These are a collection of photos taken at the Austin Psych Fest I attended two weekends ago. My friend Kimia took most of these photos, all the really good ones. We had a fab time in Texas.
Lost & Found
Elevation Amphitheatre, Carson Creek
Tinariwen
Black Mountain
Babes & unicorn pants
Roky Erikson
Country Life
King Khan & BBQ Show
Linda of Golden Animals
Kimia
Sonia
Black Mountain
When I grow up, I’m gonna write rap lyrics (ATL)
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
Every spring I spend hours each week walking through my favorite garden shops. Stopping to admire and sigh at the plants I so wish to buy, but cannot afford. Because one or two is simply not enough. I want to buy 10 or 20 of each plant I love. I can see in my mind how lovely they’d look if only I could buy the whole grand lot.
I console myself with project spots all around my yard, each year building towards the dream garden I want. I am up to 10 peonies, with the two I bought yesterday. Having a beautiful yard takes a great deal of patience, years of planning and very dirty hands.
My bare hands were dirty all day, pulling onion grass, planting this year’s additions and moving my six roses to a new location, one that I hope they like much better.
Spring really is the most wonderful time of the year. It is so hopeful and full of promise with green, green grass to daydream on.
Begonia Baby
Lazy Daisies
The rare orange Azalea
In 3 weeks these will be cherry pies
Sweet Lilac
Dogwood days
One of my favorites, the stunning and strange Coleus
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
It has been about two months since Donal and I have been to Karen’s house in Atlantic City. Both myself and Donal have been dealing with major surgeries in our families since we last saw Karen. We have been on overdrive, helping our families, caring for the children, waiting for phone calls of good news from the hospital, and watching slow painful recoveries of two of our dearest loved ones. This has kept us from what had been an every weekend project to get Karen’s house back together.
We drove to AC this morning to put the project back on track and assess what is left to be completed. What we found was heartbreaking.
Karen lost everything on her first floor from the flooding of Hurricane Sandy in October, 2012. Her insurance did not cover content, so the water heater, the appliances in her kitchen and all of the belongings that occupied her first floor—and had made her house her home—were not replaceable with insurance money. She has been receiving assistance by way of volunteers from various churches, from Donal, myself and our friends, and from volunteers of the University of Delaware.
Driving down, I had imagined that Donal and I could walk in her house, assess the work which still needed to be done and apologize for our absence. I even suggested to Donal that we film a short interview and talk about what had happened. I pictured me and Karen standing on her stoop, talking about FEMA and her insurance company, the city of Atlantic City and Chris Christie and all the questions I have; I could then use that short film to ask my friends and family for donations to get her the money for her floors.
We knocked and Karen let us in. I immediately knew I wasn’t going to be making any films today; we could barely bear the weight of Karen’s despair. She broke into tears at the simple question “How have things been going?” She has been living without a first floor for six months now. She told us that her car died last week, that she can’t afford to replace it and now walks to work. Because of her brain injury (a trash can lid flew up on a windy day and knocked her to the ground, from which she now suffers daily) the 30 minute walk to work is adding a great strain to her already shaky equilibrium. To make things worse, she also told us that mold had grown on their mattresses, from wet personal items, crammed in already tiny bedrooms. So, she had to throw them out, and her family have been sleeping on mats donated by her son’s school.
Karen is poor. She is the working poor. She sits at the very bottom of the American middle-class, just above the poverty line. She has never gotten a break in her whole life. Then this storm swept through her home and unraveled a life that she was proud enough to try and hold together. Sandy took everything.
Karen is a good person. She works full-time running a program for underprivileged women at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission. She has worked there for over 20 years. She has two sons and is the sole caretaker for her brother, a special needs case. She never complains or acts entitled. Today, I saw a person so low, so beyond despair, her tears rolling down her face as she said she can’t take it anymore. She kept repeating that she just needs a break. This was one of the saddest moments in my life, so sad that none of us could look at each other, look in each other’s eyes for lies, hope or answers. We stood in silence, in a dark room from which Sandy stole the electricity, with humble reverence to Karen’s life, with reverence to what it looks like when everything is really stacked up against you; what it looks like to be poor in the richest country in the world.
Karen is, without a doubt, one of hundreds in Atlantic City with a similar story. She told me how neighbors were abandoning their homes, renters gone over night, leaving their soiled belongings to grow mold. I could ask questions about FEMA, The Red Cross, her family and culture, 12.12.12. concerts, and Chris Christie all day long, but that is not going to get Karen floors in her house so she can start living her life again.
Enough. The single word that kept answering all the questions running loose in my mind. None of it matters! Just get her what she needs.
I have a personal commitment to myself to help Karen. I never leave anything unfinished in my own life, and tend to buck up exactly in the 11th hour. I plan to do exactly that for this woman, one I barely know; everybody deserves a break, and I have had plenty of my own. I am going to ask every person I know for money, for a donation in any amount and pull the money together to get her floors so she can move on from this terrible chapter in her life.
The kitchen and most of the walls had been repaired. All Karen needs is floors, an electrician and her walls primed and painted, followed lastly by trim and baseboard. Then we can finally move in the sofas and furniture and all the other generous donations we’ve already secured for her.
If you would like to come to Atlantic City on Sunday April 14, Saturday April 20th, or Sunday April 21 to help paint and prime, please contact me at Ingrid@madquestionasking.com. If you would like to donate money to help reach our goal of $2500 to buy Karen floors, please contact me at Ingrid@madquestionasking.com.
Karen is a good person, she just needs a break, and if you can help, please try.
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
I want to go back.
I always want to be there on the island. I have spent the other half of my life in Bar Harbor, Maine. When I am not there I look up and wonder what the sky looks like without me.
I wonder what I am missing.
The sky on the island is always changing and moving fast. There, the sun wakes me up early each morning with colors I could never find words good enough for.
At night the sky seems so close. All those stars teasing me as if I just tried a little harder I could touch that moon.
I will be back soon enough, the whole summer long this year, each day and night, looking up.
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
Last week I made the long distance run up to Montreal to spend a weekend with my oldest and dearest friend Brooke, to look at art, drink and eat in cozy bistros, and chiefly to see The Zombies. I love The Zombies and, when I asked Brooke if she’d take some time off from work and travel to the romantic North with me, she sweetly said yes.
And those would be the glints of satiation… moments after I licked the tip of my knife and finished off the marrow of a beautiful Osso Buco at Bocata.
Brooke and I have a long history of obliging each other to attend shows we badly want to see but have no fellow, true-blue fan to go with. In the early 90s, she must have agreed to see half a dozen k.d. lang shows with me, my mother telling us before each show that we’d certainly be the prettiest pair there. I agreed to see Marilyn Manson with Brooke more than once. The biggest upside to this agreement between us, besides pleasing a friend, was seeing a piece of pop culture that we both may have missed.
Sweet Brooke
I will always remember the audiences at both lang’s and Manson’s shows; but what I’ll never forget is a 30-foot blinking, lighted sign spelling out DRUGS that came up out of the stage floor, with Manson’s sexy all-black female backup singers perched on this huge sign wearing leopard bikinis. It was the essence of the pop culture aesthetic at that time, the turn of the century. I am happy to have that memory, regardless of not being a Manson fan.
Before we left for this trip, every time we mentioned we were going to Montreal to see The Zombies, the reply was always the same. “THE ZOMBIES??… like from the sixties??” A good friend had the same reply but took it a step further by adding, “They’re kinda AM Gold, Ingrid.” Crushed, I couldn’t respond. I was pleased to point to the ceiling when two Zombies songs came on at an oh-so-cool Brooklyn restaurant—that served the latest trend of orange and yellow wines—only an hour after the AM Gold comment was made. Myself and The Zombies redeemed, with him commenting, “What, this song is The Zombies?”
Moon Lover
The show was fantastic. Truly. They even played some Alan Parsons Project and Argent’s “Hold Your Head Up.” It was packed, with non-stop ovations from fans ranging in age, from their 20s to 70s. The last time The Zombies played in Montreal was 47 years ago. After all that time, I didn’t miss this piece of pop culture either. I love that.
I love that life can be long and beautiful and shared, ageless. And, for some people, they can write meaningful and sincere music and still have it linger in their hearts and give it to their old and new fans, 47 years later.
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
Last Friday afternoon I met up with friends of mine at the Philadelphia Art Museum for our children’s weekly art classes. Just as I passed through the revolving door, out of the cold, my friend looked me up and down and asked, “Are you having a bad day, too? I think I said mother fucker 20 times today.”
“Hey, that is the greatest combination of two words of all time, maybe even the oldest!” I said smiling, “Made you feel better didn’t it?”
We parted, to drop the kids at different classes, both of us feeling lighter.
The release of strong language can really soothe some of the stress we carry inside. But how often does one really feel as though they have the freedom or confidence to say the words we hear so rarely anymore in our plain-Jane, mealy-mouthed society?
At the last MQA book club dinner, while sitting at my dining room table surrounded by friends who were eating a complicated new recipe that I had proudly knocked out of the park, a shameful word popped up in our conversation. A friend repeated an LBJ quote which carried this ugly word. She quickly bore the heavy burden of publicly saying a bad word in front of nice people and there followed an uncomfortable tangle of justifications, leaping from her mouth. “I don’t use that word. I am just using it in this context.”
I looked around the table, studying pairs of eyes that didn’t care about hearing the word; some eyes had dropped to their plates but I, being the hostess and a woman who embraces all words whole-heartedly, felt I had to clear this up.
“Big deal! It is a word! If we can’t hear or use words that are ugly or bad then HOW will we describe the very things that those words are intended for??”
To emphasize my point and to top the word that had been spoken, I added loudly,
“A cunt is a cunt is a CUNT!”
Forks dropped. Then her husband said, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? We didn’t hear you.”
His witty response lightened the heat and force of my exclamation and we resumed eating and talking about a really great book for the rest of the night.
A part of me never recovered; I get beaten up by how watered down language has become and I take it personally, straight to heart. I worry about words, the loss thereof. I worry that the really good ones, the ones that make women cringe and hold their babies tight to their chest, the words that start and end fights, the sweet dirty words that I so wish to combine and whisper against the skin of a lover and also dream of hearing against my own skin, will one day just not exist; and all I’ll have are books to remind me that, once upon a time, people desired to speak to each other in such a way that it implied a depth of feeling or a pride in thought; that, once, there was a time when a person felt something and wasn’t terrified to share it.
One of the things that repeatedly blows my mind is how passionate letter writing was, pre-WWII. Even men would write letters to each other declaring their deep affection and admiration for each other. Today, no such lust for personal expressive writing exists to my knowledge. People today shy far away from any hint of personality, even in casual friendly banter.
A classic example is a story my friend Bob told me. He was at a party and recognized a couple who lived on his street. He approached them, introduced himself and said,
“Hey, I am your neighbor, I live two blocks up the street.”
The response was,
“How do you know where we live? Are you stalking us?”
That story makes me cringe, not only to think that some trashy, common family is stalker-worthy but that this is a clear and hideous example of what conversation looks like now-a-days.
I often hold back from writing how I really feel about something. Even I feel as though there are these dull boundaries that must stay intact, because everyone else seems to think they should. I wish I had more guts to spill the beans, let it out. But maybe the real question is, who is listening? Maybe no one.
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
MQA Home Movie Number Three
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
This past Saturday, my friend, Ami – who is the Sunday school teacher at her church – asked if I’d go with her to tent city, the homeless encampment in Camden. To help her find out what the residents could use with the money the children in her Sunday school raised. Each quarter, the children collect a “Noisy Offering.” She told me that the children walk up and down the congregation with metal bowls and collect pocket change. And it is up to the children to vote on what charity or “need” they want to give it to. They chose tent city.
After we stopped by the encampment to ask what they wanted to blow their $108 on, we filled up one propane tank, and bought pomade, men’s and women’s underwear, sugar, water, coffee, cooking oil, cigarettes and batteries for them. Ami bought the cigarettes herself, not wanting to spend the children’s donation money on that. I stood in line behind her and bought a Whatchamacallit, since I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. While looking at the cooking oil, coffee and sugar in the cart in front of me, it made me think that those items could have been on any list a hundred years ago, timeless necessities.
I decided that this time, on this visit to tent city, I would film a short interview with some of the encampment’s members and share the film with my friends, so they could see what I see when I visit tent city.
This is tent city. These are my questions for the homeless there.
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
I spent a good deal of Sunday hanging sheetrock with Donal at Karen’s house in Atlantic City. Her kitchen, which was completely gutted due to the devastation of hurricane Sandy, is the current focus of Donal’s complete restoration of her home. Karen lost nearly all of her belongings in the first floor of her small home during the storm.
As we prepared to begin to sheetrock, with me tapping back nails and screwing screws back into the lath, Donal asked me to tell Karen about all the items that our friend, Bethann, and I had sourced for her. I ran off a list, including a sofa, new 20″ TV, pair of twin beds and boxsprings, $500 cash towards flooring, five bar stools, a filing cabinet, and a bookcase. These items added to the fridge and kitchen cabinets that were already donated by other friends.
She shook her head in disbelief, smiled, and said, “The funny thing is that the bookcase makes me the most happy. I lost all of my books in the storm.” I asked what she liked to read and she said she is a non-fiction reader, enjoying Christian books and also biographies. I told her one of my book clubs was reading the biography, “Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum discovered the great American story” by Evan I. Schwartz next month and I’d lend it to her when I was done.
I asked Karen what has surprised her the most from the aftermath of a devastating hurricane and her reply was mighty quick. She said she couldn’t get over the generosity of complete strangers. To tell you the truth, I can’t either. I can’t believe Donal is intending to, not only get me and every other person he can out of their house at 6:30 am on a weekend to help him help her, but that he plans to see this thing through. It is a huge job! And one that a gentle, kind woman, who likes to read non-fiction and has worked at a homeless women’s shelter for more than two decades, indeed deserves.
Other highlights of the day, besides of course, the fact that I screwed in enough sheetrock that the soft skin between my index finger and thumb got slightly blistered, was meeting her insurance adjuster. Who, finally, that day, came to look over her home’s damage, 70 days since the storm touched ground.
It was the first house he looked at, in his brand new job as an adjuster. He, along with 360 other newly trained adjusters, would finally get into homes that hadn’t been seen yet. I paused and turned my head to hear him speak to Karen in the next room and smiled like any decent troublemaker would, when his first question was if this was a home or a row home. I almost fell to the floor in mischievous laughter and looked at Donal, pointed to the floor and said quietly, “Yeah, it’s a home alright, people live here. Duh!” It took all of me to not follow this poor guy around and make his next paycheck’s virgin expedition turn into a bullet-sweating, t-crossing hell by a girl who can run off questions faster than lightning.
I hung back though, and continued to work.
After he left, I asked Karen what she thought of the concerts and all the fancy fundraising. She said she was given four blankets, a bucket, and a mop from the Red Cross a week after the storm and hasn’t seen them since. She, herself, hasn’t seen or knew of anyone who received any assistance from any non-profit, other than small church groups. She then told me that the City of Atlantic City stopped taking debris after December 15, meaning any demolition material would have to go into a rented dumpster. Well, City of Atlantic City, for some people who have no money, have no help, and maybe haven’t seen their insurance company show up yet… way to go! Way to go Federal Gov’t, way to go FEMA, way to go stupid-bullshit-useless-feel-good-asshole-fronted-12.12.12-concert!
The only thing I heard after the 12.12.12 concert was “Mick Jagger was AMAZING!” to which I should have replied each and every time, “Ummm, aren’t we supposed to be helping people in a time of extreme crisis?? What good is watching the Stones for people like Karen?? She’s never going to see those dollar bills!” Man, I wish I could have stood on that stage and told the whole world about Karen, about her poor neighbors and friends, most of whom do not have any help, some of whom have not even gone home yet… 70 days later in the richest country in the world.
If you would like to lend a hand and help us get Karen’s house back together, please contact me. One day of labor makes a big difference. According to Donal, anyone is useful, which he proved to be true on Sunday. If I can sheetrock, you can sheetrock. And if you’re lucky, Donal might even take you to the famous Irish Pub for a cold beer and a sandwich after you bust your ass, helping a decent person get her life back together.
© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
Way back in time (last spring) I started this project. When my people found out that I would be writing my thoughts down on a blog (I still hate that fucking word), I got a whole lot of “Ingrid, you CAN’T talk about…”
“Ingrid, you CAN’T talk about the Troops!”
“Ingrid, you CAN’T talk about breast cancer conspiracy theories!”
“Ingrid, do not MESS with Anonymous. They will not find you funny at all!”
What? Anonymous? I LOVE Anonymous. The only messing I’d do with them would be along the lines of Anonyophilia! (I made that up myself. Think Plushies.) What are they going to do if I mention them on MQA, hack my computer and lay public the fact that sometimes I stare at the corduroy pants for 4 to 6 year olds on the English clothing website Mini Boden for some mind numbing hours?
I had two excellent ideas for MQA three-minute films that included the Guy Fawkes Anonymous mask. I never made either. One is too long to explain, but the other had everything. Republicans, Democrats, mustaches, pig tails, butt sex, metaphors, fireworks, NPR, NRA, Jesus and Jon Stewart. It would have been really something else but it was too much for me to pull off alone. The only scene that got shot or shot well is in my love letter below. (I had to get this out there, out of my computer, even though the brilliance of the original use is out of context.)
Anonymous is still at it. Just two days ago this story came out. “As Israel and Hamas continued their deadly conflict in Gaza Thursday, the hacker group Anonymous rallied to the Palestinians’ side, launching a digital attack against websites belonging to the Israeli government.” Read more here.
It would be impossible for a girl like me to not crush on the Robin Hoods of the interweb. At least somebody wants to defend, or attempts to, the underdogs of our miserable world.
And of course, the mask is very alluring.
© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved
Yesterday, my friend and I attended a tour of love letters at the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia. As luck (or sadly, maybe current culture’s lack of interest in love, history, and books) would have it, the tour was given for just us two. A private show.
While standing in a gorgeous, softly lit library brimming with rare books, I surprisingly felt overwhelmed with wonder and mystery. In the nooks and crannies of any town or city are wonderful spots like this library, left disinterested by the general public. But there, in the Rosenbach, in the middle of yesterday’s afternoon, I found myself holding the original and very delicate and very pained second-to-last love letter Keats wrote to his beloved Fanny, as one of my dearest friends read it aloud.
Magic.
The tour guide wanted us to hold the books, to touch the letters, to cold read them without feeling blushed or insecure of mispronunciation. She showed us Marlene Dietrich’s love notes to Mercedes de Acosta. One was written in green ink. We touched the original forgery of a 17th century faux William Shakespeare love letter to his Anne Hathaway.
As the tour of letters ended I asked, “who is writing love letters today?” The guide said she hoped we would write a love letter when we left.
In my mind, I write them all day long. But there is no reader, only a ghost.
I left thinking that being in love is showing a side of yourself no one ever sees. It is tender and luscious, like a lover’s scent trapped inside thousands of hair strands, to be smelled like a secret later. It is torture and possession, too. Keats felt those things. He could not, not feel them.
We left the Rosenbach and walked through Rittenhouse Square. Near the square’s center, we passed a family with a little boy who my friend and I met last year in our daughters’ ballet class. I was happy to see them by chance, it reminded me of early last fall. When I had watched the shy little boy dance, in some odd way, I felt very connected to him. He was so innocent and quiet, with beautiful dark brown hair. When I watched him dance with my daughter, I found myself thinking that some day, some girl is going to love him so much, and I wished for him that he’ll go on and let her. As I passed him by chance yesterday, I made the same wish for him.
A sweet afternoon, brimming with questions of love, chance, and fate.
© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved
Why am I here?
Why are we here?
How come the bar for status quo is always so goddamn low?
Is Pete Townsend a pervert?
What do I care if he is?
Why doesn’t the Earth just furiously implode already (since its children are eternally misbehaving) like a tired momma in a bus shelter in west Philly?
Why do people take themselves and their dullness so seriously? (Oh, my favorite flavor of crystal light is definitely the orignal lemonade.)
Why hasn’t Bob made that a t-shirt yet?
If he sees this, will he make it a t-shirt?
Is there a way to tell someone they have spinach in their teeth through eye contact?
Is working, raising your kids, and watching TV really (really?) enough out of life?
Are humans addicted to safety because of evolution?
Do I over-use hyphens?
Is everyone full of shit?
Why would playing Where’s Waldo ever possibly be enough for Waldo?
Is it possible to be haunted by a ghost who wantonly practices identity theft?
Am I full of shit?
What did the colors of the leaves changing look like 1000 years ago in NJ?
If I walk into the woods for good, will Eddie Veddor make a follow-up record to Into The Wild?
What am I missing?
Are car shows fun?
© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved
The following is a list of some of the best search engine terms that lead someone to my site. (Picture someone sitting at their computer and typing these words into google, especially “are men in v-neck sweaters gay.” That is my favorite, because this is what I picture “Oh my God! Oh my God! I think Jerry might be gay! He consistently wears v-necks. Oh my God!”)
What I want to know is, when they got to my home page… did they find what they were searching for?
tampons in the bible
lesbian shoulder squeeze
lady wawa greece sex film
fuck.honking scandal
what makes some men sensitive and more like women
wind blows nancy regans dress up
fucking to good handsome lady
tumblr grey school skirt and knee socks
swedish meatball girl
how much dubble bubble to kill a groundhog?
celebrities spit or swallow
naughty americanstrip pics
i messed up my sisters email and she lost internship position
mr. norway gay
warren zevon asshole
yoga women quiff
are men in v neck sweaters gay
irish fat fuck
i was a chubby lady hiding in the bushes
strangling pippi longstocking
why do people have nervous laugh when around me
women humiliating very very young stories
celebrities nude “strangling him”
kenyan gays dicks
giant diapers
larrg david quif drinking coffee¿
casual nudity when growing up in a large family
can you be partially retarded?
ob gyn fat bitch
black man who lived in iceland long ago
dear heinz ketchup
“knuckle” + “dirty jokes”
mom nude laying out
my brother getting caught fucking farm cow
how to tell my mom i want to lay out naked
dream:exam failing and cow chasing
no its not that time of the month jokes
ingrid & friends fuck party
he was speechless as i took off my clothes
© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved
A short film, a home video, on the future of book burning.
© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved
These are a collection of photos taken at the Austin Psych Fest I attended two weekends ago. My friend Kimia took most of these photos, all the really good ones. We had a fab time in Texas. © Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved
I took my little ladies to see my friend, Kimia, DJ on Friday night at Ortlieb’s in Philadelphia. It was early. We stayed for an hour and the girls were in bed by their nightly 8 o’clock bedtime; and while they did dance and party pretty hard at the DJ booth with their comp-ed Shirley Temples […]
Every spring I spend hours each week walking through my favorite garden shops. Stopping to admire and sigh at the plants I so wish to buy, but cannot afford. Because one or two is simply not enough. I want to buy 10 or 20 of each plant I love. I can see in my mind […]
Both the probing questions and the ever-increasing interest in my single life, from well-meaning friends, can be annoying, much like newlyweds rudely being asked, over and over, when they are having a baby. The annoyance is that, in coming from so many directions, it becomes compounded, and I am forced to politely grimace and listen […]
Waiting in lines is not my strong suit. Even back in seventh grade, when eating at stupid places like Planet Hollywood was “the” thing to do for cheesy suburban folk, I would always refuse to join my friends as they waited in lines to get in these places. Waiting is beneath me. I once cut […]
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