Clackers. Marble balls on strings that you played with – we played with, I played with and absolutely loved – by making the two balls clack, bang and boom against one another (hand-eye development for sure!). They were so much fun; I loved the sound of the two balls meeting, but they were taken off shelves and horribly altered (plastic, no string, ick!) because pieces of breaking clackers were getting in people’s eyes, and bodies, I guess? That sucks, so I do get it, but oh, the loss!!
On line, where you can get a vintage paid of clackers for only $125, they’re called Klatter Balls. Klatter simply does not have the same deliciousness of Clackers. Words will ‘k’ in them tend to inspire humor, to imply fun will be had; I read that once, and I agree. Klackers. And yes, what would Freud say? Smashing testicle-like balls together has an underlying message I am sure, which is or was – hm – I wonder. LOL. The idea was how long, how many high and low clacks you could get, making the balls create a circle of sound at high speed. D’you think they also reminded men of the vulnerability of ‘their package’? Heeheehee. They were cool and heavy in the hand. Heeheehee.
I am not going to pay $125 bucks for a vintage pair of Klackers, but I admit, I’m tempted. Chinese jump rope was also an obsession around the same time, middle school, a madness that faded when our attention was turned toward…boys? Organized school sports? Our first jobs as teenagers? One day, we were hanging out, waiting for our turn to jump like mad around and within strewn together rubber bands stretched between the ankles of two of our friends, or frenemies, standing at least eight feet apart, or weaving plastic colored strand into chunky anklets, necklaces, and bracelets, or clackety-clack clack clacking to our hearts content. And then we weren’t.
Recently, a dear friend made the mistake of sending her bra purchase – a whole bunch of bras – to my address via one of those gigantic shopping platforms I will not mention here because in principle I don’t support them even if I too, occasionally, use them. She did this because she was tired and y’know, scroll, click without really looking, and oops! She was traveling and doing and life-ing; it can get confusing at times; my address is one she sends shit to once in a while, so it was in the queue. Having received a box of bras (did she mean them for me? oh, nope, not even close to my size!), I then waited until she was done traveling, or almost done, and putting the bras in a fresh box, sent them to her at her NYC address.
Well. That was almost two weeks ago. The box of bras, being sent from glamorous Nieuw Kingstone, have been to Newburgh, 10199 in NYC, 10024 in NYC (her zip code but wait, we’re not done), back to 10199 (a distribution center in midtown, something I didn’t realize I needed to know) back to 10024 out for delivery, then forwarded to 10021 (who TF knows why), back to 10199, out for delivery again yesterday in 10024, and now, this morning, at yet another USPS distribution center as yet unidentified (please lord, make it in Manhattan, and not the Bronx).
Here’s the thing. Certified prick Louis DeJoy is still running the USPS, after having been appointed by You-Know-Who. DeJoy and his co-hort of conservative cranks want to turn the oldest, most trusted U.S. institution (founded by Ben Franklin, for crying out loud) into a true and total understaffed and funded shit-show in order to go private because all that $$$$ going into upgrading infrastructure and buildings, pensions and decent wages for postal workers (who take a lot of shit), is making them crazy, making them drool, making them get hard over the only thing they think matters: cash.
Ideally, these creeps would like to privatize the education systems, water systems, and all other major public systems in this country because they see an opportunity not to serve the public but rather to squeeze the public. Many water systems in the U.K. were privatized during the long series of Tory governments; it was sold to the public as potentially ‘more efficient’, promising ‘better service’; it has been anything but. When private hands take over public good, cutting costs to maximize profits to private persons/shareholders (full disclosure, I have money in the stock market), the people suffer. Beaches in the U.K. have been inundated with untreated sewage thanks to ‘more efficient’ water and sewer services, but – and you can bet on this – not in posh communities.
An area where private interests are making inroads, increasing suffering in the U.S.? Prisons. Private entities are being given or ‘awarded’ communication contracts, reducing opportunities for families to have in-person visits with incarcerated parents, husbands, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers; these private companies streamline the ‘communication process’, limiting contacts to video consoles or phones that cost the users, very often the poorest and least able among us, big bucks to maintain relationships with their incarcerated family member.
Deep breaths. Regardless, I am hopeful the well-traveled and truly sophisticated box of bras will get to my darling pal sometime soon. Please. Put-leeeeeeze.
Aaaaaaaand: we have an update…the very well-traveled bras – two MORE trips to 10022 before another stop at 10199 and then, bah-boom, out for delivery in 10024 again and then – you’re kidding me, right? 10022 again and 10199 again and then, finally today, she got ’em (I made her text me a photo). Life is good. And, not for nothing, as she and I are both into astrology, yesterday (I am approximately a month in advance with my posts, generally, because I do not like to feel rushed!!) – yesterday Mercury went direct, so next time, maybe don’t send anything during Mercury Retrograde? From start to finish, it took from the 5th of August to the 28th. LOL.
Why now, when the summer is getting close to done and over, with mornings already chilling down? Well, I went away, and Diego spent Hurricane Debby in a boarding kennel (he loves it, lots of space to run, lots of dogs to bark at, horses too) where he got very wet, and by the time I returned to pick him up – his hair was a matted mess. Time for a shave, y’all, which included 2 tranquilizers (he loves his curly locks, and gets anxious, twitchy, and stressed) and a fond, foolish mother being shoved out the door because I was a distraction, or something. Meh. (I was.)
Isn’t he magnificent? Not my silly, floppy, curly muppet at present anymore, but still – a gorgeous thang. He’s recovering, and has eaten his rewards with gusto (no food when giving tranquilizers). His hair grows back in quickly, and might – by the time this is posted, have curled up again, but in the meantime, it’s an adjustment for us both, and no question he feels naked. Heeheehee… Poor booby. What a profile!!
I’m a nerd. I have no problem admitting that, and trivial or seemingly trivial facts fascinate, inspire or enrage me (or all of the above), and inevitably, albeit not always, stick in my head. Here are a few I find inneresting, and worth sharing, because inneresting and historical – yet not all of the facts below are ancient, in fact too many of them are much too recent, unless you’re a five or ten-year-old. They’re higher ed., bidness, and gubbmint related, and yes, women now outnumber men in undergrad and grad school enrollment, but, and, however – the overall picture re: women in leading legislative, business, and academic positions is not close to parity – for women, for women, for women, y’all. Because if we’re not in the room, we – and the issues that matter to us – might be on the menu, or chopping block. (Elizabeth Warren: “If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”)
Women were excluded from higher education all over this blue and green planet (Oxford conferred its first degrees on women in 1920) for actual, literal centuries, restricting them, therefore, from leadership positions of all kinds across all professions and disciplines. This began to shift, finally, in the 19th century, when women had two routes to higher education: they could enroll at either coed institutions, one of the few of which was Oberlin College (founded in 1833 for men only but admitting women and people of color beginning in 1837), or by enrolling women’s colleges like Wesleyan, which was founded in 1831. Between 1836 – 1875 fifty women’s colleges opened in the U.S.
In 1862, Oberlin awarded a degree to Mary Jane Patterson, making her the first black woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. By 1900, one in three black professionals in the U.S. held a degree from Oberlin, which is a truly astonishing tidbit that had a profound and lasting impact on African American citizens. Of course, at the time they admitted women (although I don’t know how long this ‘tradition’ lasted) Oberlin didn’t allow their female student to take classes on Mondays, because Mondays were set aside for the ‘girls’ to do Oberlin’s male student’s laundry (I may have just vomited a little in my mouth).
By 1934, 7 of 10 undergrads in the U.S. attended a coed institution, and the Ivies – who were among the last to go co-ed because of course they were – did so largely because talented and gifted young men were choosing to attend co-ed colleges in preference to single-sex institutions whether they were Ivy League or not because *many men actually like women (*not all men LOL). Hey, maybe women aren’t a distraction and waste of time and scholarly energy, maybe they’re a draw, you misogynistic assholes. Of course using the presence of women as a marketing tool to get men to attend your school is also sexist AF. FEH.
Stanford opened its doors in 1891 as a coed school (yay!!), joined by the University of Chicago that same year and the entire University of California system, established in 1869, was also coed from the get-go (double YAY). Many schools, however, ‘held out’ well into the second half of the 20th century, insisting that the co-ed model would ruin the college experience for men because men are what matters, y’all. Insert eye-roll emojis here___________.
To this day, the lack of parity in higher education leadership and faculty positions is stark. Women make up only 31% of full-time faculty in the U.S. and a mere 27% of tenured faculty. Job security matters, especially if you have a family, or want to: 70% of tenured male professors have children, only 40% of tenured women faculty do. Women of color hold an even smaller number of positions because of course they do regardless of talent or qualifications, with Black and Hispanic women making up only 3% each of full-time faculty throughout academia. These numbers change depending on whose research you take a look at, but the paucity of women of color in tenured positions is consistent across all research whoever is doing it.
Princeton and Yale began admitting women in 1969, which means the first degrees were conferred in 1973, with Brown University following in 1971. Dartmouth waited until 1972 and Columbia University did not admit women until 1983. Okay, okay Barnard – Columbia’s ‘lady’ college, was founded in the 1890s, and Radcliffe – Harvard’s ‘lady’ college was founded in 1879 – but and however…until the degrees received were conferred by Columbia and Harvard you know the world view on those other degrees was ‘not an Ivy, not to be taken seriously, not, not, not because lady college‘. Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, by contrast, had admitted women since 1870 and 1914, respectively.
One of the many research reports worth looking at (to this nerd) on women in academia is linked here:
As for business? As of June 2023, 10.4% of the major corporations in the United States were led by women. Of the 52 Fortune 500 CEOs that are held by women, a quarter were named CEO in the past year, which I believe speaks for itself. In government, the numbers aren’t much better, with only 25% of the US Senate, 28.7% of the House of Representatives and 31.9% of statewide executive positions held by women (but must we include Sara Huckabee Sanders and Alabama’s Kay Ivey because ugh); 12 women are governors, 22 are lieutenant governors, 30% of state senators are women, and 34% of state assemblies/houses are women. Nevada and Arizona have the highest percentage of women in their legislatures (60.3% and 50% respectively), with West Virginia and Tennessee having the lowest number of women in their state legislatures at 11.9% and 15.2% respectively. Numbers for all other levels are available here, and worth mining if, like me, you’re a numbers and facts nerd:
Let me repeat: ‘If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.’ – Senator Elizabeth Warren, and – speaking for Mother Nature during the hottest summer on record – yep.
“The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back.” – Carl Sandburg
The above from Carl Sandburg was given to me at age eighteen as an assignment – memorize this – from the theatre department at the university I’d entered in the fall of 1977. Ok, I can do that. Easy-peasy. We were gathered on the stage, all 100 or so of us Freshmen and women, to do the poem as a group, with our future instructors, with the Artistic Director of the theatre and theatre program, and it was – different. Did we add motion; I think we did, robotic jerks and starts? Mebbe. All I remember feeling was way out of my depth, plus the giggles because we started with breathing and relaxation exercises and the old guy (the A.D.) was grunting like a stuck pig, as were a number of my extremely enthused peers. Ok. I can do this. I guess.
If the message was ‘we’re all in this together’, which I had hoped it would be, it was soon made clear that was not the point – although, even all these years later, I’m not sure what the point of the poem, and our stomping around like robots, was. Go with the flow, remain open and curious, swim with the other fishies, and maybe, maybe the sharks won’t get’cha, perhaps? There were a lot of girls in tights and leg warmers. Good GAWD, leg warmers. There were a few men, not nearly enough, also in leg warmers and sweats, and I hung around the periphery trying not to stand out, but also trying not to fade into invisibility.
This was not, and these folks were not really ‘my tribe’, but I stuck with it, and them, making my way through the process of getting out of the house, into college and then – bam! – out into the wider world as had been prescribed and laid out before me since childhood. Step A, step B, step C. Did they prepare me for a career in the professional theatre? Meh. Not really. Did I learn something, and get a chance to grow up? Yes, I did, even if the growing up part took many more years. The breathing and relaxation exercises that made me giggle? Now those, those were helpful.
“The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back. The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman never talks back.”
