Thursday, January 26, 2012

Paula's Falling

I watched the Today Show the other day, when Al Roker interviewed Paula Deen about the rumor that she had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Paula (I feel as if I can call her "Paula" because for umpteen years I have been watching her cook the things the women in the Methodist church in Thayer cooked) confirmed that she did indeed have Type 2 diabetes, and that she had been diagnosed about three years ago. She had not divulged the diagnosis, and I couldn't really understand her answers to Al's questions about the secrecy surrounding her disease.

I assumed, and she said nothing to disabuse me of my assumption, that she hadn't told anyone because diet and obesity are two factors that trigger Type 2 diabetes - the one that people develop in adulthood because they eat and sit themselves right into it. And anyone who watches Paula cook and has done so for more than a few years knows that her recipes are filled with butter and sugar and sour cream and other fattening goodies, and that she has put on more than just a few pounds. The viewing public has also seen her husband grow from overweight to gargantuan.

My assumption is that Paula didn't tell anyone because to do so would have told the world, "If you cook like I do, and then eat the food, you will gain a lot of weight and you will get diabetes." Then people might have gotten the idea that cooking and eating that kind of food are not good things. Then those people might not have watched her show, or bought her cookware, or bought her cookbooks. Those actions could have detrimentally affected Paula's bottom line.

Further complicating the issue is that she divulged her health condition ONLY after she signed up with a Big Pharma company that manufactures a diabetes drug. This means that she was ready to tell only when it was going to make her some money. So we can again assume that what she did or did not do or tell or did not tell is based on that thing that makes the world go 'round, and I'm not talking about love.

Additionally, I admit to thinking that Paula seemed disingenuous in her interview with Al Roker. Al, who had to resort to bariatric surgery a few years ago to lose weight, pointedly asked questions regarding her diet and her recipes and whether she was going to change either. She sidestepped those legitimate questions by saying that she eats the way she cooks only in moderation, and that she urges her viewing public to do the same. As a long-time regular viewer, I can tell you that I have heard Paula Deen two or three times say that she doesn't eat like this every day, but I recall with much greater clarity her giving me the idea that adding another tablespoon of butter to a recipe is going to make it taste better, giggling while she looked mischievously at the camera.

All in all, that mischief is part of her charm. She makes just about everything sound like fun, whether it is cooking with her sons, or watching a comedienne imitate her right down to her wigs, her "y'all," and her laugh. She invites us all right into her kitchen, and if we really went, we know we would probably laugh right along with her for as long as we were there. She has made cooking and eating old time Southern favorites, replete with butter and deep fat frying, just a whole lot of fun. Her growing girth has given truth to the old adage, "Fat people are jolly;" those of us who would rather have fun than eat sensibly are drawn to both her and the food she lovingly cooks and tastes on the set.

Her camera personality has developed myriad fans, I among them, and those people have made her a very wealthy woman. Along with that celebrity and wealth, I believe, comes a modicum of responsibility to the people who have given her those things.

I think that when she found out about her medical condition, she should have told her producers and her fans, and she could have been a hero by doing the same fun cooking in a manner that was healthy for people with diabetes. Her show might have changed, but if she and her fun personality are the draws, her legion fans, me included, would have followed right along with her - and probably lost weight and been healthier in the long run.

I realize that we are all responsible for our own health and what we eat, but we humans are easily led. That is why so many girls were caught up in the fashion trend of baring their midriffs even when their bulging midriffs shouldn't have been bared, why so many men wear baseball caps inside and all the time, even when it is downright rude or unattractive, why women will ruin their feet and comfort by wearing high heeled shoes that don't really fit, why small children will recognize the Golden Arches at extremely early ages, and why otherwise sensible people believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced." Paula Deen is not responsible for our getting fat, but she sure has made it easy and fun. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing for her to show us that getting un-fat can be just as fun - even though not quite as easy.

I think would she do that in her own cute way, she would have just as many television fans and maybe more; however, her diabetes drug might not sell as many pills. I wonder which is more important?

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A Poignant Look Back

Yesterday, at a joyous memorial service, Max and I reminisced about our personal contacts with Ron Jennings, the Sedalia Democrat's most well-known columnist. Ron died last week after finally succumbing to brain cancer, which had dogged him for about 20 years. He was diagnosed shortly after he and I shared the stage in Annie, I as Grace and he as an extra, but really as the proud father of the prepubescent star of the show, who now is a lovely, confident, talented young woman with two children of her own.

Ron was one of those guys who, when first we met, seemed to be comfortable in his own skin, although that skin seemed to be kind of geeky. It wasn't long afterward, though, that I realized that Ron was the real deal - a truly nice guy who had been dealt a hand that would have been difficult for most: he wore a hearing aid and had a slight speech impediment, and his glasses were thicker than mine. I found out yesterday that his situation was more dire than I had thought: he had been diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy after his birth, and his devoted mother had massaged his little legs ceaselessly to help him do what his doctors told him he would never do - walk.

And walk he did. He also, contrary to his doctors' predictions, went to school and to college, even attending the prestigious School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. That is how Max met him, because they were at that school at the same time. Ron went out of his way to be kind to Max when he found out that Max, a fellow BJ, had ended up in Sedalia, where Ron had made his home.

Over the years, our paths crossed often in different ways, but most usually having something to do with theater. When I decided that only I could be Nellie in South Pacific, and the director agreed, Ron came to preview night and gave me a fabulous review as a newcomer to Sedalia Community Theater. He never saw me without asking what play I was going to audition for next. Even after I quit trying because my schedule prevented three hours of rehearsal every night for six weeks, Ron always reminded me that I had talent and the community missed seeing me on the stage.

I will never forget the one time someone other than Ron did a review of the current play for the paper. It was Annie, and the reason Ron didn't review the play was that he was in it! The person who did the review instead didn't quite understand that the review wasn't really a review, but was instead a preview of pleasant things to come for the people in the community who attended the show. This person actually made critcal comments! Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was buzzing about how the paper had made a terrible mistake in letting anyone other than Ron tell the community through the paper that the show would be worth seeing.

Ron and I also shared a most interesting night sometime around 1985 or so. I was the coordinator for the State Fair Queen contest, and Ron was the columnist who dug up the story that the very first State Fair Queen had moved back to and was then living in Sedalia. She was a piece of work, as they say, and was basking in the glory of being the most newsworthy item in Sedalia that summer. Ron did a column about her, and I invited her to be a part of the Queen contest by making an appearance and being interviewed as a time killer while the judges were out tabulating their ballots.

She, enamored with both of us for showering her with attention, asked us to bring our spouses to a dinner at her home a couple of weeks after the Fair ended. Max had something else to do that night (or so he said), so I attended without my steady date, and Ron and his wife Pat attended. The evening was a nightmare. We arrived around 7, on time, and The Queen served cocktails while the person who was cooking and serving readied dinner in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the server was not too experienced, and so dinner was not served until around 10, after we all had several cocktails and were a little unsteady on our feet. I left almost immediately after we finished dinner, knowing that my mother would not approve of eating and running, but Ron and Pat showed much better manners than did I, staying at least a little longer.

Ron showed good manners, too, in his writing, which was the highlight of our little newspaper. He, like I, believed that everyone has a story, and he spent time discovering and telling those stories. He had a wonderful sense of humor, evidenced by the loud laughter of the crowd at his memorial service when his words flashed across the video screen, interspersed with pictures of Ron's family and of him growing up in Maryville. I remembered reading some of those columns, wondering how he made the most mundane of human experiences come alive to be not mundane, but instead interesting and exquisite.

When Ron's brain tumor was found and when he was diagnosed with brain cancer, he underwent surgery, coming out on top of the world and cancer-free. He also came out without hair on one side of his head. Just as he had with his prior physical failings, he handled his semi-baldness with good humor and acceptance, all of that lasting for 20 years, during those years when most of us become discouraged about the ravages of time on our bodies and our physical appearances.

All in all, Ron Jennings was a gift to as many people as he knew. He lived life well, had a loving wife and two daughters, and was a light for many people who might otherwise not see that each of us is important in the whole scheme of things. I am thankful that I knew him and that our paths crossed. I wish I had taken the time to tell him so.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown

When I was growing up in Thayer, our family went to the dentist in West Plains, a mere 30 miles and 45 minutes of bad road away. One particular summer, which one I can't remember, my sister and I had to get lots of fillings or suffer some other such dental torture, and so my mother decided that we should just get it out of the way all at once. So, during one particular week, again, I can't remember which one, we drove to and from West Plains every day, going there dreading, and coming home grumpy and in pain.

On Monday, as we rounded one big curve in the road, we noticed a black dog standing by a fence. He was not inside the fence, but instead just standing beside it, about 15 feet or so from the road. We noticed him and made some kind of comment about how we hoped he wouldn't dart out onto the highway. On the way back, we saw that he was still there, and we were happy that he hadn't been killed by some inattentive driver.

On Tuesday, we rounded the same curve on the way to West Plains, and saw that the dog was still standing by the fence. It looked as if he hadn't moved a muscle from his stance the day before. My mother, my sister, and I kind of made uncomfortable noises, because we knew then that something wasn't right with either the dog or his master. When we saw the dog on the way back, we began to conjecture about what had happened and why the dog was still there. My mother told my dad about the dog when we got home, and he, too, was puzzled.

The next day, when we again saw the dog, we concluded that someone had dropped him off and he was waiting for his master to return - which, by this time, we knew was not going to happen. I can't really remember whether we bought some food in West Plains, or waited until we went back on Thursday to take some food to the dog - because we couldn't let him starve - but the important part of the story is that we put food in the car, pulled the car off the side of the road, and took it to him. He was grateful and ate it.

On Friday, the last day of our marathon dentist visit, we left the house with my father saying to my mother, "Do not bring that dog home." We already had Hildegarde von Clover, the meanest dachshund on the face of the earth (but that is another story), and my father knew the possibility that my mother would stop, pick up the dog, and add him to the family. He thought it best to remind her that doing so would not be such a good idea.

However, when we rolled in, about four hours later, with the dog in the back seat of our four-door sedan, my smart dad had already put out a water bowl and a full food bowl, and had made a bed for him under the car port. He knew that my mother would not be able to leave Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown on the side of the road, and figured "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." The dog's name came from an old blues/old time country song that wailed, "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown, what will you do when the rent comes 'round?" Rufus, bless his heart, wasn't ever going to have to worry about rent again.

Rufus became a beloved part of our family for many, many years, giving us much to smile about and bringing with him an early understanding of brain damage - his first visit to Elmer Shaw, DVM, gave us the information that he had survived a puppy illness that had left him somewhat slow. He was gentle - I never heard him growl or even bark - and he did things such as walk into small trees and get lost in the back yard, so he became a house dog who house-trained himself.

The same visit to the vet was for surgery rendering him unable to sire puppies (!), and when we picked him up, Dr. Shaw told us that he had not urinated for the two days that he had been recovering in the kennel. It should have been no surprise to us that on our way home, in the same four-door sedan with black carpet and black interior, Rufus finally felt safe enough to let loose with all the bodily fluid he had stored uncomfortably for the past two days. I heard a noise, and an unfamiliar odor wafted through the car, and I realized that Rufus knew he was with people who loved him, so he could go to the bathroom wherever he needed to. I don't know if we ever got rid of the odor that permeated the car's carpet, especially in southern Missouri's hot summers. I think we eventually got rid of the car!

I wrote poetry about Rufus - Haiku, really - that garnered a good grade in my creative writing class at William Jewell. And when my parents divorced, many years later, Rufus went to live with a friend of my mother's, out on a farm, roaming the countryside, and probably, in his brain haze, forgetting all about the people who cared for him enough to pick him up off the side of the road.

Mother called me when she found out that he had died, at a ripe old age, and I cried. He was the sweetest dog ever.