SYBIL SEZ!!!!........ Don't Bug Me!!!!

Dear Sybil, I’m one of those poor blondes who seem to attract every kind of bite at the beach, and none of them are from a handsome lifeguard! It’s only July, and I’m covered in mosquito bites and maybe some other gnat, blackfly, chigger, and “no-see-ums” too. HELP!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!, Sincerely, Itchy.

Dear Sincerely Itchy…. (oops! Sorry!) …just Itchy! You’ve come to the right place! Mummie isn’t a blonde, but there’s something in my chemistry that has always made me a tasty treat for the world’s predators, especially among the six-legged set! If only I had as many admirers among the older, doddering nobility of minor European principalities and duchies. They could nibble on me as much as they liked, and I could have as many jewels as Madame Arnfelt in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC or Aunt Alicia in GIGI, and half the itching! But no! I’ve ended up being one of those poor girls at the barbecue who loses a pint of blood at the relish tray. I will stand in a group of partiers and everyone will be cool and collected, but I’ll be so covered with mosquitoes, it’ll look like someone clubbed me with the pepper grinder! When I was young, my grandparents actually used me as a bug attractor at their croquet picnics…my job was to stand on a pedestal with two flashlights and be a living target for every mosquito within 300 yards of the buffet tables. I was to use the flashlights to signal them in for a safe landing…on me! I got a quarter an hour. If only we had known back then some of the science and the easier remedies for mosquitoes and their cohorts! Well, we do now, and I for one am no longer anemic from June through the end of September thanks to these tried and true tricks!…

1)    Mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide we exhale, to the warmth of our bodies, to the smell of various soaps and perfumes, and to dark clothing…. Be sure to dress in very light colors or preferably white clothes! Who would have thought that the chicest fashion choice might also save your skin??...literally!. Although many experts will suggest eating garlic or drinking apple cider vinegar in quantities for days before a party, I find that that is just too extreme. Who wants to time themselves to sweat out “bug repellant”? Ridiculous! BUT! The evidence for using fragrance as a weapon is overwhelming, but it has to be the right fragrances!….. there are scores of stories of people mixing a few drops of essential oils like citronella, citrus and mint, eucalyptus, lemongrass, witch hazel, or my very favorites, lavender or vanilla extract in a small spray bottle of water. Tea tree or neem oil will also work beautifully. Spray yourself and your clothes paying particular attention to your “pulse points” (behind your ears, around your throat, underarms, wrists, inside of elbows, groin area, back of knees, and ankles). Most folks love the way any of these concoctions smell and are glad to use generously after the shower. You can also mist your bedclothes with any of them to keep all insects away from you just in case there’s a small hole in that screen at the rented beach cottage! If you don’t have access to a health food or a “new age” notions store, raid your laundry room! Most dryer sheets, slightly moistened and rubbed lightly but thoroughly all over the body and face will chase all bugs away, including gnats and blackflies. Avon’s Skin So Soft still is one of the great “accidental” double-use product stories of all time! Who would have thought that an “affordable” skin moisturizer sold by a door-to-door vender could turn into one of the best insect repellents as well?...and now it comes in the “grease-free” formula too!

2)    Environmentally, you can start the battle by removing any standing water in your garden/patio area. Look carefully! Not just in the birdbath or the splash pool that the kids accidentally punctured and have left deflated in back of the tool shed for two months! Mosquitoes will thrive in a dog dish under the porch or tossed aside garbage can lid that’s too cracked to still use. Before we started spraying the world indiscriminately and killed everything, (thank you Rachel Carson!) dragonflies, frogs, toads, and bats were our biggest allies against all sorts of harmful insects, especially mosquitoes. Our eco-friends’ numbers have been decimated by local community boards who believe that “nuking the neighborhood” is the most expedient choice. Sadly, all we’re learning is that mosquitoes happen to be among the first species to adapt to and recover from chemical onslaughts, while their enemies may be seriously endangered afterwards, and slow to recover. The more technologically advanced we humans become, the more we learn that the best strategy against our insect-foes in the natural world is using nature itself. Let’s try to encourage the return of a wider diversity of wildlife out at the beach and in the countryside. It may sound crazy, but gardening centers and the internet are now selling special “bat boxes” which can be put up in the eaves of your house or garage, or in the tree outside your window to bring a little Bela Lugosi touch to your garden! Bats are shy and of no danger to humans, but they rain havoc on mosquitoes! Imagine a chic little Electrolux vacuum cleaner swooping around at dusk sucking up hundreds of gnats, flies, mosquitoes…all the Insect-World’s vampires that see YOU as Miss Mina with no crucifix around your neck!! Ironic, isn’t it, that a bat in your garden might be the Fearless Vampire Killer that saves YOU from destruction!?

3)    There are a few more tricks for your garden/patio area that will help greatly. Citronella candles; the kind that come in little tin buckets for the industrial-minded, or in attractive glass holders like they use to give away at Sunoco stations in the 1950s are what grandma counted on! And she was oh so right! Place a few of these around the perimeter of your eating area. They create a wall of confusion and exclusion to the bug-crowd! No one wants in!!! And have you got a green thumb…or, um, whatever? Use it! If you’ve got a garden, plant it with marigolds, ageratums, lavender, lemon balm, lemon thyme, pennyroyal, bee balm, catnip, citronella grass, basil, sage and rosemary! All are good choices to grow in pots or beds….. but be careful! Don’t assume that you can also rub flowers or leaves on your skin directly as a repellant. Some of these are so powerful that they can actually cause irritation. Check online about their particular qualities. Better to let them just stand as beautiful and powerful sentries!! Of course the herbs are perfectly safe, and terrific for picking for recipes while they deter the pests! And if you’re barbecuing, a bundle of rosemary or sage can be tossed right on the coals to help flavor grilled food and play havoc with winged intruders! As your friends gather round the grill to smell your latest Food Network find, the Bug-Luftwaffe will be fleeing in droves!

 
4)    Lastly, I have heard of a couple of other strange insect repelling devices that I have mixed feelings about. A zip-lock clear luncheon bag filled with water and some flakes of tin foil or a couple of pennies hung in a doorway?!?! It sounds too strange to be real, but I have actually seen it work! Mostly for flies though. And it has to be in a very well lit area for the effect of the sparkling water and metal to catch and disturb the eyes of the insects…. But try it yourself and see! One thing I will say for it, it doesn’t attract the insects to you! On the other hand there are the homemade CO2 soda bottle insect-traps made with water or ginger ale, sugar, yeast, etc, etc, etc…..yes!! They work, although they’re vile to look at as they begin to fill up and turn black with thousands of mosquitoes and every other species of bug in the surrounding 200’. But in my opinion, they’re attracting more insects to your patio area than would have been there to begin with. They remind me of budget versions of the highly expensive and science-fictiony ultra-violet “zappers” of the 70s that you could pay a fortune for at the garden center, and then hoist into a tree near the house. Did they annihilate any winged miscreant who wandered into their wiry web of manmade lightning? Oh yes!...and I suppose there are those in the backwoods who got “hours of enjoyment” watching the proceedings. But the racket and the flashing was certainly distracting from any normal conversation….. and again, the ultra-violet bulbs were designed to bring the victims, not repel them! Yes, it’s true, Noah Snurd of Poke-A-Ma-Hola, Arkansas was paying his own utility bill doing the community-at-large a favor by killing vast numbers of pests, but he was actually importing them from miles around! I had a sophisticated friend in the Hamptons who bought four of those “zappers” when they first came out! He installed them in the corners of his flagstoned terrace overlooking the ocean for an evening banquet. There was caviar and champagne, laughter and music, gossip and flirting…..and then… the screaming! The AWFUL SCREAMING! Insects by the hundreds began to hurl themselves into those aluminum faux-pagoda lanterns and either burst into flame or explode into cindered shrapnel that landed in people’s crab ceviches…. I made the mistake of standing too close to one of them in my white floor length Norma Kamali, and the static charge turned me into the Bride of Frankenstein! Once we were taken to triage areas to assess our injuries, we realized that our host may have created a rare entomological vortex by concentrating four, count’em FOUR of those insect crematoriums on one single patio!!….. National Geographic, Wild Kingdom, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not all wanted to bid for exclusive rights for the “true story”……Variety said it best!...HAMPTONS HIDE-AWAY HELL FOR HOI-POLLOI!! (It took me two weeks to get my hair back into its naturally cute little page-boy!)

So there you have it. I’ve done it all! Seen it all! Been eaten by it all! If I’m not an expert by now, who is? Take any of this advice, and save yourself from the mosquito marauders! As for me?....I should have done those old OFF commercials and gotten paid for sticking my arm into those terrariums full of mosquitoes for TV. I could have made a fortune!…. Or at least more than a quarter an hour! Xoxoxo! Sybil.

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There's No Business Like Show Business....... #2

LAW & ORDER Update......as you know I was congratulated by the LAW & ORDER franchise for appearing as more dead people in all their programs than any other actor!!!.... a total of 982 victims! I am now being nominated for a special Life Achievement Award for "Most Lifelike Dead Person".....I believe it may have been for the season where I played "apple dunkee dunked", "Macy's store elf found gift-wrapped in a shoe box", "no-nosed nun", "lady member of Dead Poets' Society dressed as Emily Dickinson", "actress playing a corpse who turns out to be a corpse", "contortionist folded into strange shapes one too many times", "mime who frantically signalled for help but no one heard", and "one of 24 blackbirds baked in a pie" ....... I am deeply honored.

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There's No Business Like Show Business.... #1

WOW!!!! I have just been congratulated by the LAW & ORDER franchise for appearing as more dead people in all their programs than any other actor!!!.... a total of 982 victims! I have played "glamorous starlet with poked out eyes", "bag woman with expensive brooch but no head", "poodle walker thrown off ferris wheel", "Fuller Brush saleslady set on fire", "perfume counter shoplifter without hands", "nuclear physicist scratched and eaten by barnful of cats", "lonely man wearing lipstick and bad costume jewelry trampled in gay porn theatre stampede"...

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SYBIL SEZ!!!...... Nasal Rinses: Say “YES!” to your NOse………..

Dear Sybil, My allergies are the worst this Spring season! Pollen is working my last nerve, and I’m sick of taking all the drugs that come over the counter or from the allergist, (which I consider even worse). I think I read that you told a friend about nasal rinses, but the idea scares me…. Can you put my mind and nose at rest??....Please?? …rhymes with SNEEZE! Sincerely, Ronny. 

Dear Runny…er, RONNY! Yes, I have told friends about nasal rinses before, and although it sounds gross to many people, pumping some saline into your nose and flushing out your face can not only be a wonderful sensation, it can also be a life-changing decision too! Most of us remember how perfectly awful it was as children to accidentally breathe in the water at the swimming pool. Not only was it regular tap water, it was heavily chlorinated on top of it all! The burning was terrible, and it turns most people away from ever considering nasal rinses, but the saline water that you either prepare yourself or buy ready mixed in sterile containers at the drug store is exactly the same saline solution that your body is made up of…. about 60% of it!!! And it’s approximately a 0.9% solution, so when you spray it into your sinuses, it’s no more uncomfortable than your tears when you cry. A dear friend of mine asked about rinses, and when I explained the concept to him, he remembered that when he was child at the ocean and got seawater up his nose it wasn’t unpleasant at all…. because the ocean is much more like our own body chemistry than chlorinated pool water… Anyway, back to why a nasal rinse can be so helpful during cold and allergy seasons…. Your sinuses are designed to produce a regular protective amount of watery mucus to keep irritants, bacteria, pollen, and dust from lodging and potentially infecting or damaging the sensitive interior tissues inside your face and airways. But sometimes the pollutants are too numerous or toxic for your body to withstand. At that point, the invaders can trigger a cold or a particularly brutal allergic reaction, and your body responds by declaring “war” in the form of massive amounts of mucus to flush away the enemy. We’re told to drink “plenty of fluids” to keep our bodies completely hydrated for the production of water to supply the mucus  which we either blow out, cough up, or swallow to be destroyed in our digestive systems…. (gross, yes, but rather ingenious after all these millions of years of evolution!) We now know that instead of using decongestants to dry up our sinuses the way we did in the 1950s, we should use products like Mucinex to increase the flow of protective mucus and force fluids, preferably vitamin enhanced waters to maintain our electrolytes. Supporting our bodies’ natural function is the best way to stay comfortable and get well quickly! And a nasal rinse, preferably in the shower, is a fabulous help.  It can unblock the clogged up passageways, clean out all the debris, and even alleviate a bad sinus headache within minutes. A neti pot is easy to buy at the drug store with the right saline solutions, either premixed or available in premeasured envelopes to be mixed with distilled water.  I said “distilled water”…NOT tap water or bottled water. Distilled water is pure H20….nothing else!! No minerals, additives, etc. I buy the envelopes, mix up the right amount in an empty shampoo bottle with a nozzle and spray a dose into each nostril twice, blowing out the contents, and repeating once again. The whole process takes just seconds, and I do it in the morning and again at night. Colds are rare for me now, and if one does start to take hold, I can diminish its duration and severity. ….sometimes stopping it dead within an hour of the first scratchy throat or sneezing…  Although you can see actors on the Internet demonstrate the method for using a nasal rinse, I’ll tell you quickly that it’s as easy as leaning forward in the shower (or over your bathroom sink, facing the drain, turning your head to one side, and gently squirting the saline into the upper nostril and letting it flow through your sinuses inside your face and out the lower nostril. Turn your head the other way and repeat, Turn again and repeat. Turn again and repeat. Blow gently each time without plugging either nostril so that you don’t blow anything into your ear canals… As you get more comfortable doing the process, you’ll start to experiment with tipping your head this way and that to “clean out all the rooms in your attic” as we nasal-rinse aficionados joke!! I promise you, you’ll feel and see a difference right away….. some of my friends claim that food even tastes better, and I’ve known some smokers who claimed it was easier to give up because they could actually smell what was offensive about cigarette smoking more clearly…  You know, my friend Isak Dinesen (yes!...of OUT OF AFRICA fame!) once claimed that "the cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.".... well, she was right, but she left out salt-water nasal rinses! Let me know Ronny, what you think! Spring is running a little late this year, but maybe we can make it a bit more fun for you when she finally waltzes through the front door!!...and you don’t have to hold your nose!!! Xoxoxo!!! Sybil.

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SYBIL SEZ!!.... The Laundry Lambada!!

Dear Sybil, I hate doing laundry! I hate having to stay in the laundromat and watch the machines to make sure they finish running right. The washers always go off balance and don’t finish their spin cycle right, and when I come back the clothes may be soaking wet…or still sudsy! Is there a solution?? Please help or I’ll wear dirty clothes to your Friday shows!!! Yours truly, Stinky. 

Dear …..um….Stinky ….. (After all those years at finishing school and at Vassar, I never, ever thought I would address anyone as “Stinky”!!....especially in a letter!!). I happen to enjoy doing my own laundry!....  whether it’s at home or in a laundromat.  Heaven knows I’m not the most domestic creature in the world, but there are some home chores I like doing, and the process of washing and drying clothes (even “delicates” by hand) appeals to some part of my “simpler-life fantasy”. I love getting stains out of clothes (blood is one of my specialties!), and there’s nothing sweeter than the smell of fresh clothes from the dryer or the clothesline! I adore surprising folks, and myself, with how white I can get my whites! …and I’m often caught bragging about it, much to the annoyance of gardening club members or innocent diners at other tables!… But more on that at another time! … let’s solve your washing machine mambo….or as I like to call it, The Laundry Lambada! First of all, laundromat machines are constantly going out of whack because they basically have almost round-the-clock use….like a taxi cab in NYC. There truly is no rest for the weary, and these machines exist as close to Charles Dickens’ workhouse brutalities as we can get in the 21st century. Someday in the future, androids may look back on us as barbarians and savages for the way we treated their machine ancestors. Not only do laundry machines (and taxi cabs!) run nearly nonstop, but they’re often run by fools as well… people who drive over curbs and lane dividers, or stuff 45 lbs. of wash in an 18 lb. front-loader. The new water-conserving washers make it clear how full to fill the tub and how much detergent to use! Do so!!! They’re not posting those directions on the wall to ruin your day or encroach on your civil liberties! (If any Tea Partiers or Ayn Rand Fan Club members are reading Mummie’s little articles, you’re bound to be enraged! My politics are fairly clear!). The nice laundromat folks are invested in you getting clean clothes, and they’re definitely pointing you in the right direction. Probably you should fill your front-loading machine only about 2/3s full, leaving some “breathing space” at the top of the tub. My laundry room has an actual diagram that shows exactly what they recommend…I guess the only way it could be clearer for the laundry-lame would be if we actually had a laundry stewardess in a tailored uniform come down the aisles between the machines and demonstrate with smiles and gestures to a prerecorded announcement. (Hell, that’ll spike the monthly rent right up, won’t it?!). Once you’ve loaded the tub properly and made sure that neither a sock nor a child (or pet!) has gotten caught in the rubber seal around the door, use the proper amount of detergent and in the proper orifices offered to you….why am I hearing snickering? Washing machines have orifices too! Now! Here’s the solution to your aggravation with machines that go out of balance and don’t complete their cycles correctly….(even if you DO stay and try to brace the machine that’s loaded properly, you can end up “rasslin’ it” back and forth and accomplish nothing more than being laughed at by other customers and throwing your back out for a week!) Here’s what I do; be sure to take a couple of extra terry-cloth dishtowels to the laundry with you. If you use a giant laundry bag, that too is a great tool, and here’s why…. Fold each of the towels or the bag several times into a bulky-ish lump, almost like a fabric “brick”, then carefully but firmly slide one (or two if necessary) into the space between the washing machines right up at the top front corner. You’ll have to really “saw” the folded cloth back and forth to fit it in tightly enough. Take it out and add folds if you need a tighter fit, or remove some folds if you can’t budge it into the space, but remember!.... the tighter the fit of that cushion, the less the machine can wobble when it starts its spin cycle. One towel on each side of each of your washing machines will brace the whole arrangement, and you’ll have a troop of disciplined soldiers marching at attention instead of the gymnasium prom scene from WEST SIDE STORY. I guarantee you can either leave and go get a caramel macchiato or sit in front of it all with your latest issue of the New Yorker and do nothing until the machine turns off…period! The clothes will be thoroughly rinsed clean and spun dry, ready to be shaken out and tossed into the dryer. I taught myself that trick years ago (alright, washing machines had just been invented, and I should have patented my idea!!) but every time I’ve shown it to folks they look at me I like I discovered fire…or invented beignets!!! (I wish I had!!) Let me know if my little trick helps you out Stinky, and makes laundry day a little easier on you. Until you win the Mega-Millions and can have a staff of laundresses doing it all for you, maybe you’ll find the Laundromat a place for coffee and conversation with fun, new friends…. And if not, well, please wear deodorant to my shows, or I’ll be sure to “smell” you out! Xoxoxoxo!!!! Sybil.

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Sybil's "HOLLYWOOD FACT OR FICTION??"......

....SYBIL'S "Hollywood Fact or Fiction!"........ yes, Facebook friends, the true story may finally be coming to light! Shortly after his sensational debut in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), handsome leading man Gort Bronkelmann was accused of being a closet Communist among the Beverly Hills “lefties”. Savaged in the tabloids by the likes of Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopperst and Walter Winchell, he went from being the "Silver Fox of the Saucer Set" to "Blinky the Pinko", a target for ridicule in comic strips, bathroom stalls, and Bosco commercials..... Ashamed and broke, Gort fled the scene for nearly twenty years, reportedly living hand-to-mouth by flipping enchiladas in Tico-Tico, Mexico and bagging groceries in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. He secretly studied "method-acting" through the Lee Strasberg "You-Can-Act-In-Your-Pajamas" correspondence course that was listed on the back cover of a Wonder Woman comic book he saw at a barber shop. He disguised himself and returned to Hollywood as a "newcomer", befriending the former star and now down-and-out Joan Crawford as her shopping pal and eventually her personal assistant. She later cast him as TROG (1970) where his disguise completely fooled his former enemies. He became a much beloved spokesman for the Pepsi-Cola company. Having a life-long need for salty snacks, Gort was instrumental in the corporate purchase of the Frito-Lay empire boosting sales of both product lines. Shortly before Crawford's death, Gort/Trog revealed his true identity by tearing off his floor-length fake-fur/bathmat jumpsuit at a shopping mall grand opening! The same old polished steel profile sparkled again in the sun before the cheering crowd and the flashing cameras! Crawford, dazzled and conspicuously aroused, begged him to marry her, which he did in a private ceremony in Sepulveda for just a few friends and the urn containing the ashes of LB Mayer. Gort gave her a few more years of joy, and finally, peace.....something they had both longed for in their very different lives.....she the classic film icon who bridged the wide span from silent films to Rod Serling surrealism, and he, Gort Bronkelmann, the heir to the failed Bronkelmann's Ladies Notions empire who bridged the wide span from enchiladas to death rays and made it out alive! G-O-R-T........ T-R-O-G.... just a coincidence? You decide.... (Postscript: Yes, Gort was Jewish…..Sadly, even at his birth, his bris had been BRUTAL!!! It took four hours and an acetylene torch! ...and the nice Mohel accidentally set fire to a beautifully embroidered chuppa for the Finkelbeiner wedding later that afternoon.)

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SYBIL SEZ!!!… Hiccups: Mary Poppins May Have Had Something There...

Dear Sybil, I’ve heard that you have a foolproof cure for hiccups among your amazing bits of household wisdom!!  Is it true, or is this just another superstitious urban myth?... and what really causes them in the first place??  Sincerely, Gasping-for-breath!  

Dear Gasping, I DO in fact have a scientifically proved cure for hiccups, tried ‘n’ true, and handed down from one generation of great stage actors to another, family to family, dynasty to dynasty. It was used by the Booths, the Barrymores, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Fisk, Laurette Taylor, Filbert Dirndl, and even Sarah Bernhardt and Sandra Bernhard (who may actually be the SAME person, since they are never seen at the same party at the same time! ….but more on that later!).  The actual science of the hiccup is this; the vagus nerve which runs from the brain down the neck and into the abdominal area, branching out into the various organs, becomes irritated through common digestive problems, emotional upsets (known as “vapours” to the Victorians), blows to the head (sometimes with hatchets!), extended performances of ventriloquism (with or without dummies!), poor accessorizing at luncheons, and over-indulgence in alcohol (usually through so-called “ladies aperitifs” with paper umbrellas!).

Hiccups are little more than a reflex, a misfiring of the nerves leading to the diaphragm! And they're usually more a nuisance than anything else…unless of course, they’re fatal! (My poor great-uncle Wilbur, but that’s another story for another time!). Most home remedies involve two strategies: 1) Overwhelm the misfiring responses of the vagus nerve with other “information”. The vagus nerve informs the brain that something much more dire is happening, and the brain, as the so-called “corporate headquarters” of the body, issues other directives that supersede stupid hiccuping!…or 2) Or interfere with the breathing, as in increasing carbon dioxide levels, which again causes the brain to focus on more dire matters than hiccuping.

My cure, which I have inherited from great actors, performance artists, interpretive dancers, contortionists, ecdysiasts, and highly provocative animal acts is the following: Simply take two spoonfuls of ordinary white sugar, or two sugar packets if you’re on a stock tour and loitering in a diner in Akron! Place the sugar under your tongue and hold it there until it dissolves on its own. No cheating! Don’t chew it, roll it around, or move it in any way… Just let it completely dissolve slowly on its own. As it vanishes, you’ll notice that your hiccups have magically vanished as well. For those of us on nitro-glycerine (or recreational drugs taken orally), we know that the area under the tongue is one of the most highly absorptive places in the body both in completion and speed. The sugar goes instantly and completely into the blood stream and overrides the misfiring signals to the diaphragm, essentially misfiring the misfiring!! I have never known this to fail, and it was the classic cure for hiccups for people who couldn’t afford to be hiccuping in front of the public at the most serious times; Edward Askew Sothern yodeling in OUR AMERICAN COUSIN, Martin Van Buren accepting the presidential nomination of the Know-Nothing Party, and Pinky, the balloon clown at the Lucas County 4H Jamboree making his poodle-balloons make rude sounds!

There ARE, of course, other so-called cures which I will list here in descending order out of journalistic integrity, although I wouldn’t trust any of them on my coleus!  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!  

1) You’ve heard of “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”?? Well forget the 1st and 3rd, and play “Hear No Evil”! Supposedly, plugging your ears energetically can stimulate the branches of the vagus nerve which run nearby, and by stimulating the nerve endings there, the vagus nerve goes into action. Of course some people take home-cures too far and end up “over-medicating” themselves by putting pencils, oblong vegetables, and even power tools into their ears! Please! Don’t let this happen to YOU!  

2) There is the age-old Scared-to-Death cure!  Truly ridiculous, unless of course, you have a rich old Aunt Petunia with a severe heart condition, a castle in Monte Carlo, and you’re her favorite nephew!  Then have at it! Hiccups or no!!  Scare the crap out of her! If she survives and is cured, she’ll put you in her will! If she dies. Make sure all her paperwork was in order before you….um…”cured” her.

3) Gulp water! Lots of it!  NO REALLY!!!  LOTS!! …and upside down!!! I assume that’s what Dick Cheney was having the military do at Guantanamo Bay… “curing POW hiccups”….. this particular cure is infinitely more gentle than the old tried ‘n’ true “shotgun-in-the-face on a hunting trip” cure which can have harmful side-effects.

4) Speaking of torture, here’s a suggestion from the Inquisition; take hold of your tongue, and pull it out in front of you for 10 minutes! With pliers… This actually doesn’t cure hiccups, but it keeps you from complaining about them any further to your friends, and that alone is a kind of peace …for others!!!  

5) ON a lighter note (but only barely!) tickle them away; You can tickle the roof of your mouth with a cotton swab or other …ahem…object. Or you can ask someone to tickle any other sensitive parts of your body, inducing laughter… etc. Paying a professional in a roadside motel room for this service is optional… As is nudity… And other paraphernalia.  

6) Hold your breath… or have someone hold it for you. See cure #5 again… Specifically items “professional” and “paraphernalia”… Apply as needed. Try to avoid pillows at all costs though… and any heirs to the Roman Empire.

7) Bag your hiccups! Breathe into a tightly applied paper bag very rapidly and deeply until either the hiccups are gone... Or you wake-up two days later on the floor. Please do NOT try the Jerzy Kosinski version of this with a drycleaner bag and a bubble bath! (“Calgon Bouquet! Take me away!” indeed!!!!)  

There are other cures that have been handed down through the ages and from many different cultures, but I think that as modern people we should avoid shaking gourds, reading sheep entrails, and setting bonfires for a simple case of hiccups! I’m sorry, but drinking and eating too fast and too much strikes me as a much more likely cause for hiccups than witchcraft or Halley’s comet!  Just my opinion! And, as MY old Aunt Petunia used to say, “Sybil dear, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cured bacon!”… (I know! I had NO idea what that meant either!!). XOXOXO! Sybil.

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Charles Barsotti (Sept. 28, 1933 - June 16th, 2014)

For any animal lovers out there: Charles Barsotti (Sept. 28, 1933 - June 16th, 2014)

Many of you have known for years of my deep affection for the cartoonist Charles Barsotti whose work appears regularly in the New Yorker Magazine. His iconic little dog cartoons are always funny and often touching, but none more so than this one. I remember the day I turned the page in my copy of the magazine and this image was on it. I was in a little cafe in the Village just a block from home and enjoying my croissant and latte on a rainy but cozy morning. There were maybe six other people chatting at tables. I glanced at the picture, the image of the entrance to Heaven, the older man arriving, and the little dog bounding towards him.....and then I read the caption. I will never forget...ever, that moment...

I was stunned as tears began to literally flow down my face. When they started hitting the paper, the sight of them only brought more heavy tears, and I had to cover my face to hide a sob choking its way up my throat. I grabbed my napkin, but it was no use....It was clear that I was crying and I rested my elbows on the table and smothered my grief, but it was too late. People had started to notice because the nice waitress came over and whispered to see if I was ok. I looked at her and saw the other people looking over with gentle expressions of concern. I couldn't speak...so I turned the cartoon to her and pointed. She looked puzzled I think because she perhaps couldn't believe that it was something on a page of a magazine....and then her eyes widened...and stared. And they filled.... filled quickly! She blinked and looked like she had to read it again to be sure. She turned away and then back to me. Our eyes told us everything we needed to know. She put her hand on mine and pressed and then walked away wiping her eyes.

The man behind the counter asked her something, and I could see her explaining as his face grew solemn and then saddened... the lady at the table next to mine asked if I was alright, and (as best I could!) I mentioned the cartoon...she seemed nice so I held it out to her. Smiling softly, she took it and ....her eyes did the same thing... glancing, reading, widening...and then her eyes closed. She stayed like that for a moment, her mouth set for a second, and then two tears began to slip down... she opened her eyes, now changed completely and gulped a sound ...or a word but couldn't finish...

I don't need to tell you that we all shared the magazine that morning...all of us strangers in a little cafe with the rain falling outside on West 4th Street. Each person was deeply touched, and we began to chuckle through our collective tears at how simple Barsotti's lines are, both drawn and written. And we all marveled at how such a sweet image could express a humorous little joke on the surface, as well as a profoundly deeper message underneath.

I have shared that cartoon over and over on my page here on Facebook whenever a friend has posted about the passing of a pet. And I have said every time that this image is what I hope is waiting for us...certainly waiting for me.

Charles Barsotti lived to be 80, a good long life, but... when I think of his wonderful eye and voice and hand and spirit being still now... no more beautiful thoughts like this to be drawn and shared, well... I'm sure you know how I feel. And all I can do is to look at all the brilliantly simple cartoons he created, and this one in particular, and feel the gratitude, joy, and tears for a few black lines on a white page... drawn and written. And that they can live within you for a lifetime....and beyond...

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article567945/Beloved-New-Yorker-cartoonist-Charles-Barsotti-dies-in-Kansas-City.html

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SYBIL SEZ!!!..... Hotel Soaps: To Steal Or Not To Steal……

Dear Sybil, Now that Summer is coming, I plan on doing a lot of traveling, mostly to the Catskills and Adirondacks and on up into New England to the great old hotels and resorts that my grandparents and their parents went to. One thing I remember from them is the wonderful old miniature bars of soap they had in the bathrooms that had names different from the usual Ivory or Camay that we used at home. I would always take the bars home and keep the labels with the names of the hotels and resorts on them to remind me of our trips. They always seemed to be more luxurious than our soaps, and they lasted longer even though they were smaller bars…Is it wrong to steal them? Sincerely yours, Feeling Guilty.

Dear Feeling Guilty, DON’T! Those soaps are actually wonderful in a number of different ways. ….even ecologically! First of all, the companies that made them intend them to be promotional! A hundred years ago, the higher-end soap makers hoped to lure new customers into buying their brands back home by placing miniature versions of their product in vacationers’ rooms who would do just what you did as a youngster; link the look, the feel, and the smell of a soap with a glorious vacation in an exotic place. For middleclass Americans who were becoming affluent enough to “take to the open road” and stay at the so-called Grand Hotels that were previously restricted to the super-rich of the 19th century, every nuance of their stay was memorable, even the grand bathrooms with their giant fluffy and monogrammed towels and their beautiful incised bars of soap. The marketing ploy was so successful that the more common soaps (Ivory, Dove, Camay, Woodbury, etc.) responded by trying to flood the hotel industry with their own brands, but of course, there was nothing particularly “special” about sensible old Ivory. You could find it in every gas station washroom and backroad motel off the highways. Ivory may have been "99 44⁄100% Pure" and even floated!..... but that certainly didn’t mean much to Marion Crane at the Bates Motel. 
Another thing about the higher-end soaps that you noticed too, F.G., was the fact that they seemed to “last longer”! They did, and here’s why; better soaps are “hard-milled” or “French-milled”; terms which mean that they go through added steps which cause them to be harder, glossier, less full of emulsified air, and longer lasting. A bar of Crabtree & Evelyn, Caswell Massey, or any of the other classic luxury soaps may cost more per bar than the standards, but watch how much longer they stay because of that compulsive perfectionism that the French put into everything they design.... Hey, and do yourself a favor! Get an old-fashioned flower-frog from Grandma’s pantry or the local flea market (the metal criss-cross flower-holder that folks put in the bottom of a vase! No, not the deadly one with the 200 needles sticking up!) and use it as your shabby-chic soap dish. It’ll keep your fine soap up in the air between bath times and completely dry it out. Nothing turns soap “soupy” faster that letting it sit in one of those forlorn built-into-the-wall soap dishes that come with every high-rise apartment. And to make them last even longer, always unwrap soaps as soon as you bring them home, and store them either in your chest of drawers or on closets shelves. Not only do soaps get even harder when they’re allowed to “dry” out for a couple of weeks before use, but they also make a wonderful sachet for your clothes and linens, and they chase away moths and mildew too…..a triple bonus, n’est-ce pas? (That flower-frog soap dish and the sachet trick work equally well on the cheaper brands of soap too! Your bar of Ivory will last twice as long, trust me!) And remember that I mentioned that bars of good soap have an ecological benefit too? Well, the processes and packaging for hard milled soaps are much less stressful on the environment. The craze for bath gels and foams that started in the 1980s spiked the use of petroleum and other chemicals not only to make the products themselves but also the millions of bottles that remain completely unrecycled to this day. The packaging for a three bar box of Caswell-Massey “Number Six” (George Washington’s favorite, by the way….and mine too!) is basically some paper and cardboard….not your high-falootin’ spray-labeled faux-plexi-glass aero-dynamically designed squirt bottle for Aveeno that’ll be completely intact in a museum in 2000 years. Treat yourself to the luxury of great bathtimes with a luxury that turns out to be both economically smart and ecologically responsible too…. Now you can settle back into that hot tub and feel really relaxed. You’re a good person!….. even if you DID steal that bar of hotel soap!! Xoxoxox! Sybil.

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SYBIL SEZ!..... There's A Fungus Amungus!...

Dearest Sybil, We opened our house on Fire Island last week and walked into a disaster! It seems that with the very long, very cold, and very, very wet Winter this year, our place flooded from the roof and there was water and mold everywhere. Where, oh where do we even start??? HELP!! Mrs. Fuzzy Slippers.

Dear Mrs. F.S.,  You know it’s so funny! Folks always come up to me on the boardwalk, on the beach, or in a bistro and tell me that they think I float unharmed and never inconvenienced by life’s troubles and tragedies…and I have to reassure them that I get knocked around just as much as everyone else waiting for their clam chowder… even out here in beautiful Fire Island. And I TOO have walked into a house completely trashed by life’s merry little pranks! (Remind me to tell you about the Manson Family wannabes who broke into a place I had in the Pines and lived for maybe 4 months without any running water but still used the toilet!.... Yes! YOU do the math on that one!!). When you walk into a house that has been thoroughly soaked and is becoming a finalist for the Miss Hazmat-Most-Contaminated-Places-To-Visit-Before-You-Die Contest, there are definite rules and protocols to follow to get your home OUT of the running!!! Many of us learned a lot about this after Hurricane Sandy wreaked such havoc all over the Northeast, and the hew and cry over and over again was “MOLD”!!! Suddenly, perfectly healthy folks were coming down with strange skin and respiratory problems; rashes and sores that itched and might not heal quickly, coughs and sinus infections that got worse and worse, and then a whole list of other even scarier symptoms involving digestive and neurological problems. When it was discovered that houses were molding, especially with the “new” building materials like sheetrock and plaster board being more vulnerable than the “old-fashioned” wood paneling of the 1950s, Fire Island turned from a sweet little sandbar into one huge hospital ward of health bulletins, hype, and hysteria….. and much of it well-founded! For the very young, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems mold in the home and work place can be terribly serious and even deadly. Now that we look back through news reports from the past, we see that “mysterious outbreaks of illnesses” may very well have been mold-related following hurricanes, floods, and other disasters involving water damage in locations that remained wet and possibly warm after the initial catastrophe. SO!...with all that in mind, what do we do?? First of all, the internet can answer tons of questions and give us referrals to the right solutions and the people that can provide them… Also, ask your neighbors! Kevin Bacon is right about the whole 6 degrees thing. You can’t throw a slice of moldy pumpernickel in any direction without hitting someone who’s had some experience with solving a mold problem in their place. Your friendly neighborhood contractor (and there are dozens up and down the length of the island!) have all been involved and perhaps even received extra training! Yes, you could do all the home-made cures like opening the entire house up to fresh air and sun, putting fans in all the rooms blowing furiously, and washing everything down with a mixture of bleach and hot water and “scrubby” sponges!…. In addition to bleach, folks have used borax, vinegar, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, common household detergent, and even grapefruit seed extract and tea tree oil. And then of course, there are now dozens of special moldicide products on the market. But everything needs to be handled very carefully, and if you’re put in the position of having mold inside walls, ceilings, and under the floor, there’s only one solution; and that is the professional one. Call an expert! Do nothing on your own! I’m telling you you haven’t lived till you’ve had a wall pulled down, or a floor pried up and seen mold in black, green, and every shade between mounding into veritable throw pillows of Edgar Allen Poe horror!! Above and beyond the sad smell of a dead basement greeting your recoiling nostrils, the sight of that much mold swallowing up the innards of a house sends some folks right over the edge…. (Did you know that some folks actually have a phobia of mold! I’m not sure what it’s called, but fear of mushrooms is “mycophobia”, and perhaps that’s close enough, because sometimes there are mushrooms growing in all that gunk along with everything else!) The one and only rule I can give you is that the faster you get the water stopped, the place open, airy and drying out, and the contractor called, the easier and cheaper it will be. Period! A lot of white clothing, slip covers, linens, and other fabrics can be rescued with several washings of Oxyclean combined with bleach and detergent….colored fabrics like Grandpa’s favorite bowling shirt may be less easy to rescue because chlorine bleach really works the wonders. If you’re willing to spend some money on the non-white items, take them to a reliable neighborhood drycleaner. They’ve managed miracles for me, and you don’t necessarily have to drop another mortgage at Madame Paulette’s just because the Met’s Costume Institute does!! Now, before one of you reading this over his eggs Benedict mutters that Mummie is pontificating from a lofty perch and knows nothing of whence I speak….I have a confession to make; I AM "MRS. FUZZY SLIPPERS"!!! ….and I’m the one going through all of this myself. You see? Mummie cares so much about you, dear reader, that she even uses her own stubbed toe to help you with yours!! Mold, stuffed up noses, surprise visits from in-laws at the beach, dead raccoons inside the eaves, and day-old French bread and a fondue pot you got from the flea market; yep! Just ask Mummie what to do, and she’ll dig up something from her glamorous misadventures!! …and now?....Well, back to the laundry and a cup of coffee with my wonderful God-sent contractor Mr. C.B.!!!! Xoxoxox!! Sybil.

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