ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 26, 1996 TAG: 9603260017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Amplifications, addenda and near-altercations regarding a few of my recent columns:
Some members of the Coffee Pot Ladies Auxiliary had a hard time swallowing my description of the club in a March 7 column about their activities - especially those that occur in the bar long after the last petunia is fertilized.
Specifically, they thought I made them sound like lushes. Specifically, they are not.
``The last time I went to The Coffee Pot, I drank coffee,'' complained Lydia Aldrich, a longtime member of the bar-affiliated gardening club.
And they do focus more on gardening than beer, she insists. ``We gossip, you know, like women do. And we trade recipes. And sometimes some of us go to plays at Mill Mountain.''
Another member - who asked not to be named - described herself as a ``widow with two grown children and three grandbabies. I'm not in the league that gets out and goes bar-hopping,'' she says. ``I think that's nothing but disaster for anyone who does.''
Sorry I took the bar humor too far, ladies.
Salem's Dick Howard took exception to my admittedly goofy profile of the Vinton oral surgeon, Dr. George Kevorkian Jr., and the hackneyed jokes he hears - daily - about his name.
``By finding interest/humor in all those lame and predictable Dr. Kevorkian jokes, you are by a very brief extension trivializing the pain and hopelessness that drives terminally ill people to Dr. Jack Kevorkian,'' Howard wrote. ``Suicide, assisted suicide, terminal illness, pain, total dependence and the anxiety of knowing your condition is terminal are not things to be made light of.
``Would you have written of `swimming' jokes if the local person had been named `Susan Smith' or `bomb' jokes of a local `Timothy McVeigh?'''
Fifth-graders in Lori St. Cyr's class at Highland Park Elementary rallied behind my Feb. 20 column on a Newport mother's campaign to revive recess. Fourteen took time out to write.
Carrie Cardwell: ``I thought it was really cool because it sticks up for us kids. When my class doesn't have recess we act up.''
Chase Grogan: ``When kids don't have recess their mind just goes blank. It's very hard to think when your screams, hollers, giggles, etc., aren't out of your system.''
Tasha Brewster: ``My plan is to get kids together and protest. I'll get the kids on every channel on TV and principals and teachers would watch it.... Kids should have recess.''
Tamara Williams: ``I think all kids need recess because they need to exercise and need to know how to get along.''
Yvonne, the woman who was looking for a car mechanic named Brad in my Feb. 27 column, came up short in her search. She needed him to testify as a witness in her case against a garage owner who, she claimed, sexually harassed her, cursed at her and failed to fix her car.
She did, however, hear from nine other customers - mostly women - who had experienced similar problems with the mechanic. And she won her civil suit.
Karen Dixon, assistant to J. Peterman - THE J. Peterman of mail-order catalog fame, known for his deft way with words - called to thank me for the mention in my Feb. 15 column.
The month of February, I wrote, inspires such impulsive craziness in me that I tend to do things I would never do in, say, June - such as dying my hair plum and charging outrageously expensive J. Peterman pants.
J. Peterman's writerly prose, catalog devotees might be interested to know, is actually written by Peterman's best friend and business partner, Dixon said. Elaine on ``Seinfeld'' has never written copy for the catalog, contrary to popular belief among ``Seinfeld'' devotees.
Nor was that the real J. Peterman on the show last season. ``A lot of our customers thought that was really him,'' Dixon said of the Peterman stand-in. The real J. Peterman ``is tall and handsome - but he's much more intelligent'' than the ``Seinfeld'' portrayal showed him to be.
On March 12 I wrote about poet Shelly Wagner, whose 5-year-old son, Andrew, drowned in the river behind her house in 1984. The column described her recent Hollins College poetry reading, in which she shared her poetry as well as her insights on grief.
On March 13, the world mourned the horrific shooting in Dunblane, Scotland, where 16 kindergartners and their teacher were slain by a crazed former Boy Scout leader.
Nancy Harvey, a local hospice worker, called to say that Wagner's message is being hand-delivered to Dunblane. A friend of Wagner's in Norfolk is traveling to the village next week - and taking along 20 copies of ``The Andrew Poems'' as a gift for the parents and school principal of the slain children.
And Jim Ford, of Northwest Mutual Life Insurance Co., called to add another anecdote to last week's column about Lew Thurman, the 79-year-old expert on pool - and life.
``We used to work together at Colonial American 25 years ago,'' Ford said. ``Now I wasn't a coffee drinker and I don't smoke and I hardly chased around. And I was kidding with Lew once in the lunch room and I told him, `I have no vices.'''
Lew's vintage response: ``You mean you have no minor vices.''
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