Naked light fixtures

I just had a funny/traumatic experience in my kitchen last night.

It's a long story: the lightbulbs in my kitchen overhead light burned out on Friday. A friend from grad school was over on Saturday because we were going to see a matinee of the Reader and we had some time before the movie, so I made him get up on a ladder and change the bulbs. Well. we were yakking (my bad), no doubt about the limitations of depicting the Holocaust in film or criticizing the rationale of recent Supreme Court decisions (yes, we really do talk about stuff like that) and he got distracted and didn't screw the light fixture cover back on properly.

So, just after I finished cooking dinner last night and was moving away from the stove to get something from the cupboard above the sink, the glass light fixture cover came crashing to the floor.

Luckily neither I nor my kitty Tati was standing under it--and I would have been if I were still cooking--because one of us would have been badly hurt or even killed if it had been a direct hit. That thing was really heavy. I am still shaking. I finished sweeping up the glass but vacuuming up the dust took some time. It shattered into a million little pieces, and of course, Tati wanted to investigate, so I had to keep shooing her out of the kitchen.

Normally I would get up on a ladder, no problem, but I broke my leg (a really long story) last year and I am still nervous about getting up on ladders. Ugh. Need to get over that.

With the naked light fixture the kitchen now officially looks Depression era (the house was built in the 1942) but not in a good way. Quilting projects with repro 1930s feedsacks--cute. Naked lightbulbs--depressing in a Walker Evans kind of way. I feel as if I should be packing the pick-up and heading to California to pick grapes with the Joad family.

On that note I will post some appropriate music for the drive. Covers of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" from, of course, YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKSKjqn9Pw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7j7oDN1VGk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHqPGTMSn1s


(Be sure to check out the first one. It's very groovaliciously 1960s).

Change, change, and more change

What a difference four hours can make. About two and a half weeks ago, on Wednesday, January 28, 2009, my life changed profoundly. I went from reading the economic news at breakfast to becoming an economic statistic by lunchtime. Of course the 17 jobs shed at my small company wouldn't even make the back page of the local section of the newspaper, compared with the headline-making catastrophic job losses at Caterpillar (22,000 jobs--sheesh) or General Motors.

But one of the thousands of jobs shed in the month of January, on that bone-chillingly damp Wednesday was mine. This event forces me to take stock and make (I hope) positive changes in my life goals, in my consumption habits, in my activities, in my relationship to my community, friends, and family, and in my career path. It's a journey--perhaps one that I wouldn't have chosen to make--and this blog-writing exercise is part of that journey.

Having studied history, I can't help but be fascinated by the larger historical forces at play in the Great Debacle of 2008, even as I am dealing with my own personal situation (update a resume, find freelance work, find a JOB. With health insurance.) Like Thucydides, even as I participate in these events on an intensely personal level, I'll observe and chronicled the experience. (Though if my blog postings actually survive through next year, let alone across the millenia, I'd be mighty surprised.) But I'll be sharing my observations about anything and everything in the coming weeks and months with anyone who cares to read them.

Anna
P.S. I confess that I never drank the expensive coffee drinks. I always helped myself to the free coffee in my warm office.