpone further shopping for clothes until we got to the capital of fashion. We thought. What a rude awakening it was when we found out that Paris was not full of high, or any, fashion. The market is dominated by the same hum-drum cookie cutter stores, the Kleins, Armanis, Hermeses, La Costes, Bosses, Diores, Michael Korses, Pradas, Ralph Laurenses, Ferragamoses, Burberries, and Chanels.
Some of the exciting mystery of traveling to foreign countries, the pleasure of shopping in a different market, died for us that day. The world, it appears, at least from the shopper’s point of view, has become a homogeneous blend of sameness. The cities of Europe, and presumably Asia as well, are but clones of each other. They are as predictable as outlet stores in the Mojave desert. Disappointed successors of Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, we flew home. We stopped over in San Francisco where the rest of our dream died: from Union Square to Fisherman’s Wharf, guess what? Same old, same old: Calvin Klein, Armani, Hermes, La Coste, Hugo Boss, Dior, Michael Kors, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Ferragamo, Burberry, and Chanel. And still no blouse.
To add insult to injury she found her blouse the next day at home in Portland, at T.J. Maxx on Washington Street. And it was on sale, too.
(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
We are finally getting it right. The country is waking up. The first step is a big step, maybe not Moon shaking but certainly big. We are updating our poets! Because this is what Robert Frost really meant to say: “Something there is that does love a wall”. And we now join Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher as we sing “Do fence me in!” And we remember, of course, our own Ronald Reagan’s powerful speech: “Mister Gorbachev, do keep up that wall!”
When I was a child growing up in Germany in the Thirties the highest paid entertainer in the world, they say, was Grock the clown. “The king of clowns” they called him. Everybody loved him but nobody, as far as I can remember, ever suggested to turn the government over to him. But then, of course, we already had a Reichskanzler.
I have seen TV programs that developed something like this: The Master of Ceremonies walks out on stage. The audience breaks out in wild shrieks. The man has not said anything yet.
Come March it will be 125 years since he died. If there ever was a poet, American or otherwise, who painted his words with a broad brush, to mix a few metaphors, it was Walt Whitman. Just listen to that enthusiasm: “Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!” “I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon!” “And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self.” “Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”
You must hand it to the Bard: he always finds the right words. Here is an excerpt from Act III of Midsummer-Night’s Dream, slightly brought up to date. Quince is the speaker:
“Alas, the brain is a receptacle for nonsense”. So says Dr. Fishelson, a character in one of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories. “This earth belongs to the mad”. It often feels that way. Scholars used to study their texts. Now they text about their studies. And they do that on IPHONES and TABLETS and ANDROID devices that are also capable of ASR and that have PHOTO APPS in case PIX are needed. It is all done in a mysteriously abbreviated language accessible only to the elect. The acronymns alone can tax your memory. Granted, some we readily understand. If invited to a meeting we expect an RSVP, but not necessarily an ASAP or a FYI.
One often hears it said that there is “no free lunch”. Tell that to your neighborhood hippie. He (or she) will probably be surprised that you do not know that “food just is”.
What is so holy about holy? Just asking the question is an absurdity. Dictionaries don’t help. “Holy” with a capital “h” is the sacred, pertaining to divine things or beings. While “holy” can also be merely a word used in expressions of surprise, as in “Holy cow!” And then there is Hollywood where there are neither hollies, nor anything holy or even surprising.