The more decorated the pages with edible Rorschach stains, beetroot thumbprints & general incoherent dribblings, the more you have honoured them.

The Union Project, a beautiful old church located in the heart of my neighborhood, is being renovated for use as a community center. The people running the show are innovative and exciting, and we try to support them whenever we can. We bought our Christmas tree from them (and I suppose we will this year too since I already bought a pine-scented soy candle to offset the distressing fact that the tree was lovely but it had absolutely no smell - and then what is the point of having a live tree but the smell?); I took one of the stained glass restoration classes there (there are a gazillion gorgeous windows to be restored, and they offer classes which people pay for in order to restore them all, rather than paying for them to be done. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.); we attend the little farmers’ market when we can; and last night we went to a “hard hat fundraiser,” to check out progress and mingle with the bigwigs. (I saw Gordon Loesch! (He was VERY tan and very flawless-skin-looking a la Johnny-Depp-as-Willy-Wonka.) Also Bill Peduto! Whoo hoo! And Sarah Louise sporting her new "Pink is the new black" t-shirt, which caused considerable debate among my companions as to its political meaning.) Also to eat lots of little finger-y food things like broccoli-cheddar puffs and veggie egg rolls and mini quiche Lorraines (quiches Lorraine?). I am definitely a grazer of the first order, so that was dinner for me. The Church Brew Works (speaking of renovated churches) supplied beer – they had a fantastic lager which Dan declared the best lager he’d ever had and drank three. (I, alas, stuck to ice water.) They had a cello player and then a DJ, and a Chinese auction; it was a cool little event. We got to keep our hard hats too (with the spiffy little Union Project logo), so my little Simon-the-Builder got a real hard hat to complement his carpenter jeans, tool belt, and plumber’s crack this morning. After which we walked home and hung out with our next door neighbors, discussed local politics, and drank more. I love my neighborhood.

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I’ve been to several of these “Creepiest Places on Earth” locations, and I do have to admit that the cemeteries in New Orleans are creepy beyond belief. It’s not just the people buried there (Marie Laveau), or the bizarre grave decorations, but just the traditions of burial. The mausoleums are above-ground (tradition has it that this is because the water table is so high – New Orleans is below sea level); you bought one for your family. (But if you were a pauper or your family didn’t have enough status/cash to own/rent a mausoleum, there *were* (and are) below-ground burials.) When you are buried, your casket/body may not be disturbed for a year and a day (if too many people die in your family over the course of a year, you may need to rent or borrow vault space elsewhere). At the end of that time period, your decomposed body – bones and such – are removed from the casket (which is then simply discarded – makes for cheaper funeral arrangements!) and then pushed into the back of the mausoleum where they fall down a chimney-like channel, and then the space is available for the next corpse. It’s the sort of city where it’s easy to believe anything could happen, and most likely does. In the Garden District or even parts of the French Quarter (not Bourbon Street), it is easy to believe in ghosts. The cemeteries are creepy, both for their eerie mausoleums and monuments, and for the high crime incidence – you do not want to walk around them after dark, you are asking for trouble of one sort or another! I’ve never been a big Anne Rice fan – in fact, I think she’s pretty awful – but Robert Girardi’s Madeleine’s Ghost features a pretty spooky spectre from the Big Easy.

The Tower of London is another spooky place I have actually been. It is considered one of the most haunted places in Britain which considering their long and bloody history is saying a lot. Seeing and touching the chopping block where Anne Boleyn lost her head was just weird. Rumor has it that she wanders the Tower grounds with her head tucked under her arm. The Bloody Tower is where Richard’s two nephews are purported to have been imprisoned and murdered; they have been seen wandering the tower hand-in-hand. Phantom funeral processions have been seen crossing the grounds, as have phantom regiments of soldiers. The rooms are tiny and cramped and low; even if you’re not claustrophobic (but I am), you’d start feeling creeped out after a while. I remember one room with all these scratchings on the wall – days being counted off, messages to family members before prisoners were carted off to be executed…hundreds of years old. Downright unsettling.

I’ve been to Gettsyburg but the only truly disturbing thing there were the rows upon rows upon rows of graves for young men – it seemed as if the majority of graves were for teenaged boys - aged 18, 19, 20 years old. Horrifying.

And as far as Lizzie Borden goes, here’s pretty much all I know about her, save for the similarities to Margaret Atwood’s Grace Marks, in Alias Grace:
Lizzie Borden with an axe
Gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Of course, Borden was acquitted, but her name lives on in infamy.

And sadly, while in Paris several years ago, I was not aware of the Parisian catacombs so didn’t have the chance to see them. But trust me, some of the rooms at Versailles were completely creepy in their own way. Not to mention some people’s experiences in the gardens there. (My own mother among them, who was not given to hysterics or daydreams. But she SWORE she saw people in period clothes wandering the grounds. Just being aware of this was enough to make me jittery. )

Anyway, what got me off on this tangent? I forget. Sorry. Hope it was interesting at least.

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Snippets:

• The things children say, some of which you never thought you’d hear in a lifetime –
  
  
  • “Jude hit me with the thinking chair!”
    
    
  • “Why do you need someone looking at your butt to get you out of the house?”
    (For the record, such as it is, I *said* a “kick in the butt” but Si misheard/misunderstood me. Please do NOT look at my butt, I am self-conscious enough as it is.)
  
  
  
• I spent an inane amount of time today looking up phone numbers in Italy for my Private-Number-Patron. If you’re interested, you too can check out www.yahoo.it for the Italian Pagine Bianche or Gialle.
  
  
• There are auditions for The Apprentice on campus today. Starbucks and the Union were full - full, I tell you - of well-dressed poseurs carting laptops and cell phones and what have you. Except for the small contingent of people who think it is acceptable to attend any event in blue jeans, Tevas, or a wife-beater undershirt – also toting laptops and cell phones. Idiots. The whole lot of them.
  
  
• This looks like an interesting little book (courtesy of The Guardian): Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Anyone ever heard of her?
  
  
• Dove has a worthy new ad campaign that tells women to embrace their curves. Too bad they're hawking cellulite cream. - (Rebecca Traister, Salon.com) You know, I just don’t have a problem with this campaign. It’s no more or less disingenuous than any other advertising campaign for a beauty product. I think if you take it at face value, the message that normal, healthy (not toothpick-thin) women are beautiful too, is a worthy message. Regardless of whether they want to rid themselves of cellulite or not. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Dove’s shampoo/hair conditioner. Fortunately I have no cellulite on my scalp…)
  
  
• I am nine chapters into HP book 6. It’s much better than Book 5 but there are little things annoying me, like several lame typos (site instead of sight, for example).