Jean Harper

I missed it — a potluck dinner using food grown within a hundred mile radius. The intrepid Chris Hardie produced a nifty video of the event with lingering shots of berries, a beautiful pie, bean dishes, some handsome lettuce and a number of contented eaters. What a great idea, and one I hope happens again this summer. One of the real joys of living in Indiana is the fact of a real plenty of good food, locally grown and available.

One of the questions Chris posed in his video was: why do you think locally grown produce is important? One answer on the video was that this effort supports the local economy. True, and that’s good. It also potentially cuts down on the buckets of gasoline used to truck things in from afar. I say “potentially” because even 100 miles can burn up a lot of gas, unless the search for local food is careful, intentional, shared. Another answer was the fellowship of coming together to share the food. A way to build community, connections between people, which is sorely needed. And, by the look of the cheerful crowd, welcome.

So here’s an idea, Progressive Wayne County folks: how about a Progressive Potluck? Locally grown food, served up at several local homes. You start at the first, eat the good stuff, then travel to the next, eat more good stuff. The trick is: getting from home to home by bicycle, foot, horseback, scooter (the kind the Amish kids use) … anything but a gasoline powered vehicle. The only exception would be if there are disabled folks who must make use of a particular kind of transportation (van, for instance). This event would be something the local newspaper, radio, WCTV, etc. would love to cover. Good PR for Progressive Wayne County, letting more people know what is possible in our part of the world. It would be fun, too, to include a diversity of cuisines and by way of that ethnicities in the event too. What do you say?

P.S.
I am happy to say that I will be moving to a new place in a few weeks, and will volunteer to be on the progressive potluck route. This home is a bit “greener” than the one I’m in now. In the new one I can have a garden, in a yard that has enough sun to actually grow some decent vegetables. Not this year, except for some late growing lettuce and some onion sets for next year. And next year? Beans, tomatoes, lettuce, snap peas, squash, and my beloved leeks. This house also has a wood burning stove, and it’s not hard to find local firewood. There are enough windows that face south and west, and there you go: a little passive solar energy too. Now if I can only get my hypermileage skills honed…

Dear Human Beings –

Me Owen, again. I am writing on Jean’s blog to say something to all the people who set off fireworks in July: DOGS DON’T LIKE FIREWORKS. We don’t. They scare us. A LOT. Fireworks make us hide our heads under furniture, and shake like … um … cats? This makes us feel stupid. Please, oh please, people who have fireworks: be nice to your neighborhood dogs. Go away somewhere far out in the country where there are no dogs (okay, no cats either ) and do your fireworks there. Not in the sidewalk in front of the house I live in, not in the alley behind the house I live in, not in the streets around me either. I’m a nice dog and I’m sad about being scared.

Thank you.

Love, Owen

PS Yes, I can too write. Jean taught me.

As I write this, the sky is overcast, and a cool breeze is winding through my house. It feels not like summer, but like a day in early fall. Last night, at D and M’s, we all sat around a fire in a pit, talking, toasting marshmallows, and each other. The night was cool, perfect to be outdoors. This morning, my corduroy shirt still smells of woodsmoke.

For reasons of my own, I am taking today off. Back to work tomorrow, the first of July. Today? Although I can’t really afford the gas, I’m taking a small road trip. There and back again. And since it’s cool, Owen gets to come with me. Off we go.

Owen, who loves to play fetch, plays fetch so hard that in the heat he collapses if I let him play too long. It’s scary to watch your little dog come inside, stagger around and then fall to the floor, panting frantically. We limit fetch to no more than twenty throws this time of year. Which means we play fetch more often.

I have a cold. I was sitting in the sun trying to dry up my cold. It did not work. Now I have a sunburnt nose. And a cold.

Across the alley a man is painting a house. For the past two days he has been scraping the old paint off. Now the new paint is going on. Yellow clapboards, white trim.

Somewhere, someone is playing a radio in their back yard. Oldies. Songs I grew up with. Oldies?

I am learning to knit socks. Knitting and summer days seem diametrically opposite. To knit in summer I have to sit in front of a fan. If I knit outside, I’ll be knitting sweat socks.

The air conditioning is off. I don’t particularly care for air conditioning. The air feels stale, the AC unit uses too much energy, the use of it feels as though you become as confined to the indoors as being stuck inside during the winter. I’d rather be hot. Except at night. Then, I turn the air conditioning back on.

My cold makes me want popsicles. Orange ones. Green ones. Blue ones. Flavors which don’t exist in the natural world.

Later today I am going to ride my horse. This is not as pleasurable when you have a cold. Or when there is a thunderstorm, as there is predicted to be later today. Or when it’s hot, which it is. Still, as Winston Churchill said, “No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.” Right he is.

Late note: I took allergy medicine and my “cold” disappeared.” I just have a sore throat. This is not a cold. I hate allergies.

This is me, Owen, writing this. My birthday was yesterday. Not today. YESTERDAY. And you know what? Jean FORGOT my birthday. She FORGOT it. I waited all day yesterday for my cake and my three candles and my extra dog treats and my new toy and my walk and my extra game of fetch. ALL DAY I waited.

Nothing. No cake. No candles. No extra treats. I did get a squeaky tennis ball from Tractor Supply but that DOESN’T COUNT because it wasn’t a REAL birthday present. And I did get a lot of games of fetch but they DON’T COUNT either because JEAN FORGOT my BIRTHDAY ALL DAY.

I went to bed sad. And then Jean woke up this morning and said what she always says to me in the mornings: “Hello my Pookie Moo.” It’s annoying, I agree, but I usually smile and put up with it because she feeds me, throws tennis balls, and sometimes gives me big treats like pig ears or lets me eat horse poop. But today? I didn’t smile. Not at all. I just looked at her with my best forlorn sad dog look and I beamed thoughts into her brain about how she FORGOT my birthday which was YESTERDAY.

And then Jean finally got it. She said, as if she had thought this thought all by herself, “Oh No, Owen! I FORGOT your birthday which was YESTERDAY!!”

Duuuuuuuuuh, Jean. I knew that. I knew it ALL DAY.

Now Jean is thinking uo ways to make it up to me. She has played fetch with me only once so far, but I bet there are more games of fetch coming. And I know I’m going to get treats. Lots of them. And a cake and candles — THREE CANDLES because I am THREE. And maybe even new toys! And a walk in the woods. And a swim in the pond. Oh I’m a HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DOG! Happy birthday to me!

This summer, I am putting together my tenure dossier. This big tome is composed of a narrative, supporting materials, and something mysteriously referred to as “supplemental” materials. The whole thing is meant to be an extended argument for why my university should grant me tenure. “Extended” is not the word I would choose, however. Bloated? Weighty? Something like that. The narrative alone will end up being something like 100 to 150 pages. I mean, really. Who wants to read that much about my life as a college professor? I don’t. I certainly don’t want to write it. Then there’s all the stuff to prove that what I wrote about my life as college professor is actually true. That is the “supporting material” part. Then, if that doesn’t seem to be enough, there’s the opportunity to put more things forward in the “supplemental” carton. The film you made, the entire exhibit of writing that was on the wall, the art the little kids put on the wall, the pink fairy wings that you wore on Halloween to amuse your students. That kind of thing.

No one, I am finding out, enjoys this process. Tenure dossier production is a misery, tortuous and filled with drudgery, made even more miserable by the dire sense that if this doesn’t work out the only employment option left is — what? A greeter at WalMart? Checker at Big Lots? Still, this process is one we all go through. And I have this dark sense that after having gone through it, we then become determined that all who follow us shall also go through this suffocating hell. Did I say that? I did.

Which leads me, finally, to the point of this post: procrastinating. I’m doing that right now. Writing about how I don’t want to be writing my tenure dossier. The one I had nightmares about last night. The one that is sitting on this desk, half written. Not quite half written. I even started reading a book about procrastinating last night rather than write this thing. What, I’d like to know, is the evolutionary advantage of procrastination? I mean if we dork around all day and don’t do our work, are we the lesser ones, the ones that get eaten by the cheetah, the ones who not being fittest don’t survive and therefore don’t get to perpetuate the species? That doesn’t seem likely. Maybe it’s species specific, period. Dogs, for instance, don’t procrastinate. I have never seen Owen look at his tennis ball and say, “Hmm. Maybe later.”

Owen, however, loves his tennis ball. Loves the zen of fetch, the burst of speed as he follows the ball, the rewarding joy of bringing it back. If I’m diligent about it, I might learn to love my tenure dossier. A friend suggested I see this as an opportunity to contemplate where I have been and then imagine fully where I might like to go. Looking at this project that way, seeing the inner fetch of it, the zen of it, the opportunity of it? Okay. Maybe now — or, well, soon — I can stop procrastinating and really get to work on this.

In my creative writing classes, fall and spring semester, I often have students write about their favorite season. Choose a season, I tell them, write about one perfect day, conjure up the season in words and images, stories we can see, use all your senses to bring the day, whatever day it is, alive. I really like to do this exercise in late January, or early February, when everyone is stir crazy from the cold, the gray days of Indiana winter, the latest bout of flu or strep throat or whatever virus is cruising through schools and work. The students write in class for twenty minutes or so, then they all read their work aloud, one by one. Invariably, and I know this, most of the students will write about summer. The warmth, the sun, the play outdoors, the time with family, barbecues, softball, vacation, water, sunburns. All that.

It’s a magical moment when we do this. Winter slides away. Summer rises up in the classroom, created out of words. The students sigh (seriously, they do), responding to stories of bonfires and cookouts, fourths of July, the long gilded days of June. There is much joy, of a quiet almost reverent kind, in the classroom when we do this. Of course my job, as teacher, is to point out that language has taken us away from chill dark days into another season, given us a gift, transported us. Magic. Not magic. Both. We talk about that, because it’s what we’re there for in creative writing class, and we move forward with a surer knowledge of what words on the page can do.

Still. When the weather is like it has been today, and will be tomorrow, words are not enough. I just want to be outdoors. There is not enough sunscreen in the world. I’m burnt and brown, tired and happy. Even though I must, I do not want to sit at my desk at all when the weather is like this. Today I managed a few hours. But I spent the afternoon outdoors, and the evening too. And tomorrow, if it is at all like today, I will find it just as hard to stay rooted to my desk, writing. What is there to write about? Winter? Ah. There would be magic in that, wouldn’t there. Maybe so.

Today, in the mail, I got a membership card from AARP. All I have to do to “activate” it is send in $12.95, and then, at 12:01 a.m. on July 20, 2008, I will automatically be added to the ranks of this venerable group.

I am so not ready for this. I mean, for pete’s sake, I’m still in my forties. Okay, extremely late forties. Okay, so I’m almost fifty. Whatever. But AARP? I’m not retired. Far from it.

What’s next? I imagine the Senior Activity Center calling. Hello, Jean? We have a lovely mid-morning therapeutic knitting class we thought you might be interested in. Discounts for senior citizens this month…

Then I’ll get a call from the subscription people at Arthritis Today. Subscribe now and get a free gift of Ginseng Garlic Green Tea! Good for Memory Loss! Gout! Bad Eyesight! Dysfunctions of all kinds!

Then there will be the first solicitations from alumni representatives wanting to help me plan my estate. And wouldn’t you be interested in the projects your alma mater has planned for the future?

No. And don’t give me a stupid t-shirt either. Go away. All of you.

Yesterday, I finally remembered, about two thousand miles late, to take my car in to have the oil changed. The Jiffy Lube in Richmond is amazingly fast — when there’s no line, like yesterday, you can get in and out in five minutes. They tell you that when they usher you into the waiting room. I never believe it, although I should, because it always turns out to be true. Yesterday afternoon, I barely had time to read the local newspaper (which also only takes five minutes) when the manager came in and said, “You’re done.”

At the counter, he read through all the things they had checked on the car — oil, wipers, water, tires, transmission fluid, air filter. Everything was fine. Then he told me the total, $42 something. Then he kind of paused, and said, “What kind of animal do you have?”

Oops. I had forgotten that Jiffy Lube also vacuums your car. And there was a LOT of Owen hair in my car, especially the front seat, which Owen will tell you , belongs solely to him. He thinks so, anyway.

“I have a dog,” I said. “A black and white dog who only sheds white hair.”

He laughed. “I have a golden retriever. Same thing: hair everywhere.”

Hair everywhere is right. My black car, black interior, is filled with white dog hair. And crumbly pieces of dog treats, muddy paw prints, a couple of gross tennis balls, a pink toy jammed into a drink holder, all kinds of dog detritus. I suddenly felt very sorry for the Jiffy Lube guys. “Did you guys vaccum all that hair out of my car?”

“We tried,” he said. Then, in an apologetic tone: “My vacuum’s not as strong as it could be.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Neither, apparently, is mine.”

I think he then said something about using tape to get the rest of the hair off. I’m not positive about that. He had a deep Kentucky drawl that obscured (to me, anyway) some of his words. I paid my bill, thanked him, and drove away in my slightly less hairy car…in search of tape.

Today, because the powers that be have decreed that We Shall Have New Carpet, I’m packing up my office at school. Everything. Books, files, all the weird junk I have accumulated over the past five years. Here’s a partial list of stuff I have found:

a glow in the dark rubber skeleton
horse Christmas lights
a pair of pink wings…I think it’s a Fairy costume
two tiny bottles of gin (they were part of a weird gift, Aaron, and no not from Truman)
one bottle of tonic
a pie plate
three horse shoes (every English teacher needs these, trust me)
a duck soap bubble thing that you can wear around your neck (another gift)
a pair of shoes I didn’t even remember having

There’s more. Dumb books (French for Cats, for example), six copies of Elements of Style (not a dumb book), a Fairy Tale book (why is this here?), a Dr. Suess book (I know why that is here), and something like two dozen dictionaries ranging from a small paperback ordinary dictionary to my favorite, The Historical Dictionary of American Slang which has no less than thirteen pages devoted to variations on the wonderfully expressive Anglo-Saxon word “fuck” demonstrating its possibilities as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, interjection, intensifier, and indispensible acronym root word.

Yes, we are having a lovely day here in English professor land. And right about now I have to say: Okay, Jean. Put down the books and put them into the boxes. Keep moving…

Yesterday morning, about nine, Owen went missing. Just like that. One minute I was sitting in a back yard, Owen happily lounging on the grass, and the next minute, when I turned my attention elsewhere for a moment, Owen bolting across the grass, hellbent on chasing something. Probably a squirrel. Who knows. But off he went, trailing a retractable lead that had been attached to his collar.

And off we went, a friend and I, chasing Owen. For hours. First on foot, up and down the streets of the neighborhood — an unfamiliar neighborhood to Owen, unfortunately — then in two separate cars, cruising up and down streets, stopping everyone and asking if they had seen a medium sized black and white dog. No, they hadn’t. People shook their heads. Nope. Not this morning. No. No dog, no Owen. I even called the police department. No reports of an Owen-like dog.

By noon, we had run out of places to look, people to ask, the sounds of barking dogs to chase in hopes that it might be Owen, or maybe Owen pestering another dog to bark at him. We had turned up nothing. No one had seen a trace of Owen. It was as if Owen had simply vanished.

At times like this a couple of things happen.

The first is that imaginary scenarios rise up like scenes in a film. I imagined Owen taken in by a kid with a tennis ball, Owen happily playing fetch with his new friend. I imagined Owen caught under a fence by the leash on his collar, and unable to get free. I imagined Owen abducted by dog-fight promoters, Owen hit by a Camaro full of teenagers, Owen run over by a train, Owen still running, six miles away, trying to get away from the scary leash on his collar.

The second thing that happens is that people turn out to be incredibly nice. After we couldn’t find Owen, we made up posters of Owen and started putting them every place we could think of. The local gas station where the manager said she wasn’t allowed to post anything, but she would set the poster on the front counter where everyone could see it, and she did just that. The EMT station where the dispatcher and the EMTs on duty all gathered around and looked at the picture of Owen as though committing his cute little skinny body to memory. The girls working at the ice cream stand who cooed “Oh he’s so CUTE!” and kept the poster, promising to call if they heard or saw anything. And then the guy at a house next to a telephone pole where we were putting up a poster who told us in great detail about the weekend drop off for strays at the animal shelter. Everyone we met — each person a stranger — was kind, helpful, patient, compassionate.

The third thing that happens in moments like this is that people reveal who they really are. I tend to get incredibly stoic and a little nonverbal (for me) at moments like this, playing those grim scenarios in my head but not giving voice to the sheer terror and anguish I am really feeling because — I think, and tell myself — we just don’t know yet, so until we know what really happened, we should just do whatever we can do to make sure we have done whatever we can do and not get hysterical until it’s really time to get hysterical which is not yet and hopefully never. My friend, also a dog lover, knew full well that I was imagining terrible things happening to sweet Owen and kindly and calmly took the lead in Operation Find Owen. And made me laugh when I could. Kindness, calm, and gentle humor — those are remarkably good qualities to have in a moment of crisis. Life itself too, I think.

Finally — finally! — just as we were beginning to let despair and hopelessness settle fully in, my cellphone rang. A woman’s voice on the other end said, “Are you missing a dog named Owen?”

Oh my. Missing indeed. “Yes,” I said. “Yes. We have been looking for him everywhere.” And she had him, right here, she said, which turned out in the end to be no further away than around the block. Owen, it seems, had spent most of the day, in her words, “cowering under a tree in my yard.” A block away. It might as well have been another country. I told her where we were and she said, “I’ll walk him over.”

And then, five minutes later, there was Owen led along by the woman, my little dog walking down the street looking tired and a little worried. She led him up to us and it took Owen a minute to register that it was me. Then, well, you know how dogs are — bonkers when reunited — Oh it’s YOU! YOU! Ohmygosh!! Ohmygosh!!! Here I am!! Here you are!!! This is GREAT!!!

Well. That was me too: a little crazy with relief. Lost and then found. A happy ending. And because of that happy ending, I find myself thinking now that yesterday was a day I wouldn’t trade for any other day — a more ordinary, uneventful one, which might have revealed a great deal less about life and people, dogs and love, in the passing of its minutes and hours.

A few days ago I came back home after a three week stay at Yaddo, the swanky artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. There are many good things to say about Yaddo — it’s a beautiful place, smart and amazing people go there, as a “guest” you are treated like artistic royalty. There are less than good things to say about Yaddo — every lunch contains carrot sticks in a waxed paper bag, carrot sticks that appear to have been prepared with an ax; there are deer ticks everywhere, which became a subject of conversation at most dinners; and … well, actually those are the only less than good things to say about Yaddo itself. To have been there was a real gift. Three weeks to simply work on my own stuff, to be fed three meals a day, to have an attentive staff fend off intruders, to have a huge studio all for my own work — and to have absolutely no expectations of producing anything.

That was the most amazing part. Yaddo opens its doors for artists and writers to come and spend time and never expects anything in return. You don’t have to “prove” you’ve done work. In fact, if you want to, you can sleep in the sun for your entire stay. I readily admit to doing some of that when the sun infrequently appeared. When I got to Yaddo I was exhausted. Two years of film work, school work, the work of life itself — I was tired. I found myself sleeping a lot. Ten hours a night, a couple naps during the day. This, apparently, is a common Yaddo phenomenon. You arrive, feel surrounded by incredible kindness, good food, good will, and you promptly fall asleep.

Finally, when I got over being tired, I began to write. It went as it always does — false starts, moments of inspiration followed by hours of self-doubt, a couple of good sentences followed by pages of crud. Or as a breakfast pal, a painter, called it: “dreck.” Lots of dreck. If I were working on my own, I would have been groaning and miserable. But at Yaddo? In the morning I had breakfast with the few people who got up early. We would chat about ordinary things — the fantastic Yaddo grapefruit served every morning, the pileated woodpecker in the woods, the deer ticks, the inconstant sun — and then we would gather our lunchboxes and go off to work. Go off to work knowing that everyone was going off to work — on a painting, a series of drawings, a musical composition, a novel, a play, a film, poetry. From the window of my studio I would see my Yaddo friends pass by off and on throughout the day: Denise the poet walking to the Yaddo library to look up a word, T. the composer driving her jeep to the music studio deep in the woods, E. the journalist perpetually on her cellphone, talking to her sources in the Sudan. Just seeing them was reassurance enough. And I didn’t know this until the end of my stay, but they would look for me at my desk, writing. We were all at work, and we all quietly looked for one another, working.

Then, at the end of the day, we would gather for dinner. We usually didn’t talk about our work — that was a Yaddo rule: if someone doesn’t want to talk about their work, they don’t have to. But we did talk about art in general, making art, reading, writing. Some of the best conversations I had were finding out how a painter thinks, or a composer, or a journalist. And realizing we are all doing the same thing, in a way: with each new work of art, and I include writing as art, and good journalism too, we are charting new ground. I know how to write, a painter knows how to paint, but each new piece is a new exploration of the craft. That’s what makes what we do art, I think. If it’s not new ground, it’s not art.

Should I mention I had Sylvia Plath’s studio? I did. She was happy at Yaddo I think. I like to imagine her happy — happy in the way artists are when the work is alive and vibrant and with you, really with you. That’s the Yaddo energy. I hope to keep that with me now, back in Richmond, back in my home studio. Here’s hoping…

dear blog readers — this blog is on holiday until the last of May, first of June, more or less.

Enjoy the lovely spring weather wherever you are.

See you back here in June.

- J

My sister went to the Concord Patriots’ Day parade today — this is the best review, best seat, of the parade: LINK

Dan says it best, check out his blog: LINK

It’s spring, for certain. The flies were out in the pasture today, and the horses were cranky and sweaty by 4 p.m., ready to come into the cool shade of the barn. The appearance of flies, albeit not romantic or charming, is my absolute measure of the start of spring.

So, what’s yours?

I suppose it’s the insanity of Spring. Everyone is outdoors, riding bicycles, scooters, Harleys, mopeds, one speeds, ten speeds, anything with wheels. Okay, here’s the thing, cycle lovers of all kinds: you are a moving vehicle. Moving vehicles go on the road, with the flow of traffic. I don’t mind if you go four miles an hour or 84. Just work with the traffic. To do otherwise is to invite death.

As the young man with the backwards ballcap and the banana-seat bike did today, the deathwish guy who rode on the sidewalk, against traffic, across intersections, across access alleys, across exits from ATM machines, the very ATM machine I happened to be exiting. The one that when I was done extracting cash from the machine, I looked to the left, the only direction the traffic was coming from, waiting for my opening, and when it came, I pulled forward. At the very same time as backwards-ballcap-banana-seat-bike-riding guy came barreling down the sidewalk from my right.

Holy spokes, Batman! I about killed this kid! I screeched to a halt, he veered into traffic (which screeched to a halt), and I found myself hollering ridiculous things like “Jiminy Christmas, You Knucklehead! Watch where you’re going!”

I think he gave me the finger, but I can’t really say. My heart was thrashing in my chest and I had to get a grip on the adrenaline surge. Man, oh man.

Spring!

As I left school today, I drove down one of the more busy roads of lovely Richmond, Indiana. Before me, oddly, the traffic started swerving and braking. What was going on? Then, I saw it. A guy was riding a bike at the side of the road while his dog trotted alongside him. At first I thought the dog was on a long lead. Nope. The dog was simply following along behind his human friend. And when the dog — a lovely loping hound-like dog — saw something that interested him, he’d pursue it. Whether that meant darting into traffic, or bounding along the side of the road. He was a dog. He followed his nose.

And then, about the time I pulled even with this doofus on a bike and his lovely dog, the dog caught wind of something and raced across four lanes of traffic to the other side of the road, into a stand of trees.

No, he didn’t get hit. Yes, he lived. And yes, the doofus on the bike actually followed the dog in pretty much the same manner across the road.

But for heaven’s sake: Don’t do this! Use a leash, walk your dog, and stay off the busy streets. We ought to issue citations for goofballs like this! Owen agrees. And Owen is always right.

In the hallway, I hear a little voice singing a little song:

Jean, Jean…you’re young and alive….

I mutter back:

B, B….I’m middle aged and half dead….

This is something like the third or fourth time I’ve been sick this year — THIS YEAR — alone. What gives? Me, I suppose. As in giving out. Or maybe it’s working with someone who has a toddler (the film editor), or working with students who have toddlers and babies and children (you know who you are), or maybe it’s that I’m tired and stressed and my diet stinks (consisting mainly of my beloved cheese cubes, and no I’m not giving them up, dammit), and I work too hard and probably play too hard too.

So whatever the reason, I’m now officially sick. The doctor said so, and wrote up three prescriptions — two drugs, and one shot for pain in an old riding (more like falling) injury. I feel seriously middle-aged. The bad dwarfs have moved into my body: Grumpy and Wheezy, Achy and Bitchy (yeah, she’s a dwarf too). Oh, and? My happiest moment this week (and it’s only Monday) was finding a pair of bifocal sunglasses at the drugstore. At least I didn’t buy a copy of More magazine, that annoyingly chipper mag meant for women over 50. Go away.