“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie- deliberate, contrived & dishonest- but the myth- persistent, persuasive & unrealistic.” - JFK

PART ONE OF TWO: MYTHOLOGY (Greek)

Alexandra Robbins’ Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities is a weirdly compelling book. I find myself not wanting to put it down. Robbins does a terrific job of helping us get to know the girls she has undertaken to follow throughout a year of sorority membership, and rather than perpetuate mindless stereotypes, she intelligently and thoughtfully explores, dissects, and exposes the stereotypes and the truth behind them, both by in-depth, research-based investigative reporting and though a careful character analysis of her four subjects and her relationship with them as well as their relationships with their sorority sisters.

God, am I glad that I never rushed a sorority (not that any of them would have taken me anyway, probably, I apparently didn't worry nearly enough about how I looked).

But some of the other stuff this author talks about - I just don't know. I guess it takes all kinds. But now I get why people look at me funny if it ever comes up that I used to hang out at a fraternity when I was in college, and that my boyfriend was one of the brothers. Maybe there's some truth to all the stereotypes of Greeks. It's just weird, since it so doesn't gel with what I experienced - but then I wasn't deeply involved, like being in a sorority.

I always liked being at the house, I always felt safe there, I liked most of the brothers (actually, the other girlfriends were more the problem, what is with women hating other women?). Most of the brothers - I mean, really, most of them - were all right guys.

It's hard to reconcile my memory of fun parties, and being involved in events at Carnival that I might have skipped otherwise, and even more ritualized events like formals (even if I never did get my lavaliere - but I wasn't bitter. Ahem.) with the crazy stuff the author talks about in this book. Maybe I was just naive. Maybe it's because my boyfriend never seemed to take a lot of the stuff all that seriously. Maybe the house I frequented really was different from the norm.

I remember how heartbroken I was when I wasn’t selected to be an official little sister, before national outlawed little sisters. Later, some of the bigs officially made me a ‘friend of the house,’ but I still couldn’t wear letters. I LONGED to wear those letters.

I would have killed for a lavaliere from J. He either didn’t love me enough to be bothered, or, looking back now, what I think was probably the case, he didn’t take much of fraternity ritual very seriously at all and probably had very little idea how very very badly I wanted to be lavaliered. Yet when he proposed - with his fraternity pin AND his grandmother’s ring - after college, I turned him down. (Although I have to admit I did fondle that pin a bit…I had wanted it for so long. I mean, the ring was pretty, but that pin…)

But I knew from the get-go that sorority membership wasn’t for me. I have never been a woman’s woman. I’d have imploded in the hothouse atmosphere of a sorority house. This book merely proves me right in that regard. Some of the girls assert that they have found lifelong sisterhood with their sorority sisters, but others are as dismissive of the senseless rules and political playmaking as I would be. The sex, the drinking, the drugs, the partying and casual hook-ups, all ring very true to me, and that’s just from this GDI’s college experience in the early nineties. I am not sure how much being in a sorority contributes to these girls’ behavior, and eventually that is the conclusion Robbins reaches as well. But in the meantime, what a heck of a read. Like "Dynasty" meets Little Women, with a dash of The New Girls or "Clueless" thrown in for good measure.

"Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.” - Ani DiFranco

I have been recently very annoyed by the stark white walls of my upstairs bathroom. The entire room – bath surround, sink, floor, up to about waist-high on the walls – is covered in vibrant Pepto-Bismol pink tile. So when I painted the ceiling and upper walls, I chose a fairly bright white semi-gloss. The ceiling is about nine feet high, though, and the upper walls and ceiling comprise a lot of wasted space.

I recently bought brackets to put up shelves over the floor cabinet that holds washcloths and handtowels, the apothecary jars of Q-tips and cotton balls, my bath salt collection, and other assorted bathroom junk. I hung the photos of the boys in the bathtub on the wall opposite the tub, over the two towel racks. I have a lovely little etched-glass and mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink, and some botanical prints in weathered green-painted frames for the awkward corner wall, right over the chrome bar for the hand towel currently in use.

BUT I have a giant expanse of high white wall behind the toilet.
It needs some artwork.
OR SOMETHING.

I looked into ordering vintage soap ad posters, but decided that was too cutesy. Especially in a Pepto-Bismol pink bathroom.

I can’t have the boys draw me something because I already have their crayoned schematics of my kitchen framed and hanging on the kitchen walls, and fingerpaintings hanging in the front hall over their coat hooks. Too much of a good thing and all...

I am not interested in generic pastel paintings of flora, fauna, and fields, and the posters from Carnevale in Venice in '95 and my repro of Marc Chagall’s Paris opera house ceiling are already displayed in my living room and upstairs hallway.

So I turn to my Internet friends, like I do in times of doubt and trouble.

I spent a peaceful hour the other morning sipping tea and shuffling through dear Suse’s lovely photos on Flickr. (It was almost as good as actually having coffee with her – almost.) I was entranced by her seemingly effortless and evocative shots of everyday items – she makes the ordinary so lovely: a stack of vibrantly dyed washcloths, a round basket with soaps in it, that resembled a little bird’s nest, a translucent amber bar of Pears soap.

I fell in love with a photo of her armchair by the fireplace, piled round with books and school papers, which I want to hang in my bedroom because looking at it makes me feel cozy and warm and relaxed, much like I imagine I'd feel in her house.

And so I emailed her: why don’t you have more photos of your bathroom?

Her mudbrick house is so cozy and charming, and she has such a way with little touchs of handmade beauty – her soft stuffed Christmas trees, her knitted gnomes, her nature table. I will bet her bathroom is definitely photo-worthy. Or at least some of the bathroom-type stuff in her bathroom is photo-worthy, and would look simply fabulous enlarged just a bit, framed in a simple frame, and hung on MY bathroom wall by way of decoration.

I think I need about three more bathroom-type shots, Suse, to accompany the soap, the basket, and the flannels.

Could you get right on that?

Thanks, dear!