Have Boat, Will Travel (If I must)

There are many sterling traits that set the Yankee Curmudgeon character apart from others and give me pleasure to count my own among the ranks, but helpfulness, alas, is not one of them.

Example: Not long ago, I went into a certain, sterile big-box hardware store that shall remain nameless, with the goal of buying paint. For the purposes of anonymity, lets just call the minions hired to prowl the aisles of this vast and soulless cavern The Orange Aprons. No, not for any particular reason, but good question! Glad you're paying attention. Anyway, after milling cluelessly in front of the overwhelming array of color options for upwards of forty minutes, lost in the thrall of indecision, I finally settled on a color and a finish. (The OA’s had long ago scattered to the winds the minute they sniffed uncertainty on me.)  So I grabbed off their shelf a gallon of base paint that promised me eggshell finish, and drifted over to the ‘paint center’ counter. And waited.

And waited.

And.

Waited.

I tried to flag down an OA whom I caught unpacking boxes in the middle of the paint aisle. He first tried the old “if I don’t look at you then maybe you won’t be able to see me” routine before sighing in defeat and with the look of a doomed man, asked if he could help me. No doubt because of his manned post in the middle of the paint department, I mistakenly thought he could. Was he able to mix some paint for me please?  Or, in the event that he wasn’t, could he perhaps summon for me somebody who could? Nope. He wasn’t and he couldn’t. Awfully sorry, but he was in the middle of stocking, and his radio wasn’t working. But if I waited “just a few more minutes”, Linda would be returning from break. She could help me, he said, with oily reassurance.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Finally, a pinch faced fireplug of a woman sidled up to the paint counter and in the same tone she might have employed if she had just found out I clubbed baby seals in my spare time, asked if she could help me.

I slid the gallon I had selected across the counter, along with the paint chip I had decided upon.

Can I get some paint mixed please?

Not with that paint, you can’t.

Silence.

Um, what?

She blinked.

I blinked back. Sorry?

She jabbed a finger at the label. That’s the wrong paint.

Oh.

I waited for her to elaborate, to expand upon this observation but evidently counsel had decided to rest.

Silence.

Um–– …Could you show me where the right paint is then?

Sigh.

And as she unwedged herself from the sliver of an opening the paint counter afforded and led me back down the aisle she had only just minutes before passed, she offered this nugget for me: You should have asked for help if you were confused.

More recently, Gina and I have been trying in our own bumbling way, to solicit help from our neighbors. I always say that we live on a lake but a more accurate description is to say that we live across the road from a lake. It is a small road, granted, but just the same it means that we are maddingly close to water without being able to reach it. All the land that touches the lake around us is privately owned. This is a fairly new development. Mostly because until recently, we thought we lived right down the road from a public access way, and for four or five years, we have been treating said access as such.  It was the perfect place to launch our kayaks when we wanted to paddle around the water and enjoy, say, a spate of beautiful spring weather when sounds of mirth and merriment from all those enjoying the cool waters might waft up from the shores and ring in our ears where we sat in our backyard, sweating and stewing in humid misery. Unfortunately, due to a little investigative research, begun purely in an effort to vindicate our righteous indignation that some crotchety lout had erringly plastered “private property” signs all over what was in fact a public access, we discovered that those private property signs were, to our astonishment, plastered all over private property.

Whoops.

Okay, that’s okay, we told ourselves. We would forget this access and move on to plan B.

Plan B was brilliant. It couldn’t fail. Because had a secret weapon:

Chocolate chip cookies.

The hardest part was summoning the courage to knock on a neighbor’s door. We had done a thorough investigation of the lakeside properties and had carefully chosen this neighbor because it was convenient, but also because we assessed the layout and decided their property bounds afforded the maximum convenience for everyone and also the minimum disturbance. These neighbors have a long (relatively) and winding driveway that curves around towards the house exactly as a small embankment slopes down towards the lake. It provided a perfect path for us to wheel our kayaks down to the lake while the distance and ample foliage between our route and their house would ensure that our presence would not disturb their privacy at all. The path we marked out led to a small swampy cove. It was out of the way. The cove, frankly, looked lonely and unloved.

I wrote a letter introducing ourselves and asking if we might be able to work out an agreement where they might grant us access to the cove to launch our kayaks and we in return would give them chocolate chip cookies and also our lasting gratitude. In addition to reverent hero status. I revised the letter three times. Gina bustled in the kitchen getting a plateful of cookies made. At last, we were ready to put the plan into action.

Armed with smiles and a plate of cookies, we embarked on our journey across the street and down our neighbor’s driveway.

Our neighbor was youngish. Forties maybe. Pleasant, in a socially awkward way. He nodded as we babbled. He listened to our pleas. In my enthusiasm, I thrust my letter at him and Gina flung the cookie platter into his hands. He was startled, but he took them both. He said our request seemed reasonable. He’d just have to ask permission of course.

Of course!

He looked worried, like he couldn’t figure out how to both ask for permission and also continue his duties as our host. Fulfilling one mission meant abandoning the other.

He looked relieved when we told him he could get back to us, that he didn’t have to do it now.

Of course! We told him our emails and numbers were in the letter. The cookies were his too, regardless of his decision.

Of course!

He thanked us, and we thanked him, and then we returned home. I immediately headed to the bathroom to scrounge for asprin.

That night he emailed us back.

Naturally, he said, he was sorry that it wasn’t going to work out. His reasons were squirrelly and vague and I couldn’t quite follow what he meant. We were crestfallen. We’d been hoping that all our effort would help us secure a place where we could wheel our kayaks down to the water. We were hoping it could be his cove. It wasn’t going to be. That was his prerogative, of course.

Of course.

The cookies, he made sure to tell us, were delicious.

We still haven’t found a place to put our kayaks in. At least not a place that doesn’t involve a severely off road commute through the woods or strapping them to the car and driving down to the public boat launch.  We haven’t summoned up our courage or our efforts to deploy plan B upon another neighbor. Partly because we're feeling cowardly, but mostly because the weather’s turned cold again and so the pressing incentive to secure ourselves a boat launch has mysteriously faded.

Then, just the other day, we were playing out in our garden, and watched the kids from across the street try to sell water. Yep, straight up, plain old tap water out of a plastic jug. Their grandmother who lives with them and was more or less overseeing the operations, wandered over to our yard to talk. She said they couldn’t find the jug of country time powder in their house, but clearly, these enterprising kids were undeterred and felt if they couldn’t sell lemonade, then they could at least help their neighbors stay hydrated.

But soon, a minor crisis arose when they discovered they were running low on plastic cups. Potential loss of sales swam before their eyes. I could see it in their expressions. Not that anybody had driven by in the last hour, but still. They sent the youngest on an emergency supply run, but after several minutes, he came back empty handed. Their grandmother promised she would help scrounge more up when she was done talking with us. It was however,  apparent to all that she was in no danger of flagging any time soon.  Then she happened to peer around the corner of our house and she spotted our kayaks. And that’s when found out from her that there might exist a lakeside benefactor not three doors down from us. Our neighbor knows this first hand because she launches her rowing scull from this woman’s property. She suggested we try asking her. Gina and I looked at each other.

When our conversation ended, Gina thanked our neighbor and then went into the house to get one of our plastic tumblers and a dollar. The kids practically went limp with relief when she showed up with her own vessel. They gave her extra water as a token of their appreciation. She told them to keep the extra change, as a token of hers.

She wandered back into our yard and in silence, we ruminated on our tip. I could feel courage and hope start to trickle through my veins once more. I looked over at her and saw her purse her lips, deep in thought. She was staring off, towards the direction where our potential benefactor lived.

How’s the water, I asked 

Delicious, she said. A dollar very well spent, I think. Here, have some.

I did, and so it was. 

We haven't gone over to plead our case with the woman, not yet. It's cold and raining right now and we haven't had time to make more cookies, but the delicious hope of possibility blooms once more. And I am considering amending my blanket statement about New Englanders. Some exceptions apply.

Sometimes, You Just Need to Escape.

      Blessed little lambs that you are who read this blog, know that drag is a recently cultivated little obsession of ours. If you want to bail out now, go ahead. No hard feelings. This is part 2 of my foray into drag. You’ve been warned.

     Last Friday, Gina and I went to our first live drag show. It was, to quote the lingo the kids these days are using, epic.  Not only was it our first live drag show, it took place in Northampton Massachusetts, which is quite possibly one of our most favorite places in the world. It’s where the coffee is strong, and so are the women. And not only was it in Northampton Massachusetts, it starred two of our favorite drag queens ever. We got our picture taken with them. They signed our t-shirts. The spoke to us. We’re in love, officially.

            Though I would submit that there is never not a good time to get to see Raven or Jujubee in person (forgive me, o gods of syntax for that one), our virginal drag show experience proved to be a small but restorative oasis in a sea of roiling reality. Sometimes, a person just needs to escape. And drag provides an escape, both for the performer and also for the (willing) audience.  I am still learning about drag, its culture within the gay world, and its different forms of expression, but the more I learn about it as an art form, the more enamored of it I become. Drag shows and the drag pageant circuit are sort of offshoots of the gay ballroom scene, which in turn formed out of a need for the gay community to create their own havens of safe realities. In the 1990 documentary about New York City's ball scene, Paris is Burning, one person describes entering into a ball venue as“crossing into the looking glass. Into Wonderland. It is the only place where it feels 100% right being gay.”

            For those in the ball world, and also for those who do drag, both forms of expression are a way to escape the feelings of powerlessness, self-hatred, vulnerability, and real danger that exist on a daily basis for queers. By participating in balls, and by doing drag the contestants and performers get to rewrite the rules of reality. They make a world where the reviled are instead revered, where losers are winners, and where the voiceless have voice. In my last post, I wrote about failure. About feeling like a failure and about how failure can rapidly consume. What I love about drag is that I see how it provides for those who do it, a way to escape feeling like a failure (the failure of being gay in a hetero-normative world), by creating a persona that empowers.

            Drag queens are characters. They have personalities, likes, interests, and tastes that are separate from their male counterparts. In that sense, drag is like writing. Both are a way to fiddle with truths and make up different realities and then invite audiences into their crafted worlds. The power of fiction is its ability to model reality without having to submit claims of actually being reality. Sometimes, I just want to escape. And so I create worlds and characters and stories that are my own. I can lose myself in them, and I can also tweak reality to my liking. Writing is my venue. E.L Doctorow writes in the opening paragraph of his essay, “False Documents” that “by a ritual transaction between reader and writer, instructive emotion is generated in the reader from the illusion of suffering an experience not his own.”  Just as I can feel real empowerment or understanding or sorrow or love in the novels that I read, so too can similar instructive emotion be generated in other forms of art. I feel empowerment and love and voice from drag. Not in all drag, not from all performers. But my favorite drag queens are like my beloved authors.  When they invite me into their worlds, I eagerly accept.   

        

I never knew how small Gina and I actually are.

Failure

Failure is the demon that attacks the creative muse who would visit me, and I, a coward, what do I do? I sit back and let it happen. And when Creativity has been bludgeoned to a paste and torn asunder, Failure turns to me satisfied. There, it says. What did I tell you?  It reaffirms its own existence this way and only grows in power with each successful attack.

            Failure has been especially potent lately. It points out its presence in everything I’ve touched, and whatever I have not yet touched or have abandoned before it could begin, well that was Failure’s influence too. What I haven’t done is because I am incapable of doing it; what I have done is, ipso facto, only within my abilities, which, Failure reassures me, are inadequate.  Any moron can complete something, but that doesn’t mean she can achieve. Achievement is a slippery toad that ever changes its form and eels out of my grasp as soon as I think I may have touched it. And Failure, always ready to be of service, points out Achievement’s newest form for me, while also shouting in my ear that I will never be able to hold it. I know this is only Failure's desperate way of maintaining its supremacy, and yet I let it convince me. Believing in Failure makes me feel like more of a failure, and that’s just what it needs to feed on to grow stronger and more powerful. It is like a leech that convinces its host to let herself be sucked dry.  It rattles off for me all of my shortcomings, my squandered opportunities and all my wasted chances as evidence that I am indeed a failure. that I have always been a failure, and will always be a failure. It continues this way, building the case against my own worth until it has me crippled with doubt and fetal with fear and begging for mercy. Sometimes I am able to tamp its voice down, to tell it to knock it the fuck off, but other times it feels like the only thing that is true. Certainly the only truth that is real.  Even as I write this, Failure is piping up to insist that I am not even articulating its power and hold over me at all adequately. Because in addition to everything else, it is also very vain, you see  And yet, it doesn’t think I should write about it at all. In fact, it wants me to stop right now and erase this whole damn thing and certainly never post it because:

1)    It’s nothing that anybody wants to read (because it fails as an interesting/meaningful piece of writing)

              1a) not that I have very many readers anyway (because I am failing to 

                    develop my ‘social  platform’ as well as I should.)

2)    I ought to be embarrassed by it (and I am) because in writing it, I am only admitting what I already know is true, which is that I am a failure. Because people who aren’t failures don’t need to post stuff like this.

3)    I should be able to do better than this.  And it's true. I should. But it is also true that I haven’t been blogging as much as I was a month ago because I have begun of late to let Failure whisper in my ear, to let it convince me of my shortcomings as a writer/artist, which only serves to ensure the certainty of my failure as a writer/artist.

Failure thinks I should hold out for better ideas. It wants me to wait for that creative muse to come unwarily traipsing back into my life. Failure tells me it will play nice this time, but I know it will try to bludgeon the muse as soon as she is within striking distance. Because that is its favorite past time.   And so I will write this, and I may even post it. Because it is the only power I have against Failure. That is the real reason Failure doesn’t want me to continue writing this, or even to post it. Because just this little act of defiance stuns Failure enough to shut it up for a moment, and suddenly isn’t the only voice I am able to hear anymore.  Maybe in that quiet I will be able to hear Creativity calling. If I am lucky, Confidence might be somewhere near her too. They are weak right now, still suffering the wounds that Failure has inflicted, but I write this so that I can find them. So I can begin to nurse them back to health. 

Claiming my blog from Blogger

I apologize for this post. Seriously, don't read it because it's not interesting.  I am sure there is a different way to do this, but that's the thing about technology. To keep up with it, you have to be savvy in it. To be savvy in it, you have to keep up with it. Thanks to rockin' instructions by Kate Pilkington, I am trying to get all on board with bloglovin', which is the newest bestest way to follow blogs, since apparently google is doing away with google friends. Or some such fiddle faddle. i don't even know. Because I'm not technology savvy.
    Anyway, the whole point of this post is because I'm trying to claim my blog to post it on my bloglovin' profile because that's apparently what I need to do. And to do that, i'm supposed to paste a code into my blog. So here it is.

claiming my blog

Now I can claim my blog in my profile, and that is really the only point of this post.

Though, if you are still reading this post, check out the new follow button at the top! sweet!

Now my next step is to copy that cute little button and plop it at the end of every post. But I'm already exhausted, so that will just have to wait. sigh.
follow my blog

Oooh, GIrl!

 Gina and I have a new obsession. It is drag. As in queens, not loud cars that drive too fast.  Now, I am no expert on the world of drag. I will admit that most of my knowledge about this sub-culture within a sub-culture comes largely from the internet and a smattering of documentaries, and that it only metastasized from an idle curiosity into a full blown love with the delightful discovery of RuPaul’s Drag Race, a television show that I like to imagine is a sort of a Project Runway meets a Gay Pride parade Float and they have a love child after getting drunk on too many Absolut Vodka cocktails. (I say this like I have ever watched Project Runway. I’m getting off topic, but this reminds me of a time I was checking into a hotel in North Dakota. The woman asked me where I was from. I told her Boston. She said, “Oh. I’ve never been to your coast. But I must say, I prefer the other one.  Similarly, I prefer RuPaul’s Drag Race. Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled program). I will even admit that two years ago, I knew pretty much next to nothing about drag queens. So for me to pretend that I am any sort of expert on the culture of male drag is a bit like claiming to be an expert on DaVinci after a brief stroll through the Uffizi and its gift shop. But good heavens, if I let a silly little thing like ignorance stop me from opining, I would have stopped talking back in kindergarten.

            So what is it, exactly? What is it about the display of glamour, high fashion, and exaggerated femininity from male performers that can fascinate, charm and inspire adoration in even the most rumpled of lil’ ol’ lesbian like yours truly, and her mild mannered wife?  

Pandora Boxx sporting Chevrolet chic

                                                   

Certainly, someone who can create haute couture out of licorice whips and caution tape, or fashion headpieces from automotive accessories is more than deserving of my admiration, but it is more than that. And yes, anytime a spotlight shines on some particular group who can camp out under that big sprawling tent of we call “queer,” I get a little heart sparkle of kinship love, but it is more than that too. Watching RuPaul’s Drag Race makes me want to chase rainbows in the wind and smile kindly upon my fellow neighbors of the world, and dandle children upon my knee and save kittens from danger, and write weird blog posts when I ought to be working on my novel. So what is it? Well, after more exhaustive thought and analysis on the matter than I would ever grant truly pressing concerns, and after picking through Gina’s brilliant mind in an effort to understand and articulate our fawning love for fierce female impersonators, I have come up with a few possible reasons. If you are still with me this far, bless your heart. And then buckle your seatbelt because it’s going to get craze (as the kids these days will soon be saying, just you wait). 

           

Part I. Drag Queens and Gender.

            Like I said, I have put way too much thought into this. This is part one of a three-part foray into the world of drag queens. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

   So, growing up, I was a tomboy. But sometimes, even being a tomboy was not enough. I felt lost in a chasm between my masculinity and femininity. I yearned to shed every last trace of my femininity but no matter how hard I tried, in the end I was inescapably a girl. My sex that I couldn’t shed, the female-ness that marked me under all that tomboy bravado was a source of shame for me. It’s about here that I sort of wish I hadn’t entirely blown off the only women’s studies course I ever took, because I might have some more academic analysis to back up my argument, but on the other hand, I am good at nothing, if not reinventing the wheel over and over again without a manual.  So what did my prepubescent angst mean? Did it mean that I was a gender-confused, even “trans-gendered” little kid? Well yes, I was. And that was because I didn’t yet know how to parse sex from gender, or indeed that they could be separated at all. The whole concept of gender is a complex and sometimes pretty bewildering notion on its own, and then we go and link it inextricably to sex. Males are “supposed” to be masculine, and females are “supposed” to be feminine. But what does it even mean to be masculine or feminine? Being the overly sensitive little kid that I was, by the time I was starting nursery school, I had reduced my observations of gender down to this: masculine (and therefore boy) meant strength, and feminine (and therefore girl) meant weakness; masculine/boy meant confidence and feminine/girl meant vulnerability. A little gender slop across the sexes was permissible, but girls who wanted to be masculine was more permissible than boys who wanted to be feminine. This (I reasoned) was because it was better to be strong than to be weak, and it was better to be confident than to be vulnerable. Thus: it was better to be a boy than a girl. Being the empiricist I was, I found evidence to back up my conclusion. This was the reason why I was allowed to wear pants and act like a “tomboy”, but why the boys in my classes never showed up in dresses. It was the reason why my coed classmates and I could be collectively called ‘guys’ but not ‘girls.’ It was the reason why to cry like a girl or to throw like a girl was a put down. It was the reason why boys were not supposed to act or be effeminate in any way. In a nutshell, to be feminine was to be a girl, and to be a girl was to be weak and vulnerable on account of being feminine. Who on earth would settle for that lot, if given the choice? But of course I wasn’t given a choice. I was a girl.

            But the thing that they don’t tell you when you are three to eighteen and moping around feeling sorry for yourself because of your sex=gender=inferiority complex, is that everybody embodies both genders to some extent, so being of one sex or the other doesn’t really have anything to do with your gender. To be sure, I still don’t really know what ‘masculine’ means and what ‘feminine’ means, but I know we all embody some swirly muddy mixture of both feminine traits and masculine traits. But also to be fair to my younger self, my conclusions might have been simplistic, but even today, even now, even despite the great strides we have made in women’s rights and gay rights and all that, I would still argue that femininity is not esteemed as highly as masculinity. It is still more okay for women to be masculine than for men to be feminine. When you say of a woman, ‘she had the balls to do X’, we understand that to mean she acted with courage, but you can’t really praise a man by calling him effeminate. You still don’t call a coed group of people ‘girls’, but “guys” is almost always fine. “Guys” in this context has become gender neutral, but “girls” in that same context is still too inextricably linked to femininity, and femininity still squicks people out. I’m not saying that in an equal world the sexes would be perfectly interchangeable copies of each other, or that each sex would be a precise balance of masculine and feminine because I don’t think that at all. I’m saying that in an equal world, both (or all, if you want to go that route) sexes could express whatever masculinity and whatever femininity they have as fully and freely as they choose and it’s all acceptable and no eyebrows will be raised or shame induced.

            Which brings me back to drag queens. Sorry for the off-roading, but I wanted to delve into gender because one reason drag instills in me all those bubbly happy feelings, is that the performers embrace and empower both their masculinity and femininity equally. They don’t hide behind one or the other. They don’t try to shed one in favor of the other. They don’t apologize for their femininity nor do they try to erase their masculinity. Rather, they let both shine together in one heightened and harmonious display. It is vulnerability but it is also confidence. The result is pure, sexy, strong, glamorous power. It is literally breathtaking at times. In some ways, drag is the art of creating a separate third gender. The performers are male, the outward appearance is feminine. The appearance is not just femininity, it is femininity on steroids. Heightened and exaggerated and pushed to the realm of extreme. It is larger than life femininity. It is femininity on masculine proportions. It is femininity masculinized, and masculinity feminized. It is feminine heart with masculine soul; feminine kit with masculine caboodle. 

Raven. A Fierce Queen

            The power of drag queens is their ability to transcend both genders while fully embodying each. To find strength in their femininity and glamour in their masculinity. And it is that, I think is what warms the little cockles of my tender heart. For though I have since come to not just tolerate but celebrate both my sex and my femininity, drag still speaks to that little girl I used to be, the one who felt lost in the chasm between her masculinity and femininity. Drag shows that little girl how to embrace both and not apologize for either. It shows her how to shed the shame and find the love. It tells her that she is fine and good the way she is.

            At least, I think that explains part why I love drag so much. Next time, I will explore how being a drag queen is not altogether different from being a writer.  But now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a peculiar need to go out and rescue a kitty or dandle some child upon my knee.

Poetry

Today we bid farewell to national poetry month. Having waited until the last possible moment to get in on the poetry love,  I do want to point out that I am technically not late since this is being posted on April 30th.

A couple things: I am not a poet. I used to be, back when poetry meant producing rhyming couplets and calling it a day, but after we were supposed to outgrow that stage, I lost interest and talent and have been defiantly wading in the shallow waters of my rhyming pool ever since.  Occasionally I have turned out works of what I like to call poetry, and will continue to defend them as such. You, of course, are free to think otherwise. I will not judge you for it.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I will.

Two notes on the poem below: 

1) The picture is of Caravaggio's painting, "David with the Head of Goliath."  2) It should be "thee," not "thou" in the second line, but I wrote it as thou before I thought about it and I sort of thought it was funny that way. Also my friend Sarah told me she thought it should stay thou, and she's smart and has a great sense of humor and also generally makes sense, which are compelling reasons for me to listen to her.  (Interesting side note: when John Lennon was singing "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" to Paul McCartney, he accidentally sang "two foot small" instead of "two foot tall," which was what he had written. Paul liked the phrase as it was sung, and said it should stay that way. And it did. So there you go.) 

David with the Head of Goliath And Mother (offstage)

God’s name, what has he brought home now?

Young man, I've had it up to here with thou!

Don’t thinketh thee can bring that in

Thou dost not knoweth where it’s been!

Goliath or Gabriel, I don’t care.

His head stays outside, is that clear?

I’ve just spent the morning cleaning,

Last thing I need’s a head that’s bleeding.

Thou waltzeth back here from a fight,

Disheveled and thine hair a sight,

Expecting–what–Congratulations?

Hmph! What thou needs is castigation.

I do not calleth thee a winner.

What I calleth thee is late for dinner.

Now return that head where it belongeth,

Then wash thine hands, and run alongeth.

And if you've read this far, here is a poem by Ogden Nash as a reward for your perseverance:

Further Reflections on Parsley

Parsley

Is Gharsley

Was there ever a better poet? I ask you! 

Happy last day of Poetry Month!

O, the Dramatic Irony of it All!

It's a good thing that I have friends who are so on the ball that they not only create their own memes, but that they invite the likes of yours truly to write an essay for their blogs, since I have been lacking and slacking in my own posts lately.  Today's Post Hoster is Anna Urquhart at The Silent Isle, and if you haven't heard of her, I imagine it will only be a matter of time before you do. She is nothing short of brilliant, and it is an honor to be invited to write for her series, "Had I But Known..."
I hope you enjoy my cautionary tale and I encourage you to check out the other 3 essays (but counting!) in the series. Thank you for reading!