The Urban Elf

I find myself a victim of extortion at the hands of the city of Boston. Just the other evening, after spending several hours at home working diligently on a number of ongoing and deadline heavy projects, I went out to meet friends for a late evening cocktail at a charming saloon on Commonwealth Avenue. I drove, since the walk to the T from my house is still too much for me given my ongoing recovery. After driving around and around I found what I thought (due to a lack of signs) was a legal parking space. Well, two drinks and two hours later I come back to a $75.00 ticket. Nearly a day's pay to park for two hours.... oh, yah, that's fair, especially since I don't knowingly park illegally. I suspect city hall will be hearing from me. Like I have time for this. Sheesh.

While I daren’t say that I feel perky. I so loathe perkiness. It is a mind far more wakeful than yesterday that tumbles its suspect contents across a clacking keyboard to you. Yesterday I was so desperately tired.

You see, due either to militant impudence or dire incompetence the coal shoveling gnomes in the furnace room failed in their duty. While I must admit I will enjoy doling out their richly deserved punishment, I was not amused that the manse was left to greet the morning painfully bereft of hot water. As immersion in cold water harbors too many unpleasant memories I decided to temporarily forgo the whole experience. The result of this, of course, is despite that my valiant efforts to caffeinate my way to complete consciousness the fog failed to fully lift. It is nearly impossible to get the blood flowing freely without the thermal assistance of a hot shower, especially when I haven’t recently fed. Instead I contented myself with daydreams of pleading wailing gnomes as fitting soundtrack to my luxuriating in endless streams of hot water and steam.

The jack-booted christianist extremists are on the march again and this time they plan to bring their own version of Kristallnacht to Sesame Street. A house subcommittee recently voted in favor of drastic reductions in federal financial support for public television. I don’t know about you, but… from Sesame Street and the Electric Company teaching me letters, numbers and reading (and that Rita Moreno was fierce) to Mr. Roger's Neighborhood providing a voice that lives deep in my heart saying "you are special" and continuing, at nearly forty, to bolster my self-esteem when the world seems an otherwise hopeless place to Zoom showing me that kids can accomplish so much if they work together to Masterpiece Theatre awakening me to the nuance and intrigue of society and sending me to the library shelves to read great literature not just for school, but on my own time to Julia Child who taught me the basic principles and language of cuisine and set me on the path to being a pastry cook at the Ritz Carlton to Bill Moyers helping me to know when it was time to change directions and investigate another career and maybe life path, PBS has been an important part of my life. We cannot afford to lose this valuable part of our media landscape, this essential part of our culture. We owe it to our children to continue the good work begun by the late Jim Henson, Fred Rogers, Alistair Cooke and Julia Child. Please don’t remain silent.

Today I was to be free. Today I was to cast off my crutches like an anointed pilgrim to Lourdes. Today was supposed to begin the final three week count down to my emergence from this orthopedic cocoon that I might unfurl my wings and fly free into the blue skies of the July social scene.

But, no.

True I have forsaken the bandage-happy splint in favor of a walking-cast, but due to my bones riding the little bus on the road to wholeness my bone fusions have not yet totally fused. So now in conjunction with the walking-cast I shall be wielding a single crutch for two more weeks to provide an additional semi-weight-bearing period of knitting time. Then, I am permitted to shuck the crutch without another inquisition by the priests of medicine. However, my appointment to finally, completely, totally be rid of all prescribed encumbrances has been pushed back to the first week in July. What does this mean? It means that I am going to be dragging an unfashionable open-toed ski boot all around Gaylaxicon. It means I will have to watch yet another con dance from the sidelines. It means that I have exactly one and one half days of full weight bearing to rebuild twelve weeks of atrophy before having to unveil my now hopelessly mismatched legs at pool and sea side. It means I am so pissed off that… Let’s just say it’s not pretty.

At times like these I am reminded of the immortal words of Jim Steinman as channeled by Bonnie Tyler.

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

Well, mostly I toss and turn from a lack of air-conditioning and preponderance of pollen, but you get the idea.

Oh, Allergy. Oh, wheezing, brain fogging, eye burning allergy. It appears that perhaps my systematic sacrificing of television “weather-casters” to the sun god has begun to pay off. But gods being fickle egomaniacs the glorious orb has shown up late, only sporadically engaged with the guests and activities, and then meandered off without so much as a “fare thee well”. Probably off to hobnob with vacuous paparazzi magnets at some deplorable Wolfgang Puck establishment. But, returning to my point, the sun has indeed been seen. After our interminable Seattle-like climax of a cold and sodden stretch of six rain ruined weekends in a row the sun is at last playing a cheeky game of peek-a-boo. Of course this means that when the shining one does appear in the sky every flower in creation that has been getting lush and sturdy and fat as if readying for its adolescent growth spurt joins its fellows in popping off like flashbulbs in the presence of Princess Di. So now here I sit, peering out the window at the sun’s protracted fan-dance with every gland swollen, every joint aching, a face that looks and feels as if I’ve been bobbing for poison ivy and the distinct impression that while sleeping someone funneled a wheelbarrow load of sand through my nose and into my cranium. No doubt as soon as I can move and the metric mule-load of antihistamines I’ve swallowed remits me to gravity’s grasp, I will have to take action. Perhaps I should try sacrificing tanning booth operators…