Shelter

(This piece ran in the LA Times a cupla days ago. xo Amy)

When I appear at the fence of the Glendale homeless shelter with my rolling suitcase, I hear cries of "It's the book lady" or, if I'm with my daughter, "It's the book ladies; let them in!"

At that point, we are allowed to cut to the front of the line and pass through the gate without being wanded or searched. We then head for a table in the hall where we empty our suitcase and spread out our books.

Since I'm on the board of the Friends of the Glendale Public Library, I collect most of the books I bring from the red-dot, super-sale bookshelf at the library. These are donated books that no one purchased at the library's sale.

I also tell neighbors and friends that I am collecting gently used books for the homeless.

The response has been ... interesting. One friend, an otherwise intelligent person, dropped off a bag of glossy, hardcover coffee-table books. One that sticks in my mind was about Roman Polanski. What is a person who trudges through life like a hermit crab, with everything he owns on his back, supposed to do with 10 pounds of Polanski?

Other friends have asked me what kinds of books the homeless like, which is kind of like asking what kind of books tall people, or redheads, like.

"I assume," one friend said, "that they want easy, escapist stuff?"

Another said: "I don't think I have the right kind of books for homeless people."

This year, the Glendale shelter moved from near downtown to a funky industrial side street of concrete and cyclone wire. It has a 77-bed capacity, and it's first-come, first-served, which means that if you are the 78th to arrive, you lose.

As the lucky 77 souls enter each evening, they pass through security, which is handled by volunteers; then they sign in, and then they walk past my table.

At the beginning of the season I spent the whole time calling out "FREE BOOKS!" to everyone who came by. Now most of them know the drill. Some march right past, in a hurry to sign up for showers and get their cots. Others say they are satisfied with their Bibles. But many fall upon my book offerings as if they've been offered a feast.

One guy snaps up all the science fiction he can; another is always on the lookout for nonfiction science. One woman asks for poetry but needs large print because she has lost her glasses. As a glasses wearer myself, the idea of moving through the day without seeing clearly is nightmarish.

Some pick quickly, based, on author or cover art. Others pore over every book, examining the backs and blurbs, reading the first page, and asking me or those who have gathered around the table what we know about the books.

One man who looks like a young Santa Claus asks, winking, if I have "Fifty Shades of Grey." But he ends up taking mysteries. A woman, who wears her hair wrapped in a high, red scarf, always wants psychology books. After being there every Monday night since Dec. 1, I know to hold certain titles aside in case certain people show up.

The books are theirs to keep, to trade, to do whatever they like with but one woman always pushes her walker up to my table and returns last week's book for something new.

In less than an hour each Monday night, my books have been picked over, and dinner is being served in the other room, so I pack up and roll out.

Driving away from the shelter, I worry about the people I see walking around. Are they homeless? Did they miss the 77-person cutoff and now have nowhere to sleep? But I also feel glad that at least some guests at the shelter that night won't have to just stare up at that institutional ceiling, listening to 76 strangers snore. They'll have a book to get lost in as they lie on their cots.

I know that the shelter is only open from Dec. 1 to March 1, but it hadn't really sunk in what that meant until one of the guests asked me on Monday if it was my last time coming. That's when I realized it was the last Monday of February.

Where would all these people be next Monday night? And the Monday after that?

As I rolled my remaining books out through the gate this week, there was a small group of people who hadn't gotten beds for the night. Among them was the red-scarfed woman who reads psychology.

Never mind next Monday; where would she sleep that night?

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-homeless-glendale-books-20140227,0,2580045.story#ixzz2uqrYjDpA

Facebook op-ed from The LA Times

The 10th birthday of Facebook last week caused me to recall my miserable pre-Facebook existence, when methods of procrastination were sorely limited.

As a stay-at-home writer, phone calls were unruly and hard to control. What if the other person wanted to tell a long story? What if she wanted me to really pay attention?

I could have a bit of contact with the outside world by scanning the newspaper or listening to the radio. But for me the switch in media was too jarring and tended to trigger frantic snacking, which often led to napping.

I needed a way to remain in my chair, at my screen, but be able to check in on friends without having to make small talk or even hold up my side of the conversation. Although I didn’t realise it, I also needed a chance to spy on semi-strangers and relatives and people from my past without breaking any laws.

I needed access to video snippets and newsy bits that someone else thought were funny or touching or bizarre. I needed a simple way to keep up with neighbourhood gossip and industry rumour. All while investing precisely as much time and attention as I wanted to, with no reciprocal responsibilities or guilt.

In short, I needed Facebook.

Satisfying the semi-social, procrastination needs of middle-age writers may not have been what Mark Zuckerberg had in mind when he launched Facebook, but he can count that among his accomplishments nonetheless. Thanks to him, with one click I can leave work, get out of my own story for exactly as long as I wish, then return to work. Better than ruby slippers!

I assume all Facebook users find their own community. I write children’s books, so the people who “friend” me tend to be teachers, librarians, other writers or readers. And they’re there for me.

Just the other day, I couldn’t remember the title or author of a book that I wanted to recommend to a friend, so I asked the communal Facebook brain. All I had to go on was the general subject and my memory of the cover art.

Within minutes I had the book’s title from a middle school librarian in Massachusetts whom I’ve never met. She probably came across my question while doing her own procrastinating.

Another time recently, I posted a picture of the grubs I found infesting my flower beds. By nightfall they’d been identified, remedies had been suggested, similar insect stories shared, sympathy extended.

What I didn’t expect when I first started using Facebook was that just through the accumulation of “status updates”, which are rarely more than a sentence or two, distinct personalities would emerge. Not all, but many of my 1,429 Facebook friends who began as total strangers have become virtual friends.

There’s also something wonderful about the ease of ending Facebook friendships. I can simply block anyone I find annoying, and they never know.

And when blocking isn’t enough, there is the delicious joy of unfriending.

The overzealous debut author who believed that relentless self-promotion via social media really was the path to success: One click, and he’s gone! The NRA kid whose response to school shootings was that the teachers should be armed: Unfriend! The antiabortion and marriage protection fanatics: Click, bye-bye!

But Facebook friendships can also pull you into real-life dramas.

I have one Facebook friend who is suffering from severe depression. She recently checked back into the “whack shack” (her words) for electric shock treatments, which she described in detail. She writes about her plight with humour and charm, but it tears my heart out. I find myself as anxious about her illness and treatments as I would be about an actual blood-and-bone friend.

Recently, a sweet guy I’d never met, and only knew from his Facebook posts, died. I learned this when his brother announced his sudden death - on Facebook. I was stunned, and totally blindsided by the depth of my emotion. But I wondered if I was entitled to be sad over a total stranger. Was it voyeuristic? Ghoulish? Inappropriate?

The sorrow felt entirely real, but it was embarrassing.

I secretly went to his Facebook page and found that I was not alone.

Alongside his real-life friends and family, many people who had only known him on Facebook posted condolences and memories and prayers. His online community mourned. We comforted one another. Some of us eventually became Facebook friends.

Maybe those of us who connect on Facebook care for each other and cry over each other in the same way we do over beloved characters in novels and movies.

As a fiction writer, I take those relationships seriously. So even if the whole Facebook world is just a new kind of fiction, the laughs are real, and so are the sorrows.

And the procrastination is exquisite.

xo Amy

P.S. This first appeared as an op-ed in The LA Times.

Here is the link:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-facebook-anniversary-20140216,0,188628.story#axzz2tgY5SMxE

AmyKossBlogThang: Bye-Bye Green

AmyKossBlogThang: Bye-Bye Green: O ur new neighbors are probably lovely people in many lovely ways, but the first thing they did after moving in, was to hack down, up...

Bye-Bye Green

Our new neighbors are probably lovely people in many lovely ways, but the first thing they did after moving in, was to hack down, uproot, clear out, and grind to bits every speck of plant life in their yard. 

This was, of course, within their rights.

Never mind the fact that the jade plants were huge and hearty and probably ancient. Forget the towering bottle-brush plants that the hummingbirds loved. To hell with whatever that tree with the fragrant waxy white flowers was. These plants had thrived and bloomed and not bothered a soul for as long as memory, and yet they had zero right to continue to survive. 

The utter powerlessness of plants is heartbreaking.

But before you think this rant is my selfless plea for plant rights, you need to know that in place of the lush, living wall of green that you see in all these happy BEFORE photos, the new neighbors are erecting an enormous  fence, leaving me in... a ditch.

I am not the first person to have her view obscured, and I am not going to murder these neighbors in their sleep, or do anything harsh or nasty to their ghastly, towering fence.

But this blog stands as a memorial to the greenery, birds, bugs and bunnies of the good old, pre-viewless, ditch-living days, which ended Thursday.

AFTER

BEFORE

xo Amy

Ta-da! The New Me!

Thank goodness it's almost New Year's Day. I don't think I could bear to lug these flabby thighs and wobbly gut around with me much longer. So looking forward to their instant disappearance as 2014 begins! And really, my work habits have gotten so slack and slovenly these last few, well, years, that they too will benefit from a resolution or two. And shouldn't my finances match my new abs?

Up early, teeth brushed, bills paid and neatly filed, maybe take a run. Shower. Wear shoes. Eat greens. Greet the day with a big smile. Then type! type! type! That will be 2014.

Before you assume that I make the same resolutions every year, I'd like to point out that these things evolve slowly.

My earliest recollection of making New Year's resolutions dates to middle school when I resolved to 1) run away from home and become world famous; 2) learn to re-inhale my cigarette smoke through my nose; and 3) get Mike Humphrey to fall hopelessly in love with me, and then treat him like dirt.

My high school resolutions expanded beyond simply not being caught by my parents to not getting caught by any other armed or unarmed authority figure. I resolved 1) not to leave my purse in cars when hitchhiking (this resolution came after one helpful driver called my house and told my parents of my purse's whereabouts); and 2) that if I was ever again caught smoking dope at the park with Boogie Greenberg, I would not helpfully grab and hide his pipe.

Come the college years, New Year's resolutions concerned 1) not getting pregnant; 2) not waiting until the last night of the semester to read the assigned textbooks; and 3) showing up on time — or at least awake, sober and fully clothed — for my 9 a.m. class.

As a young wife and mother, I went on to ignore an ever more sophisticated, if less edgy, crop of resolutions. I resolved not to sing scary songs to my children at bedtime, even if it seemed funny at the time, and not to throw all my husband's dirty underwear in the garbage no matter how many times in a row I'd been stuck with the laundry.

Of course, many New Year's resolutions demand a last hurrah.

It might be one more go at the racetrack or craps table, or a bittersweet, drug-enhanced fling with a stranger before giving it all up for the new year. Some folks need to indulge in the robbing of a final bank for closure, or feel compelled to loot and burn one last village for old times' sake. Others just need to run a few more red lights before midnight.

It's been years since I've required that parting carton of Kools before the annual New Year's Eve Quit. But I can't say that this year won't demand one last deep-fried, chocolate, whipped-cream, buttery, pig-out, with my pants unsnapped.

Then I'll press the magic 2014 Refresh Button and, like a reverse Cinderella, the stroke of midnight will transform me into the patient, disciplined, tactful, competent, enlightened, slim and healthy woman I've always meant to be!

I will awaken on New Year's Day cheerful and perky, signed up for another go with Curves and Weight Watchers, along with Yoga Booty, tai chi, pole-dancing, stretch-boxing, vegan cooking, meditation and scenic water color!

I'll tidy the office and give the bathroom a New Year's scrub, while flossing my teeth and doing kegels. Then, I'll call my parents and roll nary an eye as they repeat the same three questions on loop.

I'll pay the rapt, adoring attention of a newlywed bride as my husband goes into excruciating detail about his work. Then I'll cheerfully scrape up the enormous turds dropped around the yard by the long-term-visiting daughter's enormous dog without making mention of said daughter's laziness. I'll happily open the wallet without comment for the unemployed son. Then, most difficult by far, I'll resist the urge to send my agent the daily, petulant, nag-o-gram regarding my latest book manuscript.

No, wait! I won't have to "resist the urge" because the New Year's Me will be free of such old-year urges! All that evil inner chatter will have been effortlessly hushed. Ah! to no longer feel the call to nag, or criticize, or sulk, or be tempted by pie or potato chips! This must be what they mean by a happy and peaceful new year.

xo Amy

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-new-years-resolutions-20131231,0,1499350.story#ixzz2p6f6Xwdz

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-new-years-resolutions-20131231,0,1499350.story#axzz2p1cXU1IA

A Three Alarm Night

Three car alarms are going off on the street. They don't blend and are not playing well together. Maybe it is the work of merry holiday pranksters, or malicious elves. Maybe some clumsy neighbor staggering home drunk, ricocheted off the cars, oops! oops! oops! 

Or, maybe it is an earthquake, the beginning of the end --- what we Californians on the fault line call: The Big One.

The dogs find it inspiring, and have joined in the holiday carol. 

Diamond, the pit-bull, goes, AROOO!

Little Guy is delivering his uniquely irritating, staccato, relentless, sanity-eroding yip.

Wally the poodle-mutt is on cow bell. 

SHIT.

I hope the dogs and I are not about to plummet, yipping and barking, to the molten center of the earth -- with a ghastly, three- siren accompaniment.

It never occurred to me that the end could have such a crappy sound track. 

One car alarm, maybe. The approaching semi-reassuring wail of an ambulance, a few on- lookers shrieking, maybe someone crying... But a cacophony of discordant alarms is way too... well, alarming.

Grim mid-December thoughts as we skim past the 25th anniversary of my friend Lisa Endig's death. Hers was quiet. Didn't have anything to do with alarms, except the ones going off between my ears. Early morning on a living room couch on a quiet Santa Monica street. Maybe some traffic sounds outside, maybe birds. All I really recall is the lengthening silence between her breaths.

Ah! The sirens have stopped. We've been spared. 

In the quiet that the sirens leave behind, the dogs return to licking their butts and watching me for signs of snack-happenings, and I re-notice the sounds of rain. 

I'd forgotten the rain! Even forgot all about the double rainbow I saw earlier on my drive home. But now, I'm glad to remember, glad The Big One has been postponed, and glad for the chance to wish us all, in these last few weeks of the year, a pleasant sound track, stable ground, and many continuing breaths, in and out.

lots of love,

amy

Thanking

My dears, Forgive me for re-posting this oldie, but the feelings have not changed with the years. xo Amy

I, Curmudgeoness Koss, am glad we got all that thankfulness out of our systems, as there is no math more cloying than the counting of blessings. It is not that I don’t see how amazingly lucky we are. I do. 

• We’re lucky to be ALIVE and healthy and more or less conscious and intact and housebroken. 
• We’re lucky to be alive NOW after the good folks before us took care of the messier aspects of inventing pie, and e-mail and deodorant and elevators. 
• We’re lucky to be alive HERE where we are free to believe, write about, wear, eat, and say pretty much whatever asinine thing pops into our addled little minds, as evidenced by this blog.
• All that is a great start, but it always seems like underneath all the warm fuzzy thankfulosity lurks an under-tone of bargaining; The assumption that if we act really grateful it’ll stall worse crap from descending. See Fate? How fun it is to do good things for us? See how grateful we are? (and worthy) 
• 
  
• But the real issue about all this thanks-giving is its implication that the job is done, mission accomplished with no room for improvement. 



Let's Talk Turkey -- photo by Marla

• Call it greedy, but I want more. Just because I’ve got a house doesn’t mean the world can check housing off its list of problems. And just because I can eat like a pig doesn’t mean we don’t have a ways to go before hunger is no longer an issue. 

Let's just hope more of us have more to be thankful for by next Thanksgiving.

xo

Amy