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Parent Category: Life and Style

Category: Living in USA

Created: 01 March 2013

Last Updated: 05 January 2016

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Letter from America.

By Cara Sheridan O’Donnell.

O'Donnell Irish EyesGuilty pleasures:  Everyone has at least one.  You know what they are, those innocuous, low-brow, or tasty-but-nutritionally-empty things and activities you hate to love.  You there—yes, you, the woman in the green dress who is reading this at your desk while you are supposed to be reviewing an employee’s monthly expense report—do not look away.  Do not glance down at the bottom drawer of your desk where you hide your stash.  All it takes is one guilty-looking, downward turn of your eyes and your coworkers will correctly conclude that you are the culprit responsible for the five dozen Twinkies wrappers discovered today in a malfunctioning heating vent.

And you!  Yes, you, in the pinstriped Armani suit. Pretend all you want to find it an imposition on your valuable time, but you are not fooling anyone.  Even your five-year-old grandson realizes that nothing pleases you more than opening up a brand-new jumbo box of crayons, and then coloring half the pages in his Batman and other superhero coloring books.

Some guilty pleasures are less benign than others.  The Twinkies lover mentioned above might have been warned in the past that she is flirting with incipient diabetes.  It would therefore behoove her to find an alternative guilty pleasure. (Bagpipe and square-dance lessons come immediately to mind; she just might savor these activities enough for them to qualify as her new guilty pleasures.)  There is no reason whatsoever, though, for Gramps to turn in his crayons for fishing gear or golf clubs.  The same could be said for the neurosurgeon who likes to unwind after a difficult procedure by reading a chapter or two of the latest Harlequin romance novel.  If I were her patient, I would rather see an assortment of steamy reads on her desk than to note that her office bookshelf was crammed with first-year medical-school textbooks or tomes with titles such as Brain Surgery for Dummies. Why she would find it necessary to hide her particular guilty pleasure from prying eyes is something I simply would not understand.  I am a fairly tolerant person; perhaps others are more judgmental, or more likely to poke fun.

You might be somewhat amused to learn that Abraham Lincoln’s guilty pleasure was to scarf down a plateful of gingersnaps.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Honest Abe’s guilty pleasure was gingersnaps, the 19^th-century equivalent of animal crackers.  I heard somewhere recently that the world-renowned chef Anthony Bourdain’s guilty pleasure is also food related.  No surprise there, but the delectable item in question is macaroni and cheese, and not of Bourdain’s own creation.  His favorite mac ‘n’ cheese dish comes from the kitchens of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  (Go figure.)  Jessica Simpson’s guilty pleasure is Nicorette gum, but she claims to be a nonsmoker. She says she just likes the taste of this quit-smoking aid.  (I’m sorry, but Simpson’s is a guilty pleasure which I cannot help but compare to that of a guy who claims that his guilty pleasure is to re-read back issues of Playboy magazine because they contain such thought-provoking articles.)

One woman I know confesses that doing laundry is her guilty pleasure. She fully realizes that she is supposed to grumble and groan about pairing endless socks, folding her husband’s tee shirts, and sorting the underwear of her four children into tidy stacks. To the contrary, she finds a soothing comfort in handling the warm cotton fabrics as she pulls them from the dryer.  Her house could go un-vacuumed and undusted for a month, but her family members sport the cleanest, least wrinkled clothes in town.  Best of all, one of her husband’s guilty pleasures complements her own.  After the kids clear the dinner table, Dad washes and dries the dishes, glassware, flatware, pots, and pans by hand, even though this couple has a dishwasher in perfect working order.  I would call their marriage a proverbial match made in heaven, wouldn’t you?

Many Americans will spill their secrets when asked, especially when they learn that others share their passion for watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” eating a breakfast consisting of peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches washed down with chocolate milk, or making semi-regular midnight runs to Dunkin’ Donuts for a box of glazed Munchkins   Some find the disclosure of their guilty pleasures difficult, but a word of caution here:  Do not, even for one nanosecond, believe folks who adamantly deny having at least one guilty pleasure.  Such people are not to be trusted.  For your own good, you should not encourage their friendship.  Oh, and one last bit of advice:  Do not, under any circumstances, invite self-proclaimed guilty-pleasureless individuals to attend the spring concert of your adult-ed musical ensemble.  Their snorts and snickers will echo unpleasantly throughout the auditorium when they discover that it is you who has the tuba solo.

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Written by Administrator

Parent Category: Life and Style

Category: Living in USA

Created: 22 February 2013

Last Updated: 05 January 2016

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Letter from America

By Cara Sheridan O’Donnell.

Gentle Readers,

O'Donnell Irish EyesI was having a difficult time concentrating this week.  No, I was not ill and I had nothing in particular on my mind. That was the problem. When I sat down to write this week’s piece several days ago, I simply could not think of a topic of interest to me.  I have faced that predicament before, so I began to write by employing the word “perhaps” to begin my initial sentence.  You might not be aware of this, but typing the word “perhaps” at the top of a page is a sure-fire technique to jumpstart the first draft of a school composition, undergraduate-level college paper, essay, or blog entry.  It has never failed me in the past.  However, in that attempt to write, “perhaps” was as far as I got.  Seventeen minutes after striking that “s” on my keyboard, I had already wandered over to YouTube, where I finished watching half a dozen videos of random groups of people performing the “Harlem Shake.” You might wonder how I then so effortlessly moseyed over to Wikipedia, where, for another quarter-hour, I educated myself about the population of Luxembourg (509,074 as of 2012, for those of you who might be interested), and learned that David Bowie’s wife, Iman, was born to a gynecologist mother and an ambassador father.  One glance at a photo of this exquisitely fit supermodel caused my stomach to rumble.  Pumped up with determination to satisfy my hunger pangs with a healthy meal, I made myself a bowl of granola with sliced banana.  Upon uncapping the bottle of skim milk in the refrigerator, I discovered that it was just “off” enough to make me gag.  Another ten minutes wasted, and I realized I had to go to the grocery store (where one can while away an hour or two, especially if vendors are offering free snacks or if one runs into a friend one hasn’t seen in 18 years, as happened to me on that excursion).

In my defense, I did have a couple of distractions this week.  My sister Susan was visiting from Virginia.  She brought along her dog, Una, a delightfully non-yappy Morkie who decided that my writing area—specifically, my bed—was the ideal spot to hunker down for her holiday, but only when I occupied it.  I could not very well ignore the sweet pooch, could I?  So, during one attempt to write, I instead shared with her some interesting websites on which her kith and kin are featured, an experience she seemed to enjoy as much as I did.  Thanks to that mutually satisfying exercise, it became crystal clear to me—oh, and I made it abundantly clear to her!—that, should I ever acquire another dog, I will not purchase a Morkie; there is just no telling whether the puppy will grow up to look more Maltese than Yorkshire or vice versa.  I like predictability in my purchases.  However, gazing down at her inquisitive little face, I did assure her that, if I were to adopt a puppy from an animal shelter, I would definitely consider driving home with one of her extended family.  Una seemed relieved, but I had wasted yet another good portion of one day in ministering to her psychological well-being.

once upon a timeNow, no visit from my sister is complete without spending at least one afternoon-into-evening with two of her four adult sons, who often take the train out from their respective Manhattan apartments to my suburban digs.  Preparation for a dinner date with these two young men, who are both six feet four inches tall, requires the laying in of a prodigious quantity of food, which is depleted shortly after they remove their winter coats but before they kiss their Auntie Cara hello. My nephews are entertaining, I must admit.  In fact, I so greatly relish their company that it was easy during their visit this week to lull myself into a false sense of complacency.  After all, when they depart after dinner, I told myself, I will have ample time to get cracking on another weekly submission. Yes…right after I watch the two-hour Season Three finale of “Downton Abbey.” I was not about to miss that, but, Oh!  The shock!  The horror!  Matthew dead.  It can’t be.  Poor Lady Mary!  Poor newborn baby boy! This cliff-hanger of a development merited long-winded discussion and plot dissection with others until the wee hours.

Activities of daily living, of course, also cut into my writing time this week, and a person has to sleep, too.  Am I not correct?  Well, to be honest, not even the ZZZZZZs materialized in the past few nights; I was kept awake with thoroughly unsuitable article topics dancing like out-of-season sugarplums in my head.  Come to think of it, those mental gyrations closely resembled an internal version of those videos of the “Harlem Shake,” as they were altogether graceless and without any rhyme, rhythm, or reasonable expectation of creating an enduring impression.

So, here you have it:  Today’s “Letter from America,” begun 15 minutes ago, contains only the minutiae of one person’s week.  Perhaps I should apologize.  (Oh, and perhaps that last sentence is how I should have started this epistle.)  On second thought, of what value is a letter without a few unexciting tidbits of information? This one is chockfull of tidbits! Moreover, in this letter, the sender is neither hitting you up for a loan nor making demands of you for repayment of money you borrowed.  There now, isn’t that nice?

All my best,

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Written by Administrator

Parent Category: Life and Style

Category: Living in USA

Created: 15 February 2013

Last Updated: 05 January 2016

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Letter from America

By Cara Sheridan O’Donnell.

O'Donnell Irish EyesWhen our dog, Jack, was put down after he was hit by a car, this act of mercy was performed with a pistol owned by a neighbor.  Had we no access to that gun, I do not know how long and how horribly the poor animal would have suffered.  The trauma to his brain was massive; perhaps he would have lived for an hour, perhaps ten hours, but would no doubt have had died with or without veterinary attention. I remember being grateful on the day that a gun was made available so quickly to us.  Was the gun registered?  I have no idea.  Was the weapon owned by a law-abiding, respectable member of my community?  Yes.   While I do not know the history of the gun itself, I do know the history of its owner:  It is most probable that, if the gun was bought in brand-new condition, its use that day was the first and only time it was ever fired to end the life of a living creature.

It was only after I moved to the South as an adult that I met many people who grew up with a healthy respect for and knowledge of all types of guns.  Some surprised me with that knowledge.  While on a business trip to New Orleans, I was accompanied by my favorite, gentlemanly young computer programmer.  After a long day manning the booth at a trade show, we chose to walk from the restaurant in which we had dinner to our hotel.  Taking one wrong turn, we found ourselves in a sketchy neighborhood, an area just unsettling enough to cause my co-worker to mutter, “I wish I had one of my guns with me.”  I was dumbfounded.

“You have a gun?” I asked, trying (without as much success as I had wished for) not to put too much emphasis on the word “you.”

My coworker regarded me curiously.  “I have about a dozen, maybe more,” he responded.  “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have at least one gun, except—well, I’m guessing—maybe you!”

Back in the office a few days later, he told our colleagues how astonished I had looked when he told me he was a gun owner.  Yes, I was teased unmercifully by the rest of them because, as it turned out, I was the only person in the company who had never so much as held a gun.  Indeed, one member of the customer support staff had recently purchased a new pistol to replace a gun she had given to her mother!  Mind you, our office staff comprised only upstanding citizens – nary a one had a criminal record.  Some used their guns fairly often at shooting ranges or on weekend hunting trips.  A few were ex-military or grew up on military bases.  Some no longer hunted but kept at the ready the guns they had acquired over the years for the protection of their families in the event of a home invasion.  One treasured his collection of antique firearms, certain that they would one day be worth a fortune.

GunsThe consensus among conservative, law-abiding gun owners is that mandating the registration of all weapons would result in the registration of only those weapons owned by conservative, law-abiding gun owners, and that criminal types will be the only individuals in the United States who possess unregistered weapons.  This is, in my opinion, a logical assumption.  It is also their fear that registration of all guns merely makes it easier for subsequent confiscation of weapons by authorities.  For this fear, they are scoffed at by gun-control advocates:  “Nobody wants to take all your toys away!”  I, however, find that fear to be well placed.  I do not like to think that registration requirements are necessarily a prelude to confiscation—not here; oh, no, not here in the land of the free and the brave!—but I have to think it could be.  Where does that leave all those unregistered weapons?  In the hands of criminals!  (Read my exhaled “DUH” right here!)

Registration of guns and ultra-strict requirements for obtaining guns are not the answer to the problem of violence in the United States.  They are not, as is asserted by some, even the beginning of a solution to the problem of violence in general; but what is the solution?  Can a solution be achieved in a year, a decade, or ever?  What are your thoughts?  Does a solution come readily to your mind?

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Ed’s comment:

Why don’t you let Cara know your views on this matter? In Ireland for example, you can’t buy a handgun, and to be found in the possession of one is considered a very, very serious offense. Yes you can purchase a rifle or shotgun, but the rules are very stringent.

The criminals have the guns, our uniform policemen do not (yes we have armed detectives and Swat teams etc) but our murder rate is still way below the US.

So does having easy access to a gun make your life safer when the bad guy has one?

‘Fire breathes fire in some people’s book’.

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Written by Administrator

Parent Category: Life and Style

Category: Living in USA

Created: 08 February 2013

Last Updated: 05 January 2016

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Letter from America. 

By Cara Sheridan O’Donnell. 

Part One.

O'Donnell IrishOne mild spring Sunday in 1995, about three months after we moved from New York to Georgia, our dog, Jack, was leashed and thoroughly enjoying a short walk with a young neighbor who was trying to convince her parents to buy her a puppy.  She was close to doing just that, in large part by “borrowing” Jack regularly to demonstrate to them how diligent she would be in caring for a pet.  We had adopted Jack four years earlier from an animal shelter on Long Island.  He was a “mature adult” border collie when he came to us—his “fur-ever” family—at the time of his adoption; therefore, none of us knew his precise age.  What we did know, though, was that Jack was as lean and lively as a much younger dog.  On the other hand, we had just recently noticed that he seemed to be developing what we and the vet thought was age-related hearing loss.

After a solid half-hour or so of walking, Jack made it clear to his young companion that he wanted to return home.  He tugged at his leash and, apparently deaf to the sound of a vehicle approaching at a high rate of speed, trotted into the middle of the road, where he was hit by the oncoming car.  It was a miracle, plain and simple, that the driver missed hitting the child, as well.  (The fact that the driver was someone who shouldn’t have been issued a driver’s license is another story.)  The little girl (now grown and a beautiful wife and mother of two) screamed for help when she realized that Jack had been hit, and hit hard. Hearing her cries of anguish, people emerged from houses, including ours.  I arrived at the scene just minutes after the accident and fell immediately to my knees on the asphalt beside Jack.  A “mama’s boy” from the moment of his adoption into our family, Jack tried to raise his broken and bleeding head when he finally heard my voice.  I remember wailing out to anyone who would listen that we had to get him to a vet.

One of our new neighbors knelt next to me.  Gently but firmly, he explained that a trip to the vet—the nearest one a good ten miles away and not open on a Sunday, anyway—would be fruitless; that there was nothing—with the exception of one thing—that anyone could do for Jack now.  This same gentleman then offered to do that one thing, to "put the pup out of his misery." Deep in my gut, I knew it had to be done, and done quickly, or Jack could suffer for hours.  In a voice quaking almost as violently as my body was trembling, I asked, "But how?"

Mindful of the children who had gathered at the scene, he whispered, "With a gun," as his arm tightened around my shoulder.

My response to that sounded stupid, even to my own ears: "Gun?  But who has?  Where? Gun?"  Remember, I was a suburban New York City girl who had only recently been transplanted to a then-semirural Atlanta suburb. At that time in my life, I knew very few people who owned (or even knew how to shoot) a gun, apart from an FBI agent friend of my father, a family member who was a Secret Service agent, and a sitting judge who carried a gun for self-protection.  (On reflection now, I might also have known a few guys who were rumored to have more than a passing acquaintanceship with firearms, but they surely didn’t go around talking about it.)

border collie"Cara, you're in Georgia now; there are lots of guns here.  I'll take care of it," my neighbor said, his soft Southern drawl somewhat calming me.  When I nodded my understanding, he urged me to go home, so as not to have to witness the act.  I said I’d wait with Jack until he returned with his gun, but I was able to shoo away all the children who were standing there in stunned silence.

Before he left to get the gun from his house, however, another neighbor, who had just come home from church, pulled up in her car.  This Southern belle sized up the situation in a flash and, much to my surprise, held her handbag out the car window, saying to our mutual neighbor as she did so, "Here; look in the side pocket.  I can't watch, but y’all can use my gun."  Honestly, I was never so grateful in my life to be in such close proximity to a gun.  Only later did I learn that the woman, who had been trained as a child in the responsible use of guns, owned a store which she often closed late at night by herself, and carried her little pistol in the unlikely event of a robbery.  On that Sunday, her gun was put to a merciful use.

I turned away but heard the shot, which sounded too loud to have come from such a tiny pistol.

Later that day, our Jack was buried in our backyard by two solemn dads, their eyes red-rimmed.  Jack was mourned by all who knew him, especially by the little girl who loved him so and who blamed herself for quite a while for something she could have done nothing to prevent.  The driver of the car that hit Jack, on the other hand, was a woman whose name we never learned.  During the few minutes she reluctantly stayed at the scene of the accident she had caused, she never came even remotely close to expressing simple sorrow over the death of a dog, much less any remorse over her part in that death.

I never did become a gun owner myself, but living in the South for 16 years certainly shaped and, to some degree, changed my thoughts regarding gun ownership in general.  I believe it should be something of a pain in the backside to procure a gun.  It seems reasonable to me to require a background check on a buyer, as well as a waiting period before that gun is removed from the store by a buyer. Permits to carry concealed weapons should be issued with equal vigilance, in my opinion.  Yup, that is what I believe; those are the views of Idealistic Me.  Realistic Me, however, knows that criminal minds are not going to obtain their weapons through legal channels.

Gun control is a hot topic in the United States these days, certainly the hottest topic in the past month or so.  Both Idealistic Me and Realistic Me agree that more stringent gun-control laws are not the answer to curbing and/or preventing acts of violence.  I intend to expand on this topic next week, but, in the meantime, I welcome your thoughts.

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