Comments on: Happiness Happens

Happiness Happens

the man of twists and turns — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 01:10:39 -0800

It Ain't Over: The Business 9 Women Kept A Secret For Three Decades

Somewhere in West Tennessee, not far from Graceland, nine women -- or "The 9 Nanas," as they prefer to be called -- gather in the darkness of night. At 4am they begin their daily routine -- a ritual that no one, not even their husbands, knew about for 30 years. They have one mission and one mission only: to create happiness. And it all begins with baked goods.

The 9 Nanas have a webpage (with blog) and a Twitter feed.

By: dubold

dubold — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 01:57:14 -0800

That's a great story - but I'd like to think that if my wife was getting up at 4 AM for 30 years and baking cakes, I would catch on at some point. How did these guys not realise the house smelled like cake?

By: MuffinMan

MuffinMan — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:00:01 -0800

The secret to a happy marriage: pretending your spouse's secrets are secrets.

By: fluffy battle kitten

fluffy battle kitten — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:04:13 -0800

Wouldn't surprise me if some of the husbands were factory workers who had to leave for work around 4:00am, dubold. Also, there is something in my eye.

By: Kerasia

Kerasia — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:06:07 -0800

gawd damn, salty liquid has just dropped off my face.

By: jonathanstrange

jonathanstrange — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:08:00 -0800

Oh, such a great story! I wish I was as altruistic as this, but I'm way too lazy and selfish.

By: Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:10:10 -0800

If two people know it, it's not a secret.

By: poe

poe — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:15:32 -0800

Is anyone else super creeped out by this? I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is it Arsenic and Old Lace? Or are we talking more Bodysnatchers? Maybe I'm just too cynical for this silly old world.

By: fraula

fraula — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:39:12 -0800

Is anyone else super creeped out by this? Having had a great-grandma who did something very similar, no, not at all. My great-grandma grew up during the Great Depression. She married a man her family didn't like, they disinherited her, turned out he was a violent drunkard (I only found out a few weeks ago; she never talked to it, though as you'll see, it helps make sense of a lot of things). In the 1930s they drove from Nebraska to Oregon in one of the original Ford Model Ts, with their 8 young kids in tow. My great-grandma cooked, laundered, sewed, crocheted, knitted, gardened, tended wounds with aloe vera she always had growing in pots. I remember getting bruises as a kid; Great-Grandma panicking and asking "who did this??" Usually it was just me being a tomboy. She'd break off a piece of her aloe vera, squeeze it and tell me how good it was for bruises and burns. Her home was filled with crocheted and knitted blankets, toys, hats, doll clothes. She gave them to families in need, secretly. Not a single child from a poor family in her neighborhood, for miles around, was without a colorful winter hat and gloves. She made sure they were renewed when they wore out or were lost. Kids who liked dolls had dainty, lace-like doll clothes. Those who liked noisy toys had "clackers" she made from the tops of screw-top jars that are pressurized and "pop" when you open them – she knitted cozies for them. The article says: "We gave new meaning to the term drive-by," Mary Ellen said with delight. "We'd drive through low-income neighborhoods and look for homes that had fans in the window. That told us that the people who lived there didn't have air-conditioning. Or we'd see that there were no lights on at night, which meant there was a good chance their utilities had been turned off. Then we'd return before the sun came up, like cat burglars, and drop off a little care package." My great-grandma always said she did it because we were all in it together. Maybe it's easier to understand when you know the crushing poverty, abandonment, violence, and terror of a tall, strong drunkard of a husband she had, while trying to raise eight children. Alone and sabotaged by abuse. We don't know anyone's stories. Recently they donated more than $5,000 of pillows and linens and personal care products to a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. Maybe they've been there. Have relatives or friends who have. Your priorities change when you've lived through soul-crushing experiences, whatever they may be. You realize that the stories told to us that lead to stratification and hierarchization, of "value" and "objectives" and all those illusions narrated to keep us striving and thinking that generosity and altruism are "creepy", are chaff on the wind. That the true meaning of life is relationship. And that there will always be people who haven't yet understood that; whose need to believe in that grand, privileged value society has given them is more important than seeing the love around them.

By: Segundus

Segundus — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:10:18 -0800

Is anyone else super creeped out by this? No, but I admit I'm not sure what I would make of it if someone sent me a pound cake anonymously. I doubt whether I would eat it.

By: Catch

Catch — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:37:58 -0800

"One of the sisters suggested that we should all start doing our own laundry and put the money we saved to good use. I admit, I protested at first. " Inspiring stuff. I am going to fire my old scrubbing woman tomorrow and start helping the poor.

By: pla

pla — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:40:25 -0800

dubold : That's a great story - but I'd like to think that if my wife was getting up at 4 AM for 30 years and baking cakes, I would catch on at some point. How did these guys not realise the house smelled like cake? "One of the sisters suggested that we should all start doing our own laundry and put the money we saved to good use. I admit, I protested at first. There's just something about laundering that I don't like" I suspect these ladies belong to the sort of "bridge" club that doesn't play bridge, they build bridges - To steal a line from Night Court. Ah, rich people problems. ;) _{god I hate that expression, whatever the second word...}

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:45:57 -0800

<---willing to do own laundry for charity

By: Secret Life of Gravy

Secret Life of Gravy — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:46:45 -0800

but I'd like to think that if my wife was getting up at 4 AM for 30 years and baking cakes, I would catch on at some point. The cake baking as a fund raiser didn't start until after the husbands were told. At first it was just a little money here and there from using coupons and green stamps, less than $50.00 a month per ninja.

By: dontjumplarry

dontjumplarry — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:55:27 -0800

The generosity is inspiring. But I do hate this pervasive and pernicious lie that charity should begin at home. It does feel great to help those in our local communities, and of course it's understandable and a lovely impulse, but what it means in practice is that comfortable westerners should focus on helping other relatively comfortable westerners, while the two-thirds of the world who aren't comfortable -- who don't need gifts of food to feel good, but to prevent their children from dying of malnutrition and diarrheal disease -- get nothing as usual.

By: deliquescent

deliquescent — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:08:15 -0800

"less than $50.00 a month per ninja." What a steal!

By: pla

pla — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:11:57 -0800

dontjumplarry : But I do hate this pervasive and pernicious lie that charity should begin at home. I think you've misunderstood that expression - Most of us won't even go that far. And if you won't even do it for "your own kind", who, then?

By: jaduncan

jaduncan — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:12:21 -0800

Ah, rich people problems. ;) god I hate that expression, whatever the second word... Challenge accepted: rich cake problems. Cannot eat second delicious slice.

By: dubold

dubold — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:17:26 -0800

The cake baking as a fund raiser didn't start until after the husbands were told. Okay, I re-read the story for a third time, and I guess you're right. It was the opening paragraph, and this line: That's when the 9 Nanas moved their covert baking operation out of their homes that made me think it was mostly about the baking. Anyway, regardless of whether or not it's pound cakes or utility bills, these people are thinking of others, to some degree, which is a Good Thing. I do hate this pervasive and pernicious lie that charity should begin at home. Sure, and I don't like the inclination to find the flaw in every good deed, even if I do succumb to it from time to time.

By: Catch

Catch — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:19:14 -0800

Rich Little problems. Everyone you impersonate dies.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:22:26 -0800

Wow, is there nothing that Metafilter can't disdain?

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:30:20 -0800

Wow, is there nothing that Metafilter can't disdain? Is this something I'd need a soul to understand?

By: jaduncan

jaduncan — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:31:14 -0800

Wow, is there nothing that Metafilter can't disdain? A really cynical person would wonder if they'd made the story up as part of a plan to start a mail order cake business, then outsourced the actual baking. I am not that person.

By: Segundus

Segundus — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:37:19 -0800

I'm sort of interested in the equation of cake and happiness. I was thinking just the other day that over thirty years my workplace has gone from somewhere full of blokish men, with an occasional young female, to a basically female place where only one or two old gits like me and rare young men are found. Over the same period we've moved from a culture that revolved around beer to one that revolves around cake.

By: MuffinMan

MuffinMan — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:39:58 -0800

And let's face it, that's a good incentive for true equality in the workplace. Beer and cake.

By: Segundus

Segundus — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:42:02 -0800

Beer and cake. A banner I could march under. Well, amble.

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:44:34 -0800

Chocolate Stout Cake Draft Magazine: Cake and Beer pairings

By: jaduncan

jaduncan — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:47:15 -0800

Secret 10th Nana.

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:52:23 -0800

That was a lovely story. Thank you for sharing it.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 05:03:37 -0800

Wow, is there nothing that Metafilter can't disdain? How about a world in which this sort of self-sacrifice and charity is necessary?

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 05:42:43 -0800

I assume you mean "isn't," and I say bring it, but I'm not going to sit here at my iMac and cast aspersions on the intentions or acuity of those who are at least trying in their own way to help the people around them that they can. How are we defined but by the way we act towards others, and anonymously paying someone's electric bill is higher up the ladder of useful acts that internet finger-wagging. I mean, it's not a zero-sum game. An act of charity doesn't negate a vote for social justice at the ballot box. They can compliment one another. Let's do both.

By: msbrauer

msbrauer — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 05:43:13 -0800

People wash eggs?

By: gilrain

gilrain — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 05:51:41 -0800

msbrauer: People wash eggs? Any egg you buy at a store has been washed of its natural coating of "bloom", which actually keeps them fresh longer but is commercially undesirable. If they're washing theirs, they're probably getting fresh eggs from a friend or local farmer. Although, I'm still not sure why they'd bother to wash them... no harm in just cracking and using like normal, with an unwashed egg.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:04:49 -0800

Something something let them eat cake.

By: kcds

kcds — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:14:02 -0800

Any egg you buy at a store has been washed of its natural coating of "bloom", which actually keeps them fresh longer but is commercially undesirable. Any egg you buy at a store in the US has been washed of its cuticle, but this is not common practice in Europe, and as a consequence, Europeans frequently store their eggs at room temperature, not in the fridge.

By: stormpooper

stormpooper — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:20:00 -0800

Is anyone else super creeped out by this? Yes. They put weed and LSD in all of their goodies. Muwuwhahhaahahhah. Or at least, that's what I would have done. When life throws you lemons, serve lemonade.

By: gauche

gauche — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:22:00 -0800

I'm still not sure why they'd bother to wash them... no harm in just cracking and using like normal, with an unwashed egg. Fresh eggs, while delicious and superior to store-bought eggs, do sometimes have bits of dirt or straw or chicken ... um, excreta stuck on them, which can fall off into the bowl when cracking. These things will in all likelihood not kill you, but if I were making a special comfort-in-hard-times cake for somebody and I had fresh eggs, I would probably wash them first.

By: Benny Andajetz

Benny Andajetz — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:30:21 -0800

I wish I was half the person these ladies are.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:34:45 -0800

Here I was expecting a Bosom Buddies/Breaking Bad mashup!

By: Segundus

Segundus — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:43:10 -0800

Careful, I think we're teaching our Nanas not to wash eggs here.

By: mightygodking

mightygodking — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:47:32 -0800

Wow, is there nothing that Metafilter can't disdain? look, it's not that they aren't doing valuable work, but why can't they dress up like Lady Gaga while they're doing it, is that too much to ask

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:59:04 -0800

It's funny -- I'm considered cynical by most of the people I know IRL, but I'm a wide-eyed, credulous romantic by MeFi standards.

By: otherthings_

otherthings_ — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:13:00 -0800

Anyone who's been to Burning Man would recognize this as the beginning of a gift economy. Only the people they're helping didn't pay hundreds of dollars and spend a week in the desert for the privilege. Therefore, this is good.

By: Naberius

Naberius — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:16:22 -0800

I'm just glad Ayn Rand didn't live to see this come to pass. She would be so disappointed. So is Paul Ryan

By: kenko

kenko — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:30:30 -0800

Sure, and I don't like the inclination to find the flaw in every good deed, even if I do succumb to it from time to time. I think we can find the good deeds flawless while finding flawed the way they're celebrated (which is, despite the emphasis on our all being in it together, basically individualistic—because we all help each other out as individuals, see?).

By: Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey

Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:16:01 -0800

If you're not saving the most wretched, downtrodden souls in the worst circumstances out there across the globe, you're a self-indulgent, overfed, inconsiderate Westerner fucking taking a cake no further than next door while some 6-yer-old living under a murderous dictator thousands of miles away is half an hour from shitting themself to death from dysentery. HOW FUCKING INSULTING TO ALL THOSE WRETCHED, POVERTY-STRICKEN MASSES CONTINENTS AWAY! I BET EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM RESENTS THE FUCKING IDEA THAT SOME GODDAMN 'MURRICAN IS GETTING THEIR LIGHTS TURNED BACK ON WHILE NANA AIN'T DOING JACK SHIT ABOUT THE OPEN-TRENCH SEWER SOME PREGNANT 12 YEAR OLD IS SHITTING IN ON HER WAY TO PICK GARBAGE OUT OF THE TRASH DUMP SHE LIVES NEXT TO! Fuck you, Grandma. Go make some REAL difference on people who actually matter (unlike your neighbors), and stop patting yourself on the back for your half-assed, self-indulgent wankery under the false banner of doing some dollop of good in the world"

trope. The classics are my favorite.

By: aganders3

aganders3 — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:22:28 -0800

> I doubt whether I would eat it. I would think about it exactly twice, and then eat it.

By: bwerdmuller

bwerdmuller — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:31:45 -0800

This was a lovely story. But wait, they were spending $400 a month on laundry? Either they were doing something wrong, or I am.

By: Foam Pants

Foam Pants — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:22:53 -0800

The story seemed to be about a bunch of grandmas but I don't think I saw a single pair of hands in those photos that looked over 50. And a lot of expensive haircuts. I dunno. something seems off.

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:43:44 -0800

I didn't wanna do it but I guess I have to: West Tennessee Women Secretly Delivering Cakes to Underprivileged Familied for 30 Years, Daily Mail.

By: cribcage

cribcage — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 10:35:35 -0800

But I do hate this pervasive and pernicious lie that charity should begin at home. It does feel great to help those in our local communities, and of course it's understandable and a lovely impulse, but what it means in practice is that comfortable westerners should focus on helping other relatively comfortable westerners, while the two-thirds of the world who aren't comfortable -- who don't need gifts of food to feel good, but to prevent their children from dying of malnutrition and diarrheal disease -- get nothing as usual. I recognize that sentiment comes from a good, genuinely caring place, and I definitely don't want to come into a pleasant thread with a litany of the horrors that are statistically likely to have occurred (1) in the past twenty-four hours, and (2) inside the radius between your home and the nearest hospital or police station. But if we're trading notes on pet-peeve pervasive and pernicious lies, that is definitely one of mine, the idea that "comfortable westerners" fret only about being able to afford Christmas presents and birthday cakes and cannot know of third-world troubles. There are more westerners than just the comfortable ones. That said, I'll applaud bringing any happiness into the world, including baking birthday cakes and giving toys to tots. What these women and their families have been doing is inspiring. Thanks for posting the FPP.

By: idest

idest — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:16:34 -0800

This was a lovely story. But wait, they were spending $400 a month on laundry? Either they were doing something wrong, or I am. I think that was the total for all of them. Wonderful story.

By: dancestoblue

dancestoblue — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 12:48:08 -0800

A million years ago, my little ex-wife and I were living in Florida, and getting ready to move back to yankee-land, broke, not hungry but real close to it -- pinto beans and corn bread -- we were scraping around for money for gas, and of course hoping that old van would make the trip, fingers crossed. A guy who lived 'cross the way in our apt complex was pretty decent -- older than us, and he was a teacher or some such, and he played tennis for chrisakes, we distrusted him accordingly. Tennis. Joe College. He even wore white shorts and shit, this guy was a fish, right? Kathy used to make those macramé plant hangers, and, like anything else she turned her small freckled hands to, she made them so nicely. Though never flawless, always something a bit off somewhere, I think of how she did and I think of those native Americans who weave rugs and put an intentional error in them, to keep them from ... I dunno. Keep from vanity? Remind of lifes imperfections? No telling. And with Kath it wasn't intentional, it was built in, it was just her, unless it was pen and ink, which was flawless, always, perfect, perfect yet beautiful, it sang. She'd made this one plant hanger, it had four big metal hoops in it with the ropes twisted round them, it had twirls and every kind of knot, it was a monster, small people could have lived in it, maybe some did, no telling. If you put a motor in it you could probably fly it. Something, it was something. Anyways, this neighbor guy, he gets onto that we're moving, he's not blind, it's clear we're in trouble, Kathy tells him she's selling off some of her plant hangers. He gave us $100 for that macramé. He gave us $100 for the macramé. I don't even know his name. We'd made fun of the guy. Called him a fish. Chuckled about his white shorts, hairy legs, his glasses. Kathy, a warmer heart than mine, laughed less loudly probably, but she was in it. My job is to give that money back to Life.

By: Myca

Myca — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:31:04 -0800

I ... I think I have something in my eye.

By: radiosilents

radiosilents — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:42:20 -0800

those of you questioning whether or not you would eat the mystery pound cake have never been crushingly poor and/or going hungry. you would eat it, and you would hope it was an act of kindness that brought it to you. but you would definitely eat it.

By: danny the boy

danny the boy — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:58:51 -0800

Geez, not even crushingly poor/ hungry, but like, didn't any of you guys go to college in the last few decades? We knew exactly which days the hostess store threw their expired product into the dumpsters out back. The food that I took chances on back then (I didn't always win) made me glad we were covered under the university health plan.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:06:05 -0800

The food that I took chances on back then (I didn't always win) made me glad we were covered under the university health plan. You know, I don't think I ever got sick on any of the things I ate which spent time in dumpsters.

By: third word on a random page

third word on a random page — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:39:01 -0800

When I was 17, first year of college, I worked at a café with a bunch of rich kids. They used their tips to buy shots and ironic t-shirts; I used mine to pay rent and food. I did okay, but things were always tight, just a few bucks away from a really bad situation. A coworker and friend, also 17 or so, handed me an envelope with a card and about $200 after his shift one night. Birthday money, something like that, and he wanted me to have it. I don't remember exactly what I did with it, probably bought myself a tube of lipstick and paid rent, but that money was the first little bit of luxury I'd had since moving out. Thanks for the reminder that I still need to pay that one forward.

By: divabat

divabat — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:19:21 -0800

that last line about how they want to help those that don't have their family around to help them...I wonder if they deliver cake to lonely sleepless newly-arrived international students. *tear*

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:50:47 -0800

those native Americans who weave rugs and put an intentional error in them Aside: I was going to be a pedantic killjoy and claim this was an Amish practice but in fact it appears to be entirely apocryphal. Not that I didn't enjoy the simile anyway.

By: theora55

theora55 — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:35:55 -0800

I went to Guatemala and visited Guatemala City, and saw the dump where people glean the garbage for recyclables and food. If this thread has incited a feeling of wanting to help some people, especially children, who genuinely desperately need it, Safe Passage is an amazing program. Charity is one of the 7 virtues. prudence, justice, restraint (temperance), courage (fortitude), faith, hope, and love or charity. The current American politics of greed and lack of charity make me sad, and I'm happy to see some good-hearted charity in action. Thanks for posting this.

By: jason says

jason says — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 08:59:24 -0800

I love stories like this, and I don't care whether they are rich/poor/whatever - they are helping people around them in a way that I may never be able to emulate. I applaud them. When I was a young college student, GI bill money would frequently be late coming in. This led to more than one occasion of pretty significant belt tightening. At one point specifically, I was staring down two weeks of pretty much no food - some rice and maybe a ramen packet. A friend happened to swing by my apartment and noticed the barren cupboards. I came home from work that night and found my fridge and cupboards full of groceries. I actually cried. Being not entirely stupid, I know that I have to pay this karmic debt back. So most times I am grocery shopping I find somebody that looks like they need help, and try to buy their groceries. Fifty bucks to me now is a decent meal, but to the young me and to many people today it is all the difference in the world.

By: Isadorady

Isadorady — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:04:56 -0800

The story seemed to be about a bunch of grandmas but I don't think I saw a single pair of hands in those photos that looked over 50. And a lot of expensive haircuts. I dunno. something seems off. I am over 50 and have lovely hands. And I am poor and have nice haircuts. But I am occasionally off. Sweet story,though.