Author: Mary Fons

  • Civil Disobedience Is Hard. (Do it anyway.)

    I don't like you either, PETA. 'Case you were wondering.
    I don’t like you either, PETA. ‘Case you were wondering.

    If I were a betting woman, I’d wager 95% of human beans are trying to do their best 95% of the time. The 5% of people who aren’t trying at all are sociopaths. The 95% of people who take 5% of their time off are just tired. I’m with you. These odds mean that I cut folks a break most of the time and I cut myself a break, too. No need to get worked up over a cup of church basement coffee. No need to shout. No need to be rude to the waiter. We’re all trying. Be cool. 

    However.

    This love and compassion for humanity dictates that I must stand up for true wrongs where they arise. If I don’t, can it be said that I have love for humanity? If I don’t stand for something, I’ll fall for any grievous act committed by the Transportation Security Administration. For example.

    I ride in airplanes more than most, a lot less than some. After researching the then-new TSA backscatter machines a few years ago, I decided I would always opt out of going through one. Every time. It wasn’t the threat of radiation: I’ve had so many MRIs and CT scans in my life, I probably already glow in the dark. What bothered me about the machines was that they were so clearly about business more than security. A handful of companies got mountains of money to sell new scanners to airports — airports with scanners that worked just fine already. Dig about six seconds into the story and you’ll find that the three backscatter-making firms have ties to lobbyists and U.S. Representatives on both sides of the aisle. I’m a proud capitalist (we always are) but the deal smelled dirty to me and I felt my fear being exploited. That never feels good.

    And then there was the whole “someone’s seeing me naked” thing which only bothered me after it turned out that yes, people were looking at your naked body when you went through, despite all protestations from the TSA officials that they weren’t. Hey, I love being naked. And on the special occasions when someone gets to see me loving being naked, that’s dandy. But the filthiest word in the English language, hyphenated or otherwise, is non-consensual and it would take a full bottle of tequila and/or a lobotomy before I’d consent to letting a sloppy TSA dude in a room on the other side of the airport look at my bare bodkin. This bodkin is mine, pal. You gotta ask first. Besides: you have clothes on, and that means we’ve got an abuse of power. And I hardly need to point out that where I live — in America, dammit — peeping is against the law. Pardon my French, but I figure the appropriate response to the entire no-clothes imaging thing is “F-ck you.”

    But then came the true offense. For a number of years, and on two separate occasions, I had an ileostomy. Translation: I wore a small bag on my abdomen and that’s how I pooped. I was a very sick girl and that ostomy saved my life twice so I never exactly hated it, but it was a tribulation. Now, the old scanner machines were never an issue for an ostomate like me. An ostomy bag’s parts are 100% plastic, so unless you put something metal into the bag, which you could theoretically do (ew) there is nothing at all that would be of concern to the metal detectors, therefore no security issues.

    Ah, but the backscatters, they see all. Sort of. They sure see ostomy bags. If you are the owner of one and you happen to be in the security line with the gal who doesn’t know what she’s looking at on the screen? Buckle up.

    It happened in Detroit. They saw my naked, ostomied body and freaked out. I was treated roughly, questioned past my explanation of my medical situation. I was taken inexplicably into a closet — not a room but a closet — and made to reveal my bag and show it to the pair of bovine TSA women who with every passing minute revealed themselves to be less intelligent than I had initially guessed. I was in tears by the end of it, when they decided I had an ostomy bag and not a pouch full of terror. It might’ve been something like that for them, had they kept poking at it. It was the one time in my life I wished for a defective bag. Is that mean?

    So I opt out of those machines and it’s a real pain, man. The opt-out takes longer because you have to wait for someone to do the pat down and then you have to do the pat down. The TSA people hate you because you have an imagination and because you’re interrupting their flow. You are stared at. People in line behind you think you’re suspicious; other people think you’re stupid because everyone knows there’s more radiation in your cell phone than there is in a backscatter machine. They heard that on CNN so it has to be true! And sometimes even I think, “Geez, who cares? It’s faster. Just do it.” Famous last words.

    So I go the extra mile, every time. It’s the principle of it. It’s my instinct. And it’s my right.

    NOTE: The management realizes we’ve misused the word bodkin in the above post. We like it, though.

  • Nuts!

    More.
    More.

    Greetings from North Dakota!

    There are plenty of reasons to love The Peace Garden State. For your consideration:

    • the North Star Quilt Guild is here; I was invited by this guild to give a series of lectures this weekend. Ladies, it has been a delight — thank you. 
    • Lewis and Clark saw their first Grizzly Bear not far from where I am sleeping this evening
    • Canada = spittin’ distance
    • you can get fresh roasted Bavarian nuts in the Grand Forks convention center

    About this last thing.

    I had three events today: two lectures and a Q&A session. After my first lecture, I stepped out of the room and into the hall and my olfactory senses were caressed? made love to? by the smell of roasting sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. It was as if an enormous homemade caramel had plopped down on the roof.

    “WHAT IS THAT?” I said, a little too loudly to no specific person. “WHAT AM I SMELLING.”

    “Oh,” said a lady with a quilt show badge, “Roasted almonds. There’s a game today. ” She said this like it was no big deal, like warm, sugary, roasted nuts were as exciting rubber washers on sale at Home Depot.

    “WHERE ARE THEY.”

    My nose was pointing straight up in the air and I was whipping my head around — SNIFF! SNIFF! The aroma was mouth-wateringly great. Forget hot chocolate, forget burning leaves. The smell of roasted almonds in October trumps those autumnal scents. Indeed, there was a game on the other side of the big convention center and the almonds are a staple in the concessions sold on game days. I asked if non-game-attending folks could procure these magical treats somehow. The terrible answer came: no, you need a ticket to get past the gate, sorry.

    But a hero appeared!

    “I can take you up there,” said a young man in a blue convention center staff coat. His name was Kevin and he had overheard me freaking out. I latched onto Kevin at once and he lead me through the hall. The smell got stronger.

    I really like roasted nuts. In New York City there are a lot of roasted nut vendors on the street with their steaming carts. You can get cashews, toffee almonds, sesame seed nuts — just about any kind o’ nut. When it’s icy and cruel in New York, you wrap your paws around that warm sack of crunchy, sweet nuts and it doesn’t matter that you can’t afford to live in New York or really even visit for more than three days; it doesn’t matter that you can only afford warm nuts for lunch. Really, like, just the nuts. Maybe a coffee.

    I found the vendor upstairs. I paid $11 for the largest plastic cone. The cone was the size of a plumpish guinea pig and every bit as warm. Maybe warmer. A guinea pig with a mild fever, maybe. I cradled it to my breast and stole back down the stairs and to my room on the other side of the complex. I flopped on my hotel bed and I ate five. They were really hot and I have a loose filling, so I had to be careful. I was drowsy from my adventure, so I fell asleep with them in my hand. When I woke, I ate three more and thought up good names for roasted nut vendor carts:

    Completely Nuts
    Perfectly Nuts
    Nuts About Bavaria
    The Nutty Bavarian

    And then I tried to think of names that would be bad:

    She’s Nuts
    What Are You, Nuts?!
    The Fevered Guinea Pig
    The Nut Cup

    Thanks, North Dakota. I’ve had a lovely visit.

  • Saintly Germain

    I didn't do it! Blame it on France!
    I didn’t do it! Blame it on Napoleon!

    I recently bought a bottle of St. Germain, a sweet liqueur produced in France. It was recommended to me for use in fancy cocktails and in the sly, delicious fortification of white wine. The bottle came in a gift box with a carafe and a 1′ x 2′ poster featuring scantily clad young girls, presumably photographed in France, presumably around 1920, presumably drinking St. Germain. I direct your attention to the scanned-in portion of the poster I’ve included above, in case you missed it. (You didn’t.)

    When I opened up the poster that day, I hooted with glee. “What??!” I cried, and showed my friend Ben in town from Portland. He snatched it from me at once. He grinned. “Now that’s good marketing.” There were instructions on the backside (!) of the “pamphlet,” as Ben called it, on how to mix various drinks using St. Germain.

    “If that’s a pamphlet, I’m a Freedom Fry,” I said, taking it back. Oh, the French. So obnoxious, so brilliant. Getting a maid’s nearly bare bottom smack in the middle of a poster when all I wanted was an aperitif is a little presumptuous and…well, plain sumptuous. The poster works beautifully. It’s a genius move on the manufacturer’s part. My friend and I poured a touch of the liqueur into our Chardonnay, sipping and staring, transfixed by the image of these two girls. He was fantasizing about happening upon the pair by accident; I was fantasizing about being one of them.

    Look again. Wouldn’t you want to be there?

    Two pretty, stockinged French girls in their early twenties are reading a book together. It’s summer, around four or five o’clock in the afternoon. Cicadas buzz in the trees and lazy bees dip and wobble over field flowers. Just out of sight is a picnic basket and the Peugeot bicycles they used to get to the clearing. The girls stole a tube of lipstick from a sister earlier and a bottle of — wait for it — St. Germain. They’ve been at leisure for several hours, dozing, drinking, laughing, telling secrets, taking long, deep breaths. It’s bright and hot but there’s a gorgeous breeze; the air feels so marvelous on the skin that they’ve allowed their skirts to get rumpled, their knickers to show without a single care in the world. They are floating in private, languid, countryside. Friends, kindreds, girls, girls, girls.

    What I love most about this photo is what isn’t there: There is no man. If you’re a girl who has ever had a best girlfriend, you know the sweetness that comes from a perfect, sensual afternoon that involves zero dudes. It’s not sexual. But it’s sensual, best believe that. Indulgence of the feminine kind is one of my favorites. These days, I am mostly busy with my career, with dating the male sex, with stitching patchwork and setting (more) goals. But when my longtime friend Kristina comes over, she always spends the night. We talk till midnight, we sometimes have wine, we talk about love and books and the past and when it’s time to get into our jammies, we never care if the other sees us change. She sleeps on the couch, I go to my bed.

    But oh, for a glade, St. Germain. Oh, for those lazy bees.

  • Empathy Day.

    Cheer up, Charlie. (Virginia Woolf.)
    Cheer up, Charlie. (Virginia Woolf.)

    Everywhere I looked this past weekend, I saw human suffering. It wasn’t pity; my path continually crosses with people just like me who have their crosses to bear, just like me, and pity is gross. The difference was that for a few days I was a particularly raw nerve for some reason, and I felt the ache more acutely. Who can say why.

    The three lame gaits I witnessed (one after the other, each more severe than the last) were the first taste of the tone of the whole two days. First was a young woman just ahead of me on Wabash. One of her legs was significantly shorter than the other and she walked with an UP-down, UP-down, UP-down rhythm. I wondered if she sensed that rhythm anymore, or if it has always been so normal that it’s long been absorbed. After her was an elderly man so corkscrewed by scoliosis he looked directly at the ground and was clearly not able to look elsewhere. I’m not sure how he gets around like that, but he was getting around, and he had a plastic bag from Walgreen’s.

    Then came a fellow on crutches. He wanted to sign up for the Segway tour I went on but after much deliberation and discussion with the kindly tour crew, he didn’t. As it turned out, the young, attractive (Iranian? Turkish?) man had MS. The Segway machine responds instantly to even the lightest movement of the body riding it; since multiple sclerosis causes involuntary movements, riding the Segway would not be safe. A thigh that mutinies and jerks to the left would jerk the whole contraption to the left, too, putting the young man and the pedestrians around him at great risk. As he crutched past those of us gleefully practicing on our Segways in the park, he gave a big smile and said, “Have fun, guys!” and I nearly wept, absolutely, this is horrible, no, no, that is not right, I hate everyone, you gotta be f-cking kidding me, no, no… I recalled an infirm Virginia Woolf who wrote about resenting healthy people, resenting “the armies of the upright.”  I felt ashamed at the surplus of health I possessed. I wanted to give him some and then we could both ride.

    And the next morning, an old woman with rheumy eyes scrabbled up to the front of the bus to ask, repeatedly, “Is this 9th Street? Is this 9th Street? Do you go to Roosevelt? Is this 9th Street?” I knew the bus route well and so I went up to the front and said in a gentle voice that I was getting off where she was and I’d make sure she got her stop. And so I did, and she began to talk to me as we disembarked. She was going to the store a block or two away; I said that I was going to the same store (true) and that we could walk together. She liked this idea and we shared a good 15 minutes of conversation as we walked slow as snails. Her name was Jahuri and she wasn’t such a sorry figure — kind of a spitfire, honestly — but at 77 with severe glaucoma that had long gone undiagnosed, she would be blind within a year. Her cloudy eyes tugged at my heart and when I left her at the store, my whole body felt heavy.

    And then at Starbucks, a little baby touched a plush toy to his downy cheek. “Mamah!” he cried, showing her his new friend. “Mamah!” The beautiful young Spanish mother picked up her son and said, “Ah! Carino!” and it wouldn’t be a moment of suffering at all except that I felt briefly, deeply devastated that I have no baby, that my bloodline will end when I do, and what a shame it is when the doors to possibility close.

  • Found Text: My Grad School Application Essay

    That's my folder this semester. But do I have a cubby??
    That’s my folder this semester. But do I have a cubby??

    And now, without asking for it and likely not wanting it, I present my grad school application essay. It’s a bit of a longer read, but it is essentially the story of how I was robbed in January and the story is pretty good. I labored so on this piece that my writer’s ego won’t allow me to let it gather dust in Google Docs forever.

    Editor’s Note: WordPress doesn’t do footnotes, so I’ve cobbled together a blog version of the two I included; it should be clear. Also: I got into the program!

    Fons
    Writing Sample
    University of Chicago MLA Admissions
    Spring ’13

    “To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.”
    – David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature

    Kill a man’s family, and he may brook it,
    But keep your hands out of his breeches’ pocket.
    – Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto X, Stanza 79

    For well over an hour I stood, arched over glass cases, chatting with the guys at the fancy pen shop. We looked down at the different models. I learned about barrels and nibs, the difference between this Italian manufacturer and that German one. I was shopping for An Official Pen, the first in my life. I had decided to become a woman of letters even if I was the only one who knew it and I needed the proper tool for the job.

    I auditioned several before I found an Italian rollerball made of heavy white resin with gold details and a nice heft. It fit my hand just right and streamed ink onto paper with an almost wanton quality. This sexiness, mixed with the solemnity and significance one expects from An Official Pen, ended the search. I paid, tucked my purchase into my handbag, and my new pen and I sailed through the shop doors onto the street. I do write so many words each day; now the already pleasurable act was getting this insane upgrade. How was it possible to be so happy?

    Less than an hour later, my purse was stolen. Just like that, my pen was gone, and I went from bliss to panic. For a time I was inconsolable, but in the hours and days that followed, I considered an argument that challenged my reasons be upset. According to this argument, no one had actually taken my purse: in fact, there was no such thing.

    * * *

    Had he been at Panera that evening, 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume would’ve patted a hysterical me on the shoulder and asked me to consider the lily.

    Hume made many significant contributions to the world of philosophy, but the one that concerns us here is his controversial ‘bundle theory.” Bundle theory is the ontological assertion that there really is no such thing as a lily. What there is is your sense of smell, your perception of flowers, your memory of previous “lilies,” atoms of water and carbon, your understanding of height and weight and how such things are measured, and so on. In other words, a lily is no more than a collection of its properties; without all of these pieces sliding into place, a lily might as well be a hippopotamus, or a war missile, or Greenland, or nothing at all.

    There in the cafe (better: there in a square space delineated by slabs of brick and mortar wherein one conceives of ‘soup’ and ‘sandwich’) my purse had been deleted. None of its physical properties were available to me any longer; I had only a memory of them — a pretty flimsy “property,” if you ask me. And though I believed I was adequately describing the purse over the phone to the police, there was so much adrenaline pumping through me at that moment, even the picture in my head was shorting out. Perhaps to the thieves “my” purse still physically existed (was it “theirs” now?) but to me, my beloved handbag was suddenly nothing more than a concept — an expensive black Italian leather one that held the contents of my organized life. What was a handbag? What was any object that could be so empirically with me one moment and gone the next? Do handbags exist, Mr. Hume? Mine certainly didn’t, not anymore. The bundle had left the building and was probably halfway across Chicago at that point.

    It wasn’t until I applied Hume’s theory to my situation that I began to feel even slightly better. If the purse was a concept now, it was a concept an hour before the crime as well; I just felt more comfortable with it back then. There was another purse I had yet to encounter that would be attractive to me as a replacement. The pocketbook, the keys, the day runner, the phone — these were all just bundles of properties, I told myself, not items of true substance that existed on their own, certainly not items that I could feel real affection for. (Full disclosure: the Chanel lipstick was tough — I loved my “La Somptueuse” very, very much and of course that particular shade has been discontinued; in the end I had to admit that lipstick is only pigment, water, and sexual possibility; nothing more and not anything less. It’s hard to be actively devastated when you decide to bag emotion and consider objecthood instead. An hour later I stopped crying and straightened up.

    My purse never existed. My purse never existed. My beautiful, beautiful purse.

    Though I  was somewhat less distraught after considering all this — calling my mom helped, too — my inquiry into the nature of material things wasn’t quite finished and now threatened to disturb me more profoundly than the theft itself. In terms of causing long-lasting trauma to a person, I do consider the battle of petty crime vs. metaphysical crisis an even match. As I walked up Michigan Avenue the next morning carrying exactly two personal effects (1), I felt positively weightless. Weightlessness is a feeling with a good reputation, but actually it’s awful. This is because it defies one of the the most fundamental properties of all material objects: gravity. Even if they are all just a big bundle of this and that perception, even if we’re making all this up, blink by blink, material objects (e.g., apples, purses, small dogs), are spooky if they suddenly start floating in the air.

    Everything on my body seemed subject to fling off at any moment. I fully expected to be robbed again, was anticipating it, bracing myself for another thief who might divest me of my coat, even the shoes on my feet. My glasses weren’t a given: they might pop off my face and go flying into the sky. What, exactly, was keeping them from doing just that? Wasn’t everything else gone? Hadn’t my fellow man betrayed me once? My previous relation to objects and other humans (more objects!) was now absurd. We believe we own things, that we “have” them, that they exist because we see them; after the purse snatching, these ideas flagged and dropped. Not a very good place from which to go to the D.O.T. for a new driver’s license, but I went anyway, brow furrowed. (2)

    * * *

    I have replaced my pen.

    The shop guys gave me a YPT (“You Poor Thing”) discount and two free ink refills, which was awfully sweet of them. The argument that there is no such thing as a thing, a concept I might not’ve considered at such length had I not been unceremoniously divested of many precious things, did help me cope. But bundle theory, like arguments for or against deism, does kind of end up in a similar, dare I say impotent spot: either there is a god or there isn’t; either there are substantive things or there aren’t; we still have to pay the electric bill. We still have to pee. We still have to make sure we’ve received and read through a particularly strong graduate school applicant’s materials thoroughly.

    Are you sure you have everything?

    ——————————
    (1) Passport, mint.
    (2) A final dispatch from ground zero: As I passed WGN, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that the radio would report the story.z “Popular Chicago resident Mary Fons was robbed yesterday. Police say her Marni handbag, itself valued at over $1500, was stolen at a cafe at Congress and State around 4pm. Cafe staff assisted Fons in placing calls to cancel credit cards, including Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Citibank. A report was filed with Chicago police. “They made me call 311 because this is a non-emergency,” Fons said, “But as a woman’s brain is located in her handbag, I may require an ambulance.”

  • My Way Or the Segway.

    "Paper skyscrapers/scrape the skyline."
    “Paper skyscrapers/scrape the skyline.”

    Get a coffee at the Pret a Manger on Saturday morning. Drink half of it, then resolve to drink less coffee, more water. Make this resolve every single day for seven years and keep doing it until notified otherwise.

    Pay your money. Sign the insurance release for the Segway tour. Marvel at how you always first write, “Sequay.” Wonder genuinely if you have mild dyslexia, because it’s always been like this with the “q’s” and the “g’s” and the “b’s” and the “p’s,” a little dimple in your composition, strawberry jam in the gear shift.  See pods of marathon runners and whirr past them, carefully but not without the sniff of a cool kid.

    Think about Nike (human engineering) vs. Nike (Greek god.) Decide it’s an even match.

    See the city from A Beautiful Spot and marvel with your best friend how lucky you are to be alive and breathing. Get hungry “after all this Thoreau-ing.” Go to the new pizza bar; fuel up.

    Kiss.

    Smile.

    Snap picture.

    Have six great ideas before you even leave the pier.

  • Salon and On: Charles Ifergan on Oak Street.

    The carousel of love.
    The carousel of love.

    I love my salon.

    Finding a home for your hair is no small task in the big city. Salons grow like weeds in every neighborhood from Cicero to the lake and stylists pour like water out of so many beauty school faucets. (Note to self: check and see if “beauty school” is derogatory.)

    But two years ago, I found my spot. It is Charles Ifergan on Oak St. and it is a magical place. If you don’t live in Chicago, you likely won’t know that Oak St. is one of our poshest roads. There’s a Lanvin store there, if that tells you anything, and if you need to be told something else, there’s a Harry Winston, too. (Note to self: check and see if anyone’s ever coined the euphemism, “a Harry Winston.”)

    But my salon, while not a bargain, isn’t outrageously expensive simply because it’s near a shop that (successfully) sells purses for $35,000. In New York or L.A., this proximity would automatically mean that your hair — just a trim! — would be upwards of $400 bones. But this is Chicago. You can’t charge $400 for a haircut. You can try, but most people will laugh at you and then you will go out of business. We eat bratwurst here. So Charles Ifergan is competitive but not gouge-y, so I can give them a sane amount of money and feel very, very fancy without going bankrupt, which is where I would go if I gave my money to nearly any other place of business on Oak.

    The elevator up to the fourth floor is entered into from the actual street, first of all, and that’s just rad. The first time I had an appointment, I got in and the doors shut and I was whisked up in that elevator; okay, it actually heaved me up — not a new elevator. It’s okay, because when the doors opened to the salon, it was love at first sight/smell.

    The noise of dozens of hairdryers, at least a dozen stylists, and the chatter of every client in the place nodding heads full of highlight foil created a marvelous clatter and whir. Someone was calling to someone else and a handsome woman was tapping a foot with a high heel at the reception desk. The smell was intoxicating: chemicals, botanicals, mists of Avalon and sprays like waves on a beach. The layout of the salon is circular, which makes it feel like more of a beehive than it already is.

    George does my color. I think he’s Greek? He has a lovely accent. I found him — and the salon — because a “Best of Chicago” report in Elle magazine called him out by name. I said, “Well, I like the best, so… To George!” And the mention was well-bestowed: my haircolor has never been more lovely and George, I think, truly sees me as one of his clients now. You do have to prove yourself, you know. It’s still the big city.

    Phoenix cuts my hair and does my blowouts. He is an adorable creature. He’s hella smart, too, and friendly, and we cackle and commiserate while he works his own magic.

    This is not a post that I was paid to write. It’s just that I’m composing this at Charles Ifergan at this very moment, getting my roots done and then seeing Phoenix for a cut and style. I have a good weekend planned and one must always be prepared.

    Hats off, Mr. Ifergan…because you’re worth it! And I will accept a coupon, but no biggie.

  • Bloomingfail’s.

    It's like a little alligator chomping my joy.
    Like a little black alligator chomping my happiness.

    The riot of pink in the picture above is a dress, and that’s my leg, and that big black annoyance hanging from the bottom is the new anti-theft system recently deployed at Bloomingdale’s in Chicago and, I assume, everywhere else. Sorry the picture is reversed — I was trying to get a shot that didn’t get too friendly and was up close enough to allow you to examine the device. I partially succeeded. Sorry, Mom.

    Department stores have long used electronic sensors on their garments as well they should. Thieving from a store is not cool and those honks and buzzers that sound at the door when someone tries to take a non-paid-for item of clothing past them have surely deterred countless people from trying to do so. But there’s a new game in town because there’s a different kind of theft the Bloomie’s folks are after: buying something, wearing it, then returning it.

    In the ephemeral world of fashion, I can see how this would appeal: wear an item once, take it back, get another, etc., like you’ve got your own little revolving closet. I’ve never considered it because a) it didn’t occur to me, b) too much trouble anyway, and c) ew. But it apparently happens all the time, so the Bloomingdale’s corporation has invented an anti-returning system and though I am hardly a thief, I believe it is the death of shopping. At least at Bloomingdale’s. At least for me.

    Here’s how it works: There’s a big black tag on the item you purchase (see photo.) It stays on the item after you pay for it. They don’t take it off at the store like the other sensors — yes, the other sensors are still on the garment, too. When you get home, if you intend to keep the item, you take off the big black tag. You break it off, actually, because you have to twist and pull the top of the bottle cap thingy and it shatters in your hand. Once the plastic is broken you cannot return the item. I’m not sure if you get store credit, but I’m pretty sure you..don’t? I don’t know because I decided to keep my pink dress, but then, I had decided to keep it before. In the store. When I bought it.

    Oh, Bloomingdale’s. You so strangely killed my shopping joy. You know how when you lose your favorite bra (don’t ask me how this can happen and I won’t have to tell you) and you have to replace it? In no way is it fun. It was so fun when you found your favorite bra! You bought it! It was like your best friend and you were so happy because you chose it, or it chose you! Then it goes missing and you have to trudge back to the store and find it, or search online and find it, and when you hit “buy” or when you plunk down your money, it’s depressing. The thrill of buying something new is gone.

    That’s how I felt with that damned tag. I got home. I was so excited about my dress. Then I saw that tag and instantly, I had second thoughts. Did I really want it? I bought it, but did I really want to buy it? This was for keeps. This was like getting pinned by a boyfriend. The gods were pressing me: Mary, you loved this enough to buy it but do you really really really love it enough to keep it? FOREVER?? 

    No! I… I don’t know! It’s a dress! There are lots of dresses! Maybe I should return it! But I was going to wear it! But it’s forever! But! Bloomingdale’s, I hate you! I like this dress but now I hate it!

    In my frenzy, I grabbed the tag and twisted and smash! the tag shattered and the dress was really really mine, as opposed to almost being mine before. Total and complete fail, Bloomingdale’s. I fear that all the shops will go this route soon and when you are faced with this, friends, you will understand.

    I wore the dress that night but you know what? It drapes strangely on the hanger and it’s never the dress calling to me when I open the door to my closet. Most dresses say things like, “Mary… Pick me… I’m fun…” This one says something more like, “Mary… We’re married and we’re going to visit my mother for the weekend…”

    And it’s hot pink! Oh, dear.

  • Love, Thyself.

    My homecoming queen.
    My homecoming queen.

    Recently I skimmed a book passage in which the author encouraged single people to practice “self-love.” In lieu of being actively shown love by a partner, in other words, the singles were encouraged to actively show love to themselves. You’ve surely come across this idea, single or not. But in a culture that by and large looks at the intentionally single person as suspicious, damaged, and inexcusably narcissistic, it’s downright dangerous to seriously talk about loving yourself, much less actively practice it. Are you serious? I mean, could you get any more selfish?

    I have chosen to remain single since my divorce. I have had several opportunities to “couple up” and I have declined to do so. This has come with some pain for both me and the fellow in question, but I remain resolute: I am single, and I like it that way.

    At this point, there is surely the reader who thinks, not without kindness, “Well, that’s easy enough when you’re young enough to change your mind — and you will.” Others are a bit gloomier: “You’ll be sorry when you’re old and alone.” And still others will resent that I proclaim my choice to be single with such unabashed satisfaction and confidence. “People are meant to be married. Who does she think she is?”

    I’m quite sure that being single is, for me, the only way to really find out.

    There’s much to say about my decisions to go stag, but for the purposes of this post I’m going to corral my thoughts back to the “self-love” article. The concept itself calls to mind sappy scenes: should I run a bubble bath in a candlelit bathroom and float rose petals in the tub? Should I wrap myself up like a burrito and listen to nature sounds? Perhaps self-love is something rather, uh, too private to write about here.

    Many of the suggestions for self-love I find are based on suggestions for acts of love between a couple, and those are often sappy and unimaginative. (To wit: rose petals in a bathtub are gross. They turn into blood-colored spitballs that stick all over your wet, naked body. Romance fail.) I pride myself on being a pretty creative lover of people, so when it comes to loving myself, I’m creative about that, too. Because it’s true that if there’s no one to be sweet on and no one to be consistently sweet on me, I’ve got to do something about it.

    I’m naked a lot. One of the first things I do when I come home is take off all my clothes. The naked body is so great! We all have one. Being naked and putting the dishes away is one of life’s greatest pleasures, as long as you don’t drop a glass, of course. Being nekkid as a jay-bird is kinda silly, and it’s very important when you’re single to not get too serious about it. Besides, my poor body has been through a lot and it’s a loving thing to let it be visibly more healthy today than it’s been in awhile.

    I keep my house quite tidy. If I lived with my best friend, I would keep the house very tidy and clean because I love my best friend and that is the right thing to do. Well, it’s the right thing to do for me, too. An organized house = an organized mind. This is a fundamental belief I hold. Get me my Windex!

    Admittedly, buying myself flowers is not the most creative act of love, but boy does it work. I have fresh flowers in my home, always. Always. I love the gladiolus and I have fresh glads as long as I can throughout the seasons. They are tall and sumptuous, intelligent. The flowers go from these tight little fingerlings to these papery, sashaying blooms and I buy the green ones, the red ones, the white ones. I love them and they love me right back.

    And whenever I come home from a trip, whenever I’m gone all day and I put the key in the door, whenever I feel like I’ve been away physically or mentally for too long, I enter the hallway and greet my condo with a, “Well, hello! Hello, my darling! Welcome home! Yes, you are lovely, lovely, lovely!” or some variation on that theme.

    Who can I miss? What could be wrong with it? And who could ever regret these days?

  • You’re a Fons, I’m a Fons, Let’s Do Lunch.

    You are so freakin' pretty! Holy cannoli!
    I look out of windows THE SAME WAY.

    Dear Emily Fons:

    We have never met. Would you like to have lunch? A salad and a latte? A slice? What do you like? It’s my treat, I know lots of good places, and yes, we should definitely have dessert.

    Ms. Fons, I am Mary Fons, and that’s weird. It’s weird to be me, yes, but it’s also weird that we share a last name. You are a Fons! There aren’t that many of us in the big scary world. In fact, I only know of six others and their phone numbers are in my speed dial. Are we related by blood, Emily Fons? If we aren’t, please pretend that we are. Because here’s what I know about you:

    1. You’re an opera singer
    2. You’re a very good opera singer
    3. You’re super pretty (see photo)
    4. Your website is lovely

    These are all good signs. Here’s what you should know about me:

    1. I am not a stalker
    2. but I am coming to see you when you perform at the Lyric next month!
    3. that does sound creepy
    4. seriously, I’m cool

    What do you say, Fons?

    God, that feels good! I never call anyone “Fons” except my sisters and it’s boring by now — we’re all adults! We’ve been doing this for years! We need fresh Fons! Be that new Fons smell, Emily. We’re really fun — the whole family! We’re educated, we like word games, we store top-shelf liquor, we support the endeavors of one another (a few boyfriends have gotten the stink-eye, but they probably deserved it) and we are almost dangerously creative. You’d fit right in, maybe? A little?

    Email me. Comment. Tweet. You can find me. I’m 100% serious about all this. I’m pretty sure you’re in my town and I think we should have lunch. And the only thing you’ll need to worry about in terms of creep factor is that you might catch me staring at you like a weirdo a couple times. Just a couple. But I’ve never known a real, live opera singer — or a Fons I didn’t know.

  • The Maine Camper’s Slug Song

    I wrote “The Maine Camper’s Slug Song” a few years ago when I was doing a play up in Maine. This was an ode (ode?) to the truly enormous slugs that emerged at night and also an exercise in meter: the inspiration for the piece was John Betjeman’s “A Subaltern’s Love Song.” Yes, I know that the creatures I saw aren’t actually sea slugs — sea slugs live in the sea — but it paints the correct picture of the Atlantic Oceanic monsters that made me lose sleep many a night. Enjoy!

    800px-Brown_snail

    The Maine Camper’s Slug Song
    by Mary Fons

    The sea slugs of Maine, the sea slugs of Maine,
    Lengthened and strengthened by Northeastern rain,
    What frightening sizes you all seem to be,
    There in damp grasses, too close to me!

    Like hot dogs or cowcumbers – oh, how to describe?
    The long, skinny, tube-like shapes that do hide
    In grasses in yards of Tom, Dick, and Jane,
    We are weak from your grossness, oh sea slugs of Maine.

    Oh sea slugs of Maine, oh sea slugs of Maine!
    How could I possibly sleep once again
    Without nightmarish visions of slimy long necks
    And trails of your travels and nocturnal treks.

    For an encounter occurred tonight in the fog,
    While islanders slept, sawing log by large log,
    I met with a sea slug and had to then log,
    My experience in this internet blog.

    Nearby the front door, after some time away,
    I found one of you, smack dead in my way–
    Dead, yes indeed, I’d prefer you remain,
    You foul gastropod! you mollusk of Maine!

    But lo the courage I found I had not
    Sufficient enough to kill on the spot–
    What would I use? My shoe or my fist?
    How might one murder a foe such as this?

    For your body was tensile; gooey and brown,
    And I had no stomach for stooping way down
    To meet at the ground with the whites of my eyes
    A creature’s existence which logic belies.

    And so with a shrug and a shiver of spine,
    And a curse for a world that created its kind,
    I sidestepped and wide-leapt its long, curvy line,
    Dignity shattered but otherwise fine.

    Oh sea slug of Maine, oh sea slug of Maine,
    I am bested tonight – and this is quite plain,
    But sleep with eyes open – all four of them,
    For one night we’ll duel and you’ll not find luck then!

    It’s not that I hate them or wish them great pain,
    But g-ddamn they’re disgusting, the sea slugs of Maine.

  • You Can’t Wrap a Baby In an iPad: Why Quilts (Still) Matter

    My Little Churn Dash. Designed and pieced by Mary Fons, quilted by LuAnn Downs.
    My Little Churn Dash. Made by Mary Fons, quilted by LuAnn Downs.

    Unless I’m at a cocktail party hosted by quilters, I am usually the only quilter at a cocktail party.

    When I talk about what I do for work, someone will invariably say, “Sorry — did you say you’re a…quilter?” I nod and say yes and then two things happen: first, the person cocks their head and goes “Huh!” and then, “My auntie used to knit, too.” Sometimes I gently explain the difference between quilting and knitting, sometimes I just ask about the auntie.

    If you’re not a quilter, you probably don’t think about quilts very often. You know what they are. You maybe had one in your house as a kid. You don’t know that we take umbrage when you to refer to a quilt as a blanket (please!) and you have no idea that the business of quilting kicks up $3.6 billion dollars annually — that’s just in the States. But that’s all perfectly okay. I don’t know about programming in Ruby, nothing about the Blue-Footed Booby (okay, that rhymed), or how to fix the sink. We all have our work and stuff we geek out on. Quilts, for me, are both. I traffic in them; you don’t.

    But then…

    Then a quilt comes into your field of vision and I can tell you exactly when it happens: when there’s a baby coming. When there’s a marriage. When someone is real, real sick. Unlike the Blue-Footed Booby, quilts arrive when they are needed and what I insist upon, what I know is true, what I make sure to say at any cocktail party, be-quilted or otherwise, is that quilts are still needed, still relevant by virtue of what they are. Quilts are love, manifested. Put another way:

    You can’t wrap a baby in an iPad.

    Technology is galloping away with us all and I’m riding bareback with all my quilter friends who, you could argue, are more digitally connected than other hobbyists — we have pictures of quilts to share, online bees; the entire Modern Quilt Guild “movement” was born online. But all the binary code on the planet can’t comfort a baby like wrapping it up in a quilt. Another example? Give a newlywed couple a handmade quilt and watch death rays emit from the eyes of everyone else at the shower — the crystal fruit bowl from Tiffany’s and the Kitchen-Aid mixer might as well be crap from the Dollar Store. You can’t beat a quilt with a stick. They’re magic. They’re irreplaceable. They’re also positively American, at least when we speak specifically of patchwork quilts (as opposed to whole cloth or fancy boutis stuff from Europe, and they can keep all that.)

    Hey, I want my own MakerBot. My smartphone, myself.  In the Venn diagram of “Nerdy,” “Creative,” and “Friendly,” “Quilter” is smack in the middle. Besides, we like buttons and stuff. But what gadget — and while we’re at it, what work of art — can you wrap up in, sit on, barf on, wash, cry under, make a tent out of, mop up stuff with, hug, throw, wad, rip, repair, and then give as an heirloom? I’d guess there’s probably just one answer to that question.

    And so we still make quilts. We still do. And we will for a long time because try as we might to wriggle out of it, we’re still human. Humans need comfort and joy and to me and my fellow grieving, joyous, aging, newborn, and just plain chilly humans, a quilt is just the thing.

  • Drinking & Sewing.

    Better have some in the medicine cabinet, dawg.
    Better have some of these in the medicine cabinet, dawg.

    I cut my finger pretty good last night. I was drinking and sewing, so you are forbidden to have any sympathy for me. It’s okay.

    I don’t drink much alcohol these days. I’m just not into it. I realized awhile ago that the increasingly obligatory evening glass of wine was suddenly two obligatory evening glasses of wine and about the time that it became that, I stopped getting a good night’s sleep. I would wake up at 3am and if there’s one thing I do not do, it’s toss and turn. So I’d wake up and read books and try to attack my day — and by noon I was a shell of a woman. When I didn’t drink wine in the evenings, this did not happen. Eureka!

    But last night I decided to enjoy a vodka tonic. It’s been months since I indulged in a little evening refreshment and it just sounded nice. A little Tito’s, a little diet Schweppe’s, a little ice. Clink, clink, ahhh. And then, because I am brilliant, I picked up my rotary cutter, which is essentially a razor blade on a wheel. The rotary cutter is to a quilter as the hammer is to the carpenter: an indispensable tool used constantly that can really mess up a finger.

    I was slicing around my fan template, zipping to and fro, enjoying some tunes. Sip. Zip. Zip. Sip. “La-la-la,” I sang, and I was so excited about the vodka and the scrap quilt forming on my design wall that I zipped my way right across my index finger and pam! a great flap of skin was now dangling off of me, ruby red blood welling up in astonishing quantity.

    “Ah!” I exclaimed and jumped back. I raised my hand over my head and grabbed the first thing I saw to wrap around my wound. What do you suppose I grabbed? Fabric, of course! You see, quilters are very smart. We have bandages at the ready at all times. Carpenters can’t say that (though you could argue they can make a splint pretty quick — or a stretcher.) I hopped up and down and whistled; this thing could be bad, I thought, and I stole a peek. Oh yes! Pretty bad. But there was no tingle, no numbness, so I don’t think I hit a nerve.

    The lesson: do not drink and sew. I am not the first to do it, certainly not the first to advise against it, and I know for a fact that I’m not the first to do it anyway and then injure myself. But “the fool who persists in his folly will become wise,” said William Blake, and he actually died while singing, so we should listen to him.

    Can I get anyone a drink?

  • Hi-Low, No.

    Hi, low, or otherwise, it's just awful.
    Oh, for heaven’s sake.

    We’ve all made sartorial mistakes.

    In case I should forget mine, there are plenty of pictures and videos of me that prove I’ve made misdirected fashion choices. I’m thinking of the belted baby doll dress in the second season of Quilty, the “are-those-cornrows?” hairstyle in the third season, the yellow nail polish on the first Love of Quilting series I un-officially co-hosted. These were all mistakes.

    But we learn — not in spite of these misfires, but because of them — to internalize the truth: just because something is trendy does not mean you should wear it. Ballet flats give me piano legs. Cap sleeves cut me across the widest part of my arm. Most bluejeans add ten pounds to my frame. (Until very recently, when I actually found a great pair by accident, I had not owned a pair of bluejeans in over six years. There are other things one can put on one’s bottom half, you know.)

    If you are sixteen, you can pretty much wear whatever you please as long as you can get out of the house before your mother throws her body against the door to keep you inside. But I have spotted the “hi-low” skirt trend and it is so bad, I don’t believe even a nymphy, achingly pretty sixteen-year-old could pull it off.

    The hi-low skirt is a short skirt with a long, sheer skirt over it. What can the designers be thinking? It doesn’t make sense. It is not aesthetically harmonious. The short skirt is not cut in a remarkable way to begin with and then there’s this long, gauzy afterthought, this sheer mistake wafting all over the place. I think it makes a gal look like she’s fallen from a great height and has hit tree after tree on her way down, leaving ripped bits of her real skirt on the craggy branches. Now she’s just got one bit of dress left — a bit of dress and a slip underneath.

    Sub-optimal.

    Oh, but I see it! I see the “hi-low” on the streets of Chicago. Not all over town, but some. And I look with wonder and I put on a black turtleneck. Turtleneck loves me, hi-low loves me not.

  • Notes on The Walk of Shame.

    "Shoe." McClurg Court, Chicago, IL. 8:45am, September 29, 2013.
    “Shoe.” McClurg Court, Chicago, IL. 8:45am, September 29, 2013.

    “Look at that!” my friend said, pointing across the street. “That’s a shoe.”

    I looked over. It was a shoe. Just one. Nice, too. Pretty sexy. We crossed the street to investigate and I took a picture for you. My friend and I were full of breakfast.

    Because you, gentle reader, are so gentle (and chaste and respectable and pious) I shall ‘splain to you something called “the walk of shame” because the shoe this morning was perhaps the best evidence of the WOS that I have ever encountered. The walk of shame happens when you spend the night at the home/apartment/dorm room of a paramour/booty call/random dude* and you have to leave and go outside. Sometimes you have to walk a fair piece because there are no cabs or bus stops nearby. A walk of shame can happen just to where you parked your car the night before; that definitely counts. Sometimes, you can’t find your purse/wallet and you have to walk the whole way. That’s gonna be the worst right there, because the only thing worse than the walk of shame is the long walk of shame.

    The shame happens for the following reasons:

    a) you have baggage about extra-marital sex (and you had some)
    b) you are hungover (again)
    c) you are dressed in the clothes you wore last night, as evidenced by the fact you are in a cocktail dress at nine in the morning, barefoot, your high heels wedged into your purse because your feet hurt
    d) you’re being honked at (people not on the WOS love the WOS)

    I did the walk of shame exactly once. I was in college. I was so far from home that morning that it makes me cry just thinking about it; there was no bus. There was no car. There was me, a sparkly blouse, and about a mile-and-a-half of questionable sidewalk between me and my sweet, sweet coffeemaker and bunny slippers. I got the honks. I got the cramp in my foot. I got the vodka headache and I definitely got the message.

    But I had both my shoes.

    *guys can do the WOS but because most dudes’ day clothes look similar enough to their goin’ out clothes, it’s less obvious. Also women + sex = societal shame, men + sex = “sowing oats”

  • “I Came Here To Win.”

    It hurts so good.
    It hurts so good.

    I make quilts. While I sew, I enjoy various media. Sometimes it’s radio, sometimes it’s a podcast. A lot of the time it’s junky television via the Internet.

    There is lots of great, game-changing television out there. I don’t watch it. It takes too much focus. (I can’t watch Mad Men and sew patchwork; it’s unfair to Don Draper and unfair to my quarter-inch seam.) Instead, I watch gameshows. Reality gameshows. Biggest Loser, America’s Next Top Model, and Master Chef are totally — like, totally — my favorite shows. They’re just engaging enough to keep me company but utterly devoid of real substance. Perfect.

    So I fire up the HuluPlus and I let entire seasons play. The downside to this is that any mystery or magic used in putting the shows together is gone. I know the template now. The challenges, the editing, the hosts’ indignation and the tear-jerker stories behind the contestants — every show, every game, it’s all die-cut. What’s really hard to listen to after hour eight are the interviews. I’ve figured how they do them. I’ve never experienced an actual reality show interview, but I am 99% certain they play sections of the already taped show for the player and ask him/her leading questions about what they were thinking at the time. And I picture the interviewer being extremely bored because these players, they say the same thing every single time.

    Interviewer: “What does this competition mean to you?”
    Player: “This competition…it means everything to me.”

    Interviewer: “When Heidi walks out, what are you thinking?”
    Player: “I’m just thinking, ‘What is going to happen next?’”

    Interviewer: “What are you thinking right now, when Susan put the shrimp on the plate?”
    Player: “Right now, I’m just hoping I don’t go home.”

    Interviewer: “What did you come here to do? Is this just a game to you?”
    Player: “I came here to win. This competition is not just a game for me.”

    And on and on. And every once in awhile, something actually dramatic or surprising will happen (doesn’t happen often) and I’ll whoop or holler while I’m pressing my fabric and if anyone saw into my condo, they would see that I am a nerd.

  • Your List, Please, Part I.

    I do not expect to be a Mother, Tracy Emin. 2002. Private collection, courtesy Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia © the artist
    I do not expect to be a Mother, Tracy Emin. 2002. Private collection, courtesy Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia
    © the artist

    La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club was founded in 1961 in New York City by Ellen Stewart. The website says: La MaMa is a world renowned cultural institution recognized as the seed bed of new work by artists of all nations and cultures, and that it true, I have seen it with my own eyes.

    Each year, La MaMa takes a handful of folks to a renovated convent in central Italy for a playwright’s retreat. The retreat is ten days, you must apply and be admitted, and the facilitator changes from year to year but is always a decorated, critically-acclaimed, commercially successful writer. The year that I was accepted into the program (yo, 2010!) I had the good fortune to study with Lynn Nottage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose play Intimate Apparel is currently being adapted into an opera at the Met. I know.

    Of all the provocative, creative moments Nottage encouraged and fostered in our group that year, I think back again and again to her List.

    “Write down your five favorite authors of fiction who are no longer living,” she said. Sure, I thought, and breezily put down Woolf, Maugham, etc. “Now list your five favorite living fiction writers.” Everyone was scribbling on their legal pads. We did the same for non-fiction. Though this was fun, I was surprised at how many numbers there are in the number five. Maybe I didn’t have enough espresso at breakfast.

    “Okay, favorite dead poets,” said Lynn. I know poetry better than the average bear, so I wasn’t daunted by this so much, except… Did I have five favorite dead poets? The world is spilling over with devastatingly beautiful poetry and choosing my five favorite poets should be extremely hard: hard because one could not possibly winnow it down to five. I got stuck at four. I was starting to dislike this exercise.

    “Now, list your five favorite living poets.”

    Full stop. Me no likey. The truth was, I didn’t know current poetry well enough to have one or two favorite living poets, let alone five. I was ashamed to admit that aside from a slam friend who I genuinely admire, only Billy Collins came to mind. Billy Collins!? I don’t even like Billy Collins, but I froze. I had one space out of four filled in and all my blathering about being an artist, being culturally hip was dissolving before my eyes. I was embarrassed.

    “Now,” said Nottage, “Five favorite dead painters.” We were all fidgety at this point — we knew what was coming. “Now list your five favorite painters painting today.”

    I had one: Chuck Close. But he’s just one of the few living painters I know of.

    There were a few other prompts. When we were done, Nottage said, “Look at this list. Where are there holes? Those holes are your homework. And not just while you’re here, but from now on. Read what poets are doing today — how are they writing? How are painters painting today? Where is art going? These are your fellow artists. Explore their work, too, not exclusively the work of dead people. Living artists are important to us and to the world we live in. You should know them, find your favorites, and follow their work.”

    And you? Do you know poetry? Who is painting today? It’s a big world out there and the ancient work, the vetted classics, they are classic for a reason; they stand the test of time. But this is our time.

    Look around, investigate. Google. Visit new museums. Find the artists next door, not just the ones on the shelf.

     

  • The Horror of Autumn.

    Do I smell ether?
    Do I smell ether?

    Fall has come.

    When I got back to Chicago after my balmy — and surprisingly rainy — trip to Atlanta last weekend, the slightest little chill in the air wafted under to my nose and it was unmistakable. Even if it hasn’t come all the way in the house, fall has a toe in the door.

    Just like you can’t be a little bit pregnant, it can’t be “a little bit autumn.” When that chilled, sharp-edged air slices through the sky, you know what time of year it is and that you can’t go back. Maybe — and I’m serious about this — it’s death. Perhaps our human senses are tuned to the decay of the trees; after all, as leaves change color, they’re dying, getting ready to fall and hibernate and regenerate later. Maybe our spidey-sense is still intact all these millennia later and when we know it’s autumn, we are scientifically right.

    Like so many of my white, middle-class, Midwestern brethren, I love fall. Marketed as it is as to us a time of pumpkin-spice lattes, fireplace make-out sessions, holiday plans, etc., how could we not love this season?

    But there’s a disturbing ring to fall for me, as well. It is impossible to describe. When the chill comes, at least twice and sometimes as many as thrice, I will experience a palpable sense of dread. My throat feels like it’s falling. My heart aches. All the bad days, the late nights, the homework, the housework, the breakups. It’s ineffable, inexplicable; it’s all the in- words rolled up into a second’s worth of time when I’m walking on State Street, say, or stepping into a taxi.

    I think it’s called melancholy. Or ennui. Or just surprise. Surprise that every year, fall slips in with pointy teeth for two seconds before it beams with a genuinely beautiful smile.

  • Waxing Poorgahtory.

    Sub-optimal.
    Sub-optimal.

    In a big city like Chicago, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a great salon. When you finally do, you wrestle with wanting to tell every woman you know and wanting to keep your delicious little secret forever and ever. The rest of the time you’re just hoping they won’t go out of business.

    I found a killer waxing spot two years ago. It’s the place. They do unbelievable work, you can always get an appointment, they’re open from 8am to 8pm, and the prices are fair. I’m clearly a devoted customer, but only now does the receptionist call me by name. You gotta earn it over there. They know what they’ve got.

    When I went in yesterday for detailing I was told I’d be with Julianna and I did a little mental air-guitar. Julianna is the best of the whole crew. A 50-something Polish lady who I swear wears a girdle, Julianna could rip every last hair off your body in under 10 minutes. It wouldn’t hurt any less, but it would be over quickly, and that is the mercy of Julianna. But she doesn’t come without strings. Julianna likes to visit while you’re on her slab, and there’s only one thing she’ll talk about: Jesus Christ.

    “You know, sveetie, I say to all ze girls: you must open yoor heart, give to Christ Jeezoos. He is way to happiness, He is way to evverlasting trooth. We are all seeners; I am seener, you are seener. Dis is truth.”

    Rip!

    “We must believe in ze Bible as true word of God. So many people, so, so many people lost in ze world and they don’t care! They say, ‘Oh, I am fine, I am leader of my own life, dis and dat, whatever.’ But when they burn in evverlasting fire, they see the error of their wayz. Eet’s too late. That’s it.”

    Rip! 

    It’s possible to reach an ecstatic state over the course of a bikini wax. The whole thing is absurd, for one thing. You’re putting hot wax where? On purpose? And then ripping the — oh, sweet mother! You’re naked from the waist down — also absurd. And it hurts so much. There you are, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the next strip of agony, and you go into a happy headspace where nothing can harm you. There are bunnies and stars there. Add to all this a large, 50-something Polish woman delivering a constant stream of Catholic admonishment and salvation, and I’m telling you, it’s downright trippy. Six minutes into my appointment yesterday, I connected to victims of the Spanish Inquisition on a kind of time warp mental plane:

    INQUISITOR: Is there a God?
    MARY: No!
    INQUISITOR: Hot wax!
    MARY: No!
    INQUISITIOR: Yes!

    (Rip, rip, rip. MARY hollers, thrashes.)

    INQUISITOR: Ha!
    MARY: Bastards!
    INQUISITOR: Will that be cash or check?
    MARY: (pause.) What?
    INQUISITOR: It’s $85 today. Cash or check?
    MARY: Oh, sorry. Cash.

    Julianna, we have ideological differences. But we’re good. We both agree on the importance of grooming. You like tips, I like to give tips. You call me “sveetie,” you usually tell me you like my hair, and you always make time to do my eyebrows, even if you’ve got an appointment right after me. In the city, these are true gifts.

     

     

  • Go-Go-Gadget Grad School!

    Penny, from Inspector Gadget. She had the first tablet computer, you know.
    Penny, from Inspector Gadget. She had the first tablet computer.

    I’m in grad school. 

    The Master’s of Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago is a degree tailed for professionals who need classes at night/on the weekends. It provides a curated buffet of (magnificent) everything rather than focusing on just one discipline, e.g., aeronautics or French philosophy. Candidates take biology classes, humanities courses, physical science courses, etc. I applied and was accepted earlier this year. When I had my interview, I realized just how different grad school at the University of Chicago would be compared to my previous college experience. That experience was great (B.A.,Theater Arts, University of Iowa, ’01) but this seemed instantly to be a world apart. 

    The program’s director, upon welcoming me into his office, offered me a chair and then looked out the window. Then back at me. Then back to the window.

    “It’s a lovely day. Let’s take a walk.” My heart sank. Surely I hadn’t gotten in.

    Mr. Ciaccia put on a hat and a trench coat and I collected my purse. We walked across the beautiful Hyde Park campus; he pointed out buildings and houses of note. The sun was shining after a rainstorm, and we skirted puddles as we talked about architecture, the gods, music. It was so grad school-y, I almost giggled about six times. I think he used the word “epoch” a couple times.

    Turns out I did get in. By the time we rounded the corner to the building where we began, I had to ask. “So… Mr. Ciaccia, did I get in?” He looked at me with a warm smile.

    “Yes, you did.”

    I squealed and jumped up and down. (I’m a nitwit like that.)

    Last semester I took a class called “The New Cosmology,” which was all about space, particle physics, dark matter, etc. It was so mind-blowing, so awe-inspiring, I got misty a couple times in class. This semester, I’ll be in a class called “The Problem of Evil.” Check it: 

    “This course will consider the theological problem of evil, starting with the Book of Job. We will next investigate the problem from the perspectives of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, for whom evil was the major, stumbling block in the proof of God’s existence. At issue will be the question of whether the view of evil initiated by Augustine as the “privation of good” represents an adequate explanation of evil. This pursuit will lead into the problem of theodicy: can–or should–God’s ways be justified to human beings? We will look at theodicy in selections from the works of Hume, Bayle, Voltaire, Leibniz, and Kant. We will then study several fictional treatments of the problem of evil, including Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Melville’s Billy Budd, and the Coen Brothers’ movie No Country for Old Men, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.”

    For a geek like me, the prospect of starting this class in a couple weeks is like sitting in a mink coat on a generous tuffet as someone brings me an entire pecan pie a la mode, a spoon, and a note from a doctor who has ordered me to put on a few pounds. I’m excited.

  • Welcome to The Internet.

    Is that better?
    Is that better?

    To encounter one or two people in your life who don’t like your face, just get out of bed in the morning. To have a sizable number of those people, you’ll need to be on television.

    Sipping my coffee this morning, feeling fantastic about wrapping the latest 2-week taping of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting, I accidentally found a gnarled thread on the Fons & Porter Facebook page. The venerable, incredible teacher and company founder, Liz Porter, visited the set to film two (excellent) episodes the other day and a picture was taken of us at work. I love working with Liz and felt quite chipper about it all until this morning.

    “If they would just film with MaryAnn [sic] Fons instead of that nitwit daughter.. all would be good,” commented one Cora McDivitt Darrin, upon viewing the photo. Virginia Anne Lewis felt similarly, adding, “I wish mary [sic] would stop making faces and nodding and shaking her head.” Four people Liked that. And from the lady so irresistible she has not one but four last names, Pat Stubo Erickson Sullivan lamented, “I’m almost ready to stop watching….Mary drives me nuts. She talks WAY too much and her waving hands are so distracting. I’d rather have MaryAnn on alone with guests if we can’t have Liz back!” Various other folks digitally nodded their heads (not so vigorously they might’ve strained their necks, I hope) in agreement.

    I took another sip of coffee. The cream was curdled.

    Every well-intentioned mother in the world, including mine, would advise me to “just ignore it.” Just ignore it, the well-intentioned mothers say, shaking their collective heads, “some people are just negative.” This is the part that catches in my throat along with the hot tears in my eyes: Why do negative people get a pass for being wretched? I’m not negative. I’m all good. I’d never call a well-intentioned human a nitwit. Look:

    nitwit |ˈnitˌwit|
    noun informal
    a silly or foolish person (often as a general term of abuse).

    I’ll claim silly. I wear silly with pride. And perhaps in affairs of the heart, I am at my core, a fool. But you don’t know that, Cora darling, and since I don’t speak of my love life on Public Television, and since I know my job pretty well, I’d say that makes the word “fool” off limits. Besides, once the word “abuse” pops into the mix, you have wronged your fellow man. Ask around; it’s unanimous.

    But hey, if you don’t want know strangers’ opinions of you, Mary Fons, stay inside your house. Strangers will still have opinions about you (you’ll be the crazy person who never comes out of your house) but you’ll never know what they’re saying, which is good if you’re a sensitive gal. But I did leave the house. I’m on a show that broadcasts to 93% of the PBS markets in America. I chose to approach this circumstance and I’ll lay in it. If I spent time whining about how a stranger in Montana (or hundreds of strangers in Texas) don’t adore me, I’d actually be the nitwit Cora believes me to be.

    I can’t complain about negative comments happening. They’ll keep happening. But I can call people out for being simple and mean to me. Your name is as public as mine when you write on walls in binary code.

    So: Does it feel weird to be talked about so intimately by someone you don’t know? It’s crazy, right, ladies?! Feels kinda crappy. Makes you sorta mad. But who should you get mad at? It’s hard to know! I know!! Such an impotent, helpless feeling. Just do what I do: try not to let this webpage ruin your day; instantly fail. Clench your jaw a few times, click over to Amazon and try to forget about it. Click back. Read your name again. Feel like a failure. Burn. Get paralyzed for about an hour. Literally, physically shake “it” off and set about your day. Eventually forget whatever nasty thing Person XYZ said about you, but not completely; no not completely, because they did say it and a bunch of people saw it. You mustn’t cry, though, even if you feel like you got punched in the face. If you cry, you’ll really feel dumb because people will say that if you don’t like it, don’t work.

    As for all the strangers who said lovely things, I’d like to thank you individually for your your charm, your intelligence, your flawless skin, your timeless elegance, and those swan-like necks! Ms. Susan Parrish admitted to missing my mom and Liz but managed a sincere tally-ho: “[Liz and Marianne] made such a good team,” Parrish said, “But I like Mary as well; she is doing a great job. Keep up the good work.” The incomparable Leslie Fitzgerald went to bat for me, wading into the fetid comment stream to say, “For those of you who have been bashing Mary, what happened to the old adage, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Sheesh!”

    Ah, but Leslie. This is the Internet. Welcome to the Internet. Leave your face at the door.

    p.s. Enjoy.

  • Washerwoman.

    You can bathe a baby in it, too.
    You could bathe a baby in it, too.

    The washing machine is broken here at my mom’s house. It just stopped working. Unfortunately, it stopped working when it had a full tub of water and it’s a front-loader. To get the serial number to order the part, Mom had to open the door. She jumped back and the water gushed out. I so wish a goldfish would’ve sailed out, too.

    When I film the TV show I go through a lot of clothes. There’s a different outfit for every episode and I do a little side project show at the same time, in the same studio, so we’re talking about sixteen different ensembles, plus several Plan B choices in case certain items don’t work (e.g., too low-cut, too stripey, cigarette burns, etc.) Some laundry is required, therefore; having no washing machine is not ideal. Yesterday night I needed laundry done and I was going to have to do it myself.

    Down to the basement I trudged, nearly falling and cracking my neck on the stairs, as usual. I pulled a string and the lights came on. There’s a big wash sink down there, so I set about hand washing my clothes. Here are the three greatest modern inventions of all time:

    – washing machines

    I couldn’t come up with two others that are better.

    Though there was something vaguely meditative and prehistoric about sloshing my skivvies through the tub of warm water, I refused to get romantic about it. The last time I hand washed two loads of laundry was never, and the mere thought of doing so every day or even every other day was enough to begin to break my back. Oh, women! How we have toiled. And I had soap! For the majority of human history, we just had sticks and stones! Of course, we didn’t have cashmere, either, but I still don’t see how a stick can get mascara and cabernet out of a garment.

    Ohhh… Right.

  • Word Nerd: Quaintrelle

    Lempicka's "The Blue Scarf," dahhhhling.
    Lempicka’s “The Blue Scarf,” dahhhhling.

    Just when language pleases me from the top of my capo to the tip of my tarsals, it goes and does it all over again. Ladies and germs, I present “quaintrelle,” a word I discovered yesterday when I wasn’t looking for it.

    Quaintrelle
    (n.)
    A woman who emphasizes a life of passion, expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, and cultivation of life’s pleasures.

    I’m signed up for that one. The leisurely pastimes part is the only part that I can’t get 100% on board with. In my head, “leisurely pastimes” translates to “strolling” or “a spot of tea with Freddy and the Rumsfordshire sisters after a pleasant game of squash on the lawn.” I’m a long way from squash on the lawn.

    The rest of it, though, has pretty much been my M.O. since ’95. They say relationships take work. It’s true; but we have a relationship with ourselves, as well. This relationship takes just as much work, maybe more. Today, I shall set a goal: I will take a pleasure in life and cultivate it one step further than usual. I will be a quaintrelle I can be proud of.

     

     

  • Word Nerd: “Loaded For Bear”

    Bear! Agh! Bear!
    Bear! Agh! Bear!

    Oh, misconceptions. You crazy little guys! I can think of a few:

    – when you fall in love, it will be forever
    – “He’s got the whole world/in his pants”
    – black licorice doesn’t taste good
    – the expression “loaded for bear” comes to us from the nautical world

    Let’s look at that last one. Last night, I was set straight by a comrade. We were in conversation at an almost handicappingly dim restaurant, nibbling on burrata and tomatoes so fresh they were still mooing.

    “Well, there I was, and let me tell you, I was loaded for bear!” my dinnermate said. I stopped him in his tale to ask about the provenance of that expression. It was a nautical term, wasn’t it? I knew what it meant, that a person was ready for a fight, ready for a major event, equipped and prepared to do serious business. But I have operated my entire life (at least since I could read or whatever) that “loaded for bear” referred to the maximum level of cargo or freight a big ship could carry at one time. I was using “bear” as in “bearing weight.” To me, “loaded for bear” meant that a massive ship was packed to the hilt, loaded up “for bear,” perhaps a sailor’s way of saying, “the full weight.” Don’t know where I picked it up, don’t know who might’ve misled me or if I just made it up, but I’ve used the expression properly for a long time and never thought to question it.

    “No, no,” said he. “No, it means you’ve loaded your gun for big game. Like a bear.”

    I smacked his shoulder. “Get! Out! Really?? A bear?? It means an actual bear??”

    “Yes,” he said, and smiled in that way that men smile when a girl in a dress swats them on the shoulder. Happy girl, silly hitting. Lovely hitting.

    What a revelation. A bear. I like animals a lot — in the abstract — and when an idiom has been employing one right in front of my face without my knowledge, well, my day is made upon discovery of that.

    Loaded for bear! For bear! Of all the things.

  • How The Mighty Amish Quilts Have Fallen

    The Quilting Bee, Grandma Moses, 1950.
    The Quilting Bee, Grandma Moses, 1950.

    If you want to feel like you’ve accidentally taken expired cold medicine, I recommend the Discovery Channel’s Amish Mafia. 

    When I’m home in Iowa, I watch a bit of television. I refuse to be a no-TV snob, but the truth is, I don’t have a television in Chicago and I haven’t owned a TV since I left home for college. I’ve just never wanted one very much, mostly because I am an enormous nerd who would rather read a book than do just about anything. And besides, commercials are tiny rapes.

    Last night, I was clicking channels and found this Amish Mafia show. Have you heard of it? Seen it? Been as dumbfounded as I was by it? For the most part, a person can watch 30-seconds of any show on television and get the gist of it. “Oh, this is a cop drama,” you think, or “Oh, this is a sitcom where the guy is a lump and the smart wife loves the knucklehead anyway,” or, at the very least, “This is a reality show vs. a show with actors playing parts.” The producers of any show want you to do this. They want their shows to be instantly recognizable so you don’t have to think terribly hard and you can just be entertained. There’s nothing wrong with that; and the best shows actually mess with the formulas and create great, dynamic television. Consider The Sopranos; violent and humane, dramatic but often hilarious, too. Good stuff.

    I watched Amish Mafia for a full 30 minutes last night and I still had no idea what was happening to me. The show follows…Amish people. Mostly men. Who have…guns. These Amish men with guns…collect money from other Amish men? With guns? Everyone is very…angry. These angry Amish men with guns talk to the camera like it’s a reality show, but I’ll bet you two bonnets and a straw boater that THERE IS NO AMISH MAFIA so it simply could not be real. Amish people don’t allow girls to play with any doll that has a face! That’s considered a “graven image” and creates idolatry; how does an HD camera filming Amish in their kitchens avoid the whole “graven image” thing? Even for a Mennonite, this seems as plausible as a fish saying, “I prefer living out of the water.”

    The whole show was so confusing and lame and slightly disturbing that I had to look it up. It’s not real. It’s scripted. They’re all actors. It’s fake, fake, fake, and the reality show “feel” is calculated, calculated, calculated. The actual Amish are horrified. The actual Mafia is probably horrified, come to think of it. But Amish Mafia just got picked up for a second season, so we’ll all be horrified together for at least another 6 months or so.

    The thing that makes me mad is that I even believed for one second that it was real. I did! I thought, “Gee whiz, the Amish community has heavies that break kneecaps for community funding?? That’s nuts!” And then I realized I had been suckered. I don’t like being suckered by an inanimate object, which brings us full-circle as to why I don’t have a television.

    The thing that steams me the most? There are quilts all over that show and I can’t decide if this is good or bad. Should I be happy a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt is shown five different times on a major cable television show? Or should I cringe because the guy sitting on it has a gold tooth and bad attitude?