I’ve never been a “joiner,” though at one time I was a Camp Fire Girl wearing a felt vest embroidered with earned beads – such as the red bead for learning how to fry an egg on a rock, a skill I never used more than once. What the point of that outdoor exercise was escaped my beanie clad head. The experience involved a flat rock, a sunny day in high-summer, and, of course an egg. Of the latter, we had plenty in rural Iowa. You also needed a mom willing to sew endlessly. My two brothers were Cub Scouts, so she sewed for them, too.
As a young Brookfield up and comer, I think I volunteered (but only once) to head up the auxiliary of a medical group that catered to physician husbands and the hospitals that supported them. One spring I came up with the brilliant (duh!) idea for a name for our spring dance…”Spring Fling.” It was voted on and duly accepted because the other members had NO ideas whatsoever. For a few months I busied myself with twigs, sparkle, glue and such, the goal being to make 50 centerpieces for guests to bid on, haul home, and hide in the attic. Martha Stewart wasn’t around in the ‘60s, but I was. It’s embarrassing to admit my level of boredom had reached the point where I was a bona-fide craftsy wifie. I knew how to make a stunning wreath out of a cardboard pizza thingy and various shapes of macaroni. Oh yeah.
In an effort to keep from turning into a Stepford chick, I fled back to the halls of academia where I could hide among the mountains of books. The early novels of UW-Madison grad, Joyce Carol Oates, found their way into my hands and then my head. I’ve read most of what she’s written and reviewed as much as the Shepherd Express will allow. I’m also devoted to the work of John Irving and the late John Updike. A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving) is still one of my all time favorites. Viet Nam was in full swing and Father Groppi’s fight for civil rights rang across Milwaukee, far from cushy white Brookfield where, in my privileged circle, Valium reigned and noontime cocktails were très chic and daddy drove off to the hospital in a big bad Lincoln Continental, to join in with physicians who packed heat during the Groppi marches.
This past week I attended my first Book Club meeting, held in our community room. I joined only because I noticed at least one person in this condo building reads Oates. I know this because I discovered an Oates’ novel in our “library” of donated books shelved in the Community Room. Frankly, though, most of the books don’t interest me, though I did spy a good T.C. Boyle (The Women) hidden among the bodice rippers, boring memoirs, and outdated cookbooks featuring everything bad for your heart. Boyle’s book is about the underside of Frank Lloyd Wright’s various paramours, and perhaps this might be my Book Club suggestion primarily because a FLW exhibition is at the Milwaukee Art Museum, now through May. Wright was the Wisconsin chap who built houses that leak like sieves. I should know, having tried to live in several similar pads attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright copy cats. Believe me, it’s no fun sleeping under plastic sheeting during heavy rainstorms.
I guess I should add that among the donated books, are a few about Jesus. All in all, the book shelves are a sign that residents here have diverse reading habits. One of them has taken the time to arrange the tomes so we don’t end up finding a book about Tom Cruise next to one about how to prepare meatballs. I’m busy working on a review of The Women for thirdcoastdigest.com, an online daily that puts up with me, and should you visit their site, you can read about his romances. There were quite a few leakers.
