The fury of Andrew revisited. . .

Twenty years ago come Thursday, a Category 5 chainsaw called Hurricane Andrew cut a swath of ruin like no storm before it.
The Miami Herald, Sunday, August 19th.

You had to be there to truly understand it.

August 23rd, 1982 was a Sunday. When word came that Andrew was coming our way, the island on Biscayne Bay where I live was evacuated. At mid-day,I packed a few things into a duffle, stuffed my two cats, Pasha & Sasha, into one carry cage, and drove inland, south, to my daughter Andrea's home in Kendall. A really bad move. Who knew.

I'd been living in Miami since 1957 and the arrival of "hurricanes" was considered a good reason to party. So fear didn't enter into our consciousness as reports about Andrew started to flood the TV and radio news.

At Andrea's house we were two women, mother and daughter, and a 14 year old boy, my grandson Adam, plus 5. . I said 5. . .cats, my two and Andrea's three. As night fell and the wind and rain were definitely getting worse by the minute, we were faced with the fact that the entire back of Andrea's home consisted of floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors and no shutters (In those days I had no shutters on my waterfront condo, nor did any of my neighbors. Today they are mandatory.)

Suddenly aware of our vulnerability, we frantically searched for something to protect us from the possibility of broken glass. The only thing we could come up with was a series of 6' high cardboard posters with lifesize portraits of Adam in various sports outfits. . left over decorations from his recent bar mitzvah celebration. Hastily attached to the glass doors with tape, they would intermittantly be lit by lightning throughout the long night as we huddled together in the darkness on the hall floor.

We turned out to be one of the lucky ones on Andrea's block. She kept her roof on because her front door opened out and didn't blow in like so many others. For nine weeks after Andrew there was no electricity in her area as FPL struggled with downed trees and broken lines. Looting was rampant and Andrea was gratified to find many of her neighbors sitting on their front steps with a shotgun across their laps and signs that read "You loot. We shoot." And they weren't kidding.

My island survived Andrew with lots of damage but in better shape than Andrea's area. Our electricity came back in a little more than a week and my apartment welcomed a steady stream of friends who were still without and were dying for a hot shower. Hurricanes can really make you shift your priorities.

I don't find hurricanes funny any more. No one who lived through Andrew does. It may have happened 20 years ago, but in some ways it seems like yesterday. Reading about it on the front page of the Herald today brought it all back.
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Photo caption: Andrew approaches South Florida in full intensity.

A look back. . .

The Huffington Post reported the other day that Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, who invited millions of women to join the sexual revolution, has died. She was 90 years old.

Long before "Sex And The City" hit TV, there was Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl," her grab-bag book of advice, opinion, and anecdote on why being single shouldn't mean being sexless. It made a celebrity of the 40-year-old advertising copywriter in 1962.

Wow! That was 50 years ago and I bet today's generation of young single women have never even heard her name. What a difference a mere half a century can make.

While I was no longer a single girl in 1962. .I remarried in 1957 after several years of fun and games. . . attitudes about working women were already changing. The Feminist Movement was in full swing and Women's Lib was the watchword of the day with Betty Friedan's book, "The Feminine Mystique", a must read and Gloria Steinem the woman we looked up to.. Sounds antiquated today but I clearly remember my brother-in-law asking my then husband "why he allowed Joan to work". To his credit, my husband's response was that "allowing" had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Helen Gurley Brown's book was considered shocking in its day by many, but this was a time when AIDS and HIV were still unheard of, and to paraphrase FDR, the only thing a single girl had to fear was the fear of getting pregnant. And contraception generally took care of that problem. The times they were a-changing, that's for sure.

Today's generation of young women doesn't feel it necessary to marry and have children right out of school like mine did. They also don't feel compelled to "do it all". . be Super Mom, Successful Businesswoman, Wonderful Wife, like we did. (Not always so successfully in the last category.) When they do marry, they have husbands who share the load, helping with the house and the kids. Unheard of in the 50's and 60's. I can attest to that.

Reading about Helen Gurley Brown's passing made me reflect a little. Just as my Mother's generation paved the way for women to have the right to vote, my generation paved the way for a more equal workplace for women. And oh yes. . the radical idea that sex was lots of fun!
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Photo caption: HGB & Cosmo

Watching the Olympics and reminiscing. . .

I'm loving the Olympics, especially my favorite, Track & Field. Once upon a time I was a long distance runner. So I was amused to hear on TV last night that Ryan Lochte admits to "peeing in the pool" before his races and insists that most swimmers do the same. Which leads me to today's blog topic: "Bathroom Stories of Long Distance Runners".

I assure you, every runner has one, whether they are training for the Olympics or just out for a multi-mile early morning run. Finding a pit stop is a major part of long distance running.

We had one friend who ran in the New York Marathon on an unusually cold morning and while racing through the streets of Harlem was forced to make a detour into a restaurant's Men's Room, only to find he was suffering from Jerry Seinfeld's friend George's "deadly shrinkage" problem. Not good when you are in a hurry.

My own favorite story took place during a Half Marathon Race in Key West. The race route circled around the outer edges of the island with very few buildings and no handy portolets to be seen. At about 10 miles into the race, Nature's call was becoming very insistent and I was desperate to find some place to stop and go.

Ahead I spied a dense clump of sea grape trees on the side of the open road. Without breaking stride, I dashed in to take care of business only to find a very startled homeless person lying on the ground next to where I was squatting.

Too late. He smiled. I smiled. Needless to say, I was laughing when I rejoined the race. Memories are made of that.
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Staying on top of the evolving English language. . .

Words fascinate me. When I read that a website called Collins Online Dictionary was getting ready to publish the latest new words emerging from pop culture, science and technology, I got to thinking how many "new" words have crept into my daily conversation as well as my freelance writing work.

Take, for instance, the verb "to google". I use it every day when I'm at my computer. There's always something I need to look up or check on, so I've become a major googler. (Note photo taken on my iphone of slightly dusty Webster's Dictionary. Haven't looked at it in years.) Oh yes, "iphone", another important new word in my vocabulary. . not to mention "apps" for my "iphone". How else can I play Words With Friends, Hangman and Solitaire? Is there anything that can make you more anxious than when you misplace your cell phone? Hard to believe that as little as 15 years ago, you might not have even owned one.

I'm also not above responding to a funny e-mail with a quick LOL. Collins says the use of that well accepted shortcut is called "lollage". Bet you didn't know that.

For the fun of it, I checked on some of the new words that will appear in this year's Online Dictionary. They include "Tebowing". . if you are a football fan you are well aware of former Gator Tim Tebow's infamous prayer stance. . ."Ginormous" when something is really, really, really big. . . .and my favorite, "Mantyhose", tights for men.

I'm curious to hear some of your favorite new words. I may not be your BFF, but I'd love to hear from you out there in Cyberland.
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Picasso & Matisse have nothing to worry about. . .

I've run out of room to store one more canvas, so it's either rent a storage unit or just stop painting. The latter is not acceptable, maybe because painting is one of my favorite things to do these days. I admire people who are passionate about something. I'm not sure I'm passionate about painting, but I definitely love doing it. (I really love painting animals. That's Louie Ostrin of Divide, CO, in the photo at right.)

I've gifted many of my paintings to family and friends, but never sold one or even thought about what I would charge if I could. Enter a website called "Artist Rising" that purports to serve as an on-line gallery for not-so-famous wannabe artists.

One thing's for sure.. .I am a better painter than a computer technician. I say that because the other day I spent more than three hours laboriously uploading and labeling more than 35 paintings into four different "Collections". . The Feminine Mystique, The Human Condition,The Art of Nature and Pet Portraits. . only to click on something I obviously shouldn't have,and to discover, to my absolute horror,that I had deleted the entire thing.

I don't give up easily, and this time I was ultra careful not to hit anything that said delete. Jojo's Gallery is now up and running. . if you're curious what I've been working away at these past three years, go to www.artistrising.com, enter the name of my gallery, and take a look.

I'll be curious to know what you think.

Me and Alec Baldwin. . .

I've never been thrown off an airplane for doing it, but I have to admit that I am also addicted.

I play Words With Friends on my iphone and find myself staring at that little screen at all sorts of odd times, like standing on the check-out line at Publix, between tram tours at Fairchild Gardens, and while watching a Netflix movie at night with the "significant other". Words are my business, the written kind that is, and I admit it, I am a vicious competitor.

And speaking of the "significant other", ever since I downloaded the Words app on his iphone, we've had a serious difference of opinion about the rules of the game. Benard feels it is poor sportsmanship on my part when I trump him with a triple score word. I tell him he shouldn't make it so easy for me to do so. Poor guy. . he also gets beaten regularly by his daughter Paula. If this keeps up, he may need psychotherapy soon.

I play regularly with four or five other people, all with very different lifestyles, but all seriously competitive. Some I beat. Some beat me.Some it's about even.

They range from Mario, the head of Reading Services at WLRN where I read every Tuesday morning, to Jon, the husband of my daughter's half sister who last week played from Korea where he was on tour as the sound engineer for John Legend. (Jon doesn't let a little thing like a change of continents get in the way of his Word games.) In between are two or three women friends, including my good friend Merele, best described as "one tough cookie" wordwise and,of course,the often disgruntled "significant other".

In addition to the fun of competition, the game has added significantly to my already pretty extensive vocabulary. Take the word "qi". . .very handy when you have the letter "q" on your board and no "u" to make a normal word. According to Google, it has Chinese roots and means "part of every living thing". And you thought I was just wasting my time playing games.

By the way, my user name is JoanSpec, and I warn you, I give no quarter. Ask my daughter. She refuses to play with me any more. I may have to let Benard win this current game we're playing or I'm possibly in danger of losing him as well. Then who would cook dinner???
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My Mom's writing gene. . the gift that keeps on giving.

I find myself writing about some strange subjects these days in my "semi-retirement" role as a freelance writer. Would-be clients find me on my website, www.joanspector.com, or on something called Thumbtack.com that I apparently signed up for one day and forgot all about.

As a result, I end up researching or using my imagination about businesses and subjects that I never heard of, or at the very least, know absolutely nothing about.

Example: I just completed writing a website for a company that paints commercial and corporate airplanes. Who knew that was such a world-wide business? And I bet you don't know the industry term for the designs you see on the outside of the next plane you fly on. I certainly didn't, but God bless Google! What would we do without it! I had to write one whole web page on the company's ability to do outstanding "LIVERY". It took a quick visit to Google to learn all about the use of that esoteric term when describing the overall paint design of an airplane.

Here's my new favorite. . a 30-something young man, with a wife and two children, in need of a "personal statement" for his application to law school. I interviewed him over the phone and came to understand how important these 500 words could be for his future. I'm sure he will pardon me for allowing you to read the first graph of what I wrote.

As a 14 year old in May of 1994, I, along with three members of my immediate family and seven others, found ourselves clinging to a capsized raft in the choppy waters of the Caribbean, somewhere between the coast of Cuba and the tip of South Florida. Rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, we were taken to Guantanamo Naval Base where we lived for six months before making our way finally to the United States in January of 1995..

I made him promise to let me know when the law school accepts him.
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