Tag Archive for: Maggie Barbieri

A Few of My Favorite Things

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I was going to wade into the racially-charged waters of the Henry Louis Gates incident (Gates-gate?) but will leave you with one very succinct quote from Bill Maher which made me laugh no end: “Is your home safe from black intellectuals?” Presumably, Officer Crowley, Dr. Gates, and President Obama will join together in racial harmony this week and share a beer and move past the whole thing, even if in many parts of this country, black men will still be arrested for doing nothing wrong other than being black.

Ok, enough said. We’ve come a long way, but still have a long way to go. On that, I think we can all agree.

So, I now turn to what I like to call “a few of my favorite things” post. Not as popular as Oprah’s list of favorite things and I certainly won’t be sending each and every one of you one of the things on the list but maybe you’ll find yourself intrigued enough to buy one or more item on the list. Here we go:

1. Progresso Pesto Sauce: As faithful readers of this blog, you know that dinner time is a challenge around the Barbieri house. We have one vegetarian, one person on a low-roughage diet (that would be me), one person who eats just about everything, and one person who only likes to eat things, mostly meats, that a group recently cited as those who increase your risk for colorectal cancer (try explaining what that is to a 10-year-old). The answer to all of my prayers? Progresso Pesto Sauce. Yes, I know you can make your own, but that would require that I a) buy a basil plant, b) put it in a pot, c) make sure the cats in the neighborhood don’t use said pot for a litter box, and d) go outside and tend to the plant. None of that is happening friends, I can guarantee you. You know what’s easy, though? Pulling back the plastic lid on a container of store-bought pesto and mixing it with a bunch of hot pasta. Serving a salad and a loaf of Italian bread alongside it. Hearing people in family exclaim that this is their “favorite meal!” and seeing their smiles as they eat it. Easy, not too expensive, and everyone eats it. What could be better?

2. The BodenUSA web site: The country has a long way to go on racial issues and I have a long way to go on dressing myself better. Not so since I discovered the BodenUSA web site. Boden is a company based in the U.K. with moderately-priced but extremely hip clothes for women of a certain age. (That would be me and the northern half of Evelyn David, who is still expounding on her love of the black wrap dress that I encouraged her to buy and which she now owns. If you’d like to see what it looks like, go to www.maggiebarbieri.com. I’m wearing it in the photo on the home page.) And fortunately, as things have shifted southward on me, they have taken to making a line of very stylish tunics, which look fabulous with a pair of jeans or dressier pants and which cover my trouble spot or “writer heinie” which has developed over the past few years. I hesitated giving out this secret because I don’t want to see an army of tunic-wearing women walking around wearing the clothes that I have, but I’m a giver. You already knew that.

3. Facebook: I know. We’re supposed to be tired of social networking sites, but I’ve got to say that I am loving Facebook and enjoying reconnecting with friends and family. I’ve gotten to see pictures of my nieces and nephews on their most recent vacation, learned about who’s doing what from my high school and college classes, and reconnected with a lot of old friends. It’s also a great way to get the word out about my books, learn about other writers in the mystery world, and get feedback on covers and promotional materials. It’s also a nice diversion when I get bored with what I’m doing during my workday and that is not a bad thing.

4. My new Dyson vacuum: Another way Facebook has helped me is that it allows me to get information on products before I buy them. I put in my status update last week that I needed a new vacuum and the comments flooded in. Most encouraged me to get a Dyson and boy am I glad I did. Remembering the southern half of Evelyn David’s post a few weeks back about putting her vacuum together (something I wouldn’t be remotely interested in or adept at), I was concerned about getting a machine that I wouldn’t be able to use right out of the box, let alone have to use a screwdriver to put together. Fortunately, the Dyson was already assembled and after a few test runs, virtually the easiest thing in the world to use. The only drawback? The bagless technology. It’s great—don’t get me wrong. I just don’t enjoy seeing Barbieri dirt—and apparently, there’s a lot of it—swirling around in the clear canister after just one vacuum session. We are apparently a very dirty and disgusting family and my old vacuum, with its bag housed in a canister in which nothing could be seen, kept this ugly secret. I guess I’ll get used to seeing the dirt swirl around, but for right now, I’m pretending it belongs to someone else.

So, that’s it. I could go on but I’ll wait for another post to do so. We still haven’t discussed my love of mocha chip frappacinos from Starbucks but will, I promise. What are your favorite things? More importantly, what can’t you live without?

And don’t forget to protect your home from intellectuals—black, Asian, caucasian, or otherwise.

Characters Welcome

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This post borrows a line from the USA network: characters welcome. As you know, our faithful Stiletto Gang readers, I have just returned from a week on the island of Bermuda, a place as close to paradise as you’ll find on this earth. But I laughed as I read Lisa’s post from Friday about the people riding the bus in her neighborhood in San Francisco because people saying things like “I’ve been in hot tubs with judges” happen with regularity in the cities and towns of the United States but not in places like Bermuda, as I’ve determined from several bus rides from my two vacations there. I have been on a total of four buses, all going different places, and have found that everyone rides in complete silence. Not a word is spoken, not a conversation had. Everyone stares at the gorgeous rolling vistas, the ocean, or the floor. Nobody talks about their time in hot tubs with judges, but they do greet their bus driver when they get on and bid him or her a lovely adieu when they leave. Is it the climate? The continual ocean views? Or just a sense of decorum that we’re lacking here in the States? Bermuda is a very civilized place to navigate.

Not so the resort, filled with intense and sometimes your quintessential ugly Americans. To paraphrase a song, “clowns to the left of me, type-A-ers to the right, here I am…” People often ask me where I come up with some of my characters, and dear readers, the answer is: everywhere. Vacation spots are a great place to people watch (the airport, in particular) and observe behavior. Who doesn’t respond when their spouse asks them a question? Who swims by themselves while their significant other tans all day? (I resisted the urge to lecture.) Who starts drinking rum swizzles at noon and doesn’t stop until the dinner bell rings? Who obsessively checks their bar bill and questions the cabana boy about it until the bartender comps at least one drink?

Hubby and I arrived at the resort last week, and after having lunch and two rum drinks consumed in rapid succession (not recommended), headed down to the pool, where we set up camp on two lounge chairs next to the most gorgeous pool I had ever seen, the ocean at our backs, a lovely breeze caressing our exhausted bodies. The only bad part? We obviously had a VERY IMPORTANT PERSON sitting right behind us who had to do business—loudly—on his cell phone, while his wife and friends sat idly by, drinking daiquiris and trying to enjoy their vacation. We were soon joined by a family of four with a young daughter so unhappy with everything having to do with vacation that she set about wailing every two minutes or so to express her displeasure at a) the salt on the French fries served poolside, b) the amount of ice in her drink, c) the tightness or looseness (depending on her mood) of her arm swimmies, or d) all of the above. Her parents dealt with all of this with a general malaise, seemingly used to her meltdowns. Jim sat placidly, trying to block out the squealing, but hoping against hope that I wouldn’t get up and remind the parents that all of us around the pool were on vacation, some of us without our children for the first time in fifteen years. Fortunately, this family only returned intermittently and VERY IMPORTANT PERSON appeared to have checked out the day following our arrival.

VIP and unhappy little girl were replaced by a large, extended family who were attending a destination wedding at the resort. They were fine for the most part: pleasant, amiable, happy to be on vacation. Only problem was that instead of communicating via the poolside telephone with people in their party who were in other parts of the resort, they instead reveled in screaming at each other from pool to the third floor veranda of whichever guests were not at the pool. This got old very quickly.

But I got a ton of stuff for characters in my next book or two because you truly can’t make some of this stuff up. I overheard a conversation among a group of older women (who had brought their seemingly mute husbands with them on vacation) which centered entirely around doctor error and MRI’s. I’ve experienced both but have chosen to wipe them out of my mind, never to speak of either ever again unless I am a) called to the witness stand in a malpractice case or b) need to give someone advice on how to withstand the noise inside of an MRI machine. Their conversation about these two subjects took up the better part of three hours. No one swam, no one stared at the vistas beyond the pool, but everyone had a story about an MRI or a doctor who had killed one of their friends by prescribing the wrong medicine, puncturing their femoral artery with a syringe, or by JUST NOT CARING.

As fellow Stiletto Gang poster and northern half of Evelyn David would say, “OY.” Don’t even get me started on the behavior at the all-you-can-eat (for $25.00 US) breakfast buffet.

But then again, all of this is coming from a woman who sat poolside in what my mother calls her “bathing costume,” which is comprised of wide-brimmed hat, ankle-length swim tights, and a mock turtleneck, long-sleeved pull over (all UV protective). I’m sure people were looking at me thinking, “What the hell is she wearing? And if she can’t go out in the sun, why would she come to Bermuda?”

We met some great couples while we were away, too, all of whom were vacationing without their children and in a state of disbelief that we were in such an amazing, exotic locale. But we all talked about our children at length and then all admitted that we would be back with the kids at some point because we wanted to share this incredible place with them. And that’s how you know that even though they drive you a little crazy, you love them like crazy. And will do everything in your power to keep them away from doctors and MRI machines even if it means that at some point, they, too, will have to wear a bathing costume.

Maggie Barbieri

And Away We Go…

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I keep thinking about Marilyn’s post from either last week or the week before where she talked about what it was like to grow up in Los Angeles before it became “LA” or the “Left Coast.” A much simpler time, she would often take a book, lounge under a tree in front of a stranger’s house and relax for an afternoon. I commented that we used to get thrown outside for the day after breakfast—and without sunscreen (that’s how long ago that was!)—and play with the twenty or thirty kids in the neighborhood, careful of the ones who had their licenses and tooled around the hood in cars or even worse, motorcycles. One summer, during an Olympic year, we set up an elaborate obstacle course and held Olympic trials that everyone participated in and which included such events as the limbo, the hide-and-seek tournament, and the hurdles. Everyone took turns and almost everyone bettered their score as the summer progressed. Elaborate scorekeeping was definitely part of the process.

Our kids are heading off to camp. When I was a kid, nobody I knew went to camp. With twenty or thirty kids in the neighborhood, who needed camp? We could run around outside, unfettered, for hours. Danger didn’t lurk around every corner like it seemingly does these days, and everyone had a great time. But now, once the winter semester is over, mothers (mostly) talk about what their kids are doing for the summer, who knows the best camps, where you can find the most reliable transportation to camp, who’s going to Bronx Zoo camp, who’s going to sleepaway camp for seven weeks, etc. For the past few summers, child #1 has been going to sleepaway camp for twelve days with her best friend, whose brother joined them last year. And this year, child #2 will join the group and attend with them for mini-session #2, which is a twelve day stay at a very rustic, yet charming, camp on a lake not terribly far from here.

God bless hubby’s heart because he’s done most of the camp preparation. Camp preparation includes stamping every piece of clothing—and that includes EVERY sock—with the child’s name, just in case they send their laundry out during the twelve days that they are at camp. A trip to Target last week netted a cache of $337.00 worth of camp supplies—body wash, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, a new trunk for child #2, extra bathing suits, extra underwear, and extra socks—most of which I’ll never see again, I imagine. Right now, husband is washing sheets and pillowcases so that they can be stowed in the trunk. They will return as they have in the past, but I guarantee you that they will smell like a combination of earth, mud, moisture, and sweat. Everything that returns from camp does and has to be washed repeatedly until it smells like home again.

The kids return smelling that way, too, incidentally.

Child #2 is very excited but if not a bit nervous. But being as he is extremely gregarious and would talk to a brick wall, I’m not terribly concerned. I keep telling him, “It’s twelve days. It’s not even two weeks. And you’ve got your sister, and her best friend, and her best friend’s brother. You’ll be home before you know it.” Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself?

The camp phenomenon is relatively new to me. I do have good friends who attended camp every summer, all summer long and they are wistful for their time there. I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything but when my friends get talking about “color wars” and camp sing-alongs, I wonder what it must have been like to pack up at the beginning of the summer and leave home and kin to spend the summer with people who they still remain friends with.

Did you go to camp? What are your best memories? What, in essence, did I miss?

Maggie Barbieri

Vacation Time and the Living Is Easy

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Husband and I are headed for our first non-kid vacation in fifteen years soon and it is to our favorite place on earth (besides home sweet home, that is), Bermuda. We went to Bermuda three years ago with the kids, fell in love with it, and made a promise that we would return, alone, when we had the chance. We are so looking forward to the trip.

Now you may be asking yourself, why would a melanoma survivor—and someone who assiduously avoids the sun—pick a tropical locale so close to the equator to vacation? First reason is that despite the fact that I can’t swim, I love to swim. And I use that term loosely. My idea of swimming is a spastic doggy paddle/treading water/half American crawl that if you tried to replicate, you might pull a disk out and require immediate surgery. But it has been working for me for years and I’ve learned not to make too many waves with it, so once the other swimmers get used to a middle-aged woman in ankle-length, UV protectant swim tights and a mock turtleneck UV protectant swim shirt flailing about next to them, and are convinced she isn’t having a stroke, everyone has a great time. We also have hats, sunscreen that was created for when you’re actually standing on the sun (ok, not really, but close enough), and swim shoes to protect the feet. Guaranteed, I’ll be the palest person getting off the plane at JFK when we return from the island.

We picked a hotel with seven restaurants because another thing we’re not is intrepid travelers. If you all recall our honeymoon story, we once went off the grid for “authentic” south of the border food, only to have me pick up a parasite, which I’m pretty darn sure still resides in my lower intestine and makes an appearance every once in a while. I’m also pretty sure that it has created its own parasitic family, one that enjoys making me sick every few years or so. So, once we park ourselves at the resorts, it’s where we sit, eat, sleep, “swim”, and lounge for the next week. We’re also not motor scooter people (Dad once forbade me from riding them and I obeyed him—my sister, not so afraid of authority, rode them all through her high school senior year trip to the island and even flashed pictures in his face while I said a silent prayer in the corner; she was, in the words of my grandmother, “bold.”)—but we’re not averse to getting on one of the clearly-marked pastel Bermudian buses and riding into Hamilton for a little shopping and dining. I will resist the urge to buy a “Bermuda bag.” Remember those? They were big when I was in high school. They had a wooden handle and were oval shaped and you could change the fabric on the handle to one of a thousand pastel or paisley selections. I couldn’t carry one off in 1985 and I certainly can’t now. But I often get caught up in the local color and think that I must have whatever it is that they’re selling. A Bermuda bag, though, doesn’t go with my clogs and recycled grocery bag lifestyle. I think I’m old enough and wise enough to realize this but only time will tell.

This time, though, I’m determined to get to St. George, which I heard is an historic part of the island and where you can get a drink called the “dark and stormy” that is sweet but deadly. My kind of drink exactly.

We have plans to partake in some kayaking while we’re there, but I’ve also learned that once we settle in somewhere and regard all of the activities that other resort-goers are undertaking, we just live vicariously through them. We’re both so tired from the school year and my work schedule that while we have great hopes of kayaking, scuba diving, and other water adventures, I bet you anything that the most we’ll do is raise a hand to the bartender to bring us another rum swizzle. That will require most of our energy and we want to make sure we don’t run out of steam too early in the vacation.

I’ll give you a full report upon my return. I plan on returning parasite, and sunburn-free. What are your plans for the summer, Stiletto Gang readers and posters? Will it be full-on relaxation or an adventure vacation? Write in and let us know!

Maggie Barbieri

Too Many Days of Rain

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No, this post isn’t about the weather. It has been a strange couple of days in the celebrity world in terms of deaths, what with the losses of Ed McMahon (not so surprising at 82), Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and pitchman Billy Mays and I had some thoughts I wanted to share.

I’m finding myself having a hard time getting worked up about the death of Michael Jackson and I’m wondering why that is. Well, deep down inside, I know what it is, but for right now, let’s just leave it alone. I do feel terrible for the surviving family members, and particularly, his children—two of who have their collective future hanging in the balance while their birth mother decides whether or not she wants to be a participating mother as opposed to someone who carried them for nine months and then left shortly thereafter. The whole situation has a decidedly carnival air about it, just as the poor man’s life did. And that leaves me sad, but not with a grief that I can’t overcome, which is how I’m seeing some people depicted on television.

I can’t say that I was surprised by the too early and untimely demise of Michael Jackson at all. Part of me was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner.

We also, as a media-hungry society, watched as Farrah Fawcett died a slow and painful death from cancer. I felt worse about her passing, maybe because I know the pain of being a cancer patient, or maybe because I related to the fact that despite being perfect looking, she had a less than perfect life marred by the addictions of a grown son who had to visit her in shackles. Although her family and friends claimed that she had no idea that her son was in jail, I think she knew. I think that she was fully aware until the end that her little boy had lived a less than stellar life and was suffering the consequences. Don’t ask me how I know this or why I think this but I think that behind that glorious smile was a pain that only a parent with a dark secret like that can hide.

It was with great sadness that I had to let child #2 know that Billy Mays, champion pitchman, had died. Nothing gives child #2 more joy than the “Mighty-Putty” commercial in which with just a piece of this magic putty, an elephant can pull an eighteen wheeler. Kid begs me—and I mean BEGS me—every time the commercial comes on to buy Mighty Putty, going on to list the innumerable uses it might have in our own home. They are too embarrassing to list but put end to end, amount to a punch list that would probably stretch down our street to the Hudson River below. He was crestfallen when he heard that his hero had died. I think I may actually get the kid some Mighty Putty to alleviate his grief.

Between these celebrity deaths, plane crashes, the fallen troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pictures of protestors being gunned down in the middle of the streets of Iraqi protesting the election (I hope this gives the non-voting Americans—and you know who you are—pause), I can barely stand to watch the news. You would think that all around us was death. But truly, all around us is life. And that, we should celebrate. Because every day is a gift to be treasured and too often, we treat as something that we are owed.

And so finally, I’d like to remember someone who wasn’t a celebrity, but just a very kind man and someone who our family considered one of a kind. John “Mac” McVeigh died on Friday at the age of 67, of an untimely and massive heart attack. He was my father’s oldest and dearest friend and was someone who could light up a room without sucking all of the oxygen out of it. He once told me when I was very small that “God never gives you more than you can handle” and I remembered those words, even as they were used as mere platitudes throughout the years by lesser men and women to describe situations that didn’t rival the ones he faced. He loved his “Reezie,” his kids, and his grandkids. And he loved his friends and treated them like special gifts bestowed upon him. He told the longest, most meandering stories that you could imagine, but eventually, those stories would come to an end, and you would be richer for having heard them. To say that he will be missed is a massive understatement, but if we can all carry around just a little piece of John’s love of life around with us in our hearts, we will all be just a little bit better. And happier.

Maggie Barbieri

Don’t You Die on Me, High-Speed Internet Access!

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I often make fun of my kids who have complete meltdowns when one of their gadgets go dead like the iPod, the Wii, the X-box, the Sims game on the computer. I usually start with, “when I was your age, we didn’t even know what computers were!” or something equally unimpressive to their young, technologically-savvy ears. So, it was with great interest that I have been judging my reaction to an email I received two weeks ago yesterday, in which a man—I’ll identify him as Greg (not his real name)—wrote to a group of local dsl users with his company—I’ll call it ZT&T (not its real name)—that ZT&T was dropping all of them as customers. No explanation as to why, but uninterrupted service was promised, despite the fact that service would be suspended within forty-eight hours. Not long enough to get another service, but just short enough to send the names on Greg’s email list (which were revealed, not hidden), enough time to panic. I recognized two of my friends on the list.

I’ve identified the five stages of grieving for your internet service. Here they are:

1. Fear: Who was Greg? Did he really work for ZT&T? Why did he reveal the entire email list to all of the other affected customers? Was he phishing? To counteract the fear, I called ZT&T and reached India. The man in India assured me that Greg was real, he did work for ZT&T, and yes, he was dropping me as a dsl customer in less than forty-eight hours. He bid me adieu and wishes for a nice day. I told the man in India that not only was I beyond annoyed, I was dropping ZT&T as my local and long distance carrier. He was unimpressed.

2. Frustration: I called Greg; he had left a phone number which I assumed went back to India where I would get the desk of the guy sitting next to the first guy I spoke to. When Greg picked up his phone, I was amazed. He let me rant and then told me that service would be uninterrupted; they were selling us, en masse, to another local carrier we’ll call Berizon. Yes, yes, yes, Greg intoned, there would be no interruption of my dsl service. I reiterated that I ran a business from my home that was dependent on high-speed internet access; in his monotone, he GUARANTEED that I would have service on Thursday when I awoke. I did—it just went out after lunch. Technically, he did not lie.

3. Anger: My emails to Greg, which in the beginning ended with “have a nice day” or “thank you for your help” descended into “you’d better resolve this before I bring Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General of New York State, and all the wrath he wrought down on your pathetic tuchis.” Before long. Greg, too, was unimpressed. (Sense the theme here?) He assured me that I was first on the list for reconnection and would have email by Monday, the 15th at the latest. Later that day, I received a packet in the mail from Berizon with my installation disk saying that I would have service a week from Saturday, June 26th. I called Greg back, but he didn’t pick up his phone this time; an away message on his email indicated that he had gone on vacation (I’m not making this up). He instructed us to call someone else. But I’m so dang tired of this whole thing that the thought of explaining who I am, why I’m angry, and how desperately I need high-speed internet service made me think twice about calling this new person. Something tells me Greg didn’t fill the new guy in on the hordes of angry customers in our Village.

4. Denial: “This isn’t really happening,” I would intone as I waited for my dial-up service to connect. Hours later, while still waiting, I would still be in my fugue state, rocking back and forth in my chair, saying the same thing. Every try to download a pdf on dial-up service? It takes four days. Eventually, I did download the complaint form from the Attorney General’s office, but since it took so long, the bottom was cut off and I have to start again.

5. Acceptance: I will have dial-up forever. I will never work again. It’s okay. Lots of people live with dial-up. Lots of people have productive lives. High-speed internet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Just as I got to this point, the doorbell rang. When I opened it and took in the smiling face of the Berizon technician, his shiny truck at my curb, I nearly jumped into his arms. “Berizon man! I am so happy to see you!” I screamed, clapping my hands together; I held back from hugging him. He took a step back from the doorway and slowly made his way down the front steps, fear etched on his kind face.

“Nobody is ever that happy to see me,” he said, regarding me warily. “They usually want to wring my neck.”

I checked his name tag. His name was Dave. Not Greg. And he worked for Berizon, not ZT&T. In my book, this guy was okay. He helped me call up my web page and helped me get a wireless connection. Never will I make fun of my kids again. Now that we have the technology, let’s all use it!

Maggie Barbieri

Deep Thoughts

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Today’s one of those days where I’m all over the map, so I thought I would do a round-up (see #1 and #2) on some topics that I’ve written about previously and let you know about some promotional gigs that Evelyn David and I will be doing and how they’re going. I hope you’ll indulge me this meandering post.

1. Youth Lacrosse: On Saturday, our kids got beaten up so badly—and I don’t mean that euphemistically—that Coach called the game midway through the third quarter. He decided that our kids didn’t need to be taking sticks to the face, ribs, and legs all in the name of winning a game in the third and fourth grade league. Just wasn’t worth it. Thanks, Coach. And thanks for your email on Sunday, apologizing for calling the game; as you saw from every response you got, we’re all behind you. We just don’t care that much about winning. We care more that our kids can get to middle school with all of their teeth and bones intact.

Fortunately, Sunday was a new day and the team played their last game. I am proud to report that it was played clean, with everyone surviving the nine to three loss with their teeth, bones, and pride intact. Child #2 was thrilled with the fact that he scored the last goal of the season, which by all accounts, was a beaut, complete with NOT ONE, BUT TWO spin moves. Kid is thrilled with himself.

2. Chick Lit: I’ve been thinking about this classification for a while now, wondering whether or not I like the sound of it, especially as it relates to the Murder 101 series. I am big fan of chick lit, and will read anything by the biggies in the niche—Jennifer Weiner comes to mind immediately but I am sure I can think of more. And regardless of whether or not it falls into this category, I’m ordering fellow Stiletto ganger Susan McBride’s Cougar Club as soon as I can because it looks like a complete hoot and I am hoping that I’ll be done with book #5 at that point and can relax. (Yeah, sure.)

A friend was kind enough to drop off an article from the NY Times this past week in which a character in a book being reviewed remarks that if Updike was a woman writing today, they would have slapped a pink cover on the Rabbit series because after all, they’re about relationships, right? Good point. The writer goes on to say that you can tell a chick lit book by its cover. How? Well, if it’s got shoes, a martini glass, even an Adirondack chair, you’ll know that it’s a book for you, if you’re a fan. I don’t know what the writer would say about books that include blood-splattered writing pads (see Final Exam, the fourth installment in the Murder 101 series); I’m hoping that is the mark of an excellent mystery.

Oh! And I almost forgot! My friend, Sheila Curran’s, publishes her second book today and I’ve read it. It’s fabulous. It’s called Everybody She Loved and you will not be disappointed.

3. Book Signings: The Northern half of Evelyn David and I had a book signing this weekend at a great bookstore in her town called Anderson’s. We’re currently on the “Cupcakes and Corpses” tour. Evelyn, as is her way, baked all of her own goodies and brought them, beautifully displayed on a tray. I bought three dozen red velvet cupcakes from a friend with a baking business because as I said repeatedly (I love when a joke works), “If I had made the cupcakes, we would actually have some corpses around here.” So thank you to Anderson’s, Evelyn for setting up the gig, Susan for baking my cupcakes and making me look so good, and everyone who came to support us (most of all!). We sold a good number of books, had a great time, and met wonderful people. And any day that I get to spend time with Evelyn David is a good day in my book, so it was a success all around. The next stop on the tour is the Village Bookstore in Pleasantville on Saturday, June 20, from 1-3. Once again, I will be bringing Susan’s cupcakes and you don’t want to miss that!

I think that’s it for today. I hope all of our readers are enjoying spring; we here on the East Coast are wetter than we’ve ever been. Seriously. Enough, Mother Nature. We hear you.

Maggie Barbieri

Reunion Weekend

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I had the pleasure of spending Saturday evening into Sunday at my alma mater’s annual Reunion celebration. Although it is only my 24th year out of college, my three best college friends—with whom I roomed during my sophomore and their junior years—were attending their 25th jubilee. I was also honored to be a guest presenter there and had the pleasure of speaking to a dozen or so women from the class of ’59, one of whom is the mother of a friend here in the Village. I spoke about the Murder 101 series and these wonderful women restored my belief in my own public speaking skills.

Here’s the thing—I bomb with some groups. There have been several presentations I’ve given where I’ve laughed at my own jokes in front of a room of people who looked like they had come to attend the annual Mortuary Science convention. They do not find my jokes funny, my stories amusing, nor me laughing at my own jokes and/or stories at all humorous. I’ve given a few of these lackluster presentations in a row and was starting to lose faith in myself.

But the class of ’59 was a game crowd. This was a group of extremely interested, mystery-loving women. They ate up everything there was to be heard about Alison Bergeron and the books in the series. And they laughed where you were supposed to laugh and even some places where you weren’t. But that’s ok. Rather have laughing than the alternative.

It was a gorgeous weekend here on the East Coast and my alma mater sits on the Hudson River. The Half Moon was sailing past the college just about the time that I was presenting so many reunion goers went out to see it so as not to miss what turned out to be quite a spectacle. (See here for details and some nice pictures of the replica of Henry Hudson’s ship) Being a huge fan of the Hudson—I’ve lived near it my entire life and enjoyed its beauty—I didn’t mind that I had been ditched in favor of the historic flotilla that sailed past the college and toward my home town, where it sailed past Sunday morning. Missed that one, too.

The girls and I spent Saturday afternoon walking around campus, marveling at how little had changed but also at the improvements that had been made. We had some champagne to celebrate our annual weekend together and then a cosmopolitan right before the dinner dance we were to attend that evening. Before heading over to the dining hall, we ventured into the beautiful chapel—where many key scenes from the movie “Doubt” were filmed—and drank in the smell of bees’ wax, floor polish, and incense. It was there that I got a little overwhelmed, thinking about the four of us, the time that had passed, and the struggles we had gone through. When I told my friends what I was thinking, one of the four, my gal Trixie, turned to me and said, “You’re cut off.” (My reputation as a weepy imbiber is legendary among this crew.)

It’s amazing how after a quarter decade it can feel as if no time has passed. At the same time, it can feel like almost twice that time has passed. It’s a weird conundrum. We had a great time at the dinner dance, dancing among graduates going as far back as the class of ’39—ok, maybe they weren’t dancing, but they were there—and meeting new people with whom we shared the bond of being “Mounties” (our college nickname). The camaraderie that existed among women much older than we are impressed me and again, made me weepy. Seeing women who had cultivated the bonds of friendship over the course of thirty, forty, and even fifty years was impressive indeed. We all have different histories and backgrounds but our love of our friends, and the school that brought us together, will keep us together forever.

Maggie Barbieri

Men–and Women–Behaving Badly

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I have now experienced the phenomenon common in suburban sports known as “parents behaving badly.” To this point, because I am married to the most mellow man on the planet, and he has coached baseball with two other mellow guys in town, we have been immune to the things I read about, hear about, and don’t believe can actually happen in a town of 7,500 people. After all, I always thought, in a town this small, where you run into almost every inhabitant at least once a month—if not week—why would people behave badly? We don’t take our sports that seriously, do we?

Apparently, we do.

Without going into detail, suffice it to say that at child #2’s baseball game on Saturday, there was a dispute involving a call. The call went in our favor, and two runs on the opposing team were considered invalid. The coaches on the other team—to put it mildly—heartily disagreed. And disagreed. And disagreed. Until all three of them were practically blue in the face and taking issue in a vociferous manner with the umpire, who clearly knew his stuff and had a relatively cool head. It got so bad that words were exchanged during the clean-up of the field after the game. Fortunately, our head coach had the good sense to pick up home plate and walk away, thereby avoiding any additional conflict about a play that had happened oh, somewhere around the third inning. Me, husband, and kid #2 were so focused on eating lunch (the game had gone on for more than two hours in the hot sun) that we beat a hasty getaway lest anyone get in front of us at the deli; that was our only concern.

But I have to admit, I was pretty riled up myself as I plowed into my fried eggplant and mozzarella sandwich. My son, however, upon diving into his ham on a roll, asked me if I had seen him steal home. Fortunately, I had. This was the one time I wasn’t exchanging recipes with Melissa on the bleachers or talking about which hair dye lasted the longest. The joy on his face, and the lift that he got from doing something he considered to be the absolute most exciting thing one can do on a baseball field, made me forget that anything had happened in the game between the adults. The kids, in general, had clearly had a great time. The adults? Not so much. So, we spent the rest of the day talking about the home plate steal, and the artistry that accompanied it. Kid #2 was so overjoyed that he told his sister the minute we entered the house, his enthusiasm was contagious. She, too, was equally excited by his feat and asked him about every single detail of this amazing act of athleticism.

That’s what it should be about.

But it’s not and we all know it. The next day, I drove with a friend to our sons’ lacrosse game. We made the mistake—not knowing any better—of sitting with the opposing team’s parents who proceeded to critique, berate, and heckle our kids who range in age from eight to ten. When one of our kids inadvertently knocked someone down (hey, it’s lacrosse—little boys, sticks, and running. What do you think is going to happen?), they would scream for a technical penalty or even for the kid to be thrown out of the game. When one of their little wonders did the same? It was aggressive play. It was how you played the game. It was “go, get ‘em, Tiger.” My friend and I tried to tune the whole thing out and exchanged recipes and tips for hair dying, and tried desperately to find something to do on Thursday other than train with Trainer Shari, who was sitting in front of us and threatening us with severe training. (She’s taking us to the Gorge—where no one can hear us scream.) The game ended with one of our third graders taking the business end of someone’s lacrosse stick to the face. When he collapsed on the ground, in tears, waiting for his mom to come out and comfort him, the opposing team’s parents had the good sense to fall silent. Thankfully, the game ended shortly thereafter. My friend and I got back to my house and tried to forget we had ever been to the game with a lovely bottle of Chardonnay.

Kid #2 is young. He’ll be playing a lot more organized baseball and lacrosse. And despite my being the most competitive person on the planet (remind me to tell you how I turned square dancing into a competitive event), I just want him to have fun. Seeing him smile while running around the bases—bugs flying into this teeth—gives me more joy than anything. And seeing him shrug his shoulders when he’s tagged out makes me proud of him. He moves on very quickly, as he should. There’s been a lot written on this subject and probably no more to say but I will leave you with this: Parents, please take it down a notch.

Maggie Barbieri

And Justice Sonia for All

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Who’s this? She grew up in the Bronx, is Hispanic, a woman, thanked her mother during her first speech, and is currently living and working in New York. She’s Sonia Sotomayor, and barring any back taxes, unpaid nannies, or anything else untoward in her background, she is to become our first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

And the people at the top are finally starting to look like the people in the middle and everywhere else in this great nation.

Say this for Obama, he’s really getting into the whole “melting pot” ideal. The justices are truly starting to represent the faces and ideals of just about everyone in the country. And that is a very good thing. Believe it or not, I don’t want everyone the Court to look, act, and sound like me. I don’t want all of them to hold the same opinions as I do about abortion, affirmative action, immigration, and a host of other hot topics. We need debate. Because somewhere between the left and the right is the truth and that is what having all of these different people, with dissenting opinions—and most importantly, different backgrounds—is for.

Of course, these nominations are always a crap shoot. George H.W. Bush thought he was getting a by-the-book conservative when he appointed Justice David Souter, who turned out to have a few leftie ideas of his own when it came time to rule. But even Sotomayor herself has admitted to the fact that being an Hispanic female makes her more qualified to sympathize with those like her—those who were raised by single mothers in the poorer areas of our inner cities who had to make it on their own. Time will tell, as will rulings. But I have a feeling that she’s sincere when she talks about that empathy for the “little guy,” as we used to call the downtrodden back in the day and that that will shape how she decides certain cases. Case in point: she is most well known for her rulings on discrimination cases involving people with disabilities.

Whatever you feel about the direction the country is taking and despite how you might have voted in the last election, you can’t say that it isn’t an interesting time to be an American. I can’t remember being a teen and thinking about who might be the next Supreme Court nominee because I was certain it would be an old white guy. Same for presidential candidates. We had Geraldine Ferraro that one time and that in itself was exciting, but I think we all had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn’t be one heartbeat away from the presidency and that her candidacy alongside Walter Mondale was really just a parlor game. But now? To paraphrase a song: the rules, they are a’changin’. And I for one, am feeling groovy.

Maggie