Born On This Day- February 3rd... James Bridges

James Bridges was an American screenwriter and film director. Bridges was born in Paris, Arkansas. He got his start as a writer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, & one of his episodes -An Unlocked Window, earned him a 1966 Edgar Award. He went on to write & direct several films that I admire a great deal: The Paper Chase (1973), The China Syndrome (1979), Urban Cowboy (1980), Perfect (1985), & Bright Lights, Big City (1988). Also check out the underrated September 30th, 1955, where Richard Thomas plays a youth traumatized by the death of James Dean.


His life partner was actor Jack Larson who played Jimmy Olsen on TV's Superman series. Bridges died 1993, at 57 years old, of cancer. The James Bridges Theater at UCLA was named in his honor in November 1999. Bridges was a faculty member there early in his career.

Born On This Day- February 3rd... Gertrude Stein

"I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich."

I have read & enjoyed the very famous & well read The Biography Of Alice B. Toklas, but I have never been able to make heads nor tails of any of her other work. But still, Gertude Stein & Alice B. Toklas were the most famous lesbian couple ever…. until Ellen & Portia, & I do love lesbians, especially in pairs.



Gerttrude Stein was born in 1987 grew up in Oakland, CA. She studied psychology at Radcliffe & medicine at Johns Hopkins, but in 1903 she moved to Paris to be a writer. In 1907, she met a lady from San Francisco, Alice B. Toklas, & 5 years later, they moved in together. They stayed together for over 30 years until Gertrude's death in 1946.


Gertrude & Alice lived together in France for most of their adult lives. During WW1, they drove an ambulance. During World War II they had to flee to the countryside when the Germans occupied Paris. They lived in a small town & kept a low profile, protected by their French neighbors.


The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which Stein published in 1933,  & made her famous. The book is not a Toklas biography at all, but Stein's which she wrote using the voice of Alice B Toklas. as the narrator. The book was wildly popular in America, & Gertrude and Alice embarked on a triumphant lecture tour of the U.S., where she was, according to biographer John Malcolm Brinnin: " a celebrity of such proportions that her eminence on the American scene was for a time shared only by gangsters, baseball players & movie stars".


The apartment of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas was the most famous artistic & literary salon in Europe. Gertrude Stein was the arbiter of artistic taste in the artistic circles. Her offhand remark could make or break an artist's reputation. Geniuses like Pablo Picasso & Ernest Hemmingway would come to spend time Gertrude Stein, while their wives sat with Alice B. Toklas.

When France was liberated, Gertrude became the surrogate mother for the American GIs. Shortly after the war, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer & died in surgery. Her beloved Alice B. Toklas outlived her by 21 years.

Happy Birthday Honey, I pulled the garbage can lid out of the wheel well.

I lay in the middle of the road, one leg kicking at the undercarriage and one arm grasping in behind the front left tire of my vehicle at the hunk of grey plastic. A car passes without a glance at me as I am sprawled halfway underneath my vehicle, kicking and grappling with it. The garbage truck passes too, giving a rude little honk. I could be dead, you evil fools. These things would never happen in a small town.

"What's the black dangly thing there?" Asks an old woman who was stumbling down the road with her yellowish, teacup pomeranian, little cur of a mongrel. Now the dog is climbing onto my chest, while trying to lick me as I lay beside my vehicle, kicking at the garbage can lid that is jammed into my wheel well. I'm not a dog person. "Maybe try some kind of gardening tool," suggests woman with mongrel. "I'll look in your garage for you." and she begins fumbling around with my possessions. "I don't think a rake will work.... hmmm" Super. At least there are some helpful souls out there still, I guess.

"It's the animal deterrent lid locker thing" says I about the dangly black thing hanging from the lid in my wheel well, brushing some filthy snow from my hands. Uvula I think to myself. I get up and go get an axe from the garage because I want the old woman to stop going through my things while I'm laying on the street, kicking a the stupid lid that is wedged in impossibly tight. I'm a little embarrassed at the state of my garage: everything is jumbled in there. "I don't know about an axe. Maybe you should wait for your husband to get home from work. He can jack up the vehicle for you." she says. Blink.

This makes me cringe internally at the idea of Neil having to jack up the van instead of me, to remove the offending garbage can lid.... and also pours gas onto the fire that is my stubborn, proud streak. No no. There will be no crumpled, frozen garbage can lid wrenched into the wheel well when Neil gets home today. There will be no saving Chelle from her own disregard for backing over grey plastic garbage bins. I have a lot on my mind, you know. I will do it myself.

I call over to my neighbor, Peggy, who is on her way to pick up daycare kids from the same school I was headed to for my own little clump of children. "Peggy. Would you do me a huge favour and pick up my kids for me? Yeah. I ran over my garbage cans. Yeah. It's stuck"

Peggy comes over to have a look at the lid. She lays on the drive way to give it a shot. Her white scarf is dragging in the muddy snow, much to the chagrin of Madame Puppymill. Mr Yippee is freaking out because one of Peggy's daycare kids that she has with her tried to look at him. "He's nervous around strangers." says old woman with dog.

"WELL. I have to go get those kids." says Peg and off she strides toward the school, little ones bouncing behind her. "We might stay and play for 15 minutes on the playground." Perfect. That will give me more time to yard on the garbage can lid. How lucky can I even get?

So I try another axe, this one with a prying end. Woman with Pomeranian has gone off to check on Cindy's baby. She was supposed to be watching a baby and was instead rummaging through my garage for an axe or hoe? Thanks for the help, please go check on the baby. I get back to peevishly tugging and hammering at the lid with the blunt end of the axe and my foot. I get lost in it, thinking to myself that if I can change the oil in a gravel screener and run an excavator, then dammit- I can get this lid out. I'm picturing the glorious moment where I track down woman with Pomeranian to show her that HA! I didn't need anyone to jack up the van for ME! I'm a capable and perf.....

"I can't get your kids" Peggy is back already. "Yeah the school is apparently on lockdown. You have to go get them." Lockdown for like... gunmen????!! screams my brain. "Yeah apparently someone saw a coyote down the street." The alarm bells konk out.

A coyote.

A $#%& COYOTE? But I haven't saved the day from the whole lid thing yet. I can't drive to the school with a garbage can lid crammed into my wheel well. Can I??? Nooo. Nononono. Surely I don't have to drag my stroller out across the ice and wait outside the school because someone possibly saw some flea-bitten, foot long hotdog of a so called predator stumbling into the neighborhood from a field 3 hours earlier. It's garbage day. This is CANADA. Of course there is coyote. For every one coyote you see, you don't see 20.

Well the last bell is going to go soon, so I fling the stroller out of the back of my vehicle.. I don't even remember setting up because I was busy seeing red and sending annoy vibes to the kids' bumbling, dramatic principle over this newest shenanigan. Eleanore materializes into her stroller and off we trudge. Down the street and through the barren schoolyard, stumbling through the frozen, thawed, and refrozen footprint gouges; my clothes all covered in mud and grease and snow. Eleanore burbles through the particularly bumpy patches. They really did close down the school over this stupid coyote that is probably happily gnawing on someone's chicken carcass, back home in the field and laughing to his coyote buddies about the panic he personally spread that day. The furry little terrorist.

I arrive there and the children have been rounded up into the gymnasium, and the fear of God has been put into them over this little twit of a dog-rodent. Some are crying. I am LIVID at the kneejerk reaction to such a trifling issue. People have been called from work. The kids are not allowed to walk themselves to their buses without an escort. As though this coyote is outside the school, waiting in the darkness- choosing which child it will pick off for it's dinner. This freak of nature beast that has crossed the lines of wilderness to suburbia. Do they know how small and skittish coyotes are? Have they confused it for a werewolf? Has someone read too may werewolf stories? Bugs Bunny perhaps?

(The rebel in me wants to print this out and paste it around the elementary school.)

The poor little thing, if it had even been in the school yard, would have turned inside out from fear if it had seen the hoards of screeching kids pouring from the school. Coyotes are not well known for their fearless constitutions. I am beginning to see a resemblance to this authority figure in the nature of the coyote. I make sure to tell my children that what happened today was so very ridiculous. I worry that they will look up to this weak kneed person and in doing so, weaken themselves and allow themselves to be governed by unnecessary fear.

They locked the school down over a coyote sighting that was blocks away. Should I start constructing survivo-bubbles for my kids? Have we come to a point where we trade freedom for the weakest possibility of purported danger? Do we teach our children to cower over imagined threats? Do we teach them that these faint threats are worth huddling in masses of contagious panic? Oh I do hope not. I need to allow the steam to stop rocketing from my ears. Tea will help.

..And so my afternoon went on fairly uneventfully. I got home and popped the lid out of my wheel well ten minutes later, took the bent lid across to my neighbor's to show my trophy to Peggy, who was appropriately impressed. I got the accolades I deserve indeed. Neil got home from work, sloppy joes and jokes were made. Kids were sent to bed several times over. The house is quiet and I am now in the process of unwinding my brain.

*breathe*

Now off to bed, it's Neily's birthday tomorrow and I will take him out for lunch.